4 - The Michigan Daily - Monday, May 24, 1999 Edited and managed by EmitY ACHENBAUM NICK WOOMER students at the Editor in Chief Editorial Page Editor University of Michigan min 3 Unless otherwise noted, urnsigned editorials reflect the op>inion of the 420 Maynard Street aorit iofithe iailis editorial board lll other articlelettersand Ann Arbor, MI 48109 cartoonu do not necessariv reflect the opinion of The Michigan Dai. E veryone at the University can breathe a little easier now that Gov. John Engler's plan to revamp the way state colleges and universities are funded has been killed by a Senate panel in Lansing. Engler's plan would have been disastrous for large research institutions like the University and Michigan State University. The Senate's reasonable answer to Engler's plan, a far less rigid proposal by Sen. John Schwarz (R-Battle Creek), is a better approach to the funding of higher education and deserves to be looked at carefully. The now-dead funding proposal, which zipped through the state House of Representatives earlier this year, called for dividing each of the state's 15 public col- leges and universities into four groups. Colleges and universities within each group would have received the same amount of money for each in-state student enrolled. The plan would have resulted in an insignif- icant 3 percent increase in state funding for the University, Wayne State University and Quadi paive differences Engler funding plan was recipe for disaster Eastern Michigan University. MSU, Engler's alma mater, would have received a 4.6 percent increase. The lack of appreciation for the qualita- tive differences between each of the state's colleges and universities demonstrated by Engler and many in the legislature is unset- tling. No one in the university community should forget such a gross over-simplifica- tion of matters when the lawmakers respon- sible for the plan come up for reelection. The notion that the issue of funding for higher education in Michigan can be settled by simply placing each institution into one of four tiers is absurd. Every school in the state's system of public colleges and univer- sities plays a unique role in the larger scheme of higher education and therefore has different funding needs. In general, the University, with its large number of graduate students and research facilities, requires more state funds in order to accomplish its educational goals. Specifically, with the cost of constructing the new Life Sciences Institute looming in the near future, the University will need to have access to more state funds if it is to keep tuition from raising yet again. Last year Lansing only raised the University's funds by 3 percent but tuition shot up by 4.5 percent. Lawmakers pressur- ing the University to use the rate of inflation as a benchmark for setting tuition can not justify allowing state support for higher education to slide. It ought to be obvious to Engler and certain legislators that cutting- edge research does not move ahead in har- mony with Michigan families' ability to pay for higher education. Engler's plan to appropriate money o groups of public colleges and universitW will hurt Michigan's smaller institutions as well. Like their larger counterparts, schools like Ferris State University and Lake Superior State University have their own specific needs that must be addressed indi- vidually by lawmakers in Lansing. Engler and certain members of the House must take note of the flaws inherent in grouping Michigan's public colleges and universities as they hammer out a compro- mise between the Engler plan an Schwarz's proposal. If lawmakers want W make higher education more affordable to Michigan residents and simultaneously maintain the status of some of the state's colleges and universities as first class research institutions, they must be willing to i'dividually address each institution's specific needs. Dead wrong Illinois case shows flaws with death penalty Sex offender list fraught with problems L ast week, after eight years of sitting on death row, Ronald James was exonerated by the state of Illinois. Originally convicted for rape and mur- der, DNA tests proved that Jones could not have committed the crime. The national attention given to Jones' release brings to the forefront the larger question of the state of capital punishment in the United States - and the facts over- whelmingly show that the death penalty is an inappropriate method for punishing criminals. The problem with the death penalty begins with its discriminatory nature. Without standard national rules dictating when the death penalty should be sought, African Americans are disproportionate- ly sentenced to death. Today, 36 percent of the inmates on death row are black, while African Americans constitute only 12 percent of the nation's population. Similar discrimination is evident when examining the race of the victim in capi- tal punishment cases. 