Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Title of entry: Editor's Note: Strawberry Creek Forever!

About this entry: The entry is the Editor's Note by editor in chief Pat Joseph, introducing the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of California. The audience is UC Berkeley alumni, donors and fans--a readership that is often skeptical of institutional boosterism and that responds better to intellectual honesty and wry humor.

The strategic goal was twofold: frame a football-heavy issue in a way that would reinforce the magazine's independent voice and editorial identity while appealing to the full breadth of the Berkeley alumni community.

Joseph accomplishes this with an informal essay about UC Berkeley's dual identity. "It's Berkeley on the diplomas; Cal on the helmets," he writes. "One name for the brain, another for the heart." Rather than apologizing for an issue devoted to football and spirit, Joseph contextualizes it: he gives a capsule history of Cal's once-dominant, now heartbreaking football program, connects the school's DIY spirit (embodied by the Calgorithm and the origin of Oski, the mascot) to its burgeoning startup culture, and ends with a meditation on Glenn Seaborg — Nobel laureate, former chancellor, avid football fan — who, Joseph writes, "embodied the Berkeley/Cal duality as well as anyone." The kicker: Seaborg's surname is an anagram for the football cheer, "Go Bears."

The piece never asks readers to feel proud; it gives them something to think about, and smile at. The result is an editor's note that functions as a genuine essay — one reflective of both the character of the institution it covers and the magazine that covers it.