friday, november4, 1977
page 4
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Mention student fees these days-and duck.
The flak is flying over two main issues: should
there be student fees for student organizations
and who should allocate those fees.
Everyone seems to forget that both of these
discussions center on one small portion of fees
roughly $6 of the $66.50 we pay each semester.
The rest goes to pay for bonds, contractual ob
ligations and some administrative expenses.
That's no typo. The argument is centered over
only about $6-enough to buy three six-packs or
an album. Most textbooks cost more.
Sunday the ASUN Senate will discuss the allo
cation of that pocket money. The Senate agrees
with most students that the fees are necessary to
provide services on campus. It simply wants con
trol of allocations. (A university task force is
studying the question of continuing student fees.)
We agree with the philosophy behind the move.
Elected representatives should hold the purse
strings.
But we have problems with parts of both
proposals ASUN is to consider.
The first, suggested by the Senate's budget and
fees committee, calls for senators to make up or
dominate the committee which judges who gets
how much. The committee's suggestion would go
to the full Senate for approval.
The second proposal, filed by a group of
senators led by Bill Skoneki, would establish a
14-member allocations committee. Only three
members would be senators. This committee's
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proposals also would be subject to ASUN Senate
approval.
The second proposal comes closer to being
realistic and responsible. But there are still
problems with it. Some of the problems are the
same for both.
Both boards propose having senators sit on the
allocating committee. This time-consuming
process probably would take away from the
senator's other duties as a representative.
Also, both boards-at least on the surface
are highly subject to the whims of a possibly
capricious or incompetent Senate (the second less
than the first).
A more workable alternative might be to
pattern the process on the Legislature's
procedure. The Legislature relies heavily-some
say too heavily -on their budget analysts.
But all appropriations remain subject to the
review of elected representatives.
Who would comprise this ASUN Senate budget
analysts staff? The simplest answer might be the
current Fees Allocation Board.
In the past, this board has acted responsibly. In
many cases, members of the board have worked
harder than senators.
Sure, there are problems with every proposal.
A workable compromise should be sought. More
importantly, the problems should be put in
perspective.
About $150,000 is allocated to student
organizations each year, These allocations are the
vital lifeblood for most. Still, it gets down to
about $6 a semester a student.
The NU Board of Regents' desire to eliminate
fees for student organizations is misplaced. The
regents should be more concerned with holding
the line against tuition raises which hurt much
more where it counts-in the wallet.
lood of America's heritage spills on N.Y. street
New York-She tried to wake him up at 5 o'clock that
afternoon. When he didn't move, she let him sleep.
Enriqueta Zambrano didn't like the job her son had any
way: driving a cab from 6 at night until 6 in the morning.
A boy throws his life into a fire working ho!-- like
that. Besides, her son Eddie had quit school for this job.
He was only 22, but he didn't have the energy to attend
college and then work at night. His nerves withered his
Stamina when he sat in classes.
The father was dead and Eddie felt it was his duty as a
man to help his mother. Make money, make money, he
kept telling himself. But as the mother walked quietly out
of the bedroom, she was pleased that she had not been
able to wake him for this job she did not like.
Eddie overslept because he had stayed up when he had
come home early Saturday morning. lie went to watch his
youngest brother, Fabian, run in a high school track meet.
Fabian finished second, and when Eddie came home it
was midafternoon. He said he was fine, that he would
wake up with only a couple of hours sleep, but he did
not.
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- Then at 6:15, the dispatcher from the cab company
called the house. The mother, who doesn't speak Eng.
lish, gave the phone to her son Abe, who is 18.
"You got to get him, we're shorthanded," the dis
patcher said. When Abe shook his brother, Eddie Zam
brano jumped up. He was upset that they had let him
sleep. His mother called in from the kitchen that she had
his dinner ready, Zambrano, drying his face, rushing to
the door, said, no, he had no time.
History passages
When he ran out the door, somebody on the street
. asked him where he was going, and he called out, in Eng
lish, Tm going to work and I'm late." He laughed and ran
up the block, to the Blu-White Taxi Co.
Once they wrote passages in history textbooks about
. people like Eddie Zambrano. He came to this country
from Ecuador on a student visa and instead took a job.
Now in New York, they hang up posters against aliens like
him. Ve have become afraid of the blood that created us.
