1£gan Bat
Vol. Cl, No.20 Ann Arbor, Michigan - Wednesday, October 3, 1990 Th eoMpynsgh
Germany celebrates its
reunification
BERLIN (AP) - The Western
Allies ceded their post-war occupa-
tion powers yesterday as the clock
ticked toward the historic moment
when East Germany will be ab-
sorbed, with all its problems, into a
new united Germany.
A vast party across the land of 78
million people was getting under
way in anticipation of the midnight
unification of Germany, with fire-
works and ceremonies to last
through tomorrow. Today has been
declared a national holiday.
Police in Goettingen near the dis-
appearing East German-West Ger-
man border reported 1,000 leftist
protesters opposed to unification
rampaged through the city late
yesterday, breaking store windows
and chanting "Never Again
Germany!" and "Nazis out!"
Police were gearing up for trou-
ble from rightist and leftist radicals
planning demonstrations in central
Berlin, where the Berlin Wall used to
stand. Hundreds of riot police as-
sembled near Leipziger Street in East
Berlin, a march route for radicals
from the west.
City authorities banned demon-
strations near the Brandenburg Gate,
the 200-year-old monument that will
be a focus of celebrations, which
start at the nearby Reichstag, the old
German parliament building.
The broad thoroughfares east and
west of the Brandenburg Gate were
crowded with tens of thousands of
people hours before the historic oc-
casion, and many vendors were sell-
ing food, drinks, and souvenirs.
Dixieland jazz, street musicians,
and organ grinders played music that
rang in the chilly fall air.
Searchlight beams waved in a
cloudless sky, and a tall crane dan-
gled an old East German "Trabi" car
50 feet in the air just south of the
massive stone gate.
About 150 to 200 leftist radicals
lined a police barrier outside the
Schauspielhaus, blowing whistles
and jeering at dignitaries arriving for
a formal state ceremony hosted by
the departing East German govern-
ment.
The radicals shouted "Germany,
drop dead!"
The arriving dignitaries included
West Berlin Mayor Walter Momper
and Hans-Jochen Vogel, chair of the
Social Democratic party.
They were rushed into the his-
toric house, under heavy police
guard. The Schauspielhaus is in the
eastern part of the city, a few hun-
dred yards from where Checkpoint
Charlie used to be.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl said in a
statement to the Frankfurter Allge-
meine newspaper that the new Ger-
many will help stabilize Europe, and
that it would not be a "restless Re-
ich" like Nazi Germany, which
plunged Europe into its most disas-
trous war.
Several German newspapers pub-
lished the approved verse of the na-
tional anthem to be sung in unified
Germany - not the old
"Deutschland Ober Alles" verse -
but the third verse, which starts:
"Unity and Justice and Freedom for
the German fatherland."
Souter to be
next Supreme
Court justice
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
Senate voted 90-9 Tuesday to con-
firm the nomination of Judge David
Souter to the Supreme Court. The
only dissenting votes came from lib-
erals who fear he will oppose abor-
tion rights.
The New Hampshire jurist was
approved less than 2 1/2 months
after he was tapped as President
Bush's first nominee to the high
court. It was too late to put him on
the court for the start of its session
this week but, at age 51, he will
probably participate in its rulings
well into the next century.
Souter watched the proceedings
from a friend's law office in Con-
cord, N.H.
"He's just exactly the kind of
person with a broad background that
we need on the Supreme Court,"
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said as
debate on the nomination began. "I
think he showed that he is a person
of fairness. He's willing to listen.
He's a person of independence."
Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., said
he supported Souter, but warned
Bush that the path of the next nomi-
nee might not be so smooth if the
president moves further to the right
wing.
"I want to express the hope that
the administration will not learn the
wrong lesson" from the lopsided Se-
nate vote on Souter, Biden said. A
more doctrinaire conservative "could
well fall outside the sphere of ac-
ceptability," he said.
Souter will become the 105th
justice of the Supreme Court, filling
the seat vacated last summer by the
retirement of Justice William Bren-
nan.
Sen. Herb Kohl, a committee
member, said there appeared to be
"two Judge Souters."
See SOUTER, Page 2
Roll 'em
Lori Adair, a telecommunications graduate student, makes her first film for a class. She's already decided on its title: "A Crashing Fancy."
RC faculty, students disagree about a
by Matt Ader
Within the next few days, RC
senior Erik Riddick will go to the
offices of the Residential College in
East Quad to transfer into LSA. Rid-
dick has been enrolled in the RC for
three years, two of which were spent
living in East Quad.
