Ninety-eight years of editorial freedom Vol. XCVIIi, No. 129 Ann Arbor, Michigan -Monday, April 11, 1988 Copyright 1988, The Michigan Daily Women find By VICKI BAUER First of a three-part series LSA senior Meredith Vermillion scales down seven stories of the Dental School Building with a pack of students trailing behind her. No, Vermillion is not a daredevil trying to break a record, nor is she in training for a trip to the Himalayas. As the Battallion Commander of the University's Army Reserve Officer's Training Corps, Vermillion leads first-year and sophomore cadets in one of their weekly lab exercises. THE UNIVERSITY'S ROTC program trains students to become officers, specifically 2nd lieutenants, in the Army, Navy, Marines, or Air Force. By teaching students how to Women In ROTC equal Air Force ROTC; and 11 of 163 "midshipmen" in the ROTC Navy are women, three of whom also be- long to the Marine Corps. ROTC admitted the first women in 1972. And though women are still a minority in the ROTC pro- grams, they say they are treated equally to men. Overseeing all Army ROTC members, Vermillion holds the highest position awarded to a cadet. She is a daily reminder to the cadets in Army ROTC that a woman can serve as a role model and reach a top- level position, one not held by a woman in over four years. BUT VERMILLION said male cadets do not resent her posi- tion. "I don't get any flack," Vermil- lion said of the male cadets. "I am in the authority position. To go against me would be going against a supe- rior." ROTC Army cadet Greg Gilbert, an LSA junior, said, "If she's quali- fied for (the position) then by God, she should have it." He said women and men are treated equally in the ROTC. "I kind of forget they are women and treat them the same," he said. Company Commander of ROTC Navy Kelly Pastva also asserts her authority over the 70 "midshipmen" she leads, 11 of whom are women. treatment in ROTC Pastva also belongs to the Marine Corps, a smaller division of the Navy. P A S T VA, an engineering se- nior, said she does not feel uncom- fortable as a woman in a tradition- ally male field. "For me, it's an honor," she said. "I was the only woman last year. I look at it as having the chance to stand out among the rest. A lot of women don't want anything to do with it, but I can handle the stress, pressure, and demand for perfection." But Pastva said she must work twice as hard as men for recognition and is an easy target for criticism. "I don't have the opportunity to melt into the woodwork. The men are al- ways looking for something that's wrong," she said. ROTC Army cadet and LSA se- nior Brigette Seeger agreed: "Women sometimes have to go a step farther to prove themselves." SEEGER SAID she remem- bers being treated in an inferior manner by the male officers during training last term. "Some of the male officers were walking me step by step through the training. It took them three or four weeks before they could see I could do it on my own," Seeger said. Women and men are expected to fulfill the same basic requirements in the ROTC programs, but women See ROTC, Page 3 be officers while they work toward a college degree, ROTC trains 75 per- cent of the nation's military officers, said Lt. Colonel Charles Narburgh of Army ROTC. At the University, 22 of 94 cadets are women in the Army ROTC; 23 of the 108 cadets are women in the I Htjacrers threaten massacre in Cyprus LARANCA, Cyprus (AP) - The hijackers of a Kuwaiti jumbo jet started to hurt passengers yesterday after authorities refused to refuel the plane and release pro-Iraniani bombers imprisoned in Kuwait, the flight engineer said. In Lebanon, a pro-Iranian group threatened to kill American and French hostages if any attempt was made to storm the plane. THE statement from the Islamic Jihad was delivered to the Reuters news agency in west Beirut, along with photographs of journalist Terry Anderson, -an American, and Jean- Paul Kauffmann, of France. "To the families of the hostages, we declare that we shall execute the Western captives in Lebanon if the plane and holy warrior (hijackers) aboard is subjected to any military foolhardiness," the statement said. In Cyprus, the Arab hijackers, who have killed one passenger since seizing the plane Tuesday, threatened to kill their captives in a "slow and quiet massacre." A NOON deadline passed without any slayings. But one minute before a second deadline expired four hours later, the engineer, relaying the hijackers' 0 messages to Larnaca Airport control tower, said: "They've already started to hurt one of the passengers." He gave no details. The hijackers also threatened to force the pilot to take off and crash into Kuwait's royal palace. There are believed to be 53 people still aboard the Kuwait Airways Boeing 747, including three mem- bers of Kuwait's ruling al-Sabah family and at least six hijackers. SENIOR Palestine Liberation Organization officials in Cyprus met with the hijackers four times yester- day. The PLO is believed to be a key factor in negotiations to end the six- day ordeal. PLO leader Yasser Arafat arrived in Kuwait from a visit to Moscow. Informed Palestinian sources in Cyprus said he would be meeting Kuwaiti leaders about the hijacking. The plane landed in Larnaca on Friday. Flight 422 was comman- deered Tuesday en route to Kuwait from Bangkok with 112 people aboard and forced to land in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, where 57 people we~re released.1 VP considers hiring professional CBN head By STEVE KNOPPER A "professionally trained" station manager may succeed the student currently supervising the Campus Broadcasting Network if Vice Presi- dent for Student Services Henry Johnson pursues an option he circu- lated last week. In a letter sent last Wednesday to student General Manager Paul LaZebnik, Johnson suggested that the CBN Board of Directors post- pone the selection of next year's general manager. Johnson said the University's executive officers dis- patched him and Union Director Frank Cianciola to investigate other ways of operating CBN. But according to the CBN Constitution, passed in 1984, that position must be filled by a student. Though the University's Board of Regents holds WCBN's license, di- rect authority over management must come from station workers, the Constitution says. SOME STUDENTS have criticized Johnson's letter, deeming his suggestions an attempt