Men’s Tennis: No. 10 Cal Battles Michigan

THIS WEEK:
vs. No. 36 Michigan
Rancho Valencia Resort and Spa | Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.
Thursday, March 4 – 1 p.m. PT
www.mgoblue.com

121st Pacific Coast Men’s Doubles Championship
La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club | La Jolla, Calif.
Friday-Sunday, March 5-7
www.ljbtc.com | www.usta.com

OH CRAP. We know what this means….

Cal can no longer sneak up on opponents as it cracked the top 10 in the latest Campbell’s/ITA College Tennis Poll. The No. 10 ranking is the highest position the Bears have held since finishing 2003 ranked No. 4 in the nation.

Women’s Tennis: No. 5 Cal Hosts SDSU and Stanfurd St

BERKELEY – The Golden Bears begin a series of four matches in the friendly confines of the Hellman Tennis Complex this weekend. Cal will gear up to face its rival, No. 14 Stanfurd in a Saturday matinee but first, must get by San Diego State on Friday afternoon. The Bears roll into the weekend’s matches looking to right the ship after getting edged by UCLA in Los Angeles. A strong four-match showing will be important as Cal finishes the regular season with seven out 10 matches on the road. The Bears will look to its top-ranked players to get off to a strong start with the focus on No. 2-ranked sophomore Jana Juricova. Junior Marina Cossou holds the No. 17 singles ranking and is just one victory shy of her 20th singles win of the year. No. 56-ranked junior Mari Andersson slipped for the first time in 2010 as she fell to UCLA’s Andrea Remynse, but she will look to get on track and open up another nine-match winning streak.

Men’s Swimming: Sweet! Our Dudes Won the 200 Medley Relay

LONG BEACH, CALIF. – The No. 4-ranked University of California men’s swimming team started the 2010 Pac-10 championships on a strong note Wednesday (March 3), winning the 200 medley relay for the third year in a row. The medley relay team of juniors Guy Barnea, Damir Dugonjic, Graeme Moore and Josh Daniels recorded a time of 1:24.85 to lead the Golden Bears to victory in the first event of the four-day meet, held at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool in Long Beach.

Cal Baseball Hosts No. 17 Arkansas, which is like a really good team

In an intriguing early season college baseball match-up, the 6-1 California baseball team hosts 6-1 and No. 17-ranked (Baseball America) Arkansas in a three-game non-conference series at Evans Diamond. Believed to be the first time an SEC team has played a series in Berkeley, the Golden Bears are looking to avenge a 1-2 series loss to the Razorbacks last season at Baum Stadium in Fayetteville….Overall, Cal is leading the Pac-10 in both team ERA (1.60) and team batting average (.404). [yay!]

SERIES RECORD:
Cal has a 2-2 all-time record versus Arkansas.

Reminder: Hot Hot Hot Mike Mohamed (BAM 9.5) to Chat Live with JO today at 1230p PT

BERKELEY – Cal senior LB Mike Mohamed will chat live on the Contra Costa Times BearTalk Blog this Thursday, Mar. 4 (12:30 – 1:30 p.m. PT). Cal football beat writer Jonathan Okanes of the Contra Costa Times will moderate the live chat in which Mohamed will answer selected questions from fans.

Mohamed will be a national honors candidate and one of the team’s most experienced players in 2010. He has played in all 39 games over the last three seasons with 16 starts and is Cal’s active career leader in tackles with 245.

Steve Lavin and Since97 Agree: Jorge is BAM 8.8

From Farudo:

While talking this week with Steve Lavin, the ESPN analyst and former UCLA coach praised Jerome Randle and all of Cal’s seniors, but I couldn’t get him to take a breath in his praise for sophomore guard Jorge Gutierrez.

"He can transform the game at both ends of the floor. He plays with a level of poise pretty exceptional for a sophomore. He plays with a hard edge, alertness, aggresivness and doesn’t back down from anybody. If Cal has success in the touranament, I’ll be surprised if he’s not a pivotal reason."

