Overhauling SGC MSA plan avoids convention hassles By The School and College Government Task Force 'N THE ALL-CAMPUS Elections on November 18, 19 and 20, students will be asked to vote on a package of amend- ments to the SGC Constitution which has been called the "Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) Plan." In addition to changing the name of SGC, the "MSA Plan" would signifi- cantly alter two aspects of ,the current SGC. First, the com- position would be changed from the present 17 at-large mem- bers to one representative from each School and College Gov- ernment and 18 at-large members. Second, an internal struc- ture would be created with a steering committee to facilitate the functioning of the government and a set of officers with specific job functions. Passage of the "MSA Plan" would result in several posi- tive changes in student governance on this campus. First, with the inclusion of representatives from each school or college, every student would be assured that the particular concerns, both academic and other, that are unique to his or her pro- gram would be represented. SGC has never had the infor- mation or contacts with the various academic units to be an effective advocate for students' academic needs. SECOND, THE TYPES OF ISSUES discussed and the quality of decision-making would undoubtably improve the current SGC. Students who have been actively involved in issues at the school, college, and departmental levels will bring a sense of realism and purpose to the workings of SGC. Their experience with the serious business of univer- sity governance will make them more likely to preserve a sense of perspective on issues. Their sense of responsibility towards their constituencies will make them less likely to have involved themselves in campus politics without the serious commitment needed. Third, the incorporation of school and college representa- tives in the central student government makes for an integrated student governance system. There will be a flow of informa- tion and opinions, not only between lower levels and all-cam- pus levels, but between students in different schools, colleges, and departments who will work together for the first time in the new all-campus forum. Students from different units will be able to concentrate their efforts in dealing with com- mon problems, and the all-campus government may for the first time lend effective aid, even financial support, to stu- dents acting on issues of concern to students in the school and colleges. FINALLY, THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE provided for in the "MSA Plan" would construct a much more stable organization than any SGC has ever known. The new steering committee would provide the efficiency needed for a large government but have all the necessary checks to insure that the real power resides with the whole group. The assignment of functions (e.g. programming, advocacy, communication, services, and budgetary support) to ongoing officers acid com- mittees would insure continuity of performance. Unlike past SGC's, certain vital aspects of an all-campus government would not be overlooked for years. There is another proposal on the ballot to initiate a con- stitutional convention. We believe that this proposal should be defeated for several reasons. IN JANUARY 1975, AND AGAIN in October 1975, the fourteen organized school and college governments passed resolutions supporting the general philosophy and proposed re- structuring of SGC presented in the Commission to Study Stu- dent Governance Report. After extensive discussion, representa- tives from the school and college governments decided that the only feasible route to implement the CSSG Report was to write specific amendments to the SGC Constitution. The task of writing these amendments consumed the entire sum- mer and early fall months of this year. Given the time, energy and thought devoted to this task by representatives of various schools and colleges, we feel it would be repeti- tive and unnecessary to repeat this work through a constitu- tional convention. ANOTHER FACTOR TO CONSIDER is the time ele- ment involved and the size of a constitutional convention. SGC has proposed a convention membership of 75 people. The time it would require for this unwieldy body to organize, re- search, discuss, and agree on specific amendments to a con- stitution (a 4 majority of convention delegates is required to approve any decision) is a prospect which promises to delay the crucial restructuring of SGC far into the future. The CSSG began its work in September 1973. It would be unlikely for a constitutional convention to implement its work until 1977. Four years is a long time to wait for positive change. If both propositions pass, the "MSA Plan" will go into effect in April of 1976. It would be illogical to revise the SGC structure in a constitutional convention before the "MSA Plan" is even tired and evaluated. FOR THESE AND OTHER REASONS, representatives from the school and college governments have joined together in the School and College Government Task Force to support the passage of these amendments, and oppose a constitutional convention. We feel that the impetus for a truly effective and credible central student government must come from those of us who work with students in all the various units. We urge you to vote yes on Ballot Question "B" - "The MSA Plan" - in the All-Campus Elections on November 18, 19 and 20; and to vote no on Ballot Question "C" - "The Constitutional Convention Plan." AMrfll i Mr w riw i _.._... - r (ise £ft4irn Pa4 Eighty-Six Years of Editorial Freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Social evolution spells New York's fall Friday, November 14, 1975 News Phone: 764-0552 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104 ( f J 4 4!0 By MARC BASSON FEDERAL AID TO New York City has recently become very much of an "in" topic for discussion. "If we don't save New York City, the whole na- tion's economy is going to col- lapse," people shout. Or, alter- natively, grumbles of "let them stew in their own juices" are audible, depending on who hap- pens to be arguing the subject. But New York City's present fiscal crisis raises a more sig- nificant question which has been almost completely overlooked in the furor surrounding the need for immediate Federal interven- tion. Is New York City. or for that matter any large metropo- lis, really viable in the frame- work of today's society? In 1952, science fiction writer Clifford Simak recapitulated the development of the urban con- cept in his novel "City." "THE CITY IS an anachron- ism. It has outlived its useful- ness. Hydroponics and the hel- icopter spelled its downfall. In the first instance, the city was a tribal place, an area where the tribe banded together for mutual protection. In later years, a wall was thrown around it for additional protec- tion. Then the wall finally dis- appeared but the city lived on because of the convenience which it offered trade and com- merce. It continued into mod- ern times because people were compelled to live close to their jobs and the jobs were in the city. "But today that is no longer true. One hundred miles today is a shorter distance than five miles back in 1930. There is no longer any need for them to live cooped up in a city." TWENTY - THREE YEARS later, this is still one of the best summaries of the develop- ment and future of the city ex- tant. Relatively well-to-do peo- ple are moving out of the city in droves to the pleasanter at- mosphere and lower taxes of the suburbs (from which they can always commute into the city if necessary) and the corpora- tions for which they work are gradually following suit. All this depletes the city's tax base. So, to obtain the same amount of money it was getting before the government is forced to raise taxes, at which point even more people and corporations join the exodus. The city is left to the poverty-stricken and the "un- desirable elements" and as the city increasingly resembles a gigantic slum, the few corpora- tions and prosperous people left take flight. The whole vicious cycle somehow reminds one of the worm Oubouros devouring his own tail. AS THE CITY'S population degenerates, the municipal gov- ernment attempts to provide more and more services in an effort to retain and control those citizens it has left. More police- men must be hired to cope with the rising crime rate. More fire- men must be found to cope with the ever-increasing number of dilapidated tenements that no one has ever bothered- to re- store. And, most importantly, money must somehow be funnel- ed into the pockets of the city's indigent residents so that they will patronize the local shops and keep' a semblance of a functioning economy alive - in other words, higher welfare pay- ments or immense construction projects reminiscent of the New Deal and the WPA. (New York City has frequent- ly been criticized for its high welfare payments and for the grandiose and generally useless building projects inspired by Robert Moses, but the city had no other choice but to keep priming its economy in the hope that it might suddenly catch into spontaneous motion. BUT HOW CAN the city fund all of this? Without a decent tax base, its only recourse is to sell bonds, in effect borrowing mon- ey from its bondholders at in- terest, and then city must sell more bonds to repay previous bondholders and raise addition- al operating money. The entire system is utterly impractical. Even Federal funding can be no more than a temporary pal- lative, for the Federal govern- ment, too, must sell bonds and collect, taxes to obtain money, and it simply cannot afford to support the governments and economies of almost every me- tropolis in the country. NEW YORK CITY is not alone in its plight, although it is prob- ably farther along the road to disintegration than any other city at the present time. Los Angeles was forced to raise pro- perty taxes ten percent in Au- S S "Even federal fund- ing can be no more than a temporary pal- lative, for the Federal government, too, must sell bonds and collect taxes to obtain money, and it simply cannot afford to support the governments and economies of almost every metropolis in the country." gust and will probably have to raise them again next year to keep a balanced budget. Phila- delphia suffered from a nine- teen million dollar budget de- ficit and expects to be in the, red about fifty million dollars by the end of this fiscal year. Detroit will maintain a balanced budget only if nonresident city income tax rates are doubled, which is highly unlikely, and inner city Detroit already ap- proaches much of New York for decrepitude, squalor and crime. Only a few cities like Houston and its oil remain safely afloat, supported by some natural re- source. Block associations and full page advertisements asking New Yorkers to "Support Your City" aren't going to help much either in the long run. SO WHERE DO we go from here? Just what