4- The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 15, 1993

be £iigjan 1 aiI

Shr as oas

M-mi

L'41

I

420 Maynard
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Edited and managed
by students at the
University of Michigan

JosH DuBow
Editor in Chief
ANDREW LEVY
Editorial Page Editor

L


Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the majority opinion of the Daily editorial board.
All other cartoons, articles and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.

INTHE 90'5 .6EN F-"LI-HOSPITAL
DE~LIVERY
A ROOM
00 'D- 776P" SQN "1

I

ZTOHN t(ELLY
NATUJRAL PARENTS
AND 13AIEL W

C.7 7VDR CE . AWvYE
" 64GA +£PTAt

'

.

sg
MSA budget cuts important services

t

By ROGER DEROO
In his recent letter to the students,
Craig Greenberg, president of the'
Michigan Student Assembly (MSA),
has outlined is goal of making MSA
more lighthearted and fun. But there
is a cost to taking student fees and
throwing parties with them. That
cost is reflected in his priorities and
was not discussed in his letter. And
it is a price that we all are going to
end up paying.
Over the summer months, Craig
Greenberg has revealed his priorities
for MSA. Not only does he put an
emphasis on throwing parties on the
Diag, such as the one on the 9th, but
he has decided that the vital services
provided by MSA should be
eliminated.
Both Student Legal Services
(SLS), whose lawyers provide free
representation to any student who
needs legal help, and the Ann Arbor
Deroo is a Rackham graduate
student and a member of the
Michigan Student Assembly. He is
also a former MSA treasurer.
'SERVE' community
through volunteerism
To the Daily:
As a member of the Ann Arbor
community and a student at the
University, I would like to commend
the Daily for its two articles on the
local homeless population. The daily
presence on campus of the homeless
seeking loose change, a kind word, or
shelter from the cold is a constant
reminder of the escalating national
crisis.
The words of these articles and of
this letter mean little unless they are
translated into action. Society's ills
feed on passivity. Get angry at
homelessness. Get angry at hunger.
Get angry at the seeds of injustice
such as racism, sexism and greed.
Then, channel that anger into action.
Educate yourself, educate others, and
incorporate your knowledge into
your daily life.
One way to get involved on
campus is through Project SERVE, a
student-led service organization.
Project SERVE is dedicated to
empowerment and justice. Visit the
office on the second floor of the
union to find information about
community organizations that
address issues relating to children,
women, the handicapped, the elderly,
the illiterate, and the environment.
Remember, no effort is small,
every action is important.
BRIAN DUNN
RC Sophomore
All you need is love
To the Daily:
It is impossible to take people out
of their square one mentality without
being held responsible for their care
and safety.
And, when we allow people to be
confetti in our hand, we do it at our
own "risk."

Tenants Union (AATU), which
provides free counseling to thousands
of student tenants, will be
immediately or eventually eliminated
by Greenberg's policies. At the
regents meeting in June when the fee
was set, he requested and was
granted a financial separation of SLS
from MSA, resulting in a $2.69 fee
for MSA and a separate $3.93 fee for
SLS, which students no longer
control.
This will eventually result in the
removal of protections for students:
the University administration will
first pressure SLS to cease defending
students arrested by the campus
police, then it will pressure SLS to
stop representing students in court
entirely, then it will fire the excellent
lawyers we now have and replace
them with law students doing
internships, etc. In the end, even if
we have SLS in name, we will have
lost it due to a University
administration set on redefining the
legal protections that we need.
But not only are students losing
financial control (and therefore

ONE step backward before we can
take two steps forward in any
direction ... not the other way
around.
GERARD CARLTON
Phoenix, Arizona
A homeroom class?
To the Daily:
Clark Kerr, President of the
University of California once
professed: "The multiuniversity is a
confusing place for the student. He
has problems of establishing his
identity and sense of security within
it.... The casualty rate is high. The
walking wounded are many." In
recent years universities have grown
larger, more complex, and more
impersonal. A recent Carnegie
Foundation survey of university
presidents found them deeply
worried about the lack of an
integrated community on their
campuses. They were bothered by
widespread student alcoholism,
sexual harassment, racial tensions,
bigotry and crime. At least half
believe "the quality of campus life is
of greater concern today than a few
years ago."
A university should be a
community. If it attracts large
undergraduate populations and takes
their money, then it has a positive
responsibility to provide them with
some sense of membership and
belonging to a larger group.
Unfortunately large universities have
many features that isolate and harass
students and separate them into
competing groups. Housing is
chaotic, courses are passive read and
regurgitate experiences, and grade
and financial pressures leave little
time for socializing. But the absence
of community turns the university
into a trade school. The university
may be a success as a factory turning
out highly skilled technocrats, but it
s a failure in teachini nennle

