Convocation season is upon us, and it is once again a time of transitions — both joyous and bittersweet. Like you, I am also transitioning as I step down as your chancellor at the end of this month and return to being a Berkeley faculty member. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for making my service as chancellor such a fulfilling one.

In the course of nearly nine years as chancellor, I have had the great pleasure of interacting with what are undoubtedly the most “engaged and engaging” students anywhere. Having taught at several other institutions around the globe — including Yale, MIT, Toronto and Oxford — I have come to appreciate that Berkeley students are very special. It has been a great joy to meet and connect with so many exceptionally talented students who not only have a passion to learn and a drive to excel but also the ambition to give back and change the world for the better. I have found Berkeley student energy empowering as well as inspiring.

You have made your mark on this campus, on our community, our state and indeed, the world. On campus, you have partnered with the administration to create a vibrant multicultural student center. You forged a unique partnership with the university to transform Lower Sproul Plaza, completely revitalizing student activity space. You educated me on greenness and sustainability, and your ingenuity has shown what marvelous things one can do to make our campus greener. Your passion for responsible stewardship of our planet is reflected in the many green energy projects in which the campus is engaged.

You have supported our local community in numerous ways through the Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund, beautifying neighborhoods through artwork, providing community health services to the needy and volunteering for thousands of hours as tutors in neighborhood schools. You have made Cal Teach a thriving program on our campus.

The passion of your convictions has had a remarkable effect. We worked together assiduously to pass the California DREAM Act and make possible scholarships and financial aid for undocumented students. You registered voters and advocated convincingly to help pass Proposition 30, thereby mitigating further state cuts to higher education in the current budget.

On a global level, many of you have traveled to far regions of the world, bringing your knowledge and creativity to help alleviate poverty. Your inventiveness has already resulted in projects that will improve life in impoverished areas of the world.

I undertook the chancellorship with a commitment to sustaining Berkeley’s unique public character and ensuring that our academic excellence would be affordable to students of exceptional talent from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Together, we have sustained and enhanced robust financial aid programs not only for students from low-income families but also for the middle class. Berkeley became the first public university in the United States to create a Middle Class Access Plan. Despite increasing tuition, we have been able to ensure that Berkeley undergraduates are graduating with the lowest student debt among all public teaching and research universities across the country.

I have enjoyed working closely with the ASUC and Graduate Assembly leadership throughout my entire tenure as chancellor. Our student leaders are deeply committed to working in the best interests of our student body and the university. Whether on issues such as student mental health, campus climate or, most recently, the Student Health Insurance Plan, their constructive collaboration made possible a myriad of accomplishments.

We have also had many good times together. Mary Catherine and I have loved greeting our new students in the fall at the outdoor receptions at University House and cheering with you at football games in the student section of Memorial Stadium. Watching student performances, whether athletic or artistic, has lifted our spirits. Celebrating your successes at scholarship receptions, at award events and at graduation has made us tremendously proud of your achievements.

You have touched us profoundly, and we have been inspired by you. We wish you all the very best for the future and will watch with great interest and pride as you go out and make an impact on the world in the powerful way that only Berkeley graduates can.

GO BEARS!

Robert Birgeneau is the chancellor of UC Berkeley

The post A letter from the chancellor appeared first on The Daily Californian.

In February 2012, the campus stood on the verge of capturing a $60 million grant from the Simons Foundation to launch a theory of computing institute. Its competition, several elite East Coast private universities, equated the problems facing the campus with a death spiral. Why, they wanted to know, would the foundation consider giving such a large sum of money to a campus that in a decade would be a shadow of itself?

Having been posed the question, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau gulped as he sat across a table from the foundation’s decision-makers. Completely unprepared for such an assessment, he paused for a full 30 seconds before unleashing a 30-minute lecture on the ongoing vitality of UC Berkeley.

“I told them everything,” he said in an interview last week. “I told them about our public character, I told them about our comprehensive excellence, I told them about our financial aid strategy.”

