Time to revive an old ZR analysis of U-M data manipulation. Read that along with with last week's ZR exclusive on U-M administrative growth, and yesterday's piece by Marisa Schultz of the Detroit News who writes here about the statewide wave of tuition increases.

And guess who's allegedly to blame again - anybody but the administrators at the schools. The legislature isn't appropriating enough of your money.

Hammered by six years of state appropriations reductions, U-M has taken considerable cost-cutting measures, from motion sensors that activate lights only when someone's in a classroom to reducing the number of deans in the College of Engineering, said U-M Provost Teresa Sullivan. "But finding additional things to cut is getting harder and harder."

In 1960, state funds comprised nearly 80 percent of U-M's budget; now that's 24 percent, and tuition is the largest stream of revenue, she said.

"We are in a situation in which our state appropriation has been under considerable pressure," Sullivan said.

Wait, there hasn't been "six years of state appropriations reductions" - there have been six years where legislative appropriations have stagnated or modestly increased. More importantly, that quote on the 1960 comparison of "relative % of legislative funding" is an extension of the fabulous lie first perpetrated by former president James Duderstadt in the mid-90s, when he pointed out that U-M's 1986-1996 "share" of state funding as a percentage of U-M's overall funding fell from 18% to 12%, and blamed the legislature for the "cut". Sullivan deserves credit for the novelty of expanding the time-frame to 1960 to increase the magnitude by a factor. Still, ZR debunked the original horrible twisting of statistics which applies today, pointing out that U-M averaged 17% growth in administration over the same time while the legislature gave 8% more over the time. That's twice the rate of inflation (quadruple for expenditures and other revenues including tuition increases and federal sources) - the legislature lived up to its end of the bargain, yet U-M blamed it on them in the bustling 90s and still uses the same old saw today.

Although the Detroit News writer is doing the best she can with the beat she's assigned, the problem is when you're forced to take the word of U-M officials you're in for some surprises.

"Time and time again we've made the cuts and we've done the reforms," said Regent S. Martin Taylor, noting U-M has slashed $120 million in costs in five years. "We've done those things and then we recognized that (in order) to keep Michigan great, we have to increase revenues."

Just last night State Senator John Pappageorge told a Rochester gathering a story. You go into your boss's office and ask for a $5,000 raise. After much discussion about your value and productivity, and the budget of the company, your boss gives you a $2,000 raise. You walk out of the office and tell your office-mates you just took a $3,000 pay cut.

In the University of Michigan shadow world of budgeting, an increase can be a cut. A look at the Provost's data reveals how words can be twisted - but ZR's favorite is when James Duderstadt tried to play the same trick in the mid-90s and ZR broke it down with this analysis showing that the decline was really an increase but decline relative only to outrageous 17% annual growth by U-M bureaucracy.

If U-M "cut $120 million" in expenses, it doesn't mean that it reduced its overall bureaucracy by that size. Either they cut a hypothetical $120 million that they might have spent in ideal circumstances, they cut something they were going to cut anyway or was at a natural end, they cut something but spent twice as much elsewhere, or any number of explanations. Regardless, I'd like to see the documentation of exactly what their cuts were, and methodology. And even if they saved a $120 million in future costs, its nearly a $3 billion dollar budget. Compare these explanations with last week's ZR statistical analysis of the last five years of U-M administrative growth.

Flip S. Martin Taylor's statement around. Instead of, "(in order) to keep Michigan great, we have to increase revenues," it should be "to keep Michigan great, we have to decrease costs." Does it really matter whether a student pays for his university education in tuition - or through his or her parents and future taxes. It's just a shell-game either way. The key is to reduce costs and provide better value. And with the salary analysis ZR has done, clearly that isn't happening.

Zarko Research again provides insight into the vaunted, but bloated, University of Michigan.

Like the ZR analysis of Michigan State University salary database trends over the last two years when it asked for a 9.6% tuition hike last week, ZR has been collecting U-M databases. An analysis of five year trend data provides a clear insight into why U-M tuition rates explode. There are 38,000 employees at U-M - and 3500 of them make more than 100K annually, a number itself that has an impressive growth rate.

