- Title
- PCC Courier, March 24, 1978
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- Date of Creation
- 24 March 1978
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- Description
- Student newspaper published and edited for the Associated Student Body of Pasadena City College weekly during the college year by the journalism students.
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PCC Courier, March 24, 1978
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No System Overload
Says Computer Chief
A SB Softball Game
Pits Battle of Sexes
It happened so quickly. It was one of
those things that everyone knows is
coming, except for the person it is
coming to. One second Ron Grant
stood smiling proudly, the next he
reached to cover his pie-covered face,
having been the victim of Senate
President Charlotte Hutchins’
challenge for softball supremacy,
Tuesday in the Campus Center.
ASB ushers in the new baseball
season this Saturday afternoon with a
softball battle of the sexes.
Student senators and ASB Board
officers team up, men against the
women, immediately after Inter. .Club
Council’s annual Flea Market at 2
p.m., March 25.
Tomorrow, even Alvar Kauti and
Phyllis Jackson, the dynamic duo
deans of student activities, become
adversaries. Kauti has gone over to the
men’s team, while Ms. Jackson has
opted for the women’s side — naturally.
The players have agreed to to the
conditions of defeat— loser take all,
especially a pie in the face.
“Five of the male teammates are
stocking up whipped cream and crust
especially for me,” said Student
Senate President Charlotte Hutchins.
She, in turn, is filing away their names
for future use, she said.
“We’re going to win,” she pro¬
claimed. “We’re going to wipe them
out.”
Likewise, Ron Grant, ASB President
and the men’s team captain, declared
his men the winners. “We have our
pies ready. Most definitely, we’re
going to beat the pants off of them.”
“I took a look at the women’s
roster,” said Steve Skordiles, ASB
finance commissioner, “and I can’t
see why the women are even going to
bother to show up.”
Optimism is great, but the men had
better watch out. Ms. Hutchins, the
women’s team captain, confided she
had a couple of ringers on her side.
Besides that, the men have
graciously allowed the women a seven-
point handicap. The females also
welcome four outs an inning to the
men’s three. Another advantage for
the women— they outnumber the men
almost two to one.
The two teams will clash on PCC’s
baseball diamond, Thurman Field,
and tickets are selling now for 50 cents
at the Campus Center.
Organizers are setting up a con¬
cession booth at the ball park. They
will be hawking Cokes, dill pickles,
peanuts and popcorn, Ms. Hutchins
said.
Proceeds from the game will go to
the ASB scholarship fund, child care
committee and other projects.
Win or lose, Circle
К
has already
challenged the women’s team to a
match of its own, said Ms. Hutchins.
“That’s because the women are going
to be the victors,” she added.
—Glenda Cade
House Builders Get Practice
By Arthur Wood
Staff Writer
The computerized registration
system at PCC was not severely over¬
loaded during the first week of spring
semester, according to Director of
Computer Services Robert Berger.
The computer itself was not over¬
loaded; rather it was the mechanism
for getting the data into the system
which bogged down.
Responding to material quoted in a
March 3 Courier article, Berger cited
reasons other than those mentioned in
the article as causes for the system’s
apparent slowdown in handling of re¬
programming.
Berger indicated three main factors
Retirement Plan Opposed;
32 T eachers Sign Petition
UPS AND DOWNS— Between T and V
buildings there is a house students
build, then tear down, build, then tear
down, etc.
—Courier Photos by Sami Solh
/
Suzan Guerra
By LeeAnne Schwartz
Assistant News Editor
The small frame house that stands between T
and V buildings will never be lived in.
In fact, it will never be finished.
The 28 students in the Building Remodeling class
use the house to develop, practice and test their
building skills. During a semester they do the
foundation work, put up the studs, put on a roof,
apply shingles and put in one or two windows.
Then they tear it down, only to begin the process
again.
Actually working on the house gives the students
needed practical experience that pays off when
they enter the work force as carpenters, according
to instructor Don Richardson. “I’ve had several
good carpenters come out of this class and they’re
able to go out and get good jobs with good pay,”
said Richardson.
To start the class off on building careers,
Richardson begins by teaching the basics. Some of
the students, he says, have never worked with a
hammer before. Yet, by the end of the two-year
period needed to complete the class, the students
have built and torn down a house four times.
“Because of this class, the guys (and one girl)
are able to go out on a job and know what needs to
be done and how to do it, because they’ve actually
worked on a house,” said Richardson.
Richardson, who began teaching three years
ago, tries to give his classes a well-roundeu
building education through their work on the house.
Students can draw up blueprints and submit them
to a class vote to determine the next floor plan for
the house. The class also elects a foreman for the
project.
