Page 4-Saturday, February 11, 1978-The Michigan Daily G~betMicbznIag Fightv-Eight Years of Editorial Freedomn 420Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 110 News Phone: 764-0552 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Why choose on aid plan Fidel's troops line the globe when .we cal 1EDERAL FUNDS to aid education AU have been so inadequate over the ,last decade, it is' confounding to think pthe U.S. college community would actu- ,ally have a choice of financial benefits ,to pick from in 1978. ~ But, in fact, we do. President Carter only this week 'proposed a massive increase in the ,amount of federal money to be available to college students in the form of loans and grants next year. That plan emerges at a time when Washington legislators are already considering a program which would offer families of college students up to $500 in tax credits tto offset tuition costs. Both plans are designed to directly help students and their families, who, over the past ten years, have been the unwitting victims of an uncontrollable inflation in the cost of higher education. The President's plan, unveiled Wed- nesday, is designed to specifically aid middle-income families, through the existing program of grants and loans sponsored by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). For the first time since the start of such aid programs; students from families making $16,000 to $25,000 a year would be eligible for outright grants of at least $250. Never before has that in- come bracket been entitled to student grants. In addition, the ceiling for federal student loan eligibility would be raised from the present $30,000 income limit-to $45,000. Low interest loans would be accessible to more students than ever before. The estimated cost of Carter's proposal is $1.46 billion, most of which can be absorbed . by -the President's budget. The other program under con- sideration would bypass the HEW student aid program and offer outright income tax credits of up to $500 to families paying tuition, regardless of yearly income. This plan, introduced in Congress last year, has already ecured considerable support in both The Senate and the House of Represen- katives. Legislators have endorsed the tuition tax credit plan, as has this newspaper, because of its simplicity. It s a do-it-yourself aid program. All a amily needs to qualify are receipts from an offspring's tuition payments, end a deduction can be made from the federal income tax paid in April. n have. both?9 BOTH PROGRAMS have fundamen- tal imperfections. The Carter plan utilizes the already-overloaded HEW, student aid bureaucracy, and promises a lot of red tape, a lot of waiting and a lot of frustration for those trying to take advantage of it. The greatly increased number of loan and grant applications to be filed under the new plan will not help matters, either. The tuition tax credit plan is flawed, in that it is avail- able to the wealthy who really don't need it, and it sis useless to those families which have such low-income they don't pay federal taxes. Basically, though, both programs are based on sound and compassionate thinking. President Carter would like the public and Congress to believe they must choose between supporting either his proposal or the tax credit proposal, but there is no reason why both ideas can't be implemented in some form. While the cost' of the Carter pro- gram, combined with the cost of the tax credit program would undoubtedly make the adoption of both plans im- possible, compromise on the part of both the President and the Congress could create a hybrid and retain the benefits of both plans. The easiest solution would be to place a ceiling on the income levels of families eligible for the tuition tax credit. Carter stopped at a $45,000 limit for his middle-income proposal, and an identical ceiling on the tax credit plan would seem ideal. This would cut down on the tax credit plan's cost and satisfy President Carter's gripe that the rich would benefit unnecessarily. At the same time, HEW would not get so overloaded with grant and loan requests because the tax credit would be available. And members of Congress can appear generous when it counts most - during their election year. Above all, the families of college students would be getting more atten- tion paid to their financial difficulties than ever before. That is only proper, considering the costs of college are higher than they have ever been before. Cubans are fighting wars in black Africa, breeding bulls and building roads in Asia and waging a low-key campaign to win influence among their Caribbean neighbors. The island nation's campaign for Third World leadership - with Africa replacing Latin America as it's top priority - mixes the gospel of socialism with a flood of soldiers, doctors and other technical ad- visers. CUBA'S LARGEST presence'abroad is in Africa where an estimated 27,000 Cubans, mostly soldiers, operate in 16 countries. President Fidel Castro also has dispatched his "international builders brigade" to Viet- nam and is wooing friends in Jamaica in the Caribbean and Guyana on South America's northeast coast. Aside from soldiers, the brigade resem- bles in many ways the U.S. Peace Corps. It includes everything from teachers, basket- ball coaches and doctors to construction workers and dance instructors, often followed by propaganda movies and the government news agency, Prensa Latina. IN VIETNAM, Cuba has opened a bull- breeding center northwest of Hanoi, built a hospital in central Binh Tri Province and con- structed a 30-mile highway southwest of Hanoi linking industrialand agricultural areas. The Vietnamese government recently awarded friendship medals to 20 Cuban ex- perts for their contribution to war reconstruc- tion. In the Caribbean, Cubans in Jamaica have built an agricultural school for 500 students outside Kingston, have a micro-dam project in the works, are training