Editorials

As a non-card-carrying but nonetheless proud Old Blue (I think that’s what University of California at Berkeley graduates are still called), from the class of ’61, back in the days when the local campus was called simply “Cal,” never “Berkeley,” I’m delighted to see that the school is still following its traditions. Well, “delighted” might be a bit strong. “Bemused” would be more like it. The tradition I’m referring to in this instance is acting with utter stupidity when anything approaching public relations is concerned. 

We spent the exciting years of the ’60s in Ann Arbor, from 1961 to 1973, so we had the chance to observe another way of doing university business close at hand. While our friends in Berkeley were enjoying riots and demonstrations of all kinds—the Free Speech Movement, People’s Park, the anti-war movement—we in Ann Arbor enjoyed relative tranquility. It wasn’t that nothing was going on: Students for a Democratic Society was founded in Ann Arbor, and someone burned down the naval ROTC building, among other excitements. But the phlegmatic reaction of the University of Michigan administration to any and all provocations avoided the massive confrontations that defined Berkeley in the ’60s. As Carol Denney is fond of observing, Berkeley is not the home of the Free Speech Movement because the campus had so much free speech, but because the clueless UC administrators did their best to stifle it, with predictable results. 

The stupidity tradition started even before the ’60s. When I arrived on campus in the fall of 1959 Fred Moore was fasting on the steps of Hearst Gym because the University of California still required all male students, even pacifists like Fred, to be members of ROTC. The previous spring members of the first student political party, Slate, had been disciplined for holding a rally under a campus oak tree supporting the state’s fair housing ordinance. Not too many years before several faculty members had been fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. Cal administrators knew how to provoke a confrontation even in the fifties.  

Which brings us to the present case, the university’s expressed desire, in the course of an expensive and vulgar redesign of the formerly charming football stadium, to build an establishment for the care and feeding of the hired gladiators who now seem to be an inevitable part of campus life.  

The emphasis on big sports at Cal is a new tradition, or at least new to me. As I remember it, in the late ’50s we were proud of the poor quality of our football team, which we believed was directly associated with the high intellectual caliber of our students. This must be wrong, though, because one of Berkeley Mayor Bates’ proudest memories is playing in the Rose Bowl game in 1959. We must have lived in different worlds in those days. 

Now Bates and I do agree on one thing: the utter and complete stupidity of the university’s desire to locate the grandly named Student Athlete High Performance Center right smack on top of the Hayward Fault, on a two-lane road hemmed in from all directions by impenetrable traffic. It’s one thing to have a football stadium, used for only six home games a year, in that location—the probability that the big one will come while it’s in use could be considered acceptably small.  

But the proposed Gladiator’s Gym, intended for heavy day-and-night use, is another matter entirely. Even the timorous Berkeley City Council is against it. They usually confine their condemnations of bad behavior to far-away follies, but they’ve approved a law suit challenging the duplicitous environmental impact report which UC submitted for the project. At Tuesday’s council meeting, someone suggested that the city should contact UC’s big bucks donors to let them know that a can of worms has been opened, but Councilmember Wozniak, a retired UC lab administrator, was horrified at that prospect, as were others. 

The promoters have announced that the mega-gym will be named for one Barclay Simpson, a Danville resident who started a company which makes parts used in big construction projects. Simpson is also the chair of the board of the University Art Museum, where he’s well thought of, and has been the president of the California Shakespeare Festival, another worthy institution. Berkeley City Council members might balk at contacting all of the deep pockets that UC taps, but perhaps just Simpson would like to meet with them to discuss their objections. If he values his brand, he might want to think twice before allowing his name to be used for such an unpopular project, one which has so far attracted four lawsuits.  

At an ungodly hour last Friday morning we went up to the oak grove which will be destroyed if the gym goes in. We were just in time to see the construction shovels scooping up the worldly goods of the campers who were there to support the tree-sitters and tossing them in a dump truck. I asked the fellow who seemed to be the head cop why he was doing this. Evidence, he said. Of what? Trespassing, he said. Don’t you have to warn them first? Nope, he said, citing a code section, special for the university, which undoubtedly had a genealogical connection to the Free Speech Movement. I asked how confiscated stuff could be used as evidence of wrongdoing if it were picked up by a machine and all jumbled together. What about chain of custody? I asked, remembering O.J. He looked a bit pale, and changed the subject. 

Of course it was nothing but bullying, a characteristic power play in the hallowed UC tradition of stupid actions. It seemed particularly poor given that a judge, just the day before, had denied the university lawyers’ request to approve some similar muscle moves. And last week the state’s legislative analyst’s office blasted UC’s poor record of dealing with local governments in the cities where its branches are located. 

The top cop told me that they wanted to get the campers out of the way before the students came back this week, but that didn’t work, and now everyone’s even madder than they were. A Welcome Back Students party is scheduled for this Saturday at noon at the grove. It will be interesting to see if once again the pig-headed folks still calling the shots at my alma mater will manage to turn a brush fire into a firestorm.