4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, April 7, 1999 az £Iirbipn &dlg 420 Maynard Street HEATHER KAMINS Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editor in Chief daily.letters@umich.edu9 Edited and managed by JEFFREY KOSSEFF students at the DAVID WALLACE University of Michigan 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. 'Every ghetto, every city and suburban place I've been Gome odothsno Government should not snoop online Make me recall my days in the New Jerusalem." - Lauryn 2:11 0 here are certain refrains that one becomes accustomed to hearing if one hangs around here long enough. "The girls at Michigan suck.' "Labatt's? No, thanks. I only drink Bell's, served in a freshly washed glass bong." "I'm finally donez with my thesis. I'm going to make a nui- sance of myself at Ashley's." James "Know of any par- Miller ties tonight? Man, this town is dead:' Which brings us to n Tap the grand champion refrain of every student; from the rankest greenhorn freshman to the paint-by-numbers fifth-year senior: "Man, I can't WAIT to get out of Ann Arbor." I'll be the first person to acknowledge a need for a vacation or temporary respite from one's surroundings. That's a fairly understandable human impulse. I get bored with Ann Arbor too, and I've been here longer than any two of you put together. But what I find more interesting is the impulse to leave Ann Arbor, in particular, is almost pathological and rapid, like the need to get insulin or the need to get off Riker's Island. "I am just like so sick of Ann Arbor. The club scene is just shit, the bars suck and you have to drive to Detroit just to see anything interesting. I can't wait until I: graduate/leave for the summer/transfer, etc." I'd like to look at this a little more closely. First, there is a misplaced sense of social cache attached to leaving town. I remember it from high school. Moving to another city when you're young automatically implied that you were going to have some kind of life-altering transcendental experience. Anyone who tires of Ann Arbor and tries to remedy this by going to another universi- ty in another town is in for an expensive and inevitable disappointment. This is not to say that one college town isn't different from the others. Each has it's own character, it's own kind of student, it's own style. But it's still a college town. After you get over the little differences, there's not much else there. Several thousand fairly well-heeled children of fairly well-heeled parents. Preppie guys like preppie clothes and the Dave Matthews Band. Bookish types like Woody Allen and Kafka. Most of the student body will have approximate- ly the same tastes, within certain limits, the same reactions to things and the same aspirations for their adult life. Once you get used to a different library, street names and student union, you're right back where you started. The second most popular reason for want- ing to leave Ann Arbor is that the city is bor- ing. Okay, I can kind of see that. If you're from New York (I hate you) you are used to a certain critical mass of consumable enter- tainment, from Korn to God Street Wine to Blues Traveler to Korn. People from other large cities have the same feelings. Yet I dare say that there are few cities in the country of this size that have such an impressive and long-standing tradition of supporting and promoting the performing arts. Name anoth- er city of 100,000 people that gets the Harlem Nutcracker every year. How about the Jazz and Blues Festival"? Restaurants of every taste and ethnicity in the known world? Dozens of different bars? I could go on. The point here is not to sound like a tourist guide for the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce. Rather to point out a weakness of the "boring defense." Instead of going out and looking for fun they have this illusion that Method Man, J.D. Salinger and the Beastie Boys are supposed to show up to their apartment every weekend night. "Yo, what's up, G?" says Adam Yauch. "Me and Meth and J.D. was just in the area like and we wuz wondering if you wanted to come to this club with us, throw back some free drinks and like spin a little bit, maybe freestyle. Hey, bring those lyrics and stuff. J.D. says he's looking to come out of retire- ment and publish your work, you undiscov- ered genius you." If you're waiting to begin your life as a raging hipster at the height of the college experience, going where someone said cool things happen to cool people won't help, no matter how close to San Francisco you move, or how crappy your midtown walkup is. Bottom line: Cities are only as stimulating as you make them. Wait for fun to happen to you, and you'll be waiting awhile. P.S. - To the two junior staffers at the Review who wrote the "hilarious" fake crime note about me in the last Review par- ody of the Daily. You two work for the jour- nalistic equivalent of a dad-pitch baseball team for 7-year-olds. No one pays attention except your parents, and in the rest of the world you are recognized as sad, half-assed and gameless. Anonymous insults are the province of cowards. -.James Miller can be reached over e- mail atjamespm@umich.edu. S ympathy for Internet child pornogra- phy traders caught by law enforce- ment agencies is bound to be in short sup- ply, but by focusing on such extreme instances, many people lose sight of the undesirable consequences that go along with active policing of the Internet. Last week, LSA first-year student Aaron Bruns was arrested for distributing child pornography under the Child Sexually Abusive Act when the Florida Bureau of Investigations informed the Department of Public Safety that an indi- vidual from the University had been trad- ing child pornography over