Berkeley Time

For anybody who's unaware of it, there's a tradition here at Berkeley known as Berkeley Time, wherein classes will (conventionally) start ten minutes after the officially listed time. Not every instructor does this, but it's a generally-accepted convention. It's so accepted, in fact, that I recently saw a flyer asking for experiment volunteers; one of the flyer's key points was that experiments did not start on Berkeley Time, to give you an idea.

This little tradition is supposedly a concession to us, the students, and a manifestation of Berkeley's famous "laid-back attitude" (that is: "Look at us! We don't even have to try to be Better than Everyone Else!"). It's also marketed as a general comfort thing; BART is slow, there's a Zion rally blocking a street, or whatever, so you're late. Berkeley Time renders this obsolete. With a mutual understanding that ten minutes late is on time, all these little splinchy glitches are accounted for.

The only problem with Berkeley Time is that it... uh, it doesn't work, sir.

Berkeley Time ought to work, on paper; the theory is to just make it so those people who wander in ten minutes late are on time anyway, and don't miss or disrupt any of the class. It's a good theory. The problem with Berkeley Time is that it's official and universal, rather than an unspoken understanding. Classes start ten minutes late to let you get there, and that's fine. The only issue is that everybody knows that, and that includes the people who come ten minutes late as it is. So, effectively, Berkeley Time just shifts the problem ten minutes forward in time. The people who have to do a trip to Starbucks still have to do it, the people who oversleep still oversleep, and so on and so on.

That brings me to my own personal problem with Berkeley Time, which lies in its underlying causes. I may have misled you above, and I apologize. The institution of Berkeley Time actually has nothing to do with any particular mutually-held attitude, or demographic of students, or anything like that. It only exists because the university, despite all outward impressions, is "just sorta hobblin' by."

Berkeley Time is in effect for the sake of overlapping classes. Some classes go until 5:00, for example, and there might be another class listed as starting at 5:00. To avoid the issue of people going in and out at the same time and there being a tear in space-time, we just agree that the second class starts ten minutes late.

Notice that this convention is published, official, and in effect for virtually every single class, and you might deduce the problem. Our university has (officially) 35,899 students and growing, which sounds grand. The problem is that, as that number grows, our university isn't necessarily growing with it. Classes are getting more and more impacted, buildings are getting busier and busier, and space is getting progressively harder to find. The entirety of the Astronomy department, for example, currently resides in semi-permanent trailers near campus (temporary measure, but the point stands).

"But Berkeley has all sorts of money! Why don't they just build more buildings to put classes in?"

I don't want to be libelous, but there are a fairly small number of people responsible for that strange dichotomy between "money in" and "results out."

TL;DR Classes are ridiculously clogged because: the university has all sorts of money, and the campus isn't seeing any.