The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4A - Thursday, October 13, 2011 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com SUMMER KRINSKY E-MAIL SUMMER AT SKRINSKY@UMICH.EDU Mom... I don't think I can make it home for fall study break.I have a lot of work.. STEPHANIE STEINBERG EDITOR IN CHIEF MICHELLE DEWITT and EMILY ORLEY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS NICK SPAR 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. ." Tear down trade barriers Detroit meeting will be good for commerce A 11 eyes will be on Detroit tomorrow as South Korean presi- dent Lee Myung-bak and President Barack Obama convene at the General Motors plant in Lake Orion, Mich. to promote a trade deal between the United States and South Korea. In the first trade agreements to pass Congress since 2007, the U.S. House and Senate passed three free trade agreements yesterday, which will ultimately increase international trade and promote commerce for Aierican industries through overseas markets. 4 Grow new roots In addition to negotiating this trade agree- ment with South Korea, the U.S. will secure trading partnerships with Colombia and Pan- ama to further improve international com- merce.- Passing the trade agreements with these three countries could potentially boost U.s exports by $13 billion through agricul- ture, machinery and other goods and services. The most substantive of the pacts, however, would be with South Korea. South Korean markets will provide near- ly $11 billion in additional potential rev- enue. Though trade agreements were almost reached four years ago between the U.S. and South' Korea, long disputes concerning South Korea barriers to U.S. automotive imports prevented their passage. Now, both nations are pushing to quickly ratify the agreement, which would allow each U.S. automaker to import 25,000 cars into South Korea every year. In the agreement, South Korea would change its automotive safety standards for imported vehicles to those required for Amer- ican vehicles. Additionally, South Korea plans to cut the current tariffs on U.S. products in half and eliminate them by the fifth year ofthe agreement. While many South Koreans have expressed a preference for domestic vehicles because of safety concerns, they should be assured that the U.S. safety standards are amongthe highest in the world. Capitalizing on this opportunity to engage in increased international trade could prove invaluable to the U.S. economy. Once enacted, the trade agreements will create tens of thou- sands of jobs for the country and small U.S. enterprises will directly benefit from a larger labor force. Economic growth will be boosted by the increase in employment and the cre- ation of new markets in which the U.S. can export goods and services. The Motor City will also reap the benefits associated with this proposed surge in commerce thanks to the auto industry's presence in Michigan. The expansion of U.S. exports to South Korea, Panama and Colombia coupled with reduced tariff barriers on U.S. products will further stimulate the struggling economy. Since products exported from the U.S. to South Korea currently face higher tariffs than U.S. imports from South Korea, the trade deal will level the playing field between the two countries. With lowered tariffs on U.S. exports to international markets, the U.S. economy has the potential to gain revenue. And with a lower trade deficit, government spending will not be sacrificed or affected by these trade deals. Gongress made positive progress for Mich- igan-based automakers in approving the agreements. This is an important business opportunity for the companies involved and has the potential to aid in the rebuilding of Michigan's economy. P retty much all cultures have an established rite of passage for young people. Some of these are ancient tra- ditions, like the Jewish bar- and bat-mitzvah. But there's no I question what the most impor- tant one is for middle-class JOEL youth in Amer- BATTERMAN ica today: going to college. Now that we're here, what does that say about us and our society? As I see it, the single-most important thing about college is that it's a place we leave home for. The second is that it's a community composed largely of people our own age. That's easy to take for granted, but in the sweep of history, it's pretty darn unusual. Only within the last century has it become so routine for so many young people to pack their bags and go off to live in little enclaves for four years. Our training for life is now an experience of dislocation. The fam- ily loses its gravitational pull. We leave behind many - if not most, or even all - of the people we've known before. The communities where we may have spent all our years become a memory. Even those of us who grew up nearby have entered a distinctive social niche. In Europe, it's common for under- graduates to live at home and attend school nearby. Not here, despite the cost of housing. For Americans, "college life" has to be its own dec- laration of independence, or, when parents turn into "pay-rents," at least the imitation of one. Uprooted from wherever we've been, we're immersed in a big sea