ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Ann Arbor, Michigan
the statement
michigandaily.com
SPORTSWEDNESDAY
ANN ARBOR
City votes against deer cull protest resolution ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
The proposal would have allowed legal action against those protecting deer
The Sixth Circut ruled that the University must require cross-examination by the accused or his agent.
Student group creates petition criticizing Title IX court ruling
Organization calls for reversal of decision ordering cross-examination in misconduct cases SAMANTHA SMALL Daily Staff Reporter
Tuesday afternoon, Jane Roe, a newly-formed student group at the University of Michigan, penned a petition calling for the University to adjust its new policy in Title IX investigations,
based on the September Title IX ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling states students accused of sexual misconduct must be allowed the right to cross-examine their accuser as a part of due process. LSA freshman Emma Sandberg, a founding member of the orga-
nization, said adhering to this ruling would cause further trauma to survivors and discourage students from coming forward to report sexual assault. “The harm that would be caused by this policy would be devastating,” Sandberg said. “Having to sit face to face with
the person who raped you and be forced to speak, interact, and be drilled with questions by the person who violated you...I consider that to be abusive. A process this cruel will have lifelong, emotional consequences See TITLE IX, Page 3A
LEAH GRAHAM Daily News Editor
City Council voted down a resolution Monday that would have directed the city attorney to investigate the actions of the protesters who sought to disrupt Ann Arbor’s annual deer cull. The measure, which was defeated in a 6-5 vote, would have required the city attorney to “take any and all appropriate responsive actions, including issuance of citations and the filing of lawsuits seeking an injunction or such other relief that the city attorney determines appropriate.” Ann Arbor established its deer management program in
late August of 2015 in response to resident complaints about overgrazing and worries about deer-vehicle collisions. Since then, municipal deer management efforts have racked up costs to the city of more than half a million dollars, with City Council approving more than $182,000 in continued spending in November. According to the city, a total of 274 have been killed and 72 surgically sterilized. Councilmember Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2, said there was an urgent need for the city to intervene. “I’m bringing forward this resolution to address concerns See DEER CULL, Page 3A
‘U’ researchers take lead in studying Library Lot Residents deal called gun violence prevention among youth Search for
ANN ARBOR
ANN ARBOR
off, city to settle suit
Collaborative project examines how firearm injury and death relate to gun rights
City attorney directed to bring legal battle with citizens’ group to an end
Researchers at the University of Michigan are leading a national collaborative effort to study firearm injury and death among children and teens. The interdisciplinary project, comprised of more than 30 researchers, health practitioners, and firearm owners and a dozen academic institutions, seeks a scientific approach to gun violence prevention with respect to gun ownership rights. The project, known as the Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens Consortium (FACTS) is led by professor of emergency medicine and director of the Injury Prevention Center Rebecca Cunningham, professor of public health Marc Zimmerman, and assistant professor of emergency medicine Patrick Carter. In November 2018, FACTS launched a new website with data, research, videos, courses, fact sheets and other resources on firearm injury prevention, less than a week after the National Rifle Association prompted controversy by tweeting that doctors should “stay in their lane.” In response to those who argue academics and doctors should not be involved, Cunningham believes gun violence is a public health
LEAH GRAHAM Daily News Editor
Ann Arbor City Council passed a resolution Monday night directing the city attorney to settle a lawsuit with a citizens group over the sale of a plot of land adjacent to the Ann Arbor District Library. Local attorney Tom Wieder filed a complaint in Augustin Washtenaw County Circuit Court on behalf of the Ann Arbor Central Park Ballot Committee in response to the sale of the lot to Chicago developer Core Spaces. Proposal A passed by a narrow margin in November after months of debate and opposition from Mayor Christopher Taylor. It amends the city charter, nullifying a vote by City Council in April 2017 to sell the lot to Core Spaces, which had planned to build a 17-story high rise with office and retail space, a hotel, apartments and an outdoor plaza. Following the passage of Proposal A, which mandated the city maintain ownership of the Library Lot in perpetuity and develop it as an urban park and civic center commons, Ann Arbor officially called off the $10 million See LIBRARY LOT, Page 3A
GOT A NEWS TIP? Call 734-418-4115 or e-mail news@michigandaily.com and let us know.
CLAIRE HAO
Daily Staff Reporter
Follow The Daily on Instagram, @michigandaily
problem, one that should be addressed with injury prevention science and increased funding for research. “The amount of money we have for firearm research still pales in comparison to the amount of funding for cancer, which actually kills less children,” Cunningham said. “Firearms are the secondleading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States. In the same way that having less car crashes is not political, or less opioid overdoses is not political, having less firearm injuries and deaths is not political.”
The five-year project is funded by a $4.9 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the largest NIH grant for firearm research in 20 years. It has a number of goals, such as developing a research agenda through identifying research questions and priorities, conducting pilot studies to establish groundwork and best practices and creating an online data repository of existing research. These initiatives, according to Cunningham, aim to develop resources in a field
that has been largely neglected in the past. “Firearm prevention is in its infancy. It’s been very much suppressed,” Cunningham said. “FACTS is set up to jumpstart research on firearm violence that has been mostly absent for the past couple of decades. At the end of five years, we will have helped to create a field that is much more active and a group of researchers that are much more knowledgeable.” Cunningham believes preventing firearm injury includes studying topics such See GUN SAFETY, Page 3A
new AAPD police chief
Student group calls for reversal of court ruling in sexual assault case SAMANTHA SMALL Daily Staff Reporter
City government consulting firm Strategic Government Resources held a community hearing Tuesday night with Ann Arbor residents and City Councilmembers to hear thoughts and concerns regarding the search for a new police chief. Ann Arbor’s last police chief, Jim Baird, transferred to Breckenridge, Colo. in February. The meeting was held by Doug Thomas, the senior vice president of Strategic Government Resources, a firm that specializes in aiding local governments across the nation search for new government officials. City Councilmember Jeff Hayner, D-Ward 1, emphasized the importance of the new police chief’s relationship with the community. “I’m looking for somebody who really has a strong sense of community and really wants to work with the community policing aspects,” Hayner said. “And also understands that here in Ann Arbor, we have a very
JACK SILBERMAN / DAILY
For more stories and coverage, visit
michigandaily.com
INDEX
Vol. CXXVII, No. 49 ©2019 The Michigan Daily
NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 ARTS......................6
See POLICE, Page 2A
SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............5 SPORTS....................7
News
2A — Wednesday, January 9, 2019
MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers
TUESDAY: By Design
WEDNESDAY: This Week in History
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
THURSDAY: Twitter Talk
FRIDAY: Behind the Story
THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: CLINTON SEXUAL HARASSMENT CASE TO PROCEED January 10, 1996 WASHINGTON (AP) - An Arkansas sexual harassment case against President Clinton can go to trial, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday, setting the stage for a Supreme Court battle. Clinton’s attorney argued that Clinton should not be questioned under oath on such matters while serving as President. But an appeals panel in St. Louis decided on a 2-1 vote that the case brought by a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, can
proceed. “The President, like all other government officials, is subject to the same laws that apply to all other members of our society.” The court ruled. “A sitting President is not immune from civil suits for his unofficial acts.” “Obviously, we’re a little disappointed, but there was a very strong dissenting opinion...which we believe the Supreme Court will follow, assuming it takes the case,” said Robert Bennett, Clinton’s attorney.
If the top court did agree to take the case, there’s virtually no chance a trial would start before the 1996 election. The Supreme Court would not hear arguments until October at the earliest, and a decision would not be expected until sometime next year. Jones, a former Arkansas employee, alleges that Clinton sexually harassed her during an encounter in a Little Rock hotel suite in 1991. She has said she rejected Clinton’s suggestion that they engage in sex. Clinton has denied
ever having an encounter with Jones, and has said he cannot recall whether he ever met her. Bennett has tried to have the case dismissed on grounds of presidential immunity. In a statement, Gilbert Davis, one of Jones’ attorneys, said his client was”very pleased” with yesterday’s ruling. “This goes beyond the parties in the case because it stands on the proposition that no one is above the law,” Davis said.
He said the next step barring any further legal delays - would be taking sworn statements from Clinton and a former Arkansas state trooper that Jones has alleged first told her that Clinton was interested in meeting her in the private hotel suite. Bennett argued in September that letting Jones’ case proceed would set the precedent of exposing sitting Presidents to lawsuits by anyone who disagrees with their policies. In addition, Bennett has contended that
the lawsuit would unfairly distract Clinton from the performance of his official duties - an argument often employed by government officials to avoid testifying in civil proceedings. But Davis, Jones’ attorney, has asserted that his client is due the same rights to a fair and speedy trial as anyone else - whoever the defendant is. Bennett has two weeks to appeal the three-judge panel’s decision by asking the full 8th Circuit court to consider the matter.
COVE RING TH E PE ACH BOWL
Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com
MAYA GOLDMAN
TOMMY DYE
Editor in Chief 734-418-4115 ext. 1251 mayagold@michigandaily.com
Business Manager 734-418-4115 ext. 1241 tomedye@michigandaily.com
NEWS TIPS
news@michigandaily.com
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR tothedaily@michigandaily.com
EDITORIAL PAGE
opinion@michigandaily.com
PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION
ARTS SECTION
photo@michigandaily.com
arts@michigandaily.com
NEWSROOM
SPORTS SECTION
734-418-4115 opt. 3
sports@michigandaily.com
CORRECTIONS
ADVERTISING
corrections@michigandaily.com
KATELYN MULCHAY/Daily LSA junior Alexis Rankin stands in the tunnel entrance to the field at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium during the Peach Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia.
Editorial Staff FINNTAN STORER
ON THE DAILY: UNIVERSITY ALUM DARREN CRISS WINS GOLDEN GLOBE On the Daily: University alum Darren Criss becomes first Filipino-American to win Golden Globe SMTD graduate and actor Darren Criss became the first Filipino-American to win a Golden Globe award at the 2019 Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills Sunday. Criss received the award for best actor in a limited series or TV movie for The Assassination of Gianni
POLICE From Page 1A
Versace, where he portrayed Andrew Cunanan, the serial killer who murdered Gianni Versace and four others. Criss has always been proud of his Filipino heritage, and credited the award to his mother who grew up in Cebu, Philippines. “This has been a marvelous year for representation in Hollywood, and I am so enormously proud to be a teeny tiny part of that as the
son of a firecracker Filipino woman from Cebu that dreamed of coming into this country and getting to be invited to cool parties like this,” Criss said. “Mom, I know you’re watching this.” Criss also played Blaine Anderson in Glee. He also performed at the inaugural balls of the 57th Presidential Inauguration and released an independently-produced EP in 2010.
department and their hiring prospects. “We are having a heck of a time trying to fill our ranks because no one wants to be a police officer right now,” Hayner said. “I highly recommend that we are doing ride alongs to see (the community) through the law enforcement officer’s eyes.” Hayner discussed the necessity of the new chief being able to train others. “What any department needs
is a real strong leader who is would be progressive in leading going to set the tone for the the police department. department and someone who “It’s a look at someone who is going to do the training to is versed not only in ridged diverse community and they avoid the situations we see on academy training but in new need to be very understanding the news,” Hayner said. “I think styles of policing, community … we want somebody who it’s really important that we policing and restorative is compassionate as well as find someone who sets a tone of justice and diversion practices authoritative.” tolerance in the department.” ... finding a balance and On Jan. 14, City Council During the meeting, Thomas embracing and testing out new will hold a work session highlighted the community’s ideas,” Hayner said. “There is outlining the goals for this hire. strong emphasis on the future. a perception problem and (we Sudoku Syndication http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ Hayner said the current police “The point that I would need) someone who is going to climate has taken a toll on the emphasize is that there are be intolerant of poor behavior issues and circumstances in the department.” that has led to the model Throughout the hearing, that is being used today,” residents discussed concerns Thomas said. “What regarding the financial I’m hearing from the inequalities in Ann Arbor based community is that there on factors such as education EASY is a willingness to move and social privilege, with some past that. I have not heard saying they knew of people who anybody say that they’re had left the community because so stuck in the past that of a high cost of living and the they’re not willing to lack of middle- and low-income move into the next stage.” housing. They said they wanted When asked about the the incoming police chief to challenges facing the next understand the concerns and chief, Thomas emphasized politics of the community. the department’s LSA freshman Audrey Ling challenges with workforce said she was satisfied with turnover and diversity. the current work of the police However, he said he department and hopes the new would not favor a minority police chief can help continue candidate. this good work. “Clearly there’s been “It seems like the crime in questions about staffing the area is not as severe, so it and turnover,” Thomas seems like they’re doing a good said. “Diversity of the job,” Ling said. workforce is another In talking about what she challenge, but these issues would want from a police aren’t unique to Ann chief, Ling discussed the large Arbor. The goal is not responsibility that falls on the necessarily the race. The police chief. WE’RE BACK! puzzle by sudokusyndication.com © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. goal is the philosophy.” Read more online at Hayner said he was michigandaily.com looking for someone who
SUDOKU
3
4
7
8 2 6
8 6 9
4 8
6
9
7
4
3
Managing Editor
1 6 2
2
5
7
3 8
2
3 9
3
1
6
7
Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokusyndication.com!
frstorer@michigandaily.com
GRACE KAY and ELIZABETH LAWRENCE
Managing News Editors news@michigandaily.com Senior News Editors: Sayali Amin, Rachel Cunningham, Remy Farkas, Leah Graham, Amara Shaikh
JOEL DANILEWITZ and MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA Editorial Page Editors
tothedaily@michigandaily.com Senior Opinion Editors: Emily Huhman, Alexander Satola, Elias Khoury, Nicholas Tomaino, Erin White
MAX MARCOVITCH and ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editors sportseditors@michigandaily.com Senior Sports Editors: Mark Calcagno, Jake Shames, Matthew Kennedy, Anna Marcus, Paige Voeffray, Avi Sholkoff Assistant Sports Editors: Aria Gerson, Tien Le, Rian Ratnavale, Bennett Bramson, Theo Mackie, Akul Vijayvargiya
JACK BRANDON and ARYA NAIDU Managing Arts Editors
arts@michigandaily.com
Senior Arts Editors: Clara Scott, Emma Chang, Rob Mansuetti, Sam Della Fera, Trina Pal Arts Beat Editors: Verity Sturm, Sayan Ghosh, Mike Watkins, Ally Owens, Stephen Satarino, Izzy Hasslund, Margaret Sheridan
ROSEANNE CHAO and JACK SILBERMAN Managing Design Editors Senior Design Editor: Willa Hua
design@michigandaily.com
ALEXIS RANKIN and ALEC COHEN Managing Photo Editors
photo@michigandaily.com
Senior Photo Editors: Alexandria Pompei, Natalie Stephens, Alice Liu, Annie Klusendorf Assistant Photo Editors: Katelyn Mulcahy, Miles Macklin, Emma Richter, Hannah Siegel, Allison Engkvist
ANDREA PÉREZ BALDERRAMA
Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com Deputy Editors: Matthew Harmon, Shannon Ors
MADELINE TURNER and MIRIAM FRANCISCO Managing Copy Editors
copydesk@michigandaily.com
Senior Copy Editors: Sadia Jiban, Olivia Sedlacek, Reece Meyhoefer
CASEY TIN and HASSAAN ALI WATTOO
Managing Online Editors webteam@michigandaily.com Senior Web Developers: Johnathan Liue, Abha Panda, Ryan Siu
NOAH TAPPEN
Managing Video Editor video@michigandaily.com Senior Video Editors: Jillian Drzinski, Aarthi Janakiraman
CARLY RYAN and NA’KIA CHANNEY Michigan in Color Editors
michiganincolor@michigandaily.com
Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Lorna Brown, Samuel So, Ana Maria Sanchez-Castillo, Efe Osagie, Danyel Tharakan Assistant Michigan in Color Editors: Grace Cho, Harnoor Singh, Nada Eldawy, Maya Mokh
CATHERINE NOUHAN and JOHN FABIAN Managing Podcast Editors
CARRINGTON TUBMAN and MADALASA CHAUDHARI Managing Social Media Editors
5 9
3
dailydisplay@gmail.com
Business Staff ADRIANNA KUSMIERCZYK CAMERON COANE
Creative Director
ZELJKO KOSPIC
Sales Manager
Special Projects Manager
ROBERT WAGMAN
ANITA MICHAUD
Marketing Consulting Manager
Brand Manager
The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University OF Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. Subscriptions for September-April are $250 and year long subscriptions are $275. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
DEER CULL From Page 1A that have been brought to our attention regarding protesters who have been interfering,” Lumm said. “They haven’t been peacefully demonstrating, they have actually stopped and prohibited our contractor White Buffalo from performing their culling contracted work on properties that have been identified for culling.” The city hired Connecticutbased White Buffalo Inc. to execute its deer management program in 2016. Since this year’s cull began at the start of the month, the company’s sharpshooters have taken up positions on public and private land around Ann Arbor, including land owned by the University of Michigan, and will remained stationed there until Jan. 27. Protesters from groups like Friends of Ann Arbor Wildlife in Nature and Ann Arbor NonLethal Deer Management have held demonstrations by the sharpshooters’ perches. Lumm said the protesters have worked to disrupt the cull and make the city-hired hunters less effective. “The protesters are preventing
TITLE IX From Page 1A of victims of sexual assault.” Rick Fitzgerald, assistant vice president for Public Affairs said that the University decided to implement the interim policy and will be gathering feedback on the effectiveness of the policy. “We understand that this new element in our policy can be upsetting to those involved in the process,” Fitzgerald said. “We believe questioning by students is less traumatic than questioning by attorneys and also removes concerns that a student may not be able to hire an attorney. Also, our process remains an administrative procedure, not a court hearing.” The ruling was made in response to a lawsuit filed by a former University student who claimed the University does not provide due process for male students accused of sexual misconduct, which the lawsuit attributed to gender discrimination. The lawsuit alleges on March 12, a female student reported to the Office of Institutional Equity that she and a male student had engaged in non-consensual sex about four months prior.
