A tribute to the best of our middle school years The B-side 0 0 400 IIE ffid~igan BaiIlj Ann Arbor, Michigan Thursday, September 25, 2008 michigandaily.com CAMPUS SAFETY Crime alerts now headed to your inbox Officials worried change will allow students to learn about incidents earlier and more that campus didn't consistently. "We recognized that it was not learn about crimes only creating more work for others, but it also was not consistently for- quickly enough warded on a timely basis," Brown said. "This will allow us to get out By JULIE ROWE the information about significant Daily StaffReporter crimes in a more timely, efficient and effective way." In an effort to make sure stu- The University's Administrative dents, faculty and staff receive alert Information Services department e-mails in a timely fashion, the (MAIS) gave University Police University has reworked its crime access to e-mail addresses for the alert distribution system. Everyone entire Ann Arbor campus - about with a University e-mail address is 80,000 people, MAIS Assistant expected to get an e-mail within Director Beth Farrell said. four hours after an alert is issued, Before, the e-mails were slow officials said. going out because the alerts, sent to Until now, whenever a crime every individual in the University's occurred on or near campus, Uni- large database, were sent at the versity Police spokeswoman Diane same time. Brown would send ane-mail to the Farrell said MAIS started looking deans and heads of each college into ways to enable mass crime alert and department and ask them to e-mailing in January. She said the forward the alert to University stu- shooting incident at Virginia Tech dents and employees. in April 2007, which left 32 people TheCampusSecurityAct,passed dead and many others wounded, in 1990, requires universities to made the efficient dissemination of alert students of violent crimes on crime alerts a high priority. or near campus. MAISimplementednewsoftwar+ However, many people didn'tget and worked with pre-existing spam these e-mails until hours after they filters and virus detectors to make were originally sent, Brown said. mass crime'alert e-mails possible. Others never got them at all. "It was a more difficult job than The Department of Public Safety one might think," Brown said. will now send e-mail crime alerts "We're very appreciative that directly to all University students they've found a way to make this and employees. Brown said this work." MAX COLL NS/Dail' Brown Jug waitress Sarah Bennett reaches for a liquor bottle in the baserent at the South University watering hole, which has hired a bar auditor to reduce losses. COUNTING EVERY LAST DROP Local bars hire company to stop flow of free alcohol By LINDY STEVENS Daily StaffReporter If Aaron Boillat is in Ann Arbor, don't bother schmoozing your waitress in hopes of getting a free drink at the bar this week- end. Boillat owns a franchise of Bevinco, an alcohol auditing company that accounts for every drop of beer and liquor that gets spilled or poured for free in cam- pus bars. According to Boillat, about 20 to 25 percent of the alcohol used by a bar is lost due to spills or unaccounted alcohol sales in any given week. Boillat said he can save ovners an average of $1,600t per week by weighing and count- ing every bottle in the bar's inven- tory. Soit's not hard to see why plac- es like The Brown Jug, The Blue Leprechaun, Caf6 Felix and the / aut/ BAR, have all hired Bevinco to discreetly catch bartenders, who overpour shots or give away drinks in hopes of making bigger tips. Boillat said his work usually helps bar owners cut losses to less than five percent of their weekly supply in about one month. Dave Root, manager of The Brown Jug, said Boillat's work has limited the bar's losses to about three percent - or less than $100 in lost inven- tory - every week. He added that $100 in lost inventory actually translates to several hundred dollars in lost profits on draft beers or mixed drinks that sell for three or four dollars apiece. Still, he said, loss- es that low are almost unheard of among most local establishments. "It's not a big deal to come up two or three percent short, and actually, that's really, really good," Root said. "A lot of places in town are at 92 percent and happy just to get to 95 percent." The secret behind Boillat's suc- cess is that most bartenders don't know he's taking stock of what they're mixing until they've been caught. Boillat doesn't go into bars until after last call, once all tabs have been cashed and doors locked for the night. Equipped with a laptop and a few precise measuring scales, Boillat usually gets to work at about 5 a.m.,- and starts count- ing and weighing every bottle of wine, keg of beer and fifth of liquor the bar has on hand. "We compare sales to usage to make sure that everything that was used was rung up, and then anything that wasn't, we show the owners a report highlighting See AUDITS, Page 8A INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS ISR helping start institute in Qatar Joint research GLOBAL LEARNING project the latest Socialist presidential candidate visits campus in series of global ventures for 'U' By CHARLES GREGG-GEIST Daily StaffReporter In a move reflecting the Univer- sity's efforts to increase its inter- national presence, the Institute for Social Research has started a five-year partnership with Qatar University in Doha, Qatar. The goal of the joint program, which started earlier this month, is to help the foreign school establish a social research institute. Mark Tessler, the University of Michigan's vice provost for inter- national affairs and the project's principal investigator, said Qatar is becoming a major player in the global education market. "Ibelievethesocialresearchinsti- cute that we will help Qatar Univer- sity to establish will quickly become one of the very best in the Middle East, and will carry out studies and research of great value to Qatar and the Arab world more broadly," Tes- sler wrote in an e-mail. The goal of the project is to make the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) an organization capable of conducting world-class studies on its own, said co-principal investigator David The University has joint programs and partnerships with several colleges around the world. 