$ trojan
Volume XCIII, Number 27
University of Southern California
Thursday, February 17, 1983
RTD and USC try to agree on bus passes for graduate students. President Zumberge, student senate, and RTD will meet next Wednesday to discuss the issue.
School, RTD meet on bus pass issue
By Brenda Wong
Staff Writer
The Rapid Transit District will hold a public meeting next Wednesday to review the qualifications needed to purchase a student bus pass.
President James Zumberge and the student senate have specifically called on the RTD to revise its policy on the granting of bus passes to university graduate students.
Some graduate students cannot purchase student bus passes because they are ineligible under the current RTD policy because the university and the RTD have different definitions of full-time graduate student status.
The university defines a graduate student as one who enrolls in eight units of courses or more each semester. The RTD, however, defines a graduate student as one who takes 12 units or more.
As a consequence, many university graduate students have not been able to purchase student passes although they are classified as full-time students.
“The whole works is going to be put on the table,” said Marc Littman, news bureau representative for RTD. He said the board will also examine administrative problems and possible revenue loss.
Littman, however, did not indicate than any concession would be made to university graduate students.
“We have 1,000 schools in the program and we have to apply uniform standards. It's 12 units for everyone. USC is one of
1,000,” Littman said. “If we changed our standards, we would have to change it for everyone. It would create an administrative nightmare.”
Littman added that with 14,000 fewer people purchasing regular monthly passes, the RTD could be losing as much as $2.7 million a year. This figure is based on the number of adults who were buying regular monthly passes and are now purchasing student college vocational passes.
The price of a regular monthly pass ranges from $20 to S55 depending on the number of freeway systems on which the rider must take. Each additional freeway system is an extra $7, but student passes enable riders to use any freeway system at no additional cost.
“The board has the power to keep the program as is, or limit it to certain students, or employ any option that is open to them," Littman said. “At this point, no one can really predict what action the board will take. In the meantime, our standards will be enforced.”
Littman encouraged anyone who has a suggestion, complaint or opinion to attend the 10 a.m. meeting in the second floor board room at 425 So. Main St., Los Angeles. If one can not attend, any correspondence will be considered by the board.
Commuter senators angry over reapportionment plan
By Jeffrey Tylicki
Staff Writer
The five commuter senators of the undergraduate assembly are angry about the student senate’s adoption of a reappor-tionment plan that would reduce the number of commuter senators to four, even though their constituency exceeds that of residence halls by almost
3-to-l (3,800 students).
The plan, sponsored by Dan Dellicompagni, graduate vice-president, and Tony Manos, undergraduate vice-president, calls for each of the undergraduate constituencies to be represented by the same number of senators.
Current representation is based on five commuter senators, three residence hall senators, four student community senators, and four row senators. The plan passed during Wednesday night's senate meeting gives each of the four constituencies four representatives.
“The commuters are outraged!” said Julie Spezia, a commuter senator. She told the senate that it was not fair for the 6,000 undergraduate commuters to be represented by the same number of people as the 2,200 students in residence halls.
“The Trojan Commuter Alliance is 100 percent against basing representation (in the senate) on anything other than population,” said Richard
Scotti, a commuter senator and undergraduate representative on the senate cabinet.
Unfortunately for the commuters, most of the senators did not share this opinion. Dellicompagni said that equal representation on the undergraduate level “will give the senate
a more cohesive group representing the campus at large.” One of the arguments for the proposal was that the four constituencies have never fought. Ironically, after graduates voted for the proposal in a
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7 Soviet dissidents offered positions
The university has offered teaching positions to seven Soviet Jewish scientists who say they have been persecuted for seeking to leave their country, the Los Angeles Times reported today.
“We wanted to create the opportunity for them to resume research and teaching . . . and to express our concern for academic freedom,” said Irwin Lieb. vice president and dean of the college of letters, arts and sciences.
Lieb and Michael Melnick, a research associate professor in basic sciences and board member of the Committee of Concerned Scientists, went to the Soviet Union to offer the visiting professorships for the 1983-84 academic year.
When asked if Soviet officials would allow any of the seven to leave the country, one scientist replied, “Not really.”
The offer is believed to be the first time that one university has simultaneously invited seven Soviet Jewish scientists to emigrate. All seven invited to teach at the university lost their jobs after seeking permission to leave Russia. Some were stripped of their academic degrees, thrown out of professional societies and barred from scientific libraries.
One of the seven invited by the university — Alexander Parit-sky — is in prison. The others are Yuri Medvedkov and his wife Ogla, both urban geographers; Simeon Katz, a mathematician; Valery Soyfer. former director of Moscow’s Institute of Molecular Biology; Viktor Kipness. an econometrician; and Mark Freidlin, a mathematician.
In a letter sent last year to Israeli President Yitzhak Navon, one scientist said, “We have been put in the position of hostages who serve as an example of how futile and dangerous are requests to emigrate.”
Ellsberg: still "fighting wars'
Now active in nuclear freeze
By Michael Molinski
Assistant City Editor
In 1973, Daniel Ellsberg was cleared of all charges against him for releasing the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.
Ten years and hundreds of speeches later, he is still fighting wars.
Ellsberg has dedicated his life to opposing war and nuclear proliferation. Wherever he goes, he carries with him the label of peacemaker.
“All the things I’m doing — civil disobedience, lobbying, lecturing, campaigning — all of these reflect my knowledge from the Vietnam War that these methods can affect a great evil,” Ellsberg said.
He is now active in the national campaign for a bilateral nuclear freeze between the United States and the Soviet Union, and has been involved with leagues of war resisters.
Ellsberg spoke on campus last week on nuclear disarmament as part of the Mind-Body-Spirit Festival sponsored by the Unity-in-Diversity Council.
He was the featured speaker on a panel of six which in-
cluded spiritual leaders, educators, and a nuclear engineer. The panel was designed to give alternative views on disarmament abd the variety of the panelist’s dress epitomize the diversity in their perspectives.
Ellsberg was dressed in a gray leisure suit with a pale dress shirt contrasting a colorful tie. His glasses rested low on his nose and his receding gray hair was tousled. His fel-low panelists ranged in dress from silk shirts and sandals to a white robe and turban.
Ellsberg’s eloquent manner of speaking drew the attention of the audience and gained him several rounds of applause, as was the case earlier in the week wrhen he addressed the “Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War" conference on "The Development of a Vietnam Policy.” However, some animosity arose between Ellsberg and one of the other nuclear disarmament panelists when he
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DANIEL ELLSBERG