Wednesday, September 8, 1999 - The Michigan Daily - New Student Edition - 3F

'Project serves as a link between students, agencies

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By Phil Bansal
Daily Staff Writer
Eleven years ago, whenever University students
wanted to volunteer their free time to help people in
need of assistance, they had to call agencies out of the
blue and offer their services. But in 1988, Anita Bohn
helped start Project SERVE.
Now, it's the link between students seeking the expe-
rience of community service and agencies seeking vol-
unteer reinforcements in the battle against poverty.
Now students can drop by the Madelon Pound House
on the corner of East University Avenue and Hill Street
where they will find a list of organizations around the
area that need volunteers.
Bohn, who is now a co-director of Project SERVE,
hopes to have a Website up and running by the fall
where students can enter what they would like to do and
where they would like to be, then receive an address and
information on the agency that best meets their desires.
Students who wish to make a hefty commitment to
public service can find one in SERVE's Alternative
Spring Break program. ASB's service lasts one week,
but volunteers meet throughout the year to plan their
week - and afterward to discuss their experience.
Those post-trip discussions are a vital part of Project
SERVE, which wants students to learn something from
helping other people. Bohn, an alum, considers the
important long-term changes of community service to
be for the volunteers themselves. She is always happy to
see "students taking goodwill with them" whether they

pursue social work for a career or not.
Some volunteers have found community service so
rewarding that they kept coming back every year of col-
lege, and intend to continue when they leave school.
Students who continue with Project SERVE can also
move into leadership positions which allow them to
provide input on future projects.
Sara Saylor, a recent graduate of the Residential
College, volunteered all four years she was in school,
became a volunteer-recruiter and educator for SERVE,
and will soon go to San Diego to mentor juvenile ex-
offenders and help them get their lives back on track.
Amy Cortis, a fifth-year LSA senior, has also partic-
ipated with SERVE throughout her four years of col-
lege. She did ASB her first year and went to Rosie's
Place, a women's shelter in Boston, where she served
meals and spoke to women who were homeless or suf-
fering from mental illness. She learned from that week
that "no matter what your situation is. things can
change in an instant." People can become ill, can't
work, aren't insured, have no family to help them -
and that's just one possible scenario.
Some of the agencies SERVE has helped raved about
the volunteers.
Julie Lubeck is the volunteer services coordinator for
SOS, an organization that helps homeless children and
also operates a crisis hotline. SERVE volunteers tutor
and care for children at SOS's daycare facility on White
Street. Lubeck is thankful for SERVE volunteers' relia-
bility, which is extremely helpful for children who have

constantly moved around from home to home, and
whose parents are often too busy to attend to them.
Options Center serves offenders and their familie%
as well as people living in conditions which push thenm
to commit crimes. Cecily Garrity, children's programs
coordinator, has SERVE volunteers mentor children
after school. She is ecstatic about the volunteers, who
have shown a tremendous commitment. Five volunteers
will be returning this fall for the third year in a row to
mentor their child.
Both Lubeck and Garrity expressed a concern for,
more diversity in the pool of volunteers. Lubeck said 8(
percent of volunteers nationwide are women. The great
majority of volunteers are also white. Garrity felt it
would be just that much better if an African-American
mentored an African-American child, because the men-
tor could then be evidence of an African-Amerca,
leading a successful life.
Mick Walsh, a program manager at Arbor Heights, a
shelter for juvenile ex-offenders, saw the volunteers as
guides, taking some people who had grown up in
unforgiving environments and bringing them up front
the deep and into a livable life. Sometimes the ex
offenders return to what they know, and end up back ih
a high-security prison in Adrian, Mich. But sometime,
the changes wrought by volunteers can last gencr
tions.
-------------------------------------------9
More information on Project SERVE will soon be
located at www.umich.edu/-volunteer.

ADRIANA YUGOVICH
WSB site leader Ben Fife helps a group unroll paper for an after-school painting
activity at the Notre Dame daycare center for Haitian refugees in Miami.


