4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, March 19, 1999 ctje £tiigyn &dg They never told us it would be so hard to have it all 420 Maynard Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109 daily. letters@umich.edu Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan HEATHER KAMINS Editor in Chief JEFFREY KOSSEFF DAVID WALLACE 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. Paper trail 'U' and MSA should reform poster policy W e're told we have it easier now. They tell us we can do anything we put our minds to. We have special support groups and job discrimination clauses and sexual harass- ment lawyers. Members of Congress include usw in their patriotic. speeches by referring to "our men and women in the armed forces" instead of just "our boys over there." We can beat out men for jobs and grades without feel-, Laurie ing guilty. Mayk In less than two months, thousands of She women will graduate Says from the University of Michigan. And we have big plans. Armed with expensive educations, job offers and graduate school acceptances, we'll set off this spring to change the world. We'll do things our mothers never had the chance to do, we'll shatter the glass ceiling - and we won't take no for an answer. In fact, "no" is a word we haven't heard very often on this liberal, equal opportunity campus. How could a University town with a female mayor, provost, LSA dean and U.S. and state representatives be anything but inviting to bright young women? We've been treated just like our male classmates (because we complain if we're not), and we expect that our careers will parallel, or sur- pass, theirs. But PC or not, life's just not that easy. A few weeks ago, I was chatting away to my boyfriend about my career plans and the exciting possibilities of jumping from this city to that, when he said the magic words: "But what about the kids?" Huh? The kids? What kids? I don't have any - OH. Uh oh. In four years, nobody told us the answer to that question. Heck, nobody even told us there would be a test. We've been so busy scratching in our, planners that it never occurred to us - at least not many of us - that things just might not go as scheduled. Chances are pretty good that there will be another per- son, a partner, in the picture. And kids don't raise themselves. At least, they shouldn't. Although recent studies have given work- ing women the green light by concluding that quality time is more important than quantity of time spent with their children, there's no doubt that family life shakes up a career, and vice versa. A recent New York Times article explored the lives of women in medicine and cited studies that show women doctors are more likely to work fewer hours and pass up chances at demanding practice partnerships or man- agement positions because of the time com- mitment required. And so at a time when female doctors are both highly respected and in demand, the question seems to no longer be of whether women can reach the top in their field, but whether they will choose to do so. I remember a male friend in high school telling me that he would gladly stay home and raise the children if his wife wanted to pursue a demanding career outside the home. At the time, it seemed like the perfect romantic solution: Mr. Mom for the Millennium. I wonder whether he'd say the same thing today, after four years of midterms and all- nighters and Career Planning and Placement. Perhaps he would, but his solu- tion is certainly not everyone's answer. It's unlikely that women would ever allow my friend with his apron and carpool to become the norm. Aside from those bitter enough to think that our husbands should pay for our grandmothers' sacrifices, many of us want to be the caregiver in our house- holds, or we at least want to play an equal share in this role. As much as some of us try to fight them, we have natural maternal instincts. We coo at babies, our male friends cry in our presence but not in their bud- dies', and we have the urge to brush off lint from strangers in suits. I once found myself in the middle of a busy newsroom, ironing a colleague's shirt for an interview. Why? Because I was there and it needed to be done. Had I ever seen any of my male predecessors attempt such a thing ? I assure you, no. Journalist Cokie Roberts wrote a simple yet amazingly insightful book called "We are Our Mothers' Daughters," in which she describes the relationships of women in her family and how each generation effortlessly assumes the roles of the previous genera- tion. She maintains that although profes- sional expectations have changed for women, personal ones have not. What we probably will be facing in our post-graduation lives is a world of two- career households, expanded private and federal funding for daycare, long days and unnaturally brief nights of sleep. Can we have it all? Maybe, but this world is going to require something we haven't had a lot of practice in, thus far: compromise. -Laurie Mayk can be reached over e-mail at ljmayk@umich.edu. 0 0 nybody with at least one class in Angell or Mason halls has surely noticed the recent proliferation of posters and advertisements for candidates seeking election to the Michigan Student Assembly. The names and faces of MSA hopefuls - printed on these ubiquitous, multi-colored pieces of paper - have become a kind of wallpaper plastered over every blank sur- face available. In fact, every night around midnight or 4 a.m., University custodians restore these walls to their original poster- less condition by taking down every flyer in the building. It has become a cat-and- mouse game between Angell Hall building management and the zealous candidates who seek name and face recognition by putting new posters back on the walls as soon as the old ones have been taken down. The race to put these flyers back on the walls indicates a kind of good-natured spir- it of competition among MSA candidates - and the custodians who remove them on .a nightly basis are only doing their jobs. This election season sport, however, has some casualties. One of these is the paper supply. As parts of an