^;_ 4A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, January 15, 2004 OP/ED abe AWdhO u &IIIUm 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 letters@michigandaily.com opinion. michigandaily . com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 LOUIE MEIZLISH Editor in Chief AUBREY HENRETTY ZAC PESKOWITZ Editorial Page Editors NOTABLE QUOTABLE We need to see and examine and touch for ourselves." SliDEWAIK U COLIN DALY ThE7, MI CHIGAN DALY 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. « . « > _ ., . K eni.rr-snNm4j RE'CA!lA11oN 0 - President Bush on why the United States needs to send human explorers back to the moon and eventually on to Mars in a speech to NASA yesterday, as reported by CNN. Please give liberals back their liberalism JASON PESICK ON SMAu.L VoiCE M aturity and cool- But I digress. In fact, I do not think the label of an ideology similiarly oppossed to civil liberties. headedness are revolutionary socialists fits BAMN all that well; But besides these differences in worldview, not words I I would characterize them more as a collection unlike radical civil rights organizations in the would use to describe the of elitists than civil rights advocates. Reading past, BAMN has been unsuccessful in achieving level of discourse on cam- what their members and supporters have written civil rights victories. In Monday's viewpoint in pus. Universities are sup- on this page in the last week alone leads me to the Daily, BAMN organizers Kate Stenvig and posed to be dedicated to the believe that they feel the state of Michigan Cyrl Cordor wrote, "We won this stunning victo- exploration of ideas, but would be better off if certain unsophisticated ry for affirmative action and civil rights because certain organizations do not whites did not vote. To be fair, BAMN members we mobilized." They actually believe BAMN is believe that such discovery do not ever articulate this position outright, but responsible for last summer's Supreme Court should take place here. Chief among those the attitude that they know what's best for the ruling in favor of the University. They forget that groups is BAMN - but bear with me for a state and that everyone else is a clueless racist their lawyers were not permitted to argue before minute. lurks just beneath their "progressive" rhetoric. the court and that their position that affirmative I don't mean for this to be another mindless University alum Jonathan Chait pointed out action is necessary to right historic discrimina- attack against the organization, but I also real- in The American Prospect in 1995 that in these tion has never been upheld by the courts. But just ize that for what I've already said, I'm going to radical groups' fight for civil rights, liberal con- ask members of other student groups how they receive irate e-mails from BAMN members cerns such as civil liberties, academic freedom feel about BAMN taking credit for the accom- who will in essence call me a racist (they will, and even the Bill of Rights are expendable. In plishments of others. of course, conveniently forget to mention that the late 1980s and early '90s, the closest parallel More importantly, BAMN focuses exclu- the Black Student Union has had a less-than- to BAMN on campus was the Marxist United sively on affirmative action and is now leading rosy relationship with their organization). I'll Coalition Against Racism. During that time, the a boycott against Coors Brewing Co. Stenvig also likely receive complimentary e-mails from UCAR convinced the University to draw up and Cordor wrote, "In 2003, the critical civil members of Young Americans for Freedom speech codes to censor campus debate. One ver- rights issue facing the nation was the defense and writers for The Michigan Review, thanking sion of the codes called for punishment for those of affirmative action at the Supreme Court in me for attacking BAMN's intimidation tactics, displaying Confederate flags on dorm room our affirmative action cases." And surely it and they will use this column by a liberal editor doors, and/or making statements like, "Girls are was the most prominent issue, but the number at the Daily as further proof that all their ideo- not as good in this subject area as men." The of minorities who benefit from affirmative logical opponents are crazed hippies. I write federal courts wasted no time in striking down action and a Coors boycott is too small to be at this column, however, to challenge the most this code, and the U.S. Supreme Court later said the heart of any effective civil rights move- dangerous and vocal opponent of liberalism at that it would not tolerate such codes. ment. Why doesn't BAMN work to eliminate the University: BAMN. Liberals on campus now fight to preserve differences between blacks and whites in BAMN volunteer Luke Massie, who is English 317: How to Be Gay, but just over a homeownership rates, health care quality, pay, known to volunteer 60 hours a week for the decade ago, so-called civil rights activists forced unemployment, U.S. drug policy or segrega- group despite never being a student at the Uni- the cancellation of two sociology courses taught tion? These affect millions more people than versity, has said that BAMN is a Trotskyite orga- by Prof. Ren Farley, who merely quoted from affirmative action. nization, which by definition means that it is not material a student found offensive in a course on Maybe my main point of contention with liberal. It has the same mailing address in Detroit race relations, and Prof. David Goldberg, who BAMN is that I'm still naive enough to think as the Revolutionary Workers League, which is was bullied into canceling his course without people can discuss issues in a civil way before an openly Trotskyite organization. The RWL in even receiving a hearing. I have been unable to resorting to more extreme tactics. Or maybe it's turn, has had an identical membership as the confirm any clear connection between BAMN just that I'm a liberal. National Women's Rights Organizing Commit- and the UCAR, but the former's tendency toePesick can be reached at