4 Monday, June 11, 2007 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com C, he WicbiganDailu KATE TRUESDELL An indiscriminate infection Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@umich.edu IMRAN SYED EDITOR IN CHIEF GARY GRACA EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. Allother signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of theirauthors. The last straw Recruitment cannot overcome law's limits After months of hard work by the University to recruit underrepresented minorities and main- tain diversity, the final admissions numbers are in - and the results aren't looking good. In a year that total admissions increased dramatically, minority admis- sions were the exception to the rule. It's time to face the harsh reality many have dreaded - the University can't promote diversity on its own. Proposal 2 needs to go. In the last few months, the media has buzzed about the hot- test new sexually transmitted infection to grace the nation, one that has been linked to seri- ous health problems like cervi- cal cancer. Part of that buzz has been the advertising campaign to promote Gardasil, the inocu- lation against the virus. But as I have followed the media's frenzy over HPV, I have become increasingly alarmed. Wanting to be a responsible healthcare connoisseur (not to mention wanting to keep my cervix intact), but not loving the prospect of voluntarily offering up my arm as a pincushion, I decided to do my own investiga- tion of HPV and the vaccine. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for the HPV vaccine. As a rule, I'm very anti-cancer -- a stance I think most people share. My beef has to do with one little detail I have never read in the news coverage: men. After poking around the Cen- ters for Disease Control and Prevention's website, I learned that men are equally as likely to be carriers of the virus as women are. Maybe that's not such a shocker, but this led me to wonder why all the commer- cials for the vaccine featured little Suzy riding around on her skateboard, talking about how she wanted to be "one less." Why was little Sam distress- ingly less concerned with con- tracting HPV? The answer is that the vaccine has not yet been licensed for men. Why, you ask? Because testing of the vaccine on men began only recently; its effectiveness and side effects are still being investigated. But this is the part that confus- es me. Despite the fact that men and women are equally vulner- able to this disease, women were targeted first for STI prevention - a prevention that includes multiple painful injections, as well as high costs to either the patient or the government. This raises some serious ques- tions. Why is it that women were targeted first in a seemingly guinea pig-like fashion? Why is it that, once again, sexual health responsibility falls singularly upon the shoulders of women? Please do not disregard this as the rantings of a bitter feminist. I am concerned for men, too. According to the CDC, there is evidence to suggest a possible link between HPV and genital cancer in men as well. So while little Suzy can skateboard off into the sunset, carefree little Sam has to worry about the pos- sibility of contracting penial or anal cancer somewhere down the road. This hardly seems fair. The real question is, why did this disparity in research and, consequentially, in treatment exist at all? It seems like every- one stands to gain something from this treatment. Without it, men have a lot to (ahem) lose. And that would be a shame. Kate Truesdell is an LSA senior and a member of the Daily's editorial board. While the percentage of admitted applicants increased by 15 percent this year, minority applicants did not see a boost; the number of underrepresented applicants admitted to the Uni- versity dropped by 7.4 percent. Additionally, the acceptance gap for minorities compared to non- minorities closed from 12 per- cent to about one percent. Some may point to these statis- tics as a sign of Proposal 2's suc- cess, with the rate of acceptance turning out to be roughly equal for each group. After all, that would seem like just the statistic that all sides of the affirmative- action debate can agree on. But numbers can be deceiving. Inevitably, there's only one bot- tom line: admissions of minori- ties are down. When 175 more minorities apply than in the previous year and 111 fewer are admitted in the next, it's a dis- couraging prospect for the future of diversity at the University. Affirmative action addresses very real inequalities corre- lated with race. Minorities do not receive the same resources and opportunities as those in the majority, and that creates setbacks embedded in academic track records. Simply looking at admissions numbers and saying that these groups are equal is an oversimplification because, for the privileged, it's far simpler to prove qualification on paper. After generations of inequal- ity that never seems to go away, change will require action rather than wishful thinking. To the University's credit, the increase in minority applications speaks to its impressive recruitment efforts and proves that ours is an institu- tion more than fit for the task. But with Proposal 2 still in place, the University's hands are tied. Recruitment efforts can only go so far to promote diversi- ty; the University needs freedom in other parts of the admissions process to act effectively. The University has largely done its part. Now there's anoth- er responsibility for us all to face: the overturning of a law that stands in the way. JENNIFER SUSSEX Laughing it off 4 Dearborn was recently host to the Radius of Arab-American Writers, Inc., a seminar discuss- ing current issues pertaining to their community. One of the prominent guests at the event was Ray Hanania, a columnist and reporter who has been syn- dicated in both American and Israeli papers. Hanania spoke about his experiences as a Pales- tinian writer working for a Chi- cago paper and learning to live with bias. Hanania stressed the impor- tance of representation in the media and mentioned how pub- lic opinion is often manipulated by the media's portrayal of cur- rent events. He explained that bias is created through subtle plays with language that de- emphasize the seriousness of confrontations between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians. One example of this is the con- tinuing discrepancy in the use of the word "terrorist." Simply because of the subject, some acts are described as "barbaric terror- ist" actions while others are not. Another example of this bias is evident in the war in Iraq. Because the war is distilled in terms of the American cau- salities and commonly omits mention of the Iraqi civilian per- spective of the conflict, we have a misleading image of the war. However, at the RAWIlgather- ing, Hanania broached this topic with a fervency and emotion that is missing in the current newspaper coverage of these events. He and others at the RAWI conference demonstrated that the Arab-American com- munity encounters increasing amounts of prejudice because the media portrays its populace through an Orientalist, pop-cul- ture approach. This same media also omits or down plays its suf- fering in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the war in Iraq. The biased depiction of Arabs within the media places Arab- American writers in a delicate predicament - they are faced with the dilemma that what they write willreflect their entire pop- ulace.Arab-Americanwriters are forced to evaluate how they seek to portray their community and if they should attempt to directly counter the stereotypical image of Arabs in their works. But Hanania presents an interesting response to this phe- nomenon. He is on an Israeli- Palestinian comedy circuit that counters this image with the seemingly disarming venue of humor. Using this approach, the group reaches an audience that would otherwise resist a cri- tique of the American media. Until Arab-American writers can write in a free stream of con- sciousness approach that ignores the politics of publishing, their Israeli-Palestinian comedy tour seems like one of the most effec- tive ways to counter pop cul- ture's stereotypes through the guise of pop culture itself. Jennifer Sussex is an LSA junior and a member of the Daily's editorial board. a a Editorial Board Members: Mike Eber, Jennifer Sussex, Kate Truesdell, Radhika Upadhyaya, Rachel Wagner