them again from conducting this work effectively,” Lumm said. “The taxpayers are on the hook paying for this contract and the result has been that they will not perform the work that they have been contracted to perform.” Lisa Abrams of FAAWN said the group’s protests were lawful, and thanked the councilmembers who voted against Lumm’s resolution. “The fact is that our protests have been peaceful,” Abrams said. “We have been on the sidewalk every single time, or we have gotten the permission of private residents to be on their private property, so every single time we have been peaceful and we are expressing our First Amendment right to free speech, and thank you for protecting that so we are not living in a gestapo state.” Mayor Christopher Taylor has repeatedly opposed the deer cull and was the lone vote against it when the program was adopted in 2015, but he said his opposition was not the reason why he did not support Lumm’s resolution. “Civil disobedience involves disobedience and occasional violation of the law,” Taylor said. “We have protests in the streets without permits on occasion and I don’t want to get into a situation where nonviolent protest results
As the lawsuit reads, the male student alleged he and the female student had continued to talk with each other after the incident via Snapchat and occasionally ate together within the campus’ dining halls. He also claims the female student had sent a text message suggesting the two should have sexual intercourse once more. The student said he declined this offer, telling her the nature of their relationship was one of a casual friendship. The female student filed another complaint pertaining to an infraction regarding a no-contact order established in April. She claimed she saw him at a University dining hall where he remained after the alleged encounter. However, the male student provided Mcard documentation proving he was not at the dining hall at the said time. The lawsuit also cited that because of these allegations, the University forcibly revoked the student’s access to his transcripts, impeding his enrollment in a graduate engineering program. The lawsuit challenged the University’s investigative procedure and the initial withholding of the student’s transcripts. The University released the
News in legal action.” In an email interview, Bernie Banet of Washtenaw Citizens for Ecological Balance, a group that supports the city’s deer management efforts, said the protesters purposefully tried to impede the success of the cull. “The small band of ‘protesters’ seeking to protect deer have been very successfully interfering with this year’s culls, from what I hear,” Banet wrote. “By congregating at the cull sites and, they claim, exercising their free speech rights they are successfully scaring away the deer. That is, in my opinion, their transparent intention, not simply to protest. This effect on the planned culls can be construed as illegal interference with a lawful animal management program.” Banet criticized City Council for failing to pass the resolution. “This does not bode well for the City going forward being able to protect its residents and its parks and neighborhoods from the impact of deer overabundance: collisions with deer on the roads, tick-borne illnesses facilitated by a dense deer population, interference with forest regeneration, and destruction of plantings throughout the city,” he wrote. “A better balance between the right to protest and
male student’s transcripts in mid-June, about a week after the lawsuit was filed, yet the battle regarding due process remained until about a month later. The decision, mirroring a previous 2017 case at the University of Cincinnati in which the court ruled an accused student must receive some type of hearing in cases formed by word of mouth where credibility is in question, evoked an appeal from the University itself citing similar grievances found in the Roe petition. However, Sandberg claims the University has taken the ruling a “step further” even after their appeal. “The Sixth Circuit ruled that the University must require cross-examination by the accused or his agent,” Sandberg said. “So, the key is that they said ‘or his agent’ which would be a personal adviser or a lawyer, which is how it is done within criminal and civil cases. Currently, at other schools it is done by a lawyer. To have it be done by the accused rapist is unbelievable, I don’t know why (the University) felt that it was a better way to go about crossexamination by the accused rapist themself.” As a student going through the
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 — 3A
a government’s right to protect its citizens from an animal menace must be found.” Councilmember Jeff Hayner, D-Ward 1, voted against the measure. He said he did not want to discuss his personal beliefs regarding the cull but defended the protesters. “I really believe that the opposition to this cull is legitimate,” he said. “… They feel that it’s not the right thing to be doing to send guns into our parks, that it’s not necessary, that we should live and let live. I think that these are very valid arguments, and the idea of banging pots and pans and shining lights and yelling and exhibiting other forms of civil disobedience, well, it’s been famously said that the riot is the language of the unheard, and I believe that these people do feel unheard.” Councilmember Ali Ramlawi, D-Ward 5, said one of his primary obligations as an elected official was to make sure residents’ tax dollars were not being wasted — a responsibility that included the money spent on the cull. “I’m all for civil disobedience, but I know it comes at a cost,” Ramlawi said. “You break the law, you break the law and you suffer the consequences of doing so.”
Title IX investigation process, Sandberg said the act of simply reporting is exhausting. “I am currently in a Title IX case in another school,” Sandberg said. “My case currently doesn’t require cross-examination. But, it is already very stressful — it is so much to deal with. A lot of people don’t realize how difficult these Title IX cases are, they just think about the accused. For the person who is the complainant, it is an exhausting process.” LSA sophomore Rebecca Harley, a volunteer at Women at Risk International, a nonprofit providing support for women and children of abuse, believes this ruling will create further, unnecessary mental trauma in already difficult and lengthy situations as described by Sandberg. “This new ruling could create further trauma for survivors of sexual assault,” Harley said. “Being in the presence of your attacker could resurface the trauma of the incident. This is an unnecessary risk that falls solely on a person who has already undergone severe mental and physical suffering.” Read more online at
michigandaily.com
City Council moves to amend seal ordinance after criticism from ACLU LEAH GRAHAM Daily News Editor
City Council moved to amend an ordinance limiting the unauthorized use of Ann Arbor’s official seal at a meeting Monday after the American Civil Liberties Union called restrictions requiring mayoral permission unconstitutional. Mayor Christopher Taylor said the city attorney’s office worked to craft an ordinance to respond adequately to the ACLU’s concerns. “This is an ordinance that complies with those objections,” Taylor said. “It’s our goal, of course, to avoid confusion in the suggestion of affiliation or sponsorship, but it is also our goal to make sure we comply with the First Amendment in all obligations, so I’m glad that this is moving forward and I think this is an effective change.” In July, City Council passed a resolution banning unauthorized displays of the seal, with violations incurring possible fines of up to $10,000. In November, Dan Korobkin, deputy legal director for ACLU of Michigan, and Gayle Rosen, co-chair of the Washtenaw County ACLU Lawyers Committee, sent a letter to the
city criticizing the measure, saying it violated constitutional protections for freedom of speech and calling for Ann Arbor to repeal it immediately. “The City Seal and Flag Ordinance is unconstitutional on its face,” they wrote. “Unlike commercial products, a city seal and f lag do not enjoy trademark protection. As a content-based restriction on free speech, the ordinance is subject to strict scrutiny and cannot survive that rigorous test. And requiring the mayor’s permission to display the seal or f lag is a classic unconstitutional prior restraint on speech.” City Council enforced the ordinance in the case of Ann Arbor resident Ed Vielmetti, who was notified to cease and desist after using the city seal on an Ann Arbor page on localwiki.org about the seal itself. Vielmetti called the letters he and the parent organization of LocalWiki received “threatening.” Vielmetti spoke at the meeting Monday, saying he appreciated City Council’s effort to narrow the prohibitions on using the seal. “The letters, although they were not a ticket, were very
clear threats of a $10,000 fine,” Vielmetti said. “So I thank all of you who voted for this amendment, and I will thank those of you who will change your vote next time.” Councilmembers Jack Eaton, D-Ward 4, Jeff Hayner, D-Ward 1, and Anne Bannister, D-Ward 1, voted against the amendment to the ordinance. The changes to the ordinance strike the permitting provisions while specifically allowing Ann Arbor to obtain an injunction to stop “unlawful use of the f lag and/or seal.” While debating the resolution, Hayner asked Matthew Rechtien, senior assistant city attorney, about a theoretical situation in which an elected official used the city seal on social media. “If I was a councilperson, which I am, and I had some kind of social media account and I presented myself in front of the city seal and I said, ‘Vote no on this, vote yes on this, vote for this person, don’t vote for that person,’ would you consider that a violation of the council rules?” Hayner said. “Would you consider that using the city property?” Rechtien refused to answer Hayner’s hypothetical, saying
he would need all the facts before offering legal advice. “I’m just not going to get into judging a vague hypothetical here on the record in a council meeting,” Rechtien said. Councilmember Zach Ackerman, whose Twitter header was the city seal, said he thought Hayner’s question was in reference to him. “I realized now my cover photo on Twitter is the seal of the City of Ann Arbor, and I think Councilmember Hayner may be alluding to that and I would just say if you take objection to that you’re more than welcome to just call me and I’ll change it if it makes you uncomfortable,” Ackerman said. “I haven’t once thought about it until this very moment.” Councilmember Kathy Griswold, D-Ward 2, said she regretted that City Council had passed the original ordinance at all. “The fact that we wasted staff resources to write this ordinance in the first place and we are now wasting staff resources to talk about whatever conversation we’re having tonight troubles me and I apologize,” Griswold said.
LIBRARY LOT From Page 1A agreement in late December. Will Hathaway, a member of the Ann Arbor Central Park Ballot Committee, commended the city for moving to settle the citizens group’s lawsuit. “This action will help disentangle (the city) from the idea of selling Library Lot development rights to a private corporation,” Hathaway said. “It is time to look forward to the idea of an urban park and civic center on the library block. Creating a consensus vision will take some work and time. All of us want a resulting public space of which we will be proud.” City Councilmember Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2, said she was glad the resolution to wind down the lawsuit was on the agenda. “Whenever there is litigation against the city, especially when it strains from our citizens, our hope is that the litigation is ultimately settled in an amicable agreement,” Lumm said. “The passage of Proposal A in November is a clear statement from residents that the sale of the Library Lot development rights to Core Spaces is not what the majority of residents wanted for the property.” City Administrator Howard Lazarus informed the developers that the city was abandoning the deal in a letter on Dec. 31. “The charter amendment prevents or impairs the city from carrying out the sale of the development rights on the Library Lot,” Lazarus wrote. “Because this situation is obviously one that cannot be cured, the agreement with Core Spaces is terminated. We will arrange for the return of the deposit paid as part of this transaction and await your direction on where and how to send it.” The letter directed Core Spaces to send any further correspondence to him and City Attorney Stephen Postema. In a statement issued Jan. 2, Andrew Wiedner, chief acquisitions officer of Core Spaces, criticized Ann Arbor’s decision to dismantle the agreement. “We strongly disagree with the city’s position as stated in the letter,” Wiedner said. “We are evaluating our options and will be responding in more detail shortly.” At a City Council meeting Dec. 17, Core Spaces attorney I.W. Winston cautioned the city to take steps to avoid provoking legal action. “I do think that there is an opportunity to have discussions and I would hope to have those in a different form in the future to see whether the issues that separate us can be resolved
GUN SAFETY From Page 1A as safe storage of guns and how to work with families with high-risk teenagers, without taking away guns. In addition, given that 2018 was the worst year for gun violence in schools on record, Cunningham expressed the need for further inquiry into whether existing safety measures in schools are effective. For Cunningham, working as a doctor in the emergency department only further highlights the need to focus on firearm injury prevention. “One of the things that’s specific about taking care of patients who have been injured by a gun is the lethality of the bullet is such that there’s not as much you can do after the event,” Cunningham said. “We take care of people who have had horrific injuries, but I want to do work so we not have them in the ER in the first place.” To include non-academics in the project, FACTS created a practitioner advisory board composed of health practitioners, gun owners and stakeholders, pastors, and others involved in the gun violence prevention effort. Tom O’Connor, who also serves on the board of directors for Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership, is a member of the advisory board. O’Connor highlighted the importance of the firearm injury field, emphasizing that gun owners should be engaged in the
without high stakes and very expensive litigation,” Winston said. Had the Core Spaces deal gone through, $5 million of the proceeds would have been allocated to the city’s affordable housing trust fund. Monday night at City Hall, Ann Arbor resident Robert Gordon pointed out that the collapse of the sale meant the city lost money that would have benefitted people struggling to afford the city’s high cost of living. “We have a significant challenge ahead of us,” Gordon said. “It’s one thing to have good faith disagreements about the use of property in downtown Ann Arbor. It’s quite another to ignore the needs of the lower income people of Ann Arbor. Let’s look out for them. That’s a big part of your job.” Aside from legal costs, the city is still facing nearly $250,000 in fees for its failed deal with Core Spaces. Tom Crawford, the city’s chief financial officer, told MLive Ann Arbor would have to pay about $220,000 in fees to a real estate broker that helped the city solicit different development proposals for the site in 2015. The Library Lot has been the subject of another legal challenge prior to the Ann Arbor Central Park Ballot Committee’s complaint. In June, former Councilmember Sumi Kailasapathy, D-Ward 1, and Councilmember Anne Bannister, D-Ward 1, sued the city, Taylor and City Clerk Jacqueline Beaudry for a breach of protocol in the process of selling the Library Lot. The lawsuit alleged that when Taylor and Beaudry signed the contract with Core Spaces, the document finalizing the sale was not presented to City Council. That was supposedly in violation of the city charter, which requires that a minimum of eight councilmembers approve sales worth more than $25,000. During a hearing in early September, Judge David Swartz of the Washtenaw County Circuit Court heard arguments in the case and said he would issue a written opinion, but has not done so yet. Lumm said she hoped the city would find a way to settle all the legal issues pertaining to the Library Lot quickly, noting that the Ballot Committee’s lawsuit was more or less a moot point after Proposal A’s passage. “The purpose of the litigation obviously was to stop that sale, and that now being done, an agreement and court order confirming that the sale to Core will not take place is the simple, natural way to close the book on the issue,” Lumm said. “Hopefully we will also be able to close the book on the other related litigation soon.”
conversation. “With rights come responsibilities… My personal belief is that if gun owners don’t step forward and support solid research and common sense solutions to reducing gun violence, you get policy responses that don’t work and might not make sense,” O’Connor said. FACTS also hopes to create an active field that will outlast the five year duration of the project, prioritizing the need to train future firearm injury researchers. School of Public Health PhD candidate Amanda Mauri is involved in the FACTS policy taskforce. She explained being with the project has given her a network of individuals and experts with similar interests. “What FACTS has really provided me is this great space to interact with the existing renowned researchers within the firearm space,” Mauri said. “I can also connect with other trainees who are interested in firearm-related work both within and outside of Michigan, from the Masters through the Post-Doctoral level.” Mauri also noted the University is well-positioned to lead this growing field due to its existing infrastructure. “We have some of the most established firearm researchers in the U.S. The Injury Center is one of the most established ones in the country,” Mauri said. “This is a historic moment for firearm research in that we can finally start adding to the evidence base.”
