Wednesday, February 18, 1998
Community Briefs
BRIEFS
Breslow named chair
of public health board
Dr. Lester Breslow, an internationally recognized public health
leader, has been named chairman of the Dean’s Advisory Board of the
UCLA School of Public Health.
As chairman of the committee, Breslow will lead a group of
friends of the school who help raise money for various projects.
The school has embarked on a $15 million effort to raise funds for
a new building and other critical needs, part of UCLA’s $1.2
billion fund-raising campaign.
He is a former president of the American Public Health
Association, dean emeritus of the UCLA School of Public Health and
the current chair of the Public Health Commission of Los Angeles
County.
"My goal is to help the school and its friends focus on how they
can best support teaching, research and service programs of a truly
outstanding school whose impact on the public’s health extends from
Southern California to many of the most needy areas of the world,"
Breslow said.
Berkeley’s tutorial
program helps youth
UC Berkeley’s educational outreach program, the Berkeley Pledge,
has made advances in the mathematical aptitudes of students in the
San Francisco Bay area.
The program, established in 1995, targets disadvantaged students
and offers academic enrichment to facilitate future college
educations. Students in grades K-12 in more than 40 San Francisco
schools have shown improvement on standardized tests and exhibited
more self confidence.
"At the start of the semester, my students had a low sense of
self. By the end of the semester, the change I saw was remarkable,"
said UC Berkeley undergraduate and tutor Michele Hamilton.
High school students participating in the math programs earned
grade point averages that were nearly one point higher than their
peers who were not enrolled.
The success of the Pledge’s math program has prompted the launch
of programs to improve students’ reading and writing skills.
Richard Avalos stated, "(The Pledge) counters the inner city
pool of negativism. … It says to them, ‘Si se puede.’"
University police say tactics surprised them
Students protesting the end of affirmative action in admissions
and hiring policies sought physical confrontation with university
police in UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall last year, according to
police.
A confidential report obtained by The Daily Californian stated
that aggressive movements by the students caused surprised officers
to react without regard to police guidelines.
Protesters used tactics police said they had never seen before,
including securing doors to the campus administration building with
U-shaped bicycle locks and using a "ground-fighting" approach when
confronting officers.
The students’ combative behavior "surprised" police, who then
reacted with a flurry of baton blows against the protesters after
they attempted to crash their way through police lines.
"(Using the bicycle locks) meant that everyone on the first
floor was trapped," said UC police Capt. Guillermo Beckford, the
commanding officer at the time of the incident. "Public safety was
in severe danger. We had not seen that tactic used before."
The report, written by attorney Gregory Fox at the request of
the university’s police review board, said an internal review by
the department acknowledged that officers were not ready for such
aggressive actions.
Members of the review board said that if the protesters’ actions
were unexpected, officers should have stuck to written policy.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff and wire reports.