Pie protests cream UC officials By Christine Tatum College Press Exchange BERKELEY, Calif. - Agents of the Biotic Baking Brigade have struck again, this time launching pies at officials of UC-Berkeley and UC- Davis and at heads of Novartis Inc., one of the world’s largest biotechnology and agrochemical corporations. The Nov. 23 patisserie protests were the sixth and seventh "pieings” in about a month. Members of the 888, as they call themselves, have smashed custard into the kissers of five other public figures, including San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. The group, which includes a few local college students, says it hurls pies into prominent faces to call public attention to various social and environmental issues. So far, its ploy has worked. Stories of the group's attacks - in which only one protester has been injured so far - have landed on newscasts and newspaper fronts across the country. A multi-million-dollar deal between UC-Berkeley and Novartis’ Agriculture Discovery Institute and past talks between UC-Davis and Monsanto Corp. prompted this week’s pie pitching. Under the terms of the Berkeley Emporia State drops ban on discrimination against gay students College Press Exchange EMPORIA, Kan. (CPX) - Emporia State University has dropped a clause prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation from its student handbook and affirmative-action literature. University President Kay K. Schallenkamp ordered the revision last summer, but word of the change didn’t filter down to many faculty members and students until this fall. Now, teachers and students are organizing a teach-in in January to Racial incidents at Cornell prompt administrative action College Press Exchange ITHACA, N.Y. (CPX) - A string of racial incidents at Cornell University has prompted school officials to increase security on campus Students living in a dormitory primarily for African Americans, called Ujamaa, have received anonymous, threatening telephone calls warning that black students “should get off campus.” Someone also left racially charged messages that referred to the Ku Klux Klan on an answering machine belonging to a black residence hall supervisor. Other racially charged incidents have been more subtle, university officials say. A cartoon recently printed by the student newspaper, The Cornell Review, depicted a house owned by the Native American student program as a gambling casino. The newspaper defended the cartoon as a parody, but Cornell President Hunter Rawlings denounced it as “the group stereotyping we all deplore.” “These incidents, and others like them, are totally intolerable,” Rawlings told the Syracuse agreement, the company will give $25 million to researchers in the university’s department of plant and microbial biology, renowned for its study of plant genetics. In return, the institute will get access to the department’s research and have first rights to buy any information or products the department eventually may want to sell. Officials of UC-Davis and Monsanto - whose CEO, Robert Shapiro, is among the BBB’s victims - also have discussed a relationship in which the company would foot some bills for research projects. However, those talks have stalled in recent months, said Maril Stratton, a spokeswoman for UC-Davis. "Obviously, this group is uninformed,” she said. Not so, 888 members say. “We hold the University of California in flagrant contempt of its mission as a public interest institution by selling its facilities, services and students to the world’s largest biotechnology and agrochemical corporations,” said a 888 member identifying himself as Agent Apple. "Novartis and Monsanto are playing with the basic building blocks of life, as well as the food security of millions across the globe.” Two 888 members, dressed to blend in with reporters at a press conference announcing the Berkeley deal, launched pumpkin pies that the discuss why it’s important to protect gay people from sexual discrimination. About six years ago, university officials added the anti discrimination clause to the policy, joining about 350 colleges across the nation offering similar protection. But with the latest change, Emporia’s policy now states it will not discriminate “on grounds of race, color, gender, national origin or ancestry, age, disability and Vietnam Era veteran status.” Attorneys suggested that Schallenkamp remove the clause Newspapers. “This is not the first time we have experienced such incidents on campus... But we will speak out in the face of those who would seek to divide this community rather than bring it together.” So far, no arrests have been made, but the university has put more This is not the first time we have experienced such incidents on campus ... But we will speak out in the face of those who would seek to divide this community rather than bring it together.” Cornell President Hunter Rawlinns police officers on campus and has improved lighting near Ujamaa and Akwekon, the university’s Native American center. For weeks, Cornell has been at odds with students and faculty who criticize the university’s policies and proposals regarding ethnic studies and the housing of minority National Campus News „ , 1 Thursday, December 3, 1998 The Behrend College Beacon - Page 5 group later said in a written statement “symbolize the estimated 60 percent of food on American tables for Thanksgiving that will contain genetically engineered products." A few miles away, on the UC-Davis campus, another male 888 member known as Agent Cow dressed as a woman and sat in the front row of a brown-bag luncheon hosted by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoof. "All of a sudden the man stood up and yelled and smunched a banana creme pic directly into the chancellor’s lace," Stratton said. "Everyone in the room was stunned. People offered the chancellor Kleenex, but he left to get cleaned up. That’s not usually what happens during those brown-bag sessions.” While Agent Cow managed to elude those who chased him, UC- Berkeley police arrested two 888 members in connection with the pastry throwing on that campus. Both members were charged with trespassing and assault. While no one knows how the case will be handled in court, Berkeley officials are hoping the 888 members will be ordered to pay cleaning bills. “There was pumpkin pie stuck all in the carpet and running down the front of the vice chancellor’s dress,” Berkeley spokesman Bob Sanders said. “It wasn’t pretty.” from the institution's discrimination policy because they said it left the university vulnerable to a flurry of lawsuits. The state of Kansas doesn’t extend health benefits to the domestic partners of gay employees, and no federal law requires that it do so, but the policy’s previous wording could have held the university to a different standard, attorneys said. Despite the omission, university officials say improper behavior against anyone, regardless of the reason for it, will not be tolerated. students. Administrators have decided that within five years all first-year students will be housed together. School officials say the policy will strengthen class identity and student retention. Critics insist it will hurt halls like Ujamaa and limit housing options for minorities - a deterrent that may encourage many to go to school elsewhere. Minority groups on campus also bristled