4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, January 18, 2002 OP/ED o he £ibgw atij 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily. letters@umich.edu NOTABLE QUOTABLE -- BILuoNS of oLLD, CoEr UP'S, p CAU R I n aaUaL C StOVE IEZM All OV Q t7 Q Q DU ' 1~$ EONSCANDIq 9 EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER Editorial Page Editors 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. We think that people are able to distinguish between Osama and the rest of the family." I MTEDTOEY '4E WKAE ______AbUT THE PRETZEL.. DRTOS? ,f1W,, - Juerg Brand as quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Brand is the lawyer of one of Osama bin Laden's 53 siblings, Yeslama Binladin who is planning to launch a fashion label. Hey language requirement, wanna take this outside? REBECCA ISENBERG ONE TURNTABLE AND A MICROPHONE ave you ever sat in your foreign language class dumbfounded? Desperately trying to understand what your professor is saying as she speaks to you like you've spoken this lan- guage for years. Even if it's your first day. Well let me assure you that you're not alone. Maybe you're like me. I can't seem to grasp more than 'Mi piace nuotare' - which I think means 'I like to swim' in Italian. But I can never be too sure. You see, as a sophomore in LSA, I'm struggling with my lan- guage requirement. The one that demands that I achieve fourth semester proficiency in the for- eign language of my choice before I graduate. However, I grapple with this requirement daily as I attempt to teach my 19-year-old brain to learn the ins and outs of the Italian language - from a professor speaking only in Italian. The language requirement is a thorn in my side. Why? Well ... Some people pass out of their language dur- ing the orientation placement tests. These peo- ple are lucky. However, I would have to advise that there be a warning given to the incoming freshmen about the importance of this test. If I had known the consequences of not racking my brain for every morsel of French vocabulary I had ever learned in high school, maybe I wouldn't have taken this test so lightly. If I had known I would have to surrender my schedule to my language requirement or that I would spend the next two years crowded into the basement of the Modern Language Building four days a week, I promise you I would have taken this more seriously. The language requirement is the only subject within LSA that takes up two years of your life without being your major. Of course you can choose any language you want but then you are forced to take four semesters of that language with no leeway. In addition, your ability to learn languages doesn't really matter. It's a fact that some students' brains don't register foreign 'lan- guages as well as others. I may have a hard time and need to go slowly while the girl sitting next to me might be ready to whiz through conju- gates and subjunctives. What bugs me about this is that in other fields students are not forced to take a class from level one to level four. If you're bad at chemistry you just don't take it. You aren't forced to train your brain the inner workings of the entire periodic table. My other gripe is that most students don't have the proper background education in Eng- lish to learn a foreign language at such a high level. Most students don't even know the basic grammar rules of English which can be confusing when learning the grammar of a whole different language. And if you start in a level 101 at the University then most likely the professor is going to speak only in the lan- guage you are taking. So if you can't under- stand what she's talking about in English then how can you understand what she's talking about in Russian? It's tricky, I tell you. Maybe I'm just biased because I'm an English major, but I think that it may be more important that students take more English classes than so many foreign language classes. Many students can technically graduate with little back- ground in English literature and essay writing. However, these students will be perfectly able to give a full report on every German classic novel - in German. Not that I have anything against German literature, but somehow this seems askew. Just for the record, I'm not saying that the language requirement should be taken away. I understand why we should all have to learn a foreign language. I recognize the importance. However, my beef with the requirement is that it's too strenuous. People whose brains don't register and recognize other languages with ease should not be forced to reach such a higher level of proficiency. Those who really have a passion for languages - be my guest. The truth of the matter is that the best way to learn a language is to be fully immersed in it. This would require being around people who speak your language of choice 24 hours a day, not simply four hours a week. Better yet, it's much easier to learn another language as a child when your brain is developing and is more malleable. Recognizing these facts, I would argue that instead of making students like me struggle to learn Italian politics - in Italian - why don't we just loosen up the requirement a bit. 'S'il vous plait'. 