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Volume LXXVII, Number 3 University of Southern California Friday, Jiyie 22, 1979
Thieves cart off $3500 in video equipment
by Karen Kelly
Staff Writer
The Zoot Suit conflicts of 1943 were largely an acting out of ritualized fantasy bv war-stressed soldiers w hose actions can be analyzed as "the singlemost important mutiny in World War II," according to Mauricio Mazon, a history professor at the University.
While working on his doctoral dissertation at UCLA from 1974 to 1976, Mazon came across classified Navy documents and published materials which indicated there were sides to the Zoot Suit riots that hadn't been brought to light He said the riots were more than a conflict between soldiers and zoot suiters, as plavwright Luiz Valdez's play Zoot Suit portrays. The riots were also a conflict between servicemen and other workers including coal miners, ship and plane makers. The two conflicts caused a mutinous situation, he said.
"The soldiers had an image of the zoot suiters as draft dodgers, as people who didn't work, wrho still had their fun, still had their hair, still had their clothing — the very things that had been taken away from the soldiers in basic training.
"The first thing servicemen did when they jumped a zoot suiter w as to take away his clothes and give him a military haricut. That was an unmilitary and anti-military thing to do, for it mimicked the process of basic training in which recruits were themselves shorn of their hair and stripped of their clothing," Mazon said. "The young recruits were acting out a form of dissent, a symbolic protest, against the military rite of initiation."
Along with racial bigotry, there had been widespread conflicts between servicemen and workers, particularly against workers who were striking for higher wages and shorter working hours.
"Their demands sparked a mood of rebellion in the servicemen, a mood that bordered on hysteria," Mazon said.
"Young servicemen wrere confronted with a young subculture in Los Angeles that licensed everything to them — clothes, hair, wromen and rebelliousness. They were also confronted by workers' growing resentment against low rates, poor working conditions, overwork and consumer shortages.
"Given the prospect of imminent combat, which most imagined they would face, and the apparent fact that the country was readjusting itself to some of the pre-war priorities the behavior of these young recruits can be interpreted as a protest that inadvertently assumed the proportions of a symbolic mutiny against the military," Mazon said.
"The real point of it," Mazon said, "was that the Navy had lost control/'
When military officials ordered rioting servicemen back to their posts, they refused — hence a mutiny, although the military doesn't quite want to call it that, he said.
"To avoid worldwide embarrassment, the military was willing to blame the skirmishes on racism on the part of servicemen, and juvenile delinquency on the part of zoot suiters.
"But classified military documents reveal their concern over the prospect of having to punish enlisted men for refusing to obey direct orders in time of war.
"Since such a violation carried the penalty of death, the military high command in California agonized over the choice of either (continued on page 8)
by Cindy Naley
News Editor
Burglars succeeded in stealing a cart laden with $3,500 worth of videotape equipment from a School of Journalism storage closet over the weekend, according to Sergeant Gary Rus of Campus Security
Rus believed the burglari may have used a key to enter the building or gained entrance through an open door and then pried open the closet.
They removed the entire cart containing two videotape recorders, a video camera and a color television set, he added.
The theft occurred sometime between 4 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday, Rus said. It was discovered Sunday morning by Campus Security.
Both Campus Security and the Los Angeles Police Department have taken reports on the incident. In addition, the LAPD dusted the closet area for fingerprints.
"It may not necessarily be insiders," Rus said, "but it could be." There are currently no suspects.
This is the third time such a cart has been stolen from the same closet in less than two years, said Richard Zielinski, the School of Journalism broadcast production co-ordinator.
Despite the previous burglaries, journalism staff members considered the closet the best place to store the carts, said Mary Gerlitz, assistant to the director of the School of Journalism.
"The equipment is heavy, awkward and should not be moved that much. The closet was the only place," Gerlitz said.
The school had installed some anti-theft measures earlier she explained.
"We re-did the lock system last year and that should have taken care of it. But when someone wants to steal something, there's not much you can do — especially if they chip the door away around the lock," Gerlitz said.
The closet door has since been re-inforced by a steel plate, but any further action involves approval from the school's director, Dr. Edward P. Bassett, who is presently out of town.
The School of Journalism plans to move to new quarters in a semester and more elaborate security measures definitely will be taken in the new building, Gerlitz said.
"People know that there's all kinds of equipment at the university," Rus said.
And, since Campus Security cannot post a guard at a closet full time, he said, security measures are as much the departments' responsibility as they are Campus Security's.
The rest of the broadcasting department is much more secure than that one storage closet, Zielinski said.
"What I can't see is how they w heeled the w hole cart down the stairs, out the building, and dow n the center of campus without anybody seeing them," Zielinski said.
We teach our children — Fifth and sixth graders from the Newcastle Ave. School are featured in student produced documentary.	ST Photo by Craig Rice
KABC to air student-made film on integration in Los Angeles
by Steve Waller
Staff Writer
-	Unlike most student films, which screen once before a teacher and are put away on the shelf, a documentary produced by students of the Division of CinemaTelevision w ill be broadcast on KABC-TV tomorrow at 7 p.m. to a potential audience of thousands.
The film, We Teach Our Children, is a case study of children and parents affected by Los Angeles County's attempt to integrate its schools.
Produced in part by a $14,000 grant from KABC, the 40-minute color film takes a personalized look at six families within the Los Angeles Unified School District. Three of the families participated in the busing program and three did not.
Television actor Ed Asner will host the program in a videotaped sequence that was edited yesterday.
"Since busing is a controversial and political issue, if s easy to lose sight of the actual situation and the human values at stake," said cinema student Adam Jones, the film's director. "That's why we decided to concentrate on the experiences and feelings of children and their families, both at home and at school.
"There are no politicians in the film. We purposely left them out," he added.
A crew of ten cinema/television students worked on the film, which had its first public showing Wednesday in the Norris Cinema Theatre.
The audience of about 150 persons, some of whom w’ere depicted in the documentary, viewed the film with interest and approval.
W?ork on the production began in the fall of 1977, said Mel Sloan, the film crew's faculty advisor, in a question and answer period after the screening
The project started out as a visual anthropology videotape documenting the experiences of persons involved in the voluntary exchange program betw een the Vermont Avenue School in downtown Los Angeles and the Newcastle Avenue School in the San Fernando Valley.
When mandatory busing was instituted, director Jones and his partner, cameraman Doug Yellin, hoped to expand the project.
The cost of the expanded film was calculated to be six times that of the average student project, so it became necessary to find extra funding outside the department.
"It wasn't easy to find the backing," admits Jones. However, Jim Crum, executive producer of documentaries at KABC, was impressed enough with the students' work to arrange a grant for the cost of film stock and processing. The Division of CinemaTelevision provided the motion picture equipment.
The students worked on the film voluntarily for class credit.
In addition to Jones and Yellin, the other student crew' members included Craig Rice and Holly Yasui, production managers; Robert De Maio and Barry7 Zetlin, editors; and George Valleskey, Richard Stachelek Michael Haywood, John Zumpano and Patricia Castillo.	/
(continual on page 8)
—‘Zoot Suit’ distorts history, prof claims