4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, September 26, 2006 ct e strl i cn 13 a7tiv DONN M. FRESARD Editor in Chief EMILY BEAM JEFEBLO R CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK JEFFREY BLOOMER Editorial Page Editors Managing Editor EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 413 E. HURON ANN ARBOR, MI 48104 tothedaily@michigandaily.com OPINION NOTABLE ALEXANDER H QUOTABLE If I knew what DeVos knew, I couldn't sleep at night." -Failed Amway distributor Paul Bortell, who lost money trying to sell products offered by the corpora- tion Dick DeVos led, as reported Sunday by the Detroit Free Press. The glory of torture TOBY MITCHELL iONKALA RF,-Tis )(' UII.(KEI --.per..i! HISTORICAL 4 Bleachers, not skyboxes 'U' should consider alternate stadium plan n a move many regarded as a mistake, the University Board of Regents approved a controversial expansion of the Big House last May. Unlike any previous expansion, the plan would actually remove bleacher seats, replacing them with club seats and luxury boxes. At the time, it was the only one of the proposed designs for necessary stadium reno- vations that received significant attention. But the Big House Plan, released last week by a group of University alumni, would accom- plish all of the same renovations - and add 10,000 bleacher seats instead of the luxury superstructures. So far, the University has shown a troubling unwillingness to consider opposing views, effectively shutting out pub- lic comments on the plan at last Friday's meet- ing. The stadium renovation is a project that will leave a resounding mark on Michigan football culture and the University, and the administration and the regents must seriously consider the Big House Plan - and give the public a chance to speak out - before mak- ing a final decision. The Big House has embodied the tradition of Michigan football since it was completed in 1927. Each home game, more than a hun- dred thousand fans journey to that familiar sunken bowl to watch the Wolverines take on that week's unlucky opponent. Each fan sits or stands on the same cold steel bleachers. Every one of them suffers through the often cruel Ann Arbor weather. Every one of them cheers in jubilation when the revered Maize and Blue score. There are no advertisements, no distractions - just fans and football. While the two proposed structures included in the skybox plan might not take away from the football program itself,they would severe- ly disrupt the University's football tradition. Affront to tradition aside, the skybox plan has a number of flaws. Its estimated cost, including interest, is more than $200 million more than the Big House Plan. The skyboxes won't necessarily sell out - especially if the University decides to keep them alcohol-free, as University President Mary Sue Coleman intends. The skyboxes would literally tower over the masses, leaving much of the stadium in shadow. Further, the plan jeopardizes the stadium's standing as the largest in the nation. The boxes would hinder further expansion of the bowl, effectively locking capacity at just above 108,000. Despite the obvious divisions with the Board of Regents and among alumni on the matter, opponents of the luxury box plan have had a hard time making their opinions heard. An apparent case of misinformation in July resulted in opponents of the skybox plan being all but shut out from the regents' meeting Fri- day. Certainly, this could have been a simple mistake. However, mistakes, clerical oddities and other shady tactics have been the norm regarding this subject since the administra- tive sleight-of-hand that placed the stadium expansion plan on the agenda for the regents' meeting in May at the last minute - after the deadline to register to speak had passed. If the fact that the skybox plan is still mov- ing forward is disturbing, the administration's unwillingness to hear opposing arguments is even more so. The Athletic Department will say that many plans were considered,yet only the plan including luxury boxes could finance needed renovations without increasing ticket prices. This may have been the case among the alternate plans the department put forth, but as Save the Big House illustrated last week, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Viable alternatives for stadium expan- sion exist and need to be considered. In the end, the Board of Regents should remember that Fielding Yost put extra steel pilings into the ground for a reason. It's a safe bet that the reason wasn't to allow for the future construction of "enclosed seating., "7 Vii, s F 4 "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says 'I love to make agrown man piss him- self.' " So said Charles Graner Jr., a former corrections officer and a military police offi- cer at Abu Ghraib prison. Graner had plenty of fun: According to an internal Army report leaked to The New Yorker, abuses at Abu Ghraib included breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees, beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair, threat- ening male detainees with rape, sod- omizing a detainee with a chemical light and using dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees. As at Guantanamo, where simi- lar abuses are alleged, the majority of detainees were never charged with a crime. Much of the pho- tographic evidence of abuse was never released - detainee Mustafa Jassim Mustafa described a female soldiertaking pictures while Graner sodomized another detainee with a flashlight. Graner is now serving 10 years in prison, but under new Republican-supported legislation, detainees will not be allowed to challenge their imprisonment in court, and officers guilty of abuse at secret CIA prisons would never have to face justice. The Bush Administration claims that to protect America, it needs to keep evidence secret, prevent detainees from challeng- ing their detentions and immunize torturers from prosecution. Non- sense. Only 6 percent of Guanta- namo detainees were picked up on the battlefield and only 8 percent were al-Qaida fighters. High-level military officials stated in 2004 that none of the 595 detainees were senior al-Qaida operatives or leaders. The administration is only protecting itself from the PR nightmare that