.. 4A - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com L74e Mcdiian Batilg Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@umich.edu GARY GRACA ROBERT SOAVE COURTNEY RATKOWIAK EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views ofttheir authors. Guarding the Great Lakes New regulations will protect state's ecosystem and economy ver the next few weeks, Michigan residents will flock to the Great Lakes to get in some end-of-summer beach fun. Not only does Michigan's most precious resource provide state residents with local vacation spots, but the Great Lakes are also vital to many of the state's most important industries like tourism and fishing. But because the state is so reliant on its lakes, it's also necessary to protect them from environmental hazards like inva- sive species. To combat this problem, the U.S. Coast Guard recent- ly proposed regulations that would lower the amount of invasive species introduced to the lakes by sea-faring cargo ships that dock in them. Congress should put these regulations into effect to safe- guard a resource that Michigan cares about and needs to protect. It's a sad state of affairs that many in this country politically would rather start an 'Animal House' food fight rather than inspire kids to stay in school' - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, commeting on the seeming apathy and lack of commitment to helping fund the nation's education system, as reported yesterday by CNN. ROSE JAFFE E-MAIL ROSE AT ROSEJAFF@UMICH.EDU 'roday( ae-fiV4sJ,: a ____k / Avsd .la#C:. aC.. wsne' Se I }" t"t~ NEWS IN TENNWPS n4oRLD MyFree Press "confession Many types of invasive species are intro- duced into the lakes by way of ocean-faring ships' ballast water, which is the water used to help ships maintain the appropriate weight and balance as they load and unload cargo. This water is picked up and dumped wherever necessary, and all kinds of organ- isms - from algae to fish - travel with that water to unfamiliar environments. Cur- rently, regulations on ballast water are few and far between, though there have been recent movements to make regulations more rigorous. The Coast Guard's pro- posal will place stricter regulations on the amount of organisms a ships' ballast water can contain before being dumped. The ecosystem operates on a delicate bal- ance, and foreign species can easily disturb that balance. The Great Lakes are still suf- fering from the introduction of the zebra mussel, a striped mussel originally native to Eastern Europe. Some native animals like ducks can eat the zebra mussel, but that hasn't stopped it from spreading rap- idly across the region and forcing out native species. While the shipping industry is certain- ly important to Michigan's economy, the Great Lakes need stricter regulations on incoming freighters to keep them safe. The lakes will not keep attracting visitors if their ecosystem continues to sustain such damages. The Coast Guard's proposals are simply a practical way to bridge the needs of the shipping industry with the well-be- ing of Michigan waters. Approving these regulations is Congress's responsibility. Though many states benefit from being able to use the Great Lakes for shipping, Michigan and its neighbors alone are suffering the environmental conse- quences. Better protection for the lakes is a sensible way to make this situation fairer to the Great Lakes states. On top of the need to protect the envi- ronment, approving these regulations will actually be a money-saving move, too. Repairing the damage done by invasive species is an expensive endeavor - for the Great Lakes alone, it has cost more than $200 million a year, according to an Aug. 28 article by the Associated Press entitled "Coast Guard proposes water ballast rules." The benefits to the environment notwith- standing, these regulations will save the state and federal governments plenty of cash in the long run. The proposal is currently undergoing a comment period, which will last until November 27. Michigan residents should take advantage of the comment period by going to www.regulations.gov and show- ing support for the proposal. The Great Lakes are Michigan's pride and joy, and it's imperative that Congress takes whatever steps are necessary to protect them. Look, I'll talk, but you can't use myname or anything, or maybe you could use, you know, a fake one, but it would have to be some- thing interesting _ like Cobra or Zeus or ... I mean, I've thought a lot about choosing a good name when the time comes, and I made a list, but I WILL forgot it and I can'tG remember the best GRUNDLER names so I'll have to get back to you on that, but honestly I'm nervous and I just really, really need to get this off my chest. I mean, I don't want to get anyone in trouble or anything, but when I found out that you guys were doing an investigation of, you know, the academics here, not just the football team, and wanted some input from students, I can't say I was completely opposed to it. The investigation, that is. Honestly, I don't know if what I tell you would qualify as a good hard-hitting story, but you know, if you say so. Well, I would definitely agree that the academic hours I put in at the University are excessive. It's a huge mental and physical strain, especially when you're coming right out of high school. In my high school, you know, and I'd say this is the same for most high schools, except maybe those in the Upper Peninsula that have their own special rules because of the bears, I'd usually be home by 2 or 3 p.m. at