Jump to content

University of California, Berkeley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ckoala84 (talk | contribs) at 08:54, 30 January 2006 (→‎Student housing). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:UC taxobox The University of California, Berkeley (also known as California, Cal, UCB, UC Berkeley, The University of California, or simply Berkeley) is a public, coeducational university situated east of the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, California, overlooking the Golden Gate. Founded in 1868, it is the oldest and flagship campus of the University of California system and because of this often retains the tradition of being called Cal or California, especially in the context of its athletics.

Today, Berkeley serves as a dominant research center for a broad range of disciplines, although it enjoyed a golden age in the physical, chemical, and biological sciences in the twentieth century. Some of Berkeley's accomplishments during this period include the development of the first cyclotron by Ernest O. Lawrence, the isolation of the human polio virus, and the discovery of 17 chemical elements, including Plutonium, Berkelium, and Californium. The campus gained further attention worldwide with the birth of the Free Speech Movement and student protests against United States involvement in the Vietnam War, significantly defining the 1960s in America. Later developments include a number of key technologies associated with the development of the Internet, BSD Unix, and the Open Source Software movement.

History

File:Berkeley1940.jpeg
U.C. Berkeley campus circa 1940

In 1866 the land which is now the Berkeley campus was first purchased by the private College of California (established by Congregational minister Henry Durant in 1855). However, lacking the funds to operate, the College of California merged with state-run Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College, forming the University of California on March 23, 1868, with Durant becoming the first president. The university first opened in Oakland in 1869. In 1873, with the completion of North and South Halls, the university relocated to the Berkeley campus with 167 men and 222 women students enrolled. (Note that Berkeley is not the oldest public university in California; that honor belongs to San José State University, founded in 1862.)

During World War II, Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory in the hills above Berkeley began to contract with the U.S. Army in efforts to help understand the fundamental science needed to develop the atomic bomb (including Glenn Seaborg's then-secret discovery of plutonium). Physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942. The University agreed to manage the project without knowing its purpose the same year, beginning a relationship with the Department of Defense which has endured to the present. Room 307 of Gilman Hall, where Seaborg discovered plutonium, is now a National Historic Landmark. Two other University of California managed-labs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, were established during this time period.

During the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an anti-communist loyalty oath to be signed by all University of California employees. A number of faculty members firmly took a stand against the oath requirement and were eventually dismissed. They were reinstated with full honor and back-pay ten years later; one of them, Edward C. Tolman—the noted comparative psychologist—now has a building on the campus named after him (it houses the departments of psychology and education). An oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic" is still required by all UC employees.

In 1952 the University of California became an entity separate from the Berkeley campus as part of a major restructuring of the UC system, and each campus was given its own Chancellor, and greater autonomy.

A Free Speech Movement Rally under Sather Gate on their way to Sproul Plaza, the center of student activism.

The University gained notoriety worldwide nearly a century after its founding for the student body's active protests against United States involvement in the Vietnam War. This period of social unrest on campus could be traced to the Free Speech Movement, which originated on the Berkeley campus in 1964 and inspired the political and moral outlook of a generation.

1968-69 saw thousands of police and National Guard on campus. Police from over a dozen states were present, some as young as sixteen. Ronald Reagan, who as governor of California was head regent, confronted Eldridge Cleaver's attempt to teach the first Black Studies class. Police used pepper gas on the main shopping street, even when there were no demonstrations. Thousands of police encircled campus, herded everyone under the camera, then started beating.

Today, the majority of students at UC Berkeley are less politically active than their predecessors and have political opinions similar to students at most other American universities. However, a small number of outspoken radical groups continue to flourish and thrive.

Reputation and academics

According to the National Research Council, Berkeley ranks 1st nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top 10 in their fields (97 percent) and 1st nationally in the number of "distinguished" programs for the scholarship of the faculty (32 programs). Similarly, Berkeley is the only university in the nation to have all of its PhD programs ranked in the top five by US News and World Report. US News also consistently ranks Berkeley as the top public university in the country and in the top three for both of the ranked undergraduate programs, Business and Engineering.

