 Welcome to CalTV News's first segment of Offscript, where we talk to reporters about their behind-the-scenes stories from the field. My name is Tomas Manglania with CalTV News, the co-director of the department. We're going to start off this first segment with Perla Shaheen, one of our CalTV News returner reporters. She was here last semester. Perla, you actually sat down with the new chancellor, Chancellor Carol Christ, to talk about a range of issues and topics. Could you give our audience a bit of behind-the-scenes how you got that interview set up and what you talked about? Yeah, so Carol Christ, once I heard that we were getting a new chancellor on campus, I immediately thought that it would be a great story for CalTV, and I reached out to her over the summer when I was spending my time at Berkeley doing an internship over the summer. And I sent out an email, and her manager actually got back to me, or her, like, publicist got back to me and arranged for an interview later in the summer. He asked, are you available in Berkeley? If you are, then we could set up this interview. They made sure to wait until she was, you know, officially a part, officially inaugurated as chancellor. And they decided to meet with me and very graciously set up an interview time with me, even though she had a lot on her plate entering into the school year. And so, yeah, I met her towards the end of August, so I made sure to wait until fall to produce the video because I wanted to be able to publicize it on campus. And when the school year started, so when students were coming back and, you know, hearing about the new chancellor, and they'd be more intrigued about, you know, a video to know more about her. And so, basically, I really wanted to, when I met with her, she was just so interesting. She's a very strong character and very easy to talk to, and she really does have the best interest of Berkeley at heart. I think she, yeah, she was just very, she's very, she's been very involved with Berkeley. And so we kind of talked about her past experience and, you know, what she, what her priorities are as chancellor and what she really wants for the student body. Because there were, you know, some students who expressed concerns about, you know, Dirks and his priorities. And so, yeah, I just wanted to get to the basis of, like, who she was and what her intentions were for the student body and, yeah, how she planned to deal with controversial issues, specifically with, like, Free Speech Week and things like that. I'm glad you mentioned that because if you, if the viewers don't know, Perla's actually produced the story in a two-part series. And so the second part of the series, which we'll share on this post later today so that you can watch it yourself, is her specifically addressing the issue of free speech. Now, we all know that is controversial. We are supposedly at the end of what was supposed to be Free Speech Week. What was it like talking to her about that, that issue and what was the takeaway from that conversation regarding her outlook on this free speech year? Yeah, so she is very much a proponent of Free Speech, as we would hope for that. And she really wanted to ensure the safety of students this year because, you know, with all the issues last year with the breaking of the Amazon Store window and the fire that broke out on campus and all the damages that it cost us, this year she wanted to be more cautious about it. So I guess we, you know, had to deal, so we started with Free Speech Week and that was a plan to follow through. But then it didn't end up working, but I guess her take on it is that she really wants to promote an open dialogue between students and the faculty. So she set up a free speech, like a discussion between students and faculty members, including herself. And she plans to continue that discussion along the year from what I got from when I talked to her. And she seems to really hope that we can proceed in the future without violence. But, you know, that's an idealistic view and hopefully I support her in hopefully finding out if we can, you know, figure that out in the future. Of course, this is continuing coverage. And so the story doesn't end with the Chancellor's interview. We've also spoke to people from ASUC, Senator Juniper Angelica. She talked about this Facebook live with us. So definitely the conversation will continue. We thank you so much for that interview and the insight that you provided us with that. Also joining us today for our first off-script segment is Blake Johnson and Talia Lixin, who actually covered the protests recently, earlier in the week live. Can you tell us a bit about how you went about that process and what was the experience like? This was both of your first stories for CalTV. Yeah, so pretty much we knew that Free Speech Week was coming up. And so we wanted to go out there and report. It was a little bit nerve-wracking that our first video, at least for me, I think Talia, probably insane that it was our first video, was a live video. But I think it really was a great way to like throw us into the field. You know, the climate of Sproul and the protesters that were against Milo coming and the potential Free Speech Week. You know, the supporters. It was a really interesting climate, I guess you could say. And so pretty much we got out there. When Talia and I arrived, it was probably, I think Milo was supposed to start at 12 when we got there around 1145. And there were police already blocking it off. So we had to go all the way around the block. It was really, like Perle was saying, Chancellor Christ really did, like there was a lot of effort put into it to prevent it. Well, the entire part of Sproul and even cases of lower Sproul were shut down. I believe I was hearing it was also problematic to some students because it was disrupting the daily routine. And also students of color spaces were basically shut down as well. Could you maybe also, Talia, talk about your experience and who you interviewed? Our viewers don't know Talia actually. Kyle protestor as Milo was exiting in his SUV. Yes. So when he says we were thrown