to regu- late student radio. LSA sophomore Bill Adlhoch, a CBN director, said Johnson and other officials are at- tempting to censor "any kind of al- ternative voice," and that they want "tighter control over students." Michigan Student Assembly Student Rights Committee chair 'We would want to ex- plore the best possible ed- ucational environment for the station.' - Michigan Union Di- rector Frank Cianciola, on the possibility of hiring a "professionally trained" station manager for the Campus Broadcasting Network. Sarah Riordan, an LSA sophomore, said hiring a professional general manager would "ensure that the ad- ministration's concerns are reflected in WCBN's policy decisions." Riordan said she plans to intro- duce a resolution at Tuesday's MSA meeting demanding that any CBN manager be a student, or at least re- flect student interests. Cianciola, though, emphasized that the letter is not the final word for the station. "We would want to explore the best possible educational environment for the station," Cian- ciola said. The position could also be filled by outside volunteers, or tied with academic departments, he said. JOHNSON was unavailable for comment yesterday, but Director of Major Events Kevin Gilmartin, ap- pointed by Johnson to the CBN Board, said the job was too demand- ing for a full-time student. "There are problems when no one is there on a day-to-day basis," Gilmartin said. "The whole thing hinges on the General Manager. Of the last four or five general man- agers, almost all have said some- .thing about the impossibility of that task." LaZebnik agreed, saying there is "a need for someone to be down there more than part-time." The sta- tion must adhere to Federal Com- munication Commission guidelines, he said, and a professional manager may be more qualified to enforce them. But LaZebnik said, "Students' needs are the most important thing." L A Z E B N I K said the CBN Board of Directors will discuss the letter at its meeting this Wednesday. Until he received Johnson's letter, he said, the Board was planning to elect a new general manager to start in May. Adlhoch said Johnson's letter was a further administrative attempt to control campus radio, referring to incidents involving WCBN and WJJX during the past few years. Forward march Doily Photo by ALEXANDRA BREZ Michigan State Senator Lana Pollack (D-Ann Arbor), left, marches along Huron Street in the March of Dimes' Maize and Blue walk Friday. Ann Arbor Mayor Gerald Jernigan also took part in the march. See story, Page 2. WAND rallies against weapons research By DAVID SCHWARTZ If research has no peaceful purpose, it has no place at our University, the campus chapter of the Women's Action for Nuclear Disarma- ment told a crowd of about 200 students and community members at a rally last Friday. "Where the government money is, that is where the University is going to beef up its departments," said Sandra Cooley, WAND co- coordinator and a junior in the School of Ar- chitecture and Urban Planning. WAND members organized the rally to protest the University's research guidelines, said co-coordinator Devon Anderson. Last April the University's Board of Regents voted 5-2 to repeal guidelines that restricted research potentially harmful to human life. "WE HOPE this will raise people's awareness, so we can get things done when school starts again in September," Anderson said. In addition to voicing opposition to the weapons research at the University, WAND encouraged students, faculty, and staff to sign postcards saying they would not donate money to the University until strict research guide- lines are established. The signed cards will be presented to the University's Board of Regents during the public comments session of this week's re- gents' meeting. University Physics Prof. Daniel Axelrod also spoke to the crowd, condemning the University's lack of research guidelines and rebuking the notion of academic freedom. Proponents of academic freedom say profes- sors should be allowed to conduct any kind of research they wish. UNIVERSITY Political Science Prof. Raymond Tanter disagreed with Axelrod's statements in an interview after the rally. He said restricting research is synonymous with censorship. "Once you assert the right to regulate so-called military research, you have opened the way for regulating all research," he said. Axelrod also criticized University Biologi- cal Chemistry Prof. Isadore Bernstein for his current U.S. Army-funded research project, which examines the blistering effect of mus- tard gas on human skin. "It is a project to torture and kill animals so the army can figure out how to better tor- ture and kill other people," Axelrod said. BERNSTEIN denied he is conducting re- search that will be applied to weapons in the future. "All the information that derives from our project will be in open scientific journals available to anyone," he said. UCAR steering committee member Barbara Ransby and Natural Resources Lecturer James Burchfield also spoke at the rally. Ransby outlined the connections between racism and militarism at the University, and Burchfield talked about the environmental hazards associated with weapons research. In addition, a theater group called the Nu- clear Family acted out a skit depicting the dangers of allowing weapons research to per- sist on campus. Coluambia prof. to speak at graduation Sz ~By LAWRENCE ROSENBERG N ID E - A Columbia University Professor of International Relations and former .....y of Education Willia national advisor on Soviet affairs e.ett's plan to fund Catholiwill be this year's main commence- l cation abandons the public ment speaker, the University an- nounced Friday. OPINION, Page :4 Prof. Marshall Shulman, who re- ceived his A.B. degree from the ass marketing hippies of legit- University in 1937 and went on to late following? The Grateful obtain his master's and doctoral de- .find success in.the '80s, grees from Columbia, will address SPge the graduating seniors in Michigan Russia and the United States are un- dergoing a change, it makes him a particularly attractive person to have." Honorary Degree Committee member Richard Kennedy said that Shulman was chosen as the keynote speaker in January. The honorary degree committee - which chooses each term's honorary degree recipi- ents and graduation speaker - is comprised of six to eight faculty members, two students, and four ': .'