News Scrapbook 1985

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 127,454)

Son Diego, CA (Son Diego Co.) San Diego Union (Cir. D. 217,324) (Cir. S. 339,788 )

AUG 261985

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-i.Jso freshmen offered 2 course clusters Freshmen at the Uni~£ San Di_eeo this .fall- will be offered y.vo small clusters of courses usu~![ .If• served for upper classmen. 'l'!XY The classes will allow stuaents "to deal with important questions from the standpoint of more than one dis- cipline," said Joseph Pusateri, dean of arts and sciences. The course clusters are "The Na- ture and Limits of Expression" and ''Humanities and Technology." In "Humanities and Technology," students will take courses in music, philosophy, art, history and litera- ture. ~,__ L

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 127,454)

Joann and Don Lundgren, left, and San Diego Jeweler George Carter Jessop, above, are driving forces in San Diego behind the peace-seeking movement Beyond War.

AUG2 7 1985

They want world to seek a j!y.clear age Beyond War

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Construction start delayed o!tV.~~. ?,_~'~"~:.r,~! ,~!!t~~. versity Center has bit a snag at tt.e If the soil had been left uncom- U m vers1iy Qf San OiegQ. pacted. damage could have been ~uilding was originally scheduled done to the University Center as the to begin July 15 but has been delayed ground settled later. until early September because of Zeterberg said the delay will not problems encountered in site prepa- set back the scheduled completion in ration. John Zeterberg, USO physi- the fall of 1986. cal-plant director, said. The center will house a lounge, Grading and s01! compaction have student and faculty dining areas, stu- taken longer than anticipated be- dent-affairs offices, student publica- cause the si~e, east of !)(,Sales Hall, tions and conference rooms. was a dumpmg ground for soil in the The Trepte Construction Co. of San 1950s, when the first campus build- Diego is the general contractor.

The ;leashed power of the atom has changed everything SJJve our modes of think- mg and ~-e thus drift toward unparalleled

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catastrophe.

- Albert Einstein

An army can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo Members of a new peace group called Be- yond War claim that the time for Einstein's idea has come. At last, they say, the Ameri• can people can see how we've drifted for four decades, continuing to deal with the Soviet threat by building more and more nuclear missiles, until their very number threatens the ecurity of all nations. Mi ile mavens say the U.S. arms buildup is part of a policy called deterrence, not drift but design. "After all," they argue "we haven't had a catastrophe." ' But the people involved In Beyond War, a

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movement born in upper-class circumstances in and around Palo Alto, Calif., are asking San Diegans to consider other approaches to national security that go beyond war. For almost a year now, about 100 volunteers, led by two couples who have moved here from the San Francisco Bay Area to promote Be- yond War, have been putting on quiet little seminars for groups gathered mostly from San Diego's churches and service clubs. Last week, without fanfare, they put on an all-day session ln a ~erence room at the Please see BEYOND, •t

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:!1!12:!~] University t.San Diego for some 40 teachers and school administrators from all over the county. The seminars are desilJ!td to get folks wondering if there isn't anoth- er way to exist on the planet Earth - in a state of mind that goes be- yond war. Who are these people? A bunch of idealists? Well, yes, they say, and they're proud of it. "Where would America be today," they ask, "if ideals liad not been the heart, the driving force, of every great advancement made by our nation, from the aboli- tion of slavery, to universal suf- frage, to civil rights and the ecology movement?"' They are idealists. But they are determinedly nonpolitical, in any partisan sense. They do not advo- cate specific policies, like a nuclear freeze or a moratori11m on nuclear testing. Rather, they want people to start thinking in more radical ways - how to take a global view of the world, how to resolve conflicts in their own lives. Don and Joann Lundgren and Earl and Judy AtkiDIOII are the lead couples in San Diego with a global vis on. They are retired from active ciireers. The women wtre teachers. Don was an attomer for United States Steel Corp. l'.arl worked in the family businesa, UR Guy F. At• kinson Co., one of tlle ·• bi&· gest road builders. 8ot cou es have four children. And both couples • ve quit their comfortable lives in tllie Bay Area to live in rented quarters here, do- nating their time to tJ1b caUN. They share a goal with dolms of others like them, square, afflaent members of Beyond War to gft people think· ing, then move on to IIIOt!ler corn-

munity, like missionaries. Joann Lundgren, silver-haired and soft-spoken, says she doesn't mind looking like a missionary. "The main thing is we're not talking politics, we're talking survival." Beyond War's deliberate nonpar- tisan approach comes at a welcome time for the San Diego Unified School District. Harvey Prokop, program manager for social stud- ies, says the district is taking a hard look at Beyond War's materials, which might help social science teachers deal with the nuclear issue. Prokop says, "We want our teach- ers to help make our students more aware about various approaches to this issue. There's no way teachers of 12th-grade government can avoid discussions about nuclear war. If they did, they'd be sticking their heads in the sand. "Beyond War's approach seems promising," Prokop says. "It's not political. And so we want to make oor social science teachers, espe- cially our 12th-grade teachers, aware of its existence." Prokop says the district will re- mind teachers that Beyond War has an upcoming television special, "Spacehridge," to be aired on KPBS-TV, Channel 15, at 10 p.m. Sept. 9 and 2 p.m. Sept. 14. Tbe program was produced last fall, via satellite, before almost identical audiences in Moscow and San Francisco. It featured the giv- illC of Beyond War awards to t~o physicians, one Russian, one Ameri- can, founders of an organization called The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Beyond War people claim that the cooperation between this group of doctors proves that "the people of two nations can work together to build a world beyond war." During their recent Beyond War

