0 - 0 S S f a a B The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, November 26, 2008 U U Wednesday, November. T: QUOTES OF THE WEEK I ',! , ABOUT CAMPUS -S I ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN OQUIST We thought it was a drug deal gone bad. We almost dropped the casket." - RONNIE SIMMONS, a man from Wilm "This 'flush and forget' attitude creates a problem which we have to revisit." - JACK SIMS, founder of the World Toilet Orga- nization, explaining the need for people to realize that flushing their toilets can waste thousands of liters of potential drinking water. Speaking at the World Toilet Summit in Macau, Sims said that this was one of sanitation's biggest challenges, and that using "dry" toilets is one way to conserve water 1 41 If I I ; : n- The secret of Lloyd Island LHSP 101: How to stay off North Campus The Lloyd Hall Scholars Pro- gram, a living-learning community for art and writing in Lloyd Resi- dence Hall, offers a lot of perks for its freshmen. Lloyd scholars getreduced prices for University performances, access to small creative writing classes that fulfill the often-painful first- year writing requirement and an absolute guarantee they won't have to live on North Campus. For many participants, that last benefit is the most appealing. "You can live on the Hill and it keeps you off North Campus and that's the only reason why people apply to the program," LSA fresh- man Scott Schubiner said. "It's just a good way to stay on Central Cam- pus." It's not exactly a coincidence that Lloyd Hall has the nickname "Lloyd Island." The program's participants - many of whom hail from the same few places like Long Island - often get turned on to the program by older high school friends or sib- lings. "There are five kids from L.A. that are in my hall, everyone else is from New York or New Jersey," said Schubiner, who comes from Los Angeles himself. "They used to call (Alice Lloyd) 'Lloyd Island' cause there's a lot of kids from Long Island." There are other notable trends about the Lloyd population. While the amount of University students who join the Greek system is about 30 percent - Greeks have been between 30 and 50 percent of the LHSP population in recent years, LHSP faculty director Carol Tell said. She said Greeks made up some- where between 70 and 80 percent in 2001. Schubiner applied to the pro- gram after hearing about it from his sister, who was part of a living- learning community in Couzens Hall three years ago. He said his sister urged him to apply to increase his chances of liv- ing in one of the better residence halls at the University, with large rooms and a close proximity to Central Campus. And he's not alone. Many of the students now participating in the program said their intent in joining was to steer clear of a lO-minute bus rides to class and the risk of being socially isolated on North. Joanna Joels, an LSA freshman from New Jersey, said she applied to the program because it was the only place at the University where she could enroll in a nude draw- ing class. But even then, her initial intentions were to stay off of North Campus. "Lloyd is a good location," she said. "That's actually why I first looked into the program. Someone told me you can get into Lloyd and live on the Hill." LSA freshman Nick Pourmoradi, a resident of Los Angeles, cited the standard reasoning for applying to the program. "A friend told me about it, she's like, 'you don'twantto live onNorth Campus,'"he said. Kinesiology freshman Brad Mal- ach, from West Bloomfield, said he wouldn't have even considered applying to LHSP if it was housed on North Campus. But even though almost every person he knows in LHSP applied because of the location, he said it isn't the only reason people apply. "I'm sure there are people who did it for the' program more than the location," Malach said. "But I think, for the most part, it's for the location." There are those students who would join LHSP whether it was housed in Lloyd, South Quad or even Baits II, but they seem to be few and far between. LSA freshman Cassandra Malis, one of the few students who applied regardless of location and room size, said living on the Hill is more of a perk, as opposed to the main reason for applying. "I still would have done (LHSP) if it was on North," Malis said. "There's no other place that I can do the things that I'm doing here." Malis said she applied to LHSP for the opportunity to take creative classes without being enrolled in the School of Art and Design. "People who are just good at English or like to write, it's a great place," she said. "I know people that are definitely pre-med and pre-business here but they are still creative people." Many students in the program are interested in writing or the arts, but because of their majors, they won't have the opportunity to take creative classes at the University, Malis said. But the more Lloyd Hall Scholars you speak to, the more you start to realize that Malis belongs to a small minority of students.