2,400 Copies of Berkeley Student Newspaper Stolen

UC Berkeley- The Daily Californian

A Berkeley tradition continued last Wednesday and Thursday as thieves stole thousands of copies of the school’s newspaper from the racks.

Two men were arrested in connection with the theft of more than 2,400 copies of the newspaper, which has a circulation of 10,000. Wale Sean Forrester, a UC Berkeley student, was arrested for the alleged theft of about 1,000 newspapers and Raymond Nkele, a UC Berkeley alum, was arrested for allegedly taking 300 copies. The police are unsure as to who stole the remaining 1,100 papers.

Both were cited and released.

The thefts came after a string of protests against the paper for two pieces run in recent weeks – an editorial cartoon of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and a news story about a Cal football player’s arrest.

Forrester was among the approximately 50 people who crowded the Daily Cal office to protest the article about the football player.

“There seemed to be a concerted effort to censor the Daily Cal and deprive the campus community of an important forum for news and opinion,” Daily Cal Editor-in-Chief Rong-Gong Lin II said.

Daily Cal staffers guarded some of the racks around campus Thursday morning after more than 1,000 newspapers were found in on-campus trash cans on Wednesday. A Daily Cal editor said he saw Forrester and another man lift more than 1,000 newspapers from the racks around 7:45 a.m.

The Daily Cal was most recently the target of theft in October 2001, when then-mayoral candidate Tom Bates threw 1,000 copies into the trash after the paper endorsed his opponent.

In 1996, the entire 23,000-paper press run of an edition that contained an endorsement of Proposition 209 was stolen. It was the worst theft in the paper’s history.

Emergency Meeting of Riverside Student Government Goes Wild

UC Riverside – The Highlander

An emergency meeting of the Associated Students of UC Riverside on May 6 changed locations when the crowd became too large, and ultimately the meeting was adjourned because the crowd got out of control.

The meeting was called in response to a letter presented to ASUCR on May 1, which called senate elections corrupt and demanded that ASUCR address the problem of violence against women of color on campus.

The letter’s list of demands included a call for the dismantling of the UCR Police Dept. and the campus greek system. The letter, signed by “Concerned Students of UCR,” argued that these organizations “sanctioned” violence against women of color.

UCR student Martha Escobar read statistics stating that women were more likely to be raped at a fraternity party where alcohol is served.

Speaking on behalf of the greek community, UCR student Michael Breyer said the list of demands calling white students “crackers” was overtly racist and slanderous.

Students presented a budget to ASUCR that would be used to help counsel women of color on campus, including a safe house that abused women could go to for help, workshops and legal fees. The total requested budget was more than $227,000, which Senator Ivory Parnell called “not excessive at all.”

As the night wore on and discussions between speakers and audience members became more heated, ASUCR President Nadine Sayegh called a recess. She eventually adjourned the meeting because it had gotten out of control.

Sayegh said the senate would meet again this Thursday to finish reviewing the list of demands.

UCSB Professor Named to California Council for the Humanities

UC NewsWire

May 12 – Maria Herrera-Sobek, acting associate vice chancellor for academic personnel and professor of Chicano studies at UCSB, accepted a three-year appointment to the board of the California Council for the Humanities.

The CCH is an independent, nonprofit state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities that makes grants to arts and humanities projects, as well as managing its own slate of such projects. It has a budget of over $3 million for the 2003 fiscal year.

Herrera-Sobek joined the UCSB faculty in 1997 after serving 22 years on the faculty of the Spanish and Portuguese Dept. at UC Irvine.

– Compiled by Travis Hunter