~:egeflts
(Continued from Page 4)
during the public comments of the
Thursday session, another issue of
strong concern came up-that of the
Graduate Employees Organization
4GEO).
Acting President Marty Bombyk
called for the University to drop its
court case against GEO. The Univer-
sity contends the teaching assistants in.
the' union are not allowed to bargain
collectively with the University
because they are students instead of
employees.
On the following Friday, the Board
rejected a move to begin construction
of a consolidated dining complex for the
Hill dorms. Several of the regents
based their opposition on the belief that
the complex would be inconvenient and
damage the identity of each separate
dorm.0
In the December meetings, the final
ones under the leadership of Robben
Fleming, the Board tabled until
January a resolution calling for
renovations in the Michigan Union.
Also, the group approved a final site for
the Univrsity's $254 million hospital
renovation project.
THE REGENTS made two landmark
decisions in January. First, they
decided to turn the control of the Union
to the Office for Student Services to
make the Union more student oriented.
This move included transforming most
of the hotel space in the Union to dor-
mitory rooms.
At the same meeting, the Board voted
to allow hospital administrtators to
submit a certificate of need for the $254
million Hospital Replacement Project.
If the certificate of need is accepted by
the state, the project will be the most
costly single University expenditure.
FIFTEEN ELDERLY citizens and 5
students flooded the Regents Room for
the February meeting. The elderly
came to complain about space a
geriatric was using which had been
recently allocated to a consolidation
unit. Meanwhile, the students present
at the meeting spoke again during
public comments in favor of tenure for
Samoff.
The Regents, in February, also
raised dormitory fees an average of 6.9
per cent for next year, or $113.31 per
student.
In the Regents most controversial
gathering this past school year, the
Board in March was stifled by
protesters during both days until they
obtained a court order allowing them to
meet behind closed doors.
._More than 200 demonstrators,
shouting chants and accusations, were
demanding that the issue of South
African divestitire be placed on the
April agenda. When the request was
The Michigan Daily-Sunday, April 15, 1979-Page 5
denied, the spectators disrupted the
meeting.
This is where the drama continues
this week. In the interim, the Univer-
sity has obtained a court judgment
allowing the Board to move its meeting
if it is disrupted, barring only the
demonstrators at the recoivened
meeting.. Those among the protesters
from the last meeting have already in-
dicated they will gather another large
and vocal crowd for the April meeting.
The year is not over yet.
MSA
(Continued fr.mPage 4)
ITEM: MSA successfully pushed
pressure on the Regents to grant the
students more input into the process to
select a permanent successor for for-
mer University President Robben
Fleming. The Board had originally
refused to give the student advisory
committee equal interviewing rights,
but that decision was overturned in its
February meetings.
Item: The Assembly lobbied exten-
sively to urge the Regents to turn over
the Michigan Union to students through
the Office of Student Services. The
Regents finally consented, beginning a
process that will eventually lead to a
more student-oriented Union.
While its true that the election's
mishaps may hinder the Assembly's ef-
forts to give students more of a role in
the University decision-making
process, it is clear that the Assembly
scored many successes this year.
important decisions were delayed for
several months. In fact, the conditions
became so pitiful that at their last
meeting in April, faculty members
voted to abolish quorum altogether and
conduct formal proceedings with
whomever shows up. It is also predic-
table to note that even at this meeting,
they failed to achieve the necessary
quorum to vote on the issue, and were
forced into taking a recess to convince
additional faculty members to come to
the meeting.
The faculty did, however, make some
decisions the past year worthy of men-
tion. They approved amendments to the
Manual of Procedures for the LSA
Academic judiciary, which were
favorable to students in appealing all
cases of academic dishonesty. They
held lengthy discussion which analyzed
the feasibility of changes to the
academic calendar, and stiffened the
criteria for students receiving
academic distinction honors upon
graduation. However, one does not need
great insight to see that these decisions
represent minor issues. This may be
the key to understanding the problem of
faculty apathy.
