Campus & community, Campus news

A glimpse of fall 2021 at UC Berkeley: Masked, eager, back on campus

A 30-photo visit to campus shows new energy around every corner

By Gretchen Kell

Students in masks sit in a lecture hall at Berkeley Law during the first week of fall 2021 classes
Students in masks sit in professor Robert Bartlett's Securities Regulation class at the start of fall semester 2021. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

August 27, 2021

A year ago, UC Berkeley looked all but abandoned, with offices and classrooms dark, athletic venues empty, the Campanile bells silent, and students starting fall semester 2020 remotely.

This fall, the COVID-19 pandemic continues, but in-person instruction, residence hall living and extracurricular activities are back. The vast majority of students, staff and faculty are now vaccinated, and mask and virus testing protocols are firmly in place.

Check out these photos from campus, where you’ll see the liveliness of the return of tabling on Sproul Plaza, where an eclectic mix of student groups are recruiting members; hoards of talkative students on their way to and from reopened campus buildings — from classrooms and libraries to museums and cafés; busy COVID-19 testing sites to ensure campus safety; students, colleagues and friends seated together; and the continued distribution of resources for those in need.

Students in masks walk across Sproul Plaza a week before fall 2021 classes begin at UC Berkeley.
It's back-to-school time at UC Berkeley, where most classes are being held in person for the first time since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led to remote instruction. Classes with enrollments of 200 or more students, which represent 5% of all course offerings, will continue to be delivered remotely. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A student in a mask wheels his belongings onto campus near Sather Gate, with smoke from the Northern California wildfires visible in the air.
This was how campus looked last August at the start of fall semester 2020. Masks were protecting Berkeleyans from both COVID-19 and wildfire smoke, and only about 2,000 students were moving onto campus to live in the residence halls. (UC Berkeley photo by Irene Yi)
Students in masks work at tables in Doe Libary's North Reading room on the first day of classes, fall 2021.
Nearly all of UC Berkeley's libraries are open again. In Doe Library's North Reading Room, visitors in masks are hard at work as the semester begins. (UC Berkeley Library photo by Jami Smith)
A visitor pulls open the giant glass door to enter Moffitt library on the first day of fall classes, 2021.
On the first day of fall 2021 classes, a visitor pulls open a giant glass door to Moffitt Library that had been locked to the community for more than a year. (Photo by Jami Smith for the UC Berkeley Library)
A room of paintings and sculpture in the new
After a 13-month closure, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive reopened last May. Now, it's mounted one of its largest exhibitions. "New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century" opens to the public on Saturday, Aug. 28, with nearly 150 artworks by more than 75 artists; it will occupy nearly half of the museum's 25,000-square-foot space. What's more, BAMPA convened the Feminist Art Coalition, a nationwide consortium of 100-plus arts organizations to present a series of programming in 2021 informed by feminist thought and practice. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A pink neon sign that read
A crew at BAMPFA installs "Vote Feminist," a pink neon artwork by Michele Pred. The "New Time" exhibit is organized around eight themes: hysteria; the gaze; revisiting historical subjects through a feminist lens; the fragmented female body: gender fluidity, labor, domesticity, and activism; female anger; and feminist utopias. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A mural just inside the entrance to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is by Luchita Hurtado for the
At age 99, Venezuelan-born American artist Luchita Furtado died in August 2020, but her mural was installed in early July this year on the BAMPFA's Art Wall — a 60-by-25-foot interior wall visible from Center Street through the large front windows — in preparation for the "New Time" exhibit. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A graduate student receives a chicken pox vaccine at a vaccine clinic held in Pauley Ballroom the week before fall 2021 classes start.
Sikiru Alagbada, a first-year graduate student, gets a chicken pox vaccine in Pauley Ballroom from University Health Services (UHS) nurse Zayani Lavergne-Friedman. The vaccine clinic recently held there offered vaccinations for several diseases, including COVID-19. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A nurse gives a student an injection at the injection clinic held the week before fall 2021 classes in Pauley Ballrom.
UC Berkeley's back-to-school vaccine clinic administered about 1,000 vaccines, and one-third of them were COVID vaccines. Another series of clinics will be held in September by UHS to finish providing immunizations and second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that some students still need. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
At the Rec Sports Facility, students are instructed how to swab their noses to test for COVID-19
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, UC Berkeley had to move urgently and effectively to test students, faculty and staff for the virus, and to provide vaccines.