construction crews and are providing technical assistance in sports, science, tourism, mining and agriculture. IN GUYANA, a brigade of doctors has been working in Georgetown and remote areas of the interior. Cuban experts in Georgetown are also in charge of the shrimp fleet, training Guyanese in fishing. Elsewhere in the region, Cuba is the main By Larry Heinzerling supporter of the Puerto Rican independence movement. Informed sources in San Juan say they are convinced that Havana is the main financial backer of the Marxist pro- independence Puerto Rico Socialist Party. Some of the islands of the Caribbean are seeking independence and Cuba is believed to be seeking influence in those areas through political parties rathe'r than violent revolution. Cuba's involvement in Africa was capped last 'March by a tour by Castro to Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Angola. Its role in Africa has widened since. LAST MONTH, a soldier whom Somalia identified as one of an estimated 2,500 Cubans supporting Ethiopian forces was captured by ethnic Somali insurgents in the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia. Also last month, Western diplomats in Lusaka reported the recent arrival of an estimated 50 to 75 Cuban military advisers in Zambia to train black nationalist guerrillas fighting in neighboring Rhodesia. The report was called "complete rubbish" by Joshua Nkomo, leader of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union, who visited Havana last year. Cuba's largest presence in Africa is still in Angola, the former Portuguese colony where an expeditionary force of 19,000 soldiers and 4,000 civilian advisers are backing the Marxist government against two guerrilla nationalist movements. CUBA'S MOST RECENT major commit- ment is to Ethiopia, whose leftist regime is fighting at least two secessionist movements. Cuban troops are reported to be flying into Ethiopia from Angola and Havana aboard Soviet-made IL-62 jet transports to prepare for a counteroffensive against Somali-backed rebels in the Ogaden area. Angola, Ethiopia and Zambia are only three of the 16 African states where Cuba is reported to be training armies, growing cof- fee, running hospitals, building schools and establishing state security systems. Castro also provided military advisers to Arab South Yemen to support insurgent ac- tivities against neighboring Oman. Oman crushed the rebellion. But virtually all of Cuba's soldiers overseas are in Africa, and it is Africa which Castro has apparently choser as a battleground in his bid for Third Worl leadership, with the blessing and funding o the Soviet Union. "AFRICAN BLOOD flows through our veins," Castro said more than a year ago. "We are not only a Latin American nation, we are a Latin African nation." Cuban blood has spilled in Angola, where thousands of Cuban troops helped President Agostinho Neto and his Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola defeat two other nationalist armies backed by the United States and South Africa. U.S. officials in Washington say 500 to 600 Cuban soldiers have been killed in clashes with antigovernment forces. Some political observers regard Angola as a potential Cuban Vietnam since one of the defeated factions, Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, is still fighting a guerrilla war in the southern part of the coun- try. The Cubans are not universally embraced in black Africa. Such conservative leaders as President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast fear communist expansion. STORIES OF THE "ugly Cuban" also are beginning to surface. "Go boil this water again," one Cuban was heard shouting at a waiter at a cafe in Bissau, capital of Guinea-Bissau, last year. "You want us to get sick with this African water?" This report was compiled from infor- mation collected by Associated Press bureaus around the world and was written by veteran African correspondent Larry Heinzerling, who has followed Cuba's buildup in that part of the world. LETTERS TO THE DAILY No problems in Bursley, say RAs, I Editorials which appear without a by-line represent a con- sensus opinion of the Daily's editorial board. All other editorials, as well as cartoons, are the opinions of the individuals who sub- mit them. " " " " " " G " 0 1':r b , A " 11 To The Daily: This letter is written in revulsion at the highly inaccurate and selective Daily coverage cen- tering around former Bursley Resident Advisor Eric Arnson. The Daily seems to have fabricated a totally ridiculous picture of what goes on in Bur- sley. Consistently, it has disregarded the issue of Mr. Ar- nson's job status to focus attacks on Tod Hanson, Building Director of Bursley-for whatever reasons. We would like to clear up some of the inaccuracies in the article and in the editorial. First, there is and has been no "crack down" on resident drug use in Bursley. The policy con- cerning drugs is as it always has been. No resident has had their lease terminated for use of drugs, nor have any arrests been made. We challenge the Daily to produce a single scrap of eviden- ce to support this hallucinatory conclusion. Second, the issue of student in- put into staff selection has never been an issue until this week's Daily article. This is another total fabrication, picked out of thin air in an underhanded at- tempt to discredit Mr. Hanson. There has been no change in level of resident input from last year to this year. The only change (which theDaily would have discovered had ittaken the minimal effort to read Bursley's staff selection procedures) is that the group interview, in which a number of R.A. candidates were interviewed for 10 minutes by a number of residents, has been abolished. This change was made in response to resident and staff input-RA. applicants from last year felt that the group inter- views were worse than useless and screened out potentially good staff people (who, after all, can demonstrate