Paupers’ Graves Cost Money and Dignity

The extremes of San Diego County are ever more apparent: the million-dollar manses and $300,000 tract homes on one end, the migrants in the bush and homeless on the streets on the other.

One misery index is unequivocal. The number of people dying so destitute that their worldly assets cannot pay the cost of a burial or cremation is up sharply in recent years.

In 1985-86, the county public administrator arranged for 132 burials or cremations for indigents. The figure for 1986-87 was 172, for 1987-88 it was 206. And in the first six months of 1988-89 it is 150.

The acting public administrator sees no reason that the full year’s count will not top 300, a 50% increase in one year.

It’s not as if the county hands out free burials or cremations lightly. The deceased’s assets are carefully tallied, and relatives are quizzed to see if they can contribute. Only as a last resort does the county take over.

The majority of indigents are cremated, but those who are thought to have been opposed to

cremation are buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Southeast San Diego, in unmarked graves, up to four per grave, separated by a thin layer of dirt.

“We’ve had them arrive in plastic bags and cardboard boxes,” said cemetery manager George Stelter. “I’ve had to tell the mortuaries that I want them in decent containers. I think every dead body is due some dignity.”

The city of San Diego, which runs Mount Hope, gets $145 for an indigent burial--$90 for digging and closing an adult-size grave and $55 for “perpetual” care. The $90 figure was set in 1980, the $55 figure in 1966.

But even a pauper’s grave is not immune to the rising costs attached to even the most modest slice of local real estate.

Sensing no end to the trend of increasing indigent burials, the city has decided to seek a higher individual payment, closer to the $400 it says each burial actually costs.

Customer Dissatisfaction

Linda Silverman Goldzimer, the former deputy chief administrative officer of San Diego County, now runs her own business consulting firm in San Diego and New York and is the author of the just-published “ ‘I’m First’: Your Customer’s Message to You.”

Goldzimer and collaborator Gregory Beckmann, news editor of the San Diego County Edition of The Times, argue that too many businesses and public agencies are shackled by a sloppy attitude toward customers and a lack of marching orders and incentives for employees.

Their view of modern public agencies:

“Citizen discontent has led to . . . public-contact staff members (who usually see themselves as underpaid and who frequently work in antiquated offices) becoming unnecessarily frustrated, tense, mortified, and feeling helpless about their ability to do a good job--so they don’t do a good job, or they quit and you have to hire and train someone new.”

Translation: Unless something is done, the driver’s license line at the DMV is the wave of the future.

No Match for UCSD

It’s doubtful that Peterson Hall at UC San Diego had ever seen a presentation as revealing or an audience as intense as a week ago during a fraternity rush event.

Two hundred male students packed the campus lecture hall to watch two young women cover themselves with oil and wrestle around on a mat. One of the women began the frivolity by flinging off her bikini top and engaging in what was called “interaction” with the audience.

One delighted fellow was invited to remove her lace stockings with his teeth. Another decided to make the wrestling match a threesome.

“The audience was totally into it, yelling and screaming,” reported the UCSD Guardian, the student newspaper. The shouting has now stopped, but the outcry continues.

A campus feminist group called the event sexist and “regressive,” the fraternity that sponsored it has issued an apology, and the chancellor’s office is investigating.

The wrestling match has also become an issue in this week’s election for student body president, in which the fraternity president is a candidate.