UC Berkeley’s proposal, which drew from a variety of fields, including molecular and computational biology, and incorporated the star power of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Saul Perlmutter, won the grant, beating out top-flight private universities like Harvard and MIT.

This triumph is emblematic of the excellence UC Berkeley has achieved under the leadership of Birgeneau, who is stepping down this summer. Worldwide rankings place it among the top universities on the globe, it has maintained its status as the premier public institution in the United States and its faculty members and students continue to win the most prestigious awards academia offers.

But the success has come at a cost, to both UC Berkeley itself and the University of California as a whole. For many, the path charted by Birgeneau through the state’s disinvestment has threatened the fabric of the UC system and alienated members of the campus community. To some, it has gone so far as to jeopardize the very idea of the public university.

Because of its stature, UC Berkeley has a unique ability among the UC schools to generate revenue through fundraising, private partnerships and nonresident tuition dollars. In a two-day strategic planning meeting shortly after he took office in 2004, Birgeneau decided to capitalize on this advantage in order to maintain what he calls the campus’s “comprehensive excellence.”

But this strategy — a mixture of increased lobbying for federal research grants, a drastically expanded private fundraising enterprise and a sharp increase in out-of-state students that yielded unprecedented nonstate revenue for the campus — favored UC Berkeley ahead of the rest of the system. By leveraging UC Berkeley’s brand, Birgeneau set the campus apart from the other nine UC campuses.

“(Fundraising) is campus-driven: You’re always counting on the allegiances and often the heartstrings of the donors,” said David Blinder, who spearheaded fundraising efforts as the campus’s associate vice chancellor of university relations and vice president of the UC Berkeley Foundation. “Their affiliations are to the campus rather than to the broad, amorphous thing that is the University of California.”

In the last fiscal year alone, the campus has raised $408 million through programs like the Campaign for Berkeley.

UC Berkeley’s prestige gives it a leg up on the fundraising competition, and Birgeneau has not shied from exploiting this advantage — a policy with which Birgeneau, who says he values the Master Plan’s multitiered structure, sees no problem.

“Ultimately, the responsibility of the UC Berkeley chancellor is to ensure that Berkeley continues to set the standard for public education nationally and internationally,” Birgeneau said. “My first responsibility is to ensure that … California has at least one public institution that is as good as the very best private institutions and sets the standard for the world.”

Birgeneau further articulated his vision of UC Berkeley’s primacy in a 2012 white paper he co-authored that called for many decision-making functions to be devolved from the central Office of the President to individual campuses. Although he said the proposal was not intended to give UC Berkeley or any other campus special status, it strained the unity of the 10-campus UC system. Among many controversial points, the paper’s proposal to create decision-making boards specific to each campus opened the door to differential tuition between campuses — a proposal that was shelved by the university’s 2010 Commission on the Future due to concerns it would irreparably destroy the system’s nine undergraduate campuses’ equal-footing relationship.

In addition to being a coalition of campuses, the UC system is also a coalition of undergraduate and graduate institutions. At UC Berkeley, the relationship between undergraduate and graduate programs has struggled — and in some cases, this relationship has been severed almost completely.

In the face of state disinvestment, graduate programs have ratcheted up tuition rates and subtly pivoted away from the campus. Combined living and tuition expenses at the UC Berkeley School of Law now top $72,000 for California residents, placing it in the neighborhood of its private peers. Meanwhile, graduate programs in the sciences have increasingly looked to sponsored projects as a way to obtain research money.

“All of the attention in access has tended be on undergraduate education,” said Judson King, director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley.

In pursuit of financial security, the campus’s graduate programs have emulated the operations of their counterparts at schools like the University of Virginia. Virginia’s Darden School of Business, for example, has relied largely on tuition and fees to finance itself self-sufficiently for more than a decade.

“What a lot of places are doing is selectively quasi-privatizing certain schools, like law and graduate business schools,” said University of Virginia professor David Breneman, an expert in the economics and financing of higher education. “But they don’t like to talk — UVA doesn’t like to talk about anything but it being a public university — but we’re moving away from the meaning that it’s largely publicly financed.”

