Illustration by Maren Slobody

The University of California Board of Regents recently approved two new chancellors for UC Berkeley and UC Riverside: Nicholas B. Dirks and Jane Close Conoley respectively.

The appointments were confirmed on Nov. 27 at the Office of the President’s Oakland headquarters. Dirks, the executive vice president and dean of the faculty for Arts and Sciences at Columbia University, was selected as Berkeley’s tenth chancellor by UC President Mark Yudof after a six-month search.

“Nicholas Dirks is a humanist with an invaluable mix of scholarship, fundraising experience and administrative expertise,” Yudof said. “I am confident he is the right leader at the right time for UC Berkeley.”

Dirks will succeed the current chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau, on June 1, 2013. He does not, however, feel anxious or overwhelmed in transitioning from a private university to the University of California.

“I am deeply honored to have the opportunity to serve in a leadership capacity at a truly great institution of higher learning that is both a beacon of excellence and a powerful engine of opportunity,” Dirks said.

Although Dirks will not officially begin his service until next summer, Conoley, dean of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, will begin her appointment on Dec. 31, the day after Timothy White, UCR’s current chancellor, leaves to be the new chancellor for the California State University system.

Yudof is just as confident in the decision to appoint Conoley for Riverside as he was in the regents’ decision to appoint Dirks for Berkeley.

“Jane Conoley has long been a nationally recognized education expert, and she is a treasured member of the UC community,” Yudof said. “I am confident that the Riverside campus will keep moving forward on several fronts, especially student success.”

The regents approved an annual salary of $486,800 for Dirks and an annual salary of $245,600 for Conoley.

Ten percent of Dirks’ salary will come from private donors and 90 percent will be funded by the state and other sources. Dirks and Conoley, like the current UCB and UCR chancellors, will receive annually an auto allowance of $8,916 and will have a house on campus that will be paid for with non-state funds.

Conoley’s salary will also be funded by the state and by other private sources. Conoley’s new salary will be distributed immediately because she will spend most of December transitioning from Santa Barbara to Riverside in order to begin her appointment on Dec. 31.

There are significant differences between Dirk’s and Conoley’s recently approved salaries from the current salaries of chancellors Birgeneau and White.

Dirks will be paid $50,000 more in his annual salary than Birgeneau, who receives $436,800. Conoley will be paid $79,400 less than White, who receives $325,000.

Although the majority of the UC Board of Regents approved Dirks’ overall compensation, Gov. Jerry Brown, who also sits on the board, voted against Dirks’ allocated salary.

Brown emphasized the need for sacrifices to be made among the university’s administrative leaders in the current climate of budget cuts and increased student tuition.

“The $50,000 increase above the incumbent [chancellor] … does not fit within the spirit of servant leadership that I think will be required over the next several years,” said Brown during a telephone meeting with the regents, according to The Sacramento Bee’s “Capitol Alert” blog.

Brown added that as governor he would continue to be an advocate for “greater efficiency, greater elegance [and] modesty” within the UC.

Other government officials besides Brown are attempting to take a stand against such salaries like Dirks’.

According to the “Capitol Alert,” State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said that he plans to re-introduce a bill that would prohibit pay increases like Dirks’ at the UC specifically under a tight state budget and in a time of a sharp increase in student fees.

“UC and CSU are public institutions designed to serve California’s students and not to be a cash cow for wealthy executives,” said Yee in a statement. “I am committed to passing legislation to stop these egregious compensation practices and restore the public trust.”

When meeting with the 10 chancellors, either in person or by phone, Yudof plans to discuss how to handle non-violent protest with “proportional” law enforcement, he said in a statement released on Sunday Nov. 20. In addition, Yudof said he is assembling an assessment of campus police procedures.

UC Davis police officers pepper sprayed Occupy UC Davis participants on Friday Nov. 18, while UC Berkeley police officers jabbed Occupy UC Berkeley protesters with batons on Nov. 9.

“As I have said before, free speech is part of the DNA of this university,” Yudof said. “Non-violent protest has long been central to our history. It is a value we must protect with vigilance. I implore students who wish to demonstrate to do so in a peaceful and lawful fashion. I expect campus authorities to honor that right.”

While the UC Davis chief of campus police and two other officers involved with the pepper spray incident are on a paid leave of absence, students and faculty are calling on UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to resign.

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

It was a conversation with his father that brought the recession home for Scott Leiserson.

“My dad is a very futuristic person in his planning, and he thought for a while he would be writing a check for my college,” Leiserson said. “Eventually, the financial crisis hit. And he owns a manufacturing business … He lost half his business in one quarter of time, and another half in the second quarter, making it a three-quarter loss.”

