Following the lead of several elite Ivy League schools, UC Berkeley chancellors announced yesterday that they'll be cutting tuition costs for families with annual incomes between $80,000 and $140,000. In a conference yesterday, Berkeley officials promised that tuition next fall for middle class families will not exceed 15% of their annual income, marking the first time a public university has made such a move. more ›

A couple times in the last two years we've mentioned talk of developing an earthquake early warning system -- something like what they have in Japan -- which would give all of us about a 30 to 60-second heads-up the next time a major earthquake strikes the West Coast. Yesterday, UC Berkeley and the University of Washington received $6 million in seed money from the Palo Alto-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to work on implementing such a system. more ›

Today in delightful local TV news reports, CBS5 has the hard-hitting report of a secret compound hidden in the East Bay hills that is home to the world's only captive Hyena colony. more ›

In another early morning sweep by officers in riot gear, UCPD cleared out some 20 tents from the Occupy Cal camp on Sproul Plaza. Charitably, cops who surrounded the camp around 3:30 a.m. this morning announced that campers would have ten minutes to clear out their belongings. Even with the brief notice, which apparently caught campers off guard, it appears the plaza cleaning went much more peacefully than other Occupy camp clashes, including the November 9th standoff between students and police officers on the Berkeley campus. more ›

The transfer student who brandished a handgun while in the computer lab at the Haas School of Business at Cal and was subsequently shot by campus police yesterday has died. He's now been identified as 32-year-old Christopher Nathen Elliot Travis, an undergraduate whose motives for carrying the handgun are still unclear. more ›

Wise man Stephen Colbert took on Occupy Berkeley's skirmish with abusive police this week. Calling UC Berkeley a "hippie haven" and a "slow food, locavore, patchouli, super-fun granola dump site," Colbert breaks down the now-famous video of students and faculty clashing with the fuzz on November 9. more ›

The Daily Clog posted a brilliant review of a recent appearance by wounded sparrow Johnny Depp at Wheeler Hall. The cloudy actor was in Berkeley for a screening of The Rum Diaries, Depp's second foray into the dude world of excruciatingly pretentious and insecure Hunter S. Thompson, followed by a Q&A with Cal students. After one kid asked a (stupid?) question about boom mikes, the 48-year-old actor reverted back to his snippy Winona Ryder days. Thank God. more ›

During a lecture at UC Berkeley, former kooky presidential candidate Ralph Nader lambasted college sports, claiming that athletics have dumbed down universities, students, and 'Merica as we know it. And, well, he has a point. Matt Krupnick of the Contra Costa Times reports: more ›

In yet another year of predicable winners on the horizon (not Konstantin Novoselov again, please!), white hot 'it' astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter surprised many when he took home the Nobel Prize in Physics for his understated yet deeply moving work in supernovae with the Supernova Cosmology Project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Critics have praised his performance as "electrifying," "a revelation," and "brutally honest." Perlmutter shared the major award with hotshot guy pals Brian Schmidt, an astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University, and Adam Riess, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. more ›

The UC Berkeley Republicans plan to host a provocative "Increase Diversity Bake Sale" this Thursday, one that many have decried as racist. Why? Well, because the bake sale's organizers plan to charge different students different amounts for the cupcakes. The price structure is as follows: more ›

Amalia Mourad, an 18-year-old UC Berkeley student, hawks baked good on Solano Avenue in order to pay for tuition. According to Berkeleyside, "She takes out a $12,000 subsidized loan for the year, which barely covers tuition" but she still must pay for "housing, food and school supplies." (Pst, she faces a $12,192 tuition bill for 2011-2012.) more ›

According to Forbes Magazine, Gavin Newsom's alma mater is a better place for higher education than UC Berkeley. NBC Bay Area notes: "Santa Clara University received its highest-ever ranking from Forbes's 2011 list of the best colleges in America, jumping nearly 60 places from the 2010 list to No. 67 -- three spots ahead of the University of California, Berkeley." more ›

As UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium patches up their aging concrete facilities, the Cal football team is set to kick off their 2011 season in San Francisco starting in September. The team's first game against Fresno State will actually take place at the home of the Niners down in Candlestick Park, but after a short roadtrip to Colorado, AT&T Park becomes bear territory for the rest of the team's home games in 2011. more ›

From noon to 8 p.m. today, the Ben and Jerry's at 2130 Center Street (near West side of campus) will hand out free scoops of ice cream. And that sounds positively delightful. What's more, your free scoops will help support Camp Kesem, a Berkeley institution that provides kids whose parents have or had cancer with a summer camp experience that "gives them a chance to be kids." Again, delightful. [via the devine Diana Newby at Daily Clog] more ›

UC Berkeley police are asking the public to help catch that man they think responsible for a series of robberies and sexual assaults. The latest incident occurred Friday morning. "Police say it happened near Haviland Grove around 12:30 a.m.," reports KGO. "The student says she was walking through campus when a man grabbed her from behind, sexually assaulted her and robbed her." The suspect is described as a white man in his 20s with short brown hair, 5'7"-ish, thin build, and was last seen "wearing blue denim overalls and a green sweatshirt." more ›

