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This doesn’t warrant a Nuclear-Free Protest Bell post because there’s not a whole lot protesters can do now that the university officially signed the heavily disputed $500 million alternative energy research deal with BP earlier this week. Nevertheless, we thought we’d share our latest crankypants attitude about the critics who’ve got it all wrong.
- The writing’s on the wall. We’ve all seen the scribbled bathroom stall “END CORPORATE IMPERIALISM–SAY NO TO BP DEAL” messages which seem to go nicely with the “Does he really love me?” and the “Stop writing on the bathroom walls! Take care of the Earth!” notes.
Clearly, bathroom-stall writing is effective on all fronts. “Corporate imperialism” has won, he probably doesn’t love you if you have to ask and imploring bathroom walls to stop writing on themselves simply won’t work.
- The protests didn’t work either. If anything, they called attention to the pitfalls of the early drafts of the BP contract, the later drafts of which, in our completely uneducated opinion, probably encouraged greater accountability and academic freedom that ultimately allowed the various legal staffs of the University of California to approve the final version.
Still, some remain cautious about who does what where and when. We see no problem with criticizing details that make or break a transparent contract, but it is with the bathroom-wallers of the world out there that we take issue. Calling the Energy Biosciences Institute “corporate imperialism” merely because the partnering institution happens to be a corporation gives as much credibility to the critic as it does to the toilet stall it was written on.
UC Berkeley Officially Signs $500 Million Partnership with Energy Giant BP [Daily Cal]
It’s a Dealbreaker [Daily Cal]
UC Berkeley, BP finally sign contract for research project [SF Gate]
Comments:
Nov 19, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Number 1 wants the Clog to report journalistically? It’s surprising that someone who enjoys pissing and moaning poetic about liberal issues doesn’t also understand what a blog is supposed to be.
Nov 20, 2007 at 2:07 am
as in, i’ll bite…what is a blog ‘supposed’ to be?
Nov 19, 2007 at 1:16 pm
How uneducated you are is clear based on your idea of the “earlier drafts of the contract”. Students never got to see any contract until after it was signed—and now that is has been released, it is clear (as your own editorial staff agrees) that the contract is even worse for academic freedom than the proposed deal. Stop beating up on critics of the deal—so what if some kid wrote on a bathroom stall, because the Stop BP-Berkeley campaign as a whole drew on a broad range of professor, grad and undergrad support with criticisms backed by the SF Chron and the DC. Instead of pointlessly critiquing the critics, why not do some responsible journalism and report on the content of the biggest corporate deal in university history?