The financial crisis of 2007-08 and the subsequent recession caused Leiserson to take out Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loans through UC Santa Cruz’s Financial Aid and Scholarship Office. Leiserson has been a student at UCSC for two years now, and he currently owes $71,820.

“It’s scary,” he said. “When all this happened my dad said, ‘We just can’t pay for your college right now, you’re taking all the loans.’ I’ve been getting these statements each quarter … and this number is a lot.”

At a projected $1 trillion nationwide, student loan debt is not going away any time soon. For many the burden is staggering: Student debt is increasing at an estimated rate of $2,853.88 per second, according to The Project on Student Debt, a non-profit group that is part of the Institute for College Access & Success. After adjusting for inflation, the College Board reports that students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago.

In late October, President Obama introduced changes in student loan legislation, and recently there has been a surge of stories calling the loans situation a “bubble,” akin to the financial crisis of 2007-08. While pundits and politicians alike are taking notice and speaking out about the loan situation, many students remain concerned about whether there are any solutions in sight.

Jason Green finished his degree at UC Santa Cruz in January of 2011. He explained how crushing the debt of student loans can become.

“I got my degree in biology and I’m $80,000 in debt right now,” he said. “With my degree, if I could get a decent job it wouldn’t be so bad, but the job market is so fucked right now too that I’m just so screwed.”

He said since his family was neither impoverished nor incredibly wealthy, he was put in a difficult situation.

“Combined, my parents make about $120,000, so we couldn’t get any financial aid,” he said. “But it wasn’t enough to pay for college either, so I had to take out loans and try to get scholarships and grants. After my first year I lost my grandparents, and I didn’t have the GPA anymore to get scholarships and grants, so I had to start taking out loans.”

Graduates today face the highest unemployment rate in recent history. In 2009, recent graduate unemployment rate was at 8.7 percent, 1.2 percent beneath the national average. In 2010, the recent graduate rate grew to 9.1 percent, while the national average fell to 9.4 percent. Defaults are up as well: The number of students defaulting on their loans is growing fast, with a 2010 default rate at 8.8 percent, in comparison with 7 percent in 2009.

Dan Rola works the front desk of UCSC’s Financial Aid and Scholarship Office. He said it can be very difficult for students to take on the burden of paying for their education without familial support, the same support weakened by the recession.

“With the credit crunch a lot of families are experiencing, we’re finding students are having trouble getting parent loans. When their parents are denied parent loans, they can reapply with cosigners to still get the federal loans,” he said. “But in a lot of cases parents don’t have that option. So the student is left to find private loans elsewhere. Often they’re left trying to foot the bill, whether it’s a portion of their tuition or housing.”

Graduate Jason Green said at first he was fortunate, as he was able to receive federal loans. However, due to extenuating circumstances, funding his education through private loans was his only option.

“After my grandparents passed and my grades fell, I couldn’t get them anymore,” he said. “I started using Wells Fargo and I used them to get through school.”

Green is among a small minority at UCSC who are left with little choice other than private loans. Only 2.1 percent of UCSC students used private loans during the 2009-10 academic year, according to data from the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office. The rest are federal, with the average student debt upon graduation pegged at $17,546.

As these statistics follow only students who began and finished their undergraduate education at UCSC, the numbers leave out the roughly 2,700 transfer, re-entry and re-admittance UCSC students that make up a significant portion of the campus.

The “Bubble,” and Rethinking Capitalism

In its simplest definition, a speculative bubble is when buyers purchase an asset consistently over a period of time. They envision it rising in value, and as more people purchase the asset, its price rises. Eventually buyers outnumber sellers, and finding nobody to sell to, panic ensues among investors and prices plummet — the bubble “pops.”

In 2007-08, a bubble in mortgage-backed securities brought the United States into a recession. After low-interest rates introduced by the Federal Reserve, investors looked toward housing to invest in high-profit Credit Default Obligations (CDOs). CDOs often held subprime mortgages, loan arrangements for borrowers with a poor credit history and typically with high interest rates. Just like home mortgages, student loans are securitized, and are packaged and sold by investment banks in CDOs.

Like housing, often student loans are made without research into one’s credit or income and are by definition subprime. However, unlike home mortgages, it is nearly impossible for a student to declare bankruptcy and default on his or her debt, much less walk away like many homeowners did.

The Bruce Initiative on Rethinking Capitalism, a project within UCSC’s social sciences, endeavors to look at finance and capitalism through new perspectives, after the events of the 2007-08 financial crisis brought the United States economy to a halt. Professor Robert Meister helped form the program, and said the UC’s ability to continually raise tuition despite future job markets will further increase student debt.

