Free Republic

Only when cops entered Rodger’s nearby apartment did they find his first victims: three multiply-stabbed men whose names were withheld Saturday night, pending family notification. It remained unclear Saturday night if any of the three were Rodger’s two roommates. He had written in the manifesto that he would “have to kill” them so he could turn the place into “my personal torture and killing chamber.” “I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good...

A gunman went on a drive-by shooting rampage in a Santa Barbara student enclave and at least seven people were killed, including the attacker, authorities said. Investigators believe a gunman driving a black BMW acted alone in the shootings late Friday night near the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A gunman in a black BMW opened fire on crowds of people Friday night in a Southern California seaside town near UC Santa Barbara, killing six people and injuring seven others in what investigators described as a "mass murder" rampage. The gunman was later involved in at least one shootout with sheriff's deputies and died of a gunshot wound to the head, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said at a Saturday morning news conference. He could not confirm whether the gunshot was self-inflicted. Seven victims were hospitalized and at least one of them had undergone surgery for life-threatening injuries,...

On the heels of Brandeis University’s controversial decision to rescind an honorary degree to women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, organizers of a week-long pro-Israel event called iFest, which is currently underway at the University of California, Irvine, say they have been forced to cancel a scheduled speech by Nonie Darwish, a prominent pro-Israel speaker. Lead iFest organizer Daniel Narvy, president of the campus group Anteaters for Israel (AFI), who will be joining the Israeli Defense Forces this summer, says Orange County Hillel was primarily responsible for the cancellation and that the incident is another example of Hillel’s marginalization of...

The other day, this story hit the New Media. It's one the Old Media will simply never report. Two sisters, 16 and 21, and members of Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, were holding a pro-life sign while demonstrating at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A choppy cell phone video caught the scene: Students hurl obscenities at the young girls while a large, imposing woman, with two accomplices in tow, march off with the sign, having ripped it from one girl's hands. The girls follow the thugs to the elevator, and as the video continues recording, the intimidating woman...

When former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano takes over as president of the University of California later this month, she will live in leased accommodations that the college system is renting for nearly $10,000 a month. While the price tag is several thousand dollars less than what the university spent leasing her predecessor's home, some university officials say it might be more cost-effective in the long run to fix up a vacant mansion that housed previous university presidents. A committee of the University of California's governing board agreed Tuesday to spend $620,000 toward the multi-million cost of renovating the historic...

Cronyism: Homeland Security honcho Janet Napolitano announced she'd quit her cabinet post on Friday to take a $750,000-a-year job as president of the University of California system. Is this the best the regents can do? Instead of appointing a world class scientist, leading medical expert, respected academic or distinguished public servant — such as the truly qualified Condoleezza Rice — to lead the great University of California system, the UC regents opted for a political hack of no academic merit whatsoever. Their pick, Janet Napolitano, has presided over one disaster after another at the Department of Homeland Security. Dubbed Big...

When you think about it, it's amazing that the high-minded swells at the University of California didn't unveil a new logo sooner. The old logo, which will continue to appear on diplomas and official letters, features the school motto, "Let there be light." Ancient. An English translation of a Latin phrase. And a book. Dead-tree lit. 1868? Dead white guys. Under a star. Too militaristic. But it wasn't political correctness that relegated the old UC seal to the dusty top shelf reserved for weighty documents only. The new logo, explained UC spokesman Steve Montiel, is "an operational thing." The seal...

The University of California Student Association (UCSA) secretly passed a resolution last month which condemned the nation of Israel of “racism.” The resolution, passed through the student organization with unanimously support, claims there is a “wealth of scholarship and legal opinion” that exists affirming “racism” on behalf of Israel. The resolution was in response to HR 35, a California Assembly resolution condemning anti-Semitism in higher education.

UC has reached a $1 million settlement with UC Davis students who were pepper sprayed at an Occupy-inspired Nov. 18 demonstration to protest rising tuition. UC will pay student plaintiffs $30,000 each, and the ACLU will pocket up to $250,000. Everything that is wrong in California resides in this story. For $30,000, I'll get pepper sprayed. Students think tuition costs too much, so what do they do? Sue the university - it has deep pockets. This episode began because students know that if they stood around smoking pot and demanding more money from Sacramento, the administration would be tickled pink....

