University of Southern California
DAILY • TROJAN
VOL. LXI.NO. 117
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA
FRIDAY, MAY 1, 1970
FILMMAKERS' PROP
Flag drops; incident arises
It seemed like a major tactical alert for the campus police yesterday afternoon at the flagpole in front of Bovard Administration Building on University Avenue.
It all began with a group of cinema students who were lowering an American flag for a film they were making.
The flag touched the ground, apparently by accident, and then all hell broke loose.
One campus security officer approached the two students and discussed the matter with them, taking their names, addresses and phone numbers for official purposes.
Another campus security officer soon arrived at the scene of the accidental desecration. He questioned the students as to whether they had official permission to lower the flag.
The students said they did, but the officer attempted to call headquarters to verify their statements.
When he learned that his walkie-talkie message was being poorly received at headquarters, the officer walked down to the corner to use the phone.
Meanwhile, another officer rode to the scene on his three-wheeler and raised the flag, which had been hanging a few feet above the ground. As he raised the flag, this officer informed the students that they would be unable to continue with their filmmaking activities until he saw official permission in black and white.
Finally, the officer who had gone to the phone at the comer returned and told his fellow officers and the crowd which had gathered that Victor Sargent, head of campus security, had said permission had been given to the students.
IT’S SHOWBIZ
Cinema student lowers Old Glory for a movie scene. Campus policemen didn’t appreciate his sense of the dramatic.
LAW DAY
Chicago 7 defendant to speak
Among the guest speakers and panelists at today’s Law Day events, presented by the Student Bar Association and the Student Lawyers Guild, will be Mike Tigar, who briefly represented the Chicago Seven, and Tom Hayden, a Chicago conspiracy defendant.
The day’s program starts at 10:15 a.m. when Terry Hatter, director of the Western Center on Law and Poverty, will lead a discussion entitled “Is the Government Using the Western Center on Law and Poverty to Keep the Lid on?” at the Law School Lounge.
Following a lunch break, the topic “Should the Courts Provide for or Prevent Revolutionary Change?” will be discussed by a panel including Scott Bice, professor of law at USC and law clerk
to Earl Warren; the Hon. George Dell, judge for the Superior Court of Los Angeles; Hayden and Tigar in Bovard, Room 305.
“It’s a pretty relevant program to what’s happening today,” said Stan Diorio, graduate representative for the Law School. “The panel is geared to undergraduates, not the graduate level.”
Law Day is customarily a workers’ holiday. When it was originated in 1886, following a workers’ demonstration for an eight-hour work day interrupted by police intervention, the day was called May Day. In the early 1950’s, the name was changed to Captive Nation’s Day, reflecting the government’s concern with both Communism and emerging nations. The name was changed by Congress in 1961 to Law Day.
Art and technology conference begins
By LINDA BIBER SoCal editor
The usual USC weekend environment is an experience in stunted activity, with commuting students and faculty trickling off campus and everything that is unused being quickly locked up.
But this weeknd another environment is going to blink on, plug in, and go linto motion. In vans, painted cars and O and M carts it is arriving—an art and technology environment—lasers, neon sculptures, inflated bubbles, sound and light creation machines—all for “In Process,” the first annual West Coast Conference of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT L.A.).
The three-day conference, which officially begins today at 4 p.m., will bring artists and scientists, students and professionals, together to show the consequences of placing today’s and tomorrow’s technology in the hands of art.
Paolo Soleri, the architect visionary who proposes future cities that will reach as much as a half mile into the sky and release the landscape from its present urban sprawl, will be the featured speaker at the conference. He will speak in Harris Hall 101 at 1 and 3 p.m. on Saturday.
Although the conference is not scheduled to begin until this afternoon, yesterday and even Wednesday, “In Process” seemed to be already underway, as artists and their creations moved on to the campus in a sort of happy pandemonium to occupy their assigned or newly-chosen spaces, or to initiate spur-of-the-moment changes.
