Northeastern University - Cauldron Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 29 text:

A city lived in fear New York ' s young lovers were scared the summer of 1977. The big blackout was almost forgotten by the time Stacy Moskowitz was killed on an otherwise quiet night in Brooklyn. Even if you weren ' t a Islew Yorker, it didn ' t matter. The idea that some nut with a .44-caliber revolver might come sneaking up on your parked car and blow you away in a single blast was enough of a scare to send you and your date home early on a Friday night. Six fatalities and seven- wounded survivors were victims of those circumstances between the Fall of 1976 and that following summer before the New York City Police Department tracked down one of the nation ' s most hated and mysterious mass murderers. Who could have guessed that a 24-year-old postal clerk from a small Westchester commu- nity about 30 minutes driving distance from New York City would turn out to be the cause of all that hate and fear? David Richard Son of Sam Berkowitz was arrested Aug. 10 just outside his home after Tlie Blizzard of ' 78 Surely, you were thinking, the snowing would stop. You ' d seen enough blizzards to know that even Mother Nature ' s bad side pe- ters out once in a while. And it did stop. The snowfall lasted only two days — but what a two days! When the clouds blew over and the sun cast its rays across the city, you saw the devasta- tion. Boston was buried, in some parts, in 44 inches of snow. Thousands of residents living along the coast were homeless, their houses having been swallowed by the ocean. Seventeen bliz- zard related deaths were reported in New Eng- land. Cars were buried everywhere you looked. police traced his name from a vehicle that received a parking ticket the night of the Moskowitz murder. He was charged later that month with all of the shootings. It was a command. I had a sign and I followed it, was his explanation for killing people. Evidence retrieved during his arrest showed that Berkowitz was on his way to shoot up a Long Island discotheque when police cor- nered him in his car in Yonkers. After being declared fit to stand trial and pleading guilty to the charges, Berkowitz was sentenced to maximum prison terms for all six murders. He would be eligible for parole in the year 2007 at the age of 54. Massachusetts was in a state of emergency while National Guardsmen and municipal workers took a week to get things moving again. Classes were cancelled for five days starting when snowflakes began falling Monday after- noon, February 6, 1978. Cabin fever caused some students to throw snowballs and ice at campus police who were busy untrap- ping cars and plowing parking lots. A few win- dows were broken, but people generally stayed indoors playing cards, drinking and getting to know their fellow dorm inhabitants. Unless you owned one of the countless number of automobiles covered with the cold, white stuff, there simply wasn ' t any reason for you to go outside. Nothing was opened and trying to walk through four foot drifts was pret- ty much impossible. The university spent $195,000 for the cleanup, further reddening an already over- blown snow removal budget for that horren- dous winter by $220.00. While the university coped with the situation with virtually no major damage, Boston and its citizens struggled. People were out of work for a week. Many were separated from their fam- ilies without any means of transportation or, in some instances, communication because electricity was knocked out in 100,000 homes. Major highways became pedestrian walkways full of cars and trucks that couldn ' t be moved anywhere. But like past emergencies, people learned to help one another. Shovelling snow off a neighbor ' s car, lending assistance to the el- derly or offering a home to a lost stranger were some of the ways Bostonians tried to make the problem easier to handle. Man ' s will to survive was tested that Febru- ary, In the final grading he emerged with a few scars, yet able to reestablish his lifestyle and keep on going. The power of television was brought to trial in Florida in the fall of 1977. A 15-year-old boy pleaded innocent by reason of insanity in the slaying of his 82-year- old neighbor. The de- fense tried to prove that violence on television had made Ronny Zamora incapable of distin- guishing right from wrong in the highly cele- brated murder case. Zamaora ' s attorney named television an accessory to the crime. He said the youth was suffering from prolonged, intense, invol- untary, subliminal television intoxication. The jury did not agree and brought down a guilty verdict of premeditated murder. 8

Page 28 text:

