0 Page 4 -The Michigan Daily- Friday, November 1, 1991 1 e M d143au 1UiIQ 20 Maynard Street Arbor, Michigan 48109 ANDREW GOTTESMAr 747-2814 Editor in Chief 4 Ann A N Edited and Managed by Students at the University of Michigan STEPHEN HENDERSON 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. alilllEEE~ lill Wisconsin code 1K [HE FAST -"Ulb V(E-EKS, SEVERAL GVbn }{/WE: ocovKREo siMiLAR -rwr"F oNE7 iN kl LL. EN) TEXAS } 04D A L"j H 0 v 6lj NO 04F WAS rAvRDCKED, THE t5vENTS ALL 5H12E ONE coM M o N FeAT u P. E ... ' 1 WU' r' 0 O:z 0 0 _ VA' Y _ 'a.r "}}:fi}}}}::'" :" 4:}:S}i}?:"?1:"i}r{4} "X"}}i. ": {":{"hR: :'fi :" ' fi ' '+Sh ^. :.V " ..LY .g" .Ah JX. 4 'K yR ". L. r.: 1 ...x ""11".Y L ..V. : :Z:{: : " " " " 'J ":.1"."}.'" " .. }.t'. ."4:".":.":":{"-."::^:{"}.'."...:s hL h1"r {".V ".L".. . .:1: .11".". 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AYJ: J.1"J:: A""Y.".WJ:: JJA1"J....: J.'..... .AR At" :"}}:J":{":.""}: ':{"}:"}:''Y.1vJJ: JAY.YJJ: J.4ty:.v: v:J::[Y.Y:.1v.4'V."r..1... 1J."...1 J:{":.-.{ ::1 ."A".. ...11'1.:: J ".1.... '."AL ".1"Y:: A"": . : t..."......1 JJ: A4......1"; "......-. v:{ Y1. . "1 JA""Y"t . ................................................................................{':ti{'}:"}: :{ :"}....................J:JA."R....A.::":'J::':.ti":::."."J :"}JA"." :ti'f:{'.-1........................."h........vJJ:r}....L '.Y:.A{":".4.rh J{....At.t1.1L AL.:1Y. More on controversial ad S 0 PVderal judge was right to axe The problem of repressive speech codes is not unique to the University of Michigan. Students 4tthe University of Wisconsin recently fought and won a battle against such an anti-harassment code in a federal court. After several controversial incidents at Wis- consin in 1987 and 1988, the university passed a Speech code in 1989, barring any racist, sexist, or 4iscriminatory comments that created an "intimi- dating, hostile, or demeaning environment." Since then, the University had received 35 domplaints regarding such intimidating and hos- tile behavior. The case taken before Federal District Court Judge Robert Warren involved eight students who were sanctioned under the 1989 code. Two of the students were suspended and six were put on probation for writing messages such as "death to all'Arabs" and comments about a woman's breasts over their electronic mail network. 'Because any electronic-mail system (like the MTS system used here at the University of Michi- gan) can be used as public forum for communica- tion, the judge's decision that the students' sanc- tions were an infringement on their rights to free speech was proper. At the same time, electronic mail messages are policy, protect free speech much like telephone conversations and ordinary letters. They are personal and private means of communication. No one - especially the Univer- sity - has the right to monitor or read those messages without the permission of those involved in the exchange. Along with the imposition of the suspensions and probations, the University of Wisconsin also ordered the eight students to undergo mandatory psychiatric and alcoholic counseling. This step is clearly beyond the authority of the University and obviously infringes on the rights of every student attending Wisconsin. The university is not a court of law and has no business sentencing students who merely exercised their freedoms to terms of psychiatric care. Speech codes plague many American universi- ties. The case atthe University of Wisconsin clearly demonstrates the dangers of restricting speech in any forum of communication, whether it be elec- tronic mail or face-to-face conversations. To ensure the marketplace of ideas remains diverse and honest, students need to be allowed to discuss their ideas with frankness. The University of Michigan should take heed to the battle won in Wisconsin. Speech codes have no place on college campuses. Native Americans U.S. government should cease brutal treatment n its tireless search for land to build nuclear waste dumps, the U.S. government has located yet another desirable site: the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation in New Mexico. Although the federal government has ap- Oroached many Native American tribes in the past to' request that Indian lands be used as dumping grounds, the Mescalero Apaches of New Mexico are the first tribe to consider the "merits" of a nuclear waste storage site on their reservation. Wendell Chino, Chief of the Mescalero Apache tribe, favors the proposed site. He and his col- Jefgues believe that they can bring to such a program their "strong traditional values that favor protecting the Earth." *The fact that the reservation is suffering from a 35 percent unemployment rate must also weigh heavily on Chief Chino's mind. A nuclear waste ;storage site on the reservation would provide hun- dreds of jobs and generate significant revenue for the Indians living on the reservations. But the proposed site is far from having unani- mgus support. A significant number of opponents fear that Native American tribes approached by the federal government will fall prey to environmental disaster as promises of financial gains are ex- changed for strong nuclear materials on Indian lands. There is fear that they would be selling the :future of Native Americans. That the Mescalero Indians have to consider building a nuclear waste dump on their reservation in the first place demonstrates the serious, but usually ignored, plight of Native Americans. In- dian communities have the highest alcoholism and unemployment rates of any group in the United States. They are also the poorest ethnic group in