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Coffee Brake The Berkeley Police Department has been experimenting with an unusual program to reward the city’s good drivers: Benevolent motorists are flagged down and handed coupons good for a complimentary cappuccino, latte, or other non-alcoholic drink at the Au Coquelet Café. Local residents have voiced some skepticism. “I’d tell him, ‘I appreciate your time sir, but, unfortunately, I don’t drink coffee,’” says Oakland resident Jonathan Cha ’97 when asked what he would do if pulled over. “But I do support filling Berkeley drivers with even more carcinogens, narcotics, and caffeine in order to improve their driving skills.” Starr Trek Off-key Sproul Plaza crooner Rick Starr has hung up his busted microphone wired into a coffee can, apparently for good. Noise complaints and verbal arguments stemming from Starr’s anachronistic compliments aimed at attractive women have led to temporary derailments of “The Rick Starr Show” in the past. This time, however, a recent Daily Cal opinion piece by former Starr accompanist Kevin Moore proclaims that Starr’s current sabbatical is permanent. “Rick’s act has not changed at all over the years, but his audience has changed a great deal. At best he has been treated coldly and ignored. At worst, mistreated,” wrote Moore, a guitarist. “Singing has been Rick’s life. But now he is sick at heart and weary of all the rejection. He won’t be coming back.” Wrong and wrong! Talk about adding insult to injury — Brian Foster ’80 reports that, according to a major credit agency, he has never worked a day in his life and (naturally) graduated from Stanford. “Ignore the fact that I graduated from Berkeley 20 years ago and have been employed since age 15!” grumbles Foster. Out to lunch What’s the best class at Cal? The query was food for thought for Q&A subject and longtime Cal presence Chalmers Johnson ’53, M.A. ’57, Ph.D ’61. “The beauty of a place like Berkeley is that it has the best graduate students on earth— they’re almost surely smarter than the faculty,” says Johnson. “The best course at the University is called ‘lunch,’ because that’s where those students get to know each other; they’ll make life-long friendships and they’ll learn from each other.” Summa cum moolah More than a few cash-poor Cal students have fantasized about the vast riches they could acquire by simply changing their names to “UC Regents.” Stephen Rose, however, did not have to fiddle with his name at all. A Class of 2000 graduate in mechanical engineering, Rose returned home in early June from the national collegiate rowing championships to discover that, contrary to the usual procedure, the University had transferred a chunk of cash to him. “Boy, I must have good karma,” Rose told the Daily Californian. “I thought, ‘Berkeley has been good to me, but this seems a little excessive.’” The result of a clerk’s data-entry error: a $1,013,660.42 spike in Rose’s bank account. “In this particular case, the department was dealing with a construction contract and needed to make a rush payment to the vendor,” explains Cal director of business services Greg Brown. “The three people who should have [checked over] the transaction didn’t notice the vendor number they were using was off by one.” Despite visions of beaches, Bentleys, and box seats, Rose did the right thing and returned the money. “My first thought was that the money was from the financial aid office, so hundreds of people wouldn’t get their financial aid,” said the former millionaire. “I knew it wasn’t mine.” |
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