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uPage 4-The Michigan Daily- Wednesday, December 9, 1992

Ott Ictloan a I]u

420 Maynard Street-
Ann Arbor, Michigan 4810
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.
Mrs.Smith leaves Washington

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T h: University Board of Regents doesn't ex-
actly have a spotless record with University
students, and student activists in particular. Many
students view the regents as an old boy network -
an executive board filled with political hacks who
seldom visit Ann Arbor and often ignore student.
concerns.
That is why it is especially
disheartening that Regent
Veronica Latta Smith (R-Grosse
Ile) will end her eight-year tenure
on the board next month. Smith
has been a lone voice for students
on the board, and-her perspective
'will be missed.
Last month, when her col-
leagues on the board were eager
to ram through a code of conduct .
that was an imposition on stu-
dents' lives, Smith and Regent
Deane Baker (R-Ann Arbor)s
mounted vocal opposition.
"The statement calls for a fair
trial but does not provide for one
...It is not enough to amend these
problems. We regents have seen what the students
have seen: the administration coming up with one
clause or another that makes the code unfair. The.
students' ,objection that the process is.controlled is
a fair and correct position," she wrote.in a position
paper.
At the same meeting, Smith objected that the
regents enacted the code before they were aware
of a related MSA referendum (students over-
whelmingly rejected the code).
Characteristically, President Duderstadt dis-
" J *r .3
State Senate kills
D uring the same period hatthe University
.received record higi f 6pots' bt;ap,;'the
Michigan 'Senate let the C ruipu"Sexual 'Assalt
Victims' Bill of Rights die in committee. The
Judiciary Committee hadlittle time to consider the
bill after it finally passed the House, primarily
because senators were caught in a scramble by the
two parties to claim a majority .for the Senate's
coming session. The bill ought to haveleen a
priority in spite of any p4i# iM gig;
The University Sexual 45sault Prevention and
Awareness Center (SAPAC) has received 56 re-
ports of sexual assault so far this term - the
highest number since SAPAC's inception. This
does not necessarily mean that more rapes are
occurring. Rather, it reflects increased awareness
and willingness of victims of assault to report the
'crime.: Still, 'all rape incidents ,on campus ,are
unacceptable. This statistic serves tohighlight the
problem in concrete terms.
Survivors need legal guarantees of their rights,
so that society's misconceptions about sexual as-
sault will not interfere with their ability to pursue
an education. The proposed bill would require
cglleges and universities to specify the rights of
survivors, including the right to have the crime
treated seriously and investigated by police. This

missed these concerns.
When the administration proposed an earlier
speech code, which was later struck down as un-
constitutional, Smith was the only regent who
voted against.
Her stalwart opposition to deputizing a Univer-
sity police force was equally com-
mendable. Smith was the only
regent to vote against deputization,
and she did so on two occasions.
"The students were opposed to
having the deputized police force
on campus, and my feeling was
that we should respect and listen
to the students. The students were
the ones that this policy would
affect," she said in an interview.
Such concern for student views is
simply unheard of elsewhere on
the board.
To help remedy this, Smith has
supported having a student regent
on the board. When the regents
neglect student concerns, as they
FILE PHOTO/ma'y did when they during both
deputization votes (the first vote was over the
summer, the other was just before spring break),
Smith publicly aired her concerns.
It is her willingness to speak out when the
administration bulldozes over students' rights, and
her outspoken advocacy for those rights that has
made Smith's voice the most compassionate and
democratic on the board.
"I do not like dictating to people what's good for
them. My feeling is, the students have to have input.
They know what's good for them as well."

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Daily should get whole story

To the Daily:
I feel that I must respond to
your accusations in last Friday's
editorial "Blind luck saves MSA
tax status," (12/4/92).
In it you accuse me wrong-
fully acting on my own to hire
Plante-Moran to investigate
MSA's tax status. Let me clarify
the events at the beginning of
MSA's efforts to fix our tax-status.
problems.
After the Aug. 18 MSA
meeting and Summer classes were
over, I was first notified that the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
had discovered a minor glitch in
MSA's tax-exempt status -
namely that the letter of determi-
nation of our tax status from the
IRS was not on file at MSA,
Plante-Moran or the IRS. Plante-
Moran estimated it would cost
between $1000 and $1500 to fix
the problem themselves.
Rather than wait nearly a
month for the next MSA meeting
for any work to begin, I, as the
only executive officer of MSA
available between terms, re-
stricted Plante-Moran to a $1000
limit to fix the tax problem. I did
not "personally hire Plante-Moran
... to investigate MSA's tax
status." Plante-Moran is the
auditing frm that the Assembly
hired in 1982 to do our annual
audit and our taxes. This activity
is in line with what Plante-Moran
was hired by the Assembly to do.

