4 The Michigan Daily - Friday, January 26, 1996 Uige Lirigan Datl i-i 420 Maynard Ann Arbor, MI Street 48109 Edited andmanaged by students at the University of Michigan MICHAEL ROSENBERG Editor in Chief JULIE BECKER JAMES M. NASH Editorial Page Editors You came you saw, you wrote. Now it's tJ'e to pack fti. Urles 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. Leadersh 11996 Were can students find direction? (T ead: v. 1 a: to guide on a way esp. by going in advance; b: to direct on a course or in a direction; c: to serve as a channel for. "Leader: a person who leads." . Since September, when President James J. Duderstadt announced his plans to resign at the end of June, regents and administrators have been absorbed in searching for his suc- cessor. In their struggle to put together a search process that would result in a credible person to fill Duderstadt's shoes, official leadership has been strangely inconsistent- and students have been slow to fill the void. In part, the regents' hesitancy has been to their credit. The search forums, headed by regental search co-chairs Shirley McFee (R- Battle Creek) and Nellie Varner (D-Detroit), have done an admirable job of allowing the community to express its views on the next leader. However, despite their efforts to reach out to the community, the regents seem unable to formulate a coherent plan. They appointed a firm to help conduct the search, without any specific idea of exactly what the firm's role will be. Then -- after haggling for months about the meaning of the state's Open Meet- ings Act - the regents announced that they will appoint an advisory committee for the search. On the surface, this is a positive step. But the committee's meetings will be - surprise! - closed. And yesterday, shocking students and administrators alike, the regents unexpect- edly appointed an interim president. Despite his relative anonymity, Vice President for Research Homer Neal is not a bad choice. He 'has received much respect as an administra- ;tor, and he will be the first African American to head the University - a major step. Neal may well prove to be an exemplary interim leader, but he has shown no interest in the permanent job. Thus efforts toward finding a new president must continue un- checked - and they must take place in the open. By appointing an advisory committee, ;the board appears neatly to have sidestepped the Open Meetings Act. The act dictates that virtually all meetings among elected offi- cials be open to the public. Since no regents will serve on the advisory committee, the board argues that the committee legally can ,close its meetings. Whether or not the regents are within legal bounds, their actions violate the spirit of the Open Meetings Act. Even if the com- mittee cannot eliminate candidates from the list, its recommendations presumably will carry considerable weight. Students have a right to observe the process by which those recommendations are made, to ensure a fair decision. But would students do this, even if they could? In one sense, the regents hardly de- serve blame for their actions. They have given students ample chance to express them- selves, yet few have taken the opportunity. The student forum in December garnered a paltry turnout - 50 students cannot repre- sent the entire campus population. Moreover, 50 students should not have to represent the entire campus population. The University is home to some of the brightest and most active college students in the na- tion. Yet when it comes to campus issues - particularly those involving the University administration - the vast majority are con- tent to sit by and let the bureaucracy make decisions for them. Students complain about construction, about graduation requirements, about parking. They complain about a Uni- versity that is impersonal and insensitive to undergraduate education. Yet how manystu- dents can name an administrator aside from Duderstadt? How many even know how Duderstadt's successor will be chosen? If students are dissatisfied with campus life, they have few to blame but themselves. The University president is not directly re- sponsible for campus events, but he or she is, in every sense, the University's leader. He or she guides the way, sets the direction, opens the channels. It has been said that societies invariably obtain exactly the government they deserve. The principle holds as true for University students as for any state or nation. If students do not exhibit leadership of their own, lead- ership will be given to them. And it will inevitably take them down a path they do not want to travel. Like other societies, the University com- munity displays a delicate balance between the governors - regents and administrators - and the governed - students. Each has a responsibility to contribute to that balance by respecting and soliciting the other's partici- pation. The new University president, above all, should be an individual who understands that balance. Neither students nor the admin- istration can lead the University