Page 4-The Michigan Daily- Wednesday, November 4, 1992
1 e 4i1c igttn+ ttil
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420 Maynard Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
764-0552
Editor in Chief
MATTHEW D. RENNIE
Opinion Editors
YAEL CITRO
GEOFFREY EARLE
AMITAVA MAZUMDAR
Edited and Managed
by Students at the
University of Michigan
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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Thank God!
W ith a vast majority of the electoral votes, Bill
Clinton went from being the governor of a
small state to being the next president of the
Jnited States. The American people have rejected
the staunch conservative legacy of the Reagan
revolution in favor of progress, change and the
government's commitment to social justice.
R Now, Clinton's task is before him. Clinton has
Ws mandate -now he must meet the promises he
:rade to the American people during his first 100
days in office; to do that, he must chose a clear set
of ambitious priorities.
First, he must establish a national health care
program. Declining incomes of all Americans -
except for the very wealthiest -has left some 30
million Americans uninsured. That should serve
as a call to action. It is essential that Clinton prove
early on that - unlike President Jimmy Carter -
he will expend all of the necessary political clout
to push through his health care proposal. Clinton
pledged to employ his running mate, All Gore, to
run through the halls of congress, selling his
presidential bill of goods. Despite his mandate,
Clinton is still an outsider, and he may need Gore's
political know-how.
Considering so many Americans cannot afford
to pay their doctors' bills, and health care reform
was a key campaign platform, Clinton must not
drop the ball on this issue.
The economy is what got Clinton into office,
and this is the issue he must successfully address
ifhe wants to pass the rest of his agenda. Signifi-
cant cuts in the military will leave many Ameri-
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cans unemployed, so job conversion and job train-
ing programs are a necessity. Clinton's plans for
increased investment are a proven way to create
jobs, jump-start the economy, and improve the
American infrastructure. But Clinton should be
aware that investment programs will be costly, so
he should do what he can to get them through
Congress while the 100-day honeymoon lasts.
Welfare reform also topped Clinton's agenda. Get-
ting Americans back to work, and off welfare
payments must be a national priority.
Obviously, Clinton must address education as
well. Ronald Reagan and George Bush have slashed
funding for this essential program. The Department
of Education has become a political farce, and one
Congress has neglected funding. Clinton must use
the White House as a bully pulpit to once again
make education a national priority. Steep federal
cuts have put an undue burden on state and local
governments, and Clinton must clean up this mess
and restore federal funding.
Clinton's appeal to young Americans has been
especially encouraging. Programs like his peace
corps at home have been specifically aimed at this
group.
For the first time, young people will have the
opportunity to feel a part of the political process. He
shouldn't abandon them once he moves into the
Oval Office.
President Bush conceded with true class, and we
hope he fulfills his promise to do everything he can
to ensure' a smooth transition to a Clinton presi-
dency.
0
Campus radio station resurrected
C losed down five years ago when a disc jockey
airedracist jokes, campus radio station WJJX
is returning to the airwaves. While the anti-Black
slurs aired in 1987 were sickening and intolerable,
shutting down the entire station for one reprehen-
sible act was an overreaction by the Office of
Student Services.WJJX has learned its lesson, and
the University should allow the station to decide
its own broadcast content.
The event
leading up to ~ 5
WJJX's shut-a
down was a
call-in pro-
gram by disk
j-dckey Ted
Sevransky.
One of a
Sevransky's
programs fea-
tured clearly °
and unmis -
takably racist.
jo k e s A
Sevransky, to
the credit of
the station,
was immedi-
ately fired.
The incident sparked a wave of protest by
outraged students. The Office of Student Services"
plosed down the station the next day - throwing
the baby out with the bathwater - and it has
remained closed for the past five years, except for
a brief comeback in 1991.
The closing of WJJX occurred in a different
political atmosphere than today, when nervous
administrators would often react to racist inci-
,dents by clamping down on freedom of speech.
Fear of racism incited by incidents such as this and
a racist flyer the same year led the University to
draft a dangerous speech code which a Michigan
judge later struck down as unconstitutional. Cam-
pus politics have since changed, and it is doubtful
that the University would take such a draconian
approach to a similar problem today.
Disturbingly,-however, the stationhad to pledge
to the Campus Broadcasting Network, its govern-
ing board,
that it
would not
. a. feature
call-in pro-
grams as a
condition
for its rein-
statement.
