al *1 OPINION PageA. Thursday, September 30, 1982 The Michigan Daily 6 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Sinclair Vol. XCIII, No. 19 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board New Black Student Union ON APRIL 1, 1970, the Black Action Movement called off its Univer- sity-wide class strike. For a full week before the radical group's decision, every classroom at the University was empty. All dormitory food services closed their doors. Most professors stayed home. The University shut down.% All because BAM, an arm of the Black Student Union, wanted it to hap- pen. BAM and the union made headlines across the nation. They were that important. Through the '70s, the .union declined, losing membership (and with it, clout) until the BSU folded in 1978. Minority activism was almost non-existent at the time, and what little protest did surface was a product of scattered and ineffective organizations. Now, after four years of absence, the Union is attempting a comeback, and no one should be happier than the University's black community. In March of 1970, the University Regents pledged to increase campus black enrollment to 10 percent by 1974. The University hasn't come close to x-. reaching that figure. Black University enrollment is currently at 4.9 percent, a situation that demands correction. The Black Student Union could aid in finding a solution to the enrollment problem. The union might also be essential in solving other problems campus blacks have been hit by recen- tly, including restrictive tuition, declining financial aid, and a lack of representation in many of the Univer- sity's governing boards, student and administrative. The union, if it does manage to get it- self rolling, will face some tough challenges on campus. The Univer- sity's minority population has a recent history of sorry apathy. In addition, the University's current financial situation may be an easy screen for keeping black enrollment low-fiscal emergency can be translated quickly into "we can't afford to enroll more blacks." Obviously, today's BSU will not ac- complish what the '60s union accom- plished. But they can try, and in the process, Ann Arbor's black community should welcome them with open arms. GOIWG TO SiWK T JUSF A!VOUJ-.OMME F CANVT SWIIMi! AK'E Ti1E SYMA'K 4tcJA( 11,'fR? o N~..LTr .T5r ,vvow TNIE M'AE ..W9A'A-...... WW AT~ ." /1. _ .EAGNOMIcs" , --- h r ... " - ." '?0.R~w. v A L f l 5r ",:/4? A computer's cockeyed look' at America s troubled suburbs 0 Good morning GOOD MORNING, this is your University. Today we're introducing a new policy on late drop/adds. We're under no obligation, of course, to offer you any explanation for our actions, but we thiought we'd give you a hint anyway. ; If your fall schedule is set, get up and enjoy the day. 'If you have to go to CRISP, go back to bed. From now on, we'll be fining you $10 for changes in either elections or modifiers. In other words, if you want to drop Russian 101 before conjugation ruins your life, or if you want to brave calculus, but only with the insurance of a pass/fail modifier, you'll just have to pay up. Now don't look so hurt. You know how often we have to bill you. Tuition, housing, overdue library books--these things add up. You think a first-class education grows on trees? And besides, you've been clogging up CRISP lines something awful. We had to do something to thin them out. Maybe the $10 fee will help. Sure, we've already got lots of ways to discourage you from going to CRISP . .. late. For example, if you drop a class after the three-week limit, we'll put a nice fat "W" on your transcripts. That way, one day when a graduate school or an employer asksyou why you were a failure at college, you'll remember us. Also, if your credit load goes below 12 because of a late drop, we will still charge partial tuition for the classes you lose. Hey, a deal is a deal. What's that? Why charge $10 on top of these other penalties? Smart question. We bet you graduated at the top of your high school class. Well, we do it because we must. We must save money. We must teach late droppers a lesson. We must keep students in line. We know that if you're in over your head in a class or if you can't juggle your classes and your job, our ten bucks won't stop you from CRISPing By Frank Viviano NORTHAMPTON, Mass. - Until recen- tly, the people of Northampton felt pretty smug about their apparent good fortune. In the midst of a recession that brought hard times to so many other New England towns, this Connecticut Valley community of 30,000 was experiencing a modest boom. Businesses were flourishing in its freshly rehabilitated Victorian downtown. Young professionals were relocating here from elsewhere in the region. The town's largest industrial employer was dramatically expan- ding its staff and facilities. THEN, THIS summer, a grim report arrived from the Rand Corporation. On the strength of a highly publicized $200,000 study commissioned in 1979 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the influential Santa Monica, Calif., think tank had concluded that Nor- thampton faced serious social and economic problems. In fact, it was one of America's most "troubled suburbs." If Northamptonites were surprised at this unexpected diagnosis, they