4A - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 17, 2001 biz £ridi'tgan all 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily.letters@umich.edu On leaving Ann Arbor GINA HAMADEY CAUGF T PROVOKING EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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 opinion of The Michigan Daily. eeing that seniors refuse to acknowl- edge the imminent graduation, hushing any- one who mentions it, it feels strange to write on the topic. More than that, though, it's difficult to write about graduating from college because I've found that grand conclusions escape me at the end. My sophomore year I was walking through the Diag by myself in sunny April, filled with love for college and Ann Arbor. I felt like writ- ing it all down - my favorite places and moments, sing praises to late nights at Pizza House, sangria at Dominick's, my favorite pro- fessors, welcome week, cheap kegs at house parties. But I didn't, saving it for senior year when I would be really emotional and full of wisdom. Well, here I am. No epiphany. I remember this from high school - fresh- man and sophomore years we signed yearbooks constantly, in class, at lunch, we would even bring our books to the beach. By senior year, we got lazy. I hardly have any signatures in my last yearbook. There was nothing or, rather, too much to say. And this year, with all the wam- ings and online viewings, I have decided not to run the Naked Mile. I almost ran it sophomore year, and I should have. But I didn't, saving it for senior year, the last, nude hurrah. But it won't happen this way. I do not think the mean- ing of one's college years hits one at the end. The true appreciation comes during. Perhaps while studying at Espresso Royale, eavesdropping on talks of post-modem thought or Jane Austen or existentialism. Or maybe the meaning came while walking across campus during a first, quiet snow, enormous flakes like gossamers illuminated by the streetlamps. Some of the meaning was with me on my very first night in Ann Arbor, which was spent with people I had just met at orientation. Evan led us in the middle of the night through trees down into a seeming abyss of nature called, simply, the Arb, and told us a story of how someone was murdered there years back. I held on tightly to Catherine and Libby, my new friends, as we descended into the forest dark- ness. That's how freshman year was, holding on to virtual strangers for support and friend- ship, partying with them, sobbing to them about a high school boyfriend whom they have seen in hundreds of pictures, but whose last name they do not know. Some of these friends stay - Catherine lives in my house on Greenwood. I thought the meaning would come at the much-anticipated viewing sophomore year of "The Big Chill." My friends declared, as many Michigan friends have done before, that we would be like the characters in the movie-we would stay in touch forever and watch football games together, singing "Hail to the Victors." But the myth of "The Big Chill" is misleading. The reality of making a huge, lasting, co-ed group of friends is improbable. Because though college does include a support system that you party, study, live, scream, cry with, it is also a time of autonomy. Through your major, your job search, perhaps your abroad experience, there is a constant search for self. Sometimes the person you are when you graduate is not the same person you were in the dorms, and that is all right. It's a wonderful selfishness that may not be allowed for later in life, when bosses, co- workers, spouses, children come into play. Forget a group of ten, I feel fortunate-0 graduate with a few friends whom I can really talk to and really trust, regardless of the changes we have undergone. I went out with these girls, my housemates, on St. Patrick's Day. We were inebriated by noon, dancing with green tongues from the green pitchers at Touchdown's, which happens to be the first bar I ever snuck into: The song "Glory Days" played from the jukebox in true reflective style, and I was reminded of the time I heard that song at the same bar two years prior, singing the lyrics with the same girls at my old friends the Fiji boys. And so it goes. We have been disregardisig our upcoming graduation because if we seit reminiscing, we won't stop. There is too imch. So we will continue to ignore it, enjoying the last weeks by frequenting the same places we have for four years, pretending it was last year; the year before, or just two weeks ago. Any- thing to prevent the onset of the inevitable no;- talgia we will feel for years to come. This is Gina Hamadey's final columnor The Michigan Daily. Give herfeedbac at wwwmichigandaiy com/forum or via e-mail atghamadey@umnich.edu. I AAPD, DPS presence may spark 'melee' To THE DAILY: Having read that the Ann Arbor Police Department's promise to "make as many arrests as are necessary to shut (the Naked Mile) down" (Sgt. Michael Logghe, The Michigan Daily, 4/16/01), I am now very concerned for the safety of the runners and spectators. I have seen what happens when the AAPD, or DPS for that matter, try to stop the inevitable. When I was a first-year stu- dent, my father and I attended the Michigan vs. Ohio State football game. When the Wolverines won, 110,000 people tried to rush the field, AAPD and DPS responded by pepper spraying the crowd - not just those rushing the field, the entire crowd. The result was who knows how many injuries and in the end, most of the spectators wound up on the field anyway. I fear a similar melee will occur today if the AAPD makes good on their word to start arresting runners. Nothing is more dangerous than a police officer who cannot do what s/he thinks is his or her job. The only way for arrests to feasibly be made is if police offi- cers start tackling runners or take other dras- tic measures. Violence begets violence, boys in blue. Mix that with a few hundred volun- teers trying to protect the runners (God bless 'em), a few hundred naked runners, and a few thousand drunken spectators and the mix is explosive. The Naked Mile is an innocent way for overworked undergrads to blow off some steam. Thanks to the volunteers and aware- ness of the