Daily § Trojan
University of Southern California
Volume LXXIII, Number 53	Los	Angeles,	California	Wednesday,	May	3,	1978
Student Senate selects remaining officers in undergraduate election
WHERE'S THERE SMOKE?—Paraquat is a chemical herbicide presently being sprayed on marijuana fields in Mexico by the Mexican government. Record Retreat in University Village is selling kits that test for paraquat contamination in marijuana. DT photo by Mark Kariya.
By Gail Asayama
SUIT Writer
The Student Senate completed its undergraduate elections Tuesday with the selection of its vice-chairman, representative, and five seats on the President’s Advisory Council.
Dennis Alfieri was elected as the undergraduate vice-chairman and Khaled Take was chosen as the undergraduate representative.
Each of the candidates presented candidacy statements at the meeting, which was attended by all the newly elected undergraduate senators. The major issue at the meeting was the time commitments of each of the students for the coming year.
Two candidates withdrew their names from the ballot, saying they felt that other commitments might be conflicting.
Alfieri said in his candidacy statement that the most important concern was a need for a more effective communication between the Student Senate and the student body.
Marijuana users offered ways to determine paraquat contamination
By David Watson
SUtT Writer
Marijuana smokers fearing paraquat contamination are being offered help by KMET radio and Record Retreat in University Village.
Record Retreat is selling paraquat test kits that cost $4. The kit involves four separate tests and can be conducted by following the instructions. The shop has sold 12 kits in one week.
Paraquat is a chemical herbicide presently being sprayed on marijuana fields in Mexico by the Mexican government. The herbicide causes the marijuana on which it is sprayed to deteriorate in three days when exposed to direct sunlight.
However, Mexican farmers have been harvesting contaminated marijuana the same day it has been sprayed. The farmers have learned the marijuana will not decompose if it is removed from sunlight before three days have passed.
KMET radio has organized a protest campaign against paraquat spraying. A KMET spokesman said the U.S. government has provided $50 million to Mexico in the last 3 years for the spraying program.
KMET’s three-phase protest began with a massive telephone appeal to its listeners asking them to telephone the White House and protest the spraying. The White House told KMET there had never been so much public response to any previous issue.
The second phase of KMET’s campaign consists of collecting at least one million signatures on a petition that will be sent to the White House protesting the spraying.
The KMET spokesman said the third phase of the protest will be a march staged in Washington,
D.C., to protest the funding of the spraying program.
The Student Health Center has received no calls relating to the
paraquat contamination. The receptionist at the center said she has orders to provide immediate treatment to anyone who may have smoked marijuana contaminated with paraquat.
She said anyone wanting to know if their marijuana was contaminated would be referred to USC-County Medical Center.
The Drug Analysis Laboratory at the hospital is not yet equipped to test for paraquat poisoning. Persons who want to know if their marijuana is contaminated are urged to send a sample to the PharmChem laboratory in Palo Alto.
A spokesman for the Drug Analysis laboratory in USC-County Medical Center said the deterioration process cannot be reactivated but the paraquat remains on the marijuana undetected.
The federal government has warned that permanent lung damage may resuit from regular or heavy smoking of Mexican marijuana contaminated with paraquat. The irreversible damage results from smoking three to five contaminated cigarettes daily for several months. Damage may also result from less frequent use.
By Devra Lieb
SUIT Writer
Your vehicle has been immobilized. Please report to Campus Security, Parking Structure A, for its release.
Upon returning to your car, if this notice greets you, it’s best to follow the advice. The reason: a device called a rhino boot has been installed on the left front tire of your illegally parked car immobilizing the wheels.
The rhino boot, a creation trademarked by a Denver manufacturing firm, is a heavy-gauge steel device with two jaws that clamp over the left front wheel of automobiles. When installed, the steel clamp makes it impossible for the car’s wheels to move.
The university’s parking and security operations department has been using one rhino boot device since October and has or-^ dered three more.
Mel Clark, administrator ol parking operations, said the boot is installed on cars parked illegally in reserve parking spots, handicapped areas or in front of fire plugs.
Violators must pay an $8 penalty fee to have the device removed. Clark said the fee is considerably less than the fee parking violators are now forced to pay when their car is towed away.
Clark said the rhino boot is used approximately 10 to 12 times a month. The device has been successful in curtailing parking violators, he said.
“It’s an ugly-looking thing and that's probably one of the reasons it’s so effective,” Clark said.
The rhino boot is presently being used by over 150 universities across the country as a parking control device. Clark said he first learned of the boot from a brochure sent by the Den-(continued on page 2)
Take also said that there is a similar need. Take said he is going to push for an open policy and that by taking an official stand, there would be less ambiguity between the students, the senate and the administration.
The election of the council’s representatives required five runoffs. The senate bylaws state that a majority must be reached and that no more than two rep-
resentatives, including the undergraduate representative, can be of the same constituency.
Jeff Gates, Larry Pezor, Nancy Somers and Paula Tripp were elected to the seats.
The graduate elections still remain incomplete. Bill Dauster, then chairman of the Student Senate said the senate gave the graduate schools two or three weeks of advance notice to (continued on page 2)
New policy will protect student employee rights
By David Watson
Staff Writer
Student employees will now be protected by guidelines accepted by the Student Affairs Committee of the President’s Advisory Council.
The guidelines were contained in a report by the Intercommittee Task Force on Student Employment Rights. The purpose of the report was to provide uniformity to the policies and practices affecting student employees.
The report stated that student employment rights have been left to department interpretations of ambiguous university policy.
The report is based on a 15% student response rate. It found that 91% of the responding departments pay their work-study students employees more than the minimum wage and 89% pay non-work-study employees higher than the minimum wage.
Several departments said they had successfully resisted pressure to increase hourly wages in order to allow the student to use up his work-study allocation.
The report found a wide variation in the privileges and benefits granted to student employees. Seventy-six percent of the students said they received flexibility in hours but only four percent received staff parking.
The report suggested that the nature of benefits and the requirements for receiving them be brought under control. One way to do this would be establish a system granting traditionally full-time benefits such as staff parking, staff cards, and library privileges to part-time employees on the basis of hours worked per week.
The final recommendations of the report urged departments to maintain the policy of paying all student employees the minimum wage and try to make every effort to develop an incremental pay scale.
It also said departments should take time at the beginning of a student’s employment to outline his benefits.
The report concluded that a marketing campaign is necessary to inform the departments of the benefits of advertising with Career Development, who are best equipped to match student to job.
(continued on page 2)
Parking violators get ‘booi Campus Security puts c!a
Ed Sarpy, parking field supervisor, applies rhino boot
DT photos by Mark Kariya