0

o0

Feel like a fish
out of water?
Call us to find a home
for Fall 1990!
Prime Student
Housing
761-8000
PS

Soul Sister
Aretha Franklin, one of the
great soul singers (but by no'
means the greatest), has assured I
herself a place in American1
cultural history. She
has had her historical
moment. There was a
time when her career
was perfectly in tune
with the zeitgeist.
The 1%7 release of
the single "Respect"
from her first album
on Atlantic Records
saw Franklin taking
her place beside Franklin
James Brown, Martin
Luther King Jr. and Muhammed I
Ali as Black role models, or at l
least as voices that spoke for
many Black Americans. Written i
and recorded by Otis Redding, in
Franklin's hands "Respect"
became a powerful statement for 1
Black freedom and women's1
rights. Redding himself admitted
that Franklin had outsung him ;
good and proper. "I just lost my
song. That girl stole my song," he
told a reporter at the time. Where
Redding had barked over a tight,
funky but fairly subdued rhythm

Socks it
section, Franklin proclaimed her
"womanish" strength loudly over
driving guitar, fatback drums and
bursting brass. With Franklin
assertive and "taking
no prisoners," the
song became a
conflation of the Civil
Rights and Women's
Movements.
"Respect" was the
first time that Black
church singing by a
woman really crossed
over bigtime into the
white mainstream.
Franklin had grown
up singing and playing piano in
her father, the Reverend C.L.
Franklin's Bethel Baptist Church
in Detroit. In 1959, she was
"discovered" by CBS talent scout
John Hammond, the man who
had signed Billie Holliday, Delta
blues singer Robert Johnson and
Bob Dylan. Her recorded output
at Columbia, for the most part,
was dire, consisting of bland
readings of jazz records; this
mediocrity was partly a result of
the constricting image the record
company had in mind for the

The law of the
Law Library

M

.:

I
The short story from a fresh
perspective...washable
rayon/cotton/linen in dill, black
or honey. By Michael G.
Three-button boyfriend jacket,
S-M-L, $48. Belted, pleated
shorts, 343, $36.
Jacobs on's
Liberty at State
Downtown Ann Arbor

i

I

The time: the near future. The
place: the U of M law library. The
last light of dusk begins fading
from the sky as the
undergraduates fill the reading
room, crammed elbow-to-elbow,
eyes straining in the inadequate
light. Below, law students sit in
plush chairs, reading their learned
texts in comfort and perfect
lighting and environmental
quality. Suddenly, the stillness is
broken by the sounds of a battle
cry. Through the reading room
rushes a team of commandos
wearing the familiar maize and
blue uniforms and "MM"
armbands of the Michigan
Mandate. Brushing aside the
security guard and the desk staff,
the raiders lead a mob of cheering
undergraduates triumphantly
through the lower levels. The last
bastion of inequality on campus
has been toppled.
What exactly is it about the law
library that its rulers feel that
undergraduates are too unclean to
enter? Or the business school
library, for that matter? What is so
unique about these places that
anyone without the proper ID is
forever banned? Does the medical
library have such a segregationist
policy? No. At Taubman, the
students of medicine and the
students of history freely mix, to
no one's apparent detriment.
After all, it's not like anyone but
medical folks use the materials
there; no surgeon is going to find

the volume of the Burmese Journal
of Endocrinology he wants gone
from the shelf because a
comparative literature sophomore
is perusing it. So why do the
business and law libraries require
the proper internal passports? Is it
insecurity? After all, we all need
doctors. But do we really
need lawyers and
corporate executives?
This would seem to me
to be the best
explanation. It is surely
not a function of library
name. Are graduates only
allowed in the grad? Is
anyone with more than
eight punches on their
student ID turned away at
the doors of the Ugli? Are
liberals arts and musicA
majors dragged kicking E
and screaming from the
engineering library by
sliderule-wielding goons?
Obviously not. Ironically, it's
easier for an undergraduate to get
into the Gerald Ford Presidential
Library on north campus than to
get into the law or business
libraries.
The funniest (or perhaps not)
thing about this is that the rules
are not universally enforced. If
one of the tie-died, long-haired,
Birkenstocked granola heads that
this campus sports were to go into
the business library at the same
time as a three-pieced suit type of
similar age, sex, and race, does