don't you just tell your neighbor to take the 12 inches? You've got a half-acre. Does 12 inches matter that much?" The woman became very quiet and very thoughtful. "You could almost see the wheels turning," says Lundgren. It is not difficult for some San Diegans to see the possibilities in this new kind of thinking, even in the area of international affairs. One of them is George Carter Jes- sop, a jeweler and one of San Diego's leading businessmen. In a recent interview, Jessop said he believed in Beyond War's ration- ale: "When enough people change, then our government will change. In our country, a politician either . adapts or he is replaced.'' Jessop, a member of the board of governors in his district of Rotary Internation- al, now helps give presentations around the county for Beyond War. What got Jessop going? He says he saw a movie produced by a group called Physicians for Social Responsibility. It showed what would happen if a nuclear bomb were to drop on an area like San Francisco. The devastation, he said, was hard to comprehend. "I realized then that unless we get beyond war, mankind will not continue to live on this fragile planet. Sure, we're tak- ing the hard way, educating individ- uals. But it can happen. It has to happen.'' Jessop admits that some will op- pose the efforts of Beyond War. He says we have to expect a lot of iner- tia behind a system that's been going strong for 40 years. But he says the American people are final- ly beginning to see how dangerous that system is. "In World War II," says Jessop, "both sides together dropped the equivalent of three million tons of TNT. Do you realize how m~ch dy-

namite that is? I did some checking on this. If you loaded up some rail- road boxcars with that much TNT, the train would stretch almost the length of the state of California. But the combined nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and the Soviet Union today equal 6,000 times that much. And we're building more of these mis- siles every day.'' People at the Beyond War semi- nars will nod sadly, Jessop says, when they are confronted with facts such as these. Then, invariably, they will ask, "What about the Rus- sians?" Jessop says he believes the time has come for the United States and the Soviet Union to drop old hatreds. He says, "The Russians lost 20 million people during World War II - in their own homeland. They know a lot more about survival than we do.'' His conclusion: "When we're talking about survival, political problems aren't that important." Furthermore, he says, the Soviet Union has been making important moves to help put an end to the arms race. On July 29, Mikhail Gor- bachev announced a five-month moratorium on all nuclear testing and said his country was prepared to extend it past Jan. 1 if the United States would follow suit. The Reagan administration rejected the invitation, and unnamed adminis- tration officials, according to The New York Times, said the United States had two reasons to continue testing. Tests were still needed, they said, "to develop an X-ray laser for a strategic defense against nuclear missiles and to find ways to fight a long nuclear war.'' Jessop says he wonders whether this is a way to put an end to war. "Why can't we be honest men," he asked, "and lay it out and go for it?"

"The main thing is we're not talking politics, we're talking survival."

seminar, schoolteachers and ad- ministrators watched the "Space- bridge" program. The seminar, said Joann Lundgren, was typical of doz- ens she and her husband and the At- kinsons have run in the past year. They avoided partisan politics and resisted temptations to blast the Reagan administration for re- cent words and deeds that some critics say will subvert arms talks this November in Geneva. (In an editorial Friday, The New York Times characterized Presi- dent Reagan's recent announcement that the United States would soon launch anti-satellite tests in outer space as "playing with nuclear fire.") Instead, they invited their audi- tors to try some new strategies in their own Ii ves - on the theory that "we, the people, have to change our own violent ways before our politi- cians can be expected to do so." Thus, they asked people to en- dorse a set of "agreements" and play little games that zeroed in on the resolution of conflicts in their own daily lives. The agreements: I will resolve conflict I will not use violence. I will not preoccupy myself with an enemy. I will maintain a spirit of good will. I will work together with others to build a world without war. Once people start thinking in those terms, their lives change. "I can't fight with Don anymore." Joann says. "It's not congruent when I go around talking about put- ting an end to war." At one point during the session

with the school people, she asked the group to consider a hypothetical conflict between "Rick" and "Tom" that began when Tom stole Rick's bike and Rick was angry. The group had an easy time imagining a series of events leading to violence be- tween the two of them. It had a much harder time writing a scenar- io ending in accord. "You see," said Joann, "how little thought we've given to the resolu- tion of conflicts?" Someone complained out loud about our culture's principal teach- er, television. "That's all we ever see on TV," he said. "Conflict and violence. It's part of the air we breathe." Joann nodded. "What we're pro- posing won't necessarily he easy. But we have to start somewhere. And we have to be creative. Too often, people think in terms of black and white. They say, 'Well, if some- one comes into my home to attack my wife and children, do I just sit and do nothing?' They think of two extremes: 'total passivity' or 'I kill him.' But there are a whole lot of strategies that fall in between these alternatives.'' In a smaller group, later, one woman shared a current conflict in her own life. She said she and a neighbor had been fighting for months over a 12-inch strip of land between their half-acre lots. She was obviously upset and beside her- self with frustration. What to do? Joann Lundgren reports that an- other member of the group suggest- ed a radical move. He said, "Why

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