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Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Can’t bury Canterbury
Canterbury House, a small local venue, has been Ann Arbor’s secret musical gem for decades, witnessing generations of legends
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» Page 5B CAMPUS LIFE
Journalists renew attention for crisis at border Panelists discuss causes, changes and next steps in immigration debate in event hosted by Wallace House and Ford School ABBY TAKAS
Daily Staff Reporter
“The news is moving so fast. We move week after week, from story to story, from crisis to crisis, from despair to outrage, to not knowing where to turn. Sometimes it’s important to stop and step back, and remember that even if the story at the front of the news has moved forward, the thing that we were talking about one month ago. . . is still very active and still requires our attention,” Lynette Clemetson, director of the Wallace House at the University of Michigan, opened. On Tuesday evening, Wallace House, an organization focused on encouraging civic engagement through journalism and the free press, hosted a panel of journalists at the Ford School of Public Policy to discuss the crisis at the United States-Mexican border. Though it may not be at the forefront of recent headlines, the problem is still affecting thousands of immigrants daily. This panel coincided with the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Summit, a week-
long event to reflect on and evaluate the initiatives Michigan has taken to improve its racial composition and climate. Social Work student Joanna Jaimes said she came to the event interested in the intersection of social work and politics, having grown up listening to journalist Maria Elena Salinas, who spoke at the event. “Latino students on campus and our representation is important at events like this,” Jaimes said. Salinas is the host of her own news-magazine show, “The Real Story with Maria Elena Salinas,” and has received numerous awards recognizing her work in investigative journalism and the awareness she has brought to the implications of the United States’ immigration policies. Public Policy graduate student Jose Javier Lujano introduced Salinas, praising the fundamental trust she has been able to build with the people she is interviewing. “(Salinas) knew her audience’s stories as if they were her own,” Lujano said. Salinas moderated a panel composed of Ann Lin, associate
professor in the Ford School of Public Policy, Aaron Nelsen, 2019 Knight-Wallace Fellow, and Ginger Thompson, a senior reporter at ProPublica. The panelists discussed the trajectory of current American policies and the political discourse over what immigration laws actually state versus how they are being enforced. Lin claimed the current immigration crisis is a result of the disconnect between the actual policies and a
consideration of their implications. The 1997 Florez v. Reno settlement set restrictions on how long children can be separated from their families while their parents are undergoing court proceedings,
whether that be in the process of applying for asylum, or in the process of being prosecuted for re-entering the United States after originally being deported. Thompson explained the Obama administration
was previously sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for detaining families for too long, violating the Florez settlement. This violation is the reasoning behind the Trump administration separating children from their families; so that the families as a whole are not detained unlawfully. The Trump administration is also separating children from their families in See BORDER, Page 3A COURTESY OF BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY
AARON BAKER/Daily
Ginger Thompson discusses the border crisis at the Ford Building Tuesday.
Georgetown professors dissect issues Three new SAFE, La diagnoses related to working class voting base Casa raise
CAMPUS LIFE
of mumps alarm ‘U’
Director of UHS urges precautions against “easily transmitted” virus ANDREW HIYAMA Daily News Editor
At least three University of Michigan students were recently diagnosed with mumps, according to a campuswide email sent Tuesday from Robert Ernst, the executive director of the University Health Service, which provides health care services to University students, faculty and staff. “I want to assure you that we are coordinating with campus partners, Michigan Medicine, and state and county public health authorities to identify, treat and prevent mumps,” Ernst wrote in the email. According to a Washtenaw County Health Department fact sheet, the virus, which Ernst said is “fairly easily transmitted,” is spread through droplets in the air, such as from coughing or sneezing. Symptoms of mumps can appear 12 to 25 days after the initial exposure and include headaches, fever, and See MUMPS, Page 3A
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CAMPUS LIFE
Lecture titled “Don’t Blame the Working-Class” debunks misconceptions KATHERINA SOURINE Daily Staff Reporter
Georgetown University faculty Sherry Lee Linkon, English and American Studies professor, and John Russo, visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor. Linkon and Russo focused on patterns of voting among the working class with an eye on the 2018 midterm elections. The lecture, “Don’t Blame the Working-Class: Understanding WorkingClass Politics and Culture in the Trump Era,” stemmed from the book Linkon and Russo recently co-authored, “Social Costs of Deindustrialization,” about the city of Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown suffered immensely from the downfall of the steel industry that had been central to their economy. Linkon began the lecture by affirming those who voted for Donald Trump largely came from higherclass demographics, in contrast to popular belief. While the white workingclass did contribute to Trump’s election, she found that Hillary Clinton won by a significant margin among voters of low-income brackets. Trump’s largest margin of victory was from people who made $200,000 or more. Linkon emphasized Check out the Daily’s News podcast, The Daily Weekly
other factors, such as race and education level, as indicators to votes. “The one factor you could most clearly predict for who voted for Trump versus who voted for Clinton was race,” she said. Linkon also explored common misconceptions about why the white working class voted for Trump, such as lack of education,
discontent with being left behind by global economy and racism. According to Linkon, disenfranchisement and lack of trust in politics played a larger part. She referenced a New York Times poll that asked working class voters which elected officials they felt were fighting for them. The most common response was not Democrats or Republicans, but rather, “no
one.” “As we see it, Trump really did appeal to many disaffected voters, but we have to understand that they’re disaffected for a variety of reasons, including people having seen politician after politician come to places like Youngstown and make promises, and then went to Washington and did nothing See VOTING, Page 3A
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Georgetown University Professor Sherry Linkon discusses how deindustrialization has created a cultural shift at the Don’t Blame The Working Class Lecture in Tisch Hall Tuesday.
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Vol. CXXVIII, No. 8 ©2018 The Michigan Daily
mock walls in protest
Annual demonstration challenges violations at Mexico, Palestine borders JORDYN BAKER Daily Staff Reporter
Members of the University of Michigan Students Allied for Freedom and Equality and La Casa gathered in the Diag on Tuesday afternoon for an annual demonstration, focused on the border wall between Israel and West Bank Palestinian territories, as well as the border wall between the United States and Mexico. Two large painted mock walls stood in the Diag, and members of SAFE and La Casa gathered in front of them to chant, sing and listen to experiences of their classmates. One SAFE member, who requested to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, explained the parallels between the two walls, pointing to specific discrimination faced by students because of these borders. “We’re putting them up to raise awareness about the unjust human rights violations that happen at both of these borders,” the SAFE member said. “The same things that are happening at the U.S.-Mexico border are also See SAFE, Page 3A
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News
2A — Wednesday, October 10, 2018
MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers
TUESDAY: By Design
WEDNESDAY: This Week in History
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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: SENATE DELAYS VOTE ON THOMAS NOMINATION The Senate yesterday postponed its vote on Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination for one week to investigate allegations he sexually harassed a former aide. Thomas “totally and unequivocally” denied the accusation. The embattled nominee requested a delay to “clear my name” as several crucial Democratic supporters said they could not vote for him until the allegations were aired. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine said the allegations should be “publicly and fairly resolved.” Anita Hill, a law professor who says Thomas made repeated lewd remarks to her when she worked
for him a decade ago, said she would cooperate with the Senate. “I intend to go to Washington if it is requested,” she said. Thomas appeared to be a sure bet for confirmation until Hill’s allegations became public over the weekend. Since then, several Thomas opponents have urged new committee hearings to investigate Hill’s allegations. Thomas supporters had initially fought a delay, but relented when it became clear there might not be enough support for confirmation if the Senate voted yesterday. “I can count,” said Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas. The decision to delay the vote capped a dramatic and remarkable day which saw the Senate
agonizing not only over how to proceed with the nomination but also with the larger issue of its sensitivity to the issue of sexual harassment. Even as they reluctantly agreed to the delay, Republicans vented anger that a private committee report on Hill’s allegations was leaked to the media. Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.), a Judiciary Committee member, said he would demand appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate unspecified violations of Senate rules. Under the agreement reached yesterday night, the vote on the Thomas nomination was delayed exactly one week, until 6 p.m. EDT Oct 15.
Mitchell said the delay was “to give time for further inquiry into this matter by the Judiciary Committee.” He did not say what action the committee would take. Seven of 13 Democrats who had announced their support for Thomas — Alan Dixon of Illinois, Richard Bryan and Harry Reid of Nevada, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, J. James Exon of Nebraska, Wyche Fowler of Georgia, and Richard Shelby of Alabama — all called for a delay in the vote. If supporters forced a vote, “this senator would be in a position to vote against the nomination,” Bryan said. Exon said he would either abstain or vote against Thomas if the vote were held
yesterday. Danforth proposed that the Senate Judiciary Committee take testimony from Thomas and Hill. Mitchell met privately with Dole and others as a growing number of senators urged postponement. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) chairperson of the Judiciary Committee, reversing his earlier position, joined the call. President Bush, asked in late afternoon if he was standing by the nomination, said, “You’re darn right.” Thomas remained out of public view. Danforth released a sworn affidavit in which the nominee said, “I totally and unequivocally deny Anita Hill’s allegations of
misconduct of any kind toward her, sexual or otherwise.” “At all times during the period she worked with me, our relationship was strictly professional,” Thomas said. “During that time and subsequently, the relationship has been wholly cordial.” “These allegations are untrue,” Thomas said in the affidavit he had signed earlier in the day. “I am terribly saddened and deeply offended by these allegations.” Hill, flanked by three bodyguards and surrounded by reporters and photographers, made her way into the University of Oklahoma Law School yesterday afternoon, declining to answer questions.
Whitmer proposes raising tobacco purchasing age to twenty-one 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com
Current legal age for to purchase is 18, new proposal met with support
ALEXA ST. JOHN
ZACK BLUMBERG Daily Staff Reporter
Last week, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer released her health care proposal which included a provision to raise the statewide legal age for purchasing tobacco from 18 to 21, an issue that has seen bipartisan support on the University of Michigan. Currently, Ann Arbor is just one of two localities where the legal tobacco purchasing age is already 21, along with Genesee County. While this policy may be uncommon within Michigan, it is rapidly
gaining popularity across the greater United States, and has already been enacted in several states, including California, New Jersey and Oregon. Whitmer explained her rationale for supporting the bill, citing the importance of public health. She said she believes it is an issue both parties can get behind. “The facts show that this is an issue that everyone, regardless of party, should get serious about,” Whitmer told The Daily. “The leading cause of death in adults under 70 is tobacco, and 95 percent of adult smokers
started smoking before they turned 21. If we want to keep Michiganders healthy and lower tobacco-related deaths in Michigan, we’ve got to raise the tobacco-purchasing age.” The University of Michigan’s chapter of College Democrats supported Whitmer’s stance, according to Public Policy junior Cathrine Kelly, communications director for the organization. Kelly echoed Whitmer’s health concerns and agreed Michigan needed t lower smoking rates. “This policy is already local law in Ann Arbor and
it helps deter young people from starting up this deadly habit,” Kelly said. “We have high rates of tobacco use in Michigan and raising the legal age will help to reduce that.” Democrats are not the only ones in favor of this policy. LSA sophomore Dylan Berger, president of the University’s chapter of College Republicans, said it would help Michigan’s public health and that he fully agreed with Whitmer on this issue. “I would hope that my fellow Republicans in See SMOKING, Page 3A
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Central Student Government votes on new members, highlights goals CSG to purchase and distribute stamps for absentee ballots, voter registration ATTICUS RAASCH For the Daily
The Central Student Government convened for their sixth meeting of the year Tuesday to discuss the confirmation of various member positions, as well as highlight goals surrounding Election Day on Nov. 6. The meeting began with Speaker of the Assembly Austin Glass in conjunction with CSG President Daniel
Greene introducing potential new members to the assembly. Twelve members were put in front of the assembly for a presentation of their credentials as well as a question-and-answer style discussion before each member voted on the confirmation of the new member. All 12 members were confirmed to the government. Among other topics of discussion included a motion proposed by Ben Gerstein, LSA representative
and sophomore, for CSG to purchase and distribute stamps for students to use for voting related purposes, such as mailing absentee ballots. Following discussion and revisions, the motion was approved unanimously by the assembly. According to Gerstein, the stamps would be distributed to give increased voting access to students. “What we would like to do is purchase stamps and envelopes and distribute them to students so they have the
resources they need to have no excuse, and to avoid not sending in a by-mail ballot,” Gerstein said. The meeting ended with a series of resolutions including acquiring room reservations on campus to allow students easier access to poll training for Election Day, as well as a resolution to allow for full financial transparency of CSG spending to students. These were moved to be discussed at a later date.
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BORDER From Page 1A attempt to deter immigrants from coming to the United States or spending years in the United States while applying for asylum. Nelsen said these immigration policies are harsh and often inhumane by nature, but emphasized that the current hardline policies have done very little to stop the flow of immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, that we saw during the Obama administration. Nelsen also discussed the shift in how U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have interacted with the media, and the implications this has on the current political conversation.
