4A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, February 5, 2001 die firtr4toun: ttid 420 MAYN:R STREET ANN Aimop, MI 48109 daily. lettLers('jlt lnich. dit When college is all you have in common EMILY ACHENBAUM DiAMOND I THE ROIU % *s EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT TIHIE UNIVERSITY OF MI ICHJGAN SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER 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 bpinion of The Michigan Daily. on't call me cold- hearted but chances are, I'm not your friend. This is not to say that you aren't perfectly funny, smart and trustworthy. I just question the way that col- lege life makes acquain- tances, the people who will never be your real friends, so artificially inviting. The last of the senior audits have been filed and the letters are arriving: Yes, you are going to graduate. Summer sublet murmuring has started; jobs, thank goodness, are being agreed upon. It's only February, but as second semester seniors tie up ends, the prioritization that lacked during the previous three and a half years appears. We start spending time with our friends - not our acquaintances. We start asking our- selves, with whom will I stay in touch with after graduation? It's actually a pretty dismal ques- tion, because despite the hoards of people even the most anti-social of us have met, it's going to be very few that are worth the effort of staying actively involved with - those to whom you actually want to put forth the effort. Unlike the summer splits we've been used to since kinder- garten, our friends are not all going to meet up again in four months and live in the same place. The people we know well, they will stay with us. But who do we really know well? There is the assumption that because we're all fairly intelligent, fairly well-off and fairly white that we are similar people with similar lives. You forget that the person sitting next to you in lecture as you read this column could be an ex- bulimic, alcoholic or the child of parents whose love is proportional to academic success. In a sea of vaguely familiar yet unremarkable faces, we see no whole person. Amongst our friends, we scoff - things are different. Naturally we are not supposed to know the psychological background of a 300-person Stats lecture. But we know our friends. Or do we? Even in our social circles, we hide parts from ourselves, because everyone has things they are desperate to hide. In college, it is comi- cally easy - when you are not sure if this per- son will still be your friend next term, next year -there is little need for intimacy. College envi- ronments, large or small (although large in par- ticular), beget acquaintances. it is in college that I have come to abhor the concept of acquain- tances. I try to not have them. Loneliness and isolation at the University is blamed on being in large classes where we are only numbers, not even our good old social security number at that. People don't know your name, and with 40,000 students, why should they? The beauty of a big school is that it allows us to try people out, to pick and choose. And there is a comfort in never having to stay in contact, once you've come to terms with the fact that not continuing to stay in e-mail contact with your freshman roommate simply because they're your freshman roommate does not make you a bitch. There is no need to keep -people on a string. You're not going to see each other any more. You will run into your old boyfriend, once, while sweaty and frizzy-haired coming back from the CCRB. Murphy's Law. You will, run into the guy you used to do econ homework and then drink with last year in West Quad. He might think you're rude for not staying in touch. So there's one person who thinks you're not so nice for not e-mailing him back. So what. Is it all right to just be friends during col- lege? Is the friendship undermined or falsified in some respective light when you realize that col- lege is what you had in common? Is shunning acquaintances cold-hearted? I view it as a way to exalt my closest friends by giving them all my attention. And "acquaintance talk" is boring. I can be fake at work, be phony in class discussions, but by the time I'm with my friends, I want to let the guard down. This may mean putting all your energy into three people. Two. One. "My fellow classmates," are in large part, people I've never met and will probably never meet. We fool ourselves if, with the Thursday bar girls and work friends and physics study group, the connection is always that different. Such groups take some time and effort to main- tain, but what is the real benefit of spreading one's self so thin? Maybe because you think your acquaintances are your friends. A lot of us do; I haven't always been the wiser. It's one of the sadder things I've seen in college - thou-, sands of people fooling themselves, or knowing that they are fooling themselves, because it's easier. Because that's what you do in college. Be the wiser. Emily Achenbaum's column runs every other Monda. She can be reached via e-mail at emilylsa(,)umich.edu. Loading the Board of Regents really does dilute the power of the people.' - State Sen. Alma Wheeler Smith (D-Salem Twp.), last week on Gov. John Engler's hopes to amend the state Constitution to allow the governor to appoint seven additional members to state university governing boards. Ellerbe doing 'very good job' as Michigan basketball coach To THE DAILY: I am writing to express my disdain for the letters printed in the Daily concerning the state of the Michigan basketball pro- gram. It seems to me that most of you are forgetting that just over one year ago, Coach Brian Ellerbe had this basketball team play- ing solid ball, a 12-5 record, including a near upset of Duke and on its way to a NCAA tournament bid. The program was looking up and heading into the first meeting with Michigan State, Michigan looked to have a reasonably good shot at winning the game. After that, the wheels came off the cart. First, Jamal Craw- ford, the leading scorer and floor leader was suspended and would never wear the maize