44 OPINION Page 4 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Sunday, January 24, 1982 The Michigan Daily supportin5 martial 1ax heh!1 Vol. XCII, No. 94 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board - 0 1 Super Sunday T LOOKED fine on the black-. board. When the powers that be from the National Football League and the City of Detroit met in 1979 to discuss a possible Silverdome Super Bowl, they agreed that the timing was right. It would be a bold step, yanking the coveted contest out of the Sun Belt, but the bitchers would adapt. Besides, con- stant complaints ,that the game was inaccessible to northern fans needed to, be appreciated. The Silverdome fit the bill. Detroit's braintrust had obvious in- terests at stake. Always looking for a public relations boost, government and industry leaders foresaw lucrative 'benefits from the national attention and stimulated local commerce. The automobile companies, which sponsor - a large percentage of televised games, expected to be rebounding by January 1982, and welcomed the opportunity to show off their blossoming factories. Sadly, January 1982 finds the city and the industry bottoming out. Both are in pain today-terrible pain-and .the Super Bowl's arrival magnifies rather than mollifies the suffering. Economic depression' is ravaging this area; the auto industry is deteriorating quickly. A quarter of the once- prosperous labor force is unemployed,' and many of those still working face shortened hours and sporadic lay-offs. ' Not a pretty picture for the television cameras. The ' spotlight glares on Detroit at a time when optimism is scarce, if not nonexistent, and the despair plaguing its residents can be - felt at every turn. Already, visiting journalists have taken great pains to describe the area's desolate condition. "Hideous and horrible," one spor- tswriter described the city on national television. Others publicly scorned their Pontiac assignment. As a result, the city's leaders and media figures have been on the defen- sive. They did not expect this occasion to arouse such contempt for the area, although they perhaps should have when planning the Silverdome bowl. From the moment they landed at Metropolitan Airport, Detroit's guests immediately discovered the sour local mood. "UAW Suspends Contract Talks," the headlines read, and the ac- companying articles vividly described the perilous condition of the industry, which is the city's lifeblood. On the very next day, further illustrating the depressed bowl-week climate, the papers bellowed, "Young's Townhouse Bugged." A little scandal, wonderfully timed along with the doomed union meetings, comfirmed the impression of our unhappy guests. Consequently, an attempt to sym- bolize the revitalized, encouraging local spirit has instead come to sym- bolize a despondent, desperate spirit. An attempt to bolster pride has eroded pride, and when it's all over a good many people will wish it hadn't hap- pened. Not now, anyway. If only the Super Bowl could have waited until, the people of Detroit and Pontiac were working, the economy rolling, the mood sweetening. The eyes of the nation, then, would have spared our people such painful humiliation. I J ,... .- ,- t . t L - ,,,. j. . f __ -,. , " y, 0 h A ti e ---- - -- (d p . ti \ " /' ' , ., '' ! _ d _ - _ . _- . -- -- r - T M H w I.a w 1982 _ __- -_ _ _ 0 a 6 ft depressed C.harlevo ix:' Some real riches-and ho pe 0 Drunken resolution Tr'HEANN Arbor Police Department's' crackdown on area bars and liquor sellers finally-and thankfully-seems to be coming to an end. Thursday's acquittal of a University student on charges that she had : violated Michigan law by selling alcohol to a minor marks the seventh straight not guilty verdict in a series of Telated cases. This latest acquittal-of :Susan Sterner, an LSA senior-may -just knock the wind out of the un- popular crackdown. In their crackdown effort, the Ann yArbor Police had Explorer Scouts ranging in age from' 18to 20, go into, 'bars and liquor stores and attempt to ' purchase alcoholic beverages. These AAPD tactics bordered on en- trapment, owners claimed. Some mer- chants said the scouts came back to their stores again and again, until: finally they were allowed to purchase alcohol. Using scouts to buy the alcohol, however, was a shrewd move on the part of the AAPD. The term explorer - scout congers up in the mind's eye the 4 image of a 15-year-old in a nifty brown and red uniform asking for a six pack of Molsons. As it turns out, many of the scouts appeared, according to store employees, to be well over 21. But in many respects, the resolution of this