San Francisco Chronicle reporters Phil Matier and Andy Ross report that Oakland Athletics president Dave Kaval will hand deliver a letter to Peralta Community College District Chancellor Jowel Laguerre “asking to begin negotiations to buy or lease” a 13-acre plot of land near Laney College in order to build a new stadium for the Oakland A’s. The plot currently houses the district’s headquarters.

The exclusive report from Matier and Ross includes quotes from Kaval’s letter, including details on proposed ancillary development around the site. The A’s desire to play their first game at this new stadium in 2023.

It was widely reported that the A’s had primarily been considering three finalists in its search for the long-awaited ballpark site: Howard Terminal near Jack London Square, another portion of the current Oakland Coliseum lot, and Laney College. The Laney decision was also divided between the Peralta lot, which abuts the Nimitz Freeway and a northern parcel that would essentially require relocating Laney College’s baseball and football programs.

The safest and most boring choice would have been to build a new stadium at the current Coliseum lot. It has the most advantageous transit situation of the three primary sites but the least compelling neighborhood draws.

Scretary of Education Betsy DeVos appeared at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black university, to give the commencement speech, but from the start of the speech, DeVos was drowned out by students and other commencement attendees who were simply not pleased with her being there.

“Dr. Jackson, Board of Trustees, thank you so very, very much for this great honor and privilege,” DeVos said as boos and jeers started up almost immediately and grew louder and louder as she spoke. “I am honored to become a Wildcat,” she added, which prompted an even more outraged reaction.

“It’s a real honor and privilege to be with you as we celebrate the Bethune-Cookman class of 2017,” she continued, speaking to students who were not sitting in their seats and would not face her, even after the students were told that their degrees would be mailed to them if they continued to boo and jeer.

OAKLAND — Facing political and public pressure, Mayor Libby Schaaf on Tuesday backed away from a plan to divert funds from a voter-approved soda tax measure after residents threatened to campaign against her re-election.

Last week, Schaaf unveiled her proposed 2017-19 budget and quickly drew criticism from City Council members, including ally Annie Campbell Washington, for proposing to use the soda tax revenues to help close the city’s budget deficit.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Campbell Washington, Rebecca Kaplan and Desley Brooks, the co-authors of Measure HH, said the mayor’s plan would bring a backlash from voters who were promised the funds would be spent to help fight childhood obesity and soda consumption.

They also said “big soda” would use the “bait and switch” on Oakland voters to fight soda tax measures in other cities. Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and Albany are among the first in the nation to pass such a tax, a growing trend in progressive and urban areas.

Sexual harassment, bullying and racist stereotyping are common in the technology industry, creating a culture that drives underrepresented employees out of their jobs, new research has found.

One in 10 women in tech experience unwanted sexual attention, and nearly one in four people of color face stereotyping, according to the Kapor Center for Social Impact and Harris Poll, which surveyed more than 2,000 people who left tech jobs in the last three years.

The findings – which suggest that sexual harassment and complaints about unfairness are disproportionately high in the tech sector compared to other industries – come at a time of heightened debates around diversity and discrimination in Silicon Valley.

“For each person who experiences unfairness, it’s very personal and it’s very painful,” said Ellen Pao, Kapor’s chief diversity and inclusion officer and former Reddit CEO, who has been outspoken about discrimination. “As someone who has been working in the tech industry since 1998, I know it’s prevalent, and now we have the data so people can understand the scale.”