‘U’ lecturers’ union endorses Deitch, Ilitch for Board of Regents
By Chris Herring, written on Oct. 30, 2008
Jacob Smilovitz
Daily Staff Reporter
With less than a week until Election Day, the labor union that represents University of Michigan lecturers have endorsed a pair of candidates vying to join the University’s Board of Regents.
The Lecturers’ Employee Organization threw its support behind incumbent Larry Deitch and newcomer Denise Ilitch, both of whom are Democrats from Bingham Farms.
Ian Robinson, LEO’s Ann Arbor campus co-chair and a lecturer in the Residential College, said members of his group feel connected to the regents and the work they do.
“We actually talk with the regents regularly about policy issues, so we have some real knowledge of their positions of relevance to our work,” he said.
The Graduate Employee Organization, which represents GSIs, has yet to endorse regent candidates. Neither group plans to back a presidential candidate. They each deferred that endorsement to their parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, which supports Democratic nominee Barack Obama earlier this year.
‘U’ receives $3.8M grant for kidney research
By Chris Herring, written on Oct. 28, 2008
The Medical School’s Division of Nephrology has received a five-year, $3.8 million research grant to conduct kidney research.
The grant, from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, will allow the University to further investigate prevention strategies and develop diagnoses for those with kidney ailments.
The University, which has garnered NIDDK funding every year since 1988, was one of just seven schools to receive the grant.
Johnson & Johnson purchases ‘U’ start-up company
By Chris Herring, written on Oct. 28, 2008
HealthMedia Inc., a University of Michigan start-up company, has been purchased by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, the University announced in a press release.
The company, which provides Web-based health advice by joining advanced technology with behavioral science, has about 140 employees. They all will stay in Ann Arbor despite the transaction.
Though details of the transaction were not disclosed, the release said the sale should net the University about $1.7 million of money that will later be reinvested into research initiatives at the University.
“This success is a good example of how the University of Michigan can be an engine for economic change and growth in the state,” said Stephen Forrest, the University’s vice president for research, in the release.
HealthMedia, founded in 1998, is a product of the University’s Tech Transfer Office. Prior to purchasing the company, Johnson & Johnson served as its customer.
University President Mary Sue Coleman has served on Johnson & Johnson’s board of directors since 2003.
ITCS officials vow to create transparency, open lines of communication
By Chris Herring, written on Sep. 24, 2008
By Matt Aaronson
Daily Staff Reporter
Alan Levy, communications director of the University’s Information Technology Central Services and Dana Fair, marketing communications specialist of ITCS, took the floor early in Tuesday’s MSA meeting to talk about increasing the flow of feedback between students and the department.
“We want to develop a process for day-to-day problems that students have,” Fair said. He explained that in order to do that, better communication with student organizations like MSA is necessary.
Each spoke a lot about being more transparent and creating more outreach. Fair insisted the first step toward that would be to establish better lines of communication.
“In terms of understanding all that ITCS is and all the services they offer, it’s not always crystal clear,” he said.
Levy used speaking his time to discuss ITCS’s “Be Aware You’re Uploading” (BAYU) program, a notification system that informs students when they might be uploading or downloading something illegally.
One representative on the assembly asked what type of information is collected and stored about students in the system. Levy responded by saying that the content of uploads is never part of the data ITCS sees or collects. He said ITCS only stores data about when uploading activity takes place and the type of software that facilitates the upload.
“Data is retained for one week, and then it is gone,” he said.
An attempted resolution proposal
Ann Arbor resident and anti-Israel activist Blaine Coleman and a woman who claimed her name was Abeer Hamza tried to propose a resolution “to boycott apartheid-Israel, and to stop apartheid on campus.”
The resolution, handed out to the assembly in a packet, listed three items in its summary: “Boycott all Israeli products,” “Take that $1 trillion you’re spending to kill Muslims, and spend it instead on rebuilding Detroit,” and “Stop 400 years of white privilege—the University should admit every black high school graduate.” As a number of assembly members got up to leave during his speech, Coleman remarked “If you’re against rebuilding Detroit, you’ll want to leave the room now.”