However, before the next
MSA meeting on Sept. 15, word
came back to the executive
officers that Plante-Moran tripled
its estimated cost to between
$3000 and $5000. We received
no assurance that further cost
overruns would not be charged to
MSA, nor any guarantee that the
tax problems would be fixed.
In light of the fact that Plante-
Moran was supposed to be taking
care of our taxes for 10 years and.
the expenses that they seemed all
too willing to charge against the
students' fees, Vice President,
Hunter Van Valkenburgh and I
decided to recommend to MSA
that it pursue an alternate solution
to the tax problem. This is what
the Assembly did. I am extremely
proud of the professionalism
shown by Stuart Lazar, the
University Law student we hired,
in helping MSA out of this
problem. The appropriate forms
and documents will be filed with.
the IRS before the new year, and
I look forward to the final
resolution of this issue sometime
before this coming Summer.
I would appreciate it if the
Daily editorial staff would at least
attempt to contact me for my side
of the story next time they wish
to accuse me of wrongdoing.
Roger De Roo
MSA Student General
Counsel


.thka 'o w

victims rights.
is importhntsince uniyersities fear the bad public-
ity causedby repots-andinvestigations of rape. But
the right- )Pwu'vivorsto receive justice -- not to
mention the importance of convicting dangerous
men - far outweighs this cosmetic concern.
In addition, the bill would mandate that counsel-
ing, housing transfers and class changes be made
available to survivors, who may want to avoid
contactvf th the assailant. Counseling is crucial for
helping4stvivor deal during the emotional after-
math of .the ordeal - which may include fear,
anger, a false sense of guilt, and a feeling of being
dirty or violated.
However,justice dictates that the survivor should
not have to be the one to make housing and class
changes. Ideally, the assailant should be the one to
adjust his living arrangements and schedule so the
survivor would not be further threatened. But until
the alleged rapist is proven guilty, this would be a
violation of the rights of the accused.
The Campus Sexual Assault Victims' Bill of
Rights should have been a priority this year - it
was passed unanimously in the State house -but
the time for hearings in the State Senate expired
before the bill was approved. The bill will be
reintroduced next year, and students should be
vigilant to ensure its prompt passage.

Art you should cover
To the Daily:
As all students who spend any
amount of time on North Campus
know, there has been an addition
to the environment in front of the
Dow Building. Personally, I am
forced to look at the structurally
unsound, demented-satellite-dish-
like, warped, aesthetically
torturous thing from hell, named
by some "artist" to sound vaguely
mathematical. I was looking
forward to the Day Without Art
hoping that this would be covered;
it was not. I demand an explana-
tion.
Brian Scriber
Engineering junior
Separate church Daily
To the Daily:
I am responding to "Vatican
remains in dark ages" (11/4/92)
and Katherine Metres' column
"-Church needs to embrace its
women" (12/1/92).
Why does the Daily staff feel
the need to present this unsolicited
and misguided advice to the
Catholic church? When did you
proclaim yourselves a committee
of theologians? In the future,
avoid the hypocrisy of giving
"friendly advice" to a religious
institution with which you so
obviously disagree.
Michael Hackett
LSA first-year student
Get rid of junk mail
To the Daily:
We do not usually think of
junk mail as an environmental
hazard, just as a pain. But, if
100,000 people stopped their junk
mail, we could save about 150,000
trees every year.
In order to reduce your junk
mail up to 75 percent, write to:
Mail Preference Service, Direct
Marketing Association, 11 West
42nd St. P0 Box 3861, New
York, NY 10163-3861. They'll
stop your name from being sold to
most large mailing list companies.

