4 -The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, November 14, 2001 OP/ED 7bte Alirigun auiIv 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 ... A merica has historically always had a very specific ethno-cultural core - white, slowly evolved from British and Protestant ..." -Peter Brimelow, author of "Alien Nation," responding Sunday in a written statement on vdare.com to Dr. Stephen Steinlight of the American Jewish Committee, who criticized Brimelow's assertion that non-European immigration damages American culture. REG R[ST a e d .- J Z- w J~ V~ 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. What a shmoo can teach us about class conflict NICK WOOMER BACK TO THE WOOM oday, Americans are involved in two wars. While the public concentrates on the government's murderous invasion of Afghanistan, class war is being waged in Washington, D.C. ..That's not just sectar- ian communist tripe; the progressive - but hardly radical - journalist Bill Moyers declared it last week in The Nation, as he lamented the rash of irresponsible post-Sept. I1 corporate giveaways in Washington. One of the most egregious giveaways has been the House's retroactive repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT, enact- ed during the Reagan era, was a reaction to corporate tax loopholes and intended to force corporations to pay at least some taxes. In the version passed by the House, corpora- tions are entitled to $25 billion in tax refunds; Fourteen corporations (including IBM, General Electric and General Motors) will receive $6.3 billion. "Our business and political class owes us better than this. After all, it was they who declared class war twen- ty years ago, and they who won," Moyers wrote. Moyers' observation is an astute one. Americans need to think about what it means to say "united we stand." More specifically, Americans need to think about who/what exactly is this "we," and contemplate the uncomfortable possibility that there may in fact be certain classes of people whose inter- ests are fundamentally opposed. The current liberal political consensus presupposes that what is in the interest of the wealthiest individuals is ultimately also in the interest of the poorest, but the current liberal political consensus might be wrong. In his book "Class Counts" (Cambridge, 1997), Erik Olin Wright offers the following illustration about how two classes might have totally incompatible interests: In the 1940s comic Li'l Abner, there are only two classes: Workers and capitalists. The capitalists are looking for a community where labor is cheap and settle on the town of Dogpatch, which, it just so happens, has become overrun by a benevolent creature called a "shmoo." Shmoos have the ability to change themselves into anything necessary for human existence but not into luxury items. So a shmoo could turn itself into a sturdy flannel shirt but not a Ralph Lauren blouse. Even better, since the shmoos can multiply themselves an infinite number of times and desire only to serve humans, "in effect, the shmoo restores humanity to the Garden of Eden." Now, let us make the standard assump- tion also made in neoclassical economics that both classes in Dogpatch are composed of "rational agents," that is, everyone is self- interested - neither altruistic nor malevo- lent. What emerges from this assumption is a scenario that is ideal for the workers and awful for the capitalists. Whereas the work- ers have all their needs met and they only have to work for discretionary income, the capitalists would have to make significant investments to make the jobs in their facto- ries enticing enough to the workers, who no longer have to look after their own basic needs. Now suppose that, in addition to allow- ing everyone access to shmoos, it was also possible to limit access to the shmoos, so that only workers or capitalists could get shmoos or no one could get shmoos. How would workers-or capitalists, acting as ratio- nal agents, choose to distribute shmoos? If the workers were rational, their prefer- ences would be ranked like this: 1) Everyone gets shmoos. 2) Only workers get shmoos. 3) Only capitalists get shmoos. 4) Nobody gets shmoos. If the capitalists were acting ratio- nally, their preferences would be almost dia- metrically opposed to the workers: 1) Only capitalists get shmoos. 2) Nobody gets shmoos. 3) Everybody gets shmoos. 4) Only workers get shmoos. "What the story of the shmoo illustrates is that the deprivations of the propertyless in a capitalist system are not simply an unfortu- nate byproduct of the capitalist pursuit of profit; they are a necessary condition for that pursuit," Wright concludes. One real world example of the story of the shmoo would be the case of subsistence farmers in South Africa. Of course, the farm- ers had no use for money (they produced everything they needed), yet they were sub- jected to monetary taxes in order to force them into the labor market. Maybe society and the economy have changed to such a degree that the parable of the shmoo no longer applies, but is this something we should just assume? I think not, especially in light of the astronomical tax breaks our representatives in Washington are handing mega-corporations while the unemployed enjoy no assistance at all. Instead, Americans ought to start thinking critically about the nature of class and its role in their lives. The shmoo might still have a lot to say. Nick Woomer can be reached via e-mail at nwoomer@umich.edu. Y VIEWPOINT Could the ad ministration be watching 'U'? Administrative policy loopholes leave room for civil liberties abuse By ROBERT GOODSPEED Most students take their constitutional right to priva- cy for granted, assuming that their email and telephone conversations, student records, residences and even M- card photos are private. Others are made acutely aware of the importance of privacy: Victims of stalking and sexual violence, political activists and victims of racial profiling all rely on our constitutional guarantee to pri- vacy in their daily lives. The University, hopefully through negligence, has failed to enact effective policies to protect students' privacy. As an example, currently, the University has no clear policy preventing adminis- trators from reading students' e-mail, and no way for students to file complaints if they believe their constitu- tional right to privacy has been violated. The Student Rights Commission of the Michigan Student Assembly has undertaken a review of privacy issues at the