Smart Ass: The People and the Purpose

Welcome to the Smart Ass website, virtual home of Smart Ass magazine, Berkeley’s voice of the Democratic left. Our mission is to act as a campus forum for progressive issues and public policy concerns, with a mixture of news, humor, features, commentary, satire, and analysis.

The reputation of an outspoken, radical Berkeley atmosphere seems to argue against the need for a publication to be the voice of Berkeley’s liberal anything. In fact, both Berkeley’s history and its current activism seem proof of its rather uproarious chorus of dissention, a force that would appear to render our publication’s presence obsolete. However, in order to understand why our existence is not only unique but essential to creating, encouraging, and questioning both Berkeley and the outside world, one has to understand the city, university, and history that we come from.

It is almost universally understood that the name “Berkeley” is synonymous with the term “radical.” The city of Berkeley and the University of California’s campus together are renown, from Boston to Bangalore, as a haven for tied-dye wearing, tofu-eating, tree-hugging, Che-loving hippies. Not that some of us aren’t, mind you. But despite the ardent efforts of the more impassioned activist groups, Berkeley is not just the over-simplified, drugged-out commune that the city, and much of the rest of the world, wishes for it to be.

In many ways, the city and campus are very much a microcosm of the same values of diversity, tolerance, and independent thought that America as a whole prides itself upon. Just as the tenements in the darkened corners of Sinclair’s New York held a goulosh of Jews, Italians, Irish, and Eastern Europeans around the turn of last century, the university’s ashen units hold a melange of Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, and Middle Easterners at the beginning of this century. Just as our national history contains a plethora of sit-ins, walk-outs, strikes, marches, and speeches that have determined America’s revolutionary progressiveness, Berkeley has a rich history of taking action in defense of issues now that in 20 or 30 or 50 years will be assumed truths. Just as America has prided itself on its ingenuity, inventiveness, work-ethic, and daring risk-taking, Berkeley has been a model school and city for initiative, invention, and courageously challenging what is currently perceived as correct. It is one of the few places is the country where academic royalty, bright-eyed students, and street-wise rabble all sit knee to knee in perfect caffeinated harmony at cafés across the street from where the Free Speech Movement began and down the hill from where 13 chemical elements were discovered. As a city and a university we are the same melting pot that America so proudly proclaims that it is. As a student body and a community we unabashedly represent many of the best American ideals.

So how in this heated cacophony can the Democrats’ voices be heard? This is Smart Ass’s role, its niche, and one that we not only wish to fulfill but demand. We are not the radicals that the Republicans say, nor are we the conservatives that the protesters say; we are not just college students and political junkies; we are not simply Americans and Democrats. We are all of the above and more; we are progressives; we are the Democratic left in the best sense of the phrase. We are everything combined, we are our own niche, we are the latte-sipping, sushi-eating, Times-reading bioengineers and comp lit majors of California’s future. This is not all we are, but we are all this.

The faction of Berkeley’s flagrant radicalism that serves as the nation’s quintessential counterpoint to every Fox-watching, Walmart-shopping, Lordy-praising, Limbaugh-loving podunk town across the 50 states should be appreciated by everyone who understands the necessity in the freedom of balanced extremes in a fairly functioning democracy. However, this does not make for sound policy, critical review, productive action, or particularly witty satire (though it has a happy habit of caricaturing itself rather hysterically.) No, we at Smart Ass wish to exercise our first amendment right but to do so in a clear, conscious, coherent way that proves we have lived up to the responsibility that that right entails.

These words that we have written and will write will probably have been stated many, many times before. However, if we wish for any type of free democracy, for anything true and good in this world, then they should be stated a million times more and a million again. Perhaps stating them in a different way, a different year, a different election, a different bill, a different writer, a different reader, it will click with someone who will do something, just as it has the many times before that the world has changed because someone stopped to think, because someone was inspired.

But it first must be written, it first must be said. And then it must be read and discussed, for that is what voices are for. Just as any proud American proves his or her investment by voting, proud Berkeleians raise their voices and we at Smart Ass intend to speak with strength and vigor, to comment and criticize, to satirize and dissect those issues that are most important to us as a city, country, and world, and to do it as truthfully, passionately, and brutally as it is in our power to do so. For this is one of the great beauties of America, and one that Democrats at Berkeley wish to exercise, foster, and defend.

Smart Ass Board

All of the following have been board positions responsible for various aspects of the publication:

• Editor-in-Chief: Executive official responsible for overseeing all aspects of Smart Ass fundraising, publication, and staff. Serves on the executive board of the Cal Berkeley Democrats.
• Publisher: Typically a former Editor-in-Chief, the Publisher serves as a guide throughout the publication process
• Managing Editor: Manages writers and handles submissions
• Business Manager: Manages all financial and fundraising activities
• Production Editor: Manages, creates, and coordinates the issue's layout and the layout process
• Senior Copyeditor: Coordinates the activities of the copyeditors
• Distribution Manager: Coordinates the distribution process
• Graphics Editor: Designs all graphics and manages graphics staff, including cartoonists
• IT Designer: Designs and maintains the website and listserv
• Online Editor: Collects and manages content for the website

See the contact page for a list of available positions; see the staff page to see who's currently working for the Smart Ass.

Constitution

Read the Smart Ass constitution (PDF, 13K)