“One needs to understand that in this society, people don’t think of debt as a tax they pay to the financial industry, because they think they’ve already gotten something — their tuition,” he said. “The whole industry exists because well over 90 percent of students cannot finance 100 percent of their costs, and can live on credit besides. Because they can simply add their credit card payments to their student debt … If you view the university as a public institution and you view tuition as a tax, this is the only public agency that can raise taxes and increase the number of payers at the same time.”

Tuition and fees for public four-year institutions across the country have risen 8.3 percent higher since last year, according to a report by College Board. The University of California has increased student fees to record levels, about 18 percent over the course of last year and 30 percent the year before that.

Meister has been a prominent dissident against UC fee hikes. He wrote a series of articles entitled “They Pledged Your Tuition,” in which he described how the UC’s power over tuition was used as collateral for construction bonds. As a leading member of the Rethinking Capitalism Project, he made a suggestion: Instead of the UC regents constantly raising tuition, the University of California could provide a free education for anyone who agreed to a 3 percent income tax for a preset number of years.

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

Working Toward the End of Debt

Nicole Gamache is a former re-entry graduate who transferred from Golden West College in Huntington Beach to UC Berkeley.

“In two years, I acquired $26,000 of student loan debt,” she said, over the phone because she does not have much time between a full-time job and raising her 12-year-old son. “I actually kind of consider myself to be lucky, because I did find a job. It took nine months after I graduated to find one.”

Gamache graduated with a degree in anthropology in 2010 and now lives in Albany, near UC Berkeley, so her son can remain in the same school district. She wants to continue studying anthropology, but can’t, because of her debt to the UC regents — in this case in the form of a hold placed on her account because she couldn’t pay her bills.

“What’s frustrating is I have my B.A., but I can’t get my transcripts and go to grad school because of the amount of money I owe,” she said. “There’s a limit to how much you can take out in a year, so I ended up owing, in addition to the student loans, almost $9,000 to the UC itself.”

Since 2010, Gamache has paid $400 altogether. After her six-month grace period she was able to defer her payments because she was unemployed. Now that she’s working, she’s receiving bills she can’t pay for. While she was able to lower her payments from $300 a month to $50, between housing, food and the expense of raising a child, she says she still can’t pay.

Professor Meister of the Rethinking Capitalism Project said students’ defaulting can be profitable for the loan industry.

“There’s a sense they are more profitable if they perform worse, because they aren’t riskier if they perform worse, they’re just more profitable,” he said. “On the other side, you might have a student with $28,000 in debt … such a student will on average face penalties and collection fees that are added onto your principal — $30,000 collection fees right off the bat. And your default doesn’t put you in a position as a credit card default might, to lower your principal and negotiate. It’s the case that people will often pay, through the miracle of compound interest, something like $130,000 or $140,000 in total.”

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

The Obama Administration’s Response

President Obama’s plans, introduced Oct. 26, include debt consolidation and a lowering of the income percentage that determines payments. Debt consolidation, a new system proposed by the president, would allow students to combine all of their student loans into one monthly payment. This would also help students by providing a lower interest rate if rates had changed. Before, students could have as many as five or six different bills each month. The plans also lower the monthly payments from 15 percent of one’s income to 10 percent, and will forgive any remaining debt after 20 years instead of 25.

UCSC graduate Green said lowering payments would not be valuable to him. He would rather pay his debt faster.

“I don’t want to pay for 20 years,” he said. “While I know that would help a lot of other people, I intend to try to go to grad school or med school in the next two years. That means I’m going to have to take out more money or find another way to take care of it … just pay off the old loan with the new loan.”

Meister questions the amount of help students could actually get from the new legislation.

“In order to qualify, you have to be up-to-date and have not missed a payment,” he said. “And how many people would be in a position where they couldn’t pay it off for 20 years and wouldn’t have missed a payment?”

Part of the problem of calling the current student loans situation a “bubble” is that bubbles are very difficult to predict until they have popped. Patrick Register, associate director of the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office, said he doesn’t see how it could be possible to predict the future of student loan debt.

“There have just been so many variables in the last five years … It’s complicated,” he said. “When I look at our averages, they are not climbing as rapidly as they could be in other states. Part of that is because we have a fairly significant low-income student population, and that student population qualifies for grants — federal, state and institutional. And if the grants come close to keeping up with the increases in tuition, we’re going to be OK.”

Green offered several pieces of advice from the outside, having seen the job market with his own eyes.