World Universities Rankings performed in 2004 by the UK Times Higher Education Supplement named Berkeley the number two university in the world overall. Similar findings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute for Higher Education place Berkeley as fourth in the world.

Richard Moll listed Berkeley as among eight "Public Ivies," public universities that provide students a collegiate experience comparable to those of the Ivy League, in his influential 1985 book of that title. However, a college guide (Owens, 2004) says "with tens of thousands of students, Berkeley is nothing if not large and impersonal." Another guide (Princeton Review, 2005) claims, however, the large size adds to the pluralism. "If you walk into a lecture hall and you had to group people into what 'crowd' they were in high school, it would be near impossible... The only thing most of these people have in common is that they are ridiculously smart."

With more than 7,000 courses in nearly 300 degree programs, the university awards about 5,500 bachelor's degrees, 2,000 master's degrees, 900 doctorates and 200 law degrees each year. But despite its size, the student-faculty ratio is 15.5 to 1, among the lowest of any major public university, and the average class has roughly 30 students (not counting discussion sections led by graduate student instructors).

Berkeley has had 19 Nobel Laureates on its faculty and 54 affiliated with the university

Berkeley has also graduated more students who go on to earn doctorates than any other university in the United States, and its enrollment of National Merit Scholars was third in the nation prior to 2002, when participation in the National Merit program was discontinued [1]. UC-Berkeley's acceptance rate to medical school of 63.4% [2] is among the top of all public universities. It is just above the University of Virginia at 61% [3] and just below the College of William and Mary at 80%. [4].

Berkeley's faculty currently boasts 221 American Academy of Arts & Sciences Fellows, 3 Fields Medal holders, 83 Fulbright Scholars, 139 Guggenheim Fellows, 11 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators, 28 MacArthur Fellows, 87 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 128 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 8 Nobel Prize winners, 3 Pulitzer Prize winners, 84 Sloan Fellows, and 7 Wolf Prize winners. (see list of distinguished Berkeley faculty)

UC Berkeley has a reputation for student activism. Beginning in 1996, California Proposition 209, which ended Affirmative Action in California and the University of California system, and its subsequent impact on the campus population of African American, Latino, and Native American students helped to rekindle activism around issues of race. In this instance, reaction came not only from students, but also from alumni. Four alums established the IDEAL Scholars Fund to increase the number of qualified, underrepresented students of color at UC Berkeley.

Other creative protests included those in support of Professor Ignacio Chapela in his campaign for "tenure justice” against claims of undue influence from Novartis and the biotechnology industry. Chapela was eventually granted tenure.

Campus architecture and architects

Memorial Glade, at the center of the Berkeley campus.

The campus is 1,232 acres (5 km²) in its entirety, though the main campus is on the western 178 acres (0.7 km²), crossed by two creeks and including the tallest stand of hardwood trees in North America. Overlooking the main campus on the east side are several research units, most notably the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Space Sciences Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and the Lawrence Hall of Science. Much of the rugged upper hill territory is still undeveloped. Residential Halls and administrative buildings spill out into the city of Berkeley, particularly to the south of the campus.

The campus and its surrounding community are home to a number of notable buildings by early 20th-century campus architect John Galen Howard, his peer Bernard Maybeck (best known for the Palace of Fine Arts), and Maybeck's student Julia Morgan. Later buildings were designed by architects such as Charles Willard Moore (Haas School of Business) and Joseph Esherick (Wurster Hall).

File:South Hall.jpg
Built in 1873, South Hall is one of the few original buildings still standing on the Berkeley campus

Very little of the early University of California (c. 1868–1903) remains, with the Victorian Second Empire-style South Hall (1873) and Piedmont Avenue (designed by Frederick Law Olmsted) being notable exceptions. What is considered the historic campus today was the eventual result of the 1898 "International Competition for the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California," funded by the mother of William Randolph Hearst and initially held in the Belgian city of Antwerp (eleven finalists were judged again in San Francisco, 1899). This unprecedented competition came about from one-upmanship between the prominent Hearst and Stanford families of the Bay Area. In response to the founding of Stanford University, the Hearst Family decided to "adopt" the fledgling University of California and develop their own world-class institution. Although a Frenchman, Emile Bénard, won the competition, he disliked the "uncultured" San Francisco atmosphere and refused to revise and oversee the plan. He was replaced by fourth place winner John Galen Howard, who would later become UC Berkeley's resident campus architect. Only University House, designed by architect Albert Pissis and then home to the President of the University of California, was placed according to the Bénard plan (it is today the home of UC Berkeley's Chancellor).

