Monday, February 2, 1998
Community Briefs
Bill aims to increase tracking of hate crimes
Colleges and universities will need to increase their oversight
and reporting of hate crimes, if a new bill in Congress passes
approval.
The legislation proposed by Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.)
would require colleges to collect and publish more data on hate
crimes, including those related to simple assault, harassment and
vandalism. The bill is expected to receive a detailed review in
January.
Current law, under the Campus Security Act, requires only that
colleges report hate crimes that result in serious felonies such as
murder, rape or aggravated assault.
"It was useful to provide the reporting of hate crimes in these
three [felony] categories, but it does not provide students or
parents with the overwhelming information of what actually
constitutes hate crimes in America," Torricelli said.
Giving students and parents added information will help them
make educated decisions about college, which, in turn, "will make
the deans, law enforcement officials, boards of trustees and alumni
take these problems seriously," Torricelli added.
Felonies account for only about 16 percent of hate crimes
nationwide, he said, which means few if any make it onto annual
campus security reports. For example, no college has reported a
hate crime that resulted in murder, and only a few have classified
a rape or assault as a hate crime, the senator said. Several
high-profile incidents prompted the development of the bill,
Torricelli said, including the electronic-mail death threats that
60 Asian American students received last year at the University of
California-lrvine.
Unabomber cake comes to Berkeley
The UC Police Department Bomb Squad came out to Evans Hall
Tuesday morning following the discovery of a cake with references
to Unabomber and former UC Berkeley Professor Ted Kaczynski.
On top of the crudely-made chocolate cake was a photo of
Kaczynski and the words, "Free Ted," clipped out of a newspaper,
several eyewitnesses said.
Although no explosives were discovered in the cake, police
feared that the references to Kaczynski may have been a sign that
the cake was a bomb.
Estogen replacement may vary in effects
A novel hormone therapy drug studied at the University of
California San Francisco exhibits different effects on
postmenopausal and premenopausal women, according to UCSF
researchers. To date, human studies of the new drug called,
raloxifene, have only been conducted on post menopausal women.
The drug is an alternative to estrogen replacement therapy and
is intended for women who choose not to take estrogen after
menopause. In previous UCSF studies of raloxifene in postmenopausal
women, researchers found that it is perhaps one of the safest and
most effective hormone therapy drugs because of its unique
characteristics, said Valerie Baker, MD, lead author of the
study.
Raloxifene belongs to a class of drugs called selective estrogen
receptor modulators (SERMs). However "unlike other SERMs,
raloxifene has a positive, estrogen-like effect on a postmenopausal
woman’s bones and cholesterol levels, yet it does not mimic
estrogen’s adverse effects on her breasts and uterus," says Robert
Jaffe, MD, senior author of the study. It is expected to be
available in pill form for postmenopausal women this month.
During the UCSF study, a total of 31 reproductive age women
received raloxifene during different phases of their menstrual
cycles. According to Jaffe and Baker, raloxifene neither affected
ovulation nor altered the length of the menstrual cycle. However,
the women’s estrogen levels increased.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff and wire reports