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October 31, 1971 - Image 4

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Michigan Daily, 1971-10-31

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

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The month
in review

No. 2

October, 1971

Page Four

October images ...

SGC: Facing an identity crisis

-Daily-Rolfe Tessem

Secret research

More hurdles

tc

ban:
Sgo

By ALAN LENHOFF
Less than two weeks ago,
Senate Assembly climaxed al-
most eight months of debate
with the endorsement of a poli-
cy, which would ban most clas-
sified and military research
from the University.
Yet the faculty representa-
tive body's proposal must still
surmount a major hurdle-fac-
ulty members themselves.
The policy itself appears to be
a carefully worded, workable
one. Proposed by sociology Prof.
Howard Schuman, it states that
the University "will not enter
into or renew any federal con-
tracts or grants that limit open
publication of the results."
"This general policy," it con-
tinues, "will be suspended only
in cases where the proposed re-
search is likely to contribute so
significantly to the advance-
ment of knowledge as to justify
the infringement of the freedom
to publish openly. In all cases,
the burden of proof rests with
the faculty member who pro-
poses the contract or grant."
The proposal also calls for
the formation of a committee
to review requests for exemp-
tions from the general policy.
The committee would include
both opponents and proponents
of classified research, as well
as student representatives.
But long before the Regents
decide whether the proposed
policy will become the official
University one, the proposal
faces a tough battle from some
professors-primarily those in
the engineering college.
Of greatest significance is the
attitude of University Senate,
comprised of 2.800 professors,
administrators, deans, research-
ers and librarians.
Although it has never been
used in the past, the Senate has

By DAVE CHUDWIN
Managing Editor
Like' many of the young people it re-
presents, Student Government Council
is undergoing an identity crisis. Caught
in a vise between an apathetic student
body and a distrustful University admin-
istration and faculty, Council is groping
to find its place on campus.
Although SGC has often been the tar-
get of criticism in the past, the resigna-'
tion of four of Council's 11 at-large mem-
bers Oct. 7 has forced a long, hard
look at the form and function of stu-
dent government at the University.
While Council members have frequent-
ly resigned in the past, the loss of more
than a third of Council's membership in
one stroke put the question of its fu-
ture in the spotlight.
The debate over such issues as Coun-
cil's effectiveness, its representativeness,
its leadership and its funding will con-
tinue as campaigning begins for SGC's
fall elections on Nov. 16 and 17.
Among the most vociferous in these
debates are Council members - both past
and present.
"I don't think SGC has done a bit of
good for anyone in the University, in the
community or in the country," says Rick
Higgins, one of the three conservative
Student Caucus members who resigned.
"The red tape, the bureaucracy, the bick-
ering, is repugnant to me."
In response to this and similar charges
that SGC has accomplished little, its
leaders claim a credible record of "com-
mitted action."
They point out that SGC played a
major role in establishing a student-run
bookstore and in setting up institutional
structures within the University such as
the student-dominated Office of Student
Services Policy Board and the new Uni-
versity Judiciary.
Council leaders also say they were deep-
ly involved in the Black Action Movement
strike for increased minority admissions,
establishment of the Bachelor of General
Studies degree, (lobbying against classi-
fied research and ROTC and supporting
numerous anti-war activities.
In addition, "much of the progress on
the school and college level has come
from SGC," says Vice President for Stu-
dent Services Robert Knauss. He credits
SGC with helping to get students on
University committees and in opening up
administrative and faculty meetings.
Despite these accomplishments, large
segments of the campus feel SGC does not
perform a key function of any student
government - representing the student
body.
Traditionally low turnout in SGC elec-
tions (17 per cent of students last spring),
lack of interest in SGC on the part of
graduate students and radical control
for several years have led to charges
that SGC does not accurately mirror the
sentiments of the students.
"SGC makes students think they're be-
ing represented when they aren't," t h e
three Student Caucus members said as
they resigned from Council.
This feeling is especially prevalent
among top University officials. "It's not
representative and I'd be in favor of
seeing it changed," Regent Gerald Dunn
(D-Flushing) says.
SGC leaders, however, point out that
SGC elections are open to all students,
who all have the opportunity to run for
office.
Despite this, graduate students h a v e
traditionally shied away from voting in
SGC elections and participating in its
activities. Instead they have concentrated