into this live interview situation, we were literally thrown into it. There were just people, all these police pushing us into sort of a little crowd where gathering around where Milo's car had been exiting campus and sort of an escape mission almost to get away from all the media and the people that had been chasing. And we found a woman who was gracious enough to let us interview her after we told her a little bit about what our organization was and how we're a student-run newspaper who wants more information about people that were out here protesting and counter-protesting. And this woman talked to us a little bit about why she felt it was important to be out there and her side of the story and her outlook on this. I'm not clear whether she was a student or not. So that would have been interesting to find out, but it was a quick little run-in that we had with her. But many of those people were not students, which I find interesting. And many of the people out there were, I found, not protesting one side or the other of this free speech situation. But the fact that our money as students is going toward a lot of the security that's going, that's preventing a lot of movement through campus and making it very difficult to get around. Because this week alone, supposedly it costs close to a million dollars, right? Yes. And so Blake and Talia, I was there with you. I was videotaping your live coverage. And our viewers might not know this, but this is also part of why we do off-script. We did see someone get arrested, who supposedly, at least when we were right when this is there, really was just doing his job. Do you mind explaining, Blake, to our viewers what that was? Yeah, so Talia was filming a live video and Tomas and I were standing there. And we're right in the middle of a crowd, so it was really overwhelming. There's a lot going on, and there's riot police pretty much everywhere. And we see this African-American male following an actual news reporter. I'm not sure which channel. I believe it was KPIX. Yeah, so we saw him following her. Later we find out Tomas knew this, but he was a security guard for the news channel, but the police misinterpreted why he was following her. And so they grabbed him and they were really aggressive with him. And all of a sudden I see them pulling out the zip tie handcuffs. And they're like handcuffing him and just being really aggressive with him. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so intense. And then you later told us his affiliation and it was like, oh wow, there's so many other people that could have potentially been a bigger threat. And then he was the one that was shown. So it was interesting to see, especially the climate of the protests and everything that's going on. And then they chose to do something about him. So it was really interesting to see. Right. And just for more context, we actually did speak to the reporter whose security guard this was. And so he was a private security guard. He was former, I believe, he was a private security guard in Richmond. And luckily I would say it, you know, of the best that we could make of it, they got everything on camera on there. And now he did try to reach out to them and see online if there was any updates. I couldn't find any, but we hope that really whatever the situation is that it's treated the way it should be. But that definitely is why we are doing off-script to let you know these behind-the-scenes stories. And just real quick before we wrap up, Perla, when you interviewed the chancellor, she also touched on the food and housing crisis. Yes. And a story that I produced, and again we'll be sharing all of these stories after this segment, she talked about the food and housing crisis. And could you maybe just give a brief explanation of what she talked about and then we'll go on about talking about the ASCC's tunnel. Yeah, so currently UC Berkeley is dealing with an extreme deficit because of overpopulation and, you know, it's a public school. You have to accept a certain amount of students from a certain state and other areas. So she's dealing with the overpopulation of students and therefore we have an issue of lacking, we're lacking housing for those students and, you know, there's not enough for the population that's on campus. And so she's hoping to solve that by, you know, creating more facilities available for students and she kind of discussed that a little bit. Hopefully we'll see that she'll follow through on those actions and those promises. But yeah, maybe we could solve that. Definitely. And so as I was sharing with you guys as we do show reviews every week at our meetings, the ASCC Executive EAVP office held a town hall and Congresswoman Barbara Lee was, you know, treated as the headliner. She is a well-known person here in California and really across the nation. And so they addressed the issue of food insecurity and housing insecurity, which, you know, is such a crisis here and they really wanted to have the university state and really administration as a whole look at this issue as a crisis just as we discussed other crises that we experience as students. And one of the biggest takeaways is that even though we do have a large undergraduate population, when considering these issues such as food and housing insecurity, we can't leave out our graduate students. And so that was one of the takeaways that maybe you wouldn't find in the actual story, but the panel really focused on both undergraduate and graduate students and one of them, I believe it was Ruben Sanchez, who's Ethnic Studies major graduate. He said that we can't forget the community outside of campus. And so at Cal TV News we cover everything both on campus, off campus and really what affects everyone no matter what part of the country you live in or in this case we even have some international viewers across the globe. And so we want to thank Talia, Blake and Perla for sharing their stories with us today behind the scenes from the field. This is our first segment for Offscript. Tune in next week for the second segment of Offscript. Thank you for tuning in to Cal TV News.