WHA goes to court over open policy
By ANGELA CURCURU Campus Editor
The Women’s Halls Association officers will be called before the University Judicial, a group of faculty, students and administrators, sometime next week for the officers’ failure to prevent violations of university rules and regulations. The case stems from the WHA’s institution of the open hours policy in the Women’s Complex.
WHA members were charged in accordance with the Student Conduct Statement which states that, “Upon satisfactory proof that the group has encouraged or did not take reasonable steps as a group to prevent violations of university rules and regulations, the group may be subject to permanent or temporary sus-
pension of charter, social probation, denial of use of university facilities, or other appropriate sanctions.”
The measures taken against WHA will depend entirely on the decision of the University Judicial. The group’s decision can be appealed to the Student Behavior Committee.
On Jan. 19 WHA instituted its open hours policy, which changed visitation hours from 10 to 2 a.m. in the women’s dorms to 24 hours. Since the visitation hours in the dorms cannot be changed without approval by the Board of Trustees, any women who made use of the new policy were charged with a university offense.
There are two cases which will be tried by the University Judicial within the next
few weeks against two women residents who have been accused of violating university policy by having men in their rooms past 2 a.m. The names of the two women have not been released.
The fate of open hours visitation is somewhat unknown at the moment. The WHA is now distributing petitions throughout the dormitories for residents to sign in protest of present visitation hours. An “in-support” showing scheduled for Monday night, where all women would have been asked to turn in their ID cards overnight, was cancelled pending action on the WHA case before the University Judicial.
According to Laura Kotsiris, WHA president, there seems only one route open
towards the Board of Trustees’ approval of the open hours policy. The Commission on Student Life is presently working on a report, due in April, which will study all aspects of campus life.
If after researching the open hours pol-icy the commission thinks it would improve the dorms, 24-hour visitation will be recommended in the report to Daniel Nowak, acting vice-president for student affairs.
From there, Nowak could recommend it to the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Student Affairs. The committee, in turn, would then have to recommend it to the board before this policy could be approved.
University of Southern California
DAILY @ TROJAN
VOL LXIV, NO. 66
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
FEBRUARY 9, 1972
ASSC convention dies
The ASSC constitutional convention died Tuesday because of its failure to produce a completed document by its deadline. However, members decided to request that the ASSC Executive Council reconvene the convention and allow it to continue the work begun by the now defunct body.
Because of its failure to achieve a quorum at Tuesday’s meeting, the convention was unable to vote on extending the deadline for a completed constitution. This made the group automatically defunct.
“We were unable to produce a document because our first responsibility is as students,” said Dave Howe, convention chairman.
In asking the ASSC to reconvene the convention, a steering committee of the now defunct convention has trimmed the group’s size from 46 delegates to 31.
The reconvened convention will produce a document by March
3,	said Howe. The completed constitution will then be submitted to the council, which will have two weeks to call for a special constitutional election.
Mike Clark, convention secretary, listens to Howe at Tuesday’s
session. DT photo by Will Hertzberg.
Blackburn resigns post as BSU chairman
By CATHY MEYER Executive Editor
Henry Blackburn resigned last week as chairman of the campus Black Students Union.
“I had spent 90% of my time working for the black students on this campus and I needed some time for myself,” he said. His position will be filled by Joe Connors, BSU vice-chairman, until the group’s next election.
Blackburn chaired the organization for one and a half years, establishing a solid base of power for black students at USC. During his term, the BSU grew from what Blackburn called a “dictatorship” under the previous chairman to an organization “open to all points of view,” Blackburn said.
“I stressed that the organization should not become an ideology,” he said, “because once the ideology falls apart, the organization is stranded,” said Blackburn.
Instead, Blackburn directed the BSU towards viable goals and programs within the community and on campus. “The organization should spend a lot of time in the community, but I felt that we couldn’t deal with the community until we dealt with the school itself,” he said.
Some of the BSU’s projects under Blackburn included a tutorial program; fund-raising for Angela Davis’ defense; Black Notes, the organization’s newspaper; and the USC-Brigham Young basketball game protest in December, 1970.
This fall, the BSU took ever the ASSC offices on the third floor of the Student Union to protest their lack of office space in the building.
“Both the BSU and MECHA (who later protested) wanted to impress upon everybody that the building should belong to the students and that there shouldn’t be any administrators in it. Hopefully, the BSU and MECHA won’t have to go through that again. We shouldn’t have had to in the first place,” he said.
