Posts tagged Cal at FanHouse

About a month ago word came down that Cal's planned athletic facilities upgrade had been temporarily halted by literally tree-hugging hippies. Apparently the hippies' legal counsel was wiser than their hairstylists -- white male dreadlocks were regrettably prominent -- and managed to get the facilities delayed based on some obscure seismic statutes. Everyone was duly pissed off and waited for the next shoe to drop.

That shoe appears to be an 80-year old archaeological report featuring one skeleton and one 19th century Mexican coin:

he protesters, who have been roosting in the oak grove since Dec. 2, pointed Tuesday to a UC archaeological survey from 1925 stating that human remains were removed from the area when the stadium was constructed.

"I think this is a significant find and the area should be protected," said Stephan Volker, attorney for the California Oak Foundation, one of four groups suing UC over the proposed renovation of Memorial Stadium and construction of the $125 million sports training center.

Cal blog Tightwad Hill sees through this obvious load of crap and is unamused:

In reality, what the anthropologist in question found was a partial skeleton and a Mexican gold coin dating from the 19th century - but please don't pay attention to the facts. After all, the facts don't really matter - the hippies have another interest group to drag up into the trees and yell into bullhorns. What they lack in gainful employment is more than matched, I'm sure, by their energy and enthusiasm for civil disobedience.

Never mind that no one EVEN KNEW ABOUT THIS SO-CALLED REPORT until the lawyer for the hippies dug it up and shopped it around. It's still very sacred, I'm sure. Break out the smudge sticks and the burning sage, and let's party! Sorry if you think I'm being flippant, but this is the worst sort of opportunism. This 1925 report has yet to be corroborated by any other source. Ken Lightfoot - who as the head of the UC Museum of Anthropology, knows a thing or two about the subject - is unimpressed and says the skeleton's ethnicity is undetermined.

It would only be flippant if there was the slightest shred of evidence that this 1925 report was relevant to anyone except unemployed people with awful hair and kickin' lawyers.

First: Jeff Tedford's initial reaction to the fiasco is, as expected, dull. Via The Band Is On The Field, this SF Chron article has his first words on Hippiegate:

"Anybody who's asking those questions [about his dedication to Cal] is very uneducated to my feelings to Cal and this program," Tedford said. "My commitment is unwavering. My commitment is 100 percent to Cal. I'm not panicking. I'm not fazed by this at all. "I want those statements to be clear to our players, our recruits and anyone else who is wondering."

That's the only thing a man facing down signing day in less than two weeks could possibly say, but if the project is permanently kiboshed that would have to put a damper on his enthusiasm for staying at Cal.

The chances of that seem slim for any panicking Cal fans out there. Though the hippies are engaged in some literal tree-hugging, the injunction was granted based on a California law prohibiting state buildings from going up on earthquake faults. Tightwad Hill explains:

[The judge's] ruling hasn't been released to the public, but the Chronicle report suggests that she found a likelihood that the stadium project would violate the Alquist-Priolo Act, which forbids the state from building new buildings on active earthquake faults. The University submitted a number of tests to the court, some of which showed no seismic activity under the project and others that were inconclusive.

So... that seems like a technicality unrelated to the whole hippie-tree mating thing and not one that is likely to stand up in court. End result is probably a trial that Hippies, Inc., loses and Cal proceeding with construction next year unless Hippies, Inc., comes up with more red tape. Obviously, that's not impossible. It's California and hippies are known to smell and be legally crafty.

Yeah, when I first read about this at Tightwad Hill I thought terming the people trying to prevent a bunch of trees from getting cut down "hippies" was harsh, but... yeah...



Those are some crunchy frickin' hippies right there. I can smell the Bob Marley concert from here. Anyway: confirmed hippies have succeeded in getting a preliminary injunction that prevents Cal from making planned stadium and practice field expansions. This, of course, is the sort of thing that could only happen at Cal-Berkeley. Hippie-featuring video can be found at KRON. The Cal Football Fan calls this a "major blow" against the facilities renovations Jeff Tedford demanded before signing a contract extension with the Bears.

What we need hyeah, of course, is some Slayer.