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 Don't li8ke what see ? Tell our readers what you think. Write to the Michigan Daily at 420 Maynard Street, or send your letters via MTS to "Michigan Daily." View I r i l. I '1' j 1 i-f1 i a i of PR1C ES 4 e -4 W....