USC wasn’t obligated to start project at mansions says legal VP
BY MARK PATTON
Editor
The university’s vice-president for legal affairs said that the university was under no obligation to found a writers-composers colony at two mansions which were recently returned to a woman donor in a court settlement.
“The university was not obligated to start the colony project until after the donor died,” said Carl M. Franklin, reacting to a story in last week’s Summer Trojan. “But the donor is very much alive right now.”
The donor, 85-year-old Marguerite Eyer Wilbur Longstreth, signed an agreement with the university on Christmas Eve of 1969 to start the project.
The recent settlement, however, allows the university to keep a $755,000 trust that Longstreth gave it for the project. When the agreement was made, the trust was valued at approximately $1 million.
Franklin said, however, that the money was only pledged to the university, and was not actually given. Therefore, he said it was grossly inaccurate to blame the university for the trust’s shrinkage of just under $250,000.
The vice-president for legal affairs added that the two mansions, which are located in Santa Barbara, could be revoked by Longstreth at any time according to the agreement. He said, however, that the trust is irrevocable, and that is why the matter was taken to court.
The settlement allows the university to maintain full control of the trust. When Longstreth dies, half of the money will go to the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and “to the extent reasonably possible, for writers and composers.”
That money, which will total approximately $350,000, will be designated as a memorial to Longstrethr’s late husband, V.R.G. Wilbur.
The other half of the money will go to the Longstreth Foundation.
The agreement stipulates that the university must consult Longstreth—although not necessarily take her advice—on investments or changes.
The university agreed in the settlement without trial that the full title to the mansions will be transfered to the new Marguerite Eyer Wilbur and William Longstreth Foundation. Longstreth still hopes that the project will be carried out, even if on a scaled-down basis.
Franklin refused to comment on why Mrs. Longstreth sued for return of the mansions and trust. The state attorney general, however, has raised the question of whether Longstreth’s current husband, who is in his mid 40s, had unduly influenced her to revoke the mansions and trust. They were married just before her decision to revoke.
The university, however, never pursued that point and no evidence to support that contention was introduced in court.
Longstreth is a graduate of USC, and the university has honored her in the past for her work. She founded the prestigious Music Academy of the West near Santa Barbara, is an authority on pioneer California and is an accomplished writer.
One ofthe mansions in question is Longstreth’s current home in Montecito, a suburb of Santa Barbara. The other mansion is located 10 miles south down the coast from Santa Barbara near Santa Claus Village.
Summer
Trojan
Volume LXVIII, Number 14
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
Wednesday, August 13, 1975
SIGNS LETTER WITH HEW
University won’t lose government contracts
BY PAM ROTENBERG
The university, faced last spring with the prospect of losing $30 million in government contracts because of alleged affirmative action deficiencies, has renewed those contracts.
The university signed a three-page letter to renew them after a meeting in Washington,
D.C. with Casper Weinberger, secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
The meeting resulted from a 42-page letter sent to more than a dozen universities in May threatening to cut off government contracts if federal guidelines for hiring women and racial minorities were not changed.
/-
The letter, which was sent to President John R. Hubbard by HEW’s regional office in San Francisco, said that the university “fails in several important respects to meet the standards and guidelines” of Executive Order 11246 of the Office for Civil Rights.
The Office for Civil Rights is a branch of HEW that is required to decide whether an institution has an acceptable affirmative action compliance program before it can receive any government contract over $1 million.
Barbara M. Pearson, director of the university’s Equal Employment Opportunity Office and Affirmative Action Program, attended the Washington confer-
ence in Hubbard’s absence. She believed the first letter was sent because “the Office for Civil Rights was being sued.
“They are not really interested in results, but they need reports to hire more bureaucrats,” she said.
The hiring system of affirmative action states that once hired, women and minorities must receive the same promotion, salaries and fringe benefits as similarly employed white men.
The National Cancer Institute, which was considering awarding the university a $2.65 million contract, requested the review of the university’s affirmative action program according to the May letter.
“None of us are fighting affirmative action,” Pearson said. “We are just not in favor of make-do reports that don’t tell a thing.
“The Office For Civil Rights either did not read the reportsor they were not evaluated pro-erly. It was costing us extra money to put out extra reports.
“And boy, was Secretary Weinberger furious at what had been done.”
Pearson said that the university was not really accused of discriminating. What was requested, she said, was more proof that the university wasn’t discriminating.
“Procedures will do away with any discriminations—not re-
ports,” she said. “More than $500,000 in reports won’t show anything.”
Pearson supported the university’s affirmative action program, saying that a system of checks and balances has been developed.
“We monitor hiring procedures, how the positions are advertised and what qualifications are needed,” she said.
She added that Congress is taking action “to make sure our contracts are not treated like construction contracts.
“They will try to change the system so every year the interpretation of the regulations won’t change,” she said.
-
A painting by the Italian artist Tintoretto, now on exhibit in the university’s Armand Hammer Collection, may be one of only 30 oils by Western European artists in U.S. collections to be displayed this year in the Soviet Union.
Vitaly Suslov, deputy director of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, USSR, recently visited USC’s University Galleries and inspected the Tintoretto—“Portrait of a Venetian General,” estimated to have been painted in the 1570s—during a month-long search mission in the U.S.
Suslov disclosed that he would eventually choose 43 paintings from U.S. collections for the Russian touring exhibit. Thirteen of the paintings will be by Russian artists.
The show being planned by Suslov will be part of a new cooperative art exhibit program currently underway between the United States and the Soviet Union. Two Russian shows, one of old masters and one of golden artifacts from ancient Russia, will be exhibited in the United States. Both of the shows will travel to Los Angeles’ County Museum of Art.
While in Los Angeles, Suslov visited USC’s University Galleries, the County Art Museum and Disneyland.
Don Brewer, director of University Galleries at USC, said that the university had acquired the Tintoretto on loan from the Armand Hammer Foundaiton in 1964 and that it had then been appraised at $50,000.
University painting may be displayed in USSR
Hermitage Gallery in the USSR, Don Brewer (far left), director of the university galleries, and Murray •< ramer from Armand Hammer's Occidental Corporation.
RUSSIA BOUND?—This painting, which has been on display in the university's Fisher Gallery for a number of years, might be included in a cooperative art exhibit between the United States and Russia. Studying the painting is Vitaly Suslov (right) of the