of the similarly young and discon- nected. The "student ghetto" is a less isolated place than its name- sake, but most student haunts are decidedly segregated by age. You might guess the Fountain of Youth was spouting on Ingalls Mall by the average ages of folks passing by. At its best, this grand experiment more than lives up to its promise of liberation. Removed from the par- ticular context of our upbringing and inserted into a volatile crowd of peers, we can gain space to discover other ways of living, see the world with new clarity, even loosen the grip of certain kinds of oppression. I got a reminder of this Monday when I stepped out of the Hatcher Graduate library and discovered the National Coming Out Day rally on the library's steps. And it's no coincidence. So many social movements in the past 50 years were nurtured at campuses like ours - as the New Deal and Baby Boom made higher education a mass phenomenon. Isolated from the world that bore them, and with the power of numbers on their side, these new concentrations of young people decided they wouldn't toler- ate Jim Crow, or war in Vietnam or the burning of the Cuyahoga River. Starting from places like the Diag, they challenged the egregious fol- lies of grown-ups and changed the country for good. Yet the college excursion also carries big risks. Isolation from the world can breed utopian think- ing, but it's less helpful for utopian practice. Most seriously, separation from the people and communities we've known can erode our sense of responsibility toward others. Some of the new groupings that form in college may be extraordinarily close-knit, but they are also, for the most part, inevitably temporary. Despite the great collective ritu- als of Football Saturday solidarity, one wonders if they only conceal a growing atomization of ourselves, if the experience of college doesn't threaten to be one big acidbath that dissolves us into a permanently nomadic set of professional individ- uals, every bit as liquid as the global economy's flows of cash. Leaving what you know can be liberating. That would be an appropriate rite of passage, given the troubled, transient nature of our society. For- tunately, while we didn't organize this ritual, we still have the power to make it serve our purpose, just as the 1960s generation did. Instead of acting out a dress rehearsal for the world as it is, we could use college to improvise what we'd like it to be. We can't undo what brought us here, nor would many of us want to, but we can work to shape a future that might emancipate us from the alienated present. -Joel Batterman can be reached at jomba@umich.edu. 4 4 4 EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Aida Ali, Michelle DeWitt, Ashley Griesshammer, Patrick Maillet, Erika Mayer, Harsha Nahata, Emily OrleyTeddy Papes, Timothy Rabb, Seth Soderborg, Caroline Syms, Andrew Weiner DAVID BLEZNAK | Attend fourth annual UIC The Complete Spectrum: Chris Dyer discusses the FAIR Education Act and how it pertains to LGBT students. podi~ umGo to michigandaily.com/blogs/The Podium BENJAMIN SUN| Explore Venture for America 4 Michigan Interactive Investments, a student investment organization at the University, is hosting its fourth annual Under- graduate Investment Conference on Friday, Oct. 14 and Saturday, Oct. 15., MII has invited students, alumni, professionals and sponsors to participate in the conference throughout the"weekend. The UIC will feature a stock pitch campetition - where teams select a stock according to conference guidelines and present it to a panel of judges - and serve as an opportunity to meet professionals and students from investment clubs at different schools across the country. This interaction allows students to learn from each other and think about investment ideas and campus investment clubs from a new perspective. MII is focused on educating its members about investing and financial markets. Older students collaborate with younger students to develop the technical and personal skills for professional careers. Many of the com- peting investment clubs are focused on the same goal MII members are encouraged to help organize the UIC or compete in the competition. In its inaugural year, the UIC was found- ed to bring together investment clubs from other universities to compete in the stock pitch competition. The UIC has been suc- cessful for the past three years due to the participation of schools across the country, Michigan alumni and corporate sponsors. This year, the conference will host 16 schools - including the University of Cali- fornia at Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon - which will compete for a $3,000 grand prize. Each team of two to four students will deliver a 12-minute stock pitch followed by eight minutes of Q & A on Saturday morning. Three teams will be select- ed to compete in the final round and will give a longer stock pitch to a panel of four experi- enced professionals, including head of debt capital markets for SunTrust Robinson Hum- phrey, Beau Cummins, and David MacGregor, CEO of Longbow Research. These judges will determine which school is the winner of the competition and grand prize. In