4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, December 7, 1993 1 je £irbinau DaxI 420 Maynard Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan JOSH DUBOW Editor in Chief ANDREW LEVY Editorial Page Editor 1 Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the majority opinion of the Daily editorial board. All other cartoons, articles and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily. Sharp as Toast; TALK TO SANTA! SAT: - 2 - S LT Y - - tr 'atc 1kfAn1'pvy AA5 :"19 9 31*' STyLE, i1' r1~ A. Berman's letter was enlightening To the Daily: This letter is in response to Scott Berman's letter (11/17/93), which insightfully and accurately characterized all engineers. His liberal and open-minded thoughts have been most enlightening to us. As students of the College of Engineering, we agree completely with Berman's opinions. Having each chosen an engineering field as our major, we are now completely devoid of all human emotions, social awareness, and self-autonomous thought. You see, we were genetically engineered to carry out the conservative opinions and actions of our parents. Upon graduation, we are gleefully looking forward to the opportunity to be subservient in the workplace to all other majors. Sadly, we have to cut this letter short. The reason, you ask? "Star Trek" is on soon. Some things are really important. DAVID FISKE Engineering sophomore MINIR PATEL BRANDON PERSINGER Engineering juniors Piazza distorts the facts on Israel To the Daily: In his piece "Apply terrorism standard equally" (11/11/93), James Piazza tenaciously attacks Israel and claims it implements policies of terror and overt oppression. Piazza, however, distorts the facts and uses cheap demagoguery to inflame a few isolated incidents in Israel's past. Inducing from these cases that Israel's policies are sheer terrorism is nothing more than fascist propaganda. An Israeli citizen and soldier who spent five months in the Gaza strip and West Bank, I can assure Piazza that the Israeli government has no policy of killing innocent children. The political and strategical situation in the area is too sensitive and complicated for it to be reduced to "good guys and bad guys." I totally agree that the current presence in the occupied territories is wrong and oppressive to human rights, but the solution will be political. Israel is already making major concessions that are changing the atmosphere every day. AARON GUTNICK LSA first-year student I'm using a real tree, so there! To the Daily: (The following is the text of a letter the author wrote to Eric Luskin, director of Family Housing at the University, with a copy sent to the Daily for publication. -ed.) Some sunny day in December, I'm going to take my wife, my spn and my daughter, and go to my favorite Christmas tree spot, one to which I went with my own parents years ago. I'm going to patiently hold up trees for my wife until I'm blue in the face, and finally agree with her on what will probably be an overpriced Douglas Fir (I'm a Scotch Pine man myself). Then, I'm going to take said tree home and put it up in my living room, all the while enjoying that wonderful fresh pine aroma, which more than anything brings back Christmases past, and watch nervously as my daughter drops ornament after ornament while trying to get the hook on the limb. Next, I'm going to give it some water, which, according to your study, makes a tree nearly imnossible to ignite. Finaly afte~r burden on the part of the lessors to invent new and infringing policies. In other words, take a break, and have a Merry Christmas! JOHN HEFFERNAN Business graduate student Don't blame the victim for the crime To the Daly: I am writing in response to Chief Leo Heatley's statement in the article concerning the rape behind South Quad ("Local police investigate rape behind South Quad," 12/1/93). He says the attack could have been prevented if the woman had walked with someone. Why is it her responsibility to find an escort at night? Why isn't it the police department's responsibility to make the streets safe enough for women to talk alone? Since when have we started blaming the victims for the crimes?! She simply walked 10 yards out of her back door. Do we have to call Safewalk even to cross the street now? Women should not have to live in a society that pampers criminals and puts them back on the street to rape again. Chief Heatley is correct, the rape could have been prevented. Maybe if the men of the world would take responsibility for their actions and not blame women for rape, this could have been prevented. Instead of interrogating the victim about her lack of responsibility, why not work to toughen the criminal system and place the blame and interrogation where it belongs?! Stop blaming women for men's power tripe, start convicting rapists, give them harsher sentences. Then maybe, the attacks will be more preventable. Until men stop thinking with their dicks and start thinking with their minds, women will be forced to live their lives in fear. BECKY HOLLENBECK ABBY GOODMAN LSA first-year students Don't force your values on others To the Daily: I am writing in response to Michael Martz's letter (12/2/93). First of all, he says that he "believe(s) that AIDS is a disease resulting from immorality." While this may be true for the majority of AIDS cases, there are still a significant amount of people who contract HIV regardless of their moral actions, i.e. blood transfusion recipients and newborns. I don't find these people to be involved in a "web of sin." It is also arbitrary for Martz to say that "Americans need to change their moral values in life, like abstinence, don't use drugs, and don't commit the act of homosexuality." I think that he should consider that it isn't the immorality of these acts that causes AIDS, it is the lack of responsibility in committing these acts. Besides, he shouldn't ask us to commit actions