Since you can’t turn your head without hearing the words “budget crisis,” we’ll assume you’ve heard about the cuts in funding to various departments on campus. Since the problems began, some faculty even raised the question of cutting back funding for athletics. And this Thursday, the faculty voted to “urge the school to stop subsidizing its money-losing athletics department as soon as it legally can.”

Now take heed—this doesn’t mean that the football team is going be thrown unceremoniously from the gravy train. The legal part makes everything much more difficult. The Chancellor himself noted that contracts don’t expire for a few more years, so the university will “continue to help the department stay afloat.”

It just means that they’re looking now for a way to make the athletics department self-sufficient. And yes, that could mean cuts to athletic teams.

Professors already seething from earlier cutbacks are not kind to athletics funding. Michael O’Hare, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, put it this way: “The university is about values of scholarship, teaching and the arts, not swimming, running and haute cuisine.”

Them’s fightin’ words. Use your own and sound off in the comments below.

Image source: Neubie under Creative Commons
UC Berkeley faculty endorse cut in athletic aid [San Francisco Chronicle]
Earlier: To Subsidize or Not to Subsidize

So what is parkour exactly? Etymologically (oh yes, we’re going there) “parkour” comes from the French word “parcours” which means “route.” Basically, though, it’s a lot of people trying to find the most interesting way to get around, including leaping from building to building, jumping off walls, entering a room through a window, and lurching crazily from surface to surface.

The group in Berkeley seems pretty hardcore. (Hardcore parkour–yes, we had to go there, too.) These traceurs (the trendtastic word for parkour devotees) get accolades from bystanders.

Albert Kong, a linguistics student at Berkeley, is one such dude. “He moves around objects like river water around a stopped canoe. He looks both graceful and strong in the process,” the article gushes.

Pure poetry. Are we the only ones sensing a martial arts movie in the works? “Parkour on Lower Sproul,” perhaps? We can see the tagline right now: One man. One million ways to get around.

French-born parkour goes mainstream [Inside Bay Area]
Image source: JB London under Creative Commons

As All Hallows’ Eve approaches, the evil spirits from other realms begin to awaken, entering the portal of our world. (Don’t worry, this will end up being about sports. Just hang in there.) Berkeley’s least favorite spirit, the hobgoblin known as budget cuts, is hard at work again, cackling and doing whatever it can to make college less fun.

Now some professors are saying that sports should no longer be subsidized. (Tellingly, they call themselves the Sports Grinch Club.) Even some Knight thinks so—the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which reports that there is an “out-of-control ‘arms race’ among college football programs competing to pay increasingly high coaches’ salaries and other associated costs.”

Athletic departments around the country are almost always out of dough. Cal is out to the tune of about $6 million this year, in spite of a budget of nearly $65 million (about $2.3 million of which went to football coach Jeff Tedford last year, btw). Chancellor Robert Birgenau is expected to lend more than $12 million by the end of next year from a discretionary fund “of interest income, gifts and undesignated bequests.”

Yee-owch. Maybe this deficit is small potatoes to the university guys, but for those of us contemplating curdled milk as an attempt to delay going to the store, these potatoes are quite large. Especially when you consider those pesky fee increases …

That said, we would like to live in a world where nerds and athletes can coexist peacefully, with funding going to both sides. After all, this is a post-”Breakfast Club” world.

Some profs want Cal to stop subsidizing sports [SFGate]
Image source: Monica’s Dad under Creative Commons

Yesterday, though, we found one that might just take the (cup)cake. Fine, giant $25,000 cupcake cars in a Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog are hardly the weirdest things to come out of Berkeley, but that pun was just too entICING to resist. Alright, alright, we’ll knock it off. We just think it’s rather telling that our first thought while reading about “Bay Area artist” Lisa Pongrace’s cupcakey creations  on a national, in no way regional blog was “Hm. Five bucks says she’s from B-Town.” And we were right:

THINGS WE NEED: A $25,000 Cupcake Car [BWE]
Cupcake Cars [YouTube]

As you may or may not have heard, someone has apologized to you recently. No, it isn’t that girl who hit you with her backpack in the slap-dash rush out of Wheeler on Friday afternoon. It isn’t even the guy who laughed uproariously at inappropriate moments while you were trying to watch a movie.  No, it was Sandy Barbour, Berkeley’s Director of Athletics.

