4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, March 22, 2002 OP/ED ~b i rbi&u iji 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 letters@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 JON SCHWARTZ Editor in Chief JOHANNA HANINK Editorial Page Editor 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. NOTABLE QUOTABLE This great center of democracy is truly tainted -by money." - Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc. ) in this week's Economist, shorty after the Senate approved the most expansive campaign finance reform plan in over 30 years. TALEAD TOOK ZT~ rrsio ___I AVE7 TO S A&IT In r1o0? aYOU MIGHTr WANNJA THOMAS KULJURGIS Tf:NTATVELY SPEAKING A RAs: There are better ways to spend tuition dollars JEREMY W. PETERS DON'T MAKE ME COME BACK THERE 44 he next time you're in a residence hall on campus I suggest you take a long, hard look at the numerous resident "advis- ers" the University bankrolls. If you're anything like me, your reaction should be something along the lines of: "My tuition money goes to these people?" I place the word advisers in quotation marks because whom do these people actually advise? I certainly never went to my RA to do any soul searching and I have yet to come across anyone who has. If in fact you are one of these people who seek out the infinite wisdom of your hall mentor, your problems probably run a lot deeper than you realize. I would suggest you seriously consider leaving school all together. RAs aren't trained to deal with any real prob- lem a resident may have and no amount of sensi- tivity training - or any of the other courses they take that are supposed to turn 20 year olds into social workers in a matter of days - will make them capable of handling anything more than cleaning up vomit in the bathroom. Reading over a list of the responsibilities an RA must fulfill to earn his or her rent-free loafing period for an entire school year should make you wonder why the University even bothers posting a job description in the first place. Here are some highlights: "Implementing social programming and demonstrating consistent availability and accessi- bility ... Modeling a commitment to multicultur- alism ... Creating and fostering a community in which all the individuals are respected, while con- tinuing to educate both residents and staff mem- bers on issues of social identity." Could you imagine a hallway like this? First of all, I wouldn't want my RA to be available all the time because that would mean I would have to see him. (And let's face it, the residence hall staff on campus isn't exactly the group of people I'd like to see on the next Temptation Island.) Second of all, "RA availability" is University- speak for "Big Brother is watching." Except in this case Big Brother is not the dominating, Orwellian figure that eyes your every move, it's a socially challenged junior or senior who never quite made that first friend to share an apartment with sophomore year. He or she is bitter and will take that aggression out on you and your friends after "quiet hours." Since we've already established that RAs are in no position to dispense therapeutic advice, what's left for them to do? They can, and often do, patrol the halls looking for people having fun so they can end it promptly. But this basically rel- egates them to the position of dorm tattle-tale and I hardly see the University justifying paying for- mer high school hall monitors to do this alone. Instead, the University tacks on a host of fluff duties like promoting multiculturalism and foster- ing social awareness and call this position an RA. The problem is that no one's interested in the politically-correct package the school is pushing So we're back at hall monitor as a role for RAs now. But remember, we do have something at this university called the Department of Public Safety. They are the only ones with the pseudo- authority to enforce residence hall rules, despite the fear an RA might instill in his or her hallway with the threat of being written up (which doesn't amount to much).' The University is essentially paying RAs to do part of a DPS officer's job, and they're pay- ing people who are utterly inept at doing so. Anyone who thinks RAs are qualified as securi- ty guards needs only to look at the bang-up job they've done with the recent crime wave in Uni- versity dorms. I'll close with brief precis of my experience with an RA. When I moved into my dorm the first day of my freshman year, my roommate and I were greeted by a small, older-looking fellow who offered to help us with some of our bags and informed us that our presence was required at a "mandatory" hall meeting later that day. Of course we skipped that meeting - something for which I have never forgiven myself because I was then unable to run for hall rep and put it on my resume. The next time I saw my RA was three years later at Good Time Charley's. We reminisced briefly about the hall; who had flunked out and who had come out of the closet since. The best thing about him was that he didn't get in our way and we didn't get in his. This unspoken arrangement was something that not only benefited this man who wasn't there, but it also was quite convenient for the 70 other guys in my hall. No one complained. The underlying mes- sage here: The best RA is no RA. Jeremy W Peters can be reached atjwpeters@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Kohen's column displayed ignorance of international affairs; United States' role To THE DAILY: I must say that I am both shocked and sad- dened by the ignorance of international affairs exhibited by Yael Kohen in her column Knocking the French off their high horse in yesterday's Daily. For over a decade, we have lived in a unipo- lar world, and the disastrous results of this fact can be seen around the globe. The American military has taken it upon itself to hold the coun- try of Iraq in continual poverty and destitution. The United States felt that it had the right to intervene in the Balkan civil war and created a situation that is totally unsustainable without international supervision in the process. Most recently, the United States has taken upon itself the right to invade the country of Afghanistan and create a puppet government - something our meddling never allowed the Soviets to do two