University of Southern California
DAILY ® TROJAN
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA, FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 7, 1969, VOL. LX, NO. 66
DISPUTED UNI FORMS-The uniform* displayed by song giris Linda Funk, right with tunic on, and Wendy Cooper, were designed to
convey the Trojan image. They have been the
objects of both criticism and praise since they were introduced at the beginning of the year.
Cheerleaders’ adviser replies to complaints
Photo by Steve Bolinger
Lindley Bothwell, adviser to the cheerleaders and song girls, came to the Daily Trojan yesterday to answer the complaints registered by Penny Ward, an exsong girl, in yesterday’s paper.
The former Indianapolis race car driver spoke without signs of anger as he discussed complaints about the song girl uniforms and the restrictions on the girls’ actions during basketball games, both of which are under his jurisdiction.
“USC’s athletic program is financed by the sports fans of Los Angeles,” Bothwell said. “The student body is not paying the bill, John Q. Public is. When you ask them to support you, you’ve got to do something to please them.”
Bothwell explained that a top designer was employed to make the outfits for the song girls.
“The girls wanted to help,” he said, “but that wouldn’t make any more sense than to hire a top coach like John McKay and then let the players help run the team.”
It isn’t the clothes but the routine which makes the song girls anyway, he insisted. “These girls are terrific. They could dance in sack cloth and ashes and get away with it,” he said.
Bothwell also defended the song girls against the criticism which they had received for their apparent inability to create excitement during the games.
The rooting section, until the California game last weekend, was diluted by regular customers, Bothwell said. This is one of the reasons that the crowd didn’t seem to be reacting.
The adviser also said that the song girl routines had been limited to five after people complained last year that the girls were performing too frequently and distracting from the game.
“I’d rather have people say that they don’t see the girls enough than to groan every time they come out,” Bothwell said.
BSU head wants more ethnic classes
By JOHN COFFLAND
There is an essential need for more courses than have been created in order for USC to have a meaningful ethnic studies program, Warren Hewitt, co-chairman of the Black Student Union, said yesterday.
The establishment of this program has been under discussion for several months by the Curriculum Sub-committee of which Hewitt is a member.
The committee submitted a summary of dialogues on this subject to Dr. Topping, yesterday.
The summary calls for the establishment of a three-sided program to deal with studies relating to Mexican-Americans, Afro-Americans and Oriental Americans. The program would draw upon the expertise of many departments.
It also calls for a dual-directorship for the management of this program. With approval, this will give two men the responsibility for creating and coordinating the program for ethnic studies.
Prominent among the candidates for these posts are Dr. Rudy Acuna, Political Science Department, and Dr. B.
Obichere, currently an instructor at UCLA.
The Ethnic Studies classes offered this spring, consist of 12 “core courses,” ranging from anthropology to public administration, and six “related courses” which are predominatly religion and sociology.
Most of these courses, Hewitt said, were previously in existance and represent little progress in developing a coordinated program. Hewitt terms this development essential.
“Students are unhappy about the course education has taken in excluding the contribuitons of ethnic groups,” Hewitt said. “The strife on other campuses demonstrates that.
“The University must take upon itself the burden of implementing a program to do something about it.
“This program could motivate a whole new image. USC could really be number one by being the first to establish an ongoing, coordinated program-not plagued by disorder and strife. The opportunity is here for vast expansion that could reach through all educational levels.”
Y. FRANK FREEMAN
Trustee dies; served USC for 20 years
Y. Frank Freeman, a USC trustee for 20 years, and an executive at Paramount Studios, died Wednesday at Good Samaritan Hospital after a short illness. He was 78.
Born Dec. 14, 1890, in Greenville, Georgia, Mr. Freeman received a degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia School of Technology in 1910. He was married in 1913 to Margaret Harris of Atlanta.
Mr. Freeman is survived by his wife, and a sister, Mrs. W.B. Kee of Atlanta. Funeral arrangements are being handled by the Forest Lawn-Glendale Mortuary.
4 med students aid in admissions
By LIN FARLEY
Students are now helping admit new students to the School of Medicine as the result of a decision made last fall, when four medical students were quietly appointed to fill faculty vacancies to the school’s Admissions Committee.