“Find experience on campus right now … One of my exes has a double major in anthropology and literature, and she’s working at Trader Joe’s right now,” he said. “Go do something you want to do, right now, because experience matters way, way more than your degree for some reason.”

As a recent graduate, Green just started making payments on his loan debt in October, after his six-month grace period. He has to pay $770 a month with money from work he finds on and off at a temp agency.

“Look early, look now [for work], look two weeks ago — it’s something you should be doing constantly,” he said. “For the last three weeks or so I’ve been employed, then they laid me off for three days, and then they found me a new day job. I’ve worked the last four days and now I’m unemployed again.”

Current UCSC student Leiserson was able to get a job doing property maintenance on a ranch near campus, and he says he’s very excited about it. However, he’s still apprehensive about paying off his loans.

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be working there, but it’s just nice to have another source of income other than the school,” he said. “Especially coming into Christmas time and Thanksgiving — it’s the longest time since the next financial aid.”

By the end of this year, he will owe $91,306.

Illustration by Matt Boblet.

A UC Berkeley disciplinary panel concluded that student journalist Josh Wolf’s presence in the November 2009 11-hour occupation of Wheeler Hall was a punishable offense. Wolf, whose footage of the occupation was used in a “Democracy Now!” broadcast, recently graduated from the two-year journalism graduate program at UC Berkeley and must now write an essay addressing university policy toward student journalists before he can pick up his diploma.

This “punishment” is blatantly patronizing. This disciplinary action makes clear the administration’s insulting standpoint that student status supersedes journalistic status, sending the message, “You are merely a student — now go write an essay.” As if that was not enough, the subject of the essay is administrative action regarding student journalists. It is a twofold slap in the face.

Per recent action taken by UC Berkeley, only one thing can be derived — in the eyes of the UC system, student journalists are not journalists at all. The administration condescendingly declares that student status takes precedent over journalistic status, and imparts judicial processes on people who are operating as journalists while being enrolled as students.

The idea that student status negates journalistic status is absurd. Student journalists are journalists. And further, if any status should supersede another, U.S. citizenship and the national adherence to the First Amendment should trump student status and the student code of conduct.

As Nanette Asimov of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “Guilty verdicts for practicing journalism are the stuff of authoritarian nations and now, apparently, UC Berkeley.” This is a poignant summation that typifies the systemic issues facing student journalists in the UC system, especially considering the current crisis hitting our universities and the numerous resistance efforts that have been, are currently and will continue to be taking place.

At the time that Wolf entered Wheeler Hall with his press pass displayed around his neck, 60 miles away, a reporter for a UC Santa Cruz publication called The Project was in Kerr Hall with his press pass displayed around his neck, filming the 66-hour occupation.

Kenji Tomari was issued a restitution fee by the university administration. The restitution was eventually dropped, but only after Tomari spent more than a quarter fighting the university with the $944 charge hanging over his head.

This is a systemic issue. As independently-funded publications that are entirely run by their membership, autonomous from the university, comprised of reporters wielding press passes, the question of which status supersedes the other is irrelevant – the two are autonomous spheres.

If journalists are afraid to report because they are not protected, we as a system are embarking on a path of self-censorship — an inherent contradiction to an intrinsic value of the free press.

UCSC Student Media has mobilized to alleviate this debilitating construct by working to establish a Universal Press Pass, which the administration would recognize, and grant journalists wielding these passes protection and officially recognize their function as journalists in that capacity. This is a step in the right direction, and would be in the university’s best interest. Both organizations have overlapping values — to educate and inform the public.

In President Obama’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech, he addressed the value of journalists and reporting in these trying times. As the UC system — like America and the rest of the world — faces uncertain times ahead, his comments are especially applicable for journalists reporting on and in this dying system.

“In the last months we’ve seen journalists threatened, arrested, beaten, attacked and in some cases even killed simply for doing their best to bring us the story to give people a voice and to hold leaders accountable,” he said. “And through it all we have seen daring men and women risk their lives for the simple idea that no one should be silenced and everyone deserves to know the truth. That’s what you do. At your best that’s what journalism is — that’s the principle that you uphold. It is always important, but it’s especially important in times of challenge, like the moment that America and the world is facing now.”

The free press exists for a beautiful and paramountly important reason: “That no one should be silenced, and everyone deserves to know the truth.”

If Obama gets it, why doesn’t the UC?

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

The UC Online Instruction Pilot Project will allow individual faculty members to propose an online course for the project and decide how the class should run. How exams will be proctored and how grades will be given depends in large part on the faculty members.

