SYED: TOYOTA IN NASCAR ISN'T AS UNAMERICAN AS YOU THINK OPINION, PAGE 4 NOT FOR KIDS CAGERS HEAD TO PIVOTAL ROAD CONTEST AT MSU LITTLE CHILDREN' A COMPLEX VISION OF SUBURBIA ARTS, PAGE 5 SPORTS, PAGE 9 ( NI N ~I) \ FL N BALS( f L )IL')R EI LV+b\ Ann Arbor, Michigan www.michigandaily.com Tuesday, February13, 2007 CAMPUS CRIME Students robbed at gunpoint They asked for Fourth Avenue. Kinsey said the suspects' home- directions, but towns - Romulus and Ypsilanti - were unusual. took cash "We don't usually have a lot of out-of-towners coming in and doing By ANDREW GROSSMAN this stuff," he said. ManagingNews Editor Sunday's robbery is the fourth robbery on the streets near cam- Kindness to strangers backfired pus this semester. None of the three for three University students early other incidents were similar to the Sunday morning. one on Sunday, according to AAPD Three male students walking Sgt. Charlotte DeMateo. on the 300 block of East Jefferson Department of Public Safety Street at 12:30 a.m. stopped to give spokeswoman Diane Brown said directions to Hamilton Place to a DPS hasn't had reports of armed group of men, all of whom had their robbery on campus since March. faces concealed by hoods or ban- While attacks like the one on Sun- danas. A few moments later, the stu- day have been rare in recent months, dents found themselves face down Kinsey said the circumstances of on the ground and $40 poorer, Ann the robbery - on a side street, late at Arbor police said. night - were typical of such crimes. Police said one of the men pulled He advised students to travel in a gun on the students and demanded cars as much as possible late at night their money. and to carry a cell phone. Detective Chris Fitzpatrick of Fitzpatricksaidhebelievethefour the Ann Arbor Police Department men who were arrested were the said that while two of the students only ones involved in the robbery. had money to give the robbers, one Because the four suspects were turned over a wallet with $40 in it. caught immediately, Kinsey said He said the four men forced the he's hopeful that the campus area three students to lie on the ground won't seea rash of street robberies. while they fled. Once the robbers "Hopefully we nixed this trend took off, one of the students called right away," he said. "We caught police, who quickly apprehended them before they got started doing two of the suspects nearby. Two this a lot, so that's a good thing." others were arrested later Sunday Kinseysaidthestudentsdidtheright in Ypsilanti and Romulus. Fitzpat- thingbygiving the mentheir cash. rick said three of the suspects are 18 "Don't try and be a hero when years old. The other is 17. somebody has got a gun," he said. Fitzpatrick said officers found a The four suspects - oneYpsilanti loaded handgun that they believe resident and three Romulus resi- was used in the robbery in a bush dents - will be arraigned today in outside Bethlehem Church on South Washtenaw County Court. Harvard University Prof. Paul Farmer lectures in Rackham Auditorium yesterday about the possibility of treating AIDS and tuberculosis in Africa. The 1,100 tickets for the event were all claimed weeks before the event. A CALL TO ACTION Noted humanitarian draws sell-out crowd of admirers By JESSICA VOSGERCHIAN Daily StaffReporter At a speech in Rackham Audito- rium yesterday, Harvard Univer- sity Prof. Paul Farmer resorted to a time-honored advertising ploy: the before-and-after picture. What the renowned humanitar- ian was advertising was serious. The before photo showed a shirtless patient suffering from tuberculosis and AIDS. His skin clung to the ridges of his ribcage and cheekbones. The after photo was of the same patient six months after retroactive viral therapy. He looked decades younger. His limbs looked strong, his cheeks were full and an ear-to-ear grin lit up his face. Farmer was trying to convince the audience of the importance of investing in treating disease in Africa. Ross School of Business and the William Davidson Institute host- ed a speech by Farmer yesterday. Organizers reserved 700 seats for business, public health and medi- cal students. They received 1,700 requests. The free tickets for the auditori- um's 1,100 seats were claimed long before the event. Eight stations were set up in University buildings to view the speech in a live web- cast. Farmer is a founder of Partners in Health, agroup that has brought medical treatment to Africa since 1987. He received a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation for his work in Public Health and Medicine. Prof. Bob Kennedy said the Business School invited Farmer in an attempt to expose students to people who work in fields outside the business world. The event was not widely publi- cized. The sole invitation was an e- mail sent first to Business students and later