-Friday, October 7, 1977-The Michigan Doily
i
.
Lirbirgan
Eighty.;Eight Years of Editorial Freedom
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109
VIII, No. 26 News Phone: 764-0552
E
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
l
TENANTS' CORNER
The
'lounge
people'
Vol. LXXX
The need to investigate
CIA activity on campus
T GOES WITHOUT SAYING that
the University is one of the slow-
st moving creatures ever to inhabit
he earth. The Housing Office's
cramble for freshperson dorm'
pace every September not-
ithstanding, it is clear that the ad-
iinistration's business takes a long
me to be resolved.
But a matter has come before it
iat should be resolved immediately
- not because the problem is an
mnergency, but because delay of a
esolution will probably thrust it un-
er a mound of bureaucracy, never
> be pulled out and considered
gain.
Last month, President Fleming
eceived a letter from a Washington
roup that is investigating domestic
pying by the CIA. The group, which
alls its effort the Campaign to Stop
-overnment Spying and is part of
he reputable Center- for National
ecurity Studies, informed Fleming
hat Michigan is one of many univer-
ities suspected of harboring secret
IA-affiliated scientific and political
esearch.
The warning grew out of a Senate
ommittee's study which reported
IA activity on over 100 U.S. cam-
uses. The activity usually involves
ecruitment of students for CIA
ork or the sponsorship and sub-
idization of research for the CIA -
11 of which might or might not be
cceptable, except that it's kept
ecret. In some cases, even top uni-
versity officials haven't known
about it.
The Senate committee did not
reveal which campuses were in-
volved, but it is a fair bet that one of
them was our own. In any event, the
Campaign is asking the University
community, and the administration
in particular, to consider the matter.
But the administration has been
slow to respond, as have student
leaders on campus. Fleming said
last week that he would raise the
matter with deans and with the fac-
ulty's Senate Advisory Committee
on University Affairs (SACUA), but
as of this week several deans and
SACUA officials said they hadn't
hea d from Fleming. Michigan Stu-
derit Assembly president Scott
Kellman, the student leader who
could generate concern for the Cam-
paign's request, said he wasn't in-
terested.
The Campaign suggests adoption
of guidelines set by Harvard Univer-
sity with regard to the CIA activity.
They are not particularly stringent;
in essence, they merely call for
openness - if the CIA is contracting
for work on a campus or recruiting
students or faculty, let it say so.
A stand on the matter might be
deferred until it is clear whether our
own campus is playing' host to such
activity. But let's find out, and con-
sider the matter with haste and con-
cern.
By STEPHEN HERSH
They're called the "lounge people."
They are the freshpersons whom the University hasn't been able
to place in regular dormitory rooms, because of the housing shortage.
They now live in dorm lounges converted into makeshift bedrooms -
and they were informed recently that they will be staying there, four
to a lounge, for the rest of the academic year.
FOR MOST OF THEM, the lounges are the last stop after weeks of
moving around from place to place on the temporary housing circuit.
Pre-architecture student and "lounge person" Tracy Moir says that
"it seems like I moved once a week. I've lived in three temporary
rooms. First, I was in with an RA (a dorm resident advisor). And
I've lived in two lounges.
"It really has been an inconvenience" she says. "It was a hassle
because I had to skip classes to move. And it was also a lot of hassle
because I couldn't bring up all my stuff from home to school. During
the summer I found out I was going to be in temporary housing. I kept
calling them all summer for more information, and they just told me I
was in temporary, and they were very vague about what that was."
Finally, the temporary accommodations were reclassified as
permanent. "A week or two ago they told us it was permanent for the
rest of the year," she recalls. "When they told us that I was glad. I was
so sick of moving around that I was glad to finally get a place to stay."
