OPINION
Page 4 Wednesday, June 8.,19941
EDITOR IN CHIEF 420 Maynard Street
James M. Nash Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan.
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
Patrick Javid Unsigned editorials present the opinion of a majority of the Daily's
Jason S. Lichtstein editorial board. All other cartoons, signed articles and letters
do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Daily.
a
The University's communication depart-
ment now bears the taint of financial
mismanagement. A just-released audit
chronicles 3-1/2 years of spending from
three endowments, spending that has raised
serious ethical questions about how the
department-and the University as a whole
- distribute its donations.
More than $400,000 may have been mis-
spent. Using privately funded endowments,
department officials took trips abroad, dined
at posh restaurants, attended video festivals
and a lecture on "Boogie Woogie and Blues
Piano." The endowments were intended for
student internships, visiting professors and
research into contemporary media issues.
The apparent spending abuses may or
may not be related to the past turmoil sur-
rounding the department, but the audit adds
yet another question mark over the unit's
future. The communication department is
without a permanent leader in the wake of
former chair Neil Malamuth's resignation.
Indeed, the problems in the department pre-
Communication
Fiasco
Department must restore money, image
date Malamuth: several spending abuses
documented in the audit occurred under
former chair Frank Beaver. Lacking a leader
and a sense of direction, the communication
department was fertile ground for misman-
agement and squandering of funds.
Little did the donors realize the future of
their department when establishing the en-
dowments. In 1974and'75, when the endow-
ment accounts were established, the Univer-
sity had a journalism department. Now it has
a communication department, one that con-
tinues to drift from traditional journalism to
quantitative social sciences.
Moreover, the department has been
stripped of its bylaws and self-governance. It
is under the control of LSA Dean Edie
Goldenberg, who has named an interim de-
partment chair. If the takeover of the depart-
ment is not enough to scare away potential
donors, the incidents ofmisspendingreported,
in the audit may well be. It is another sad twist
in the department's recent past and another
roadblock to the future.
The situation is not all bleak, however.
University Auditor Carl Smith has wisely
seized this opportunity to suggest a broat
probe of endowment funds. Goldenbe<
has reacted by pledging that LSA will
velop "clear and specific guidelines" fo:
endowment spending. For too long, the
University has operated under a vague policy
statement on endowments that is suscep
tible to interpretation - and abuse. The
questions raised in the audit report shoulk
provide further impetus for LSA and the
University to regulate its spending.
Thanks tolax monitoring ofendowmer4
the abuses were allowed to continue througl
this year. The University lacks the resource
to audit departments unless charges of im
propriety force its hand. The University di
not investigate the communication endow
ments until the son of a donor alleged the
money was being misused. Stricter monitor
ing procedures need to be implemented, an<
followed, to avoid future spending abus
Only then can the brazen abuse of endow
ments be prevented, and the department's
image rehabilitated.
Welfare reform: a plan
Chutzpah needed to fend off conservatives
Conservative revolt
Is the religious right taking over America?
Pst forward to 1995. Assume that all
Americans will have health care rights
that can never be taken away, the economy
will be in good shape and the GOP will have
enough senators to filibuster almost any
Clinton proposal. For the country as a whole,
this probably means the fractionalization of
Washington, a gridlock so fierce that the
wave of hope Clinton and Gore rode into the
White House will have frozen. For welfare
reform,thiscouldmeansomethingevenmore
insidious: the president's campaign pledge to
"end welfare as we know it" could mean
ending welfare altogether.
Virtually no one disagrees that welfare is
out of hand; and no one disagrees that the
current welfare state encourages some de-
pendency (although fewer than 20 percent
of welfare recipients stay on welfare for
longer than two years). Unfortunately, the
above has become disingenuous rhetoric
used to veil the true conservative agenda:
eliminating the state social welfare net.
Campaigning for the presidency, Bill
Clintonunderstoodtheneed for compassion-
ate reform of the welfare system. Perhaps,
when his plan is finalized and presented to
Congress, he will ignore conservatives and
propose a plan to truly revolutionize welfare.
But preliminary reports do not indicate any-
thing of the sort. The Clinton team appears to
be deadlocked on anumber of issues. Clinton
d oesn't want welfare to be a way of life, but
what if after two years on welfare, a parent
still can't find a job? Should benefits be
yanked away? Or should the government
"provide placement assistance to help every-
one find a job, and give the people who can't
find one a dignified and meaningful commu-
nity service job," as Clinton and Gore wrote
in Putting People First ? The solution is to
mandate work requirements but also to real-
ize that finding a job that pays enough to
support a family is not always easy. Before
this could be instituted, however, there would
need to be a drastic expansion of child care
and job retraining services. The minimum
wage should also be raised to around $5.
Yet, expanding benefits costs money.
Obstructionists in Congress are married to
the notion that spending money can never be
good, even if it yields returns in the long run.
Evidence the wordsofSenate Minority Leader
Bob Dole (R-Kan.): "It's not welfare reform
if it costs more." And President Clinton has
said that the administration would drastically
reduce the level of child care services that it
originally projected. In other words, the fu-
ture of welfare is at stake unless benefits are
extended across the board to help those be-
low the poverty line. Although the conserva-
tive-fueled myth of welfare mothers using
drugs and unwilling to work is alive and well
in the U.S. Congress, we anxiously await
congressionalorpresidentialchutzpahtofight
off the conservatives.
liver North on Saturday won the Repub-
lican nomination for Senate in Virginia.
This is just one of several Republican state
conventions around the country in which the
religious right is winning contests over more
moderate segments of the Republican Party.
Even Ronald Reagan voiced his opposition
to North's nomination, indicating that the
Republicans are in danger come November
when their religious right candidates will
have to compete against more moderate
Democrats. However, the real danger lies in
their extremist ideology -the religious right
discriminates and fights to eliminate equal
rights through their crusade for "morality."
The realthreat posed by thereligious right
comes not from nationally televised contests
for state and national representatives, but
from lesser known elections on local school
boards across the country. Over the past year,
fundamentalist Christians have been win-
ning these elections in record numbers: The
National Association of Christian Educators/
Citizens for Excellence in Education say
their followers won 6,000 school board seats
in 1993. And many of them are stealth
candidateswhowaituntilafterthey areelected
to reveal their religious agenda. In this way,
they undermine the democratic system of
representation by implementing programs
they never mentioned in their campaign.
Threatening examples of the religious
right's crusade abound: It fights to add
creationismtoschoolcurriculumand attempt
to keep public school students from learnini
that condoms prevent disease transmission
It advocates the superiority of American cul
ture and argues for the constitutionality o
school prayer. In New York City, the Chris
tian Coalition blocked a proposal for
multiculuturalcurriculumbecauseitincludes
references to families with gay and lesbi
parents -the group said the program wouT
"teach sodomy to first graders." In Lak<
County, Fla., teachers are now required to tel
students that American culture is "superior t<
other foreignorhistoric cultures." This brans
of intolerance is precisely what is not neede<
in our public schools.
The religious right claims it is fighting fo
the free exercise of religion, and often com
pares its struggle to that of African Ame4
cans and other oppressed groups. For ex
ample, the religious right uses the Bill o
Rights to justify its crusade for school prayer
But this misses the point. The Bill of Right
was created precisely to protect minorit
religions, not to impose viewpoints onevery
one else. The increase in the election o
religious right candidates ironically threat
ens the free exercise of religion itself, and 14
this reason - coupled with its electoral ex
tremism - the religious right poses a threa
to both the Republican Party and Americar
society. We must all be vigilant- and checl
this threat.