Eighty years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Micbigan 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michioan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1971 NIGHT EDITOR: W. E. SCHROCK The judiciary controversy AFTER YEARS of wrangling over the question of a campus judicial system, the Regents tomorrow will consider, and most likely pass, a new judicial plan for the University community for a one- year experimental period. The plan is the result of almost a year of effort by a committee of students, faculty and administrators appointed by President Robben Fleming to come up with a workable plan to try and punish those charged with offenses. But the impetus behind the new judi- clary runs much deeper, going back to the student power demonstrations here in 1985 when students first began to ask for responsibility over their own af- fairs. A new judiciary is desperately needed by the University. The present Regents Interim Disciplinary Rules border on the line of unconstitutionality, providing not for trial by peers but by an outside hear- ing officer appointed by the president of the University, clearly not an impartial party in most discipline cases. As necessary as the new judiciary is, the Regents should carefully consider whether two changes made in the plan agreed upon by the committee are wise. In general, the judicial proposal calls for guilt and punishment to be decided by a vote of at/ least five out of six randomly selected student jurors in cases where students are defendants or faculty jurors when defendants are faculty mem- bers. A complaint referee would handle the filing of charges and provide for arbi- tration if both parties agreed. Judicial hearings would be presided over, by a lawyer from outside the University com- munity along with one student and one faculty associate judge. THE CHIEF remaining difference be- tween the committee and the Re- gents is over the power of these associate judges. The judiciary committee proposed that all legal and procedural rulings on ques- tions such as admissibility of evidence and removing spectators from the hear- ing room be decided by unanimous vote of the three-man panel. The regental draft would have the pre- siding judge alone decide questions of law with only rulings of decorum to be made by a majority vote of the three. THE REGENTS should consider rein- stating the committee's procedure before they give final approval to the plan. As the Chicago "Conspiracy" trial de- monstrated, it is important that defend- ants and spectators at a hearing under- stand why judges make procedural rul- ings and have confidence in these decis- ions. Granting the power to make t h e s e decisions to an outsider alone when legal questions are considered obliviates much of the judiciary committee's efforts to formulate a plan that will generate con- fidence and be fair. Senate Assembly wisely recognized this when it last week urged the Regents to have the three-man panel decide all rul- ings by a majority vote. THE SECOND major difference between the committee's revised plan and the regertal draft are selection procedures. TheRegents have proposed a complicated outirne where, in general, officers of the system would be selected by the Regents after prior approval of a slate of double the number of vacancies by Student Gov- ernment Council and Senate Assembly. This cumbersome process could delay the system and puts into the hands of the Regents rather than the University the final say in appointments. The procedure proposed by the judicial committee would have interviewing boards propose a slate equal to the num- ber of vacancies and the slate would either have to be approved or rejected by Student Government Council, Senate Assembly and the Regents. Such a procedure would probably be more workable, quicker and result in more representative officers for the sys- tem. IWHILE THE Regents should change these two features of the draft, the most important priority is to get the new judicial system working for the one-year experimental period that has been pro- posed. At long last members of the Univer- sity would then have a judicial system that, while by no means perfect, satis- fies the requirements of fairness, im- partiality, and acceptability to different groups on campus. -DAVE CHUDWIN Managing Editor GM: TI By TOBY COOPER Daily Guest Writer JUST ABOUT the only inevitable consequences of organized ef- forts to combat American social problems are hopeless confronta- tions with powerful corporate en- terprise, and ultimate frustration. The Campaign to Make General Motors Responsible is reversing this trend, not by overpowering its adversary (an obviously im- possible task), but by building its own sophisticated constituency for socially conscious corporate con- duct. Campaign GM's choice of a target was not an arbitrary one. General Motors Corporation is the largest corporate monolith in history, with an annual budget larger than any country in the world except the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It has a total payroll of 802,500 persons, with more people employed o v e r- seas than the U.S. State Depart- ment. Yet, despite its size and wealth, (gross earnings for 1970 pushed $51 million per day) GM remains quite insensitive to social needs. While proudly claiming leadership in the areas of minority oppor- tunities. pollution, and safety in- novation, GM remains intransig- ent unless threatened with I a w- suits or public defacement. In a typcial show of public re- lations savior faire, GM issued a booklet to all shareholders this year, entitled "Progress in Areas of Public Concern." The 49 page booklet contains quasitechnical ar- ticles by top engineers and mem- bers of the Board of Directors. and carefully assures the share- holder of his viability in the de- cision-making base of the Cor- poration. But the reported "progress" in meeting social problems is care- fully screened from evaluation in the context of the current public demand for equal opportunities, environmental quality, and reli- able, reasonably-priced products. IN THE BOOKLET GM's Chair- man James M. Roche reports on the company's progress in minor- Ity opportunities. "The problem of inequality." he reasons. "still lingers in America - and there- fore in General Motors." Roche ought to know something about inequality, with salary and bonus- es amounting to $795,000 per year, or $379 an hour, he earns 100 times the salary of the average UAW worker, and four times t h e salary of the President of t h e United States. He goes on to boast of "encour- aging results" in minority hiring programs. By the end of 1970, Roche claims. 