4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 12, 1994 ew rijgrtn &dlg 420 Maynard Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan JEsSIE HAuADAY Editor in Chief SAM GooDSTmN FUTr WAiNESS Editorial Page Editors w 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 war anst women Women faculty members at the 'U' treated harshly 'The right of privacy ... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.' Justice Harry Blacknun writing for the Court in Roe v. Wade -} -S/r N T O , .: t an open house yesterday afternoon de- signed to inform about Political Science Prof. Jill Crystal's ongoing gender discrimi- nation suit against the University, one could find a virtual who's-who of disgruntled Uni- versity faculty members. From discussions of tenure to issues of whistleblowing, current and former faculty members-both men and women alike-seemed eager to express their concern with a University obsessed with se- crecy, a University that continues to treat female faculty unequally. Prof. Crystal's case is a good place to begin deconstructing the pillars of secrecy that the University continues to hide behind. While most of the issues surrounding the Crystal case can only be resolved in a court of law, there are several pieces of evidence that don't bode well for the University. On June 6, 1993, after the College overturned the Politi- cal Science Executive Committee's recom- mendations and denied Crystal's bid for ten- ure, Crystal filed a formal grievance. After being stonewalled for months, the University gave her only 36 hours to prepare evidence for her hearing. Along with this, the University told Crystal's lawyers that minutes from the departmental discussions about Crystal's case did not exist. Later, in court, the University admitted that this was simply not true. More- over, a recently uncovered memo written by Political Science Professor Kenneth Lieberthal, who was one of the internal re- viewers charged with evaluating Crystal's case, reads: "Her [Crystal] written record is clearly more complete and of higher quality than is that of at least one other person who recently received tenure from us." He also says that the "extraordinarily elastic" tenure criteria have often led to the tenure of male professorswith"mediocre 'internal'reviews." If the Crystal case existed in a vacuum, or was an isolated aberration, it might be easy to dismiss it. But the fact is, the case is just a piece in a long-standing puzzle that has left women on the outside looking in. The long list of chilling facts speak for themselves: from1977to 1993, 31 percent of the female assistant professors in LSA who have been recommended by their department for tenure were then denied tenure at the College level; male assistant professors suf- fered the same fate only11 percent of the time. 53 percent of lecturers are female, but only 20 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty are women. Since the 1989 elections, not one female member of SACUA has fin- ished her term. In the Political Science de- partment, the pay gap that leaves female faculty making less money than male faculty has increased since 1992. And from1990 to 1992, the number of women occupying se- nior administrative positions at the Univer- sity actually decreased from 30 percent to 22 percent, leaving only about 1 in 10 of these upper-level positions for women. This is not to say that the University has been completely silent on the issue. This spring, President Duderstadt plans to an- nounce the Michigan Agenda for Women, which will probably include the implementa- tion of commissions to look into some of the above-mentioned problems. However, the University continues to keep all tenure records from the public eye, it continues to enforce gender inequalities in pay and hiring and the latest debacle has University lawyers suing Crystal for defamation. Hopefully, the Agenda will not become an excuse for inaction. Real problems exist, and they are problems that demand immediate recourse. Try economic affirmative action To the Daily: Mere mention of the phrase affirmative action can elicit strong emotional responses from people, both pro and con. When I say I do not support affirmative action as it stands today, I have often taken the brunt of some of these strong emotional responses. "How can you be against affirmative action!? It is one of the only ways to ensure equal opportunity to minorities who have been repressed in this racist country for hundreds of years!" While I do not disagree with this statement, I believe a better way to promote equal opportunity would be to focus on economic discrimination. Economic discrimination affects those people at the lowest income levels. They receive a substandard education, live in a substandard environment and are offered substandard opportunities simply because they are poor. In American society today, economics is a greater discriminatory force than racism. The American ideal of equal opportunity, would be better served if affirmative action would focus on helping those who experience economic discrimination rather than racial discrimination. Addressing the problems of economic rather than racial discrimination improves Affirmative Action policies in a couple of ways. First, the proposed alternative would eliminate improper exploitation of the system. In my own limited experience, I know of more than one instance where minorities with upper-middle class backgrounds accepted scholarships to quality schools, while students with lower-class backgrounds settled for local community colleges because of insufficient funds. Some of these poorer students were minorities; some were not. All of the poorer students, however, lacked the opportunities available to the richer minority students, who were going to college regardless of a scholarship. These kinds of results do not go very far in fostering equality of opportunity. Second, the economic affirmative action program would still promote diversity as well as the current affirmative action policies. Minorities still comprise a disproportionately