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4A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, April 14, 2003
OP/ED
Ulje £htau ai1g
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EDITED AND MANAGED BY
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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
I guess bad
shooting is conta-
gious. Tonight, it was
like SARS."
- Houston Rockets center Yao Ming, on his
team's loss to the Portland Trailblazers,
as quoted by The Detroit News.
SAM BUTLER IHE SOAPBOX
-k
,9r
0
Summers and the sweatshops of the willing
JOHANNA HANINK PARLANCE OF OUR TIMES
he end of the
Michigan year,
along with the pre-
mature shedding of cloth-
ing (60 degrees is no
excuse for near-nudity),
heralds many things.
With our end-of the end-
of-finals, set at a date so
gloriously early as to be
nearly unprecedented (but for universities set
in picturesque Canada), come two added
sources of worry - both of which are less
than appreciated as final deadlines and exams
close in on us. The lesson: A four-month sum-
mer, in all its glory, leaves some serious diffi-
culties to contend with.
Anxiety No. 1: Finding the perfect sum-
mer sublet or sublessee. From bathroom stalls
to Angell Hall, the campus is now fliered a la
Michigan Student Assembly elections, and
behind each of those fliers is the same level of
selection insecurity advertised by any given
MSA candidate. It's been painful to watch my
friends' own sublet notices advertise rent rates
that are sinking lower and lower by the semi-
week. Everywhere, $350 has been crossed out
to $275, and every day I'm more thankful that
I'm not a part of that constituency which
needs a stronger Ann Arbor Tenant Union
more than it knows. The second lesson?
Apply to Telluride House. It's free and so is
the food. (www.umich.edu/~tellride).
The catch-22 of the summer housing strug-
gle is that it often seems no easier on the other
end of those posters. I'm looking for a sublet
too, but a few thousand miles away in a town
where I'm finding that $300 will buy a cot in a
two-bedroom, ten-person, aging (or more like-
ly just plain aged) hippie compound. One of
the ads I saw offered a deal like this, but on
the upside promised that there was, indeed, a
special room (which the lessee would be more
than welcome to use) set aside for the purpose
of yoga and meditation. My feeling was that
their sense and my sense of good karma
wouldn't really line up.
Unfortunately, there's nothing to do but
whine, and what better place to do so than
one's precious 20 inches of bi-weekly news-
paper space.
(There! My first meta-column. Welcome,
summer, and watch me slack!)
Anxiety No. 2: This one is real and its
problems are serious. It's the question of the
summer job, or, if you're too Type A to deliv-
er pizzas, the summer internship.
When I was a freshman, I had my June-
August gig landed by November. Toward
March, though, I watched my friends fill out
application after application for summer
internship programs that they had no interest
in - but felt compelled to seek. Over the
summer, I later became obsessed with the the-
ory behind the non-paid internship. In the
world of humanities and social sciences, the
freeness of your summer labor seems to corre-
spond to dignity and nobility in the same way
that the relative absurdity of a business school
student's time pricetag corresponds to her
own vision of success.
I worked at the Connecticut Civil Liber-
ties Union alongside legal students who had
received funding from their own universities
to pursue non-profit work instead of corpo-
rate law over the summer. I was happy to do
it, though; I lived at home and it eventually
meant a weekend job, but I loved the work
and the people in the office. I understood
why it couldn't pay.
What I never understood, however, was
why the U.S. Supreme Court couldn't pay.
The Supreme Court internships - along
with hundreds of other federal government
internships - pay nothing. Those are tli
kind of internships that stuff a resume and
eventually land someone a job. But how
many of the qualified and deserving college
students in the country can afford to pick up
and move to Washington for a summer of
Metro riding and expensive everything, for a
pat on the back from a congressman and
another line on the C.V. ("intrinsic bene-
fits")? I know that I couldn't.
If this same Supreme Court doesn't find
affirmative action as it stands at the University
a "compelling state interest," surely both its
justices and the federal government as a whole
would still publicly insist that they value both
diverse backgrounds, racially and socio-eco-
nomically, in federal employees. Yet the peo-
ple whom they are grooming over college
summers to become their employees are only
those kids who already have a lot of money,
feel free to spend it, and uncompelled to
(independently) generate more - or those
kids who sacrifice much more than they
should ever be asked to in order to service this
country and learn something.
This argument is not about the value of
making more money; it's about the value of
opening up prestigious positions to students
without the resources to take advantage of
them right now. It's also about calling these
"internships" what they really are, "volun-
teerships." One would think that the govern-
ment could muster up the funds to pay some
of its most energetic employees at least a
minimum wage. The four-month summer at
the University leaves room for a lot of
opportunity, but the organizations unwilling
to pay their student workers (and which still
get hundreds of eager applications) don't.
The result is a model of the backward
sweatshop: people standing in line for a
great no-paying job.
