4
OPINION
Page 4 Sunday, October 7, 1984 The Michigan Daily
,
AM
MSA and
'U,
officials set up code forum
LEADERS OF THE Michigan Student
Assembly and top University ad-
ministration officials have seen and heard a lot
of each other lately. They haven't agreed upon
much, nonetheless they have kept the
negotiation channels open and have set a date
for a public forum on the student topic of the
year: the proposed code for non-academic con-
duct.
The code would impose new restrictions on
T '
TheWeek
*in Review
University students' actions outside the
classroom and a judicial system would be set
up t6 enforce the new guidelines.
This week 'assembly members and ad-
ministrators met in a closed meeting but failed
in the attempt to iron out some of their
disagreements on the issue. MSA believes they
should have power to reject the code and its ac-
companying judicial system! The ad-
ministration contends that, if the assembly is
going to flatly reject the code, another avenue
must be kept open to University officials to
pass the code.
Virginia Nordby, director of affirmative ac-
tion and a University policy analyst, came out
of the meeting agreeing to appear before the
assembly this Tuesday. Nordby will try to set
up some conditions satisfactory to both sides so
that they can proceed with making suggested
revisions in the guidelines drafted last March.
Whether or not student leaders and ad-
ministrators can overcome the road blocks and
begin negotiations, a public forum on the code
is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 8 at 7:30 p.m.
in the Rackham Amphitheatre. Mark your
calendar. There's bound to be some heated
debate.
Sexual dealings
Have you ever dated, held hands, kissed, or
had sexual intercourse? How much do you
weigh? Do you think you might have bulimia
or another type of eating disorder? These are
University housing, affirmative action, and
counseling officials are itching to ask of studen-
ts. And this week, abandoning all modesty,
resident advisors, the School of Public Health,
and Health Services, began distributing sur-
veys to students. The surveys are intended to
generate discussions and educational
programs to help students better deal with
their sexual relationships.
However, some RAs said they feel they are
not qualified enough to talk about sex with their
residents and feared the surveys would brine
some ghosts out of the closet.
"Say one really screwed up person comes to
an RA at two o'clock in the morning and says 'I
was molested as a child.' What do you tell them
to do,. call (76) GUIDE (the University's after
hours counseling and referral service),"
worries one RA who asked not to be identified.
Those who would rather not let the Univer-
sity in on their private sexual affairs do not
have to fill out the surveys, officials say. And
RAs who hadn't planned on becoming sex
therapists for a bunch of frustrated University
students can always ,refer their residents to
other more experienced counselors.
One can't help but wonder if the University
will use these surveys to put out a report like
the Kinsey Report on sexual behavior. If they
do, it would definitely be required reading.
San Diego Padres if they are to face Detroit in
the Fall Classic this year.
This situation places many students in a
"nail-biting" position before their t.v.s, and
inevitably homework slides almost as much as
the baseball players slide into their bases.
LSA freshperson Mike Mandrea admits that
baseball has, perhaps, a higher priority for him
than studying.
"Yeah, I watched the game (the Tigers' first
game against the Kansas City Royals), and I
let my homework slide," Mandrea said.
Some suspect that University students aren't
the only ones with playoff fever. LSA freshper-
son and Cubs fan, Ed Krause, said he thought
his two o'clock class may have been cancelled
Wednesday so everyone could stay home and
watch both the National League playoff con-
tests.
The Dedicated Cub Fan, Award on campus
has to go to Stacey Fisher, a third year law
student, who said she took a train home to
Kalamazoo and then drove into Chicago with
her family to catch the opening game of the
Cubs-Padres series.
"I had to miss some classes, it was worth
it ... seeing (Cub pitcher Rick) Sutcliffe hit a
home run is worth it. It's history, This is only
law school," proclaimed Fisher.
And the battle between the Cubs and Tigers,
or whoever winds up at the World Series, is, of
course, only baseball.
Solomon IV
One of the most important laws affecting
students is the notorious Solomon Amendment
which requires that students pledge they are
registered with Selective Service before
receiving federal financial aid money. Recen-
tly there have been attempts to strengthen the
tie between student financial aid and Selective
Service registration in a provision named
Solomon IV after its sponsor Rep. Gerald
Solomon (R-N.Y.). This would extend the
original Solomon Amendment to cover students
enrolled in health-related schools.
Conflicting versions of the bill have been
passed in each house of Congress and a con-
ference committee is still trying to work out the
differences. Once the bill clears the committee,
it must return to the House and Senate for ap-
proval and then be signed by the president.
Because Congress has postponed adjournment,
they may get to the bill sometime next week.
In addition to the provision extending the
amendment to cover health profession studen-
ts, the Senate version of the bill includes a
penalty for schools which help students get
around the law. Schools which offered alter-
native financial aid to their students would not
receive federal grants.
In other congressional action, the House
voted Monday to approve a bill that would
allow graduate staff and teaching assistants to
collect past taxes withheld from their tuition
wavers. The bill would return the tuition waver
to its original tax-exempt status which ended
last January when Congress failed to renew an
Internal Revenue Service regulation.
