4 -The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, November 27, 2001 OP/ED 0 c~bz 1Mkbcligtuu Otilg 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 '(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 editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. Coyk~idtteAca o~tYVeA l41i eof A~ Qatr\ ' a C e OS wets. H W, 9uoiec& $oit "Atn Secv\i5 smce. IY l5 .st J r- / . ® ) 0 4 J) td p .r yy) 1 i n i c, 6 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. 0 0 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 LETTERS POLICY The Michigan Daily welcomes letters from all of its readers. Letters from University students, faculty, staff and administrators will be given priority over others. Letters must include the writer's name, phone number and school year or University affiliation. The Daily will not print 0 ...1