4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 21, 1994


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'For the younger generation there is a sense of
disenfranchisement, or, as they call it nowadays,
diminishing expectations. In a sense, the nation is
beat.'
-poet and guru Allen Ginsberg, speaking to the New York Times

420 Maynd
Ann Arbor, M 48109
Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan

Jessie Halladay
Editor in Chief
Samuel Goodstein
Flint Wainess

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.

Residence robbing

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Housing Division needs
Students who sign leases for most resi-
dence halls automatically receive the "Any
13" meal plan, which gives 13 meals per week
at a cost of $2105.60. The University Housing
Division allows residence hall students who
do not want the standard "Any 13" to change
their meal plan and get a refund. Students can
then opt for the 9 meal plan, the meal-per-day
plan or the zero meal plan, which provide
annual refunds of $370, $610 and $1200 re-
spectively.
The students who change their meal plans
might be surprised when their student account
bills arrive in the mail. If these students study
their bills, they will note that they are charged
$2105.60 fortheir meal plan, the same amount
as astudent whohasnotchangedthe"Any 13."
The refund for these students comes through
Entree Plus, which cannot be credited towards
students' accounts until the following April.
Thus, students' money is tied up in Entree Plus
for the entire year.
Of course, the money in Entree Plus is
usable. But, Entree Plus is only accepted at a
few locations - and many students would
prefer to have the money credited towards
tuition than tied up in the debit card system.
One studentwhohadchanged his meal plan
called up the Entree Office recently and asked
that his refund be credited to his student ac-
count, as he rarely used his Entree Plus and
needed money for items which were unavail-
able through Entree Plus. He was told that the
Entree Office did not do that. When asked
what the rationale of this policy was, the busi-
ness manager of the Entree Office explained
that, "It's just one of the rules.... That's just

to reimburse mealdfunds
the way it is."
What the business manager didnotexplain
was that the University makes a modest profit
on the interest on the funds in Entree Plus. If
the University used refunds to credit the ac-
counts of students who change their meal
plans, it would lose the 3 to 4 percent interest,
probably a substantial amount of money if all
the students who change meal plans are con-
sidered - but students would not have their
money tied-up.
Students who change meal plans, in effect,
are forced to loan the University money for a
year. When students change their meal plans,
and their refunds go onto Entree Plus, the
University places the actual refunds in its
Entree Plus bank account.
Students' meal refunds sit in the
University's bank, collecting interest for the
University -while students are unable to use
their own refunds as they see fit.
Students should not be forced to loan the
University money. Students who have no
meal plan should not be billed the same as
students who have the "Any 13" meal plan.
The Housing Division should allow students
to credit their meal plan refund to their student
accounts.
The University had a serious problem fill-
ing the residence halls last year. To attract
more returning students, the Housing Divi-
sion has made dramatic improvements in the
quality of service offered in the residences.
Allowing students who change their meal
plan arefund creditable to their account would
be a further way to improve the quality of
service in residence housing.

__j

Interfaith dialogue is essential

Entree Plus

To the Daily:
In his article on
multiculturalism in the Sept. 8
Daily, Seth Abrams laments the
"self-segregation" that he sees
"rampant on the University
campus."
What kind of problem is
self-segregation? It is not a so-
cial ill if people spend most of
their time with others of the
same religious orcultural back-
ground. Rather it is social norm.
because it is normal for us to
want to spend time with people
who understand us. Every cul-
tural and religious community
has its own special way of com-
municating and behaving that
is special and meaningful. The
problem is being able to com-
municate across cultural and
religious lines.
Meaningful interfaith and
cross-cultural dialogue is the
only way people of different
cultural and religious back-