"It is obvious," as one faculty mem-
ber put it, "that if we were presented
with issues of importance, like faculty
salaries or problems with tenure, we
would come in full force to these
meetings." The administrative struc-
ture of LSA is one which gives most of
the power to the Executive Committee
- made up of six faculty members and
a number of deans - and to the Dean,
Billy Frye. The faculty rarely decides
the issues which concern them the,
most, and until this arrangement of
power is changed, LSA faculty
meetings will probably be sparsely at-
tended.
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
When the LSA Executive Committee
advised the Curriculum Committee to
make a review of Experiential Lear-
ning - learning which takes place out-
side the classroom and focuses on
community projects or research -
several things occurred. The
Curriculum Committee made certain
revisions in the guidelines for experien-
tial courses which would encourage the
increased emphasis upon subjects
directly related to the academic
discipline - additional readings, more
formal discussions between instructors
and students, etc. The committee,
which has nine faculty members and
three students, decided not to make
major revisions in specific programs.
However, the Executive Committee
decided on its own to force such
changes in one of the most popular and
well-respected programs on campus -
Project Outreach.
Outreach projects, which are super-
vised almost entirely by un-
dergraduates who have taken the cour-
se before, work with various com-
munity agencies and are concerned
with personal communications with
people involved in prison reform,
tenant-landlord disputes, hospital
relations, and aiding the elderly. Many
students, and some faculty members,
have said that such experiences are
much more valuable than traditional
classroom learning, and that by its very
meaning are quite different.
However, the Executive Committee
felt that because Outreach did not
utilize enough Teaching Assistants and
faculty members in its sections, it was
not worthy of credit. Therefore, it has
asked the Psychology Department to
increase faculty supervision in the
program, and has even recommended a
reduction in the number of credits (12)
which a student can currently take in
the program.
The fact that such changes are taking
place in Outreach, combined with the
review of all experiential learning' in it-
self, is an indication of faculty and ad-
ministrative concern with "intellectual
freedom." In a sense, it is a call for a
return to structured forms of education,
without any allowance for true
creativity. This has also been men-
tioned as a problem in the new English
composition program at the University.
While the University has said the
writing ability of students is on the
decline, there has really been little
proof of that suggestion. In addition,
some TAs are upset about the new
requirements because they say they do
not allow them to structure the course
in an individualized fashion, thus
restricting creative freedom in the
classroom.
flow, the city would be forced to tran-
sport its garbage to private landfills,
where it would be financially at the
mercy of the owners.
The shredder will also open up the
possibility of a city-wide recycling
program, as the machine is designed to
weed out metal from the rest of the
refuse.I
THE PUNCH-CARD voting system,
introduced in the February primary
election, was blasted from all sides
following the April election, at the last
Council meeting of the season. Com-
plicatons had arisen with the vote-
counting, and canvassers had finished
their work around midnight, counting
ballots with magnifying glasses.
According to City Clerk Al
Vollbrecht, part of the reason for the
delay lay in the fact that the votes were
all counted at one central place-the
city Armory-rather than at the in-
dividual polling places. Local
republicans had requested the votes be
tallied at the Armory so that monitors
could be on hand to observe the process.
This month's elections saw the rein-
statement of last year's Council, all the.
incumbents being re-elected: So
barring any such major frustrations as
the punchcard system complications, it
looks as though the flavor of Council
debate during the next two years will be
not much different than that of the past
12 months.
began its task for catching up to the
faculty and alumni groups.
THE FORMAL selection process
began on February 15 when the student
advisory committee submitted its
needs of the University statement to the
Regents. A pool of approximately 250
nominees had been collected since Sep-
tember; for the first time, all three
groups turned their attention to selec-
ting a University president from among
those nominees.
On February 16 the advisory groups
won their most significant concession
since the beginning of the search: the
Regents unanimously passed a
resolution allowing representatives of
the three advisory panels to interview
the final candidates for president along
with an unspecified number of Regents.
