AHC: Screw Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley, is widely considered to be the most prestigious public university in the United States, and has two elements, berkelium and californium, to its name. With a POD not before 1900, make Berkeley a second-rate university, or even worse.
 
One possible POD is, that they don't hire Ernest Orlando Lawrence as professor, not in 1928 or any later date.
 
Last edited:
Charlie Manson launches Helter Skelter at Berkeley, with the aid of more than few dozen students.
After that wide ranging murder spree is closed down, the Uni is closed down, from all the horrors that took place on campus in late 1969-70, finally cleared out by the CA National Guard and Federal Troops
 
Charlie Manson launches Helter Skelter at Berkeley, with the aid of more than few dozen students.
After that wide ranging murder spree is closed down, the Uni is closed down, from all the horrors that took place on campus in late 1969-70, finally cleared out by the CA National Guard and Federal Troops

From what I know of Manson, he'd have a pretty hard time fitting in with a university milieu, even(or perhaps especially) the more firebrand leftist factions. Certainly, a challenge to get a sufficient number of followers to make the authorities want to close down the whole school forever.
 
From what I know of Manson, he'd have a pretty hard time fitting in with a university milieu, even(or perhaps especially) the more firebrand leftist factions. Certainly, a challenge to get a sufficient number of followers to make the authorities want to close down the whole school forever.
The now enlarged 'Family' start their murder Spree at the Local Frats and Sororities, then moving to the Halls, and then to the Uni

Just too much bloodly memories, is all torn down for a very enlarged Peace Park
 
During the Great Depression, another Ark Storm comes, flooding the Central Valley and causing disastrous landslides in the Bay Area that wreck the campus. The state has recovered by WWII, but does not rebuild there, focusing on other UC sites. What's left of the land and buildings is purchased by Berkeley Bible College.
 
The now enlarged 'Family' start their murder Spree at the Local Frats and Sororities, then moving to the Halls, and then to the Uni

Just too much bloodly memories, is all torn down for a very enlarged Peace Park

I can see them shutting down those particular frats and sororities, and whatever particular dorms murders occured in. But the whole university?

Just for starters, what would be the economic impact of sending all those students out of the area to study somewhere else? Memorialization is nice and everything, but is the community really gonna be willing to absorb all the lost jobs? Tenured professors having to look for work elsewhere for the first time in decades? Dozens of scheduled conferences cancelled, scientific research projects having to pack it in etc?

And for the back story, did Manson have a lof of connections with the Bay Area, such as would allow him to move there and become a major player in the scene? My impression was that he was always pretty much a SoCal dude, but I could be wrong.
 
Is it? Not according to a number of rankings from the last few years.

FWIW they're the highest public US university on the ARWU, and it looks like UCLA (#20) is the only public school to edge out Berkeley (#22) in the USNWR rankings. Maybe saying the highest implies a consensus that isn't there, but now we're kind of picking nits.

What makes the OP challenge particularly interesting is that state support of the university system has already cratered in California (down to 13% of total general funding in recent years), and private philanthropy has really been able to prop up the university, so you need a really early POD that wipes out UBerkeley's credibility early, or the entire bay area has to POD and not go on its Silicon Valley trajectory that enabled the wealth in the area.

Also, I was really hoping this was going to be about Pac-12 football, and the obvious answer was extending the Tom Holme era.
 
PoD: September 17, 1923

The wind doesn't turn like it did IOTL, and most of Berkeley, including the UC campus, is destroyed in the Berkeley Fire of 1923. While UC-Berkeley is rebuilt, UC deemphasizes its importance, and focuses on other sites.
 
Would take most university rankings with a grain of salt, some places are brilliant in one space and absolute dogshit in another. Case in point, Georgia Tech is ranked quite low on that scale since it's a monofocused tech/engineering research school.
Berkeley might close down departments and so on, but it'd take quite a lot to convince the UC System to close the engineering and sciences colleges - those are its main focus and main source of fame after all.
Have it's infamous poli sci wing go even more bugnuts?
As I said, they'd probably shutter the poli-sci program before closing the engineering and sciences colleges completely.
The wind doesn't turn like it did IOTL, and most of Berkeley, including the UC campus, is destroyed in the Berkeley Fire of 1923. While UC-Berkeley is rebuilt, UC deemphasizes its importance, and focuses on other sites.
This one works, I think. Solidly avoids the issue of dealing with a stellar scientific establishment using a lackluster and batshit insane poli-sci wing.
 
As I said, they'd probably shutter the poli-sci program before closing the engineering and sciences colleges completely.

This one works, I think. Solidly avoids the issue of dealing with a stellar scientific establishment using a lackluster and batshit insane poli-sci wing.

You're talking post POD, right? Because lackluster or batshit insane would be a really weird descriptor of that department. At the moment, it's a massive research hub in terms of published material, that has a few Skyttee Prize recipients on faculty. Historically they've caused 3 or 4 major paradigm shifts in the field, notably fissuring political science from behaviorism in the late 50s, which had gotten stale academically. I get there's this Berekely student activist thing that certain people fixate on, but on the academic side, that Department pumps out public figures who have made pretty significant contributions to the field and has changed how pretty much any political science student in the field is taught the subject.
 
You're talking post POD, right? Because lackluster or batshit insane would be a really weird descriptor of that department. At the moment, it's a massive research hub in terms of published material, that has a few Skyttee Prize recipients on faculty. Historically they've caused 3 or 4 major paradigm shifts in the field, notably fissuring political science from behaviorism in the late 50s, which had gotten stale academically. I get there's this Berekely student activist thing that certain people fixate on, but on the academic side, that Department pumps out public figures who have made pretty significant contributions to the field and has changed how pretty much any political science student in the field is taught the subject.
post-PoD, referencing the earlier post of having the poli-sci department 'go crazy'. Not referencing OTL.
 
This one works, I think. Solidly avoids the issue of dealing with a stellar scientific establishment using a lackluster and batshit insane poli-sci wing.

And it's a post-1900 PoD, too (the 1923 Berkeley Fire was a real event IOTL; most of Berkeley was only saved because a sea breeze came up IOTL)...
 
PoD: September 17, 1923

The wind doesn't turn like it did IOTL, and most of Berkeley, including the UC campus, is destroyed in the Berkeley Fire of 1923. While UC-Berkeley is rebuilt, UC deemphasizes its importance, and focuses on other sites.

Where do all the tech-heads end up? UCLA? USC? Do those two end up being SoCal’s answer to Research Triangle?

My father is a Ph.D. graduate from Berkeley. Wonder where the Ph.D. would have come from in that case.
 
Where do all the tech-heads end up? UCLA? USC? Do those two end up being SoCal’s answer to Research Triangle?

My father is a Ph.D. graduate from Berkeley. Wonder where the Ph.D. would have come from in that case.
Probably USC or UCSF? Or even UCD? Both of those were far older, in 1923 UCLA was just starting out, may not even have graduated more than on PhD batch.
 
The University of California, Berkeley, is widely considered to be the most prestigious public university in the United States, and has two elements, berkelium and californium, to its name. With a POD not before 1900, make Berkeley a second-rate university, or even worse.

Are you by chance a Stanford alum Quintiplicate?
 
Top