41 4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 30, 2001 OP/ED olbe £kw niag 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily.letters@umich.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 (( New York City's historic refusal to shut up is one of the national treasures that some newly minted sunshine patriots wish to bulldoze under the rubble of Lower Manhattan." - From AI Giordano's article "Never shut up, New York," a ppearing in the Oct. 25 issue of The Nation. von s+ok- b6 . r' / 6 my1 idea..' Zd a t, a .4- m1 C 4 i2 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. L JII 41 ® won ried how -N,' s ha~s hdf~ed e e\jtCeoC.. I Reforming student activism: A modest proposal AUBREY HENRETTY NEUROTICA A tudent activism on this campus is overblown. Sure, Fkthere's a lot of sign-wav- ing, rhetoric-chanting and fist-shaking, but these minor aberrations fade into the background faster than you can say x "hell no." Face it, all you burgeoning cause-hawkers: Your pretty signs, your bullhorns and your shouting aren't cutting it anymore. Your methods are passe. And if you want my support, you'll have to be a little more creative. One fresh idea for campus activists to consider is setting themselves (not to be confused with anyone or anything else) on fire. Now this is a good way to get my atten- tion. Fire is almost always cool, especially when it's nearby and safely contained. And just think what it could do for the cause! ("Hey! Did you hear about that Students Against Syphilis guy who set himself on fire?") I guarantee the student body would appreciate this kind of valor ("Dude! Check out the blisters on that guy!"). Finally, no one would get hurt except the noble activist himself. You say you want a revolution? Prove it. While setting fire to yourself is an excel- lent way to cast your cause into the spot- light, it only works once. After that, you've got to get off your extra-crispy ass and take some real action lest some other, more pas- sionate masochist steal your thunder. Fol- low-through is key to overcoming Joe Public's gnat-like attention span and it's a difficult concept for many campus activists to grasp. Take, for example, the small faction of militant conservatives pushing for the aboli- tion of the Women's Studies department. They talk big, asking tough questions like "What about Men's Studies?" and making bold, poignant statements like, "Feminism worked, bee-yatch," but I have yet to see them take action. What're you waiting for, boys? I suggest you go out and purchase subscriptions to "Good Housekeeping" and "Family Circle'' magazines for everyone in the Women's Studies department. Have them airlifted to Lane Hall and ceremoni- ously dropped each month when the moon is full. Hire Laura Bush to hand-deliver each one. Let's see a bit of that colle'ge essay originality that got you into the University in the first place. Not to pick on the right-wingers; the campus left is just as guilty of using out- moded activist techniques. They told us independents lots of scary things during last November's election debacle - most of them containing the phrase "a vote for Nader is a vote Bush" - rather than giving us five good reasons to vote for Al. Hash Bash was a step in the right direc- tion (thousands of people smoking down in broad daylight to spite the law is just the kind of innovation I'm looking for), but even "high noon" is becoming old hat. What can be done to make this event more cut- ting-edge? How about calling in a major snack company to sponsor it? ("Hash Bash, brought to you by Hostess!") I realize that some bleeding-heart, anti-American, radical commie liberals may object to "selling out" to such a large organization, but I would challenge any of them to refuse the free cream-filled chocolate cupcakes that would inevitably accompany such an agreement. Remember: It's for the greater good. I hear the Greek' system has been sending its boys to seminars aimed at combating the sexual harassment and date rape rampant in fraternities. This sort of "action," while slightly better than nothing, is hardly an effective way to eradicate the problem. If the Greek higher-ups were really concerned about it, they would simply issue police- grade stun guns (or, say, pinking shears) to all the fine, upstanding young women who frequent their free-beer-and-booty-dancing weekend gatherings. Problem solved. And then there are the Jesus people. (No, I am not referring to the campus Christian community. Please do not attempt to hold a prayer vigil outside my room or stone me to death on sight. Thank you.) The Jesus peo- ple are the amiable bunch that stands out in the Diag with signs so large, the' complete- ly obscure the front of the Grad library. They hand out informative pamphlets about your (and my!) personal descent in to the fiery pit of Hell. Call me a purveyor of blas- phemy, but I think these devout doctrinaires should follow their leader's lead, lose the signs and spend more time hanging out with the tax collectors and prostitutes. Besides being a great P.R. move, it'd be a lot more fun than hollering "salvation" at jaded col- lege students day in and day out. Hey, it might even teach them a little something about the art of persuasion. I I Aubrey Henreitv can be reached via e-mail at ahenrett@umich.edu Berkeley's wild weeks of protests, censors and thieves GEOFFREY GAGNON G-ot x- M n a campus brim- ming with social activism and a i history of open minded- ness, signs have emerged this month that the sanctity of free speech at the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley may be endan- gered. Civil liberty advocates and free