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