On Monday, Nov. 11, the campus group of Amnesty International will be kidnapping some professors from large lecture and speaking briefly to the class about human rights, human rights abuses and Amnesty.
We are also having a cage set up on the Diag, with prisoners in it, and group members collecting signatures on human rights-related petitions.
One of our goals is to educate campus about Amnesty International, an international human rights organization that advocates no form of government, and works to free all prisoners of conscience, to ensure prompt and fair trials for all political prisoners, and to end disappearances, torture, extrajudicial executions and the death penalty.
But we also want to give students an idea of what it's like to live in a country where human rights abuses occur daily. Politically active friends "disappear" or are arrested; your professor who criticized some government policy is found dead in the Arb; your uncle the labor activist begins getting death threats; the police are always giving you speeding tickets, littering tickets, jaywalking tickets, but every time they stop you, they end up questioning you about your roommate who is in the College Republicans, or your best friend who is in Alianza. This is not to say that there are no human rights abuses in this country, but there are many countries where people live in constant fear of their own government.
Sometimes it seems that every where we go on campus, someone wants something, wants us to give money to a bucket drive, or take their leaflet, or sign their petition. And sometimes all we want is to be left alone, not to worry about imprisoned political activists thousands of miles away. But as we are always being told, it is an increasing global world, and we all suffer for human rights abuses that take place anywhere. We cannot expect to have well paying jobs in this country when the United States sells weapons to governments that imprison their own labor activists and allow multinational corporations to pay workers a few dollars a day.
Refugees do not come to the United States because they don't love their own country, they come seeking refuge from the terrible things that their own government has or has threatened to do to them. And too often, these governments are supported by the United States.
Practically, justice for anyone cannot be built on the exploitation of another. And as citizens of a rich and powerful country that is more accountable to its own citizens than many, we have a responsibility to be aware of what is going on in the world, and how we can and do affect it. Once we are aware, it is our choice what to do with that knowledge. We at Amnesty would ask that you would use that knowledge to help guarantee human rights to all humans, no matter how far from Ann Arbor they are.
Abby Schlaff
School of Nursing
Apparently, some of your reporters need to look at a map. The article in Monday's Daily ("Dole stumps in Brighton as part of 'victory' tour," 11/4/96) concerning Dole's campaign stop in Brighton stated that Brighton is a "small town about 30 minutes west of Ann Arbor."
In fact, Brighton is almost directly north of Ann Arbor, and I can make it from central campus to the first Brighton exit in about 15 minutes. Trust me, I do it every day.
Brian Madden
Engineering senior
I found Rebecca Ewing's views on child care to be remarkably short-sighted ("Paying for others' mistakes," 10/23/96).
While it is true that people need to take responsibility for their own actions, and that in a perfect world no one would be forced to pay for the mistakes of others, the situation here is more complex than Ewing seems to believe.
If the University does not provide child-care, we, as members of the community, will still incur costs. If a student cannot stay at the University because he or she has to stay home and take care of a child, then we lose the contribution that that person could have made as an educated member of society. If the child is put into a compromising situation, and does not receive the care that she deserves, then we as society must later face an adult that has not had a healthy upbringing.
A person who has a child before they can support it financially has made a mistake.
However, we at the University should recognize the courage it takes for the single parent to try and go beyond that mistake by going to school.
A University education will better the life of the parent, the child, and society in general.
Institutes of higher learning (especially those supported by state money) are and must be open to everyone, not just those who have never made a mistake.
Joshua Turner
Law school
Despite my request to check back with me if I were quoted, the reporter who wrote the article on gender bias failed to do so, and I was thus misquoted in the Daily ("Gender biases may exist in evaluations," 11/5/96). Here is what I intended to communicate:
Across campuses in the United States, the average student ratings of women faculty members average at least as high as those of male faculty members, perhaps a little higher. Students tend to achieve more when they feel that teachers have a personal interest in their learning.
One of the major factors in student-rating scales is a "warmth" factor that includes items in student learning. The factor is related positively, both to student achievement and to ratings of teaching effectiveness.
Women faculty members tend to be rated higher than men on the "warmth" factor.
One can, however, be cold and impersonal, and be effective. There is no one style that is effective for all students, all teachers and all courses.
Although cold, impersonal teachers may be rated overall as high or low depending on other characteristics, female teachers who are cold and impersonal tend to receive lower student ratings than comparable male teachers.
Hilbert J. McKeachie
Prof. of Psychology