School of Music may lose its accreditation
'I'M STARING AT THE RAIN' — While the recent	• caught many without umbrellas, such as these two
rains may not remind everyone of a Gene Kell/ musi- students seeking shelter in the Administration Building cal, they did bring a song to the hearts of the for- until the cloudburst passed. DT photo by Sue Adams, merly drought-stricken Angelenos. Sudden downpours
Daily w Trojan
University of Southern California
Volume LXXIII, Number 22
Los Angeles, California
Friday, March 10, 1978
Priority system designed for fall housing; cost increase expected
Fall housing assignments at the university will be determined under a new priority system. A 10% cost increase is also expected to affect student residents.
The priority system applies to returning students, who will get 50% of the housing. The remaining 50% of the spaces will be reserved for freshmen and transfer students, said Sharon Kettler, residential assignment coordinator.
A committee, composed of students and three staff members from the residence halls office, is acting as a liaison between the students and office. The committee initiated the change in the priority system.
Kettler said potentially 2,000 to 3,500 returning students may turn in priority applications due March 17. Students who are not assigned will be put on a
waiting list and fill in any vacancies made available during the summer with housing cancellations.
Students who are already living in university-owned housing may arrange for off-campus housing for the fall, more easily than new students, Kettler said.
Women who will be asked to move out of Birnkrant Residence Hall and half of the men in Men’s Residence West will be given high priority in the assignments for next year, said Randy Rice, director of residence halls.
Birnkrant will be all male and Men’s West will become coed in a decision recently made to open up more housing spaces for men.
Rice said there is an increase in the demand for housing by returning students, especially in the apartment complexes.
He said there are vacancies open now and students accepting a housing assignment now would be eligible for housing (continued on page 2)
Reaccreditation of the School of Music may be in jeopardy if its practice facilities and equipment do not meet the national average of similar institutions by 1980.
The accreditation report by the National Assn. of Schools of Music concerning the university’s School of Music were discussed at a meeting of the Academic Affairs Committee Thursday.
Grant Beglarian, dean of the School of Performing Arts, told the committee the School of Music has an average of 32 students per practice room, compared with the national average of 11 per room among private universities of comparable size.
The school is also below the national average in equipment. The university has 75 pianos compared to a national average of 140 and has one pipe organ, compared to a national average of five.
The need for additional space for solo instrumental and voice practice was one of the major concerns in the accreditation report, Beglarian said.
He said most of the accreditation team's concerns were a reiteration of previous statements by the School of Performing Arts to the university administration.
The School of Music has a reputation for its excellent faculty and staff but its facilities have long been considered inadequate, said Eileen Hunter, secretary of the Academic Affairs Committee.
Beglarian said the School of Performing Arts has approximately 1,500 students, with 714 enrolled in the School of Music.
To receive a degree in music, each student must certify at
least two hours per day of lab time or practice. Since tuition is 85% of the performing arts budget, the school regards its students as donors.
Beglarian said providing adequate work space for 1,500 donors is a major problem.
The school told the last accreditation team that additional practice spaces were planned in new facilities being built. But, due to inflation, the practice rooms weren’t included.
The accreditation team also recommended that more fulltime teachers be hired and an effort be made to integrate the School of Music into the main life of the university.
Beglarian told the Academic Affairs Committee that he does not view more full-time teachers as a valid goal. He said much of the strength of the school derives from the high quality of part-time professionals who complement the fulltime faculty.
Beglarian responded to the need for integration of music into the main life of the university by speculating that persons interviewed by the accreditation team were not those who attend plays and concerts and were not aware of the variety of cultural events sponsored on campus.
The Academic Affairs Committee made a motion to increase the practice facilities of the School of Music to make sure it maintains its accreditation.
Howard Rarig, director of the School of Music and associate dean of performing arts, is now responsible for raising the necessary funds for the needed facilities.
Copy machine breakdown attributed to heavy abuse
By Robin Oto
Staff Writer
You need a special section in a book. The librarian says you can’t check it out. So you dig out some change and find the copy machine. Then you find out none of the copy machines work.
“The basic problem is that they are made to operate under relatively favorable conditions but public service is not. They are used an awfiil lot,” said Francis Spreitzer, head of the micrography and reprography department in Doheny Library.	,
Spreitzer said the copy machines were made for standard office use and not the heavy student use on campus.
The machines are being used about one third more than last year, and the breakdown rate was higher then, Spreitzer said.
“The machines work harder, make more copies, break down more. Objectively we are better off than last year because we made more copies. But subjectively, people are still unhappy because they break down,” he said.
The office-type copy machines have been converted to coin operation that poses a primary problem. Canadian dimes and other foreign coins dropped into the slot also cause breakdowns. The machines will jam because the foreign coins have different magnetic properties than the American coins.
“The machines shut down until they are cleared. All these coins go in and they don’t come out,” Spreitzer said.
Doheny Library has two staff-operated copy machines and seven coin-operated ones.
A permanent staff member looks after the machines every weekday, and another staff member monitors them part-time. “All our machines are looked at everyday. On Fridays, one looks at them in the morning and one in the afternoon to make sure they work on the
(continued on page 2)
Woman astronaut says she’s ‘just one of the guys in the program’
By Mike Schroeder
Staff Writer
The news of a 28-year-old electrical engineer being selected as one of 35 new astronauts wasn’t surprising. The fact that the new candidate is a women was surprising.
Judith Resnik, one of six women selected to join the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in February, spoke to 50 people as part of Women’s Week Thursday.
Resnik was selected to serve as a mission specialist in the agency’s shuttle program, which is currently the primary focus of the nation’s space activities.
Already, she says she is “just one of the guys in the space program,” although it has just been little more than a month since the selections were announced.
But she knows there is a lot of hard work to come.
She explained the astronauts will begin their training during six months of classes. They will attend classes in aerospace subjects, propulsion and computer systems four hours a day during this period. This is done to give the most instruction about the shuttle.
Another 18 months will be spent in operations training to learn the hardware and software systems the astronauts will be dealing with.
In 1980 the candidates will become ready-for-fiight astronauts and may be assigned to actual space flights.
“The selection is an exciting turn of events in my career,” Resnik said. “My only regret is that I can see the next several years going by so fast.”
Restiik has lived in Redondo Beach, Calif., since October 1977. She is currently a systems engineer for International Business Machines.
She worked her way through Carnegie-Mellon University for her bachelor of science degree. She attended the University of Pennsylvania for a year and received her doctoral degree from the University of Ireland.
JUDITH RESNIK
She applied for the NASA program in July 1976 when the agency was recruiting astronauts for the first time in 10 years.
In response to a question, Resnik told the audience she didn’t believe sex representation was a part of the selection process.
“I know they (the selection board) didn’t sit down to pick X number of minorities and women,” she said, noting four minority men were also part of the new astronaut class.
One reason women and minorities were being chosen was due to the large amount of publicity issued by the agency to get minorities and women to apply for the positions, Resnik said.
She also explained test pilots had been used exclusively up to this point as astronauts. “When they were able to start using scientists, the selection opened up,” Resnik said.
This publicity included a commercial with Nichelle Nichols, an actress who played the role of Lt. Uhura on Star Trek. The name of the first space shuttle craft now being tested is the Enterprise, also from the television show.
She saw the selection of women as a correc: tive measure by NASA. “They saw the imbalance in the program and corrected it,” she said.
(continued on page 2)