the past, the UIC has hosted several Uni- versity alumni as judges and speakers for the event. MII will host Cummins, MBA class of 1989, of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey for the third time. He will give a keynote speech at 1p.m. on Saturday about careers in finance. In addition, the event is sponsored by Long- bow Research, Wells Fargo, BP and Blackrock. The sponsors of this event are providing eight first and final-round judges. Three first round judges are MII alumni and friends. The final round of the stock pitch competi- tion will begin at 3p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 15. The speech by Cummins and the final round of the stock pitch competition will be open to the public and held in the Blau Auditorium at the Ross School of Business. We encourage anyone who is interested to attend. David Bleznak is a Ross School of Business senior. He is the director of the Undergraduate Investment Conference and also serves as the vice president of operations for MIl When I graduated from the University in 1995, I had little idea of what I wanted to do professionally. I had a general impulse to get training and skills, so I went to work at an investment bank. It didn't take me long to conclude that I was more interested in our clients than I was in my job. What drew me to these companies were the entrepreneurial stories of their founders. I realized that the real creation of value was coming from these visionary entrepreneurs and not the lawyers and bank- ers. Pretty soon I left to throw my hat in the start-up ring. So at the ripe old age of 23, I founded my first com- pany, Community Connect Inc., with four other friends. We started the company out of my apartment, and I ran it as CEO for more than 12 years until we grew the company to about 150 employees and then sold it to a publicly traded media company. Having started a com- pany at such an early age with so little experience was an incredible challenge, but I was fortunate to have the support of some amazing entrepreneurs. Their mentor- ship, combined with hard-won experience, has made an enormous difference in my career. When I speak to recent graduates who want to someday start or run a company, I tell them to seek out mentors who will help them develop professionally. Find someone who has built a career like the one you want, and engage with him or her until you get a good sense of how things are done. Right now,there are some phenomenal entrepreneurs building successful businesses in Detroit, just a stone's throw away. There's Brian Balasia, the co-founder of Digerati who graduated from the University in 2003 and proceeded to build a business helping other busi- nesses use technology to increase productivity. There's Brett deMarrais, who graduated from the University in 2009 and is now the CEO and Founder of Wedit, a crowd-sourced wedding videography business set to clear six-figures of revenue this year. And there's Phillip and Ryan Cooley, whose destination restaurant Slow's BBQ has revitalized the Corktown neighborhood. Phil-. lip and Ryan are now working on a 28,000-square-foot incubation space to house new enterprises. These entrepreneurs and their success have given rise to a new sense of opportunity and excitement in the region. Josh Linkner, managing director of Detroit Venture Partners and founder of ePrize, recentlytold us how happy he was with the dozens of innovative com- panies they've been seeing. DVP has already invested in seven companies, with many more on the way. For those of you who would like to follow in the footsteps of Brian Balasia, Brett deMarrais, Phillip Cooley, Ryan Cooley and even Josh Linkner, there's the University's Center for Entrepreneurship, which, under managing director Doug Neal, is one of the best in the country. There's Bizdom U. - an entrepreneur- ship accelerator funded by Dan Gilbert and based in Detroit. And there is the Venture for America Fellow- ship, which will be offered to roughly 50 of the top college graduates in the country. Venture for America Fellows will attend training camp held at Brown Uni- versity next summer with experienced entrepreneurs and investors before beginning work at a start-up in Detroit or another low-cost city. After two years, one Fellow will receive $100,000 in seed investment. Applications are now open at www.ventureforamerica. org/apply. The path to entrepreneurship has historically been less clearly marked than other paths. Indeed, that has been one of its defining features. But the country, and Michigan in particular, needs its best and brightest to become entrepreneurs who build businesses and create jobs more than ever. You will never be more able to take risks than at this stage in your career. Entrepreneurship is much like other professional paths in that you tend to get better at it over time, but the decision to start must be yours. The challenge is there for you, and the time to start is now. 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. We do not print anonymous letters. Send letters to tothedaily@michigandaily.com I Benjamin Sun is a University alum and a member of Venture for America's entrepreneur board.