Wednesday, September 29, 2004 zE SEA SON HASN'T BEGUN, BUT ICERS START OUT NO. I ... SPORTs, PAGE 8 Weather News 3 A New York Times journalist's account of welfare reform Opinion 4 Housing overhaul long overdue it1 HI: 70 LOW: 37 TOMORROW: 70/40 Arts 5 ABC seeks out a new'hit in "Lost." One-hundredfourteen years of ediorilfreedom www.michigandaily.com Ann Arbor, Michigan Vol. CXV, No. 1 2004 The Michigan Daily BUDGET CUTS * Custodians struggle with new schedules Mlk I';5f4( Improving student living The Michigan Student Assembly has announced it will create a board to work with the University's Student Legal Services on improving living condi- tions off campus. The assembly will send an e-mail out to presidents of student organizations, notifying them about the board. At a town hall meeting on Oct. 27, the board will present to SLS some of its main issues of concern. MSA launches housing board By Mary DeYoe Daily Staff Reporter The seemingly endless tussle between tenants and Ann Arbor landlords, a recurring woe for students seeking to move off-campus, is about to start again this year. But the Michigan Student Assembly is teaming up with the University's Student Legal Services to create a place for stu- dents to bring their concern and to final- ly alleviate some of their problems. MSA is organizing a new Housing Advisory Board, a group which will research general issues plaguing off- campus living conditions, such as stu- dents' lack of awareness about their rights as tenants. The group, which will hold its first public meeting later next month, will consist of six students and two Univer- sity representatives. At last night's assembly meeting, Doug Lewis, director of Student Legal Services, expressed his interest in work- ing with MSA to finally resolve tensions between tenants and landlords. He noted that in the past broad issues that affected many students were often ignored because of the way that SLS was set up to deal with them. "At least 30 percent of what we do involves disputes between tenants and landlords, and many of the individual problems overlap. However, it is hard to combat these larger problems by working only on a case by case basis," said Lewis, who will be one of two University repre- sentatives on the board. Jesse Levine, MSA Student General Counsel, who has been working closely with Lewis on this topic, said, "The advi- sory board will increases the communi- cation between tenants and SLS." The expired Student Housing Task- force, which organized in January 2003 under the presidency of then-LSA senior Sarah Boot, had similar goals of improv- ing off-campus living. The current assembly aims to revitalize the task force's intentions and improve upon them. "By selecting representatives through a more selective application pro- cess, we hope to have better qualified spokespeople," Levine said. The representatives will be selected by Levine and members of MSA's Campus Governance Committee. An e-mail will be sent to the presidents of all student groups on campus within the next few days with information about the applica- tion process. Eligible applicants are not, however, limited to group leaders. Levine encouraged anyone inter- ested in the board to e-mail him at jeslevne@umich.edu. Once selected, the new advisory board representatives will collect a list of the See MSA, Page 7 Custodians Clayton Sweeny and Sarah Aldrich wheel containers of trash to the dumpster outside Mason Hall at about 6 a.m. yesterday. Custodians, who used to work mainly at night, have begun working mostly from 4 a.m. to 12:30 p.m, due to budget cuts. Staif ored to work sh fts a dawn By Kristin Ostby Daily Staff Reporter Custodians at the University are under pressure to complete their work with short- ened, early-morning hours, causing exhaus- tion and sleep-deprivation, some custodial staff members said. Budget cuts prompted Plant Building Services to move up to 80 percent of its shifts to the early morning, said Nathan Norman, Plant Building Services director. The moves are part of the University's budget plan that it approved in July. The change in shifts has saved Building Ser- vices as much as $350,000, Norman said. "One of the biggest complaints is that the employees are being overworked and under- "When they started talking about changing the shift to 4 (a.m), I jumped ... for another department." Jeremy Phillips Custodian, West Quad Residence Hall staffed," said Mike Edwards, president of Amer- ican Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 1583, the union that represents the custodial staff at the University. Edwards said although most shifts now last from 4 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., custodians are expect- ed to get all of their work done in the four hours before classes begin at 8 a.m. "That leaves a lot of work (in that short period of time)," he said. Norman said there is still enough time to fin- ish cleaning. "We don't try to get all of our work done before (students) come in, in the morning," he said. "We have this very well figured out." Prior to budget changes, most shifts for the 367-member custodial staff were from 4 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., or