By Susan Ritchie
SUff Writer
For students who are bored with Row parties. Tommy runs and the general lack of intellectual atmosphere on campus, project Think Tank might be a solution.
Created by two students. Rusell Gorman and Gary Wood, Think Tank was designed to fill the intellectual void at the university and to create new interest and excitement in learning.
"I think the university does not have the intellectual life that it should have. People here are purely interested in their classes, not with current events and what’s going on in the world," Wood said.
The program, as proposed, would consist of three events held during one month. The first week's event would feature a well-known speaker from the academic world, such as Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger. The speech would outline the theme to be followed that month. The following week, five faculty members would hold small group discussions at various locations across campus. A faculty debate would close the theme the final week.
The program has not received any funding by the university. The proposal will be submitted to the Campus Activities Allocation Board before August 1 and then be taken to various other levels after a CAAB decision.
Wood does not see a conflict with the University Speakers Committee that sponsors speakers from diverse fields. “One of our guidelines is that our speakers be from the academic community. They must have a university affiliation,” he said.
Wood said he is optimistic that the program would be well received by students and faculty members.
“It is the students’ responsibility to learn and assure an opportunity for learning if one is not available," he said.
Think Tank under consideration
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UNIVERSITY SHUTTLE SERVICE — Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is one academician being considered as a guest for Think Tank.
Summer
Troian
Volume LXXIV, Number 4
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
Friday, June 23, 1978
Solzhenitsyn tells the truth
Western world’s morales decline
Besides being one of the intellectual and literary grants if our age, Alexander Solzhenitsyn has become a towering world figure in the violent and tormented history of the 20th century.
In a rare public appearance, his first in three years, the exiled Russian author delivered the commencement address at Harvard University June 8.
The Nobel Prize winner who dared to expose the tyranny and terror of the Soviet Union made some less-than-pleasant observations on the moral state of the Western world. The following is a partial text of the controversial address.
letriaM by permission of the S»n Diego La ion
Truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.
If I were today addressing an audience in my country, examining the overall pattern of the world’s rifts, I would have concentrated on the East’s calamities. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted fouryears and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the West in our days, such as I see them.
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an out.side observer notices in the West in our days. The Western worjd has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each
political party and, of course, in the United Nations.
Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.
Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.
And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance.
But they get tongue-tied and paralj zed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, w:“ aggressors and international terrorists.
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?
When the modern Western states were created, the following principle was
(continued on page 6)
Arson suspected in fire at University Hilton
By Kiku Lani Iwata
and
Dawn Marumoto
One of the few eyewitnesses to Tuesday’s Hilton Hotel fire was 11-year-old Oliver Kracht from Shepard Field, Texas, who remembers seeing a pile of coals as he ran toward the elevator on the third floor.
“It was dark and I couldn’t see anything in the corridor except the lights ... that’s why I could see the coals,” said Oliver with a slight German accent.
Oliver’s eyewitness account of the “coals” probably aided the Los Angeles Fire Det. in determining the causes of the two simultaneous fires which erupted in the elevator foyers of the third and sixth floors of the University Hilton. Thirteen fire department trucks repsonded to the fires.
The fires began at the end of the hallways on the third and sixth floors, said William Bennett, county fire chief. “We suspect someone set them,” he said.
This suspicion was later verified by a member of the fire department’s Arson Squad. “It was an incendiary (fire) . . . definitely arson . . . and the suspect has not been found yet.”
An employee of the hotel found the fire, and the engineering crew that is always on call at the hotel had the fire under control with the available firefighting equipment before the fire department arrived, said Dennis Koci, hotel general manager.
Only one person was injured while trying to escape the smoke and fumes.
SMOKE IN YOUR EYES — Firemen found the fire in the University Hilton under control when they arrived. Hotel employees had extinguished the fire with available firefighting equipment. The fire is under investigation by the fire department's Arson Squad.
Hans-Dieter Kract, Oliver's father, broke open the window and lowered his baby and the rest of his children to the outside ledge.
Altogether, an estimated 200 persons were evacuated from 4 of the building’s 11 floors.
Hilary Greenberg, a student from Oklahoma, was also in the hotel at the time of the fire.
“We (Greenberg and her mother) were on the 11th floor and heard the alarm. The hall was filled with smoke. Then we went to the fire exit first and it didn’t open That really scared us. We returned to oui room, then a maid came and took us down another fire escape.”
Koci said the University Hilton was especially well prepared for the firsei since they had a fire drill meeting in May which resharpened the skills of the staff.
“This building could never burn. It’s solid concrete.” he said, knocking on the office wall.