Kore Chan/Senior Staff

A UC Berkeley student was robbed at gunpoint near Moffitt Library on Sunday evening.

The incident marks the fourth robbery or attempted robbery to occur on campus or on property close to campus since Thursday.

In the Sunday robbery, a UC Berkeley student was walking west on University Drive about 9:11 p.m. when two males approached him, according to a UCPD crime alert released Monday.

One of the perpetrators walked up to the victim, pointed a black handgun at his chest and demanded his cellphone. Before he could comply, the perpetrator pushed the student to the ground. The student dropped his phone, one of the perpetrators picked it up and the two perpetrators fled north on the west side of Haviland Hall, according to the alert.

The armed robbery was the second of its kind this week, after an incident at the intersection of Berkeley Way and Oxford Street early Thursday morning, according to a UCPD crime alert released Thursday. About 5:30 a.m., an armed person struck a 57-year-old UC Berkeley affiliate. The woman fell to the ground, and the perpetrator took her purse and fled the scene.

Later that evening, a 19-year-old student was robbed in front of Unit 3’s Beverly Cleary residence hall while waiting at the shuttle pickup location on Channing Way, according to a UCPD crime alert released Friday. The perpetrator in this incident also pushed the student to the ground before snatching her cellphone and fleeing the scene.

In a fourth incident this weekend, however, a student successfully resisted an attempted theft.

The student was walking between Dwinelle Hall and the Valley Life Sciences Building just after midnight Saturday when three males approached him, according to a UCPD crime alert released Monday. Two of the men stood in front of and behind the student, one issuing verbal threats while the other grabbed his backpack from behind. The student clenched his backpack and began to yell, after which the men fled the scene.

Immediately after each of the four crimes, UCPD searched the area but was unable to locate the perpetrators.

According to a recent Berkeley Police Department report, 221 robberies have occurred within the city from January to June 2013. The report also noted a 67 percent increase  in robberies targeting people with iPhones, smartphones and other small electronic devices in the first six months of 2013 compared with the same months in 2012.

Megan Messerly is a news editor. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

The post Several UC Berkeley students and affiliates robbed in campus area last week appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The student was walking on Campanile Way when he was confronted by three males about 12:40 a.m., according to a UCPD crime alert released Monday. A perpetrator moved in front of the student as another perpetrator grabbed his backpack from behind in an attempt to take it. The perpetrator in front verbally threatened the student, who clenched his backpack and began to yell.

The three suspects fled the scene, running east toward the Campanile. The victim, who was uninjured during the encounter, walked home and called UCPD to report the crime.

UCPD searched the area but was unable to locate the suspects.

According to the UCPD crime alert, the suspects are described as:

Suspect No. 1 — A male, possibly Asian, in his late teens or early 20s, 6 feet in height, with a thin build and dark complexion and wearing a red hooded sweatshirt.

Suspect No. 2 — An Asian male in his late teens or early 20s, 5-foot-10 in height, with a thin build and wearing a black hooded sweatshirt.

Suspect No. 3 — An unknown race male in his late teens or early 20s, 5-foot-10 in height, with a thin build and wearing dark clothing.

Megan Messerly is a news editor. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

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About 7:43 p.m., the victim, who is affiliated with the campus, was walking along the Grinnell Path from Oxford Street while texting on her iPhone, according to a UCPD crime alert released Tuesday. She put the phone in her pocket, and, as she neared the south side of VLSB, she felt someone run into her.

The male perpetrator took the phone from her pocket, knocking her to the ground, and fled the scene. After a male passer-by chased the perpetrator to the south side of Haas Pavilion, he dropped the phone, and the passer-by retrieved it and returned it to the victim.

The victim suffered minor injuries. After searching the scene, UCPD was unable to locate the perpetrator.

According to the UCPD crime alert, the suspect is described as:

A black male between 20 and 25 years old, 6 feet in height with a medium build, either short hair or bald, wearing a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt with white or light-colored markings on the front and light-colored jeans.

Megan Messerly is a news editor. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

The post Female robbed near southwest corner of VLSB appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Jessica Rogness/Staff

It’s not uncommon for the weather in Berkeley to cycle through all four seasons in a single day. What starts out as a chilly morning may turn into a blistering afternoon and then abruptly dip into subpolar temperatures come evening. If you can’t identify with crazy, ever-changing weather, you must be new here. You might consult weather.com before getting dressed in the morning, but we at The Daily Clog have a more accurate take of what a typical day in Berkeley will be like.

