Youth Radio - Topic: UC Berkeley

Greg Niemeyer Creates New Music For a New Problem

squevedo — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:41:02 -0600

What does the phrase "emotional science" mean to you? For some, it implies psychology. For Greg Niemeyer, a tenured associate professor in UC Berkeley's department in New Media, "emotional science" means science that stimulates and engages. Niemeyer is also the director of the Data and Democracy Initiative at CITRIS, The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, which looks to utilize technology and science to help individuals makes democratic and conscious decisions about the world around them. Their latest project, Sevenairs, takes the air quality measurements in California and turns them into music.

Turnstyle News: How does this project relate to the work being done by the Data and Democracy Initiative?

Greg Niemeyer: Well, as citizens we have the right to breathe but we also have the right to pollute. And we need to have a lot of information about the quality of air we breathe in order to make meaningful choices about how the air quality affects our health. So if we can think about different ways of looking at, understanding and learning about air quality and voicing our concerns about it we can make better decisions about both our exposure to pollution and sources of pollution and that will make us more free and active citizens.

Turnstyle: Why is music the chosen medium to present this data?

Niemeyer: In this particular project we used music because we wanted to make the experience of data suspenseful. When you look at the Sevenairs website you can see that music is playing and data is scrolling, and you can see how air quality measurement data makes certain sounds happen. So what happens is that you want to see what happens next. That slight element of suspense we find makes people look at the data more closely and they think, “That sound was interesting. I wonder what caused that spike in the air pollution?” It’s supposed to be more engaging than straight-up data would be. So the idea is how can we make looking at air quality fun?

It’s like, how interesting is a thermometer? It goes up and down, up and down. And it’s not very interesting if you turn it into numbers either. But if you say, “Hey, is it colder or hotter than it was yesterday?” Suddenly that’s an interesting piece of information. The same is true for air quality, how can we make it interesting? We can show that it changes dramatically. At the moment it’s a little more dramatic than plain data, and music certainly helps [to show that].

Turnstyle: Are you a musician yourself?

Niemeyer: No, I’m not. I’m just a new media artist. My colleague Chris Chaffe from Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford, is the composer of this piece. We’ve been working together for many years, since 2001, and we’ve dealt with the "musification" of data in that time.

Turnstyle: One of your projects is called the Tomato Quintet. In that project you used the gases produced by tomatoes during ripening to create music. Another collaboration with Chaffe?

Niemeyer: That’s correct, we worked on that together. Tomatoes produce certain gases such as Ethylene and CO2 while they ripen, while they turn from green to red. The redder they get the more C02 and Ethylene they produce, and we can measure that and turn it into music.

Turnstyle: And what did that sound like? I noticed that the pollution music had sort of an eerie tone.

Niemeyer: The tomatoes produced a kind of salsa music. It was very rhythmic. It was not quite as eerie. There were four channels of music: One was salsa music, one was a kind of crackling sound, one was the sound of wind, and one was the sound of a flute. Those four channels together created quite a musical landscape. It was a little unusual. Sevanairs is just one single take on two channels of data. So there’s one flute and one guitar.

Turnstyle: Is setting the musical tone a conscious decision or does it just come about organically?

Niemeyer: We made those decisions based on what we wanted it to feel like. So we wanted the tomato quintet to be sort of festive and fun. Ideally we wanted the people who came to see the ripening tomatoes to start dancing and produce more carbon dioxide from exhaling, because then the carbon dioxide would get the tomatoes to ripen faster. The whole thing would kind of be like a harvest festival.

In the case of [Sevenairs], we went to several sites in the 35^th parallel that are supposed to be beautiful and are supposed to be full of regenerative properties but we found them all to be somewhat polluted. We sort of missed the pure experience of a clean land and clean air, and we’re not getting that anywhere really. So we’re almost reflecting back on a time—a time that may have never existed—but nevertheless we imagine that time, a time where California was more pure.

Turnstyle: So have you received any feedback from the public or other scientists about the music?

Niemeyer: We’ve done it for a while and the feedback we get sometimes is that people think it’s much more composed and arranged than they think is possible coming from two lines of data. So the flutes, for example, they sound like someone is really playing the flute with a certain type of tambour, with a certain type of vibe to it. People often think that there’s somehow a real person in there playing live.

We also got the feedback that the music does sound a little eerie and sets a certain kind of mood. Some people say it’s a little difficult to listen to because it’s not traditional music. It doesn’t have a beat like most music does or a melody that comes around or any lyrics. But it’s a new kind of music for a new kind of problem, which is how to live more in harmony with these environmental challenges we face.

Turnstyle: Your approach to science seems very playful. Do you consider yourself a rarity in your field in that sense?

