YOUNG BLOOD

In announcing the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts’ founding
in England, Boy Scouts of America executive Justin Jepson told
county supervisors at this week’s meeting that the organization
boasts a membership of 2,100 Santa Barbara County youths who
collectively donated $28,000 worth of goods to the Santa Barbara
Foodbank in 2006. 1st District Supervisor Salud Carbajal asked
Jepson to accept his wish that the BSA “get beyond excluding gays
and lesbians in your organization.”

Dozens of concerned parents, faculty, and students turned out
for a special meeting of the Santa Barbara School Board on Tuesday
to hear the nuts and bolts of early-stage plans to relocate the
entire K-6 Santa Barbara Community Academy to the La Cumbre Junior
High School campus. Myriad architectural options were offered,
detailing the various ways two of the district’s only schools with
growing enrollment could coexist while remaining independent. Staff
estimated the tentative and controversial plan would cost anywhere
from $296,000 to $361,000, with funding coming from Measure V and
I-98 bonds. The board is expected to revisit the issue at a regular
meeting early next month.

Following a three-hour public hearing on Tuesday, the Board of
Supervisors voted quickly and unanimously to deny an appeal by
Westmont College neighbors who objected to the Christian college’s
plan to add more housing and other buildings on its leafy, 111-acre
campus. The 1,200 student enrollment cap is unaffected, but the
addition would mean that students will no longer sleep three to a
dorm room. At a future meeting, the supervisors will hear
Westmont’s appeal of some of the conditions imposed by the
Montecito Planning Commission when it approved the project.

The graduate program at UCSB’s political science department has
been ranked eighth – tied with Princeton University’s – in the
nation in a new national college rankings survey. The Faculty
Scholarly Productivity Index – which examines a department’s number
of journal and book publications, citations in other works, grant
monies received, amount of research, and honors awarded to
faculty – ranked 7,294 doctoral programs in 104 disciplines at 354
universities. This new ranking system, based on productivity rather
than reputation, is designed to eliminate an inherent handicap that
can render newer universities less prestigious.