The Michigan Daily - Monday, July 28, 2003 - 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR State's budget is indeed good for higher education To THE DAILY: I wish to respond to the edi- torial entitled Budget Crunch: Large funding cuts will hurt stu- dents and state (7/21/03). As the Michigan Student Assembly's external relations chair, I have worked extensively with other schools throughout the state of Michigan to lobby on behalf of the University's stu- dents. While I agree that the new budget will hurt Michigan stu- dents, it is inevitable that any budget in our current economic situation would have such an effect. I would like to address two of the major points in the editorial, funding discrepancies and the Merit Scholarship. While it is definitely true that Grand Valley State Univer- sity will fare better this year than other universities, it is important to understand recent history. Last year GVSU received less than $3,000 per student, while the University received approximately $9,000 per student. While one can argue a difference in educational qual- ity between the schools, GVSU and Saginaw Valley State were the only schools to fall below $4,000. When the Association of Michigan Universities, a lobby- ing body consisting of student government officers of the 15 public universities, met this past year, one of our priorities was equalizing the discrepancies in state funding. I truly believe that the state's creation of a $3,850 per student floor funding is a positive step in advancing edu- cation throughout the state of Michigan. With regards to the Merit Scholarship, it has been shown that students from more affluent areas will do better on the exam, that is not in dispute at all. In fact, the governor's proposed Michigan Opportunity Scholar- ship program was designed to move some of the Merit money toward financially needy stu- dents. However, your own article applauds the legislature for not supporting this program as it is heavily biased toward private school students. Additionally, this past fall Proposal 4 was a ballot measure that would have taken the Merit money and given it to hospitals and health care. The citizens of Michigan over- whelming voted against this idea, and supported the students of higher education. The state needs a merit-based incentive for students to keep her highest- achieving students in the state. Whether the Michigan Educa- tional Assessment Program test is the most appropriate way to gauge students, well, that is another issue. The final budget definitely supports students more than anyone could have predicted 8 months ago, and I personally am very pleased to learn that tuition will only increase 6.5 percent, as opposed to the rumors of 10 to 15 percent that circulated last winter. BOBBY COUNIHAN Engineering senior The letter writer is the external relations chair of the Michigan Student Assembly and an MSA representative from the College of Engineering. No evidence U.S. government wants to 'Christianize' Iraqis TO THE DAILY: In Ari Paul's latest article, he brought up concerns that Ameri- can missionaries might be given carte blanche by the U.S. gov- ernment. While these might be valid concerns, such a fear has no historical precedent. Although the United States is a religious nation, spreading reli- gion has never been the agenda of the government. Only one such incident, as I can recall, was President William McKin- ley's letter after the the Philip- pines had been won from Spain during the Spanish-American War. In that letter, he wrote that it was the duty to "Christianize" the native peoples (even though they had already been reached by Spanish missionaries). Despite this, it was the premise of the U.S. government, not propagating religion, that attracted the Chinese to deal in trade with the Americans during the latter years of the Qing dynasty. The British, French, Italian and Dutch had, at times, influence in the imperial court through missionary ties and the Americans had no interest in doing this. , In conclusion, I find Paul's apprehensions, while valid, to be slightly unfounded. I don't believe the U.S. government has any agenda to spread religion. The only challenge I foresee is making sure the Iraqis see the mission of the American govern- ment and the mission of Ameri- can missionaries as distinct and separate. RAHMAN WooDs Alumnus It must be the shoes DANIEL ADAMS ADVANTA G? PUSH. Number nine on my cable box is E SPN. When nothing else is on, I know exactly what to expect from this network - pure drivel. ESPN is a fas- cinating creation of cable television. A good idea on paper, except for one small problem - sports aren't played 24 hours a day. Solution? Boil entire games down to highlights, and show the same highlights all day. Then, have a bunch of has-beens and never-weres talk about the highlights. Now that's quality entertainment. Media outlets like ESPN have a unique and unparalleled ability to turn athletes into personalities. They build these men and women up into icons; then, with great quickness, dispatch the dogs to tear them apart. So I can only imagine the wet dream ESPN and its executives had over Kobe Bryant's current legal trouble. Huge, gaping holes in programming can now be stuffed full of Kobe. Their packs of analysts now have a lamb for the slaughter - an athlete at the peak of his career, without a blemish on his record. Without doubt, Kobe Bryant was untouchable in the media, that is, before he opened the door and let a 19-year-old, and a world of problems into his life. How hard they fall, and how fun it is to watch. We collectively gasp when a sports star is exposed as having personal problems, when most of us have our own skeletons in the closet. Kobe Bryant cheated on his wife. Did we expect more of Bryant? He promised the fans wins, not marital fidelity. You want an athlete? There he is. You want a role model? Be careful what you wish for. The media put these men under the microscope, expect perfection then wonder aloud why athletes can't deliver. They say they want upstanding role mod- els. They say that Bryant had a responsi- bility to seta good example. Turn the channel: number 74 on my cable box is the Outdoor Life Network, with such fine programs as "The Running of the Bulls," "Total Bull: The PBR" and "Bill Dance Outdoors." Somewhere in the middle of all that garbage, OLN broadcasts the Tour de France. In this year's tour, two Americans dominated most of the field and put on a pretty good show. Chances are pretty good that you've heard of one: Lance Armstrong, the bike rider, turned