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Volume XCIII, Number 24	University of Southern California	Monday, February 14, 1983
University to recruit National Merit finalists
By Douglas Lytle
Staff Writer
The office of admissions is in the process of expanding its recruiting program in order to attract more National Merit Scholarship finalists to the university.
For the fall semester of 1982, the university enrolled 28 freshman national finalists — a low number in comparison with other major educational institutions in recruitment of merit scholars — who are usually considered to be the brightest high school students.
The university placed 62nd out of 105 universities in first-year enrollment of National Merit Scholarship winners in a recently published ranking by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Kelly Calhoun, assistant director of admission and school relations, said the failure to bring more finalists to the university is partly because “we don't offer them enough money in financial aid packages.” In some cases, Calhoun said, finalists may choose to attend schools with low’er tuition than this university.
Coincidentally, university President James Zumberge was recently elected to the board of directors of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC). As a member of the NMSC board, Zumberge will attend the NMSC’s bi-annual meetings, and will work with the management of the National Merit Scholarship Program (NMSP). Zumberge will receive no compensation for his service on the board.
The NMSC promotes the largest independently financed academic competition for college scholarships in the country. Since its creation in 1955, the program has awarded nearly 83,000 scholarships to high school students who have shown academic excellence.
Calhoun said Zumberge’s joining the board of the NMSC has stirred interest among some schools in the university to play a more active role in the recruitment of finalists.
Calhoun added that the drive to recruit finalists is “in expansion” and that discussions are under way at this time to create new recruitment programs for the fall of 1983.
The university currently seeks finalists by holding an "Honors Day” in the fall semester. “Honors Day” gives national merit semi-finalists a chance to see the university and to learn more about its benefits.
After Honors Day, the admissions department will continue to correspond with those students who are selected as finalists. If a finalist is interested in attending the university, scholarship packages are arranged and sent to him or her.
Calhoun said last fall’s “Honors Day” was quite successful with more than 170 possible finalists in attendance.
Candidates are chosen according to high scores on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), which are administered during high school years. The finalists are then selected from
the body of semi-finalists and judged on their academic work and recommendations from the principal of the school.
The rankings in The Chronicle of Higher Education re-
ported that Harvard University finished first with 295 freshmen merit scholars enrolled. Texas A&M and Princeton University were tied for second with 190 each.
The rankings were based on an annual report prepared by the NMSC. The annual report documents national recruiting trends in colleges and universities.
Regents apartments residents demand improved conditions
By Carmen Chandler
Staff Writer
Residents of the University Regents apartment complex have signed and presented a petition to the administration demanding that living conditions be improved in the 32-unit building.
All but five of the building’s residents, who are exclusively graduate students, signed the petition, which w'as sent last week to university President James Zumberge and the university’s board of trustees.
The petition demands, among other concerns, that the university improve the Regent’s water filtration system, begin a regimen of weekly sprayings to deal with insect problems and replace the bed mattresses in each room.
Nour Hassan, a graduate student in electrical engineering, said he signed the petition because “we need those things, really.”
Eric Schusterman, a resident of the apartment building, which is located in the 1200 block of W. 27th Street, does not know if the petition will persuade the administration to act.
“Maybe it won't do anything for us in the immediate future, but it might have some long term effects for future residents,” he said. “The university has got the students by the balls.” The petition listed the residents’ seven top priorities:
—	a central water filtration system to handle a sediment problem in the water.
—	new beds because the mattresses are too uncomfortable.
—	a weekly anu thorough spraying of the entire apartment complex for insects.
—	an overhauling and readjustment of all the
doors in the building, which residents say do not latch securely.
—	the removal of boxes designed to hold air conditioners which, however, do not have air conditioners in them.
—	larger refrigerators with additional freezer space.
—	fixing the water heater for the Regents' swimming pool or installing a solar heating unit on the roof.
The residents are also asking that the curtains and bedcovers in their rooms be cleaned or replaced, the recreational room be converted into a lounge with a television, security visit more during the evenings, an emergency phone be installed by the pool and a sundeck installed on the roof.
The residents have suggested forming a board of councilors for graduate housing to raise money for repairs and a possible on-campus tower dorm for graduate students.
The councilors, the petition states, should be “active, retired millionaires” who would act as a mini-board of trustees for the students.
The Regent apartments once served as two-person dormitories but are now single units at $252 a month.
Schusterman said the residents’ basic complaints concern the refrigerators, beds and cockroaches.
“We feel if they are going to call this an apartment we should have refrigerators,” Schusterman said. “In the ones we have now the freezers are not big enough to stack three TV dinners in. I have a confining bed. It’s just a place where you
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Frances FitzGerald: A humor that heals an aching wound
By Susan Shaw
Staff Writer
It was perhaps not an enviable assignment, but Frances FitzGerald seemed to have little trouble detailing how the United States can avoid future “Vietnams.”
At the concluding panel of the Vietnam conference last week in Bovard Auditorium, FitzGerald was able to elicit both laughter and applause with her list of do’s and don't's for American foreign policy makers.
“Do not,” FitzGerald admonished, “get involved in the internal affairs of small third world countries, particularly ones with no economic or strategic importance to the United States.
“It is also quite easy,” FitzGerald said, “not to get involved in w'eak, corrupt, repressive governments, even if you do not have to go to the lengths of manufacturing this government yourself.
“In fact,” she said, "there is nothing easier than avoiding future Vietnams.”
These apparent common-sensical suggestions reflect not only FitzGerald’s disdain for the American policy in Vietnam, but also reflect her own form of optimism.
“She has,” said A.J. Langguth, a university professor of journalism who was largely instrumental in developing the Vietnam conference, “a humor that heals.”
"Fire in the Lake"
FitzGerald spent two years in Vietnam, writing for such magazines as Atlantic Monthly and New Yorker. But FitzGerald, 42, is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book. “Fire in the Lake.” The book, which also won the Bancroft Prize for History and the National Book Award in 1972, has been described as one of the best books written about the Vietnam War. But moreover, the book, which took FitzGerald five years to write, was one of the first to attempt to give Americans a sympathetic understanding of the people of Vietnam.
Journalists, FitzGerald said, frequently give you just the “surface of things.”
What needs to be answered is “why people have the attitudes that they do — why is someone a guerrilla, or why was the revolution in Iran the way it was? You can’t understand these issues,” she said, "without understanding something about the history of the people.”
Americans may be peculiarly susceptible to misunderstanding political events in other countries because, FitzGerald explained, “we are basically an apolitical country. Often we assume there are no real political conflicts, only problems with solutions to them.”
Few Americans “know other languages, and
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Staff photo by Robert Heller
FRANCES FITZGERALD