Mixing grades and sports:
The Michigan Daily-Saturday, April 17, 1982-Page 5
A delicate balance
(Continued from Page 1)
That is, until he was injured in the
inal spring practice at the end of his
freshman year. "The last thing on my
mind was geting hurt," he said.
IT WAS then that Paris realized an
athletic career can be cut short by the
turn of an ankle or the twist of a knee.
This revelation told him to "hit the
books," he said,, adding that some
athletes never understand how impor-
tint those books are.
"People are going to be people,"
Paris said, explaining that athletes, as
other students, don't always take ad-
vantage of their educational oppor-
tunities.
ACCORDING to basketball star
Dietz, the temptation of professional
athletics can distract students from a
different - and sometimes more
realistic - career goal in academics.
Dietz said she has friends on various
teams who believe, although they won't
publicly admit it, that they have a
chance at making it in the professional
ranks.
Women athletes, she said, rarely'
have that possibility hanging over their
heads because there are so few
professional sports for women. But
Dietz said this fact doesn't mean com-
bining college athletics and academics is
any easier for women than men.
"IT'S ALL UP to the individual," she
said. "The spectrum goes from
someone who is just playing sports and
just getting by (academically), to
people who would skip practice for an
exam."
For those athletes who are "just get-
ting by," the University's Department
of Intercollegiate Athletics provides ex-
tra support.
TUTORIAL services, financed by
donations from the M-Club, a group of
former University letter winners, are
offered to any athlete who is having
academic troubles and wants the help,
said George Hoey, an academic coun-
selor in the athletic department.
The tutoring service is free, and
works in conjuction with the counselors
of the school or college in which the
athlete is enrolled.
Freshmen football and basketball
players usually receive the most
tutorial help, because their sports
require two terms of participation, said
Hoey.
Schembechler said as long as he
"preaches the gospel" of academics
first, and football second, the depar-
tment is going to make sure the student
athletes get degrees. And one of those
assurances is an academic support
system.
"A GUY CAN'T play good football if
he's battling academics all the time,"
Schembechler said, in explaining the
need for the tutorial service.
Some athletes use the support
provided by the department and some
don't. Hoey estimated that of the 400 to
500 athletes at the University, 25 per-
cent receive tutorial assistance of some
sort.
And what all that support is building
toward is a Univerity of Michigan
degree. To get that degree and remain
eligible for intercollegiate participation
athletes must maintain a minimum
number of credit hours: 24 credit hours
after the first year; 51 after the second
year; 78 after the third year; and 105 af-
ter the fourth year (in an athlete
decides to remain in college five years
to get an extra year of eligibility.)
ATHLETES also must maintain a 2.0
University grade point average or face
review by an academic performance
committee.
Schembechler said that while there
was always an occasional easy course
for an athlete, the opposite occurs, too.
Some faculty members, he said, are
prejudiced against student athletes.
"Some people don't like football.
They don't like the notoriety of it, they
don't like the publicity of it. They're
jealous of it," Schembechler said.
BUT, BY all reports, Schembechler
manages to see that most of his athletes
get degrees.
All seniors on the 1980-81 football
team graduated, according to
Wolverine Recruiting Coordinator Fritz
Seyferth. That figure, of course, does
not take into account all the football
players who may never have reached
senior status. Those who dropped out
of the program, or the University,
never make it into the calculation.
In 1980, the University as a whole
graduated 46 percent of all freshper-
sons it enrolled in 1976.
Schembechler puts his graduation
rate at 82 percent.
Says University President Harold
Shapiro: "The greater concern to zme
is what students are on the way out, not
the way in."
This article is the
series.
last in a four-part
Profs aid weapon work, Air Force says
(Continued from Page 1)
one application of his work could be to
reduce radar visibility, he added that
he knows nothing about Stealth
technology and that he could not even
conceive of an "invisible" airplane
ever being built. "I'd hate to think that I
was contributing to that," Senior said.
