 Greetings and welcome to this very special edition of Campus Conversations. I'm Dan Moguloff from the University's Office of Communications and Public Affairs and very special because it is our traditional end of semester conversation with Chancellor Carol Christ. And this time there's a little extra edge to it because Chancellor, you're coming around the home stretch, you're about to start your last semester. What's that like? How does that feel? It's a complicated mix of feelings. On the one hand, there are things that I do and I think, that's the last time I'm gonna have to do that. But then there's a lot of regret for things that I really love. It's gonna be a big change of life for me to be retired successfully, I hope. And so it's a complicated time. Are you gonna miss us or are you gonna go, oh, I'm part of this community, you're not getting rid of me, I'm gonna be here, still living in Berkeley, still attending campus events. So it's not as if I'm going someplace. All right, so we're gonna jump in. I've got a bunch of questions about the semesters wrapping up and the one ahead. And we also have a number of questions that have already come in from student staff and faculty. And as we go along, we'll try to get to all questions. We already have a lot, but if you've got one, as we're talking, please put it on our Facebook Live site and we'll do our best to get to it. So in all seriousness, this has been a complicated and challenging semester. The campus, like campuses across the country, has been buffeted by the repercussions and the impact of the war between Hamas and Israel. What are your own thoughts right now? What are you thinking about in terms of the university's response going forward? I think this has been one of the hardest issues that I've dealt with in my chancellorship that it is. So first of all, there is such tragedy at the heart of this, so much violence, so much killing, so much atrocity that and members of our community, both those sympathetic to the Palestinian community, those sympathetic to Israel, are deeply, deeply caught up in a compassion, anger, angst about what is happening. And unlike in other protest movements, if you think about the George Floyd, for example, protests or thinking way back the Vietnam protests, those were moments where the campus was largely united, it felt, and now the campus is deeply divided. And we seem to have lost the ability, not just as a campus, but really as a country, to have civil respectful conversations about issues on which we profoundly disagree. There is a tension, I think, between the free speech protections given in our conversation and Title VI, which ensures people's freedom from harassment or discrimination that's based on national origin among things. I don't think that the law at that border is comfortably settled. And as I've said often over and over again, that just because you have the right to say something doesn't mean that it's right to say. When we all have to look to our principles of community, if we care about this as a community and how we interact with each other, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't have strong, conflicting, passionate opinions, but we need to treat each other with respect and civility. So how do we go about doing that? Are there things that you're considering in terms of programming or educational content next semester? What kind of actions are you beginning to contemplate for the campus to address the phenomenon you just described? I've been thinking a lot about exactly that. What kind of programming can we do in the spring that will help us address this phenomenon? I think there are other people thinking about this too. I fundamentally, what our goals are, are to model respectful, civil disagreement. And so I know that there is a plan under development in some of the schools and colleges for a podcast series. I think the law school is also imagining planning some programming around free speech. What we wanna do is build the capacity for dialogue, particularly among our students. So, and I've been really impressed and grateful for the fact that both units on this campus have been reaching out, as foundations and donors to the campus saying, how can we support this work? So we're working hard on thinking through what the best ideas are. I've been talking to a number of both groups and individuals trying to get their suggestions to figure out what to put in place in the spring semester. So why, maybe you've already addressed it, but I'm curious about why this is so apparently important to you, these particular issues. You mentioned in your last message to campus, one of the recent ones, that it posed a threat to sort of the university's values. Is that where this all comes from, your concern about what's happening right now? That's a really interesting and deep question. For when I came in as chancellor, I came in, many people probably remember, in the midst of a huge controversy about free speech. And Milo Yiannopoulos was not allowed to speak on campus because there was a riot. And I felt at that point it was so important for the community to establish the capacity to have people speak here whose ideas people strongly disagree with, members of the community strongly disagree with. So that was, and so I spent a lot of my first two years thinking a lot about free speech. And in part, it stems from that. And it's a conversation that never ends because one of the characteristics of university communities and generally, I used to have a colleague who talked about the, has talked about university communities as a series of concentric parades. And the student parade goes around pretty fast. Four years, two years for transfer students, you have a totally new group of students. And so conversations where you think, in some other institution, you might be getting there, always need to be renewed in the university. And conversations about free speech in particular get renewed on the slightly different grounds than when related to the particular issue that's at the center of people's attention. And I guess this issue is particularly important