Things to do: Happy hours with a twist

March 26, 2010 in Things to do by TBG | No comments

Everyone else is on vacation, but you’ve been in Berkeley working hard all week. It’s finally Friday and you deserve a break. If you’re looking for something different to do, check out these slightly unusual happy hours.

Photo by SassyRadish

Saul’s restaurant & deli recently started a latke and beer happy hour. Between 2-5 pm on weekdays, you can get 1 pint and 1 latke for $5.25, 2 pints and 2 latkes for $9.95, or 3 latkes and a pitcher for $18.95. You can also get reasonably priced latkes without beer. (Word to the wise: these latkes are very large, so start with one unless you’re really hungry.)

Photo by lesleykIn west Berkeley, Sea Salt has an ocean-themed happy hour. From 3-6 pm every day, they offer $1 oysters, $5 well drinks and house wine, and $3 draft beers.

Have your own favorite happy hour with a twist? Please share in the comments.

Freebies

March 23, 2010 in Uncategorized by TBG | No comments

Photo by moriah.

Today from 12-8 pm is Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day! Wherever spring break has taken you, find the nearest Ben and Jerry’s to get your fill of free ice cream.

It’s a great day for it in the Bay Area. Temperatures are forecast to be in the 70s and close to campus the line should be shorter than normal. Now all that’s left to decide is what flavor to get. See you there!

The Death of the 51

March 16, 2010 in Guest blogger, In the news by Colleen Morgan | 1 comment

Photos by Colleen Morgan

It’s late and the bus is still filled to the gills with chattering Berkeley students, fogging up the windows and ignoring the exhortations of the bus driver, “STEP BACK! EVERYONE STEP BACK!” Students are leaving campus after late nights studying and working in labs, some headed to Safeway to stock up on supplies.  The student traffic tapers off south of Alcatraz, with older commuters staying on, heading to downtown Oakland and beyond.  The bus quietly undergoes an almost complete demographic change, one that has not gone unnoticed by the AC Transit authorities.

You may have missed the announcement last month from AC Transit: major changes were coming for some of the local bus lines, the most shocking of which is breaking the 51 in half at the Rockridge BART into 51A and 51B, lines that would service the north and the south segments of the 51′s route.  This would require paying for a transfer for non-UC Students, and for students with a Class Pass (a mandatory charge of $69.50 to your student fees, I hope you make good use of it!) presumably AC Transit would be able to charge UC for two rides instead of one. I also do not particularly look forward to getting off at Rockridge and waiting for another bus, especially late at night after a long day of grading.

It’s not a major disruption and will not change the experience of most students who live inside the Berkeley bubble, yet it seems a bit cynical on the part of AC Transit to break the bus line in half at the Berkeley/Oakland border. Students tend to stay in a tight circle around campus, and while this may benefit their university education, it seems a bit sad to live in the Bay Area for several years without venturing into Oakland and San Francisco.  In this respect, breaking up the 51 is just another division between Berkeley and Oakland, punishing those who would venture outside of the bubble.

Graduate Assembly events this week

March 15, 2010 in Graduate Assembly by TBG | No comments

The Graduate Student Support Services and the Graduate Minority Student Projects are putting on two timely workshops this week.

Wednesday, March 17, get all your 2009 tax questions answered at the Taxes Workshop, led by H &R Block representative Caan Nguyen. This workshop will be held from 3:30-5:00 pm in Stephens in the MLK Jr. Student Union. As always refreshments will be provided!

Thursday, March 18, Mushim Ikeda-Nash of the East Bay Meditation Center is leading a workshop on meditation and writing from 12:00-2:00 pm in 554 Barrows Hall. Unfortunately, this workshop, which teaches techniques to improve your writing process, is already full. However, if this type of offering is of interest, please keep an eye on the GA calendar. The workshop organizers are hoping to offer it twice next year.

Of the workshop, Ms. Ikeda-Nash has written: “This is not journaling for self-expression or personal therapy or contemplation; it’s not creative writing to ‘express our feelings’ or explore something artistically through language. This will be about having an assignment, a goal, a timetable, and basically doing ‘project management’ on oneself to produce a ‘deliverable’ without getting snowed under by one’s perfectionism, inner critic, procrastination, feelings of overwhelm, or stress from other parts of one’s life.”

Email Erica at gssp@ga.berkeley.edu with any questions.


Graduate Student Satisfaction Survey

March 10, 2010 in Graduate Assembly by TBG | No comments

The GA is launching its first annual Graduate Student Satisfaction Survey. Through this survey, the GA hopes to obtain feedback on all aspects of graduate student life at Berkeley. The survey asks about your experience in your program, funding and fees, student services, and the work of the GA and should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to fill out the survey before Friday, March 19, 2010. You can find it here.

If you’re wondering why complete the survey, there are two main reasons.

(1) To be heard. By letting the GA know which issues matter to you, you will help the GA to more accurately and effectively represent the needs of graduate students in its interactions with campus and external decision-makers, and to achieve results that directly benefit you, such as improved services and increased resources for graduate students.

(2) To win a prize. Survey respondents have a chance to win three cash prizes (of $800, $500 and $200) as well as ten $50 gift certificates for the Cal Student Store.