from 11 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., Nor- man said. Although Building Services saves money, some custodians say they are suffering from the cuts. One is Jeremy Phillips, a former custo- dian at Building Services, whose custodial staff See CUTS, Page 7 LECTLONS<04' South Asians aim to boost turnout By Victoria Edwards and Carissa Miller Daily Staff Reporters Sierra Club chief blasts Bush By Alex Garivaltis For The Daily Speaking yesterday at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope promoted the tenet of his new book - that the Bush administration is "recklessly destroying a century of environmen- tal progress." His message, though delivered in a state that is closely divided between President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry for the presidency, found favor with the vast majority of the more than 80 audience members, who were mostly students and area residents. Scott Foley, a member of the University College Republicans executive board, said, "I wouldn't take anything from the Sier- ra Club as fact." The Sierra Club is known to have a lib-' eral bent, overwhelmingly endorsing Democratic can- didates such as Bill Clinton in 1992, Al Gore in 2000 and Kerry this year. Pope spoke of the EPA's progress from 1980 to 2000 in cleaning up hazardous waste sites. "At the rate of environmental cleanup that Pope still existed in 2000, all of the major U.S. toxic waste dumps would have been cleaned up by 2020," he said. The Bush administration's watch, he said, has seen the first hazardous waste increase in 20 years. Pope said Bush has drastically reversed what was, until his administration, an ongoing national record of improving drinking water cleanliness. He said the reversal is one of "hundreds" of the Bush administration's environmental failures. Nostalgically, Pope discussed the acreage of national landmarks, which had been increasing through the year 2000. He said in the three years of the Bush presidency, 145 million acres of land were stripped of their protective status, breaking a tradition that began with Theodore Roosevelt and was kept alive by all subsequent U.S. presi- dents, including Bill Clinton. "Why did the Bush administration try so hard to reverse all of that progress?" he said. He dis- See POPE, Page 7 Amid tables of chicken wings, pakora and potato salad, students questioned and educated each other in an attempt to raise the voter reg- istration rate among South Asian students, who community leaders say participate in elections in lower numbers than any other minority group. LSA junior Ramya Raghavan, chair of the College Democrats, was one of several student political leaders who participated in an Indian Ameican Student Association mixer last night in the Michigan Union to raise awareness among South Asians about the importance of this year's election. She said voter registration is important because South Asians have traditionally been overlooked by politicians. "(We've been ignored) because South Asian students seem somewhat apathetic to issues. I've been talking to people here and they are particu- larly affected by education, immigration and civil liberties," Raghavan said. She added that she feels the votes of South Asians have been taken for granted by certain political parties, especially since in the past many South Asians could not vote becaue they lacked citizenship. The event brought together representatives from student political groups such as the College Democrats, College Republicans, as well as rep- resentatives from LSA Student Government. Organizers of the event stressed the impor- tance that first-time voters register in Ann Arbor instead of trying to obtain an absentee ballot, which students cannot send in when voting for the first time under many state laws. The roughly 100 students, a majority of whom were South Asian, were then urged to question the student political leaders for the rest of the evening. Jaya Soni, a member of South Asian Ameri- can Voting Youth, echoed Raghavan by saying that this generation of South Asians is influential because in many cases it is the first generation with the right to vote. SAAVY is an organiza- tion that concentrates on registering South Asian American youths to vote. "A lot of our parents couldn't vote. We're See ELECTIONS, Page 7 Oil prices hit record high k T) LONDON (AP) - Crude oil topped the psychological milestone of $50 per barrel yes- terday for the first time, and a Saudi Arabian oil official said the world's largest petroleum exporter would raise its production capacity by nearly 5 percent in a bid to calm prices. Analysts said instability in the Middle East, political unrest in Nigeria, Africa's top oil exporter, and damage to U.S. production from est oil exporter will go into effect within weeks, using new fields where production has just begun, Oil Minister Ali Naimi said. "The fields of Abu Safa and al-Qatif, which have just started production, will be used to increase the kingdom's production capacity in the coming few weeks to 11 million barrels per day," the minister said in a statement. "In light of the recent developments in I I I 9 ~.