"I
r
:Page 4
S -
OPINION
Wednesday, April 14, 1982-
The Michigan Daily
Edited and managed by students a.t The University of Michigan
Cutting the University budget:
/ol. XCII, No. 154
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, M1 48109
Who will win,
who will lose
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
, environmentIn
M ANY OF THE classic legislative
battles won during the 1970s in
the name of .the environment are now
being challenged by a hasty Reagan
..administration.
The administration currently is
seeking to weaken two of the most im-
portant environmental laws on the
books, and it is using an ailing
economy as its ally.
Regulations cost industry money. It
is much cheaper for companies to spew
dangerous acids and chemicals into
the air and water than it is for them to
help keep the environment clean.
The administration has been quick
to heed complaints from its friends in
industry concerning. inconvenient
regulations. The Environmental
Protection Agency now wants to give
industries more time to install the
"best available technology" to halt the
dumping of pollutants into the nation's
watet supplies.
In addition, the EPA has drafted
legislation that would ease rules for the
cleanup of contaminated water and ex-
tend industrial permits for discharging
waste into rivers from five years to ten
years.
Well, at least we still have clean air,
,-ou say. Perhaps not if the EPA and
General Motors have their way. GM
,nsists that changes in the Federal
Clean Air Act could lower costs on
autos with minimal effects on air
quality, and the EPA agrees. En-
vironmentalists have disputed these
claims, however, saying relaxed stan-
dards will greatly increase the nation's
air pollution and acid rain levels.
Clean air and water do cost money
and in these hard economic times they
often become the first victims of "cost
saving measures." Just as there are
costs inherent in environmental
regulations, however, there are costs
in scrapping standards to save money.
Polluted air and water destroy the en-
vironment and plague humans with
disease. These are the hidden costs of
unchecked pollution.
- Industrial progress and a clean en-
vironment can coexist in this country.
Regulation that hampers industry with.
little positive results for the environ-
ment deserves to be scrapped. But
weakening regulations merely to im-
prove economic quantity would
needlessly sacrifice environmental
quality.
Losing our clean air and water con-
trols after waging such a long fight to
have them would be a step backward.
The administration should halt its
drive to relax valuable environmental
regulations before too much ground is,
lost.
By Bret Eynon
The geography department is gone. The
schools of art, natural resources, education and
other University programs currently are on the
chopping block. Rumors fly that the School of?
Social Work and the Residential College may
be the next targets for the cutting process
known as "selective discontinuance."
If you're like many students, you probably
believe that these programs are being whittled
away because of declining state:appropriations
to higher education. ' You may think these cuts
are an unfortunate, but necessary, move to
save the University.
DECLINING STATE appropriations,
however, are merely a short-term problem.
They are not the immediate impetus for the
program-cutting strategy. Why are programs
being reduced and discontinued? It actually is
part of an administrative effort to drastically
reshape the University.
The current process of reduction and discon-
tinuance is a process of budget shifting, not
budget cutting. Cuts in schools such as natural
resources will not reduce the University's
overall budget. The dollars taken from natural
resources will be reallocated to another "high
priority" campus unit. With Vice President for
Academic Affairs Billy Frye's five-year plan,
some $20 million will be shifted in this
manner over the next five years.
So far, most of the argument over the five-
year plan has centered on which programs will
be cut. But an equally important question
exists: Where will the funds taken from art,
education, and other programs be put? And
what will this reallocation mean for the future
of the University?
ONE POSSIBLE beneficiary of the coming
cuts is the proposed Michigan Research Cor-
poration, a University-owned subsidiary which
will serve as a bridge, between the University
and private industry. MRC will subsidize
faculty entrepreneurs whose research has high
commercial potential, providing them with
laboratory space, legal and business services,
and high salaries. In the long-run, products
developed by MRC may benefit the entire
University through licensing agreements and
patent royalties. In the short-run, however, the
University must invest $4 million to $6 million
to get MRC off the ground.
Other units will likely benefit from the Un-
versity's restructuring program. The
engineering college, which has great potential
for attracting grants from private industry and
the military, wants to move to North Campus.
Such a move will require large sums of
money-large sums that the five-year plan un-
doubtedly will free up. The new Center for
Robotics and Integrated Manufacturing will
need roughly half a million in University funds
over the next two years. And the proposed Ann
Arbor township research park, designed to
house the Industrial Technology Institute, will
depend upon University financial support to get
its ball rolling.
The pattern is clear. Administrators have
chosen to market the University's, most attrac-
tive asset - technological expertise. This
strategy might bring in revenues, but not until
sometime in the late 1980s. The University
needs substantial amounts of "venture
capital" to get things started now, so ad-
ministrators are hacking up programs with lit-
tle or no potential for attracting military or in-
dustrial sponsors.
