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Weekend Magazine
Vol. XCVI - No. 121 Copyright 1986, The Michigan Dail
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Ninety-six years of editorialfreedom
Ann Arbor. Michiaan - Friday. March 28, 1986
Ten Pages
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Muenchow takes
MSA
election
By MARY CHRIS JAKLEVIC
Meadow party candidates Kurt
Muenchow and Darrell Thompson
emerged as the new executive officers
of the Michigan Student Assembly
during yesterday's tabulations after a
close battle with the Student Rights
party candidates.
Muenchow and Thompson, who will
take over as president and vice
president, respectively, will lead an
assembly split between the more con-
servative Meadow candidates and the
Applwants
to answer
RA offers.
today
By EVE BECKER
Students who were offered resident.
advisor positions for next year must
respond by today due to a more ef-
ficient selection process developed
this year. The new process cut a mon-
th off the time it usually takes to
select RAs.
The Housing Division implemented
a centralized process in an effort to
standardize the RA application
process. Instead of sending applicants
all over campus to interview at all the
dormitories they're interested in, the
new system focuses on candidates'
performances in two informal classes
in programming and crisis interven-
tion in residence halls.
ANOTHER CHANGE means that
applicants. will receive no more than
one job offer. In the past, it was com-
mon for some candidates to receive
offers from several dorms, which
prolonged the selection process
because the openings that were tur-
ned down had to be filled by applican-
ts on a waiting list.
Alan Levy, building director for
See MORE, Page .5
more liberal Student Rights can-'
didates, as well as numerous in-
dependent and write-in represen-
tatives.
WITH 1996 votes, the Meadow ticket
beat out Student Rights candidates
Jen Faigel and Mark Weisbrot, who
had 1,844 votes.
Muenchow is a senior in the School
of Natural Resources, and Thompson
is an LSA junior.
The new assembly will take over in
two weeks.
INDEPENDENT candidates Kurt
VarnHagen and Steve Savoy earned
179 votes, and Indispensable can-
didates Mark Soble and Marc
Strecker received 161.
All figures are based on
preliminary counts, and results will
not be certified until after a recount is
completed over the weekend.
Total voter turnout was 4,889
students, whichwasslightly lower
than election officials and candidates
expected, and about 1,000 fewer than
last year.
MEADOW PARTY candidates took
every representat e seat for the
College of Engineering, which is a
moderate and conservative
stronghold.
The strong turnout of engineering
students at the polls, an estimated 25
percent of the college, helped to swing
the election in favor of the Meadow
presidential ticket.
The Student Rights party fared well
in Rackham, where its candidates
took six out of the seven represen-
tative seats.
RESULTS of the LSA race have not
yet been determined, but election
workers indicated last night that both
Student Rights and Meadow will earn
some of the 18 LSA seats.
This year's election was marked by
hostilties between the Student Rights
and Meadow parties, which some fear
may make cooperation between the
new representatives difficult to
achieve.
"Students attacking students is!
exactly what the administration likes.
to see. We can't afford to continue in-
fighting," Faigel said yesterday.
FAIGEL, who has worked on the
MSA Women's Issues Committee for
two years, has not decided if she will
continue her work under the new
assembly.
Faigel said the Meadow party's at-,
tempt at "red-baiting" Student Rights
See MUENCHOW, Page 5
'U' Council
makes
progress
By KERY MURAKAMI
The University Council yesterday informally
finished its recommendations on how the University
should deal with life-threatening crimes.
The council, which has been working for more
than a year on an alternative to the controversial
code of non-academic conduct, will meet again next
week to polish its proposals.
COUNCILMEMBERS will then formally release
th'e "procedures for handling violent acts" for input
by others at the University, including the Michigan
Student Assembly. The assembly has rejected six
proposals written by the University administration
or previous councils for a set of guidelines on
student behavior outside academics.
Students opposed to the code have said that
police, not the University, should deal with crimes
ranging from murder to civil disobedience.
The council is expected to discussopposition and
suggestions from around the University before
formally presenting the University's executive of-
ficers with its plan in the fall.
BEFORE September, councilmembers also plan
to form recorriendations on how the University
should deal with non-life threatening crimes.
But the "emergency procedures" currently being
discussed are only meant to "protect members of
the University community from violent acts, in-
cluding arson, or the threat of such acts."
Last week councilmembers agreed that after a
student is accused of a violent crime, a University
+ k
Doily Photo by ANDI SCHREIBER
Benched
Ann Arbor resident Kenneth Bischoff rests in the spring sun on a Liberty Plaza bench yesterday.
See 'U,' Page8
Hunger expert says mistrust
of Nicaragua is
By JOSEPH PIGOTT
Americans suspicions about Nicaragua's Sandinista
government are unwarranted and based on misinfor-
mation, world hunger expert Francis Moore Lappe said
last night.
Lappe, author of-Diet for Small Planet and Food First,
spoke in Rackham Auditorium of about 350.
The crowd interrupted her several times with applause
and rose to a standing ovation at the end of the speech.
ACCORDING to Lappe, new land reform laws and a
national assembly give Nicaraguans freedom they did not
have under the Somoza regime.
"What we see in Nicaragua is not a fiat pushing the
peasants in a radical direction, but the peasants deman-
'misinformed'
ding certain base rights denied to them before," she said.
