11:25 a.m.

Most of the classes that evacuated Moffitt Library were cancelled or have been moved off campus.

11:18 a.m.

The fire alarms at several campus buildings-Dwinelle Hall, Barrows Hall, Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, Moffitt Library and Valley Life Sciences-went off within the last hour, causing hundreds of students to evacuate the building.

Staff at Moffitt Library said people cannot reenter the building until the Berkeley Fire Department arrives and assesses the situation.

10:30 a.m.

The fire alarm in Dwinelle Hall went off, forcing hundreds of students, staff and faculty to evacuate the building. Many protesters walked over from the demonstration and attempted to convince evacuating students to join the protest.

10:17 a.m.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau sent out a campuswide e-mail alerting staff, faculty and students about the occupation of the second floor room of Wheeler Hall and the subsequent closure of the building until further notice.

“The campus police are working to resolve a protest action that is occurring in

Wheeler Hall,” he said in the e-mail. “Employees who can contact their supervisors should talk to them if possible to determine whether telecommuting or relocation to another work area is an option. Those in the building right now are advised to leave until the situation has been resolved.”

9:48 a.m.

At least 8 Berkeley police cruisers are at the scene with officers from the department handling the protest.

9:35 a.m.

Protesters are still holding on to their position in the second story room, with intermittent appearances at the window by a masked man who is shouting anti-police messages to the sit-down picket line below.

Some students are still trying to cross the picket line

“I’m pretty confused,” said Dan Brown, a UC Berkeley freshman. “I understand where the protesters are coming from, but if I don’t have a class, free day off.”

9:25 a.m.

“There about 60 of us grads and undergrads, cops are breaking down doors, locked down since 5am,” said one protestor via text message.

8:59 a.m.

Police are using a crowbar to open the door, according to protesters inside.

8:50 a.m.

Protesters have taken over at least one room on the West side of Wheeler Hall. UCPD officers have surrounded the building, and some are inside.

Protesters were yelling out the window of the building with a banner hanging from it.

At least 30 protesters are sitting behind a banner that says “Solidarity” and “shut down UCPD” blocking the path between Durant Hall and Wheeler Hall. Because of construction, the block is forcing pedestrians to walk around Dwinelle Hall or Wheeler Hall in order to pass across to the north or south sides of campus.

The walkways around Wheeler are almost completely blocked off by UCPD and caution tape.

According to witnesses, at least one person has been arrested in connection with the protest.

“I think it’s great … there’s not a lot of people fighting the power,” said onlooker and Berkeley resident Lou Brown.

– Zach EJ Williams, Stephanie Baer, Cristian Macavei, Chris Carrassi, George Ashworth

Protesers try to enter California Hall. Tim Maloney/Staff

Student actions during the first day of the strike at UC Berkeley to protest proposed fee hikes took a more aggressive tone than the other actions taken since the Sept. 24 walkout.

The day’s events were highlighted by 37 protesters, 18 of which were UC students, temporarily occupying a building on campus. Earlier in the day protesters also formed a human chain around California Hall that came close to turning violent.
Previous actions on campus have remain relatively less confrontational.

After leaving Sproul Plaza and marching to Downtown Berkeley protesters marched to California Hall and linked arms around the building to prevent workers from leaving the administrative buidling, though most in the march did not advocate some of the actions.

As the protesters where locking arms about 10 people left the building, none were willing to comment. At around 3 p.m. as two people stepped out of the building, the protesters had formed a solid band and rushed in towards them, preventing them from leaving as the protesters chanted “You work from us.”

Organizers eventually told the protesters to break the line and let the people go.

By the time the next batch of people tried to exit the building the protesters rushed the door, forcing UCPD officers to escort the people back inside the building.

The crowd at this point was chanting “1, 2, 3, 4 tear down this fucking door.”

Some organizers tried to convince them to remain peaceful even though a few people in the crowd said they wanted to forcibly enter the building.

“We are not prepared for that kind of (violent) movement,” said junior Ruben Canedo, an ethnic studies and social welfare double-major taking part in the protest. He added that a small group of people could not make a decision for the entire group.

“If we want to have a collective action, we need to make a collective decision.”

This attempt to escalate action is analogous to the Sept. 24 protests, in which a small group of protesters chained the doors of Wheeler Hall shut before police removed the chains. As before, they were not supported by the rest of the group, who advocated maintaining a more “democratic” protest.

