To the Daily:
When I arrived at Hillel for a midnight service last Sunday, I overheard a very disturbing conversation. After the service I spoke with the person who told the story.
The traumatized storyteller was a former University law student visiting from out of state for the football game. His route to the midnight service took him down Packard Street. He was wearing a black yarmulke (Jewish skullcap). As he was about to cross a side street, a car swerved out of its way to try to run him over. After they passed him, the people in the car shouted, "Kill the Jew!" He continued on his way to Hillel. Twice more the same car drove by him, on Wells and South Forest. Each time the people in the car yelled, "Kill the Jew!"
This obviously sounds like a problem for the police, but he could not recall any identifying marks on the car. I, too, have had similar but not so life-threatening experiences in Ann Arbor. I will never wear a white kipah on Friday night again: When I was walking home one night on South Forest, a car drove by me. The people inside kept yelling, "Are you Jewish? Are you Jewish?"
Other people in the Ann Arbor Jewish community have had similar experiences. In each instance, we all assumed that the offenders were students and, possibly, drunk. I would have hoped that human society would have evolved beyond the point of threatening bodily harm to those who hold certain beliefs, especially in a university environment that preaches multiculturalism and tolerance.
Zachary Sacks
Rackham
To the Daily:
I would like to start this with a congrats to the University's fundraising committee. It has obviously put a great deal of hard work into this latest and largest campaign. However, the purpose of this letter is not a pat on the back, but a word of caution.
I set out to discover exactly how much money $1.37 billion (the amount raised to date) is. Put in terms that apply to students, with $1.37 billion you could buy every undergrad three packets of ramen a day for the next 450 years, or if instant noodles aren't your thing, the money could buy all students a new sweater and a pair of dungarees every school day until they graduate.
For those of you who are thirsty, the cash could buy 26 million kegs of Milwaukee's Best (including deposit), which, if stacked three high and three deep, could make a glimmering silver wall from Ann Arbor to New Orleans.
For the sports fan, you could use the funds to buy every student home football tickets until the year 2550. Alternatively, you could bribe every starter in the American League $10 million to ensure that the Tigers win the pennant.
In all practicality, the University won't spend all this at once, but even the interest could have a profound impact, like paying the tuition for every single out-of-state student.
My personal favorite is using the annual interest to hire one secretary for every 5 students to type their papers, take their calls, and go to class for them when they are sick.
$1.37 billion is a lot of money, and I'm not implying that the University doesn't deserve it. This money represents the power to make every student's education exceptional and I hope the regents keep that in mind when allocating its use.
Mark Greeley
Engineering junior
To the Daily:
I am writing in response to the letter titled "Affirmative action is un-American" (9/29/97). Hillson contradicts himself when he calls for our society to focus "only on merit," yet approves of preferential treatment for children of alumni. The preferential admission of "legacies" might be a profitable practice for those universities that engage in it, but is in fact the most unjust of all the admission policies mentioned in Hillson's letter.
To their credit, the spirit of affirmative action policies is to seek out those who must work harder for their achievements due to the discriminatory practices of our society. A good example of this is the disparity between the quality of the average high school education received by majority and minority students, as mentioned by Hillson.
On the other hand, preferential admissions for the children of alumni aids those who need it least (usually upper-income individuals whose parents have a college education). What is worse, special treatment of legacies promotes racial and ethnic segregation by perpetuating the racial divisions sanctioned during our parents' student years. In fact, this practice was originally adopted in the 1920s by many of the Ivy League schools in order to reduce the number of Jewish students admitted.
Lebzylisbeth Gonzalez
Rackham
To the Daily:
Gregory Hillson's recent letter on affirmative action ("Affirmative action is 'un-American,'" 9/29/97) inadvertently highlights a crucial problem with the ongoing debate - it lacks a class analysis. When affirmative action opponents focus on issues of race, expressing their concerns about how affirmative action policies are patronizing, counterproductive for racial harmony (and hence "racist") and many other flawed and conveniently self-serving arguments, they may move some auditors to conclude that perhaps affirmative action is, after all, the wrong answer to a regrettable (but essentially ignorable) series of historical injustices. What is conveniently ignored is the underlying role of economic class in keeping certain groups from getting a seat at the table of American prosperity.
Even Hillson admits that substandard school systems contribute to the disparity between blacks and whites in the United States. What he never addresses is why it "just so happens" that a disproportionate number of African Americans live below the poverty line.
Just as opponents of busing as a solution to integrating schools ignored the fact that economic differences kept most black Americans from being able to live in communities with decent schools (leaving aside the outright discrimination that barred them from free access to many neighborhoods), affirmative action opponents like to gloss over the ways in which poverty leaves so many citizens from the advantages that make gaining acceptance to universities of the quality of the University of Michigan imaginable.
Of course, there are millions of poor whites in this country, and they, too, should be getting helped to gain access to a better economic life. So, if affirmative action is extended explicitly to reach the poor, regardless of ethnicity, then critics like Hillson will have to face up to a reality I suspect they would prefer to avoid: what galls them about affirmative action is that it is not designed to help those who already have a seat at the feast, or a leg up toward securing one.
Would middle-class folks at the University and elsewhere be willing to support a system that would bring more poor people to universities and professional schools, at the cost of some admissions for "their own?" As has been pointed out in this publication before, it is not about race - it is about self-interest. And, I would add, it is about money.
Michael Goldenberg
Rackham
10-02-97
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