4A - Monday, A pril 2, 2007

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

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KARL STAMPFL IMRAN SYED JEFFREY BLOOMER
EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR 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.
A faction in the fraction
Clusters a tangible solution to meet challenge of diversity
n its crusade to maintain diversity, the University has a new
technological ally. The Descriptor Plus software program uses
demographic information to identify geographic areas and
high schools that are underrepresented in the University's student
population. The software can make the University's lofty goals for
minority recruitment attainable, even in the face of Proposal 2.

This is like heaven for me.
- Wrestling fan Mark Klein on WrestleMania 23, which was held over the weekend at
Comerica Park, as reported yesterday by the Detroit Free Press.
JOHN OQUIST Ij E 1N YOUR FEET
Write for Daily
Opinion this summer.
Columnist spots
Navailable.
(You don't even have
to be in Ann Arbor.)
Email editpage.
editors@umkh.edu
for more information.
For once in their livesforge

a

Descriptor Plus is a software program
created by the College Board that divides
areas into different clusters based on fac-
tors such as the average annual income
and the percentage of minority students.
The service also creates high school clus-
ters that compare the quality of education
to the socioeconomic and racial makeup of
students.
Since September, the admissions office
has used the software to prevent a decline
in minority enrollment. Despite its use of
minority population percentage in deter-
mining what cluster a particular neighbor-
hood goes in, this method does not take the
race of individual candidates into account
and should be able to withstand litigation.
Despite past efforts to diversify campus,
the Descriptor Plus statistics reveal that
75 percent of all students who attend the
University come from only five of the 30
clusters. Clusters with a high proportion of
minorities and lower-income populations
are the least represented on campus.
For instance, one cluster includes house-
holds with an average income of $42,600.
Seventy-one percent of this cluster is com-
posed of minorities, but this group only
accounts for 3 percent ofthe current student
body. Statistics like this reflect a failure in
campus diversity, despite efforts to combat
racial and socioeconomic uniformity.
The University has the opportunity to use
this new software to target the 25 under-
represented clusters and boost enrollment
from these groups. Instead of limiting the
CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK
By the owners,
The ownership society. The phrase has
a nice ring to it, even if you aren't the sort of
committed conservative who wishes deathand
defunding upon every remnant of President
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The rhetoric
that surrounds President Bush's notion of the
ownership society inevitably hearkens back to
deeply rooted American ideals of liberty, inde-
pendence and self-reliance.
For Daily columnist John Stiglich (The own-
ership society, 03/21/2007) and many other
conservatives, those three words seem to be
the greatest thing to come along in American
political life since that special morning when
the Great Communicator single-handedly dis-
mantled the Evil Empire by telling Mr. Gor-
bachev to tear down some wall.
A closer look at Bush's ownership soci-
ety, though, reveals that its policies would do
much for those who already have much - and
do little for those who already have little. This
isn't an accident; it's the very design of a pro-
posal driven by a free-market ideology deeply
hostile to the egalitarian policies that have
given fair opportunities to tens of millions of
Americans.
Take, for example, the idea of healthsavings
accounts. Those struggling to get by aren't
likely to have much money left over at the
end of the month to throw into a nifty health
savings account. But for those with the right
combination of health and affluence, health
savings accounts are a nice tax dodge.
Privatizing Social Security is another core
policy in the ownership society. Bush's failure
to-sell the idea to a skeptical nation hasn't dis-
couraged true believers. Stiglich got so excited
about privatization that he even said funds for
Social Security will dry up in 2019. That's not,
well, true. Even without reform, the Social
Security trust fund should let the system pay
its bills until 2042 or so. With enough ideology,
who needs research?
Traditional motifs of American discourse
like free-market ideology are the most impor-
tant components of the ownership society.
Crucially, one of those tropes is, late 19th-cen-
tury, up-by-the-bootstraps social Darwinism.
In the ownership society, government isn't

