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Wednesday, March 28, 2018
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Inside the CSG Race
Statement contributor Tanya Madhani reflects on her exclusive access to several CSG campaigns in the weeks leading up to the election
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statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | M A RCH 28 , 201 8
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
Former CSG candidates unpack race, large losses Campaigners of color push for more representation on assembly, engagement KATHERINA SOURINE CAMERON HUNT/Daily
Daily Staff Reporter
Panelists discuss the importance of women of color in public service at the second annual “A Seat at the Table” panel at the Union Tuesday.
A Seat at the Table panel features women of color in public policy
Panelists discussed intersectionality, social injustices, and overcoming barriers to access SAYALI AMIN
Daily Staff Reporter
The second annual “Seat at the Table” was hosted Tuesday evening by the University of Michigan’s Students of
Color in Public Policy in the Michigan Union. The event, including four panelists of color, created a dialogue on issues of intersectionality, social injustices and illuminating the voices of women of color. The theme for the panel was “Sister Outsider,” based on
Audre Lorde’s 1984 collection of poems and essays of the same title that touches upon similar issues. Juliana Pino Alcaraz, a University alum and policymaker at Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, served as a moderator for the event.
Kururama Sánchez, a Public Policy graduate student, one of the organizers of the event and a member of SCPP, said she was excited to include the oftenexcluded voices of women of color in the discussion about policy. See SERVICE, Page 3A
Regarding what issue she wanted to see prioritized in the University of Michigan’s Central Student Government elections, Public Policy senior Gloriela Iguina-Colón expressed one of many shared sentiments on campus: a need for diversity of representation and a rise in student leaders who prioritize engaging with individuals in the University and Ann Arbor community. Iguina-Colón worked as a deputy campaign manager for the MomentUM party, and highlighted her work with Engineering junior A.J. Ashman and LSA junior Charlie
Bingham as an integral part of her experience in the campaign movement. “CSG has lacked representation of different identities and thus has excluded marginalized voices. MomentUM is about genuinely bringing everyone into the conversation,” she said. “This starts by acknowledging that these problems exist. That people and their identities are not invisible. But rather their identities and experiences are primordial.” CSG elections, which took place last week Wednesday and Thursday, resulted in a landslide victory for MVision’s executive candidates, Public Policy junior Daniel Greene and LSA sophomore Izzy Baer, amassing 3,439 votes. The second-place See POST-ELECTION, Page 3A
Students, addiction specialists call for Michigan’s CSG talks treasurer culture shift on alcohol, drug addiction goodbyes
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talks future of economy
Collegiate Recovery Program helps those in recovery stay active in school, lifestyle
In face of challenges, state looks to expand economy with efficiency & new tech
David, a Social Work student at the University of Michigan, tried Vicodin for the first time when he was 17. “I’ve never felt this good in my life,” David, who requested his last name remain anonymous, said. His doctor prescribed him the drug in order to alleviate any pain he may feel after undergoing a wisdom tooth surgery. The next year, after a lacrosse injury at the University of Georgia, a doctor prescribed him the drug again. When Vicodin didn’t suffice, his doctors prescribed Percocet. After one month of taking the prescription pain medication, he was addicted. “I ended up taking it for about a month and tried to stop, (but) it’s pretty addicting,” David said. “Then I started buying (opioids) from the streets from friends, and eventually started writing fake prescriptions so I could get more.” When David started graduate school at the University, he reached out to the Collegiate Recovery Program, a support service for students who are recovering from alcohol and drug addiction that has branches at universities throughout the country. The University chapter, run single-handedly by Program Manager Matt Statman, seeks to help students in recovery do well
MAEVE O’BRIEN Daily Staff Reporter
On Tuesday afternoon, Michigan State Treasurer Nick Khouri addressed an audience of about 75 students, faculty and community members as part of the University of Michigan Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy lecture series, titled “Fiscal policy in Michigan: Past, present, and future”, to discuss the primary focuses of the state treasury moving forward. Khouri, a University alum, was appointed state treasurer by Gov. Rick Snyder in April 2015 after working in the private sector as vice president of Corporate Affairs at DTE Energy in Detroit. His role as state treasurer involves collecting and investing state money, advising the governor on tax and revenue policy, collecting state taxes, overseeing state credit and ensuring local government financial health. In his introduction of Khouri, See TREASURY, Page 3A
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in school and enjoy their time at the University without alcohol or drugs. Music, Theatre & Dance sophomore Julia, who requested her name be changed to remain anonymous, struggled with alcohol addiction in middle school and high school and described the program as “crucial” in aiding students with finding community outside of college drinking culture. “I think it was because it was hard for me to find a way to connect with people in my dorm socially because so much
of it was bonding over partying, or rushing or stuff like that, and I had no interest in either of those,” Julia said. “CRP was really crucial in a social way for me to be able to find people who I had something in common with and were pursuing the same things that I was.” Julia started drinking and smoking marijuana when she was 13 years old. Proudly calling herself a “weekend warrior,” she would spend the entire weekend drunk or high, but usually did not indulge during the week. However, after spending days
in the hospital and threatening suicide, she joined a rehab program her senior year of high school. About seven months into the program, she said she “really wanted to get sober” after realizing the core of many of her problems was addiction. Julia decided to take a gap year before starting school at the University, and while meeting with a voice teacher in Ann Arbor over the summer for a vocal lesson, she met up with Statman. She said acknowledging her addiction See RECOVERY, Page 3A
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INDEX
Vol. CXXVII, No. 100 ©2018 The Michigan Daily
in final 7th assembly
Last meeting hears bills on graduation equity costs, BAMN on immigration CARLY DURIS For The Daily
During the final meeting of the seventh council of Central Student Government at the University of Michigan, many representatives spoke about what CSG meant to them over the past year, the experiences and growth they will take away and concerns for future engagement. At the beginning of the meeting, Business junior Jack Griffin and LSA junior Connor Kippe spoke about food insecurity among students. They noted the turnout for Maize and Blue Cupboard’s food distribution doubled from last time, serving 365 students. The group By Any Means Necessary also raised concerns about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations, stating they are a racist and bigoted attack on U.S. democracy. The group said they have been going to campuses and groups across Michigan to boost attendance for a court case on April 25. Members emphasized See FINAL, Page 3A
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MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers
TUESDAY: By Design
WEDNESDAY: This Week in History
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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: THE FINE ART OF TAKING OFF YOUR CLOTHES March 28, 1981 (vol. 91, iss. 144, Page 1) By David Crawford
off his clothes before the class’ professor arrived. Coen said she was shocked and intimidated because “I didn’t know what to draw.” “Everyone turns red, but the models aren’t embarrassed,” said freshwoman art student Amy Ewald. Sophomore Art student Robin Kandel explained that after a time, “you’re not viewing (the model) as a sexual thing. The model becomes an object and you concentrate on your work.” According to Art School Dean George Bayliss, using nude models instead of clothed ones is “an essential thing to do. Reference points have to be seen.” Administrative Assistant Pat St. George, who hires and schedules models, emphasized that a “professional” approach is taken in nude modeling. On the stage, she explained, the
Poised with one knee on a chair, the phone receiver resting on her shoulder, she looks into the horizon. A floodlight hung at the left lightens the shadows on her naked body. Half an hour later, she is in the same position. After the students finish drawing, she alks off the stage and reaches for her robe. Her job as a model for Figure Drawing 102 is over for a while. To some, the idea of modeling nude is risque, but for most people enrolled in figure drawing classes “it’s nothing,” said one student. Some students admitted they were embarrassed the first time they saw a naked model. Senior American Studies Major Corinne Coen recalled that at the first drawing session, the model took
model is a figure for the artist to draw, but in the five-minute rest period between poses, the model “becomes himself again.” Since administrative guidelines state that the model should be undressed only when necessary, the model is required to wear a fulhlength robe, she added. According to Art Prof. Julia Andrews, the objective of Figure Drawing (one of four art- school prerequisite courses for upperlevel classes) is for students “to learn about the proportion of the human body, how it moves and articulates, and how to transpose a moving three-dimensional form which exists in space to a two-dimensional flat surface.” “It’s hard to draw the clothed form,” Andrews explained, because it is difficult to see “the structure and mechanics of the body.”
Photo Courtesy School of Art
ON THE DAILY: SEATTLE SCHOOLS SEEKING ANN ARBOR SUPERINTENDENT SWIFT with photos corroborating their campus appearance. Some tweets captured Carell walking into the Student Activities Building to meet the tour and standing outside in a black baseball cap, black coat and dark sunglasses. According to WMTV Channel 15 in Madison, Wis., Carell visited in the University of WisconsinMadison on Monday prior to his appearance in Ann Arbor. Carell is best known for his role in the TV show, “The Office” and movies including the “Despicable Me” series and “Crazy, Stupid, Love”. LSA sophomore Rebecca
ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Daily Staff Reporter
The University of Michigan set the stage for two Hollywood personalities on Tuesday as students frantically traced the stars via social media. Steve Carell, famed movie actor and television star, was spotted on a campus tour with his daughter. “Star Trek” actor Zachary Quinto was also seen on campus purchasing a midday coffee at Starbucks on State Street. The celebrity sightings stirred up social media activity
Bernstein saw Carell and his family checking out of the Graduate Hotel on Huron Street. While excited about his presence on campus, she was concerned about his celebrity status as he roamed campus for personal reasons. “It was pretty cool to see a celebrity on campus, especially one who is so beloved by our generation,” Bernstein said. “I did feel bad for him because I could not imagine him simply trying to enjoy family time while being stalked by thousands of students.” LSA sophomore Ilana Char also saw Carell on Tuesday. “I just hope his daughter
had a good tour and good luck to her as she starts the college process,” Char said. While social media stirred about the presence of Carell on campus, Engineering sophomore Claire Stemper snapped a discrete photo of another celebrity, Zachary Quinto. Quinto most notably played Spock in “Star Trek.” “We made eye contact once, but I don’t think he wanted to be bothered so I didn’t say anything, just stared a bit,” Stemper said. “I was definitely starstruck.”
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Surveying the crowd gathered in Hutchins Hall at the University of Michigan Tuesday afternoon, the first thing Justice Albie Sachs asked of the more than 100 attendees was that they sit down. “It’s wonderful and it’s despairing to see so many people standing — puts a lot of pressure on the speaker,” he said, referring to the dozens of students, professors and University staff who were unable to find seats at the Law School’s 2018 William W. Bishop Lecture in International Law. The annual Bishop Lecture hasSyndication previously featured Sudoku Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, and Judge
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decades later, while living in Mozambique, South African government forces attempted to assassinate him with a car bomb. The explosives were planted on the wrong side of his vehicle, and Sachs survived but lost his right arm and
his life fighting was his “soft vengeance.” “What was the one good thing apartheid did?” Sachs said. “It created antiapartheid. And it was because of apartheid I met Nelson Mandela.” In 1990, the South African government yielded and the apartheid state collapsed. The country’s first national multiracial elections were held in 1994 and Mandela was elected president. He appointed Sachs to one of the 11 seats on the Constitutional Court, South Africa’s version of the Supreme Court. During Sachs’s tenure on the bench, the court abolished the death penalty and overturned laws criminalizing homosexuality. Sachs advocated heavily for the inclusion of a bill of http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ rights in South Africa’s new constitution and argued that the document should include rights to housing, water, health care and a clean environment. Nausiza Palawzo, a student at Washtenaw Community College, said she appreciated went blind in one eye. Sachs Sachs’s discussion of Ubuntu said while he was recovering philosophy, an idea in from the attack, he received southern Africa that roughly a note from his allies in the translates to a belief that all anti-apartheid movement that people are connected to one read, “Don’t worry, comrade another. Albie, we will avenge you.” “I think that’s the way to go, Sachs rejected an eye-for- just recognizing each other as an-eye mentality. human beings,” Palawzo said. “What kind of world will “In Western society, people it be if everyone is blind and can focus a little bit excessively without arms?” Sachs said. “If on individualism.” we get democracy, if we get Caroline Kim, assistant the rule of law, that will be my director of the Program on soft vengeance.” Intergroup Relations, lived in Included in the title of a South Africa for five years. She 1991 book he wrote about his said having Sachs speak at the recovery from the attack as University was an “incredible well as a documentary about honor.” his life, “soft vengeance” “This was absolutely signals retaliation based not surreal,” she said. “I was just on retribution, but success. in South Africa last week and Sachs said putting an end just having gotten back, it’s to the oppression he spent totally surreal.”
“What kind of world will it be if everyone is blind and without arms? If we get demcoracy... that will be my soft vengeance.”
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Navi Pillay, the former United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. Sachs, a native of South Africa, was a freedom fighter in the anti-apartheid movement and a former judge on the country’s constitutional court. As a law student in the 1950s, Sachs joined the African National Congress and began advocacy work to combat the racist statutes of apartheid. He was first arrested at 17 years old for violating segregation laws. When the judge found out how old he was, Sachs was released into his mother’s custody. “Which was a big letdown,” Sachs joked. “I wanted to be a revolutionary hero.” Sachs was later raided by the security police and placed in solitary confinement for 168 days without trial. He went into exile in 1966. Two
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The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University OF Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. Subscriptions for September-April are $250 and year long subscriptions are $275. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid.
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RESILIENCY
FINAL From Page 1A
SAM MOUSIGIAN/Daily CSG President Anushka Sarkar hugs engineering senior Chloe Henderson after announcing she was the winner of the Resiliency Award at the Michigan Difference Student Leadership Awards Tuesday.