would occur if citizens realized just how badly they've been lied to. The real secu- rity threat here is the threat to the job security of the party respon- sible for the torture of innocent people like Mahar Arar, a Cana- dian citizen the United States deported on faulty intelligence to Syria, where he was kept for 10 months in a 3-by-6-foot cell, beat- en repeatedly with a metal cable and forced to sign a false confes- sion before finally being freed. Apparently we fought for 40 years to defeat the Soviet Union so that we could become them today. If there is one thing we should have learned since Sept. 11, it's that civilization is fragile and must be protected against barbarism within and without. Ancient cul- tures allayed their fear of death by ritually murdering some of their own so God would spare the rest. Between Abraham and Christ, wars fought for God and country replaced human sacrifice. Of course, no victims of the Aztecs, Crusaders or mujahideen actually had to die - they were killed by people des- perate to gain power in the face of mortal fear by killing someone else in their stead. In this cold calculus of torment, the innocence or guilt of victims is beside the point. There are no Iraqi civilians and no innocent prison- ers, only insurgents and terrorists, and by torturing and killing them, you glorify your cause. The abuses at Abu Ghraib and the CIA prisons are logical extensions of Holy War - you're winning as long as more of them suffer and die than you. Why not admit it? As you watched the orange blooms rising in the Baghdad sky on television and remembered the fear and hatred you felt that morning in September, as mortar fire rained down around the prison and you thought of your dead friends while the naked Iraqi cowered in the corner at the teeth of your dog - why not admit it? In that moment, you were God. In that moment, death could not touch you because you held Him on the end of a leash and pointed Him at your enemy. Conservatives who decry this as another attempt to smear America ought to look in the mir- ror. In arguing for torture, the Limbaughs and O'Reillys who enable Bush have done more to establish a moral equivalence between America and its enemies than 30 years of anti-American radical agitation. By supporting the continuation of secret CIA torture camps, they cement Gra- ner as the face of America in the Middle East and thereby do more to support al-Qaida recruit- ment than any leftist intellectual fifth-columnist ever could. Mili- tary personnel from top Penta- gon lawyers to Colin Powell insist that torture fails to yield valid intelligence, endangers U.S. troops captured abroad and erodes America's moral authority in the war on terror. Osama bin Laden would be overjoyed; "the Crusaders" will have abandoned any claim to moral high ground should this psychologically dis- eased policy become law. Of course, I'm not privy to the sort of classified experiences our intelligence operatives will get to have. Maybe the joy of making a grown man piss himself is worth the stain on our nation's honor. Mitchell can be reached at tojami@umich.edu. d A VIEWPOINT HPV vaccine is worth your time LETTER TO THE EDITOR Send all letters to the editor to tothedaily@michigandaily.com. BY AMANDA BURNs It seems that partisan politics is the norm rather than the exception in Lansing, especially on issues involving sexual health. For this reason, the state Senate should be applauded for its bipartisan approval of legislation requiring all girls to be vaccinated against human papilloma virus strains known to cause cervical cancer. HPV is a sexu- ally transmitted disease so common in the general population that the Center for Disease Control estimates that 80 percent of women will contract it by age 50. With 20 million already infected and an estimated 6.2 million new cases each year, it is time for sexually active teens and college students to get informed. The virus has become common for a number of reasons. Men carry the disease without symptoms and often pass it on to their sexual partners. Also, HPV can be transmitted despite the use of con- doms, making it extremely difficult for women to protect themselves. Finally, a major contributing factor to the disease's spread is a lack of education. Only recently have media campaigns started to warn women of HPV's link to cervical cancer. Ten of the 30 known strains of HPV are labeled "high-risk" and can lead to cervi- cal cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates cervical cancer will claim 3,900 lives this year alone, making it a major women's health issue. Luckily, scientists have developed a vaccine that in clinical trials was 100-percent effective against certain high-risk strains. This type of cancer vac- cine should be welcomed with open arms, but because HPV is sexually transmitted, the vaccine has awakened a conservative Christian backlash that is quick to point to abstinence as an effective alternative. The fight has escalated since health officials and state legislatures started considering making the vaccine mandatory for girls entering middle school. Many question the necessity of vaccinating 12-year-old girls against an STD. While it may be true that not many 12-year-old girls are sexually active, any attempt to choose a more appropriate age would be arbitrary and leave some girls unpro- tected. Sexual education is often a divisive issue because parents may believe that by educating their chil- ER IN RU SSELL 7 dren, they are approving a promiscuous lifestyle. But there's a big difference between taking pre- cautions and encouraging sex. If the vaccine is not mandatory, it places the burden on sexually active teenagers to either address the issue with their par- ents or attempt to receive the vaccine without their knowledge. This would be difficult because the vaccine costs $360 if teens don't use their parents' health insurance. Many girls will willingly take the chance of contracting HPV rather than admit they are having sex at 16, and that could cost them their lives. This is too serious an issue to gamble on the effectiveness of abstinence-only education. Luckily for the next generation of Michigan girls, the state Senate feels the same way. In a 36-1 vote last Thursday, the Senate approved