'49ers get playoff revenge on Women of Troy — see page 12
Volume XCVIII, Number 49
University of Southern California
Friday, March 22, 1985
Attempted rape
By Jennifer Cray
Assistant City Editor
The Los Angeles County district attorney's office will not file charges against two fraternity members arrested last week for allegedly attempting to rape a sorority member on March 8.
The district attorney's office will not press charges of attempted rape against Scott Weldon, 21, due to a lack of sufficient evidence. The case against Neil Higger, 21, will be referred to the Los Angeles city attorney's office for review on a lesser charge of sexual battery, said Sgt. John Rice of the Los Angeles Police Department's Southwest division.
Lt. Art Blair of University Security said the deputy district attorney handling the case indicated charges of attempted rape will not be filed because the district attorney's office was not absolutely sure a court would convict the suspects on those charges.
Blair was at the meeting in which the deputy district attorney announced the decision. He said the courts are so overloaded that they can only prosecute the most serious cases — cases
charges dropped
in which they are sure they can get convictions.
Blair said, according to the deputy district attorney, attempted rape charges would not be pressed because the case did not have a high enough priority when compared to the district attorney's current caseload.
"I didn't know what to think," Blair said. "I thought it was a good case. I still think it's a good case."
According to the security report, the victim was at a fraternity party when the suspects, who had allegedly been drinking, molested her and tried to take off her clothes.
It is alleged that Higger asked Weldon if he should go ahead and rape the victim. Weldon reportedly did not respond, Blair said.
When the suspects attacked the victim, she fought back and managed to escape, the report said.
Both Higger and Weldon are members of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.
The city attorney's hearing, which will decide if Higger should be formally charged with sexual assault, is slated for April 10.
Myerhoff remembered with memorial service
By Richard Hatem
Staff Writer
Woman in critical condition after 30th St. fire
Life saved by neighbors who quickly wielded garden hoses
MIKE MELSON. DAILY TROJAN
Patricia Morris is treated by paramedics after a fire gutted her 30th Street apartment Wednesday.
By Nancie Mack
Staff Writer
A 59-year-old woman suffered second and third degree bums on her arms and face Wednesday night after a fire gutted her apartment on 30th Street near the Shrine Auditorium.
Patricia Morris of 710 W. 30th St. remained "in critical condition" Thursday afternoon at the County-USC Medical Center Bum Unit, said Adelaida DeLa-Cerda, public information officer for the medical center.
The fire was caused by Morris smoking in bed, said Capt. Steve Lorenze of Fire Station 15 on Jefferson Boulevard. Damages to the tiny, one-room apartment were estimated at $3,000, he added.
Three fire trucks arrived at Morris' home at the Neldnorth Apartments — located behind the Shrine near the university's Cardinal and Gold complex — at 7:06 p.m., three minutes after they were called by the victim's neighbor.
The firemen quickly extinguished the fire, which the neighbors had already begun to hose down, Lorenze said.
"Actually, the neighbors saved her life," he said.
Because of her age and the degree of her bums, she probably would have died if she had not been on the floor, breathing the best air, Lorenze said.
Teresa Alvarez, the 11-year-old daughter of the complex manager, said she was outside jumping rope with her younger brother when she saw Morris through the woman's apartment window.
"She was screaming 'help' " and burning, the girl said.
The child called to her father for help, then saw Morris scratching at the window to get out. Morris pounded on sofa cushions, trying to stop her hands from burning, then fell to the floor, the child said.
Abel Castillo said he was in his apartment, directly opposite Morris' apartment, when he heard someone yell "fire."
When Castillo evacuated his apartment, he saw Morris' curtains burning and tried to break into her apartment with the help of Christine Kotz, a university student.
Alfredo Alvarez, the apartment manager, said he had dragged a hose over to (Continued on page 6)
People spoke, but not in hushed tones, as they filed into Hancock Auditorium Thursday, with a classical string quartet playing in the background and seeming to evoke the spirit of Barbara Myerhoff.
About 150 friends, co-workers and students attended the memorial services held Thursday for Myerhoff, a professor of anthropology, who died Jan. 7 of cancer. She was 49.
A clip was shown from The Culture of Fairfax, Myerhoff's final project that dealt with the Jewish population in the Fairfax area of Los Angeles. Myerhoff's most popular work, a play entitled Number Our Days, received an Oscar and two Emmy Awards in 1977.
"Barbara left us at the height of her productive power," said Alexander Moore, professor and chairman of the department of anthropology, who opened the program. "Our purpose is not only to mourn, but to celebrate."
Moore said most anthropologists fit into the category of "local" or "cosmopolitan," depending on whether their work was done while traveling or based at a university. But, he said, Myerhoff defied either classification by being a perfect mixture of both.
Johannes Wilbert, professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at UCLA, spoke of his work with Myerhoff while he was her doctoral supervisor as she earned her degree in anthropology at UCLA.
"I was reluctant to assume this obligation and privilege today," Wilbert said. "I am glad I was not asked to speak at her funeral. I would not have been a good speaker at that time."
"She knew how to become part of a tribe, a gang, a society without losing her credibility as a scholarly observer," Wilbert said, as he told of her work studying bike gangs and hippie communes from the perspective of people on pilgrimages.
Virginia Tufte, professor of English, called Myerhoff "a seer — wise and almost prophetic."
"Barbara brought a kind of drama to everything she did," said Tufte, who taught classes with Myerhoff and co-edited a book entitled Changing Families with her. "She had the ability to help students find within themselves talents they didn't know they had."
Vikram Jayanti, producer of The Culture of Fairfax and an associate of the Center for Visual Anthropology, read from an interview with Myerhoff held after she knew she had cancer.
Myerhoff, in the interview, said her work as an anthropologist "is a strange double-mirror" in which she observed a new world through the perspective of having just emerged from her own world.
In the film clip that was shown, Myerhoff — again in an interview
—	told of a dream she had in which "I'm standing at the edge of a pool and it is the pool of life — and I just can't bring myself to jump in."
In the closing statements, Rabbi Laura Geller of the Hillel Jewish Center, told of a Jewish custom of tearing one's clothes to symbolize the rupture that results when a loved one dies.
After 30 days, Geller said, the clothes are mended. However, when a teacher such as Myerhoff dies, the wound never heals, she said.
MIKE MELSON DAILY TROJAN
ALENANDER MOORE