College Briefs
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 3, 2001 9:00 p.m.
Government accessing private student
records
Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed a legislation last week
that would allow the federal government to access private student
records, but a national survey of university registrars shows this
is already being done ““Â and students haven’t been
notified.
Law enforcement officials have had “virtually
unfettered” access to any student records from colleges and
universities since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Barmak
Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association
of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers at UC
Berkeley.
The information accessed may range from medical records to
professor notes and parking violations.
Colleges have cooperated so far, though the bill would mandate
compliance even if campuses refuse to give out student
information.
New York University expenses up after
attack
Services to students and campus members affected by the Sept. 11
attacks have skyrocketed into the millions, according to Lynne
Brown, vice president of student affairs at NYU.
Students evacuated the dorms that morning and were given $200
stipends for compensation and other costs.
A second set of textbooks was donated to all.
Phone cards worth $10 were distributed, the campus store passed
out free notebooks, pens and calculators, and a computer loan
system was started for displaced students.
As students moved to hotels and other residence halls, the
university worked to gather funds from all possible sources.
“We are also seeking reimbursement through our insurance,
emergency government aid and other sources of revenue,” said
university spokesman John Beckman.
Berkeley researchers study iron levels in
kids
A study by researchers from UC Berkeley, and the state health
department adds new evidence that insufficient iron levels may be
putting children at higher risk for increased lead exposure.
In the study published Oct. 3 in Environmental Health
Perspectives, the journal of the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences, researchers found significantly
higher blood lead levels in children who were iron-deficient than
in children with normal blood iron levels.
While other studies have been done on this subject, this is the
first study to take into account environmental lead contamination,
said Asa Bradman, Ph.D., associate director of the Center for
Children’s Environmental Health Research at UC
Berkeley’s School of Public Health and lead author of the
report.
UC Irvine to research information
technology
The National Science Foundation has awarded $2.8 million to the
Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations at
UCI for a project that evaluates the impact of information
technologies on people.
“While there is research and considerable theorizing about
the emerging impacts of information technology in different
contexts of peoples’ lives, no large-scale study has
attempted to investigate such impacts simultaneously,” said
James Danziger, project coordinator and a political science
professor in the School of Social Sciences.
The five-year project will analyze current and potential impacts
of information technology on people’s social lives in four
institutional contexts ““ households, workplaces, schools and
governments ““ and on the organizations themselves.
Compiled from Daily Bruin wire services.
