Ede again? MSA President Ede Fox's flip-flop on
the proposed university Statement of Student
Rights and Responsibilities could wind up costing
students dearly in the end.
The Fourth Annual Animation Celebration hits the
Michigan Theatre this week, complete with
Nippoless Nippelby, the grotesque creature with
no nipples to speak of.
SORT 1
Michigan tennis' Brian Eisner did last weekend
what the Wolverine football squad couldn't - he
came back from South Bend with a victory. (In the
Tom Fallon Invitational Tournament, of course.)
Today
Partly cloudy, windy;
High 66, Low 48
Tomorrow
Mostly sunny; High 61, Low 40
4ir
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One hundred and one years of editorial freedom
abo, Mchian Tusda, Spteber2Z
12
Kiosk fire disables phone,
computer lines in tunnel
Students offer
criticisms of
conduct code
by Henry Goldblatt
Daily News Editor
A fire set to a kiosk in front of
the Undergraduate Library left
damaged phone and computer
lines in its wake as well as an es-
timated $100,000 in damage.
Department of Public Safety
Lt. Jim Smiley said DPS received
a report of the fire at 1:45 a.m.
Saturday morning. DPS dis-
patched a car and put out the fire,
which had spread because of the
numerous fliers on the kiosk.
However, before the fire could
be put out, the plastic on top of the
kiosk dripped through the metal
grate under the structure and
leaked onto the fiberoptic and
coaxial cables located in the steam
tunnel below, Smiley said.
Telecommunications Director
Roxana Block said the damage left
by the fire was the worst affecting
the phone system since the
Information Technology Dbivision
(ITD) took over the service in
1986.
"I have not heard of this kind
of problem ever - nothing even
approaches it," she said, adding
that the U-M has spent $30,000 in
temporary repairs.
"This was not just a little fire
on a little structure. There was a
substantial amount of damage. We
are taking a serious look and we
will hopefully resolve this to a
successful conclusion," Smiley
said.
ITD spokesperson Kathleen
McClatchey said work to make
initial repairs to the cables was
slowed because the rubber and
See FIRE, Page 2
The kiosk in front of the UGLi
remains charred after it was set
on fire early Saturday morning.
I
U.S. News
ranking
drops U-M
two spots
by Jennifer Silverberg
Daily Administration Reporter
The U-M dropped in rankings
for the third straight year - but
stayed in the top 25 - in the U.S.
News and World Report annual
college and university rankings,
which hit newsstands yesterday.
The U-M ranked 24 out of 204
national universities, dropping
rom 22 in 1991 and 21 in 1990.
But it ranked eighth in reputation.
"U.S. News tells you in the
magazine that there is no differ-
ence between one or two rankings.
The measure is not so fine-tuned
as to make a distinction," said
Walter Harrison, executive direc-
tor of university relations.
Bob Morse, senior editor at
U.S. News and World Report, said
not all public universities dropped
in the rankings, despite the one-
place drop of the University of
Virginia and the disappearance of
the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill from the top 25.
"There was a slight deteriora-
tion on the whole but I wouldn't
call it a massive trend," Morse
said. "In financial resources, (the
U-M) fell, but reputation im-
proved slightly."
U-M senior Matthew Daitch
said he would not be surprised if
lack of state funding contributed
to the university's drop from 22.
"Considering we've been
cutting funding, that's obviously
going to drop us and as long as the
reputation and quality of the
students don't change, it doesn't
bother me," Daitch said.
Morse agreed that the U-M's
comparative shortage in financial
resourses could have contributed
to the two-point drop.
"It goes logically that if the
See RANKING, Page 2
These are the top 25
colleges and universities as
rated by U.S. News & World
Report:
1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. Stanford
5. Cal.-Tech. (tie)
5. MIT
7. Dartmouth (tie)
7. Duke
9. U. of Chicago
10. Columbia
11. Cornell
12. Rice
13. Northwestern
1dI I ofI ,nn: Dtr, i
by Melissa Peerless
Daily News Editor
Although attendance at last
night's public meeting to discuss
adoption of the Statement of Student
Rights and Responsibilities was
sparse, U-M Vice President for
Student A ffairs Maureen Hartford
said she felt input garnered last night
will help administrators draft a more
universally satisfactory conduct
code.
Hartford opened the meeting with
a statement detailing the process the
U-M has used to draft the code up
until this point.
"We want as much student input
into the decision as possible," she
said. "We hope that during this long
and ongoing process you will tell us
what you want and what you think."
Hartford said the U-M adminis-
tration hopes to have a final draft of
the code in place by mid-October.
MSA Rep. Brian Kight said the
U-M is acting too quickly. "This
can't be described in any way as a
student-administered code or a stu-
dent judiciary," he said. "The ulti-
mate decision is that of the adminis-
tration."
