4 - Friday, December 8, 2006 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4 jb Midigan B&i4y Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. x.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. Wheeling and dealing 'U' dodges responsibility to disabled football fans f you think spending hundreds of millions of dollars to over- haul Michigan Stadium would be a renovation - well, you're wrong. A renovation, you see, would have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are so many lessons from that time for our time, none greater than the idea of one nation greater than the sum of its parts." - Former NBC Nightly News anchor TOM BROKAW, in a speech delivered at Pearl Harbor during a ceremony honoring the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the military base, as reported yesterday by The Associated Press. Ditching the dorms Members of the Michigan Paralyzed veterans of America have complained that while Notre Dame managed to include more than 400 wheelchair-accessible seats in that school's smaller stadium, the reno- vation plan for the Big House includes far fewer seats. The group has threatened to file a lawsuit against the University, saying its plan doesn't comply with the ADA's require- ment that disabled fans have multiple seat- ing options in different locations. University General Counsel Marvin Krislov argued at last month's University Board of Regents meeting that changes to the stadium's bowl should be considered a "repair." While constructing new luxury boxes is a renovation by any definition, the University's legal position apparently is that renovations to the bowl itself, like adding restrooms and widening seats and aisles, should be considered "repairs" - a category not subject to the ADA. This putative distinction between a repair and a renovation might seem confusing to anyone who has clicked the link for infor- mation on "Michigan Stadium Renovations" on the University's homepage. Denying that parts of the renovation are actually a reno- vation to avoid complying with the ADA is also hypocritical. Promising to improve the stadium's handicapped seating is one way the University has sought to sell the skybox project to a skeptical public. With Regent Rebecca McGowan's recent switch to support the renovation plan, there appears little hope that the addi- tion of luxury boxes to the stadium can be stopped. If the plan must go forward, the least the University can do is to ensure that the stadium provides adequate wheelchair- accessible seating. The University has gotten good at ignor- ing critics of its skybox plan. Hopefully, it has enough respect for its disabled fans to give their concerns the attention they deserve. The idea of a luxurious, pri- vate dormitory that charges between $600 and $900 per month as an alternative to the grungy beehives freshmen are shoved into today is enough to make any propo- nent of integrated living communities shudder. Knowing wealthy students could segregate themselves in a dorm equipped with all the ame- nities any college student could ask for - private bedrooms and bathrooms, even maid service - is not a pleas- THERESA ant thought forT those who advo- KENNELLY cate diversity in - residential life. But although the argu- ments against building private dorms are numerous, University Housing's operation of on-campus housing to- day makes the creation of a privately owned and operated dorm increas- ingly probable. Private dorm alternatives have been creeping onto college campuses around the country to meet the de- mands of students who snub tradi- tional dorm life. Managed by a slew of companies - most notably United Campus Housing and the Scion Group - these dorms are usually located near or on a college campus. First in 2003, and then again in 2004, housing con- tractors approached the University about building a high-rise complex on an unoccupied lot near Bursley Resi- dence Hall on North Campus. When an easement was drafted last year between the University and Unit- ed Campus Housing for the company's plans to build a 900-bedroom complex off Murfin Road, the idea of private dorm at the University became a real- ity. The plans were finalized in mid- February, when City Council approved the easement and construction plans by a 9-2 vote. The project was to be completed by summer 2006, or sum- mer 2007 at the latest. But then nothing happened. The lot wasn't cleared, advertisements weren't put up and life on North Campus has remained as stagnant as ever. A Univer- sity Housing employee I talked to didn't even know what I meant by a "private dorm" and was unaware of any prior North Campus construction plans. The most reasonable conclusion I can come up with is that the company scrapped its plans and moved on to another college because the luxury dorm wasn't welcomed by the Univer- sity administration. And with no new proposals on the table from compa- nies wanting to construct on campus, University Housing has retained its monopoly over the on-campus hous- ing market. North Quad plans are finally in full swing, and it appears University Hous- ing is making overdue but genuine strides towards updating dorm life - which is long past due, given that the last new dorm was built in 1968. But its control over the market is frightening to say the least. Year after year, freshmen are forced into dorms that are as uneconomical as they are shoddy, with almost no way around it. Undoubtedly, dorm life has long been a rite of passage for fresh- men. But looking at dorms today, re- ality trumps tradition; what's really going on inside University Housing should not be forced on anyone. University Housing's monopoly over the on-campus system has also al- lowed it to rob students in many unde- tectable ways. Reports of cockroaches in showers, unsanitary eating condi- tions, false fire alarms and instances of theft are becoming as ubiquitous as the minor, in possession tickets handed out in dorm hallways. While the high cost of living in the dorms is no mystery, these drawbacks - along with inescapable meal plans and the prevalence of economy triples - make things even worse. The fact is that the roughly 30 per- cent of students who live in dorms are not getting their money's worth given Why the University should welcome private dorms. the way housing has deteriorated. So as long as students are paying absurdly high prices, they might as well spend their money in nicer, more comfortable private dorms. Building such dorms is the only foreseeable way to counter- act the irresponsible way University Housing is managing residential life on campus. In order to attract prospective students, it's in the University's best in- terest to recruit new on-campus hous- ing developers and ensure they follow through with construction plans. Theresa Kennelly is a Daily associate editorial page editor. She can be reached at thenelly@umich.edu. .' ' 4 Integration on trial Court must be careful not to undermine Grutter, Brown an the weeks following the passage of Proposal 2, it seemed to many students at the University that campus diversity would soon hit rock bottom. Less than a month later, another con- tentious racial integration issue is being breached - this time, in the U.S. Supreme Court. And once again, it doesn't look good for proponents of integration. JESSI HOLLER The complications of citizenship Arguments began Monday on two dif- ferent but related cases, one from Louis- ville, Ky. and the other from Seattle, Wash. The issue at hand is the constitutionality of integration programs in these cities' school districts. Both districts allow stu- dents to pick what school they wish to attend and then make assignments, taking into account factors like school capacity, geographic location - and race. To foster a diverse racial makeup, students can be denied access to their school of choice and transferred elsewhere. These schools are simply trying to break down the most ingrained social barrier in our society. Racial segregation pervades most urban areas, and housing, employment and social segregation plague even the most diverse cities. Schools in Louisville and Seattle should be commended for trying to combat the effects of segregation. Instead, disgruntled moms whose kids didn't get their preferred school are suing them. This is not a case of some worthy appli- cant being denied admission to a presti- gious university. Seattle's lawyer, Michael Madden, insisted in his arguments that the schools in question are all compara- ble, and the city's system is not in place to right the wrongs of economic dispar- ity. Students in these cities are still get- ting an equal education - only with the added benefits of a racially diverse learn- ing environment. It might seem that policies to promote integration in K-12 schools shouldn't be legally controversial. After all, the land- mark decision in Brown v. Board of Edu- cation held that separate is inherently unequal. And yet Chief Justice John Rob- erts ironically cited the Brown precedent during oral arguments Monday - to argue against integration. It's a shame that some conservative members of the Supreme Court fail to see the importance of policies to promote diversity, particularly in light of our heavily segregated society. Many observers expect the court, with two Bush appointees who are hearing a case on race for the first time, to strike down the policies. Such a ruling, how- ever, would do great damage to the prin- ciple of stare decisis. In 2003, the court ruled in Grutter v. Bollinger, the case that challenged the admission policy at the University's law school, that race was an acceptable factor in college admissions. To throw out this precedent after such a short time would make it appear that poli- tics had determined the outcome of the case and could only damage the reputa- tion of the court. Reconceptualizing "The Univer- sity as Global Citizen," as a Honors College panel discussion asked us to do last week Wednesday, turns out to have just as much to do with warring conceptions of culture as it does with the University's wars over cola. The debate that ensued knocked against the fragile casings of issues far more nuanced than whether the Universi- ty's decision to kick Coca-Cola prod- ucts off campus - only to reinstate the contract some four months later - was just. The grounds of the Coke con- troversy are inextricably rooted in the debate over the changing role of citizenship in an increasingly com- plex global order. As the definitions of exactly who qualifies as a citizen become increasingly contested, the ethical challenge