MSA President Sabrina Shingwani reminded the assembly that everyone who takes the floor at meetings is entitled to the same freedom of speech. (Though it’s unclear whether Coleman had a right to be there. More on that later)
The woman who identified herself as Abeer Hamza called Israel “a major force of destruction” and claimed that if “all the things that Israel has done” had been done by another country, the assembly “would be here every night passing resolutions.”
After the speakers finished, Shingwani told the assembly there is currently no such resolution and that the proper procedure for proposing such a resolution had not been followed.
Later, Student General Counsel Michael Benson reiterated the importance of respecting the First Amendment rights of those voicing their opinions before the Assembly. He ripped up his copy of the proposal, as another student representative already had, before yielding back his time.
As for Coleman, he left the meeting when he realized someone from MSA had notified the Department of Public Safety of his appearance at the meeting. Coleman has been told not to return to University property by campus police because of his involvement in past incidents.
Sen. Ted Kennedy introduces bill to expand national service programs
By Julie Rowe, written on Sep. 12, 2008
Sen. Edward Kennedy will soon introduce bill which aims to recruit 175,000 Americans into national service in the areas of health care, education, energy and the environment.
The “Serve America Act” is the first major piece of legislation Kennedy has introduced since being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May, The Boston Globe reported.
“Time and again we’ve learned that large numbers of Americans are ready, willing, able, and even eager to be involved in service, and that all we have to do is ask them to do so,” Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement. “The Serve America Act will ask. It will connect every generation through service, and enable them to help tackle a wide range of national challenges, from the dropout crisis that plagues our schools to the lack of health care in our neediest communities to the energy and environmental crises that threatens our planet.”
The bill would increase the number of national service program participants to 250,000.
Sen. John McCain, along with Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), proposed the expansion of the AmeriCorps to 250,000 volunteers in 2001 with the “Call to Service Act,” although McCain has not yet added a national service plan to his 2008 presidential campaign platform.
Obama’s national service plan, outlined on his website, proposes more than tripling the number of AmeriCorps volunteers to 250,000 and doubling the number of Peace Corps members to 16,000 by 2011. His plan would also see the creation of several new service organizations, including:
-Classroom Corps, a group of volunteers to help K-12 students and teachers
-Green Jobs Corps, providing disadvantaged youth with training, job and service opportunities working with energy-efficient technologies
-Health Corps to supplement public heath outreach programs
-Homeland Security Corps, a group of volunteers who would work in disaster and emergency response programs
-Veteran Corps, to provide hospitals, nursing homes and homeless shelters with volunteers to assist veterans
His plan also called for middle and high school students complete 50 hours of community service each year. College students would be given a $4,000 tax credit for completing 100 hours of community service in one year.
Freon spill at Main St. and Huron St.
By Julie Rowe, written on Sep. 11, 2008
Both lanes of eastbound Huron St. between Fifth Ave. and Main St. were closed for a few hours this afternoon while the Ann Arbor Fire Department and Hazardous Materials team contained a spill of the refrigerant Freon an alley.
At 12:00, three women called 911 after walking past an alley behind National City Bank because they were experiencing difficulty breathing. They were treated by paramedics and released at the scene.
When firefighters and police arrived on the scene, the cordoned off a full city block to contain the spill, which AAFD Battalion Chief Robert Vogel said originated from a damaged refrigerator. The refrigerator, he said, was a prop used by the Performance Network Theater.
The spill was contained within an hour and 15 minutes, Vogel said.
Macomb County to use foreclosure list to try to block voters
By Andy Kroll, written on Sep. 11, 2008
The Macomb County Republican Party is planning to prevent people from voting who are on a home foreclosure list in the county, the Michigan Messenger recently reported.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” Macomb County GOP chairman James Carabelli told the Messenger.
The article goes on to say:
State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”
The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”
One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.
“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”
As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”
After widespread voting controversies marred the two previous presidential elections, potential voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement have been in the news quite a bit in the past month. And with Michigan sure to be a closely contested state in November, there will surely be more stories of this type in the coming months.
