E-Board Chair Quits Over E-Voting
The Daily Bruin
UCLA

With less than a month left before the Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) elections, Elections Board Chair Alex Kaplan resigned last week.

Kaplan released a letter last Thursday stating he was frustrated by council members attempting to overrule online-voting decisions made by E-Board.

“[I]t is clear that certain members of USAC are planning to go over the heads of the Elections Board to run the election process,” he wrote.

The UCLA election code says the USAC president will appoint Kaplan’s successor. USAC President Elizabeth Houston said she sympathized with Kaplan.

“The integrity of Alex’s position as an independent E-Board chair has been compromised by the council,” she said.

The council voted down E-Board’s proposal to hold USAC’s elections online through the my.UCLA website.

Internal Vice President Elias Enciso said E-Board is supposed to work in conjunction with the council and not independent of it. He said elections would go ahead as planned on paper ballots.

They Pay in L.A.
The Daily Bruin
UCLA

Students living on campus at UCLA next year will pay about $500 more for the same living facilities and meal plan that students received this year.

Housing rates have increased about 5.5 percent per year for the last three years at UCLA. Students wishing to live on campus next year will have to pay as much as $8,335.

UCLA Director of Housing Michael Foraker said the university is doing everything it can to alleviate the cost to students. “We are doing as much as we can right now,” he said.

Foraker said four factors contributed to the increased rates: the power crisis, increased worker salaries, longer hours for some dining areas and on-campus construction projects.

Undeclared freshman Simran Sahny said it this would be a large increase to an already steep fee.

“I am not very happy,” Sahny said. “I thought it was expensive already.”

Soooooweeeee, UCD!
The California Aggie
UCD

The swine of UC Davis are in hog heaven with the opening of a new facility devoted to the study and care of pigs.

The long-promised UCD Swine Teaching Research and Outreach Center (STROC) opened March 27, replacing the 88-year-old Hog Barn. The location for the 10,000-square-foot center – west of Highway 113 on Straloch Drive – was first proposed in 1971, STROC Facilities Manager Kent Parker said.

UCD’s STROC will be a center of swine study, Parker said.

Facilities include a classroom and meeting room, a preparation room, live-in undergraduate housing, and birthing – or farrowing – pens.

The building is fully enclosed and vermin proof, Parker said.

Research conducted at the center will include work on xenotransplantation – the transplantation of animal organs, in this case from pigs, into humans.

“[STROC] demonstrates a commitment from the university to animal sciences,” Animal Science Development Board Chair Al Menditz said.

Irvine Erects 8-Foot Pole
The New University
UCI

In hopes of fostering world peace, UC Irvine has sprouted an eight-foot pole.

The peace pole, one of more than 200,000 in 180 different countries, was erected in front of the Global Peace and Conflict Studies House to the delight of the assembled crowd. Surrounded by bushes and flowers, the pole displays the words “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in four different languages.

Speakers urged students to rise to the challenges they face.

“These [peace pole] monuments are unique in their intention to help us see the future more clearly,” Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Manuel Gomez said.

Gomez said peace is not easy to achieve and the poles remind students that often it must be struggled for, one inch at a time.

Guest speaker and Nobel Prize winner F. Sherwood Rowland said achieving peace can be a slow process that takes more than one person.

“I think the problems can be solved,” he said, “but I don’t think they can be solved unless people work at it.”

Akemi Namei, a representative of the World Peace Prayer Society, which sponsors the distribution of the poles throughout the world, said that while it was small compared to other monuments, it was not the size of the pole that mattered.

“With the pole,” she said, ” we can take the message of peace throughout the world.”

– Compiled by Brendan Buhler