the latest. Then, after I was home, I would have an average of only an hour of homework to do, so at most I was putting in five hours of work a week for school. Here at the University, though, well, hoo boy. I mean, after my class- es are all done and I've been to the library and I've fed the squirrels on the Diag, I'm not getting home until five, six o'clock, and then, jeez, here's the part that really sweats my gears, I've got way more than one hour of work to do. Try four hours, at a mini- mum, and if you count Internet poker breaks the total comes to five hours. I didn't sign up for that. Well, the Internet poker I did, but don't men- tion it because it's sort of illegal in the States. Of course, things got really bad when I started missing my rec bas- ketball games. I would be at the library or in class and my team- mates would call me and say, "Dude, where's our water? You were sup- posed to bring it, that's your job," and I would have to explain in a quiet tone so I wouldn't upset the professor or anybody nearby that I couldn't make it right now, and to go use the drinking fountain, but they didn't take that too well and soon they got a new water boy. Like this summer, I was complete- ly burned out. I mean completely. Zero energy. All I could do was sit in front of the TV or the computer. Sometimes they wouldn't even be on. So I was just sitting, wishing they were on, praying that someone would come and turn them on, or feed me, but I could never make the effort, you understand, to do anything myself. At one point, I didn't shower or shave for twelve days. Man, if you had seen me ... Well, I mean, if you somehow had seen me, I would probably have had a bit of stubble after the twelve days but nothing seriously resembling a beard, to tell the truth. But I could maybe have used a shower. The nasty rumors are true: students work too hard. So yeah, the rumors are true. I mean, it's really toughhere. I can't say I was expecting it. That's why I was so drained this summer. Oh - you have to go? Okay. Yeah. Are you sure you want to print this? Well. I mean, yeah. Um, don't use my name, okay? Use ... Neptune. Neptune's good. - Will Grundler can be reached at sailgull@umich.edu. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Nina Amilineni, Emad Ansari, Emily Barton, Harun Buljina, Ben Caleca, Brian Flaherty, Emma Jeszke, Raghu Kainkaryam, Sutha K Kanagasingam, Erika Mayer, Edward McPhee, Asa Smith, Brittany Smith, Radhika Upadhyaya, Rachel Van Gilder, Laura Veith ELIOT JOHNSON Adding coor toU The newly constructed additionto the Museum of Modern Art on the corner of State Street and South University has considerably changed the aesthetic panorama of Central Campus. Grow- ing up 20 miles from Ann Arbor, the view facing east from State Street always came to mind when I thought of the University of Michigan. Angell Hall, with its enormous width and towering Roman columns, looked like it'd been slammed down in its place by some giant. The trees, some of them older than my grandparents, spoke to the stability and historyofthe campus. But the new addition to the Museum of Mod- ern Art doesn't fit in with my vision of the Uni- versity. The straight lines, right angles, walls of glass and slabs of concrete seem architecturally at odds not only with the classic buildings which surround much of the Diag, but also with the original Museum of Modern Art. Initially, I was disgusted by the costly muse- um addition. On top of the issues I had with the incongruity of the building, it transformed a grassy, shaded area of the Diag into an enormous concrete walkway. "Why don't we just lay con- crete over the entire Diag?" I thought. Out with natural settings, in with modern design. Those 80 year-old trees were so 20th century. I figured the addition to the Museum of Modern Art would end up being the new Dennison - a true WTF moment in University history. Passing by the construction site last fall, star- ing up at two stories of horizontal concrete slabs, I had an idea. Maybe the University could put something on those walls. The University removed all the grass, trees and dirt (color), and replaced them with huge slabs of clean, cut con- crete (gray). Why so serious? Why so austere? Isn't this Ann Arbor, the liberal mecca of the Midwest?Aren't there students at this institution artistically skilled enough to transform these graywalls into something beautiful? Of course, the University has the right to clas- sify whatever it likes as art. If it says three large, metal support beams painted orange and bolted together is art, so be it. But what statement is the University making when the art it chooses starts more conversations regarding the definition of art than the value or beauty of the piece? My guess is that the University is saying, "We're all about theory here at Michigan." But the sculptures are fine. They're unique and they add at least a little bit of color to an oth- erwise drab part of campus. They're also highly conceptual, so I'm not surprised that their design goes over my head. But how about adding something with a little bit of culture, something that perhaps a few more students on campus could relate to? Some- thing a little less stuffy, or maybe even some- thing the students of the University have some say in? I know the perfect place for it. There's a horizontal rectangle of concrete on the north wall of the museum addition that would accom- modate either one large mural or many small ones. It can be aesthetically modern, since that's all the University feels like