4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, January 23, 1996 I Maynard Street rbor, M 1 48109 Editor in Chief JEAN TWENGE THE ERAsABLE PEN Polite conversatfrn dominates 420 N Ann A Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan JULIE BECKER JAMES M. NASH Editorial Page Editors greetng cards - for good reason Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of a majority of the Dailv's editorial board. All other articles, letters, and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion ef The Michigan Daily. MSA should pass GEO resolution tonight T he Graduate Employees Organization is dangerously close to striking as negotia- tions with the University for a new contract rtrudge along. The current contract expires Feb. 1, and as the deadline approaches, stu- dent support for GEO is crucial. At the Michi- gan Student Assembly meeting last Tuesday, student representatives passed up their chance to send a message of support to GEO as the union continues negotiations. Tonight they will have another opportunity to back GEO. MSA must vote to support the graduate in- structor union. MSA dealt with the issue ineffectively. Although GEO's negotiations with the Uni- versity are nearly three months old, MSA did not formally consider supporting GEO until last Tuesday. Rackham Rep. Ray Robb pro- posed a resolution that would support GEO and encourage the University to reach an agreement by the contract deadline. How- ever, MSA decided to table the proposal until tonight to give all members a chance to x review the resolution. MSA Vice President Sam Goodstein in- dicated that he cannot, in fairness, force members to vote on an issue they have not reviewed. Goodstein is correct. However, GEO's proposal was issued in October. Al- most three months is ample time to read a proposal and vote on it. MSA could have addressed the issue before January. Rackham Rep. John Lopez said MSA might not vote on the issue again because representatives may not have enough "time to read the proposal in the next week if they haven't even touched it yet." Members may believe that timing matters no more than the resolution itself. Even Goodstein stated, "I don't think the position of MSA has a great impact." On this point, Goodstein is mis- taken. MSA is the elected student voice. The assembly has a responsibility to make its voice heard on the contract negotiations, which affects a large part of the student body. Support from the student government would show the administration that the students - including undergraduates - ally with GEO. MSA's support would give GEO negotiators more credibility. The University has dawdled in negotia- tions with GEO - administrators have ad- dressed less than half of CEO's resolutions in the last three months. MSA's resolution would send a strong message: students sup- port GEO. MSA has the responsibility to speak on behalfofstudents --failure to do so would be contrary to the assembly's mission. MSA has no excuse for further delay. GEO's contract deadline is too soon to post- pone the resolution again, and it is the repre- sentatives' responsibility to consider it be- fore the MSA meeting when representatives will vote. Tonight, having read the proposal, members must vote to unequivocally sup- port GEO. I was named after an old friend of my mother's, an English teacher in the same small school in Minnesota where my parents taught. The older Jean's life has been full of ups and downs. She and her husband couldn't have children, so they adopted two boys. Then Jean's husband was fired from his job as a woodworking teacher; soon afterward, he threw out his back and couldn't finish the contracting jobs he had started to help sup- port the family. In her late 30s, Jean learned she was pregnant with the child she thought she couldn't have and gave birth to a healthy, bright baby girl. In her Christmas card, Jean wrote to my mother about the events of the past year. Her son Alan, who had decided not to go to college, was working on the second level of a construction site when he stepped on a beam he'd been told to avoid. He fell seven feet onto a concrete floor and was in the hospital for more than a week. Only a few days later, he was headed to a party with some friends when they hit another car, landing Alan in the hospital for another two weeks. Jean's younger son Danny is 17 and the father of a I -year-old; he and the baby's mother are getting married after he gradu- ates from high school. "I now understand why some people send Christmas cards and only sign their name," she wrote. So do I: It's because the truth is some- times too painful. We know this now in late January, the Month of Reality (here, that means frozen snow, slushy boots and books read by the fluorescent glow of library lights during the long, cold nights of the new winter term.). But December is different: The same long cold nights are filled with warm family gath- erings, stacks of presents and houses draped in rainbows of colored lights. The rosy image is continued every year in many families' Christmas letters. En- cased in florid prose, they follow not the Golden Rule of Truth but the bronze Rule of Resumes: i.e., make something out of noth- ing. Vacations are described in excruciating detail. Everyone's housejust got a new deck. Children have always been elected president of their class, are going to the best college in the world and look exquisitely beautiful