University of Southern California
DAILY • TROJAN
VOL. LIX
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1967
NO. 9
DRAFT FORMS NOW AT LOCAL BOARDS
All male students eligible for the draft must obtain a 104 form from their local Selective Service Board to retain their deferment, John McKinstry, assistant dean of men, said yesterday.
Unlike last year. Selective Service registration will not be handled at the Admissions and Registration Office.
Forms must be obtained either at local boards or at the Southern California Selective Service Board Headquarters. 1216 S. Maple Ave., l>os Angeles.
Graduate students who will have finished one year of graduate work by Oct. I will be given
an additional year to obtain their
masters.
Students just entering Graduate School will receive no deferment, however.
Students working on their Ph.D.’s are allowed five years to complete their requirements, he said, as long as they are not yet 24 years old when they begin.
Students in medicine, law, dentistry, osteopathy and optometry are exempt from the draft until they obtain their degree.
Any further questions can be answered by Dean McKinstry in 224 Student Union.
PROFESSOR'S ASSESSMENT
Nuclear retaliation in Mideast possible
Although Israel won a decisive military victory over the Arabs during the recent Middle East war, the Arabs may someday retaliate with nuclear weapons, a UCLA political scientist said yesterday.
Speaking at a weekly “Delicatessen Lunch" at the Hillel Foundation, Dr. Steven Spiegel, assistant professor of political science, said he fears that the Arab nations, led by Egypt,
College Bowl offers USC
another try
Eight years ago four Trojan undergraduates appeared or College Bowl, a television quiz program, hoping to win honor and money for USC — mostly money.
They lost. 195-65. to Barnard College of New York. It took eight years, but the Trojans have been given a second chance. Chance to regain their stature in the eyes of TV viewers across the nation.
The program will be seen next spring, and the search is now underway for four undergraduate scholars. All full-time undergraduate students under 25 years of age are eligible for the program.
An initial screening examination will be held this Saturday at 8:30 p m. in Bovard Administration Building. Between 30 to 40 students will be selected to take a special quiz covering areas typically contested on the College Bowl series.
Several teams will be chosen from this group to compete in a campus runoff, from which the eventual winners will be chosen.
may try to annihilate Israel with nuclear as well as conventional weapons.
Dr. Spiegel, who recently returned from a visit to Israel, said that if the Arabs did gain possession of nuclear arms, the weapons would undoubtedly be given to them by India or Communist China.
Russia would not want a nuclear conflict in the Middle East, and would thus keep sophisticated weapons out of Arab hands, he explained.
“Although Israel could also develop nuclear arms, she would suffer from nuclear conflict more greatly than Arab nations because of her compactness and great population density." Dr. Spiegel said.
He also felt that Israel will continue to occupy its recently captured Arab territories “for a long time to come.”
Spiegel said that despite the fact that Israel now holds by force these seized Arab lands, she faces the important problem of what to do with the captured territories and their people.
“Israel today is infinitely more secure—at least militarily and geographically—because of her territorial acquisitions.” Dr. Spiegel said. “She also faces the dilemma of how to handle the thousands of new people under her command.”
Israel must soon face the question, “Should the Arabs in the captured lands be allowed to govern themselves. or should Israel continue to rule by military edict?” Dr. Spiegel said.
He said he spoke with many Israelis in government position who favor either making the captured Arab lands into an Israeli territory or a commonwealth: or transforming them into an independent, but pro-Israel “rump state” in the way El Salvador is entwined politically and financially with the United States.
TO GENE PETRILLO: FROM A GRIEVING FRIEND Floral wreath commemorates campus suicide last year.
ONE YEAR LATER
Suicide remembered by friend who cared
By STAN METZLER City Editor
One year later, a friend remembered.
It was on Sept. 27, 1966, at 4:20 on a Tuesday morning that Gene Michael Petrillo was found dead on a bench between Bovard Auditorium and Founders Hall.
Campus Police later established the cause of death as suicide. Death from a .22-caliber, six-shot revolver.
At approximately 10:15 yesterday morning a local florist delivered a large, floral cross in front of Tommy Trojan.
A card pinned to the white cross read:
“In memory of Gene M. Petrillo, USC student who lost his life a year ago today because the friends he thought most of selfishly let him down.
ROBB ON SOVIET UNION
Communism — a religion
Dr. J. Wesley Robb returned from a month-long trip to the Soviet Union, and was able to draw a three-pronged comparison between religion and the Communist Party. He delivered his analogy at the Faculty Center Association yesterday.
Giving a ‘‘Layman’s Impressions of the Soviet Union.” Dr. Robb, professor of religion and associate dean of humanities, said the Communist Party has itself become a religion for the Russian masses.