Robert Buchal, Senior's program
manager at the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research, said he sees
almost no connection between Senior's
work and Stealth technology. "We're
looking at numerical information at a
very elementary level. Maybe 20 years
down the pike it might do some good,"
Buchal said.
"This is mathematics work. When
you're doing this, you're coming up
with theorems and the like. Half the
time, you don't get anything," he said.
"I wish it (could be used sooner), but
that doesn't happen in real life."
.SENIOR SAID in an interview earlier
this year that the Air Force often in-
cludes weapons applicability in its
statements on research just to please
Congress, which demands such infor-
mation to justify appropriations.
The Air F'orce also finances research
by the engineering college's dean,
James Duderstadt, to help the military
understand "to what degree different
kinds of (laser or particle) beams could
be used in space for weapons systems,"
Fujii said.
"One of these days the Air Force is
going to be assigned a mission in space
. . and we'll be able to minimize our
problems for that task" by having
already completed work on the fun-
damentals of lasers in space, Fujii said.
LAST WEEK, the General Accoun-
ting Office urged the Defense Depar-
tment to speed development of a "con-
stellation of laser battle stations in
space" to defend against a Soviet
ballistic missile attack.
The Air Force's objectives in spon-
soring Duderstadt's work is specifically
directed at the weapons objectives, said
Stan Dickinson, a spokesman for Fujii's
office. "It may turn out that the work
will contribute to a super com-
munications system (or other civilian
application) but we're not looking into
the future for such spin-offs," Dickin-
son said.
Duderstadt said, however, that his
work and that of Engineering Prof.
Rudi Ong is strictly in the fundamental
area of plasma physics. "There's no
particular weapons system that I'm
aware of," Duderstadt said.
DUDERSTADT said that his work
"could apply equally well" to many
other uses, including new energy sour-
ces and the cutting of metals with
lasers.
Referring to his work's military
potential, Duderstadt said, "My
suspicion is that people are very skep-
tical about whether (a laser weapon)
would ever work, but suppose the Soviet
Union is way ahead of us on that ...
the Air Force wants to keep uR.
"The Department of Defense wants
to make certain (such a system) will
work . . . that may be one of the reasons
why they sponsor research like this.
But we're never privy to that infor-
mation," Duderstadt said.
THE AIR FORCE said that other
University researchers contribute to
"rocket and air breathing propulsion
concepts," which would include
anything from missiles, to jet engines,
to satellites.
Engineering Profs. James Nicholls'
and James Driscoll's work on ignition,
combustion, and detonation, also will
be used to understand detonations in
unconfined fuel-air explosions, which
involves any fuel mixture that has the
potential to explode, Nicholls said.
Nicholls said his investigations into
the fundamentals of detonation "could
be used on many, many things, from
hazards to, possibly, weaponry." But
he defended his work as being like any
other work in the technical fields.
CRITICS OF defense research "don't
understand that if you come up with a
better computer program, you can
eventually use that for a weapon, too,"
Nicholls said.
In a report published yesterday,
Michigan Student Assembly researcher
Bret Eynon said that a classified
research proposal submitted and later
withdrawn by Senior was intended "to
examine.. . U.S.'cruise missiles to see
if they were detectable (by radar)."
Senior said in. an earlier interview.
that the proposal did involve the cruise,
missile, but he would not say what the
purpose of the project was. The
Classified Research Panel, which
reviews all classified proposals,
questioned the propriety of the project,
and Senior withdrew the proposal.
"TO ME THAT review panel served
its purpose," Senior said. "I was aware
it was close (to being in violation of
University policy)."
Eynon's report is a revised version of
one which he submitted to MSA in
January. The report was published in
a pamphlet prepared by the Committee
for Non-Violent Research entitled
"Going for Broke:' The University and
the Military-Industrial Complex."
The faculty Senate Assembly will
discuss the issue of Pentagon-spon-
sored research at the University on
Monday at its monthly meeting.
More than 150 faculty members
signed a statement this week that
called for more stringent review of
military research.
ROII
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1L 1LeR
LOVER
D
LAo-
^ i 1 .
"Cramming pays off"