4 OPINION Page 4 Sunday, November 6, 1983 The Michigan Daily 14 Dear 'U': Why have the blacks left? DEAR TOP University officials, Promises, promises. Remember about 13 years ago when you vowed to boost black enrollment levels at the University to 10 percent? Sure, you remember. It was during the height of the Black Action Movement strike. You set the goal of making black enrollment 10 percent by 1973. Well, statistics you released last week show that you still haven't accom- plished your goal. The figures that came out last week show that black enrollment levels are fitting nicely into their yearly trend of declining. Yes, this year, 4.9 percent of the U.S. citizens on campus are black. Last year 5.2 percent were. view your past record with black enrollment as a sure indication of this. It's funny, though that you can't seem to figure out why this problem exists; after all, it's not a new one. Love ya, your conscience. P.T. Barnum's show If you live on campus this year you are part of one of the greatest phenomenon in the annals of the University and the city of Ann Arbor. It's incredible, it's astounding, and nobody can of- fer a solid explanation: This year housing ren- tal rates off campus have tended to stablilze or decrease from last year, and because of that, more apartments are being rented! It's a challenge to all you economic majors to figure that one out and explain to the landlords in this fair college town why ridiculously high rental rates may be less profitable than or- dinary high rental costs. One of the explanations that has surfaced, however, is that a greater proportion of the student population is rich because the less wealthy potential students haven't weathered the tuition increases. The new, more wealthy student population is better able to afford costly single apartment situations: sleeping rooms, efficiencies, and one-bedroom apar- tments as opposed to the cost-cutting tradition of "doubling up" in apartments. Another explanation given over the week was that this year students have been able to rely on their student loans with more confidence than last year and so are more willing to sign the dotted line on housing leases. Landlords say that the decrease of vacancies this year will not mean major rent increases in the future, but let's face it guys-we know about the fleece and demand relationship in Ann Arbor housing. officials, but the process can get a little tricky when the debtor has its own air force. It seems a group of Nigerian students, most supported by scholarships from the Nigerian government, owe the University somewhere around $116,000 in unpaid tuition bills - money the University plans to cash in on. According to the University registrar, the 32 Nigerian students currently enrolled at the Ann Arbor campus owe from $30,000 to $40,000; the remainder of the $116,000 if owed by former Nigerian students. The problem affects nearly 5,000 Nigerian students studying at American universities who cannot pay their bills because their gover- nment has not delivered over $10 million in scholarship awards. Also, private sponsors in Nigeria are finding it difficult to pay the students. Officials on both sides of the Atlantic say the falling price of oil (Nigeria's principle export), and restrictions on, the flow of American currency out of Nigeria caused the difficulties. The University this week responded to the problem in typical fashion; it set up a commit- tee. The informal panel, composed of officials from the admissions office, student accounts, the International Center, and other departmen- ts, will try to formulate a policy for dealing with delinquent payments of all foreign students - not just Nigerians. In addition, the Rackham graduate school now demands that students backed by "high risk" (read: Nigerian) sponsors pay tuition before they are admitted. The University panel suggested hold credits and suspending CRISP priviledges for the Premier of Nigeria, but no action has been taken. Low vacancy rates have sent many students pedalling away from once-available off- campus housing units. But when students from other countries are added into the figures, total black enrollment at the University stands at 4.5 percent. The most baffling part of this problem is that none of you seem to be able to pinpoint the reason for the continual decline. It's dropped every year since 1977. Some of you say the general atmosphere of the University is discouraging black students from coming here. Some of you say other universities are stealing away our prospective black students by luring them to their college campuses with tremendous financial aid and scholarship packages. But many black students, on the other hand feel that University recruitment and renention brograms aren't up to par and that they are being lost in the administrative shuffle. They Petty (cash) arguments Students voted last spring to give the Ann Arbor Tenants Union $7300 for whatever it is they do. Now this other organization, the Tenant Landlord Resource Center, claims that the union doesn't do any work-the work- shops promised haven't materialized, and office hours supposedly aren't being kept. But where did these resource center people who want student money come from? Doug Weiner and Lincoln Ashida, who are leading the fight for the money, are defecters from the tenants union. They claim they can do all of the duties of the tenants' union and more and do them better. But the tenants union counters their argument saying that these two men are not doing work either and that they are only