More on Admissions

As the Regents prepare to discuss A-G admissions requirements, this summary of the requirements from the San Francisco Chronicle may be helpful:

....UC requires a more rigorous set of specific classes in history and science than the California State University system does to satisfy these requirements. UC also has slightly stricter rules than CSU, including fewer ways to fix course failures or omissions, and requiring more of those earlier poor grades to be submitted. UC also lets students submit more honors points.

...Two groups of Californians are automatically eligible for admission — though not necessarily to the UC campus of their choice:

• Students who score in the top 9% at their high school in UC-approved courses during junior and senior year.   
• Students who score in the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates.

...Most freshman applicants complete far more than the minimum of 15 A to G courses required to qualify for UC admission. Here is a look at the share of applicants admitted in 2025 compared with how many A to G classes they took: 

• 15 to 19: 5% of applicants. Admitted: 3%
• 20 to 24: 38% of applicants. Admitted: 27%
• At least 25: 58% of applicants. Admitted: 43%

...UC has not offered specifics about what changes, if any, could come from the [A-G] review. Among the possibilities are:

• Changes to the subject areas themselves.
• Changes to the number of required courses in each subject.
• Recommendations for going beyond the minimum requirements.

...The earliest the regents could consider any recommended changes would be in the second half of 2027. Even if they agreed to make changes, the new rules could take time to kick in...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/college-admissions/article/uc-a-g-requirements-review-22368092.php.

Straws in the Wind - Part 464

From the NY Times: Teresios Bundi once symbolized the strange, life-changing opportunities the internet provided. Hailing from a farming village in Kenya, Mr. Bundi moved to the capital, Nairobi, in 2011 to be the first in his family to attend university. There, a friend suggested he try a new online job: writing essays for cheating overseas college students... Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments.

...Then A.I arrived, and the good times ended. In 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. At colleges worldwide, students made a simple calculation that has become more pronounced today: Why pay a freelancer in Kenya when ChatGPT could do the job? Essay work began to thin. Rates fell, and assignments dwindled. Before long, the industry shrank to almost nothing. “I never would have expected A.I. could do this,” Mr. Bundi said...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/technology/kenya-college-essays-ai.html.

Retract

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: The journal Psychological Science... retracted a 2002 research paper co-authored by Dan Ariely, the influential but increasingly scrutinized Duke University professor, after the blog Data Colada reported earlier this week that the study contains fabricated data. The paper, on which Ariely shared authorship with Klaus Wertenbroch, found that subjects responded better to externally imposed deadlines than self-imposed ones, and has been cited over 2,000 times on Google Scholar. The retraction is the latest in a series of scandals that have dogged Ariely. Earlier reporting by Data Colada led to the 2021 retraction of another study he had co-authored, and data sleuths have cast doubt on more of his past research...

...The three professors who run Data Colada detailed several points of evidence showing that the 2002 deadlines study contains doctored data. Many participants’ results in the dataset were identical, suggesting data points had been duplicated or faked. Results that should be highly correlated — for instance, participants who said they liked the task would be expected to also report finding it interesting — showed no signs of correlation.

...In 2021, Data Colada documented evidence of fraud in a 2012 study Ariely had co-authored that also failed to replicate. Another author on the study was Francesca Gino, whose tenure was revoked by Harvard Business School after the data sleuths found a pattern of data fraud across several of her studies.* ...Duke announced [in January] it was closing Ariely’s lab, alongside several other centers, a decision the university said was made the previous December...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/data-sleuths-found-evidence-of-fraud-in-another-dan-ariely-study-now-its-being-retracted.

====

*The Harvard Crimson reports pre-trial maneuvering in the Gino case is ongoing as a December 7 trial date approaches:

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/9/9/harvard-gino-trial-near/.

