0 requirement change, which included looking into the curricula of other schools, was done more than eight years ago. "You're dealing with the dif- ficulty of students not being here long enough to see their projects be fulfilled," Wagner said. "That's dis- couraging from our end and that's even more discouraging to the con- stituency because they see a broken promise." Another problem of turnover is the hardship in forging relationships with the administration. The easiest way to wade through the bureau- cracy is, as consensus of those interviewed suggests, to foster com- munication with the University's higher-ups. "Relationships with the administrators is, I would argue, the most important part of speeding up the process," Wagner said. "There are a lot of hoops you need to jump through," Wagner said. "There's a lot of bureaucracy here." Not necessarily a fan of the former Blue Party, Wagner still points to it as an impressive example of using connections for getting things done. "I didn't like the idea of the Blue Party at all," he said, "but in the end of the day, they got fall break." But connections alone don't lead to effectiveness. A singular voice for students throughout the years is also helpful. Lasting parties that maintain similar goals as officers enter and exit MSA's revolving door would assist in the process, but Nolan believes continuity also lies in the individual initiative of officers. "Way too little time is spent going back reading Daily archives, under- standing previous administrations," he said. Start Small here was a time, not too long ago, that MSA was in the habit of passing resolutions along the lines of tell- ing President Bush not go to war in Iraq. These resolutions, invariably, go nowhere and take away time that could be going toward projects where change can realistically be made. Following the footsteps of more recent presidents, Levine has focused on more local work, both with the city and with the University, and has yielded some results. Historically, the most notable changes are ones accomplished on the local level. Nolan, the leader of the Blue Party that helped imple- ment the first fall break, attributes the party's success to its ability to hone in on where practical changes could be made. This, for all intents and purposes, is working closely with University, like Nolan did, or at city council, as Levine has worked toward. Levine's push for representation in the city's decisions is one important step, but also being attuned to and ready to fix the little annoyances of everyday student life. Once things start getting done, even on a small scale, MSA will be able to cure the "perception that student government doesn't do a lot of stuff that affects people," as Lee puts it. Don't forget grad students we could do here for an immediate increase in voting? Mark Kresowik, the UISG presi- dent, attributes the jump to a cam- paign aimed at the school's graduate students. According to Kresowik, his platform was not especially graduate student-centric, but he was one of the few candidates in the past years to take the simple step of going out and talking to non-undergrads. If Kresowik's experience is any indication, there is great untapped potential living in the Northwood apartments and far off-campus. In terms of MSA, -there are several vacancies in representative posi- tions, notably two in Rackham. Levine even admits that participa- tion from the graduate programs hasn't been maximized.- But stepping up the campaigning isn't enough. Student government shouldn't just talk to grad students, but actually think about ways to accom- modate their needs. Several years ago, Levine said, MSA made strides in pro- viding child care for students and has been working to increase legal ser- vices for international students - the majority of whom are studying at the graduate level. Whether its keeping tabs on the Graduate Employees' Organiza- tion or just lending an open ear to Rackham students, engaging grad stduents can only help MSA's per- formance. n the end, there is no golden num- ber or percentage that election committees should strive to. If student government is supposed to "engage the campus community," as Levine describes it, but can't get a significant number of the student body to sit at their computer for five minutes to vote, then the engage- ment hasn't gone far enough. MSA does an acceptable job at dol- ing out funds to student groups, but few students vote for a candidate based on his ability to pass out money. MSA has taken the first steps to more visibility and, eventually, broader relevance. By looking at the bigger picture, MSA can eventually establish itself as a force of long-term, consistent change. Bo00K EXCERPT ® The Grea Courtesy of F "The Great Reporters" tells the stories of 13 of the world's most famous newspaper journalists. The book focuses on Americans such as Emie Pyle and Meyer Brits such as Hugh Mcllvanney -journalists who took chances to better inform the public. This particular excerpt looks at the life of Edna Buchanan, a Pulitze ning Miami Herald crime reporter whose workhorse attitude and shrewd writing helped her achieve the recognition she has today. - Doug Wemert nee upon a 1940s time in New Jersey, there lived a little girl who loved stories. Not stories about princesses, and fairies, but ones about the kind of people who don't make for very happy endings. People like "Mad Bomber" George Metesky, mobster "Lucky" Luciano and bank robber Wil- lie "The Actor" Sutton. These were, she later wrote, the dark princes of her child- hood, and it was just as well she found in their tales some glamour because there was not too much of that in her own young life. Her father had run away when she was seven, she was awkward- looking, too tall for her age and she wore hand-me-down clothes. Neither was she any good at adding up. "You'll never amount to anything," an elemen- tary school math teacher once told her on front of the whole class, "Not even a good housewife." Fortunately there was another teacher. Her name was Edna Mae Tunis, and she taught English to the girl who loved stories. And one day, when she was 11, the girl wrote a story of her own. Mrs. Tunis liked it so much she made Edna Buchanan promise that she would one day dedicate a book to her. Well, the girl grew up, and it began to look as if the math teacher had been right. Dead-end job followed dead-end job, and, as time passed, she was, as pre- dicted, amounting to absolutely nothing. But then, in her twenties, she moved to Miami and joined a writing course. On it too was an editor on a small paper called the Miami Beach Daily Sun. Impressed either by her writing, her persistence, or her blonde looks, he suggested she apply for the vacant job of society