Sunday, March 23, 1975 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Five I Sunday, March 23, 1975 THE MiCHIGAN DAILY Page Five _____FILE John Wilhelm: The life and high times of a perpetual schoolboy By CONNIE BOSLEY er program in the dormitory, so this sort of experience will be XVOU'VE PROBABLY spoken a part of student life in the to John Wilhelm at least dorms. It's one thing I have left once - just didn't hang around hanging, and I may still want long enough to learn his name. to do something about it. He sits every day behind the "There are a lot of really good reserve desk of the UGLI and faculty members who are dy;ng if he's not there, you can find to have interaction with s t u- him in the Reference Room of tohvEneatinwt u the Graduate Library. He dents," he says enthusiastically. the radate Librry.He Even if only seven or ten seems unremarkable. His socks people come if you start get-. are a dashing bright red but i p oo -aiy you dta't he he is a quiet man and sits com- iang too many you don't nave fortably in his cloister of books. a dialogue, you have a lecure. But if you do continual pro-! But Wilhelm has seen some gramming over the year, and it remarkable things. This man affects six or ten people every has been enrolled as a student time, you do touch a lot of stu- at Michigan for over fourteen dents and it may stimulate years - from 1961-74. them." Wilhelm's helief in thq cr'm- ? 9PHE OLDEST continuously en- rolled student believes pas- sionately that Michigan is truly3 an academic community, poten-j tially ideal for learning at itsI fullest through interaction with others. What is most fascinat- ing are his reasons for staying -they provoke thoughts about our own reasons for being here. His small room at Baits is barricaded by stacks of the New York Times, stacked in the easy chair and piled on the floor, waiting for him to sort through them to discover which articles it was that he wanted! to clip for his "files," which cover such subjects as econ- omics, the Middle East, and "U- M Miscellaneous." He has lived in University Housing evry year since he came here from' California in 1961 to obtain his Masters in Economics. AfterI years in East Quad and Burs- ley, he is now finishing up the year at Baits. He completed his dissertation and obtained his Ph.D. in Economics 1 a s t; August. "I don't envy people in apart-' ments at all," Wilhelm declar- ed. "They've got too small of az group - they don't have any variety. The dormitory provides a sort of community. I like it b e c a u s e it institutionalizes things." J'HISBELIEF in the dormi- tory as a community prompted his' actions as Chair- man of the Education Commit- tee at Bursley. "Living in a dorm should beI an experience, and the academ- ic side in an important side of this. I brought three speakers in from outside the Univer-ity to spend a week in the dormi- tory, living and interacting on a more informal basis with stu- dents. One thing I wanted to do, and I still want to do, is get the University to go after some permanent funding to have a permanent in-residence speak- munity of the University also' manifests itself in his attitude toward the library. He says there will still, unfor- tunately, be exceptions under these regulations. His ideal so- lution would be one that would treat all library users alike. "An effective student organiza- tion should have gono in and really gotten those rules chang- ed" he says, "but SGC wx, a mess at that time . . . they're generally not overly int! rested in doing anything about mb- stantive student issues." Wilhelm feels strongly t h a t relevant issues to the students and the University community have been largely ignored. "These things have beern lost in the attempt to do great sweeping things, instead of small things, moderate things, that require effort and a cer- tain amount of frustration. It's not dramatic-I'm sorry - it's just not dramatic. But I think much more substantive in a sense." JOHN WILHELM hopes to teach economics, and he re- mains here because job in- formation is available to him through the economics depart- ment. "[ENE OF MY greatest dreams in life is to leave :r mark, to make a change. If it'3 a great change, and its for the better - that would b !wonder- ful. But more realistically, most people can hope to make small,: minor changes, or say that may- be something was better be- cause we did something. Better for us, or better fr someone else, maybe for both." UE SAYS THAT "the library is the heart of the Uni- versity" - and his attitude to- ward faculty and student use of of the library. "There are no fines for over- due books for faculty memb'rs -there never were. This has resulted in some intolerable ,re- datory library behavior. In 1969 I ran into a situation where I needed a book because a pro- fessor suggested I should read an article in it to check on something for my dissertation. A faculty member had the otok, and the library unsuccessfully tried to call it in several times. When I went down to Circula- tion to complain, I was tolI by a secretary down there, 'Oh, whenever somebody wants a book that he has, I write tnem and tell them that it's lost, be- cause the guy told us a long time ago that he wouldn't re- turn a book until he was ready to.' " After several months, a n d after letters were written to the Dean by the Library aid by Wilhelm, the faculty membe' s office was unlocked (he had left the country on leave.) Near- ly thirty other overdue b o o k s were discovered there, along with the book in question. This incident prompted Wilhelm's ef- fort to have effective sanctions made against faculty and teach- ing fellows who misuse the lib- rary. "I COULDN'T GO as far as I wanted to, but thern are now regulations, whicn will be fully enforced beginning +his summer. They will result in the suspension of library privileges to any member of the Univrrsity community who does not return overdue books. But this is some- thing I had to do on my own, and it was a battle. rk. t . ' i E " . k E ' I li (, s E t L . ' ., Daily Photo by STEVE KAGAN Connie Bosley is an sophomore who left thei after her freshman year. LSA dorm It Pays to Advertise in The Daily U NIVE RSITY SDANCERS In CO NC E RT Fri.-Sat., April 4-5 8 pFm. 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