X. XX.,
:-X:

Becca Sehenk, president . .
..guiOding a troubled SGC

By PAT BAUER
An Esquire magazine representative
was more than a little surprised last
month when he called the Student
Government Council president for an
interview.
"Miss Schenk?" he choked. "Y o u
mean all you've got's a woman?"
In a time of reevaluation for SGC,
Rebecca Schenk has become its pres-
ident-the first. woman elected to
head the student body of a Big Ten
school.
Becca's interest in government be-
profil

gan many years ago, but not because
she wanted to change the world, she
laughs.
"I first decided to run for student
office back in eighth grade, because
I was shy," she recalls. Face-to-face
situations didn't bother her, but she
felt timid "sitting around with a lot
of giggling 13-year-old girls and try-
ing not to be a fuddy-duddy."
Becca sought acceptance. But in a
class of 92 students, she ran for class
office five out of her six last years in
school--and lost everytime.
"The elections were just popular-

ity contests, anyway, and I was nev-
r in the 'in crowd,' she muses bit-
terly.
"Everybody always thought I was
weird. Not only was I the poorest in
the class, but I was a Catholic. For
Muncie, Indiana, that was really
weird."
Peer group acceptance finally came
in her senior year, but not in the way
she expected. Becca starred in the
senior play, which she remembers as
"some stupid thing about ghosts or
something."
Other important changes were tak-
ing place in her life. At 16 she gave
up Catholicism.
See SCHENK, Page 7

i:y'
A:-
ii>k

did not represent the political beliefs of
most students on campus.
Last spring, however, the situation
changed as the right-wing Student Cau-
cus won four Council seats and Bill Thee,
a conservative, ran an extensive, but
unsuccessful campaign for the presi-
dency.
Brad Taylor, the remaining conserva-
tive on Council following the resignations,
says, "Most people are here for an edu-
cation and not for a revolution."
A more valid criticism is that SGC does
not represent the student constituencies
within academic units of the University.
"You are not going to have a strong
student government until you solve the
problems of representing the schools and
colleges here on the Ann Arbor campus,"
says President Robben Fleming.
University administrators are suspicious
of Council not only because of what they
view as its lack of support, but also be-
cause of doubts about the present SGC
leadership.
Both within the administration and
among students there are many who be-
lieve that the current SGC officers are
mediocre. One member of SGC describes
Schenk as a "really incompetent" and
Administrative Vice President Jay Hack
as "a court jester."
Schenk "goes shooting her mouth off
without getting the facts straight," ac-
cording to one University official. "They
haven't been willing to do their home-
work, to put in the time."
Hack points out that the present Coun-
cil members have had to overcome a lack
of experience. "There was no one on
Council with much more than a single
semester of experience, while before there
have always been a couple of members
who had been around for two or three
years. People have to learn the ropes,"
he says.
To improve Council's image" and to
garner more student support, Council
is taking on a number of major projects
itself.
Money, however, is required to fund
projects like a women's crisis center, a
print co-op, a food co-op, and the Tem-
porary Employes Association.
SGC's record on disbursement of the
25 cents per student it gets from tuition
fees has been spotty, critics charge. They
claim that the bulk of the money has
gone to leftist ventures such as the Radi-
cal Independent Party in which Council
members have been deeply involved.
See IDENTITY, Page.'7

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(I

on school and college graduate student
governments.
The president of one of these, D a n
Fox of the recently-formed Rackham
Student Government, says grad students
have different interests and different ap-
proaches to problems than SGC.
SOC President Rebecca Schenk main-
tains that "graduate students are part
of SGC's constituency and we'd like them
to participate."
SGC claims the right as "the only duly
elected all-campus government" to ap-
point student members to University com-
mittees. The faculty, however, relied on
the now-defunct Graduate Assembly (GA)
to fill seats for graduate students.
With the demise of GA, a bitter dis-

pute has broken out in the last month
between SGC and supporters of the pro-
posed Graduate Federation over who
should make appointments.
A complication has been the failure of
SGC to seat students on many of the
committees to which it can make ap-
pointments, because of a breakdown in
the appointment mechanism.
Not only graduate students have felt
disenchanted with SGC.
Through most of its history, Council
has assumed an increasingly left-wing
orientation, many members using the or-
ganization to further the aims of the
radical movement on campus.
The relative political hontogeneity of
the members led to charges that SGC
Anti-War Activism

'

PROF. SCHUMAN: "Making
public our research is rightly a
central value of University life."
veto power over any action of
Assembly-and there are clear
indications that classified re-
search proponents are currently
organizing to that end.
The veto procedure is simple.
If a quorum of 100 members
are present at the Senate's Nov.
22 meeting, they can override
Assembly's action by a majority
vote.
What poses the greatest threat
to the endorsed proposal is that
there is no way in which the
Senate can assure that a group
which is representative of the
faculty will attend the meeting.
Obviously, with 2,800 mem-
bers, a rather small percentage
of the total group actually goes
to the meetings. Should engi-
neering college faculty members
turn out in large numbers, a
veto might be ensured.