program's use to the admissions process, the
University can also use this information to
create a more focused outreach program.
Now that the University has these sta-
tistics, it is time to move forward with its
recruiting. Sending administrators and
alums into these underrepresented areas is
a valuable recruiting tactic that the Univer-
sity should intensify immediately.
The geographic targeting approach
embodied by the Descriptor Plus program
was one of the recommendations of the
University's Diversity Blueprints task force,
which held a corresponding forum last
week. The forum was intended to address
the concerns and opinions of students;
many feel that the recommendations of the
task force are too vague.
Yet only 10 students attended, largely
because the forum was held on North Cam-
pus on a Wednesday morning. The timing
of the forum unfortunately suggests that
the University is striving for image rather
than meaningful input. If the administra-
tion really wants student insight, it must
make the Diversity Blueprints forums well-
publicized and accessible to students.
The Blueprints report attempts to address
the University's response to Proposal 2 by
discussing different strategies of recruit-
ing minority students. With tools like the
Descriptor Plus program, the Blueprints
report has the potential to be extremely
effective in combating that much-feared
drop in minority enrollment - provided
students are able to attend its forums.
for the owners
supposed to do much of anything, and work-
ers aren't supposed to organize to demand a
fair deal through collective bargaining. Once
we're truly living in the ownership society,
anyone who isn't doing well economically
should simply be seen as having foolishly mis-
managed assets.
When 100 percent of the blame for poverty
lands squarely on the poor, there's no conceiv-
able moral justification for any silly bleeding-
heart redistribution of wealth. Even today, you
can'tvocally advocateredistribution ofwealth,
but it sneaks by here and there through things
like subsidized student loans, food stamps and
Medicaid. In the ownership society, though,
there will be no need for an equitable distribu-
tion of wealth, or opportunity. The free mar-
ket will allocate capital and assign prices (for
education and health care, for example) as the
invisible hand deems fit. And that's that.
Economic growth under such a scenario
won't be as great as ownership society advo-
cates hope. As bright young people find a col-
lege education utterly beyond their means and
resign themselves to menial labor, our nation
will inexorably lose its competitive edge in
a technology-oriented world economy. The
wealthy elites who benefit most from owner-
ship-society policies might find themselves
frittering away their capital on security sys-
tems, should a particular pastime popular in
other countries with grossly unjust distri-
butions of wealth - kidnapping for ransom
- emerge as an American phenomenon. And
once health care is carefully rationed solely on
the basis of ability to pay, workforce produc-
tivity will suffer somewhat due to the probable
increase in mortality rate.
Personally, I prefer to live in a country where
people realize that society functions bet-
ter, morally as well as economically, with the
occasional deviations from laissez faire dogma
that are necessary to ensure the existence of a
strong middle class and something resembling
equality of opportunity. If Stiglich thinks that
makes me a Socialist, then so be it.
Christopher Zbrozek is an LSA senior and
a meber of the Daily's editorial board.

