A BOY &A BIKE
The story behind Taylor Lewan's \
1962 teal-blue Firestone tandem
bike and the man who sold it.
IPAGE 2B1
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Monday, April 2, 2012
michigandaily.com
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
SAM rallies
for higher
ed. funding
STATE BUDGET
'U' stem cell
programs
under attack
Amid rain, wind
100 turnout for
protest at Capitol
By GIACOMO BOLOGNA
Daily StaffReporter
LANSING - Despite heavy
rain and strong winds, almost
100 students from across the
state came to Lansing on Fri-
day to protest funding cuts to
higher education and to advo-
cate for students' rights.
The rally - held by the Stu-
dent Association of Michigan,
a collaborative organization
of student governments at
universities in the state -
was close to being cancelled
due to a -heavy thunderstorm
that persisted throughout
the morning and afternoon.
However, the storm ceased
just minutes before the stu-
dents began their march from
the Lansing Center to the
steps of the capitol building.
SAM President Jay Gage, a
student at Lake Superior State
University, met with state
senators and representatives
on Thursday, before speaking
at the rally on Friday.
"We desperately need rein-
vestment in higher educa-
tion," Gage said. "If we are
going to have a good educa-
tional sector, then we fund it."
Gage lauded higher edu-
cation in the state and called
Michigan's institutes of
higher learning "the most
prestigious universities in the
world," particularly praising
the University of Michigan.
During the 90-minute
rally, the students, waving
colorful flags with university
logos, listened to speeches
from several speakers while
occasionally interrupting
with loud chants and vuvuz-
elas.
Tyler Helsel, public rela-
tions director for SAM and
a LSSU student, said he was
hoping upwards of 500 stu-
dents would participate in
the rally, but said the weather
discouraged students from
See SAM, Page 3A
House committee
demands more
information on
studies
By ANDREW SCHULMAN
Daily StaffReporter
In light of ongoing disputes
over the University's embryonic
stem cell research efforts, the state
House Appropriations Subcommit-
tee on Higher Education passed
a budget recommendation Friday
seeking to strip the University of
some of its funding from the state.
The recommendation comes
more than two weeks after Univer-
sity President Mary Sue Coleman's
critical remarks to the committee
about its budget formulation, and
stems from a disagreement over
the type of information the Univer-
sity should report to the legislators.
Republican members of the com-
mittee insist that the University
must provide specific data on the
research, while University officials
have resisted those efforts.
This year, instead of supply-
ing the data points the committee
requested, the University compiled
what Cynthia Wilbanks, the Uni-
versity's vice president for govern-
ment relations, called a packet of
press releases and scientificejournal
articles on the University's embry-
onic stem cell research.
University spokesman Rick
Fitzgerald said the University sent
the package to legislators to pro-
vide them with a more in depth
look at the research going on at the
University.
"It gave the legislature a deeper,
broader, richer understanding of
the stem cell research than a simple
list of five or six numbers," Fitzger-
ald said.
Wilbanks added that one reason
the University did not provide the
data was that it does not generate
documents that contain the data
the committee requested.
"We have provided a lot of infor-
mation that may in part include
some of the data points that were
identified in the higher education
See STEM CELL, Page 3A
TOP: Festifoolers prepare for the parade in an alley near Main Street yester-
day. BOTTOM: Art & Design Prof. Nick Tobier helps students from Detroit
Community High School with their puppets.
ANN ARBOR PUBLIC TRANSIT
AirRide bus service begins
From the Editor:
Route will serve
Detroit Metro
starting today
By ANDREW SCHULMAN
Daily StaffReporter
With summer quickly
approaching, students may
now have an easier time find-
ing their way home at the end
of the semester with the assis-
tance of AirRide - a newly
launched service that provides
daily roundtrip bus transpor-
tation from the Ann Arbor area
to the Detroit Metropolitan
Wayne County Airport.
The program - a collabo-
ration with Michigan Flyer,
a branch of the Indian Trails
Motor Coach transportation
service - will stop 12 times
daily at the Blake Transit Cen-
ter and the Kensington Court
Hotel, located off of State
Street, as well as four times at
the University's Central Cam-
pus Transit Center. Tickets
range from $6 to $20 a person,
depending on age and how
far in advance a ticket is pur-
chased.
At the official announce-
ment of the service at the
Kensington Court Hotel on
Friday, David Nacht, a Law
School alum and AATA board
member who spearheaded Air-
Ride's development, lauded the
service's affordability and con-
sistency of service to the crowd
of about 40 people.
"This is a big deal," he said.
"You're not going to wait two
or three hours. You need regu-
lar services, and you need to
know that and rely on that.
We're offering that."
