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.