Community Briefs

Thursday, April 16, 1998

Community Briefs

Trial date set for Dixon discrimination case

A trial date was set for the case of David Dixon vs. the UCLA
Department of Family Medicine for Feb. 23, 1999.

The plaintiff, Dixon, is claiming he was discriminated against
on the basis of race and as a result was released from his graduate
program in medicine just one month before completion.

Dixon is claiming $10 million in punitive and other damages. The
pre-trial and mandatory settlement hearings are set for Feb. 12,
1999.

Star piano professor celebrates birthday

Pianist, pedagogue, philosopher, Vitaly Margulis, UCLA Senior
Professor for Piano celebrates his 70th birthday today with a
concert in his honor.

He is not just a pianist: he is a real master in his field who
has been performed in Europe, Asia and America. He is a pedagogue
who attracts young pianists from all over the world to come to UCLA
to study with him and whose students have won more than 90 prizes
at international competitions. People know him less as a
philosopher, but his works on music theory reveal new insights into
the piano music of Bach and Beethoven.

Students and friends will congratulate him by a gala concert in
Schoenberg Hall at 8 p.m., featuring world-known pianist Martha
Argerich from Argentina.

Born in Charkov, Ukraine, as a son from a family of musicians,
Margulis became famous very early. At 30, he was teaching a master
class at the famous Conservatory of Leningrad.

Until he emigrated in the ’70s, he had played more than 1,000
concerts in the Soviet Union. In 1975, he became a professor at the
Musikhochschule at Freiburg in Germany. Margulis is attached to the
piano untiringly. After retirement, he moved to Los Angeles in 1994
and took a professorship at UCLA. For every vacation, he travels in
order to give recitals and to teach master classes. Three weeks
ago, he performed in Milan.

For Margulis, who is a representative of the Russian Piano
School, emotions play the most important role. The technique, being
itself a precision work, always serves the musical expression. It
is the music which will touch, and it is the sound which is able to
transmit the spiritual content of music.

Therefore, the sound is the most important means in Margulis’
piano playing.

It is difficult to put music into words. Margulis, however, is
able to do so in his Aphorisms which are collected in a book titled
"Bagatelles," which has been translated into several languages.

Berkeley fraternity loses campus status

The Delta Sigma Phi fraternity will no longer be a member of the
UC Berkeley Greek system as of the fall semester, campus officials
said Monday.

The fraternity was brought before a review board at the
university after a pledge filed a police report with the Berkeley
police regarding a hazing incident that took place during the fall
semester. According to sources within the fraternity, the report
had been the final result of a semester of hazing the pledge had
endured.

The Delta Sigma Phi pledge filed the complaint with the police
department, which immediately forwarded the report to the
university. After being contacted by the Office of Student Conduct,
the pledge agreed to give a full report to the unversity.

Tucker Callaway, former president of Delta Sigma Phi, said the
pledge never confronted any executive officers in the house about
the problems before going to the police.

Doug Zuidema, manager of the Office of Student Conduct, said
hazing had been going on within the fraternity for at least three
years. Zuidema said that it had gotten to a point where physical
injury was involved.

Compiled from Daily Bruin staff and wire reports.