political control) of SLS, Greenberg
intends to immediately destroy the 0
AATU by eliminating its allocation
from the MSA budget.
The AATU provides the unique
service of educating, advising and
advocating for tenants from a
tenants' viewpoint. If it is eliminated,
student tenants will be left with the
questionable advice provided by the
University Housing Office, itself a
landlord. The AATU costs less than 0
15% of what's left of the MSA
budget, yet it provides more direct
benefit to students than does MSA
itself.
I hope the Assembly can be more
fun this year. But if that goal is
achieved at the expense of the vital
services that MSA provides, it's not
worth it. If you disagree with the
current direction of MSA, cutting
these important services to students
in order to throw more parties, please
come to MSA and speak up. MSA
meets on the third floor of the
Michigan Union at 7:30 p.m. on
Tuesdays. The Assembly will vote
on the budget next Tuesday, Sept. 21.
keep their membership intact from
term to term, they would at least
develop a group of friends and
acquaintances that would remain
constant over their college careers.
Moreover, these groups could
function as a substitute family,
supplying the student with a group of
people who care about him or her as
a person.
What would students do during
their homeroom class? They might
have common projects or maybe just
take tea and cookies. I don't really
know, but I suggest that they discuss
their problems. The homeroom class
could be a counseling group that
gives its members a fresh perspective
and a helping hand with their
problems. A faculty member could
be assigned each homeroom class
and participate in discussions. There
might even be a monthly council of
homeroom members to discuss their
common problems.
How do you get people to attend
a homeroom class? Here I think a
little coercion is necessary. The best
way is probably to assess a fee and
then give a rebate for each
homeroom meeting attended. But
even a voluntary homeroom class
meeting with coffee, tea, and
doughnuts would go a long way to
ending campus anonymity and the
sense that one carries one's burdens
and problems alone.
Large campuses don't have to be
lonely and impersonal if mechanisms
are established to fight loneliness and
isolation. And the university should
play a leadership role in establishing
such mechanisms. Otherwise, all its
psychologists, economists, planners
and scientists aren't really solving
problems that need to be solved.
They are just teaching abstract ideas,
researching remote facts and
collecting paychecks.
If the university succeeds in
integrating students into a larger
sense of community and becomes a *

.!College Roundup
" '
Penn St sets gender equity
44 r
.'i> Seven men's varsity sports in the ing male athletes. Now it's time for the than wi
Big Tenaregone. UCLA eliminated its rest of the Big Ten to take note and that hel
:men's gymnastics program, a program follow suit. - if th
thathas produced four world-class gym- The University took a positive step At th
nasts in the last year. toward gender equity by deciding to becaref
The culprit? elevate women's soccer to varsity sta- them-
Gender equity. tus next season. Asd
The Big Ten Gender Equity Action Even morecommendable,however, univers
Policy was established to benefit fe- is the fact that Penn State did not cut a moneyr
male athletes, but it was not supposed men's sport to do it. that hel
to be at the expense of male athletes. Many officials from other universi- sports.
p But Penn State has proved there is a ties spout that meeting gender equity won't d
way to establish the required 60/40 requirements is a "no-win situation." athletes
percent male-to-female athletic par- They moan and groan about the finan- uity.

example
illing to contribute to the sport
ped put them through college
ey are asked.
he same time, universities must
ul not to bite the hand that feeds
- namely, football.
demonstrated at Penn State, a
ity's football program is a big
maker that brings in the funds
p support many non-revenue
Hacking football programs
o any good for male or female
, or the principle of gender eq-