91 4A - Friday, November 20, 2009 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com E-MAIL CHRIS AT CSKOSLOW@UMICH.EDU C 1 4e fitichioan [ wily CHRIS KOSLOWSKI Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@nmich.edu ROBERT SOAVE COURTNEY RATKOWIAK EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR No. 1 d rather jut call 2012 grossed $225 million Sigh. Go ahead. Make an Roland Emmerich a hack this weekend, proving once Obama joke and leave it at that again that style and spectacle will always trump substance . Wowagreement fee good o 0 0 a0 0 0 GARY GRACA EDITOR IN CHIEF 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. Common sense The Common App will ease burden on potential students tudents may remember how difficult it was to apply to mul- tiple colleges that all required different applications. But the process is about to become a little easier for students who want to apply to the University. Administrators recently announced that they intend to adopt the Common App, a standard- ized application already in use by many universities. By making it so that students don't have to fill out so many distinct applications, the University will attract more applicants from across the coun- try. As it transitions to the Common App, the University should simply make sure that it retains unique and important criteria Smoking won't stop here has been a lot of talk late- ly about the University's pro- posed campus-wide smoking ban, which would prohibit smoking on all University . property start- ing in July 2011. Aside from the fact that the ban is both unfair and an infringe- ment upon stu- dents' rights, the JARSHA ban's enforce- PANDUAG ment mechanism K the ban is illogi- cal. Violators of the ban will be directed to cessation workshops instead of paying fines. But cessation workshops aren't going to curb smoking on campus. Instead of creating a new policy that isn't going to work, enforcement of the current smoking policy on campus should be improved. First of all, it's important to remember that the policy in place now, which says that smoking should be a "reasonable distance" from building entrances, isn't enforced. Cigarette smokers can always be found smoking in between classes directly outside busy buildings like Mason Hall or the Modern Lan- guage Building. It's possible that the new policy is partially a reaction to complaints due to lax enforcement rather than the need for a new initia- tive. After all, Ken Warner, dean of the School of Public Health, said at a University forum last week that he wasn't sure how the ban originated. It may be true that at four other universities that implemented a simi- lar prohibition, 97 percent of people were said to have behaved in accor- dance with it. This could be because a comprehensive ban has more concrete limits than "reasonable distance," or because relatively shoddy enforce- ment goes under the radar. But stud- ies of compliance rates have not been done for the 256 other colleges where a smoking ban has been put in place, so it's definitely possible that the com- pliance rate is exaggerated. It's irritating that the University administration seems to be making the same mistake. The first smoking policy isn't working properly because it isn't enforced, and the restrictive new policy borne of this failure will probably fall into the same trap. Though the University's intentions may be benevolent, there is a major flaw in this approach. Understanding why takes a review of the transtheo- retical model regarding behavioral change. According to the theory, the process of quitting smoking can be broken into five stages: precontem- plation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. The most important stage to understand is precontemplation. In this stage, indi- viduals are completely unwilling to quit and may not be swayed because they are either "unconvinced of the problem, see change as impossible or are unwilling to change." As the 2006 Maryland Adult Tobacco Surveys show, 61 percent of smokers are in this precontempla- tion stage. Essentially, direction to attend smoking cessation workshops wouldn't be beneficial at all to them. Considering the majority of smok- ers on campus are likely to be in the precontemplation stage, these work- shops have a far greater potential to be a waste of money than an effective enforcement mechanism. The University of Iowa, which was mandated to ban smoking on campus by state law, has a much more logi- cal approach to enforcing the law. There, violators are fined $50 per infraction. Establishing tangible consequences, as opposed to offer- ing treatments that smokers may not be open to, is a much more effective method of making sure the Univer- sity's current policy is followed. In addition, a fine would easily raise revenue for the University, which could help make up the cost of ces- sation programs that may be useful to the proportion of smokers who are considering quitting. Such programs could be a part of the solution, but not the major component of aiding in the enforcement of the ban. U should better enforce its current smoking policies. If the current smoking policies were properly enforced, and officers ticketed people smoking near build- ings, there may have been less sup- port for the campus-wide smoking ban in the first place. This enforce- ment should have been the solution to any complaints about smoking on campus. The prohibition is an egre- gious violation of