Jessica Fiske-Bailey, assistant vice provost for Undergraduate Education, mentioned that technology could help the UC reach more people.

“As state funding gets limited and costs increase, [the UC system] feels a great responsibility to provide accessible education,” Fiske-Bailey said. “There is a real commitment to provide education to people.”

According to the UC Online Instruction Pilot Project’s website, the project will test whether online instruction can use technological tools to give undergraduates educational opportunities comparable to the quality classroom instruction offered at a UC.

Students will be able to take a course from the comfort of their own dorm room or favorite coffee shop, rather than an overcrowded lecture hall.

“If you have a virtual classroom, you may not be limited by location space,” Fiske-Bailey said. “The theory behind it is that you won’t be limited to taking classes at the location you’re located in.”

UCSC students who cannot get into a class because it has reached its full capacity can instead take it as an online class at another UC. For example, if a legal studies class is already full at UCSC, but not at UCLA, a student can instead take it online from UCLA.

Sophia Zeng, a UCSC third-year, was unaware of the efforts the UCs are making to introduce online classes, but thinks that online classes are a great idea.

“[Online classes will allow] students who want to get ahead in their education or even students who don’t want to leave their house or dorm room to receive [an] education,” Zeng said. “It might even encourage students to ‘attend’ class without physically being there.”

Jim Phillips, director of Learning Technologies at UCSC, mentioned that the university’s system is currently a hybrid, with a combination of online web-based tools and in-class experience.

This new project will make UCSC’s current system available online — with virtual classrooms where students can interact with other students and the professor, Phillips said.

However, certain hands-on classes will not be available online. These classes range from chemistry labs to studio drawing courses.

Ideally, the project will allow students to see the lecture online, as the professor is giving it. Also, students will be able to key in questions during the online lecture. All lectures will be available on demand after the official lecture date.

Although other institutions have already implemented programs like this successfully, there are some concerns that have yet to be addressed.

Zeng worried that online classes might not work for all types of students.

“Online classes could be [disadvantageous] for people who don’t have strong self-motivation and negatively affect a student’s ability to develop punctuality or good study habits,” Zeng said.

At the recent regents meeting at UCSF, Regent Eddie Island advocated for distance education as a way to save money. He questioned whether this form of education was being looked at seriously as an alternative to increasing student fees.

“There is no reason to use distance learning when the student fee pots remain available,” Island said.

Opponents of the program are concerned that the loss of personalized instruction may affect students and faculty members negatively, if not planned out well.

Zeng, an environmental studies major and education minor, said that if online classes are not planned out right, the inability to meet new people and friends in these kind of classes would be detrimental to the overall college experience.

“Online classes should be introduced. However, [the UC system] needs to realize that there will be positive and negative outcomes with such classes,” Zeng said. “This situation depends on each person’s learning ability and pace.”

Phillips, director of Learning Technologies, does not doubt that the UC system will have online education.

“We will have online education at the UCs,” Phillips said. “It’s just a question of if it will happen now or later.”

If the project succeeds, students will be no longer restricted by classroom location, but will instead have a virtual classroom they can access from any location in the world, Fiske-Bailey said.

“The world is so much bigger than we thought,” Fiske-Bailey said. “Our location should not limit us.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Day after day, students are reminded of how little money the University of California has. It stings a little when it is revealed that the UC has spent almost $2 million in the past few years on bottled water for the San Francisco and Berkeley campuses.

In light of recent cuts to student resources, this number is a slap in the face to those who have camped out in libraries and led chants in defense of their education. It brings up the question of whether Bay Area tap water is so intolerable that the population of these universities cannot be brought to drink it. This is not so, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which claims that the region’s water is some of the purest in the world. So why has the UC deemed the purchase of these Arrowhead brand water jugs so essential? The New York Times asked this very question. A representative from UC San Francisco offered a couple half-hearted justifications, one of which he then invalidated upon further questioning. Thus, what we can determine here is that the UC has spent millions, for no apparent reason, on a commodity that is provided free of charge by the city.

To put this number into perspective, let’s look at UC Santa Cruz’s ballot Measure 42. If passed, the measure will require an additional $6.50 a quarter from each of UCSC’s 15,000 students, roughly $390,000 a year, which will fund an additional 400 library hours each quarter. According to numbers released by UCSF and UC Berkeley, the UC spends well over $400,000 each year in bottled water for the two campuses. In short, the UC has prioritized fresh bottled water over our access to our library, a resource we should not have to fight for.

And it isn’t just UC students who are paying the price for bottled water. Though most make a valiant effort, few people recycle their plastic bottles as often as they should. So the millions of tons of plastic used to package bottled water end up in landfills with piles of trash. Keep in mind also the millions of barrels of oil that are used to produce the bottles.

