4A -Tuesday, January 22, 2008 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.cam I e ticl igan ily Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@umich.edu IMRAN SYED JEFFREY BLOOMER EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking about the war in Vietnam at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4,1967. Safety is a two-wa street KARL STAMPFL EDITOR IN CHIEF Unsigned editorials reflectthe official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views ofttheir authors. The Daily's public editor, Paul H. Johnson, acts as the readers' representative and takes a critical look at coverage and content in every section oftthe paper. Readers are encouraged to contact the public editor with questions andcomments. He canbe reached at publiceditor@umich.edu. R , TE Y Playingit safe Shooting response highlights problems with alert system There was a fatal shooting Wednesday night just blocks from North Campus. If you were lucky, you probably found out about it on Thursday. While there isn't a reason to get hysterical about this incident, the University's lagging and varied response left a lot to be desired. Hindsight is 20/20; but looking back, the University's response illustrated mistakes that need to be corrected if it hopes to establish a uniform and rapid response sys- tem alerting those on and near campus of potential safety threats. The issue, in anxiety-distilled form: It took 10 hours or more for some students to receive an e-mail about the fatal shooting out- side of North Cam- pus last Wednesday night. The mass ire y that followed prob- ably spread the news more quickly than the university we attend. JEFFREY In fact, I still haven't received an BLOOMER e-mail. But I'm not sure it matters. What I did receive, before I even checked my e-mail on Thursday morning, were calls from two differ- ent people about the situation who had found out about it on campus. They had little concrete knowledge, but they understood the basics: Some- one was shot near North Campus and the police hadn't found the suspect. I looked online right after those con- versations and found that the suspect wasn't likely still on campus. The word of mouth on campus was part outrage and part confusion. I was part of the latter camp, mostly because I didn't understand the out- rage. Still, a mugshot of Engineering student Andrew Robert Myrick, the suspect in the shooting, met many students on alerts posted throughout campus. He remained at large going into the weekend. People were unsure of what was happening and didn't understand why there wasn't a more centralized effort to explain it. The first, worthwhile question came in unison: Why didn't I hear about this directly from the Univer- sity? Then a second, more stupid one usually followed: Did we learn noth- ing from Virginia Tech? The answer to the first question is that everyone should have. Four hours after the shooting, the first round of crime alerts went out, and anyone who opted to receive those alerts did, including University department heads. North Campus students found out by early morning, and an e-mail to all University affiliates went out by midday, though it had the potential to take all afternoon to reach everyone. The reasoning behind the second questionescapesme.Theactualdetails of what happened here last week and at Virginia Tech last year have noth- ingin common and don't come close to addressing the same issue. Though the incident Wednesday inescapably taps into a growing concern over safety at universities nationwide, comparing this situation to that one reflects an unproductively broad and alarmingly cavalier disregard for what actually happened in both cases. It seems the notification system did its job in this case. I found the appro- priate information within a reason- able amount of time, especially given everything the police knew, and it strikes me as a good thing that DPS exercised caution before sending out an incomplete or misleading alert. If you disagree - and I assume those who do are the people who are fanning the Virginia Tech flame - I'm not sure why there isn't more of an active discussion happening. There is still debate about the best way to notify students in these cases. Text messaging is on its way, apparently, though I find it difficult to imagine how that will be more effective (or faster) than the current system of crime alerts. There remains no con- sensus, and it is clearly a concern for many people, evidenced by the outcry this past week. But bear in mind that there's no indication from the University's administration that it believes the sit- uation was handled inappropriately. This isn'tviewed as a screw-up. For my part, I think the notifica- tions were prudently distributed. If you don't, this can't end in a shoulder- shrug, and you can't continue to make The response from 'U' was fine. If you disagree, speak up. tenuous parallels to other tragedies every time violence makes its way onto campus. I felt safe last week and still feel safe this week. If you don't, now is the time to deal with it. But now that the situation looks increasingly like it didn't affect any other students and a holiday week- end has passed, the furor has quieted, which reflects much more danger- ously on the University at large than any of the administration's actions last week. Jeffrey Bloomer is the Daily's managing editor. He can be reached at bloomerj@umich.edu. Students received word of the homi- cide, which occurred less than a mile from North Campus, in a way that could almost be considered haphazard. The shooting occurred at roughly 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. About four hours later, an e-mail was sent to the media, University department heads and people signed