trojan
Volume XCVIII, Number 54
University of Southern California
Friday, March 29, 1985
Calm before the storm-------- The Von KleinSmid Center Bell Tower almost brushes the clouds as a
thunderhead moves across the Los Angeles sky.
Mix-up in scheduling leaves LAS in the cold
Vietnamese Student Association awarded use of auditorium
By Pablo Lopez
Staff Writer
A scheduling conflict between the Vietnamese Student Association and the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences for use of the Norris Theatre on April 13 has left the coordinator of a social science fair searching for another location on campus.
Jon Strauss, senior vice president of administration, influenced Wednesday night's decision to give the Vietnamese Student Association the use of Norris Theatre for its political conference on April 13, thus overriding an earlier commitment to LAS for the theatre.
Russell McGregor, director for the School of Cinema-Television, had earlier in the week said the Vietnamese Student Association could not use the theatre. He wanted the office of academic relations — part of LAS — to use it for its social science fair.
McGregor had made a verbal agreement in September with the office of academic relations, allowing it to use the theatre April 13. The Vietnamese Student Association, however, reserved the theatre in December with a written invoice for the same day.
"It was clearly a mix-up and apparently a mistake/' Strauss said. "The place was over-booked and there could be an argument made in either case."
But, he added, "The Vietnamese had it written on paper, so 1 don't think you can toss a coin on this one."
McGregor was not available for comment Thursday
and will not be at the university until next week.
However, Sherryl Lucarelli, director of academic relations, said she blames the university for not having one governing body to handle building reservations with a master calendar.
"You look at other universities and you will find out that they have one group organizing events on their campus," Lucarelli said. "I wrote a report several years ago informing the university of our problem, but I guess the university has ignored it.
"With no general coordinator, we are forced to compete with ourselves," she said, adding that McGregor could be at fault, too.
Lucarelli is coordinating "History Day — L. A.," an annual event that brings the brightest junior and senior high school students in the area to the university. It is coordinated with the help of the Los Angeles Unified School District and various other organizations in the area.
Students who compete at the social science fair at this university, then have a chance at state honors in Sacramento, and eventually a shot at national honors in Washington, D.C.
Last year, over 350 students competed at the university. This year, over 800 students are expected to attend.
Besides saying that an invoice is not a contract, Lucarelli had other concerns.
"I have a concern for the (junior and senior high
school) students who will be here," Lucarelli said. "Who knows what could happen?
"The Vietnamese conference is of a political nature and there could be trouble," she said, "and I don't want anything to happen around the students who will be showing off their efforts. It just won't look good for the university if someone gets hurt."
Lucarelli said she talked with McGregor last September about reserving the theatre for April 13 and the event was written in the Norris Theatre calendar. Lucarelli added that Norris Theatre was reserved for the event the last three years in the same manner.
However, "LAS" was rubbed out of the Norris Theatre calendar for that date a few months later and the Vietnamese Student Association received an invoice honoring its request for the theatre for a sum of $350 in December.
A requisition to pay for the theatre's cost was allegedly left on the desk of Rich McKinney, manager of Norris Theatre, but he said he never saw it.
But the mix-up — the scheduling of two events for the same day — occurred because someone saying she was working on the "History Day" event, telephoned McKinney sometime in November and canceled the April 13 date.
No explanation was given, McKinney said, adding that cancellation of events by telephone is not unusual.
(Continued on page 7)
Overlooked campus clubs will get funds
Funds pledged for new dental school library
By Aaron Van Curen
Assistant City Editor
The Gay and Lesbian Student Union and the university's service and honor organizations were given a place in the Program Board structure at Wednesday's senate meeting because they were left without funding after a reorganization of the board last year.
These groups were overlooked during last year's reorganization of the Program Board, and had to apply for funding from the board for each of their individual events, instead of receiving a budget allocation at the beginning of the year.
The groups also received funding for some of their day-to-day expenses from the senate discretionary fund.
A new reorganization, which came following a complete restructuring of the senate last month, has put the groups in line for an annual allocation, though each of their programs ■will still need to be approved by the Program Board executive committee, said Tom Becktold, a co-author of the senate bylaw amendment package that made the changes.
The GLSU and the Inter-Ethnic Executive Board will be grouped under the board's allocation division. The IEEB provides funding for the Black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific and international student service organizations.
The service and honors department, also a part of the allocations division, has been created to provide money for the Knights, the Helenes, Mor-tor Board, and other recognized service and honor organizations.
A discretionary department, where campus organizations not covered under other divisions of the Program Board may apply for program funds, also falls i p-der the allocations divisions.
(Continued on page 2)
By John Zack
Staff Writer
The School of Dentistry has received a $1 million pledge from one of its support groups to help build a new dental Library / Learning Center.
The Century Club, which has over 1,000 members, many of whom are alumni of the School of Dentistry, has already given over $500,000 of the pledge to the dental school, said Joanne Mayne, assistant director of development for the School of Dentistry.
Frank Mason, dental librarian, said he hopes the construction of the Library / Learning Center on the west side of the Norris Dental Science Center can begin in 1987. The school needs to raise about $3 million more for the construction, Mason said.
Currently, the dental library collection, which is ranked third in the nation by the American Dental Association's Bureau of Libraries, is primarily stored in the dental center. The current facility can only seat 55 of the school's approximately 700 students at a time, Mason said.
The collection will be moved to the first floor of the planned structure, where there will be seating for over 120 students. On the second floor there will be offices for dental faculty members who have not been able to find office space in the current facility. Mason said.
Some dental faculty members currently have offices in the Andrus Gerontology Center and elsewhere, Mason said.
The new center will have facilities to help practicing dentists do research, as well as to receive the continuing education required by national and state licensing organizations. For example, the center will have more computer terminals on which dentists can have access to MEDLARS, a huge dental data bank in Bethesda, Md., (Continued on page 10)