Recently, the RC has gathered a
reputation for being a college in the
University which many students
withdraw from, to pursue an LSA
degree.
There has been much discussion
of this perception by RC faculty and
students. However, it has been diffi-
cult to determine whether or not
there is any truth to this perception.
The counseling office in the RC has
only recently begun compiling fig-
ures on attrition. It is even more dif-
ficult to determine how RC attrition
compares to the attrition rate in
LSA, because they do not compile
attrition statistics either.
The RC's Registrar reports that
out of 215 students who entered the
RC in 1985, 180 graduated four
Students say requirements a cause of drop-outs
years later in 1990.
The figures suggest that some
students who start in the RC aren't
graduating from the RC.
But the figures don't necessarily
indicate that RC students are leaving
to pursue LSA degrees, and more-
over, they don't indicate that RC
students leave or drop out of their
program any faster than students in
other schools.
According to a first-year student
retention study for College of Litera-
ture, Science & the Arts matriculates
in 1985, 3714 students out of 4461
completed their studies within four
years.
Regardless of what conclusions
might be drawn from these statistics,
the feeling that high attrition exists
in the RC, is common amongst its
students.
The reputation for-high attrition
became a major concern of many RC
administrators and students last
semester, in the wake of an article in
ouRC Magazine, entitled "Jumping
Ship!: Why do students Leave the
RC?"
The article was written by the
publication's editor-in-chief, RC se-
nior Michael Kelley. Kelley inter-
Residential College, disagrees with
Kelley's assertions.
"The phrasing throughout (the
article) refers to things without giv-
ing any account of numbers," Eagle
said.
Eagle disagrees with Kelley's as-
takes place for that reason... we
teach languages intensely because we
think that's how students can get
proficient."
Proficiency in a foreign language,
in addition to a literature class in
that language, is a fundamental part
The counseling office in the RC has only recently begun compiling
figures on attrition. It is even more difficult to determine how RC
attrition compares to the attrition rate in LSA, because they do not
compile attrition statistics either.
viewed several RC students who
were in the process of transferring
into LSA. Kelley found that their
major reasons for leaving the RC
were troubles with the RC's strict
language requirement, bad experi-
ences with the RC counseling office,
and the desire for a major outside of
the RC.
Herbert Eagle. director of the
sertion that the dropout rate may be
high, saying that attrition rates for
LSA are similar to those of the RC,
hovering around 60 percent to 70
percent.
Eagle said the reason students
withdraw from the RC is they are
unable to complete the language re-
quirement.
"We know that some attrition
of the RC's educational philosophy.
As Eagle points out, the RC "can't
relax this requirement for some, and
not for others."
He also mentions that, "products
of (RC) language programs are supe-
rior to those of programs in MLB."
For evidence, Eagle points to the
fact that there are currently 18 stu-
dents in the University's exchange
ttrition
program in Freiburg, Germany. Of
these 18, 10 are RC students who
began in Intensive German I.
There is no question amongst RC
students that the language require-
ment is a reason for transferring into
LSA.
LSA junior Pete Miriani enjoyed
taking Intensive French in the RC;
but dropped out of the RC because
he didn't want to take a French liter-
ature class. "It's kind of a waste of
time to take 20 credits of French...
something I really don't care that
much about."
Many students withdraw from the
RC because they find the RC's lan-
guage proficiency exams difficult and
burdensome. RC sophomore Ben
Jones said that for him, the exams
were "a major point of stress. "
Although the language require-
ment does seem to be the most
common reason for leaving the RW
there are those who withdraw fr
other reasons.
Riddick was dissatisfied mith the
See RC, Page 2
Aircraft
carrier to
aid gulf
forces
by the Associated Press
The United States bolstered its
forces in the Persian Gulf yesterday
with the arrival of the aircraft carrier
USS Independence, and France fired
warning shots at a freighter sus-
pected of violating the U.N. em-
bargo on Iraq.
Assembly blocks
condemnation of
* PSC trip funding
by Christine Kloostra
Daily MSA Reporter
A resolution to condemn the
Michigan Student Assembly's deci-
sion to give $1,000 to the Palestine
Solidarity Committee (PSC) was de-
feated last night.
An 11-10 vote by the assembly,
in favor of the resolution was made a
* tie by President Jennifer Van Valey.
Israeli and Palestinian representa-
tives, and is presenting its findings
in a series of speeches at the Univer-
sity.
Earlier this month, a proposal to
make the PSC return the $1,000 was
called out of order because the
money had already been spent and
the action could not be reversed.
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