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t the Fair begin "it seems there's a better way to do all this."
Art Fair starts today! If you're at all like me,
ou're probably sitting around kicking yourself that
ou didn't find a way toget out of town earlier. Now - Neal Shine, publisher of the Detroit Free Press
ou'restuck.Andguesswhat:.Youaregoingnowhere.
So, you might as well deal with it. Get ready to Viewpoint,
swallowed up by the Art Fair, kind of an old
ople'e Hash Bash. It's the one time of the year
henthecity ofAnnArborrecognizesthatthestreets
ound campus are useful for more than a way to trap
udents into getting shafted for parking tickets. A
And when you get down to it, that's what really A d r ssL th1o to e u a i n
makes Art Fair so special. They will still tow cars
ith glee, but since itcovers uptheentire city,there's By Flint . Wainess sculptors seeing no way to make a living without
o place to park anyways. The fair takes up the only An undergraduate degree from the attending law school, should the Congress be
artof the city that really matters: It closes South U., University of Michigan will cost an incoming attacking the National Endowments for the Arts
orth U., State St., Washington, Liberty, Main, and first-year student somewhere in the ballpark of and the Humanities, or the Corporation for Public
or allpracticalpurposes,M-14andl-94, sincetraffic $24,000. That is, if a student graduates in four Broadcasting?
on't move from today until sometime next month years, takes no spring/summer classes, has no
hen it unclogs. major medical problems or has comprehensive I can think of no better time to begin a
It's not that I hate the whole Art Fair escapade. health insurance, has his or her housing fully dialogue on such fundamental issues to the
s just that I have this sort of natural aversion to paid for by financial aid, doesn't need to buy student community as this week. Tomorrow, the
assive crowds of 100,000 people in sweltering heat textbooks, gets free food from Meijer, and has Board of Regents will be presented the requested
wandering for no particular reason for hours, and no need for non-academic, co-curricular or 1995-96 budget; and Friday, the regents will
hen not getting anywhere, all the while dropping academic pursuits, a degree will cost $24,000. vote on the provost's proposal to raise tuition at
mustard on their Birkenstocks. Of course, you don't Perhaps a decade ago society could afford to levels ranging from 4.9 percent to 6.8 percent. If
have your choice of where you want to go, either. turn a blind eye to the exorbitant costs of higher history is any indication, the regents will approve
You drift into the mob, and see where it goes later. education. After all, higher education was the requested budget with little discussion about
DrivingbackfromWisconsinacoupleofweeks thought to be a choice; a useful benefit to the monumental importance of the rising costs
ago, I noticed signs for the Art Fair on I-75 near society, yes, but mainly to keep the cogs of the of higher education.
Mackinac Bridge. I guess that is where the cheap Cold War machine working. Moreover, a To be fair, the proposed tuition increases are
arking is located. ("Shuttles will be running from cacophony of sociologists, Marxists and by no means extravagant. No new major
e U.P. on the hour forthe best deal in parking....") disgruntled activists argued, only blue-collar initiatives are to be undertaken with student
If you take out the insane crowds and traffic, I workers are the true heroes of the American dollars, and the University has gone through
love the concept of an art fair. Truly, I do. The dream. great pains to raise money from other sources.
conceptofamobofpeople notexactly getting along But yesterday's world by no means exists Nevertheless, students should be concerned
but not quite rioting either really appeals to me. But today. A rapidly changing society now knows a for, as you know, tuition does not exist in a
that's not what this art fair is about. It's about simple truth: An undergraduate degree, if you're bubble. The writing of a budget is a process that
driftwoodsculptorsandguyswithponytailshawking lucky, can help you get clerical work. It is no evolves overa year and, traditionally, the student
piles and piles of crap. Remember the art fairs your longer a ticket to the middle class; it is now a role has been not to influence that evolution, but
parents would drag you to as a kid? There would be ticket to further education. to try to influence its results. I aver that this must
some cool pictures, some neat paintings, but what And there's nothing wrong with that change. change, and the leadership of change must come
you really dug were the rubber band guns and bottle If change can be conceptualized as coming in from a coalition of elected representatives, which
games. Now that you are in college and can shoot waves, the most devastating approach our oddly means both MSA and the Board of
people with the real things, I can't think of much to generation can take is to simply brace ourselves Regents.
do anymore. I'msure there will be some great works for disaster; our peculiar task is to embrace the Together, we need to begin shaping an
on display, but it's not like anyone is going to run wave, to predict its course and, most important, affordable future, an inclusive system of higher
throughitwithacartspendinglikethey'reatMeijer's. to chart its course. education - and yes, that can be done, even
As if it weren't crazy enough, Orientation will Thus, it is one of the great ironies of history within today's tuition rates. It can be done, for
also be full swing. There will be about 300 students that 1995 marks the year in which federal instance, by protecting and expanding financial
walkingaroundevenmoreaimlesslythanusual.Ican spending for higher education has been subject aid, working toward comprehensive health
sympathize with their plight, because my first to such a barrage of inflammatory attacks. insurance for all students, and keeping campus
impression of the University also came at Art Fair. Precisely when it became an accepted truth that housing affordable. From textbooks to tuition, it
I remember the walking tour quite well: "Over higher education is the ticket to prosperity, is time students, faculty and administration band
re we have the Law Library, which houses the funding for higher education came under attack together to insure higher education will expand
underground-uh, aquarium. Over on State Street at both the federal and state level. With no cure its mighty wings to all of society; the alternative
you'll see 'Fat Louie's Crazy Nachos'. Over there, for AIDS or Alzheimers, with no answers to is too Dickensian to bear.
