Staff pholo by Larry Gund
Volume XCII, Number 35
trojan
University of Southern California
Tuesday, October 26, 1982
Foreign enrollment 1st in nation
Survey ranks university highest
By Michael Mollnskl
Staff Writer
In an annual survey recently released by the Institute of International Education, the university was ranked first in the nation in foreign student enrollment, among all universities.
A community college in Florida, however, had a larger enrollment, making it the school with the highest number of international students in the United States.
According to the survey, a total of 3,434 international students were enrolled in the university last year, over 300 more than any other university.
Nationwide, a record high 326,299 foriegn students were enrolled in American colleges and universities last year. Typically, California led the nation with 51,520, almost twice as many as any other state.
The reason that the university has such a large number of international students is twofold. First, an exceedingly large number apply to the university. For the fall 1982 semester. 6,724 international students applied. Second, the university admits a large percentage of these applicants. Almost 41 percent of this fall’s applicants were admitted.
In comparison, 3,556 international students applied to the University of California, Los Angeles, for fall 1981. It accepted only 33 percent of these applicants. This fall's statistics were not available.
According to IIE, UCLA was ninth in the nation last year in terms of total number of international students.
The university admitted ap-
proximately 60 percent of all students that applied for this fall, both foreign and domestic, said Michael Halloran, associate dean of admission and financial aid.
The criteria for admitting international students varies among fields of study. Many fields do not require that the student take a test prior to acceptance, like the Graduate Record Examination or the Scholastic Apptitude Test.
“The university is popular among foreign students for several reasons,” said Sharif Os-sayran, president of the International Student Assembly, both on campus and nationally. "First, it is in Los Angeles. Second, it has a good reputation in internationally
popular fields of study, like engineering."
Last spring, 37.2 percent of foreign students in the university, both undergraduate and graduate, were engineering majors. Some 14.3 percent were dispersed among majors within the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, and another 10.4 percent were in the school of business.
By far, the largest number of international students, both in the United States and in the university, are from Iran. There were 498 Iranian students in the university last spring. The next largest representation of students were from Taiwan, 386, followed by Indonesia, with 291, Saudi Arabia, with (Continued on page 11)
Professor stabbed
By Marc Igler
Assistant City Editor
An assistant professor of accounting was stabbed in the neck and on the hand Saturday afternoon in her Bridge Hall office by an assailant who apparently had no motive for the attack.
Elesa Bentsen, 29, who has taught for three years at the university, spent Saturday night in California Hospital where she was treated for her injuries. She was released Sunday evening.
Besides there being no apparent motive, the attack is particularly confusing to University Security because the assailant was seemingly undisturbed by the Homecoming festivities taking place just outside the building.
"That's what is really scary about this,” Sgt. Art Blair said. “There doesn’t seem to be any reason for her being stabbed.”
Blair added that Bentsen was neither robbed nor sexually assaulted.
She was attacked with a steak knife in her office by a man described to be in his mid-20s. She met him on the front steps of Bridge Hall when he had asked for help in locating a university professor who he said was helping him obtain a football scholarship to the university, Blair said.
(Continued on page 3)
Professor doubts validity of political polls
By Carmen Chandler
Staff Writer
The public should be skeptical of political polls, warned Ben Enis, professor in the department of marketing at the university and author of several textbooks and articles on marketing research.
"Polls are a much better way to predict the future than a guess or a comment by a newscaster. However, polls are not as scientific as they appear to be.” he said.
Polls are subject to three types of errors: sampling errors, non-sampling errors and response errors, he said.
Sampling errors occur, he pointed out, because the people conducting the polls are not able to question every single voter.
“Polls are a sampling of the voters but even the polls can’t ask every voter. . .there is no way to get an absolutely perfect representation,” Enis said.
The public is more aware of this error because pollsters have recently been issuing statements with the results of their polls, saying that their polls are subject to an error of plus or minus 4 percent.
“Some people will elude your grasp,” Enis said. "In a telephone survey you’re not going to reach people who don’t have telephones. If you call between 9 and 5, your’re not going to reach people who work during the day. Others simply don’t want to talk to you. You will never know if the people who answered your questions are more or less representative than those who got away.”
There can be no guarantee that the responses the pollsters get are the true feelings of the public, Enis said.
“If you ask a person a question and the truth is they haven’t made up their minds, they may pick someone they think the
pollster wants to hear.
“The way you word a question can influence the wray people respond. People are generally nice and they answer the way they think the pollster wants them to. They are ‘yea sayers,’ and then there are ‘nay sayers.' They will answer opposite of what the pollster wants them to,” Enis said.
Response errors involve the time the polls are given.
“Polls ask people their opinions at the time the polls are taken as opposed to what they will really do (on election day), often several days or weeks before they vote.”
A spokeswoman for Republican gubernatorial candidate. Attorney General George Deukmejian, took the issue one step further.
(Continued on page 11)
BUT STUDENTS STILL WORRIED ABOUT SECURITY
University corrects Parkside Tower fire code violations
PARKSIDE TOWER
By Jeannle Wong
Staff Writer
Parkside Tower, a university dormitory complex, has been granted a final certificate of occupancy by the city's Building and Safety Department after having been reprimanded last month for violating numerous state and city fire codes.
The building's fire alarm system was recently short-circuited when fifth-floor occupants destroyed some smoke detectors while playing football in the hallway, said Dean Paske, supervisor and resident inspector of new construction. It took time to trace and locate the problem areas, so the city requested that University Security officers be placed in the building to watch for potential fires.
The system is functional again, and the problems have been corrected, Paske said.
“(However), I didn't feel it (the building) was ever unsafe," Paske said. “We had a functioning fire alarm system at the time. The only problem was that the enunciator wasn't enunciating."
The enunciator, Paske said, is a panel on the first floor that flashes when a fire alarm is activated.
“Its purpose is to show anyone on the first floor where the fire is," Paske added. "However, the occupants of the building would have been alerted of any fire h >se the alarms would have sounded off.”
The city's fire department is happy with the cooperation it has received from the university, said Capt. Otto Herman, commander of schools and churches unit.
“We know it probably caused them (university officials) a lot of trouble, and cost them a lot of money,” Herman said. “However, our main concern was for the safety of the students."
There are no life-safety violations in Parkside now, Herman said, but the fire department will continue to conduct routine inspections occasionally.
“As far as the fire department is concerned, we are very happy with Parkside,” Herman said.
Major construction of the building was completed about three weeks ago, Paske said. Currently, contractors are administering final touch-ups. Landscaping will begin today, followed by street work.
A main problem caused by the extended construction, some residents feel, is the fact that the main doors, which open into the lobby of the building, have been left virtually unlocked for construction purposes since the beginning of the semester.
Some students have complained that because the main doors are unlocked, and the elevators have not been "keyed” into the university system yet, anyone has access to the building, jeopardizing resident security.
A female resident of the dormitory, who asked not to be identified, said she caught a non-resident in the lobby early one Sunday morning, banging on the vending machines.
“What bothers me is not the fact that he was in,” she said, “but that he could have taken the elevator up a few floors to where people were sleeping.”
Security is mainly being provided by officers from housing protection, who patrol the building every 20 minutes or so, and by the residential advisers, said William Thompson, director of housing and residence halls.
“The locks have been changed, and the students were given keys in the fall.” he said. Because the south complex’s main office will be relocated to the
(Continued on page 10)