Niemeyer: I don’t think I am a rarity as much as I’m sort of just not a scientist. I grew up around a lot of science and I respect science and I know a lot of scientists who I love to talk to. But my discipline is really game design and so I’m curious about, how can we get people who aren’t scientists-by-training to engage in scientific thinking and how can we show that’s it fun? I’m trying to see how I can get people to engage in scientific concepts and scientific reasoning without making it look like a whole bunch of math and a whole bunch of technology and whole bunch of biology but rather the thinking itself, the joy of discovery, the joy of curiosity.

Turnstyle: Were you surprised at all by the data that you collected?

Niemeyer: Yes, yes I was. I always am. It’s so funny because as a traditional scientists you usually have a hypothesis about what you’re looking for and then you try to find an experiment that either confirms or denies the hypothesis versus when we go out and measure stuff it’s more of a matter of general curiosity. Much like a photographer might go out into the world and just takes pictures of things until he or she finds something interesting, we just measure air quality data until we find something interesting.

So this approach with Sevenairs actually comes from a Japanese television station that wanted to do a documentary on what happens along the 35^th parallel. They came to California and asked us if we could do this project with them and so we gave them some tools to measure air quality with and they actually collected the samples in this case and when we got the results back we were very surprised. They went to this Monarch grove which is a Monarch Butterfly reserve and it seems to be very polluted with volatile organic compounds and we have no idea what actually happened there so we have to follow up. It seems like some of these well-known natural reserves aren’t as fresh at all as we think they might be. What I think might have happened in the case of the Monarch Grove is it is a densely forested area with lots of plants, and it so happened that there was a lot of decompositions happening when they went there and a lot of decay, so there were a lot of volatile organic compounds in the air that they seemed to have measured.

Turnstyle: For those of us, including myself, who can’t tell the difference between a Doppler and a doorbell, can you explain how you went about collecting this data and the significance of Volatile Organic Compounds and Carbon Dioxide? What role do they play in air pollution?

Niemeyer: When it comes to air pollution there are many factors we want to consider. One is combustion. If there’s too much C02 air it can lead to a reduced breathing capacity so we have to breathe more in order to get the air we need. It can make us sleepy and so forth. Volatile Organic Compounds are airborne solvents. You know how if you have a can of glue and you open the lid, there are a lot of Volatile Organic Compounds that come out. Same is true for alcohol, same is true for perfumes or hairspray or methane that is released from the human body or other sources. And all of these can impact us as neurotoxins, they can make us dizzy or drowsy and that is unhealthy.

For us, Carbon Dioxide and Volatile Organic Compounds are indicators of human industrial activity. If there’s a lot of industry, if there’s a lot of pollution coming from cooking or any kind of combustion, we see that in Carbon Dioxide and Volatile Organic Compounds.

Turnstyle: You collected data in downtown Hollywood and on Pismo beach. What did the decision-making process look like when you were choosing locations? Were there any deal-breakers for certain spots?

Niemeyer: Well, deal-breakers, there were some…Deal-breakers as in [the Japanese T.V Station] got in trouble in some places. They got kicked out of Harris Ranch [in Coalinga, California] because the people there didn’t want that data to be available. That was something we found often; some people are very sensitive about air quality and they really don’t want you to tell anyone what the air quality is like. For example, we wanted to do a project in Cairo, Egypt and this was before the revolution. The Egyptian government really didn’t want any air quality data to get out of the country, so they were very upset about [the project] and, in fact, started arresting the people that we worked with there.

Greg Niemeyer hopes to expand the site soon so that anyone can collect and upload data, and hear what it sounds like. To learn more, check out the Sevenairs website.

What Does Occupy Movement Mean For Cal Business Students?

rgee — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:22:43 -0600

Robyn Gee, Turnstyle News

What is it like being a professor of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business when the Occupy movement takes the campus by storm?

For one thing, it makes for some great teachable moments.

Professor Kevin Sweeney, former executive of Patagonia, began talking about the Occupy movement with his class on Oct. 5, when protesters began camping out in San Francisco. But recently, they’ve had to look no further than the school's own backyard, with Occupy Cal protesters making Sproul Plaza their home base.

From Sweeney’s perspective, businesses and corporations should not be surprised at all by the Occupy movement if they are practicing corporate social responsibility. According to him, businesses should use NGOs and activists to read the tides of change. Sweeney likes to use a surfing analogy to prove his point.

“When you surf, you reach a point in the wave where you either ride that wave or you just get hammered by it... You try to find the people there who know the break really well... and they can say, ‘That bump out there, that’s a big hairy wave, we’ll get trapped by that one.’...You want to find NGO activists who can look out on the horizon and see which of those bumps are really going to be big waves... When you do that, you’re not surprised by Occupy Wall Street. This is a wave you can’t ignore,” said Sweeney.

And it has been hard to ignore the action on the UC Berkeley campus. Two weeks ago, protesters were met by UC police in riot gear. Several protesters were jabbed with batons as they attempted to block police from taking down tents that were erected on Sproul Plaza.