Opinion
4A — Wednesday, January 9, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
KIANNA MARQUEZ | COLUMN
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com
MAYA GOLDMAN Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA AND JOEL DANILEWITZ
FINN STORER Managing Editor
Editorial Page Editors
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Emma Chang Joel Danilewitz Samantha Goldstein Elena Hubbell Emily Huhman Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan Sarah Khan Lucas Maiman Magdalena Mihaylova Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland Anu Roy-Chaudhury Alex Satola Ali Safawi Ashley Zhang Sam Weinberger
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
ZACK BLUMBERG | COLUMN
I
Should Britain really Brexit – and can they?
n the summer of 2016, Great Britain stunned the world by passing the “Brexit” referendum to leave the European Union. However, as Britain’s deadline to finalize a deal with the European Union over the terms of their departure grows nearer, the mood in Britain is starting to change. The sense of confusion that had previously enveloped the debate over Brexit is slowly being replaced by panic, as Britain inches closer to the March 29 deadline with no deal in place. As beleaguered Prime Minister Theresa May desperately negotiates with both Parliament and the European Union, something has become clear: Britain shouldn’t leave the European Union, and under the terms Brexit was voted through on, it really can’t. First, there’s the simple fact that leaving the European Union would create problems for Britain. According to research done by the Confederation of British Industry in 2016, 71 percent of CBI member businesses reported that the Britain’s membership in the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. The positive impacts these businesses mention are likely tied to the numerous economic benefits Britain receives as an EU member: access to a single European market through the elimination of tariffs between EU member states and the increased negotiating power Britain had in the global marketplace thanks to the EU’s ability to negotiate as one entity. Additionally, the EU’s free movement policies have proved beneficial for both British businesses, who used the policies to plug labor gaps with foreign workers, and British citizens, who used the policies to find jobs abroad in other EU states (there are more than 750,000 British citizens working abroad in the EU). While nationalists complain about the influx of immigrants from poorer Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary, Britain needs immigration. Since 1973, Britain’s birth rate has been below replacement level every year (it is currently 1.8 births per couple). An aging, declining population would put an immense strain on Britain’s public services. To top it all off,
Britain’s position within the EU is already more advantageous than that of a standard member: Britain is allowed to use its own currency, the British pound, meaning the value of its currency is not tied to the economies of other EU nations. While pontificating about the economic advantages Britain currently enjoys as an EU member is one thing, another grimmer and more immediate issue faces Brexit right now: On the terms it was promised, it appears to be completely infeasible. For starters, using a simple majority as a trigger for leaving the EU was a nonsensical decision that went against Britain’s own precedent. In 1975, Britain held the United Kingdom European Communities membership referendum, which was a vote on whether they should remain in the European Economic Community. The British government carried out this vote to demonstrate public support; subsequently, 67 percent of the electorate voted to remain a part of said Common Market. To ensure consistency, this same procedure should have been used when leaving the EU, and would have helped ensure strong support for leaving, instead of the chaotic mess Britain currently finds itself in. Potentially, there could be grounds for holding another Brexit vote on the principle that a 60 percent majority should be required. Secondly, Brexit negotiations will simply never satisfy Parliament, making a deal between the European Union and Britain unworkable (and for Britain, the only thing worse than leaving the EU with a bad deal is leaving the EU with no deal at all). The simple truth is that there are too many parties and too many issues — it would be near impossible for May to come up with a deal that appeases everyone. Between trade regulations, oversight of the Ireland-Northern Ireland border, and the status of customs unions, there are too many partisan interests at play for May to create a solid coalition. Parliament isn’t the only group May cannot persuade; British citizens who voted to leave might have even higher expectations of what May can wrestle out of the
EU. The abundant lies spread by the Leave campaign in the lead-up to the Brexit vote drive these unrealistically high expectations. As part of their campaign, Leave guaranteed that leaving the EU would allow an additional £350 million per week to be invested into National Health Services, while economic analysis showed the actual number was closer to £250 million (the campaign was called out for this lie a few days before the vote and walked back on it, but not before convincing nearly half of British voters it was true). Additionally, Daniel Hannan, a member of Parliament for the Conservative Party who helped lead the Brexit movement, said before the vote, “Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Since then, May has repeatedly explained that leaving the EU means leaving the single market. In creating a campaign backed heavily by falsehood and exaggeration, Leave has placed unattainable expectations on May, meaning no deal she brings back can satisfy British citizens who voted for Brexit on the basis of Leave’s false promises. While Britain should do everything it can to try to stay in the EU, overturning Brexit will be difficult. With May unlikely to back down, the responsibility falls to Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, to call for a no confidence vote, allowing Labour to gain a majority in Parliament and hold a referendum to overturn the initial decision. It might not be easy, but with so little time left to avoid a no-deal Brexit, it seems like Britain’s best option. Lastly, this piece only exists because of deceptive campaigning and ill-informed voting. In a world heavily influenced by social media, it is more important than ever that we hold institutions accountable for what they publish, and simultaneously work to be informed citizens and voters. While we at home haven’t voted for anything as long-term or consequential as Brexit, the mere existence of this column is a reminder of the duties we have as citizens of a democracy. Zack Blumberg can be reached at zblumber@umich.edu.
EMILY CONSIDINE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT EMCONSID@UMICH.EDU.
T
New year, same climate vulnerability
hough we are basking in the light of the new year, we cannot forget an utterly devastating realization that the world came to after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report regarding global warming near the end of 2018: Continued human activity causing greenhouse gas emissions will raise the global temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040, predictably causing severe and unprecedented effects of climate change. Perhaps the most feared aspect of this issue is the unknown and the questions that arise from the sole phrase “climate change”. We have come to connote this phrase as something that we should be fearful of, but why? In essence, I believe that when we choose to come to terms with the issues of climate change and educate ourselves on what must be done to prevent it, then we will open ourselves up to a collective that will make the large-scale effort feasible. Furthermore, it is crucial to outline how the effects of the predicted climate change will affect all of our lives, not to strike fear into your hearts but for the reason that we will all be able to do more when we know more. As a result of increased global warming, public health, food and water security, human security and international economic growth are likely subject to risks by climate change. The IPCC is highly to moderately confident that increased global temperatures will cause complications for the livelihood of disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, intensify the risks of ozone-related illnesses and vectorborne diseases and minimize the net yields of crops among major continents. As we continue activities that increase the overall temperature of the atmosphere, we are making ourselves more susceptible to disease and impoverished conditions in underprivileged areas. Ultimately, this exemplifies how the populations of all lifeforms susceptible to calamities will not be the ones who are directly contributing to the
damage, and thus spur arguments that global injustice has become prominent in the wake of selfpropelling maneuvers made by world leaders. Not only will we be affected by the complications created for our public health, but we will also be responsible for the leaders we choose to direct our state towards just or injust climate action. Current pathways that have been suggested for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will require rapid and extensive transitions in energy, land, urban infrastructure and industrial systems. The IPCC is highly confident that the use of existing technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in industry will be limited by economic capacity and large-scale industrial capacity. Additionally, the transition of urban infrastructure will be limited by institutional and sociocultural barriers. Finally, the transition of agricultural land use will be limited by technological and environmental barriers across regions. As we take steps that attempt to reduce the overall temperature of the atmosphere, we will be challenged by the interconnection of the sectors within our society that will be affected accordingly. As a result, people of all societal sectors will have to develop effective methods of collaboration and diplomacy as we look to compromise on the optimal way to proceed with generating solutions. While we maintain hope that we can alleviate the climate change issue with the correct action, it is important to understand that the scale of adaptation that will be necessary if we fail to completely mitigate these issues may not be of a capacity that is feasible to us. The IPCC is moderately confident that while there are dozens of adaptation options for reducing the risk to natural and managed ecosystems, sea level rise and economic growth in urban areas and adaptation to ecosystems, food and health systems will likely be
more challenging. This is due to the adaptation capacity of these vulnerable regions becoming more limited with increased warming. Furthermore, it is important that we begin to strategize how we can eliminate the issues posed by climate change completely rather than prepare to adapt to the repercussions, because it is unlikely that successful and total adaptation will be possible. Despite my worries regarding global warming and climate change, I am confident that the steps taken by institutions hosting leaders in public research and initiatives towards developing solutions for these largescale environmental issues will continue growing in significance and thus contribute to implemented solutions. As a part of the Blue Sky Initiative formed during the end of 2017, a team composed of professors, directors and program managers within various schools at the University of Michigan was created in the summer of 2018 to create the Global CO2 Initiative. The objective of this team is to research and identify commercially sustainable approaches that can be pursued to reduce global CO2 emissions using a system-level process of technology assessment, technology development and commercialization. Principal investigator Volker Sick, a professor at the University, has expressed the team’s eagerness to follow through with the initiative in a statement following the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in December 2018, “The conclusion of COP24 in Poland we believe marks the end of official climate diplomacy and begins the era of climate action. Carbon management technologies and policies will be part of this new era and we are excited about sharing in this mission with all of you.”
Kianna Marquez can be reached at kmarquez@umich.edu.
MILES STEPHENSON | COLUMN
S
In 2019, let’s celebrate humanity
croll through the average news or social media feed and you’ll see exclamations about the end of times. Whether a claim about the incoming nuclear war, Trumpmania and the fall of democracy, or an indictment of children’s overconsumption of technology, many seem to be up in arms about the state of the world in 2019. But how bad are things truly? And how does the world today compare to the world just a few generations ago? Surely if the world was nearing apocalyptic standards we would see an increase in negative statistics, particularly in the youth of today. As the sample of the population that would be most likely to reflect the consequences of modern societal changes, we should see an increase in violence or drug use or hateful demonstrations among today’s youth if the panic were to be believed. This, however, is the opposite of reality. Today, teens are using less drugs and alcohol than the generations that came before them, having less unprotected sex and are exercising more, reflecting an unprecedented societal consciousness about physical well-being. Despite the sensationalist media coverage, gun violence is far lower now than in 1993 (a whopping 49 percent decrease), teens are less likely to bring weapons to school, and teens are less likely to fight at school. Teens are also more proficient in writing and mathematics, more likely to wear seatbelts and less likely to experience hate comments. As the news website Vox puts it, “today’s teenagers are the best-behaved generation on record.” So where does this massive concern for the “smartphone” generation come from? Some experts point to “juvenoia,” or the exaggerated fear of the effects of social change on youth, as the root cause. Michael Stevens, a popular American educator, explains this phenomenon. “Children are the future of the species, so it’s reasonable to assume that nature would select for features in a species that cause adult members to prefer the way they were raised and distrust anything different. After all, parents by definition, were a reproductive success for the species; they made new
members. So whatever choices and influences brought them to that point must have been good enough. Any deviation from that could be a problem.” But perhaps these seismic crises must be viewed from a worldwide perspective, not just from the wellbeing of the newest generations. From this standpoint, however, nearly every positive statistic about human life has increased as well. Around the globe, life expectancy has doubled since 1800. In the next three decades, more people will receive formal education
There is no better time for a human to exist on our planet than this very moment than in all of human history up to this point, and everywhere people are earning three times more than they did in 1950. World Resources Institute reports that “Worldwide, the number of people living on less than $1 per day-the international standard for extreme poverty-has dropped from 1.25 billion in 1990 to 986 million in 2004,” and even countries in states of extreme privation today have lower infant mortality rates than the most successful, safe countries in 1950. Since the dawn of humans, inequities have persisted, and it is unlikely that we will ever eradicate them from society. That said, the general standard of living has improved for the average person. Those that would have once been relegated to famine and homelessness in a past society can now enjoy experiences that would have been viewed as luxuries for most of history. As the Heritage Foundation reports, “The typical poor household, as defined by the government, has a car and air conditioning, two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR.” This point is made not to belittle the woes of those struggling with poverty, but instead to show how far the
definition of what it means to be “poor” in the world has improved. This revolution is largely from contributions in science and medicine from countries like the United States and from institutions dedicated to the improvement of mankind including the University of Michigan. Even when looking at the state of the environment, a realm of news saturated with doomsday predictions, the prevalence of the six major pollutants – carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone and PM2.5 – in the atmosphere has fallen dramatically. Furthermore, carbon emissions in the United States have decreased steadily since the 1940s and the biggest trend of 2018, “The Straw Ban,” helped introduce the issue of plastic pollution in our oceans to the public imagination. This isn’t to say the environment faces no ecological issues. There’s a long road ahead for humans in their struggle to manage the health of the planet and to mitigate the effects of climate change, but I believe no solution will be met before we consider an appropriate appreciation for how technology and the Internet has helped us make things better. The quality of life on Earth is increasing every day, and nearly every statistic available argues that there is no better time for a human to exist on our planet than this very moment. And yet, this apocalyptic thinking endures. For most of history, this kind of thinking would have been appropriate, as disease, famine, oppression and suffering plagued the majority of humans. But in 2019, I believe we need to update our outlook. I’m not advocating for blind positivity, nor the lack of appropriate criticism when corruption or the misallocation of resources occurs. Instead, as I reflect on the coming of the new year, I advocate for an appreciation of the unprecedented well-being of mankind and the role technology and medicine have played in improving life on our planet. Research and educational institutions like the University must continue to do their part in improving humanity, but it’s OK, from time to time, to stand back and marvel at the genius of the modern world.
Miles Stephenson can be reached at mvsteph@umich.edu.
Arts
5— Wednesday, January 9, 2019
REVISITING SERIES
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
Over two decades later, Short stories for the days and ‘Buffy’ still slaying you might be short on time SAYAN GHOSH Daily Arts Writer
The last “Revisiting” piece I wrote covered “Mad Men,” a show that many deem to have ushered in the “Golden Age” of television, along with classics such as “The Sopranos,” “Six Feet Under” and “Deadwood.” In a similar vein, Joss Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” has occupied a space where its mixture of cult status and critical acclaim has elevated it into the pantheon of legendary TV. And yet, I spent the first 18 years of my life never watching it — not due to my ignorance of its existence, but rather because I thought it had a “silly name.” Over its nearly 150-episode span, “Buffy” somehow traversed nearly every sociological and philosophical quandary you could think of. Its basic premise is that the protagonist Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar, “The Crazy Ones”) is a special teenager endowed with superhuman strength and other attributes to help defeat the demonic presence in her hometown of Sunnydale, California. Her group of friends, known as the “Scooby Gang,” help her throughout the process. It still took me embarrassingly long to stop dismissing the fantastical, supernatural elements of the show, even though it is these very elements that make the show so intriguing. Academics, in particular, seem to have an affinity towards the show, creating (perhaps facetiously) a new academic field called Buffy-ology to analyze the social dynamics it portrays. To them, the demons and monsters can be compared to anything from terrorists to sexual predators. It is possible, due to its influence, that popular culture is becoming a more respectable subject of study. I still maintain that the show took entirely too long (nearly two seasons) to find its groove. But
when it did, it really did. It features some of the best portrayals of young adult life I have seen on TV, both acknowledging but not belittling the drama and emotions that pervade it. It handles high school life especially well, leading to a slight dropoff in quality after many main characters eventually graduate. The “Buffyverse” has remained so popular through the years that it has permeated nearly every form of media. For starters, the series “Angel,” a spinoff centering on the vampire of the same name (David
It is possible, due to its influence, that popular culture is becoming a more respectable subject of study
Boreanaz, “Bones”), received similar amounts of acclaim. There have been (frankly not very good) novels, six video games and recently, an in-development sequel. “Buffy” may not have the prestige drama veneer of “Mad Men” or “The Sopranos” or the gritty realism of “The Wire,” but that does not mean it is necessarily any less complex. “Buffy” is fantastical and surreal, but it uses those elements to make as valuable a social commentary as the former, all while dismantling TV tropes and norms that were all too prevalent in the era. “Innocence” (Season 2, Episode 14) This is the episode that firmly
convinced me the show was on a path towards greatness. It starts as a touching portrayal of young love and sexual awakening, but the turn it takes as a result was my first true jaw-on-thefloor moment in the series. While Buffy’s loss of innocence is heartbreaking, it aids in her development, allowing her to end the episode a stronger, more mature character. Perhaps the most resonant aspect of the episode is the fact that the emotions Buffy feels are a universal experience at that age, even if we do not have to go out and kill demons. “The Body” (Season 5, Episode 16) “The Body” lies in the same tier of episodes as “Ozymandias” and “College.” In a show whose strengths lied in its subtle use of music and sound effects, this episode contained neither. Sure, it is a painful watch, containing barely any (if at all) catharsis. Like Buffy, we are dragged on a rollercoaster of confusion, sadness and horror, lacking any discernible explanation or justification for what just happened. It’s actually one of the less fantastical episodes of the series, which makes the events that transpire even more shocking and brutal. It tackles human mortality in a way that we can all relate to. “Hush” (Season 4, Episode 10) It takes a tremendous amount of skill to make a compelling episode of television with little to no dialogue. Like the more recent episode of “Bojack Horseman” (“Fish Out of Water”), “Hush” features little speaking roles due to a group of ghouls stealing the voices of Sunnydale’s residents. These ghouls, known as “The Gentlemen,” are some of the show’s creepiest beings, even scaring the cast during the episode’s production. Overall, the episode is an intriguing examination of the power of language in its ability to express clearly yet also to obscure.