in their airbrushed senior pictures. Parents are happy with their jobs, and getting trans- ferredto a new city away from family, friends and schools is always "exciting." Divorced partners just aren't mentioned at all, disap- pearing from the Christmas letter one year as if they'd never been a part of the family. I much preferred my namesake's letter - truthful, to the point and reflective about life and what it can toss your way. One of these days, though, I want to write the ulti- mate nauseatingly optimistic Christmas let- ter, committing all the sins of the genre: Pseudo-poetic platitude. "As the snow fell softly outside the window, I marveled that yet another year had passed." DON'T say: "It's Christmas Eve and I just remem- bered that I have to write these stupid-let- ters." Travelogue. Name every place yoh4 been since last December, including the trips to the next town and the drives to see jailed relatives (leave out the jail part). There are two key phrases here: "It was a welcome break" and "... and then it was off to Aruba." DON'T say: "It's amazing how much you can save staying at Motel 6. Mmm ... burnt orange carpet... Veiled or not-so-veiled comparison. "It was a wonderful and exciting year fir us and we hope this letter also finds you anr your family well." DON'T say: "We're do- ing great! How's life in that dump with your lousy husband?" The kiddie parade. The more, thebet- ter! They're the smartest and most beautiful children in the world - AND Timmy was unanimously elected Hall Monitor! The key here is lie. DON'T say: "Just between us, Timmy's nickname is 'Our Little Mistake."' The truth is usually much more interest- ing. It also brings us closer together, reali4 ing that we're suffering the same boredom and setbacks as everyone else. The only other alternative is only to sign yourname- a signature on an otherwise cheerful card that can speak volumes of pain. - To reach Jean Twenge, don't send her a Christmas card. E-mail her at jeant@umich.edu. MATT WIMSATT M-oLuE's Du4EmvnA o- v ~jCO~pk~kzA AM ER1 ,4to 'C~& NOTABLE QUOTABL 'It's completely white here and white students are very happy so they don't understand whyO we're offended.' - Sherise Steele, Black Student Union speaker, commentingon tIb University 'sfailure welcome students of color Separate is unequal All-male military academies are outdated hen Shannon Faulkner first sued The w Citadel, an all-male public institu- tion, for denying her admission,,the issue of gender discrimination returned to the news. Three years later, the Virginia Military Insti- tute, the only other publicly funded single- sex school, is embroiled in a gender discrimi- nation suit brought by the Justice Depart- ment after a complaint from a Virginia high school student. Publicly funded institutions cannot discriminate, and the Supreme Court should send the message. Last week, the court heard arguments on the VMI case. If the justices side with the student, anew law would outlaw publicly funded all-male education. Testifying for the state of Virginia, ex- perts claim that single-sex education, par- ticularly in all-female institutions, can be superior to mixed gender education in some situations. Based on this reasoning, they ar- gue it is in the public interest to keep a single- sex option open among public institutions. In this vein of reasoning, VMI attorneys argue that opening entrance to females would compromise its rigorous program. VMI as- serts that it fills a public purpose by subsidiz- ing a unique all-male learning environment. As a compromise to young women who want to participate in the VMI experience, Vir- ginia must provide for a "separate but com- parable" female leadership training program at nearby Mary Baldwin College. VMI's attorneys miss the point. "Sepa- rate but comparable" is a novel way ofsaying "separate but equal" - a phrase with omi- nous connotations. History has taught that "separate but equal" rarely means equal." Placing women in a different program from men indicates they are inadequate for the standards of the full VMI program. Women must be given an equal opportunity to com- pete with men for positions at VMI. VMI's single-sex status is outmoded. Making the nation's three service academies - West Point, the Air Force and the Navy- co-educational in 1976 proved women quite capable of equalling and even surpassing men in an intensive and physically demand- ing educational regimen. Today's military has become gender integrated - if a VMI or Citadel graduate enters the military, he will likely serve under a female commander. Fail- ing to prepare men for this reality serves the interest of neither the military nor the public. Single-sex education can be a rewarding educational experience. However, it does not belong under the government's control. The state has no more interest in subsidizing VMI or The Citadel than it does subsidizing Brigham Young or Notre Dame. Military institutions are touted as providers of equal opportunity or qualified individuals in today's military. VMI and The Citadel do neither. LETTERS Michigan fans should give Fife respect To the Daily: It was a joy for me to read the article "Unheralded Fife's con- tributions put game in M' win column" (1/22/96) in Monday's sports section. I am happy to see that Dugan Fife is finally getting the respect and praise that he de- serves for the unnoticed things that he does game in and game out. It always pains