Days later, Occupy Cal held a campus-wide strike. Many professors canceled class, and Professor Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, gave a lecture to thousands of students on the steps of Sproul Hall about the free speech movement.

On that same day, an undergraduate student was allegedly brandishing a gun in the Haas Business School, and was shot and killed by campus police officers, making some business school students wonder if they were being targeted.

There is no proven connection between Occupy Cal and the shooting, according to the Daily Cal. But according to Sweeney, his students made their own connections. One of his students shared with the class that she had heard business school students criticized for not being active or visible in the protests. “She found that upsetting, it bothered her... and then she had to be evacuated from a classroom because there had been a shooting, and she thought, ‘My god, has it come to this?’” said Sweeney. He said she went to the Occupy Cal General Assembly that night and was impressed, and found that she identified with some of the movement’s ideals.

This student made a lasting impression on Sweeney’s entire class, as she called for her fellow business students to check out the protests. Delanie Ricketts, an undergraduate in Sweeney’s class said, “Actually it kind of halted the conversation. It was something that no one really could debate...Everyone supports higher education when you’re at Cal. All students want to make sure that not more classes are being cut.” Occupy Cal, like other efforts in the growing "Occupy Colleges" network, is leveraging the message of the skyrocketing cost of higher education to narrow their demands.

But admittedly, the business school is in somewhat of a bubble. Ricketts said, “Haas is perceived as this outside community because it’s one of those majors that you have to be accepted into. You can’t just declare... Just business itself is something you don’t think about when you think of liberal, hippie Berkeley.”

Jesse Bussell, an undergraduate business major also in Sweeney’s class, said, “We are a fairly small major. We only have about a couple hundred students, and all of our classes are [at Haas], so we are physically separated from the rest of the school,” he said. He says that separation sometimes creates a lack of connection with what's happening in the world, including the Occupy movement. He says his peers are mostly looking to go into what he calls the "ABC's" -- accounting, banking, and consulting, and many spent the fall immersed in their search for internships or jobs.

He's become more socially aware over the past few years, but admits that money is important to him because he grew up in a "fairly poor family." He said, "The main reason I’m here is to have a better job, and be really successful…and make enough money that I can be really secure."

Bussell has had discussions with friends about whether it makes sense for the Occupy protests to be happening at Cal. "We didn’t want things to be out of control or unnecessary so that it interrupts studying," said Bussell, especially since finals are coming up in a few weeks. They've also debated whether the protests on campus can embody the same struggle as the protests on Wall Street and in downtown Oakland because "there are just large amounts of social inequality in these places."

Ricketts sees it differently. She finds students, even business students, more engaged because protesters are widening the message. “I saw many stickers on backpacks in my business class, ‘Help Defend Public Education.’ I think that’s something that they can identify with in the movement, even if it’s not related to the concerns about big business.”

Sweeney agrees. “If I look at the business school, I think our students are actually there. I think our faculty isn’t... It’s almost like (the Occupy movement is) surprising to the business faculty as opposed to the business students.”

Sweeney says he's seen a shift in his students' mentality over the years. “The students today are utterly different from students I had 10 years ago... They have a more subtle and sophisticated understanding of what the pressures are facing businesses... There’s a lot less cliche, a lot less labeling of corporations... They’re really cynical about companies that say they’re doing green stuff, and they really want proof -- and they know what proof looks like,” said Sweeney.

Ricketts is a good example of the changing profile of students taking business classes. She sees the Occupy movement as a job opportunity for her -- she can see herself consulting with large businesses helping them become more socially responsible. She sees business as part of the solution, not the problem. “Business has a ton of capital, a ton of power, and to be able to link that with these issues is something that’s exciting and interesting and can be really helpful.”

UC Berkeley Students To File Lawsuit Against University, Police

denise — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:22:04 -0600

By: Denise Tejada, Turnstyle News

On Wednesday, 20 students -- along with a civil rights group, BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) -- will file a lawsuit against UC Berkeley administrators, the UC Police Department, and Alameda County Sheriff's officers. The lawsuit is demanding compensation for police brutality and false arrest, and the violation of students' First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights, during a peaceful demonstration on Berkeley's campus on Nov. 9.

On that day, police were filmed shoving and beating protesters, many of whom were UC Berkeley students, on campus during a peaceful demonstration. Some of the students were arrested after the ordeal.

Students were shocked by the treatment they received from police. “A police officer jabbed me three or four times in the lower abdomen,” said Ashley Pinkerton, a UC Berkeley Peace and Conflict studies student. “Each time it was a jolt more than the pain because my adrenaline was rushing so much, so I didn’t really feel that stuff till much later.” Pinkerton found herself standing up against campus police after helping another student who she saw being “strangled” by officers.

Pinkerton has been a supporter of the Occupy movement and has attended the general assemblies in Oakland. She said she's now proud to support the Occupy movement at her school. “I think, overall, just being in something that is so collectively active, it gives you this really righteous feeling...you share something really intense."

