4 - Friday, October 19, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.cam 4 - Friday, October19, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom 4C Micigan 4a1*1 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com TIMOTHY RABB JOSEPH LICHTERMAN and ADRIENNE ROBERTS ANDREW WEINER 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. F R OM T HE D AILY No need or speed Prescriptions only for those that need them dderall and similar prescription drugs have become promi- nent on college campuses in the past several years - how- ever, stimulants aren't just used by stressed and overworked college students, but younger students as well. Recently, doctors have prescribed children in low-income areas Adderall so they can get ahead in school - whether they have ADHD or not. Doctors falsely diagnose children who struggle in school and prescribe them medica- tion as a coping mechanism. Adderall is a quick but dangerous fix to the larger problem of underfunded and low-performing school dis- tricts, and it's not the way to improve low-income districts' test scores. Haven Hall hate crime There's been a lot of misin- formation and confusion on this campus regarding the vandalism in Haven Hall on Monday, Oct. 8. So let me help clear the air. It was a hate crime. Don't believe me? Let's go straight to the YONAH source. From LIEBERMAN the FBI: "A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is moti- vated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, reli- gion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin." Seems clear enough. Let's rewind a bit and go over exactly what happened in Haven Hall. In the wee hours of the night, either one person or a group of peo- ple went through all of the floors of Haven Hall and intentionally tore down flyers and personal effects outside offices of GSIs, profes- sors and department heads in Arab American Studies, Native American Studies, African American Studies and Women's Studies. The items torn down had to do primarily with ethnic and gender studies, as well as flyers promoting LGBT groups and other progressive causes. People don't just wander around the upper floors of Haven Hall - this was an intentional act targeted at ethnic studies departments. Even more maddening than the disgusting act itself was the com- plete lack of response by our com- munity. There was no DPS crime alert. It took three days for a cam- pus-wide e-mail to be sent out by University Provost Phil Hanlon. Most people heard about it via Facebook, a forwarded e-mail or word of mouth. This is completely unacceptable for a university that has the "deepest respect for diver- sity" according to Hanlon's e-mail. The University community should be embarrassed by the delayed response. More so than even the lack of response, the type of response infu- riates me. The first official line from the University came in an article in The Michigan Daily about graduate students who took it upon them- selves to re-flyer the area in pro- test. University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald is quoted as saying, "Our understanding is that (the DPS) investigation determined that the incident was not hate-related ... that said, we certainly understand that many people would still be con- cerned about this type of incident happening on our campus." In other words: There was no intentional discrimination, but we're sorry if you felt that way. The tone changed a bit the next day in Provost Hanlon's e-mail. He wrote that "Posters, flyers and deco- rationswere removed from the walls and tossed to the ground, and some had push-pins placed on them," but refused to categorize these items as related to race, gender or sexuality. Without that crucial specificity, the average student has no idea of the oppressive implications of the act. He continued, "This act of destruction and intolerance is not Michigan." While I appreciate labeling the hate crime as intoler- ant, this is clearly not far enough. The words "hate" or "bias" are not mentioned once in the e-mail. He attempts to tie the entire response back to the idea that Michigan is a diverse community. By doing so, Hanlon and the administration are shoving this hate crime under the rug by asserting that the perpetra- tors don't occupy the mainstream Michigan community. But this is simply not true - there's more to the story. Our campus is not the integrated, open- minded, magical place the admin- istration would like to portray it as. The University needs to call a spade a spade. 4 During move-in this fall, some- one hung a noose in a Mary Markley Residence Hall where only one black student lived. The Reflection Room - located on the first floor of Angell Hall and intended as a space for Mus- lim students to pray - was defaced twice in the pastyear. Our University grossly underfunds the same eth- nic studies departments that were targeted last week. These are just three examples, but the list is much longer. To get a glimpse of the issue, read the Daily personal statement published last week, "Being Black in Ann Arbor," which pointed to the constant pressure that blackstudents face in our community. Our administration must change its tune when it responds to future incidents of this nature. It must be proactive instead of reactive to such incidents. Instead of painting the perpetrators as "bad apples," our administration must own up to the fact that such hate crimes are an extension of the forms of discrimi- nation that people across campus deal with every day. It can start by admitting that the vandalism in Haven Hall was a hate crime. -Yonah Lieberman can be reached at yonahl@umich.edu. In Canton, Ga., Dr. Michael Anderson diag- noses lower-income children with ADHD and prescribes them stimulants. But Anderson places the blame on the economic status of the students rather than the disease itself; indeed, he considers the prescriptions he writes an evening