To Dr. George Blumenthal, Chancellor,
and Mr. Mickey Aluffi, Chief of Police:

I am writing to object in the strongest terms possible to the handling of today’s protests.

While I am not unsympathetic to the point made by the protesters today, I object to their method, and must equally fault the administration for allowing them to close access to campus.

Those who engage in civil disobedience must also accept the consequences, and I saw no sign whatsoever that those in authority intended to impose consequences upon the protesters. Absent that, the protesters’ actions were mere thuggery and those who turn a blind eye to them are complicit.

As far as I know, campus authorities have an obligation to enforce the law. I don’t know whether or not there is a legal obligation to assist students, faculty and staff in getting onto and off of campus, but it certainly seems like there should be.

Instead, parking officers blocked off the streets approaching the main entrance and in essence aided the protesters.

As a commuter student who had to work all morning, I was unaware of the protests or the reason for the road closure until I checked online while in stopped traffic on Empire Grade approaching the West Entrance. I know for a fact that several students in my class commute from work in Santa Clara or San Mateo counties, and they were likely caught in the same mess – as were hundreds of others as witnessed by the mile of traffic leading up to the west entrance.

At the west entrance, I was forced to turn around by a mob of students; the single campus police officer visible, while cordial, made clear that his instructions did not allow him to take any action to allow traffic through.

I missed half a day of work to attend class today, and was prevented from doing so by the actions of a small handful of misbehaving students. The responsibility for this does not lie solely with those students, but at least equally with the administration which coddles them.

I’m not sure that your administration is not more culpable: as a society, we make an allowance for “kids” like most undergraduates, while we expect responsible professionals to live up to full adult standards.

I strongly urge you in the future to take whatever actions are necessary to ensure that protests remain peaceful and do not disrupt the normal operation for campus. If student protesters will not cooperate, they should be subject to the normal legal and academic penalties.

Regards,

Nathan Edel
Student, UCSC Baskin School of Engineering
Resident and taxpayer, San Mateo, CA

cc: Congresswoman Jackie Speier
cc: State Senator Leland Yee
cc: State Assemblyman Jerry Hill
cc: San Francisco Chronicle
cc: City on a Hill Press

(also CC’ed, but not marked in the original letter, to the Governor)
(edited to fix line breaks)

2) As of Saturday, we are officially under contract on a house. It’s here in San Mateo, really near work. Pictures are available but will not be posted here until we close, which will be on like March 2nd or something like that. Keep your fingers crossed that nothing gets screwed up on the financing.

On the down side, I was sick as a dog with a cold all weekend.

The one very amusing thing that Cuil DID find was a recent LJ/blog post critiquing a graph in the first of my two grad school papers: Your Graph is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

As an aside, there is a rather lame blogmeme sitting in my lifejournal (cubicle_hermit) which will probably be erased, but for those interested, you might look now.

The Public Elites
Some schools didn’t make our list because their students are too good. The best of the best.

NEWSWEEK’s Challenge Index is designed to recognize schools that challenge average students, and not magnet or charter schools that draw only the best students in their areas. These top performers, listed below in alphabetical order, were excluded from the list of top high schools because, despite their exceptional quality, their sky-high SAT and ACT scores indicate they have few or no average students.

[snippage to lower on the page]

Hunter College High School, New York City: College prep school that serves grades 7-12 and is tied to the City University of New York system.

Oddly enough, Bronx Science got better sounding coverage than Stuyvesant, and Brooklyn Tech wasn’t mentioned at all.

(This was accidentally set as a Page, rather than a Post. It was originally posted on May 19th)

Marie said it would make me look like an egg. It sort of did, although this photo (taken after about 60 hours’ re-growth) doesn’t really show it.

PS, for family in NYC – if you get me the Mr. Beer, please have it shipped directly

Gah. I hope my air conditioner works at home.

1) As I was scootering on Hillsdale between Edgewater and El Camino a helicopter went coverhead. This, in itself is not that unusual; we get traffic, police and occasionally executive helicopters a lot – Hillsdale is between (probably roughly halfway, in fact) between SFO and the San Carlos airport.

What WAS unusual is this was VERY obviously not a civilian helicopter. It went by quickly, but it was the narror profile and shape (especially the front and back cockpit) of an attack helicopter. I’m pretty sure it was some sort of Cobra, not an Apache, as it was not angular enough for the latter – though this much is on looking at photos online and not an instant recognition.

Interesting. I’d have needed a much better camera than the one in my phone to get it.

2) We had a fire alarm malfunction at work today. They were supposed to be doing some kind of checking on the sprinkler system, and apparantly they set it off. Annoying.