But for UC Berkeley graduate student Francisco Alvarado, that violent night was the first time he showed his support to the Occupy movement. “It was very lovely, people were being very friendly... I decided to stay. I had my books [and] I thought, 'I can do my homework on the steps of Sproul Hall,'” Alvarado said.

The 30-year-old was the first person to start locking arms to protect the few tents that were on Sproul Hall and was also the first person to be arrested.

“All I kept hearing from the cops was ‘move, move, move..’ and as I was getting hit, and I don’t know how, but I started screaming, ‘I can’t move, you’re hitting me!' ” Alvarado said. The next thing he remembers is police pulling him from the group, putting zip-ties on him, and arresting him.

Turnstyle reached out to UC Berkeley about the lawsuit, but the university would not comment since the lawsuit has not been filed. However, on the day after students and campus police clashed, spokeswoman Claire Holmes of the university gave a statement, saying the administration stands behind campus police and their actions. “We watched what was happening in Oakland, and decided we couldn’t let that happen here…Police were asked to enforce our policy, and that’s what they did,” Holmes said. “We never like to hurt our students or anybody here. We tried to warn them in advance.”

For Alvarado, standing side-by-side with fellow students and speaking against fee increases was important for him. “When I started going to undergrad at San Jose State -- even going to a state school, it was harsh, making the payments and continuing education.” Alvarado said. “Fee hikes were happening then, too. Having that background and having lived through an undergrad experience of struggling, I knew that as a graduate student I had to take that stance.”

Pinkerton and Alvarado say it’s amazing to see the support UC Berkeley students are receiving, but it’s also important for those attending the movement to ask themselves “You, as the 99 percent what are you bringing to the table?” They also want this lawsuit to help spark the conversation that police brutality is not acceptable on campus and against students.

UC Berkeley Math Professors Hold Teach-Outs To Bring Awarness On Police Brutality

rgee — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:01:34 -0600

Denise Tejada, Turnstyle News

UC Berkeley made international headlines after a video surfaced showing campus police pushing and beating students with batons. One professor, Math professor Nathan Ilten, saw those videos and was inspired to help bring awareness to the issue of police brutality on campus. He reached out to other fellow mathematicians to help put together a "teach-out" on UC Berkeley's campus.

Turnstyle filmed one of the six teach-outs at Berkeley, Professor Andrew Critch's “The Mathematics of Altruism and Civic Involvement.” The class included a review of the simple order-of-magnitude calculations and how they often show that altruistic behaviors -- like voting and civic engagement -- can have a huge expected impact on social issues.

Math Proffessors Hold Teach-Outs at UC Berkeley Campus from Turnstyle Video on Vimeo.

Occupy Protestors In California Target UC Regents

rgee — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:57:37 -0600

Rachel Krantz, Turnstyle News

As students and faculty strike on the Cal campus today, UC regents have announced they will be canceling a meeting scheduled for November 16 at the UCSF Mission Bay campus. The regents cited "a real danger of significant violence and vandalism” as their reason for canceling tomorrow’s meeting. University police told them "rogue elements intent on violence and confrontation with UC public safety officers were planning to attach themselves to peaceful demonstrations expected to occur at the meeting." Whether or not these threats to the regents are real, it is true that Occupy Cal had called for a protest of Wednesday’s meeting. Activists say the regents are acting on behalf of the 1%, implementing budget cuts and fee hikes for university students. Occupy Cal points out four board members in particular as part of the problem: Monica Lozano, Dick Blum, Leslie Tang Schilling and Paul Wachter. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

"It's telling that the regents don't want to face people who are calling on them to make the 1 percent pay for re-funding public education - including their own companies, like Bank of America and Wells Fargo," said UC Berkeley doctoral student Charlie Eaton, an organizer with the graduate student employees union, which has worked on the protests with a group called Refund California.

Lawmakers have cut hundreds of millions of dollars from UC's state allocation over the past few years, including $650 million this year alone. Another $100 million could be cut this winter if state revenues fall short as expected.

At the same time, the regents have consistently raised tuition and fees, tripling them in the last decade to $13,218, while cutting campus services.

Turnstyle News looked into the board members some more:

Dick Blum: Dick Blum is an investment banker and the husband of US Senator Diane Feinstein. He is also the President and Chairman of Blum Capital, an equity investment management firm. An article on Theava.com, (a news site delivering news around Mendocino Country) had this to say about Blum:

Richard Blum is a San Francisco-based finance capitalist presiding over a business empire that is, to say the least, expansive. Hedge funds? Blum owns one outright and wields a significant share of various others. Real estate? His primary investment vehicle, the $7 billion Blum Capital Partners, owns the largest real estate brokerage firm on the planet, CB Richard Ellis, of which Blum is chairman of the board. Construction? Until public scandal prompted him to sell off his holdings, Blum was a majority partner in a construction and engineering company that did billions in business with the US military among other government clients.