Instead, the reliance on student fees and donations has meant that graduate programs have come to look more like privately financed arms of a public university.

In order to demonstrate to donors that he was serious about maintaining UC Berkeley’s comprehensive excellence, Birgeneau fully committed the campus to his alternative funding push.

“First and foremost, it was important for our constituents to have the confidence that nobody was going to be retreating from Berkeley’s standards,” said Blinder, who left the campus for a similar position at The Scripps Research Institute this year.

But the focus on money created an atmosphere in which Birgeneau spent so much time away from UC Berkeley pursuing additional revenue that students and faculty members alike came to see him as aloof from the needs of the campus community. The tension came to a head during Birgeneau’s controversial handling of the November 2011 Occupy protests — an episode he said he regrets — when many in the faculty called for a no-confidence vote in his leadership.

Other policies also created conflict on campus. Operational Excellence, a cost-saving initiative that Blinder credited with demonstrating the campus’s commitment to financial efficiency to donors, often became a target for its layoffs that campus workers perceived disproportionately affected nonsenior management roles.

Increased admission rates of nonresident students became an equally frequent focus of campus dialogue. During protests, activists decried the immediate effects of the out-of-state influx while analysts considered the policy myopic. A recent paper co-authored by professors Bradley Curs of the University of Missouri and Ozan Jaquette of the University of Arizona found that increased enrollment of nonresidents at public research universities, including UC Berkeley, has limited socioeconomic and ethnic diversity.

“It undermines the university’s long-term case that it is a public university and needs public support,” said Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute, who called the pursuit of nonresident students “expedient revenue-hunting.” “These things represent short-term solutions to long-term systemic problems that need to be worked through.”

All these policies and decisions, and the reactions to them, are manifestations of the fundamental tension that underlies Birgeneau’s term as chancellor. His nine years in California Hall have been at some level a prolonged dialogue on what it means to be a public university.

On the one hand, the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education founded the UC system on the public ideal, according to which the population of the state invested in the education of its younger generations. This is the ideal that many faculty members and students aspire to and the principle that has guided the movement against state disinvestment of the past four years.

But as the state disinvested from the UC system regardless and UC Berkeley began raising money from other sources, Birgeneau has sought to maintain what he calls the “public character” of the university.

“Saying it’s a public university means it is available and accessible to all residents of the state depending only on their having the academic qualifications for admission,” King said. “The idea of public education is that it is available without regard to personal or family (financial) resources.”

By this metric, Birgeneau claims to have preserved public character. Although middle-income enrollment has decreased 9 percentage points from 2000 to 2010, 38 percent of UC Berkeley’s student body receives Pell Grants, and in December 2011, the campus implemented the Middle Class Access Plan, which caps parent contribution toward undergraduate education for students with family incomes of between $80,000 to $140,000.

Birgeneau’s appointment in January as the leader of the Lincoln Project — a three-year initiative organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences aimed at defining the future of public higher education — affords him a platform from which he can continue exploring higher education reform, this time on a national level. Though his methods have at times been controversial, his peers in public higher education refer to the successes of the campus during his tenure as the “Berkeley Miracle.”

Endorsing his work at UC Berkeley, the academy wrote in a press release announcing the move that Birgeneau “has launched initiatives at UC Berkeley that are the models for public colleges and universities elsewhere.”

Contact Jordan Bach-Lombardo and Curan Mehra at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

The post Birgeneau leaves legacy of complicated commitment to public mission appeared first on The Daily Californian.

In an interview with The Daily Californian’s Senior Editorial Board last week, Birgeneau recalled an instance when officials at another university referred to “the Berkeley miracle” — essentially, the fact that the campus has been able to avoid deteriorating as state funds diminish. A less skilled chancellor might have succumbed to talk that, in the face of such a steep challenge, the campus needed to sacrifice access in the name of excellence or comprehensive academic rigor for targeted success. Birgeneau held steadfast to the belief that UC Berkeley could remain prominent in all areas, and he was largely successful in that mission. “Now, the state … doesn’t even provide enough money to pay the salary of our teachers,” Birgeneau said in the interview. “In spite of that, Berkeley continues to be one of the top-tier universities in the world.”

