. . . March 1994

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Statistical Slip-Up

YOUR DECEMBER issue has an article headlined "Dip in acceptance rate challenges LS&A." It appears that statistics also "challenge" your reporter and some LS&A officials. According to the article "...the University is enrolling fewer top high school scholars, an issue of concern to Dean Edie N. Goldenberg and Undergraduate Admissions Director Theodore Spencer." The same article reports the statistics that caused this concern.

In 1988, 1,408 top scholars applied to Michigan and 369 enrolled. In 1993, 1,864 top scholars applied to Michigan and 381 enrolled. One doesn't need to be a top scholar to notice that 1,864 > 1,408 AND 381 > 369. This means that more top scholars are applying to Michigan than five years ago and more are coming to Michigan than five years ago. That sounds like quite good news, especially considering the increase in Michigan's tuition since 1988. So why write that "the University is enrolling fewer top high school scholars"? And why are Dean Goldenberg and Director Spencer "concerned"? The answer seems to be that 381/1,864 < 369/1,408. Indeed the fraction (not the number) of top scholar applicants who come to Michigan has fallen. But in what sense is that bad news? A lower acceptance rate would mean an almost inevitable consequence of an increase in applications from those extremely talented students who will be offered many attractive options from top universities.

I wish that deans, directors and newspaper reporters would take the time to think about what statistics mean. Concern is a scarce resource that ought not to be squandered on mere confusion.

Prof. Theodore C. Bergstrom, Dept. of Economics Ann Arbor

DEAN GOLDENBERG'S and Admissions Director Spencer's concern for a trend of "declining yield rates for top scholars" from high schools is understandable. I wonder, however, if Admissions' definition of top scholars (those students with a GPA of 3.8 or higher and an ACT score 31 out of 36) implies that all other students are "less-outstanding", a position that seems to be indicated in your article. Is Admissions' acceptance policy in conflict with itself? I have been under the impression that other factors in addition to grade-point average and test scores are used in the aggregate to determine a student's worthiness of admission to the U-M and at the same time, to many if not all, be considered outstanding in his or her own right.

I would suggest that those individuals who are concerned with the creation and implementation of ways to "sway more top scholars to choose the U-M should not forget the "less-outstanding" students out there who come to the U-M and demonstrate significant academic accomplishments while fruitfully contributing to and gaining from this University's community life, such as my sophomore daughter is doing.

Garnett Brown Los Angeles

AS THE PARENT of a freshman at U of M who is in the College of LS&A, I was not surprised to read your recent article "Dip in Acceptance Rate Challenges LS&A." There are many stories which attest to the "lack of commitment to teaching" by LS&A faculty. Suggestions to improve the program are admirable, but accessibility and the encouragement of freshman and sophomores are critical. Teaching assistants cannot and should not be given this responsibility alone. Other "big schools" have done it!

Ina S. Porth Maitland, Florida

Inspired By Solar Car Team

I'M A 7th grader at Addams Jr. High. Your article has inspired me. I have just recently decided to use solar-powered cars as the topic of my Science Fair project. I'm wondering if you have any information on solar energy, if you do, please send it to me. It would be greatly appreciated.

Bill Ridgway Royal Oak, Michigan

On Orthodoxy

I AGREE with Prof. James Turner, whom you quoted as saying that "contention has an important role in universities." Debate and discussion are essential for intellectual health. I must therefore disagree with the same Professor Turner, when he subsequently said that the goal of the university should be "to get students to challenge orthodoxy." To have a debate or disagreement, there must be two different views. There must be some who defend orthodoxy, as well as those who oppose it. In a university where all students "challenge orthodoxy," there would be no creative tension, and no intellectual debate. There would merely be uniformity and conformity, and "challenging orthodoxy" would become the new orthodoxy, as rigid as any other.

