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Friday, October 19, 2012 - 3

The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Friday, October 19, 2012 - 3

NEWS BRIEFS
WASHTENAW COUNTY
Fifth Michigander
dies in Menigitis
outbreak
Authorities are reporting a fifth
Michigan death in a national out-
break of fungal meningitis linked
to contaminated steroids.
The Michigan Department of
Community Health said Thursday
that its death count has risen by
one inthe last day. Mlive.com says
the latest victim was a 62-year-old
Washtenaw Countyman.
The state agency now reports
45 Michigan cases of fungal
meningitis, plus four non-men-
ingitis infection cases related to
the same contaminated steroids.
Michigan's death toll stands
at five, including the death of a
Cass County woman whose men-
ingitis was linked to treatments
for back pain across the border at
an Indiana clinic.
NEW ORLEANS
BP: Sealed ocean
well isn't source
of Gulf sheen
A sheen on the Gulf of Mexico
likely came from oil seeping out
of a piece of discarded equip-
ment that failed to contain BP
PLC's massive 2010 oil spill, the
company and the Coast Guard
said Thursday.
A statement from BP said a
three-day inspection confirmed
that its Macondo well, which
blew out and led to the nation's
worst offshore oil spill, isn't leak-
ing. A relief well that intercepted
the blown-out well and sealed it
isn't leaking, either, BP said.
The company said the survey
determined oil probably leaked
from an 86-ton steel container
the companylowered over aleak-
ing drill pipe in efforts to funnel
oil to the surface. The container
was one of several methods BP
used in its months-long effort to
contain its blown-out well.
BEIRUT, Syria
Airstrikes in
northern Syria kill
at least 43
Syrian warplanes hammered a
strategic city captured by rebels,
leaving behind scenes of carnage
captured Thursday on amateur
videos that showed a man hold-
ing up two child-sized legs not
connected to a body and another
carrying a dismembered arm.
Activists said airstrikes over
the past two days on opposition
targets across Syria's north have
killed at least 43 people.
The city of Maaret al-Numan,
located strategically on a major
north-south highway connect-
ing Aleppo and Damascus, was
captured by rebels last week
and there has been heavy fight-
ing around it ever since. Rebel
brigades from the surrounding
area have poured in to defend the
town. Online videos have shown
them firing mortars at regime

troops, and they claimed to have
shot down a government helicop-
ter on Wednesday.
BAGHDAD, Iraq
Iraq presses U.S.
for faster arms
deliveries
Iraq's prime minister pressed
for faster deliveries of weapons
to help arm his country's military
during a Thursday meeting with a
senior U.S. defense official.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
made the request during talks
with U.S. Deputy Defense Secre-
tary Ashton Carter in Baghdad,
according to a statement by the
Iraqi leader's office.
Al-Maliki said Iraq needs to
beef up its defenses to protect the
country's security and national
sovereignty, and to tackle terrorist
groups that continue to threaten
Iraq's stability more than nine
years after the U.S.-led invasion.
Carter visited the Iraqi capital
during a Mideast tour that includ-
ed stops in U.S. allies Kuwait and
Qatar.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports

