Students

Times are tough enough for Californians; they're even tougher for Californians' teeth. "One-quarter of all adults and 28% of children in California have untreated dental caries [cavities]," says Len Finocchio, a senior program officer at the California Healthcare Foundation, a health advocacy group. "Our research tells us that many people in California have been avoiding routine care that might have cost about $100 for a checkup and cleaning, and then find themselves in the emergency room, where they get only an antibiotic, a bill that can average over $600 and instructions to see a dentist."

Re "2 held in slayings of USC grad students," May 19 I was a USC graduate student in the 1970s. I had come from Ohio car-less and poor and was forced to live off campus because USC could not provide housing. When a late class required me to walk home at night, I made sure that morning to wear tennis shoes and dark clothing so my footsteps would be softer and my body less visible. Gang members confronted us routinely; one student in my complex was beaten up as he was running for safety.

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

Nobody has yet used the "c" word — cheating — to describe the imbroglio that has scrambled the testing schedule at Chatsworth High this month. But another "c" word — confusion — has forestalled end-of-the-year revelry for dozens of hardworking students, who will have to retake or reschedule a series of Advanced Placement exams. The official statement from Los Angeles Unified about the testing problems blames "an irregular pattern in conducting" an AP psychology exam last week.

In the remote northeastern corner of Guatemala, archaeologists have found what appears to be the 9th century workplace of a city scribe, an unusual dwelling adorned with magnificent pictures of the king and other royals and the oldest known Maya calendar. This year has been particularly controversial among some cultists because of the belief that the Maya calendar predicts a major cataclysm - perhaps the end of the world - on Dec. 21, 2012. Archaeologists know that is not true, but the new find, written on the plaster equivalent of a modern scientist's whiteboard, strongly reinforces the idea that the Maya calendar projects thousands of years into the future.

Hollywood High School keeps its doors open 12 months a year to ease overcrowding. The year-round schedule allows the campus to run hundreds more students through its cramped classrooms. It also chips away at their education. Teachers skip pages of material, assign less homework and give fewer tests because their school year has been slashed by 17 days. Hundreds of pupils take the Stanford 9 exam shortly after returning from an eight-week vacation.

At Gulf Avenue Elementary in Wilmington, 4-year-olds in a transitional kindergarten class start the day singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" before sitting down to trace the letter A and learn its sound. Nearby, students in the school's regular kindergarten class are also hard at work, reading and writing sentences. The two sets of students are separated in age by only a few months, but the gulf in maturity and academic skills is wide. Teacher Carmina Gonzalez, who helps some of the 4-year-olds with their letters while tending to a little girl who is crying distractedly, says she saw the contrasts every day in the kindergarten classes she taught.

Dear Liz: I graduated from college last summer and was lucky enough to get full-time employment. However, I have a great deal of college debt, including private and federal loans. Are there government programs that help pay back college loan debt? Do you have any suggestions? I cringe at the thought of paying double what I owe over the life of the loan because of interest and want to get this debt under control in the next few years instead of 15. Answer: Your eagerness to pay off your student loan debt is admirable and is particularly appropriate when it comes to your private student loans.

LAFAYETTE, La. - Visitors to this oil town might be forgiven for wondering whether the BP oil spill and subsequent drilling moratorium ever happened. "Now hiring" signs are plastered on billboards around town, and hotels such as the Crowne Plaza are chock full of seminars training students to work on offshore rigs. Many offshore companies can't find enough workers for the jobs they're listing. This parish has the lowest unemployment rate in Louisiana, 4.8%. Such is the opportunity on the offshore rigs that Sheila Clark, whose husband, Donald, died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago, said her 22-year-old son recently asked her how she'd feel if he went to work on a rig. "I can't stop him," said Clark, who moved to Baton Rouge after her husband's death.

What's to like about taxes? Most people view them at best as a necessary evil to help pay for robust government services - a public benefit. But cigarette taxes are an anomaly. In their case, the tax itself is a public benefit. Proposition 29, which would place a $1 levy on each pack of cigarettes sold in California, would serve the common good by making cigarettes more expensive. Economists have demonstrated conclusively that taxes on cigarettes are an effective tool for reducing smoking rates, which not only benefits the health of current and potential smokers but clears the air for people who would otherwise be exposed to secondhand smoke.

