Opinion
4 — Friday, November 15, 2013
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The real-life impacts of scrapping
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com MELANIE KRUVELIS ANDREW WEINER EDITOR IN CHIEF
and ADRIENNE ROBERTS
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
MATT SLOVIN MANAGING EDITOR
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
FROM THE DAILY
Transparency through information freedom Bill provides citizens with realisitic access to government records
T
he Michigan Freedom of Information Act was created to guarantee public access to state-level government records. However, based on the law, the public bodies holding documents can unilaterally control information through delays, unreasonably high prices and dubious denial of requests. In response to these problems, the recently proposed House Bill No. 4001 marks the latest attempt at FOIA reform. Journalists have a lot at stake with FOIA, but the bill deserves attention from anyone even moderately concerned with Michigan’s governance. Passing the bill would provide Michigan’s citizens with realistic access to FOIA documents, upholding the expectation of government transparency and accountability. Michigan’s FOIA, enacted in 1977, hardly delivers the “free” information it promises. In reality, public bodies can maneuver around FOIA requests with relative ease. Officials can withhold requested information up to five days — sometimes longer when granted extension — and don’t necessarily have an incentive to speed up the process. While this might appear reasonable, it allows significant conflicts of interest to develop. Freezing information when the need is urgent, such as during elections or policy votes, has the potential to distort the democratic process. But most people don’t even reach that point, lacking the robust finances necessary for fees. Joe Sontag of the National Federation for the Blind was charged $2,400 for a request in regards to a cafeteria’s closing. Sontag called the fee “outrageous,” and couldn’t appeal a case without a legal staff to support him. Public bodies also can contrive reasons to deny the process outright, often without much explanation. Fulfilled FOIA requests can make an important difference in public issues, but the current statute does little in accomplishing its duty. The prosed policy would rectify current
FOIA issues by imposing new rules and lowering fees. Officials would be required to present information free of charge, and if individuals require copies of the documents, the charges couldn’t be more than 10 cents per page. Requests delayed past the five-day deadline would be deducted 20 percent of their total cost every day; after five days. And repercussions for arbitrary delay or denial, as judged by a circuit court, would result in higher damages, now $5,000 instead of the original $500 penalty. These changes would shift the current legislation toward a more public-oriented policy that counteracts bureaucratic attempts to circumvent FOIA. Legitimate concerns would gain traction, and the paralysis caused by the current system would be eliminated. FOIA’s premise of open information uses the agency of proactive residents to maintain a transparent, responsible state. But under the current law, faulty protocol precludes most inquiries’ success before a request is even made. This undermines not only the freedom of information but the justice and protection of citizens.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Kaan Avdan, Sharik Bashir, Barry Belmont, James Brennan, Eric Ferguson, Jordyn Kay, Jesse Klein, Melanie Kruvelis, Maura Levine, Aarica Marsh, Megan McDonald, Victoria Noble, Adrienne Roberts, Paul Sherman, Daniel Wang, Derek Wolfe
KATHERINE LELITO | VIEWPOINT
Insuring all aspects of health
Health insurance plans for University employees — including faculty, staff and graduate students — cover almost all aspects of reproductive health and family planning, including contraceptives, pregnancy termination, elective adult sterilization, male sexual dysfunction treatments, and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment. However, there is one troubling omission in this coverage: fertility treatments. Not only are fertility treatments omitted from standard coverage, but University employees also do not even have the option to purchase additional coverage for fertility treatments on any of the 2014 plans offered in the state of Michigan by Blue Cross Blue Shield, Health Alliance Plan or Priority Health. The unavailability of access to fertility treatments is much more than just a personal issue: It can affect the University’s competitiveness when recruiting faculty and graduate students. Other Michigan universities, most notably Michigan State University, offer insurance plans that cover these treatments. In recent meeting of Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, faculty members raised concerns that the University’s benefits package could keep us from recruiting top researchers. In the United States from 2006 to 2010, 6.7 million women were unable to get pregnant after trying for one year or could not carry a baby to term, while more than 600,000 men were medically diagnosed with an infertility problem. We cannot assume that fertility treatments will be an insignificant factor in a prospective faculty member’s to come to the University. Furthermore, infertility affects a number of marginalized groups and should be seen as a social justice issue within the larger debate about reproductive rights. Although much of the debate has focused on a woman’s right to prevent and terminate pregnancy, we have largely ignored a person’s right to have children, especially when he or she requires assistance to do so. Professional women who must delay having children to be competitive with their male counterparts, young women diagnosed with premature infertility, gay couples, cancer patients treated with radiation, and people with traumatic injuries to their reproductive organs are all disproportionately affected by infertility. Infertility also disproportionately affects African American and Hispanic women, and those women are less likely to receive fertility treatment.
