4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 16, 2001 OP/ED 0 Cite wticbman 749ativ 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." Ker " . 7 Yt I+ria. r awti" 0: d Y -" .y r ' kir r 100,S /cc F 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. / 0 4 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 4 4 i. . .. .. . . I I