Being a new student can be nerve-wracking, but UC Berkeley’s On the Same Page program gives all incoming students something to talk about. In its 10th year, On the Same Page offers a free copy of the same book to new undergraduates — freshmen and transfers — as a way of welcoming them into the campus’s intellectual community.
This year, faculty chose a handful of books to be reviewed by a team of students who provided feedback to deans in the College of Letters and Science, who selected Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.
In this video, student reviewers talk about why it’s so important for the campus community to read the nonfiction novel. “It’s a conversation about justice,” says one student. “It’s a conversation about poverty. And it’s all happening right here at Berkeley.”