Spot.us

Mr. Blum’s spouse, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), whose wealth is estimated to be as high as $100 million, and whose 200-plus page disclosure statements are almost exclusively dedicated to tracking the labyrinthine activities of Blum Capital Partners.

Monica Lozano: Lozano serves on the board and is a director of Bank of America. According to Wikipedia, she is also a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She has also served on board at UnionBanCal Corporation, a San Francisco banking company. She is the publisher and Chief Executive Officer of La Opinión , America’s largest Spanish Language newspaper. According to Spot.us, Lozano may have had conflicts of interest while serving on the Board of Regents:

In 2008, while Lozano served on the board of Bank of America and Walt Disney, the UC General Endowment Pool owned about $5 million in Bank of America bonds and $530,000 in Walt Disney bonds; while the UC Retirement Plan held $99 million in Bank of America bond investments and $8.5 million in Walt Disney bonds.

Lozano's annual income is also in the hundreds of thousands per year, which puts her in the top 10 percent of earners in the U.S.

According to Forbes, Lozano made a total of $127,376, which includes $47,376 in stock awards, as a director for Bank of America in 2008. And she apparently earned a total of $234,842, including $71,909 in stock awards, $52,090 in options and $17,093 in other compensation, as a member of Walt Disney’s board during the same year.

Paul Wachter:According to his website, Paul Wachter is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Main Street Advisors. Main Street Advisors provides a wide range of financial, strategic and asset management advisory services to a select group of high net worth individuals and companies. Wachter serves on the Board of Directors of Time Warner Inc. and as a special advisor to the California Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth.

Leslie Tang Schilling: According to The Regent's of The University of California website, Tang Shilling is s Founder and Director of Union Square Investments Company, a commercial real estate investment and management firm. After 10 years as a Director of the Pacific Bank N.A., she was a director of Golden West Financial since 1997 and retired from its board in 2006 when it was sold to Wachovia Bank. According to Spot.us, Tang Shilling's earnings would put her in the hundreds of thousands:

As founder of Union Square Investment Co., which was valued between $100,001 and $1 million, Schilling said in 2008 she received a salary of more than $100,000. And she received between $10,001 and $100,000 in income from L.T.D.D., according to 2008 disclosure forms.

Spot's investigation also cites a past potential conflict of interest since Tang Shilling has served on the Board of Regents:

In May 2006, mortgage-lender Golden West Financial was sold to Wachovia Bank for $25.5 billion while Schilling served on the board of the company and fellow Regent Russel Gould was involved in business development and partnerships for Wachovia in California. Both were Regents at the time.

[Opinion] Occupy Wall Street: Can Big Business Be The Answer, Not The Bad Guy?

rgee — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:45:06 -0500

Read Turnstyle News' Full Occupy Wall Street Coverage

Delanie Ricketts, Turnstyle News

I don’t believe all big business is bad business. While I identify with Occupy Wall Street protesters’ grievances with corporate America, I have a different vision of what needs to change. I see business as our most valuable ally in the quest for social justice. And in a bad economy, I see job opportunities for myself in that world too.

I didn’t always feel that way. I knew I wanted to study poverty ever since I moved to Jakarta, Indonesia in 5^th grade. As my family and I drove to our future home, my ten-year-old self was baffled by the endless string of shacks, pollution, and people living on less than a dollar a day. I thought to myself, “Is this where we’ll be living?” But as expats, of course, we lived in a very nice, manicured condo.

Nonetheless, right outside my window poverty stared me right in the face. Why was it that I could live a life of luxury while my neighbors could not? After moving back to the United States, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I saw myself working for an NGO to right the injustice and inequity I experienced in Jakarta. Once I enrolled as a student at the University of California Berkeley, this dream became complicated.

As part of my liberal arts major, I decided to take a business class. It was in this class that I started thinking differently about big business. I discovered, with readily available capital and power worldwide, corporations can be extremely valuable actors in the effort to end poverty, despite a focus on profits. Although many people, including some of my peers here at UC Berkeley, are skeptical of businesses that claim to be making a difference, I am optimistic. My optimism is fed by the huge amount of people I see already working towards making businesses become more socially responsible.

To me, Occupy Wall Street represents a whole movement of people dedicated to demanding that corporations become more socially just. As more and more businesses decide to meet these demands, I see more and more opportunities for myself to create a career advising companies how to change. I don't see that as selling out, but being part of the solution. Already in my business class this semester, I'm spending time analyzing social justice efforts in major companies.

One of my assignments was to write recommendations to Apple for their future Supplier Responsibility report. Through my research, I learned a lot -- mainly that while Apple isn’t perfect, it appears to be making serious efforts to be socially responsible, dispelling the myth, at least for me, that all big business is bad business. Corporate America doesn’t have to be our enemy, especially if future CEO's and leaders of NGO's are already at the table together in business school classes like mine.