do we do with what is left of our cities? For the time being, we are probab- ly going to have to continue our desperate efforts to prop up urban economies with pension funds, Federal guarantees and the like. There simply isn't enough time to find a workable solution before the collapse of New York City drags us all down. Meanwhile, however, we must seek an alternative. Perhaps the best idea would be to, abandon our urban sprawls completely and to walk away from them while we still can. This is cer- tainly possible, for it is just this same .trend towards abandoning the city that began the urban disintegration. With, modern transportation and communica- tion facilities, we need no long- er worry about concentrating in small areas for convenience and efficiency. The key to continued survival is decentralization. New York City's difficulties can only decrease the confi- dence of corporations in the de- sirability of an urban location. Fine, Let them move out. En- courage them to move out. SOONER OR LATE1, the cities are going to collapse, one after another, first slowly and infrequently, and then, as inves- tor confidence plummets and metropolitan citizens start run- ning scared, in one long crash of toppling fiscal structures. Our efforts now must be devoted to ensuring that the rest of our economy is not trapped in the rubble. Rather than mourning the demise of the urban concept, let us recognize it as a glorious but outmoded artifact of a by- gone era and attempt to de- velop a societal structure more suitable to modern times. Marc Basson is a member of The Daily Editorial Page staff. r. I' +Nr * { . . V" t '! 4I "' PIRGIM REPORTS Facts hidden by State health unit r :# U.N. resolutio cheap shot THE UNITED NATIONS' resolution equating Zionism with racism is a document ridden with hypocrisy and an insensitivity toward the deli- cate state of world affairs. The Third World nations under- standably find some difficulty sepa- rating Israel from the long shadow of American magnanimity, and so have widened the scope of their anti- imperialist venom to encompass the Jewish state. But this sentiment doesn't justify their support of so in- flammatory a resolution. The resolution would have been damaging enough had bad timing been its only drawback. But the anti- Zionist gesture was rooted almost en- tirely in fallacy. And those of its ele- ments even remotely based in truth could also be applied to most of the U.N. members who supported it, espe- cially the Soviet Union, one of its more enthusiastic backers. The Israeli citizenry will readily concede that theirs is, above all, a Jewish state. But it does not follow from this that Israel is a racist state. Non-Jew Israelis enjoy all the. con- stitutional rights and privileges of their Jewish countrymen; and if some form of de facto discrimina- tion does exist, it hardly could be any worse or more blatant than the anti- semitic sentiment in many Arab lands and other countries across the globe. TE'MAV'r qTAF.F FOR THE U.S.S.R. to stand at the head of the pack in chastising the Israelis is a classic exercise in hypocrisy. From them the shot at the state of Israel was especially cheap in light of their campaign of oppres- sion against Russian Jewry. The U. N. resolution solves nothing. It is an irresponsible piece of rhe- toric that could set off an endless ex- change of rebuffs and prevent pro- gress toward peace in the Middle East. The issues of the Middle East are complex ones. Every party in the con- troversy has played the role of both offender and offended more than once. There is no clear villain or vic- tim. TO REVERT TO LOWLY name-call- ing, as the Arabs, the Warsaw bloc, and their adherents have done in this week's resolution, is to deny or deflate whatever progress has been made in the Arab-Osraeli crisis since the state of Israel was founded 27 years and four wars ago. If the U.N. is to be preserved - if, indeed, it should be - it must not be allowed to degenerate into a forum of inflammatory rhetoric voiced strictly for its irritant value. The na- tions of the world know the power score well enough without the aid of the U.N. The world body's usefulness lies in Its potential as an agent of compromise in times of crisis and mercy in times of tragedy. Its mem- hprc' nations should make an effort By EDWARD PETRINI ]ROW OFTEN HAVE you heard public officials pro- claim how "open" they are? To favor openness in government is definitely vogue. Reality can be quite the op- posite, however, especially if potentially embarrassing infor- mation is concerned. Take the following incident, discovered during research for PIRGIM's recent report on ac- cess to Michigan government records. State Secrets. During the winter of 1972-73, a Detroit - based consumer organ- ization, Citizens for Better Care (CBC), made several re- quests for documents from the Michigan Department of Mental Health. Because it was concern- ed about the quality of care be- ing provided to former mental patients in community place- ment facilities. CBC asked for copies of official inspection re- ports and other documents re- lating to enforcement of mini- mum standards at facilities un- der contract with the state. According to Brian Clapham, CBC Project Coordinator, the reports revealed overcrowding, wholesale building, code viola- tions, and inadequate staff sup- ervision. In one home, the pa- tients were not even being fed on Sundays and holidays. MAYBE THAT'S WHY access to the official reports wasn't easy. Some of CBC's