University of Southern California
DAILY ® TROJAN
VOL. LX	LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1968	NO. 2
Mauk outlines 10 barriers to getting an education
By MIKE PARFIT Editor
In his first speech of the semester, Associated Students’ President Bill Mauk told a group of freshmen that there are 10 obstacles to getting an education at USC. The list he made included the 12 years of elementary and secondary education, the four
Free Press
editor opens
ASSC series
University shapes future values, Ciardi tells forum
John Ciardi, poet, lecturer and part-time professor, told a delayed Great Issues Forum Friday that university studies establish values which can be used to judge the relative qualities of life.
“A bull cannot sing like a man,” he said. “One of the things you’re supposed to learn at college is the difference between the bull sound and the man sound. And there is only one way you can tell that difference. You have to have heard the man sing. Once you get into your head the sound a man makes then you have something by which to measure the sounds other things make.”
Ciardi was speaking on the topic “What Good Is a College?” His talk, originally scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, had to be postponed to 11 a.m. Friday because of plane problems.
Ciardi did not just address himself to the
FROSH ELECTION PETITIONS READY
Petitions are now available for the freshman representative elections. Elections Commissioner Pat Lawson announced yesterday.
The petitions may be picked up at the YWCA and must be returned by Sept. 26 at 4 p.m. The campaign opens Sept. 30.
"This year we have set up subcommittees so that the elections will be completely run under the Election Code,” Lawson said. The ASSC elections last spring were ruled invalid and rerun.
meaning of college. His speech covered such topics as personal memories, politics, poetry, Caruso and the “Freshman Theme.”
“You are about to begin an ancient puberty ritual,” he told the freshmen. “It is called the ‘Freshman Theme.’ Basically it consists of bringing an empty head into confrontation with a blank sheet of paper with the instructions to produce a number of words.”
He also discussed the use of the development of empathy in writing.
“Empathy is a specialized word,” he said, “But there is nothing specialized about the process.” He then told about watching movies patterned after “Perils of Pauline,” in which “the girl would cower back against a wall and a great door would open and a hairy arm would reach out for her. Then everyone in the theater would yell ‘Look out!’ and she would hear us and pull away. Nobody ever said, ‘Get her. , hairy arm.’ But I could rewrite this story from the point of view of the hairy arm and make you cheer for it. The marvel of Fiction is that we can become anything.” He commented later on the relative importance of things compared to their size. “The simple-minded assume that you have to have a great big significant object in order to make an intelligent comment about it. But a fool, looking at the universe will see nothing, but the great mind looking at a mote can see the universe. That’s intelligence, and what measures it in this case is not the size of the thing looked at, it’s the size of the mind that is doing the looking.”
Ciardi is poetry editor of the Saturday Review magazine, has taught at Harvard. Rutgers, and Tufts, and has been the host of a television series. He is also well known for his translation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”
years of university studies and the attitudes of the individual himself.
“There are probably two reasons who most of you are here,” Mauk said after introducing himself. “One is the draft and the other is sex. Now there are a few who have come to get an education and if you’re one of them—that’s great. The unfortunate thing about it is that there are too many stumbling blocks at the University of Southern California on the way to an education.”
Mauk went on to describe what he feels are obstacles. He listed:
1.	The rules and regulations of the university.
2.	“Twelve years of miseducation outside the university.”
3.	“The four years that lie ahead which will be irrelevant.”
4.	“The problem of mistrust.”
5.	“Uninspired and uninspiring professors.”
6.	Pressure from other students. 7. Parental pressure.
8.	“Your concept of the black community.”
9.	“The battle you’ve got with yourself.”
10.	“Dishonesty between you and your associates.”
As he explained each point, Mauk sat on the edge of the stage with his shoes off and his notes resting on a piano in the orchestra pit. His voice varied in tone from a quiet endorsement of peace to a vigorous protest against the current goals of higher education.
“What they are teaching us now isn’t going to help us,“ he said. “Twenty years from now we’re going to be living in a different world. And yet we’re being trained to rake in the dollars, have a nice house, become established in society and all that
irrelevant garbage. Because that just ain’t the way it’s going to be. We’re headed for a lot of trouble unless we can learn to make our education relevant to the society we’re going to live in.”
