8 - Tuesday, April 17, 2007 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com For a day, office hours held on Diag A CALL TO MANHOOD Lecturers negotiating with 'U' ByKATHERINE MITCHELL Daily StaffReporter Yesterday, a concrete Diag bench was lecturer Margaretha Sudarsih's Advanced Indonesian classroom. Sudarsih, a lecturer in the department of Asian Languages and Cultures, is one of 55 Lectur- ers' Employee Organization mem- bers who signed up to hold their regularly scheduled office hours or classes on the Diag yesterday and today to tell students about their ongoing contract negotiations. Lecturers from LEO, a union for non-tenure track lecturers at the University's three campuses, stationed themselves on the Diag from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., meeting with students while passing out flyers about LEO to passersby. "We wanted to bring aware- ness to the fact that we're in nego- tiations right now," said Janella James, LEO's chief organizer. LEO, an organization of more than 1,400 lecturers, is in con- tact negotiations with University administrators. LEO's contract expires at the end of June. LEO's bargaining position includes salary raises, improved health care, more transparency in employment reviews, a uni- form title for all LEO members, more flexibility to work off-cam- pus. A team of bargainers led by English Lecturer Kirsten Herold began negotiations Jan. 26. James said one goal of this week's event was to inform stu- dents about the large number of teachers they have that are not on a tenure-track. James also said the event can remind tenured colleagues how many lecturers are involved on campus. She said many tenured professors have been supportive of LEO previously. RC Lecturer Ifnigo de la Cerda, LEO's Ann Arbor campus co- chair, said he heard some lecturers wanted to hold class outside, but were deterred by the strong wind. Sudarsih's Advanced Indone- sian II class, though, braved the wind. She and her five students gathered around chicken nuggets, grapes and ice cream cake while speaking Indonesian. "I wanted to support LEO because negotiations have not been going very well," Sudarsih said. "The students need to know what we're doing." One of Sudarsih's students, LSA senior Diana Parker, said she also wanted to support LEO. Parker said she has supported previous LEO demonstrations and events. LEO members went on strike in 2004 before issues with LEO's last contract were resolved. But James said she hopes LEO continues awareness campaigns without taking job action like strikes, though she said LEO is far from a point where something like that would be considered. Her class yesterday celebrated the upcoming graduation of three of its members. Her class today will also be held on the Diag, but will follow regular class format. LSA senior Jason Harris tin whiteT-shirt) speaks to Engineering junior Steve Martin at the Call to Manhood event held yesterday evening at the Crisler Arena Champion Center. Harris organized the event, which sought to help black men become better leaders. A 2nd ter-m for faculty gov't chair By LISA HAIDOSTIAN Daily StaffReporter The Senate Assembly voted yesterday to sus- pend a rule that says a chair of the assembly's executive arm cannot serve consecutive terms. The assembly also approved a second three- year term for Charles Smith, the chair of the Senate Assembly Committee on University Affairs. Smith was unanimously re-elected in a SACUA meeting earlier this month. Smith said SACUA has made a great deal of progress over the past year and that members didn't to want to stop the momentum by select- ing a new chair. "They knew if they elected me they would have to ask for a rule suspension, because the rule was clear-cut," Smith said. He said it usually takes about three or four months for new SACUA chairs to adjust to the position. He said he hopes his incumbency will make the committee more productive next year. "We had an exceptionally good SACUA this year," Smith said. "I think nextyear will be even better." Smith said he and the rest of the members of SACUA will determine the committee's goals for the next year at its June retreat at the Uni- versity's Inglis House. IF I HAD A BOAT LENDERS From page1 investigation. University spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham said financial aid offices independently decided to make the changes because of the negative connotations that have been attached to the term "preferred lender" by New York Attorney Gen- eral Andrew Cuomo's investiga- tion. She said she didn't know if any other University units made similar changes. Cunningham said it's accurate to say that the University doesn'tmain- tain preferred lender lists because that term now references the con- flicts of interest Cuomo's investiga- tion has uncovered. Although the University was one of more than 400 colleges that received a letter earlier this year asking for information as part of the investigation, its financial aid office has not been found to be using ille- gal practices, Cunningham said. "We're not doing anything