. . . John Braun, a fine arts professor and the university coordinator for the conference talked on the phone to the people at EAT, referring to one of the university’s higher-ups; “She thinks we’re \going to blow up the campus . . . We may blow a few minds.”
... A bell-bottom artist name Bill Haney who carried his work over his shoulder like a roll of wallaper, was introduced a few times, “This is Bill Haney and he’s going to set up his thing,” and wandered through the Student Activities Center for a long time looking for a place to hang it.
. . . The Plant Stimulus Response exhibit appeared with slight alterations. Instead of mimosas (sensitive plants) a display of prickly pear sculpture was being set up. “The mimosas went to sleep on us,” said Harold Gregor, the artist who planned the exhibit ...
. . . Word went out that Doug McKechnie’s moog synthesizer was “sick.” The Rainbow Jam light artist group had already set up a crate scaffold for their myriad of projectors in Harris Hall 101, as a few people toyed with McKechnie’s “electric Zen machine.”
These were just the beginning vibrations of the vast program of simultaneous events planned for this weekend.
Students who walk onto campus today or tomorrow from 4 to 11 p.m. or Sunday from 1 to 11 p.m. may head for any open rooms in the Student Activities Center, Seaver Science-Center, Harris Hall, or other open spaces and play environmental bingo or may check the information table set up at the Student Activities Center to get an exact schedule of events. Tickets to the moog-light shows, the film programs, the workshops on Sunday and Soleri’s talks, will also be sold at the information booth.
New history class drops lectures, finals
By BONNIE ROWE
In what class can you have no finals, meet two hours a week, and still reap more benefits than all your classes put together? American History 200 with Howard S. Miller is the answer for many students.
The experimental class, American Civilization and Institutions, is “based on the hypothesis that students are interested in learning rather than merely being taught,” Miller said.
Miller arbitrarily divided American history into approximately 20 year segments. Groups of three or four students do indepth research on a period and present it to the class. The presentations run from talks to dramatizations.
Miller designed his class to provide an alternative to the traditional lecture method of teaching. He said students don't learn by the traditional method of lectures and repetition on tests.
“History is taught backwards,” he said. “Historians work with the original and teach from the books. History should be taught along the lines of science, researching information as a historian does, and learning from that.
“American education in general is conservative by intention but learning is in-
herently subversive,” he added. The mere process of questioning the previous truths makes this so.”
The principal problems have been with the students’ concept of the educational process, he said. “There is not so much class involvement as there ought to be, which in turn is a consequence of the students’ resistance to let the learning touch their life. Students would rather be taught than learn. Another deterring factor is that many studens would rather play it safe than experiment.”
Generally, students have accepted the experimental class well. “He’s telling you to do your own thing, you’re on your own,” Helen Wakayabashi said.
Students are in awe of their responsibility to present history to their classmates, but come through with bits of his-ory not usually brought up in a survey course in American history. An example of this is Chris Nadeau’s interpretation of the Salem witch hunts as a generation
gap-
Students have grasped the problems of teaching survey courses. Faced with the problem of teaching 20 years of history in two hours, most students try to cover unusual asjects cf the time or narrow their presentations to one person or problem
which occurred during their time period. The general consensus is that everyone has had the straight lecture survey of American history and now is the time to add something new to their knowledge.
Miller views his class “as an experiment to see if you can give a freshman student guidance, advice and assistance, then see if he can make sense out of the historical method.”
Miller claims his class has been “a qualified success.” Not only has he found out students’ reaction to innovative teaching methods on a lower division level, but he said that he feels his students have learned American history.
The unfortunate part of the class is not evident to the present students but to students next year who wish to become involved with learning American history through this form of experimentation. Miller will not be teaching because of his work on a fellowship.
By the time he returns the following year, the class will have branched out in another direction.
“Any class taught the same way for four or five consecutive semesters is probably being taught wrong,” he said. His present class is only one alternative to the traditional method of teaching.
HOWARD S. MILLER