a bill requir- ing all girls entering the sixth grade in 2007 to be vaccinated. State Senator Beverly Hammerstrom (R-Temperance) proposed the legislation, which is the first of its kind in the nation. At a time when Republicans are becoming increasingly intertwined with religious interest groups, this legislation sends a very important signal - women's health is too important to be swept up by the political fray. We can only hope the state House will take up the leg- islation upon returning from break and follow the Senate's lead. While this legislation ensures the next gen- eration of girls protection against cancer-causing strains of HPV, the college generation will have to be more proactive. The vaccine is a three-step process that will require effort from female stu- dents, but considering the odds of contracting the virus, it is time well spent. University Health Services should greatly expand the availability of this vaccine by offering it in dorms, as it currently does for meningitis. Sororities and other campus organizations must also help spread the word. It's our responsibility to make the HPV vaccine the norm. We must reclaim discussions of HPV from awkward high school sex-ed classes and bring it to living rooms, classes and bars. Hopefully, the question "Have you heard about the new HPV vac- cine?" will become as common as "Did you see whose relationship status changed on Facebook?" It's certainly more important. Burns is a LSA senior anda member of the Daily's editorial board. Perhaps Wilkins needed more comprehensive sex-ed classes TO THE DAILY: How ironic that Morgan Wilkins was a victim of the conservative Christian reproductive health and sex education policies that she now espouses (Confessions of a young conservative, 09/25/2006). She traces her conservatism to her decision not to abort her pregnancy at age 15. Perhaps if Morgan had received comprehensive sex-ed that empha- sized birth control options other than abstinence, she wouldn't have found herself. having to choose between single teenage motherhood and abortion. Instead of demonizing pro-choice politicians like Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Morgan should work on promoting a real culture of life where few women ever have to exercise their rights to safe and legal abortions. Margaret McCarthy LSA senior Conservative finds answers in Wilkins' life story TO THE DAILY: I have to commend the News section of the Daily for reporting on Morgan Wilkins's rise and fall in the eyes of the College Republicans (Confessions of a young conservative, 09/25/2006). As a Barry Goldwater conservative convinced government is the problem, I often wonder what life is like as a rad- ical religious, "neo"-conservative, the life Wilkins trumpets - a life of big government in the bedroom and the boardroom and the checkbook and the labo- ratory. Now I know: It requires a cocaine habit and an unironic love of provocation and violence. Here's to the news, for getting answers. Bryan Kelly LSA junior Apathy dilutes students' voices in city politics TO THE DAILY: Jared Goldberg's article Welcome to the PRAA (09/22/2006) would have been more powerful and convincing if he hadn't turned it into a pseudo-intel- lectual diatribe interspersed with anti-communist fear-mongering. Student involvement is up to the students, and unfortunately, apathy seems to be the sentiment of the day on campus. As a student, I do my best to be involved in current events and the political landscape both inside and outside the "Peo- ple's Republic of Ann Arbor," but so few students care to make their voices heard that it dilutes the voices of those who speak on the students' behalf. How many people in the student body even know the name of their City Council representative? If you do, have you spoken with them on issues important to you? If you will not vote, voice your concerns to your representatives or volunteer to help causes that you believe in, the inevitable result is you stripped of your rights and your voice - thus creating that which you denounce. Sean Serraguard Rackham Always expect respect, even from YAF To THE DAILY: With the beginning of a new school year, it is important to remember that at the University, the dignity of every individual is to be respected. Unfortunately, some fringe elements at this Univer- sity are using the tools of discrimination and racial bias to tear apart our community for their own gains. The Young Americans for Freedom's plan to chase a person labeled as an immigrant around the Diag is indecent and disrespectful. Posting a reward for finding their target is degrading. We are confident that members of our University com- munity will reject this act and any acts like it. We hope our community will express its own freedom by choosing to condemn this distasteful political demonstration. We must also be mindful that respect be shown to all, especially those with minority opinions. We admire the Young Americans for Freedom for representing an unpopular opinion on this cam- pus; however, we must condemn their method of expressing their opinions. This is a call to action for both conservatives and liberals to be mindful of the impact their actions on the community as a whole. Differences of opinion can be expressed respectfully. Disrespect is not a characteristic of the political right or left wings; both Republicans and Democrats agree that all persons, immigrant or citizen, have inherent dignity. November will bring a trying election to Michi- gan. With many divisive issues up for vote, we challenge the College Republicans and the College Democrats to pledge mutual respect for each other despite the inflammatory actions of other groups. We hope both groups will use their influence to encourage respectful debate on this campus. Expect Respect is a new and unique partner- ship among students, faculty and staff. We believe that harassment and discrimination, in any form, severely damage our community. Be a ripple effect for change, be aware of the effect of your actions on those around you, and always expect respect. Jim Schreiber Abbie Nurse The letter writers are LSA sophomores and members of the Expect Respect student steering committee. I 8 "e W, elJ5H 1:5UC-OA PVF15 YOMtI WAs5- Yo MOMMA IS 1' L I 4