to me because I'm horrified as many people are by the bloodshed, by the suffering, and feel a great deal of empathy for our students of very different points of view in this conflict who really are suffering trying to make sense of what is just a tragic set of events in Israel and Palestine. So I have an ideal about the university that we should be able to model how we can come together even in the face of the most extraordinary difficulties and disagreements. If we can't do it, who can? Yeah, boy, that's an ambitious goal. And I hope we'll talk more about it next semester as some of these things begin to unfold. I just wanna move on to some other subjects which may seem a little more mundane, but sometimes mundane is a welcome change. We talked, I think at the beginning of the semester about some concerns, the university's financial health and its budget, where do things stand right now? Our budget is balanced this year, that's good. It doesn't mean that there aren't financial challenges in the future. So the state is facing a big budget deficit for its 24-25 budget. So we obviously the fortunes of the state and the fortunes of the university are closely tied. So we have to work through the budget process, doing all our advocacy work, our lobbying with the state to make sure that we maintain the 5% a year that the governor committed to in the compact. And we have to be energetic in the development of other streams of revenue that can make up for what is even at its current, quite principled and generous level is going to be a shortfall because our expenses are growing faster than our revenues are growing. Yeah, so speaking of revenue generation, one of the questions that came in from one of the members of our community kind of relates that. They ask, what is the expected construction start date for the Berkeley Space Center at Moffitt Field and are there plans to use the site for revenue generation? Yes, that's the point of the project is both the revenue generation opportunities that it offers but also the synergy that it offers with the research arms of companies that are closely tied to research fields at Berkeley. But it also offers revenue opportunities in terms of executive education in terms of self-supporting master's programs. It offers educational opportunities, closeness to internship opportunities for our students. So it offers a great deal but certainly revenue generation is one of those things. We're now moving into an EIR, Environmental Impact Report process that will take about two years. So I think I expect the first building will be completed in about four years, about 2028. Right, and am I correct in understanding that already though there may be some academic opportunities for students down with NASA before the building? Absolutely, one of the many advantages of the Berkeley Space Center is a much closer relationship with NASA Ames and opportunities for students at NASA Ames. That's exciting for them, getting access to really talented Berkeley students and exciting for us. I'm gonna move on to another question that it has to do with finances. And it says in the last campus conversation, you chancellor reassured that despite the current financial problems, no staff or faculty be terminated. But you didn't mention this person said that not everyone leaving will be replaced. This person writes, I see this firsthand in the library system which is greatly overstretched and underfunded. Maybe we hear something about your vision for the future of the UC Berkeley libraries. This person points out they're not just nice buildings but also people and staff but also people and all the people who work there and study there. So the bigger question is within the financial context, your vision and your hopes and what you see on the road ahead for UC Berkeley library. Yeah, that's a wonderful question. That first of all, I think most important about the libraries are the people that work there. I think as we've moved into a digital age, the space has a somewhat different function that it's less important as a place of storage on site for books. For example, I don't think most of us look for bound volumes of journals anymore in the library that that's available online. And a lot of our work has moved to a digital format. At the same time, library space has become even more important to students as a place to be. We have turned into a campus in which their students commute longer distances than was the case in the past. They're often looking for places to be during the day and to study. So the library has become so important a place for students to be. I've been in so many different conversations with students in which they talk about their favorite library to study and often has nothing to do with whatever they're studying. For example, there are real fans of the East Asian library which is one of the most beautiful places on campus. Fans of the library in the College of Environmental Design. So library space is undergoing a kind of transformation but it's the people in the libraries that are the most important, particularly at a time when it is so more complex to access the information that you need, the materials that you need. I believe that we're right now recruiting for a new university librarian. We're in the final stages of that search. So we're looking for a leader who is going to be able to lead us through this enormously fast changing world of libraries and to try to determine in a somewhat resource, limited environment what is the best way we can use our resources. I myself believe it's on people but we're going to have a leader who is going to continue what has been Jeff Mackey Mason's wonderful work in leading us to a future of libraries that is gonna be very different from the libraries that I grew up using as an undergraduate and graduate student. Yeah, how interesting. A lot of food for thought there. Gonna move on to the other side of the campus both geographically and maybe in terms of its whole atmosphere and that's athletics, also having to do with money. And this one is now that Cal athletics is moving to the ACC. There's gonna be