4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, April 14, 1995 c ble £krbigun iatlig F- 777, 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 11 ~T~JNC ..-.OFUC3'' 7H~P yMt YO L)or PrAiden T RUS M E ... V5 T A1996E tr, iQ , .. i } ;. i , ! , 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