Page 4--The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 23, 1992
F(ditor in Chie
420 Maynard Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
764 - 0552
MAITlIEW I RIENNIEI
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 majority of the Daily's Editorial Board.
All other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.
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Leave the driving to 'U'
ue to the unreliability of the Fuller bridge,
buses commuting between North and Central
campuses must rely on a safer, but unfortunately
longer route. While much attention has been paid
to the considerable length of the detour, less has
been given to the University's poor handling of the
situation.
Since the bridge may not be completely re-
paired until well into the next year, the University
has the responsibility of insuring that the rerouted
schedule will run as smoothly as possible. In this
endeavor, the University has failed.
While most bus riders are aware of the unavoid-
able detour, few have any idea when normal routes
will be resumed, or even when reconstruction of
the bridge will begin (apparently, not until Decem-
ber). Furthermore, the present bus schedules make
no indication of this detour, and provide only out-
dated information about the old routes.
Students who want to take a look at the new
routes must rely on posted sheets available only in
a fraction of the buses.
This aside, the University has yet to fully rec-
ognize the added problem of transporting students
between the two campuses in a reasonable amount
of time. Before the detour, all three buses -
Northwood, Bursley-Baits, and the seldom-run
North Commuter - made stops for students with
classes on North Campus. Now, the once widely
used Bursley-Baits bus makes stops only in the
residential areas. Those students wishing to com-
mute between classes must now crowd on the
other two buses. It is entirely impossible to find a
seat, and bus isles are dangerously packed.
At the bus stops, buses are often unable to pick
up the entire crowd, forcing students to wait for the
next bus. If these students are lucky, they have a
only a ten-minute wait. But the wait can be as long
as 15 minutes, depending on whether a bus is
running behind schedule.
This, coupled with the longer ride, makes an
average trip last 30 minutes or more - about
double the time of the same trip last year. Then
again, the Northwood and Bursley-Baits buses
used to arrive every seven minutes last year, rather
than every ten to 15 minutes.
In an attempt to alleviate the inconvenience, the
University has added only a couple of buses to the
Northwood Route. This small remedy has failed to
reduce either the crowds or the travel time.
Considering the University's class schedule only
allows for 30 minutes between classes on the two
campuses, these delays can cause students sched-
uling problems.
To effectively get at the problem, the University
could add more buses to the Northwood route,
since it is the only major route available for stu-
dents with North Campus classes. If necessary, it
could even take a bus or two from the less-crowded
Bursley-Baits route.
Perhaps the University could even rent a few
buses from the financially ailing Greyhound Bus
Company - anything to make sure students can
get to class on time.
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Bushthe debate dodger
Code aids rape victims
To the Daily:
You have raised a number of
questions about the new State-
ment of Student Rights and
Responsibilities.You would do
well to read the . icle on your
own editorial page, -Date Rape
Victim Tells Personal Story" (9/
14/92). Your statemient that "..
the Ann Arbor courts have
jurisdiction over these crimes,"
demonstrates your failure to
understand what these crimes
mean to their victims. It may be
true that this was a crime punish-
able by the courts, however a very
small percentage of such crimes
ever gets reported. She did try to
handle it within the University. by
reporting the manl's misconduct to
the President of his fraternity.
Perhaps if the proposed policy
had been in place she would not
have felt so totally trapped -and
she might ha\ e even used the
University's mechanisms to deal
with her situation. As it was, there
was nothing but the local court
system, of which she wrote, "No
court will ever prosecute a little
boy who went too far." Further-
more, rape is very hard to prove
in court, and it takes a long time
before it can be addressed.
In this area of sexual harass-
ment, as in other areas, faculty
and staff have had policies
governing our behavior for some
time. Why is it then so unreason-
able that students should live
within similarly defined areas of
rights and responsibilities?
Harvey Bertcher, D.S.W.
Professor of Social Work
To the Daily:
I am sick and tired of hearing
the word "minority." Will
someone please tell me who isn't
a "minority?"
If African Americans, womyn,
gay men, Asians, American
Indians, the physically chal-
lenged, lesbians, Latin Ameri-
cans, Jews, Hari Krishnas,
Muslims, bisexuals, HIV-positive
people, the mentally ill, atheists
and the homeless are all consid-
ered "minorities," then will the
real majority please stand up?
Who elected the white,
heterosexual, Christian, finan-
cially secure men who are not
physically challenged, HIV
positive or mentally ill to the
majority? I'm sure if all the
numbers were added up they
would be a "minority" just like
everyone else.
