4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 30, 1994
ale]bzLrn iu
'The Michigan Daily would love to get ahold of information
that would violate the privacy rights of others, and we must
not let this happen.'
-'U' President James J. Duderstadt, on why the University will not release
records pertaining to the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities
Notes
420 Maynard
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Edited and managed
by students at the
University of Michigan
JEssIE HALLADAY
Editor in Chief
SAM GooDsThN
FLINT WAIESS
Editorial Page Editors
Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of a majority of the Daily's editorial board.
All other articles, letters, and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily.
The president'ial search
Duderstadt was second choice, regents ignored input
-.EVEN STRAtJDED' OW~ A DESERT TSLAND,
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Finally.
After six years of contentious struggle
between the Board of Regents and two news-
papers, the embarrassing truth has been re-
vealed concerning the search for president
of the University: few minorities or women
were "considered," the students' list of can-
didates roundly ignored and the regents were
left with a second-choice because one re-
gent is alleged to have remarked, "The Uni-
versity of Michigan would never hire a
president with a foreign accent." Further-
more, the "search" cost more than $90,000
to execute and another $375,000 to defend
in court.
In the end, the court ruled the regents had
willfully violated the Open Meetings Act
and had denied the public's critical right to
know.
U..
When the regents began the process of
selecting a new president in May of 1987,
the ground rules were essentially the same
as the previous one in 1980. Keep the infor-
mation as restricted as possible, set up quasi-
advisory committees of faculty and students
and don't give any - repeat - any infor-
mation to the public or the press. When the
public asks who is in the running and whether
we are considering minorities or women for
the position, refuse to comment.
But they did not stop there.
When Virginia Nordby, the director of
the Office of Affirmative Action, formally
requested information regarding the search
nine months after it had begun - she re-
ceived a one-page memo that listed a nu-
merical breakdown and nothing else. And
the numbers showed the University had
virtually no women or minorities in mind
for the top spot. At a time when they were
publicly professing a new-found commit-
ment to diversity and affirmative action, it is
sadly ironic that no women were finalists
and only one token minority finalist was
named.
The numbers speak for themselves: 25 of
the top 27 candidates were men. No women
were interviewed. Three were minorities.
And no minority was seriously considered.
Also revealed was the presidential search
committee's decision-making style, namely
the lack of attention payed to student input.
Duderstadt was not even on the student list.
He received the absolute lowest rating from
students due to fears that he would be a
technocrat, unsympathetic to needs of stu-
dents.
But most glaring about the search papers
was the fact that a phone call from Regent
Deane Baker (R-Ann Arbor) prevented the
first choice, Vartan Gregorian, a dynamic
educator and president of the New York
City Public Library, from getting the job.
The precedent set was a bad one. If the
search process is allowed to go on in secret
again, any regent could prevent a candidate
from coming to the University by intimidat-
ing them over the phone. And the regents
actually rewarded Baker's actions, by rub-
ber-stamping his de facto decision.
And because the search process was so
badly fractured and the finalists weren't
really "finalists" - everyone beside Dud-
erstadt had been eliminated - the regents
were stuck with the in-house candidate the
faculty had worried would end up being the
only one left - and they were sadly right.
In the end, the documents portray a group
of regents out of touch with the public and
out of focus with the main reason for con-
ducting a search: finding the best candidate
for the people not for themselves. They
prided themselves on maintaining secrecy
over diversity, ignoring student concerns
and defending a badly broken search pro-
cess for years after.
What would the University be like with-
out an irate phone call from an out-of-
control regent? Sadly, we can only wonder.
Art fair expansion
City Council should give Kerrytown a chance
Move forward and get
the point
To the Daly:
On March 14, the Daily
printed my concerns about
Aryeh Caroline's Viewpoint
(3/9/94). I took issue with
Caroline, questioning his use
of racist rhetoric and with
intellectual confidence borne
of one's environment. I
emphasized moving beyond
political posturing -
through the exertions of
thought, understanding and
compromise - toward
peace. Since then, Caroline
retracted one of his insulting
generalizations about Arabs.
But what of moving
forward?
I just completed a fact
filled, well supported
paragraph backing a
Palestinian point of view and
exposing the single-
mindedness of Caroline's
assertions. But that
paragraph is not here. I
didn't challenge Caroline
then, nor do I write this now,
for the purpose of continuing
an argument. On the
contrary, my point is that
representing one side of an
issue is easy. "Since my
youth, I have learned ... ," as
Caroline wrote, will not do.
From "South Pacific:"
You've got to be taught
Before it's too late
Before you are six, or
seven, or eight
To hate all the people
your relatives hate
You've got to be
carefully taught.
We must demand more
from ourselves through
education. While remaining
true to our values and ideals,
whatever they may be, we
must reject the trap of
believing because 'it's
always been that way.'
