Dot * y w Troian
University of Southern California
Volume LXVII, No. 46
Los Angeles, California
Thursday, November 21, 1974
Quality of education given low rating in faculty survey
BY PETER BOYER
The general quality of education received by university undergraduates is average or below average, according to 61% of faculty members who responded to an attitudinal faculty questionnaire.
A preliminary report was distributed to members of the Faculty Senate in its monthly meeting Wednesday.
The Faculty Senate Executive Board mailed the questionnaire to full-time faculty members in early October to determine the opinion of the faculty in areas of importance requiring attention
here.
Of the 1.470 questionnaires distributed, only 580, or 39% were returned.
The questionnaires asked faculty members how they would compare certain conditions, services and benefits here with above average institutions of higher learning.
In response to the relative quality of student life at the university. 79% of faculty members who responded felt that it rated from average to very poor.
The general intellectual climate at the university was average or below average, according
USC called harmful to students’ psyche
BY MARC NOWADNICK
“Caution: USC may be hazardous to your mental health,” said Anita Siegman, director of Counseling Services, at a speech at Hillel House on Wednesday.
“People at SC should get some special bonus for staying alive—just for getting through,” Siegman said. “It’s a real challenge—it takes courage, assertiveness and tremendous amounts of self-confidence.
“A student comes to the university and the gap between what the student expects and what the student gets is so broad—the expectations are simply not met.”
Siegman cited an example of two students who had applied and were accepted into the university for the fall semester.
Both attended summer orientation. expecting to get the courses they wanted and to receive their financial aid packets.
The courses weren’t available and the packets weren't forthcoming—they had applied late.
The students also discovered they were near 700th place on the waiting list for residence halls, and that only the top 200 were eligible for housing in apartments off campus.
The students, one from Michigan, the other from New York, were advised to go home and try another university.
“My concern is that all too often if students have problems, there is very little questioning of the environment here.” Siegman said. “The responsibility for
finding a solution isleft with the students.”
More than 30 students dropped out in the first four days of registration this fall. Siegman said she sees the problem as “misrepresentation and a little bit of false advertising” on the part ofthe university and its recruiters.
“People involved with the administration and recruitment are concerned with keeping the university in the black—keeping us financially solvent. But is our concern to keep the university in the black or to serve the students?”
If the university has problems serving the basic needs of the students, she said, it is very difficult for students to enjoy the extracurricular programs the university has to offer.
The counseling center has a volunteer staff of 30, who work to provide mental health services 120 hours a week, and are booked 100% of the time.
“SC is a lonely campus,” she said. “There are no real casual places, other than the grill, for students to gather to sit and talk. And there are not very many alternative lifestyles.”
Siegman said the university environment should be molded more to fit the students—the students shouldn’t have to mold to it.
“The university is a crazy place.” she said. “Lots of people are making decisions in isolation of others. Does anybody care how it will effect the rest of the student population?”
Security problems evolve from campus dances
BY BARBARA CHAPPELL
There have been security problems which endangered students’ safety during recent on-campus dances.
For that reason. Friday night’s dance, which was originally to be held atop the parking structure, has been relocated to the Commons Grill area.
The dance, sponsored by the Student Programming Board, is to be a orevictory dance titled “The Bitch is Back.”
John F. Lechner. director of Campus Security and Parking Operations said that during recent dances held in the Grill area, nonstudents were admitted and security problems resulted.
Richard Morantz, entertainment coordinator for the Student Activities Center, said the dances in the last few weeks were fund raisers with admission charged and that student IDs were not checked.
On Nov. 8 there was a dance in the Commons Grill area. No security guards were present.
(Continued on page 2)j ^_ —-- . ■ .. ..... ■ ■■ ■■■ ■
to 77% of the responses. However. 60% ofthe faculty members felt that the quality ofeducation received by graduate students at the university was above average.
A total of 82% felt that their salaries rated from average to very poor, and 62% said that the process by which the university sets salaries was below average.
In response to a question that asked for preference of salary increase allocation, 88% said that increases should be determined by a combination of cost of living increases and on the basis of merit for those deserving salary hikes.
Sixty percent felt that emphasis on research and publication for promotion, tenure, and pay increases was too heavy, and 64% felt that more emphasis should be put on teaching ability.