case seems exceedingly ap- propriate: A stupid case elicited a stupid resolution. .tsan o .m rr.... Letters and columns repro Sterner was acquitted not because of the unfairness of the Michigan liquor laws or because the police used questionable methods, but because of a technicality. She was acquitted because the police could not prove that she had actually sold an alcoholic beverage to the Ex- plorer Scout. While a police officer testified that the drink looked like beer and tasted like beer, the prosecutor could not prove that the contents of the glass served to the scout actually was beer. Like the rest of the whole liquor law controversy, the resolution seemed to ignore the real issues. It ignored the issue of police, entrapment, much as Michigan's liquor laws seem to ignore the fact that drunk driving is not limited to citizens under 21 years of age. It ignored the question of whether the police should devote their already scarce resources to sleuthing in bars rather than solving real crimes, much as Michigan's liquor laws ignored the ability of the state to enforce its will upon the young. In the end, of course, such silliness really doesn't matter. Michigan's liquor laws are as they are, and, repeated attempts to change them have failed. What matters is that a useless and unnecessary strain on the Ann Arbor community seems to be en- ding. }^$;}:: '}.:: O?} r ' 2. , }: ri~i:{"i'h.?": ::v:i "kv:". .:.. ??.: :}i;;::;.?i}.. ikr'r}::::. .:}::?"...... . . . CHARLEVOIX, Mich.-This idyllic, snow- blanketed, Lake Michigan community of some 3,000 souls earned a particularly unen- viable distinction in 1981. Charlevoix County, of which this resort town is the seat, ended the nation's highest unemployment year in post- Depression history with the highest unem- ployment rate in the state of Michigan, which claimed the highest unemployment rate in the nation. This is not to say that Charlevoix County, with a December unemployment gate of 17.3 percent, led the nation's list of economically depressed counties. Many regions in more prosperous states suffered much higher Jobless rates. But there is a certain powerful symbolism in being the most distressed coun- ty of the most distressed state-even if it takes an outsider (or a returned exile) to ap- preciate it. Adding irony to symbolism, one is struck by the inexplicable look of wealth here. The ugliness of poverty is effectiely muted by the sparkling virgin snow and the twinkling lights that adorn the new saplings along Bridge Street, the four-block-long busness district of chalet-style shops and restaurants. Hundreds of imposing, three-story summer "cottages," with spacious lawns sloping to the water's edge, remain empty and boarded against the winter, awaiting the summer s influx of big- city millionaires from less gracious locales. EVEN MORE striking are the signs of con- tinuing community stability and commit-, ment. Residents coughed up $750,000 of loan commitments and donations to build a han- dsome new two-story -wing to the community hospital in "1981, and the first elderly, low- income residents recently were moved into a new $3 million, 64-unit public housing project-the first ever built here. Voters also approved more than $500,000 in bonds for con- struction of a new city water tower and, true to form, continued to tax themselves enough to maintain virtually all public school programs, including extensive regional travel for both varsity and junior varsity athletic teams and bands. Despite a declining enrollment, voters approved a new addition to the high school, which serves 340 students, two years ago. Moreover, the academic quality of the school system continues to provide a model, and hope, for the future of public schooling. High school principal Vane Smith notes that student assessment scores routinely are well above the state average, and that about 60 percent of graduates go on to a college or university. Such signs of health are all the more im- pressive when viewed against the backdrop of real economic depression in this county and region. The collapse of the auto industry in Detroit, some 300 miles south, and the By Jon Stewart stagnation of new construction have meant closures or near closures of many of the region's industrial operations, including two cement plants, a large iron foundry and a half-dozen or more auto parts plants. THE RELATIVE affluence of the town of Charlevoix is largely a function of its high property tax valuations, which are swollen to. more than $140 million by the extensive resort property. But in the non-resort communities of the area there are no rich absentee tax- payers