Sather Gate marks the original southern entrance to the campus, and now the entrance from Sproul Plaza

Much of the older campus is built in the Beaux-Arts Classical style, which was the style preferred by John Galen Howard and Phoebe Hearst (who paid his salary). With the support of University President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Howard designed over twenty buildings, which set the tone for the campus up until its expansion in the 1950s and '60s. These included the Hearst Greek Theatre, the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Doe Memorial Library, California Hall, Wheeler Hall, (Old) Le Conte Hall, Gilman Hall, Haviland Hall, Wellman Hall, Sather Gate, and the 307-foot Sather Tower (nicknamed "the Campanile" after St. Mark's Campanile in Venice). Buildings he regarded as temporary, nonacademic, or not particularly "serious" were designed in shingle or Collegiate Gothic styles, such as North Gate Hall, Dwinelle Annex, and Stephens Hall.

Buildings Founders' Rock, University House, Faculty Club and Glade, Hearst Greek Theatre, Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Doe Library, Sather Tower and Esplanade, Sather Gate and Bridge, Hearst Gymnasium, California, Durant, Wellman, Hilgard, Giannini, Wheeler, North Gate and South Halls are a California Historical Landmark and are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Bowles Hall—built in 1928—is California's oldest state-owned dormitory and is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Wheeler Hall, built to represent John Galen Howard's "City of Learning" design, currently houses the campus' largest lecture hall

John Galen Howard retired in 1924, his support base gone with both Phoebe Hearst's death and President Wheeler's resignation in 1919. William Randolph Hearst, seeking to memorialize his mother, contributed to Howard's resignation by commissioning Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan to design a series of dramatic buildings on the southern part of the campus. These were originally to include a huge domed auditorium, a museum, an art school, and a women's gymnasium, all arranged on an eastward esplanade and classically oriented towards the campanile. However, only the Hearst Women's Gymnasium was completed before the Great Depression, at which point Hearst decided to focus on his estate at San Simeon instead.

The dramatic increase in enrollment during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s led to the rapid expansion of the campus, beginning with the University's appropriation of the north end of Telegraph Avenue to form Sproul Plaza and headed on its east side by Sproul Hall, a new neoclassical building for the campus administration. However, the administration moved out of Sproul and into California Hall, situated in the heart of campus, after students barricaded themselves in Sproul during the 1964 Free Speech Movement. (Today, Sproul Hall houses Student Services and the Admissions Office, and Sproul Plaza is the center of student activities.) A series of huge Brutalist concrete buildings were also built to provide much-needed housing, lab, office, and classroom space, including Evans Hall, Cory Hall, Wurster Hall, Davis Hall, McCone Hall, Zellerbach Hall, the undergraduate dorms Units 1, 2, and 3, and others.

File:Vlsb.jpg
With over three acres of usable space, the Valley Life Sciences Building is one of the largest academic buildings in the world.

Gray-green Evans Hall is the tallest instructional building on the campus and houses the offices of faculty in mathematics, statistics, and economics, which once included former Assistant Professor of Mathematics Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the Unabomber. Students widely revile Evans as the ugliest building on campus, with the possible exception of Wurster Hall. (Ironically, Wurster Hall is the building that houses UC Berkeley's architecture department.) The most recent campus development plan lists Evans Hall as a candidate for demolition within the next fifteen years. Cory Hall, the electrical engineering building, was the site of two attacks by the Unabomber in 1982 and 1985. Its neighbor Soda Hall (computer science) is one of the few classroom buildings on campus with showers. It was completed in August 1994 at the cost of $35.5 million, raised entirely from private gifts. Dwinelle Hall is another large building on campus; its rooms are strangely numbered both because Dwinelle Hall was built on a slope, with entrances on different levels, and because expansion wings were numbered differently from the original building. Because this confusing building is host to both large lower-division lecture classes and many smaller discussion classes, it is sometimes called the "freshman maze."