VOTING From Page 1A to help any of those workers,” she said. Linkon also emphasized the importance of cultural effects from the economic devastation of deindustrialization, and how a feeling of hopelessness has extended to multiple generations. She referenced the common perception of Detroit as a fallen power to illustrate the point. “You may not see the losses, but they’re there. And it’s continuing to create disease and difficulty and destroy the lives of communities,” she said. “If you live in a deindustrialized community, you hear again and again to get over it, and there are many reasons why they can’t get over it.” Russo shifted the focus away from solely the industry workers and taking into account the widespread effects of economic recessions. “It’s not just about the workers, It’s about what happened in 2008, the Great Recession. It’s the people who lost their health care, lost their pensions,” he said. “No doubt steel workers are part of the argument, but this is happening continuously.” He also claimed Democrats have failed to mobilize the working class because separation between Washington, D.C., and the Midwest has isolated unique problems faced in previously industry-driven cities. “In our studies, we found that a lot of people from the East Coast never really fully understood that was happening to the country. Washington is a bubble,” he said. “I live there nine months of the year, but the issues that are happening in the Midwest are not fully addressed politically. Youngstown’s story is America’s story.” He also emphasized the issue of grouping the working class together. He compared Trump’s rhetoric to former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, explaining how Sanders’s platform mobilized this group’s anger but directly targeted corporations and
SMOKING From Page 2A Michigan State Government are open to Whitmer’s idea. I think both Republicans and Democrats can agree that tobacco usage has an adverse impact on Michigan’s well being and work to limit its usage,” Berger said. “As Ms. Whitmer has said, 95 percent of adult smokers started smoking before the age of 21. I believe raising the age required to buy tobacco would help curb Michigan’s tobacco usage. The human and economic costs of tobacco usage in Michigan are overwhelming.” Berger also added he felt the proposal would help Michigan
He claimed under the Obama administration, Border Patrol was very straightforward and clear about their intentions. Now, he claims, they are intentionally vague to hide the fact that they are denying interviews to immigrants trying to enter legally. Thompson explained she was able to investigate what was really happening inside these camps, through a confidential source that risked their job to garner attention. Thompson obtained a tape of a young girl crying to call her aunt inside of a detention center, which caught the attention of the nation and the White House. “Those children and their voices drowned out all the political noise and the only thing anybody could hear anymore
Wall Street, creating an institutional barrier. “Firstly, there’s no one working class: The Black is different from the white, which differs by state,” he said. “Why Trump won is he redirected all that worker anger of their economic security, and moved it into a fight against African Americans,
News were those cries. Even people who thought they might support the idea of cracking down at the border, and more security at the border, didn’t think it should look like that,” Thompson said. The panelists explained their personal experiences with the success of giving a face to the statistics, and of simply portraying humans as humans. Lin explained those coming to the U.S. seeking asylum know that once they get here, things won’t necessarily be easy; they will just be easier than the turmoil of their home country. People are immigrating to escape cultures of crime and violence to gain the ability to work and provide for their families. None of these fears satisfy the requirements to be granted asylum.
he said. “But nowadays the average auto worker doesn’t feel like they’re worth much. In fact, their employer tells them how much they’re worth depending on their paycheck. So a lot of people work minimum wage and they don’t feel like they’re worth health insurance, so they don’t fight for it.”
The Obama administration was relatively lenient on deporting people that had legitimate reasons to come to the U.S., even if those reasons may not have qualified them legally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has historically delayed deportation for immigrants that have led successful lives in the U.S. for decades, but recently, these same people have been deported immediately upon their arrival to their court dates. Thompson argued the high deportation rates in the U.S. violate the international laws the U.S. government signed, and the U.S. should be accepting more people, even if we are not comfortable doing so. Lin explained that in 1980, the U.S. accepted more than 200,000
SAFE From Page 1A happening at the PalestinianIsraeli border. Families are subject to family separations, discrimination, harassment. They’re usually detained for hours and hours, even if you are an American citizen.”
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 — 3A immigrants, taking responsibility for the wars and civil unrest the U.S. contributed to in Southeast Asia. The Trump administration recently stated that they are implementing a ceiling for 30,000 immigrants this year. Nelson argued U.S. policies are a major contributor to the influx of immigrants trying to come to the U.S. He explained that Americans are exporting gang culture to Central America and enjoying recreational drug use from the illegal drugs imported from Mexico. These drug cartels are terrorizing citizens, with the money we are handing to them, he argued. In terms of solutions, Lin proposed the U.S. needs to reinstate previous policies to the forefront of our actions. She
explained that many people are trying to enter the states legally, citing that 90 percent of people asked to come to asylum hearings show up, and suggested that the government simply give them a chance to enter legally. Clemetson concluded the conversation reiterating the goal of this panel, which wasn’t to identify one clear solution, but rather to simply start the conversation. “In a conversation like this the goal cannot be to provide answers . . . the goal we decided on is to provide context, to provide true, on the ground experience, to provide different points of view, and to provide connections with the audience,” Clemetson said.
body allowed for a secret ballot, which members approved to protect pro-Palestinian students from blacklists. “If you are put on that list and you go through these checkpoints, they’ll pull you out and you’re going to be interrogated, you’ll probably be deported, not allowed in,” the student said. “That’s something
minority students on campus and how the walls are affecting their lives at the University. “Our main purpose, hopefully, by having this painting out here, was just to raise awareness and continue to have the U.S.-Mexico border conflict in the minds of people, especially when it comes to family separation, especially when it comes to Trump’s zerotolerance policy, his termination of catch and release and just to show how inhumane these policies are and how even after so many months, there’s literally no comprehensive immigration reform,” Sandoval said. “There (are) people in Central America and all of these countries struggling and trying to come to the U.S. for more educational, economic opportunities, and who are facing violence, persecution in their communities, and that’s a lot of the parallels that’s happening in Israel, Palestinians are facing a lot of human rights violations and inhuman policies, especially in interactions when it comes to border patrol.” The SAFE member agreed, highlighting their efforts through divestment and demonstrations like Tuesday’s, to hold the University accountable for its actions in human rights violations. The 2017 divest vote, which was later voted down by the Board of Regents, called for the University to divest from Boeing, Hewlett Packard and United Technologies for supplying weapons and equipment to the Israeli military. As recently as June, Israel has been condemned by the United Nations for using lethal forceagainst Palestinian civilians protesting at the Gaza border. “It’s important for us to get these walls out because we want to make sure that people are understanding the stake and how complicit we are as a University in these crimes. I know the border wall seems so far away… but our University is very complicit in these human rights violations because we are investing in American companies that are profiting off these border walls,” the student said. “We’re still pushing for the University to form a committee to investigate our investments in these companies that are complicit in the human rights violations at each of these borders.”
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immigrants, rather than against corporations or Wall Street.” LSA junior Jeremiah Dunne said the event gave him new perspective into the history of the working class. “It’s a really interesting issue in this country, now especially. In my class we talk about the perspective of the working class people a lot, and how they’ve become disenfranchised through this careful effort of the wealthy. You can look back when unions first started in the thirties, and the working class was very involved in politics, and they were willing to work together and fight for their worth,”
economically, something Whitmer also mentioned in her health care proposal. “Over 200,000 children currently under the age of 18 will eventually succumb to tobacco-related illnesses,” Berger said. “On the economic side, Michigan spends over $4.5 billion on health care costs due to smoking. Moreover, smoking costs Michigan over $4.75 billion in productivity loss as a result of tobaccorelated illnesses. Working to minimize tobacco usage in Michigan will be a boon for our health and economy.” Shortly after Ann Arbor’s smoking ordinance went into effect in 2017, Attorney General Bill Schuette, who is now also the Republican
He provided the example of nationalized health care as a way that workers are mistreated. “That’s also one of the reasons why corporations are against nationalized health care, because it makes the average person feel like they’re worth more, and they deserve things from the government and corporations,” Dunne said. “Despite nationalized healthcare being cheaper for corporations, because they don’t have to pay for people’s health care, they won’t in the long-run because it gives the worker power. That’s just an example of how bad things are for workers.”
I think both Republicans and Democrats can agree that tobacco usage has an adverse impact on Michigan’s well being
candidate for governor, issued
The member explained how students of Palestinian or Arab heritage who go on study abroad trips through the University are often stopped at checkpoints, where they are forced to wait in long lines and are subject to intense interrogation, strip-searches and other forms of harassment. The member also spoke about international political blacklists, highlighting the fears many Palestinian, Arab and Pro-Palestinian students have of being placed on a blacklist. Central Student Government passed a #UMDivest resolution for the first time in the University’s history in 2017, which was also the first time the
an opinion saying claiming the ordinance was in conf lict with state law, though it was never challenged in court. Additionally, Whitmer, Kelly and Berger all said they were in favor of extending smoking codes and regulations to products such as vapes and e-cigarettes. “Per CDC data, the number of high school students that used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days increased by about 75 percent over the past year,” Berger said. “ I believe that e-cigarettes are harmful on their own and have the potential to raise a new generation of nicotine addicts. I would like to see Michigan State Government take action to combat e-cigarette usage by
that the University has ignored time after time and has not released any statements about, and that’s another thing we’re trying to raise awareness about.” LSA senior Yezenia Sandova, a member of La Casa, an organization that supported SAFE in its divestment resolution last year, said it was important to show solidarity with communities facing similar struggles. Sandoval spoke about the parallels between the two border walls, especially considering the human rights violations committed as a result of the walls. She also highlighted the demonstration’s aim to raise awareness of struggles faced by
MUMPS From Page 1A swollen cheeks and jaw. Ernst noted severe complications with the virus can sometimes occur, which include encephalitis, meningitis and deafness. Mumps can be prevented by vaccination, though Ernst said mumps can cause some non-serious symptoms even in people who have been immunized. It is also possible for people carrying the virus to not display any symptoms. Ernst said a person with mumps could remain contagious until five days after symptoms begin. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the
implementation of the U.S. mumps vaccination program in 1967 decreased recorded cases of mumps by 99 percent to less than 1,000 cases per year. In both 2016 and 2017, however, the number of mumps cases recorded nationally was above 6,000, “mainly due to multiple mumps outbreaks reported across the country in settings where people often have close contact with one another, like college campuses.” This is a developing story. Check back at michigandaily. com for more details.
Opinion
4A — Wednesday, October 10, 2018
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T
End the Rohinyga genocide
he Rohingya might be the world’s most persecuted minority group. The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar who, for decades, have lacked citizenship or any legal protections. In additon, their ability to access education and health care, to travel freely, practice their religion and marry has been deeply restricted. In August 2017, the Burmese army ramped up its persecution of Rohingyas to unprecedented levels. The Burmese military has systematically destroyed villages, raped women and executed thousands. The violence has pushed more than 700,000 Rohingyas to leave Myanmar, primarily for refugee camps in Bangladesh. A report by the United Nations Human Rights Council has determined that the violent acts of the Myanma military amount to genocide. With no apparent signs of the violence against the Rohingya lessening, and with some countries sending Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar, something needs be done. America should use economic sanctions to compel the Myanma government to stop its persecution of the Rohingya. The sanctions could first target specific Burmese generals or government officials, like has been done against Russian officials. For more leverage, the sanctions could be broader, targeting sectors of industry, as was done by America against Iran. America could use the threat of precision military strikes against the Myanmar Army to deter violence. Actual precision military strikes against the Myanma military would be low risk for American air and naval personnel given the low capabilities of the Myanma military. If none of this works, a no-fly zone could be established in Rakhine state, where the vast majority of Rohingya live, as was successfully done in northern Iraq to protect Kurds from Saddam Hussein’s murderous Al-Anfal campaign. Following the Kurdish model, an autonomous zone could be established in Rakhine state to further protect the Rohingya. In a matter of weeks, the Rohingya’s situation could be more secure. It’s clear America is more than capable of helping the Rohingya. But why should America intervene to save the Rohingya in the first place? Firstly, America should help the Rohingya for moral reasons. In a world as interconnected and informed as ours, there is no excuse to let mass murder
go unhindered, especially considering the wealth of options America has for helping the Rohingya. But some will say that foreign policy needs to be rooted in realism and strategic interests, rather than solving humanitarian crises, which brings me to the second reason America should intervene in the Rohingya genocide: doing so would have strategic benefits. Embracing humanitarianism would strengthen America’s global leadership. American leadership has shaped the rulesbased, liberal world order since World War II. The features of this liberal world order include free trade, deterrence of interstate war and adherence to international law and norms, all of which benefit Americans by making the world a wealthier and safer a place. But the liberal world order is under threat.
But the liberal world order is under threat
China is quickly growing in economic and military power. Eventually China will achieve parity, if not supremacy, over American economic and military power. China is already converting its increasing strength into global influence, in competition with the Americanled liberal world order. The Belt and Road Initiative seeks to invest in developing countries to solidify Chinese influence. China is increasing foreign investment in Europe with the same goal in mind, with surprising success. Military structures are being built on islands in the South China Sea, and Chinese naval vessels have been intimidating American ships trying to uphold freedom of navigation, which is crucial for free trade. If Chinese power is greater than American power, America cannot rely on its might alone to influence international conduct over Chinese attempts to do the same. China’s global leadership, under its current government, would undermine and ultimately replace the liberal world order, bidding farewell to free trade and promoting dictatorships all over the world. This would make Americans and the rest of the world less wealthy and less safe. To save the liberal world order, America should
reconfigure it to genuinely value humanitarianism. In Henry Kissinger’s book “World Order,” he outlines how strong world orders are based on legitimacy and power. The American-led world order has been anchored in American power. America’s unmatched power allowed it to write the rules of the world order through the creation of organizations like the World Trade Organization and NATO. When countries gravely violate the rules of the world order, it is America that leads the charge against them, like in the First Gulf War when America led a coalition to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Kissinger writes that force alone is not a stable recipe for world order. The world order set by the Congress of Vienna in 1814 fell apart because it relied only on force. Legitimacy is also needed for a stable international system. America’s legitimacy as leader of the liberal world order stems from its professed fidelity to universal values such as democracy and human rights. But America has not been consistent in living up to those values. America has supported dictators who violate human rights and has on occasion violated the very rules it was instrumental in establishing, like when it invaded Iraq. America’s hypocrisy naturally undermines its legitimacy. America’s inconsistency gives critics of the liberal international legitimate reason to criticize and thus undermine it. Even America’s allies in Europe and Asia have at times become disillusioned by America’s failure to abide by the values it preaches. There is nothing America can do to overcome China’s eventually superior economic and military strength. But by seriously adopting humanitarianism, America could bring greater legitimacy to the liberal world order. Desire for the preservation of human rights are universal. Agreeing to stop genocides from happening could be the beginning of a humanitarianism which would give the peoples and countries of the world reason to choose an American-led world order even as it is no longer the world’s superpower. A humanitarian and morally-motivated American world order could be a more attractive option than the autocratic realpolitik, which doesn’t even profess to consider human rights, that the Chinese government would offer.
Aaron Baker can be reached at aaronbak@umich.edu.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.