THE LOUNGE WHICH MOIR SHARES with her three roommates
is in Markley Hall's Little wing. Their room fairly bustles with ac-
tivity. On a typical weekday night earlier this week, Moir was typing
an essay at her desk, as one of her roommates sat talking with a friend
on the shiny yellow plastic couch which is the suite's focal point, while
at the far end of the room another roommate was listening to disco
music blaring from a stereo.
Moir feels that four people are too many to be living, studying, and
relaxing together in a single room. "It is kind of hard to get homework
done,,because there are so many people. And they put only two desks
in each room, which is a problem when you've got four people."
What does Moir think should be done to alleviate the dorm housing
shortage? "I would say they should either build more dorms or accept
fewer people in University housing," she says. "But housing is
horrible all over the city, and if they accept fewer people in dorms, it's
just throwing them into the Ann Arbor housing market."
ONE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TO ENTER the lounge suite on
Markley's Van Tyne wing to learn that the "lounge people" there are
bitter about the problems the University's housing shortage has
caused them. Taped to the outside of their door is a cartoon, clipped
from The Daily a few weeks ago, depicting an official telling an
audience of students that "The University may not have enough funds
to provide adequate housing, but I can guarantee we will keep accep-
ting new students until we do."
Kim Amodei, one of the people living in the Van Tyne lounge,
remembers that she was "near tears" when she learned that her
lounge accommodations were made permanent. When she got the
news, she and her lounge-mates had been uncomfortable in their suite
for days.. "We were living out of boxes," she says. "We couldn't un-
pack."
She originally came to Markley when the Housing Office assigned
her to a double room there - but when she arrived at the room, she
found that there were already two people living there. She went back
to the Housing Office to complain. "It was kind of upsetting," she
complains. "I said, 'I have a lease, I signed it, and now what am I sup-
posed to do with it?' They make you sign leases and then they take
them back."
Amodei was then assigned to the lounge where she now resides.
SUE CAMARENA, ONE OF AMODEI'S three roommates, recalls
that the most irritating thing about living for weeks in temporary ac-
commodations was her envy of all the other students who were able to
move in and settle down before classes started. "Everybody was put-
ting stuff in their rooms, making them up," she says. "And our stuff
was at home."
The lounge people are among the students hardest hit by the short-
age of university housing, a shortage which grows more acute with
each passing year. This season's temporary housing crunch is a
repeat of what happened first in 1969 and again in 1973, when the
University was forced to find short-term accommodations for students
waitipg for regular dorm rooms to open up. This year is the first time
the University has been forced to make some of those temporary quar-
ters permanent.
In the winter of 1975, the University instituted the "dorm lottery,"
a system designed to allocate scarce dorm rooms among upper-class
students who were demanding more rooms than were available.
AND THERE IS NO REAL CAUSE to hope the situation will im-
prove as long as the University takes no action to expand the supply of
student housing. That is the message conveyed by the University's of-
ficial publication, the University Record. Last Monday's Record says:
"Will this year's housing crisis stage a repeat performance next
year? (Acting director of housing Robert Hughes) says it well might.
In fact, he adds, it could be worse. 'Since 1968, we have projected the
need for additional housing. Even with a decline in enrollment, I thinlt
there would still be more demand than we are able to accom-
modate.'"
For the past ten years, the University has been increasing its
enrollment at an average rate of nearly 500 students per year. But no
new dormitories have been built since 1968. The most recent construc-
tion of student housing took place five years ago, when the University
added some units to the Northwood married student housing complex.
TRADITIONALLY, THE UNIVERSITY has housed a full 33 per
cent of its student body. But the percentage is on the decline - it is
now down to 29 per cent.
There is a clear need for more student housing. The University's
housing shortage causes two-fold problems: it hurts those students
who are forced to enter the maze of temporary housing, and it forces
more students into Ann Arbor's private rental housing market. The
private market is already crowded, and as a result,.rents are high,
maintenance is poor, and places to rent are scarce.