grounds can find a common
language. A dialogue, either
formal or informal, happens
when members of different
groups shed stereotypes of one
another and share experences
and views of the world as well
as carefully listening and striv-
ing to make themselves under-
stood. In a religious setting, it
means abandoning the notion
that one's faith and tradition
has a monopy on the truth.
Slowly, a new channel of com-
munication opens and true
multiculturalism begins.
The University already has
a successful dialogue program
through the Office of Intergroup
Relations. I suggest that this
program be expanded to the
dorms where every first year
student will take part in some
kind of dialogue as part of their
first semester dorm experience.
Bill Plevan
LSA Junior

reveals
private info.
To the Daily:
The Thursday, Sept. 15 is-
sue of the Daily featured a front
page article ("Off-campus En-
tree a plus, despite early
glitches") by Lisa Dines. The
article states: "The new cards
also offer students increased
safety because of a new com-
puter-generated student num-
ber instead of Social Security
number." What kind of im-
proved safety is it to have the
Social Security number moved
to the back?
Perhaps Durst is trying to
say that Entree accounts are no
longerelectronically accessible
by Social Security number.
Does this make the cards elec-
tronically safer? No, because
the Entree account number is
also written on the card nu-
merically. (The account is ac-
cessible by punching those dig-
its by keypad. We've all seen
this done). In addition to sup-
plying a student's Social Secu-
rity number, the back of the
card also supplies many other
potentially useful bits of infor-
mation about the cardholder.
The changes to Entree are meant
to provide credit-card/ATM-
like services for students.
I'm not saying that the new
cards are bad.They're definitely
more convenient than the old
cards, but questionable safety-
wise.
Calvin Chu -
Rackham graduate student

'Don't peat, it
could kill you
It is no great secret that the mer-
chants of Ann Arbor are out to kill
most of the student body.
The merchants have been deny-
ing it for years. But you must face
the truthjust as you must face your
political science professor, no mat-
ter how ugly either may be. And the
truth is this: any way you look at it,
your professor is REALLY ugly.
Now, about those merchants.
They are out for blood. And once
they get the blood, do you know
what they are going to do with it?
(NOTE: If, in fact, you do know
what they are going to do with it,
don't bother reading the next sen-
tence.) When they get the blood,
they're going to poison it.
Actually, they have already
started to poison our blood, through
a source most of us are somewhat
familiar with: "food." This "food"
comes in various shapes and sizes
often disguised as a cheesebur-
ger or a sandwich - but is always
made up of the same ingredients.
Those ingredients, according to
sources close to the Ann Arbor Mer-
chants Association of Merchants of
Ann Arbor, are as follows:
4 percent bread
1 percent cheeselike substance
47 percent cholesterol
Those of you with a brain larger
than a bar of hotel soap have prob-
ably noticed that those percentages
don't add up to 100. In fact, they
only add up to somewhere between
50 and 60 percent. This is because
the other 50 to 60 percent is some
sort of unidentified substance
known, technically, as gunk.
The sad part is that students
have little choice but to accept the
poison.
If you live in the dorms, you
have to eat out or order in, because
you don't have the patience to eat
dorm food, which has a tendency to
crawl off your plate when you're
not looking.
If you live off-campus, youronly
other option is to cook, and that's
not much of an option at all. Let's
face it: you're tired. You've got 17
hours of class each week, 10 of
which you actuallyattend. Youhave
to study, or at least wander around
in the library for afew hours toclear
your conscience. Youhaveto drink.
You have responsibilities, like e-
mailing your roommate. One of
these weeks, you're going to have
to do laundry. The last thing in the
world you want to do iscook. Well,
OK, the last thing in the world you
want to do is dive into a pool of
killer bees. But cooking is a close
second.
So you go out, and your options
are limited. You can go to Amer's,
which has delicious sandwiches
available on a monthly installment

plan. That covers one meal. After
that, you can't afford it anymore.
So you're stuck with very few po-
tential eateries, which vary from
McDonald's to Burger King to
Wendy's. You can also go to, say,
Taco Bell. Admirers of Taco Bell
refer to it as Taco Hell or Toxic. I'm
not saying if it's good or bad, but
when admirers of a restaurant use
words like "toxic" and "hell" to
describe it, well ... judge for your-
self. (For those who defend Taco
Bell, I have two words for you:
meat squirter.)
One place where many students
dine is the Union, largely because
the restaurants there take Entree
Plus, which means that the stu-
dents' parents have already paid for
the meal. Think about it: your par-
ents have already funded a cam-
paign to kill you. And you thought
they loved you.
After that, you are left with two
real choices: coffee and pizza. If