In place of the Russian Orthodox Church, which now attracts only a few middle-aged and elderly worshipers in its few remaining buildings, there has been substituted the religion of morality, the religion of nature, and the religion of Lenin and Marx.
The religion of morality, he said, ts enforced by a vigorous moral code, the 12 Commandments of the Communist Party, which is almost puritanical in its outlook.
Dr. Robb travelled through Russia as academic director for a group of students from several Midwestern colleges. Several of the students commented that the differences they most noticed upon their return were the increased freedom of religion and the more liberal attitude toward sex in the West.
The religion of nature. Dr. Robb explained, comes out especially in the young, when they spend long periods at camps in the woods. This religion ha* became almost pantheistic, he Mid.
DR. J. WESLEY ROBB Religion in Russia
But the religion of Leninism and Marxism is the most omnipresent, imposing itself in factories, on posters, and in the nation’s hallowed shrines.
Dr. Robb especially noted “the almost religious awe on the faces of Russians visiting the tomb of Lenin in Red Square.
“It’s almost macabre, the incarnate diety stretched out with a yellow light on Lenin's face and hands as they walk around giving homage.”
Dr. Robb also commented on the Palaces of Happiness the party has erected for issuing birth certificates,
and the Palaces of Marriage that have replaced the traditional wedding ceremony.
“And when the young child reaches the age when we baptize them, the Russians take him out and have him plant a tree,” Dr. Robb said. “I think it’s a rather nice idea.”
Although the Russian constitution calls for the strict separation of church and state and this separation has been interpreted as a call for atheism, much of the religious problem in Russia is in the Orthodox Church itself, he said.
Many Soviet intellectuals identify religion with pre—Copemican science, he said, because the Orthodox Church has confined itself to defending traditionalism and has not progressed much beyond that stage.
Dr. Robb recalled having explained to a Russian college president some of the current theological and ecumenical trends in Western religion, including the works of Barth and Tillich.
After hearing him, the president replied, “Almost you make me a believer.”
Dr. Robb’s trip was conducted under the auspices of the Board of Education of the Methodist Church and the American University in Washingon, D.C.
The group visited 10 major cities, and travelled more than 10,000 miles through the Soviet Union.
USC turns out graduate idiots— SDS president
“May his soul rest in peace.
“A grieving friend.”
Included in the card with specific directions for delivery “at the base of the statue of ‘Tommy Trojan,’ which is in the center of campus adjacent to the Administration Building.”
All very careful. A year after what had to have been, despite the days of indecision proceeding it, a very quick, impulsive act.
Nancy Langley was sitting at a table in front of the statue when the wreath was delivered. Most of the students thought it was from Michigan State, she said.
TYPICAL STUNT
It would have been a typical college stunt, and it was perfectly logical for the first group walking by to laugh. It all fit.
But then Nancy went up and opened the card. After that the laughter wasn’t loud. Still there was an occasional chuckle. Charitably, someone didn’t understand; someone thought Michigan State was still playing a joke. Or someone didn’t care.
Most of the students, when they read the note, just looked away. Some stopped for a minute before they left. There was a stare they all had in common. Not really sad, but just a question.
“Who’s he?” one girl asked. She had paused a little longer than most. She wasn’t sad, either.
There was little to be sad about. There was no funeral in front of Tommy Trojan yesterday. Few students felt a personal loss. Petrillo, apparently, had had few friends—his roommate, whom Petrillo had earlier asked if he thought a .22-calibre revolver would kill a person; a girlfriend, whom police last year said Petrillo was having some problems with; and someone unknown, perhaps, whom a little after midnight one year ago Petrillo had said he was going out to meet.
‘WHO’S HE?’
But to most USC students now, Petrillo is only “who’s he?” A hard fact, but softened because someone did grieve. •
A little after 5 p.m. the floral wreath was removed by the Campus Police and disposed of. The card was entered in the police log.
To the students who stopped and read the card, who peeled back the envelope to see if there was a florist’s name, who just rode by and wonder-ered about the flowers, who paused and maybe even sighed—the wreath was gone.
In a day or two, the memory will also be gone.
Except for one grieving friend, who for a reason or reasons unknown, felt he couldn’t let Petrillo down.
By GREG KRUGLAK
“USC turns out White-Anglo-Sax-on-Protestant graduates who spend four years getting their prejudices reinforced,” David Lang, president of Students for a Democratic Society, said yesterday in a rambling criticism of education.
Lang, in the first of 15 weekly seminars on radical education, said he sees a trend toward an educational system which produces a new kind of man—the antihuman.
