Page 4 -The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 21, 1990
lbe Wmhdligan lailI
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
420 Maynard Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
A RTS
NEWS
OPINION
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PHOTO
SPORTS
WEEK END
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Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other cartoons,
signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.
Salvadoran coffee
Join the boycott to pressure the muderous regime
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A NATIONWIDE CAMPAIGN TO BOY-
cott Salvadoran coffee is rapidly gain-
ing momentum and has already begun
to put pressure on the El Salvador gov-
ernment. The University can contribute
to this campaign by refusing to buy
coffce that contains Salvadoran coffee
beans, especially in their bulk pur-
chases for the residence halls. Stu-
dents, faculty, and staff can help this
effort by writing to President Duder-
stadt and asking him to remove Sal-
vadoran coffee from all University fa-
cilities.
The Salvadoran government's sys-
tematic and brutal repression of human
rights is by now well known. More
than 70,000 Salvadoran citizens have
been killed by government-sponsored
death squads in the last decade. As a
warning to church and opposition polit-
ical activists last November, six
priests, their housekeeper and her
daughter were murdered by the Sal-
vadoran military. Although some of the
lower officers involved have been in-
dicted, sources close to the investiga-
tion have acknowledged that the
higher-ups who gave the orders will
not be held accountable.
The coffee boycott is one of the
most effective ways to put direct pres-
sure on the Salvadoran government. Of
the Salvadoran government's $900
million annual budget, $500 million
comes directly as aid from the United
States. About $300 to $400 million is
revenue from taxes on coffee exports.
More than 60 percent of Salvadoran
coffee is sold in the United States.
The boycott is already beginning to
have an effect. El Salvador's ambas-
sador to the U.S., Miguel Salaverria,
has denounced the boycott. Interest-
ingly, Salaverria is a major coffee
grower whose family has been linked
by former U.S. ambassador Robert
White to a group which directs the
death squads. The coffee oligarchy is
very well connected with the ruling
Arena party, which was founded by
death squad leader Roberto
D'Aubuisson.
Salvadoran labor and peasants' or-
ganizations recognize this connection,
and have called for the boycott as a
means of forcing the government to re-
spect their right to organize.
The main target of the boycott is
Folger's coffee, which is the largest
U.S. purchaser of Salvadoran coffee.
People should also avoid any brand or
blend of coffee that does not expressly
indicate that it is free of any Salvadoran
beans.
According to Folger's officials, they
have been lobbied by both the U.S.
State Department and the White House
to keep Salvadoran coffee as part of
their blend to support the Salvadoran
coffee growers, and in turn, the gov-
emment.
The University administration, to
their credit, decided last month to
honor the United Farm Workers boy-
cott on California grapes, and has
stopped serving them in the residence
halls. It would be just as simple and
every bit as significant to honor this
boycott as well, which has already
been endorsed by Cesar Chavez and
the United Farm Workers, AFSCME,
and other labor and religious organiza-
tions.
Daily should
By Jim Bull
'wake up'
to religious events
I was glad to see Wes Neal's letter
("Daily ignores religion," 3/20/90) fault-
ing the Daily for failure to cover Domini-
can priest and theologian Matthew Fox's
visit to campus. I'd like to point out that
the Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News,
and The Ann Arbor News all covered this
event.,Only the Daily saw fit to totally
ignore him. However, I think the over-
sight goes beyond ignoring religious
events on campus, because these were
much more than religious events.
For starters, in this University which
is so academically diverse, it should come
as startling news that the School of Natu-
ral Resources, the School of Art and the
Department of Dance collaborated to spon-
sor an event. In fact they sponsored two
appearances of Fox on campus during the
day on Friday.
In the afternoon over 500 people
crammed Hutchins Hall to hear Fox re-
mind the audience that the original pur-
pose of going to a University was not to
find a good paying job and find your place
in this consumer society, but to find your
place in the universe. How could it be that
an institution devoted to truth has no
courses in Native American culture, when
this land is still pregnant with their wis-
dom? Fox says the University needs to
bring back mysticism which was for years
wedded to authentic science, to teach us to
stand in awe at the beauty of this universe.
