Quick Takes: Louisville Scene of Latest Campus Incident, Calif. Aid Cut Would Hit 2-Year Students Hardest, Judge Backs Peer-Review Confidentiality, Another Bank Drops Student Loans, Library Theft, Israel Boycott Idea Resurfaces

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An agitated student with a gun held a counselor at the University of Louisville hostage temporarily Thursday morning before surrendering -- and police officers later found that she had come to the campus after allegedly killing her two children. In a note to the campus, President Jim Ramsey and Provost Shirley Willihnganz laid out how the situation unfolded, including the university's sending of a campuswide alert urging students to stay away from the campus health services center. After the standoff was defused, with the 37-year-old student taken to an off-campus mental health facility, police officers went to her home and found her two children dead. Authorities charged the student with murder.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget plan to cut back funds for California's need-based grants program would disproportionate hurt students at the state's community colleges, the Institute for College Access and Success said in a report Thursday. The report said that because of the way money from the Cal Grant Program is distributed, new grants to community college students would be cut by 45 percent, or about 18,500 students, in the fall. The report also estimated that 700 students at the University of California would be denied a Cal Grant, 2,000 in the California State University system; 1,200 at private nonprofit colleges; and 3,000 at for-profit career colleges.
A federal judge has blocked an attempt by Pfizer to gain access to two journals' peer review notes on articles about two of the drug company's products, The Wall Street Journal reported. The legal fight was disclosed this week by the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the journals involved, in an editorial. JAMA officials argued that confidentiality was essential to the peer review process.
Zions Bank, the largest bank based in Utah, has announced that it will stop making federally backed student loans, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. Zions said it would soon introduce a new student loan product.
Missing any books from your library? Federal officials have charged a Montana man with stealing several books and maps from a library at Western Washington University. The investigation started when a librarian at Western Washington noticed some maps missing from the university's collection and matched them to items for sale on eBay. The Associated Press reported that as part of the probe, federal authorities seized more than 1,000 books from the man's home. A majority of the books were marked as belonging to about 100 university libraries -- and many of the books were published before 1900.
Britain's faculty union will again consider proposals for an academic boycott of Israel, The Guardian reported. Boycott proposals have been controversial for several years, with supporters saying that they are needed to protest Israeli policies and many others -- regardless of their views on Israel -- saying that boycotts of colleges and universities are antithetical to academic freedom.