Andrew C. Smith '85 Ann Arbor

I CAME across the following statement in "A discussion of 'PC' and academic values": Asst. Prof. Elizabeth Anderson is quoted as stating, "For instance, professors are no longer free to make comments about women's breasts." Please have your staff advise, sir, exactly when it was acceptable for professors (acting as professors, as implied by the remark) to make such comments? Letting such an absurd allegation go unchallenged does a disservice to the University. Apparently you and your staff have either abdicated your editorial obligations or you are so terrified of faculty coloring themselves as PC experts that you don't dare question absurd allegations made by them.

Prof. Rebecca Scott may have some knowledge about philosophy, isn't it a pity she uses that as a shield from facts? True, there have been, from time to time professors who made untoward remarks from the front of their classrooms. If the professors were sufficiently out of line, they were removed from the classroom. If, on the other hand, the remarks were not quite that unacceptable, the speaker acquired a reputation for outrageousness and suffered whatever attendance penalties might ensue.

To infer that the existence of a few oddballs creates a social norm is stupidity personified. To publish such statements without challenge is bad journalism at best as well as offering support to unethical attempts to rewrite history.

Thomas S. Roberts Manchester, Michigan

Sexual Orientation

THE LETTERS of Calvin Rice and Dennis P. Kelly [Dec. '93 issue] cry out for a reply. Their first and common mistake is to confuse "sexual addiction" or "sexual compulsion," which may be psychiatric disorders of homosexual or heterosexual people, with sexual orientation, which is not a diagnosis. I do not know the story of the student Rice mentions, who refused to room with a homosexual man, but the University's response seems appropriate. Perhaps the student did not know any homosexual people and feared the unknown. Perhaps he wrongly thought that homosexual men seek to rape heterosexual men at every opportunity. Perhaps he heard and believed false rumors about homosexual people and could not look at the individual. Regardless, there is no better way to address his fear, lack of knowledge, or narrow-mindedness than with education, and the University's mission is to educate.

Kelly's letter is full of misconceptions. ... [He] is unaware of reports from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have found a decline since the early 1980s of new transmissions of HIV among homosexual men. Furthermore, Kelly is so misinformed about AIDS that he does not know that worldwide transmission of HIV is thought to occur overwhelmingly with heterosexual activity, not homosexual activity. AIDS is frequently and unfortunately perceived in the US as a homosexual disease due to reasons of sociology and politics, not reasons of medicine. Many people with AIDS have needlessly suffered beyond the physical injury of their disease in part because of North Americans' generally massive and collective ignorance of conditions and events in poor countries across the oceans.

Prejudice has infected this society and the entire world for much longer than HIV has, and appears to be more widespread than HIV and may well take longer to overcome.

Carl Stein Durham, North Carolina

I WAS MOST gratified to learn that my Alma Mater has finally included sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policy. Attending Michigan as an undergraduate in the 1940s was a difficult experience for a lesbian like myself, even though in all other respects, Michigan gave me an outstanding education.

The pressure to conform, to date, to have boyfriends, was simply horrendous. Deeply ingrained fear kept one from identifying oneself or speaking to others of one's identity: one engaged in hypocrisies, became withdrawn and alienated. There were known gay faculty, but they too dared not identify themselves openly. One faculty member provided me with emotional support, I know now because he recognized our common state. But he and I never dared name it. And, of course there was no institutional support in service for what was then considered a disease. I suffered in silence, as I did throughout the first half of my life.

Many years later, having co-founded the University of California Gay Alumni/ae Association (at Berkeley, where I took my PhD), I tried, with tireless student services worker Jim Toy, to found a Gay Alumni group at Michigan. But my distance from Ann Arbor, Jim's overwork and the continuing great fear of exposure that I recognized on visits to Ann Arbor, prevented our success. I hope others will now succeed, as the fog of bigotry begins to lift.