anyone believe that the latter
would be asked for his or her ID
and not the other way around?
Right. As long as you look the
part, you're okay. I've never been
challenged upon entering the law
library (I assume that will change
as soon as this column hits the
stands) but my girlfriend needs a
letter signed by a professor (on
department letterhead), her
mother, and a 3/4 majority of the
Board of Regents just to go in and
look at the nice plants. As things
were explained to her, they are so
tough on issuing a "Course
Related Use
Pass" because
« undergraduates
don't have the
brain power to
comprehend
how to use a law
library. This
from people
who don't even

ob
arle

know that
"course related"
should be
hyphenated. On
the other hand,


sketchpad
cOLD SEASON, AY1
f ....0

f.zinn

IV

BEAT IT! I NAVE NO TIME
lb fe Stc4.'>

any clown with
a Bar card gains instant
admittance. The best young
minds at this university are
forbidden to go where Larry Korn
may freely pass.
Not that either of these two
libraries have anything special to
offer. The dental library is just as
quiet as law and not nearly as
dangerous as business (take a look
at all that glass in the business
library and tell me it isn't built for
a Hollywood-style automatic
weapons massacre). There's
always a rousing game of
Dungeons and Dragons going on

in the sub-levels of the Nat. Sci.
library. The gray walls of the
windowless Physics-Astronomy
library are sure to keep distraction
down to a minimum, whereas
Math has the coolest photocopier
on campus. And for good old
excitement you just can't beat the
Grad, where your search for The
Book of Mormon is sure to lead to
the wrong sublevel, looking at ten
thousand titles in Korean.
The principle's the thing,
however. Perhaps if we all lined
up outside those massacre-
inviting windows at the business
library or at the railing over the
windows to the law library and
just sort of stared they would give
up and let us in. Or undergrads in
the law reading room could
maintain a constant, long line to
the bathroom while the
aforementioned granola heads
could study in the lobby outside
Hale auditorium, preferably on
Corporate Visitor days. Biological
necessity and career pressure will
soon force the hold-outs to
submit. Don't hold your breath
for the Michigan Mandate
commandos. As usual, students
are going to have to deal with this
inequality on their own.

IL II U.

p


n vim

Tn----%.

DAY? Au,'1 r
DAU.aL

tAA

it had to be done

"L

i




r

1*

'SMY

fobVUr

the tire. Not wishing to have my
life end on the road between
Hamilton and Windsor I chose to
get a new tire.
Luckily we were in Canada
when this happened. Canada is
known throughout the diplomatic
community for three things: their
hockey, their doughnuts, and
their incredibly friendly, helpful
service station attendants. We got
to experience the latter first hand.
Our friendly and oh-so-helpful
service station attendant not only
agreed to replace my tire at 1:30
a.m., but he gladly accepted the
task as if it was the sole purpose
he was put on this Earth. He went
out of his way to make sure he

could find me the cheapest used
tire he had. The whole thing only
cost me 18 Canadian dollars
(approx. $15.40 in this country).
Recently when I had a tire
replaced at the Briarwood Amoco
it put me out $72. Rather it put
my parents out $72. I charged it to
their credit card, but it's the
principle were talking about.
Unfortunately friendliness and
helpfulness could not make up for
the fact that it took our service
station attendant about two hours
to change a single tire.
Thus to update we found
ourselves in this town in North
Ontario, in our minds we still
needed a place to go, blue, blue

windows behind the stars, yellow
moon on the rise, big birds flying
across the sky, throwing shadows
on our eyes... you get the idea: we
were helpless, helpless, helpless
but to follow our whims and see
Niagara Falls. (That's got all the
makings of a great song)
The Falls are truly a sight to
see, or at least we imagined they
were as we pulled up in the pitch
black. We had driven all this way
and someone had turned off the
lights. There was only one thing
to do, wait until daylight to
behold the majesty of the falls.
Being too cheap to pop for a
honeymoon suite with a heart
shaped bed for the four of us, we

decided to shack up in my
spacious wagon. We drifted off to
sleep dreaming of the roaring falls
and the majesty of nature's
creation.
We awoke thinking of how
tired, cold and hungry we were.
Let me tell you, there's nothing
quite like the smell of a car after
four people have slept in it. The
Falls were in fact a sight to see,
but a quick pass through Niagara
and it was apparent people don't
make this trek to see the Falls.
Niagara has more wax museums
per capita than any other town in
the world. There's the Ripley's
Believe It Or Not Museum, The
Dracula Museum, The Madam

To
coi
Wo
the
tat
(
hai
ret
of
the
the
Ca
ne
bri
od
A
my
to

We welcome Jacobson's Charge, MasterCard"and VISA"
Shop until 9 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. Until 6 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.





12

WEEKEND March 30, 1990