their abilities in 10 minutes?) The committee consisting of non-reapplying staff and volun- teering residents which will in- terview Resident Advisor ap- plicants individually, still exists, performing the exact same fun- ction as it did last year. Mr. Hanson has not "taken over much of the process him- self." Where does the Daily come up with this bullshit???? He has the exact same role as the Building Director did last year. Mr. Hanson has repeatedly asked for and utilized staff input in the formation of the selection procedures. He has asked all residents (twice, at this point) who riteresited to volunteer to asked to discuss expectations at orientation . At that time, they were much debated, and modified in several instances, so that every staff person could feel comfortable with them, and raise the objections. Mr. Hanson ac- tively sought, in fact, demanded, input into thse expectations. Every staff person knew that trafficking in drugs would result in termination. No one had any objections to this aspect of the. policy. Everyone knew what the score was. In such cases, the issue is not how much dope was involved, how much it cost, or who profited. The issue is violation of a con- tract freely entered into. The issue is not the morality or the legality of using dope in Ann Ar- bor. Many Bursley staff people enjoy using dope outside the building. The staff does not make judgements on other staff or on residents who smoke dope. We do not feel that an R.A. will be "isolated" from their residen- ts if they don't smoke dope with them; and certainly no damage will be done to relationships if R.A.s do not sell dope to their residents. There are plenty of R.A.s around whose floors Tznnnt S .Crna respect and like them,' without smoking dope with them. To say that violation of, a clearly stated expectation of job perfor- mance, with knowledge of the consequences involved, has "no real bearing on R.A. performan- ce" is patently absurd. We resent the Daily stating that dissent in Bursley is being stifled. We resent the implication that Mr. Hanson fired Mr. Arnson for, his "vocal" views 'about policy-that is just not true. The Daily implies that the rest of the staff is being trampled on by the Building Director. This is also un- true. Since coming to Bursley last year, Tod has restored en- thusiasm for being on staff. He has re-established all-staff meetings at which we can give him our opinions about policies. (at none of which, by the way, was resident input into staff selection ever discussed). The R.D. staff in Bursley has been given a greater voice than ever before in how the building is run, and both the R.D.s and, Tod regularly seek input from the rest of the staff. Tod has never to our knowledge abused his authority. He is con- sistently fair and reasonable, and brings an extremely high level of expertise and genuine caring to his job. He spends an enormous amount of extra time beyond his job requirements, talking to staff. and students. We are proud to work for and with him. We believe that the Daily owes the entire Bursley staff an apology for the imputations presented in its editorial. -William H. McGee III Susan McGee Karen Livingston Colleen Coughlin Judy Goodstein Diane M. Cupps Leroy Freelon, Jr. Colin A. Joseph Nora Katherine Foley Karen Carrington Laurie Scheich Mark O. Mathews Jim Allardyce Keith Kline Thomas E. Bowe Zeke A. Gikas All of the aore, -itht hee- ception of Susan Mc,'Iee. art, imenhers of the Resitiential .Staff at 1 iurslea Iil. Turning the .heat on By Bill Becker Margarite Mack has a five month old baby who East Huron Street. Says Lochrie, "When I moved has been sick with pneumonia for the past month. into my place in the fall, my radigtors had jam- According to Mack, it's not the cold outside that med in the 'on' position and it was unbearably has caused her baby to come down with hot.' pneumonia, but rather it's the cold inside her "Now, when I most need that heat, I don't have apartment. any," says Lochrie. "It was so cold in my room the Mack, who lives in the Woodland Hills Apar- other day that I could see my breath" tments in Ann Arbor, has been without heat off A tenant who is suffering from lack of heat, not and on for about a month. only has the right to withhold rent until the lan- dlord fixes the heat, but also has no obligation to "IT'S So bad not that I keep my little baby at pay rent for the days that they are without heat. my mother's house," explains Mack. "I just can't trust the heat to be working all the time. IF THE heat in your apartment fails, and the "I'd call the landlord and ask him to fix my heat landlord refuses to remedythe situation promptly, and after a two or three day delay, they'd finally you have the legal right to do the following:. Move come by and make some minor adjustment which into a hotel until your dwelling warms up again, would only last a week or so before it'broke down and charge the hotel bil1 to your landlord. (If you again." choose to do this, you must choose the most It wasn't until Margarite Mack called the Ann reasonably-priced hotel you can find which is Arbor Tenant's Union that she learned what rights close to the quality of your rental unit.) she has as a tenant. Exercising these rights can involve a com- plicated legal battle with your landlord-but still, MICHIGAN State law gives tenants the right to they are your rights. For advice in handling such a withhold their rent if their landlord violates the problem, contact your own attorney, an attorney premises in reasonable repair. at a free Legal Aid Society, or the Tenants Union. The Ann Arbor Housing Code states that every Your can reach Campus Legal Aid society, or the rental dwelling must have heating facilities which Tenants Union. You can reach Campus Legal Aid are capable of heating all habitable rooms to a at 763-9920, and you can reach the Tenants Union temperature of 70 degrees Farenheit when the at 761-1225.