4 - Tuesday, December 5, 2006 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com LJbe 1i*idiigan &at Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 413 E. Huron St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104 tothedaily@umich.edu EMILY BEAM DONN M. FRESARD CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK JEFFREY BLOOMER EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. -- ' FRID -10E DAILY The editorial below, which is being print- tured and renamed the Board for Student ed in college newspapers across the coun- Publications. Today it serves primarily to try today, has particular relevance to The oversee the finances of the Daily, the Michi- Michigan Daily. On at least three occasions ganensian and the Gargoyle. Daily staff in this newspaper's past, the board in Con- members select the Daily's editors without trol of Student Publications interfered with interference from the board or University the Daily's independence by refusing to administrators. accept the staff's recommendations for edi- While we certainly won't root for USC in tor positions - a situation strikingly simi- the Rose Bowl, we wish the staff of the Daily lar to that which occurred recently at the Trojan the best of luck in its conflict with University of Southern California. their university's administration and the In 1969, the Daily's board was restruc- USC Media Board. Defending the collegiate press USC wrong to block editor elected by newspaper's staff A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse." - U.N. Secretary General KOFI ANNAN, responding to a question about civil war in Iraq in his last interview with the British Broadcasting Company as reported yesterday by BBC.com. Annan will step down from his position on Dec. 31. ALEXANDER HONKALA E .I I 6 To naming Ann Arbor's new high school after Bo Schembechler. That's certainly a better idea than the two sugges- tions an official naming committee brought before the school board, Northridge and Skyline. One of those is the name of a 1994 earthquake in California, and the other, well, just sounds silly. To the Bowl Cham- pionship Series system, for fairly obvious reasons involving Glendale and Gators. We're too busy being bitter to come up with some witty and sarcastic joke about Jim Tressel's sweater vest to print here. EXXON VAS.[? J E t rN S R ! fi F a 0 ne week ago, an administrator atcthe University of Southern California blocked the re-election of Zach Fox to the postof editor in chief ofthe Daily Tro- jan, the campus's student daily newspaper. As college journalists, we are deeply trou- bled by this decision. Practicing journalism with strings attached isn't really practicing journalism at all, and to that end, we seek to preserve the tradition of a functionally - and whenever possible, formally - inde- pendent collegiate press. If campus news- papers are to succeed in informing readers and training reporters, they must be more than public relations arms of universities, and they cannot operate under the yoke of administrators' censorship. Fox was re-elected by the staff of the Daily Trojan behind a vision that called for more financial transparency and a reorganization of the paper's senior edi- tor positions. Yet his election required the approval of USC's Media Board, a body of students, faculty members and adminis- trators that oversees the school's student- run media operations. USC Vice President of Student Affairs Michael L. Jackson, a member of this board, decided not even to present Fox to the board, describing Fox's vision as irreconcilable with the Media Board's outline for the role. Fox, who had been serving as the editor this fall, resigned from his post in protest of the decision and threw his support behind the Daily Trojan's editorial director, Jeremy Beecher, who handily won a subsequent vote on Friday and was approved by the Media Board on Monday. Earlier this semester, Fox repeatedly approached the board requesting informa- tion about the budget and finances of the paper. Given that access to financial infor- mation is a standard operating procedure for nearly all our nation's college papers - independent or not - this move denies USC's student journalists a holistic view of an industry that is facing major chang- es. Although the administration has com- missioned a task force to investigate Fox's proposals, its reticence toward financial transparency creates an appearance of impropriety and leaves open questions as to whether Fox was denied his post in retaliation for his probing questions. Although the Daily Trojan is not totally fiscally independent, its daily production historically has been student-run. Regard- less of the formal level of independence of the paper, a meddling administration undermines the educational value of stu- dent journalism. Interventions like this one assault the core values of student newspapers: objectivity and comprehen- sive coverage. They compromise journal- istic integrity and tarnish the development of the next generation of journalists. Our society relies on its newspapers to check powerful individuals and institu- tions. An administration-controlled stu- dent paper poses the same threat to an academic community that a state-con- trolled press would to a nation; oversight limits the press' ability to act as a watch- dog and prevent misuse of authority. The USC administration's interference with the student press creates a chilling effect, forcing student journalists to weigh the risk of losing their jobs against the duty of writinga story about or questioning the administration. Such considerations ham- per a paper's ability to do its job. If USC intends to imbue any journalistic values in its students, it must allow its students to be journalists without fear of administra- tive reproach. USC's action diminishes the role of stu- dent journalists across the nation by dem- onstrating a lack of trust in students to decide the structure and daily operation of their paper. But more important, it vio- lates the fundamental value of the press. The university administration does a dis- service to the whole of the USC communi- ty, not just the Daily Trojan editors whose decisions