There is also concern among protesters about what will happen to undocumented students if there is police action.

“We need to be conscious of undocumented people who are not only afraid of being arrested, but being deported,” Canedo said.
Some of the protesters wanted to make sure students were aware that the action that took place would reflect on the workers’ strike.

“If something goes down, who are they going to blame, the workers? I don’t want that to happen,” said Katherine Renfro, one of the rally speakers with the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) union, one of the unions that is holding a two-day strike.

The protesters formed a circle in front of California Hall and held a meeting to plan action for the next two days. The meeting later moved to Dwinelle Hall, and was interrupted by a student who said other protesters had occupied the Architecture and Engineering building.

About 40 people occupied the building, which houses the campus’s the offices of Edward Denton, vice chancellor of capital projects.

Protesters alleged that the more than $250 million that would be raised from the proposed student fee increase would be put towards construction.

However, according to Nathan Brostrom, interim executive vice president for business operations at the UC Office of the President and vice chancellor for administration at UC Berkeley, said this accusation is false.

“That could be no further from the truth,” he said. “We don’t use any educational funds (fees) for capital building projects. If students vote for an increase, then we pledge those funds, but otherwise it’s false.”

The 37 occupants remained in the building for about and hour until about 5:40 p.m. when they reached an agreement to give their names to the UCPD and leave the building.

The occupants were “definantly” in violation of UC rules and regulations by staying in the building past its 5 p.m. closing time, according to UCPD L.t Alex Yao.

The protesters said they occupied the building in solidarity with other similar actions around the globe, reported by the Austrian Times and InfoShop news, an anarchist online newspaper.

The occupants who were not charged with any crimes, though the Office of Student Conduct and the UCPD will be discussing the circumstances behind this violation, according to Yao.

Organizers said they thought the day’s events were succesful in showing the university that students were not taking the cuts lightly, according to senior Marika Goodrich, who helped organize today’s protest.

“We are showing this is our university and by taking action inside a building they are showing to the university if they don’t listen to us, student action will escalate,” she said. “There are definitely people who are committed to staying here all night.”

While the fate of that decision will be on the minds of millions around the state and the, it composes only one of a multitude of issues going before the Regents between Nov. 17 and Nov. 19.

Issues range from approval of new student housing at UC Berkeley to upgrading the interim director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to full director. They will also decide if Berkeley gets accepted into a pilot program that would give campus more autonomy in approving building site. The three-day event will end with a presentation on the level of private support coming to the UCs —it’s down all over if you hadn’t guessed, though Berkeley is doing better than most.

On the local front, campus will be looking to get the final designs for the Anna Head West student housing approved, meaning construction could begin this summer and provide 424 beds for undergraduates by fall semester 2012. The housing would be constructed on top of an existing parking lot across the street from People’s Park, between Channing Way and Haste St.

This housing is an attempt to help meet the 1600 new beds the 2020 Long Range Development Plan for campus estimates will be required by that date. Finding empty property to build on is extremeley difficult in the Bay Area according to Marty Takimoto, a spokesperson for residential and student service programs.

“We are limited in sites, which is why its going on a parking lot,” Marimoto said. “We have to design buildings that fit into an existing space.”
The design of the new dorms are not with critics. Some members of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association do not think the design on the new building will mesh with neighborhood.

“Some features of new design…is designed in a way that is sort of aggresive,” said member John English. “There is a prominent jutting cantilever in brutal contrast with massing of historic buildings. Im not against modern artchut but there are ways to design things to be compatible.”

Campus is also looking to receive authorization from the regents to participate in a capital projects pilot program. Admittance would allow building projects under $60 million to be approved by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau instead of the regents.

Campus has to first get a ten-year Capital Financial Plan and Physical Design Framework approved at the meeting before being allowed to participate in the program.

According to Christine Shaff, communications manager for the campus’s department of facilities service, the program would be “less of a time intensive process” than the current model of going before the regents with each proposal to build.

The Office of the President is looking to get the authority to require health insurance as a condition of enrollment for graduate students, an authority they already have over undergraduates. This change in policy gives the authority to the Office of the President and the regents instead of each individual campus. For the time being health plans will not change.

“It standardizes and makes consistent how we treat undergraduate and graduate students,” said Claudia Covello, the executive director of University Health Services.

