 Welcome to CalTV News's third episode of Offscript where reporters share behind-the-scenes stories from in the field. Thank you for joining us. My name is Tamas Malania. And so today we have a full studio. We are talking with Blake Johnson, Anna Luck, Robert Tuk and Lisa Kim about the stories they produced in the past few weeks. And so let's get started with Robert Tuk. Robert, in your research story, which we actually collaborated on, we spoke with athletes and students who are Abbot Athletic Game Watchers about the issue of leaving on the field. Can you tell us about how you went about making that story and what the people you spoke with said? Hey Tamas, thank you for having me on here. Basically the whole point of the NCAA story was to really highlight kind of the movement going on in the NFL. Students on campus watch football every Sunday, every Monday. And you see it in the news. You see on Facebook that Colin Kaepernick of the Formula of the San Francisco 49ers put his knee down on the field. And he did it as a protest and that was very eventual and gradual and soon players started doing it too. The big question is whether or not collegiate athletes, athletes like UC Berkeley and the Pac-12 and the rest of the NCAA, whether or not they're allowed to take a knee if they want to during the National Anthem. We spoke to the communications office, Herb Benenson. We wanted to speak to Catholics, really kind of gauge if there are any bylaws or protocol for the National Anthem. Herb responded in an email and told us to kind of Google it. Told us, you know, a lot of it was accessible online. So it was a little bit frustrating that even we ourselves as students can inquire within the communications office of Catholics. But sure enough, you know, you send us information, we watch the videos, we did our research. And we found out that, you know, football players at UC Berkeley, you know, say in the tunnel, a lot of athletes have been addressed by their coaches on kneeling. And it's kind of, no one's really done it yet. Right, and so for the viewers who don't know what TV programming is like within the Pac-12, the Anthem is played during commercial break. And then by the time the camera goes live, the athletes are out of the tunnel and in the field. And so one of the other things I remember from that story, speaking to other students, one of the things that was one of the most important things the students said was that these athletes aren't just athletes, they're students, they're citizens of America, and therefore they should have the right to approach them. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, these are college students that are very aware of social issues that are happening across not only campuses and cities, very close to home for all of them. These are also students that have a lot of, you know, heart and they want to practice their freedom of expression. You know, their freedom of speech and a lot of the students that we spoke to agree. All right, thank you so much. And again, after this live episode ends, we're going to be posting all the links to these stories in the description. So let's move on to reporter Lisa Kim. I'm actually accompanying you on this live stream. The polished story will be out very soon at the end of the week. Can you tell us what you covered and also what you saw at the live protests that many people were asking for Berkeley to ban meat entirely? So first I want to thank you for being my cinematographer that day. And that event was on Saturday at noon, and I would say 100 people gathered, and a lot of them were students and actually people from around the community. And three organizations gathered that day. It was Direct Action Everywhere, The Safe Movement, and PEDA. And these three organizations gathered to send one message to ban meat on Berkeley. And I spoke with Cassie King that day, and she is her new software at UC Berkeley. And she said she's been part of Direct Action Everywhere since her freshman year, and she's an English major. And she just, like, she spoke, she did a speech that day. She spoke for about three minutes. And she was really passionate about what Direct Action Everywhere does. So Direct Action Everywhere does something called Open Rescue. And something unique about Open Rescue is that they go into these slaughterhouses and they rescue a lot of animals, and they do this all live. And so the most recent rescue that they did was they went into a chicken warehouse, a slaughterhouse, and they managed to rescue two chickens there. And actually on Sunday after the event, they went to Oakland, and they saved about, like, a thousand rabbits, because they saw that, like, rabbits were dying inside a slaughterhouse, and they went there. And this was all live. And it's also on their place of refuge, too. Interesting. And so how many people showed up to this protest, and was there a big police presence? I mean, I know we just came off with what seems to be a while ago, but it was Free Speech Week not too long ago, where we had police presence on campus. Was it a similar atmosphere? How would you describe it? So the protest on Saturday, I would say, almost like 100 people showed up. And a lot of people were students, I would say. And that day there was a lot of parents and visiting students, I would say, like, seeing just looking around the campus. And there was not a lot of police security. I'd say there was roughly about, like, five police events. And when I saw the footage of the protest one, those three organizations