Ninety- nine years of editorialfreedom
Vol. IC, No. 39 Ann Arbor, Michigan - Tuesday, November 1,1988 Copyright 1988, The Michigan Daily
SACUA
OKs
'U'9Co
BY STEVE KNOPPER
Both the faculty and student governments
have passed a proposal to reconvene the panel
that writes student conduct rules.
The faculty's Senate Advisory Committee
on University Affairs voted unanimously
yesterday to reconvene the University
Council, a nine-member committee of
students, faculty, and administrators.
The Michigan Student Assembly, during
its meeting last week, passed the proposal
which will now head to the University's
executive officers for consideration.
SACUA chair Beth Reed, a professor of
social work, said she hoped the council could
meet by early December, and that SACUA
would start interviewing faculty to serve on
the panel this week.
MSA officials said last week they hope to
appoint members by the middle of the month,
so the council will be prepared to meet before
December.
The council's future has been in doubt
since last summer. In July, the University's
Board of Regents voted to suspend the council
in a year unless the council itself could come
up with rules to make it more effective.
Many regents have called the council
ineffective because students would not
compromise their position against a code of
non-academic conduct. But student activists
criticized the administration for not listening
to the student body, which has consistently
voted against the code in MSA-conducted
polls.
In the past, council members have left
meetings in frustration because neither side
was willing to compromise. But many say the
regents were hasty in dismissing the council
- which hasn't met since last year - rather
than making it more effective.
Sociology Prof. Gayl Ness, a SACUA
member, said the council was "the one body
where administrators, students, and faculty can
uncil
'There has been an erosion of this
trust between the faculty, stu-
dents, and administration over the
last few years. I would like to see
that rejuvenated,'
-Gayl Ness,
SACUA member
get together... There has been an erosion of
this trust between the faculty, students, and
administration over the last few years. I would
like to see that rejuvenated."
Ness called the new document, written by
Reed and MSA President Michael Phillips, a
"beautiful procedural proposal," saying it
encourages compromise. Unlike past council
incarnations, the new council would employ a
neutral mediator to resolve conflict.
Rob Bell, chair of MSA's
Communications Committee, said the new
council will survive because the proposal
outlines several mechanisms to avoid
problems the council has encountered in the
past. These include:
.making deadlines for members to finish
their work;
-creating a secondary committee to vote on
rules in case the council reaches an impasse;
-and appointing members who display
attitudes of "good faith" to compromise
instead of stonewalling.
The University's executive officers must
still accept the new proposal before groups
can nominate members. Reed said the
proposal would probably go before the regents
for final approval.
- Daily News Reporter Alyssa Lustigman
contributed to this report.
Shades of Fantasia DAVID LUBLINER/Dally
A member of the University's School of Music Orchestra, dressed as Mickey Mouse, presents the Band's
conductor with a baton during last night's Holloween Concert before a standing-room-only crowd at Hill
Auditorium. The orchestra gathers once a year for the annual October event.
Israe'lis to elect new
parliament
today
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israelis vote
today in an election tied to 11 months of
violence that has cost the lives of more
than 300 Palestinians and 10 Jews, inclu-
ding a rabbi's daughter and her three chil-
dren killed in a weekend attack in the town
of Jericho.
Sunday's firebomb attack on a bus that
killed 27-year-old schoolteacher Rachel
Weiss and her children is expected to boost
the chances of Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir of the conservative Likud bloc,
who advocates tougher measures against
the Arab uprising in the occupied lands.
"There's no question it will help Likud,"
said Daniel Elazar, a political analyst of the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. "For
most voters this will only reconfirm their
beliefs, but for those voters sitting on the
fence something like this 'could push them
off to the right."
Zeev Eitan, a political analyst at Tel
Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Stra-
tegic Studies, said: "In this election, that
could be the difference between a clear vic-
Violence
may
bring
Likud
votes
party
tory by one party or a tie."