NEW YORK - Dharun Ravi had appeared stoic for three hours, but he broke down in tears as his mother sobbed beside him while pleading with the judge to spare her son from prison. She got what she wanted, up to a point: Judge Glenn Berman on Monday ordered Ravi to spend 30 days in jail for spying with a webcam on his gay Rutgers University roommate, Tyler Clementi, who killed himself days later. Ravi could have received a 10-year term for a crime jurors concluded was motivated by anti-gay bias.

In the stream of photos on their Facebook pages, Javier Bolden and Bryan Barnes look like the life of the party. The young men hung out with a group that dubbed itself "No Respect Inc.," a "party crew" that followed a local DJ to parties and other events across South Los Angeles. The photos show Bolden and Barnes dancing, shirtless, showing off their tattoos and muscles, and striking poses with young women. Under one photo Barnes took of himself in December, he wrote: "Merry Christmas To All Da Females Dat Didnt Have A Good Christmas :)"

UNDERRATED 'The Pitch' on AMC : Like a real-life "Mad Men" with far less interesting furnishings, this reality show captures the drama behind today's ad game and transcends the cliches while doing it. Sure, it's a little unsettling to consider the economics behind a show about creating commercials — one of which you actually watch by choice once the "winner" for the week's campaign is picked — but it's strangely worth it after seeing the...

College graduation is typically a time to tally accomplishments and to look ahead. But for many graduates, it is also a time to tally student loans and figure out how to repay them. About two-thirds of college graduates have some student loans to pay off, and their average debt is about $25,000 to $28,700, according to estimates by education experts and organizations. (About 10% of those with loans owe more than $50,000 or so.) Many college seniors say they had not thought much about their debt until they received summaries just before graduation.

By the stats, Jordan High School in Watts is an abysmal failure: Only 3% of its students are proficient in math and only 11% in English. More than half the students drop out between ninth and 12th grades. And almost 20% of those who make it through fail the state exam they need to graduate. Even its physical plant is wretched. On last year's "Safe School Inspection," Jordan rated poor in every category, from fire safety to vermin infestation. But this year, the struggling school is the scene of a high-stakes experiment.

Shell casings and signals from one of the victim's cellphones led police to arrest two men in the slayings of two USC graduate students from China - a botched robbery that focused a harsh global spotlight on the campus that is a magnet for foreigners. At a news conference Friday evening, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck identified the suspects as Bryan Barnes, 20, of Los Angeles and Javier Bolden, 19. Barnes was taken into custody Friday afternoon by a team of LAPD SWAT officers, along with FBI and other federal agents, who raided an apartment near the USC campus.

Last week, the Senate voted on a proposal by New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez to end some of the billions of dollars in handouts enjoyed by the fossil-fuel industry. The Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act was a curiously skimpy bill that targeted only oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left out were coal and natural gas. Even so, the proposal didn't pass. But that hasn't stopped President Obama from calling for an end to oil subsidies at every stop on his early presidential-campaign-plus-fundraising blitz.

Students and teachers returning from China complained Thursday that the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was not helpful in getting them out of the strife-torn nation, leaving them waiting futilely for instructions while citizens of other countries were being evacuated. "We got nothing," said Roxanne Sylvester, 37, a teacher in UCLA's English-language program at the Chinese Academy of Social Science Graduate School in Beijing. She said she saw Canadian, Portuguese, Irish and French embassy personnel arrange charter flights and airport transportation for their respective citizens while the U.S. Embassy remained silent and unreachable.

The parents of two USC graduate students slain near the campus last month have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the university, saying the school misled them when it claimed that it ranks among the safest in the nation. Ming Qu and Ying Wu, both 23-year-old electronic engineering students from China, were fatally shot April 11 while sitting in a parked BMW in the 2700 block of Raymond Avenue. No arrests have been made, but Los Angeles police say they believe the killings were the result of a robbery gone wrong.