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Volume XCIX, Number 43	University of Southern California	Thursday, October 31, 1985
Jerry Brown donates documents
Doheny chosen to house gubernatorial collection
BENILOA SAND AN DAILY TROJAN
By Aaron Van Curen
City Editor
Dean Charles Ritcheson, university librarian, accepted the document collection of former Gov. Edmund G. "Jerry” Brown Jr. as part of Doheny Library's Regional Cultural History Collection at an informal luncheon attended by both the former governor and his father, former Gov. Edmund G. “Pat" Brown.
The younger former governor said he selected the university's library because he felt it would be able to quickly catalog the documents, which comprise almost 2,000 linear feet of letters, legislative files, reports, background material, audio and video tapes, newspaper clips and memorabilia. The library is cataloging all of its collections on a computer.
Jem’ Brown explained that libraries around the world are being linked by computer catalogs, forming an international library with information that can be retrieved by everyone.
"Whatever we do has international significance. I don't claim that these papers have international significance as yet, but they are a contribution to the international library," Jerry Brown said.
"Gov. Brown was governor for nearly eight years of significant California development,"
Ritcheson said. "People were listening to him," he said.
Jerry Brown said, "A collection of this type is an investment in the future and this shows confidence that we're going to have a future. ..."
He said his term as governor from 1975 to 1983 was a "very experimental period."
"There are lots of lessons to be learned about the governmental processes" from this period, lessons that can be found in the documents, Jerry Brown said.
The documents will be available for research "when the students start asking," Jerry Brown said. Lana Beckett, curator of Regional Cultural History Collection in Doheny and the woman in charge of cataloging the Brown collection, said the first section of the collection may be available in six months, though she said it will take many years to catalog it entirely.
Brown estimated the value of the documents by comparing it to the value of the gubernatorial document collection of his father when it was donated to the University of California, Berkeley library. He jokingly valued that collection at the time of its donation at $325,000, but the senior Brown corrected that figure to SI.25 million. Allowing for inflation, Jerry Brown estimated
that his collection is worth S3 million.
Both Browns studied at UC Berkeley.
Jerry Brown left politics after losing the 1982 U.S. Senate election to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson. He would not comment
Jerry Brown and Dean Ritcheson
on his future political plans, but Ritcheson said, "We have not by any means seen the last of Jerry Brown on the national scene."
Pat Brown said his son is now practicing law, writing a book and working with several "think-tank" political research
institutions.
Brown works out of Southern California and said that is part of the reason he donated the papers to USC. "I didn't want to give them to Berkeley because it's 500 miles away. 1 might want (Continued on page 7)
Stun gun: latest in self-defense
By Terry Allen
Staff Writer
Members of the university community looking for an effective means of self-defense may W’ant to consider the stun gun, the latest in a line of hand-held consumer weapons designed to
protect otherwise defenseless citizens from potential assailants.
However, an assessment of the gun's ultimate utility depends on whom you talk to.
Reggie Montgomery, a former student who left the university'
in 1983 to pursue a career with the California Angels, sells the gun for the Los Angeles-based Omega Stun Gun Company. He believes the gun is an effective means of self-defense.
"It's like having a life insurance policy you can carry around with you," he said. "It's a really nice item to have."
The size of a hand-held transistor radio, the stun gun is equipped wjjh two adjacent metallic prongs, each about a quarter inch long. A 45,000-volt current of electricity can be summoned from between the prongs bv squeezing a control lever. If the prongs make contact with the skin or clothing of a potential attacker, he is temporarily rendered insensible.
"It's like a medical seizure," said Stey'e W'ard, director of University Security, describing bodily reaction to the gun's shock. "The electricity affects the nervous system and you go out of control. You fall down and start flopping around.
"There have been medical studies showing that the thing is harmless, but there are some dangers to it," he continued. "When you fall down you might hit your head on the ground. It's hard to tell what might happen when someone is out of control."
Ward also cautioned that the weapon, already dangerous if used correctly, might be readily abused, particularly on a college campus.
<Continued on page 7)
JOEL ORDESKY DAILY TROJAN
Stun guns may be sold on campus
University prepares for reaccreditation process
By Nancie Mack
Assistant City Editor
It's reaccreditation time for the university again, and the administration is hard at work. Reaccreditation occurs just once every 10 years and it means extensive writing and rewriting of a Self-Study Report, to be followed by a visit from a team of administrators from other universities.
The report will be filed next spring with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The university should be visited in the fall of 1986.
"The self-study process will advance our own understanding of our major academic priorities, as well as provide information demonstrating that USC meets or exceeds the quality standards that we as a member of WASC have helped establish in our region," read an April 1985 memo from Provost Cornelius Pings to President James Zumberge.
The university's self-study method is "very much a standard process," said Jerome Walker, assistant provost and general editor of the report.
He said the uniy'ersity voluntarily undergoes reaccreditation. The self-study program, w’hich will take about a year and a half, started last winter and spring with meetings between Provosts Sylvia Manning and William Spitzer and faculty committees.
Manning and Spitzer met with the committees to get recommendations on how their sections of the report — undergraduate education and research and Ph.D. studies, respectively — should be structured and what issues should be considered, Walker said.
According to Pings' memo, the report will be a collection of essays concerning three major themes — the undergraduate experience, Ph.D. programs and libraries — and a number of other subjects which, combined, will cover essential information required by WASC.
Other subjects include conclusions and directions for the next ten years; actions responding to WASC's five-year update in 1981; university governance and purposes; research; major academic unit changes since the last accreditation in 1976; faculty; students; plant, facilities and equipment; finances; and university dey’elopment.
Although Zumberge is responsible for the final report, it will go through a number of hands and committees before reaching him.
Members of the executive committee, chaired by Executiy e Vice Provost Robert Biller, will draft specific sections of the report. Biller also chairs the University Reaccreditation Self-Study Committee,
(Continued on page 6)