Community Briefs

Admissions Web site hit by hacker attack

The UCLA Admission Decision Web site was hit with a denial of
service attack on March 29, the day that the site opened.

The Web site allows students applying for admission as freshmen
for the fall to check the status of their application online
instead of waiting for the information to come in the mail.

This is the first year that students have been able to check on
their applications online. About 12,500 students were able to check
the status of their applications before the attack, according to
Rae Lee Siporin, director of Undergraduate Admissions and Relations
with Schools.

The attack flooded the Web site with requests, making it
impossible for students to get information from it.

“This is the sort of thing that is just not right,”
Siporin said.

The problem has been corrected, according to a posting on the
Web site, but Siporin said that there is no way of knowing whether
the site could be susceptible to a similar attack again.

David Russ appointed as new UC treasurer

The UC Board of Regents appointed David Russ as its new
treasurer and vice president for investments today.

He was the public markets managing director for the University
of Texas Investment Management Company, which manages investments
for the University of Texas system, Texas A&M University and 14
medical research centers in Texas.

Russ was educated by UC schools, receiving his undergraduate
degree from UC Berkeley in 1980 and a master’s degree in
administration from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management in
1986.

The treasurer’s office reports to the regents on the
performance of UC’s investment portfolios, which totaled
approximately $55.5 billion as of Feb. 28. The office also reports
on administrative operations, campus foundation services and its
budget.

Russ replaces Patricia Small as treasurer. Small resigned last
August after serving as treasurer for five years. Dewitt Bowman,
former chief investment officer for the California Public Employees
Retirement System, served as interim treasurer while a search for a
permanent replacement was undertaken. He will continue to serve
that role until Russ takes over on June 1. Russ will receive a
salary of $275,000.

UCLA doctors to treat Romanian girl

During a humanitarian medical mission to Romania in February,
UCLA pediatric surgeon Jorge Lazareff was struck by the case of
Oana Stanger, a 6-year-old native with a malignant brain tumor, who
will undergo surgery tomorrow at UCLA’s Mattel
Children’s Hospital.

Though Romanian doctors removed a small portion of the tumor in
a previous surgery, a larger portion must be removed in another
procedure to improve Stanger’s chances of survival.

Vital to the process were host parents Gina and Chris Jackson,
who offered their home to the child and her parents upon receiving
a phone call from a friend of a friend.

“When we found out that if the little girl didn’t
find a host home she wouldn’t be able to come to the United
States and she would die, we said bring her over,'”
said Gina Jackson.

Lazareff and the UCLA neurosurgery team are combining forces
with the departments of anesthesia, radiology, pathology and
neurology for the procedure, all of which will be paid by the Ethel
Bowles Fund.

Compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports.