4 - Friday, April 13, 2007 OPINION 0 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 413 E. Huron St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104 tothedaily@umich.edu KARL STAMPFL IMRAN SYED JEFFREY BLOOMER EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position oftthe Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. FROM THE DAIY College ready Students are prepared, deserve expanded opportunity With mockery for the "iPod for every student" propos- al still prevalent and the ongoing bickering about the appropriate level of education funding for education, good news right about now would be great. That news came Mon- day when Michigan's schools were named among the nation's best in preparing students for college. While this is a welcome respite from the negativity, these findings highlight the fact that our state has a wealth of qualified students who should go to college, but they'll need more help from Lansing than they have had in the past. NOTABLE QUOTABLE 0 Take yourself outside the emotions of the chain saw." - Defense lawyer Traci Smith on client Daphne Wright's murder conviction being based largely on her using a chain saw to dismember her victim, as reported yesterday on CNN.com. JACK DOEHRING Write for Daily Opinion this summer. (You don't even have tobe in Ann Arbor.) Email editpage.editorsumichM edu for more information Debunking the weird mt 4 Research conducted by the National Cur- riculum Survey cited Michigan behind only Kentucky and Indiana in curriculums that foster success in college. The findings credit Michigan's new stricter standards for schools and a classroom focus on analytical thinking instead of memorization as the two driving forces behind Michigan's success. While Michigan is struggling to remain relevant in a changing economy, these find- ings are a hopeful sign that the state is making progress in a critical area. But state legislators are on the verge of letting the one thing that Michigan has going for it slip away by cutting off support to both higher education and K-12 education. This is nonsensical policy. Unfortunately, only two days after the state was proclaimed amongst the best in preparing students for college came news that Michigan's teachers' salaries had slipped from being fifth highest in the coun- try to eighth. This is a dangerous trend for the state. Teachers are at the root of Michi- gan's success. Allowing their salaries to fall behind those of other states will discourage talented teachers from staying in the state. With cuts on the agenda in our cash- strapped state, it should be a priority for state lawmakers to protect the endangered annual K-12 per-pupil allotment. When you've got a good thing going, common sense says that you don't stop doing it. It is a matter of neces- sity that schools receive the funding neces- sary to make progress in meeting curriculum standards and preparing students for further education. Anything short of that is the type of unfunded and counterproductive mandate we would expect of the Bush Administration. The same logic extends to higher educa- tion. Having students in the state who are well prepared for college means absolutely nothing if those students don't move on to college. But in order to increase access to higher education, the state will have to sac- rifice elsewhere. By continuing its commit- ment to state universities - both research universities and the others - lawmakers can help keep tuition down and increase the availability of scholarships, thereby making college more accessible to students. With everything the state has been through lately it is reassuring to see that something is going right, but there are no guarantees that success will continue for- ever. In places like Detroit, schools continue to lag behind the average and only seem to be descending further into ruin. The budget cuts being debated in the state legislature are an discouraging sign for the future. With its high ranking in preparing stu- dents for college, Michigan has gained a sell- ing point it can use to bring jobs and growth to the state. It would be a shame if it were to lose it because of short-sighted budget cuts. KEVIN BUNKLEY I VIEWPOiNT Learn from the E.U.'s mistake Talk about environmental policy reform is all the rage in Washington these days. Con- gress has successfully narrowed its proposed solutions to two main areas of progress: cut- ting carbon emissions from industries and enacting steeper regulations for automobile fuel standards. As they prepare to tackle these issues, however, it would be wise for lawmak- ers to first take a look at the European Union's current woes with these very same environ- mental policies. They will discover that there are significant market-related problems with both the carbon emissions scheme and fuel emission standards. Automobile mileage standards strike a chord with Democrats and Republicans alike. It's something Congress can fix in the next few years in an effort to save the Big Three. And both sides already have a starting place right under their noses, In 1975, then-President Ger- ald Ford penned the first compulsory mileage standard in America with the Energy Policy Conservation Act. Auto companies have repeat- edly dodged enforcement of these standards and higher standards were once again left out when the bill was renewed just a few days ago. Across the pond, the European Union recently announced new CO2 limits for all cars produced in its member countries. The new regulations establish a maximum emission of 130g/km of CO2 for every car, which translates to a 39.2 mpg here in America. The problem? The regulations are too strict. Porsche Motor Company will be forced to move production of its popular models out ofthe E.U. because complying with the regulations is just too expensive. The situation for America and its Big Three is not all that different. In addition to these higher mileage stan- dards, the government's plan for carbon credit cap-and-trade system is ambitious, yet ultimately flawed. The cap-and-trade system only works if there is a cap. Carbon emissions will never decrease without one, which the E.U. is slowly finding out. America did effec- tively use a cap system