THE WB
BOOK REVIEW
‘Milkman’ investigates the modern day with ingenuity JOHN DECKER Daily Arts Writer
It takes only a page or two of reading to realize that the cover of “Milkman” is deceptive. The binding of the 2018 winner of the Man Booker Prize depicts an innocuous, fluorescent-pink sunset — one of those once a year, stop-and-snap-a-photo sunsets that makes “Milkman” stands out among its fellow books. The sedative lightness of the cover seems to admit innocuousness. But “Milkman” is not innocuous. Nor is it gentle, or quiet, or apologetic — nothing that the cover may suggest about a subdued, romantic narrative. To say I wasn’t excited to read the Booker winner would be a lie — based on the superficiality of covers and excerpts, I have rooted for “Milkman” since its
nomination on the long-list — but the way I fell in love with reading “Milkman” was not in the pleasant, blushing manner I had
“Milkman” Anna Burns Graywolf Press Dec. 4, 2018
expected. It was a cycle of shock, recoil and return. Anna Burns’s third novel narrates the story of an 18-yearold girl (referred to as “Middle
Sister,” as none of the characters in “Milkman” are prescribed actual names) over the course of two months. Her unnamed town is saturated with violence — violence from the ubiquitously demonized enemy countries “over the water,” violence from the renouncers of the state that control Middle Sister’s town and violence from the state police as they intervene in a village of scattered revolutionaries. Surprisingly, though, this warzone setting is but an offhand normality in the book. Instead, it is Milkman, a paramilitary that begins making unwarranted advances on middle sister, that takes the place of chief antagonist in the book. At first glance, Burns lays out an insidious landscape that seems to hyperbolize the dark experience of growing up as a woman in the late 20th century. Maybe,
ALIX CURNOW Daily Arts Writer
We are all constantly running out of time. In reading that sentence you just ran out of at least one second. If that gives you as much stress as it does me, this list is for you. Reading to me is like food and air — I can’t go a day without it. But, recently, getting through entire novels seems to be taking up far too much of my time. Yet, I still crave the act of reading. The creative thrill of piecing together strings of words into images that only your mind pays witness to can be addicting. This is why I’ve started to maximize the most of my time and brain capacity by reading short fiction. Through reading short fiction, I feel as
Through reading short fiction, I feel as though I’ve fulfilled my thirst for creative writing in the least amount of time possible
though I’ve fulfilled my thirst for creative reading in the least amount of time possible. The short stories I’ve read are quick, important and detailed, and can be found online for free. And, conveniently, are in the following list. 1. “At the Birthplace of Sound” by Akil Kumussary The author of this short story, Akil Kumussary, is a recent Charles Pick South Asian Fellow in fiction. Her novel “Half Gods” has gone on to achieve critical acclaim, being selected as the Editor’s Choice for the New York Times Book Review. She was also my creative writing professor last semester. I accidentally stumbled upon her short story
Burns seems to suggest, the descent of society would look like this for all genders. But on second thought, the landscape Middle Sister walks — and how her hyperaware, rightfullyparanoid thoughts congeal in it — becomes painfully real. Middle Sister’s encounters with Milkman while walking, her fears of being drugged, the pernicious comments coming from third brother-in-law, all resonate uncomfortably with the realties meeting women today. This daring, critical kick at that experience of being a woman pays off. The apotheosis of the book’s dark and applicable portrayals is perhaps Tablets Girl, a “girl who was actually a woman,” that is one of the local outcasts in Middle Sister’s town due to her propensity to poison people. This usually takes place, most suitably and without retribution, in bars. People flee from Tablets Girl, people watch their drinks when Tablets Girl is around. It’s not just Burns’s clear allusion to date-rape that that is to be appreciated here, but her spiked humor and exaggeration also. This is not to reduce “Milkman” down to a forced, constricted focus on genderpolitics though. Burns’s writing alone is remarkable (something I refuse to say passively). “Milkman” is
while doing research for this notebook. After thinking “That’s my professor!” I began to read the story. Upon finishing it, I thought, “Oh my God … that’s my professor.” If you’ve never read anything written in the second person, I’d suggest starting at this story. The use of second person allows the story to come alive in a way third or first person wouldn’t allow. Kumussary’s prose alone is enough to keep the reader interested. Every sentence is not only needed but wanted. She depicts the “notso-quite” and “almost enough” limbo all people go through in a way that isn’t pitying, but celebratory of the excitement in the “in-between” moments of life. 2. “A Trip” by Claudia Ulloa Donoso (Translated by Lily Meyer) Akil assigned this story as required reading in her class. In this piece of flash fiction not reaching over 1,000 words, the main character goes on a vacation in the stomach of her cat. The story is unexpected, hilarious and would pair perfectly well with a cup of morning coffee. 3. “Marzipan” by Aimee Bender I discovered Aimee Bender last semester, and she has easily become one of my favorite authors. Her collection of short stories titled “Girl in the Flammable Skirt” should be on everyone’s to-read list. “Marzipan” was one of the stories in this book that particularly stood out to me. All of the stories in this collection are told through the perspective of a woman. They all possess a certain type of fantastical flare. “Marzipan” focuses on how it feels to lose a parent. The story starts off with a woman being concerned over the fact that her husband’s stomach has taken on the shape of a donut — with a gaping hole in the middle, coincidentally happening after the passing of her father-in-law. The woman then becomes concerned with her own stomach, as she is impregnated at age 50. The story takes a gruesome turn for the best, but you’ll have to read it to find out more. It is a whacky and creative metaphor for loss and grief. Bender trusts the minds of her readers are as wild and interesting as her own. 3. “The Coast of Leitrim” by Kevin Barry
brimming with endlessly long paragraphs, lose-your-train-ofthought stretched sentences and digressing thoughts from Middle Sister that render the book incredibly complex. At first, I was perturbed by this formal and royal-esque writing, especially upon an encounter with a paragraph spanning four, almost five, pages. But as I continued, I found myself — in an unlikely way — reading Middle Sister’s voice in an uninterrupted pattern even more critical and translucent than I expected possible. This is assisted by Burns’s near-perfect draw of synonyms through the book, making her writing appear dependably careful and personal. I was enamored by the characters in “Milkman” and the abrasive humor that was tacked onto them. It isn’t often that I get a full cast of characters (narrator, antagonist, family) that are so real, so exciting to encounter. Most memorable are the “wee sisters,” Middle
After reading this short story in The New Yorker this October, I understood love a little better than I had before.
Diving into any of these stories will open your eyes to a perception of the world you haven’t experienced before
You meet the main character alone in his dead uncle’s cottage. An infatuation (or is it love?) with a barista takes away his loneliness for a bit. Was that all this barista did for him, though? Check out this short story to uncover more about this character and his lonely and realistic journey through love. 4. “Puppy” by George Saunders Who would I be if I didn’t include a George Saunders story in my list of recommended short fiction? Saunders is acutely aware of the terrible things humans do, and he’s also aware of the humor that can be found in it. The short story “Puppy” was actually the first piece of fiction I read by him. The wit and pacing in this story immediately had me inclined to read more. Featured in his book of short stories “The Tenth of December,” “Puppy” is a sad and strangely hilarious recounting of the adoption of a puppy. This seems like a wholesome activity but, naturally, humans find a way to mess it up. Diving into any of these stories will open your eyes to a world you haven’t experienced before. The authors are brilliant. The stories are emotionally resonant. The time it takes to read them is short. Take a break from your day and enter the world of someone else’s for a bit. I promise you, it’ll be worth it.
Sister’s three younger sisters who, despite their young ages, are infatuated with topics such as French revolutionaries, going through “Kafka phases” and eavesdropping every moment they get. Characters like the wee sisters offer unexpected gratification along Burns’s dark timeline of events. The real humor displayed make “Milkman” all the more authentic and pleasurable. I love “Milkman” because it is a fruitful attempt to offer me hints of a human experience I will never be able to understand, let alone be familiar with. Perhaps the most evocative and vivid account in the vein of social-rebellion and unwantedgaze I have ever encountered, “Milkman” is a narrative that has been told repeatedly, even frequently in the 21st century. Burns’s unequivocal writing turns this narrative into a fearsome chant, one well worth shouting along to.
Arts
6 — Wednesday, January 9, 2019
FILM REVIEW
Bullock bold in ‘Bird Box’ SAMANTHA NELSON Daily Arts Writer
Doomsday. The End of Days. The Rapture. Whatever name it takes, the dramatization of the moment of reckoning for the human race continues to fuel the film industry without fail. By now, Hollywood has presumably squeezed out every last plotline possible about the world’s demise. Yet, even after 2012 came and went, the end-of-lifeas-we-know-it craze persists. Our expectations for films within this genre are understandably low, given the common threads of painfully predictable plotlines, poor action and weak direction found in films like “The Knowing,” “2012” and “This is the End.” However, “Bird Box,” Netflix’s latest apocalyptic flick, is perhaps an outlier within its class. Fresh, thought-provoking and terrifying, through Sandra Bullock’s talent and strategic fiddling with chronology, “Bird Box” offers more than the flame-filled skies, splitting streets and screaming pedestrians that we expect of it. Cynical loner Malorie (Sandra Bullock, “Gravity”) cannot help but dread the invasion of her solitary lifestyle her progressing pregnancy will inevitably yield. While initially detached from the influx of news of mass suicides occurring overseas, Malorie is thrust into panic when the glazed-eye, suicidal individuals materialize within her town. Somehow escaping the mayhem
alive, Malorie and a slew of fellow survivors determine the key to their survival is to blind themselves to the outside world, realizing that through seeing, they will likely meet the same fates as the corpses littering the streets. As tensions build, fears
“Bird Box” Netflix grow and literal darkness ensues, the survivors struggle to maintain their humanity as they adapt, quickly learning their realities will never be the same again. Though riddled with moments of confusion we manage to follow along (our hearts racing every step of the way) to the end of the film, thanks to Sandra Bullock’s superb acting. Malorie serves as our muchneeded guide through the bizarre, post-apocalyptic world that “Bird Box” conjures. Her sturdy, no-bull demeanor produces a character who is consistent and tangible. Viewers, like the terrified characters within the film, are desperate to latch onto something solid amidst the unpredictable and harrowing backdrop of their world — where a tool as essential as eyesight is limited. Along with her firmness, viewers are able to find comfort and solace in the quiet relationship Malorie builds with fellow survivor, Tom (Trevante Rhodes, “Moonlight”). The refreshing thing
about this romantic subplot is its subtlety. Also working in the film’s favor is its usage of time. Two parallel timelines operate to show the present and the past. Viewers begin the movie in a state of utter confusion, following a blindfolded woman and two children down a daunting, gray river. Audiences, drawn in from this point of curiosity, have most of their questions answered in the second timeline, which illustrates flashbacks from six months prior. Our furrowed brows slowly begin to relax as we begin to piece together the intersections between present and past. While elements like Bullock’s acting chops and the manipulation of time make “Bird Box” an intriguing watch, it should be known that this is not in any way a mild or ‘light’ movie. The sensations we are left with after watching are comparable to those that linger after sitting through an episode of “Black Mirror.” We are impressed and fascinated by the film’s imagination of a reality where sight, a quality that is normally so simply taken for granted, is restricted. At the same time, however, over the course of the film, we develop a sickening twist in our stomachs, nauseated and distressed by the unpleasant nature of humans in crisis. Its intense fear factor aside, “Bird Box” should be praised for its inventiveness. In fact, the film’s simultaneous ability to make us jump with fright and
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
reflect deeply may just be enough to erase the wrongs of its predecessors and redeem the apocalypse genre altogether.While elements like Bullock’s acting chops and the manipulation of time make “Bird Box” an intriguing watch, it should be known that this is not in any way a mild or ‘light’ movie. The sensations that we are left with after watching
‘The Plotters’ a thriller JOHN DECKER Daily Arts Writer
The world is familiar with the professional killer trope: “Star Wars,” the James Bond novels and even Pulp Fiction all include some reiteration of the same type of character. And for the right reason: Readers devour these stories. The remorseless, accessible killers exist in realms where the borders of reality are difficult to identify, and excitingly easy to contort. Un-Su Kim takes this trope to a new level in his first book translated to English; all of the characters in “The Plotters” are assassins except for a select few. These are not paid killers who are hired by someone else for dramatic effect, the killers themselves are the central focus of the book. Kim looks deep into the killers’ humanity and at the complex socio-political sphere they operate within. “The Plotters” settles its crosshairs over Reseng, a thirtysomething Korean man who has been working as a for-hire assassin for years. Adopted by Old Raccoon (a vacant, older man who works in tandem with assassins) as a child, this world is all Reseng knows. He flourishes in an environment where men labelled “Plotters” take orders for homicides, in turn handing these orders and victim profiles over to assassins. It is an environment where corruption is ubiquitous, tacitly suggesting that, everyday, disappearances or political deaths — outright murder or not — are the result of the Plotters and their transactions. While “The Plotters” at times seems unsure of what it is trying to accomplish plot-wise, it is in his characters that Un-Su Kim shines as a writer. The characters in the novel are diverse in temperament and realistically formed — greatly
nuanced for the “typical” assassin type. While initially the novel is disproportionately saturated with men and (at times, the often accurately ludicrous) male perspective, Kim thankfully escapes this trough by the final half of his novel. He offers several female characters, most centrally Mina, who is, along with Reseng, one of the most fantastically formed characters. Mina is both flawed and a badass. She takes on stereotypical female propensities that authors often disregard when employing a
“The Plotters” Un-Su Kim Doubleday Publishing January 29, 2019
“strong woman” archetype. She is annoyingly talkative, cares about her physical appearance and is physically meek. Simultaneously, however, she fights for a cause, is remarkably intelligent and remains the calmest amongst all of the characters in the face of peril. She is a shining example of Kim’s ability to craft truthful, balanced characters. Mina, while certainly imperfect, is a refreshing offer of a female character in a thriller novel. Authors molding (usually female) characters often feel the need to choose between good and bad, between “manic pixie” and socially altruistic. Mina, along with the many other characters of “The Plotters,” is allowed to be both. The story of “The Plotters” is interesting. The writing is good, for the most part. There are certainly sloppy lines, especially when it comes to dialogue, though this
perhaps can be attributed to the translation element of the novel. Depending on the intensity of the scene at hand, the book is not remarkably difficult to put down. There are gripping scenes —they just do not come with frequency. Although its characters stand out, “The Plotters” slips into an ill-fated middle ground between literary fiction and the thrillermystery fiction familiar in works such as “The Girl on the Train.” Kim seems unable to decide on one territory — or perhaps is just unwilling to examine both territories entirely at the same time. There are two or three especially moving scenes in the work where Reseng’s humanity (and sometimes his inability to adhere to it) is revealed. Principals of love and loss are toyed with eloquently. However, these passages falter when Kim later neglects them, juggling instead with his thriller plot, trading blood and adrenaline for half-hearted examinations of literary themes every few chapters. It is difficult to be wholly enamored with “The Plotters,” especially when sincere themes seem diluted by a desire to continue to force moments of drama and violence. Thrillers, both onscreen and read, are often made or broken by their ability to trick audiences and retain their attention for the span of the story. Characters such as Reseng and Mina — characters that feel remarkably authentic — do this uniquely, as it is hard not to lean into their stories and human depth. “The Plotters” is a good thriller for its willingness to investigate outside of the at-hand, adrenalinebegetting drama and the novel takes refreshing breaths. In the future, hopefully Kim expands the appeal of his work with even more of these voyages.
distressed by the unpleasant nature of humans in crisis. Its intense fear factor aside, “Bird Box” should be praised for its inventiveness. In fact, the film’s simultaneous ability to make us jump with fright and reflect deeply may just be enough to erase the wrongs of its predecessors and redeem the apocalypse genre altogether.
CONCERT REVIEW
Getting cozy in Detroit for The Internet’s show ROBERT MANSUETTI Senior Arts Editor
There’s something so satisfying about going to a concert to catch a break from life kicking your ass. On December 12, when I was sinking in the mire that was the final days of fall semester, I nonetheless decided the best use of my time before a final exam was to drive to Detroit to see The Internet (yes, the band) live. Despite some logistical hiccups, which resulted in me driving alone, in a borrowed car, with a manual transmission, I still managed to scoot down the highway to Detroit. On the downtown streets, I avoided the high-vis vest types harping their parking lots and opted to poorly parallel park only a block away from the venue. Walking to the steps of Saint Andrews Hall and beholding people still waiting in line almost an hour after doors opened was an omen the atmosphere that night was going to be electric. A pat down and a trip to will call later, I was armed with a photo pass on my wrist, which gave me William Miller from “Almost Famous” levels of confidence as I smooth-talked my way into the exclusive VIP seating upstairs. Opener Moonchild took the stage as soon as I found an advantageous spot to settle on the railing. Their brand was
NETFLIX
BOOKS REVIEW
are comparable to those that linger after sitting through an episode of “Black Mirror.” We are impressed and fascinated by the film’s imagination of a reality where sight, a quality that is normally so simply taken for granted, is restricted. At the same time, however, over the course of the film, we develop a sickening twist in our stomachs, nauseated and
Walking to the stpes of Saint Andrews Hall and beholding people still waiting in line almost an hour after doors opened was an omen in the atmosphere
slightly Vulfpeckian, lo-fi funk with tinges of pop and jazz. They were nothing to write home about until the main vocalist, Amber Navran, and the two pianists flanking her sides each pulled a saxophone or trumpet seemingly out of nowhere, much to the crowd’s surprise. Maybe it was a testament to the audience’s attention level that we didn’t notice the array of instruments at their feet for a song or two, but after they busted out the
brass, our eyes and ears were captivated by their sweet symphony. Moonchild didn’t stop there; they showcased their talent as multi-instrumentalists by playing flutes and clarinets to boot. While the crowd gathered was not quite their mellow target audience, we still vibed with them, especially when they got everyone chanting along to a cover of Jill Scott’s “A Long Walk.” They exited to joyous applause, not stealing the show from the main act but serving up a savory appetizer: the perfect kind of opener. After Moonchild had packed up their instruments and bright lights flooded the venue once again, the wait for the top-billed band was par for the course (read: almost criminally long), but the in-house stereo system kept it lively, which is almost too easy to do in Detroit when you play “First Day Out” by Tee Grizzley. So when the music abruptly cut and the lights went dim, the audience was roaring. A five-man wrecking crew piled onto the tight platform to the opening kicks and snares of “Roll (Burbank Funk),” and immediately everyone in the packed Saint Andrews Hall was bobbing to the music. Both the crowd and band were in perpetual motion the remainder of the evening, stopping only for a second after the intro song when frontwoman, Syd, took a swig of her drink from a paper cup and set it down near a speaker. “Hold on, let me secure this tea,” she said to the crowd’s laughter, as drummer Christopher Smith started to play the opening notes of “Dontcha.” Other than that track, the setlist was comprised of cuts from Ego Death and their 2018 release Hive Mind, with the balance unsurprisingly favoring the more recent. The first half of their performance was more geared to cutting a rug, with crowd favorite singles “La Di Da” and “Come Over” doing the heavy lifting. And yes, The Internet had two literal Persian rugs on stage, a couch stationed on top of them. While Smith and producer Matt Martians mainly sat behind their drum set and synthesizer respectively, guitarist Steve Lacy, bassist Patrick Paige II and Syd didn’t hesitate to get comfortable. Paige and Syd flopped on the couch and cheered on Lacy as he took over for “Beat Goes On,” while Syd and Lacy sat in awe of Paige’s meditative verse which closes out “It Gets Better (With Time),” a song that Syd took a somber moment to dedicate to their late friend Mac Miller. On stage, The Internet looks a motley bunch, each aesthetically adding their own stylistic flair: Lacy, who I am convinced can make any piece of clothing look hot, rocked a tie-dye shirt, split toe boots
and a rainbow guitar straps; Syd was unassuming in her plain white T-shirt and ultraflared pants; Smith happily
Much like the crowd packed within walls of the venue, The Internet represents a variety of ages, backgrounds, styles and personalities
drummed along without a shirt. Much like the crowd packed within walls of the venue, The Internet represents a variety of ages, backgrounds, styles and personalities. But together, they somehow make it work, and get the crowd to work in unison, too. As Syd and Lacy slowly strode from side-to-side strumming and singing along to “Curse,” the mass on the main floor copied them, swinging in sync with the twosome like the Hall was playing Simon Says. We were enchanted by the love songs, but also bounced to the triumphant songs like “Get Away” and “Just Sayin.” For the latter, Syd even coached us through the hook (“You fucked up!”) recognizing the audience’s adrenalized engagement. “I know how Detroit get loud as fuck,” she yelled, a wide smile on her face. With a longerthan-average set and magical prowess, they gave us a reason to get loud. Everyone left with vibrancy coursing through their veins. The Internet ended their set a tad unceremoniously, but with a good sense of humor: They picked up their instruments and shuffled off-stage as the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme played. Perhaps a bit ironic, as I had to return to the empty reality of the bleak winter night outside and Ann Arbor where work awaited, or perhaps a bit self-aware, as The Internet keeps up with the constant pressure of touring as they continue across the United States before embarking for Australia and Europe. Nonetheless, exams happen and sold-out shows will be played, because on nights like this, The Internet reminds us the beat goes on.