The engorging is top-heavy - an outlandish growth rate among $100,000/year employees, percentage increases in the "Top 1000" by two measurements that are consistently in the 5% range (with a 7.5% average spike, and 20% total spending spike in 2001-2002, reflecting probably a "preparation" for bad times given the strong economy the previous year and the obvious signs of crisis down the road. But there has been no "crisis" for the purses and wallets of U-M bureaucrats, even as the Michigan economy has crashed. They keep churning out nickel increases while the Governor wants to appropriate extra pennies from the plebes to make up the difference.

Education is important. But out-of-check, unaccountable cost increases for top-level administrators do not guarantee any student a fair education. Check the tables yourselves. It's all there - or actually, its' all in Mary Sue Coleman's $600,000 (plus hidden benefits) salary. Imagine if that money went to students instead!

A google news search shows that no mainstream media outlet appears to have covered the change public comments policy at today's University of Michigan Board of Regents meeting. ZR chastises the media for its complicitly - although the public comments doesn't affect a media right (speaking is typically not done by the media), any assault on access rights is bound to come back and later hurt the media.

The Detroit Free Press first look at the Board meeting was this positive look at the two race-neutral scholarships the Board adopted to comply with Proposal 2. No doubt this was newsworthy, but as a capsule of the meeting woefully incomplete (both the stadium controversy and the Open Meetings Act issue must). It is possible we'll see more detailed analysis in the slower non-wire news cycle.

But in searching for open meetings issues, we found this interesting, now two-week old piece, about guess who? The MEA and a quorum of school board members illegally meeting in March over a teacher complaint.

Four Ypsilanti school board members violated the Michigan Open Meetings Act when they attended a March 8 meeting of teachers and staff who complained about then- High School Principal Layne Hunt, according to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office.

Criminal charges, however, will not be filed, Deputy Chief Assistant Prosecutor Steve Hiller said in a memo released Wednesday to The News. Hiller wrote there is not enough evidence to prove that Amy Doyle, Andy Fanta, Cameron Getto, and Tom Reiber intended to violate the state law.

Hiller's nine-page memo dated June 5, stemmed from a meeting the board members attended at the Michigan Education Association's office on Carpenter Road in Pittsfield Township. Doyle and Getto have since resigned from the board. After much controversy at the high school, Hunt resigned as principal March 28.

It's nice to know a County Prosecutor got involved (that's one of the great things about the OMA, they do have that discretion although we rarely see it used), and that the ultimate outcome was two board members doing the right thing and resigning. Here, the MEA used its own offices, not to subvert FOIA but rather OMA. It's unknown as to whether Principal Hunt should or shouldn't have resigned, but its clear the pressure was on him, to the point of illegal secret meetings.

UPDATE on Ypsilanti secret meeting.

This Ypsilanti Courier piece gives us far more detail on the issue of the secret meeting:

Washtenaw County Deputy Chief Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Steven Hiller ruled last week that a March 8 meeting with Ypsilanti High School teachers and staff who had concerns and complaints about then-principal Layne Hunt was in violation of the law.

Hiller said he would not prosecute the matter, however, because he could not prove there was intent to commit the violation.

In a nine-page memo, Hiller outlined the case against the four trustees, Amy Doyle, Andrew Fanta, Cameron Getto and Thomas Reiber, who attended the meeting after a communications snafu. Doyle and Getto have since resigned from the board.

Hiller then concluded the board members had broken the law by deliberating on the issue of firing Dr. Hunt. If the trustees deliberated and/or made a decision regarding the issue, the meeting would have been a violation of the OMA because no notification was given and no minutes were taken.

But, attendees at the meeting insist the session was for information-gathering only and no deliberations or discussions were held.

"It was for information-gathering purposes only," insists Kelly Powers, president of the Ypsilanti Education Association. "That's what they [the trustees] said at the beginning of the meeting and that's what happened. They listened and took notes."

Big things come in small packages. One of the great things about little newspapers is they cover their local stories in better detail than the regional newspapers we are all accustomed to seeing. And the internet finally picks most of them up now.