University, and we have concluded that in many areas, the University has neglected to address pri- vacy concerns. We believe the administration must address the privacy of student records, students' e-mail and computer files and M-card photos - because all are loosely protected at best. This is not a new issue. Faculty and students have been concerned about the weak and non-existent poli- cies for years. The University's faculty senate created a Civil Liberties Board in 1966 to protect the civil liber- ties of students, faculty and staff. In 1999, that body created a sub-committee on privacy, to investigate how the University might better protect the privacy of Uni- versity faculty - and students. In 2000, after more than a year of meetings, the Civil Liberties Board published the "Civil Liberties Board Report of Privacy and Confidentiality" - a doc- ument that criticized the University's Standard Practice Guide policies, identifying five areas of concern dealing with electronic and other privacy issues. They asked the University to consider creating special Privacy Over- sight and Complaint Resolution Committees. This report has been ignored. On Sept. 25 2001, the Daily reported that University President Lee Bollinger and the administration had completely ignored the report, and that the faculty senate had drafted a letter to "draw Bollinger's attention to their concerns." ("Bollinger asked to respond to faculty concerns, requests," 9/25/01) The administration ignored the letter. Privacy seems to be something the administration versity called milerun@umich.edu. The University spent thousands of dollars to plaster the campus with posters discouraging students from running. Yet a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mail sent to the e-mail group they used to coordinate the effort came up with a press releases and innocuous congratulatory e-mail: Apparently the rest were exempt from scrutiny, and they claimed they fell under the clause protecting pass- words, keys, locks and security procedures under FOIA. After the Naked Mile debacle last year, students used e-mail to try to organize a second, "secret" Naked Mile. Ann Arbor Police and Department of Public Safety officers flooded the area where the run was to begin, raising the specter of e- Privacy se mail privacy for many students. While someth they may have heard about the plans admini legitimately, it raised the issue: Does the applies1 University read students' e-mail? If they do not, are their policies to ensure that Resident a they will not in the future? not info, Currently, there is no policy that their resi unambiguously protects the privacy of all legally ret students' e-mail and computer files stored them intof or transmitted on the University's net- ... wh work. The Standard Practice Guide - the admini set of regulations applying to faculty and staff at the university - contains a brief operates entry on the privacy of e-mail and data, almost bl saying that "personal electronic mail ... is secs considered private to the fullest extent per- - mitted by law." However, it is unclear if this policy includes student e-mail, since the guide only applies to staff. Also, the only federal law governing e-mail has proven an ambiguous protection of privacy at best: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act was written in 1986, and although protects e-mail in transit, it allows businesses and Internet service providers to read their employees' and client's e-mail freely. In this case, it seems unclear whether the University should be consid- ered a government entity, or a provider of Internet ser- vices. If the first, the University is strictly prohibited from reading student e-mail without legal warrants; if the latter, students have few, if any, constitutional protec- tions to privacy of e-mail. Our second concern is the privacy of student records. While the Family Education Rights Protection Act (FERPA) and the University's own policies regarding student records provide fairly strong stan- ten requests, and allows these requests to be postponed for up to 45 days. This length of time is clearly unaccept- able, and must be shortened - students must have timely access to their records for financial, legal and personal reasons, and over a month's delay is unnecessary. In addition to written records, the University main- tains a database of all M-card photos. These photos are available to faculty and staff for "identification purpos- es" and students may request their own photos by mail. The policies protecting the privacy of these photos must be strengthened - the photos can be a tool for law enforcement, but students should be informed of 0 eems to be hing the stration to itself: advisers are med that dents can fuse to let their rooms lie the stration under an blanket of recy. their right. In order to protect the safety of students, protect Constitutional rights, and prevent fraud, students should be told about their right to have this photo expunged from the database after they are issued a card, and the photos should not be available through the mail to either administrators or student seeking a copy of their own photo. Face-identifica- tion technology was used at the last Superbowl to scan the crowd for wanted criminals, and this technology could be used to easily compare the University's vast database of photos with photos taken at political protests, Hash Bash, even the Naked Mile, allowing the Uni- versity to make a positive identification using a photograph alone. Finally, regarding either privacy of electronic data or records, there is no provision for faculty, staff, or stu- dents to file complaints if they believe their privacy has been violated. The faculty senate's Civil Liberties Board recommended the creation of privacy Oversight and Complaint Resolution committees in 2000, an idea we strongly support. No policy, no matter how strong, can be effective without efficient and consistent means for enforcement. The Student Rights Commission believes the Uni- versity can make several changes to dramatically improve the protection of students' rights to privacy on campus. First, create a forceful and comprehensive pol- icy strictly protecting the privacy of student e-mail, files, and web browsing on University computers and networks. Second, create a privacy Oversight and Complaint Resolution committees, as suggested by SACUA in 2000, so that students, faculty and staff will haves n n nntrnriProarn ,ron Eithnir nriv rv is r nnotpaA ,r.;'