Seventy-Fifth Year of Publication
dMHy trojan
Volume Cll, Number 18
University of Southern California
1912 — 1986
Thursday, September 25, 1986
FEATURE
Ski Club changes locale, offers trips and more service
By Sue Fogarty
Staff Writer
The university Ski Club, which provides students and faculty with several ski trip opportunities throughout the year, is kicking off the new season.
The Ski Club, open to experienced, as well as first-time skiers, has relocated this year in order to provide better services to its members. The new headquarters is located in the USC Adventure Center lounge in the YWCA building at 36th and Hoover streets on campus.
"It's much more convenient," Rick Agnelli, manager of the Adventure Center, said. Last year the Ski Club was located in the Student Union, and did not have specific office hours. "Now we are always open from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday," Agnelli said. During these hours there is always a member available to answer questions.
In addition to offering members discounts on the various trips that it sponsors, the Ski Club also offers many other services and bonuses. With the $20 membership, members receive a Ski Ciub t-shirt, a membership card, a 10 percent discount on (Continued on page 8)
Teaching assistants exempted
Council urges continued tax suspension
By Katherine Dyar
Assistant City Editor
While the new federal tax bill awaits approval from Congress this month, an organization of
19	major research universities has agreed to continue suspending tax on graduate teaching assistants' tuition remission until a decision on the new bill is reached.
Dennis Dougherty, vice president of finance, said that the Council on Governmental Relations, a group of research universities that includes Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, agreed that it would not move to withhold taxes on the tuition remission that graduate TAs will receive in September.
Doughtery said the council, which discussed its decision at a meeting in Pennsylvania two weeks ago, agreed not to withhold the taxes because of optimistic reports it was receiving from Washington about tuition remission that reassured universities the tax bill would not affect graduate TAs.
Under current law, graduate TAs are considered to have an employee relationship with the university and are supposed to be taxed on their stipends and tuition remission.
Graduate research assistants, however, are not required to pay taxes on either their stipends or their tuition remission.
Dougherty said that research assistants are exempt because in 99 percent of their cases they are working for a principal investigator whose research is funded by the federal government.
Since the work they do is published with their graduate theses, it is considered a part of the degree requirement, he said.
However, TAs do not fall in the same category, Dougherty said, because most graduate students are not required to take teaching fellowships to complete their degree requirements.
"Because the teaching activity is not a part of (a TA's) academic requirement, the government is saying (the universities) have to recognize that work as generating an employer/employee relationship," which makes the tuition remission taxable under the current law, he said.
"If we'd followed the letter of the law, we would've started deducting at this level last January (1986), but we've been told and told and told, 'hey, we're not going to let this happen,' so we haven't withheld," Dougherty said.
"We're in violation of the tax
law as it stands now, but so is every major research university in the country," he said.
The tax law that has applied to university employees since the beginning of this year requires those pursuing graduate degrees to have taxes withheld from their tuition remission because it is seen as part of their employee compensation.
Those employees who have dependents attending graduate school at the university also have taxes withheld.
The government "doesn't recognize that the remission is not cash," he said. "The graduate student is paying taxes on nonliquid revenue."
In cases evaluated by the university, the monthly income of some TAs could drop by as much as $275, Dougherty said.
To counter this, the university is considering several alternative ways to adjust the TA stipends to lessen the impact of the increased taxes.
"If the tax law doesn’t come through, which is supposedly only now a five percent possibility, we would need to increase their stipends or else we wouldn't be attractive as a university for a graduate student," Dougherty said.
Although the council agreed
to postpone enforcing the remission tax, Dougherty said, it will continue to evaluate the situation of the graduate students monthly to try to prevent any back taxes for the students if the bill fails.
"It was very brave for us to say we're going to force Congress to do something by fall or we're going to start withholding, but we can't do that to the students," he said.
The council is asking that the bill be retroactive so that tuition remission taxes accrued after last July 1 not be collected. Instead, the TAs would only be taxed on their stipends, thereby eliminating any taxes_ owed on tuition remission, CJougherty said.
Crash trauma to be studied
By Lori Grange
Staff Writer
Media representatives present at the crash site of an Aeromex-ico jetliner and a small private plane in Cerritos Aug. 30 are the
subject of a new research project being conducted in part by the university.
The Aeromexico Accident Study will analyze the psychological effects of the Cerritos -
tragedy on the press and other disaster workers, researchers said at a news conference yesterday at the Institute of Systems and Safety Management.
The study is being conducted by three principal researchers, including Dr. Elliot Mittler, assistant professor of systems management at the university.
"The media has never been looked at as the hidden victim of a disaster. We'd like to see exactly how you've responded to this incident," John P. Keating, head researcher of the project, told the press yesterday.
Keating, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington, said that for every victim, 10 "hidden victims" — people other than victims or victims' families — are affected by a disaster.
The study will focus on American Red Cross, fire, ambulance, and media personnel present at Cerritos and how the disaster has affected them, researchers said.
"We want to study the experiences of the media who were there so that we can create recommendations for (dealing with) the next event," Keating said.
Researchers began the study last Monday, and have distributed over 150 questionnaires and interviewed over 50 people so far.
While Keating said it was "too early to tell" what kind of reactions to expect from the project, he said they might be similar to those studied after last year's Delta DC-10 air crash in Dallas.
"Our team of researchers and (Continued on page 6)
Career Day goes on despite rain showers
Students offered job opportunities
By Karen Martinez
Staff Writer
Yesterday's unexpected rain shower dampened wool business suits and cardboard displays at this semester's Career Day, but didn't stop interested students from gathering job information from prospective employers.
The event was originally scheduled to take place at Alumni Park but was relocated to the Von KleinSmid center because of the weather, said Stephen Cheney-Rice, assistant director of the Career Development Center.
As director of the event, Cheney-Rice had been organizing since June by mailing invitations to organizations ranging from the Central Intelligence Agency to Clorox.
Five of the 75 companies scheduled to take part did not attend.
For those students who missed the event, there will be other opportunities to meet with the organizations, said Gar Crosper, assistant director of career counseling at the Career Development Center.
All companies will be doing on-campus interviews between Sept. 29 and Nov. 19. Career Day was an opportunity for students to meet the organizations before interviews begin and to encourage students who haven't already signed up to do so. Registration will take place two weeks prior to the interviews.
Attendance at Career Day usually ranges from about 2,000 to 2,200 people, Cheney-Rice said, but he estimated that approximately 1,200 people participated in yesterday's event.
The weather "dampened the enthusiasm," he said.
Originally Career Day was directed toward engineering and minority students to support the university's affirmative action program, but the fair now runs on "an open basis," Cheney-Rice said.
The two groups of students who might have benefited most from Career Day are business and engineering majors, Cheney-Rice said. There were also representatives from organizations such as the Pillsbury Company looking for students with a liberal arts background for sales and product management jobs, he said.
NCR Corp., a San Diego based computer company, has been coining to Career Day for years, said NCR representative Andy Esparza. He said that they came here looking for "anywhere from
20	to 50 people."
Students can hope for better weather at the next Career Day, which has been planned for Wednesday, Jan. 21.