Volume XCII, Number
dkj% trojan
University of Southern California
Thursday, October 21, 1982
CLUB OF LIFE PROTESTS MERCY-KILLING STANCE
Group demands dismissal of pro-euthanasia professor
By Alan Grossman
Assistant City Editor
Fliers demanding the firing of university gerontology- professor Gerald Larue by comparing him with Adolf Hitler, and by posing the question of “Gerald Larue: Another Jim Jones?,” were circulated on campus Tuesday by a group opposed to the professor’s proeuthanasia beliefs.
Larue is the president of the Hemlock Society, an organization whose goal is to legalize mercy killing, either via suicide by the terminally ill patient, or with help from, for example, his doctor. The professor was the target of the Club of Life. The club equated Larue’s beliefs with Nazism, and has scheduled a conference at the University Hilton to discuss its beliefs.
“What we’re charging is that the same policies that founded the Nazi ideology are now being raised again, like euthanasia, which is genocidal in its implementation,” said Marianna Wertz, head of the Club of Life.
Larue said neither he nor his group support or are even suggesting genocide.
“Our group believes that people who are terminally ill, and that’s the only group we deal with, should have a say about their death.”
“I’m very much against suicide and the death penalty. I’m pro-life,” he added.
But Wertz disagrees."This man calls himself a humanist.
The flier states that ‘Larue and Hemlock are, indeed, trying to kill humanity.’
Humanism is the right to life. Larue is preaching death.”
The flier states that “Larue and Hemlock are, indeed, trying to kill humanity.”
Larue called the flier “a personal attack, a vicious attack.” Derek Humphry, director of the Hemlock Society, and himself acquitted by a British court of criminal intent when he gave his terminally ill wife poison in 1980, agreed that the flier attacks Larue more than it does euthanasia.
“The Hemlock Society welcomes intelligent competition but we think it should be kept on an impersonal basis. (Euthanasia) is a key moral issue of the 1980s. The conservatives are afraid they’re going to lose, and they will in the end,” he said.
But Larue said Wednesday he will not seek legal action against the Club of Life.
“Even though their flier libels me, I don’t want to give these people any more publicity than they've already gotten. Besides, I'm too busy with other things,” Larue said.
Humphry said he is confident his group will legalize
Campus worker’s death shocks family, friends
Ruth Shapiro, an employee with the university's department of contracts and grants for nearly 14 years, recently died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage at her home in Culver City. She was 60.
Shapiro had been admitted to a Los Angeles hospital several weeks before her Sept. 22 death because of a viral infection, but was released after about two weeks, said Arthur Shapiro, her husband of 42 years. “She came home and started making plans about what she was going to do when she returned to work,” he said. Soon after returning home, she began losing her strength, he said.
Her death apparently had nothing to do with the viral infection. “The doctor released her because she was recovering," he said. “He was surprised of her death.
“I still can't believe it. She was my wife and my best friend. She was the greatest sport in the world,” Arthur said.
Shapiro enjoyed working at the university, he said. “She had close contact with a lot of people there. I've received cards from people I don’t even know from the university. I even got a card from Dr. Strauss (senior vice president of administration). I would just like to thank everyone for their concern.
“Right now I don’t know what I’m going to do. It's too much. I haven’t changed things since she died. Everything is still the same. I just can't bring myself to change anything.”
He attributed her death to her cigarette smoking. “She smoked three packs a day all her adult life up to eight years ago. I think that was a contributing factor,” Shapiro said.
Ruth Shapiro is survived by two sons, Robert, 39; Barry, 41; and a grandson, Buffy, 4.
Judy Corbett, who worked with Shapiro for five years, commended her ability to teach. “She taught me a great deal about contracts and grants, especially in the consulting area.
“She was way above a co-worker. We worked on a word puzzle every morning. She shared her family problems with me and I with her,” Corbett said. “She was always there ready to help.”
