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 ..