Free Republic

OAKLAND -- The Alameda County judge who presided over the dispute between UC Berkeley and tree-sitters seeking to block a construction project, Barbara J. Miller, was found dead Friday at her home in Oakland. She was 58. Judge Miller was found a little after 6 p.m., Oakland police said. The cause of her death has not been determined. Judge Miller was elected to the Superior Court for Alameda County in 1996 after having been a commissioner of the court since 1987. She served as presiding judge in 2004 and 2005. During her years on the bench, Judge Miller's best-known case...

Berkeley once again dipped into U.S. foreign policy Tuesday when its City Council unanimously passed a resolution asking the Obama administration to withdraw troops and private armed contractors from Afghanistan and cease drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The issue proved to be the liveliest of the evening, with members of the public protesting when councilmembers Susan Wengraf and Linda Maio suggested postponing the item to correct ambiguous wording in the resolution. Code Pink, CopWatch and Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission, which recommended the resolution to the council, voiced their support for immediate troop withdrawal. Melody Ermachild Chavis, author of...

A group of UC Berkeley law students will launch a torture accountability initiative next week dedicated to holding the authors of the infamous torture memos accountable, reinstating respect for the prohibition against torture and ending executive abuse of power and impunity. Called the Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture (B.A.A.T.), at their kick-off Oct. 13 the group will host a panel of lawyers and legal academics to discuss the memos crafted by the Bush administration’s legal counsels at the Department of Justice, including Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo. Yoo, who spent the previous semester at Chapman University, returned to the UC...

John Yoo is back teaching at the University of California Berkeley Law School this semester and there doesn’t seem to be much anyone can do about it. A few UC faculty members have pronounced that they consider this to be disgraceful, and some of the more colorful citizen protest groups have trained their sights on Yoo’s public appearances and even hounded him at home, but the Law School itself seems to be paralyzed. One would think that being an obviously incompetent or dishonest practitioner of the legal trade would be enough to disqualify him from teaching impressionable students, but law...

Berkeley would become the first city in the United States to independently try to comply with U.N. treaties on torture, civil rights and racial discrimination, if the City Council passes a measure on the issue tonight. The measure would require the city to file biennial reports to the United Nations on how - or whether - the city meets international human rights standards. In Berkeley, that could include its record on homelessness, the achievement gap among different racial groups at Berkeley High and the presence of John Yoo, a UC Berkeley School of Law professor and Berkeley resident who authored...

Berkeley has finally come up with an answer to the question posed by the annual parade: How Berkeley Can You Be? The answer is: Very Berkeley - as long as you don't sell beer off the back of floats, toss candy to kids or walk naked down University Avenue. Those restrictions, plus some unexpected permit fees, ended the 13-year run of the How Berkeley Can You Be? parade and festival, a bacchanalian romp through downtown that featured everything from flame throwers to Nobel laureates to motorized couches. Daunted by the new restrictions, organizers have decided to cancel the event, slated...

A couple of weeks before Van Jones resigned his Washington job, I happened to have a casual conversation with an old friend about a media organization we’d both been instrumental in founding in the distant last millennium. He was complaining that the group had, rather soon after it began, turned into an arena for ambitious self-promoters instead of being the advocacy organization which its founders intended. Most of this happened in the 15 or so years when I was too preoccupied with earning a living to pay attention, but I believed my friend’s annoyed recital of pointless power struggles within...

BERKELEY — Six months after Tristan Anderson, a former UC Berkeley tree sitter and Bay Area activist, nearly died after being struck in the head with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli troops, friends are holding a benefit Sunday to raise money for his recovery costs. Anderson, 38, remains at a rehabilitation hospital near Tel Aviv and continues to have setbacks and infections after skull surgery last month, supporters said. The operation came after doctors learned Anderson was suffering from post-traumatic hydrocephalus, a blockage of the ventricles — open spaces in the brain — that causes poor circulation of cerebral...

