4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, April 14, 1995
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Mxcmn AROSENBERG
Ross AiunRiA~
420 Maynard
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Edited and managed by
students at the
University of Michigan
----,
MICHAEL ROSENBERG
Editor in Chief
JULIE BECKER
JAMES NASH
Editorial Page Editors
Running the Naked Mile
on the path to Real Life
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.
A birthday for vwomen
Agenda anniversary
s the Michigan Agenda for Women cel-
ebrates its first birthday, the University
.community should take the time to look back
on what has been accomplished over the past
year. Announced by President James J.
Duderstadt last April, the Agenda for Women
is one of the University's boldest statements
of policy and goals. Its vision is far-reaching
and all-encompassing: "By the year 2000,
the University of Michigan will become the
leader among American universities in pro-
moting the success of women of diverse
backgrounds as faculty, students, and staff."
In the year's review, it becomes clear that the
vision is moving forward in baby steps. Many
endeavors have been initiated, but no giant
leaps have been made.
Duderstadt's efforts to further this agenda
have been commendable. Over the past year,
he has conducted "town meetings" with fe-
male faculty and staff, and has spoken to
graduate students, resident advisers, women
of color and women in the Medical School.
Living up to his pledge of personal commit-
ment to the agenda, he has reached out to the
community in ways unprecedented in recent
years for a University president.
Overall the agenda is following a positive
trend, and the University status report re-
leased this month shows some progress even
beyond the roundtables, town meetings, fo-
cus groups and task forces. Staff-paid park-
ing lots - generally unused by staff after
working hours - were opened at night. This
provides a greater number of well-lit parking
spaces on campus after dark, all located close
to campus buildings. The improved evening
accessibility to parking should curb sexual
assault and other crimes against women.
The sexual harassment process has been
.centralized under the agenda, with complaints
snow directed to the Office of Human Re-
sources and Affirmative Action. Rather than
several scattered methods of complaint, there
will now be one organized resource for deal-
marks slow progress
ing with sexual harassment. The centraliza-
tion of the process will improve its consis-
tency, creating clear and fair handling of
incidents across the board.
Other important changes have also been
made over the past year. The Faculty Women
Career Development Fund was created to re-
ward women faculty who make particular con-
tributions to the University. This goes a long
way toward recognizing the extra burdens
female faculty often carry due to their small
numbers on campus - in fall 1993 senior
women faculty were outnumbered 281 to
1,683.
While these attempts are encouraging,
some issues have not yet been addressed -
and must not be forgotten. For instance, the
agenda pledges to tailor University policies
to family needs. This includes reforming
tenure and promotion procedures to take
family responsibilities into account - a
change that affects all employees, but will
have particular consequences for women.
With the exception of talking to women to
find out their needs, little action appears to
have been taken on these issues. While com-
munication is important, it must be followed
immediately by positive activity.
In all, the first year of the Michigan Agenda
for Women has seen steps forward, but
progress is slow. Administrators have en-j
gaged in a great deal of talk but a smaller
amount of action. While many areas need to
be covered and research is essential for proper
changes to be made, the University must not
get caught up in the agenda's image. Instead
of directing energy into designing a logo -
another item listed on the progress report -
the focus must fall on how much ground
women gain at the University. Roundtables
and focus group discussions are a nice start,
but words are hollow unless converted into
action. The administration must not lose sight
of its reason for creating the agenda: making
the University a better place for women.
T .S. Eliot said April is the cruelest
month, and he never even had to
watch a fat hairy guy run the Naked Mile.
For the thousands of University students,
Eliot's words ring true.
April is the cruelest month.
It is the end of the school year. For
some, it is the end of college. And it is the
beginning of that frightful time known as
Real Life.
It's appropriate that the last event of the
school year in Ann Arbor is the Naked
Mile. A few hundred students, many of
whom would not wear shorts they felt
were too revealing, will run naked through
the streets of Ann Arbor on Tuesday. Sev-
eral thousand students, many of whom would
never purchase a pornographic magazine,
will watch.
Why? Because they can.
And they never will be able to again.
It's not about sex, this event. It's about
freedom, about being young, about being
accountable to nobody. Because they can.
You don't see CPAs and executive vice
presidents running around their towns na-
ked, any more than you see college stu-
dents learning the alphabet while watch-
ing Sesame Street.
There is a time for everything, and then
there is a time to move on. The time to
move on is inching closer. There are only
a few remaining chances to take advan-
tage of the freedom of being a college
student.
