4A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, March 31, 2003 OP/ED RicA 4dga1,d~ 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 letters@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 LOUIE MEIZLISH Editor in Chief AUBREY HENRETTY ZAC PESKOWITZ 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. NOTABLE QUOTABLE He's very kind to Christians." - The Rev. Jacob Yasso, on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his Detroit church and received a key to the city over two decades ago, as quoted by The Associated Press. SAM BUTLER CAI~z-sc SOAPBO-.X bckof - Wre. bo S Lsi/ t After trial, campus will need to reevaluate JOHANNA HANINK PARLANCE 01 OUR TIMES onight at 8 p.m., the Michigan Student Assem- bly's caravan convoy V will be leaving for Washington, toting bus- loads of University stu- dents eager to exact their share of history. They're heading east to be present for Supreme Court arguments in the University's affirmative action case. I'm not going; end-of-semester papers and projects aren't letting me. But the court will be releasing audio tapes of tomorrow's arguments (a move unprece- dented, except for after Bush v. Gore), which I plan to hear. After three years at the University, I'm still fascinated by this case - and a little tired of it, too. I've never known a University of Michigan that wasn't fighting in the courtroom for its admission policies. But while I've faded out from Univer- sity civic life and lost the pulse of the ins and outs of trial groupies (I used to be one), I still feel that the lawsuits have been enough of a part of my time in Ann Arbor to allow me to stake my own claim in them. I think I have a right - and a lot of people here do - to tell a lot of this story, years from now, in the first person. In February of 2001, as a second-semester freshman, I skipped school one day and heard the eminent African-American his- torian John Hope Franklin tell the most absorbing and intense stories I have ever heard firsthand about race in this country. In the time since I sat in the Detroit courthouse that day, the timbre of campus emotional reaction to these lawsuits has changed dramatically. Not long after my experience in Detroit, during my freshman March and April months here, my friends and I would spend hours eagerly connect- ing the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary and its fearless (now graduated) leader to Trot- skyite movements and international bank accounts. The lawsuits were, to us, a cam- pus politics game. But now, only two years later, The New York Times is run- ning full page Op/Ed spreads on the case. The most respected politicians, organiza- tions, businesses and minds in this country have filed briefs and shared opinions. So now it's here. This week, the case will be out of the hands of the intellectual and PR machines grinding out the constant analysis and commentary. After the deci- sion is announced in June, this campus will be a very different place. The antici- pation of the close of this trial has been like the anticipation of a graduation: We're counting down the days, but we're not quite sure what to do after it's over. In September we'll come back to an even more irrelevant Defend Affirmative Action Party and a feisty campus with one less issue to keep it occupied. But if we've learned anything from these lawsuits (and we should have learned a lot), it's that whatever we're doing at the University hasn't closed the gap. The University is still making argu- ments that diversity is good for every- body, but diversity doesn't happen when two different colored people sit in the same room or live in the same hall. It only happens when they talk. Former University president Lee Bollinger once wrote, "Diversity is not mere- ly a desirable addition to a well-run educa- tion. It is as essential as the study of the Middle Ages, of international politics and of Shakespeare ... It broadens the mind and the intellect - essential goals of education." In a Saturday New York Times Op/Ed piece, though, Stanley Rothman discussed the results of a study he conducted in an attempt to verify the University's basic "diversity is good" assumption. He found, using anonymous surveys, that in "diverse" educational environments, stu- dents, faculty and administrators all regis- ter "increased dissatisfaction with the quality of education.", What's become clear over the last few years - and it's taken a long and difficult trial for us to figure this very obvious point out - is that affirmative action, as it's practiced or even imagined, is a half- baked effort. It might be putting students in the seats, but the diversity we're getting out from different-colored people isn't close, for most of us, to the kind that Bollinger envisions. When the trial's over, if all goes well, the University will have some time and resources to spend on phase follow- through - a phase that has to work if we want to convince ourselves that the princi- pal argument for affirmative action isn't overly romantic and naive. While many groups have filed amicus briefs on behalf of the University, there's been growing discussion over the opinions of the individuals behind those groups - most feel uncomfortable with affirmative action. If we win this case, we'll have activist effort to spare. It would most wise- ly be invested in closing the-gap between what most of us say about affirmative action and what most of us think. 