Farudo: Cal Fans Should Root for Trojans Tonight

– USC at Arizona State, 5:30 p.m.: The Trojans (16-12, 8-8) were swept at home by the Oregon schools last week, but a win at Tempe would deliver the outright Pac-10 title to Cal. ASU (20-9, 10-6) is 14-3 at home this season.

Barring that, we’ll need to handle our bidnass and get all Twist’s-Wedding-Night on the Furd on Saturday.

I believe you’ve reached close to the truth on this one. We’ll leave it up to the Ohio CGB Supreme Court to decide whether this investigation is admissible in court and whether Sir TwistNHook is found guilty of…something. We’ll find something.

Mega Man Justice League CALumbus Bear and Ohio Bear, please hand in your ruling by the end of the day whenever you have time to read it.

His first basket as a Cav!

Looks like it might take awhile for his lift to come back.

Anyone here participating? I am, as usual, abstaining in these matters.

In the past six months, UC Berkeley has been an important hub of activism against state divestment in the UC system, as well as public education in general. Today’s statewide day of action marks the first time a statewide day of protest will incorporate people from across California in support of the broader cause of public education, from Kindergarten through doctoral program.

In addition to rallies at other university campuses, community colleges and cities throughout the state, the day’s events include a rally on the steps of the state Capitol in Sacramento and a protest in front of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office in San Diego.

“(March 4) is the moment where everybody understands the importance of the idea of a public education,” said Kevin Wehr, an assistant professor of sociology at Sacramento State University who has been helping to organize the rally in Sacramento. “We have gotten to the crisis point and people are finally paying attention.”

The lack of a singular authority coordinating events has meant that various groups will be taking different approaches toward reaching their respective goals. But one area of agreement is the need to “defend” public education.

Matthew Senate discusses how people shouldn’t be hiding their privacy.

I think it is time to draw a line in the sand.

I think it is time to cast away masks and black clothing and lighters. I think it is time we learn from the Free Speech Movement and decisively step away from violence and destruction.

I say this as a young person, as a Californian, as a student who believes in public education.

Solidarity is essential for this struggle to succeed. The threat of division is perhaps the most immediate and potentially devastating to our movement for change.

However, we set no tone of justified protest when we adorn masks and all black to hide our identities, to secure our safety from identification. Many of us bathe in pools of privilege and to utilize these tools to covet our privilege is, to me, unjustifiable.

Jeff Schauer talks about the need to defend public education.

There is a march at the state capitol planned for 11 a.m., a rally in Oakland at 1 p.m. and many reasons to be at either location.

Any teacher knows that education isn’t something that comes cheaply. You can’t cut corners in what is one of the most labor-intensive but necessary and ambitious endeavors out there. Technology can aid but can never displace the need for a low teacher to student ratio. Bureaucracy, though an issue, is a minor one, and focusing on cutting costs plays into the hands of Republicans who are drooling at the prospect of hacking into the state’s budget. We must fund K-12 and higher education properly, and this means tax hikes at some stage, which in turn mean the repeal of Proposition 13.

Corporations have been blackmailing the public, threatening to leave the state if we raise taxes to fund education. We can call their bluff: other states will be taking similar action to sustain their own education systems; there is already considerable infrastructure in place that would make the threatened pull-out impractical; finally, it is in the interests of businesses to have a skilled, educated workforce. But pragmatic counter-arguments aside, we should not cave into threats against education’s ability to do moral good. The skills and lessons that education provides, and the central ideal of a properly-funded public education system—that children and students from all backgrounds learn on an equal footing and are treated the same-are the best antidotes to the inequalities of geography, class, race and opportunity that plague us. This is why access to the University of California, badly threatened by a view that sees the sky as the limit where fee hikes are concerned, is so important to defend.

I have spent 19 years in California’s public education system (six at the University of California), and feel as though I have been incredibly well-served by the experience. But now the students with whom I work at Cal and in Berkeley’s school district are facing formidable hurdles: the familiar specters of inequality that come from a chronically-underfunded system on the one hand; but also looming threats from a growing and powerful minority in our legislature and state who argue that public education is expendable, that the public good doesn’t matter, and that the idea of equality is irrelevant. March 4 provides an opportunity to go on the record saying that we don’t buy any of those ideas.

