USI

In 2013, UC Berkeley alumni, Danny Murillo and Steven Czifra, met on campus and shared their backgrounds on being formerly incarcerated and system impacted individuals. Together, Murillo and Czifra co-founded the Underground Scholars Initiative, or USI, a student-run organization for those who have been personally impacted by the U.S. criminal justice system.

Under a new University of California hiring policy, prospective university employees will no longer be asked about prior convictions in their initial employment applications. This push to “ban the box” will take effect as early as October, just over a year after UC Berkeley became the first UC campus to institute the policy.