Repeat from Sept. 20, 2022: Background About Admissions as the Regents Discuss the Topic

A new podcast called Gatecrashers is being unveiled about college admissions. At this posting, there are so far episodes about the history of such admissions at Columbia, Princeton, and Dartmouth - with more to come.* From the Gatecrashers description:

What topic is more controversial, sensational, and endlessly captivating than college admissions? It’s a billion-dollar industry. It sends celebrities to jail. The Supreme Court is weighing in on who gets in and why. We might think we have read all there is to read on the issue, and heard all there is to hear. But if you want to understand everything that’s going on with college admissions today—not just the battles over diversity, but the very existence of college applications, the essays and interviews and standardized tests—you have to look at the first group that tried to diversify elite schools. You have to look at the Jews. Gatecrashers, an 8-part podcast series launching September thirteenth, twenty twenty-two, tells the story of how Jews fought for acceptance at elite schools, and how the Jewish experience in the Ivy League shaped American higher education, and shaped America at large.

The Columbia episode, edited to remove extraneous announcements, follows and can be heard - along with the description above - at the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/columia%20admissions.mp3

====

*The full set of the Gatecrashers podcasts can be heard at:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gatecrashers/id1640617083.

====

Originally at:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/09/admissions-history-you-didnt-know-about.html. 

25th Anniversary: September 11, 2001 - Part 3

The fallout from the Sept. 11th UCLA Law School event continues:

https://dailybruin.com/2026/09/12/julio-frenk-condemns-symposium-featuring-attorney-for-alleged-9-11-conspirator 

====

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-12/ucla-chancellor-law-school-9-11-event

====

https://x.com/yudapearl/status/2098927762669215919

====

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/chancellor-julio-frenk-comment-event-coverage-sept-10

Grad Housing

Apparently, despite federal cutbacks, UCLA expects to need more grad student housing. From the Daily Bruin:

UCLA will convert a newly acquired Sawtelle multifamily complex into graduate student housing over the next few months. UCLA purchased the building at 1775 Beloit Ave. in August for $8.5 million. The property is about three miles away from campus, and students will be able to move in in a few months, a UCLA Housing spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The acquisition – along with other purchases on Wilshire Boulevard, Venice Boulevard and Berryman Avenue – are part of UCLA’s goal to expand housing for graduate students, the spokesperson said in the statement. The university is converting Weyburn Terrace – which previously only served graduate students – from graduate housing into undergraduate housing over the next three years starting this fall...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/09/06/ucla-expands-graduate-student-housing-with-8-5m-sawtelle-property-acquisition.

Straws in the Wind - Part 463

From the LA Times: The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would strip private colleges and private grade schools of their tax-exempt status if they provide targeted help to students based on their race, a significant escalation in the White House’s campaign to eradicate diversity programs directed at Black, Latino and other minority students... The Treasury Department proposed the change... in a new regulation that, if made final, would take effect after May 2027. The rule is broadly aimed at ending any policies or programs that help students because of their race, and it specifically says such benefits in admissions, scholarships and facilities “would be incompatible” with the rule...

The proposed change would not only impose a tax bill on schools, but also could discourage donors who would lose the advantage of deducting the donation to lower their taxes. A public comment period is expected to last until early November. In California, the proposed changes would cover more than 85 nonprofit colleges and universities, among them Stanford and USC. The proposed rule also affects private K-12 schools — in all, more than 18,000 institutions nationwide. Public colleges, such as UCLA, and public school districts would not be affected, although Trump has separately threatened to pull their federal funding over race-based assistance...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-09-03/trump-tax-exempt-status-schools-race. 

Parallel Blogs / Subscribing

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

===

Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/ 

or

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

and put in your email address. 

You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications. 

25th Anniversary: September 11, 2001 - Part 2

From the California Post: UCLA’s top official has condemned a 9/11 event hosted by the college featuring a range of controversial speakers — including the defense lawyer for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The school’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, said in exclusive remarks to the California Post that he supported longtime UCLA professor Judea Pearl, who tore into the university for hosting the lawyer representing the jihadist behind the execution of his journalist son, journalist Daniel Pearl.