and blue again. Then, this fall, the other starting guard Kevin Gaines was kicked off the team for repeated violations of team rules. I don't know any team in the country that can lose both of its starting guards and still continue to compete at a high level. Ellerbe is doing a very good job as head coach of the Wolverines. We may not be winning as many 'games as some would hope, but we are improving each game. And I didn't see any player on the Wolverines squad quit on Tuesday night. We actually outscored Michigan State in the second half. We were just unfortunate to encounter one of the nation's best teams, on perhaps their best night. Their defense, combined with shooting 70 percent in the first half, would have given some NBA teams a tough time. Give Ellerbe time. He is just coming out of the Ed Martin scandal and he has been handed some very unfortunate circum- stances. This team is young and talented. Next year's recruiting class is shaping up to be one of the best in the country. We will be back, please give Ellerbe some time to rebuild this program without any outside setbacks. As a true Wolverine fan, I have faith in Ellerbe, as well as the team. ANDREW FINE LSA junior REPUBLICAN PARTY WASHINGTON, .C. HOUSE PARTY ANN ARBOR, MI 9 O 0 0 Ann Arbor life imitates politics Federally-funded faith-based charities will help the needy To THE DAILY: The Daily's recent editorial concerning President Bush's plan to help faith-based chari- ties and individuals contributing to them ("Reli- gious government," 2/2/01) shows a misunderstanding of the plan and of faith-based charities. It is false to say, as the Daily does, that a "faith-based charity is nothing more than a political euphemism for a religious mission." I am sure that if the Daily talked to volunteers at church-run soup kitchens or migrant ministries or any of the other numerous faith-based chari- ties it would find people concerned first and foremost with helping the less fortunate whom they are serving. If they happen to be from a religious group, I hope that they truly believe in their religion and would be happy if their exam- ple caused others to seek to learn more about their faith. But the reason for helping others is not to recruit; charitable works come from a feeling of responsibility to help others that is a part of most religions. It is easiest to create an effective charity with the help and financial support of a group of like-minded individuals. In many cases these groups are religious. It is true that public money should not pay for proselytizing and that Americans in need of social aid should not have to accept someone else's religious precepts in order to receive aid. The President's plan also acknowledges this. The President's plan is not a plan to help religious groups. The President recognizes that private charities can often be more effective than the government. His plan is an attempt to help effective charities. Besides, as the Daily says, "the United States government is not in the business of determining what constitutes a religious group," so it should currently be able to support faith-based charities the same as sec- ular charities. Otherwise, how would it know which ones it isn't allowed to support? It concerns me that the Daily is so cynical that it believes that religious people only help others in order to proselytize. Are the only peo- ple with altruistic intentions atheists? I wish the Daily cared less about who is helping people and more about helping people. 'BRIAN PUCHALA Engineering first-year student 0 Flames in VIEWPOINT Headline news from Chii mouthpiece Xinhua News A quoted so many times by th linking the Oriental meditat with a demolition incident Square on Jan. 23, which inv called "Falun Gong people." Falun Gong (also called Fa something strange to Michiga States. Wayne, Oakland and W ty as well as cities includi Bloomfield, Ann Arbor, St Roseville, Farmington Hills Hills have all issued either "Fa "Falun Dafa Week" to recogni: ity to promote a peaceful and environment. U.S. Rep. Johnt Tiananamen Square: Suicide or setup? Xinhua News Agency claimed that within teams operated on all of them, cutting open a minute of the man setting himself ablaze, their tracheas and throats to allow them to police had dashed over to him with four fire breathe. All of the victims were badly burned na's Communist extinguishers and quickly put out the flames. and some had gone into shock. gency has been However, a European journalist based in Bei- What is strange about this is that according e foreign press, jing said that, "I have never seen policemen to the articles, the victims were nonetheless ion Falun Gong patrolling on Tiananmen Square carrying fire able to field questions from journalists and in Tiananmen extinguishers. How come they all showed up have conversations allegedly renouncing volved seven so- today? The location of the incident is at Falun Gong. One doctor in the United States least 20 minutes round trip from the nearest expressed disbelief when he read the Xinhua alun Dafa) is not building - the People's Great Hall. If they article. n and the United were to have dashed over there to get the He said that patients would never be able Vashtenaw Coun- equipment, it would have been too late." Is to recover the ability to speak so quickly after ng Troy, West it even possible that the police could have this kind of surgery. He said: "Either Xinhua erling Heights, responded with not one, but four fire extin- News Agency is lying or they have created a and Rochester guishers within the space of a minute if medical miracle!" lun Dafa Day" or they didn't have prior knowledge that this Besides, Falun Gong disapproves of any ze the sect's abil- was going to occur? form of killing, including suicide. I stress-relieving In terms of response time, another foreign So, if it is not a self-demolition, then what Conyers, Jr. (D- journalist in Beijing expressed shock that Xin- is it? China's anti-Falun Gong campaign is 'Yw;r"Q rrn i hm n +nh- tor~pcPthe first rc.,,rt eon thei.heiin into i~ts loth rnnnth, ,with, thei. nvcrn-. r, , x aLL 4