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6
Hanink can be reached
atjhanink@umich.edu.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Butler's cartoon insensitive,
reflects society's ignorance
of schizophrenia
To THE DAILY:
I am writing in regards to Sam Butler's
cartoon in Monday's Daily (The Soapbox,
04/07/03).
Schizophrenia is a real disease, and
your cartoon was a disservice to the stu-
dents and faculty at the University who
struggle to cope with its effects. Some of
these students may not yet have a name for
what they struggle with. Images of straight-
jackets and comments about "crazy pills"
found elsewhere in the Daily's edition will
not encourage them to seek the help that
they desperately need.
My sister is schizophrenic. Having a
family member with a severe mental illness
has made me more aware of the harm that
jokes can inflict. I've tried to go out with
friends in Pontiac only to hear police in the
area refer to people as "crazies" and listen
to a local radio station mock homeless peo-
ple. It makes me sick.
Our society would rather relegate these peo-
ple to the street than provide the necessary help
for them to get better. I've heard other people
suggest that the public health services don't
advertise their services or make them easily
accessible for fear of being overwhelmed. In
the private sector, severely mentally ill people
are discharged from hospitals before they're
better simply because private insurance often
caps the length of hospital stays at 30 days. A
physician would be accused of malpractice if he
or she discharged a patient halfway through
chemotherapy, but the equivalent for mentally
ill patients is standard practice. I've asked the
University Health Service to cover mental ill-
ness at the same extent as other illnesses. To
date, it hasn't happened. (And Butler probably
doesn't give a damn, but at this university it is
easier to insure a random stranger by claiming
to have a sexual relationship with that person
than it is to insure my own sister.)
The perception of schizophrenia is that
is untreatable and that if you have it, you
end up in a mental hospital for the rest of
advertisement that the Daily printed for the
U-M Computer Showcase. A printed apolo-
gy would be a good step to helping educate
the University campus about the reality of
mental illness.
SARAH BATES
Rackham
Some areas of University
life diverse, integrated
To THE DAILY:-
I do agree somewhat that the student body is
not as diversified and integrated as well as it
could be. When I first arrived in Ann Arbor, I
coined the term" voluntary segregation" for
myself to describe the groups I saw walking
around on campus, separated mostly by ethnici-
ty. My point here, however, is to say that the
University is succeeding in some ways.
I live on the second floor of Betsey Bar-
bour Residence Hall, and we are so integrated
it totally defies the statement regarding what
someone would see walking into a residence
hall (Students voice concerns over campus inte-
gration, 04/09/03). I was amazed at how inte-
grated my hall was. In pretty much every
double on my floor, a caucasian is paired with
a minority. The only ones that were not were
ones where the two people had previously
signed up to live together.
Regardless, the majority of the girls on my
floor, and a few from the third floor, have
become incredibly close friends, and whenever
we all have the opportunity to eat together, you
would find girls that are Chinese, Japanese,
Caucasian, Phillipino, Saudi Arabian, African,
Indian, Pakistani, Native American and Mexi-
can. Now, I would say that is a pretty wide
variety of minorities and the majority sitting
together. Ironically; in our group, the majority
is actually made up of minorities. This proves
that the University's goal of integration is
working, at least in our case.
CINDY CHU
LSA freshman
War protesters, naysayers
on Bush admin. should
mongers. I'm not particularly a Bush fan, and
I may not know more about the situation than
any other student, but I'm smart enough to
trust the people who definitely do know more
about what is really going on in the world.
Bush's Cabinet, government officials and mil-
itary leaders are given far more information
than any of us on these matters and are more
than able to make rational, objective deci-
sions. The president's military advisers have
probably all seen action themselves and/or
currently lead troops. Why would a general
want to put his soldiers in harms way if he
knew it wasn't for a good cause?
Why would Bush want to spend so much
money on the war effort when he knows the
economy is weak? Protesters would probably
answer, "They're idiots." Well, you're an
idiot. Don't believe every conspiracy theory.
Cynicism about the government and
authority in general is popular and highly
overrated right now. Our government isn't
perfect, but it is better than most and is well-
enough informed by the CIA, FBI and other
sources to know how much of a threat Saddam
is to us and that region of the world.
He is a bad man and with that much power
he's dangerous. He never had intentions of com-
plying with any U.N. resolution. He had a stran-
glehold on the entire country as demonstrated
by the fact that Iraqi government officials were
not forced to lie to the world anymore. It was
wonderful to see them celebrate freely in the
streets and pull down that statue of Saddam as
the U.S. military arrived. Our motivation may
not have been to specifically liberate them, but I
have trust that it was at least in our national
interest to get rid of Saddam.
The Iraqi people will have a new democra-
tic government and the chance to finally enjoy
their rich, beautiful country in freedom. Fur-
thermore, this should put the United States on
better terms with the Arab world having freed
their fellow Arabs. How do you feel about
your protests now?
DAVID KAPLAN
Engineering senior
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