First, you don’t want to get out of bed. You may be a Golden Bear, but on a chilly Berkeley morning, you would much rather be hibernating:

You bundle up to go to your 9 a.m. class:

Whether you’re refrigerating in an air-conditioned VLSB auditorium or toasting in 150 Dwinelle Hall, class will probably look something like this:

You emerge from your classes in the afternoon, and you suddenly notice a wild weather change:

So you start shedding layers:

But then the sun sets in the evening:

And it is chilly once again:

Image sources: Alyssa D., Angie Terukina, Carol Schnei, Berkeley DM, WhatshouldwecallWWU, Easy Way, Whatshouldberkcallme

Contact Jessica Rogness at jrogness@dailycal.org.

The post Tank top or parka? One day of Berkeley’s weather in GIFs appeared first on The Daily Californian.

• GBC — Golden Bear Cafe
• VLSB — Valley Life Sciences Building
• FSM — Free Speech Movement (Cafe)
• CKC — Clark Kerr Campus
• EECS (pronounced EEKS!) — Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
• SLC — Student Learning Center
• GSI — Graduate Student Instructor
• CARS — Campus Accounts Receivable Systems (billing)
• DARS — Degree Audit Reporting System

The post Berkeley acronyms appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Kimberly Veklerov/Staff

There is a very particular type of disappointment that comes each time I realize a piece of bathroom wall graffiti is unoriginal and uncredited. The words hang in the air, without lovely little beginning or ending quotation marks, without a final, resounding authorial citation.

If the quote in question is not well known — an obscure indie song lyric, for instance — then the singer is forever denied recognition for her work unless a curious student happens to Google search it. In a stall of VLSB, for example, is a fantastic paragraph on perseverance without any name ascribed to it. Turns out, it’s the first part of Eminem’s “’Till I Collapse.” Eminem might not exactly fall under the indie category, but his music is just as unfamiliar to me. There is something so unbearably grating about his voice, coupled with his general promotion of violence against women, which makes his music too much for me. But I digress. Each time a Google search reveals a lack of originality, I wonder why it is so difficult to properly attribute another’s ideas.

At first the answer seems to be selfish egoism. Words without citations benefit the pen-holder, not the idea-maker. This reasoning might make sense on Facebook, whenever a citationless quote is posted as if it were the original work of the creator of the status. In the case of Facebook, because the status-poster-pen-holders are known people, I always tend to believe the worst in them — that they are blatantly attempting to pass off another’s idea as their own.

But on an anonymous bathroom wall, selfish egoism does not seem to be the neat and tidy reason why attribution is so rare. After all, the graffitists are just as nameless as the quotes they are writing, so there is no personal gain that comes from plagiarizing. Whoever anonymously Sharpied the Eminem quote obviously cannot take credit for his words. The answer is not pure laziness, either. Spending an extra three seconds to write down the singer’s name is no daunting task.

I think the reason why it is uncommon to acknowledge the writer is because words are more powerful when their source is unknown. Every author connotes certain feelings or previously held notions that are irrelevant to the quote at hand. If Einstein says that imagination is more important than knowledge, it is impossible to understand the quote by itself. Immediately we think of Einstein’s own knowledge, how he was the most brilliant thinker of the twentieth century, which makes his claim of imagination’s importance that much more significant. If Eminem says this whole inspirational piece on finding your inner strength, then readers such as myself might brush it off without considering the worth of his words.

At the end of the day, there is no real reason to attribute every idea to a particular source. Admittedly, this becomes problematic in academia, but it is important to keep in mind what Carl Sagan has to say on making apple pie from scratch: Nothing can be 100 percent original. The words Einstein says, the lyrics of Eminem’s raps — they’re all just influenced by those who came before. Every word in every language has already been spoken, so all we can do to be unique is make our own combinations and permutations of them.

After exploring wall after wall of bathroom graffiti, I have to believe that there is some value to be gained from ideas being faceless. It’s one of the reasons why some authors choose to write anonymously or under a pseudonym. Words have more meaning if we are not concerned with who said them. If we lived in a hodgepodge of thoughts, some coming from Average Joes and others from Einsteins and Eminems, then all we have to stand on is the merit of the thoughts and not the merit of the thinkers.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

The post A nameless notion appeared first on The Daily Californian.

A lot of wish-washy, sentimental stuff has been said about the positive benefits of nature – stuff that we appreciate but often find a bit unsubstantial – but a new study gives some scientific support for that idea.

