New World continuad from page 5 up ifthe...

New World

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up if the University escalates its attacks.  And to start some motions going against the University on the basis of violations of civil rights.  Now we think that’s a really good thing, 'cause they're really well respected people in this country, and people listen when they stand up in your behalf.  However, we lost a whole lot both spiritually and financially when the University pulled that big auditorium freeze last fall.  We lost 23 of our dates.  So, especially if the University continues to practice such policies, what we're going to have to do is to get together another suit that's based on conflict of interest charges and name out individuals connected with the Administration, and sue for damages.  So we figure that 30,000 or 50,000 dollars could be attributed to that conflict of interest, based on the fact that the University owns about a third of the stock in the Butterfield chain.  It owns 44,000 shares, an estimated worth of about a mil lion dollars fixed value.  Also, two of the Regents, Dunn and Lindemer, are on the Board of Directors for the Butterfield Theater Chain.  The Butterfield Theater Chain is the Campus, the State, the Michigan, and the Wayside Theaters.  And they just recently moved to buy up the United Artists theaters out at Briarwood, so they are pretty much getting an entertainment monopoly of the city.  We've also heard from other sources that they're trying to take over UAC, to start showing rock concerts for their own profit.

The third thing that we have to do is to publicize this as much as possible, to get the word out to people as to what's actually happening.  We're doing some political work,...talking to people before the movies.  Through our movies, in the last year, we've been able to contact a large number of people.  And there's a whole lot of people fired up about this whole issue.  And I think that's probably one of the reasons that the University is starting to renege its original position, and back up a little more because they know there's going to be more trouble than they know what to do with if they try to take over financial accounts of student organizations, ‘cause that's the most active element in the whole student community; the most organized.

SUN:  Getting back to the new theater, do you still need any kind of construction help…something that our readers might be interested in helping out with?

KENNY:  Yeah, for people who want to drop by, there's a whole lot of things to do.  We especially want unskilled tradesmen for helping with different cleanup tasks and moving things around.  That would really be helpful.  We've already signed up skilled trades too -- the Cosmic Construction Company.

SUN:  Do you still need money?

KENNY:  Well, we need about 5,000 more dollars.  We need people to cosign loans, or to donate money.  We've had an ad in the Daily, and we've asked the faculty people to give between 250 and 500 dollars.  And we've gotten a couple thousand from events, and New World is putting in $3,000.  We can work out some type of investment.  It's really important.

SUN:  Will you now remain a student group?

KENNY:  Well, we’ll always be a student organization, whether the University elects to interfere with our group's activities on campus or not.  If they elect to throw a student organization off campus, to prevent them from using University facilities, then we're going to make it very clear that that's what's happening.

(Interview by Marty Stern)