Page 4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 30, 1990
lble Mibign ?BaiIg
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS
. AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
420 Maynard Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
9
Lewis innovations are necessary
NOAH FINKEL
Editor in Chief
DAVID SCHWARTZ
Opinion Editor
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.
To the Daily:
I can't believe I am writing this letter
in defense of the Michigan Marching
Band, as I marched for four years in the
Spartan Marching Band.
Like the Michigan Marching Band, our
band has changed directorship twice in the
last few years. My sister currently marches
in the Spartan band and my brother is a
band director, thus I understand the battles
that ensue over tradition when a new
director takes the reins.
Having attended several of the Michi-
gan band's practices, I feel the changes
Gary Lewis is implementing are generally
for the best.
Gone are the cane poles that marked off
two-step intervals during rehearsals
(something that any band member can
learn to do on their own). The color guard
looks crisper and executes several
equipment changes during their program
which adds to the color and pageantry.
Yes, he has introduced corps-style
marching. Every new director will want to
initiate his own new traditions. You may
recall that under the direction of Revelli
and Cavender, the Michigan Marching
Band was the instigator of fresh, innova-
tive ideas in marching halftime entertain-
ment.
Since their departure, the band has been
stagnant while other college marching
bands have passed them by. Gary Lewis
was hired to put Michigan back in the
forefront.
pact and visual effect. Lewis is not forsak-
ing tradition, but branching out to new
horizons.
w As for the disdain of the musical selec-
tions, it must be realized that students
comprise only a portion of the football
audience. A wide variety of people attend
the game and listen to the band: young,
old, country-western fans, R&B lovers,
classical buffs, rock 'n' roll enthusiasts,
Having attended several of the Michigan band's
practices, I feel the changes Gary Lewis is
implementing are generally for the best.
Discounting Detroit
U.S. Census workers come
EARLIER THIS YEAR, THE U.S.
Census Bureau began its once-a-decade
task of counting every person in the
United States. However, the process
has been marred with errors, com-
plaints, and rumors of corruption.
What happened to the City of Detroit is
a prime example of the Census Bu-
reau's failures this year.
The Bureau released its preliminary
count for the city in August. It came to
970,156 *- a quarter of a million peo-
ple fewer than the count for 1980.
Mayor Coltman Young and city offi-
cials were outraged, because if that
figure had been allowed to stand and
Detroit's population had fallen under
1,000,000 for the first time in 50
years, the city would lose millions of
dollars in state aid, thereby crippling an
economy already in decline.
Mayor Young began a massive ef-
fort to find 30,000 Detroiters who had
not been counted. Working with po-
lice, neighborhood volunteers and civic
leaders, the counters went into the
w poorest parts of the city to find home-
less and displaced persons, whom the
U.S. Census historically ignores. Last
Thursday, Young reported that his
up short nationwide...
group had found 121,350 Detroiters
the census had overlooked.
The situation in Detroit calls atten-
tion to some real problems inherent in
the census process. Because volunteers
do not make a concerted effort to count
every inhabitant, homeless people and
minorities in large cities are often not
included in the final tally. Census offi-
cials themselves have acknowledged
that they undercount large cities with
significant minority populations by as
much as 6 percent.
These problems have far-reaching
implications. When minorities are un-
dercounted, their proportion of the
population is understated and quotas
that try to include minority representa-
tion equal to their percentage of the
population fall short. This problem is
especially prevalent in the Southwest,
where the census consistently under-
counts a rapidly expanding Latino
population.
This situation underscores the need
for census reforms by the year 2000.
When census counters ignore the least
privileged in society, and do not search
for those that need most to be found,
everyone in our cities suffers.
The Michigan high-step is better than
ever, and should remain a staple of the
program repertoire. However, many direc-
tors have ascertained that corps-style
marching, when properly executed, actu-
ally enhances the halftime program. High-
step is regarded by those in marching band
circles as the dinosaur of marching styles.
Nevertheless, it can be and is sprinkled
into corps-style programs for musical im-
Fleeing corporations are the root of the problem
THOUGH MAYOR YOUNG SHOULD
be commended for his successful cen-
-sus crusade, neither he nor the Detroit
:City Council has offered any solution
to the long-term problem that required
such a crusade in the first place: the
steady decline in Detroit's population
since 1960. Then, the city had 1.67
million inhabitants; today, its popula-
tion barely tops one million.
