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One hundred seven years of editoril freedom

Wednesday
April 1, 1998

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Miority
admissions
fall in UpT
By Jennifer
o r i a Daily Staff Rep
Juniors
The Washington Post find living
University
BERKELEY, Calif. - The fall that th
University of California's two premier ditional res
campuses reported yesterday that their prised to I
first undergraduate classes chosen such halls
without the use of affirmative action' "We star
11 have an extraordinarily low num- overcrowdir
r of black and Hispanic students. Housing pu
At the university's Berkeley campus,
admissions offers to black students for
next fall's incoming class have plunged
by 64 percent and by 56 percent for
Hispanic students. Those are the lowest
totals for each racial group in at least
15 years. Of 8,000 students who were
offered admission, 191 were black,
down from 562 last year. A total of 434
Hispanic students were offered admis-
n, down from 1,045 last year.
The admissions trends are similar
but not quite as extreme at UCLA. In
its incoming class the number of black
students who are being offered admis-
sion has fallen by 43 percent, and by 33
percent for Hispanics.
The numbers are down even though
both campuses got more minority appli-
cations, with stronger academic creden-
tials, than in previous years. Officials at
th campuses said they expect the
mber of minority students who actu-
ally accept the offers to be even lower,
since the students who are chosen tend
to get offers from many schools.
The declines match the predictions
that many university leaders in the state
made when the University of California's
Board of Regents, and later California
voters, approved the nation's first and
most extensive ban against racial prefer-
ences in college admissions.
'These numbers are worse than what
we had hoped for," said Berkeley's
chancellor Robert Berdahl. "We still
have to be a place of opportunity for
all, but the law is constraining us very,
very substantially"
College leaders nationwide have been
anxiously awaiting the results from the
University of California's first attempt
in a generation to choose undergradu-
ates without using race as a factor
ause many universities are also fac-
ing pressure to limit, or abolish, affir-
mative action. The giant University of
California system, which has eight cam-
puses and more than 166,000 students,
is one of the most prestigious public uni-
versities in the country - and, until
now, one of the most racially diverse.
Richard Atkinson, the president of Melody
the University of California system, store in
said yesterday that the new admissions
figures at Berkeley and UCLA are "a
rce of great concern for the univer- S
s ty, as they should be for all of
California."
Across the nation, nearly all public By Nika
universities still abide by a 1978 Daily Staff
Supreme Court decision that allows One 2
colleges to use race as one among stumblec
many factors used to choose students. some far
So far only California and Texas "Thes
have removed racial preferences from of my u
their admissions rules. Gregor,
But opponents of affirmative action Fool's in
higher education are trying to get Greg
another potentially precedent-setting to see
case to the Supreme Court. because
If they succeed, many higher edu- the pran
cation officials say the latest figures "I was
from Berkeley and UCLA could be a my roor

harbinger.
0
Historian pre
By Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud
and Mahesh Joshi
Daily Staff Reporters
Rarely do scholarly works clinch top spots on
best-seller lists in the United States and world-
wide. But that's what Harvard
political science associate Prof.
Daniel Goldhagen managed to
achieve with his footnote-laden
ok "Hitler's Willing
ecutioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust."
Goldhagen, whose book was
hailed as "one of those rare new
works that merit the appellation
landmark" by The New York

ousing left with extra spaces

)erclassmen have access to traditional halls

r Yachnin
porter
and seniors who scrambled to
arrangements for next year after
Housing announced this past
ey would not be eligible for tra-
sidence hall housing may be sur-
learn that nearly 300 spaces in
are now open to them.
ted this out in the fall to ... reduce
ig," said Alan Levy, director of
blic affairs.

Housing officials were unaware of the extra
spots until a few days ago when the number of
places available after students who had re-
applied for University housing - in addition
to those set aside for incoming students -
could be counted, Levy said.
"We didn't know for sure how many leases
would be signed until we were done," Levy
said.
The additional spaces may have resulted
from returning students who felt they would
have better chances finding off-campus hous-

ing, Levy said.
"The fact is that in the fall, a lot of upper-
class students were making housing decisions
and reacting to the housing restrictions ... we
made the best estimate (of returning students)
we could at the time," Levy said. "What was
not possible to predict was upper-class stu-
dents not wanting to live in non-traditional
halls.
"We knew it would be hard to get it just
right," Levy said.
See RE-APP, Page 7

The housing situation:
Three hundred spaces
remain available for
walk-in lottery
participants and
incoming students.
There will be half as
many overflow triples
next year as there were
this year.

Students will now VICKI LASKY/Daily
learn about their 1998-
99 University housing options at the beginning of next
semester.

WHO ARE YOU FOOLING?