Wurster Hall, an example of the Brutalist style used on some campus buildings.

Underneath UC Berkeley's oldest buildings is a system of steam tunnels which carry steam to those buildings for heat and power. During the 1960s, Berkeley students chained the doorknobs of the Chancellor's office in protest over the Vietnam War. The Chancellor, having no other way in or out of the building, used the steam tunnels to escape. Afterwards, the exterior double doors on that building were changed so they only had one doorknob, and this remains today.

New construction and developments

Recent developments include the newly completed Jean Hargrove Music Library, the fourth free-standing music library to be constructed in the United States.

In mid-2006 the new Stanley Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility, named after the 1946 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is planned to open its doors. It will house the headquarters of the California Institute for Quantitative Biology and will serve as a center for interdisciplinary teaching and research as part of the campus Health Sciences Initiative. Designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, the 285,000 sq. ft. building will contain 40 laboratories, a 300-seat auditorium, state-of-the-art audio visual technology, and one of the world's largest magnets. The 11-story structure was designed to be at the intersection of innovation and history, with a stone facade similar to the buildings on central campus.

The new portion of Davis Hall will serve as the headquarters for the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). Estimated at 185,000 sq. ft., the building will support a "broad array of projects, from information systems for emergency and disaster response in an earthquake to life-saving medical alert sensors, to 'smart' buildings that automatically adjust their internal environments, to save energy and reduce pollution." It will include nanofabrication facilities, labs, and classrooms.

The Tien Center for East Asian Studies, named for one of the campus' most beloved chancellors, will contain two facilities, the C.V. Starr East Asian Studies Library and the Institute of East Asian studies, intended to make Berkeley one of the preeminent research centers on the subject. The first free-standing buildings to be devoted to East Asian Studies in the United States, it has broken ground and is scheduled for completion in fall 2007. The library will house one of the two largest collections of East Asian materials in the world outside of the Library of Congress.

Library System

The north side of Doe Library with Memorial Glade in the foreground.

As of 2006, Berkeley’s library system has over 10 million volumes and 70,000 serial titles spread over 32 main, departmental, and affiliated libraries. In sum, the libraries cover over 12 acres and combined make one of the largest library complexes in the world. [5] In 2003, the Association of Research Libraries ranked it as the top public university library in North America and third among all universities behind Harvard and Yale, based on a variety of statistical measures of quality. [6] It is also the fifth largest academic library in the United States, surpassed only by the above named universities, the University of Illinois, and the Library of Congress.

Built in 1910, the main collections were traditionally housed in the Doe Memorial Library, one of the original structures in the "Athens of the West" design. The library was meant to be the first building students and visitors saw when entering the university, although today most students enter from the opposite side at Sproul Plaza. Most of the main collections have also moved to the Moffitt Undergraduate Library and the Gardner Main Stacks, while Doe serves as the reference center for the system.

Inside Doe are the two largest reading rooms in the university, appropriately named North and East. Both are designed in the Beaux Arts style reminiscent of great public buildings around the world and fitting of a library of its prominence. [7] The East reading room is the smaller of the two and exhibits hand-carved wood ceilings depicting the names of famous academics throughout history, as well as the companion piece to Emanuel Gottleib Leutze's Washington Crossing the Deleware, Washington Rallying the Troops at Monmouth. The piece was originally gifted to the university in 1882 by Mrs. Mark Hopkins but was soon forgotten after it was stored in the Hearst Women’s Gymnasium. It wasn’t until the 1960’s when Dr. Raymond L. Stehle was writing a biography of Leutze, was it rediscovered and placed in the reading room where it has remained ever since.

The North Reading Room before the 2005 restoration.

