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Education The Courts

Judge Rules UC-Berkeley Must Freeze Its Enrollment To Assess Ecological Impact of Its Undergrads (slate.com) 88

Posted by BeauHD from the stringent-environmental-laws dept.
schwit1 shares a report from Slate: Enrolling more students at one of America's best public universities might be bad for the environment. That's the conclusion of California Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman, who on Aug. 23 ordered the University of California-Berkeley to temporarily freeze the number of students it admits every year under the California Environmental Quality Act, putting crowded classrooms in the same category as heavy infrastructure like highways and airports. "Further increases in student enrollment above the current enrollment level at UC-Berkeley could result in an adverse change or alteration of the physical environment," the judge wrote (PDF).

How'd we get here? Under California law, universities are periodically required to prepare a long-term development plan that includes enrollment forecasts and an environmental impact study. In 2005, UCâ"Berkeley produced one projecting that its headcount would stabilize at about 33,500 students. Instead, the school ended up enrolling more than 42,000 by 2020, with plans to admit more still in the years to come. The university didn't think that welcoming more students to campus required it to perform a whole new environmental review. But a state appeals court in San Francisco disagreed in 2020, ruling (PDF) that increasing enrollment counted as a "project" that needed to be evaluated under the CEQA, just like building a stadium or dorm would be. In doing so, the judges sided with a local community group, Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods, which sued UC-Berkeley in 2019 and set the stage for last week's lower court decision officially hitting pause on the school's enrollment ambitions. California's flagship public university must now assess the ecological cost of its student body at once.
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Judge Rules UC-Berkeley Must Freeze Its Enrollment To Assess Ecological Impact of Its Undergrads More

Judge Rules UC-Berkeley Must Freeze Its Enrollment To Assess Ecological Impact of Its Undergrads

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  • They pull up a few spreadsheets, push some paper across a desk, plan for environmental considerations, then every university of a similar size can use the findings. I'm for it.

    • Yeah, not doing a complete environmental impact statement is pretty much a paperwork issue here, but not one they can avoid. Easy to fix. But I wouldn't be surprised if it takes them a long time anyway, and if they cry about it the whole time.

  • This has absolutely nothing (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @07:10PM (#61754449)
    To do with the environment. If you click the link you'll see who brought the lawsuit that started this. It was an organization called Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods. This law was explicitly created to limit the growth of the University so that the people living near it wouldn't have to deal with the extra traffic and the gentrification.

    Mind you there are effective ways to deal with both and still grow the University but they're unpopular because nobody wants to pay for infrastructure spending or to contain out of control property prices at a high enough level in the state or you don't just get screwed over by wealthy venture capitalists forcing you out of your home.

    This isn't an environmental issue it's a zoning issue and I'm appalled that slashdot editors would post this here. It's mean spirited clickbait of the worst sort.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      It's good clickbait though. Slashdot's advertising masters will be happy. You're the second comment I see, but I expect the rest to be about how dumb California is, libtards, oh the humanity.

      Great fodder for Slashdot's aging bitter IT guy readership.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by matthewd ( 59896 )

      It might technically/fundamentally be a "zoning" issue but in the real world it's not: it's CEQA. Universities have to follow CEQA requirements for environmental impact of their projects and lawsuits can be brought against them under CEQA. If that's not right, then I'd call it a bug in the legislation that allows such things to happen.

      • now stop and think about how and why those laws got passed in the first place... You're so very close to an epiphany.

        It's not a bug, it's a feature. It let them pass a law that otherwise would have been unpopular (limiting the growth of the university). In politics they call these sorts of Shenanigans "how the sausage is made".
      • Makes you wonder how many Berkeley professors and alumni's were involved in passing that legislation.

    • The impact on the neighborhood is part of the environmental impact. That's always part of what is in an environmental impact statement. Often it is the dominant part of the analysis.

      The headline slashdot used is flamebait; the decision has nothing to do with ecological impact, it has to do with environmental impact. Which is mostly about the effect on neighborhoods in urban projects. Sometimes it includes runoff if your project leaks into waterways. The ruling is mostly about housing projects, and they have

    • Re:This has absolutely nothing (Score:5, Informative)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @07:50PM (#61754545)

      This law was explicitly created to limit the growth of the University so that the people living near it wouldn't have to deal with the extra traffic and the gentrification.

      That's also not correct. It covers *all* development in California. It's particularly effective against universities as they are required to submit long-term development plans for review. It's also being used to halt the redevelopment of an old hospital at UCSF to add beds and bring it up to modern seismic standards:
      https://www.pncsf.org/new-page [pncsf.org]

      The abuse of this law - to prevent high density housing, homeless shelters, bike lanes, you name it - is well documented.

      • Yep, NIMBYs have been using it for years to stop housing development, leading to coastal areas in particular building about half the housing we needed, which drove California housing prices through the roof.

