Daily if Trojan
Volume LXVII, No. 85
University of Southern California
_ Los Angeles, California
Wednesday, March 5, 1975
Touton won’t close but still may be unsafe
UNSAFE?—Residents of Touton Hall have complained that the dormitory is structurally unsafe. The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety has deter-
mined that Touton Hall is safe enough to avoid evacuation, but is not sure whether fire ordinance regulations are being met. DT photo by Shuji Ito.
KSCR gets university approval, will begin operation March 31
BY NANCY SHINABARGAR
Assistant City Editor
KSCR-AM. a new student radio station, has been cleared for broadcasting by the university administration.
After three months of waiting. KSCR was approved Monday by James R. Appleton, vice-president of student affairs. The station will air its first program at 6 a.m. March 31
Appleton, in a memo to Kenneth OwTer Smith, interim director of the School of Journalism, apologized for the delay in KSCR's approval. Appleton proposed five stipulations for KSCR's management which the station is complying with. Bob Moore the station's general manager, said.
The stipulations include organizing a constitution and bylaws for the station, clearing ads with the Daily Trojan so as not to compete with the newspaper for advertising, using Studio C in the Allan Hancock Foundation for broadcasting, and clearing the construction of speakers w ith Paul Moore, director of student Activities.
KSCR's programming will appeal to all segments of the university. Moore said. He said he hopes the new station will duplicate KMPC’s success in presenting broad-based musical programming.
“We can’t please everybody,” he said. “But we feel that anything that's good people will listen to. If they know they’ll get a variety of music they’ll stay tuned," Moore said.
The KSCR station management doesn’t plan to compete with the Los Angeles market for advertising, music or news programs. And Moore predicted KSCR will set an example other local radio stations will follow
“Right now Los Angeles radio is in the cycle ofspecilities. You have to tune to KGFJ for soul music, or KFWB for news. We’re
going back to the original concept of radio, which is a variety of programs for everyone,” he said.
The station will operate on carrier-current lines, similar to telephone lines. The lines will be hooked up to the Row, dorms, the Grill and Commons area.
The current is fed directly into the alternating-current wall outlets. Any radio plugged into the socket, or within 25 feet of an AC socket can pick up the station’s signals. Moore said.
At first, only the Grill and the bookstore will receive KSCR. Within a few weeks all the dorms and the Row should be connected to the station transmitter by the telephone company, he said.
KSCR’s frequency will be near the low end ofthe AM dial, about 500 or 600. Moore said.
Carrier-current lines, regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), are cheaper than a conventional radio station, Moore said. Another consideration in choosing the sometimes cumbersome carrier current was the lack of air space for a 10-watt radio station in Los Angeles.
Federal regulations on obscenity and libel will be observed, and Moore felt censorship would only be a minor problem.
“We’ll avoid it by omnipotence,” he said jokingly. “If you can’t be clever without being
libelous or obscene, then you don't belong on the air.”
The Student Programming Board will probably finance a $2,000 loan so the station can begin on schedule, Moore said. The Bank of America denied a $1,500 loan to three telecommunications students for the stations. Bank loan officers said all three students were seniors and there was no guarantee the money would be repaid.
If KSCR ever does apply for a
FCC professional license, they won’t follow the example of UCLA. Moore said.
Recently the FCC discovered a 10-watt station was being illegally operated by the university. The station was shut down, and UCLA now has no chance of obtaining an FCC license, he said.
“Now they’ll have to wait until everyone on the FCC dies or resigns. and forgets about it. That will be a long time,” Moore said.
BY MIKE MEYER
Senior Staff Writer
The principal inspector for the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety said Tuesday that Touton Hall is not unsafe enough for an evacuation demand to be made, but the department is still not sure whether fire ordinance regulations are being met.
Two electrical inspectors from the department were scheduled to inspect the building Tuesday, but as of 3:30 p.m.. neither had show'n up.
The inspector. James Pruett, said the corrective work demanded in a Jan. 29 notice was probably 99^r complete. The notice demanded evacuation of the dormitory by March 3.
