4- Tuesday, March 6, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com ie Midigan alv Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann ArborMI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com ASHLEY GRIESSHAMMER JOSEPH LICHTERMAN and ANDREW WEINER JOSH HEALY EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS 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. Imran Syed is the public editor. He can be reached at publiceditor@michigandaily.com. Risky business Michigan can't support new casinos Twenty-two new casinos have been proposed for construc- tion in Michigan. Both private investors and Native Ameri- can tribes are pushing for more venues throughout the Lower Peninsula. The proposed construction would almost double the number of casinos in the state - there are currently 25. This push comes in response to the record-breaking revenue of the three Detroit casinos in 2011 - an astounding $1.4 billion. While more casinos could help bring revenue to the state, doubling the number has significant potential to oversaturate the market. Michigan is not a destination gambling spot like Las Vegas, and too many new casinos could hurt the existing ones. One candidate needs to drop out after Super Tuesday so there will be the correct number of stooges. #SuperTuesday" - Comedian Andy Borowitz tweeted about the Republican presidential candidates in advance of today's ten Super Tuesday primaries. W Intelligence is relative Two efforts, one led by Michigan First and ballot proposal Michigan Is Yours, propose to increase the number of casinos. The two pro- posals call for four new casinos in Romulus, two in Detroit, two in Port Huron and more in Macomb and Oakland counties. The obvious benefits of adding casinos to the state include more jobs and a boost to the economy. Outside of revenue taken in by the casinos, patrons spend additional money at local gas stations and nearby restaurants, which benefits surrounding businesses. Lansing Mayor virg Bernero is in favor of some casino expansion. He has expressed interest in having a casino in Lansing, and thinks building casinos would be helpful for cities outside of Detroit. Detroit currently hosts three casinos: the MGM Grand Detroit Casino, the MotorCity Casino Hotel and Greektown Casino Hotel. Detroit seems to have enough casinos already, and adding more could take away revenue from the existing ones. The casinos Michigan already has are clearly successful. The record-breaking rev- enues from 2011 are a testament to that. But those numbers cannot be sustained forever. An oversaturation of the Michigan market will take away from existing casinos. Michi- gan residents and nearby travelers will reach a point where they won't spend any more money in the industry. Once that point is hit, the casinos will suffer. In Las Vegas and other destination cities, people travel from around the country and world to visit the casinos and hotels. The Michigan gambling demographic consists mainly of Michigan residents and residents in neighboring states such as Ohio and Indi- ana. Without a huge market, it's doubtful that Michigan would be able to support 22 new casinos. Jake Miklojcik, president at Michigan Consultants in Lansing, said Michigan could safely support a 20-percent growth in casinos. This number seems more realistic than a near- ly 100-percent growth. Without a large audi- ence for the casino expansion, doubling the number in Michigan would be a risky gamble. Choosing a safer route by adding a few casi- nos in key areas would be a more responsible alternative that would create jobs and boost the surrounding area's economy. Overexpan- sion will hurt the existing casinos and would not be beneficial to the state. E veryone is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid." This Albert Einstein quotation came to mind several times over the course of last week. These profound words HARSHA sum up an inter- NAHATA esting idea - intelligence is relative. There isn't a singular cor- rect measure we can use to judge how smart someone is, and people often are "geniuses" in different areas. This begs the questions: How can one single standard judge the relative value of all different types of talent? Can we really say one type of "smart" is above, or better, than another? This past week, I was on an Alter- native Spring Break trip in New York City, volunteering at various non- profit organizations. I spent a great deal of time working at the Boys and Girls Club, helping 2nd and 3rd grad- ers with gym and homework. These kids come from low- income backgrounds, from the inner city with inadequate resourc- es and low academic achievement. They come from the type of back- ground characteristically por- trayed as most likely to lack good quality public education. And yet, from my week working with these kids, I can definitely say they weren't by any means stupid. Yes, some of them were easily dis- tracted, but what 8 year old isn't? The main problem wasn't that these kids didn't care about school or that they didn't want to learn. Often times, they didn't understand the way things were being explained or couldn't follow the reasoning behind what they were asked. Looking over some of their prob- lems and examples, this was no surprise. The way that simple math concepts - such as addition and subtraction - were explained was confusing, even to me. The lessons complicated basic addition - add- ing a series of steps and rules that resulted in averylongand unneces- sarily complicated process. For example, let's look at an addi- tion problem: 47+14. Instead of just liningup the two numbers and add- ing the ones and then