Assemblies
control money,
act as students'
representatives
By Jewel Gopwani .
Daily Staff Reporter
This University, just like any other, has special training
grounds for potential politicians. Every school and college has
its own student government, but the largest and most rigorous
on campus is the Michigan Student Assembly.
Meeting every Tuesday evening, during the school year (they
meet on alternate Tuesdays in the summer) MSA consists of
numerous committees, commissions and task forces. Among
others, they include a communications committee, a North
Campus relations committee, a peace and justice commission
and a superfan task force - which encourages fan support for
non-revenue sporting events.
Representing all undergraduate and graduate students at the
University's Ann Arbor Campus, assembly president Bra
Elias said MSA's job includes "presenting the student voice to
administration and the government, providing services for stu-'
dents and facilitating and supporting student group activities."
And for MSA, last is certainly not least. Perhaps its most val-
ued obligation on this campus is funding student organizations.
With the $5.69 each student is charged every semester, MSA
gathers the $100,000-plus that it needs to fund more than 70
student organizations..
Expecting to have more than $168,000 to allocate this
semester, Budget Priorities Committee chair Glen Roe said the
process of applying for funds is a little confusing.
First, the group must be registered with the University as a
student group. Second, it must fill out an application, where it
tells BPC how much it needs for the semester. "Student groups
rarely get as much as they ask for," Roe said. "The less a stu-
dent group asks for, the more likely it is that they get fully fund-
ed."
Then BPC reviews the application and makes its recom-
mendation. If it chooses to, the student group can appeal BPC's
initial recommendation. Finally, BPC makes its recommenda-
tion for each student group to give to MSA, which then dis-
cusses the numbers and votes on the recommendations.
But that's not all.
In order to get funds, a representative from the student group
*must sign two grant agreements, spend their own money, keep
track of their receipts and turn in copies of those receipts to
Student Organizations Account Services.
Once MSA verifies the group's expenses, the assembly will
then reimburse the student organization.
Russ Jacobs, former co-chair of Amnesty International and
a recent graduate ('99), said the group appreciates the funding
even though it didn't "meet all of Amnesty International's
needs.
"We got 50 percent of what we asked for," Jacobs said. "It
would have been easier if we got what we asked for."
0 Aside from funding student groups, MSA's student service
function is another way, Elias said, MSA tries to make students'
lives more "livable."
These student services that MSA provides include a self-
defense class that started last semester as well as the assembly's
latest plans to make the campus more accessible to handi-
capped students. And MSA's long-waited Student Coursepack
Service, which started in the 1999 Winter Term, gives students
who have certain classes the chance to purchase their coursep-
acks at a cheaper price than they would find at local bookstores
such as Michigan Book and Supply and Ulrich's.
A long-time goal of the assembly has been to elect a student
o become a voting member of the University Board of
Regents. Facing numerous obstacles in electing a voting mem-
ber, the assembly has now focused on setting up a Student
Regent Liaison, which would institutionalize a system where
students elected by their peers give the board of regents a stu-
dent perspective on University issues.
And at their weekly meetings, resolutions are brought up that
call for the assembly's stance on a variety of issues. Last semes-
ter's resolutions included a statement against the Ann Arbor
Police Department for its raids on numerous house and frater-
, ity parties.
The various other student governments on campus are not
charged with as broad and complex of a job as MSA and are
not necessarily affiliated with the assembly. For instance, LSA
Student Government, which also meets on Tuesday nights, han-
dles some social issues, but focuses more on academic issues
and dealing with the college's administration. LSA-SG and the
other college governments charge the students in their con-

Book

smarts

Lakeisha Bland, a member of the Summer Research Opportunity, studies this summer in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library - also known as the Grad.
Lzbrarks aren 't as dauntg as they rst loo

By Adam Zuwerink
Daily Staff Reporter
The University library system, consisting of 24 libraries
and 594 employees, can often appear daunting to new stu-
dents, but it is the very size and resources of the libraries
which makes an endless amount of research information
available to students.
The library most students visit first is the Shapiro
Undergraduate Library, affectionately known as the 'UGLi.'
Assistant librarian Laurie Alexander said the UGLi's first
floor reference desk is the best place for first-year students
to come and find out about what the library has to offer.
Alexander said the UGLi offers the largest number of
group study rooms, the science library, the film and video
collection, and the course reserves. Located on the second

Home to the main repository of humanities materials, the
Grad library also offers an extensive microfilm collection,
the Asia library, and the Special Collections library, which
houses rare books not available for circulation, said assistant
librarian Sheila Cummins.
As far as studying, the Grad contains many individualized
carrels but almost no space for group studying when com-
pared to the UGLi, Cummins said.
Another feature of the Grad is the Knowledge Navigation
Center, managed by assistant librarian Susan Hollar. The
KNC is located on the second floor and "is a service where
people can come and learn about new technology, such as
how to make a Webpage or use a scanner," Hollar said.
Electronic information and the move to on-line archive
searching and Web-based research has nrofoundlv affected

Historical Library Director and School of Information Prof.
Francis Blouin.
"New technology has transformed the world of informa-
tion, which was previously confined to print-based materi-
als," Blouin said. "The concept of what a librarian is is
changing rapidly."
Blouin also said the changing nature of how users access
information has changed the role of the library because
research "prep work can now be done at home."
"New technology provides libraries with a means to get
information to users more conveniently," Blouin added.
Other libraries of note in the University system include
the Media Union, located on North Campus and home to the
Engineering library. Outside the official system, but still on
camnus and onen to University students, are the Clements