2B - The Michigan Daily Graduation Edition - Thursday, April 15, 1999
GRADUATION '99
TEACHING TURMOIL
Code of conduct
GSIs refuse to work,
demand better wages
introduced to
'U'
Editor's note: This story originally
ran in the April 8, 1996 edition of
The Michigan Daily. Graduate
Student Instructors at the University
held a walkout again on March 10
and 11, 1998 to obtain higher wages
and increased benefits.
By Anupama Reddy
Daily Staff Reporter
Despite 38 hours of non-stop bar-
gaining last week, the Graduate
Employees Organization and
University bargaining teams have left
the table without reaching an agree-
ment.
The immediate result is a two-day
GEO work stoppage beginning today.
"It is not a protest. It is a picket
line," said GEO spokesperson Pete
Church. "If you cross the picket line,
it's not a neutral statement. It's a state-
ment against the individuals who are
fighting for a living wage and a fair
contract. It's a matter of social jus-
tice."
University chief negotiator Dan
Gamble said he did not believe there
was a clear definition of what cross-
in a picket line meant.
"A picket line is in the eyes of the
be older," Gamble said. "It's all an
individual's decision. I'm sure that
everyone is not going to feel that
deeply about it."
University Provost J. Bernard
Machen said the walk-out should not
be observed by the University com-
munity.
"The strike is not in the best interest
of the University and GEO" Machen
said. "Our faculty and staff should not
honor the strike."
Some students said they understood
GEO's position but questioned the
timing and effectiveness of a two-day
walk-out.
"The way I see it is the (GSIs)
deserve the pay raise," Engineering
first-year student James Tallman said.
"I'm paying money to go here, so I
deserve the chance to go to class.
"Especially being so close to exam
time, it's really crucial that I go to
class."
LSA first-year student Kelly
Klemstine agreed.
"I understand that they aren't being
treated the way they want to be treat-
ed," Klemstine said. "I understand
their problem, but I also think it is
pretty close to exams. I wonder what a
two-day work stoppage will do."
But LSA senior La Tonya Sutton
said she fully supported GEO's work
stoppage because GSIs do much of
the grading and teaching at the
University.
"I think GEO (members) do a lot of
work," Sutton said. "They need to be
respected and rewarded. I believe
what they are asking for is not an
unfair thing."
The University and GEO engaged
in non-stop bargaining beginning last
Tuesday under the conditions of a
Editor's note: This story originally
ran in the Nov. 20, 1996 edition of The
Michigan Daily. The Code of Student
Conduct was reviewed in 1998 by both
student and University committees and
is still in place.
By Amy Klein
Daily Staff Reporter
The new Code of Student Conduct
became policy Friday when the
University Board of Regents voted 7 to 1
to implement it
permanently -
- ' with a review in
three years.
Regent Deane
Baker (R-Ann
Arbor) was the
only member of
the board to vote
against the policy.
Baker has
Baker opposed every
code proposal the board has consid-
ered.
The Code replaces the Statement of
Student Rights and Responsibilities, the
interim non-academic conduct code that
had been in place since 1993.
A workgroup of eight students and
consultants recommended the Code to
the Office of Student Affairs in early
October, and the policy has been revised
with community input more than three
times in the last month.
"This is not a copy of anyone else's
code of conduct," said Vice President for
Student Affairs Maureen Hartford. "It is
uniquely Michigan's."
The new Code addresses the "values"
of the University community, student
rights and potential violations. The docu-
ment includes procedures for resolving
disputes through mediation and 12 sanc-
tions. The regents asked Hartford in April
to seek student input to draft a conduct
code that was simple and non-legalistic,
addressing critics' concerns with the last
policy. Regent Philip Power (D-Ann
Arbor) said the new Code successfully
outlined student values.
"This code stresses the norns of the
academic community into which the stu-
dents enter voluntarily," Power said. "It's
not a punitive document - it stressed
values first and education second. It's a
huge improvement over earlier versions."
Baker, who said he still objected to
the Code, proposed a "sunset" clause be
attached to the policy, which would
have abandoned the Code in three years
unless it was reviewed and re-imple-
mented by a regents' vote. The clause
was dismissed in favor of the review
after three years.
"There has been tremendous opposi-
tion all through this process in the sense
that if there is a code, there should be a
minimal code," Baker said. "The regents
would have been better served if we
could have heard the arguments of stu-
dents who object to the Code - and
there are many."
