U-M Conference Will Explore Impact Of BAM

U-M conference will explore impact of BAM

"The University of Michigan a Decade After BAM” will be explored in a conference opening Wednesday and ending Friday in the School of Education Building.

Panelists will include leaders of the Black Action Movement and U-M faculty and staff members who were involved in discussions with them during the March 19 April 1, 1980, boycott of classes.

Sponsored by the U-M Center for Afro-American and African Studies, the program will be free and open to the public. It will begin at noon Wednesday in Whitney Auditorium with a panel discussion of the theme topic featuring four U-M professors: Albert J. Wheeler of the microbiology and immunology department, former mayor of Ann Arbor; Charles D. Moody Sr., director of the Program for Educational Opportunity; Madison J. Foster III, social work; and Pauline T. Stone, political science and CAAS.

CHARLES KIDD will give the keynote address on “The Significance of Black Student Activism in the Late Sixties: The Case of BAM.” His talk at 8 p.m. will take place in Schorling Auditorium of the School of Education, as will all other sessions. Kidd, formerly assistant vice-president for student affairs at U-M, now is dean of the College of Science and Technology Florida A & M University.

"The Organization and Significance of BAM” will be discussed in a panel discussion at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. With anthropology Professor Niara Sudarkasa moderating, panelists will be attorney’s Ed Fabre, former chairman of BAM; and Cynthia Stevens, Ron Harris and David Lewis, former members of the BAM negotiating team.

"Perspectives on BAM from the University Community” will be offered at 3:45 p.m. by law Professor Allan F. Smith, who was vice-president for academic affairs at the time of the BAM strike; Nellie Varner, former associate dean of the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and psychology Professors Robert Hefner and Richard D. Mann. Psychology Professor J. Frank Yates will moderate.

“THE CHALLENGE of BAM for the 1980’s” will be discussed at a 5:30 p.m. panel discussion by six current students, responding to the significance of the event for their own time. They are Jemadari Kamara, CAAS lecturer; Ben Newhouse, School of Business Administration; Vicky Rowels, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Student Government, Virna Hobbs, president of the Black Student union; and Janice O’Neal, Michigan Student Assembly. Obika Gray, of the political science department and CAAS, will moderate.

U-M president Harold T. Shapiro, will deliver the closing address at 2 p.m. Friday. It will be titled “Prospects for Continued Recruitment and Retention of Blacks and Other Minorities at the University in the 1980s.”

IN MARCH 1970, BAM organized a campus-wide protest to express dissatisfaction with black student enrollment and supportive services available to black students. The regents on March 19, 1970, voted unanimously to accept a goal of 10 percent black enrollment and substantially increased numbers of other minority and disadvantaged groups.

Total minority enrollment on the Ann Arbor campus last October was 3,129 students (10.3 percent). More than 16 percent of the total financial aid funds awarded in 1977-78, went to minority students. Of the 3,219 minority students on the Ann Arbor campus last fall, 1,919 (6.1 percent of total enrollment) were black.