Delay of Touch-Tone registration puts students on hold — again. — page 4.
I
‘Do I ’ear an American accent?' — one student's excursion abroad. — page 7
Swim team loses to Texas in its bid for a national title — page 20.
(cMHf trojan
Volume CIV, Number 57
University of Southern California
Monday, April 11, 1988
Parking’s price: About $6 million in tickets, fees
By Karl Kahler
Staff Writer
University parking fees will generate almost $6 million this year, but all of it will be funrteied back into salaries, expenses and debts, according to the Office of Budget and Planning.
And even though on-campus parking space is disappearing rapidly because of construction, the university has no plans to build another parking structure because of outstanding debts on existing
The big business of parking
ones, said Roy Heidicker, assistant director of Parking Operations.
"We provide the best service based on our existing resources," Heidicker said. "If I could create a few thousand more spaces on campus through building another parking structure, I'd love to do that. But that's not my money to spend."
Parking Operations is expected to generate $5.9 million for the 1987-88 fiscal year, said Veronica Tincher, associate director of the Office of Budget and Planning. The fiscal year began July 1, 1987.
Parking citations are a principal source of revenue. Fines range from $10 to $30, and parking enforcement officers issue 300 to 500 tickets each weekday, Heidicker said.
(Continued on page 6)
Priority Period overbooking leaves 360 in the dark
Housing applicants left ‘homeless’
By Karen Denne
*•»» . re t.r •. . _
Man writer
Hundreds of students who participated in this year's Priority Period did not receive a housing assignment for the fall, the director of housing services said Friday.
Bill Thompson said that because of an increase in Priority Period applicants this year, 360 students received a letter of deferment that said they are guaranteed a housing space in the fall but may not receive their assignment until late this summer.
In the letter, students were told to respond to housing services if they were still interested in reserving a space. Thompson said 275 students responded.
The number of students participating in Priority Period increased 11.5 percent from last year, Thompson said. This is the second time deferred letters have been sent out in the past six years. There were no deferments last year.
Assignments will be given to the 275 students "as we get cancellations, and we do get them over the summer," Thompson said.
"It's never come to the point where we haven't been able to house students who have applied for priority period by fall check-in," he said.
In assigning spaces, the university intentionally overassigns housing with the expectation that the number of students who cancel will accommodate the unplaced students, he said.
"If there are 200 spaces in a building, we may offer 260 students that building, knowing a certain percentage of students will not accept," he said.
Thompson said that he expects a 12 percent to 15 percent cancellation rate. "We get some cancellations up front from students who won't accept their priority period assignment."
Some apartments have a higher rate of overassignment than others, however.
"Those further from the university have a larger overassignment factor than the buildings closer to the campus," he said. 'Troy Hall has a very small overassignment rate because there is a high return rate there."
(Continued on page 3)
Cyanide leak forces hospital evacuation
County-USC staff finds broken bottle in trash dumpster
By Jordana Bieze
Staff Writer
More than 200 staff members were evacuated from the main building of the County-USC Medical Center last Friday after a hazardous chemical was found leaking in a trash bin, a hospital official said.
Hospital employees discovered a broken bottle of urea cyanide in the dumpster after a strong odor led them to investigate it at about 10:30 a.m., said Ted Holland, a hospital spokesman.
The dumpster is located on a loading dock at the southeast end of the main building.
The basement and a portion of the first floor of the building were evacuated after two teams of hazardous materials investigators identified the leaking chemical, Holland said.
Any danger presented by the chemical leak was immediately removed by the Los Angeles Fire Department, he said.
"Whatever the danger was is not there now," he said.
The cyanide compound was in a box with several unbroken bottles of other chemicals that came from a laboratory on the 19th floor. It mistakenly ended up in the dumpster when the lab was cleaned, Holland said.
"I think they packaged up too many things and forgot what was put where," he said.
Laboratory workers are employed either by the county or the university, Holland said. He added that all hospital employees are instructed to follow strict
precautions when handling chemicals.
The chemicals in the unbroken bottles were not identified Friday. Hazardous materials teams from the fire department and the County Health Department worked all day to remove them from the dumpster as a precautionary measure, he said.
Evacuation of patients on the first and second floors of the center's main building was stopped midway out of the building after fire department officials decided that it was unnecessary, said Toby Sta-heli, a spokeswoman of the County Health Department.
"The fire department initially said patients should be evacuated from the first and second floors, and then later they said it would not be necessary," she said.
The only people who evacuated were from the medical records, materials management and maintenance departments of the hospital, Holland said.
Student interest poll prompts first AIDS course at university
By Karen Denne
Staff Writer
The university's first course devoted exclusively to the study of acquired immune deficiency syn drome will be offered in the fall as a two-unit gen era! elective class.
said M. Michael Appleman, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, one of the class's professors.
' The class will discuss the Acquired Immune Deficiency Virus, the immune system and "the medical spin-off of all this — how AIDS leads to a great variety of other diseases," Appleman said.
• The university receives almost $800,000 to train health professionals in AIDS prevention and treatment. See page 14.
"The AIDS Course," offered by the biological sciences department for credit / no credit, is designed to accommodate a maximum of 350 students.
"Students will leam a considerable amount of scientific, biological and medical information,"
In addition, the course will cover the psychological, sociological, economic and legal aspects of AIDS.
A course on AIDS offered at UCLA during the winter quarter received considerable publicity be-
(Contmued on page 3)
GILMORE MARA / DAILY TROJAN
I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE — Sen. Pete Wilson’s wife, Gayle fields questions last Friday from memebers of Trojans for Wilson, a student group that backs Wilson’s re-election bid.