Daily § Trojan
University of Southern California
Volume LXXII, Number 54	Los Angeles, California	Friday, December 9, 1977
Task force will consider possibility of coed Men’s West, male Birnkrant
By Marc Corman and Merilynne Cohen
Staff Writers
A task force is studying the possibility of changing Men’s Residence West to a coed dorm and making Birnkrant Residence Hall an all-male facility next year.
That would be the major change in a number of topics to be discussed at a meeting today of the Office of Residential Life task force.
Other proposed changes in-
clude making four floors in Marks Tower for males and three for females. Currently, four floors are female and three are male.
In addition, the number of male residents in College-University Residence Hall would be cut down to about 20 from the current 70.
Hans Reichl, director of the office, said there are two main reasons for the possible changes: a lack of women on the west side of campus and the
NOT TOO BAD — A guitarist for Bad Boy really enjoyed playing on the Student Activities Center patio at lunchtime Wednesday. A large audience turned out to hear the band play, despite the cool weather. DT photo by Doug Gray.
MEChA planning legal action against university
By David Hall
Staff Writer
Members of MEChA are planning legal action against the university due to a skirmish between a custodian and campus security officers on the night of Dec. 2 after the unionization election at the Physical Plant.
According to a report compiled by MEChA, containing the statements of Enrique Grajeba and witnesses of the incident. Grajeba was beaten by six to eight Campus Security officers after the election. where the workers voted down joining the Teamsters Union.
Raphael Santamaria, a spokesman for MEChA, said a large group of employees had been gathered in the parking lot across from the Physical Plant at approximately 10:30 p.m., having been released from work early following the election.
According to Santamaria, who was translating the report that was written in Spanish, an officer came over and told them tJiey could be there until 2 a.m.. but to keep it down.
"But, he came back a little later with three other officers,” Santamaria said. “Then, the original officer said they had one minute to leave. When they noticed Grajeba had a beverage in his hand, they told him to throw it down and leave.
He then walked away with the drink, and it was then they jumped him. Two grabbed him from behind and another began beating him from the front. More joined in, hitting him with sticks and kicking him. Six or eight officers beat him for about five minutes. There were about 15 officers there.”
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need to establish a proper men-to-women ratio.
Barbara Tracy, an area coordinator for the office, said the university is required to have proportionally equal spaces for men and women based on the number of housing applications received.
Right now, 1.4 men apply for housing to every 1 woman applicant. The university does not quite have that proportion of actual spaces now and needs more spaces for males, Tracey said.
By making the possible changes, approximately 50 more spaces would be made a-vailable.
He said there has been no formal request by students for the changes.
However, input is involved in the task force, he said.
Reichl hopes a formal proposal for the changes will emerge from today’s task force meeting.
If so. the proposal would then move upward to a final decision by the Board of Trustees, Reichl said.
One male resident of Birnkrant who wished to remain anonymous feels students (continued on page 9)
Med school, California Hospital discuss plans for possible affiliations
By Marsha Johnston
Staff Writer
Negotiations are being conducted between the university’s medical school and the California Hospital Medical Center to reach an official, institutional affiliation agreement.
An institutional affiliation developes broader educational programs, allowing students serving internships to use a wider variety of hospital facilities.
The medical school has similar agreements with Rancho Los Amigos. Los Angeles County General. Orthopedic, Los Angeles Children’s, John Wesley Hospitals and other health care institutions.
Students are currently involved in an exchange program with the California Hospital Medical Center’s pediatrics ward.
“We have over some time been working to develop programs where there could be institutional affiliation,” said Allen W. Mathies, Jr., dean of the medical school. “We re at the point now where that could take place.
“We still have to set the criteria (for the agreement). How many doctors involved is worked out on a departmental basis because the (educational) requirements for surgery differ from those of pediatrics.”
The California Hospital Medical Center is a 325-bed general care hospital in downtown Los Angeles. It houses the Southern California Cancer Center and California Hospital Center School of Nursing, the only private nursing school in Southern California.
The center already has one or more teaching programs per day in medical, obstetrics/gynecology, surgery, pediatics and general practice that provide various medical students with continuing education credits.
"To get into broader educational programs, you often need a university base,” Mathies said.
There are several advantages to becoming a teaching hospital, he said. Affiliation gives the hospital a closer, working relationship with the medical school’s specialists.
The hospital’s ability to attract patients is often enhanced because a broader teaching program is, in part, an index of quality, Mathies said.
Medical staff with the ability to teach and practice simultaneously are inevitably drawn to a teaching hospital.
Through the interaction of the hospital and university facilities, the care of hospital patients can be upgraded.
"The average age of practicing physicians is 50, so how do you (a hospital) attract young doctors?" Mathies said. “If students use the hospital during their education, they may send their patients there when they get a private practice."
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‘Star Wars’ writer-director says film was disappointment for him
By Rori Benka
Staff Writer
Star Wars, the all-time box office success, was a disappointment for George Lucas, its writer/director, who spoke Thursday to a packed group of cinema students and professors in Norris Theatre.
Lucas, who majored in cinema at the university during the 60s, made a comfortable return to the campus in a closed-door presentation of his^ works as a student and professional. No publicity for the visit was announced and the doors were shut to many members of the press. A small, quiet man whose screen techniques dazzled audiences around the world, Lucas softly told the group that he expected more out of Star Wars than was humanly possible.
“I'm the only one who knows it’s a shadow of what it could have been and it kills me that it turned out like that," he said. He described its production as "painful, frustrating and only 25% of what it could have been.”
American Graffiti, a Lucas production taken from his high school experiences, reached what he considered to be 50% of its potential.
"In Graffiti, we did the best we could with what limitations and money we had. But with Star Wars, the frustrations grew with a bigger budget and staff and the expectations that came along with the movie.”
Star Wars took five years to make from conception to release, with a $9.5-million budget and 1,000 people working on it. American Graffiti, on the other hand, was shot in 28 days, mostly at night, with a considerably smaller budget.
“American Graffiti was easy to film — I lived that life. But in Star Wars. I was dealing with dreams and how to bring them to reality. Reality almost always falls short of your dreams.”
The dream that Lucas had with Star Wars was to create the mythology America did not have. The story, he said, is like the classic tale told around the campfire — an exotic adventure in a far-off land.
But he took the frontierland to space and merged it with the way he saw man relating to technology — thus creating a new mythology. “Our country needs those stories — a country without mythology is a sick country,” he said.
Still, with the concept, the time and the budget, Lucas confessed that he had no idea Star Wars would become the smash it did. It was not until the film was previewed before an audience that he was encouraged of its popularity.
"I wasn't sure the film worked at all. I thought its effect would be like Planet of the Apes or 2001." Yet even with the success, Lucas said he has no real concept of it and still feels like a cinema student.
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GEORGE LUCAS