rSoft selling' SGC to its constituency Eighty-one years of editorial freedomn Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan "I 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1972' NIGHT EDITOR: TAMMY JACOBS Closing research loopholes A UNIVERSITY POLICY eliminating most classified military research on campus is an idea whose time has come -months ago. The passage yesterday by Senate As- sembly, the faculty representative body, of a comprehensive research policy hope- fully signals the beginning of the end of this interminable debate. The Regents will consider the pro- posal at their next meeting. They should approve the Senate Assembly policy with only minor modifications. The assembly's policy would generally prohibit research contracts that limit open publication of results beyond one year. This provision would bar most fed- erally-classified projects since the gov- ernment cannot specify how long re- search results will be kept secret. At the same time, it would allow most indus- trial research to continue as long as it can be published within the one-year limit. The close inter-relationship between this University and major industries is questionable. However, there is little doubt that industrial research is not even remotely comparable to secret military research in the harm and suffering it eventually brings to human welfare. The assembly proposal would also strictly prohibit research "the clearly forseeable results or any specific purpose of which is to destroy human life or in- capacitate human beings." 'JHILE THE interpretation of the as- sembly's Classified Research Com- mittee will be important in determining the ultimate effect of this provision, it is clear that assembly members and the University community mean it as a sign that we do not want research on this campus that is directly war-related. Of course all research might eventually improve the effectiveness of military en- terprises. But for too long researchers here have been working on target sen- sors, electronic warfare and other re- search directly applied to warmaking. Other provisions of the policy insure that the University will be able to dis- close the identity of sponsors and the purpose and scope of their research pro- jects so that the University community can judge their appropriateness. Inevitably through the long process of debate and compromise, this policy has been watered-down and some loop- holes added. They are important, not be- cause they require the rejection of the proposal, but because without them it would be a much better policy. THE FIRST LOOPHOLE allows for ex- ceptions from policy which prohibits research whose results cannot be pub- lished within one year. It states that re- search that "so significantly contributes to knowledge so as to infringe the right to publish openly" can be exempted by the vote of the Classified Research Com- mittee. In the past, this committee has been i uite close to the secret research estab- lishment on campus. It it conceivable that once the present controversy dies down the committee could use this pro- vision to approve large numbers of secret projects. It is important for the assembly to prevent this by making wise appoint- ments to the committee and for the Uni- versity community to remain vigilant over its actions. A second loophole would exempt re- search which would restrict only "nu- merical constants and equipment para- meters or settings" for more than one year. This is an ambiguous, dangerous clause. The Regents should ask some tough questions about what it means. The provision was added by members of the Senate Advisory committee on University Affairs to the committee re- port that formed the basis for the policy passed Monday. Yet neither SACUA members nor mem- bers of the committee are quite sure what "numerical constants and equip- ment parameters or settings" are, and how the Classified Research Committee might be sure of this information before considering a request for an exemption. Those responsible for this provision should do some research on what it ac- tually means and the Regents should not approve it unless they can be given the specific information as to how many pro- jects this provision might effect. DESPITE THESE loopholes, it appears that this policy will eliminate much of the war research at the University. That alone justifies its passage by the Regents at their meeting next month. -DAVE CHUDWIN Managing Editor By JOEL SILVERSTEIN LATELY, THERE has been an air of absurdity surrounding Student Government Council. It almost seems like Council is a large beetle, turned over upon its back, legs flailing madly at the air . . . The engines of production have been turned up full: Agendas have tripled in size, ofice expendi- tures are running wild - yet ab- solutely nothing is being produced. It is for this reason that I am writing, to finally expose whatever myths are left about the utility of SGC. I want ot do so "for the record" because people have a right to know. An SGC election is approach- ing. This time it will be a special election, probably next month, concerning - itself with several funding proposals. Appropriate at such a time in the semester and foremost in the majority of Council members' minds is