0 4 - Tuesday, April 14, 2009 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com E-MAIL ELAINE AT EMORT@UMICH.EDU l e Iict ig n ,+ ily ELAINE MORTON I Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@umich.edu ROBERT SOAVE COURTNEY RATKOWIAK EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR GARY GRACA EDITOR IN CHIEF t ur o 'a fVeCVf (Wolverine) Access denied 0 Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. The failure of test preps Universities need to offer alternatives to Kaplan, Princeton While most companies are facing financial setbacks in the current economy, at least one industry is still boom- ing - test-prep companies. College students' desire to do well on graduate exams has turned this industry into a mas- sive money-maker. The end result is that students who can afford expensive prep services have a definite advantage over those who can't, and this unfair advantage only serves to widen socioeconom- ic inequality. Universities have a responsibility to ensure that all of their students are on equal footing when they apply to graduate schools. To achieve this, the University of Michigan, for its part, should offer inexpensive and competitive test prep courses. Whether it's the MCAT, LSAT, GRE or GMAT, it's well known that the level of success students achieve in these exams is related to how much preparation they had beforehand. Even the most intelligent and qualified students can score poorly if they come unprepared, so it's not surprising that more students are resorting to expen- sive commercial test preparation services offered by companies like Kaplan Test Prep or Princeton Review. These services give students much better odds at scoring well on graduate exams. While the idea of taking a test prep course prior to the scheduled date of an exam seems reasonable, the price tags on such resources are often anything but. The cost of a package that includes classroom instruction, course materials and online access through private test prep businesses can run anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 - a fee that is out of the reach of many students, especially in current economic conditions. Graduate school exams are supposed to be objective measurements of a student's ability to do well in a graduate program. But when some students can afford thorough prep courses and others can't, these exams inadvertently become biased against less fortunate students. The competitive edge will go to the wealthiest students instead of the ones who are mostintelligent. This leads to graduate programs that are increasingly bastions of better-off students. Currently, the University isn't leaving disadvantaged students with many options. While the Career Center offers a $50 LSAT familiarization course - the only test prep course offered by the University for post- undergraduate standardized exams - stu- dents and teachers have noted that it lacks the extensive preparation that law school hopefuls students would need to fully pre- pare for the LSAT. And the Career Center recently announced that it has no intention of expanding its test prep program. To fix this socioeconomic split, the Uni- versity should offer more thorough, inex- pensive courses to all students who plan to take graduate school entrance exams. It's very much within the scope of the Uni- versity's role to offer test prep courses that will place all students on a level playing field with the Kaplan and Princeton elite. It's also necessary for ensuring that access to higher education does not become pro- hibitively expensive for students who have no affordable alternatives to Kaplan and Princeton. The University could at least act as a mediator between prospective grad stu- dents and GSIs, offering them a classroom to meet and prepare for grad exams. While not the same thing as what Kaplan offers, this would at least amount to a less expen- sive option. Among the many things looming in stu- dents' mind as they sit down to take their exam, the last thing should be whether or not they would have done better had they taken a more expensive test prep course. Despite the fact that my reg- istration date was four days ago, I still haven't registered for all my classes. While this is due in part to my own procrastination and hectic sched- ule, the registra- tion process itself deservesesome of the blame. That's right, ROBERT I'm looking at you,S Wolverine Access. SOAVE If you're a Uni- versity student, you probably understand my frustration. The Student Business page of Wolver- ine Access isan incomprehensible lab- yrinth of links that are grouped under misleading and vague headings. See if you can answer this question: Is View My Grades listed under Enrollment, Academic Records or Degree Prog- ress/Graduation? Difficulties like this (the answer is Enrollment, for some inexplicable reason) make navigating Wolverine Access a pain that students don't have time for. The registration page is also listed under Enrollment, and whether you proceed from that point by picking Add Classes, Swap Classes or Drop Classes, the website is still going to spill you to the same place - after cryptically flashing the word