they rendered inconsequential. The integrity of the collegiate press is important to the greater integrity of the academy, where students and professors as well as journalists question and inves- tigate and learn from the world around them. Those are values that motivate us as journalists, and we hope they are values that the USC administration also chooses to stand behind. Virtual morality y Calc IIIprofessor once told me that mathematics would one day solve all humanity's problems. "Scientific or social, clean energy to drug addiction - one day their equations will be found and they will be solved." He was serious. Although seldom stated so bluntly, this attitude under- lies the think- ing of many r scientists and ; laypeople alike. And while it's , tempting to dismiss this notion as sci- entific impe- rialism, it has_ profound and TOBY dangerous MITCHELL results in the real world. When Iran terrifies the world with its nuclear program, it's benefiting from a Cold War-era weapons policy that would've made my calculus professor proud. Iran's chief ally in the United Nations is Russia - they have lots of nuclear material they want to sell. And Russia, like the United States, has this nuclear material partly because of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Duringthe Cold War,agroup of scien- tists at a defense firm called the RAND corporation devised a mathematical game called the Prisoner's Dilemma. In the game, if one prisoner informs on the other, his sentence is reduced to one year and the other's is increased to five. If neither informs, their sentences both stay at two years. If they both inform, their sentences are increased to three years apiece. Neither can know what the other will do in advance. Now say the two "prisoners" are the United States and Russia, and the "in- creased sentence" they can inflict on each other is an atomic holocaust. The mathematically ideal solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma is for both prison- ers to rat on each other. In Cold War parlance, this was called Mutually As- sured Destruction: Make sure the Unit- ed States has enough nukes to annihi- late the entire planet, Russia will do the same, and then they're both screwed if they attack. In military circles of the time, this "minimax solution" was taken to dem- onstrate that the constant threat of thermonuclear armageddon was pref- erable to peaceful disarmament. Un- fortunately for our generation, a few important variables were left out. The Prisoner's Dilemma assumes both pris- oners are rational agents out for their own self-preservation. It doesn't cover fanatics who believe they glorify God by killingtheir enemies and go to Paradise if they themselves die. For the religious nihilists of Iran, Israel and American Christendom, the Apocalypse is actu- ally an incentive. That massive permanent arms in- dustry that made the bombs? It's a mathematical necessity. While the pol- icy of "massive retaliation" was already in place before the work at RAND, it's probably safe to say the military-indus- trial complex built to serve this policy felt reassured by the idea that there was a scientific basis for their liveli- hoods. Public opinion in the 1960s, un- educated as it was, tended not to regard the atomic extermination of the entire human race asa legitimate strategic op- tion. Such rationalized insanity is the ex- act sort of nightmare we can expect in a world of quantities divorced from val- ues. This is the same System the 1960s fought and the Machine the postmod- ern 1990s raged against. Such a "virtual morality" barely disguises its darker underlying drives of power and arro- gance. In Eliot's brilliant phrase, to the ex- tent we consider science an appropri- ate substitute for ethics, we're guilty of believing in "systems so perfect that no one will have to be good." Like my calculus professor, we may still hold out hope for technological salvation - a literal deus ex machina - but the Second Law of Thermodynamics still makes a pretty poor substitute for the Golden Rule. At the University, such lopsided logic is particularly influential within two professional schools: Engineering and Business. Although mainstream stu- dent organizations and professionalism courses pay lip service to ethics, stu- dents are generally encouraged to be- lieve technological and economic prog- ress work just fine, ifnot better,without such mushy feel-good concerns. There are excellent student organizations like Net Impact or BLUElab that stu- Thought divorced from ethics can't solve our problems. dents can use to apply their education to world problems, but they must fight against the prevailing winds in their colleges. The promise of scientific progress is one of the true gifts from Western civi- lization to the world. Hunger, renew- able energy, AIDS - all of these can be mitigated by reason, research and in- telligence. But science itself will never solve these problems without the will that morality alone can provide. Albert Einstein was more eloquent than I: "The ancients knew something we seem to have forgotten. All means prove but a blunt instrument if they have not behind them a living spirit. But if the longing for the achievement of the goal is powerfully alive within us, then we shall not lack the strength to find the means for reaching the goal and for translating it into deeds.' Toby Mitchell can be reached at tojami@umich.edu. 6 The following student newspapers also have endorsed this editorial and published it today in either their print or online editions: The Brown Daily Herald, The Cavalier Daily (University of Virginia), The Cor- nell Daily Sun, The Daily Californian, The Daily Evergreen (Washington State University), The Daily Illini, The Daily Orange, The Daily Pennsylvanian, The Daily Princetonian, The Daily Reveille (Louisiana State University) The Daily Sundial (California State University, Northridge), The Daily Texan, The Daily Trojan, The Harvard Crimson, The Oregon Daily Emerald, The Stanford Daily and The Yale Daily News. Send letters to tothedaily@umich.edu THERESA KENNELLY +EW NT City Council's wishful thinking The Wolverines better off to act with class and dignity