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Volume XCVII, Number 50	University of Southern California	Tuesday, November 13, 1984
Bruinbusters sweep campus
Draft registration verification not required for financial aid
By Dana Glad
Staff Writer
Financial aid procedures will not be affected by the Education Department's decision not to require colleges to verify that their students have registered for the draft before they receive financial aid, said Michael Halloran, dean of admissions and financial aid.
Originally, proof of students' registration with Selective Service would not have been required until the next school
year, which W'ould have made the financial aid process more time consuming and expensive, Halloran said.
Now, Halloran said the university will simply continue "collecting statements but not requiring verification,” when students apply for financial aid.
The certification forms, on which students indicate whether or not they have registered for the draft, will not currently be checked with Selective
Service or any other government agency.
The change in the Solomon Amendment, a bill passed by Congress which denies financial aid to students who were required to register for the draft but did not, occurred when the Education Department found that 95 percent of students provided correct information on the certification forms.
Halloran said, however, that the university had not made plans to implement the stricter guidelines of the Solomon Amendment because "there was a general feeling that as long as draft registration had picked up to the extent it had they proba-blv would not require the draft reports."
If the change had not come about within the next three months, the dean said, plans would have been made for verification procedures.
The university was concerned because it would have been necessary to collect the certification forms, send them to the Education Department and wait for their response, said Halloran. He also said the Education Department was having difficulty in responding to the small number of inquiries they are now receiving.
The current plan will rely on the honor of individual students and save a lot of money in potential processing costs, Flal-loran said.
This university was among many schools in California that wrote letters to the department protesting the plan, which would have forced them to police the Solomon Amendment. Although some schools opposed the plan on ethical grounds, this university opposed it for practical reasons, Halloran said.
'Electronic church' audience is conservative, study finds
By Dana Glad
Staff Writer
Although viewers of religious television are a smaller group than once thought, these programs may have a conservative political effect, Stewart Hoover, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor, said Monday.
Hoover, speaking to about 15 university students and faculty members, presented the findings of his recent study of the "electronic church," in which he interviewed 20 Philadelphia area families who watch "The 700 Club," an evangelical television talk show.
About 12.2 million Americans, or six percent, view religious programs, Hoover said, adding that the size of the audience had previously been thought to be much larger.
He said accurate results had been difficult to obtain before researchers determined that the average viewer of religious television watches two to three different programs.
Hoover's quantitative results also showed audiences tend to be very religious, quite conservative politically and more likely to vote than the average citizen, making them a small, homogeneous group.
In his interviews with viewers, whom he would have not been able to locate without the help of "The 700 Club," which keeps extensive records on viewers who call, write, or send contributions, Hoover said he found they usually gave a variety of pat responses when asked why they watched the show.
Underlying their answers, Hoover said, was their desire to identify with something larger than themselves and have their values confirmed.
"The 700 Club," which requires $110 million in annual contributions to stay on the air, strives, like other religious programs, to deve-
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JAMES WARF
No peace through strength, Atom bomb creator predicts
By Andrew Thomas
Staff Writer
A university professor emeritus and co-creator of the atomic bomb said increasing our nuclear arsenal virtually assures disaster rather than peace, calling President Reagan a “demagogue" for saying Democrats wanted "peace through weakness."
"If nuclear weapons are continued to be made by superpowers, then there is no doubt in my mind that we will eventually destroy ourselves/' said James Warf, a veteran of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.
Warf said people who think more weapons mean peace are "in error."
He attributed the idea of a large arsenal bringing peace to a pre-World War II notion of sovereignty. He said "each nation will act in what it perceives as its best interest." When a nation felt threatened during that time, they would arm themselves or be destroyed.
That system was invalidated by the advent of nuclear weaponry because nuclear W'eapons are "qualitatively different than regular bombs," Warf said.
Warf began work on nuclear power in 1942. He worked at various universities and research institutes throughout the country as a group leader of two research groups that dealt with fission products.
He decided to work with the Manhattan Project because it was "a lesser of two evils. . .1 asked myself, 'My God, what if the Nazis win?' "
Warf left nuclear research after World War II when he decided the United States' "primary
purpose was to make more and more bombs."
In 1945, Warf helped found the Federation of Atomic Scientists, now the Federation of American Scientists. He is still active in the organization, whose original purpose was to "examine the ultimate effects of atomic weapons on our society," Warf said.
In 1948, Warf came to the university to teach science.
Warf has been active in the human rights organization Amnesty International, was an anti-Vietnam War activist, taught chemistry in Indonesia and Malaysia and wrote six chemistry books in the Malay language. He has also toured the lecture circuit, giving talks on nuclear powrer.
"I don't think we'll even get a chance to face social problems unless we first try to save the human race," Warf said. He added he is sometimes considered extremely left-wring by colleagues.
Warf said fear of nuclear war would not prevent it from occur-ing.
"Just because it's horrible, it won't stop people from doing it," he said. "A nuclear war might well come."
Since the nuclear age is only about 40 years old, "we still haven't developed beneficial traditions regarding it," Warf said.
"We have to accept the idea that the two superpowers are roughly equal and that they can destroy each other," he said.
The Soviet Union backed down in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he said, because Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev did not feel his nuclear force was (Continued on page 6)
Tommy Trojan was the setting for entrepreneurs pushing T-shirts and buttons for the UCLA game Saturday. Here the special events committee sold 'Bruinbusters' T-shirts for Troy Week 1984. Troy Week started yesterday and runs through Friday.