that human rights activists and multinational corpora- tions face is to sort and reorder the web of tangled ethical fibers under- girding our emerging global society. Swirling around the Coca-Cola Company's alleged violations of union workers' rights in Colombia and environmental standards in India is a multifaceted ethical controversy that initially appears to be a simple case of might versus right. Cast the globalization debate in the terms of the culture wars of the '90s, how- ever, and you will find yourself con- fronted with a startling parallelism. The almost absurd nationalism of statements like "The world is great because of America - not the other way around!" (as one panelist so tact- fully declared) makes it apparent that the Pat Buchanan-era paranoia over some sort of radical affront to "main- stream" American culture still lurks in the musty corners of our cultural unconscious - and clings fiercely to that last can of Coke. But this time, the politics ain't local. The Coke Coalition's battle to boot the soft drink off campus, given Coke's violation of the University's Vendor Code of Conduct, is the politi- cal manifestation of a process of wider theoretical significance - the eclips- ing of the old state-subject concept by global citizenship. The international movement to stop Coca-Cola from trampling over the environment and workers' rights also carries with it a brash and threatening proposal: The old conception of citizen no longer holds water. Not, at least, as a strictly national distinction. The University's central role in the Coke controversy mirrors the impor- tance of the modern university as agent in the larger theoretical strug- gle. The University is at once a cor- poration, "thought leader" and public disseminator of the politics of state, and the Coke controversy has forced the University to choose one set of ethics over the other. Each of the University's roles presents a different ethic: the Vanderbilt business ethic of "the public be damned" versus an emergent universal ethic of inalien- able human rights. The question is not whether the corporate armies or the opposing melange of grassroots coali- tions will "win" the Kulturkampf, but how to find a mutually agreeable way to chart the ethical landscape of the global state. The Coke controversy highlights the importance of conceptualiz- ing new ways to order and mediate between the competing ethics in this nascent global world. Anti-globalists and American chauvinists alike have failed to develop progressive solu- tions that confront these realities, corporate-invented though they may be. This new cultural arena demands sheriffs - otherwise, the old ethic of corporate consumption may swallow the more earnest but fiscally power- less ethic of human rights and corpo- rate responsibility. However, these ethical sheriffs must be theorists before they are activists. They may wield pop-guns, but those pop-guns must point toward universal, global solutions. Activism doesn't just include the protests and strikes - the history of the American labor movement bears testament to the fact that forming a coalition is half the battle. Solidarity - between Uni- versity students and administrators, international rights coalitions and the groups whose rights Coca-Cola's prac- tices have systematically denied - is the new category that will prove cru- cial in mapping out the ethicalterms of the culture of the global state. As panelist and Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise Andrew Hoffman indicated, transformation- minded coalitions must identify inno- vative solutions to the many problems presented by the global state - as well as the problems themselves - before rushing to take the Bastille. Not that it cannot, or should not, be stormed. Today's mass-culture Bastille, after all, may well be a space measured in fluid ounces per can. Jessi Holler is an LSA freshman and a member of the Daily's editorial board. 4 Send letters to tothedaily@umich.edu RYAN JABER A B-side writer misunderstands meaning ofHanukkah TO THE DAILY: The essay in this week's B-side A reconciliation with Hanukah (12/07/2006) is absurd and reflects the writ- er's lack of understanding about this special holiday. It's terribly unfortunate that the writer hasn't a clue as to the meaning of Hanukkah. An abundance of decorations would not enhance the meaning of Hanukkah. It is unimportant to the those who celebrate of the Jewish holiday that radio stations do not play Hanukkah music 24 hours a day. Rather, Hanukkah - which means dedication - is about spend- ing time with family and friends. Hanukkah is about celebrating the countless miracles and blessings in our lives. Despite what the author says, the fact that Hanuk- kah is not very commercialized does nothing to dimin- ish its significance as a treasured holiday. It is already that, and it will always be. Carrie Dubin LSAfreshman ' ' ' ;6: "w .. ., - t lr :1 T 3 1/ t S ki JOHN OQUIST :. I WISH THIS WINTER WERE WARMER, WHEN IS GLOBAL WARMING GOING TO RAMP UP? BUT GLOBAL WARMING KILLS POLAR BEARSI LOOK LITTLE BRO, I LIKE GLOBAL WARMINGI I LIKE THAT IT'S HOT, AND I SAW THAT AL GORE MOVIE AND YOU KNOW WHAT, I LIKE THE HEAT, EVEN IF IT MEANS POLAR BEARS HAVE TO DIE, OK? 3 SOME TREES OR SOMETHING. (sAsi I 1 11 { 11 / If III x i