82 percent of death penalty cases in the United States involved white victims. Further strengthening the case against the death penalty is the number of inno- cent people on death row. When he was released, Ronald Jones became one of 79 men and women released from death row since the inception of the modern death penalty in 1973. Those numbers equate to one innocent for every seven people executed, a proportion that cannot be tol- erated. While some may argue that these drawbacks are necessary evils to main- tain capital punishment, the statistics show that the death penalty is not effec- tive in deterring crime. When states with the death penalty are compared to states without the death penalty, the non death penalty states often have lower murder rates. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, in 1997, the average murder rate per 100,000 people in death penalty states was 6.6 people, while in non-death nenalty states the average wasj only 3.5. While the drawbacks to capital punishment should not be tolerated under any circumstances, they become even more ridiculous as capital punish- ment continually proves to be ineffec- tive. If capital punishment must continue, at least for the time being, improvements must be made to combat discrimination and the number of innocent people on death row. Lawmakers can start by guar- anteeing better legal representation for defendants in capital cases. Currently, most defendants in capital cases, too poor to hire their own lawyers, are given court-appointed lawyers. These lawyers are often underpaid and inexperienced. In fact, some states limit the compensa- tion a court-appointed attorney can receive in a death-penalty case to under $2,000. This obviously results in sub- standard legal representation and increased false convictions. Lawmakers should also institute mandatory DNA tests when applicable. Something as sim- ple as this could have spared Ronald Jones eight years on death row and most likely many other inmates their lives. But even with these improvements, capital punishment should not continue. Disregarding the looming moral issues, the fact remains that capital punishment is discriminatory and ineffective. Rather than spend their time wasting often inno- cent lives, lawmakers should look for alternative methods to punish criminals. [ ather than fulfilling their duty to Michigan residents by treating sex offenders, the Michigan state police have instead published the state's list of sex offenders on the Internet. The stated rea- son behind the list is to aid parents in identifying sex offenders who may be living in their neighborhood. While committing sex offenses should be looked upon seriously, sex offenders are nevertheless entitled to live out their lives as normal citizens after having completed their sentence, instead of being subject to public humiliation as a result of this published list. Sex offend- ers should be given the opportunity to truly rehabilitate during their sentence to alleviate any public fear that the offend- ers will repeat their offense once they return back to society. The state police have no need to publish such as list on the Internet where it can be accessed by people with all sorts of intentions. Many problems are currently associ- ated with publishing this list on the web site. The list of sex offenders is not com- pletely accurate. Mistakes are found in as much as 25 percent of the registry. Instead of trying to remedy the problem or take the list offline, the state requests at the bottom of the list that citizens "contact your local police agency or sheriff's department... to report the dis- crepancy" Furthermore, only the per- sonal descriptions of the sex offenders are published along with the offense that they committed. But the vast majority of crimes attributed to those listed are con- victions of criminal sexual conduct with no additional information such as the date of the offense. Many individuals listed were born in the '30s, '40s or '50s making it quite possible that the offense these individuals committed occurred decades ago. Sex offenders are put on this list with- out exception. Minor offenders, such as those convicted of crimes like indecent exposure under certain circumstances, could have their names put on the 1i0 Even sex offenders should not have to face their whole life living in the shad- ows of a crime for which they have served out their punishment or that they committed a long while back. Sen. David Jaye (R-Macomb), main- tains his own site which has a disclaimer reading: "This list represents our best effort to accurately duplicate the infor- mation provided. We are not responsi for inaccuracies." Such an irresponsible action by a public servant should be con- demned by voters. Instead of publishing a list of sex offenders, the state police should focus on rehabilitating them while they are serving their time. The state should pass legislation to ensure that sex offenders receive comprehensive psychological treatment while they are serving time in prison so that when they return to soci- ety, they are rehabilitated. The state police should no longer resort to such counterproductive tactics as publishing the names of sex offenders on the Internet. On a practical level, the inaccuracies in such a list will inevitably lead to harassment of innocent people. From a moral standpoint, society's fun- demental concept ofjustice demands that those who have paid their debts to soci- ety for their crimes should not be pl* ished any further. In order to solve the problem, the state should focus their efforts on the psychological roots of sex crimes