The decision to purchase such large amounts of bottled water is not economically responsible. When it comes down to it, the UC is flushing money down the drain, money that students fight for every day. They need to invest in a water filter, turn on the tap, and stop recklessly spending our money.

impassioned protesters marched to UC President Mark Yudof’s Oakland Hills mansion on Oct. 24. Many of those in the group yielded tombstones mocking Yudof’s previous assertion that being president of the UC is “like being manager of a cemetery.” Photo by Rachel Matsuoka.

Approximately 600 students, educators and workers hailing from UCs, CSUs, community colleges and K-12 schools from across the state came together in a day-long “mass democratic action” at UC Berkeley’s Pauley Ballroom on Oct. 24.

The group, calling the event the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education, met with the intent to figure out the next step to confront the budget cuts in California’s public higher education system. The group decided a statewide day of marches will take place on March 4, 2010.

Speakers that included students, parents, educators and workers kicked off the conference by introducing the problem at hand — the severe budget cuts and layoffs that are happening across all California public schools. The conference facilitators and speakers all stressed that there were larger matters at hand that encompass the budget cuts.

“That’s what this is about — the privatization of public education,” said Kathryn Lybarger, a gardener at UC Berkeley and member of the AFSCME coalition that attended the conference.

By raising tuition costs, cutting CAL grants and further limiting financial aid, many students of lower economic backgrounds will soon be unable to afford college, attendees maintained. Facilitator and UC Berkeley fourth-year Luis Angel Reyes also contended that the further privatization of public education has become a racial issue.

“Students of color have been fighting to keep the doors open to the university,” Reyes said onstage at the conference in one of the introductory speeches.“This is a historic movement. This is the beginning of a mass movement in the entire country.”

The floor was opened to anyone who wished to express their ideas for the next plan of action. There were a range of proposals, from the legislative to the demonstrative. Some proposals for an indefinite strike were made by UC Santa Cruz students during the open floor session and were met with cheers from the audience.

“A one-day strike is not going to shake the state,” said Brian Glasscock, a UCSC first-year. “An indefinite strike is the only way to win what we want.”

Other ideas that were brought to the floor were to march at UC Los Angeles or in Sacramento. However, due to the overall concern of losing visible support because of the potential inconvenience, it was decided that action on individual campuses would be the best course of action.

Since creating a show of unity was high on the list of priorities for the next demonstration, a date was agreed upon during the conference. After much deliberation and dissent, a decision was made to launch a statewide march on March 4 to occur at each respective campus so that more people may have the opportunity to participate.

Immediately following the conference a blend of roughly 100 UC students, educators and workers took their impassioned protest right up to UC President Mark Yudof’s mansion in Oakland Hills. The protesters marched through the neighborhood with signs shaped like tombstones, in reference to a quote from a recent New York Times article in which Yudof said that being the president of the University of California is like being the manager of a graveyard.

“There are many people under you, but no one is listening,” Yudof said in the interview.

In a UC student media meeting on Oct. 19 Yudof explained what he meant by the controversial “cemetery” joke. He commented that “people think the president of the University of California is all-powerful but it’s like being the manager of a cemetery. I get to talk a lot, but people aren’t listening to me … It didn’t mean they were dead, it didn’t mean there were cadavers. It just meant that … I don’t have a command and control; I need the cooperation of students and faculty. That’s all it meant.”

The protesters were met by police who had taped off the driveway to Yudof’s house. The gravestones, many of which read “RIP Quality Education,” were placed right outside the police line and on the hillside in front of the mansion.

Chants of “Shame on you! Shame on you!”  quickly turned into “Shame on Yudof! Shame on Yudof!”

Although some conference attendees were disappointed in the seeming lack of solidarity in the decision to stage a campus-wide march, facilitator Reyes said, “Remember, we’re starting from the beginning of a movement and we have a lot of challenges.”

“There’s a woeful lack of knowledge [of the situation] at my school,” said a student representative from UCSC at the conference. “We need to raise awareness first.”

Park supporters join hands and dance to live music performed from People’s Stage. They frolicked across the grass before dispersing to their respective picnic blankets. Photo by Arianna Puopolo.

The 40th anniversary celebration of People’s Park in Berkeley, Calif. reeked of history and body odor as hundreds of wayfarers, wanderers and wonderers came together on April 26 to share stories and honor the park by remembering those who fought to protect it.  

A love child of rebellion, the park was founded on the principles of freedom of speech, assembly and expression. Today the space serves as a public park and a daytime sanctuary for much of Berkeley’s homeless population.  

