The Lobster DeCal at UC Berkeley
Cal is somewhat unique among universities in that it allows its students to create our own Democratic Education at Cal classes, or DeCals, and teach them to other students. The university is not so trusting as to allow these student instructors to assign letter grades to their students though, so the worst penalty for failing to do — as typically assigned — the weekly readings or a single essay, as well as showing up to more than half of the sessions, is a no-pass grade, which doesn’t count against one’s GPA. This lack of consequence often leads students to mentally drop out of these classes as their main ones ramp up later — but not very much later — in the semester, and how is a true Berkeley course to indoctrinate students with what critics label socialistic dogma if they are not fully engaged?
This permissibility to not devote oneself to a course one is enrolled in changes with Cal’s soon-to-be newest and most popular DeCal, The Lobster. This title, as well as the description to follow, may seem like a naïve freshman’s drastic misinterpretation of an absurdist black comedy’s message being to bring that love-frantic dystopia to life on one of the most academically intense college campuses, whose level of academic rigor is only matched by rates of depression and loneliness, but we promise that we thought this course up all by ourselves with our Berkeley brains — and hearts — and that…