decades ago - under the guise of "elimi- nating al-Qaida." Unsurprisingly enough, however, the upper echelons of al-Qaida have all managed to escape capture, but since the United States has already accomplished its goal of subjugating Afghanistan, it doesn't seem to care anymore. These are the consequences of our unipolar world. As long as superpowers - or just nations, for that matter - exist, there must be some sort of distribution of power to prevent a single nation from running roughshod over the rest of the world, as the United States does today. The, need for this is made even more clear by Kohen's callous disregard for international sen- timent - a disregard that I fear is quite wide- spread. How obvious does it have to be that if one entity dominates many others, the dominat- ed entities will feel violated (or, in her parlance, "have their buttons pushed")? Nobody, whether individual or nation, likes a bully or an authori- tarian. It is my hope that the United States and Americans in general learn to get over the revoltingly arrogant tendency to ignore moral standards, common sense and international opinion - both that of friends and enemies. Even if people refuse to see this action in the light of being the right thing to do, I would hope that they could at least view it in the context of common sense. After all, one who abuses their friends will soon find themselves without any friends at all and its a big world out there. SEAN CARON Engineering freshman }ryit , f doA fieir t acf rna was filled with half truths and outright lies. No one lashed out at Horowitz when he talked to a majority African American audience in terms of sports, since he obviously thinks that's the only arena blacks perform well in. Horowitz began his. petty name-calling when he figured out that he could not adequately address the questions from the floor. By suggesting that the forum almost "got out of hand," the authors are doing nothing more than trying to cover for the fact that the Michigan Union administration went overboard with the amount of police presence and an actu- al canine which gave us all flashbacks to the summer of 1963 when protesters in Birming- ham, Ala. were confronted with police dogs and water hose. In the past, I have attended other controver- sial public forums, but none of those events were supplied with numerous cops and police dogs. The message that the Union Administra- tion sent is clear: When black students come out to voice their opinions, it's time to bring out the dogs. Is this a community that fosters diversity? Furthermore, all of this negative press is simply trying to take our minds off of the fact that we have racists bigots among us. The hate messages that have been targeted at both indi- vidual students and students of color in general, must stop. Members of the Daily should not play a role in diverting attention away from the real problems. ERIKA DOWDELL LSA senior Daily biased in presentation of White's former criticism To THE DAILY: We find the criticism of interim University President Joe White in Tuesday's Daily to be unwarranted and without merit only two and a half months into his term. In particular, the headline (Business faculty initially gave White low reviews) and first page of the article prove to be an unfortunate instance of misleading, biased journalism. The casual reader quickly perusing the front page might only catch that then-Dean White received poor reviews from faculty members, missing information buried later in the article that these evaluations were conducted six to eight years ago, with consistent, marked improvement since. This article also trivializes his many impor- tant successes at the Business School, including raising the school from mid-level rankings to consistently ranking in the top 10 nationally among Masters programs and top three among Bachelors programs. The article also fails to mention President White's remarkable fundrais- interim president through student/faculty/staff forums at all three Michigan campuses, as well as Monday's-headline-garnering forum on women's issues. Instead of searching for reasons to criticize and sway opinion against the interim President, the Daily could better serve students by encour- aging a permanent solution for the University's top post and its list of recommendations should begin and end with Joe White. KYLE UREK MARK POWERS Alumni Michigan Rew vindicates Daily's BAMVN coverage TO THE DAmY: It may be bizarre to find a defense of the Daily coming from the Michigan Review, but the charges being made by the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary's Agnes Aleobua and Ben Royal are completely off base. In our estimation, the Daily has provided fair treatment and coverage to BAMN, given BAMN's practices on this cam- pus, its standpoints, and its means of furthering its goals. Before BAMN members accuse the Daily of unfair bias, they ought to ask whether they have brought it on themselves. To begin, BAMN takes an absolutist stand that allows no room for disagreement. BAMN believes affirmative action must be defended, as is, with no changes, at all costs. This position is extreme in the utmost. On a diverse campus such as ours, it is not unreasonable to assume that even a progressive mind might believe that affirmative action should be tweaked, altered, amended or even scaled back to cope with cir- cumstances that have changed in the program's 30 year history. Even so, much of BAMN's rhetoric mirrors the words of Miranda Massie from the March 18 Daily (Homing apologizes in retraction letter), "Anybody who claims to be against affirmative action has to confront the basic fact that he is standing up for the re-segregation of higher ed." Not only is this sort of position completely unreasonable in an environment of intellectual openness, but it also smacks of a McCarthy- esque mindset of "Disagree with us and you are a communist/racist." The Daily has an editorial responsibility to call this position unreasonable even if it endorses affirmative action. There is a difference between being progressive and being dogmatic. The Daily deserves further exoneration in its claims that BAMN scares away moderates. BAMN cannot help but scare away moderates on the issue with its extreme rhetoric and strate- pies that rely on nersonal intimidation. Since e