SUPPOSEDLY, profits from programs like
MRC or CRIM will be plowed back into the
University - a kind of academic "trickle-
down" theory. But the results of such an effort
to "Reaganize" the University are not pleasant
to contemplate. The University's new focus
may mean a narrower range of classes will be
offered. Students may find themselves in large
classes with professors more interested in
research than in teaching. In other words,
students will receive a shabbier education.
Other groups may also be hurt. Many bright
junior faculty members have already gotten
the message to look elsewhere for jobs. And as
tenure prospects dwindle, so do the prospects
of meeting affirmative action goals. In the
coming years we can expect the faculty to grow
smaller, older, whiter, and more predominan-
tly male.
Perhapsthe real losers of the University's
redirection will be the people of the state.
Michigan taxpayers, who have built the
University, may see their public resource tur-
ned over to the interests of private industry. To
fully understand the impact of this loss, it is
necessary to consider the history of the
University and the true social purpose of any
public institution of higher education.
THE UNIVERSITY always has found itself
caught between two contrasting definitions. On
one hand, it is a public school charged with
bringing its benefits to the people of Michigan.
On the other hand, it has always had a strong
research component, and has been considei'd
an elite school-the Harvard of the Midwest,
It used to seem that these two components
could complement each other The benefits of
both University teaching and reseach have
been widely shared. In recent years, the
University has opened its doors to several new
groups. New programs in labor relations, en
vironmental advocacy, black culture, and
women's studies have flowered as these groups
took their place on campus.
Now, however, the fruits of this development
are being tossed aside. Programs currently
are being evaluated according to the con-
stituency they serve. Does that constituency
have money? Power? If not, tile program in-
volved is expendable. Creative, innovative ex-
change, which holds the best hope for finding
solutions to humanity's problems, is bein
eliminated systematically in favor of
vocational training and military-industrial
fund-shopping.
The damage being done may be irrevocable.
The opportunity to make the University of
Michigan a rich' educational community
representing the diverse interests of the state's
citizens is being carelessly thrown away. Who
knows when, or if; such an opportunity will
come again?
Eynon is a community historian and
Michigan Stulent Assembly investigator.
Loan cuts on vacation,
RESIDENT Reagan interrupted
his' Caribbean vacation this
weekend to deliver a radio address on
his proposed student loan cuts. The
heat finally got to the president-not
the warm temperatures of the tropics,
but the criticism from Congress and
the nation on his rash policies toward
students.
Reagan lashed back at his critics,
saying they had deliberately misled
students into believing the government
was unjustly snatching away loans.
Unfair, the president charged. As un-
fair, as the horror stories unleashed
that his cuts will force millions of
students to drop out of college.
His proposals will cut back some on
student loans, the. president admitted,
but their impact will be limited, since
private lenders are now offering a
record volume of loans.
The president seems to be protesting
too much. No amount of explanation
can deny the facts; students will be
severely affected if the president's ef-
forts to cut loans succeed.
What Reagan neglects to stress are
the unpleasant facts. Under his.
proposals, graduate students would be
eliminated from the guaranteed
student loan program altogether.
Eligibility for all grants would be
tightened. Direct loans for lower in-
come students, such as Pell grants,
would no longer be given solely on
demonstrated need. Work-study funds
would be slashed by a third.
If these proposals pass through
Congress, thousands of students un-
deniably may be hurt. Legislators
estimate that at least 800,000 students
would lose their Pell grants. Although
not all of those affected would have to
leave school, as the president correctly
stated, a substantial portion would be
forced out or would find .it impossible
to obtain desired educational oppor-
tunities.
The opposition to student loan cuts,
however, obviously has built a strong
enough base to reach the president's
ear. And, fortunately, Congress is not
likely to pass any of the proposed cuts
for the next fiscal year. Perhaps this
concerted pressure will be enough to
convince Reagan to put his student
loan proposals on a permanent
vacation-by giving them up for good.
Weasel,
By R obert Lence
NEY, W +tF IOU IA
MY O eNTATION (2
YEAR. L THU-44T-
YW L40KCP FAWWAR.
i tT NAR 'tn
SEWEVe 7W WAS
FUR YEARS Ago!
YfAg( irSURF-
WErtr FAST,
Tt*t IT.
SqFwA" 'yowu'( N K.
OF CO"C(,E6.?
soRfA W"T T te1)a.6 4 t Mm5ft
ANA TRICP NOT ToFMAK~E WAVES.
