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One hundred six years ofeditorialfreedom
Friday
April 4, 1997
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esbian witer
pealks on
*dentity issues
Nice Robinson
Stagf Reporter
Being featured in Time magazine changed the life of gay
ghts activist Urvashi Vaid.
For one thing, her parents were pretty impressed.
"It sort of legitimized me and my political work in the eyes
f my parents;' Vaid said last night, speaking to more than
100 people gathered in the Michigan League as part of Asian
acific American Heritage Month.
aid, the author of the 1995 book "Virtual Equality:
mainstreaming of gay and lesbian liberation," said she
ailed her parents in New Delhi, India, to share her suc-,
ess with them. Afterward, they were more accepting of
her controversial political activism.
Currently the head of the Policy
Institute of the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force, Vaid spoke elo-
quently on the connection between
political responsibility and personal
identity, and called for greater
political activism among young
people.
Reading an essay she wrote for a
South Asia gay and lesbian publication,
Vald Vaid gave a personal account of how
political activism helped her find her
identity.
"The place where I defined my identity was inside grass-
roots political organizations" she said. "I've learned so much
in the process of developing a racial and sexual and gender
identity."
tut Vaid said she also worried about the consequences of
g her racial and sexual identities to define her political
viewpoints. "Would I somehow lose myself to gain the
world?" she said she asked herself.
Vaid, who calls herself a progressive activist, said the
progressive gay and lesbian movement is often fractured.
"Can we all come together as a progressive movement in
the next couple of decades?" she asked, pounding the table
for emphasis.
Vaid raised a number of political issues in her presenta-
tion, including immigrant backlash and the current contro-
versy over fundraising for the Democratic Party.
documented workers are being exploited in the United
States in sweatshops," she said.
"What do we do as Asian American progressives ... about
the fact that U.S. companies are going overseas and exploit-
ing labor there?" she asked the crowd.
Students said they found Vaid's remarks insightful. "I think
See VAID, Page 3
Student
group
crashes
Bollinger reception
. atino/a organization.
demands to meet with
University President
By Heather Kamins
Daily Staff Reporter
A group of 25 students stormed into the
Alumni Center and demanded to meet with
University President Lee Bollinger yester-
day, interrupting a welcome reception for
the president.
The reception, organized by the Michigan
Student Assembly and the Student Alumni
Council, intended to give student leaders a
chance to meet the president and voice their
concerns.
But Bollinger had little time to mingle
with students after Latinas y Latinos Unidos
for Change, a movement of University stu-
dents advocating Latino/a student rights,
entered the reception pounding drums and
shouting, "La Lucha sigue sigue" or "the
struggle continues and continues."
LUCha members said they recently sent a
letter to Bollinger outlining 16 demands they
feel are necessary "to fulfill this University's
commitment to be a diverse, multi-cultural
institution;" but his office never responded.
"The members of LUCha will no longer
be kept down by the University's Eurocentric
focus," said LUCha member Nora Salas, an
RC senior. "At this time, we demand a meet-
ing with President Bollinger."
LUCha members crowded the floor of the
Alumni Center, making it difficult for
Bollinger to speak.
Bollinger told the protesters he would
meet with them sometime next week, but
would have to consult with his office first.
"It is a priority and I will meet with you,"
Bollinger said. "I cannot, at this time, guar-
antee a time and a place, but I promise I will
meet with you next week."
The group ordered Bollinger to set a spe-
cific time to meet with them, and refused to
let him speak until he met their demands.
JOSH BIGGS/Daily
A member of LUCha reads off a list of demands to University President Lee Bollinger yesterday. A group of students stormed the Alumni
Center, interrupting a reception held for Bollinger and student leaders.
"The University does not have that credi-
bility," Salas said. "They've lost our trust
altogether. We are not distrusting the
University and the administration with no
basis. If you all were doing your job, we
would not be here. Justice is not negotiable."
In a brief speech to the crowd, Bollinger
said he would listen to the students and he
acknowledged their use of their First
Amendment rights.
"I am very much in favor of student ideal-
ism and activism," Bollinger said.,
Bollinger said that he supported social
change when he was a student leader in the
1960s, and added that students today have a
more difficult time promoting reform.
"It was a time of great social unrest;'
Bollinger told the gathered crowd. "It was
much easier to be an activist in that point of
time. Then, it was a matter of changing laws.
Today, it is much more complicated. It is a
matter of changing hearts and minds."
After the chants and shouts continued,
Bollinger decided to cut short his speech and
appearance at the reception.
"If the president responded with a date,
See PROTEST, Page 2
ITD kSneepspfit'--
Tk p Nearly 60 percent ofU
students own a computert- ,
if ormation highway n000
aputers on campus.