The University last year began to withhold
taxes from the tuition it paid for graduate staff
and TAs-the only institution in the nation that
did so. This fall, however, the University has
not withheld this tax.
It is up to the Senate to act on the bill this
week. The University's lobbyist in Washington,
Thomas Butts, said he was optimistic that the
Senate would approve the bill.
The Week 'in Review was compiled by
Daily Opinion Page editor Jackie Young.
Tigee. hat
... hot item on campus
Baseball junkies
Nearly 23,000 students from the state of
Michigan attend this University. Only 11,000
University students are from the state 'of
Illinois. What does that mean? It should mean
that Detroit Tiger fans outnumber Chicago Cub
fans on campus. If one of the teams interest
you, you have probably been glued to a
television set this week as the stakes become
high.
Friday the Tigers pulled off a 1-0 victory over
the Kansas City Royals, moving them on to the
World Series. The Cubs must win out over the
4
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Reagan alters view on Sovietg
Vol. XCV, No. 28
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
Acosm not activism
TUDENTS SEEM to be getting
more visible these days. Yet some
of their organized activities are less
than socially desirable and, despite
some students' beliefs, not nearly as
worthy as the crusades launched upon
in the '60s and '70s. in fact, of late
student unrest has become in-
creasingly tied to the consumption of
alcohol, with political causes a secon-
dary concern. This is hardly the kind of
student activism to be endorsed or en-
couraged.
Evidence for this unproductive ac-
tivism can be seen in yesterday's
three-hour disturbance begun at a pre-
game party in Lafayette, Ind. College-
age people became unruly before the
Purdue-Ohio State football game and
started throwing rocks and bottles at
the police. Some individuals even
pulled a passing motorist from his car
and beat him. Ironically, 'a police of-
ficer noted that "Not since 1969 or '70,
during the (Vietnam) war," had there
been a comparable incident in that
area.
Wednesday students, mostly from
Illinois State University, marched to
city hall in order to "protest" a city or-
dinance restricting public gatherings
and the sale of beer. Though the
gathering started out peaceful, it en-
ded up with students staging a sit-in on-
an interstate highway, and some
students throwing beer bottles at the
police. If they had been publicly
voicing their outrage at the killing of
American soldiers in a foreign coun-
try, their actions could have been
justified. Instead, they chanted such
obscenities as "Fuck (city police chief
John) Lahr. We want beer."
The students also began to cry out
'"Kent State, Kent State" when police
fired tear gas cannisters at them, in-
voking the memory of an incident in
the '70s when National Guardsmen
fired gunshots into a crowd of students
protesting the Vietnam war. If they felt
their situation was in any way similar
to that of the Kent State protesters,
then they lack a clear understanding
of the meaning of justice and social
reform.
Had the protest remained non-
violent, it would have been acceptable,
though hardly noble. Sure, students of
age deserve to have their beers. But if
they are going to fire rocks at the
police and cause danger to themselves
by blocking a highway, this is a totally
different situation. They have become
a public nuisance for no sufficient
reason. That the students wanted to be
able to hold a beer party in the street is
not a good enough reason. The police
might understandably question the
motives and values of a citizen who
puts drinking ahead of all else.
One Illinois student claimed that
nearly 20 students are arrested in
Normal, Ill. every. weekend for
carrying cups of beer in public. That is
a high number of student drinkers.
Social drinking plays a key role in
campus life, as it has for decades. But
it shouldn't become the all-important
aspect of student life. If it does, then
something is dreadfully wrong.
Alcoholism is considered by most
doctors to be a disease-an affliction
that can be cured by ceasing to drink.
When beer becomes more important to
students than the welfare of other
people, this society is in real trouble.
The next generation of leaders won't
be able to handle running this country
if they can't even handle their liquor.
By Franz Schurmann
A joke has been circulating lately .among
Sovietologists in which one comments
gravely that the Soviet Union is a nuclear-
Sarmed Nazi Germany. Another quickly
corrects him: "No, a nuclear-armed Austria-
Hungary." The point, to those who have
forgotten their European history, is that
nothing ever worked in Austria-Hungary,
whereas Nazi Germany was the quintessence
of ruthless efficiency.
There is a lot more to the joke than just a
humorous sidelight to the Sovietologists'
serious studies. The joke, in fact, encom-
passes two basic views of the Soviet Union
being expressed in American foreign policy
circles.
THE FIRST view, common to the har-
dliners, holds that the Soviet Union is a rein-
carnation of Nazi Germany: armed to the
teeth, controlled by secret police-backed
depots, and expansionistic. This view was
expressed in President Reagan's "evil em-
pire" speech.
The second view holds that, like the old dual
monarchy of Austria-Hungary, the Soviet
Union is ruled by tired old men; that, though
heavily armed, it lacks the spirit to fight, and
that its top-heavy bureaucracy makes life dif-
ficult but not impossible.
Each view has direct implications for U.S.
policy. If the first view prevails, it would ap-
pear inevitable that sooner or later the United
States and the Soviet Union will clash,
probably in nuclear war.