In our country, no one should
be referred to as a "major" or a
"minor." We're all people. Okay.
so some people may be different
from other people, but that
doesn't make one group of people
more important than another.
Nick Pawlowski
LSA sophomore
Who is the majority anyway?
An open letter to 'U' students
01
W hat are voters to think of a presidential
candidate who refuses to argue crucial is-.
sues before the public? Considering President
Bush's retreat from the debate planned with Gov.
Clinton for last night in East Lansing, they should
think very little of his re-election effort.
The principle at stake is whether presidential
debates are best organized by a nonpartisan third
party concerned with the public interest or cam-
paign strategists concerned with the protection of
their candidate's image.
The bipartisan Commission on Presidential
Debates recommended three debates with a single
moderator who would be able to glean specifics
through follow-up questions. The commission
chose this format to avoid personal attacks, to
make the debates less orchestrated and to pique the
interest of potential viewers.
Bush found fault with this set-up, preferring
only two debates and a panel of questioners. He
reserved the right to determine the times and dates
of the debates and bypass the recommendations of
the commission. He wanted to avoid a free-form
debate that would force him to think on his feet and
answer tough questions form his opponent.
The format proposed by Bush would have
elicited a predictable debate with stock answers
from the candidates and limited follow-up from
the panelists, as has been the case in the past. This
distracting set-up would reduce viewers' ability to
hear and judge the candidates based on their indi-
vidual merits.
The controversy will continue to be an issue,
since both candidates have agreed to two debates.
Bush, however, wants one debate to cover the
economy and one to cover foreign policy. This
plan would leave many important social issues
untouched.
The Clinton camp refused to negotiate this
week's debate, and the deadline for a settlement
expired. Not only is the cancellation of the debate
a huge disappointment to the Michigan State Uni-
versity (MSU) and East Lansing community, but it
deprives voters of a major source of information
about the candidates' programs and communica-
tion abilities. A recent survey shows that more than
half of U.S. adults watch the debates and consider
them important when deciding how to vote.
Furthermore, by dodging the debate, Bush
slighted the state. With Michigan unemployment
soaring, it is no wonder that the president would
rather avoid discussing his economic record and
minimalist plans.
But he failed to give MSU even "the favor of a
reply." The school wasted half a million dollars to
prepare for a debate that never materialized. Wisely,
Clinton took advantage of the situation to make a
solo appearance.
Bush's stonewalling over the format of the
debates only reinforces the perception that his re-
election effort is floundering and defensive in
nature. The candidates should debate under the
conditions recommended by the commission and
let the voters make a well-informed choice.
Welcome back and welcome
to Ann Arbor. I want to take this
opportunity to introduce myself
to those of you I have not yet
met. My name is Mark Guimet
and I am running for the State
Representative seat for the 52nd
district.
I decided to enter this race
because it is important that we
have a voice in Lansing that
speaks for our community. I have
spent my entire life in Ann Arbor
and working towards its benefit.
These are exciting times and
critical times, as well. We need
to focus on our community, to
work together to solve our
problems.
Since you, as Michigan
students, spend almost nine
months out of the year in Ann
Arbor, I value your input in our
community. As members of the
student body, you possess
tremendous talents in many areas
of specialization. It is important
that your voices are heard. And
although not all of you live in the
52nd district, I ask for your
involvement. The 52nd is not an
island.
I want to ask you for your
help. Our campaign is a one-on-
one approach to politics. I have
gone to over 15,000 doors in our
community and I will continue
this through to the election. We
are building a coalition that
transcends party lines and we ask
that you join in. The campaign
offers you a chance to jump in and
make a change in state level
politics.
Mark Ouimet
Candidate for State Represen-
tative, 52nd district
COMMUN ITY INSIGHT. ..... .
MSA responds to Daily criticisms
'nuj cipi' r
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by Ede Fox and Hunter
Van Valkenburgh
We are compelled to respond to
the editorials ("MSA betrays stu-
dent interests..." 9/10/92) concern-
ing the activities of the Summer
Student Assembly, the summer
body of the Michigan Student As-
sembly. While we recognize that
the interpretive fine points are de-
batable, there are some errors of
fact, and we will respond point-by-
point.
