The Towerlight, February 2, 1984

tl19840202-000 "11 The Towerlight Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings not by the intellect. � Hechert Spencer Vol. 77 No. 15 PUBLISHED BY THE STUDENTS OF TOWSON STATE UNIVERSITY TOWSON, MARYLAND 21204 February 2, 1984 ??��? AT&T Calling Breaking up may be hard on you By James Hunt Breaking up, the old song goes, is hard to do. In the case of AT&T, which di-vested Jan. 1 into one long distance phone company and seven regional companies handling local phone ser-vice, it is difficult to say on whom the break up will be hardest: AT&T, which posted a loss of $4.9 billion in the last quarter of 1983; the regional companies, which lost their local op-erating subsidies from AT&T; or the phone customers. The breakup is causing a number of changes in phone costs as well as in the way people get phone service. In the past, AT&T kept residen-tial and local phone rates low by charging artificially-high long-dis-tance rates. The profits from long-distance calls went to help pay for local service. But after the breakup, the re-gional phone companies have to charge customers enough to make a profit off local service, too. Just what those charges will be remains to be worked out by phone companies, local utility rate boards, and Congress. The Chesapeake and Potomac (C&P) Telephone Company was granted a $168 million rate increase last month by the Public Service Commission. How the increase will affect individual customers is un-known, however, and the decision is being appealed by the Maryland People's Council. For the moment, however, much will depend on the kind of phone system a campus has. Towson State Students�who get their own phones independent of in-stitutional systems�will continue to deal with C&P to get a dial tone and access to local and long-dis-tance service, explains Joyce Ber-ryman, an AT&T district manager in Denver. Students can buy long-distance service itself from one of the many companies now selling it: AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and others. After January 1st, when the act-ual breakup became official, students can now get the hardware�the act-ual telephone�from any equipment seller, Berryman said. Students with their own phones are subject to the same residential rates as everyone else. They are also being given the op-tion of measured or nonmeasured service beginning this week (see chart below). ""Students will have to sit down and decide how much they use their phones to decide which op-tion to choose,"" said Ralph Valle, di-rector of office services. A group of higher education asso-ciations worried about the ""deva-stating effect"" of the higher phone costs in early December asked the Federal Communications Commis-sion (FCC) to -?xempt colleges from certain new fees for at least five years. The coalition was particularly worried about the new ""access fees"" to take effect April 3rd, 1984. Under those fees, business custo-mers would have to pay $6 per line per month to get ""access"" to local and long-distance networks. Others would have to pay $2 per line. The group, in a written plea for exemption from the fees, said the access charges would punish cam-puses with Centrex systems, which centralize campus lines through one switchboard. Under the new FCC rules, each and every phone line on campus going into the central switchboard would be subject to an access charge. Towson State, which is tied into a 2000-line Centrex system with 18 other state institutions, will not be affected by the a�cess charges. ""If the $2 access fees go into ef-fect, C&P has agreed to reduce basic line charges by $2"" to offset the fees, Valle said. National reports from the College Press Service. Local Service Charge Options Measured�Economy $5.40, monthly, plus charge for each local call at 3.4 cents for ist minute, 1.3 cents each additional minute. Measured�Regular $9.20 monthly, includes $5.85 worth of local calls at 3.4 cents for the ist minute, 1.3 cents each additional minute; additional calls at same time-measured rate. Non-Measured�Flat rate $16.49, unlimited local calls. Non-Measured�Message rate $9.20 for ist 65 local calls, 9 cents for each additional call. Non-Measured�Economy $5.40, plus 9 cents for each local call. Source: Baltimore Sun Japanese artistic heritage John Simpson reviews a Japanese Lacquer collection showing at the Walters Art Gallery page 5 Tigers lose fifth and sixth The tiger men's basketball squad continues its losing ways both at home and on the road page 9 Auto emissions test Scott Hollenbeck takes a look at o the state's exhaust emissions test page 11 Poe toaster draws Towson grad to Western cemetery ""I've got a feeling he won't be here this year,"" fretted Chris Sharpf, a graduate student at the University of Baltimore