Pro- cessing for a few seconds. You should immediately congratulate yourself, but don't celebrate for more than a couple minutes or the page will time out and automatically kick you back to the Wolverine Access welcome menu. - .But if you do make it through to Enrollment, the truly fun part begins. There's a Class Search option on the Student Business page. But as far as I can tell, it's just the exact same thing as the search function on the Add Classes page. The search function is so difficult to use that you might as well just open up the LSA Course Guide in a separate tab. If you're like me and don't entirely understand what classes you need to take in order to graduate, you'll also have to open My Academic Require- ments - which is listed under Degree Progress/Graduation butnotAcadem- ic Records - in yet another tab. This page is actually helpful, which makes it even more frustrating when you take too long and it randomly spills you back to the Wolverine Access welcome menu. And you'll spend so much time shuffling between My Academic Requirements, the LSA Course Guide, Add Classes and rate- myprofessor.com that getting timed out is a likely possibility. When you've finally backpacked a class, it still isn't as easy as just click- ing it. You have to put a check in the box next to the class's name (click- ing on it will get you a description of the class and nothing more) and click PROCEED TO STEP 2 OF 3. At this stage in the game, you can finally reg- ister a class after enduringsome more Processing. If I haven't convinced you that there's something horribly wrong with Wolverine Access, just ask around: Most University students hate it. For the sake of comparisons, I asked a friend at Michigan State how she feels about her college's regis- tration process. Her response was this: "They assign us a day and time and we just search for classes using WebEnroll. It's pretty easy." This sounds exactly like what we do at the University of Michigan, only you would never think of using the word "easy" in the same sentence as Wol- verine Access. Despite all these hang-ups, I'll enroll in classes eventually. But it's LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: unfortunate that a university offering students so many academic choices can't come up with a.better system for helping students make those deci- sions. Registering for classes is more difficult than ever. This problem isn't unique to the registration process. A story that ran in the Daily on Friday reported that many students have similar frustra- tions when it comes to their advis- ers (Students: Advice too scattered, 04/10/2009). The story listed "long wait times for appointments, over- generalized advice and conflicting information between LSA advisers and concentration advisers" as some of the difficulties that students faced. At the University, reliable guid- ance and an easy-to-use system are basic requirements that aren't being met. Between class, homework and extra-curricular activities, students are busy - and registering for next semester's classes always takes place during the most stressful time of the year, when papers are due and final exams are looming. We need more help than we're currently getting and this should come in the form of better advising and a more navigable website. And while I was typing that last paragraph, I was timed out of the Enrollment page. Thanks, Wolverine Access. - Robert Soave is the Daily's editorial page editor. He can be reached at rsoave@umich.edu. 6 I I I i Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor. Letters should be less than 300 words and must include the writer's full name and University affiliation. Letters are edited for style, length, clarity and accuracy. All submissions become property of the Daily. We do not print anonymous letters. Send letters to tothedaily@umich.edu. SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@UMICH.EDU Counselor's discriminatory views A conversation about race' needs compromised job standards to include all minority groups 4 EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Nina Amilineni, Emad Ansari, Emily Barton, Elise Baun, Harun Buljina, Ben Caleca, Satyajeet Deshmukh, Brian Flaherty, Emmarie Huetteman, Emma Jeszke, Sutha K Kanagasingam, Shannon Kellman, Jeremy Levy, Erika Mayer, Edward McPhee, Matthew Shutler, Neil Tambe, Radhika Upadhyaya, Rachel Van Gilder, Laura Veith The Daily is looking for a diverse group of strong, informed writers with an interest in campus issues to become editorial board members in the spring and summer semesters. E-MAIL RACHEL VAN GILDER AT RACHELVG@UMICH.EDU FOR MORE INFORMATION. JASON MAHAKIAN E-MAIL JASON AT MAHAKIAJ@UMICH.EDU r<'I t3 A \' 0 f c ' E nA i OVA154 R7X~l~iA~ll CstelipU AFB 5~comm -isSE, ThiS5 i.,V$iSEf Hw~b TO THE DAILY: The Daily's recent editorial regarding Eastern Michi- gan University's dismissal of counseling graduate student Julea Ward gets the idea wrong (Getting the wrong idea, 04/13/2009). In the Daily's admirable defense of aca- demic freedom and ideological diversity in the classroom, and of Ward's decision that she could not provide clinical services to a man involved in