4 - Friday, January 25, 2013
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
4 - Friday, January 25, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom
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4C Michigan 43at4olij
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MELANIE KRUVELIS
and ADRIENNE ROBERTS MATT SLOVIN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR
NOTABLE QUOTA LE
Well, it didn't sound like a man. It sounded
like a woman. fthe somehow made that
voice, that's incredible.
ANDREW WEINER
EDITOR IN CHIEF
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.
FROMTH EDAIL
Advanced (dis)placement
Denial of AP credit at Dartmouth will cost students
Beginning with the entering class of 2014, Advanced Placement
scores will no longer count for college credit at Dartmouth
College. While students can still place out of certain courses
with high AP scores, the scores will not count as progress toward their
degrees. Because strong AP scores in certain subjects might qualify a
student to place out of specific courses, they should be awarded college
credit as well. Not doing so disregards a key purpose of taking AP tests:
earning college credit to lessen the ever-increasing cost of undergradu-
ate education. This sets a troubling precedent for other colleges.
- Notre Dame libbacker Manti Te'o said during
Thursday
Gone (cat)fish
Developed in the 1950s by the College
Board, the AP Program offers more than 30
college-level courses that students cAn take
in high school. Students who receive high
scores on end-of-semester exams can receive
college credit for those courses and possibly
be exempt from some introductory college
classes. For many high-school students, the
purpose of taking an AP course is to gain col-
lege credit and enhance their college applica-
tions. The program even endorses this view,
advertising on its website that taking AP tests
is a way to "earn college credit and place-
ment." Refusing to accept strong AP scores
for college credit runs contraryto their origi-
nal purpose. This practice takes advantage of
students who take AP courses to gain entry
to competitive colleges but are then denied
credits for those courses.
Denying AP credits has resounding finan-
cial implications. At the University of Michi-
gan, for example, a student with AP Calculus
BC scores of 4/5 or 5/5 can be exempted from
introductory math courses and earn four
credits toward his or her degree. If the stu-
dent is part-time, this 4-credit sequence
would cost $2,432 if coming from in-state and
lower division or $6,639 if from out-of-state
and lower division. By doing well on the AP
Calculus BC exam, which costs $89, a stu-
dent can save $2,287 or $6,639, depending
on where they live. Alongside these savings,
granting AP credits also creates opportuni-
tiet for students to pursue other courses,
intellectual interests or employment - which
is increasingly relevant given the rising costs
of tuition.
While some schools like Dartmouth pro-
vide generous financial aid that aims to meet
100 percent of the students' need, the vast
majority of colleges do not have this capa-
bility. While certain schools might deny AP
credits and still cover the financial burden
of taking credits that one would'have other-
wise earned, most colleges cannot. Schools
that refuse to grant AP credits are setting a
dangerous precedent for other institutions
to follow. Should this trend be realized in
schools that are not as wealthy, our institu-
tions of higher education will become even
less accessible.
Colleges that don't grant AP credit must
realize that one key reason students take AP
exams is, in fact, to earn college credit. Dis-
regarding this not only denies the useful-
ness of enriching high-school education with
advanced classes, but also places an unfair
financial burden on students.
By now you've likely familiar-
ized yourself with the Manti
Te'o debacle. The cuckolded,
football star; the
girlfriend who
died, then didn't
die, of cancer;
the lonely Chris-
tian band singer;
the lazy sports
magazine fact
checkers. Clus-
tering around E
like bees protect- XU
ing their queen,
the media outlets
do their best to make appropriate
reparations. Sorry, they buzz. We are
so,so sorry.
"No, never," Teo said when asked
if he played any part in the ruse. Uni-
versity of Notre Dame, doing what
all athletic departments do when
backed into a corner, rallied behind
its star player with ferocious convic-
tion, releasing a statement claiming
that "this appears to be, at a mini-
mum, a sad and very cruel deception
to entertain its perpetrators."
