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.

The poll found majorities think important changes need to be made to the state constitution and citizens prefer implementing these changes in a package of reforms.

State legislation, in the last few decades, has followed a pattern which reflects that Californians are for radical change. For example, citizens voted to dramatically change taxes in Proposition 13 and recall Gov. Gray Davis with a movie star, according to an article about the report.

Changes such as these, however, have not necessarily improved the state’s legislation.

For instance, approval rates of the legislature have been low following the passing of measures majorities voted for. The poll found that only 13 percent approve of the job the legislature is doing.

Voters ask for a large number of services and expect the Legislature to provide all of them at once. When the Legislature is unable to comply with their wishes, citizens blame legislators for the state’s crises, yet they may not be justified in doing so as experts say the crises are results of former constitutional reforms, like Proposition 13.

Still, the Bay Area Council and a coalition called California Forward are both pursuing a new conventions for the 2010 ballot.

The cockroaches coming out of UC Berkeley aren’t from the entomology department but the university’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab.

Ronald Fearing, UC Berkeley associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and researcher Paul Birkmeyer built a robot dubbed DASH—Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, according to Wired Magazine. The bot weighs only 16 grams, can reach speeds of about five feet per second and can be dropped from about 92 feet without breaking.  Aside from such feats, its most intriguing feature is six legs and a body that acutely resembles a cockroach.

The researchers modeled their creation after what the pair’s YouTube video calls one of “nature’s greatest runners,” Periplaneta americana, or the cockroach.

DASH was designed to demonstrate the benefits of smart composite microstructures, which in laymen’s terms is a quicker, more cost-effective process of producing “microrobots.”

But the cockroach-bot is only one of many the lab is working on. Other 2009 research projects include, the Ornithopter Project—a bioinspired flying machines; the Micromechanical Flying Insect, which is self-explanatory; and the Millirobot Rapid Prototyping—a kit allowing users to build their own robots.

In a letter responding to a Visalia Times-Delta editorial piece, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said the university’s strategy to increase funding for the school will not reduce enrollment opportunities for students from the Central Valley.

The editorial accused UC Berkeley of refusing admission to California students who would require financial aid and giving their slots to full-paying students from out of the state or the country.

Birgeneau addressed the Central Valley, assuring families that they should not be concerned that their children might not be able to afford Berkeley.

“If they earn a place at Berkeley, they will not be turned back, and we will ensure that they have the means to earn a UC Berkeley degree,” he wrote.

But Birgeneau also wrote that UC Berkeley will have to increase the amount of out-of-state and international students. The campus is overenrolled by 2,500 students, which means the state will not supply funds for that number. Instead of cutting the seats altogether, Birgeneau says they will be filled with those who can pay the full cost of their education—out-of-state and international students.

“We are frankly shocked that Berkeley would so blatantly betray its own values,” the Visalia Times-Delta wrote in response to the campus decision.

The debate about the initiative is ongoing, both sides arguing to uphold the accessibility and prestige of one of the nation’s most reputable public universities.

At this week’s ASUC Senate meeting, senators heard a warning from Finance Officer Alan Ni regarding their financial situation. He said there is less than 9 percent of funds left in the senate’s contingency fund, which is allocated in the spring for the senate to distribute throughout the semester.

Last week, Ni reported that 63 percent of the contingency fund remained. The senate spent about $9,000 at its meeting last week, which was almost 40 percent of the fund, according to Ni. Last week’s meeting was the first full meeting at which the senate could conduct official business since Sept. 23 due to a delay in confirming Ni to the finance officer position.

Ni said he would be writing a bill in the next few days to replenish the contingency fund with money from the carryforward fund, which serves as the senate’s reserve. He added that he thinks the senate needs better guidelines for approving bills.

“There needs to be better, stricter guidelines, and everyone needs to be conscious of the budget,” he said.

Ni added that last year’s senate replenished its contingency fund four times, and that the senate in recent years has not come as close as it is now to depleting the carryforward fund.

Senators expressed their concerns regarding the lack of funding and briefly discussed amending the way they allocate funding.

“We’re not going to be able to serve students next semester at all if we don’t do something about it,” said Student Action Senator NhuNhu Nguyen.

