Daily |Ji Trojan
University of Southern California
Volume LXX, Number 12	Los Angeles, California	Tuesday, October 5, 1976
Staff breakfast draws union demonstration
President Ford speaks here at noon Thursday
President Gerald R. Ford will speak from the steps of Doheny Library at noon Thursday.
The President’s speech will be directed to convocation of first-time voters and is open to the general public.
Gov. Jimmy Carter has also been invited to speak here, but there has been no confirmation of his appearance.
No major presidential contenders have spoken on campus since 1960, when Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy inaugurated the university’s First-time Voters Convocation.
President John R. Hubbard said, “We are hopeful that just as the historic presidential debates of 1960 are being repeated this year, the appearance of both major candidates at USC will be repeated.”
Ford’s address will require the closing of Doheny Library from midnight on Wednesday until 2 p.m. Thursday. The opening of the library’s new undergraduate reading room may also be delayed.
GERALD R. FORD
YES OR NO—Signs reflect the decision university custodians are faced with concerning the issue of unionization. DT photo by John Sapone.
POLICE SEEK SUSPECT
Kidnap probe continues
Police are continuing their investigation into the attempted kidnapping on Sept. 23 of an 18-year-old female student in front of the University Hilton.
A second incident, reported the following day and possibly involving the same suspect, is also under investigation.
Leads are sketchy in the search for an 18-to 20-year-old black male who was wearing a green Army-style fatigue jacket and a blue cap at the time of the first incident, said Sgt. Lawrence Townsend of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southwest Division.
Sgt. Townsend said he received a report the following day from another female student who said she was approached by a man fitting the same description as the kidnap suspect while she walked to her car.
The student said she was in the parking lot just east of Figueroa Street and 35th Street when the man, described as being of slight build and rough complexion, ap-
proached her, asking where she was going.
After giving him a fictitious answer, she said the man replied, “fine,” and walked away. She said he first walked toward campus, then turned south toward Exposition Boulevard.
In the first incident, the student told police she was studying in her car, which was parked in frontofthe hotel,ataboutlO a.m.
She said the man walked up to her twice while she was studying. The second time, she said, the man reached into the car, unlocked the door and pulled out a gun. He told her to move over because they were “going for a ride.”
Following a brief scuffle in which she wrestled the gun away from him, the man left the scene.
Sgt. Townsend said patrols in the area have been stepped up, and officers have been advised to be on the look-out for the man.
BY vENTSCHOaNECHT
Staff writer
University employees and MECHA representatives picketed Monday for unionization at President John R. Hubbard’s annual breakfast for staff.
About 23 janitors, gardeners and students demonstrated to show “there are workers on the campus who want unionization,” said Salvidor Martinez, a participant ir. the MECHA-organized event.
Protestors carried signs that read “USC supports bureaucrats, MECHA supports unionization” and “We want benefits, not promises.” Nearly a dozen signs, some of them in Spanish, were carried.
MECHA, a student organization, charged that, in the past, custodians and gardeners were the only university employees excluded from staff breakfasts and that the invitation to attend on Monday was a move designed to placate the workers. But a spokesman from Hubbard’s office said every Operations and Maintenance worker has always been invited.
MECHA was not invited to attend the breakfast, but Martinez said there was no negative response to the demonstration from other employees as they left the breakfast.
Custodians and gardeners represent about 260 of the university’s 480 Operations and Maintenance workers. All of the workers can vote on Oct. 21 on Teamster representation.
Many of the rest of the workers— electricians, plumbers and other tradesmen—say they do not want to be represented by the Teamsters.
Chuck O’Regan, an electrician, said the group would not be a good representative
of the workers because it is basically a trucking union, not a trade union like the AFL-CIO.
“They’re not going to represent the employees—they’d be trying to get control of the campus,” O’Regan said. “Then, if some trucking local needed support, they could shut down the whole campus, because we’d have to go on strike for them.”
O’Regan said that, while the custodians do represent the majority of Operations and Maintenance workers, it is not a fair representation because they are not in the same category as the tradesmen.
“We re trades people,” O’Regan said. “We all had to start as journeymen and it took most of us five or six years to get where we are.”
Many of the electricians and other tradesmen feltthe fairest way to deal with the problem of unionization would be to reclassify the workers into specialized and nonspecialized labor. That way the union could negotiate to represent the custodial faction, which supports it. and the tradesmen would not be involved.
But negotiations to reclassify and divide the workers cannot proceed until after the election because of the time element involved. And by then, those workers who object to union representation may find it is already too late to do anything.
Some of the tradesmen complain that union representatives have never approached them about unionization. “All they do is go to the janitors, because they know that over there they have the majority,” one worker said. “They never asked us about money or anything. It’s like we don’t mean anything.”
Academic qualifications of freshmen up, council told
The academic qualifications of this year’s entering freshman class is higher than ever before, said Zohrab A. Kaprielian, executive vice-president.
The average grade-point average of enrolled freshmen, including 100 students in the Experimental Admissions pro-
gram, is 3.32, compared to last year’s 3.25 average, Kaprielian said in an admissions report to the President’s Advisory Council.
He said the increase is not the result of grade inflation. The average Scholastic Aptitude Test score rose 30 points this year for freshmen who applied to the university, while the national average dropped three points.
Kaprielian explained the university’s plan to increase the selectivity of admissions to improve the quality of students. “The university does not wish to increase the number of students in the entering class,” he said, “but does wish to increase the pool of applicants from which we derive the entering class.”
Already the applicant pool has increased. The number of undergraduates, graduate and professional applicants this fall totaled 16,283, compared to last year’s 15,257 total. Admissions actually decreased .1% this fall with 10,566 new enrollments, compared to 10,576 in 1975.
Despite the slight decrease in admissions, Kaprielian said, “Based on past records, we did not suffer any setbacks. And we’ll be able to meet our budget.”
While the quality of students has increased, so has the quality of services to students, said James L. Jones, the current acting director of Student Administrative Services, in his report to the council.^
He said a change in organization in the financial aid department has reduced the problems that students have had in the past. '
“Last year, out of 7,000 individuals who had financial aid needs, 50c7c had errors on their aid packets. This year, out of
10,000	packages, there were less than 1% with errors,” Jones said.