Thursday, December 1, 2005 'ING WEIGHT TO UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS®... THE STATEMENT News 3A Greek organizations raise tens of thousands for charity Opinion 4A Sports SA Jeff Cravens wants you to see Monologues' Zone battles women's hoops in loss 4U111 One-hundredfifteen years of editorilfreedomn r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- ------------------------- - - ------------ - - ------------- www.m higandaily.com Ann Arbor, Michigan Vol. CXVI, No. 40 02005 The Michigan Daily Greden: No couch ban this year Ann Arbor fire official says City Council should ban porch couches; students say couches are not a major safety concern By Jeremy Davidson Daily Staff Reporter It's back. After a one-year leave of absence from Ann Arbor politics, discus- sion about banning couches on porches has resurfaced, but Council- member Leigh Greden (D-Ward 3) says it's not likely a proposal will come before Council in the next year. The topic emerged again after assistant fire chief Chris Brenner said recently that couches on porches are a fire hazard and that City Coun- cil should ban them before someone is killed, The Ann Arbor News reported. The department has pinned the cause of two recent Ann Arbor fires on porch couches, reasons it sees as compelling enough to ban them from porches. Greden said the Fire Department is unanimously in agreement about a proposal to ban them. But despite strong opinions from the Fire Department, Greden said he does not expect a couch ban proposal this academic year. Ed Comeau, director of the Center for Campus Fire Safety, a nation- al nonprofit organization concerned with fire-safety education, said that he would support legislation that banned couches from porches, because they pose a greater fire hazard than a couch inside. He added that 81 fire deaths have occurred since 2000 in student housing across the country, an average of 16.2 deaths per year. "There have been a number of fires across the country over the past few years that have been attributed to furniture on front porches. The problem is that the fire starts on the exterior where there's no detec- tion and can build up on the outside and move toward the inside of the building," Comeau said. But some members of the joint student-City Council committee, a group of student and City Council representatives that aims to improve relations between the two groups, saw things differently. "It should be our choice to have couches out there," said LSA senior Mike Forster, a member of the committee. "I think that most of the time the fire doesn't start with the couches - it might exacerbate the problem, but I don't think that they are the cause." Michigan Student Assembly president and committee member Jesse Levine said the risk of having a couch outside is similar to that of having one inside. "Students deal with a certain amount of risks every day of (their) lives," he said. Levine added that porch couches are not an issue the city govern- See COUCH, Page 7A PETER SCHOTTENFELS/Daily LSA junior Walter Nowinski is starting a new Michigan Student Assemibly party called the Michigan Progressive Party. Emerging MSA parties crop up 0 Students frustrated with dominant Students 4 Michigan Party plan to offer new competition By Ashlea Surles Daily Staff Reporter Voter turnout for this fall's Michigan Student Assembly elections was the low- est it has been in years, the assembly spent $20;000 on a concert and many students seem completely indifferent, say a couple students trying to turn things around. In an effort to revitalize student govern- ment and increase student interest, LSA junior Walter Nowinski and LSA sopho- more Travis Radina are each forming new parties to contend with the currently dominant Students 4 Michigan Party and the Defend Affirmative Action Party in April's MSA presidential elections. Nowinski, a former member of MSA's Budget Priorities Committee, is forming the Michigan Progressive Party and plan- ning to run on a platform based on "better housing and better classes." The "better housing" end of the platform entails the maintenance of better MSA relations with the city in order to have an influence on housing issues, including lease dates and parking restrictions. "MSA has a tremendous amount of lob- bying power to change these things," he said. The "better classes" part of the platform will include an effort to improve MSA's Advice Online system. These changes would allow students to learn the caliber of courses as determined through data collect- ed from student surveys, Nowinski said. With its entire executive committee already assembled and its platform almost entirely formulated, MPP is well on its way to developing a full slate for the April 2006 MSA elections. Radina, a member of the College Dem- ocrats, is forming the Michigan Students for Progress Party. The party is still in the works, with only a handful of students involved in its development, but Radina plans to field candidates for every position in this April's elections. Radina and Nowinski have spoken with one another, and they said there is a pos- sibility that the two parties will combine for the April elections. Radina said he supports the University's use of affirmative action in admissions but would also like to explore the possibil- ity of "economically, rather than racially See MSA, Page 7A ACLU fights law denying drug convicts college aid i SAME OLD DRILL T-.. t m Group will sue federal government to provide financial aid to students who nave been convicted of drug offenses By Anne VanderMey Daily Staff Reporter fPotheads, beware - marijuana is not only bad for your lungs and your pocketbook, it can also take away your financial aid if you're caught. But the American Civil Liberties Union in conjunction with var- rous civil rights and student rights groups has announced that it will file suit against the federal government based on its denial of finan- cial aid to students who have been convicted of a drug offense. A section of the Higher Education Act, up for renewal this month, has rendered an estimated 175,000 students ineligible for ajd, according to a recent study released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The provision denies aid to anyone who tas been convicted of even a minor drug offense. Dan Berger, a spokesman for the ACLU, said it resorted to legal action because its previous attempts at lobbying had been 1 rgely fruitless. "It's hard (for Congress) to do anything that's not completely draconian on drug policy because there's so much fear of seem- ing soft on drugs," Berger said. He added that because the courts doesn't face that political pressure, the ACLU may have better luck with the suit than it had with lobbying. Adam Wolf, an attorney for the ACLU, said the lawsuit has good chances in court because it makes strong claims against denying education to drug offenders. He said the suit will allege the act violates at least three provisions of the U.S. Constitution, including the Equal Protection Clause, the due process clause and the double jeopardy clause. The lawsuit comes at a time when Congress is already looking at revising the Higher Education Act to cater to criticisms that it does not serve as a deterrent to drug use because it is retroactive in its application. Currently, a college student can be stripped of his financial aid even if he was convicted of a drug offense in high school and not in college. "It's unfair that it doesn't give notice to people of what the exact penalties for a crime are. ... Only later does Congress say, 'Oh, we're going to tack on additional penalties now,"' Wolf said. Alexa Marrero, spokeswoman for Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Education Committee, said she agrees that the provision is being incorrectly applied because it considered past offenses when taking away financial aid. See ACLU, Page 7A PETER SCHOTTENFELS/Daily Second-year dental student Deepika Aggarwal prepares a tooth for a crown on a mannequin head In the newly renovated Dr. Roy H. Roberts Preclinical Laboratory in the School of Dentistry yesterday. Lecturers to hold short protests during class time -3 TTT~l~ i 1 C' ( TC I TT T.- -r~i XT C T ot"I. .-.-.o. 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