and a graduate of Towson State. Sharpf was one of a handful of students who braved a terrible snowstorm and sub-zero temper-atures in a cemetary through the night of January 18th and 19th to crack a 35-year-old mystery at the University of Maryland at Balti-more: More than 100 cars were ticketed on Cross Campus Drive last Monday. There is a possibility the tickets will not have to be paid. Ticketing catches everyone off-guard By James Hunt Last Friday, Baltimore County posted signs placing a four hour parking limit on Cross Cam-pus Drive, a move that apparently caught both students and University officials by surprise. Over 100 cars parked along that road re-ceived $18 parking tickets Monday morning from the Baltimore County police, prompting complaints from a number of students who said they had not been adequately warned about the new restrictions. Donald McCulloh, vice president of business and finance, said that although the University favored the parking restriction, it waw also caught off guard by the sudden rush of ticket-ing. ""I don't know why it [the ticketing] hap-pened,"" McCulloh said. ""We're very disturbed."" He said that the University had sought to place some type of restriction on Cross Campus Drive to provide short-term parking for the campus while the Lot 11 parking garage is un-der construction. The loss of Lot 11 has temporarily cost the University 350 sorely needed parking spaces. Originally, McCulloh said, the University had asked the county for permission to restrict Cross Campus Drive to day and continuing studies students with permits. The county�perhaps an-ticipating objections from neighbors�rejected that idea, but offered to impose a four-hour park ing limit which the University accepted. The University, however, did not expect the county to act as quickly as it did. f NO PARKING ANY 'TIME ........, ,-- FOU R1i' HOUR_ PARKING' By Bob Tarleton A Baltimore county worker installs a sign on Cross Campus Drive last Friday. By Bob Tarleton ""We had been led to believe that the paper-work [to effect the restriction] would take a while,"" McCulloh said, during which time the University would be able to inform students of the change. However, by the time the letter to students had been prepared for mailing Monday after-noon, almost evry car-150 by one count�on both sides of Cross Campus Drive had been tic-keted. McCulloh also said he had expected that the county would ignore the signs, once posted, for a while to allow students to get used to the new restriction. (The University, he said, generally ""waits seven to 10 days at the beginning of each semester to allow students to get a pattern set"" before it begins ticketing or towing cars. The exception are those cars parked in fire lanes or blocking entrances and exists.) Ralph Valle, director of office services, said that the University had an ""understanding"" with the Baltimore County Department of Traf-fic Engineering, which posted the signs, that the police department would be notified and no cars would be ticketed until after Feb. 13. ""Evidently there was a misunderstanding"" between the two denartments, Valle said. The Department of Traffic Engineering, he added, ""is pursing the matter through the police de-partment and the courts,"" raising the possibil-ity that the tickets will not have to be paid. If it's any consolation, the four-hour limit is not permanent, but will only be in effect while the garage is under construction. The four-level, 1055-car garage is schedule for completion by summer. Board says aid has dropped during Reagan's term WASHINGTON, D.C.--Finan-cial aid for college students has plummented 21 percent�over $2 billion�since the Reagan adminis-tration took office in 1980, accord-ing to a just-released study by the College Board. From a high of $18 billion in 1981-82, the amount of financial aid available for students has dropped to a low of just over $16 billion for the current academic year. ""And that $2 billion decline is even greater when inflation is taken into account,"" said College Board spokeswoman Janice Gams. ""Aid had been cut by one-fifth in infla-tion- adjusted terms."" Much of the decline is due to cuts the Reagan administration and Con-gress have made in Social Security benefits for college students, stricter limits on Guaranteed Stu-dent Loan (GSL) eligibility, and a post-Vietnam War drop in the use of veterans' benefits. In addition, the study reported ""a switch in the trend from grants to loans which has been remarkable,"" Gams said. In 1970-71, for instance, grants accounted for nearly two-thirds of all financial aid, while loans and work-study benefits accounted for the other third. By 1975-76, grants constituted over 80 percent of all financial aid expenditures, loans 17 percent, and College