I remember how it was -- JR
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Top California university may have to slash admissions after neighborhood group complains
The University of California, Berkeley may have to slash its new admissions by about one-third after a neighborhood group in the hilly Bay Area city challenged the environmental impact of the top college’s expansion plan.
The university is asking California’s supreme court to intervene after the local group, called Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, successfully argued the university was violating a major environmental law by failing to account for increases in the trash, traffic and noise that increased enrollment and new construction would bring.
As a result, the university will have to send out 5,100 fewer admission letters than planned next month, and forgo $57m in tuition fees over the 2022-23 academic year.
The case sits at the intersection of several big debates roiling California at the moment: how to reduce educational inequities and rein in increasingly unaffordable tuition fees? How to address a housing crisis even as nimby homeowners seek to stifle new development?
At the center of the UC Berkeley case is the state’s environmental law – the California Environmental Quality Act – which critics say is being brazenly used by neighborhood groups to block necessary housing and infrastructure using the pretense of environmentalism. It has also raised the alarm that amid unprecedented demand for higher education in California, thousands of students will miss their chance at a degree from one of the top US universities.
The construction project near campus that triggered Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods’ challenge would replace an existing parking structure with accommodation for 30 graduate students, and classroom space for the university’s public policy program.
In its environmental impact study for the new construction, the university argued increased enrollment previous years had “no significant environmental impacts”. UC Berkeley has also said that it should be able to address the concerns raised in the lawsuit without having to limit enrollment in the meantime.
But in August, a county judge disagreed. “Further increases in student enrollment above the current enrollment level at UCBerkeley could result in an adverse change or alteration of the physical environment,” superior court judge Brad Seligman wrote, ordering the school to freeze enrollment at the same level as 2020-21.
The court’s assessment essentially concluded that crowded classrooms full of college students posed an environmental threat akin to a highly-polluting highway project, said Jennifer Hernandez, an attorney who often defends developers from CEQA litigation.
Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods has stated that the university, which has increased its enrollment from 31,800 in 2005 to 43,100 last year, has failed to provide adequate housing for students. The group argues students have pushed into the city and impacted housing prices and homelessness in surrounding communities. It has further suggested that the university adjust admissions to let in fewer students from other states and other countries – who pay higher tuition fees than California residents – to admit more locals.
“UC Berkeley students themselves have repeatedly said that UC should stop increasing enrollment until it can provide housing for its students,” said Phil Bokovoy, president of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods. “We are all very concerned that UC Berkeley will create a housing crisis next fall.”
But critics of the group have countered that while the university should do more to house students – many of whom struggle to find apartments and afford rents in one of the most expensive California regions – Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods shouldn’t be blocking the development of new housing in making that point. Bokovoy, who is a graduate of UC Berkeley himself, has suggested that the university expand elsewhere in the Bay Area.
The university has not yet detailed how it would decide which offers to rescind if the freeze were to go ahead. But it has said the losses in tuition revenue would reduce the university’s capacity to offer financial aid to low-income students and could limit class offerings.
Because many graduate students have already received their admissions letters and because of the number of new admits the university would have to cut down, undergraduate students are expected to be most affected.
Riya Master, a senior at UC Berkeley and the external affairs vice-president for Associated Students of the University of California, a student association, said she worried that lower-income, first-generation and minority students who might have had fewer extra-curricular activities listed on their applications due to the opportunities that were available to them would be disproportionately affected.
Environmental law is “not being used with the intention of protecting the environment. It’s being used to limit access, it’s being used to keep the neighborhood the way an older, primarily white generation wants it to be”, Master said.
In a letter to prospective students, Olufemi Ogundele, director of undergraduate admissions, wrote: “This is unsettling news, we know” and reassured students that the university is working to avoid a reduction in new admits.
The freeze on admissions would come as the demand for seats in the University of California system continues to rise. Applications to the UC schools have soared, especially since the state university system phased out a requirement to submit standardized entrance exam scores. Applications to the schools were also up among Black and Latino Californians. The number of students who took semesters off due to Covid-19 seeking to return to campus this fall will further squeeze the university’s ability to admit new students, UC Berkeley said.
“This is a disaster for the university, and this is a disaster for students,” said Ozan Jaquette, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s the meanest thing I’ve ever heard.”
For many students, a degree from a highly-regarded public institution is a “big massive engine of social mobility”, he noted, adding that there would not be a way that Berkeley could feasibly reduce admissions to the extent currently required without it affecting students from all backgrounds.
“Trying to use CEQA as a population control statute is a real slippery slope,” said Hernandez, the attorney.
The CEQA, a landmark law initially signed into law in 1970 by then-governor Ronald Regan, has recently been at the center of several high-profile court cases challenging developments. The state’s attorney general has intervened in some cases that use CEQA to challenge new construction in fire-prone wildlands.
