4A - Thursday, March 10, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4A - Thursday, March 10, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom C4C idlcigan Bailu Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Unfair incrimination STEPHANIE STEINBERG EDITOR IN CHIEF MICHELLE DEWITT and EMILY ORLEY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS KYLE SWANSON MANAGING EDITOR 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. (Un)lock it up Federal gov. needs to finally close Guantanamo Since its establishment under the Bush administration in 2002, the prison at Guantanamo Bay has been part of a distress- ing chapter in American history, rife with allegations and accounts of prisoner abuse and torture. The prison was established as an indefinite detention facility and housed those designated as "enemy combatants," who - according to the Bush administration - were outside the bounds of the law and not entitled to protection under the Geneva Convention or legal recourse to challenge their detention. Lawsuits on behalf of the detainees eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which has repeatedly ruled in their favor by granting prisoners the rights of habeas corpus and exposing proce- dural flaws in military tribunals constructed under Bush that made neutral arbitration impossible. B ignews fromthe sports world folks - college football play- ers are all a bunch of feloni- ous hoodlums. They'll mug you blind given the chance. Come to think of it, my house was robbed over break. Call the M Department of Public Safety - JOE I've finally got a SUGIYAMA lead. If you think that my bold accusations are a little unwarranted, it's because they are. And since you could so easily distin- guish my baseless claims from fact, you probably won't have a problem with a similar hyperbole reported in the March 2 Sports Illustrated which revealed results from its study called "College Football and Crime." SI and CBS News conducted an "unprecedented six-month investi- gation" of college football players' criminal history and reported their findings last week. The 2,837 play- ers in question were members of SI's Preseason Top 25 football programs. After checking the backgrounds of the players, SI found that 7 percent of the players "had been charged with or cited for a crime" and nearly 60 percent were convicted. The crimes include theft, property destruction, drug possession and others. The numbers presented weren't what struck me as surprising, but rather the way in which the infor- mation was presented. It was odd that SI gave a few anecdotes about students who had committed crimes and then generalized that information to the entire football community. Stories of armed rob- bery and aggravated assault con- stituted a great deal of the report. These tales were the crux of SI's argument that crime is rampant in college football, and the programs could care less. While these stories are by no means the whole picture, without them there isn't much in this study that warrants a multiple page spread in the magazine, let alone the cover. Though they're presented as alarming, the statistics are less than shocking. When comparedto Oregon State University's Daily Barometer study about crimes committed by all college students, they're downright placid. About 3.5 percent of all col- lege students - and I'm rounding up from 3.45 percent, a liberty that echoes throughout SI's study - have previously committed a crime. When considering the sample size of SI's study compared to that of the Daily Barometer's, it becomes apparent that this 0.05 percent difference in convictions between football play- ers and other students isn't all that significant. SI's smaller sample popu- lation means that statistics are more susceptible to outliers, which can skew the results. No study is perfect, and sam- pling the entire population of play- ers would require about five times as much research as was done by SI. Perhaps the key to understanding the true irrelevance of SI's report is that it didn't "have access to juvenile arrest records forroughly 80 percent of the players in the study." Wait - what? The statistics of a study that made claims about 25 college foot- ball teams were extrapolated from only 20 percent of their claimed data pool. After reading this disclaimer - which was one of many - my opin- ion of SI's reporting methods took a stark turn. SI criticized football programs for not checking the criminal records of their recruits - infor- mation that it wasn't able to access because juvenile records aren't publicly available - stating that none of the 25 teams require a background check on their pro- spective student-athletes. Some of the coaches were asked why they don't do more research on their recruits. Many answered with a not-so-far-from-the-truth response of not "know(ing) that juvenile records were available." Because they aren't. SI is apparently a fan of snipe hunting for background EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: checks - Heeere record, record, record *clap* *clap* *clap.* SI's intentions were noble, and I have no problem with this study being done. What I find problem- atic is how it took vanilla results and turned them into a scandal for the ages. It's not fair to cast such a villainous light on college football players because you find a couple of malevolent anecdotes. Crime study of student-athletes is misleading. If anyone should be upset, it's the players. Though they're often ste- reotyped as thuggish brutes, the vast majority are college kids who are no more inclined to commit crime than a member of a fraternity or an honor society. I hope that SI realizes its error in judgment and republishes this study in its "Go Figure" section of the Scorecard. I'll even give a couple of suggestions for the headings: 7 Percent of college football players we made out to be criminals in the SI study. 4 Percent of players who actually committed a crime. 567 Players - out of 2,837 - whose criminal records were available for the study. 