trojan
Volume XCI Number 41	University of Southern California	Friday March 12, 1982
11 percent tuition hike may be optimistic estimate
By Laura Castaneda
Staff Writer
The proposed 11 percent increase in tuition is being termed by Jon Strauss, senior vice president of Administration, an optimistic one, therefore indicating that the suggested figure may be a minimum.
“I expect to see a higher proposal than that,” he said.
Although the exact figure is not yet known, Strauss said that a presentation to the Resource Management and Planning Commission and the Council of the Deans is expected to take place around March 30.
“That is where the whole budget proposal picture will be put together,” Strauss said.
Strauss and other high level administrators were targets of recent criticism at a Student Senate tuition strategy/information meeting held Wednesday. During the meeting, student senator Mark Slavkin. accused the administration of knowing how much tuition will increase next year. He also said the administration's method of designing the budget was backward.
The vice president responded calmly to these remarks. He said that a situation will seem a certain way “depending on how you're looking at the elephant. From where Mark is at. that's the way it looks to him."
Strauss said he had no hard feelings because of the criticism directed against him. "My view toward him (Slavkin) and the senate is mostly positive. They’re raising issues that should be raised and causing people to think.”
He said the administration will listen to them, and that they do have an effect on their decision
making. “They have always been a part of our decision making,” Strauss said.
He defended the administration's current method of designing the budget, calling the system “by far the most participative, decentralized and open process that this or any other university has ever had.”
He explained that the budget is based on projected inflation, expenditures, staff and faculty salary raises, and tuition increases. A sum is made, then sent to individual schools and centers. The administration then works in conjunction with them to decide the university budget, and each school’s and center’s budget.
“I don’t consider that a backward process,” Strauss said. “This is not the administration's budget, it’s the university's budget.”
Strauss confirmed that suggestions made by the Student Senate on how to fill the SlO to 12 million gap between its present funds and next year's budget goal without raising tuition would be considered. “There is no question that the senate's report is playing a major role in our thinking," he said.
Some of these suggestions include a stronger alumni fund-raising program, and heavier budget cuts. The vice president said, “That’s what we're doing. There are a number of areas we are working on, including reductions in administration, staff, centers and schools.”
Slavkin said that if tuition goes up as much as anticipated, transfers and applications will decrease and drop-outs will increase. However, Strauss said that the administration is working on raising university financial aid and will try to fill the gap that wilt be created by higher tuition and decreased federal aid.
Staff photo by Pam Veascy
OFF ROADING — Kappa Epsilon Phi and Kappa Alpha Theta members drive into the mud during the annual Phi Psi 500 tricycle race. Alpha Omicron Pi participants stayed on the track and won the event a yearly part of Greek Week.
Community leaders want better university relations
By Alan Grossman
Staff Writer
The consistent disagreement among community organizations about the best way to serve their constituents has contributed to their inability to form a single representative group. This has prompted Dallas Willard, chairman of the University/Neighborhood Relations Commission to describe the groups as “150 tentacles looking for an octopus.”
But despite their differences, the Central Park Five members and the 15-year-old Greater University Parish all agree that the university can be a better neighbor by contributing more time and energy to the community.
“The university is wasting its opportunity to benefit both us and itself,” said Ange Kasza, the president of the Central Park Five.
Don Ferguson, the vice president of the three-year-old North University Park Community Association, a member group of the Central Park Five, said, “The university should be talking to the people who live in the community. (Until it does that) it’s not talking to the right people."
Father Ed Penoncek. president of the Greater University Parish. said. “USC is highly respected in this community by people who don't really know it, but would like to.”
The leaders of these groups described their philosophies and their relationships with the university and each other during recent interviews.
The Greater University Parish
GUP was first formed over ten years ago, and in that time became responsible for such projects as University Gardens and the Urban Training Center. Penoncek said the goal is the same as it has always been — dealing with the various problems surrounding the university.
“We have always presumed that we would handle the problems covering the university. That’s why we have become an issue-orientated rather than a territorial organization,” Penoncek said.
“I don’t pretend that we represent the whole community, but we can at times make the powers that be slow down about decisions that effect the community,” Penoncek said, explaining
(Continued on page 7)
UNIVERSITY NOT EXPLOITIVE
Redevelopment aids community
By Alan Grossman
Staff Writer
A university administrator said Wednesday that, even though the university benefited as a result of the 1966 Hoover Redevelopment Project, the community was not exploited as some have long believed.
As a member of the Los Angeles City-appointed Hoover Urban Redevelopment Advisory Commission, Leonard Wines, executive assistant to the senior vice president for Development and University Relations, said he witnessed public hearings on the project, and these hearings demonstrated "a vast majority of acceptance.”
Wines said the university did not purchase the real estate from residents because the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) ran the program, and thus bought the land.
He said that Donald Pelegrino. a “new” official in the Community Redevelopment Agency was mistaken when he told the Daily Trojan (March 3) that the CRA was not involved in the original project.
“The whole project was carried out by the agency. The CRA acquired the property at fair market value, moved the people, demolished the buildings, regrouped the land and then sold the parcels to different bidders, including the university,” Wines said.
“USC gave no neighborhood resident money because the
university did not carry out the program,” he added.
Of the 78 total acres added to the campus as part of the project. 12 were already owned by the university. Wines said. These 78 acres includes the area west of McClintock Street and a land strip bordering the northern part of the campus along Jefferson.
He said the university could have exercised its right of “eminent domain” as granted to private colleges in the 1920s and as outlined in Section 1A of Article XII of the California State Constitution, but instead chose to help the community during its expansion.
This aid was given in the form of redevelopment. Wines said that two outside independent appraisers were hired by the CRA for each house or business in question, and the appraisers based their quotes
‘I'm saying 90 to 95 percent of the people involved in the Hoover Project were satisfied. The one big problem in that project which will probably come up in the new one. is the fear of the unknown. ’
on their own opinions, not necessarily the CRA’s. Reappraisals were given upon request.
Reimbursements were given to residents and businesses that suffered losses because of the relocation. Mineral rights were retained by the residents after the sale, and Wines said those rights continue to be valuable.
“I’m saying 90 to 95 percent of the people involved in the Hoover Project were satisfied. The one big problem in that project, which will probably come up in the new one, is the fear of the unknown. Until people get their offer from the CRA, they feel they have no security because they don't know what is going to happen. It’s a legitimate fear I would have. But after the (original) project was underway, people were satisfied,” Wines explained.
Of those still unhappy about moving. Wines said these were either people who really did not want to move, but just happened to be in the project area, or people who did not like the idea of the government wanting their land.
Wines added, “Everything uttered at the public hearings was transcribed and is probably in City Hall. These (records) would show- that even though there were people against urban renewal, the vast majority were in favor.”