large portion of the lower economic classes in America. As a result, they would continue to receive assistance and continue to contribute to greater racial diversity on campus and in the workplace. Promoting diversity in economic background would also generate a vibrant community with a variety of ideas and opinions. The inner- city and the suburbs could interact on equal grounds. Economic Affirmative Action would create diversity of both race and thought. Finally, prejudices could no longer stereotype minorities in top schools and powerful positions as being not qualified and merely products of affirmative action. By taking affirmative action's focus away from race, people would be less inclined to attribute minority successes to preferential treatment. I have spoken to minority students on this campus who excel in their chosen fields of academics, but they complain that many of their peers still perceive them as being on this campus solely because of affirmative action policies. Here, affirmative action acts as a detriment to the very people it is intended to help. Discrimination is eating away at the fabric that holds this country together, equality of opportunity. Changing the way we look at discrimination provides us with the benefits outlined above. All of these advantages work toward a more equitable society, and in our society where the gap between the rich and the poor is growing quickly, a little more equality is now more necessary than ever. Out of fairness those people who suffer under the grip of economic discrimination, as well as those who live with the stereotype of "quota- fillers," the University should lead the way in reforming affirmative actiongby concentrating its affirmative action policies on economic rather than racial discrimination. MICHAEL VAN DRIEL Institute of Public Policy student Compulsions o beauty My mother looked around at the other new students gathered for the first day of my college orientation and turned to me: "You know, everybody looks really nice here," she said. "Nobody looks like a cheerleader or anything." Then she studied my makeup and carefully hot-rollered blonde hair and reconsidered. "Except for you, dear," she said. I had to admit she was right. During my junior year in high1 school I had earned an unsavory reputation as a "smart girl" and a feminist and had gone to great lengths not to look like either. I used to stand in front of my mirror at home and experiment with barrettes and banana clips, mascara and matte base, trying to become more beautiful. I would think about my academic achievements while checking the size of my pores, and the narrator in my unwritten autobiography would say, "But she wanted to be known for being beautiful." Even having a boyfriend wasn't enough -- I wanted to look like a model. Six years later very little has changed. My latest worry is that everybody from my high school is getting married, and what am I doing still single? Almost as a reflex, I've started to care about how I look again. I pay attention to what shampoo Iuse, and I bought mascara yesterday for the first time in five years.' Last month I even participated in the highest worship to the goddess of beauty - I got a makeover (excuse me, a "beauty consultation") at Hudson's in Briarwood. I was thinking about this before Christmas when I was standing in the all-fuschia Barbie aisle at Toys 'R Us. Three rows over the GI Joe toys said, "Hold it or I'll blow your head off!," but here in the Barbie aisle you could purchase Barbie's pink car, or pink house, or even Barbie for President (wearing a poofy dress that looked big enough to conceal a bomb to blow up the opposing candidate - and the three terrorists necessary to plant it.) Somehow this wasn't too bad. But then I saw "Baby's First Purse," complete with play lipstick and a small miror. The picture on the box showed an 8 month-old infant. Next to that was a pink hand-held mirror that said "You look pretty" or "Your hair looks nice" when you pressed a button. The rest of the aisle had fake nail sets, a "Little Tykes" vanity table and more play makeup sets than I could count. The girls on the boxes smiled their half-toothed 7 year-old smiles - and every one of them was wearing makeup and curled hair. Women also go temporarily insane when forced to look at pictures of themselves. I don't know a single woman who's ever liked a picture of herself that wasn't airbrushed. Men, on the other hand, not only don't complain about how they look in pictures, but do their best to look goofy. The little angelic boys who smiled for the camera at five learn how to smirk, smile like the Joker, drool and stare fixedly at nothing by the age of nine. As they grow up they simply refuse to smile in pictures, choosing to look sullen, stern, macho or still goofy. They don't care how they look - and they go to great lengths to prove it. But there are the women still, smiling for the camera and making sure that their hair is in place and their eyeliner on. Men's high standards for feminine beauty are often blamed for this obsession, but I'm not so sure women do all of this solely for men. And women also deem appearance fairly important in a date or partner, but I don't see men starting to wear makeup anytime soon. Perhaps Naomi Wolf was right - the changes of the last thirty years have left us longing for romance and beauty, and women are paying the price by worrying about how they look. A woman can be successful and ambitious - but she must also look feminine and beautiful. Sexual power plavs into this as 01 Foreign policy in disarray Enough is enough. The Clinton foreign policy team has proved its irrevocable ineptness in just about every crisis it has attempted to resolve. From Bosnia to Haiti, from North Korea to China, several key offi- cials responsible for formulating and carrying out U.S. foreign policy - Secretary of De- fense William Perry, Secretary of State War- ren Christopher and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair John Shalikashvili - have done an incredibly poor job. It is up to