ODD FUTURE RECORDS
“ This must be
the
” place
ILLUSTRATION BY CASEY TIN
statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | JA N UA RY 9, 2019
Annie Klus /Daily
2B
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 // The Statement
statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | JA N UA RY 9, 2019
Managing Statement Editor Andrea Pérez Balderrama Deputy Editors Matthew Harmon Shannon Ors
Designers Liz Bigham Kate Glad Copy Editors Miriam Francisco Madeline Turner
Coming up for air
Photo Editor Annuie Klusendorf Editor in Chief Maya Goldman Managing Editor Finntan Storer
BY MATTHEW HARMON, DEPUTY STATEMENT EDITOR
I
n terms of an introduction, this is a column about nothing in particular. But it’s also a column about anything under the sun. I don’t know if this affords me unmeasurable literary freedom or if it cages me in, wandering aimlessly around the halls of banality. But as a circus manager in charge of transporting the big top from town to town has probably said at least once, “Let’s get this show on the road.” If you’re my mom, you might know I used to write a column in Statement called “Soundtracking,” where I would pair events and feelings with specific songs in an attempt to highlight the musicality of life, which is often filled with repetition and been-there, done-thats. If you happen to not be the woman who brought me into this world and supported me in everything I ever did (even during the mullet phase in middle school), you probably have no clue that column existed. And I’m okay with that. It was an experiment in exploring myself. Every two weeks, Statement editors (sometimes much to their dismay I’m sure) afforded me the privilege of scrolling through Spotify playlists and recounting tales of embarrassment, profound life changes and even my own lackluster deflowering on one specific occasion. But every time I sat down to write — and even now, as I sit at my desk hoping the patron saint Billie Holiday will give me something of value to say — I wrote to destress. I wrote to take a moment for myself. I was comfortable where I was, click-clacking away obnoxiously because I never learned how to type. No seriously, I never learned how to type. My right hand goes wild but my left pecks and only covers like 10 or 15 keys. I look like that gif of Kermit the Frog at the typewriter, but only typing 30 or 40 words per minute. But back to writing. I wrote that column because I felt as though it was where my needs and skills (or lack thereof) fit best. And I absolutely loved it. I had the freedom to revel in my past embarrassments, to explore the deepest caverns of my memory and share them with the world. I was able to toy with the past while staying incredibly present. Now, it’s the future I’m scared of. ut back to this most recent Thanksgiving — the worst holiday when you don’t have a concrete, step-by-step answer to the foreboding question, “What are you thinking post-grad?” The question looms over every conversation with every third aunt 18 times removed. Even when the words aren’t leaving their lips, you can see it in their eyes. It’s like when parents can’t wait to ask the waitress how their day’s been. Some inquiring adults I can evade with a simple, “I’d be happy in anything as long as I’m writing.” I do mean that wholeheartedly, but it really does the trick to get people off my back. Then I can go on my merry way. But one especially persistent relative dared to hit me with the follow-up. “But what does that mean, Matt? What happened to journalism?” “Ummmmm…”
C
A
Matthew Harmon is a Deputy Statement Editor.
Alexis Rankin /Daily
(Before I have the chance to respond) “You’re almost 21! You can’t not know what you’re gonna do after you graduate.” Dat shit hurted. After that one interaction, I lied awake at night, trying to imagine a million different futures — my own fig tree straight from Plath. I made so many yellow legal pad lists, scrawling internship pathways, connections to call in, everything a higher-education institution has taught me to do. It’s not what you know, but who you know. But how am I supposed to figure out who I know if I don’t even know myself? Over every gust of wind on this campus, every echo, I hear a voice. The voice demands your future be set in stone. Whether it’s your own decision or someone else’s — what you do, the voice cares not. But the voice badgers me every day for not knowing exactly what my plan for the future is. If I don’t have a pathway I can confidently outline to any newcomer who demands one, maybe I should just do what others want me to do instead. Then I never have to figure it out myself.
n hour ago (an hour from writing, not an hour real time from when you’re reading this. That would be crazy if I could time that out), someone asked me what my plans are this semester. When I told them about being a deputy Statement editor — and how I planned on taking a step back from the 24/7 News process I used to be entrenched in — I was hit with a big, fat “Why?” And now I would like to present to you a list of questions it is acceptable to ask someone when they are excited about their new job on Statement, even if it doesn’t fit in your expectations of what you thought they might do with their life: “What are you guys thinking about doing with Statement?” “Are your occasional columns gonna be like Soundtracking? Your mom told me those were great!” “Why are you so strapping and handsome?” And here’s a list of questions that aren’t acceptable: “That seems like a step back. Why don’t you want to do more?” “Don’t you love The Daily?” “Why are you already crying? It’s only 9 a.m.” I know this isn’t their fault (especially the crying bit). It’s just our immediate reaction. We expect people to strive to do the most they can for the things they love. And I do love The Michigan Daily and News. With my whole heart. But I also love being able to experiment with other projects and mediums of expression. Taking a step back to bask in what you’ve created and focus on yourself shouldn’t be an instinctively interrogated decision. But here’s where my typical, self-destructive behavior would kick in, telling me I’m being self-serving and letting people down for not doing more. This semester, I’m trying a new thing. It’s called confidence. Haven’t heard of her before, but we’ll see how she is. n an ideal world, I just want to breathe. And we aren’t afforded much time to breathe at this university. It’s four years, maybe five, and then you’re thrust out into the scary world like a newly christened ship embarking on its maiden voyage. Everyone wants to know about where the ship is going, but few ask how the ship’s doing as it bobs in the water. As a professor once told me when I almost broke down during office hours asking what I should do with my life, higher education should be a place for experimentation. As members of this university and, even broader, as humans, we need to collectively encourage exploration. Because what typically follows experimentation is a better understanding of self. And isn’t that what higher education should be about? Finding out who the hell you are? Take that ceramics class even if the credits won’t count for anything. Who says you can’t play mandolin? Tell the world to take its expectations of you and feed ‘em to the birds. As Socrates probably once said, “Love yourself, you’re worth it, cutie.”
I
Word of mouths M
y expectations of love and romance were doomed from the start. As a child, I lived and breathed Disney movies. The story was always the same: A beautiful princess was in trouble and — shocker — a beautiful prince came to save her. The perfect pair fall in love as soon as they look at one another, and BOOM! They’re set for life. To me, this cliché was reality. It was December 2010, and at 10 years old, I was already scoping my classroom for viable bachelors. I was a fifth-grader ready to be in love. AJ was a 4-foot-10-inch brunette football player who was in my best friend’s class. In my mind, he was perfect boyfriend material. He was cool and athletic: the perfect embodiment of an apathetic jock. I was a perky dancer, which in my mind was close enough to the classic cheerleader. We were bound to be perfect. I was determined to date him. I told each of my friends about my crush, all part of my master plan of him finding out and then, of course, asking me to be his girlfriend. Elementary school gossip travels fast, so naturally, AJ knew I liked him by the end of that day. We were dating by that night. The following Friday was a snow day, which set the scene for a perfect first date. We were invited to sled at my friend Emma’s house, and I immediately started planning strategies in order to make the night flawless. We would share a sled, and it would be just like the magic carpet ride from “Aladdin”. I’d get cold and he’d give me his jacket. Maybe Emma’s mom would make us spaghetti for dinner, and we could share a noodle like Lady and the Tramp. We could even watch a movie and he’d pretend to yawn, then put his arm around me. To start the night off right, I secured the romantic ambience by wearing a shirt that said “Free Hugs” — a flirtation tactic that nobody could deny. There was no room for error. By the end of the night, everything had gone as planned. It was even more than I had hoped for because AJ had
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 // The Statement
3B
BY ANDIE HOROWITZ, STATEMENT COLUMNIST kissed me! It was just as romantic as I had hoped for too, as we snuck off into Emma’s closet, closed our eyes, counted down from three, and leaned in. I was the happiest 10-year-old alive. I was proud of my courage. I knew my brave efforts to put myself out there had paid off. Through hard work and determination, I had turned a fantasy into actuality. My two best friends showed their solidarity and agreed with my sentiments. And just as good friends do, they came back to my house, and we laughed about it all night. Not only was I in love, but I was an EXPERT on all things kissing! “Was it on the lips or the cheek?!” Lips, obviously. This was the real deal. “Who leaned in first?!” He did, duh! I was not that bold. “Did you flick your foot in the air?” No, I didn’t. That only happens in the movies. It was all fun and games until my mom came home. As soon as she walked into my room, she could tell something was up. I saved myself the interrogation and blurted out the good news. My boyfriend kissed me! I expected a parade of joy, a giant hug, a mazel tov. Instead, I was humiliated. My mom explained to me that I was 10 years old, and kissing is inappropriate. Could I even imagine what the other fifthgraders would say if they found out? I didn’t even think about other people during my planning process — in the movies, no one else’s judgement matters but of the couple in love. I didn’t think that my behavior could be considered improper. I didn’t think kissing could be classified as such a taboo action. But the more I thought about it, the more anxiety I felt. The once present feeling of solidarity began to fade as my best friend whispered to me, “Some girls may think you’re a... slut.” A slut. I had to keep it a secret because if not, I was destined to be the class slut. A fifth-grade slut. I cried the entire night. How could I be so slutty and not even realize it? I was gross. I felt an uncontrollable feeling of emotion come over me, an
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
emotion I had never truly felt before. It was the perfect storm of humiliation, distress, anxiety and embarrassment caused by an understanding that my behavior was unacceptable. It was my first true encounter with the emotion that I would come to know as shame, and I had to get rid of the lingering disgust immediately. The only way I knew how was to continuously deny it even happening, shown by breaking up with AJ and swearing everyone involved to secrecy. No one else could know about what I thought was the first skeleton in my closet. One of the main things I learned from my dabble in promiscuity is to never to trust fifth-graders to keep a secret, a truth that I was naive to at the time. Just like before, elementary school gossip travels faster than the speed of sound, and by the end of the following Monday, everyone knew about my first kiss. Denying it became impossible. By the end of the week, even the girls from the elementary school in the other part of town knew. Apparently, they didn’t want to be friends with the Deerfield girls any-
more. We were too slutty for them. I was a 10-year-old who already knew shame, who already felt the ostracism associated with sexual experimentation. I was a 10-year-old girl who wanted romance and love and flowers and a boyfriend and an innocent kiss. I instead was labeled a slut. Thankfully, 10-year-olds tend to forget and move on. Girls started kissing boys regularly as soon as we hit middle school. I quickly became yesterday’s news, and my embarrassment eventually subsided. I no longer felt the humiliating consequences of my actions. Instead, other girls were condemned to the ruthless ridicule associated with sexual curiosity. My friends have been subjected to any of the following: easy, prissy, whore, prude. Slut. Whether it’s an experience that happened in college or an innocent fifth-grade kiss, the backlash is inescapable. But I’ve grown to realize that the backlash isn’t worth it. People will always pass judgements; people will always inflict shame. But by understanding
this very feeling of shame is defeatable, I have been able to grasp that wearing my actions as armor is the most redeeming form of resilience. I’ve watched “The Breakfast Club” thousands of times, and one quote always seems to stick with me. “If you say you haven’t (had sex), you’re a prude. If you say you have, you’re a slut. It’s a trap. You want to, but you can’t, and when you do, you wish you didn’t, right?” There’s no right answer. There will never be a right answer. No matter the action, or even lack thereof, there will always be the temptation of what seems to be an inevitable feeling of disgust, embarrassment, distress, humiliation. Shame is a collection of unasked-for ridicule, controlling the actions of the curious, condemning the actions dauntless. And with that, I’ve learned to accept that I will forever be the 10-year-old girl with an open heart, vulnerable only to Disney princesses’ rare side effect of promiscuity. If that makes me a fifthgrade slut, then so be it.
4B
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 // The Statement
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 // The Statement
I
t’s a Saturday night in mid-December, and despite the freezing temperatures and the impending tempest of finals, Angell Hall Auditorium A at the University of Michigan is packed. Students and families have crowded into the rows of cramped seats, and there’s a folding table along the back wall piled high with veggie trays, cookie platters and boxes of Entenmann’s Little Bites. The biannual Good News Christian a cappella concert is about to start. The performance begins with a video, projected on the screen at the front of the room. In the video, Good News members do a variety of skits about the ordinary stresses of college life: an awkward date at Bubble Island, a looming exam, catching the flu at an inconvenient time. All this, they explain, is why they feel a bit unprepared for the concert — but the show must go on. The video ends with the Good News crew opening the doors of Auditorium A. As their on-screen counterparts enter, so do the flesh-and-blood members of the group. The lights turn back on, and the show begins. Whatever I expected from a performance by the University’s only Christian a cappella group, this wasn’t it. few weeks before the concert, I spoke to two Good News members at a tiny table in the South University Espresso Royale: LSA sophomore Maica Mori and Information graduate student Luke Thompson. Mori is in her second year with Good News, and Thompson is in his fifth (he’s been a member since his sophomore year of undergrad). Both Mori and Thompson arrived at the University unsure about how they would integrate their faith into college life. “I knew I wanted to be a part of a singing group,” Mori explained. “A capella seemed cool.” When she stumbled upon Good News online, she was intrigued. “I felt really strongly about Good News,” she said. “Joining it has been one of the best college decisions.” “My sophomore year, I tried to get more engaged with the University,” Thompson said. “I thought I would try to embrace the faith I’d been brought up in and just see if that would help me get to know people and understand my faith better.” Singing has always been important to both Mori and Thompson, as both a part of worship and outside it. Thompson grew up Lutheran, and since coming to college, he’s tried out a few dif-
A
“ This must be ” the place
ferent churches in southeast Michigan. He recently settled on Zion Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Detroit, a 600-seat neo-Gothic stone building located down the street from the historic Senate Theater. Mori was raised Apostolic Pentecostal, a Christian sect with wildly different traditions than Lutheranism. “I grew up going to a church that has a lot of bands, worship, music, open worship every Sunday,” Mori said. “So I’m used to collective singing Christian songs,” “And I come from a bunch of stoic Germans,” Thompson joked. Good News members were raised with all kinds of Christian denominations, which Mori and Thompson believe is part of the group’s strength. “I grew up in maybe a kind of an older style of church,” Thompson said. “So seeing people who worship in a different way — people who have emotion as more prevalent in the way they worship — it sort of teaches me about how they understand things and I’m able to impart stuff I’ve learned in a more traditional setting.” “You can come from a very specific denominational background, but then when you come to Good News, you can meet other Christians and see different worship styles and different ways that people live out their faith,” Mori added. “It really causes you to grow as a Christian.” Mori explained the Apostolic Pentecostal traditions are much more emotive than those of the Lutheran services Thompson grew up attending. “It’s the complete opposite side of the coin,” she explained. “It’s a newer (type of Christianity), a whole mixed bag of people. It’s very much big displays of worship. It’s completely different. I visited Luke’s church before and it’s the traditional cathedral thing — the priests came up and they did the goblet of wine.” At her church, things are far less formal. “It’s very much open,” Mori said. Sometimes, she explained, people even dance during services. “If some people show emotional displays, it’s completely acceptable. If people are crying, things like that.” Though she began college unsure of how faith would fit into her new routines and rhythms, Mori explained the strength of other Good News members’ devotion has helped her realize that a life with God is the one she wants and needs.
