UC Berkeley must slash enrollment by 3,000 students next fall, freezing it at 2020 levels following a California Supreme Court ruling on Thursday.
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The court, by a 4-2 ruling, maintained a lower court order from August which capped enrollment at 42,237 students, the fall 2020 number. There are currently 45,057 students enrolled at all levels of the university.
The university must also stop construction on the Upper Hearst project, which was in the process of building two housing structures for professors and classrooms.
The order stems from a 2019 lawsuit by the group Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods, which alleged that the university failed to address multiple quality-of-life problems the $126 million construction project would bring to the area.
Those potential problems included increased traffic and noise from construction, as well as the police, fire and health services needed to handle the side effects of noisy parties and extra-crowded parks and streets due to increased enrollment.
The group argued the project violated the California Environmental Quality Act, which requires public agencies to study the significant environmental impact of its actions, and would've displaced low-income Berkeley residents.
"While we are pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld the trial court's imposition … we'd like to assure deserving California high school students that we are as disappointed as they are that UC has tried to use them as pawns in UC's attempts to avoid mitigating the impacts from the massive enrollment increases over the past few years," Save Berkeley Neighborhoods' president, Phil Bokovoy, said in a statement on Thursday.
UC Berkeley officials said they are engaged with state leaders "to identify possible legislative solutions."
"We are extremely disheartened by today's ruling by the Supreme Court of California," UC Berkeley officials said in a statement. "This is devastating news for the thousands of students who have worked so hard for and have earned a seat in our fall 2022 class. Our fight on behalf of every one of these students continues."
While they hope the ruling eventually gets reversed, officials said it will mitigate the harm to prospective students by deferring some enrollment to January 2023 and increasing online enrollment.
Many freshmen offers of admission have already been sent out, with the last batch scheduled to be sent March 24. Transfer students' offers will be sent on April 2.
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