BRUCE
From Page 1
noon.
Standing shoulder-to-shoul-
der inthe blue- andwhite-walled
gymnasium at Cuyahoga Com-
munity College, 3,000 people
gathered to listen to Springs-
teen's six-song set, while another
700 watched from an overflow
room. Though he didn't get a
request from the President,
Springsteen did unveil a new
song - "Forward" - which he
named after Obama's re-election
slogan.
"Let's vote for the man who
got Osama. Forward, and away
we go," Springsteen sang as the
crowd, encouraged by the rock
legend, yelled "Forward" back.
Springsteen said he had trou-
ble finding words that rhymed
with Obama, so in the second
verse he sang about his love for
the state of Ohio.
"I came to Ohio looking for
a date," Springsteen sang. "We
kissed and I said it's a hell of
a state. We made love, but it
wasn't so great. Forward, and
away we go."
On a more serious note,
however, Springsteen said he
believed the "distance between
the American dream and real-
ity" continues to grow, adding
that Obama will help unify the
country.
"I'm here today because I'm
deeply concerned about the
deepening disparity in wealth
between our best off citizens
and our everyday citizens,"
Springsteen said, while lightly
strumming his guitar. "That's
a disparity that I believe our
honorable opponent's policies
will increase and it threatens to
divide us into two distinct and
foreign nations."
Springsteen listed a litany of
Obama's policy achievements
- the passage of the Affordable
Care Act, the bailouts of Chrys-
ler and General Motors and the
repeal of the military's "Don't
ask, don't tell" policy - in order
to further showcase his support
PANEL
From Page 1
public universities.
The event featured vari-
ous speakers, including Nancy
Cantor, chancellor of Syracuse
University; Uma Jayakumar,
a University of San Francisco
professor; Katherine Phillips,
a Columbia University Busi-
ness School professor; and Gary
Orfield, a University of Cali-
fornia, Los Angeles professor
and co-director of UCLA's Civil
Rights Project.
Cantor, a former University
provost and dean who played a
key role in the 2003 case, defend-
ed affirmative action, claiming
that diversity is beneficial to
everyone.
"Diversity means better sci-
ence, more innovation and
healthier communities," Cantor
said. "In higher education, it's
not something extra on the plate.
Diversity is the plate."
Cantor added that despite
arguments that race-based
admissions policies neglect tal-
ented students, they are crucial

in providing diverse perspectives
and they foster better-informed
collective work when solving
public problems.
"If we're to ensure prosperity
in social justice, our efforts to
maintain and strengthen the fab-
ric of society must continue and
must succeed," Cantor said.
Jayakumar said during her
presentation that high numeric
diversity increases interactions
across races, which reaps signifi-
cant educational benefits. Low
minority representation, how-
ever, allows racist attitudes to

for Obama.
With early voting in Ohio
already underway, and with
several recent polls giving
Obama anywhere from a one- to
five-point advantage over Rom-
ney, both campaigns are heavily
emphasizing the importance of
winning the Buckeye State.
Republican vice presidential
nominee Paul Ryan campaigned
in Ohio on Wednesday for the
fifth day in just more than a
week. Obama also held a rally on
the campus of Ohio University
in Athens, Ohio on Wednesday,
and Vice President Joe Biden is
expected to visit the state early
next week, according to the
Associated Press.
Still, one of the most active
Democratic surrogates through-
out the election season has been
former President Bill Clinton.
He has traveled exhaustively
throughout the country to
campaign for Obama and other
Democrats, even stopping in a
Detroit suburb last Friday to
headline a fundraiser for Sen.
Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).
In one of two rallies Clinton
held in Ohio on Thursday, the
former president delivered an
impassioned 30-minute speech
to supporters, emphasizing
time and again his belief that
Obama brought the economy
back from the brink of disaster
and is leading the country to
prosperity.
Clinton highlighted the bail-
out of GM, which has a metal
processing plant in Parma, as
one of the ways the Obama
administration has helped revi-
talize the economy.
He also discussed the admin-
istration's efforts in making
college more affordable as a
means of long-term economic
growth. Clinton said some of
the Obama administration's
greatest achievements were
lesser-known reforms that
were passed along with the
Affordable Care Act to feder-
ally back student loans.
"If you get out of medical
school with a debt of $200,000
- which is the average medi-
persist.
"This is a call to action," Jaya-
kumar said. "We need to con-
tinue to think about the triage
in doing affirmative action ...We
haven't found anything more
effective than affirmative action.
We should continue to look at
that, but we should also look at
ourselves and how we perpetu-
ate everyday racism."
Each speaker asserted that
without affirmative action
policies, the diversity of public
universities will significantly
decrease, creating social stigmas
and isolation for minority stu-
dents.
"A consequence, of course, of
isolation and exclusion is ste-
reotyping gone rampant which
can and does limit and kill edu-
cational opportunity for all those
thatget swept into its indiscrimi-
nate net," Cantor said.
Since the use of affirmative
action at the University was abol-
ished in 2006, minority enroll-
ment has begun to decline. In fall
2005, minorities made up 24.2
percent of total students, accord-
ing to a report from the Universi-
ty Office of the Registrar. By fall

