4A- The Michigan Daily - Monday, April 17, 2006
OPINION
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KATIE GARLINGHOUSE HO.S ARREST
DoNN M. FRESARD
Editor in Chief
EMILY BEAM
CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK
Editorial Page Editors
ASHLEY DINGES
Managing Editor
THE ONLY WAY
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MARA GAY
COMMON SENSE
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Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All
other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their author.
VIEWPOINT'
Time to make the right choice
BY JESSE LEVINE
You now have time - 90 more days - from the
start of your lease to find the right place to live. The
lease-signing ordinance that passed should succeed,
but we all - students, the University and the Ann
Arbor City Council - have some work to do.
Having the right roommates can make or break
a year. Having a responsive landlord can make or
break a year. The place where you eat, sleep and
work can make or break a year. We hope giving
you 90 more days (and hopefully a shopping peri-
od) will help you make the right choice - mak-
ing your year.
So, here are the details: September 1 leases can
be signed on December1. Landlords cannot legally
show or sign a property until 90 days have passed.
Landlords who violate the ordinance will be
fined $1,000. Some have claimed that landlords
will start signing leases under the table, violating
the heart of the ordinance. In the fall, this may
happen. But those who violate the law will be held
accountable - to the tune of a $1,000 fine. There's
nothing like enlightened self-interest to make sure
a law will be followed.
Students: Don't let strangers in your house,
don't sign leases under the table and don't feel
pressured to sign - because there is approxi-
mately a 10-percent vacancy rate in Ann Arbor.
An ordinance alone will not solve all Ann Arbor
housing problems. You, as students, need to follow
the law. That means refusing to allow "prospec-
tive renters" into your homes before 90 days have
passed on your lease, refraining from engaging in
under-the-table agreements for new properties and
remembering that Ann Arbor has approximately
a 10-percent vacancy rate, so you shouldn't feel
pressure to settle or sign right away.
City Council: Upon the automatic review of the
ordinance next year, strongly consider including
a shopping period - it just makes logical sense.
If you're leasing a car, you don't sign that lease the
same day you take it for a test drive unless you're
absolutely certain. You shop around. You try to
find the best deal - to make the right choice. Sign-
ing a housing lease should be no different. While
the student committee was willing to compromise,
we still feel that including a shopping period is
the best public policy and should be included in
the automatic review next year. There are hardly
any downsides to a shopping period. Students are
smart. We can handle two different dates: one to
start shopping around, and one to be able to sign.
As for the landlords, the cost of showing around
prospective renters for about two weeks is not sig-
nificant. Students, let's make our voices heard next
year so Council can make the change and so we
can make the right choice.
We doubt that the landlords will all shift their
leases en masse. The lease-signing ordinance can-
not stop landlords from shifting September leases
to May; the city can't legislate that. But here's why
a shift is unlikely: The University will be moving
its housing fair to sometime in mid-November,
encouraging students to slightly delay signing on
the dotted line. If landlords do collectively shift
their leases, the blame for the "feeding frenzy"
will lie squarely with the landlords, and the public
will know who's trying to exploit whom.
Working with City Council has been produc-
tive. Council members Leigh Greden (D-Ward
3) and Wendy Woods (D-Ward 5) have been
especially open to students. Also, Mayor John
Hieftje has advocated for this ordinance from the
beginning. Still, students need more. The Coun-
cil should strongly consider including a shopping
period when the ordinance is reviewed next year.
We now have at least 90 days. Ninety days to
figure out whom we want to live with next year.
Ninety days to figure out whether our landlords
will respond to our calls about leaky ceilings or
broken thermostats. Ninety days to figure out if
we want to re-sign. Ninety days to try to make the
right choice and find the right place to live, so we
don't have to worry about distractions, and can
focus on, well, the complex and multifaceted lives
we all live as students at the University.
Levine is an LSA senior and last year's Michi-
gan Student Assembly president. He is writing this
viewpoint on behalf of the Ann Arbor City Council
Student Relations Committee.
t first I
think my
eyes are
playing tricks on
me. Surelyno one
in his right mind
would sport a blue
Duke lacrosse shirt
at a time like this,
when allegations of
gang rape stalk the
team. My better logic tells me I should let it
go, eat my lunch in peace and enjoy the beau-
tiful, sunny, rare Ann Arbor day. But as we
pass one another in the cafeteria at the Uni-
versity we both call home, my mouth betrays
my better judgement and I cannot help but
blurt out, innocently, "I'm sorry - is that a
Duke lacrosse shirt you're wearing?"