sent to public health and medical students. The news spread through a spree of forwarded e-mails, Ken- nedy said. After being introduced by Busi- ness School Dean Bob Dolan, Farmer didn't waste much time to delve into a discussion of his work fightingAIDS in Africa. Farmer confronted the argu- ment that humanitarian efforts should focus on AIDS preven- tion over treatment of the disease, which is more expensive. He said it's not too expensive on a large scale to treat AIDS- infected Africans with retroactive viral therapy, which is designed to suppress the disease and its symp- toms. Farmer argued that cost goes beyond just dollars and cents. He said it's important to consider See FARMER, page 7 New buildingA b r on tap or East U. To make way, new owners to demolish historic complex By KATHERINE MITCHELL Daily Staff Reporter Anberay, the 84-year-old yellow Art Deco apartment complex on East University Avenue known to many as Melrose Place, may soon be knocked down to make way for a much taller building. Zaragon Inc, a Chicago-based real-estatecompany,planstodemol- ish the existing23-unit building and construct a 10-story, 66-unit apart- r ment building in its place. SHAY SPANioLA/Daiiy The plan still needs to be Anberay, an 84-year-old apartment complex on East University Avenue approved by the Ann Arbor Plan- ning Commission. Rousseau also designed St. Mary's not going to be in as great a loca- Zaragon President Rick Perlman Student Chapel and Trotter House. tion," she said. said the new structure, Zaragon The building's previous owners Students hoping to prevent the Place, would contain apartments told tenants in November to look building from being demolished with two to six bedrooms marketed for new housing, but it was unclear have formed a group on Facebook. to students and professors along whether they would be able to rent com called "Save Melrose Place." with ground-level retail space and their apartments again next year. The group's recent news includes two levels of underground parking. LSA sophomore Lea Kilibarda, an apparently facetious plan for Perlman, a University alum, said an Anberay resident, said rent- saving Melrose Place. the company purchased Anberay ers weren't told for sure that they "We should chain ourselves to about a month ago with the inten- wouldn't be able to re-sign leases the tree in the courtyard so they tion of demolishing the building. until last month. This made finding won't be able to tear down 'the cas- Anberay was designed in 1923 by a place to live next year more diffi- tle at Anberay,' " the page says. Joseph Rousseau, then a professor cult. "I don't think people are too of architecture at the University. "No matter where we move we're See CUTS, page 7 Decades later, SDS returns Where it began, students restart chapter of left-Wing group By PAUL BLUMER Daily StaffReporter A group of students held the first Students for a Democratic Society meeting at the University since 1969 on Sunday. Forty-eight years ago, Ann Arbor resident Alan Haber helped organize SDS. For ten years, during the turbu- lent 1960s, the activist group fought against the draft and the Vietnam War with rallies and protests. Ann Arbor was a hotbed of SDS activity throughout the 1960s, especially in the later part of the decade. The group's manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, was written by University alum and former Michi- gan DailyEditor Thomas Hayden. Fittingly, Haber was there to lend his encouragement. About 20 students attended the meeting in the Michigan Union win hopes of reviving the University's SDS chapter, enough for the group to be recognized by the University as an official student group. The University chapter joins the more than 250 SDS chapters across the nation that have been re-estab- lished since January 2006. LSA junior Matt Roney led the meeting, though he stressed the non-hierarchical structure of SDS. "Members have democratic access to all levels of decision-mak- See SDS, page 7 HAZED AND CONFUSED ANGELA CESERE/daily Afire truck in front of Noodles and Company on State Street yesterday. Employees called the Ann Arbor Fire Department at about 4 p.m. and reported a haze in the basement. Firefighters used a thermal imaging camera to look for signs of burning, but couldn't ascertain the source of the haze. AAFD Capt. Jim Budd said it could have been smoke or a dust cloud. TODAY'S HI: 16 GOT A NEWS TIP? Call 734-763-2459 or e-mail WEATHE 0 10 newscomicbgandaily.com and let us know. ON THE DAILY BLOGS From 'The Office' to Nick Drake WWW.MICHIGANDAILY.COM/THEFILTER INDEX NEW S .... . .................... ....2 ARTS ...............................5 c2 7bVo e cC bhgan aily SUDOKU .. ............ ....... 3 CLASSIFIED ...........................6 mib it ycm OP ION . . . ... ... ... 4 SPO R TS... . ... ..I.. .. .... 8