Only 23% of those who responded agreed with the statement that the university’s personnel policies “are consistent and fair.” More than 60% disagreed with the statement, and 16% had no opinion.
Over 50% of those who responded disagreed with the statement that “the organization of USC is designed for the primary purpose of meeting the academic needs of the students.”
Only 35% of the faculty members felt confidence in the ad-minstrative leadership of the university, and 46% expressed reservations about their degree of confidence in the university’s administrative leadership.
In spite of the generally unfavorable attitude of most of the responses to the questionnaire, 62% said in their subjective estimate of USC as a university that it was one ofthe top 75 in the nation, and 6% said that it was one of the 10 to 15 best.
MARJOE GORTNER
DT photo by Bob Chavez
Marjoe: always an actor, from revivalism to movies
BY KEVIN MeKENNA
Associate Editor
“As sure as I am speaking to you; as sure as you are listening to your phonograph, as sure as I am only eight years old; JE-sus came to me
and ...”
From the time Marjoe Gortner was four years old he was haranguing frenzied revival metings with pentecostal rhetoric like that.
And as sure as I am writing this now; as sure as you are reading this newspaper; as sure as he is now 30 years old; Marjoe came to Bovard Auditorium on Wednesday.
But he wasn’t preaching.
Marjoe. whose movie biography two years ago exposed revival meetings as a sham and their ministers as money-hungry materialists, is now an act jr.
He said he has been called “demon-possessed” by some revivalists, including his father, because of the film.
Marjoe was smiling and articulate throughout his hour-long appearance, but much more low-key than in his evangelistic performances.
Traces of his past could be seen, though, when his arm shot out to point at the next questioner, and his voice seemed to take on a hint of the ministerial twang when he spoke of his earlier days.
A child sensation. Marjoe became disillusioned with the whole
(Continued on page 3)
Watergate, Ford’s pardon called decisive factors in ’74 election
Jess Marlow. KNBC television news anchorman, said Tuesday that Houston Flournoy would not have been the Republican candidate for governor of California if it were not for Watergate.
Marlow and Bill Boyarsky, a Los Angeles Times political reporter, agreed that Watergate and President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon were decisive factors in the 1974 election They spoke at a panel discussion on the media and politics, sponsored by the Graduate Students Organization for the School of Journalism.
The other panelists were Boyarsky’s wife Nancy, a free-lance writer and coauthor with Boyarsky of the book Backroom Politics, and Bob Kholos. press secretary for Mayor Tom Bradley.
The panelists also agreed that Watergate had had an influence on the media’s coverage of the candidates. There was more concentration on checking for questionable financial backing and other Watergate-like factors.
Boyarsky agreed, but added, “I object to the idea that people are turned off by politics and so we shouldn’t cover it.”
Boyarsky said that the media's coverage of women candidates and women’s issues was also inadequate. Marlow said that although some women candidates were given good coverage, it was “probably not right the kind of coverage... We were not as interested in the issues as in the fact that they were women.”
The general consensus, however, was that the media had been fair and unbiased in its coverage.
Time magazine carried a picture of Edmund G. Brown on its cover the week before the election. A
member ofthe audience suggested that this indicated bias, or at least bad judgment.
“It was their right to cover the election any way they wanted,” Boyarsky said. “If we start worrying about who we’re covering more, we’re not doing our job.”
“We don’t give enough credit to the voter,” Kholos said. “Did the Time cover influence yovr decision?”
Marlow also said that Federal Communications Commission rules requiring television stations to give equal time to all major candidates for an office should be changed.
“There should be as little meddling by the government as possible.” he said.
Coverage of local politics in Los Angeles has improved considerably in the last 20 years, Boyarsky said.
Los Angeles newspapers 20 years ago were dominated by Republican, business-minded owners, Boyarsky said.
“Ours (the Times) was one of the first to change. We re now going after the sins of county government.” he said.
Mrs. Boyarsky said that in Los Angeles there is relatively little competition for newspaper readership. In Chicago, she said, “the only way they can compete is to uncover scandals.”
Marlow said that investigative reporting does not lend itself easily to television (visual) presentation. However, he said that the networks and some local stations are making efforts to do more investigative reporting.