Don t judge homosexuals

To the Daily:
I am responding to Mattie
Mierzejewski's letter ("Homo-
sexuality is a sin," 12/2/92). Aside
from the basic insensitivity, and
irresponsibility displayed by the
letter, I feel the need to take issue'
with any person who judges
others' lifestyles. To me, homo-
sexuality is inherently unnatural,
but I hardly find it reason to shun
a human being.
Mattie cited the Daily's "inept
attempt at judging God's laws by
human opinion." This statement is
evidence of the basic self-serving

nature of the beliefs of many
pretentious and arrogant keepers
of the Christian faith. Human
opinion and human perception is
the only kind of opinion or
perception Mattie, I or any of us
are capable of, despite many
Christians' inept attempts at
denial
I do not begrudge Mattie or
her beliefs. But I do not feel the
need to have the threat of
damnation hung over my head by
self-righteous people.
Scott Kier
LSA junior

... and U.S. Congress follows suit

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Punish Sht for actions, nttogt

0 n Capitol Hill, the Violence Against Women
Act also recently died in committee, but it
too has a fighting chance to pass next year due to
the persistence of its sponsors. This bill would
provide funding for better law enforcement and
data collection regarding violence against women
and would allow gender-based incidents to be
prosecuted as hate crimes. It would make domes-
tic violence a federal crime - a much-needed
departure from the traditional attitude that such
abuse is merely a private matter.
The bill's initiatives are crucial for making the
legal system more responsive to women's con-
cerns. The education of state and federal judges
about violence against women will foster a court-
room environment which provides dignity and
encourages effective sentencing to prevent further
harm - like keeping bond out of reach when a
woman's life would threatened by her partner's
freedom prior to trial.
The portions of the Violence Against Women
Act dealing with campuses have been incorpo-
rated into the Higher Education Reauthorization
Act, which passed the U.S. House and Senate this
summer. The relevant passages are now called the

authorizes $10 million for college campus rape
education, prevention and survivor support ser-
vices.
Much like the Campus Sexual Assault Victims'
Bill of Rights, the act requires that campus security
crime reports be made available to the public and
that schools respect the rights of rape survivors.
The funding for the act is being held up by a
domestic spending cap, but proponents feel that
budget priorities simply need to be shifted away
from defense spending.
Legislation addressing women's safety is long
overdue. The lawmakers supporting the bills at
both the state and the federal levels should be
praised for their attention to these issues. However,
many members do not recognize the importance of
these bills and are too willing to allow them to die
in committee.
Washington must ensure the passage and fund-
ing of efforts to stop rape and domestic violence.
This legislation is a step toward providing more
safety for women.
Efforts to end the self-imposed restrictions caused
by fear may help women take advantage of the
opportunities for which the women's movement

by Flint Wainess
There isnodoubtaboutit: Marge
Schott is a racist, anti-Semitic, xe-
nophobic, bigot. Her keeping of a
swastika as some sort of twisted
relic makes Pat Buchanan look like
a progressive liberal. She, and any-
one else who constantly spews out
racial epitaphs as some sort of sick
humor, foster the stereotypical and
dehumanizing behavior that invades
the lives of minorities in America.
But there are several ways to
oust Schott from her position as
ownerofbaseball'sCincinnatiReds.
The politically popular method,
endorsed by many liberal papers, is
to callsfor Schott's fellow baseball
owners to use their totalitarian
power to force her to abdicate her
ownership.
This sounds simple enough at
first. After all, it seems obvious to
everyone that Schott's blatant big-
otry is a blot on Major League Base-
ball. But upon second thought, it is
clear that emnowering baseball's

these seem outrageous,,just glance
at the existence of minorities in
baseball's managerial positions.
You can't? That is because there
are almost no minorities to glance
at.
The thought police of this world
can continue to try and punish indi-
viduals for alleged statements made
in the privacy of one's home. But
these are the same people who
"know" abortion is wrong. So why
not fire pro-choice owners? They
can justify their actions by saying
that Schott is a private owner and
shouldn't be able to represent a
baseball organization. But people
who condone censoring school
newspapers have their arguments
grounded in this same faulty logic.
The Schotts of this world will
always exist if we allow censorship
to prevail. The correct solution is
for Schott's frightening ideas to be
debated and refuted in the market-
place of ideas.
I am not saying that Schott
hnuld emain nw r nr i P R&