4A - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, September 5, 2006 OPINIO] N4 cl;hJew t 1i E ID M(du DONN M. FRESARD Editor in Chief EMILY BEAM EMILYBEAM JEFFREY BLOOMER CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK ManagEn EdOOMR 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 Binge ticketing AAPD fines won't curb drinking As August fades into Septem- ber and students return to Ann Arbor for the beginning of the fall semester, the neighborhoods sur- rounding campus spring to life with festivities. Some students quietly mourn the end of summer; others liven up their remaining evenings with a little alco- hol. Though college has been synonymous with drinking forever - or at least since our forefathers filmed "Animal House" -the Ann Arbor Police Department is determined to keep students on a tight leash. Over the course of Welcome Week, the AAPD handed out more than a hundred tickets for minor in posses- sion, open intoxication and other alco- hol-related violations. As one officer on "party patrol" told The Ann Arbor News over the weekend, "We call it our own freshman orientation." Students, however, seem unlikely to learn any meaningful lessons from this misguid- ed policy. Ostensibly, the party patrols aim to protect students by curbing drinking. Indeed, curbing student drinking has been a goal for temperance activists and puritans in Ann Arbor since the University's founding. For decades, sales of liquor by the glass were forbid- den east of Division Street, the better to keep strong spirits from student bodies. But given the impossible task of enforc- ing strict temperance on a college cam- pus, the AAPD may be making student drinking more hazardous. Fear of cita- tion may do little to lessen drinking, but could stop worried friends from seek- ing the medical attention their vomiting comrades need. The officers' enthusiasm for ticketing underage drinkers is effective at little more than raising extra money for the force and teaching students to distrust the police. From a general public safety perspective, the inordinate amount of attention given by the AAPD to target the student population is a waste of lim- ited resources. As the Ann Arbor News reported in June, violent crime increased 35 percent from 2004 to 2005. Many of the crimes reported occurred in the various student neighborhoods, the same neighborhoods where the "party patrol" is often preoccupied with keep- ing students from carrying red cups of alcohol. If the police are too busy catch- ing such students instead of apprehend- ing drunk drivers and violent assailants, this strains the entire department. A police presence in student neigh- borhoods is not inherently negative. Quite the contrary: It would better serve Ann Arbor - and students - if police would focus their energies on keeping an eye out for the person who has drunk too much and may need medical atten- tion, or the individual wishing to cause harm to others. Vigorous enforcement of drinking laws might help fill the city's coffers, but it is doubtful whether the AAPD's peculiar form of freshman ori- entation does much to encourage incom- ing students to drink responsibly. NOTABLE QUOTABLE I have no fear of losing my life. If I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I Will save it. - Steve Irwin, a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter, as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald in a tribute to him. Irwin was killed Monday morning after being attacked by a stingray while shooting a TV show in northern Australia. Iron and apath TOBY MITCHELL had effecthasbeen a precipitousincrease when no-one believes in them. The been in American fear, and it created the liberals and conservatives may be hang- single greatest haven for terrorism deluded or outright wrong, but at ing around on Earthby invading Iraq to prevent least they can be bothered to care. the tiny terror. The president himself was Nowhere is it worse than at the Buddhist the subject of a multimillion-dollar IronicUniversity: Sarcasticmockery temple in PR campaign intended to make an masquerades as sophisticated intel- my home- Ivy League scion of privilege out to lectual critique, strong belief is dis- town when be the exact sort of sincere, straight- trusted as a prelude to sanctimony, Melissa shooting regular Joe who would and there's no self-indulgence that showed up. never spend millions of dollars on can't be passed off as a self-aware Seeing life and death play out in a PR campaign. It would all be a parody of self-indulgence. Students front of her on the operating table masterful piece of political satire if are not the main culprits: "Reason" must have cut through any impulse it weren't an Orwellian nightmare. is undermined by postmodernist to crack wise or play at being jaded, Maybe Bush's main legacy will be professors eager to supplant it with because she was without guile. the addition of a fourth equation to Theory, and "tolerance" is politi- She launched herself into religious Orwell's triumvirate: War is Peace, cally correct code for the tribute practice with an earnestness I had Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is owed my own