Bear in Mind, Episode 11, October 22, 2003
Transcript

Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl: Welcome to Bear in Mind, coming to you from our TV studio on the Berkeley campus, where we’re joined by a small group of students, faculty, and staff. On this edition, we’ll be talking with swimming star, Olympic hopeful, and Berkeley senior Natalie Coughlin about competing in world-class athletics. We’ll also be talking with Vice Provost Christina Maslach about what makes the Berkeley undergraduate experience unique. And, finally, we’ll ask political science professor Henry Brady about his thoughts on California’s recall election. So, stay tuned for the October edition of Bear in Mind. I’m your host, Chancellor Berdahl.

Our first guest is Cal’s most celebrated athlete, swimmer Natalie Coughlin. A fourth-year, Psychology major, Natalie owns 17 U.S. records, 5 world records and 9 NCAA titles. She’s become so famous that young swimmers made pilgrimages to the Spieker pool in order to catch a glimpse of her training. Welcome to Bear in Mind, Natalie.

Natalie Coughlin: Thank you.

Berdahl: Tell me, how long have you been swimming? When did you start?

Coughlin: I’ve been swimming pretty much my whole life, but I didn’t join a swim team until first grade. So, uh, about 6 years old or so,

Berdahl: OK.

Coughlin: But I was moving towns, so to meet new people, I just joined the swim team.

Berdahl: So, you kind of waited until you had gotten older before joining a team.

Coughlin: Yes, that’s actually about the age when people join

Berdahl: Is that right?

Coughlin: It's 4, 5, 6 — yeah, you’re stuck for life.

Berdahl: Well, what does it take to be a swimmer? What’s the most important characteristic?

Coughlin: The ability to endure the endless hours of training is No. 1, and that’s how you’ll get through from age 6 to 21, is to be able to endure those hours. But from there, it’s love of the sport, passion. I think one of things that I’m best at is I’m very passionate about the sport, and so I’m able to focus and practice, and I love it. That’s the only way you can really do it is if you really love it.

Berdahl: You said endless hours. When does your day start?

Coughlin: I wake up about 5:30, and I’m in the water by 6, out of the water at 7:45 and then back at practice at 1:30, and then I’m leaving about 4:30. In between then, I eat and go to school and study.

Berdahl: How do you find time to study? You’re a Psychology major. That’s a rigorous major. How do you find time to do that?

Coughlin: Well, it’s hard, but I’ve been swimming ever since I was 6, so throughout my life, I’ve been dealing with managing my time and being efficient with how I study. It’s really not that difficult. You find little periods in the day when you can study, and it somehow works out. Things just happen to work out.

Berdahl: Does being a Psychology major help you in any way, in terms of getting your thoughts and emotions and so forth under control, or is that simply quite separate?

Coughlin: I think what you’re getting at is mental toughness, and I think mental toughness is something that you have to learn through experience. It’s very hard to pick up a book and learn about it, and I think through the 15-plus years I’ve been doing this, that’s how I’ve learned it. You know, psychology I find incredibly fascinating, and I think that’s why I’m able to do it, is because it’s easy to study for, because I just enjoy it.

Berdahl: Now, you hold quite a number of records, including five world records. What did you feel when you broke your first world record, and has it become so routine now that it’s ordinary for you?

Coughlin: It’s definitely not routine, but my first world record was, I think it was the 200-meter backstroke, short course meters, and, you know, like a couple years ago, and Teri McKeever, said that, you know, you should go 2:03 [minutes], and I think the record was 2:05 or so. I didn’t really believe her, we never do short-course meters, it’s not really a form that you do in the U.S., but the rest of the world does, I mean, usually do short-course yards. But I just swam really well and touched the wall and was shocked, and it was incredibly exciting, and then the next day, I got the 100-meter backstroke, which I was hoping to get.

Berdahl: So, you didn’t really, when you broke the first world record, you didn’t realize that you were in contention to break a record?

Coughlin: Well, I knew I definitely had the ability to do it, but it was a December meet, and December, the fall, is very, very tough — it’s a very, very tough schedule, and you train really hard. Your fastest swims aren’t in December, so, I just wasn’t expecting to do it then. I knew I had the ability.

Berdahl: Now, you had a big disappointment, getting ready for the last round of Olympics, because an injury kept you out of that. As you’re getting ready for the next round of Olympics next year, is there special training that you’re going to be doing for that, or is it just more intensity?

