UCSD Students to Crawl Home: TJ Taxi Halted
UC San Diego – The Guardian
Oct. 1 – A free weekend shuttle service at UCSD will no longer make pickups at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Triton Taxi, operated by Cloud 9 Shuttles, will still haul students to local surroundings such as San Diego State University, Hillcrest and downtown San Diego, but will no longer run to the San Ysidro border crossing. The change was announced at the first meeting of UCSD’s Associated Student Council.
Commissioner of Student Services Kelly Vasant said the company discontinued the service because the long drive presented a high risk to their drivers.
Students at UCSD expressed disappointment with the change.
“It’s pretty lame because lots of people go to TJ and get hammered and they have to find a way home,” Eleanor Roosevelt College sophomore Ryan Wilson said.
Vasant said A.S. would attempt to improve Triton Taxi next year.
“We’re projecting a bigger budget for Triton Taxi to get to the border,” she said.
“Lots of people get drunk after partying at TJ and they need a ride back home,” Thurgood Marshall College junior Taibat Sallahdeen said. “It was definitely a good thing and it’s a pity that it’s gone.”
$19 Million Facility Finished at Irvine
UC Irvine – The New University
Oct. 8 – Construction recently finished on Croul Hall, a privately funded facility that will house both faculty offices and research labs for UC Irvine’s Department of Earth Systems Science. The $18.7 million, 68,830-square foot building is named after John Croul, former CEO of the Santa Ana-based Behr Process Corp., who donated $6 million to the facility.
The building features a three-story atrium, complete with a staircase that zigzags to the top of the atrium and offers views of the UC Irvine quad and the hills beyond.
The hall will serve as place for atmospheric and oceanographic modeling and as a staging area for field research. Because it is privately funded, however, the facility will not house any classrooms.
Some have already raised complaints about the facility.
“Some of the architectural designs are rather strange,” said Leah Necas, a first-year ESS graduate student. “There are no places for graduate students to work.”
Necas said the general outlook on the building is positive, however.
“Everybody is pretty proud of the building,” she said. “We’re proud to be part of the first group to do research here.”
UC Spends $12 Million on Chairs for Elderly
UC Office of the President
Sept. 30 – The University of California has raised $12 million in state and private funds to fully fund six new endowed chairs in geriatric medicine – a subspecialty dedicated to providing medical care for elderly patients.
The new faculty chairs will be located at UC’s five medical school campuses – Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco – and at the Berkeley campus. There is no medical school at Berkeley, but the campus offers major health sciences programs and operates a joint medical student educational program in conjunction with UC San Francisco.
The state provided a total of $4 million to fund two new chairs at $2 million each. These chairs will be named after former California governors Edmund Brown, Sr. and Ronald Reagan, and will be located at the UCSF School of Medicine and the UC Irvine College of Medicine.
Private donations and reallocations of existing endowments funded the other two chairs.
The new initiative aims to recruit and retain UC faculty clinicians who are skilled in caring for the elderly, and to ensure that the best practices in geriatrics education and research are readily shared through the UC system.