You have to love that Orwellian spin coming from Kelly Powers, of the YEA (Ypsilanti Education Assocation). "Information-gathering purposes only". "Deliberations" on the other-hand is a pretty big thing to define. I suggest that if you gather information - or prostrate yourself in front of a union leadership group who is feeing it you your daily dose - you are deliberating (perhaps in a non-meaningful way, but ... ). Deliberating is the act of working toward a decision. Collecting information is a vital and integral component of working toward that decision. The difference that YEA alleges is superficial.

The reason we have an open meetings act is so that no "special" (interest) sub-set of the population has secret access to our public official in the decision-making process. The Michigan Education Association, NEA, and its satellites (HEA, YEA, etc), fight long and hard for their special privileges and access. And whether its unions or corporations, it's time to say no more.

David Boyle, a liberal Democrat who has fought in favor of race preferences but is now fighting the University of Michigan Athletic Department's expansion and commercialization of seats (luxury) at the historic Michigan Stadium, has sent me this hat tip. While ZR takes no formal position on Michigan's move to change the feel of the Stadium, we sympathize with the treatment and strong-arming of those who have objected. As usual, Michigan "leaders" have ignored public input and engaged in tactics to avoid debate and public engagement.

The University of Michigan Board of Regents, a body dominated 6-2 by Democrats, is considering a policy change on its public comments rules. The plan is to reduce the number of comments from 12 maximum to 10 maximum - retaining the 5 minute limit per person. They've also added a clause that gives priority to individuals who have not spoken to the Board in the previous two months.

This is yet another disgusting, anti-Democratic move by an administration and institution that seeks every bit of control and governmental edge it can obtain. Reducing public comments is just a visible symptom of the large disease infecting the university's administrative process.

The Michigan Open Meetings Act would seemingly come to the rescue in such a situation, and it may, but its not entirely clear. MCL 15.263(5) is the key section of the OMA here:

(5) A person shall be permitted to address a meeting of a public body under rules established and recorded by the public body.

U-M would argued that its established rules (which now require a 24 hour advance sign up and max out 12 "first-come, first-serve" speakers) are recorded, and that's the end of the story. A variety of common-law requirements however, including the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, require such policies to be reasonable. For example, what if U-M kept lowering the number of speakers, in a "slippery slope", say to 8 then 6 or 1? What number is reasonable? Obviously a policy that allowed zero people to speak would be illegal, and a policy allowing say, only 1 speaker per meeting, would be unreasonable. 12 speakers - the current policy - seems to ZR to already be an unreasonably small number for a statewide body with a constituency of 7 million registered voters and thousands of out-of-state alumni, donors, and stakeholders.

Another consideration here would be the plain word and grammatical reading of section (5). Is not the phrase, "A person shall be permitted to address a meeting ...", even if under rules, not clear in its requirement that any person seeking to address a meeting entitled to address the meeting? It would seem that even the current U-M rule restricting the number of speakers to 12 is in violation of that requirement. While the law would seem to allow the public body almost complete flexibility in such things as time limits and other rules to insure order, it would seem that any restriction on number would violate the rights of persons to address a meeting.

If anyone has 11 people who want to speak at the next meeting, it would certainly be an interesting legal challenge to set up!

Whether you're on the left like David, an opponent of race preferences like myself, or of any logical political stripe, you can find solace and agreement with David's new website, Fire Mary Sue Coleman.com. While that would be nice start, we'd note that the administrative beast that is U-M is much broader-based than its figure-head and it is only a short-term fix.

Marisa Schultz of the Detroit News reports here on the what is allegedly the effect of Proposal 2. Before imagining the sky falling, remember that U-M predicted that in the wake of a preference elimination that numbers would fall from 12% to as low as 4%. Here's the actual picture.

African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans make up 10.7 percent of the freshmen who have paid enrollment deposits to reserve a place at U-M this fall, compared to previous years when minorities typically comprised 12-15 percent of each class.

The figures paint the most complete picture yet of what the first class admitted under Proposal 2 will look like. Proposal 2, the Michigan constitutional amendment that banned the consideration of race, gender and ethnicity in university admissions, took effect in January for U-M, midway through its admissions cycle.

And on cue:

"With one- half of a year with Proposal 2 and you are already seeing a drop (in minority students)," said George Washington, attorney for By Any Means Necessary, a pro-affirmative action group suing to overturn the amendment. "You are really talking about more of a drop next year."