to eliminate sulfur dioxide emissions entirely from industries to stop acid rain. It was only successfully, how- ever, because it was a clear-cut cap. Carbon credits are the main form of curren- cy in the energy market. They are particularly big right now among carbon-spewing facto- ries, CEOs and celebrities who want to reduce CHRIS KOSLOWSKI I OUT TO PASTU carbon emissions without conservation. For example, Al Gore's mansion consumes 20 times the amount of energy as the average home, and carbon credits are his way to offset his electric bill and placate the public. The carbon credit market, at least right now, is also very friendly to big polluters. The mas- sive companies and owners of mansions buy carbon credits to offset their own emissions, but these big spenders are by no means altru- istic. The purchase diverts the cutsto factories in the Third World while the original pollut- ers make a profit off of the credits they bought. When the government puts the cap-and-trade in place, lawmakers have make sure that it is enforced, via the Clean Air Act, at the source (the power companies), in order to produce a trickle-down effect to individual consumers. The big European power companies with outdated facilities buy the credits to compensate for their inefficient plants. The E.U., however, is struggling to strike a compromise between all of its member nations, which all use different types of energy, to fix the problem. The inconsis- tencies in price as well as caps for carbon emis- sion allowances have produced huge increases in electricity rates across the continent, too - something America is already fighting. American power companies are in the same situation as European companies, with parts of the country using nuclear power, coal or natural gas. Congress can avoid the E.U.'s mistakes by carefully choosing a cap that all power companies have to meet. A cap of a 20 percent reduction in emissions can encompass most of the big polluters, who will be forced to either buy expensive allowances off the car- bon market or meet the cap. Instead of allow- ing the credits to go to waste, America should put them back on the market, where smaller companies can buy them. Congress can get the nation's environmen- tal reforms started off on the right foot while avoiding the problems of the E.U. by sim- ply committing to enforcing regulations. A competitive carbon market coupled with the passage of federal mileage standards and a national cap on credit trading and monitoring emissions can begin the long road to turning the nation's emissions green. Kevin Bunkley is an LSA junior and a member of the Daily's editorial board. "People are tricky You can't afford to show Anything risky Anything they don't know" -Aimee Mann, "It's Not" here's nothing sadder than watching people graduate from the University no more cul- tured or worldly than they were when they arrived. If college is the time to meet new people and try new things, then so many of us haven't gotten our money's worth. We all came to the University to learn. But the relatively narrow outlooks we bring to campus can hinder that mission and even derail it if JAMES we're not careful. DICKSON They say you should watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Watch your words, for they become your actions. Watch your actions, for they form your character. I'm a word man myself, and if there was one word I could eliminate from the English language, it would be weird. It's a negative word and an igno- rantword. It's a word that reveals more about the prejudices of the speaker than the character of the subject. And it'sanuglybrushtopaintsomeonewith - typically someone who has simply behaved in a manner inconsistent with your experience, however limited and however dependent on media imagery. If no two people are exactly the same, what makes someone "random" or "weird"? There are 6 billion people walking the Earth. All of us are differ- ent, but we share so much of the same LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Inus has a right to freedom of speech TO THE DAILY: Many people disapprove of Don Imus's hateful insults. Fair enough. But I respectfully disagree with his termination by MSNBC and CBS. According to the First Amendment, there are many times when the gov- ernment cannot restrict free speech. Yet there is something here that is commonly overlooked: Free speech does not exist in a vacuum. Not only must the law protect free speech, but it must also be protected by society. We have the freedom to not listen to people whose opinions we find repug- nant. But we shouldn't shut them out. If we take down Rush Limbaugh's hateful show, we hinder more than just his ideas. We hinder all ideas. Over the past week or so, several pieces have been written in the Daily about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from both sides of the issue. It's a touchy issue and regrettable things have been written, but it's an impor- tant conversation to have. I prefer to have a few bigots going over the line rather than absolute silence out of fear of offense. Let's hear all of it, and lets make our own judgments. Shouldtherebelimits?Yes.Rep.Vir- gil Goode (R-Va.) probably shouldn't make anti-Muslim comments as a public servant. If he was a radio talk show host, he would still be consid- ered a bigot, but at least he wouldn't have power to turn internal discrimi- nation into reality. So maybe that's the place to draw the line. It's not with Don Imus. The networks shouldn't force him off the air, because it does nobody any good to have onlythe most politically correctvoice onthe air. Steven Chen LSA freshman LSA kids atDaily jealous of engineers TO THE DAILY: This letter is in response to the Daily's editorial on cheating in the genetic makeup. This tells me two things. First, individuality is biological. No matter how hard society tries to sup- press the individual for the supposed safety of numbers, we're all cursed with being ourselves. No matter how influenced we are by family, friends or the media, at the end of the day we're left to rely on our own judgments on how to live life. You may major in busi- ness administration rather than art and design to please your