America. The federal government's policies toward Na- tive Americans only seems to make their situation worse. Ever since the government forced Ameri- can Indians to live on reservations, they have constantly struggled to sustain themselves. It is sad and ironic that the government can now take advantage of the economic and social crises that they forced upon Native Americans in the first place. But Native Americans are not unique in being used by the federal government to bear the burden of questionable environmental policies. Poor communities are constantly faced with the dilemma of whether to act as the government's garbage dump ortotake achance for a modicum ofeconomic improvement. This problem has attracted some attention in recent years. The plight of Native Americans, however, has been ignored for centuries, and is steadily getting worse. It's time the U.S. govern- ment took responsibility for its harmful environ- mental policy and its brutal treatment of Native Americans. To the Daily: As Michigan residents at school in far-away Massachusetts, we were appalled by the Holo- caust revisionist's blatantly untrue and hurtful ad in Thursday's Daily. We don't have to disprove its allegations in this letter - the confessions, documents, photos, fallen family trees, burnt syna- gogues, crematoria, human ash heaps, and still-bubbling death pits speak for themselves. So do the survivors, and Elie Wiesel offers this insight into revision- ism: "If we are to believe certain morally deranged and spiritually perverted pseudo-historians, the Holocaust never took place. The killers did not kill, the victims did not perish. Auschwitz? A fraud. Treblinka? A lie. Bergen-Belsen? A name. This is what they have stated for some time... "'Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last' is the name of one brochure. Austin J. App, former associate professor of English at LaSalc College, Philadelphia, spells it out: 'The Six Million Swindle: blackmail- ing the German people for hard Marks with fabricated corpses.' French author Paul Rassinier, a pioneer of this revisionist ap- proach, speaks of 'The lie of Auschwitz.' Northwestern Professor Arthur Butz calls it 'The hoax of the century'... "'A thousand years will pass and our crimes will stillsbe remembered,' said Dr. Hans Frank, military governor of Nazi- occupied Poland, while waiting to be hanged. He was naive. Scarcely forty-five years have passed and his crimes have already been forgotten. Distorted. Or ignored." Wiesel goes on to stress the need for education about the Holocaust: not just for its own sake, but to motivate us to speak against injustice, wherever it may be. Wiesel has taken this impera- tive seriously, and we should follow his lead. While that action should be taking place in the areas of environmental degradation and treatment of women and minori- ties, of military buildup and world hunger, last week, the injustice was on the back page of the Daily. Fred Dobb and Amy Simon Brandeis University students To the Daily: The way the Daily has handled the recent controversy over their printing of "The Holocaust Controversy" advertisement is truly sad. My reasoning for taking this stand however is not the mainstream, typical response that has been espoused by the various groups which were deeply offended by the ad. Let me state first and foremost that I disagree with the content of the ad that suggests that the Holocaust never occurred. Upon a review of the historical evidence, it seems clear to me that such an event did occur. Although the historical evidence weighs in favor (heavily) of the Holocaust, this is no reason to deny anyone such matter to be printed is simple: to deny anyone a forum of expression of their ideas, no matter how "incorrect" they may be, is to fall into the same trap that Nazi Germany fell into. If Nazi Germany had had a diversity of ideas and free and open expression of those ideas, it is doubtful that the Holocaust would have ever been allowed to occur. As it was, millions died because there was no way to check the system. Those that argue that Bradley's ideas should be restricted merely because they are repugnant are risking the same fate that befell Germany in the 1930s and '40s. The Daily's primary failure is its inability to take a firm, consistent stand in this respect. The editors issued a defense on First Amendment grounds on the front page the following day while the business apologized and said it would "er sure that...ads...unfit to print" would not be allowed to go to press. The Daily, by taking such contradictory stands, has under- mined what miniscule credibility it did have. Until the Daily can iron out its own internal differ- ences on this issue, don't expect any respect from either side in this debate. Chetly Zarko LSA junior To the Daily: Last Thursday, the Daily printed an ad soliciting donations for an organization which erroneously claims that the Holocaust never occurred. The Daily editorial staff defended its decision to run the ad, citing the First Amendment and the desire to encourage free speech. Granted, free speech is an essential right. But the First Amendment is irrelevant to this discussion. The relevant issue is the Daily's policy concerning the printing of ads. It appears that the Daily applies its policy in an inconsistent manner. The First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law.