Berkeley Part Two: Back to School
After lunch, I headed in to the UC Berkeley campus. I took the tour they give for prospective students (hey, you never know, right? : )
It was a very good tour. Being that it was part sales-pitch, the guide of course made a point of telling us about some of the school’s accomplishments, mentioning factoids like how the school has two elements of the periodic table named after them (Berkelium and Californium), pointing out the “Reserved for Nobel Laureate” parking, and so forth. I was disappointed that she didn’t seem to know anything about BSD Unix or Berkeley’s other contributions to open source and computer science, but c’est la vie.
She took us inside a few buildings, like the Museum of Paleontology, where we got to meet their T-Rex :
Don’t worry, wingnuts — I’m sure he doesn’t believe in you either. He had a nickname that I can’t remember. I want to say “Steve”, but I don’t think that’s right. She also took us into the Doe Library:
That painting in the background is the original Washington Rallying the Troops at Monmouth, a companion piece to the more well known Washington Crossing the Delaware. I was hoping to have time after the tour to come back and see the Emma Goldman Papers, but it wasn’t to be. I was disappointed that the tour guide knew not of Emma, either. Sigh.
Of course she did tell us some about the school’s architecture, and pointed out the Sather Tower:
Apparently you can go inside and up to the top, another thing I wish I’d had time to do after the tour. We also discussed some of the beautiful and distinct landscaping; in particular these unusual trees, a favorite of the original architect, are a prominent feature:
Of course much was made about the school’s history as a center for protest and activisim. She showed us these doors from an administration building:
Apparently the story is that during one protest, the students locked the administration inside by chaining the doors shut; the door handles have since been removed on two sides of the building in remembrance.
Our guide also took us to Sproul Plaza, where many of the free-speech protests took place:
At the plaza we saw this marker, for which the space above has been legally declared outside the jurisdiction of any authority, to ever be a symbol of free speech:
And what college campus is complete without a Free Speech Movement Cafe?
I joked about being a prospective student, but I’m not sure it’s a joke. Absolutely if I could go back and do things over, I would try to get in to this school. And certainly, moving to California to be a thirty-five year old freshman wouldn’t be the most unusual thing I’ve done in my life…