0 Shanghaiiiao Tong University(China) & College of Engineering * Weizmann Institute (Israel) & Life Sci- ences Institute * Peking and Tsinghua Universities (China) & Center fon Chinese Studies 0 Peking Universityt(China)& Institute for Social Research f Qatar University(Qatar) & Institutefor Social Research sOURCE:UNIVERsITYOFMICHIGAN Howell, assistant director of the Center for Political Studies at ISR. "Some places kind of sweep in and do surveys and then leave," he said. "The long-term goal is for them tobe self-sufficient." "We don't even know what we're going to do yet," he added. "This is an extremely interdisci- plinary activity, rather than being just political science or psychology or engineering. It involves people from a variety of disciplines, which is really where science is going." The partnership is funded entire- See QATAR, Page 7A In speech at League, White slams Wall Street bailout plan By JILLIAN BERMAN DailyStaffReporter Though he might not pack stadi- ums and high school auditoriums like fellow presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain, Social Equality.Party presidential, candidate Jerry White still hopes to give the two major candidates a run for their money. White visited campus last night, sharing his views on the nation's financial crisis in a speech to a crowd of about 35 at the Michi- gan League. Congress is currently working on a $700-billion of legis- lation to bail out Wall Street firms. White criticized the negotia- tions,saying a bailout would reward those he blamed for the crisis. "There is $700 billion being donated by the Treasury to the wealthiest bankers on Wall Street," White said. "Our party has the answer to the crisis - one that begins with the masses of work- ing people, not with aristocracy on Wall Street." In an interview after the event, White said he is running to provide a political alternative to Obama and McCain, both of whom support the bailout. "Both of them are preparing to issue a joint statement urging the passage of what would be the greatest theft of public assets in the history of the country, to bail out financial speculators at the direct expense of working people," he said. "We're running in order to make the case for a socialist alter- native. If the resources of the coun- try have to be mobilized to avert a financial catastrophe, then the great financial institutions should be put under the public and demo- MAX COLLINS/Dail Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate Jerry White spoke about the Wall Street financial crisis in the Michigan League yesterday. cratic ownership of the working people." White, who was invited to campus by the Students for Social Equality, said he's been met with substantial opposition from the political establishment. During his speech, he cited an effort by the Illinois Democratic Party to keep him off the state's ballot. He said he also wouldn't be on the ballot in Michigan. White said he has nowhere near See SOCIALIST, Page 7A NT RcA t URtA L SPOR[ S LSA council votes to condemn IM scoring policy Officials: resolution calling rules sexist won't dictate change By MATT AARONSON Daily StaffReporter LSA Student Government passed a resolution Wednesday night condemning the University's co-ed intramural sports policies for sometimes awarding females more points than males in compe- titions. The vote passed with 12 in favor, four against and four abstaining. Though the body passed the resolution, it will likely amount to little more than a symbolic ges- ture, with recreational sports offi- cials saying they plan to keep the rules in place regardless. Jan Wells, associate director of recreational sports, saidbefore the meeting that the resolution would have nobearing on the University's intramural sports policies. "We are not governed by the LSA government," she said. The resolution, sponsored by LSA sophomores Steven Benson and Stephanie Baum and LSA junior Kim Buddin, argues that the University's recreational sports department is not mandated to fol- low the guidelines suggested by the National Intramural-Recre- ational Sports Association. The resolution cites an excerpt from the Federal Title IX legisla- tion, which says "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participa- tion in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal finan- cial assistance." It also cites the University's nondiscrimination policy. In the less competitive tier of intramural soccer games at the University, a goal scored by a See SCORING, Page 8A WEATHER HI: 76 TOMORROW LO: 54 GOT A NE WS TIP? Call 734-763-2459 or e-mail news@michigandaily.com and let us know. 1MR$AEME~lNEieRSf#ER ON THE DAILY BLOGS Notes from Tuesday night's MSA meeting THEWIRE.BLOGS.MICHIGANDAILY.COM INDEX NEW S ............................... 2A Vol CXIX, No.18 OPINION.... .................4A 2100RTe Michigan Sally SPO.RTS. . ...........A. michroondaily.com5A SUDOKU.............................SA CLASSIFIEDS....................6A T HE B-S ID E ......................... 1 B a