The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - 3 SACUA From Page 1 "It's a prevailing philosophy and probably why they want this done before getting a new president." Canning added that she felt this was a "major mistake" by the administration because it added to the loomingdisconcertoverthe situation. "We're all trying to do our jobs. There's a huge, simmering anger among faculty and graduate stu- dents; it's going to blow up and go * public very soon," Canning said. "We've been trying to govern our departments and do the best we can. We'd really like them to com- mit to no layoffs because it would make the pain and agony of this process much less. It'd still be scary but much less." Canning said there has also been a discrepancy between ini- tially projected savings and what the administration currently expects, which added to the ten- sion among department heads. Savings from the project were initially projected at $17 million, but are now expected to be just $5 million in four years. This caused the group to question whether the ACTIVIST From Page 1 the idea of sustainable envi- ronment originated from these communities thousands of years ago," Gaillard said. "We want to make the connection for students." In 1993, LaDuke co-founded Honor the Earth, a non-profit organization to raise awareness and support for environmental issues in Native American com- munities. "As Americans, we are the people who live in this time, and we have this opportunity to stop people from blowing up another STARTUP From Page 1 categories, such as pizza, sand- wiches and burgers. The website excludes-rng-personal reviews in favor of a top-five list. Schemanski said they decided to forgo traditional rating sys- tems because he believes they become ineffective in convey- ing a restaurant's popularity to readers. "All of those ratings, what they end up doing is make every- thing pretty much look the same," Schemanski said. "After a few hundred people will rate a place, it all just kind of goes towards the average." The MyFab5 team started its efforts in Ann Arbor but quickly expanded to all of Michigan. In August, the website expanded to the entire United States. While the website is available in every city, Schemanski said smaller, cities might not have rankings simply due to their smaller populations. "As of today, our users have created more than 5,400 rank- AST was the most efficient way to cut costs or if other methods such as attritionorreorganization could have achieved their goals with less "human pain." "If they knew it would really save money, we would find it eas- ier to accept, but the cost-benefit analysis doesn't make sense," she said. Canning said department chairs have asked the adminis- tration to slow down the AST, in hopes that leaders will wait until a new president is in place. They hope that SACUA will explore the situation and formulate its own opinion to be conveyed to the administration. Nonetheless, Canning said the LSA chairs felt like their com- plaints have been heard by the University's leaders in the Flem- mingbuilding. "They heard us and realized it was very painful," Canning said. "They said they would consider, our requests, and I think it would go a long way to making this pro- cess better." She added that, overall, the ATS initiative seems "out of sync" with the University's stan- dard approach to change, and it's not indicative of what's expected of a school frequently ranked in the top universities to work for nationwide. . Canning and her peers contin- ued to question the validity of the campaign, citing similar efforts at other institutions - including Yale University and University of California, Berkeley - that didn't yield desired results. At the end of their session, SACUA chair Karen Staller said she feels it's important to now hear the administration's view on the situation and plans to address the issues with AST fur- ther when Provost Martha Pol- lack attends the meeting in two weeks. In a statement Monday eve- ning, University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said the administra- tion expects there to be little if any need for reduction in force as a result of the sharing of support services, as the 325 affected by the initiative are now vacant or filled with temporary employees. Fitzgerald said the University will discuss the changes with employees this week. He added that the University does not expect to reduce pay for employ- ees who make the transition to the shared services model. said. "When you get out there on your own, you're going to do From Page 1 whatever you want anyway, so to make your own decisions, it's Derick Adams applied to be a going to take you out there on driver after he saw a job posting your own." on a bus last year. After sending The primary priority for driv- in an application, PTS asked him ers is safety. When big events for an interview, where he was come to campus - such as foot- offered the job on the spot. ball games and performances, While Adams had no previous among others - PTS sends experience driving 4 bus, he had its drivers notifications and a customer service background reminders about safety proce- from previous part-time jobs - dures. When an accident occurs a characteristic