Downstroke

Cars, contracts and the CSU: Beep! Beep! The United Auto Workers union, which in this case has nothing to do with cars, has overcome a traffic jam with the CSU.

A contract was signed Aug. 1 after months of negotiations—and a threatened strike by student employees in May—that will benefit teachers’ assistants and the California State University. CSU officials and union representatives signed the contract in Long Beach on Monday. It’s the first collective-bargaining agreement for the 6,000 academic student employees in the CSU, which includes teaching assistants, graduate assistants and instructional student assistants.

The CSU and union leaders have come to a “forward-looking agreement” that rewards student employees, said Samuel Strafaci, CSU assistant vice chancellor of human resources. Raymond Wight, a union committee member and instructional student assistant at San Diego State University, stated in a press release, “We expect that our current collective-bargaining agreement and today’s signing ceremony will mark a new, productive and cooperative chapter in our union’s relationship with the CSU.”

At least they don’t have to pee in a cup: Junior dope fiends, coke heads and tweakers beware. The Paradise Unified School District just approved random drug testing, and if you participate in a competitive extracurricular activity you might become part of this pilot program. And that goes for band geeks, too.

The school board unanimously approved the program last week, but it had been a goal for more than two years, Superintendent Steve Jennings said later.

“There was just a general feeling that we want to do everything we possibly can to give our students a reason not to participate in drug activity,” Jennings said. “Some [students] think it’s a great idea and some aren’t really excited about it.”

The district will contract with a lab and provide it with a list of numbers that are attached to students in sports, cheerleading, drill team, band and chorus programs. Lab staff will pick a few numbers and those students will submit to a mouth swab. If it comes back positive, regardless of the type of drug, a first-time offender can choose to enter a drug-counseling program and immediately resume participation in his or her extracurricular activity, or suffer a 60-day absence from the activity. The students cannot be expelled and, Jennings said, “there’s no communication with the police. It is confidential.”

DWN: Drivin’ while nekkid: Butte County Sheriffs deputies say they have no idea what was going on in John Andrew Childs’ head when he was spotted Tuesday in the parking lot of Spangler’s Sound on Entler Avenue south of Chico running laps around his white Mazda Miata, wearing no clothes and “acting strangely.”

When deputies arrived, Childs jumped into his sports car and sped off, hitting 100 mph on Highway 99 before deputies, outmatched in Crown Victoria patrol cars, lost sight of him. Later, deputies again spotted Childs and persuaded him to pull over, at which point he took off on foot—still completely naked—down Centennial Drive. Deputies caught up and booked him for evading a peace officer.