students' rights, and it excessively stigmatizes one bad habit - but the wrong approach is being taken to enforce it by the administration, since most smokers aren't going to quit because of a ces- sation workshop. if the ban is inevi- table, it would be better to save the money and fine violators. -Harsha Panduranga can be reached at harshap@umich.edu. from its existing application. The Common App, which currently serves 392 other major private and public universi- ties, provides a single, standardized applica- tion form for undergraduates and includes school-specific supplements. Admissions officials have applied to start using the Com- mon App as early as this February. If every- thing goes as planned, students applying for the University's late summer admissions cycle of 2010 will be the first to submit the populat application. Administrators plan to preserve the unique essay questions found on the current application by including these questions as supplements. The change will affect the format of the application, rather than the substance of it. While proponents of the University's exclusive application might argue that it separates the dedicated applicants from the uninterested, there is little reason that the application process should be made any more burdensome than it needs to be. The University's move to the Common App reflects the realities faced by high school seniors today. The high-achieving stu- dents that the University hopes to attract shouldn't have to fill out separate and redundant paperwork for every school to which they apply. And since the switch to the Common App is primarily a matter of reformatting the information on the appli- cation and can still include the essay ques- tions that make the University application unique, there's little benefit to using an exclusive application. The switch to the Common App is a gesture of outreach that will increase the University's visibility and attract a more geographically and socially diverse group of applicants. As a result, the University's already massive number of applicants will almost certainly increase. Many similar schools have reported more applications after making the switch to the Common App. As the size of the applicant pool increases, the University can expect to have an even more varied group of applicants from which to choose. The result will be an even more diverse student body. It may be true that the Common App could cause more students with less inter- est to apply to the University as a backup school. But the benefits in having a larger pool of applicants to draw from will more than offset this. And administrators can work to ensure that an increase in the num- ber of out-of-state applicants doesn't com- promise the availability of quality education for students in Michigan. The University's switch to the Com- mon App is a good move, promising a more diverse applicant pool and decreasing the burden on high school seniors applying for college. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: 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. *I EILEEN STAHL I Dying for Twilight love ANDREW CHINSKY I *I Unless you live in a promotion-proof bunker, you know that today is the release date for "New, Moon," the movie based on the second of Stephe- nie Meyer's four amazingly popular "Twilight" books for young adults. These hyper-dramatic romance novels about the sparkling emo vampire and the girl who loved him send teen girls squeal- ing loudly enough to kill small animals. And while I enjoy a good love story, there are some seriously creepy messages in "Twilight" about what is and isn't romantic. I want to know who the hell decided to market "Twilight" to teens and tweens. Case in point: our 17-year-old heroine, Bella, spends the majority of "New Moon" trying to kill herself because her zombie boyfriend, Edward, hs broken up with her. Well, technically, she's throwing herselfinto potentially lethal situations because it causes her to hallucinate Edward's voice screaming at her for being a melodramatic cretin. But if she does die in the process, Bella assures us she's fine with it, because her life is officially over now and "the sheer beauty of (Edward's voice) amazed me. I couldn't allow my memory to lose it, no matter the price." Accord- ing to Meyer's website, we shouldn't judge Bella for any of this because this is how people behave when they lose true love. Yeah. This isn't My Little Pony. The Yellow Ribbon Teen Suicide Prevention Program, apparently the last people on Earth whose brains haven't been shorted out by glitter, issued a warning that a movie presenting sui- cide as romantic might not be such a good thing to show to teenagers, especially if they share Bella's low self-esteem. Across more than 2,200 pages, Bella moans incessantly about how she is "hideous" and "worthless." Unfortunately, these are feelings that a lot of teen girls can identify with. Thanks in part to the Ralph Lauren school of beauty, American girls are undergoing what many mental health professionals call "a crisis of self-esteem," obsessing over being attractive and accepted by peers. This is more than typical teen angst-- the last twenty years have seen skyrock- eting rates in depression, eating disorders and self-mutilation among young women. It's Edward's acceptance, I think, that makes him so appealing to girls. When you feel imper- fect, the idea of a perfect guy who will wrap you in his scintillating