1985-10-25

              Wesleyan welcomes alumns
ILLINOIS WESLEYAN
S2DEVOTED
"I don't think we're
in Kansas anymore."
-Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz
TO THE CONCEPT OF FREE PRESS
Volume 92 Bloomington, Illinois 61701, Friday, October 25, 1985 N
Approve resolution
Trustees denounce apartheid
The Illinois Wesleyan Univer-sity
Board of Trustees joined a
growing number of institutions
voicing official abhorrence of the
practice of apartheid in South
Africa.
The trustees approved a resolu-tion
endorsing the policy of
"Social Responsibility in In-vesting"
of the Common Fund
Corporation and the participation
in and sponsorship by the Com-mon
Fund of the Investor Re-sponsibility
Research Center.
The Common Fund is a non-profit
organization that provides
investment management ser-vices
exclusively for educational
institutions. Wesleyan is a mem-ber.
The investment policy state-ment
of the Common Fund reads
in part:
"The primary purpose of
The Common Fund is to max-imize
the return on the assets
entrusted to it, while main-taining
a level of risk that is
appropriate for its consti-tuents.
"In conjunction with this
purpose, the Corporation in-tends
to act as a responsible
investor regarding practices
of portfolio companies which
could be considered to cause
substantial social or environ-mental
injury. Investments
will be regularly reviewed
from this perspective, draw-ing
on publicly available in-formation,
reports developed
by other organizations and
direct research.
"Topics of concern include,
but are not limited to. such
Radio station comes
By Greg Tejeda
News of the firings of Ellen
Joyce, WESN public relations
director, and Jonnell Simpson,
music director, has spread to the
campus and many versions of
what happened exist.
The controversy began Sept. 27
when Jonathan Thomas, station
manager, dismissed the pair. The
official reason given was that
they "were not fulfilling the
duties of their jobs."
Thomas said various negative
remarks from Joyce and Simp-son
came to his attention, and he
did not feel this was in the best in-terest
of the station. He said,
"Their credibility is shot." Of
Joyce, specifically, he added,
"How can I rely on a PR director
who runs down the station on the
side?"
Joyce and Simpson said their
remarks had been made only to
another member of the executive
staff, Don Burns, program direc-tor,
and that they were of a con-structive
nature.
Joyce and Simpson did not tell
anyone else of their remarks, and
both feel that the versions which
Thomas heard were distorted.
Joyce holds Burns partially
responsible for the firings.
Burns does not recall ever hav-ing
spoken privately with Joyce
or Simpson in regard to the sta-tion.
The only dicussions that he said
he had with the two occurred in
public places, such as on the quad
or in the cafeteria. "It could have
been heard and distorted by
anyone," he said.
Burns said that he never asked
the two for their opinions. He add-ed
that the decision to fire Joyce
and Simpson was by the authority
of the station manager only. "I'm
not privy to his reasons for
firing," he said.
Lack of communication is an-other
point brought up by Joyce
and Simpson. A music budget
was not given to Simpson until
Sept. 26, the day before she was
fired. This inhibited Simpson's
ability to perform her job.
Thomas attributes this to com-plications
iri the budgeting pro-cess,
which delayed turning over
the true figures.
Simpson sympathizes with this,
but feels that Thomas should
have informed her, as he did not.
Simpson and Joyce also
brought out an incident involving
a message for station members
left in Thomas' absence.
It informed staffers not to try to
contact him, as it was his birth-day,
or they would lose their jobs.
Thomas explained that the
memo read, in its entirety, that
people should not contact him
unless they a) gave him lots of
money, or b) wanted to lose their
jobs. He meant the memo as a
joke, because he was in a situa-tion
where he would not be near a
phone for several hours.
Joyce said she now realizes the
intent was satirical, but added
areas as observances of the
law, employee relations,
operations in foreign coun-tries
and consumer and en-vironmental
protection...
"Although the Trustees
have the responsibility to
seek to maximize the invest-ment
return on invested as-sets,
they do not believe that
responsibility is inconsistent
with action on the social
responsibility dimension."
