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Tonight: Partly cloudy, dry,
low around 370,
Tomorrow: Partly sunny, dry,
high around 530.
One hundred six' years of editoria~l freedom
Wednesday
October 2, 1996
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Mideast
conference
hushed
gut hopeful
'[he Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser
Arafat huddled privately yesterday at a
White House luncheon that stretched
nearly three hours on the first day of
talks that the Clinton administration
Ocribed as a halting but hopeful step
ward restoring peace in the Middle
East.
U.S. officials said the session,
between two bitter adversaries who
have met only once before, produced
no breakthroughs. But the officials
described a sense of relief at the White
House, where they earlier had warned
that there was such ill will between the
two men that they might not meet with-
out President Clinton and King
*ssein of Jordan present as diplomat-
ic chaperons.
The first meeting went well enough
for the two leaders to agree to hold a
second face-to-face meeting before the
summit's scheduled end today, and
high-level talks continued into the
night at Blair House. While few details
emerged about the substance of the
talks, Israeli officials said all the dis-
ted issues between the two sides
re under discussion.
The Israelis made clear, however,
that Netanyahu is inflexible on some
subjects - including Palestinian
demands that he close an ancient tun-
nel near Muslim and Jewish holy sites
in East Jerusalem. Israel's opening of
the tunnel last week sparked
Palestinian riots that left more than 70
dead.
"We've been at a profoundly grave
*ment in the process in which the
capacity of these two sides to have this
type of dialogue was just not present,
period," said White House spokesper-
son Michael McCurry. "Re-establishing
some ability for the leaders to address
their differences directly was one of our
principal goals here, and we've moved
in that direction today."
Beyond the improved ambiance,
however, it was far from clear that the
*stily arranged summit would pro-
duce solid results. Israeli officials said
they rejected a request from Clinton to
set a precise date by which Israeli
troops would complete a promised par-
tial withdrawal from the West Bank city
of Hebron.
See SUMMIT, Page 7
MSA looks to
hike student
fee to $4.19
By Will Weissert
Daily Staff Reporter
During the Michigan Student
Assembly elections in November, stu-
dents will have the opportunity to vote
on whether to raise their own student
fee by $1.50 -a 55.8-percent increase.
The $1.50 increase per term would
go to fund Project Serve and the Black
Volunteer Network, bringing the total
student fee to $4.19 per term.
If the fee increase passes, the two stu-
dent groups will receive $123,752 in
additional funding. MSA will allocate
$70,000 in additional funding to
Project Serve and will give the BVN an
additional $25,000.
The two groups also hope to estab-
lish a $5,000 general scholarship and
provide the remaining $23,752 to other
student groups.
After last night's meeting, the major-
ity of MSA members supported the
assembly's decision to allow students to
vote on increasing their own fee.
"I am always happy when the stu-
dents have an opportunity to vote on an
issue in a democratic forum," said
MSA President Fiona Rose. "We have
opened up a medium for students to
truly voice their opinions."
Normally, student groups receive
funding through MSA's Budget
Priorities Committee, which has
$90,000 this year to allocate to student
groups.
But BVN Vice President Dwayne
Fuqua said BPC did not provide ade-
quate funding for his group in the past.
"When we went before MSA (last
summer), $500 was all we could get,"
he said. Fuqua said the group was
forced to raise its own funds.
Fuqua said he is pleased the assem-
bly cleared the way for students to
decide on the increase in funding to
both BVN and Project Serve. "This is
great news," he said. "We had pretty
much plotted out that this was going to
pass the assembly."
Carmen Tomshack, a member of
Project Serve's Leadership Team, said
she is confident students would vote to
increase their own fee.
"I definitely think it will pass during
the elections; we have over 4,000 stu-
dents working for Project Serve and a
large number working for BVN, she
said. "But this is also good news for all
students because the (scholarship) will
See FEE, Page 2
Celebrating the
harvest season
Above: LSA sophomore Dave Caroline
(right) shows ISA sophomore Dina
Goldwasser (left) how to shake the
Lulav and hold the Etrog, two tradi-
tional symbols of the Jewish holiday
of Sukkot. The annual holiday cele-
brates the coming of the harvest
season just after the Jewish new
year. Participants stand and watch
the lesson in a traditional Sukkah, a
thatched hut with holes in the roof,
allowing people inside to see the
sky. Fruits and vegetables hang from
the roof and walls.
Right: A student holds the Lulav,
which is made of palm stalks, and
the Etrog, a citrus fruit, after a
demonstration of rituals regarding
their use during the annual holiday.
WARREN ZINN/Daily
MSA's budget committee
doles out .dollars to groups
By Will Weissert
Daily Staff Reporter
If student groups take the time to fill
out an application and appear at a hear-
ing, chances are they will receive some
money from the Michigan Student
Assembly.