15.3 per cent of those employed by GM were mi- 'he GM Chairman James Roche need nority Americans. The less en- couraging statistic, that o n l y 3.8 per cent of GM's salaried em- ployees are non-white, is not men- tioned. Even more distressing is Gen- eral Motors' reported progress in the increase of minority-owned dealerships. GM has about 13,000 dealerships, 12 of which are own- ed by blacks. "A year ago we had only seven automobile dealers who were black . .." Such leadership does not go un- recognized; Roche is a member of the New Detroit Committee, the Steering Committee of the Na- tional Urban Coalition, and t h e President's National Advisory Council on Minority Enterprise. Roche does not boast about GM's first black member of the Board of Directors, Reverend Leon Sul- livan, who was appointed in Jan- uary after Campaign GM press- ed heavily for, the election of a black to GM's Board at the an- nual meeting last year. Reverend Sullivan last month demanded ces- sation of business in South Africa by General Motors. EMISSIONS RESEARCH di- rector William G. Agnew reports to shareholders on automotive emission control. His stated pro- gress is hardly encouraging to the informed public, either. Despite GM's efforts to deemphasize t h e fact, the automobile remains the largest single source of air pollu- tion, and GM remains the largest single source of automobiles. Ralph Nader's study group re- port on air pollution, Vanishing Air, cites the. automotive contri- bution to air pollution at 180 bil- lion pounds, or 60 per cent of the total annual tonnage of pollution in this country. This figure is based on the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare data published in 1966. Agnew brandishes the 1970 H.E.W. report proudly; transportation accounts for 42 per cent ofthe major pol- lutants by weight. However, t h e H.E.W. estimate of the total con- tribution to the problem by the internal combustion engine re- mains unchanged at 180 billion pounds per year. In other words, the first report erred in its esti- mate of air pollution from other sources; air pollution is worse than we thought. This dots not have the slightest effect on the seriousness of the problem with respect to automobiles. THUS, DR. AGNEW clouds the issue with meaningless compari- sons in an almost criminal attempt to cover up the effects of carbon monoxide on our lives. By clever- ly relating carbon monoxide to the effect of sulfur oxides (byproducts of the combustion of coal) the statement is made that sulfur ox- ides are 200 times more harmful than carbon monoxide. Since sul- fur oxides have their primary ef- ftct on the respiratory tract, lungs, and heart, especially if these tissues are already stressed with bronchitis or emphysema,. and carbon monoxide has lit t 1 e effect on these areas, the state- ment is true. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, for a social conscience 4 odorless gas, which kills people by combining with the hmoglobin in the blood 200 to 300 tim s faster than oxygen, thus crippling t h e body's oxygen transport system. The preliminary effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, drowsiness and nausea, are often experienced by drivers in a summer traffic jam. No mention of these effects is made in the report to share- holders. THIS IS NOT to deny that GM is working on the problem of auto emissions. The positive crankcase ventilation (PCV) valve, the one Mobil detergent gasoline is supposed to keep clean, is basically a device to recycle crankcase fumes where carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons a r e concentrated. Crankcase e m i s - sions account for about a quarter of smog-forming hydrocarbons that escape from the automobile. GM first introduced this sim- ple device on the 1961 California models, when the Corporation was faced with compulsion under new- ly enacted state law. However, the rest of the nation did not benefit from California's innovativenap- proach until the end of 1961, when Secretary of H.E.W. Abraham Ribicoff warned that he would press for nationwide legislation requiring crankcase controls if the industry did not "voluntar- ily" add them to all models by 1963. Another jaded attempt to white- wash the pollution problem is GM's effort to equate the term "smog" with the problem in the Los Angeles basin. "Hydrocarbons," claims Agnew, "are of concern only because of the role they play in the combination with oxides of nitrogen and sunlight to form photochemical smog; photochemi- cal smog is the type which oc- curs primarily in the Los An- geles area". During the formation of t h e CleantAir Act Amendments of 1965, the H.E.W. report disagreed with this, concluidng that "evi- dence of photochemical smog re- action products outside of Cali- fornia is clear." All of our metro- politan areas monitored for smog reactants are in imminent danger of harmful smog formation. When conditions for smog formation are