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Ninety-seven years of editorial freedom
XCVII- No. 64
Copyright 1986, The Michigan Daily
Ann Arbor, Michigan - Thursday, December 4, 1986
Ten Pages
U
-Cellar
faces
financial
crisis
By KERY MURAKAMI
The University Cellar bookstore, beset by severe
nancial problems, may consider folding, several
sources said yesterday.
Jeff Epton, a former employee who has kept up
with the store's affairs, said at least two local banks
this fall have refused to make loans to the store.
The University Cellar depends on credit to buy new
books for the book-buying rush at the beginning of
fall and winter semesters, then repays the banks after
the rush. Without such credit, the store would lose
profits made during the beginning of winter term.
The two terms combined comprise about 50 percent
of the store's business, said Epton, a member of the
Ann Arbor City Council.
UNIVERSITY Cellar and local bank officials
would not say how much the store needs, but Epton
estimated the figure to be about $500,000. In addition,
Citizens Trust Vice President Tom Dickinson
confirmed that the bank had demanded that the store
repay a 1972 loan that subsidized the store's move from
the Michigan Union to its current location on the
corner of Liberty and South Division streets.
Dickinson refused to disclose the amount of the
outstanding loan. Both Dickinson and Comerica Bank
President Jim Andrews also acknowledged that they had
rejected the store's loan requests.
Store manager Jane Self and members of the
University Cellar's Board of Directors refused to
comment.
In an effort to raise cash quickly, the store this week
began a 50 percent discount sale and suspended buying
back books. "Things are kind of up in the air," said
Rackham graduate student Dave Bacon, a member of
the store's board. He declined to elaborate.
EPTON said, "The people over there are resilient
people. But they'll have to consider several things,
including folding. If it folds and we lose the 75
permanent jobs and the additional temporary rush jobs,
the responsibility will fall on the heads of Ann Arbor
banks."
University Cellar employees interviewed yesterday
refused to comment on that possibility, but they said
they may take a voluntary pay cut in light of the
store's troubles. After the store lost money last year,
Epton said, workers volunteered a 20 percent pay
decrease. It is unclear, however, whether any reasonable
pay cut would raise enough money for the store.
The University Cellar has had a tumultuous history,
beginning with campus-wide protests in 1968 when
the University's Board of Regents rejected proposals for
a low-cost student-run bookstore.
Students complained of uniformly high prices in
Ann Arbor's bookstores, and felt a non-profit store
would force others to lower their prices. Fearing further
protests, the regents approved in early 1970 a one-time
$100,000 allocation to form the University Cellar.
The store left its home in the basement of the
Michigan Union in 1982 after a dispute with Union
officials over rent hikes and restrictions on selling
items with 'M' and 'Go Blue' insignias.
Survey.
Jobs will
decrease
for grads
EAST LANSING (AP) -
College graduates in the 1986-87
ucademic year will find fewer jobs
ut higher salaries than students
who attained their degrees a year
earlier, according to Michigan State
University's annual survey of 761
businesses, industries, and govern-
mental agencies.
Graduates be warned: the
employers consider drug screening
an ethical procedure, said the
survey. Twenty percent said they
Wcreen new college graduates for
drug use, and 95 percent of those
who do said they'll reject job
applicants when tests show
See COLLEGE, Page 2
RHA officers resign
The student officers of the
Residence Hall Association
resigned at the RHA meeting last
night, The Daily learned late last
night.
RHA Secretary Bryan Case said
President Peter Samet, Vice Pres -
ident Rebecca Lawrence, and
Treasurer Kevin Novak all
resigned, citing academic reasons.
-Eugene Pak
Tuition
plan to .go
to Senate
By MICHAEL LUSTIG
Key Republican state senators and administrators
yesterday reached an agreement on the guaranteed
college tuition plan, almost a year after Gov. James
Blanchard first proposed it.
The Senate will consider the plan next week.
The state House overwhelmingly passed the first
version of the bill in May, but it had been held up
in the Republican-controlled Senate Finance
Committee.
THE Republicans' version of the plan would let
parents give the state a lump sum or a series of
smaller payments in exchange for a promise of four
years' paid undergraduate tuition in a state school
when their children reach college age.
The new version changes the way the state would
handle the investment, and adds a couple of safety
valves in case the plan doesn't live up to its
promises.
The compromise bill that will go to the Senate
next week differs from the original bill, but it is
actually stronger, said State Treasurer Robert
Bowman, who was involved in the compromise
negotiations.
THE University has not taken an official stand
on BEST, or the Baccalaureate Education System
Trust. Roberta Palmer, assistant to the vice
president for government relations, said the
University is "supportive of programs that increase
access to the University," but added that the
University is unsure of how the program will work
See STATE, Page 8
Petition for freedom Daily Photo by JOHN MUNSON
LSA freshmen Jolie Grossinger, left, and Allison Bender sign letters as a part of yesterday's Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry's
Awareness Day on the Diag. The letters were to President Reagan and Sovet premiere Mikhail Gorbachev, pushing for the
emigration of Yuri and Nelli Shpeizman to Israel. The Shpeizmans were refused exit visas in their emigration attempts in 1978.
