4A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, December 2, 2002 OP/ED cuer ffikbigau i749uUt 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 When you have the highest ranking law enforcement official in the country saying either you're with me or against me ... that rubs people the wrong way." - American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero, on the post-Sept. 11 rise in ACLU membership, as quoted by the Associated Press. SAM BUTLER ThE SOAXPBOX kToh44T ZjL)s/ bdowetcifc#9 e 1 i does 1'4- work? NI ~ 'i;CI- 0 0J 115 weeks, three dead birds and a bungled sundae JOHANNA HANINK PARLANCE OF OUR TIMES he scene replayed itself over and over again my freshman year: Allegra and I lay sprawled on the floor of her dorm room in South Quad, in sweat- shirts and sweatpants or our infamous fleece "sacks" - ingenious inventions of apparel that few males have seemed to be capable of appreciating. This was the assumed position from which we'd regular- ly count down the days until we could escape the S'quad and go home for Thanksgiving; I remember that when that count first began, it stood at a staggering and dismal 11 weeks. But now it's been 115 weeks since the first of many splays on the floor in a room with its window facing East Madison - a window that, when I sometimes pass South Quad late at night, I still look out for to see if the light in 6433 might be on. One-hundred-fifteen weeks changes a lot, and "going home" for Thanksgiving is now a phrase with a far different semantic gloss than used to read when I was a freshman. When this column goes out to press and the Dailys hit the stacks on Monday morning, I'll still be here in Connecticut where there's six inches of snow and I can see Moses (a horse) from my old bedroom window. In the interest of a sense of shame, I will not men- tion the (active) rooster or the pair of "Hary Coos," Scottish Highland Cattle, next door. One-hundred-fifteen weeks later there's a computer and a pile of boxes in my old bed- room, but there hasn't been a bed here for at least 26. 115 weeks later I haven't seen some of my closest friends from high school in more than 52. One-hundred-fifteen weeks later, running into a quasi-ex-flame from 1999 doesn't provide the social aggravation - and hence, of course, the excitement - that it did in November 2000. The first Thanksgiving home unfairly car- ries too many expectations, to recapture 18 years of friendships can't depend on one dead, stuffed bird. Two years ago I took four planes in five days, traveling for 12 hours between layovers and delays on the Wednes- day before just to make it home. I swore to my mother that I was never coming home for Thanksgiving again, and a year and another tedious layover later, I was back. But each year it's become clearer that the greater Storrs area is not the social metropo- lis that, waxing nostalgic, I've sometimes remembered it to be. The focus of the scene is a little restaurant called Kathy John's, open 'til 11 p.m. in the peak of the summer and to 10 p.m. all other months, where at every opportunity the rookie alumni of my high school congregate to eat ice cream and tip poorly. Two years ago, when I'd finally recovered from the orneriness that air travel never fails to bestow, sitting in a four-person booth with seven or eight other people I'd known since fourth grade was the most com- fortable feeling in the world. So last Wednesday night my friend Elena, the one person in the world who still consis- tently shortens my nickname, Hanne, to Hans, drove us to KJ's where we waded in the senior-year-of-high-school memory of stomaching the "bell-ringer," a towering sun- dae worth a half gallon of ice cream and a veritable tub of toppings, bananas and whipped cream. The event had ended like a scene from a movie - people cheering and whooping. We were so full as we neared the end that we finished the last melted scoops through bendy-straws - one of those memo- ries where, with each telling, the fish gets a little bit bigger. But this year the slippery slope of the downfall of teen-hood made itself unignor- ably manifest. When Elena and I arrived, the restaurant was, to be sure, filled with familiar faces. The problem was that I could barely attach a single name to face - the tables were filled with people I recognized from the halls of high school my senior year, the "freshman" who were now driving cars and picking up the checks for their girlfriends. Later that night, the kids just a year younger than us spilled in en masse, but gone to grad school and jobs - even "careers" - were the people we'd always remembered. It had been out with the old, and our "genera- tion" of the kids of the tri-town area had become, well, the old. The final nail in the coffin of childhood anamnesis: my usual raspberry sundae with chocolate-raspberry ice cream came back to me as a hot fudge sundae with black raspber- ry ice cream. One-hundred-fifteen weeks later, I'm ready to lie on the floor in my sack and wail my-threnody again; this is the life-change the health teachers should really be warning the sixth graders about. Johanna Hanink can be found in Stucchi's, hoping she's still young enough to get her usual, and afterward will be reachable atjhanink@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Chirumamilla's viewpoint 'highlights her ignorance' about Indian culture TO THE DAILY: I knew from the first sentence of the viewpoint Indian culture more than dancing girls, rap beats, 11/27/02, that I would not come away liking what I would read. But, that is a part of life - you have to take the good criticism with the bad, and I was pre- pared to hear the negative criticism. However, I came away with feelings of pure anger and frustration. As an Indian American Student Association Executive Board member, I am appalled that the Daily would allow something like this to be print- ed. When IASA voted on the issue of boy- cotting the Daily, we heard both from Jon Schwartz and a representative from the boy- cott. It was only after listening to both view- points and a two-hour debate that we voted on our position. Now, I'm not in any