Cal Alumni Pride

Welcome to the home page of Cal Alumni Pride, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) alumni club of the University of California, Berkeley. Our mission is to support and promote the interests of UC Berkeley and its alumni, with an emphasis on issues and interests specific to the LGBT community.

We are proud to represent the contributions and potential of Cal's past, present, and future LGBT alumni. Membership is open to Cal alumni and friends. Please take a moment and join today! It's easy: just fill out our on-line membership form. Also, join us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

Ten Years Later: Remembering Mark Bingham

Sara September 8th, 2011

Reposted from The Daily Californian

Remember His Name

Ten years ago, Mark Bingham helped bring down a hijacked flight.

Today, his mother continues to preserve his memory.

By Gabriel Baumgaertner | Senior Staff
gbaumgaertner@dailycal.org

Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 9:04 pm
Updated Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 1:25 am

The ease with which Alice Hoagland speaks about her son is not merely admirable but extraordinary.

Almost 10 years removed from the day that saw her son rise as an American hero, the mother of Mark Bingham — the former Cal rugby player who helped bring down the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 — speaks vigorously and vividly about life with and without her son.

Alice Hoagland wants to talk because the tragic results produced the advancement of movements that her only son — her only child — advocated. Alice Hoagland wants to talk because 10 years, though a necessary reminder to the public, remains a number, while the loss of a son cannot be measured. Continue Reading »

UC Berkeley awarded five-star LGBT campus climate rating

Sara August 22nd, 2011

Reposted from the Daily Cal:

UC Berkeley awarded five-star LGBT campus climate rating

By Amruta Trivedi | Staff
atrivedi@dailycal.org

Sunday, August 7, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Updated Sunday, August 7, 2011 at 9:23 pm

For the second year in a row, UC Berkeley was awarded a five-star campus climate rating for providing a safe and inclusive environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, faculty and staff.

The Campus Climate Index, released August 3 by the nonprofit organization Campus Pride, placed the campus in the ninetieth percentile, giving it the highest possible rating of five stars in seven of the eight categories, including LGBT policy inclusion, academic life, student life, campus safety and counseling and health.

“Colleges use the index as a way to become better,” said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride. “We assess whether they did what they were asked to do on index to improve the school.”

The campus was one out of five University of California campuses to receive a five-star rating. The others are UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara.

UCSF mourns death of Dr. Kevin Allen Mack

Sara July 21st, 2011

By True Shields via The Daily Californian

Dr. Kevin Allen Mack, an associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco, died last Thursday after the UCSF shuttle bus he was riding in on his way to work collided with a big rig in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood. He was 52.

The crash occurred at the intersection of Octavia and Oak Streets at around 6:20 a.m. on July 14 when a tractor-trailer truck carrying four cars collided with the shuttle bus, killing Mack and injuring two of about 15 shuttle passengers and the shuttle bus driver, according to San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Lt. Troy Dangerfield.

According to Dangerfield, the driver — whose name was not released — and two passengers suffered nonlife-threatening injuries while Mack was pronounced dead at the scene after being ejected from the shuttle and pinned under the truck. The truck driver was uninjured.

The incident is currently under investigation by the police department, but the effects of Mack’s death are already being felt by his friends, family and colleagues.

Mack was also the director of educational technology and faculty development in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. He joined the UCSF faculty in 2000 after he graduated from the University of Hawaii School of Medicine in 1994 and completed his residency program at Harvard University.

While working at the Joint Medical Program, Mack became a key developer of the program’s Problem-Based Learning curriculum — an alternative to lecture-based curricula that focuses on crafting problems professionals will face in practice using simulated patients.

“Kevin’s passion was the use of Problem-Based Learning in medical education,” said Amin Azzam, head of the program’s Problem-Based Learning curriculum and a close personal friend and colleague of Mack’s. “Most medical schools use it as a tiny fraction of the students’ lives, but at (UC) Berkeley, it is the vast majority of the curriculum.”

Obama to nominate Michael Fitzgerald, openly gay Boalt Hall alumnus, to the U.S. district court

Sara July 21st, 2011

By ABBY PHILLIP, via Politico:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday nominated the fourth openly gay judicial candidate of his administration to the U.S. district court.

Michael Fitzgerald, a lawyer with Corbin, Fitzgerald and Athey in Los Angeles, was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Fitzgerald, 51, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of California Berkeley’s School of Law, previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in California and has been a practicing trial lawyer for 20 years.

“I am honored to nominate Michael Walter Fitzgerald to the United States District Court,” Obama said in a statement. “His impressive career stands as a testament to his formidable intellect and integrity. I am confident he will serve the people of California with distinction on the District Court bench.”

A special message from the Cal Alumni Association

Sara March 1st, 2011

From the Cal Alumni Association:

On February 18, the Cal Alumni Association (CAA) Board of Directors, in an unprecedented action, voted to support placing Governor Jerry Brown’s current proposal for maintaining existing taxes on the June 2011 ballot.

Why did the CAA Board take this action?

Without the maintenance of existing taxes, the excellence and access of UC Berkeley will be jeopardized by further drastic budget cuts.

In 2009-2010, all departments at UC Berkeley, including academic departments, took a permanent budget cut averaging 19 percent. Last year, approximately 600 staff positions were eliminated. Another 280 are slated for elimination this year. State funding for UC Berkeley is now less than federal funding, less than student fees, and less than private donations.

What can you do?

Before Californians can vote on the maintenance of existing taxes, the measure first has to get on the June ballot. The State Legislature must decide by March 10, 2011 to get the measure on the ballot.

Please send an email telling your legislator to put a revenue measure on the ballot, so California voters can decide whether to maintain existing taxes that will help save UC Berkeley.

Governor Brown’s budget already includes a $500 million cut to the UC budget. Without the tax extensions, the Legislative Analyst Office predicts that the UC budget could be cut by an additional $500 million. Of this $1 billion reduction, $160 million could be cut from the UC Berkeley campus alone.

Californians face a difficult choice — do we balance the state budget by cutting expenditures alone or do we minimizing the damage to one of our greatest educational institutions by balancing the budget with a combination of expense reduction and revenue generation?

While we recognize that no one likes to pay taxes, we are also assured that the Governor’s current proposal does not include any new taxes, only an extension of the existing taxes.

Please send an email telling your legislator to put a revenue measure on the ballot, so California voters can decide.