PROTEST—Residents of Trojan Heights are refusing to pay rent because of inadequate maintenance of their apartment.
MEChA says comments by board leader incorrect
By Shari Cookson
Assistant City Editor
Spokesmen for MEChA claimed Thursday that some of the statements made by Stanley Kivota, chairman of the campus activities allocations board, were incorrect and grossly exaggerated.
Kiyota said the United Farm Workers Support Committee, a branch of MEChA, sent 30 members to intimidate the review board into allocating it $310 in funding (Daily Trojan, March 14).
Only about a dozen members attended what Larry Pezor, chairman of the review board, described as “a very friendly meeting."
Kiyota was not present at this meeting, Pezor said.
The allocations board had initially voted to deny the group money for reasons that it had never allowed the group to respond to, said Mercy Marques, cochairman of MEChA.
After the review board charged that the allocations board had been rude to the group and hadn't given it a proper hearing, the allocations board decided to fund the group.
"Everyone has biases but allocations board members seem to let their biases influence them," she said.
MEChA members said the allocations board had controlled the hearing and barely let them speak.
The allocations board is often intimidated by large groups which show up at a hearing, Pezor said.
"Kiyota often chose not to recognize us or else he would cut us off when we wanted to indicate something was being misconstrued," Marques said.
MEChA members have submitted proposals and requested that the allocations board contact them if there were questions.
"But the board didn't question us and, as a result, didn't know what we were talking about," said Richard Tostado, advisor of MEChA's newspaper, El Nuevo Sol.
The reasons the allocations board gives for not funding a group aren’t usually discussed until the group appeals to the review board, Pezor said.
Fidel Huerta, president of the United Farm Workers Support Committee said he felt the allocation board discriminated against him
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Trustees take stand
By John Frith	• Nonsegregation of races in
Staff Writer	all eating, comfort and work
Corporations run by three uni-	facilities,
versity trustees have agreed to	# Equal and fair employment
principles that will promote fair	practices for all employees,
employment in the companies'	M Equal pay for all employees
South African dealings.	doing equal or comparable work
Fluor Corporation, Rockwell	for the same period of time.
International and Dart Industries	# Initiation and development
are among more than 100 Ameri-	of training programs that will
can corporations that agreed to	prepare, in substantial numbers,
the principles.	blacks and other nonwhites for
The six principles were formu-	supervisory, administrative, cler-
lated by the Rev. Leon H. Sulli-	ical and technical jobs,
van, a black Philadelphia minis-	# Increasing the number of
ter who is also a member of the	blacks and other nonwhites in
board of General Motors.	management and supervisory
The principles are:	(continued on page 5)
trojan
Southern California	Friday, March 16, 1979
Students boycott rent payment in protest of inadequate roof repairs
By Carole Long
Assistant City Editor
When Paul Headley moved into his apartment at Trojan Heights in December, no one told him about the leaky roof or the bathroom light that never went out, not even his three new roommates. Now, two of the roommates have gone, and the broken light has been fixed, but the leaky roof remains.
For the past three months, water has been dripping from the ceilings of the two bedrooms in apartment eight. Complaints to the complex manager, university residence halls and physical plant have not yet solved the problem.
Since March 1, Headley, a freshman in electrical engineering, and his roommate Matti Laukkanen, a sophomore in cinema, have decided to boycott their rent in protest.
"We don't plan to pay up until we receive adequate reimbursement for the damages and inconveniences this has caused," Headley said.
"We've called the health department, complained to Linda Elizalde, manager of the Trojan Heights complex, and met with David Lee, director of the residence halls, but it's still leaking," he said.
"Whenever it rains the water leaks into my room, but in Matti's, everytime someone uses the shower or flushes the toilet it leaks. We have garbage pails on the floor to catch the dripping."
The water seeping through the ceiling caused the paint to bubble and mildew to form. "The whole apartment had that terrible mildew odor," Headley said.
Near the end of January physical plant employees scraped off the peeling paint and painted over the areas. This, however, did not stop the leaking.
University plumbers sent to inspect the situation in February told the students the problem in Lauk-kenan's room had to do with the showers in the upstairs apartment.
They said it was not a sewer problem but that they needed to install a shower door upstairs so the water wouldn't collect on the floor and leak through.
Water leaking into Headley's room was seeping through cracks in the walkway on the second floor, university employees said. "The holes were caulked but the water still leaks in when it rains," Headley said.
In the second week of February, other university employees knocked out sections of the bedroom ceilings where it had been leaking.
"Now we have big holes with the wooden beams and sewer pipes clearly exposed," he said.
A plasterer came last week and made an estimate on the ceiling. Elizalde and Lee said part of the reason the problem has lasted so long is that the university does not own the apartments. They were leased last May on a one-year contract.
"For anything that would cost over $20 to get fixed the owner of the building has to approve the work," Elizalde said.
The owner has seen the holes in the bedroom ceilings and has agreed that they need to be fixed, Elizalde said.
Lee said he first learned of Headley's and Lauk-kanen's situation in early February and has been trying to correct the situation since then.
"I’ve been trying to get in touch with the owner the past few days but have been unable to reach him."
Lee said the owner had offered financial compensation to the two students for the damages but it had been refused.
Headley said Laukkanen had received a letter from the owner which offered 75.06 for reimbursement but he turned it down because he felt he deserved more than that.
SERVICE CONTINUES
Gas station suffers from shortage
Volume LXXVI, Number 25	University of
By Wendy Green
For the fourth day in a row the pumps at Steele and Kennedy's Union 76 station have run dry at noon.
The station, located on the comer of 37th Street and Flower Street, is where many university staff, faculty and students purchase gasoline.
Chuck Kennedy, station owner and operator said, "In a sense. I'm going to be running out of gas every day at an unspecified time.
"The public is not aware of the real shortage yet, but if the papers keep it up, they will be and gas lines will be forming by the end of the month," Kennedy said.
Regardless of the gas circumstances, Kennedy said the station would remain open during regular hours for servicing, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays.
Kennedy said a 600 gallon per day average decrease by the Union Oil Department of Energy is the cause.
The decrease was caused by a federal directive to all oil companies to cut back on allowances to their affiliate stations.
A spokesman from Union Oil said the federal order requires 76 stations to keep their gas allott-ments for March, April and May at the same rate for the corresponding three-month period in 1978. He anticipated that the cutback would be extended after that time.
Both the Union Oil spokesman and Kennedy hinted that the Iranian situation was the major cause of the federal cutback. "I'm not sure what the friendly Ayatollah over there in Iran is going to do,"
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OT photo by St*ra Hyman
DRY BY NOON — The last four days of dry pumps at Steele and Kennedy’s Union 76 station may be the first indication of a gas shortage, but this won’t stop the station on the comer of 37th Street and Flower Street from keeping regular hours.