Around the state

OAKLAND — Both sides in a trash company labor dispute resumed talks Sunday in an effort to resolve a three-week lockout that has some residents raising a stink over uncollected garbage.

Officials with Waste Management have hired replacement drivers since locking out 480 drivers July 2 and say they are close to getting pickups back on schedule.

But city officials and residents of Oakland and other cities in the east San Francisco Bay area say trash has been left curbside. Besides Oakland, affected cities include Emeryville, Albany, Castro Valley, Hayward, Newark, and parts of San Leandro and San Lorenzo.

Peter Maloney of Castro Valley said his garbage was picked up July 5, but "we haven’t seen hair nor hide of any drivers” since then. He said he has called and e-mailed Waste Management but received only automated replies that trucks would come.

Waste Management of Alameda County said they locked out drivers because of rumors the members of Teamsters Local 70 were about to strike.

Pacific Island students want UC to collect more specific data

LOS ANGELES — A coalition of Pacific Islander and Asian students at the University of California at Los Angeles is pushing for the university system to change how it collects admissions data.

They believe more information about students from smaller ethnic groups, such as Hmong and Thai, would focus increased attention on the educational barriers facing certain Asian populations.

Advocates are collecting signatures to petition legislators and the Board of Regents this fall

"Pacific Islanders are just pushed under this umbrella of Asian and are never really seen,” said Nefara Riesch, a Samoan American junior at UCLA. "Our small numbers are never recognized.”

Asians and Pacific Islanders have several choices when marking their ethnicity on UC applications, but many of the smaller groups are not represented. The students are all grouped together in most official reports.

The "Count Me In” campaign aims at getting the UC system to create a specific Pacific Islander category within admissions data.

UC officials acknowledge some Asian communities are underrepresented.

"We’re a university, so we always think more information is better,” said Nina Robinson, director of policy and external affairs in UC student affairs. "The question is the cost.”

She said changing the way the system collects data would make it harder to track trends over time. The university can expand its outreach to underrepresented populations even without more demographic information, she said.

The student effort parallels a state bill crafted by Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance. It would ensure that state-collected data would be separated into additional Asian and Pacific Islander groups, including Hmong, Taiwanese and Tongan. California currently collects information for 11 such groups. The bill would expand it to 21.

The educational levels of some Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the state are very low. Sixty-six percent of Hmong, 58 percent of Laotians and 56 percent of Cambodians have not completed high school, according to a recent report compiled by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center based on census data and estimates. Meanwhile, 30 percent of Asian Indians and 22 percent of Pakistanis have advanced degrees.

Asians and Pacific Islanders are not interchangeable, said Karin Wang, vice president of programs for the center.

"The reality is that our needs, our histories, are extraordinarily different,” Wang said.

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Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com