4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 16, 2001
OP/ED
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420 MAYNARD STREET
ANN ARBOR, MI 48109
daily.letters@urmich.edu
EDITED AND MANAGED BY
STUDENTS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SINCE 1890
GEOFFREY GAGNON
Editor in Chief
MICHAEL GRASS
NICHOLAS WOOMER
Editorial Page Editors
NOTABLE
QUOTABLE
Te weak are
always at the mercy of
those that are stronger.
There's an old saying:
God created man, but
Colt made them equal."
-David Cox, a lifetime National Rifle
Association member, as quoted in the
Los Angeles Times commending the
Fullerton-based pro-gun lobby that has
rented 300 billboards across Californiq
which bear the message "Society is safer
when criminals don't know who's armed."
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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.
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Beyond the banal: First-year seminars exposed
AUBREY HENRETTY NEUROTICA
recently received a Ah, the first-year seminar ... a group of 15-r
personal e-mail from 20 wide-eyed freshpeople paired with a wise,r
Evans Young, assis- mentorly professor who would ease them gently r
tant Dean of the College of into the harsh realm of academia. Small classes,a
Literature, Science and the personal attention ... it'd be just like high t
Arts, that went something school, only with small classes and personal 1
like this: attention. There would be profound conversa-
"Dear current/former tion, dramatic pauses and widespread chin t
first-year seminar partici- stroking.N
pant: Our records indicate that you are/were at At least, that's what it said in the booklet.
some point enrolled in a (few) first-year semi- Things didn't quite work out that way in "
nar course(s) here at the University. We are my first-year seminar English class. Putting
very interested in hearing what you aside suspicions that my professor was a Mart-F
think/thought about it/them, so we've set up ian, I still don't think she liked us much. Her
this on-line survey. Please fill it out. Love, eyes could - and I do not mean this
LSA Undergraduate Education Assistant Dean metaphorically - bore a hole through even i
Evans Young." the thickest skull in 1.5 seconds flat. When N
I didn't fill out the survey. I couldn't. The she didn't look vaguely annoyed, she looked t
questions were too general, too open for misin- specifically annoyed. But who could blame I
terpretation. But since I am never one to ignore her? We students were certainly no match fort
a personal e-mail, I feel I owe Assistant Dean the green-but-eager young intellectuals pic-e
Young (and anyone pondering the first-year tured in the booklet; we were a bunch of inar-N
seminar experience) a few words of explana- ticulate just-out-of-high-schoolers, full of
tion: So here they are: Interpret as necessary. ideas but lacking technical know-how. If she1
You remember first-year seminars from wanted to engage us in meaningful dialogue,c
Freshman Orientation; they had their own little she was going to have to teach us something
booklet, separate from the course guide. They about it first. And that wasn't going to be anyr
had colorful names like "Psych. 192: The Psy- fun.C
chology of the Zoot Suit," "Geology 157: All Of course, "fun" takes on a whole new f
About Mantle" and "Philosophy 188: Knowing meaning when you're an English professor. t
You Know that You Know, Ya' Know?" They There's a wide misconception that English I
fulfilled valuable distribution requirements like professors are born with psychoanalytic read-
"Race and Ethnicity" and "Introductory Com- ings of "Hamlet" in their hands. On the con-
position." trary, I think most English professors used to be
A different view at a familiar school
normal people. They were undergraduates with
minds of their own. They defied convention,
rejected old interpretations and wrote papers
about it. They got C-pluses from tyrannical
teachers who just didn't understand. They
longed to infiltrate and overhaul the system.
Then, in grad school, their professors locked
them in dank, murky basements where there
were large rats and refused to feed them (the
grad students) until they started using words like
"germane" on a regular basis.
I like to think this is what happened to my
professor.
So, did I learn anything from this course?
Sure. I learned how to stand proud at two
inches tall. I learned that being persistently
wrong ("You are grasping at straws! There is no
way the tabby cat had an Oedipus complex!
No!") is more interesting than being apathetical-
ly right ("Oh, puh-lease, how banal"), to
embrace the mundane and to appreciate people
who smile.
I promised myself I would never call a fel-
low human's thoughts "banal." Not even if she
deserved it.
In the end, I took my English credits and
ran. Traumatic though my experience was, it
didn't kill my interest in the field of English. Far
from it ... There are too many conventions left
to defy, papers to write and C-pluses to earn.
That said, I'm thinking I'll pass on grad school.
I
Aubrey Henretty can be reached
via e-mail at ahenrett@umich.edu.
GEOFFREY GAGNON G-oLOGY
ust above the spot
where the Bear
Mountain Bridge
Sspansthe Hudson River
between Poughkeepsie
and New York City, my
friend Ben's school sits
like a stone gray fortress
in the New York hills.