KRON 4 Morning News reported that, just this past Tuesday night, a woman was attack on the UC Berkeley campus. A man allegedly exposed himself to the victim. She walked away. He ran after her. Grabbed her and "groped her." The suspect is described as a black male in his early twenties, somewhere around 5'10". He was sporting a red baseball cap with white emblem during the incident. Please be advised. [KRON] more ›

Days after Gov. Jerry Brown proposed cutting $500 million from the UC system next year, UC Berkeley plans to prune 150 managers and support staff this year. This comes on top of the some odd 600 jobs hacked since last year. more ›

Laura Zelko, A UC Berkeley student who took part in protesting fee-hikes and campus layoffs last November is now facing a possible one-year suspension in a public disciplinary hearing which took place on October 27th. You'll remember 43 protesters barricaded themselves inside Wheeler hall last year, which became the focal point of campus-wide protests. more ›

Mad Men, it's a good show. No, a great show. Quality TV Programming, if you will. It's the kind of show certain viewers turn on their TV to watch, then turn off their TV once it's done. It's the kind of show enjoyed by people who insist on enjoying the Sunday paper over morning coffee. It's the kind of show people sandwich in between Twin Peaks and The Sopranos on their carefully crafted Facebook profiles. So, it only makes sense that the (highly depressing) AMC drama would receive attention from UC Berkeley, the Bay Area's equally acclaimed institution of higher learning. more ›

Uh oh. UCB plans to slice an addition 200 jobs next year in order to save money. "Chancellor Robert Birgeneau says a consulting firm hired to help the system save money concluded that the school has too many managers," reports KTVU. "The campus could save about $20 million by eliminating jobs through attrition, retirements, voluntary separations and layoffs." The esteemed school already cut 600 since 2009. more ›

So you know how BP and various others have been trying to sell us on the idea that the gargantuan oil plume in the Gulf of Mexico had somehow magically disappeared? Well, now some Berkeley scientists have confirmed that this actually may be happening, but it isn't magic. A newly discovered microbe, a particularly gluttonous form of oil-eating bacteria that have existed for millions of years on the ocean floor, appears to have multiplied rapidly since the April 20 spill and gobbled up so much of the dispersed oil as to render the plume "undetectable." more ›

According to The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley has been feted as one of the top "military friendly" schools in California due in large part "to its efforts in offering both financial and non-financial support services to veterans on campus." The poll, conducted by G.I. Jobs, who released their annual Military Friendly Schools List this week, is in sharp contrast to the school's (in?)famously anti-war and anti-military sentiment. [Daily Californian] more ›

19-year-old athlete Misha Dawood was on her way to the sixth annual National Women's Football Championship in Islamabad when she became one of 152 people killed in that Airblue plane crash in Pakistan last week. Dawood was a sophomore at U.C. Berkeley, a member of the Diya Football Club, and a member of the light crew team. Despite studying abroad in the U.S., Misha had flown back to Pakistan to help her team win the championship. The team would go on to win on Thursday, and dedicated its victory to Misha. more ›

Here's a funny bit: Librarians at various UC schools are waging a quiet war against Nature Publishing Group, the publishers of influential journals like Nature and Scientific American who have raised the cost of institutional subscriptions as much as seven-fold in the last couple of years. A 400% increase for 2011, amounting to $1 million, was the last straw and now the librarians are calling for a UC-wide boycott of the magazines, including all those academics who serve as contributors. more ›

UC Berkeley professor Dr. Robert Bea is an expert in off-shore oil rig accidents, and he was asked by the White House last week to analyze the BP disaster in the Gulf. As 60 Minutes reports, Dr. Bea also investigated the Challenger disaster, and the Hurricane Katrina disaster -- after which his voice never fully recovered. more ›

In lieu of getting ready for graduation, some UC Berkeley students are starving themselves in an effort to get Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to "publicly denounce a recent Arizona immigration law," reports The Daily Californian. (Unlike your SFist Editor, who, weeks prior his UCSC graduation, had three reservations as Oswald's and two now-legendary graduation parties scheduled. Which: exhausting.) Horacio Corona and Alejandro Lara-Briseno, for example, "are enduring the hunger pangs of going without food for more than 168 hours." more ›

CAL Men's Water Polo Team, who swim "in support of ballot Measure C -- a bond measure to save, rehab and improve Berkeley's city pools." You can sponsor them (and why wouldn't you? Just look at them) and support Measure C right here. more ›

Presumably moments before last night's rally / dance party flash mob at UC Berkeley, sparked by cranky tuition-hike protesters, gained momentum, this student protester was swallowed up by riot police. According to the this video's maker, Narukami, the girl was "taken and arrested by police while she was telling everyone how a police officer punched her in the nose." more ›

In another nod to their Boomer parents, a gang of tuition-hike protesters at Berkeley turned their political act into a rowdy party last night, invading a building that's under renovation with spray-paint cans, a sound system, and some 40s of O.E. (or similar), and eventually spilling out onto Telegraph Avenue and vandalizing a sandwich shop. We're sure the UC Regents are listening to your demands now! [ABC 7] more ›