- abridging freedom of speech, or of the press." This is a prohibition of government censorship. The First Amendment does not require that a newspaper print everything or anything. The Daily therefore had every right to print or reject the ad. The Daily justifies its decision to print the ad as an attempt to encourage the marketplace of ideas. We would accept that justification if the Daily printed all ads submitted, but it does not. The Editor-in-Chief notes that a "beer ad with a woman holding a beer between her breasts" would not be printed (10/28/91). Why would such an ad be considered more offensive than an ad comparing victims of the Holo- caust to witnesses of "flying saucers"? The Daily attempts to distin- guish this ad from sales ads, claiming that this ad presented "ideas." But the CODOH ad specifically requested donations. Thus, both the sales ad and this ad attempt to make profits, and they pay the Daily for space in its To the Daily: As a child, I was weaned on stories of Jewish uncles and aunts starving to death in the sewers of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. In Auschwitz - the German concentration camp whose motto read "Work will make you free" - the only work my cousins performed was to dig ditches into which their naked and bullet- riddled bodies were discarded. For the sake of my family, whom I never knew, and in the name of millions of other Jews, tens of millions of Russians, thousands of homosexuals and gypsies and in memory of all the victims of the German Nazi Holocaust, I must express the deepest contempt and hatred toward Bradley Smith's Holo- caust revisionist advertisement in last week's Daily. Despite my outrage, however, I was sadly not able to participate in my fellow Jews' protest of this outrageous ad. It would be hypocritical to associate myself with the likes of protest speaker Professor Todd Endelman in condemnation of a 50-year-old Holocaust, while he and much of the University Jewish community tout the virtues of the State of Israel, which today, through its repeated massacres, destruction of culture and theft of land, is committing a holocaust against the people of Palestine. Attempts at genocide - whether of Jews, Palestinian Arabs or anyone else - must be confronted with equal condemna- tion and halted with equal determination. Unless we Jews learn and implement the inevitable lessons of our own sufferings, we cannot profess outrage toward monsters like Bradley Smith. Daniel Kohns LSA sophomore To the Daily: As a 1966 LSA and 1969 Law alumnus of the University, as a member of the President's club, and as a Jew, I am deeply distressed by the "decision" of the Daily to run the "anti-Holocaust" advertisement last Thursday. While I would defend Bradley R. Smith's right to assert his unpleasant ideas in a public forum, and the Daily's right to advocate those ideas in an editorial, I do not believe that the First Amendment requires the Daily to provide a vehicle for every fanatic, hate-mongering group or individual with sufficient funds to spew their venom. As you know (or should know) "commercial speech" (i.e. a paid advertisement) does not enjoy the same constitutional protection as general or non- commercial speech. While the paper's business manager's statement that the ad was not read strains credibility, that is not as disturbing as the editorial staff's assertion that it still would have run the ad even if it had read it. As editors, I believe it is the Daily editors' responsibility to "edit," that is, to choose between competing stories, editorials, photographs, etc. and to set a standard for resnonsible iournal- Genetic info DNA makeup shouldn't be public domain T he National Institute of Health and the Depart- , ment of Energy are spending close to $6 billion on the Human Genome Project, in which the entire ig9netic 'information of human beings will be mapped. What will happen when this data comes to light? Scientists hope to discover the causes of and resistance to disease, as well as unlocking the secrets of the inner workings of human DNA. ;However, this knowledge, like most scientific in- formation, can be potentially perverted into some- thing terrible. The information may tell scientists what genes code for what disease-susceptibility. Thus, scien- tists, by analyzing people's genetic material, may discover to which diseases and conditions people will be more prone. If personal health information were to get into the wrong hands, the consequences could be tragic. If, an insurance company discovered that a client would contract cystic fibrosis in five years, for example, it could raise their premiums or deny them health insurance. Employers could use this information in a simi- lar negative manner. What employer would hire someone likely to need expensive medical care within a few years? What person's working abili- ties could compensate for the cost of therapy and treatment? The benefits of new genteitc knowledge may be a double-edged sword, and may open up new forms of "genetic discrimination." It is bad enough that handicapped people are discriminated against for their present condition, but it is an even greater travesty to discriminate on persons for their future medical conditions. Steps must be taken to prevent people's private genetic information from being made available for public consumption. People who have their DNA scanned and mapped should have the right to confidentiality of their genetic makeup. When technology produces this information, people should not be treated as diseased and use- less, and the necessity for the privacy of this information must be recognized and enforced. ', E Nuts and Bolts of O. CON7ESTANlS RE A -OL TO TART OR 065TACLE COURSE. ~AND OUR GLAIRoS(, ARE R LAY IVNG IT ARE. UI-I, 3-AU WON NIM... YP by Judd Winick IS HE O.K.? ZLI KErrI TE E&TA' WHFEN 'DYMOE.