News in Brief

Earthquake Center Gets Grant to Improve Highways

The California Department of Transportation has awarded a five-year $2.25 million grant to the UC Berkeley-based Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center in an effort to seismically strengthen California's highway system, university officials announced Monday.

A multidisciplinary collaboration of researchers including engineers and geologists from academic, government and private agencies will be supported by the grant.

"Research projects will focus on ground motion, response of soil during severe ground shaking and the seismic performance and reliability of bridges and highway systems during an earthquake," said Yousef Bozorgnia, associate director of the center.

Center Director Jack Moehle said that through technological study researchers are able to see how various structures will hold up in the event of an earthquake.

The result of the study, researchers said in the statement, could lead to advances in electrical and water systems and building design.

The center, which consists of eight research institutes across California and Washington, is a National Science Foundation research center funded by private and governmental grants at the local and state level.

"There has been some research in this area already, but there are still more challenges ahead of us," Bozorgnia said.

City, Campus Collaborate For Health Care Volunteers

City and university officials are teaming up to launch the first annual Volunteer Mobilization Day scheduled for Friday, Berkeley city officials announced Tuesday.

More than 100 graduate students from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health are set to be deployed to various health care sites across the city for the day, in a move to bring students into the community.

"This is an exciting opportunity for our students to be directly engaged with the Berkeley community ... we expect that this initial contact will lead to ongoing relationships that benefit everyone," said Stephen Shortell, dean of the public health school, in a statement Tuesday. Shortell will launch the event with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates.

Sites that will participate in the one-day event include the Women's Daytime Drop-in Center, the Berkeley Food and Housing Project and the Fred Finch Youth Center's Homeless Youth Collaborative.

"This is exactly the type of cooperation that we envisioned as part of the new UC-city partnership. I believe it will be a model for other developments to follow," said Bates in the statement.

Labor Board: UC, Union

Are at an Impasse

A state labor board has declared relations between UC and its clerical workers at an impasse and will now bring in a third-party mediator to ease negotiations along, university officials announced Tuesday.

The California Public Employment Relations Board certified the impasse at the request of university administrators, deeming it necessary to bring in a mediator after a nearly year-long process.

"We are grateful for the impasse certification and we are hopeful that a mediator will help reach us a fair contract for our clerical employees," said Howard Pripas, UC director of labor relations in a statement Tuesday.

The Coalition of University Employees, which represents nearly 16,000 UC clerical workers across 10 campuses, launched a three-day strike against the university in June over the lack of systemwide wage increases for the 2003-04 fiscal year.

Union officials then called for the increases in light of fact-finding reports they said show UC's wages trailed 20 to 30 percent behind the California State University system.

The impasse has been declared for the 2005-08 contract, which has been up for debate between the two parties for the past year.

A three-year 12 percent wage increase is at the center of negotiations, but university officials have said that in light of state budget concerns, the increases cannot be guaranteed.

Former Berkeley School Official to Resume Position

Former Deputy Superintendent Eric Smith will rejoin the Berkeley Unified School District one year after resigning from his position to attend to "urgent family matters," according to the Oakland Tribune Monday.

Smith will begin work with the district on Sept. 1, specializing in financial and operational matters, district spokesperson Mark Coplan told the Tribune.

Smith's successor Glenston Thompson, who began work with the district in July 2004, resigned from his position earlier this month to seek employment outside the district, according to the Tribune.

Controversial Toilet Painting Moved

A controversial painting that spurred outcries from the California Republican Party last month has been moved from the State Department of Justice cafeteria to Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office.

The painting, depicting an American flag being flushed down a toilet with a sign reading "T'anks to Mr. Bush," was submitted by Berkeley lawyer Stephen Pearcy as part of an art exhibition sponsored by the California Lawyers for the Arts. Conservatives called for its immediate removal, claiming the piece was "anti-American."

Pearcy, who received national media attention in February when angry Sacramento denizens took down his piece depicting a dead soldier holding a sign reading "Bush lied, I died," expressed anger about the decision to move his piece to an area with limited access, claiming it denied him his First Amendment right to political speech.

"His office is not public. The decision to move it was based on the content and the viewpoint being expressed," Pearcy told the San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday.

Officials from the Attorney General's office maintained that the decision to move Pearcy's and two other artists' work stemmed from concerns about the situation in the Middle East and had nothing to do with its content.

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