PTS desires in and after the review process is driver candidates. Upon being .complete, PTS sends out similar offered the position, Derick, like notifications detailing the inci- all potential student drivers, dent and how to prevent simi- underwent the two-weektraining lar ones from occurring in the program. Bidwell, the PTS trans- future. portation manager, said his office While the University commu- usually offers positions to any nity relies on the timeliness of potential drivers who are willing Blue Bus arrivals, Dolen said PTS to try out the training process. prefers that drivers run behind Since new drivers have to schedule to be safe, rather than adjust to the busier atmosphere, speeding to make it to each stop LSA senior James Kehoe, who on time. has been a Blue Bus driver since Equipped with a GPS, call pro- his freshman year, said most acci- cesses and radios, each bus can be dents often occur during the fall tracked to keep a record of driv- semester, as evidenced this year. ers' performance. Additionally, "We're noticing more this year Dolen said the campus commu- just because ofhow stupid they've nity provides feedback to assist been, to be frank," Kehoe said. PTS in improving its operations. "Accidents happen all the "It's a probably unique situ- time, especially the first semester ation where we have the ability when the new students are really to get information from so many getting into the swing of things." different (people) - all kinds of While the training process people that are willing to help us teaches student drivers the get better," Dolen said. basics, both Kohe and Adams said drivers gain the majority of Accidents or negligence? their knowledge and skills while. on the job. Even with the shad- Though accidents can hap- owing process of training with pen, the case of the unattended, a supervisor, the ability to make running bus earlier this month quick decisions comes with prac- appears to be a demonstration of tice. negligence on the part of a student "Most of it is on the job, but driver rather than an accident. that there's really no way to The driver left his bus unat- simulate anything like under tended and running at the inter- the arm of somebody," Adams section of Arch and White streets for as much as twohoursbetween the hours of midnight and 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 2. Though the bus was off-campus for an extended period of time, supervisors did not make University Police aware of the missing bus. Rather, a staff member of The Michigan Daily notified University Police of the abandoned bus. The driver was arrested on charges of unlawfully driv- ing away an automobile, and a supervisor drove the bus back to base. Bus drivers have certain spots - located on Central Campus, South Campus and North Cam- pus - to park while taking their designated breaks. The location where the bus was left unat- tended was not a designated stopping point. At the time, Uni- versity spokesman Rick Fitzger- ald emphasized that Blue Bus drivers are never allowed to take their buses home for breaks when they're on the job. Dolen reportedly refused to directly address the incident, and instead categorically main- tained that safety is a top priority for PTS. He did not explain why supervisors failed to alert police to the missing vehicle. In light of recent and potential incidents,PTSis constantlyreeval- uating and enhancing its train- ing protocol. PTS has met with officials at the Indiana University, Bloomington, to discuss how they train their student drivers. Dolensaid PTSis alsoexploring different technologies to enhance the training program. Potentially, the program could feature a bus simulator to better prepare stu- dents for the road ahead. "There's always learning to be done," Dolen said. "You can't pre- dict everything that's going on, but you can predict a lot." mountain, from combusting the planet into oblivion," she said. "We have this opportunity to keep our river for fish, not for chemicals." LaDuke said people today are becoming addicts of extreme energy, what she described as the extreme demand and reliance on fossil fuel as a result of the profit- driven economy. "You rationalize your behav- ior when you are an addict," LaDuke said. "Oil-polluted water sources in North Dakota? Who cares? Who lives up there anyway?", Rebuking Americans who say that sustainable energy cannot meet the nation's cur- rent demand, LaDuke said alternative power sources could supply the United States if so much electricity wasn't wasted. LaDuke said the concept of "relocalization," or focusing on local communities, is the answer to a more sustainable future. She pointed to the Native Americans on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, who harvest solar and wind energy at a scale that is efficient for the small commu- nity. "There is always a chance for redemption," LaDuke said. "We still have chance to make signifi- cant changes." MISSING From Page 1 safe," Balsmeyer said. "He is a big part of our fraternity, and we were ready to go out to comb community." Balsmeyer said he does not have information about what happened to Stevens that has not already been stated by the media. He did note that a police officer called the fraternity this morn- ingto let them know Stevens was alright. Ann Arbor Police Lt. Renee Bush wasn't immediately aware Monday morning of where Ste- vens had been during the time he was missing, but acknowledged that officers were actively look- ing for him. -Daily News Editor Taylor Wizner contributed to this report. ings in Ann Arbor alone," Schemanski said. "Since each ranking can contain multiple restaurants, our users have made over 18,000 restaurant recommendations in Ann Arbor."