Downstroke

A loosely organized group at Chico State University plans to protest the presence of the multinational tobacco corporation Phillip Morris USA at a career fair to be held in the Bell Memorial Union on Sept. 23.

The company, along with the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch, Frito-Lay, Pepsi and Clorox, is offering up jobs, but tobacco-industry watchers also note its presence in developing countries, exploiting poor people for cheap labor and marketing cigarettes to children and the undereducated.

The word was spread via a campus-wide e-mail sent by Annie Sherman, the A.S. commissioner of environmental affairs and a leader in a movement on campus to get university entities to divest themselves of tobacco stocks.

Sherman, who clarified in a later e-mail that she means no disrespect to the career fair’s organizers and doesn’t speak for the A.S. as a whole, said she’ll be protesting because the career fair should exclude businesses with poor environmental records.

Since Sherman sent her e-mail, several professors have also logged their support for the protest.

What’s your fee? If they’re gonna keep jacking up fees, they can at least have some predictability about it. That’s the thinking behind the California State University system’s plan to come up with a long-term fee policy.

Statewide student groups, particularly the California State Students Association (CSSA), have been working with the CSU Board of Trustees to compromise on a plan that would ratchet up fees gradually and in a way such that students would know what to expect.

“It’s been a pretty hot topic for a month or so,” Nicole DeMartini, the A.S. director of legislative affairs, said at a Sept. 20 meeting of the Chico State Associated Students Governmental Affairs Committee.

As proposed, the policy would raise fees annually until they reach one-third of the cost of the students’ education. The CSU Board of Trustees, its newest members not sure they had all the information needed to vote on a policy, postponed the matter to an Oct. 28 meeting.

Invasion of the bud snatchers: A home invasion robbery occurred late Sunday night at a house on the 300 block of West Eighth Street, and as usual the prize was a cache of marijuana. Chico police say most home invasion robberies are perpetrated against small-time weed dealers or growers. Such targets tend to be non-combative and often have large amounts of cash and other sought-after items that become easy pickings for more hardened criminals.

Two suspects were captured after one of the robbery victims called police. Lionel Thomas, 19, of Chico was arrested on Eighth Street shortly after the robbery, while his alleged accomplice, Ashley Hampton, 32, eluded a helicopter dragnet until just after 2 a.m. Monday. Three other suspects are thought to still be at large.

According to police reports, five masked men armed with handguns kicked in the door of the home and struggled with the residents before taking an undisclosed number of mature marijuana plants from an indoor grow at the residence. Police have not said whether they will charge the robbery victims with drug charges, but in past incidents they have not, partly to encourage home invasion victims—even those doing illegal things—to call police.