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Smoking ban on Pearl Street Mall has Teeth
Mar 21st
The ordinance banning smoking on the Pearl Street Mall went into effect on Jan. 18, 2013. The ordinance bans all smoking between 11th and 15th streets on the Pearl Street Mall, and on the lawn of the Boulder County Courthouse. The maximum penalty for a first or second offense within two years is a fine of $500; a third and subsequent conviction within two years triggers the general penalty provision of a maximum $1,000 fine and/or maximum of 90 days in jail.
Boulder police officers who patrol on the Pearl Street Mall have been educating people about the smoking ban since it went into effect, and have not written any tickets while the signs were being manufactured. On Monday, April 1, the ordinance will be fully implemented, and enforcement will begin.
Signs were ordered after City Council approved the ordinance in December; however there was a delay in the sign manufacturing. The signs on the mall are custom enameled and take longer to fabricate. The enamel signs are more resistant to graffiti and other tampering.
The city is collaborating with several partners, including Boulder County Public Health and Downtown Boulder, Inc. (DBI), to create a coordinated educational campaign for downtown employees and visitors about the smoking ban on the mall. A celebration event will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, April 12, on the 1300 block of the Pearl Street Mall, where county, city and DBI staff will be available to answer questions about the smoking ban and about free resources available for individuals who wish to quit smoking.
Teens and adults can apply for summer jobs with Boulder County Youth Corps
Mar 19th
The Youth Corps offers one of the best first-job opportunities available in Boulder County. Teams have completed projects such as constructing nearly a mile of trail at Walden Ponds Wildlife Habitat, replacing the residential fence at a Boulder County low-income housing development in Louisville and preserving the McDonald Cabin at Betasso Preserve Open Space. Parks and Open space is now accepting applications for Youth Corps members and team leaders.
Who: The Youth Corps will hire 180 teenagers to work 30 hours per week.
- Boulder County residents ages 14-17 have until Friday, March 29 to apply for summer jobs with the Boulder County Youth Corps. Boulder County is especially in need of female Corps members.
- Applicants can apply online at http://www.bouldercounty.org/youthcorps. Applications can also be picked up at counseling offices in Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley schools; city and town personnel offices; most local recreation and youth centers and libraries; and the Boulder County Human Resources Department, 2025 14th St. in Boulder.
What: Corps members will work on a variety of community service projects such as forest thinning, historic preservation, construction and repair of fencing, trail maintenance, removal of Russian olive trees and noxious weeds, landscaping and replacing light bulbs with compact fluorescents.
When: Youth Corps members are expected to work Monday through Thursday, from June 10 to July 31.
Where: Teams will work in unincorporated Boulder County as well as in cities and towns within Boulder County.
Compensation: This year, Corps members will earn a starting wage of $7.78/hour, with the possibility of earning a $100 bonus at the end of the program based on merit and strong attendance.
- Teens who have worked for the Corps in past years can earn up to $8.28/hour.
- Corps members are eligible for reimbursement for the purchase of work boots and gloves.
- RTD bus passes for the purpose of traveling to and from centralized work meeting places may be subsidized.
The Youth Corps is also hiring team leaders, who must be high school graduates at least 21 years old with two years of college coursework or more, among other qualifications. A list of full qualifications is available online. Team Leaders start at $13.50/hour. These positions remain open until filled.
For more information, visit http://www.bouldercounty.org/youthcorps or call the Youth Corps office at 303-678-6104.
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CU Boulder study: More power leads to more dehumanization (No sh*t, Sherlock)
Mar 6th
“I think a lot of us have the intuition that some powerful people can be pretty dehumanizing,” said Jason Gwinn, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and lead author of the study. “But our goal was to test if power, when randomly assigned to ordinary students, would have that effect. That would say something about power itself rather than about the sort of people who have the drive to take power.”
The researchers enlisted about 300 CU-Boulder students taking an introductory psychology course to participate in two experiments. In the first experiment, students were assigned to be either a manager or an assistant for a mock hiring task. The assistants were asked to review resumes for an open job and then list the strengths and weaknesses of each applicant. The managers then reviewed the list made by their assistants and made a final decision about whom to hire.
In the second experiment, participants were asked to play a game and were assigned to be either an allocator or a recipient. For the game, one allocator and one recipient were tasked with splitting a pot of money. The allocator, the higher-power role, made the first offer, suggesting how the money be split. If the recipient, the lower-power role, accepted the offer, both people received their share of the money. If the recipient declined the offer, neither person received any of the money.
At the end of each experiment, the participants were asked to rate each other on 40 traits. The result was that students in higher-power roles assigned fewer uniquely human traits to the students in lower-power roles than vice versa. Examples of traits considered to be more uniquely human, as defined and tested in a 2007 Australian study, include being ambitious, imaginative, frivolous and insecure. Examples of traits that are less uniquely human — those that could be used to describe a pet as well as a friend, for example — include being passive, timid, friendly and shy.
The question of whether power leads to dehumanization has part of its roots in the renowned Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971. Twenty-four male students were randomly assigned to play the role of either inmate or guard in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. During the study, the guards were psychologically abusive to the prisoners, many of whom passively accepted the abuse, despite the fact that the participants knew that they were all students at the same elite university.
Though the guards were described as dehumanizing the prisoners, the term “dehumanization” was well defined at the time and the experiment was not designed to allow the researchers to confidently state that it was the increase in power that lead to the dehumanization. By contrast, Gwinn’s study, now available online, was designed specifically to test the relationship between power and dehumanization.
Gwinn cautions that the researchers cannot yet say whose perspective is being changed by the power differential imposed on participants in the CU study. It’s possible that being in a position of less power makes a person see those in power as more human rather than the other way around, or that both people are affected.
“We haven’t pinned down why this happens,” Gwinn said. “We don’t know whose perception is being affected.”
Charles Judd and Bernadette Park, both professors in CU-Boulder’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, co-authored the study.