_- . Pete Sickman-Garner, mar- keting manager for Zingerman's, said it makes sense to start a food-centered website in Ann Arbor because of the variety of restaurants in the city. "Given the way Ann Arbor's food scene has exploded in recent years, this would be a good town to try out something like this," Sickman-Garner wrote in an e-mail interview. "Foodies are definitely people who like sharing their opin- ions." New advancements at MyFabS include a recent won $15,000 grant to help grow the company. The money will go toward hiring a professional design team that' will work to improve the web- site's logo, graphics and website functionality. The company is also trying to include Instagram on its site and use it to more effectively to gauge users' favorite places. It hopes to include this function on the website by mid-Decem- ber. Although MyFab5 was cre- ated to help customers decide where to eat, Sehemanski said- their website also helps restau- rants. "There are a lot of people out there that are taking advan- tage of the fact that they can hurt a business's reputation," Schemanski said. "Sometimes customers will try to extort them for a free meal, saying they will leave a bad review. Sometimes it is just disgruntled employees that will go on and do that, or a competitor from other restaurants." Schemanski has big hopes for the future of MyFab5 expanding into categories beyond the food industry. "Going out to a restaurant is part of an entertainment experi- ence ... so we can apply it to other forms of entertainment, like movies, TV shows and books," Schemanski said. Clemency sought for ten women convicted of murder The Power Group argues victims of domestic violence should be released from prison DETROIT (AP) - Ten Michi- gan women convicted of murder deserve to be freed from prison because they were subjected to domestic violence and didn't get fair trials, according to a group working on their cases. The Michigan Women's Jus- tice and Clemency Project is fil- ing petitions for clemency with Gov. Rick Snyder for the women, who were convicted of first- or second-degree murder and have been behind bars for years. . "These women are not a threat to anybody," project director Carol Jacobsen, a University pro- fessor in women's studies and art & design, told the Detroit Free Press. "The whole social under- standing of battery and abuse has changed since the 1980s and 1990s, when many of these womenwere convicted." Snyder's office told The Asso- ciated Press that such applica- tions go to the parole board at Department of Corrections for review and then get a review by the governor's office. The office said the state looks at every appli- cation equally. All of the women have sought clemency before and have been denied. One of the cases is that of Nancy Seaman, a Detroit-area teacher who hacked her hus- band to death in 2004. She killed Robert Seaman by striking him with a hatchet 16 times and stab- bing him at least 21 times in their garage in Farmington Hills. She is serving a life sentence. A jury in 2005 convicted Sea- man of first-degree murder, but the Oakland County trial judge reduced it to second-degree mur- der. A state appeals court later reinstated the jury's verdict. She said she was a victim of emotion- al and physical abuse and was threatened again that day. At her trial, the defense pre- sented experts who talked about battered spouse syndrome and had argued for such a defense. Nancy Seaman's former defense attorney, Lawrence Kaluzny, said he's hopeful that Snyder will consider her case. "I never thought she should do life," Kaluzny said. "I believe she was abused." Four of the 10 cases set for review, including Seamen's case, occurredinOakland County.Pros- ecutor Jessica Cooper said her office is monitoring the petitions. "We're aware of them, and we will monitor them for the victims, just as we monitor paroles," she said. "We are hopeful cases like these are decided thoughtfully, with reason, and not by passion." Snyder spokesman David Mur- ray said such clemency requests get careful consideration. "Every prisoner has the right to apply for a commutation, and there is a process spelled out in statute that must be followed," David Murray said in an email to AP. "The process involves the Michigan Parole Board review- ing every application and making a determination if the case has merit. of Play Duncan J. Billing, LL Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer Hasbro, Inc. Reservations required: http:/chear.org/meister-lecture Sponsored by The Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Unit, a collaboration of the Schools of Bt Dentistry, Information, Law, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health, Public Policy and So 4 .# I