based on his subjective "morals;" people should have the right to do whatever they want as long as it does not affect others in a negative way. And as for the use of religion in Martz's letter, all I can say is that forcing another's morals or values on someone else is detrimental to man; it doesn't allow him to think for himself and learn from his mistakes. It is best to let people consider religion only by their own volition. GREGORY L. PARKER Architecture first-year student Don't make them die for their supposed sins proposed cure is to be effected. The call to "family values" is merely a retrenchment - a rear guard action. Rather than seeking to pro-actively develop a medical cure, campus Republicans propose that, in effect, society passively close the watertight doors to prevent a flood of polluted blood from contaminating the remaining pure stock. Essentially, they propose to let those with AIDS die while watching from afar in their morally sealed stockade. Considering that a significant portion of the world's population has become infected by supposedly immoral conduct, one may legitimately question the Christian compassion of those who propose this course. Furthermore, as a society we do not deny medical care to victims of physical accidents, yet College Republicans imply that those who commit what they deem moral mistakes should be left to perish. Moreover, the Republicans' position implies that allowing the moral riff- raff of the world to die off will morally improve society by allowing those who adhere to their concept of family values to survive. The comparison to the eugenic arguments of the early part of this century cannot be ignored. By choosing the term "cures" rather than "prevents," College Republicans propose that the solution to this tragic epidemic is to simply allow untold millions to die while they preserve their own pristine blood. MARK CHASTEEN LSA senior 'Morality' would stop 'avoidable' HIV/AIDS transmission To the Daily: Are we debating issues or semantics? I am not proposing family values will cure the physical manifestation of AIDS. What they will cure is the societal problem of transmitting a deadly disease. In the case of the dentist and the wayward husband, the disease was transferred because they had no values. But, if that dentist or husband had applied moral standards, they would not have carelessly transmitted it. (If the husband had respected his role in the family, he wouldn't have been wayward in the first place.) Here, morality would certainly have prevented the transmission, resulting in that many less cases of AIDS. Accordingly, if all those with AIDS now took steps to stop the transmission of the virus, AIDS would be isolated to only those who were currently infected. If research develops a cure, then those currently infected will be treated. If a cure is not found, at least the disease will spread no further, as those with the virus would not pass it on. My heart goes out to those who would sadly die uncured, but we cannot use their plight to justify the rampant lack of morality which can be traced to almost all the cases of "avoidable" transmission. PAMELA NASH LSA junior Oops... I almost forgot To the Daily: After posting my recent letter concerning your lack of coverage of Veterans Day, even I got the impression that you completely neglected the holiday. My actual complaint is not your coverage of it in the Nov. 11 edition, but a lack of promotion of events that were to take place. You offer advance notice of all other events on campus and yet on the actual holiday, not a word was mentioned. Please add these comments to my previous correspondence. MICHAEL SCHUILING 1 0 1 ;o %r L4 Ih 7 If the Fiske gde doesn't suffice try this Ranking colleges on the basis of quality is big business these days. There's no longer -- a need to get into philosophical ar- guments over the intrinsic worth of your chosen insti- tution of higher learnig. Open up a copy of U.S.T Snooze and World Distort, and you can prove to the bozos back home that Michigan is better than Michigan State. This concept has recently been taken to new heights by an obscure "men' s magazine" called "The Inside Edge." These guys decided to rank colleges not on the basis of quality, but on the basis of how easy it was to get a degree and how many attractive women you could boink while you were there. The whole concept struck me as bizarre; I could just see every magazine in the country getting in on the act. "Women's Day" and "Good House- keeping" (read by mothers everywhere) would rank colleges based on security on campus, the availability of laundry facilities, and the strict rules prohibit- ing opposite sex visitation in the dorms. "Cosmopolitan" would tell you how easy it was to walk around the campus in high heels and how much cleavage you should show. "Soldier of Fortune" would rank how easy semi-automatics were to come by. "Seventeen" would pretend to care about academics, but would end up telling you how fashion- ably the women dress and how many cute guys there were. Even if these surveys were done, I would still find the "Inside Edge" sur- vey the most bizarre. For those of you who haven't heard of the survey, the magazine had 50 raters from around the country rate the nation's 300 larg- est co-ed colleges and universities on how "fun" they are to attend (Michigan ranked number 25, in case you're won- dering). The exact criteria they used are worth reporting: proximity of bars and clubs, number of parties, sexiness of the women at the school, percentage of women at the school, quality of sports teams, quality of facilities, loca- tion, and ease of graduation and classes. By these criteria, a school where you learned nothing, got drunk every weekend, and screwed as many women as possible would be at the top of the list (which explains the placement of Florida State as No. 1, I suppose.) Maybe it's because I