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 763 0379 764 0552 747 2814 PHOTO SPORTS WEEK END 764 0552 747 3336 747 4630 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 1i1~ .~- - - -f } a n+AN- r ° NOM ri o~a d a / r o t t/ O " 1 t/ V ( l 0 1 ~3b~~ ~4ATf Wr$rA- P~~p1~ FNN''4~.t~Zt ~eii~ ~-~ ~')~ EM fWL~I, 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