-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. _ 4 _- .. _ - i - ... _ , l -.. . -- i1,' ' 5._ i! lill i I -- _ _ tf i t ', t, t // _ __ ' i I ' /i 4' y-, F1' A 6 d / I !/ (f ..,. V J 0 U 7-7 CEtf 1i- it' I / /1 I' c r