“Judea Pearl is a deeply valued member of the UCLA community, and I have profound respect for him, for the memory of his son Daniel, and for his decades-long commitment to combating antisemitism, terrorism and hatred,” Frenk said.

“The brutal murder of Daniel Pearl was an act of unspeakable evil, and I support Judea and his family. We also mourn the thousands of lives lost from the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, as well as the suffering of countless families and communities.”

He went on to blast event, which covered two days and also included an appearance by a Yale professor who labeled post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts “racist.”

“UCLA’s values are clear. We reject antisemitism and terrorism in all their forms, and we believe our campus must be a place where the dignity of every member of our community is respected,” Frenk continued.

“Nothing about this event at the UCLA School of Law, which we do not endorse, changes or qualifies those commitments.”

Daniel Pearl was decapitated by Mohammed in Pakistan in 2002 after being lured there for a supposed interview with an Islamic scholar. One of Mohammed’s lawyers, Melanie T. Partow, was set to speak at the event on Friday.

Frenk suggested the event — which invited no victims of the attack, but welcomed leftist speakers, including one who said Israel “should be attacked”— had given voice to the wrong guests.

“Academic freedom does not require us to be neutral about antisemitism or terrorism,” said Frenk, who became UCLA’s seventh chancellor in January 2025.

“Speaking at UCLA should never be mistaken for the university’s approval, endorsement, or acceptance of an individual’s viewpoints, or our institution’s indifference to the pain their presence may cause members of our community.

“In this case, I understand why Professor Pearl and others are deeply hurt. Judea’s voice, and the history behind it, deserve to be heard with the seriousness and humanity they demand.”

Judea told The Post that he was taken aback by the event.

“Colleagues inform me that, sadly, UCLA Law School is guilty of such practice: Weaponizing the painful days of 9/11 and 10/7 to promote hateful ideologies,” he said.

He added: “Having lost a son to such an ideology, I stand ashamed of my university.”

The educator added that he felt any 9/11 event should commemorate victims of the attack.

“A September 11th event should be used to commemorate the victims of that attack: Innocent Americans,” he said...

==

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/09/11/us-news/ucla-chancellor-condemns-controversial-9-11-campus-event/.

==

Note 1: Before the chancellor commented, a "spokesman" for UCLA had released the following statement, according to the article above:

“Events organized by an individual UCLA Law program, centers, or institutes — and the views expressed — do not imply endorsement by UCLA Law, and neither the language of this symposium nor the views of its speakers should be understood as representing the school as a whole,” the spokesman said. “UCLA Law does not review or approve these choices, nor does the school withdraw invitations because a speaker or viewpoint is sensitive or controversial.”

==

Note 2: According to the Daily Bruin, Murphy Hall originally helped publicize the Law School event at a local neighborhood council:

...Carmen Zambrano, an assistant director for UCLA Government Relations, said... that the School of Law will host a symposium on the impacts of 9/11 on the United States’ legal and political systems after 25 years...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/09/09/north-westwood-neighborhood-council-recap-sept-2-2. 

Does the Barnum Rule Still Apply?

From the LA Times: 

Thousands of low-income patients, some seriously ill, are scrambling to find new doctors as they lose access to UCLA Health physicians after a longtime Medi-Cal contract was not renewed. Under the contract that expired June 30, UCLA had been providing specialty care to 9,000 medically frail patients from Health Care LA, an association of nonprofit clinics that serve patients covered by Medi-Cal, the state program for the poor. “Many of these patients have been waiting for months to be seen by UCLA specialty medicine providers and are now being told they cannot receive the care they desperately need,” Health Care LA said...

University officials... pointed to “capacity issues” at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, including in the emergency room and dozens of specialty clinics... [University spokesperson Phil] Hampton said UCLA had offered to extend the contract, but Health Care LA rejected the offer... 

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-09-05/low-income-patients-at-ucla-health-scramble-to-find-new-doctors-as-contract-ends.

NOTE: Keep in mind that negotiating tactics in these kinds of contracts can include PR. 