- They are the ones attending the extracurricular events, winning the writing and arts awards, sticking with the pro- gram for more than one year and, ultimately, giving LHSP its literary reputation. Now that Schubiner is immersed in the program, he appreciates what LHSP has to offer -small, intensive arts classes, one-on-one interac- tions with professors and the ease of attending classes located just a few floors below his dorm room. But despite.recognizingthe posi- tive aspects of LHSP, Schubiner - as well as many other students in the program - doesn't participate more than is required. As part of the program, students must attend at least one extracur- ricular event each month, be it a poetry reading, a gallery showing or a concert. "The one thing I don't like about the program, it's the one manda- tory event each month," Schubiner said. "I think there's a lot of people that don't end up gettinginvolved. I think it's a lot of people, even some of my friends who are on the execu- tive board for LHSP, abunch end up quitting." Malis said a lot of the guys in her hall completely skip the events and programs. "When I go to the extracurricu- lar things you're supposed to go to, there's no boys in that club," she said. "I guess thatthey don't do any- thing that they don't have to do." Both Malis and Schubiner agreed that it seemed like an dispropor- tional amount of Lloyd scholars come from the same areas - New York City, Long Island, certain affluent suburbs in metro Detroit and, increasingly in recent years, Los Angeles. Pourmoradi learned about LHSP from a friend who went to the same high school in Los Angeles and was in the program the year before him. Malis learned about the pro- gram from her best friend from high school, who was a Lloyd Hall Scholar a couple of years ago. Schubiner even lives in the exact same room as a friend of his from high school who's four years older. It's sure that LHSP is for stu- dents who are genuinely interested in the arts, but if the coordinators were tobe completely honest about it, they might describe the program, as a living-learning community for artists, writers and opportunists. -TREVOR CALERO Y / f TALKING POINTS Three things you can talk about this week: 1. Mark BegiCh 2. Cyber warfare with China 3. Justice for Guantanamo detainees And three things you can't: 1. The downfall of the Dingell family 2. Pope Benedict's 'prophesy' about the economic downturn 3. Al Qaeda on Obama BY T HE NUMBERS Number of times Lawrence Greene, University political science lecturer, has been had his law license suspended, once in 1998 and again in 2003 Amount, in dollars, Greene owes Ford Motor Company from cashing his deceased parents' retirement checks Number of years Greene has been teaching at the University Source: WXYZ Detroit "I just remember hitting the water." - LAURA DE LA CRUZ, a sophomore on the Morton Ranch High School cheerleading team in Katy, Texas, describing the squad's hazing process, which entailed blindfolding the girls, tying their hands together and then throwing them into a pool. Seven of the girls who conducted the hazing were indicted last week on misdemeanor charges VIDEO OF j f. THE WEEK The memorizing , appeal of vacu-cat I'll admit it. I am personally responsible for at least a couple dozen of the more than 1.68 million hits "Roomba Driver" has gotten since it was posted a week ago. The a45-second clip ofahousecat riding a robotic vacuum in circles has a soothing quality that's hard to pinpoint. Something about the video - perhaps the humming of the Roomba or the puzzled yet apa- thetic attitude of the cat - makes it a memorizing stress reducer. The black and white cat stays almost perfectly still, its tail drag- ging behind, as the vacuum moves forward and backward. I'm not the only one to be drawn in by the video, Tuesday CNN linked thevideounder the headline, "Kitty zoombas about on robotic Roomba." The video represents a sub-genre of "pet versus Roomba" or "pet versus over-priced Sharper Image products" clips circulating on YouTube. There's "St. Bernard vs. Roomba Pt. 1", "Puppy Vs. Robotl Epic Battle For Territorial Domi- nation" and "Quail mortals! It's the hamster-controlled robot." -KELLYFRASER See this and other YouTube videos of the week at youtube.com/user/michigandaily THEME PARTY SUGGESTION High school reunion - Either the best or worst part about going home for break is seeing your high school friends. For some, it's a joyous reunion. For others, it's an awkward reminder of how much you've changed and how glad you are to have moved on. If you're in the first camp, revisit the pas- times of your adolescence. Play Scrabble at the old cafe or smoke behind the football field. If you're in the second group, turn off your phone and hang out with your mom. Throwing this party? Let us know. TheSttement@umich.edu STUDY OF THE WEEK Banning fast-food TV ads could curtail obesity Prohibiting fast-food television advertisements could reduce child- hood obesity inthe United States, according to a report thatwill be pub- lished this month in the Journal of Law and Economics by researchers from Lehigh University, Georgia State University and the City Univer- sity of New York. For the study, the researchers analyzed government survey data from the late 1990s that consisted of personal interviews with thousands of families in the U.S. In addition, the researchers examined local televi- sion stations in the 75 biggest markets, looking at the size of viewing audiences and specific fast-food commercials in each market. Banning fast-food commercials would reduce the number of obese children aged 3 to 11 by 18 percent and the number of those aged 12 to 18 by 14 percent, according to the study. The researchers also concluded that eliminating a tax deduction for'fast-food restaurant advertising would reduce the number of obese children by 5 to 7 percent. - BRIAN TENGEL ington, North Carolina, who was serving as a pallbearer at a funeral when two undercover sheriffs tasered one of his fellow pallbearers. The victim had been charged with threatening his ex-wife and had refused to turn himself in ILLUSTRATION BY LAURA GARAVOGLIA