WHEN VERONE WENT 1 CLASS, X.
WENT lb .As5! WHNJ EVERYONE WEN(T
To THE BAR, L WENT1Tme vimJRE
"T1INKLM6THAN IZtHolz).
I°
-t
iaW, HorU
r ANLAD CD 20
CETA RUSEIN MF
ALL
SETFOR
WHAT?
"Ic
WHO KNOWS?
TRYINb Nor
WAVES/
0,
LETTERS TO THE DAILY:
Capitalist press unfairly slams rally
.4
*
-.4
.4
TA the Daily:
March 20 marks an important
victory: the day the Nazis were
run out of Ann Arbor. Some 2,000
workers, students, minorities,
heavily supported by area labor
unions responded to the call for
action of the Spartacist League-
initiated Committee to Stop the
Nazis on March 20. But for those
who did not want to see the Nazis
stopped, March 20 was a
shameful defeat. So The
Michigan Daily is howling about
"violence." In the editorial titled,
"Placing the Blame", (Daily,
March 23) you blame not the Nazi
stormtroopers who came with
their brownshirts and swastikas
to terrorize decent citizens, but
the militant anti-Nazi demon-
§trators who organized to stop
them.
"On Saturday they caused
trouble," editorializes the
Michigan Daily, siding with the
Nazis against their enemies. The
1ubiquitous "they" refers here to
"revolutionary groups." For the
Daily "nothing could be more
reproachable-than the methods of
these groups." Stopping the
Nazis seems to be just about the
worst thing the Daily editors can
imagine, calling "the whole
scene (on March 20) a tremen-
dous spectacle unmatched in
action of the crowd which needed
no 'manipulation' to stop the
hated Nazis.
Unlike the Daily, which weeps
over the "constitutional rights".
of the "innocent" Nazis, the 2,000
Ann Arbor residents who stopped
them know what they are. The
survivors of Hitler's death camps
know that "free speech" is not
the issue with these terrorists
who are looking for an
"American Hitler to gas the
Niggers and Kikes." And Cynthia
Steele, the black Michigan
woman who had her hand blown
off by the Klan knows that the
genocidal terrorists are not just a/
threat in the future and the dim
past. A Nazi lynch mob is not a
debating society.
Why has The Michigan Daily so
obviously lined up with the Nazis
against those who fight them?
Because they are smarting from
the political defeat they suffered
along with the Nazis on March 20,
when the Mayor's diversionary
"Let's ignore the Nazis" rally
flopped. Despite the Daily's in-
cessant campaign of violence-
baiting the Committee rally in an
effort to keep away demon-
strators, hundreds of University
of Michigan students made the
clear decision to stop the Nazis,
not ignore them.
leaflets!'
But more than mere hypocrisy
is involved in blaming the left for
the violence of the fascists
lalthough there's plenty of
hypocrisy). The Michigan Daily
is a crude collegiate reflection of
the big-time capitalist press. After
the Greensboro massacre in
which the Ku Klux Klan/Nazis
gunned down anti-fascist demon-
strators in, broad daylight The
New York Times called it a
,'shootout" between two equally
violent groups. The Daily wants
to go the Times one better por-
traying the communists as more
violent than the Nazis. Behind
this journalistic campaign of
witchhunting the left and
covering up for the Nazis is the
ominous fact that the fascists in
all of their forms are becoming
more acceptable to an in-
creasingly desperate capitalistic
class. The racist union-busting
scum are seen as the future-shock
troops needed to save decaying
capitalism in crisis.ay
The Daily was particularlm
irritated by the SYL's "banne
(which) flew at the City Hall rally
proclaiming an end to the Reagan
war drive." For the Daily such a
program. is "completely out of
place in protesting a Nazi
threat." But in fact the alarming
and increasing growth of, the
fascist groups is taking place in
the fringes of the anti-Soviet war
drive. It is the Cold War an
racist policies of both capital
parties that have given the green
light to the KKK/Nazis and they
are, helped out considerably by
the capitalist press. It will take
the SYL program of mass
labor/black mobilization to stop
them. That's what stopped the
fascists here-not the courts,
police or the bleating of liberal.
sheep.--Michelle Lubke
Spartacus Youth Leag
April 12
I '.,
/i
it'K 1
Pales tin ian struggle
I
To the Daily:
In a story (Daily, March 28)
you quoted some of my statemen-
ts out of context. What I actually
said was that the Palestinians
hope to establish a secular
Victims of Zionism in refugee
camps or lender a most brutal
Israeli military occupation, they
are struggling for the right to
return to their homeland,
Palestine, and live there with
Jes in ei nria .ht