up for crime alerts from the Department of Public Safety, the unit responsible for protecting campus. An e-mail to students living in North Cam- pus residence halls wasn't sent until early Thursday morning. More than 14 hours after the shooting occurred a campus-wide e-mail was finally sent. Few students actually received these e-mails until hours after they were sent. When sending out campus-wide e-mails, the system is backlogged for up to 10 hours because it is taxed by so many e-mails. The University suggests that department heads forward the e-mail to their students, and some students may have received the e- mail in this way. Others may have received it from other groups they are in. Some never actually received any e-mail at all. The inconsistency of this response makes the University seem irresponsible. Although the man responsible for Wednes- day's homicide has not threatened the lives of others on campus, it is still important to step back, look at how this situation was handled and think about how it can be improved. It's unfair to compare this inci- dent to the tragedy at Virginia Tech last spring; but it is also unfair to disregard its lessons. The lag in sending campus-wide e-mails is a considerable problem. Last week, the campus-wide e-mail from Michigan Stu- dent Assembly President Mohammad Dar encouraging students to vote in the presi- dential primary and informing them about how they could vote had the same problem. That e-mail reached some students after the polls closed. If the University can't find a way to speed up its mass e-mails using its own web mail system, maybe the problem could be solved by outsourcing to other web mail systems like GMail or Windows Live. Although there are privacy concerns that need to be considered if the University switched to one of these systems, these sys- tems also come with considerable benefits like increased storage space and a more user-friendly platform. It is also unusual and confusing that some University department heads forwarded the e-mail to their students while others did not. If it improves how quickly students receive an e-mail, there is every reason to direct department heads and administra- tors to forward the e-mail and not just sug- gest participation. On the positive side, a text-message alert system is slated to be implemented in March. This should go far to get the word out quicker. Nevertheless, when the pro- gram begins, the University must make sure to inform students about how to enroll for alerts and how the system will work, including the circumstances under which it will be used. In all of these alert systems, the Univer- sity must exercise considerable discretion about what constitutes a true campus safe- ty threat. But, this shouldn't be an excuse to not be prepared for one. While it is unnec- essary to create hysteria over isolated incidents, the cost of failing to inform the campus community of important threats could be profound. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Emad Ansari, Anindya Bhadra, Kevin Bunkley, Ben Caleca, Milly Dick, Mike Eber, Gary Graca, Emmarie Huetteman, Theresa Kennelly, Emily Michels, Arikia Millikan, Kate Peabody, Kate Truesdell, Robert Soave, Neil Tambe, Matt Trecha, Radhika Upadhyaya, Rachel Van Gilder, Rachel Wagner, Patrick Zabawa. KATE PEABODY Media-tested. Celebrity- approved. i SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@UMICH.EDU Chant at Notre Dame hockey game was offensive TO THE DAILY: While one of my favorite parts of attend- ing Michigan hockey games is the unwavering enthusiasm of students, I found the chant "dirty Catholics" at the end of Friday's Notre Dame game extremely offensive. Sports have paved the way for cultural breakthroughs in both race and religion. This chant was an unfortunate and unacceptable step back for campus. Sportsmanship should not stop where the ice ends and the stands begin. Janice Roller Alum Learning lessons from the Virginia Tech massacre TO THE DAILY: As a 2007 graduate of Virginia Tech, I was shocked at how late the notification of Wednesday's homicide adjacent to North Campus was sent out. The incident occurred at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. I did not receive an e-mail until after noon the next day from College of Engineering Dean David Munson - almost fifteen hours after the incident. Last spring, people were calling for the heads of the Virginia Tech's president and chief of police because they thought the two hours between the first murders and the notification of students, faculty and staff was an irrespon- sible length of time. The situation facing Virginia Tech adminis- trators that morning is not entirely unlike the one so near to our campus Wednesday. They thought that the first shooting was an isolated incident and were pursuing a "person of inter- est." I realize that this particular homicide did not occur on campus like those in Blacksburg, but the person of interest is a student and it is reasonable to think that he could have been on campus at any point after the incident. Officials at Virginia Tech made the best decisions they could last April given the infor- mation they had at the time. However, now we know more and should be better prepared to protect ourselves. The least we can do for the victims of that massacre is learn from the trag- edy. I doubt that anything would have occurred differently last week had we been notified ear- tier about the homicide near our campus. But it would have made us be more vigilant in case something happened. It is always important to be aware of one's surroundings, but we so often get lost in our own lives that we need to be alerted to those times when we need to be especially vigilant. Katrina Ramsdell Engineeringgraduate