City News

The city of Davis Human Relations Commission is accepting nominations for the 2010 Thong Hy Huynh awards to showcase local human and civil rights activists’ successes. The award was established to commemorate the life of Davis Senior High School student Thong Hy Huynh, who was stabbed to death in a racially motivated dispute on the Davis Senior High School campus in 1983.

Government officials are making a final effort to encourage public participation in the 2010 census. The constitutionally-mandated count has occurred every 10 years since 1790. The census yields a massive amount of demographical data that is used for the creation of legislative districts and the allocation of federal funding to local governments.

In the face of prospective funding diversion for the state-mandated Jail Medical Program, the Yolo County Health Department might have to cut several department programs. Previously, county general funds have covered the Jail Medical Program’s $3.5 million annual cost. However, the health department might have to use $1.2 million in health realignment funds, which are supposed to cover general public health and indigent health programs, to fund the Jail Medical Program.

President Obama’s new student loan bill has colleges saying bye-bye to the middleman. The federal government will take the place of private lenders on student loans.

Contention remains over the merit of Proposition 16 on California’s June ballot. Some say it’s a beneficial constitutional amendment for the majority of electricity consumers, while others call it a special interest campaign for a large corporation.

Californians will face a number of choices on the June 8 ballot. One is Proposition 15, an initiative which, if enacted, will impose fees on registered lobbyists in California and use the additional revenue to provide funding for political campaigns in the state. Initially sponsored by Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Oakland), the proposal launches a pilot program that will only apply to political campaigns for the Office of Secretary of State in 2014 and 2018. Hancock said the people of California will benefit from Prop. 15 as well as those considering running for secretary of state who do not want to spend years of their life “dialing for dollars.”

With the passage of the health care reform bill come changes that boost funding for higher education. The Education Reconciliation: Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, found within the health care bill, eliminates the current practice of providing federal subsidies to private student loans, cutting out banks as the middleman. Instead, the government will supply loans to students directly.

It may save paper, but that online textbook may be lowering students’ grades. In an Arizona State University study, “To Scroll or Not to Scroll: Scrolling, Working Memory Capacity, and Comprehending Complex Texts,” co-author Christopher Sanchez, assistant professor of applied psychology at ASU, found that certain students are not retaining as much information when scrolling through online documents.

From sixth-graders to high school seniors, many Davis students played for their own cause on March 27.

Teenagers may be night owls, but according to new research by a UC San Diego assistant professor, those hours out of bed each night may be turning more teens into weed users.

THURSDAY: It’s a bird, a plane…

Efforts to reform California’s primary election system have been resuscitated with Sen. Abel Maldonado’s (R-Santa Maria) Proposition 14, which will appear on the June 8 ballot.