LINK

On March 4, people around the state, indeed, around the world, will be participating in rallies, demonstrations, marches, teach-ins, strikes and more in support of funding for all of public education at K-12, community college, CSU and UC campuses. We hope that many UC Berkeley students, faculty and staff will “bring the war back home” and show support for and solidarity with the local community in the East Bay by joining the rally in downtown Oakland at Frank Ogawa Plaza (in front of Oakland City Hall, 14 & Broadway, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.)

While we in the UC system naturally think first of keeping our university affordable for Californians, we must remember that our freshmen have been shaped by twelve previous years of schooling. If California’s schoolchildren have been cheated out of quality primary and secondary schooling, their chance to successfully complete their college education is diminished. All of us at the university need to demonstrate our understanding that underfunding of education is not just a university level issue, but one that is at crisis levels throughout the educational system. Here is an enormous chance for the UC community to show its concern for the children in the state’s beleaguered public schools.

LINK

Mahatma Gandhi applied the idea of ahimsa, or doing no harm and avoiding violence, to the political and social realms, crafting a philosophy of nonviolent, civilly disobedient resistance. In light of the violence of last week, and with March 4 before us, we must reflect on the idea of violence.

I witnessed the incident on Telegraph Avenue last Thursday, and it was undoubtedly violent and fits into what most people’s conception of violence is.

But physical violence and major property destruction are not the only forms of violence.

Structural violence, the most widespread and destructive form of violence, is perpetrated systemically against the people by those who have power (politicians, administrators, etc.) in the form of policy and ideology.

When families are forced to live in hunger and without healthcare as a result of cuts to social programs, that is a form of violence. When environmental regulations are scaled back and tens of thousands of air pollution-related deaths result, that is violence. When higher education is cut and prison spending increases, resulting in ruined futures, that is violence. When all of us see this happening, but go on as if nothing’s happened, that is violence.

LINK

Demonstrations will erupt across California today as students protest the soaring cost of education — but the fury overlooks the fact that fee increases actually help poorer students by providing more money for financial aid.

The state of California is no longer subsidizing every college student’s education. Instead, students whose families earn at least $70,000 per year are footing more of the bill, making it possible for students whose families earn less to pay no tuition at all.

The new “high tuition, high aid” model represents a profound shift that has taken root as California universities make good on a promise to accommodate every qualified student — even as the state faces year after year of billion-dollar deficits. Many experts say that without new taxes, there’s no going back to free school for everyone.

That’s bad news for students whose families earn more than $70,000 per year and will pay up to 30 percent more in tuition this year compared with last. About one-third of recent fee increases at the schools in the University of California and California State University systems go toward expansion of aid programs. The rest of the fee increases go toward instruction and student services.

Striking students disagree with the analysis. “This argument is not supported empirically,” said UC-Santa Cruz graduate student Erin Ellison. “Research shows that applications from students of color decrease when tuition goes up. There is sticker shock, and they don’t believe the promise of support. It is very limiting.”

LINK

For the first time in UC Berkeley’s history, campus officials will use waitlists for fall 2010 freshman admissions in order to allow more flexibility in meeting enrollment targets.

According to campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore, approximately 200 students will be waitlisted when admissions decisions are released.

“We will not know the number of admits from the waitlist until after May 1—after we receive statements of intent to register from students offered admission March 25,” Gilmore said in an e-mail.

The UC Board of Regents had previously announced after a Jan. 21 meeting that waitlists for incoming freshmen could be adopted for fall 2010 at the discretion of individual campuses.

Gilmore did not specify when UC Berkeley made the decision to implement the waitlist.

UC officials said waitlists are intended to allow for enrollment adjustments because enrollment figures may change due to uncertainty over state funding.

Here’s a cool map giving you the distribution of chains. Go here for bigger image.