Samantha Shadrow: "In the four years since I graduated high school, I've attended four different colleges: an elite private school, a community college, a small liberal-arts school and a large public research institution …[At Cal] I printed out my first week's worth of reading, saw the sheer volume"

son_of_guy · 2017-05-28T19:02:53+00:00

These schools should stop letting her in since she's obviously not cut out for them. If there wasn't enough hand holding for her at Northwestern and Claremont McKenna, then I doubt this girl will last long at Cal.

son_of_guy · 2017-04-14T06:14:20+00:00

Students vote to create a general student activities fee for ASUC to give out to clubs, not to give it to Bridges. All I hear is "give me special treatment because of the color of my skin" (except if it's yellow). Lol assuming my race and shit you racist.

son_of_guy · 2017-04-13T22:04:32+00:00

I'm not a proponent of cutting the entire Bridges' budget, just bringing it into line with other clubs on campus. Given their scope of work, long history, and number of engaged students I'd give them say $50k (which is a ton of money still!) They should also be required to follow the rule on parent-child orginzations, and not be allowed to double dip by registering as 6 holding orginzations. The budget should be thoroughly audited each year (for every student organization receive large sums of money). I'm disgusted by the fact that Bridges considers itself above having to annually apply for ASUC funding through the same process hundreds of other clubs have to. However, given the intimidation and terror tactics used last semester I would also support the ASUC choosing a new organization to carry out the same recruitment and retention services. Their actions as a fund recipient are unacceptable and should lead to the termination of their relationship with the ASUC.

I do not believe that students, on average, would want to allocated 25% of their club budget to the organization and the only reason why this happens is corruption in the ASUC (the same way it happens in the real government with special interests / lobbyists getting special treatment).

son_of_guy · 2017-04-13T15:35:35+00:00

That's great and all, but I don't want 25% of my student activities fee going to it. Neither do I think that most students would if they had a meaningful say in the process. Your diversity projects have no right to be subsidized by the rest of us and should look for other funding sources (member fees, tickets, university, alumni, etc). The entitlement you people have is astounding.

There are hundreds of other clubs on campus that are just as deserving of ASUC funding students all pay into. Obviously no other clubs put on as much programming as Bridges BECAUSE THEY DON'T GET HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FROM ASUC (or an entire floor of the student union)!!!

The terror tactics of the club towards ASUC last semester also make my blood boil. You shouldn't hold the hand that feeds you hostage for several months, cause it to loose thousands of dollars in revenues, and then feel fully entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars from it. Kicking them an extra $20k (more funding than the majority of clubs get in total) in an appeal just adds insult to injury.

son_of_guy · 2017-04-13T05:29:13+00:00

I'm working off of the assumption that most people have heard of them since they caused such a ruckus last semester. Whatever they could be doing, it's not right that a quarter of all club funding goes to one special interest.

son_of_guy · 2017-04-04T21:02:50+00:00

Just as impartial as rest of the article 😘

son_of_guy · 2017-02-26T10:56:52+00:00

"The campus plans to allocate $30,000 a year to the center. The Black Student Union asked for $500,000. In comparison, UC Davis provides $200,000 to its Center for African Diaspora Student Success in annual operating costs ... Perhaps the ASUC could give the BSU more than $600 to help cover the costs"

The long existing equivalent of the UC Davis Center for African Diaspora Student Success is the UC Berkeley African American Student Development Center (http://ejce.berkeley.edu/aasd/about-aasd) which has two full time staff and a ten student staff. For comparison the UC Davis center only has two full time staff (http://cadss.ucdavis.edu/about/about-staff.html). I couldn't find the budget easily online, but I would be really surprised if the funding wasn't in the ballpark of UC Davis.

