4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, January 14, 1997 cuje Strduni~ n tuilg 420 Maynard Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan RONNIE GLASSBERG Editor in Chief ADRIENNE JANNEY ZACHARY M. RAImII Editorial Page Editors Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. FROM THE DAILY Without warning ITD policies hurt academic atmosphere T he Information Technology Division changed a lot of its policies in the past few months - most of them detrimental to students. Its newest policy will cut off essential computing services to those with insufficient funds in their computing accounts. ITD is leaving students stranded without warning. Every month, students receive a pre-paid subscription from ITD to pay for computing services. In September, ITD dropped the allocation to $10 while increasing the cost of services, such as printing. For most stu- dents, the regular subscription fees cover e- nail, five megabytes of IFS space - a place on a University server where students can store files - and ITD login service, totaling $1.95. However, printing saps the account of 8 cents per printed side; after the $4.40 minimum charge for dial-in Internet access, accounts get charged by the minute. Given computers' importance at the University, the "small allocation fails to pro- vide students with sufficient resources. Under ITD's new policy, students will have to pay out-of-pocket or face being cut off from basic computing services. Through extensive use of dial-in access, students can end up with a negative amount in their account - dial-in won't cut off in the mid- dle of a call when the funds hit zero. At the beginning of the month, the small allocation may not pull the account into the black and when subscription costs are taken, the stu- dent loses access to e-mail, printing, dial-in and IFS space. Most students don't know how to check account balances. Displaying the balance after every print job, and possibly every logout, would keep students informed as to :how close they are to losing their privileges. ITD Operations Manager Liz Salley said %TD will not inform students before cutting off these vital services. ITD could easily Informe Marijuana should b ,: oto, it's not the '60s anymore. ; California and Arizona residents have realized this progression, and passed laws to make marijuana legal for medicinal pur- poses. The White House denounced both laws, and, a week later, promised to spend t$1 million to study scientific evidence on ,the effectiveness of medicinal marijuana. That the White House would even consider amending its classic "just say no" stance is impressive. But the study seems to ignore -other medical research, which shows that marijuana is one of the safest therapeutical- *ly active substances known. For thousands of years, human beings have used plants - such as cannabis - to treat an array of ailments. The U.S. govern- ment did not outlaw marijuana - for strict- ly medicinal as well as recreational purpos- es - until 1937. Currently, only eight " Americans have obtained exceptions to the ban for a specific medical treatment. Yet studies have shown the benefits of marijua- na for treatment of AIDS, glaucoma, can- cer, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and chron- ic pain. In 1988, after years of court battles trying to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes, the Drug Enforcement Agency's chief administrative law judge, Francis Young, ruled: "Marijuana, in its. natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known. ... It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this sub- P e P I- _. 1 send an automated e-mail to students about to be suspended a couple of business days (or a couple of dollars) in advance. "Godzilla" never misses a chance to inform students who have reached their e-mail (not IFS) storage quota, although it blocks e- mail in the meantime. On a broader scope, every student receives CRISP appointments and financial-aid notices over e-mail - why not low fund warnings? ITD must view itself as a part of other University functions. Professors often use e-mail as a method to communicate with students outside the classroom. Students use their IFS space to store class assign- ments and papers - if they lose access to the space, they may have trouble meeting assignment deadlines and their grades could suffer. ITD's plan to punish students who overdraw their computing account could end up hurting the student's class work. The solution ITD posits is for students to set up self-funded accounts. ITD did well in making it possible to create an account 24 hours a day at the NUBS site - thus pre- venting late-night exchanges of passwords to print papers. The process still requires a minimum $25 deposit, payable by check or money order. Of course, a North Campus resident will have considerable trouble making it to NUBS after the last bus. ITD should fulfill a purpose streamlined with the University's educational mission. According to an ITD study, about 5 percent of the computing accounts would have been suspended had the new policy been in place in November. Disconnecting the life line of such a large chunk of the community is unacceptable. Students pay thousands of dollars in tuition and fees, which includes computing costs -- to force them make additional payments for a fundamental ser- vice is doubly taxing. e legal for medicine NOTABLE QUOTABLE' 'I'm looking forward to seeing old friends and beginning to talk with some people about what the issues are, so we can begin with some energy in February.' - University President-select