Nacht said demand from
University officials was an
important factor in the ser-
vice's introduction, noting that
he surveyed the deans of the
University's schools and col-
leges to find out the biggest
barrier to attracting prospec-
tive faculty and graduate stu-
dents.
"Number one or two on
every dean's list were trans-
portation issues," he said. "The
University is the number one
driver of traffic to and from
our community from this air-
port, and so, this is very much
designed with the University
in mind."
Under current plans for the
service, AirRide may offer air-
port-bound riders parking for
up to 14 days at the Fourth Ave-
nue and East William Street
parking structure and at the
Kensington Court Hotel for $2
per day. It would also poten-
tially share bus stops with the
Detroit SMART bus system.
See AIRRIDE, Page 3A
An article in the March 8
edition of The B-Side, The
Michigan Daily's weekly arts
supplement, ("Ten Thousand
Villages unites art, culture
and philanthropy in one store-
front") contained material that
was plagiarized. The article,
which was about a fair-trade
store on Main Street, contained
several passages that were cop-
ied directly from the Wikipedia
entry on fair-trade products and
from the store's website.
The plagiarism was discov-
ered after an arts editor editing
another one of the reporter's
articles found passages that
were also taken verbatim from
other websites. A thorough
search of the reporter'sprevious
work revealed no other instanc-
es of plagiarism.
The writer in question has
been dismissed, and The Mich-
igan Daily no longer stands
behind the plagiarized article.
This is an unacceptable
violation of this newspaper's
core principles, and correc-
tive actions will be taken. Since
January, when it was discov-
ered that a former Daily col-
umnist's work didn't meet our
paper's ethical standards, we've
stepped up our safeguards
against plagiarism.
We will continue to work to
enhance those safeguards.
This semester, we've expand-
ed the role of our copy desk. Our
copy editors now read all news
and opinion articles and any
arts articles in the B-Side. All
staffers must also now submit
details about any research they
conducted for their piece when
they turn in their articles.
Until now, these steps had
proven successful, as we've
caught a handful of question-
able pieces before they've gone
to print. The Ten Thousand Vil-
lages story slipped through the
cracks. There are no excuses:
This was an egregious error and
we, as Daily editors, take full
blame.
Moving forward, we willnow
require plagiarism checks on all
articles before they go to print.
The arts section already does
this in its day-to-day editing
process, and we will require all
other sections to followsuit.
Plagiarism willnever be com-
pletely preventable, but we can
- and will - do better to ensure
that you can trust the content
you see every day in print and
online as original work.
Joseph Lichterman
Editor in Chief
CAMPUS PHILANTHROPY
1,500 volunteer for annual Detroit Partnership service day
Students
participate in
activities to
rejuvante Detroit
By PETER SHAHIN
Daily StaffReporter
DETROIT - For many Univer-
sity students, smashing concrete
or digging trenches may not be
the ideal way to spend a week-
end, but volunteers of the Detroit
Partnership gladly spent Satur-
day participating in such philan-
thropic efforts.
This weekend, about1,500 stu-
dents from the University trav-
eled to Detroit to participate in
events around the city organized
by DP, a student organization
that provides volunteer and edu-
cational opportunities in Detroit
to University students. Working
with community-based groups,
students engaged in activities
ranging from demolishing hous-
es to planting community gar-
dens in an effort to support some
of Detroit's most underprivileged
neighborhoods.
LSA senior Cassie Basler,
executive director of the Detroit
Partnership, explained that the
group arranged events with 35
organizations around the city.
Basler said one of the partner-
ship's strengths is the diverse
and unique opportunities it pro-
vides to its volunteers.
"Not many people have the
opportunity to knock down a
garage with a sledgehammer,"
Basler said.
According to Basler, students
went to several sites around the
city to paint and clean schools,
work in community gardens,
clean abandoned properties,
demolish dilapidated structures
and perform a host of other activ-
ities. In almost every case, com-
munity volunteers, joined the
students, eager to see their own
neighborhoods benefit from the
program.
In Brightmoor, a distressed
Detroit subdivision, volunteers
worked with the neighbor-
hood group Neighbors Building
Brightmoor to prepare commu-
nity gardens for planting, cleared
debris and cleaned up abandoned
properties awaiting demolition.
Riet Schumack, program coor-
dinator for Neighbors Building
Brightmoor, said to prevent aban-
doned homes from being used
as drug houses, residents often
employ a crude technique called
"dropping the porch." The pro-
cess - an economical solution for
a neighborhood where a house
can be purchased for $500, as
compared to the $10,000 it costs
to demolish it - involved tearing
the roof off a home's porch and
letting it fall in front of the door
to prevententry.
"(For) people that come back
to the neighborhood, it's very
mixed feelings," Schumack said.
"They're hurt by the fact that
so many houses are gone, but
they're also happy to see that
something is happening."
See DETROIT, Page 7A
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