SERVICE From Page 1A “We’re hoping to have a really lively conversation with the audience and the panelists,” Sánchez said. “It often feels like a lack of a voice for women of color, so it’s important to see those voices at the table.” The panelists included Ashley Tuomi, the executive director of American Indian Health and Family Services of Southeastern Michigan; Desiree Cooper, a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and reproductive rights activist; Mahima Mahadevan, a New American Leaders Michigan program coordinator; and Sandra O’Brien, the chair of Wayne State University’s Board of Governors. After introductions of each of the panelists by SCPP President Gabrielle Horton, a Ford graduate student, Alcaraz presented questions for each of the panelists. Alcaraz first asked the panel about what it means for a woman of color to be at the table. “There are so many white norms determining that space before we came in,” Mahadevan said. “Even though there are women that are there, there are so many norms that we are struggling to push against.” Tuomi commented on what she has witnessed in her career
TREASURY From Page 1A Public Policy professor Barry Rabe touched on the unique contours of the past decade of Michigan economic history. “This is a state that has had good times and bad times over the past half-century and beyond,” Rabe said. “What an interesting decade we have been through, what an interesting time the Snyder years have been in the fiscal condition in the state of Michigan.” Khouri began his talk by calling attention to the highlights of the current Michigan economy. As of January, state unemployment is at 4.7 percent, down from 14.6 percent during the recession in 2009. Personal income growth has outpaced the national rate, and Michigan has successfully diversified its employment base away from manufacturing and into sectors such as professional and business services. Khouri said now there are jobs available, the task at hand is adequately training employees to be efficient in those roles. “It’s the real focus now of everybody,” Khouri said. “These jobs are available now, at least during this part of the cycle. How do we get the employees trained and ready to take the jobs that are available right now?” While the state has mostly recovered to its position prior to the recession, it is experiencing a downward shift in its size and
so far. “There’s almost this competition among women to be at the table,” Tuomi said. “We fall into the trap of tearing each other down rather than bringing each other up, so find a way that we make comprises and help each other.” Cooper also mentioned the workplace discrimination women often face for having or wanting to have children. “I’ve spoken to a lot of audiences and always ask this question,” Cooper said. “How many women have hidden the fact that they are having children, or are pregnant, or are planning to be?” The answer was many. Alcaraz also posed the question of what mentorship from women of color has meant to the panelists through their experiences. Cooper responded to this question first, bringing in her experience working at the Detroit Free Press, where she said she was initially underpaid for the work that she did. Cooper said only after an older woman of color made Cooper aware of it, did she stand up for herself. “There is still a taboo that (women) don’t talk about and that is money,” Cooper said. “Let’s talk about that and that is a huge validation of our power.” O’Brien, who is the only person of Latinx descent to serve in her position at the University, spoke from her
experiences working in the judicial system. “Without somebody that looks like you, whether it’s a female or a person of color, there’s a higher probability that your interests won’t get served,” O’Brien said. For the final question, the panelists gave advice to their younger selves at the beginning of their careers. “You can do it all,” O’Brien said. “I grew up with modest means on a farm, and I’m the first in college of my family. Women can have it all, if you want to have a family and a career, then you can.” After the questions were over, the panelists interacted with the audience to discuss issues with representation and employment. Rackham student Save Gasaiwai said he came to the event because he heard from Mahadevan earlier this year and her ideas had resonated with him as a Pacific Islander student. “I’ve been doing a lot of soulsearching about what I want to do after I graduate,” Gasaiwai said. “They (the panel) really clarified some issues that I have myself have been struggling with like discussing my pay, saying if I’m good enough for a position, because of my position in society.”
relative wealth compared to the rest of the nation. “We’ve had to painfully, slowly adjust our budget and our fiscal policy towards this change in relative deterioration in the economy,” Khouri said. Khouri gave an overview of the tax revenue, with over 85 percent generated from the property, income and state taxes. He noted that the tax burden on Michiganders has decreased, as Michigan has only the 30th highest taxes in the nation. Before the final part of his talk in which he mentioned policy focus areas for the future, Khouri addressed the struggles of Michigan local governments, of which there are 1,800. He said both rural and urban areas alike are encountering economic challenges. “When we talk about the fiscal health of local governments, the answer is it depends,” Khouri said. “It really does vary by geography, by size, by function. It’s not just urban areas. Some of the districts that are struggling the most are in the (Upper Peninsula).” Among the issues facing local governments, Khouri mentioned the lack of diversity in their revenue sources, that they rely too heavily on property taxes. Another pressing issue is the unfunded liabilities of pensions and healthcare. “I know there’s this question of justice, of what retirees need and deserve, that’s not what I’m talking about, although
it is what I’m talking about,” Khouri said. “What I’m talking about is the unfunded liabilities continue to grow and (the local government’s) ability to service that is not growing at the same pace.” As Khouri turned toward the future of the Michigan economy, he showed predictions of economic expansion, with the treasury’s general fund and school aid revenues rising. He outlined objectives of sustaining current progress, avoiding yo-yo fiscal policy and preparing for next recession. These objectives necessitate addressing long-term spending needs while the economy is good, reforming the tax system to match the evolving economy and improving the fiscal health of local governments across Michigan. He ended his talk with advice to the public policy students in the audience. “You’re the next generation of policymakers,” Khouri said. “I think you’ll do fine. Just focus on the basics. Focus on the policy, not the politics. Take a longer-term view of what’s required and not just a short-term view.” LSA sophomore Johnny Luo, who will be studying public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy next year, said he was motivated to come to the event for professional development, as well as his coursework in economic inequality. Luo said he thought the new generation of policymakers would bring a fresh perspective to
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RECOVERY From Page 1A was crucial to her steps towards assistance. “I know people say, ‘I’m a person in recovery,’ just so people don’t get scared by the word alcoholic, but I’m an alcoholic,” Julia said. According to Julia, one the largest obstacles CRP faces in attracting members is the stigmatization of addiction and recovery. CRP’s biweekly meetings average “around 20 members” with total membership consisting of 30 to 40 undergraduate and graduate students. However, with over 46,000 students at the University, she believes a lack of awareness about the program and its utility to those in recovery, along with the stigmatization of addiction, prevent students from joining. “(The University tries) to push their mental health resources, but I think what is preventing more people from utilizing those resources is the nature of American college culture of heavy drinking and also the stigma associated with addiction,” Julia said. “(It’s) the idea that you can’t be an addict while you’re in college, or alcoholics are the homeless people who live on the streets in downtown Ann Arbor when in reality, it has so many more faces than we care to acknowledge.”
solving Michigan’s economic challenges. “The thing (Khouri) talked about so many times was that we need new energy in our state policies and our state legislature,” Luo said. “I think that’s the way — some new idea or new ideologies.” After his talk, Khouri fielded specific questions from a panel of graduate students enrolled
“How do we get the employees trained and ready to take the jobs that are available right now?”
in a public budgeting course. The students had collected submissions from the audience and via Twitter. When asked what he most wished the public understood about his domain, Khouri said he wished people understood the trade-offs that come with policy. “Like life, broad public policy issues are always tradeoffs,” Khouri said. “They’re never black and white. I think, without really thinking about it, I wish people understood that most of these typical questions are balancing acts between two goods, and it’s not good and bad.”
the case is a fight for the lives of Iraqi refugees that is personal to many members of the group. Later in the meeting, Social Work student Lawrielle West spoke again about inequality among graduating students, as she proposed a resolution to make graduation a more equitable experience for all students. This includes providing regalia and headshot photos for students who can’t afford it. The resolution to fund West’s initative passed unanimously. West emphasized the importance of students of all incomes being able to share the same memories. “We have to make sure we maintain the dignity and also pride of those who are able to persevere across barriers here,” West said. Finally, the meeting adjourned with many heartfelt goodbyes and “thank yous”
David echoed Julia’s sentiments and said he thinks the University should be more open to talking about recovery. “Recovery needs to be more talked about at the University of Michigan because a lot of students don’t know what it is and have biases or stigmas against being in recovery or having an addiction problem,” David said. A 2012 study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that 40 million Americans over the age of 12 suffer from addiction to alcohol, nicotine or other drugs. The student also found only one in 10 of Americans who are addicted to alcohol or drugs, excluding nicotine, receive any form of treatment. According to Wolverine Wellness Director Mary Jo Desprez, part of the problem may be that only certain kind of drugs are stigmatized. “The words we say matter, and when you say, ‘I use a hard drug,’ that’s a stigmatizing category where, let’s just say somebody lives in an off-campus house who drinks a lot, they don’t get that same (stigmatization),” Desprez said. Though the Collegiate Recovery Program serves people like David, who suffer from opioid addiction, the most common addiction that students struggle with in college is alcohol. According to the National College Health
POST-ELECTION From Page 1A candidates, MomentUM’s A.J. Ashman and Charlie Bingham, won 1,927 votes. Some, like outgoing representative Matt Thomas, an LSA senior, commended the representation of communities in the assembly. Outogoing CSG President Anushka Sarkar, an LSA senior, expressed her disappointment with the significant amount of voters who wrote in Reggie the Campus Corgi. 1,403 students wrote in Reggie, 63 votes shy of the True Blue candidates, Business junior Arathi Sabada and LSA sophomore Marianne Drysdale. She criticized popular news outlets, such as the Detroit Free Press and BuzzFeed, for adding coverage to Reggie’s “campaign” and delegitimizing the work of student candidates. In order to combat the lack of informed voting among students, Sarkar outlined the importance of the Big Ten Voting Challengeas a way in which students can learn the importance of civic engagement and understand how voting processes take place. “Fostering a commitment to voting and civic engagement at a young age is incredibly important,” Sarkar wrote in an email interview. “It’s not because people don’t understand CSG that people voted for a dog. It’s not because CSG doesn’t do anything that people are disengaged with their
to the other members. Many representatives shared their own personal sentiments of gratitude for their experiences with CSG. CSG Vice President Nadine Jawad, a Public Policy senior, emphasized the immense impact CSG had on her college experience and said she was so grateful to have been able to leave her own mark on the campus community. “I think the thing we revisit year and year, and every time we have elections, is ‘what does CSG do?’ and ‘what has CSG done for me?’” Jawad said. “It has to be your mission to leave this place better than you found it. I can honestly say that I have given everything I could to this organization, to this campus in my four years. While I made mistakes and all, I can truly feel that I left something here that I love so much and it will hurt a lot to leave it.”
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Assessment study conducted at the University in 2016, 46 percent of undergraduates exhibited high-risk drinking (defined as four drinks or more for females and five drinks or more for males), while only 9 percent of undergraduates used prescription drugs for nonmedical purposes. Desprez said while an opiate crisis can be mirrored at the University, students are far likelier to be addicted to alcohol or other drugs such as marijuana and Adderall that are less stigmatized. “If you’re seeing an opiate epidemic in society, it doesn’t show up the exact same way, but we’re not impervious to it,” Desprez said. “But on a college campus, the data has always really been clear that the number one drug of choice is alcohol, and not very far behind is marijuana, and then you have some of the study aid drugs, stimulant, misuse and things like that.” The Collegiate Recovery Program does not provide treatment to those in recovery. Instead, it recommends that its members attend 12-step programs, programs pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous designed to help people through a therapeutic medium, and focuses on providing additional resources and support to students in recovery at the University.
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representative body and resort to memes and throwaway votes. It’s because of a larger problem of insufficient education around civic engagement. It’s because proving to people that their representative body truly does work in their best interests is an age-old battle with which governments have been struggling.” Sarkar pushed the importance of INNOVATE, CSG’s public service pitch competition, and the Diag events as avenues through which CSG can interact with students on campus and show the type of work happening within CSG, as well as legitimizing CSG positions to students unfamiliar with their efforts. Though Sarkar supported the True Blue campaign during this election, she voiced her admiration for all those who ran as candidates and her hopes for the future. “I have faith in Daniel Greene and Izzy Baer to lead this organization and student body with integrity, with emphasis on empowering marginalized students, and maintaining the momentum of this year,” Sarkar wrote. “I have faith in the elected Assembly Representatives to give voice to their communities and schools. And I have faith that the values Arathi and Marianne represented in leadership of True Blue will be embodied in this next year of CSG,” Sarkar wrote.
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Opinion
4A — Wednesday, March 28, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ROBERT DALKA | COLUMN
The importance of research as an undergrad
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FROM THE DAILY
Regents should listen to activists and Schlissel on C.C. Little
Illustration by Joe Iovino
A
s undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Michigan, the names of places become embedded in our language. For many, C.C. Little is the name of a bus station, a location for class or simply a landmark to give directions. Underneath our colloquial use of the name, however, is the inherent glorification of a man who stood for everything University students and administrators oppose. This week, after years of protest, discussion and deliberation, University President Mark Schlissel has proposed to the University’s Board of Regents to rename the C.C. Little Science Building along with Winchell House in West Quad Residence Hall. The Michigan Daily Editorial Board commends Schlissel for his proposal, and calls on the board to listen to the opinions of both students and faculty to approve this change. At the same time, we commend the student activists who made their voices heard to get us to this day. It is time we acknowledge our own history and take the proper steps to ensure we honor those who reflect the values of our community. Across the nation, at universities like Yale University and Georgetown, students have come together to address the growing issue of controversial building names. A name, especially one of a prominent university building, has a special kind of presence that is felt throughout a campus. Recently, University students have focused their efforts on the C.C. Little Science Building and Winchell House in West Quad. Little was unremarkable as University president with a tenure of only four years from 1925 to 1929. While he tried to implement various university policies, he remains infamous for his support of eugenics as well as his role in the spread of tobacco propaganda in the country. Winchell, similarly racist, published “Proof of Negro Inferiority” in which he tried to explain the “biological proof” that African Americans were inferior. On a diverse campus, the glorification of Little and Winchell, inherent in the naming of a building, does not support the image of inclusivity that the University works to purport.
The proposal to rename the building would not have been possible without the determination of students on campus. The Editorial Board would like to commend all of the student activists and leaders on campus who organized and fought to change the name of C.C. Little. There have been years of fighting from students, determined to correct what they saw as a visible display of values severely incompatible with what our campus hopes to embrace. As a University that is trying to fight for diversity, equity and inclusion on campus, changing the name of the C.C. Little building and Winchell House is a formidable step in promoting inclusivity for students on campus. With campus issues like these, student voices should be heard and heeded as we are the ones who interact, both directly and indirectly, with buildings on campus. We call on the Board of Regents to listen to student concerns and understand that they have taken the time to go through the process to implement this change on our campus. Additionally, we hope the University considers the changing of the C.C. Little building’s name a first step, not a final resolution. Oftentimes, building renames and other policy changes happen as a result of student protests and, while the action on this project by the University is commendable, we hope the administration pays due respect to the work of the student activists by being proactive and work to audit all names of existing
HANNAH MYERS | CONTACT HANNAH AT HSMYERS@UMICH.EDU.
University buildings. Students have already expressed concerns over the names of other buildings such as Angell Hall. Instead of waiting for campus activism, the President’s Advisory Committee on University History, which assesses building rename requests, should apply guidelines, such as those used at Yale, to show students on campus that their concerns are prioritized and have a lasting effect on University policy. What is most important is the inclusion of student perspectives in administrative and board discussions on how the campus can better reflect the values we find most important. Let us be clear: Removing the names of despicable individuals in our University’s past from buildings must not be construed as an erasure of their legacies at the University. Should the board approve this measure, the University must take steps to ensure that the legacies of C.C. Little and Alexander Winchell live on, not atop the honored pedestals of named facilities, but in the historical record. The University should publicly display, whether in a plaque or exhibit or another medium, that these individuals had previously been honored, and that it took significant student activism for the names to come down. The University must never hide its history of honoring these individuals and the student activism it took to get to this change.
