This week in the news

After Va. Tech, colleges keep closer watch over troubled students

On the agenda: A student who got
into a shouting match with a faculty
member. Another who harassed a
female classmate. Someone found
sleeping in a car. And a student who
posted a threat against a professor
on Facebook.com.

In a practice adopted at one
college after another since the massacre
at Virginia Tech, a University
of Kentucky committee of deans,
administrators, campus police and
mental health officials has begun
meeting regularly to discuss a watch
list of troubled students and decide
whether they need professional help
or should be sent packing.

These “threat assessment groups”
are aimed at heading off the kind
of bloodshed seen at Virginia Tech
a year ago and at Northern Illinois
University last month.
“You’ve got to be way ahead of
the game, so to speak, expect what
may be coming. If you’re able to
identify behaviors early on and get
these people assistance, it avoids
disruptions in the classrooms and
potential violence,” said Maj. Joe
Monroe, interim police chief at
Kentucky.

The Kentucky panel, called Students
of Concern, held its first
meeting this past week and will
convene at least twice a month to
talk about students whose strange
or disturbing behavior has come to
their attention.

Such committees represent a
change in thinking among U.S.
college officials, who for a long time
were reluctant to share information
about students’ mental health for fear
of violating privacy laws.

“If a student is a danger to himself
or others, all the privacy concerns
go out the window,” said Patricia
Terrell, vice president of student
affairs, who created the panel.
Terrell shared details of the four
discussed cases with The Associated
Press on the condition that all names
and other identifying information
be left out.

Among other things, the panel
can order a student into counseling
or bar him or her from entering
a particular building or talking to
a certain person. It can also order
a judicial hearing that can lead
to suspension or expulsion if the
student’s offense was a violation of
the law or school policy.

Brief by Associated Press writer
Sue Lindsey

Cities worldwide switch off lights to raise awareness of global warming

From the Sydney Opera House
to Rome’s Colosseum to the Sears
Tower’s famous antennas in Chicago,
floodlit icons of civilization went dark
Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide
campaign to highlight the threat of
climate change.

The environmental group WWF
urged governments, businesses and
households to turn back to candle
power for at least 60 minutes starting
at 8 p.m. wherever they were.

The campaign began last year in
Australia, and traveled this year from
the South Pacific to Europe to North
America in cadence with the setting
of the sun.

“What’s amazing is that it’s transcending
political boundaries and happening
in places like China, Vietnam,
Papua New Guinea,” said Andy Ridley,
executive director of Earth Hour. “It
really seems to have resonated with
anybody and everybody.”

Earth Hour officials hoped 100
million people would turn off their
nonessential lights and electronic
goods for the hour. Electricity plants
produce greenhouse gases that fuel
climate change.

In Chicago, lights on more than 200
downtown buildings were dimmed
Saturday night, including the stripe of
white light around the top of the John
Hancock Center. The red-and-white
marquee outside Wrigley Field also
went dark.

“There’s a widespread belief that
somehow people in the United States
don’t understand that this is a problem
that we’re lazy and wedded to our
lifestyles. (Earth Hour) demonstrates
that that is wrong,” Richard Moss, a
member of the Nobel Peace Prizewinning
Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change and the climate
change vice president for WWF, said
in Chicago on Saturday.

Workers in Phoenix turned out
the lights in all downtown city-owned
buildings for one hour. Darkened
restaurants glowed with candlelight in
San Francisco while the Golden Gate
Bridge, Coit Tower and other landmarks
extinguished lights for an hour.

New Zealand and Fiji were first
out of the starting blocks this year.
And in Sydney, Australia – where
an estimated 2.2 million observed
the blackout last year – the Opera
House and Harbour Bridge faded to
black against a dramatic backdrop of
a lightning storm.

Brief by Associated Press writer
Caryn Rousseau