Coughlin: I don’t think I’m going to change anything. The biggest thing in the past four years has been coming to Cal, and, you know, I changed everything in my life: school, where I live, who I train with, but since then, everything’s been going well, and I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing the past three years. It will work out, if I just stay on what I’m doing.

Berdahl: What led you to select Cal?

Coughlin: Being a native Californian, I am incredibly biased, and I love California. I think it’s the best state, and I didn’t want to leave, and where I was looking was UCLA, Stanford, and Cal, and after my recruiting trips, after visiting the swim teams, I just felt that I really liked Berkeley. I really liked the swim team, and I felt very comfortable with the swim team. It wasn’t about who was the better team or anything like that; it was where I felt most comfortable.

Berdahl: And are you glad you chose Cal?

Coughlin: Oh, of course. I love Berkeley, and I really believe that it’s the best school there is.

Berdahl: You’re a senior this year. What comes next for you? Will you continue swimming for some period of time?

Coughlin: Yeah, I’ll be swimming another five years or so, and sometime I’ll graduate, I’m not sure exactly when that’s going to be. With the Olympics coming up, my schedule’s going to be a little mixed up. But, yeah, just continue swimming and wherever it takes me. If I’m lucky, somehow I’ll be able to make a career out of swimming and through the people I meet.

Berdahl: Tell us what a career in swimming would mean for five or six or seven or eight years after.

Coughlin: Well, for five or six, you know, you get sponsorships, and just through endorsements, you survive, and you do end up making a little bit of money. It’s nothing like the NFL or anything like that or NBA, oh my God, but you can make a living out of it, and I would love to that. I mean, that’s one of the biggest blessings is being able to do what you love and making a living out of it.

Berdahl: Longer term, what do you see as a potential career?

Coughlin: I just love sports so much, and they’ve been a part of my life for 16 years. I’m only 21, so, it’s going to be really hard for me to leave that arena, and I really like media relations and so, something with sports and media, whether it be broadcasting or something else, something in that.

Berdahl: Well, you’ve already had quite a bit of experience before cameras and being interviewed and so forth, so it would be quite natural for you to move into some kind of a media job, I would imagine.

Coughlin: Yeah, I would love to do that.

Berdahl: That’s great. Well, as you think about how this has shaped your life, do you want your children to be swimming? Would you recommend this for others?

Coughlin: Everybody’s different, and there are a lot of hours in swimming, but I personally love it. I just think that people should become involved in something they really enjoy and pursue it and just enjoy it. I don’t think swimming is the only way to go. I definitely wouldn’t push it on anybody.

Berdahl: Well, we’re going to be looking for you in the Olympics, through all of the meets this coming year. You’ve really made us very proud, and we’re really, very glad to claim you as one of our Cal athletes.

Coughlin: Thank you.

Berdahl: Thank you very much, Natalie Coughlin. We’ll be right back with more Bear in Mind. I’m Chancellor Berdahl.

Back to top

Berdahl: Our next guest is Christina Maslach, who is Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education here at Berkeley. Christina is renowned for her study of job burn-out, but she’s also renowned for a number of other things. She’s won UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award; she’s the CASE Professor of the Year; she’s the Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year; she has many honors as a teacher. We’re delighted to have you with us today, Christina. Welcome to Bear in Mind.

Christina Maslach: Well, thank you.

Berdahl: Now tell us what you see the job of Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. This is a new job that has been created in the last several years. How do you see that job?

Maslach: I think the most important aspect of this job is to really be an advocate for undergraduates to the chancellor, to the cabinet, to make sure that issues that affect undergraduate education are really front and center. And secondly, I think the goal of the job is to really focus on the campus as a whole. Undergraduate education takes place in many colleges, schools and departments, but there’s really a need to look broadly. What are all the opportunities that we provide for our students, and are we doing the very best? And in that sense, I think, the Vice Provost has that special responsibility.

Berdahl: Well, Berkeley is well known as a great research university. It’s well known for its graduate programs. Like all big public universities, we’re frequently criticized for not paying enough attention to undergraduate education. Is that a fair criticism?