Firstly, the net fee increase was
for $.43 per student, not $.78, be-
cause we were asking that the $.35
fee for nc Michigan Collegiate
Coalition (M(.C)-which the Daily
supports--be rolled into our fee, as
the University has been whining
about collecting fees for a lobbying
group (the University, in fact, pays
for lobbying out of student tuition).
Callng $.43 a "large increase" is
jus laughable given that it is less
ti h. the cost of most candy bars.
Furthermore, it was not an unjusti-
fied request.
Last year, the Ann Arbor Ten-
ants Union (AATU) took a 45 per-
cent cut at the hands of the Jamie
Green administration, and had to
cut their services in half. Student
Legal Services (SLS), which pro-
vides free legal help to any student,
had its allocation frozen, causing
financial difficulties for its staff of
experienced lawyers. The language
of the "fee cap" is ambiguous, and
we felt the needs of AATU, SLS
and MSA justified this small in-
crease per student.
We were not "taken to task... for
fiscal irresponsibility" by the re-
resulted in the best audit report of
several years. Much of the credit
goes to last year's Assembly, who
hired an accountant. We have
pledged to the regents to imple-
ment those procedures recom-
mended by the auditors, and get an
even better report next spring.
On the issue of the tuition in-
crease, we must apologize to the
student body for not being more
vocal at the time it was being de-
bated by the regents. Part of the
reason was that almost without ex-
ception students oppose tuition in-
creases, and for us to tell that to the
regents would be superfluous. An-
other part was that we were all busy
with our own work at the time.
We saw no problem with asking
for '43 cents for our work while
opposing tuition hikes of hundreds
or thousands of dollars per student,
and it is presumptuous of the Daily
to say we "feared" doing so, with-
out asking us first. The Daily is
right in its opinion that an official
statement opposing the increase
would have been in order.
The $350 granted to graduate
students at the School of Social
Work for printing pamphlets con-
cerning the weavers co-op in Gua-
temala is not a "random" or "hap-
hazard" grant. If the Daily were
paying attention for the last 20 or so
years, MSA has always given
money to student groups who at-
tempt to enrich the educational op-
portunities here at the University
and who cannot find the funds else-
where. This has always been part of
our mission.
If the regents are planning a
Crcnnlept renroanization of R A
ing to come in one day and find out
that our keys don't fit anymore.
As concerns the changes to the
Board for Student Publications, we
feel that the Daily's reaction to our
actions was overblown. The pro-
posed changes were drawn up by a
task force heavily weighted toward
the administration, and was ap-
proved by a majority of the Daily
editors, not the entire Daily staff.
In our opinion, it gives the presi-
dent too much veto power over the
selection of the board. This is okay
now given the people he has prom-
ised to appoint, but could lead to an
insidious stacking of the board,
which has a financial stranglehold
on the paper.
The final changes were not ready
during the school year, and all we
asked was that the vote on the
changes be delayed until the school
year for full public view.
Like tuition increases,
deputization and other anti-student
measures, this was being dealt with
in the summer, as if the president
were trying to sneak it past students.
We hope the future proves us wrong
on the actual effect on the Daily, but
we stand behind our attempt to open
the process up to the entire student
body.
MSA and the Daily have more
common interests than disparate
ones. We are all students at an ex-
pensive public institution, and as
such have an interest in seeing it
remain open to a broad spectrum of
the public, and not become an elite
institution for a privileged few or a
research-heavy "business" that sac-
rifices undergraduate education.
While differenre n nnininn are.
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T HE. B O 1IN . . . .. . . .............. ........
De'at of a salesa pItch
Anyone who's watched much college football
on T.V. knows that universities will go to
almost any length to make their school look good
on its commercials. We've all seen clips of eager-
to-learn college students hard at work with the
most advanced lasers or some other high-tech
equipment, even though, in truth, most students
only get to use the laser beams every couple of
weeks or so. Some students are shown translating
the last of the Dead Sea Scrolls, while others are
hard at work in economics class finding a fool
proof way to permanently balance the federal
budget. g
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latest ad is, if not realistic, a notch or two better thy;n
the vanilla mush that normally fills the air waves on
football Saturdays.
The new spot, which shows a young Arthur
Miller opening his University acceptance letter and
convincing his parents of the value of a Big Ten
education, certainly continues the tradition of
corniness (which must stretch all the way back to
the very first college football telecast). But at least
it doesn't portray a "typical" college lifestyle that's
actually about as typical as Preacher Mike prosely-
tizing for Shi'ite Islam.
And the next time you read the Cliffs Notes for
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