For those who will be in Ann Arbor
again next year, this is not truly the end of
college. But it's another reminder that
there is an end, and that the days are
dwindling. Real Life does not know pro-
crastination. Real Life is coming, quickly.
So there is the Naked Mile, a night of
pure physical and emotional exhilaration,
a hell of a Monday night ... I mean Tues-
day night. (Don't get that wrong - you
will regret it.)
The Naked Mile, really, is a one-shot
deal, where a bunch of students get to-
gether one night and do something they
would never do, and the rest of the stu-
dents watch something they would never
watch, and then it's over. Oh, there are a
few who take photos of the event, hoping
to get some kind of sexual excitement out
of this. But the people who bring cameras
Tuesday night are revealing more about
themselves than those without the
clothes.
This night should not be recorded on
film. It is a memory-in-the-making, some-
thing to look back on.
A few thousand seniors will soon be
entering Real Life, where nice clothes are
worn and schedules are organized hour by
hour instead of day by day. It is a necessary
change. But it's still sad, and the transition
will cause more than a few eyes to well up
and make more than a few students wonder
where the time went.
Not everyone will run in the Naked
Mile, and not everyone should. It's not for
everyone, and besides, a big part of the
event is the students in the crowd, the
students who cheer.
It is a group event, the entire student
body ignoring classes and finals and the
future and doing whatever they want for a
night.
Several hundred students will run
through the streets of Ann Arbor Tuesday
night. They will run and they will yell and
they will wave to their friends who are
cheering them on. When they are done, they
will put on their clothes and walk into Real
Life.
And in the future, they will talk about the
time, back in college, back before they took
their jobs and started their families, back
when they were kids, when they ran the
Naked Mile. Because they could.
JIM LASSR
SHARP AS TOAST
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NOTABLE QUOTABLE
"If out of dreams
reality Is made,
what are the
dreams we would
like to realize 40
years hence?"
- Jonas Salk, speaking at
the University on the
40th anniversary of the
discovery of a successful
polio vaccine
LETERS
Muzzling the DePaulia
DePaul students' actions contradict goals
ast week, students at DePaul University
in Illinois shut down their campus news-
paper, the DePaulia, in protest over language
and news coverage they considered demean-
ing to Blacks. In an article about a disturbance
at a dance sponsored by a Black student
group, the DePaulia quoted security reports
that referred to people as "M-B" or "F-B" for
Black males or females and "M-W" or "F-
W" for white males and females. The protest-
ing students claimed the use of these terms
perpetuated degrading stereotypes.
Regardless of whether these students have
a legitimate complaint, their decision to shut
.down the campus newspaper was both mis-
guided and dangerous. Student protest is a
powerful and worthy tool -if used properly.
However, protest that impedes free expression
is inappropriate and unproductive. The First
Amendment grants all people freedom of the
press. Denying people this right, even through
legal protest, is a mistake.
There are many forms of protest that are
admirable and laudable - unfortunately, stu-
dent demonstrators at DePaul are disregard-
ing them. These students might have staged
a rally, organized a boycott of the publica-
tion, written letters to the editor - any of
:these options would have been noble and
praiseworthy. Instead they have censored
other students. Not only is this response
unreasonable, but it will most likely also hurt
the protesting students' cause. Even if the
DePaulia's article was racially demeaning,
shutting down the paper in protest will give
the students little besides negative publicity.
Many describe the current U.S. student
population as apathetic anduncaring. On many
campuses, students fighting for what they be-
lieve is a rare sight indeed. Many proponents
of student activism may look favorably on the
DePaul protest, ready to commend any action
that involves students in the community around
them. But that inclination is shortsighted and
discredits the student population. Students are
not so far removed from their ideals that they
cannot be expected to stand up for them with-
out abridging the rights of others.
Actions like the one taken by the DePaul
protestors are poor examples of worthy and
productive student activism. According to
the Student Press Law Center, a national
watchdog group for student press rights, this
protest is the first in five years to halt publi-
cation of a student newspaper. Evidently, for
the past half decade, cooler heads have pre-
vailed and have kept protest from denying
people their constitutional right to publish.
One can only hope that respect for liberty
will soon come to rule again. Student protest
should not come at the price of collective and
personal freedom.
Construction
harms quality
of campus life
To the Daily:
Can you taste it? It'sin the air.
Not the sweet freshness of the
coming spring. Not the awaken-
ing force of this morning's cof-
fee. It's dust, and it's taking over
this school.