I
walked into the lab, finished with my classes for the day and ready to get some data. I had been wrestling with the lab equipment for weeks. The computer kept crashing, turning entire days into wasted time. Luckily, it was put down to its final resting place. We now had a brand-new computer and I was ready to finally get some results. As I was setting up, I realized that the laser was not lasing at all. To fix this kind of problem, you have to adjust small mirrors and align the inside of the laser cavity. I had done this before, but I had help. This time, I was on my own. After an hour of moving the beam up, down, left, right, a laser came out the other side. I had fixed it. I felt better about myself than I have ever felt finishing a homework problem set, and now I was ready to take data. This type of experience was not a one-time thing for me, and not an experience only I have had. I have talked with many other undergraduates at the University of Michigan doing research, not just in physics, and a ton of them have had to work through issues on their own. Figuring out how to solve one of these issues is an invaluable experience. You not only learn a new skill, but you learn how to solve problems on your own and are able to gain confidence in your own abilities. A lot of people stress the importance of doing research as an undergraduate, but I feel that they don’t always talk about the most important reasons for it. A reason commonly cited is to gain experience in your field to prepare you for graduate school. This is usually directed to convince students in the hard sciences — physics, biology, chemistry — to get into research early. It is true; it does help students prepare for what they will be expecting in graduate school, and as Sarah Webb pointed out in an article for Science, many graduate schools “have come to expect it.” Though this reasoning is drilled into students’ heads from the moment they step on campus, it has a small scope and is often restricted to a specific group of students
focused on STEM research. It raises the question: What about those in the social sciences? I have a friend who had to participate in research for the Psychology Department for her marketing major. I think that this experience sets a great example of what many people should do. Just because she is not majoring in psychology does not mean she couldn’t participate in research in the field, especially since many of the skills she learned were directly applicable to her future marketing profession. You could ask me, “But why would I do research in a field that might only be tangentially related to the field that I am in, when instead I could get an internship that directly relates to what I want to do?” I would respond, “Go for it! Do what’s best for you,” but I would follow that comment with an attempt to convince you that what’s best for you would be at least a semester of research. An internship will look pretty good on your résumé. However, think about all the other people doing the same internship you are — maybe not exactly the same, but similar and standard. Employers have seen that résumé before; it’s not necessarily anything new. Nowadays, you have to stand out and do something different. The thing that could set you apart could be research. However, the reason for doing research should not be so you can just stamp it on your résumé as another checkbox checked. The true value of research is what it teaches you. A study by John Petrella and Alan Jung concluded that doing research as an undergraduate can help in creating more tolerance for obstacles, learning to work independently and boosting selfconfidence, among other things. I have seen this while participating in my own research. In the example I opened with, I was able to deal with a problem that came up, figure it out on my own and felt better about my abilities afterward. According to data from the United States Department of
Labor, in 2017, over 60 percent of those between 16 and 19 years of age worked in either the service occupation or sales. Now, I am not disparaging anyone in these industries, but some of the jobs in these sectors, which most 16-19 year olds take part in, do not offer much opportunity for ingenuity or discovery. I have worked both as a barista in a coffee shop and as a busboy in a restaurant, and in each one, I had to stick to the rules and steps that I was told when I started the jobs. There was not much room for creativity, and I pretty much just followed instructions and went through the motions. Undergraduate research offers a break from these types of jobs. You are able to work on projects in which you need to think critically and develop new ways of doing things. According to the National Science Foundation, as of 2016, the University of Michigan spends the second most money on research and development of any U.S. university. It spends the most out of any public school and is only beat by a private university, Johns Hopkins University. In my opinion, it would be a crime not to at least explore the option of doing research while attending this university. There are a ton of ways to start, from applying to the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program to just emailing professors as I did. Mirroring the slightly selfrighteous motto of our university, you might not immediately be the best at research, but you will get to work with the best and will be given a real chance to help lead a project. Research will be a new experience for many, but no matter what your major is or what your career ambitions are, it will be helpful in one way or another. So in preparation for next fall, or even this summer, look into doing some research. Robert Dalka can be reached at rpdalka@umich.edu.
MAGGIE MIHAYLOVA | COLUMN
I
Pay college athletes
t was a surreal Saturday. As the seconds dwindled down in what was a close, lowscoring and sloppy March Madness basketball game, Michigan vs. Florida State, the entire bar was silent. Each breath began to pulsate to the same rhythm, a hypnotic mumbled version of “The Victors,” as we watched the five sweeping flat-screen TVs with ignited interest. Then, with the realization that we were going to win — “The Wolverines are going to the Final Four!” — the bar erupted into a chaos of chants, screams, hugs, clinks of glasses and euphoric happiness. It was in this moment of observing pure joy that I turned my gaze back to the screen. I watched as these 19 young men celebrated in a manner almost identical to us, but with a barely visible hesitation. They still hadn’t made it: They had to worry about the next game, their homework due on Monday and various other concerns normal college students face. Whereas we fans would head home for the night, the weekend stretching before us, they were faced with a long, packed schedule. Before starting college at the University of Michigan, I didn’t know much about the NCAA. I had read a few things about its supposed exploitation of players, but it wasn’t until I arrived on campus that I realized the weight of this truth. Before, I had viewed student-athletes as celebrities, arrogant and entitled to their fullride scholarships, fancy gear and free passes in class. Now, I see them everywhere, in the flesh — asking for double servings in the dining hall, studying in the basement of East Quad Residence Hall, stopping at a tabling event in Angell Hall — and I realize that they are real people; real college students. They are here both to learn and represent our school — to further both their education and athletic career. The only difference between me, a freshman, and Jordan Poole, a freshman, is that he is part of a department that makes up to $158 million in revenue for the University— and I am not. The most profitable college sports are men’s basketball and football. These sports generate huge amounts of revenue for the
NCAA and their universities through ticket sales, merchandise and television viewership. According to the NCAA, about $821 million is generated through television and marketing rights from the Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament and about $130 million is generated through ticket sales to championship events. Moreover, in 2013, CBS and TBS split $1 billion in revenue just from March Madness. And two years ago, the University generated more than $97 million for football and earned a $60 million profit. There is no denying that these athletic programs make a lot of money, so where does it all go? In football, there are the reasonable investments, such as facility maintenance, travel expenses and student scholarships, but there is also a large amount diverted to extravagances, such as flashy new jumbo screens or the usage of private jets. Coaches also receive generous and arguably excessive salaries. Jim Harbaugh is known as college football’s highest-paid coach, with yearly pay of $9 million. With all the money and deals and chaos, the students often get pushed aside in the financial battle. The industry is so concerned with profiting that it exploits their players. In exchange for their athleticism, student-athletes receive full-ride scholarships, which includes their tuition, room and board. They get to travel and play the sport they love. However, behind the glamour and seemingly righteous compensation, they struggle in even their menial needs. In an interview with Shabazz Napier, former University of Connecticut Huskies basketball player, he stated that “some nights I go to bed starving.” His sentiments have been echoed by many studentathletes who believe that a fullride does not sustain a real college lifestyle, one that includes buying textbooks, going out to eat or attending events. Critics suggest that studentathletes, like other busy students, should be grateful for their scholarship and follow the standard path of getting a part-time job to make that extra money. Yet I would argue that their position
as an athlete for a university functions as a job. For example, in a 2013 report on Northwestern’s football program, it is outlined that a player’s “typical training camp day entails mandatory meetings, film sessions and practices from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.” Something that consumes one’s day cannot be labeled as a hobby, especially when its results come in the form of billions of dollars. Student-athletes also lack security. As of 2013, universities aren’t required to provide health care when an athlete is injured, which leads to steep medical bills, and oftentimes, rescinded scholarships. One notable story is that of Kyle Hardrick, a former University of Oklahoma basketball player who now works 12-hour shifts in the oil fields near his home in Texas. During his freshman year of college, he tore his meniscus, and after a lethargic reaction by the athletic department, the university refused to pay for his surgery and rehab. However, in hopes of playing, Hardrick went through with the operation and recovery, paying out of his own pocket. Once ready and optimistic, his head coach Lon Kruger decided that “Kyle really don’t belong here” and the university rescinded Hardrick’s scholarship. It is a disgrace that universities can so blatantly disrespect and discard such vital members of their institution. There needs to be impactful, dynamic bylaw change within the association. Student-athletes deserve better compensation, in whatever form it may hold. The current situation is not fair. Student-athletes provide and produce so much for their universities, and yet the NCAA profits in an extremely disproportionate manner. With the implementation of a workstudy type program, free lifelong health care and non-rescindable scholarships, student-athletes will find themselves represented and respected, and therefore empowered, in performing for the school and sport they love. Maggie Mihaylova can be reached at mmihaylo@umich.edu.
Arts
5A — Wednesday, March 28, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
DAILY FOOD COLUMN
CONCERT REVIEW
From Cow to Cone: Inside Ann Arbor’s Blank Slate ELI RALLO
Daily Food Columnist
MATT VAILLIENCOURT / DAILY
black bear and Roy Woods headline Hill Auditorium SAM LU
Daily Arts Writer
There are huge venues and there are small venues — think Little Caesar’s Arena compared to St. Andrew’s Hall — and then there is Hill Auditorium. Though I’ve been inside for academic lectures and student group performances, I’m ashamed to admit that until Saturday, I’d never actually been to a concert there. Under the auditorium’s sweeping, megaphone-like arches, I sat silently, waiting for the chatter of the audience around me to die down. When Roy Woods sauntered onto the stage, I was slightly surprised. In my experience, I’ve never been to a single concert where the set actually started on time. From the upraised platform that overlooked the hall, Woods immediately threw his entire being into the stage; I don’t think he was still for a single second of his nearly hour-long set. His energy, magnetic stage presence and eclectic, bouncing dance moves captivated the crowd. At
some point, he took his shirt off and stared at us silently while the auditorium echoed with screams for about a minute straight. I’d come in with no idea of who Roy Woods was, but by the time he exited, waving enthusiastically back at us, I knew that many people felt as if his performance was the perfect appetizer to the main course — blackbear. On his tracks, blackbear’s voice is smooth, measured and chilled out: In the studio recording, “Idfc” is resigned yet emotionally hard-hitting, and carries an undercurrent of powerful, subtle grief. Performed live, the song takes on a heavy, intense desperation that’s absolutely intoxicating to listen to. With the help of some amped up bass and tinkly percussion, the same melody reached higher highs and deeper lows, and all this combined with the diffused light from an army’s worth of phone flashlights made for a very stereotypical (but not altogether unpleasant!) loud, boisterous concert experience. Besides “Idfc,” blackbear also performed some of his most popular tracks off of his most
recent albums, including “4u” and “Dirty Laundry” from 2015’s Deadroses and “gucci linen” and “bright pink timbs” off of last year’s cybersex (although I was more than a little disappointed he didn’t actually play “Deadroses” itself). He closed the night with a feint by leaving amid a chorus of cries and then coming back for one last hurrah. blackbear is undeniably one of the most popular artists in the U.S. right now. Some love him. Some hate him. Some think that his whole mega emo, bleeding-heart vibe is way overdone. Even though I’ve been listening to blackbear in some way or another since high school, I haven’t really made up my mind on his music. In the end, his tracks are probably still going to remain on my every-once-in-a-while, I’mfeelin’-kinda-basic playlist. To some extent, I agree that singing about love is cliché — people have been doing it for thousands of years — but at the same time, blackbear wouldn’t be popular if his lyrics and style weren’t deeply relatable to a broader audience, and there’s nothing wrong with staying relatable.
TV REVIEW
‘Mechanism’ is a failure SAMANTHA DELLA FERA Daily Arts Writer
In 2015, the Netflix series “Narcos” enthralled audiences with a retelling of the life and business of Columbian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. An instant hit, the series was renewed for four seasons, the third of which premiered this past September to critical acclaim. Now, attempting to feed off of this success is “The Mechanism,” a “Narcos”-esque show from the same producer: José Padilha. Departing from Escobar’s Colombian cartel, “The Mechanism” takes place in Brazil and is loosely based on the investigation of rampant bribery and foul-play in the statecontrolled oil industry, known as Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash). Told through the eyes of police officer Marco Ruffo (Selton Mello, “The Movie of My Life”), the series highlights both the personal and professional consequences of trying to take down corrupt public officials. In the first episode alone, Ruffo’s family is threatened by the money-laundering criminal Roberto Ibrahim (Enrique Diaz, “Rust”). The second episode jumps 10 years ahead, the case still unsolved, with Ruffo struggling to find another job because he’s been marked with retirement due to mental illness. With the narration-based storytelling and a crime story plotline, the comparisons to “Narcos” are obvious and unsurprising. What would be surprising is if “The Mechanism” receives the same praise as its predecessor, as quality is not one of the things the two shows share. Though effective in introducing its main character and understanding his obsession with
solving the corruption scandal, Ruffo’s voiceover is suffocating at points — often using cheesy one-liners and unnecessary profanity to tell the story. There is a chance for recovery when the series continuously shifts focus between Ruffo and his badass woman mentee, Verena Cardoni (Caroline Abras, “Something Like That”). Yet without sustaining the narration style that the show debuted with, some later parts and episodes feel disconnected, and as a result, the audience fails to understand some main
“The Mechanism” Netflix characters, like Verena, as much as they may others. In fact, most of the issues with “The Mechanism” comes from its dialogue; not necessarily what it contains, but rather how it is presented. The show does not use subtitles, but instead dubs its Spanish and Portuguese-speaking actors with English voices. This makes for an uncomfortable and distracting experience, one that could be resolved if the majority of American people wouldn’t mind understanding their shows through subtitles rather than relying on less-than-exemplary dubbing. The saving grace of the series is its cinematography, which showcases the sweeping skylines of some of Brazil’s most beautiful cities, including São Paulo and Brasília. In more poignant shots, the severe economic inequality of Brazil is depicted through contrasting scenes of the lavish houses of politicians and the sagging huts of a poverty-stricken portion of the public. Yet not even this can redeem “The Mechanism” from the
larger problem of the genre that it hails from. While perhaps entertaining, there are dangerous undertones to the thread of series and movies that use the stereotype that Latin America is nothing more than a crime-infested drug hub. Even the promotional art for “Narcos,” a series praised for its representation of Escobar’s Columbia, turned the entirety of South America into a single pile of cocaine. From dramas like “Narcos” to comedies like “We’re the Millers,” Latin Americans and their countries are turned to nothing more than drug dealers or their victims. This phenomena just perpetuates an unfavorable view of its population that many in America are attempting to foster. As important as it is to learn about and understand the violence and struggle that many are facing in Latin American communities, there has to be better ways to do so. Tacky, over-dramatic Netflix shows can be fun to watch, but they only succeed in making entertainment out of the real-life and ongoing misery of the citizens they address. Instead of relying on an eight-part series for global news, perhaps we should demand more of our media in their depictions of ever-vibrant culture of the Americas, and not just their unfortunate blemishes. Though “The Mechanism” may shed light on a serious and topical issue that those outside of Brazil may not know about, it does so in a way that is trivializing and artificial. True understanding comes from resources beyond what is fun to watch; and if someone really wants to educate themselves on the political and socio-economic issues of surrounding countries, “The Mechanism” is certainly not the way to do it.