He stops cold in his tracks and his eyes
narrow, moving over my body, looking me up
and down. His glance is so quick, so sudden,
so cleverly sinister that at first I'm not sure that
it even happened at all. But then it punches me
in the gut and I am overcome with the fear and
shame of a horse as it is sold at auction. Still;
there is nothing - absolutely nothing - that
could have prepared me for the moment when
he smiled smugly, proudly even, and said,
"Yeah - yeah, actually - I am."
Then he sat down with his boys and
resumed his lunch, boasting loudly that the
alleged rape victim had probably made up
the story after being poorly tipped by the
lacrosse team she was hired to dance for.
The facts of the Duke case are still murky,
and no charges have been filed yet. But the
accuser is a mother and a student at North
Carolina Central University in Durham, a
historically black college just across town
from the far more prestigious, expensive
and overwhelmingly white Duke Univer-
sity. Regardless of the case's outcome, the
incident is significant: It has reminded us
that issues of class and race continue to fes-
ter just under the surface, as stubborn and
entrenched as ever.
Duke's administration has cancelled the
remainder of the lacrosse season, though
some say it took them too long to respond to
the incident and that the university has failed
to reach out to the greater Durham commu-
nity. The lacrosse team, however, serves as
a beacon of unity: Its 47 members - 46 of
whom are white - tell prosecutors the same
story, denying any wrongdoing and declaring
that the allegations are nothing but lies.
All of this, of course, is disturbing. But in
the world we live in - and at the (northern)
University we attend - we are no strangers
to issues of gender, class and race; the word
from Durham isn't exactly new news.
Still, as my peer left me standing in the
middle of the East Quad cafeteria, I was
shocked. What is this sickness that compels
a white male at the University to express
solidarity with these 46 young men? Is it
the oppression they have suffered and the
exploitation they have endured? Or maybe
it's the way history has dehumanized them,
treated them as objects and made them into
hypersexual criminals, beasts to be both
shunned and feared.
I want to sit down and enjoy my lunch
too. I want to talk to my girls and feel the
first rays of sun soak into my face. But it
still hurts, it still gets under my skin, still
makes something inside of me want to
scream: "This is not okay, this is not right,
we can do better, and we must!"
But it's hard to care all the time. Just a
couple semesters on this campus can bring
to a head all the issues of gender, class and
race most people experience in a lifetime.
Constantly defending your peer's right to
claim citizenship in the human race would
be an exhausting feat.
It has occurred to me that this cafete-
ria encounter may not be such a big deal.
It has, after all, only confirmed what I
already knew - that sexism and hatred,
prejudice and privilege are not Southern
phenomena but are American phenomena,
alive and well in every community in this
country, the University included. Some-
times I wonder if I should take a hint from
some of my fellow Wolverines and care
less, be outraged less, sleep better at night.
What does "privilege" mean to most of
us anyway? For too many students, these
words are nothing but clich6s - merely
the favorite terms of their social science
professors. But in that one moment in the
cafeteria those words were given life; they
have never been more real for me.
There is nothing hopeless about our
situation. We are a campus of intelligent,
good-hearted and otherwise rational young
individuals. But all the privilege in the world
cannot save us from ourselves if we do not
believe, deep down in some uninfected
part of us, that the Muslim woman with the
headscarf deserves the same respect as the
fraternity brother.
I should mention that I have no regrets
and that every day of my two years at the
University has been an adventure. This
campus will show you some incredible
things if you allow it to. But the University
can be exhausting as well. So many worlds
0
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
VIEWPOINT
Ann Arbor and wind power
BY JOHN HIEFTJE
I wish to offer clarifications to the editorial
Great mills, great times (04/06/2006).
For more than a decade, Ann Arbor has
been recognized as the leading city in Michi-
gan in energy conservation and innovation.
City conservation efforts have saved taxpay-
ers millions of dollars, and these efforts con-
tinue today. Ann Arbor is the first city in the
United States to move to light-emitting diode
streetlights. This technology will allow us to
light the streets while using 60 percent less
electricity.
The city already produces 24 per-
cent of the electricity needed to operate
streetlights, water and sewage treatment,
buildings, etc. Much of this comes from
capturing methane gas from an old land-
fill, and the rest comes from hydroelectric-
ity. The city energy office worked with the
private sector to establish bio-diesel fuel-
ing stations in our area, and city vehicles
have been running on B20 (20 percent bio-
fuel) for some time. This summer, we will
be shifting to B50. There is great potential
to grow bio-fuels in the Greenbelt.
Last summer, I asked my staff to begin
research into how we could make even greater
use of renewable energy, specifically wind
power. We began talks with Noble Environ-
mental Power about purchasing wind-gener-
ated electricity for Ann Arbor.