The students attending the meet-
ing voiced concern about several
sections of the code to a panel of
administrators - Associate Vice
President for Student Affairs Royster
Harper, Director of the Office of
Orientation Pam Horne, Hartford,
and Dan Sharphorn of the U-M
general counsel's office.
Fourth-year Engineering graduate
student David Wilson said he feels
the code would be more effective if
its language was less vague and
more inclusive.
"All of the things mentioned in
the code are also deemed illegal by
the current legal system," he said.
"We don't have a list of punishable
crimes so we don't know what they
are. I can't believe that the members
of the student jury could know what
they are."
He also criticized the portion of
the policy which mandates that stu-
'You don't have a
choice of whether or
not to have a code.
You have a choice of
what kind of code to
have.'
- Maureen Hartford
Vice President for Student
Affairs
dent offenders be tried by a jury of
their peers.
"If the jury believes 'more likely
that not' that you are guilty, you can
be thrown off of campus," he said.
"That's a scary thought to me. I
don't have faith in the students or
administrators to be fair. With this
system, I have no trust. I have no
faith."
Wilson added that he thinks stu-
dents should be able to make mis-
takes and learn from them while at
the U-M.
Second-year law student David
Schwartz questioned the panel about
the a specific clause of the code -
that which monitors. student activity
"within or without the university."
Hartford replied, "We have re-
ceived a lot of comments about the
language being vague in that area.
That piece of the code requires that
we deal with off-campus student ac-
See CODE, Page 2
MICHELLE GUY/Daily
Leap frog
Brothers Tommy and Alan Rosenbaum, of Toledo,
successfully attempt at getting Tommy in the hole of
the cube.
L
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Clinton to address MSU d ite CanCelat of debate
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) -
Bill Clinton will be trying to make the
most of President Bush's refusal to
debate today at Michigan State Uni-
versity with a campus rally expected
to draw several thousand.
The Democratic presidential nomi-
nee also was scheduled to take part in
a live call-in television show. The
hour-long show was scheduled to start
at 7 p.m. tonight and be shown in
much of the state.
The schedule put forward by the
Commission on Presidential Debates
called for Clinton and Bush to debate
tonight at the Wharton Center, on the
Michigan State campus.
That was to be the first of three
presidential debates with a single
moderator. Clinton quickly accepted
the schedule and the format, but the
Bush campaign rejected it and said
debate details should be worked out
between the two campaigns.
It countered by saying that Bush
would debate only if there were two
debates and a panel ofjournalists asked
questions. Clinton's campaign said
the bipartisan debate commission's
plans were fine with the Arkansas
governor and it was up to the Bush
campaign to work out something else
'I think the American
people are entitled to
debates.'
- Bill Clinton
presidential candidate
with commission.
"I think the American people are
entitled to debates," Clinton said yes-
terday in Chicago.
He visited Macomb County on
Sunday, where he pitched populist
economic themes andhammered Bush
for not offering an economic plan
until 10 days ago.
"Too little too late," Clinton
cracked, noting that Bush served up
the plan some 50 days before the
election and more than 1,300 days
after taking office.
"This is a do-nothing administa-
tion that will do nothing again for four
more years if we're foolish enough to
give it to them," Clinton said.
While Clinton spends the day in
Michigan,a key battleground on Nov.
3, Bush was set for a six-state fly-
around in hopes of igniting a spark in
his lagging campaign.
As the weak economy continued
to hurt his campaign, the president
made his strongest foray yet into the
controversy over Clinton's draft sta-
tus during the Vietnam war.
The Arkansas governor "has not
told the truth, the whole truth, nothing
but the truth" about how he avoided
military service during the Vietnam
War, Bush said in a radio interview
with Rush Limbaugh.
"Let's let him level with theAmeri-
can people," Bush said. "It's not go-
ing to go away."
Meanwhile, Clinton's wife,
Hillary, was scheduled to visit a
Kalamazoo elementary school late
yesterday.
Campus, Quayle react to
'Murphy Brown' episode
NEW YORK (AP) - The sitcom that
churned political waters set sail on its new
season last night, with "Murphy Brown"
fans expected to be joined by single mothers
and millions of the merely curious.
Among them is the series' No. 1 critic,
Vice President Dan Quayle, who planned to
watch the show for the first time.
Focusing on the misadventures of a
Washington, D.C.-based television reporter
and her co-workers, "Murphy Brown" had
been a CBS hit alnost four years before be-
"I think it's a very cheap attempt to de-
scribe family values in America by someone
who knows very little about the true
American family," said LSA sophomore
Andrea Diallo.
"I think the way they approached it was
good," said LSA sophomore Kari Upham.
"The writers did a really good job of making
their point without sinking to a cheap level."
Quayle began his criticism May 19 when,
during an address to a group in San
Francisco, he blasted the Murphy Brown
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