ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM Monday, February 22, 2016
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ACADEMICS
CSG makes progress on release of course evals AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
Burton resident Raymond Blake speaks about how he has seen the effects of the water crisis firsthand as a volunteer for Catholic Charities at Flint on Friday.
In Flint, impacts of crisis apparent in day-to-day life
Residents discuss frustration with government, burden on families By LARA MOEHLMAN Daily Staff Reporter
As national media attention and a state and federal declarations of emergency over
Flint’s water crisis draw eyes to the city’s community, residents are tasked with continuing to live within the city’s bounds, feeling the crisis’ effects. On a Friday afternoon, Saginaw Street — the city’s main drag — is quiet, with several residents walking into the restaurants and shops that have survived the economic hardships that have plagued the area since the closing of a nearby General Motors plant almost
seventeen years ago. On the University of MichiganFlint campus, a few students linger in the Harding Mott University Center watching T.V. on communal screens, eating or paging through thick textbooks. Signs around campus tell students the water is OK and safe for them to drink. Students rely on state-issued purifiers on each faucet and drinking fountain to protect them from any possible lead in the city’s water supply
while on campus. Cody Worswick, a sophomore computer science major from Marysville, Michigan considers himself fortunate. Before enrolling at the University’s Flint campus, his mother was aware of the dangerous water quality within the city’s limits, he said, and bought him a filter, which he uses for all of his drinking water. Worswich said he doesn’t See FLINT, Page 3A
After FOIA, body has data but must wait for University approval By JACKIE CHARNIGA Daily News Editor
LSA senior Cooper Charlton, Central Student Government president, said Sunday that course evaluation data could be released for student use as early as fall 2016. The organization has gained the data from a Freedom of Information Act request, Charlton said, but cannot release it until it secures approval from the Provost’s office. CSG has been advocating for the release of course evaluations since Charlton’s party, Make Michigan, took office this fall. Charlton said two committees led by Sean Pitt, LSA junior and CSG chief of staff, and Anushka Sarkar, LSA junior and CSG
SPORTS
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Michigan wins B1G title, ends 12-year drought Wolverines keep intensity up all week, hold off Indiana for victory By COLE ZINGAS Daily Sports Writer
Saturday night, in a unified leap, the Michigan women’s swimmers, divers, coaches, trainers, and the Big Ten Championship trophy splashed into the pool at Canham Natatorium, capping off a victory years in the making. Over the course of the fourday Big Ten Championship meet, the Wolverines beat out the 12 other Big Ten teams and claimed their first Big Ten title since 2004. “The only way to put that in words is to cry for joy,” said Michigan coach Mike Bottom. The Wolverines dominated the meet, leading from the second day on. After the 100-yard freestyle, in which freshman Siobhán Haughey set a pool record with a time of 47.71
and senior captain Ali DeLoof finished third, the meet was all but over. And after the 200-yard butterfly, with two events still remaining, the Wolverines had put themselves out of the reach of second-place Indiana, the only team within 400 points of the Wolverines. However, DeLoof didn’t always know that Michigan would accomplish this much. Three years ago, DeLoof was a freshman struggling through weeks of 20 hours of practice in the pool. It was Bottom’s first year with the program, and the team finished sixth in the Big Ten. DeLoof helped the team to improve over the next two years — placing fifth in the Big Ten in 2014 and third in 2015 — but taking the next step was still somewhere in the distance for the Wolverines. “We imagined it at the beginning of the year, but it was always just a possibility,” said sophomore Clara Smiddy. Even just a few days ago, DeLoof — who was named firstteam All-Big Ten on Saturday — didn’t know if she would be See SWIMMING, Page 2B
chief programming officer, have submitted reports to the office of the Provost regarding the construction of a new course evaluation instrument and a new release policy. If approved, the University of Michigan will release the course evaluation data. This is the first time CSG has submitted a FOIA request for course evaluations since 2011, according to Pitt. He wrote in an e-mail that the recommendations formed by the committees will be considered by the University in determining what information will be collected and released from course evaluations, and are not directly related to the FOIA request. In 2011 and prior, the Michigan Student Assembly, now known as CSG, regularly filed Freedom of Information requests to release course evaluation data for a course selection advice site. Pitt said though these efforts have fallen See EVALUATIONS, Page 2A
‘U’ project funded by NASA for Mars trip Researchers could contribute to future travels to the planet By KEVIN LINDER For the Daily AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
Terry Thompson, School of Public Health assistant professor, speaks about water access and communities of color during a panel at Hatcher on Friday.
Panel looks at links between race, access to clean water Noting current events, speakers emphasize impact on citizens By RACHEL COHEN Daily Staff Reporter
On Friday, a group of panelists from Flint, Detroit, Highland Park and Muskegon Heights spoke at the University to discuss water access and management in
communities of color as part of an event for Black Heritage Month. Each panelist had a different expertise including research, science, political and activist backgrounds. All of the panelists agreed, however, that water is a public good that should be available for every person to access. Leon Howard, program manager in the Office of MultiEthnic Student Affairs and moderator of the event, said the Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs wanted this event to
address concerns about water access in communities of color and to delve into why the management of water has tremendous impacts on communities. “We wanted to do a panel focused on water access and management in communities of color because of what was going on in Flint and other places across the state when it comes to being able to access safe water,” he said. One of the topics of the panel was the ongoing effect of water crises as well as long-term See PANEL, Page 3A
NASA recently funded a University of Michigan design for spacecraft thrusters as part of its Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP). The NextSTEP program encompasses various projects, all aimed at bringing humans closer to manned missions to Mars. The project at the University is led by Aerospace Engineering Prof. Alec Gallimore, who was named the next Engineering dean Thursday. His design, called the X3, is the thruster component of a larger propulsion system called the XR-100, which is the project of major aerospace engineering firm Aerojet Rocketdyne. NASA awarded $6.5 million to Aerojet Rocketdyne for the XR-100, $1 million of which has been given for work on the X3 thruster See NASA, Page 3A
Making a splash Michigan won the 2016 Big Ten women’s swimming and diving title
» INSIDE WEATHER TOMORROW
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2A — Monday, February 22, 2016
ON THE DAILY Swiping right on that potential suitor is becoming more common among American adults, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The national survey of over two thousand adults found about 15% of American adults report using online and/or mobile dating sites, compared to 11% in early 2013. A large part of this spike in online dating is connected to the increase in dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Grindr and Zoosk, especially with high smartphone use among young people. This overall increase is particularly distinguishable in two age groups: 18- to 24- year olds and 55- to 64- year olds. In early 2013, only
about 10% of the first age group reported having used online dating; today, the number has nearly tripled to 27%. The number of users is growing across the range of American adults. The proportion of 55- to 64 year olds who use online dating has doubled from 6% in 2013 to 12% in 2015. The study also looked into whether the outcome of online dating sites is the stereotypical onenight-stand or if they truly create relationships. 29% of respondents reported they know someone who has married or entered into a long-term partnership with someone they met via online dating. The survey also said college graduates and users from middle-tohigh-income populations
DIAG PROTEST
are more likely to know people who have entered into a long-term relationship that began online. Nearly half of the college graduates know someone who has entered into a long-term partnership or marriage with someone they met via online dating. Data also showed digital dating has received mostly positive reviews; a majority of users agree that it is advantageous over other ways of meeting potential partners. 80% said that online dating is a good way to meet people; more than 60% say that it allows people to find a better match and is much more efficient and easier than other means. -DESIREE CHEW
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WHAT: Students, faculty and staff of North Campus will present their art and poetry in this annual showcase. Some works will be published in the Blueprint Magazine. WHO: Maize Pages Student Organizations WHEN: 10 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. WHERE: Duderstadt Gallery
Biotrash talk WHAT: Prof. Sarah Hodges will host a lecture on the contemporary history of health care and the afterlives of medical garbage in Chennai, one of the newest health hubs in India. WHO: Center for South Asian Studies WHEN: 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. WHERE: Tisch Hall, room 1029
WHAT: Professor Amira Jarmakani will host a lecture on the representation of Arabs and desert romances in Western popular culture. She will discuss this in the context of U.S. imperialism. WHO: Arab and Muslim American Studies WHEN: 11:30a.m. to 1 p.m. WHERE: Angell Hall, room 3222
Workout class WHAT: Rec Sports will organize a class that combines zumba, yoga and strength workouts, in support of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. WHO: Department of Recreational Sports (Rec Sports) WHEN: 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. WHERE: Central Campus Recreation Building, room 2275
Stress workshop WHAT: This workshop will examine the cognitive and emotional aspects of stress and worry, and prescribe evidence-based methods for general wellness. WHO: Mary A. Rackham Institute WHEN: 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. WHERE: Rackham Graduate School,Earl Lewis Room
Diversity town hall WHAT: The UM Library will hold a town hall to discuss how it can promote inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility to the UM community. WHO: University Library WHEN: 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. WHERE: Hatcher Graduate Library, Gallery (room 100)
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Toledo resident Liu Hua leads protests on the Diag on Saturday to protest the manslaughter conviction of Peter Liang, a former NYPD officer who fatally shot Akai Gurley, a Black man, in Brooklyn in 2014. Rallies in support of Liang occurred across the country on Saturday. His supporters say that he has been made a scapegoat for police brutality while other, often white, police officers with similar cases have not been convicted.
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Juried Art Competition reception WHAT: The winners of the Juried Art Competition will receive their awards and showcase their work. WHO: Center for Campus Involvement WHEN: 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. WHERE: Michigan League, Hussey Room
Film screening WHAT: Prof. Teresa Satterfield will host a screening and discussion of the film “The New Latinos.” WHO: Latina/o Studies WHEN: 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. WHERE: Ann Arbor Downtown District Library, Multi-Purpose Room
THREE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW TODAY
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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) announced Saturday that he will drop out of the race for the GOP’s nomination after a flagging campaign, the BBC reported. He came in fourth in Saturday’s South Carolina primary.
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The Michigan women’s swimming team won the Big Ten Championship for the first time since 2004.
>> SEE SPORTS ON 1B
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Bomb blasts in the Syrian cities of Homs and Damascus Sundy have killed more than 100 people, the BBC reported. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for both attacks, which targeted areas populated by Alawite and Shias.
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CSG Detroit Congress looks at transportation between cities Group hopes to provide better services for traveling students By MEGAN DOYLE Daily Staff Reporter
On Sunday night, the Central Student Government Detroit Congress held a sparsely attended monthly meeting in the Michigan Union. The Detroit Congress,
sponsored by the Commission on Detroit Engagement, aims to bring together various student organizations and initiatives that work in and with the city of Detroit to collaborate and discuss Ann Arbor’s connection to the Motor City. CSG members noted that attendance was down due to sickness, as noroviruscontinues to be present on campus. Three student organizations were represented at Sunday’s meeting: Detroit Revitalization and Business Initiative, Detroit Urban
Debate Education and Trotter Multicultural Center organizers. The meeting was chaired jointly by LSA sophomore Dylan Bennett and LSA junior Rohin Patel, co-chairs of the Detroit Congress. Despite the low turnout, Bennett said there are several other student organizations who have attended previous Detroit Congress meetings, including Detroit Partnership, JDs in the D and Seven Mile Music. Two of the three organizations were new to the Detroit Congress, according to Patel who said he believes the lack of attendance overall did not keep them from having a productive conversation. Sunday’s meeting focused primarily on the issue of transportation difficulties for students traveling between Ann Arbor and Detroit. Several representatives voiced concern that their organizations do not have the resources to transport people to and from Detroit.
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by the wayside in past years, the current assembly’s two committees have put a particular emphasis on obtaining this data again. However, the push to release the data has sparked concerns on campus, namely from faculty, over potential biases and impact on tenure. In October, the Faculty Senate voted to delay the public access of the numerical evaluation data. In response to the concerns, CSG exceutives pointed to a report released by the University of Michigan Learning Analytics Task Force, created in 2013 by former Provost Phil Hanlon at request of the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs. According to the report, there is virtually no correlation between student grades and perceived workload and biases based on gender, race, ethnicity
DELANEY RYAN/Dailly Central Student Government president Cooper Charlton presents recent CSG initiatives at the University’s Board of Regents meeting in the Michigan Union on November 19, 2015. (Delaney Ryan / DA)
Students who want to get involved in Detroit are often asked to drive their own cars to downtown Detroit, attendees said. They may also be asked to pay for taxi cabs or Zipcars. The organizations often have the funding to reimburse their members for their travel expenses, but this places a financial burden on those members to pay money out of pocket before being reimbursed.
