ews: 76-AILY .dvertislng: 7640554 C *&ti One hundred six years ofeditorialfreedom Friday April 4, 1997 3' ."a > . > ?. a R, ., $ 3ro A. .v: kv,. rs+, r$k> y >#'s' r: r s rt. .,y ,,. , t "m:,'H . r 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 I I - -