The plan will allow the regents to alter plans across the 10 campuses in the future, giving them more ability to work with campuses to study cost containment options, Covello said.

“What if you put all the campuses in one pooled plan and got a price break,” she said. “I think they want to look into that. But they are still early on that.”

The regents will also be treated to a presentation on the status of private funding throughout the UC’s. This past year, the University of California received just over $1.3 billion in private support. Berkeley was third behind UCSF and UCLA with $276,331,975. The other campuses had $300,424,313 and $351,688,986 respectively.

As far as each campuses fundraising campaigns go The Campaign for Berkeley is doing the best out of the 10 campuses with $1,238,760,015 pledged, almost three times more than what UCLA has raised. Both started their campaigns in 2005. UC Santa Barbara has raised 544,195,956 since 2000.

A bill to replenish the contingency with funds from the carry-forward reserve was introduced and passed to the finance committee for consideration. Ni said the bill was intended to transfer $8,000, even though the text of the bill says, “THEREFORE IT BE RESOLVED, that the ASUC Senate allocate $8,000 (five thousand dollars) from the Carry Forward Fund to the Senate Contingency Fund.” If it passes committee, the bill will be voted on by the full senate next week.

Senators had waited to learn the balance of the reserve fund before using it to replenish the contingency, but many said the reserve is very likely to have well over $8,000.

ASUC President Will Smelko addressed the senate and reminded them that he had vetoed a bill they had passed last week urging the UC Berkeley campus to end financial support of the intercollegiate athletics program. SQUELCH! Senator Emily Carlton, an author of the bill, motioned to override the veto, which will be discussed and considered at the senate’s meeting next week. The ASUC Constitution requires a week’s wait between the veto and a vote to override.

Two owners of businesses at the Bear’s Lair Food Court—Ann Vu from Healthy Heavenly Foods and Arnoldo Marquez from Taqueria El Tacontento—addressed the senate and said they were going on strike beginning Monday to protest new leases with significant rent increases issued to them by the ASUC Store Operations Board.

“We want to continue to serve the Berkeley community, but we have been pressured to sign contracts in the middle of the recession which is unfair,” Marquez said. “We cannot survive with the contract they have offered to us.”

Marquez has until Monday to accept his new lease. Vu declined the terms of the lease in July and is required to leave by May 31.

Matt Marks, an advocate for the vendors, addressed the senate and urged them to attend the board’s meeting Tuesday.

”You guys are all members of the Store Operation Board,” he said. “The auxiliary is performing a coup where they’re taking power away from you guys.”

The senate passed a bill on the consent calendar supporting the renewal of the Rochdale Village lease with the campus administration.

Lower Sproul Student Council Chairs Joseph Guzman and Joycerine Lee addressed the senate to ask for input regarding the effort to pass a referendum to add a campus-based student fee that would help fund the renovation of Lower Sproul Plaza and the surrounding student union complex. They asked senators to help them arrange meetings with their communities so that they could gather input as well as endorsements and support for the effort. They also asked that the senate pass a bill themselves in support of the effort, and Student Action Senator Parth Bhatt successfully moved to add such a bill for consideration next week.

Elections Council Chair Vinit Sukhija addressed the senate and presented his plans to reform the ASUC elections scheduled for April. He said he wants the senate to make necessary amendments to the ASUC bylaws that would allow for the elimination of all or most of the physical polling locations on campus. He said only 10 percent of voters use these stations while 90 percent vote online. He added that he could run the election with $15,000 instead of $40,000 if these changes were made.

Sukhija also said he would work to increase publicity of the elections via e-mails and structured, publicized debates.

”This year I’m planning on running the most aggressive publicity campaign ever run by the elections council,” he said.

The senate confirmed two judicial council justices, including the renewal of Chair Kiira Johal’s term. The council now has all nine of its positions filled.

At the request of Student Action Noah Stern, the senate had a moment of silence in recognition of Veteran’s Day. CalSERVE Senator Rahul Patel asked that the moment including recognition of veterans from around the world and CalSERVE Senator Ariel Boone asked that it recognize queer veterans as well.

Before adjourning, Patel said the senate should consider moving the location or time of the senate’s next meeting so that students and senators would not have to cross the picket lines that would take place during a systemwide strike scheduled for next week.