Lee Bollinger YuKi KUNIYUKI GROUND ZERO FuruRE. oF SocAL_ ECUWtI .... \ -4-0 Online Daily The print media aban- story itself Jdoned the practice of selec- is enjoyableLiel rotg poor g*ram""- JOHN WODFORD research showed that verba- EXECUTIVE EDITOR, TO THE DAILY: tim quotes were selectively MICHIGAN TODAY Reading the Daily daily used to insult or ridicule from Arizona is one of my certain individuals, classes great pleasures. of persons, especially Rules' book It is about the best of the blacks, poor people, white University home page southerners, immigrants deserves items! and the like. JF. BRINKERHOFF The journalistic profes- criticismnand UNIVESITYALUM sion noted that since the UNIVERSITY ALUM speech of politicians, corpo- parody rate officials, entertainers and such was systematically cor- T Selective rected by reporters, this cour- To I LY: tesyshold b exende toall I had heard about the quoting pe onso extended to book "The Rules: Time- Today, unfortunately, we Tested Secrets for Capturing mocks may see certain publications the Heart of Mr. Right" from maya friend of mine before I read sourcan coese do - the article by Adrienne sandodn ien oting do nes- Janney ("Do Rules girls have TO THE DAILY: paper and magazine subjects. more fun?" 1/13/97). Your reporter quotes the It is an unfortunate regres- second time. late Prof. Betty Jean Jones's sion. Aside from being sexist, father as having said that I hope, however, that the oppressive, stereotypical, it's when he returned to his Daily will see the error of its just stupid. home after leaving his way n eunt h iy I want to thank Adrienne daughter, "I know she done of most major newspapers for tearing into a book that so called me three or four and correct all poor grammar deserves to be torn into. times." ("'U' mourns loss of that is not relevant to the Thankfully, others have theatre prof. in Comair story itself. also agreed with Adrienne crash," 1/13/97) Today, unfortunately, we and me on that subject. For Although Mr. Jones may may see certain publications all of you who wish to laugh have expressed himself in returning to a selective, arro- may I suggest the book those words, your reporter gant, condescending double- "Breaking the Rules," by and her colleagues should standard in quoting of news- Laura Banks and Janette know that it is the usual prac- paper and magazine sub- Barber, a parody on "The tice in print journalism to jects. Rules," and sure to be a com- correct grammatical errors. It is an unfortunate edy classic. I'm not going to Everyone, from presidents to regression, tell you what's in the book - actors to educators, occasion- I hope, however, that the you have to find out - but I ally uses incorrect or non- Daily will see the error of its know that you won't be dis- standard grammar. way and return to the policy appointed. Newspapers and magazines of most major newspapers routinely correct the substan- and correct all poor grammar DOUGLS BARNS dard usage. that is not relevant to the LSA SENIOR 1O YEARS AGO IN THE DAILY ... Do away with language requirement GRAND ILLUSION On Ingmar Bean and passing time Ingmar Bergman's ability to expose man's daily struggle, what Camus called "the nakedness of man before the absurdity of life," is unsurpassed cinematic history. His films dramati and thereby evoke, the full gamut of human emotions: from disgust to joy and everything in between. In one of Bergman's many masterpieces, Strawberries," Isak Borg is an elderly professor SAMUEL returning by car to GOODSTEIN his old school to receive an award; during the journey Borg comes to terms with the failure that is his life. As a husband, father and friend he has failed those close to him. On the eve of this car-ride, Borg had a dream; with this dream Bergma creates one of the most powerfW scenes in celluloid history. Stumbling through the empty streets of his town, Borg is surrounded by images of his death; looking up, he sees a great clock with no hands. For Borg, not only has time stopped, it has ceased to exist. For most people, there are two very distinct methods to measure time. The first is the socially constructed variety, whereby we break up our days into 2A equivalent blocks as an artificiW means of following the movement of our planet around the sun. (Some scholars claim that our solar calendar is, in fact, off the mark and should be adjusted.) The movement of the hands is indeed a social construct, created to compartmentalize our days and per- fected to aid the flow of business. Proof: The time zones that are such a central component in our recogniti9 of time were not developed until thie railroad became the dominant mode of economic transit in the late 19th cen- tury. Railroad companies, for obvious reasons, needed time to be standard- ized; before this development, noon was the moment the sun was at its highest point - in other words, each city had its own noon-time. This para- digm for time is man-made and emo- tionless, but pragmatic. The second way to monitor time* so simple that a person could measure it even if they had never learned to count. This second paradigm of time is no social construct, it is born of an emotional energy - experienced when standardized time is suspended. When the most terrifying moment of your.lifelasts an eternity, when one joyous week seems to consume only a single day - this mode of time can be captured by convention, cannot standardized. When time elapses in this way, we are completely helpless to control or measure it; it moves and takes us along. Bergman's genius lay in his recogni- tion of the power of this unmeasurable