Community Briefs

Thursday, 4/24/97 Community Briefs

SAGE kicks off protest with card signing Prompted by the
continued refusal of chancellors and other UC officials to
recognize their unions, academic student employees at UCLA, UC
Berkeley, UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara officially kicked off
yet another statewide campaign for administrative recognition. At
UCLA, representatives from the Student Association of Graduate
Employees (SAGE/UAW) were in front of Powell Library collecting
signatures of support from students while explaining how SAGE
employment issues affect undergraduates. The strikes on other UC
campuses are set to begin next week, SAGE officials said. Members
of the Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE/UAW) at UC
Berkeley voted overwhelmingly to strike from April 30 through May
2, and academic student employee unions at other campuses will
likely follow suit. This most recent action is the latest in a long
string of protests against the university and administration from
teaching assistants (TAs), research assistants, readers and tutors
who want collective bargaining rights with the university. Over the
past two years, increased discontent over working conditions and
benefits among SAGE members has driven the group to stage
increasingly disruptive strikes. During Fall Quarter, several
hundred SAGE members at UCLA, in conjunction with similar groups at
Berkeley and San Diego, kept TAs and research assistants out of the
classroom for five days late last November. At the end of those
strikes, the unions voted for a UC-wide escalation before the end
of this academic year if the UC administration did not agree to
begin collective bargaining. Girls benefit from ‘Take our Daughters
to Work’ Today marks the fifth-annual public-education program,
Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Created by the Ms. Foundation for
Women in 1993, the program invites parents or relatives to bring
adolescent girls to work with them. Studies by Harvard University
researchers, the American Association of University Women and the
Minnesota Women’s Fund show that adolescent girls often receive
less attention and suffer from lower expectations than boys their
age do. The program was designed specifically to make up for those
differences and to show girls they can become whatever they please.
For girls, early adolescence marks the time when distress most
often takes place. For this reason, the Ms. Foundation created Take
Our Daughters to Work Day to intervene at this crucial period. Boys
are also invited to participate in the program. Family gains upper
hand in UCI suit Relatives of a mother left comatose after surgery
at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center got the
upper hand in a lawsuit in which a judge ruled the hospital could
not offer a defense because of attorney deceit. Superior Court
Judge C. Robert Jameson concluded Tuesday that lawyers for the
hospital and the UC Board of Regents obstructed justice and so
would not be allowed to present a defense to a medical malpractice
suit filed by the family of Denise DeSoto. The judge, in granting a
motion filed by attorneys for the DeSoto family, ordered a default
judgment entered against UCI and the regents. The unusual ruling
permits attorneys for the Garden Grove woman to present uncontested
evidence about her injury at a hearing before the judge in the next
30 days. DeSoto’s attorney, Neil Bahan, said he will ask that UC
Irvine be ordered to pay $10 million to $15 million. The judge will
decide what damages, if any, the university should pay. Only then
can UCI appeal. A trial is still possible for the UCI doctors also
named in the suit. Compiled from Daily Bruin staff and wire
reports