speech proponents nationwide have watched with interest and caution the debates that have swirled in the past month surrounding the appropriateness of speech in the wake of Sep- tember's national disaster In a pair of contentious cases that strike at the very nerve of the free exercise of speech, student editors at The Daily Californian - the campus newspaper at Berkeley - are taking defiant stances in the face of controversy and criticism. The debate jumped from the pages of The Daily Californian on Sept. 18 when the paper ran the syndicated column of Darrin Bell who had depicted the terrorist pilots of the air- planes downed in last month's tragedy standing in flames symbolic of hell. The cartoon immediately touched off a firestorm of controversy that found its way to the university's student assembly, where a measure that threatened The Daily Californian with an outrageous $8,000-per-month increase in rent for the offices the independent newspa- per rents from the assembly was proposed. Though the threat of financially penalizing the independent newspaper was later removed before the motion moved to a vote, the fact that the Associated Students of the University of California - Berkeley, the school's official stu- dent senate, would consider stifling the free speech of the campus daily should raise eye- brows on campuses nationwide. Rarely does a student-run campus forum need to fear being silenced by its peers in stu- dent government who usually operate with similar motivations of student service. But by threatening to manipulate rental agreements in an obviously coercive attempt to extract an apology from the paper, the student senate considered a frightening form of censorship to say theleast. Now, I should say quiet clearly that I make no claims in defense of any cartoon that incenses, insults or in any way contributes to fear or anxiety on campuses - especially in light of last month's tragedy. The cartoon may have been run in poor taste and the edi- tors' response to the complaints it generated may have been insensitive; nevertheless, to see an elected body of campus leaders threat- en to silence a newspaper in such a way should make us all stop and take note of the potential abuse of power. In the end, ASUC passed a rather symbolic resolution that still called for a dramatic show of apology on the part of the newspaper. The student senate voted with an 11-7 vote to demand a front- page apology from the newspaper and urged its staff to seek sensitivity training. The paper's editor in chief has said that the controversy has done nothing to change the editors' decision to refuse an apology for the cartoon. But things refused to quiet down for The Daily Cal as last week free speech oppo- nents stole hundreds of newspapers after bandit censors took issue with an advertise- ment placed by the Ayn Rand Institute. Five years ago as Californians weighed in on Proposition 209, The Daily Californian saw some 22,000 papers stolen in response to an editorial. And even last year after conserva- tive media-monger David Horowitz placed an ad in the paper, The Daily Californian found itself in the middle of a wild debate and another case of stolen newspapers. The rogue criminals last Wednesday declared that they "will not allow business as usual to continue." Sadly, even in a time of heightened aware- ness of freedoms, the type of censorship that is becoming commonplace in Berkeley is beginning to look like business as usual. Geoffrev Gagnon can be reached via e-mailatggagnon@umich.edu. -1 I V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Americans fail to appreciate their unique freedoms TO THE DAILY: Monday's edition of The Michigan Daily made me seriously question the native born American's appreciation for his own nation. I agree that one of America's greatest virtues is freedom of speech and freedom of the press. That is exactly one of the reasons that enables us to have a functioning democracy. Likewise, the lack of this freedom is one of the reasons many of the Middle Eastern regimes have failed at democratization. However, all this anti-U.S. rhetoric seems sickening to the point where I start believing with all the American imperfections and mis- takes of foreign policy, you would not want to live anywhere else in the world. The fact is that it is easy to be critical when all you ever experienced is life in America. But those of us who were lucky (or unlucky) enough to see more of the world, know how fortunate we are to be here. If you are so sym- pathetic toward Afghan or Palestinian extrem- ists, why not move closer to your "brothers in arms"? Oh, you don't want to? I wonder why. JULIA SHERSHAVIN LSA sophomore 'Leftists' must realize benefits of capitalism will allow economic growth rates, as seen in formerly destitute countries like South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand. On the other hand, leftists like Goldstein should notice that socialist or non-capitalist countries like North Korea and Cuba have low growth rates, and only have poverty, repression, and stagnation to show for it. Take a snapshot of a typical South Korean shopping at a diverse mall (capitalist) and a typical North Korean (socialist) digging in the mud, and ask yourself which person lives in freedom. This leads us to our current foreign policy crisis: Has anyone wondered why Asian coun- tries were able to modernize and Arab countries are replete with revolutionary fervor? The answer is, some Arab countries like Egypt attempted to modernize in the 1960s, however their form of modernization manifested itself in crackpot socialist economic policies. Further- Am UMm A*