University officials often argue that the construction of more
student housing is impossible, because if enrollment declines after
some new dorms are built, the University will be stuck with a lot of
unoccupied space. But at other colleges across the country, the
problem of fluctuating enrollment has been avoided by the construc-
tion of student apartments instead of dormitories. When enrollment at
those colleges drops, the apartments are leased to non-students living
in the community, at a profit to the colleges.
The Universityis in large part responsible for the size of Ann Ar-
bor's population. It ought to take part in the task of seeing to it that the
community have enough adequate housing.
"
Stephen Hersh is community education director of the MSA
Housing Law Reform Project.
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DAILY DRAWING BY KARL SCHWEIKART
Human rights and The Bomb
~-," -
I.
.
' . +TflE MILWAUKEE 1OURN
DIST FE NEWSPAPER SYNDICATE, 197
'Relax! We keep a tight rein on these things from
the very beginning!'
NAL
f i t rti
a
EDITORIAL STAFF
ANNIARIE LIPINSKI JIM TOBIN
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NIGHT EDITORS: Paul Campbell, Ernie Dunbar, Henry Engel-
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BrianrMiller, Dave Renbarger, Errol Shifman and Jamie
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By SIDNEY LENS
Human rights, Panama Canal rights, the
right of due process for beleaguered Bert
Lance - more than any other recent presi-
dent, Jimmy Carter has spoken of his concern
for the people's rights.
But like his recent predecessors, there is
one right bestowed on President Carter by a
combination of technology and the imperial
presidency that cancels out all the constitu-
tionalguarantees of every American citizen.
That is the unchecked power to press a button
that would initiate a nuclear war and cause
the deaths of hundreds of millions of people
around the world - including one-half of
America's population.
THE CONSTITUTION, of course,
prohibits the President from initiating any
war, nuclear or otherwise, vesting that right
exclusively in the Congress, but Congress has
abdicated its nuclear responsibility.
It has given a single person power over life
and death - under the rationale that it take
sonly 30 minutes for a missile with nuclear
warheads to reach American soil from the
Soviet Union, and even less if the missile is
Under the program called Crisis Reloca-
tion (CR), the Pentagon's Defense Civil Pre-
paredness Agency says it will have days and
probably weeks while diplomats negotiate re-
location of tens of millions of Americans. CR
does not explain, however, wvhy Congress
can't be assembled during those days or
weeks for a decade and vote, or why a popular
referendum can't be conducted.
The answer probably is that if Congress or
the people voted against a nuclear war the
American diplomats would have no "bargain-
ing chips" in their negotiations with the
Russians. The Soviets, it is said, would make
no concessions if the nuclear threat were re-
moved. Thus, too, the right of survival has
been replaced by the right to be a "bar-
gaining chip."
THE U.S. has enough missiles to destroy
the Soviet Union; they have enough to destroy
us - no matter who strikes first - and since
each knows that nuclear war, in General
Douglas MacArthur's phrase, is "double-sui-
cide," neither superpower will ever start one.
The best proof is that there hasn't been any
nuclear engagement since August 9,1945.
Thorn r a ntmh.r f t Afir~tltiaa witih this
Enlargement of the concept of "executive
power" began before the nuclear age, when
President Roosevelt told Congress on Sep-
tember 7, 1942, that if Congress refused to
amend the Emergency Price Control Act he
would do so on his own. "The President," he
said, "has the powers, under the Constitution
and under congressional acts, to take meas-
ures to avert a disaster that would interfere
with the winning of the war."
After the 1962 missile crisis, Kennedy
stated that had nuclear war broken out, "even
the fruits of victory would have been ashes in
our mouths." All that the U.S. had been able
to build in three centuries, he said, would
have been destroyed within 18 hours.
THE RESULT has been an erosion of a
basic American principle, accountability -
the right of a citizen to be protected from ar-
bitrary acts by a tyrant or an hysteric
through an elaborate system of checks and
balances.
At least insofar as the "right to life" is
concerned that principle has been eviscera-
ted. This point was brought home forcefully a
few years ago when President Nixon was on