The Zambrano family, which lives neatly and quietly
in the basement apartment of an attached brick house,
made it in this city by the mother, Enriqueta doing out.
side sewing on a big machine in the dining room; by the
oldest brother, Ernie, working as a mechanic in Brooklyn
by day and a cabdriver until midnight at night; by Eddie
driving the cab full time; by Abe working part-time
through high school, and by Fabian, 1 3, delivering papers
after school.
When Eddie Zambrano started work a little bit fate last
Saturday night, he was given car No. 1, a Checker cab
with a bullet-proof partition. Eddie was in such a hurry to
get out that he did not notice that the partition behind
him was open.
Chicken leg.
At 10:30 he stopped at his house on the way back
from a call. He honked the, horn and asked his brother
Abe to bring him up something to eat. Abe walked out
with a chicken leg. Eddie took it and drove away on a
call.
At 3 a.m., Eddie had a call to Morris Avenue and 166th
Street, in what has now become, through flame and vio
lence, a part of the South Bronx.
At 3:10 a.m., Eddie called to the dispatcher on the
radio that he had made a pickup. It is uncommon for the
driver of a radio dispatched cab to call in a return trip.
They get very few of them, and when they do, the money
goes directly into the pocket.
"That's $4.75 for the return," the night dispatcher,
William Evangelista, called over the radio to Zambrano.
Then Evangelista said to the others in the office,
"That's an honorable kid."
Don't take call
"I'd like it better if he didn't take that call," one of the
drivers, Bob Pomeroy, said. -
A half hour later, Evangelista called over the radio
"Car one." There was no answer. "Car one' he called
again. A moan came through the receiver
"What do you call this?" Evangelista said to himself.
Car one, let me hear you," he called out. Now there was
no sound on the radio.
Evangelista called for his drivers to start looking in the
area of Schieffelin Avenue, where Zambrano was
supposed to be heading. Then Evangelista called up several
other radio-dispatched companies and asked them to help.
A half-hour later, the dispatcher from another cab
company called Evangelista and said that the blue and
white Checker cab had been spotted, parked up against
the side of another car. The headlights were on and the
motor was running.
4A quick one'
Evangelista called the 47th Precinct. He says the cop
who took the call told htm, "What are you worried about?
He's inside for a quick one. He'll be right back."
Evangelista hung up and dialed the police emergency
number, 9 U, This kid Zambrano wouldn't know how to
stop to play, Evangelista told himself.
Bob Pomeroy; in one of the company's cabs, got to
Schieffelin Avenue before the police. When he walked up
to the Checker, he found Eddie Zambrano sitting straight
up at the wheel. Eddie's eyes were wide open and there
was a bullet in his temple.
Zambrano was the second cabdriver killed in the Bronx
Saturday night. Whoever did it to Zambrano used a .22
and killed him for about $80.
Eddie Zambrano's family, smothered by the surprise
of death, were motionless in their apartment.
To the hospital
Ernie, the older brother, was saying: "My mother woke
up to answer the phone and when she heard them
speaking English, she had them get me. The man on the
phone told me it was, important. They had found my
brother. Possibly a heart attack.
"I went to the hospital myself. When I walked up to
them, all the policemen there began to go away from me.
Then one of them said he was dead already, but they
didn't want to tell me. I went inside and he was dead.
He was" -he touched his temple- "shot in the head."
"See?" an aunt said. "He was so proud of his soccer."
She held out a clipping from the school paper of the State
University at Canton. It said, "Jose Zambrano (his real
name) did an outa-site job as goalie in our victory."
Then the aunt showed a color picture of Eddie sitting
at a drawing board. This was when he was taking an
architecture course, she explained.
"All the brothers working and he was a school, it made
him sick," the aunt said. "He was not supposed to work
on a student visa. He didn't care. Anything he had to do
exhausted him. He was so nervous. But he worked six
nights a week."
Wounded eyes
The mother sat on the living room couch, charcoal
smudges under large dark wounded eyes. Her youngest
sonile,t in front of her- she had a hand on his head.
Fabian, you're beautiful, we love you," one of the
women said. The boy's eyes filled. "Fabian, finish first
m your race the next time," one of the men said. Fabian
smiled.
Copyright 1977. Jimmy Breslin
Biitnbutd by tha Chicajjo Tribune, New York Nam
Syndicate, Inc.
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