Then, faster than you could say
"Lennay Kekua," Te'o changed his
tune. In an exclusive interview with
Katie Couric on Thursday, he admit-
ted that, whoops, he knew his girl-
friend hadn't passed away when he
received a phone call from a stranger
purporting to be her in early Decem-
ber. And yet, he still grieved for her
"death" on national television two
days later.
"You stuck to the script. And you
knew that something was amiss,
Manti," Couric said, sternly.
"Katie, put yourself in my situ-
ation," Te'o pleaded. "I, my whole
world told me that she died on Sept.
12. Everybody knew that. This girl,
who I committed myself to, died on
Sept.12."
Te'o is better on the field than
under the muted lighting of a net-
work soundstage. Watching him
gracefully sack opponents on the
20-yard line, his face shielded by his
gold helmet, there's something vul-
nerable about him - almost poetic.
You want to root for this guy; this
sweat soft-hearted hunk of a hero.
In interiews, he's fine - calm, enun-
ciates well - but is still somehow dis-
ingenuous and unreadable.
Ever since the sad, strange nar-
rative exploded on Deadspin a little
more than a week ago, ESPN has
been covering the aftermath in
careful, pointillist detail. Was Te'o
complicit in the hoax or a victim of
it? Experts dish up new theories by
the hour, reading his eyebrows, the
timestamps of his cell phone calls, a
receipt from 1-800-FLOWERS and
anything else they can grasp onto
that would indict or salvage the hap-
less football player.
What's struck me most about the
coverage of the Te'o storyline is the
witch-hunt-like, us-versus-them
mentality writers have taken on. Te'o
is either vilified as a publicity-seek-
ing faker or a sweet, spotless fool,
with in-between. The audience,
for it part, has eaten it up with the
breathless excitement of a criminal
wiretap. But, why all the fascination?
Why do we feel personally offended
that agirl we never knew didn't die of.
cancer and that a guy we've only seen
onthe Big Ten Network might have a
fetish for whisperingsweet nothings
to a wall of static?
The kicker is that Nev Schulman,
creator of the film "Catfish" and the
MTV show of the same name, has
been crowned the authority on all
things Internet hoax, oft sought-
after in interviews to arbitrate Te'o's
innocence. Never mind that Schul-
man's own "discovery" that the girl
he was so in love with who ended up
being a lonely, overweight lady from
rural Michigan had its own whiffs
of deceit. It seems suspicious that
this twenty-something Jewish boy in
skinny jeans could have been hood-
winked by a woman two times his
senior, and that the whole endeavor
an interview with Katie Couric on q
regarding his fictitious girlfriend.
zing
wasn't really just an excuse to cash
out and become famous - that the
making of "Catfish" wasn't a kind of
catfish in itself.
We all throw half-
truths of our lives
into cyberspace.
In my humble, non-evidentiary
opinion, Te'o probably had some idea
of what was going on - maybe not at
the beginning, but certainly at the
very end.:Why am I so sure?
Because we all do it: we all cat-
fish. Ever since our lives migrated
online, there's been this American
Dream-like possibility of self-con-'
structing how the world should see
us. We throw fabulist, half-true-
half-not tales of our lives into
cybersphere, carefully editing and
tagging our photos to produce the
lives we'd like to have. We're not
so different from Te'o, who cat-
fished a beautiful Stanford student
with a "warm smile and soulful
eyes," or from Sports Illustrated,
who catfished a great, Greek epic
in its fawning October profile of
Te'o, titled "The Full Manti." This
mutual exchange of fact and fiction
is part of an invisible contract we
sign when we power up our laptops
and log onto Facebook. The story
of the fallen Heisman contender
resonates because we have all been
Manti Te'o. We've been both ver-
sions of him: the cuckoldee and the
cuckolder.
But what happens when the con-
tract breaks, as Te'o's has? Then the
shimmering versions of the selves
we'd like to be dissolve like Pepto-
Bismol tablets. No, that can't be what
I really look like. Oh, but it is.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
Kaan Avdan, Sharik Bashir, Barry Belmont, James Brennan,
Eli Cahan, Jesse Klein, Melanie Kruvelis, Patrick Maillet, Jasmine McNenny,
Harsha Nahata, Adrienne Roberts, Vanessa Rychlinski,
Paul Sherman, Sarah Skaluba, Michael Spaeth, Derek Wolfe
AARICA MARSH I
It's legalization time
0
Jennifer Xu can be reached
at jennifxu@umich.edu.
