OPINION 4 ARTS 9 SPORTS 10 What's wrong with savings & loans? Shame on you, Patrick Swayze N Who is Michigan's Mr. Tenacity - on ice and off? Ninety-nine years of editorial freedom Vol. C, No. 37 Ann Arbor, Michigan -Thursday, October 26, 1989 Ex-Pres. Ford speaks on abortion, elderly by Christine Kloostra Daily Staff Writer Former President Gerald Ford was featured as the keynote speaker last night at a fundraising dinner for an expansion project at a local nursing home. Ford, a University alumnus, was in Ann Arbor to promote the Glacier Hills Nursing Home at 1200 Earhart *Rd. Before the dinner, Ford addressed a wide variety of issues during a press conference, ranging from abor- tion to a political blunder in the 1976 presidential debate against Jimmy Carter. During the debate, he had stated that the Soviet Union had no control over Poland. But, in view of recent reforms in the Eastern Bloc, Ford said, "maybe I was right after all and they were wrong." Asked about the abortion issue, Ford said, "My own view is that there should be a right to an abortion if the woman's life is in jeopardy, and in cases of rape or incest," and if he were still a member of Congress, he would "probably have voted for that proposal that would provide fed- eral funding for those three specific cases." The proposal was recently vetoed by President George Bush. Ford recently returned from a con- ference on the role of former presi- dents in the U.S. He said, "Each in- dividual former president has- to make his own choice of what he wants to do. Each will have different interests and should be free to pursue them." Since his defeat in the 1976 pres- idential election, Ford said he has traveled to 176 college campuses and answered more than 7,000 questions from faculty and students. "I like that," he said. Ford said he was supporting the Glacier Hills project because he strongly believe, in "private funding facilities that help in our health care problem." The center, the only non-profit nursing home in Ann Arbor, is ex- panding in response to a critical shortage of nursing home beds in the county, said Nicolas Meima, execu- tive director of Glacier Hills. "As a society, we know that our federal or state governments can't take care of all the needs of the elderly. The compassion of the community is reflected in the quality of the care of its elderly," Meima said during the press conference. Ford also addressed the changing role of the younger generation in car- ing for the growing population of senior citizens. "When I was young, sons and daughters took in their par- ents and grandparents. Times have changed. It is now the responsibility of sons and daughters to help provide good retirement homes and nursing centers, Field trip Second graders from Mack Elementary School in Ann Arbor climb up the steps of the Museum of Art for a tour of the museum. House backs Bush's veto of abortion assistance bi11 WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's veto of a bill to provide abortion assistance to impoverished victims of rape and incest was sustained in the House on yesterday as a 231-191 vote to override him fell 51 votes short of the necessary two-thirds margin. Though narrow in scope, the bill carried symbolic importance in the widening political struggle over the abortion issue, and proponents took their loss with a vow to keep the president's feet to the fire. "The president won a legislative victory today with use of a legislative minority," said Rep. Les AuCoin, D-Ore. "He will put his party at tremendous risk in the next election, and some of his allies on the House floor will not be returned." The vote left intact an 8-year-old ban of federal financing of abortions for poor women, except when their lives are threatened. The disputed provision would have permitted Medicaid abortions for women who are victims of rape or incest, and who "reported promptly" to authorities. It was part of a spending bill that now goes back to the House .Appropriations Committee for revision. Abortion rights supporters picked up a net 15 votes on the override See ABORTION, page 2 Former President Gerald Ford speaks the Kalamazoo room of the League. DAVID LUBLINER at a press conference yesterday at 'U' minority enrollment task force faces recurring issues Lby Marion Davis Daily Minority Issues Reporter In 1970, the University's Board of Regents adopted a goal of 10 per- cent Black enrollment in response to demands made by the student Black Action Movement. Today, the Black enrollment fig- ure is 6.5 percent. On Oct. 10, University Provost Charles Vest announced that he would appoint a Task Force on Mi- nority Student Recruitment and Re- tention. "There is a growing need to provide coordination of the expand- ing number of programs in the Uni- Gould to .speak at Rackham tonight by James Herron Celebrity is a rare thing for scien- tists, and for paleontologists, one ould suppose even rarer. Steven Jay Gould is a remarkable exception. Gould lectures at Rack- ham Auditorium at 8 p.m. this evening. Gould is widely considered within the discipline to be one of the pre- eminent evolutionary theorists, but his notoriety derives from a different source. Gould has been the loudest pokesperson for the evolutionists in vw versity that reach out to students of color," Vest said at the time. The task force will be charged with promoting communication, co- ordination, and mutual support among pre-college recruitment pro- grams and those that help students achieve their full potential after they enroll at the University. But many of the issues facing the task force have been proposed before - in a 1984 position paper by former Vice President for Academic Affairs Niara Sudarkasa. In the paper, Sudarkasa argued that although poor secondary school preparation is often cited as a reason for low Black enrollment, there are enough qualified in-state Black stu- dents to significantly increase the University's undergraduate enroll- ment. In 1970, some in the administra- tion questioned whether the 10 per- cent goal was sound, and doubted the availability of a pool of qualified Black students to fulfill it. If the proposed 10 percent Black enrollment goal were compared to the Black proportion of college- bound students, Sudarkasa pointed out, "It is clear that Blacks are under- represented at the University of Michigan... Blacks have consistently constituted about 10 percent of the college-bound population in the state of Michigan." In the report, Sudarkasa said mi- nority students can be scared away from the University because of a "selective, expensive public institu- tion image" and often perceive it as too "costly and inhospitable." More importantly, she concluded, "If the University could provide the financial wherewithal to enroll a crit- ical mass of Black students, there would be less complaints of alien- ation and anomie, and, give a sup- portive environment, these students would begin to feel more at home..." The report recommended that more personalized communication, rather than massive and intimidating "college fairs," be employed in mi- nority recruiting efforts. , Five years later, Vice Provost for Minority Affairs Charles Moody said he feels personalized communication is important and is already being in- corporated into the admissions pro- cess. Moody said he will meet today with the Office of Minority Affairs staff to discuss the task force and "to see how and what we can do to deal with the issues of recruitment." Vest said the important measure of success for his task force will not be the number of minorities en- rolled, but the number of students of color who make it to graduation. "This requires not only continuous improvement in recruitment of stu- dents of color, but also increased at- tention to the programs, activities and environment that enhance their chances of academic success," he said. Quake leaves 13,000 homeless; aid totals billions of dollars SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - More than 13,000 people were reported homeless yesterday, and officials warned more houses could be lost in landslides near earthquake. Children in the badly damaged Marina district returned to classes in their reopened school-turned-shelter. As Congress moved forward with relief packages worth billions, a survey found many Bay area residents gave low marks to the federal response to last week's devastating quake. California's Office of Emergency Services (OES) raised its count of displaced people to 13,892, nearly after her apartment was severely damaged. "The aftershocks are really getting on my nerves." Some students were upset to find 175 displaced people still in their school when it reopened. "It's sort of weird," said one student. "We can't get to the gym. The yard is split in half for the Red Cross." Landslides in the Santa Cruz Mountains have already claimed scores of homes and geologists warned of worse to come. Because of the rain, huge sections of land in Santa Cruz County cracked by earthquake fissures are in C ' -- A.-< . . . . . . ..a... . t.:.:. . . . ...