reduced revenue from media rights. What's your plan or what's your thinking in terms of making sure that Cal athletics financial future will be secure within the context of the broader budgetary reality of the university? We're working very intensely right now in a financial sustainability plan for athletics. You're absolutely right. We're entering the ACC at a reduced share of media revenue. So we'll see a drop in that. But so we are working closely with the office of the president and also closely on campus with a budget plan for athletics that will be sustainable in the long run. I think it's too early to talk publicly about the details of that now, but we're making good progress. We expect that we're going to get some money from UCLA. It's jokingly called Calimony and as well as some help from the office of the president as well as things that we're gonna do on this campus like an increase in philanthropic goals, more revenue generation. I think it's just in two years that the agreement expires with the panoramic hill neighbors and it was joking the other day that Taylor Swift would be a great solution to our problem as I imagine she is for many. And so we're really thinking about what are the revenue opportunities in athletics that we're not taking advantage of currently that can help us with the budget challenge we face. All right, you've done it. I never thought I'd heard Taylor Swift mentioned as a solution to any of UC Berkeley's problems, but that's the world we're living in, fine. I wanna go back to Moffett Field for a second. You know, one of the things that was interesting, there was a lot of talk when all the press coverage of the fact that we're gonna be sort of building a whole academic research part down there was there was a sort of a sub theme around the university support for entrepreneurship on campus and for innovation. That feels like something relatively new. Is that become a big priority for the campus? Talk to us a little bit about how you see the university's responsibility or role when it comes to supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. Yeah, that's a wonderful question. I think back to the 90s when I was provost and I had a meeting at that time of a number of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and a number of our scientists, they were interested in how they could shorten the distance between discoveries in the laboratory and their realization in the commercial world of venture capital. And everybody left that meeting just scratching their head thinking that they just didn't have a clear answer. That distance has become so shortened to a distance today. And I think many of our faculty are really interested in the robustness of the infrastructure on campus that allows them to translate their discoveries into the commercial world. So we have a number of programs that are close to the campus. Skydeck is one downtown. Another is the Baker Bioengineuity Hub. That's in the Old Art Museum. We're developing something we're calling the Berkeley Innovation Zone, which will have a climate incubator and accelerator where a university all currently is. We're also imagining an incubator or accelerator for translational research that spins out of the IGI. So that's just things that are on campus. And then Moffat provides another opportunity for space related kinds of entrepreneurship. But I think that's become increasingly translational research, has become increasingly important to our students and our faculty. And I'm excited to see those opportunities develop. They're also another source of income for our campus. Rich Lyons does this very interesting analysis, which I'm not sure I can repeat here in detail, but I'll tell you the bottom line, which is the money that we're getting from innovation, entrepreneurship, intellectual property is approaching the amount of money that we get from the state. Oh my God. It's a very interesting moment for Berkeley. Wow, that's an incredible development. Yes, it is incredible development. Wow. Gonna stay on the money front for a little bit, the campaign. You have just a few more days to make that gift. They will celebrate the end of the campaign on the campus on February 29th, which is exactly four years from the time that we kicked it off. I remind everybody that just about 10 days after that, we went remote because of the COVID pandemic. But we're at $7.1 billion now in the campaign, still counting really, really wonderful, wonderful gifts that are transformational for the campus. So a few follow-up questions that came in from folks in our community about the campaign. I'm gonna drill down a little bit more. $7.2 billion is a lot of money by any measure, but what makes, is there something unique about that achievement for Berkeley as a public university with a medical school? Does that, besides the number, does that stand out to you in any way? Oh, it absolutely stands out. This is the largest amount of money ever raised in a campaign by a public university without a medical school. And last year, we were, this is about the money that we raised in a year. We were number, I think number six or number seven, I can't remember which, in the country, in the amount of money that we raised in a year. So the amounts are different. This is twice what we raised in our previous campaign. So that's really terrific. But the other thing that I've tried to do in this campaign is changed our focus in philanthropy from nice to haves to our fundraising for our core. And so we've been fundraising for undergraduate financial aid, for graduate student fellowships, for new faculty positions, and of course, for buildings. You know, there's a follow-up question here that reminds me of something one of your predecessors used to say, Bob Bershino and Bob, if I'm getting you wrong and misquoting you, I'm sure you'll let me know later today. But he used to talk about the need for private support to maintain the university's public character. Talk to us a little bit about the role private philanthropy is playing in that regard and is playing in the context of a public university. Yeah, that's such a