President Clinton to do something about this himself or find some fresh blood to replace a number of incapable Cabinet officials. The United States faces a serious reevalu- ation and reorientation of its national security and foreign policy objectives. A fundamental reassessment of the administration's handling of issues of national security must be under- taken to salvage what is left of U.S. foreign policy. The Clinton team's most severe and de- bilitating problem is its inability to come to a policy consensus and to project that single, clear voice of reason to the American people and to actors in the international political system. Here is where Christopher, Lake and Perry fail most explicitly. No one can figure out what the Clinton administration's foreign policy objectives are or what it wants to accomplish in a number of crises and confla- grations across the globe. This is a frightening development and a threat to peace and stabil- ity. The latest series of miscues within the administration concerning events in Bosnia most clearly demonstrate this fatal flaw of Clinton's team. Secretary Perry and General Shalikashvilitold reporters over the past week that the United States would not use force to endthestrangulationofGorazde.Shalikashvili stressed that the bullet would never bring peace to Bosnia, and thus, the United States would play no military role in protecting this U.N. declared "safe haven." The statements made by these two top officials signified a regression in our Bosnian policy, which was just starting to make a difference in ending the plain nonsense. Maybe these public state- ments reflected Perry and Shalikashvili's personal or bureaucratic interests at stake, but the White House was forced to later retract their remarks, andon Sunday, twoU.S. fighter jets hit Serb targets on the ground near Gorazde.The question remains: how was any rational person, or nation, supposed to know what this administration was thinking? What is causing this institutional paralysis? Like a confused child, this administration has consistently failed in addressing the pri- mary U.S. interests at stake in both China and North Korea - a region of the world where the United States cannot afford to falter in its pursuit of democracy, liberalization and non- proliferation. In dealing with North Korea, the Clinton circus act has juggled the carrot and the stick to no avail. It is crucial that the International Atomic Energy Agency be al- lowed to inspect critical processing, research, development and production sites inthe North. North Korea has consistently rebuffed the West, yet Clinton has waveredbetween shows of American firmness and diplomatic yield- ing. The administration has, in a span of six months, stated that Patriot missiles would be deployed in South Korea, that the use of nuclear weapons would not be ruled out to pressure the North and that joint military exercises between the South and the United States would be called off as a conciliatory gesture. And once again, William Perry took to the airwaves to declare that the United States would not use force on the Korean Peninsula unless the North preemptively in- vaded the South. On the China front, the idea of eliminating yearly approval of most-fa- vored nation status (MFN), the backbone of the GATT system, has been toyed with, and will hopefully be resoundly rejected. It is imperative, and abundantly clearfrom the results Clinton's team has produced, that serious change needs to occur within this administration. Either Secretary Christopher should be dismissed or the White House should increase the attention the President gives to issues of national security. We can- Constituti By LORETA LEE People have called the Michigan Student Assembly's politics just a game, sometimes for good reason. The way the new Constitution for MSA was passed serves as a good example. While it seems amazing that this new dumping of democratic principles passed, even more striking is why it passed - because students were denied the right to all the information that they needed and wanted to know in order to vote on it. Although the new Constitution strips voting rights from commissions representing people of color and women, and also states that only the President can appoint the voting members of Steering Committee now, I would have accepted the election results if students had voted "yes" to these changes in a fair election. "Fair election" is subjective, so let me give the facts. )n passes Constitution was provided, but the old Constitution or a summary of the changes from the old Constitution to the new was not provided. Not surprisingly, many students abstained from voting. The results could easily have been different, because the new Constitution passed by only 11 votes, and because of a lack of apathy: at the polling sites, many students actually asked and were denied the right to see the old Constitution or to know what the changes were. "Hey, we followed the rules. There's nothing in that election code that said we did anything wrong," said advocates of this new Constitution. What concerns me is that students who actually took the time to vote and to ask for full information were left in the dark. How can people talk about "the rules" as if making information accessible to those concerned dishonestly to information and the importance of truth to actions in a game. His words demonstrate that he has lost sight of, forgotten, or perhaps never known fundamentals of policy making: integrity and honesty, particularly to those students MSA represents. When we lose sight of these, then politics indeed becomes reduced to just a game of rules, with no concepts of right and wrong entering the picture. Incidentally, although my case centers on violations of student rights to information and the right to uniform regulations, the way the new Constitution was passed did indeed violate the "rules," as Meg Whittaker showed me. An amendment text longer than 300 words must be summarized and displayed for seven days, and must appear on the ballot question. It wasn't. 0 I i