Surprisingly, the news story uses an interesting word:

The dip in minority representation comes at a time when a record number of students applied to U-M, with applications topping 27,400. Applications from black, Hispanic and Native American students also went up, but the number accepted dropped.

Shockingly, U-M spokepeople actually something interesting:

U-M officials did not comment Wednesday on the diversity of the class. However, they said it should be one of the "most highly qualified and intellectually dynamic ever admitted."

Hmm. One wonders if there's a correlation to Proposal 2 and that.

The Michigan Daily is reporting yet another devious strategy to bypass Proposal 2 - the allegedly "independent" 501-c-3 "Alumni Association" might finance race-based scholarships on the theory that it is a "private actor."

The first thing this will cause is a decline in donations to that organization. Nonetheless, it is questionable for many reasons as to whether the association is sufficiently distinct from U-M to survive the legal challenges. We'll keep an eye on this one.

Zarko Research is deeply exploring a major research exclusive. ZR has filed a FOIA for more details.

Based on a tip from a source, Zarko Research has become aware of the "China Scholarship Council," a branch of the People's Republic's of China (PRC)(yes, that's the nation of China), and an agreement they have with the University of Michigan (UM) to provide special access to U-M. During 2006, much was made by Democrats in the Gubernatorial election and elsewhere of all the jobs Dick DeVos was sending to China directly, and indirectly how Republicans generally were allowing jobs to go to lower-labor rate countries and China in particular through support of trade policies (regardless of the fact that trade agreements have all had bi-partisan approval, including President Clinton, over the decades). In the meantime, UM had and still has a deal to guarantee slots to Chinese engineers - in crass terms that unions and corporations alike should understand, Michigan taxpayers are funding and subsidizing our competition's long-term growth. The double-and-triple ironies here are numerous - I'm expecting (perhaps naively) the Democrat Party to remain consistent here and rally around at least this limited aspect of what MCRI prevents (special deals with foreign nations to give them inside-access, in preference over Michiganders or US citizens, to our education system -- quotas to groups that have no need for the preference and are already competing). ZR opines that Chinese nationals should have at most equal access to US educational facilities - not subsidized access. Chinese nationals have for a long-time had open-access to our institutions and the Chinese government is free to subsidize that as they will, but U-M need not add to the subsidy and advantage thereto received.

Proposal 2 provides that no university:

"...shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin..."

I have emphasized the key phrase.

Below is from the top-linked U-M description of the program I was alerted to. Much of the material still remains in password protected areas of the U-M website, now subject to a ZR FOIA. I've italicized key parts of U-M's violation of Proposal 2 - since the PRC is funding the scholarship, that is itself not a violation of the law - but U-M's reserveration/quota of 5 seats and co-pay guarantees of free medical insurance and other costs, in combination with the limitation of PRC citizenship, make this program a violation of Proposal 2:

The CSC-UM Postdoctoral Fellowship Program 2007-08
The application process for the CSC-UM Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2007-08 is under evaluation at this point in time and we will post the application information both on this website and in an e-mail to the University of Michigan academic community as soon as it is available.

Background:

The China Scholarship Council (CSC) and the University of Michigan (UM) have agreed to launch a joint postdoctoral program with the goal of fostering academic exchange and research collaboration between Chinese scholars and the faculty of the University of Michigan. Every year, up to five postdoctoral fellowships will be awarded to nationals of the People's Republic of China. The UM Center for Chinese Studies at the International Institute will be the coordinating unit responsible for collecting UM faculty applications and providing liaison between the participating programs and CSC. Postdoctoral Fellows should have their Ph.D. degree in hand by the time the fellowship begins, and should have obtained their doctoral degree within the last five years in a Chinese or overseas institution.

CSC and UM will jointly participate in the selection of fellows to ensure good match of expertise and interests between UM faculty and the candidates. Specific goals of the program are: 1) to involve the postdoctoral fellows in ongoing faculty research projects at the University of Michigan, and 2) to promote UM-related academic exchange and research capacity building in China. The postdoctoral period is intended to be up to 2 years, the first academic year to be spent at the University of Michigan and additional time up to one year to be spent in the P.R.C. Alternative proposals for the duration and location of the post-docs will be considered as long as they meet the above goals.