2 News entities that should be embarrassed by their reporting tac- tics - CBS News and SI. 100 Percent chance that SI wasted everyone's time with a story that doesn't exist. Let's face it - the scorecard is all anyone reads anyway. -Joe Sugiyama can be reached at jmsugi@umich.edu. There was reason for optimism when Presi- dent Barack Obama was elected. He prom- ised to close the prison by January 2010 and took tangible steps toward that goal. Notably, the administration halted military trials in 2009 and attempted later that year to transfer detainees to the United States for civilian tri- als, which failed because it didn't receive fund- ing from the U.S. Senate. But now we're several months into 2011, and Guantanamo's closure looks to be a broken promise, as Obama has retreated in face of political opposition. In a disappointing action on Monday, he issued an executive order to resume military tribunals. It's important to remember that the Obama administration has handled the situation much better than its predecessors. New military tri- bunal procedures require a periodical review of prisoners' status and ensure that defendants have access to legal couJlyeb, Additionally, Obama has promised to adhere to the Geneva Convention. But these changes are stop gap measures that don't address structural problems with the Guantanamo Bay prison. Though the revised procedures may seem fair in theory, they are still prone to abuse. In the end, representatives of the executive branch may use their discre- tion to decide whether a prisoner may be indef- initely detained - this is hardly equivalent to due process. Not only is this procedure unfair, it's unnecessary. So far, the one criminal tried in civilian court - Ahmed Ghailani - was con- victed on a conspiracy charge and sentenced to life in prison despite the exclusion of a key witness whose identity was ascertained by tor- ture. At a fundamental level, criminal prosecu- tion of detainees affirms our faith in the rule of law and must, at the very least, be given the chance to work on a consistent basis. The blame can't fall solely on the Obama administration, which has faced logistical and political obstacles in its attempts to try pris- oners in the American legal system. Obama has faced opposition from Congress and the media in his attempts to try detainees in civil- ian courts. This needs to end. The damage done to America's reputation - in the form of international criticism and increased terror- ism recruitment - by keeping Guantanamo fBay open far outweighs any potential security threats from housing terrorists in maximum- security U.S. prisons. Though the administration reiterated its promise this week to eventually close the Guantanamo Bay prison, this has to be taken with a grain of salt. Obama needs to show that he's actually committed to this goal, and there must be a cooperative effort to close the deten- tion facility as quickly as possible. I I Aida Ali, Will Butler, Ellie Chessen, Michelle DeWitt, Ashley Griesshammer, Melanie Kruvelis, Patrick Maillet, Erika Mayer, Harsha Nahata, Emily Orley, Harsha Panduranga, Teddy Papes, Asa Smith, Seth Soderborg, Andrew Weiner FAHAD MUHAMMAD SAAD I I W Israel is not perfect 0 MELANIE KRUVELIS I A step from the edge So, spring break. Pretty crazy, huh? Not that I really remember what happened, of course. Somewhere between listening to Jewel on repeat and waiting for the phone to ring, I sort of lost track of everything. Well, anyway, it sure is good to be back at school. You know, back to lonely nights in the library, sitting by yourself in the cafeteria, and above all, being united with 40,000 students by a single phenomenon - bacne. Erm, wait - I mean stress. Partially due to a physics experi- ment gone terribly awry, the academic pres- sure is back on. Luckily, a recent New York Times article explained that it isn't just those of us here at the University who are feeling overwhelmed. According to the Jan. 26 article titled "Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen," the emotional health of incoming students has dropped to the lowest level in the last 25 years. What's really concerning isn't the fact that an entire generation is sinking further and further into a seemingly endless depression with rampant abuse of prescription drugs spreading faster than STDs within the cast of "Jersey Shore." Nah, that's not really a big deal - certainly not worth investigating anyway. The real issue? No one seems to know pre- cisely why this nation's college students are huffing paint chips. "We don't know exactly why students' emotional health is declining," John Pryor, a research program director at University of California, Los Angeles's Higher Education Research Institute, told The New York Times. Well, I don't know about you - hey, maybe we should change that, perhaps over dinner later? No, wait, the generational depression thing. Right. It's all over campus - walking through Angell Hall on a Monday morning is like navigating through a crowd of hungover Eeyores. The point is we must ask ourselves - why are we so stressed? What's the cause of this widespread unhappiness? And how quickly can we deport all these 'depresshmen' to Ohio? The most obvious answer to this perma- nent state of gloom and doom is, of course, MTV's remake of "Skins." It was an innocent enough idea - a chance for American tele- vision producers to once again capitalize on British brilliance, replacing dry humor with Nascar jokes and cracks about fast food. But unlike successful remakes of shows like "The Office," "Skins" is one of those trainwrecks you don't actually wantto watch at all, but are forced to because your roommate bought the TV. And after being in the room for the first five episodes of the show, I completely under- stand why American college students are one step away from jumping off that ledge. We suck at the one thing we're supposed to be good at - television. Without the accents and strange British euphemisms, the show really just became a pornographic circus of nipple talk and smoking pot off someone's nipples, which I didn't think was possible. As a direct result, everyone hates America, and we're forced to deal with it. It could be Charlie Sheen too. For years, it's been pretty obvious that dear Charlie is the man - if his acting on "Two and a Half Men" doesn't scream brilliant, I don't know what does. But in recent weeks, Sheen