way saying that because IASA does not support the boycott, that the Daily in turn should only publish positive sentiments about us. I'm saying that the writer, Sravya Chiru- mamilla, never even asked IASA anything about the show, and honestly came off look- ing like an uninformed idiot. There are some points in the article that personally anger me, so I'm going to address each one of them: 1. Chirumamilla's statement that the dances were "colorful, while unfortunately homogenous." This is such an insult to the Culture Show Core, the choreographers and the dancers. If Chirumamilla knew anything about Indian dancing (since she claims to be the one beacon of Indian tradition in a cam- pus filled with superficial Desis), she would notice the amazing amount of variety in our show. I personally have been taking Indian dance for the past 12 years, and how Chiru- mamilla can compare any of the dances to each other is beyond me. How is the South Indian "Sangamam" dance anything like the gypsy "Ghagra" dance? How was the bhangra anything at all like the raas? And how can you say that the dances were homogenous when we premiered the "Bam- boo" dance, whichhas never been performed at an IASA Show before? I take offense to this comment because we worked extremely hard to show the many facets of India. The introduction to each dance was in more than five different languages. Her statement sim- but irresponsible. We would have to skip over so many important events, and there is no way to look at the situation objectively. The show is supposed to celebrate the diversity and also the unity in India. Bring- ing up the subject of Kashmir does not cele- brate unity in any way. Also, the clips we showed are events that are less known about Indian history. Almost everyone on this campus knows at least something about Kashmir, but how many people know about the Bhopal tragedy? Or the earthquake in Gujarat? We were trying to educate people on subjects they didn't know about already. 3. The DaimlerChrysler video. Chiru- mamilla, extremely irresponsibly, made it seem like IASA created the video. We didn't. We didn't even know it was as long as it was. But what choice did we have? We are paying for a show that 4,000 people come to see. That is the largest cultural show on campus. I the Daily to try to put on a cul- ture show of this scale, and see if you can do it without getting sponsorships. Chirumamilla's comment that the mes- sage in the first commercial was "all other cultures have made contributions (read: sold out), why can't Indians?" That is reading a bit too much into the commercial. The commercial is simply say- ing that America's culture is a fusion of the various cultures of the world. IASA was not trying to give the audience some kind of message through these ads. On a further note, I can't understand how Chirumamilla is even a Daily staffer when she then uses this point to go off on a tangent about rap music. Honestly, considering that The Daily is one of the best college newspapers in the country, and Chirumamilla's viewpoint was an example of incredibly bad writing. JUHI KAVEESHVAR LSA sophomore Divisions among Indians, Indian Americans imply too much culture not 'cool' TO THE DAILY: I couldn't have championed more Sravya Chirumamilla's recent viewpoint on Indian culture (Indian culture more than dancing girls, rap beats, 11/27/02). In complete consonance with her views, I believe that the University's Indian American Student Association of the is too many times. I am proudly American and I am proudly Indian, but I am vehemently ashamed to acknowledge that a group representing my eth- nic identity has stigmatized Indian students to such a disparaging extent. The fact that Indian- born students on this campus felt so uncom- fortable and alienated from their Indian American counterparts that an Indian Student Association was formed, quite frankly makes me sick. Though no one is so audacious as to openly admit that the fissure of IASA and ISA was predominantly because of an inane'cultural hierarchy established by Indian American stu- dents, the truth is that beyond the euphemistic explanations rooted in a difference of organiza- tional and political ideology, IASA was glad to have these so-called "FOBs" off its back and out of its prestigious association. The dichoto- mous division of Indians and Indian Americans on this campus implies to me, "It's cool to be Indian, but don't be too Indian. It's cool to be Indian, just as long as you don't have an accent when you talk. It's cool to be Indian, but only to a certain extent." An organization that implicitly bolsters such beliefs, in my eyes, is not worthy of all the praise it attributes itself. Being a part of several multi-cultural orga- nizations, I find that a rift of such a nature is almost exclusive to the Indian American com- munity. I don't see the shame or embarrass- ment in the eyes of my Latino friends as they openly converse in Spanish with recently arrived Latino, immigrant students. I don't see the immense culturally-based division among my Italian American friends and Italians from Europe. But what I do see is the group of deri- sive Indian women walking their way to an Alpha Iota Omicron party, making contemptu- ous remarks about the "FOBS" they see on the way. Giggling away, they mock their English, the way they dress, and their mannerisms in general. Trumping the several similarities they have with physical attributes, Indian Ameri- cans perceive themselves, in comparison to Indians, as "holier than thou." And if our com- munity is so gripped with such superficial things as to ignore that these students are in the same place that most of our parents and grand- parents were not too long ago, then that leaves little aspiration for the future. Being Indian American is not about placing one facet of our identity above the other; it's not about nodding your head to Redman as he ardently raps away to "that Arabic chick;" and it's certainly not about being embarrassed to acknowledge that we share so much in com- mon with these so-called "FOBs." IASA can bask in it's gloating and what it 9 I a Aw