2A - Friday, November 21, 2014 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4 LEFT LSA junior Christine Yu paints her own cup at "Mochas and Masterpieces" at the Ann Arbor Arts Center Wednesday evening. (Rita Morris/Daily) RIGHT Members of Groove perform on the Diag to promote their fundraising event Monday. (Sam Mousigian/Daily) BAMN From Page 1A University's administration. Most prominently, BAMN has criticized the University for fail- ing to increase minority enroll- ment. According to the Office of the Registrar, the University's population of underrepresent- ed minority students remained roughly stagnant over the past year, totaling just above 10 per- cent. After about an hour, Schlissel reconvened the meeting inside the Regents Room in the Flem- ing Administration Building, noting the meeting had been adjourned for "public safety reasons" and a transcript of the reconvened portion would be posted online. "I certainly respect the right of the group to speak up and tell us their opinion about some- thing important," Schlissel said in an interview with The Michi- gan Daily after the meeting. "I'm disappointed that they chose to disrupt the meeting, but we were able to conduct the business of the University in this separate venue as needed." The meeting in Fleming last- ed about 10 minutes. The board quickly voted to approve the renovation projects listed on the November agenda, including schematic designs for the David JOURNALIST From Page 1A information disseminated by tobacco companies, Lewis said the truth is also obscured for political reasons. In 1994, the cigarette manu- facturer Phillip Morris filed a M. Dennison Building and the new Biological Science Building. Though staff members of the University's Office of Public Affairs alerted the media to the venue change and noted a tran- script of the meeting would be made available to the public, a general announcement regarding the venue change was not made inside the Anderson Room. The University maintains that relocating the meeting did not violate Michigan's Open Meet- ings Act, which specifies that decisions of public bodies - like the University's Board of Regents - must be made at a meeting open to the public. Across Regents Plaza, signs on the Administration Build- ing doors read, "The building is LOCKED." Security officials ini- tially declined entry to Michigan Daily reporters until a regent told the officers to permit entry. University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald confirmed that only news media were allowed into the meeting. Apart from the regents and executive officers, the only mem- bers of the public present inside the Regents Room were members of the media, Central Student Government President Bobby Dishell, a Public Policy senior, and public affairs staff. Though the Open Meetings Act says meetings must be held "in a place available to the public," it is $10 billion lawsuit against ABC alleging its "Day One" special report was libelous. The series - which also included another law- suit, which resulted in the same settlement - reported that the companies used extra nicotine in their cigarette products to keep people smoking. Lewis said ABC not only opted to apologize for the report, but likely the University could have legally excluded the protesters from entering the new meeting location. The law states, "A per- son shall not be excluded from a meeting otherwise open to the public except for a breach of the peace actually committed at the meeting." After the regents had left the Anderson Room, BAMN group members shouted their demands to a half empty room for more than an hour. The group later marched toward the Student Activities Building, which houses the University's Office of Undergraduate Admissions, and continued chanting as they moved up and down streets near the Union. BAMN has called on the Uni- versity to adopt a "10 percent plan," similar to a policy in Texas, where the top 10 percent of every in-state high school graduating class is guaranteed admission to any of the state's public institu- tions. In addition to increasing minority enrollment, BAMN has demanded the University improve transparency related to sexual assault allegations. "We don't want to wait another year to see the results of another failure of another committee, another failure of another lan- guage campaign, and see those numbers of minority enroll- ment drop again like they have also retracted another documen- tary on U.S. tobacco exports to other countries. "People in ABC were told to kill a half-million dollar documentary about how U.S. has been exporting tobacco outside the U.S. In the name of free trade, tobacco was allowed be grown, sold, manufactured and advertised to children and others around the world," he said. been doing over the last five to 10 years," Alvarenga said at a press conference before the meeting. He said the efforts the Univer- sity has made in response to their other requests have been inad- equate. "The University's solutions for this year are the same solutions the administration has been giv- ing for years and years at this Uni- versity," he said. "They have just created more campaigns about inclusion but in reality they don't address the real problem, which is that drop of minority enroll- ment." In an interview after the meet- ing, E. Royster Harper, vice presi- dent for student life, said the board was trying to listen, but BAMN made it difficult. "I was disappointed," she said. "They are talking about issues that are important to us, but in a way that makes it hard for them to be heard. I'm not going to hear you if I'm scared that you are going to hurt me. I'm just not going to hear it. That is the down- side of the strategy." BAMN has not requested a meeting with