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Volume XCVII, Number 29
University of Southern California
Friday, October 12, 1984
Voter registration campaign nets high percentage of USC students
By Karen Castro
Assistant City Editor
During a voter registration campaign that ended Tuesday, USC registered and re-registered over 3,600 voters, a figure which was proportionally higher than any other Southern California college campus.
Although UCLA registered 4,332 voters — the most of any school in the Voter Registration Program — the number of voters this university registered put "USC wray ahead proportionally," said Jim Hernandez, regional coordinator of the program.
UCLA, with 33,300 undergraduates, registered about 13 percent of its student body. This university, with 15,882 undergraduates, registered about 22 percent of the student body.
Michael-Jon Martinez, chairman of the Student Senate's Environmental and External Affairs Committee, which coordinated the senate voter registration campaign, was “flabbergasted” and "tremendously pleased" at the results.
"I didn't think we'd get that many. We are so proud of our campus," he said.
Of the more than 22,000 people registered at 34 Southern California campuses, this university accounted for 22 percent to 23 percent of the voters, said Hernandez, who was in "total shock" over the total number of students registered.
According to statistics of the schools in region five of the program, Cal State Long Beach registered 265 voters; Cal State Los Angeles, 400; Cal State Northridge, 475; UC Irvine, 553; Cal Poly Pomona, 1,376; and UCLA, 4,332.
Groups such as the Student Senate, Trojan Democrats, Trojan College Republicans, Wartc Student Union, United University Church and Movimiento
Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) set up tables in front of Tommy Trojan during the two-week voter registration campaign.
"It helped that there was more than one register table," said Mark Decker, senator and chairman of the Political Concerns Committee. "Students felt more comfortable registering; they didn't feel espoused to a specific party."
Decker helped register students, faculty and staff from a table manned by the Student Senate. The senate registered 230 voters over a four-day period last week.
Decker, who was "absolutely ecstatic" about the final overall figures, noticed a "big push after the debates," with a large number of people registering Monday and Tuesday following the televised debates between Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale and President Reagan held Sunday.
"A large percentage of people who registered declined to state (a specific party). Otherwise there were equal amounts of Democrats and Republicans who registered," Decker said.
But he added groups such as Trojan College Republicans registered over 90 percent Republicans, for a total of over 2,100 people.
Bernard Walker, president of the BSU, said his organization registered 250 students during a seven day period. Over 200 of the voters registered at the BSU table were Democrats.
He said the organization set up the registration table "because I am extremely anti-Reagan as are most BSU members" and the BSU wanted to encourage Democratic registration among black students on campus.
Walker said the BSU did register "a few Republi-
(Continued on page 6)
MIKE MELSON'DAILY TROJAN
This oversized campaign poster foretells the arrivai of Vice President George Bush to the university on Monday.
Republican student to seek office in 47th Assembly District
By Frances Hong
Staff Writer
The Republican Party is searching for a new, young candidate to steal the 47th Assembly District from its Democratic base this November, and uni-
versity student William Sanderson thinks he can fill the role.
"The Republican Party is rapidly expanding and broadening its base and can no longer be written off as the 'right-wing' party, otherwise I wouldn't be
in it," said Sanderson, a 26-year-old senior majoring in finance.
An active Trojan College Republican and Los Angeles County Young Republican, Sanderson classifies himself as a moderate Republican. He de-
Freshman Writing hit by criticism
Students say program fails to make grade
By Ramona Hattendorf
Assistant Managing Editor
This is the second in a two-part series on the Freshman Writing Program.
In 1978, the Freshman Writing Program was restructured into a workshop class. Emphasis was taken away from lectures and placed on the evolution of the students' papers. Students were given help during the process of writing, rather than after the completion of an assignment.
The approach was innovative, indeedit is still being developed.
According to the FWP's director, Betty Bamberg, the yearlong FWP receives a lot of support at the university level.
Yet just as the older, more traditional FWP was attacked, so is the current program.