A 28-minute discussion included consideration to move the time and date of the meeting, cancel the meeting and add a meeting the day before Thanksgiving Day or during finals, and move the meeting to a location off of university property. Rochdale Village as well as the residential units and People’s Park were all considered but turned down because they are university-owned. Suggestions for new meeting times or dates were turned down as senators objected due to time conflicts. Senators settled on 2424 Warring St., a location reserved by Student Action Senator NhuNhu Nguyen, as the new location for next week’s meeting to be held at the regular time and day.

The meeting adjourned at 10:46 p.m. and lasted for 3 hours and 30 minutes, including 11 minutes of recess time.

Miller, 58, was found dead in her Oakland home last Friday. A preliminary autopsy revealed she died of natural causes.

The chancellor first mentioned raising close to $60 million for the campus by replacing 2,500 in-state students with out of state students, who currently pay more than three times as much in undergraduate fees. The campus is over-enrolled by 2,500 students, meaning that it does not receive state funding for these students.

“Rather than leave those seats empty our goal is to replace them with out of state students,” Birgeneau said.
Birgeneau then spoke about a “surprisingly well received out of the box solution.”

The solution would involve creating a hybrid model of public funding for universities throughout the nation.

“We’ve called on the Obama administration … we’ve appealed to them to save public education,” Birgeneau said. “If the the federal government were to invest in public education half of what they spent on AIG, then that would be enough to permanently solve the problem for about the top 20 public research universities.”

The chancellor said he had received the support of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

At the forum, Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard touched on another issue: the effects of the cuts on low and middle income families. He said that in a seemingly counter-intuitive way, the increased fees could help lower income students financial aid because a third of student fees goes to aid, Poullard said.

“While lower income students will be covered the bad news is that middle class students are not,” he said.

Members of the Third World Liberation Front asked the panel about their support for a Multicultural Center as part of a new Lower Sproul Plaza.

While the chancellor said he needed to see a detailed financial plan before making a commitment, he said the campus will match student funds as each of the phases of the redevelopment come along phased way.

Poullard addressed the growing level of unrest in the audience.

“There is a certain level of ribbing and cynicism that I would expect from this event,” he said. “I ask for grace and patience as I hear things and I will extend grace and patience back to you.”

Many questions addressed different paths of activism students should take to protest the cuts. The scheduled UC systrem wide strike, which has 960 signatories  as of Friday at noon, came up many times during the forum.

Birgeneau told the forum he personally did not support a strike and later said in an interview he thought it would be an ineffective measure to combat the cuts. He mentioned that legislators in Sacramento had viewed the September 24 walkout with “disdain”.

“They said ‘Oh, its only Berkeley’,” he said.

Earlier that evening, Birgeneau and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer advocated for a march on the state capitol and for students to lobby their local legislators.

“I hope that literally … there will be hundrends of thousands of supporters demanding that the legislature reverse its polcies and support higher eduation,” Birgeneau said.

Towards the end of the forum student organizer Blanca Misse rallied the crowd, telling the panelists that they are going to need to stand with students as they protest the budget cuts in Novemeber.

“I don’t know how big the strike in November is going to be, but the one in March is going to be hella big,” Misse said. “Be ready to be with us in the picket lines, to tell the regents and to tell the president that we are not going to take it.”

Computer science professor Brian Barsky addressed the senate to discuss loans the intercollegiate athletic program has taken from the UC Berkeley administration in the past. He said he is submitting a resolution to the Academic Senate calling for the cessation of administrative funding to athletics, and that he wants ASUC Senate to approve a bill supporting the cause. The senate approved such a bill later in the meeting.

“Some people (say) that we’re horrible people, we don’t want sports around. That’s not it. We’re just saying please live within your means,” he said. ”Most important serious substantive things aren’t happening, and yet we’re funding this program that’s supposed to be self-sustaining and self-supporting.”

Barsky said he learned that the football team charters an aircraft to get to games from reports about the charter plane’s landing difficulties in Arizona on Friday. He said this is an example of intercollegiate programs not cutting back.

“A lot that happens in that program is quite more luxurious,” he said. “Far more luxurious than what’s happening in the academic world.”

CalSERVE Senator Cynthia Nava asked if athletic scholarships would be cut if the administration’s stopped financially supporting athletics. Dean of Student Jonathan Poullard joined the conversation briefly to say that would undoubtedly be the case. Barsky added that he was concerned athletes do not receive an adequate education and do not focus enough on academics.

