Well, that didn't work out quite as planned

Blog readers will know from yesterday's post that early in the morning of August 3rd, an attempt was made to close off Berkeley's People's Park for a project to construct new student housing. We included a video yesterday of what happened, but we'll again embed it below. 

In any case, here is an announcement from UC-Berkeley pausing the project:

Construction paused at People’s Park due to violence, unlawful protest activity

By Public Affairs | AUGUST 3, 2022

This afternoon, campus officials issued the following statement to media outlets:

Due to the destruction of construction materials, unlawful protest activity, and violence on the part of some protesters, the university has decided to pause construction work on the People’s Park housing site. All construction personnel were withdrawn out of concern for their safety. In the course of preparing and planning for the start of construction, safety has been the university’s highest priority, and that remains the case now.  In an effort to avoid further confrontation, law enforcement officers have also now withdrawn from the site. The campus will, in the days ahead, assess the situation in order to determine how best to proceed with construction of this urgently needed student housing project.

There were multiple arrests, but we will not be able to provide confirmed, detailed information about numbers, charges, etc., until tomorrow morning.

Source: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/08/03/construction-paused-at-peoples-park-due-to-violence-unlawful-protest-activity/.

As a reminder, the Regents approved the project back in September 2021:

You can see the meeting of the Finance and Capital Strategies committee where the discussion and approval occurred at:

https://archive.org/details/regents-academic-and-student-affairs-9-29-21/Regents-Finance+and+Capital+Strategies+9-29-21.mp4.

(Aren't you glad we preserve the recordings of the meetings since the Regents delete them after one year?)

Here again is video of what happened on August 3rd:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i67VCYsNkQ.

===

It might be noted that the issue of constructing student housing is linked to the pressure from the legislature and governor to expand student enrollment. The legislature intervened recently to override a court decision that would have blocked Berkeley's expansion.* Will the legislature now act in some way in response to this event? The governor showed up at the recent Regents meetings to discuss UCLA's decision to join the Big Ten - perhaps not the biggest issue facing the state. Will he respond to this event? If you want more enrollment, there will have to be more construction somewhere. Just saying... 

===

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/06/berkeley-housing-litigation-aftershock.html; https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-more-merrier-part-5.html.