Clouds of the quiet menace
have captured our once-pretty
campus from State Street to
Washtenaw. Be careful not to
walk out with wet hair or it will
become a magnet for the flying
particles which are "an unfortu-
nate consequence" of the endless
construction we are being forced
to deal with.
In planning for the future,
our administrators and other
leaders have forgotten about the
present. Remember when this
campus was clean and beauti-
ful? I don't. Four years or more
we spend here and when was
the last time that there wasn't a
chain-link fence obstructing the
normal path to class or some
Ellis Don crane a fixture on the
horizon.
There must be some reason
why almost every building is
under some kind of remodeling
or other work but I can't quite
imagine it. Are we selling the
school in five years and have to
make all of our repairs now? This
school has existed for more than
175 years, and all of a sudden,
someone has decided that the
nineties are when every little
thing must be taken care of.
Twentv vears from now I
versity of Michigan is a place of
learning. Not meaning to take
school too seriously, but when I
have to spend five to ten extra
minutes to try to get to my lec-
ture at Angell, then have the
eloquence of my professor in-
terrupted by constant hammer-
ing outside the window, I get
annoyed. Spitting out the mouth-
ful of dirt I have filtered out of
the air at the end of lecture is not
a pleasant occurrence either.
The University is always
looking for contributions from
alumni and now from the gradu-
ating senior class. I have to be-
lieve that the money which we
give goes directly to things like
all-glass buildings or whatever
they are doing between Angell
and the museum. To that I sug-
gest that the University adminis-
tration find less destructive ways
to spend their money or else seek
other, less concemed, people to
donate.
Kaveh Kashef
LSA senior
Friendliness a
yearlong bid
To the Daily:
We would like to address
some recent criticisms expressed
about Project Smile and Friendly
Days. We appreciate hearing stu-
dents' concerns, for it helps us
understand that we have not yet
fully communicated our vision.
Our vision at Project Smile is
for a friendly University. While
on one level'this means that we
want people to smile ateach other
as they cross the Diag, open doors
for each other and talk to neorile
diverse community without sepa-
ration, and how we can structure
classes to promote community
building rather than divisive com-
petition.
In other words, Project Smile
is much more than just passing
out smiley stickers, though that
may be what we're known for.
Project Smile is fundamentally
concerned with social change.
But we also don't think that we
must wait until we reach Utopia
to take the time to treat each other
kindly. Let's work to make this
campus the strongest community
it can be, and along the way, let's
not forget to smile!
Members of Project Smile
Daily ignores
Harmonettes
To the DaIly:
We are writing in regards to
the Daily's preview (4/7/95) and
review (4/10/95) of the Friars'
39th Annual Best Concert Ever.
As we are both members of the
Harmonettes, we enthusiastically
support our counterparts from the
Men's Glee Club. However, we
find it offensive that a university
that prides itself on the advance-
ment of women virtually ignores
the all-female Harmonettes while
avidly promoting the all-male Fri-
ars. The Friars were given two
extensive articles with photo-
graphs, while the Harmonettes
preview was written by a staff
writer who didn't even bother to
come to the concert.
If this establishment wants to
promote women on campus, it
could begin by giving equal treat-
menttnfmale anfiaftions The
budgeting
To the DaIly:
Let me get this straight. In
regards to the Monday, April 3
Daily, two headlines on the front
page caught my attention: "IRS
says 'U' owes $7.7M in back
taxes" and "'U' rakes in cool
$7.8M by lending out logo to
merchandisers." At this point, I
see an easy solution to a prob-
lem. Knowing the University,
however, means that this is in no
way a solution, but a potential to
misdirect money and screw the
students at the same time.
According to the first article,
if the University is actually ree
quired to pay the $7.7 million in
taxes, then "the money has to
come from somewhere" which
directly translates to an increase
in tuition. Of course, that makes
sense. Always raise tuition wher
confronted with a financial loss
When the opportunity arrives tc
show a profit, as in the use of the
'M' logo, should tuition be de*
creased? No, that actually does
make sense, so that money should
somewhere else. The most obvi.
ous and incorrect method is tc
put it directly into athletic schol-
arships, where it is needed most
As most non-athletic scholarshij
people know when they purchasz
their season tickets, the revenue
from football, basketball an(
hockey just weren't highenough
It is a shame, I suppose, al
though it is something that wt
students havejustaccepted. Prof.
its go to athletics, losses go t"
'U' needs
lessons in
0
ow TO CONTACT THEM
Vice President for Student Affairs Maureen A. Hartford
6015 Fleming Administration Building