“We never really have a completed job, though,”
said Richardson, explaining that the students just
need to get an idea of how the job is done and the
techniques involved, rather than doing the whole
job.
It is for this reason that only one or two of the
windows are installed, the roof is only partially
shingled and the bare framework is left exposed.
The class puts in some work on the house every
day during its four -hour class session unless, of
course, it rains. Unlike typical homes, the little
house leaves inhabitants exposed to the elements.
After a semester of learning on the three-room
house, the little practice home is dismantled in two
or three days. Nails are removed and reusable
lumber is saved for the next practice house. The
students go back to the drawing board and
anything left over from the little house that was
ends up in a fireplace.
EAT IT UP— ASB President Ron Grant joined the ranks of pie-in-the-
face recipients Thursday, a victim of Charlotte Hutchins, Student
Senate president. One onlooker commented “that’s cold.” Grant
probably agrees. —Courier Photo by Paul Fandl
By Glenda Cade
Assistant News Editor
Faculty members presented a
petition to the Faculty Senate Board
(FSB) at its last meeting requesting
elections be held to accept or reject a
new retirement policy.
The Board of Trustees approved the
new policy last week over the ob¬
jections of an FSB representative and
the president of PCC’s chapter of the
California Teachers’ Association
(СТА).
The 32 teachers who signed the
petition felt certain rules and regula¬
tions drafted into the new policy were
discriminatory to persons desiring
continuing employment past age 65,
said Dorothy Reynolds, representing
the FSB.
FSB members generally agreed with
the faculty petition’s statements and
decided to urge the Board of Trustees
to delay action on the issue until the
faculty could vote on it. Elections
should be held within the next four or
five weeks.
The petitioners want certification of
competency for continued em¬
ployment past age 65 to be based on the
same standards of competency as for
other faculty members, Mrs.
Reynolds, professor of life sciences,
said.
Under the new policy, a teacher who
wants to continue teaching must ask
six months ahead of time, may be
subjected to a physical and-or mental
examination to “determine com¬
petency,” and shall attend a hearing
with the superintendent. The process
would be repeated each school year the
employee desires to continue.
“This looks like a gauntlet that could
be set up to make certain that no one
over 65 wants to continue teaching,”
said Ben Rude, president of PCC’s
СТА
chapter. “Would anyone want to
put himself through this kind of or¬
deal? Then you go through this every
year as long as you can stand the in¬
dignity.
“Competency should be automatic in
the absence of any indication to the
contrary. If a teacher is obviously
senile, the Board of Trustees certainly
can challenge his competency as it can
at any age.”
Without evidence to the contrary,
maybe the superintendent-president
could be authorized to attest to the
competency of a teacher at 65, Rude
suggested to the trustees.
But John Madden, dean of personnel
services who presented the new policy
to the trustees for approval, said
county counsel, PCC’s legal adviser,
indicated its draft was the minimum to
comply with the Alatorre require¬
ments. “The school can only certify for
competency if the Board has a policy
for such,” he said.
“We are not going to require a full¬
blown physical of anyone or a full¬
blown mental examination of anyone,”
he added.
There are “plenty of safeguards”
already for challenging competency at
any age, Mrs. Reynolds said, so the
policy’s new standards are both
“unnecessary and discriminatory.”
The Alatorre bill, which outlawed
mandatory retirement in the private
and public sectors and spawned the
new policy, did say to determine
competency according to standards
adopted by the Board of Trustees, Mrs.
Reynolds said. “But it does not in¬
dicate the standards should be any
different from the ones the school has
already.”
At the FSB meeting, Philip Simon,
professor of life sciences, said “If they
can examine you at 65, they sure can
start examining you at 28 or 35 or 40.”
According to the interpretation of
the law, “If you put something like this
through, you are going to have to do it
at all ages, and prove you are com¬
petent to teach the next year,” Mrs.
Reynolds added. “So you better watch
what you put for 65, because you will
get it at all ages.”
Eventually, the Fair Employment
Practices Commission (FEPC) will
take this point of view, that standards
set for one age should be carried to all
ages, according to Mrs. Reynolds. “It
will ultimately be challenged, I think.”
Robert Spare, president of the Board
of Trustees, said he would like to see
the rules “as liberal as we can have
them. But the employer has the right
at some time to draw the line.
Sometimes it is impossible to remove
anyone, so there are two sides to the
question.”
The trustees agreed to have Dr. E.
Howard Floyd, superintendent-
president, discuss the discrimination
question with the county counsel. If a
more liberal interpretation is allowed,
the Board of Trustees said it possibly
would revise the guidelines to ac¬
commodate the FSB’s position.
contributing to the situation that
Erdley Beauchamp, dean of registra¬
tion, had described as “jammed up.”
