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February 04, 1992 - Image 4

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The Michigan Daily, 1992-02-04

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Page 4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, February 4, 1992
Editor in Chief

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420 Maynard Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
764 - 0552

MATfEW D. REaNNIiE
Opinion Editors
YAEL CITRO
GEOFFREY EARLE
AMITAVA MAZUMDAR

Edited and Managed
by Students at the
University of Michigan

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Unsigned editorials represent a mnajority of the Daily's Editorial Board.
All-other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.
Out of Fleming, into the dorms

ore than 20 years have passed since the new
Vice President for Student Affairs Maureen
Hartford called a college residence hall home. As
Hartford begins her week-long vacation in South
Quad, she will be able to interact with a more
diverse body of students than most administrators.
see in their entire careers
While hiding out in the
secluded Fleming Build
ing.
Hartford should be
commended for her vi-
brant enthusiasm, her in .
fectious desire to meet
students, and her gump-
tion for staying in false
fire alarm-plagued South.
Quad. Residence-hall
life, with its crowded
bathrooms and unidenti q
fiable entrees, gets te-
tious for even the most
'iesilient students.
This spunky new administrator brings a wel-.
come breath of fresh air to the stale communica-
tions lines between students and administrators,
* which have been all but severed by administrators
like President Duderstadt, as well as the regents.
who seem numb to student concerns about campus
issues.
Yet, Hartford has repeatedly voiced and dem-
onstrated her desire to speak to students of all

types. She seems committed to listening to all
students, ratherthan simply catering to the agendas
of student leaders.
Hartford wants to improve the efficiency of
CRISP. She plans to poll students before registra-
tion to determine which classes will be in high
demand and hopes to increase class spaces accord-
ingly. She wants to help student-athletes to better
balance academic pressures and life in the sporting
world.
Hartford is dedicated to improving the quality
of student life on campus. However, it is also clear
that even the most sincere promises often remain
unfulfilled. It is for this reason that Hartford must
listen carefully to what she hears from students
while staying in the dorms.
Hartford cannot fix what she does not know is
broken. Student and administrative relations have
decayed, leading to increased apathy as students
perceive the administration as unwilling to listen
to their concerns. Issues ranging from deputization,
to the new Union policy, to the credit values of
LSA classes have all been addressed with negli-
gible student input. With Hartford's arrival, it is up
to students to hold her accountable to her promises
and to keep her informed of campus developments
and concerns.
Thus far, it seems that Hartford is doing her part
to meet the demands of the University student
body. Students should demonstrate the same re-
sponsibility by telling Hartford their concerns and
pushing her to act on them.

IGCEN J7 A o ,(0c.t 4 -r F ?N~om.CN
"- -
rIo-r
Harassment bordering on blatant racism

!U.
I

Once, I played hooky.
There were seven culprits all
together. Cutting classes was out of
character for us. We were all dili-
gent students who were usually busy
obsessing over our studies that close
to finals. This time however, we
wanted to blow off some steam on
the last day of
classes.-
So, we piled
into a van, and
roared out of V}
Ann Arbor. We
were headed for
a day of fun and
debauchery in by Matt
downtown De- Adler
troit. We
planned to take in a lavish meal in
Greektown, and then check out the
Detroit Institute of Arts under the
influence of hallucinogenics.
My companions and I were
bright, tenacious students with high
aspirations. Beyond that however,
we were anything but homogenous.
In terms of ethnic background, this
was as mixed a pot as any.
There was Rob, our steadfast
Adler is an LSA senior and a .
Daily Opinion strffer. His colunn
appears bi-weekly.

van driver, a Russian immigrant.
Jew. Spiro sat next to him. Spiro is
the son of Greek immigrants, (he
recommended the restaurant). Fill-
ing the hack seats were Yurij, a
Ukrainian immigrant; Anu, who is
of Indian descent; Naoto, a Japa-
nese immigrant;Chris, an all Ameri-
can boy; and me, of course.
After laughing away one of the
most enjoyable days of our college
careers, we headed for Canada. We
planned to mellow out in Windsor
over pizza and beer.
It was at the border crossing
into Canada that our day turned
sour. It turned into a day which I
know I will never forget.
Rob stopped the van in front of
the small, official looking customs,
booth.
"What's your nationality?" the
guard asked.
"We're all Americans," said
Rob.
"Drivers licenses, please," the
man droned, bored.
We quickly passed our licenses
forward.
"I'llneed to see proof ofci tizen-.
ship from Naoto and Anu,"said the
guard, making little effort to pro-
nounce the names correctly. But