The action, unprecedented in the history of medical schools across the country, was made with little fanfare by the dean of the School of Medicine, Roger O. Egeberg. The four students, one of whom is black, assumed their new duties at the committee’s first meeting in September.
Since that time Mary Ann Turner, a freshman from Sioux Falls, Theodore R. Humphrey, a sophomore, junior Steven V. Allen, the son of comedian Steve Allen, and senior John F. Simmons, Jr., a black student from Dartmouth, have participated in the once-a-week meetings of the 18-member committee.
In addition to the weekly meetings, they also assumed responsibility for helping to process 2,300 applications and interview applicants for the 84 seats available in the freshman class of 1969.
Dr. Gerald A. Green, assistant dean of admissions, who advised Dean Egeberg in the selection of the students along with Lawrence Stevens, chairman of the Admissions Committee, referred to the students’ appointment “as sort of fortuitous.”
“We had four people who were being rotated off the committee, and instead of putting four more faculty people on, we suggested to the dean that we put on four students,” Green said.
Green said it never occurred to him or Stevens to throw selection of the students open to the student body since “nobody gets voted onto the committee in the first place.”
“We don’t believe in the idea of constituencies on the admissions committee,” he said. “We think that if a guy has a constituency then he doesn’t try with us to get the best people, but to get one of his boys in the school—someone who will fall in with his group—and we don’t like this way of selecting people in medicine.”
Green, an assistant professor of psychiatry, puffed on his pipe and explained, “I’ve been talking to students about serving on the Admissions Committee for three years.
“Despite all the interest and pressure for membership on other faculty committees, nobody had ever been beating on our door to get in the Admissions Committee.”
When he asked students why they weren’t interested, he said he would get answers like, “Well, it makes me feel funny, passing on my peers.” Green said one freshman told him, “Look, I was in this spot last year, and I don’t know whether I would have liked some student passing on my candidacy as to whether I could become a doctor.” The other vein of sentiment Green mined in the medical students was typical of students everywhere, and that was the question of how much time would be required.
According to his own report, the weekly meeting usually begins around 7:30 p.m. and may run on past midnight, which he said a majority of medical students would consider very time-consuming.
“They had very legitimate reasons for not wanting the responsibility,” Green said, “but I still felt that it was worthwhile to have their thinking be a part of the whole decision making process, and that’s why I kept sounding the students until we finally just said, ‘let’s do it.’ ”
Green said one of the benefits of the students’ participation is that it brought about a redefinition of the operation of the committee. “The four of them asked us,“ he recalled, “ ‘Well, if you want us to operate along with you, what exactly are we looking for?’ ”
In order to answer, he said the committee had to take a fresh look at their whole operation and added with a chuckle, “There’s nothing like students to keep you honest. If you’re tendentious, if you’re wearing the groove a little too deep, there’s nothing like somebody who says ‘show me.’ ”
As far as the students are concerned. Green said he felt they are realizing that the decision to say no to someone isn’t an easy one and that the faculty members took their responsibilities seriously.
“I think a lot of students see us as a bunch of ogres just waiting to chop them, and we aren’t really,” he added.
He noted the committee was discovering that applicants who displayed a poor reaction to being interviewed by students made poor candidates because “the whole constellation of personal qualities that responds well to student interviewers will also respond well to medicine updating itself and not staying in the rut it’s been in.” “That’s a whole new criterion for screening people we didn’t have before,” Green laughingly declared. He went on to say that reaction has been highly favorable on the part of most applicants, and it appears that student admissions members are also attracting people who might not have been previously interested.
Although the students comprise approximately one-fourth of the committee, the question of how much voting power they hold is virtually moot. No vote has ever been taken within the committee.
According to Green, who has been serving on the committee in various capacities for the last seven years, if two people don’t care for an applicant, he is simply disqualified.
“Contrary to what you would think, instead of creating a very homogenious group, this process has created a very heterogenious class of students,” he said.
Green said that each committee member is presented with files on 30 applicants at each meeting. Time is allowed for everyone to read through a file, interview reports are presented and a discussion follows. In the course of the process of discussion, at some point, near unanimity is reached or else serious objections on the part of one or two are raised. The process has never made a vote necessary.