Despite financial difficulties, the senate unanimously passed bills allocating $1,500 to the Ek Raath Hamaare Sathe benefit concert held by the Pakistani Student Association as well as $1,200 to the Nikkei Student Union. Members of the student groups filled the senate chambers during the bills’ consideration, and the senate debated the funding allocations for about 40 total minutes.

Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard said he received many complaints regarding pro-life demonstrations held on Upper Sproul Plaza on Monday and Tuesday. He told senators that the event was sponsored by a campus student group and that they “dotted all their I’s crossed all their T’s” in registering the demonstration.

“Let me remind folks: that is called ‘free speech,’” he said. “And even if I disagree with it, I will never tell anyone they can’t say something. … Free speech is all free speech, not just some free speech.”

UCPD Sgt. Andrew Tucker discussed recent crimes and incidents on and around campus, including a hate crime he said occurred at Bowles Hall on Saturday and Sunday in which someone had drawn Swastikas on two residents’ name plates.

Poullard added that two male members of the Sigma Epsilon Omega gay fraternity were “violently thrown from a (fraternity) party for dancing together and kissing” and that he is working to mediate discussions regarding the incident. He added that the fraternity holding the party might be sanctioned if its members were involved.

ASUC Auxiliary Director Nadesan Permaul said that after Nov. 30 any printed checks sent to student university employees will be replaced with “pay cards” that would be mailed, and that these students should consider signing up for electronic deposits if they have not already done so.

ASUC External Affairs Vice President Dani Haber said she met with California Senator Mark DeSaulnier, who she said was “very sympathetic to the needs of students.” She added that they discussed the possibility of bringing the full state legislature to campus to discuss the state budget.

The senate approved a bill sponsoring Tikvah, an Israeli student group on campus. In committee, CalSERVE Senator Rahul Patel amended the bill earlier in the week from stating “Tikvah’s mission is to advocate for Zionism: the national movement of the Jewish people, whose homeland is Israel” to stating “Tikvah’s mission is to advocate for Zionism: a national movement with the core belief that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people.”

Tikvah members planned to attend the meeting to protest the amendment until Patel withdrew his amendment Monday. The bill was passed without objection at the meeting. Tara Raffi, a Student Action member of last year’s senate, addressed the senate and said senators were “overstepping (their) boundaries” by having proposed the amendment.

“As a senator myself last year, I may have had political ideological beliefs, but I would never tell Students for Justice in Palestine how to phrase their mission statement even if I disagreed with them,” she said. “It is not only petty, but it is insulting and inappropriate to me and my group of people that this amendment be made.”

Patel said he discussed concerns with Student Action Noah Stern, the author of the bill, before withdrawing his amendment. Both Patel and Stern said they dealt with the issue off the senate floor in a way that should be used as an example for resolving future issues.

“It was me going back to my community speaking to them about it, getting their concerns and going to (Stern), speaking to him about it, and going through that process and really doing what I’m supposed to do,” Patel said. “And I really don’t appreciate the response given to me by the community that was offended by this.”

Patel and Raffi discussed the issue outside, and SQUELCH! Senator Emily Carlton rescinded her motion to recess for two minutes “to chant ‘fight, fight, fight’ outside.”

Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, a second year doctorate student, gave a thirty-minute presentation about a partnership the ASUC established between UC Berkeley and three universities in May. He went through a slideshow presentation that included photographs of destroyed universities in Gaza as well as quotes from the recently released United Nations Gladstone Report.

”It’s very hard to get an education in occupied territories,” Huet-Vaughn said. ”I think it’s quite clear that this is a significant impediment.”

ASUC President Will Smelko addressed the senate and said he is working on a letter-writing campaign to have students write 10,000 letters beginning Nov. 2 in attempt to have United States President Barack Obama speak on campus. When asked by Cooperative Movement Senator Christina Oatfield what he wanted Obama to speak about, Smelko said he did not know. Independent Senator Jonathan Gaurano said he hopes to have Obama speak about public education as part of a speaker series.

The meeting adjourned at 11:54 p.m. and lasted for 4 hours and 40 minutes, including 24 minutes of recess time.

Image: Shannon Hamilton/The Daily Californian

The training program was set up by the lab and Alameda County, and apprentices in the county can fulfill some of their required 8,000 hours of training at the lab.

Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s chief operating officer Jim Krupnick and business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ Local 595 union Victor Uno came up with the idea, and  The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Northern chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association sponsored the apprentice training program.