How BR, ,gJ d& n Modern'Venus'
The Rude Mechanicals' unorthodox
A look at the 17-day process that brought former West Virginia men's play about race, gender and inhu-
basketball coach John Beilein to Michigan Sports, page 9 manity Arts, page 5
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Ann Arbor, Michigan www.michigandaily.com
Robert Frost, Arthur Miller, Leonard Bernstein and the Dalai Lama
all have one thing in common: they stayed at the University's ..
Friday, April 6, 2007
Two MSA
plans take
on cost of
textbooks
GUESTS OF THE 'U' IN By WALTER NOWINSKI
Daily News Editor
THE INGLI1S HOUSE
The University houses some of its
most prominent guests at a large
mansion overlooking the Arb.
" Poet Robert Frost
" Playwright and alum Arthur Miller
" Members of the royal families of Japan,
Greece, Thailand and the Netherlands
" President Gerald Ford
* Newsman Mike Wallace
" Opera star Jessye Norman
" Drs. Christiaan Barnard and Jonas Salk
" he Dalai Lama
* Musicians Leonard Bernstein and Vladi-
When University alum and for-
mer President Gerald Ford came
back to Ann Arbor to watch Michi-
gan play Ohio State in football, he
didn't get a suite in the Campus Inn
or the Bell Tower Hotel. Instead,
the University put him up in a
10,000 square-foot mansion locat-
ed east of the Nichols Arboretum.
The Tudor mansion, called Inglis
House, has been owned by the Uni-
versity since 1951. It was willed to
the University by Detroit industrial-
ist James Inglis, who had no direct
connection to the school. After sit-
ting idle forthree years, the mansion
was converted into the official Uni-
versity guesthouse and a residence
for off-campus regents in 1954. Since
then, scores of alumni, speakers
and dignitaries, including the Dalai
Lama, have spent the night in the
slate-roofed mansion overlooking
the Huron River Valley.
It is believed that the house,
which cost $250,000 to build in
1929 - about $2.8 million intoday's
dollars - was donated to the Uni-
versity by James and Elizabeth
Inglis to serve as a house for Uni-
versity presidents, said Rita Gal-
loway, facilities manager for the
One calls for release
of lists, other for
'understanding'
By JESSICA VOSGERCHIAN
Daily StaffReporter
Michigan Student Assembly
members are developing two
strategies they say could help
reduce the cost of textbooks.
The plans are spearheaded by
separate MSA committees and
take different approaches to the
issue.
One initiative is to convince
University administrators to
require professors to release
their book lists to students and
bookstores earlier in the year,
which would allow students to
shop for books ahead of time
and find the cheapest prices,
MSA Vice President Moham-
mad Dar said.
Dar said Senior Vice Provost
Lester Monts suggestedthe idea
to adninistrators after an MSA
member met with him about the
suggestion last winter.
If instituted, the earlier dead-
line would make bookstores
more likely to offer higher
buy-back rates for used books
that they know are on profes-
sors' lists. That would make
more used books available for
students to purchase the next
semester, Dar said.
But Dar said MSA and Uni-
versity administrators need to
pursue the plan carefully so
professors don't feel pressured.
"Once you infringe on how
professors teach their classes
you're getting into serious per-
sonal space," he said. "We don't
want to encroach on the rela-
tionship professors have with
the bookstores."
Dar said the initiative could
garner support for fighting text-
book prices beyond Ann Arbor.
"If campus, faculty, admin-
istrators and students realize
early is good, then we could use
that to address the bigger pub-
lishers," he said.
The other initiative is the
creation of a program in which
three or four students would
report on the operations of
Shaman Drum Bookshop for
academic credit, said Eric Li, a
former MSA representative who
is developingthe program.
The idea came from a Janu-
ary forum about textbook prices
where Shaman Drum owner
Karl Pohrt spoke about ways his
store could ease the process of
buyingtextbooks, Li said.