Students Demand That Brown Sign CA DREAM Act Part 2

rgee — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:10:59 -0500

The second part of the California DREAM Act has reached Governor Jerry Brown’s desk, and students and activists are demanding that he sign it. A group of activists from the national organization By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), local educators, and middle school students held a press conference on September 1st at the UC Berkeley campus to spread the word about the upcoming deadline for passing the bill.

Yvette Falarca, a teacher at King Middle School in Berkeley, CA, brought some of her students with her. The students were there with the consent of their parents to speak out to the press about why the DREAM Act is important to them. Zaira Romero said, “I came to fight for my rights to go to college. Even though we’re not from here... We’re trying to tell them we want to be something in life.”

The first part of the CA DREAM Act, AB 130, which passed in July, allows undocumented college students in CA to receive private funding and scholarships. The second part, AB 131, would allow undocumented students to be eligible for state and government funding - the difference between going or not going for many students.

The group had planned the conference in that particular location because it was in front of the UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birjeneau’s office. Birjeneau came out and informed the activists that he would not be able to attend the press conference, but that he supports the issue. “I believe [the governor] will sign it,” said Birjeneau, who is also writing an op-ed for the Daily Cal in support of AB 131. “But we cannot forget about the Federal DREAM Act,” he said, reminding the group that they need to take their fight to the Federal level.

However, the group was not satisfied. They wanted him to commit to urging the University of California Board of Regents to pass a UC DREAM Act, that would open up options like the UC Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan to undocumented students. The chancellor said, “I’m working on this behind the scenes to figure out a strategy...” but one person replied, “We can’t secretly support it!”

Tania Kappner, one of the founders of BAMN, and a graduate of the Education School at UC Berkeley, said this movement feels like the struggle for Affirmative Action during her time as a student. She’s currently a history teacher at Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, CA. She does not trust that Brown will sign the bill, because he approved the extensive budget cuts to higher education in California--a state that ranks near the bottom of the list in terms of funding per student. “Brown could go either way on this,” she said.

Ronald Cruz, a BAMN attorney and Boalt Law School grad, said that the announcement by President Obama that undocumented college students would be low-priority for deportation, made it easier for students to speak out in favor of the DREAM Act. “With the attack on public education right now, the DREAM ACt is core to keeping the American Dream alive for all,” he said.

Making The Most Of Community College

rgee — Fri, 27 May 2011 18:32:39 -0500

This story was originally published on L.A. Youth.

By Devin Ruiz

After taking a tour of UC Berkeley at the end of sophomore year, I fell in love with the school and knew it was where I wanted to be. Every student I met on my campus tour was wearing something “Cal” and telling me that this is the college I should go to. I was convinced.

The problem was that my GPA, while good, was nowhere near the 4.0 that I felt I would need to get in. I thought about working extra hard to raise my grades to give myself a slim chance to get accepted, but I had taken only one honors class and one AP class and wasn’t very involved in extracurriculars. Then I thought about going to a Cal State for undergrad and going to Berkeley for graduate school. But I knew that would feel like settling and I wouldn’t be happy. So I decided to go to a community college for two years and then try to transfer to Berkeley. I figured that community college would be a chance to start over and get better grades so that I could transfer to my dream school.

I went to a private, all-girls Catholic school where the majority of students were smart and had known their dreams schools, like Cal Tech and UC San Diego, since they started freshman year. It was difficult not to compare myself to other girls in my class. When I told my classmates I was going to a community college, I felt embarrassed. One classmate told me I wasn’t going to a “real college.”

Although I started to regret that I hadn’t tried to get better grades during my freshman and sophomore years, I was motivated to create a plan that would allow me to transfer to a UC in two years. I started by enrolling at Santa Monica College, the community college that has that highest transfer rate to the UCs. Then I promised myself that I would work as hard as possible to get at least a 3.7 GPA (a 3.0 is the minimum GPA needed to transfer to a UC, but I wanted to increase my chances of getting into more competitive schools like Berkeley). I would have to stop procrastinating and start studying a week before the test instead of an hour before.

Two weeks after I graduated, I started my first class. I was nervous that the coursework would be too difficult or that the professor’s way of teaching would be drastically different from what I was used to in high school. Since it was a remedial math class it was easy but I braced myself for a harder fall semester. To my surprise, my high school had taught me a lot. The books I read my freshman year of high school were repeated in my English 1 and 2 courses. I ended my first semester with a 4.0 and was very proud that my plan was working.

My biggest worry during that first year was whether I would be able to get the classes I wanted or needed. I had heard horror stories about people who were only able to enroll in one class and had to try to add others on the first day. But luckily—with the exception of a sociology class that I couldn’t get into—I didn’t face these problems.

