Elections 101 Seminar
Michigan State University's Michigan Political
Leadership Program (MPLP), recently featured on "The Wall
Street Journal's" front page, is offering an all-day seminar
on the nuts and bolts of running for elected office or
managing a candidate's campaign. The seminar is entitled
"Elections 101: Getting Ready to Run". It is sponsored by
MPLP's Alumni Association and the Institute for Public
Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) of the College of Social
Science.
The seminar will take place on Tuesday, September 28 in
Big Ten Room A at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing.
Registration will begin at 8:00 a.m. and the program will
conclude at 5 p.m. The registration fee after September 17,
1999 is $65 and includes a continental breakfast, lunch,
parking, and a campaign reference binder.
Some of the seminar topics will include: Understanding
Campaign Finance Requirements, Developing A Campaign Plan,
Getting Your Message Out, and Knowing Your District.
Featured speakers reflect a variety of political
perspectives them: Ken Brock, Political and Public Affairs
Consultant; Ken Cockrel, Detroit City Councilman; Carol
Conn, Capitol Fundraising Associates; Dave Doyle, Marketing
Resource Group; Robert LaBrant, Michigan Chamber of
Commerce; Al Mann, Michigan House Republican Caucus; John
Moralez, WKAR TV, Michigan State University; Susan Safford,
Office of Representative Pam Godchaux; Craig Ruff, Public
Sector Consultants; Ed Sarpolus, EPIC/MRA; Sam Singh,
Michigan Nonprofit Association; John Truscott, Office of
Governor John Engler. We are pleased to have MPLP alumni
included in the mix of presenters.
The MPLP is a multi-partisan program designed to
develop skills in the ares of personal leadership
development, effective governance and public policy analysis
and process, as well as practical politics and campaigning.
The program recruits Michigan citizens who are interested in
positively affecting public policy decisions in Michigan.
It is co-directed by Lynn Johdahl, Executive Director of
Michigan Prospect for Renewed Citizenship and former
Democratic State Representative of 22 years; and Anne
Mervenne, Special Advisor to Governor John Engler and former
Ingham County Commissioner.
If you are interested in attending, please call the
MPLP office to receive a registration form at (517)355-6672
or download a registration form from the IPPSR website at
www.ippsr.msu.edu.
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The Changing Face of Racism by Tim O'Brien
The following article is the latest in a series of
Op-ed articles written by LPM Executive Director Tim O'Brien
and submitted to news outlets across the state for
publication. This current article was published on September
16, 1999 in the Detroit News and can be viewed on their web
site at: http://www.detnews.com/search/navi.htm
There must be something seriously wrong with how we
define our political spectrum if I can somehow have been
moved from one end to the other while always standing in the
same place.
Take the issue of racial discrimination.
Not since my college days when I marched in the streets
in uncompromising opposition to the notion that individuals
may be segregated or otherwise discriminated against based
on the color of their skin, has race been such a hot
political topic.
The flashpoint then (and for that matter, now) was
admissions to government sponsored educational institutions.
Many of us insisted that any institution supported by
everyone must be equally open to everyone who meets
objective admission standards. These criteria might include
grades, test scores, even athletic prowess or alumnus
legacy. However, admissions ought never be based on any
intrinsic (and irrelevant) characteristics such as a
student's gender, sexual orientation, ethnic group, race,
and so forth.
Universities, especially in the south, were adamant
that criteria for admittance should be entirely within their
administrative discretion.
That position is echoed today by our own University of
Michigan which is currently embroiled in lawsuits over its
racist admissions policy, nowadays euphemistically called:
affirmative action.
"Can you get into an admissions process by a court?"
president Bollinger asks in words that could have come
directly from a 60's vintage diatribe by Lester Maddox or
George Wallace.
In the style of those "segregation forever" southern
governors he goes on to rail against "anybody coming from
the outside [saying], 'This is fair, this is unfair. I don't
like this thing you are doing, I don't like that thing. If
we can just get inside this admissions policy, we're sure we
can do a better job.'"
And, having asserted a self-righteous moral superiority
justifying exemption from societal norms and accountability,
Bollinger proceeds as his political forebears did to offer
up one spurious argument after another to rationalize racial
discrimination against individuals whom no one denies are
utterly innocent of any wrongdoing.
He begins by smugly stating that the notion that race
is no longer a significant factor in American life is a
myth.
This is what in argumentation is called a "straw man"
-- a debating ploy whereby, a claim is attributed to the
opponent which he never actually made for the sole purpose
of then knocking it down.
The fact of the matter is that opponents of affirmative
action never said that race is not a factor in contemporary
America. Indeed, it is, ironically, affirmative action
proponents such as president Bollinger who continue to make
it one.
Apologists for contemporary discrimination assert that
"diversity" (by which, incidentally, they mean only of the
most superficial, physical kind -- diversity of viewpoint,
for instance, is ruthlessly repressed) is not an optional
characteristic of a particular university environment but
rather an essential element of the entire educational
process.
This would, no doubt, have come as something of a
surprise to the scholars and academics from time immemorial
whose devotion to the knowledge and teaching of the arts and
sciences, irrespective of the ethnic composition their
student bodies, somehow managed to get us through to the
21st century.
And in traditional left-liberal mulishness the fact
that his own students tend to prefer congregating and
interacting within their own ethnic groups only reinforces
the belief that efforts to impose social engineering must be
redoubled. The more persistent the failure, the more this is
taken as evidence of the necessity.
Coincidentally, in Washington U.S. Representative John
Conyers, D-Mich., has introduced a bill to prohibit the
practice of racial profiling. Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer
also claims to oppose the practice.
Perhaps, they can prevail upon president Bollinger to
explain the rationale behind treating people differently
based on their skin color since he so vigorously endorses
the idea and supports the practice.
The fundamental fact that is utterly ignored by those
who would impose their vision of a just society is that
there is no such entity as the black race, the white race,
or any other discrete collective, that can either perpetrate
or suffer from injustice.
There are only individuals -- some particular
characteristic of which places each into one or another of
those amorphous categories.
There are only unique students with their own, personal
hopes and dreams for a happy and productive life.
Like James Meredith, who in 1962 used integration laws
to become the first black man to attend the University of
Mississippi, going on to a distinguished career as an
author, civil rights activist and attorney, who ran for U.S.
Congress and worked for a time (interestingly enough) in the
office of conservative U.S. Senator, Jesse Helms (R- NC).
And like Jennifer Gratz, the math major and homecoming
queen who graduated from a high school in Southgate with a
3.8 GPA dreaming of one day becoming a doctor, who has now
filed suit against the University of Michigan to stop that
institution from destroying her aspirations by denying her
admission simply because she is white.
None of us dreams in black and white. We only dream as
individuals.
There is no fairness or balance achieved by
compensating those who never suffered under a system of
legal discrimination at the expense of those who never
caused it.
A great American leader back in my college days once
said he dreamed of a day when each of us would be judged not
by the color of our skin but by the content of our
character.
I thought he was right. I still do.
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