Colleges Students

Every afternoon, Rashmi Chethan and her female Indian friends gather to drink chai, stroll around their sprawling San Jose apartment complex and console each other over their stalled careers. The group includes doctors, lawyers, computer scientists and a nuclear engineer. Their husbands are computer stars in the Silicon Valley, programming and design whizzes granted special high-tech visas that allow them to work in laboratories, software mills and Internet shops for up to six years.

At least a dozen schools were put on lockdown, streets were sealed off and a wave of law enforcement swept across eastern Los Angeles and Santa Monica early Thursday after an anonymous caller threatened to "shoot up" a campus. A 19-year-old Santa Monica College student was arrested 90 minutes later on campus when he surrendered to school psychological services after police identified him as the person who had called 911, saying he had a gun and was going to attack a school and shoot himself on campus.

It was a step toward what one director calls "the Rose Bowl of American educational theater." More than 200 college- and university-produced plays from five states had been entered in competition in the Region VIII conference of the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival, held here last week. Only 13 were accepted. Two of them were from Orange County. One entry was August Strindberg's "Easter," directed by third-year graduate student Christian Kiley, from Cal State Fullerton.

Los Angeles police say they have investigated three rape cases involving Occidental College students in the last three years, far fewer than current and former students outline in a civil rights complaint. In the U.S. Department of Education complaint filed Thursday, attorney Gloria Allred's law firm, which represents several current and former students, alleges that 37 students were "raped, sexually assaulted, battered, harassed or retaliated against for speaking out against sexual violence" since 2009.

Tau Kappa Epsilon, the nation's largest college social fraternity, announced that it had ended pledging in an effort to stop dangerous hazing, making it the second fraternity in a week to do so. "We have tried numerous programs to eradicate (hazing) from the fraternity, but so far none have accomplished the task," said T.J. Schmitz, the group's executive vice president.

Student reaction Friday to Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening's plan to catapult UC Irvine into the ranks of the nation's top 50 research universities ranged from guarded approval to apathy to fears about a decline in UCI's teaching quality. With the fall quarter less than two weeks away and the campus largely quiet, news of the chancellor's vision for the estimated 13,000 undergraduates and 3,000 graduates spread slowly.

America's research universities may be the envy of the world, but they all too often fail to properly educate their undergraduate students and need "radical reconstruction," according to a new and strikingly critical report. The report, issued by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, suggests that these universities could improve their educational role by involving undergraduates in research, starting in the freshman year.

Accounting teacher Larry Lease was only kidding when he told his students that when they got rich, they could show their appreciation by buying him a new Porsche. Lease thought one of his former Shasta College students was just continuing the joke when the student e-mailed him last May asking him what color he wanted. But when Robert Sullivan came to visit Lease this week, he arrived with a burgundy Porsche convertible, valued at $50,000 and registered in Lease's name.

Smoking among college students has risen by 28% in the last four years, alarming researchers who say the new trend likely signals a reversal of the 30-year decline in adult smoking rates and could lead to further increases in tobacco-related illness. The new study, released Tuesday by the Harvard School of Public Health and published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Chapman University may give next year's incoming freshmen more than dorm keys, course catalogs and the campus telephone book. Odds are good that next year the university will hand them a laptop computer loaded with software. Chapman may join a growing number of colleges and universities nationwide--and one of the few in the West--that regard computers as so important they provide them to incoming students.

Fewer than half of California's community college students transferred to a four-year school or earned an associate's degree in 2011-12, the lowest level of completion in five years, according to data released Tuesday by the chancellor's office. Statewide, 49.2% of students who enrolled in 2006 achieved those goals after six years, compared with 52.3% of students who enrolled in 2002. The completion rate for students needing remedial math and English was about 41%. By comparison, 71% of students who entered prepared to do college-level work in those subjects earned degrees or transferred.

The Riverside City College student body president is a registered sex offender who has pleaded guilty to kidnapping and committing lewd acts with a child less than 14 years old. School officials knew about the status of Doug Robert Figueroa, 40, prior to his run for office, but in a statement, they said they had “determined that there was no policy, statute or ordinance that could prohibit this student from seeking office as student body president”...

The two Pasadena police officers who fatally shot unarmed Azusa college student Kendrec McDade during a robbery investigation a year ago acted "within departmental policy," an internal review of the incident has determined. Findings of the Pasadena police administrative review board were announced in a brief statement Wednesday. Pasadena officers Jeffrey Newlen and Matthew Griffin shot McDade, 19, during a March 24, 2012, police pursuit that ended near the intersection of Orange Grove Boulevard and Sunset Avenue.

BAKERSFIELD - Fernando Jara is something of a star in Kern County - and a mystery. From humble beginnings, Jara founded a program to rehabilitate drug addicts and felons on a five-acre farm. He is completing a master's degree at Claremont School of Theology and will soon begin work on a doctorate and a law degree. The energetic 37-year-old and his wife, a Kern County supervisor and rising political star, attended President Obama's inauguration in January at the invitation of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Families aren't saving enough for college, students are falling deeper into debt and nearly 13% of graduates owe more than $50,000, according to new research. The bottom line of the research, gleaned from a pair of new studies, is that college-debt woes continue to worsen despite all the attention focused on the ballooning debt of America's young people. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that the number of students taking out college loans, and the amount they borrowed, both grew 70%, or roughly 7% a year, from 2004 and 2012.

Amazon.com wasted no time putting one of its Kindle tablets on sale to kick off the new year. The Seattle-based online retailer started a monthlong sale on New Year's Day that takes $50 off the 8.9-inch version of its Kindle Fire HD tablet. The reduced price, however, is only available to Amazon Student members who have an Amazon Prime account, which costs $39 for the full year for those who have an ".edu" student email address. The sale applies to both the Wi-Fi version of the large-size tablet as well as its 4G LTE variant.

UC Irvine students and professors on Monday rallied in opposition to a proposal before the UC Board of Regents to eliminate affirmative action in student admissions. "Student affirmative action is about opportunity," said Corina Espinoza, director of UCI's Cultural Resource Center. "It's about giving people the opportunity to exhibit promising qualities. It's about equity and it's about having the same thing available to everyone in our society."

About 30 students, faculty and community members Wednesday attended Cal State Northridge's fourth "Day of Dialogue," an event focusing on diversity and cross-cultural relations. Ronald Kopita, vice president of student affairs, cited the same-day scheduling of other popular events on campus as the reason for the small turnout. Sponsored by CSUN's Project Community, past events have drawn between 100 and 120 students, coordinator Kristin Morgan said.

With the passage of Proposition 30, college students will be spared another round of tuition increases and younger students will avoid a shorter school year, results that were met with much jubilation Wednesday. For public school districts, the measure's success was mostly about escaping another wave of severe budget cuts, including teacher layoffs, curtailed instructional time and larger classes. But for higher education, the measure is expected to reap immediate positive benefits.

Re "Crowded colleges," Letters, Oct. 18 A letter writer calls for eliminating physical education at community colleges in favor of "academics. " After teaching PE and health for 38 years, I have to respond. Half of my students were obese or eating their way there. Diabetes, heart issues, lost work time due to illness and self-esteem issues can be headed off by a well taught PE class aimed at lifetime skills. I one asked my health class students how many of them used algebra or a foreign language in the past year; few did. Then I asked how many knew an alcoholic or drug addict, lost someone close to them or needed to understand proper diet; most of the hands went up. A brilliant student is a healthy student; teach both.