The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 182

VENTURA COUNTY Cos Angeles (Tiraea Thursday. Srpcrmbrr 29. 1988 VCPart IX fit 3r'--'': BOB CAREY Lot Angela Timet Ronald P. McArthur, president of Thomas Aquinas College, teaching philosophy. Below.

Wesley Stupar. 20, of Thousand Oaks, studies writings of Aquinas. Serra Statue to Be Shown Over Protests of 2 Groups By JESSE KATZ. Timet Staff Writer Despite objections from city art committee and an American Indian group, the Ventura City Council has decided to display a wooden statue of Father Junipero Serra. at least temporarily, in the new City Hall atrium.

Indian leaders objected to the likeness of Serra. who some view as more oppressor than apostle, being placed near two replicas of Chumash rock-paintings planned for the space. The art committee felt that the atrium was too small for proper display of the 9-foot. 4-inch statue. Still, council members said they felt an obligation to the local craftsmen who spent 16 months carving the piece, which is the model for a bronze statue that will replace the crumbling Serra monument outside City Hall and has been lying in a downtown workshop since August awaiting a home.

"The carving is not only a work of art. but a work of love." said City Councilwom-an Nan Drake, whose motion Monday to accept the wooden statue until "a more suitable place is found" received unanimous support. Not Suited for Size of Atrium But the City Hall Art Selection Committee, a council-appointed group that selected the Chumash murals, says the statue of the Spanish missionary is "not harmonious" with the design of the refurbished atrium. "It's way too large for the area." said Cynthia Lloyd-Butler, one of the committee's six members. "It just doesn't work.

It would look stupid. like a misfit" The Candelaria American Indian Council, an Oxnard-based social service organization, found more than aesthetic problems in having to share the space. "What a slap in the face to the Indian people." said Jessica M. Roybal, executive director of the group. "I'm heartbroken.

The City Council is being totally insensitive." Council members, however, hoped that their action would cap an emotional debate over the fate of the statue, a project begun in 1986 by then-Councilman Russ Burns to replace the decomposing sand and gravel figure built by Meiners Oaks sculptor John Palo-Kangas 51 years ago. Art Committee Not Consulted Although council members and volunteer carvers had long assumed that the wooden version would ultimately be housed in the atrium, the council neglected to share those expectations with the City Hall Art Selection Committee, which chose the Chumash paintings in June. In fact, it was not until Aug. 2, the day before the wooden piece was scheduled to be moved to the atrium, that the art committee learned of the plan and put on the brakes. "We felt very much rebuffed," said Wilbur Rubottom, the retired Ventura cabinetmaker who led the carving team.

"We felt like a bride left standing at the altar." At Monday's meeting, Rubottom and Burns complained that the council apparently thought that the statue was "worth nothing at this point," and they requested that a home be found for "one of the finest pieces of artwork" ever done in Ventura. "I feel very, very badly about this," said Drake, who had recommended forming the art selection committee. "I don't think anyone meant in any way to make one piece of art lesser or greater than another." Rubottom said the wooden statue, which Please see SERRA, Page 14 Booked Up At Thomas Aquinas, Education Means Studying the Classics By DENISE HAMILTON. Times Staff Writer It is 7 p.m. at Thomas Aquinas College and Machiavelli holds sway in a moonlit classroom, just as he did 450 years ago in the intrigue-filled court of a Florentine prince.

In this room, however, there are no critical an-theologies, no lectures, no teachers. There is only Machiavel-li's essay, "The a tutor and 14 students, grappling with good and evil on Books classics that reflect Western civilization from 2,500 B.C. to the early 20th Century. Students at Thomas Aquinas learn physics from Einstein, calculus from Newton, evolution from Darwin. They study Freud's view of the psyche, they learn chemistry from Lavoisier and genetics from Mendel.

They read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. And, of course, they read St. Thomas Aquinas, the 12th Century Italian saint whom the Roman most enlightened teacher, .1 j-r The campus is in hills between Santa Paula and Ojai. Catholic Church considers its philosopher and theologian. a mountain meadow halfway between Ojai and Santa Paula.

"A prince needs to be street-wise and opportunistic to maintain power," one student begins, suggesting that Machiavelli applied different rules of behavior to rulers and common men. Immediately, another student objects. "Miss Ayre, I don't agree with what you just said. You didn't cite anything from the text" So it goes at Thomas Aquinas, one of just a handful of colleges nationwide where students earn a liberal arts degree by 'reading solely what their schools deem the Great "We read only the greatest minds and the greatest works in every discipline," the college's Dean Thomas Dillon said. Added Admissions Director Thomas J.

