The state of California has no money.  This should come as no surprise to Americans, given the sad state of the economy these days, but we kind of haven’t had money for a long time.  My perspective is that of a student at a public university; I sometimes grow wistful when I hear tell of my friends at private schools and the economic benefits thereof.  But, that is neither here nor there, and I’ve had a great experience at Cal.  Besides, plenty of college students are broke, right?  I did talk to my parents last night about finances.  My mother does not believe this topic to be a matter of public consumption, and I think I agree–with the exception of college, and possibly post-college life.  College students who do have money to spread around tend to be spreading the largesse of their parents (yes, massive generalization), and post-college, there are even fewer people living off their family, leading to a higher incidence of financial straits.  I think.  We’ll see.

At any rate, there are a lot of renovations going on around campus, and I’m not sure where all the money originated to fund these projects.  The stadium, for instance, has already cost an exorbitant sum based on legal fees alone!  I will voice my opinion here briefly, as I keep referencing the controversy obliquely without expounding.  This is a news release from 2005 (my first semester as a Golden Bear) announcing the project plan–boy, did things go awry.  Various groups opposed development; some are just against development in general; others spoke out against the destruction of an oak grove at the project site.  Here’s my take.  The construction is necessary and not uni-purpose (i.e., focused only on the football team).  I’ve seen the field hockey team change at the side of the field, facing the street, because they don’t have their own locker room.  In addition, a famous stop on the tour of Memorial Stadium involves visiting the fault line.  The Hayward Fault Line is the most dangerous in America (I won’t cite any studies on this because I’m running late, but Mik recently told me so, and she is a credible source.  Gold star for anyone who can name the possible logical fallacy in my argument here.), and you can see an actual rift in our bleachers, right under one of the alumni sections.  It would be a tragic way to go.  Second, trees are important, but the trees in question were not…well…polar bears.  They were planted when the stadium was built, so they did not pre-date UC construction.  Furthermore, the proposal indicated that three trees would be planted for every tree cut down.  (Again, my credible source is a friend–an Architecture major.)  Lastly, protests are important; civil disobedience is important.  The caveat, of course, is that causes should be worthwhile.  If there were people willing to go so far as to sit in trees for 21 months, they surely had energy to um…solve world hunger, or cure cancer.  It is my opinion that their passion was wasted on trivia, and they in turn wasted resources the university could have used on ME!  The arguments I’ve presented here have been tossed around ad nauseum by others and are not novel in the least.  I’m simply typing them out here because I should finally explain the past references.

This brings me to my actual purpose.  Another iconic Berkeley monument is undergoing renovation, and this time, I do know where the money originated!  The class of 1950 helped raise funds to give Sather Gate a facelift.  That press release explains many of the reasons why Sather Gate is so special; I should also point out that it is one of the scenes that was actually filmed on our campus in The Graduate, which I have yet to see.  That’s another half-post in itself, though.  I took a couple pictures on the mobile and sent them to my email from my phone (!), which isn’t particularly advanced for anyone else, but is a huge step on my part in embracing technology, ok?

This one is the day before construction began:

And this is the first day of construction (aww…):

Not bad, huh?