The preliminary results of a new study showed that feelings of awe can make people less self-centered and more generous. The study had subjects stare at our very own Valley Life Sciences Building and our eucalyptus grove. Those looking at our lovely trees reported more “humility, compassion and cooperation.”

In an urban environment like Berkeley, most people probably neglect to experience nature. This is why we love the fact that our school has areas dedicated to nature. It’s calming and apparently improves our willingness to cooperate.

Maybe all group projects should have a mandatory meeting in our eucalyptus grove? We could all sit in a circle, sing kumbaya and tree hug our differences away.

Or imagine corporations having their offices in a building symbiotic with nature, complete with little capuchin monkeys delivering all memos? We know our productivity would rise just by being around awesome trees all day. This is our attempt to surreptitiously convince all of those Randian leaders of industry to plant a damn tree, for once.

Of course, nature isn’t the only way to be awed, though it’s a good one. We were awed when we got our new high score in Tetris. Far from feeling humble, however, we proceeded to rub our ultimate skill in everyone’s face. So maybe there are some flaws to this idea.

There is something to be said about why the study compared an artificial structure to a natural one. Admittedly, both are impressive, but it’s something about the natural world that really puts things into perspective. Yes, the VLSB is a big and beautiful piece of architecture, but forests are the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, complex and interdependent systems at the limit of our comprehension and forces far greater than what we could achieve.

We consider nature as a mother – maybe it a kind of parental love of the natural world that makes us feel connected and less self-centered?

Image source: B@ni under Creative Commons

The post Feelings of awe make you more generous, less Randian appeared first on The Daily Californian.

At 10:49 a.m., two unaffiliated victims, one a white 55-year-old male and the other a white 55-year-old female, were talking on a cellular phone when a suspect approached them and attempted to intimidate the two victims, according to a UCPD crime alert.

The suspect then threatened to beat up and ended the confrontation with a derogatory religious epithet, according to the alert.

No one was injured during this unprovoked confrontation, and UCPD officers responded to the scene but were not able to locate the suspect. The incident is still under investigation.

Below is the UCPD Crime Alert description of the suspects:

“A Hispanic or White male, approximately 20 years of age, light or olive complexion, 5’06” to 5’-08” tall, approximately 140-pounds, stocky build, black hair, brown eyes, wearing a black t-shirt with white writing, dark pants, black shoes, and carrying a red backpack with a silver stripe.”

View Man and woman assaulted at Valley Life Sciences Building in a larger map

Anjuli Sastry is an assistant news editor.

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Unless a compromise is accepted by the ASUC Judicial Council, the results from the Class Pass referendum — which would extend the bus pass contract with AC Transit — will not be tabulated because an injunction was set on the results by the Judicial Council, according to Elections Council chair Pamudh Kariyawasam.

The injunction came about after Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab filed charges against the referendum because the language on the ballot incorrectly stated the pass would last three years instead of seven for a portion of the first day of voting.

Navab said she is working with the Elections Council to reach a compromise to tabulate the results and determine if the votes cast while the ballot was inaccurate would have changed the results. As of press time, the Judicial Council had not approved a compromise.

The results of the V.O.I.C.E. Initiative — which asked students to pay $2 per semester to support The Daily Californian — will only be tabulated if the Judicial Council decides to overturn ASUC President Vishalli Loomba’s executive order invalidating the initiative at a hearing Wednesday night, according to Kariyawasam.  The executive order was challenged by Lynn Yu, campaign manager for the referendum — resulting in the hearing.

Results of the general election will be tabulated in 2050 Valley Life Sciences Building at 6 p.m. Thursday.

Chloe Hunt is the lead student government reporter.

The post Fee referendums could be missing from ASUC General Election results Thursday appeared first on The Daily Californian.

At about 10:43 p.m., the 26-year-old student was walking westbound on the Grinnell Pathway near the Life Sciences Addition building wearing earphones when he allegedly felt someone grab his shoulder. The victim turned around and saw two suspects standing in front of him — one of whom was holding a handgun — and was told to get on the ground, according to a UCPD crime alert.

The victim complied, and the suspects allegedly took his backpack — which contained his computer, his cellphone and his iPod — before they allegedly fled westbound on Frank Schlessinger Way. The victim did not sustain any injuries during the incident.

After the victim called 911, UCPD responded and searched the area but was unable to locate the suspects, according to the alert.

One suspect is described as a male in his late teens to early 20s, approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and carrying a silver handgun. The second suspect is also described as a male in his late teens to early 20s, approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall.

Allie Bidwell is the news editor.

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