University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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The following news articles are accounts of major events that happened this year here on campus and throughout the world. Some of these events affected you directly,others indirectly. The stories are presented in a subjective format, with the authors expressing their point of view. The opinions may be controversial . . . but, then, what isn't?

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S.G.A. Elections In late February of 1978 all students wishing to become a candidate for S.G.A. co-president or trustee had to submit nomination signatures to the Student Senate. An unprecedented number of people fulfilled the re- quired mandate of gathering 250 names in order to have their names put on the ballot. Problems arose when a new govern- mental affairs committee was faced with operating a presidential election with obsolete guidelines and vague in- terpretations of these guidelines from various friends involved in the process te.g. the Student Attorney Generali. There were no provisions within the Student Government Constitution for run-off elections, yet more than ten candidates were vigorously pursuing the positions. This meant that if no can- didacy was able to receive a majority 433.30701 of all the votes cast, some other method would have to be initiated to elect the President. This vehicle hap- pened to be an electoral college, a sys- tem scraped some years ago due to its lack of true democratic characteristics. Another quirk in the '78 elections was the none of the above option that was allowed on the ballot in the popular election but not in the elector- al convention. Governance: wmiteotsioirnsooo In conjuction with the push for The Year of the Union , the Distinguished Visitors Program brought Tom Hayden ileftl and Dick Gregory fright! to speak at the Student Unionization Conference. Both these speakers urged students to take a more active role in their educational institution. Unionization It was supposed to be the year when students at UMass would finally chal- lenge the administration and win the right to collectively bargain the terms of our education and living conditions. The Undergraduate Student Senate declared it The Year of the Union , attempting in September to spark a campus-wide movement by sponsoring a well-attended two-day conference to introduce students to the concept of a union and sign up recruits in the fight for student rights. Dick Gregory, one of the keynote speakers, expressed the sentiment of the audience when he told a cheering crowd you got to let those educators know they exist to satisfy your needs, not the other way around. Then, in the following months, the spark seemed to die as the publicity and coverage waned, the Student Sen- ate fought internal battles, the student advocacy agencies failed to coordinate their efforts, and the recruits failed to show up in large numbers to launch a 4 EJ full scale attack. Many observors would agree with one student senator who lamented, the Union has fizzled. What these observers failed to see, however, was that the push for a stu- dent union did not begin nor end in the fall of 1977. Expecting an explosion that would immediately find students in control of their university, they failed to detect the small steady flame of activity that continued to burn. A group of one hundred or so students continued to research, petition, can- vass, and participate in endless meet- ings, knowing - or at least hoping - that progress was being made. This progress included the publish- ing of the Course and Teacher Evalua- tion Guide, and winning concessions from academic departments such as the Economics Department, which was pressured into funding a student-run tutoring program. But the biggest victory was the right to a negotiated lease for students living in University housing. ln this case, those who had been formulating and promoting a lease for months finally got the popular support necessary to effectively challenge authority. The support came when Southwest Residential Master-Director jim Mat- lack made the mistake of mastermind- ing a plan to limit residence in Pierpont dormitory to freshpeople and sopho- mores, presumably to curb drug traf- ficking there. This, coupled with the release of an audit proving that the dorms didn't meet health and safety code standards, resulted in the over-night occupation of Chancellor Bromery's officein Whit- more by 1.50 students. In the course of its forced scuttling of the Matlack plan, the administration' also agreed to reim- burse students living in substandard housing and to negotiate a lease. Negotiating is, of course, what un- ions do, so, looking back, the more as- tute observers will realize that while The Year of the Union may not have been a big bang, it certainly wasn't a dud. just ask the Chancellor. - jim Gagne