not right, air throughout the country may still be dangerously polluted. THE FOCUS of GM's approach to the emissions problem has been to protect the internal combus- tion system with a series of tack- on devisces, and a heavy barrage of public announcements that the problem has been solved. Crank- case blow-by devices, evaporate controls, and exhaust control sys- tems were all introduced with the same redundant pattern; Cai- fornia cars first, in compliance with state law, and nationwide dis- tribution one or two years later. The new catyletic converter sys- tem. designed by GM in a frantic effort to meet the federal' a i r quality standards for 1976, is a bulky unit to be clamped midway down the tailpipe where it prom- ises to be another epensive com- ponent in the syndrome of plan- ned obsolescence. None of the tack-on devices has been able to control the increas- ed emissions simply as a result of increasing use of the automobile. The result has been the perpetua- tion of the internal combustion engine's use - in an age when more efficient systems could be available - and a continuation of our air pollution problem THE ONE TYPE of pollution which the auto industry will never correct on its own is the presence of automobiles themselves. Con- gestion in the cities, crisscrossing freeways, and 55,000 fatalities each year continually remind us of this. Ecologists worry about our nation's population of 205 mil- lion, which is growing at the rate of one per cent per year. But today we live with 105 mil- lion automobiles, and their pop- ulation is growing at the rate of five per cent per year. Farms feed people, but it takes oil fields and refineries to feed automobiles. How long will it be before these two incompatible systems of land use undermine each other? How long, in fact, can General Motors continue giving birth to auto- mobiles at this rate, and fatten- ing its present profit margin be- fore society demands a change? GM's progress seems pitiful in- deed when viewed in the perspec- tive of the demand for unpolluted air or the need for black repre- sentation in positions of business leadership. The key question then becomes, can we expect Ja m es Roche and his kind to make viable social decisions? Attorney Phil Moore, director of Campaign GM, says no. The men atthe top of our giant corpora- tions are too powerful, and much too isolated from social problems to be entrusted with social decis- ions. Most of our top executives live in the suburbs, removed from t h e sight of poverty. They commute around rush hours, some even by helicopter. Roche has no worries about his car's performance, or warranty, and his vacation c a n easily be spent' in a chosen en- vironment. If GM feels it is doing its best for the black man in America by adding five black-owned deal- er franchises to its roster of 13,- 000, we can only reinforce this minimal committment, but point out emphatically that the cor- poration's efforts suffer from too narrow a viewpoint. The p e o p 1 e whose lives are affected by GM must gain substantial representa- tion in its decision-making base, or the needed social consciousness will never be felt. THE PROBLEM is that corpor- ate leaders already make sopial decisions, unrestrained by the need for comprehensive assessments of possible 'social or environmental harm. We cannot allow GM to define our criteria for clean air, nor can we allow James Roche to determine the economic role of American blacks. Corporate' leaders mut be held accountable for the inadequacy of their social decisions through per- sistent public efforts to expand the decision-making structure of busi- ness in order to adequately meet public needs. EDITOR'S NOTE: At their month- lv meeting today and tomorrow, the Regents will decide whetherto vote the University's General Mot- ors stock in favor of management or Campaign GM, a national organ- ization trying to reform the company. Toby Cooper, a repre- sentative of NACT, has been or- ganizing local support for Campaign GM. Ri 4 #-i 4V Housing: New opportunity FOR AS LONG as anyone can remember, students have faced a housing short- age at the University. At their meeting tomorrow, the Regents have an oppor- tunity to alter significantly the Ann Arbor housing market by approving a plan to build 1,000 low-cost apartments. Only a minority of students now live in the University's dorms. After one or two years of dorm life; students follow tradi- tional instincts to move to apartments. The apartments available for student oc- cupancy are for the most part less ex- pensive than the dorms, yet entirely un- reasonable in the context of usual apart- ment rents. For example, a two-bedroom apart- nent which houses four students may cost about $320 monthly. With the $80 per student, the entire housing package of utilities, rent and food amounts to considerably less than the $150 monthly dorm rate. THE PRICES charged to students here r compare with prices for fashionable apartments in such areas as Chicago's near North Side and Boston's B e a c o n Hill. Thus, as long as the housing shortage continues, with just enough spaces for students seeking occupancy, students will be forced to pay exorbitant rents. Landlords know that students n e e d places to live and that even excessive rates fall below the dorm charges. In addition, they cite high taxes, mainten- ance costs and the burden of "student wear and tear" as justification for their fees. But there is a solution to the housing problem which the Regents can help Im- plement - University sponsored low- cost apartments. A T THE tnrmv Othr Repynt n n p en nance, through a loan from the Depart- ment of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), low-cost apartments for its stu- dents. With the HUD loan, the Univer- sity would pay nothing for the con- struction, but