 Welcome to Cal TV News, the second part of Offscript. My name is Tomas Malonia, the co-director of the department. Here at Offscript, we talk to our reporters about behind-the-scenes stories from in the field. Thank you for joining us. And today I'm sitting down with Lisa Kim and Robert Tew, both reporters in our news department. And first, Lisa, I want to start off with a story that actually you and our fellow reporter, Polina, who was not able to make it today, she covered, along with yourself, the Free Speech Week wrap-up. So you guys were talking to students on Scrowl and really across campus about what Free Speech Week like was for them. Could you tell us about who you spoke to and what kind of responses you got from the students you interviewed? So we spoke to four students and to them, all of them were very nice. And it was actually our first video together. It was a new experience to get people to talk to us. And a lot of their opinions about Free Speech Week were how it might have bothered them while they were going to class, especially because Free Speech Week was canceled. And a lot of students felt like their time was being disrupted because of the cancellation and all of the police around campus, because not a lot of students are used to that. So a lot of them were very frustrated and then one of them mentioned that they don't understand where all the money went because they're supposedly a million dollars spent on the security. Yeah, I noticed in a lot of the interviews you did, Free Speech Week was supposed to be a week, but Chancellor Caldwell-Chris and Robert will be talking about his interview with the Chancellor later, but she was talking about how this really is the year of Free Speech. And we are feeling that this story, Free Speech Week was a few weeks ago, but it continues to live on. The main concern seems to be the cost, really, and how that money could have gotten elsewhere. You guys also utilized live footage from the actual event. Can you talk about how do you use that in the story and what dynamic did that bring into the story? So there was a lot of live footage on this speech and protest that were happening during campus. And we wanted to bring that all together and show everyone the whole world the impact of that. So we wanted to use the live footage of the Wheeler Hall and police were coming in and out and they were telling students that they have to evacuate the proximity. And a lot of students were just confused about what's going on. One of the police, I remember, said, oh, this is not a danger, this is not a danger. But a lot of students were walking very fast out of Wheeler Hall. Just as a reminder, Polina and Jane also worked on the story with you. What was the overall sentiment you got from the students you were interviewing? If you could describe it in a few words, what were they feeling after a Free Speech Week? So some of the students actually went to the protest and some did not. And I guess a lot of them again were very confused about what was going on. Why was there so much police? Because they're going to classes and some of them experienced classes being cancelled too. So they were wondering, even though I remember one of them said, oh, my parents called and they're wondering. My friends from high school were asking, oh, what's going on? I don't know where there's only protests and bombs and all these people at your school. They were just explaining everything's okay. I think a lot of students were just confused because everything happened so quickly and it was cancelled and that was very unexpected. So they didn't know why it was cancelled. There are a lot of talks about why the protests, why the speeches were cancelled. But it was because the speeches, the speakers didn't turn in their forms on time and some of them were saying, oh, the teacher, the school itself didn't send. They didn't respond to the emails that were questioned. Right. This event has been well publicized. But really, this is the year of free speech as the Chancellor has called it. The effects both impacting students who were there on campus and who weren't. This is a perfect segue to talk about your story, Robert. We actually produced, we helped produce two stories alongside Tara Holbrook this week and in the past week. Let's first talk about the story you did regarding the events following the evacuation of Leela. You talked to some people there. Can you describe to us how that evacuation took place? One of our other reporters, Talia, actually got live footage from there. Talk about how that story came together. Yeah, absolutely. It was fascinating. That day, on Monday, it was before Free Speech Week really came together. It was right before, it was basically the catalyst of it all. And it was nice because we went down to the West Crescent on on the west side of campus. And there's going to be an organization there. It's Unite Against Righting Violence in the Bay Area Coalition. And they were organizing things. They had a few speakers. And basically for the extent of Free Speech Week, they were planning on protesting it. So students showed up. Personally, I had professors show up. And even in one of my French classes, my professor was very vocal about all of this. It's violent to be on campus, confrontations with right-wing supporters, left-wing supporters, just all over the spectrum. And it's this hazardous for students to go to class. They thought so. They signed a boycott. 133 signatures. Only six of them were STEM. But all the professors and basically the humanities departments agreed that this, it was inappropriate to happen on campus. So we go to this organized rally. It's on the steps. In full wars. Another TV organization shows up. And they're provoking people. Left and right. You must be a fascist. You must be a communist. And it was just really fascinating to see the dialogue. This discourse is almost provoked violence. But people were surprisingly very calm. And occasionally did have reheated conflicts. This was all before we were all. And so that's interesting. This is why we have the Oscar series to talk about things that don't necessarily make it into the story. But that you as a reporter experience. And so for example, the info wars reporter who was there provoking people. She was particularly provoking the press other members of the press. Is that right? Absolutely. She was trying to antagonize everyone. Later that day I saw on Facebook that she had her car broken into. Awful thing. Never wish it on anyone. But everyone there was there for a specific reason. They had banners. They had fires. They had posters. It was very militarized. There are at least 100 police officers there. The footage itself is less than two minutes long. But there are people all over the place. It was very hot that day. You have a lot of news outlets. But there were also students, there were professors and members from the community. And they had a lot of people that were considered peaceful watchers. Observers to ensure that nothing violent would happen. After that ended, they marched all the way up to Mueller Hall. And I believe they occupied it. I was outside when that happened. Fire alarm was pulled. Police went in and everyone was evacuated. And so for our viewers just tuning in, you can watch all of the stories that we're telling behind the scenes stories about on our Facebook page and our YouTube page. We will be posting the links to that after the segment. It's no longer live. I think that's a great segue to talk about the story that you and Kara also worked on. And Kara's the other reporter who can make it today. But she did work on the story with you. You guys attended an ASUC meeting where Chancellor Carol Chris actually spoke. What did she speak about? And how did you go about getting there? Kara and I went to the ASUC meeting with intentions to speak to the chancellor. We weren't sure what she was going to talk about. I've never really saw her in person before then. Only very rarely. So she did show up. The whole senator gallery was filled with students, with ASUC senators, with observers, and members of the administration. The vice chancellor, Paul Vasades was there. And as well as Chancellor Chris. She goes out there for an hour. She speaks. She has four main points. Those four points included a new financial model, diversity, the student experience, and just another one regarding the whole community and its entirety. Kara and I spoke to the chancellor before. We were able to get an interview promised for three minutes. It took us in three minutes. We asked her, you know, there's a lot of expectation for chancellor coming into a university like this. It's a flagship from your university and whatnot. We also discussed safety. The elephant in the room was the free speech week. A lot of people were affected. ASUC senators were harassed. They were doxxed. That was a new trend that I learned. ASUC senators were being po-focked. I mean, she won't handily pick from, you know, their appearances. It was very discriminatory and scary. And so they actually had a portion there where students could ask questions to the chancellor. What were most of the questions about? Were they all about free speech week? Or were there other issues? They primarily concerned free speech week. Basically a lot of multicultural centers, centers for marginalized communities were being shut down. And they were just really trying to ensure that why did the chancellor allow this to happen? Apparently she has a legal obligation. All right. Thank you so much, Lisa and Robert. Thank you so much for doing your stories. We also want to recognize Carol Holbrook and Juliana Jang, who are not able to join us today for student reasons. And we thank you for tuning in to CalTV's second part of our script. Again, stay tuned for this and more in the coming weeks.