The irony of gentlemen's night'
In the United States, a marijuana user is
arrested every 42 seconds. With that many
people arrested, imagine the even greater num-
ber of people who are associated with someone
who was once incarcerated for using, possess-
ing or growing pot. It could be anyone: perhaps
it was your college friend just having some
weekend fun or your great uncle with stomach
cancer who was once locked up on possession
charges. Maybe it was you who was arrested
and suffered the consequences of the outdated
U.S. marijuana laws. What are the police really
solving by busting these users? Are they actu-
ally creating a safer and freer country as they
have been telling us for years?
Approximately half of all drug busts in the
United States are pot-related with 87 percent
of these arrests being for the non-violent pos-
session of marijuana. Because most of the drug
arrests are non-violent offenders, their time
spentincorrectionalfacilitiesisoftenmoreinju-
rious than beneficial. Instead of being "rehabili-
tated," many of the nonviolent citizens actually
become more aggressive and spiral deeper into
the criminal system. In order to survive, they
must mimic the ways of actual violent offend-
ers surrounding them. To solve'this issue, the
federal government must reclassify or totally
eliminate marijuana - and potentially other
drugs - from the Drug Enforcement Agen-
cy's controlled substance list. Drug offenders
need authentic rehabilitation, not seclusion or
repeatedexposure to violence.
Under the Controlled Substances Act of
1970, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I
drug with no use for medicinal purposes and
high potential for abuse. It occupies this cat-
egory alongside more dangerous drugs such
as heroin, LSD and crack cocaine. It's ridicu-
lous that pot is classified as a higher risk than
extremely addictive drugs like cocaine and
oxycodone.
By classifying weed as a Schedule I drug,
people who have exposure to the drug may
believe the government is implying that other
drugs have similar side effects. This, however,
is deceptive and dangerous. Compared to pot,
the other drugs in the Schedule I class are
extremely dangerous. More than one-third
of U.S. citizens have tried marijuana with no
reports of addiction or death. Furthermore, as
of the November election, 18 states and Wash-
ington D.C. now have marijuana-friendly
legislation. The majority of the American pop-
ulation recognizes the harmlessness of THC.
Why can't the federal government?
"Marijuana should be legalized for many
reasons, but the most important reason is
because it is a civil rights infraction," Miles
Gerou, president of Eastern Michigan Univer-
sity's chapter of Students for a Sensible prug
Policy, said. "There is too much fact to show
that marijuana is relatively harmless, and cer-
tainly not lethal, to keep putting good citizens
in jail for making healthier choices than the
legal recreation drugs offered in our country."
Though many Americans have come to
the same conclusion, the federal government
refuses to budge. THC is still described as
more dangerous than Xanax, morphine, oxy-
codone and many other legal substances in
the United States. So instead of rolling up a
doobie I should pop apill, right?
Wrong. It's outrageous to believe that weed
is more harmful than the subsequent drugs in
lower class schedules. The idea that marijua-
na is a "gateway" drug is also absurd. In most
instances, people.experiment with nicotine or
alcohol before trying marijuana. Therefore,
the two most commonly used legal substanc-
es in the United States are the first gateway
drugs into the illicit substance community.
For decades, marijuana has been wrong-
fully labeled amongst our society. The time
for change is now. Much of our country has
legalized pot in some way, which alludes to
the majority of American's acceptance for pot.
Our right to use marijuana in a similar way
we use tobacco and nicotine needs to be rec-
ognized. The first few steps have been taken:
marijuana prohibition is slowly ending state
by state. Now it's time to tackle the federal
government and their illogical classifications.
It's legalization time.
Aarica Marsh is an LSA sophomore.
Last week, we had a "gentle-
men's night" at my co-op.
Just wait for the irony of
that statement.
