Features

Oakland residents get $500,000 in settlement 

OAKLAND – Three dozen east Oakland residents will receive $500,000 from their former landlord in a settlement of a lawsuit alleging that he failed to exterminate pests and fix their appliances and that he berated them after they complained. 

The plaintiffs filed suit in October 1999, accusing John Argyropoulos, 64, his wife, Lillie, and his nephew, Steven Kizanis, 40, of breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence for not doing enough to provide habitable living conditions at four buildings. 

The couple’s attorney, Fred Feller of Berkeley, said Thursday that most of the money will be paid out of insurance funds and that the settlement was not an admission of liability. 

The money will be divided among the plaintiffs based on how long they lived there and the extent of their alleged problems. 

Stanford students protest lack of diversity 

STANFORD – About 150 Stanford University students gathered in White Plaza on campus Thursday with signs and shouts to protest what they see as the administration’s lack of commitment to cultural and racial diversity at the school. 

Among students’ concerns was that the administration’s response to racist graffiti found on campus last month was “delayed and inadequate,” according to a flier passed out at the rally. 

Julie Lythcott-Haims, assistant to the president, attended the rally and said the administration thinks its response has been appropriate. Stanford President John Hennessy and others have written letters to the Stanford Daily condemning the graffiti and vowing to find those responsible. 

Marc Wais, dean of students said graffiti found on walls and in classrooms was reported March 15. Campus police are still investigating the graffiti; Hennessy said Thursday that police believe it was the work of one person. 

Illegal immigrant arrested after INS meeting 

SAN FRANCISCO – A Fiji woman was arrested last week after attending an Immigration and Naturalization Service meeting with her husband. 

Gina Balawanilotu-Roach, 32, has been on the agency’s deportation list for a year. Her attorney and her husband do not contest that, they simply want the INS to let her return home while she works to change her status based on her marriage to a U.S citizen. 

Balawanilotu-Roach fled her native Fiji in 1990, three years after a bloodless coup. Her husband, Morry Roach told the Contra Costa Times she left because she felt threatened over her activism on behalf of Fiji’s repressed Indian population. 

Two bids for political asylum failed, as did a final appeal, heard just weeks before her 1998 marriage to Roach, an electrical designer for a Walnut Creek engineering firm. 

A stay of deportation from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals kept the Oakland teacher off the expulsion list for three more years, but the court rescinded the order last year.