Internet Relay Chat. Child pornography is inherently morally wrong, and if the allegations against Bruns prove true in court, Bruns must be punished according to the law. Whether the charges against Bruns are true and as serious as have been alleged, the Florida Bureau of Investigations should not have been snooping around the Internet, looking for illegal activity. With the evolution of the Internet still in its incipient stages, and the potential for seri- ous rights violations in the future, it is far too early to allow law'enforcement agen- cies a surplus of liberty to police the new medium. Recent examples of law enforcement organizations going too far in their elec- tronic policing are not difficult to recall. Five wealthy suburban Georgia teens were arrested last month under the Georgia Street Gang and Terrorism Act for jokingly publishing a mock Website that purported to be written by actual gangsters. Officials defended the arrests on the grounds that the page could lead to increased actual gang activity. If convict- ed, the boys face up to 10 years in prison. Before they were tipped off by an America Online executive, law enforce- ment officials were looking into the pos- sibility of catching the author of last week's Melissa computer virus with a controversial Microsoft identification number embedded into Microsoft Office. Microsoft was recently attacked by priva- cy activists who claimed that if the iden- tifier was matched with hardware ID numbers, the machine on which of a Microsoft Office document was created could be traced. Most people do not use the Internet for trading child pornography, creating mock Websites or writing e-mail viruses. Nevertheless, legitimate Internet users could potentially find their rights violated by overzealous law enforcement agencies hunting criminals on the global network. The prospects of profiling based on Website visitation is terrifying. Internet surfers who visit various political, drug or sex-related sites or chat rooms could potentially have their activities logged by police. Internet users must not allow them- selves to become caught up in the notion that they have nothing to fear from law enforcement if they are doing nothing illegal. If the current trend in Internet policing continues, it may not be long before individuals will have to think twice before they click on a link for fear that the site they are visiting could poten- tially land them in legal hot water in the future. Officials must put safeguards in place to ensure that Internet usage and paranoia do not eventually go hand in hand. Lower ticket price increase was a smart move The voice of the University's support- ers has finally been heard. Responding to a slew of complaints from the general public, the University's Athletic Department reduced public sea- son ticket prices from $35 to $31 per game while student prices remain the same, a decision that was announced last week. The Athletic Department should be commended for listening and responding to the opinion of fans, especially at a time when the department has come under fire for its spending on the new scoreboards at Michigan Stadium and the Athletic Department's costly "M Go Blue" Website. The Athletic Department's decision to reduce season ticket prices comes in response to an earlier decision made by the department to increase ticket prices by 30 percent, from $27 to $35 per game. The general public is an important source of support - especially financial - for the University when its athletic teams participate in varsity sports. Fans should not have to face the possibility of huge increases in season ticket prices at the end of each season. Fans understand the principle of rising operating costs in running the athletic program each year, but a 30-percent increase abused their loyalty. The athletic department's revised decision allows for a more reasonable and gradual increase of ticket prices. This decision will also help generate a positive effect toward University fimAraieian whkinh rnlit- nn the ane.:r1 public, especially alumni of the University. The public is more inclined to financially support an institution that shows respect and listens to the ideas of the fans - as exemplified by the deci- sion made by the Athletic Department in this case. With the recent introduction of two new varsity sports - men's soccer and women's water polo - the Athletic Department also needs to carefully examine how it will restructure its finances as a result of the decrease in revenue. In the upcoming year, the Athletic Department will generate less revenue than the expected $3 million from the original increase in season ticket prices. The decision will require the restructur- ing of its funding. The Athletic Department needs to be careful when making changes to reduce the possibility of affecting varsity pro- grams, especially given the establishment of two recently introduced varsity pro- grams. The Athletic Department has respond- ed well to the opinions of the fans. Perhaps the department has learned from its experience with student hockey tickets, where this past season's increase gouged student supporters and caused many not to purchase tickets. With the addition of new varsity sports, it has made two good deci- sions in recent weeks and deserves com- mendation for doing so. But the Athletic Department needs to continue to listen to the lnva fans nfthe TTnivezrethr Students' Party displays 'pathetic whining' To THE DAILY: Students' Party, we, the students, are tired of you. That is why the Blue Party won so many of your MSA seats, plain and simple. After reading the Daily's arti- cle ("MSA court upholds 1 party motion" 4/5/99) about your vain attempts to reclaim MSA leadership, I was saddened. I was saddened