me at games to see him hang his head as the crowd yells at him. I often have to check to make sure that I am in Crisler Arena, and, yes, Dugan still is a Wolverine. By the way the crowd usually treats him, you'd never know it. Hopefully, through the coverage of the Penn State game and finally being brought to light how important he is, he will finally get the respect he deserves. Jessy Mann LSA first-year student 'U' must not force GEO to strike Feb. 1 To the Daily: It has been about two weeks since the end of the graduate stu- dent instructor's strike at Yale University. This strike was about gaining recognition forthe union, Graduate Employees and Stu- dents Organization, that had been unanimously elected five years ago to represent 1, 100 graduate student instructors at Yale. By threatening to blacklist and fire those participating in the strike and by changing exam for- mats to allow convenient grading without the assistance of teach- ing assistants ("Yale TAs strike; grade reporting delayed," 1/ 11/ 96), the administration and some professors at Yale have only. proved that they are willing to break the law and to compromise academic standards in order to deny GESO as the GSIs' collec- tive bargaining unit. The current contract between GEO, the Graduate Employees Organization, representing GSIs and research and staff' assistants here at the University expires Feb. 1. As an undergraduate, I can appreciate GEO bargaining in favor of such issues as including contract language that makes en- forcing class-size limits enforce- able and ensuring such training as English-language and orienta- tions to teaching at American uni- versities for international GSIs. The collective bargaining of wages is also important, because it makes sense that GSIs' wages affect the quality of their teach- ing (one of CEO's proposals for the new contract is to bring up all the salaries of GSIs who currently do not make a living wage ac- cording to the University's own numbers) and many are forced to take otherjobs that take time away from the classes that they teach. Undergraduates should also know that GEO is responsible for for- mal University recognition of af- firmative action and proposes a GEO-UM committee to track ac- cess by students of color to GSI positions - to make sure that the ethnicities of GSIs are represen- tative of the student body. Because the last thing that GEO members want is a strike, they have, in an effort to bargain efficiently and effectively with the administration: 1) already be- gun preparing for bargaining last year, 2) asked to begin bargain- ing sessions a month early, 3) proposed the formation of GEO- administration work groups that would develop joint proposals to bring back to the bargaining table. In actuality, however, bargaining has begun only two weeks early and only one administrative mem- ber has been assigned to sit on the four proposed work groups. As a result, the administration has only been able to table three counter- proposals so far. And as Feb.1 rapidly approaches, we can only hope that the University adminis- tration will not be willing to force GEO members to strike. Benjamin Williamson LSA senior Daily's review of Kenny G based on the 'ludicrous' To the Daily: I was extremely offended by the Daily music review on Jan. 17 of Kenny G's album "Miracles" and Kirk Franklin and the Family's "Christmas." While I know nothing about Kirk Franklin, the review's remarks on Kenny G, in my opinion, con- stitute some of the most, ludi- crous music journalism I've ever read. The reviewer states that Kenny G is "widely acknowl- edged for his virtually untouch- able prowess on the soprano saxo- phone"! On the contrary, Kenn G has for years been, in theWcW of the Rolling Stone Album Guide, "reviled as a featherweight and a fake." The review of his Christmas album twice uses the word "jazz" to describe the rusic that Kenny G is spewing. This is a joke to jazz fans everywhere. Saying that Kenny G plays jazz because he has a saxophone is like calling Joan Baez amasterof thrash metal because she can the guitar. To quote the "Alb Guide again: "What Kenny G plays would best be described as 'fuzak' - that is, a combination of fusion and Muzak which ... manages to be sopoforic than ei- ther individually." The review further states that, "Kenny G's music ... can touch your soul and fill you with good cheer year round." Personallf listening to something thatre- minds you of hot, overcrowded shopping malls filled with angry, shrill parents trying to return the broken, overpriced toys without a receipt the day after Christmas is good cheer, then pass me some manic depression. I find it diffi- cult to believe that anyone who has been forced to listen to Kenny G in the elevator or while und- going root canal therapy c possibly take a reviewer seriously which claims that he has "rein- forced worldwide appeal ofjazz's catchy flava." In the end, the reviewer states, "he cannot begin to put into words the full spiritual impact"of the albums reviewed. I'm thinking he shouldn't have even tried. Anthony Zaret RC first-year student . How To CONTACT THEM University President James J. Duderstadt Office of the President 2068 Fleming Administration Building 764-6270 e-mail: jjd@umich.edu Vice President for Student Affairs Maureen A. Hartford 6015 Fleming Administration Building 764-5132 e-mail: Maureen.Hartford@um.cc.umich.edu 11 YOU CAN'T BEAT EM, JOIN 'EM! v