The Board stated it hoped the final
group would be "less than eight per-
sons:"
In the end, the long-sought right to in-
terview the final eight candidates was
won less because of the boycott, than
because of careful negotiation between
student committee members and the
Regents. Once the members committed
themselves to be involved in the
process, they were careful to build a
relationship of trust and cooperation
with the Regents. And when the Regen-
ts became convinced that the student
committee was ready to participate in
good faith, they granted the inter-
viewing rights.
BUT PART OF establishing that trust
meant a commitment to secrecy by the
students. While that commitment
disturbed many of the group's mem-
bers, it was a necessary concession to
insure that the Regents would trust the
committee. Nevertheless, because
of the Regents' fear that publicity about
candidates will cause the best ones to
withdraw, the student committee is still
committed to secretly interviewing the
final candidates for the position. That
commitment is a disservice to the
students they are representing in the
search.
The presidential selection process-
with fewer than fifty nominees
remaining-is nearing its final stages.
It is currently unclear when the inter-
viewing process will begin; it is equally
"unclear when the final decision will be
made. The only formal prediction made
during the process was by Regent
David Laro (R-Flint), who was vir-
tually certain the choice would not be
made in April and could continue until
July. More probable is that the selec-
tion will be made in June; it could be
made in May.
But regardless of whoever is
ultimately chosen to lead the Univer-
sity in the 1980's, one fact will emerge
from the search for a president:
significant decisions are still the per-
sonal domain of the eight University
tegents. And that situation will con-
tinue in the near future.
.pres.
Academcs,
(Continued from Page 4)
troversy is likely to continue for many
years, because it is one of the only ways
the students can get input into the
tenure process.
Finally, the fact that students are not
directly involved in tenure decisions -,
they do not serve on executive commit-
tees in most colleges, nor do they have
input into department decisions - has
been the focus of recent attempts by at
least one organization to push for
student positions on important commit-
tees. The Samoff Student Support
Committee has decided -to examine a
broader scope of tenure issues and plan
to pursue its position more vehemently
in the fall.
LSA FACULTY
One only has to look at the behavior of
the LSA faculty this past year to find a
blatant example of inaction. Although it
is not historically a new problem, nor is
it unique to unversities across the coun-
try, the LSA faculty meetings were so
sparsely attended all year, that many
cirty
(Continued from Page 4)
family zoning are based on population
density, not partisan leanings.
And Democratic Councilman Ken
Latta said in response to Trowbridge's
comments, "People who move into
apartments now are middle-income
families that cannot afford houses.
Many of those families are conser-
vative, and not those that are poorer
and would traditionally vote
Democratic."
THE MAYOR'S assessment that the
two parties work well together on
Council is not totally unfounded,
however, Council members have
collaborated on such issues as the solid
waste shredder facility and have
denounced together such projects as
the new punch-card voting system.
The $2,825,000 shredder, which was
placed on the April ballot and sub-
sequently approved by the voters, will
prolong the life of the city's near-
overflowing landfill by compressing the
garbage deposited there. Preservation
of the present landfill will insure the
city independence in the area of solid
waste disposal. Should the dump over-
Search
(Continued from Page 4)
teeing that the three groups would have
access to candidates nominated by the
Regents. But point 12 of the document
stressed that the "Advisory Commit-
tees are not to conduct any interviews.
This is the prerogative of the Regents'
Selection Committee alone."
WHile, the faculty and alumni (a
group that Chairman Sam Krugliak
would later call "completely the ser-
vants of the Regents") panels con-
tinued to organize their search commit-
tees, MSA voted on October 24 to
boycott the presidential ,selection
process because they were denied in-
terviewing rights. It was not until
December 12 that they would vote to
change that decision.
On that day, MSA voted to participate
in the selection process. After the
student committee, co-chaired by Jeff
Supowit, Bridget Scholl and Olivia
Wesley, assembled, it passed a
resolution stating that it would
"recommend to MSA the recall of our
committee" if "we perceive a lack of
meaningful student participation in the
selection process, specifically
inadequate access to candidates, in-
cluding interviewing." The group then
tinue in the near future.
pr.
17
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