went to open. And I would say there was more police there. It was a lot bigger, and they were all riding and standing around the warehouse, and they were just, like, they were taking action. There was a lot of speakers at that event on Saturday, too. Right, definitely. Thanks for covering that. And like I said, we do have the live stream on our Facebook page and the full story. And you actually interviewed Cassie, who led the protest on Saturday, on Sunday, rather. And so that will all be on our Facebook page. And it's interesting to see because oftentimes, I mean, this is why we have off script to talk about these stories. For example, the part where, you know, they rescued rabbits in Oakland. I don't know how many people knew. That was exactly the case in the city. I want to move on now to our other reporter, Blake Johnson, who worked on a story that hit a lot of people's, you know, personal lives. You, along with Robert Tuke, spoke to students around campus about the Northern California wildfires. We all see it in the headlines even today. It was devastating. What was it like talking to the students and what did they tell you about them? Right, so we interviewed a couple of students. A couple of them were actually survivors of their homes that either burned down or they needed to burn down. And it's, I can't begin to describe, I can't even begin to imagine also what they're going through. But it was so fascinating to see how resilient they were. I was talking to one girl and, you know, she was looking at it as one of the learning experience. You know, it's like uniting her community now, although many of her family, friends, like local residents have all lost their homes and we literally lost everything. She was looking at it as like, it's going to unite the community. I was really like inspired by it because, you know, for someone to look through such a devastating time, it's really amazing to see that people are able to look past, you know, the moment and look at the future and think, well, it's only going to go up. And something that didn't make it into the package was that a lot of them who were affected are actually organizing in Berkeley here and bringing it back home. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so there were a couple of different groups. There were some Greek life organizations and I think some other organizations that were coming together. They were collecting supplies and primarily they wanted money more so because it was difficult to store the supplies once they're delivered to those areas because there's not a lot of places to put supplies for people because they were running out of room. So money would help. And it was great to see not only those that were affected by the fires that were uniting, but it was also the UC Berkeley campus, you know, how many other and helping those that they had seen affected and wanting to help them. And I think one of the most interesting parts of the piece was that you guys actually explained the N95 mask. And so, you know, it's recent. It seemed like it was a perennial clog that we had on campus after the fires hit. And so could you touch on that a little bit and how that also impacted some students' health? Yeah, so we talked about the N95 masks, because the smoke from the North Bay fires came and affected UC Berkeley and a lot of the Bay area. And so many people were taking precautions through wearing these masks. And we interviewed a couple of people in Mongolia. You know, she said she had asthma and it was affecting her, but it also was just affecting people without health concerns. And so, you know, there's so many toxic particles I would assume in the air. And so these masks were like preventing from that and showing to people's lives. And so I think it was a great opportunity for Robert and Blake for doing that story very timely. And lastly, Anna, your story will not be out probably in the next week, but we wanted to talk to you because it was probably, aside from our interview with the Chancellor, this was another high-profile interview. You interviewed the Dean of the Law School, Chemerinsky. Can you tell us how you went about organizing that interview and what was the main takeaway if you had to summarize the interview? I guess reaching out to the Dean of the Law School wasn't the hard part. He approved like the five minutes of emailing him. The hard part was actually like trying to get through to the Secretary and finding a date to do the actual interview. It was delayed first for a week and then after for a month. So I had to wait for a long time. So my interview was basically asking him what the free speech really meant. A lot of the students here or whenever controversial people come to campus to speak, they always say that they support free speech but not hate speech. So I asked the Dean of the Law School what free speech actually meant. So just a quick summary, he said that there was no such thing as hate speech. And even if there was hate speech, it was protected under free speech as long as it doesn't hurt anybody. So that was the interview. All right, thank you so much. Interesting. So that story will be posted later on in the week. I wanted to thank again Lisa Kim, Robert Tuk, Analogue and Blake Johnson for all of their hard work. And we thank you for tuning in to the third episode of Offscript, where reporters share behind-the-scenes stories from in the field. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to stay tuned to CalTV for this and more in the coming weeks.