photo by gusto

BERKELEY (pronounced as for Busby, though named after the English philosopher-theologian George Berkeley) is dominated by the University of California, one of America’s most famous – and infamous – universities. Its grand buildings and thirty thousand students give off an energy that spills south down raucous Telegraph Avenue, where ageing hippies peddle rainbow bracelets in front of vegetarian restaurants, music stores and pizza joints. The very name of Berkeley conjures up images of dissent. Sproul Plaza, in front of the school’s entranceway, Sather Gate, is where the Free Speech Movement began, and, too, argue some historians, the experience known as the Sixties. Among the sites of the almost-daily pitched battles of the Sixties and early Seventies, part of the broad campus revolt against the Vietnam War, was the now-seedy People’s Park. Things have calmed down considerably, and now the campus prides itself on its high academic rankings and Nobel-laureate-laden faculty. In recent years, the biggest cause célèbre on campus was the plight of Naked Man, an undergraduate who refused to wear clothing while attending class, and the attempted shutting down of local radio station KPFA. Today’s students yell profanities and shout down Bible-thumpers on Sproul Plaza, unaware of the irony of it all; feel free to stroll around the campus’s tree-shaded pathways and contemplate the dissent of years long gone.