then, what could I expect from this
man - someone with no back-
ground understanding in what it
means to be sensitive to the needs of
minorities, suddenly thrust into sub-
jective judgement of those simply
wishing to cross a border.
Naoto and Anu immediately pro-
duced the relevant documents, as if
anticipating the man's request.
As we pulled away from cus- .
tomns, we were all thinking thesame
thing. The guard had scrutinized
Naoto and Anu simply because of
their skin color.
Had foreign sounding names:
been the issue, than Yurij and Spiro
would have surely been suspect.
We talked about this oriefly, but
quickly dismissed the issue. We did
not want to let it spoil our day.
Looking back,. I wish we had
talked about the incident a lot more.
It was just a few minutes later
when Naoto turned tome and looked
intently into my eyes. I could im-
mediately see that his eyes were
straining to hold back tears.
"As long as I live, my American
citizenship will not be the same as i
yours," he said quietly, choking.
I did not know what to say. I was.
straining to hold back my own tears.

"

Bush dumps on environment, again

President George Bush's campaign speeches
over the years have been riddled with prom-
ises. His promises have ranged from his "no new
taxes" pledge to his promise to become the "edu-
cation president." Perhaps the most vacuous prom-
ise of all was Bush's claim to be "the environmen-
tal president'."
Throughout Bush's presidency, the buying and
selling of pollution rights, or shares, has become
as common as the spotted owl is scaree. Similarly,
the administration is attempting to ease restrictions
on wetlands development, permitting the oblitera-
tion of a beautiful and valuable natural resource for
economic gain.
Keeping consistent with his lip service toward
protecting the environment, Bush is now attempt-
ing to shrug aside new Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) regulations regarding air pollution.
In his State of the Union address last week, the
president declared a 90-day moratorium on regula-
tions that hamper development. This vague decree
left environmental groups confused. Is Bush will-
ing to sacrifice protecting the planet for the sake of
industry?
The answer came this past week, when Presi-
dent Bush tied the hands of the EPA, and prevented
it from releasing new regulations that would re-

quire businesses to provide a 45-day notice before
increasing their emissions. This waiting period
would allow for public hearings, whereby environ-
mentalists could attempt to block the changes. The
EPA considers these rules crucial to administering
the Clean Air Act.
The White House Council on Competitiveness,
headed by Vice President Dan Quayle, claims that
these new rules would be detrimental to business,
and has proposed a more economically friendly
counter-plan. The plan allows for only a two-week
notice and denies environmentalists the opportu-
nity to object.
The council also suggested that small busi-
.nesses be completely exempt from the regulations.
In addition, it requires the EPA and state regulators.
to watch only those facilities that, in the words of
a senior administration official, "they think have
gone wrong." This intentionally vague notion will
create a huge loophole, enabling companies to
increase their emissions without proper regula-
tion.
Will the president never learn? Short term mon-
.etary gain in no way balances out environmental
disaster. Campaign promises aside, everyone has a
duty to protect the planet. Bush's disregard for this
responsibility has become all too obvious.

Give them a break

Never forgetting the Final Solution

T here is a compelling adage about the future
- that says those who forget the events of the
past are doomed to repeat them. This is true both of
occurrences that have little consequence and those
that have impacts of colossal importance.
On Jan.19,1992, the German government made
a necessary and long overdue statement to help
protect many dark memories from the erosion of
time.
In the tranquility ofBerlin's Gruenewald Forest
rests the Wannsee Villa. It was in these pleasant
.urroundings that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Third
, eich devised its evil plot to exterminate the Jews
yin a complex, well organized and systematic as-
, embly-line massacre that incorporated the par-
Wicipation and coordination of almost every institu
etion in Germany. This"Final Solution," resulted in
4ie deaths of millions of European Jews and was
put into actionrat The Wannsee Conference on Jan.
20, 1942.
Now, 50 years later, Germany has unveiled its
first national memorial to the six million Jews who
were murdered between 1939 and 1945. Although
there are monuments that exist on the grounds of
some death camp sites, Wannsee represents the

first time official recognition has been given to the
precision and sterility with which the "Final Solu-
tion" was created.
Although the Wannsee memorial is a crucial
step in the large scale preservation of the Holo-
caust, its message to the German people may have
been sent too late. The results .of two recent polls
indicate that 42 percent of all Germans believe that
the Nazi regime possessed at least some "positive,
attributes" and that 62 percent of Germans desire
to end the discussionof the Holocaust because they,
feel no moral responsibility for the acts of their
parents and grandparents.
This is a travesty.
The fact that the German government has fi-
nally acknowledged the truth cannot alone satisfy
the need for a safer future. As long as apathy and
hostility exist regarding the memories of the Holo-
caust, its legacy of injustice will continue. The
Wannsee Memorial will be vitlal in ensuring the.
memory of the "Final Solution" is not forgotten.
But until all people recognize and understand the
randomness of prejudice and hatred that the Holo-
caust represents, the future will not be safe from
the recurrence of horrors past.-