where all those trailers are parked? That's the Diag." pressing problems such as urban decay and -Wainess, an LSA senior, serves as student
After about two hours of munching on elephant crime, should the Congress be attacking precious representative to the Board of Regents as
ears(bread dough fried in lard and rolled in sugar. An research dollars? With student writers and Michigan Student Assembly president
American classic), I knew that I could handle dorm
food in the fall. So it wasn't a complete waste. ,. Uec R By Matt Wimsatt
I suppose that for a lot of students these next few W G ?
dayscouldbringupsomeprettytraumaticmemories. N E
It could be the last time you ate greaseballs wrapped
pretzel salt and they didn't bode well with your ,
dneys. Or maybe you didn't practice trying to walk
at four inches per stride in 95 degree heat in a grumpy
mob. (They do have the ArtFairMaster at the CCRB,
youknow.)Forme,itwasthattimebackatOrientation.
It took me an hour to get from East Quad to Ulrich's /
andbackjusttogetalousy Michigan shirt.Theworst
thing about it was when I was trying to squeeze 'V
through the gawkers on South U I got accosted by a -
horde of streaking clowns. There were 20 of them
and they all had evil clown makeup on. They started
urrounding me and chanting and throwing cotton
ndy and- oh, wait. That happened to some other
guy. I get the horror stories confused.
It won't be all that bad, I guess. I'll get my fill of
beaded necklaces. And maybe I might find a cool
photo. Still, I expect about two hours of decent T / TI-rr OF ANN ARBOR RPE$S oQ r4'5
shopping and four days of hell.

lay, July 19, 1995 - The Michigan Daily - 5
The right side of
the picket line
My momma taught me never to cross a picket
line.
So when the Detroit Newspaper Agency went
on strike Thursday I did what was natural: I took
an indefinite break from my less-than-glamorous
stringing job at The Detroit News.
I think that Mom always feared the potential
danger of angry strikers, out of work and fighting
for their livelihoods. To her, strikes are a conflict
not to get in the middle of.
But she also instilled something deeper in me:
Picket lines should not be crossed, to work or to
purchase, because laborers need to be supported in
getting what they want.
In fourth grade, when my elementary school
went on strike, my divorced parents were divided
on the issue. As a small business owner my father
was unsympathetic to the teachers, and so I had to
go to school and face frustrated substitutes who in
turn faced us - unprepared in front of 40-plus 9
year olds. A woman made me stand with my face
in the corner because I had not asked before
getting up to sharpen my pencil. After school I ran
to my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Jaqua, at the
picket line and cried, and she about cried too -
because she would rather have been with her
students, who, she could see, were miserable.
News columnist Nickie McWhirter (I did not
buy the paper but found Saturday's and Sunday's
outside an apartment building on Church Street,
rainsoaked and abandoned), proclaiming herself a
veteran of many strikes and giving the backhand
to unions everywhere, wrote in Sunday's News
that workers and papers both lose in strikes. She
wrote, "If anybody can tell me what a strike is
good for except self-destruction, please do."
Prominently displayed on the front page of
Saturday's combined strike paper, Free Press
publisher Neal Shine wrote, "there have been better
days." He went on to say, "Instead of expressing their
traditional right to free speech in the columns of the
News and Free Press as they usually do, striking
employees of both newspapers are expressing that
right at the top of their lungs on the picket lines."
How is expressing themselves in a column
about their job dissatisfaction going to help their
plight? We writers wouldn't want to downplay the
grandiose importance of our work, but sometimes
action is needed. How is one column voice going
to compare to the unified voices of six unions?
What's missing here is an understanding that
the issues debated are not petty or frivolous - nor
can they be reduced to employee greed.
National Public Radio's "Morning Edition"
featured a striker who expressed his view that the
management's paper would only be good for such
unpleasant functions as lining the bottom of a bird
cage or cleaning up dog poop, but nothing more.
That seems to balance out the Detroit Newspaper
Agency's overblown image of its Associated Press-
dominated pages. Frankly, though, in this flip
comment lies a truth: The News and the Free Press
aren't newspapers without their small parts. It
takes every aspect and every person to put out a
finished product. To think that the company can
survive without the workers is sheer arrogance.
The cost of newsprint is going up, and
readership is sadly going down. And I concur with
News editor and publisher Robert H. Giles that
Detroit should have not one, but two newspapers.
But everyone involved in the process, from
reporters to distributors, have a stake in the
newspapers as well. Taking it out on them is not a
solution. We're all on the same side here, folks ...
or at least, we were. And the newspaper industry
will not stay strong without the people inside it.
Mom was right - you have to stand by the
workers. No matter how many times I re-evaluate
that ideal, I come down on the outside of the picket
line.