BY MIRIAM FRANCISCO, COPY CHIEF
I asked Mori if Good News has changed the way she thinks about religion. “In more ways than I could talk about with our time,” she said. “It was really cool because coming into college I had this thing, like, I didn’t really want to go to church as much as I used to. My faith was really waning. I would talk to God sometimes and be like ‘God, to be honest, I might take a break from church, I’m not really sure about this.’” After joining Good News, her initial uncertainty evaporated. Mori said it is the specific blend of community, singing and faith that makes Good News such a good fit for her. When I asked about the primary goal of the group, they explained the group doesn’t really have a single, defined aim. “It’s kind of a fun question,” Thompson said. “I think if you ask different members of Good News, you’d get slightly different answers. I mean, ultimately we’re united around the Good News. We want to tell people that are Christian or people that are not Christian that Jesus died so that they could be forgiven.” “It’s a prayer set to a tune,” Mori explained. “It’s worship set to a tune.” Music for prayer is nothing new. “Gregorian chant is like the first a cappella,” Thompson said, “There are reasons they would sing instead of speak everything. There’s a long history in Christianity of using music to express prayer. It’s thousands of years old — we’re just adapting it to the times.” To prepare for their performances, they spend the first hour and a half of rehearsals singing. The last 30 minutes are devoted to fellowship. This can take on a variety of different forms. Sometimes members of Good News meet in a stairwell in the Modern Languages Building to sing and worship. Other times it’s bible study, games, prayer or announcements. “You meet people who are passionate about music and who are passionate about God,” Thompson said. “You get these situations where everybody is definitely different people but we’re able to unite. We’re not just uniting in the way that a lot of choirs do, where you’re uniting because you’ve got to make this music sound good. We’re united in our faith, ultimately.” s someone who doesn’t take part in organized religion, my discussion with Mori and Thompson gave rise to questions I knew they probably couldn’t
A
5B
answer. I wondered, in the way I think all agnostics and atheists do: How are you so certain? Do you ever have doubts? But these didn’t feel like questions I could ask them. I was there to learn about Good News, not to interrogate the basis and tenacity of their faith. The closest we came to discussing the experience of belief — the actual physical feeling of piety — was when they talked about singing. They told me about the overwhelming sense of peace and harmony they felt, strong enough to break through stage fright. About performing a solo, surrounded by their friends, their brothers and sisters in Christ. This, at least, felt as though it shared a boundary with something I could understand. It reminded me of something I learned about two years ago in a class whose material mostly escapes me now. I took Sociology 100 my freshman year. The class blurs together with the rest of first semester: milk stained with dining hall cereal, the bridge to the Hill, long evenings lost in the strange rush of explaining my whole life to new friends. But one concrete lesson I have not forgotten from Sociology is something LSA lecturer Terence McGinn told us about concerts. Bear with me. I promise this connects to Christian a cappella. A few years ago, McGinn had a student who wrote an honors thesis about the sociology of concerts. The student was interested in the experience of euphoric connection that many concert-goers report feeling. I found the thesis online. It begins with the author, Jeffrey May, LSA ‘10 and current Michigan Law student, describing his own powerful sense of ecstasy during a cover of the Talking Heads song “This Must Be the Place” by The String Cheese Incident. I confess that I was already intrigued. I love “This Must Be the Place.” A few months ago, some Saturday night when it was still warm out, my friends and I sang it together as we walked home. We were on the corner of Washtenaw Avenue and South University Avenue, waiting to cross the street, and I remember how that moment made me feel more deeply what I’ve always sort of known to be true: that the chimerical promise of whatever is next will always be eclipsed by the hugeness of our anticipation. The memory of the stuff we were waiting for will fade, and what remains is everything else: dancing in someone’s living room while the sun sets, the quiet walk home. See THE PLACE, Page 6B
The Good News Accapella group performing.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
Annie Klus /Daily
6B
Wednesday, January 9, 2019// The Statement
From Page 5B
“It seems both especially easy and especially hard to have open hearts in
“I’m just an animal looking for a home and / share the same space for a minute or two.” I think the most tender, supreme pleasures of friendship and community come when we acknowledge the shared things (God, the Talking Heads) that make us feel our own expansiveness. Still, it is — and I say this self-consciously — far easier for me to understand Jeffrey May’s exhilaration than it is for me to imagine Mori or Thompson’s. When I listened to The String Cheese Incident’s cover of “This Must Be the Place” on Spotify, I thought it was just all right. May even admits that he didn’t initially think much of the rendition. But as the music began to build upon its own energy, something changed for him. “As the last verse commenced, I started to feel as though I was possessed by an outside power, and my whole body swelled with an alien energy. With this possession came a feeling of empowerment and a sense of peace and calm — everything was finally alright,” May writes. He hesitated to tell anyone about this experience: “I thought that they would have no understanding of what I had seen and experienced: a chance encounter with what I could only desperately call the divine, the transcendent. Had I found God?” I’ll spoil the thesis here: May decides that it wasn’t God. Instead, he thinks it was collective effervescence, a theory proposed by sociologist Emile Durkheim. Collective effervescence is Durkheim’s way of explaining the heightened emotions that result from participation in a group activity. He argues that being in a group of people who are all on the same page — thinking the same thing, doing the same thing, hearing or singing the same song — can result in a sense of group identification so electrifying that it feels otherworldly. The word effervescence first came into use in the late seventeenth century. It comes from the Latin word effervescere, which means “to boil over” (ex- meaning “out” plus fervere, which means “to boil”). It wasn’t until the 1800s that the word took on its current meaning: vivacity, liveliness. I like to imagine emotions bubbling and boiling over and making a mess. If only we could always let our interior life express itself this plainly: a temperamental liquid, prone to spilling. This might all seem only tangentially related to Good News, but as someone who isn’t religious, the idea of collective effervescence helps me understand why participation in this group is so important to its members. College necessarily involves finding out which communities or friends speak to our multitudes, our peculiarities and incongruities. We discover which groups draw out our most interesting selves — which ones make us feel effervescent — and which groups we find tedious and limiting. In Good News, members are allowed to be Christians, college students and singers, all at once. It’s the recognition of the overlap between these identities that makes the group so special to its members. *** I began this article with the intention of surveying niche clubs and organizations on campus. University tour guides tout the huge selection of student organizations — more than 2,000 — and I wanted to write about the most unique of the bunch. I thought I knew what the core of the story was going to be: that there are many, many clubs on campus, all of them addressing some specific intersection of identity and interest, all of them strange and silly and quirky and important. I interviewed the president of Craft Beer Club, the co-founder of Game of Thrones Club, the
college. We want to be known for who we are, but
we also wonder: Who are we?”
president of Cubing Club and the founder of CurlTalk. I couldn’t seem to go beyond the surface of the questions I was asking, though. It wasn’t until I spoke to Mori and Thompson that I realized what these clubs have in common is not simply their specificity — it is the fact of their communality. Singing, praying, drinking beer, watching Game of Thrones, solving a Rubik’s Cube, celebrating natural hair: These things can all be done alone. There must be something special, then, about doing them in a group. Fall of my freshman year, I joined Leim, the University’s only Irish dance group. I did Irish dance for about eight years growing up, and I wanted to keep dancing in college. As a kid, we mostly did solo dancing. Ceilis (group dances) were reserved for special competitions and our annual Christmas shows. But in Leim, we exclusively did Ceilis, and it reinvented Irish dance for me. I was in Leim for just one year, but it was exactly what I needed at the time: a tangible tie to my childhood, a group with whom I could feel identified beyond explanation. In Leim, we didn’t talk while we were dancing. We were silent, hearing the music, feeling it, remembering the steps, moving our bodies together to make something bigger than ourselves. We held hands in a circle. We moved in and out and formed a line. Sometimes, before we got tired and cranky and forgot what we were supposed to be doing, the separation between our bodies and the music seemed to shrink to nothing. The sound was inside us; we needed it in order to dance and it needed us in order to play. I may be biased, but Irish music seems to open itself up particularly well to this sense of interconnectedness. How delicately layered are its intricacies, how clean the sliding notes — the kind of sound that longs for movement. For me, there has always been a pure joy in the way the song fits the dance, in the body memory it inhabits. It engenders certainty. It speaks us into conviction. Surely this can’t be so different from singing Christian a cappella. *** James Verini wrote in the New Yorker that “This Must Be the Place” is the song that explains the Talking Heads. “It’s been covered by Arcade Fire, MGMT, and the jam band The String Cheese Incident, among others,” he writes. “There are books named for it. Hip brides march down the aisle to it. It’s quoted in mawkish editorials.” What he means, I think, is that “This Must Be the Place” has become synonymous with a sort of ironic sentimentality, a wistful self-awareness that feels particularly easy to pin on young people (and people who miss being young). This article might very well be the mawkish editorial that Verini dismisses. But I’d much rather be mawkish than apathetic. I’m thinking of Leslie Jamison when she wrote, “I want our hearts to be open.” It seems both especially easy and especially hard to have open hearts in college. We want to be known for who we are, but we also wonder: Who are we? Perhaps having open hearts is the problem and the solution; we find those who make our hearts feel open by first opening them. Humans are pack animals, college students even more so. We want to figure it out. A pizza is ordered; a final is failed; we call home. We call each other. We try to find the people who will help us move forward into the future and for whom we are able to do the same — the ones who bolster our certainty that the world is endlessly capable of containing whatever we can manifest. Verini writes, “‘This must be the place’—it’s not a statement of certainty, is it? It’s not ‘This is the place.’ It’s more ‘This is what someone said the place was.’ It’s even a little desperate. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do if this isn’t the place.’” College: Someone once told us that this was the place, and now we’re trying to see exactly what kind of place that is, and where within it we are supposed to fit. This must be the place — but only because we’re here together, because it’s all happening right now and this is where.
A mother’s instincts on an empty avenue
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 // The Statement
7B
BY ANDREA PÉREZ BALDERRAMA, MANAGING STATEMENT EDITOR
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
I
grew up in the arid valley where the moonlight was muffled by the smoke of thousands of coal-burning stoves. It was cold and scary at night and the day came, only to reveal the night’s crimes. Every morning, the newspaper delivered headlines of the number of people, my people, who didn’t make it through. Dozens every month. Hundreds every year. It was an eye for an eye among my people. The vicious cycle of death and suffering continued uninterrupted for years. Nobody was spared — not the rich, not the poor, not those who ran or those who hid. Every single person was affected. Family members started to go missing. Some came back and some were never seen again. Some were taken viciously and purposely. Some were mere accidents of a ricochet bullet. Their deaths were quick and painless. Nobody knew how to stop the misery, but everyone was learning every day how to live in it. There were no rules. Love was vanishing. We lived in a war zone, yet the world was unaware of our suffering. I sat somewhere on the top branches of a tree looking out at Lake Michigan, unearthing memories. It had been some time since I had been to Juarez, Mexico, but I still liked to open my chest of memories once in a while. I was afraid of forgetting about my people and their suffering, but was also privileged enough to be able to see it from the other side — o separate myself from it instead of live through it. I felt guilty sometimes. All of the femicides, the organized crime, the anarchy that ruled my city’s streets. I was away. I wasn’t there to see it, but all I could do was remember. remembered a woman and a girl in a car at dusk. They were driving on an empty avenue, their conversation dwindling because of a disagreement. A typical mother daughter interaction. The
I
girl iced her mother out for picking her up early from a friend’s house, even though the mother had agreed to extend the curfew by a few hours. Unbeknownst to the girl, who had just started la escuela secundaria (middle school), her mother was afraid. A crippling anxiety crawled up her spine, and the hairs in the back of her neck were permanently spiked. She would not be at ease until they crossed the 15-foot wall and electrified fence that separated their neighborhood from the city streets. Safety is only a few minutes away, the mother thought to herself while she looked over to the passenger seat, where her daughter sat with her arms crossed and eyes fixed on the ground. Her daughter’s face was no longer that of a little girl. It had started to transform, along with her body, to give way to a woman. It was a dangerous time to be a woman in this city. Women had been disappearing and dying here for decades, and there was nothing more dangerous than a girl and a woman in a car by themselves. Suddenly, a car pulled up next to them. It was another woman. She was older, but the years manifested in a lovely way. This woman had the appearance of someone who wasn’t afraid anymore. She had seen too much. Lived too much. Suffered too much. She was there as an act of freedom. During these years, no women dared going out of the house without their husbands, especially not at night. Being by a man’s side gave them an illusion of safety, as if any man could have stopped what happened that night. The light was still red when a small, white, battered-up Toyota driving on the cross street — the only other car within sight — stopped in the middle of the intersection. Two armed men poured out of the Toyota and headed straight for the older
women’s car. In the sliver of a second before the men came too close, the two women and the girl looked at each other. Their mouths watered and stomachs dropped at the sight of danger. “Don’t look at them,” the woman said to her daughter. The exact complexion of either of the men would remain a mystery, as neither of the women nor the girl could recollect it after the incident. But their presence was infinite. It was as if their bodies radiated a kind of heat that could permeate the doors of the car. Their presence seeped through the atmosphere and filled the veins and minds of the two women and the girl with fear. The light was still red when the men went up to the driver’s side of the older woman’s car and pulled their guns out, pointing them at her head through the window, opened the door and yanked her by the arm. Her gesture of freedom, the bravery of being in the streets on her own, left her kicked and bleeding on the ground. She wore a handkerchief around her head that was now covered in blood and dirt. One of the men took her purse as well. When she saw this, the mother did not hesitate to accelerate through the red light. The men got into the cars and shortly after, the battered-up Toyota and the older lady’s car appeared in her rearview mirror. The old woman still laid frozen on the ground; becoming smaller and smaller as the cars drove away. There might have been other red lights that night, but the mother did not stop at any of them. She did not breathe until she had driven her car past the 15-foot stone wall and electrified fence that divided their neighborhood from the city streets. Her shoulders did not relax until she and her daughter
were safely in their home. She locked all of the doors and drew all the curtains. As if any physical barrier was going to stop the men who robbed and kicked a woman on the street from coming after them. hat mother and daughter were me and my mother. When I think of it now, I always remember family, friends, sunny days and happiness, but the more I sit on top of trees unearthing memories, the more I realize how real and possibly traumatic my experiences were. My family has been living across the border now for a few years. Here, where all the lawns are perfectly manicured and everyone wears braces, it is hard for people to understand what happened. It’s hard for anyone here to really know me when my past is so foreign to them. I could attempt to explain, but there’s no way to put these feelings into words. I know I’m not from Juarez anymore, but it is important to never forget. To keep reliving those moments, as if it could change the fate of the city or my own. As if I could forget about the privilege of being on top of a tree looking out at Lake Michigan without a trace of worry. As if I could go back without being seen as a gringa. I look back now, after spending most of my teenage years in Michigan, and I can pick out all of the ways in which I am different than my friends who stayed in Juarez. I think they can see it, too. Whenever I am with them, I am the Michigander, but whenever I am with my new friends, I am the Mexican. I sometimes feel like I don’t have a home, but what I do know is that I grew up in the arid valley where the moonlight was muffled by the smoke of thousands of coalburning stoves. It was cold and scary at night and the day came, only to reveal the night’s crimes.
T
8B
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 // The Statement
Alec Cohen/Daily
VISUAL S TAT E M E N T:
Winter Break as seen by the Daily photostaff
Amelia Cacchione/Daily
Allison Engkvist/Daily
Alexis Rankin /Daily
The Michigan Daily | michigandaily.com | January 9, 2019
SPORTSWEDNESDAY
Hoosier
Daddy? U-M 74, IU 63: MICHIGAN MOVES TO 15-0
Design by Jack Silberman Alexis Rankin / Daily
MICHIGAN STAYS UNBEATEN, TAKES CARE OF IU Ethan Sears Managing Sports Editor As Zavier Simpson converted a hook shot, extending the Wolverines’ lead to 16 with 14:35 to go in the game, Indiana coach Archie Miller shouted and punched the air in anger, frustration spilling into body language. Miller spent most of Sunday’s game standing on the visiting sideline with his hands on his hips, shaking his head after missed shots, exasperation open — putting on display just how far ahead Michigan is of his team. If there was a game for the Wolverines to lose, this was it. Sophomore forward Isaiah Livers missed his second straight game with back spasms, meaning Michigan coach John Beilein had no choice but to rely on freshman Brandon Johns and redshirt sophomore Austin Davis at backup center. The Wolverines
have sputtered in every game for a month. Indiana is a top-25 team with two All-Big Ten-caliber players in Romeo Langford and Juwan Morgan. It took only minutes for Michigan (15-0 overall, 4-0 Big Ten) to prove otherwise, and minutes more for the Wolverines to take an insurmountable lead on No. 21 Indiana (12-3, 3-1) on their way to a 74-63 win. This, in contrast to a month of games against subpar competition, was the Wolverines of November, back in full force. This was the team that went into Villanova and stunned the national champs, then ran North Carolina out of the building two weeks later. They stayed undefeated and they looked good doing it. From the jump, this was Michigan’s game. Sparked by Charles Matthews on both ends, the Wolverines started the contest on a 9-4 run, extending their lead to 23-9, then 30-13, all before the 10-minute mark of the
first half. “We made some shots and we really guarded them,” Beilein said. “I think we were in better
looked as good as he ever has in a Michigan uniform early on, getting to the basket and creating points in transition seemingly
rhythm man-to-man, ’cause we just played Penn State — we had been into a funk there a little bit when we were just playing against all the zones. You don’t know how people are gonna play you. And so I thought we just hit a really good rhythm and we set the tone.” Matthews, a redshirt junior,
at will. He drew two fouls on Langford, a future NBA lottery pick, in the game’s opening minutes, then held the five-star recruit to 17 points on 5-of-11 shooting. By the end of the first half, Matthews had 16 points on 6-of-9 shooting, ultimately finishing with 18. “He’s a dominant scorer,
INSIDE SPORTSWEDNESDAY
and he’s a dominant defender,” said sophomore guard Jordan Poole. “And Charles doesn’t put himself in situations where he thinks about anybody else. Or matchups, or guys going lottery, or whatever situation. Charles is looking at who’s in front of him and he’s gonna try to kill him every night.” In front of a multitude of NBA scouts, Matthews wasn’t the only one to impress. After two early 3-pointers, Poole finished with 18 points, his third straight game with over 15. Indiana did manage to cut Michigan’s lead to single digits midway through the second half, buoyed by Langford and Morgan, who combined for 17 points in the first 10 minutes after the break. After junior center Jon Teske picked up his fourth foul with just over eight minutes to go, the window seemed open for the Hoosiers to mount a comeback. Johns slammed it shut. In 13 second-half minutes, Johns did everything asked
MATTISON & WASHINGTON SPURN HARBAUGH, DEPART FOR COLUMBUS SportsWednesday Column Page 4B
of him, banging down low and slamming home dunks on his way to eight points and eight rebounds on the day — a performance that could see the backup center job become his to lose. “He’s sort of trying to learn, ‘What’s the next step? What’s the next play?’ And it’s just really simple things that, as the game slows down for him, he’s more capable of going further,” Beilein said. “But that was a matter of foul trouble by Austin, foul trouble by Jon (Teske) and Brandon getting in there.” After the game, a calmer Miller stood at the podium trying to describe what happened, the same fate that has befallen the prior 14 coaches to face the Wolverines. “Undisciplined,” he called his team. “Just some backbreaking plays. Fouling shooters. And again, not being able to convert some easy ones. Just led them to be able to, pretty much, comfortably play the game.”
