Is the UC a Good Neighbor?

“It’s important for people in Berkeley to understand that there is a location where people can come to where there are no prerequisites. You don’t need anything else other than being human.”

-Coco Rosos, Berkeley resident as quoted by KQED

Current Events

On the night of Jan. 3, 2024, hundreds of law enforcement officers shut down the block of People’s Park under the purview of the University of California, Berkeley. Members of the People’s Park community were sleeping in the kitchen, where free meals were formerly served, and the treehouse, which had been used as a base for activism for at least a year prior. 

The officers wore riot gear and carried non-lethal weapons, protecting crews who would raise a barrier of double-stacked shipping containers around the park. Over the course of the following day, nearly a dozen arrests were made with justifications ranging from the attempted removal of barriers (charged as theft) to refusal of the crowd to disperse from the area. 

A Brief History

The events of Jan. 3 are among the most recent of a sixty-years-long battle over the one-block land parcel formally owned by the UC. The park was founded on the UC’s vacant lot in 1969 by local activists in reaction to a House Bill which would have American universities instate more stringent policies regarding campus activism. 

On May 15, 1969, thousands of protesters engaged with police, and later National Guardsmen, attempting to shut down the park in a violent clash now known as “Bloody Thursday.” Both hospital records and UCPD statements indicate over 100 injuries on either side, however the only casualty, 25-year old James Rector, succumbed to multiple gunshot wounds from police fire. 

The Contemporary Debate

Since the park’s rocky inception, it has held a deeply-political character for many Berkeley locals. For others, it has developed an unsavory reputation as a hub for homelessness and crime, leading to the question of whether the park and its resident population are truly representative of the “people’s” interests. 

This debate takes place within the broader context of land development for population densification, particularly by the UC, in California. Like other schools in the state, UC Berkeley has been continually litigated against for its failure to control a growing student population’s encroachment into its host city. Groups like Make the UC a Good Neighbor, the primary driver behind the current string of lawsuits, continually raise concerns about this student population’s negative impact on surrounding neighborhoods, from the shade of their multiplexes to the noise of their parties. 

With arguments on either side reflecting NIMBY-like sentiments, while simultaneously highlighting the hypocrisy of their opponents, the People’s Park issue is particularly complex. Should UC’s planned development, which will house 1,100 students and preserve 60% of the park as open-space, be permitted to continue? Should the character of the park figure into its preservation, or otherwise be preserved for by the UC? What is owed to the people by the UC, and does it include the park?