“Welcome Back — we missed you!” reads a sign written in light blue chalk cursive on the wall of Blank Slate Creamery, Ann Arbor’s premier sweet-tooth hotspot. It is 2:30 p.m. on a sunny, yet chilly, Monday afternoon in early March, about 26 degrees fahrenheit with scattered snow showers. The shop, nestled on a corner near the heart of downtown Ann Arbor, right past Main Street, had opened its doors for business only 30 minutes previously. Despite the cold weather and trek from campus, as snow falls and the temperature drops, the shop is a revolving door of happy customers — a mix of townies and students alike. All of them hovered over the circular tables with chalkboard surfaces, spooning balsamic strawberry, brown butter cookie dough and (a personal favorite) wolverine tracks flavored ice cream between laughs. On this particular Monday, Blank Slate has just reopened for the season, having been closed for the dead of Michigan winter, when most of us can barely get out of bed to go outside, let alone eat ice cream. I’m an advocate for them to open their doors all year around, considering the midterm season craving for some of my favorite scoops calls even when it’s 10 below zero (a further testament to wolverine tracks being the best ice cream flavor I’ve ever had). That being said, I couldn’t wait to open the front door when I arrived to visit the shop’s owner, Janice Sigler. A few days before my visit, they celebrated the fifth anniversary of their 2014 opening, which Sigler did not anticipate at all. “We ran out of ice cream in the first two days. And people were saying it was a marketing ploy! But I was so stressed, thinking how could I open this place and run out of our product before the first two days?” she said in an interview with The Daily when asked to describe that opening weekend. Though stressful at the time, this first weekend set up very well for what was to come for the shop, as it quickly became one of the most popular dessert locations in Ann Arbor. Marketing ploy or not, Janice and her family must’ve been doing something right, because the minute they had enough ice cream to re-open their doors the crowds came running. Sigler is an alum of the University, having completed her degree in 1991. She went on to work with alumni relations for about 20 years before deciding she wanted to be her own boss. In brainstorming ideas of what she could do if she left her job with alumni relations, she was reminded of an old dream of hers she had growing up. She used to live near an old school house she always thought would make a great ice cream shop. And suddenly, she realized that her destiny was to open her own shop — one with its own quirky personality that would make it stand apart from the 80,000 ice cream, gelato and frozen yogurt shops around the U.S.. When she was in her 20s, this ice cream shop ambition seemed like it would be nothing more than a dream, but things have since changed. This is a testament to an ongoing theme running through the central vein of the shop: authenticity and going back to your roots. Sigler’s son Nate showed me around the shop’s kitchen while he told me about his mother’s journey to becoming what I call an ice cream engineer — making her own unique flavors, all from scratch. She began with a little cupboard ice cream maker, testing out different flavors and ingredients before realizing the potential she had in the world of ice cream. Some may say she bends the rules of the conventional ice cream flavor, but I say she advances the world of ice cream, taking even the diehard Breyers french vanilla fans and making them go nuts over Fresh
Basil or Blueberry Pancake. Suddenly, everyone is interested in blackberry-riesling sorbet paired with a scoop of creamy matcha. After the initial experimentations with the little ice cream maker, it was time to step it up a notch. Janice was trained in Massachusetts by Gary of Gary’s ice cream, and had mentors from all over the country — the dairy programs at neighboring Big 10 universities especially. She nods to MSU, who, despite the rivalry, welcomed her warmly and aided her with the cooling process. Since then, the team at Blank Slate have become experts. Nate showed me how they mix in the fresh ingredients for each individual flavor, adding garden mint or coffee grounds to the mix while it’s still hot. Chemically, this really infuses the ice cream with the specific ingredients, making the flavor all the more aromatic and heavenly. After the ice cream is finished being made it goes into a -25 degree freezer to harden. The time on the process is precise, and when the timers go off for various steps Nate and the other employees drop what they’re doing to attend immediately to the product. “It’s hard to change people’s taste and their minds when it comes to ice cream and when they’re used to artificial flavor,” Janice said about their flavors. “The mint chip is not bright green, and over here I’m making fresh blackberry jelly for our peanut butter and jelly ice cream. It’s not what people are used to, but that’s the fun of it.” I never realized how much goes into the process before the cone is passed over the white countertop into my thankful palms — and I certainly gained a further appreciation for the trials and tribulations of the ice cream chemist. So what’s the secret? “Well, we go the extra mile,” laughs Nate, “and that’s why they go the extra mile,” gesturing to the filled tables of customers who have walked a little less than a mile from campus for an ice cream cone. Blank Slate certainly does go the extra mile. I was lucky enough to get a backstage glance into the ice cream making process, and learned about the rigorous process that goes into the end product: a pink cup enclosed with rich, creamy hot fudge and adorned with a glossy maraschino cherry. While most ice cream places purchase a mix or perhaps just receive large containers of their ice cream from a bigger corporation, Blank Slate makes everything from scratch. This means everything from the ice cream to the mix-ins, including things like cookie dough, caramel, fudge and brownie bites. They use the freshest fruit for their fruitier flavors and the most quality ingredients for mix-ins that they cannot make from scratch. Their dairy provider, Guernsey Dairy Farms, in Northville, Mich., pasteurizes their product before it gets to the store, however, the staff must re-pasteurize the dairy prior to making the ice cream, which is one of the earliest steps of the process. When I was there they were making the brown butter cookie dough flavor. The eggless cookie dough is made from scratch, and the dough is swirled into the base. “I want to try to make it so I would like every bite, you know? And so everyone doesn’t have to be picking out the cookie dough,” Nate laughs as he focuses on the swirl of the ice cream filling up white containers, en route to the freezer. The staff has a certain camaraderie and personality to them, which fits Blank Slate perfectly. As a family owned business, Janice and her son Nate, who is the operations manager, work closely day in and day out, and the value of having a motherson duo working together is something really special. Janice and her husband live on top of the shop, both Michigan graduates with passionate, warm
personalities. I had the pleasure of meeting both of them in my recent visit to Blank Slate — and got to talk to them about the family values that are the key to Blank Slate’s charm. Janice’s father did the electrical work of the building, and her brother, a carpenter helped upon opening too. The employees make the atmosphere and energy in Blank Slate vibrant, hospitable and waffle cone scented. This takes me back to the first time I ever had Blank Slate, which I consider one of my best memories at the University thus far. My best friend and I, having finished our first exams of college in mid-December of our freshman year decided to head out to get ice cream in celebration of our tests being over. We selected Blank Slate as the location, despite the 9:00 p.m. chill in the December air. When we were halfway there from our dorm room in East Quad it began to really snow for the first time since we’d arrived at Michigan. This was the first blizzard of the winter. The snow was coming down in huge wet flakes, sticking to our hair and our hats and our coats. Our first instinct was to turn back, but we were already halfway into the 30-minute walk, and we had heard that the ice cream was worth it. So we trekked on. Our hands were freezing cold, and tears — a result of laughing too hard, or perhaps the nostalgia of growing older — froze like icicles on our cheeks. Our noses were pink and our eyes bright. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we arrived. The black and white sign hung like a cloud in the sky, the little grey building like a temple or a house of worship. We skid down the sloped road toward the front door, and collapsed into its open embrace, still smiling as we proceeded to defrost. I think this was the moment that I realized what I adore so much about this city and its peculiar idiosyncrasies everywhere you turn, making it so easy to fall in love with. Everything in Ann Arbor, even the ice cream, is done with a degree of love I didn’t know existed in any other pocket of the Earth. This was my first time at Blank Slate. I had the white chocolate raspberry flavor, with homemade hot fudge, still my go-to, and still tastes like coming home. Since then, I’ve brought every visitor I’ve ever had to the shop, from my grandparents who were craving ice cream after the spring football game last year to my best friend, who visited on a snowy Nov. weekend to see a performance of a show I was working on. Each time is better than the last, with new memories and flavors. A personal favorite moment was when my younger brother decided to commit to the University class of 2022, and we celebrated with two ice cream flights and a pile of tiny plastic spoons. That’s the best way to describe Blank Slate: a celebration, even when it isn’t called for. Just a spoonful of celebration. A spoonful of happiness. After the tour of the ice cream laboratory, an array of tasters on little paper spoons (matcha is incredible, the brown butter cookie dough is to die for) and of course a warm waffle cone with none other than white chocolate raspberry, I had to walk out of the front door of Blank Slate and back into the real world. But luckily, I got to do it with a feeling of amiability and satisfaction in my heart, and an ice cream cone in my hand. One of the most endearing parts of the shop to me is the name. It’s unconventional, nonetheless with sweet individuality that makes it more alluring and distinctive. The name of the shop is a testament to the journey from Communications major to dairy expert, starting anew in pursuit of a childhood dream. And isn’t that what we all need sometimes? An ice cream cone dripping down the side of our hand (chocolate fudge brownie and madagascar vanilla with fresh raspberry sauce), an adventure and a fresh start.
Arts
6A — Wednesday, March 28, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
apart and having to come back together again is a classic one and one that should not have been that hard to tell. But the problem is that the MCU has worked almost entirely in bullet points, without the connective tissue needed for such a story to work. At the end of the original “Avengers” movie from 2012, the heroes all go their separate ways after fighting one battle together and meeting each other. At the beginning of 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” the group is now best friends that have clearly been working together for months or even years. Two of them are suddenly in a previously never-mentioned relationship. Tensions exist
COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW
DANYEL THARAKEN / DAILY
Exhibition of Art by Mich. Prisoners quietly stuns NITYA GUPTA Daily Arts Writer
“When I was a kid, I was always putting models together. My bedroom was full of hot rods, monster trucks and classic cars. Deep inside my soul, I am still that kid when it comes to building these vehicles. And when I’m immersed in building something from scratch, I am no longer in prison. I’m sitting in my bedroom, gluing in each piece, getting it just right. I hope you enjoy checking these out as much as I enjoyed creating them.” That is the artist statement from Michael Hiltz-Denman, whose work appeared in the “23rd Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners” in the Duderstadt Center. The exhibit showcases works created by people incarcerated in Michigan Department of Corrections facilities. Curators and volunteers visit artists in all 28 adult prisons to select work for the show. The pieces range in media, content and level of artistry, making for a diverse exhibit. I don’t often think of the incarceration experience, save for the few times I drive past a corrections facility. Yet it was impossible not to consider it when looking at all the pieces. Some of the art directly addressed the experience, portraying the bars and the cells. Others, like Monster or Victim? by Parrish Collision, were clearly meant to make us question the conviction process. At first glance, the piece appears to be a huge human eye, drawn in close detail. But in the pupil, you can see the courtroom and two hands in handcuffs. I spent a long time wondering about
the backstory of this artist and about the amount of artwork I saw that similarly hinted at wrongful convictions. We could also read artists statements from those who decided to write one. As I flipped through the booklet, I was struck by the common threads — for many of them, art is a means to express themselves or remember different times, much like Hiltz-Denman’s statement. It was a surprisingly intimate look into the minds of prisoners, who we may often forget or choose not to think about because they dredge up conflicted feelings about
23rd Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisioners Mar. 21 - Apr. 4 Duderstadt Center Gallery Free the horrible crimes that have been committed and the way our system handles criminal behavior. I found the statements to be incredibly humanizing and a way for me to think about each individual, instead of thinking collectively of them as prisoners. The exhibit also made me think beyond issues of incarceration or wrongful convictions. Artists made a variety of statements, whether personal, environmental or social. Spill Ink Not Oil by Bradlee M. Patrick is a watercolor and acrylic piece depicting an ocean in dark blue hues. The black that seeps into the water stems from a
massive quill pen’s ink, and the colors drip off the canvas onto its mounting. This is a piece that’s stunning because it’s so simple and elegant. It doesn’t try hard to tell us what it’s about. Instead, its power is in the detailing of the feather and the droplets spraying off of it. Another piece I spent a lot of time looking at was One Forgotten Part by Thomas Gordon. It’s a sculpture of a robot fashioned out of metal parts. One arm holds up a circular box with a mechanical heart placed inside it. A frame at the bottom of the piece showcases a poem written by the author, discussing how he was once a human but was changed into a lifeless bot. The ending lines hit at the dilemma Gordon is portraying: “They say I have no emotions and can’t feel pain, / Then why do I cry from the stress and strain, / Do they not realize they missed one part. / I still am suffering because they forgot my heart.” It was tough for me to look at this work when I was wondering about why these people were incarcerated. A part of me wanted to believe these artists had done nothing wrong, but a few quick Google searches of some of them hinted at troubled backgrounds and serious crimes like sexual misconduct. It was an uncomfortable conflict, and I wasn’t sure how much empathy to feel or not feel, how much I was supposed to like the art or not like it. Though I want to ignore the discomfort, I know that I can’t. Instead, I must look at this art as a reminder that these incarcerated adults are people too, who have creativity, emotions and passions. And while it may be difficult for me to view, their art deserves the chance to be shared.