Brittany Hosea-Small for UC Berkeley
A student swabs her nose at the Rec Sports Facility testing site.
UHS surveillance testing sites did close to 18,000 tests from Aug. 16 to 22, the week before classes began. This included all students moving into campus housing plus any students, faculty and staff who needed a surveillance test to have a compliant green testing badge. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
Annie the peregrine falcon opens her beak to squawk, as if to say,
Welcome back! Annie the peregrine falcon's three latest offspring — Fauci, Kaknu and and Wek'-wek — have grown and flown away during the past few months, but she and mate Grinnell will be watching over the newest students on campus from their home high atop the Campanile. Listen for their occasional calls above you. (Cal Falcons image)
Berkeley Law students in masks talk before class begins.
On a recent afternoon at Berkeley Law, students confer, in masks, during professor Robert Bartlett's Securities Regulation class, which has an enrollment of 80 students. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
Professor Robert Bartlett's Securities Regulation class, with 80 students, meets in a large lecture room. Everyone is in masks, both students and professor.
Physical distancing is no longer required, as seen here in law professor Robert Barlett's class, but face coverings are mandatory indoors, including for those who are vaccinated and those with approved medical or religious exemptions to vaccination. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A student picks up a free loaner laptop from the Student Technology Equity Program.
Incoming student Jhrenara Rios picks up a free loaner laptop from the Student Technology Equity Program. It's just one of the more than 9,000 pieces of technology given to students with financial need by STEP since the program began during the pandemic in July 2020. Applications for undergraduate, graduate and professional students to be considered for free hardware are still open, while supplies last. (UC Berkeley photo by Gretchen Kell)
First-year Berkeley Haas MBA students in masks participate in a design/think session during orientation week. They are gathered around a table filled with post-it notes and are talking and pointing to them.
New Berkeley Haas MBA students recently participated in a design/think session led by second-year MBA students during the business school's orientation week. (UC Berkeley photo by Jim Block)
Students work in a community garden as part of the Berkeley Haas MBA day of service during orientation week.
Last August, new MBA students at Berkeley Haas — there are 291 in the Class of 2023 — rolled up their sleeves to work at Alameda Point Collaborative, a supportive housing community, and its social enterprise, Ploughshares Nursery. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
Students in masks walk through Sproul Plaza where tabling is back after a break during the pandemic.
Tabling has returned to Sproul Plaza under the plane trees, where registered student organizations promote themselves to attract new members. While masks outdoors are optional, many in the campus community can be seen wearing them. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
On the first day of classes, students in Berkeley's quidditch league recruit new members for the league.
One group out recruiting near Sather Gate was the campus Quidditch League, which is competing again after two years without a match, due to the pandemic. The league placed second in the nation at the USQ nationals in 2018 and is "going up to No. One," vowed captain Harry Dill. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A blue and gold T-shirt that says
Rooted in magic and the Harry Potter books, the sport of quidditch also is progressive in terms of gender equality — all are welcome to play and are needed to beat Stanford. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A quidditch league player at Berkeley with a turquoise stripe in his hair and his league uniform on looks at the camera
Quidditch players like senior Eli Phipps practice on Memorial Glade; there currently are about 20 people in Berkeley's league, and seven players are allowed on the field at a time. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
The Cal Dragonboat club was out recruiting new members on Sproul Plaza on the first day of classes. They pose for a photo in their uniforms and with a dragonboat paddle in blue and gold.
Also recruiting members on Sproul Plaza was the Cal Dragon Boat Club. Dragon boating is a water sport in which up to 20 people paddle a canoe-shaped boat together in synchronized rhythm to make the boat move, emulating a soaring dragon. Usually, races are 200, 500 or 2000 meters in length. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A Cal Dragonboat club member's hat is blue with a gold dragon on it.
Berkeley's dragon boat club is one of the top teams in the U.S. Tryouts are open to all students. Practices are twice a week on weekends at the Jack London Aquatic Center or the Berkeley Marina. During the weekdays, members train individually or in groups off the water. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A pop-up version of Berkeley's food pantry was operating on Lower Sproul Plaza during the first day of classes.
This fall, the Food Pantry is holding pop-up pantries, like this one on Lower Sproul Plaza, just outside the MLK Student Union. The emergency food relief supply is for all students, staff, visiting scholars, postdocs and faculty. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
A food pantry staffer opens a lid on a container of frozen fish that were offered to those picking up groceries on Lower Sproul Plaza during the first day of fall 2021 classes.
Natalia Semeraro, food resource coordinator at UC Berkeley's Basic Needs Center, readies a cooler of frozen fish for distribution on a recent morning, as students and staff drop by to get a grocery bag filled with healthy items of their choice. The pantry encourages people to take what they need, but can only accommodate up to one visit per person per week. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
Students enjoy lunch on the patio of Anthony Hall at a luncheon celebrating the new Native American Student Center.
On Aug. 26, a luncheon for students who self-identify with the Native American community met at Anthony Hall to celebrate the hall's new role as Berkeley's Native American Community Center. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)
Two students eat lunch on chairs on the patio of Anthony Hall at a luncheon celebrating the new Native American Student Center.
The outdoor luncheon was a chance for new students to feel welcome as they arrived on campus and a soft launch for the community center, which will officially open in the near future. (Photo by Neil Freese)
A celebration of the new Native American Student Center included music by a Native American, who is striking a tambourine-shaped instrument with a stick on the patio of Anthony Hall.
Elder Keeven Hesuse opened the event with an honor song on a hand drum. To his left is Patrick Naranjo, director of the American Indian Graduate Program on campus, who provided a welcome to the guests. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)
An evening concert at the Greek Theatre featuring the group Not Our First Goat Rodeo shows a packed crowd with many people in masks and colorful lights on the stage, and Yo-Yo Ma's reddish cello stands out.
On Aug. 21, Cal Performances held its first live show since the Joffrey Ballet performed in Zellerbach Hall in early March 2020. The Grammy Award-winning Not Our First Goat Rodeo — cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolinist/songwriter/vocalist Chris Thile, bassist Edgar Meyer and Stuart Duncan on fiddle — presented material developed during the pandemic. But first they gave the audience a virtual hug. (Cal Performances photo by Jenny Reik)
carol christ in a mask talks to a student at the start of fall semester 2021
"I could not be prouder of our amazing campus community ...," Chancellor Carol Christ said in a back-to-school message. "More than 94% of Berkeley’s students and 88% of our faculty and staff are vaccinated. Mask guidelines are being carefully followed. Testing protocols and policies are understood and respected. Our facilities are being kept clean and safe by the unsung heroes of this campus, our essential workers." (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)