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“
You, me and my Tinder account
Reed, I am having an emergency. We need to go upstairs to your room right now.” “Ok, let’s go,” I said to my friend Michael as I gestured toward the stairs. Upon escaping from the party and arriving in my room, I asked Michael the obvious question: “What’s going on?” His answer was far more complicated than I could have predicted. Michael, who isn’t old enough to buy alcohol, has been in a dedicated relationship for the better half of the last decade. “Okay dude, please just let me tell you what happened before you start judging me. You promise?” “Yeah, I promise.” “Ok, so a few weeks ago I downloaded Tinder on my phone.” I quickly shot Michael an inquisitive look. “Yeah, I know, but look — all I have been doing is swiping right on everyone. I downloaded it because I just wanted to see who would swipe right on me, I don’t actually want to do anything.” I shot Michael another more confused look about where this was all going. “Well, I swiped right on this cute girl and she messaged me! So I responded and she kept messaging me. She is here, downstairs, at the party. I really care about Sarah (his long-term girlfriend) and I don’t want to ruin things with her and if I stayed down there I think I would have made a decision that I would regret.” The most immediate response I had to this situation was to think Michael was acting like just another scuzzy guy who was trying to cheat on his girlfriend — and maybe that was the truth. But, another part of me saw Michael tangled up in a much more complicated web composed of desire, cyberspace and reality. Michael and I always joke that the internet raised us. From a young age, both of us had nearly unlimited access to the computer and we quickly crafted virtual versions of ourselves. The first virtual version of myself was my “Club Penguin” account; for Michael, it was “RuneScape.” In online gaming lobbies, people don’t have an identity they can be held accountable for. The other people are complete
strangers who only know you by your username, creating a breeding ground for absurdity and unbounded speech. For many gamers, usually middle schoolers, this anonymity is an opportunity to say the most vulgar, disgusting and offensive things imaginable. For someone like Michael, who still games on a near daily basis, this sophomoric behavior is no longer shocking or provocative in the cyberspace; Michael is completely numb to it. In a game lobby, people’s characters aren’t real and neither are the words that people speak into their microphones — dying in “Call of Duty” means nothing and no one is actually coming to your house to have relations with your mother, no matter how much they insist they already have.
A Tinder account is designed with the purpose of creating a private life with someone else Creating a character in an online game is an odd hybrid between reality and simulated non-reality. The people are real, as is everything they say, but the space in which these interactions occur is immaterial. In cyberspace, someone can try new games, create new characters and say outrageous things as much as they want. The actions I take in one game have absolutely no bearings on the actions I take in another game; cyber identities are anonymous and separable. For Michael, creating an account on Tinder was like downloading a new multiplayer game. He was just creating another virtual manifestation of his identity that wasn’t attached to his personhood. Or so he thought. Michael didn’t see his Tinder account as something that was real — he didn’t see it as something that could manifest itself in real life any more than “Fortnite” could. Under this view, Michael’s
Tinder account was the same as looking longingly at someone in class or lurking on someone’s Instagram account — acting in the ambiguous space of desire, but not cheating. When Michael saw his Tinder match in person, the material reality of his situation set in. This was not the same type of cyber identity as “Fortnite” or “Runescape.” A logical response to this might be to say that creating a Tinder account is much more similar to making a social media account than it is to creating a character in a video game. After all, social media accounts are virtual manifestations of real people, not simulated characters, and on Tinder, someone depicts their real self. Tinder, however, does not operate in the same space of visibility that Instagram and Facebook do. A Tinder account is not a public landing space where anyone can view your profile, you cannot use Google to see if someone has a Tinder; after swiping, an account can vanish into the cyberspace forever. Instagram and Facebook accounts are designed with the purpose of sharing the happenings of an internal life, while a Tinder account is designed with the purpose of creating a private life with someone else. In short, a Facebook account is always attached to a public image, while a Tinder account pursues a semi-anonymous and private interest. In Michael’s state of shock and panic, he reached for the buoy that was my room so that his virtual identity didn’t drown his real identity. It is unclear if Michael’s story is just a contemporary recasting of an old narrative about a gluttonous man seeking to cheat on his girlfriend or if Michael really didn’t understand the material consequences of his Tinder account. Either way, it is becoming increasingly clear that our virtual selves are producing material realities on their own terms. *Names have been changed to help protect people’s identities.
Reed Rosenbacher can be reached at rrosenb@umich.edu.
ADDISON BASSOCK | OP-ED
A
The dorm who cried wolf
s many may know, the fire alarm has been going off incessantly at the Mary Markley Residence Hall. While it can be considered simply an annoyance, many students believe it has become a danger. Even though we understand this dorm has not been renovated and the alarms can be set off purely by humidity rather than an actual fire, this is now a major hazard. When the fire alarm goes off, sometimes even five times in the early hours of the morning, it causes students to initially be alarmed that it is a fire, then gradually understand it is a mistake. The third, fourth and fifth time the alarm sounds in one day are the times when the students begin to stop believing they need to leave the building. How is this dangerous? It is dangerous because of what could occur when there is actually a fire. Last week, the alarms went off six times. I’ve spoken to numerous residents of Markley,
who all admitted they stayed inside their rooms. And they were right to stay there — as soon as the alarm was turned off after thirty minutes of ringing, it went back on two minutes later, proving to these students it was only a mistake, due to the weather or some other accident. While these students were right this time, what happens when they are wrong? What happens when the alarm goes off for the 11th time in three weeks and the students don’t leave, assuming it is another mistake from the humidity? What happens when hundreds of students stay in their rooms, only to eventually smell the smoke, hear the screams and realize this time it isn’t a mistake? You can’t ask students to leave every time the alarm goes off. When the alarm goes off multiple times in a day, in a week, it causes students to stop believing. And this is a major concern for our safety. At the University of Michigan, our tuition money should be
going toward researching ways to prevent the alarm going off from humidity. Maybe even some renovations are overdue because these issues of fire alarms being set off multiple times in a night are not happening in South Quad Residence Hall, West Quad Residence Hall, East Quad Residence or any other renovated building on campus. Furthermore, we are only students. With midterms this week, it is detrimental to our health if we don’t get the sleep we need. When studying until 1:00 a.m. or 2:00 a.m., most students want to sleep a full seven to eight hours. With alarms going off from 5:30 a.m. to 6 a.m., then 7:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m., and so on, it greatly disrupts the sleep cycle we so desperately need. For the health and safety of your students, we are begging for this issue to be fixed.
Addison Bassock is a LSA freshman.
SURVIVORS SPEAK: SUBMIT TO OUR SERIES Over the past few years, both students and administrators at the University of Michigan have addressed on-campus sexual assault through new policies and ongoing activism. More recently, the news cycle and broader times, however, the personal stories of individuals who have survived an assault can be lost in the bigger discussion. With that in mind, the Opinion section has created a space in The Michigan Daily for first-person accounts of sexual assault and its corresponding personal, academic and legal implications. Submissions will be published as a series of personal accounts that show essential perspectives: those of the survivor. Submissions will be due by Oct. 26 at 11:59 p.m. Please submit pieces to Editorial Page Editors Ashley Zhang (ashleyzh@umich.edu) and Anu Roy-Chaudhury (anuroy@ umich.edu) to be considered for publication. If it is past the deadline, you are welcome to still submit your piece to be considered as an op-ed.
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
DAILY ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN
FILM REVIEW
The Avatar returns
WARNER BROS.
Cooper and Gaga shine in luminous ‘A Star is Born’ SAMANTHA NELSON Daily Arts Writer
When you stand too close to the subway platform and feel the wind from the train breathe across your body, there is a moment where time pauses. Your stomach drops, your eyes widen and your heart skips a beat. In a split second, the rush is gone, the wave of heat you felt creep through you moments before subsides, but your heart keeps pounding, alert and on edge. This same surge of adrenaline is exactly what “A Star is Born” gifts its audience, an unexpected drop into a mesmerizing world of music and intimacy. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s collaboration is nothing short of wondrous, inexplicably captivating with every note sung and every gaze shared. Though a remake of a classic tale, Cooper’s film gracefully forges its own path and leaves us all stunned into a state of awe with its heartswelling chemistry, entrancing lyrics and a sense of electricity and vibrancy. Working in a restaurant by day and moonlighting as a supporting act singer in a local drag club, aspiring artist Ally (Lady Gaga, “American Horror Story”) is a far cry from living in the spotlight. Though independent, spirited and tremendously talented, Ally clearly grapples with her unconventional beauty, which has played its part in blocking her from breaking into the industry thus far. Her luck changes, however, when one fateful night, steady, down-to-earth celebrity musician Jackson “Jack” Maine (Bradley Cooper, “Silver Linings Playbook”) coincidentally staggers drunk into the drag bar where Ally is performing. The connection between the two is almost otherworldly, intense, yet
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 — 5A
pure. Mesmerized by Ally’s voice, Jack invites her out for a drink and, by the end of the night, asks her to accompany him to his show the next night. Ally’s life is turned upside down, as she is thrown into the limelight at Jack’s side
“A Star is Born” Warner Bros. State Theater
and subsequently rocketed by her talent into a spotlight of her own. First things first, let us acknowledge that Gaga and Cooper are nothing short of sensational in this film. From the start, they delude us into thinking that what we are about to witness will be one musician’s rise to fame and another’s fall from it. But the real magic of “A Star is Born” is its tangibility. Gaga and Cooper personify Ally and Jack so deeply that we swear we could reach across the screen and touch them. The connection they share is between them and them alone, and though their relationship is challenged by Jack’s struggles with alcohol, they remain somehow untainted by the elements of lust, money and fakeness that surround them. Their love is not one manufactured for an audience, which is exactly why we can’t take our eyes off of the screen. Aside from making all of our hearts bleed in longing for a love like theirs, Cooper and Gaga’s musical chops, both solo and in tandem, craft a soundtrack of gold. As a six-time Grammy winner, Gaga isn’t exactly a novice in the singing department. However, this makes her performance as Ally no less powerful. Unlike
popular pieces from Gaga’s body of work, when she performs live as Ally up on stage, we get a taste of her voice without an ensemble of synthesizers and other instruments. And it is staggering. Her passion behind every lyric she sings and every melodic note she hits echoes in our ears long after the screen goes black. Now, of course, we can’t forget about Cooper, who kicks of the film with a foot-thumping number that sends chills of excitement down our spines. Cooper’s throaty, country-rock style is harmonized alongside Gaga’s belting vocals and somehow it just works. Leaving the theater (after wiping away hysterical tears), we can’t refrain from immediately downloading every track on Spotify, prepared to put Gaga and Cooper’s blissful melodies on repeat. Evidence of Cooper’s brilliance as a director is the fact that never once do we look on screen and see Bradley Cooper, dazzling and uber-famous actor, and Lady Gaga, eccentric and fearless pop superstar. We see only Jack and Ally. Just as their characters’ love miraculously shadows them from the toxic culture of fame that surrounds them, Cooper and Gaga morph so convincingly into their roles that we forget any knowledge of their celebrity outside of the film, unable to see them as anything but two people hopelessly in love. One thing is for certain: What Gaga and Cooper have given us all with “A Star is Born” is timeless. We can’t shake the fantasy of a love so raw and real, just as we can’t erase the film’s haunting, yet stunning lyrics from our minds. Surging with emotional energy, the deepest of sorrow and the greatest of love, “A Star is Born” is a soul-shaking epic that is, quite simply, unmissable.
A few weeks ago news broke that the beloved animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” was to live on as a live-action reimagining, courtesy of Netflix. Fans who began having horrible flashbacks to the last time “Avatar” went live action were given reason to hope with the additional news that this time around the remake will be spearheaded by original creators Brian Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino. The cast won’t be whitewashed and will feature actors whose skin tone and nationality will properly reflect the roles they will be playing. This is all very exciting. But, as I’ve written many times before in this column, the question must be asked: Do we really need this? “The Last Airbender” is easily one of the best children’s TV series of all time and some might go as far as to say it deserves to be considered on the list of the greatest scripted television shows period. I recently re-watched the majority of the series and it held up even better than I remembered. Practically everything that goes into telling a story in the visual medium, from character to plot to music to visual design, was done to absolute perfection. Spanning only three seasons (or “books,” as they were stylized in the universe), the story has continued with a spin-off TV show, “The Legend of Korra,” as well as a number of books and comics. With such an expansive world at their disposal, it seems like the creators could have brought the show to Netflix with a new story instead of just a re-telling of one we’ve already seen, but I suppose there wouldn’t be as much money in that. I’m approaching this reboot with trepidation. On one hand,
it seems impossible that it could possibly any worse than the M. Night Shyalaman movie “The Last Airbender,” which is widely regarded as one of the worst films of the 21st century. On the other hand, it is also hard to imagine how this new series could ever be better than the original. The original show was basically perfect on its own, so what more could really be done with the story and characters that wasn’t done before? The “Avatar”
IAN HARRIS storyline also worked well in the serialized format of oldschool TV, where episodes would release every week with long gaps, at times, between episodes, adding to the experience of journeying and growing with these characters. It’s possible the travelogue nature of the series will fall a bit flat if whole seasons are released at a time, as is the Netflix way. All that aside, the potential is there. The children who grew up watching the Nickelodeon cartoon are now in their late teens or early 20s, and the potential to grow the show with the audience in a similar way to other generational series such as Star Trek is clearly there. The original episodes featured their
fair share of dark content but also shied away from the concept of death and at times sugar coated certain aspects of the genocidal war that was taking place in order for the show to be appropriate for children. This live-action Netflix need not place such restrictions on itself. The other big question hanging over the revival of “Avatar” is the status of former head writer Aaron Ehasz. Ehasz was the head writer for the entirety of the series and appears to have been an influential part of the writing that made the show a cut above the rest of early 2000s children’s programming. Strangely enough, Ehasz recently debuted his own serialized animated series on Netflix that was hailed by many as the next “Avatar.” “The Dragon Prince” came out on Netflix this past September and quickly gained a following, although it’s a far cry from “Avatar.” “Prince” has been renewed for a second season, so whether or not that will preclude Ehasz from working on the new “Avatar” remains to be seen. In this age of never-ending stories, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” remained the pinnacle of how to tell a story correctly. The three books of Water, Earth and Fire were a very clear beginning, middle and end. There was at most one important remaining question at the end of the series and all character arcs were fulfilled in an extremely satisfying way. With the brand recognition and sheer popularity of the franchise, it was unlikely it was going to be gone forever, but a live-action reboot of the original story might not necessarily be what fans were hoping for. Only time will tell if this new version of Aang’s story will be worth the trouble.
