COMPUTERS INTER VIEW: DOUGLAS VAN HOUWELING Turning fees into technology Editors note: Daily reporter Jerry Markon and News Editor Thomas Miller met with University Vice Provost for Information Technology Douglas Van Houweling last week to talk about the mandatory computer fee and other computing activities around campus. Here is the first of two excerpts from that interview that will appear on the Daily's Com- puter Page. DAILY: As you know, the MSA Com- puter fee referendum showed studen- ts disagreeing with the fee by a 4-1 margin. Do you see these results as accurate, and if so, how will it effect the implementation of the fee? VAN HOUWELING: Well, I don't have any quarrel with the accuracy of the actual elections. I assume the votes were counted correctly. And as I have said before, given the way that par- ticular proposition was presented on 'the ballot, I probably would have voted against it myself, because if you just ask a person if they're in favor of a fee, then of course they're going to say, "No I don't want a fee." If you say, "would I prefer to have a fee in order to have the following benefits," then you might get a more accurate kind of a depiction of this kind of thing. But you know, there's a lot of things at the University that I'm not sure that if you put them to the students in a, referendum, that the students would approve of them. For instance, if the Students understood how much of their tuition - and I don't have the numbers - that goes to support the libraries every semester, then I'm not sure they'd vote to have the library. The fact is, we're trying to find the least expensive way to provide our students with access to this technology. We think that's a very important part of the educational process, and I personally, regret the part of it has to be a student fee, but we just couldn't do it without having some portion in the form of a student lee. So how will it effect things? If anything, it just motivates me to work harder than ever to try to build good communication with students about what the purpose of the fee is, what * the benefits to the students will be, and to make sure we provide means for the students to communicate with us so that we can tell when we're doing things right in terms of how we use the fee and when we're not doing things the way they'd like them to be Zone. And as I said (at the MSA meeting last week), I hope that more and more of the students understand what the fee is about so that if they were ever presented with that kind of a question again, they'd understand that the choice is either the fee or not having access to this technology, and that is where it really comes down un- fortunately, because we just don't have enough financial flexibility to do ft without the fee. D: You've said that you regret that there wasn't more student input from the beginning. VH: Over the summer I was con- ° cerned that we didn't have as much student input as we wanted before we established this fee. In fact, there was a proposal that, perhaps, this should be on the regent's agenda for the July STUDENT ACCOUNTS: 4r Your attention is called to the following rules passed by the Regents at their meeting on February 28, 1936: "Students shall pay all accounts due the Uni- versity not later than the last day of classes of each semester or summer ses- sion. Student loans which are not paid or renewed are subject to this regula- tion; however, students loans not yet due are ex- empt. Any unpaid ac- counts at the close of busi- ness on the last day of classes will be reported to the Cashier of the Uni- versity and "(a) All academic credits were back on campus when we took that action, and that is, in fact, the way it worked out. All during the summer I was con- cerned about this, and I wish the timing had been different. I wish I had come to the University of Michigan two years ago, rather than just one year ago, and then all this planning could have been done in a more leisurely fashion. But the fact is I started on December 1st, about a year ago now, and if we were going to have something in place for this academic year, we pretty much had to move in September. That was ac- tually delaying it somewhat beyond the level that we wanted to delay it. We already committed some pretty detailed plans by the time we took it in in September. Because, of course, in order to build space and get machines in place, it takes time. The alternative was to wait for another academic year, and it just didn't seem that we could afford to wait for another academic year. And other people agreed with me, which is why we did it the way we did it. D: You've said before - at the public forums - that the University of Michigan is really behind other universities in terms of computing. VH: I think it's important for me to put that in perspective. We're behind the very best institutions, institutions that are in a leadership position. I don't think we're behind most of the major public institutions, but, you see, the students who come here, typically, are also the students who would go to the very best institutions across the country. The University of Michigan, as you know, is kind of a unique place. It's a university that is in the ranks of the very best univer- sities in the country. If we weren't careful, we'd find ourselves in a position that would be very hard to recover from. It was that comparison that I was making. We have to be not just average for a public institution or a little better than average. We have to always compare ourselves to the very best universities. We were falling behind those universities. The second part of the interview will appear on January 14. The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, December 10, 1985 - Page 5 i. " Lighten up your Christmas - vacation with a Ax¢ * computer game from SOFTWARE EXCHANGE It makes a great gift I.} Discount Computer Software and Supplies HOURS:ST E Mon.-Thurs. 10-6:30 322 S. STATE ST. Y. " Fri. 10-9 Sat. 10-5 (inside the Jewelry Exchange) Sun. closed 663-4788 Van Houweling ... defends fee or August (1985) meetings - the ap- proval of the fee. 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