T4r Atrtgan . :43at'lg J I1 S I 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 'i ........ ,s t. .:::...v........... r4..%:;: ;4A::r.,f,. 6::::z4::v.: .7......Fr..i'",.-... 4t:i .:... ../r.v ......, t4v"i:" r a-li:Y}: -4 ..:! . .4..4.:: (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 .,. :.:.: .. ... ..