This program will initially be implemented for three years to begin fall semester of 2005 with the possibility of renewal at the end of three years and expansion at any time at the agreement of both parties.

Financial and Logistic Arrangements:

The China Scholarship Council will provide each fellow with international airfare and a monthly stipend of no less than $1,150 while the postdoctoral fellow is at the University of Michigan. The UM programs and faculty hosting the fellows will provide medical insurance and a supplemental monthly stipend of $683.33 while the postdoctoral fellow is in the United States and $416.67 while the postdoctoral fellow is in China to match current UM and Chinese minimal postdoctoral stipend levels. The UM Center for Chinese Studies will assist UM-units with J1 postdoctoral scholar visa applications to the United States as well as help arrange housing and other university paperwork while the postdoctoral fellow is at UM. The UM Center for Chinese Studies will also determine the feasibility of any proposed second-year Chinese arrangements. The program will be open to full-time faculty from any academic unit on the Ann Arbor campus.

Selection Process:

Application to the CSC-UM Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is open to PRC nationals who have obtained their doctoral degree within the last five years in a Chinese or overseas institution and who must have the Ph.D. in hand by the beginning of the fellowship.

The selection process will have two stages. First, a UM postdoctoral fellowship selection committee will be established to select five or more UM faculty postdoctoral fellowship proposals. The committee will include representatives from the UM Center for Chinese Studies and the International Institute. The committee will consider the following criteria in selecting the proposals: first, the quality of the research project; second, the extent to which the project meets the two goals of the postdoctoral fellowship program, including the extent to which the project commits to investing faculty time and project resources in mentoring the postdoctoral fellow.

UM faculty proposals should include the following:

1. Project description of research questions and methodology (2-3 pages)

2. Sources of project funding

3. Job description for the postdoctoral fellow

4. Expertise or skills required of the postdoctoral fellow

5. Expected output at the end of the fellowship period

The Center for Chinese Studies and CSC will publicize the UM postdoctoral fellowship opportunities both inside and outside China. CSC will forward up to three eligible candidates for each postdoctoral research position (candidate can apply to multiple projects, but must rank-order their preference), and the UM faculty in charge of each postdoctoral project will select the fellowship winner from among the proposed candidates, reserving the right to refuse all candidates if they are academically unsuitable.

Chinese national applicant proposals to UM should include the following:

1. Letter of interest

2. Detailed curriculum vitae

3. Sample publications

The letter of interest should include a 1-2 page statement for each project to which applicants are applying of its relevance to their research interests and training highlighting the expertise they bring to the project.

Application Schedule for 2007-08 fellowships - To Be Determined

Evaluation:

Postdoctoral Fellow Faculty Advisors are responsible for annual reports evaluating the performance of each CSC-UM postdoctoral scholar including a list of all co-authored working papers and publications.

Administration:

Interested UM faculty should send their application to Summer Tucker (summert@umich.edu) at the Center for Chinese Studies, Suite 3668 SSWB, University of Michigan, 1080 South University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106.

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This may be the first documented violation of Proposal 2. ZR will both seek more information and agressively pursue a wider audience.

Shortly after the election, the University of Michigan (U-M) launched an advisory board called "Diversity Blueprints" to give it input in how to reform its policies to comply with Proposal 2 and still achieve "diversity."

I learned of the program shortly after Christmas. Nominations, including self-nominations, were due by December 21. Undaunted, I sent an email to Lester Monts, Vice-Provost for Multicultural Affairs, anyway, nominating myself to participate. He replied saying that since the date had past, I wouldn't be allowed to participate on the committees, but that I could speak at their public speaking opportunities. I replied that the committee would greatly benefit from full my participation, not just a talking head speaking to the committee with no give and take, and asked him and Mary Sue Coleman to reconsider. I also asked them to explain why the date of application was important and why they could not accept additional members at any time, if their true goal was "diversity" they would strive to expand their intellectual reach without regard to such trivialities. I gave them until January 5 to reconsider, and have not received any further response. I told them that I would not waste my time speaking publicly (I may change my mind on that, but only to note this kind of thing) to a group unwilling to put members of both sides in a serious place at the table where give and take communication can occur.