the tens, as we normally do, the kids were told to first add 3 to 47 and subtract that 3 from 14. Then they would have to add 50 and 11, coming up with 61. The idea here is that it is easier to add with numbers that end in zero. Yes, this is a handyshortcut, but the problem was there were no basic addition concepts to add the short- cut to. One of the girls I worked with struggled quite a bit with this long, drawn-out process. When we lined the two numbers up and added nor- mally, she did it excellently - get- ting almost every answer correct. But the pages in the workbook that required us to use this method were a different story. She had trouble keeping track of all the steps - sometimes rounding one number to the nearest zero but forgetting to adjust the other - she would con- fuse the order, or she just couldn't understand what she was being asked to do. For kids who are just learning concepts, teaching in a complicated manner only adds to the confu- sion. Moreover, the real goal isn't to teach kids the shortcut, but instead to make sure kids can add in the first place. So, if a child is able to easily add the long way and under- stand what is going on, why force them to learn a complicated short- cut that will only throw them off? Teach concepts, not how to jump through hoops. The students are then tested not on the basis of how well they know the concepts, but on whether or not they can use these various compli- cated methods. If you asked the girl I worked with to add, she would do great. But on tests and homework asking her specifically to employ the shortcut she wouldn't do well. There are times when it's good to know different ways to do some- thing, but in this case, whether or not she knows the shortcut doesn't really matter. It's not adding much to her knowledge of the subject, but she'll be punished for not knowing how to do it. Which brings me to the Ein- stein's quote. A lot of what is defined as smart or not has little to do with actual intelligence and more to do with how well someone is able to answer questions in the way that the test-givers want. This isn't necessarily measuring true abil- ity, but simply how well students can jump through the hoops they are told to. And here is where these low-income kids will struggle most, as they don't always have someone telling them which loop to jump through next. - Harsha Nahata can be reached at hnahata@umich.edu. 0 EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Aida Ali, Kaan Avdan, Ashley Griesshammer, Nirbhay Jain, Jesse Klein, Patrick Maillet, Erika Mayer, Michael McHenry, Harsha Nahata, Harsha Panduranga, Timothy Rabb, Adrienne Roberts, Vanessa Rychlinski, Sarah Skaluba, Seth Soderborg, Caroline Syms, Andrew Weiner SARI KRUMHOLZ| We have a voice Stick a tampon in it 'A re you there God? It's me, an old white guy. Now let's talk about A few weeks ago, the Republican controlled House of Representatives Oversight and Gov- ernment Reform Comittee members held a congressional hearing on the Obama admin- istration's proposed birth control mandate to ensure women have access to birth control with no co-pays, regardless of where they work. Republicans refused to let a single woman speak in support of the new birth control ben- efit during the hearing. In fact, Republicans said that a woman impacted by the policy and who was scheduled to testify wasn't "appropri- ate or qualified" to speak on the issues. A photo of five men testifying before the House panel went viral in a matter of minutes. I, as well as many others, was outraged by the congressional hearing's explicit exclusion of women over a matter that concerns women's bodies and lives. Regardless of religious and/ or political ideologies, 99 percent of sexually active women have used birth control at one point in their lives, according to the Guttm- acher Institute. Isn't the pointof representative democracy that the people who make the deci- sions represent those who the decisions affect? If I had the chance to speak on the panel, this is what I would argue: Birth control is basic health care, and its accessibility to all women is vital. It enables women to avoid unintended pregnancies, but according to Planned Parenthood, it can also provide protection against endometrial and ovarian cancers; serious infection in the ovaries, fallopian tubes and uterus; iron defi- ciency anemia; and premenstrual symptoms, including headaches and depression to name a few. It also reduces cramps or menstrual pain, regulates menstruation and treats acne. In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, only 42 percent of pill users have strictly contraceptive purposes for the pill. The Obama mandate enables all women to have access to this essential health care. Birth control can be extremely expensive - a woman can sometimes pay up to $50 a month for it, according to Planned Parenthood. This high cost can prevent its accessibility to many women. For example, one in three women has struggled to pay for prescription birth control and as a result used birth con- trol inconsistently. Many women who use contraception already have children. They have knowledge and experience pertaining to the cost of a child and are making a pragmatic decision based on their own well-being as well as their family's. However, they may not be able to enact this decision if birth control is too cost- ly for them to afford. In fact, many women who do not have the resources to raise a child might also not have the resources to afford birth control. This leaves some women in an extremely difficult quandary. Affordable birth control not only benefits women but also the federal