political-cultural avoided, and next to her bright sin- Strength, Hypocrisy is Sincerity. identity by all others. University cerity, I felt shown up. My irony and Even our great buildings have speech codes encourage irony: If cynicism were no mark of worldly become ironic: The skyscraper set we can claimeverything we say was sophistication, but only a cover for to replace the World Trade Center intended as a joke, we can back out a child too self-centered and full of sits a crystalline tower atop a fea- of anything that offends hypersensi- fear to risk conviction. tureless two-hundred-foot tall con- tive classmates armed with punitive We live in an age of irony. We crete base. Built to prevent truck university policies. love to watch famous people fall bombings, this blank block support- While we may thereby evade the from grace and ordinary people ing an armored pinnacle serves bet- judgment of our peers, we will not debase themselves on television: ter as a symbol of the cynical view escape the judgment of history. In They confirm our suspicion that Americans have of our own country this period of national and interna- there's no virtue that doesn't mask - hardened against outsiders and tional crises, we would do better to a selfish motive. Who can fault our inaccessible to anyone not already remember that guileless sincerity suspicions? The last period of ideal- at the top. The name of the project: that laid my own posturing bare at ism in America, the '60s, became "Freedom Tower." I suppose "the Temple, that simple force of truth a mockery of itself through the Empire State" was already taken. before which the mighty tremble hypocrisy of its devotees - how The greatest enemy of free- and cynicism curls in on itself like many baby boomers spoke "love dom is not terrorist-sympathizing a worm in sunlight. That sincer- and peace" while their actions liberals, nor even neo-imperialist ity is our own voice, telling us that screamed "indiscriminate sex and conservatives, but rather the pre- we shall not pass this way again, heavy sedation"? maturely jaded Gen-X or Millenial reminding us that every moment is The moral failures of that genera- whose cynical disaffection with a yesterday responsible to a memory tion helped set the stage for the cru- government precludes any politi- of tomorrow. elest joke yet: the Ironic Presidency. cal involvement whatsoever. The The Bush Administration fights a United States and its democracy Mitchell can be reached "War on Terror" whose primary are, above all, ideals, and ideals die at tojami@umich.edu. VIEWPOINT What MSA needs 4 4 I KATIE GARLINGHOUSE .HosE; AR;EsT BY TIM HULL Like many other students at the Uni- versity,I usedto feelthatthe Michigan Student Assembly was a complete joke. Most of what I saw coming from MSA was internal mismanagement and resolutions taking stances on polit- ical issues. Last winter, I decided that it was time to do something about this situation. I applied (and was selected) for an appointed position as an MSA representative. Upon my appointment, I began to see things a bit differently. MSA does in fact do a lot more than just pass resolutions - it provides funding for many student groups and works on various student-driven projects through committees and commis- sions that open membership to all students. Despite the fact that MSA is not as useless as it may seem, how- ever, it is evident that it still has a lot of work to do in order to become rel- evant to the student body at large. First of all, MSA needs to focus on what the student body cares about. MSA, asa whole, tends to place far too much importance on small pet proj- ects that benefit only a select few and on making political statements about divisive issues. While these actions may garner votes from a few student groups, they don't accomplish much beyond alienating those in disagree- ment. Instead of worrying about these types of issues, MSA should spend more time on those that actu- ally matter to the majority of students - the rising cost of tuition, campus safety issues, bus schedules, campus dining options, class registration and degree requirements. While MSA itself may not be able to do anything on these issues directly, it can be an effective vehicle for communicating student concerns to the University administration and local government - if it sets aside the politics and puts real student issues first. However, in order to be able to understand student concerns, MSA needs to be more accessible to the student body. MSA has made inroads in this regard by opening its committees and commissions to all students, but there are still many areas in which it is not accessible. For instance, students currently have no effective way to communicate with MSA. While MSA currently allots a portion of each of its general meet- ings for community concerns, this only allows students to briefly state their concerns to MSA. In order to truly represent students, MSA must do much more. It needs to allow for more outside input and participa- tion. Requiring all MSA business to undergo committee or commission scrutiny or allowing more non-repre- sentatives to participate in meetings would help immensely, as would