A student who arrived at UC Berkeley this year sees a tuition bill exponentially higher than those who entered campus when Birgeneau began his chancellorship in 2004. With state funds now accounting for only about 11 percent of the campus budget, students should hardly be surprised. And though UC systemwide tuition hikes over the years have been deplorable, Birgeneau has done all he can to keep UC Berkeley affordable. He started by getting ahead of the curve. About six years ago, Birgeneau said, he and other administrators realized that state funding was going to be a problem, and they “understood that if we did nothing … Berkeley would not be the institution it is today.”

To fight the threat of rising tuition prices posed to middle-class families, Birgeneau pioneered the creation of the campus’s Middle Class Access Plan in 2011. Touted as the first of its kind for any public university in the country, the innovative financial aid system caps parent contribution at 15 percent of total income for students whose families make between $80,000 and $140,000.  But he was also cognizant of the reality that “there was no silver bullet” to the funding crisis. Accordingly, he oversaw a diverse transformation in the campus’s fundraising model. During his time as chancellor, for example, the Campaign for Berkeley has raised nearly $2.6 billion as of last summer to support faculty chairs, research and scholarships, among other items.

As such efforts progress, Birgeneau has in effect instigated a culture change for UC Berkeley. Despite dwindling public funds, Birgeneau’s leadership has emphasized holding onto the campus’s “public character.” That means the campus continues to strive for economic diversity — which one can find evidence of by noting that 38 percent of UC Berkeley undergraduate students received Pell Grants in the 2010-11 school year, according to U.S. News and World Report. It also means that the faculty and student body on campus are deeply committed to public service, Birgeneau said.

In the spirit of serving the public, Birgeneau has been a tireless advocate for some of the most disadvantaged students. Aside from his trailblazing middle-class financial aid plan, Birgeneau displayed a deep devotion to making UC Berkeley accessible for undocumented students. Not only did he personally pressure the governor to support the California DREAM Act, which allows undocumented students to receive financial aid, but he also presided over the creation of a campus scholarship for undocumented students. And he understands that support for undocumented students is incomplete without immigration reform at the federal level, a cause he will no doubt continue to advance when he ends his chancellorship this summer.

Yet when it comes to general campus climate, while Birgeneau recognizes the friction among some student communities, his mindset is problematic. He accurately pointed out that productive dialogue between students is key to bridging the gap, but he incorrectly framed campus climate as “a student problem, not an administration problem.” He is correct that “climate is about how students interact with each other,” but more proactive administrative support would go a long way. The administration, which does not turn over every year like much of the student leadership, needs to take a more active role in improving campus climate.

Birgeneau has also not been accessible enough to students. Although he did a decent job connecting with specific student leaders, he certainly could have been more accountable to the student body at large. When asked about his relationship with the student government, Birgeneau pointed out that he has fostered close ties with ASUC presidents, but he has not been nearly visible enough in the ASUC Senate in recent years. Incoming chancellor Nicholas Dirks, who arrives at UC Berkeley after serving as an administrator at Columbia University, must be more present in public student spaces on campus.

|Dirks can also learn from Birgeneau’s mismanagement of major campus protests. During two of the most significant demonstrations in recent years — at Wheeler Hall in 2009 and during Occupy Cal in 2011 — Birgeneau came under fire for failing to prevent police use of force against protesters. If Dirks internalizes lessons learned from the uproarious aftermath of those protests, he should be able to avoid similar pitfalls.

However, Dirks’ biggest test, as Birgeneau indicated, will be whether he can continue to protect the public character of UC Berkeley. The campus has done great work under Birgeneau, but threats to balancing access and excellence remain. “We don’t need more great private universities — we need great public universities,” Birgeneau said. “That’s Berkeley’s responsibility … we need to be vigilant to maintain our public character for the indefinite future.” Dirks has big shoes to fill on that front.