requests re- ceived no response at all from the department. Others were met with a terse rejection, the agency refusing to explain legal basis for denial. At one point. Dr. E. G. Yu- dashkin, the department's direc- tor at the time, wrote CBC that he was asking his staff "to stop wasting their time replying to these questions until we have some more definitive statement regarding (CBC's) purpose," apparently assuming that access to public information can be de- nied if the agency does not care for thegoals of the requestor. In fact, Yudashkin even turned CBC's requests around by demanding to know informa- BUT THE FAVORABLE set- tlement did not end CBC's prob- lems. Although forced to recognize CBC's right to access, the de- partment refused to provide cop- ies of reports on seven facili- ties until CBC paid the depart- ment $436.57. The department tried to charge CBC for the time it took for highly trained, highly paid administrators to review each report and make the deletions specified in the settlement agreement. CBC went back to court. It pointed out that the reports fol- lowed a form outline and that the lowest paid clerical assist- ant, following simple instruc- tions, could make the deletions. In March, 1974, the court order- ed copying costs at 10c per page, or $42.00 for the entire set of reports. This is just one of 16 case studies PIRGIM selected for its report on freedom of infor- mation problems in state and local government in Michigan. The next step is to take action to solve this problem which hinders the work of students, scholars, consumer advocates, journalists, and lawyers, among others. In order to assure that citizen access to information does not continue to be frustrated by of- ficial arrogance, administrative and judicial delays, exorbitant copying charges, and other bar- riers, PIRGIM has drafted a comprehensive new freedom of information law for Michigan. AMONG OTHER features, the proposed law will clarify what is available and require agen- cies to respond to citizen re- quests for information within specified time limits. It would not open all government files, but reasonable exceptions would be more clearly defined. And if information is denied, the agen- cy would have to explain its legal reasoning in writing. There would be better provision for administrative review and quiick court appeals. The bill is now being review- ed by many of those it is intend- ed to benefit, prior to introduc- tion by Rep Perry Bullard (D- Ann Arbor) in a few weeks. If' r r 4 I i Letters:* Zionists reactionary To The Daily: AN UNWARRANTED hysteria has appeared in this country since the passage in the UN General Assembly of a resolu- tion calling Zionism a racist ideology. Editorials, letters to the editor, commentators, and speakers at rallies are harshly condemning the UN and her- alding a new age of anti-Semi- tism. People in this country have long been blind to basic reali- ties about Zionism and the whole Middle East question. This resolution and the two oth- ers passed on the issue of Pal- estine are not vengeful actions on the part of the Third World. There is truth in them. A country in which any Jew, and only Jews, can immediate- ly become a citizen, while other peoples cannot, is racist. A country which denies its former inhabitants the right to return to their homes is racist. A country whose political ideology was described by its originator as a "colonial pro- gram" is racist. A COUNTRY WHICH legally and s o c i a lI y discriminates against Arabs and Oriental Jews is racist. Also - this is not an anti-Se- Therefore, I went to the SGC mitic resolution. I, a Jew, am meeting last Thursday night at not threatened by it. If anyone constituent's time and asked insists on equating Zionism Council if these rumors/facts with Judaism, it is the Zionists were true. Suddenly, some SOC themselves, not its opponents. members became bisibly upset and noticeably rude. Lisa Yellin This resolution should be a and Kim Keller of SOC immedi- place to begin admitting that ately questioned the appropri- something is rotten in the state ateness of such a comment (an of Israel and in the Middle East admission of guilt, perhaps?). as a whole. And it should be a No Council member admitted place to begin recognizing that that he/she benefitted from any settlement must include a SOC by getting course credit, return of the Palestinians to even though some SGC mem- their home.. bers and officials claim this is Ruth Gersh true. I think it is despicable that these gutless SOC members do Credit not have the "genitalia" to state that they have a self-serving To The Daily: purpose for being on SGC. As VARIOUS Student Government a former SGC member myself, Council (SGC) personnel have I knowthat I never got any- informed me that many Student thing but headaches, aggrava- Organizing Committee (SOC) tion, and a "sock" in the nose Party members are using their from serving on Council. I re- elected positions on Council as sent that it appears SOC mem- the primary work for obtaining bers have ulterior motives for credit for an urban planning their SGC service and are cov- course. This made me question ering up these facts from the the motives of many SOC mem- student body. I won't forget bers for being on SGC. I won- this when I vote in the SGC dered whether the SOC mem- elections (November 18 to 20.) bers were interested in the stu- Bob Matthews dent body or themselves. November 9 ..." .. y.U.. "., .. . 5.. ,......41S.... Contact your reps-