0 0 0 6 Rebecca Isenberg can be reached via e-mail at risenber@umich.edu. V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR B-School jobs important for all To THE DAILY: I admit, I rarely read the Daily. And when I do, it's usually for the crossword puzzle. However, I had to respond to the In Pass- ing presented Monday ("B-School students: You'll get no tears from me"). As a BBA in the Business School program, I am used to the "greedy business school" stereotype often used to typify University of Michigan Busi- ness School students. Is it accurate? For some People, perhaps. But for a member of the Daily edit board, which is a consistent champion of student's rights and defender of anything evil, to bla- tantly stereotype and blindly categorize every Business School student is ridiculous and hyp- ocritical - lines like "if jobs are so scarce maybe their time could be spent doing a little soul searching" and "it's not that important that a few grads won't be going to live in New York City at salaries starting in the hundreds of thousands" are ridiculous and laughable. Please, a little homework or an attempt to understand what you're talking about wouldn't kill you! Why is it important when Business students can't get jobs? Because, for example, when investment banks hire analysts and associates, (30 percent and 17 percent of BBAs and MBAs respectively, according to the UMBS annual report) companies can acquire capital more eas- ily - which means they grow. When companies grow, they hire more people at all levels (yes, this includes the working class!). Sure, these people get com- pensated well - but wouldn't you expect exceptional compensation packages for work- ing 100-hour weeks with' aneducation from a top-tier institution? Exactly. JESSICA CASH LSA senior The writer is Vice-President of the Michigan Student Assembly MSA 'irrelevant; 'out of touch' To THE DAILY: Reading the Daily article ("MSA pass- es resolution about the Michigan Student Assembly resolution in favor of detained local Muslim leader" 1/16/02) has con- vinced me of a few that about MSA. A) They are irrelevant B) They are out of touch C) They are wasting my money Perhaps I have always known that they were the first two things and failed to admit it to myself; however, allocating $500 to a symposium is drawing the line. Regardless of Haddad's plight, the practi- cal matter is that he has nothing to do with this university and should be outside the MSA's jurisdiction, not to mention its list of priorities. I guess I didn't have a prob- lem with the MSA living in its own little world, though, until they started wasting my money. Didn't we just pass a fund increase of $1 to the MSA? Not that it is a big expense, but please guys, spend it on something that benefits the student popula- tion. The MSA is not an avenue to advance your own personal agendas, so please try and focus. NATHAN CAMPBELL LSA junior MSA's leadership to blame for poor student-city relations To THE DAILY: I write in response to Michael Grass's essay ("Whose Ann Arbor?" 1/16/01). Grass writes that the Michigan Student Assembly has been "mired in petty political bickering for years and has been unable to address student issues off- campus". I would suggest that this is rather a lack of MSA's administrative will and leader- ship than the fault of the entire Assembly. Less than three years ago, students were reg- ularly appointed to City Council committees, commissions and task forces. I, along with other MSA representatives, working in concert with the Mayor established a process that included student representation. This plan, which had it been followed by the current MSA administra- tion, would address many of the complaints that Grass addresses. Rather than blame the Assem- bly as a whole (even though the Assembly bears some responsibility for lacking the ability to fol- low-through on well developed projects devel- oped by former representatives), place the blame where it belongs - on the shoulders of an inex- perienced, politically motivated MSA adminis- tration which neither values (or uses) the vast wealth of experience held by current or former members of opposition parties because they are more interested in what they can accomplish and then tout in the next semester's elections than they are for real student progress. ANDREw L. WRIGHT Alumnus The writer is aformer MSA representadtveand MSA City Liaison and is a member of the Downtown Development Authority Citizen's Advisory Committee. V VIEWPOINT March with a Purpose on MLK Day BY JESSICA CURTIN AND AGNES ALEOBUA This year on Martin Luther King's birthday we march with a purpose. Martin Luther King Day must no longer be a time when pompous speeches soothe us while inequality and injus- tice fester. Now is not the time for hollow com- memorations celebrating Martin Luther King's struggle for integration and equality in America. Now is the time to take up that struggle and build it energetically. The last civil rights move- ment won equality before the law and outlawed Michigan are currently under consideration by the entire Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati and will be in front of the US Supreme Court over the next year and a half. The outcome of these cases will be felt around the nation. Our march must say to the judges who will decide affirmative action's legal fate and to American society as a whole - we will not accept a return to the segregated conditions which gripped the University and other institu- tions of higher education before the first Civil Rights Movement won affirmative action. At the same time, this MLK march is also a er, of beacon of knowledge while capitulating in deeds to the ugly racist tradition of marginaliz- ing black, Latina/o andNative American peo- ple. Only leaders unequivocally committed to the integration of higher education are accept- able for our nation's great schools. We demand that the next University president be on record unequivocally in defense of affirmative action. We will accept no less. Ours is a time when the US government openly claims racial profiling of Arabs to be its policy, when affirmative action to kill and die in the armed forces is assumed and affirmative ,I m