Anne Marie Ellison, chair of the
Michigan Student Assembly's Students'
Rights Commission, introduced the idea
of a sunset clause at Thursday's public
comments forum. Although she has
firmly opposed the code, Ellison said she
would accept a policy with a sunset
clause because it would allow the regents
to test the statement before implementing
it permanently.
FILE PHOTO/Daily
University Graduate Student instructors staged a work stoppage in April 1996
following a 38-hour bargaining session with University officials to obtain better
wages.
media blackout and closed discus-
sions to non-bargaining members of
GEO. When the marathon bargaining
session ended Friday, both parties
spoke about the session.
GEO President Scott Dexter said
the negotiations reached a stalemate
on the issues of wages and interna-
tional graduate student instructor
training.
"The University was unwilling to
bargain on a mandatory subject of
bargaining - international GSIs,"
Dexter said. "They also said they
would refuse to bargain on wages
until (international) GSI training was
dropped. That's illegal according to
state law."
I
'JERU SALEM,
Fri ends, family grieve for murdered LSA senior
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Editor's note: This story originally ran
in the Sept. 27, 1997 edition of The
Michigan Daily.
By Stephanie Hepburn
and Mike Spahn
Daily Staff Reporters
LSA senior Tamara Sonya Williams
pleaded for her life yesterday, but noth-
ing would stop her boyfriend. Not even
the threat of a campus police officer's
bullet.
The 20-year-old ran bleeding upstairs
from her basement and desperately
knocked on a neighbor's window before
she was stabbed to death about 200 feet
"All I know is that two young lives have been stamped out
for nothing."
- Yvonne Williams
Tamara Williams mother
I
I Phone #: 734-995-5060 I
1 exp. 12-31-991
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1 p o 0 0 °// (
from the front door of her North Campus
apartment complex - where a
Department of Public Safety officer
fatally shot Kevin Nelson after he refused
to drop the knife.
Yesterday's shooting marks the first
time a DPS officer fired a weapon while
on duty.
"My daughter was a people person,"
said her mother, Yvonne Williams, of
Detroit. "All I know is that two young
lives have been starpped out for nhing."
The stabbing and shooting left the
campus in shock yesterday as news
spread quickly as more than 40 reporters
swarmed around campus. A scheduled
LSA fund-raising celebration was can-
celed and a vigil outside Williams' home
drew about 150 people, including
University President Lee Bollinger.
"All of us are horrified at what, by all
accounts, appears to have been a vicious
criminal assault," Bollinger said.
But yesterday's apparent case of
domestic violence was not the first
Williams had to face. In 1995, after cam-
pus police were called twice to Williams'
home, Nelson was convicted of domestic
assault and battery and was put on pro-
bation. The same year, Williams pro-
cured a restraining order against him,
said Leo Heatley, DPS director.
Neighbors said they heard the couple
fighting as recently as three weeks ago.
Williams, a "talented and gifted" stu-
dent who would have celebrated her
21st birthday Monday, had planned to
graduate in May with a general studies
degree and was deciding whether to
apply to law school or the University's
School of Social Work. She had even
ordered a class ring.
A hard worker, student and mother,
she balanced classes with a part-time
job at LSA Media Services while rais-
ing her 2 and a 1/2-year-old daughter.
"It's so amazing what type of person
she was;' said Tamika Pennamon, her
best friend and LSA senior. "She was in
school, worked and raised her daughter.
Any little thing she could do, she would."
But Williams' life ended in tragedy
when her live-in boyfriend stabbed her
to death early yesterday morning at her
home in the Northwood apartment
building complex. The incident caused
such an enormous amount of commo-
tion that numerous neighbors called
911 for help and tried to break up the
dispute with baseball bats.
"We are both going to burn in hell,"
screamed Nelson as he repeatedly
stabbed Williams, according to Chris
Baumann, 27, a neighbor.
Other neighbors heard similar "irra-
tional yelling."
"He was yelling, 'I had enough of
you. Look what you made me do,"' said
Desmond Flagg, 16.
When police arrived at the 2200
block of Stone Drive, they found
Nelson, 26, outside the home, standing
over Williams and repeatedly stabbing
her, DPS officials said. The responding
officer, a 2-year veteran with the cam-
pus police fired two shots, killing
Nelson, who is not affiliated with the
University.
The officer, who's name will not be
released until an investigation is con-
cluded, was put on administrative leave
according to standard DPS policy.
Vice President for University
Relations Walter Harrison spoke at yes-
terday's press conference about the tragic
loss to the community and the University.
"Grief and sadness (is what) the
whole University feels," Harrison said.
"A talented and gifted senior at the
University was a loss to the entire
University of Michigan. All of us grieve
with her family during this sad period."
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