Last September, I issued the Mayor's Green
Energy Challenge, setting a goal for city gov-
ernment to use 20-percent renewable energy
by 2010 along with a 20 percent reduction in
greenhouse gas production. For the city as a
whole, I set a goal to use 20 percent renew-
able energy by 2015. In December, we invit-
ed the University to join us in a green energy
purchasing partnership. Since November, we
have been working with executives of DTE
Energy toward the goal of moving wind-
generated energy across its grid to light and
power our city.
In February, the City Energy Commission
submitted an excellent progress report, and I
raised the bar to 30 percent renewable energy
for city government by 2010. Last month, City
Council passed a resolution calling for Michi-
gan to follow the lead of 22 other states and
establish a Renewable Energy Portfolio Stan-
dard to move our state forward.
City government can reach 30 percent
renewable energy by 2010 without wind power
from Michigan's Thumb, but with it, we can
make even greater strides.
I greatly appreciate the Daily's advocacy
for renewable energy. Michigan will soon
need more electricity, and there is tremendous
potential for wind energy in our state. The
question is not simply should we build wind-
mills, but rather: Should we build two more
mercury-spewing, greenhouse-gas producing,
coal-fired plants, two new nuclear plants or
clean, green windmills?
Hieftje is the mayor of Ann Arbor and an
adjunct professor in the School of Public Policy.
Secrecy prevents secret soci-
eties from goal of service
TO THE DAILY:
The group formerly known as Michigamua has
taken significant steps to rectify its past abuses of
Native American culture, but the intrinsic nature
of a secret society is in conflict with many of the
University's ideals. There is a difference between
humility and anonymity, between closed mem-
bership and elitism and between benefiting the
University and benefiting a select few. I urge the
group formerly known as Michigamua and other
secret societies to carefully consider their secrecy
and recruitment methods.
Elizabeth Tappan
Engineering junior
The letter writer is the president of the Society of
Women Engineers and the Class of
2007 engineering president. This letter
expresses only her personal views and is not on
behalf of is not on behalf of any groups
of which she is a member.
Coke's turn to ILO for
investigation in good faith
TO THE DAILY:
In response to the viewpoint by Adri Mill-
er, Lindsey Rogers and Jason Bates regarding
the University's business with the Coca-Cola
Company (Coke restored behind students' backs,
04/13/2006), I would like to make a couple of
important clarifications regarding the company's
relationship with the International Labor Organi-
zation. The ILO, founded in 1919, has a structure
in which workers and employers participate as
equal partners with governments to promote and
protect social justice, human and labor rights. It
is disappointing that the authors would claim the
very structure that has enabled the ILO to have
such a remarkable, positive global impact - an
impact that has helped ensure the freedom to join
unions and the recognition of collective bargain-
ing, helped abolish forced labor and eliminate
child labor and helped ensure the equal treatment
in the workplace that otherwise would not be
I have a deep respect for the ILO's structure
and mission, and I am fully confident that the ILO
will conduct an unbiased, independent investiga-
tion of Coca-Cola's labor relations and workers'
rights practices in Colombia. I believe anyone
who is familiar with the ILO will also attest to its
qualifications, credentials and independence.
Edward E. Potter
The letter writer is the Coca-Cola Com-
pany's director of global workplace
relations and worker accountability.
Same logic for ending minor
says tear down Big House
To THE DAILY:
I am perplexed by the LSA Curriculum
Committee's decision to suspend the Span-
ish minor. Associate Dean Robert Megginson
explains in the article (LSA bids farewell to
Spanish minor, 04/13/2006) that the program
is "suffering from its own success," and that
due to a lack of resources, the Department of
Romance Languages has found it infeasible to
continue to accommodate the high number of
students interested in minoring in Spanish.
I don't doubt this is a real problem for the
department; I've been on my fair share of
waitlists for upper-level Spanish courses. It
is clear that the program is in need of some
adjustments and likely more funding. But that
a large percentage of the student body is inter-
ested in learning Spanish should not be sur-
prising, considering how useful the language
has become in everyday life.
Is it just me, or does the decision to elimi-
nate a program as the solution to a problem
of overcrowding seem entirely illogical and
absurd? If the demand for the Spanish minor
has increased beyond the department's capac-
ity to accommodate it, shouldn't the University
focus on expanding this capacity, rather than
canceling the minor altogether?
By this logic, the University should have
torn down the Big House years ago for a lack
of seats. That a University with such extensive
resources would elect to eliminate a staple of
Editorial Board Members: Amy Anspach, Andrew Bielak, Kevin Bunkley, Gabrielle D'Angelo,
Whitney Dibo, Milly Dick, Sara Eber, Jesse Forester, Mara Gay, Jared Goldberg, Mark Kuehn,
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