good question and such a good formulation. First of all, just to answer in the most basic way that what our aspiration is, is access at scale and all the money that we've gotten to support financial aid, the money that we've gotten to support the basic needs center, the money that we have raised to support equity and inclusion, all of that helps with that goal. Then secondly, one of the things that's been inspiring to me to work on this campaign is you get to understand what are the aspirations of people with the extraordinary good fortune to have the capacity to give. And I'll just tell a few anecdotes to tell you about some of the gifts that we've gotten that I think are so much in the spirit of Bob Urshino's remark. One is a democracy initiative in which we have students who get financial aid as democracy fellows to have a number of programmatic elements along with their financial support, scholarship support to learn more about democracy. Another is to strengthen our program in Callan the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Providing more opportunities to spend a semester in Washington. Another, the neuro hub, the wonderful gift from Sandy and Joan Weil is to try to find the causes of neurodegenerative disease. So we have just extraordinary gifts that are motivated not by, oh, I want my name up in lights, but rather I wanna do good for the world. I wanna make the world a better place. And I think Berkeley is the place to do it both because of its excellence at scale and its student body, but also because of the incredible power of its faculty to make discoveries that change our world. We just heard this week, I'm sure people read in the newspaper about the very first CRISPR based therapy being approved that it won for sickle cell. And that's our own Jennifer Doudna made the discovery that made that possible. So I think philanthropy and the public nature of our identity are just wonderful partners. What a wonderful answer. I wanna stay with the campaign just for one more question. And based on one of the questions that came in, it seems like there might, there is for some a degree of dissonance between the campaign and its incredible success in the 7.2 billion and the riches that seems to come with that package. And at the same time, the restrictive budgetary realities of the campus. Can you sort of address that for people who are maybe feel a little dissonance between those two elements of the campus' life? Yeah, this was a really wonderful question. One, I know a lot of people wonder about, I went to CAPRA, the Academic Senate's Committee on Academic Planning and Resource Allocation. And one of the members said, so when am I gonna see some part of this $7 billion? I mean, philanthropy is really lumpy that people give not to the electricity bill, or to the kind of general support of staff on campus. They give to projects that inspire them and the kind of magic and skill of development is creating that match between a donor's vision and something the campus both needs and wants to build what it is. So the gifts don't generally enhance the budget, except as the funding, we've raised about a half a billion dollars for graduate student support. That directly helps us fund our graduate students. We've raised over a half a billion dollars for undergraduate financial aid. That is budget relieving support. We have raised, I think it's 38 currently, new faculty positions. That is budget relieving, although those positions always go to particular fields. And so if you're sitting, say, in the English department, use my old department and you wonder, well, where's my extra faculty position if it's not going to use? So the lumpiness of philanthropy means that people give to particular projects. They don't give generally to the budget of the university. That's where state support is so important, where tuition is so important. I'm going to turn to another one of your priorities in that student housing. Can you give us a little update on where things stand and what the current status is of the construction site at People's Park? I'd love to. So first of all, anybody who is listening in, that's in Berkeley, if you drive down Oxford Street, you can see Anchor House looking more and more finished every day. That's set for an opening next fall. And then we also have graduate student housing going up in Albany. That's also set for opening next fall. So those two housing projects, which together between them, I think is about 1,400 beds, really terrific addition to our housing stock. People's Park is the current status of it. I wish I could say something has changed, but it still is there's an appeal of the lawsuit in front of the California Supreme Court. We were sued in our under CEQA, that's a California Environmental Quality Act. And the grounds of the suit were that we hadn't fully evaluated the impact of social noise, that's parties, and on the neighborhood. And also that we hadn't compared the People's Park site to every other site. The legislature has passed two laws that make those not grounds for suit under CEQA and we're waiting for the California State Supreme Court to say that the lawsuit is moot because of the change in state law, but that doesn't happen and we have no way of controlling or predicting when that's gonna happen. Meanwhile, what we've been doing is offering shelter to the people who have been camping in the park. There were last, I heard about 26 individuals camping in the park, we offered them all housing in a motel that the campus is renting. Rooms in, 22 of the 26 took that offer, so that's really good. And what I feel passionately that the answer to homelessness is housing, not camping, and we're trying to do our part in being proactive in helping the unhoused community find housing. Yeah, so you say do our part. So that suggests to me that you see the university has some accountability and as a part of the city's life to sort of accept some responsibility for addressing that problem because I think we've spent millions of dollars in terms of providing transitional housing to the people who've been in the park. Where did that