this semester after the release of a university report that, in part, suggested Cornell’s ethnic studies programs - including African American, Asian, Latino and Native American studies - be housed in the same building and work together more closely. Proponents said the move would give ethnic studies a stronger, collective voice, but opponents viewed it as a means for school officials to limit their autonomy. The debate led to a petition signed by more than 500 students and a three-day student sit-in outside the offices of the College of Arts and Sciences. University officials eventually removed the recommendation from the report. Police Blotter: A Look At Campus Crime Briefs By Peter Levine Campus Correspondent University of Wisconsin College JPress Exchange TUCSON, Ariz. (CPX) - Someone made off with a fiberglass fish mounted on a wall in the University of Arizona’s biological sciences building. According to the Daily Wildcat, a university employee reported the fake, finned creature - valued at $1,200 - missing on Nov. 20. The employee said he found no signs of forced entry and that many people have access to the room where the fish was kept. STANFORD, Calif. (CPX)- For the second time in two months, a computer hacker broke into computers at Stanford University and stole the passwords for almost 300 e-mail accounts. According to the Stanford Daily, the hacker used a stolen password to get into the university’s electrical engineering department’s computer system. The Daily also reported that the hacker broke into the system on Oct. 31 and maintained access to it for six days. “It looked like the hacker was going for power and wanted to control the system, not necessarily what was on it,” David Brumley, a specialist in the university’s Computer Security Office, told the Daily. Although there were no reports of e-mail tampering, university officials did shut down several accounts, forcing many students to change their passwords. The Daily reported that campus security officers tracked down the hacker to an Internet service provider, but could not proceed further without outside assistance. The university chose not to ask federal agents for help because minimal damage was done. In early November, hackers broke into Stanford computers and took more than 5,000 user passwords. BOULDER, Colo. (CPX) - Armed with a three-man water balloon launcher and a lot of snow, a group of students at the University of Colorado at Boulder Economics professor sells rights to sex-change story College Press Exchange CHICAGO (CPX) - It's not every day that a university press pays big bucks for the memoir of an economics professor. But the memoir of an economics professor who has had a sex change is a different story. The University of Chicago has paid Dierdre McCloskey a $20,000 advance for her autobiography. Have something to say ? Write a letter to the editor Email letters to behrcoll2@aol.com. Please include name, phone number major, and semester standing. managed to raise a few eyebrows on campus recently. The group specifically aimed the snowballs at windows and managed to break one. Passersby snickered, and police didn’t think to look for any suspects - until they read about the incident in the campus newspaper. CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, 111. (CPX) - A student at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana suffered minor injuries after three men attacked him outside a dining hall on campus. According to the Daily Illini, the victim was eating in the dining hall on Nov. 19 when the trio asked to step outside to settle some business. The victim later told police he did not know the men, but went along with them anyway. Once outside, the trio pushed the victim to the ground and kicked and punched him all over his body. The attackers fled when a resident advisor arrived on the scene. The victim was treated and released from a local hospital. ANN ARBOR, Mich. (CPX) - One man’s efforts to take cleaning supplies from the University of Michigan’s graduate library were a wash after workers stopped him. According to police reports, the man tried to walk out of the building with several cleansers and a box of trash bags. The man, later dubbed “Mr. Clean,” wound up dropping the goods and running from the library. COLUMBIA, Mo. (CPX) - Members of the Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University of Missouri kicked out a former pledge who was living among them after investigators named him the lead suspect in a rape case. The suspect is not currently enrolled at the university, but had been living in the KA house. “He was a pledge in the spring, and he didn’t make grades,” fraternity president Greg Shelton told the student newspaper, The Maneater. “He was down on his luck, and we offered him a place to live.” The reported rape allegedly happened in the fraternity’s off- which is currently titled Crossing: A Memior. While the sum is chump change in the industry of trade publishing, it’s an unusually high price to be paid by a university press. The author was formerly Donald McCloskey, a widely respected economist at the University of lowa who stunned family, friends and colleagues in 1995 when he announced his decision to become campus house after a homecoming party in September. The victim has been reluctant to press charges, leaving investigators unsure of whether they will make an arrest in the case. “We can’t go to the prosecutor without a victim,” Columbia police Sgt. Stephen Monticelli told the Maneater. University officials said the fraternity will not be held responsible for the reported sexual crime or for housing someone not enrolled at the school. COLUMBIA, Mo. (CPX) - Campus police at the University of Missouri investigated the Nov. 12 theft of a pair of wooden crutches from a student, the student newspaper, the Maneater, reported. So far, they have no suspects. BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (CPX) - Students pulling an all-nighter in a library at SUNY-Binghamton must have rubbed their eyes In amazement when a naked man sauntered by them. According to the Pipe Dream, students called campus police to report the man’s brief public appearance at 4:15 a.m. on Nov. 16. The man, described as 'being nearly 6 feet 4 inches tall and about 30 years old, picked up a pile of clothes and fled from the building when someone questioned him. Officers reported that they searched the area but found no one. COLUMBUS, Ohio (CPX) - Police had little choice but to ticket a former Ohio State student for disorderly conduct after finding him in a stupor. According to police reports, two students escorted the man to a dormitory after finding him Intoxicated on campus. The man told the students he lived there, but resident assistants called police for help after determining he did not Police checked out the man’s story and learned that he indeed had been a resident of the dorm - in 1994, not this year. Officers arrested the man, ticketed him and later released him to the custody of his brother. a woman In the book, due out next fall, McCloskey plans to chronicle his decision to become a woman and to describe the reactions of his wife of 30 years, who eventually divorced him, and of a sister and former colleague, who McCloskey said tried to have him committed to a mental institution.
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