Trojan
University of Southern California
Vol. LXV1, No. 5__________Los Angeles, California_Friday, September 21, 1973
Student, Farm Workers Clash Over Boycott
MILT WOLPIN
related stories of harassment by ranch superintendents and teamsters. Because ofthis harassment, the union members decided to strike early before the contracts signed in 1970 expired, he explained.
“IF IT was only trying to convince the strikebreakers to join us it would be easy. But we have hassles with the teamsters and the police,” Vasquez said.
According to Vasquez, the teamsters have come at the
By KEVIN McKENNA
Assistant City Editor
Development of the new Annenberg School of Communications is continuing on schedule, Fred Williams, dean ofthe school, said in an interview Thursday.
The school, which will begin its master’s degree program in communications management in February, was created last year by an $8-million gift to the univer-
WORKERS' PLEA—Elizor Vasquez, a representative of the United Farm Workers Union, spoke on campus Thursday in an attempt to enlist students' help in the boycott of nonunion grapes and lettuce. DT photo by Audrey Chan.
Communic ations Unit Under Way
sity by Walter H. Annenberg, United States ambassador to Great Britain.
Williams said USC was chosen for the grant in part because Los Angeles “is where the film industry, the television people, and the communications hardware manufacturers all come together.”
“WE D LIKE to be the think tank where the complex comes together,” he said.
The school is oriented toward developing decisionmaking people in the different facets ofthe communications profession—public information, computer communication, cable television, instructional media systems, and educational television.
“We will be trying to think of the problems of the 1980s and their solutions before people know they are problems,” Williams said.
“We’ve been able to gather together some of the best people in the country for ideas for the school,” he said.
BUT HE ALSO said the school will try to take advantage of as much local talent as possible.
The school’s instructional program will include problem-centered seminars, whose goal will be the solution of a well-defined problem area.
Two such seminars will be offered this spring. The first will deal with the use of communications in solving the Los Angeles transportation problem.
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Bv SARAH HECK
StafT Writer
A heated argument over the grape and lettuce boycott between representatives of the United Farm Workers Union and a graduate student ensued during a union recruitment meeting on campus Thursday.
John Garry, the son of a grape grower in Sanger, 12 miles from Fresno, challenged Elizor Vasquez and Baldwin Keenan on several points of their presentation designed to enlist the audiences help in their boycott of nonunion grapes and lettuce.
Cecil Hoffman of the United Campus Ministry and Milt Wolpin. associate professor of psychology, were also present to offer their sympathetic views of the situation ofthe union and its members.
Wolpin insisted that the farm workers’ struggle was nonviolent and directed toward the growers. He called the Teamsters Union a “tool of the growers” and their contract with the growers a “sweetheart contract which violates California law.”
HOWEVER, Garry commented, “From my own experience, it has not been a nonviolent struggle.” He cited examples of destroyed crops and farm equipment as well as workers who have
PACKED IN—The university’s ever-present parking problem was unusually severe Thursday. Students left their cars in the aisles in Lot B, leaving other drivers with no other choice than to wait for their return to back out. DT photo by Tina Pasquinelli.
Self-Designed
Majors Available
By PETER WONG
Managing Editor
Applications for the new Interdisciplinary Majors Program in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences will be accepted immediately, the official who will coordinate the program said Thursday.
The program, described in Target 1980, the general plan for LAS, will offer students the opportunity to cut across departmental and divisional lines to create their own majors.
Posters advertising the program will be displayed within the next week around campus, Preston L. Dent, the coordinator of the program and the associate dean for curriculum and instruction, said.
EVENTUALLY, posters and brochures will be distributed in local high schools and probably across the nation, Dent said, because he believes the program will be
so distinctive that it will attract students to USC.
Applicants are asked to file an autobiographical sketch, a statement of goals and reasons for their achievement.
Applications will be reviewed in late Novemb er or early December. The deadline for filing is Jan. 7.
Inquiries may be directed to Dent’s office or the LAS office, Administration Building 200.
ALTHOUGH THE program will eventually accommodate 100 students. Dent believes the first group will not be as large as that.
“Wre want to get the very best students,” Dent said, adding that the program will not be on a first-come, first-served basis, and it will not be required to enroll 100 students.
“We want creative well-motivated students to work with a creative, well-motivated faculty.”
(Continued on page 9)
been beaten up by union workers.
"Being from the country, I get very upset when the people in the city don’t know both sides. It’s struggle between the unions, not between the farm workers and growers,” Garry added.
Vasquez, a Delano farm worker and union member,
strikers with guns and stakes from the vineyards while the police, who have claimed they will remain neutral, have backed off.
Because the immigration office can supply growers with workers from Mexico— and for many workers, they must work or starve—the strike can not be totally effective, Hoffman said.
Strikebreakers are easily found and so another means ,of financially hurting the growers must be found, he said.
Hoffman cited three choices offered to the farm workers. Violence, boycotting or giving up “to the apathy reflected in Grapes of Wrath.'"
Boycotting is again the chief weapon of the farm workers.
Keenan, one of the volunteer boycott directors, emphasized that although the strike was effective the people in the cities can help the farm worker cause by “knockingthe heck out ofthe purchase of grapes.”
This includes not only not buying nonunion grapes but putting pressure on the cafeteria not to use nonunion grapes and head lettuce.
Kennan cited other methods of assistance helpful to the union. These include picketing Safeway stores, leafletting areas and holding house meetings where a union representative would come to speak.