Shawn Vestal

Eastern Washington University is looking to hire consultants to help deal with potential health and safety issues arising from the recent discovery of uranium ore left unprotected in a storage room, possibly for years. The school wants help in determining how much exposure about a dozen university workers underwent, as well as any cleanup and disposal procedures needed, said Peter Batsakis, EWU's manager of environmental health and safety. He said the goal is to have the matter settled by the start of classes Sept. 20.

Students will return to the dorms at Washington State University in a couple of weeks, but the police won't – at least not without a warrant or an invitation. Campus officers no longer will make routine patrols of dorm hallways, after two cases in the spring in which criminal charges were dismissed after a judge ruled, in essence, that dorm hallways are like the hallways in your home – police can't just walk through them looking, listening and sniffing for crimes.

Officials at Eastern Washington University are investigating whether there's any fallout for workers who may have spent years around uranium left unprotected in a campus storage room. EWU workers found the rocks a week ago as part of a sweep of the campus by the new manager of environmental health and safety, Peter Batsakis. There were five drawers labeled as uranium, full of the small rocks in a first-floor storage area in the science building, Batsakis said.

The former risk manager at Eastern Washington University has sued the school and several individuals, alleging she was fired as retaliation for speaking at a public hearing on proposed asbestos rules. Anne Bailey lost her job at Eastern after complaints were raised about her testimony at an Aug. 18 meeting of the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority. An EWU professor and a local environmental attorney complained to university administrators that Bailey had purported to speak on behalf of the university and that she had a conflict of interest because her husband had worked as private consultant on asbestos cleanup. Following an investigation, she was fired Jan. 2.

A state study shows that the number of Washington residents who applied to the state's public universities is down by more than 9 percent from last year. The drop is most pronounced among older students and transfers from community colleges and other schools, prompting some to speculate that an improving economy may be partly behind the trend. However, the decline in applications was across-the-board among all Washington residents, while out-of-state applications from high-school-age students actually increased 8 percent.

A Washington State University fraternity is facing a federal misdemeanor charge over something that's become a regional rite of summer for some Greek houses: rafting parties on the Salmon River. More than 100 people associated with Alpha Kappa Lambda camped and partied last September at Short's Bar, a beach area and boat ramp on the lower Salmon River about a mile upstream from Riggins, Idaho, according to court records and federal officials.

Community Colleges of Spokane is moving toward requiring sex offenders to set up "safety plans" and provide information about their cases before enrolling. The proposals would make it easier to reject applications from sex offenders or to expel them if problems arise, officials say. The proposals were developed after professors raised concerns about sex offenders on campus, sharing classes in some cases with high school students working on college credits.

When Janessa Todd enrolls as a freshman at Spokane Community College in the fall, she'll be paying the bills with help from a lot of sources. A scholarship, student loans, the low cost of living at home and a job at Taco Time.

The state has ruled that the Community Colleges of Spokane engaged in unfair labor practices by hiring private workers for some tasks and making it difficult for union members to get information needed for negotiations. In its June 30 ruling, the Public Employment Relations Commission ordered CCS to stop subcontracting out several jobs, to allow the union to bargain over any work done by private employees, and to stop "obstructing" union requests for information.