New Portland Police Chief Has an Arresting Record

--Police Capt. Penny E. Harrington was promoted to chief of police of Portland, Ore., making her the first woman in the nation to lead a big-city police force. Mayor Bud Clark said he chose Harrington over three other finalists because of “the long-term period she’s had in the trenches.” Harrington, 42, joined the Portland Police Bureau in 1964 and worked her way up through the ranks. The new chief has had a controversial career, filing several sex discrimination complaints over department policies and practices that she felt were weighted in favor of men. Clark, a former barkeeper, said he chose her because of her “commitment to the community and her record as an administrator.” Harrington said she plans to put more police officers on patrol--”walking and talking”--in an effort to improve relations with the city’s residents. The appointment was Clark’s first major personnel decision.

--A Harvard University student radio station is into Bach ‘n’ roll. WHRB has programmed a 200-hour “Bach orgy” to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach. “Some people are trying to stay up for as much as they can, but we don’t advise that they stay up for the whole thing,” said Programming Director Michael Rosenberg. “Some people start getting cranky after 30 hours of listening to it.”

--A course on French movie star Brigitte Bardot, featuring eight of her films, is packing them in at Middlebury College in Montpelier, Vt. About 175 students of the small, private college are viewing the movies, writing a short analysis of each and discussing “popular culture, eroticism, aesthetics, voyeurism and misogyny,” according to the course description. Claire Schub, the 29-year-old professor of French who is teaching the class, said she thinks most of the students signed up for the four-week course out of curiosity. “Most of them have heard of Brigitte Bardot, but hardly any have seen her movies,” she said. “She was a sex symbol for their parents.” Karl Lindholm, associate dean of students, remarked: “It is easy to parody its content--a bunch of post-adolescents watching dirty movies--but it has intellectual content. The mistake we made is we should have had limited enrollment. This is the biggest number of students I can remember in a course, at least this year.”