Genius-producing math program lost to UC Berkeley fingerprinting requirements | Campus

Hannah Cairo shook the math world when she disproved the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture, a 4o-year-old unsolved math problem, when she was only 17. 

Well ahead of her peers in math, Cairo applied to colleges when she was 14 and was accepted into UC Davis.

Seeking advice on what to do, she consulted UC Berkeley professor Zvezdelina Stankova, founder of the Berkeley Math Circle, or BMC. Cairo had been enrolled in a BMC summer program. Stankova encouraged her to enroll in graduate-level math courses at UC Berkeley rather than enroll as a student at UC Davis. 

“I ended up following (Stankova’s) advice, which, in retrospect, I think was a much better decision,” Cairo said. 

Eventually, Cairo learned about the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture, which she would eventually disprove, in a graduate-level math class taught by UC Berkeley assistant professor Ruixiang Zhang.

Cairo is one of many talented mathematicians who have gone through BMC’s programs. Other former BMC students include Oaz Nir, founding partner at Hudson River Trading, a quantitative trading firm with a net trading revenue of nearly $8 billion in 2024, and University of Toronto professor Gabriel Carroll, a four-time top-five scorer in the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, widely considered one of the most prestigious undergraduate math competitions in North America.

However, after 27 years, BMC has shut down its flagship program, BMC-Upper, due to “stringent” new campus background check requirements, according to a statement on BMC’s website. 

Founded in 1998 by Stankova, BMC was designed after Eastern European and Chinese math circles, where students are taught mathematical knowledge beyond a typical school curriculum. According to Gleizer, BMC is “the first university-based math circle in the country”; he added that he thinks it’s “the best, even better than” UCLA’s math circle. 

Campus notified BMC of a requirement in fall 2024 that required all adults who interact with minors, including BMC instructors, parent volunteers and guest speakers, to be fingerprinted as part of their background checks.

According to Laura Givental, director of BMC Elementary, BMC is an independent nonprofit organization under the umbrella of the United Math Circles Foundation. However, in exchange for using classrooms on campus, UC Berkeley has required BMC to conduct regular background checks for nearly a decade as part of a 2016 contract.

AB 506 requires background checks for “regular volunteers,” whom the bill defines as individuals who work with minors for “more than 16 hours per month or 32 hours per year.” However, campus mandates fingerprinting through a “hideous” process, even if an adult’s interactions with minors amount to less time than what AB 506 states, according to Givental. 

A petition asking campus to revisit its fingerprinting requirements was signed by more than 380 parents, students and other BMC affiliates, including several campus faculty. The petition claimed the requirements are “not part of any official UC Berkeley, UC, California, or federal policies.”

When asked why campus chose to implement these fingerprinting requirements, campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore said campus’s “requirements go beyond minimal standards with good reason” in an email. 

In response to an email from BMC’s pro bono lawyer at the time that asked for the risk management research that motivated campus to go beyond AB 506’s requirements, Chief Campus Counsel and Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs David Robinson said although “risk staff did do research,” there was “no written record” of the research to share with BMC, according to an email obtained by The Daily Californian.

Campus requires California residents seeking electronic fingerprinting to go through the company Biometrics4ALL. However, according to Patricio Angulo, executive director of BMC’s Math Taught the Right Way program, appointment booking was “clunky” and done automatically. Some people found that the fingerprinting location was closed or a fingerprinting technician was not available on-site.

According to Angulo, even parent volunteers and speakers who interact with students virtually must be fingerprinted. 

For out-of-state speakers, campus’s background check guidance states “candidates outside of (California) will not use LiveScan specifically with Biometrics4ALL but instead, follow a paper-based/hard card process … in their state.” 

Angulo said an online-only BMC volunteer drove “hours” from upstate New York to go through ink fingerprinting at the New York City Police Department. 

Then, these ink fingerprints must then be mailed to the California Department of Justice, according to Givental. She added that some fingerprints were returned to the original sender with no additional feedback.