Lappe condemned the Reagan Administration's policy
in Nicaragua and urged Americans to help remove the ob-
stacles to democracy for the Nicaraguan people.
. "MORAL courage is required to say the unpopular, to
say the emperor has no clothes, to say that the President
is lying through his teeth," Lappe said.
Lappe defended the Nicaraguan government's human
rights violations and press censorship. Although
Nicaraguan troops have committed abuses, all the
responsible parties have been put in prison; the Contra
See LAPPE, Page 3
Oil prices continue
plunge as OPEC fails
Lappe
...speaks on hunger
Robert Kennedy killer denied parole
By PHILIP LEVY
Because of increased oil production
levels, the price of crude oil has been
falling since last November, affecting
gasoline prices at local service
stations. Within the past few months,
prices at the pump have fallen from
approximately $1.20 per gallon to
around 80 cents per gallon.
Last week the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) attempted to reach a
production cutback agreement that
would stop the plunge of crude oil
prices, but the meeting broke up
Monday in failure.
ALMOST immediately after the
meeting, the price of crude oil fell,
and analysts are predicting that the
price decline will continue.
The price of crude oil is fast ap-
proaching pre-1973 levels, after ad-
justment for inflation. In 1973, the
OPEC nations started an embargo
that sent prices skyrocketing.
While crude oil prices have more
than halved in recent months, con-
sumer gas prices have not. Tony
Canino, spokesman for Shell Oil Co.,
explained that the crude oil price is
only one of several factors that
determine the final price of gasoline.
FOR EXAMPLE, the gasoline that
ends up in Ann Arbor originates as
crude oil from domestic or foreign
wells. It is then refined into gasoline
and transported by pipeline to a
regional distributor, who distributes
the product to independently owned
dealerships. The costs of all these in-
termediate processes have remained
stable, cushioning the fall in the
overall price. Because of the time in-
volved in producing and transporting
gasoline, it may take up to three
weeks for a fall in crude oil prices to
be reflected at gas stations.
Difficulty in enforcing production
agreements led to OPEC's recent
failure, said Theodore Bergstrom, a
University economics professor.
"Economists were surprised that
OPEC had as much power as it did for
as long as it did," he said.
According to University economics
prof. Stephen Salant, OPEC aimed its
1973 embargo at countries such as the
United States that supported Israel in
the Arab-Israeli war that year. The
OPEC nations cut production, but
could not direct the embargo at the
See OPEC, Page 2
SOLEDAD, Calif (AP) - Sirhan
Sirhan was denied parole for the
* eighth time yesterday, and the parole
board called the 1968 murder of Sen.
Robert Kennedy "An attack on the
aemocratic system of the United
States."
The convicted assassin flinched as
the ruling was announced. His eyes
appeared to fill with tears as he
listened to the board's statement,
which called for him to undergo inten-
sive psychiatric testing and therapy
and to be transferred to the state
medical facility at Vacaville.
Sirhan, who will have another
hearing next year, apologized to the
parole panel during a hearing, but a
prosecutor argued the Jordanian im-
migrant should not be freed because
his crime was "an enormous offense
against the American people."
"I'm sorry it happened," said
Sirhan, 42. "I wish it had never hap-
pened."
Los Angles Deputy District Attor-
ney Larry Trapp told the panel, the
eighth to consider freedom for Sirhan
since he first was eligible for parole in
1975, that it should "send out the
message this is a crime that will
never be tolerated or treated with
mitigation."
"This was not an average
homicide," Trapp said as the morning
hearing ended. "It touched an entire
nation. It affected the entire political
fabric of the nation.''
Kennedy was appearing at a cam-
paign event at a Los Angeles hotel
during his bid for the 1968 Democratic
presidential nomination when he was
slain.
Attorney Luke McKissack, who
represented Sirhan at the panel
meeting at Soledad prison, said his
client has learned political
assassination can't solve the Middle
East's problems.
"Sirhan is ready for release and I
will encourage you to set him free as
soon as possible," he said.
But Trapp suggested that Sirhan,
who premeditated and planned the
killing, could kill again.
TODAY-
Return to sender
EING A MAIL-ORDER bride wasn't what
Jill Bewdock had perhaps expected, and she
says Tom Williams can go back to Alaska
But she said Wednesday, "Me and Tom, it just didn't
click." Their three-month romance gained attention
after she answered an ad by Williams for mail-order
brides for him and several men in remote Paystreke.
They were developing a Gold Rush-era mining camp
there to attract tourists. She said she left because it
was too lonely and there weren't many modern con-
veniences. She said she is writing a book about their
Wednesday, said she's not spending any of it on 10-
year-old Stray. And she said she's not going to let her
husband retire early, either. "I don't want him hanging
around the house. The dog and the kids are enough,"
she said as she accepted the check from actor Lorne
Greene, who appears in Alpo commercials. However,
McCaskey did say she'd venture some of the cash on a
trip to Las Vegas "to see if I'm hot." She won the money
--INSIDE
INVASION?: Opinion questions Nicaraguan in-
cursion. See Page 4.
ROMANTIC: Violinist Ricci brought back a
_ *w ** A e A P A na DanSP a7_
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