Newspaper Page Text
Regents pass 15 percent tuition hike
$800
Q>
t:
| $600
0)
Q.
$400
$200
Matriculation increases
197B-B2*
$855
$6 84
$741
$502
$545
$185
H
mm
$19 5
II
$2 36
$248
n
$28 5
1978 1979
Resident
Non-resident
1980 1981 1982
All figures lor fall ol given year
* Figures from University Feet Book 1981
By JACK THRE AUG1LL
H«t and Black Staff Writer
COCHRAN — The Board of Regehts Wednes
day approved a 15 percent increase in tuition
for University System students, which will
raise the matriculation for in-state University
students from $248 a quarter to $285 and the ad
ditional non-resident fee from $493 a quarter to
$570. The increases will take effect summer
quarter.
University System Chancellor Vernon
Crawford said Tuesday the increases were due
to a tight state appropriation and efforts to
raise the students share of the educational
costs from the present 19.3 percent eventually
to 25 percent. The increases approved Wednes
day will raise the students’ share to about 21
percent.
The regents also passed increases in man
datory University student activity, health and
transportation fees.
The student activity fee will rise from the
current $10.50 a quarter to $18.50, the health fee
from $35 a quarter to $40 and the transportation
fee from $14.50 a quarter to $15.50.
The University’s athletic fee will remain at
$10 a quarter.
University Vice President for Student Affairs
Dwight Douglas said last week housing costs
should rise 12 percent, from the current range
of $223 to $323 a quarter to between $250 and
$360. Non-mandatory fees, such as meals and
housing, are considered by the system
chancellor and do not come before the board
The pay-raise proposal that also passed the
regents Wednesday will give University
System employees a 2.5 percent across-the-
board pay raise, with the remaining 3.75 per
cent allocated this year by the legislature for
pay raises going toward merit increases that
are not to exceed 6 percent.
The legislature allocated funds for the 6.25
percent pay raise, but had recommended 4.75
percent as an across-the-board increase and 1.5
percent as an automatic increase for
employees with experience in the system.
The board’s finance and business operations
committee’s report, which included the tuition
and fees increases, the pay raises and the
system’s resident-instruction budget, was the
only committee report presented that did not
unanimously pass the board.
Regents Chairwoman Marie Dodd cast the
deciding vote on the report after six regents
voted to adopt the report and six voted to abs
tain because of questions concerning the
employee pay raises
Regent Erwin Friedman of Savannah said he
voted to abstain because he was "not ready to
make a decision and felt a substantial amount
of the board was not either."
"There are still some substantial unresolved
issues, mainly in the division of salary in
creases between across-the-board and discre
tionary," Friedman said.
Crawford said the pay raises “contained the
essential elements” of the legislature's pro
posal.
Crawford, in his monthly chancellor’s report,
said the system might adopt a long-range plan
to phase in stiffer admission requirements “as
incentives to keep pressure on the state" to
continue recent efforts to improve the quality
of education.
Students entering the University System
may be required to follow a college
preparatory curriculum in high school, he said.
The abandoning of social promotions and the
institution of skill tests before high school
graduation are helping to improve Georgia's
public school system, Crawford said.
The University System may toughen en
trance requirements so that "senior colleges
and universities can take advantage of im
provement in the quality of education," he
said.
Regents Julius Bishop, Athens; Scott
Chandler, Decatur; Torbitt Ivey, Augusta;
Lamar Plunkett, Bowdon; John Robinson,
Americus and Lloyd Summer, Rome, voted for
the finance committee’s report, while Rufus
Coody, Vienna; William Divine, Albany; Erwin
Friedman, Savannah; Eldridge McMillan,
Atlanta; John Skandalakis, Atlanta and Sidney
Smith, Atlanta, voted to abstain. Regents Jesse
Hill of Atlanta and Thomas Frier of Douglas
were absent.
18 arrested and charged
with cable taps in dorms
By SUSAN LACCETTI
Krf and Black Slalf Writer
University police this week arrested
another student on charges of illegally
tapping cable television lines into a
dormitory room, the 18th such arrest
this month.
Matthew Stevenson Wright, 18, of
Myers Hall, was released on $200 bond
after his arrest Tuesday and will ap
pear in Athens-Clarke County
Magistrate's Court May 6 along with
the 17 other students arrested since
April 7.
Each student is charged with one
count of theft of services, a
misdemeanor punishable by up to one
year in prison or $1,000 in fines or both.
An investigation into the cable
tapping began after a repair crew for
Liberty TV Cable, Inc., discovered the
cable in Russell Hall had been tapped,
causing it to short out.
“The whole thing fell into our laps,"
said John Timmons, an attorney for
Liberty.
Cable company officials then called
University police and said they wanted
to prosecute Detectives checked out
other dorms and discovered additional
tappings, said University Police Sgt.
David Brown.
Police were able to locate suspects by
tracing the wires into their dorm
Committee forwards
faculty grievance plan
to University Council
By STEVE GOLDBERG
Krd and Black Stall Writer
Faculty members could have addi
tional avenues through which to
challenge decisions by their superiors
under a resolution adopted by a Univer
sity Council committee Wednesday.
