Close Mobile Menu

On Campus

Special Edition of “What to Read, Watch, and Listen To”

By the editors of California magazine

Try one of these this summer

Courtesy of the Law family

“I was afraid we’d be isolated.”

By Martin Snapp

The official motto of the Pi Lamda Phi fraternity (Pilam, for short) is “Not Four Years But A Lifetime,” and they aren’t kidding. That’s what David Law ’04 discovered four years ago when his wife Veena gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Violet.

Zona Roberts (Courtesy of the Roberts family)

Meet Zona Roberts

By Martin Snapp

Nowadays, people look back on the 1950s as the Happy Days, but for the kids who grew up during that time, it was anything but. Hovering over them were the twin terrors of The Bomb and a raging polio epidemic. One victim of the latter was Zona and Verne Roberts’ eldest son, Ed.

(Alyssa Case '18)

Saving a Language from Extinction

By Madeline Taub

90-year-old Berkeley alumna Rebecca Contopoulou speaks Greek, Italian, French, English, Spanish, and another language that sounds a lot like Spanish but is actually Ladino, a Sephardic language that traces its origins to Medieval Spain.

The Pelican Building (Margie Cullen)

Seamus Heaney in Berkeley

By Edward O’Shea

Many Berkeleyans know that Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz taught at Cal for many years. Fewer likely remember that his fellow laureate Seamus Heaney.

(Margie Cullen)

California’s Holiday Gift Guide

By Margie Cullen

The holidays are rapidly approaching, and if you’re anything like me, you have no idea what to get your family members. Mom has so many sweaters already, Grandpa has all the cookbooks in the world, and what does a 19-year-old even want? Well, luckily for us, Cal has a wealth of grads who make products perfect for gift giving, be it stocking stuffers or statement presents.

(Marcus Hanschen)

The Push to Abolish Cars on Telegraph

By Margie Cullen

On a Sunday in September, Telegraph Avenue looked a little different.

(Illustration by Monica Hellström)

Cheered Up: You Can Be a Dancer and a Lawyer

By Rachel Schuster ’17, J.D. ’23 as told to Margie Cullen, M.J. ’22

When I was really young, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

11 Things You’ll Never Believe Came Out of Berkeley!

By Pat Joseph

Yeah, okay, you’ll probably believe some of it. Still, we think it’s a fun list.

Clark Kerr [l], former President of the University of California, leaves a meeting of the Board of Regents after they fired him at Governor Ronald Reagan's insistence. (Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The Winter Issue’s Editor’s Note

By Pat Joseph

“The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.”

Highlighting boundaries: What makes a “safe space” safe? (nadia bormotova/istock)

Trouble with Safe Spaces

By Dhoha Bareche

Last Summer on Reddit, someone posted a picture of the house rules at the Person of Color Berkeley Student Cooperative, also called Castro House, that stated “white guests are not allowed in common spaces.”

(COURTESY OF TAMARA KEITH)

A White House Correspondent, A Vet, and Cal’s Mic Men

By Martin Snapp

Columnist Martin Snapp shares alumni’s stories.