Ninety-seven years of editorial freedom
VOLUME XCVII - NO. 109 ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN - WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 1987 COPYRIGHT 1987 THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Lack offaculty
diversity
hurts
'U'
By ERIC MATTSON
Third in afive-part series
As United Coalition Against Racism member
James McGee sees it, the University's apparent
inability to recruit black faculty members stems from
two factors: priorities and money.
"As far as not having enough money to go around,
I believe the Business School Library was built with
money from donations. The Law Library was built
with money from alumni," said McGee, a senior in
music theory. "There has to be enough money."
Like many other members of the University
community, McGee believes that the extremely low
number of black faculty members here - less than 3
percent of the total faculty - helps perpetuate the
University's standing as a homogeneous, "one-sided"
community.
McGee says that if the University belieyed that
recruiting black faculty members was important
enough, it would push harder and commit more
resources to reaching that goal.
"The University of Michigan has this foolish idea
that having state-of-the-art equipment makes it a great
University. It doesn't," he said. "If you have a one-
sided person operating state-of-the-art equipment,
what do you have?"
McGee acknowledged that the University does
make some efforts to diversify its faculty. Since the
early 1970s, the University has operated an
Affirmative Action office to increase the number of
black staff and faculty members here. The office also
oversees University compliance with laws prohibiting
race and sex discrimination, and it operates the anti-
sexual harassment "Tell Someone" program.
So far, the office seems to have made little
progress in the area of black faculty members. In
1975, there were 77 black faculty members here.
Today there are 67.
One obstacle the Affirmative Action office faces is
that because power at the University is decentralized,
some departments work harder than others to recruit
minorities. In addition, because faculty positions turn
over very slowly, there are fewer positions open for
See STUDENTS, Page 2
Shapiro
can
Punish
suspect
University President Harold
Shapiro has the authority to impose
further punishment on the freshman
evicted from Couzens Hall for
circulating a racist flyer, according
to a University attorney.
University Counsel John
Ketelhut said Shapiro has the
authority to act on whatever
sanctions a committee assembled to
investigate racist incidents recom-
mends. Shapiro's authority is laid
out in the "Presidential Power"
regental bylaw and the "Racial"
bylaw, according to Ketelhut.
The investigating panel, con-
sisting of University Vice President
for Government Relations Richard
Kennedy, MSA. President Kurt
Muenchow, and Law Prof. Sally-
anne Payton, was created in Feb-,
ruary to investigate a racist broad-
See GROUP, Page 3
Degree..
change
proposed,
By STEPHEN GREGORY dela the award. The denial sparked a
The regental advisory committee campus-wide outcry culminating in
on the honorary degree policy a sit-in protest at the April 18
released its report last night in regents meeting. During that
which the majority of the meeting the board decided to create
committee recommended that re- the committee to review the Uni-
gental bylaw 9.03 be changed. The versity's policy on awarding: the
bylaw stipulates that only those degrees.
who can attend commencement In the committee's 21-page
ceremonies can receive honorary report, the majority opinion was
degrees. that the University should be able
The committee's decision needs to grant honorary degrees to people
the approval of the University who are sick, have died, or are
Board of Regents to become unable to attend the ceremony "by
effective, reason of coercion." Mandela has
Last year the regents cited the been held in a South African jail
bylaw as a main reason for denying since 1962. Currently, bylaw 9.03
aniti-apartheid activist Nelson-Man- See PANEL, Page 3
Preparing for blood drive Daily Photo by DANA MENDELSSOHN
Gertrude Wagner, a Red Cross volunteer, teaches Michelle Henderson, and LSA senior, how to label blood
packs. Today's blood drive was sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and the NAACP._The next blood
drive-will be held March 26 and 27 in the Michigan Union Ballroom.
Scientist mixes space business with pleasure
By STEVE KNOPPER
The walls of George Carignan's
North Campus office are adorned
with photos of Italy, Colorado, and
Detroit. But these tourist shots
weren't taken by a Polaroid; they
were taken by satellites. Each photo
looks like a piece of modern art
designed with colorful squares,
lines, and amorphous blobs.
Profile
Carignan, a tall man with
glasses, a straight gray moustache,
and a deep, rough voice, spends a
lot of time sending satellites in
orbit around planets and comets.
A future endeavor involves the
1992 launching of an unmanned
U.S. spacecraft for The Comet
Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby mis-
sion. The mission, co-developed by
Carignan and University professors
Thomas Donahue and Sushil
Atreya, will fly the spacecraft in
tandem with a comet for three years
and fire an instrumented probe into
its nucleus.
