UC Berkeley News
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Berkeleyan

News Briefs

25 August 2005

Underhill parking to vanish until 2007

Faculty, students, and staff accustomed to parking at the Underhill parking lot at College Ave. and Bancroft Way should start making other plans, advises the campus's Parking and Transportation office. The structure will be closed beginning Monday, Aug. 29, and it will remain unavailable throughout construction of a new, 1,000-space parking facility and recreation field ÷ projected for completion in spring 2007.

Alternate parking is available at a number of lots along the southern edge of campus, from College west to Fulton St. For more information, call Parking and Transportation at 643-7701 or check online at pt.berkeley.edu.

New routes and schedules for BearTransit shuttles

Beginning Aug. 28, new routes and schedules are in place for BearTransit shuttles. Changes include the restoration of separate Hill (H) and Central (C) routes, additional stops along the Reverse Perimeter (R) route (at Bowles Hall/Gayley Road and East Gate), changes to the Night Safety (E) route, and changes to some route intervals. Schedules and routes are available online at pt.berkeley.edu/beartransit.

Lunch Poems series kicks off Sept. 1

Faculty and staff from many corners of campus will share their favorite poetry at the opening event for the 2005-06 Lunch Poems series on Thursday, Sept. 1. Participants in this year's kickoff include Chancellor Robert Birgeneau; Vice Chancellor for Research Beth Burnside; Kevis Goodman, associate professor of English (and winner of the 2005 Distinguished Teaching Award); Shayee Khanaka, head of the Library's Middle Eastern collection; Gary Sposito, professor of environmental science, policy, and management; George Strait, associate vice chancellor for public affairs; and Jonathan Thomas, head of circulation services at the Library.

The free reading will be held from 12:10 to 12:50 p.m. in Doe Library's Morrison Room; see lunchpoems.berkeley.edu for details on the series.

CHP seeks witnesses to crash that killed three grad students

California Highway Patrol officials are seeking witnesses to the July 16 Interstate 80 pileup that killed three promising Berkeley grad students. There is evidence that several other vehicles were being driven in a reckless manner right before the 2:30 a.m. crash, CHP spokesman Trenton Cross said at a press conference held last Thursday.

Cross said that no one had yet been arrested in connection with the case, and that suspects could face felony counts of vehicular manslaughter or murder.

"Many good witnesses have come forward," Cross said. He urged anyone who saw the accident or heard someone talking about it to contact the CHP at
1-800-TELL-CHP.

In the accident, a westbound tractor-trailer driver lost control of his vehicle because of the reckless drivers and crossed into the eastbound lanes near Ashby Ave. Berkeley graduate students Benjamin Boussert, Jason Choy, and Giulia Adesso slammed into the truck and were killed.

New rule affects UC Extension 'XB' units

Beginning this semester, those UC Berkeley Extension courses designated as "XB" on the Extension transcript will now be calculated in Berkeley students' grade-point average; departments and colleges are asked to update handbooks and other student materials accordingly. The text of the regulation ÷ BR A208, approved by the campus's Academic Senate in April ÷ can be found online at academic-senate.berkeley.edu/resources/regs_art1.html#208.

For information on implementation, contact Registrar Susanna Castillo-Robson at scr@berkeley.edu or 642-2261.

Vernon DeMars memorial set for Sept. 10

A campus memorial celebrating the life and accomplishments of Vernon DeMars, professor emeritus of architecture and former department chair, will be held on Saturday, Sept. 10, in the Wurster Hall Courtyard, from 1 to 4 p.m. Those planning to attend are requested to send an RSVP to Lawrence Lawler in the College of Environmental Design dean's office, at lawler@berkeley.edu.

Voicemail changes are on the way

Berkeley staff and faculty can opt to dial into new messaging services this fall, as the campus rolls out its Unified Communications initiative. By the end of the year (final dates to be determined), subscribers will be able to listen to voicemail on nearly any computer (via CalMail), hear e-mail over the phone, receive faxes via e-mail, and have calls to a single phone number follow them on and off campus.

Message retention times and some message quotas will be increased; prices will stay the same.

To facilitate the conversion to the new voice-mail system, and to continue to retrieve voice mail, staff and faculty voicemail subscribers (who number about 10,000) need to establish new passwords and create greetings on the new system. Communication and Network Services will notify all users when the new system is in place. No new hardware or software will be needed, and the menu prompt tree is being customized to be as similar to the existing system as possible.

Subscribers who opt to stick with their current level of voice-mail service will experience only minor changes.

For details on pricing and capabilities of the new system, see unibears.berkeley.edu.

UCTV documentary 'White Mountain' wins an Emmy

The University of California Television (UCTV) documentary In the Shadow of White Mountain, produced by Rich Wargo at UC San Diego, received an Emmy Award for best documentary in June from the Pacific Southwest chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Narrated by Peter Coyote, In the Shadow of White Mountain tells the many stories of UC's White Mountain Research Station, a biological field station with both the highest-elevation research lab and the highest-elevation Internet node in North America. It includes one segment on the extreme hibernation of White Mountain's squirrels and another on what the evolution of the willow beetle reveals about climate change. For information on the hour-long documentary, including a link to view it online, visit www.ucsd.tv/whitemountain.

Alcohol-awareness training now required for incoming students

Beginning this semester, some 6,900 incoming Berkeley students will be required to take an online alcohol-awareness training. Up to now, the alcohol- awareness course has been required at Berkeley only for students who had violated rules on the use of alcohol at campus student housing.

"AlcoholEdu for College" is tailored to individual students based on their gender, current alcohol usage, whether family members drink, whether they are athletes, and whether they say they use other drugs. It involves an initial two-hour session, including a test, and a 15-minute follow-up.

Created by Outside The Classroom, Inc. and used at many universities, the AlcoholEdu program is one of several efforts at Berkeley to address student alcohol use.

In a 2003 survey of Berkeley students, 79 percent reported drinking alcohol in the past semester and 61 percent of those drinkers said they had gotten drunk.
The campus's AlcoholEdu website is at www.uhs.berkeley.edu/alcoholedu.

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