Barsky said changing football divisions might alleviate the issue.

”If we were to change divisions that might actually be a compromise solution,” he said. “That would pretty much settle everything.”

Poullard responded to Barsky’s talk in his weekly address that followed.

”One thing that really upsets me about our campus is when students receive half a story,” he said. “When the professor just spoke, while he gave a lot of good information, it was not the whole story. … Get all the information please. You may come to the exact same decision point, but at least you have all the information.”

Finance Officer Alan Ni addressed the senate and said there was in fact $1,070 left in the contingency fund, rather than the $2,131 he had reported at last week’s meeting. He mentioned again that the auxiliary does know how much money is in the reserve carry-forward fund.

“I’ve been talking to (Auxiliary Financial Services Manager Marilyn Stager) pretty much every day and she keeps saying there are internal auditors and they’re working on adjustments,” he said. “So she couldn’t give me an answer.”

He recommended senators discuss how they want to allocate funding once they continue doing so again. He recommended that they do not consider groups’ funding requests on a case-by-case basis.

“In the meantime you all can’t really allocate money,” he said. “I think you guys should talk more about guidelines and moving forward. I know in the ideal situation it would be case-by-case, but in the end it doesn’t turn out that way. The groups in the end get screwed if there’s not enough money … I know that the conversation is hard but I think that it needs to happen.”

In his weekly address, Academic Affairs Vice President John Tran said the effort to send 10,000 letters to U.S. President Barack Obama in an effort to get him to speak at UC Berkeley had begun this week. He also said that he was working on a project for his class in which he is studying how the ASUC Auxiliary works with students who have a high turnover rate as they join and leave the university.

The senate discussed possible restrictions on allocating funds to student groups. Independent Senator Christopher Franco suggested working off of allocations made last year, but CalSERVE Senator Eunice Kwon disagreed, saying last year’s senate did not make good financial decisions and should not be an example. Student Action Senator NhuNhu Nguyen suggested asking that student groups be more specific about where their funds would go.

Student Action Senator J.P. Shami said events contributing to charity should show that they donated more than the amount they were funded, but Kwon said charity events often try to raise awareness as well as donate funds. Independent Senator Huda Adem, who is also chair of the finance committee, said it is hard to define fiscal responsibility and that she is hesitant to make a rigid system that would need repeated exceptions.

“There’s always going to be an exception, with 600 groups on campus and 20 of us and different opinions,” Adem said. “There aren’t very many things we can do besides taking each thing on a case-by-case scenario.”

The meeting adjourned at 9:55 p.m. and lasted for 2 hours and 41 minutes, including 7 minutes of recess time. This was the senate’s shortest meeting this year with the exception of its second meeting on Sept. 2, which was 10 minutes shorter.

KTVU reporter Rita Williams allegedly received information from three unnamed sources stating that only two counties are being considered for the change—Los Angeles County and San Diego County.

Judge Morris Jacobson decided to change the venue for Johannes Mehserle after deciding that Alameda County residents possibly harbor too much bias in the landmark case.

The trial was originally slated to begin on Nov. 2, but the case has been delayed until Nov. 9, when the counties up for consideration will be discussed.

On Oct. 30, the commission decided on a set of colleges to investigate, but declined to release the full list.

In recent years, many liberal arts colleges have worried about their gender ratios that show the colleges’ difficulty in attracting both male and female applicants.Private undergraduate colleges are exempt from the admissions provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, so they have the right to consider gender in the admissions process.

These large pay packages are still relatively new in higher education. In 2002, there were no presidents making over $1 million: only four earned more than $800,000 and 27 earned more than $500,000.

Over all, the study found the median pay for presidents of the 419 private colleges and universities surveyed was $358,746, a 6.5 percent increase from the previous year. The median presidential pay, adjusted for inflation, grew by 14 percent over the last five years, according to the Chronicle.

“It’s a market and it’s increasingly hard to find these people,” said Jeffrey Selingo, editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has published its annual compensation survey since 1993. “That said, almost every year, presidential salaries have gone up faster than inflation, and faster than tuition, which rankles some people on campus.”

The Chronicle’s information is from federal tax documents for the 2007-08 fiscal year, a period before the current economic downturn. More recently, most colleges have calmed salary increases for university presidents, Selingo said.

“Next year, it’s likely that we won’t see many presidents getting big raises,” he said.