        Source: CA Legislative Analyst's Office: https://lao.ca.gov/reports/201... [ca.gov]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by stikves ( 127823 )

        It all makes sense...

        You bought your house for $70K, and now young families are running up to pay $2.5 million for it. Why would you want it to change?

        And those young families have raided their 401ks for the down payment. If the housing market moves towards any sign of sanity, they will lose a lot. Do you want your $2.5 million house to be worth only $2 million? Of course not.

        And we can't give permits willy nilly. It used to be cherry orchards around here: https://www.mercurynews.com/20... [mercurynews.com] . But we have no

    • o do with the environment. If you click the link you'll see who brought the lawsuit that started this. It was an organization called Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods. This law was explicitly created to limit the growth of the University so that the people living near it wouldn't have to deal with the extra traffic and the gentrification.

      Aha, so the inner-city thug lobby is behin this. How dare entrepreneurial young people move in and fix up the neighborhood! Next thing you know there will be new restaurants opening, crack dens being replaced by art galleries. Bourgeois students ruin everything.

      • the inner-city thug lobby

        Poor frightened racist, scared of a really moronic boogeyman. Fuck an A.

      • They don't move in and improve the neighborhood... They move in, go to school, party-hardy, pay little to no taxes, vote the woke vote and then move on in a few years feeling smug they'll improve the world... someday. Maybe even become the next Martin Shkreli, Elizabeth Holmes, Bernie Madhoff... Or even a Sackler!

        • You're talking about the students, not the gentrifiers.

        • The thing is, Berkeley IS a "college town" (albeit one that's part of a large metropolitan area). As a practical matter, almost everyone within a mile of a large university ultimately has some connection to it. At the very least, the school was there & dominating the area decades before they moved there... and it was probably a big reason WHY they moved there.

          Consider Gainesville, Florida. Sure, there are a few thousand random "Crackers" in Alachua County... but nearly everyone ELSE who isn't a student

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by c-A-d ( 77980 )

        That is pretty much what I heard when the nimbys started to complain about gentrification in the Gastown neighbourhood of Vancouver.

        For those that don't know, Gastown borders the "Downtown East Side" which is basically Vancouver's skid row. It had a bunch of SROs, which are basically low-cost slum-hotels, which were converted into proper apartments.

    • No wants to pay for the infrastructure improvements, but I suspect they are happy about the revenue that the university generates for the area. Apparently, 70% of the revenue is spent in the Bay area. That's from a $3 billion budget. So, yeah, cry me a river.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      First off there is exactly -one- thing that generally and universally correlates with ecological degradation and that is human population. More people more harm to the local environment. So right away you are completely and incorrect.

      However depending on how you define environment it can mean a lot more than ecology. It certainly can me the character of a place. You act as if its wrong from someone who has either been in a place for a long time or worked really hard to buy their little slice of heaven to o

      • It's downright astonishing how many contradictions are built into left-wing politics. It's too crowded, let's import more people! Houses are too expensive, let's not build more of them! College debt is too burdensome, let's send more kids, including the ones we know won't succeed!

    • People are part of the environment.

    • Good. A limit on enrollment might force them to raise the bar for admissions instead of lowering it while raising tuition. They may even have to look at their budgets and think about whether they really need more administrative staff than faculty, or reconsider the legitimacy of having over 60% of their funding go to cover administrative costs.

      Hell, if California's university system generally faced enrollment limits it might prevent them from helping cover up the failure of California's secondary educa

      • They may even have to look at their budgets and think about whether they really need more administrative staff than faculty,

        This. All *administrative* staff must teach at least 3 credit hours per semester/tri-mester. No more free-riders!

  • Stupid kids require more training. More training requires more resources. Using more resources has a negative ecological impact.

    Looks like we're back to enrolling only top students based on academics.

    • Well aren't you an optimist.

    • Stupid kids require more training. More training requires more resources. Using more resources has a negative ecological impact.

      Looks like we're back to enrolling only top students based on academics.

      LOL, no. You've already got high scoring and achieving Asian kids being locked out of prestigious schools because of "diversity" set-asides to pump up the numbers of black and Hispanic students. What makes you think schools will take a purely merit-based approach now?

      All this is going to do is push out kids that WOULD have gotten in based on merit down to a "next-choice" school. Kids that would have gotten into Berkeley back in the day will be slotted down to something like UC-Davis (assuming that schools l

    • Why did we ever stop? All we have done since has increased costs and decreased value. Investing educational resources in the students most likely to produce the greatest return on those investments sounds pretty good. Investing those resources in students that didn't even qualify to graduate high school hasn't worked out so well for anyone, including those students.

  • I'm assuming they'll claim with a straight face that more undergrads will result in *less* environmental impact, seeing how so many more kids will be trained to be all tree-hugger woke 'n' shit by going to Berkeley.

