Bidding the Berkeleyan Goodbye

The October 1, 2009 issue of the Berkeleyan, the biweekly newspaper of UC Berkeley faculty and staff, is the last edition readers will see in print. After almost a quarter century of continuous publication, the Berkeleyan has fallen victim to campus budget cuts. According to Editor Jonathan King, whose position has been eliminated after 7 years on the job, the remaining staff of the paper will be "integrated into the daily work of the UC Berkeley NewsCenter." He continues:

We're far from the only campus unit to absorb budget reductions in the form of departing colleagues. The rebuilding, here as elsewhere, is just getting started: See, for example, our page 1 story this issue on the significant restructuring going on in the research-administration arena. In the interim, the once and future staff of the Berkeleyan — in whatever form it may ultimately take —join the committed faculty and staff of UC Berkeley in looking forward to more prosperous times ahead.

While that sentiment works well with the theme of our current issue -- Under Construction -- it's hard to shake the suspicion that "restructuring" is really just code for something much more dire.

Let's hope not.

Comments

[Tim]

I'm sure "restructuring" is the code you suspect. But, from another perspective, it's disappointing that the wordsmiths at the Berkeleyan would adopt that kind of corporate Newspeak. Or, perhaps, fall victim to it.

[Anthony St. John '63]

The Fall 2009 "Under Construction" issue is the best issue since the award winning Sep/Oct 2006 "Global Warning" issue. Indeed, “A Campus Crusade” as subtitled on the cover is once again most definitely in order, especially since the problems discussed in the Global Warning issue are nowhere near being solved to guarantee a continuation of the quality of life we constructed and thrived on during the post-WWII 20th century.

To this point, Charles Burress’s “Work in Progress” excellent feature article makes two paramount points defining both the immediate need and role model solution for “A Campus Crusade”:

Immediate Need Statement: ‘For author Gray Brechin, who first came to Cal as an undergrad in 1967, “[Berkeley] is today a very different place, the faculty and students so quiescent that I sometimes wonder what sedative has been put in the water.” He said that when he joined a small vigil outside the office of Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo to protest the “torture memos” that Yoo wrote for the Bush-Cheney administration, “virtually no faculty or students would join us—they were too plugged into their cell phones, iPods, or in too much of a rush or worried for their careers.” ‘

Role Model Solution Statement: ‘Although the end of the Vietnam War and other changes in the world at large helped usher the protest era off the stage, the Free Speech Movement’s undoing was caused also by its success, said Lisa Rubens, a Bancroft Library historian and expert on the movement. The protesters’ push for civil rights and gender equity helped open the doors to increased diversity, ethnic studies, greater equality for women, and other changes on campus that provided more opportunity for cooperative engagement and lessened the need for angry confrontation, she said. “Students are involved in so many kinds of socially aware and socially concerned activities.”’

It’s time for Free Speech Movement v.21C, with a sense of urgency if an acceptable environment, California and Humanity are to be perpetuated with at least the same quality of life we achieved in the 20th century.

So far in this new millennium we are proving that homo sapiens have failed once again to learn and act wisely from the lessons of history that document far too many failed civilizations before ours.