DAILY ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN
‘Infinity War’ & Beyond Almost 10 years ago, “Iron Man” was met with great critical and commercial success. The film ended with the now well-known “postcredits sequence,” in which an eyepatch-wearing Samuel L. Jackson (“The Hitman’s Bodyguard”) arrived on the scene and mentioned something called the “Avengers Initiative.” The rest is history. Ten years and 18 movies later, we are now one month away from “Avengers: Infinity War,” the ostensible culmination of the sprawling superhero saga and the capstone to all that has come before. I don’t particularly care for these Marvel movies, but I am hopeful about “Infinity War.” I have long argued in this column that ending defines meaning. For a story to have a point, it has to have an end. Without an ending, a story isn’t a story at all, but merely a continuous series of events that goes on and on and on. Even the most elementary of storytellers could tell you
that everything has an arc, a beginning, middle and end. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU), that idea of smashing different franchises together into one super franchise, in its
IAN HARRIS quest to continue expanding ad nauseam, has utterly failed in its attempts to tell an overall story. “Infinity War” is its final chance. In broad strokes, it would be easy to say that the MCU has told a story. In the films leading up to “The Avengers,”
we saw The Avengers form. In “Captain America: Civil War,” we saw them fall apart. And now, in “Infinity War,” we will see them come back together to fight Thanos, the evil alien who is after all of the MacGuffins from previous films which, when collected, can be combined into the ultimate MacGuffin that he will use to take over the universe. That’s the story. But it hasn’t been told. Or at least, not told well. Oh sure, the events have happened, more or less. But the fatal f law of the MCU has long been that the idea is much cooler than its actual execution. Almost every single film in the series begins with the status quo and ends with the status quo. A major character has never died. Over the course of almost 20 movies, we have seen the Earth be saved from complete destruction almost 20 times. Never once has any of it seemed to mean much of anything. The story of a team coming together, falling
And now comes Thanos. The big baddie to end all big baddies
that were nowhere to be found in the original. The Avengers are now a family, but we never got to see them become one. The films elided the part where the characters actually got to know each other. The audience is left to assume that there were a bunch of adventures off-screen in which the characters developed. It doesn’t work. Something similar happened with “Civil War.” What on paper is the story of our heroes disagreeing about whether or not superheroes should have to be held accountable by the government in actuality turned out to just be a conf lict about whether or not Iron Man can get over the fact that Captain America’s buddy Bucky Barnes killed his mom (never mind the fact that Bucky did it while under mind control, because the film never seems to care about it). The
central conf lict of hero versus hero, of a family torn apart by a fundamental political disagreement, is sidestepped in favor of a story that boils down to miscommunication. “Civil War” wanted to be the dark middle chapter of the franchise, the “Empire Strikes Back” of the saga so to speak. But it misses its chance by both undercooking the central conf lict and leaving its heroes in a pretty good place with each other at the end. No one dies. No one is truly hurt. The closest thing we get is Don Cheadle’s War Machine breaking his legs. He’s up and walking again by the end of the movie. You want to come out of this, a film called “Civil War,” feeling that there is no way the Avengers will be able to handle what is coming to them. In the end, you get the sense everything will be just fine. And now comes Thanos. The big baddie to end all big baddies. The thing that all of this has been building towards. Or has it been? You’ll notice Thanos has barely been mentioned thus far in this article. That’s only one or two times fewer than he’s appeared in all 18 films. J.K. Rowling did a better job building up Voldemort as the ultimate villain in the pages of her first Harry Potter book than Marvel has done in 18 featurelength films. What does Thanos want? Where does he come from? Who in fact is he? If you haven’t read a ton of comic books, it’s doubtful that you have any idea. Has he had any real impact on any of the events that have come before? If he has, it hasn’t been made clear. And if all he wants is to take over the universe using a magic power MacGuffin, what makes him more dangerous or more threatening than the countless villains we’ve seen before who wanted to do the exact same thing? In the end, despite all of the bluster and popular cheer, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has operated far too much like a comic book, and not enough like a film series. I said at the beginning of this piece that I had hope for “Infinity War.” I do. I’m not
Classifieds
naïve enough to think that there won’t be more MCU films after this. But many of the original actor contracts expire with this film and it seems this is the closest thing to an ending we will ever get. It’s the series’ final chance to prove that it is more than just a giant advertisement for toys and comic books. It’s the final shot for the series to decide to actually be about something. For it to give the characters arcs that last, for Tony Stark to finally make the ultimate sacrifice, for Captain America to decide what it truly means to be a symbol, for The Hulk to come to grips with his aff liction, for Hawkeye to do something, anything, this
On April 27, we will have reached “Infinity.” Please just for once, let us not go beyond
is the last chance. Stick the landing, and you can make it all worthwhile. The AntMans and Doctor Stranges and forgettable Thor movies and rebooted Spider-Man — it can all be made to have lead to something great, like how the original pre-Avengers movies were raised up by the quality of what they led to. It isn’t too late for the MCU to prove that it’s actually telling a story, rather than just trying to print money. The alternative is that “Infinity War” will turn out to merely be the lead-in to “Avengers: Ultimate War” or “Avengers: Eternal Battle” and then we will get three more “Iron Mans” and six more “Thors” and 17 “Black Panther” spin-offs and on and on it will go forever and ever and ever. On April 27, we will have reached “Infinity.” Please just for once, let us not go beyond.
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FOR RENT RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 Touch, e.g. 6 Model in a bottle 10 SALT weaponry 14 “Ta-ta, mon ami” 15 Students’ lunchroom 17 Secondhand wave of excitement 19 Surprised cries 20 Court plea, briefly 21 Bridal path 22 “Uh-uh— however ... ” 24 They may be raised in casinos 25 Saudi neighbors 27 Google Apps component 29 Place to get delivery instructions? 31 Pro bono TV ad 34 “Hamilton” climax 35 27-Across alternative 36 Has second thoughts about 37 Member of the fam 38 Hare care site 42 Thick 43 Off the beaten path 44 Arcade activity 47 Welcome words to a hitchhiker 48 Kicking partner? 49 Ancient France 51 St. Petersburg’s river 54 Minister or imam, say ... and, in two ways, a hint to words hidden in 17-, 29- and 38Across 57 Jaguar’s jaguar, e.g. 58 Clarence Odbody in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” e.g. 59 Give a finer edge to 60 Word with bill or ball 61 In __: unborn DOWN 1 Hockey announcer’s cry 2 Actress Falco
3 The Sultan of Swat and The Splendid Splinter 4 Like produce at farm-to-table restaurants 5 The Danube’s cont. 6 “Run along now” 7 Pull with effort 8 “Assuming it’s true ... ” 9 Guinea pig, e.g. 10 Taken from above, as photos 11 Invigorating 12 Jacque’s thousand 13 Cyber Monday events 16 “To clarify ... ” 18 Operating 23 Show __ 24 Copenhagen carrier 25 Former GM division 26 Haleakala National Park locale 27 Round Earth map 28 Landlocked African nation 30 Airport lineup 31 Made tense
32 Doctrinal faction 33 Tennis great Arthur 36 Cud-chewing mammal 38 Go back (on) 39 Director Lee 40 Disruptive forum visitor 41 With it, once 42 Cut into parts 44 Brooks with two Grammys
45 Last 25-Down model 46 Italian fashion city 47 Iditarod runner 49 Hockey announcer’s cry 50 Pervasive glow 52 Turn sharply 53 Guthrie who sang about Alice 55 Little trickster 56 Seine filler
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03/28/18
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Sports
Wednesday, March 28, 2018 — 7A
Slaker continues to have success in late-game situations for Michigan JACOB SHAMES Daily Sports Writer
One look at Jake Slaker’s freshman-year stat line tells you everything you need to know about the 2016-17 Michigan hockey team. First, the good: Slaker scored seven goals and added 14 assists, ranking seventh among Big Ten freshmen with 21 points and hinting at a promising future ahead. The not-so-good? Slaker’s 21 points led the team. A season before, Kyle Connor paced the Wolverines with 73. Slaker put up 21 in something else last season — plus-minus. Minus 21, to be precise. Granted, it’s hard to fault Slaker directly — he was more symptom than cause. Michigan scored just 2.62 goals per game last season, a drop of over two goals from 2015-16, and had one of the youngest rosters in college hockey; a roster that lost seven of its top eight scorers from a year before. But that was last season. This season, the Wolverines are in the Frozen Four for the first time since 2011, and Slaker, now an assistant captain, is a bellwether for something else entirely. The San Diego, Calif. native has been a solid contributor all year long. He’s third in goals, eighth in assists and fourth in total points. But it’s not only about what he’s done — it’s about whenhe’s done it. Slaker has shown off a knack for clutch goals ever since Michigan’s second home game against Vermont. On Oct. 21, with the Wolverines down 2-1 a five minutes to play, he fired home a wrister to tie the game. He lit the lamp again with 54 seconds remaining, almost single-handedly stealing a victory. Against Ferris State two weeks later, Slaker’s two thirdperiod goals were the final nail
ZOEY HOLMSTROM/Daily
Sophomore forward Jake Slaker scored the game-winning goal in Michigan’s win over Boston University in the NCAA Tournament Northeast Regional final.
in the coffin. In Michigan’s biggest game of the season to that point against Minnesota, his goal in the final stanza sent the game to overtime, where the Wolverines claimed a 5-4 victory. When Michigan was left for dead, down 4-0 to Bowling Green in the opening game of the Great Lakes Invitational, he scored two straight goals to lead a near-comeback effort. And it was his empty-netter that wrapped up a victory against Wisconsin on Mar. 2, all but punching the Wolverines’ ticket to the NCAA Tournament. “He’s just a game-time player when he gets in big situations,” said senior forward Tony Calderone. “He’s moving his feet all game. I don’t know, it might be a coincidence that he scores all of them in the third … But he comes up big when we need him.”
In fact, out of Slaker’s 15 goals this season, 10 of them have come in the game’s final 20 minutes. But he couldn’t tell you why — in fact, he wasn’t even aware of that fact until recently. “I guess I need to start playing better in the first and second period,” he deadpanned when asked about it after practice Tuesday. Michigan coach Mel Pearson can’t explain Slaker’s thirdperiod success either. But he has a theory. “He’s good around the net, and he’s got good speed,” Pearson said. “And maybe it’s because teams break down as the game goes on, and he’s able to use that speed to get to loose pucks and put pressure on people.” It’s a pitch-perfect description of what happened Sunday afternoon in the NCAA Tournament Northeast Regional
final against Boston University. With 13 minutes to play and the Wolverines locked in a 3-3 tie, Slaker was exhausted and near the end of a shift. Eyes still on the puck, however, he chased it into the offensive zone, bearing down hard on Terrier defenseman Brandon Hickey. Under pressure to make a quick decision, Hickey swung his stick and missed the puck entirely, and Slaker jumped on the loose change. Just Boston’s Cam Crotty stood between Slaker and goaltender Jake Oettinger. Slaker tried to swerve around Crotty before shooting, but his shot hit the defenseman’s right knee. Regardless, the puck deflected off of Crotty and found its intended destination, pulling Michigan back into the lead. The Terriers wouldn’t score again.
Was it somewhat of a lucky goal? Perhaps. But it was Slaker’s forecheck that put Hickey on his heels. It was Slaker skating as fast and as hard as anyone, no matter how tired. “His speed and the pressure he put on the defenseman to make the error and then get the puck and make the shot, I think that could be some of it because he is a good skater,” Pearson said. “He’s just as strong in the third period as he is in the first.” That’s the case for his entire line, actually. Slaker, junior Brendan Warren and freshman Josh Norris are three of the Wolverines’ strongest skaters — Pearson believes that the trio skates as well as any in the country. “We’re getting on the forecheck early, and it lets us play a little bit more on the offensive side,” Slaker said. “So
then when we’re playing the defensive side, we can skate harder back and catch the guys. I think it just plays in our favor being faster, just taking pucks to the net and just playing as fast as we can, pushing the pace for the other team.” Pushing the pace has other benefits, too. Michigan’s first two lines are built much differently — Calderone, senior Dexter Dancs and junior Cooper Marody carry much of the scoring burden, but aren’t quite the elite skaters that Slaker, Norris and Warren are. The Wolverines’ second line may not light the lamp as often, but can break teams down with the stress they put on opposing blueliners, setting up the “DMC” line to inflict a mortal wound. “They add speed, they get defensemen thinking about where they need to go,” Calderone said. “When they’re moving their feet and they’re going, offensive pressure opens up everything for all the other lines. So once they’re getting pucks deep, hitting guys and skating, it’s dangerous.” You can chalk Slaker’s propensity for big-time plays up to to pure coincidence, if you so choose. That’s probably fine with him — he pretty much does so himself. But Pearson frequently mentions players getting rewarded for efforts that usually go unseen. That’s been Slaker all season — working hard in both zones, playing on special teams, skating opponents to exhaustion. And even when he hasn’t directly experienced the benefits of his hard work, others have. Sunday, Slaker was rewarded. The reward: a game-winning goal and a trip to St. Paul. And going from a minus-21 as a freshman to being an assistant captain and the third-leading scorer on a Frozen Four team? It’s a bit harder to call that a coincidence.
Breakdown of the four teams remaining in this season’s Frozen Four ROBERT HEFTER Daily Sports Editor
Since the conference’s genesis in 2014, no Big Ten hockey team has won the national title. But that fact seems poised to change this year, as three of the four teams that populate the Frozen Four in Saint Paul, Minn. hail from the Big Ten. No. 2 Notre Dame, who stands as the lone conference champion of the quartet will face off against Michigan. With a 5-1 routing of Denver, No. 4 Ohio State is set to battle MinnesotaDuluth in the other semifinal matchup. With No. 1 seeds St. Cloud State and Cornell eliminated, both of the semifinal matchups feature a clear David-andGoliath complex. The Wolverines and Fighting Irish split their two regular season series, and the Bulldogs fell to Denver in the NCHC finals, the same team the Buckeyes stomped over in the quarterfinal. The Daily breaks down the four teams contending in the Frozen Four vying for a National Championship: Minnesota-Duluth (13-11-0 NCHC, 23-16-3 overall) Perhaps the most battle-tested team with the highest strength of schedule in the pack, according to the 2017-18 KRACH Rating, the Bulldogs could give the Buckeyes a run for their money. With a 23.9-percent conversion rate on the power play — which stands as the paramount of the four — and the second-best defense according to USCHO, Minnesota-Duluth purports a dual-threat front that could take advantage of timely situations. Defenseman Scott Perunovich — the CHN Rookie of the Year — and forward Peter Krieger headline the attack with 36 and 30 points, respectively.
Perunovich tallied 15 of those points on the power play. The second-to-last time the Bulldogs played in Saint Paul on March 16 in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff, they were dominated on the power play by Denver. But with wins over St. Cloud State and Air Force in the Tournament, they seem to have found the answer to the issue that plagued them late in the season. Ohio State (14-8-2 Big Ten, 26-9-5 overall) The Buckeyes strolled to the Frozen Four with victories over Princeton and Denver. Arguably the best team in the Big Ten, Ohio State boasts the best defense of the group with 2.08 goals allowed per game and the best penalty kill at 89.29 percent. But the Buckeyes’ resolute defensive line isn’t the tip of the iceberg. Forwards Tanner Laczynski, Mason Jobst and Matthew Weis combine for 126 total points, which easily stands as one of the scarier top-lines in the nation. And with 60 total goals scored in the third period alone this
Ohio State boasts the best defense of the group.
season, Ohio State is the outright best closing team of the four. The Buckeyes have notched wins over every member of the final quartet, save MinnesotaDuluth, but have also lost to Notre Dame four times, the most recent being in the Big Ten Championship. Michigan (11-10-3, 22-14-3) The Wolverines have been underdogs this whole tournament. With tough wins over Northeastern and Boston, Michigan has proven its ability to provide offensive output in dire straits. And with a middle-of-thepack offense and defense, the Wolverines’ grit has certainly propelled them to their first Frozen Four berth since 2011, when they lost to Minnesota-Duluth in the final. Forwards Cooper Marody and Tony Calderone are the undisputed leaders of the offense with 86 total points. The junior and senior, respectively, combined for three tallies in the first two rounds of the tournament.
Perhaps Michigan’s greatest strength, though, is its newfound versatile streamline from the crease all the way up to the attacking zone. Sophomore goaltender Hayden Lavigne’s mental fortitude paired with a .910 save percentage has been consistent and reliable. And freshman defenseman Quinn Hughes’ 28 points, supplemented by junior Joseph Cecconi’s veteran stalwart efforts on the blueline, serve as a multipurpose feeder to the productive attacking arm. While the Wolverines have found success this season against Notre Dame — sweeping them in a weekend series when they were the top team in the land — they have experienced quite the opposite against Ohio State. The Buckeyes have defeated Michigan five times in five matchups. Notre Dame (17-6-1, 27-9-2) Riding the wave of a victory in the Big Ten Tournament Championship, the Fighting Irish squeaked by Michigan
The Wolverines have been underdogs this tournament.
EMMA RICHTER/Daily
The Michigan and Notre Dame hockey teams split their season series but match up again in the Frozen Four.
