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An all-day "Community Forum on Affirmative Action" will be held at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ on Friday, April 23, in the University Memorial Center. The conference will feature panel discussions by CU-Â鶹ӰԺ students, faculty and staff on topics including affirmative action research, policy formation, law and morality and the impact of affirmative action on CU-Â鶹ӰԺ. All events will be held in the UMC from 8:45 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and are free and open to the public. The conference is organized by the diversity council of the CU-Â鶹ӰԺ sociology department.

Now that CU-Â鶹ӰԺ students have discovered the Hard Drive Cafe in the Kittredge Commons complex for weeknight study breaks, Web surfing, socializing and espresso, its staff is trying to draw bigger crowds on the weekend. The six-month-old coffee and computer hangout has received high marks since it opened on Halloween last year. Students are taking advantage of the cafe's pool table, 19 televisions, a wide assortment of coffees, juices, pastries and appetizers, and eight Imac computers for surfing the World Wide Web.

Cable television pioneer Bill Daniels is donating $500,000 to the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ School of Law to establish a scholarship endowment fund. Income from the fund will be used to assist law students who demonstrate a financial need and who have a "commitment to public service." Daniels made the gift in the name of Gene Nichol, CU law professor and former dean of the law school, whom Daniels has long admired.

Keith Basso, professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, will give a lecture titled "Apache Landscapes and the Oldest Man in Show Low," on Monday, April 26th. The talk will be at 5 p.m. in Old Main Chapel on the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ campus. Basso plans to address how and why people form attachments to places. He also will compare the sense of place of American Indians with those of other residents of a nearby community in central Arizona. The talk is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Center of the American West.

More than 2,000 American Indians and First Nation Peoples from tribes in the United States and Canada will rendezvous at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ on April 17 and 18 for the third annual "Red Nations Cultural Unity Celebration Contest Pow-Wow." Pow-wow events will be held in the Coors/Events Conference Center.

In the basement of CU-Â鶹ӰԺ’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, a monstrous centrifuge sporting an 80,000-pound swinging arm and a box to tote hefty payloads whirls a miniature earthen dam at 200 miles per hour.

Rodney King, O.J. Simpson, Louise Woodward. The names represent not just people but criminal trials that critics claim spotlight the deficiencies of the American system of justice. During the trials, lawyers and legal experts assured Americans that these cases were not typical and that the U.S. trial system remains the best in the world. But according to CU-Â鶹ӰԺ law professor and former federal prosecutor William T. Pizzi, these cases are typical and our legal system is not the best.

MEDIA ADVISORY M. Cherif Bassiouni, professor of law at DePaul University and Chairman of the United NationsÂ’ Commission of Experts investigating human rights violations during the Bosnian civil war, will deliver the 42nd annual John R. Coen Lecture in the Fleming Law Building on the CU-Â鶹ӰԺ campus. Bassiouni will be available to answer reporters' questions concerning suspected human rights violations in Kosovo on Thursday, April 8, from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in the Fleming Law Building at CU-Â鶹ӰԺ. Call 492-3084 to arrange an interview.

The physical affects of buildings, classrooms, signs and symbols on visitors and members of the campus community will be the topic of a forum at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ on April 20 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in conference rooms 3 and 4 at the Recreation Center. Professor James Banning of CSU, who studies the relationships among people and the university environment, will give a slide presentation on the impact that these spaces, including graffiti, art, posters and access, may have on diverse groups and the spirit of multiculturalism.

Two ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula known as the Larsen B and Wilkins are in "full retreat" and have lost nearly 3,000 square kilometers of their total area in the last year, say scientists in Colorado and the United Kingdom. Researchers at the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ’s National Snow and Ice Data Center and the British Antarctic Survey attribute the retreats to a regional warming trend. The trend has caused the annual melt season to increase by 12 days to a total of 20 days over the last 20 years, they said.