Much of his speech, however, was not critical, although he attacked students as well as the university. Most of what he said was advice.
He spoke about personal attitudes: “The best thing you can discover is peace of mind with yourself. Because if you can’t live with yourself you can’t live with other people.”
He also made suggestions on how to treat the community:
“We live in a black community. And that’s cool. Take advantage of the community you live in. When you see black kids on this campus go up and talk to them. And if you develop some trust there, then I think you’ll develop some understanding between black and white.”
And he spoke about the student’s level of maturity:
“Do what you want to do. You’re 18 years old. You’ve got responsibilities to go along with that and you’ve also got authority—a hell of a lot of authority.
“Tell your parents: ‘If you want to pay for my education, pay for it, but it will be my education. And if you don’t want to pay for it, fine, then I’ll make it the hard way.’”
As he pushed his feet down into his shoes and put away the notes, Mauk mentioned his own image.
“You may not buy all this,” he said. “You may think I’m a wierdo hippie, and I am. But I hope some of you have listened.”
Apparently some of the members of the audience had listened and were concerned about what had been said.
When Mauk finished a girl in the back of the room said, “Are you going to give us equal time?” and as soon as the floor was open for questions a line formed at each microphone.
One student asked how to avoid having to cut his hair if he entered Air Force ROTC.
“Well, the movements on other campuses have been trying to get rid of ROTC,” Mauk said. “And if you do that then you won’t have to cut your hair.”
A member of an older generation came to the mike and asked Mauk if he had solutions to the problems he had been discussing.
“I don’t have solutions,” Mauk said. “And I don’t pretend to have solutions. My position goes along with ^hat Lenny Bruce said: ‘Out of a source of constant irritation, an oyster develops a pearl.’ And I’m going to be a source of irritation.”
Mauk did, however, add that he would propose as a solution to war an effort to “get people to simply reluse to fight.” He compared war to slavery.
“Slavery was a part of society,” he said. “But then people started saying they just weren’t going to have slaves any more, pretty soon we got rid of slavery. And that’s how we should get rid of violence.”
Another student asked what constructive plans Mauk had for the university.
“A little bit constructive,” he said. “Mostly destructive, but not in the violent sense. Every time there’s a thorn we should cut it off. There are rules and regulations that don’t apply any more. We should get rid of them.” About 45 minutes after the program was scheduled to end Mauk finally left the auditorium, still answering questions.
SECOND HOFFMAN BUILDING
CHARRED REMAINS—Not much was left of a third-floor bedroom after an early afternoon fire yesterday caused an estimated $5,000 damage to the Alpha Phi sorority house on 28th Street.
Alpha Phi residence hit by $5,000 blaze
A fire, apparently caused by a cigarette, gutted a third-story bedroom in the Alpha Phi sorority house yesterday, causing an estimated $5,000 in damage.
The fire destroyed the room and its contents and caused smoke damage to other rooms on the third floor, said J.L. Parker, Los Angeles Fire Department battalion chief.
No one was in the room at the time of the blaze, and no one was hurt in the fire, he said.
The fire started shortly after noon and was under control by 12:30 p.m., Parker said.
Parker said initial investigation indicated that the fire began when a cigarette was placed too close to an
overstuffed chair.
Susan McCailum, a sophomore member of the sorority, said she noticed the fire when smoke began filling the second floor.
“We tried to get upstairs, but it was real, real hot,” she said. “Smoke was billowing down and we couldn’t get up there.”
“I said, ‘There’s a fire.’ It was a normal reaction.”
Six units responded to the fire after Mrs. Joy McCarelle, house mother, ohoned in the alarm.
Beth Roberts, junior, another sorority members, also tried to discover the cause of the smoke.
“When we got up there, we couldn’t move, we couldn’t even breathe,” she said.
Forum for Student Awareness, an ASSC student committee, begins its series of meetings featuring guest speakers today, with lectures in the Student Activities Center at noon and 2 p.m.
