Here's What You Could Buy With the Estimated $800k Cal Spent on Milo Yiannopolous

UC Berkeley was bracing for protests over a series of inflammatory speakers who planned to visit campus during a four-day period at the end of September. The event fizzled, but the school still spent an estimated $800,000 on security.

In the end, only Milo Yiannopoulos (with a small contingent, including Pamela Geller) made it to campus. He didn't speak that much on Sept. 24 but had many photos taken.  UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said, “It feels a little bit like probably the most expensive photo op in the university’s history.”

UC Berkeley usually sets aside about $200,000 a year for protest response and demonstration management. This one event is estimated to have cost the university four times that amount.

All this got us thinking: What else could we do with $800,000?

School supplies. You could buy 8 million pencils. Or 800 MacBook Airs. Or 133,333 paperback copies of William Shakespeare’s collected works.

Need caffeine? You could purchase 188,235 cappuccinos at $4.25 a whack.

But seriously. With $800,000, Berkeley could cover the yearly costs for 23 in-state students. That includes tuition, housing, supplies — everything.

The school could give its roughly 547 custodians a one-time $1,462 bonus. That’s almost 4 percent of their average income.

Or, Berkeley could hire 40 more graduate students instructors like William Callison. He teaches political science and makes $20,000 a year, pretax.

Forget about UC Berkeley. With that money you could buy eight Tesla Roadsters.

You could acquire this little house in Berkeley.

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/24838112_zpid/800000-800000_price/2952-2952_mp/san-francisco-_att/globalrelevanceex_sort/37.982904,-122.187538,37.616135,-122.633171_rect/10_zm/

And if you just really needed to get out of the Bay Area, you could fly to New York last-minute. You could do that a lot. About 1,700 times.

In the end, only Yiannopoulos actually came to UC Berkeley for what was supposed to be a four-day "Free Speech Week" event with numerous speakers. He didn't stay long, just about 20 minutes. If you break that down, the security cost for him was $40,000 a minute.

The total UC Berkeley budget deficit is projected to be about $110 million. At a rate of $40,000 a minute, the school could pay off its deficit in just under 46 hours.

What would you do with 800 grand?