The antihuman, Lang said, has lost his creativity because of a tech-nologized curriculum, which “produces graduate idiots in its own image, moral morons, self-serving automatons who deny their essential humanity. . .”
The American educational system, he charged, including USC, is perpetuating this production of antihumans. He feels USC is no longer a university but a professional training school.
LACK OF IDENTITY
A lack of individual identity, apathy, and a lack of student power are also reasons for a growing disenchantment with current educational methods, he said, a disenchantment which creates a need for radical education.
Lang said radical education is a means of dismantling the current educational methods which incorporate most of the prophecies in “1984.” A radical, he said, is someone who is open to change and who approaches a subject with an open mind.
As a beginning, he would like to see the three USC groups—students, faculty and administration--given appropriate amounts of power.
As things stand, Lang said, the administration has a disproportionate amount of power, which causes discontent among students and faculty. “The best USC professors have already left or will leave soon,” he said.
Lang also called for an investigation of the members of the Board of Trustees, and said SDS plans to launch such an investigation into the political backgrounds and wealth of the board members.
CRITICIZES SOCIETY
The SDS president, like many other members of the New Left, criticized what he calls contradictions in the American society. He asked what is being done about slum and ghetto conditions.
Lang noted that about $66 million is being spent in Vietnam each day, then asked, what about the people going hungry, and cutbacks in educational spending?
In an attempt at bringing the realities of life onto the campus, Lang said, SDS will provide literature, speakers, films and demonstrations on their system, radical education.
In a Faculty Newsletter article, Lang defended the SDS position on education:
“We (SDS) do not seek just to change the techniques (of education), we seek to change the nature of the system.
“The educational process is a society’s primary instrument for the self-generation of its way of life, and it is the American way of life, and therefore that which reproduces it, that we condemn.”
Recently, the SDS president has come under criticism for distributing a letter -without university approval. The letter, written by John Wardlow, dealt with the USC student’s second-class status. It was titled “The USC Student as a Nigger” by Lang. Ward-low'3 office (AMS President) was placed below his signature. Neither change was authorized by Wardlow.
TYD to see Kennedy film today at noon
Trojan Young Democrats will open their fall activities by showing the film “1000 Days,” in 129 Founders Hall today at noon.
The film is based on the similarly titled book by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. about President John F. Kennedy’s term in office.
The screening will be followed by a general meeting. Included on the agenda are a proposed constitution, the California Democratic Council Peace Slate Convention this Saturday, and the future of TYD.
Steve Beidner, first vice-president and new deputy director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Young Democrats, said two positions are still open on the TYD Executive Board. He asked interested students to contact him or TYD president Shelley Linderman.
Future TYD programs will include a talk by Dr. Donald Kalish. chairman of the Peace Action Council, on the June 23 Peace March at Century City: a. speech on medical hypnosis; and a discussion of the CDC Peace Slate as a constructive alternative to President Johnson's war policies.
A discussion of “the truth about the FBI,” by a former FBI agent, and a program on the sociological aspects of the Negro revolt are also planned.
Teacher Corps cut may affect interns
A one-third cutback in the National Teacher Corps is possible if a proposed Senate appropriation of $18.1-million is passed by Congress.
At this time 58 USC students participate in the program. If the proposed cut is approved, this number would probably be reduced to 35.
USC interns are presently working in seven school districts: Enterprise, Willowbrook, Garvey, El Monte, Jurupa (Riverside), Compton and Compton Union High.
Five-man teams, including four interns and one experienced teacher, are assigned to each school district.
“I hope there is a reinstatement of some of the funds to help maintain some parts of the program,” said Miss Annette Gromfin, director of the USC Teacher Corps Urban Program.
“There will be an increasing need for teachers in the poverty areas and as it now stands the need can’t be met.”
The program was initiated two summers ago with a planned budget of $33 million. It is designed to attract new people to the field of education who are willing to work in disadvantaged area schools.
Under the program, students with a bachelor’s degree doing graduate
work in education may become interns and work with children in poverty areas.
The interns gain experience working with parents, working in the community, and utilizing the resources of the community to aid in solving educational problems.
The program, under the auspices of the U.S. Office of Education, is federally funded under the Teacher Corps Act.
TROLIOS TRYOUTS SET NEXT WEEK
Trolios, an all-student satirical revue, will hold tryouts Monday and Wednesday from 7:30 to 11 p.m. in 321 Student Union.
Cochairmen Skip Kennon and Alan Hubb ask that applicants have material ready during tryout sessions.
Trolios needs applicants for production, direction, choreography and dramatization vacancies.