alone. A working partnership is the best -- and per- haps only - chance for success. magine, if you will, the following sce- nario. You have just turned 21, and while recovering from side effects of the 21st birthday, you receive a phone call. It is one of the reporters at The Michigan Daily, and he has an announcement. The president of the University has just announced his resig- nation - a revelation as unexpected as it is significant. What do you do? An old maxim of journalism has it that the news never sleeps, so neither do the best reporters. The news doesn't get hung over either, so the aftereffects of a birthday cel- ebration are a sorry excuse not to do your job. What do you do? You carry yourself into the Daily, where you spend your hangover reflecting on the eight years of the president's term. You do this because ever since your first days at the University, the Daily has been your job. You started it with timidity, maybe. You saw an ad for free bagels and political de- bate, and you made your way to the Student Publications Building to see what it was all about. Two women greeted you, both smart, both feminists, both utterly intimidating. Still, you stayed, writing about baseball with a scruffy editor in chief and about cock- roaches in school walls with an even scruffier fellow staff member. Or maybe, as a new student here, you flipped through the pages of the paper while waiting for your first discussion section to begin. Naively, you didn't realize then that discussions don't begin until the second week of class. But the time sitting outside of an empty classroom in the Modem Lan- guages Building was well-spent: The ar- ticles in the student newspaper impressed you, and you saw an ad welcoming you to a "Mass Meeting" in the Student Publications Building. Little did you know that the mass meet- ing was the first of hundreds of hours you would spend there. Days and nights you spent at the comput- ers. You came in covered with snow, drip- ping with rain, seeking refuge from the sum- mer heat. You listened to people discuss, politely and otherwise. You pushed yourself in between your editor and his associate, trying to drown out their screaming with a little of your own. Your name moved up in the staff box, emerging from the masses of "Staff," and you protested in vain at Bosnia obsessions and the misuse of "quintessen- tial." You worked. You edited. You wrote. You designed. And maybe, between edi- tions, you actually found time to attend class, do your homework and lead some shadow of a social life. If this sounds like a bleak description of life at 420 Maynard, it's only part of the picture. Your marriage of conve- nience turns into a perfect partnership, just the right "moderate and rational" blend of intelligence and goofiness. You get to learn and lead and laugh. You get to threaten - sometimes mockingly, sometimes not -to kill your editor in chief. Try doing that at a "real" newspaper. In some ways, however, the Daily is as real as life gets. Students stopping by be- tween classes write about a serial rapist stalking Ann Arbor. Sleep-deprived editors debate affirmative action and marijuana le- galization. And you, bleary-eyed but ideal- istic, are part of it all. You look back, after three years, after a year in charge. You think of the big issues, trying to count the sheer number of inches you have given to the Code and the Clinton presidency. You take stock of your enemies - you wonder what Maureen Hartford and Mary Lou Antieau and Deane Baker and NWROC think when they pick up your opin- ions in the morning. You take stock of your friends, the ones who have sent you letters and e-mail messages and phone calls to support something you've written. You take stock of your friends, the ones you've made over proofed pages and dinne breaks at the Union. You quietly thank those who. have encouraged you to keep doing what you're doing, despite the less-than- promising job market for would-be journal- ists. Without friends and enemies, produc- ing a newspaper five days a week would be no more than applying ink to newsprint lifeless words devoid of meaning. You adjourn your last meeting, and as the room empties out, your eyes fill it up again with those who peopled it so vibrantl4 during your time there. You see their faces, hear their voices. You look at the volumes on the wall, where those voices are indelibly preserved. You take one last look, adding your ghostly presence to the scores that already reside there. And you thank them, and thank yourself. It's been a hell of a ride. - Julie Q. Becker and James M. Nash can be reached over e-mail. They can also be found wandering the streets of Ann Ar bor, desperately seeking a page to proof read. JiM LASSER THAIT 5 FUNNY - - 1DOE5N'T HAVE THis BooK AN Y ?AGE:S SHARP AS TOAST THAT S WH II V NO F',N Y / J NOTABLE QUOTABLE 'That's all there 4 Is. There Isn't any more.' -Bob Ufer, the legendary voice of Michigan football, in his sign-off at the end of games.u D fI ..= r _ Z r K 1'" .. fi ,. : _ ., .