2011, minorities represented 19.6
percent of University students.
Phillips said her research has
shown that diverse groups out-
perform homogeneous ones,
but perceived effectiveness in
diverse groups is inversely relat-
ed to performance. Because of
this, she urged that the public
become comfortable with pro-
moting diversity in the learning
process.
She added that affirmative
action leads to diversity not only
within universities, but also in
the workplace.

cal school debt in America now
- and you want to be a family
practitioner in small-town rural
Ohio or in inner-city Cleve-
land, you can do it because your
repayment obligation is deter-
mined by your salary, not the
other way around," Clinton said.
While Clinton elicited cheers
throughout his speech, the ova-
tion Springsteen received when
he took the stage was deafening,
though he joked that following
Clinton was like performing
after Elvis Presley.
Nevertheless, Springsteen
was the main attraction Thurs-
day, and the crowd hung on to
every lyric, singing along to hits
such as "The Promised Land,"
"Thunder Road" and "We Take
Care of Our Own," which has
been a staple at nearly every
Obama rally throughout the
campaign.
In a nod to northeast Ohio,
Springsteen also performed
"Youngstown," which includes
the lyric, "Them smokestacks
reachin' like the arms of God,
into a beautiful sky of soot and
clay" - paying homage to the
manufacturing industries that
have long defined this region,
and which Springsteen said
Obama helped save.
Springsteen even followed up
one line in "Youngstown" about
sending "our sons to Korea and
Vietnam," with a new addi-
tion about the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, before singing the
song's next written lyric: "Now
we're wondering what they
were dyin' for."
Springsteen's song choice,
along with his spoken remarks,
illustrated his deeply felt rela-
tionship with working-class
America, which he is using to
help the Obama campaign reach
out to working-class voters. It is
crucial for Obama to carry this
demographic in order to win the
election, according to Kim Fari-
nacci, a Peninsula, Ohio resi-
dent who attended the rally.
"He speaks to the point, to
the heart, like he writes in his
songs," she said. "He may be a
millionaire, but he's one of us."
"Race still matters," Phillips
said. "It matters to people with
high socioeconomic standing
and it matters to people with
low socioeconomic standing, and
until we recognize that, we're
going to go backwards. If this
Fisher case comes out in favor of
Fisher, turning back the times,
we are going to see greater seg-
regation not only at the elemen-
tary schools and the high schools
where we see it now but at the
college level."
Orfield, who helped write an
amicus brief for Fisher with 444
signatures from 172 educational
institutions and research centers
in support of affirmative action,
said potentially overruling Grut-
ter would have vast consequenc-
es.
"(Universities) are at risk of
losing the capacity to select their
students in a way that produces
a diverse student body," Orfield
said. "It's a radical thing to think
that our court may actually be
taking that away from them,
superimposing the judgment of
the court on the autonomy of all
of our education institutions."
Rebecca Silverblatt, a Uni-

versity of Texas alum who is
currently pursuing a master's
degree in higher education at the
University of Michigan, said the
symposium hit home for her.
"For me, this is important in
an all-encompassing way ... it's
much broader than just one court
decision," Silverblatt said. "It
affects business, it affects higher
education, it affects secondary
education, it affects social issues.
There's just so much to it and
this event is doing a good job at
(bringing) together all of those
perspectives."