Currently, the University runs the Detroit Connector, a bus system that takes students from the Central Campus Transit Center to three different locations in downtown Detroit which runs four days a week. However, LSA junior Alexis Lowe, the representative from Trotter Multicultural Center, pointed out that because the Connector requires an Mcard,
Detroit residents cannot utilize the transit system to get to Ann Arbor. “Because we hold cultural events at Trotter, I think it’d be really beneficial for Detroiters to come up here for that,” Lowe said. Lowe added that this would fill the Connector during hours when it is less-used by University of Michigan students. She suggested implementing a small fee for use by See DETROIT, Page 3A
or citizenship status in regard to course evaluations. Chaired by Physics Prof. Tim McKay, director of the LSA Honors Program, the task force was operated for three years and consisted of faculty members from several schools and colleges. Certain other parameters have also been put in place regarding the effects of the data release for the instructors. Pitt said firstyear instructors will not have their evaluation data released publically. Sarkar and Pitt said their committees are the result of a three-way partnership between the CSG Executive Committee, University Provost Martha Pollock and the Faculty Senate. “As Cooper and the rest of the Executive Committee have promised, students will now have access to previously unavailable information to improve their course selection process, including evaluation data, by backpacking for the fall of 2016,” Sarkar and Pitt wrote in a joint
e-mail. Pitt also noted that along with the course evaluation data, the University is working on another tool to aid in course selection. The Academic Reporting Toolkit 2.0 is a website that aims to be a onestop shop for the course selection process. Pitt said the tool will contain information about not only the professors who taught the course and when, but also the students who had previously taken it — including their majors and grades of an average student. Pitt said CSG executive committee’s push for the release of course evaluations stems from recognizing the high cost of University courses and wanting students to be supplied with as much information as possible when selecting their courses. “Students are paying thousands of dollars for each and every course that they take here,” Pitt wrote. “Most are taking out major student loans and many are working between classes just to be here. When we recognized
how little reliable information there was to help students select the courses that they spend so much time and so many resources on, we knew we had to make a change.” Pitt said during a CSG meeting last semester that releasing course evaluation data will allow students to form expectations of courses without resorting to third-party sources like the website RateMyProfessors.com. In a later interview, he noted that as an out-of-state student, he and many others have particular interest in accurate course information. “Each course I take here costs thousands of dollars and I’m spending so much time and energy to be able to be a student here and it’s important that I can take courses that actually contribute to my growth and education,” Pitt said. “I only have two sentences to look at on the course selection website, that doesn’t really give me a basis from which to make a decision.”
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FLINT From Page 1A
NASA From Page 1A taking place at the University. Prof. Gallimore said the University is a partner and subcontractor for the firm. The X3, which is based on a series of thrusters developed at NASA, works by ejecting plasma at extremely high speeds out of the rear of a device, providing forward thrust. Plasma is ejected at speeds of up to 30,000 meters per second, which is equal to about 65,000 miles per hour. Scott Hall, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, is the lead graduate student on the project. He said while the NextSTEP funding has only occurred in the past week, development of the design has been underway for some time. “The funding through NextSTEP has been active for about a week, and the proposal for that was originally made about a year ago,” he said. “However, the X3’s development started somewhere around 2010 and the thruster has been assembled and operational since September 2013.” The X3 is competing against two other designs for use in the XR-100 system. According to Hall, this design is the only one of the three that has been created by members of a university. The X3 design is also further ahead of competing designs in terms of development, Gallimore wrote in an email. “It is more mature than any of the others, which means the risk of developing it is lower,” he wrote. “Also, it appears to be lighter and more efficient (in terms of converting spacecraft power to thrust) than the other systems.” Hall also noted that the X3 design has a proven track record. “The three different concepts are all electric propulsion, but they are all very different types,” he said. “The thruster we have developed here has a very proven track record: It is based on a series of thrusters developed at NASA.” According to Gallimore, the shortterm goal is to bring the design to a level of readiness within three years. “The goal is to bring the technology up to a readiness level in three years, that a follow-on contract could get the system ready for use in space a few years after NextSTEP is done,” he wrote. Even if the design is ready in three years’ however, it will be longer until the X3 design can be tested or put to use in space. Gallimore said he believes one of the limitations will not be the U-M thruster, but rather the spacecrafts that would use it. “The power system needed to drive this thruster is years away from development, so while the XR100 system could be ready by 2020, I doubt we will have a spacecraft large enough or powerful enough by then to use it,” he said. Hall agreed and said it will take some time for the design to be put to use. “Realistically, it would probably be 10 years or so until something based on this work was operated in space,” he said. “But our project is ambitious and if successful will get us much closer than we are right now to being ready to fly for the first time.” Hall added that there are several other potential uses of this technology beyond just propelling humans to Mars. “The X3 was developed not only with Mars missions in mind, but also a range of other applications,” he said. “The thruster was designed to be run down to as low as 1 kW and up to 200 kW, so it has a huge range of ‘throttle ability,’ as we say. Something like it could be used to maneuver heavy satellites in orbit around Earth, for cargo tugs to places like Mars, to crewed mission to places like Mars, and as a way to get a very large probe to deep space much quicker than by traditional means.”
DETROIT From Page 2A non-students. Several of the representatives voiced concerns that the Connector often runs regardless of whether people are riding it, meaning it often runs empty. CSG representatives added that the Connector also has a marketing issue — few people know of its existence. Business junior Danny Kaprielian, the representative from Detroit Urban Debate Education, remarked that he had not heard of the Connector until this meeting. His organization sends students to Detroit regularly. The Connector is funded
trust free filters provided to the community by the government. “I don’t feel like the (government-issued) filters are even adequate, because I don’t know how well they filter out the lead,” he said. “I just know that my filter filters out the lead, and I don’t trust theirs.” At his home, Worswick still gets Flint city water, which he noted comes with challenges that can’t be solved just by filtering all drinking water. “I don’t like the fact that I have to shower in lead water, but it’s whatever. I have to live with it,” he said. Christopher Miller, a freshman physics and math major, is shoveling snow off a bench on campus. He works for UM-Flint part time. Miller is one of three people on his street who have well water — but many of his family and friends are not as fortunate, he said. His friends come to his house regularly to take showers. Miller said the unfolding magnitude of the water crisis is still unimaginable. “It was just sort of surreal for a while just because they had been talking about it for a long time — how there was something in their water — and it just wasn’t right,” he said.
PANEL From Page 1A solutions. Panelist Dr. Terry Thompson, assistant professor of the Department of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Michigan-Flint, has been working with a team of researchers on communitybased participatory research for what he calls the ‘91st day.’ He said the 91st day occurs after media coverage slows down and emergency funds stop coming. “As you know, emergency funds, water and all this usually happens for 90 days. But what we’re interested in is what happens on the 91st day after CNN has gone,” he said. “So that’s what we’re interested in. We’ve got to find explicitly what is it that is needed, what is that gap.” The event featured videos including from the local Fox News channel, “Let it Rip: Flint water crisis special” and “When the Water Runs Dry: Voices from the Detroit Water Crisis.” Panelist Dr. Jerome Nriagu, a recently retired professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health, said he has done work on childhood lead poisoning in Flint and Detroit with a focus on the future of the water source. Nriagu said many of the solutions to decontaminate the water that were discussed in the Fox News video such as treating river water will not work even in the short term. “First of all, somebody says you can treat Flint River water, the answer is no,” he said. “Because it’s contaminated with organic compounds and we still don’t know how to remove some of these organic compounds from any river water. So the idea that you can treat river water, from my own research experience, is false.” Both Thompson and Nriagu discussed the possibility of removing and replacing the pipes of contaminated communities as a long-term solution to the water crises. Thompson said
through the Office of the Provost and will expire June of this year. The funding will then need to be renewed. The transportation issue is one that underscores the lack of communication and coordination across student organizations working in Detroit organizers said, which is what the Detroit Congress is working to combat. Bennett said some of these issues with the Detroit Connector are to be expected, such as a disconnect between those who are running the transportation and those who need to use it. “So I guess it’s just a lack of communication in different aspects, as one might expect,” Bennett said. The meeting ended with a
“My sister is dealing with it, and she was just starting to notice hair falling off — her skin would be really red when she got out of the shower for whatever reason and she didn’t know (why),” Miller said. He added that any trust between Flint residents and their local and state governments that once existed has disappeared. “At first it was like, ‘There’s no way the city of Flint is just going to allow the poisoning of 90,000 residents — no, they totally did,” Miller said. “It just helps to further cement the dichotomy — the line of trust that is just never gonna come back in terms of citizens and their government. It’s never gonna come back.” Miller said he is further angered by the fact that national media, not the months of Flint residents’ complains, sparked governmental attention to the water crisis. “It was going on for a solid year and a half before the rest of the world picked up,” Miller said. “There’s a city of 100,000 people being poisoned and no one seems to care just because they have shoddy infrastructure.” Larry Tucker, a Flint resident who regularly uses UM-Flint campus recreational facilities, on Friday said he believes the government must
the procedure for removing pipes is not too complicated and takes a few hours, adding that community members should be trained to replace the pipes so they can feel involved. “The people would feel that they are part of the solution and that confidence in itself will do so much for a community,” Thompson said. All panelists said they agreed that that it is important for communities to feel empowered and to use their voices to show what the media will not show. While much of the conversation in the media about water has been centered on Flint, panelist Alexis Ramsey, a charter commissioner for the city of Highland Park, said in 2014 it was reported that over 1,000 children in Highland Park had higher lead levels than the children of Flint and that there had been a 35 percent increase in water bills for bad water. “We just want people to understand that we are fighting the same fight, no different than Flint, and our citizens and residents are facing the same thing,” said Ramsey. Panelist Kim Sims, mayor of Muskegon Heights, noted that her city was one of several that avoided hiring an emergency manager, which Flint had while the crisis was unfolding. She added that her city has its own water filtration plant, saying she hoped to learn from the other panelists about water management. “We do have our own water filtration plant that we own and operate completely,” she said. “At this point we are our own customers because we had two customers who decided to leave us for another municipality. I’m hoping to gain some knowledge actually while I’m here and assist the conversation however I can.” Panelists also discussed the evident health issues facing the children of Flint. Panelist and activist Monica Lewis-Patrick, co-founder of We the People of Detroit which aims to provide resources for Detroit citizens to better their quality of
broader discussion on what the organizations can do to strengthen the relationship between the University and the city of Detroit. Patel said he finds it helpful to structure the Detroit Congress’ meetings around common problems that all the student organizations can relate to. “It’s very beneficial to talk about broad issues surrounding Detroit engagement like social justice, community service, business and transportation, like we discussed today,” Patel said. The next meeting will be in March. Bennett and Patel said they’re attempting to bring University administrators to upcoming meetings.
take immediate action. He’s not alone in these sentiments by far — some state residents have called for moretransparency from Gov. Rick Snyder (R) while others call for his arrest. Tucker added that the crisis has deeply impacted his level of trust in the government. “I don’t trust whoever I’m drinking water from — no way,” he said. “Just because they put up a sign there that says ‘filtered’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s filtered because the government is always going to cover themselves.” Caniejrah Marshall, a junior communications major at Mott Community College in Flint, works in a student convenience store in the Harding Mott University Center on the University’s Flint campus. Softspoken, she answers questions as she checks out customers. She said the water crisis has been particularly difficult for her to deal with due to her severe eczema, a condition that inflames the skin. She noticed her skin turning extremely dry after showers directly after the city switched from using Lake Huron’s water to the Flint water supply. She suffers from regular itching spells and takes Benadryl on a nightly basis to alleviate the irritation. Before government agencies and local charities began
life, said children have already started showing health problems from the contamination. “One of the things we know from working on the ground in Flint for almost two years is that teachers are already reporting that they are seeing behavioral issues and acting out increased in the classrooms,” said LewisPatrick. “We also know that with these children, especially poor white, Black or brown children will be more likely to be incarcerated as opposed to being treated.” Charles Ransom, Multicultural Studies librarian at the University Library, served on the committee that organized events for Black History Month. He said this event related to Black History Month because water crises are primarily happening in communities with a large population of African Americans. “Just like what the speakers were saying, most of the cities that have been affected by the water issues are chocolate cities, they are Black cities,” he said. “It seems to follow the same script — the city loses money, the city has an asset, it’s water or it’s the water treatment plant and they lose it or something goes wrong.” LSA junior Lauren Miles said she came to event because she was curious and had not gone to an event for Black Heritage Month yet. She said she wanted to know more about the water crisis in Flint. “I knew of Flint, I didn’t really know the details of it and I really wanted to know the details because I keep on hearing things about water,” Miles said. “I took a one-credit class last year about water, it was more of a global view on water. This is another side of that conversation that is important; I think it’s everyone’s main concern.” She added that though the event focused on Michigan, she thought anyone can learn from the issues discussed. “I think we can take things from here and apply it to things that are happening all around the world,” she said.