By working in the store for
eight to 10 hours a week and
examining the store's business
records, the students will likely
gain insight into the textbook
industry and be able to recom-
mend ways to fight high prices,
Li said.
He said the reports the stu-
dents will present to MSA will
also help students to under-
stand the bookselling industry
- like the cost of buying from
publishers and shipping fees -
that factor into the retail prices
of books.
"We'll be able to see where
we have the ability to home
in and make change or we'll
understand the aspects we can't
help," Li said.
Li said he thinks students
uninvolved with the company
will be able to recognize parts
of the process that could be
improved that Pohrt hasn't
noticed in his more than 30 years
of experience inbookselling.
MSAis also consideringsend-
ing representatives to lobby in
Lansing this fall for the state
government to reduce or elimi-
nate sales tax on textbooks, but
no concrete plans for the project
have been made, Dar said.
office of the president.
Galloway, who oversees both
Inglis house and the President's
Residence at 815 S. University Ave.,
said every University president
since 1951 has been offered Inglis
House as a residence, but they all
have chosen to live on Central Cam-
pus instead. Galloway said Univer-
sity presidents probably choose to
live on Central Campus as opposed
to Inglis House as a symbolic ges-
ture to show they are engaged with
the campus.
But the University has found the
relative isolation of Inglis House
useful when it needs to house a
prominent dignitary with some
degree of privacy.
University spokeswoman Kelly
Cunningham said the United States
Secret Service preferred to have
Ford stay at Inglis House because
the secluded 8-acre estate is rela-
tively easy to secure.
See INGLIS, Page 3A
HASH BASH 2007
Rally faces cold,
low turnout
DEOXYRIBOSE DANCER
At campus tradition,
student attendance
has fallen
By ALESE BAGDOL
Daily Staff Reporter
organizers of tomorrow's
Hash Bash hope the Ann Arbor
tradition will help convince law-
makers to decriminalize getting
high.
Low temperatures and low
student turnout, though, could
get in the way.
Temperatures in the 30s and
a chance of snow are in the fore-
cast.
Last April, a crowd of about
900 people composed of both
elderly hippies with dreadlocks
and giddy high school students
gathered on the Diag to partici-
pate.
But the attendance at Hash
Bash, which used to number in
the thousands,has declined in the
last several years, and increas-
ingly fewer University students
are attending, said Adam Brook,
the event's organizer.
In the past eight years, 217 peo-
ple have been arrested at Hash
Bash. Only four of them were
University students, Department
of Public Safety spokeswoman
Diane Brown said.
"The demographic at Hash
Bash keeps aging," she said.
Brown said Hash Bash isn't as
student-oriented as many people
think.
"The event draws a lot of peo-
ple from out of town who do not
understand or respect the values
upheld on this campus," Brown
said.
But LSA freshman Nathan-
iel Morton said he thinks Hash
See HASH BASH, Page 3
AUTO INDUSTRY
Kerkorian
offers
$4.5b for
Chrysler
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
The New York Times
Kirk Kerkorian is back. After
making billions on brazen invest-
ments in Hollywood, Las Vegas
and Detroit, he is now pursuing
Chrysler once more, a dozen years
after his last attempt.
His investment arm, the Tracin-
da Corp., made a $4.5 billion cash
offer yesterday for the struggling
Chrysler Group that hinges on
winning the exclusive right to
negotiate with DaimlerChrysler
and a deal with the United Auto-
mobile Workers union that could
mean worker concessions.
The bid - proof that Kerkorian
See CHRYSLER, Page 7
JEREMY CHO/Daly
Dancer Elizabeth Johnson as Miss TATA at the Michigan Theater yesterday. She was part ofa dance group that collaborat-
ed with scientists in an effort to show that science can be beautiful In biology, the TATA box is a DNA sequence that starts
the DNA transcription process in cell division. Johnson said the TATA box's role is to "turn the genes on."
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