2020 Spring Archives - Cal Alumni Association

_{Image source: After 32 years incarcerated, James Carlin, 76, is now Berkeley's oldest first-year student. // Photo by John Powers}

From Prison to Ph.D.: Berkeley’s Formerly Incarcerated Students

The Underground Scholars took a different path to Cal. JAMES CARLIN WATCHED A SMALL AIRPLANE snake over the field beyond the barbed wire fence at Deuel Vocational Institution, a state prison in Tracy, about 60 miles east of Berkeley. He’d seen the plane before. It came at daybreak, flying low and trailing behind it a […]

_{Image source: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed S.B. 206 into law, which once in effect by 2023 will allow student-athletes to profit of their name, image, and likeness. // Illustration by Phil Wrigglesworth}

College Athletes Could Soon Cash In

A new state bill could be a game-changer for athletes, colleges, and the NCAA. IN NOVEMBER OF 2015, A FEW DAYS BEFORE the Big Game between UC Berkeley and Stanford, California State Sen. Nancy Skinner attended an Oakland Rotary Club meeting. That day, as it often does, the club was discussing athletics, and it had […]

_{Image source: iStock // Illustration by Leah Worthington}

Editor’s Note: Show Student-Athletes the Money

Not everyone is on board. There’s money in college sports. Lots of it. March Madness, the national basketball tournament, alone brings in more than $900 million annually for the NCAA, the nonprofit that oversees college athletics in America. And big-time college football generates even more revenue than basketball. The athletes who play these sports, however, […]

_{Image source: Keegan Houser // Courtesy of the UC Regents}

Chancellor’s Letter: Lighting the Way

Berkeley unveils a new fundraising campaign. Last month, we formally launched a comprehensive fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $6 billion for Berkeley—a historic target for any public university and one of the most ambitious in all of higher education. The goals and aspirations for the campaign connect directly to the challenges and opportunities […]

_{Image source: Cal's first Disney Imagineering grad Kristine Sanders '16 says the first day of her Imagineering internship was the "best day of her life." Shh, don't tell her fiancé. // Illustration by Cindy Salans Rosenheim}

The Happiest Intern on Earth

Meet Kristine Sanders, the alum who “majored in Disney.” My earliest memory of Disneyland was going on Splash Mountain when I was 3. It was upsetting and wonderful all at the same time Disney was a major feature of my childhood; sometimes my mom would take me four or five times a week—and she wasn’t […]

_{Image source: John Walker Productions}

Is ‘They’ Here to Stay?

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg talks pronouns and our changing language. “Letter-for-letter, no part of speech gets people more worked up than pronouns do,” Geoffrey Nunberg wrote last year in an op-ed for NPR. But this “pronoun rage,” which speaks to the growing agitation around gender and identity politics, isn’t all that new, he says. And he […]

_{Image source: iStock, Pixabay // Illustration by Leah Worthington}

Editors’ Picks: What to Read, Watch, and Listen to This Spring

Some of our favorite books, films, and performances, for your entertainment Our editors have curated a list of the arts to indulge in this spring season. Here are their top picks of forthcoming dance, films, novels, and more to check out now through May This is Chance! The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice […]

_{Image source: Amanda Ramirez // Daily Cal}

Berkeley Law Says Goodbye to Boalt Name

Famed law school is now housed in “The Law Building” ON THE MORNING OF THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, UC carpenter Joe Poppi chiseled away the name “Boalt Hall” from the façade of the UC Berkeley law school. It was the culmination of a long debate after revelations surfaced about the building’s namesake’s racism. “There is no […]

_{Image source: Roman Fuchs // Wikimedia Commons}

International House, Cal’s Pillar of Diversity, Celebrates 90 Years

Welcome to the United Nations of Berkeley. FOR INTERNATIONAL HOUSE ALUMNA BERNICE TAJIMA, the days after February 19, 1942, were a race against the clock. President Roosevelt had just signed an executive order forcibly relocating people of Japanese descent from their West Coast homes to internment camps across the country. In this climate of extreme […]

_{Image source: A squirrel enjoys a bunch of nuts near the Faculty Club. // John Morgan / CC}

Meet the Critters of Cal’s Campus

Everything you never knew about Berkeley zoology Campus is teeming with more than just students; a wide variety of wildlife can also be found in Berkeley’s backyard. From the mountain lions that roam around the Lawrence Hall of Science to the three-spined sticklebacks in Strawberry Creek, here are a few of the critters who call […]

_{Image source: The 12 inmates-turned-journalists on the San Quentin News staff, who edit the paper, are instructed by professional journalists. // Photo courtesy of Max Whittaker, New York Times, Redux}

He’d Lost Faith in Journalism. Then He Started Teaching in Prison.

Berkeley’s William Drummond talks reporting from San Quentin In 2012, William Drummond had begun to lose faith in journalism. A changing media landscape in the age of the Internet had led to what he saw as an abandonment of the fundamentals. So when the Berkeley journalism professor was invited to teach a class at the […]

News Flash: Weed Isn’t Exactly Legal.

What’s changed since California voters passed Prop. 64? NOT FAR FROM THE OREGON BORDER, in the serendipitously named city of Weed, the Hi-Lo Café boasts a display of cannabis-themed souvenirs. Among the buttons and baseball caps are Bic lighters that urge smokers to “Enjoy Weed,” “Got Weed?” coffee mugs, and refrigerator magnets bearing the legend […]