institution that claims to value envi- ronmental consciousness, both the candi- dates and the administration should make attempts to cut down on the waste that the activities of posting and then removing the MSA posters produce. By throwing away all of these flyers, Angell Hall building management is needlessly wasting untold amounts of paper. It is not as if the candi- dates are forbidden to tack up their ads, they are simply told - through the actions of the custodians - that if they want to campaign in this way they need to print up new posters every day. While some MSA candi- dates may enjoy the challenge that this pro- vides, it is not sufficient to justify the waste that it generates or the trees that it sacri- fices. A more environment-friendly solu- tion to this problem - one that would allow the custodians to do their jobs and the can- didates to retain their campaign strategies -- would be to save the posters that are removed and allow the candidates to put them back up the next day if they choose. One other solution would be for the University to allow campaign posters to remain on the walls for one week before the election. Since candidates will only scram- ble to put up new posters at this most cru- cial time of the election season, it makes lit- tle sense to keep removing the posters each night. Other possible advantages to these solu- tions would be economic. Making these posters can be very expensive and having to repeat the process every day until the elections can be prohibitively so. Students who do not have the financial resources to spend half their savings at Kinko's making eye-catching campaign posters are at a decided disadvantage if they want to run for MSA. While it is possible to seek elec- tion without blanketing Angell Hall with advertisements, given the current cam- paign environment, it would seem unwise not to if one wanted a legitimate chance to win. The ability of a student to successful- ly campaign for MSA should not be deter- mined by economic factors, already a dis- tressing feature of national and local American political campaigns. It would be unreasonable to deny MSA candidates the opportunity to campaign in public spaces --- such is their First Amendment right. But in order to decrease the waste produced by these campaigns and the economic strains that they put on poten- tial candidates, MSA and the University should come up with some solutions that satisfy both their needs. Rather than turn- ing Angell and Mason Halls into battle- fields between candidates and custodians, the University and MSA should get togeth- er to ensure that this building is kept as an environmentally sound and economical forum for MSA's election season political discourse. 0 Tom Hayden doesn't live here anymore By Jeffrey Kosseff Daily Editorial Page Editor More than 25 students spent a second night in University President Lee Bollinger's office, protesting sweatshop labor in third-world countries that produce Michigan apparel. I commend these stu- dents for attempting to bring back the activist spirit of the '60s. Sweatshop labor must be stopped, and a sit-in is an effective way of reaching the University administra- tion. This sit-in, however, pales in compar- ison to the activism of the Vietnam era, simply because less students are involved. Times have changed, and most students simply are not interested in changing the world. Hopefully, more students will take an active interest in SOLE's cause. Bollinger is being incredibly reasonable with the protesters by allowing them to camp out in his office and not having the Department of Public Safety remove them. By allowing the members of Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality to throw a sleep-over party - complete with take-out food and dancing - in his office, Bollinger demonstrates that he is a really cool person. He is not "the man." He understands what it is like to believe in something. The SOLE members are comparable to Tom Hayden and the other college students who drafted the Port Huron Statement, which began the Students for a Democratic Society. SDS was the nationwide organiza- tion that was responsible for Vietnam War protests on college campuses. Like the pro- testers of the '60s, many of the SOLE coor- dinators never had to suffer the effects of the foreign atrocities they protest. In the Port Huron Statement, Hayden and compa- ny wrote that the SDS members are "people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, look- ing uncomfortably to the world we inherit." SOLE members, unlike most students on this campus, care about the world beyond Ann Arbor. The SOLE members are doing what they can to stop atrocities from occurring. The University is the largest producer of collegiate apparel, so if it asks for a living wage, many other universities may follow. The sit-in is the most extreme form of peaceful protest possible. SOLE, however, is not a duplicate of SDS. Hayden and six other SDS members comprised the Chicago Seven, a group of protesters who were beaten by police offi- cers and arrested at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. They suffered tear gas and beatings for their cause. SOLE members are eating pizza and having dance parties in Bollinger's suite of offices. This does not make SDS a more noble group. SOLE's actions have been much more rea- sonable than those of SDS, because SOLE has stayed within the law. SOLE demon- strates that violence and law-breaking is not the most effective way to get a point across. Although daily bomb threats, tear gassings and 2,000-person rallies are no longer present on college campuses nation- wide, SOLE has proven that SDS's mes- sage is still alive. It is appropriate to remember the conclusion of the Port Huron Statement, which stated that "as students, for a democratic society, we are committed to stimulating this kind of social move- ment, this kind of vision and program in campus and community across the country. If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable." -Jeffrey Kosseff can be reached over e-mail atjkosseff)umich.edu. R ND I NG(TrHE NB 0 CHIP