4-Thursday, May 22, 1980-The Michigan Daily Summer library policy too harsh UNIVERSITY STUDENTS who are enrolled for fall term should be allowed to check out materials from campus libraries during the spring and summer. Present Univesity policy dictates that only students with I.D.'s validated for spring or summer term may check out books from University libraries during the months of June through August. The sole reason given for this rule is that it is long-standing University policy to deny non- enrolled students certain services during the summer months. This policy is justifiable in some instances, such as access to the recreation buildings and student health services, since these programs rely on funds from tuition paid by spring and summer students. But library administrators estimate that the number of non-enrolled students who would use the libraries in the summer would not make an appreciable difference in library system costs. For virtually no additional money University administrators could easily extend the service to students enrolled in the fall. Permitting fall students to use the service would require little additional bookwork. Students who wished to take advantage of the service would be required to register with the library so staff could have a record of summer addresses if overdue notices needed to be sent. In the case of large fines or missing books, the library would always have the ability to revoke summer privileges from those who abuse them. Students not enrolled in spring and summer terms but planning to return in the fall are still students in every sense of the word. They have many varied reasons for wanting to be able to check out materials from campus libraries. They may wish to do research on a thesis topic, get ahead in a class next fall, or just further their own education. The current policy of denying these students access to the library does not contribute to the library's objective of providing resource materials to students who need them. The library staff has recommended that students not registered for spring and summer terms be allowed to borrow materials during these months. The decision to change the policy at very little expense to the University and provide students with an additional, beneficial service, now lies with the University administration. Editorial policies Letters and columns represent the opinions of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the attitudes or beliefs of the Daily. - MUDSLIDES OFF OF erupting Mount St. Helens obliterate everything in their path. St. Helens: Dress rehearsal for dooms dal Mount St. Helens erupts in- washington on Sunday and its swirling residue hits New England on Thursday. Towns and cities hundreds of miles from the volcano find themselves buried in ash, their citizens cloistered in- definitely inside their dwellings. Cars and trucks by the thousands are stranded on highways in vir- tual blizzard conditions. Scien- tists predict the colossal ash cloud may remain withus for decades, circling the globe in- definitely; it may even possess the power to alter the earth's weather for an indeterminate period. All this from a single gigantic belch off a lone mountaintop. The mind simply reels, unable to quite comprehend the cataclysmic scope of nature at work. The proportions are just too gargantuan, too encom- passingly swift to place in a dimension one can comphrehend. ONE STUDIES the photographs of entire forests felled like matchsticks, of people stumbling through city streets, handkerchiefs wrapped over their faces with the sky above pitch black at midday. One sen- ses it is allthe demented scenario of a science fiction writer, the By Christopher Potter looney imagination of a hopped- up end-of-the-world scenarist. Yet it is all real-breathtaking in its perverse splendor, coldly humbling as it reminds us all what very tiny creatures we are, how naked and vulnerable we remain to forces on this planet and beyond over which we have no more control than do ants. It may also prove a relatively painless vision of times to come-a dress rehearsal for a dark future which seems to slip more from our command with each passing day. Conceive, if you can, the force not of a single volcano but of a thousand nuclear missiles striking within mere minutes of each other. Picture, if you can, not a single cloud of ashes buta voluminous blanket of fallout encircling the earth forever, raining death with a pitiless omnipresence. Is St. Helens merely a visionary spec- ter to our own approaching doom, a demise ironically spawned not by an indifferent universe but by our erratic human passions? It now seems a much closer, much more graphically believable premise than it did a week ego. Pildtlie the ada tlJil6' scenario: We myopically sweep the California cowboy into office; he soon discovers his good-vs.- evil primitivism is horrifyingly inadequate in coping with the relativity of a volatile world; he begins to panic, his rigid political certitude crumbling around his shoulders; his faith, his essen- ce, his very manhood at stake, he must fight back-he must act. His finger edges inexorably toward the button; it hesitates, then thrusts cathartically down- ward. The cowboy is brimmingly fulfilled and the rest of us are lost, hurtled screaming into a mutant hell from which will never be salvation. The volcano sits, its gaping hole winking sardonically out at us. It has a multifarious knowledge of calamity-and, like a large-budget 3-D disaster movie, it has even had the cour- tesy to demonstrate precisely what Armegeddon will be like. Has this most desolate of political years made us too blind, too fatalistic, too enervated to give this large prophet any heed? In evangelistic terms, there is still time, brother. Christopher Potter is a staff witerfor.theDaily-Artspage.