One of the best things about attending a community college has been the opportunity to take classes that sound interesting. My friends who attend Cal States or UCs restrict themselves to classes they’re required to take to graduate or for their majors. They feel that taking a class for fun would make it take longer to graduate, which would make college more expensive. Although the price has increased at SMC—from $26 to $36 a unit—I can still afford to take classes just because I am interested in them.

I discovered an interest in fighting for equality

When I enrolled at Santa Monica, I had no idea that I had a passion for women’s studies. A friend of mine took women’s studies his first year and I was extremely jealous that he called himself a feminist when I didn’t know what “feminist” actually meant. I thought it meant equality for women. I took my first women’s studies class during the fall of my first year at SMC and I’ve taken one more since. I’ve become a full-blown feminist who doesn’t just fight for women’s rights but the rights of people who suffer from various forms of oppression. I’ve decided that when I apply to a four-year university I will minor in women’s studies.

Although I loved being able to choose classes that interested me, I was still worried that going to SMC meant I would miss out on an exciting college life and that the students wouldn’t be involved in clubs or care about the school. A teacher I respected in high school had talked down about students who attended community college, saying that they only went because their parents would kick them out if they didn’t go.

I went to my classes, got my 3.7 GPA and joined enough clubs to get some community service hours. But I wasn’t planning to make lots of friends because I feared that I would become someone who treated SMC like high school and went to class just to socialize. It was easy not to get involved—students in my classes never mentioned on-campus groups. So I became what I was afraid of, the stereotypical community college student who wasn’t involved.

I would go to class and hang out with D’arcy, the one friend I met during my summer class. But it was lonely eating by myself and not what I expected from the “college experience.” I had imagined college as hanging out between classes with my friends and having group study sessions. And while that happened sometimes, it was nothing like what my friends from high school told me about their college lives, like staying up until 3 a.m. studying with their roommates. I became Facebook friends with some classmates but we never made plans to hang out outside of school.

I wanted to be more involved

Toward the end of fall semester, I was tired of being alone at school and I decided to learn more about what was happening on campus. D’arcy and I attended Club Row—an event where clubs set up tables on the quad to attract new members. D’arcy, who is a year older than me and transferring to UCLA, told me that the UCs would want more than just a few hours of community service. I signed up for several clubs. But I wasn’t sure I would have much to contribute so I didn’t go to the meetings and continued to eat lunch alone.

Early in spring semester, the vice president of the feminist club came to my women’s studies class to announce their first meeting. The way she passionately talked about the club’s goals, I was able to see myself participating. I went to the meeting and learned about how the club wanted to bring better comprehensive reproductive health care to campus. One way they did this was to bring attention to pregnancy centers that target women who have unplanned pregnancies. On billboards, the clinics advertise “Pregnant? Scared? We can help” and list a phone number. But they don’t offer unbiased, medically sound services and often don’t tell women about the option of abortion when dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. A woman I work with went to one of these clinics and they gave her literature that said abortion was wrong and led to breast cancer as well as other things that are medically false.

After attending the meeting I was inspired by the students’ passion for activism and realized that this was what my college experience had been lacking. I began attending the weekly meetings and after the president had to step down because of work hours, I took over the position.

Since then, we’ve campaigned to help re-elect U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer and hosted a Domestic Violence Awareness week. We raised awareness of violence against women by having anyone on campus who had something to share write a message on a shirt and hang it on a clothesline on the quad. We hung 67 shirts. People’s messages ranged from “Violence never equals love” to personal stories about their experiences with domestic violence and how they survived it. Right now we’re working on getting more comprehensive reproductive health care such as birth control and STD/HIV testing on campus. Along with this, we want to better publicize the days that the Westside Family Health Center is on campus doing educational workshops.

Through my work with this club, I have been able to work with other student leaders and professors. I’ve become the one who people turn to for advice on how to bring feminism into other school events, such as Earth Week. It’s awesome when others recognize you and ask for your help with their club. The Latino Student Union wanted me to represent the feminist club during César Chávez Day. They asked me to talk about Dolores Huerta, who worked closely with Cesar Chavez. I’ve also been asked to give statements during student rallies against the budget cuts at SMC. Before getting involved, I never knew that community college had such active students.

As California public colleges face extreme budget cuts, it seems like community colleges are being hit especially hard. There have already been tuition increases and there are threats of the cost going up to $66 a unit. During the time I have been here, it has become more difficult to get classes. Several of my classes, from economics to photography to Spanish, have been overcrowded with 40 additional people trying to add during the first week. The overcrowding can sometimes be distracting.

I’m proud that we’re fighting for our education

SMC canceled its Winter 2011 session (classes that are taught for six weeks between fall and spring semesters), and this upcoming summer session is getting cut in half, and could still be eliminated. Even more frustrating is the fact that while administrators have their minds set on cutting classes, professors and school resources, they are unwilling to hear students’ ideas, such as lowering administrators’ salaries. But even though I’m worried about how this will affect my education, there has been a positive: students are joining together and I no longer think that the students here are apathetic.