Monday, February 22, 2016 — 3A
providing free bottled water to Flint residents, Marshall said she paid seven or eight dollars for cases of water, a costly expense. And though she has been buying bottled water, she continues to bathe in the tap water. “I have no choice but to take a shower. It kind of makes you feel helpless because I can’t help but to take a shower — I can’t help but to cook in the water and I heard somewhere that they could’ve fixed it a long time ago so it would’ve been better if they just fixed it and treated it right in the beginning so people wouldn’t have to go through this,” Marshall said. She said she is additionally troubled with the fact that government officials now face million-dollar projects to fix and replace the pipe system, whereas it would have initially cost $35,000. Though she said she is appreciative of national and local efforts to provide water and filters, she worries about those who don’t have cars and therefore access to pick up bottled water. Damario Mason works with Sodexo catering on UM-Flint’s campus. He said his aunts and cousins have experienced symptoms of lead poisoning, and his family recently decided to leave Flint.
“They’re losing hair. They’re getting rashes and it’s just not livable anymore so they just decided to leave,” Mason said. “I saw my little cousin the other day and she had a huge rash on her arm, and I knew she wouldn’t normally get that just from regular water.” Denazia Pettway, a freshman public health and sciences major from Detroit, lives on UM-Flint’s campus. Pettway said she only drinks tap water on UM-Flint’s campus thanks to a notification from University officials that it’s safe, and accompaying water filters. She added that she was disturbed by a lack of governmental accountability surrounding the water crisis. “They just wanted to live their lives, but people are getting sick and people are dying and people are sad and they don’t know what to do because this is Flint,” she said. “Flint is not the richest city. Flint is very poor, and so they don’t have the money to go out and move — they don’t have that money. They don’t have those resources, so they have no choice but to sit in Flint and use water bottled water for everything.”
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Opinion
4A — Monday, February 22, 2016
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Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
FROM THE DAILY
Democracy for Detroit schools
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oilet water falling from the ceiling, mushrooms sprouting from the walls and black mold infestation are just some of the conditions that students and teachers have had to face on a daily basis in Detroit Public Schools. It is difficult to imagine that any city’s residents would allow their elected officials to treat their children with such indignity. But Detroit residents don’t even have the opportunity to make that choice, because Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has utilized the state’s financial emergency law to give a non-elected, state-appointed emergency manager practically complete control over DPS affairs. The events that have unfolded in recent weeks surrounding DPS are a reflection of a larger trend within the state government: Too much power is being concentrated in the hands of non-elected, state-appointed officials to the detriment of Michigan citizens. In response to mass protests by DPS teachers and the Detroit Federation of Teachers lawsuit against DPS, Darnell Earley, the city’s stateappointed emergency manager, announced this February he’ll leave the position Feb. 29. Earley was also the emergency manager for the city of Flint, a position from which he also resigned without issuing any sort of public apology. Furthermore, during his time in Detroit, Earley has consistently not listened to residents. Earley has criticized teachers who participated in sickouts. After pursuing the lawsuit, DFT has also attempted to bring in its own health inspectors. However, DPS officials stopped these inspectors from entering all but one school building, saying DFT’s inspectors would “complicate the district’s efforts to fully comply with state and local regulations.” Now state lawmakers are considering legislation to provide funding and revitalize the school district. The trend of Snyder concentrating control of the city’s poorest areas in the hands of the unelected is unacceptable. Most alarming is that in recent months, Snyder’s emergency managers have essentially acted with impunity while the populations they governed suffered. That’s not to say that serious financial reform like that which Detroit, Flint and others are undergoing won’t come with sacrifices. However, on the exterior, Detroit seems like a city on the rise. New restaurants and young residents have moved downtown. The riverfront has been revitalized, a new hockey stadium is in the works and the Detroit auto show hit record-high attendance this past January with more than 800,000 visitors, the most it has seen in 12 years. But an apparent contradiction lies in investing whatever it takes to revive Detroit’s urban core while ignoring the buildings crumbling around its most vulnerable residents. DPS teachers are the only ones doing anything constructive to raise awareness, but are being met with serious resistance. It’s easy to see why teachers are frustrated with administrators, especially because administrators are also using funds that could be used to fix schools to sue many of the teachers who have participated in sick-outs. Their reasoning: Sick-out protesters are depriving students of their right to attend school, adversely impacting students’
academic progress, depriving students of their breakfast and lunches, forcing parents and non-striking DPS employees to miss work and wasting taxpayer money. Looking at photographs of the conditions of Detroit schools’ buildings, it is obvious that these conditions existed before the sickouts, and are only going to get worse unless someone calls attention to them — which is exactly what teachers accomplished in holding sick-outs. Lack of administration funding for instructional materials adversely impacts each student’s right to an education, and it’s not a stretch of reason to conclude that a leaky cafeteria roof might deprive students of safe, healthy breakfasts and lunches. The teachers participating in sick-outs should be applauded for their dedication. Earley and DPS officials should not be acting against the teachers, but instead in conjunction with them and DFT. The demographics of districts with appointed emergency managers must also be called into question. Grosse Pointe, a 93.2-percent white town, is just 10 miles away from the 82.7-percent African-American Detroit, but its schools aren’t crumbling. DPS has failed administratively to provide adequate education for its students, but the implications of socioeconomic status and race cannot be ignored. The inequality between public school systems — not just in Grosse Pointe, but throughout the state — begs the question: Why are some students afforded top-notch instruction while others have to settle for substandard education? Emergency managers in both Flint and Detroit were only accountable to numbers on a spreadsheet, and never to the actual human beings they governed. In the cases of Flint and DPS, it seems Earley is failing to recognize the tangible impacts his decisions are having on human lives. Snyder and the DPS administration need to realize that behind all the debt, behind all the money and behind all the problems are real students who deserve an education. It is possible to make a difference through kindness, empathy and compassion. If the people in power can remember that when they are making decisions, then Detroit will be one step closer to revitalization.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan, Jeremy Kaplan, Ben Keller, Minsoo Kim, Payton Luokkala, Kit Maher, Madeline Nowicki, Anna Polumbo-Levy, Jason Rowland, Lauren Schandevel, Melissa Scholke, Kevin Sweitzer, Rebecca Tarnopol, Ashley Tjhung, Stephanie Trierweiler, Hunter Zhao
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NOTABLE QUOTABLE
A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not a Christian. This is not the gospel.
— Pope Francis on Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposed immigration policies.
M
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Why I stopped listening to Kanye
y hands were raised toward the air, a sign of praise to God. My head was lowered, eyes closed, as I just wanted to soak in the moment. I was not at church, but I felt like I was taken there. I was listening to “Ultralight Beam,” the first CHRIS track of Kanye CROWDER West’s new album, The Life of Pablo. West described this new work as a gospel album before its release, and while listening to the first song, I believed him. The choir roared through my speakers and Chance The Rapper’s verse gave me goose bumps. But as I went through the songs in the rest of the album, I found myself thinking, Did Kanye really just say that? Kanye West has always been known for his over-the-top ego and critically acclaimed music style. I am a fan of his and honestly enjoy every song on The Life of Pablo. But some of the lyrics and his recent tweets have been questionable, to say the least. The nature of his words can’t just be swept under the rug saying, “Oh, that’s just Kanye.” We still listen to the music, but we should no longer view West as a role model or idol. Fans can be caught in an awkward middle ground when a celebrity or anyone they admire messes up or says something they don’t agree with. I grew up a huge fan of Tiger Woods. I wrote a report on him in fifth grade because he paved the way for Black and mixed people in golf and kicked ass while doing it. He runs foundations to promote golf with children who live in the inner cities and his Tiger Woods Learning Center has five campuses across the United States that teach college-access classes to underprivileged kids. But when he announced on Feb. 19, 2010 that he cheated on his wife with multiple women, I was 14. I was upset, but quickly forgave him, probably because I had been a fan since I could remember. I was just 14, and I thought the good he did trumped his mistake that he took ownership for. There obviously is a difference between cheating on your wife and using controversial lyrics, but Woods apologized and some have forgiven him. West, on the other hand, has continued using controversial lyrics
time and time again without remorse. In his song “On Sight” from Yeezus, he raps, “Soon as I pull up and park the Benz / We get this bitch shaking like Parkinson’s.” In the song “Blood on the Leaves,” (also from Yeezus) he compares sitting courtside across the court from your wife at a basketball game to apartheid. West hasn’t apologized or owned up to the controversy. He isn’t obligated to, but he should. Because he doesn’t take responsibility for what he puts out there, we cannot respect him for anything else but possibly his musical talent. As listeners, we must deliberate whether we want to support an artist who makes outrageous claims or hurtful statements. Much of the uproar about lyrics on The Life of Pablo comes from two separate bars, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why, I made that bitch famous,” and “Do anybody feel bad for Bill Cosby? Did he forget the names like Steve Harvey?” West defends the first lyric by saying in a series of tweets, “First thing is I’m an artist and as an artist I will express how I feel with no censorship. 2nd thing I asked my wife for her blessings and she was cool with it. 3rd thing I called Taylor and had an hour long convo with her about the line and she thought it was funny and gave her blessings. 4th bitch is an endearing term in hip hop like the word n****.” But Swift and her representatives deny the claim wholeheartedly saying, “She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that bitch famous.’ ” Because of West’s past use of lyrics and the fact that he called Swift “fake ass” backstage on SNL last week, we cannot take his word. And isn’t it weird, though he had his wife’s blessing, that West talks about having sex with another woman while he is married? And no, Kanye, I certainly don’t feel bad for Bill Cosby. Dude, the song was great until you said that. “Facts (Charlie Heat Version)” is such a great song to fire you up before an exam or even to aggressively eat your cereal, but when I heard that line, my face shriveled up and I took out my headphones. West has tweeted, “BILL COSBY INNOCENT !!!!!!!!!!” and Cosby is not. Too many women have bravely stepped forward to say that Cosby had assaulted or raped them for anyone to think Cosby is anything but guilty.
We can idolize characters or celebrities, like Cosby was adored for his television show and stand-up sets, and when they make a mistake, we may deny it or shrug it off. Of course, depending on the severity of the offense, we can accept apologies, like in the case of Woods, or have our opinions change permanently, like with Cosby. Kanye does not apologize for his antics, but he does remain one step ahead of those who criticize him. In “Feedback,” he raps, “I can’t let these people play me / Name one genius that ain’t crazy.” Even the apostle Paul, a writer of the Bible’s New Testament — who the album is named after according to West — was perceived as more than out there during his time. Kanye West is crazy, but has reached new levels of self-absorption and being completely unapologetic. Paul wrote in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is good and acceptable and perfect.” This verse is difficult to follow for any Christian. But it put me in the mindset that some of the things that West says are unacceptable, and should not be taken lightly because he hasn’t publicly apologized for any of them, even if he does internally regret some of the things he has said. Even West’s former songwriting partner, Rhymefest, said that West needs spiritual and mental help. West’s narcissism has reached a boiling point and it can put his fans in a middle ground — at least it has for me. In my opinion, his music is excellent. But I’ve been disappointed with his words. Even if he may be joking, thus far, he hasn’t indicated so. Part of me wants to keep listening to The Life of Pablo, but at the same time, I don’t think I can support West because of his words. The album is great, filled with great production, beats and also lyrics that I enjoy. But the bad has outweighed the good for me, so I ripped off the BandAid and I deleted it off my phone. West and I agree on this: Only God can judge him. I just choose not to support his music anymore. Kanye West can take us to church. But his words can’t be taken as trivial. — Chris Crowder can be reached at ccrowd@umich.edu.