administrators, Harper said. "If you want to sit down and talk about the issue we can cre- ate an environment to do that to," Harper said. "This isn't a situa- tion where people have asked for a conversation and they have been refused. However, Lewis did not entire- ly place blame on institutions for delayed awareness of tobacco's harmful effects on health. He said public apathy is also responsible, and he is concerned that the pub- lic is not as media-literate as it has been in the past. "News consumption and paid subscription has been going down in this country for more than "Beyond the noise and the chanting, very little got accom- plished," she said. Accord- ing to Dishell, the only involve- ment CSG has had with BAMN was fund- ing a bus for them to travel to Washing- ton, D.C. a few years ago. "My experience working with them, they don't necessar- ily want to. work with someone as (T efiidhigan ai1 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com PETER SHAHIN DOUGLAS SOLOMON Editor in Chief Business Manager 734-418-4115 ext. 1251 734-418-4110 ext. 1241 pjshahin@michigandaily.com dougsolo@michigandaily.com Newsroom News Tips 734-418-411s opt.3 news@michigandaily.com Corrections Letters to the Editor corrections@michigandaily.com tothedaily@michigandaily.com Arts Section Editorial Page arts@michigandaily.com opinion@michigandaily.com Sports Section Photography Section sports@michigandaily.com photo@michigandaily.com Display Sales ClassifiedSales dailydisplay@gmail.com classified@michiandaily.com Online Sales Finance onlirieads@michigandaily.com finance@michigandaily.com EDITORIALSTAff Katie Burke Managing Editor kgburke@michigandaily.com JenniferCalfas ManagingNews Editor jcalfas@michiandaily.com SENIOR NEWS EDITORS: Ian Dillingham,Sam Gringlas, Will Greenberg, Rachel Premack and Stephanie Shenouda ASSISTANT NEWS EDITORS: Allana Akhtar, Neala Berkowski, Claire Bryan, Shoham Geva, Amabel Karoub, Emma Kerr, Thomas McBrien, Emilie Plesset, Michael Sugeiman and Jack Turman Megan McDonald and Daniel Wang Editorial Page Editors opinioneditors@michigadaily or SENIOR EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS:Aarica Marsh and Victoria Noble ASSISTANT EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS: MatthiewSeligman and David Harris GregGarnoand Alejandro Ziliga Managingsports Editors sportseditors@michigandailycom SENIOR SPORTS EDITORS: Max Cohen, Alexa Dettelbach, Lev Facher, Rajat Khare, Jake ASS"STA" SPOTIrTORS:'Max Bultman, Minh Doan, Daniel Feldman, Simon Kaufman, Erin Lennon,JakeLourim and Jason Rubinstein John Lynch and jplynch@michigandaiy.com Akshay Seth Managig AtsEditors akse@michiandaily.com SEsIORTSEITOSiancarsloBuonomo,NataieGadbosIrikaroodad ASSISNT ARTSEDITORS: Jamie Bircoll, Jackson Howard,Gillian Jakab and Maddie Thomas Teresa Mathew and Paul Sherman oManagngPhototEditor yphoto@michigandaily oom SEsIOR PHOnOEDTOS:lsn aranadRuyn*allau ASSISTANTPHOTOEDITORS:LunaAnnaArchey,Virginia Lozano, James Coler, McKenzie Bere zin, and Nicholas Williams Carolyn Gearig and Gabriela Vasquez Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com SENIORDESIGN EDITORS: AmyMackens andAliciaKovalcheck Carlina Duan Magazine Editor statement@michigandaily.com DEPUTY MAGAZINE EDITORS: Max Radwin and Amrutha Sivakumar STATEMENTPHOTOEDITOR:RubyiWallau STATEMENT LEADDESIGNER: Amy Mackens MarkOssolinski and Meaghan Thompson ManagingCtpy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com SENIOR COPY EDITORS: Mariam Sheikh and Alisba Qiu Austen Hufford Online Editor ahufford@michigandaily.com VIEEDIR: aua FredihandJames Reslier-Wells BUSINESSSTAFF Madeline Lacey UniversityAccounts Manager Ailie Steir ClassifiedManager SimonneKapadiaLocalAccountsManager Lotus An National Accounts Manager Olivia Jones Production Managers Nolan Loh special Projects Coordinator Jason Anterasian Finance Manager The Michigan Diy (ISSN0745-967) i publshed o,,ndayhrogh Frida urn he al inter terms by.~ bepce pa a ys office for N sri ons f all em statnnSpemeaUS a a re $110. Winerterm (anay thrugh plis li1 5n.earlong(Set eSthoa ssh Api)is5195. Siverityafiiat ess. 'mi'b n5, Mt.1 5o'chga Dily5is a eber fSOn ,,o,ThAsoitdPesad Te*soOatnpO.C oO'$,,,,. much as use them as a platform and there is not really a lot of give and take there," Dishell said. "I don't see us having a strong work- ing relationship with them in the future." In an interview with The Daily a half-century," he said. "Does that mean the public is getting its news elsewhere? No. We have this disengagement that includes absorbing information and being interested in knowing the infor- mation." Lewis said individuals must expose themselves to news media to remain aware of current issues, but the public must also pay atten- after the protest, BAMN orga- nizer Kate. Stenvig, a University 4 alum, said she thinks the group got their message across. "We won't accept another year of false promises," Stenvig said. "We want results now." tion to the quality of the sources as well. "Quality begets quality," he said. "If you consume sophisticated, complex, interesting information about the most important issues of our time, you are probably more cognizant of those issues and actu- ally understand the implications. You are what you read, and you are what you watch." TEXAS From Page 1A ban on affirmative action. "I believe the 10 percent plan works because to say that these students, the top 10 percent of students at these schools, aren't intelligent enough or aren't equipped enough to come here is just a complete joke," she said. However, University President Mark Schlissel said the Univer- sity would not be likely to imple- ment admissions strategies like a percentage-based plan, arguing they are ineffective in an Octo- ber interview with The Michigan Daily. "I'm not sure that's necessar- ily the answer, or at least there's not strong evidence that that's the answer in the context of our laws here in the state," he said. The 10 percent rule was origi- H,.