The assembly's Budget Priorities
Committee has been allocated
$90,000 of the $200,000 internal
budget - and, "if groups go through
the motions we very, very rarely give
them no money," said BPC Chair
Karie Morgan. "We have $7,000
more than last year and that means
we can fund a lot more student
groups."
BPC provides funding for speaker's
and performer's fees for group events,
groups' publicity costs and operating
expenses. It may also cover group trav-
eling expenses.
The MSA rules forbid the assembly
to fund food and meals for individual
group members.
"We look at each group individually
- we have no set standards about
amount of allocation," said BPC Vice
Chair John Lopez. "We will allocate
very large sums of money to groups if
they can prove they will use it effec-
tively."
To be eligible for BPC funding, stu-
dent groups must have at least five
See BPC, Page 2
RHA discusses plans for ding center
Site to be larger than 2 football fields mail :;c
By Chris Metinko
For the Daily
Some of the most common com-
plaints among students about resi-
dence hall life are the quality of cafa-
ia food and the dining experience.
University Housing is trying to
eliminate these complaints with a
newly proposed dining center for the
Hill residence halls, which will seat
2,100 students per meal and replace
the Couzens, Alice Lloyd and
Stockwell dining halls by fall 1999.
William Zeller, director of
University Housing, said the pro-
posed project will solve several prob-
lems with the existing facilities.
"It's a win-win situation between
needing the ren-
ovation and
needing the it's a
space," Zeller
said last night at situation
a resident forum
in Alice Lloyd, needing t
sponsored by
the Residence renovatic
la s
ssiociation nee ding
"The main dri-
ving force is to
provide more Director of U
modern dining
services and avoid the costs of reno-
vatin."
Casey said the proposed dining center
would be modeled after similar com-
plexes at Boston College and Duke
University, where students can experi-
ence a variety of dining styles - cafe,
fast-food, conventional and marche - in
which the food is prepared
Zeller said the new dining center is
necessary to avoid costly renovations
to the dining facilities already in the
residence halls on the Hill.
"This was an idea proposed in the
late 1970s or early 1980s, but didn't
pass," he said. "But now we're faced
with millions of dollars worth of ren-
ovations with our four current dining
halls."
Neal letter to explain
secret salary deals
Under the
Win-win1
between
the
mn and
the space,
proposal, Mosher-
Jordan's din-
ing hall
would be
remodeled
and an under-
gound floor
would be
added to the
building so
as not to dis-
, turb the
By Jodi S. Cohen
Daily Staff Reporter
Chemistry Prof. Thomas Dunn said
yesterday that faculty members have
been "wanting to know" the facts about
the compensation agreements former
University President James Duderstadt
made with top administrative officers
before he left office.
Interim President Homer Neal will
formally respond to questions about the
benefits packages in a five-page letter
he plans to send to the faculty this week.
The letter "addresses several of the
issues raised in the press regarding the
executive officer compensation pack-
ages," Neal said.
Neal said there have been many
"inaccuracies" about the deals that
Duderstadt gave to seven top officials
- including Neal - before he stepped
down June 30. The compensation
agreements, which were made without
the knowledge of the University Board
of Regents, included yearlong leaves of
absence and future salary guarantees.
Regents indicated at last week's
meeting that they plan to develop a
tighter compensation policy for
University presidents to follow.
Neal is the appropriate person to
address the issue.
"The faculty would like to know a lit-
tle bit more about it," Dunn said.
Dunn said his own e-mail "has lit up like
a neon sign during the past week or so,"
with faculty members posting messages
and questions in response to the news.
Since there has been no formal reac-
tion from the University's administra-
tion, Dunn said the faculty have heard
only one-sided accounts, mostly from
the media.
"To not
respond allows
many of the
inaccuracies to
stand on their
own," Neal said.
The interim
president went
on to say it is
inaccurate to /
report that Neal
D u d e r s t a d t
made the agreements after his decision
to step down. "The letters were just
codifying agreements made, in some
cases, years before" Neal said.
While Duderstadt's letters were dated
William Zeller, director of University Housing, explains the ramifications of unifying
the cafeterias of the Hill area.
n
courtyard
- William Zeller and Palmer
iversity Housing Field. All
four Hill resi-
dence halls would have covered exte-
rinor walkways that would connect to
ing structures would cause student
fees to rise.
Juip, an LSA senior, said the
amount of space that the project
would free up - more than 50,000
square feet - would be a great bene-
fit to campus.
"If you ever try to coordinate an
event on campus, you.become keenly
aware of the lack of space avalible,"
learning community," Andrews said.
However, he said there has already
been talk of using the space for student
housing to ease the burden of over-
crowding.
Most students at last night's forum
seemed to like the proposal.
"Overall, it's a fiscally sound idea,"
said Engineering junior James
Stoops. "And the idea of a modern
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