Lackadaisical language and “progressive” politics
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hey might seem like empty political talking points, but the recent skirmishes over who or what is a Democrat or progressive actually offer us the opportunity to expand our political discourse and redefine the spectrum of acceptable ZAK political opinion. WITUS In a town hall last week, Hillary Clinton once again grossly paraphrased Bernie Sanders’ criticisms of President Barack Obama, alleging that Sanders called the president “weak,” “flawed” and so on. (Apparently, criticizing the current president is unbecoming of presidential candidates.) Clinton ultimately suggested that “Senator Sanders wasn’t really a Democrat until he decided to run for president.” The crowd responded with a mix of boos and applause. Though he caucuses with the Democrats and supports many of their legislative initiatives, as a matter of fact, Sanders was not a member of the Democratic Party until he decided to run for president. I don’t see why Sanders’ status as an independent or his willingness to criticize President Obama should worry us. In fact, it’s the reason many of us support him. If Clinton’s criticism here amounts to saying that Sanders rejects establishment politics, she is just knocking on the open door. But let’s allow ourselves to briefly play this language game of putting names to politicians and policies and see who falls in the categories of Democrat or progressive. In 1963, Sanders was being arrested at civil rights rallies in Chicago. He also participated in marches with Martin Luther King Jr. In 1964, Clinton was supporting Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, avowed opponent to the civil rights movement. Clinton would go on to work for other Republicans, such as Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller. In
terms of partisanship, Clinton plainly appears to be the least Democratic (i.e. most Republican) of the two. Though her husband was officially a Democrat, his critics have often pointed out how his presidency blurred the traditional lines between our country’s two dominant parties by supporting policies that were highly conservative. For example, Michelle Alexander frequently talks about how the 1994 crime bill extended and intensified Reagan’s war on drugs, by pouring billions of dollars into the destruction of Black communities across the country. These labels (Democrat, Republican, progressive, conservative, etc.) don’t literally mean what they used to, as with most other labels in our political discourse. Last I checked, U.S. Republicans don’t believe in the idea of the republic any more than U.S. Democrats do. Liberals don’t believe in open-handedness any more than conservatives believe in conserving anything. Libertarianism in this country usually means market fundamentalism (i.e. letting a few people who control a vast majority of the nation’s capital determine the lives of the less privileged) instead of what it maybe once meant (i.e. something closer to the Thoreauvian notion that people ought to determine their own destinies free from the constraints of big government and big commerce). Point being, these terms either don’t denote much of anything substantive, or their current common usage has perverted their old meaning into its opposite. So let’s not worry too much about how the mainstream media assigns politicians these titles. If the Sanders campaign ultimately does nothing else, it has forced millions of people, who might not otherwise be inclined, to reckon with the true meaning of these terms. The disagreement between Sanders and Clinton over terms like “progressive” represents a larger ideological disagreement between the two. It is a disagreement between liberals and the New Left (beautifully embodied in Ms. Nina Simone’s song, “Mississippi Goddam”). It is a disagreement today over fundamental political and
economic questions, like “Is corruption a symptom of Wall Street when it’s not properly regulated, or is corruption inherent to its very structure?” and “Are health care and college education luxuries, or are they economic rights?” and “Should the government serve the will of the citizens, or just (to borrow a phrase) a handful of billionaires?” This contrast benefits people whom, by watching CNN, ABC nightly news, MSNBC, etc. before the Sanders campaign, might not otherwise have noticed that there are other — and, in my view, more compelling — visions of progress than the liberal, pessimistic ObamaClinton vision. While the president and Hillary Clinton say to go slow, Sanders and Ms. Simone say that’s what’s the trouble. If we want to reinvest signifiers like “progressive” with meaning and efficacy, we should first avoid adopting their common usage. Instead, we should critique this perverse usage and appropriate these terms according to our own purposes. In other words, after overcoming our cultural speech impediment, we appropriate the term “progressive” according to what we ourselves declare progress to be. In this postmodern era, when the signifier has apparently lost all connection with the signified, it’s tempting to conclude that we have no hope of using language effectively (especially political language). But this conclusion overlooks the fact that words have the meaning that we invest in them in order to serve our individual and communal interests and concerns. Investigating the meaning of words not only improves our ability to communicate; it improves our ability to think, expanding our political horizons beyond the binary of liberal and conservative and into a whole field of potential political opinion, which might include socialism, to anarcho-syndicalism, to #BlackLivesMatter. That’d be what I’d call progress. — Zak Witus can be reached at zakwitus@umich.edu.
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ALBUM REVIEW
Monday, February 22, 2016 — 5A
EVENT PREVIEW
BJ’s major debut CBCO rings in the Chicago Kid’s “In My Mind” is just original enough By MATT GALLATIN Daily Arts Writer
Make no mistake. As closely tied as BJ the Chicago Kid may be with hip hop today, he is through and through an R&B artist. His B+ early mixtapes contained a In My plethora of overt references to Mind traditional R&B BJ the gods — Sam Chicago Kid Cooke, James Brown, Mar- Motown vin Gaye — and his sound has always reflected that reverence for classics. At times this has worked to his detriment. His first mixtape, Taste of Chicago, while an enjoyable piece of soul showcasing his smooth, crooning voice, sounded ill-fatedly bound to be the background music for overzealous, virginal high school boys dropping $1.99 clearance rose flower pedals over their extra-long twin bed in an attempt to convince their apprehensive, younger, girlfriends that this is finally the “right time.” There’s even the obligatory “Sexual Healing” cover. Those predecessors so prevalent on his earlier works seemed to box him in as he held them so tightly. Whether by personal growth or external pressure, BJ has branched out towards the contemporary. BJ’s feature on rapper Schoolboy Q’s track “Studio” was undoubtedly his major break into
the public lexicon. Still, he was by no means unknown prior, lending his voice to standout releases like Kendrick Lamar’s Section.80, Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap and Ab-Soul’s Control System. His most recent full release, The M.A.F.E. Project, offered samples from Kanye West’s futuristic album Yeezus and a rendition of Justin Timberlake’s “Strawberry Bubblegum.” It’s an acknowledgement that, for better or worse, popinspired bass and synths are the majority of R&B tracks in 2016, not jazz bands and orchestral sounds. In My Mind, BJ’s major-label debut, finds the artist merging his past and present, trying not to compromise either. He shows impressive growth both vocally and sonically, likely a result of the talented crowd he’s associated himself with, and there’s an obvious tinge of tradition here. But there’s an equally poignant modern element that helps keep this album from feeling like any other nostalgic work of soul. Opening the album on “Intro,” BJ jokes “I love God, but I also love mob movies.” It’s a fitting introduction to In My Mind, which pulls influence from both. “Man Down,” which leans closer to mob movies, both on account of the berretta-like beat and lyrics like “you can’t fuck with me and my n****s,” is probably the closest BJ will come to the radio. It’s a forward-moving track that brings an energy that was sometimes absent from his earlier releases. On the other hand, there’s no lack of slow piano-ballad sermons on this debut. “Shine,” Falling On My Face,” and “Jeremiah/World Needs More Love,” all lean on his love for God. On the latter, he makes this unquestionably clear:
FILM REVIEW
‘Saul’ haunts By DANIEL HENSEL For the Daily
It has become nearly impossible to separate the Holocaust from its cinematic legacy. We’ve seen Oscar-winning feature films and documen- A taries of all tones, all sub- Son of Saul ject matters and Mozinet from numerous countries on the Michigan Theater topic. And while this subject is far from a tired one, its sheer prevalence in a way calls for some new interpretation of the horrors of the early 1940s. “Son of Saul,” directed by Hungarian first-timer László Nemes, is yet another film to add to the subject matter’s collection of works, but it satisfyingly goes beyond the conventional messages and techniques of the works that came before. The film follows the titular Saul Ausländer, played impeccably by first-time actor Géza Röhrig, through a day and a half at Auschwitz. There, Saul is a prisoner and member of the Sonderkommando, a labor force comprised of Jewish prisoners who were coerced into assisting the Nazis in disposing the bodies of gas chamber victims at the threat of their own death. Saul comes across the body of a boy whom he claims as a son, and attempts to find a rabbi to give the boy a proper burial, while also joining a cadre of fellow workers who are attempting to escape. These two stories interweave as Nazi officers decide to trim Ausländer’s specific group of workers. That last plot point, (like a boa constrictor tightening on its prey,) turns the film into more of a taut thriller. “Son of Saul” differs so strongly from other Holocaust movies because its subjects are not larger than life. Whereas “Schindler’s List” features a man who saved about 1,000 Jews, and “The Diary of Anne Frank” follows a girl whose story has become legend, “Son of Saul” is a fictitious story about a group of people who have been largely forgotten. When Saul enters the screen, we know nothing of him, his past and his fate. The story renders Saul as a stand-in for all the victims whose stories we
have forgotten. And yet, “Son of Saul” retains a narrow scope in its examination of the human experience in horrifying circumstances. Saul, who wears a deadened expression throughout much of the film, is seen at his most lucid when on the quest for the rabbi. Otherwise, Saul resembles little more than an abused worker who, because of the conditions, has been dehumanized beyond emotional recognition. Saul’s decisions in the company of fellow workers are peculiar, but they serve to emphasize that rationality is a luxury in such harrowing experiences. But while Saul is the most featured character, the true stars of the film are its below-the-line craftsmen. Mátyás Erdély’s shaky, kinetic cinematography instills a true sense of chaos, while the quick pace of the script itself underscores the quickly approaching doom of the characters. Matthieu Taponier’s editing features several long, uninterrupted takes, many of which depict relatively mundane events, like Saul standing in a hallway as several new prisoners pass him on their way to the gas chamber. This deliberative pacing both adds to the mounting dread of knowing what awaits these prisoners, as well as the bit of relief of knowing Saul gets to live for a few seconds more than we would have seen if the clip had been edited. Further, the camera follows Saul around, like a third-person video game following its main character, while the typical horrors of the Holocaust are confined to the corners or, more often, off-screen. The biggest accomplishment is the film’s superb soundscape, designed by Tamás Zányi, which transforms off-camera conversations into menacing words looming over Saul’s, and our, head. The sounds of screaming, crying, burning and hard labor combine to create an opus of pure sonic horror. “Son of Saul” was Nemes’s attempt to cure the ills of the Holocaust film. He avoids spectacle, heroes and happy endings, the typical fixtures that make the subject matter artificially digestible. And most of all, rather than attempting to be a sprawling epic, “Son of Saul” is impossibly small, opting to focus on its main character rather than the horrors that surround him.
“Just in case you were wondering what Jeremiah I’m speaking of, not the singer but the prophet from the bible.” The best moments of this album come when BJ can bring both of these elements together. “Church,” featuring Chance the Rapper and Buddy, sees him contemplating that line between church and sin. “She say she wanna drink, do drugs and have sex tonight / But I got church in the morning,” he sings. He delivers the lines playfully, like he knows what he wants but also what he needs. Impressively, he holds his own with Chance, who has a habit of taking center stage on a number of his guest appearances. The Kendrick collaboration, “The New Cupid,” is another highlight that marries new and old, and again involves BJ looking at his moral compass — “Cupid’s too busy in the club” he notes. The interplay between Kendrick and BJ is powerful, with both seeming to guide each other, like friendly musicians in a jazz band. BJ has been often compared to D’Angelo, on account of similarities in his voice and tributes (both subtle references and entire album covers) that BJ has made to the artist. Indeed, BJ seems like the natural succession from D’Angelo’s ’90s neo-soul towards a more rap-heavy modern scene. BJ doesn’t have the power, though, that D’Angelo’s voice does, and the more old-fashioned, vocal second half of In My Mind could turn off listeners that were initially held by the tempo of the opening tracks. Still, In My Mind is a solid attempt at bridging BJ’s different worlds. It neither succumbs totally to pop-pressure, nor holds too completely to tradition.
new year in Detroit By DAYTON HARE Daily Arts Writer
The mental image that generally accompanies the word “orchestra” is that of a large mass of European instruments gathered together in front The China of a wildBroadcasting haired conductor Chinese enthusiOrchestra astically waving Monday, Feb. a baton 22, 8 p.m. — which is fair, Orchestra Hall, Detroit consider$15 GA, $50 Box Seats ing that in almost any context this image would be largely accurate. But on occasion the word is applied to an ensemble which defies expectations, shaking off linguistic preconceptions to present the public with something unanticipated. This is the case with the China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra, which will be performing in Detroit Monday evening under the direction of Pang Kapang. “It’s a combination of all different types of Chinese traditional instruments — that’s including percussion, strings and wind instruments — but it’s set up very similar to a Western symphonic orchestra,” Wei Yu, principal cellist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, said in an interview with The Michigan Daily. “It’s like a large orchestra version of
… Chinese traditional instruments.” The CBCO was founded in 1953, formed by the combination of two previous Chinese orchestras. Over the subsequent decades it has come to stand as a symbol of Chinese culture, led to prominence by conductor and composer Peng Xiuwen. “The piece I’m playing with the orchestra is … a modern adaption of a very traditional, old folk melody,” Yu said, who will be featured as a soloist on the CBCO concert for the piece Huaer Caprice said. “It’s based on a very well-known film back in the ’60s. The movie is called ‘The Visitors from the Icy Mountain’; the theme song … has become a popular song called ‘Why are the Flowers So Red?’” The melody, while a folk tune, is actually not Chinese in origin — rather, its roots are Tajik, a designation which refers to a wide range of Persian speaking peoples of Iranian origin. Since “Visitors from the Icy Mountain,” however, the melody has become widely known in China.
The orchestra defies western expectations. “I grew up in mainland China — I know that tune really well,” the cellist said. “(The piece) is such a showcase of the cello and another
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(Chinese) string instrument … it becomes a virtuoso piece for two solo instruments accompanied by this large orchestra.” Many of the pieces the CBCO will be presenting are similar — modern arrangements of traditional Chinese folk music — but several are original compositions as well. “A lot of folk melody is from the voice, or from one single instrument — right now they are adapting a lot of varieties into this kind-of Western kind-of orchestration, or symphonic, version of the tradition,” Yu said. CBCO is visiting Detroit to celebrate the Chinese New Year. On February 8th the new Year of the Monkey was inaugurated, an event which occurs once every 12 years in the cyclical Chinese calendar . “The Chinese New Year is celebrated worldwide these days,” Yu said. “Before I joined the DSO I was also a member of the New York Philharmonic. For a few years we started to have a Chinese New Year celebration in concerts.” The concert, Yu said, touches universal themes of music and ideas of cultural dialogue. “I’m just really happy to be a cultural ambassador between American and China, together celebrating the Chinese New Year … music is a bridge that links two cultures together,” Yu said. “I’m very proud to be part of the cultural ambassador (sic) using the common language of music … I hope that way to introduce Chinese culture and music to a wider audience, and vice versa.”