Maslach: I think in general it’s been the kind of criticism that does come up. I mean, "undergraduate education is No. 2, rather than No. 1 in this kind of a research context." But what we’ve been doing here at Berkeley is really trying to level that playing field, so that it’s as much a No. 1 kind of priority because it is part of, and integrated into, our research mission. So we’ve been working really hard, not only in involving our undergraduates in giving them a special education that taps into the research greatness of the campus, but we’ve worked really hard on making teaching as important for faculty as their research. I’m really pleased to say that when we survey our undergraduates, like we did this spring, we had about half of the undergraduate class answer. We asked them about the quality of teaching and the kind of education...

Berdahl: What did you find out?

Maslach: We found out that the vast majority of students, up in the 80 percents, were saying that the quality of the teaching was really good. It goes against the stereotype that we often hear about big classes, impersonal, don’t pay attention. And yet, the students are telling us that they’re really getting very good value and a wonderful education here. They like the quality of the teaching. In our large undergraduate classes, we have a lot of our most Distinguished Teaching Award faculty leading those classes, bringing in new innovations, finding new ways to involve students in the kind of excitement and discovery of research. So, I think the stereotype, the criticism, is probably not as true as it may have been.

Berdahl: Can you give us some examples of how involving students in research is taking place on the campus? How are some of the undergraduates actually getting involved in research?

Maslach: Well, there’s a lot of different routes for that. One of them is the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program, or URAP, and basically what that does is pair up undergraduates with faculty. So, faculty indicate what kind of research projects they have going, how many research assistants or research apprentices they’d like, and then the program matches up students to that. And [the students] take it for credit, but many of those undergraduates continue working voluntarily, because they get involved in the research project. So, that’s one. A second one is, in many — particularly science — disciplines, students work in the labs and sometimes as paid assistants or getting credit. So, there’s a way where they have a role working with the graduate students, the post-docs and the faculty in a whole research team.

We are working on getting new options available for students to do research, and one of them that’s really exciting, I think, is the Oral History Program in the Bancroft Library. We never had undergraduates be a part of that, and now they are, and they’re getting that kind of training and really contributing, you know, to the archive. So, we’re working on a number of areas, where we’re bringing in undergraduates to the research enterprise, where they have not been before.

Berdahl: You’ve mentioned the large lecture classes and an effort to alter or improve or introduce new techniques in large lecture classes. Since those classes are something that will always be the case at Berkeley —

Maslach: Absolutely.

Berdahl: … how are they? What kind of changes are you hoping to introduce?

Maslach: Well, there’s a couple of things that we’re trying to do. One is that we’re working with faculty to sort of rethink how you use the time in the lecture. It’s very much right now what Meg Conkey could call the banking model, you know. Professors put something out, the students take it in and then they give it back on the exam. So, for example, Meg and Ruth [Tringham] in Anthropology are really transforming what they use the lecture time for — breaking up students into teams who work on their projects and use multimedia techniques — so it’s just a whole different kind of interaction that goes on in the class as the students are learning and working.

What we’re trying to do is deal with not only the basic question of how best do students learn, and are there better models than just the sort of passive kind of lecture, but also dealing with the fact that we do not have enough large lecture rooms on campus. We don’t always have enough GSIs to provide the sections and the labs. We have technology now, which allows us to do some really innovative things and so all of that is coming up into sort of an interesting mix. So, for example, we received a grant from Hewlett-Packard to put in wireless all around campus, so that it’s not just upgrading that aspect that you can be sitting not just in Free Speech Café but in the Ed-Psych Library. That’s one of the attractions there, is the wireless. You can have your little laptop and be able to connect to—

Berdahl: So you can connect to the Internet anywhere on campus with the wireless connection.

Maslach: The Internet, the library and your fellow students. Part of the grant is funding new experiments in statistics, anthropology, chemistry, where students, in a sense, are continuing their learning and doing things together all kinds of places, in different kinds of ways, and I’m really looking forward to that.

Berdahl: So, technology is changing a lot of what we do in the large classrooms?

Maslach: It can. It doesn’t have to. Technology has sort of been servicing the pedagogy, and so it’s really what the faculty and the GSIs, what they’re trying to accomplish and what sorts of technology help them get there. We try and provide options and choices to get them thinking about, What is it you’re trying to accomplish here in the class? But it can be low tech, like colored chalk, or it can be high tech, you know, like all kinds of other things. What are the tools, the best tools to allow you to really engage students? That’s a challenge in a large class. Lectures can still do it, I mean we know incredible lecturers that get standing ovations after each one that they give, so I’m not trying to knock it, but I’m also saying that there are other ways in which we can do it.