NETFLIX
COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW
‘Night and Day’ is uncomfortably thought provoking TRINA PAL
Daily Arts Writer
“Night and Day” is not your typical play. There is no damsel in distress, no heroic prince to come to the rescue and no sorcerer casting spells. It is not exactly a tragedy or a comedy. There is no naïve Juliet blinded in search of love and no handsome Romeo, bold and daring. “Night and Day” makes you uncomfortable, not content. The result is what you have left after peeling away the browning outer layers of an onion: raw f lesh and rich substance. Charles Mee, the revolutionary playwright of “Night and Day,” declares that: “There is no such thing as an original play.” This production is a part of Mee’s “(re)making project” which focuses on weaving together multiple plays while maintaining originality in abstract interpretations of them. “Night and Day” is a joint collaboration by the School of Music, Theatre & Dance’s Department of Theatre and Drama and the
National Academy of Theater Arts in Krakow, Poland, and is directed by Malcolm Tulip and Dominika Knapik.
“Night and Day” SMTD Thurs. Oct. 4 - Sat. Oct. 6 @ 8p.m. Sun. Oct. 7 @ 2 p.m. Thurs. Oct. 11 - Sat. Oct. 13 @ 8 p.m. Sun. Oct. 14 @ 2 p.m. Arthur Miller Theater $30 GA, $12 Student
“Night and Day” is messy and disjointed. There are no firmly developed characters. Instead, ensemble members assume different roles for each scene. Most of the
interpretation is up to the audience. The play opens with a woman dreamily proclaiming that Mee’s version of “Day,” based on “Daphnis and Chloe” by Greek romanticist Longus, and “Night,” based on “Thyestes” by Roman tragic playwright Seneca, is version “2.0.” It’s new and improved, so to speak. It’s evident why: The entire production follows the plot of these ancient works only slightly. Minutes into “Day,” viewers are confronted with confessions from the ensemble concerning intimate portrayals of their sex lives and miscarriages, among other topics. One member talks for a full minute about his experience with a prostitute, including the exact amount he paid her and for what services. An uncomfortable silence follows each of these monologues. Awkward laughter fills the air with uncertainty. Mee has mastered the art of pushing uncomfortable topics to the forefront, making us question why we stigmatize them to begin with. Similar segments in the
counterpart “Night” forces us to contemplate what we normally try and shuff le into the periphery. The stage is dark except for a long, rectangular table where four men sit. One recalls the time when his squad, during a war, invaded a home and killed an entire family until “no life remained in the house — a ‘family unit’ had been eliminated.” Another talks of killing two rapists in a tunnel and seeing the life leave their eyes. Dialogues like these made me want to clap my hands over my ears and shut myself out from the world. No one wants to hear these things. No one wants to relive how terrible the world can be every single day. But topics like these are discussed so frequently in Mee’s work that they become normalized. Mee’s constant portrayal of death and destruction raises an important question: Is modern human society actually civilized? If making a comparison to prior foraging societies, for example, most would say yes. We now have agriculture: a means to produce our own food instead of obtain it elsewhere. We have
technology and science, but with our capacity to kill and hate, how are we any different from those we consider
This production is a part of Mee’s “(re)making project” which focuses on weaving together multiple plays
“uncivilized?” Our human nature is the same at its roots; we are still capable of war, and we still have insecurities. We now have complex societies linking us together, but very
little has changed. During “Night,” an “uncivilized” man caked in charcoal and blood moves in slow motion about the stage, contorting in different positions among the feet of the “civilized” dressed in suits. While the civilized feast and clatter their spoons and forks, the “uncivilized” man doesn’t join, but instead remains at their feet like a servant. He tries to confront a “civilized” man, approaching him slowly and purposefully, but ends up falling into his arms instead in surrender: The “uncivilized” is no match for our modern world. In Mee’s world, however, civilization and societal structure is the true enemy. The less coherent the world is, the better. “Night and Day” is purposefully jumbled up because there is security in expression that ignores the constraints and stigma of the world we like to consider “civilized.” Sometimes the world makes the most sense when there’s nothing holding us back. “Night and Day” will continue to run Oct. 11-14 at the Arthur Miller Theater.
Arts
6A — Wednesday, October 10, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
TV REVIEW
ALBUM REVIEW
‘The Neighborhood’ is in dire need of a renovation ALLY OWENS For the Daily
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Ghostface Killah is old, and he’s okay with that MIKE WATKINS Daily Arts Writer
Ghostface Killah was a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan. The Wu-Tang Clan was founded in 1993. Thus, Ghostface Killah has been musically active since 1993. That’s a 25-year career. That’s a long time. Reinvigorating East Coast rap with his hard-nosed squad, Ghostface and the Wu-Tang Clan were extremely important 25 years ago. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic had just stripped away New York’s hip-hop credentials, and the rap world was fully embracing the West Coast’s lighter-hearted G-funk, save a few hits from The Notorious B.I.G. In response, the Wu-Tang Clan delivered music that sonically combatted the groove-rap flourishing in Los Angeles; their sound was dark, brash, cold and still authentically New York. Throughout his career as a solo artist, Ghostface Killah has stuck to this mold religiously. Even modern spins, like his collaborative album with eerie jazz group BadBadNotGood, played into his ’90s wheelhouse. His most recent release, The Lost Tapes, is no exception. Introduced by tired comedian, Michael Rapaport, the project is described as “dusty
soul,” a full embrace of its stark contrast with modern hip hop. Even the album’s title has a vintage connotation. Track after track, Ghostface raps in static aggression over grandiose soul-sampling beats at 90 beats per minute. “Buckingham Palace” starts with a sample that sounds like it’s played through a phonograph, and, shortly after, Ghostface
The Lost Tapes Ghostface Killah X-Ray Records begins to half-shout in a monotone timbre over the same beat for the remainder of the track. “Saigon Velour” also starts with a sample that sounds like its played through a phonograph, and shortly after, Ghostface begins to half-shout in a monotone timbre over the same beat for the remainder of the track (except this one has Snoop Dogg in it). “Watch Em Holla” also starts with a sample that sounds like it’s played through a phonograph — you get the gist. To clarify, there is nothing wrong with this mold. It made for some of the most iconic music in hip-hop history, and its compressed, “dusty” nature makes for a very cozy listen. It’s just very
obviously a 25-year-old mold, void of all of the distinct qualities of modern rap: no vocal inflections, no repetitive cadences, no dynamic beats driven by the potential of digital production. The lack of these contemporary characteristics is obviously understandable; the era in which Ghostface thrived is vastly different from today. He acknowledges hip hop’s evolution and his consequential irrelevance on “Reflections of C.R.E.A.M. (Interlude 2)”: “It’s a new wave of children that’s up. Music is different... If we would’ve came out with C.R.E.A.M. right now, we wouldn’t have gotten played.” If anything, the rapper should be lauded for acknowledging his age and sticking to his proven sound, as opposed to dangerously denying his diminished importance by forcefully implementing modern sounds that end up sounding unauthentic (see: Snoop Dogg’s atrocious Make America Crip Again). Ghostface’s The Lost Tapes should be the how-to-guide for any dated rapper. Instead of trying and failing to reinvent yourself, embrace the fact that your new music is no more than a nostalgic window to hip hop’s past and the relevance you used to hold. Let the kids handle the new stuff and save your reputation.
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
DOWN 1 Aristocrats 2 Grammy-winning cellist 3 “Not too __!”: “Good work!”
4 “To the max” suffix 5 Slyly attracts 6 “Brideshead Revisited” novelist Waugh 7 Wiener schnitzel meat 8 Words of confession 9 School fundraising gp. 10 Household skills class, for short 11 “Let me handle it” 12 __ Lee desserts 13 Canine command 18 Elevs. 22 Mideast chieftain 25 Arthur of tennis 27 Dictation pro 30 Like dessert wines 31 Ambulance pro 32 007, e.g. 34 Figure skating figure 37 Sticky subject? 38 Musical Yoko 39 Get sassy with someone
“The Neighborhood” CBS Series Premiere Mondays @ 8 p.m.
for onlookers who know better and it feels easily solvable. But, alas, with CBS’s track record for continuously renewing mediocre content well after its expiration date (looking at you, “Big Bang Theory”), we may just have to watch this onedimensional conflict stretch over seven seasons. The show’s issues do not stop at its weak premise. Like many other fish-out-of-water tales that have preceded it, “The Neighborhood” requires the audience to suspend some of their disbelief to conclude why two opposites would ever come into contact, and further, why they are forced to stay in contact with one another. Unlike “The Nanny” or even “The Beverly Hillbillies” who have set-ups somewhat based in reality, “The Neighborhood” gives us no explanation as to why a family as vanilla as Dave’s would choose to move to this predominantly Black neighborhood that hasn’t even begun to show the first signs of gentrification. The characters on the show do not speak like humans. Every line
of dialogue is tailor-made to fit between insufferable drags of the laugh track. On top of that, the tonality is erratic. Shortly after making a joke about a neighborhood crackhead, Nick goes off on a legitimate tangent about how the opioid epidemic has shown him that addicts are victims. Which is true. But what? Worst of all, the show takes itself entirely too seriously. Jim Reynolds and company actually carry this show as though they are at the vanguard of a new racial discourse in America, when in actuality they are peddling the same ideas that have been in circulation since the ’90s. Yet, rather than refining those ideas, they somehow do it with less tact. In this episode, a Black character actually has to break down the idea that Black people can’t be racist. And he is treated like he’s being the stubborn one. I know CBS’s target audience is the AARP crowd, but come on. Aren’t we tired of hearing this same thing? Aren’t we tired of white people’s aversion to educating themselves on systemic racism being treated as a punchline? A punchline that is, conicidentally, written by a white man. Similarly to the comedy of the show, Reynolds cannot seem to figure out what he wants the show to be. Is it a commentary on the tonedeafness of the “colorblind” millennial generation, or is it simply just a vehicle for a bunch of white guys to test out “Black People Be Angry” jokes? No matter what the answer truly is, the result appears to be the latter. In the same way that Dave simply being in a Black neighborhood will not end racial tensions there, merely placing Black people in dated, buffoonish roles does nothing to end the diversity issue in Hollywood.
BOOK REVIEW
Release Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2018
ACROSS 1 “Big Board” that lists GM and GE 5 Strauss of jeans 9 Scam using spam, say 14 Fireworks cries 15 Eye layer that includes the iris 16 Roman robes 17 How something precarious may hang 19 Love, to Casanova 20 Soft toss 21 “Out with it!” 23 List-ending abbr. 24 Diplomatic office 26 “No more for me, thanks” 28 Simon __ 29 How a good comedian leaves the audience? 33 Farm layer 35 Lamp-to-plug line 36 Little mischiefmaker 37 Marisa of “My Cousin Vinny” 40 Asian New Year 41 Very unpleasant 43 “It’s __-win situation” 44 Clinton’s veep 46 Fifth scale note 47 Difficult time 50 Queries 54 Schlepped 55 Eats a little 57 “Verrrry funny” 59 Stem (from) 61 Opposite of “yep” 62 Overplay the part 64 Care 66 Career employee 67 New __: modern spiritualist 68 Rebuke from Caesar 69 Put off 70 Gridiron throw 71 Stinging insect
If you can recall my review last week, I made an impassioned argument in favor of giving network television a chance. And, well, how should I put this? I take everything back. A lot can change in a week. For example, last week I still held onto the wild, optimistic notion that regardless of how shitty the quality of a show is, there must be someone behind the scenes that gives at least a sliver of a care about what type of product is presented to the world. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was last week. CBS’s newest comedy, “The Neighborhood,” premiered this week. From creator Jim Reynolds (I want everyone to know his name), “The Neighborhood” is simply one of the worst things I have ever watched. The show is a classic fish-out-of-water tale, and by “classic” I mean “would have been topical in 1976.” Dave (Max Greenfield, “New Girl”), a professional conflict mediator from Mich., runs into a big conflict of his own when he and his family relocate to a predominantly Black neighborhood in Los Angeles and aren’t exactly given a warm welcome. Did I mention Dave was white? Did I mention the neighbors were Black? You’re going to want to remember that, because it’s not like they mention it every 30 seconds. Essentially, Dave just wants to be friends with his new neighbors, but is thwarted from this goal by Calvin (Cedric the Entertainer, “The Last O.G.”), the patriarch of the family next door. Calvin, whose job, ostensibly, is to wear oversized Chaps polos and pace around angrily, wants nothing to do
with Dave because — oh wait, it’s never explained. Everyone just assumes it’s about race. Which it is. Oh wait, it isn’t? No, it definitely is. And that’s the show! The show’s treatment of conflict could be likened to a child trying its hardest to fit a circle block in a square hole: It is repetitive; it is frustrating
40 Import-export imbalance 42 “Sadly ... ” 45 Newspaper opinion page 46 Norelco products 48 Pointed beard 49 Baked potato topping paired with sour cream 51 Piano piece 52 Some big box stores
53 Clinched, and a hint to the four longest Across answers 56 “... and two if by __” 57 __ up: robbed 58 Parisian gal pal 60 Latvian capital 63 Blow it 65 “Do the __”: soft-drink slogan
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
By Bruce Haight ©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/09/18
10/09/18
‘Cockfosters: Stories’ is a timely collection of tales MIRIAM FRANSISCO Daily Arts Writer
Helen Simpson’s 2015 collection of short stories, “Cockfosters: Stories” is preoccupied with the ordinary. Each story takes place over a short period of time — often no more than an hour or two — and in most, there is little physical or external action. Simpson deftly balances narrative and interiority in these small compartments of time. Each story is both dull and thrilling, slow-moving and blindingly insightful. The strongest stories in the collection are about gender, a theme on which Simpson delivers startling insights through various unremarkable men and women. Perhaps the best story in the collection is “Erewhon,” a delightful skewering of gendered expectations and dynamics. The title is a nod to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel, the setting of which is a satirized Victorian society. In “Erewhon,” a middleaged man lies awake in the very early hours of the morning. He ponders the emotional distance that has developed between him and his wife and hopes to transition to parttime work. The first page of “Erewhon” seems, at first glance, unremarkable. Slowly, though, the subversive nature of the story emerges. “Not nice to think how the overwhelming majority of men who were murdered were murdered by their own wives,” the narrator says darkly. The strength of “Erewhon”
is how ordinary the world it creates is — no detail is outlandish, except for the premise of the gender-swap itself. All the cultural and social expectations and norms associated with women are now applied to men, and vice versa. “It was hard,” the narrator says, “the way older women got better with age while men lost their sexual allure … Nobody
“Cockfosters: Stories” Helen Simpson Vintage Contemporaries
really respects a man anymore once he turns 40, particularly if he’s losing it on top.” Simpson slickly pokes fun at the heavily gendered aspect of the real world by maneuvering the sad, frustrated protagonist of “Erewhon” through assorted machinations. “In a pathetic attempt to fight back, he’d recently been engaging on a spot of newsagent guerrilla warfare,” Simpson writes. “Now when he bought his paper he made sure to stick some of his preprepared Post-it to the naked boys on the covers of women’s magazines — notes he had felt-tipped in advance with the words WHAT IF HE WAS YOUR SON?” In the other stories in “Cockfosters,” Simpson builds recognizable worlds. In this way, she gains our trust in her ability to assemble places and people we might know. In
“Erewhon,” Simpson applies her trademark vigilance to an imagined place, one whose inversions bring to light that which is painfully familiar but also often obscured by its own routineness. While sometimes verging on the ridiculous — the narrator talks about driving his daughter around the country for her competitive yoga tournaments — “Erewhon” is a masterful demolition of the pressures women are constantly under. “Don’t be such a MascuNazi,” the narrator’s wife says. “That was what really worried him — him and the other dads,” the narrator explains. “They all agonized endlessly about whether or not they were good fathers.” Or: “He wasn’t overjoyed about still being on the Pill. All four of his grandparents had died of strokes or heart attacks, but Ella couldn’t tolerate condoms. ‘They muffled things,’ she said.” Upon completion, it becomes clear that “Erewhon” is not quite a satire; it’s devoid of the amplification that defines the genre. There is no exaggeration, just a sleight of hand that exposes the world for what it is, and what it has always been. “The world was womanshaped — get over it!” Simpson writes. Reading “Erewhon” in 2018 is perhaps different than reading it when it was originally published in 2015. Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court this week, despite multiple credible accusations of sexual assault. “This was the way things were,” writes Simpson. “This was the natural order.”
