Volume XCII, Number 52
trojan
University of Southern California
Thursday, November 18, 1982
Student referendum offers choice on rising tuition
By Bill Truman
Staff Writer
A student referendum that will address rising tuition costs and the present flat-rate system, is set to be held by the Student Senate in the hopes of shaping this year’s senate tuition policy.
“The referendum is the most effective way for us to isolate student opinion,” said Ingrid Calle. financial affairs chairman of Student Senate.
"It is a form of grass-roots support.” she said.
“After what happened last year, we have to sit down and re-evaluate our position. We have to get a feel for what students think about this issue.”
Calle said this is normally the time of year when the senate decides its stance on tuition increases, which differs in degree from year to year.
She said that the budget process for the university starts in three weeks, and that this is the time students should make themselves heard on the tuition issue.
“It is a way to show the administration that it is not just 40 students in Student Senate, but the whole student body. The Student Senate will pursue whatever course the students decide,” she said.
Students can participate in the referendum by filling out a form at a table that will be located in the grass median between Bovard Auditorium and Doheny Library'. Calle said that the forms would be available, if weather permits, today, Friday, and Monday and Tuesday of next week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Students will also receive a fact sheet with information concerning past tuition increases
and information on the flat-rate system, Calle said.
“We’ve had a lot of input that students are unhappy with the flat rate. W'e have also had input which indicates some students don’t care. The question on the referendum asks, 'Do students want to keep the flat rate as it is or go back to the 15-18 unit system?’ ” Calle said.
As for the overall tuition rates. Calle said the senate is attempting to give the students an opportunity to tell the administration how they feel about the spiraling cost of education.
She w'anted to clarify that the referendum is not just a survey, but rather likened it to a proposition on a ballot Calle said that a referendum was used three years ago to decide whether or not the University Center should be constructed with student funds. The students directly decided how funds would be allocated.
The senate’s tuition-steering group is coordinating the initiative. Calle said that it is hoped that as many as 7,000 students participate — the number deemed necessary by Calle to have an impact — although she admitted that the figure will probably be smaller.
It is being run by the senate's joint election and credential committee to ensure that the election is official.
Asked whether there had been any indication of new tuition increases for the coming 1983-84 academic year, Calle said, “There has been no official word on a tuition increase, but I would bet my life on it”
Calle stressed that voter turnout will be imperative. “WTe need a large percentage of the student body to make this message forceful.”
University asked to make up salary loss
By Cathy Murino
Staff Writer
The Faculty Senate unanimously adopted a resolution to maintain and improve current faculty salaries. It also called for the university to make up inflation-related losses in salaries at the group’s monthly meeting Wednesday.
The resolution, presented by the senate's Employment and Remuneration Committee, asks that the university set faculty salaries at a level relative to other major institutions.
It also states that the university should restore, for both professors and other faculty members, the losses caused by inflation, which has accumulated yearly over the past 10 years.
“There has been an overwhelming downward trend in national salaries for university faculty,” said Norman Cliff, a member of the senate.
Overall, he said, the country' has experienced a 20 percent decrease in faculty salaries, and this university has faced a 15 percent decrease.
The resolution, which was printed and distributed among senate members, included a graph detailing the downward trend. Using 1967 dollars as a constant, the faculty member who made Si3,000 in the of 1972-1973 school year, now makes about $11,000.
Cliff attributed the trend to a lower number of enrolled students, and that there are a greater number of persons with doctoral degrees entering the job market
“If salaries continue to decline, and there is no reversal, the result will be good faculty members leaving,” Cliff said.
“Others who stay may have to do distracting things to make money such as managing apartment buildings,” Cliff said.
He said this would take away from the overall education of the students, and the quality of the university could decline as a result
The method of salary distribution has not yet been discussed by the senate, but Cliff said he guessed that the implementation will be gradual—about 1.5 percent per year against the consumer price index.
In other matters addressed during the meeting, Jon Strauss, senior vice president of administration at the university, discussed a new decentralized approach to the 1982-83 budget
The new system still emphasizes the importance of revenues, and the roles of the schools as budgetary units, Strauss said, but it also clarifies the distinction between school and university revenues.
He said it also defines financial incentives for the schools to maintain their old sources of revenue as well as develop new ones.
(Continued on page 6)
Famed ‘queen of muckraking’ lends insight to writers
Jessica Mitford reflects on career; offers advice
By Marc Igler
Assistant City Editor
Jessica Mitford, one of journalism’s so-called troublemakers, did not even know what a “muckraker” was before her first book was published 22 years ago. Several books later, Mitford and muckraking are almost considered synonyms— for the less dramatic term, investigative journalism.
“The Queen of Muckraking,”
A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said that nothing toxic was found in the contents of a water cooler bottle, which was located outside the university's news service. The LAPD tested for possible chemical toxins Wednesday.
“We tested the water this afternoon and we could not find any hazardous substance,” said Douglas Collison. a detective with the LAPD’s Southwest Division.
as Time magazine dubbed her several years ago, spoke in the Annenberg School of Communications Auditorium Tuesday night, doling out pithy anecdotes about her career, and lending advice to her audience of primarily journalism students.
Mitford, 65, was brought to the university as the school of journalism’s Otis Chandler Distinguished Lecturer, a yearly
No one became ill after drinking the water.
Members of the news service told University Security Monday that the water tasted “foul.”
The LAPD removed the bottle after 5 p.m. on Monday.
He said that Arrowhead is “fully cooperating” with the LAPD, and was scheduled to run its own tests late Wednesday.
The results should be released today, Collison said.
honor that has in the past been bestowed to such “heavies" as I.F. Stone and David Halber-stam.
What could be considered most remarkable about Mitford is that she decided to take up writing at a considerably late age, in response to the boredom that she said set in after raising a family.
She had little or no previous writing experience and no formal education, being a member of aristocratic England where formal education is not considered “ladylike.”
“You don’t really need an education to write,” Mitford said quite matter-of-factly. “All you need is a pen and paper. From there you educate yourself.”
Her first book, Daughters and Rebels, a collection of tales from her childhood, was a best seller in 1960. Three years later she wrote. The American Way of Death, which brought her literary acclaim and earned her the reputation of a muck-raker for her expose on the immoral character of the funeral industry.
Mitford’s writing style is par-continued on page 3)
Arrowhead to run test on water police say was OK
JESSICA MITFORD
Stuff photo by Jewlca Friedhelm