attended the bottom-ranked school in this survey (the University of Chicago ranked num- ber 300, after Oral Roberts and West Point), but I think this is a ratherwarped view of fun. First of all, why does an active social life have to revolve around drink- ing? Most people I know have just as much fun hanging out with friends at a coffee shop as they do hanging out with friends at a bar - maybe even more since they don't say stupid things or throw up afterwards. Drinking in moderation has plenty to recommend it, but I have a feeling the guys at "The Inside Edge" are into the lampshade- on-da-head school of drinking. And what's this junk about the sexi- ness of the women - and just the women? (Not that adding in the attrac- tiveness of the men would have helped U of C's ranking -unless you're into geeks.) I'm sure their excuse is that they are a men's magazine, something that heretofore has not existed witho pictures of half-naked women, spo figures, or disassembled cars. At any rate, I was under the mistaken impres- sion that it takes more than sexiness to make a woman fun to be with; I would hope that there are a few guys out there who want to date friendly, intelligent, and self-confident women. But maybe I'm wrong. It would be easy to dismiss this survey as so much mindless, sex@ junk, but the truth is, it touched a nerve. The Associated Press picked up the story, and almost every major newspa- per in the country ran it somewhere in their front page section. With more people going to college these days, there are a sizable number of people out there who care which colleges are the easiest to skate through. This is the most disturbing part the survey: the implication that t easier it is to graduate from a school, the more fun it is to go to. Going to college to actually learn something seems to be a fading ideal -these days the point is to have lotsa fun, learn as little as possible, and get out with your piece of paper as soon as you can. How can such an empty experience be considered fun? "Uh, I dunno," sa the guys at Florida State, chugging beer. "Gotta go to my class - you know, Math for Trees. Where's the babes?" Society is to blame for rape, not the rapist By RYAN ESSENBURG "Rather let the crime of the guilty go unpunished than condemn the innocent." -Justinian I, Law Code, A.D. 535 Late Tuesday, as I was studying my homework for the next day's classes, a friend of mine stopped to inform me that another rape had occurred on campus, this time right outside of South Quad. Still fresh in my mind was last month's horrifying description of what happened to the woman who was stopped at gun point with her companion. After being abducted, she was repeatedly raped (arms restricted) and then thrown off of a bridge into a river (with her arms still restricted.) This woman could have died at least four or five times but still, miraculously, she lives today. I was nonetheless quite upset to find out that another rape, this serious disregard of a human being's dignity, rights and self-worth, had once again occurred. I desperately wanted to know the person's name who committed the. crime, so that I and the rest of campus could see what type of vile, base and loathsome creature he was. But is it this man that I despise so much or do I despise, rather the society that has made him into who, or what, he is? It is very easy for us to put the blame on two sources: the victim and the rapist. The victim. That is what she (or he in rarer cases) is. They are a victim of someone's illogical actions and are therefore unwillingly sentenced to a punishment, for a crime, they did not commit. The crime? Being a woman; then to add, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The rapist is a mere tool in this highly complex, overall picture of rape. He is the one who carries out the final act in a progression of injustices that are distributed to all minorities everyday by society. But contrary to what conventional thought would have us to believe, the victim is not totally responsible for this injustice and neither is the rapist. I am not advocating that whoever rapes should not have to face the consequences of his or her actions, but rather, I am showing how the rapist is just an immediate source to point the finger. The real criminal is you, me and the rest of society. We have constructed and adhere to a society where we treat the rape victims as the beginning and end to the entire rape problem. University Department of Public Safety Chief Leo Heatley said, "(The attack could have been prevented) if she had walked with someone, if she had called and escort service." Heatley probably chose a modest way of assessing the situation and stating what he felt was a cause. But in this nonchalant, everyday manner we see how dangerous victim-bashing is. It has become so integrated into our thought processes that we come to assume that she could have prevented the rape if she really wanted to. But instead of this "could have been prevented" scapegoat answer, we should be asking, "Why should women feel as though they are objects? Why can't they feel secure?" To answer this and other very rigorous questions, would demand a critique of society; we are guilty of constructing a society that is based upon how women act, how women dress, and the way they conduct themselves to males. It's time to re-@ think our cultural assumptions that we, as a society, place on both sexes, so that we can change for the better. This argument can be debated much further than this, however, just as society acts quickly to point the blame on rape and other crimes, I too will act quickly by ending here. The rapist is the mouthpiece for a society whose morals and foundations have@ gone awry. A not on . -s. Over the course of this semester, and for some time before that, the Daily has struggled to print all of the letters we receive that include the author's name and phone i