PRESIDENT FLEMING: "It's
difficult for me to tell a pro-
fessor that he cannot have any-
thing to do with classified re-
search."
Another problem is that there
is no way the credentials of
those attending the meeting can
be checked. Most of the unit's
votes are taken by voice and no
one has yet devised a manner
of detecting a non-member's
"aye" from that of his legally-
seated colleagues.
The Senate does have a proce-
dure for taking a vote of the
entire membership by mail -
but this requires a majority vote
of members in attendance. And
it seems highly unlikely that
proponents of classified research
would take such action if they
constituted the majority of
those in attendance.
Officially, the research pro-
posal has not yet been placed
on the Senate's.November agen-
da, but knowledgable sources
See STOPPING, Page 7

The movement's new move

By LYNN WEINER
Associate Managing Editor
The premier performance two
years ago drew 20,000 in Ann Ar-
bor and a million across the na-
tion. But the third re-run of the
annual anti-war moratorium this
month attracted a paltry 600 here,
reflecting low demonstration turn-
outs throughout the country.
Meager attendance at local
peace events - which included a
rally, march. workshops, and
speeches - mirrored wide-spread
disenchantment with mass mora-
toriums, as the "no business as
usual" Oct. 13 theme evoked little
more than rhetoric the third time
around.

October news briefs
Quote of the month
"It's lik.e presenting giuerrdilla theater dur-
in g an intermission at the Iower theater."
-RICHARD KENNEDY, secretary of the University, corn-
menting on yesterday's anti-war halftime show.
0 As special city voter registration drives added sev-
eral thousand new young voters to the rolls this month, a
number of developments occurred which could affect the
potential impact of that bloc of voters.
The Human Rights-Radical Independent Party filed
21,000 petitions with the State Elections Office-6,000 over
the number necessary to appear on the state ballot and
thus on the ballot for next April's city election. The party
is still awaiting a ruling on the status of its petitions.
Meanwhile, Democratic and Republican City Council-
men wrangled over the composition of the citizen's com-
mission which will decide the new boundaries of the city's
wards. Council, with each party striving for a majority on
the originally four Democrat - three Republican member
commission, has witnessed two rare mayoral vetoes and a
court suit filed by the Republicans against the mayor and
commission, over the issue.
r University service and maintenance employes this
monhr~vhipetpd afc, %trkP.a..%n marnf 'PQnlinoa 2nnfit

Anti-war activists, however,
battled the apathy stifling the
movement by searching for new
methods of demonstrating against
the- Indochinese war.
On the national level, a demon-
stration in Washington involving
over 1,000 ended last week as 300
were arrested after attempting to
serve President Nixon with an
"eviction notice." The protesters,
in "Phase One" of their cam-
paign, held a "People's Grand
Jury" to indict Nixon for "war
crimes", and began to plot for his
defeat in 1972.
And locally, the Ann Arbor Co-
alition to End the War (AACEW)
decided to exploit yesterday's
homecoming game theme and
halftime show as a demonstration
against the war.
Such politicization of home-
coming involves attention-getting
tactics which organizers hope will
overcome the malaise of the move-
ment-just as "Evict Nixon" or-
ganizers hoped the colorful grand
jury and infusion of electoral pro-
test would add life to their dem-
onstrations.
"When ideas wear out, we have
to find something new to involve
people and project our message."
AACEW spokesman Dave Gordon
says.
His group succeeded in getting
the homecoming theme changed
from "Let's Work Together" to
"Let's work together to bring the
troops home now,"
The AACEW, along with the
Vietnam Veterans Against the
War, then fought for months for
permission to use the football field
for yesterday's anti-war presenta-
tion before the crowd of 70,000.
The permit followed an AACEW
petition urging the band to march
in peace symbol formations during
half-time. The petitions were
signed by 1,500 - including two-
thirds of the football team.
The band finally agreed to a

I

-Daily-Sara Krulwich

I

.,. :.:.:
.. ... ..

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