how to come up with the best public relations in order to hype people into voting Council Joel Silverstein was elected to SGC in the Spring of 1971 and re-elected last November. more money. Of course, Council members would be quite content with people- just not voting at all - since SGC is the all-campus re- presentative government of only the loyal 10 per cent of the student body that votes. THE WORI)ING of the funding referendum, its place on the bal- lot, and the questions preceding it are - as in the last election - all being carefully considered. The techniques that will be used, and some members have them down to a science, are distressingly simil- ar totany Madison Avenue soft- sell. It is no different from the hype inducing you to buy n e w clothes, cars, records, or deodor- ent. S udent Government Cocncil will again be sold, not on its merits. but on what it might be able to do for you. Reflective people across campus will sit back and think, "hmmm . . . just what has SGC done in the past" - and 'then be hard- pressed to find answers. It did vote to publish a list of police agents recently, but then some members changed their minds and Council re-voted against such a move. And, while Council made three attempts to unseat an administrative officer and charge him with incompetence, it never could seem to get it to- gether enough to enforce the laws it passed governing campus film societies . . . The list stretches on and on - at least as long as the bill of resignations presented Council over the past year. STILL, AN election will be held (section 14.09 of the Election Code). After all, isn't it also mentioned somewhere in the SGC Compiled Rules that advertising surpasses production in America, that it doesn't matter what Council has done but rather, how it is pack- aged for the voter? Eventually, a new crew of candidates will strag- gle in, friends of friends of t h e old Council. and another funding proposal will be dusted off. It's almost too much for an in- telligent person to bear - this fa- cade of power, of letting the stu- dents "decide." But, nowadays fewer and fewer people are being drawn in. They aren't fooled by the hype. It's so easy really, like switching stations to avoid commercials. People do not even trouble themselves to vote. It is this intelligent apathy that is the intriguing phenomena per- vading campus oday. The aliena- tion that people were taught to recognize in every facet of their lives has now swung full circle to confront the original teachers. It isn't just Richard Nixon and his followers that are viewed as a hype, but SGC and a whole spec- trum of the Left on this Campus, as well. A lot of words were spoken but there was very little change. The last building seizure ended on campus with radicals looking forlornly out the window of the LSA Bldg. for non-existent masses assembled in support. The last teach-ins and moratoriums were sparsely attended because they reneged on a promise inherent in them of somehow ending the war. And through it all, SGC has evolv- ed into a clique no more repre- sentative of campus leadership than he staff of a campus humor magazine. IT IS NO time to weep, how- ever, for thedemise of the Left. Thore is a process of natural se- leetion at work on campus and the dying - out of progressive action and organization should be view- ed as part of this natural occur- rence. In time, old ideas will be replaced; unfit ideas always die and are replaced by new ones. There were just too many weak nesses in' the student movement of the 1960s. We were too ambi- tious, the Vietnamese kept telling Mayday organizers last Spring. People became too easily furstrat- ed with the slogan "Stop the Gov- ernment" when it went unfulfilled. But for whatever reasons it is happening, people should not be afraid to criticize the final and ab- surd distortions of that movement. As the Johnny-come latelys scurry across campus - peddling rhetoric from the class of '68, a lump of nausea.cannot help but force its way into one's throat. It is perhaps up to college news- papers to not be too polite in dealing with some of this non- sense. For as any movement on' the decline unavoidably attracts certain undesirable characters and traits, the sooner the con-artists and power consolidators can be unmasked, the sooner the rebuild- ing process can be begun. THERE ARE bores sitting around SGC's table, terribly pro- ficient at turning out small note- books of governing rules a n d amendments that no one ever bothers to read. Council has be- come a marvelous children's story: Stuffed-up senior statesmen strut like male cocks, chests ex- pansive as they listen to them- selves talk. Votes aren't.even trad- ed for pet projects anymore as Council is no longer even involv- ed in any projects, but rather for motions on changes in the operat- ing procedures or assessing mem- bers for personal use of the mimeograph. So many times, no principles are in evidence totex- plain a Council members, vote. Motions rise or fall on individual whims or fancies. SO, WHAT HAPPENS when you givesa revolution and nobody comes? You could try and sell your message before "Planet of the Apes" when it shows in the Natural Science Aud. Or, you could spend a few hundred dollars on an all-new "SGC needs you!" recruiting booklet. This once-de funct pamphlet enumerates t h e many nebulous areas in which Council has actually pretended to work: city government relations, intramural sports, student control of residence halls . . . The inescapable thesis inherent to all of this is the fact that the drama may soon be drawing to a close, and that maybe it is time some of these institutions b e g a n readying themselves for a f u 11 burial. The action-oriented Left has for a time disintegrated on campus and will probably not even bother to field a slate of candidates in the next election. This Left was the motivating force on Council for the entire decade of the Six- ties. And, aside from two very small cliques, one on the Right (Responsible Alternative Party) and one more Moderate (GROUP) no one else is interested. BUT AS THE new ' L e f t and Council have always been replete with doomsayers, I may be no exception. The weekly SGC meet- ings will no doubt continue as will the calls flr mass meetings that stem from them - while the rest of the campus waits patiently for old ideas to die and new ones to take their place. f SGC's executive officers presde over a Council meeting Letters to The Daily. I To The Daily: IT IS REMARKABLE that Dave Chudwin, or any writer, c o u 1 d write an article like his "Space Shuttle: WPA for the seventies" (Daily, Jan. 18). Here at the Uni- versity we have a very fine aero- space engineering department, and Chudwin might at least have in- quired there about the S p a c e Shuttle before writing his feature. so that he would know what hb was talking about. To begin, there is his comment: "Shuttle launches will only cost $10 million apiece compared to 10 times that amount at present. What (NASA officials) do not say is that $5.5 billion in development- al costs . . . are not included in the $10 million figure." This is like saying, "Airlines advertise flights toyCalifornia for $200. What they do not advertise is that the developmenal costs for the planes, some $1 billion or more, is not included in this figure." Economics distinguish between these very different costs' -the so-called "recurring costs" and "nonrecurring costs." Unfortunate- ly, Mr. Chudwin does not. THEN, the article continues: "NASA is not quite sure what the Space Shuttle will be used for"; he seems to think it will be used "only" to launch unmanned satel- lites. Had he inquired at the De- partment of Aerospace Engineer- ing, he would have learned: -Shuttle-era satellites will be very different from today's de- signs; today's are like jeweled wristwatches while tomorrow's will be like alarm clocks. Today's sat- ellites must be very compact and light, to be launched at all; they must be extremely reliable, to work where there are no repair- men with screwdrivers. All this makes them very costly, slow to design, and prone to cost over- runs. Shuttle-era satellites can be bulky or heavy, because of t h e Shuttle's large cargo bay; they will be roctinely serviced by re- pairmen. This will reduce their costs, their rates of failure or loss, their complexity of design, a n d their proneness to cost overrun. -In addition, the Shuttle w i 1 carry out the so-called "sortie" missions, which are a new form of manned mission. Today's man- ned missions are flown by astro- nauts who spend years being trained; these astronauts use equinment which is complex and costly, since it must meet the same rigid specifications as un- manned satellites. Sortie missions will be flowniby non-astronauts- by passengers who, like airline customers, require no special training for flight. Their e'iiphient may be of standard laboratory types, such as Dave Chudwin might see in any lab about t hbe campus.These sortieamissions will open up space flight to all who can make good use of it. Thus, many scientists from this univer- sity alone may fly into space, to conduct experiments. FINALLY, I will 'say that if Mr. Chudwin is seriously interested in the space program, and does not merely wish to attack it to 'make political points, let him come over to East Engineering. He '%ill find several people there who are prepared' to give him some back- ground in the Space Shuttle. We look forward to seeing him. -T. A. Heppenheimer Grad. Jan. 18 * Examining personnel review 0 THE ARRIVAL on campus of the Robert Hayes and Associates consulting firm should be met with modified pleas- ure, seasoned with skepticism. The firm, brought in to untangle part of the University's personnel office, has the potential for eliminating some dis- crimination in employment and improv- ing the University's faltering efforts to fulfill its affirmaitve action program. But considerable handicaps stand in the way of its success. Almost inadvertently, it seems, the University has hit upon a plan which can benefit some of its female employes. In the interest of restructuring per- sonnel, the firm was hired to examine the job classification in the Professional and Administrative category (P&A) -- a category which includes over 5,000 peo- ple afd 860 job titles. As part of this ex- amination, it will be setting up a uni- form salary program, writing descrip- tions of all job titles, attempting to en- sure salary equity within the University, and trying to set