University of Southern California
DAILY • TROJAN
VOL. LX
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1968
NO. 10
Black prof controversy stirs board
LOS ANGELES (CNS)-State College trustees expressed concern today over the growing number of controversial faculty appointments in which responsibility was carelessly exercised and professional background ignored*
The concern was expressed in a statement reaffirming a policy on grievance procedures on appointments, tenure and promotions.
The statement was adopted unanimously only hours after the trustees had voted to request the transfer of a teacher, Black Panther leader George Mason Murray, to a non-teaching position at San Francisco State College.
The primary authority for appointments, the statement said, still rests with faculty and utlimately with the president of the individual college.
“The board does not ... desire to participate in review of individual appointments,” it said.
“But there is a growing number of instances of controversial appointments in which the responsibility of the colleges appears to have been carelessly exercised without adequate—or any—consideration of any aspects of professional background other than specific skill involved.” the document stated.
Murray, 22, was assigned to teach two classes of educationally deprived students.
Urban-semester session set
USC STOP—The university will be served by an aerial skyway station under the rapid transit system proposal appearing on the November ballot as Proposition A.
TOPPING SUPPORTS PLAN
The Urban Semester offered last spring and summer will be repeated next summer and a spring offering is under consideration, Meryl Ruoss, director of the summer program, said yesterday.
Students in the 16-unit program will experience a new type of education operating beyond the formal lecture-outline-exam system, he said.
“It’s an urban nation and students must begin to learn in that context, Ruoss said. “Exposure to reality is important to today’s student.”
Rapid transit supported
President Topping and the heads of three other area universities announced their support of Proposition A on the Nov. 5 ballot yesterday. The proposition would provide the city area with a rapid transit system.
The other leaders are Chancellor Charles E. Young of UCLA, Dr. Lee DuBridge of the California Institute of Technology, and Father Charles Casassa of Loyola University.
The four presidents said they consider rapid transit a way to make educational and cultural activities on their campuses available to all.
Freshman election campaigns to begin
Campaigns for the office of freshman representative on the ASSC Executive Council will begin Monday at 7 p.m.
The primary election will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 9 at polls located at Bovard Auditorium, Fagg Park, and the Architecture School Complex. Run-offs, if necessary, will be held Oct. 19 at the same time and locations.
During the primary, the freshman voters will also have an opportunity to register their opinions in an ASSC pool.
The opinion poll will cover such topics as Vietnam, the electoral college, birth control, Chicago police tactics, the news media, and civil disobedience. The aim of the survey is to provide information on how the college student feels prior to undergoing influences of higher education, said Pat Lawless, elections commissioner.
“The caliber of freshmen now is higher than any other time at this school,” Lawless said. “They have the ability to change the status quo of apathy toward elections.”
Commenting on ways in which the freshman class can formulate student policy at USC, Lawless gave priority to two courses of aciton—“First, demanding qualified candidates, and second, by having a large turn-out at the polls, which is a voice of their support of qualified candidates in student government.”
They said, “Today, many underprivileged young people find attending universities a difficult chore because of lack of personal transportation or because of the inadequacy of public service.”
Through one half of one percent sales tax hike in Los Angeles County, Proposition A would raise $2.5 billion to build an 89-mile, high-speed rail system with 300 miles of feeder and connecting bus lines.
If the proposition is passed in N ovember, work will begin immediately on the system with the completion date set for 1976.
The rapid transit system would relieve the parking problem at USC and mitigate expensive fares, said Ray Kovitz of the Citizens Committee for Rapid Transit. Cultural and sports events on campus would be more accessible to the public, he said.
Plans include a rapid transit station at Exposition Park, near USC. Other stations would be located in Westwood, .adjoining UCLA; in Westchester, near
EDITOR SAYS NO DT MONDAY
Mike Parfit leaned back languidly in the plush chair from which he directs the journalistic empire of the Daily Trojan. "There will be no Daily Trojan Monday," he said concisely.
Loyola’s Del Rey campus; and in the San Gabriel Valley with connecting bus lines to Pasadena and Cal-tech.
Urban semester students have engaged in activities as diverse as getting a helicopter view of Los Angeles, confrontations and discussions with members of the black and brown communities, seminars with creative professors and attending a dress rehearsal at the Mark Taper Forum.
Ruoss said the program seeks to give students exposure, experience and some comprehension of the complexity of urban life.
For many students this exposure was an emotional, visceral shock, Ruoss said.
After being exposed to the variety of an urban culture, it was the student’s job to integrate his information into a project. The city inspired papers, films, poems and the composition of an original soundtrack.
Ruoss said, “The students responded enthusiastically. Several remarked that for the first time they were really learning.” He said he felt the Urban Semester has been largely successful in educating students to live in an urban nation.
Idyllwild meeting sign-ups to start
By CARLA SWEENEY Assistant feature editor
For the first time, written applications will be accepted for the student-faculty conference at Idyllwild, Nov. 1-3. They will be available Tuesday at the YWCA and the Student Activities Center. They must be returned by Monday, Oct. 7.
The Idyllwild conference, composed of 50 students and 50 faculty members and administrators, is held each semester at the Idyllwild campus.
It began four years ago with a grant from the Danforth Foundation under Dr. Sims Carter, director of Project FASTEN. The foundation has made a study of student-faculty relations in large urban universities.
The grant stopped last year but the conference has been continued. The ASSC contributed to this semester’s conference. The participants may be charged $10 to raise the rest of the money. A scholarship program is planned.
In keeping with its two-fold purpose of improving student-faculty relations and getting student and faculty opinions on university problems, the conference discussed the role of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in the university and “Freshman Expectations and Senior Realizations” at previous conferences. This semester’s topic is “The Responsibility of the Professor to the University.”
Although past conferences have been referred to as “bitch sessions” by some, constructive programs have come out of them. Two of these are the faculty fellow program, in which faculty members hold frequent meetings with freshmen women, and the annual Festival of the Arts.
They have also drawn the criticism by some as “elitist conferences” because those students chosen by faculty recommendation have tended to be upperclassmen involved in university activities.