Parking: stalking the endangered
species
By Sherie Stark
Assistant Feature Kditor
Armed with only their cunning instincts and well-trained eyes, they stalk the premises, racing against the clock in the daily hunt.
The masters of this big-game strategy are students, and their prey is the endangered parking space.
While the situation appears to be under control on paper, the lengths some students go in order to park leads one to believe otherwise.
“The problem is not only that there are not enough spaces,” said John Lechner, director of campus security and parking operations. “A large part of it is that students don't want to park anywhere but 100 feet from their class.”
He said that the ratio of permits issued to parking spaces is 1.8 to 1, which is a standard ratio for most universities and public places.
Lechner said'that humanistically, the university shouldn’t sell more permits than it has spaces, so what it tries to do is determine how far the spaces can go, and still fall within a safe ratio. He added that the university can get away with it because all of the students aren’t on campus all of the time.
However, he said the ratio is somewhat misleading because about 2,000 of the
7,000	available spaces are located on Menlo Avenue, adjacent to the Coliseum.
“Psychologically, students think of that area as off-campus, and even though there is a tram running back and forth every 15 minutes, nobody wants to park over there,” he said.
Lechner said that not only do most students refuse to park on Menlo, but there are some who will do almost anything to park on campus.
He reached into his desk and pulled out
a grey index-card box of phony faculty permits that students have tried to use to park on campus. There were mostly hand-drawn cards, with varying degrees of detail and color accuracy, and a few Poloroid-photographed cards, some in color and some in black-and-white.
“These are just some examples of the variety we've picked up this year,” he said. “Maybe the students deserve some credit for being inventive, but probably about 90% of them get caught.
“Crooks tend to be crooks in all capacities, so we usually pick them up along the way for illegal parking.”
He said some students anxious to park on campus don’t even bother trying to obtain a faculty permit, but give the parking guards excuses for getting on campus, such as that they have to drop off a thesis paper or pick up a heavy package.
(continued on page 2)
Daily ® Trojan
University of Southern California
Volume LXVIII, No. 115	Los Angeles, California	Friday, April 23, 1976
STRUTTIN’ MY STUFF — A dancer performs a ceremonial dance as part of the celebration for the Semana de la Raza sponsored this week by MECHA. The dance group, from Mexico City, performed Aztec dances. DT photo by Gary Kirkorian.
Provost search continues; choice possible by fall
A provost for the university has not yet been appointed, but there is still a strong possibility that one will be chosen for the 1976-77 school year as was originally planned, said Paul Knoll, associate professor of history and a member of the provost search committee.
“I do not rule out the possibility of a provost being appointed,” Knoll said. “But I can’t say that the appointment will be categorically made.”
He said the committee wanted to be assured of having a qualified person for the job before a final decision is made.
“There are names under review now in the president's office which are promising,” he said. “The
committee is still reviewing upwards of half a dozen names.” Knoll declined to release any of the names being considered. President John R. Hubbard was unavailable for comment.
Hubbard had originally set July as a target date for the provost decision to be made. Knoll said that he would rule out the possibility of an interim provost being appointed.
If no appointment is made, the most probable situation would be for the vice-presidents, whose posts will be phased out by the selection of a provost, to continue in their offices until the provost position is filled, Knoll said.
(continued on page 5)
Stringent guidelines approved for undergraduate directed research
By Marcus Oviatt
Staff W riter
The Academic Standards Commission and the Curriculum Committee have approved guidelines that will make undergraduate directed research courses (numbered 490) more academically demanding.
The two groups endorsed recommendations by a subcommission studying 490 courses that the courses in the future should be letter graded, limited to individual research and require the authorization of the supervising faculty member and the appropriate department head.
The revised structure of the courses will take effect next spring.
Keith Keener, chairman of the subcommission, said the courses had become characterized by abuse.
He said the courses were originally established in the 1960s to allow exceptional students to pursue studies not offered by the regular curriculum.
Turned to “micks”
But they soon turned into “mick” courses for many students and ceased to carry any real weight on a transcript. Keener said.
A major abuse involved allowing groups of students to work together on research projects, he said.
“Groups would come in and undermine the Curriculum Committee because they would establish de facto courses that didn't adhere to any standards of academic quality,” he said.
“Often students could find a ‘mick' professor who'd give them easy credit. This penalized the students doing legitimate research. They couldn't use the course credit for graduate school because the school considered the things a joke.
“A lot of times a student would hand in a book report two weeks before the end of the semester and get credit for it. What the course was originally designed to do was becoming the exception, while the abuses were the rule.”
Keener said it has been common for students to use 490 courses as emergency stop-gaps after they’ve discovered they were a few units short of the necessary 128 for graduating.
To combat this practice, credit for research projects will range from a minimum of two units to a maximum of eight. The previous range had been from one to eight units.
“There's no such thing as a one-unit research project,” Keener said.
A secondary course will be created for emergency cases, he said. This course, numbered 390 and called “Special Problems,” will offer from one to four units of credit for individual study graded on a pass/no pass basis. Enrollment in the course will be by petition.
Students must be qualified
Under the new guidelines, no 490 course will be approved unless the student's record has indicated superior performance in the field, a written proposal for the project has been submitted prior to registration and the project has been authorized.
Keener said students were not the only ones at fault in the situation.
“No one is saying the abuse is just by students,” he said. “It's a two-way street. Professors have often been unconcerned with maintaining academic quality control.
“A 490 on a transcript should mean something. But it will not work unless the departments say ‘Yes, we don't want our 490s to be laughing stocks.’”
TV personality to perform at Songfest
LIZ TORRES
The costar of the television series Phyllis, Liz Torres, will perform the overture of Songfest '76 on May 1 at the Greek Theater.
She will sing Welcome to Our World, an original composition by Norman Mamey, arranger and conductor of the Songfest.
Currently, Torres divides her time between television, nightclubs and the Broadway stage.
She recently made her Broadway debut in The Ritz and has appeared on the Tonight
Show, the Men' Griffin Show and the Mike Douglas Show.
She performed on television with Jose Feliciano and Trini Lopez in The Latin Special and with Ben Vereen on his summer television series.
She has appeared at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, the Sahara Hotel and Harrah's in Lake Tahoe and at the El San Juan Hotel in Puerto Rico.
Tickets for Songfest '76 are available in the Ticket Office, Student Union 200.