I may accept Caroline's
apology for his remarks
about Arabs. The families of
Akram Joulani (whose name
I carried during the vigil for
those killed at Hebron) or
Arafat Mahmoud Bayid
(whose name my Jewish
roommate carried), in the
face of ongoing
institutionalized racism, may
not. This is about having the
moral courage to stand for
what is just; about learning
how deeply our words can
cut and how significant a
barrier to peace prejudiced
attitudes are. I will continue
to hope that beyond the
bickering, we all -
including Caroline - get the
point.
BRADY BUSTANY
LSA senior
What a joke!
To the Daily:
If someone had said, one
~i-..:a
consider a comic-strip writer
- given that their comic
strip meant something to us
students. Bill Waterson
would have been great. Gary
Larson, Charles Shultz, Berk
Brethed or Gary Trudeau
would all have been great.
But CATHY? How did this
happen? Is there some big
CATHY fan club lobbying
the administration so that its
author will finally get the
respect she deserves? I doubt
it. The bottom line is that
CATHY is a lame comic.
And I don't mean lame in the
way that the word is so
overused as in "That's lame
dude," but in the very real
sense that the comic is
stumbling around as if
wounded and should be shot
to put it out of its misery. At
best, it is fluff. At worst, it is
a pretty offensive portrait of
a weight-obsessed, shallow
career woman.
Graduation speakers
should be chosen not
because they are alums, but
because their work has
meant something to the
students. We might not all
agree with Clinton or Bush,
but at least they were
significant people in our
lives. In choosing CATHY,
the administration has
proven itself way out of
touch with the student body.
Indeed, I'm not sure yet if I
shouldn't be a little insulted.
I'm sure CATHY is a fine
person, and she might even
turn out to be a dynamic
speaker with a great deal of
wisdom to impart to us as we
leave this, our ivory tower.
She'd better be.
GAVIN BARBOUR
LSA senior
Despite loss,
Wolverines provide joy
To the Daily:
As I sit here on my
computer in Angell Hall
desperately trying to churn
out a 12 page term paper,
visions of a lost National
Championship continually
dance around in my head.
Despite constantly reflecting
on the errors of the team
against Arkansas, such as
Makhtar not keeping his
hands off the ball in the
cylinder, Jalen Rose missing
an open layup to tie the game
and Dugan Fife, nervous as a
middle school child, missing
every three point attempt, I
can do nothing more than
thank this team for all the
thrills they provided every
fan of Michigan basketball.
There is no doubt in my
mind that despite all its
mistakes, the team willingly
put all its heart into the game
and was willing to do
anything in order to win for
its school. I doubt if anyone
will ever forget Juwan
would like to say that in my
three years at the University I
have been blessed with a
brilliant basketball program.
Despite all the failures, it has
provided the student body
with more heart, class and
thrills than any other
program in the country.
Despite our sadness, only
down the road will we really
comprehend how great this
team was, and how much joy
it provided.
CHRIS CAMEREM
LSA junior
Letter writer's logic
faulty
To the Daily:
Ernesto Garcia claimed
recently in a letter to the
Daily that Albert Einstein felt
it "essential" to be deeply
concerned for "real meaning
in life," and even for the
"reality of God." He
produced a quote that he felt
illustrated this. I believe that
while Mr. Garcia was correct
about the first point, he is
quite wrong about the
second. Consider these
quotes, taken from Albert
Einstein: The Human Side
(edited by Helen Dukas and
Banesh Hoffman, published
by Princeton University
Press):
"It was, of course, a lie
what you read about my
religious convictions, a lie
which is being systematically
repeated. I do not believe in a
personal God and I have
never denied this but have
expressed it clearly. If
something is in me which can
be called religious then it is
the unbounded admiration for
the structure of the world so
far as our science can reveal
it."
"I do not believe in
immortality of the individual,
and I consider ethics to be an
exclusively human concern
with no superhuman
authority behind it."
"What I see in Nature is a
magnificent structure that we
can comprehend only very
imperfectly, and that must
fill a thinking person with a
feeling of 'humility'. This is
a genuinely religious feeling
that has nothing to do with
mysticism."
Mr. Garcia claims that
"scholars ... have become
convinced that there must be
more to reality than mere
physical processes." I think
that a single quote by a
scientist and a 14-year-old
article from Time are not
enough to establish this as a
widespread trend. In any
case, a more subtle problem
surrounds Garcia's use of
"mere." As I think the above
from El
Salvador
SAN SALVADOR - There's
nothing about El Salvador that made
me feel far from home. Nothing
shocking. Nothing strange. In fact,
the familiar-looking divided
highway outside my guest house,
lined with the neon signs from gas
stations and McFood restaurants,
could have been Washtenaw, or any
other exit, off any other interstate.
But the people I met in my few
days there know an existence far
from anything I could ever begin to
comprehend. I've never stepped
over a body on my way to class, and
I've never learned to incorporate
massacre into my daily experience.
There was a minor protest at the
International Fair Grounds in San
Salvador when the polls closed
March 20. It was the first election in
this Central American nation since
the 12-year civil war ended in 1992
and hundreds of people were still
standing in the scorching hot sun,
waiting for their chance to vote.