‘U’ scientists lent hand in developing atom smasher
By Kelly Fraser, written on Sep. 9, 2008
By Elaine LaFay
Daily Staff Reporter
If all goes well early Wednesday morning, a beam of subatomic particles will zoom around a track deep underground in Europe and scientists will come close to answering some burning questions about the formation of matter and some of the deeper secrets of the Universe.
“We are attempting to discover the fundamental principles of matter and their interactions,” said Homer Neal, the University’s team leader for ATLAS, one of two particle detectors that are part of the larger experiment.
Scientists hope this experiment will shed light on the early moments of the Universe, which will provide answers to questions like the creation of matter and where tiny protons — particles found in the center of atoms — get their masses.
At 4 a.m. Wednesday – 10 a.m. in Geneva – someone will flip the switch of a particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider – a massive contraption that allows physicists to study the smallest particles in the Universe. The LHC, buried 300 meters beneath Switzerland and France, is operated by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
It is a global undertaking that involves more than 80 countries and nearly 2000 scientists. Twenty-five of those scientists are from the University. “It’s one of the most important scientific endeavors of our time,” said Neal.
University physicists contributed to the construction of ATLAS, and many parts of the experiment were designed and built in Ann Arbor, tested and shipped over to Switzerland. The LHC is the centerpiece to the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson, a particle thought to exist throughout the universe and that is so unstable it can only last for fractions of a second before it changes into different particles.
“The Higgs boson is assumed to be responsible for giving all other particles their mass,” said Neal. “There’s an enormous amount of interest in discovering it and we should be able to discover it at the LHC.”
University scientists did work on muon detectors, specialized machines which look for the remnants of the Higgs particle, said Bing Zhou, head of the U.S. ATLAS muon detector development and construction.
She said they also hoped the LHC would harness the component of dark matter, a mysterious substance thought to compose around 95 percent of the Universe. Physics Prof. Rudolf Thun said tomorrow is only the first stage in a series of protons beams at different settings.
He said CERN would start small and work their way up to higher densities and energies in the proton beams over a period of weeks.
Regent Richner, me and the RNC
By Andy Kroll, written on Sep. 4, 2008
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Wandering the concourses here at the Xcel Energy Center Wednesday night looking for reactions to Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, I spotted from afar University Regent Andrew Richner (R-Grosse Pointe Park) working the crowd.
Wearing the customary blue blazer, but with a hockey jersey supplied by Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox underneath, Richner, an alternate Michigan delegate, gladly offered his take on Palin’s speech.
“I think she hit it out of the park.,” Richner told me. “A pretty powerful speech for someone that I’d never of — no, I shouldn’t say it that way.”
He added that he was pleased Palin mentioned Michigan in her speech, and said he thought she would be popular among Michigan citizens.
“I think she’s going to resonate with people from Michigan,” he said. “She mentioned Michigan in her speech; she referred directly to Michigan jobs.”
Soon after, as those in attendance flooded the concourses and headed for the exits, their red and blue McCain-Palin placards in hand, Richner talked about the increased attention he’d seen throughout the week given to Michigan and its economic woes.
“They’re paying attention to Michigan,” he told me, “which is — I’ve been to other conventions, I was a delegate in New York (in 2004), and Michigan has not received this kind of attention at any convention I’ve been at.”
A firm handshake and cordial “Take care” later, we went our separate ways, the two of us quickly disappearing amongst the Republican faithfuls who all appeared contented, assured — and a bit worn out.
Paper reports record enrollment at U-M Flint
By Kelly Fraser, written on Sep. 3, 2008
A preliminary head count yesterday at the University of Michigan-Flint shows a dramatic increase in the size of this year’s freshman class, The Flint Journal reported.
According to an internal e-mail sent to U-M Flint employees obtained by the Journal, 890 first-time freshmen are enrolled this year, compared to 626 students last year.
Mel Serow, a spokesman for the campus, declined to comment about the enrollment figures. The University will not release enrollment data until the official 10-day count on Sept. 10 is completed, he said. The school has planned a press conference for Sept. 11, he added.
One factor attracting new students may be the campus’ new dormitories, which opened this fall.