Volume XCIII, Number 18
University of Southern California
Friday, February 4, 1983
Dedication ceremony held for new cancer institute
KENNETH NORRIS JR. Cancer Hospital and Research Institute at the Health Sciences Campus in East Los Angeles.
Housing splits up grads, undergrads
By Melinda Smolin
Staff Writer
In compliance with a stand taken in'1980 by the Housing Policy Advisory Committee, graduate housing will be separated from undergraduate housing as of next fall, and for the first time, the housing office will strictly enforce this rule.
This means all undergraduate students currently residing in Jewel Manor, Troyland, Helena Apartments, Terrace Apartments or University Regent are not eligible to live there next year. These buildings have been designated for graduate students only.
Similarly, all graduate students living in Troy Apartments, Webb Tower, Cardinal Gardens and others are not eligible to return to these buildings.
Centennial Apartments will be split between graduate students and undergraduate students.
Students living in special interest housing such as the faculty-in-residence program or Harris Plaza will not be affected.
When students file their housing priority period application, the computer will reject their choice if it does not correspond with their student status, and they will be assigned to the nearest undergraduate or graduate space accordingly.
However, those students who want to continue living in a redesignated building may petition the Housing Policy Petition Board until Feb. 11.
The housing office has already received about 30 petitions, including one petition filed on behalf of 35 people.
Gloria Donald, manager of housing assignments and collections and a member of the housing petition board, said she expects about 40 more petitions.
Currently, there are 368 graduate students in university housing, said David Blackmar, coordinator of housing assignments in auxiliary services. Approximately 185 graduate students currently live in undergraduate facilities, and there are 104 undergraduate students living in graduate facilities, he said.
Reasons for petitioning varies, Blackmar said. He stressed that “any exceptions granted by the petition board would be strictly, absolutely only a one-year extension.”
Blackmar described the effort as the last leg in a process which began in 1980 of separating graduate housing from undergraduate housing.
The 1980 stand was “prompted by the needs expressed by graduate students,” Donald said. "Graduate students work. They don’t want to come home to a party,” she said.
“As far as I am concerned there is no good excuse,” she said about exceptions to the policy.
However, many students living in these buildings have a different point of view.
By Mark Lowe
Staff Writer
After several starts, setbacks and funding worries, the Kenneth Norris Jr. Cancer Hospital and Research Institute was dedicated Wednesday, marking the completion of the university's largest construction project ever.
Kenneth Norris Jr., the institute’s namesake and principal private donor, presented the center to university President James Zumberge and for “the betterment of mankind” at a ceremony held at the Health Sciences Campus in East Los Angeles.
“We are pleased to have this day arrive after long planning tad consuaction. This is a truly historic event,” Zumberge said.
The dedication was especially meaningful to those connected with the institute because the S3 7 million addition to the Comprehensive Cancer Center has met with several stumbling blocks since its inception in 1973.
Originally, the Norris Institute was to be funded by federal and county grants and by private donations to the university. In 1976, however, voters failed to approve a $40 million bond bill that would have provided the institute with county money.
Because of this, the National Cancer Institute, which was to provide the federal funds to the county, had to be persuaded to transfer the construction money to the university from the county.
Also, with county support gone, the university was forced to scale down its plans for a large facility of over 120 beds to a smaller center of only 60 beds. The facility is for patients suffering from cancer that cannot be treated elsewhere or does not respond to conventional treatment.
“We decided we could do this ourselves,” said John Hisserich, deputy director of the center. “But we would have to do this on a smaller scale.”
Construction of the building was completed with additional private funding and an $11.8 million grant from the NCI. The first patients are scheduled to enter in March, Hisserich said.
The nine-story structure houses facilities for scientists and physicians to study and determine the causes of cancer, develop cures and preventions for the disease and treat people with extraordinary cases of different kinds of cancer.
Laboratories on three floors of the building will enable researchers to investigate the “mysterious changes that make a normal cell turn into a cancerous cell,” develop new drugs for treatment and create tests for the early detection and possible prevention of cancer, said Brian Henderson, director of the center.
These facilities are backed up by accommodations for surgery, radio and chemotherapy, and a computer network that allows scientists to find out what types of treatment and research are being conducted elsewhere in the country' and abroad.
Actual patient care will be secondary to the institute’s research and educational purposes, although the center will treat those with cancer or those who have not benefited from usual methods of treatment.
“Patients will come here when they have some cancer for which this center has technology." Henderson said, “but not for cancers where treatment is readily available.”
He added that the Norris Institute will be a “last bastion of hope" for those “for whom standard treatment has failed."
Officials at the ceremony we -e optimistic about the future of cancer research which Vincent DeVita Jr., director of the NCI. ^nid is part of an overall “biological revolution.”
“What we do now in the laboratory is what was only dreamed of in 1971,” DeVita said, referring to the date of the Congressional National Cancer Act. which established a network of comprehensive cancer centers, of which the university's is one out of 20.
DeVita said scientists can now study and map the genetic makeup of cells, enabling them to find the basic differences between normal and cancerous cells, and to possibly discover the process that turns cells into cancers.
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University sponsors conference to discuss lessons from Vietnam
By Susan Shaw
Staff Writer
In an attempt to re-examine the extent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and to investigate the causes of the war, the university will host next week a conference entitled, “Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War.”
The conference, which begins Sunday and continues through Wednesday, will focus on nearly all aspects of the Vietnam War and will feature an array of speakers and panelists who are among the most controversial and celebrated personalities from the Vietnam War era.
This project, sponsored by the school of journalism, school of international relations and the center for humanities, will receive national and international attention as journalists from around the world will cover the conference.
The conference is the
brain-child of A.J. Langguth, an associate professor of journalism at the university. The event will help students understand the Vietnam War, an event that has been a “catchall” for an entire generation of revolt and dissent, Langguth said.
Langguth also said it will offer “new perspectives” on Vietnam which will enable policy-makers and journalists an opportunity to reevaluate their work and see both their successes and failures.
The conference will open at noon on Sunday and will feature a two-hour presentation of some of the finest broadcast reporting from Vietnam.
These film clips are from the collection of Lawrence Lichty, a university alumnus who is considered one of the nation’s foremost authorities on Vietnam broadcast footage.
From 2:15 to 3:45 p.m., the participating advisers for	the	confer-
ence— Harrison Salisbury, Peter Arnett, Gloria Emerson, Francis FitzGerald, David Halberstam, Ward Just, Morley Safer, William Tuohy and Garrick Utley — will read passages from their Vietnam dispatches.
These readings, Langguth explained, will help vivify the Vietnam experience, offering students not only a fascinating look at the journalistic process, but will also put the war into perspective better than any book could.
Judith Coburn of the journalism department, who organized the exhibit of war photographs now on display at the Annenberg School of Communications, will chair a panel discussion on war photography following the readings.
Among the photographers present will be David Douglas Duncan, Mark Godfrey, Philip Jones-Griffiths and Eddie Adams.
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