tee, another group with an interesting history. interrupt meetings and press conferences reveals jzpesick@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR g0 I High school quality in rural areas, not race, indicative of students' disadvantage To THE DAILY: Affirmative action is a simplistic solution to solve the great problem of inequality across school districts. This solution fails. It is racist and gives preferential treatment based solely on skin color and not on more important character- istics. Affirmative action overlooks three impor- tant things: 1) there are blacks that attend good schools 2) white people (believe it or not) do live in Detroit and 3) Rural schools lag behind schools in larger communities and are not helped by affirmative action. On this last point, I would invite everyone to check out the website www.greatschooLs.net. The site lists MEAP test scores for high school stu- dents at every school across the state. Rural schools are always ranked below schools in rich communities, such as suburban Detroit. As an example, the MEAP scores at Arenac Eastern School, in Twining, were as follows: 23rd per- centile in math, 24th in reading and fourth in writing. These scores are at or below scores in many Detroit schools, and 97 percent of the stu- dents at this school are white. Compare these scores to Seaholm High School in Birmingham, where the scores were 92nd percentile in math, 96th in reading, and 90th in writing. Other examples of poor rural schools include Reed City, Evart and Ogemaw Heights. Affirmative action simplistically labels that all blacks are equal and that all blacks are more disadvantaged than all whites. In fact, the majority of socially disadvantaged people in our country are rural whites. I would like to point out that more than half of my graduating class did not go on to college and of those that did, the vast majority attended a small community college near our town. I would also like to point out that there was only one Hispanic at my school and only one black student (who, as it turns out, is my girlfriend of two years). This country needs to fix the disparities across school districts. This involves electing a president that cares more about educating our students than sending them to Baghdad. The solution is not, however, to simply stereotype and give preferential treatment. If anything, uni- responses to Laura Davis's inane letter yester- day ('U' should be held to higher level of budget accountability, 01/14/04), so I'll simply focus on the last part of her letter: privatize the Universi- ty. Are you nuts? Privatizing would force the University to raise tuition costs for in-state resi- dents, as the University would no longer be receiving money from their taxes. Many stu- dents from around the state simply would not be able to afford $30,000 per year; however, $10,000 per year is something they can pull off. By privatizing, the University would gradually become less and less diverse as the only people who would be able to afford to go here would be the rich, who are predominately white. Con- sidering the University strongly believes in diversity, privatizing would be a very, very foolish thing to do. MAX KIMBROUGH LSA junior IM Building should change entrance policies, allow fans To THE DAILY: I usually consider myself a mild-tem- pered person; however, this wasn't the case on Monday night. A bunch of my friends were playing in an intramural basketball game at 7 p.m. at the Intramural Sports Building. I wanted to show my support for the team and watch. Easy enough, right? Well, my girlfriend was in town who doesn't go to the University and came with me to go to the IM Building. I went inside the IM Building, swiped my card and informed the front desk girls that my girl- friend was a guest and we were just here to watch the game. We were then informed that we had to buy a $10 pass. $10!? To watch my friends play in a basketball game. What!? I paid $8 on Sunday to watch the Michigan men's basketball team take on Indiana for three hours. How could I pay more to watch an hour game between two intramural teams. Most high school games are about $3. I understand that if she were here to actually use the facility then it would make sense, but that was far from it. I tried to explain that we were only there to watch the game - nothing else, as ing? Something is very wrong here. You think we pay enough money to this school that we can at least bring a friend to watch an IM basketball game. Where has all of the common sense gone in the world, espe- cially here at the University among people who take their jobs too seriously. $10 to watch an IM basketball game, give me a break. So after that I turned from mild tem- pered to over the edge. To the front desk girls and rest of IM staff, how can you sleep at night? Seriously? I'm out. KEVIN ORR LSA sophomore Will Daily support the legalization of marijuana or take wait and see approach? To THE DAILY: I lust read your editorial entitled Smoke up in Al (01/13/04) at cannabisnews.com and was surprised to find the absence of any men- tion of the signature drive currently underway to legalize cannabis/marijuana in Michigan. For more info, check it out at: www.apublic- service.com. The actual signature drive started Jan. 8, although the promoters of the proposal will not start their drive for signatures until Jan. 25. It will run through July 5. Tell me, after reading the proposed amendment, does your paper/staff endorse this? Remember, cannabis has no known overdose deaths reported and aspirin and bee stings alone kill more people than this plant. I am anxious to know, can we count on the Daily to support this? Or will you all stand on the sidelines and "wait 'n see." I look foward to your response. JOHNNY MEYER Reader LETTERS POLICY The Michigan Daily welcomes letters from all of its readers. Letters from University stu- dents, faculty, staff and administrators will be given priority over others. Letters should include the writer's name, college and school year or other University affiliation. The Daily C 0 6 6 __ _ ____ _ r . *: r