Week 4- Toby Lee

Toby Lee Section A03 Week 4

The article I read was the article written by Alan Markow, “ A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis respond to Occupy movements.” When I first read this article, I had one question in my mind and that was whether I had made the right decision to attend UC Davis instead of UC Berkeley. Then I thought why there was even a discrepancy in the way both universities handled the situation. Was it because UC Berkeley had a better reputation that they need to hold up and that UC Davis should continue tarnishing their reputation. On a simple level we can see that UC Berkeley handled the situation in a way that pleases the audience while in the article is seems that the writer wasn’t quite pleased in how Davis handled the situation. Instead it was brought up instead of lowering the tuition they gave an excuse that there are a lot of expenses that needs to clean up Dutton Hall. A question I may ask is why didn’t UC Berkeley bring up the fact that they need to clean up their campus. Then that brings up the topic of whether Berkeley is a more prestigious university, so they don’t give excuses to the public and whether the students in Berkeley are more well behaved than Davis. It can be seen that Berkeley upheld their reputation well by responding positively to the Occupy movement. Within a short amount of time they passed a financial aid program that helps the middle income families. That quieted the crowd while Davis didn’t by giving an excuse and having campus police pepper spray. Does that mean that Berkeley has high requirements for even the security system and financial department? How is it that Berkeley handled a situation with much more finese than Davis? I am not saying that Davis didn’t handle the situation well but rather stirred up even more emotions. With even less people on their side, even the media will start to perceive that Berkeley is indeed the higher ranked school, without test scores in comparison. If Davis handled this situation differently, they could have promoted their school better and probably stood out from Berkeley by letting the rest of the world know that Davis is on par with Berkeley.

Markow, A. (2011, December 22). A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis respond to Occupy movements. Retrieved October 11, 2017, from https://ivn.us/2011/12/19/a-tale-of-two-campuses-berkeley-and-davis-respond-to-occupy-movements/

UC Davis . (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2017, from https://studyabroad.ucdavis.edu/local_resources/images/logos_graphics/ucd_logo_small_gold.gif