0 4A - The Michigan Daily - Friday, November 15, 2002 OP/ED cat !e lkigau t taUl 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 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 you So "othisno fA \ (- ( 0d~ G~ov jo+eA rmm yC. YOU Said aloo} VYLASleeves I 1 O IDC)VT -" 2-~J a( 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 4 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? 4 472{ - '7 7Ei7777777777 Y:ih+dF fc4W 1' r .Y} ~n nnY T I'1