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MEN’S SOCCER
Despite strong defense, Michigan defeated, 1-0 COLIN MCGRATH For the Daily
In a matchup of the Big Ten’s top two teams, the No. 14 Michigan men’s soccer team fell to No. 2 Indiana in a defensive battle that ended with a final score of 1-0. Michigan (8-2-1 overall, 3-1-1 Big Ten), which entered the game riding a nine-game unbeaten streak, looked upon its defense to halt the Indiana attack, and through the majority of the game the back line held strong. But Indiana (10-2-0, 4-0-0) only needed one defensive lapse to capitalize. Ten minutes into the second half, following 55 minutes of organized and composed defending by the Wolverines, the Hoosiers earned their chance to break the scoreless game open. Indiana midfielder Griffen Dorsey made a run into Michigan’s third of the field and slipped past two defenders to find midfielder Rece Buckmaster trailing behind in open space. With nobody marking him, Buckmaster fired the ball into the bottom corner of the net, past Michigan sophomore goalkeeper Henry Mashburn’s outstretched glove. “In our moment of — if you call it a moment of weakness, it’s not really a moment of weakness — (Dorsey) does a good job,” said Michigan coach Chaka Daley. “He’s a big-time player, (he) tucks in, beats a guy, skips by (sophomore defender Jackson Ragen) and sets (Buckmaster) over here and he scores a great goal.” Despite giving up the goal, Michigan’s defense remained composed and organized throughout the game. Ragen and senior defender Daniel Mukuna were especially impressive; both consistently making well-timed tackles, blocks and clearances that stalled Indiana’s attack time and time again, while both senior Marcello Borges and sophomore Austin Swiech did a good job of containing Indiana’s attack on the
wings. Mashburn also had a solid game, tallying four saves. Indiana’s back line found a way, however, to outshine Michigan’s and conceded no space for the attack to create meaningful chances. There were moments when Michigan tested the Hoosier defense, but these occasions were extinguished. “Down the stretch, while we had a lot of the ball, while we put them under duress, I don’t know if we really gave them a ton of, what I would call, stress or working the goalkeeper late in the game,” Daley said. “Although we had a lot of the ball, and we started to put it in, I think they did a good job of protecting the lead…But certainly we’re disappointed we didn’t find a way today.” Overall, the match was wellbalanced and competitive until the final whistle. Neither team dominated possession early on, as both played back-and-forth with each defense curtailing attacking chances. Indiana’s counter-attack showed flashes of danger at times, but the Wolverines maintained their shape and protected the net — until the goal in the 55th minute. After Indiana scored, though, Michigan adjusted its attack to be more proactive. With more urgency, the Wolverines got the ball into the box and did what they could, but Indiana conceded few opportunities other than a handful of chances that failed to test sophomore goalkeeper Trey Muse. “There’s nothing to improve upon, except just staying sharper, you know what I mean, in those big moments,” Daley said. “They played in the national final, they have five redshirt seniors, eight seniors starting. “When you kind of knock it down, it’s a pretty experienced group, and we had our way at ‘em. We had a go at them. They found a way today, and that’s what, you know, experience will do sometimes, and we’ll get better as a result of this.”
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 — 7A
Wangler proves progress with first touchdown MIKE PERSAK
Managing Sports Editor
With a little more than six and a half minutes left in the fourth quarter of the Michigan football team’s win over Maryland on Saturday, Jared Wangler trotted onto the field and into the offensive huddle. Per usual, the fifth-year senior fullback was joined by his position partner, sophomore Ben Mason. And while Wangler knew there were a variety of plays that could be run with both fullbacks, it wasn’t until junior quarterback Shea Patterson called the play that Wangler knew he was going to score. Moments later, the 12th-ranked Wolverines broke the huddle. Patterson got the snap, and he faked to Mason while Wangler leaked into the f lat. Patterson rolled out and hit Wangler near the goal line, who fell into the endzone with the ball. “When I caught it, I didn’t really know if I was in the endzone or not,” Wangler said. “But when I saw the blue endzone, that’s just kind of when I knew. And then, obviously, I got pretty juiced up after that. I was pretty excited.” That’s when the celebrations began. First, as Wangler said, he got juiced up, yelling into the Michigan Stadium crowd while his teammates mobbed him in the corner of the endzone. Then he made his way to Michigan’s sideline, where he was met by all the players who have known him over the last five years, going crazy for a fifth-year senior’s first career
touchdown. Wangler’s brother, Jack Wangler, who played for the Wolverines from 2013 to 2017, had made his way down to the front row. Wangler celebrated with him, too, for good measure. “It was awesome to see that,” said senior wide receiver Grant Perry, who played with Jared in middle school. “You know, he’s worked so hard, and it was just really happy. All the guys were really happy for him.” Wangler’s first touchdown isn’t exactly a shocker — he has played increasingly more snaps as the season has advanced. Still, even with the rest of the season to go, the play gave Wangler somewhat of a punctuation on a career that has been anything but routine. Wangler, whose dad, John, is a former Wolverinesquarterback, came
“When I caught it, I didn’t really know if I was in the end zone.”
to Michigan as a three-star safety. Since then, Wangler has gone through the firing of Brady Hoke — the coach he committed to — a position change to fullback and even a knee injury over this past summer. All that turmoil has driven Wangler in to work harder, to prove he belongs. “It feeds in a lot,” Wangler said. “You know, you go through the ups and downs, you don’t quite play as much as you anticipate on, like, early on in your career. And, yeah, it’s just something that sticks to you. You really want to be out there and contribute for the team, and you’re in here busting your butt every day just like everyone else. So yeah, that’s something that plays into it.” One of the unknown pieces of turmoil for Wangler was
“I appreciated that, that he gave me that extra incentive.”
AARON BAKER/Daily
Fifth-year senior fullback Jared Wangler scored his first career touchdown against Maryland on Saturday.
Nothing much has changed after slow start Michigan practiced just the same as usual this week despite losing season opener
MEN’S SOCCER
‘M’ defense makes it a contender in the B1G CONNOR BRENNAN Daily Sports Writer
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Junior defenseman Griffin Luce saw progress in Michigan’s defensive play throughout the periods of its season-opening loss to Vermont on Saturday.
TIEN LE
Daily Sports Writer
It’s a case of expectations versus reality. One would expect the No. 4 Michigan hockey team to beat a Vermont team that went 10-20-7 last season. But reality says otherwise. Similarly, one might expect the Wolverines’ in-practice adjustments to address struggles seen in the opening game of the season. Well, reality, once again, says otherwise. Nothing’s really changed. Attitudes, maybe, but Michigan is sticking to its system, trusting that the problems that surfaced during the loss will sort themselves out through time and experience. “I really don’t think anything needs to be changed to be honest with you,” said sophomore center Josh Norris. “Compete has been one of
the things mentioned a lot by (Pearson) and I know its something he takes a lot of pride in, and that’s how he wants the team to play, so I think as long as we’re really competitive every night, I think we have enough talent for the rest to take care of itself.” The only difference in the team, which showed in the Wolverines’ rebound game on Sunday against Waterloo, is the demeanor. They’ve seen rough starts before, so it’s nothing new. Instead, they’re focusing on shaking off the rust and getting acclimated to the systems in place that had propelled them to success late last season. “I think it takes a little bit to get used to in a game situation,”
said junior defensemen Griffin Luce. “And obviously we got surprised there a little bit quick early. After that we showed more growth, like you watch the second period, we didn’t give up any goals there, and the third period, we gave up one and the empty netter, but I think it was pretty evident our defensive zone got better through the game.” Luce added: “It was a little bit of a learning curve for some guys.” So, despite the loss, the status quo stayed the same. Practice didn’t need to be changed. It was the attitude that did it. It was the verbal cues. It was the intensity the team practiced with. “We’re playing to our
“I really don’t think anything needs to be changed...”
revealed on Tuesday via Wangler’s Instagram account. He posted a picture of himself celebrating in the endzone with Mason, captioned, “ ‘You will never play here at Michigan’ -DJ Durkin (2015)” Durkin is the Terrapins’ head coach — though he is currently on administrative leave — and was the Wolverines’ defensive coordinator in 2015. “I guess it’s just something I appreciated that he did for me early on in my career, was, you know, he was tough on me,” Wangler said. “He’s a tough coach. That’s just kind of his style. So that quote just kind of always stuck with me in my head, and that’s just one of those things, like I mentioned earlier, you just have to prove people wrong. So, you know, I appreciated that, that he gave me that extra incentive.”
system, which is how we want to play. Being on them quick. Being aggressive,” Luce said. And it’s the things that don’t need practice that require the most repetition. There were defensive drills, like every practice, but it was the communication during those drills that was stressed — one of the things Luce thought factored in the team’s loss. You can see defensive zone drills, but you have to hear the verbal cues to understand the difference from last week’s practice. “Making sure that everyone’s communicating and on the same page in the defensive zone so that we can have a rock solid defense like we want,” Luce said. “Because we think that’s going to be the backbone of the team, and because offense comes off of defense, we need to sharpen up defensively and tighten up for sure.”
Michigan was knocked from atop the Big Ten standings Sunday afternoon when No. 2 Indiana (10-2 overall, 4-0 Big Ten) came to town. The 2017 national runnerup defeated the fourteenthranked Wolverines (8-2-1, 3-1-1), 1-0, behind a clinical offensive display and a resolute and organized defensive performance. Though the game was evenly contested, ultimately, the Hoosiers were just better when they had to be. “That was a pretty even, 50-50 game,” said Michigan coach Chaka Daley. “They’re a pretty good team. There’s a reason there’s a number one on their jersey, but we’re a good team, too. That’s my takeaway. There’s no doubt we were challenged though.” For the Wolverines, a noticeable bright spot was their defense. Indiana’s goal was scored off a broken Michigan attack where the full-backs were upfield, leaving the remaining defenders exposed at the back. The Hoosiers effectively worked their man advantage, and Rece Buckmaster placed it in the only spot he could have, beating sophomore goalkeeper Henry Mashburn to the far-post. In the first half, the Wolverine defense thwarted countless Indiana attacks and dealt aptly with a barrage of crosses from Hoosier wingers. The centerback pairing of senior Daniel Mukuna and sophomore Jackson Ragen seemingly didn’t put a foot wrong, making critical tackles within their box. The success and reliability of this partnership has been a developing trend for Michigan throughout this season and is one of the reasons the team held the top position in the Big
Ten prior to Sunday’s game. “They’re great players,” said junior attacker Jack Hallahan. “When someone scores a goal on them, they’re absolutely gutted and that shows a lot about their character. Those guys work really hard.” Emphasis on “when someone scores on them.” The Wolverines have allowed just seven goals in 11 games this season, and contributed to five clean sheets. Ragen and Mukuna started at the back in all of these contests. The two dependable and physically imposing central defenders are f lanked normally by seniors Peter Brown and Marcello Borges, though versatile sophomore Austin Swiech has also seen significant time at full-back. This continuity at the back has had a favorable effect on the team as a whole. “I think it’s really nice,” Hallahan said. “Especially as an attacker knowing we have such a solid defense behind us. It gives us the freedom up front to be creative.” Despite the success, Michigan’s stellar defensive performances will have to continue if it hopes to rebound from the loss against Indiana. The Wolverine attack was ineffective against a superior opponent like the Hoosiers, especially when they packed it in late in the game. Michigan’s remaining schedule doesn’t get any easier with No. 15 Notre Dame and No. 13 Michigan State still to come. The Wolverines will rely heavily on their defense, like they did against Indiana, to keep them in these games. “We got this opportunity and we played a team of that caliber now,” Daley said. “Going down the stretch, we know what we are, and what we can continue to do and build upon. Learned a lot today, for sure.”
