4 -The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, November 27, 2001
OP/ED
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'(We're horrified
by the news. We
have to act soon or
someone will exploit
the situation in this
country. Scientists
cannot be trusted to
act responsibly."
- Bruno Quintavelle, director ofthe
Pro Life Alliance, as quoted in the London-
based Daily Telegraph, reacting
to the claim that scientists in Worcester,
Mass. have cloned the first human embryo.
Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's
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necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily.
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SWF seeks cultural identity, adequate rent funds
AUBREY HENRETTY NEUROTICA
othing gets me
thinking about
i: my heritage
quite like Thanksgiving,
a holiday commemorat-
ing that lovely historical
period wherein a bunch
of people who looked
vaguely like me con-
quered a great ocean and
brought disease, corsets and Christianity to
the New World. ("Thanks, guys," said the
noble savages. "We needed that.") Pumpkin
pie, anyone?
None of my forebears were here for that
mess. They were still scattered about Europe
and the Middle East, likely participating in
holy wars and bad fashion trends of their
own. They came from six different countries
and had interesting accents and difficult-to-
pronounce surnames. They came to the
United States, checked the old ways at the
dock and encouraged their children to adopt
the amorphous ethnicity that is "American."
The concept of ethnic pride baffles and
fascinates me. To be able to point to a place
on a map or a group of people who - to the
untrained Western eye - look like they
could be related and say, "I identify with
that" is mysterious and romantic to someone
like me, someone whose idea of a cultural
bonding experience often takes place around
a Monopoly board at 2 a.m. with a three-
liter bottle of Faygo on one side and a movie
nobody's watching on the other. Yes! Baltic
Avenue! Sixty bucks? I'll take two.
What is heritage? Is it hanging out in my
Lebanese grandmother's kitchen all day,
making .stuffed grape leaves over gossip? Is
it laughing with my friend Zeina at the poor,
misguided trendies who would buy mass-
produced watery gray hummus from Whole
Foods? Can you imagine what they would
say to me if I sauntered into a Lebanese Stu-
dents' Association meeting to inquire about
possible membership? Me, with my dishwa-
ter locks and blue eyes? I can. "Oh, you
must be looking for the Ninth Reich of the
Aryan Sisterhood. They're meeting next
door."
I'd get over it. After all, I'm only a quar-
ter Lebanese. Maybe I should try getting in
touch with my German roots, instead ... no,
the only German words I know are "Reich"
and "sauerkraut," and I'm not particularly
fond of sauerkraut. Let's see, what else have
we got? Well, I have an Irish last name, but
there haven't been any authentic Irish peo-
ple in my family since the 1800s. I'm also
parts English and Welsh, but I hear they
don't like each other much. Wouldn't want
to get in the middle of anything. My grand-
father's mostly Lithuanian, but the Lithuan-
ian Pride movement is still in its infant
stages. We'll have to see how that one pans
out.
No matter how much I research German
or Lebanese or Irish history, I still feel like
an outsider. I feel silly and conspicuous at
cultural events; I am genuinely interested,
but my presence seems somehow intrusive.
I'm sort of like a self-aware tourist, wearing
my ethnic ambiguity around my neck like a
big camera with a Mickey Mouse sticker on
it.
Logic would follow that if I can't
embrace any of these mother lands, I must
just be American. But I'm not sold on that,
either. I feel American in the sense of
Memorial Day barbecues and fireworks on
the Fourth of July, firm in the conviction
that the Boston Tea Party was the most
poignant and innovative act of war of all
time. However, when it comes to this coun-
try's leadership, corruption is as American
as can-shaped cranberry sauce. And if
laughing sardonically when the president
speaks for ten minutes without actually say-
ing anything makes me un-American, I will
wear that label with pride.
Perhaps this sense of global vagrancy is
just melodrama. Perhaps I should recognize
my missing ethnic identity as the lost cause
that it is, stick to my bad similes and my
turkey and lie awake at night thinking about
something more pressing. But I don't think
culture-envy is all bad. In lieu of ethnic
bonds, real or imagined, you find there are
other ways to connect with people. Like col-
lapsing in a fit of hysterical laughter when
you land on Boardwalk - which you don't
own and which has two hotels on it - when
all you've got to your name is Baltic
Avenue and a pink five-dollar bill. Standing
up, taking a bow, declaring victory with a
straight face. Cracking a smile. Conceding
defeat.
There: I identify with that.
6
al
Aubrev Henretty can be reached
via e-mail at ahenrett@umich.edu
A real world education in real world problems
GEOFFREY GAGNON G-oLoGxY
is no secret that stu-
dents find it easy at
times to get lost in the
world they create in Ann
Arbor - a world of ideal-
istic realities and hopeful
aspirations where social
change can be measured in
big ideas and bold plans
put forth in the comfortable
confines of a classroom. Its easy to paint the
world the world beyond State Street and South
University in very distinct shades of black and
white - and do so in convenient 50-minute
blocks of time twice a week with our desks
arranged in a circle.