101 Hanink can be reached atjhanink@umich.edi: LETTER TO THE EDITOR Panhanders have no right to soliCit in 'U buildings TO THE DAILY: I was checking e-mail in the Fishbowl today when I noticed a large man wandering the room, a bag of plastic bottles in his hand, checking through wasteboxes. I did not think much of it until I noticed him approaching multiple people at random. Mostly I saw people shaking their heads at him and him moving on, but a few peo- ple actually reached into their pockets to give him change. When he approached a set of com- puters near me I overheard him asking for change and then offering to sell drugs. I became quite bothered at this point and motioned for the staff to ask him to leave, yet he left before any confrontation was necessary. I then saw him through the glass windows as he walked down the hallway. He approached more people and received more change. I felt less bothered by him and more bothered by those who so willing- ly gave him change. Giving him money would only ensure that he would remain prowling the room, bothering more people with his panhan- dling. Surely, on the street you can respond to panhandling however you wish, but when in the Fishbowl, please be considerate of the context and those around you, and do not humor such behavior. A person who is willing to ask ran- dom people for money, as good-hearted as he might be, obviously has some problems, might be dangerous, and has no purpose in the Fish- bowl in the first place, especially when he is offering drugs. You might say I'm very uptight and para- noid, but I've seen enough occasions when peo- ple, especially college students, yearn to give sketchy people the benefit of the doubt and regret it later. When in a University building, people should put aside whatever principled or politicized notions they might have regarding the "down and trodden" (this particular man appeared quite healthy in fact) and should not respond to panhandlers. STEVE DANNEMILLER LSA junior 0* YOU WANT TO GEV VENOMOUS E-MAILS FROM PEOPLE YOU HAVE NEVER MET? APPLY TO BE A DAILY cOLUM THIS SUMMER OR NEXT FALL. POTENTIAL SUMMER COLUMNISTS E-MAIL JZPESICK@UMICH.EDA FOR A FALL OLUMN, E-MAIL OPINION@MICHIGANALY.M. 0 0 VIEWPOINT Campus politics needs to avoid extremism BY YUUA DERNOVsKY, Avi JAcoBsoN AND RACHEL RoTH In the past three weeks, the University has become a hotbed of political activism. In addi- tion to the omnipresent representatives of Defend Affirmative Action Party and the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, the overzealous student activists got another excuse to stand in the middle of the Diag and harass the University community: the impending and now occurring war in Iraq. Last Thursday, hundreds of high school students, imitating to detail the hippie protests of the 1970s, stomped around the Diag, hoping to convince the world that war is bad because "Bush is stupid." Across from them stood several members of Young Ameri- cans for Freedom, hoping that their chant "U- S-A" will convince the world that war is good. The majority just stood around and laughed. It is crystal clear that this campus became increasingly polarized in the past few weeks. A more radical rhetoric became part of everyday life, especially evident on the pages of The Michigan Daily. Affirma- tive action, war, budget all find a place in promote further education about Israel and the Middle East on this campus. Sadly enough, however, in the past week, the mainstream pro-Israel community has been grossly misrepresented through the pub- lication of campustruth.org ads in the Daily. These ads, which try to represent the conflict as that between good and evil, do a great dis- service to the pro-Israel cause on this campus. Through oversimplification of a nuanced and deeply complex conflict, these ads only fur- ther polarize the discussion on the Middle East on this campus and intensify emotions between the two sides of the debate. The Daily decided to pull these ads after much negative feedback from the University com- munity. Michigan Student Zionists President Rick Dorfman's explosive reaction to this decision on Monday only further highlighted what is wrong in the divisive and explosive debate on the Middle East. As leaders of the mainstream pro-Israel student groups on this campus, we recognize that it is important to recognize that the Daily has a right to deter- mine its own editorial position. As a private publication, it can choose not to publish opin- ions that are offensive, divisive, and counter- productive, such as these ads. Being a pro-Israel activist is extremely dif- and is further indication of the vile hatred of America that exists within the Palestinian community" (Daily business staffs decision to suspend ads is censorship, 03/26/03) and outright reject this as a position of the pro-Israel com- munity. Like the SAFE divestment confer- ence, which was rejectionist and uncompromising with regards to the dialogue on the Middle East, this type of language is not an acceptable method of political advocacy and should not be tolerated in the future. This is both ineffective as a tool of educa- tion and detrimental to the pro-Israel move- ment because the campus student body does not identify with irrational, extreme views. The pro-Israel community now faces a variety of complex problems on this campus, including a divisiveness on the issue of war and a possibility of intensifying anti-Semitic sentiment, evident in the recent physical assault on a Jewish student in Ann Arbor. Now the immediate goal of the pro-Israel community is to understand its role and direc- tion with regard to the war in Iraq, as it seems to be the pervading issue on campus. Moreover, it is important that the entire campus community does not fall prey to the extremist rhetoric that often finds its place in times of crisis. The best way to 0 THE BOONDOCKS A.ARONMcG-R'L.j[)E-R WAR CovERAG.n 1 T5S LiIKEA REALLY BAD, REALLY BIG-FWA~T MOVIE.. FMD(FlSS WODS hn(1 ,F RnIdri IT'S LIKE WATCHING "THE j PHANTOM MENACE" -