Art Kunkin, '?ditor of the Los Angeles Free Press, will speak on censorship at noon. An open discussion will follow his talk.
Robert P. Myers, Jr., a foreign service officer who served in Vietnam, will be the second speaker.
Kunkin was educated at the New School for Social Research and at East Los Angeles College. After a stint in the merchant marine, he worked in the automobile and aircraft industries. His journalistic experience ranges from freelancing as a reporter and photographer to editing the Free Press.
Myers attended Williams College, the Sorbonne, the University of California Law School and American University. His career in the foreign service includes two years in the Philippines and two years in Indonesia as well as a year’s service in Vietnam.
Kunkin is a frequent lecturer at colleges, labor unions and liberal organizations. He has also voiced his views on radio KPFK-FM. His repertoire of topics includes American history, economics, philosophy, politics and city planning.
Myer’s first assignment in South Vietnam was assistant provincial representative in Dariac, the largest province of the country. He lived with and grew to admire the Montagnard people, and tried to convince Vietnamese officials to help this group.
Myers thought a program to better the lives of the 900,000 minority peoples in South Vietnam was needed. He was responsible for the conception and development of an ethnic minorities program, which, with a budget exceeding $1 million, aims to weave the minorities into Vietnamese society.
Medical center to open
DROP AND ADD STARTS TODAY
Another domino in the University Master Plan will fall into place Wednesday when the Elaine Stevely Hoffman Medical Research Center is dedicated.
Named after the wife of USC Trustee H. Leslie Hoffman, who is founder and board chairman of El Monte’s Hoffman Electronics Corporation, the center will be the second campus building to carry the Hoffman name.
The nine-story building is located on Zonal Avenue and is already serving staffs in metabolic diseases, clinical pharmacology, cardiology, surgical specialities and gastroenterology.
It was completed earlier this year and houses more than
70 scientists who are directing research programs in cancer, heart disease, diabetes and emphysema.
Dr. Topping has called the building “a new and significant medical research facility.”
Although the tallest structure in USC’s 83-year-old School of Medicine, the center blends architecturally with the adjacent Burrell O. Raulston Medical Research Building which was erected in 1952 as the first medical campus building.
However, sunshades of horizontal concrete, which projects six feet from the face of the building and are evenly spaced between reenforced concrete columns, make it different from the school’s other buildings.
General contractor for the project was the William J. Moran Company of Los Angeles.
In the main floor lobby, according to Moran, a feeling of openness was achieved by enclosing two sides of the building with floor-to-ceiling glass.
A landscaped, quarry-tiled plaza extends on the campus side of the building to tie it with the nearly-completed Kenneth T. Norris Medical Library.
The entire center was planned, designed and engineered by Welton Becket and Associates, architects and engineers.
The center has two wings which are joined by a central elevator shaft. Outside stairwells are at both ends of the building to permit the fullest utilization of interior space.
The entire Department of Biochemistry is accommodated in the center which also provides quarters for the Departments of Pathology and Microbiology.
In addition to clinical investigations, the medical scientists in the building will be conducting exhaustive basic research projects into viruses, genetics, immunology, enzymes and enzyme inhibitors, blood functions and biological sources of energy.
The Hastings Foundation, which has a long-term agreement with the university to support a broad program of teaching and research in pulmonary tuberculosis, has 18 laboratories alone in the center.
The Mossman Laboratories occupy the entire third floor. More than 90 laboratories are in operation within the center.
Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman, who are residents of San Marino, are the major donors of funds which made possible the construction of the $4.6 million structure.
The USC main campus building carrying the Hoffman name is the H. Leslie Hoffman Hall of Business Administration, which was dedicated in 1967.
NEW MEDICAL CENTER-The Elaine Stevely Hoffman Medical Research Center, located on the USC medical campus, will be dedicated tomorrow, marking another milestone in the university's master plan for progress.
The semi-annual task of dropping and adding classes will start at 1 p.m. today. Physical Education Building 200.
Drop and Add will be conducted from 1 to 7:30 p.m. today through Friday and from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday. There will be no late fee charged.