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Arts
6A — Monday, February 22, 2016
TV REVIEW
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MUSIC COLUMN
‘Vinyl’ embraces The beautiful dark, truth of rock era twisted ‘Life of Pablo’ HBO show from legendary creators depicts life in the ’70s fast lane By SHIR AVINADAV Daily Arts Writer
“Vinyl” reflects the legendary names heading its creation. Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter team up post“Boardwalk Empire” to Aproduce another powerful Vinyl period piece. Series The lengthy Premiere series premiere (nearly Sundays two hours) at 9 p.m. takes on the ’70s New York HBO music scene with countless depictions of coke-fueled antics, abounding sex and spectacular musical performances. In short, it abides by the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll trope of the iconic rock era. Though these elements are ubiquitous, they don’t define the show superficially. In the very first scene, Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale, “Boardwalk Empire”), the once-great record producer around which the show centers, rips off his car’s rearview mirror to line up what we assume is the first coke he’s done in some time. This hook into the story suggests there is more to Richie than the staggering music producer we see at a moment of weakness. And when office secretary Jamie Vine (Juno Temple, “The Dark Knight Rises”) sleeps with aspiring punk musician Kip Stevens (James Jagger, “Mr. Nice”) after a particularly rowdy performance by his band the Nasty Bits, she begins to mold him into a musician she can present to Richie to sign, indicating her ingenuity that exceeds her low rank on the industry totem pole. The show is rooted in the par-
ticularities of an industry overrun with seedy characters and their unwholesome pastimes (including ingesting a variety of drugs), but it doesn’t fall into the trap of glamorizing the lifestyle. Cannavale’s powerful performance as Richie, the music exec with a storied past, illustrates this grounded storytelling. We’re taken back and forth between his humble beginnings in the music industry and his present day disillusionment as a man on the comedown from the pinnacle of his career. The story is told through Richie’s perspective, which he warns from the start may be blurred by his excessive drug use and “bullshit.” His character is written masterfully by Terence Winter and George Mastras and executed poignantly by Cannavale. After the first scene of Richie’s meltdown in his car, we learn what sparked the series of events leading to his moment of weakness. As Richie and his partners Zak Yankovich (Ray Romano, “Everybody Loves Raymond”) and Skip Fontaine (J.C. MacKenzie, “The Departed”) sit at a conference room table with the German executives buying their floundering record label American Century, Richie’s voiceover briefly explains how he got to where he’s sitting and how he “earned his right to be hated” carrying kegs and cleaning up vomit before starting his own company. More importantly, the previous scene’s weight is made clear when Richie states, “I had a golden ear, silver tongue and brass balls. But the problem became my nose, and everything I put up it.” Aside from the clever prose and cynicism towards the music business, the show is enhanced with beautifully executed cinematography and a soundtrack carefully curated by show creator Mick Jagger himself. The rapid cutting and various angles of some of the more striking performances create a blur of leather pants, guitar thrashing and headbanging that draw us into the performance as if
we were one of the enthralled audience members attending the show ourselves. Scorsese’s style is stamped on to the show with dreamy interludes of wellknown musicians performing in Richie’s imagination, reflecting whatever emotions are coursing through him at the same moment. That is the beauty of the show. It bonds together the music and its emotional response in a way that reflects the profound attachment Richie and other music fans have to their experiences with it.
The show bonds together music and emotional response. The music of the period is infused into every moment of the show, from playing over the loudspeakers at American Century’s offices to catching Richie’s attention as he passes a nightclub driving down the street. The music’s constant presence in the narrative is as much a part of Richie’s character as it is the show itself. His passion for music is delivered with such sincerity that it makes his efforts to salvage his company by selling it all the more poignant. Richie’s devotion to his company and the world of music also creates a rift between his wife Devon (Olivia Wilde, “Rush”) and himself, who comes in second to the job he lives and breathes for. Like any middle aged executive with his glory days slipping away behind him, Richie is forced to look back at his past mistakes, including his neglect of his family, with tormented questioning of what’s to come next. This struggle, along with an epic soundtrack, is what we have to look forward to as the series continues.
I
always thought it was weird how many people I talked to would name “Lost in the World” as their favorite Kanye song. Don’t get me wrong — it’s an amazing track that scales incredibly huge heights— but all things considered, it’s just another major highlight of an ADAM album with THEISEN about a dozen of them. “Lost in the World” is a coda to one of the greatest records of all time, but as a non-single, the enthusiasm I’ve heard for it over the years was a little perplexing. I have yet to form a solid opinion on Kanye’s latest: The Life of Pablo. I want to hail Rihanna singing Nina Simone over a sample of “Bam Bam” as some of the best music I’ve ever heard, but I need to forget about those opening Taylor-Swift-referencing lines to do so. I think “No More Parties in LA” is one of Kanye’s best songs ever, but it’s sandwiched in between two of his most mediocre. When I was walking to class this week I always thought about trying to pick a song from the album to listen to, but I usually found that I’d rather listen to something like Acid Rap. When I can give it my full attention, though, and I’m not just looking for pleasant songs I love in between lectures, I’ve been pouring over Pablo, trying to make as much sense of it as I can. But I’m still completely overwhelmed by Kanye’s vision. The Life of Pablo is hip hop’s answer to James Joyce — geniuslevel intellect and never-beforethought creative ambitions fully realized to a hysterical extent that’s astounding yet impenetrable. This album is Kanye’s fickle impulsive genius brain made painfully public in the most tangible way possible, but to even call Pablo an album and put it in the same category as the millions of traditional collections of songs out there in the world doesn’t feel quite right. But as I listened to TLOP, I found my mind going back to “Lost in
norms are meaningless and the worst thing someone can do to you is lie— and more than ever that young creative ideal is what I hear on Pablo. Being a kid, there’s always a conflict between maturity and immaturity — multiple interior parts of yourself duking it out as you try to figure out who you are and what kind of person you’re going to become, and in Kanye’s broken experiments and regrettable phrasings and glorious, inspired combinations of sounds, that’s exactly what I hear. And so as I try to figure out what Life of Pablo will mean to anyone months or even years from now, I’m seeing it more and more as a record for kids and teenagers — one that stretches the realms of possibility and acts like the choking, authoritarian mainstream world is of no consequence and has never even existed. Kanye is Van Morrison creating tender, beautiful, nine-minute odes to drag queens on Astral Weeks or Wilco smashing the typical clichéd rock album to pieces on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but of course, he’s none of these things, because Kanye’s mind is truly unique and only he can approximate it to us through music. If Kanye defines success as how real he can make his fantasies, Life of Pablo pushes him even higher. If he’s not untouchable, he’s at least in Beatles territory, continually forcing us to expand our definition of hip hop and pop music like the Fab Four did for pop and rock with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. Listening to Life of Pablo, it’s obvious Kanye is still lost in the world, using his art and ambition to search for meaning in the disorienting darkness of life. He’s not successful all the time, but along with Pablo’s garbage fires, the album also features a few peak Kanye moments (namely “Ultralight Beam”) where you can feel that enlightenment just centimeters away from his outstretched fingers, and it makes for the most incredibly thrilling and challenging music I’ve ever heard. I hope Kanye never gets found. There’s nothing crazier than Theisen in a Giuseppe store. To calm him down, e-mail ajtheis@umich.edu.
‘Call Saul’ hits hard with gloomy reality
TV REVIEW
By MATT BARNAUSKAS Daily TV/New Media Editor
AMC
They’re applauding T-Swift’s Album of the Year win.
the World.” Kanye’s verse on this song is one huge contradiction, as he speaks to this “you” who seems to represent every gigantic idea, good and bad, in the entire universe. And when I hear Pablo, I hear all of the ideas in Kanye’s head trying to become tangible and fit together, with no filter and nothing holding them back. The art Kanye creates is everything he is and all he wants to be, layered one on top of the other and relentlessly captured from every possible angle. Music is his devil, his angel, his heaven, his hell, his now and forever, his freedom and his jail, his lies and his truth. Now listen to “Father Stretch My Hands” off Life of Pablo. Kanye’s two-part track incorporates soulful backing vocals like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, features classical composer Caroline Shaw, a Future sound-alike, a Metro Boomin’ drop, his dumbest lyrics (the bit about the bleached-asshole model on part one) and some of his darkest (everything he says on part two.) Kanye throws all these pieces into a vortex and expects us to make sense of whatever the final composition turns out to be. “Father Stretch My Hands” is a song that not that long ago wouldn’t have even registered as music. It’s an enourmous contradiction of sounds that tests your patience and pounds at you and purposely evades anything comfortable or familiar, and it’s endlessly fascinating even if it’s not entirely satisfying. I obviously have no idea what Kanye West’s actual mental state is now or has ever really been, but unlike some critics and fans, The Life of Pablo and the circus surrounding it don’t make me personally worried for his long-term sanity. In that SNL audio, I just heard a really stressed-out dude finally losing it after days of non-stop work; in his tweets, I just see cries for attention and experimentation (“what happens if I say this?”) mixed with occasional smart lucidity; in the music itself, I just hear a mostly selfaware Kanye trying to be as real as possible, not self-editing or holding back any of his ideas, stretching himself as far as he can go. Kanye’s music has always strived for this childlike state — one where all dreams are possible and society’s
Walter White (Bryan Cranston, “Trumbo”) got to go out with a bang. The same cannot be said for his crooked lawyer Saul Goodman/ AJimmy McGill (Bob Oden- Better kirk, “W/ Bob Call Saul and David”). While the for- Season Two mer Heisen- Premiere berg died at Mondays the end of at 10 p.m. “Breaking Bad” blasting away AMC neo-Nazis, embracing his infamy and earning some semblance of redemption, Saul resigned himself to a life of hiding, toil and anonymity to avoid arrest. Like the opening of its first season, “Better Call Saul” ’s season two premiere reacquaints us with Saul in his monochromatic purgatory as “Gene,” the manager of a Nebraska Cinnabon. There’s an inherent sadness in the mediocrity of Saul’s new life, with Odenkirk bearing the worldweary weight of Gene. When Gene gets stuck in a dumpster room, with one door locked and the other set to alert police if opened, he becomes the man trapped in his own life, resigned to waiting for someone else to open the door. This is the end for the man. And in that fact lies the ultimate tragedy of “Better Call Saul” — the inevitability of Jimmy
McGill’s transformation into Saul Goodman and Saul eventually wearing the mask of Gene. It’s an endpoint the audience knows will inevitably come, but it doesn’t make the series any less intriguing. “There’s no reward at the end of this game,” Jimmy muses to love interest Kim (Rhea Seehorn, “Whitney”) as the pair sits in the bar of the resort that Jimmy is staying in after turning down a position at a prestigious law firm. Jimmy is caught at a crossroads; it’s entirely possible to see the con man living the rest of his life scamming blowhards like Ken Wins (Kyle Bornheimer reprising his one-off role from “Breaking Bad”), but the decision has already been made. Every step Jimmy takes leads him towards Saul; there may be detours like the resort, but the destination is set. “Better Call Saul” is a tragicomedy. Sure, the characters are verbosely hilarious as creators Vince Gilligan (“Breaking Bad” ’s showrunner) and Peter Gould (“Too Big to Fail”) along with their writers insert amusing specificity and charm into every member of the cast. Underneath it all, though, is the sobering inevitability that, for at least some of these characters, the end will be far worse than where they began. While the thoughtlessness of prescription drug dealer Daniel Warmolt (Mark Proksch, “The Office”) with his flame decaled Hummer H2 and obsession with baseball cards is amusing, foreboding danger lurks right around the corner. Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks,
“Community”) may have walked away from being the fool’s hired muscle, but, as the audience knows, he can’t stay away forever. Like fellow “Breaking Bad” alum Odenkirk, Banks’s character’s future is firmly set in stone, no matter what he does.
All roads lead to a Cinnabon in Nebraska. Often framed within wide shots, the characters of “Better Call Saul” are made insignificant by the world around them and their own encroaching fate. Written and directed by Thomas Schnauz (“Reaper”), “Switch” may be offering a brief stoppage on the way to the endpoint, but the signs pointing towards it are there — whether it’s in the form of a minor “Breaking Bad” character like Ken or the literal signs that Jimmy often ignores in one life but cautiously obeys in the next. When Jimmy finally accepts the position at the law firm of Davis and Main, it’s a continuation down the path that will end in tragedy. Davis and Main, with their company cars and cocobolo desks, will turn into a strip mall law firm with faux pillars and a blown up copy of the Constitution, which will also fade away. All roads lead to a dead-end Cinnabon in Nebraska — enjoy the ride while you can.