SportsWednesday
2B — January 9, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
With Livers out, Johns gets his chance and makes his introduction JACOB SHAMES Daily Sports Editor
For a minute there, Brandon Johns felt like he was in high school again. With seven minutes left in the second half, Johns gathered a pass from junior point guard Zavier Simpson and tried a lefthanded layup off the glass. It bounced off the rim, but Johns popped straight back up over everybody and tipped the ball into the cylinder. On Michigan’s next possession, Johns slipped a screen, caught Simpson’s pass all alone in the post and pummeled the ball through the net with his right arm. Not enough? Twelve seconds later, the freshman forward — he of just 10 games of college basketball — leapt up to challenge Indiana forward Juwan Morgan at the rim and stuffed the All-Big Ten senior. What was left standing of Crisler Center after Johns’ dunk was set ablaze. “It reminded me a lot of East Lansing (in high school),” Johns said. “Different levels, but it’s great to be out here.” That 56-second sequence was a throwback to Johns’ highflying, highlight-reel high school career, during which he had 28.1 points, 11.3 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game as a senior. But in that same sequence, Johns arrived on the big stage. His arrival was both longanticipated and sudden. Johns rode the bench for most of the Wolverines’ first 14 games as he acclimated to the college game. But for a Michigan team that struggled to find stability backing up junior Jon Teske, the 6-foot-8 Johns’ raw athletic ability was a tantalizing prospect; a perfect complement to the 7-foot-1 Teske at the ‘5.’ In the last week, Johns got the break he needed. Sophomore forward Isaiah
Livers missed last Thursday’s game against Penn State due to back spasms, and after feeling less than 100 percent in practice and warmups over the weekend, was listed as doubtful minutes before tipoff Sunday, his absence opening up an opportunity in the Wolverines’ small-ball lineup. And just over midway through the first half, redshirt sophomore center Austin Davis, Teske’s primary backup, committed his second foul. “It was the need,” said Michigan coach John Beilein. “He’s making progress in practice, but we’ve seen that a few times in practice. … That was a matter of foul trouble by Austin, foul trouble by Jon and Brandon getting in there.” Added Johns: “I just knew I had to be ready, know everything, defense, offense, just in case he does call my name, if somebody gets in foul trouble I can come out and contribute.” He did just that, going straight to work inside and inhaling rebounds — four of them in less than three minutes. In 13 minutes against the Hoosiers, he would finish with a team-high eight of them, along with eight points and a block. “That’s one thing I’ve really been focusing on since I got here is just rebounding, play with a high motor,” Johns said. “I think rebounding was like what everyone thought the main thing that I could do, and if anything else followed up, it’s okay.” In the second half, the rest of Johns’ game materialized in full force. Just over six minutes into the half, Davis was sent to the bench for good after hacking Morgan;
ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Freshman forward Brandon Johns had eight points and eight rebounds in his breakout performance against Indiana, perhaps cementing a regular role in the rotation.
his fourth foul in as many minutes. With Teske on the bench with three and Indiana climbing back into the contest after trailing by as much as 17, the weight of the Wolverines’ perfect start came to rest on the shoulders of the callow East Lansing High School product. The Hoosiers had cut the lead to 55-46 when redshirt junior forward Charles Matthews surged into the lane, his runner missing high off the backboard. Johns saw it, rocketed off the ground and powered home the rebound. Turns out, that impressive
“It reminded me a lot of East Lansing (in high school).”
display of athleticism was only the appetizer. Less than two hours before his rejection of Morgan, it wasn’t even a sure thing Johns would play. Now, against a nationallyranked opponent, in front of a national TV audience, one of the most unlikely of players had taken complete control. “I did not (see Johns’ performance coming), but I do know that he is capable,” Matthews said. “Injuries allow some people to step up and make the most of the occasion. He definitely had a big game, big
impact for us.”
After the game, Beilein noted that Johns had been too passive in practice on occasion. The next step in Johns’ development, according to Beilein, is bringing the same energy he showed on Sunday more consistently. “We’ll see how he does in the next two days,” Beilein said. “But there’s an argument for him to be the first big man off the bench after how he played today. “... Just do this in practice and do this in games. He would tell you himself. We played four-on-
“I did not (see Johns’ performance) coming.”
four the other day, full-court, four-on-four, no rules, he was a non-factor in the game. He’s good, he’s good. He’s got to be a factor in these games. … Playing harder, playing smarter, just embracing the contact is all I need to do.” “I love the kid. He’s going to be a really good player.” John’s breakout showing didn’t end when the final buzzer sounded. Nor did it end when he led the Wolverines in singing “The Victors” in the locker room. As he left the Crisler Center media room and a swarm of reporters behind, a man in a Michigan sweater came up to him with a five-word declaration. “Welcome to regular playing time.”
MEN’S BASKETBALL
Unlikely veteran Matthews dominates Langford Jordan Poole emerging ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
Just over three minutes later, Matthews threw down a dunk right over Langford — and to add insult to injury, Langford fouled him on the shot. Matthews missed the and-one, but the play contributed something far more important. Just four minutes into the game, one of Indiana’s best players was already in foul trouble. He sat much of the remainder of the half. “That was a designed play to see if we could get that second foul,” Beilein said. “And Charles paid attention, taking the ball strong then right then ... not be as strong with it. That was a strong baseline drive, and that’s who he can be.” For the rest of the half, it’s who he was. Matthews added two more dunks in the half, including one off an offensive rebound. He imposed his will on the Hoosiers, not letting them take anything on offense or on defense en route
to 16 first-half points, three rebounds and three steals. And beyond that, Matthews provided a veteran presence. He may have been fired up more than usual because of the matchup with Langford or the bright lights of a big game at Crisler, but it carried over to the rest of the team and kept the Wolverines rolling to an 11-point win. “It’s a huge energy boost, for everyone, because he does so much,” Poole said. “He’ll get a tip deflection or he’ll go and he’ll get a steal or he’ll get a tip rebound of a 50-50 ball, so being able to see a leader out there hustling and being able to get easy buckets and transition buckets and being able to get the crowd going and give us a positive boost and positive momentum in any time in the game is definitely huge for a game like this.” And that goes back to Matthews, the fourth-year player who wasn’t supposed
to be here. But he is, and now he’s transformed into a vocal guy on a young team. He’s the only fourth-year on the team, so it falls to him to provide the energy. As he got going, Beilein realized it was time to get the ball in Matthews’ hands more often. The coach drew up plays for him and trusted him to do his job. Matthews then went out there and disrupted everything, from Indiana’s shooting to its spacing to its defense. He held Langford to just 5-for-11 from the field. He grabbed boards and forced turnovers to salvage empty possessions. Against a team like the Hoosiers, he made sure Michigan left nothing to chance. “Don’t discount what Charles — Charles is just huge,” Beilein said. “It’s about winning. It’s about winning. This is his fourth year in college. “Just wants to win.”
In the waning seconds of Sunday’s game, it was Charles Matthews who stood at center court, dribbling the clock out on the Michigan men’s basketball team’s win over Indiana. It was appropriate, for a game where, for much of it, the redshirt junior wing had been a focal point. Coming into the contest, a lot of the focus was on his matchup with Hoosier wing Romeo Langford. They were both highly ranked recruits out of high school, and in a way a microcosm of the different ways recruits can turn out. Langford is the player who’s living up to his hype, an instant star for Indiana who revitalized the Hoosiers after a down year. Matthews is the guy who never thought he’d be here, a fourth-year player who transferred from blue blood Kentucky after plans to go one-and-done didn’t work out. Matthews — as sophomore guard Jordan Poole noted after the game — doesn’t usually think about matchups. He just looks at what’s in front of him and takes it from there. But this matchup was a little higher profile than most. “He was fired up about this matchup,” said Michigan coach John Beilein. “Because he’s got respect and he knows how good that Langford is.” And going against Langford, Matthews had perhaps his best performance of the year — firing up not just himself, but the team around him, carrying it to its 15th straight win. It was just the second possession of the game when Matthews stripped the ball from Langford, then drew a ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily foul. After the inbound, Poole Redshirt junior Charles Matthews scored 18 points and held Indiana’s Romeo Langford to 5-of-11 shooting on defense. hit a jumper.
“He knows how good that (Romeo) Langford is.”
“This is his fourth year in college. Just wants to win.”
THEO MACKIE
Daily Sports Writer
Two months ago — back when the Michigan men’s basketball team barely cracked the top 20 and before its season had even tipped off — sophomore guard Jordan Poole was anointed as the Wolverines’ star. Redshirt junior wing Charles Matthews and junior guard Zavier Simpson were the leaders, but Poole, seven months removed from the program’s most iconic moment in recent memory, was the face of the team. Then, freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis stole that title and ran with it. When Michigan made its introduction to the national stage in a 73-46 win at Villanova in mid-November, it was Brazdeikis — not Poole — who shone brightest. Through five games, Poole was averaging just 7.8 points per game, reaching double-digits only once, while Brazdeikis had done so four times. Since then, Poole hasn’t had a game with under 11 points, transitioning from the enigmatic scorer he was a year ago to the Wolverines’ most reliable weapon. “Coach (John Beilein) is definitely giving me the green light, but he also trusts me a lot,” Poole said on Sunday. “He wants to put the ball in my hands, and he definitely trusts me on making the right play.” Added Beilein: “It’s the complete package of having a guy that you gotta trust he’s gonna learn what good shots are. But you don’t want to take that hunting personality he has away from him.” In Michigan’s latest dominant win — a 74-63 over Indiana on Sunday — that trust was on full display. The first half was a showcase of everything Poole offers the Wolverines when he’s at his best. Five minutes into the game, he made back-to-back threes to extend Michigan’s early lead to eight and blow the roof of the Crisler Center, as he did so many times off the bench a year ago.
But after the break, he ran into the type of adversity that would have stymied his effectiveness last season. Each of his three 3-point attempts clanged off the rim and into the hands of a Hoosier. Instead of frustratedly jacking up more threes, though, Poole responded to each of his misses by going inside the arc and scoring, including a highlightreel crossover into a mid-range jumper. While his second half didn’t have the same pop as his first half, all three makes came after an Indiana basket as the Hoosiers tried to claw back into the game. “We always look at what the defense is giving us, and we can tell that we were able to pivot past some of the mismatches that we had in the game today,” Poole said. “I feel like we were able to drive more in the second half and space the floor and get threes in the first half.” Poole’s performance on Sunday was no aberration. In last week’s sluggish 68-55 win over Penn State, he led all scorers with eight points in a low-scoring first half. When Brazdeikis and Matthews made the headlines with 12 points apiece after the break, Poole remained consistent, with nine of his own. Four days earlier, as the Wolverines scuffled to a five-point halftime lead over Binghamton, it was Poole who kept them afloat with 12 first-half points. For the kid who had a tendency to disappear as a freshman, that ability to perform when he and his team hit adversity has been the biggest difference in Poole’s 10-game double-digit point streak. “Over the summer, I saw a great growth in what’s important in winning basketball,” Beilein said. “As opposed to the way he probably was playing his freshman year.” And when he and his team are on? Well, then he’s still Jordan Poole — with the behindthe-back passes and stepback jumpers to prove it.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SportsWednesday
January 9, 2019 — 3B
Michigan falls to Merrimack, 4-2 One step forward, two steps back BAILEY JOHNSON Daily Sports Writer
After 40 minutes of play, Michigan (7-8-6) and Merrimack (6-15-1) were deadlocked at one goal apiece. Forward Derek Petti was able to break the stalemate with a goal just seconds into the third period that allowed the Warriors to take the lead and eventually the victory, 4-2. Entering the final period, Merrimack was on the power play as a result of senior defenseman Nick Boka taking an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty at the end of the second period. And just 17 seconds into the man advantage, Petti skated into the slot untouched and fired a shot past freshman goaltender Strauss Mann to put the Warriors up by a goal. “The second goal, we take a bad penalty at the end of the period,” said Michigan coach Mel Pearson. “A real bad penalty, and they convert on it. A real soft goal.” Merrimack added another tally moments later to stretch its lead to two. Michigan struck back just over two minutes later, when freshman defenseman Jack Summers’s shot was tipped into the net by junior forward Adam Winborg, but the late-game goal proved to be not enough for the Wolverines. They fell to Merrimack, which entered the game ranked 52nd in Pairwise — out of 60 teams — and have now won just one of their last five games. “(The Warriors) played desperate, and that was the difference,” Pearson said. “They played desperate, they played like their life depended on it. We played like it was just another game. We’re not good enough to just show up and think we’re just going to come out and play … We’re going to have to play a lot harder.” The matchup was rife with odd-man rushes and breakaway chances, but neither team consistently capitalized on those chances.
Just over two minutes into the game, forwards Jordan Seyfert and Patrick Kramer found themselves in a two-on-zero breakaway ahead of Michigan’s defense. Mann had little hope of stopping Kramer’s shot, and Merrimack took the early lead. But after that, the Warriors’ odd-man chances frequently found the end boards, not the back of the net. Early in the second period, freshman defenseman Nick Blankenburg nearly ended up on the wrong side of a one-on-zero breakaway, but he used his skating to force the Merrimack player to the side of the net and prevent a goal. For Michigan, breakaway chances were no more fruitful. “We missed the net a lot,” Pearson said. “(Merrimack) blocked a lot of shots, but we missed the net a lot. Over the net, wide on grade-A scoring opportunities. We’re not a gifted team as far as scoring goes. We have to really work for our goals and tonight we had to really work for our goals.” Minutes after the Warriors found twine, freshman forward Garrett van Wyhe and sophomore forward Dakota Raabe came close to an odd-man rush of their own, though goaltender Drew Vogler was able to make a straightforward
save on Van Wyhe’s shot. It took more than a period for the Wolverines to equal the score. In the second period, junior forward Jake Slaker fired a shot from just outside the right circle. Goaltender Drew Vogler tried to make the save, but Slaker’s shot tucked underneath the top of the net for his eighth goal of the season. “(Junior defenseman Luke Martin) made a nice play to me out wide,” Slaker said. “I thought I had a step on their defenseman. I was getting a lot of shots all night and I finally saw an opportunity to get a good shot and luckily, it went in.” Just three days before the loss to Merrimack, Michigan defeated No. 9 Notre Dame 4-2 — in South Bend. And three days after the loss to the Warriors, the Wolverines will face No. 4 Ohio State in Columbus. Last season, Michigan fell to the Buckeyes all five times the two teams met. The seven teams of the Big Ten are separated by just 10 points, with three teams tied in the middle at 15 points each — including the Wolverines. Michigan now has just three days to bounce back from the loss and get ready for a trip to Ohio State. Its performance in Columbus could set the course of the rest of its season.