The post Chancellor Robert Birgeneau appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The settlement calls for the removal of clauses in SB 160 that dealt with ASUC investments and appropriations. It effectively thwarts the ASUC’s effort to divest its own funds from companies involved in Israel’s alleged “human rights abuses” against Palestinians, leaving a purely symbolic piece of legislation that requests similar divestment by the UC Regents.

The charges that brought about the settlement claimed that the bill was not approved by the proper committees and should have been passed by a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority.

“I think SB 160 has lost a lot of weight through this settlement,” said Noah Ickowitz, SQUELCH! party chair and a former columnist for The Daily Californian. “The bill that passed is now a completely different bill once these clauses are stricken. It loses almost all its authority. I hope the public understands that this is no longer ASUC divestment.”

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said in a public statement that the passage of SB 160 would in no way affect the investment policies of the university.

The settlement, which is pending approval by the Judicial Council, was reached between Attorney General Hinh Tran — representing the ASUC — and Ickowitz and former external affairs vice president Joey Freeman. Tran, who was tasked with defending the ASUC in the matter, conceded the legitimacy of the constitutionally grounded charges against SB 160 but added that in his opinion, the charges did not have enough merit to warrant nullifying the bill.

“It’s a sign on cooperation and compromise on a very difficult bill,” Tran said.

Student Action Senator George Kadifa, who authored the bill, disagreed that the settlement watered down the bill in any way, emphasizing that the purpose of the bill has been largely symbolic since its inception.

“The settlement changes very, very little about the bill,” Kadifa said. “A part of the reason (we were willing to compromise) was that the ASUC wasn’t invested in any of these companies. That wasn’t the main focus. All language calling for the UC Regents to divest is still in the bill.”

While the settlement represented a compromise between the parties involved, it was not necessarily a consensus of the affected communities.

Despite being on the opposite side of the divestment debate, Jewish Student Union President Daphna Torbati agreed that the settlement did not really change the essence of the original bill.

“Although this is definitely a change in the right direction, these changes are largely inconsequential, as the bill still contains the same sentiments that ignore much of the Israeli narrative,” she said.

Both Tran and Ickowitz said they believe that the settlement reflects an important ability to compromise on an issue that has been divisive. They echoed a sentiment similar to that of ASUC President Connor Landgraf when he announced that he would not veto the bill in an effort to expedite the campus’s healing process.

“Not going through a hearing definitely helps campus climate,” Ickowitz said. “We really don’t need a trial right now, and the settlement avoided a big public spectacle. I’m sure there are people in both communities left unsatisfied, but in this case, I’m sure it was the right decision.”

Contact Jeremy Gordon at jgordon@dailycal.org.

The post Settlement of charges against divestment bill SB 160 to remove major clauses appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Following months of controversy, UC Berkeley announced that it will withdraw from the systemwide UC Student Health Insurance Plan in the fall.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced the decision to withdraw Thursday, joining four other UC campuses that are abandoning at least some parts of UC SHIP. The announcement comes after the systemwide Council of Chancellors approved various changes to UC SHIP, including campus withdrawal, in a meeting Wednesday.

“Today I am stating my support for the students’ position and, following their urging, announcing that UC Berkeley will be withdrawing from UC SHIP and returning to a UC Berkeley-operated student health insurance plan,” Birgeneau said in a statement.

Beginning Aug. 15, UC Berkeley will transition back into a campus-managed, fully funded insurance plan similar to what the campus had in place for decades before joining UC SHIP in 2011.

UC SHIP follows a self-funded model in which those paying the costs, in this case the UC system, are responsible for absorbing the plan’s risks, according to Bahar Navab, UC Berkeley’s student representative to the UC SHIP Advisory Board. Fully funded plans place risk on a separate insurance provider but generally have higher premiums.

UC SHIP currently has a $400,000 lifetime cap and a $10,000 prescription drug coverage cap. As a fully funded plan, UC Berkeley-provided insurance would also have to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits these coverage caps.