Before you get excited, she isn’t apologizing for a soul-crushing Homecoming.  She’s actually apologizing for a more literal crushing—that of your body against a complete stranger’s at Memorial Stadium.  The letter of apology, addressed rather ambiguously to “Cal Football Fans,” laments the lack of crowd control at this past Saturday’s game.

In particular, Ms. Barbour states:

“An immediate review after the game found that almost half the crowd entered the stadium through just two gates – Gates 1 and 2 – near the north side of the stadium. The resulting bottleneck caused lines to back up, especially on the concourse level.”

In other words, there was an honest-to-God clusterf*ck.

But they’ll do better next time. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves as we clutch our Cal foam finger forlornly and rock back and forth, wailing softly. Everything will be better next time.

Image source: ian_ransley under Creative Commons
Cal Athletics to Examine Crowd Control [Cal Bears]

We feel kind of bad for finding this amusing. Except not really. Uh, go Bears?

Cal Band is Brutal [YouTube], via California Golden Blogs

“We Work.”

Well done, Stanford. Although we seem to be alone in our approval, considering the Athletic Board has apparently expressed its discontent with the catchy little epigram. We can’t understand why anything so original and inspired could provoke the slightest degree of vexation. Sure, the current economic crisis renders it a tad on the douchey side. And taking into account an indisputable reputation for exorbitant wealth and snobbery, it might come off as mildly ironic as well.

But mostly, “We Work” is downright stupid—and, as such, hilarious.

Image Source: swanksalot under Creative Commons
Stanford football: Is the new slogan dumb, insensitive, or … ??? (I can’t think of a third option) [CollegeSportsHotline]

Prolonging your grad date might not work either, if that’s what you’re thinking. Seniors, you’re screwed. Juniors, you’re probably screwed too. We hope you plan on getting a Ph.D. in something useful.

Meanwhile, we’re in a nursing shortage. Hint hint.

Or, if you want to denounce your materialistic lifestyle and you’re into that whole hippie thing, there’s always wwoofing.

Image Source: left-hand under Creative Commons, edited by Christine Borden
Congrats, graduate – good luck finding a job [SF Chron]

In other words, your presence is requested at the contract vote for Panda Express on Lower Sproul. Will protesters prevent this momentous decision? Probably not, but we’d never say no to another appearance of a panda suit.

Day: Tuesday, April 14
Time: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Where: Eshleman Hall

Image Source: Anna Hiatt, Daily Cal
The Panda Express Contract is Voted On. [Facebook]
Earlier: ‘You Can Try to Stop the Panda, but Eventually …’

So what was up with those weirdos on Sproul today with the blue recycling bins? Oh, that’s SQUELCH!–just smile and move along, folks. Earlier today party chair Andy Morris e-mailed us a schedule of events for Upper Sproul Plaza:

4/2/09: SQUELCH! Recyling Day
4/3/09:  Smokeout of Campus Politics (Hookah on Sproul)
4/6/09:  The Infamous Annual Vibrator Races
4/7/09:  Historical Battle Reinactment With Water Balloons (exact battle TBD).  In fact, if the clog would like to encourage readers to vote on what battle we should reinact I would follow their will.
4/8-4/9:  Probably something.   But really, if people didn’t vote on the first day they’re not likely to vote on the second or third.

If you have any other ideas, leave a comment.

Morris also notes that the hookah tomorrow is free for all and not just for the lonely-looking SQUELCH! person puffing away.

Image Source: Eric Hamilton under Creative Commons