To the Daily:
Give the working person a
break, Kreg. It may stretch the
mind. But for the sake of argu-
nent, imagine yourself standing
in the bank teller's shoes.
Say that your name is Cindy.
You're single with a little boy
who seems to always have a
runny nose. You've got to be out
of the apartment and at work by
7:30 every morning! You're on
your way to daycare when the car
breaks down.
The baby is screaming his/her
head off. What do you do? You
go on. You get* to work. ThP head
teller is.Waiting to tell you that
you had better start shaping up or
else. What do you do? You go on.
.You escape to the bathroom,"
to fix yourself up. Maybe you .
smoke a cigarette, or take a fresh
piece of gum. You've got to.
compose yourself. You'll be fine.
All you need to do is your job..
Then the students begin
coming in. One of them starts to
make a scene. He's complaining
about you. You were wrong
somehow. You're not sure how.
You followed bank policy. Things
are getting ugly. You really need
this job.
You were hired to assist the
customer in business transactions.
You thought you were. Sure, you
didn't say good morning, and of
course, you were not smiling, and
then you got sarcastic, but hey,'
this has been a ruff morning.
What should you do? What
should you do? You go on.
You accept his abuse and
apologize for the chewing gum,
and go on, that is if you still have
ajob. This is the real world,
Kreg. Student's will make it a
better one by showing their own
humanity, civility and respect.
Sure, I want good service just
like you. But, I doubt I'll find it
by following your advice and
picking on the working person.

according toMarx, dloes not
requjre perfect human beings.
More specifically, it requires
people who have learned the
lessons that a capitalist society
teaches. They do not have to be
selfless, nor do they have to. work
only for the state and their fellow
man.
The communist citizen only
needs to learn that. they can do
better for themselves if they work
in cooperation with others than if
they work in competition with
others, and that a society is more
productive if its membefs strive
for individual perfection rather
than superiority over those around
them..
Marx believed that this lesson
would be taught when: the
capitalist society veiled, even
though there existed in that
society the means of production
capable of providing for everyone
(and by no means at the poverty
level), because the wealth was
gathered into the hands of the
few.
This is the theory of commu-
nism and to date it has been
neither proven nor disproven. The
Soviet Union is a poor example of

A communist. nation because it
never arose from a capitalist
nation. It was a land of peasants
under a Tsarist rule, and the
revolution was instilled from
outside the country, not by the
people themselves.
The failure of the Soviet
Union was due to far more
mundane reasons than its commu-
nist nature, such as its lack of an
industrial base and excessive
investment in the military
(because of us).
What is important to realize is
that ideas and ways of living that
seem utterly foreign to us seem so
merely because of our upbringing
and the ideas that our society
instills in, us.:.It' is not surprising
that to Americans ingrained with
the concept of capitalism,
communism seems unfeasible.
Keep in mind that our way of
thinking is not the only, or
necessarily the best way of
thinking, and the way our children
live may be as inconceivable to us
as the way we live will be to
them.
Dave Morris
Engineering first-year
student

God created whiptail lizards

To the Daily:
Bennett Seacrist obviously has
t real bone to pick with gays and
lesbians. Unfortunately, what he
does not have is "nature" on his
side. I'd like to direct his attention.
to a recent iime article (1/20/92)
on how various animals repro-
duce.
One example I found particu-
larly interesting was that of the
whiptail lizard, which has evolved
into a female-only species. These
lady lizards reproduce by a'
process known as parthenogen-
esis, or splitting of the egg.
To stimulate egg production,
the lizards engage in lesbian sex..
The truth is that many animals
engage in same-sex and inter-
course. Where does this leave Mr.

Mr. Seacrist states that,
"homosexuals cannot produce any
offspring unless they adopt." Isn't
our present president pushing
adoption as a wonderful thing? To
me, a family is a group of people
who love and support each other,
blood links are something
separate.
Finally, there is the old
argument that God created Adam
and Eve to provide us with a mold
for future relationships. By the
same token, God also created
Ruth and Naomi, whiptail lizards,
and a man who said love tran-
scends'all boundaries of race,
class, and gender. We have
inherited a world of many
choices.
The Bennett Seacrists among

Nuts and Bolts
IOs'e AGAN 1DAY'Tm
IS THE DO WMOCI
'IPft 4TIAL .M ~PmDAES.L
GUS 0"M1E .)AIMR I#A5JONEP

by Judd Winick

So LEr6S OPEN 'TW6e
KPRONE LiNES AND HM (WA
You CrT i4INK OF mE _
CitrATq5. FIRE iI
AWAY G(~ANG. - 'l

L IN" REOEN.

KI'M 4' CkNA<

':

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