salaries at a level which will be competitive with other employ- er$, The firm's recommendations will be submitted to the executive officers for approval. ALTHOUGH VICE PRESIDENT for Aca- demic Affairs Allan Smith claims that the firm's investigations are related only loosely to job discrimination, all of these projected results could conceivably aid in combatting sex bias. The Univer- sity's review of personnel files-an as- sessment of individual files to determine whether an employe was being paid con- siderably lower than others doing the same work-has run into snags as a re- sult of inequitable job classifications. In many cases there are different job titles for men and women doing the same job-or having the same qualifications- with men receiving the higher salary. In such cases, the salaries of the women cannot be upgraded to the level of the men because it would mean exceeding the salary limits set for their own job title. Redrawing the job titles, however, could eliminate such discrimination. The writing of job descriptions, too, is an important step on the road to affirm- ative action. This has been long request- ed by women who suspect that they are doing more work than the University ac- tually requires for their job titles-or takes into account when computing their salary. UNFORTUNATELY, HOWEVER, it is doubtful that this examination of the personnel office will do as much for wo- men as it could. Although women could benefit broadly from a thorough investi- gation, neither the University nor the consulting firm has indicated that any special efforts will be made to achieve pay equity for women. Indeed, it may be that quite the oppo- site is true. The University steering com- mittee appointed to advise the consulting firm is composed of 13 men and 3 women -hardly a representation of the distribu- tion of sexes throughout the University's -Daily-Jim Judkis futurespast I PIRGIM: 1 Protecting the public interest 4' by davc ehudwin IN WASHINGTON, Lansing and other, seats of government around the coun- try, there are lobbies for almost every group one can imagine-from railroads and riflemen to clergymen and toy manu- facturers. Lobbies for everybody but the public. As government regulation and control affecting many areas of our daily lives has increased in the last century, the pro- cess by which governmental decisions have been made has changed. Instead of thoughtful consideration by disinterested representatives, legislation and regulation are far too often the result of conflicting claims by pressure groups, jostling their political muscle. The public interest often loses out in the crush-lobbyists blocking action in areas such as consumer protection, ecology, health care and anti-discrimination en- forcement. TO COUNTERACT this situation, groups of students across the country are organizing to form public interest research groups, or PIRGs. Modeled on the efforts of such groups a Nadfim'R. aiclc,,'elaw rpv-~r,m (ovaa 17- ing organized on campuses across the state to support a statewide, student-sup- ported professional lobby for the public interest. The idea behind PIRGIM is simple. Stu- dents at each university and college around the state petition their boards of trustees or regents to collect $3 from each student per year to be given to PIRGIM. The $3 is refundable to those who do not wish to support the program. Such a plan might eventually raise about $200,000 annually to support as many as 20 full-time professional staff members- a director, lawyers and scientists. WHILE THE professionals would pro- vide needed expertise and continuity over summers and school vacations, PIRGIM would be student controlled. A board com- posed of student representatives from all participating schools would set priorities and direct the professionals. Students would be more directly in- volved as volunteer researchers, office workers and speakers. Students also might participate in PIRGIM-funded summer research projects to expand the scope of the ffru ' ,artiviies the University Administration and the Regents. THERE ARE, HOWEVER, two dangers with the program. First, students, as well as many other people, equate giving money with support and participation. The bane of guilty liberals is speaking with their pocketbooks instead of donat- ing time and effort. If students agree to give a few bucks a year and this makes them feel they are really helping to clean up the environment or improve the laws, then PIRGIM will defeat its own purpose. If, however, PIRGIM serves as a cata- lyst for student action it will make an important contribution to channeling stu- dent concern and student energy into con- crete accomplishment. Hopefully, this will be the case. The second possible problem with a group like PIRGIM is that it will attack only symptoms and ignore many of the causes of the difficulties with American society. PIRGIM "will provide an effective means for change within the framework of the established legal system," accord- ing to the organization's perspectus. But Ralph fNader lize the Regents have been reluctant in the past to levy fees for non-University organizations. For example, one of the demands of the Black Action Movement strike in 1970 was th collectionnof a iiudnt fee for the