USC looks to scalp FSU
Sports, page 28
Senate funding may be unjustified
Viewpoint, page 4
‘China’ fails to illuminate
Life / Arts, page 11
Catch of the day
F-
Volume CXIV, Number 41	University of Southern California	Tuesday, March 12, 1991
USC denied in bid for Examiner clips
Public library to get stories, photos from defunct newspaper
By Ben Martin
Assistant City Editor
Though it has recently completed one major donation agreement and nearly finalized another, Doheny Library's Regional History Collection was not selected last week to receive millions of clippings and photographs from the defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
The collection will be donated to the Los Angeles Public Library system instead.
The decision was finalized Thursday when the Board of Library Commissioners voted to accept the Hearst Corporation's offer to donate the materials, which include more than 2.3 million photographs, 2.6 million clippings and 830,000 negatives that date mostly from 1961.
Meanwhile, Doheny Library will maintain its collection of about 1.2 million photographs and 2 million clippings from the Los Angeles Examiner compiled between 1904 and 1961. Those materials are filed at the East Library on Hope Street near the old May Co. building.
Both libraries had expressed interest in obtaining the Herald Examiner's collection, but the Hearst Corp. decided in favor of the public library, where it thought more people would have access to the information, Hearst Corp. Vice President Lee
Guittar wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles library.
"With due deference to USC, my rationale was that having it available to the public would give it more utilization than if it was stuck in some corner of USC,'' said John McCabe, former chief operating officer at the Herald Examiner. McCabe had recommended the corporation donate the materials to the public library.
The idea that the materials would be locked away in a university basement, completely closed off to the public, had been disputed by university officials since October 1990, when Hearst officials began considering publicly what to do with the Herald Examiner's morgue.
"From the beginning, I really had the impression that they'd made the decision to give the materials to Los Angeles Public Library on the erroneous assumption that they wouldn't be accessible here," said Victoria Steele, head of the university library's special collections.
"I explained that (attitude) was completely untrue, but they didn't listen," she said.
One full-time staff member already is assigned to the upkeep of Doheny's Examiner collection, Steele said.
It would have made more sense, she said, to keep all the Hearst records in one place, rather than split them between two libraries.
"But the Los Angeles Public Library will do a fine job of taking care of it, and as long as it's available to the public, that's the important thing," Steele said.
(See Library, page 9)
Bob Golden / Dally Trojan
Biology Professor Bud Perkins examines his catch while guiding students on a marine biology cruise aboard Occidental Vantuna. See photo essay, page 20.
Students volunteer their Spring Break
18 to help restore houses, tutor at Utah reservation
By Susan Graham
Staff Writer
Eighteen USC students will join 30 students from the University of Utah to spend Spring Break on a Navajo Indian Reservation refurbishing homes, tutoring children and providing community outreach services.
"This is the first time in USC's history that we've done something like this," said Robert Castro, agency coordinator for the USC Student Volunteer Center.
"Other universities, such as Vanderbilt and Stanford, are involved in programs like this and we thought it would be culturally interesting for students," he said.
The five students who run USC's Student Volunteer Center did not know what reaction to expect when tl.ey announced the plans for the Alternative Spring Break because many students are used to vacationing.
"The response was great," said Castro, who is also a junior majoring in English-American literature and business finance. "We had 50 to 60 applications and after interviewing about 40 of them, we narrowed the group down to 18 students."
"I saw an advertisement and was interested because I have experience doing projects like this," said Brad Tooker, a junior majoring in social science and history who will be going on the trip. "I spent eight summers with the Sierra Service Project, a non-profit organization that sends students to Indian reservations to construct houses."
"I'm an R.A., and I learned about the program when I received the flier to post on the board (in the hall)," said Tara Atkinson, a junior majoring in philosophy who has been active in other volunteer projects. "I like to try new experiences and I'm hoping to learn about the Navajo culture."
The Student Volunteer Center also held an information session during orientation week in Au-(See Break, page 19)
Professors tackle ethics on new L.A, Commission
By Elizabeth Washburn
Staff Writer
Two university professors are currently in the midst of the most controversial battle to erupt at City Hall since Mayor Tom Bradley was accused of taking bribes from two local banks in 1989.
Actually, the two events are related.
After it was discovered that Bradley was serving as a consultant for two Los Angeles-area banks — both of which just happened to be doing business with the city — a movement toward some kind of "ethics in government" provision was bom.
Bradley's embarrassment eventually manifested itself as Proposition H, a wide-ranging ethics-in-govemment package placed on the June ballot by the Los Angeles City Council. It included a 40-percent salary increase for council members and was overwhelmingly approved by the voters.
The ordinance — the toughest of its kind in the country — requires some 1,500 city employees to submit a full annual report on their private finances, including additional disclosures about the finances of spouses, children and business partners.
This is where university law professor Dennis Curtis and journalism professor Ed Guthman come in. They are two of the five appointed citizens charged with the task of building the city's
first Ethics Commission — a job that has been made all the more difficult by a host of recent controversies surrounding the commission.
It all started when the commission went hunting for an executive director, a full-time watchdog to man the office and oversee admin-
(See Ethics, page 21)
Dennis Curtis and
Robert Menaalan / Dally
Ed Guthman
Trojan