NEWS
The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 3
ON CAMPUS
Panel to advise
students on
starting businesses
A panel discussion featuring local
female business owners will take place
today to present stories and advice to
students interested in starting their own
businesses. Participating in the panel are
Judith Cheney, founder of the Rosemary
Company, a web-based party gifts busi-
ness; Sandy Ryder, founder of Say Cheese,
a local cheesecake bakery; and the artistic
director of Wild Swan Theater.
A representative from the Michigan
Small Business Development Office will
also be available to offer suggestions and
answer questions about starting small
businesses. The discussion will begin at
4:30 p.m. in the Center for the Education
of Women at 330 East Liberty St.
Veterans to
talk about war
experiences
Four war veterans will speak tonight
about their experiences fighting in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam during
an event called "Untold Truths of War:
First Hand Accounts." The event will
begin at 7:30 p.m. in Rackham Audi-
torium and is sponsored by the Peace
and Justice Commission of the Michi-
gan Student Assembly.
Documentary
focuses on
children in Uganda
The film "Invisible Children"
will be screened today at 7 p.m. in
the Michigan Room of the Michi-
gan League. The documentary was
filmed by three college students from
California and chronicles the lives of
children affected by war in northern
Uganda. The event is sponsored by
the Invisible Children Group.
CRIME
NOTES
DPS responds
to argument in
CCRB
Two people were arguing in the Cen-
tral Campus Recreation Building Sunday,
the Department of Public Safety reported.
Police responded to the scene and the peo-
ple left the premises.
Subject writes on
door with black
marker
Someone wrote on a door in Bursley
Residence Hall with black marker Sun-
day, DPS reported.
People arrested for
having controlled
substances
Three people were arrested for having
controlled substances in the southeast stair-
well of the Church Street parking garage
yesterday, DPS reported. The subjects were
released pending warrant authorization.
THIS DAY
In Daily History
Proposed code of
P conduct causes
unlikely allegiance
April 11, 1984 - Michigan Greeks
and campus co-op residents have
formed an unusual alliance against the
University's proposed non-academic
code of conduct. Both groups feel it
would threaten their autonomy from the
University. The proposed code would
create an internal judiciary that would
allow the University to punish students
for such acts as arson, theft, vandalism
and some types of civil disobedience.
Currently, the governing boards for
the Greek system and the co-op sys-
tem have their own codes and disci-
plinary procedures.
MAma-mnr of the, Dnnhlalnnr A co-
CASS TECH
Continued from page.1A
at race and academic scores but at whether
applicants are from a single-parent home,
have overcome a significant obstacle in
their lives or are the first generation of their
families to attend college.
Out of the 25,000 applications submitted
to the University each year, about 23,500
are from high school seniors who are aca-
demically qualified to attend, Lucier said.
The challenge is selecting about 5,000 of
those applicants who will best contribute
to the campus community.
Once reviewers establish that a can-
didate is able to succeed academically at
the University, they then consider what a
student could bring to a diverse campus
community based on their life experienc-
es. This, Lucier said, is where affirmative
action comes into play.
Lucier said that a misunderstanding of
the admissions process, coupled with fall-
out from the 2003 lawsuits in which the
Supreme Court upheld the University's use
of racial preference in admissions, led to
the stereotype that all black students were
admitted because of affirmative action
policies.
Black students admitted to the Univer-
sity "have academic records that are as
strong, if not stronger, than the person next
to them in their classroom or their resi-
dence hall room," he said.
Still, it is undeniable that some students
are chosen over others based partly on
their racial identity.
University spokeswoman Julie Peterson
said part of the rationale behind race-con-
scious policies is that considering race in
admissions helps the relatively few under-
represented minority applicants from
drowning in a sea of white applicants.
"If we didn't have a race-conscious pro-
cess, the sheer mathematics of it would
mean that the applications from minority
students would be drowned out by those
from majority students, and therefore very
few minority students would be admitted,"
she said.
Opponents of the ballot measure say
affirmative action is necessary because it
extends equal opportunities to minorities
who otherwise would not have adequate
access to public higher education and
employment. But MCRI supporters say
practices like the University's admissions
policies constitute a violation of the 14th
Amendment, which guarantees equal pro-
tection under the law to all citizens regard-
less of race.
What all this means for some Uni-
versity recruitment programs that
focus on underrepresented minori-
ties - the programs that allow Win-
frey and other recruiters to maintain
an almost daily presence in schools
like Cass Tech - is still up in the
air. According to Peterson, exactly
which recruitment programs would
have to be terminated could only be
determined via the inevitable lawsuits
that would occur if Michigan voters
approve MCRI on Nov. 7.
"We can predict a fair amount of litiga-
tion;' she said. "People would be suing,
defending programs:"
Still, MCRI proponents argue race
should not be considered even in
recruiting.
"I don't think universities should be
targeting anyone based on their skin
color. If they want to target people, they
should be targeting based on grades,"
said Jennifer Gratz, executive director of
the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, the
organization behind the ballot measure
of the same name.
