Admission policy change considered
By Cliff Tan
Staff Writer
The University Admissions Committee discussed changing the admissions policy Monday on applicants who have passed fewer than 12 high school academic subjects, but have passed the General Educational Development Test,a high school equivalency test.
The current policy does not allow applicants who have fewer than
12	courses to be admitted.
Fernando Padilla, a political science professor, expressed concern that the current policv mav discriminate against many intelligent students who did not take college preparatory courses in high school.
Jaime Cruz, an assistant director of El Centro Chicano, said the dropout rate of Chicano students is high, and the policy discriminates against them.
The policy was established to give qualified students who did not get a high school diploma because of adverse circumstances, such as illness, a chance, said Peter Brown, associate director of admissions.
Padilla was asked to present a resolution to change the policy at the committee's next meeting in two weeks.
The admissions office will consider a recommendation from the committee to change the equivalency test policy, Brown said.
Committee members disagreed on whether or not the committee can have an impact on admissions policies for the fall 1980 semester.
"I don't believe that a committee that started in Februarv can have any impact this fall," said William Weber, chairman of the committee. However, the committee will have an impact on the fall 1981 semester, he said.
Cruz disagreed. The committee can have an impact by reviewing policies such as the one on equivalency tests, he said. The committee should also work toward an end of reviewing marginal admission cases.
Brown said 90'r of the recruiting for the fall 1980 semester had been completed and 10% to 20% of the conversion work, getting admitted students to enroll, had been completed.
(Continued on page 8)
Staff photo by Kenneth Lewis
IRAN FORUM — The International Students Assembly sponsored an open forum on Iran Monday. One speaker said the friendship of the former ihah came at a great price for the Iranian people. The speakers refused to allow themselves to be photograDhed.
LJ
Volume LXXXVIII, Number 25 University of Southern California	Tuesday March 11, 1980
BRANCH OFFICE PROPOSED
Travel service may change
By David Romero
Staff Writer
The Student Senate has discussed the possibility ot changing the USC Travel Service into a branch office of an outside travel agency.
The senate sent a resolution to James Appleton, vice president of Student Affairs, Friday in support of such a change.
With no connection to talks concerning this change, the director of the Travel Service, Dan lives, is leaving his post Friday to become regional sales director in the western states for a British-based tour company. He would not comment on the possibility of a change in the university travel service.
The senate's resolution was approved at its Feb. 27 meeting. Colette Benton, a senate member, said students are dissatisfied with having to go to an off-campus travel agency to purchase airline tickets and being charged a 55-fee for trips under $75.
Presently, the travel service cannot sell commercial airline tickets, lives said. The only wav U can sell those tickets is to apply for ticket agency status or become a branch office of an existing agency.
Appleton said that becoming a branch office is the most feasible of the two ideas.Upon receiving the senate's resolution, Appleton said he was very willing to examine the proposal, but
would not comment on the chances of its acceptance.
Appleton said he sees advantages to having a full travel agency on campus. The convenience of location for students to purchase airline tickets and the specialization in students' particular travel needs would have to be emphasized if the university went to an outside agency, he said.
Appleton said he intends to meet with Anthony Lazzaro, vice president of Business Affairs, to explore the proposal.
Legalities would have to be met by the university to ensure fairness to commercial travel interests, he said. The chances of establishing a (Continued on page 11)
Open forum airs Iranian history
U.S. shows ‘gross lack’ of knowledge
By Nancy Harlow
Staff Writer
Americans have a gross "lack of history and knowledge" about Iran, which led to the failure of American policv makers to gauge past events and act intelligently in the present, said Phvllis Bennis at an open forum on Iran Monday.
Bennis, who represented the National Lawyers' Guild, was one of two speakers who spoke in the forum sponsored bv the International Students Assembly.
The other speaker, an Iranian graduate student, refused to identify himself.
Over 100 students listened to the speakers in Annenberg Auditorium and many spoke heatedly about reasons for the situation in the Middle East.
Bennis stressed that one must learn about the background regarding U.S. intervention in
Iran to understand why the Iranians behave as they do.
"It's very difficult to provide information for ourselves and without information it is difficult to understand what is happening now," she said.
Bennis said without this basic understanding, one could onl\ view separate tactics in Iran but not comprehend the whole. She said one cannot credibly separate Iranian actions from their history.
With the nationalization of Iranian oil fields in 1951, Iran was put on center stage in United States policy making, Bennis saidj The shah was put into power by the CIA and powerful American businesses who wanted to protect access to oil, she said, and the shah acted in U.S. interests in OPEC to keep the price of oil down.
Although the shah started massive programs of moderni-
zation, which were reported bv the American press, the news did not cover the costs of the programs, or the fact that they only benefited the upper classes, Bennis said. The shah's de-(Continued on page 12)
Amassing of credit by runner seems OK
By Richard Bonin and Susan Straight
World class sprinter Billv Mullins received credit for 2S uni.> :.<k-en at four junior colleges to become eligible for the university’s 197S track team.
Although Mullins needed 28 units to graduate from junior college, the university accepted onlv 14 of them.
The two-year community colleges from which he received credits in the fall 1977 semester are Pasadena, Rio Hondo, West Los Angeles and Los Angeles.
Mullins, in his last year of eligibility and a member of the university's relav team that set a national collegiate 400-meter record last month, said he attended the classes. "I worked mv butt off," Mullins said. "I staved up late (and) did a lot of driving."
Jack Larsen, faculty representative who certifies athletes' eligibility, said in a prepared statement Monday that he investigated Mullins' transcripts two years ago and found nothing illegitimate about them. He also said he informed the Pacific-10 Conference of the results of his investigation.
The director of admissions. Jay Berger, said in the same prepared statement that only 14 of the 28 units Mullins completed in the fall of 1977 were accepted by the university.
"I can state that of his 69 units completed at the community college level for granting of an Associate of Arts degree, onlv 39 wen-acceptable for transfer to USC," Berger said in tr>< suiioment.
The first report of Mullins' unusual academic performance ap peared in Thursday's edition of the Valley \cn.~.
The story, however, did not gain widespread attention until Monday when the Los Angles Times ran a front page story, in that arti cle, the Times questioned how Mullins could take almost double the .normal course load of a junior college student. It also thought it unusual that the 22-\ ear-old sprinter was able to attend classes that were so far away from his home.
Pasadena City College and Rio Hondo (in Whittier), for example.
(Continued on page 9)
Budget proposal increases staff pay
By Paul Escobar
Staff Writer
Despite disagreement over staff salary increases, the Resource Management and Planning Committee of the President's Advisory Council voted in fa\’or of the final budget report and recommendations.
In the Friday meeting of the committee, one member voiced her discontent with the proposed staff increase of 11% for the academic vear 1980-81.
"I'm concerned that this (report) doesn't address staff salaries adequately," she said.
"Under the report, staff positions of grades 8 through 12 won't get their salary increases until five years from now.
"The differential in the allocation pool between
faculty and staff cannot last for long."
However, John Currv, director of management planning, said there are two pressures that will affect the staff-facultv salaries in the future.
"First, the turnover rate of nurses, technicians, etc. will not be internal. Secondly, the amount of money required to increase staff salaries is too. awesome without ravishing somewhere else. There must be a reassessment of the managerial process to replace people with capital to increase salaries, services, and efficiency," Curry' said.
One member disagreed with the assumption that capital investment would free monies to be used for salary increases.
"How can we go on toward capital investment
(Continued on page 11)