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“assisted suicide,” the legal term for euthanasia, but it will have to wait.
“At the moment, we are only trying to educate the public,” Humphry' said. “In due course, when there is sufficient understanding and sympathy, we will attempt to change the law.
“Assisted suicide is a crime in California. In Holland, Switzerland and Scotland, it is legal so we’re not asking for something that has not been done before,” Humphry also said.
But Wertz said the Hemlock Society’s policies are only the beginning of an outbreak of fascism.
“It starts with the old and the incurably ill. We can’t afford old people in America today. We're practicing Nazi economic policy,” she said.
The flier blames “the new world economic crisis and a growing cultural pessimism” for the devaluation of human life around the world.
“We’re on the verge of a Dark Age. People are being encouraged to kill themselves so they won't be a burden on their families,” she said.
“The genocide occurring today is 10 times that of Hitler. We can feed (the world’s starving people) not as a handout, but as a stimulant to our own economy,” Wertz said, adding that the two-day conference will elaborate on the subject. The conference concludes tonight at 7.
She said she thought Larue was teaching his beliefs in class, but Larue vehemently denied this. As an example, Larue mentioned the Tuesday morning interruption of his class by Wertz and a colleague.
“I don’t teach (euthanasia) in my class. They asked my students if I had ever discussed it, and they told them ‘no’.
“Heck no. I’ve never tried to influence them (my students). I’ve never asked them to join Hemlock.”
Although Wertz said Larue’s students were unaware of their professor’s involvement in Hemlock, Wertz said she still does not believe Larue should be allowed to teach.
“I think he (Larutt) is trying to create a generation of doctors and students believing the way he does. He should be kept as far away from any school as possible,” Wertz said.
Vern Bengston, the director
of the university’s Gerontology Research Institute, said he had not seen the Club of Life’s flier nor did he know about Larue’s involvement with Hemlock.
But, he said, he sees no conflict of interest for Larue to be teaching in the gerontology' department.
“No, I don’t feel there’s a conflict of interest. For some scholars in gerontology, the right to death is as important as the right to life.”
Submission of grades, missing alumni discussed at Faculty Senate meeting
By Cathy Murino
Staff Writer
Business at Wednesday’s Faculty Senate meeting ranged from the approval of a rule that requires instructors to submit grades 72 hours after the last day of final exams, to the discussion of missing alumni.
Business on the agenda included elections for the senate nominating committee. The committee nominates senators for executive board positions. The four senators elected to the nominating committee are Ken Smith, Gibson Reeves, Arnold Dunn and Steven Copley.
Fund raising was discussed by James Appleton, vice president of development. He said the university needs to do a lot of “in-house work.” For example, he said, there are some 155,000 alumni of whom only 55.000 were able to be contacted with their addresses on file.
Recently 30,000 more alumni were added to the list who are capable of being contacted. Of the remaining 70,000, about 40 percent can eventually be included, he said. A goal of the development staff is to be more effective in serving
the university. “We are brokers for the staff,” Appleton said.
The need for a new faculty handbook was brought up by Frank Mason, a senator. He said the committee in charge of the handbook’s revisions has been working on the book for three years. The senate passed a resolution to ask the administration to respond to the revised handbook.
The 7 percent pay raise the faculty received last year was discussed by senator Norman Cliff. He said the university has now reached the level-one position, being in the top 20 percent of all universities salary-wise.
Don Lewis, president of the faculty senate, said he had discused the possibility of making an evaluation of administrators with Cornelius Pings, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs. In the past, there has been no real procedure to bring this about.
Also, Lewis said a budget advisory committee would be formed by the senate's November meeting. Such a committee would review the budget before it takes effect.
Staff photo by Pam Veasey
ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT — Numerous window panes hover above double doors leading into the south side of the School of Social Work building. This scene through portals reveals a relatively quiet moment at Hoffman Hail, only broken by a student seated in the foreground. The eerie grey photo is due to solarization.