has gone from that wacky uncle with drug problems to that wacky uncle who snorts cocaine off the tur- key at Thanksgiving dinner - and by turkey, I mean porn stars. It's hard for college students to live up to the standards set by one of the highest paid actors on television - how can we possibly be happy with ourselves as we watch Sheen calmly explain on CNN that he has "a 10,000-year-old brain and the boogers of a 7 year old?" It just isn't fair. We may never know the real answer as to why we're so stressed. Maybe it's Miley Cyrus hosting "SNL." Perhaps it's the straight-to- DVD release of "Mean Girls 2." Or maybe it's the fact that today's college students face high unemployment rates and skyrocketing tuition prices - not to mention climate change, world- wide civil unrest, costly wars, obesity, rising threats of terrorism... Sigh. But really, did you see Miley? Her impression of Lindsay Lohan? God, talk about depressing. Melanie Kruvelis is an LSA junior. In Daniel Luks's world (In Defense ofIsrael, 1/24/2011), the Jewish state can do no wrong, and when it rarely ever does, there's always a darn good reason for it. He asserts that as the only democracy in the Middle East, it stands for peace, justice and equality, having extended the hand of friendship to the Palestinians on countless occasions only to be rebuffed every time. Luks's arguments, how- ever, are fallacious and illogical, and collapse under the weight of scrutiny. The Palestinian Authority has insisted on the ces- sation of settlement construction activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and on the pre-1967 borders as being the basis of all further talks. Luks contends that these preconditions are unreasonable, and Prime Min- ister Benjamin Netanyahu would agree. But if you and I are fighting over a piece of real estate and we are going through an arbitration process, should I be allowed to build on that land and consequently change its charac- ter? Furthermore, the entire world community, through United Nations resolutions as well as through unilateral action, has recognized the pre-1967 borders as the basis for a future Palestinian state. What would the Israelis consider a good starting point? The new boundary creat- ed by the Apartheid Wall, which is four times as long and twice as high as the Berlin Wall, and cuts through villag- es in the West Bank, separating farmers from their fields? What's more, the recently leaked Palestine Papers reveal the extent to which the Palestinian leadership was will- ing to go to reach a political settlement, only to receive nothing in return from the Israelis. So who's really being unreasonable here? Luks then discusses the conduct of Israel's neigh- bors and how the country's track record is just stellar when pitted against those of the oppressive and intol- erant regimes that surround it. First, there is a very good reason why there are more dictators than elected leaders in that part of the world, and it has much to do with U.S. foreign policy in the region over the last half century, but I won't get into that here. Nonetheless-it is highly disingenuous of Luks to compare Israel to the dictatorial arrangements that it shares borders with. Of course the democracy, however flawed, will fair better! What he should be comparing Israel to are modern lib- eral democracies, and not to the world's biggest human rights offenders such as Mubarak-era Egypt and pres- ent-day Saudi Arabia. And when the appropriate com- parisons are made, it is clear that Israel's record is just absolutely dismal. Luks is right: Israel is not perfect. In fact, it has deep structural problems. Even if one were to forget about its conduct abroad, including its offer to provide apartheid South Africa six Jericho missiles tipped with nuclear warheads, its use of white phosphorus and human shields during 2008 Operation Cast Lead - which resulted in the massacre of 1,400 Gazans - its illegal blockade of Gaza, its illegal settlements in the West Bank, its silencing of the growing peaceful protest movement in the Occu- pied areas, the presence of Jewish-only roads in the West Bank, and so on and so forth, it is hard to ignore the direction the country is taking. From rabbis issuing statements asking Jews not to sell property to non-Jews, to the wives of certain rabbis telling Jewish girls not to date Arab boys, from expulsion of its only Arab student by a school in Sulam, northern Israel, at the behest of a group of Jewish parents to the Central Elections Com- mittee banning Arab parties from running in the 2009 parliamentary elections, Israel has steadily been moving to the right. And with extremists hijacking deliberations in the Knesset regarding the settlements, the mere men- tion of dismantling those settlements in the future now amounts to political suicide. And to boot, criticism of Israel's actions is summarily dismissed as either the ravings of "self-hating Jews" or the unbridled propaganda of anti-Semites, whose ranks would probably boast such renowned peace activists as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter, all of whom have spoken out against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its treatment of the Palestinians. And I wonder what they would make of the revered Mahat- ma Gandhi, who rejected Zionism and did not support the creation of Israel, even though he sympathized with the plight of the Jews. Would he also be considered an anti-Semite? The conclusions of United Nations fact- finding commissions, Amnesty International, B'Tselem and other concerned organizations are almost invariably labeled "biased" and "one-sided." I am all too familiar with this flawed and dangerous outlook, this convenient deflection of criticism, having come from a country where people find it expedient to off-handedly explain all of Pakistan's woes with conspiracy theories involving India, Israel and the United States. You see, it's never us; it's always everyone else. Fahad Muhammad Sajid is an LSA senior. 6 6 0 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor. Letters should be fewer than 300 words and must include the writer's full name and University affiliation. 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