The Code must Go
On Friday, April 21, the University of Michigan Board of Regents may
very well make the reprehensible Statement of Students Rights and Responsibilities, widely known as the
Code, a permanent policy. Supported by such administrators as University President
James Duderstadt, Vice President of Student Affairs Maureen Hartford, and Judicial
Advisor Mary Lou Antieau, the Code, currently an interm policy, tramples on the rights,
liberties, and privacy of U-M students. Perhaps this is why student protest against the Code
is growing steadily greater, and that students are looking upon the administration with
lessening respect. Student sentiment over the Code is remarkably negative; therefore, if
the administration passes the Code next Friday, the Review calls for students to demand
the immediate resignations of Duderstadt, Hartford, and any regent who votes in support of
the Code.
Why such a bold and harsh demand? Because never before have such a diverse and
vast array of students stood united to show such a strong disapproval of any University
action or policy. In recent months across campus, from the offices of the Michigan Daily to
the offices of the Review, from the Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) headquarters to the
meetings of the Student Civil Liberties Watch (SCLW), and from campus computing sites
to the gatherings of the National Women's Rights Organization Coalition (NWROC), the
shouts of protest and the words of resistance have echoed with resonance in an uproar
against the Code. If the University administration and the Board of Regents ignore such
strong student opinion, they have no place at the University, for with the passage of the
Code, the administration will have shown a blatant and deplorable lack of respect for U-M
students and their rights.
The many flaws of the Code are innumerable. The Review extensively has chronicled
and exposed the Code's dangers throughout the last few years. But as a brief overview, the
most obvious and glaring flaws of the Code are among the following:
1. A lack of student input in the Code's formulation. While the University did hold
town meetings and supposedly sought student input in the Code's formulation, it is clear
that any student input fell onto deaf ears. The Code is opposed by a huge portion of the
students; indeed, a 1992 MSA ballot question found that 92 percent of student voters opposed
the implementation of the Code. Yet this is the type of input the University chooses to ignore.
2. The lesson in buffoonery known as the amendment process. The University's
amendment process is an exercise in idiocity. Not only did it take months and months to
actually hold an amendment hearing, the bureaucracy that one encounters in trying to
propose an amendemnt is staggering. Student input on Code amendments is weak at best.
3. The interm period of the Code has been less than successful. The Code has brought
many students to trial durings its time as an interm policy. Most of these cases proceeded
with a suspicious amount of vagueness, incompetence, and secrecy. Many students tried
under the Code have come away with reactions of resentment and helplessness. The Code
has yet to prove that is necessary to or capable of maintaining order at the University.
4. En Loco Parentis: In the place of parents. Plain and simple, students at the
University of Michigan have reached the maturity of adulthood. The University's
paternalistic dictatorship is both unconstitutional and unnecessary.
5. Innumerable violations of civil liberties, individual freedoms, and constitutional
principles. The Code has the ability to pry into oneÕs non-academic and offÐcampus
activities, restrict one's freedoms of speech and action, and usurp the civil court system as
well as the right to due process. The Code is no less than a transgression against the civil
liberties of students.
It would seem logical that the University President, the Vice-President for Student
Affairs, and the Board of Regents would notice the hugely negative outcry that resonates
across the campus. The students have spoken; the question is will the administration
listen. If they do not, and the Code is not abolished, the University of Michigan students
will have no choice, but to demand the resignation of the administrators that are supposed
to be looking out for our best interests. MR