A grassy landscape covers most of the park grounds, but in its back corner gardens are planted among a grove of trees.  At the park’s anterior, a playset still stands and People’s Stage is the venue for several concerts and colloquiums every year. 

“There’s no other place like it,” said a former People’s Park resident who asked to be identified as Caleb X. “When you come back to Berkeley you come back home.”

People’s Park began as an expansion project for UC Berkeley.  The campus bought up the entire space in 1967, with the intention of building dormitories for the growing student population. 

The area was known to be “alternative” and the students who lived there adhered to a lifestyle that the university condemned. 

Jack Radey attended Cal in 1964, and joined several activist groups while living in Berkeley. He witnessed and participated in many of the movements to protect the park and challenge the authority of the university.  

“The existence of considerable student housing in the Southside area was a constant concern to the UC deans,” Radey recalled. “Because in such quarters it was hard for Mommy and Daddy to supervise the young people who were believed to indulge there in such improprieties as sex, marijuana, beat poetry and leftist discussion  — to say nothing of espresso and jazz music.” 

The year after the university bought the neighborhood, the UC deans issued evictions and the neighborhood was promptly bulldozed. Shortly after, the university ran out of money and the property became derelict. 

“While it would have been indecorous to conduct room searches and the like, the university did the next best thing,” Radey said. “It bought up a bunch of the buildings and leveled them, leaving a big, muddy space above Telegraph.”

Everyone is welcome at People’s Park. The signpost located nearest the garden-side entrance, greets visitors.

On April 20, 1969, community members joined forces and took over the space. They tore up the concrete and asphalt, replacing it with gardens, flowers and play equipment. 

Less than one month later, the California Highway Patrol and Berkeley police officers occupied an eight-block area around People’s Park. The officers took positions in the early hours of May 15, 1969. Later that day, infamously known as Bloody Thursday, a rally of several thousand gathered at Sproul Plaza on Berkeley’s campus and began to venture toward the park.

Police officers opened fire on the crowds.

They fired tear gas and double-aught buckshot bullets while the marchers retaliated with projectiles, including rocks and bottles. Student James Rector was fatally shot. Today, a mural near the park depicts the Rector shooting. 

Over 100 civilian injuries were reported, but no police were hospitalized. By the end of the day, Gov. Ronald Reagan called in the National Guard and banned public congregation.

“We were not supposed to congregate, so the cops and troops were periodically called out to disperse us,” Radey said. “We would not fight them, but we would continue to be in the streets, retreating, advancing when they fell back, regrouping in the side streets, and nonviolently resisting their attempts to violate our right to assemble.”

Radey recalled that the will of the people made an intimidating force against the police. The National Guard and Oakland and Alameda County police forces were called in for backup, causing several casualties including one fatality and one student being blinded.

“The Berkeley police were the most professional and the calmest,” Radey said. “The UC police were pathetic … and scared stiff.  [They] ordered parking attendants to do stormtrooper duty. The Oakland pigs and the Alameda sheriffs were the worst, and most dangerous.”

Radey recalled the force with which students and civilians rallied against the police presence as if it were yesterday. 

“They had numbers, an uphill lie, youth and grim determination,” he said. “They broke through police lines, trashed police cars, threw back the gas and volleys of bottles and anything else that could be thrown.”

The ensuing battle came in the midst of youthful rebellion and political reform. The appeal of the People’s Park movement, many said, stemmed from having a cause that could be justified. 

“We weren’t fighting somebody else’s war. This was ours,” said Julie Vinograd, a Berkeley alumna of the class of 1965.

Vinograd, known as the Bubble Lady, waged her war against the university by blowing soap bubbles from a rooftop near the park for 24 hours. 

Daily protests continued for the next two weeks. Security officers and civilians continued to have confrontations.  Tear gas was dropped from helicopters and a rally marched in Sacramento. 

Despite lack of experience and resources, Radey feels the rally organizers succeeded because of their solidarity and innovation. 

“The organizers did manage one impressive feat,” Radey said. “In the face of the marijuana drought, the organizers managed to score a kilo of pot somewhere, and had it rolled up into joints, put in a cardboard box, and thrown off the back of the lead truck into the crowd.” 

Between marches and confrontations, Radey said he and his friends spoke with many of the National Guard officers. Radey recalled the reluctance with which these officers served and the solidarity they ultimately succumbed to. In the midst of one particular confrontation, the masses called on the guardsmen to lower their weapons.

