Ten days before the University of California at Berkeley was scheduled to notify applicants whether they’d been accepted in-person, online, or for the spring semester only, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Monday to allow it to avoid those distinctions — a response to court-ordered enrollment cuts — for the coming fall.
Both the State Senate and the California State Assembly had voted unanimously earlier in the day in favor of SB 118/AB 168, which essentially overrides the decision of the state Supreme Court. That court had upheld two lower court rulings freezing enrollment at 2020-21 levels.
Late Monday, Newsom, a Democrat, signed the bill into law. “I’m grateful to the legislature for moving quickly on this critical issue,” the governor said in a prepared statement. “It sends a clear signal that California won’t let lawsuits get in the way of the education and dreams of thousands of students, our future leaders and innovators.”
The measure gives Berkeley 18 months to complete an environmental review of its expansion efforts before a court-ordered freeze on enrollment can take place. The law also changes the California Environmental Quality Act so that enrollment shifts don’t constitute, by themselves, a “project” subject to environmental restrictions.
The university is scheduled to send out acceptances for its fall 2022 class by March 24, and it had planned to tell 1,000 students they could enroll online-only for the fall semester and 635 more that they’d have to defer to the spring semester. Now, that won’t be necessary.
As a result of the new law, the university will return to its original admissions and enrollment targets, a campus spokesman, Dan Mogulof said. In late March, it will offer admission to more than 15,000 incoming freshmen and then in mid-April, to more than 4,500 transfer students. As it does each year, Berkeley will enroll a small number of students in the spring, but nowhere near the number the now-scrapped mitigation plan had called for. All admissions offers will be for on-campus learning. The approximately 400 graduate-school seats the university had planned to cut will be reinstated.
Berkeley’s chancellor, Carol T. Christ, thanked lawmakers “on behalf of thousands of students who will benefit” from the new law. “At Berkeley we are, and will remain, committed to continuing our efforts to address a student-housing crisis through new construction of below-market housing,” she said in a written statement. “We look forward to working in close, constructive collaboration with our partners in Sacramento in order to advance our shared interest in providing California students with an exceptional experience and education.”
Michael V. Drake, president of the University of California system, said the legislation affirms the university’s obligations under state environmental laws “while also safeguarding the bright futures of thousands of hardworking prospective UC-Berkeley students.”
The neighborhood group that sued the university over its recent expansion blasted the legislation as “poorly drafted and confusing.”
“UC-Berkeley does not have the capacity to handle more students, and more than 10 percent of current Berkeley students suffer homelessness during their education. In addition, more than 15 percent suffer from food insecurity,” Phil Bokovoy, president of Save Berkeley Neighborhoods, said in a statement. “We don’t want new students to have to live in cars, campers, and hotel rooms like they are in Santa Barbara.”
Bokovoy predicted the measure would worsen the area’s housing crisis and result in additional litigation.