Berdahl: Well, I’ve noticed that one of the technological innovations has been very helpful for me this year and that is that we can get the photographs on the Web of students we have in our classes. I was able to learn the names of the students in my Freshman Seminar much faster than I normally would have without being able to associate names and faces as readily as with those pictures.

Maslach: Yeah, again, that’s an innovation called CourseWeb that we started last year, again in response to faculty needs of "I want to be able to communicate with my students more effectively." So, what CourseWeb does is it automatically gives you the updated list of who’s in your class. You don’t have to ask people, keep a list, and you can send e-mail out and hear back from them with the press of a button. It makes it very easy, large class or small.

Berdahl: But they can send e-mail to you at the press of a button, too.

Maslach: That’s true. That’s true. But you want to be able to think of how you respond to those. One of the important themes for me, for undergraduates, and I always sort of push out on this, is the ability to connect with faculty and communicate in all kinds of ways, because faculty are so important for what students get out of here. So, e-mail is one way, but not the only way to do that. The other thing about CourseWeb, as you mentioned is the photos. It’s the student IDs, and we’ve gotten such great feedback from faculty, as you’ve said. It personalizes it; it breaks down that barrier of "I’m here. You’re there, and who are we?"

Berdahl: We just went through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation process that happens about every decade.

Maslach: That’s right.

Berdahl: What did you learn from that?

Maslach: Wow.

Berdahl: It focused on undergraduate education.

Maslach: It focused on undergraduate, yes.

Berdahl: We learned first of all that we were going to be re-accredited.

Maslach: [Laughs] I don’t think that was in doubt. That really wasn’t the reason we were doing this. Ten years ago, I think, the review team — getting back to your earlier point — felt that somehow you’re a wonderful top research university, your graduate education is wonderful, etc., etc., but you’re not really paying attention to undergraduate education. This time it was about what have we been doing in [the last] ten years to address that. I think a lot of people thought we might still get criticized — the usual "we’re too big, we’re impersonal," etc. The most wonderful thing was how surprised the team was at what we were doing, and they were getting this — not because of just what we wrote and prepared — but they came and spoke to students and staff and administrators and they were really impressed with the kinds of things we’re doing on this campus. I think their concerns are more on how we’re going to sustain it, how we’re going to keep this momentum going. But, I basically heard a message of "You know, you should be tooting your horn a little bit and not being quite as modest about undergraduate education," as we sometimes are.

Berdahl: Well, modesty isn’t always what we’re known for.

Maslach: I know.

Berdahl: So, it’s good to have that acknowledged. But much of the leadership in undergraduate education is you, your contribution, Christina, and we’re grateful to you for that.

Maslach: Thank you.

Berdahl: Thank you for being on Bear in Mind.

Maslach: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

Berdahl: And that was Christina Maslach, Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education here at UC Berkeley.

Back to top

Berdahl: This is Chancellor Bob Berdahl, and you’re listening to Bear in Mind. Political science professor Henry Brady is an expert on voting systems and issues. During this recent recall election, Professor Brady testified in the 9th District Court of Appeals on the validity of punch-card ballots and became a much-quoted expert during that recall election. Welcome to Bear in Mind.

Henry Brady: Good to be here.

Berdahl: Tell us a little bit about that election. What was your impression of the voice of the voters? What were the voters trying to tell our government in the course of that election?

Brady: I think we had some voters who were very angry at Gray Davis. They felt that a lot of problems in California were due to his lack of leadership. I think the truth is, he wasn’t a great leader. There’s no sort of memorable phrase we can all remember from the Gray Davis years. I think there’s some concern, I have here, that people are blaming Gray Davis for problems that are sort of structural problems in California. Whatever, they certainly were angry and they certainly decided to make a change.

Berdahl: Do you think that’s a general phenomenon, or unique to California? There’s some sort of speculation that it’s just sort of "throw the bums out" as an anti-incumbent expression that may translate into next year’s national election. Is that possible?

Brady: Well, it is possible. I mean I think that when people see problems, they look to their leadership, and they say, "Has this person been leading?" And when they don’t see that, they get angry. One of the things we learn as political scientists is we used to think that reason is really what motivated voters, but more and more we realize that emotions are incredibly important. We have to understand better how emotions come out and how people make decisions based upon emotions.

Berdahl: Is it surprising to you that emotions … most of the television ads that I see that are so carefully crafted don’t necessarily appeal to reason so much as they do emotions?