The University needs to engage our bod-
ies, our creative side and our heart; not
only our minds.
That evening people filled almost every
the religious story with sin. It may have
been news to non-Christians to find out
that there is an older tradition in the bible
which is deeply ecumenical that has been
ignored. Fox ended his lecture with over
1200 voices in the audience chanting:
"Earth I am, Fire I am, Air and Water and
Spirit I am." That doesn't happen every-
day!
There is yearning on this campus for
something deeper than a good grade or a
six figure job, and its growing. Fox
touched something deep in so many peo-
There is yearning on this campus for something
deeper than a good grade or a six figure job, and it's
growing.
nick and cranny of First United Methodist
Church, including the choir loft behind the
speaker. Behind Fox hung a gorgeous
banner of Mother Earth and the moon
against a black velvet backdrop of space
scintillating with rhinestone stars. The
earth was brought back into church. Re-
spondents spoke about how Creation Spir-
ituality (not creationism) is deeply
African, Buddhist and Native American. It
was news for people to hear Fox talk
about the incredible arrogance of starting
ple here and called it forth. I don't think
this campus will be the same again. Rip
Van Winkle slept for twenty years and
missed the American Revolution. Rip Van
Daily was asleep this weekend and missed
the labor pangs of the birthing of a global
renaissance right here on this campus.
What is sadder is that due to the Daily's
negligence, many others were deprived of
participating or even knowing about this
new revolution that is afoot. It's about
time the Daily woke up!
Baseball
It's back but the spring training towns have lost
Bull is a graduate student
School of Natural Resources.
in the
THE THIRTY-TWO DAY MAJOR
League Baseball lockout has finally
epded. Spring training has started and
the season will begin only one week
later than scheduled. Multimillionaire
owners and players have finally settled
their differences and are ready to start
playing ball but one group of the base-
ball community has been neglected, the
spring training communities of Florida
and Arizona which depend on the
spring training season for their eco-
nomic survival.
Seventeen towns and cities in
Florida such as Lakeland, where the
Detroit Tigers workout, and eight more
in Arizona, have had to promise the
baseball clubs extravagant spring
training facilities, paid for at taxpayer
expense, to keep their teams from
leaving to other towns that will offer
the teams even more incentive to move.
But more than just the increased tax
base that the teams bring to their re-
spective spring communities, local
businesses such as hotels, motels,
restaurants, and souvenir vendors have
been directly financially burdened by
the lack of tourists and players injecting
money into the towns because baseball
did not show up.
The players and owners should set
up a fund to compensate the towns and
businesses for the lack of revenue
Wh itaker
during the thirty-two days of the lock-
out. These towns, which do not share
in the one billion dollar baseball televi-
sion contract, and only lost during the
lockout are at the mercy of the baseball
teams and should not have to swallow
their losses alone.
Veal is off the menu
To the Daily:
Students Concerned About Animal
Rights (SCAAR) is pleased to report that
all hope is not lost when it comes to deal-
ing with the University administration.
Around February 5, we sent a letter to ev-
ery residence hall food service and to the
Director of Housing Food Service request-.
ing that veal be removed from the cafeteria
menu. For those who don't know, veal
calves are raised under the worst conditions
of any food animal. They are fed a com-
pletely liquid diet which includes a large
amount of antibiotics and they are kept in
darkness in pens too small for them to
turn around in or lie down comfortably in.
Besides the psychological pain of not be-
ing allowed physical contact with another
living being, the animals have constant
diarrhea and are so anemic that they will
lick the urine-soaked floorboards of their
stalls to get iron, that is. if they are not
chained by the neck to prevent this.
We sent the aforementioned letter to
Food Services as a formality, and we fully
expected to receive a negative answer.
