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It was only the opening minutes of a summer session class at UC Berkeley, but tensions were about to get high. I was a teaching assistant for the class, and the professor and I were going over class policy when a student, an undergrad, raised their hand with a question.

"Are you going to be honoring Berkeley Time?" they asked.

The professor and I, who spend most of our time at the Graduate School of Journalism, were slightly puzzled by the question. We'd heard of Berkeley Time as a colloquialism – to us it was just the idea that people at the school tend to run late to things, but not an official class policy.

We offered what we thought was a decent compromise: We won't penalize those who come in 10 or less minutes late to class, but we were starting our instruction on time.

The compromise led to instant rebellion.

The student who asked the initial question informed us that it was a official school policy at Berkeley to start courses 10 minutes after their scheduled start time. They said our compromise would still penalize students who were late, because they would miss out on course material that might be useful or essential later in the semester. Fair enough.

But another student who was visiting from another school in the UC system retorted, "But I paid for class to start on time."

In order to calm the rebellion, we agreed to start instruction 10 minutes late. After class was over, we learned that the Berkeley Time convention was put in place to allow students, teachers and other classroom aids and staff to get from one class to another and prep for the day's session, which is vital if they're scheduled for back-to-back classes on Cal's large, hilly campus. And, according to Google Maps, there's good reason for the grace period.

A quick query for directions from the College of Letters & Science up the hill to the Haas School of Business reveals a 9-minute walk. And it takes 12 minutes to get from The Goldman School of Public Policy to Hearst Gymnasium, which, despite its name, holds classes.

There's a dual master's degree offered by the Graduate School of Journalism, where I'm a student, and the School of Public Health. But it takes 13 or 14 minutes to walk uphill from the public health school to the journalism school – the reverse trip takes 10 minutes.

But the policy has had an effect on life outside of the classroom – club meetings, events and even faculty and staff meetings have adopted the leniency on start time.

Alex Matthews, a student in the MPH/MJ dual-degree program who also went to Cal for undergrad, said that while she thinks Berkeley Time is a good thing, she has to suss out times when it's not appropriate to abide by the policy.

"It's a good thing, because there's a lot of hills on this campus," Matthews said. "Because I have a class that ends down the hill in Genetics and Plant Biology at 10 a.m., and then I have another one up by The Campanile that starts at 10:10. But it actually technically starts at 10 and if it weren't for Berkeley Time, I'd be really late to that class." That walk takes 10 or 11 minutes, according to Google Maps.

Abhinav Singh, who started as a freshman at Cal just a few weeks ago, said that he's been taking advantage of the policy, which he said is a new concept to him. Although he is familiar with the 1,232-acre campus after visiting several times from his native Pleasant Hill, it still is a hike from him to get to one place to another, so he appreciates the policy. "I like it. It helps me, because most of my classes are back-to-back, so one class ends and I still have ten minutes to get to my other class," Singh said.

Berkeley Time is a part of the culture at Cal that Kaitlin Benz, a student at the Graduate School of Journalism, said she thinks is unnecessary. "It feels like the only university that I've heard about it doing it and I haven't heard good things about it and I haven't heard bad things about it," Benz said. "So it makes me wonder why does it even exist."

She said that she had no problem getting to back-to-back classes on time at the University of Central Florida, which is a 1,415-acre campus, when she was an undergrad. But she also said that she's sympathetic to those who have disabilities and others who might have trouble getting around campus for back-to-back classes.

"And I get that people have to schedule classes back-to-back, but it doesn't take that long to get to classes," she said. "Last year, I had a class here at North Gate [Hall] and I had a class at Haas, which is quite far ... and it just doesn't take that long."

Ardin Lo, a junior studying economics and history at Cal, said that he first learned about the policy during a tour of the campus. "I thought it was great because the tour guides were excited about it," he said. "They were like, 'This is something unique about Berkeley, you know, part of the Berkeley culture.'"