  • Bad slanted reporting (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dynedain ( 141758 ) <slashdot2&anthonymclin,com> on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @07:29PM (#61754503) Homepage

    As always. A California Environmental Impact report is not about ecological impact, that's only of many considerations. It's also about traffic, safety, noise, utility and other resource demands, views, parking, etc.

    The "environmental impact report" is the standard process any large development in CA must go through to ensure there's a full understanding of how it will affect the neighborhoods around it. But the name makes people latch on for stupid Fox News-type sensationalist reporting about those crazy libtard Californians.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 )

      But the name makes people latch on for stupid Fox News-type sensationalist reporting about those crazy libtard Californians.

      (Glances at the fine article)

      Ah yes, that well known Fox News-like right wing rag, Slate ...

  • What about the environmental impact of stupid court cases and moronic judges? How much oxygen and precious electrons were wasted in this whole process? If they are going to take away people's right to education they should be willing to put their consumptions and privileges under the microscope too.

  • I don't agree with the judge's reasoning (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @07:46PM (#61754535)
    I don't agree with the judge's reasoning, but I agree with the outcome. I think all colleges are overpopulated because everyone feels like their child should get a college education, whereas a college education is not for everyone. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for everyone to continue to learn throughout life and even being able to take any college course they want for free at any age, but the only thing we've been able to achieve in the past 30 years is raising demand artificially, which has lead to the cost of the supply going through the roof, all to the detriment of the student who go to college, get a degree, owe $100K+ upon graduation, and end up getting jobs at minimum wage and pay the minimum on their student loans for 20 years.

    • I realize that a highly uneducated population is needed for conservatives to attain and stay in power, but a blanket numerical restriction on the number of college admissions is a stupid way to react to "too many people getting an education." For one thing, in order to compete with China and Europe we will need engineers and scientists, so a numerical restriction without adjusting the ratios of majors is will be detrimental. Also, while it will work great for some, for most people the lifelong learning path

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )
        Sure it is good to have lots of STEM slots. But that's not what the GP was talking about (and I bet you knew that). This is about the hundreds of types of jobs that have little to nothing to do with what is taught in college. Sales jobs, retail jobs, welding and construction and many other fields and jobs don't really require a college degree. Engineering sure but not the welder who follows the plans. And requiring those folks to take a $40,000 or more loan just to get an entry level job only benefits

        • If there's a shortage of retail jobs, why do many of those jobs pay at or around minimum wage? Store clerks ought to be making six figures like a software developer.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Just because someone loads a truck today doesn't mean that tomorrow they won't find a more highly skilled job. Without a degree they tend to get stuck in low paying jobs forever, with little opportunity to move up.

          The solution is to increase opportunities for people without degrees through on-the-job training. Employers don't want to do that though, they just want off-the-shelf workbots that they can burn out and discard in a few years.

        • Something else to consider: in my near 25 years experience in the tech industry, I have never once seen or heard of anyone from a University or College reach out to my employer, even with an informal survey, to ask what sorts of criteria we are seeking in prospective entry-levels.

          I have heard of larger corporations like Google and Amazon put funding into certain education programs. It seems like it works the other way around sometimes. But most of the entry-level candidates that I interview are sorely lacki

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )

        The best way to promote wiser college decisions is to approve loans based on the career prospects for that major. If you are going to major in a subject that has poor career prospects then you shouldn't be getting a federal loan unless you showed good performance in indicators in the relevant subject because you would clearly need to excel in that major to live comfortably

        Yeah, while that may work for things like engineering, it doesn't quite work for many other subjects. As a matter of fact, the fine arts would suffer greatly under that model. Most of the painters and musicians whose works we adore today were piss poor and would never get a loan under your model.

        • Re:I don't agree with the judge's reasoning (Score:4, Insightful)

          by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Thursday September 02, 2021 @12:35AM (#61755333)

          Yeah, while that may work for things like engineering, it doesn't quite work for many other subjects. As a matter of fact, the fine arts would suffer greatly under that model. Most of the painters and musicians whose works we adore today were piss poor and would never get a loan under your model.

          If great artists are being made thanks to majoring in fine art or music, why wouldn't the loans for those majors get approved? Banks would be tripping over each other to provide those loans. The only way they wouldn't be approved is if the chance of being a successful artist by majoring in music is low. Loans won't get approved if it means for every great artist, hundreds or thousands are relegated to being poor/broke. And that is how it ought to be. Why would we *want* so many people to end up in terrible life/financial situations just so that we get our one Yo-yo Ma or John Willliams? And btw, most of our top musicians never even went near a college campus. Do you think Madonna knows what the inside of a college campus even looks like? What college did Elvis Presley go to?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xenx ( 2211586 )

            Do you think Madonna knows what the inside of a college campus even looks like?