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Chaos in Haiti
Agreement fails to address some central issues

Picture forgets caption

Diplomacy must always be preferable to
war. A simple truth, and yet one that has
often been lost on a century of U.S. foreign
policy that tended to tread perilously close to
outright imperialism. With this in mind, the
Clinton administration's use of both the carrot
and the stick in ousting the military junta in
Haiti deserves praise.
The agreement procured Sunday evening
by former president Jimmy Carter, Senator
Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and General Colin Powell
gives Haiti's military dictators until October
15th to leave the country. Aided by as many as
16,000 U.S. military personnel, the Rev. Jean-
Bertrand Aristide would then return to lead the
island state, which overwhelmingly elected
him president by a two-thirds majority.
Seemingly, this agreement allows for the
best of both worlds. The junta will abdicate
power, U.S. forces will enter Haiti with little or
no casualties and a solid contingency plan will
ensure U.S. troops are quickly replaced by a
multinational unit ofpeacekeepers. But poten-
tial disasters loom.
The agreement is similar to the one signed
a year ago at Governors Island. True, the junta
is less likely to balk when flanked by the
prospect of force from military personnel situ-
ated on Haiti's mainland. Yet, it is not exactly
comforting that former president Carter based
his assessment of the situation on his percep-
tion that the Haitian military is made up of
honorable individuals who won't break prom-
ises. These are of course the same leaders who
have precipitated a reign of terror on the poor,
the religious and other supporters of Father
Aristide.
The timetable for withdrawal ofthejunta,
however, is only one of many oroblems the

agreement fails to confront. Most disturbing
is the decision to fashion an agreement which
grants amnesty to all members of the Haitian
military. First, there are problems inherent in
allowing escape hatches for individuals and
groups which have committed incredible hu-
man rights atrocities.
But more importantly, allowing the mili-
tary to remain in the country opens the possi-
bility that Haiti will once again be engulfed in
civil war. Only this time, United States and
United Nations troops will surely be caught in
the crossfire.
The Clinton administration's reasoning for
entering Haiti is sound - ensuring democ-
racy in our backyard, securing the flow of
refugees and ending barbaric human rights
atrocities -all add up to a clear national
interest that is clearly worth defending.
For military reasons, the United States
cannot intervene in the affairs of all of the
countries that don't meet our standards of
ideal democracy. But in Haiti, the task is
initially a simple one: simply to disband a
gang of thugs that have overthrown a demo-
cratically-elected president.
Once this is accomplished, it would be
wise to phase out all U.S. troops from the
mainland. This would allow the president to
correctly boast that the United States restored
democracy -with the support of the Haitian
people, several Latin American states and the
United Nations - while also avoiding the
distinct possibility of American men and
women being left in harm's way. Hopefully,
this will lead to the foreign policy credibility
that the Clinton administration has been so
desperately searching for.

To the Daily:
I, on a regular basis enjoy
reading your paper, however
today a caption to a photo
seemed incomplete to me. I am
from Shelby Township in
Michigan, just 60 miles north-
east of here.
The representative on page
5 of your paper last week looks
to me to be House Majority
Whip David Bonior from
Michigan's Congressional Dis-

trict Number 10.
It troubles me that though
this University is located so
close to his district and he is the
third ranking member of the
U.S. House, his name was omit-
ted from the caption of a picture
in which his face was clearly
seen. I just thought you should
know.
Frank LaRosa
Ann Arbor resident

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