The Faculty Affairs Committee voted
unanimously to send to the full council a
resolution setting up new faculty
grievance procedures.
The resolution, if accepted by the full
council later this spring, would require
each school or college to examine the
possibility of establishing a mechanism
for resolving disputes between faculty
members and their bosses. The college
of Arts and Sciences is currently the on
ly unit with such a procedure.
The Faculty Affairs Committee for
mulated a plan for the operation of the
new grievance committees, and recom
mended the plan to the individual
schools and colleges. The schools do not
have to adopt the proposal — they can
do nothing, or they can formulate a plan
of their own.
A suggestion the committee offered
in lieu of a grievance committee was an
ombudsman within each school who
would act as an arbitrator of disputes.
The new systems would not replace
existing grievance procedures but
would supplement them. The
University-wide procedure now in use
was drafted in 1979 at the request of the
U S. Department of Labor, and deals
with grievances stemming from alleg
ed illegal discrimination.
"The resolution makes it necessary
for departments to talk about having a
grievance committee,” said David L.
Levine, a social work professor and
member of the Faculty Affairs Com
mittee “It’s better to have something
people can go to than have a Newtonian
time machine that no one can find.”
The resolution adopted at Wednes
day's meeting leaves open for discus
sion the issue of which topics can be ad
dressed by the proposed grievance
committees That point has become a
heavily debated topic in recent months,
due to conflicting opinions from the
University administration and the
Board of Regents
Grievance committees at the Univer
sity cannot hear pay disputes, ac
cording to an April 1981 ruling from the
Board of Regents saying the commit
tees should not hear such matters. That
ruling was in response to a query from
the A&S grievance committee, which
has subsequently been held up in its at
tempt to solve pay disputes,
Virginia Trotter, the University's
vice president for Academic Affairs,
said earlier this year that she believed
the 1981 ruling about pay disputes was a
policy that applied throughout the
University System. However, the
regents may be redefining their posi
tion on the matter
A recent newsletter from the Georgia
Conference of the American Associa
tion of University Professors indicates
that the regents would allow some pay
disputes to be heard by grievance com
mittees
Walter O’Briant, local president of
the American Association of University
Professors and past member of the
Faculty Affairs Committee, said the
newsletter he received reported on an
informal dinner conversation between
AAUP members and University
System Chancellor Vernon Crawford.
At the dinner, Crawford was asked
about the grievance dispute, and said
that grievance committees are preclud
ed from hearing only two topics: those
disputes over salaries confirmed by the
University president, and disputes in
volving the non-renewal of non-tenured
faculty.
“It seems to me that the chancellor's
statement makes possible a degree of
scope the faculty grievance committees
could do that the April 1981 ruling would
seem to make impossible," O'Briant
said.
The dispute centers on whether facul
ty members can bring before a
grievance committee complaints of
salary proposals before the proposals
are approved by the president
To add to the confusion, Georgia
State University and the Georgia In
stitute of Technology have grievance
committees that hear appeals of pay
raises, dismissals and virtually any
other administrative action. The
regents have yet to express their disap
proval of such committee hearings
rooms. Both residents of all rooms with
the illicit cable wires were arrested,
Brown said.
Liberty Cable has placed ads in local
papers warning that it is conducting an
audit of its subscribers. "Please take
notice — You can be prosecuted," the
ads read
“A lot of people pulled out their taps
to the cable system after reading the
ads," Timmons said.
Liberty Cable will continue the audit
in Clarke County until the system is
cleaned out, Timmons said. The
company initiated the audit in March to
determine how many residences were
illegally receiving the service. Tim
mons said the students are the only
ones who have been arrested so far, but
the company is working on other cases
Timmons estimated that 10 percent of
Liberty's viewers are hooked up to the
system illegally.
"Most of the cases involve ignorance
of the law where the students did not
realize that they were stealing,"
Timmons said. “Most tapping of the
cable lines is done when people splice
into a neighbor's cable.”
Officials at Liberty said they are not
trying to make cases and get people
fined and jailed. “We’re just trying to
get the system cleaned up," said Bob
Denson, general manager of Liberty.
Where we're going to make a case is a
very obvious, blatant theft of our
service,” Denson said. “We have an
obligation to our paying subscribers to
be sure they (the illegal viewers) will
not be getting this free service.”
University police said the in
vestigation will continue. The students
arrested will probably go before the
University's Student Judiciary, but not
until after their cases have been heard
in Magistrate's Court, Brown said.
Arrested April 7 were Martin Glen
Hudson, 19, and John Richard
LaFountaine, 19, both of Russell Hall
Russell Hall residents arrested April 8
were: Gregory Richard Jordan, 21;
Steven David Mendelson, 19; David
Scott McCann, 19; William Allen Quam,
21; Godfrey Richard Schul, 19; Gregory
Strenkowski, 19, and Mark Allan
Weinstein, 18.