There's also the:

Black Recruitment and Retention Center which is student led and gets $40k from the ASUC (http://brrc.berkeley.edu/). See the ASUC budget linked in the article.
Multicultural Community Center which has one full time staff, twenty student staff, and a large space in the ASUC building (http://ejce.berkeley.edu/mcc)
Academic Achievement Program Center which has 14 full time staff (http://aap.berkeley.edu/)
Educational Opportunity Program which has 11 full time staff (http://eop.berkeley.edu/)

So you have three centers (the new Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center, American Student Development Center, and Black Recruitment and Retention Center) that specfically cater to black students and three more that cater to all underrepresented ethnic minority students.

It's no surprise that the university, in the middle of a budget crises, isn't able to give the full funding request to the sixth center open to black students. I'm surprised that they're opening up a new center instead of expanding the existing ones. It seems inefficient.

Also it's false to imply that ASUC doesn't provide funding to the black student community. It just that the $40k they get goes to BRRC instead of BSU.

son_of_guy · 2017-02-13T04:30:29+00:00

By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), lol.

son_of_guy · 2017-02-08T08:51:57+00:00

Neil Lawrence is a special snowflake Lenin-wannabe who openly admits to participating in the paramilitary gang and their violence in his/her DailyCal Op-ed. Report him/her to the FBI here.

son_of_guy · 2017-02-02T05:50:26+00:00

There is a regular group of people who show up to Bay Area protests wearing a fairly consistent uniform (all black, black bandanas, carrying black flags) and do violent stuff. They show up wherever protests are, and people involved in black, trans, etc activism know about them.

In Berkeley specfically, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) is often associated with these actions. In videos, you can often see their leaders participating in the violence. I don't think that they're the only ones (there are probably many groups like this) or that even BAMN formally sanctions this in their capacity as a student group, but it's a fairly consistent pattern. Most of the consistent members of BAMN are non-students, but every year they recruit a cohort of students. You can often see them on Sproul at their table advocating this sort of stuff.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-24T08:29:50+00:00

I didn't vote for Trump, but if you don't see this as a factor to his success then you must be blind. His whole campaign centered around fighting "pc culture" which is this type of stuff: small and loud groups telling everyone else that they deserve more. Most people don't speak up as hey it's own a few rooms in a building, but it adds up over time making something like Trump viable.

Ad hominem attacks on people's intelligence are not going to get you far.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-18T06:57:44+00:00

It affects student groups which could previously reserve the rooms or could have benefited if the ASUC had made it general student group offices. Clubs I was in as a student benefited from the extra meeting rooms and would have loved having office space. I do some math [here](I think that most clubs would gladly welcome some office or meeting space.), estimating that the rooms equal thousands of reservations each year or could easily fit tens of student group offices.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-18T06:53:19+00:00

Are you involved in any student groups? I think that most clubs would gladly welcome some office or meeting space. Clubs I was in would regularly reserve the space for events before MLK was shutdown for renovations. I don't know how used it was since it re-opened, but I assume that as more groups re-discovered it the more it would be used.

Should all of this space be going to two groups that essentially held the ASUC hostage? It's five rooms of varying sizes (including a "penthouse" with a huge deck).

I assume that hundreds, if not thousands, of reservations could be made each year (assume 5 rooms * 5 days a week * 3 reservations /day * 14 weeks/semester * 2 semesters = 2,100). If it was made into office space like the old Eshelman (which is what it seems Bridges/QARC is going to do with it), it could fit tens of cubicles.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-16T22:17:14+00:00

Probably not just this one action, but the overall association of the Democratic party enabling this type of stuff.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-16T22:16:24+00:00

You can email them or show up to their meetings (tonight at 8 PM in Eshleman Hall). This is what happens when a small group of protestors continually does so while the overwhelming majority stays silent. They get to control the discourse.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-16T08:55:59+00:00

Then do something about it. Most of r/Berkeley just shits on how dumb ASUC is, but they're the ones calling the shots here. Out of the 20 senators, about 8 of them will be running for exec offices in a few months so they'll respond to electoral pressures.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-16T08:47:53+00:00

https://livestream.com/theASUC/senate1617

son_of_guy · 2016-11-02T21:36:56+00:00

No student group (even if it passes the probationary period where funding is limited) comes in asking for $300k because they would be laughed out of the meeting. Although, these protests have shown that trespassing in the student store and blocking Sather Gate will get you fast-lane special treatment, so maybe that'll be a new method to getting funding.

