Fund Raising Foreign to Oxford

--Oxford University will begin a fund-raising campaign in the United States, marking the school’s first such effort outside the United Kingdom. The school, hurt by cuts in public funding by the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, hopes to raise $400 million, and already has collected $112.2 million in Britain and from American corporations and foundations. Queen Mother Elizabeth, patron of the Oxford International Development Program, was one of the first to make a contribution. Sir Patrick Neill, vice chancellor and head of the fund-raising effort, said: “Posts stand empty as there is no money to pay salaries for new appointees. An alarmingly high proportion of academic posts have no supporting endowment.” Prominent graduates among the school’s 9,000 alumni in this country will join Lord Jenkins, Oxford’s chancellor, at a dinner dance at New York’s Hotel Plaza to kick off the campaign. The alumni expected to attend the dinner include New York University President John Brademas, former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, Vanity Fair Editor Tina Brown, former U.S. Atty. Gen. Nicholas Katzenbach, Brown University President Vartan Gergorian, publisher Rupert Murdoch and art historian Rosamond Bernier.

--A Pole is going from “Solidarnosc” to the Stars and Stripes. Kazimierz Bascik, who created the red-and-white banner of Poland’s Solidarity trade union in 1980, is going to take the oath of U.S. citizenship in Columbus, Ohio. The Polish government declared martial law when he was returning to his homeland from a visit to Ohio, so he detoured to West Germany and eventually settled back in the United States. He and his mother, Cecylia Bascik, live in Clintonville. After he takes the oath, Bascik says: “I’m going out to dinner and wave the American flag.”

--As more than 2,000 Italians with speech and hearing impairments watched, Pope John Paul II dedicated a statue of a priest who worked with the handicapped two centuries ago. Priests and nuns at the ceremony in Trevignano translated the Pope’s words into sign language as he said: “I exhort you to persevere without being discouraged by difficulty.” The bronze statue honors Tommaso Silvestri, a priest who was the first man in Italy to begin educating speech- and hearing-impaired people. Before the dedication, the Pope prayed at the priest’s tomb on the 200th anniversary of Silvestri’s death. The pontiff also celebrated a Mass for 5,000 people at the town square.