UC Berkeley Surprised To Learn PhD Students Will Do Anything To Survive PhD Program

BERKELEY — In a development that has shocked absolutely no one who has ever attended graduate school, UC Berkeley announced this week that a PhD student had been systematically destroying a rival's computers for years, a crime spree that went undetected by the university until a professor was forced to install his own hidden surveillance camera like some kind of academic vigilante.

Jiarui Zou, 26, a doctoral candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences—the literal science of making computers work—has been charged with three felony counts of vandalism after allegedly making computers do the opposite of working. According to police, the sabotage involved "some implement that caused sparks to fly out of the laptop," a method notable for its complete lack of subtlety and apparently total effectiveness at evading institutional notice.

The damage totaled $46,855 over multiple years, during which time UC Berkeley—home to seven Nobel laureates and the birthplace of UNIX—proved institutionally unable to identify a pattern that a Target loss prevention associate would flag in a single shift.

"We are taking this matter very seriously," said a university spokesperson, carefully not explaining how the matter had been taken for the previous four years while one student's computers kept exploding and another student kept being nearby when it happened. The spokesperson declined to comment on whether "taking matters seriously" had at any point included "noticing them."

The professor who finally cracked the case—whose name has not been released, presumably to protect him from the administrative consequences of solving a problem no one asked him to solve—obtained permission from the building manager before installing covert surveillance equipment. Somewhere, experts confirmed, there is a form with a checkbox for "Reason for camera installation: ☐ Security ☐ Research ☑ I'm solving crimes now because nobody else will."

The victim—a PhD student presumably intelligent enough to be admitted to Berkeley EECS—spent years watching their computers serially combust and concluded, according to sources, that they were simply "unlucky." At no point, investigators noted, did the student consider that the universe had not, in fact, specifically selected them for laptop-based persecution.

"This is what institutions teach us," explained Dr. Helen Woodward, a sociologist at Stanford who studies academic culture. "The system isn't failing you. You aren't being sabotaged. You just need to work harder. Your laptop exploding is a you problem. Have you tried office hours?"

The arrest—which occurred at Cory Hall on November 12th—ended with Zou declining to comment to police, a response experts described as "legally correct" and "the most information anyone has shared about the internal experience of PhD students in years."

Zou faces felony charges specifically because each destroyed computer was worth more than $400, the threshold for felony vandalism under California Penal Code 594. Legal experts noted that his entire academic future now hinges on Apple's pricing strategy; had he targeted slightly cheaper Chromebooks, this would be a misdemeanor and a strongly-worded departmental email.

UC Berkeley, which extracts approximately $300,000 in research value from each PhD student while paying them $34,000 and calling it "training," expressed concern about the $46,855 in laptop damages.

The case has prompted reflection across academia about the pressures facing graduate students. UC Berkeley offers PhD students 12 free counseling sessions per year and a meditation app. It does not offer "someone noticing when you've started committing serial felonies" or "anyone checking if your academic rival has begun an arson campaign against your laptop."

"Two students entered Berkeley's PhD program," observed Dr. Marcus Chen, who studies academic competition. "Both were probably in the top 0.1% of global intelligence. The system told them only one could have a future. One decided to do science. The other decided to do war. The system created both outcomes."

Zou maintained addresses in both Richmond and Berkeley, police noted—a man who planned for housing redundancy but not for the possibility that someone might eventually point a camera at the exploding computers.

His first court appearance is scheduled for December 15th. A conviction could result in deportation, leading to what one immigration attorney described as "America prosecuting him with the full weight of its legal system, then deporting him, then writing a think piece about why we can't retain STEM talent."

The victim could not be reached for comment, as their current laptop had not yet exploded.

At press time, university officials were reportedly considering whether to upgrade their security infrastructure or simply wait for another professor to get fed up and handle it.