W J J X
should not
be limited
to an all-
music for-
mat if it
wishes to
expand its
program-
ming.
MICHELLE GUY/Dail The sta-
tion deserves the maximum editorial freedom, so
that it can explore issues relevant to students. The
apparent fear of another racist incident is ground-
less; in any case, WJJX's editorial independence
far outweighs any possibility of offensive content.
Students can only benefit when other students
have open access to media outlets. Whether in print
or on the airwaves, student perspectives add to
political discourse and enrich.mtheculture of the
campus. WJJX's return is welcome.
Pro-life supporter
made sound argument
To the Daily:
Conglutinations to Bridget
Hamilton on a well-written article
("Rights of the fetus need to be
protected," 10/16/92). In a few
column inches, Hamilton stated
and supported several strong
arguments against abortion.
Besides pointing out the hypoc-
risy, prejudice and insult to
women contained in many "pro-
choice" assertions, Hamilton gave
medical evidence for the proposi-
tion that a fetus is a human being.
The corresponding pro-choice
article ("Freedom of choice
belongs to each and every
woman") consisted largely of a
statement of the status quo in
America with respect to abortion,
plus a few straw-man arguments
for diversion. No attempt was
made to argue that a fetus doessnot
represent a human life. Yet this
question is the crux of the abortion
debate (unless the pro-choicers
don't care whether a fetus is a
human being or not). As with all
issues, those who have supporting
facts use them, and those who do
not are left to bluster.
Aaron Mead
Third-year Law student
Madonna photo an
affront to decency
To the Daily:
I am very disappointed that the
Daily chose to compromise its
standards by printing porno-
graphic pictures on the from page
(10/23/92). Not only was your
lapse an affront to decency, it was
also an insult to the dignity of
both men and women in general.
Must you join the clamor to
further objectify women and
degrade men to the status of
lustful brutes?
Come on folks, clean up your
act!
Clayton Hubner
Rackham graduate student
To the Daily:
This letter is in response to
your editorial entitled "MSA
right, despite ROTC wrong," (10/
23/92).
It is ridiculous and unfair for
you to suggest that the University
remove the ROTC program from
the campus.
The policy of the Department
of Defense is not necessarily the
belief of every ROTC cadet.
Many members, I am sure, do not
support discrimination of anyone
for any reasons.
Furthermore, many cadets,
like myself, depend on the ROTC
program for financial assistance.
As I am a non-resident, I would
not be able to attend the Univer-
sity without the aid of my
scholarship.
Not only does the ROTC
program provide the only means
for many students to attend the
University, it also gives young
men and women who choose the
chance to become commissioned
officers in the U.S. Armed Forces
and to serve their country.
Students like myself should
not be penalized for a policy
which we did not create and which
we cannot control.
Why don't you say, in com-
parison, that the Catholic Church
should be banned from the
University, as it does not ordain
homosexuals?
Yet, would you dare say that
all Catholics discriminate against
gays and lesbians?
Perhaps you should take a
closer look at your own bias
against the ROTC program and
allow cadets to practice their
academic and career choices
without having to worry about
whether or not they will be able to
continue to attend the University
and earn a military commission.
Samuel Kwan
LSA first-year student
ROTC provides opportunities
Be careful not to belittle races
To the Daily:
I was a bit disturbed by the
title of one of the articles in the
Oct. 7 Daily. The article that I am
referring to was entitled
"Treadway highlights booter 7-0
scalping."
Although I'm sure that there
was no conscious racist intent or
any other underlying meaning
behind the title, it still could have
been taken offensively, particu-
larly by Native Americans.
It is humiliating enough to
have their names used for
American sports teams, but then
to use the word "scalping" to
describe how a team with a
Native American name is beaten
in a soccer game is disrespectful
and quite demeaning.
Being an African-American
male I was able to empathize
with and thus have similar
feelings to students of Native
American descent who may have
read and been upset by the
article's title.
I imagined reading "Treadway
highlights booter 7-0 lynching."It
was at that moment that I realized
how someone could be angered by
the title. If that had in fact been
the title of the article, you know as
well as I do, that this campus
would have been in uproar. Just
that example alone should show
you how important it is to be
careful of how we say what we
say, so to speak.