runners, no real harm would be done to anyone if the cops simply stayed at home. I would merrily partake in the event this year, but I am too afraid. I'm not afraid of having my picture on the internet, being groped by spectators, or even of being arrest- ed. I'm afraid of getting hurt by a fight gone out of control or by an overzealous police officer trying to "protect and serve" the com- munity that, in this case, doesn't want him to. MATT BIEBER LSA senior CW VRO~A Sufny(us . Wi ~AMM CA ?CtTO CA~ 1l O9 CA. c uof:;M OWS AT ALITY VY S1O~IS AT 'MAT $AgKETf TNTU T LI Me OF CAMZA I vi A cEj NIKE ~A6S! Q' _ I '" ~t1A~fE L' SEk KY 4 ' e Bollinger must be ashamed of his own naked body To THE DAILY: University President Lee Bollinger's latest e-mail urging, posted last week en masse to University seniors, and which articulates his "growing concern" about the annual Naked Mile, corroborates, finally, what we have per- haps all worriedly suspected about our illustri- ous university president: Bollinger is, clearly, ashamed of his own nakedness. Now let's not rush to hasty judgment or get catty about this. Nudity is a sensitive issue even in our profligate, anything-goes postmodern milieu and we shouldn't neces- sarily expect our president to prove immune to the harsh and relentless duress of body image woe. He's only a man you know and just as susceptible to the implicit media- reproach of bronzed and godlike MTV spring breakers or cadaverously skinny supermodels as any of us. Underneath Bollinger's rhetorical veneer of rationalism, respect for the law, compas- sion for the University community and peacekeeping savvy is the language of shame, pure and simple. And I believe we are all charged to help our president break free from these society-scribed restrictions. Let's not allow our beloved University's headman to capitulate to the disillusion of diminished self-worth and physical unworthiness th plagues our image-obsessive culture. Let's all urge Bollinger, instead, to cele- brate his body and take unabashed pride in his nudity. I, for one, hope to see him run- ning in the Naked Mile tonight, for his own sake, and my binoculars will be peeled. NICHoLAs HARP Rackham student ATTENTION: INTERESTED IN A POSITION ON THE DAILY EDITORIAL PAGES COLUMNIST OR CARTOONIST ROSTER FOR SPRING/SUMMER OR FALL TERMS? E-MAIL THE EDITORS FOk MORE INFORMATION. SPRING/SUMMER TERM INQUIRIES: AUBREY HENRETTY - ahenrett@umich.edu FALL TERM INQUIRIES: editpage.editors@umchcedu BAMN cannot lead a new civil rights movement 0 VIEWPOINT A recent mass e-mail announcement for a "national student/youth conference" to the Uni- versity community was sent by the organiza- tion "Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Struggle for Equality" or the most recent title associated with the group known as BAMN. The goals of this conference include everything from overturning all the recent court cases against affirmative action to single-handedly taking on the Supreme Court and building a "new, independent, national civil rights movement." This is a monumental task and clearly a full-time project, even by university student standards. Just what is BAMN trying to accomplish and for whom? BAMN is a largely white socialist group seek- ing a platform for its militant socialist agenda by posturing a so-called "new movement to achieve integration." The problem is, BAMN seems to be creating more problems than it.is solving on the issue of affirmative action. History and facts seem to be lost in any dis- cussion that BAMN raises about its "new lead- ership role" in defending affirmative action or civil rights issues. The civil rights movement ordered integration was to help minorities achieve access to better resources. The end desired was equality, not integration. Integra- tion became a means (tool) to achieve equality. Not vice versa. As an end, integration without a redistribution of resources (wealth, employ- ment, education) is useless. Even today, de facto "Jim Crow" outcomes can be found in what are increasingly segregat- ed urban and suburban areas. Even as BAMN lauds its success in recruiting student support- ers from inner-city schools such as Cass Tech, it remains true that Cass and most inner city Detroit schools are largely segregated and largely black. BAMN has even been banned from recruiting students in a majority of inner city Detroit schools. So while BAMN laments the lack of resources of segregated schools in Detroit, its louder cry for integration leaves these very segregated high schools out in the cold in favor of integration in higher education. BAMN's reliance on "fly by night" crusaders such as Jesse Jackson, who is too busy building a federally funded family enterprise, adds noth- ing to an effective civil rights advocacy. On the contrary, the NAACP (an organization deemed "right wing" by BAMN) has long understood that progress in civil rights on issues of race tory are certainly doomed to repeat it. Militant protest didn't begin with BAMN and history will continue to credit Nat Turner and Malcolm X with being more effective in the realm of militancy than BAMN will ever be. BAMN's tendency to dismiss anyone who disagrees with its values as "right wing opponents" will never build an effective movement to defend civil rights or affirmative action. Too often, an open discussion with opp. nents of affirmative action reveals a deep lack of information and understanding of what affirmative action is and what it is meant to accomplish. Lack of information and even increased levels of bad information become ready ammunition by opponents of affmna. tive action due to the emotive and often offen- sive directives taken by the BAMN organization. The issue of affirmative action is valuable to opponents and supporters in environment where there is equal access information on this controversial subject. An effective defense of affirmative action is not achieved by simply shouting down the objec- tions of its opponents. Numerous protections for consumers were initially met with vehe- ment opposition by business until a combined government and community education and to seek to fulftill o rain si frbyb the Kyoto~ Prowcl, ~4IL$V&1~ &Ut. l xiVREU !?GGV%'f E 311 Y4V "'