Daily
Trojan
Volume LXXI, Number 35
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
Wednesday, March 30, 1977
7.8% INCREASE PROPOSED
HELLO OPERATOR — A telephone repairman attempts to connect with Ma Bell after repairing a telephone line that was burned down in a fire south of the university, near Santa Barbara Avenue. DT photo by Denis Wolcott.
Fall housing rates under review
By Gary Maloney
Staff Writer
An overall housing rate increase of7.8% for 1977-78 was proposed Monday night as administrators met with members ofthe Residence Halls Coordinating Council, the student governing body of the university dorms.
The proposed increase is not uniform and breaks down to an average room rate increase of 7.1% and a board rate increase of 9%. said Guy Hubbard, director of Auxiliary Services.
The increases must be approved by Anthony Lazzaro, vice-president for business affairs, before going into effect next year.
“The facts supporting the proposed increases are significant.” Hubbard said, quoting the following rises in costs to the office of Residential Life:
•	Salary and wage increases. 7%, including minimum wage increases.
•	Cost of utilities. 24.2%.
•	Cost of maintenance (services bought from the Physical Plant facilities, reflecting their costs, labor, materials, etc.), 8.2%.
•	Cost of supplies, 6.5%.
•	Telephone expenses, 109c (includes telephone usage by resident advisors and head residents on university business, emergency calls to parents, etc.).
•	Contracted services, 10% (includes pest control, ventilation and refrigeration costs, etc.).
•	Equipment and furnfshings in the halls, 6.59c.
•	Cost of food service, broken down into two categories: increased cost of food, 8.79c and increased meal participation. 4.5% (i.e. more people are eating more of their allotted meals).
Hubbard said specific proposed housing increase rates will be broken down by classification of each facility.
Marks Tower and Birnkrant Residence Halls are classified as recently refurbished facilities. Their rate for room and board, as proposed will rise from $1,709 to SI.836 per year, an increase of 6.6%.
“Residents in these facilities will experience lower rates of increase because in recent years they have been surcharged as a result ofthe upgradingofthe residence hall. Conversely, students in housing to be refurbished next year will
have a higher rate of increase,” Hubbard said.
These newly refurbished residence halls include Trojan Hall, Marks Hall and Elisabeth von KleinSmid-Harris Hall. By the proposal, they will increase from the present $1.665to$1,836. fora 10.3%overall increase.
College-University Hall ranks as an unrefurbished facility and. according to Hubbard, will not receive major upgrading before nextyear. Itsrate will rise from $1,665 to $1,796, an increase of 7.9%.
Hubbard declined to give specific figures for Cardinal Gardens and Troy Hall, as well as Harris Plaza, Men’s West and other university apartment facilities. He said that the proposed rates, however, ranged from increases of 6.9% to 7.5%, not deviating from the general range of 7.1% for room rate increases.
Parking revenue, however, will be cycled back into the complex and will be reflected through lower rates in the Troy and Cardinal facilities, he said. “This will prevent rates from going very high for 1977-78. We consider it a fair and honest process,” Hubbard said.
The same concept of cycling extra revenue back into the facility, he said, has been followed for years with the summer programs that rent out use of the residences.
“Summer income goes to pay for the fall program and the university has not asked for any of that income for general university use. The same applies to vending machines, washing machines and similar forms of income — after costs for the operation are deducted, the money goes back into the facility,” he said.
Art students, administrator discuss prof tenure denial
By Shelley Hoose
Staff Writer
Art students who boycotted classes Monday to protest the denial of tenure to James DeFrance, assistant professor of fine arts, met Tuesday with Paul Hadley, interim academic vice-president. Hadley explained to the students the reasons for DeFrance’s denial, but neither party would comment.
“It would not be a kindness to DeFrance to have specifics discussed. All that can be said is the President’s committee found him deficient in one or more of those areas (stated in the Faculty Handbook as criteria for determing tenure approval),” Hadley said.
He said the university provides grievance procedures DeFrance can follow if he decides to take further action.
As far as the students are concerned, the key to the issue is if the appeal can still be reversed.
Peter Duke, who first organized the boycott, said, “We wouldn’t be doing all this if there weren’t a chance (of reversal).” He added that he might not continue his studies at the university if the denial stands.
Hadley told the students who met with him that he did not think the decision could be reversed, Duke said.
A teaching assistant in the art department said he thinks DeFrance will take further legal steps for his tenure to be reconsidered.
The TA said DeFrance is the only artist at the department who is internationally known, and his presence at the university determines if “the art department will, sink or swim.”
DeFrance met Tuesday with Hadley and Ruth Weisberg, acting associate dean in the School of Architecture and Fine Arts, to find outthe reasons for hisdenial. upon which he declined comment. Prior to Tuesday, neither he nor Weisberg had been informed why his appeal was denied.
Weisberg said an art personnel committee made up of faculty, both tenured and untenured, is elected by the department The committee recommends its decision to the associate dean and then to the dean, who makes the final recommendation to the President’s Advisory Committee on appointments and promotions.
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Anthropologist’s film wins Oscar
By Valerie Nelson
Assistant City Editor
Elderly Jews and a yearn to study the ways of grow-ingold helped earn an Academy Award fora professor here.
Number Our Days won Monday in the Best Achievement in Documentary Short Subjects category. But for Barbara Myerhoff, a professor of anthropology who wrote and narrated the film, the rewards of making it came much earlier.
The 30-minute color film focuses on the lives of elderly Eastern Jews in a community center in Venice, Calif., and the rewards came from what the film meant to the old people it was about, Myerhoff said in an interview Tuesday.
She sat in her office in the Social Sciences Building, with pictures of old people on the walls and a mock Oscar given to her by her students sitting on a cabinet, and talked about a celebration.
“What the film meant to me is what is meant to the people it was about. These forgotten people were given a celebration of their lives,” she said.
Whether the film won the award or not. Myerhoff felt she had made a personal statement about old people’s lives.
She admitted the honorwasnota complete surprise, because “I had lots of reason to hope. I always wanted to make a film for those people, and the film was made without compromise.
“It is very’ significant that Hollywood thought so
much of it to give it world-wide honor. The film was made by two women, for public television, and it’s about old people and Jews,” she said, adding. “It must be a year for ethnic themes,” i n reference to the television sequel Roots.
The idea of making her first film came out of her role as project director for a study on the cultural aspects of aging at the Ethel Percy AndrosGerontology Center.
Myerhoff called the film’s inception “a logical decision. Their culture is dying and I have a desire to preserve it as fully as possible.
“The old people at the center used to say a 11 the time, ‘Oh, we’ll win all the Academy Awards.’ They had a sense of their own worth, of their own magic,” Myerhoff said.
“The magic (in making the film) came from Dr. Myerhoff and the incredible old people,” said Lynn Littman, as she accepted the award. Littman of KCET, produced and directed the film. She added that the old people gave her insight into her Jewish heritage and an exuberance for old age.
The project began when Littman met Myerhoff at a woman’s conference where Myerhoff was showing slides of her studies at the center. Littman approached her after the show with the idea of making a film, Myerhoff said.
Myerhoff had approached other people before about making a film, but they said “who wants to watch old people?”
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BARBARA MYERHOFF
'The old people at the center used to say all the time, 'Oh, we'll win all the Academy Awards.' They had a sense of their own worth, of their own magic.'