Court ofAppeals
rejects Defense
of Marriage Act

NY judges strike
down law in a 2-1
decision
NEW YORK (AP) - Saying
the gay population has "suffered
a history of discrimination," a
divided federal appeals court in
Manhattan ruled Thursday that
a federal law defining marriage
as a union between a man and
a woman was unconstitutional,
adding fuel to an issue expected
to reach the U.S. Supreme Court
soon.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals seemed interested
in adding its voice to several
other rulings already at the high
court's doorstep by issuing its
2-to-1 decision only three weeks
after hearing arguments on a
lower court judge's findings that
the 1996 law was unconstitu-
tional.
In a majority opinion writ-
ten by Judge Dennis Jacobs, the
2nd Circuit, like a federal appeals
court in Boston before it, found
no reason the Defense of Mar-
riage Act could be used to deny
benefits to married gay couples.
It supported a lower court rul-
ing after a woman sued the gov-
ernment in 2010, saying the law
required her to pay $363,053 in
federal estate tax after her part-
ner of 44 years died.
Jacobs, though, went beyond
the Boston court, saying dis-
crimination against gays should
be scrutinized by the courts in
the same heightened way as dis-
crimination faced by women
was in the 1970s. At the time, he
noted, they faced widespread
discrimination in the workplace
and elsewhere. The heightened
scrutiny, as it is referred to in
legal circles, would mean govern-
ment discrimination against gays
would be assumed to be uncon-
stitutional.

"The question is not whether
homosexuals have achieved
political successes over the years;
they clearly have. The question is
whether they have the strength
to politically protect themselves
from wrongful discrimination,"
said Jacobs, who was appointed
to the bench in 1992 by President
George H.W. Bush.
He said it was difficult to say
whether gays were under-repre-
sented in positions of power and
authority without knowing their
true numbers.
"But it is safe to say that the
seemingly small number of
acknowledged homosexuals so
situated is attributable either to a
hostility that excludes them or to
a hostility thatkeeps their sexual
preference private - which, for
our purposes, amounts to much
the same thing," Jacobs said.
Lawyer Paul Clement, who
had argued in support of the law
on behalf of the Bipartisan Legal
Advisory Group of the House of
Representatives, was traveling
and did not immediately return a
message seeking comment.
Brian Brown, president of the
National Organization for Mar-
riage, which filed arguments
with the appeals court before
the ruling, called the decision
"yet another example of judicial
activism and elite judges impos-
ing their views on the American
people."
He urged the Supreme Court
to take up the case, saying: "The
American people are entitled
to a definitive ruling in support
of marriage as the union of one
man and one woman, as 32 states
have determined through popu-
lar vote."
Dale Schowengerdt, an
attorney with the Scottsdale,
Ariz.-based Alliance Defend-
ing Freedom, called the ruling
"off base" and predicted the
Supreme Court will disagree
with it.

Heaney said. "It seems unlikely
SUPER PAC that Romney will win Michi-
From Page 1 gan, and I would bet money
that Obama will win, but ... still
remained less contested than Michigan is back within com-
in other battleground states, petitive range."
though Romney has trimmed Kall said the advertisements
Obama's lead with strong debate could also bolster the Republi-
performances. Obama led Rom- can ticket in the state, from the
ney by a six-point margin of race between Senator Debbie
52 percent to 46 percent in a Stabenow (D-Mich.)andformer
Detroit News/WXYZ-TV poll of Rep. Pete Hoesktra (R-Mich.) to
likely Michigan voters released the six ballot proposals.
Thursday, up from three points "Even if it's notlikelythatthis
in a Detroit Free Press poll on is going to end up being a win-
Oct. 8, but down from a double- ning strategy, it's worth spend-
digitmargin this summer. ing that money because they
While the margin between have it," Kall said. This strategy
the candidates is larger in is not really going to hurt Gov.
Michigan than in other states, Romney's ability to compete in
Heaney and Kall agreed the these other states."
expenditure could still benefit Despite Romney's deficit
Romney's campaign. in the polls, LSA senior Jared
If the advertisements in Boot, chair of the University's
Michigan tighten the race, chapter of Students for Rom-
Heaney said it could force the ney, wrote in a statement that
Obama campaign to spend he believes the state is winnable
additional resources or time in for the Republican presidential
Michigan, diverting the cam- nominee.
paign's attention from closer "This race has been volatile
swing states like Ohio. but the number are starting to
"If you start running ads, trend and solidify for Romney
what that also does is it forces so the PACs are keeping the ads
Obama to defend Michigan," here now," Boot wrote.
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