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New worlds When Shayna Parekh '02 came to visit Berkeley as a high school senior, her brother was too busy with his mid-terms to show her around. So Shayna showed herself around--she talked to student groups on Sproul, visited Boalt Hall and the Haas School of Business, watched the football team practice at Memorial Stadium. "In that one week, I did everything," she says. "Doing everything" could be the motto for this effervescent 21 year old. A political science and interdisciplinary studies major, Parekh is this year's winner of the University Medal, Berkeley's highest undergraduate honor. To qualify, a senior must have a GPA of at least 3.96 and demonstrate other accomplishments that have contributed to the University or wider community. One might think that Parekh had to work hard to get her good grades, but she doesn't put it that way. Not that she didn't put in the hours; it's just that, she says, it never felt like work. "I really haven't ever been 'forced' to take a class--every one I've taken I really wanted to take," she says. She says that research and reading were "pure enjoyment," and that she only wrote papers when she felt truly inspired to write. She's the sort of student that teachers dream of, says Beth Simmons, her political science professor--always tuned-in and ready with a question. Simmons, who recommended Parekh for the University Medal, says Parekh's paper on the International Convention to End Discrimination Against Women is the best student paper she has ever read. Parekh's idea of a fun way to spend an evening has been to listen to one of the many fascinating speakers who come to Berkeley. She considered this a vital part of her education at Cal, and tried to take in a talk every evening. "It was amazing to hear the personal side of issues I had been studying in the classroom," she says. Another critical part of her education was UC's education abroad program. She attended a summer session in South Africa after her first year, titled "The Politics of Change in South Africa." Taught by Professor Robert Price, it opened her eyes to the problems of the developing world, as she was able to visit the townships she was reading about in the course. The following year she spent six months at the University of Delhi. "It was real immersion," she says. "We were dropped right in. Everything about being there was different and challenging--the crowds, the pollution, the noise every hour of the day." Language was another difficulty--Parekh is fluent in Gujarati, but in Delhi people speak Hindi. (Fortunately, Parekh had attended some excellent Hindi classes with Usha Jain, a professor in the department of South Asian studies who has just received a distinguished teacher award.) While in Delhi, she also worked for the Mother Theresa Children's Home. This was her first visit to the country her grandparents left as youngsters. Both sets of grandparents emigrated to East Africa for a better life, and later moved to England. Parekh herself was born in Southern California. Both the African and the Indian programs opened up whole new worlds for Parekh. When she arrived at Berkeley she had been interested in domestic politics, but these experiences abroad turned her interest towards the developing world. Her second trip to India last summer--with the American India Foundation, set up by Bill Clinton to help rebuild the region after a devastating earthquake in January 2001--cemented her desire to go into international development work. After graduating, Parekh plans to return to Gujarat for a year, followed by graduate work in social planning at the London School of Economics. She says that her grandparents are pleased that she is returning to the country of their birth, even though she has not chosen the comfortable life that they and her parents planned for her. "The reason that my grandfather left for East Africa was because of the business opportunities. But at the same time he just had this urge to travel and do new and different things," she explains. "I realize that that's where I must have gotten it from."
Gender benders The popular weed killer atrazine causes male tadpoles to develop into hermaphrodites, says associate professor of integrative biology Tyrone Hayes. Reporting his findings in the April 16 issue of the Proceedings of the
Hayes, who has just been honored with a Distinguished Teaching Award, is a developmental endocrinologist who looks at the hormonal effects of chemicals on frogs. He was originally asked to study the herbicide atrazine by its manufacturer, Syngenta, but the final study was funded by the National Science Foundation. He found that at levels of 0.1 parts per billion (ppb) atrazine demasculinized male tadpoles of the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis. The chemical caused them to develop ovaries in their testes; it reduced the size of their vocal organs (which are used in mating calls); and it lowered their levels of the male hormone testosterone to one-tenth the normal level--even lower than the level normally seen in female frogs. None of the unexposed frogs had any such abnormalities. The maximum allowable level of atrazine set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for drinking water is 3 ppb. The EPA recently set the maximum level for pond water at 12 ppb. Yet in parts of the Midwest, where atrazine is used on two-thirds of corn and sorghum fields, rain and spring water has been found with levels of 40 ppb. Agricultural runoff sometimes has levels of atrazine as high as several parts per million. Hayes also examined native leopard frogs in the Midwest, and discovered that they had some of the same abnormalities as those he saw in his lab. "The use of atrazine in the environment is basically an uncontrolled experiment--there seems to be no atrazine-free environment," says Hayes. "We need to ask the question: What are the environmental costs of using atrazine?" The Mideast on campus It was an agonizing moment on Sproul Plaza April 9, when a Jewish student, speaking at a rally by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), took the microphone to say kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. The student was praying not only for the Jewish Holocaust victims but also for Palestinians killed on April 9, 1948 (the "Deir Yassin massacre").
The much-anticipated April 9 noon gathering followed weeks of tension on campus, including the throwing of a cinderblock through the front window of the Jewish Hillel cultural center. But the large rally, with nearly 2,000 participants, most of them supporters of the Palestinian cause, passed without violence. After the speeches, some five hundred supporters of SJP marched through Sather Gate and a portion of them entered the foyer of Wheeler Hall, chanting and clapping while classes, including a midterm, were being held. Ignoring orders to leave the building, 79 protesters, including 41 students, were arrested. The chancellor said that "willful interference with the educational mission of the University" would not be tolerated. In early May, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was center stage again when Snehal Shingavi, a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate and founding member of SJP, posted a description of "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," a course he will teach next fall. The class is a section of English 1A, and Shingavi is a graduate student instructor. "The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine...has systematically displaced, killed, and maimed millions of Palestinian people" since 1948, Shingavi wrote in his description of the course on the Web. "And yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance." But what was deemed most offensive in the description was its final sentence: "Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections." The reaction was immediate and negative, from the nation's press ('"Is there no free speech at Berkeley?") as well as from the campus and from alumni. Very quickly, the graduate student removed the offending sentence from the Web and amended the description to comply with the requirements of English 1A. Chancellor Berdahl stated: "Students in any course have the right to express themselves openly and to have their work evaluated free of discrimination or harassment. In this case, the English department chair will explicitly advise students enrolled in the class of this right. If students believe that these rights are compromised, they are to contact the department chair immediately." Berdahl also said: "Universities should not avoid presenting controversial material. At the same time, it is imperative that our classrooms be free of even the appearance of indoctrination. Classrooms must be free and ordered places in which an intellectually rigorous environment prevails and where students learn and practice the skills of spirited inquiry."
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 Shayna Parekh, 2002 University Medalist
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