In response to my own diagnosis of infertility, I petitioned top-level administrators and women’s issue groups at the University advocating for coverage of fertility treatments for employees. Currently, the question of whether or not to add coverage is under the consideration of Laurita Thomas, the associate vice president of human resources for both academic and medical campuses. Thomas will base her decision on guidance from the Medical Benefits Advisory Committee, a voluntary committee of 10 men and six women employed as doctors, lawyers and academics. MBAC will finalize their recommendation to Thomas at the committee’s meeting on Nov. 19. Although I am pleased that the University is considering adding fertility treatment coverage to our benefits plans, I remain concerned that they will not support the coverage based on feedback from University President Mary Sue Coleman’s President’s Advisory Committee on Women’s Issues. A representative of that committee reporting from its last meeting said that few members saw any hope of increasing health benefits to include fertility treatments. Members of the University community may object to adding this coverage on the grounds that fertility treatments are expensive and experimental. First, while increases in cost to the University may be a concern for some, adding coverage for University employees is not likely to increase health care premiums. States like Massachusetts that have mandated fertility coverage from insurance plans have not seen costs associated with infertility increase after adding the coverage. Second, while fertility treatments used to be novel and experimental, most disease treatments, regardless of cost, become covered after the technology becomes standard practice for effective treatment of the disease. In the case of fertility treatments, the national average for success rate is an almost 50-percent chance of pregnancy from one cycle of in vitro fertilization. This success rate is higher than many other covered treatments for other diseases. My hope is that the University community will recognize that access to fertility treatments is not just important to our institution, but it is also a social justice issue-spanning gender, class, race and sexuality. Katherine Lelito is a Rackham student.
T
he Detroit Free Press recently published an editorial about the devastating effects of scrapping on Detroit neighborhoods. The article aptly discusses the need for — hopefully impending — legislation that will make it difficult for ALEXANDER scrappers to sell HERMANN obviously stolen materials, one of the biggest issues facing the bankrupt city today. No surprises here — I couldn’t agree more with the Freep’s incredibly uncontroversial opinion. What, then, is missing from their otherwise on-point analysis? Something — anything really — that grounds scrapping, and its processes and effects, in reality. Let’s be real, scrapping and the fear of scrapping, squatting and other related crimes don’t regularly instill fear in most University students and Ann Arbor residents. When we leave our homes for class during the day, or even when we leave them unoccupied for longer periods of time over breaks, hardly a thought is given to the potential burglarizing of our TVs, gaming consoles and personal possessions. Even less consideration is given to the possible theft of furnaces, plumbing and copper wiring that probably earns much less cash on the black market. These are fears many Detroit residents face every day — even though scrapping is associated most with recently abandoned homes. Unless vigorously protected, a newly vacant home in Detroit will be completely vandalized within 48 hours. Although I can never claim to understand the true effects of scrapping — neither the strain nor the cost encumbering individuals — working at a Detroit-based humanservices nonprofit prior to graduate