In a letter sent to Birgeneau last month by UC Berkeley student representatives, Navab and ASUC President Connor Landgraf wrote that poor management from the UC Office of the President and a desire for more local control were some of the reasons students favored withdrawing from UC SHIP.

“I think that localized control and more decentralized governance is what’s best for our campus right now,” Navab said. “It’s a two-year plan, and we can always re-evaluate after two years. If UC SHIP has changed enough that we want to go back to it, we always have that option.”

UC Berkeley’s decision to withdraw comes in light of UC SHIP’s projected $46.5 million net deficit, which earlier prompted the possibility of premium increases across the board.

According to Kim LaPean, communications manager at the Tang Center, the new plan is expected to include a 13 percent premium increase for undergraduates and a 20 percent increase for graduate students, though the campus has yet to finalize rates. LaPean said benefits will not decrease under the campus plan and that officials are working to ensure that students will be able to see the same outside carriers.

“Berkeley students were really clear that they did not want to lose benefits,” LaPean said. “The changes that they’re going to see are all going to be in the favor of the student.”

Other campuses that decided to partially withdraw from UC SHIP include UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara. Some campuses, like UCLA, have opted to stick with UC SHIP.

Students with coverage through UC SHIP next year will also see changes, including lifting the lifetime maximum, annual pharmacy cap and other caps on essential care. The UC Office of the President is currently reviewing options to close the deficit, but UC spokesperson Brooke Converse said students will not have to pay for the deficit through premium increases.

“Our job right now is to respect the campuses that want to leave,” said Scott Arno, the UCLA student representative to UC SHIP Advisory Board. “No campus should be forced into this plan. We need to make it run better so that they’ll want to come back.”

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

The post UC Berkeley to abandon SHIP appeared first on The Daily Californian.

UC Berkeley will transition back to its own campus-run health insurance plan beginning Aug. 15, similar to what was in place for decades before the campus joined UC SHIP.

“Today I am stating my support for the students’ position and, following their urging, announcing that UC Berkeley will be withdrawing from UC SHIP and returning to a UC Berkeley-operated student health insurance plan,” Birgeneau said in the statement.

The move to abandon UC SHIP comes as the program faces a projected $46.5 million deficit, down from the originally projected $57 million deficit and what could have been a premium increase of up to 19.8 percent for UC Berkeley students. The new plan will have no coverage caps and is expected to include a 13 percent premium increase for undergraduates.

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org.

The post UC Berkeley to leave UC SHIP, return to campus health plan appeared first on The Daily Californian.

1) Just to get this out of the way: The unibrow is gone! Yes, it no longer adorns the spot between his gorgeous eyes. The debate over how exactly it was removed remains unresolved. The top possibilities are duct tape and waxing, since plucking would have taken too long.

2) Despite its untimely death, the unibrow has a Twitter account. Read that sentence again to make sure you understand that. The tone and grammar of the tweets makes it unlikely that Dirks is behind it, but it’s still hilarious. And it’s just getting off the ground! Help out the ‘brow by adding to its two-follower count.

3) He has an acute sense of fashion. The tie he was wearing at his acceptance speech was customized. His wife got it for him in from of his favorite stores on Madison Avenue.

4) He believes in the power of public schools to make a university great, despite the fact that he’s spent extensive time at notable private universities such as Caltech and Columbia.

5) He wrote the books “The Hollow Crown,” ”Castes of Mind,” and “The Scandal of Empire.” (We think these would’ve been better names for the books in the Hunger Games series.) They focus on India and the role that the caste system, colonialism and imperialism had on the formation of the country.

6) His interest in South Asian anthropology was piqued by his Fulbright Scholar trip to India as a young boy, where he learned to speak Tamil, a regional language, and how to play the South Indian drum.

7) His relationship with his wife, Janaki Bakhle, began when Bakhle, an editor at the time, chased Dirks to review a manuscript for a piece in the University of Minnesota Press.

