Change in flat rate may hike tuition
By Mark Lowe
Staff Writer
If the university administration takes the student senate's advice and reinstates the flat-rate tuition fee for students taking between 15 and 18 units, tuition would most likely be increased 13 percent next year instead of the projected 11 percent hike.
John Curry, executive director of the university budget, said that the budget will face a S3.5 million deficit if it were based on charging a flat rate for a program of 15 to 18 units instead of the current 12 to 18.
“If we balance the budget, then change the tuition pricing strategy, the budget is out of balance, and that would mean raising tuition two percent,” Curry said.
The seriate requested last December that two models be made of next year’s budget, one with a flat rate of $7,000 a year for 15 to 18 units, the other with a single fee for 12 to 18 units.
This was the result of a referendum held in November in which 52 percent of the students who voted favored a flat rate for 15 to 18 units.
Tuition until last year was based on a flat rate for 15 to 18 units, with a per unit charge for less than 14 or more than 18. That practice stopped this year after the university changed the plan in order to eliminate a budget deficit.
“The university had a very hard time balancing the budget last year,” Curry said. “We could either raise tuition or change the pricing. Changing the pricing is preferable because it benefits more students.”
Curry said that since “there are a lot more students taking 15 or more units than there are taking 12,” a two percent increase across the board would be unfair to that majority because their fees would increase more.
But Tony Manos, undergraduate vice president of the student senate, disagreed with Curry, saying the university should not “tax a few students to keep tuition down.”
Manos said the change in the flat rate “did effect a lot of students,” especially those who take only 12 units because they must work full time to pay their tuition.
“Those students are still taking 12 units no matter what it’s costing and keeping their jobs," Manos said. “I think that’s very unfair.”
The senate also questioned the need to keep the new tuition plan in place, since it was designed to offset a deficit in this year’s budget but not in future budgets.
“It was presented to us as a temporary thing,” Manos said. “Now they’re saying it’s forever. I question the validity of that statement. Why are they walking into this year saying we need additional funds?”
(Continued on page 5)
Volume XCIII, Number 21 University of Southern California Wednesday, February 9, 1983
Students and faculty to have new voice in public relations
By Sheldon Ito
Staff Writer
John Robinson, senior vice president of university relations, has devised a plan to reorganize the office into two divisions and to establish an advisory group so that students and faculty will have a say in how the university is promoted.
The plan calls for the restructuring of university relations into an office of public affairs and an office of public information, both of which will report directly to Robinson.
Robinson, explaining that no one person can “express the university in total,"said that the advisory council will assist in setting the university’s public relations agenda.
“When we send people out to tell others about USC, we want to make sure we’re not just describing one comer of the place,” Robinson said.
This marks the first time in anyone’s recollection that students will have direct input into the university’s public relations campaigns, said Dan Dunmoyer, president of the student senate.
“It’s a first for USC,” Dunmoyer said. “I think it’s a good idea by Robinson.”
Robinson also voiced his enthusiasm for the new council saying that he wanted “a group to think and to formulate ideas and ways we can express them.”
Under the restructuring plan, the office of public information will embody most of what used to be known as the office of university relations, which oversees the News Service, media relations, Transcript and Trojan Family and other areas such as filming on campus and visual pro-
gramming, Robinson said.
By comparison, the office of public affairs will be a staff function, responsible for mobilizing public opinion in support of the university’s major public relations goals, Robinson said.
“The person in this position will be a sort of ‘university advocate’ working with individuals and groups, in the community, the media and elsewhere, to win attention and support for USC.”
Robinson said his decision to create the new plan was based on the difficulty involved in having one director in charge of both the managing and promotion of the department.
Robinson said he believed that the amount of managerial responsibility in a single position leaves one “stuck inside” and unable to accomplish both areas. He described the double duty of working with the community and simultaneously managing a large group as being “almost in conflict.”
“We wanted to make sure we had an 'advocate' out in the community expressing the goals and aims of the university.” Robinson said.
“We felt we had to divide the positions to get the best results,” he said, emphasizing that the advisory groups are to be informal and not “overly structured.”
“I think we should just sit around and come up with what we think about this university,” he said.
“We want the message to reflect accurately the diversity and vitality we find here,” Robinson
said. “We want to be able to describe, in vivid and convincing detail, the high quality of the research and the teaching, as well as the flash and the fun.”
Panel agrees protest movement affected Vietnam War
By Carmen Chandler
Staff Writer
A panel of four anti-war activists agreed Tuesday that the protest movement had a considerable, if indirect, impact on U.S. military planning during the Vietnam war and eventually influenced its outcome.
Todd Gitlin, the founder of Students for a Democratic Society and currently on the faculty at UC Berkeley, called the movement against the Vietnam War “the most successful movement against a shooting war in history.”
But he said it is hard to find concrete evidence of the protest movement's success.
The movement’s influence was mostly indirect and its impact was felt mostly by politicians and economists, Gitlin said.
“The movement as a reform was a success, but the movement squandered much of its moral authority. It felt too much romanticism about the other side,” he said. “The movement’s romanticism cut into our credibility.”
David Dellinger, who was arrested in
1968	as one of the Chicago Seven, assessed the anti-war protest movement and said that though it did not stop the Vietnam War after the Tet offensive, no additional troops were sent to Vietnam.
“There was a failure in the movement in relation to Vietnam today. U.S. politics today are a continuation of the war by other means,” Dellinger said refer-
ring to El Salvador and the Middle East.
After some applause from the audience, he said, “If the United States lost the war, so did Vietnam, with all its bravery and heroics. The Vietnamese wanted their freedom. Vietnam was forced, step by step, into the arms of the Soviets.
“The important thing is not did we win, it is, will we stop the wars carried out in the name of peace,” Dellinger said to the applauding audience.
The second session, “The Effects of the War on the Armed Forces,” drew a considerable amount of audience reaction.
William Peers, a retired general who worked -for General William Westmoreland in Vietnam and directed the official inquiry into the massacre at My Lai, argued that if the armed forces in Vietnam had more control over their directives and strategies the war could have been won. This drew murmurs from the audience.
Members of the audience periodically interrupted Peers' speech with hisses and cried out “killer” and “no more wars,” but they were quieted by other members of the audience.
Cecil Currey, a professor of history at the University of South Florida and author of Self-Destruction: The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army During the Vietnam Era, said the Vietnam War could not have been won at all.
Currey, James Fallows, an editor of The Atlantic, and Ruben Treviso, associate editor of Hispanic Link, said the United States’ armed forces did not
learn anything from the war.
They agreed that the lessons from the Vietnam War would continue to be ignored, and they called for reforms based on the mistakes made in Vietnam.
“Who will call for such reforms?” Currey asked. “Not President Reagan. He’s too enamored with his generals.”
When the discussion was opened for questions from the audience, several Vietnam veterans accused Peers of not presenting all the facts and many were openly hostile.
Haskel Simonowitz, a veteran of the
war, said while he was in Vietnam he was told to falsify figures and documents. He said this went on routinely and at all levels. He wanted to know the extent of Peers’ involvement in this.
Peers responded by saying that though some minor falsifying might have taken place, he was never part of any falsification and never knew of any.
After the discussion Currey commented, “I didn’t expect the hostility the veterans directed toward Peers. He was one of the few true heroes of Vietnam. He knew the difference between honor and dishonor.”
George Gorman, president of the West Los Angeles Vietnam Veterans Center, debates with a guest panelist about American G.I. views during the Vietnam War. See story on page two.