Tech and Providence in their Regional matchups. But with the worst offense of the four teams, it’s not surprising that Notre Dame is winning by close margins. Forwards Jake Evans and Andrew Oglevie stand as the bannermen, amassing 78 total points. Where the Fighting Irish make up for their lack of offensive prowess is in their vigorous defense. Their 2.16 goals-allowed per game stands as the ninth-best in the country
— behind Ohio State’s 2.08 — and their 88.89-percent penalty kill prove that they can stop the best. And if Notre Dame’s opponents do find their way past the back line, they have Cale Morris to worry about. With the best save percentage in the country at .945, getting anything past Morris is a feat. As the regular and postseason Big Ten champion, the Fighting Irish are the best team in the Frozen Four on paper. Time will tell if they can prove it.
Sports
8A — Wednesday, March 28, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
TENNIS Notebook: Yaklich familiar with Loyola-Chicago WOMEN’S Wolverines sweep their
After coaching in the same conference as the Ramblers, Yaklich has familiarity ETHAN WOLFE Daily Sports Editor
If you had Loyola-Chicago in your Final Four, the rest of us would like to know about the 2018 midterm elections, tomorrow’s lottery numbers and the date of the Game of Thrones season nine premiere. The Ramblers have been the darlings of March Madness, as they enter San Antonio with all the support that comes with being an underdog. But the allure of Loyola-Chicago rests in that they were — and still are, to an extent — unknown. Unless you’re Michigan assistant coach Luke Yaklich. Prior to joining the Wolverines, the defensive maestro went 7-1 against the Ramblers in his four seasons spent at Illinois State as an assistant coach and is familiar, at least fundamentally, with coach Porter Moser’s style of play. “Coach Moser is an unbelievable coach ... you have to be locked in on both ends of the floor,” Yaklich said. “It’s
gonna be a dog fight. His teams reflect his personality. They’re prepared, they get better, tough and they have a bunch of really great kids that have been through the Missouri Valley and nonconference wars. “Loyola is obviously gonna have our full attention all week, and we’re thrilled with the opportunity to play in the Final Four against a really good and well-coached team.” Yaklich has been the architect of Michigan’s top-five defense that has propelled them to the Final Four. His expertise could help lead the Wolverines past LoyolaChicago and into the National Championship game. C.J. Baird becomes a fan favorite Besides the victories themselves, there was a clear-
cut, feel-good moment from Michigan’s second weekend matchups — C.J. Baird’s lastminute 3-pointer in the blowout over Texas A&M. The walk-on freshman had scored only once this season — a layup — against Alabama A&M on Dec. 21. “It’s the best feeling of my life,” Baird said. “I told Ibi Watson when I got in there I’m gonna shoot it and he said, ‘Okay, do it then.’ I was kinda nervous when (Jaaron Simmons) called me because I’m like, ‘Oh, they actually want me to do this.’ I didn’t think they’d actually let me do it.” The nearly 30-foot shot catapulted Baird into Twitter fame. Besides a couple thousand mentions to his name, former Cleveland Browns quarterback and Texas A&M alum Johnny
“Coach Moser is an unbelievable coach.”
SAM MOUSIGIAN/Daily
Assistant coach Luke Yaklich has some experience with Loyola-Chicago, as he coached against them at his last job.
MEN’S TENNIS
‘M’ extends win streak, then falls to Ohio State AKUL VIJAYVARGIYA Daily Sports Writer
The No. 8 Michigan men’s tennis team split the weekend, beating Penn State on Saturday, 5-2, before faltering, 6-1, against No. 2 Ohio State on Sunday. Saturday’s match started with inconsistent doubles, which was nothing new for the Wolverines (2-1 Big Ten, 12-3 overall). After winning the first doubles match, 6-2, Michigan couldn’t close out any of the other two matches, losing, 6-2 and 7-6 (4), at second and third doubles, respectively. “We served for (the doubles point) twice, and that’s happened a lot this year where we are just not finishing,” said Michigan coach Adam Steinberg. “It’s becoming a little bit of a habit where we have it in our sights and we’re letting it go.” However, the Wolverines rebounded and hit the ground running during the singles matches, winning four of the six matches in convincing fashion while senior Runhao Hua grinded out a fifth point in three sets at No. 1 singles. “You want to grab that momentum back as soon as you can,” Steinberg said. “Davis (Crocker) did a great job. Carter (Lin) has had a great year and finished his opponent pretty quickly, but that whole side with Alex (Knight), Davis and Carter were great yesterday and brought us to victory.” Michigan experienced another win on Saturday — freshman Mattias Siimar’s return from injury. Siimar not only won at No. 1 doubles with Knight, but also harassed the Nittany Lions (1-2, 11-7) at No. 5 singles, winning 6-1, 6-2. “Keeping him off the court is really tough, but he feels good, and (he) needed that,” Steinberg said. “He loves to be on the court, so I know he was really dying to get back out there, and
it obviously helps our team. We need him.” His return was not enough to overcome the Buckeyes (3-0, 16-2), though. Despite a lopsided 6-1 defeat, the scoreboard did not reflect how close many individual matches were, as the Wolverines lost two of their singles matches in third-set tiebreakers on top of losing the doubles point, 6-4, 7-5. “With our team, I think everyone feels like we have a chance to win at every position, which is really good because it doesn’t really put extra pressure on anybody,” Steinberg said. “When you go into Ohio State, you’re playing on those front courts against the best players. “It’s a huge challenge, but it’s also fun. It’s the atmosphere you want to play in front of and I think they grow a lot from it.” The one win on Sunday came at No. 4 singles from junior Myles Schalet, who was the only player to lose against Penn State. Playing the No. 42 player in the country, Schalet closed out a tight three-set match, 7-6 (1), 4-6, 10-3. “Today, he handled himself well when he was down and hung in there,” Steinberg said. “(He) was more positive and played with real good energy even when he was losing, and (it) helped him through the match. And then his best tennis comes out of that.” With conference season just beginning, Steinberg continues to play with new doubles lineups in hopes to remedy Michigan’s deficiency in that area. But Steinberg also looks at the bigger picture. His takeaways from the weekend are straightforward. “We just have to get four points,” he said. “We don’t have to get any more than that. So if we can win the doubles and find three spots against these top teams, then that’s all we need. And we are good enough to do that against anybody.”
Manziel also tweeted at Baird, “Final four bound @baird_ cj#IfYouCantBeatEmJoinEm” and promised an appearance in San Antonio. Baird also scored a video interview with The Ringer that racked up 146,000 views. While the shot put the walk-on in the spotlight, it also brought attention to the rest of the scout team for their efforts in game preparation throughout the season. Football coaches react to Michigan basketball success There is one thing that the football and basketball teams clearly have in common: elite defense. On Tuesday, defensive coordinator Don Brown spoke with the media and talked not only about his team’s improvements over the offseason, but he also marvelled at the basketball team’s hard-nosed play. “They’re doing everything,” Brown said. “The point guard, (Zavier) Simpson? He’s an impressive guy. Boy, I remember watching him and l’m like, he’s a dude now. “Let’s get him out there, I’m sure coach (Jim Harbaugh) would love that. I’m enjoying the ride like everybody else.” Harbaugh also raved about how the basketball team and his coaching counterpart, John Beilein, have ascended to onceunthinkable ranks. Unlike Brown, Harbaugh wasn’t reserved about his praise for the team. “They’re beasts,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going too far on a limb here, I think that the way the team played (against Texas A&M), they could’ve beat the Los Angeles Lakers. ... Guys were attacking on both ends of the floor on the offensive side and the defensive side. So much excitement for Coach Beilein and his staff and the team. And onward.”
home, weekend series PAIGE VOEFFRAY Daily Sports Editor
The homecoming was everything the Michigan women’s tennis team could have hoped for. After 11 straight away matches — including a 5-2 victory at Minnesota on Friday — the Wolverines returned to the Varsity Tennis Center and secured a 7-0 win against Purdue to remain undefeated in Big Ten play. “It’s been a tough stretch for the girls,” said Michigan coach Ronni Bernstein. “It’s definitely good to be home. We played really well today too, which was a bonus. We’re starting to put it together which is nice.” Added sophomore Chiara Lommer: “It was really nice having a home crowd. Having everyone behind us was really great, especially after that doubles point. It was just a really good, positive atmosphere and we felt really confident being back home after the tough away conditions.” Over the course of the weekend, the Wolverines dominated singles play, winning 11 of 12 matches. No. 1 junior Kate Fahey continued her dominance with a 6-4, 6-2 win Friday, and rolled Purdue’s Silvio Ambrosio 6-0, 6-2, on Sunday. Ambrosio fought off a match point, but in the end, Fahey took advantage of Ambrosio’s slice return and used the slow-moving ball to drill the shot down the line. The Boilermaker could barely muster a shot back as the return landed in the net. Fahey was the first off the court, so all she could do was wait and watch her teammates pick off each Purdue player one by one. No. 5 senior Mira Ruder-Hook
followed closely behind with a 6-2, 6-0 win of her own, and it became a race between No. 6 sophomore Lera Patiuk and No. 3 Lommer to see who could clinch the match for the Wolverines. Within seconds of each other, Patiuk, then Lommer, won their matches off of Boilermaker errors. No. 2 junior Brienne Minor was the final Michigan point. Her first set was a grind, and required a tiebreaker. Minor jumped out to a 6-1 lead, and while Alex Sabe threatened a comeback, Minor escaped with a 7-5 win in the tiebreaker. She took the second set easily, breezing to a 6-1 victory. The Wolverines usually rely on singles play to make up for their lackluster doubles play. Michigan dropped the doubles point Friday but won it Sunday, leaving much to be desired. Though shaky doubles play isn’t the end-all be-all for the Wolverines, but it’s just another facet they need to keep working on if they hope to stay undefeated in the Big Ten, especially with matches against No. 5 Northwestern and No. 6 Illinois approaching in two weeks. “We just gained a little bit of confidence,” Bernstein said. “You start believing in yourself and you figure out how to get the four points. I think as a group that’s what we’re starting to figure out and it’s good timing because we’re in the Big Ten season which is very important.” Added Lommer: “Since we’ve been back in Big Ten season, we have a different demeanor. Coming in and knowing we’re the best and just that first win (against Iowa) was like, ‘Yeah, we are the best in this conference’ and we have just been rolling since then because our attitude is back and we’re back on top where we belong.”
Dwumfour has potential to fill in for Hurst MIKE PERSAK
Managing Sports Editor
It doesn’t take much to get Don Brown talking about his defense. On Tuesday, the defensive coordinator was asked who, of the younger guys on the Michigan football team’s roster, was competing for playing time at linebacker. It sent Brown into a four-minute answer, listing 20 players from all over the defense who have impressed him in some way this spring. He lingered longest while talking about the Wolverines’ defensive line, naming seven specific players who stood out before giving a caveat. “I just hope I’m not missing anybody up front,” Brown said. “Because I really feel very strongly that we’ll have seven or eight guys there.” It makes sense, as the defensive line was perhaps Michigan’s deepest position last season. Its only loss this offseason was defensive tackle Maurice Hurst,
who graduated. But the question does remain: Who will replace Hurst? Junior defensive end Rashan Gary was much more brief when asked who’s stood out in Hurst’s absence. “We’ve got this guy, you know, Jersey kid, (junior defensive tackle) Michael Dwumfour,” Gary said. “He’s fast off the ball, just like (Hurst). It’s ridiculous. But, you know, you’re gonna see it when the time comes.” Maybe there’s some bias, as Gary, a New Jersey native himself, admitted he’s known Dwumfour since the second grade. Still, though, it’s high praise from the junior. In fact, it’s somewhat surprising considering that Dwumfour has been a bit of a second fiddle in his time being
recruited and playing for the Wolverines. When he graduated from high school, Dwumfour was a three-star recruit, according to 247Sports. In Michigan’s 2016 recruiting class that had 13 four and five-star players, including three on the defensive line, Dwumfour was overshadowed. That isn’t an automatic disqualifier, but Wolverine faithful weren’t exactly clamoring for Dwumfour’s arrival. The same could be said for his time on campus too. Dwumfour has played in just 10 games in his career — nine last season — and amassed six career tackles. For the past two seasons, he’s been mostly an afterthought at a position that has yielded multiple NFL players in recent years.
“He has taken a huge jump from when he first got here.”
Hurst’s departure leaves a question mark on a defense that otherwise has very few. But from all accounts, Dwumfour has returned this season with a new mindset. He’s made improvements that have his teammates taking notice, and he is smack-dab in the middle of the conversation for who will take Hurst’s spot on the interior of the defensive line. “I’ve seen a guy, you know, grow up,” said sophomore linebacker Devin Bush. “I’ve seen a guy go through ups and downs. He was feeling one way, this way, and he’s down on himself, then he’s up in spirits. I’ve seen a guy go through a bunch of mixed emotions and, you know, when we’re on the field, he’s out there working. And you can see improvement from him and he has taken a huge jump from when he first got here.” Added Brown: “The guy that was taking great steps a year ago during Bowl prep was (Michael) Dwumfour. He hasn’t slowed.”
EVAN AARON/Daily
Defensive coordinator Don Brown says that junior defensive tackle Michael Dwumfour has continued to make progress on his game in spring practices.
statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | M A RCH 28 , 201 8
The Machine: Inside the CSG race
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Wednesday, March 28, 2018// The Statement
statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | M A RCH 28 , 201 8
Managing Statement Editor: Brian Kuang
Photo Editor: Amelia Cacchione
Deputy Editors: Colin Beresford Jennifer Meer Rebecca Tarnopol
Editor in Chief: Alexa St. John
Copy Editors: Elise Laarman Finntan Storer
Managing Editor: Dayton Hare
Let’s Bitch About It: Spring, you wily temptress
BY LYDIA MURRAY, COLUMNIST
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here’s nothing like waking up to a blue sky and shining sun. Rolling out of bed doesn’t seem quite so hard when you know that waiting for you is the warm embrace of sunshine on your face and the sweet taste of finally-seasonally-appropriate iced coffee. You get dressed, put on a light coat and step outside to meet the beautiful day. But wait — instead of the warm sun, you are abruptly confronted by an icy wind that stings your skin. It’s almost April. Where is the 60-degree weather? Why is it still freezing out? Spring can be beautiful and exciting, but in Michigan, spring is a temptress who leaves you cold and disappointed. What in the heck am I supposed to wear?
