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Monday, January 16, 1984
University of Southern California
Volume XCV, Number 5
GREGORY EVANS
Students to create Sacramento ‘voice’
By Sheldon Ito
Assistant City Editor
A lobby is being formed by university students this semester to "provide a voice" in Sacramento on issues that affect the students of private universities, said Greg Evans, a senior in public administration and organizer of the lobby.
The lobbyists will travel to Sacramento "once or twice" this semester when issues involving students of private universities are addressed by the state legislature, Evans said.
He said he got the idea to start the lobby after observing the lobbying efforts of the University of California at Berkeley students while he was working for the state senate last year.
Evans said he decided a student lobby was needed to represent the interests of students at private universities and colleges — something he feels the UC lobby does not adequately accomplish.
"While we share the commonness of being university students, the UC lobby often represents the interests of the public California state universities," he said.
"Our interests can be vastly different and are often not represented in the legislative process," he added.
Evans said he approached other private universities — Stanford University, the University of Pacific and the University of Santa Clara — to join the lobby and received no cooperation.
So, for now, it's just this university's student lobby, he said.
However, Evans added that he hoped students from other private universities wdll join the lobby in the future, and it will then change its name to the "Private and Independent Universities of California Student Lobby."
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Five senators leave office
Cite time commitments as reasons for resigning
By Catalina Camia
Assistant City Editor
Citing time commitments as their reason, five student senators resigned last week, leaving the Student Senate with 27 senators and their third set of resignations in the last year and a half.
Undergraduate representative Tony Hams and graduate representatives Ben Boish, Mark Schoen-field and Craig Mitchell all resigned from their senate duties last Wednesday because of "heavy" time constraints this semester.
R. Greg Stevens, an undergraduate representative for the student community is spending this semester studying in Washington, D.C.
Bill Lilia, Student Senate president, said it is "pretty unusual" for five people to resign at once, but emphasized the resignations were not related to any internal problems in the organization.
"The resignations had nothing to due with any type of dissension within the senate at all," he said.
He added that the resignations would have no bearing on the effectiveness of the senate, and the vacant seats would possibly be filled very soon.
"(Being a senator) is a heavy involvement," Lilia said. "It requires a lot of time, and often people don't realize during the elections how much time it will be."
I ilia emphasized the senate policy is "students first, senators second."
The senate is comprised of two sub-groups — undergraduate and graduate. The undergraduates are then divided into four constituencies based on the various campus living groups.
Within each constituency — residence halls, student community, the Row and the commuter representation — are four senators. There are 16 senators within the graduate division.
For the time being, the senate will operate with only 27 senators. The vacant seats will be filled according to the rules of the individual constituencies, possibly by this weekend, in time for the
mid-year senate retreat, Lilia said.
The undergraduate seats will be filled from the list of candidates from last spring. Those students who were runners-up in the election will be asked to fill the two vacancies.
Lilia could not say who the students were, only that they "are being contacted."
Each graduate school has its own way of electing its senators. Mitchell, a senior in the Dentistry School, said his resignation has caused the Dentistry School to re-evaluate the way their senators are elected.
Mitchell explained that he recommended to the Dentistry School that a younger person within the program be selected to the post.
Specifically, Mitchell said it would be "better if the senator were a freshman who did his undergraduate work at this university, and understood the Student Senate."
"I resigned, basically, because of a lack of time," Mitchell said. "I'm going on to my residency, and it's not fair to the senate (that I stay on)."
Harris, a junior in business administration who represented the residence hall community, said he decided to resign after he re-evaluated the time commitments of his outside job and his Air Force ROTC position.
"I knew I was having some difficulties toward the end of last semester, and I tried to stay on for the spring because of the turnover in senate last year,” he said. "I wanted to add stability."
Harris, also a resident adviser at College-Univer-sity residence hall, was referring to the four resignations of last year, and the two resignations — by a fellow residence hall senator and the joint elections chairman — of the fall semester. Both positions have since been filled.
Harris said he will remain involved with the senate as a member of the library committee.
"I think I can handle special projects better/’ he said. "But I don't want to let anyone down by having the commitment (of a senator)."
Boish, a graduate from the School of Education, and Schoenfield, a graduate in the Professional Writing Program, were unavailable for comment. However, Lilia said the two students resigned due to "dissertation commitments."
University neurologist brings new hope to Gehrig’s Disease patients
By Cornell Barnard
City Writer
A university neurologist has announced further developments in an experimental drug which is bringing new hope to patients receiving treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.
"Since October, when the
University affirmative action is analyzed in expected report
By Doreen Guarino
City Writer
An important report on affirmative action at the university is expected to be made public by the end of this month, said university officials.
The report of approximately 130 pages was compiled by the university's Office of Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action.
The report will analyze the university's affirmative action policies, practices and the final employment result, said Barbara Pearson, director of the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action.
Pearson said the report wall analyze the university's actual work force compared to the potential work force of qualified persons in the community.
The report will be discussed at next month's meeting of the university's Affirmative Action Committee.
Pearson said that affirmative action was established at the university in 1970, making the university one of the first in the nation to establish a specific plan of affirmative action.
In the spring of 1983, Stanford University compiled affirmative action statistics which compared Stanford to Harvard, Yale and this university.
The study compared the number of women and minorities in the faculty, staff and student body of each university.
"In every category, USC had more women and minorities than any of the other three," Pearson said.
The major change in the uni-
versity's report compared to previous years is that it will be stated in plain language that everyone can understand, she said.
This is also the first year the report will be distributed to the different schools and departments within the university, which will be involved more directly in affirmative action.
"It's the first time we've asked the home departments to come up with their own analysis of where they think their deportment is weak (in affirmative action) according to the data we send them," Pearson said.
"We're looking to get the schools and departments more directly involved in affirmative action,” said Jon Strauss, senior vice president of administration.
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method of administering the drug and the dosage was changed from intravenous to a direct injection, symptoms have been alleviated for three days in most patients and up to 10 or 12 days for others," said Dr. W. King Engel, director of the USC Neuromuscular Center at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.
Although the drug alleviates symptoms only temporarily and apparently does not arrest continuing degeneration of nerve cells, no other treatment has been so successful, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, which is funding Engel's research.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a fatal neuromuscular disease which usually causes death in its victims within one to five years. It is commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease after the New York Yankees' baseball star who died from the disease in 1941.
Engel, recently interviewed by Barbara Walters on ABC's news magazine 20/20, said that while the drug, called thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), is not the answer to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, it could well lead to the development of other drugs that have wider- and longer-acting effects.
"In answer to the question, 'How dose are we to finding a cure?' Well, we won't know un-
til we get there. It could be tomorrow or even next year — you just have to work the best that you are able, " Engle said.
Engel said patients respond differently to the TRH drug but the reasons the drug helps some symptoms but not others is not known.
One patient, a 65-year-old man who has had the disease for three years, could not walk without touching a wall or other solid supports before receiving the drug, Engel said.
After the injection, however, he could walk without the support. The patient could also get out of bed without help — an effort he had not been able to make for months.
Another patient who had not been able to lift his hands above his waist even to drink a glass of water is now able to lift his arms high above his head after the TRH had been administered.
Robert Bauman, 33, a patient of Engel's and a sufferer of the disease since April of 1983, was an avid bodysurfer, runner and basketball player, but now must walk with the aid of a companion.
Bauman explained that the depressing thing about his whole illness is "wondering
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