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.