Deciding what to wear in the spring is a constant battle. Is it still sweater weather? Can I wear short sleeves? Often, I will get dressed in a giant sweater and scarf and walk out in my parka only to find that by midday I am sweltering under all of my layers. Or conversely, I head to class midday in a light jacket and T-shirt only to be freezing to death on my late-night walk home from the library. The only way to accommodate for the weather is to pull a “Clueless”-style outfit change every few hours. While it is difficult to dress appropriately for the weather, there is a clear portion of the student population who do it completely wrong. Perhaps University of Michigan students have just evolved to be immune to the cold
in ways I have not, but somehow as soon as it is above 50 degrees, half the campus is on the Diag in shorts and T-shirts, throwing a Frisbee or sitting in a hammock. I don’t know what’s more blinding: The ref lection of the sun off the remaining snow patches or off the calf of a pale white boy in shorts? Do you not get cold? It’s really not that warm out. This truly seems like Stockholm syndrome but for Michigan weather. That one dude who insists that it’s still going to snow again Why are you like this? Who hurt you? Can’t you let people be happy? Spring is a time for optimism and sunshine. Perhaps you are trying to protect me from the devious nature of Michigan spring, but please do not remind me
ILLUSTRATION BY BETSY STUBBS
the one day when I am finally enjoying the weather. Constantly predicting that it will snow again is like reminding students that finals are just around the corner during that one week where there aren’t any midterms. It’s the calm before the storm, and you’re right that the storm is coming, but darn it, let a girl relax at least long enough to finish an iced coffee. I’m stressed out of my mind and can never enjoy the weather when it is good Speaking of exams and stress, Michigan spring — the cruel being that it is — always seems to know when students are busiest and then picks those days to be warm. Do you have an exam tomorrow? What a perfect time to make it sunny and 65 degrees so you can watch all the other students enjoying themselves from the confines of the UGLi! Aside from offering beautiful weather when we cannot enjoy it, spring also has other ways to make us feel bad about ourselves. In this atmosphere where everyone seems happy and excited about their summers comes a stream of Facebook posts announcing summer internships and fellowship offers which, even if you have a job lined up, can make you feel inadequate. Oh great, Josh, the random dude from that club I joined freshman year, is working for McKinsey this summer and Jessica from high school is at Google. Meanwhile, I’m stuck here just hoping that someone in D.C. will be kind enough to actually pay me for my services. Spring has so much potential for beauty and new opportunities. We look forward to it every year when we trudge our way through the snow. Although Michigan winters are so dreadful even the most expensive Canada Goose jacket can’t keep you warm, the only people who really enjoy spring are the ones lying to themselves about what tank-top weather is.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018 // The Statement
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Critical Questions: What’s a good liberal, what’s a good conservative? BY ISHI MORI, COLUMNIST
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or those of you who sit back and watch as this country gets rocked by political turmoil and maybe feel a little guilty about that, this story’s for you. In politics today, it seems as if there is only one way to be a good liberal or a conservative. Or a feminist, environmentalist, fundamentalist, fascist, communist, you name it. If you’re a Democrat but you oppose abortion, you’re out. If you’re a Republican but you support amnesty for illegal immigrants, you’re also out. This sentiment felt all the more real for me the other day — in my case, being a good person of color — during Central Student Government elections here at the University of Michigan. It was Thursday night, high time for each party’s campaign. Reggie the Campus Corgi just dropped out of the race and students had to look for a human candidate to support. A few members of the Japan Student Association, of which I am part, wanted the organization’s executive board to endorse the MomentUM party for their platform and diverse representation, just as a few other cultural organizations have done. Yet I was opposed. Aligning the board with a certain party meant we were endorsing an organization, which I may have been skeptical of. Moreover, I wanted to keep JSA apolitical. A non-negligible number of members and I joined the organization to forget about politics and have a good time with people who share the same background or an interest in Japanese culture. There were certainly valid points being made by the members who wanted to endorse a party. Perhaps we, as an organization that represents a certain ethnicity on campus, have an obligation to endorse candidates and movements that are committed to expanding representation for people of color on campus. Yet not everyone thinks about social justice all day every day. Just as there is a right to advocate, there is also a right to stay silent. In the end, we compromised and allowed individual members (not the entire board) to endorse MomentUM on JSA’s Facebook page. Yet, I was left saddened. Thought civil, over the course of the argument, some accused me of not caring about people of color and not using my privilege to help others. Of course, I care about race and class and privilege (That’s why I write these columns in the first place!). I
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) speaks at the GOP Field Office in Livonia on February 16, 2016.
just choose to display it differently, and I believe they had just as much a right to their own opinions. To assume that every person in a certain ethnic or cultural category would unconditionally support a given slate of causes is fallacious. The reality is that most Americans’ political preferences are not uniformly attached to any single party or ideolog y. That is why there were Rockefeller Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats until each party’s base began to increasingly apply purity tests. The vitriol many of us encounter regarding political issues sometimes may be because we are college students –– the time during our lives when we are perhaps the most radical –– but that doesn’t mean it’s a healthy way to persuade people. Take this New York Times story about a man who cut himself off from all the news in the world after the election of Donald Trump and lives a solitary existence on a pig farm in Ohio. A former corporate executive, Erik Hagerman deliberately avoids all form of current events –– what he calls “The Blockade” –– even going as far as asking his relatives and friends
to not talk about politics and listening to white noise at the cafe to avoid overhearing political conversation. Some in the comments section of the article criticized Hagerman for shirking from his duties as a citizen to be informed and benefitting disproportionately from his white and class privilege. These are valid points. Women, people of color, as well as anyone without the disposable income to hire a financial adviser in San Francisco to take care of their assets cannot enjoy Hagerman’s luxury. Yet who are we to judge Hagerman? Most of us read or watch the news but are too powerless and/or lazy to do anything about it. There are so many of us, upon hearing of some great injustice in this world, who would rather sit down and watch Netf lix than go protest or run for office. He is the extreme version of those of us who may have political views but want to stay silent and go on with our lives. Though Hagerman may have isolated himself from society, he does contribute something to this world. He is currently planning to restore land around an abandoned strip mine and leave it for future generations to enjoy. That is his civic contribution,
File Photo/Daily
he claims. This is not to say there is something wrong about not doing “enough.” We are all students, workers, parents, guardians who in the end need to make the grade and wait for our paychecks to arrive. And even among those of us who are active in the political arena, there are people who cannot voice their personal opinion — think about the news reporters at this very paper, whose silence is a tool that conveys neutrality. As for me, I am just a columnist for my college newspaper. My piece is merely an appetizer to the more important feature article in The Statement. Yet if even one person reads this and changes their perspective on things, I feel like I’ve fulfilled a sufficient amount of my civic duty. In the end, what matters is not whether you’re a good liberal or good conservative, or even that you make a statement. Rather, for those of us that are not the most active, popular or outspoken, we should do our best to be a good human being and benefit others by doing what we do best. For Hagerman, it’s the environment. For me, it’s writing. What’s your contribution?
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Wednesday, March 28, 2018 // The Statement
Wednesday, March 28, 2018 // The Statement
The Machine: Inside the CSG race
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remember the outcome of each Central Student Government election during my time on the University of Michigan campus clearly. My freshman year, the election between Make Michigan’s Cooper Charlton and Stephen Halperin, and The Team’s Will Royster and Matt Fidel ended in a victory for Make Michigan by a four-vote margin. Junior year, I saw LSA senior Anushka Sarkar and Public Policy senior Nadine Jawad’s campaign and achievements dismissed by the opposing party’s candidates. Seeing candidates of color lose and their platforms dismissed in campus elections is not a frequent event, but their occurrences, however sparse and minute, were frustrating to me nonetheless. As part of my last semester on campus, during yet another CSG election, I found myself writing this article with the simple motivation to learn more about what CSG campaigns are actually like, but instead I found that frustrations I had as a voter were just as apparent among those who were in the assembly. In the interviews I conducted throughout the month, many raised concerns about the tokenization of individuals and the shadow of Greek life that loomed over platforms from various parties. SG is treacherous,” Public Policy junior Allie Brown, senior policy adviser for eMpower, said. To Brown, the perception of CSG as an organization that “does nothing,” is fair.
by Tanya Madhani, Contributor
University alum David Schafer’s term in the 2016-2017 school year. “CSG can be a taxing organization,” she said. “While there was change that was happening when I was in it, I was not satisfied.” One of her initiatives was the annual demographics report, Sabada said. She spearheaded the report after being dissatisfied by the representation in the organization. nushka and Nadine are the first women of color to ever hold the office together and nothing can take that away from them,” Public Policy junior Daniel Greene, now president-elect from MVision, said about the candidates that he formerly worked for during their campaign. When I met Greene at Espresso Royale’s State Street location, he sat hunched over his laptop typing away at another email or text or Facebook message from someone in his campaign. After I brought up how busy he must be, his eyes went wide, and he nodded slowly. “Let me show you my calendar,” he said, twisting his laptop toward me. All that was visible was a large purple square on a bright, white background. “This is my schedule for the week.” When asked if he’s eaten, he gestured towards a small plate in front of him, which was clean, save two small pastry crumbs. When asked what his impression of CSG this past year was, Greene hesitated and offered an implicit rebuke of his predecessors: “I’m sick and tired of large promises.” “Campus is really hurting,” Greene said, referencing racist f lyers found during the winter and fall 2017 semesters. “What I want to do is follow up on those promises. That’s why I’m running a campaign that’s based on direct experience and that’s why I’m willing to get less sleep.” There is virtually no difference in the basic stances of each party’s platforms, Greene said. What makes his party stand out is first-hand, personal knowledge of hot-button campaign issues and the unique experiences they bring to each aspect of their platform. “No one on our campaign is here to check off any boxes,” he said. “We’ve picked the people that are the best for the job.” MVision was the only viable party with an all-white executive ticket with both Emma Richter/Daily being a part of Greek life. Their inclusion Engineering junior A.J. Ashman and LSA junior Charlie Binghman, then-CSG candidates for the MomentUM of Black students in high-level positions party, speak at the CSG debate at the Michigan Daily on Thursday. March 15. seemed to stand in contrast with their
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“For a lot of people, it’s more about how it’ll look on their resume than what they’re doing on campus,” she said. During the fall semester of 2017, CSG proposed a resolution to pay themselves in a move that many panned as self-serving. Earlier this semester, CSG published an affordability guide which students criticized heavily as out of touch for recommending students cut back on laundry and housekeeping services in order to save money. Following the controversy, CSG took the guide down, but many students hadn’t forgotten about it by the time the election for the 2018-2019 school year came around. Unlike Brown, several of the candidates in the CSG race were previously a part of the assembly and were part of the incumbent president and vice presidents’ campaign during winter 2017. When I spoke with candidates in MomentUM, MVision, eMpower and True Blue, each of them acknowledged the criticism CSG receives for its supposed ineffectiveness. “I welcome the criticism when it comes to CSG,” LSA junior Arathi Sabada, True Blue’s presidential candidate, said, prior to the election. “For me, it’s a lot less about the position and the title, and more about my impact. Being a good leader is the ability to empathize with other students.” Sabada’s ties to CSG began in her freshman year when she applied to the organization on a whim, eventually holding a position as chief operating officer during
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ticket and Greek life roots. Some within CSG, as well as voters, said this seemed like a case of racial tokenization. Public Policy junior Gabby McFarland was part of MVision in its first few days, but resigned two weeks before election day for what she said were a variety of different reasons, including some of the party’s promotional material. “There’s just a lot of dynamics within the campaign that frustrated me,” McFarland said. This pressure would have been fine had she only felt it from individuals outside campaign, McFarland said. However, that was not the case, as she did not feel supported within MVision as well. “There’s a lot of pressure on me, being behind two white candidates, which would have been fine,” she said. “When I was receiving a lot of negativity on the outside of the campaign, and then internally, I began to lose faith in what we were campaigning on. It started to feel very disingenuous.” McFarland, who is part of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, said she was interested in crafting MVision’s sexual assault platform and gravitated toward writing those policies, but lost faith in the team after facing disagreements with others from the party. In particular, the Next Step Program that MVision crafted in order to address sexual assaults puts immense pressure on survivors when it should be doing the opposite, she said. According to MVision’s website, the Next Step Program aims to address the needs of sexual assault survivors to be heard, supported and protected at the student organization, SAPAC and administrative level. This program was heavily criticised by an op-ed in The Daily, in particular for its failure to hold Greek life on campus accountable for its role in sexual assault and the culture surrounding it. McFarland tried to combat the policy, she said, but MVision went forward and incorporated it into their larger platform. “I’ve been lectured on, ‘Oh, you can’t run away from politics,’ but I think when politics compromises your core values, I think it’s definitely OK to take a step back,” she said. “The Next Step Program, when they were designing that, I really don’t agree with a lot of the policy in there … Like I said, it just began to feel very disingenuous.” Another thing that contributed to that feeling was MVision’s use of Black celebrities in their social media promotions. In off-the-record conversations, mul-
tiple members of opposing campaigns expressed the same discomfort. One photo in particular that made her uncomfortable was an image of former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama with a caption that stated, “Only 3 more days until election day … Vote MVision.” The image was posted on Snapchat by LSA junior Michael Heyward, MVision’s co-campaign manager and a Black man. “I think it’s hard because Michael and Caitlin ... I’m completely rooting for them, but I think it’s hard for them to put it in perspective,” McFarland said, referring to Heyward and LSA junior Caitlin Christian, a Black woman and MVision’s co-campaign manager. “We’re not the candidates. The candidates that are associated with these pictures of Black people are two white people. I think it’s hard to make that connection as a campaign manager.” Christian said that accusations of tokenizing against their party were hurtful. “I definitely think tokenizing has been used for our campaign in a lot of situations,” she said. “People say Michael and I are tokens, but that’s really disrespectful because that’s kind of like saying, ‘You don’t deserve the position you’re in’ and that we’re just here because of our identities. I don’t think that’s fair.” As for the use of Black celebrities in their promotional material, Christian said they were simply using figures in pop culture as a fun way to engage with students on campus by using individuals from media they are interested in. “(They’re) people that we look up to and I’m sure a lot of other people do,” she said. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s tokenizing celebrities ... Saying that it’s because they are Black, again just like tokenizing people on our team, it takes away from the fact that it’s just an (individual) that we look up to.” Using Black celebrities like Nicki Minaj and Kanye West on posters is one last attempt to grab voters that MVision does not have, according to McFarland, from demographics they were unable to reach through their messaging. “I think Izzy and Daniel are very aware that they don’t have this empathetic, genuine connection with (voters of color),” McFarland said. “Putting out that propaganda with Black people’s faces on them is a last attempt at getting those votes.” EMpower and MomentUM, McFarland said, garnered more support from students of color and were doing more outreach toward those students. She said Public Health junior Lloyd Lyons, eMpower’s candidate for president, had face-to-face meetings with students in Good Time Charley’s to speak with them about a campus incident where a student published a racially charged image on Snapchat. “MomentUM and eMpower are making genuine attempts to connect with their voters,” McFarland said.