building late- ly. Abstract? Go for it. It could be anything, as long as it adds some color. The University should hold a competition for student artists (or those in the community) for the opportunity to paint that enormously bor- ing wall. The price of said competition? Cheap. The University pays for materials and that's it. Cheaper than a single bright orange support beam, I bet. Another perk of the mural idea - it could be changed. Every semester, year or decade, the competition is held again, and a brand new mural goes up for people to examine, talk and argue about. Allow students to have some creative con- trol over how their environment is aesthetically changed. Why not allow some artistically gifted students to display their genius and become voices in the way our University evolves and changes? The University has an opportunity to give students the artistic license to create what- ever they like out of a boring campus building. What's more modern and progressive than that? Eliot Johnson is an LSA senior. BRIAN FLAHERTY | I The coffee conspiracy Have you ever met one of those idealists who wants to scale Mount Rushmore to throw protest banners over Lincoln's nose the instant their sense of justice is even slightly violat- ed? Well, I'm one of those people. And I'm now engaged in an ongoing battle involving coffee beverages. I didn't always consider myself a coffee warrior. There was a time when I believed coffee was just a tasty and aromatic liquid that one must chug daily and in exorbitant quantities to experience pleasure and the illusion of being wakeful. But my views changed one day when my lov- ing gaze fell on a caramel cafe latte and I thought about where this nec- tar of the gods actually comes from. My first guess was trees. I was close - coffee grows on bushes, pri- marily in Brazil, Columbia and Viet- nam. Around 1000 CE, coffee was introduced to Arabia, where coffee bushes remained a closely guarded treasure until 1616. That's when the Dutch successfully swiped a cof- fee bush and brought it to Europe. Demand for Java quickly rose as afflu- ent Europeans gathered in cafes and slurped cups of Joe. Voltaire report- edly consumed 50 to 72 cups per day, and to support Voltaire's habit, coffee cultivation was outsourced to various colonies where, in many cases, it's still grown. Today, coffee is a Goliath industry - petroleum is the only commodity that ranks higher than coffee in terms of dollars spent in trade. According to Coffee Universe, over 400 billion cups of Java are consumed each year, mak- ing it the world's most popular bever- age. And why not? Coffee stimulates the brain, is an integral cultural arti- fact and (arguably) tastes heavenly. The problem is that there's a dark side to coffee. For one thing, coffee- growing has big and ugly impacts on the environment. Among the things it causes are destruction of habitats, deforestation, pesticide pollution and degradation of soil and water. Add to that the fact that a single cup requires more than of 35 gallons of water to produce (often in countries where drinking water is already scarce) and you have a large-scale and far-reach- ing environmental problem. Java raises social justice issues, too. Corporations make billions sell- ing coffee, but the farmers that actu- ally exert the time and effort to grow it typically see very little of that money. often, farmers lack direct access to coffee markets and have little choice but to sell their coffee to better-connected middlemen - at a fraction of the price the middleman will receive and an even smaller frac- tion of what the end seller receives. For many growers, the result is a cycle of poverty, debt and sweatshop- esque working conditions. I personally don't like any of those things, and unfortunately there's no easy solution to the problems sur- rounding coffee. But there are some things a student can do without sac- rificing coffee and all of its magical benefits. In my case, I've decided to start buying fair trade coffee rather than the other stuff. Fair trade cer- tified coffee cuts out exploitative middlemen by replacing them with cooperatives that offer farmers a fair- er price for their harvest. Fair trade coffee is also fairly easy to find on campus, if you simply watch out for the label. Some of the places offering fair trade coffee in Ann Arbor are Beansters. Expresso Royale, and Bert's. And, according to the Organic Trade Association, 78 percent of all fair trade certified coffee sold in the United States is also certified organ- ic, meaning that it's grown using more environmentally sustainable pnethods. For instance, organic coffee is grown without artificial pesticides and with sustainable crop rotation that mitigates problems like soil and water erosion. Our consumption decisions and the businesses we support have real and noticeable effects on other peo- ple and the environment. Drinking a cup of fair trade coffee or writing a viewpoint about it doesn't right all the wrongs in the world. But it hope- fully does make a tiny difference, and even tiny differences can really add up in the long run. I now drink my coffee with a little milk, no sugar and a sense of pride from know- ing it got into my cup the right way. Brian Flaherty is a Business senior and an associate editprial page editor. 6 6 6 The Daily is looking for a diverse group of strong, informed writers to be columnists during the fall semester. Columnists write 750 words on a topic of their choice every other week. E-MAIL ROBERT SOAVE4T RSOAVE@UMICH.E U FOR MORE INFORMATION.