student Lobbying for graduation at the Big House isn't childish TO THE DAILY: I'm writing in response to Theresa Ken- nelly's column in which she argued that Uni- versity students are more concerned about where graduation will be than they were about the presidential primaries last Tuesday (Where our interests lie, 0I/I7/2008). I fail to see how attending a forum to oppose another blunder by the University is not "adult-like," as Kennelly argued. I also fail to see how a lib- eral student body not showing up to a primary in which half of the Democratic candidates weren't even on the ballot is not "adult-like." I would like to remind everyone that the Michigan primary had virtually no effect what- soever on the Democratic presidential nominee because the Democratic National Committee stripped of all of Michigan's delegates and the only major candidate on the ballot was Hillary Clinton. The Republican National Committee stripped Michigan of half of its delegates. However, the graduation relocation does affect students, despite Kennelly's insistence that we need to grow up. Many of us have had less than amicable relations with the Uni- versity administration. Many of our families have invested huge sums of money over the past four years for our education here. Many students have families flying in from across the nation to experience Ann Arbor and visit Michigan Stadium for the first time. I'm not disputing the importance of voting or claiming that it would be easy for the University to hold graduation in the Big House. But I don't need to be lectured about how to behave like an adult, and I certainly don't need to be told that we don't deserve a better graduation experi- ence than the one we are going to receive. John Munoz LSA senior When I was a wee fifth grader, my class traveled to one of Bob Dole's campaign speeches in Grand Blanc, Mich. If I had been old enough, I would have voted for him - not because I understood and agreed with his views but because I got a Dole sticker from the trip. I was eas- ily bought. Back then my supportwas won by stickers. In this year's kinetic presi- dential popularity contest, every minute of media attention and every sticker given out counts too. So it's no wonder that candidates are turn- ing to the nation's best and bright- est: celebrities. When celebrities throw their support behind a candi- date, it generates significant media attention. As a society, we are fall- ing into the trap of focusing on those with the most vocal support. There is a general consensus that the road to t dency is no longer about, issues, but a beauty cont evolution began with th duction of television andt Internet - both of which ha public image important. menting this, there is also feedback on public opinion. With knowledge of wh ning, the pressure on v undoubtedly great. But w1 these continuous updates polls and frontrunner ca when voting? The celebr here to help. Expert in martial arts, Texas Ranger and pitchma Total Gym, Chuck NorrisE Mike Huckabee. When yo this, I'm sure the battle fory stopped. After all, both are ted to Christianity and illegal immigration. B: importantly, who with Chuck On th: hand, if fan ofOpr frey tha: probably great de: Barack - , . , campai he presi- Apparently, he is a great candidate. debating Oprah said so. She has joined him at est. This campaign events, using her celeb- e intro- rity to rally support. Who knows, if then the you turn out to an Obama campaign ave made stop, you might even win a car. Comple- Everyone is arguing about who constant would make a great president. That includes celebrities and people with o's win- webcams and YouTube accounts. 'oters is Everyone has an opinion and an ho needs endorsement, and exposure to these on the opinions is changing the way the ndidates game is played. ities are Researchers guarantee that such celebrity endorsements have Walker little impact on the choice of vot- n for the ers. According to the Pew Research endorsed Center and their News Interest iu heard Index Omnibus Survey, endorse- your vote ments have very little direct impact commit- on howa person votes. Results show stopping that no matter which celebrity the ut more support is from, a celebrity endorse- messes ment doesn't make a person more or less likely to vote for a candidate. e other Though the public may not direct- you are ly take into account who Chuck rah Win- Norris is voting for, it is certain that n you've celebrities give these candidates a heard a larger soapbox. When presidential al about hopefuls garner celebrity support, Obama's it comes with more media attention gn. and more headlines. Such increased exposure can lead to more support from the masses. In the presidential horse race, attention matters. The public receives most of its informa- tion about the candidates from the media. This is shaping a new way of campaigning where celebrity sup- port is a key element. The media has a pro- found effect on what A we know simply by the 0 A / amount of space and 0 08 time they give to cer- tain topics. It may not be something we change, but it is something we can be aware of. Research may say that celebrities don't affect our vote, but along with the media, they affect which candi- date we give the most attention. * This increased media exposure may give a candidate an advantage. However, the presidential campaign trail shouldn't resemble high school campaigning for prom court. We aren't voting for who is the most popular but who is the best for the job, whether the media gives that person the deserved amount of attention or not and whether Walk- er Texas Ranger thinks that person would be a good president or not. Kate Peabody is an LSA junior and a :-s \ member of the Daily's editorial board. 4t, as ~ L- - ,