Polls taken before the attack and
published yesterday in the newspaper
Maariv either gave Likud the edge or
indicated a dead heat similar to the one that
forced Likud and the center-left Labor Party
into a "national unity" coalition in 1984.
Four different polls indicated that Labor
and its left-wing partners would receive 47-
55 of the Knesset's 120 seats, with Likud
and its allies getting 56-65.
Some seats are expected to be taken by
three Arab-oriented parties whose strong
support of the Palestine Liberation Organ-
ization make them unacceptable in either
major party's coalitions.
The recent killings have prompted calls
for revenge by leading politicians compet-
ing in an election that is expected to be a
major element in deciding the future of the
West Bank and Gaza.
Ariel Sharon, a former defense minister
and senior Likud politician blamed Labor
for Sunday's attack, saying that the party's
willingness to exchange occupied land for
peace encouraged Palestinian violence.
Shamir spoke out for for swift punish-
ment of Palestinians responsible for the
bus attack. But Foreign Minister Shimon
Peres of the Labor Party said that it would
provide nothing in the way of hope for a
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A 48-hour travel curfew, which began
yesterday at 11 p.m., confined the 1.5 mil-
lion Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank and Gaza to their homes and barred
press coverage without an army escort in
the territories.
The curfew, which is supposed to ensure
a quiet election, had nothing to do with
Sunday's attack on the bus, an army
spokesperson said.
'
TA waiver
BY LISA POLLAK
At 3:15 a.m., October 22, Congress passed
a piece of legislation the University and its
graduate student teaching assistants had waited
ten months to see.
But there was one problem. Nobody at the
University was quite sure what it meant.
This morning, after almost a week of
deliberations, University lawyers and top ad-
ministrators plan to answer publicly the ques-
tion that some say last week's federal tax bill
didn't: do graduate student assistants owe taxes
on the tuition they don't pay?
University GSAs don't pay tuition; their
1987 contract granted full tuition waivers for
the first time this fall. But ten months ago,
when federal tax exemptions for GSA tuition
waivers expired, teaching assistants faced the
possibility of seeing their $560 average take-
home monthly pay drop $150 to $200.
tax issue
The University, however, was optimistic
that Congress would not only re-enact the ex-
emptions this fall, but retroactively apply
them to 1988. And so, rather than withhold
the taxes from student paychecks, the Univer-
sity paid the taxes itself and billed the students
- without imposing penalties on those who
didn't pay.
Last week, after much delay, Congress fi-
nally passed its mammoth tax bill. Rather
than re-enact the old exemption, however, the
bill adds the provision that "teaching assis-
tants can receive tax-free tuition as long as
that tuition is beyond reasonable compensa-
tion," said University lobbyist Tom Butts.
Unless University officials can prove the
GSA tuition waiver is "beyond reasonable
compensation" - that is, not merely payment
for services - the bill will not relieve the
See TAs, Page 2
officials to decide
Protest inquiry
called biased
BY MARK WEISBROT
The decision to press charges
against four students arrested in a
protest at the Oct. 6 inauguration of
University President James Duder-
stadt has come under harsh criticism
from activists and a local attorney.
Jonathan Weber, of the Ann Arbor
law firm Rose and Weber, said it was
"negligent" and "irresponsible to the
public to be bringing charges with-
out first finding out if there is a
case."
Ann Arbor police Detective Dou-
glas Barbour, who investigated the
inauguration incidents, interviewed
only police and campus security be-
fore asking the county prosecutor's
office to press charges.
"We can't interview every witness
before pressing charges," Barbour
said.
One interview with a non-police
witness is included in the report,
Barbour said.
But police "were certainly aware
h that there were many witnesses to the
was taken to the University hospital
with a head injury.
Steingraber was charged with as-
sault and battery.
There is no police policy which
requires investigators to speak with
all available witnesses before press-
ing charges.
Weber compared the case of the
Duderstadt protesters with that of
See Protest, Page 2
..