Five years ago…
Students reacted with shock at the release of President Bill Clinton’s August 1998 grand-jury testimony regarding his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Several classes took time to discuss the issue, and The Michigan Daily published excerpts of Clinton’s transcript as well as pictures of Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress with the semen stain.
“I think it’s really sad,” Law School student Chris Smith said. “It’s devastating to the presidency and Clinton’s behavior is to blame.”
Ten years ago…
The University Board of Regents approved an amendment to its bylaws, including sexual orientation as a basis of protection from University discrimination. The bill passed on a 7-1 vote.
The one dissenter, Regent Deane Baker (R-Ann Arbor), said he felt the amendment represented a violation of freedoms as opposed to an enhancement.
“I have long argued, unsuccessfully, that these policies restrict both freedom of speech and freedom to practice one’s own religion by non-homosexual or lesbian students,” Baker said.
Sept. 23, 1985
The regents unanimously approved a resolution supporting faculty members who did research for President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. At their monthly meeting, President Harold Shapiro said professors had the right to do whatever work in their field they desired, as long as they followed University research regulations.
Nevertheless, 20 students protested the resolution at the meeting.
“That’s not just supporting academic freedom,” Michigan Student Assembly military researcher Ingrid Kock said. “That’s putting the University behind Star Wars.”
Sept. 23, 1980
An assailant stabbed an LSA junior outside South Quad Residence Hall, leaving minor injuries in her stomach. The victim described the suspect as a six-foot-tall white male in his mid-to-late twenties.
“He didn’t look like a bum or anything,” she said.
The stabbing came after three brutal murders in the Ann Arbor area in the past five months. The most recent one occurred Sept. 14 and resulted in the death of a Business School student.
Sept. 26, 1973
A student advisory committee to the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education called for students to sit on their university boards.
They attacked the argument by state colleges that students holding power over their professors would represent a conflict of interest.
“Such an argument is a slap in the face of every student in the state of Michigan,” the commission wrote in its report. The students also supported co-ed residence halls and the elimination of rules regarding drinking and visiting hours at universities.
Sept. 25, 1985
Detroit union steward Shanta Driver discussed South African Apartheid with a group of students at the William Monroe Trotter House. Driver advised against divesting from South Africa and instead pushed revolution within the country.
Sept. 24, 1970
University officials and the Ann Arbor Police Department ended a three-week tent-in on the Diag by threatening evacuation and arrest. The protest, during which students slept in tents, began earlier that month protesting unreasonable student housing rates in Ann Arbor.
President Robben Fleming approved the tent-in as long as there would be no serious hazards. But a threat of a hepatitis epidemic, due to one protester’s hospitalization, caused Fleming and other University administrators to change their minds.
Sept. 23, 1962
The Michigan Daily reported a recent attempt by the University chapter of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity to eliminate all racially discriminatory clauses from its constitution.
Campus ATO President John McConnell argued for the changes at the fraternity’s national congress in August 1962. Although they did not pass, McConnell said he was confident that change would come in the near future.
“A breakdown of last month’s vote shows surprising support from even deep South ATO’s,” McConnell said.
– Compiled by Daily Staff Reporter Jeremy Berkowitz.