Opponents of a downtown Berkeley development plan were still on the streets Wednesday gathering the 5,558 signatures needed by Thursday to put the plan to a citywide vote. City Councilman Jesse Arreguin, 25, who is behind the campaign to overturn the Downtown Area Plan, which allows for taller buildings, more housing density, more open space and which imposes green building requirements, said he is "cautiously optimistic" his group has enough signatures to go forward. Arreguin was at the Downtown Berkeley BART station Wednesday gathering signatures. Shadowing Arreguin and holding a sign that said "Don't Sign The Petition," was 27-year-old Salvan...

Four generations of UC Berkeley law school alumni joined activists, community members and lawyers on the Boalt Hall steps to protest former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo’s return to campus Monday. The group called for Yoo to be prosecuted and fired from his position as professor of law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law for writing memorandums which were used to justify extensive policies on detention and interrogation, even torture. The Obama administration has so far showed little interest in prosecuting those who worked for the Bush administration. Despite criticism from protesters and from the National Lawyers’ Guild...

Berkeley is scrambling to line up state tax cuts and credits for Bayer, which is considering moving some or all of its 1,700 jobs out of town. The pharmaceutical giant, which manufactures a hemophilia drug called Kogenate from its Seventh Street plant, will decide in a couple of months whether it will eventually move some or all of its manufacturing of the drug elsewhere, spokeswoman Trina Ostrander said. Bayer will soon produce a new version of the drug, called Kogenate-ph, that will require retooling its plant and retraining workers, Ostrander confirmed. The company is deciding whether that could take place...

Susan B. Jordan, a prominent attorney known for her work defending women charged with violent crimes, and who is credited with the creation of the battered spouse defense, was killed Friday in a plane crash in Utah. She was 67. Jordan, who split her time between homes in Berkeley and Ukiah in Mendocino County, formerly had a law office in Berkeley, and since 1972 had run a law practice in Ukiah. Jordan had been a licensed pilot since 1981, but longtime friend and professional colleague Ann Moorman said she was not flying the plane when it went down. Health care...

They were feasting on organic endive and popping open the herb tea Wednesday at Berkeley City Hall, as staff celebrated the City Council's unanimous approval of an ambitious, painstakingly researched plan to fight global warming. "After two years pouring your soul into something, to see it passed 9-0 is just intoxicating," said the city's planning director, Dan Marks. "This plan is a model for cities everywhere. As usual, Berkeley is a leader." The City Council on Tuesday night voted to move ahead with its 145-page Climate Action Plan, approving a host of last-minute amendments and striking mandates from most of...

Berkeley's City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to eliminate homeowner mandates from its climate action plan, in part because of an uproar from infuriated residents. The plan required owners to upgrade their homes' energy efficiency, based on an independent audit of a home's windows, roof, appliances and insulation. The goal was for all of Berkeley's 23,000 homes and 25,000 duplexes and apartment units to reduce energy use by 35 percent by 2020. Many homeowners vehemently protested the mandates, saying the cost to upgrade a typical drafty prewar Berkeley home would be astronomical. Hills residents particularly fought the portion requiring white...

This space doesn’t usually take requests, but when my 94-year-old mother calls up and insists, it’s hard to say no. What she wanted when she called last week is not hard to come up with, after all: a forthright denunciation of the Obama administration’s apparent plan to let the torturers and their instigators off the hook. Thinking people everywhere (I’m one of them) have rushed to their keyboards to do their best to make sure the current government doesn’t get away with letting their predecessors get off scot free. MoveOn is on their case to make sure they don’t forget....

Berkeley property owners may soon be asked to approve a 20 percent increase in city refuse fees in a somewhat controversial “majority protest” mail-in voting procedure. The unusual ballot process automatically counts votes not received as “yes” votes. The Berkeley City Council is scheduled to consider sending the rate increase proposal to property owners at the council’s next regular meeting, Tuesday, April 21, following a March 23 Zero Waste Commission decision recommending the increase. If approved by property owners, residential refuse collection rates for the average 32-gallon can would rise $4.52 per month, from $22.58 to $27.10. Commer-cial rates would...