One of these was the amount of time
a student might spend talking with a
terminal operator, especially when the
student finds that a particular class is
full and that he must decide whether to
choose another class or merely go
without one.
This conversation time cannot be
controlled, according to Berger. He
said that students have indicated that
the actual time it takes to program a
student at the terminal is about 30 to 40
seconds. The rest of the time is usually
conversation.
The fact that most students come to
the registration terminals at the
beginning or end of class hours, Berger
said, also makes it next to impossible
to avoid long lines. During classtime,
most students are in classes and the
volume of traffic at the terminals is
much lighter.
It is the in-between periods that the
terminals become crowded in a way
that might resemble a lunch rush in a
restaurant. If, as happened the first
week of school, any terminal operators
are out sick on a given day, there can
be a problem, since three terminal
operators cannot do the work of six.
Another major factor is the design of
the computer, which is set up mainly to
handle the period between the opening
of spring enrollment and the beginning
of spring semester, a two-month
period. During this time, the computer
will process approximately 65,000
class registrations and drops for the
coming semester.
When the semester starts, the
computer will process another 15,000
adds and drops within the first week,
which is when most students decide to
alter their programs. According to
Berger, “The system is simply not
designed to respond at a rapid rate to
do that.”
Berger discussed a situation where
an error in programming the com¬
puter had resulted in 2800 names being
dropped out of class lists, a problem he
describes as annoying.
The missing entries were identified
and restored quickly due to a safe¬
guard method which the center em¬
ploys.
Each day, at 4:30 and 9 p.m., the
terminals are shut down, although the
computer continues to run. At each of
these times, the information processed
during the preceding period is stored.
In this way, there is always a point at
which the data in the computers is
known to be accurate.
If something goes wrong, it is
possible to go back to a good point and
reprocess the data to clear up inac¬
curacies in a relatively short time.
Prop. 13 Author,
Yokaitis Debate
By Steve Johnston
Staff Writer
Both the issue of property tax reform
and Howard Jarvis himself seem to be
drawing larger crowds these days than
some candidates for governor.
The scene at Pasadena’s First
Congregational Church Monday night
probably put to rest any remaining
question among local residents that
property tax reform is the political
issue of the year.
The big event was a debate between
Howard Jarvis, speaking in support of
the Proposition 13 tax limitation initia¬
tive, which he co-authored, and Donald
Yokaitis, member of the Pasadena
City Board of Directors, who offered
the opposing viewpoint.
Fifteen minutes before the con¬
frontation was scheduled to begin, the
sanctuary floor with a seating capacity
of more than 1000 was nearly filled.
People began filing into the balconies
behind and on both sides of the
auditorium.
When the aisles began to fill up,
ushers brought in folding chairs. A few
late-comers eventually found places in
the choir pews.
And they all waited until Jarvis
finally arrived, 35 minutes late.
Although the winner of the debate
may be open to question, Jarvis
seemed to have more vocal support
from the audience.
Jarvis maintained, as he has in the
past, that the state constitution
guarantees public education first
crack at tax dollars. He said
education, therefore, would not be
adversely affected by passage of
Proposition 13.
He added to his argument by citing
reports of economists which claim that
a one per cent property tax, the level
which the Jarvis amendment man¬
dates, would furnish ample funds for
support of basic services.
Yokaitis contended that the
Proposition 13-based alternative
budgets being developed by city and
county governments as well as school
districts do not bear out the predictions
of economists. He said the Jarvis
amendment represents “fiscal dis¬
order to every city and county
government in the state.”
He referred to a 20 per cent revenue
loss anticipated by the city of
Pasadena and an expected 23.8 per
cent budget cut at PCC if Proposition
13 passes.
В
of A Winners
Enter Finals
In Competition
Four students have been awarded
$150 as scholarship winners by Bank of
America and will participate next
week in final competitions.
The four chosen are Penelope Pastis,
business; Mark Randolph, science and
engineering; Carol Cox, humanities;
and Lillian Cox, vocational and
technological.
The selections were based on a
combination of financial need and
academic ability in their particular
field. It was necessary for interested
students to fill out an application to
become eligible.
These students will participate in a
Southern California semi-finals
competition with other junior college
students for a chance of winning an
additional $250.
The winners from the semi-finals
competition may then compete for a
first place award of $2000.
Finals competition involves a battle
of wits, according to Kathy Hernandez,
senior clerk in the financial aids office.
Seated in a half-circle, a statement is
“thrown out” to students in each field
for comment.
The judges look for new ideas and
aggressive personalities.