But the state’s strict environmental laws are also used to challenge in-fill construction in cities, including affordable housing. Over the past several years, CEQA has been used to delay or block the development of affordable apartments for disabled veterans in Los Angeles and a 500-unit building in housing-crunched San Francisco. Recently, the wealthy Bay Area town of Woodside tried to use the state’s endangered species law to block the construction of new duplexes.
The law can be exploited by people who want, rather than protect California from the effects of climate change and pollution, to preserve “their own personal environment, as they experience it, outside their window when they want to take a quiet nap in the afternoon”, she said.
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Charlie Kirk, Students Rally Against Chicago Mask Mandate
The history of the COVID pandemic includes a wide range of stories. Many of them explaining the draconian measures taken by governments around the world, in response to erroneous forecasts provided by the “experts”.
Marxist political governors in the U.S. used the temporary emergency powers afforded to them by their state legislatures, to control their populations, similar to past tyrannical fascist dictators such as Stalin and Mussolini.
As more and more data has come out concerning the effectiveness of natural immunity, and as more stories of politicians and elite members of Hollywood flouting the rules they put in place, a strong movement to fight the mask and vaccine mandates is increasing.
For example, last week, a maskless Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams visited an elementary school, where she required children to cover their faces.
On Wednesday evening, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Illinois students hosted a rally, with a standing-room-only crowd of 1,200 people, at the Arcada Theatre in the Chicago suburb of St. Charles, where he, Chicago-area students, and TPUSA activists gathered in protest of forced masks.
“We know it’s not about public health. We know it’s about control,” Kirk said
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Australia: Shorter, fewer school suspensions under controversial behaviour policy
The length of school suspensions will be halved and students cannot be sent home more than three times a year under a new behaviour strategy designed to reduce the high number of sanctions against vulnerable children in NSW public schools.
Parents support the policy, but the teachers union says it will increase safety risks for staff and students by constraining teachers’ ability to manage disruptive and dangerous behaviour.
The changes come amid concerns that 40 per cent of suspensions – including around two-thirds of the hundreds of kindergarten suspensions each year – involve students with disabilities. Indigenous students are also more likely to be sent home from school.
Under the new policy, to begin next term, principals must give a warning – valid for 50 days –if a student’s behaviour is raising the prospect of suspension, and can only send them home immediately if there is a threat to the safety of others.
Students from kindergarten to year 2 can be sent home for a maximum of five days instead of the previous 20, although the government abandoned an earlier plan to ban all suspensions in that age group. A principal must take in the student’s circumstances – including any disability or background of trauma – before making the decision.
A new expulsion process will require schools to give the student and their parents seven days’ warning of a decision and to conduct a risk assessment before the student attends another school. If the risk is too great, the minister can ban the student from the public system.
There are also new rules around the use of so-called restrictive practices such as seclusion, which can only be used in an emergency, and mechanical restraint, which requires parental consent and approval from the student’s medical team.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the new strategy would also come with extra resources, such as behaviour specialists to support schools and training for staff in managing student behaviour.
“Behaviour management in our schools is one of the most important aspects of providing quality education, and we need to get it right,” she said.
“We know that what is currently happening is not working as too many students, particularly those with learning difficulties or from low socio-economic families, are suspended and do not receive the support they need.”
The suspension issue has divided school communities. Parents say students are being suspended for behaviours caused by their disability, but teachers say they don’t have the resources to deal with extreme behaviour that puts other students and staff at risk.
A draft of the policy, released 18 months ago, was welcomed by parent groups but led to tense negotiations with principals and the teachers’ union, who argued it would undermine their ability to protect the safety of staff and students.
One of their chief concerns was the scrapping of a list of grounds for suspension, ranging from physical violence or drug possession - which would result in a long, or 20-day suspension - to continued disobedience or aggressive behaviour, which could lead to a short, 10-day suspension.
The Secondary Principals Council said it had not yet seen the finalised policy so declined to comment.
However, one principal – who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media – said some were angry enough to consider industrial action if their concerns were not met.
The new strategy allows principals to apply to their superior, the regional director, for permission to suspend students for longer than the maximum 10 days, or more often than the three times outlined in the policy.
The Advocate for Children and Young People, Zoe Robinson, welcomed the policy. “We know there is a link between suspensions and youth justice. We welcome this policy reform as a step forward and are glad the department and Minister have worked with and listened to children and young people.”
P&C Federation president Natalie Walker also backed the plan. “This strategy looks to provide a more inclusive and engaging and accessible education for all children and families in NSW public schools.”
Louise Kuchel from Square Peg, Round Whole – a community of parents advocating for children with disabilities – said parents supported reducing the number and length of suspensions but wanted to see them banned for the youngest children.
“Some parents have lost count of how often their kids have been suspended,” she said. “We’re not improving outcomes for young, neurodivergent people when we keep excluding them and sending them away.”
However, the NSW Teachers Federation wrote to the NSW Department of Education on Thursday, warning the policy would increase teachers’ workload and put safety at risk.
“It will constrain the ability of schools to manage and address appropriate student behaviour, denying the vast majority of students a safe and settled learning environment,” deputy president Henry Rajendra told the Herald.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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