Good morning. It’s Monday, May 6.
- Potent storm drops feet of snow on Sierra Nevada.
- Deputy vacancy crisis grows dire in Merced County.
- And photos on the hidden life of the Salton Sea.
Statewide
1.
Subtract the income earned after college graduation from the total cost of college attendance and you get what researchers call the return on investment, or ROI. A San Francisco Chronicle analysis of California colleges included a surprising finding: Graduates of the state’s public UC and CSU systems enjoy median 10-year ROIs that are roughly double those of their private-school peers. A sampling of the figures:
- Private institutions:
- Chapman University: $38,000
- Loyola Marymount University: $59,000
- USC: $170,000
- Public institutions:
- San Jose State: $193,000
- UC San Diego: $216,000
- UC Berkeley: $243,000
2.
Nearly seven weeks after the vernal equinox, a spring snowstorm delivered the largest one-day total of the snowfall season in the Sierra Nevada over the weekend. On Sunday morning, a UC Berkeley lab near Lake Tahoe reported having received 26.4 inches, beating the high set in March by more than 2 inches. Across the mountains, several vehicles slid out on snowy roads, backups stretched for hours, and a highway was closed over avalanche risk. Yosemite, pictured above on Sunday, looked glorious. A.P. | S.F. Chronicle
- See a live cam of Yosemite’s high country.
Campus protests
3.
UCLA’s top police official defended his performance after a mob freely attacked a pro-Palestinian student encampment last week, saying he did “everything I could.” Several sources told the L.A. Times that the chief, John Thomas, had failed to carry out directions to create a safety plan days before the melee. Thomas said that was “just not true.” Rather, he said, university leadership decided to tolerate the tents on free-speech grounds and directed that police be excluded from any security plan. L.A. Times
- UCLA said Sunday that it created a new chief safety officer position that will oversee Thomas. They appointed Rick Braziel, a former chief of the Sacramento Police Department. L.A. Times | City News Service
4.
Other developments:
- UC Riverside became the first UC to reach a deal with protesters to end their encampment. Under the agreement, the university pledged to ensure that its investments are “ethically sound.” USC opted to use force, bringing in police to clear its protest camp in a predawn push Sunday. KABC | LAist
- One crucial detail has been overlooked in the demand for divestment at California’s public universities: State law forbids those schools from acting on divestment demands under a law enacted in 2016. Mercury News
- Jay Caspian Kang talked to protesters at UC Berkeley. “People see one thing on social media and something else on their TVs and in the news; like Sam, many of them conclude that the former is much closer to the truth and that the latter is largely propaganda,” he wrote. New Yorker
Northern California
5.
The deputy vacancy crisis has grown so dire in Merced County that the sheriff is now sometimes the only one around to respond to calls for help. Sheriff Vern Warnke recounted a recent call from a woman about a domestic dispute. With no deputies in range, he responded himself and found a man pacing with a gun in his waistband. “We had nobody to send, and I, as the sheriff, I’m still a cop. I still love what I do,” he said. But if the staffing isn’t addressed, he added, it could result in 911 calls simply going unanswered: “It’s not a threat. It’s a fact.” L.A. Times
6.
After a mass shooting at a mushroom farm in Half Moon Bay last year drew attention to the deplorable state of farmworker housing, the city vowed to address the problem. But 16 months later, a proposal to build an apartment complex for farmworkers has stalled in the face of a familiar obstacle: NIMBYism. During a marathon meeting last week, a planning commissioner questioned the project architect: “How does the building inform the character of Half Moon Bay? That is the fundamental issue the community is objecting to.” S.F. Chronicle | Mercury News
7.
UC Berkeley professor Elizabeth Hoover built a career on what she asserted was her Native American identity. It made her a coveted recruit, setting off a bidding war between Brown University and UC Berkeley and earning her a salary that surpasses that of many of her colleagues. But more than a year after Hoover was forced to acknowledge she is not Native American at all, she has drawn no serious sanction from Berkeley and still teaches there. “Instead, both UC Berkeley and Hoover are riding out the storm, as is Brown University, where Hoover built her career,” wrote Jacqueline Keeler. S.F. Chronicle
8.
A 101-year-old dairy farm in Sonoma County shut down for good last October after a costly court fight with an environmental group. The closure of Mulas Dairy Co. went unreported at the time, but it has shaken the area’s struggling dairy industry, which sees itself as under siege by an increasingly litigious environmental movement that accuses farms of polluting watersheds. “You fight battles for a while,” said Mike Mulas, whose farm was founded by his grandfather in 1922. “But at some point you have to know when to cut your losses and move on.” Press Democrat
Southern California
9.
A San Diego man and two Australian brothers who disappeared during a surf trip to Mexico’s Baja peninsula were found dead at the bottom of a well, Mexican officials confirmed on Sunday. Baja California’s attorney general said investigators believe the men — Jake and Callum Robinson from Australia and Jack Carter Rhoad from San Diego — resisted a carjacking and were shot. Three suspects were detained. On Sunday, dozens of surfers and mourners gathered in nearby Ensenada to register their anger. “They only wanted to surf — we demand safe beaches,” one sign read. S.D. Union-Tribune | ABC News
10.
In March, the Wall Street Journal published a powerful piece on a former lawyer’s descent into mental illness on the streets of Los Angeles and the powerlessness of the loved ones trying to save him. Now Rob Dart, 44, is telling his side of the story. He does not believe he is sick. He also believes people are controlling him via hypnosis, activated by a headlock. Quitting his medications, he said, has only added texture to his experience of life: “You realize you’re kind of the same person. You just know more about yourself.” Wall Street Journal
11.
A San Diego jury on Friday found two self-identified anti-fascists guilty of conspiracy to riot in the first-ever prosecution alleging a criminal conspiracy by antifa, a leaderless ideology. Brian Lightfoot, 27, and Jeremy White, 41, were charged in connection with a “Patriot March” protest on Jan. 9, 2021, in Pacific Beach, during which black-clad antifa members battled with supporters of Donald Trump. Prosecutors only charged antifa members, leading the defense to accuse them of bias against left-wing activists. S.D. Union Tribune | City News Service
12.
Sicco Rood, a photographer and environmental researcher, spent months planning an audacious adventure: canoeing the entire circumference of Southern California’s Salton Sea. He set off in December, but came up short: completing about two-thirds of his intended roughly 90-mile route. But he returned with a new perspective on the lake commonly depicted as a slowly unfolding environmental disaster: “People have been saying the place is dead … but that’s not what I saw at all,” he said. LAist published a selection of Rood’s photos on the hidden life of the Salton Sea.
Get your California Sun T-shirts, phone cases, hoodies, hats, and totes!
Thanks for reading!
The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
Make a one-time contribution to the California Sun.
Give a subscription as a gift.
Forward this email to a friend.
Click here to stop delivery, and here to update your billing information. To change your email address please email me: mike@californiasun.co. (Note: Unsubscribing here does not cancel payments. To do that click here.)
The California Sun, PO Box 6868, Los Osos, CA 93412
Wake up to must-read news from around the Golden State delivered to your inbox each morning.