Work-Study three percent. For the current .year, however, loans and grants each account for 48 percent of student aid, and College Work-Study three percent. For the current year, however, loans and grants each account for 48 percent of student aid, and College Work-Study the remaining four per-cent. At a time when college financial aid experts are growing increasingly concerned about the level of long-term debt college students are in-curring, the decline in the amount of available grant money promises to have far-reaching implications. At the same time, ""the early 1980s have seen a major change in the relationship of costs, income and aid for college,"" the report said. Adjusted for inflation, costs have increased, but income and financial aid per full-time equivalent student have not."" ""Thus,"" the study concluded, ""in contrast to what can be said gener-ally about the past two decades (when income and ...ncial aid awards actually stayed an,l of col-lege costs), college has become rela-tively more difficult for families to afford in the 1980s."" But the results of ""Trends in Stu-dent Aid: 1963-1983"" should also ""be put in the context of how much financial aid has really grown over the past years,"" Gams suggested. The federal role in financial aid has indeed swelled in the last two dec-ades, from 40 percent to 80 percent of all aid assistance. Financial aid from all sources�fed-eral, state and institutions�has skyrocketed from only $546 million in 1963-64 to $4.5 billion in 1970-71 to a high of $18 billion in 1981-82, the study says. Except for the last three years, student aid increased five times faster than college spending in the last 20 years. College Press Service The mystery of the Poe Toaster. Edgar Allan Poe is buried in the cemetary squeezed between UM AB's law library and the univer-sity hospital. Since at least 1949 -there is anecdotal evidence it began before then - someone has snuck in-to the cemetary on January 19th, the writer's birthday, and left a half-empty bottle of very expensive cog-nac and three long-stemmed roses on the grave. A few Poe lovers from area cam-puses have been trying to spot the Poe Toaster, who of course wants to be nameless here for evermore. Last year, five of them sat up all night in the catacombs beneath Westmin-ster Church in hopes of catching a glimpse of the ephemeral Toaster. And for the first time, they succeed-ed. At about 1:30 a.m., they saw a tall, slender man dashing through th. rpmetorv Afterwards Jeff Jerome, curator )t the Poe house and museum, tound the cognac and roses at the grave. Quoth the students, Once more! With the news came increased in-terest. Last week, about 250 people made it through the storm to attend a formal tribute at the church, now a university meeting hall. There they watched a dramatization of The Telltale Heart and heard a reading of Annabelle Lee. Mayor William Schae-fer even got into the act, naming January 18th and 19th Poe Appre-ciation Days. The gathering interest, however, worried some Poe lovers. ""We certainly welcome an in-terest in Poe,"" says UMAB spokeswoman Ruth Walsh. But ""1 hate to see anybody spoil this thing"" by scaring the Poe Toaster off ' Maybe it's the weather, maybe the crowd will scare him off,"" S'?arpf added. At midnight, the celebrants sang ""Happy Birthday,"" and lifted glasses of ginger ale, champagne and amatillado in tribute to the great writer. Then the crowd dispersed, leav-ing the handful of pessimistic students to repair to a courtyard ad-jacent to the cemetary for the night-long vigil. One of them, Rutgers student Doug Greenfield, maintained his sense of wonder even in the mid-night dreary. ""This,"" he said, ""is a piece of modern folklore. I wouldn't miss it for anything."" The night was freezing. But they were obviously deep into that dark-ness peering, as long they stood there wondering, fearing. Still, the Poe Toaster didn't ap-pear. At about 5:30 a.m., Sharpt couldn't take it any longer. He took momentary refuge in the church to warm himself. Once there, he saw a man pull up to the front gat o of the cemetery in a large sedan, get out. and walk to Poe's grave. ""He came and went jt..a: like that."" Sharpf recalls, snap l ing his fingers. ""Very quick. I didn'. that it was the Poe Toaster until 1 went to the grave, and found the cognac and roses."" There are still no clues who the Toaster is. The license place on the car was covered with snow. Nobody saw his face. The other watchers didn't even see the Toaster o by. It's all just as well. Jerome in-sists the group has no intention of interfering with the Poe Toaster's tribute, or even revealing his identi-ty if they ever found it out. ""This is a nice mystery,"" Jerome says. ""There aren't a lot of mys-teries left anymore."" College Press Service "