So much for intellectual diversity at U-M. The membership list of the DB committee reads likes a who's who of preference supporters. Missing are notables such as Carl Cohen. I never received a timely offer (one might expect someone trying to build such a committee to reach out to notable proponents) and only noticed it late in my normal surfing. If this is what U-M does when it wants "outreach," then the institution is a miserable failure and real "diversity" never truly the goal. One would expect notable proponents of MCRI to be on the committee - especially if they sought out such participation, regardless of when they do. Mary Sue Coleman and U-M's dedication to "diversity" is a farce, and insincere.

In similar timing to ZR's receipt of documents from two cities regarding the post-election events surrounding Proposal 2, Dave Gersham reports here of the Ann Arbor News' FOIA foray into University of Michigan e-mails. ZR's report is above, to follow.

Gersham's article is long, taking up four internet pages, but insightful. Gersham starts:

Over a three-day period after the passage of Proposal 2, U-M President Mary Sue Coleman and university regents received nearly 500 e-mail messages from people responding to the vote or to Coleman's campus speech the next day that questioned the legality of the proposal.

A review of the correspondence, obtained by The Ann Arbor News under the Freedom of Information Act, shows backers of Proposal 2 and critics of Coleman outnumbered people who supported her or the university's commitment to diversity by about two to one.

So that's about 333 to 166, and not so lopsided as to suggest a coordinated effort by either side (and I'm aware of none from personal knowledge on the pro-Proposal 2 side, but ironically there are mild hints from non-U-M sources that others may have encouraged pro-preference e-mails to counter what I suspect was a spontaneous outpouring of pro-Proposal 2 messages).

If anything, the catalyst for this outpouring was the official spamming of the university community of Coleman's defiant November 8 speech (and my own review of City of Grand Rapids and Lansing documents suggest that that reached them). They hit over 100,000 bragging about her defiance.

A university spokesperson estimated that Coleman's e-mail was sent to at least 100,000 people - faculty, students, staff and alums.

In the Diag speech before a large crowd of mostly cheering supporters, Coleman said U-M will follow the law, but she questioned the legality of Proposal 2.

"I believe there are serious questions as to whether this initiative is lawful, particularly as it pertains to higher education,'' she told the crowd. "I have asked our attorneys for their full and undivided support in defending diversity at the University of Michigan. I will immediately begin exploring legal action concerning this initiative. ... We will find ways to overcome the handcuffs that Proposal 2 attempts to place on our reach for greater diversity.''

Since then, U-M officials have taken pains to moderate their message, toning down criticism of the vote and emphasizing the university will follow the law. The only legal action U-M has filed so far was a request for a delay in complying with Proposal 2 until the current admissions cycle is completed this summer. Initially granted, the delay was later turned down by a federal appeals court, and the university is weighing its next steps.

It's no wonder 500 people replied.

Regent Andrea Fischer Newman, a Republican Regent who has remained silent on diversity for too long, felt emboldened to finally say this, after a decade of opportunities:

Newman said she appreciates Coleman's passion and that Coleman shouldn't be criticized for a speech that was heartfelt. But Newman said she was disturbed when Coleman said in her speech, "We are Michigan and we are diversity,'' a line she used twice.

"Diversity is important, but Michigan is about a lot more,'' said Newman, listing traditions such as academic and athletic excellence. "And I would hate to characterize that as the only characteristic of our school. That's what concerned me.'

Newman is right, and she is in an impossible (and pointless, almost) position as a member of the minority party on the board. Wisely, and ominously, Newman said this:

Newman said she would like administrators to seek a vote of the regents if the university plans to take a "proactive" legal step.

As of last week, Newman said U-M administrators had not asked regents to support a particular plan of action to respond to Proposal 2.

U-M wouldn't let Mary Sue Coleman interview with Gersham. No doubt her "heartfelt" emotion might get the best of her.

U-M would not make Coleman available for an interview about the public reaction to her speech and the university's response to Proposal 2's passage.

Julie Peterson, a U-M spokeswoman, said the flood of correspondence was among the most she has seen on any single issue.