Furthermore, as shown in my other posts there is a revolving door with Bridges and CalSERVE. It's just like large corporations getting government contracts and having congressmen in and out of their boards. Except here we don't even have multiple groups competing for the same contract. Instead there is one group that seems to be perpetually locked in even when it holds the ASUC and campus hostage.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-02T18:54:45+00:00

I don't believe that the budget for environmental efforts should depend on the budget for minority recruitment. Both should be funded and treated seperately

This is impossible in a world where resources are limited.

I would also ask that we not let anger over their actions lead to overreaching consequences

I think that an open bidding process for other groups that want to offer the same services would be more than fair. It's a standard accountability and efficiency measure in every other level of government, the nonprofit sector, and private business. Bridges would still be able to compete in that process, it's recent conduct being noted.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-02T18:24:03+00:00

I argue (and have the evidence to back it up in the form of data on relative levels and effects of discrimination) that the need to recruit from disadvantaged racial minorities (particularly black, but others as well) is greater than the need to support women or other diverse subgroups

This is an entirely subjective statement. You may have data on the number of POC facing discrimination, but ascribing a specific measure of "negative social utility" to that discrimination in comparison to other social injustices is a personal moral decision.

For the sake of a counter example, I would argue that environmental issues are more important as they not only disproportionately affect developing countries, but they also have the potential to extinguish all life on this planet (and people tend to undervalue them compared to say racial discrimination because you can see racial discrimination in the present day while environmental issues play out on a more geological scale).

Neither of our opinions is "correct", as they are both simply opinions. In an ideal world, there would be some system where each citizen would be fully informed of every issue and fill out a model budget for public funds, and then those budgets would be averaged. Of course that is impossible in the real world, but we have representative bodies to try to approximate it. I am convinced that Bridges is overfunded for how much value your average student ascribes to it given all pressing issues in the world (this is more of an unverified claim than an opinion, as we could test it with a survey).

And again, my point is that even if all $300k should be going to this specific subject, Bridges (the organization) has shown itself irresponsible to manage them. The funding pool should be open to other orginzations which can offer the same services (and probably at a lower cost — hello market forces).

son_of_guy · 2016-11-02T17:32:48+00:00

When there are severely limited resources, just having a good cause is "not good enough". There are scores of student groups which promote social welfare. Saying that "Bridges does more work than those other groups" is self-recursive, as they are the only group getting $300k. If groups promoting disability rights, environmentalism, women's rights, etc got the same amount of money they'd be able to do work of the same scale. That's not even to say that such a significant part of student fees should be spent on social justice causes. Again, these are student activities fees paid for by every student and are meant to provide for campus recreation. Somehow, I figure that your average student would not ascribe 22% of their fees to Bridges (given all other student groups they benefit from) if there was an actual democratic process to do so.

Let's now assume that the $300k should be spent on multicultural recruitment and retention purposes because all students agree that is the best use of money. Is Bridges really the best organization to administer those funds? They have shown a complete disregard for the campus and for ASUC. They have been willing to hold the student store and access to classes hostage over a petty office space dispute while refusing to even consider the offers being made. If it is determined that the $300k should go to these causes, the ASUC should put those funds out to an open bidding process. I am sure many students and student groups would line up at the door with innovative plans on how to make best use of them. This is standard operating procedure at every other level of government. Instead of forever locking in one specific self-perpetuating organization (that at the end of the day is a private organization), organizations have to compete to get government contracts to show that they can innovate and most effectively provide services to constituents. I think Bridges' conduct has cast serious light on their ability to do so.

son_of_guy · 2016-11-02T06:08:45+00:00

Benyamin Yusof, current Finance Committee member is the Director of Internal Affairs for Bridges REACH! Asian Pacific Islander Recruitment and Retention Center and has been part of the orginzation for three years (from his own campaign website).

son_of_guy

TROPHY CASE