SportsMonday B
The Michigan Daily | michigandaily.com | February 22, 2016
Maryland 86 Michigan 82
AMANDA ALLEN / Daily
Wolverines fall to No. 6 Maryland in wild shootout in College Park By JACOB GASE Daily Sports Editor
COLLEGE PARK — Much like in their first showdown on Jan. 12, the Michigan men’s basketball team’s rematch with No. 6 Maryland was nothing short of a heavyweight fight. Each team rode multiple momentum shifts, with most of the Wolverines’ punches coming from junior forward Mark Donnal and sophomore guard Muhammad-Ali AbdurRahkman, who combined for 41 points. And after limiting guard Melo Trimble to two points in the last meeting, Michigan’s defense held him to 3-for-10 shooting this time around. But Maryland countered with its own one-two punch, composed of big men Diamond Stone and Robert Carter Jr. — who together scored 30 points and grabbed 11 boards — and also rode a strong effort from versatile wing Jake Layman, who made his first five shots of the game.
And this time around, the Terrapins punched harder, dashing the Wolverines’ chances of upsetting them for a second time this season. Trailing 82-79 with under 30 seconds left, Michigan (9-6 Big Ten, 19-9 overall) had a chance to tie the game, but junior guard Derrick Walton Jr. was called for an offensive foul when he pushed off a Maryland defender under the basket. Despite a late 3-pointer from redshirt sophomore guard Duncan Robinson, the Terrapins hung on, and Trimble — who scored seven of his 14 points from the charity stripe — sealed an 86-82 victory from the free-throw line. “Maryland was just better than us on too many plays to get the victory,” said Michigan coach John Beilein. “We just didn’t have enough to get it done. Tough race down the stretch — ball didn’t bounce our way a couple times, other things didn’t go our way a couple times, and it just wasn’t enough to get the victory.” Maryland (11-4, 23-5) had
plenty of chances to pull away throughout, but the Wolverines wouldn’t let them. Donnal made all three of his attempts from beyond the arc in the game, at times singlehandedly carrying the offense and scoring six straight points in one memorable stretch. “There’s another gear for Mark that you saw today,” Beilein said. “He’s got a fifth gear that can make him a really good college basketball player. ... I was dialing him up today — usually that hasn’t been as successful when I did that, but he’s ready to do that now. It changes our whole team.” AbdurRahkman also provided his share of heroics, stealing an inbounds pass midway through the second half and hitting a layup to give the Wolverines four points in seconds. He later was fouled on a made layup and knocked down the ensuing free throw to give Michigan a 73-72 lead — its last lead of the game before Carter won a tip drill at the rim to put See MARYLAND, Page 4B
“Maryland was just better than us on too many plays.”
DREAM COMPLETE n Michigan culminated a four-year journey to the top of the Big Ten on Saturday at Canham Natatorium. SportsMonday Column, Page 2B
AMANDA ALLEN / Daily
FOR OLD TIME’S SAKE n Red Berenson coached against Ferris State’s Bob Daniels for the 63rd time on Friday, 23 seasons after their first meeting. Page 4B
SportsMonday
2B — February 22, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SPORTSMONDAY COLUMN
Mike Bottom’s ever-growing empire
T
uesday afternoon, one day before his women’s swimming and diving team won the Big Ten Championships in its home pool, Michigan coach Mike Bottom stood on the pool deck at Canham Natatorium, watching over his empire. JAKE Right in LOURIM front of him were the qualifiers for the Big Ten meet, and the ‘B’-level qualifiers for the NCAA Championships who didn’t make the Big Ten meet. On one wall, a clock counted down until this summer’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and on the other side of the pool, Club Wolverine — the Olympic hopefuls training at Canham in preparation for this summer — swam alongside the current Wolverines. “And this is just the men’s side,” Bottom said. “And then we have the women’s side of things ready to go here.” Bottom and his swimming dynasty are well-established. Three years ago, his men’s team reached the peak of college swimming, winning the national championship. The previous summer, he coached in his fifth Olympics, putting him among the greatest swimming coaches in the world. That year was the culmination of his previous journey. It was also the first year of his next one. In the 2012-13 season, Bottom took over the women’s program in addition to the men’s. That year, while the men won the national title, the women were an afterthought, finishing 36th. There, Bottom found himself in an unfamiliar position. “It wasn’t easy,” Bottom said
Tuesday. “It wasn’t easy for me, and it wasn’t easy for the rest of the coaching staff. … Every time, our gut aches, just like everybody aches when you don’t do what you want to do as a team. But that’s OK. That’s sport.” Coaching both teams also meant twice the work, twice the time commitment and twice the number of athletes. It’s a testament to Bottom’s methods that the men’s team won the national title in the first year he led both programs. The biggest challenge now, according to Bottom, is finding time with his three daughters, ages 10, 9 and 5. Four years ago, he was already the successful head coach of a thriving men’s program. So why did he add the women’s program to his schedule? What, after five Olympics and a national championship, did he have left to prove? “I don’t think I have anything to prove, right?” Bottom said. “I think at this point in my life, I’ve done what I’ve done. So I don’t feel like I need to prove (anything), but I feel like it’s an opportunity.” The Big Ten title Michigan won at Canham Natatorium on Saturday seemed like a long shot four years ago. The year before Bottom took over the women’s program, the Wolverines finished eighth in the Big Ten and hadn’t won the conference since 2004. Bottom believed the pieces were in place to reach that level again, but he had to bring the team to believe that it could do it. That wasn’t easy, though. After the meet Saturday, senior Ali DeLoof, whose first year was also Bottom’s, admitted she never thought she’d make it. “Twenty hours a week in this pool, it hasn’t been easy,” DeLoof said. “It’s been a process. It’s tough to keep your head up sometimes, but you’ve got the
SWIMMING From Page 1A
qualifying four divers for the platform finals. Bottom, the long-time men’s coach, took control of the women’s team in 2012. He took over a team that had fallen off since the success of the early 2000s and was closer to the bottom of the Big Ten than the top. Drenched from his victory leap into the pool, Bottom was hit with a wave of emotions when talking about how far the program had come. “It’s absolutely a dream to reality,” Bottom said. “Our first year, we didn’t have people in the final. I think we had two, maybe three people in any of the finals. Tonight, we had people in almost every final.” For Bottom, getting this far was not only in his mind, but also in plain sight — the 2004 Big Ten Championship banner has beckoned at every training session and every home meet during his time with the Wolverines. Every Saturday for the past four years, his team has stood under that banner and sang the Michigan fight song together. It took Bottom, DeLoof and the rest of the program four years to get there, but the hard work has paid off. Saturday, they could look at the banners on the wall, and for the first time in 12 years, know that there will be a new place to sing “The Victors.”
able to help her team capture a Big Ten title. She fell ill earlier in the week, putting the chance to swim at Canham for the last time as a senior in serious danger. But by the time the meet started, DeLoof was determined to compete. Not only did she swim, but she excelled and capped off her Big Ten career by anchoring the pool recordsetting 400-yard freestyle relay, with a time of 3:13.81. “My freshman year, I didn’t think I was going to make it at all,” DeLoof said. “ ‘Those who stay will be champions’ — it’s really what’s been with me all year and even this week.” Though the program had shown clear improvement this year, winning all but one of its dual meets, it was an underdog to the Hoosiers going into this weekend. Bottom and his team knew they needed to step up, and both swimmers and divers answered the bell. In the 1,650-yard freestyle, freshman Yirong Bi bested her seed time by 20 seconds to finish second. Smiddy just missed a pool record in the 200-yard backstroke when she beat out Indiana’s Kennedy Goss to win the event. And the dive team impressed a sold-out Canham crowd by
AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
Michigan won its first Big Ten Championship since 2004 on Saturday.
girls motivating you every day, and I’m going to miss that.” The Wolverines made incremental improvements every year, from 36th to 30th to 22nd at the NCAA Championships, from sixth to fifth to third in the Big Ten. As Bottom’s methods paid off, his swimmers bought in more and more each year. But the last step was the toughest. As Bottom spoke Tuesday, Indiana entered Canham Natatorium. He ran the scores before the meet and wasn’t sure his team could beat the Hoosiers. Neither was his wife. “She said, ‘Mike, you’re going to lose by 100 points,’ ” Bottom said Saturday. “I go, ‘Come on, sweetie, you gotta help me out here! Give me some confidence!’ ” Going into Saturday, the fourth and final day of the championships, Michigan led Indiana by 45.5 points. Still, Bottom thought the Hoosiers could catch his team if things went wrong. Saturday morning, in the 200yard backstroke, Marie Georger beat her seed time by 4.56 seconds to sneak into the ‘B’ finals, where she’d earn at least 11 points. In the 200-yard butterfly, Astrid Swensen did the same. It was then that Bottom knew his team could pull it off. Senior captain Sarah Kamstra said the Wolverines went into the finals saying it was still 0-0. They did it to make sure they still fought until the end, but maybe it was also because they had never won before. Bottom spent four years building up all the belief he could in his team, but maybe just a hint of doubt remained until the victory was secure. Around 8 p.m., with an hour still left in the meet, that moment came. Indiana had no divers left, and even if the Hoosiers won the final event — the 400-yard freestyle relay — and Michigan
AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
Mike Bottom won his first Big Ten championship as coach of the women’s swimming and diving team on Saturday.
was disqualified, the Wolverines would still win. Then Michigan won the relay by two seconds anyway. So the final moments of the meet weren’t a conclusion as much as they were a coronation. The Wolverines stood on the pool deck as the conference handed out the relay awards, and then the individual awards, and then the other 12 team awards, one by one. They wore shirts that read, “Those who stay will be champions,” because they all stayed, and they were champions. When the moment came, they ran up to the podium, giddily cheering and singing and dancing. They threw on their Big Ten Championship hats and shirts and posed for a photo. And then they dove in the pool.
“There (were) tears, and there was laughter,” Kamstra said. “And that was just something I’ll hold with me forever.” Bottom dove in, too, just as he always does when his team wins a championship. Before he did, though, he spoke for a moment with associate coach Rick Bishop. He told Bishop to look at their swimmers’ faces. “This has been a four-year process,” Bottom said. “Now, they can understand they’re champions. Not that they weren’t champions before this, but this solidifies it. And I said, ‘This will change their lives. They’ll have this moment in their lives forever.’ ” That moment was what Bottom dreamed about when he took over the women’s program, no matter when it came, no matter how far
it took to get there. Tuesday, on the cusp of that milestone, he was asked if he ever thought twice about it, about the early struggles or the long hours or the drain of the journey. Just then, his 5-year-old daughter ran up to him on the pool deck and jumped into his arms, watching the swimmers along with him as he beamed with pride. “Maybe, in a few years, I need to do something different,” he said. “But right now, the thrill of seeing these women get better, climb the ladder of success in their own lives … I get to be a part of that. That’s a thrill. That’s a thrill you can’t buy.” Lourim can be reached at jlourim@umich.edu and on Twitter @jakelourim.
‘M’ prevails on Senior Day By CHRIS CROWDER Daily Sports Writer
Even though the Michigan band jeered, “We’re not Penn State” while the Nittany Lions took free throws, Penn State and the Michigan women’s basketball team played strikingly similar. Both struggled to shoot from behind the arc, take care of the basketball and played through their stars. But on the Wolverines’ Senior Day, Michigan outperformed its counterpart in the fourth quarter to pull off a 78-73 victory. After the Wolverines started the game on a 10-3 run, the Nittany Lions called a timeout. After the Penn State players stepped onto the floor again, their defensive pressure intensified, bringing the action more up-tempo. Michigan, a team that usually prefers to play in transition, looked rushed with the change of pace as it missed a wide open layup, turned the ball over six times and missed five 3-pointers in the first quarter alone to fall behind, 17-15, at the end of the period. Both the Wolverines and Nittany Lions struggled to make baskets as both suffered from shots rimming out and poor shot selection. Midway through the second quarter, Michigan was shooting 33 percent (8-for-24) and Penn State was shooting at a 35 percent clip (7-for-20). To add to the lackluster start, the Wolverines made careless passes in transition, stunting opportunities to develop a rhythm when they were not making baskets to begin with. “In the first half we struggled with wide open shots. I don’t think we’ve been that wide open all year,” said sophomore guard Katelynn Flaherty. Michigan ended the half down 37-32, but it took momentum into the locker room as Flaherty knocked down a jump shot to beat the buzzer. The shot capped off an average half for Flaherty, who had nine points but also three turnovers. The Wolverines had 11 turnovers in the first half, nearing their average of 15.4 a game.
DAVID SONG/Daily
Senior guard Madison Ristovski’s basket helped the Wolverines clinch a win in her last regular-season home game.