Complaints deal primarily with a lack of unity within the FWP, but also include grievances about instructors and use of class time.
The focus of the FWP is to improve, and adapt its methods to suit the student's needs. As
such, many changes have been made to improve the program. Changes were also made in the FWP's final exam, about which many students have complained.
Last year the FWP announced the essay topic and gave reading materials for it prior to the final exam.
Yet students still complain too much emphasis is placed on the final. Since the grade earned in 101b covers both semesters, students feel eight units are riding on one essay.
The FWP's computerized data, however, shows that students' exam scores actually improve after completing 101b. Yet, even with computerized data backing up the FWP, many students protest, saying the grading policy is unfair.
"These guys would have flunked Hemingway," said one irate student who failed the program's waiver exam.
Indeed, the grading system seems to be the universal complaint about the program. The rating the program receives on teaching effectiveness varies with the quality of the instructors students receive, but the final exam grievances are widespread.
One student, now a junior, took the exam two years ago. He went into the final as an A student. He received a D on the exam and ended up with eight units of C in the course.
The grading system is "totally arbitrary," he said.
Another student went into the 101b exam last semester as an A student and failed the final. He appealed and retook the test, this time earning an A.
Rumors of discrepencies between grades earned in class and the grade given after the final exam worry some students.
Moreover, Judith Mathews, an instructor in the FWP said grading policies may change from one exam to another. She said in the fall 1983 exam, students were asked to support or dispute a robbery, and were then graded on their ability to see both sides of the situation.
"We looked for depth and ability to see things from a different perspective," Mathews said.
"(Grade bias) could happen occasionally," she said, but w’ent on to stress that the department tries to avoid it as much as possible.
Every instructor has to grade final exams, averaging between (Continued on page 8)
scribed the Republican Party as a "very open party, a party of opportunity and a party of inclusion, not exclusion."
The 47th Assembly District includes Vernon, Huntington Park, Bell, Cudahy and part of Los Angeles, including this university. The incumbent is Teresa Hughes, a Democrat.
Although the state Assembly is predominantly Democrat, Sanderson says a large and growing number of "moderate" Republicans are beginning to flex some muscle on the political scene.
"People see Republicans as
neo-conservative types, but look at the demographics of people. The Republicans in California are racially and sexually diverse," Sanderson said.
If Sanderson is elected to the 47th Assembly, his first priority will be to create jobs.
"This district cries out for jobs, and I intend to create an incentive for more businesses," he said. "Jobs and businesses are what this district needs more than anything else."
Sanderson also strongly favors Proposition 39, an initiative to turn the task of reapportion-(Continued on page 7)
Professor says civil rights in trouble if Reagan elected
By Aaron Van Curen
Staff Writer
The re-election of President Reagan would devastate civil rights because he could appoint a conservative majority to the Supreme Court, a university associate professor of law said Wednesday.
Speaking before a group of 200 students, whom he later described as liberal on civil rights if not on economics and foreign policy, Erwin Chemerinsky said five of the nine current Supreme Court justices are over 75 and are either in ill-health or are contemplating retirement.
He said the question of the upcoming presidential election is "Do you want Ronald Reagan appointing the justices who will define our rights for most of our lives?"
"If you are about individual liberties and civil rights — this should be one of the most important issues in the election — then you have an obligation to make others who are less aware of the law realize the potential effect of a Reagan re-election on dvil liberties for the rest of this century," Chemerinsky said to the audience, which he later estimated was 65 percent law students.
Chemerinsky said Reagan's record indicates he would appoint a court that would limit dvil liberties and dvil rights.
He dted the appointments of conservatives Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia to the District of Columbia Circuit Court. Chemerinsky said these judges recently wrote an opinion saying homosexuals have no Constitutional right to privacy, and that the majority of sodety may lawfully choose to discriminate against them.
Other judicial appointments he discussed induded the 7th Circuit
(Continued on page 7)