school exposed me, somewhat, to these daily horrors. The Detroit Rescue Mission, the organization I worked for, had a program that received donated homes from individuals, banks and the city of Detroit and, provided we could repair the homes at an affordable price, deeded the fixed-up properties to homeless families we served. In my capacity, I frequently ventured out to different parts of the city to inspect homes under consideration. There isn’t adequate space in this column to do justice to what I saw, but, almost exclusively, unless the home was currently occupied, there was no chance we’d acquire the property. Not only are Detroit homes among the oldest in the metropolitan area — a common plight in central cities across the United States — but poorer occupants are often financially incapable of investing in the upkeep of these properties. As neighborhoods deteriorate further, crime spreads and adjacent housing declines as well. The resulting desire to leave the neighborhood further disincentivizes even basic maintenance, creating cycles of neighbohood deterioration. Adding to these existing problems, scrappers tear apart the walls to get at the plumbing and wiring and steal all appliances, senselessly and needlessly destroying the infrastructure. They quickly make it cheaper to raze and rebuild than to rehabilitate the property. Even boarding up unoccupied homes is a fruitless endeavor. Beyond signaling to scrappers that, “Hey, this property is now unoccupied 24/7,” most reasonably priced board-up methods are easily circumnavigated. When the Detroit
Rescue Mission accepted a donated home, we relocated a client to the property immediately. They kept the premises secured at night while we finished the rehab work. The only marginally effective counter to scrappers targeting abandoned homes is the diligence of neighbors — but even then, the limitations of such measures are obvious when you consider the pervasiveness of abandoned structures in Detroit — as many as 78,000 according to some estimates — and the need for residents to, you know, actually sleep at night. Once, when looking at a home near Grandmont on Detroit’s west side, a neighbor confronted me upon hearing someone enter the house. After explaining my organization’s intentions, he told me how he regularly had to chase away squatters and scrappers alike in the home. A college student in his early, maybe mid-twenties, he was attending the University of DetroitMercy and had grown more fearful recently after his neighbor on the other side of the vacant home had been burglarized while at work just days before. He said he felt like the vandals were moving house-by-house down the block, and that his house was next on the hit list. He even asked if we had homes in other neighborhoods he could live in while finishing school. I know it’s uncontroversial to say — scrapping, squatting and home burglaries are bad. But why, then, has it taken lawmakers this long to do more to minimize the potential financial benefit of the already-illegal practice? Maybe they, like us, simply aren’t aware of scrapping’s real-life impacts on real-life people.
Why has it taken lawmakers so long to combat scrappers?
— Alexander Hermann can be reached at aherm@umich.edu.
Man! I (talk) like a woman
E
ver since I re-embraced the warm, sometimes sweaty arms of singlehood a few months ago, my roommate Margaret and I have talked a lot about boys. Guys. Men. Everything inbetween. Last year, these KATIE conversations STEEN wouldn’t have been very interesting, and probably would have centered on “30 Rock,” pizza, spooning or a combination of the three. Now, it seems every other day or so, I’m giving ol’ Marge some sort of an update as I navigate through singlehood. But since these conversations are not to be discussed outside of the walls of room eight of Minnie’s Cooperative House, I’ll just sum up what we share with two words — girl talk. The funny thing about girl talk is that it usually centers on … not girls. A quick look in the trusty Urban Dictionary defines “girltalk” — not to be confused with the mash-up artist — as, “Deep conversation between members of the female sex. Contrary to popular believe, it is not always about boys.” But if you have to say “it is not always about boys,” it’s probably going to be about boys for the vast majority of the time. Like, 90 percent of the time, with the other 10 percent being talking about how your period has synched up with your roommate’s. Or something. Anyway, this newfound bonding over guys colloquially known as girl talk got me thinking: If my life were a movie — hah — and Marge were in it, too, we would totally fail the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test requires that a movie has at least two women in it and these women talk to each other about stuff beside men. It also got me thinking about a conversation I had last summer in the humid, crowded kitchen of a Michigan House summer party. “What makes you feel like a man,” I had asked a friend for who knows what reason. He thought about it for a second, then referenced a summer hiking trip he took that involved all kinds of manliness — not shaving, not showering, using muscles, drinking beer, farting… After he answered, my friend asked in response, “What makes you feel
