Student Government

Sal Castro, a veteran Los Angeles Unified School District teacher who played a central role in the 1968 "blowouts," when more than 1,000 students in predominantly Latino high schools walked out of their classrooms to protest inequalities in education, died in his sleep Monday after a long bout with cancer. He was 79. Castro died at his home in the Silver Lake district, seven months after he was found to have stage 4 thyroid cancer, said his wife, Charlotte Lerchenmuller. In March 1968, Castro was a social studies teacher at Lincoln High School near downtown when he helped instigate the protests that became a seminal event in the development of the Chicano movement.

Elected student leaders at UC Berkeley passed a resolution early Thursday that urged the UC system to divest from companies said to profit from anti-Palestinian Israeli policies. The controversial resolution was passed in the student government's Senate after being debated Wednesday night and into the morning. The vote was 11 in favor and 9 opposed, according to the Daily Californian student newspaper. The resolution calls for the UC system to end investments in such companies as Caterpillar and General Electric that provide technology, weapons or other products that the Israeli military uses in the Palestinian territories.

After much debate that brought the passions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to campus, UC Riverside's student government has reversed itself and revoked a resolution that urged the UC system to divest from companies that have contracts with Israel's military. The student leaders moved to drop the controversial divestment policy after approving it just a month ago because they came to see how it made Jewish students feel "marginalized," according to Armando Saldana, the Associated Students' executive vice president.

"BSC theater students Russ DeBusk and Ben Moseley are on the road to stardom," said the story in the campus newspaper at Birmingham-Southern College. A few days ago, many students here would have said that was a fair prediction. The two sophomores were creative, popular products of Birmingham's comfortable suburbs. Benjamin Nathan Moseley, the son of a Jefferson County constable, sang baritone in the college choir. Russell DeBusk Jr.

From a shelter in Boyle Heights, 18-year-old Abraham Magana dreams of Stanford. Magana has been homeless for more than six months. Since he moved out of his family's house in August after escalating conflicts with his sister, he's lived in a shelter run by Jovenes Inc., a nonprofit that gives young homeless men a place to sleep. Magana will graduate from high school in June. Then he hopes to earn straight A's at Santa Monica College, get elected to the student government and apply to transfer.

In an effort to promote "safe sex," student governments at two community colleges are attempting to have condom vending machines installed in campus restrooms. They will be among a growing number of colleges and universities nationwide--and two other institutions of higher education in San Diego County--that are trying to combat sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS.

To raise funds for a scholarship in memory of slain student Robbin Brandley, the student government of Saddleback College is sponsoring a band concert Friday from 2 p.m. to midnight. The Saddleback communications major and student government member was stabbed to death Jan. 18 in a campus parking lot. The crime has not been solved. The Associated Students of Saddleback College, the student government organization, will have 11 professional bands playing at the scholarship-fund concert.

Responding to lobbying from military veterans' groups and city leaders, Saddleback College's student government has agreed to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag at the beginning of each meeting, starting in August. The student government dropped the pledge from the agenda last year, President Jeff Haskell said, because the practice of reciting it was insensitive to foreign students and atheists. "People started to argue beliefs," he said, rather than take care of business.