UM Regents Follow State Voters Whims

It's hard to say anything very good about the University of Michigan's Board of Regents.

Since the eight Regents are elected on a state wide ticket, most people don't know who they're voting for. Since most people don't know who they're voting for, the major parties award the nominations as plums to party hacks or large contributors, sort of like ambassadors to Luxembourg or Liberia.

The people most affected by the Regents' decisions, University students, employees and the Ann Arbor community, thus have no influence on Regents' selection. Since Regents usually don't live near the University, and haven't gone to school for ages if ever, they tend to be grossly ignorant or the multi-million dollar corporation they're supposed to be running.

(This year Democratic candidate Sarah Power told the SUN she thought it would take her several years as Regent just to learn how the University operates.)

Once the usual gang of well-to-do people is elected, they come to town once a month to be wined and dined by the University's executive officers at Inglis House, the elegant Arboretum hide-away. From Inglis House the Regents occasionally adjourn to the Administration Building for meetings, many of them behind closed doors, and again in the near-exclusive company of the University's executive officers.

Of the four major party candidates running for the two seats this year, Democrat Sarah Power has been the most visible, perhaps because she is the only one who lives around here.

Ms. Power says she is deeply committed to expanding opportunities for women and minorities and wants "more open decision making." Besides being daughter-in-law to Eugene Power, the former Regent forced to resign his seat in 1966 due to business dealings, Ms. Power has been an administrative assistant to Gov. Nelson Rockefeller 1959-63, sits on the boards of the University Musical Society and Power Foundation, and is director of the U.S. Commission to UNESCO's task force on International Women's Year.

Although her father-in-law is on the board of directors of the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM), Ms. Power told the Sun she opposed the lab's move to Ann Arbor. However, she said she saw nothing wrong with present ties between the University and ERIM.

Republican candidates are David Upton, a Kalamazoo College trustee who says he wants more student voice in decision-making, and Dona Scott Parker, a Howell bank director who seems most concerned about reducing the University's budget. 

Running in the midst of eleven candidates nominated by the small parties are the Human Rights Party's Diane Kohn and ace SUN reporter Ellen Hoffman, both of Ann Arbor.

Hoffman and Kohn support the unionization of University employees, internal democratization (i.e. student power) and opening up the University to the community. The HRP candidates also want to step up recruitment of minorities, increase financial aid and place limits on faculty and administration salaries.

"I know what it's like to be at the bottom of the ladder," says Hoffman, who worked as a clerk and a teaching assistant before coming to the SUN.

-Rich Fox