government. If insurance companies foot the bill for contra- ceptives then we are reducing potential gov- ernment spending on childcare, foster services, welfare services and the list goes on. Lastly, this is a matter of women hav- ing agency over their lives. This is matter of women choosing to rely on themselves rather than their partners in order to guarantee safe and protected sex. This is a matter of women having a say in their futures. House Republicans are trying to drown out this voice, and therefore we must spread the message: We support the Obama admin- istration's proposed birth control benefit that ensures all women have access to birth control. Sari Krumholz is an LSA senior. how we can keep our hands in the proverbial vagi- nas of Amer- ica, shall we? We'll show you, Shelly Peters! You turned me down for prom? Well, how does a political war on your basic rights sound?" MELANIE KRUVELIS Or, at least, so goes the intro- duction to Newt Gingrich's latest autobiographical masterpiece, "Dr. Strangelove or: How the Human Pillsbury Doughboy Got With So Many Hot Staffers." Or wait, was that Rick Perry? Rush Limbaugh? It's gettingso hard totell these days. After all, as we get closer to the impending doom - erm, the 2012 presidential election - it becomes clearer: Our current Republican leaders do not care about your vagina. Or your uterus. Or "that fappy thing that I will touch on any woman who's not my wife." Because when it comes down to it, protecting the rights of half the population? Upholding the egali- tarian beliefs intrinsic to American society? Not calling a law student a slut on national radio? Sure sounds like a bunch of women's troubles to me. Take, for instance, Texas. Now there's a state that likes its eggs fer- tilized. And if proposed budget cuts are any indicator, Texans like eggs a la less likely to be tested for ovar- ian cancer, too. A year after massive cuts to the state's family-planning funds, the state is now calling for elimination of its Women's Health Program, a plan for reproductive- healthcare services that helps nearly 130,000 women who fail to qualify for Texas's strict Medicaid require- ments. The reason? Under federal law, Texas can't prevent care provid- ers like Planned Parenthood (or any other qualified medical care provid- er) from WHP plans. The logical response: refuse the millions of federal dollars offered to the state to fund WHP, discon- tinue the program and leave the low-income women of Texas - which is the state with the high- est level of uninsured women - to fend for themselves when it comes to annual exams, STI testing and access to birth control. And since the well-being of hun- dreds of thousands of women isn't enough of an attention-grabber these days, here's a dose of repro- ductive irony for you: those abor- tion clinics that the state legislature was so hell-bent on exterminating? Well, 14 Planned Parenthood clin- ics in Texas that perform abortions somehow had the foresight to cut themselves from any state-affilia- tion and currently run as separate entities. Since these clinics don't receive any state funding, the pro- posed cuts really won't stop them from terminating any unwanted pregnancies, throwing birthday parties for the antichrist, or what- ever else abortion clinics do. As for the other 51 Planned Parenthood clinics that provide reproductive healthcare to women in the state? Well, yeah, they're screwed. But you know what they say - everything's bigoted in Texas. I don't mean to pick on the Lone Star State. To be fair, there are plen- ty of other politicians that care just as much about women as Bush cared about black people and Lou Bega cared about Mambo No. 6. Like Newt Gingrich, for example. To his credit, I've never seen a beached whale so interested in the female reproductive system. For the past several decades, Gingrich's aerial attacks on areolas and all things women read like the back of Now That's What I Call Misogyny - "99 Problems But a Ditch Ain't One," "Pro-Life on Mars?" and that time- less classic, "Women's Rights are Dumb and Stuff, Pt. II." Remember the so-called Personhood Amend- ment, the Mississippi legislation that declared that life begins at fertilization? Despite the defeat of ballot initiative, Gingrich still wants to see a nationwide expan- sion of the failed bill, ultimately making all abortions illegal, even in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of a woman. And good news: Gingrich isn't alone. Both Gingrich and Rick Santorum have vowed to only appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court bench, a move that ultimately places the life of a fetus over the life of a woman. Our Republican leaders don't care about your vagina. And as I sit here, blasting Alanis Morissette and pounding away at my keyboard, I just have to wonder - when was the last time I shaved my armpits? But perhaps more importantly, will the conserva- tives ever care about the unshaven, alternative Canadian rock, angry women types? But since I'm just about out of room, and I'm tired, and I'm just not interested in filling the opinion page with any more platitudinous rants, I'll end with one lastbit of advice. When it comes to women's rights, the Republicans need to step up or, better yet - stick a tampon in it. CONTRIBUTE TO THE COVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and viewpoints. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while viewpoints should be 550-850 words. Both must include the writer's full name and University affiliation. Send submissions to tothedaily@michigandaily.com. 0 - Melanie Kruvelis can be reached at melkruv@umich.edu. 0I A a