Basketball teams defeat rivals
See SPORTS
trojan
Volume C, Number 30
University of Southern California
Monday, February 24, 1986
Professor claims non-verbal cues reveal deception
By Kelimia Mednick
Staff Writer
Detecting deception without sophisticated machinery is the focus of Michael Cody, a university professor who teaches a class in non-verbal communication.
Cody has written numerous articles on lying, including the chapter, “Cues to Deception" in
FEATURE"
the soon-to-be-published college textbook, Persuasive Communication.
Cody's research has taken him around the country.
He has conducted studies in a communications laboratory furnished by the university's Faculty Research and Innovation Fund Award he received last year.
Contrary to popular belief, statistical analyses reported in "Cues" indicate that a person's face is a very poor place to look and learn if he is being dishonest.
Generally, people who are untrained in non-verbal communication are accurate in detecting deception 45 to 60 percent of the time.
What specific cues should an observer note to identify the dishonest communicator?
"Liars experience increased arousal because of the fear of punishment. Arousal is indicated by pupil dilation, more speech errors, blinking less, and higher pitch in voice.
"Liars leak cues associated with uncertainty. Increased hesitations, a shrug, and irrelevant statements indicate a person is thinking about a message that never occurred," Cody said.
(Continued on page 8)
University to build primate exercise gym
By Katherine Dyar
Staff Writer
After a year and a half of planning and controversy, the university primate vivarium will build an exercise facility for its medical research primates.
William Blackmore, director of vivaria at the university's Health Sciences campus, said that the facility, the first for the vivaria, will be basically a "play area" for its long-term research primates, equipped with trapezes, ropes, and "whatever other toys they like to play with — maybe even Samonsite luggage."
The exercise room, in its current design, will hold two animals at a time, with a double wall of chain-link fence splitting the room in half to prevent fighting and "finger-biting," Blackmore said. Although the animals will be separated, they will still be able to see each other and provide each other with
Facility to serve as play area
companionship and exercise, he said.
The facility will be a testing ground for the possibility of constructing similar rooms at the vivarium, depending upon the number of long-term primates the university will be housing in the future.
Blackmore said he had been working on plans for the design and construction of the exercise room for a year and a half, while the university was developing a proposal to house the long-term research primates at the Los Angeles Zoo.
The vivarium waited to begin construction of the facility because the National Institutes of Health, which sponsors the research being done on the primates, advised Blackmore last October that the legislation on the care of research animals
would be changing that year and that he should wait until the new requirements were released.
After NIH announced its new policy, Blackmore said, the university was one of the first to meet its standards, and has either met or surpassed the standards for the humane housing of research animals for several other agencies, including those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
When the Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Commission rejected the proposal to house the animals at the zoo, the vivarium decided to go ahead with the construction of the exercise facility.
Paula Van Orden of the Fund for Animals, one of the supporters of the university's attempt to use the zoo, said that she is
Check forger bounced to jail
By Tania Soussan
Staff Writer
After pleading guilty to charges of forgery last Wednesday, a man, who posed as a student and cashed over $3,000 worth of bad checks at the university, was sentenced to 180 days in county jail and three years on probation.
Chris "Franco" Wells, 24, was booked on Jan. 9 on nine felony counts of fraudulent check writing, and, after a preliminary hearing on Jan. 28, waited in jail for three weeks for sentencing.
At the time of Wells' arrest, Robert Wade, an investigator for the university, said Wells had cashed the checks over a period of seven months, beginning in fall of 1984.
At that time. Wells registered for classes and obtained a student identification card and a housing contract. He, however, later withdrew from the university, Wade said.
Wells held a work study job in Dohenv Library for about two months and then transferred to Commons Cafeteria. After receiving a
tslpill
ROCCO GARCIA DAILY TROJAN
REVENGE OF THE NERDS — Engineering students celebrated Games Day on Friday with a chariot race on Trousdale Parkway.
"glad to hear that USC is improving its own facilities" and felt that Blackmore had been "sincere" in his desire to create the best and most natural environment possible for the animals.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, another group that backed the university's efforts to gain housing at the zoo, feels that animal research should be stopped altogether, but that the zoo housing would be a step in the right direction. Lucy Shelton, coordinator of the Los Angeles chapter, said "the ultimate alternative would be to build a natural setting or sanctuary" for the animals.
"They are living, feeling, thinking beings," Shelton said. "How would you feel if your relatives, your close relatives, were in prison and being experimented on?"
Blackmore said that The Coalition to Save USC Primates, an organization that wants to see the university stop using research animals and that had opposed the zoo proposal, had been told of the planned facility. Bob Barker, a representative of that organization, could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Dr. Warren Thomas, director of the Los Angeles Zoo, said he believed that even if the arrangement with the zoo had gone through, the university still would have built the exercise facility.
"You have to give USC credit for the facilities they've got," Thomas said. The voluntary addition of the exercise room "shows their sincere concern for the animals," he said.
Blackmore agrees.
He said that he hopes the experimental facility will be completed within six weeks, and that he is "on the backs of the operations and maintenance people to get started as soon as possible."
Special senate housing to be debated this week
Would save housing for senators
By Gordon Gary
Staff Writer
A Student Senate resolution that calls for Housing Services to reserve a total of eight residence hall and apartment spaces for senators will be discussed in an in-depth meeting between senators and David Blackmar, assistant director of housing services, later this week.
The resolution, passed on Feb. 12, calls for the housing office to "reserve four residence hall and four student community housing spaces, in various complexes, for senators. . (until) . .they have been assured housing in their proper constituency."
Community housing spaces are defined as apartments owned bv the university.
At present, senators have to resign their positions as representatives of residence hall constituencies if they do not get housing within those constituencies during priority period, the author of the resolution, Tom Becktold, said.
This year the priority period began Jan. 24 and will continue through March 21.
"The thrust behind the resolution is that we have been losing good senators because they can't find housing," said Pauline Ng, senate president.
"There needs to be a dialog between the housing office and the senators" to determine what should be done about the problem, she said.
Becktold said the residence halls are the main focus of the resolution because most students who want to run for senate in that constit-
(Continued on page 7)
couple of paychecks, he opened an account at the USC Credit Union, Wade said.
He was also arrested in Glendale on Dec. 18 for allegedly writing another S3,000 worth of bad checks to Sears Department Store, and is still waiting for sentencing in that case.
All told, Wells wrote at least 34 checks from accounts at Security Pacific National Bank, First Interstate Bank and the USC Credit Union.
The university investigative section was alerted to the case when a representative of Sears called to confirm Wells' status as a university employee after he had been arrested in Glendale.
An anonymous tip in January led Wade to Troy East apartments where he discovered the car Wells had parked there was stolen. Wells was then arrested for grand theft auto, Wade said.
More charges may be filed against Wells if other fradulent checks are discovered.