THE NOT-QUITE-SO-GOOD OLD
DAYS OF CLASS REGISTRATION
NEWS, PAGE 2
L AKES M IAM I FROM THE DAILY: BIG HOUSE
PLAN SHOULD FOLLOW ADA
CAGERS HOLD ON AGAINST REDHAWKS SPORTS, PAGE 7 OPINION, PAGE 4
I ie~ hpa hug
Ann Arbor, Mi.
www.michigandaily.com
"I trust (my students) to really
think about the issues and to talk
to each other. Out of this emerges
people who take charge."
- ENGLISH PROF. BUZZ ALEXANDER
Friday, December 8, 2006
At WSU, a bold
plan for diversity
Law School to
give preference to
Detroiters
By WALTER NOWINSKI
Daily StaffReporter
Wayne State University's
Law School has developed a
more aggressive post-Propos-
al 2 admissions policy than
what University of Michigan
administrators have indicated
they will adopt.
Faculty at the law school
in Detroit approved a new
admissions policy that they
hope will maintain diver-
sity without taking race into
account.
Since Michigan voters
banned the consideration of
race, gender and national ori-
gin in public institutions last
month, the state's top univer-
sities have been scrambling to
rewrite their policies to com-
ply with the new law.
Wayne State Law School
is the first to adopt' a new
admissions policy. Neither
the University of Michigan's
undergraduate admissions
office nor the University of
Michigan Law School have
released details about how
they plan to comply with the
new law.
However, in an interview
earlier this month, University
Provost Teresa Sullivan said
the undergraduate admissions
office would likely be "conser-
vative" about any changes to
the admissions process this
year.
Instead of granting racial
preferences as in the past,
the new system will guaran-
tee admission to any student
with a certain GPA and LSAT
score. It will also make special
exceptions for students who
fall below the threshold but
meet certain criteria. One of
the more controversial excep-
tions is for students who live
in a geographic area centered
on the city of Detroit, which is
over 80 percentblack.
There will also be an excep-
tion for students who have
lived abroad or on a Native
American reservation, a
rough substitute for explicitly
granting preference to Native
American students.
The new admissions policy
also includes exceptions those
for students who were dis-
criminated against, overcame
adversity and attended disad-
vantaged high schools.
But the new admissions
policy did not come with-
out controversy. The initial
plan presented to the faculty
proposed maintaining racial
preferences for Native Ameri-
can applicants and granting
exceptions only to students
who live in Detroit.
Wayne State Law Professor
Laura Bartell told The Detroit
News that many of the excep-
tions were simply proxies for
race.
See WAYNE STATE, page 3
Inventors imagine new
way to navigate campus
Pair seeks to wire
'U' with radio tags
to help blind
By ARIKIA MILLIKAN
Daily Staff Reporter
Finding your way from the
Michigan Union to the Den-
nison Building is a very differ-
ent experience if you're blind.
It's doable, but it's not easy.
"Basically, you've got a
blind person at point A who
needs to get to point B," said
Jim Knox, a coordinator for
the University's Information
Technology Division. "There
are a variety of ways to get
there, like taking a bus or nav-
igating with a cane, but what
they miss is the journey."
To illuminate that journey
for the blind, Knox helped
develope TalkingPoints,
which would allow them to
hear what others are able to
see.
Knox and his co-workers
hope to wire South University
Avenue so that when a blind
person walks down the street,
a device attached to a headset
will announce landmarks -
like a stop sign, a fire hydrant
or Rendez-Vous Caf6 - as he
or she walks by.
In the Adaptive Technol-
ogy Computing Site, a show-
case of ergonomic technology
tucked away in the basement
of the Shapiro Undergraduate
LSA senior Adrian Griffin stands handcuffed to other students in the middle of the Diag atla demonstration for prison reform yesterday
afternoon. She is wearing a tally of the number of days she has spent fasting in solidarity with a hunger strike in a Texas prison.