While Young's failure to provide
Detroit with bold and imaginative lead-
ership has certainly contributed to this
problem, it both predates his accession
to power and is, in many respects, be-
yond his ability to solve.
Instead, the primary culprit in the
demise of both Detroit and countless
cities like it across the United States is
m the corporations which have pulled up
and left -leaving massive unemploy-
ment in their wake - for non-union,
low-wage havens throughout the South
-and the Third World.
m Between 1976 and 1986, Detroit
lost more than 100,000 industrial jobs,
and the United Autoworkers alone lost
40 percent of its dues-paying members
'during the same period. Meanwhile,
General Motors was in the process of
p opefing nine new plants in anti-union
- states throughout the South, and of im-
-porting more than one million car
bengines from sweat shops abroad -
up from 60,000 in 1979.
Nationally, the ramifications of such
1 policies were equally catastrophic. The
is-,city of Pittsburgh, for example, lost
-;nore than 140,000 jobs between 1968
and 1988, ;which cost the city more
-than $2.3 billion in revenues a year.
Between 1973 and 1986, the country
as a whole lost six million manufactur-
.ng jobs because multi-national corpo-
rations fled abroad. Meanwhile, the
percentage of profits that U.S.-based
multinationals made from foreign op-
:-erations climbed from a meagre 3.4
percent in 1950 to more than 20 percent
by 1990.
As cities' tax bases shrank and their
services declined, the "white flight" to
the suburbs that had begun in the
1950s accelerated. Between 1950 and
1980, 465,000 Detroiters left for the
suburbs, which grew by 131 percent.
Today, 73 percent of those residing in
the Detroit metropolitan area do not
even live in Detroit.
As Detroit's suburban sprawl grew,
the city's tax base suffered further de-
terioration and the number of jobless
and homeless assumed epidemic pro-
portions. By 1985, 28.9 percent of
Detroit Blacks and 60 percent of Black
youth were unemployed, making for
the highest such rates in the top 30
metropolitan areas. In the country as a
whole, more than six million more city
gan's right turn led to dramatic slashes
in federal monies to cities. Increasingly
bereft of both federal assistance and a
manufacturing base, mayors like
Young in Detroit, Wilson Goode in
Philadelphia and Marion Barry in
Washington, turned to real estate
speculators and the banks - the big
winners under Reagan - to bail them
out.
Offering massive tax breaks and
cheap loans, all three mayors, in league
with real-estate moguls, presided over
a spectacular redevelopment of their
downtown areas.
But in all three of these cases, pro-
jects such as the Renaissance Center in
Detroit translated into big profits for
speculators while offering few jobs for
the poor and even fewer new taxes for.
the city coffers. Philadelphia, despite
massive redevelopment, is poised on
the verge of bankruptcy. Washington's
homeless population has tripled, even
though frenetic construction doubled
the city's office and hotel space be-
tween 1980 and 1988.
Increasingly, it is only a drug-fueled
informal economy that keeps cities
like these afloat. Drugs now generate
more than $50 billion in profits every
year in the United States, and drug use
continues to expand - not because
people are "derelicts," as Bush would
have us believe - but because they
feel as though they, have no alterna-
tives.
If this country is serious about sav-
ing its cities, it will take much more
than a few publicity stunts by mayors
like Coleman Young. It will, first of
all, take a federal government willing to
make a serious commitment to the na-
tion's cities by slashing its bloated de-
fense budget.
It will, additionally, take federal and
state governments with the courage to
levy massive taxes on the off-shore
profits of U.S. multinationals. It will
take municipal governments with the
ability to make corporations pay for the
city services they use. It will take a
"war on drugs" strategy that empha-
sizes rehabilitation and job training
rather than more cops and more pris-
ons.
The time in which such a redirected
and fervent commitment might make a
difference is rapidly running out. With
New York City's richest 20 percent
making 19.5 times as much as the
poorest 20 percent - a 25 percent in-
crease since 1977 - and with Detroit
and Los Angeles increasingly fulfilling
the prophecies spelled out for them in
Robocop and Blade Runner, the na-
tion's cities are poised on the precipice
of extinction.
We can try to save them, or we can
Lee makes time for
his students
To the Daily:
This is a response to the article
concerning Chemistry professor Stephen
Lee ("Lee transforms students into
chemistry fans," 10/26/90). I was taking
Chemistry 126 when Prof. Lee was
teaching it during his first semester at the
University.