BERKELEY — The U.S Marine Corps Recruiting Center, which has been the target of protests for the past 18 months, was badly damaged by vandals Wednesday night, the eve of the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war. Today, broken windows are boarded up with sheets of plywood at the recruitment center in downtown Berkeley. CodePink and other anti-war groups picketed in front of the Marine recruiting center at 64 Shattuck Square in downtown Berkeley since the fall of 2007. The groups say the Marines do not belong in liberal Berkeley and they should find a new spot for their center....

When Tristan Anderson, now 38, was living illegally in the trees at UC Berkeley to protest the administration's ultimately successful bid to cut down the trees to build a sports training center, life was good. For 21 months, Berkeley's tree sitters happily fouled their nests with little interference from the authorities. Their biggest fear was falling. When Berkeley finally erected barbed-wire fences and began to shine spotlights on the canopy campers, the tree huggers complained that UC had turned their grove into "Guantanamo." UC retaliated by giving the tree sitters energy bars. In June 2008, Anderson, who went by the...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A state appeals court breathed new life Tuesday into campus integration efforts, ruling that Berkeley does not violate California's ban on racial preferences when it considers the makeup of students' neighborhoods in deciding where they will go to school. Berkeley's policy "does not show partiality, prejudice or preference to any student on the basis of that student's race," said the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. "All students in a given residential area are treated equally." The ruling is the first by an appellate court on a school district's voluntary integration plan since California voters...

Friends of a Bay Area activist who was critically injured while demonstrating in a village on Palestine's West Bank have organized their own demonstration in downtown San Francisco today as a show of solidarity. Friends of Tristan Anderson, a former tree-sitter at the UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium oak grove, and supporters of Palestine will gather at 4 p.m. Monday outside the Israeli Consulate at 456 Montgomery St. in San Francisco, said Kate Raphael, a fellow activist and friend of Anderson's. "Our intent is to give people a chance to talk about Tristan, to focus on the people who have been...

AT A TIME WHEN the nation has turned to the left, one of the more liberal universities in the nation will be studying right-wing movements. Although the timing is odd, investigation of the right is a welcome academic pursuit. Thanks to an anonymous $777,000 donation a Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements will be established at UC Berkeley. Researchers will analyze right-wing groups in the United States and abroad and compare them. Larry Rosenthal, a sociologist who will oversee the center, is on target in saying that conservative movements have been overlooked in academia, which tends to be...

Whole Foods Market, the national natural food supermarket chain that represents itself as supporting local communities, found itself under attack Wednesday when a large group of East Bay residents gathered outside its Emeryville headquarters vociferously protesting the company’s decision not to renew the lease of Ashby Flowers, a family-owned business that rents a small building in the corner of the parking lot at the company’s 3000 Telegraph Ave. location in Berkeley. In an interview with the Planet at his company’s regional headquarters Wednesday, Whole Foods Regional President David Lannon said that the company was not renewing the lease since it...

A man was unconscious at Highland Hospital on Tuesday evening after he was beaten with a tire iron and a metal pipe in a dispute over burritos at Juan's Place restaurant in west Berkeley, police said. Berkeley Police spokeswoman Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said two Juan's Place employees were arrested for assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the 4:30 p.m. incident. Police did not release the name of the victim or those suspected of beating him. Kusmiss said the incident started when three men who had been drinking entered Juan's Place and inquired about free food, which they often...

A moratorium on new fast food restaurants and convenience stores along a portion of University Avenue in downtown Berkeley may soon be lifted. The Berkeley City Council is scheduled to consider a Planning Commission recommendation to lift the ban Tuesday night, Feb. 24. The ban on new fast food restaurants and carry-out food stores on University Avenue between Oxford Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way was first adopted by the council in 1999 at the request of the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) and with the support of then-Councilmember Dona Spring, who represented the downtown area on the council. In...

Dogs do what dogs do - and in Berkeley, "dog do" is now part of some very public art. Decorative medallions depicting dogs sniffing, dumping and humping each other have recently been added to the base of one of a pair of sculptures commissioned by the city on either end of the pedestrian and bike bridge over Interstate 80. At first glance, one might think the scatological series of bronzes - at the base of the west side sculpture celebrating the waterfront park - is a joke. It's not. "I am showing dogs doing what dogs do at the dog...