The purpose of my letter is not
to censor what you print nor to tell
you what you should print, but
simply to ask whatever you do
indeed print, that you would be
mindful that it does not belittle or
disrespect any race.
Antonio Littleton
Engineering sophomore
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The Daily encourages its readers to voice their opinions. All letters should be 150 words or less. All op-ed
pieces should not exceed 3,000 characters. Send all submissions to The Michigan Daily, 420 Maynard, Ann
Arbor, Mich 48109. Or via MTS, The Michigan Daily: Letters to the Editor.
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Don't assume minorities won, tsucceed
Vatican remains in dark ages
IThe Catholic Church vindicated Galileo last
week, finally acknowledging that his three-
hundred year old discovery that the earth rotates
around the sun is valid. But that doesn't mean the
Vatican is out of the dark ages yet. It still refuses
,to recognize a homosexual's right to an education,
equal employment, military service and legal adop-
tion. Fortunately, a liberal movement is afoot
within the Catholic Church to challenge its tradi-
tionalist beliefs and recognize inalienable homo-
sexual rights.
Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of De-
troit and Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond,
along with more than 1,500 fellow Catholics,
signed an advertisement to be published in the
National Catholic Reporter next week that calls
for social legislation that would establish "basic
civil rights" for the American homosexual com-
.munity. Gumbleton and his supporters are ad-
vancing a vitally significant progressive agenda
within the Catholic Church and wnrks to mnintnin
challenged and debated from both within and with-
out the Catholic Church, and Gumbleton is right to
question the Pope's stance on homosexual rights.
The rise of the fundamentalist religious right-
wing in the early 1980s - characterized by Pat
Buchachan's frightening display of intolerance at
the 1992 Republican National Convention - pro-
vides fertile political ground for the perpetuaftion of
anti-gay bigotry inAmerican society. Buchachanis
right, though, when he says the United States is
fighting a "cultural, religious war as critical to the
future of our nation as the Cold War itself." It is a
war between those who believe that the govern-
ment should not dictate individual behavior and
those seeking to impose a narrow-minded agenda
on the entire nation.
The politicized battle over the recognition of
innate homosexual civil rights will most likely
become the contentious socio-political issue of the
1990s. Compassionate, understanding clerical fig-
ures like Gu mhleton and Sullivnn will hencrcial in
by Zachary Morgan
I am a Black graduate student
studying history at Brown Univer-
sity. Although I do not attend the
University of Michigan, when a
friend forwarded Professor Carl
Cohen's article on affirmative ac-
tion ("Penalty of preference," 10/
23/92), I felt a need to respond.
Cohen's attack on affirmative
action, along with his clumsy anal-
ogy of the unfortunate "shorts" who
are allowed into a "tall" academic
environment, only to suffer embar-
rassment and a tarnishing of their
reputation, was both filled with un-
founded generalities and offensive
to the reader.
While it is true that affirmative
action is an imperfect response to
the historic under-representation of
minorities in academia, it is also the
only effective response available to
lie at theti e
tion successfully addresses a need.
One which Cohen puts fourth no
alternative response for.
Affirmative action allows those
students of color who have ranked
the highest among students of color
to pursue an undergraduate or
graduate degree. While Cohen
states that "persons preferred for
university admissions on grounds'
of race or ethnicity will often ex-
hibit performances that are embar-
rassingly inferior,"
I posit that students who have
successfully made their way
through faulty school systems for
so long, when given the opportu-
nity, excel in an academic environ-
ment. This is of course, a personal
opinion which I cannot back up
with any statistical evidence. But if
I were writing an article as Cohen
did, I would have attempted to use
some evidence to support my
"intellectual reputation of Blacks
and otherminorities" tobepatroniz-
ing and offensive. Minority students
are graded on the same basis as non-
minority students. If a student gets
their degree, that degree will be
equally legitimate whether they are
white or not.
As for the white students who
are unfairly displaced by affirma-
tive action, it is an unfortunate side
effect of the system. But why is it
that those people who attack affir-
mative action don't ever seem to be
offended by the admission of"lega-
cies" to prestigious universities?
The children of past graduates
gain preferred admission status and
take seats away from students who
are academically stronger. Why is it
only when such seats go to minority
students that people get upset?
In closing I would like to say that
Cohen's descriptions of the dam-
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