Wednesday, December 9, 2020

12-9: Fullerton police, again; Coronavirus vaccines are near; Hospitals overwhelmed; Community Colleges’ Chronic Challenges

✅ A Fullerton Police Shooting Draws Neighborhood Outrage to Department’s Doorstep
 
—Voice of OC 
     …The chain of events began in May, when officers responded to a frantic 15-year-old’s 9-1-1 call about his drunk step father threatening family members and firing off a gun in their house. 
    Through body-worn camera footage released by police, officers arriving on scene May 27 could be heard shouting orders at Hector Hernandez, 34, as he stood outside his home on the west side of town. 
     He complied, according to police statements, but started pacing. Then, police set a dog loose on him. 
     By the time the canine’s handling officer caught up, Hernandez had stabbed the animal with a pocket knife — injuring but not killing it — and Hernandez, a U-Haul employee and father of two kids, was lying on the ground. 
     Standing above him, the footage shows the officer fired multiple rounds into Hernandez, who later died at a hospital. 
     Then the department’s public relations team got to work. 
     Police posted the step son’s 9-1-1 call and body cam footage to YouTube the next month, overlapped by officials’ statements detailing Hernandez’s allegedly violent behavior that night, such as claims he assaulted his girlfriend after a night out and threatened his own son when they got home. 
     Meanwhile, friends argue Hernandez, despite his behavior, didn’t deserve what they say was a highly unnecessary and brutal death. 
     In turn, a small band of enraged neighbors — some of whom knew Hernandez and watched the events unfold that night — took their anger to the department’s front door on Saturday…. 
     “I’m not somebody that wants to come stand out on the corner of the police station,” [neighbor Bill Brown] said. 
     “This is something I felt I was just forced to do,” Brown added. “I can’t sit around and watch my family and my kids depressed and sad and just say, ‘Oh, well, we’ll just trust that the police will do what’s right.’”…. 

Orange County has an order out for perhaps the most important package its pandemic-weary hospital workers will get this December: 26 boxes containing 25,350 coronavirus vaccines. Expected delivery date: Tuesday, Dec. 15. 
—OC Reg 

—OC Reg 

✅ California shatters more coronavirus records as officials warn rapidly filling hospitals ‘may be overwhelmed’ -- One day into a sweeping new shutdown, an explosion of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations signaled California could be entering the darkest chapter yet of the state’s public health crisis with no quick end in sight. Nico Savidge, Evan Webeck in the San Jose Mercury$ -- 12/9/20 

✅ Mixed messages? UC Berkeley closes residence halls while urging students to heed stay-at-home orders -- UC Berkeley recently released travel guidelines for students planning to return home for the holidays, but some feel the university is sending mixed messages by urging students to follow new stay-at-home guidelines that restrict travel while it closes most on-campus housing during winter break. Vanessa Arredondo in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 12/9/20 

Academic library survey reveals widespread budget cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic and concern about long-term financial recovery. 
—Inside Higher Ed 
Two bond rating agencies on Tuesday issued pessimistic outlooks for the U.S. higher education sector for 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic continues to strain enrollment and revenue, heighten long-term pressures, and hit certain types of institutions harder than others. 
—Inside Higher Ed 

—Inside Higher Ed 
     Hispanic-serving institutions received only $87 in federal funding per Latinx student in 2019, compared to $1,642 historically Black colleges and universities received for each of their students, according to a Center for American Progress study. And it would take an additional $1 billion in funding just to bring HSIs' funding level up to half that of HBCUs. 
     Increasing funding for HSIs is particularly important at a time when enrollment by Latinx students is rising rapidly and faster than their growth in the U.S. population, wrote Viviann Anguiano, the progressive group’s associate director for postsecondary education, and Marissa Navarro, special assistant for postsecondary education…. 

—Inside Higher Ed 
     The Law School Survey of Student Engagement, released Tuesday, chronicles changes in law education in the United States from 2004 to 2019. While law education has become more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, those gains have been unequal. For example, Black men doubled their percentage of the total number of law students -- from 3 to 6 percent -- in the 15 years of the survey, while Black women saw no similar gains. White men are still the majority of law students, though that group fell from 86 percent of total students in 2004 to 74 percent in 2019....

—Inside Higher Ed 
     A former Wisconsin governor who oversaw the expansion of the state's prison system now wants to turn a prison into a college. 
     Tommy Thompson, now the interim president of the University of Wisconsin system, wants to start with a class of 315 inmates, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. He estimates the project, called the UW System Prison Education Initiative, will cost about $5 million to get started. Thompson is working to secure funding, he told WPR, but he also expects to have inmates pay some money back in the form of student loans.... 

—CHE 

Two-year public institutions nationwide suffered the largest fall undergraduate-enrollment decrease of any higher-education sector. 
—CHE

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fullerton—again?

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...