TO THE DAILY: I wonder if Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr has ever heard the saying "Never wres- tle with a pig because you'll both get dirty, and only the pig will enjoy it." For the last three weeks, Florida coach Urban Meyer and Florida President Bernie Machen have poli- ticked and pandered to anyone who would listen. They have wined, complained, threat- ened the system and even stooped to deni- grate Michigan and the other teams with whom they were competing for the right to play for the national championship. FRIN RINR F[[L I While the media did all it could to push, pull and prod Carr into the mud of the debate, he refused with resolve and class. He reiterated time and again that a team's play on the field and not its politics off it should determine whether it received the opportu- nity to play for a national championship. While Sunday's Bowl Championship Series poll called the match in favor of the pig, I would rather see the Wolverines play in the Rose Bowl having acted with the class and dignity that defines the Michigan tra- dition than have them play for a national championship with a coach, team and uni- versity covered in mud. Ryan Parker Law School March 20, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy for the Ann Arbor City Council. It's the day the council wished to give solace to landlords and tenants throughout the city - and quell the barrage of angry students and MichiganStudent Assembly mem- bers - by passing an ingenious lease- signing ordinance. But City Council's wishful thinking has translated only to frustrated landlords and angrier (not to mention more confused) stu- dents, which has effectively led to the collapse of lease-signing ethics throughout Ann Arbor. Essentially, the lease-signing ordinance has cre- ated a city of dishonestly and decep- tion, making lease signing even more of a lawless game than it was last fall. It was the hope of the City Council as well as the many Ann Arbor resi- dents who backed the ordinance that last Friday would be the start of the citywide housing frenzy. For most student leases, Dec. 1 is the day when 90 days of the current lease period has expired. Clearly, they thought, these three months would give underclass- men adequate time to get their acts together, explore the city a bit and decide with whom they wanted to live. Upperclassman could use the 90-day grace period to decide if they wanted to stay in their homes for another year without having to worry about hoards of prospective tenants touring their residences with their landlords. Then, when December rolled around - the start of the term paper and final exam crunch, mind you - everyone could begin house shopping and find a house that meets their demands. Well here we are, five days into December, and if you know anyone who hasn't signed a lease and wants to live in a house or apartment larger than one bedroom, you might want to suggest he find a nice-sized box and alley to inhabit next school year. Thanks to landlord loopholes and clever (or realistic) students, a lot of the good housing filled up in October or November. Among the strategies to circumvent the ordinance is a waiver landlords give to tenants (sometimes three or maybe six times) to indicate if they do notwishtorenew their lease. If signed, it allowslandlords to ignorethe 90-day waiting period and lease their proper- ties for the next year as soon as the tenants hand back the waiver. Students employed their own way to skirt the ordinance - or at least those students who knew Dec.. 1 would not be the beginning of the frenzy, but rather the end when they could finally put their name on the lease of the house they'd been scop- ing out for months. Many students knocked on doors and toured houses by themselves. After finding a good place to live, they contacted landlords to "reserve" a lease-signing appoint- ment for Dec. 1. Clearly, landlords and student tenants alike have discovered ways around the ordinance. Whether the City Council became aware of them or not, these methods will only continue in future years and become more lucrative if nothing is changed. Closing the loopholes in the lease- signing ordinance would be a good start. But above and beyond those changes, a greater revision is needed in the Ann Arbor lease-signing sys- tem. It's not simply that students need more than a 90-day period to decide where to live. Rather, it's that the perennial housing problems around the city need real attention from the City Council. Lease inflation, seedy landlords, discrepancies around move-out and move-in dates and obscenely high fees for early move-in are only a few of the noticeable prob- lems with the housing market that need to be addressed. If City Coun- cil really wishes to ameliorate some of the problems with the off-campus housing system and work for student interests, it should start by creating an ordinance that more adequately addresses the problems of the housing market and cut down on the nonsense students face from their landlords. Looking at what happened this year with lease signing, it's clear the ordinance is begging for revision. In the next semester, it is necessary for City Council to act in a more pro-stu- dent manner and communicate better with the MSA-City Council commit- tee. By making changes to the lease system and voting on controversial ordinances while students are around to voice opinions instead of in the summer - which is its habit - City Council members can work on their relationship with students and effec- tively improve off-campus housing. Theresa Kennelly is a LSA junior and a Daily associate editorial page editor. She can be reached at thenelly@umich.edu. U SHffe rEUICAL t ?E(c, THAT He I$ PeAOy rO u5E 6sPeAt?5 TO TAQ ON A THT ae $ OL/r ss WrHMIOOION TO O OENEMY THE LACK OF PPOGPES$TRgOOP 3 oEINO MAOB NIQA. Editorial Board Members: Reggie Brown, Kevin Bunkley, Amanda Burns, Sam Butler, Ben Caleca, Devika Daga, Milly Dick, James David Dickson, Jesse Forester, Gary Graca, Jared Goldberg, Jessi Holler, Rafi Martina, Toby Mitch- ell, Rajiv Prabhakar, David Russell, Katherine Seid,Elizabeth Stanley, Jennifer Sussex, John Stiglich, Neil Tambe, Rachel Wagner.