of the scales. According to Anderson, society hasn'tspentthe time or the money to fix the real problem, so these stimulants give some lower-income children a boost they wouldn't otherwise receive. Parents reportedly don't object, but rather support the quick fix. The prescription of Adderall to children without ADHD creates numerous issues, pri- marily the negative side effects. Basic side effects are loss of appetite and insomnia, but there are other, potentially dangerous, com- plications. These include irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, severe headaches, hal- lucinations and psychotic episodes - a psy- chological effect one of Anderson's young patients experienced. Many who regularly take Adderall also develop a dependency on the medication. Any growing child should not be subjected to this addictive and dangerous drug during crucial developmental periods. These false diagnoses also discredit real cases of ADHD, taking away from students who actually do have the disorder and require the medication to keep up in school. Parents certainly want their kids to succeed, but that requires hard work to overcome bar- riers, not a prescription pad. It's true that many children in low-income areas struggle with a unique set of circumstances; however, parents should attempt to wrestle with these problems to the best of their abilities before endangering their children with unneces- sary medication. This "solution" effectively accommodates under-performing school dis- tricts instead of dealing with the underlying administrative issues that cause this dispar- ity. Giving these children Adderall may help them in school, but it does nothing to address the larger issue at hand. We need to treat the schools' ailments - not the children's. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Kaan Avdan, Shank Bashir, Eli Cahan, Nirbhay Jain, Jesse Klein, Melanie Kruvelis, Patrick Maillet, Harsha Nahata, Timothy Rabb, Adrienne Roberts, Vanessa Rychlinski, Sarah Skaluba, Michael Spaeth, Gus Turner Abolish race-based standards NOTABLE QUOTABLE The Supreme Court uses certain factors to decide whether a new classification qualifies as a quasi-suspect class ... In this case, all four factors justify heightened scrutiny." - Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs of Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York on the court finding the Defense of Marraige Act puts unconstitutional burden on LGBT Americans. DAR-WEI CHEN ( VIEWPOINT An swer to the jobs dilemma 4 a think of society as a progressive, evolv- ing place - a community that cherishes individual differences, supports every student and fosters pas- sionate learning. How- ever, it takes just a few minutes of watching the morning news or scan- ning the paper to quickly realize that our nation isn't emblematic of this little utopian community we call Ann Arbor. As University students, we're fortunate to attend a fabulous school that holds dents into groups based on their ethnicity and then creating set standards for each ethnic group is hurting the next generation of lead- ers and scholars. By implementing race-based standards, Florida public schools are, in a way, teaching children that they are only as intelli- gent as the color of their skin. They're teach- ing these young students that achievement at school should vary by ethnicity rather than work ethic. SARAH SKALUBA Reading standards based on ethnicity are us to the highest standards and pushes us to succeed beyond our limits, but many students across the nation can't say the same. Just last week, the Florida Board of Education approved new reading and math standards that vary according to ethnicity. It's not a system based on age, grade level or even school district, but an achievement system based solely on race. Not only is this demeaning, but it will also shatter the self-confidence and motivation of young students all across Florida. The Florida Board of Education is striving for 74 percent of black students, 81 percent of Hispanic students, 88 percent of white stu- dents and 90 percent of Asian students to be reading at or above grade level by 2018. No, I didn't fabricate these numbers, and I most cer- tainly couldn't tell you what in the world the board was thinking. Maybe the sunny weather has altered their minds, but to create a system that's so backwards and obsolete is incompre- hensible. The implications of these race-based goals will be devastating to young students across the state - all 2.6 million of them. The Florida public school system is clearly flawed and in dire need of change, but creating a system like this isn't the way to go about fixing it. Instead of holding children to different standards based on the color of their skin, we should be working to reform the educational system as a whole so that 100 percent of students will be reading at or above grade level. All children, regardless of race, should have the right to a solid education - this idea should not be controversial. Classifying stu- detrimental to young students. Florida was actually notthe first state to cre- ate achievement standards based on race: Vir- ginia implemented a similar program earlier this year and other states may soon follow suit. We live in an era that values personal freedom and equal opportunity. However, concepts like this one move our society backward in time and further divide us as a community. Will separate achievement standards based on gender be next? Say, 80 percent of boys need to be reading at or above grade level and only 70 percent of girls? The whole concept is just ridiculous. If legitimate solutions cannot be created to fix these flawed school systems, our society has avery serious problem on its hands. The education of young Americans needs to be a top priority, but breaking down standards by race certainly isn't the answer. If students are taught at a young age that they