Mark your calendars: The 25th Anniversary Empowering Women of Color Conference

March 9, 2010 in Graduate Assembly by TBG | No comments

The Empowering Women of Color Conference (EWOCC) celebrates its 25th anniversary this weekend.  This historic conference will take place March 13-14 at the MLK Student Union and is free to UC Berkeley students. The conference honors women’s struggles, focuses on issues affecting women, and provides practical tools for everyday life. This year’s event, organized around the theme “Intergenerational Wisdom: Celebrating our Past, Present & Future,” includes speeches from keynote speakers Rebecca Walker and Aurora Levin Morales, a wide variety of workshops, performances, and networking opportunities. For all the details visit the conference website and email woci@ga.berkeley.edu with any questions.

March 4th Day of Action in Defense of Public Education

March 4, 2010 in In the news by TBG | No comments

As part of a statewide day of action in support of all levels of education, protestors at UC Berkeley have been blocking Sather Gate, the main entrance to campus, all morning. A planned noontime rally on Sproul Plaza should now be underway in anticipation of the 12:45 march down Telegraph Ave. to Frank Ogawa Plaza (14th and Broadway) in downtown Oakland.

You can follow the day’s activities in the East Bay and in Sacramento with the Daily Cal’s live blogs. Or read other media coverage here, here, and here.

Things to do: Seek out seasonal waterfalls

March 1, 2010 in Things to do by TBG | No comments

Winter showers bring full creeks and green hillsides, making this the perfect season to strap on your hiking boots and visit Bay Area waterfalls at their most spectacular.

Sunol Regional Wilderness, south of Pleasanton, is home to Little Yosemite, a popular destination this time of year. A recent Saturday saw visitors of all ages scrambling over rocks, peering into pools, and craning to snap the best photo. A short 1.25-mile walk along a wide, dirt trail, these falls are easily accessible. (Dogs are welcome in this park and are allowed off-leash as long as they are under voice command.) We tacked on a 4-mile loop that led us beside a babbling brook, through oak groves and pasture, to the ridge where we stopped for lunch and enjoyed our hard-earned view.

Take advantage of the wet weather and get acquainted with one of the many local waterfalls while the Bay Area is at its most lush. Here are a few more waterfalls to choose from:

Rethinking college education

February 24, 2010 in Guest blogger, In the news by Katie Kadue | No comments

Due to tuition hikes, many Berkeley undergraduates will have to cut college short, and young students statewide may find higher education entirely foreclosed. For anyone who cares about the University of California, or who values the public university more generally, this is a travesty. Instead of serving as the engine of social mobility by providing top-tier schooling to Californians who can’t afford to go private, UC campuses will increasingly cater to those from wealthy (and out-of-state) families, ultimately reproducing existing class structures rather than shaking them up.

If you’re a Berkeley graduate student invested in the future of your institution, you know all this already. But in all the debate swirling around the lamentable fee increases – most prominently, how best to protest them – another issue is at stake. It’s heresy around here to suggest that anyone who wants and works for it shouldn’t have access to a college education. But does everyone really want a college education?

As San Jose State professor (and Berkeley Ph.D.) Mike Rustigan argued in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, many young Americans are more interested in working with their hands than sitting behind a desk, and to insist that everyone aspire to a four-year degree discounts the value – not to mention national economic necessity – of learning a trade. Caitlin Flanagan’s polemical (and pretty much universally derided) critique of the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley serves as the reductio ad absurdum of our unblinking devotion to a liberal arts education at the expense of any practical knowledge. Arguing that school garden programs rob students of valuable time with civics textbooks, Flanagan accuses Alice Waters and her “ACORN-loving, public-option-supporting” acolytes of preventing migrant workers’ kids from getting into college, which is the only way they could possibly escape their fate of diabetes and underemployment. (Waters’ suggestion that working in a garden can prove pedagogically useful is unlikely to breed a permanent underclass of sharecroppers, but if it asks students to write recipes as well as coherent paragraphs about The Crucible – if it produces people who can effectively communicate information rather than haughtily parade their cultural capital in The Atlantic – is that really such a bad thing?) Read the rest of this entry »

Graduate Assembly events this week

February 22, 2010 in Graduate Assembly by TBG | No comments

Take a break from the Olympics to check out three Graduate Assembly events this week. (For the truly committed winter sports fans, these events all end before prime time, so you won’t be forced to choose.)

On Wednesday, February 24, from 12-2 pm, there is a workshop on surviving oral exams in the Tilden Room of the MLK Student Union. It will cover organization, planning, stress management, and what to expect from your committee.  Learn how to prepare while enjoying free lunch and refreshments. Brought to you by the GA’s Graduate Support Services Project in collaboration with UHS’s Counseling and Psychological Services.

On Thursday, February 25, the Grad Social Committee hosts its first event of the spring semester, a Graduate Assembly open house at Anthony Hall from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Stop by for free food, drinks, and music and to get acquainted with the GA delegates and executive board members.

And on Friday, February 26, attend the graduate student health insurance plan town hall meeting on the ground floor of Eshleman Hall from 12 -1:30 pm. Go to learn more about a proposed UC-system-wide initiative to make graduate student health insurance more affordable and comprehensive as well as possible changes to our health insurance.

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