Donor wants cash, mansions returned
Daily <jp Trojan
University of Southern California
Vol. LXVI, No. 71	Los Angeles, California	Wednesday, February 13, 1974
BY JERRY TROWBRIDGE
An 84-year-old woman who gave the university two mansions and close to $1 million in cash and stocks now wants the gifts back.
The woman. Marguerite Taylor Lon-streath. has filed suit against the university in Santa Barbara Superior Court. She wants everything back, plus 7% interest and court costs.
The university has agreed to return the deeds for the two mansions, but it refuses to give up trust funds valued in 1969 at $1 million, later at $700,000 and still estimated to be worth several hundred thousand dollars.
Longstreath reserved the rights to live in the two mansions until her death. She now lives at the tree-shrouded mansion in Montecito, a community of the wealthy south of Santa Barbara.
From there, through her attorneys, she is battling to regain control of properties she gave away in a process that began on Christmas Eve in 1969.
With the spirit of yule in the air, Longstreath signed an agreement with Carl Franklin, vice president for legal affairs, that called for the woman to provide homes, real estate and capital to start a project that would continue after her death.
Wanted to start colony
Longstreath desired to found the Calafia Colony for Writers and Composers. She remembered herchildhood spent near the Huntington Museum and Li-
brary, and felt she was privileged to have had access to so much knowledge.
“Can you imagine what our literary and musical greats could have produced had they lived in better surroundings?” she asked.
So she wanted to let a total often writers and composers live in Casa Blanca, a Moorish-style mansion resembling a miniature palace or mosque, and Quinta Calafia, the Montecito mansion designed by Addison Mizner, a noted architect.
She first approached Scripps and Claremont Colleges in the mid-1960s, but they were not receptive. Claremont indicated the project was too expensive to maintain, and generally not feasible, according to court files.
But here Longstreath found a staff of very receptive administrators. USC was to be the place for her project.
Donations originally revocable
In the original agreement, all her donations were to be revocable. If she wanted to, she could get everything back.
Two years passed and little happened to the project. Some of the wording in the original agreement was amended to make clarifications where necessary, but it remained revocable.
But 1971-72 were years of great change for Longstreath. Then, her legal name was Mrs. Marguerite Taylor, and she was undergoing a divorce.
On Jan. 10,1971, she signed papers to set up a Unitrust agreement transferring control of assets she valued at $700,000 to
Security officers ask union bargaining aid
BY SARAH HECK
Assistant City Editor
Lawyers for the Teamsters Union have served notice on the university that a majority of security officers at USC have signed cards authorizing the union to bargain for them.
The letter of petition states that the union’s bargaining power covers wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment ofthe officers represented.
Included under the petition are all security officers and trainees. All other employees—security department director, chief, captains, lieutenants, office helpers and dispatchers—are excluded from this unionization.
Anthony D. Lazzaro, vice president for business affairs, sees the action taken by the security officers as a hasty, unfortunate step.
Whether their interest in the union is genuine or if the officers are using this unionization to air complaints and open up communication with the university has yet to be determined, Lazzaro said in an interview.
But whatever the case, no free and open discussions can occur now between the university and the officers, he explained.
"Once they have taken this step we are bound by regulations set up by the National Labor Relations Board in
the kinds of communication we can have.”
The officers did meet with John Lechner, director of Campus Security and Parking Operations, Jan. 28 to hear complaints about the department and discuss unionization. However, at that time many officers had already signed the cards.
The petition was served last Thursday. The university had not yet responded to the complaints madeatthe Jan. 28 meeting.
Lazzaro agreed with Lechner that the areas under complaint are not negotiable matters. These complaints include dissatisfaction with supervision and the policies officers must use toward students.
“Their two points are not usually union issues,” he added.
The policies Lechner and the officers must follow were set up in the Student Life Report. Jan. 6. 1971.
The report states that “The primary function of the university security officer is to protect and assist the university’s students, faculty, staff and guests, and to safeguard their property and the property of the university.”
Lazzaro emphasized that the officer’s presence does the most good in preventing problems.
(Continued on page 2)
PROGRAMMING BOARD
Student nominations submitted
AFTER REFLECTION—Donor who gave this mansion to the university later decided she wanted
it and her money back. She has filed suit.
the university. In the fund were two pieces of real property (at Carmel and Signal Hill), and 14,416 shares of stock.
On August 17, 1971, she turned over all of the furnishings in the two homes to the university.
Almost a year later she recived her final decree of divorce from a California court.
Married UCLA prof One day after that, in Las Vegas, she married a man 41 years younger than she. Less than six months later, she notified USC she wanted her former possessions back, plus interest, plus legal fees.
Thus began the court battle. She con-
tends the entire project is revocable “The Unitrust agreement was only to be an appendix,” she said.
The university points to a section in the
1971	Unitrust agreement that clearly states the trust is not revocable. Since she signed the Unitrust agreement two years after the primary agreement, university officials contend she obviously changed her mind.
It has been questioned whether she ever even read the supplemental agreement.
But also at issue is the possibility
(Continued on page 2)
Recommendations for membership on the Student Programming Board have been submitted to James R. Appleton, vice-president for student affairs.
The nominations were made by the selection panel of the Student Caucus, which is one segment of the President’s Advisory Council.
Appleton had not decided on the recommendations as of Tuesday.
Eight board members will be chosen from the ten recommended. The students nominated are:
Arturo Abarca, a graduate student in public administration, David Ackert, a freshman; Cindy Allison, a junior in journalism; David Blackmar, a sophomore; Ward Ching, a sophomore; Gordon Dossett, junior in English; Jack Fields, a sophomore; Joe Flanagan, a junior in political science; Cliff Ishii, a medical student; and Bob Shiota, a graduate student in urban planning.
Four of these students —Abarca, Fields, Ishii, and Shiota—were on last year’s interim Programming Board.
Peter Scolney, chairman of the
Student Caucus, said that later this semester two alternatives for student government will be voted on by the student body.
The two alternatives will be a permanent Programming Board or a Voluntary Student Association.
“If the election turnout is large enough to please the ‘powers that be,’ ” said Scolney, “one of the forms will be instituted, probably in September.
The interim board will last until then, or, ifthe voter turnout is low, will continue performing the functions that student government normally would.
MARIJUANA INITIATIVE —Michael Sedano, a de-criminalization of marijuana on the ballot. DT photo grodoate student in speech communication, is shown by Gehrig Ikeda. (See story on page 9). signing an initiative petition to ploce a measure for the