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OPINION
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The Michigan Daily
Page 4
Sunday, February 13, 1983
Old foes, new
friends, new
conference
THEY SEEMED like running mates rather
than old political foes as they spoke before
a packed Rackham Auditorium Thursday.
Former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy
Carter were in fine form as co-chairmen of the
first Domestic Policy Association conference
centered at Ford's presidential library on Nor-
th Campus this week.
to help with the repairs, but the church wasn't
interested. The city council will soon decide
whether Hill House should become a registered
historical landmark, but it's probably too late
to save the Ark.
Church officials say the decision to lease the
building to a paying tenant is the result of a
year-long study. The church can no longer af-
ford to maintain the building, and were once
considering demolishing it to make room for a
parking lot.
David and Linda Siglin, the Ark's managers,
will try to rent the house which is both their
home and their business. The future looks
bleak, they say. If the Ark sails again, it will
probably drift to a new location and have to
become a profit-making operation.
It may be a sad end to an era.
Divest or invest?'
THE UNIVERSITY is slowly, but surely
setting the stage for a confrontation with
the state over its investment policies in South
Africa.
Two weeks ago, Regent Thomas Roach
declared the University is not subservient to
the state legislature's requirement that it
divest from all companies operating in South
Africa. And this past week, a faculty commit-
tee charged with coming up with a recommen-
dation on investment policy, decided the
University should keep its holdings in the com-
panies.
The committees claim that the University
should keep its investments in such companies
as IBM and Ford, as long as it makes sure the
companies practice progressive employment
policies with black workers.
Fifty faculty members didn't buy that"
argument and signed a letter last week calling,
for the University to pull out all investments iri
companies operating in South Africa. ,
"The issue is to say yes to equality, yes to
democracy in South Africa, and no to racism,".
the letter read. Many students and faculty are',
charging the University has answered just the,
opposite to all three and now may flout state
law to boot.
Problems in stereo
A LTHOUGH UNIVERSITY officials declin-.
ed to comment and said it was a minor in-
cident, the director of the University's Office of
Major Events, was fired last wek as the result
of a financial audit.
Karen Young, head of the office which.
scheduled and promotes concerts on campus,
was fired after the audit began on Feb. 1, ac,
cording to Roderic Daane, the University's
general counsel.
Neither the audit nor Major Events
bookkeeping records will be made public;
Daane said. If the two were released, it could,
be "personally damaging" to Young, he said.}:
This is not the only financial problem Major
Events has run into in recent months. About.
$2,000, most of which was Major Events'
receipts, was taken from the Michigan Unioi
last Thanksgiving, Ann Arbor police said. Of-
ficials said there is no connection between the
theft and either the audit or Young's firing.
A.
The two made history of sorts as well, accor-
ding to another chief executive-University
President Harold Shapiro. In his opening
remarks to the 1,000 students and faculty
members at Rackam, Shapiro said it was the
first time any two presidents had appeared at a
college campus together since Thomas Jeffer-
son invited James Monroe to the University of
Virginia during Monroe's presidency.
Those lucky enough to get tickets for the
Rackham assembly heard the former
presidents agree on various foreign policy
issues concerning the Mideast, the Soviet
Union, and China, as well as the need for more
presidential control over the running of U.S.
foreign policy. Students were allowed to ask
questions via note cards screened by Shapiro.
Participants at the conference itself sought
solutions to getting citizens more involved in
domestic policy decision-making. "The aim of
I
The Jimmy and Jerry show at the Ford Library.
the Domestic Association," according to Ford,
"is to generate public discussion of major
issues throughout the country."
The two-day conference, primarily spon-
sored by the Kettering Foundation, attracted
such notables as television personality Norman
Lear, pollster Daniel Yankelovich, and former
ambassador to China and University Professor
Leonard Woodcock.
But that all-important goal of citizen par-
ticipation was limited to a few questions on
note cards, if that much.
Sinking ship
T LOOKS LIKE this will be the final voyage
for the Ark and its blend of coffee and folk
music. At its governing board meeting Wed-
nesday night, the First Presbyterian Church
decided to find a rent-paying tenant for Hill
House, the Ark's rent-free home of the past 15
years.
Hill house is in desperate need of over
$200,000 in repairs. The Ark's staff volunteered
The Week in Review was compiled by
Daily staff writers Neil Chase, Kent Red-
ding, David Spak, and Glen Young.
Ir
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Sinclair
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Vol. XCIII, No. 111
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
One step for the jobless
NC
iEGEIF ONL Y
VE/ L STEN Tc
1HO iT
"4o -
t1r/
'4
AFTER BEING at loggerheads for
months over how and whether
to provide for the more than 14 million
jobless, Congress and the president
finally have started on the road to
compromise.