"When people see our work,for afew
moments they forget that it was done
by a felon. They understand that it was
done by another human being - one
with the same thoughts, emotions and
inspirations they have. And for that one
moment, a major social andpolitical bar-
rier is shattered."
- An artist fea- a
tured in the Prison
Creative Arts Proj-
ect exhibition, as
quoted in Art Show
Magazine.
The titles of some
pieces at the Prison THERESA
Creative Arts Proj-
ect exhibition are KENNELLY
undeniably sugges-
tive of the artists'situations: "Troubled
Man," "Product ofSociety." But like the
artist mentioned above (who is also a
convicted criminal) hopes, the sugges-
tiveness of the art gallery will not go
much further than that. And all view-
ers will be able to see the pieces simply
as art and forget the extenuating cir-
cumstances of the exhibition.
Unfortunately, this hope is not
exactly reality at the Duderstadt Cen-
ter Gallery, where the work is currently
on display. For some viewers, the work
can be seen as nothing more than fel-
ons' artwork. As I browsed the gallery
last week, the statements I overheard
portrayed other visitors' diluted expec-
tations. Many seemed completely taken
aback by the quality of the work.
This year's exhibition features 347
pieces of art - paintings, pencil draw-
ings, landscapes, portraits, abstracts
and more - created by prisoners from
all around Michigan. The work fea-
tured in the exhibition is selected from
thousands of other pieces by mem-
bers of PCAP, a campus group created
in 1990 with the intent of providing
HPVvaccine a must
for young women
TO THE DAILY:
Arikia Millikan's personal state-
ment in last week's Statement (Com-
ing to terms with HPV, 03/21/07) was
a refreshing perspective on the new
HPV vaccine that has undergone scru-
tiny in recent months. As was pointed
out, it is important for people to realize
the staggering statistics: 80 percent of
the female population will likely con-
tract this virus before the age of 50.
Many parents have expressed outrage
when their young daughters have been
encouragedtoreceivethevaccine.They
have taken a common misconceptionto
heart, that HPV results from irrespon-
sible and thoughtless behavior.
This is simply not true. The virus is
extremely common, and anyone can fall
victim to it. But misconceptions aside,
we're talking about protection from a
fatal, silent disease - cervical cancer.
The choice should be an easy one.
Jessica Vartanian
LSA senior
Fixing Detroit takes
long-term solutions
TO THE DAILY:
I was pleasantly surprised to
read Mara Gay's commentary on
community service (Beyond Ser-
vice, 03/27/07). Her point regarding
the problems of service work is one
that is often lost to college students.
Many of us take immense pride in
the community service work we do.
We volunteer at soup kitchens or
tutor inner-city children, but never
ask ourselves what is causing these
terrible injustices.
As volunteers, it is important for
us to realize that our efforts to make
a lasting difference in the commu-

nity are futile if the root causes of
these problems are not resolved.
Service work, while extraordinarily
beneficial in the short-run, is more of
a band-aid than a cure. By failing to

incarcerated people around the state
a means to communicate their feel-
ings to people outside the prison walls.
The annual show (now in its 12th year)
servesto presentthe public with ataste
of all the hard work put in by prison-
ers with the aid and encouragement of
PCAP members.
As its website states, the exhibition
is essentially an embodiment of PCAP's
mission - to break down stereotypes
andencourage dialoguebetweenpeople
in prison and those outside. In effect, it
aims to achieve what the quoted art-
ist hopes: to have the art viewed as the
work of human beings, not felons.
But based on the comments I heard
at the exhibit, as well asa review of the
exhibition last week in The Michigan
Daily (Prison art exhibit enters 12thyear
running strong, 03/29/2007), the aspi-
rations of PCAP and the artist are far
from being fulfilled. The review of the
opening reception of the show, which
featured statements by artists who are
no longer imprisoned, read: "If walking
through a gallery of art made by crimi-
nals and former criminals is unnerving,
then so might the knowledge that some
of the artists could be standing next to
you." This perception of the show shat-
ters its purpose of facilitating dialogue
and relieving tensions between the
public and the prison communities.
It would be incorrect to ask gallery
attendees to ignore the circumstances
of the artists entirely. Ad hominem
judging of artwork is done all the time
at art museums and institutes. Being
awed by what someone can create
while living in an eight-by-eight cell
is also appropriate. But dismissing the
possibility that the work is actually fine
artwork and not just something done
by prisoners is antithetic to PCAP's
mission.
The featured artists deserve to be
treated as the talented people they are.