interested -in working with tenants so they can write it on their resumes. The Michigan Student Assembly thinks all of the people up on the fourth floor of the Union who want to work with tenants rights should stop bickering-this is all a personality con- flict. Frankly, MSA wants the tenants union to be revitalized and do a whole lot, like it used to do in the 60s. Instead, MSA's efforts to help the tenants union through budget replanning and volunteer recruitment, have been sidelined by childish, silly arguments. MSA doesn't have the time to be bothered with this petty argument, and until the two sides resolve their differences, no one is going to get that $7300. Airborne tuition Collecting delinquent tuition payments is a pretty standard ritual for University finance J r r: ,r s The Week in Review was compiled by Daily staff writers Georgea Kovanis, Jonathan Stewart, and Karen Tensa and Daily editor George A dams. i I Edie am d tganesty i Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Stewart r. ~j8 Vol. XCIV-No. 53 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board . What if.. . ? 0 LET'S PLAY a game of What If . . . What if someone were sick enough to make one of those dormitory bomb threats more than a threat? What would happen? Until this week, when the University received a bomb threat targeting a dormitory or other buildings, officials would evacuate the place just in case. But this week University officials received a rash of crank phone calls about Mosher Jordan and Stockwell dormitories. They got tired of evacuating the residents of the dorms, so next time someone calls in a bomb' threat leaving the building will become optional. What if one of those "crank" calls comes in at four in the morning and turns out not to be a crank? Name one student who'll leave unless there's a policy that tells them to. Almost every year one dorm or another experiences a rash of false fire alarms. Yet the policy is still to evacuate-just in case. Sure, it's a pain in the ass, but the remote alter- native is a lot worse. It's understandable that University officials and students are upset about and tired of sick jokes. It takes a deranged mind to get a kick out of causing that much inconvenience. But is the University willing to take the risk that an even more deranged person isn't out there waiting to pull off an even sicker joke? / / / /'r IU/ENRnOLLMENT GOAL 197 r 4996 BLACK k FNRQLLMENT REALITY . W Utopia ./5(z2_ b LETTERS TO THE DAILY: Language majors: No native speakers 4 z ~ z - r---------- +/ --__ ..... a r / , Zzz I Z .. i v j i o To the Daily: Karin Lindgren's letter ("Native speakers shunned," Daily, October 22) supporting far eastern language and literature department's decision of not allowing native speakers to major in Japanese or Chinese deserves a hearty touche. As for myself, I would like to add a few additional comments. As an undergraduate French major, I encountered several native speakers majoring in French. As Karin Lindgren carefully points out, these students were not only at an ad- vantage in speaking and listening ability, but also were able to ex- press themselves much more easily and clearly when writing term papers. While those of us who were not native speakers were struggling to write one clear, grammatically correct paragraph in French for our term paper on Marcel Proust or Rndelaire. the native sneakers are similar because they are. members of one common linguistic stock. It is grossly erroneous to allow -a French speaker to major in French because it so happens that Fren- ch and English are members of the Indo-European family of languages. From a contrastive analysis point of view, often times the differences between two languages of one family may outweigh, the similarities. For example, both Persian (Farsi) Defending To the Daily: I am writing to contest the let- ter, "Why require Foreign language?" in Letters to the Daily, of Oct. 5. Having gone through four terms of Spanish at the University, I am glad to have done so, and I feel that every on11Pg shnuld renuire foreign and English belong to the Indo- European family of languages. Although, there are some syntac- tic similarities, Persian phonological and phonetic struc- ture is quite different from English. Having studied some Persian at Michigan, I am very much convinced that a native speaker of Persian would always speak better than a junior or senior who had only studied the language for a few years at the University. Finally, I question the basic notion of why a person who goes abroad to study would want to major in his or her native language. I am very leery of these types of students. If I were to attend a French university, I certainly would not choose English or American literature as my major field of study. Af- terall, there are many fine American universities where I could study English literature. -Anthony Lewis October 24 language requirements ..Zz z BEEP Bg-=F-P BeEP BEEP.. WHlOA? NINE OZCLQG'! - ALMOST SLEPT HtROUGH-1MY S7TUvy AREA K. j k I I 3 traveling the continent, the writer didn't feel compelled to study a foreign language? Having spent much of the past summer in Europe, I know it is a great asset to speak another language. Of course one can, as they say, "get by" in continental Europe. other cultures, through the lear- ning of another language. Noticing the inherent cultural arrogance of this writer, I hope more people come to realize this overweening pride, so apparent among Americans. . Then the American people and culture could act as part of the world, j i i I