The North Reading Room features enormously high ceilings and was restored in 2005 to its original 1910 state. The renovated room features refinished historic tables and chairs, replaced floors, and task lighting similar to the original table lamps. [8]

The lobby of Doe features perpetually changing exhibits and also houses the Morrison Memorial Library. This library was gifted to the university by May T. Morrison in 1921 and is considered today to be a ‘no study library’. Many of its collections are works of classic or contemporary fiction, and the mezzanine level contains a compact disc listening area. The library evokes the feeling of an East Coast country club and was featured in the 2000 Abercrombie and Fitch Back-to-School Catalogue because of its classic beauty.

Below Doe is the Gardner Main Stacks, named after the 15th University of California President and Berkeley graduate, David P. Gardner. Built in 1997, these stacks contain 52 miles of bookshelves and were intended to accommodate the growing library collections. [9]. The Gardner Main Stacks consist of four underground floors, each roughly one-and-a-half football fields long and a football field wide. Although underground, it was built with four skylights that allow natural light to permeate even to the bottom floor.

Just east of Doe is the Bancroft Library, “one of the most heavily used libraries of manuscripts, rare books, and unique materials in the United States”. [10] This library contains over 60 million manuscript items, 600,000 volumes, 2.8 million photographs, 43,000 microforms, and 23,000 maps. The library originated in 1905 as a center for Latin-American History and Western Americana when it acquired the collections of Herbert Howe Bancroft and gained prominance under the leadership and research of Director Herbert Eugene Bolton. Today, the library also houses the largest collection of ancient papyri in the Western Hemisphere, 300 medieval manuscripts, and thousands of rare and first-edition early European and American works. Some of the most famous library holdings are the Mark Twain Papers, a collection of letters, journals, and nearly 600 manuscripts of unpublished works by Samuel L. Clemens, and pieces of Homer’s The Odyssey and Euripides’s work from ancient Greece.

The library system also contains 27 other departmental and specialized libraries, including the 580,000 volume Koshland Bioscience Library and the newly constructed Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library featuring 260,000 books, printed music, recordings, microfilms, and rare materials.

List of Libraries and Departmental Collections

Affiliated Libraries

Organization

Chancellors

The position of Chancellor was created in 1952 during the reorganization and expansion of the University of California; there have since been nine inaugurated chancellors (one was acting chancellor):

  1. Clark Kerr (1952–58)
  2. Glenn T. Seaborg (1958–61)
  3. Edward W. Strong (1961–65)
  4. Martin E. Meyerson (1965, acting)
  5. Roger W. Heyns (1965–71)
  6. Albert H. Bowker (1971–80)
  7. Ira Michael Heyman (1980–90)
  8. Chang-Lin Tien (1990–97)
  9. Robert M. Berdahl (1997–2004)
  10. Robert J. Birgeneau (2004–present)

Colleges and schools

Haas School of Business

Berkeley's 130-plus academic departments and programs are organized into 14 colleges and schools. ("Colleges" are both undergraduate and graduate, while "Schools" are graduate-only, the exception being the School of Business.):

Labor Unions representing U.C. Berkeley employees

  • UPTE University Professional and Technical Employees - health care, technical and research workers
  • CUE Coalition of University Employees - clericals
  • UC-AFT University Council-American Federation of Teachers - faculty and librarians
  • UAW United Auto Workers - Academic student employees
  • AFSCME American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees- service workers and patient care technical employees.
  • CNA California Nurses Association - Nurses

Contributions to computer science

Unix, filiation on Unix systems

UC Berkeley has nurtured a number of key technologies associated with the early development of the Internet and the Open Source Software movement. The original Berkeley Software Distribution, commonly known as BSD Unix, was assembled in 1977 by Bill Joy as a graduate student in the computer science department. Bill Joy also developed the original version of vi. PostgreSQL emerged from faculty research begun in the late 1970s. Sendmail was developed at Berkeley in 1981. BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain package) was written by a team of graduate students around the same time period. The Tcl programming language and the Tk GUI toolkit were developed by faculty member John Ousterhout in 1988. SPICE and espresso, popular tools for IC Designers, were also invented at Berkeley under the direction of Professor Donald Pederson. The RAID and RISC technologies were both developed at Berkeley under David Patterson.

