4w 4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 OPINION + 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 tothedaily@rmichigandaily.comr ik EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 JORDAN SCHRADER Editor in Chief JASON Z. PESICK Editorial Page Editor Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other pieces do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE Dates are not sacred. What is sacred is the process. - Jordanian Foreign Minister Hani Mulki, commenting on speculation that elections in Iraq scheduled for January may be post- poned due to increasing turmoil, as reported yesterday by Agence France Press. IL" CZOLIN EIALYt1:x=:, . ;<::x, 6 I i HE N~N'TrPA'"IFYIN' NOTHIN' Thoughts on leaving the country STEVE COTNER RB ED) A LERT hy do Ameri- cans leave their country? Some go on cruises, some become eco-tourists, some renounce citizenship entirely and some take up arms alongside mul- lahs. Something drives even the most tethered teens to "do" Europe, if they have the means. The freer, hairier sorts go diving off of cliffs and bungee jumping from third-world bridg- es. They smile when words fail, give the shirt off their back as a sign of goodwill and iron Canadian maple leaves onto their bags, just in case. They feel their whiteness intensely or their color richly. They get diarrhea, endoparasites and an enlarged sense of self. And if they come back, they have the jolt of seeing home through a stranger's eyes. It's a pil- grimage Americans take to no place in particular. For a certain portion of the country, it is the closest thing we have to religion. Today, people are talking about leaving in a more urgent way. Before the election, Republi- cans mentioned leaving if they lost (Imagine!), and now lefties are making it the new slogan. It's a joke of course, mostly because people name Canada when asked where they're going. But there is also a sense that people are testing each other, saying the inappropriate to see who's with them, and how far. The coastal states and blue puddles probably feel confident going abroad, knowing that everyone but Poland and Turkey would have voted for Kerry. They don't fear terrorism the minute they cross the border separating America from the world. They know they'll be able to find like-minded people somewhere on the planet. But it is getting tough to be an ex-pat. The State Department will only let you give up citizenship once you have the right to reside in another country, and the process of becoming a citizen somewhere else can take years. A person can sidestep all this by going through the "World Service Authority" in Washington, D.C., which has made more than 1.2 million people "world citizens," but many countries refuse to recognize the title. An alternative would be starting your own republic. When things got bad in Nigeria in the 1970s, the popular Afro-beat singer Fela Kuti set up his own Kalakuta Republic. At one point he had something like 29 wives, all backup sing- ers, whom he called his queens. But when his hit record insulted the Nigerian soldiers by calling them zombies, they came and burned his place to the ground. Never mind, then. If anyone still has a wanderlust, just remember that there are certain places you probably don't want to be. Fifty serious incidents occur each day in Baghdad, mostly bombings, kidnappings and snipings. And there are parts of the world that no one sees - who could say how bad they are? Since the 1980s, Algeria has been so dangerous that even Paul Theroux, the travel writer who will go anywhere, will not risk it. In the United States we argue over the number of votes stolen. In Algeria they argue over the number of people recently massacred. Some experiences of my own include being yelled at by Sowetan motorists for being a white American tourist and zipping into Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe for a day - a place where U.S. citizens are told to stay out or else use extreme caution. Zim- babwe is in the middle of an economic and humani- tarian crisis with half the country facing famine, but like a good eco-tourist, I just came for the horse- back riding. Aside from the guard who pointed an automatic rifle in our van, my biggest threat that day was a cape buffalo that, had I not been on the horse, would have charged me, gored me, stamped on me and then urinated acidic pee on me to make sure I was done. If I moved, it would repeat the process as needed. The thing that I learned, besides that the word "nature" is often shorthand for "things that can kill you," is that no one ever leaves politics behind. Boys learn that girls can talk about their bombed-out city and flirt at the same time. Girls learn every whistle, click and cat call for their rubia hair. Politics is there to greet you, wherever you touch down. And even stranger, it's not your politics. If you go to the Hector Peterson Memorial Museum in Soweto, you might cry at the sight of a slain boy being carried through the streets, but you neither killed him nor carried him, and you're not crying for apartheid, because you can't really know what that was. You are crying for humanity at that point, which is very unsettling. Politics becomes another name for misery, and it finds new forms every day. But perhaps knowing that is the first step toward a life worth living. America is not the worst place in the world, but neither is it the only place. Every time we leave it, for a week or a month, we are like an airplane skidding off the ground. We begin to see the world more clearly. We think of how little we are, but also how free and we wonder what held us in place for so long. And maybe if we can break the tether once and for all, we will really feel at home in the world. Cotner can be reached at cotners@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Culture show is expressing culture, not defining it TO THE DAILY: The recent column written by Sravya Chiru- mamilla (My culture is mine own, 11/17/2004) regarding the Indian American Students Associa- tion cultural show struck me as rather interesting, especially considering that it came out two days before the actual show. Unfortunately, she misun- derstands the role that IASA's program fulfills at the University. First of all, IASA provides an environment that gives students the opportunity to meet other stu- dents of the same cultural background. Chiruma- milla extrapolates her experience with the Telugu conference to somehow insinuate that IASA is meant to be a program to "hook" people up. This could not be further from