like a woman?” “Umm… ” I thought of various forms of activity that can be placed under the umbrella term of hankypanky. “Uhh?” I really had no idea. While my friend was reminiscing upon hiking up north, inhaling and farting into fresh Midwestern air like a true man, the only thing I could think of in terms of defining my womanhood … required a man? Recently, I decided to throw this question around some more. To my friends and housemates who identify as male, I asked, “What makes you feel like a man?” “Barbecuing. Bacon,” “Working on the car,” “Sports,” “Definitely everything sexual,” “Whenever I drive,” “Being outside,” “Drinking two fingers of whiskey, pints at the pub” — the pub? Some were a little more general — “I feel like a man when I’m around women because I’m strong,” “If a situation needed someone to take control of it, I should be the default,” “When I need to act rationally.” As one of my housemates said, “A lot of things that make me feel like a man make also make me feel like an adult.” To my housemates who identify as female, I asked, “What makes you feel like a woman?” Like before, the question could be interpreted in different ways, but the results were pretty similar: “Putting on lipstick,” “Wearing heels,” “Lacy, fun underwear,” “When I go on a date. When a boy pays for me.” Others were fairly straightforward — “My boobs.” “When I get my period.” The generalizations I’m about to make with this small, not randomized sample of responses is by no means applicable to everyone. But I think it’s worth pointing out that the majority of the answers I received were based off of stereotypes and socially constructed ways that we’re raised to think about our gender, our sexuality and ourselves. The first magazine I ever subscribed to was “Girls’ Life,” or “GL.” My much cooler neighbor who was a year older than me had convinced me that it was necessary to my ability to survive middle school — which was admittedly a little bit true, looking back. Within two months of being a “GL” subscriber, I gained lots of important knowledge like how to apply liquid eyeliner and what foods to eat at lunch in order to attract hott — with two t’s — guys. For the record, finger foods are highly recommended, especial-
ly grapes — cute and healthy. It appears “GL” hasn’t changed much since. A quick skimming of the magazine’s website shows that it’s all still there — fashion, makeup, gossip, adorable cupcakes — presented in an array of pinks, purples and baby blues. And what’s the first tab at the top of the “Girls’ Life” website? “Guys,” which includes sections like “Get a BF,” “Ask Bill and Dave” and “What Guys Think.” On a website specifically devoted to the lives of girls, we have a whole section focused on dudes. Hmm. I headed over to the website for “Boys’ Life,” a magazine created by the Boy Scouts of America. Its homepage was jam-packed with things like “make a pingpong ball launcher,” “weird science projects,” a guide to buying just about any outdoorsy piece of gear you can imagine, “hobbies, projects, and other fun stuff you can do,” and absolutely nothing about girls. In other words, while we’re learning how to eat grapes cutely over at “GL,” the “Boys’ Life” boys are actually doing things! Hobbies! Projects! Experiences! Stuff that’s a hell of a lot more fun than putting on lip-gloss. Of course, “Boys’ Life” is just as guilty of pushing boys into fulfilling the stereotypical expectations of being a male — science, outdoorsy stuff, physical activity. And I suppose that’s expected given that the magazine is run by Boy Scouts people. But damn it, at least the boys are encouraged to do things instead of just shop and worry about how to attract a significant other. And these expectations and stereotypes persist into adulthood, even if we recognize the stupidity or untruthfulness of them. According to the responses of my housemates, “being a man” means doing things, while women are supposed to care about appearance and guys. Sigh. I’m not saying that my housemates’ responses to my questions affirm that they follow the expected gender roles. And I’m not trying to tell people of any gender to not buy makeup or talk about guys or whatever else is “GL”-certified. I am trying to remind everyone that gender roles exist, and are perpetuated by what we read and watch and listen to and click on, and that they begin at a young age. — Katie Steen can be reached at katheliz@umich.edu.