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Volume XCI Number 55	University of Southern California	Wednesday, November 18, 1981
I. F. Stone criticizes government, claims policies are too simplistic
Staff photo by Pamela Veasey
I. F. STONE
LOCAL PROBLEMS DISCUSSED
Area leaders plan conference
By Alan Grossman
Staff Writer
Over 50 representatives of organizations within the Exposition Park area and the university met Monday night to formulate plans for a future conference in which they hope to find solutions to community problems.
Those who attended the meeting at Saint Mark’s Lutheran Church previously had sent in questionnaires, the tabulation of which report that eight outstanding areas of concern were pinpointed for either clarification (urban planning) or correction (crime). The eight categories were as follows: small business and its survival.
housing, crime, employment and business, USC/City Redevelopment Agency, public services, the 1984 Olympics and cultural and recreational activities.
The opening remarks by Thomas Kilgore, leader of the proposed conference, outlined the proceedings. Kilgore, associated with the Greater University Parish, explained at the outset that the meeting was to be “the beginning of a process” which would culminate in a two-day conference where the entire community, its leaders and city leaders would gather and iron out the problems.
Emphasizing that the meeting was not the conference but
By Wendell Mobley
Staff Writer
I. F. Stone, the journalist who shook the nation’s capital by overturning boulders, searching every cranny and confronting lawmakers with facts and figures, stood silent Monday evening when asked to address the question of women’s rights.
It provided the only moment of silence of the evening.
After briefly stammering and stuttering, he responded to the woman’s question, “I agree with everything you want me to say.”
Speaking to a university audience, Stone touched on issues ranging from the arms race to peace in the Middle East, from President Reagan’s administration to the requirements of a good newspaper reporter.
"the first giant step,” Kilgore said small group discussions would determine how each problem will be faced.
The leader of the small business group said his people felt most concerned about possible government contracts for the area, marketing and capitalizing on existing businesses, parking facilities for both customers and employees, and he called for some type of community-wide business association.
The housing group singled out the need for low- and mod-erate-income housing and housing facilities for senior citizens and the handicapped.
(Continued on page 16)
“Ronald Reagan has been called the Great Communicator — he’s not really a communicator, he’s a great salesman, and a great salesman can sell anything . . . once,” Stone said, as he critiqued Reagan and his administration.
The journalist said his main criticism of the administration is that the president is forming his policies on “gross oversimplifications.”
Reagan is not a conservative. Stone said. “It is ... an administration that is prepared to risk the economy and social stability on very dubious economic propositions.” He said he endorsed what Vice President George Bush termed “voodoo economics.”
“It’s amazing how people get so rich and remain so stupid. You wonder how they made a lot of money,” Stone said.
He cited Franklin Roosevelt as a president who worked for the public’s benefit, comparing the current economic situation with the one during Roosevelt’s administration.
Today, instead of a worldwide deflation, a worldwide inflation exists, and that means the world is living beyond its means, he said. “Sacrifices are necessary. And the question comes: Who is going to make the sacrifices? And are they going to be equally distributed?”
Stone mentioned France’s new socialist government as an example of what Reagan should do. “It (France) has the courage to pull the reins on its own constituency. To administer castor oil to your own friends for their own good — that takes guts.
“And we have a right to hope that a conservative administration in the United States would have the guts to administer castor oil to its own
constituency and bring the budget under control.”
He said if Reagan had faced the facts, the president would have realized that the economic program would not work. He said that during the first weeks the administration was in office, it had access to a computer and tested out its economic policies.
“The computer came up with the figure of something like a deficit of $82 billion for fiscal ’82 and $116 billion for fiscal ’84,” he said. “And it shocked the hell out of them.
“What do you think they did? They wrent out and bought a new computer.” He said the administration then programmed the computer with its own misconceptions.
Stone said the president should have said that he would initiate the tax cuts a few years down the road and could have told the Pentagon to be satisfied with the increases in military' spending made by former President Jimmy Carter. If the president had taken such measures, there would have been a surplus of $40 billion by 1984. he said.
“There’s never been such an . . . enormous, scandalous shift of wealth from the poor to the super-rich as has occurred under the Reagan administration,” Stone stated.
The journalist said he did not support the military’s implementation of super-sophisticated weaponry on the battlefield. “Traveling into battle in a Cadillac is not very wise,” Stone said. “All we hear from are the big companies that live off the defense program. The combat officer and the combat soldier who has to use the damn weapons are too rarely heard from.
(Continued on page 3)
Administrators differ on community relations
Apathy, lack of time limit student participation
By Dave Fisher
Staff Writer
A growing concern persists among community residents that students do not care about the area outside the university. They feel that students only notice the community when it affects them in an adverse way, such as the recent rash of rapes and robberies that have plagued the campus — crimes that some have blamed on the community.
University administrators do not question the fact that the university should play an active role in improving relations with the community, but they do disagree about what part students' should play in the process.
“It's really difficult for students to become involved because they're so busy,” said Ernest Cioffi, director of resource planning and management in the College of Continuing Education. “It’s not easy being a full-time student. It’s a very demanding ‘occupation.’
“We (the university) are heavily
involved (in community relations) but there aren’t a whole helluva lot of students involved in the process.”
Thomas Kilgore, adviser/director of Special Community Affairs disagrees. “My feeling is that students are a part of the community and should take part in it. The problem with students is that they don’t understand the community and don’t feel they have a responsibility to it. There are many things in the community other than crime.
“Students ought to be instrumental in helping people in the community.”
Cioffi said students usually fail to take an interest in the community because they live in the area only during the time they are attending the university.
“Students go to a university to get a degree,” he sai'-’ “II"* really difficult to become involved when you don’t know anything about the community. But many students do have the sense that they are preparing for
the future to face the kinds of problems, we (as a university) face.” However, Kilgore said he believes that students must become involved in the community.
“We (the students and residents) are a part of the same community,” he said. “A student comes here to live, not to hide. The student becomes a part of the community because he or she devotes four years of life to living here.
“An urban university needs a flavor of urban life,” he continued. “It can’t treat it (the community) as a guinea pig by studying it without interacting with it. We can’t keep perpetuating the ‘we’ and the ‘they.’ ” But both men agree that students cannot be forced to work with the community. It is up to the individual student whether he or she wants to help improve the university’s relations with area residents.
Cioffi said his office is involved in such programs as training Indo-Chinese refugees to adapt to Ameri-
can culture, providing hot lunches and conducting field trips for senior citizens and running mini-colleges for elementary and secondary school students, training them to handle problems they may confront later.
“In the last 10 years, the university has been pretty responsive to the community’s needs with programs such as ours and those of other university offices, such as JEP (Joint Educational Project),” Cioffi said. “The problem is, how can one use student power to help Indo-Chinese refugees in the neighborhood?
“Whatever the case, I think both students and the community can benefit from interacting with each other,” he added.
According to Kilgore, Special Community Affairs is an advocacy and access office. “We open up avenues where people from the university can communicate with people from the community,” he said. “We try to set up meetings between students and people in the community.”