Friday, September 16, 2005
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From the Daily:
safety or liberty?
Football takes on
cross-town rival
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One-hundredfourteen years ofeditorialfreedom
www.michandaiy.com Ann Arbor, Michigan Vol. CXV, No. 148 ©2005 The Michigan Daily
Class rating
we siteback
up again
By Anne VanderMey
Daily Staff Reporter
Advice Online, a website that rates University professors
according to student survey results, is back online after years
of technical difficulty.
The website, which is run by the Michigan Student Assem-
bly, compiles data from more than 400,000 surveys and gives
professors ratings from 1 to 5 on issues ranging from the
overall quality of the course to the weight of the workload.
"Taking into account that some people just fill it out ran-
domly, it gives you a good general guide." MSA Vice Presi-
dent Nicole Stallings said.
The original website suffered from a variety of problems,
mostly owing to the fact that it had been created in 1995,
using software that would be considered antiquated today.
"We had to completely gut it and start it from scratch,"
said MSA webmaster Judy Yu. Yu said she spent the better
part of the summer working on the site, and that she expects
the new version to be much more stable. The site has been up
and running for several weeks without any major glitches,
Yu added.
Students are greeting the new website with enthusiasm.
"It would probably be really helpful in determining what
classes I would take," LSA senior Wendy Lee said. But Lee
also expressed concerns that the data could easily be skewed
by people with extreme opinions about courses.
Some professors also have questions about the site. Susan
Douglas, chair of the communications department, said she
felt some elements of the survey could be misleading, such as
the significantly higher ratings teachers get from students in
See ADVICE, Page 7
Dinner to
benefit West
Africans
By Jacqueline E. Howard
Daily Staff Reporter
After a bad harvest, Niger, a poverty-stricken West Africa
country, is said to be losing about 15 people a day to hunger.
Students at the University are invited to eat dinner to
help.
The Michigan Graduate Student Association is hosting a
relief dinner to raise money for the victims of the Niger fam-
ine. The Michigan Student Assembly International Student
Affairs co-chair Mohammad Dar said MSA has put forth
money for the dinner.
"We're coordinating with other student groups to have an
event in which students can find out more about what's going
on in Niger," said MGSA member Mohammad Khalil.
The Muslim Law Students Association and Students of
Color of Rackham are also helping with the organization of
this event. They invited Michigan State University Prof. John
Staatz to speak at the dinner, which will be from 6 to 9 p.m.
in the assembly hall of the Horace H. Rackham Building.
Khalil said the organizations sponsoring the dinner haven't
forgotten about devastation here at home caused by Katrina.
"Now that Katrina happened, donators can choose for their
money to go towards either Niger aid or hurricane relief,"
See AFRICA, Page 7
Niger Fundraiser
About 15 people a day die from hunger in Niger.
3.5 million people in the country are in danger of dying
from starvation.
Students can register for the dinner by e-mailing
khalilm@umich.edu and reserving tickets. A $10 donation
is requested and will be given to Niger or the victims of
Hurricane Katrina depending on the donor's request
k I
Hill dining center approved
New facility will serve residents
of MoJo, Stockwell, Alice Lloyd
and Couzens residence halls
By Ian Herbert
Daily Staff Reporter
The creation of a new, multi-purpose dining facil-
ity will force students on the Hill to change the way
they are used to eating starting in 2008.
Yesterday, the Board of Regents approved a $65
million project to attach a new Hill Dining Center
to Mosher-Jordan Residence Hall and renovate the
dorm at the same time, a change that at least for two
years will have students displaced to other areas.
University spokeswoman Julie Peterson said the
plan includes placing students in Northwood III, but
the University has housed undergrads in the family
housing dorms on North Campus for the past two
years now, often with complaints from the families
who live there with young children. Peterson added
that it will be especially critical this year for the
admissions office to hit its goal of admitting 5,400
to 5,500 new freshmen. In each of the last two years,
the University has overshot that goal by about 500
students.
Even when the renovations to Mosher-Jordan are
complete, there will be fewer beds than there are
now, University Housing Director Carole Henry
said.
The dining center will be used for four of the five
dorms on the Hill - Mosher-Jordan, Stockwell,
Alice Lloyd and Couzens - but only students living
in Mosher-Jordan will be able to reach the dining
facility without going outside. After seeing a pre-
sentation by the architects, Goody Clancy & Associ-
ates, the regents voted to approve the project. Work
will begin as soon as the students move out of the
dorms this April.
"These projects are terrific examples of renovat-
ing student residential space so it connects more
seamlessly to our students' learning environment
and enhances the overall quality of student life,"
University President Mary Sue Colman said at the
meeting.
The dining center will be attached to Mosher-Jor-
dan and will look out onto Palmer Field. The design
includes large glass windows and two levels. Henry
said the ground floor will be a traditional, but mod-
ern, dining hall equipped with food stations offering
students a wide variety of options, such as pizza,
stir-fry and hamburgers, on any given night. Citing a
University Housing survey of 2,400 students, Hous-
ing spokesman Alan Levy said the emphasis would
be on preparing the food in front of students and
See HILL, Page 7
THE STALE-ING WALL
IKE H fULSDUS/ Daily
Artist Belli Uu stand In front of her sculpture entitled "Breadth" located in the Alice Uoyd dining hall. LIu was asked to do a site-specific work and wanted to
create a piece that related to what happened there. The work took over seven hours to put together and will remain in the dining hall until September 30.
