Occupy Cal is dead, but that doesn’t mean student activism should disappear. One year ago, protesters at UC Berkeley used the momentum of Occupy Wall Street to establish a movement that, at least for a short period of time, consumed the campus. However, since Nov. 15 of last year, turnout Read More…
Dear Nicholas Dirks, Congratulations on your selection as UC Berkeley’s next chancellor. Your reputation will rise or fall depending on your ability to navigate an unpredictable and sometimes explosive political environment, win the trust of students who are notoriously wary of authority and guide the world’s leading public university through Read More…
On behalf of 29 plaintiffs, BAMN has filed a $15 million lawsuit against UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, other administrators and police for excessive force, false arrest and violating the First Amendment on Nov. 9, 2011. We obtained thousands of pages of administrators’ internal emails through the Public Records Act Read More…
Tired of protesting? Surely many have seen, or even participated in, their share of rallies, occupations, pickets and other demonstrations. Some have been big; some have been small. Some are disasters; some actually get an effective message across and are successful — for example, stopping the 81 percent fee hike Read More…
The University of California shouldn’t need to pay about $1 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from mismanagement of campus protests. If UC Davis set better policy prior to November 2011, when police pepper-sprayed a group of peaceful protesters, a lawsuit wouldn’t be necessary. But the university failed to avoid Read More…
When UC Berkeley administrators or police mismanage a controversial protest, steps must be taken to ensure such situations are handled better in the future. That’s one of the reasons the campus has a Police Review Board, and it’s why the university launched a systemwide review following the tumultuous protests last Read More…
Each morning for the last two weeks, I have risen with the sun, ready to get to work pulling weeds, tilling soil and planting seeds. Each night I have set up a tent and slept under the stars, reflecting on a long day of work. I am one of the Read More…
Spring is a busy time for a maize geneticist. Experiments have to be planned, students have to be recruited and thousand of seeds have to be carefully organized and packaged for planting. It is important to get everything just right, because we only get one opportunity to do large-scale field Read More…
The food movement is vibrant at UC Berkeley. On the weekend of April 21, a group of locals — including some students and faculty members — began an ongoing occupation and planting of the Gill Tract farmland that was about to be plowed and cultivated for federally funded UC researchers Read More…
Dozens of advocates of community urban farming took over the university’s Gill Tract on Earth Day, April 22, establishing a camp and planting about two acres of vegetable crops. Their goal is to prevent development of this five-acre piece of land that represents one the few remaining agricultural spaces with Read More…