Carignan has been involved in
space research since he came to the
University in 1959. He was
Director of the Space Physics
Research Laboratory from 1963 to
1985.
CURRENTLY, he is a Re-
search Engineer at the laboratory, as
well as an adjunct professor and
Associate Chairman of the Depart-
ment of Atmospheric and Oceanic
Science in the College of En-
gineering.
"I've spent a lot of my energy in
my profession," Carignan said at
his Space Research Building office.
"It's just something I like to do."
In addition to the Flyby
mission, Carignan helpeddevelop a
neutral mass spectrometer for a
mission which will measure the
composition of Jupiter's atmo-
sphere. The mission was originally
planned to take off this May, but
last year's Challenger explosion
"set it back tremendously."
Carignan estimated that the mission
will not get to Jupiter until 1994 or
1995.
"Space science has definitely
been in the doldrums the last few
years," Carignan said. "NASA had
decided to put all of its eggs into
the shuttle... and Challenger blew
up."
But Carignan said the "reve-
lations" of the Voyager flights past
Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, and the
high-resolution photos of the
planets' atmospheres, are payoffs
for work done in early 1970s space
research.
According to Carignan, the
Orbiting Geophysical Observatory
VI, developed at the University,
spurred his success in the space
research field. Carignan said the
OGO VI was the first instrument
orbiting the earth that measured
atmospheric composition. The
Observatory's 1970 launch "put us
- me and the (Space Physics)
Laboratory - on the map," he said.
THE OGO VI, Carignan
explained, observed the atmosphere
like it was "skimming cream off of
a big bucket of milk that no one
had ever seen before.
One of the most controversial
parts of Carignan's career is heading
the Research Policies Committee, a
University committee of faculty,
administrators, and students which
discusses research-related issues.
Carignan has chaired the
committee, which reports its
findings to Vice President for Re-
search Linda Wilson and the Senate
Advisory Committee on University
Affairs, for six years. Members of
the RPC drafted a version of the
Majority Report in December
suggesting new guidelines for such
research.
Last term, Carignan presided
over thetRPC meetings in which
four students resigned from the
committee in protest of research at
the University which has the po-
tential to harm life. As chairman,
he said, he has "tried to maintain as
detached a view as I can... I'm sure
the students who resigned felt that I
didn't steer it the way they wanted
it steered."
Carignan believes "The Uni-
versity has to be very careful about
letting the Defense Department get
too large control of the funding of
research. That worries me."
"Carignan has unquestionable
integrity. I have total respect for
him," said Eric Caplan, a graduate
history student and one of those
who resigned from the committee.
"In his eyes, students were not
second class at all."
CAPLAN SAID that while
Carignan runs meetings strictly, he
"was much more concerned with the
process itself than what the process
determined."
Carignan said he spends half of
his time working on his own
research projects, while devoting
the other half to chairing the
atmospheric and oceanic science de-
partment. The chairmanship in-
volves recruiting graduate students.
"He is always upbeat," said
Research Secretary Martha Moon,
Carignan's secretary while he was
See RESEARCHER, Page 3
Daily Photo by KAREN HANDELMAN
George Carignan, a University Space Researcher, has developed a
mission that will study a comet in the 1990s.
* Students sign postcards
to protest aid cuts
FLASH seeks more
student awareness
By STEPHEN GREGORY
Members of the Michigan
Student Assembly yesterday urged
University students to sign post-
cards protesting President Ronald
Reagan's proposed financial aid
to work against the proposed cuts.
Perlman, an LSA senior, said
the drive achieved its goal of one
thousand signatures in four hours.
He said other institutions such
as the University of Pennsylvania
have recently conducted similar
By PAMELA FRANKLIN
According to Michigan Student
Assembly presidential candidate
David Sternlicht, MSA's effect-
iveness depends on how well its
representatives increase awareness
requiring each representative to go
to at least five of their school's
student government meetings per
semester.
An LSA junior and non-voting
MSA member, Sternlicht hopes
representatives will act as liaisons
wit teir. eminne oad MCA NP se
INSIDE
Is Project Democracy, created by
President Reagan, really demo -
cratic?
OPINION, PAGE 4
Australian power-rockers the
Hoodoo Gurus will have their
concert tonight at the Nectarine
Ballroom broadcast nationwide.
ARTS, PAGE 5