' Housing
biling policy
may be illegal

Students being
charged for vandalism
By Jason Stoffer
Daily Staff Reporter
University officials do not know
who tore off a $1,500 bulletin board
from a sixth floor wall in Couzens
Residence Hall on March 19.
But the University is planning to
pro-rate the cost of replacing the bul-
letin board among the floor's residents
unless the perpetrator comes forward,
according to a letter sent to sixth floor
residents by Couzens' Coordinator of
Residence Education Edwin Mayes.
Housing Information Director Alan
Levy said that during the past three
years, the University has on four occa-
sions charged entire floors for vandal-
ism without proof of who committed
the offense. Housing officials were
unable to estimate the total amount
billed in all of the incidents.
Ann Arbor attorney David Cahill
said the University's group-billing pol-
icy is illegal under the property dam-
age section of the Michigan Landlord-
Tenant Relationships Act.
"A landlord cannot just claim the ten-
ant caused damages," Cahill said. "If the
tenant says, 'no this is not my damage,'
the landlord has to sue the tenant for
damages in Circuit Court."'
University co-Interim General
Counsel Dan Sharphorn said residence
hall living, which includes disciplinary
and educational services, is different

than more traditional housing arrange-
ments. He said these differences
exempt the University from state land-
lord-tenant laws.
"We take the position that (landlord-
tenant statutes) don't apply" to residence
halls, Sharphorn said. "This is a commu-
nal living situation as compared to tradi-
tional, single self-enclosed rental units."
LSA first-year student and Couzens
sixth-floor resident Rick Gordan said
he is surprised the University could
charge the entire floor for damages
even though there was no proof some-
one on the hall committed the offense:
"There's 650 people in the hall,"
Gordan said. "Anyone can let any per-
son in, There's no key to the sixth floor
... there (are a) lot of people from other
floors who are up on our hall" at night.
Cahill said the University's claim
that it has more rights than other land-
lords violates legal precedent. He said
the University is obligated to abide by
state landlord-tenant laws when deal-
ing with residence hall residents.
The University's "idea is kind of like
'U' Housing is a hotel, and they can
make up laws as they go along," Cahill
said. "The same sort of thing was ruled
not to be legally enforceable in local
courts in the case of the YMCA two or
three years ago.
"The YMCA evicted tenants and
claimed it -ould do so because it
offered a non-traditional living
arrangement," Cahill said. The circuit
See BILLING, Page 2

ALLISON CANTER/Daily
Kibbel gets into the spirit of April Fool's Day yesterday, trying on a pair of X-Ray goggles at the Gags & Gifts
Arborland Mall.
udents gear up for fooling

A juggling act

Schulte
fReporter
year ago today, LSA sophomore Alex Gregor
d out of bed, wandered into the hall and noticed
rmiliar-looking underwear.
e girls from my hall had taken four or five pairs
nderwear and taped them all over the hall," said
laughing with friends as he recalled the April
cident.
or said that even though it was embarrassing
his drawers on display, he didn't get mad
of the obvious planning that had gone into
nk.
s pretty impressed. For weeks these girls went into
m while I was taking a shower and pilfered my

underwear one pair at a time," Gregor said.
Today, as calendar pages turn to April, many other
University students will join Gregor as victims of April
Fool's Day pranks.
Some perpetrators said they will use gadgets to aid their
mischievous schemes.
Donna Reid, a manager at the Gag & Gifts store in
Arborland Mall, said that during this time of year,
there is a definite increase in sales of their novelty
items because people enjoy having fun with the holi-
day.
"Life's too serious. People like to have fun, kick back,
pull a prank and get a good laugh," Reid said.
Some of the popular items people use in their tricks
See FOOL, Page 7

'sents views on Holocaust

keynote lecture, said he plans to speak about the
dangers associated with prejudice in politics.
"My speech will focus on the argument that the
book presents and the evidence supports, and (it) will
explain how we should understand the perpetrators of
the Holocaust and the perpetration of the Holocaust
and how it came to occur," Goldhagen said.
The thesis of Goldhagen's book is that many
everyday Germans were willing executioners of
Jews during World War II - not because they
were deceived or unaware of their role in the geno-
cide, but because anti-Semitism was a national
characteristic that made Germans view the killing
of Jews as morally acceptable.
Goldhagen said his book aims to fill the gap in
Holocaust literature that deals with the role of

have learned almost nothing about the people who
were the killers," Goldhagen said.
"Until you know a great deal about these people,
who they were, how they understood what they were
doing, what motivated them, until you know these sorts
of things, you can't possibly explain why and how the
Holocaust happened," he said.
When the book was translated into German and
released in 1996, the work was an instant best-
seller. Goldhagen visited Germany to defend the
premise of his book against the onslaught of
German skepticism.
"The book puts forth all kinds of new evidence,
new perspectives, new conclusions about the
Holocaust that challenge many of the perceived
notions, and many people have found the informa-



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