They are human beings who should
be respected for their abilities and not
make you feel unnerved.
So who is to blame for viewers' weak
expectations and perceptions of the
exhibitionIs it the legal systeminstill-
ing asense of fear inus about prisoners?
Or is it society in general thinking that
these are "bad people" who need to stay
locked up? The answer is hard to find,
but whatever it is, the more than 2.2
million people currently imprisoned
in this country will probably never be
able to escape the labels that society
puts on them.
Why can't we call
it just art for a
moment?
Felon. Convict. These people are
going to spend the rest of their lives
being defined by the one worst act they
committed in their lives. They will be
disrespected and underappreciated in
society, struggle to earn a sustainable
living, or worse, spend the rest of their
lives in confinement.
So don't go to the PCAP display
(which willbe presented through April
11) for the shock value of seeing the
brush strokes of convicted murderers
or rapists first hand. Go to the gallery
because you want to respect fine art-
work. Then spend some time reflect-
ing on how some of the artists lives
may have been drastically different if
someone had recognized their talents
or introduced them to a paintset a little
earlier in their lives.
Theresa Kennelly is an associate
editorial page editor. She can be
reached at thenelly@umich.edu.

SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@UMICH.EDU

address the important questions, like
why people are homeless, we create a
never ending cycle of community ser-
vice. As long as we neglect the source
of these problems, there will always
be people in need of our services.
The volunteers who participated
in DP Day over the weekend are
providing much needed help to the
people of Detroit, but single acts of
service have only a fleeting impact.
Providing community service is a
valuable short-term solution, but we
must address the greater causes of
societal problems if we ever want to
get to the point where service work is
no longer necessary.
Garrett Jones
LSA senior
Students must start
dialogue on Mideast
TO THE DAILY:
For someone who would love to
see peace and a two-state solution in
the Middle East, it is disheartening
to see a letter to the editor like Josh-
ua Blanchard's (Gaza pullout not all
it's cracked up to be, 03/27/07). Unfor-
tunately, it seems as if American
Movement for Israel's call for peace
and dialogue in its viewpoint (Invest
in peace, 03/22/07) was not enough.
Instead, words of peace and humility
are met with those of anger.
I am inspired to write this letter
in response to Blanchard's unfortu-
nate misinterpretation of Don Weis-
glass's comments in Haaretz (The Big
Freeze, 10/11/05). Blanchard takes a
quote out of context and ignores the
undertone of the article as a whole,
which is one of peace that eventually
will come from the Gaza pullout, not
the expansion of the West Bank. He
ignores the fact that West Bank set-
tlements were removed during the
2005 disengagement as well.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
planned a unilateral pullout of the
WestBank,scheduledtofinishby2010.
Unfortunately since last summer's war
with Lebanon and the recent shelling

coming from Gaza, Olmert has tabled
the West Bank disengagement to a
later date for the sake of security for
the Israeli people. Weisglass suggests
the implication of this "freeze" is to
root out the terrorists so whenthe Pal-
estinians gain power, Israel can have
a partner in peace - not Hamas, the
terrorist organization currently lead-
ingthe Palestinian people.
I still have hope that one day there
will be two states, Israel and Pales-
tine, that can sit down and discuss
their issues rationally. Here at the
University, we may not change the
fate of the Middle East, but it can be
a beginning of understanding. To get
individuals from the pro-Palestin-
ian and pro-Israel sides together to
talk about the situation ina peaceful
manner is significant.
Josh Goldstein
LSA freshman
College athletes no
longer role models
TO THE DAILY:
Athletic ability should never become
more important than integrity, and
thankfully our coaches seem to recog-
nize this. Even if student-athletes "have
enough pressures around them" (Should
athletes be role models?, 03/29/07),
they still represent our university on a
national front. There was a time when
athletes could be considered role mod-
els, but I know that I would never sug-
gest that a child aspire to the likes of
Terrell Owens. Unfortunately, it seems
that professional players' lack of respect
is now filtering down to college sports.
When student-athletes do things like
assaultothers, it makes headlines, and it
reflects poorly on the University. Athlet-
ics is a proud tradition at our university
and I think we have to suffer enough
indignities with recent poor records, let
alone national attention for arrests. All
University students should hold them-
selves to high standards, especially
those who have significant exposure.
Andrew Romeo
LSA sophomore'

ALEXANDER HONKALA
KO5 VO____