Straws in the Wind - Part 462

From the Daily Pennsylvanian: Several administrative and other staff members at Penn’s School of Nursing were recently laid off as part of cuts to the school’s operating budget, multiple employees told The Daily Pennsylvanian. Five Nursing affiliates — who requested anonymity for fear of retribution — attributed the job losses to University-wide spending reductions driven by federal funding uncertainty. One employee estimated that seven or eight individuals were terminated from their positions. Penn’s fiscal year 2027 budget states that the school “continues to monitor the challenging federal funding environment and is modeling and budgeting the projected impact.”

Multiple requests for comment were left with Penn Nursing. The budget comes after Penn directed all schools and centers to reduce certain expenditures by 4% in January, citing “uncertainty about how evolving federal policy changes might impact” the University... 

Full story at https://www.thedp.com/article/2026/09/penn-nursing-layoffs-staff-federal-funding-cuts-budget.

Another Scam for Authors: Delete & Don't Respond

Here is what AI has to say about this email message:

The email you received from the "Readary Book Club" in Bangalore is a coordinated, AI-driven phishing and fee-charging scam. Independent, self-published, and traditionally published authors are being heavily targeted worldwide by scammers using fake or impersonated book clubs to exploit their need for book promotion.

How this Scam Works

Target Scraping: Scammers use AI tools to scrape data from Amazon, Goodreads, and publisher websites to gather author contact info, book titles, and descriptions. 

Flattering Opener: You receive an unsolicited, warm email from a generic address (usually Gmail or Yahoo) praising your work. The text reads like they genuinely loved your story, but the text is actually generated by AI to appeal to your emotions. 

Fake Credentials: They claim to be an exclusive, highly active book club in a specific location (like Bangalore, London, or New York) consisting of "hundreds" or "thousands" of eager readers.

Financial Bait (The Catch): If you reply, they will shift to a proposal. They will offer to make your book their "monthly feature" or "spotlight selection," but they will demand a "spotlight fee," "participation fee," or "shipping fee" (typically between $55 and $350 USD). 

Red Flags to Look For: Free Email Domain: The sender uses a generic email address (@gmail.com) rather than a professional domain linked to an official website. 

No Online Footprint: Searching for the specific book club yields no active local website, distinct Meetup group, or verified social media presence. 

Upfront Demands: They ask for money via untraceable or non-reversible channels like PayPal "Friends and Family" or third-party contracts. 

A Real Book Club Never Charges Authors: Legitimate reader communities select books because they want to read them; they never invoice the author for the privilege of being discussed.

What You Should Do Next: Do not reply to the email. Engaging with them confirms your email address is active, which will trigger even more spam. Do not send files or free digital manuscript copies (PDFs/EPUBs).

Mark as Spam and block the sender immediately.

Disclosure in the Context of Closure

Closed Cases - Closed Childcare

From the Daily Bruin: A 4-year-old student at a UCLA childcare center was reported to child protective services for exhibiting symptoms of sexual abuse in May 2018. UCPD and LAPD both received notice of the incident, but both law enforcement agencies closed their cases without arresting anyone or interviewing the child or their parents. Nearly six years later, the student’s teacher was arrested for a separate case of child sexual abuse...

Christopher Rodriguez, the child’s teacher who worked at University Village from 2001-20, was convicted of nine misdemeanor charges – including willful cruelty to a child and sexual battery against a minor – in April 2025. He had been a teacher at UCLA’s Early Care and Education centers, which mostly serve UCLA employees’ and students’ children, for nearly 25 years before he was arrested in February 2024...

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt announced Aug. 13 that UCLA’s ECE centers – including Krieger and University Village – would shut down in June 2027 because of enrollment and financial issues. Hunt did not mention the sexual abuse case in his email announcement to parents.

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/09/09/ucpd-received-notice-of-suspected-child-sex-abuse-years-before-childcare-teachers-arrest.