come from? Your belief that the university needed to step into that role. There's several places that that came from. First, I believe homelessness is one of the great tragedies of our era. Every time I pass a big homeless encampment, I think this shouldn't be our country. Our country should do better homelessness. So, but I think, you know, for Berkeley in particular, that we really allowed a homeless community to develop in People's Park. And it's a little bit like the sign you often see in gift shops with lots of fragile objects in it. If you broke it, you have to fix it. And I feel we have a responsibility to help the community that is on our land transition to housing, as well as freeing that site for what I think are better uses, student housing, also housing for formerly homeless individuals, as well as a park that's really usable by the public. Yeah, thank you for that. I'm gonna stay with infrastructure, question that just came in says, person says, thank you for all the work, your work on behalf of the university and the campaign. And they ask, how does the funding of capital improvement needs come into play? In particular, I'm sure you are aware that the residence halls are in need of significant repairs, the heating systems are antiquated. How, so this person says, I'd be interested to know where these investments sit in the context of broader investment plans. Yeah, that's a great question. Rosemary Ray, our former CFO, used to say it to me often. I am absolutely confident that I can solve the university's operating budget problem. I cannot solve its capital budget problem. That has been a place where I think the state has not been attentive enough to funding needs. I'll just talk about the University of California, both in terms of needs for seismic remediation and deferred maintenance. We used to have, before 2006, a general obligation revenue bond that funded those areas of the budget about every two years. That hasn't been the case since 2006. So we really do not have a stable funding source for that. So what I've done is added, this is one way in which philanthropy is benefiting. The entire campus added a 2.5% to our philanthropic allocation. It's a kind of gift tax for deferred maintenance. So we, and I've also made the decision that all of the specified, undirected realized bequests go to deferred maintenance. So we have a pot of money that we can use. It's insufficient, but along with our advocacy for the state, we're doing, we're pulling the levers that we can. In addition, whenever we think about new buildings, we're always thinking about the seismic problems. We have us like a giant game of Tetris. The building that I'm most thinking about right now is Evans Hall, where we have statistics, we'll be moving to the gateway, advising in classrooms, we'll be moving to the new building that will be on the Dwynell Hall parking lot. And we have planning for new buildings for both mathematics and economics, which will enable us to take down Evans. So we're always thinking about seismic needs and also deferred maintenance needs in all the decisions we make. Deferred maintenance and housing is a slightly different story. There, the income from our student rents is supposed to pay for deferred maintenance. And this is an area that, in which not only Steve Sutton, but our new interim CFO, Dan Fidelberg, and also Mark Fisher, our administrative, our CAO have great interest. And so we've been working on the, what is an insufficiency of money coming from housing revenues to pay for deferred maintenance issues in housing? I'm gonna stay with infrastructure. A question came in, it says there was an article in the San Francisco Standard mentioning that the San Francisco city officials met with UC Berkeley to discuss opening a campus in San Francisco. Can you confirm or deny? What's the story? What's going on there? I can certainly confirm that we've been approached by the city and asked to think about whether we could imagine having some kind of satellite activities in downtown San Francisco. So we're, it's a really interesting question. And we've been having a number of meetings with deans, with people in the real estate property development world to advise us to see if there are any opportunities there that might be of advantage to the campus. I personally feel that we shouldn't do anything in downtown San Francisco that doesn't produce an income stream for the campus. And so the question is, what can we imagine? So very early stages in the discussion, nothing has been decided. We're really trying to get people's advice about what they might imagine. So that's where that stands. Got it. Okay, we're gonna move on to some of the other questions that have come in. Some of them are about big issues, some small, but all important to those who asked, I'm sure. This one, can you take concrete action to restore timely decisions on merit cases? The present situation is causing undue stress. The situation is unparalleled anywhere in academia. Well, we certainly, we already have taken such action. I apologize to anyone who has been kept waiting in unconscionable time in relationship to their merit increases. We had a staffing shortage. We found out that we are by far the campus that has the fewest staff in academic personnel. And there were some particular issues which we've now moved to correct. So merit cases through the heroic efforts of Vicki Plout and our staff are moving quickly again and people should get timely responses to merit cases. Yeah, and here's another one, another one that sort of relates to work conditions and human resource issues. How is campus going to address the fact that the healthcare cost increase is higher than the cost of living adjustment? Is there, are there any plans or thoughts about this? Yeah, unfortunately, the cost of health insurance particularly in California has sharply increased as people know. And it has to do largely with mandated increases in the salaries of healthcare workers. And those costs are being passed on to, I guess ultimately the consumer to insurance companies which are raising their costs for the consumer