The economy may or may not be on
the mend, but regardless, the bulk of
the millions out of work will not par-
ticipate in the benefits of an upswing
for a long time. The administration's
own calculations are that the unem-
ployment rate will remain in double
digits for the remainder of the year.
Such prospects make some kind of
relief for the jobless imperative.
Previously the president had called
jobs programs "wasteful and un-
necessary," but finally, the
administration has dropped its blind
disregard for the unemployed and of-
fered $4.3 billion to create jobs.
While the adminsitration's offer is a
laudable move in the right direction, it
represents only the first step in a series
needed to deal with the nation's
chronic unemployment.
With the nation's unemployment
rate now standing at 10.2 percent, the
kind of money the president is talking
about won't go too far. A more
workable figure would be closer to $6
billion which would create thousands
of additional jobs to take people off the
food stamp and unemployment benefit
rolls and put them to work on the
nation's crumbling roads and bridges.
But even more importantly, jobs
programs need to be accompanied
with job retraining. Much of unem-
ployment is institutional. Thousands
laid off from the manufacturing sector
in the steel and auto industries, will
never be rehired. Without retraining,
these people will never find jobs in the
service sector of the economy, which is
currently the nation's major job-
producer.
Economic recovery may have
already begun, but that only means
that things are not getting worse. The
president is finally on the right course
by agreeing to a jobs program, but he
has to move further and faster. He
must remember, each percentage
point of unemployment deprives the
federal treasury $26 billion which
means unemployment costs
everybody, not just the jobless.
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Retailers turn to luxury goods market
"WATCH ME MIT THOSE FOREOE1RS, KITY
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By Thomas Brom
Despite the worst recession in
half a century, marketing exper-
ts from New York to California
have some surprising advice for
clients: "Move up to luxury
goods." Indeed, mainstream
department stores, mail-order
houses, restaurants, magazines
and banks across the country are
taking that advice-deserting the
"new poor" of the lower middle
class. for a rapidly growing
population of the newly affluent.
"There is a definite split in the
marketplace," says Jeff Mac-
Callum, senior editor at Chain
Store Age. "We're seeing a shift
to high-quality, high-margin
goods from the specialty shops to
the discounters. Retailers are
upscaling, targeting affluent ur-
ban couples who think nothing of
buying $300 suits or putting
$10,000 of merchandise into their
homes."
RFT1ATI. ANAI.Vf'1'Q wnvPra
1980s, producing an upper-in-
come category of 25.5 million
families. "The net result," the
editors conclude, "will be the
creation of a consuming elite."
Store after store is taking the
demographers' message as
gospel, tailoring apparel and
general merchandise for the
wealthy. Associated Dry Goods
is concentrating its expansion
plans on Lord & Taylor, J.W.
Robinson and Goldwaters, as
well as its "top end" Caldor
discount chain in New England.
MACCALLUM points out that
even mass marketers like Macy's
and J.C. Penney are intentionally
lopping off "downscale" sales
volume-and making up the dif-
ference at the bottom line. "In
the first 10 months of 1982, Pen-
ney's sales declined .8 percent,"
he says, "but earnings went
through the roof. That trend is
accelerating."
In fact, the retail market now is
littered with those who could not
Direct-mail retailers also are
shifting their customer base to
match projected income shifts in
the 1980s. Spiegel, the country's
fourth-largest catalog sales
marketer, has abandoned its
traditional buyers for working
women 25 to 54 years old in
households with incomes above
$34,000. "THE OLD strategy,"
said company president Henry
Johnson, "was to hook low-
income but creditworthy
customers on extended-payment
plans and make money on the
carrying charges. I saw the op-
portunity for developing a high-
end department store." This
year Spiegel will issue four
specialty catalogs in furs,
lingerie, linens and gourmet
cookware.
Alden's, Spiegel's Chicago
competitor for the Midwestern
small town market, also began
sending specialty catalogs 'to
higher-income urban families.
But it was too little, too late. Last
and Goodlife. There also are top-
end fashion magazines, women'ยง
magazines, home magazines and
especially food magazines.
Gourmet has a circulation of -
650,000; Cuisine 725,000; Bon Ai-
petit 1.3 million. Safeway was so
impressed it bought the Bon AP--
petit name and converted several
of its stores to gourmet
delicatessens.
CBS INC. bought Cuisine after"
making a similar assessment.",
Cuisine publisher Anne
Sutherland says the next decade
will see increasing numbers of"
people "who will want to reward
themselves and who will insist on
living well."
MacCallum at Chain Store Age
believes expanded household io9
come is behind much of the u
scale wave. "Two or more peop
are now working in more thal
two-thirds of the countrys
households," he says, "and mote
people can afford upscale me
chandise."