Brady: Well, in political science, we’ve gone through different stages, because at one point in the '30s we thought propaganda was really important, so emotions were at the forefront and central in political science. Then as things started to calm down in the '50s, '60s and '70s, we started to become more focused upon reason and rational voters, and there’s a whole slate of books on that topic. But this kind of election, I think, brings us back to the classic concerns about emotions and how people get mad about things and how propaganda, if you want to call it that, or just advertisements, can sway people. Arnold Schwarzenegger had very simple nostrums that he presented to the people of California, very simple models of how government works, but they sold.

Berdahl: As a political scientist and expert on creating survey instruments, we know that politicians do a great deal of polling. Has that polling changed the way in which elections have taken place, and is it an effort to really get at the emotional issues that will drive voters? Is democracy being served by that kind of polling?

Brady: I think there’s probably too much polling, now, and as a guy who does polling, I’m a little bit hesitant to say that, since my livelihood, to some extent depends upon it. I run the Survey Research Center here, but I think sometimes there’s too much focus on polls, especially by the news media. If you look at the last election, there was tremendous focus on who’s ahead and who’s behind, and not enough emphasis upon the issues. I was very upset about the fact that time and again, I thought there were debates and there were other circumstances where the media did not pin these candidates down on the central issue of the campaign, which was "We’ve got a budget deficit in California." You know, there’s only one way to solve budget deficits. You either raise taxes or cut programs. "What, Mr. Schwarzenegger, or Mr. Davis are you going to do about that?" It’s a really simple and straightforward question. It wasn’t asked enough.

Berdahl: Why do you think the media is reticent to really drive home those critical issues and give the voters a chance what people really say on hard issues?

Brady: Well, at least two things. First, I think people aren’t interested enough and that the horse race is more interesting, and people like to sort of talk about who’s ahead and who’s behind. But I think there’s a second reason, as well. The news media feels uncomfortable when they get to issues. They think they can understand who’s ahead and who’s behind, and they have polling to sort of help them get at some of that. When they get to issues, they get nervous, because they feel that if they’re not careful, they’ll look like they’re taking a position on the issues, and so, they just feel less happy talking about those kinds of things, and therefore they don’t.

Berdahl: So, they focus on personalities?

Brady: I think a lot of it is, yes, focusing on personalities, and of course, this election was tailor-made for that. Arnold Schwarzanegger is a larger-than-life personality, and in fact a lot of the coverage — there’s a study just done by Bruce Fuller, here at this university, which shows that news media focused almost all of its attention on Arnold Schwarzenegger and almost all on his personality and very little on his issue positions.

Berdahl: As you think about the nature of American politics and democracy, is the decline of party affiliation a factor that enables the media to focus on personality? Parties mattered more in the past, I suspect, didn’t they?

Brady: Well, there’s a big debate about whether parties mattered more or less. Certainly, what’s happened, and maybe more importantly, is the rise in the media, and we have this 24-hour media cycle, this constant, incessant focus on the next thing media wise. So, we have these cable channels that are always looking for new things to talk about, and so they’re always after the next story. It doesn’t give you much time as a politician to lay out a program, to discuss it, because it’s the next story that comes up and takes you away from that theme.

Berdahl: Have politics become more visceral?

Brady: Certainly this last election was pretty visceral. It was voters who were very angry and, who to some extent I think were finding salvation in Arnold Schwarzenegger. I worry about anybody who thinks they’re going to find salvation in any politician. I don’t think politicians provide that. We need to look to a different realm of life for that. But, I think this election was this way. Whether in general that’s happened, I don’t know.

Berdahl: Well, you spent a great deal of time in Florida during the "recount," I guess as it’s referred to in Florida, and learned a lot about punch-card voting in that process. Tell us about some of the reservations you developed, and I suppose we all, I guess, developed, with all of the talk about hanging chads and the like.

Brady: I went to Florida in 2000, and I was concerned about the butterfly ballot there, which was a bad ballot design, and I also looked at the recount. But it was actually a third thing that’s really engaged my attention over the last few years, and I’ve done studies on, and that is I realized there’s bad ballot design, there’s problems with recounts, but there’s a third problem. We have voting systems that don’t even record the votes properly, and that’s the problem with punch cards. Again and again, I’ve shown through my research that when you take a county that uses punch cards and you change to one of the newer technologies, either electronic, ATM-style systems; or optical scan, which is sort of like a standardized test; when you move to those new systems, suddenly the number of people that appears not to vote goes down.

