Volume LXVI, Number 48
University of Southern California
____________Los Angeles, California _____________
Friday, November 30, 1973
YAF, Libertarians Hold Protest Against Taxation
BURNING TAX FORMS—Mark Deardorff, left, chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), Jack Willis, of the Libertarian Party of California, and Harry Culotta, a member of YAF, burned tax forms Thursday at a demonstration against the Internal Revenue Service. DT photo by Bob Chavez.
BY SHERRY STERN
Staff Writer
A demonstration against taxes and what was called “government coercion exercised in their collection" was held Thursday by members of the Young Americans for Freedom Chapter and the Campus Libertarian Society.
The protest included a picket line, burnings cf about 15 copies of the standard income tax form, 1040, and a burning of the Social Se-curitycard of Mark Deardorff. chairman of YAF.
THE DEMONSTRATION was held in front of Bruce Hall while a representative from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service was inside conducting job interviews with students.
Some observers joined the picketers. However, with only about 10 picketers and four people w ho helped burn the forms, the turnout was small.
Deardorff said that with the apathy prevalent on campus, the protest would have been good even if only one person had shown up.
“In fact. I'm surprised that I came out myself,” he said.
DEARDORFF SAID the demonstration was held because "It’s time to speak out. It’s time to show' our opposition. the IRS. that we are fed up with coercive taxation.
‘ The days of any organization that destroys human rights are surely numbered. We will, through this protest, speed the demise of the IRS and its ilk.”
He said the reason he is against taxation as it is imposed is because it infringes on the rights of citizens.
He said taxation does this because it supports programs that are bad for the individual person. He said these programs include welfare. social spending, and public education.
TOM PALMER, steering committee chairman of the Libertarians, said, “The Internal Revenue Service, through its taxing activities, has showm flagrant disregard forthe concepts of individual rights and human dignity.
Tuition Suits Face Long Delay
BY KEVIN McKENNA
Assistant City Editor
The two tuition suits against the university continue to go through a series of pretrial procedures and delays, and one member of the Tuition Action Committee said Thursday it is conceivable the case might not come to trial for another two years.
The committee member accused the university of engaging in a strategy designed to delay the case as much as possible.
“I think we can resolve the suits a lot faster,” the spokesman said, “but a lot depends on the university’s strategy, which is to delay as much as possible.”
The suits, by law, must cometotrial within fiveyears of the time they are filed.
THE SUITS, asking over $5 million in damage for undergraduate and law students for alleged illegal tuition increases over the past six
Brown to Discuss Campaign Reform
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., California secretary of state, will speak on the campaign-reform initiative at 10 a.m. Monday in Founders Hall 133
Brown w ill be a guest in the class of Larry Berg, an assistant professor of political
science.
years, were filed in Superior Court last spring.
The case is now in the pretrial process of discovery, which will enable the plaintiffs to gain access to university financial records. The records submitted to the committee before this “were nothing more than a platitudinous survey of inflation,” the committee spokesman said.
The plaintiffs have filed their responses to interrogatories—formal requests for information filed by the university—and are now preparing similar requests for information from the university.
Although the plaintiffs in the case emphasize they are out to win,they havesaid that one of their main goals in filing the suit was to get the university to release more financial information and to consult students before any subsequent tuition increases.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS have also said they believe the selection of nine students to serve on the 19-member tuition commission that reported to the University Council on future tuition increases was a token response to the tuition suit.
“In a sense, the university has become more careful in complying with the form if not the substance,” said a committee spokesman.
“Whether the commission’s discussions were actually meaningful I don’t know, since students are basically uninformed about the university financial structure.”
The commission recommended by a 7 to 4 vote that tuition be increased by $210 to $2910 next year, although none of the students on the commission voted in favor of the increase.
The students have submitted a minority report to the
University Council recommending alternative measures.
But unlike last year, no new' organized opposition to higher tuition seems to have formed among the law students.
“People are getting so used to higher tuition that they’re starting to take it for granted,” the committee spokesman said.
LOCAL REDEVELOPMENT PRO J ECT—Panos Koulermos, faculty member of the School of Architecture and Fine Arts, reviews student plans for a proposed housing development to be located near campus. See story page 2. DT photo by Paula Daniels.
“Bureaucracies like the IRS have no place in a free society. As libertarians, we oppose all intervention by the state in our lives.”
Jack Willis, a member of the state executive board of the Libertarian Party of California, said the party is in favor ofthe termination of all mandatory taxation. He said he would like to see taxes paid voluntarily.
However. Deardorff disagreed, saying he would be in favoroftaxes ifthey financed a government that would protect his rights by protecting him from other people and other countries.
He said he thinks that 40^ ofthe money earned by a citizen is too much to support a government such as ours, which he said is corrupt and has too much power. He said the amount should be no more than 2% or 3°fc.
Speakers Program Reorganized
BY SARAH HECK
Staff Writer
The Great Issues Forum, which has been responsible for bringing guest speakers to campus in past years, has been reorganized as the Campus Speakers Committee.
Dissatisfaction with the original organization prompted the 25 members to draw up a proposal to change the structure.
The smaller committee, made up of five students and five faculty members, is a direct descendant of the forum and will, it is hoped, be better able to serve the students, ac-cordingto Paul Moore, director of the Student Activities Office.
THE FORUM, which w as a university committee, was not reconstituted for the fall. Since the Interim Student Programming Board was abolished and no student government existed last spring, no students could be appointed to the committee, so essentially the forum ended last spring, Moore said.
John Sullivan, advisor for the new speaker program, said that the Student Activities Office was hesitant to spend the $11.000 allotted to the speaker program for the year until a new committee had been formed.
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