THE ALTERNATIVE view holds that now
is the time for a new detente. The Soviet
leaders are scared of their own internal
weaknesses and desperately need to make
accommodations with the United States. If
approached deftly, concessions can be
wangled from them.
In a recent speech, U.N. Ambassador Jean
Kirkpatrick, whose foreign policy views
President Reagan has generally shared,
noted that internal crises are pushing the
Soviets to seek better relations with the
United States. Everything has been going
wrong for them, she noted.
Their harvest this year is terrible. The
Afghanistan hemmorrhage continues. They
had to resort to the crudest of pressure to
prevent their most faithful ally, East Ger-
many's Erich Honecker, from going to Bonn.
And most alarming of all, there appears to be
real instability at the nerve center of Soviet
power in the Kremlin.
RECENT VISITORS from the Soviet Union
report that many Russians privately say
things started to go wrong in 1979, just before
the invasion of Afghanistan. The economic
growth rate started to go down. Detente with
the United States had soured. And Leonid
Brezhnev's illness was beginning to take its
toll.
The tone of Kirkpatrick's-and
Reagan's-recent rhetoric suggests that
perhaps the Austro-Hungarian view is
prevailing in the White House. If so, then we
might expect the administration to make a
serious effort not just to reach a new arms
agreement with the Soviets but to go beyond
and to revive the kind of far-reaching detente
which Richard Nixon achieved.
Significantly, Reagan may have sent a
signal to such an effect by making public that
he had met with Nixon to discuss his pending
meeting with Gromyko.
WHATEVER VIEW of the Soviet Union
turns out to be the most accurate, we have to
start thinking what it means to survive in a
precariously balanced nuclear world if the
Soviet Union is marred by grave internal
weaknesses. It should not be forgotten that
though Austria-Hungary was a bumbling
giant, its very weakness is credited with
giving rise to WorldWar I.
We also should remember that former
President Carter's strong reaction to the
Soviet move into Afghanistan proved, in
retrospect, to be a counterproductive
overreaction.
We had, until recently, every reason to
think Ronald Reagan would react even more
strongly to a similar move by the Soviets. But
his recent shift of rhetoric toward- a milder
tone suggests that in a second term he might
turn out to be rpore cautious than Carter, an-
d as detente-minded as Nixon.
I
I
Schurmann is a professor of history
and sociology at the University of
California, Berkeley. He wrote this article
for the Pacific News Service.
LETTERS TO THE DAILY
Re
Review encourages contemplation
To the Daily:
I thank you for Matthew
Kopka's thoughtful, and often
complimentary, assessment of
The Michigan Review ("Conser-
vatives learn the rag trade,"
(Daily, September 22). The ar-
ticle was a commendable exam-
ple of the often fragile attempt of
the writer engaged in rational
polemic to balance tolerance and
commitment to his or her ideals.
As we are both, if you will forgive
the possibility of appearing
hubristic by such a statement, in-
telligent, reasonable thinkers in
search of the Aristotelian good
life, I senst a proverbial call to
duty, to elucidate my own points
in the articles he cited and to
illuminate the Stygian miscon-
ceptions in which the Review is,
apparently, enshrouded.
I am most assuredly not hostile
toward tolerance; I have a
of Judaeo-Christianity into one
monolithic "socio-political
organ" which prizes the comfor-
ting mediocrity of undemanding
friendliness over the uplifting
challenge of complex, ancient
values.
As I make no apologies for my
skepticism about the modern
ecumenical movement, neither
do I recant my personal support
of the proposed code or my
distrust of the frequent
lionization of protests
deliberately modelled after the
tactics of the Vietnam era which
are so frequently endorsed (and,
need I add, supported with my
money) by the Michigan Student
Assembly. Perhaps some valid.
case exists that the students
struggling against the code are
fighting the same valiant battle
as the Indian people when they
protested British colonial tyran-
Unfortunately, such a com-
parison has persuaded some
students to think that the regents
are nothing less than an old-
fashioned, paternalistic group of
tyrants who will use the code to
stifle any dissents over policy.
What a pity that the discretion
and intelligence of the body
which has directed such a vibrant
intellectual giant as our Univer-
sity gives no credit. I certainly
cannot view the tolerant,
reasonable adults required to
build and govern a school of
Michigan's respected and unique
character as only so many
schoolmarms enamored of the
strap and the birch switch.
Kopka expresses confusion
over the point of certain articles,
and he is absolutely correct. The
Review has printed some poor
features - but what publication
has not? This question is cer-
movement.
"What do these people want
you to think?" Permit me a
digression. Ayn Rand is an
authoress of whose work I am
personally fond, and, although
she also does not entirely sum-
marize the perspective of The
Review (the editors would curse
the day when only one philosophy
could), her definition of hap-
piness is an apt answer to your
query. "Happiness," states John
Galt in Atlas Shrugged, "is a
state of non-contradictory
joy...not the joy of escaping from
your mind, but of using your
mind's fullest power...." Con-
templation of all our inalienable
rights - not only the right to
physical existence, but of in-
tellectual and moral liberty, and
especially to that elusive pursuit
of a peaceful and prosperous
happiness, with the spiritual for-
I
i