At the final buzzer, Jake Slaker could only slam his stick down at the ice in frustration, shattering it in two. The junior forward recorded six shots on net and a goal in the Michigan hockey team’s 4-2 loss to Merrimack Tuesday night. His efforts helped give his team a chance to win the game. The defense, however, lost it. The play that preceded the stick break wasn’t necessarily either one’s fault. Who could see a game-clinching empty-net goal, as freshman goaltender Strauss Mann skated away from the post, coming? But it was a situation the Wolverines should have avoided in the first place. Throughout the game, defensive struggles, ones that Michigan coach Mel Pearson thought had ceased coming out of Saturday’s game at Notre Dame, reappeared. Breakaways, unmarked attackers and easy shots on goals — all things that the opposing team shouldn’t have had. Yet, the Warriors had it all. On the f lip side, the Wolverines had to scrape by for
ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Senior defenseman Nick Boka’s unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty led to a Merrimack goal in Michigan’s 4-2 loss.
that a lot of this stuff, especially playing as many years as I have, kinda stoic in the sense that a lot of this stuff is already accounted for,” he said. “I’ve already accounted in my head that certain things might happen.” His response was in the context of what the Gators did on the field Dec. 29. But it’s hard not to extrapolate that to the bigger picture. Chase Winovich played at Michigan five years, and in that span experienced more highs and lows than most programs go through in a decade. His first year on campus, as a tight end, Michigan went 5-7 and fired the coach that recruited him. Then the Savior Of The Program came in and turned the place upside down. In Harbaugh’s first year, the Wolverines won 10 games. The next year, inches of JT Barrett’s extended arm separated Michigan from a Big Ten title game. All the while, Winovich somehow blossomed into an All-Big Ten defensive end. Then, slowly but surely, the outward face of the team. He came back to school unabashedly clear about his Big Ten title and College Football Playoff goals. He coined the now-infamous Revenge Tour. Which brings us to the Peach Bowl — an unceremonious end to a one-of-a-kind career, and the unequivocal plateau of a program seemingly incapable of
every chance they generated, and even more so on the ones they converted. “You can’t give up the easy goals like that,” Pearson said. “Especially when you have to struggle so hard to score, like we do right now, but you can just tell, it’s just a little bit intensity. We’re not a gifted team as far as scoring goes. We have to really work for our goals and tonight we had to really work for our goals.” As the team tried to take a step forward after its match up with the Fighting Irish, the defense took two steps back. The play that best exemplified this happened close to puck drop. A Merrimack skater f lipped the puck away from the defensive zone and into neutral ice. It dropped between senior defenseman Nicholas Boka and junior defenseman Griffin Luce. Neither made the push for the puck, and an easy possession turned into a sprint to stop the breakaway attempt for the Warriors. The defensive regression proved costly minutes after when Merrimack scored the first goal on a breakaway. It all began when freshman defenseman Nick Blankenberg left his assignment to make an on-puck play. The switch up left Warrior Patrick Kramer open, and senior defenseman Joseph Cecconi couldn’t rotate in time. Merrimack’s Jordan Seyfert, who broke from pressure, found him, and he scored. “We just had a defenseman leave the middle of the ice and come all the way across the ice to try and make the play and they got a breakaway,” Pearson said. “They got a (two-on-one), it should’ve been a two-on-four the way it was shaping up, but because we left an area. “Never should have done that. That’s not a good play. And now it gives the momentum. It
gives them some energy.” Added Slaker: “Once we go down, we know that their goal was probably a defensive let-down and we were making mistakes in the D-zone.” But Michigan cleaned up. With Slaker’s top-shelf goal and tightened-up defense, it tied the game at one apiece. An unnecessary play by Boka, however, turned the tides. Boka got into a scuff le at the end of the second period, committing an unsportsmanlike penalty in the act and putting the Wolverines at a disadvantage coming out from the final intermission. “We take a bad penalty at the end of the period, a real bad penalty, and they convert on it, a real soft goal,” Pearson said. “We didn’t give them much, but we made some key errors at critical times, and that cost us.” The special team defense had committed too many men to the battle near the boards. The puck was lodged against it, and three of the four skaters for Michigan were actively trying to poke it away. While the Wolverines were pursuing the puck, an unmarked Warrior skater curled away from the battle and stationed himself in front of the net. As the puck leaked out toward him, there was nothing between him and the goal besides Mann, and a simple shot through Mann’s legs created the late deficit. “Not prepared to play, and that’s up to each player to be ready to play,” Pearson said on Michigan’s performance. “Couple comments from our team, ‘We didn’t take them serious’ or whatever. I don’t know how you can because we’re not that good. We have to take every team serious to have a chance to win. “I thought we made some progress at Notre Dame, you know, and I thought we took a step back tonight.”
Wolverines squeak out win, 79-78
What now? ATLANTA — Chase Winovich took a deep breath and thought. Really, truly thought. He had been asked by a reporter — shortly after Michigan was dismantled by MAX Florida, 41-15, MARCOVITCH in the Peach Bowl — to assess the state of the program. A fifth-year senior, Winovich is often pegged to speak to these types of big-picture questions, both because he understands the program better than just about anybody and because Jim Harbaugh, the man at the top, won’t engage them. So they get thrown on Winovich. All year. And to his credit, less than an hour after his college career ended in a distasteful crescendo, the de facto spokesman obliged. Just weeks prior, Winovich chose to describe the loss at Ohio State as a “mirage” and, well, that explanation was no longer on the table. Where does that leave this program now? “I caught a lot of flak a couple weeks ago because I said ‘We’re building a powerhouse.’ I used some pretty heavy words,” Winovich said, striking an uncharacteristically tepid tone. “My motivation behind that was really trying to get a recruit that decommitted to come back. So, it worked. I meant what I said, just not—we’re building a great team. This thing takes time. In hindsight, coming to Michigan, I maybe underestimated the amount of time and effort it would take to get over that hump. We’ve been chasing this for quite some time.” Then a sigh. “We’re close. We’re clawing at it.” Then a question brings Winovich back to the present. The Gators posted 427 total yards — 257 on the ground — outscoring Michigan 35-5 after the first quarter. What surprised him about the 26-point loss? “I’m kinda stoic in the sense
TIEN LE
Daily Sports Writer
climbing higher. Just minutes prior, a couple hundred feet down the hallway, Harbaugh had expounded the obvious. “My feeling about the team is we’re right there to the top, but we have to put it over the top,” the coach who has lost his final two games each of the last three seasons said. “Especially in the big games at the end of the year.” He’s not wrong, of course. Michigan under Harbaugh has the seventh most wins in that span in the country. Prior to his arrival, the Wolverines had just four seasons with double-digit wins since the turn of the century. Under Harbaugh, Michigan now has three in the last four years. But after the undressing that has been the last month of Michigan football, those win totals ring hollow. Michigan hasn’t won a game later than Nov. 19 since the Citrus Bowl after the 2015 season. Its signature win of the last 4 years is … Wisconsin in 2016? Penn State this year? Bueller? “Next year, we’re not going to try to go backwards,” Winovich said, speaking of the program he’s now leaving. While Winovich might be correct that regression seems unlikely, the Harbaugh era has become increasingly defined by one question: Is progression really any more likely?
ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Chase Winovich played his last game in Michigan’s Peach Bowl loss.
TEDDY GUTKIN Daily Sports Writer
63-60. Hillmon outmuscled defenders off her missed free throw to draw a foul on a putback attempt, causing Pallas Kunaiui-Akpanah to foul out. A play later, Munger found Thome on a gorgeous bounce pass inside to cut the lead to two. Hillmon knotted the score at 67 apiece on the next possession, supplying the Wolverines with the spark that they had been searching for the entire half. When discussing her 21-point performance, which included a whopping seven offensive rebounds, Hillmon said that her mindset never changed, even during some of the game’s key moments. “The entire game I was getting putbacks and trying to get to the basket, so I tried to keep that same mindset so that I didn’t worry myself,” Hillmon said. However, the Wildcats responded with three quick points to take the lead back. After Hillmon split a pair of free throws, Michigan was whistled for a foul on a loose ball, much to the chagrin of the crowd. After the Wildcats converted on both of their free throws, Thome notched a layup with 25 seconds left to cut the lead to two after Hillmon shielded an errant pass from being picked off.
Hillmon produced another big play on the Wolverines’ next offensive possession. Following two missed free throws from Northwestern, battling inside to secure a putback off of her own miss to tie the score up at 72. “Even if it was a bad pass (Hillmon) would come to get it,” Brown said. “And even if she missed she’d get the rebound.” Michigan forced an airball on the ensuing Wildcats possession to send the game into overtime. After the game, Munger noted that the team’s defensive effort down the stretch was instrumental in kickstarting its comeback. “If we’re not scoring we have to make sure they’re not scoring,” she said. Northwestern gained the edge with a minute to go in overtime when it sunk two free throws following a foul, but Munger returned the favor to regain the lead. When sophomore guard Deja Church was whistled for an offensive foul with 12 seconds left, it gave the Wildcats one final chance to win the game and the Wolverines a chance for one last stop. After Jordan Hamilton’s layup bounced off the rim, Michigan found itself basking in the glory of a thrilling 79-78 victory.
For the second game in a row, the Michigan women’s basketball team watched as a potential game-winning shot pinballed around the rim at the final buzzer. This time, the bounce went in its favor. After rallying from an eightpoint fourth-quarter deficit, the Wolverines (11-5 overall, 2-2 Big Ten) clinched a 79-78 win against Northwestern (9-6, 2-1) in overtime after Wildcats sophomore guard Jordan Hamilton’s shot ricocheted off the rim three times before harmlessly falling into the hands of freshman forward Naz Hillmon as the buzzer sounded. Senior guard Nicole Munger hit two free throws with 51.8 seconds to go to put Michigan ahead for good, maintaining her perfect shooting percentage from the line. “It was great to be on the winning side,“ said head coach Kim Barnes Arico. The first half was tightly contested, with the Wolverines trailing, 40-38, at intermission. However, scoring woes in the first quarter prevented the team from entering the locker room ahead. Michigan went on a three-minute scoring drought, and found itself clinging to a slim 16-14 edge at the end of the quarter despite Northwestern’s inability to make a field goal for three and a half minutes. Down 56-50 entering the fourth quarter, Michigan got big plays from Munger, Hillmon and senior forward Hallie Thome to salvage what had been one of the team’s sloppier efforts of the season. Thome opened the period with an open layup, and two possessions later saved a loose ball from going out of bounds to set up a 3-pointer from sophomore forward Hailey Brown. Munger added a big bucket of her own when she ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily knocked down a corner triple Senior guard Nicole Munger hit two free throws with 51.8 seconds to go. to cut the Wildcats’ lead to
SportsWednesday
4B — January 9, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Bucking the norm Greg Mattison, Al Washington accept jobs to join Ohio State defensive staff, leaving Harbaugh in the dust MIKE PERSAK
Daily Sports Writer
Michigan linebackers coach Al Washington will be accepting an assistant coaching position with Ohio State, according to Rivals on Tuesday. The move comes one day after the Wolverines’ defensive line coach, Greg Mattison, was named the Buckeyes’ co-defensive coordinator, both joining Ryan Day, the Buckeyes’ new head coach. A Michigan spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. Washington’s loss will likely be felt the hardest on the recruiting trail. At different points throughout the season Harbaugh complimented Washington, lumping him in with first-year tight ends coach Sherrone Moore as staff who helped Michigan this season.
“There’s two other coaches that don’t get talked about as much that are doing a fabulous job and that’s Al Washington,” Harbaugh said on Nov. 12. “Good play out of Khaleke Hudson and Josh Uche. His contribution has been huge. Just a high-energy coach that does a great job with recruiting. The other is (tight ends coach) Sherrone Moore who has done a fabulous job with the tight ends. “… Just really wanted to mention those two coaches in particular because you don’t hear people talking about them that much.” Washington grew up an Ohio State fan, due to his father playing linebacker for the Buckeyes. He mentioned that he heard stories of Ohio State coach Woody Hayes and his legendary battles with Wolverines coach Bo Schembechler growing up.
At one point, Washington said he wanted to play for Ohio State as a kid. He didn’t, attending Boston College instead, and Washington’s full conversion from Buckeyes fan to Michigan coach seemed to be complete. Washington was the Wolverines’ lead recruiter on players like Zach Harrison, attempting to convince them that Ann Arbor was a better home for them than Columbus. Now, it seems that conversion was only temporary, as Washington is headed back to the place he heard about growing up. Michigan and Ohio State will face off Nov. 30 next season. Despite some staff turnover in Columbus, it seems there will be more familiar faces on the Buckeyes’ sideline than previously thought.
MAX MARCOVITCH Managing Sports Editor
A turbulent offseason for Michigan football has now gone from bad to worse. Michigan defensive line coach Greg Mattison has accepted a job to join the staff at Ohio State, as first reported by Wolverines Wire on Monday. A spokesperson for the team did not immediately respond for comment. Mattison is set to replace Greg Schiano as the defensive coordinator of the Buckeyes, per multiple reports. Mattison spent eight seasons on staff at Michigan, regularly grooming a toptier defensive line. With the Wolverines, Mattison coached five defensive linemen to firstor second-team all-Big Ten selections — Taco Charlton, Rashan Gary, Maurice
Hurst, Chase Winovich and Chris Wormley. During his tenure, the defensive line was frequently the hallmark of the team. This is the culmination of Mattison’s second stint with the program, joining from the Baltimore Ravens in 2010. He also coached for the team from 1992-1996. Mattison’s departure would undoubtedly sting regardless, though the loss is only enhanced by his destination. The Buckeyes have beaten Michigan 14 of the last 15 seasons and have yet to lose to a Jim Harbaugh-coached team. Mattison will join the staff of new Ohio State coach Ryan Day, who takes over for the now-retired Urban Meyer. The Mattison news comes just over a week after the Wolverines were embarrassed
ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Al Washington, one of Michigan’s best recruiters in the state of Ohio, joined the Buckeyes’ coaching staff Tuesday.
in their bowl game, falling 41-15 to Florida in the Peach Bowl, capping the 10-3 season in a dour manner. In the interim, several high-profile players declared early for the NFL draft: Gary, linebacker Devin Bush, cornerback David Long and tight end Zach Gentry. Each offseason under Harbaugh has included turnover on the coaching staff, with Ed Warriner, Al Washington and Sherrone Moore joining the staff last year. The Mattison departure is the first such move of 2019, but did not prove to be the last. Tuesday, linebackers coach Al Washington joined Mattison in Columbus. And for Harbaugh and Michigan, an offseason already sure to be rife with questions just reached a fever pitch.
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Greg Mattison left Michigan to take the co-defensive coordinator job at Ohio State under Ryan Day.
SportsWednesday Column: Mending the gap A
h, the college football offseason. A time for those of us in Ann Arbor to turn our collective attention to John Beilein and the undefeated Michigan basketball MIKE team. After the way the PERSAK Wolverines’ football team finished its season, you can’t blame people for being eager to do just that. And yet, Monday, nine days after Michigan’s season ended in a 26-point loss to Florida in the Peach Bowl, my attention drifted back to the football team for a bit. That was probably inevitable, since college football was rather unavoidable Monday. In case you didn’t hear, Clemson beat the hell out of Alabama in the national championship game after beating the hell out of Notre Dame in the semifinals. The transitive property is tempting to bring up here as someone who follows the Wolverines, but it is a dumb metric, and in this case, it doesn’t really matter. That’s because there are two programs seemingly light years ahead of the others in the country, and they played on Monday night. There are programs, like Georgia, perhaps, or maybe even Oklahoma and Ohio State, that can claim to be within arm’s reach of the Tigers and the Crimson Tide. And then there are programs like Michigan, which is waiting near the front of the line to join the elite programs club, while the bouncer is letting the
important people skip the line. That is fine, in the grand scheme of things. By that, I mean that things could be much, much worse. Ask about 110 other programs in the country. Hell, ask the Gators, who are playing third-fiddle in their conference these days. But it brings a question to mind: How do the Wolverines get to the level of Clemson and Alabama? It certainly isn’t through what was Michigan’s biggest news Monday, which came when defensive line coach Greg Mattison departed to become co-defensive coordinator for the Buckeyes — the Wolverines’ biggest rival. On Tuesday, it was announced linebackers coach Al Washington would join Mattison in Columbus. These are just the most recent Michigan losses to the Ohio State in a long string of them. The Buckeyes have beaten the Wolverines seven times in a row and in 14 of the last 15 meetings. With seven of those 14 losses, Michigan has finished in second place in the Big Ten or its division. That includes this season and 2016 — both years when a win over Ohio State would have likely pushed the Wolverines into the College Football Playoff. Win even a few of those games and we aren’t talking about the disappointment Michigan continually faces. And this is where Mattison and Washington’s departures really hurt. Because if there was ever a time that the Buckeyes were vulnerable, it would be now. Urban Meyer, a deeply flawed man but one of the best coaches in college football history, just
If the Buckeyes were vulnerable, it would be now.
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh lost two of his best assistant coaches, Greg Mattison and Al Washington, to Ohio State and new head coach Ryan Day.
retired. His replacement, Ryan Day, is a relatively unknown upstart. Yes, he helped orchestrate the offensive dominance Ohio State displayed in its 62-39 win over the Wolverines this season, but it stands to reason Day will need some time to figure everything out. Or maybe it stood to reason. Since Day took over, he has won a recruiting battle for five-star defensive end Zach Harrison, who was once predicted to go to Michigan. Then, Day secured the transfer of Georgia quarterback Justin Fields, the former No. 1 prospect in the 2018 recruiting class. And now, Day has hired away two of the Wolverines’ best recruiters. To be fair, staff turnover isn’t
uncommon with top programs. Alabama has had an enormous amount of it and has been at the top of the heap in college football for much of the last 10 seasons. Of course, the Crimson Tide’s turnover often comes after a national championship, whereas the Wolverines’ typically comes after a crushing loss to Ohio State and then another defeat in whatever bowl game follows. This is also different, because Alabama doesn’t lose its coaches to Auburn, and it often has the talent to make up for any coaching losses. So Michigan has some ground to make up. By some, I
(Michigan) does not have it better than the Buckeyes.
mean a lot. The way to do it is through elite recruiting or elite game-planning. Often the two go hand in hand. The Wolverines brought in a top-10 recruiting class this season, the third in the last four seasons under coach Jim Harbaugh. That is better than most teams. It is tied with Ohio State. It is not better than Alabama or Georgia. In terms of gameplanning or coaching, Michigan has it better than nearly every team it plays. It does not have it better than the Buckeyes. I give you the aforementioned 62-39 as proof. That is the kind of loss, a 23-point blowout to your biggest rival, that hampers recruiting and makes it feasible for an assistant coach to think about jumping ship to said rival. And it is also the exact, annual loss that is holding Michigan back.
What the Wolverines have right now is good enough to finish second in the Big Ten East every year, remain a top 10 program in the nation and then watch the real big boys in college football play for championships. Ask anybody within the program if that’s good enough, and they will say it isn’t. What has to change is something systemic. There either has to be a greater buy-in within the program to elevate players to a new level, a change in philosophy to use players’ talents more effectively or an uptick in recruiting that injects Michigan with players too good to fail. That is what separates the Wolverines from the top. From the Buckeyes, even. Whether or not Michigan is willing and able to make the necessary improvements remains to be seen.