University of Southern California
Volume LXVIII, Number 128	Los Angeles, California	Wednesday, May 12, 1976
Daily
Trojan
HARD ROCKERS—Song, a rock quintet, performed on the Student Activities Center patio Tuesday. The crowd most likely was enlarged by final exam procrastinators and summer-awaiting sun worshippers. DT photo by Bob LaBayne.
ELECTRIC CHAIR—This neon mixed chair called arts graduate student exhibit. The exhibit is on display "Rocker" by Don Sevart, is one of the many items in the Fisher Gallery through Friday. DT photo by Paula featured in "Somewhere in L. A.," the university's fine Daniels.
Speaker says literacy
began with craftsmen
Head resident hiring, other dorm issues to be studied
By Cathy Taylor
Assistant City Editor
The Student Senate is establishing a task force to investigate the policies of the Office of Residential Life because of recent concern about the rehiring of head residents and keeping the halls open over vacations.
A statement released by the senate on Tuesday outlined six issues the task force will investigate.
“Beginning immediately, and continuing during early summer, a Task Force on Residential Life will operate on behalf of the senate to determine locations of authority and implementation,” the statement says.
‘To clear the air’
“It is hoped that this investigation will serve to clear the air and provide an opportunity for communication and constructive improvement.”
Hans Reichl, director of the Office of Residential Life, said, “I welcome it. The more students that are involved in what we do, the better. We may even have a few more suggestions about what we can explore together.”
Glenn Sonnenberg, newly elected chairman for next year’s Student Senate, said he asked that the investigation begin so something can be resolved.
“It’s a positive, healthy thing,” he said. “I thought it was great that a group of students came to the senate because they thought we could get something done for them.”
Student complaints
Sonnenberg said he had heard complaints from international students and students living in Men’s Residence West, where
110	students signed a petition asking for an investigation.
Sonnenberg said he concluded that that was reason enough to organize the task force.
The first area of concern is the hiring and firing practices re-
garding the residence hall staff. Student involvement in staffing decisions was amplified, the statement says, after the recent dispute concerning the rehiring of Vimal Duggal, head resident of Men’s Residence West.
The task force will raise questions on student input, use of questionnaires and the criteria used.
Minimal communication
“Communication with dorm residents is minimal,” the release says of major decisions such as staff cuts and calls for proper explanation. The students have a right to know how and why decisions are made. Additionally, the use of resident advisers to communicate with the students is ineffectual, the release says.
A third point says that student committees have no real authority, and the Priorities Committee was cited as one example, saying that its decisions have been virtually ignored.
Questions involving priorities are kept away from the average students, and many student members ofthe committees are encouraged to maintain total secrecy, even to the dormitory government.
The fourth issue revolves around the dependence of student governance operations on the Office for Residential Life for monetary allocations, and to the Office of Auxiliary Services, which maintains control, the release says.
“Decisions regarding the new apartment cpmplexes are far from complete, and student input was not requested,” the statement says.
Finally, the senate recommends that the acquisition for more complete budgets from the Offices of Residential Life and Auxiliary Services should be attempted.
Positive approach
Reichl declined to talk about the issues saying, “At this time I would rather discuss the issues with the task force directly.”
However, Reichl said he thought the tone of the press release was a positive approach.
Sonnenberg said he will not be heading up the task force, but that “the university should clean its own house whenever necessary—it’s good to take a good hard look at ourselves, and this is an area students wanted us to look into.”
Slight improvement of crash survivors reported
The conditions of the two survivors of Thursday’s truck crash are improving, but they are still in the intensive care unit. Michael James Haulfler, 28, the driver ofthe truck, is still listed in critical condition.
Patricia Ann Tucker, 22, was reported in fair condition. She is a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and her sorority sisters have asked for blood donations.
Haufler and Tucker were injured in an accident near Banning early Thursday morning when the truck they were in overturned.
Theresa Lynn Kincheloe, 22, also a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and Aleck Nicholas Edwards II, 22, a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, were killed in the accident.
Persons who want to give blood—type 0 negative—should go to the Red Cross Headquarters at 1200 S. Vermont Ave., and ask that their blood be credited to Tucker at the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs.
More information may be obtained by calling Kathy Hawkins of Kappa Alpha Theta at 746-8542 or 748-0009.
to the shop to learn before puberty. The upper-class children postponed learning the alphabet. The polite arts did not include reading.”
Havelock said the first surviving samples of the Greek alphabet are dated somewhere between 750 and 690 B.C.
“That is when we can assume the system was invented,” he said, “unless we are to suppose long prior use of the invention (the alphabet) before this time . without any practice of inscription, which is unlikely.”
Havelock said it took a long time for the alphabet to take hold as a primary tool of communication. The times were marked instead by a highly proficient, oral tradition.
“There was oral storage in an edifice of contrived language,” he said. “That edifice can only have been the Homeric poems.” “In the fifth and sixth centuries, the curriculum involved ‘musicae.’ ”
He said verses were recited to groups accompanied by wood and string instruments and dancing.
Early samples of Greek writing reflect the strong oral tradition, Havelock said. Words found on such things as vases and statues have characteristics of a verbal structure rather than a written one.
“The samples that are decipherable are metrical,” he said. “Also, what is written is something that is being said aloud. It has the quality of an oral statement. There is a voice to the object. Conversation carries as light as the wind. The object alone remains visible and permanent.”
(continued on page 5/
By Marcus Oviatt
Staff Writer
The first citizens to implement the Greek alphabet in Athens were not the aristocrats, as one might expect, but the craftsmen of the city.
In a lecture entitled “The Oral and Written Word Before Plato,” Eric Havelock, a Sterling professor emeritus of classics and philosophy at Yale University, said literacy as we think of it was not a fashionable pursuit.
Havelock appeared Tuesday as the guest speaker at a symposium sponsored by the Let-
ERiC HAVELOCK
ters, Arts and Sciences honors program.
“At first, craftsmen and traders were the only ones who used the alphabet,” he said. “Until the middle decades of the fifth century B.C., the upper classes had little motivation to learn the alphabet.
“The first writers were scratchers—sculptors, potters. The craftsmen’s children went