Sports
8A — Wednesday, October 10, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tai Streets, Michigan and Brian Bowen: What you need to know Brian Bowen Sr., testified in court that former Michigan athlete Tai Streets gave Brian Bowen Jr., $5,000 to play for his AAU team ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
On Tuesday, Brian Bowen, Sr. — the father of former top men’s basketball recruit Brian Bowen, Jr. — testified in court that Amateur Athletic Union coach and former Michigan athlete Tai Streets gave the younger Bowen $5,000 to play for Streets’ AAU team, Meanstreets. Bowen, Jr., a focus of this week’s college basketball corruption trial because of numerous NCAA violations during his recruitment, was never reported to have any monetary offer from the Wolverines. However, Streets played on the Michigan football team from 1995-1999 and the men’s basketball team in 1997. Because of that, he is considered a representative of the University under NCAA bylaws. “Following testimony in a federal court today, a claim was made that a former U-M student-athlete offered money to a basketball player in exchange for participation on a youth team,” the Michigan athletic department said in a statement to The Daily. “Integrity in the college basketball environment is an important issue and we will continue to monitor this situation.” But what could the implications be for the Wolverines and what would they mean? The Daily spoke with business lawyer Richard Hoeg about the scandal’s possible impact on the University and its athletic department.
AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
The Michigan basketball team came under question Tuesday after former Michigan athlete Tai Streets was named for paying players to join his AAU team.
Why is Tai Streets considered a representative of the University? The NCAA’s bylaws include provisions for people deemed “representatives of athletics interests” because people not directly associated with the program — players and coaches — may still have an interest in helping the athletic program. Such people can have an impact on recruiting. Per bylaw 13.02.9, anyone who has been involved in promoting an institution’s (in this case Michigan’s) athletic program
“... we will continue to monitor the situation.”
is considered a representative of athletics interests — a distinction he holds for life, even if he is no longer associated with the program. “You might be able to argue that former players don’t fall fully under that paradigm,” Hoeg said. “ … But (the NCAA has) historically treated former players as representatives.” Tai Streets paid Bowen to play on a youth team, not for the Wolverines. So why would that have implications for Michigan? This is where the case gets
a little bit more complicated. Technically, representatives of athletics interests must follow all the same rules with regards to recruiting as those directly affiliated with the program. However, that’s nearly impossible in practice due to restrictions on when representatives can and cannot have contact with high school athletes. “(A representative of athletics interests) should not recruit a prospective studentathlete except as permitted by NCAA rules (but) it can’t be applied fully as broadly as
“... it can’t be applied fully as broadly as it might look.”
it might look,” Hoeg said. “ … Because to do that would be to limit any graduate that had a scholarship at some point from working in a high school, ever.” The way the rule is applied, the question becomes whether Streets ever specifically recruited Bowen to play for the Wolverines. Streets could have violated that rule even if Bowen was never offered money by Michigan if Streets promoted the school to Bowen, but there has so far been no evidence that he did so. If Michigan is implicated in the case, what would the
punishment be? Were the Wolverines to be punished, it would be because the athletic department is deemed responsible for all its representatives. In essence, it’s the University’s responsibility to make sure that boosters and former players don’t commit recruiting violations. There is no set punishment for violations of this type — not to mention that we don’t know what the extent of the violations would be. However, if there was a punishment, it would likely be fairly minor, especially since Michigan coach John Beilein has a reputation as one of the cleanest coaches in college basketball. “(Michigan) could get in front of it by essentially disavowing Tai Streets as a representative,” Hoeg said. “ … I think it unlikely to be more than a fine. We’re definitely not talking scholarships. Had the player in question played here, we might be talking about loss of eligibility and vacation of wins and things like that.” That’s where there is one potential snag. Redshirt junior guard Charles Matthews and sophomore forward Isaiah Livers both played on Meanstreets under Streets. Neither player has been mentioned by the investigation and there is no evidence that Streets committed NCAA violations with regards to their recruitments. However, because of Streets’ affiliation with Michigan, it is likely something the NCAA will look into. If an investigation found violations, there would be much bigger implications for the Wolverines. There is currently no evidence that was the case.
“I think it unlikely to be more than a fine.”
Bell ahead of schedule at receiver, quieting recruiting doubters MAX MARCOVITCH Daily Sports Editor
Ronnie Bell grips the straps on his backback and smiles. He’s asked about recruiting rankings. “Stars, I mean,” he says with a noticeable snarl. “Can’t always pay attention to stars.” A year ago, Bell was a two-star basketball recruit, committed to play at Missouri State. There was an itch to play football, the sport he’s always preferred, but the interest wasn’t mutual. “Every week I attacked high school football with everything I had because I was trying to earn a scholarship from somebody,” Bell said Tuesday evening. “But nobody wanted anything to do with me.” What a difference a year makes. Saturday against Maryland, Bell caught a pass over the middle and ran for a 22-yard score — his second touchdown of this season in which the freshman receiver
has played in all six games. After the game, Bell spoke to a long-time friend via text about just how far he’s come in such a short time. “He was like, ‘Man, a year ago today I was on the sideline talking to your dad about you playing basketball at Missouri State. Now you just scored a touchdown,’ ” Bell recalled. “Just crazy to think how much it switched.” He’s far ahead of where anyone could have predicted, and in the process is stomping all over those who doubted him. Bell saw early in one-on-one drills in fall camp he could compete at this level. Soon after, the rest of the team took note as well. Sophomore receivers Donovan
Peoples-Jones, Tarik Black and Nico Collins were among the first to see it. “A lot of people learn, especially once you get here, stars aren’t anything once you’re here,” Bell said. “Once DP, Rik and Nico, all them realized I can play, they all took me under their wing and were willing to build me up.” Black and Collins were four-star recruits. Peoples-Jones was a consensus five-star. But Bell says nobody helped him out more than senior receiver Grant Perry. Each day after camp, Perry and Bell would go back to the hotel and act out plays in the room. “We got the freakin’ couch and pillows all set up and I’m running around lining up,” Bell said. “He got me right over fall camp.” Bell was hungry — maybe
“But nobody wanted anything to do with me.”
moreso than your average freshman. This was as much about proving to himself that he made the right decision as any external validation. It’s still not lost on Bell just how close he was to a starkly different path. Had Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh not stumbled upon his tape through his brother-in-law, Bell might well be playing basketball at Missouri State or football at a far different level. When he finally decided on football, there were schools in contact with him — his hometown Division-II Northwest Missouri State being one — but certainly no program the caliber of Michigan. When Harbaugh and the Wolverines came calling, though, the decision became easy. “It was a dream come true,” Bell said. “It made me feel a lot
more better about my decision, of course. I want to play football, I want to prove to everybody I could play football. Coming in, it was like now I’m really going to show y’all.” Bell has indeed shown everyone. Few have taken more pride in Bell’s success than Director of Recruiting Matt Dudek. Dudek and the coaching staff received some backlash shortly after Bell’s commitment from fans questioning the commitment. Bell was off everyone’s radar. So when Michigan offered, plenty of skepticism followed. After both games in which Bell has scored, against Nebraska and Maryland, Dudek has taken to Twitter to gloat. After his 56-yard touchdown against the Cornhuskers, Dudek
“For me to start out this way, it’s a great thing, great feeling.”
tweeted “Zero-star Ronnie Bell #FromTheSideline #GoBlue #Winningest” After Bell’s score against the Terrapins, Dudek tweeted “Man, if only Ronnie Bell had more stars, ugh #GoBlue #Winningest” Harbaugh also spoke approvingly of Bell’s performance against Maryland, offering a comment unprovoked in his postgame press conference. “How about my guy, Ronnie Bell?” There’s still plenty of room to improve for Bell, who has three catches on the year. His skill at receiver remains raw, despite the glimpses of talent. But for Bell, Dudek, Harbaugh and all involved, the first six games of Bell’s career are a recruiting triumph, with the potential for much more on the horizon. “I just came in humbled,” Bell said. “I was ‘the basketball guy’ to everyone. My goal was to show everybody I could play football. For me to start out this way, it’s a great thing, great feeling.”
AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily
Freshman wide receiver Ronnie Bell has two touchdowns on three catches this season, as he scored a 22-yarder in Michigan’s win against Maryland on Saturday.
statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | O C TO B E R 1 0, 201 8
BY MATT HARMON, DAILY NEWS EDITOR
T
he recording starts with Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” on the organ — you’d know it if you heard it — with a minor modulation of pitch, a quiver. Then a voice rings out above the organ’s echo. “Good evening.” *organ intro repeats* “This is Dan Burke of Canterbury House” *organ once again* “… bringing you some of the sounds of the good news.” *large applause* Some of them are weird sounds, some of them are sweet sounds and some of them are perplexing sounds. Burke’s deep, rich voice is immediately cut off by the first verse of Carl Anderson’s “Superstar” from the “Jesus Christ Superstar” soundtrack. If this recording of Reverend Burke’s radio show from 1971 doesn’t convey Canterbury House’s blend of musical innovation and spirituality, I don’t really know what could. See CANTERBURY, Page 5B
You Can’t Bury Canterbury COURTESY OF BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY
2B
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 // The Statement
statement
Managing Statement Editor: Brian Kuang
Editor in Chief: Alexa St. John
Managing Editor: Dayton Hare
Deputy Editors: Colin Beresford Jennifer Meer
Photo Editor: Amelia Cacchione
Copy Editors: Elise Laarman Finntan Storer
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T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | O C TO B E R 1 0, 201 8
American miseducation
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BY MARTINA VILLALOBOS, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
t was the first day of sophomore year, and my biggest concern was whether or not I would get a five on my first AP exam. A few seconds after the bell rang, in came Mr. Delap. Mr. Delap was not an enigma, but there was certainly a legacy attached to him. He was my first teacher to ever, vocally, teach history without editing out the more violent and oppressive moments of American history. He once said that slavery was the illegitimate child of America, hidden in a closet, never talked about. It was through images like these that my idea of America solidified. It was here, in sixth hour, that I first became interested in history — a passion I maintain today. At the end of my sophomore year Mr. Delap retired, and at the end of my junior year I left the comforts of Fayetteville, Ark., for Ypsilanti, Mich. I traded the Natural State for the Pure State. In Arkansas, my last name granted me firsthand judgement and second-class citizenship. It wasn’t that Arkansas, or Fayetteville, lacked diversity, but in the halls of my high school I wasn’t eager to tell anyone that I spoke Spanish. As I look back, it almost felt like the Latinx students were there to fill in the seats, and leave — quietly. I never felt overt racism but there was almost a passive aggressive attitude. You didn’t always see people of color in AP classes — there was an implicit division. In Ypsilanti, I became a different kind of minority. This was a school where my skin color, my heritage and my name were no longer the parts of my identity that stood out. It was saying things like, “Oh my parents are professors” that did. I became much more aware of my own privilege. Ypsilanti is a low-income working class town that has had a struggling school system for years.
It wasn’t until I sat down in Ypsilanti High School that I witnessed the realities of Mr. Delap’s lectures. He said that America was born shackled to racism. Here, I realized that not only had America never freed herself of those shackles, but she had built an empire on the backs of those she deemed less worthy. At this school, teachers were “let go” in February, textbooks were older than me and locked up, the library wasn’t open and school lunches were served frozen. I faced an education system that stripped students of their educational rights. It wasn’t a school, but rather an incubator prepping America’s next generation of laborers. I graduated and did so with an unimagined support from my teachers. It was the teachers who, despite the system, tried to keep an idealization of education alive. It was a support I was never afforded in Fayetteville. With this in mind, I decided to email the few people, teachers, who had made a difference in my academic career. I emailed Mr. Delap and I told him I had been accepted to the University of Michigan. I told him how his class had made me aware of realities I would have otherwise missed. I said I wanted to study history. But most importantly, I thanked him for teaching honestly. Since then we have held correspondence for two years. In those years we have discussed, even debated, several aspects of American history. It was while I was studying in France earlier this year that I got his latest email. The tone of this email felt almost defeated — a tone I had never associated with Mr. Delap, who, despite talking about American
history without stripping it of its violent and oppressive nature, never sounded like he had lost hope. The developments of the last two years had gotten to him. He couldn’t reconcile the America he had taught with the America that was developing before his very eyes. I remember rereading the email and not being able to come up with an articulate reply. I decided to call him.
paused. He discussed his childhood memories, highlighting that there were injustices, similar to those that I had witnessed my senior year. “I would come home from school and turn on the news and watch footage to see what was going in Selma, dogs and police with fire hoses,” he said. He continued by saying that even after all of these years the prejudice persists — he says that people never got over their racist roots. In the natural pause of the conversation he broke the silence saying, “Maybe we have to wait for enough of us to die off.” He sighed and followed this comment by saying that that really wouldn’t change anything because racism has taken hold of a new generation — our generation. He went on to tell me about how he almost got drafted, but that it was a time where they were bringing soldiers back so that he was promptly rejected. I asked him if he thought he would have gone and he replied, “I always understood the anti-war movement, and sympathized with the antiILLUSTRATION BY TATIANA LOPATIN war movement” but, “I was For the first time we didn’t a straight and narrow guy so that discuss history, or at least not if the government asks I would directly. Instead, he told me go.” about his life — how he became a This is quickly followed by, teacher and why. “Seventeen of my high school Mr. Delap was a teenager during classmates were killed — what the Civil Rights Movement, he makes me sick is not one of them began his teaching career during was what I would call a patriot.” the Vietnam War, and is now as He said in his town most of the retired as Trump is overhauling students went into the military. American politics. They followed the path of their “Back in those days, in the ‘60s, parents. They went in to find a I lived in Kansas City. You can’t skill and then a job. really say that it was segregated, “No one wanted to triumph in restaurants people ate together, over communism, they just but housing was segregated. The followed tradition — learning a only “mixing” was in sports,” he skill in the army, it was the normal
thing to do,” he said. I asked him if after all of these years he felt discouraged to see the state of America, having spent most of his life teaching its history. He sighed and almost laughed. “I’ve said this many times, I don’t know if it is true — but I say it a lot so maybe there is a grain of truth — maybe I would be better off selling life insurance, teaching was a calling, religious people talk about calling, and teaching was my calling, but my career was, I don’t know, maybe I deluded myself.” I interjected, “That teaching was your calling?” “It might have been but the last few years I didn’t feel satisfied, and I think that is my fault — maybe I just wanted too much, I wanted everyone to be as interested in what we were supposed to be studying, and as the years went on they were less and less interested.” He continued by saying that the last year was the most frustrating. He felt more pressured to make sure students passed so they could graduate. He felt as though he was no longer there to educate people, but to train them. Through the many lectures on American History, Mr. Delap’s voice over the phone and my own experiences, I began to see the figure of the American student morphe. It was only by leaving Arkansas that I began to witness my own privilege, but most importantly I got to see a broken system. In some ways, we are witnessing the tragedy of the American education play out before our very eyes. It is the color of our skin or our class that determines the education we receive. This divide shows education as a funnel, a function of the state to answer the demands of a country and a market. Once it was soldiers, today it is the poor and minority working class. This is the tragedy of a miseducation.