8) His spectacles do only serve as a function for reading, as he tends to peer at you above them ominously when engaging you in conversation. Perhaps the piercing spirit of the ‘brow lives on.

9) He and Jerry Brown have had a bit of an indirect spat, with Brown criticizing the pay raise Dirks is getting over Birgeneau: a margin of $50,000. Brown pointed out that this was not in the spirit of “servant leadership” and voted against it, although it eventually did pass.

10)  Though he now embodies the “stereotypical professor” look with the crazed hair and thick mustache, he did have long hair during his time at Wesleyan as an undergraduate. He also managed to rock a red bandanna.

If this isn’t enough for you, there’s a half-hour-long interview following his appointment as chancellor-designate that you can check out. And if you have any questions for the man, you have a chance to air them! The student forum takes place on May 2 at Anna Head Alumnae Hall.

Image source: Public Affairs, UC Berkeley

Contact Uday Mehta at umehta@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter at @mehtakid.

The post Ten random facts about Chancellor-designate Nicholas Dirks appeared first on The Daily Californian.

1. His increasingly croaky voice has made it hard to give speeches. Though he is certainly eloquent in his words and impeccable in his demeanor, it would be undoubtedly difficult for anyone to command the attention and respect of thousands of 20-year-olds — unless that someone has the light-tempered voice of Morgan Freeman.

2. He’d like to move to a house that isn’t prone to being attacked. Back in 2009, a number of protesters made the upward trek to the University House and attempted to reenact a scene from Game of Thrones, laying siege to the house — albeit, for a matter of minutes — by attempting to torch it and break windows and lights. For whatever reason, the aggressors included students from UC Davis, and we’re sure that the Chancellor is excited to spend more time in his physics office — where he might have some particle accelerator beams to protect himself.

3. He is no longer rolling in green. No, not the usual type of green that’s associated with the Cal campus. Think state funding, of which he has lost over 58% over his tenure. Birgeneau referred to this massive drop as a “disinvestment by the state” in the UC system.

4. He’d like to enjoy his time at Berkeley without being questioned or interrupted. At the end of 2011, his speech to the ASUC senate was cut off by protesters in the crowd, to which Birgeneau responded with folded arms and a sarcastic smile. Following his handling of a series of protests, a petition that had garnered thousands of signatures was brought to the ASUC, calling for Birgeneau’s resignation. Thick skin and a favorable vote from Student Action kept him in power Why Chancellor Birgeneau is ready to step down — for a while, at least.

5. He was supposed to be liberated from his job five freaking months ago! The original plan was for him to step down at the end of the 2012 calendar year, something he announced close to his birthday. Instead of going through with his plan as a 70^th birthday present to himself, he extended his stay even further — a stay that was originally supposed to be seven years will now end at nine and a half.

It’s probably true that the tumult of Birgeneau’s life will decrease dramatically once he’s officially replaced as Cal’s Chancellor. But it won’t be gone completely — he may be a retired Chancellor, but he’ll still be a member of three departments on campus, a far cry from the lives of old men retiring from pristine positions like the papacy. But don’t expect him to stop making headlines: he claims he still has “one more truly significant… experiment to come” in his academic career.

Image source: The Daily Californian (left and right) & Andrew Ratto (center) under Creative Commons

Contact Uday at umehta@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter at @mehtakid.

The post Why Chancellor Birgeneau is ready to step down appeared first on The Daily Californian.

SHIP was supposed to unite all UC campuses under a cohesive, well-managed health system that saved them money and eased the managerial burden by streamlining health coverage. Instead, students have seen that SHIP is too organizationally painful to operate effectively. Administrative mismanagement led to a deficit that was at one point projected at $57 million — a problem that seems like it could have been entirely avoided had the university done a better job communicating with the firm responsible for setting premiums.