After junior guard Siera Thompson fired a pass that was intercepted by a Nittany Lion to give Penn State a 5-0 run to start the third quarter, Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico called a timeout as the coaches met up separately from the team before grouping up as a whole. “In the first half we got a lot of shots and we couldn’t get a lot of those shots to fall, and that was discouraging and affected us on the defensive end,” Barnes Arico said. “We still came out flat to start the third quarter, so when we came out, I just told them that they had to give better effort.” Thompson followed her mistake with a 3-pointer, giving Michigan the jolt it needed to cut the deficit to two by the next timeout. After an and-1 by sophomore forward Jillian Dunston and a 3-pointer by freshman guard Boogie Brozoski, the Wolverines took
the lead with 3:35 left in the third quarter. The Nittany Lions took a 55-52 lead going into the fourth quarter, but Michigan ended the third quarter on a 20-12 run. Freshman center Hallie Thome began the fourth quarter with an off-balance and-1 to tie the game. Flaherty backed up the effort with a 3-pointer to continue the hot start. Three minutes later, Flaherty knocked down another 3 to give the Wolverines a six-point lead. “I think once one of us gets going — today it was me — that everyone gets more confident and shots start to fall all around,” Flaherty said. Added Barnes Arico: “In the fourth quarter, our team did a great job of finding Katelynn, who has such a high percentage shooting, and Hallie and got her touches inside … We really found them and that was important for us to be able to score the basketball better.”
“I don’t think we’ve been that wide-open all year.”
Penn State had an opportunity to tie the game with just under three minutes left in the game, but the layup attempt rimmed out. On Michigan’s next possession, Flaherty struck again from behind the arc for her fifth 3-pointer of the game. She ended with 30 points. On the Wolverines’ next possession, senior guard Madison Ristovski sunk a floater at the buzzer to give Michigan a seven-point lead. “There were only five seconds left on the clock and I was like, ‘I missed all day, maybe I’ll try one more time,’ ” Ristovski said. “It was cool because I beat it off the buzzer, but I think it was at a really important time in the game. We were in a scoring drought and I had no idea. I’m happy it helped propel the team to win.” Dunston stepped up to the line with the Wolverines up by four, but missed both free throws. The Nittany Lions attempted to cut the lead to one, but the 3-point attempted touched nothing but air. Penn State’s next desperation 3-pointer wouldn’t fall either. In the waning minute, Flaherty was fouled and made both of her free throws. The band chanted to the Nittany Lions, “See ya.”
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
February 22, 2016 — 3B
Wolverines open season with sweep of Canisius Michigan posts first 4-0 start since 2009 season By NATHANIEL CLARK Daily Sports Writer
In each of the Michigan baseball team’s previous three seasons under coach Erik Bakich, the opening weekend was always one to forget. The 2016 edition will be just the opposite. The 15th-ranked Wolverines won all four games in the series against Canisius, 9-0 Friday, 6-2 and 3-0 Saturday and 9-3 Sunday. It’s the first time Michigan has started 4-0 since 2009. “The momentum that was created (this weekend) was a byproduct of our training, and the consistency of our efforts on a daily basis,” Bakich said. The Wolverines put away Friday’s contest quickly, putting up four runs in the first inning. It all started when sophomore shortstop Jake Bivens hit a leadoff single to right field. Senior Matt Ramsay followed up with a single of his own to put runners on first and second base. Two batters later, senior outfielder Cody Bruder singled with the bases loaded and one out to drive in two runs. Then fellow junior outfielder Johnny Slater hit his own RBI double to extend Michigan’s lead to three. Junior designated hitter Harrison Wenson added a sacrifice fly to center to put the Wolverines ahead, 4-0. Michigan later accumulated a four-run sixth inning and a one-run eighth frame to round out Friday. Every batter for the Wolverines either notched an RBI or scored a run. “To see (the offense) have success, get on base, run hard on the bases and create scoring opportunities was really
SAM MOUSIGIAN/Daily
Cody Bruder capped a strong opening weekend for the Michigan baseball team by going 3-for-5 with a run scored and two RBI on Sunday against Canisius.
exciting.” Bakich said. “Our team was very engaged and invested in one another. I liked the positivity, I liked the energy and I liked the execution.” But it was junior left-handed pitcher Brett Adcock who was the star of Friday’s show. He pitched 5.1 scoreless innings, allowed three hits and struck out seven. Sophomore right-hander Jayce Vancena came on for 1.2 innings of scoreless relief and freshman right-hander Troy Miller pitched the final two innings. “We got quality starts from
all four guys who started (this weekend),” Bakich said. “We got quality relief pitching, too. I was very happy to see the way our pitching staff competed.” The first game of Saturday’s doubleheader started out differently than Friday’s contest as Canisius scored an unearned run in the top of the first, but Michigan quickly dashed the Golden Griffins’ hopes. With two outs in the bottom of the first, junior outfielder Carmen Benedetti hit a single to right field. Sophomore infielder
“Our team was very engaged and invested in one another.”
Drew Lugbauer followed up with another single to put two runners on base. “(Lugbauer) still made some of the loudest contact of anyone with deep drives to the warning track,” Bakich said. “Even though his statistics from this weekend are solid, they don’t show how well he really hit this weekend.” Sophomore right-handed pitcher Ryan Nutof earned the win in Saturday’s first game. He pitched four innings, kept the Golden Griffins hitless and only surrendered one unearned run while striking out two. Sophomore right-hander Michael Hendrickson came on for three innings of relief, permitting only one run on three hits and earning a save in the process. While Michigan scored just three runs in the second
game of the doubleheader, four Wolverine pitchers ensured that the offense’s support was sufficient. Senior left-hander Evan Hill started things off by pitching four scoreless frames, striking out one and allowing six hits. After that, freshman southpaw William Tribucher, junior right-hander Mac Lozer, and sophomore righty Bryan Pall combined for five shut-out innings of relief. “When the pitching is as dominant as it was this weekend, it’s a huge pump-up for our offense.” Bruder said. “I have to give credit to (the pitchers).” But Michigan’s offense came roaring back alive in the first two innings of Sunday’s game. In the first frame, Bivens singled up the middle to lead
off the inning and Ramsay immediately followed up with another single. A sacrifice fly by junior outfielder Carmen Benedetti put runners on first and third with one out. Two unforced mistakes by Canisius turned into two runs for the Wolverines. A balk allowed Bivens to score and a throwing error two batters later allowed Ramsay to score after stealing third base. Slater opened up the second inning by singling to right field. Wenson then launched a home run to left field on the next at-bat to put Michigan up, 4-0. The Wolverines scored one more time in the inning to extend the lead to five. An RBI single by Bruder and a sacrifice fly from Wenson in the fifth created even more separation for the Wolverines. Bruder again singled in the eighth to drive in a run and give Michigan a 9-3 advantage. Bruder finished Sunday with three hits in five at-bats, one run scored and two RBI. “I got to give credit to the people in front of me for setting the table,” Bruder said. “Coach Bakich always had a good game plan for us going in.” Perhaps the lone blemish from the weekend was the fact that the Wolverines’ defense committed four errors Sunday, which turned into three runs for the Golden Griffins. Yet Bakich believed the performance was an anomaly in an otherwise strong series for the defense. Michigan committed two errors in the other three contests. “For the first three games, the defense was elite,” Bakich said. “We had some issues (Sunday). I don’t think our defense is outstanding, but it’s very good.” While there are still plenty of challenges ahead during conference play, the sweep of Canisius was certainly a momentum-booster for the Wolverines.
SOFTBALL
‘M’ cruises in weekend wins By TYLER COADY Daily Sports Writer
Only one run separated the Michigan softball team and No. 13 Florida State heading into the seventh inning Friday night. The Seminoles scored a run in the bottom of the sixth inning to cut Michigan’s lead to one. Then, the top of the secondranked Wolverines’ lineup came up to bat. After senior centerfielder Sierra Lawrence reached first base on an error, the stage was set for senior second basemen Sierra Romero to make her mark. Despite being hitless in three at-bats, Romero quickly put those struggles to bed as she launched a home run over the right-field fence, giving the Wolverines a 5-2 lead. Michigan scored another insurance run in the inning, giving fifth-year right hander Sara Driesenga all the help she needed to close out the game and give the Wolverines (8-1) a 6-2 victory over the Seminoles. “We expect things to be close,” said Michigan coach Carol Hutchins. “It was a tight game, but we kept swinging away.” That set the tone for the Wolverines’ 4-0 weekend in which two wins came against Florida State. After Friday night’s explosive finish, the Wolverines regrouped for a Saturday matchup against Virginia Tech, a team they beat 3-1 last weekend. Saturday’s matinee, in stark contrast to the night before, was smooth sailing as junior right-hander Megan Betsa and sophomore right-hander Tera Blanco stifled the Hokies’ hitters at every turn to ensure a 6-1 win. The pair combined to record nine strikeouts while only allowing one hit. With the pitching staff locked in, Michigan’s hitters soon also found themselves in rhythm in the
bottom of the third inning. Romero hit another two-run home run, with Lawrence crossing the plate first again. Then, hits started pouring in as Blanco singled, sophomore catcher Aidan Falk ripped a hit into center field, and freshman infielder Faith Canfield notched an RBI. The big inning propelled the Wolverines to a victory. “(Lawrence) getting on base is critical for our offense,” Hutchins said. “When she is doing her part of leadoff hitter, it really helps our offense.” Saturday night brought another date with Florida State as the host Seminoles looked to even their series with Michigan. But the Wolverines weren’t fazed, continuing to hit the ball well in the third inning. Falk, continuing her strong weekend play, got the big inning going with a single. Junior shortstop Abby Ramirez followed Falk’s single with a hit, and sophomore infielder Amanda Vargas tallied up a single of her own as the runs started to pile up. By the end of the half-inning, Michigan built up a 6-0 lead to take all of Florida State’s momentum. Driesenga and Betsa dealt with the Seminoles’ lineup with ease as the Wolverines won, 10-3. Sunday morning dealt the Wolverines a familiar opponent in Virginia Tech. From the start, it was not close. A Lawrence hit, a Ramirez triple, a Romero single and a RBI line drive from Sobczak got the Wolverines off to a roaring start. The entire lineup came up to bat in the inning. Driesenga put an exclamation point on her fine weekend, tossing six innings of nearly flawless softball, racking up three strikeouts and only giving up one earned run. Freshman right-hander Leah Crockett made her collegiate debut in the seventh inning and closed out a 9-1 win for the Wolverines.
SAMANTHA STOLOFF/Daily
Freshman Kate Fahey scored the point that clinched the Wolverines’ 5-2 victory over No. 2 North Carolina at the Varsity Tennis Center on Saturday.
Michigan upsets Tar Heels Wolverines rally past No. 2 North Carolina at home By PAIGE VOEFFRAY Daily Sports Writer
The No. 8 Michigan women’s tennis team knew it was going to be tough to beat No. 2 North Carolina 2 (10-2), and UNC 5 MICHIGAN they were excited and ready from the first serve. In the end, it was Michigan’s dynamic bond that gave them the 5-2 victory. The doubles teams were active at the net, knowing they needed to control the points if they wanted to win. Every point was a battle, but eventually the Wolverines (6-2) put enough points away to clinch the
doubles point. With the No. 1 doubles team of freshman Brienne Minor and sophomore Mira RuderHook only one point away from beating the Tar Heels’ No. 1 doubles team, which is ranked No. 1 in the nation, Minor produced a big serve that immediately put North Carolina on defense. Both players charged the net, giving them an easy volley to end the match. With Ruder-Hook and Minor winning, 6-4, the Wolverines needed only one more team to take the doubles point. The No. 3 doubles team, made up of junior Sara Remynse and freshman Teona Velehorschi, officially secured the doubles
point after winning the tiebreaker, 7-4. For the bottom of the lineup, the momentum from the doubles carried into their singles matches. Sophomore Alex Najarian took advantage of her fresh legs at No. 5 singles and came out fired up. She was two games away from winning the match and it was clear to anyone in earshot that she was ready to end it. Screams of “Go Blue” or “Come On” echoed throughout the Varsity Tennis Center. Najarian dominated her opponent and was the first to finish with a score of 6-3, 6-4. “It’s hard to play people when they’re not being as loud to try and get yourself to be loud,” Najarian
“This is a team win for sure.”
said, “But having the energy of my teammates helps a lot.” With a comeback win from junior Sara Remynse, Michigan only needed one more win to take the whole match. It was a race between freshman Kate Fahey and Ruder-Hook to seal the win first. The honor was left to the freshman. Fahey was at match point as she ran toward the net. She left the ball to land out and locked in the Wolverines’ win on a Tar Heel unforced error. While her teammates rushed to celebrate the upset, North Carolina’s Jessie Aney threw her racket in the air in defeat. “Just for the bottom of our lineup to come through today was huge,” said Michigan coach Ronni Bernstein. “This is a team win for sure. Everybody stepped up today, and that’s what it is. It’s going to take a team, it’s not going to take a couple kids.”