the truth. Unlike week- long conferences held in cities secluded from the rest of the world, IASA interacts with the sur- rounding environment. This intrinsically provides IASA members with a connection between the South Asian culture and the American culture, and in the process, provides students with the abil- ity to make a comparative assessment of the dif- ferences between the two cultures. The melding of the two is not something that should be deni- grated, but something that should be celebrated, as it is the result of a complex process of choice - the defining character of culture. It is true that the Indian culture is diverse, but IASA's cultural show should not be misinter- preted to be a definition of the Indian American culture. Rather, it is a showcase of the attempt by students of Indian heritage to connect with this heritage. The variety of dances, while not inclu- sive of South India's kuchipudi, koolaatam or the vibrant Telugu movie industry, shows that India is indeed a diverse land; it is one's own responsibility to take this to the next level and learn more about this diversity. It makes no sense to cancel an entire program because it cannot include every infinitely regressive detail. No one is fed culture through IASA or its cul- tural program; rather, the participants recognize the work that must be exerted to begin to under- stand their culture. They meet other students with a genuine interest in South Asian culture. This is a crucial step in the process of cultural recognition. I applaud Chirumamilla for realizing that IASA's cultural show does not define her cultural iden- tity; however, I feel that her column merely states the obvious in an attempt to insult the hard work of more than 250 sincere members of the South ing, which draws even staff members of the Uni- versity. While raas and bhangra may not be the sta- ples of Indian culture, one's voluntary exposure to these elements underlies a sincere attempt to understand one's culture - whatever one may decide this to be. Shailesh Agarwal LSA junior The letter writer is an IASA board member. New admission policy is in the B-School's best interest To THE DAILY: I am writing in response to the recent editorial concerning the Business School's new admission policy (A four year mistake, 11/19/2004). First, I would like to point out the irony that a newspa- per that champions itself as progressive has taken a stance promoting the status quo. My guess is that the stance stems from the editorial board's extreme lack of qualifications to be editorializing on this subject. At a school so vast, it is simply amazing that such a small group with only a few years of time here feels capable of evaluating the decisions of those in niche areas of campus. That said, let me give some additional insight on why changes are being made to the program. The Bachelor in Business Administration program cur- rently is almost a direct model of the Masters in Business Administration program at the University, short some action-based learning programs and with the addition of the two-year liberal arts back- ground that students get before entering. The pro- gram has been this way for more than 30 years, and while well rated in U.S. News & World Report, has never really been looked at in the context of what might make it better suited to undergraduates. Last year, the administration instituted a director posi- tion for the program and commissioned a group of faculty, alumni, and students to examine ways to make the No. 2 program in the country even bet- ter. Students expressed a desire to be less restrained by the program in terms of going abroad, double- majoring and taking additional business electives. They also noted that the first semester of business school is too rushed, with too much information about careers and courses flooding over them. The solution was actually quite clear - a longer program. Though the Daily asserts that this could be done internally, with no change in length, I chal- lenge an editor to come over and draw up a work- able scenario on the white board. Trust me, we've service, and this is a move to provide it better to students. If the school's mind were on the reve- nue, this change would have been made long ago. In terms of underprivileged applicants, students will have no less of a shot at the Business School now than they did before. 'The Business School honors the University's race-based affirmative action policies and will be working together with LSA admissions to make sure all applicants get a fair review. Students applying will be judged on their performance in whatever environment the grew up in and their reasoning behind getting a business education. To suggest some scheme that blocks out some group is a classic example of this newspaper's unfounded discovery of discrimi- nation in every subject it tackles. Michael Phillips Business senior The letter writer is vice president of BBA affairs for the Student Government Association of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. Evaluate Detroit's problems in a historical context To THE DAILY: Alexandra Jones's documentation of her entrance into Detroit's old Michigan Central Depot (Michigan Central Depot an ostracized memento of a once-great city, 11/18/2004) is patronizing and demeaning to the city of Detroit. Jones writes about the city as if it were some type of exhibition for her and her fellow "urban explor- ers" to rummage through. She describes the fear she feels while seeing "boarded-up windows" and "abandoned restaurants" and rejoices when she sees the sunset over the Detroit skyline and feels "for the first time today the city doesn't look like something to be ashamed of." While Jones writes about Detroit as if it were a relic from the past, she fails to take into account that people live in the city and could find her comments extremely offensive. Perhaps before proclaiming Detroit as something to be "ashamed of," she should ana- lyze the historical causes for the city's current struggle. Dating back to the 1940s, it was mid- dle-class whites that deserted the city, frightened by African Americans who sought to exercise their right to live in desegregated neighborhoods. Along with this white exodus came the de-indus- trialization of Detroit, as many factories followed and left behind poor, struggling minorities that had little access to jobs and other services. Today, Detroit faces a weakened tax base as a city that at one point had a population of nearly I ~IALflW4W~<~ Iii Lfl~ ~I.4L~ ~J~4J' LJ.~JU LU ~L i~ i 'fi u y