that you have lowered yourselves to this pettiness. After reading the details of these alleged campaign vio- lations, I saw no merit in them, only the pathetic whining of a losing party. It seems every time I open the Daily, I am faced with an article describing an ineffective Students' Party motion, or some candidate complaining because his opponent was two feet too close to an election polling site. As a voter, none of these things affect how I vote. Believe it or not, the biggest determinant in who I cast my ballot for is (gasp!) the issues! Yes, it's true! Some of us don't care about gorilla suits or pizza - we want to make sure our student rep- resentatives actually represent us and our beliefs. Despite how a student views the effec- tiveness or importance of the MSA (if the Supreme Court rules that students fees in their present form are unconstitutional, it would revoke MSA's only true power), I think we can all agree that nit-picking at a very well run campaign is a complete waste of time. The Students' Party has controlled MSA for a long time and led it no where. Give it up and let others try to undo the damage you have caused. MAr BIEBER LSA SOPHOMORE Case proves that Internet is not private To THE DAILY: I'm afraid, and so should you be. Did you know that the Florida Bureau of Investigation has been monitoring file transfers on the Internet? The implication of this is that if you have ever used Instant Messenger, ICQ or the equivalent, chances are the Florida Bureau and perhaps hundreds of other organizations hadaccess to the "private" discourse between you and your friends. Yes, Aaron Bruns transferred files depicting sex, perhaps some of those pic- tures involved minors. That's not the point though. The problemisthat some- one magically gained the authority to monitor all file transfers in order to determine which ones involved this sort of material. What's next? High school students across the country have been suspended for criticizin7 their sehn on their rner- SCOTT ROTHMAN cDlWe 5 ctrjt issues, all of them must live in constant. fear of the giant watchful eye of the same invasive organizations that pointed the finger at Bruns. I don't need to tell you that the way to stop child pornography is to stop the peo- ple responsible for producing the pic- tures, not viewing or sharing them. That is self evident. What is less evident is the fact that goes totally ignored by seemingly this entire campus: sorry to be trite, but Big Brother is definitely watching,-and he has it in for you. Students are all so quick to jump on the bandwagon calling for an end to sweatshop labor, end to sanctions on Iraq, end some of the most foreignproblems I can possibly come up with, but when a schoolmate, a brother, falls victim to per- haps the greatest injustice of all, you fall silent. All one can say is "Child porn is sick and illegal." Fine, I agree. But far sicker is the notion that the government monitors your every elec- tronically transmitted word, hoping you'll slip up so they can stick you in prison for seven years. Invasive, unjust police state? Perhaps not yet, but the foundation is clearly laid out. JESSE MILLER LSA FIRST-YEAR STUDENT Women's lacrosse continues fight to become varsity teams from Minnesota down through New York. And because of our conscious effort to opt for a decent night's sleep over frat- party hopping at tournaments, more dis- ciplined coaching, increased field time and more frequent, demanding workouts, we have been able to rise to this more intense, pervasive level of competition in Midwest lacrosse. We can remember only three losses in the last four years playing for Michigan. This year, we outrank 65 other teams (including all Big Ten schools, and Penn State - who play their No. 2-ranked Division-I freshmen on their club team) and are first in our league, undefeated. We send players to compete in the nation- al tournament every year, and have orga- nized the first-ever successful home tour- naments and trips to the West Coast. Abovedall, we do ourbest to break new ground for club sports and lacrosse specifically. Not only has our team grown in size, strength, commitment, and skill level during our time here, we have continual- ly reevaluated our goals and structure along the way. Every decision we make, every dime we spend, is deliberate in an effort to challenge ourselves, to increase our com- petition. While we welcome University atten- tion auid support, we do not invest our- selves so thoroughly in the hopes of receiving such politically-based, intangi- ble varsity funding. We play because we love the game, and because our collective efforts have always led to success. Varsity funding would be welcomed in many respects, and our teammates talk about it often. Yet in the midst of our final season, we know we'll walk away having inter- nalized oui- team's accomplishments and struggles, and value our club sport expe- rience beyond words. We have nothing to prove to anyone but ourselves. So thank you to the Daily for acknowledging in this small way the whole "varsity" issue that every club team faces. Yes, "club sports members have long been paying their dues to compete" and thanks for the brief encouragement directed at our team to "not give up our pursuit to I } N 0 9t "L" To THE DAILY: On behalf of the Michigan Women's Lacrosse Team, we would like to thank the Daily for its editorial regarding the recent varsity promotion of men's soccer and women's water polo ("Good sportsman- ship," 3/31/99). Graduation is approaching, as is the end of our commitment to our team, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank the Daily for acknowledging the issues that face many under-resourced club teams on campus. A early , c fmi re aan ,we ,ere ml