Back to School 2014

Berkeley’s November election will feature several controversial ballot measures and three contested council seats, including a historic soda tax and the first council race to take place in a new student supermajority district.

To help you keep track of Berkeley’s changing restaurant landscape, here is a short back-to-school briefing on the new restaurants that have sprung up while you were away.

Some things are quite comfortably cyclical. For example, Welcome Week, Caltopia, Calapalooza, Cal-everything, the start of a new year, a new semester, etc. — I like that these events recur. What is — or should be — unbearably cyclical, however, is the crisis that continues to face higher-education institutions.

By next fall, Lower Sproul Plaza will reopen as a bustling center of campus life.

As a university renowned for its bustling activism, UC Berkeley is facing a particularly relevant year: the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement that catapulted the student body into fervor.

Berkeley is not only what you will make it in these next few years but all that has come before.