Perhaps the most pervasive contribution to computing from UCB has been the algorithms and analysis of floating-point arithmetic, led by Professor William Kahan. These include extensive and ongoing contributions to the IEEE 754 standard.

The XCF, an undergraduate research group now located in Soda Hall, has been responsible for a number of notable software projects, including GTK+, The GIMP, and the initial diagnosis of the Morris worm. In 1992 Pei-Yuan Wei, an undergraduate at the XCF, created ViolaWWW, one of the first graphical web browsers. ViolaWWW was the first browser to have embedded scriptable objects, stylesheets, and tables. In the spirit of Open Source, he merely donated the code to Sun Microsystems, thus inspiring Java applets. ViolaWWW would also inspire researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications to create the Mosaic web browser.

File:Setiathome.jpg
Screenshot of SETI at Home scientifitc research project

SETI@home was one of the first widely disseminated distributed computing projects, allowing hobbyists and enthusiasts to participate in scientific research by donating unused computer processor cycles in the form of a screen saver.

In an interesting example of the confluence of intellectual ideas, many of the arguments for the efficacy of Open Source software development, and of the Wikipedia project itself, find parallels in writings on urban planning and architecture published in the late 1970s by Christopher Alexander, a Berkeley professor of architecture. Across campus around that same time period, John Searle, a Berkeley professor of philosophy, introduced a critique of artificial intelligence using the metaphor of a Chinese Room.

Berkeley has established partnerships with Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, Google, and Microsoft. Yahoo! Research Berkeley Labs will focus on mobile media technology and social media in a facility just outside of the campus. Sun Microsystems, Google, and Microsoft have partnereed to underwrite a $7.5 million dollar Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems Laboratory to develop more reliable computing systems.

List of research projects conducted at Berkeley:

Sports and traditions

File:Cal-logo.gif
Cal Logo
Rally Committee running Cal flags across the Memorial Stadium field at the 2002 Big Game. (Note the Stanford visitors section on the left and the UC Berkeley alumni section on the right.)
Main article: California Golden Bears

UC Berkeley's sports teams compete in intercollegiate athletics as the California Golden Bears. They participate in the NCAA's Division I-A as a member of the Pacific Ten Conference. The official school colors, established in 1873 by a committee of students [11], are Yale Blue and California Gold. Yale Blue was chosen because many of the university's founders were Yale University graduates while Gold was selected to represent the Golden State of California.

Cal has a long history of excellence in athletics, having won national titles in football, men's basketball, baseball, softball, men's and women's rowing, men's gymnastics, men's tennis, men's and women's swimming, men's water polo, men's track and rugby. In addition, Cal athletes have won numerous individual NCAA titles in track, gymnastics, swimming and tennis. Cal has also been well represented in the Olympics, by such diverse athletes as Helen Wills (aka Helen Wills Moody), Archie Williams, Mary T. Meagher, Matt Biondi, Jason Kidd and Natalie Coughlin, and many more.

The official mascot is Oski the Bear, who first debuted in 1941. Previously, live bear cubs were used as mascots at Memorial Stadium. It was decided in 1940 that a costumed mascot would be a better alternative to a live bear. Named after the Oski-wow-wow yell, he is cared for by the Oski Committee, who have sole knowledge of the identity of the costume-wearer. [12]

The University of California Marching Band, which has served the university since 1891, performs at every home football game and at select road games as well. A smaller subset of the Cal Band, the Straw Hat Band, performs at events that are less suitable for the full band. Such events include basketball games, volleyball games, and other campus and community events. [13] The university also has a Rally Committee, formed in 1901, whose members serve as the official guardians of Cal Spirit. Wearing their traditional blue and gold rugbies, RallyComm can be seen at all major sporting and spirit events. RallyComm members are charged with the maintenance of the five Cal flags, the large California banner overhanging the Memorial Stadium student section, the California Victory Cannon, and the Big C. [14]

File:Haaspav.jpg
The Haas Pavilion.