would provide the land. Student rents would pay off the loan. The Housing board's plan calls for construction of 1,000 units, to be open to the University's students and workers. If the project is to get underway, regental approval must be granted at this month's meeting to meet HUD's May 1 deadline for loan applications. The University claims to serve stu- dents, not landlords. Here is a project which will clearly improve student life, and the University is reluctant to im- plement it. President Fleming has proposed an al- ternate plan which would provide 2 5 0 units on North Campus. Although the ad- ministration may feel this plan is better than none, it might be counter produc- tive by preventing the University f r o m building enough units to significantly al- ter the housing situation. The Policy Board apartment proposal is a splendid example of constructive stu- dent criticism. Dissatisfied with the pre- sent apartments and their high rates, students investigated ways to alleviate this problem. They presented a proposal, through the student controlled Housing Policy Board, which includes faculty members and the Director of Housing. Their proposal will cost the University nothing, except for the increased busing. TOMORROW'S REGENTS meeting pro- vides an arena for observing just how much weight is really given to s t u d e n t needs and student efforts to help m e e t these needs. The manner in which the Regents deal with this housing proposal Knox's resignation: Opposing committee F-11TOR's NOTE: This is the text of Michael Knox's letter of resignation trom Senate Assembly's Classified Research Committee. The letter is ad- dressed to History Prof. Gerhard Weinberg, chairman of Senate Assembly. Dear Professor Weinberg: AT ITS MARCH 22nd meeting, the Senate Assembly approved a reso- lution expressing its confidence in me as a member of the Classified Research Committee. I have considered this support to be a mandate to continue to work for change within the structure of the Committee and -the Senate Assembly. For several weeks now I have done this, however, I can no longer in good faith continue to participate in an activity which I consider to be, morally and philosophically, anathema. I would be less than deserving of the Senate Assembly's confidence if, under the cir- cumstances, I were to maintain membership in the Classified Research Committee. Despite the actions of the Senate Assembly, the results of the student referendum, and all of the concerns recently expressed within the Uni- versity Community, the Classified Research Committee continues to function as before. The Committee continues to approve research to develop and perfect weapon sys- tems which are being used to kill human beings. It continues to ig- nore the present University Policy on Classified Research. It con- tinues to be an ally of the military research establishment. And the Committee continues to operate in secrecy, completely isolated from its constituency. IN A TOTALLY irresponsible ac- tion last Friday, the Committee ap- proved a sham proposal with full knowledge that the contents of the summary were completely fraudu- lent. The funds requested were to be used for another entirely unre- lated unclassified project. The pro- posed military research task in question had already been accom- Michael Knox plished. Further, this research task had been accomplished without the approval of the Committee. In fact a week earlier the Committee had reviewed the same proposal and voted six to one to reject it as inap- propriate research. The proposal was then reconsidered by the Com- mittee on Friday and approved ex post facto eight to four. Another recent incident is worth mentioning at this time. On April 7, 1971 the Vice-President for Research sent a memorandum to the Com- mittee's chairman announcing that he had sent a classified research pro- posal to the military sponsor without the Committee's approval. This unilateral action is clearly questionable in view of the University's cur- rent Policy on Classified Research. MY CONCERNS about classified military research and the Classi- fied Research Committee have already been elaborated in great deail. I have remained a member of the Committee in the hope that it would respond to the concerns of the Senate Assembly and the University Com- i Aw I Letters to The.Daily 4 Research To The Daily: AS IS WELL known, students have recently been intensely de- bating whether or not classified and military research should con- tinue at the University- On March 30 and 31, students voted over- whelmingly in the SGC referend- um to stop their University's com- plicity. SGC President Rebecca Schenk and a delegation of students se- parately made the request last week that Thursday or Friday, April 15 and 16, when the Re- nav. nrp mpti-na thpv hn1 an dent opinion. Although students comprise the majority of the Uni- versity community, the Regents will not even sit down and listen to us, much less accept a student input in the determination of Uni- versity policy. We have been pro- mised a "forum" in the fall, a forum that the Regents will at- tend only if they want to. But the Regents choose to ignore us for the present. There will be a rally on the Diag Friday at noon while the Re- gents are having their "open" meeting in a purposely small room, demanding advanced tickets for Pntrv .WP ar: mtin to e. Embarrassment To The Daily: I AM AN Engineering student living in East Quad and I read the article "Outside the R.C. and Looking In" with considerable embarrassment. I am happy to admit that Dave and Bill do not reflect the attitudes of the ma- jority of non-R.C. students in East Quad. As for having the guts and be- ing the backbone of East Quad, I believe that this responsibility rests with the Representative As- 4,'