“One soldier dropped his rifle and dove into the crowd, stripping off his uniform shirt,” Radey said. “The crowd covered him, gave him the clothes off their backs, and helped him disappear. I do not know what happened to him afterwards. But the fact is, the tool that Reagan wanted to use to crush us turned in his hand into mush. They were just like us for the most part, were in the Guard to avoid Vietnam, and wanted no part of a war at home.”

Vinograd recalled feeling a similar reluctance in the face of confrontation. As a pacifist, she said, it was difficult to motivate herself into activism. 

“I had this argument with my feet,” Vinograd said. “They wanted to go in and I didn’t.”

After weeks of tension and unresolved conflict, tens of thousands marched peacefully past People’s Park on May 30, 1969.

Mamma Taffy reclines in the Berkeley sunshine and enjoys the company of friends.

Today, UC Berkeley employs a community relations site coordinator to plan special events, enforce rules and manage the park day to day. Devin Wooldrige has been the site coordinator at People’s Park for nine years.

At the People’s Park 40th anniversary celebration, Wooldrige discounted what he determined to be an erroneous rumor that the university might reclaim the park to build the originally intended dormitories.  

“The university pumps quite a bit of money into the park and I don’t believe the park is now, or will be, in danger of being redeveloped,” he said. 

As for personal goals, Wooldrige takes his job seriously. He works toward making the park acceptable and palatable to the campus and civilian communities.

“I’d like to enhance its value to the community,” he said.

People’s Park is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.  The UC Berkeley Police enter at 10 p.m. every evening to vacate the park.  

Wooldrige said the park is frequented by an indeterminable number of visitors each year. Although it is closed at night, during the day People’s Park is a sanctuary for the homeless. 

Every season, new and old visitors take refuge at the park. 

“The population rises and falls with the weather and season,” Wooldrige said.

Tom Thompson is a Vietnam veteran living in Santa Cruz. Curiosity about the 40th anniversary celebration motivated him to venture up to Berkeley.  

Unlike many of the park’s patrons, Thompson didn’t protest the Vietnam war — he fought in it. He said serving in the military was the American thing to do and it wasn’t until long after the war that his principles came in conflict with those of the U.S. government.

“I didn’t fight the corporations because the corporations aren’t the problem … other people minding other people’s business is the problem,” he said. 

Thompson worked as a concrete finisher for the military nine years after being discharged. He retired at 38 and lost his home to a divorce settlement.  

Since then Thompson has been homeless. He said the military has done very little to provide aid to him and many other veterans. 

“They care about those they have to,” Thompson said of the military. “Now, I live in the redwoods and grow weed.”

Thompson first experienced People’s Park at its conception.  With nostalgia in his voice and a distant look in his eyes, Thompson snapped back to reality when he began to describe the transformation the park has undergone.

“This place has really changed,” he said. “This place is supposed to be a safe spot.”

Thompson is not the first to notice the park’s metamorphosis. 

In 1990, ongoing incidents of police brutality inspired the foundation of Cop Watch, an organization that works to educate people about the prevention of police brutality. Cop Watch distributes literature and camera equipment to volunteers. They advocate for civilians knowing their rights and encourage witnesses and victims of police brutality to report and document it.

Brandon Absher is a volunteer with Cop Watch and a Berkeley resident. He said the group distributes cameras to help execute their mission of education and prevention.

“Having a camera around, even if it can’t prevent what’s happening, lets people know what’s going on,” Absher said. 

Russel Bates is a Vietnam War veteran who says he’s been arrested several times. He volunteers with Cop Watch and advocates for the homeless and poor. 

“People who don’t have anything, who have lost everything, it’s definitely the community’s responsibility to provide the basics for them,” Bates said. “The police don’t seem to serve the poor and homeless well at all. When you’re homeless you have no place to retreat to and the police know that.” 

Bates attributes ongoing police brutality to the growing gap between the social classes. 

“There’s been a gentrification going on in Berkeley for quite some time now,” he said. 

Mamma Taffy, a tie-dye-clad woman soaking up the sun in People’s Park and offering her pipe to anyone passing by, said that verbal abuse from police officers to residents is a common occurrence in the area, where she often takes temporary shelter.

Mamma Taffy believes that, true to its name, the park is meant for the people, and she condemned the police who use force to relocate park residents. 

“This doesn’t belong to the state,” she said. “It belongs to the people.” 

Any attempts by the university to reclaim the park will be unsuccessful, Mamma Taffy emphasized. 

“We want a peaceful protest that leads to the people owning the park like they used to,” she said. 

For many, the history the park symbolizes is much more important than the grass and gardens that cover it. As former park resident Caleb X said, “It represents democracy.”