Although we find the Daily"s Dec. 12 editorial "Athletic Freedom: Contracts inhibit freedom to protest" noble, its premise is based in unrealistic idealism as editors and chairs of the Daily"s editorial board, we must respect the Daily"s laudable precedent of supporting freedom of speech and the majority vote of the board, we also have a responsibility to point out errors in argument when appropriate. Now is one of these times.

In the editorial, the board argues that the University"s athletic apparel contract with Nike stifles a student athlete"s right to protest the shoe-giant. There are, however, some pertinent points the Daily overlooked in its argument.

When the University re-signed with Nike for an exclusive seven-year partnership last year, the fine print prohibited the University or its athletes from doing anything to deface the Nike "Swoosh" logo, or anything else to defame the company. This makes sense. When two partners enter into an agreement, it is logical that one partner will not do anything to harm the other.

Such logic gets called into question when people are affected by contracts that they had no role in negotiating, as is the case with student athletes. Perhaps then-President Lee C. Bollinger and others involved in contract negotiations can be barred from covering the "Swoosh" in public, but certainly not the athletes right?

These types of good-faith arguments rest on the idea that student athletes are forced to play. Loss of scholarships may be seen as an implicit threat, but that line of reasoning is tenuous at best. The fact is that student athletes voluntarily sign on to a contract of their own with the University when they decide to play - and a major provision of the contract between the University and student athletes is the granting of certain managerial decisions to the University. Among those is the decision on what to wear and how to wear it. This isn"t an infringement of civil rights it"s a protection of property rights.

In agreeing to outfit University sports teams, Nike is offering its product not just as clothing but also as advertising. The argument extends to this as well: Private advertisements have no place in a public institution. The University, since it receives government funds, cannot pass off any officially-sanctioned ideologies to its students. Although the number of instances of private companies using public institutions for advertising (how many high school football scoreboards sport the Coke logo?), the most compelling example of private industry being "pushed" into the public sector is that of Channel One.

Channel One, as many University students may remember, is a television news network seen in thousands of secondary schools public and private across the nation. Through the contract, Channel One outfits schools with television sets in every classroom in exchange for schools allocating 12 minutes per day for mandatory viewing of the news program. Channel One has essentially become part of the curriculum, and students are "forced" to watch the news program including the advertisements for the likes of 7-Up and Gatorade. Channel One is owned by the private Primedia, Inc, and officially aligned with ABC News.

The Channel One situation is a close analogy to the current Nike contracts. In exchange for some merchandise (televisions and sports uniforms, respectively), the relative government institutions assure the corporations of visibility (in the classroom or on the playing field). Neither case infringes on the civil rights of students.

So why does Nike become an issue?

In the soap opera-like drama that unfolded in the months and weeks before Bollinger and Athletic Department Director Bill Martin re-signed with Nike, the University was left without an athletic outfitter. When the University re-signed with Nike last year, one of its arguments for doing so was that the shoe-giant provides Michigan athletic teams with quality apparel. Student athletes, the University argued, would rather be with outfitted with shoes and other gear from Nike, rather than from another retailer.

Unfortunately, the deal left many student activists with a bad taste in their mouths, since concerns over Nike"s labor practices did not seem to be fully considered by the University. Nike"s use of sweatshop labor in developing nations was and still is a valid sticking point between the University administration and student activists, who demanded that the University use its contract to force Nike to align itself with strict labor codes.

Since then, Nike has become the Dr. Claw to student activists" Inspector Gadget. To the Daily"s editorial board, the freedom of speech issue is an extension of activists" desire to vilify Nike at any and every turn. Whereas the labor rights issue are noble and admirable, the freedom of speech issue ends up looking like nitpicking and worse yet, nitpicking that doesn"t have any legal grounds.