4
Opinion
Page 8 Thursday, May 7, 1981- The Michigan Daily
.- :
Rk
The Michigan Daily
Vol. XCI, No. 2-S
Ninety Years of Editorial Freedom
Edited and managed by students
at the University of Michigan
Bobby Sands:
An ironic death
T HE POIGNANT plaint yesterday of a Bel-
fast mother of five serves as graphic
testimony for the maimed and harassed
throughout the world - those who find them-
selves caught up in irrevocable national con-
flict when all they want is to be left alone.
In a televised interview following the death of
IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, the woman
told of how she and her family had originally
moved to Sands' neighborhood in an effort to
escape virulent Protestant persecution. Yet she
soon discovered fanaticism respects no
religious or political sect.
Despite her efforts to mind her own business
and live her own life, she found herself and her
children persistently threatened and bullied by
IRA partisans into active support of the
movement. The militant principle that declares
those who aren't for us are against us continues
to hold sway on both Protestant and Catholic
sides throughout Ulster; and as in all wars, it is
the innocent bystanders, the young and the old,
who pay the greatest price for their com-
patriots' fanaticism.
There are no winners in this latest, tragic
chapter in a conflict so ancestrally ingrained in
its peoples' consciousness that rational solution
seems all but unreachable. Bobby Sands' per-
fect willingness to die for a cause he believed was
just indicates the very depths of this ancient
struggle, which meshes primordial feelings of
religious and patriotic fervor. Yet it is difficult
to grasp any positive accomplishment from
Sands' personal sacrifice: It has only catalyzed
new rounds of terror and bloodshed, a rekin-
dling of hatred in a country already strangling
from it.
The ruling British hardly emerge in a nobler
light. The stony intransigence of the Margar-
et Thatcher government over Sands' essen-
tially reasonable demands - that IRA convicts
be granted status as political prisoners -
seemed deliberately provocative in its inten-
sity, elevating the specific prisoner issue into a
heightened metaphor for the entire Northern
Irish conflict - a macho test of opposing wills
at high noon.
Such heavy-handed intractability only
exacerbates emotions already pumped to the
bursting point; it bodes an ill future for a small
land already racked by more sorrow than any
nafnnn ahnnr h avo fn haar
Covert racism at U'?
4
To the Daily:
After having gone through the
University of Michigan as a
"minority" undergraduate in An-
thropology/Archaeology and
being subjected to daily overt and
covert racist acts by several of
my professors, Caucasian
students and the LSA counselors
at the Ann Arbor campus, I can
understand why Leo Kelly Jr.
allegedly reacted the way he
did!!
The University of Michigan,
and the Ann Arbor community at
large, refuse to see themselves
for what they are (not the liberal
image presented in print): con-
=-
l~ c
Must say that I am fond of Alumni Hall _
With sturdy steps and it's mellow columns tall.
Massive, majestically rising from the ground
With stately trees paying homage all around.
But the setting has been spoiled, it seems to me,
By that jumble of jagged metal and geometry.
what is it? A remnant from some past Art Fair?
or is Exxon drilling for oil under there !
Is it Iron Henge, to tell the Druids month and day?
But on Midsummer's morn it only points to L.S&A!
It seems to bear no name so may I suggest one -
Wow about "A Ferrous Folly by Sanford and Son!
Does it add to the scene or just detract ?
Mast we accept it's presence as a permanent fact?
If we could vote on it, would it get approval ?
Or would the majority choose it's removal ?
I would suggest a different, and more distant, site
Just North of Nome - and slightly to the right!
Les Thurston
servative and racist humans,
who would really prefer not to
have us here at all as students or
faculty. There are exceptions,
but they are few. A black
American here feels, sees, and
hears the attitudes that permeate
this community and country at
large, the main attitude being,
"we would rather have you
people here as janitors to clean
our floors and toilets. The few of
you who are here as "minority"
students, we need because of the
federal fundingwe receive."
-Malika a. Mutakabbir
April 17
Mistaken
To the Daily:
I want to correct the misinfor-
med Barry Himmelstein who, in
a letter (Daily, April 18), refers
to The Explorers Club as "a gang
of big game hunters." In fact, for
the past 75 years The Explorers
Club has served as an inter-
national focal point for
geographical, geological,
oceanographic, archeological
and, recently, space exploration.
The Club flag was with Admiral
Peary when he reached the North
Pole and with Roald Amundsen
at the South Pole.
At this year's annual dinner,
honors were given to members
Lowell Thomas, pioneer in
broadcast journalism, Carl von
Hoffman who, in 1906, began his
career in exploration by studying
Tartar tribes in Siberia, and my
father, Henry S. Evans, former
volcanologist and current editor
of the Explorers Journal.
As for Hippopotamus pate,
doesn't Himmelstein know you
can get anything in New York?
-Jeffrey E. Evans
April21
4
I
I
I
a
"Perhaps you've wondered how we plan to get out of this. So have we."
0