Berkeley -- Berkeley's city council voted early today to let the public library override the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act in order to get its checkout machines serviced.After a heated debate, the council voted 6-2, with one abstention, to grant a waiver for the library to contract with 3M, a multinational technology company, even though the firm refused to sign a form promising it does not engage in nuclear research or development.The library asked permission to sign a 5-year, $63,000 contract with 3M to maintain five self-checkout scanning machines at the main library and four branches. The Peace and Justice Commission...

Berkeley's public library will face a showdown with the city's Peace and Justice Commission tonight over whether a service contract for the book check-out system violates the city's nuclear-free ordinance. The dispute centers on a five-year, $63,000 contract the library wants to sign with 3M, an international technology company based in Minnesota, to service five scanner machines library patrons use to check out books.But 3M, a company with operations in 60 countries, refused to sign Berkeley's nuclear-free disclosure form as required by the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act passed by voters in 1986.As a result, the library's self-checkout machines have not...

Some cities urge residents to go on citywide exercise kicks. Others promote municipal book clubs. Berkeley wants its citizens to go on a collective low-carbon diet. To meet its ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Berkeley is encouraging all 100,000 residents to join support groups to help individuals fight global warming. Like Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers, the groups are part social, part confessional and partly about accountability. "It does sound like AA," said Timothy Burroughs, Berkeley's climate action coordinator, who is helping to start the program. "But it's in the context of a policy goal of the city's....

“No prehistoric cultural deposits or materials” were found during an archaeological survey of the site once occupied by an oak grove west of Memorial Stadium. The report, released by UC Berkeley, was prepared by private archaeological consultants in anticipation of construction of a new high-tech gym and office complex at the site. But the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, as the report makes clear, declaring that “the entire project site should be considered an archaeologically sensitive area based on its proximity to Strawberry Creek and the fact that prehistoric archaeological deposits and features have been found along the...

Berkeley’s latest tree-sit ended almost before it began when the lone remaining branch-percher descended to earth Tuesday morning, followed by two acacias a few hours later. Campus community relations director Irene Hegarty said that only one of the two tree-sitters who took to the branches was still aloft when community members talked him down. “He walked away, though he was cited and released for trespassing by university police a couple of blocks away,” she said. Arborists made short work of the trees, leaving five or six five-foot logs and a pile of wood chips for use at the park. “They...

The treesitters are back on UC Berkeley’s turf, this time occupying the branches of an acacia at People’s Park. Two protesters declared their occupation Monday morning of one of two People’s Park acacias that the university plans to chop down. Unlike the Memorial Stadium treesit, which ended in September with the demolition of a venerable oak grove, the People’s Park protest wasn’t sparked by construction. While the university wanted to clear the stadium grove to make way for a four-level high tech gym and office complex, UC Berkeley spokesperson Irene Hegarty says safety concerns have prompted plans to remove the...

Berkeley’s latest tree-sit ended the same day it began last week when campus police signed a Christmas truce that spares—for the moment—two acacias in People’s Park. Zachary RunningWolf, the same arboreal ascender who began the lengthy occupation of the oak grove at Memorial Stadium on Dec. 2, 2006, was the lone occupant of one of the People’s Park acacias, which share space with a children’s playground. The grove tree-sit ended Sept. 9, the same day the last of the trees there was leveled by a chainsaw-wielding contract crew. RunningWolf’s ascent at People’s Park on Dec. 18 came after campus officials...

Anti-war activists from the group Code Pink gathered at a Marine recruiting station in Berkeley this morning to show solidarity with an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush on Sunday. Members of the group and others marched around the recruiting station holding shoes in the air to show support for Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi, who hurled two shoes at Bush during a news conference in Baghdad. In many Arab countries, showing the sole of one's shoes, much less throwing shoes at another person, is considered extremely disrespectful. Organizers said their demonstration was to show support for the...

Berkeley -- After an emotional, fiery debate over academic freedom and torture, Berkeley's city council passed a measure late Monday night imploring the U.S. to prosecute Berkeley resident and former White House official John Yoo for war crimes. Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the legal memos justifying torture while interrogating terrorism suspects while he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney general for the Bush administration in 2001-03."John Yoo took a material involvement in the deaths and torture of untold numbers of people," said city councilman Max Anderson, choking back tears during the council's...