cancer survivor, turned five time Tour de France champion. It's hard to underestimate how miraculous his story is, both athletically and personally. The other rider, Tyler Hamilton, has ridden almost the entire length of this year's Tour with a double- fracture of his collarbone, an injury he sus- tained in the first stage of the event. Here's the kicker: He finished fourth in a field that includes the finest cyclists in the world. Just like Bryant, these men are dominant in their sport - athletic perfection. Unlike Bryant, these men have demonstrated courage and integrity - the very things Bryant seems to be lacking. Sports media have in Armstrong and Hamilton the role models they claim to demand, yet aren't interested - the only station that carries the Tour is OLN, your source for professional bullriding and sport-fishing. Sure, ESPN mentions Armstrong in passing and some- times features a small clip of him dropping the hammer on his rivals, but asa whole it is uninterested in promoting Armstrong to the extent it had once promoted Bryant. Why? Bikes don't draw ratings. Here we have two amazing athletes that have proven to be upstanding individuals, but happen to participate in a sport that does- n't make money with an American audi- ence. If Bryant had a responsibility to set a good example, ESPN too has a similar responsibility to step up and showcase men like Armstrong and Hamilton. It won't, however, because cycling is bor- ing. How sad. Meanwhile, our favorite sports: basketball, baseball and football, have given us a veritable all-star team of fallen icons. If we are to boil sports down to the individual and turn athletes into celebrities, we had better be more careful of whom we choose to elevate. This recent episode with Kobe Bryant won't be the last-time an athlete has fallen from the public's good graces. It's part of a long and disturbing pattern, yet the fans will keep coming back for more and come laden with the same misplaced trust. Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me a hundred times over? I'll take box seats. Adams can be reached at dnadams@umich.edu. Cheney eyeing brand new liver spot JOHN HONKALA Too EABLY I THE SLN Hey politicos! It's been a tough two weeks for criminals, but that hasn't stooped The Scoop from peeping through Y blinds and rifling through personal files to find the latest dirt on American politicians and entertainers. It took us a while, but boy did we find some damaging slander! We've got the black eyes to prove it. Sources close to Vice President Dick Cheney tell us he's considering getting a Mikhail Gorbachev forehead blemish surgically implanted on his own shiny dome. Seems our creepy VP is a big fan of the former Soviet leader. Let's just hope he doesn't exchange his lovely wife Lynn for a Russian mail-order bride! Lynnie's just too cute. Item! It appears that U.S. Army sol- diers stationed in Baghdad have been pre- occupied lately. It seems that last April a troop accidentally blew a hole through the wall of Iraq's only mental hospital for the clinically insane and then left the facili- ty and its drugs open to looters. (Better keep an eye on Matthew Perry!) Appar- ently all the crazies left the joint and have now joined chief U.S. administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer in aimlessly wandering the streets of Baghdad. Let's hope those soldiers had their minds on the lovely Rebecca Romijn-Stamos of USO Project Salute 2003 instead of Kid Rock. (Or vice versa for those pretty-lady combatants.) It says here that the nation's unem- ployment rate has hit a nine-year high - 6.4 percent. We found this little tidbit in some rag called The New York Times. Well, we here at The Scoop don't know what sort of operation these Times peo- ple are running, but they might want to find a fact checker. Don't they know that if the unemployment rate reached such a crippling rate, our Savior and Manna,' George W. Bush would be doing some- thing about it? We think it's time for the Times to punch their time card and get out of the news business! Item!A joint Congressional committee released last weeka report on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, directing most of its criti- cism toward the C.I.A. and the EB.I. for their failure to exchange crucial informa- tion. Well, duh! Tell us something we don't know. Now, if only the committee could tell us who let Secretary of Defense Don- aid Rumsfeld publish a book of poetry. Uh oh! Fighting in the streets of Liberia. Seems like the tiny West African nation was created by none other than our favorite imperialist, The United States of America, so we're obligated to help them. Good thing we have so many troops in Baghdad right now keeping their military skills sharp. Just tell the Liberians to call us whenever they need us. We'll be there as quick as you can say "Let's rape our national park system!" And speaking of the military, some- body should have told President Dubya that getting out of Baghdad wasn't going to be as easy as getting in. Shoot, didn't Georgie learn anything from former big cheese Bill Clinton and handbag designer Monica Lewinsky?! Item! Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed by American forces in northern Iraq last week. I guess no one told them before they died that pig Latin is only funny when you're 10. Oh well, at least they died with their faces on playing cards (Aces at that!), which is more than we can say about for- mer Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand, who was slaughtered and turned into dog food in Japan last week. If we could be serious a moment, don't the Japanese real- ize that horses are not to be treated like some sort of cow, raised specifically to be slaughtered bloodily for hamburger meat? Item! People magazine is reporting that Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant recently purchased a $4 million ring for his wife after confessing publicly to an adulterous affair with a 19- year-old woman in Colorado. Doesn't he realize that $4 million equals 45 extra minutes we could have troops stationed in Iraq? C'mon, Kobe, where's your patriotism? Looks like my Kobe Sprite poster is headed straight for the trash bin along with my copy of the Dixie Chicks' "Wide Open Spaces" single. That's it for this week, folks. Don't for- get to read next week's column where we reveal why Tom Cruise is our arch-neme- sis. Until then, The Scoop says read USA Today and shop at Wal-Mart. (Psst ... word is, glamorous Hollywood actor Freddie Prinze Jr. does too!) Honkala can be reached at jhonkala@umich.edu.