UCI Political Science Student Wins 2016 Truman Scholarship
UCI junior Daniela Estrada, a political science major with a concentration in public law, was one of only two California students to win the prestigious Truman Scholarship in 2016.
The highly-competitive Truman Scholarship was established in 1975 and awards $30,000 to approximately 60 university juniors nationwide each year.
Two UCI students were nominated this year, and Estrada was selected as a recipient in April.
Estrada, a first-generation college student, has interned at the Orange County district attorney’s office and is currently working to establish an on-campus legal clinic to provide legal services for students. In the future, she hopes to continue her research into LAPD police brutality, and will use her scholarship to study criminal law upon completion of her undergraduate degree.
Four-Student Team from UCI Wins Southern California Sustainability Award
A team of four UC Irvine students won the ECO Spirit Award at last week’s Spring Green Expo hosted by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The ninth annual Expo was an educational showcase event, attracting more than 60 sustainability groups from throughout Southern California. More than 30 sustainability projects were showcased and groups competed for awards, including the newly-introduced ECO Spirit Award for innovative sustainability projects.
UCI’s winning team worked with Global Engineering Brigades to engineer a water system in Choluteca, Honduras, which provided clean water to 160 homes through a gravitation-based design.
Three other UCs — Riverside, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara — competed in the showcase, but UC Irvine and UC Riverside were the only campuses to take home top honors.
Chancellor Gillman Urges “Free Speech and Mutual Respect” in Campuswide Email
In a campuswide email sent on April 29, Chancellor Howard Gillman updated his yearly message on free speech, arguing that “no academic community can exist if we are mostly yelling at each other rather than talking and listening.”
In light of recent events regarding free speech and “political correctness,” Gillman urged UCI students to “deepen the conversation rather than suspend it” when perspectives differ.
He condemned “[shielding] people from ideas and opinions they might find unwelcome” and silencing controversial speakers, as he outlined in a similar email released last September.
Maintaining sentiments outlined in his September statement, Gillman noted that students should speak out when classmates are subjected to “hateful, discriminatory and inflammatory personal attacks.”
However, in his April update, he argued that “one person’s offensive speech is sometimes another person’s legitimate challenge to our wrongheaded views.”
UC Irvine Ranks No. 7 In California for Crime Rates per Student
Among all four-year California universities, UC Irvine ranks seventh for top crime rates per student, according to a recent analysis of U.S. Department of Education data.
The report, compiled by San Diego-based Gedulin Law, notes that UCI has reported 230 crimes from 2012-14 under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.
With approximately 30,000 students, UCI’s crime-to-student ratio is 2.55 — the seventh-highest among four-year universities in California.
Eight of the top ten schools reported by Gedulin Law are University of California campuses. Stanford University tops the list, with a crime-to-student ratio of 7.94.
The report notes that statistics reported to the U.S. Department of Education are not necessarily accurate and comprehensive, and some schools have underreported campus crimes which could skew data analysis.