42 wome
new shelt
t so
erek
Disputed study says Ann Arbor
hospitals most expensive
By TIM DALY
A group of Ann Arbor women is
trying to establish a network of
Washtenaw County homes to
provide emergency shelter for poor
women and their children.
The network program was
proposed as an alternative to
building a permanent shelter to
meet the increasing needs of the
homeless.
Andrea Walsh, coordinator of the
Women's Crisis Center and a
member of the group, said the
program will be modeled after
programs in other cities such as
New York, where people in
temporary emergency situations are
matched with families.
WA LSH said the program is
geared toward low-income women
and their children because women
don't always feel safe at the
shelters, and some shelters will not
house children.
Volunteer families would
provide housing for periods of a few
days to a month, Walsh said. The
families may be reimbursed if the
er plan
group is able to get government or
private funding, she added.
In New York, the Department of
Social Services reimburses host
families, but Walsh said she isn't
sure if the program here will receive
government funding. "If no
government funding is available,
we will seek private funding or just
ask people to volunteer to
participate in the program," she
said.
The 15-member group, which
met at Guild House last week,
established a research committee to
study similar programs in other
cities.
T E R E S A Swartzlander, a
graduate student in the school of
social work and a member of the
research committee, said the group
will go to area churches to find
family volunteers.
Swartzlander, a volunteer at the
Women's Crisis Center, said one of
the main reasons there is a need for
the program is that there is not
enough low-cost housing in
Washtenaw County.
By CARRIE LORANGER
Ann Arbor's hospitals have a higher average cost
per stay than any other city in the nation, a new study
says, but hospital officials say the study was skewed
because only one local hospital responded to the
survey.
Equicor, the group that did the study, sent
questionnaires to 4,839 hospitals, but received only
2,362 responses.
John Turck, director of public relations for
University Hospitals, called the survey inaccurate
because the University Hospital was the only hospital
in Ann Arbor to respond to the survey.
"IT isn't fair to say that Ann Arbor has the
highest cost per stay," he said. "If only one other Ann
Arbor hospital would have responded, that figure
would have been different and Ann Arbor never would
have made the report."
Equicor reported that the average patient in Ann
Arbor hospitals paid $10,744 per stay.
Jane Eckles of the Southeast Michigan Hospitals
Council said the University Hospitals' average cost
per stay is actually not much higher than the rest of
the nation's major hospitals. "The sample is skewed
See SURVEY, Page 2
Petition sparks U' pension review
i
r'
Walsh
... pushed for shelter
"It takes time for low-income
people to find low-cost housing
that is in adequate condition," she
said. "The network program will
provide these people with a place to
stay while they look."
Although the program is directed
toward low-income women, Walsh
said victims of domestic violence
will also be eligible for the
program. "The women will have a
See RESIDENTS, Page 3
By MARTHA SEVETSON
University faculty members and
administrators discussed the
University's pension plan Tuesday,
prompted by faculty opposition to
its investments in nuclear weapons
production and companies which do
business in South Africa.
Representatives of the Senate
Advisory Committee on University
Affairs' Retirement Subcommittee
and the University's Office of Staff
Benefits met because of a petition
calling for a "socially responsible"
retirement fund that was signed by
308 faculty members.
The petition asks the
University's Executive Officers and
SACUA's Committee on the
Economic Status of the Faculty
(CESF) to either set up a new
pension plan or negotiate with the
group which currently handles the
plan, Teachers Insurance and
Annuity Association-College
Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-
CREF).
THE CREF fund invests in 29
of the top 30 nuclear weapons
contractors and 171 U.S. companies
with operations in South Africa.
The investments in the companies
make up 35 percent of the fund's
market value. University faculty
and staff annually contribute
approximately $15 million to
TIAA-CREF, which handles
See PETITION, Page 8
TODAY-
The "Great Cookie Challenge"
. -,mysterious package arrived at The Daily
donating half of its sales tomorrow to the Washtenaw
County chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Five University fraternities and sororities will be
participating in a two-minute cookie-eating contest at
12:45 p.m., then they'll take turns seeing who can
sell the most cookies between 1 and 6 p.m. Half the
nroceeds from Mrs. Fields Cookies will he
to endorse its main attraction in Southern California:
The Universal Studios Tour, home of King Kong, the
A-Team and Psycho. But before we took Universal's
prediction at face value, we, as inquiring reporters,
had to check out the letter sent to Arizona State's
(hisss) student newspaper. Lo and behold, according
to this second letter. "Arizona will he nlavinoi (and
-INSIDE
TOXIC WASTE: Opinion addresses Michigan's
seeping problem. See Page 4.
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