If they got inside, and managed
to push their way through the crowds
to find their name on any one of 400
lists posted on walls in any one of
the four fairground buildings, then
they could vote. But the lists were
incomplete at best, and ven if the
majority of the population had been
literate, getting a ballot would have
been a difficult task.
For those who did find their name
on a list, and did find that their name
had spelled correctly - a seemingly
rare occurrence for the poor-some
discovered that their ballots had been
already marked for them, or that
there was someone nearby to
identify the "correct" box to draw
an X through.
The non-incumbent partieswere
outraged, of course, because the
inefficiency and confusion favored
the mostly rich, educated supporters
of the controlling National
Republican Alliance party, which
has been in power since 1988 and is
expected to win again.
But the general population
seemed to be no more disturbed by
the voting process than by anything
else they'd come to know.
There is nothing to fear in post-
war El Salvador. People don't get
shot very often any more - at least
not as often as they do in the cities in
the States. Torture is now practically
unheard of, and as the Cold War has
ended, the United States has stopped
dumping money into the hands of
military regimes at war with their
own people. But the history of
massacre and the size of the scars
left by 12 years of agony are
absolutely terrifying.
The more I learned, the more I
understood exactly how far away I
was from a world where a figure
skater getting whopped on the knee
dominates the local news for amonth
(at least), and outrage means the
president might have been able to
pocket a little extra cash when the
rest of the nation didn't have that
chance.
The day before the election, I
asked a taxi driver to take me
downtown where I was meeting a
friend for dinner. He, like every
other taxi driver I met, would vote
for the left coalition that included
the former guerilla FMLN. He
started telling me about the war,
back when he used to drive at night.
Back when the military enforced a 7
p.m. shoot-to-kill curfew, and when
sunrise would find bodies scattered
in the streets.
"Did you ever see people killed,"
I asked.
"Thousands," he said. Unphased.
"Weren't you ever scared?"
"No. God protects me."
"But 75,000 people died. Why
didn't God protect them?"
He didn't know. It wasn't his job
to question God.
Maybe if I were more religious,
I could better understand how this
man had distanced himself from so
much terror for so long. Or maybe I
could lend some sense to the fact
that his story was not isolated, nor
an incredible aberration, but rather,
the norm. Many people recounted
their experiences to me with the
same candor one would use to
describe a soccer game.except in El
p
S
0
Last week, the Ann Arbor City Council
decided against allowing Kerrytown, a
downtown craft and farmers' market and
shopping center, the street closing it desires
to join the summer activities of the Ann
Arbor Art Fairs. The city council presented
their map of street closings at last week's
meeting, a map that did not include the block
of Detroit St. between Catherine and Fifth
that Kerrytown had requested. The
Kerrytown merchants requested the street
closing because they want to get their hands
into the multi-million dollar summer art
fairs, which they propose to do by holding
events such as live entertainment, children's
activities, a pig roast and their usual farm
and craft market vendors. Kerrytown mer-
chants claim that their activities are not an
attempt to steal business from the other
fairs, but are an enhancement of the sched-
ule already existing.
Explaining the rationale behind the re-
jection of Kerrytown's request, the city
claims that the added activities and street
closing will overly tax city personnel and
equipment. Furthermore, city officials are
afraid that having activities on Sunday -
the last day Kerrytown plans to operate its
events and a day later than the other fairs
shut down - will interfere with the city's
cleanup efforts. City Council members also
claim the art fairs are big enough as it is, and
point out that once the fairs start growing it
will be hard to draw the line for where they
should stop. Other complaints focused on
the fact that the lives of Ann Arbor residents
are disrupted to a nearly unbearable level
during Art Fair as it is, and adding more
Kerrytown's additional activities will take
away from the other fairs.
On the surface these seem like valid
complaints. However, after deeper consid-
eration, it is apparent that they do not hold
much water. First, the city's grievance that
it cannot afford to contribute any more
equipment or personnel is at least a slight
exaggeration. How taxing can two extra.
barricades be? Kerrytown vendors already
have the necessary booths from their weekly
farmers' market, and they have not asked
for setup or cleanup help from the city.
Second, it is true that the art fairs greatly
disrupt the lives of Ann Arbor residents.
However, closing one short block of a mi-
nor street - especially when compared to
the closure of four major downtown thor-
oughfares which already occurs -will
clearly not have a large impact on traffic or
congestion problems.
Third, the merchants' proposed activi-
ties will add to, not detract from, the exist-
ing fairs. Their proposal focuses on enter-
tainment, not art sales. Their hours will
provide evening entertainment and they pro-
pose activities for families and children,
both of which are not adequately supplied
by the existing fairs.
Allowing Kerrytown to join the art fair
should not be interpreted as the beginning
of an uncontrollable spread of activities.
Rather, it is a logical addition to an all-
encompassing downtown summer festival.
Kerrytown is a unique and important part of
the downtown shopping area, and is conve-
niently located to improve the fairs without
further disrupting the city. The city made an
S