However, Gratz, who was the plaintiff
in the 2003 Supreme Court case Gratz v.
Bollinger, said universities should be able
to target underperforming high schools or
areas with low socioeconomic status.
The California story
According to various scholarly studies
on the subject, MCRI could have effects
similar to those of Proposition 209, an
anti-affirmative action law passed by
California's voters in 1996. After the full
implementation of the law in 1998, the
percentage of underrepresented minori-
ties admitted as freshmen to the Univer-
sity of California at Berkeley was cut in
half, falling from 23 percent in 1997 to 11
percent in 1998.
Peterson said the University's under-
graduate minority percentage has hovered
around 14 percent for the past several years,
but experts say if admissions officials were
forced to abandon race-conscious policies,
minority enrollment could drop below 5
percent.
Proposition 209 also had a wide-ranging
effect on UC-Berkeley's recruiters, who
had to scrap several day-long programs for
minorities, specifically a Chicano-Latino
recruitment seminar.
Walter Robinson, director of admis-
sions at UC-Berkeley, said California's law
has limited his office's ability to recruit
qualified minority candidates.
"It's a lot more expensive; we have to
cast a wider net," he said. "It's difficult to
explain why we went to a school that had
a high number of black minorities and not
another that had highly qualified appli-
cants:"
Toreach minority students without being
accused of granting racial preference, his
staff has had to double the number of high
school and college fair visits made by its
recruitment staff, taxing both financial and
human resources in the department.
"If I were able to have targeted recruit-
ment, I could pick and choose where I'd
want to go' he said.
According to Robinson, UC-Berke-
ley still receives ample applications from
high-achieving minorities similar to the
students at Cass Tech. The school is also
still able to attract and admit minorities
from low socio-economic backgrounds.
It's the minorities in the middle who are
most hurt, he said.
"The sons and daughters of people like
me will not be targeted by Cal and schools
like Cal because of Prop 209 unless they
are superior students in every other way,"
said Robinson, who is black.
Farewell affirmative financial aid?
Peterson also voiced concerns that
MCRI might damage the University's
ability to use financial aid to lure minority
students to campus.
"It's possible that financial aid pro-
grams that have race and ethnicity or
gender as one component could be at
risk or challenged," she said, adding
that financial aid is particularly impor-
tant in recruiting minorities because
some studies suggest minority families
are more hesitant to take out loans for
fear that they might not be able to pay
them back.
She also pointed out that many minor-
ity students admitted are also accepted to
other highly selective institutions, such as
Ivy League schools. These institutions, she
said, have "deeper pockets," and if finan-
cial aid officials were not allowed to offer
scholarships for specific minority groups,
private schools might be able to outbid the
University.
Under MCRI, racially targeted schol-
arships using public money would not be
allowed, said Diane Schachterle, director
of public affairs for the American Civil
Rights Coalition, an organization that
supports the initiative. Schachterle said
private scholarships for specific groups
would not be affected by MCRI.
ABC prime-time shows
will soon be free online
Several Michigan
companies to buy
advertising that cannot
be stripped for shows,
LOS ANGELES (AP) - ABC
will offer four prime-time shows
including "Desperate Housewives"
and "Lost" on its website for free for
two months beginning in May as it
continues to expand the ways con-
sumers can watch TV online.
The shows will include advertising
that cannot be skipped over during
viewing. ABC, which is owned by
The Walt Disney Co., already offers
ad-free episodes for $1.99 each on
Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes store.
The offerings on the ABC.com Web
site will also include current episodes
of "Commander in Chief," as well as
the entire season of "Alias," and will
be available through June. New epi-
sodes will be available online the day
after they run on ABC.
The shows will be supported by
advertisers, including AT&T Inc.,
Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble
Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Unile-
ver PLC, among others.
The experiment comes as networks
try to reach viewers who watch less
TV in prime-time and are embrac-
ing technology that lets them watch
shows on computers and portable
devices, such as an iPod.
"It's an opportunity for us to learn
more about a different model," Anne
Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC
Television Group, said in a panel dis-
cussion Monday at the cable indus-
try's annual convention in Atlanta.
"None of us can live in a world
of just one business model. This is
about the consumer, and how the
consumers use all this new technol-
ogy. It's consumer first, business
model second."
ABC was the first network to sell
TV episodes online. Since then oth-
ers, including NBC, CBS and several
cable networks, have offered shows
on iTunes, their own Web sites and
on Google Inc.'s new video store.
Time Warner Inc.'s AOL recently
launched in2TV, which streams epi-
sodes of classic TV shows with ads.
ABC is working with advertisers
to try new, interactive ads that will
appear in the shows and will also
offer sponsorships. Viewers will be
able to pause the shows and skip to
various "chapters," but will not be
able to fast forward through the ads.
Sweeney said that ABC would
be cautious about other distribution
deals, being careful to safeguard
against piracy, ensure reliability
of the technology, and make sure
any deals are compatible with ABC
brands. Whether such ventures are
supported by marketing is also a con-
cern, she said.
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