Now, election officials will tell you, "Oh, what’s happening here is this are people who are intentionally coming to the polls and deciding not to vote." My argument is, that’s true for some people, but it’s hard to believe that in the recall election, 1 in 11 people in Los Angeles County came to the polls and decided not to vote on the recall question. So, I’m arguing that a lot of that, those people, really came to the polls and tried to vote, did their best to vote with the machine that was there and then did not have their vote recorded.

Berdahl: Because of the mechanics of counting.

Brady: Mechanics. Not counting, recording. The trouble with punch cards is there’s nothing else in life we do that's like using a punch card. We use ATM’s, which are like the electronic voting systems, so we understand those systems. We use optical scan systems when we fill out standardized tests. There’s nothing else we do like a punch card. Second of all, the punch cards system, for those of you who vote with them, you know that you take a stylus and push it through a little, tiny hole, and when you do that, you’re supposed to push out the chad on the ballot. You can’t see whether you’ve actually accomplished that task when you do it. So, with an electronic system, you push a button and it’ll light up and it says you voted for that person. With an optical scan, there’s a name of a candidate, and you fill in the bubble, and you know you voted for that person. With the punch card person, you don’t know whether you pushed through the chad, or not, and I think, therefor, it’s very easy to have the machine not operate properly. You think it has, and therefore your vote’s not recorded.

Berdahl: How many were not recorded?

Brady: My estimate is in this last election, that there were 176,000 lost votes, which is close to 2 percent of the total number of people who voted. So, if we had an election that was within 2 percent on any of the four questions, it seems to me people would have been back in court, complaining about punch-card systems. I’m happy; frankly, the margins weren’t much bigger than that.

Berdahl: It’s hard to believe that people would make the effort of going to the polls and then decide not to vote once they got there.

Brady: It doesn’t pass the sort of common-sense test of why we go to the polls. Most of us don’t go, get there and say, "Gee, I don’t know why I came, and I’m not going to vote."

Berdahl: There have been some questions raised about the electronic, ATM-type system, in terms of security, in terms of easy manipulation of it and its results. Are you confident that that system is secure and will not be tampered with?

Brady: I think we have to be worried about all of our voting systems. One thing everybody should know is that all votes in California, and in fact almost all votes in the country, are counted by computers. So, if we’re worried about computers being hackable and malfunctioning because of bad programming. We’ve gotta be worried about punch cards, optical scans and electronic systems. It’s only when we hand-count ballots that we don’t use computers, and almost nobody does that anymore. So, that’s the first thing to understand. The second thing is some people want a paper trail for electronic systems, because they say, if there’s some evidence of a problem, then we have that paper trail. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think it’s good to have redundancy. There’s already a lot of redundancy built into those systems, so we have to ask, is it worth the extra money to add a printer to each one of those machines and to have the paper trail? And we have to also remember that the classic paper ballots can be defrauded by people stuffing ballot boxes. So, the first and most important thing to remember about this is that we have to be vigilant about every kind of system.

Berdahl: Well, this is undoubtedly going to be one of the issues that is going to continue to be talked about in the course of the 2004 election. Are you confident that we won’t have another Florida situation in 2004?

Brady: Well, the good news is that I’ve been working with people to try to get rid of punch cards in California. We have an agreement that by March 1, punch cards will be gone. So, I’m very happy about that.

Berdahl: How about the rest of the country?

Brady: The rest of the country has not made that decision yet. There are still places like Illinois and Ohio that have punch cards in place and will still be using them, and that worries me, because these are antiquated systems, and it’s probably time to go on to better systems.

Berdahl: It’s entirely possible that we’ll have a very close election again.

Brady: It certainly seems possible. It’s hard to know, but George W. Bush looked like he was flying high in the polls, but of course the problems in Iraq, the problems in the economy are making it more and more difficult to believe that he’s going to have an easy time of it in 2004.

Berdahl: Henry, thank you very much for joining us on Bear in Mind.

Brady: It was great to be here.

Berdahl: That was Professor Henry Brady, professor of Political Science here at UC Berkeley. Remember, Bear in Mind depends upon your feedback. What are your thoughts about the recall? Send us your comments at bearshow@uclink.berkeley.edu.

Well, we’ve come to the close of another edition of Bear in Mind. Thanks for joining us today. Until next time, I’m Chancellor Bob Berdahl.

Back to top