In addition to supporting the
Common Fund Corporation pol-icy,
the IWU trustees' resolution
calls for the establishment, in the
near future, of a monitoring com-mittee
of three trustees to ex-amine
the practice of the Univer-sity's
portfolio companies and to
report regularly to the board's
standing Investment Committee.
under fire
that a station manager should not
allow himself to be away from
contact for so long, even if it is his
birthday.
Both Simpson and Joyce men-tioned
that when WESN was forc-ed
off the air, there was no at-tempt
made to inform the ex-ecutive
staff of the move.
Simpson said she went down to
the station the next day, and,
business as usual, turned the
transmitter on and began broad-casting,
only to find out later that
the station was directed to be off
the air.
Joyce said Thomas told her he
did not immediately inform her
of the decision because he did not
want to wake her (the station
went off the air at approximately
midnight). "Staffers should not
have to contact the manager
singularly," Joyce said in
response to this.
Thomas answered these
charges of inaccessability by say-ing
that he initially wanted to
work with the programming de-partment,
feeling it was crucial
to establish it first. He intended to
later move on to the other areas
in detail.
He added that he was access-able
to staffers. "Don Burns was
regularly able to reach me when
there were problems," he said.
Both Simpson and Joyce want
remarks which appeared in Cam-pus
Jock, a disk jockey newslet-ter,
retracted. They also have re-'
Turn to page 6
Royalty
Senior KKG Mary Jane Helm was crowned 1985 Homecoming Queen
at Thursday night's coronation ceremony in Westbrook Auditorium.
Photo by IWU Publicity Department
Homecoming begins
Homecoming at Illinois Wes-leyan
will be Saturday, Oct. 26
with a full schedule of activities
for students and alumni starting
Thursday, Oct. 24.
Troy Sapp, Homecoming chair-man,
and his committee, have
selected "Follow the Yellow
Brick Road" as the theme for the
week, with appearances by Dor-othy
and Toto, the Tin Man, the
cowardly Lion and the Scare-crow.
The reunion clases to be honor-ed
are for the years 1960, 1965,
1970, 1975, 1980 and 1984, with
alumni from the years immedi-ately
before and after the reunion
classes making up the "cluster
classes."
Student activities got under
way Tuesday and Wednesday
with the voting for Homecoming
Queen.
Mary Jane Helm, of Kappa
Kappa Gamma was named the
winner at the Queen's Coronation
Thursday.
The other queen candidates
and the living units they
represented were Leisa Dede,
Alpha Gamma Delta; Susan Zile-wicz,
Dodds Hall; Jacklynn Ann
Wilson, Alpha Omicron Pi;
Karen Kopan, Gulick Hall; Mar-tha
Dickens, Sigma Kappa;
Sheila Lorton, Pfeiffer Hall;
Christie Claus, Munsell Hall;
Diane Bullman, Blackstock Hall;
Elizabeth Mulberry, Kappa
Delta; Kristin Clark, Ferguson
Hall and Mary Jewell, Sigma
Alpha Iota.
The queen and her court will be
introduced prior to the Titan
Games at 4:30 p.m. Friday at
Wesleyan Stadium, and during
the halftime ceremonies of the
football game against Carroll
College Saturday.
The parade will start at 11:30
a.m. Saturday from the corner of
East and University. It will
follow a new route ending at the
corner of Kelsey and Horenber-ger
Dr., where the floats will be
on display throughout the after-noon.
The parade route will be south
on East St. to Graham, east on
Graham to Park St., north on
Park St. to Beecher, west on
Beecher to East St., north on
East to Kelsey and east on Kelsey
to the finishing point. The review-ing
stand will be opposite Evelyn
Chapel near the East Gate.
Alumni activities will start Fri-day
with Alumni Careers Day,
sponsored by the Career Educa-tion
Center. Selected alumni
from various academic fields will
return to spend the day visiting
classes and talking with students.
Among them will be C. Robert
Berg '65, press secretary to Det-roit
Mayor Coleman Young.
Turn to page 6
umber 6