Peterson said Coleman wanted to use the speech on the Diag to let potential applicants and others know that U-M's appreciation of diversity hadn't changed.

FOIA Incompetence, Stalling, or Both?

FOIA requires, even in voluminous instances, a response in 15 days (3 weeks).

It took the university five weeks to fill the Freedom of Information Act request from The News, which was made on Nov. 13. It asked for all e-mails or other correspondence related to Proposal 2 obtained by Coleman and the eight regents during the three days immediately after the election.

Searching the records of 9 people for a limited time frame simply shouldn't have been that hard. But this kind of time and delay from U-M is par for the FOIA course, as ZR testifies from personal experience.

The university left the senders' names on the material it provided, but redacted contact information and what it said was any personal information writers included in their messages. Many of the writers appeared to be alumni, students and employees of U-M. Some were local residents, many were from Michigan and others were from around the country.

I'm sorry, but someone who sends an unsolicited complaint to a public body and includes their contact information has no expectation of privacy. U-M has used this dirty tactic to increase the cost (charging for their deletion time) to ZR and others, and it isn't a legal reason to withhold even parts of information. They rely on the reluctance to start and cost of litigation, along with the delay, to evade on this one.

Most optimistically is Gersham's characterization:

Other critics were both brief and blunt. Several wrote short messages calling on Coleman to resign. A few were racist. But most presented articulate and sometimes lengthy arguments, some suggesting that there are other ways to make the campus diverse and open to students of varied backgrounds, such as considering the socio-economic status of applicants.

Most of the Proposal 2 writers were intellectual in tone, well-reasoned, and advocated alternatives. That's despite the long-iterated characterizations that we're all evil racists ready to fly planes into the Graduate Library because of some white angst.

Lori Higgins writes in the January 4 Detroit Free Press that the University of Michigan has temporarily halted all admissions until next at least next Wednesday, bearing fruit to a ZR prediction in our comments section.

Higgins writes:

The University of Michigan won't make any admissions decisions for the fall term until Wednesday, giving itself some time to figure out what to do now that a federal appeals court has rejected an attempt to delay the implementation of new rules that ban affirmative action programs in public hiring and college admissions in Michigan.

On December 31, responding to a commenter about the next steps following the Court of Appeals decision, ZR wrote:

They may "temporarily suspend" their entire admissions timeline for as long as they can practically do it (tops a couple weeks) to get the ear of a state court on the "meaning" of Proposal 2 (which is pretty clear). In line with their previous use of "fake delays" in "automatic denials" to Law School applicants (in the 90s, I've documented through archival research, U-M would sit on applications for an extra couple weeks even though they were in the "auto-reject" pile simply to give the individual an appearance of deliberation), they may do some temporary suspension to give the appearance of a final gasp of fight for their hard-core base.

It's a show. It's like a death scene in a Shakespearean play. U-Michigan is acting as if they have been mortally stabbed, and they bumble around the stage grimacing every nuance of pain as if it were necessary to the drama. The whole drama with OUM, BAMN, and U-M plays like a tragic farce. But in reality, ending preferences is a bare nick (indeed, a surgical improvement to a previous wound) to the system, and requires only modest concentration and work to come up with alternatives. But our actors simply can't see them.

In the previous entry, I comment on the misuse of President Ford's support of affirmative action and his recent passing by a company that makes profit solely by promoting affirmative action. Of course, it's a company, so surprise might be waning.

And I was certainly wasn't surprised to see this blog entry by the Michigan Review on its new blog citing University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman's statement about what was most important about Gerald Ford. Here she is going over the cliff:

“In recent years and perhaps most importantly, President Ford was outspoken in his support for our diversity programs through our defense of affirmative action to the Supreme Court.”

"...perhaps most importantly..."

So the only, or at least most important, criteria upon which the U-M President judges its own accomplished alumna is whether or not they defend diversity? It's shocking and disgusting when a for-profit company uses a man's death to advance their agenda, but the order of magnitude when the president of my university does it is far worse. Then again, perhaps I'm forgetting that U-Michigan is really more like a for-profit institution (despite its legal status as a non-profit and public university).

So much for the Artes portion of that 3 pronged motto.