other than really advocating that we negotiate as hard as we can with the insurance companies. There is not, I don't think there's anything more that we can do or anything that I'm aware of being contemplated at the system-wide level which is where action would have to be taken. Got it, I wanna move now towards another question that's about campus safety. And before I just ask this question, share with us just your own thoughts, your assessment of what the current situation is, what you've been hearing from parents and where do you think stand in terms, where do you think things stand in terms of safety for the community? And also where our police department is under new leadership and how it's sort of responding to some of the challenges that are out there. I think our new, the leadership, Yogananda Pittman is amazing. She is extraordinary and really has been helping us rethink how we can have a more effective, what is a tiered public safety system. So you start with officers, armed officers and armed officers should really be used only in circumstances where crime is being committed, where there is threat of violence. And then for, we're creating another category, actually two other categories. One of a crisis intervention team for mental health emergencies, that's up and running now. So that we've moved on. And then we're creating another group of, I wanna use the term officers, but I guess I will, but it's really people who are not armed, but who are trained to intervene in situations that don't pose threats of violence or criminal conduct, but I like skateboarding and things like that. And then of course, we have our large student walk group that offers the Bears Walk service that is such a help. I have a sense just from my reading, the crime alerts that come across my desk that crime has somewhat diminished, but I haven't done a systematic study of it. Yeah, there's another question about safety, but it's very specific. So I'll ask before I go to the full question, if you're aware of within the UC system, something called the Public Safety Responder Program, does that ring a bell there? No, it doesn't ring a bell. Yeah, so there was a question about why we haven't hired, apparently there's a headcount issue and we can hire responders and we haven't. I'm just gonna ask the person who presented that question, if you could just maybe send us an email or send an email to the chancellor's office and we'll try to figure out who's got the right answers to address that. Sorry, it's just at a level of detail, we're not prepared to answer it today. Let me talk about another priority and one of the things you've talked about since the beginning of your tenure in office has been the importance of enhancing and improving and increasing the diversity of the campus community. Where do things stand with that in terms of students and staff and faculty? What progress have we made and what remains to be done on the road ahead? Well, diversity is a project that never ends as the population changes. We've made good progress. Every successive class has been more diverse than the one before. We've made particular progress in the representation of Latinx students in our student body. We're on course to be a Hispanic serving institution by 2028. So that's going well, but that's only part. The demographics are only part of the issue and equally important, it's an experience that people have when they're here. This has been a hard year, I think for a sense of community and belonging in part because of the mid-east conflict. It also is really important that people be moving up in leadership roles so that the leadership of the campus, both on the staff side and the academic side is reflective of the diversity of the campus. We've been making some progress, but not enough in my view. In that regard, we've tried to create some leadership development programs on both the staff and the faculty side. I've been particularly concerned about the representation of Asian American and Pacific Islanders in campus management positions. That group of our population is not advancing as quickly as you might expect given the proportion that they are of the workforce. So we're having particular attention to that. So that's a little bit. We're making progress, but I think it never is enough. You never arrive and say, we've gotten to our destination. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and also relates to another question that came in from the audience and sort of on a broader level, which is how do you foresee the dismantling of affirmative action policies, influencing efforts towards diversity and inclusion in collegiate settings? Yeah, that's a complicated, complicated question. Of course, we've been living since the middle 1990s with the prohibition from Proposition 209 of attention to ethnicity, race or gender in hiring and admissions decisions. So in a sense, we're at the place where the rest of the country has arrived since the Supreme Court decision. What is more alarming to me are the actions being taken in some states to eliminate diversity programming, which I think is so important and is really a way of both supporting the sense of inclusion and belonging for underrepresented populations on our campus and also as a way of educating the entire campus about diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and now we've been adding a J justice. I have another question here and I'm just reflecting, you and I have been doing these conversations almost since the beginning of your tenure and your ability to answer questions large and small always blows me away and I always think, no, you won't have an answer to this one but maybe you will. Students are set to lose access to Berkeley.edu emails nine months after graduation. Yes, you already know where I'm going or this person is. And they say other universities such as UCLA have implemented work around such as forwarding services to allow alumni to keep their emails. Why doesn't Berkeley do this? Berkeley is working on whether we can figure out a solution that the cost of continuing this service is just cost prohibitive