father, but that won't make you love business the same way you love art. You can choose to live life for the validation of others, but chances are you won't be satisfied living on the world's terms and expectations rather than your own. "To thine own self be true" is only clich6 today because it's the inherited wisdom of history. It has rang true for generations and always will, so long as we're biologically com- pelled tobe individuals. Second, we're not all that different. Everyone is different from one another, yes, but no one isdifferent enough to be an outlier from all humanity. My beef isn't with the idea that cer- tain behaviors are out-of-bounds. We all have the right to set that line our- selves, and we all should place it a bit differently. My problem is when people use words like sketchy or weird as a catchall for anythingthey aren't accus- tomed to. If only 1 percent of all the people in the world can relate to you, that's still millions of people. Soto call something weird is to either ignore that plenty of people behave similarly, or to impose a one-size-fits-all mentality on the diverse world out there. We use words like strange orsketchy to convey our shock at the unfamiliar. It's not that the things we're com- menting on are necessarily peculiar - they're simply foreign, existing outside of the purview of the speaker's limited experience. Different is a better, neutral word that more accurately describes the unknown and revealssthe blind spotsin our own world views. Different makes it clear you're talking about something you know little about, without impos- ing your judgments along the way. Dif- ferent acknowledges thatthere's no one way to do anything - there's simply Our differences aren't so weird after all. what you've seen before and what you haven't. Different does more justice to the mysterious than simply calling it weird and writing off the unusual as if you're above it all. Life is beautifully complex once you admit how little you know about it. Weird and its synonyms are words we use to rob people of their individuality and their unique voice and ourselves of valuable opportunities for growth and knowledge. Don't limit yourself with the smugness of arrogance or the com- fort of ignorance. You'll get so much more out of col- lege when you take in the world with wonderment and without judgment. It's weird how different life will be when you do. James Dickson can be reached at davidjam@umich.edu. 4 I I SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@UMICH.EDU engineering school (A dishonored code, 04/06/2007). While I respect the results of the study the editorial was based on, I feel compelled as an engineering student to provide some additional insight. In the six engineering tests I have taken at the University, I know that no students in the room were cheating. The professors who monitor the tests by sitting outside the classroom ensure that students are properly spaced apart so papers are not visible from desk to desk. To be able to cheat on these tests would require that students some- how managed to see each other's work, and this has never occurred in any of my tests. The editorial claims that nine out of 10 students admitted to cheating at some point. First, this is gross abuse of a statistic that does not pertain solely to cheating on exams. Secondly, it does not tell the readers exactly how "students admitted to, cheating." I have read the honor code. Many things such as collaboration and teamwork are condoned and even encouraged in certain classes but are considered cheating under the code. According to the honor code, I have cheated on homework more than once. You got me there. . The solution is not as simple as "proctoring engineering tests" because the survey results are not representative of the number of students who cheat on tests. The College of Engineering is founded on the premise that our students are smarter than the students in LSA. My sentiment is shared with more experienced engineers . as well. I spoke with two fifth-year engineers who said that if this sur- vey only pertained to testing, the figure would have been closer to 1 or 2 percent. The claim that the College of Engineering's reputation is tar- nished by cheating is misplaced. The honor code's definition of cheating makes students think they are cheating when they are simply abiding by normal study habits. Dan Fries Engineering sophomore Frieze Building evokes nostalgia in graduate ofAnnArborHigh TO THE DAILY: I was walking home from classyes- terday when I came across the daily crowd gathered on the corner of State and Washington Streets watching the demolition of the Frieze Build- ing, formerly Ann Arbor High School from 1906 to 1956. Amid the col- lege students, businessmen, parents and children gathered to watch the impressive spectacle was an elderly woman named Wendy. On most days you can hear "Ooos" and "Ahs" as brick and stone fall, but I was taken aback by Wendy's tears. She was a 1948 graduate of the high school that was the Frieze and expressed her sorrow at the sight of her school crum- bling before her eyes. It's responses like Wendy's that continue to irk me in regards to the demolition of the old school building. It's a shame Ann Arbor must destroy this historical gem. The need for student housing is great, and North Quad will serve the University for many years, but we should be wary of the heritage sacrificed. A majority of us Wolverines come to campus for four years then burst out of Ann Arbor, perhaps returning for a football game or reunion years later. But what about those who make Ann Arbor their home? I hail from Milwaukee, Wisc., the home of Marquette University. Over the years, Marquette has notoriously shunned Milwaukee's architectural history and torn down many land- marks in the city in an attempt to expand the campus. I would hate to see that model repeated here. For the most part, I see the Univer- sity doing its part in maintaining the heritage of Ann Arbor architectur- ally. Yet the demolition of the Frieze Building may be the beginning of a new, less historically conscious trend. Plan for the future, but don't neglect the past. 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