More recently, as a member of the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists, active in addressing discrimination in my discipline, I found Michigan's From Invisibility to Inclusion: A Study of the Status of Lesbian and Gay Men (1991) by far the best of the recent campus surveys that we used to persuade the American Anthropological Assn. to act (it has just now established a Commission on Gay Issues). To understand the life of gay students, faculty and staff, and the depth of homophobia, I can suggest no better source than this survey (available for $7 from the Affirmative Action Office, 6015 Fleming Administration Bldg., U. of M., Ann Arbor, MI 48109).

The two recent letters reveal how misinformed some alumni still are regarding sexuality, emotional preferences and AIDS. Indeed, "sexual" orientation is as much a matter of bonding, of whom one falls in love with, as of sex acts. Contrary to the propaganda of bigots, we gays, like all oppressed minorities, seek only to enjoy equal Constitutional rights with all other US citizens, no more, no less. We have paid our dues. It is time for justice.

Mildred Dickemann '50 Professor Emeritus, Sonomoa State University Richmond, California

RICE AND KELLY may want to reflect upon the fact that, while they express their prejudiced views in relative safety, those of us with the courage to express opposite views may find ourselves subject to harassment, loss of employment or other sanctions.

Paul H. Kirby '67 White Plains, New York

I WAS DISAPPOINTED by the partiality betrayed by Michigan Today's decision to print only negative responses to the revised Bylaw 14.06 (which now includes "sexual orientation"). The one-sided misinformation promulgated via this newspaper is both irresponsible and destructive.

Kelly's erroneous implication that anal intercourse is status quo for all men and women of homosexual orientation is even more woefully ignorant than his testimony that it is "universally known" as a "lethal", "habitual indulgence" which inevitably leads to death from AIDS. In fact, the AIDS virus is being transmitted increasingly within the heterosexual community by vaginal intercourse as well as by infected IV needles. Yes, it is also being transmitted by oral and anal sexual activity–also between heterosexuals.

Jeremy Long '74 Grand Rapids, Michigan

WE WERE SURPRISED and dismayed to see in your pages the two letters of protest regarding the University's addition of sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination statement, not because of the ignorance and hostility they exhibited, but because of Michigan Today's willingness to publish such misrepresentations without comment or rebuttal. By allowing the comments of such blatant homophobes to stand unchallenged, you have demonstrated all too well why a change to the University's non discrimination statement was needed.

Daniel King MBA '85 Frederick More DDS '67, MS '70

The two letters Michigan Today published on the new Bylaw were all we received. MT attempts to publish all letters received; when that is impossible, conflicting views are always proportionately represented. Letters may be edited for reasons of length, taste, accuracy, style and usage. Editorial responses, however, will address facts concerning editorial copy, not readers' opinions–Ed.

Business With Asia

LINDA LIM'S excellent article in the December issue was received by this faculty emeritus and loyal alumnus with appreciation. Perhaps you did not know of a $100,000 endowment fund donated to the China Center, University of Michigan, more than five years ago and now under the direction of Prof. Shuen-Fu Lin. We will offer $10,000 for a year of graduate student study in China, the next to come in 1995. We hope the Business School might be involved. At the least, it would be nice if the U-M in some publication would acknowledge this gift which we made in the memory of my first wife, Katherine Taylor '37, who spent her junior year in China. Please bring this to the attention of the proper authorities.

Sibley W. Hoobler '46-'76 Emeritus Professor of Medicine Cleveland

Linda Lim replies: Thank you for your kind note. The purpose of the article was not to list comprehensively all the Asia activities, programs, donations, etc., to the University (this would have been impossible), but rather to selectively highlight some new program initiatives, particularly in the realm of business. I have directed your concern to both the China Center and the U-M Development Office.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Shortly after sending the above letter, Dr. Sibley W. Hoobler died Jan. 25 at the age of 82, of a heart attack in Tucson while vacationing with his wife Catherine. He was serving to win a set of tennis at the time of the attack, his wife said.

Dr. Hoobler was internationally recognized for his pioneering work in high blood pressure research and patient care, was one of the first physicians to discover chemical compounds for the treatment of high blood pressure, and founded the nation's first hypertension clinic at the U-M.

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