- - .. s FINAL THOUGHTS A moment inthe sun Clinton seizes rhetorical advantage in address N o one can accuse President Clinton of being an inept politician. Corrupt, maybe; indecisive, yes; perhaps even too "slick" for his own good. But not inept - as his State of the Union address demonstrated Tuesday night. Relishing his last night in the spotlight before the 1996 campaign begins in earnest, Clinton co-opted the Republican pledge to end "big government." In doing so, Clinton made himself the Republicans' Democrat: a president cleaving to the center against a Congress straying right of the main- stream. Clinton's speech was neither fiat nor folly, a political treatise lacking in specifics but hitting the right rhetorical buttons. Clinton pronounced that "big government does not have all the answers" and attacked the uni- versal bogeyman of bureaucracy. He bor- rowed from the pioneer mystique of self- reliance and helping one's neighbor while allowing that Americans should not "be left to fend for themselves." Clinton's words may well have made FDR blush, but they seemed in tune with the national zeitgeist drop of cuts to financial aid for needy stu- dents, however, Clinton's scholarship pro- posal seems like a sop to the middle class, whose support he desperately needs to win this fall. While alleviating tuition for high- achieving students of mostly middle- or up- per-class backgrounds, Clinton also should consider poorer students who have succeeded in the face of great adversity. Additionally, Clinton called for tax in- centives for businesses that clean up aban- doned properties. That proposal -while not outlined in detail-- blends a concern for the environment with the GOP mainstay of cor- porate tax relief. Clinton should exercise restraint in handing out tax breaks to busi- nesses, which already take advantage of the government's generosity to the tune of sev- eral billion dollars a year. Analysts were quick to frame Clinton's speech and Senate Republican leader Bob Dole's televised response as a sneak preview of presidential debates to come. Not so. Dole seems the likely GOP standard-bearer to face Clinton in November. But Dole's uninspired Julie Becker Editorial Page Editor "If we begin sanctioning people for expressing their thoughts, it will become increasingly difficult to know where to draw the line. Soon, no one's ideas will be safe; they need only be condemned by a majority of their peers to be stifled into silence." -From my first editorial, on Marge Schott's suspension from Major League Baseball, Feb. 8,1993. 1still believe it. Darren EVersn Sports Editor When LSA senior Seth Baldwin described a certain Michigan student organization as a 'very cohesive, self-perpetuating entity,' he was probably referring to the fencing club, of which he's a member. It may well be, but it's got nothing on the Daily -except some really sharp swords, I guess. James M. Nash Editorial Page Editor "Forget the anti-incumbent electoral cli- mate, city voting patterns and the coattail effect of Gov. John Engler. David Stead is going to win the Ann Arbor mayoral race because he's more 'cuddly' than the city's last Democratic mayor, Liz Brater." -- From my news story, Oct. 28, 1994. Stead lost the race. Jonathan Berndt News Editor "Shootings, lootings and serial rapists, plea bargains and furlough programs - all have people concerned about crime." -- From an analysis of the 1994 guber- natorial and congressional races, Nov: 7, 1994 Nate Hurley Managing News Editor "People sometimes need to step away from it all - and laugh. With the depress- ing news of death and violence, which just becomes more and more unreal, there is often no way to rationalize it - no emotion fits." -from Better Nate Than Never, Nov. 10, 1994 Antoine Pitts Managing Sports Editor The Michigan men's cross country team returns to action this weekend for Sunday morning Michigan Invitational. This meet represents an important moment in the season for the Wolverines. "This is a key time for us because I have to start making decisions on who's going to run in the Big Ten meet," Michigan coach Ron Warhurst said. - From my first story, October 16, 1992 Lisa Dines News Editor "Making the wrong decision in a hurry is, not better than the right one slowly." - Chemistry Prof. Tom Dunn on the administration's decision-making policies, March 1, 1993 This is from coverage on first beat -faculty. Brent McIntosh Sports Editor In On the Road, Jack Kerouac wrote: "I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at some- day with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabi- lized-within-the-photo lives ... never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot o our actual lives.", The Daily is my snapshot. Michael Rosenberf Editor in Chief "... Egos are also a big problem at the Daily. Let's start with Mr. Rosenberg's ego. ..Mr. Rosenberg thinks he's a sportswriter and a comedian? Now that's truly funny." - Nelson Peralta, then second-year Law student, in a letter to the editor respond to my first-ever article for the Da