Onnafion ighw y i* More than 0ernto
students use e-mail on c~amps
By Greg Cox
Daily Staff Reporter
The University's "information super-
highway" could have traffic jams as bad
as the more conventional streets of Ann
Arbor - that is, if the Information
Technology Division didn't make
efforts to update and improve the
University network.
A recent ITD survey found that com-
puter use at the University has
increased dramatically in recent years
as the campus has become more depen-
dent upon technology for day-to-day
life.
The study found that more than 60
percent of University students own a
personal computer, and more than 90
percent of the student body corresponds
via e-mail.
"The data provided by the survey is
intended to help improve ITD services
and to get an idea as to what our cus-
tomers use the service for," said
Andrew Fabbro, an ITD marketing
research employee. "Eighty-five per-
cent of students and 53 percent of fac-
ulty members surveyed indicated that
they used computers for socializing as
well as work."
The 100 miles of fiber optic cable
that forms the network connecting more
than 1,000 computers at University
computing sites is traversed almost con-
tinually by users in 160 connected
buildings. University mainframes and
Web servers handle a barrage of nearly
one million requests during the course
of an average day.
"Most people we surveyed said that
they believed their usage had peaked,
but it's more likely that usage will con-
tinue to increase," Fabbro said.
ITD spokesperson Kathleen
McClatchey said that since the survey
was taken, ITD has constantly made
changes to the system in order to satis-
fy student, faculty and staff requests.
"ITD is evaluating potential changes
based on their projected benefit and
cost effectiveness," McClatchey said.
McClatchey mentioned several pos-
sible courses of action that would have
an array of results.
"One change we're looking at imple-
menting is making more modem lines
available as increasing numbers of peo-
ple are logging into the network from
home;' McClatchey said. "Another is
increasing the number of Win/Tel boxes
because many students are coming in
with Windows experience?'
Efforts also are being made by the
Computer Aided Engineering Network
to improve the computing environment
at the University - particularly the
North Campus network.
CAEN is in the process of changing
its workstations over from a "shared"
ethernet connection to a "switched"
ethernet connection, said CAEN
administrator Randy Frank. In practi-
cal terms, this means an effective
increase of 10 to 50 times the usable
network bandwidth for the improved
system.
Frank mentioned that the University
is also part of a project to create a new
Internet with better, faster data transfer.
"The University is part of an initia-
tive called Internet II, designed to pro-
vide, initially for the academic commu-
nity, a replacement for the current
Internet;' Frank said. "(The new sys-
tem) will run at a speed 10 or more
times the current speed?'
Some students said the most benefi-
cial changes ITD could make to the
computing environment at the
University involved services rather than
JOSH BIGOs/Daily
SNIRE sophomore Fernando Rodriguez leads a drum circle yesterday. This.
weekend's Hash Bash will bring many drum circles to the Diag on Saturday.
.A2 prepares for
annual 'Bash'
By Alit K. Thavarejah to Sgt. Larry Jerue of the Ann Arbor
Daily Staff Reporter Police Department.
Thousands of protesters, students "The event has grown a consider-
d curiosity seekers are expected able amount over the last 10 years,
o gather in the Diag on when the only people who
Saturday for the 26th showed up were kids skip-
annual Hash Bash. ping school," Jerue said.
One of Ann Arbor's "With a national cham-
most notorious events, pionship event for
Hash Bash festivities are women's gymnastics being
.apbAe11 to rin nm m held and the Hash Bash
servers.
"They need more people working to
connect computers in dorm rooms to
ethernet," said LSA first-year student
Lisa Sharbaugh. "They took two
months to install ethernet in my
room."
Fabbro said that one of the biggest
surprises of the ITD survey was that
most users prefer to seek help from
peers.
"The people we surveyed favored
one-on-one sessions with friends and
family over consulting a manual,"
Fabbro said.
State rakes in federal funds
WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal govern-
ment spent $39.28 billion in Michigan last year
and two-thirds of the money went to entitlement
programs such as Social Security and Medicare,
according to census figures.
It was the first year in at least a decade that over-
all federal spending did not rise in the state but
dropped slightly, from $39.37 billion in 1995, the
U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday.
Michigan received about $1 out of every $35
ance program for the elderly were among the most
costly entitlement programs, requiring about $20
billion last year. More than a dozen other such pro-
grams, ranging from federal retirement and dis-
ability payments to unemployment compensation
or housing assistance, make up the rest.
Entitlement programs have rapidly expanded in
recent years, and the amount of money the federal
government spent on them in Michigan last year
roughly equaled all the federal dollars that flowed
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