However, ten days later we received a letter
from the Director of Housing Food Ser-
vice stating that because of its
"unpopularity," veal has been removed
from the cycle menu for the spring of
1990. He suggests that we petition the
Residence Hall Association to consider a
permanent removal of veal from all future
menus, which we will do. We would also
like to petition all those who live in the
dorms to not choose veal for dinner, and to
let people know why. The more people
who know the facts about veal and stop
eating it, the sooner the veal husbandry
industry will become obsolete.
Christine Crandall
Chrisopher Coen
Michael Leizerman
SCAAR presidents
In defense of Perkins
they come here, but probably got a good
laugh out of Austin's need to resort to
name-calling. Questioning Perkins' aca-
demic research is not only irrelevant, but
stupid, and probably comes from someone
who doesn't even know what subject
Perkins teaches.
Faculty members don't deserve respect
simply because they are faculty. Nor do
they deserve it because they are older,
established, and think themselves superior
(as many do). Perkins deserves it, how-
ever, because he doesn't have such preten-
sions. He happens to give a damn, unlike
most of the professors I've had here. And
that - and the fact that he took the time
to express an opinion about the former
Opinion editors that a substantial portion
of this campus shares and most professors
(who don't care about anything except
their own research) wouldn't even known
the first thing about - ought to make
him worthy of the kind of respect Austin
is probably too ignorant to give.
His letter is a stupid attempt to appeal
to those who criticize professors simply
because they are professors. Perkins isn't
any "symbol of authority," just a good
teacher who gives a damn. Maybe Austin
should have taken a class from him.
Evan Feigenbaum
LSA junior
Women's Weekend
threatens vandal
To the Daily:
To the individual that defaced one of
the Women's Weekend Diag boards, you
do not know me, but, unfortunately, I
know you.
First, I would like to ask why you
chose to put slashes through a harmless
poster. The poster, located between West
Engineering and the Undergraduate
Library, is an advertisement for East
Quad's 23rd Women's Weekend.
The weekend is in celebration of
are continually gaining pride in their
worth somehow scare you? Does my
ability to call you a coward anger you? I
hope so.
Your actions are frightening in light of
the fact- that everyday violence against
women is somewhere in the back of a
woman's mind. The knife slashes in the
poster also serve to anger me and remind
me that work against hatred and op-
pression must continue.
Your act of vandalism may seem trivial
right now, but with this society
condoning your behavior, it can only
escalate and keep misogyny alive. The
slashes through the woman's body are
merely a symbol of the aggression that
must end.
I would like to ask that you return to
the Diag board you tried to ruin, read
about what is going on, and attend at least
one event. Perhaps one day we will work
together. Until then, I pity- your igno-
rance.
Kimberly Springer
member, Women's
Weekend Committee.
Lecture was packed
To the Daily:
Julie Foster's account of Carol Gilli-
gan's Tanner Lecture ("Prof. says women
must resist sexism," 3/19/90) provides
admirable detail about certain themes in
Gilligan's talk and about the responses of
some members of the audience. It does
not, however, give the reader any sense of
the overall size and impact of the event.
The lecture, which was sponsored by the
Department of Philosophy, is described as
having been given "to an audience of
about 300 at Rackham Auditorium." In
fact, the auditorium, which holds 1160,
was packed, with at least a hundred stand-
ing in the rear. In addition, several hundred
people listened intently to the lecture (over
loudspeakers) in the Rackham lobby and
on the steps outside the building.
I
Students are shortchanged on recent history
Pretend that the Berlin Wall is still in-
tact and communism is still the ruling
power in Eastern Europe. This sounds in-
sane, right? Not if you're from North
Carolina, because this is what sixth-
graders are being told to do when they take
placement exams written in 1987.
History is a major component of our
education, from the elementary to univer-
sity level, and everyone is required to take
considered important enough to make up
new exam questions.
The tests the sixth-graders will be tak-
ing contain only two questions about
Eastern Europe and apparently this is not
enough to change the exams...
North Carolina should get its act to-
gether and worry about how it can im-
prove the education of its children, rather
than being concerned with lobbying