actively seeking out ways to foster communication with the general stu- dent body. Otherwise, MSA will be forever trapped in the bubble of its own existence and will never be able to truly understand studentconcerns. Currently, I believe that none of the existing MSA parties really serve to further the interests of students. WhileIdidrunwiththeStudentCon- servative Party in the last election, I now feel that it - like the other par- ties - is not the answer. The main issue that I see with the SCP, as well as the Michigan Progressive Party and the Defend Affirmative Action Party,isin howsuch parties politicize student government. While SCP and MPP certainly had good ideas, the underlying politics behind the labels "progressive" and "conservative" overshadow them. This polarization divides students at a time when we should focus not on the issues that divide us, but rather those that unite us. Furthermore, they indicate an orientation with a certain political ideology - something I feel MSA should avoid at all costs. That is not to say that Students 4 Michigan is the answer - despite having the right idea of focusing on "action, not ideology" the party must develop a cohesive plan in order to make MSA more in touch with the student body. The past election was definitely a learning experience for me - I made some campaign decisions that I regret and I definitely didn't deserve to win this time around. However, I still plan to run again and do what I can to help MSA become more rel- evant to the studentbody at large. Hull is a LSA senior and a former MSA representative. I I LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Send all letters to the editor to tothedaily@michigandailycom. Students: 'You suck' chant only shows you, well, suck TO THE DAILY: Upon returning to the Big House the past few years, I've noticed a disturbing change in the student section. After third down stops on defense, students chant "You suck" to the oppos- ing team. This chant is counterintuitive, imply- ing that the reason a first down was not gained is the offense's incompetence rather than the skill of our defense. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to applaud our defensive players for using their strength, speed, intelligence and determination to rise to the occasion? I challenge the Universi- ty's students to replace the "You suck" chant by the end of the 2006 football season with some- thing more representative of their creativity and our football team's ability. Michael Salmonowicz Alumnus '01 Judicial activism has no role in Michigan politics TO THE DAILY: The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative is official- ly on the ballot. Finally, the last frivolous lawsuit against MCRI by the radical communist organiza- tion BAMN was decided in MCRI's favor. Though MCRI won its case - as it should have, consider- ing BAMN had no evidence - U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow made outrageous claims against MCRI in his lengthy written decision. His deci- sion is among the worst examples of judicial activ- ism. Turnow, a member of the NAACP, is clearly attempting to legislate from the bench. Every voter had the opportunity to read the language when sign- ing the petition. When this initiative is passed, it will prohibit state and local government from discrimi- nating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the areas of public employment, public contracting and public educa- tion. Luckily, "We the Judges" or "We the Politi- cians" did not found this country; "We the People" did. And that is why on November 7, as a member of "We the People," I will proudly vote yes on MCRI. Ryan Fantuzzi LSA junior The letter writer is a Washtenaw County Co-Chairfor MCRI. University benefactors should not spend money on stadium To THE DAILY: I was disappointed to learn that the University is spending a quarter of a billion dollars to upgrade the sta- dium. It seems as though the direct benefactors of this investment will be sportscasters and fat-cats, not under- graduate students. An appreciable number of alumni and future stu- dents visit Ann Arbor on fall weekends. I imagine that quite a few of them would want to witness an athletic event in the stadium. Since Michigan prides itself on being a world-class university and there is a significant international student population in Ann Arbor, I won- der if the athletic department would consider nurturing a soccer team? Could they find adequate collegiate or interna- tional competition? Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa are not that far away. Could the public relations staff of the athletic department entice 40,000 people to attend a soccer match on football away-game week- end? Would spectators be willing to fork out $15 for a match versus $50 for a football game? Would this event even puta small dent in the seemingly endless requests for Michigan home football tickets? My feeling is that wealthy benefactors of the University's athletic department could better invest their gifts with scholarship grants to students bat- tling the high cost of living in Ann Arbor or toward medical research at the hospital. Roger Robert Alumnus '70 4 r;