Sonny Dykes

629 days before Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem on a late summer night last year, Mikayla Cowling pulled out her phone and opened up Twitter.

Of the top 20 highest-paid UC Berkeley employees in 2016, only 3 were women, according to the university’s annual payroll data released last week.

Cal Athletics lost two of its most senior financial officials this summer, just as it prepares to find a way to close its more than $20 million budget deficit.

UC Berkeley’s former basketball and football coaches were paid the highest salaries within UC Berkeley in 2016, according to the university’s annual payroll data released Friday afternoon.

It’s no secret that Cal Athletics faces a daunting future: the most debt-ridden athletics program in the nation is tasked with cutting the entirety of its fiscal year 2016 budget deficit — nearly $22 million — by 2020.

Christ insisted that “Cal Athletics have to have a balanced budget by 2020.”

Now that you’re set to join the ranks of UC Berkeley students, here’s a quick and dirty guide to the the major news of this semester so far.