a gay relationship because it went against her religious beliefs, it states that Ward was dismissed "for no other reason than that they (adminis- trators) found her views distasteful and wanted to send a message." In fact, the counseling faculty did not dismiss Ward for her views. They dismissed her for her actions. They did not dismiss her because they found her views distasteful but rather because her refusal to treat a gay (or for that matter, any gay) patient violates the stan- dards of practice for the health care profession that she hopes to enter - standards EMU has a responsibility to make sure she understands and is able to meet. Ward is free to believe whatever she wants about homosexuality (though I agree with the editorial that her views are "mis- informed, backward and wrong"). But as a potential health care provider, she is not free to simply say she is unable to treat homosexuals as a group of people any more than a doctor is able to refuse treatment to people of color because he or she sincerely believes in white supremacy or a dentist could refuse to work on a woman's teeth because he believed in male superiority. If Ward wanted to become a sociologist, an anthro- pologist or a literary scholar and argue against gay rights and gay equality in an academic setting, that would be one thing. And in that case, she should be completely free to hold her increasingly minoritarian views. But as soon as she crosses into providing health services, she is not free to discriminate against gay clients any more than a gynecologist should be able to discriminate against, say, wives in a plural marriage. For years, Christian conserva- tives have told gay people that they "hate the sin but love the sinner." Bearing no ill will to Ward or those who share her beliefs, I say that I hate the sin of seeing homosexuals as inferior and discriminating against them as a result. And I support Ward completely in her freedom to believe reli- giously what she believes. But if she is unable to provide services to gay people as a result, she has shown that she lacks the basic compe- tence required to serve as a counselor, and her dismissal from a graduate program designed to help students learn the established standards of that profession is entirely correct. Charley Sullivan Staff TO THE DAILY: Matthew Hunter's recent column ignores the strug- gles of Hispanics and other minority groups, which lim- its conversations about race (A conversation about race, 04/10/2009). My agitation is largely due to the fact that in this conversation on race, he failed to mention, let alone explore, the fastest growing and indeed largest minority group in the United States: Hispanics. It is bewildering, yet somehow unsurprising, that such a large group of people could have been excluded. For me, and possibly for other Hispanics in the University community, it is a dismaying development that while we continue to grow and prosper in America, the history of our oppression and cultural contributions is ignored because of the assumption that race conversations are only appropriate between blacks and whites. The reality is that social relations are not black- white relations - they are white-everythingelse. It may seem insolent to compartmentalize all minor- ity groups into an "everything else" mentality, but this is the reality in America. Though there has been much advancement in the social, political and economic posi- tions of minorities in this country, most inequalities of the 19th and 20th centuries toward blacks, Hispanics and Asians have changed relatively little. They remain veiled to appease the conscience of many whites, who would like to think that race no longer matters with the advent of Obama. Well, race does matter, and if we are going to talk about it, let's not forget that there are 46 million Hispan- ics in this country - many of whom still remember being hosed, bitten by dogs or shot when they tried to unionize. Let's not forget that - though we are the largest minor- ity group in this country - there have been less than 100 Hispanic representatives in Congress since the early 1800s. Hispanics can no longer remain in the shadows when race is being talked about, because it is not only ignorant but also presumptuous to think that there is only one front on the struggle for equality in this country. There are many fronts that all need tobe addressed. If we fall into the trap of think- ing America is only black and white, we will forget it is not. This is not to say that blacks have not had their signif- icant share of oppression and do not deserve their own platform to expel ignorance. Indeed, they do. But this platform should be present for all oppressed groups in this country. Blacks remain the gatekeepers of racial rep- resentation in school-boards, city councils, Congress and here at the University. What I see happening, sadly, is the voices of other minorities being drowned in exchange for the simplified "black-white relations" argument, of which Hunter's piece is a perfect example. Inequality will con- tinue as long as ignorance exists and everyone should quickly learn this lesson. Benjamin Ruano LSA senior