wrong," Cunningham said. "We're not doing anything unethical or unlawful." While some University of Michi- gan financial aid offices have tried to scrub their sites clean of referenc- es to preferred lenders, others have left the references untouched. The University Law School's financial aid website listed five "ree- ommended" lenders as of yesterday. The website of the financial aid office of the University of Michigan at Dearborn listed three loan com- panies underthe heading "preferred lenders." "To help our students, the Office of Financial Aid has established a preferred lender list," the website said. "While there are many attrac- tive loan products with responsible lenders, the Office of Financial Aid has based its selections on our experience with lenders who offer attractive terms and have a history of good service." The University of Michigan at Flint's financial aid website used to include a list of four preferred lend- ers on a fact sheet. "The lenders on the back (of the page) will show you who the University of Michigan-Flint's preferred alternative loan lenders are," the site said until recently, according to a previous version obtained from a search engine. "The University of Michigan-Flint has partnered with these orga- nizations to provide you with the most expedited processes pos- sible." The paragraph has since been reworded and the reference to pre- ferred lenders was removed. "The lenders on the back are a sample of alternative lenders cur- rently utilized by some students at the University of Michigan-Flint," the page now says. The changes to the page seem to indicate a hasty revision. The para- graph is now written in a font differ- ent from the ones used on the rest of the page. And because of a coding error, the original sentences remain embedded in the web page. If a visi- tor to the site tries to copy and paste the new sentence, it will copy the original one. Cuomo's investigation has found that many universities have received kickbacks from loan companies for placing them on their preferred lender lists. It has also found that top financial aid officials at Colum- bia University, $ the University of Southern California and the Univer- sity of Texas all owned unreported stock in a loan company that was on the colleges' preferred lender lists. Matteo Fontana, a high-rank- ing official at the U.S. Department of Education, was found to have owned about $100,000 in stock in a loan company while working for the department. Several college officials - includ- ing Ellen Frishberg, the director of student financial services at Johns Hopkins University - were found to have taken thousands of dollars in consulting fees from Student Loan Xpress, which is on Johns Hopkins's preferred lender list. Others were found to have accepted invitations to all-expenses-paid conferences sponsored by loan companies, Several loan companies have settled with the attorney general's office for as much as $2.5 million to end investigations into allegations that they bribed their way onto the preferred lender lists of more than 60 colleges. One loan company that recently settled was Citibank, which dis- burses 70 percent of private loans granted to University students. Twenty-three percent of all loans PcTce SCnOnTcsrtLS/Daily LSA senior Andrea Buras sits in the University waterskiing clubH'soatn the Diag yesterday. The group brought the boat to the Diag to recruit students pass- ing by. taken out by students come from Citibank. Citibank was found in Cuomo's investigation to have illegally shared profits with New York Uni- versity, the University of Pennsylva- nia and Syracuse University. It is on the preferred lender lists of all three colleges. Citibank claims to be "a preferred lender for University of Michigan" on its loan application for University of Michigan students. The applica- tion, hosted on the Universityrfinan- cial aid office's website, contains the office's logo. Cunningham said Citibank is included on the University's rec- ommended lenders list because i has competitive rates and reliable customer service. She said the Uni. versitydoesn'treceive anyunlawful benefits - financial or otherwise - from listing Citibank as a recom- mended lender. Cunninghamsaid UniversityPro- vost Teresa Sullivan is working tc improve the University's conflict o1 interest policies to make it less likely that an employee would be guilty o a violation. "The provost has been very engaged in reviewing our practices and personnel to make sure the Uni- versityis observingthehighestethi- cal standards," Cunningham said. University spokeswoman Debo- rah Greene said the University financial aid office hasn't conduct- ed a full investigation into the stock portfolios of its top officials or into whether any of them have gone on junkets paid for by loan companies. "We work on the assumption that University of Michigan staff are scrupulously ethical," Greene said. "In every way, we've found them tc be. Nobody has a new sailboat in his front yard." MESA From page 1 the University of Massachusetts. 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