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4A - The Michigan Daily - Friday, November 15, 2002
OP/ED
cat !e lkigau t taUl
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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
It's been a long
time. 9'11 was more
than year ago, and we
have yet to find him."
- Sen. Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota)
doubting the War on Terror'sprogress, as
quotedyesterday by The AssociatedPress
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SAM BUTLER TYE SOAPBOX
41
W6 -a
The Horns are proud parents of soon to be grad
DAVID HORN HORNOGR APHY
We are all very
proud of me. I
am a member
of the class of '03, and
we have been here -
immersed in academia
- for four years. We've
been here since the 20th
Century, when Jamal
Crawford played basket-
ball and Haven Hall
didn't look like a museum. When Little Caesar's
peddled $3 pies out of The Union and when
becoming a computer science major seemed
wise. In those carefree years at the Century's twi-
light we came to this mighty University in search
of many things.
Easy classes were often one of them.
Others sought challenge; an opportunity to
not just flex their creative and analytical mus-
cles, but to waltz with them. Astrophysics!
German! Aeronautics! Aeronautical Astro-
physics! "Bring us your books and your theo-
ries and knowledge!" we shouted. Or I
shouted, at least. Others stared dumbly.
I tended to mix things up, academically. A
little easy here, a little hard there; didn't want
to overdo it. I came to Michigan to learn, by
Jove, but nobody likes an egghead. A few
lines of Byron and a grasp of Nietzsche's exis-
tentialism and I could maneuver my way
through any party I might attend when I'm
rich and famous. They say Romantic poetry
and a great set of abs will get you noticed at
the beach. They're completely right.
I took my required distribution classes. I real-
ly did take an astronomy class. There was a lab,
every Thursday, which met on the roof of Angell
Hall at 9:00 p.m. What seemed like a brilliant bit
of planning on my part in December (It's perfect!
Be done with class on Thursday at 11 and be all
set to go out partying! It can't miss!) turned out to
be me being miserable on Thursday nights in
February, with just Cassiopeia and Pegasus to
keep me company.
But I did manage to navigate my way
southward, via the constellations, when I got
lost on a backcountry Indiana road two years
ago. Distribution Requirements 1, People Who
Say Distribution Requirements Are Complete-
ly Unnecessary, 0.
I scored well on the math section of my SATs
back in high school. So well, in fact, that my
math score was higher than my verbal score! I
know. I know. How can anyone with such daz-
zling prose as exists in this column be an even
greater mathematician? I tried to tell my academ-
ic advisor just that, but she insisted that I needed
to fulfill the school's "quantitative reasoning"
requirement.
So off I went, and signed up for a sociology
class on the subject of demographics. The 2000
U.S. Census data had recently been released, and
my professor was as giddy as a spaz on Christ-
mas morning. We spent 90 percent of the class
letting computers crunch numbers for us, and the
other 10 percent hypothesizing over a perceived
correlation between a shrinking population of
middle income families in rural New Mexico and
a sharp rise in housecat ownership in Baltimore.
The class, as the kids are saying these days,
sucked.
But my distribution fun was far from com-
plete. Through it I found my way to Biology 100:
Biology for Non-scientists. When I started the
class I couldn't tell the mitochondria from plank-
ton, and I can't now, but I will tell you this: A
percentage of your grade, which could suffice to
salvage your semester, is based on an end-of-the-
term poster project and competition. I'm not
lying, you can ask your friends. I made my poster
on the gray wolves in Yellowstone, and decorat-
ed my oversized cardboard canvas with pirated
images of Yogi the Bear and Maurice Sendak
illustrations. My poster contained as much infor-
mation on gray wolves in Yellowstone as one can
find in 25 minutes on encyclopedia.com, and I
won the fucking poster contest. They called me
up in front of the 200 kids in the class and gave
me a wall calendar. The wall calendar was my
prize, and was made up of pictures from Walden
Pond. On the March photo, there's an M&Ms
Peanut wrapper floating in the water. Anyway.
With calendar in hand and a firm under-
standing of urban migratory patterns I saddled
up for a ride on the Spanish railroad. By rail-
road of course I mean class. And by ride I
mean torturous death march. And by saddled,
of course, I mean stumbled out of bed in an
eerie dorm room predawn and drudged across
campus in the biting cold of a Michigan winter
to the last place in the world I ever wanted to
be to learn a language I still can't speak.
Usted tienen gusto de mi columna del per-
i6dico? iEstoy tan alegre! LUsted me piensa es un
estudiante amargo y perezoso? iCiertamente
puedo estar!
Laura, my dear friend, forgot to wake me up
for our midterm (it's been three years - don't
think I've forgotten) and the brass in the Spanish
department wouldn't let me make it up, and I had
to scrape and claw my way to a C-plus. Now
THAT'S education!
Anyway there's more to my inspiring
Odyssey into academia. I've learned a great deal
in four years that this limited column space does
not permit me to share. Write to me if you want
to hear about it, or come back for more Homog-
raphy, as the farewell tour begins.
DavidHorn will not ramble like thmi again unti/
the snow melts nextApril He can be reached at
hornd@umch.edu.