The University of California will pay damages of $30,000 to each of the 21 UC Davis students and alumni who were pepper-sprayed by campus police during an otherwise peaceful protest 10 months ago, the university system announced Wednesday. The agreement, which must still be approved in federal court, also calls for UC to pay a total of $250,000 to the plaintiffs’ attorneys and set aside a maximum of $100,000 to pay up to $20,000 to any other individuals who join the class-action lawsuit by proving they were either arrested or directly pepper-sprayed, a university statement said. A video released online,...

SAN FRANCISCO – The University of California has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed during an Occupy protest at UC Davis last fall, according to a preliminary settlement filed Wednesday. The Nov. 18, 2011, incident prompted national outrage, angry campus protests and calls for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after online videos shot by witnesses went viral.

The Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP)—a program of the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender (CRG)—recently held its third annual conference, "Critical Discourses on Islamophobia: Symbols, Images, & Representations." As in previous years, speaker after speaker decried an imaginary racist, imperialist, Orientalist Western juggernaut, while disregarding the very real predations of Islamism. The first day of the conference brought in approximately eighty people at its peak, including a number of women in hijab (head scarf), typing furiously on laptops. Others sported keffiyehs and dreadlocks; a smattering of Arabic and French could be heard; and a scruffy,...

Police cleared out Monday morning the small group of protesters who had set up an urban farming camp in a patch of UC Berkeley agricultural research land in Albany. University police officers in riot helmets gave the protesters 1o minutes to leave the Gill Tract before they marched across the fields near Marin and San Pablo avenues at about 6:15 a.m. The handful of protesters who had not obeyed the police order were sent scurrying off the property and onto San Pablo, which is closed to traffic. Two protesters were arrested for trespassing after they disobeyed police orders to leave...

Occupy the Farm protesters agreed Saturday to end their three-week encampment on UC Berkeley property in Albany, but rebuffed an invitation from the university to discuss how area can be used for both urban farming and for research. Instead, the several dozen protesters set up ladders to scale the fence UC had erected around the area along San Pablo Avenue known as the Gill Tract and said they will continue to tend the vegetables and fruit trees they've planted on two of the five disputed acres. As a result, the UC Regents said they won't drop the civil lawsuit they...

Message to the Occupy the Farm folk. Don't fence us in. Because when you trespass on another person's land and claim it as your own, you leave the rest of us law-abiding folk with very few options. The property owners can ask police to throw you off the land, they can throw you off themselves or present a legal argument to have you removed and barred from ever returning. UC Berkeley officials chose option three earlier this week, filing a lawsuit seeking an injunction to have more than a dozen protesters removed from the university's Gill Tract, a 10-acre research...

Protesters will denounce torture, and the University of California’s continuing connection to torture, outside tomorrow's commencement ceremony at UC Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall). As in previous years’ graduation demonstrations, protesters including those costumed to represent prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other sites where the U.S. currently manages a regimen of illegal rendition, detention, and torture, will gather outside the commencement before and during the ceremony. They will call for an end to, and accountability for, this illegal program wherever it has been operating. Berkeley Law professor John Yoo is on the list of Bush Regime officials who they say...

A standoff between UC Berkeley and Occupy activists who planted renegade crops on university land is headed from the farm to the courts. The University of California Board of Regents filed a lawsuit Wednesday against 14 protesters, claiming they and others conspired to cut through chains that secured gates and trespass onto the Gill Tract, a patch of land along bustling San Pablo Avenue in Albany. The activists, who call themselves Occupy the Farm, moved onto the tract April 22. They are pressuring the university to preserve part of the tract, which has been the subject of development debates for...

A standoff between protesters and the University of California at Berkeley over a 10-acre plot of university-owned agricultural land in Albany continued into its 17th day today. Anya Kamanskaya, of the group Occupy The Farm, said the ball is in the university's court after protesters issued a response late Monday to the university's proposal to resolve the standoff. UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said the university planned to respond to the protesters' letter later today. Occupy the Farm activists moved onto the site, which is known as the Gill Tract and is located near the corner of Marin and San...

A former UC Berkeley assistant vice chancellor who doubled the salary of a male subordinate during a 15-month affair has been fired from the university. Diane Leite, 47, who had already been bumped from her assistant vice chancellor's job, was dismissed from the six-figure-salary adviser's job where she had landed, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof confirmed Friday. Leite's relationship with purchasing manager Jonathan Caniezo, who is 17 years her junior, was detailed in a whistle-blower letter to her boss back in August. Records show that Caniezo's pay grew from $57,864 in late 2008 to $120,000 in 2010.When the scandal went...