Harry E. Kyne, associate director of the Physical Plant, said the only problem is the electrical inspection of the fire alarm system.
He said that the department required recently installed smoke-detection devices to be connected to the building’s alarm system.
The work was done in late December and was approved by both the Los Angeles fire marshal and an inspector from the Department of Building and Safety.
Pruett said the department still has no record ofthe January approval, but feels the inspection job will be completed soon.
He said the department never planned to put signs on the building declaring it unsafe, be-
cause that type of action usually leads to a legal battle.
“We haven’t been trying to go to court We would just like to get the job completed," he said. “I don’t foresee anything drastic happening in this situation.”
Kyne said he had received several complaints from students living in Touton Hall. Many students said they felt the building was structurally unsafe.
David Albert. Touton Hall president. said the construction of the whole building is very poor, and the university is simply meeting the minimum requirements for safety. '
Albert complained about the poor condition of the walls and ceilings, and said the dorm has had constant problems with heating and plumbing.
Dennis Ceru. resident adviser for the fourth floor in Touton Hall, said flooding is a common occurrence in the building.
He said two feet of water flooded the building’s basement in early December. The flood ruined the building’s hot-water system and forced the university to replace it.
The students had complained about the lack of hot water for months, but Ceru said. “I don’t think the university would have done anything ifthe flood hadn't ruined the system."
Albert was particularly angry that the residents had not been informed ofthe city's decision to force evacuation
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Focus on . . .
Gifts: potential problems for both university and donors
BY LARRY TUCK
Senior Staff Writer
Every year the university receives a constant flow of contributions in the form of money, stocks and bonds. Depending on the donor’s wishes, such contributions may be used to add new buildings, establish endowed chairs or provide scholarships.
However, many contributions are nonmonetary and are more difficult to handle for both the university and the donor.
The university, for its part, must catalogue, store, maintain, make use of or dispose of a vast volume of material of all kinds.
For the donor, there is the problem of determining the value of his gift for tax purposes, the best time and manner to give it, and for that matter, to convince himself to part with an object of sentimental value to him.
For instance, in 1965 Armand Hammer, chairman ofthe board ofOccidental Petroleum, began donating a collection of paintings—mostly 16th and 17th century Dutch and Flemish works—to the university galleries.
On the advice of art experts, he claimed deductions totalling $321,500 for paintings donated in 1965 and 1967
However, the Internal Revenue Service had the paintings examined by other experts who appraised them at $109,500. Hammer was ordered to make up the difference in back taxes. The case is still before the tax courts.
Meanwhile, some ofthe paintings are hanging in the Fisher Gallery. Others, along with most of the 600 or so objects in the university collection, are
stored in inadequate facilities constructed in the 1930s.
Donald Brewer, director of the gallery, said that he does not actively seek new contributions because of the problems in handling donations properly.
“If you get an object, you have a responsibility to maintain it,” he said. If someone wants to donate a particularly fine piece, he said, the gallery will try to make room for it. but the current staff and facilities do not justify much expansion.
Brewer said that the present emphasis of the gallery is on temporary exhibits of works loaned from other collections. “These give the gallery most of its prominence,” he said. He also said that most galleries keep a large part of their collections in storage at any give time.
The problem here is that the Fisher Gallery’s storage facilities need to be expanded and upgraded to better preserve the collection.
One of the paintings donated by Hammer that is hanging in the gallery is “Venus Wounded by a Thorn." by Peter Paul Rubens. Last spring, newspapers published reports that the IRS had charged that the painting was either a copy or a studio version.
A lead headline in the Daily Trojan read “Donated Painting May be a Fraud, IRS Claims.”
Actually, there never was any question as to whether the painting was genuine, accoring to Hammer’s curator, Martha Kaufman.
In fact, the IRS experts, who saw only photographs, not the paintings themselves, said only that
the painting was not as valuable an example of Rubens’ work as Hammer’s experts claimed.
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