were not alone. Of more than 6,000 U.S. communities studied by Rand, the list of the nation's troubled also in- cluded Shaker Heights, Ohio, long considered the most exclusive district of greater Cleveland; Evanston, the refined lakefront suburb on Chicago's north side; Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard and M.I.T.; Newton, Mass., which boasts that state's highest property values, and Berkeley, Calif., the sunny student utopia on San Francisco Bay. THE SOCIAL and economic reasons cited by the think tank for such dubious distinction varied from place to place. In Northampton's case, Rand pointed out that the town ranked among the rock bottom 50 U.S. communities in five critical areas: It was ridden with an aging housing stock and a disproportionate number of elderly citizens; there was far too little new construction; population growth was a problem, and per capita income was dangerously low. Whatever the self-satisfaction of these townsfolk, they ought to have been worried. The Rand data proved it. Or did they? "It sure bothered the hell out of me at fir- st," says Northampton mayor David Musan- te. "Then I took a closer look at their statistics." WHERE RAND found a disturbingly aged housing stock, for instance, the mayor saw one of Northampton's most valuable assets. "Sure we have old houses here-after all, we were founded in 1654," he said. "And anyone who owns a colonial house in Massachusetts will tell you that it doesn't reflect poverty." As for low per capita income, the Northam- pton Daily Hampshire Gazette observed the obvious in an editorial devoted to the study: The town serves thousands of students from some of the nation's most expensive in- stitutions. Smith College, alma mater of Nan- cy Reagan and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, is located here. Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges are close by. Affluent by any standards, most of these young people statistically earn no income at all. Finally, added Gazette editor Edward Shanahan: "We take it as a positive sign that there is a large elderly population here. People like this community and don't feel obliged to leave. . . This is a hometown with all that implies." IT WOULD be comforting to conclude that the Northampton confusion was the excep- tion, a single oversight in an otherwise ac- curate picture of deteriorating U.S. com- munities. But the fact is that it is no worse than myriad other examples in the Rand study. The per capita income fallacy applied to this Massachusetts college town applies equally to Cambridge, Berkeley, and Evan- ston, as well as to several more campus communities which turned up on the troubled list. The mayor of Newton, Theodore Mann, not only shares David Musante's view that old buildings are far from a liability in an era of gentrification; he also has a ready ex- planation for the fact, cited by Rand, that the average educational level of his constituents did not rise appreciably over a 10-year period. "Newton's (average) was already one of the highest in the country, so its percentage in- crease could not be that great," said Mann. SURELY THE hazards of research based entirely on computer profiles, rather than ac- tual community contact, played a part in Rand's conclusions. Officials in several of the listed towns said that, as far as they knew, Rand experts neither made field visits to their areas nor called to verify data. "As a study of any individual place, such as Northampton, the report is clearly inadequate," commented Rand researcher Judith Fernandez, who co-authored the study. "Our intention was to look at as many places as possible, and you can't go everywhere in person. We had to depend on patterns of data instead. It is certainly possible that when you look at them in depth, some of these com- munities should not be on our list." HUD spokeswoman JackieCopnn said that the federal government currently "has no plans to use the study for any specific pur- pose, and perhaps never will. It has gone into our research bank; if at some time we think we might need the data, we can pull it out." BUT USED or not, the Rand report raises some disturbing questions beyond the ex- . cessive dependence on computers. For hidden in its welter of statistics lie bleak assumptions about what is healthy-and what is not-in American community development. Shaker Heights, Berkeley, Evanston, and dozens of other places on the Rand list ap- peared there, in part, because of increases in the percentage of black or Hispanic residents. "Problem populations," Rand called them. The suggestion, in sum, is clear: The ideal suburb is only brand new, well-heeled and unencumbered by the elderly. It is also white. There is no disputing that some American suburbs are in deep trouble-or even that Northampton, despite its comforts, has real problems of its own. But the greater danger facing U.S. society may be a conception of the ideal commurity which leaves so little room. for diversity. Viviano wrote this article for Pacific- News Service. late. It will just make life al ficult. But then again, we would be easy. You're welcome. little more dif- never said it 1 ,, 1 / ,i / , . .; i . r +'f !- t L. w --- ".! _c}. . 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