Overlooking the main Berkeley campus from the foothills in the east, the Big C is an indelible symbol of California school spirit. The Big C has its roots in an early 20th century campus event called "Rush," which pitted the freshman and sophomore classes against each other in a wrestling match. It was eventually decided to discontinue Rush and in 1905, the freshmen and sophomore classes banded together in a show of unity to build the Big C. [15] Owing to its prominent position, the Big C is often the target of pranks by rival Stanford University students who paint the Big C red. One of RallyComm's functions is to repaint the Big C to its previous color (usually yellow) if such a prank is pulled.

Cal students are credited with inventing the college football tradition of card stunts. They were first performed during the 1910 Big Game and consisted of two stunts in total: a picture of the Stanford Axe and a large blue "C" on a white background. The popular tradition carries on today in the Cal student section and even incorporates motion in some instances, for example tracing the Cal script logo on a blue background with an imaginary pen. [16]

The California Victory Cannon, placed on Tightwad Hill overlooking the stadium, is fired before every football home game, after every score, and after a Cal win. First used in the 1963 Big Game, it originally was placed on the sidelines before moving to Tightwad Hill in 1971. The only time the cannon has run out of ammunition was a game versus Pacific in 1991, when Cal scored 12 touchdowns. [17]

The Golden Bears' greatest rivalry is with the Stanford Cardinal. As such, matches or competitions in all sports that involve both universities take on additional significance. The most anticipated sporting event between the two universities, however, is the annual football game dubbed the Big Game, and it is celebrated with spirit events on both campuses. Since 1933, the winner of the Big Game has been awarded custody of the Stanford Axe as a trophy. One of the most famous moments in Big Game history occurred in the 85th Big Game on November 20, 1982. In what has become known simply as The Play, Cal scored the winning touchdown in the final seconds with a kickoff return that involved a series of laterals and the Stanford marching band rushing onto the field.

The Golden Bears football team plays its home games at picturesque Memorial Stadium. Built to honor Berkeley alumni, students, and other Californians who died in World War I, and modeled after the Colosseum in Rome, Memorial Stadium was picked as one of the 40 best college football stadiums by the Sporting News.[18][19]

File:Edstadium.jpg
The Edwards Stadium.

Across the street from Memorial Stadium is Witter Rugby Field, home to Berkeley's varsity rugby team, one of the oldest varsity teams on campus. The Bears, coached by alumnus Jack Clark, are utterly dominant on the American university rugby scene, once winning 12 consecutive national titles. Overall, the Bears have won the national championship 21 times since it was first awarded in 1980, and won the national championship in 2005.

Cal basketball has its home arena in Haas Pavilion, which was built on top of the old Harmon Gymnasium using money donated in part by the owners of Levi-Straus. Haas Pavilion is considered one of the most intimidating environments in the Pac-10, owing in large part to the boisterous student section near courtside called "The Bench." [20] The current head coach of men's basketball is Ben Braun, and the head coach of women's basketball is Joanne Boyle.

Near Haas Pavillion, Cal has a variety of other athletic facilities. Edwards Field hosts track and field events, Spieker Aquatics Center is the center for Cal Swimming and Water Polo, Evans Diamond serves the Cal baseball team, and Hellman Tennis Complex is the home of Cal tennis.

Cal's Men's Crew team, founded in 1868, is the oldest sport on campus. It has won 14 national championships, most recently in 2002, and has won gold medals for the United States in the 8 man boat at the 1928, 1932 and the 1948 Summer Olympics, which is more than any other college or university in the world. [21]

Distinguished Berkeley people

Nobel Prizes have been awarded to nineteen past and present faculty, among the 54 Nobel laureates associated with the university.

Student housing

Main article: UC Berkeley student housing
File:Wada hall.jpg
The new futuristic-industrialist Wada Hall, part of the Unit 2 complex.

UC Berkeley offers an array of housing options, accommodating a variety of personal and academic preferences and styles. Students have the choice of traditional, suite-style, apartment-style, single sex, family, and theme oriented housing.[22] Currently, the university offers two years of guaranteed housing for entering freshmen, and the immediately surrounding community has a plethora of apartments, Greek housing, and Co-ops.