The Oakland Tribune reports the story of a hipster granny from Berkeley that has decided to sue the U.S. military over a reporter embed she arranged in Iraq that was abruptly canceled by the government. While the Oakland Trib and the hippie granny try their hardest to make the U.S. military the villain, it's a bit hard to feel too sorry for her when the facts are considered. On top of that, the Trib absurdly calls her situation an "ordeal" which, when comparing her situation to what the soldiers have to go through, seems a bit over-the-top and silly, really....

Berkeley's City Council will delve into national policy again next week when it votes whether to demand the United States charge Berkeley resident and former Bush adviser John Yoo with war crimes. Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the memos offering legal justification for torture while he worked for the White House from 2001 to 2003.The five measures attacking Yoo were drafted by the city's Peace and Justice Commission, the same group that recommended that the city tell the Marines they were "unwelcome intruders." The City Council will vote Monday on the five...

BERKELEY — Berkeley blogger Jane Stillwater is suing the federal government for the cost of an airplane ticket to Kuwait and the cost of 15 mocha lattes from the airport Starbucks, where she spent two sleepless days because her previously approved embed with the U.S. Army suddenly was canceled.Stillwater, a 66-year-old grandmother, embedded with the U.S. military twice last year and has gone to Iraq to hang out with troops and blog twice since her Starbucks layover. But in February she had an experience that prompted her to take the Department of Defense to small claims court.In Alameda County Superior...

Berkeley’s tree-sitters faced another day in court this week, and UC Regents were plotting the fate of Memorial Stadium and an interim venue for the Cal Bears. UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said Wednesday the work at the stadium will require finding a temporary home for the Cal Bears, with the only question being whether the move will be for one season or two. “Based on current planning, it looks now like no more than one year,” he said. While construction of the new high-tech gym and office complex now under way immediately west of the stadium will provide new...

BERKELEY — The tree-sit at UC Berkeley has been over for two months. The trees are long gone, and construction of the $125 million sports training center for the Cal Bears will start when the football season ends next month. But the legal troubles for those who sat in trees or aided the tree sitters during the 21-month protest of the sports training center are far from over. On Monday, nine of the 11 people who violated a court order and were cited by police, either on the ground or in the trees, were sentenced by Judge Marshall Whitley in...

A Jefferson Elementary School third-grade teacher has resigned following allegations that she might have violated the separation of church and state by teaching creationism to her third-grade class, district officials said Friday. District Superintendent Bill Huyett confirmed that Jefferson teacher Gwen Martin—who joined the school over summer and has been on personal leave since the last week of September—resigned but declined to comment on the outcome of the investigation regarding her alleged conduct in class explaining that it was a personnel matter. “She [Martin] resigned a little bit ago,” he said. “I can’t comment on that [investigation].” Parents of children...

The two opposing mayoral candidates both have had the position of mayor, both with highly marred terms. First, let’s revisit the Shirley Dean administration which started off with Mrs. Dean not giving up her job with the largest employer in the town (UC Berkeley) while mayor. Can you say conflict of interest? One might say that Shirley Dean is the Dick Cheney of Berkeley. Even Dick Cheney quit Halliburton before taking the vice president’s job after awarding most of the post-war contracts to his former employer. It got worse when Mrs. Dean decided to go after our favorite city councilmember...

Berkeley is immortalizing its greatest protests - from People's Park to disability rights to the tree-sitters' standoff at Memorial Stadium - in a towering sculpture of fist-waving demonstrators on a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over busy Interstate 80. The artwork, titled "Berkeley Big People" and to be dedicated Saturday, is already stopping traffic. Visible from about a mile in either direction, the 30-foot-tall fiberglass sculpture is the largest and most expensive piece of public art ever commissioned in the city."It's monumental in scale, in money, in visibility," said Mary Ann Merker, the city's civic arts coordinator and the project manager....