It’s been inspiring to see students rally together or travel to Sacramento to protest or meet with the president of SMC. We have realized that we deserve an education without the cost nearly doubling.

At community college, I have been able to build my own network of feminist faculty, staff and students and we have had the opportunity to plan school-wide events—something I thought happened only at “real colleges.” I have never regretted my decision to attend SMC. I am really grateful I was given this opportunity to prepare for a four-year school.

A Perfect Storm Brewing For Student Vets: No Human Resources

rgee — Thu, 26 May 2011 14:32:42 -0500

In 2008, President Barack Obama promised that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in the summer of 2011, and troops would be coming home from the Middle East. Summer's almost here. What will these new veterans do next? And are we ready to support them financially with open arms?

This is the third year that the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill will be available to veterans as an educational grant. The bill pays for a veteran’s tuition and fees, provides a housing allowance, and a stipend for books and supplies. Since the bill was made available in 2009, the amount of veterans taking advantage of it has increased by thousands.

According to the National Center for Veteran Analysis and Statistics (NCVAS), 34,393 veterans took advantage of the Post 9.11 G.I. Bill in 2009, and that number jumped to 221,900 veterans in 2010. Imagine how many new student veterans will claim this benefit for the next academic year.

What Veterans Are Facing

For veterans that have their sights set on a diploma, the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill is a godsend. However, taking advantage of this grant can be hell. Coming out of a rigid, no slack environment, where most decisions are made by someone of a higher rank - it’s now up to the veteran to:

a) choose a school

b) fill out applications

c) write the essays

d) take the SAT’s

e) retrieve your high school transcripts

f) take advantage of your veteran benefits... and the list goes on.

At San Francisco State University, the student veterans organization on campus has seen a 30 percent increase in numbers since 2009, according to Rogelio Manaois, the director of the Veteran Services Program at SFSU, and he expects more next year. J.P. Tremblay, Deputy Secretary at the California Department of Veterans Affairs said that on average, they see 30,000 vets come home each year, but he expects more this year.

At the UC Berkeley Veteran Center, Ron William’s door was open, and the flow of student veterans was steady. “If we could multiply Ron Williams by 300 it would be the best thing for us,” said Jose de Lara, 31, who served six years in the U.S. Navy, and is now pursuing philosophy. He said that having a mentor was the most important resource for someone making the transition from the service to school. Other veterans echoed him saying the veteran center where they could find a familiar community was essential to their success.

Unfortunately for De Lara and the other 300 + veterans at UC Berkeley, Williams serves student veterans as part of an unfunded mandate by the state of California, which requires every UC, CSU, and community college in the state of California to provide someone dedicated to retaining and recruiting student veterans. Williams serves this position on top of all his other responsibilities in the Transfer and Re-entry office at UC Berkeley. “It means that no college or university is getting any additional funds from the state to deliver these programs,” he said. Maintaining the program has been a challenge.

Manaois at SFSU agrees. “Staffing is the biggest issue. I am only one full-time staff member with around five student assistants trying to run the Veterans Services Program with no real source of outside funding at this point and no time to be able to look for outside funding to help support activities for our veterans population. We are seeing a growing need for benefits advising since the majority of our new students are transfers from two year colleges and are on the tail end of their benefits,” said Manaois.

So- as troops are set to come home from the Middle East this summer, and the unfunded campus mandates remain the same - how are schools going to accommodate these student veterans? Michael Dakduk, Executive Director of Student Veterans of America, served in the Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 - 2008. When he returned home, he enrolled at University of Nevada Las Vegas, where he started a student veterans chapter. “I took the reins along with a few other leaders. We didn’t turn anyone away - prospective students, returning vets...People would call us asking, ‘How do I get my benefits?’” said Dakduk.

Dakduk and others are worried about colleges being unprepared for new student veterans. “I think that we really have a perfect storm coming up. I’m concerned that institutions won’t be prepared to absorb that impact, to accommodate our needs in class,” said Dani Molina, who served as a radio operator in the U.S. Army during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and is now doing doctoral research on the veteran population in higher education at UCLA.

Brains & Beakers: How to Make a Robotic Hand

cfoster — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:52:10 -0500

As a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate studying theoretical chemistry, Yael Elmatad studies phenomona like the quantum translation-rotation dynamics of confined molecules. And if your eyes start to glaze over just reading the end of that sentence, try to keep them open a few seconds more. Because it's the application of that kind of theoretical work that allows engineers to build things like robotic hands.

In this episode of Brains & Beakers, we're going to show you how to build one yourself. And, hey, why not -- we'll throw in some of the theory behind it too.

WATCH:

Previously:

Support for this content is provided in part by the National Science Foundation.