University of California recalls students from Israel
In the wake of the State Department’s warning released last week against travel to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, the University of California has postponed its Israeli study abroad program and asked the 27 students currently studying there to return home.

Twenty-eight of the 55 students who were originally involved in the program have already returned voluntarily in light of what University of California claims to be “the dramatically escalating violence in the Middle East.”

The university joins a group including Boston University, Indiana University, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Connecticut and Duke University to postpone or terminate study-abroad opportunities in Israel.

Slavery committee threatens to sue Harvard
Harvard University may be legally responsible for reimbursing blacks, according to Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Charles J. Ogletree, co-chair of a national committee seeking reparations for slavery.

The Reparations Coordinating Committee, consisting of about two dozen lawyers, has not yet made a formal accusation. But in a New York Times editorial published early last week, Ogletree suggested that certain endowments that many Ivy League schools were built on may have come from slavery-related funds.

Other schools included in the list of possible defendants are Brown and
Yale Universities.

According to the committee, the law suit is intended to stir public awareness on the effects of slavery.

Syracuse students protest Giuliani as commencement speaker
Fliers listing the names of people shot and killed by New York City police officers during former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s tenure have been posted around the campus of Syracuse University in upstate New York.

The fliers, not sponsored by the university, encourage students to call school officials and demand that Giuliani’s invitation to speak at the 2002 commencement be revoked.

The former mayor received numerous invitations but only accepted two:
Syracuse University and Georgetown University.

Among the names on the fliers, Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times by the NYPD in 1999.

The University publicly announced last week that they have no intentions
of canceling Giuliani’s speech.

Students have more free time, study says
College students have 11 hours of free time a day on average, according to a study released last week by polling groups 360 Youth, Inc. and Harris Interactive.

The study, which defines “free time” as time not spent sleeping, studying
or working, compiled responses from over 6,000 students 18 to 34 years old.

Students had mixed reactions to the results, with some claiming to have no free time.

Some said they had adequate time for work and play if they had a better time management system.
-Patrick W. Higgins