Lots goin' on today. I went to the Senate committee hearing on the latest Bush EPA nominee this morning, Steven Johnson. It seemed pretty standard and uneventful, until Sen. Boxer - who I was there to cover, thankfully - got up and went into this whole spiel about a suspended but not canceled EPA human-testing pesticide study in a minority-heavy county in Florida. It involves children under three as labrats in their own homes, and entices parents with $900 in cash, plus the videocamera used in the study. For her presentation Boxer showed this colorful blown-up brochure for the study, complete with cute cuddly babies lined up all in a row.

For a pesticide study.

I was trying my best not to crack up. I really like Boxer. The only other guy who took Johnson to task, the junior Senator from Delaware (no, not Biden - the other guy), was pretty dry.

Which is probably why Sen. Barack Obama, sitting on the fringe of the panel about 10 feet away from me, was literally fighting to stay awake.

Editor's note: Oh crap. We've reached the point in the program where you don't wanna let all the politico names Dickie shamelessly drops hit you on the toe.

No - it was cool! A couple minutes after I got there, I just looked over and - holy shit - there's Obama. I just wasn't expecting it. Even if he was snoring. 'Not exactly his most inspiring moment, and yet I was still pretty starstruck.

And that's why I think the junior Senator from Illinois could be the first Black president one day.

Anyways, the article below was (presumably) published in the News-Press today. It's on the Web site at least. But I don't find out what kind of play it got until about a week later, when the print copies of the paper arrive.

It's sort of like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where they have to wait 10 minutes for messages from Earth. Well, like 2001 without the acid-trip through the wormhole, unfortunately. But I'm rambling. God bless caffeine.


*******************************************


By DICKIE CRONKITE
NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON -- As the nation confronts a post-Sept. 11 decrease in foreign students, UCSB has barely maintained its international numbers, while Santa Barbara City College has bucked the trend to bring in even more students from overseas.

A study released by the Institute for International Education revealed that international student enrollment in the United States declined by 2.4Êpercent during the 2003-04 academic year -- the first time that has happened since 1971.

But Mary Jacob, director of the Office of International Students and Scholars at UCSB, said Monday that the number of UCSB international students remained relatively steady last year. There were four fewer foreign students last year than the 1,004 enrolled the year before.

However, the number of foreign graduate students has gradually decreased since the 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington. In the fall of 2004, the university had 575 international graduate students, compared with 625 in fall 2002.

Ms. Jacob said overall international student enrollment managed to stay level, thanks to the expansion of UCSB's Education Abroad Program. The university also has seen a post-Sept. 11 surge in interest among U.S. undergraduates in global and international studies.

"Students are more interested in what happened and what's going on," Ms. Jacob said.

The increasing number of U.S. students traveling abroad frees up more exchange opportunities for international students, she said.

The institute's study, released in November, attributed the enrollment drop to difficulties in obtaining visas, increasing tuition costs, perceptions abroad that international students may no longer be welcome in the United States and "vigorous recruitment" by other English-speaking countries that are taking advantage of the new trends.

All of that has lawmakers on Capitol Hill worried. On Monday, Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, led a closed-door round-table discussion to address the concerns.

"We talk a lot about the outsourcing of jobs," Mr. Alexander said at a news conference before the discussion. "What we are good at is the in-sourcing of brain power."

The round table brought together nongovernmental experts and officials from the Homeland Security, State and Education departments, as well as the White House.

Meanwhile, SBCC has actually seen an increase in its international student population.

"Over the past two years, we've had a steady incline," said Derrick Banks, director of the school's International Student Academic Program. "Since 2001, we've gone from 485 to 525 students."

Mr. Banks attributes SBCC's success in retaining the students to partnerships with organizations abroad that help facilitate the visa application process.

"We train them to counsel, fill out an application, and give additional info on interviewing for the visa," Mr. Banks said. He called the partnerships "unique to the extent that we have this close relationship."

Ms. Jacob said that before Sept. 11, UCSB could simply draft a form for each accepted international applicant once the student had provided evidence he or she could pay the tuition. The student would then take the form to the local U.S. Embassy or consulate and apply for a visa.

After the attacks, a new Student Exchange Visitor Information system was introduced.

Ms. Jacob said international students now have to fill out several forms to apply for a visa, then pay an additional $100 processing fee on top of the $100 visa fee.

They then undergo a screening process at the U.S. port of entry, where their government documents are scanned. Finally, students must check in with the university's international office, where school administrators are required to report the student's arrival to government agents.

Dickie Cronkite writes from Washington, D.C., for Medill News Service. E-mail him at ********@newspress.com.