Panel recommends Sigma Nu sanctions
DCJncD’C	Staff photo by Joe Fives
READER S ROOST — A student finds the Gothic columns and courtyard of Mudd Hall conducive to quiet, outdoor study.
By David Wharton
Staff Writer
A panel of administrators representing the university’s Student Conduct System met with Sigma Nu fraternity officials Friday and have presented to the Office of Residential Life a recommendation for official action in response to a possible hazing incident.
The alleged hazing involved two Sigma Nu pledges who were stripped to their underwear and left tied to a highway sign near Bakersfield on Oct. 6. The two were found by California Highway Patrol officers and transferred to the Kern County Sherrif’s Department, which arranged for their safe return to the university.
Jeremy Stringer, Residential Life director, has 10 days from the date of the hearing to consider the panel's recommended
trojan
Volume XCI Number
University of Southern California
Wednesday, October 21, 1981
Leak attributed to human error
Valve possibly turned in wrong direction
By Jeff Schmidt
Staff Writer
Officials now claim that Tuesday’s evacuation of the Physical Education Building due to a chlorine gas leak can be attributed in part to human error.
Juan Portuondo, general manager of the Am weld Corporation— which supplies the university with the chlorine tanks — insists that the valve on the allegedly faulty tank was in perfect working order at the time of the accident and that the emergency technicians who attempted to shut the valve off simply neglicted to
shut it off properly.
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According to a source at the university’s Physical Plant who asked not to be identified, university engineers had attempted to shut the valve as tightly as possible with a w'rench, but the tank continued to leak. He also said that firemen confirmed this.
Portuondo speculated that perhaps the officials w'ho at-temped to close the valve mistakenly turned it in the wrong direction, causing it to become stuck in an open position.
"Maybe somebody did not
close the valve the way it should have been closed. Maybe instead of going clockwise, they went counterclockwise,” he said.
John Derthick of John’s Chemical Supplies, the company which dispatched emergency personnel onto campus Tuesday and supplies Amweld with its chlorine products, agreed with Portuondo. “The valve was still open when it got to us. All we did was put a standard valve wrench on it and stopped the leak right there on the truck. We had no trouble at all shutting the valve
off.”
Derthick said these types of chlorine tanks and valves are “pretty damn foolproof and that 99 9/10 percent of the time this type of occurrence can be attributed to the operators.”
He added that Amwald has nothing to do with the servicing of the tank: “They just supply USC with the cylinder and USC’s people are supposed to know how to operate it.”
Harry KyHe, director of the Physical Plant, was unavailable for comment.
sanction and will release an official statement when he has made a final decision. The review period provides Stringer with adequate time to be sure the recommendation is just.
Dale Nienow, associate director of Residential Life, said he expects the decision will be finalized and made public by late this afternoon.
“He (Stringer) is considering the recommendation and is in conversation with the national fraternity headquarters prior to finalizing a recommendation to me on this matter,” said James Appleton, vice president of Student Affairs, who is responsible for all Student Conduct System decisions and is working with Stringer on this decision.
“I am very certain there will be severe sanctions; f am just not sure how severe,” said Brad Wilier, president of the Interfratemity Council, which will issue a statement of its position on the university sanction when the official report is made public.
“I have no quarrel with the reprimand’s being severe. How far the university will go with the reprimand is what is in question at this point,” the president said.
Sanctions available to the panel included issuing a warning, probation, suspension or pulling the fraternity’s charter. The conduct-review panel also had many "creative sanctions” from which to choose, Nienow said.
“The board tries to come up with decisions appropriate to the situation and consistent with past decisions,” he said. "The more serious the allegation and the incident, the more careful the review and the more thorough the process we go through.”
Student Conduct System sanctions aim at holding the responsible parties accountable for their actions and helping them learn from the situation so they do not repeat the violation.
(Continued on page 12)
Help offered for depressed overachievers
This is the last in the three-part series on cognitive therapy.
By Mark Gill Assistant Feature Editor
Sally (not her real name) had taken a psychology test, received an A, and said ghe was going to kill herself.
The doctor asked why: “Wasn't it a high enough A?” She told him that it was the highest grade in the class, and again he asked why.
Because, she said, she could never keep it up.
Admittedly, there are not many who suffer from the stress of maintaining such high expectations. But academic pressures affect students now more than ever as they compete for what few employment opportunities exist.
Gary Emery is the doctor in the above dialogue. He recognizes the burden which such academic pressures impose and is attempting to remedy the situation. To that end, he has offered his expertise for a series of Daily Trojan articles.
The first piece (Sept. 11) briefly touched on all aspects of the theory in a broad sense, while the second (Oct. 7) examined treatment of depression resulting from difficulties in relationships. This article will examine the treatment of depression asso-
ciated with academic and professional pressure.
Dr. Emery, consultant at the university's Andrus School of Gerontology and director of the Center for Cognitive Therapy, helped develop cognitive therapy and has written four books and numerous articles on the subject. He described the symptoms of various sorts of depression (most of w’hich reflect a lack of self-control) and offered his solution — “teaching people how to become aware of and change their distorted thinking.”
MOre specifically. Emery treats his patients by 1) identifying symptoms such as sadness, apathy or guilt; 2) finding the problems which lead to those symptoms; 3) uncovering the thinking patterns which lead to the problems; 4) developing a program to solve the problems by changing thinking patterns, thereby returning the patient to a stable plateau; and 5) discovering the underlying beliefs or expectations which set the depressed up for depression.
"Students most bothered and overwhelmed are the ones who have really high standards,” Emery said.
These perfectionists frequently ask themselves, “Who wants to be average?” Often they acknowledge their
relentless standards as stressful and somew’hat unreasonable, but will not give them up. These people strain compulsively and unremittingly in hopes of achieving unreachable goals. They measure their own worth almost exclusively in terms of productivity and accomplishment.
However, many scientists believe that these perfectionists are sacrificing themselves by decreasing their productivity, impairing their health (losing self-control and having difficulty in relationships, as well as physically impairing themselves) and lowering their self-esteem.
Perfectionists also appear to be vulnerable to mood disorders such as social anxiety, test and writer’s block. In short, perfectionists’ thinking patterns are not only unrealistic, but also detrimental to the success for which they strive.
College freshmen and students venturing onto unfamiliar ground are also victims of perfectionistic thinking, albeit not necessarily in a chronic sense.
“(Many) go in thinking it will be great, but instead of being good, the experience is bad.” Emery said. “They lose faith in their abilities and become depressed.
(Continued on page 12)