Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

Student complaints about Daily at 12/15 Regents' meeting

8. January 2006 • David Boyle
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At the December 15, 2005 UM Regents’ meeting, three students spoke during Public Comments time, in complaint about the Daily’s racially insensitive cartoons. Only 12 speakers are allowed (5 minutes each, 12×5 is one hour), so a notable proportion of speakers focused on the Daily.

One of the three speakers about the Daily was Alex Moffett (vice-president of the campus NAACP). Coincidentally, someone else also spoke against the Every Three Weekly and some “humor” it had including a manual on how to get first-year (freshwoman) girls drunk and sexually exploit them. So malfeasance and gutter taste in campus publications was a big topic.
(I spoke at the meeting too, primarily to get the Regents to pledge not to invest in Sudan; but I also spoke in support of the three speakers complaining about the Daily [I think I spoke before the E3Weekly complainant], and also found time to say something about UM’s failure to do the right thing in the Coke controversy.)

If students are willing to go to a Regents’ meeting to complain, maybe their cause is pretty important…

(Little note: the Daily forgot to report this week, that several students spoke against them at the last Regents’ meeting; is that “fair and balanced” of the D?...More to come.)



  1. Sorry not to have posted this before now, but the ever-efficient UM just recently put up (today was the first I saw it) the DECEMBER UM Regents’ meeting minutes, with the names of all the commenters, at link http://www.umich.edu/~regents/meetings/minutes/pdfs/2005/Dec05.pdf if you want the original:

    “Public Comments

    The Public Comments session began at 4:10 p.m. The Regents heard comments from the following individuals, on the topics indicated: Lauren Beyer O’Connell, student, Richard Bole, student, and Rachel Baker, citizen, on environmentally responsible design and construction of the new C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital; Jim Mogensen, citizen, on fiduciary responsibility in the town-gown relationship; Alexandra Moffett-Bateau, student, Michael Smith, student and member of the MSA Minority Affairs Commission, and Adrienne Waller, student and speaker of the Black Student Union, on the topic of the Michigan Daily’s climate and recent publications regarding minorities; David Boyle, alumnus, on passage of a resolution not to invest in Sudan; and Anne Handyside, student, on the effects of The Every Three Weekly campus newspaper on campus climate. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 4:50 p.m. The next meeting is scheduled for January 20, 2006.”
       —David Boyle    Jan. 26 '06 - 12:52AM    #