UC-Berkeley Gets Mugged by Environmentalists

By Dan McLaughlin

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

 

I am fond of citing Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of politics:

 

1.      Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

 

2.      Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.

 

3.      The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.

 

The old saw about a conservative being a liberal who has been mugged is a variant on Conquest’s First Law. Something similar is now happening to the University of California at Berkeley. One would think that Berkeley, of all institutions, cannot be outflanked from the Left, but in California, eventually, the bill for leftism comes to everyone. In this case, the state’s oppressive regime of environmental regulation is threatening Berkeley’s enrollment:

 

UC Berkeley, one of the nation’s most highly sought after campuses, may be forced to slash its incoming fall 2022 class by one-third, or 3,050 seats, and forgo $57 million in lost tuition under a recent court order to freeze enrollment, the university announced this week. The university’s projected reduction in freshmen and transfer students came in response to a ruling last August by an Alameda County Superior Court judge who ordered an enrollment freeze and upheld a Berkeley neighborhood group’s lawsuit that challenged the environmental impact of the university’s expansion plan. Many neighbors are upset by the impact of enrollment growth on traffic, noise, housing prices and the natural environment. The University of California Board of Regents appealed the ruling and asked that the order to freeze enrollment be stayed while the appellate process proceeds. Last week, an appellate court denied that request. The regents on Monday appealed that judgment to the California Supreme Court. . . . The furor has left 150,000 first-year applicants to UC Berkeley in the lurch, just a month before the campus is scheduled to send out admission offers.

 

Faced with a pincer movement from environmental activists, neighborhood NIMBYists, and an activist judge, Berkeley is . . . fighting them and bemoaning the outcome, insisting that the environmental impact is being overstated:

 

“This court-mandated decrease in enrollment would be a tragic outcome for thousands of students who have worked incredibly hard to gain admission to Berkeley,” UC Berkeley said in a statement. “If left intact, the court’s unprecedented decision would have a devastating impact on prospective students, university admissions, campus operations, and UC Berkeley’s ability to serve California students by meeting the enrollment targets set by the state of California.”

 

Even some Democrats are shocked into action when it’s Berkeley, not some rancher, on the receiving end of this, although it appears that the proposed solution may protect only the favored state university:

 

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said he would unveil legislation next week related to the state environmental law that was used by the Berkeley neighborhood group. He declined to release details but said the state law was never meant to stop public universities from expanding to meet student needs. “It’s outrageous that a court is dictating a student enrollment cap for UC,” he said. “That’s a complete overreach.”

 

Lots of things done by liberals and progressives sooner or later reach targets they were “never meant to” harm.