There has been speculation that Blackburn would run for the ASSC presidency this spring, but he emphatically dispelled the rumor.
“I’m going to graduate in August, and I had to pick between running for ASSC president and making some kind of relevant contribution to myself and to my people,” he said.
“I have negative reactions towards student government, anyway. Student government is a powerless thing. It benefits the person who’s elected and the people around him, but nobody else. If I were ASSC president, I’d give the students their money back.”
Both Blackburn and Bob Glushon, who resigned last week as ASSC freshman representative, speculated that Kent Clemence would again seek the ASSC presidency. Clemence has hinted that he can draw President Nixon to speak on campus, but Blackburn labelled the move a Clemence campaign publicity gimmick.
Though he didn’t see upcoming changes in student government Blackburn did predict a new direction for the BSU. “I don’t think the BSU is going to be around much longer on campus,” he said. “It was created out of the frustration that black students felt about a lot of things like the black studies department. But the concerns aren’t as broad as they have been. The black students here are involved in a struggle for survival. The organization will have to be adjusted to the fact that the fad for universities to accept black students has now worn off.”
Reflecting on racism at USC since he’s been here, Blackburn said, “The BSU tries to point out a lot of racist attitudes, like during the BYU protest. A lot of students call the BSU a racist organization,
but it’s just not true; we’re not advocating black superiority.
“I view most of the white students on campus as ‘niggers’-I don’t think black students have a monopoly on that word. The students here are get -ting kicked in the rear by the administration and the Board of Trustees, and they don’t know it or don’t care. They’re content with getting a so-called education and then leaving.”
KUSC — high-powered, but low-budgeted
By JERRY TROWBRIDGE
KUSC is the oldest, most powerful university radio station on the West Coast. It has stereo studios and operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yet each day the station’s staff wonders how long it will be before KUSC is closed down.
Two years ago, KUSC weathered a staff firing. The university moved the station out of the Department of Telecommunications to preserve student operation.
Last year, closure nearly came again. KUSC operates on a budget of about $4,000 a year, which averages to a little less than 42r an hour. (Electrical power is supplied by the university; if not, the transmitter alone would lose money.)
Last year, when the station’s
equipment didn’t meet the sound quality requirements that the Federal Communications Commission insists all FM broadcasters meet, President John Hubbard assisted and $12,000 was allocated for new equipment to replace the ancient equipment in use at that time. KUSC tried to buy all stereo equipment.
A station can spend from $40,000 to $50,000 in converting and remodeling its studio and transmitter for stereo operation. KUSC only missed the full-stereo mark by $5,000. The station met the requirements for nonstereo broadcasting, however, and remained on the air.
In recent weeks, KUSC has turned to its listeners and asked for money so that the stereo
studio equipment can be fully utilized.
Unlike some other student-run media and organizations on campus, KUSC is the only department in which legally binding communications decisions are made by unpaid volunteers.
The programs aired over KUSC, some interesting and relevant and others meaningless and foolish, are whatever that volunteers can be coerced to produce or what professional groups can be cajoled into sending free or cheaply. (One evening, KUSC ran a special on pel turtles and salmonella poisoning. Twenty-minute NASA specials are often run before sports programs. In the days of “old time radio” such programs became known as sustaining
programs, and indeed they only keep the transmitter on the air.)
KUSC has been offered a full stereo network line as a program source installed free of charge by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The network would provide news services as well as other programming not available in the Los Angeles area.
The other educational stations in the Los Angeles area do not meet the hours-on-the-air or diversification of programming criteria of the public broadcasting organization. KPFK, the only other station in the area the network service was offered to, declined it because of its network policy (Pacifica). The stations wish to remain an alternative service.
The only qualification KUSC
lacks is a paid staff. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting does not want an irresponsibly staffed radio station to air its programs, and the only way it can be sure its programs will reach the air is if someone is employed by KUSC to keep the station on the air if no one else will.
KUSC and certain network personel have pleaded with the corporation to waive their employment rule, but as yet no waivers have been allowed.
KUSC’s studios are examples of frugal use of space. For the typical FM station, they are well-engineered, well-designed, and well-maintained. They have equipment that many small radio stations long for, but they are crowded in an old projection
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