Susanka, in a paraphrase of British author C.S. Lewis: "There are zillions of books about Plato, all of them infinitely more complex than Plato himself." The curriculum at Thomas Aquinas borrows heavily from St John's College in Annapolis, Md, which in 1937 became the Please see AQUINAS, Page 2 Doctor Group Terminates Low-Cost Medical Plans By JESSE KATZ. Times Staff Writer Claiming that it is being hampered in its efforts to provide high-quality medical care, a group of Ventura County obstetricians and gynecologists is terminating its contracts with 19 low-cost health insurance plans. The Ventura County Obstetric and Gynecologic Medical Group, a partnership of three doctors with offices in Ventura and Oxnard, explained the decision in a letter sent this month to 6,000 patients, about 2,000 of whom are covered by such plans. Although the doctors stand to lose large numbers of those patients, they said restrictions in the kind of treatment being covered by the insurance companies were adversely affecting the quality of care they provided.

"This is something we've been anguishing over," said Dr. Richard A. Reisman, a partner with Drs. John C. Gustafson and Steven G.Coyle.

"I want our practice to offer old-fashioned, personalized care. It may not be the most efficient, but it's the most satisfying." But a spokesman for Blue Cross of California, whose "Prudent Buyer" plan was canceled by the three doctors, said his company merely requires that physicians be held more accountable. "I think this is extremely insensitive to the needs of their patients," said Brian Gould, senior vice president and medical director for Blue Cross. "We don't dictate medical practice. We just ask that the medical establishment justify its expenses." While many local doctors never accepted low-cost health plans when they came into vogue in the early 1980s, a spokeswoman for the Ventura County Medical Society said it was the first example of a large cancellation that she was aware of.

The insurance plans, known as preferred provider or health maintenance organizations, are generally able to cover 90 to 100 of a patient's medical expenses by contracting with physicians at discounted rates. In return, the physician is promised large numbers of patients. Reisman, however, said the insurance companies can also dictate the number of diagnostic tests or length of hospital stays they are willing to pay for, restrictions that he says make it difficult to provide the kind of care he feels may be necessary. "Many health plans are beginning to materially interfere in the practice of quality medicine by too often dictating what services or procedures may be provided, based upon financial criteria rather than medical appropriateness," stated the letter sent to the office's patients. The three doctors said they would give patients up to 12 months to find a new physician or enroll in another plan.

Babies from current pregnancies will be delivered, they said. Sports At Oxnard High, a reshaped Johnel Turner is changing the fortunes of the football team. Page 16 More Changes Haunt Historic Hotel By MEG SULLIVAN, Times Staff Writer Si I i omeone familiar with the antics at the Glen Tavern Inn in Santa Paula might have dismissed the scene as stage-set 'There aren't many grand old hotels more at home than Leona Helmsley. "It was like losing a part of my family," she said. The change marked yet another bump in the perennially bumpy road for the pre-World War I landmark that by Diehl's count has changed hands at least six times.

Having reverted to owner Mel Cummings ting for the murder mystery weekends that routinely attract guests from as far away as San Francisco. A more suggestible sort might have concluded that the hotel was, as its propri Judith Triem Santa Paula historian etors claim, haunted. ppp Promptly at 2 p.m. on a recent Friday, all the hotel's bed linens, a few dresser doilies and the comforter that had graced the bed of the inn's most notorious ghost disappeared. The hotel's staff and management also vanished.

The disappearances, however, were neither stage-setting nor hauntings. Hotel manager Dolores Diehl had abandoned her 15-year lease, laid off a staff of 25 and returned the bed linens to a rental company. She had ended a two-year fight to make money on the hotel, a dark, rambling structure in which Alfred Hitchcock would have been ijppH of Oxnard, the hotel remains open to overnight guests but its dining room and bar are closed. Cummings said he was negotiating this week with restaurateurs interested in managing the dining room and bar and an adjoining banquet room. He also is advertising in the Wall Street Journal and other publications to sell the historic hotel for $2.2 million.

In addition, Cummings was weighing offers to turn the hotel into a health spa or a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility similar to the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage. "I would prefer not to have the use change," said Please see HAUNT, Page 4 fc jm' BOB CAREY Los Angeles Times Glen Tavern Inn is the only Ventura County hotel on National Register of Historic Places..