-,m nally conceived to increase diver- sity on campuses after the Fifth Circuit Court outlawed other affirmative action policies in Texas during the 1996 court case Hopwood v. Texas. Hopwood was eventually invalidated by the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court deci- sion in Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld the use of affirmative action for a narrow interest like ensuring diversity. In 2009, the state legislature modified the law to allow only the University of Texas at Aus- tin to cap admissions from the 10 percent plan when the numbers made up more than 75 percent of reserved spots for in-state stu- dents. The other 25 percent of enrolled students are admitted through a race-conscious, holis- tic review process. In the 2013 case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the Fifth Circuit Court, after having the case remanded back from the U.S. Supreme Court, decided that the university's use of the "holistic," race-conscious admissions process for the 25 percent of reserved spots was valid in addition to the effects of the 10 percent plan. Gary Susswein, director of University Media Relations at the University of Texas at Aus- tin, said the original version of the law limited the university's ability to have any discretion over the admissions process because automatically admit- ted in-state students were filling almost the entire cohort of each entering freshman class. The 4 modification went into effect in 2011. California and Florida have also implemented top 9 percent and top 20 percent plans, respec- tively, after those states banned affirmative action. Shortly before the Supreme Court ruled in Grutter v. Bol- linger and Gratz v. Bollinger, both in 2003, the University issued a release responding to percent- based plans enacted in Texas, California and Florida. The statement argued that the plans failed to evaluate students holistically, encouraged racially segregated high schools, discour- aged students from attending competitive schools and disad- vantages universities with large out-of-state populations. The release also notes that adopting the plan would require a statewide university system, like the University of Texas or Univer- sity of California system, which does not exist in Michigan. In Michigan, admittance to one pub- licly funded university does not guarantee admittance to another. According to University of Texas at Austin enrollment data, the policy has yielded mixed results. In the last two decades, the school has practiced several dif- ferent admissions policies. In 1996, the university's admis- sions office practiced affirmative action. That year, Black and His- panic freshman enrollment was 4 percent and 15 percent, respec- tively. By 1998, the Hopwood decision barred the university from con- sidering race in admissions. After the legislature enacted HB 588, Black and Hispanic enrollment hovered between 3 to 4 percent and 14 to 16percent, respectively. In 2004, with affirmative action upheld in the Grutter deci- sion, Black freshman enrollment jumped slightly to 5 percent and Hispanic freshmen enrollment reached 16 percent. Though minority enrollment numbers have increased slightly at the University of Texas at Aus- tin, this jump has been partly due to the reinstatement of affirma- tive action, which is currently banned in Michigan. In California and Florida, states with similai- percentage- based plans, the results have also been mixed. Susswein, the director of media relations at the University of Texas at Austin, said automati- cally admitting the top 10 per- cent of in-state applicants allows hardworking students to attend a top state college or university. He noted the policy has resulted in improved attendance from rural parts of the state, historically underserved by the school. In addition to the policy, the school uses a holistic review pro- cess, provides financial assistance for first-generation college stu- dents and employs academic pro- grams in underperforming high schools within the state. Though Susswein declined to comment on the efficacy of the percent plan - citing ongoing litigation in Fisher v. Texas - the university's legal brief in the case argues for the necessity of race- conscious admissions, noting that just relying on the 10 percent plan is not an effective method for achieving full racial diversity. 14 The brief, which argues for the need to maintain an affirmative action policy in the absence of race-neutral alternatives, states that the 10 percent plan failed to significantly increase underrep- resented minority enrollment. The brief also states the policy made it more difficult for under- represented minority students to gain admission under the normal holistic review admission pro- cess. Law School Prof. Mark Rosen- baum, a visiting law professor at the University of California, Irvine and chief counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said per- cent plans in California had "no impact" on improving diversity at the state's most elite "flagship," like the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses. "In a state as segregated as Michigan and with Michigan at the bottom of the nation when it comes to resourcing K-12 public schools, particularly those in high poverty communities, a percent plan is unlikely to achieve much (of) anything in the way of diver- sity, and runs the risk of diverting focus from measures that might have some impact," he wrote in an e-mail interview. Instead, he said he would encourage the regents to use See TEXAS, Page 3A 4