The Year A leader dies Hubert H. Humphrey- statesman, senator and teacher- died of cancer in his Waverly, Minn, home on Jan. 13, 1978 af the age of 66. A few years earlier doctors had removed a benign tumor, but spreading cancer made his condition inoperable. A champion of the Democratic party and admired even by his sharpest critics, Hum- phrey won and lost many political battles. His first bid for elective office, as mayor of Min- neopolis in 1943, was unsuccessful. But so was his first attempt at obtaining a college dregree, which he had to postpone for finan- cial reasons. His persistence and optimism though enabled him to earn his bachelor ' s de- gree from the University. of Minnesota in 1939. He also went on to earn a master ' s degree in political science from Louisiana State Univer- sity. It was the sam ' e kind of persistence which convinced him to run for the mayorship of Minneapoliss again in 1945. That time he won the election. Yet Humphrey is not as well remembered for his early political life as he is for his influence in helping pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Senate. During his 15 years in Senate Humphrey introduced legislation on tax reforms and medical care for the elderly. He is also remembered as Lyndon John- son ' s vice president. Humphrey was one of the most vocal administration members in support of the Vietnam War. I ' d rather be remem- bered for being wrong than for being a hypo- crite, he once said. And he tried to be President. In 1960 he lost his bid for the Democratic nomination to an Irishman from Massachusetts named Jack Kennedy. In 1968 he won the nomination, but lost the election to Richard Nixon by 500,000 votes. Following a brief stint in academia, he returned to politics and made an unsuccessful attempt, in 1972, for the party nomination. But he was not through. In one of the gran- dest and most emotional political gestures of the decade, the dying senator from Minnesota I ' d rather be remembered for being wrong than for being a hypocrite. returned to the U.S. Senate in 1977. Addressing a throng of reporters and legis- lators in the Capitol, Humphrey displayed more of his eternal vigpr stating, What a won- derful place this is where we can argue, fight, have different points of view, and still have great respect for one another. Wendall R. Anderson, a fellow Minnesotan, stated, To those who feel there are no longer heroes left in the world, to them I say they have never known Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey ' s body was flown to Washington the day after he died, and lay in the Capitol Rotunda while political figures including Nixon, Ford and Carter paid homage. Two days later, his body was flown back to Minnesota for burial. i i PI jr E J l H| • «, H B k Stf ' M ■ BELI The governor of Minnesota appointed Hum- phrey ' s wife of 42 years, Muriel, to the vacant Senate seat until a special election could be called in November. Balloon power Supreme Court oks affirmative action but says no to college racial quotas In a historic (5-4) decision, the Supreme Court ordered the University of California to admit a 38-year-old white engineer named Alan Bakke to one of its graduate programs because, in the court ' s judgment, the school ' s affirmative action system was guilty of reverse discrimination. While supporting the widely-accepted view that affirmative action programs are neces- sary, the court decided that admitting stu- dents based on achieving racial quotas was unconstitutional. A spokesman for the N.A.A.C.P, called the decision a clear-cut victory for voluntary affir- mative action and President Carter said affir- mative action made a great gain. But many college administrators saw the decision as a complicating factor in the deli- cate area of affirmative action. A Yale law professor named Robert Bork, a former solici- tor general of the Ford Administration, said, We ' re told that we can count race somewhat, but not too much. Words remembered: It ' s nice to be back in Alabama. — Former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell June 22, 1977 entering prison in Alabama to serve his Watergate sentence. Three Americans, Maxie Anderson, Ben Abruzzo and Larry Newman, rode a balloon across the Atlantic Ocean in August of 1978 accomplishing a feat that had been tried v ith- out success at least 17 times in the last cen- tury and claimed at least seven lives. The Double Eagle V landed in a wheat field outside Paris, France on Aug. 17, six days after taking off from the United States. Their 3,200 mile journey drew as much attention as Charles Lindberghs solo flight in an airplane across the Ocean several decades earlier. The flight sparked a national interest in bal- loon racing and, within week, giant helim filled balloon festivals were occuring across the country. Words remembered: As is the case in time of war there is poten- tial war profiteering in the impending energy crisis. This could develop with the passing month as the biggest ripoff in history. — President Jimmy Carter in a news conference Oct. 13, 1977. We agreed we are going to continue our dialogue and ultimately out of it will come peace ... a momentous agreement was achieved already. No more war, no more bloodshed, no more attacks. — Israel ' s Prime Minister Menachem Begin Nov. 20, 1977

Page 30 text:

The Year Well-done burgers A fire in tlie Ell Center cafeteria Nov. 2, 1 977 caused $30,000 worth of damage and forced the evacuation of the Ell Center and Ell Build- ing during midterms. The fire was discovered in the dishroom by Campus Police at about 9:30 a.m. The Boston Fire Department extinguished the flames with- in an hour and large panes of glass were broken to ventilate the smelly, smol e-filled building. A fire official said the blaze was probably caused by careless smoking and started in a trash container containing plastic materials. All food had to be discarded per order of the Board of Health. Smoke penetrated walls so extensively that students taking midterms in the Ell Building were forced to finish their exams in the front Quad when the smell became too intense. The cafeteria was reopened the following day. South African investments criticized As the apartheid situation in South Africa increasingly drew the attention of civic groups and societal spokesmen, student organiza- tions began criticizing the university ' s invest- ments in American companies doing business in that region. But Northeastern ' s Board of Trustees de- cided that the $6 million invested in those 12 American companies would remain, despite pressure from some students to withdraw the inv estments. In the June 7, 1981 issue of the Northeas- tern News, D. Thomas Trigg, then chairman of the board ' s Funds and Investment Committee said, We were satisfied that they (the com- panies) were acting responsibly in efforts to improve the employment situation in their plants in South Africa. President Kenneth G. Ryder said the univer- sity can have a greater chance for making an impression upon the corporations that are In- volved by continuing. as stockholders. He said that one-third of Northeastern ' s stockholdings were invested in companies that had plants in South Africa and that a divestment of those stocks would not have much of an influence on the firms ' hiring prac- tices. Scholarship day makes debut Offering topics such as The Decline of Epi- demic Disease, The Language of the Deaf and Why We Repress it, It, Issues of Crimi- nal Administration, and What are Oraks? , Scholarship Day made its debut at Northeast- er in the Spring of 1978. About 1,000 students decided not to split the school scene on the free day to hear 19 professors discuss a variety of subjects. Sponsored by the Phi Kappa Phi honor so- ciety. Scholarship Day apparently drew enough attention to become an annual Spring event at Northeastern. Dorms at the Y To shorten the waiting list for university housing, administrators struck a deal with the YMCA in August of 1977 to have 150 students move into the top two floors of the building where Northeastern got its start in 1898. Comprised mostly of singles, the place where you can hang out with all the boys was generally clean and offered students the privacy they lacked in most dormitories. But, as one student who lived there the pre- vious winter told The News, The rooms were clean, but it was the people who got to you. You should see the loonies they got there, Students got used to calling YMCA home in the fall quarter of 1977. Rising enrollment combined with shrinking housing space forced university ad- ministrators to lease the top floors to accommodate a portion of the waiting list for dormitories.