CLASS ACTION
It's not all term papers
in courses that fosters
activism
By JESSICA VOSGERCHIAN
Daily StaffReporter
LSA senior Alex Bryan pretended
to die three times on the Diag on
Tuesday.
Between deaths, Bryan, dressed
in an orange jumpsuit, paced the
short length of his makeshift cell and
yelled at passersby. Then, every hour
between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., Bryan was
led from his cell to his mock execu-
tion by lethal injection.
Bryan was protesting convicted
murderer Jerome Henderson's actual
execution, carried out that day in
Ohio.
A group of students in English
Prof. Buzz Alexander's class on the
representation and reality of prison
organized the event.
The dramatized execution was one
of many displays of student activism
that have recently come out of Alex-
ander's classes.
The projects are strictly student-
led, Alexander said.
Alexander,who founded the Prison
Creative Arts Project, focuses many
See PROTEST, page 3
University researchers Jim Knox (left) and Scott Gifford (right) demon-
strate their new technology that helps blind people get around easily.
Library, Knox and computer
programmer Scott Gifford
have been working for two
years to refine TalkingPoints
for commercial use.
The prototype uses a tech-
nology called Radio Fre-
quency Identifiation to read
paper-thin tags embedded in
signs and landmarks.
An RFID reader relays the
signal received from the tag
to a simple computer database
programmed by University
alum Jonathan James.
See RFID, page 3
In stormy debate, group seeks calm
Bu
f
Th
Pales
pus
been
seme
Th
ers w
last
Leag
Israe
er so
Depat
t some say time checked the auditorium for
explosives before she took
or talk is over the stage. That same night,
one of the protesters who had
By AMANDA been collared at last week's
MARKOWITZ lecture was arrested again at
Daily StaffReporter a City Council meeting after
he showed up with a sign that
e debate over the Israeli- said "Fuck Israel."
tinian conflict on cam- It's that sort of climate that
and in Ann Arbor has members of a new student
anything but civil this group, Bridge the Gap, say
ster. they hope to change.
tree anti-Israel protest- Started earlier this semes-
'ere arrested at a lecture ter, Bridge the Gap aims to
week in the Michigan find a mutual understanding
ue. On Monday, a pro- between Arab and Jewish
1 group hosted a speak- students on campus through
controversial that the moderate dialogue and events.
rtment of Public Safety Members of the group's exec-
utive board, which is made
up of half Arab and half Jew-
ish students, said they hope
students will eventually be
able to debate the conflict and
remain friends.
"One of the major goals
of the group is to bridge the
social chasm," said LSA junior
MitchelKay, the group's social
chair. "We need to confront
people before we confront the
issue."
More than 45 students
quickly filled a small class-
room where the group held
a meeting Wednesday. More
chairs had to be brought in
from surrounding rooms.
When the meeting began,
the group seemed little differ-
ent than any other.
"Welcome" was written
on the chalkboard - albeit in
Hebrew and Arabic as well as
English.
During an icebreaker,
students talked about their
favorite meals, road trips and
summer experiences. The
gravity of the issue the group
faces, though, soon became
apparent.
one student said her best
summer experience was a
trip to Israel. Another said
her favorite was a trip to Pal-
estine. After that, there was a
slight tension in the room.
See MIDEAST, page 3
BEN SJMON/Daily
Business School junior Fouad Hassan (left) and LSA junior Meagan Mirtenbaum (right) at a Bridge the Gap
meeting Wednesday.
TODAY'S
WEATHER
HI:28 GOT A NEWS TIP?
Call 734-763-2459 or e-mail
LU: 21 newstmichgandaily.com and let us know.
COMING MONDAY
In the middle of the housing rush, bad news
about off-campus rent prices NEWS
INDEX
VolCXVII, No.65 NEWS, .....
Q2006 The Michigan Daily S U D O K U..
michigondaily.com OPIN IO N..
.2 ARTS..
.3 CLASSIFIEDS
.4 SPORTS.