will never be as smart or successful as their classmates because of any social identity, then this negative concept is bound to follow them to college and beyond. Such a dangerous concept will only hurt our society and hin- der talented young students from taking full advantage of their education and striving to be the best students possible. - Sarah Skaluba can be reached at sskaluba@umich.edu. In politics, very few questions have "right" answers. Much of this ambiguity comes from endless spinning that both major political parties engage in to win 24-hour news cycles. Even statistics aren't useful in clarifying anything because politicians of conflicting beliefs can assess the same situ- ation and deploy data to advance their own causes. One example of this phenomenon is the debate over jobs: GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney says unemployment has been above eight percent for 43 straight months under the current administration (until the Septem- ber jobs report came out), while President Barack Obama claims there have been "31 straightmonths of private-sector job growth." Same situation, two starkly differ- ent assessments, neither wrong! Sometimes, the only right answers that Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on are: A. always praise the troops, and B. offering prayers to disaster victims. However, these two ideas are obvi- ous and not worth discussing. Therefore, to find some useful right answers, we must look past combative words and fluffy rhetoric to carefully examine what politi- cians actually do. And although few answers in politics are definitively right, you can get pretty close to a right answer by seeing what Demo- crats and Republicans agree on when they're away from the debate lec- terns. A good case study for across- the-aisle agreement is President Obama's stimulus bill, one of his first major pieces of economic legislation. The Obama stimulus bill has been pilloried in public by Repub- licans for the past few years, and these attacks are in keeping with a chief tenet of modern conservatism: The government is inept at creating jobs. As Romney said earlier this year, "Government doesn't create jobs. It's the private sector that cre- ates jobs." Most GOP congressmen would agree with Romney if pub- licly asked about this statement. But what happens when those same GOP congressmen have to govern? In July 2009, Senate Minor- ity Leader Mitch McConnell - one of the GOP's many Obama stimu- lus critics - applied for up to $235 million from the stimulus to invest in electric vehicles for Kentucky, the state he represents. His appli- cation, which had to be approved by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, is a tacit admission that the govern- ment is able to create jobs through economic stimulus. McConnell even states in his memo: "I hope you will realize the importance of such job creation to Kentucky." Current Republican vice-presi- dential nominee Paul Ryan has also derided the Obama stimulus over the years, but he too is guilty of pursu- ing money from the very stimulus he condemns. In October 2009, Ryan asked Chu to approve a geothermal project for a company in Ryan's home state of Wisconsin. Apparently, he believes that government stimulus can create jobs for his constituents. And many GOP congressmen actu- ally agree with him (quite a few of them have applied for money too) - just not in public. Since stimulus money is a finite resource, congressmen not only have to apply for it, they have to make specific and compelling cases to the White House regarding the money's job-creation potential. Therefore, when GOP congress- men simultaneously rail against the stimulus and apply for funding, they must know that they're being dishonest and hypocritical. Ryan and McConnell would find more friends across the aisle if they sim- ply admitted to the stimulus bill's virtues. After all, they've lobbied explicitlytothat end -just ask Chu. Ofcourse, Republicans have often championed the government's abil- ity to create jobs in defense (that's why they're always against defense cuts), so government job creation is not without evidence. But they're never willing to publicly admit that government could extend its job- creating capacity to other economic sectors. Somehow, FDR's New Deal isn't a relevant precedent. Some conservatives might argue that regardless of rhetoric, the Obama stimulus was implemented and hasn't produced adequate jobs. ! I won't contest the notion that the economic recovery has been some- what sluggish. However, since we now know that both Democrats and Republicans believe in govern- ment job creation, the public needs to consider the possibility that the stimulus wasn't large enough, instead of the theory that govern- ment cannot create jobs. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has critiqued the Obama stimulus in this way, stating that while the president has passed a "somewhat disappointing economic plan," at least "a third of a loaf is better than none." Krugman also contends that the Obama stimulus was watered down by unnecessary tax cuts, and I think we all know which party pushed for those reck- less cuts. Imagine what a whole loaf of stimulus would have done and imagine how excited (albeit secret- ly) McConnell and Ryan would be about more economic stimulation. My main motive here is not to demagogue Republican economic policy, but to assert that Keynesian economics is alive and well in both parties. We may never know exact- ly what the right answers are to our country's most pressing issues, but when both sides agree on an answer, that agreement might be as close as we get. Let's move forward from there. Dar-Wei Chen is a University alum and a former columnist for the Daily. WANT THE DAILY ON THE GO? Now you can access your favorite Daily opinion content on your phone. Check out the Daily's mobile website at m.michigandaily.com. A