One of my very best
friends from high school,
Ben left little doubt where he wanted to go
to college and nobody was especially sur-
prised when he headed to the East Coast.
That was three years ago and although
we exchange e-mails, I haven't seen Ben
more than a handful of times since the night
before he left for college when we walked
from his house to the bay in our hometown.
We talked that night about where we might
be in four or five years and how things
would change. Then Ben climbed to the top
of the metal railing that separated the side-'
walk from the water and dove headfirst into
the black waves. The next day he left for
school.
It's a familiar adage these days to say
that our lives have changed in the last month
- in many ways I'm sure that they have.
But this notion of change seems relative. I
hadn't given much thought to what Ben and
I talked about that night by the water until a
few weeks ago when I really began to won-
der how much things were changing for
Ben.
True to campuses all across the country,
the students at Ben's school have been trans-
fixed on the events of the last month. The
terrorist attacks in nearby New York City,
the military response launched in recent
days and the outpouring of national pride
and unity are themes that haven't escaped
the students who sit in class with Ben each
day. It's just that Ben and his classmates
have watched with a different sort of interest
from a campus that is more than just a col-
lege campus in the traditional sense.
The United States Military Academy at
West Point - an "institution devoted to the
arts and sciences of warfare" - where Ben
and his fellow cadets have followed the
news of the last month seems a far cry from
the world we experience here at the Univer-
sity.
At the nation's oldest continually occu-
pied military post, times like these blur the
lines between college campus and Army
base. Cadets carry books to class while mili-
tary police secure the gates and restrict
entrance to "official business:."
Ben told me that things felt different in
subtle ways, that a seriousness of purpose
had come over the place. Still, Ben was
quick to remind me that it would be well
over a year before he and this year's gradu-
ating seniors would be eligible to join the
ranks of fighting soldiers and that any sort
of ground war seemed unlikely. He told me
that he was certain that the future hung
heavy on everyone's mind, but that few
cadets were talking about what might hap-
pen.
That seemed strange, because when I
saw Ben this past summer all we talked
about was the future - but of course the
future was different then, when international
conflict was a term used to describe what
happens in other countries.
Set to graduate this spring, Ben seemed
to play the role of college senior fairly well
this past summer. He talked about receiving
his commission and beginning his mandato-
ry five-years of service with a sort of anx-
ious anticipation. We smiled about his
prestigious future as a military officer, about
a long career in the Army or a cushy civilian
job in a few years. His options were envi-
able. That of course was this past summer
when combat scenarios and battle plans
seemed like they were limited to the sterile
situations he studied in his classes or read
about in his books.
For the first time since he and I stood by
the water three years ago and wondered if
our lives would change I began to think that
they really could.
These days the hypothetical seems a bit
more possible - a fact that Ben admitted
when he explained how the tone of their
preparations had been shifting. From dis-
cussing situations of peace-keeping opera-
tions to focusing on managing platoon- sized
groups in the field, Ben explained that
lessons seemed to be changing.
But I told myself not be surprised. Every-
one's lives were changed last month right?
Maybe some will be changing more than oth-
ers.
Geoffrey Gagnon can be reached
via e-mailatggagnon@umich.edu.
V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Why we must atone;
vigil today at noon
To THE DAILY:
Today marks the sixth anniversary of the
Million Man March and the fifth annual
World Day of Atonement, which commemo-
rates those millions of black men who stood
in solidarity for their own sake, and for the
sake of their families and their communities.
At a time when our nation has suffered an
enormous loss of life and hope and inspira-
tion, let us all stand in atonement for the lives
lost on foreign lands. Let us all: black, Lati-
no/a, Native American, white, and Asian,
stand together in solidarity for our own lives,
personal responsibility and reconcile within
ourselves what is right and what is just.
Please join the Black Student Union in a
silent atonement vigil in front of the Michi-
gan Union between noon and 12:30.
PANTHER McALLISTER
LSA senior
The letter writer is speaker of the
Black Student Union.
MSA delegation is
always 'professional'
To THE DAILY:
Upon reading a recent viewpoint in The
Each and every school that has attended the
conference contributes to the information shar-
ing aspect of the conference, very few as profes-
sional and knowledgeable as the delegates of the
University of Michigan. Issue sessions attended
and facilitated by the University of Michigan
ABTS delegation always proved to offer sug-
gestions to the rest of the Big Ten and provide
interesting perspectives ftom their conference
counterparts as well. The University of Illinois,
in my opinion from several years of student
government, is often in contact with the Michi-
gan Student Assembly as we value their opinion
and expertise.
The University of Minnesota conference this
passed weekend was my sixth conference over-
all. I can honestly say that a passion for student
government follows the MSA delegation where
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