BERKELEY, Calif. - In many ways and for many months, the protest outside Memorial Stadium at the University of California has been business, and Berkeley, as usual.

On one side are the protesting tree lovers who have been living Tarzan-like since December in a stand of coastal oaks and other trees. On the other is the university, which wants to cut down the trees to build a $125 million athletic center, part of a larger plan to upgrade its aging, seismically challenged football stadium.

The two sides disagreed. They bickered. Lawyers were called. Then came The Fence.



©Darcy Padilla for The New York Times
A fence built around a stand of trees at the University of California, Berkeley, has added controversy to a lengthy protest.

Before dawn on Aug. 29, building crews and the university police erected a 10-foot-high fence around the grove, effectively cutting off the tree dwellers from their supplies. The university called the fence a safety measure, meant to protect protesters from football fans descending on the stadium for the season opener.



Comment: "We fence you in to protect you, though you might die from starvation. But safety is above all, no?"



Instead, the fence has united many of the city's fractious constituencies and unleashed years of frustration with the university that made the city famous (or was it the other way around?).

"I am appalled," said Michael Kelly, who leads a group opposing the stadium plan. "I cannot believe that the institution that gave birth to the Free Speech Movement has done this."

[The university recently ratcheted up pressure when it sought a court order to end the protest, arguing that the tree community contained several health and safety threats, including propane tanks and plywood structures. On Sept. 12, Judge Richard O. Keller of Alameda County Superior Court declined to rule immediately, scheduling a hearing for Oct. 1.]

The stadium showdown has energized many in Berkeley's graying antiestablishment set who cherish the city's activist past, including the famous 1969 battle over nearby People's Park. In that case, university and state authorities sent the police and the National Guard to clear the university-owned park and build a fence, a move that led to violent clashes in which one person was killed and dozens were injured. The land remains a park today.

"A lot of people who have been here a long time have seen this as a potential rerun of that problem," Mayor Tom Bates said. "The abruptness of it, in the middle of the night, and the mobilization of the police."

In retrospect, they didn't need the police," Mayor Bates said, "but I'm just glad it didn't escalate."

The city has sued the university, arguing that the athletic center should be built away from the stadium. The stadium sits over the Hayward fault, which scientists say is overdue for a large earthquake. The university says that it has thoroughly considered safety issues, and that the athletic center needs to be near the stadium to allow athletes easy access to classrooms and training facilities near the playing fields. Arguments in the lawsuit will be heard Sept. 19 and 20.

[On Sept. 11, the City Council rejected a settlement offer from the university, to the joy of its assembled opponents, including a group of football fans who say the stadium plan will rob them of a free view of the action from a nearby hillside.

[Shirley Dean, a former mayor who says she knows well the animation with which various opinions can bounce around her hometown, said she was impressed by the turnout. "Many of these people I knew from previous times, many people - I'm not going to name names - that I would have preferred not to be in the same room with, and we were all of the same side," Ms. Dean said. "It was absolutely amazing."]

Shortly after the fence appeared, dozens of protesters formed a human chain around the chain-link fence and began tossing supplies over the top. Soon after, the editorial board at The Daily Californian, the independent student newspaper, called the fence a public relations disaster and suggested that it might "encourage martyrdom."

Zachary Running Wolf, an American Indian activist who has been living in the grove for nearly 300 days, agreed. "I think they blew it with the fence," Mr. Running Wolf said. "They showed their desperation. In the city of Berkeley, on a public campus, a starve-out program? A Guantánamo Berkeley? It's ridiculous."

Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from Fremont, Calif.