AJ Ashman, an engineering junior and MomentUM’s presidential candidate, said both his and his running mate’s identities as Black men contribute to their campaign naturally being viewed as more diverse. “Most politicians don’t look like Charlie and I,” he said. “Most student government leaders, I should say, I don’t look like Charlie and I.” he night before the Michigan Daily CSG debate, Lyons of eMpower shuff led through a PowerPoint detailing his party’s mission and campaign. As the meeting wrapped up and Lyons opened the room for questions, one of his representative candidates — who was in Greek life — informed the room that his fraternity’s president had told his fraternity brothers to “vote for MVision since it’s the Greek life party.” “What are we supposed to say to that?” he asked. “Tell them we’re not just a party for Greek life, we’re a party for everyone on campus,” Lyons said. Though members of opposing campaigns casually referred to MVision as a “Greek life party,” and the fact that its presidential and vice-presidential candidates were both involved in Greek life, MVision denied this label. “I think that we want to be more than a Greek life party,” Public Policy senior Josh Martin, MVision’s senior policy advisor, said. “We obviously want to represent members of Greek life. They are a big part of our campus … They have serious needs. There’s a lot of problems in Greek life that need to be addressed.” Martin said MVision was a party for more than just Greek life on campus and that the team was working to push issues that will affect all students. Christian added to this sentiment. “I just want to add … A lot of members on our core team aren’t involved in Greek life,” Christian said. Christian and Martin sat down together for an interview on March 22, the last day polls were open. The two of them had spent the morning on the Diag, along with representatives from MomentUM, passing out f liers and encourage passersby to vote in the CSG elections. “That dog though cannot win,” Christian said as she left the interview. “It’s so embarrassing ... We, not just us but also the other parties, have been outside campaigning and trying our best to reach out to students on campus.” “That dog,” was Reggie the Campus Corgi, a Pembroke Welsh corgi that frequents campus and has over 5,000 friends and followers on his Facebook page. The week before voting began, students had organized a grassroots write-in campaign for their beloved Reggie as both a joke and protest vote, catching fire on social media and drawing press attention from the likes of the Detroit Free Press and Buzzfeed.
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Emma Richter/Daily LSA sophomore Marianne Drysdale and Business junior Arathi Sabada, then-CSG candidates for the True Blue party, speak at the CSG debate at the Michigan Daily on Thursday. March 15.
The Monday before voting began, Michael Sola, Reggie’s owner and an Ann Arbor resident, jokingly endorsed the write-in campaign from Reggie’s Facebook page. However, after voting had been open for 15 hours, students persuaded him that his dog was disrupting the other candidates and he urged Reggie’s followers to vote for “humans” on Facebook. “As soon as they made me aware of that, I realized the thing to do would be to go ahead and end the campaign,” Sola said. n election night, Reggie came in fourth in the election with 1,403 votes, while Greene and MVision won first place with a plurality of votes, double the number of votes earned by runner-up MomentUM. Nonetheless, a dog had beaten four parties, half of which were led by students of color. On March 24, the day results from the election were released, Sarkar tweeted her disappointment at students on campus and those from the press that gave Reggie’s campaign coverage. Business sophomore Michelle Fan, aMplify’s director of communications, bemused that while it is important to properly advertise and market candidates, she chalks up the election results to students’ lack of knowledge about how to vote. “It’s all focused on names in the campaign,” she said. “I think part of it is, also on North Campus, it’s like also very largely ignored.” Fan said students who have most of their classes on North Campus may feel that CSG policies do not affect and apply to them. “They don’t really care about elections necessarily, or because they’ve personally been ignored, so it’s not like a big point for them to take out the effort to do it,” she said. The tendency to vote for candidates like Reggie also stems from a mistrust of
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CSG, she and several others who worked on campaigns have said. “I know that there are definitely some aspects of CSG that are very problematic, of course, but I think when it comes down to it, there are people who are running for a reason, and they’re running to make a change with CSG, so it’s really important to vote for them,” she said. “But people just think, like, ‘Oh, nothing’s going to happen.’” This is a trend that is evident on the national scale, Fan said. “In the Asian-American community, voter turnout is really low in the United States,” she said. “If you’re ignored constantly, or you don’t feel like anything’s going to change, you have no motivation to vote.” True Blue came in third in the CSG elections, narrowly beating the dog by 63 votes. After multiple attempts to reach Sabada for a comment on her experience during elections, I did not get a response. As for the accusations of tokenizing against MVision, the tendency to use individuals for their race and ethnicity as a means to reach particular voter bases is nothing new, Ashman said. “They’re not viewed as contributing members of the assembly ... They’re viewed as ‘Oh you’re going to bring me a population of votes so that’s why we need to engage, that’s why I need to talk to you,” Ashman said. He doesn’t know if there were any merits to the allegations against MVision’s marketing and can’t speak to their validity, but hopes that Greene and Baer rectify the situation during their time in office. “I think we have serious questions about how a party that stands accused of doing this thing can seriously lead and change the culture of CSG that has existed for years now that tokenizes students of color when they stand accused of doing what sounds like essentially the same thing,” Ashman said.
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Wednesday, March 28, 2018 // The Statement
Bill Clinton talked to a chair? BY NITYA GUPTA, DAILY ARTS WRITER
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ithin the first month of joining my high school’s newspaper, I had made it on the wall. Or rather, my idea for the Bullseye — Opinion’s spread that discussed the hottest trends — had. “Bill Clinton talked to a chair?” was what I had scribbled onto the brainstorming sheet. I was referencing actor Clint Eastwood’s iconic speech in 2012 when he talked to an empty chair as if thenPresident Obama were sitting in it, but at the time knew nothing about the speech’s contents or apparently, who said it (I am just now realizing as I write this piece that Bill Clinton was, in fact, not the one who talked to a chair). The Opinion editor thought it was the funniest thing she had ever seen, and so she slapped it up on the wall and told me I was hilarious. She was sweet, taking the time to talk to me and make me feel welcome on staff, which at the time was intimidating and very serious. Our newspaper was recovering from a major scandal just a few years back when all the editors of the staff quit in protest against the school administration’s requests for them to remove controversial articles and give the names of their anonymous sources after a series of issues covering teenage sex, drug use, drinking and more. The Chicago Tribune even covered the story and wrote an editorial about our school’s
ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY KOFFSKY
administration and its “censorship.” Because of the scandal, the new editors were trying to rebuild the newspaper to the Pacemaker-winning publication it had once been. They were on the high alert, and though the principal no longer previewed articles, it was a tense time. My class of staffers was the most removed from the scandal, having been in middle school when it all happened. But we could feel the rigidity of the new newspaper, and while we were trying to learn AP style and InDesign, we were also realizing the extent of the damage that had occurred and the tedium of rebuilding a newspaper’s reputation. I had entered the journalism world dubious from the start. I took the introductory journalism class solely because there wasn’t a creative writing class offered for freshmen, and I wanted to write. It had always been my passion, and English had always been my favorite subject. Journalism had seemed alright, so after freshman year, I signed up for the newspaper class, thinking it could be a way for me to further my interest. Yet somewhere along the way, I began to loathe writing and newspapers. There were good times—progressive dinners, a trip to San Antonio and many inside jokes. But the anxiety and self-doubt that came from writing for the newspaper were too much. Our newspaper was a highly competitive place, and as someone who had little experience writing articles and the inability to differentiate Bill Clinton from Clint Eastwood, I began to question myself. Why didn’t I get a good piece to write? Why am I not allowed to write an editorial yet? Why am I not writing about something I really want to write about? With each year of high school, the politics and competition among staffers increased, and we got yet another new adviser. I worked tirelessly to improve my writing skills because I was used to being a standout writer, and I wanted to continue to stand out. By the end of senior year, I was the co-managing editor of production and had finally written editorials and a front-page article, but it wasn’t enough. I felt more irritation than pride for what I had accomplished,
and underappreciated by the paper I had poured so many hours into. Though many people would acknowledge the fantastic job we were doing, I fixated on all the criticism the paper received and the errors we made. So, with a fair amount of teen angst, I decided I’d never do journalism again after high school. My English classes weren’t much better, as they came with the rigor of preparing for the AP exam. I had stellar English teachers, but they couldn’t make up for the rigidly structured AP essay requirements we had to meet. Though my teachers tried hard to inspire us and make us worry less about APs and our grades, it still felt like writing became “insert quote here” or “insert argument here.” Yes, my writing improved dramatically, but I resented the mechanical nature of our work and the pressure I put on myself. If that was what majoring in journalism or English looked like, then I wanted to do neither. When I came to the University of Michigan, I stayed away from The Daily and English classes. I was bitter about my history with newspapers, and worried college would be worse than high school. I knew that secretly, I still loved writing, but I hid that away, telling myself that people don’t really get to write what they truly want to write because of grades, expectations and other limitations. Likewise, pursuing creative writing or an English major seemed unrealistic for a person like me, who had always got caught up in the competition. No, I thought I’d be better off doing something safer. Of course, I had to meet the FirstYear Writing Requirement. I believed I was signed up for a class on satire, but in a stereotypical freshman move, I registered for the wrong section. Two minutes before class I shakily checked the course guide and learned I was instead registered for the topic, “Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?” I stayed in the class, partly because I didn’t know how to switch to another one, but also because it was too ironically perfect to pass up on. Who was I and what was I doing in that class? It was nothing like the other English classes I had taken, but I still told myself I couldn’t see English as my future major. I took a communications class, and then a creative writing class sophomore year thinking I would apply for the Organizational Studies major and maybe pursue the Creative Writing
minor since it was far enough removed from pure English. But I couldn’t stop thinking about English. Second semester, I took English 298 on the tiniest off-chance that I would like it and awaited the decision from Organizational Studies. I ended up obsessively reading and re-reading James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and revering over my professor’s eloquent and emotional speeches in class. Though he had taught many of the texts at least six times, he spoke like it was the first time he had ever encountered them, and I was enamored. A few weeks before the Organizational Studies decisions were to be announced, I found myself daydreaming in English, thinking that maybe in that gloomy, windowless room in the basement of Angell Hall, I had finally found the place I was supposed to be all along. One rejection from Organizational Studies later and I was back where I started so many years ago — with an unthinkably tremendous love for words on a page. Finally, I declared English, joined Daily Arts and later got another writing job. One night after dinner last semester, my roommate carefully cut up an orange and put the slices in one of our multi-colored plastic bowls while I washed my dishes. I was hit with a pang of familiarity; my dad eats an orange every day after dinner, peeling it with precision while my mom does the dishes, and my sister and I lean against the counter, talking to them. It felt slightly odd to watch her do something I had seen for my entire life, but it also felt comforting — like I was returning home, like nothing had changed. No matter what or where I was, nobody could take away the soothing sensation of the experience. I’ve since recognized it’s the same feeling I get every time I open up a new Word document and start writing again. I’d be nowhere without my longwinded path to my major and rekindled passion for journalism and creative writing. Likewise, I’m grateful for the teachers, professors, students and friends who have inf luenced me — whether positively or negatively — and of course, for my family and their constant encouragement. It’s all taught me to push past the self-doubt because I’m incredibly lucky to do what I’ve always loved. And no, in case you missed it earlier, Bill Clinton did not talk to a chair.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018// The Statement
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Food for thought BY ZAYNA SYED, DAILY STAFF REPORTER
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y nani stands over the griddle, slight beads of perspiration forming over her brow from the heat of the stove. She leans in to smell the egg chutney, a classic south Indian dish, and wrinkles her nose. Adding chopped coriander to the concoction, she sniffs again. “Much better. You want it to have f lavor, you know?” she said, dropping her rs and shortening her yous, a consequence of having a semiBritish, semi-Indian accent. After immigrating to England 46 years ago, my grandma uses cooking as a way to connect to the culture and people she left behind. This mindset has been passed down to my mom, and now to my siblings and me. Food is a big deal in my family. Each member of my family knows how to cook, whether it is chocolate nachos made by my 9-year-old brother or tandoori chicken made by my dad. Sunday dinners consisted of “cook off ” competitions between my parents until they got too intense and we had to cancel them to spare hurting parent’s feelings. Cooking carried too much weight for either parent to simply dismiss the results as part of a silly competition. Every so often, my mom will attempt to cook egg chutney. She uses the same recipe as my nani, except her dish always tastes different. Instead of having the herby, rich feel that is indicative of the East, hers tastes lighter, healthier and plainer — more within the confines of the West. Here, the inf luences of her British upbringing surface. Cooking seems to be a place where people can assert their individuality. Yet at the same time, cooking is a familial, communal experience. On weekends, my entire family will gather in our kitchen as my mom and dad cook. We are never told to; the kitchen just always seems to exude warmth and inviting tones. The tempting smells don’t hurt either. When I was little, as I hovered behind her in the kitchen, my mom would tell me the names of the spices she poured into the pot: tamarind, chili powder, cumin and coriander. I would recite the words back to her, absorbing each syllable, each sound as it rolled across my tong ue. Despite only having traveled to India once, these words taught me of the East. Growing up as a second-generation American, I’ve found that much of the “old” culture has been lost in translation. I’m not f luent in the lang uage of my grandparents and I
only dress in traditional Indian attire two or three times a year. However, through food, I have found a link to my culture. Food has satiated my appetite for lang uage, culture and community. When I finally learned how to cook, it wasn’t through formal instruction. I watched my parents sauté onions, marinate chicken and sear fish — picking up tips and tricks along the way. After setting many dishes on fire and cooking food drowned in oil and/or deficient in f lavor, I finally invented my own dish: an egg sandwich. It was a variation of something my dad had whipped up one lazy Sunday afternoon, but
included my own twist. I toast and butter an English muffin, scramble an egg, add Havarti cheese to the muffin and then combine all the components into my own little homemade brunch. The process is time-consuming — it takes much longer to make an egg sandwich than it does to pour a bowl of cereal. However, there is nothing like hunching over a frying pan in the morning while listening to the eggs sizzle and feeling the sun shine on your skin through the window in the kitchen. On slow weekends and lazy summer days, those rare days when my family wears pajamas until 1:00 p.m., I might fight clutter, my siblings and my parents for counter space to
assemble my creation, but it is those days that I miss most now that I am away at college. It took me a long time to realize I cook my eggs in the same style that my mom and nani cook their egg chutney, albeit a little more oily and f lavored only with half a pinch of salt. My egg sandwich was an adaptation of what my family has cooked for generations, and I subconsciously included it in my own “unique” recipe. It is never possible to fully lose touch with one’s culture, even if it is because of something as fundamental as food. In a world where assimilation is the norm, food connects me to my roots.
ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY KOFFSKY
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Wednesday, March 28, 2018 // The Statement
V I S UA L S TAT E M E N T:
Reflection Rooms Photos by Ibrahim Ijaz
What do reflection rooms mean to you? “A reflection room, for my purposes, is somewhere I can sort of retreat to. There’s like so many things that happen during the day and you can get really caught up in school, schedules, meetings, and sometimes at the end of the day you think I haven’t really been intimite or in communication with my God. The reflection rooms, having them around campus and scattered around campus, it just makes it so much more convenient and it’s a reminder to take the time to be mindful and in communication with my God.”
Public Health freshman Maica Mori, in the Haven Hall reflection room