Notes on accessibility
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 // The Statement
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BY MIRIAM FRANCISCO, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
even meditative. Despite working for the SSD for two years, and becoming an expert on the mystery that is notetaking, I remained incognizant of the many stories shaping disability on campus. Being a notetaker has made me aware of a set of challenges that my privilege as an able-bodied student had previously allowed me to ignore — though I recognize that even with this understanding, I have barely scratched the surface. The specifics of the challenges Courtesy of DeAnna Jerore remained abstract. I LSA senior DeAnna Jerore imagine that for many I became a notetaker with Services able-bodied students, the experiences for Students with Disabilities entirely of students with disabilities is similarly by accident. One April evening during obscure. my freshman year, I was having dinner Ignoring the needs of disabled students with my best friend and her friend. Her at the University of Michigan means friend happened to mention that he was overlooking a very significant minority. a notetaker, and he gave me the email During the 2016-2017 school year, 6.3 address of someone I could contact about percent of the 46,000 students at the getting involved. I was looking for a second University registered with SSD. Of course, job, and I knew I was good at taking notes. the experiences of these students are as I also liked the idea of sitting in on classes diverse, if not more, than the experiences I would not have otherwise been able to of able-bodied students at the University, take. I emailed Jill Rice, coordinator of and it would be a mistake to lump them all Services for Students who are Deaf and together. Hard of Hearing, and she added my name Last week I spoke to LSA senior DeAnna to the list of notetakers. Jerore. Jerore is studying Political Science I then went home for the summer and with a minor in Sustainability. For her first forgot about the whole thing. three years at the University, she was an Last fall, I was quickly initiated into able-bodied student. On Aug. 24, Jerore a world I didn’t know existed. SSD suffered a fall that severed her spinal coordinates a variety of accommodations cord. The accident left her unable to walk and programs for students with disabilities without the use of a four-wheeled walker. ranging from from mobility impairments The severity and permanence of Jerore’s to learning disabilities to hearing loss. I injury means that she has been forced became part of the notetaking division, a to quickly adapt to life with a mobility small army of students who attend classes impairment. Adjusting physically and and take notes for students registered with emotionally while also communicating SSD. Some classes are straightforward, with her professors has been challenging, requiring notes to be taken on a computer but it has not stopped her from taking and emailed to the student. Other times, classes. Jerore explained that the an assignment may come with special availability of SSD resources has been instructions — take notes with a special instrumental in allowing her to return to black marker provided by SSD, for example. her studies just weeks after the accident, Notetaking can be a strange job, because despite doctors encouraging her to put I often take notes for upper-level classes in school on hold. unfamilar subjects. In fact, the first class Jerore explained that becoming I ever took notes for was an upper-level registered with SSD required a variety of Economics course, and I knew absolutely paperwork and in-person meetings, which nothing about the material. As I took notes posed some difficulty since she spent and as the semester progressed, I began to three weeks in the hospital following her relax into the fluid mindlessness of writing operation. However, she explained that words that I had no need to understand. overall she has a had a positive experience Over time, the initial peculiarity of the job with the SSD. transformed into something soothing and This semester, Jerore commutes to
campus periodically. SSD coordinates with Information and Technology Services to provide Jerore with audio-visual recordings of her classes, allowing her to keep up from home until she is ready to return to campus full-time. After graduation, Jerore plans to pursue a master’s degree in Urban Planning. She’s interested in how climate change is beginning to impact everyday life, and she hopes to design sustainable spaces that foster cohesion and community among people of all identities and cultures. “This experience has changed my direction in terms of what those community places look like, and how they operate to encompass everyone, where it doesn’t feel like someone is being othered,” Jerore explained. Though Jerore has found the SSD to be helpful, she noted that she has faced challenges with faculty. Jerore has noticed that her professors and graduate student instructors don’t seem to understand the severity of her injury. “The biggest challenge for me is that coming back and sending out emails, professors and GSIs were like, ‘Oh, hope you get better soon!’” Jerore said. Jerore said she understands that these emails came from a place of misunderstanding, not malice. Before her accident, she didn’t know much about spinal cord injuries either. “I didn’t say this, but it sort of burned me up a little bit,” she explained. “I think that some of the awareness needs to be there. Because that was very, very difficult — I was even sending multiple emails and having doctor’s letters and whatnot in terms of trying to give (professors and GSIs) a sense of how serious this was. That took up a lot of my time.” A lack of awareness among faculty about disability is a symptom of the University’s insufficient efforts to make campus accessible. While Jerore’s experience with SSD has been largely positive, the campus remains largely inaccessible — both literally, for students with mobility impairments, and also in regards to attitudes toward disabilities. The University’s 2015 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategic plan is notably silent on disability. Some disabled students have also questioned SSD’s requirement that students register to receive services, pointing out that students with other marginalized identities are not required to “prove” their identity. While the University ranks high on lists of disability-friendly schools, this may say more about the state of accessibility in higher education than it does about the University’s accommodations for disabled students. While SSD has many programs that benefit registered students, the office
does not have the power to alter class requirements for students. University professors are provided with a handbook on how to best accommodate disabled students, but SSD cannot compel faculty to make any changes to their curriculum, even for students with SSD documentation. While the staff of SSD works hard to provide accommodations, it is important to note their budget appears somewhat limited. SSD is funded by both a general fund and an Americans with Disabilities Act Provost Fund. According to a 2014 presentation, the general fund budget has been cut by 1.5 percent every year since 2007. The 2014 general fund allocation was $18,000, down from $32,000 in 2007. The ADA Provost Fund provides between $300,000 and $700,000 per year to ensure ADA compliance. SSD also receives money from individual donors. Given that SSD provides resources to 6.3 percent of students, their operating budget is quite small compared to other organizations that serve an equal or lesser number of students. There are 1,011 student-athletes, for example, meaning that student-athletes make up a little over 2 percent of the general student population. For the 2018-2019 fiscal year, Michigan Athletics has projected a $2.5 million budget surplus; its total budget for the year was $188.1 million. This is not, of course, a perfect comparison. Michigan Athletics creates revenue, while SSD does not. Sports also holds a cultural, communal and aesthetic value that disability resources and awareness lack. Still, the difference between the SSD and Michigan Athletics operating budgets are striking. As an able-bodied notetaker, I rarely considered the people receiving my notes. Before learning more about SSD, notetaking was a simply a job for me. After researching the University’s accessibility, many of my preconceptions about what it means to be disabled on campus have been challenged. The ways campus and classes are designed for able-bodied students are glaringly apparent. How would a student with a mobility impairment navigate the stacks in Hatcher Graduate Library, for instance? How would a blind student have their obscure class readings translated to Braille? How would a student with a learning disability convince an unwilling professor to provide extra time on an exam? I’m humbled to have spoken to Jerore, and hearing about her experiences has radically changed my perspective. Obviously, the stories of SSD and the experiences of disabled students at the University are sometimes contradictory. Hearing these stories and recognizing their rich complexity is perhaps the first step toward a more accessible and equitable campus.
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Wednesday, October 10, 2018 // The Statement
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 // The Statement
WHAT KIND OF DESIGNER ARE YOU?
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BY CASEY TIN, MANAGING DESIGN EDITOR of the user. This is often done through research on targeted users, identifying main points in a product, exercising convergent and divergent thinking to find solutions and iterating upon prototypes to visualize different potential user pathways. These solutions should be robust and thoroughly tested by actual users. Across the entire process, visual appeal, cognitive implications and emotions of the user are essential to keep in mind. The design-thinking behind user experience is something I try to exercise as often as I can in my everyday life. In more general terms, I am cognizant of how my actions are affecting my interactions with others and how I can adapt my behavior accordingly. Requirements and roles often change when I am working on a project. In these scenarios, I’m a product designer who oversees all aspects of a product from start-tofinish. This entails working with the intermediate aspects of a product such as psychological and social impacts, technical limitations in product functionality, and more. The baseline goal of a product designer is to create products that cater to a user’s needs by solving existing problems. Product designers have knowledge across disciplines; they’re capable of conducting research on user data, creating wireframes and prototypes for potential solutions, and devising strategies on how the product will solve a problem -- all of which I’ve had the opportunity to do. With this, I still struggle with finding a term that encompasses my collective design identities. “Designer” is far too open-ended, whereas “graphic designer” has specific expectations that constrain my creativity. However, finding a suitable label comes second to seeing my impact on the world. Design has the ability to shape a person’s emotions and experiences
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It’s a question I’m asked more often than I’d like. Yet every time I’m faced with it, I draw a blank, regurgitating a superficial answer that I’ve perfected over time. To this day, I’m still unsure of what constitutes a designer, or if there is a single label that I can use to answer this question more concisely. Design is an incredibly broad field. Wikipedia defines it as “(the) creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object, system or measurable human interaction.” By that definition, everyone who makes a contribution to a product is a designer. Everything that we interact with on a day-to-day basis has been designed to some extent. Design is typically broken down into different disciplines, all of which share the common feature of creation for users and their environment. Personally, the ambiguous yet multidisciplinary nature of design work is what I love most about being a designer. I don’t fit into a single mode of designer; rather, I wear different hats depending on the stakeholders involved. Oftentimes, I’m a graphic designer, who is tasked with using visual elements to communicate information and ideas. This can significantly affect a user’s impression of a product. Colors, fonts and iconography come to life and are tied into a visual identity. The initial pen-and-paper designs transform in the digital world of Adobe Creative Cloud and materialize through print, where the impact of my creations becomes quantifiable. Every page of The Michigan Daily that I create is an empowering reminder of the status I hold as a graphic designer, where even the slightest design decisions can shape readers’ reactions entirely. On other occasions, I’m a user experience designer where my job is to be attentive to the behavioral consequences of a user’s interaction with a product. Ultimately, my goal is to maximize the satisfaction
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when interacting with something, and using that ability in a positive light gives me an unparalleled feeling of joy. As a mostly selftaught designer, a bulk of my design expertise comes from absorbing other designers’ ideas and concepts into my own, and iterating off of those to discover my unique design style. Over the years, I’ve collected a variety of different tips and techniques that have helped me explore my design identity, some of which are below: • Being vulnerable. Vulnerability is closely tied with discomfort, which is an agent of change. This change can positive or negative; with proper guidance, positive change can lead to growth. Being in a vulnerable situation allows for the development of new ideas and perspectives. • Making mistakes. And not being afraid to make mistakes. Every designer starts from the bottom, and through mistakes, can learn to improve. Missing the mark has significantly more personal impact than perfectly handling a task. Lots of discoveries arise from experiencing failure. • Not letting fear hold you back. If you want to experiment with
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You Can’t Bury Canterbury Ann Arbor’s hidden musical gem (Part 1)
BY MATT HARMON, DAILY NEWS EDITOR grap h designer ic
different creative approaches, go for it! The worst thing that could happen is failing the task, which is a small obstacle in the long run of things. Get creative by breaking the boundaries of design • Be a good listener. Not just hearing feedback, but really listening and digesting someone’s opinion of your work. Feedback is super valuable and is essential in growth as a designer, so use it to your advantage in your iterations. I’ve learned to be content with not having a solidified identity as a designer. If anything, it provides more opportunities for me to grow my design skills by applying them to different disciplines. The thought process that comes with being a designer has come in handy in all aspects of my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way; I hope to continue shaping my future and others’ through design.
