LOCAL/STATE
The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - 3
THIS WEEK
Five years ago...
Students reacted with shock at the
release of President Bill Clinton's
August 1998 grand-jury testimony
regarding his relationship with for-
mer White House intern Monica
Lewinsky.
Several classes took time to dis-
cuss the issue, and The Michigan
Daily published excerpts of Clin-
ton's transcript as well as pictures
of Lewinsky's infamous blue dress
with the semen stain.
"I think it's really sad," Law School
student Chris Smith said. "It's devastat-
ing to the presidency and Clinton's
behavior is to blame."
Ten years ago...
The University Board of Regents
approved an amendment to its
bylaws, including sexual orientation
as a basis of protection from Uni-
versity discrimination. The bill
passed on a 7-1 vote.
The one dissenter, Regent Deane
Baker (R-Ann Arbor), said he felt
the amendment represented a viola-
tion of freedoms as opposed to an
enhancement.
"I have long argued, unsuccessfully,
that these policies restrict both freedom
of speech and freedom to practice one's
own religion by non-homosexual or
lesbian students," Baker said.
Sept. 23, 1985
The regents unanimously
approved a resolution supporting
faculty members who did research
for President Ronald Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative. At their
monthly meeting, President Harold
Shapiro said professors had the
right to do whatever work in their
field they desired, as long as they
followed University research regu-
lations.
Nevertheless, 20 students protested
the resolution at the meeting.
"That's not just supporting academic
freedom," Michigan Student Assembly
military researcher Ingrid Kock said.
"That's putting the University behind
Star Wars."
Sept. 23, 1980
An assailant stabbed an LSA junior
outside South Quad Residence Hall,
leaving minor injuries in her stomach.
The victim described the suspect as a
six-foot-tall white male in his mid-to-
late twenties.
"He didn't look like a bum or any-
thing," she said.
The stabbing came after three brutal
murders in the Ann Arbor area in the
past five months. The most recent one
occurred Sept. 14 and resulted in the
death of a Business School student.
Sept. 26, 1973
A student advisory committee to the
Governor's Commission on Higher
Education called for students to sit on
their university boards.
They attacked the argument by state
colleges that students holding power
over their professors would represent a
conflict of interest.
"Such an argument is a slap in the
face of every student in the state of
Michigan," the commission wrote in its
report. The students also supported co-
ed residence halls and the elimination
of rules regarding drinking and visiting
hours at universities.
Sept. 25, 1985
Detroit union steward Shanta Driver
discussed South African Apartheid with
a group of students at the William Mon-
roe Trotter House. Driver advised
against divesting from South Africa and
instead pushed revolution within the
country.
Sept. 24, 1970
University officials and the Ann
Arbor Police Department ended a
three-week tent-in on the Diag by
threatening evacuation and arrest. The
protest, during which students slept in
tents, began earlier that month protest-
ing unreasonable student housing
rates in Ann Arbor.
President Robben Fleming
approved the tent-in as long as there
would be no serious hazards. But a
threat of a hepatitis epidemic, due to
one protester's hospitalization, caused
Fleming and other University admin-
istrators to change their minds.
Sept. 23, 1962
The Michigan Daily reported a
recent attempt by the University
chapter of Alpha Tau Omega frater-
nity to eliminate all racially dis-
Wall of 20,000 daffodils to decorate
Nichols Arboretum come spring
By Dan Trudeau
Daily Staff Reporter
Even for those on campus who don't consider
themselves to be the "flowery type," the concept of
an uninterrupted line of yellow daffodils running
through a half mile of the Nichols Arboretum pro-
vides an interesting mental image.
That imagined visual will take on a tangible form
this spring when Rackham student Susan Skarsgard
exhibits her thesis project, titled Imagine-Align.
Skarsgard, who also works as a product designer for
General Motors Corp., and a team of volunteers will
plant 20,000 daffodil bulbs during October to make
her conceptual vision a reality when the bulbs bloom
in the spring.
"It is, in some way, a reference to the walls and
borders and fences that pop up in our civilization
and then eventually disappear," Skarsgard said of the
flowers, which will die by the end of summer 2004.
"I realize how different people react to this idea and
take their own spin on things - that's what I want."
While imagining such a concept may only take a
few seconds, the planning, implementation and docu-
mentation of the project will continue for months and
require the help of numerous organizations and vol-
unteers, Skarsgard said. But University spokes-
woman Joanne Nesbit said volunteers are still
needed.
According to Skarsgard, it's the simplicity of the
final concept that draws people to her project.
"It's sort of a huge effort, but on the other hand, I
don't want it to get overwhelmingly huge," she said,
adding that attracting volunteers hasn't been hard.
"As soon as I explain the project to someone, it just
seems to happen. It's so easy to visualize, people
just get it."
One of those people who "just got it" was Arb
Director Robert Grese who, according to Skarsgard,
was excited and eager to cooperate once she posed
the idea to him.
Catriona Mortell, Grese's assistant, said officials
at the Arb were receptive to Skarsgard because of
the well-organized and unobtrusive nature of her
exhibition, among other factors. She said that proj-
ect will not interfere with the natural environment of
the Arb as the annual flowers will not return next
year.
"She had a remarkably well-organized plan,"
Mortell said. "It's an interesting concept to have
these boundaries - to consider what's real and
what isn't."
In order to pay for the project, Skarsgard is plan-
ning several months of fundraising, but sponsorships
are currently helping to cover the costs.
Skarsgard and other project planners have staked
out the line that the snaking flowers will follow.
Workers from Superior Brick Paving, which is spon-
"As soon as I explain the
project to someone, it just
seems to happen. It's so easy
to visualize, people just get it."
- Susan Skarsgard
Rackham student
soring the project, will dig a six-inch trench along
the line on Oct. 3, loosening the soil and making
way for planting, which is scheduled for Oct. 4, 5
and 12.
Skarsgard said one of her favorite aspects of the
projects so far has been the cooperation between
various University institutions and the businesses
and community members who will volunteer their
time to help complete the exhibition.
"It's both community and University, and it's
wonderful when that kind of thing comes togeth-
er," she said.
Skarsgard is also involved in an exhibition open-
ing on Friday at the Warren Robbins Gallery at the
School of Art and Design. That exhibition, entitled
"Memory Breeze," featumas work inspired by "funer-
al fans," - hand-held fans used in African-Ameri-
can churches in the South during the early 20th
century and will run through Oct. 27.
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