arms and whisper his devotion for twelve paragraphs is a powerful and com- forting fantasy. But Bella never learns to value herself, continuing her tirade right up until the last book. Instead, she bases her entire sense of self on Edward's attention. As Robert Pattinson, the actor who plays Edward, put it, "she doesn't really get fixed, she just gets this addiction ... she becomes completely dependent." How dependent? When Edward leaves, even if it's just for a weekend, we are treated to daz- zling descriptions of Bella having what sound a hell of a lot like panic attacks. "I would rather die than stay away from you," she informs Edward, and as "New Moon" proves, she wasn't kidding around. She confesses she doesn't have much of a life outside of Edward - friends, hobbies or a personality - because her life is Edward. I should probably also throw out there that Mdyer's char- acters consistently praise Bella for being mature for her age. Basing your self-worth around the approval of someone else leaves you wide open for abu- sive relationships, and Edward often isn't the best boyfriend this side of a restraining order. He yells, intimidates and chastises Bella as if she were a child. While Bella confesses she's afraid of his "black moods," she blames her own inadequa- cy for his behavior. It takes Edward cutting her car's brakes and placing her under house arrest to get Bella angry, but even then, she succumbs to his will and never considers leaving him. After all, his sister assures Bella while she's locked up in Edward's house that he's only doing it because he loves her. I understand that "Twilight" is fantasy, but abusive relationships, dependency and teen sui- cide are pretty high on my list of things that aren't romantic. Teen girls are taking the series very seriously, even obsessively, reading the books several times a week. on one thread I ran across on Yahoo! Answers, a reader said, "I HAVE to read it or I break down crying." However much we may enjoy the good points of "Twilight," publisher Little, Brown & Com- pany had a responsibility to make sure the books were appropriate before spending several million dollars promoting them. We've been blinded by dazzle. The time to start asking questions is long overdue. Eileen Stahl is an LSA senior. Party like it's 1969 This football season has been tough. After all the yelling, analyzing and figuring out where things went wrong, at the end of the day, we have to realize that sometimes things just don't work out in sports the way we hope. But for true Michigan students, alumni and fans, this season can still be spectacular. The team can save everythingthrough one act: beating Ohio State on Saturday. A Michigan win wouldn't be the biggest upset in the his- tory of the rivalry. That will always belong to the 1969 team' coached by the legendary Bo Schembechler. But this vic- tory would come close. So, what can Michigan students, alumni and fans do to help out the team and show that we are still true blue head- ing into one of college football's greatest rivalries? To start, come to the Go Blue, Beat OSU Pep Rally today at 6 p.m. on the Diag. For those juniors and seniors and graduate students who experienced this two years ago, you know how great the event was. As one of the people who experienced it, I have to say the word "experienced" rather than "attended," because the atmosphere was so electric I could feel it. Sophomores and freshmen who have yet to experience an Ohio State game should be prepared for a completely different feel to Michigan Stadium. Come to the pep rally for a preview. As a part of Go Blue, Beat OSU Week, the pep rally is a culmination of efforts put forth by various student groups, Michigan Student Association, LSA Student Government and many sponsors. Thousands of free T-shirts, giveaways, the band, cheerleaders, Football coach Rich Rodriguez and the team will all be part of the spectacle Friday night. I say this in part to entice you to coiie to the pep rally, but also because I hope I'm not disappointed with student support for this once-a-year event. Everyday, someone sends an e-mail out to a group I'm part of that states, "Selling OSU Ticket, Highest Offer." I know it's tempting to forget about the game because the odds of winning are so low. I know this season isn't great. I know there is a hockey game and a basketball game that night. Forget about all of that. This year is far from over. This Saturday, everything is on the line. For once, Michi- gan truly can be "all in." Coming to the pep rally will prove that Michigan stu- dents still believe in the maize and blue magic and are far from the "fair-weather fans" other schools like to believe we are. Go out to the bars or basketball or hockey after- ward. But take one hour out of our last home football week- end of the year and prove that you care about our school and our team. On Saturday night, maybe we can party like it's 1969. This viewpoint was written by Andrew Chinsky on behalf of the Go Blue, Beat OSU Core Team. BELLA SHAH E-MAIL BELLA AT BELLZ@UMICH.EDU VS/h aT U'IS-soS Fla Tj -I EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Nina Amilineni, Emad Ansari, Emily Barton, Jamie Block, Will Butler, Ben Caleca, Nicholas Clift, Michelle DeWitt, Brian Flaherty, Emma Jeszke, Raghu Kainkaryam, Sutha K Kanagasingam, Erika Mayer, Edward McPhee, Harsha Panduranga, Alex Schiff, Asa Smith, Brittany Smith, Radhika Upadhyaya, Rachel Van Gilder, Laura Veith