Volume XC Number 11
trojan
University of Southern California
Friday, July 24, 1981
Photo by John C. Ferraro
NO TRAFFIC— With many summer session classes ending Thursday, less people were visible making their way to Doheny Library than in the past weeks.
Knights promote spirit with book
The Trojan Knights have unveiled their 1981-82 “Athletic Sports Book."
The fold-up pamphlet will include scheduled game dates for the football. Men's basketball.and Women’s basketball teams.
Also included are the songs of Troy: Cardinal and Gold, the Fight Song. Carry On. and the Alma Mater.
Mike Cummins, President of Trojan Knights, hoped that the booklet would be used all year long. “I’m sure it will be beneficial at all games. Many students and alumni still don't know the songs and having this will make the cheering sections even larger.”
Cummins plans to debut the sports book at Summer Orientation Sessions. “We would
like to see the freshman become familiar with some of the traditions and heritage of this University...hopefully this will help.”
In the fall, the Knights will distribute booklets among the dormatories and apartments and atfootball games.
The booklet is being sponsored by Security Pacific Bank.
Study shows fertility rate at primitive level
The forces marshaled against reproduction in the United States have returned family sizes to levels characterizing primitive societies, according to a university demographer.
“The average family was quite small in primitive societies,” said Kingsley Davis, a professor of sociology attatched to the university’s Population Research Library.
“Women breastfed their babies and did so longer than women do today. That lowered their fertility and helped to space out their pregnancies. Some women might have lived without menstruating more than a few times, because they were either pregnant or nursing a child.”
Birth rates were high, Davis added, but families stayed small because the mortality rates among infants and children were high as well.
In modern Western society, the era of the big family was the 19th century, when the fertility rate had not yet adjusted to falling mortality rates.
In more recent times, the US fertility rate has dropped from a
1959	average of 3.7 births per woman per lifetime to a 1979 average of 1.8 births, according to Davis Heer, another demographer at the laboratory.
“That’s a fantastic decline,” he said. “The fertility levels of the late 1970s were the lowest recorded in US history.
“The birth rate is now moving up again, but I don't predict any dramatic increase in fertility. I would expect it to rise beyond the point of replacement by the middle 1980s— but the replacement rate is only 2.1 births per woman.”
The birth rate, Heer explained, is currently rising fastest among women aged 30 to 34. Many of the women born during the baby boom of the 1950s are now having the children they postponed in earlier years.
Another factor is likely to prop up the birth rate for a longer period— for the next 20 years or so. Men of marrying age (22.4 years on average) will outnumber women of marrying age (22.1 years on average), Heer said. This imbalance results from the difference in the numbers of male and female births in past years.
“Women will thus have a greater choice in whom to marry,” he said. “They will have more opportunities to choose older males who earn more money and who are more interested in, and financially capable of, rearing children.”
Davis predicted that, in the new 10 to 15 years, the crude birth rate— number of births per thousand of the total population— will again decline, as the women born in the baby boom of the 50s pass their reproductive prime.	_
(Continued on page 3)
Orientation continues new student tradition
By Kevin Olson
Orientation seminars for in-cor ling students are continuing throughout July and early August.
As in past years, the sessions are open to first semester freshmen or transfer students and their parents.
A demanding schedule organized by the Office of Orientation is designed to familiarize the new students with the university and complete the registration process.
Placement tests in language and math begin immediately for the students while parents spend their first morning taking campus tours.
Later in the afternoon, the soon-to-be-students and their families meet in Bovard Auditorium and listen to Dr. James Appleton and Dean Robert L. Mannes speak about “The USC Academic Experience” and what might be expected of them.
From there, the group is escorted to an Activity Fair in Alumni Park, giving the freshmen an opportunty to join campus organizations and learn more about student services.
For dinner, the freshmen eat in theBirnkrandt residence hall cafeteria.
The Trojan Marching Band concludes the first day's schedule with some entertainment
At approximately 10:00, orientation parties, which are as familiar to veteran students as Tommy Trojan, finally begin.
It is a difficult time for these freshmen and their families. Many loose ends need to be tied and plenty of questions must be answered. Without the help of the twelve Orientation Advisors, many of the freshman would assuredly be lost in a shuffle.
Their job is to answer question, give tours, make everyone feel at home, and act cheerful. They are also accredited academic advisors with the School of Letters, Arts and Sciences and must help the freshmen formulate thier schedules on the second day of the session.
Once the registration process is complete, the tired new students, after completing a crash course on the university, can go home, feeling more at ease and comfortable with the university environment.
Photo by Ed Chin
FIRST REGISTRATION— New students find that a large part of university life is taken up with Ailing out forms. These students are having their first experiences with H-cards, financial aid forms, and other paperwork that they will become familiar with during their college years.