Givental said only one out-of-state individual has been successfully fingerprinted for BMC as of press time, with the process taking five weeks.Out of 100 individuals from California, 80 were successfully fingerprinted on their first attempt, 15 passed on a second attempt and the remaining five required a third fingerprinting appointment. 

In addition, campus required the adult-to-minor ratio in each class, both in-person and online, to reach certain levels for each age group, according to Givental. 

BMC asked campus if it was possible for non-fingerprinted visitors to give guest lectures in a room with an adequate adult-to-minor ratio, since the agreement with campus required adults with “direct supervision” of minors to be fingerprinted, according to Givental. She alleged UC Berkeley rejected this offer. 

Gilmore said the arrangement “would not comply with policy and would facilitate interactions between minors and people who have not been background checked” in an email. She added that campus policy does not permit these interactions, both in person and online. 

According to Givental, the math circles at Stanford University and UCLA have background check requirements that are “not as strict as” UC Berkeley’s. 

“Our guest speakers are not required to do fingerprinting and FBI background checks,” said Oleg Gleizer, director of UCLA’s Olga Radko Endowed Math Circle, in an email. “Unlike UCB, UCLA is quite supportive of our Math Circle at all the levels, from the Math. Dept. Chair to various Vice-Chancellors. It’s a shame that UC Berkeley have closed the BMC.”

“Any organization that operates a program specifically designed to serve minors on campus or using campus resources must comply with campus policies regarding minors,” Gilmore said in the email when asked about background requirements for Registered Student Organizations, or RSOs, on campus. 

Splash at Berkeley, an RSO that brings high schoolers to campus to attend classes taught by UC Berkeley students, conducts background checks for participating students but does not fingerprint them, as campus policy does not require the organization to do so, according to the Splash Administration Team. 

Berkeley Math Tournament, an RSO that hosts math contests on campus for middle and high schoolers, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether or not it background checks its members.

UCLA professor Terence Tao personally wrote a letter to UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons “asking for flexibility in implementing a fingerprinting requirement that was potentially impacting the operation of time-sensitive events,” on campus, such as the American Mathematics Competitions, according to an email from Tao. 

Tao is the recipient of a Fields Medal, often considered one of the “Nobels of math.” He was awarded the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Grant” in 2006 and is regarded by many as the world’s greatest living mathematician.

Faced with administrative requirements, Stankova sent an email to the BMC community Jan. 24.

“BMC-Upper needs the guest speakers not required to do fingerprinting,” Stankova wrote in the email. “BMC-Upper is intended for exceptional students … Their needs cannot and will not be served by several local instructors. BMC-Upper has always been and will be based on attracting guest speakers of international caliber.” 

Math Taught the Right Way and BMC Elementary have continued operations; the email states that they “have a strictly developed curriculum … and they do NOT depend on guest speakers.” 

BMC-Upper will remain closed through fall 2025 and spring 2026, according to the BMC website.The program remains “in negotiations for a sustainable agreement that will allow (it) to continue to nurture a love of mathematics in students.”

In another email to BMC’s pro bono lawyer at the time, Robinson also conceded that “it does seem like BMC-Upper would need to make some fundamental changes in order to do the required checks for all of the people who teach.” 

Though Stankova has considered moving the programs online or dissociating from UC Berkeley entirely, in another email to the BMC community, she said, “neither of these options are desirable, possible, or sustainable models of the programs.”

“The truth is, when we started (BMC), it was all about the kids and teaching the kids math,” Givental said. “But with time, the amount of administrative work that was put on the math circle became so huge that it’s almost non-sustainable anymore.”

Givental questioned why UC Berkeley’s requirements should be more stringent than UCLA’s, adding that campus is “closing opportunities for at least 600 kids every year.”

Cairo and Tao expressed their disappointment at the closure of BMC-Upper, citing the impact of the circle on the community. 

“It’s a shame that the campus has these policies that are preventing the math circle from running,” Cairo said. “It’s very silly to have this requirement of fingerprinting. The campus doesn’t need this policy. They’re destroying something that has helped so many students.”

“It is disappointing to have such a popular and enriching community resource shut down for what are apparently purely administrative reasons,” Tao said in his email.