and thus no cushion against the record unemployment. Nearby East Jordan, probably the poorest community in the coun- ty, has all but lost its principal employer, the Iron Works, and workers at the town's Gulf and Western stamping plant recently accep- ted pay cuts to keep their jobs. On top of the private sector woes, federal and state cutbacks reduced local com- munities' abilities to maintain social services' at virtually all levels. When the three-riionth summer resort season ended in August, 1,100 workers found themselves out of jobs-a large portion of the county-wide force of 8,750 employed workers. -Nearly all of them, plus hundreds more who lost non-resori-related jobs, faced a long win- ter of unemployment checks, shrinking welfare aid, plunging temperatures and soaring heating bills avaraging around $100 a month per household for natural gasalone. COMPLEMENTING THE town and village hardships, nature decreed a season of foul weather that left the, area's corn crop in ruins. "People are hurting for sure," commented a Charlevoix physician. "Over the last year the number of our patients on Medicaid has rised from 10 percent to 40 percent of out total, and maybe another 20 percent aren't paying at all." And yet ... It would be a challeng6 to find a friendlier, more positive, hospitable community than the small towns that dot this most distressed county. Especially in the areas where children are concerned-schools and city- sponsored recreation programs-towns like Charlevoix, Boyne City and Boyne Falls, Petoskep and Harbor Springs are not just surviving, but are aggressively building for the future. "THE BUSINESSMEN may be lining up at the bank for loans," said-Bob Clock, a colum- nist for the'weekly Charlevoix Courier, "but no matter what happens we always pass our millage (taxes) for the schools. It's just a kind of philosophy we have here. Like old Joe Smith, the former sheriff, used to say, 'If you don't spend it on your kids, where you gonna spend it?' Folks here don't go to nightclubs much and we don't travel much. We spend what we have on the school and the kids." Why this extraordinary devotion to schools at a time when public schools in most large cities are deteriorating into ratholes as com- munities systematically disinvest in almost everything having to do with youth? The advantages of Charlevoix's resort- swollen tax base are an important factor in this town's first-rate school, but a retired teacher who has taught throughout the county summed up another answer: "Because the schools are the very, heart of these com- munities; everything we do revolves around the schools." The weekly high school basketball and foot- ball games are the social.high point in most communities during the long fall and winter months. "The first Friday after football season ends people go nuts around here,' ob- served a Charlevoix school counselor. "They don't know what to do." EVEN IN BLIGHTED East Jordan-where the school had to let 10 teachers go, close the library and end all sports funding - the com- munity anteed up enough money through a booster club to finance the teams throughout the school year. Indeed, the one certain sign of a dying community here is the willingness to let the local school close its doors. That appears to be what's happening in the little agricultural village of Wolverine, where teachers fear they'll be out of jobs this February due to a large deficit and the inability to pass new taxes. But among the communities that stubbor- nly survive, parents and non-parents alike take uncommon pride in both victorious athletic teams and college-bound graduates. Even when students leave for far-off universities, the local courier faithfully repor- ts on each and every student's achievements, from making the honor roll to making the second string of the football team.. This is not the mark of a poor or depressed community, but a rich one. As Courier editor Dave Knight put it in a year-end editorial: "If over 17 percent of the able workers in the county can't find a job, why are they sticking around? Because the want to}live here, and who can blame them?" Charlevoixans, incidentally, are not the only ones who have not given up on their town's future, despite the gloomy statistics. McDonald's and a 7-11 convenience store recently announced plans to move into town. Jon Stewart, a Charlevoix native, wrote this article for Pacific News Service. w MM Wasserman .THE ADM15l7RAIlN A$ BETRYEDUS W-WW ?o1.. A NDM h $TAC DPARTMIENT (/ TB iT'S TIME THE- MENT5 OF T4S TA WRY WE XO5P Z HOLD IN MY H~AND A LISTOF 205kloS N PPA&A4AT IT a esent the opinions of the in- _.Mi