Support for leaving SHIP has rapidly grown on campus over the  semester. In February, a group of administrators wrote that if SHIP’s operations were not “considerably improved” for the next academic year, individual campuses could opt out of the plan “to seek a more stable and financially viable health plan for students.” At a series of public forums in March, students weighed in on various proposals to tackle the plan’s deficit and toyed with the idea of jumping SHIP. Just two weeks ago, the ASUC Senate indicated unanimously that it supports withdrawing from the plan. Earlier this month, student leaders — including the ASUC and Graduate Assembly presidents — sent a letter to Chancellor Robert Birgeneau stating that “we have lost faith in UCOP’s ability to effectively manage the UC SHIP plan and believe pulling out is our only real option.”

Mismanagement as large as that which resulted in the plan’s current deficit could end up necessitating premium increases for students. To that end, as Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab said in March, “If we start causing deterrents to students using care, then what’s the point of SHIP?” Before joining UC SHIP a few years ago, UC Berkeley successfully ran its own health plan. The campus should return to that model.

But the campus running its own health plan does not mean it is entirely immune to the problems that UC SHIP faced. Moving forward, it is imperative that campus administrators pay close attention to understanding what went wrong with UC SHIP so that the campus does not repeat those mistakes.

In the end, the final decision on whether UC Berkeley should withdraw from UC SHIP rests with Birgeneau. Given the commendable community input and public dialogue that has taken place so far, his choice is obvious. The campus would be better off on its own.

The post Abandon SHIP appeared first on The Daily Californian.

In a statement explaining his decision, Landgraf emphasized that he did not support the bill and that it failed to contribute to any constructive dialogue on the issue. However, he ultimately decided not to veto the bill because he felt doing so would only intensify the conflict and lengthen the healing process for the community.

“I think people on both sides may disagree with my decision,” Landgraf said. “I think it’s the best decision for the campus as a whole, and both communities need to reconsider their perspectives on this issue and reconsider the value of having a 10-hour-long senate meeting that tears communities apart.”

In an interview with The Daily Californian’s Senior Editorial Board, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said he personally witnessed the emotional turmoil Landgraf underwent prior to making his decision.

“I met with Connor last night, late in the afternoon, mostly just to listen to him.” Birgeneau said. “He was really, really upset, justifiably so, given the threats against his person. I just tried to console him and give him advice.”

Before announcing his decision, Landgraf said he had been verbally assaulted and threatened. He said he has only received a few angry emails since his announcement was made.

Independent Senator Sadia Saifuddin, a co-sponsor of SB 160, said she commended Landgraf for respecting the senate’s decision.

“This issue is clearly one that affects countless students,” Saifuddin said in an email. “But I truly believe it is possible to build bridges in the wake of the passage of the bill.”

Although Landgraf said he sought to hasten the campus’s healing process with his decision, many on both sides of the issue say they feel even more uneasy following his announcement.

While members of the Jewish community acknowledged the difficulty of Landgraf’s position, many said they are disappointed by his decision. Daphna Torbati, president of the campus Jewish Student Union, said she feels that Landgraf’s decision bolsters a one-sided narrative and silences the pro-Israeli voice.

“Regardless of the veto action, much of the damage has already been done,” Torbati said in an email. “Our community is very hurt and disappointed about the sheer amount of anti-semitic and anti-Israel comments made on the senate floor last week.”

Many pro-divestment students said they remain concerned about the climate on campus and that they continue to feel uneasy about expressing their views. Two weeks before the vote occurred, one pro-divestment student was assaulted on campus, allegedly for saying he believed that Israel was an apartheid state.

“The repression is so severe that we have to fear for our physical safety,” said the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine in a statement. “Our physical safety and our right to open debate are at risk.”

SJP also noted that its members feel that their advocacy has been mislabeled by opponents as hate speech.

ASUC President-elect DeeJay Pepito emphasized that all communities need to remain respectful of opposing opinions on this complex issue.

“As students, we need to take responsibility for our own actions,” Pepito said. “Poor campus climate is not determined by a piece of legislation that the senate passes. Poor campus climate is perpetuated by students using hurtful words and resorting to violent threats towards one another.”

Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org.

The post Climate remains tense in wake of Landgraf’s decision not to veto appeared first on The Daily Californian.