A
VIEWPOINT
Raise your hand if you want peace
BY JONATHAN GOLDBERG
Imagine for a few moments that the Univer-
sity of Michigan is in the heart of Tel-Aviv.
State street is called Disengoff Street and South
U. is called Allenby Street. Aligning these two
streets are book shops like Borders and
Shaman Drum, coffee shops like Starbucks and
the Coffee Beanery, and cafe eateries like Ren-
dez-vous, Cosi and Stucchi's.
Imagine this: You and your friends are
spending your hour lunch break between class-
es at Cosi, and since the weather is nice you sit
outside. At the same time, a 19-year-old Pales-
tinian has just boarded a bus in front of the
Union and is heading North on State/Disengoff
toward the Michigan Book & Supply store.
Five minutes later, he detonates the bomb
strapped to his belt and you and your friends
are flung into the street. Three people are dead,
50 injured and you can't determine whether
your friend who you were just eating with is
alive or not.
This exact scene transpired at the beginning
of October in Tel-Aviv, but unfortunately, it
was not the first time in the past 2 years that
this kind of scene has made headlines on the
news networks.
Just this week we saw a 34-year-old mother
and her 7- and 4-year-old sons murdered in
cold blood, as she read them a bedtime story in
their home on Kibbutz Metzer, an Israeli town
near the West Bank town of Tulkarem.
Wednesday the University community wit-
nessed the Palestinian Day of Action, with the
highlight events being a lecture about "Ethnic
Cleansing in Palestine" and mock refugee
camps. Neither event featured or encouraged
peaceful dialogue or intellectual debate and
neither event drew the true horrific picture of
what is occurring in the Middle East.
The five deaths two nights ago are prime
examples of why the Israeli Defense Forces has
checkpoints established on the West Bank bor-
ders of Israel. Daily there are either terrorist
attacks or thwarted terrorists attacks originating
from West Bank villages and refugee camps.
The Palestinians in their PR war like to call
these checkpoints methods of oppression.
However, when viewed objectively, it is clear
that these checkpoints are a matter of national
security. This is simply a preventative check
the Israelis perform to stop homicide bombers
from entering Israel and succeeding in attacks
on civilians.
In the United States, we have similar check-
points that many of us will experience in a few
weeks as we fly home for Thanksgiving. After
the events of Sept. 11, airport security is tighter
than ever, and many of us find ourselves being
spot checked three times before we board the
plane. How many of us are screaming and
accusing the airport security staff of ethnic
cleansing? Exactly.
Now let us address such terms as occupa-
tion and oppression. An occupation is when
country X moves its forces into country Y
without instigation, and solely for the reason to
overtake it. We all know this is not the case in
Israel. The territories in question are properties
of Israel since the 1967 war in which Israel was
attacked by its Arab neighbors. Someone
always has to lose in a war; Jordan attacked
Israel and lost the West Bank and Gaza. Syria
attacked Israel and lost the Golan Heights.
Egypt broke an armistice agreement and lost
the Sinai desert, but regained it through peace-
ful deliberation back in 1979.
If the Palestinians want their own state,
then perhaps they should follow the example
set by Egypt by suppressing all terrorist
attacks on civilians and sitting down to
diplomatic dialogues. The Israelis have
shown that they want peace as we saw at
Camp David 2000 where they offered 98
percent of the disputed territories to be a
Palestinian state. What was Arafat's reac-
tion? He walked away from the discussions
without a counter-offer. How willing are the
Palestinians to negotiate peace if when given
a generous offer they turned it down?
Raise you hand if you want peace. Cur-
rently, the Palestinians' hands -are not raised
so high. If the Palestinian cause is truly one
for peace, then they need to prove that to the
public. Paying homicide bombers $20,000
plus to kill themselves and innocent civilians
is no way to show a want for peace. Pales-
tinians are responsible to create an environ-
ment conducive for peace, and until all
terrorist and homicide attacks are ceased, an
agreement will not be reached. Once all ter-
rorist activities stop, the Palestinians will see
a cease in checkpoints and the birth of their
sovereign state.
Goldberg is an LSAfreshman anda member of
the American MovementforIsrael
I
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4
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
University's self-imposed
sanctions ignore real problem
plaguing college athletics
TO THE DAILY:
The self-imposed sanctions imposed on
the University men's basketball program
have no doubt unfairly punished the current
players, fans, and basketball program. More
importantly, however, these sanctions have
diverted attention from the real issues that
nnwne intercolleviate athletics Never mind
message they wish to send is "how dare these
athletes corrupt our system and challenge our
integrity." This response treats these inci-
dents as isolated events, but nothing could be
further from the truth.
Revenue-producing college sports do
not embody characteristics of amateurism
because they are driven by the need for
profits, yet Universities and the NCAA con-
tinue to insist and operate as if they do. The
burden of this contradiction falls on the
shoulders of the student-athletes them-
selves, who are forced to be students first in
principle, and athletes first in practice.
Thcnthaa nrP than.+x. hi-ma rlnr nt
only is the University punishing the wrong
people to avoid a certain level of humilia-
tion, but it is doing so under the claim of
progress. The University should take these
events as an opportunity to examine its own
character rather than that of Chris Webber.
MOLLY HANDLER
LSAsenior
What next after piague of
academic integ'rity?
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