Creswell Hall residents arrested
April 8 were: Keith Ronald Bruno, 19;
Donna Denise Davis, 19; Kevin Kentz
Gantz, 19; Joseph Christopher
Singletary, 21, and David Prince IV, 19.
Myers Hall residents arrested April 8
were: Edward Archibald Gann, 18;
Vince Hugh Kenner, 18; and Gordon
Kent Thomas, 18
O ,,, . pho<o/l *rr> t iitrhall
l andidates (left to right) Lovett, Melton, Keagan-Belluso, Underwood and Watson
Candidates speak out in
WUOG-hosted forum
By ED I.EGGE
Kr,l ,nd Black KlaH Writer
Georgia gubernatorial candidates
discussed everything from
education to crime to baseball
Wednesday at a forum at Memorial
Hall.
S. Roland Attaway, Bob Bell, Ben
Blackburn, Bo Ginn, Joe Frank
Harris, Gladys L. Hunt, Billy Lovett,
Buck Melton, Nick Reagan Belluso,
Norman Underwood and Jack
Watson answered questions con
cerning campaign issues at the
forum, which was hosted by campus
radio station WUOG and broadcast
statewide
All of the candidates agreed that
education would be a top priority for
the new governor "We must go back
to quality education," said
Democratic former Macon Mayor
Melton. "There must be
equalization. One of the very first
efforts I will make is to raise
teachers’ salaries 15 percent with
my first budget"
"We need equalization," agreed
Underwood, D-Atlanta, former aide
to Gov George Busbee
"Education has been underfunded
in the past and it continues to be,”
said state Sen. Bell, R-Decatur.
“The money is there, but we're
spending it for buildings and then
telling teachers we don't have
enough to pay them. ”
“Teachers are precious assets,"
said Congressman Ginn, D-Millen
"The classroom is where knowledge
is imparted You solve the crime
problem through education and we
can create jobs through education."
“The best investment we can
make in the future is greater in
vestment in preparation of our
people,” said Jack Watson, White
House Chief of Staff under former
President Jimmy Carter. “The
biggest mistake of the Reagan
Administration is its pulling back in
human resources "
Several candidates discussed the
need to clean up the state’s crime
problems both in and out of
government.
"There’s nothing more con-
demnable than a public official that
violates the voters’ trust," Watson
said. "I will direct the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation to assist
local agencies in investigating and
prosecuting those corrupting
government "
Reagan-Belluso, R-DeKalb
County, said, "Georgia has the most
corrupt political system in the
nation. We've got to stamp out voter
abuse and get rid of people who try
to bend elections. This office is not
for sale, and we must insist on
safeguards in the political process "
Prison reform was one solution to
Georgia’s crime problem, the
candidates said. "Our first priority
is protection of the citizen," said
former Congressman Blackburn, R-
DeKalb County "Our failure to
build and maintain prisons is a
major problem We’ve got to build
more prisons.”
“Once we start punishing for
crime, we'll have less crime," said
Attaway, D-Wrightsville. "We
should abolish the state Board of
Pardons and Paroles, and put it
under the legislature so it will be
responsible to it.”
All of the candidates except
Reagan-Beliuso estimated their
campaign budgets at between
$500,000 and $1.5 million. When
asked how much he planned to spend
on his campaign. Keagan-Belluso
replied: "It depends on if the Braves
win the World Scries."
Russell resident charged with fire-alarm abuse
By MARK B. FLEMING
Krd and Black Aaablaat Newt Kditor
University police have charged a Russell Hall
resident with criminal trespass after two witnesses
reportedly saw him tampering with a fire alarm on
the dorm '3 seventh floor
Robert M Bell, 18, of Hinesville, Ga , was released
Tuesday night from the Clarke County Jail after
signing his own $500 bond.
Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor, punishable by
up to one year imprisonment and a $1,000 fine Bell is
scheduled to appear before Magistrate’s Court Judge
Pierre Boulogne May 10 for a preliminary hearing
“An alarm went off, and he was seen tampering
with a box," said University police Sgt. David Brown
He refused to name the two witnesses, but said they
were not police officers.
Russell Hall has been plagued by a rash of false
alarms since the beginning of spring quarter,
prompting housing officials to shut down the dorm's
new heat- and smoke-detector fire-alarm system
several times last week. According to state and
county fire officials, those system shutdowns were in
violation of the state fire codes Housing officials
have blamed students for the majority of the false
alarms
"We are going to iook at this situation very
seriously," Brown said. "It's not just a funny little
game tampering with these boxes A bunch of people
could wind up getting hurt.”
Bell, a freshman, said he did not set oft the alarm.
“1 was in bed almost asleep when the alarm went
off.” he said. “I wasn’t involved in anyway."
"I put my band over the buzzer to quiet it down, the
RAsaw it and turned me in,” Bell said.
Bell said his roommate and "three, maybe five"
hall residents could testify on his behalf
“I have no idea what could happen," Bell said. "I
could get out pretty easy, or it could be pretty harsh."