25th Anniversary: September 11, 2001

 UCLA students watch TV newscast of attack on World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2001.

Straws in the Wind - Part 461

From the Cornell Daily Sun: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals granted Cornell and four other elite universities permission to appeal a federal judge’s decision to certify a class of approximately 200,000 current and former students in a long-running antitrust lawsuit on Aug. 24. In a class action lawsuit, one or more plaintiffs file the suit on behalf of a larger group, known as the class, whose members may receive compensation based on the harm done to them. Certifying a class means allowing the contended group to proceed with litigation.

...The lawsuit, Henry et al. v. Brown University et al., alleges that 17 highly-selective universities including Cornell created an unlawful price-fixing scheme that reduced competition for financial aid and favored wealthy students under a group known as the 568 Presidents Group, which would violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Act federally prohibits monopolistic competition in interstate trade and commerce. Between 2023 and 2025, 12 of the accused universities settled for nearly $320 million in total, with some payments reaching Cornell students and alumni over the summer. 

Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame are the five remaining defendants in the suit, which was filed in 2022. The appeals court based its decision to allow the universities to appeal on whether or not the study, a regression analysis done by the plaintiff’s expert, was “adequately analyzed” by Judge Matthew F. Kennelly, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/09/7tcslsfcnv3n.

The 405 This Weekend

From Patch: Traffic will once again be impacted on the 405 Freeway and nearby roads beginning Friday when construction will shut down several lanes and ramps of the interstate in the Sepulveda Pass and San Fernando Valley for the entire weekend.

Here's a look at the closures, planned for 10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11 through 5 a.m. Monday, Sept. 14:

• The southbound 405 will be reduced to three lanes between Ventura Boulevard and Mulholland Drive
• The Ventura Boulevard on-ramp to the southbound 405 will be closed
• The southbound 405 off-ramp to Valley Vista Boulevard/Sepulveda Boulevard will be closed
• The Valley Vista Boulevard/Sepulveda Boulevard on-ramp to the southbound 405 will be closed
• The northbound 405 off-ramp to Getty Center Drive will be closed

Source: https://patch.com/california/santamonica/s/kq755/major-405-freeway-closures-return-friday-last-through-monday.

Yale Deal - Part 14

From the Yale Daily News: A centuries-old debate over whether Yale buildings should be exempt from Connecticut property tax is taking center stage amid the University’s controversial settlement negotiations with the Trump administration... State Democratic legislators threatened to revisit the exemption in a July letter that urged Yale not to settle with the federal government and implored that it bring the Trump administration to court over the Department of Justice’s inquiry... 

Yale’s earliest tax exemption was included in a 1745 revision of its original 1701 charter. That exemption was confirmed in Article 8 of the state’s 1818 constitution. An 1834 proviso set the income cap for tax-exempt properties at $6,000 and removed a former exemption on the homes of Yale faculty members. Other Connecticut colleges and universities are similarly exempt from taxation per state statutes... The exemption’s roots in a colonial agreement do not necessarily protect it from alteration, University of Virginia Legal Historian George White GRD ’67 wrote in an email...

The lawmakers who signed onto the July letter wrote that Yale’s original purpose of fitting students for public employment has become, in the “modern era,” an obligation to stand “as an anchor institution for free thought, free inquiry, and constitutional government.” A potential settlement with the Trump administration, they wrote, would jeopardize that obligation... Law professor and property law expert David Schleicher said in a Zoom interview that it is unlikely that a court would “ever say that Yale is not fulfilling the terms” of the state constitution. However, it would be “good for Yale to be popular in the state of Connecticut,” he said. The real implication of the letter, he suggested, is “‘if you do this, it would really piss us off.’” ...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/could-connecticut-revoke-yale-s-centuries-old-property-tax-exemption.

Who did it? And what was it?

