Evaluating the protest’s setting necessitates an explanation and contextualization of both the stadium site and UC Berkeley at large.
A scenic stadium with a perilous setting was the backdrop for the tree sit-in
Constructed in time for the 29th Big Game in 1923 and designed by lead campus architect John Galen Howard, California Memorial Stadium is closing in on its centennial as the home of Golden Bear football. Sitting atop the campus, the stadium overlooks Strawberry Canyon and the whole of the Bay Area, with vistas from the mid-Peninsula to the Marin Headlands available for fans to admire on the clearest days.
For all the stunning views and (hopefully) entertaining football the stadium has to offer, it comes at a structural cost: California Memorial Stadium is bisected by the Hayward Fault. The strike-slip fault runs right between the end zones and, over the years, caused sections of the stadium to slowly separate from each other. David M. Doolin, Donald L. Wells, and Patrick L. Williams wrote a report of this “fault creep” for the February 2005 issue of Environmental and Engineering Geoscience, in which they discuss the extent of the fracturing the fault has caused. The approximately 32-foot-wide split in the northeast and south sections of the stadium placed additional stress upon the structure, and letting it continue unchecked would jeopardize its safety.1 Doolin et al.’s report provides an essential piece of the backdrop for the plans for both the Simpson Center and the stadium at large. With the Simpson Center being attached to the stadium, its construction a) was coupled with that of plans to seismically retrofit the stadium; and b) fell under the auspices of the Alquist-Priolo Act, which imposes cost restrictions on buildings constructed in fault zones.2 The latter point spurred the Panoramic Hill Association, a nearby group of homeowners, to raise concerns to the University and eventually file a lawsuit concerning the construction project.3 It was with this lawsuit that the seismic element was joined at the hip to the tree-sitting protest — as would later be seen, the success of the seismic cause dictated that of the arboreal endeavors.
The University is an activist flashpoint built on stolen Native land
UC Berkeley has arguably the greatest reputation for activism of any institution of higher learning anywhere in the world. From the tumultuous Free Speech Movement of fall 1964 onward, the University has been a site of innumerable protests and rallies for causes ranging from student rights to institutional divestment from apartheid South Africa. This “Protest Central” outlook colors wider perspectives toward the University, as Thomas Bonk discussed in “A branch office for Berkeley protesters,” his late 2007 article for the Los Angeles Times.4 While Bonk goes into detail about the status of the protest at the time — the tree-sitters fenced in while both sides awaited a ruling from the Alameda County court — it’s the quick and casual nature of his greater remarks on the University’s activist history that has stuck with me the most. The ready acceptance of protests at Cal has the potential to lead to a lack of respect for said protests and their causes. While the tree-sitters certainly had their supporters, there was also the widespread feeling of exasperation over another protest interfering with University business, as well as with the greater community, especially on game days.
While the tree-sit certainly belongs to the greater campus protest tradition, the Native burial ground claims add a particular emphasis on the University’s status as a land-grant institution. Through the Morrill Act of 1862, proceeds from the sales of ‘publicly owned land’ were used to fund colleges and universities through the United States, of which the University of California was one. What this sale of land more truly entailed was the expropriation of Native American homelands for the benefit of the White ruling class — a “land grab” rather than a land grant. The Land Grab Universities project found that $730,860 (around $13.4 million today, adjusted for inflation) was raised through the sale of 148,636 acres of land to the UC.5 This side of the University’s history has only been opened up for discussion relatively recently, with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) facilitating dialogue on the status of institutions unilaterally occupying Indigenous lands.
As it pertains to the tree-sit, RunningWolf claimed that the oak grove was situated on a burial ground, and that building on it would violate the remains. The University countered the claims through anthropology professor Kent Lightfoot, who cited a finding that the one body unearthed during stadium construction was likely “an isolated case.”6 The combination of direct quotes and citations of archaeological endeavors from both sides of the oak grove conflict in Carolyn Jones’ February 2007 article for the San Francisco Chronicle demonstrates the evidence-based reliance at the core of both protester and University claims. In particular, it sheds light on the superiority given to transcribed, “official” evidence over oral histories or other traditional methods that have endured without the same recording. Because of this academically based prioritization, the University is given a further advantage over the Native protesters. Even if their claims are correct — something I am in no position to be able to discern — the orality of these claims makes it relatively easy for the University to academically counter. The onus falls further on the Indigenous peoples to provide clear evidence, resulting in a positive feedback loop that only further tilts the battle in favor of the institution.
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David M. Doolin, Donald L. Wells, and Patrick L. Williams, “Assessment of Fault-Creep Deformation at Memorial Stadium, University of California, Berkeley, California,” Environmental and Engineering Geoscience 11, no. 2 (2005): 125–39.
“Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zones,” California Department of Conservation, 2019, https://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/alquist-priolo.
Richard Brenneman, “Panoramic Hill Residents Say UC Stadium Plans Are Illegal,” Berkeley Daily Planet, November 3, 2006, https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2006-11-03/article/25499?headline=Panoramic-Hill-Residents-Say-UC-Stadium-Plans-Are-Illegal--By-Richard-Brenneman.
Thomas Bonk, “A branch office for Berkeley protesters,” Los Angeles Times, November 7, 2007, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-07-sp-caltrees7-story.html.
Land-Grab Universities, 2020, https://www.landgrabu.org/universities.
Ryan Cole, “Activists Say Stadium Project Site May Be on Burial Ground,” The Daily Californian, February 21, 2007, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucbk.ark:/28722/h2hx15q8t.