Before I began spending my Fridays at a
local middle school here in Ann Arbor, I
thought I had public education pretty well fig-
ured out. Armed with a few facts from a politi-
cal science concentration, a few studies I'd
heard of from a sociology class and my own
public school education, I figured I could offer
ideas with some degree of expertise. When I
signed up for a mentoring program at a local
middle school, it was with no hope or idea that
my "profound" understanding of the problems
facing our public schools would be challenged.
After all, my opinions were seasoned with four
years of well-considered academic reasoning
safely conducting miles from the nearest public
elementary, middle or high school.
When I finally bothered to gain a bit of per-
spective by signing on as a mentor at a local
school, I found that the vague understanding of
topics like funding issues and teacher compe-
tence that I had gleaned from coursepack read-
ings and shallow discussion sections couldn't
begin to prepare me for what I saw.
On my very first day at the middle school
and in the very first class I visited I saw a
teacher hand out a letter to be taken home that
stressed to parents that the school was taking
seriously the recent incidents of violence on
campus after students armed with knives were
disciplined the previous day. In subsequent
weeks I've worked with a student as he
devoured a jar of peanut butter supplied by a
special education teacher as he explained that
he hasn't had food available at home in several
weeks. I've watched an eighth grade student
who can barely read explain how lonely he gets
at home and I've heard a teacher explain how
frustrated she gets when she leaves the room
during a test hoping her students will cheat,
only to find that "they can't even figure out how
to cheat."
Scenes like these leave me walking away
from the school ready to cash in the optimism
that's passed around like a currency in classes
here at the University and throw up my hands in
frustration. The problems with education
seemed so much easier to figure out before I
considered kids who go to school afraid of knife
fights or who haven't eaten more than a handful
of crackers and peanut butter in days or before I
saw teachers so disillusioned and frustrated that
they pray for kids to cheat on tests.
I've seen kids with emotional problems dis-
regarded and kids with exceptional talent equal-
ly ignored as my feelings of hopeful assurance
that the right political plans and proper funding
would somehow change the system have slowly
taken backseat to a frustrated sense that makes
me wonder where we should even begin to
tackle a set of issues so big.
Yesterday as I sat with other mentors in the
program that sends University students to area
schools, I listened to another mentor explain
how she had grown frustrated with the middle
school. She told of how she sat in a classroom
with special needs students for hours waiting
for a substitute teacher who never arrived. And
she told us how the event was the last straw for
her, that she was never going back to the
school.
I wanted to tell her that I knew how she felt
- that the problems seemed too tough for a
few kids from the University to solve. But
instead I thought that despite the fact that the
experiences were raising more questions than
they were answering, I was finally getting close
to understanding the complexity of an issue.
The problems I never thought to consider a few
months ago are the ones I can't stop thinking
about now - despite the fact that they grow
bigger the closer I get to them.
The facts these days aren't as clear to me as
they sometimes appear in a discussion section,
and the answers aren't like the ones written in
the coursepack. The problems are real and sur-
prisingly so is my education.
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Geoffrey Gagnon can be reached via
e-mail at ggagnon@umich.edu.
V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Zahr's intention was
to 'take cheap shots
at the Greek system'
TO THE DAILY:
This letter is in response to Amer Zahr's
column "Fraternities and a heightened rape cul-
ture" (11/26/01). I am still trying to decipher
the point Zahr were trying to make in his arti-
cle, other than bashing the Greek system with-
out the proper information. He says that "our
University, unfortunately holds the fraternities
to no standards and to no accountability." I am
wondering what his definitions of standards and
accountability are.
In the three and a half years that I have been
attending this University I have seen every fra-
ternity that has engaged in some illegal or
morally questionable act held accountable for
quently decides on punishment, including
expulsion from the Greek system. They have
adjudicated properly in the past and I am sure
that they will do the same when dealing with
the alleged rapes at the Beta fraternity house.
It is clear that his only intention was to take
cheap shots at the Greek system without even
bothering to find out what really goes on.
ANDREW FINE
LSA senior
Wolverine Access
pales in comparison
to the CRISP system
To THE DAILY:
Few things in a student's life are more frus-
trating than trying to use the new Wolverine
While the concept of online registration is
wonderful and should definitely be implement-
ed, the way it has been executed is poor at best.
Though the system is fine during most of the
school year its crucial use periods during regis-
tration fail miserably. The University needs to
have more servers allotted to this project in
order to allow for the additional load of register-
ing students. In the meantime, they should have
an alternate method of registering while the
community adjusts to the new system.
JANINE COFFMAN
Engineering senior
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