Monday February 6,1995 Vol.CXXIV, No. 16
Interning on the USC Internet
USC's network services run the gamut from electronic mail to teleoperated robots. Here's a guide to everything you wanted to know about the Internet — but were afraid to ask.
Features, page 6
Women of Troy edge Bruins, 56-55
USC's final designed play broke down, so Audrey Gomez drove into the lane and passed to Tina Thompson, who scored on a lay-up with nine seconds left to lift the Women of Troy to the win. Sports, page 12
Take the good to the extreme
Extremism means sticking up for what one believes in instead of wallowing in wishy-washiness. Extremists are problematic, writes Brandon Gray, only when their underlying philosophy is wrong.
Viewpoint, page 4
F.Y.I.
Lab, emeriti to host speeches
The Population Research Laboratory's Noon Seminar Series continues today with a speech by Qian-Wei Wang, a graduate student in sociology. Wang will speak on "The Effects of Birth Intervals on Infant and Early Childhood Mortality in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China."
The speech will be in Conference Room 387 of the Research Annex at 3716 S.
Hope St. For information, call (213) 743-2950. e e e
The Pasadena Senior Center and USC Emeriti Center are co-sponsoring a sppech by Dr. Loren G. Lipson on "Living with Chronic Diseases," the first in the Pasadena Discussion Series. Lipson is chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine of the USC School of Medicine. The speech will take place at the Pasadena Senior Center, 85 E. Holly St., Pasadena, from 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Newspaper of the University of Southern California
UCS gathers statistics on lab use
Frequency of use, students’ majors tabulated for use by USC’s schools
Congressional cuts could affect KUSC
By Kamron Barron
Staff Writer
Congress is currently deliberating on a bill that proposes to cut public funding for broadcasting and may have a significant impact on the KUSC radio station and its programming.
The bill proposes to discontinue giving public money to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private organization which distributes the money to individual radio stations.
"Marketplace," a business and economics program pro-
duced by KUSC, would have potentially lost a large portion of its budget, but its funding through CPB ended this year.
"We're at the end of public broadcasting for that cycle," said Wallace Smith, president of KUSC. "We'd probably go back to them for CPB money later, but they probably wouldn't have any .because of the bill."
Smith said KUSC as a whole stands to lose up to $680,000 of its $6 million budget.
"It would be hard to absorb a loss of that magnitude without
making cuts in our programming and personnel," Smith said.
Cliff Dektar, a representative of "Marketplace," said Congress is not in favor of public broadcasting.
"There's the Republican majority in Congress and they want to do away with all broadcasting, television and radio," Dektar said.
"They feel that the funds are being wasted and it ought to pay for itself. There's a long story of public broadcasting being
too liberal or too conservative. There is no one singular answer to this."
Smith said in addition to wanting to help cut the federal deficit and a general difference of opinion, Congress may have other reasons behind their push to make cuts.
"There may be a more serious objective," Smith said. "That is the possibility they are looking for ways to weaken the public broadcasting industry, so it cannot function. Then they could (See KUSC, page 2)
By Sara K. Goo
Staff Writer
Assessing visitors' status as USC students is just one of the reasons employees at University Computing Services labs swipe identification cards through readers.
Statistics on how many students frequent the computer facilities are gathered regularly and provided for many uses, including providing information to each school within the university.
"We use the numbers to validate that all schools have students that use instructional labs," said Ann Patterson, senior staff associate of the office of budget and planning.
Patterson said statistics on how many students in each school use the labs are collected for the schools to use independently.
Once student cards are scanned, UCS records and collects their ID numbers. Then, at the end of the week, ID numbers are matched with the school the student belongs to. This information is maintained by the budget office and made available to the schools of the university.
Jim Pepin, director of UCS, emphasized that the statistical databases are not meant to be personal trackings of students.
''We want to know what
kinds of students are in there (the computer labs)", Pepin said, "not who's in there."
Pepin and Patterson both said there is no connection between the frequency of engineering students using computer faci-lites and the additional lab fee students in that school pay.
Patterson emphasized that if students do not use the labs, it does not necessarily mean that their costs will go down.
Pepin said that each school is a "small business" in operation, and that schools decide independently whether to charge extra lab costs to students, according to each school's own budget and expenses.
However, if computer labs gather information about which student majors use computer facilities, Leavey Library would prove to be an exception because students are not scanned into the facility, but rather they must make their ID cards clearly visible at the workstations.
Chris Ferguson, director of Leavey Library, said it would be as inappropriate for the library to charge students for using the computers there as it would be to charge for checking out books.
"Libraries are a general cam-
Eus resource funded by contri-utions of all the schools," he said.
Canwron Etazady I Dally Trojan
Nancy Wang connects to the Internet via Leavey Library hardware.
Oft-maligned Cliffs Notes still selling well
Popular study guide competes with new series
By Allison Vana
Staff Writer
Despite complaints that Cliffs Notes and similar materials may encourage students not to read literature, the market for the books continues to expand.
Sales of Cliffs Notes at the University Bookstore peaked in 1991-2, but there has been an increase of almost 10 percent this year over last year, said Peter
Goff, buyer and manager for the bookstore. Still, because of space constraints, the bookstore does not plan to carry MAX-Notes, a new line of study guides.
Professors and students have mixed reactions toward the books, which contain summaries and criticism of literature frequently used in classes.
"My own opinion on Cliffs Notes are that they are useful as remedial help for students who haven't had adequate high school preparation for the study of literature," David Eggensch-wiler, director of the undergraduate program in English, said.
"However, I feel that students would do better to seek tutorial help from professors or the writing center. It would be foolish to attempt to substitute them for the actual reader."
Goff said he has not received many serious complaints from teachers about selling Cliffs Notes.
"Cliffs Notes have been around for many years and are a frequent source of plagiarism for the less clever plagiarist," Eg-genschwiler said. "It is very obvious when a student copies from the Cliffs Notes.
Eggenschwiler said he has not found many problems with stu-
dents abusing Cliffs Notes because his papers and exams are so specific that the guides alone are not useful.
When a student is caught plagiarizing, they first receive an 'F' in the course and a note on their record. University sanctions are applied for multiple offenses, Eggenschwiler said.
"I've never used Cliffs Notes before because I always need to buy the actual books for my classes and if I bought (Cliffs Notes) on top of that, I'd just be spending a lot of extra money," Tasha McKenzie, a sophomore majoring in linguistics and exer-(See Notes, page 3)