Campus LGBT Center to Be Largest In Nation
The biggest Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center of any public university in the nation will officially open in Student Center on May 6.
The center, housed in a 2,700-square-foot facility, includes a wireless laptop computer lab, a meeting space, offices, a kitchen and a library, which includes the personal and professional collections of UCSD psychiatrist David McWhirter and his partner, the late clinical psychologist Drew Mattison, who wrote the groundbreaking book “The Male Couple.”
The inaugural ceremony will feature comments by Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, current students and members of the San Diego LGBT community. After the ceremony, students from Queer People of Color will offer tours of the facility, and later in the evening, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex Association will host a nonsexist dance at Porter’s Pub from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Academic Freedom Discussed at Meeting
Campus organization Students and Scholars Mobilized Against Repressive Times hosted an on-campus conference last week that addressed current threats to academic freedom, student organizations, diversity and free speech at colleges and universities nationwide.
Speakers included professor Saree Makdisi, who was named as a member of UCLA’s “Dirty 30,” a list compiled by a member of the Bruin Alumni Association that targets professors with supposedly radical views. Members of the American Association of University Professors, the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the American Federation of Teachers also spoke.
The conference was held in response to a bill under consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives that would force Middle Eastern and other area studies programs to adhere to special regulations under the pretense that terrorists could be funding research, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s recent scrutiny of an anti-war group at UC Santa Cruz.
Settlement Reached in WorldCom Case
The University of California reached a $13.25 million settlement earlier this month with Citigroup and a former subsidiary in a lawsuit stemming from the WorldCom securities scam.
The university filed the suit in 2003, claiming that Citigroup was involved with the financial collapse of WorldCom and that the company damaged shareholders, including the university, through its massive accounting fraud.
The university’s losses originally resulted from its purchase of 10.2 million WorldCom shares between 1998 and 2000. Most of the purchases occurred before the fraud, so the university could not join in other class-action suits against the company.