SportsMonday
4B — February 22, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Donnal’s effort falls short again By SIMON KAUFMAN Daily Sports Editor
COLLEGE PARK — Mark Donnal was the Michigan men’s basketball team’s best option on Sunday, and it almost worked. After a game-high 17-point performance in a losing effort Tuesday against Ohio State, Donnal had the game’s best mark again against No. 6 Maryland in another road loss. The junior forward hit only one field goal — a 3-pointer — in the first half at the Xfinity Center, but Donnal got hot early in the second frame and went off for 22 points, finishing with a game-high 25. After the Terrapins pushed out to a 16-point lead with eight minutes left in the first half, the Wolverines started to chip away, eventually cutting the lead down to six points with just more than a minute left. Maryland tried to extend the lead back to double digits before halftime, but two big blocks from Donnal late in the frame kept Michigan within arm’s reach heading into the locker room. To kick off the second half, sophomore guard MuhammadAli Abdur-Rahkman found Donnal twice early in the paint for two quick buckets. Donnal fought through contact on the second attempt to help Michigan cut the lead to just three. “They kind of played uphill off the ball screens,” Donnal said. “So we knew the late drop-off pass was going to be there, so that’s kind of something we emphasized at halftime.” A possession later, after a Maryland basket, Donnal got open from beyond the arc and knocked down his second 3-pointer of the game. He went 3-for-4 from deep in the game after entering it shooting just 25 percent from 3-point range. “I hit my first (3-pointer), and it gave Coach the confidence to draw up the same play,” Donnal said. “He gave me some good looks, and
AMANDA ALLEN/Daily
Junior forward Mark Donnal exploded for 22 points in the second half to try to lead Michigan from behind Sunday at Maryland, but the Wolverines fell, 86-82.
we were able to execute.” But despite Donnal hitting from inside the paint and behind the arc, Maryland continued to take it to him on the other side. After his made triple, 6-foot-11 center Diamond Stone bullied him down low, putting in an easy bucket of his own. Donnal kept playing aggressively, though, even as Michigan’s only weapon to combat Maryland’s size. Five minutes into the half, Abdur-Rahkman found Donnal again, and the big man slammed down a dunk, giving the Wolverines their first lead since early in the first half. He nailed another 3-pointer one minute later, and when he got fouled down low two possessions after that, he hit both of his free throws to keep Michigan ahead by a point. Perhaps his impact was best felt when he was off the court.
When Donnal picked up his third foul with 12:30 left in the second half, Michigan coach John Beilein opted to sub in sophomore forward Ricky Doyle. Maryland took advantage of Donnal’s time on the bench, picking up four quick points in the paint. “We didn’t keep him out for that long, but yeah (it was hard to take him out),” Beilein said. “His defense on Stone was good — he’s strong. He’s got more experience, but he’s going to have to have a rest anyhow. The way the wrestling match is down inside, he’s going to have to have a rest whether he’s hot or not. Your big men have to get a little bit of an extra breather that the other guys don’t get.” Doyle filled in for just three minutes before Donnal reentered. Donnal picked up right where he left off and used two quick layups to cut an eight-point Terrapin lead
to just four. But Donnal couldn’t handle all of Maryland’s size himself. With five minutes left in the second half and Michigan up one, Maryland forward Robert Carter Jr. put up a close-range jumper. The shot missed, but Donnal was outsized by 6-foot-11 forward Damonte Dodd. Dodd grabbed the board and put up a shot of his own from inside the paint. This time, he missed, and Carter grabbed another Maryland offensive board. Carter went up again, putting in an easy bucket from point-blank range. The Wolverines actually had the edge in offensive rebounds, 12-9, but Maryland capitalized on its second chances more, scoring 13 second-chance points to Michigan’s eight. The Carter bucket reclaimed the lead for the Terrapins, and
they never looked back, closing out Michigan down the stretch for an 86-82 win. For Donnal, though, Maryland marked his second straight game as Michigan’s most productive player. Along with his 25 points, he also picked up five rebounds and five blocks. It didn’t change the end result for Michigan — another Big Ten loss on the road — but for Donnal it appears to be changing his confidence. After losing his starting job just three games into the season before working his way back into the starting five after a big performance in Michigan’s Big Ten opener at Illinois, Donnal has established himself as far and away the Wolverines’ best option down low on both sides of the floor. Against Maryland’s physicality, though, Michigan’s best wasn’t enough.
MARYLAND From Page 1B Maryland back on top for good. The game had the makings of a shootout from the beginning. Both teams traded blows to start the game tied at 12 points apiece, with Robinson — who hit five 3-pointers in the Wolverines’ upset of the Terrapins in January — scoring seven quick points and showing off a rare inside game with two layups. But after a seven-and-a-halfminute stretch in which Michigan missed 13 straight field goals and fell victim to a 17-1 Maryland run, the contest took on the look of the Wolverines’ blowout home losses to Indiana and Michigan State two weeks ago. This time, though, Michigan refused to allow the first-half run to put the nail in its coffin. Walton started cold, but he ended the Terrapins’ scoring run with a layup and later picked Trimble’s pocket for a contested fast-break layup as part of a 7-0 Wolverine run. Walton and seldom-used sophomore forward Kam Chatman also knocked down two 3-pointers apiece late in the half to leave Michigan trailing by just five points heading into the break. “I’m proud of our kids, the way they battled (after) we got ourselves in a little trouble in the first half,” Beilein said. “Thank goodness, because that thing can go the wrong way very quickly in this building and with their team.” The Wolverines ended up showing a similar fight right until the end, outscoring the Terrapins in the second half, but it wasn’t enough to secure a potential NCAA Tournament résumé-boosting win with just three games remaining on the regular-season schedule. The loss was the end of two notable streaks for Michigan. With Walton’s offensive foul marking his fifth of the game, it was the first time all season a Wolverine has fouled out; it was also the first time Michigan has lost under Beilein when scoring 80 points or more.
Compher powers top line ‘M’ beats Ferris State
ICE HOCKEY
W
ith the Michigan hockey team on the power play against Ferris State on Friday night, junior forward JT Compher cradled a pass from fellow junior forward Alex Kile and rifled the puck MINH toward the DOAN net. Bulldog netminder Darren Smith got a pad on Compher’s shot, but the rebound went right across the crease to freshman forward Kyle Connor, who buried the puck upstairs past a sprawling Smith. Connor’s goal gave him 50 points on the year, a massive accomplishment for the freshman phenom, and his teammates surrounded him to give congratulatory pats on the back. But lost in the commotion was another milestone. With his second assist of the game, Compher, Michigan’s captain, hit 100 points in his career and became the first junior to do so since Carl Hagelin, who currently plays in the National Hockey League with the Pittsburgh Penguins, in 2010. The assist propelled Compher to tie New Hampshire’s Tyler Kelleher for first in the NCAA in helpers. Unlike a week ago, when senior forward Boo Nieves scored his 100th point, there was no fanfare. A public announcement came and went with little crowd applause. And that’s fine to Compher. That’s how it’s been all year. While his linemates put up flashy goal totals — Motte has scored in 12 straight games and Connor has 51 points on the season — Compher doesn’t get enough recognition for the intangibles he provides to the line. On a line with two of the most prolific goal scorers in the country, some could argue that
By KEVIN SANTO
Compher is the most important member of the line. He’s a key cog in a very well-oiled machine. There’s no one reason that’s the case. And that’s the point. Compher does a multitude of things very well. Compher does the dirty work. He gets to loose pucks in the corner, and he retrieves pucks on dump-ins. He gets the pucks that give his line mates chances to pad their goal totals. That’s not saying that the Motte and Connor don’t do the dirty work. But as the center on the line, Compher’s job is to facilitate, and he’s one of the best in the nation at doing just that. “JT demands the puck, and he’s got speed,” said Michigan assistant coach Bill Powers. “He can carry it, and he sees the ice exceptionally well. So you have a centerman that doesn’t have a weakness, and the other two players feed off him.” Take for example, Motte’s first goal of the weekend against Wisconsin. Compher retrieved a loose puck just inside the blue line with his back to the goal. Before he turned, though, Compher saw a streaking Motte cutting behind two Badger defensemen. He spun around and fired a pass straight to Motte, who banged it home to give Michigan the onegoal advantage. The play exemplified everything Compher does on the line. His hustle, vision and skill make him the perfect third linemate for Motte and Connor. “The one thing that you really look to our lines is the center on the line dictates so much because everything starts with him on the faceoff,” Powers said. “A lot of time, the puck gets to the middle of the rink. So that’s our centers getting the puck in the middle of the rink, so when Kyle and Tyler get the puck, a lot of times, it is dictated by a puck-carrying centerman.” Earlier in the week, when Compher was asked about which player on his prolific line should win the Hobey Baker Award, given annually to the best college
hockey player in the nation, Compher didn’t have an answer. “We haven’t talked about anything like that,” Compher said Monday. “That’s out of our control and not something we worry about.” But Compher should be in the conversation. You could even make a pretty convincing argument that Compher should be the frontrunner. Not only is Compher a big reason why the CCM line is playing well; he is also one of — if not the best — penalty killer on the team. With penalty killing, a lot of success comes from working harder than your opponent to get the puck and send it down the ice. Compher does that better than any player on the team. He doesn’t take one play off. “There’s no way JT shouldn’t be in the discussion (for the Hobey Baker),” Powers said. “Is JT the third wheel on that line? No, he’s as important as the other two.” Added Motte: “His impact freshman year all the way through now has been unbelievable for the program. The guy works hard every day. I can’t give him enough credit for what he’s done, not only individually, but for the team as well.” Compher has never put personal accomplishments before team accomplishments, not at Team Illinois, not at the United States National Team Development Program and certainly not now Michigan. And with Compher on the cusp of leading the Wolverines to their first NCAA Tournament in three years, the tournament berth will probably feel a whole lot better than hitting 100 career points Friday night. Because the fact of the matter is, Compher isn’t just a key cog on his own line. He’s the engine that keeps Michigan’s scoring machine running smoothly. Doan can be reached at minhdoan@umich.edu and on Twitter @_minhdoan.
Daily Sports Writer
Oct. 23, 1992. Back when the Michigan hockey team was still a part of the CCHA. Back when the Wolverines put together their third FERRIS STATE 2 MICHIGAN 5 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance, before stringing together another 19 afterwards. And back when Michigan coach Red Berenson faced coach Bob Daniels for the first time. Now fast forward to Friday night, 23 seasons later, and take a look at the two benches. There are the players — some in white and blue, the others in all red — but they come and go over the years. So take a look behind them, and you will find something that has stayed the same. Berenson, behind his Wolverines, and Daniels, behind Ferris State. For the 63rd time. No one knows if this is Berenson’s last season at the helm of Michigan’s hockey program yet. But if this season is his farewell tour, it’s fitting that he’ll be able to
leave with a win against the team the Wolverines have faced every year since 1982. No. 6 Michigan took the lead just under six minutes into the first period and didn’t relinquish it the rest of the night, cruising to a 5-2 victory against the Bulldogs and giving Berenson his 43rd win against Daniels — the most against any coach he has faced. “It’s a good relationship,” Berenson said. “He came in — he had his daughter with him this morning — and we had a long talk about how it’s going in the WCHA and how their team is doing. “And his teams play hard. They don’t hand over the games to Michigan. But we’ve had maybe one or two more players that could get us over the top — difference maker players or players that could score that might have made the difference.” But Berenson’s 63rd meeting against Daniels wasn’t the only piece of history that happened Friday night. Just over 12 minutes into the second period, Ferris State’s Ryan Lowney went to the box for slashing. It took just 49 seconds on for freshman forward Kyle
JAMES COLLER/Daily
Freshman forward Kyle Connor scored twice Friday to lead Michigan.
Connor to make the Bulldogs pay for the penalty. Connor coolly put away a rebound from junior forward JT Compher’s shot — the captain’s assist marked his 100th point in a maize and blue sweater, making him the first junior to reach the milestone since Carl Hagelin in 2010. But after Connor found twine to give the Wolverines a 3-1 lead, Michigan cruised until the final horn sounded. The Wolverines added two more to their goal tally off the sticks of Connor and sophomore defenseman Zach Werenski. It took Werenski just 90 seconds in the third period before he singlehandedly carried the puck in on goal from the offensive blue line and netted a backhand. Connor’s goal, on the other hand, required some help. Junior forward Tyler Motte carried the puck into the offensive zone before feeding freshman forward Cooper Marody in the left circle. After tapping the puck off his right skate, Marody reversed direction and sent a perfect pass sailing toward his fellow freshman. Connor finished the chance easily to put an exclamation point on Michigan’s victory. Though Ferris State responded with the final goal of the game, senior goaltender Steve Racine and the Wolverine blueliners put together a unified stand throughout the matchup. The senior netminder made a number of critical and acrobatic stops in front, tallying 24 in total. There’s no telling if this is the last year Berenson will be on Michigan’s bench. But if it is, he got to watch his junior captain write his name in program history. He got to face Bob Daniels one last time. And he got one last victory against him. So if it is the last time Berenson coaches on a bench opposite of Daniels’, that’s not a bad way to cap off a friendly rivalry. “He’s successful because he’s very loyal to his players, and I believe his players are very loyal to him,” Daniels said. “I think the world of Red, and I think he’s a great coach. If you want to try to emulate someone, he’s your guy.”