Students raise money for Katrina victims
By C.C. Song
Daily Staff Reporter
Although Michigan is 1,000 miles
away from New Orleans, faculty and
students on the University campus have
been trying their best to help the vic-
tims of Hurricane Katrina.
The Red Cross, working with the
Michigan Student Assembly, has raised
a total of $56,000 through bucket drives
at football games. MSA is also planning
service trips through the Edward Gins-
berg Center for Community Service and
Learning to affected areas over fall,
winter and spring breaks.
The fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha is
working on projects to help the victims
in Lousiana. "I've heard people talking
about (going to New Orleans), although
it is not final. But if it's realistic, we'll
do it," said Adrian Reynolds, an Engi-
neering senior and the relief effort coor-
dinator for Alpha Phi Alpha.
Beginning with bucket drives on the
Diag and on North Campus, Alpha Phi
Alpha raised about $2,000, Reynolds
said, and the fraternity plans to contin-
ue holding bucket drives. The money
collected will go to the Red Cross, but
Reynolds mentioned he would like to
raise money to go toward rebuilding
houses in New Orleans as well.
Aaron Rubens, a junior at Tulane
University in New Orleans, was not in
New Orleans when Katrina hit. Rubens
had planned to study abroad this semes-
ter but cancelled his plans and came to
the University of Michigan, where he
has friends, so he could help with relief
efforts in New Orleans.
"We've been putting a lot of money
into the relief," Rubens said, adding that
he and his friends have put nearly all of
their own money into the fund and aren't
sure how they will survive themselves.
"But we're doing this because we really
care about the people."
Along with three other Tulane friends
not from Michigan - Kevin Land-
er, Stephen Richard and Adam Hawf
- Rubens started the New Orleans
Louisiana Hurricane Fund. It has col-
lected about $23,000 at the University
of Michigan through individual donors
and T-shirt sales. The group has been
The group has been selling T-shirts with the
slogan "OSU sucks, but hurricanes blow."
selling T-shirts with the slogan "OSU
sucks, but hurricanes blow."
NOLA is offering more than monetary
support to those affected by Katrina.
"A lot of people in New Orleans are
uneducated, and they will need help to
open bank accounts and to find jobs,"
Rubens said.
One of NOLA's focuses is on affected
public schools. "We are going to adopt
a public school, providing them with
monetary help and mentors," Rubens
said. "We want to encourage people
to come down during spring break to
become mentors." The public school
that NOLA is planning to adopt is locat-
ed in New Orleans's Ninth Ward, one of
the area's most impoverished districts,
Rubens said.
Faculty at the School of Social Work
are also contributing to relief efforts in
New Orleans. They are collecting items
for a silent auction, which started on
Sept. 5 and will end on Sept. 19.
"I think we are all concerned, being
in the School of Social Work," Terri
Torkko, an official at the School of
Social Work, said. "We are concerned
about the students and the infrastruc-
ture (in New Orleans), which has been
totally destroyed. We're concerned with
how it's going to affect the victims."
Faculty and businesses in Ann Arbor
have donated most of the items in the
silent auction, including gift certificates
for restaurants. Richard Tolman, assis-
tant dean of the School of Social Work,
is offering to take the top eight bidders
to Dominick's for lunch. Two tickets
to the football game against Eastern
Michigan University are also being auc-
tioned; the auction will end on Sept. 15
at 5 p.m. The list of items can be found
See KATRINA, Page 7
Congress encourages schools to regulate textbook prices
By Margaret Havemann
Daily Staff Reporter
LSA sophomore Barbara Patterson was excited
when she thought she would save money this year
by using her roommate's biology textbook from last
year. She was outraged - but not surprised - to find
out that her professor had required the newer edition,
which was only slightly different from the old version,
but more expensive.
Patterson said she wished the University would do
something to help students combat rising textbook
nrices. In many instances. nrofessors don't realize
report from the Government Accountability Office, ing limits on what
Congress's investigative staff organization. to substitute my jud
In the report, the GAO said today's students are just not capable of
paying three times what students paid in 1986 for going to tell profess
textbooks. The report added that
prices are still climbing 6 percent « . .
a year - more than double the Universities should
rate of general inflation. bee odto
"Universities should be encour- enCOuraged
aged to implement numerousi
options to address textbook implement numerous
affordability," Congress recom- options to address
mended in an August amendment address
books to use, he said, "would be
dgment for the professor's, and I'm
doing that. The University is not
sors what textbooks to buy."
But a university-imposed cap
on a book's price or a limit on
the number of books allowed
per course are steps that some
universities have taken to ease
the financial burden on students.
Jennifer Libertowski, spokes-
woman for the National Asso-
ciation of College Stores, used