CULLEN Dry cleaning MSU Greeks should not ban alcohol ollowing 30 days of a campus-wide suspension of all activities, the Greek system at Michigan State University will soon meet to decide, among other issues, whether to ban all alcohol from MSU chap- ter houses. Michigan State's Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Association have come to such drastic discussions as a result of incidents on campus and at the national level. While it's important to recognize these issues, going dry is not the solution. On Thursday, Feb. 12, MSU's Greek chapters voted 27-2 to impose a moratori- um on all social events for a 30-day period. The purpose of this universal suspension was to allow their Greeks to decide how to fix the damaged relationship the Greek sys- "tem had with the university and the city of East Lansing. Now that the moratorium has ended, they'll discuss the possibility of going dry. It is an option that should not even be considered by Michigan State's IFC and Panhel. These buildings are student resi- dences, and many of their inhabitants are of legal age to purchase and consume alco- holic beverages. By forcing chapter houses to go dry, such residents will be denied a right that their non-Greek counterparts are allowed to practice unchecked. IFC and Pnhel do not have the power to regulate or ban perfectly legal actions by their mem- ty parties, such as taxi service, sober mem- bers, set chapter moral codes and guest lists, will likely not be practiced by hosts of house parties. Meanwhile, party noise once kept within the walls of huge houses will cause all sorts of problems when the cele- brations move to crowded neighborhoods. For Greeks, and everyone else on campus, the parties are best left inside the compara- tively controlled chapter houses. For IFC and Panhel, dry housing would strike an insurmountable blow to the entire Greek system. While going dry may tem- porarily appease some university and city officials, such an action could only pro- vide grounds to kick chapters off campus. A chapter may, on its own accord, choose to go dry, but it is not up to IFC or Panhel to make that decision for them. It is doubt- ful any chapter forced into such an ultima- tum would respect it. As parties become virtually impossible to be held at a chapter house, membership will likely drop signif- icantly. Eventually, chapters would possi- bly lose their charters or their members. By signing such a bylaw into IFC's consti- tution, the Greek system will be critically injured. Although this conference is taking place in East Lansing and not Ann Arbor, its importance is universal for every Greek chapter and college campus in the country. GEO supporters deserve thanks To THE DAILY: The Graduate Employees Organization has at last reached a tentative agreement with the administration in our current contract negotiations. The final days of negotiations produced substantial progress on all the unre- solved issues, including wages, fair GSI work assignments and International GSI training compensation. Pending ratification of this agreement by the full GEO membership, thesenegotiations for the eleventh contract between GEO and the regents of the University of Michigan will be finished. On behalf of GEO, I would like to thank all the supportive faculty, students, staff, campus and local unions, and community members for all their help and encourage- ment during the long five months of negoti- ations. The Michigan Student Assembly and the Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality have been particularly strong in their support of our collective bar- gaining efforts, and we thank them in par- ticular. We especially appreciate everyone who actively supported our walkout, includ- ing professors and lecturers who canceled their classes, andeundergraduates who stayed home or joined our picket lines. We recognize that the walkout placed many fac- ulty and students in a difficult position and the expression of solidarity from many of you was incredible. We would also like to acknowledge Provost Nancy Cantor, who was ready to engage in reasonable negotiation. GEO thanks her for helping to keep negotiations moving and for her commitment to improv- ing the quality of life of graduate employees. GEO is pleased to reach this agreement OT1 OF f1j4gW to0UNp~RaKADS, R1al t,% &Ny 'f W L Vcre ZN rtiNSjA 'e, crrous? 7E. * Ttul-Y (t t.. ~S-ru Dr> tA'r co - ( 1. " 1. c JL Gl ( 4 t-K9 - movie promotes stereotypes," 3/17/99) to the upcoming animated adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "The King And I." I would like to call attention to the fact that this film is not the only one of its kind. Many other ani- mated films have perpetuated, among other issues, chauvinism and racism in addition to the oversimplification and blatant alteration of classic literature and mythology. In our culture's beloved Disney films, we continually see heroines described as "strong," yet what they seek is not personal success or a greater understanding of life. In every example, they quest for the "ever-nec- essary" attentions of a man. While love is certainly an important aspect of life, it is an injustice to poison the minds of young girls across America into believing in the same old societal standard that a woman absolutely needs a man to be complete. For that matter, why does Disney (along with Mattel and a score of other companies) draw its heroines in unrealistic proportions? The. vnnn flignev fansof tndco'uil well Hamlet who forgives his uncle and restores peace to Denmark? If a story is considered too dark for an audience of children, Disney should leave it alone. Go make some egali- tarian fables, Michael Eisner! A. LAUREN BARNETTr0 MUSIC SOPHOMORE IFS should not replace disks TO THE DAILY: In response to "IFS is a reliable way to store files," (3/15/99) is it really that much more reliable than saving to a disk? It's a great tragedy when your paper is due in one hour and you discover after getting on a campus computer that the network is down - and you are not able to retrieve the document you've hipn n ri nn n for mi intlpc's houm.