Summer
Troian
Volume LXXIV, Number 7
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
Friday, July 7, 1978
Affirmative action program unaffected by Bakke ruling
By Michael Schroeder
m	Assistant Editor
J. he U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that quota systems cannot be used to determine enrollments in schools using federal funds, but that race may be used as a consideration in such admissions decisions.
The effects of the 5-4 ruling won’t be detrimental to the affirmative action program at the university, but may force the School of Law to change its admissions procedures for minorities, according to Barbara Pearson, director of affirmative action.
“I don’t see much effect on the affirmative action policies of the university,” Pearson said. “Our recruitment of women and minorities will continue the same as it has in the past.”
The university’s medical school does not use a quota system, and there will be no change in that school’s policies concerning minority admissions, Pearson said.
“(At the medical school) race is taken as a factor, but is only one of many factors,” she said.
Pearson said the law school is the only professional school here that now has anything near a quota system for minority admissions, but she “will be sending letters out to the deans to find out if this is true.”
A meeting to determine a new policy for the School of Law was scheduled for late Thursday.
Most national reports analyzing the split decision agreed that race can still be used as one factor in devising affirmative-action programs in education to help minorities overcome the effects of past discrimination.
On the other hand, numerical quotas based only on race take this principle too far, and the decision prohibits quotas as a form of redress for past discrimination.
In many respects, the Bakke decision was not as clear as these explanations read.
First, the decision was not made a constitutional question. Instead of using Bakke as a test of constitutionality, the justices, as they do in as many cases as possible, used a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the basis for their decision. Title VI. the section used to rule in favor of Bakke, prohibits racial discrimination in federally funded programs. This law was enough to rule in favor of Bakke, the justices said.
As far as the individual opinions of the justices went, three particular views stood out, with Justices Lewis F. Powell, William J. Brennan Jr., and John Paul Stevens writing the major opinions of the case.
Stevens represented the majority group composed of Chief Justice Warren Burger, William H. Rehnquist and Potter Stewart, as well as Powell, in agreeing that Bakke should be admitted to the Davis Medical School, and that the racial quota system at the Davis school was unacceptable in deciding who should be admitted.
(The Davis system allotted 16% of each class, or 16 places out of the 100 admitted, to disadvantaged students. These students were defined as blacks, chicanos and Asian-Americans.
(Bakke, now an engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Center near Palo Alto, was denied admission to the Davis school in 1973 and 1974.)
The Brennan opinion, with Justices Harry A. Blackmun. Thurgood Marshall and Byron Powell, said Bakke should not be admitted to the medical school because the use of quotas could be used to make admissions decisions.
A third opinion was created when Powell shifted to join the minority opinion on the basic Bakke question when it came to deciding the ultimate issue of racial considerations used in deciding admissions.
Though he agreed that quotas did amount to reverse discrimination, Powell said that race could be used as a consideration in developing a diverse student body.
The rest of the Brennan group based their opinion on different reasoning. They said that race could be considered to increase the number of minority doctors as redress for past discrimination.
Most post-Bakke analyses noted that although quota systems will have to shut down
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Rosen receives gold medal in Tchaikovsky competition
Nathaniel Rosen, 29, a former student of the university, has become the first American to capture the top prize in cello in the sixth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Rosen received a gold medal in the competition, the third given out since the contest became international in 1958. It is the second major international contest he has won.
It was Rosen's second try at the competition, as he competed unsuccessfully at the age of 17.
Rosen, currently the principal cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony, received his bachelor of arts degree from the university and was a student ind later a teaching assistant of Gregor Piatigorsky, the late acclaimed cellist and USC faculty member.
While at the university, Rosen gave several solo recitals and performed with students of Piatigorsky’s master classes. He also performed in a play entitled “Fables, Foibles and Fantasies” written by Grant Beglarian, dean of performing arts, in New York in 1971.