time. His clock with no hands is so haunting because it exposes our fear of a time so long in duration that we can- not endure. Bergman lays bare the dis- tinction between time measured by t clock and time measured in the min or soul; Isak Borg is so terrified by his dream not because time has run out but because time has lost its meaning, time has moved from measurable to unmeasurable. I have experienced, I think, a third way to account for time. Consider pro- found contentment: time spent that is so rewarding that the movement of L hands is irrelevant, but whereby emotional danger of the second way is put to rest. The emotional danger is what Bergman toys with, is what makes one terrifying minute last for- ever and is what makes one week of bliss seem like a split second. This danger - like any dangerous thing - can lead to pleasure or pain. But contentment, real contentment, sidesteps the danger. When time moves thus, you do not notice h much, or how fast, time has gone - you only notice your contentment. This, I have often thought, is how many grandparents must feel when they spend time with their grandchil- dren. Or how we feel when spending any amount of time with a person or object that we deeply care about (a loved one, a book, a symphony), when time is utterly overshadowed by the subject.0 So where does this leave us? Perhaps the most astounding aspect of the information revolution currently underway has been the near elimina- tion of time as a meaningful paradigm. When information, goods and people The American Medical Association will revoke the certification of doctors who pre- scribe marijuana. Patients who use it are still in jeopardy of federal prosecution no matter what state laws say. So, legal or not, it's illegal, in federal logic. General Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army officer who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, is also leading the study. McCaffrey's previ- ous work could prevent him from produc- ing an unbiased study - into something his salary pays him to keep illegal. Steve Michael, a spokesperson for Act Up, an AIDS advocacy and protest group, said it best: "Putting McCaffrey in charge of this research is like putting Nixon in charge of the Watergate files." No matter what the current laws say, the White House must take a serious look at the reported benefits of medicinal marijuana. When the federal government isn't prose- cuting the sick, it is also overzealously pros- ecuting individuals who choose to use mari- juana for recreational purposes. Since 1965, law enforcement has made more than 10 million marijuana arrests. Another arrest occurs every 54 seconds in the United States. Millions of dollars flood enforcement agen- cies and the states constantly spend money on new prisons - to continue the war on drugs - instead of working on prevention. But preventing such use is frivolous; marijuana is not physically addictive, and no one has died from an overdose of the A.,. T. 4 1, n - T n-is iti:- M - Editor's note: This editorial originally appeared in the Daily 10 years ago. L SA faculty members want to make incoming students in the fall of 1988 take a language competency test. The test would deter- mine how much, if any, for- eign language instruction a student should be forced to endure. Rather than expand language requirements, the University should consider doing away with them alto- gether. Currently all LSA stu- dents must complete four years of foreign language study in high school or test out at orientation. If they do not test out, students must complete the equivalent of four semesters of language. Under proposed rule changes, incoming students with four years of language already under their belts would also have to test out. The justification for the proposal is that only 20 per- cent of all incoming first- year students with four years proficiency of University students. It has gained sup- port as well among those who believe students who fail their placement exams in foreign language should not be let off the ho.ok simply because they had four years in high school. Proponents of change on the Foreign Language Committee, a subcommittee of the LSA Curriculum Committee, argue that the changes will encourage high schools to improve their lan- guage courses in preparation for the tests. This argument is dubious. It is unlikely that high schools that do not currently advise students of the four- year exemption will turn over a new leaf and inform their students of the new require- ments. Much less will they revamp their languagepro- grams to prepare students for placement tests. Those schools that do inform stu- dents of requirements may gear classes toward passing tests, instead of instilling true cate with them. Because of ethnocentrism, which fol- lows from an inability to communicate, Americans are often confused and bewil- dered by that which seems foreign. The University should not add to this bewilderment by propagating an unnecessary language requirement. There are a lot of important skills to be obtained in four years of study. Knowledge of history, a firm grounding in science and the ability to write clearly are among them. Students, how- ever, are not required to study any of these admirable sub- jects for four long semesters. Students are generally mature enough to select their own classes. There is nothing wrong with distribution requirements, if they are rea- sonable. TheUniversity's trs dif- ficile language requirement just will not do. An under- standing of foreign cultures and societies can be gained from history and sociology