because of changes that Google has made in its costing policies. And we discovered as we began to study this issue that only about 2% of our alumni take advantage of this. So it was a huge cost disproportionate to the number of users. However, I understand that certainly people recently graduated really care about this. So we're trying to figure out if there's some kind of work around that we can figure out. There also are serious security concerns that we have. So we're working on it. We don't know if we can find a solution. We'll certainly try to figure out what UCLA is doing. All right, going back to infrastructure two more infrastructure questions have come in. One of them is kind of curious because now I'm wondering about it too. What's the future of the Richmond Field Station? Oh gosh, I was just talking about that this morning in a meeting that that question is really an infrastructure question. We don't have enough at this term I learned as Chancellor, horizontal infrastructure. That means roads, water, electricity. And the trouble is we don't have the money to build it. So we're about to do an electrical study of the field station to try to figure that out. I think that the Richmond Field Station is gonna have to be a joint venture a little bit like the Moffat Field Project although probably with more university usages we simply don't have the money to develop the infrastructure there that would enable fuller use of the field station at this time. Good. I think that's gonna be something for another Chancellor to think about. Speaking of another Chancellor, do you have any updates on when we're going to find out? And I know the search isn't conducted by us. It's conducted by the Office of the President but any intelligence or things you want to share? I have no intelligence other than I know this search is going on and I know they'll find somebody by July 1st. I'll take your word for that. Another infrastructure question. Are there any plans for maintaining the Hearst Women's Gym an important legacy building with beautiful pools? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that is a wonderful building and we certainly have one of the reasons that we have located the electrification project where we have on the field that's right next to the Hearst Gym is to, we think that that project is gonna enable the infrastructure improvements that that building so desperately needs in Hearst Gym. So yes, we always have that in our mind and as soon as we have funding we will indeed improve the building. It's just a treasure of the campus and of course we would keep and seek to improve it. The problem is what's the budget source? Yeah. So before I ask a closing question I'm just wondering if there's anything that you wanted to address that I failed to ask about today. I think you've been pretty encyclopedic. Well, trust our community. We got really got wonderful questions. So you're looking ahead to the last semester. We talked about it a little bit at the very beginning. What do you hope to accomplish? I mean, what are you really gonna be focusing on in these last few months of your time in office? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean of course I'm gonna try to get as far as I can with the priority projects that I've had like People's Park or student housing more generally and try to resolve any problems that are particularly difficult to resolve that would be hard for new chancellor to come in and face immediately athletics. The athletics budget falls in that category I think. But one of the things that I've learned in this job and this semester certainly been testimony to that is that you always do have your vision and your plans for what you're gonna do but lots of stuff comes at you over the transom and you wind up spending sometimes way more time with what comes over the transom than you do with your best laid plans. The, one of the things that I'm going to be doing next semester is saying lots and lots of thank yous. This, you don't do anything of significance in this office without the partnership of so many people of the partnership of our extraordinary staff, the partnership of our extraordinary faculty, the partnership of our students and the partnership of our alumni and donor community. So I'll begin by thanking everybody who's listening in today. Thank you for everything you do for Berkeley. And this is, I guess people say thanksgiving as the season of thanks but I always think of this holiday season as a season of gratitude. And so I just wanna say thank you to everybody. Yeah, thanks for that. That wasn't gonna be my last question but I do have one more. In light of what you just talked about how do you feel like you're leaving the university? How would you assess our health and our position? You've been connected to the campus for so many years and when you step back and you look at its arc over the course of your time that you've been connected to the campus how are we doing? I think we're, I mean the word that to me characterizes Berkeley is resilience. And I'm very suspicious. I mean, this is the holiday season so I guess I can say this. I'm sure many of you get these Christmas letters from friends and nothing ever goes wrong in their life, right? And institutions can be vulnerable to the same fault that things are going horribly unless you can write one of those Christmas letters about Berkeley, we will always have challenges but we're good at addressing challenges. And resilience is a real strength of the campus. So many things are going right. Our extraordinary students, they're so brilliant. Our extraordinary faculty, our extraordinary staff and we're a dynamic scrappy institution that lives at our country's western edge and always has dreams that propel it to new places. Well, gosh darn, that sounds like a place I'd like to work. Chancellor Chris, thank you very much for your time today. I hope you have a great holiday season and I think I will be joined by many colleagues and looking forward to spending this last semester with you on campus. Well, thank you and happy holidays to everybody listening and thanks.