There are four complexes to the south of campus in the City of Berkeley: Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, and Clark Kerr. These dormitories offer traditional hall-style accommodations with common areas in the center of the floors. Because of their communal design and integration with the city, these tend to be the more social of the housing options. Units 1 and 2 also have many of the newest dormitory buildings, which are indented for continuing and transfer students. [23] Just outside these complexes are the Channing-Bowditch and Ida Jackson apartments also intended for older students. [24][25] Continuing south is the Clark Kerr dormitory that houses many of the student athletes and was a former school for the blind. This dorm is considered to be the most spacious and luxurious, but is the furthest from campus.

On the Eastern foothills are three complexes: Foothill, Stern, and Bowles.

Bowles Hall, as seen at the 2003 Homecoming and Parents Weekend

Foothill is a co-ed suite-style dorm reminiscent of a Swiss chalet. Just south of Foothill, overlooking the Hearst Greek Theatre, is the all-girls traditional-style Stern Hall, which exhibits an original mural by Diego Rivera. Because of their proximity to the College of Engineering and College of Chemistry, these dorms often, although not exclusively, house those who are intended science or engineering majors. They also tend to be quieter than the southside complexes, but because of their location next to the theatre, often get free glimpses of the concerts in this famous venue.

Finally, Bowles Hall, the oldest state-owned dormitory in California, is located immediately north of California Memorial Stadium. Dedicated in 1929 and part of the registry of National Historic Places, this all-men’s dormitory has large quad-occupancy rooms and looks like a British castle. Traditionally, this dorm is much like a fraternity, with many of its residents living there all four years. However, in 2005 the university decided to limit Bowles to only freshman because of complaints that it had become too much like a oversized fraternity. [26] It also houses what was once ranked one of Playboy Magazine's top-10 college parties during halloween, although the university has also somewhat cracked down on this activity. Currently, this residence is being courted by the Haas School of Business to become housing for scholars and business professionals who visit Berkeley. [27] There is a great deal of opposition to this plan and no concrete decisions have been made for its future.

Student groups

UC Berkeley has over 700 established student groups.

UC Berkeley's independent student-run newspaper is the Daily Californian. Founded in 1871, The Daily Cal became independent in 1971 after the campus administration fired three senior editors for encouraging readers to take back People's Park. Berkeley's student-run radio station, KALX-FM, broadcasts on 90.7 MHz.

The annual summer orientation for incoming freshmen is called CalSO, short for Cal Student Orientation.

The Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) is the student government organization that controls funding for student groups and organizes on-campus student events. It is currently the only autonomous student government in any public university in the U.S.

DeCal

DeCal, Democratic Education at Cal, promotes the creation of professor-sponsored, student-facilitated classes through the Special Studies 98/198 program. DeCal was born during the 1960's Free Speech movement.

Research facilities

Points of interest

References in pop culture

Further reading

  • Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco UC Press Ltd. 1999 ISBN 0-520-21568-0
  • Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny, Berkeley Landmarks. An Illustrated Guide to Berkeley, California's Architectural Heritage. Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, 2001, ISBN 0-970-667604
  • Jo Freeman, At Berkeley in the Sixties: The Education of an Activist, 1961-1965. Indiana University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-253-216222
  • Harvey Helfand, University of California, Berkeley. Princeton Architectural Press, 2001, ISBN 1-568-982933
  • W. J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley at War: The 1960s. Oxford University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-195-066677
  • Geoffrey Wong, A Golden State of Mind. Trafford Publishing, ISBN 1-552-126358

References

  • . ISBN 0375763732. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |Chapter=, |Others=, |Coauthors=, |Editor=, |Month=, |Location=, |Authorlink=, |Pages=, and |Edition= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |First= ignored (|first= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Last= ignored (|last= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help), p. 216: "nothing if not large and impersonal"
  • Cal Traditions 101
  • Cal Band
  • University of California Rally Committee
  • Cal Athletics
  • UC Berkeley Residential and Student Programs

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to University of California, Berkeley.

Official websites

Other

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=University_of_California,_Berkeley&oldid=37336341"