Berkeley's tree-sitters may have thought their nearly two-year protest was an act of civil disobedience, but to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau it was actually "racism against our underrepresented minority student athletes." The chancellor's blunt assessment came in a letter he sent to alums Janice and Thomas Boyce at the height of the tree standoff in June. The Boyces had written to Birgeneau to complain about the university's "unscrupulous and perhaps illegal action" of rehiring campus Police Chief Victoria Harrison with a hefty contract - and about what the couple saw as the heavy-handed tactics that the university was using...

“[R]acism against our minority student athletes ... underlies much of the opposition to our student athlete high performance center,” declared UC Berkeley Chancel-lor Robert Birgeneau in a letter sent to two major donors to the school. That allegation in a June 27 letter stunned the recipients, Berke-ley residents and long-time university donors and supporters Thomas and Janice Boyce. The appearance of the letter, given to this newspaper by a third party, comes as the campus is launching the public phase of a $3 billion endowment fund-raiser, with Birgeneau in the lead. The chancellor’s letter followed earlier letters from the couple...

A poster promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace at an AC Transit bus stop in front of UC Berkeley’s Eshelman Hall has been repeatedly vandalized with anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas, authorities said. The poster—part of the “Only in Israel” public awareness campaign launched by San Francisco-based BlueStarPR and sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation and Foundation of the Greater East Bay—has a picture of Israeli Arab soccer star Sowan Abbas calling for coexistence among communities. The poster also gives an example of a soccer team consisting of Jews and Arabs training together in the Arab-Israeli town of Sakhnin. Gabe Weiner, a campus coordinator...

BERKELEY - -- A woman was arrested today after she ran over a Berkeley police officer's foot when she tried to leave while being cited for a parking violation, authorities said. . . . Berkeley police Officer Griselda Ferrera stopped the motorist near the corner and told her to wait while the ticket was being written, authorities said. Instead, Markeysha Bilal-Fields, 47, of Richmond tried to leave the scene in her black Mazda, police said. The car ran over Ferrera's foot, authorities said.

At Berkeley Bowl, the nuts are off the shelf Brothers Juno, 20 months, left, and Cyrus Soltani, 5, sample fruit at the Berkeley Bowl market, famous for its exotic produce. For those caught tasting food or beverages without paying, the penalty is severe: a lifetime ban. By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 22, 2008 BERKELEY -- As most veteran customers know, it takes a pretty thick skin to successfully navigate the Berkeley Bowl, this strident city's most popular grocery store. Outside, petitioners seeking signatures for ballot measures have come to blows with opinionated residents. In the...

Berkeley's infamous tree-sitters have been hit with a rude surprise since they came down to earth: Judges are socking them with thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees.Ironically, much of the money - which could total more than $10,000 per sitter - is going straight to the University of California, the very institution the tree-sitters were protesting as they tried to save a grove of trees outside Memorial Stadium."It's really vindictive," said an attorney for some the sitters, Dennis Cunningham. "They don't have this kind of money."Maybe, but university lawyer Michael Goldstein isn't making any apologies."We've asked the judge...

It's Groundhog Day in Berkeley: Tom Bates and Shirley Dean, battle-scarred veterans of East Bay politics, are in another slugfest for mayor. The longtime rivals - both now in their 70s - are squaring off for the second time to lead the Bay Area's most progressive, eccentric city. It's Dean's fifth run for mayor and Bates' third, and their second race against each other."If there's any place that's inbred, it's Berkeley," said City Councilwoman Betty Olds, who's preparing to leave office in November. "But I'm endorsing them both because I think they've both been fine mayors."Kriss Worthington, who's served on...

BERKELEY (CBS 5 / BCN) ― Three tree-sitters said Wednesday they don't regret trying to stop the University of California, Berkeley from building a sports training facility next to its football stadium. Eight days after the last tree-sitter came down from a 90-foot-tall redwood tree, ending a 21-month protest at a grove of trees next to the stadium, tree-sitter Raul Colocho said, "On one level it was a wonderful experience to be up there.'' But Colocho, also known as "Huck,'' said "it's a shame'' that the university cut down more than 40 trees after it won court approval to go...