            Madonna was a straight A student. She went to University of Michigan, but dropped out to pursue her dance career.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Most of the people with music degrees go into the technical aspects of music production. Recording, mastering, acoustics, performance technicians, sound editing for TV and movies etc. The stars are just the front of a much larger machine that produces the music.

            Even if some degrees have limited commercial opportunities, e.g. history, they are still a great benefit to society. How much better off would we be if we learned lessons from history instead of repeating those mistakes again and again?

            The other issu

            • Even if some degrees have limited commercial opportunities, e.g. history, they are still a great benefit to society. How much better off would we be if we learned lessons from history instead of repeating those mistakes again and again?

              Ok, then taxpayer fund some jobs for them or give them scholarships. My point is not that some majors are useless (well, face the reality that some are, but thats besides the point), my point is that we shouldn't be putting people into massive debt just because we need a few historians while discarding the rest of them into debt traps. We shouldn't be taking advantage of misinformed people. A lot of people don't realize what their life can be like if they major in something for which they will never be give

          • Do you think Madonna knows what the inside of a college campus even looks like?

            Probably the frat house rooms ...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lsllll ( 830002 )
            The problem with what you're proposing is that you don't know who the next Yo-Yo Ma will be until he materializes from his peer group of 10000. That's why I believe public colleges should be free, but limited, the ratio of majors according to the needs of society and other factors decided ahead of time, and there be more stringent college entrance exams (according to the field of study, not a general "one size fits all").
        • Resources are limited. What are our priorities? Shouldn't we invest our shared resources in those things that reflect our priorities and will have the greatest return?
      • If that keeps conservatives in power, why are cities and States run by liberals graduating high school students that can't read or do math at a high school level, and sending them to college for remedial courses that get no college credit but all the college debt? Why try to send everyone, when realistically only the higher performing high school students will gain enough from it to justify the time and money - especially considering that increasing the number of students increases costs but doesn't increa

        • How were those statistics calculated, what studies are you referring to?

          • Variously, but more from grade-level achievement data than graduation rates, which have been manipulated to cover up grotesque failures.

            According to NYC's own data, something like 78% of students graduate high school, but less than half of them can read at grade level (infohub.nyced.org). How are they graduating if they can't perform at grade level? LA's public schools are slightly worse (https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/dst2019/pdf/2020016xl4.pdf). Baltimore shows graduation ra

    • I'm all for everyone ... being able to take any college course they want for free at any age

      From whom are you going to steal the funds needed to provide that course?

  • I promise to raid junkyards and pour gasoline and light a pile of used tires every night.

    What's my environmental social score?

    Maybe I can toss some plastic and aluminium foil into a recycle bin every couple weeks to offset...

  • If they mean global warming, this is absurd. If they mean the livability of the area for all those excess students plus everyone already there, this makes perfect sense.

  • That's how it's called. And when it comes to omnipotent control, "government by judges" is on par with China's PCC. (But you won't hear that on the TV)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Not so much 'government by judges.' More like 'you have a law on the books. Comply with it.'

  • Bigger piles of...

    (For the non-Californians, those are the stockyards you drive by on I-5 as you head from UC Berkeley to Los Angeles. The smell is memorable.)

  • The judge has a nephew who's an environmental impact consultant.

  • Thanks to the prevalence of poorly considered environmental protection laws, which are ripe for abuse by obstructionist special interest groups, it isn't the dumbest thing I've read this week.

    • This was not an environmental law, although it is named at that.
      It's kind of like the conservative groups that call themselves "The Center for Racial Harmony", but the board is 100% white

      The major focus of this law is, was, and always will be an attempt to limit population growth. California is famous for putting property value growth above housing. This law was intended to do exactly what it does, put the property values of existing homeowners above anything else.

  • ...a judge will forbid students from eating cabbage and beans, in order to improve air quality.

  • When I went to UC Berkeley... (Score:3)

    by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Thursday September 02, 2021 @07:14AM (#61756027)

    When I was a student at UCB 20 years ago, the enrollment of students was about 30 thousand and some change. This place already felt very crowded. I also recall that the city of Berkeley was extremely hostile to any sort of expansion of the university's facilities. I can't even imagine what it's like to have 40+ thousand students in the same place.

  • Cal has always been an evil enterprise. They were evil when they were extreme right wingers, and they are evil today when they are extreme left wingers. The one constant is that they are authoritarian assholes. I'm a Cal grad.

  • Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods

    I didn't know that's what NIMBY meant. Wasn't UC-Berk already sued once for knowingly going over the limits admitting lucrative full-tuition, out-of-state (read: foreign, asian) students? Once you could make it with a 100,000 volume library. Now you need a $2B STEM lab. The courts will sort it out, meanwhile CU Boulder is the better school. :^)

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