page reporter. She did so, they gave her a press release about a church social, she turned it into usable copy, and was hired. The kind of paper that would hire an untrained former clerk as a reporter was not liable to be the big time, and the Sun was certainly not that. It had a circulation of just 10,000, paid below any union minimum, and regarded overtime as something that only hap- pened in sports fixtures. Neither was there any fancy specialization at the Sun. You wrote, copy edited, made up pages, wrote headlines, and, if neces- sary, tipped greyhounds and composed letters to the editor as well. In other words, for someone like Buchanan who knew nothing but was prepared to work like crazy, it was perfect. For one eight- month period she was the entire report- ing staff of the paper. In 1970 she moved to the Miami Her- ald and in her second year, she started covering court, interviewing - among others - a lesbian Satanist who had stabbed her sugar-daddy 57 times. Jobs like this made Buchanan realize that the paper, lacking a full-time crime reporter, was only getting the legal conclusion of such stories, not their often tantalizing beginnings. So, in 1973, she suggested to the city desk that someone should make daily calls on police departments, check the reports, drop in on the morgue and catch up with the latest arrivals. "Sounds good," said city editor Steve Rogers, hardly looking up, "why don't you do it?" Thus did Buchanan became the crime reporter in a city that was, in the next few years, to become an ongo- ing, 24-hour-a-day festival of serious felonies. Her first murder was of Edward Beecher, a retired dealer in religious books whose vacation from New Jer- sey was crudely and terminally inter- rupted when he was battered to death on the sidewalk as he left his parked car. The violence was to get a lot more senseless than that. There was the rape victim who, running in distress down the street, came across another rape victim running in the other direction; the mother who framed her own two-' year-old for the murder of his play- mate; and Jacinto Roas, who murdered a man only to find that an iron security door had slammed shut and trapped him with the corpse. By 1981, Dade County's murder rate, which only four years before been 211, had risen to 621. Within a year, things reached the stage where, as Buchanan reported in a story that ran around the world, Dade County's morgue was so stuffed full of corpses that officials had to hire a refrigeration truck from Burger King to cope with the overflow. Edna Buchanan's by-line on a story in the Miami Herald, especially if it was front-paged in the more leisurely Su day paper, was soon a sign to reade that they could pour themselves a cc fee, settle in a chair, and enter a wor where jealousy, lust, or greed invariab led to a trail of mayhem and bodie For Florida's armchair thrill-seekei Buchanan made sure the lip-smackii pleasures kicked in right at the top: "Ba things happen to the husbands of Wido Elkin." began a 1985 story; "A 12-yea old schoolboy who had everything in tI world executed his nine-year-old brotl er, then ambushed and shot to death h socially prominent mother ..." (1983 "They called it Operation Snow Whi because the drug was cocaine and tI suspects included seven Miami polio officers" (1982); "There was a gold, di, mond-studded Rolex watch on her wris and a bullet in her head." (1984); an most famously in March 1985, on th ex-con shot by a security guard befo: he could order at a fast food joint: "Gai Robinson died hungry." Although the beat reporting jc Buchanan did was recognizably th same as that done by old-time repor ers with press cards tucked in their ha bands, she operated very differentl For one thing, if Buchanan got hold < the beans, she spilled them, whether was revealing the case of a trooper w: had molested an 1l-year-old girl in h squad car and got only probation an no criminal record in the hushed-u aftermath (her story, much criticize I UMMASO GUME-L/ uaily Former MSA representative Stuart Wagner believes that MSA struggles because of the inherent turnover of graduating student leaders. 0 ne new and immedi- ate focus that MSA can take is to redis- cover and engage the least-involved seg- ments of the Univer- sity community. Activism. It sets us apart. School of Information master's students are change agents. They help the public understand the principle of access to information while protecting privacy. SI students do not master technology for its own sake, either. They apply their skills for the benefit of all, but especially for those who have traditionally been under-served. Be part of it. Connect with SI. SC'HOI 'OF INTFORI~MATIOlN At the University of Iowa, voter participation jumped up 11 per- centage points for its student gov- ernment's presidential election last year to 24.9 percent. Iowa's student government system runs remarkably similarly to MSA's, UISG distrib- utes a similar amount of money to student groups - $800,000 to our $700,000 - to a similarly sized student body. Even the election pro- cess is near-identical - two days of online voting deciding the president and vice president on a single-party ticket. So what did Iowa do that w Before: BA, History At SI: Library and Information Services After SI: Science Reference Librarian, University of Oregon .. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN si.umich.edu/info Our master's program students hold degrees from more than 70 academic majors. Pick up your SI application CD for both the master's and doctoral programs in 403B West Hall or request one online at si.umich.edu/info. Earn your Master of Science in Information in Archives and Records Management; Human-Computer Interaction; Information Economics, Management and Policy; Library and Information Services; and Tailored. Our Ph.D. program prepares you for research and teaching. '1 1 ' t to . 'ANCNM50 NCNM, the oldest accredited naturopathic medical college in North America, is hosting a public forum in your area. Be our guest at this informational session and find out more about naturopathic medicine, classical Chinese medicine, career options and medical school requirements. Following the presentation will be a question and answer session with a leading professional in the field. Washtenaw Community College Morris Lawrence Bldg. RM 101 October 13, 2005 6:00- 8:00 pm www.ncnm.edu & Donation Ce 1621 S. State St., at Stimson, across from the U THRI STOI Michigan Union Ground Floor, PMB #151 528 South State Street (734)769.2555 1218 S. University Ave. ' www.statravel.com (734)998.0200 Whether You SHOP, DONATE or BOTH, You Help Us S S ~ ~ __ SS~S~ ~o. .~ ,,.. , E -x The Michigan Da 10B - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, October 13, 2005