In 1972, he was presented at a recital marking his formal debut sponsored by USC Friends of Music, a support group for the School of Music, and received the honor of being named most outstanding graduate, one of three so named since 1970.
Rosen’s last performance at the university was in 1977 when he participated as a faculty member in the Piatigorsky seminar for cellists, chosen from several top cellists in the country.
“Nick Rosen is a dear friend and colleague and I consider him to be one of the most outstanding cellists,” said Beglarian, School of Performing Arts.
Beglarian said he hopes to arrange for Rosen to perform at the university when he returns from Moscow.
MORE PARKING COMING
Construction boom continues despite rising costs
By Shelley Lash
“In my six years at USC, there has always been some phase of construction on campus. This has been true since the early sixties,” explained Michael Boc-chicchio. the jovial director of the campus’ Architectural Services department.
Bocchicchio glanced occassionally out of his all-glass wall as he discussed the major architectural projects currently under construction on campus.
He said the Annenberg Center for the Study of the American Experience will be attached to the present Annenberg School of Communications and will face Hoover Avenue.
The Annenberg Center, begun five weeks ago, will be devoted to researching historical, social and economical aspects of America. It is designed to house conference space, seminar rooms, offices and a small lecture theater. The completion date for the structure is set for one year.
The project will also include a mall running from Hoover Avenue and 34th Street to the future Annenberg Center.
Some students may wonder why the American Experience Research Center was not built simultaneously with the An-
nenberg School of Communications. Ambassador Walter Annenberg, who appropriated the funds for the $4 million center did not conceive the American Experience idea until two years ago.
In the faculty parking lot K (across from the Physical Education building), Bocchicchio said the Grace Ford Salvatori Hall for Letters, Arts and Sciences is being designed.
The linguistic, speech communications, LAS advisement and journalism departments will be moving into the three-story, $4 million Salvatori structure in September of 1979. Classroom, office space and an auditorium will be housed there.
“The space freed up will alleviate space problems several departments are currently experiencing. This additional space is intended to ease the crunch,” Bocchicchio said.
Henry Salvatori, a Board of Trustee member, is the donor for the structure and is naming the building after his wife.
The Seeley G. Mudd project, also for the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, will begin in one year and house the psychology and undergraduate chemistry departments. Additional classrooms and an
auditorium will also be housed there.
When asked about construction costs, Bocchicchio could not think of a situation where campus funds were used to construct a new building. “A major donor or a combination of smaller gifts is usually the way in which funds required to construct a building are raised,” he said.
If a structure is completed but not entirely paid for, the fund-raising campaign for that building will continue until it is paid off, he explained. “Sometimes funds for individual rooms are donated by different families or even one person.”
Either the department planning to occupy a new building or a member of the Board of Trustees is in charge of a fundraising program. “In a lot of cases,” Bocchicchio said, “alumni or trustees are donors for various buildings such as Davidson, Annenberg and so on.” Often teams combine to provide more successful results than one group can acquire working alone, he added.
The athletic department is currently seeking funds from individual donors for the upgrading of Cromwell Field. It has received a large amount of small gifts that will aid in the renovation of the field,
Bocchicchio said. Lights and resurfacing are part of the general upgrading of Cromwell Field slated to begin in about one month.
Concerning remodeling projects, Bocchicchio said individual departments are responsible for raising funds when re-! modeling is necessary.
“In my department,” he said, “if I want to allocate more space in this office, the money comes from the leftover material and supply fund. However, there is very little if ever any money left in a department fund and that's why there’s very little remodeling going on around campus. I think things have gotten tighter in the last several years. There just isn’t very much to go around and because of that I think we’re seeing a very minimal amount of remodeling taking place now as compared to five or six years ago.
“Also, let me clarify that remodeling does not mean beautifying something. Very rarely if ever does campus remodeling occur for cosmetic reasons. I’m speaking of functional remodeling such as knocking out a wall to create more space. The university doesn’t have funds to do (continued on page 2)