Gentlemen's -
night is essen-
tially a Thurs-
day ' night our
co-op designates!
for fancy vests,
unfortunate
fedoras and good
beer. Female KATHERINE
house members STEEN
are invited, too,
although we're
technically the gentlemen's "dates."
Basically, it brings in the weekend
with a modest gathering of well-
dressed gals and gents.Atleast, that's
the way it's supposed tobe.
This particular gentlemen's night
ended up being a bit larger in size
than I'm used to. I leaned against
a doorway, surveying my gentle-
menly kingdom, and I felt a hand on
my waist - a grab. I hardly noticed
it until I saw the hand that touched
me wasn't attached to my boyfriend.
He walked by without turning back.
It was as if it didn't even happen, and
for a little bit, I believed that it didn't.
Then I saw him, again, come up
behind a female housemate and
clamp her body like bear trap, almost
picking her up off the ground. She
didn't even respond. Not a smile, not
a playful shove, nothing. Hmm.
"Maybethey'refriends",Ithought.
"I shouldn't assume things."
So I sat at a dining room table,
watching him. But, as I sat there, a
friend sitting next to me was busy
asking me who even invited that guy.
And while she began to list off all
the women he had rubbed, groped
or left a grease mark on that night,
I watched him walk up to a house-
mate sitting across me. I watched
her pause, petrified, as she tried to
process whose thick arms were now
draped around her neck and chest.
I asked her if she wanted him to
be doing that, with the response of
a nervous smile and "No." It seemed
simple enough.
I told him that he had grabbed half
the women in this house. I received
a response implying that I wished he
would touch me. I told him to get the
fuckoj.
I f ticed a few things in the
moment after he wandered off. I
could feel the red rage glow on my
face, my heart pound and the fight-
or-flight response through every
vein. I felt tense but poised, stand-
ing a little taller than I usually do -
maybe because I was wearing heels
that night for the first time since
high-school prom. And I slowly
began to gain consciousness of the
voices surrounding me offering
their gratitude.
That night, I had five women from
my co-op thank me, citing their own
personal grievances with that oily,
oversized creep. Let me clarify: Five
women from my own house thanked
me for kicking a guy they all didn't
feel comfortable with out of their
own house. Why did it take grope
number one, two, three - whatever
- for us to finally do something about
it? In our own damn house?
Maybe for the same reason that
I almost completely forgot he had
grabbed me: It's easier to just do
nothing. It's actually kind of awk-
ward, even, to do something - or
worse, terrifying. Was this a matter
.of giving someone the benefit of the
doubt four too many times? Or were
we scared in our own house even
when surrounded by our friends
and housemates?
I'm not being completely honest
when I say I kicked him out. I told
him to get the fuck out, sure, but the
person to actually kick him out was
a male housemate. He didn't leave
when I told him to; he actually just
moved to another room. What am I
going to do about it, right? a ,
So, success - he left. But I still
feel unsatisfied with the collective
response of that night.
We shouldn't need
a guy to kick a
creep out of
the house.
0
First, I don't think he realized
he did anything wrong. Perhaps he
woke up the next day in a groggy,
skull-splitting, hungover fog and
then remembered some dude kicked
him out of a co-op the night before.
After which, he probably shrugged
and ate a hearty breakfast of bacon
and nice guy syndrome. I really don't
think I got through to him, which is
why I want to doit all over again..
I was more than capable of
explaining the house rules to him in
a civil, composed, cold fox manner.
In fact, I wanted to prove that I was
neither the damsel in distress nor a
frantic feminist chucking ashtrays
at his neck as he fled off our porch.
Moral of the story: I just wanted to
do it myself.
We shouldn't need a gentleman
to kick a creep out of the house. And
you know what? We didn't really
need him to. Yes, that night was
termed a "gentlemen's night", butin
reality, it should have belonged to
the ladies - fuck it, to the women.
We don't have to be polite or even
nice. Actually, we should be angry.
Maybe not ashtray-chucking angry,
but we should be angry enough to
say something.
- Katherine Steen can be
reached at kathelizaumich.edu.