Some of my friends went to see him
during his office hours late one afternoon.
As dinner-time approached, Prof. Lee
asked the students what they were doing
for dinner. As first-year students, they
naturally replied "in the dorm." Well,
Prof. Lee asked if he could tag along and
so they all went to Markley for dinner.
If this one anecdote is any indication,
Prof. Lee should have a remarkable future
ahead of him as an undergraduate
instructor.
First, any instructor who voluntarily
eats in the dorm cafeterias should be en-
shrined in the new "Hall of Champions"
on campus. Second, it is rare to find any
professor on this campus willing to devote
extra time outside of the office and class-
room in an effort to get to know students
(especially in such a large lecture class)
better.
Let's hope Prof. Lee has a long, illus-
trious career at the University... perhaps
he'll bring home the Nobel Prize one day.
Derek J. Chu
LSA Senior
Chait isn't funny,
To the Daily:
I keep wondering if Jonathon Chait is
on the staff of the Daily or not. He writes
that weekly column-thing that lacks both
focus and interest. He seems to write arti-
cles that sum up all his feelings under a
faulty premise (or lack thereof) and at-
tempts to be funny. If he's trying to be
witty and wry about life, he is failing
miserably.
I think that the Daily should refuse to
print his articles because they take up
more space than they are worth. If Chait
can be encouraged to write something ev-
ery month, let's say, then maybe he could
take the time to think up something
meaningful to say, rather than attempting
humor as his primary purpose.
Kevin Littner
Second-year Law Student
Daily headline was misleading
To the Daily:
I was extremely upset when I read the
headline and article, "Student protestor
sues city, University police for assault,"
(10/29/90). I cannot believe the Daily
would have the gall to print a headline like
that.
The suit was brought against a member
of the Department of Public Safety and an
Ann Arbor Police detective, not a Univer-
sity police officer. How dare the Daily at-
tempt to mislead readers by trying to chalk
up a complaint against the campus police
force before the it is even implemented!
Howard Scully
LSA sophomore
'U' cops: Students
pay, but had no input
To the Daily:
I would like to say I am confused. Why
would President Duderstadt fail to ask the
students at-large about a policy as contro-
versial as the deputization of campus secu-
rity? Not only are we required to co-exist
with campus security - which the regents
are not - but we pay the University
thousands of dollars for the chance to do
so.
Unfortunately, I am not confused. If
Duderstadt gave a damn about the rights of
students, he would concern himself with
improving the quality of education, rather
than incurring an additional bill to be
passed along to us.
Taylor Lincoln
LSA senior
Respect must be
granted to all
To the Daily:
I would like to respond to the individu-
als who wrote a message on Oct. 25 to the
female students on North Campus. I was
furious and appalled at the derogatory re-
mark, "Rebel! Don't Be A Sorority Cunt!"
which was written on the sidewalk in hot
pink chalk..
From the time we are first year stu-
dents until we graduate, we are constantly
ingrained with the ideas of equal rights for
different races, religions, sexual orienta-
tions, and personal preferences. I believe
that this also includes the choice of
whether or not to be a member of the
Greek system. We are told to respect ev-
eryone's beliefs. Why then isn't my
choice to be Greek also respected?
We have to respect each other's choices
and our parents who actually like elevator
music!
So, give the band and Gary Lewis a
break. I am excited to see the turnabout
occurring and wish them all the best!
Kathy Bovensche4
Michigan State University
class of 7984
and beliefs, whether we agree with them or
not. Until then, this campus and our soci-
ety will be sexist, racist, homophobic and
oppressive.
I'll respect others' rights; just respect
mine, too.
Lori Barret
Engineering Junior
Bus routes are inadequate
To the Daily:
On Oct. 8, the Northwood Bus Route
was changed both for the better and worse.
Much needed stops were added along Ob-
servatory for the Hill dorms. However, the
buses now stop on the opposite side 4
Geddes, which introduces a tremendous
safety problem.
Hopefully it won't take a serious acci-
dent to show that it is not a good idea to
make riders walk (or run, as is usually the
case) across this busy street to catch an
outgoing bus. Current routing still leaves
much to be desired.
As one of the many engineering and ar
students living in the Quads, I wondc
when we are going to get the buses to
service our central campus dorms. After
all, if the buses are running primarily for
students going to and from class, why
ignore thousands of us living on and off
campus south of the Diag?
Mark Utter
Engineering Sophomore
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