From the Daily Californian: For two weeks, researchers and students in the electrical engineering and computer sciences department at UC Berkeley have been left in the dark concerning a massive and ongoing cybersecurity incident. UC Berkeley is still investigating the incident and officials have told​​ The Daily Californian that law enforcement has been notified. While most EECS systems are now operational, some remain inactive as campus IT personnel work to fully restore the network. The outage began Aug. 25, when all EECS Instructional & Research Information Systems, or IRIS, infrastructure was knocked offline... Campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore later told the Daily Cal in an email that campus began “containment efforts” the following day — claiming campus IT then took down “several systems” as part of a “comprehensive security protocol.” ...

Campus administration has refused to provide details about the known scope or severity of the incident and continues to avoid referring to it as a hack or cyberattack. Gilmore did confirm that UC Berkeley reported the incident to “law enforcement”; however, she declined to name the specific agency or investigative body. Most details about the incident remain unclear...

Full story https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/uc-berkeley-ai-researchers-left-in-dark-following-sweeping-eecs-cybersecurity-incident/article_7f60ce15-c13c-4d6e-9f83-8db8fd83f0e2.html.

US DOJ vs. Berkeley Law

From the US Dept. of Justice: The U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Education (ED) announced today joint investigative findings that the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Berkeley Law) deliberately discriminates against white and Asian students in its admissions process. Berkeley Law’s discriminatory conduct violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or color, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), which banned race discrimination in higher education.

...The Department’s investigation found that post-SFFA, Berkeley Law uses race, essay prompts, and other tactics to further its admissions diversity goals. For instance, Berkeley’s application asked applicants to specify their racial identity, so that admitted students could be “grouped” with others of the same “primary identity” in class. In other words, Berkeley Law intentionally separates admitted students by race...

Full news release at https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/joint-investigation-us-justice-department-and-us-department-education-finds-uc-berkeley-law.

==

Findings letter at https://www.justice.gov/crt/media/1460556/dl.

==

From the California Post: ...[Law dean Erwin] Chemerinsky pushed back on the DOJ’s allegations, insisting race plays no role in the law school’s admissions decisions. “University of California, Berkeley School of Law in its admissions decisions scrupulously complies with Proposition 209, federal statutes, and the United States Constitution. Our admissions policy is clear that race is not considered in any way in admissions decisions,” Chemerinsky said in a statement...

Full story at https://nypost.com/2026/09/09/us-news/uc-berkeley-law-intentionally-discriminated-against-white-asian-applicants-doj/.

Artificial

To Gemini:

Please summarize the article at

https://www.dailycal.org/news/berkeley-s-ghostwriter-ai-writing-permeates-campus-student-and-city-communications/article_51f15dd0-d432-4831-a4f0-eb2c2a38e607.html

From Gemini:

Based on the investigation by The Daily Californian, here is a summary of Berkeley's ghostwriter: AI writing permeates campus, student and city communications:

Key Takeaways

Investigation Scope: Staff from The Daily Californian's news and data departments analyzed over 1,000 published works and 1 million scanned words using AI-detection software (Pangram) to track how deeply AI tools have integrated into local, campus, and public communications.

Widespread Adoption: AI-generated or AI-assisted writing was detected across nearly all domains and public correspondence levels, including op-eds, messages to students, recorded public remarks, official campus communications, city-level media posts, and even obituaries.

Recent Surge: The study indicates that broad usage of generative AI writing in these sectors is a recent development, with the majority of positive AI flags occurring in materials published within the past year.

Student Government Use: Generative AI usage was particularly prevalent in student politics, with 42.1% (62 out of 143) of ASUC Senate resolutions passed in the 2025–2026 academic year flagging positive for AI writing or editing.

Institutional Responses:

UC Berkeley’s official communications policy does not explicitly ban AI-assisted writing.

Leadership, including Chancellor Rich Lyons, acknowledges that adapting to AI is crucial for student job preparation, though specific guidelines for administrative or student communications remain vague.

Nuance & Limitations: The article notes the inherent limitations of automated AI detectors (such as potential false positives) and opens a discussion on where the line should be drawn between minor AI editing and total AI generation in public correspondence.