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he recording starts with Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” on the organ — you’d know it if you heard it — with a minor modulation of pitch, a quiver. Then a voice rings out above the organ’s echo. “Good evening.” *organ intro repeats* “This is Dan Burke of Canterbury House” *organ once again* “… bringing you some of the sounds of the good news.” *large applause* Some of them are weird sounds, some of them are sweet sounds and some of them are perplexing sounds. Burke’s deep, rich voice is immediately cut off by the first verse of Carl Anderson’s “Superstar” from the “Jesus Christ Superstar” soundtrack. If this recording of Reverend Burke’s radio show from 1971 doesn’t convey Canterbury House’s blend of musical innovation and spirituality, I don’t really know what could. Burke’s radio show, along with a litany of purely magical musical performances recorded right at Canterbury House’s late 1960s coffee shop location at 330 Maynard in Ann Arbor, were recently unearthed by the Michigan History Project. The seven-inch reel-to-reel tapes were previously owned by an independent collector,
then they were lost for a few years, until MHP found them in the hands of a musician and immediately got to work converting them to a digital format and then preserving the original tapes. MHP is constantly on the lookout for more tapes in a quest to preserve the cultural memory of Canterbury House before all the original recordings from the era are lost, according to the president Alan Glenn. MHP is currently in talks with a record company and is hoping to issue the tapes as part of a deluxe vinyl release series. Sadly, some of these new recordings might not see the light of day due to copyright restraints. “We’re (trying to release the material) mainly to further our mission of preserving and publishing the history of Michigan — and also because it’s so incredibly cool!,” Glenn wrote in an email interview. “Seriously though, people’s mistaken expectations that their old tapes, films, photos and the like are worth a lot of money is a big problem for historical preservation … This stuff rots away in a musty attic or basement until it turns to crumbling, moldy dust. That’s a tragedy, because when history is lost, it’s gone forever.” These tapes are an archivist’s heaven — they aren’t cheap bootleg recordings made by an audience member, but rather professional tapes run directly from the venue’s soundboard made with permission from the artists. More importantly, they represent the panoply of music during a time of political turmoil, with the Vietnam War in full swing. On these tapes, artists such as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Dave Van Ronk, Odetta, Doc Watson, Len Chandler, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, the New Lost City Ramblers, David Ackles and Steve Noonan bare their souls
to crowds of fewer than 200 University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor residents, some just before the world would know their names and musical creations. During my “listen to my Discman on the bus” phase in sixth grade (everyone had those, right?), I got a Best Buy gift card for Christmas. My dad took me and convinced me to buy Neil Young’s Greatest Hits. There it stayed in my yellow Discman Sport for months on end. When the Coen Brothers’ film “Inside Llewyn Davis” came out, I couldn’t get the soundtrack out of my head. That’s where I learned about Dave Van Ronk, and his songs have stayed in my cover repertoire ever since. Once a guy at an open mic brought me three Van Ronk LPs cause he knew how much I idolized the folk singer. This past summer, Joni Mitchell’s Blue got me through some incredibly rough times. I’d be lying if I said she doesn’t creep into my weekly listening habits this semester too. I’m telling you this because the music that came out of these found recordings has been with me for years. When I told people I was working on this piece, the response was eerily similar among almost everyone I talked to. “What’s Canterbury House?” The music Canterbury House has provided a platform, for from the ’60s, to today has influenced me as a writer and as a person. Canterbury’s story inspires me to both respect the art of the past and continuously look to the future to consider what space my own art can occupy. I hope it does the same for you. ishop Samuel Harris saw the need for an Episcopal student ministry on the University campus in 1885. According to documents pro-
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Wednesday, October 10, 2018// The Statement
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 // The Statement
vided by current Canterbury leadership, Harris worried the student body at the time would “become too secularized and forget their religious foundation,” and took it upon himself to see Hobart Hall — shortly after renamed Harris Hall — be built at 617 East Huron Street. The building still stands, but is now used as office space. The Hobart Guild, the organization in charge of the Hall, aimed to “stimulate (the student body’s) spirituality,” hosted their first regular meeting on Oct. 2, 1890. Harris Hall, a steam-heated building with a capacity of 500 people, included a stage — a crucial symbol of performance that would continue with the Church for years to come — a non-smoking billiards room, a library, a dining room, a bowling alley and more. The building would fall into disuse as a social gathering as the University grew — eventually being swallowed up and leased by the school — and the ministry moved to a smaller house owned by St. Andrew’s on Lawrence Street in 1935. Several years after the World War II, the Episcopalian Student Foundation took over, hiring a chaplain and moving to 218 North Division Street. The institution, after changing buildings (and even names) a few times, would finally settle at its current location of 721 Huron as Canterbury House in 1995. Go back to 1967. What I wouldn’t give to be in the room with Burke and Martin Bell, the Chaplains at the time, when they decided to transform the mission of Canterbury House, and subsequently Ann Arbor’s place in music history. Burke, following the trend of religious institutions nationwide in the late ’60s, wanted to blend current fads with spirituality to connect with a generation bent on rebellion. The college students of the late ’60s wanted nothing to do with an organized establishment telling them what to do, when to do it and what to believe. The dream of the coffee house chapel, in Burke’s words, was a “means of establishing contact, whether it be through
Courtesy of Al Blixt Bob Franke at Canterbury House in the late ‘60s.
folk music, folk rock, blues, liturgy, art or drama.” Burke and Bell, along with student manager Ed Reynolds, a music fanatic who, according to Canterbury documents, “was completely turned off to all things that smacked of religion,” made the move to an old print shop at 330 Maynard and turned the space into a coffee house/ministry/concert venue/everything but the kitchen sink in terms of cultural potential. This move was a catalyst for the flood of musical invention that was brimming at the University. Students plucking away at guitars and banjos in their dorms were dying for a place to play and hear their musical idols. Burke, Bell and Reynolds made this dream possible. hen I first received a batch of the recording samples from Glenn at MHP, I was sitting in a pristine white coffee shop with antique furniture, delicate latte foam designs and the sounds of Noname’s new album Room 25 pumping through the speakers just around the corner from 330 Maynard. I closed whatever homework I should have been working on, as well as the Facebook tab I was mindlessly scrolling through, and rocketed my hand towards my backpack to find my earbuds. I found the files and knew which one would be my first listen. “joni_mitchell_marcie_1968.flac” I hit play on the reel-to-reel sample. The voice of an emcee emerges. It is quick and businesslike, as if he’s announcing the next stop on the subway. “Joni Mitchell.” Applause follows. However, after a name like Joni Mitchell’s, given her legendary status today, you’d expect a stadium of cheering fans to be heard. Canterbury House is no stadium. It wasn’t even the size of the Michigan Theater. It was, in this iteration, quite literally a coffee shop with a stage, a decent sound booth and minimal lighting. This low-key setup feeds into the recordings. The claps reverberated off the walls in a way only intimate venues can allow. Then, everything around me melted as Mitchell began to sing. “Marcie in a coat of flowers / Stops inside a candy store / Reds are sweet and greens are sour / Still no letter at her door …” I’m in a tight spot here. As a writer, it’s my job to find the exact words to convey Mitchell’s vocal quality, her fingerpicking on her Courtesy of Al Blixt acoustic guitar, Spider John Koerner at Canterbury House in the late ‘60s. her lyrical prow-
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ess as a songwriter, to you, the reader. I’ve heard the tapes and you haven’t. This isn’t a taunt, but rather a description of the role I am in the position to fulfill. The problem is Mitchell transcends description. Her serene, profound soprano register lures you in but, as soon as you think you have a moment to breathe and revel in the beauty Mitchell has constructed around you — her lyricism and guitar chops knock you on your ass and demand you pay your respects to the Queen of California. Attention must be paid, and Mitchell will get that attention without breaking a sweat. Bob Franke sure paid attention. And she thanked him for it. ranke, a student at the University during the late ’60s, was what many would consider a staple of Canterbury House during the coffee house period. Like many folkies of the period, Franke and his buddies were inspired by Bob Dylan’s mainstream success and the folk renaissance. In true early Dylan fashion, Frankie and gang would listen to people like Reynolds, a mentor to Franke, perform cuts from the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, a seminal collection of folk songs from the ’20s and ’30s that laid the groundwork for the folk renaissance of the ’60s. From there, the folk fever spread in true folk tradition. “He and his friends would take songs from the (Harry Smith Anthology) which was, basically, the weirdest thing we had ever heard but the most wonderful too and he’d play all of these stories that we knew nothing about,” Franke said. “He learned the styles how how to tell these stories with a guitar and basically taught those techniques to me and we passed them back and forth among all our friends.” Growing up, Franke was always attracted to music that told stories, specifically his parents’ musical theater LPs. Then, being in a city like Ann Arbor in the middle of a folk revival, he couldn’t keep away. Franke recounted the moment during his freshman year he really solidified his relationship with and lifelong reverence of Canterbury House as a space for musicians to share their passions and stories with the audience. When he asked to play a set, he was instead given a position revered by few but a blessing in disguise — the job of doorkeeper. “It was an education itself. I took money at the door and got to see some of the most amazing people coming through, folk revival people and traditional folk people as well and, later on, people who sort of stood at the crossroads of folk and pop music,” Franke said. “I wound up spending all my time there and really learned an awful lot about music.” But back to Joni. While working as doorkeeper and sometimes playing his own songs, Franke saw Mitchell perform at Canterbury House in ’67. According to a letter from Mitchell’s agent Elliot Smith to Reverend Burke, “Joni loved playing the Room and when another date
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can be worked out, would love to go back once again.” Lucky for Franke, and frankly everyone else at the University, Smith and Burke arranged for Mitchell to play three nights at Canterbury March 8-10, 1968, for $650. Franke wasn’t going to let Mitchell’s talent slip through Ann Arbor’s fingers again without getting the word out somehow. Along with his trusted position at the door, Franke was also occasionally writing for The Michigan Daily’s Arts section. He had written a review of Mitchell’s first Ann Arbor show in ’67 and, in The Daily’s March 9 issue, penned the article “Joni Mitchell Yang, Dylan Yin,” which began with a simple command: “Joni Mitchell is playing at Canterbury House this weekend. See her.” Franke described Mitchell’s music best, in my opinion, when he wrote, “Perhaps one of the best words to describe it is joy. Not happiness as such, but the positive unity of human experience.” With this glowing review in print, Franke wasn’t going to miss the show for anything. “Apparently, (Joni’s) manager had shown her the article and she was delighted by it because every artist wants to be heard, and I had heard her deeply and reported on that experience so she asked to meet me,” Franke said. “I was still taking money at the door and I just went right down, met her and she gave me a big hug, thanked me for writing the article and I’ve remembered that hug for the rest of my life.” In our conversation, Franke made it clear how large of an impact his time at Canterbury had on his career as a musician. Canterbury House was a place for Franke to improve his chops and be exposed to all styles of music, learning from other performers and having fun all the while. Out of all the things he has kept from the period, Franke mentioned he held onto his articles on Mitchell.
Sure enough, it was Franke. Blixt, also a student at the University at the time, photographed countless concerts and performances at the coffee shop location. Dozens of his prints are in the Bentley Historical Archives for Canterbury House. In the Espresso Royale lobby, I was holding photographic history. Blixt got his start photographing racing tracks with his father growing up. Once he got to the University and found out about Canterbury House’s Division Street location, he fell under its spell, like everyone eventually did, and became the official Canterbury House photographer. “I saw something in The Daily or the paper so I went and I was hooked,” Blixt said during our conversation. “I loved it and, of course, at the time in my dorm, everyone seemed to have a guitar and they were all listening to the Great Folk Scare of the 1960s.” Although he said he loved photographing the folk musicians, Blixt made a point of noting it wasn’t just folkies with an acoustic guitar in one hand and Harry Smith’s Anthology in the other on stage at 330 Maynard. His photographs of the Buddy Guy Band, with two saxophone players and Buddy on electric, back up his argument. He points to the metamorphosis in Bob Dylan’s sound from the early ’60s to ’67, incredibly explored in D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary “Don’t Look Back,” to highlight the diversity of sounds echoing down the alley. “By this time, Bob Dylan had gone electric so after that, the crossover between electrified music and folk music was breached,” Blixt said. “We would have people who would come in and sing traditional Scottish ballads, mostly it was singer-songwriters, but … a jug band is not folk music. A blues band is not folk music. As a matter of fact, if you’re not a string band, you’re not folk music.”
“The claps reverberated off the walls in a way only intimate venues can allow. Then, everything around me melted as Mitchell began to sing.” “What (the articles) meant to me was that I was proud that I had gotten it right, that I had found something of real value and reported on it, shared it with everybody and that that had an effect to help Joni herself become the person and artist that she’d become,” Franke said. hile sitting in Espresso Royale (South University location) looking through a Kodak box of film prints and contact sheets, the smiling face of a young boy with a guitar piqued my curiosity. Al Blixt, the photographer, told me to turn the contact sheet over to see if he had written who the performer was.
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Blixt also remembered the events that weren’t necessarily performances, such as noon movie screenings and free brown rice and apple cider. Blixt said the people there knew the space was special. As the official photographer, Blixt’s photos were mounted on the walls of the the coffee house for patrons to see. In his photos lies both a journalistic eye for capturing the event and a sense of drama and storytelling. We talked extensively about one photo of Doc Watson, a singer-songwriter who had been blind since he was a year old but revolutionized folk music with his flatpicking style. In his print, Watson is
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waiting in the green room of Canterbury House before a performance, and Blixt and I couldn’t help but comment on his concentration and what could possibly be running through his head — lyrics, stories to tell onstage or anything under the sun. “Anytime you’re photographing musical artists, there’s no sound so what you’re trying to do is capture a representation that encapsulates the experience the best you can,” Blixt said. “What you’re trying to do is to (capture) something where people would say ‘That’s a cool picture and I don’t even know who it is.’” ayle Rubin, an associate Courtesy of Al Blixt professor of Anthropology and Women’s Joni Mitchell at Canterbury House in the late ‘60s. Studies, started DJing Although Rubin currently still DJs in junior high school before becoming a from time to time, she finds the differWolverine. She discovered her passion for ences between recorded and live music to music when she noticed the reaction from be crucial to an audiophile. As you can tell people at parties when she’d take a turn from recordings such as Neil Young’s Sugar selecting albums for the record player. Mountain - Live at Canterbury House 1968, “People would be sitting around, feeling shows at Canterbury were nothing like the awkward and I would just go over to the recorded material from the same artist. record player and start putting stuff on and They told stories, they had extended asides, they would start to dance,” Rubin said. or “raps” as the Young reissue calls them, Rubin started her college career in ’66 and they could converse with the intimate and discovered Canterbury at the Maynard crowds. Rubin said this is where the beauty location in ’67. Like Blixt and Franke, she of live music rings true. remembered having the opportunity to see “Recorded music always sounds the tons of incredible talents, some that made it same, because once it’s recorded, it’s like big and others that potentially should have. publishing a book. It’s codified. It’s there She got to see Neil Young, Mitchell, Jim on a page,” Rubin said. “Live music is more Kweskin and many more artists in their spontaneous. It can vary quite a bit more … prime. And the way sound works live is very difHowever, like Blixt, she also looked back ferent than the way it works coming off of a fondly on other elements of the magical stereo or coming out of speakers … You can space for members of the artist community feel the air move and you certainly could at at the University, such as the spirituality Canterbury House.” in the space and the conversations around With folks like Young and Mitchell sellfood sustainability. ing out amphitheaters today, these gigs “It was wonderful in so many ways,” have a superstar aura to them — huge Rubin said. “It was a religious organization amplification systems, big spotlights and first and foremost … but a lot of the minis- thousands of adoring fans. However, Franters were very progressive so it became a ke, Blixt and Rubin were lucky enough to place where people who were part of ‘the catch them and many more at the intimate Movement’ gathered and went for meet- sets of Canterbury, with the air moving ings, to hang out, to go to services on Sun- around them. day. I am not religious, and I didn’t grow However, the music wasn’t the only up Christian but even I went to services. thing making the air move in the late ’60s. They were just really profoundly pleasant If you wanted to rebel against the Man and and inspiring services to go to. Also, one of the War Machine, you’d just have to head Ann Arbor’s first health food restaurants down the very same alley at 330 Maynard. was located as a little kind of salad bar in Part two of this series will run in next the front of Canterbury House.” Wednesday’s issue of Statement Magazine.
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Wednesday, October 10, 2018 // The Statement
V I S UA L S TAT E M E N T:
Faces of Football Of course football players, coaches, and cheerleaders are prominent figures at football games, but so many people make football Saturdays as exciting and enjoyable as they are. As alumni came back for the homecoming game this weekend, I tried to capture some of the spirit of the game and Michigan community. Photos by Emma Richter