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Organizers host teach-in on racism in history of ‘U’ ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Activist groups look at implications of legacy of white supremacy on campus
Political commentator Ben Shapiro speaks about conservative values with a sold out crowd at Rackham Auditorium Tuesday evening.
Ben Shapiro discusses government compulsion, conservative values
Political commentator draws capacity crowd to event at Rackham Auditorium MADELINE MCLAUGHLIN & JONATHAN WONG Daily Staff Reporter & For The Daily
Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro was met with a standing ovation upon taking the stage of Rackham Auditorium Tuesday
evening. Looking out onto the crowd, he thanked the Young Americans for Freedom and the University of Michigan for hosting him, as well as the protest group Shut Down Shapiro at Rackham Auditorium for their interest in his visit. According to the University’s
chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student group on campus seeking to educate students on right-wing ideologies, tickets reserved for students sold out in under two minutes and were resold for up to $200. Shapiro is editor in chief of
the Daily Wire, a conservative news and opinion website, and host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” a daily news podcast. He has been recognized as a prominent voice for conservative millennials nationwide. See SHAPIRO, Page 3A
ZAYNA SYED
Daily Staff Reporter
On Tuesday, a coalition of leftleaning organizations hosted a teach-in titled “Umich is Complicit in East Quad Residence Hall” to highlight what they called the University of Michigan’s history of inaction against white supremacy. The event was held in response to Young Americans for Freedom’s invitation to Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, to speak at the University. Shapiro addressed a crowd of more than 1,000 students at Rackham Auditorium on Tuesday. According to LSA sophomore Mani Samei, a student organizer with the Michigan Student Power Network, one of the organizations
co-hosting the event, the teach-in sought to tie Shapiro’s speech to a larger trend of white supremacy on campus and raise awareness about the #UMichisComplicit campaign. “So we were like, okay, we can use this opportunity and the thing that’s happening on campus to galvanize some energy towards kicking off this campaign that folks have been talking about for a little while, the #UMichisComplicit campaign, to sort of bring more popular consciousness on campus just the fact that this University is founded on white supremacy and continues to further that,” Samei said. See RACISM, Page 3A
Formerly imprisoned Washington Post CSG reviews Panel talk misconduct journalist recounts experiences in Iran examines
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The University of Michigan’s Wallace House held an event titled “Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison” on Tuesday in the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre. The event featured Jason Rezaian, a Global Opinions writer for The Washington Post, to discuss his new book “Prisoner,” which describes his 18-month experience in an Iranian prison. “Prisoner” chronicles Rezaian’s time spent in Evin, an Iranian prison, known for its poor conditions and
BARBARA COLLINS Daily Staff Reporter
The University of Michigan Central Student Government met Tuesday night to discuss a resolution to recommend revising the current University sexual misconduct policy and debated changing their weekly meeting time. LSA freshman Emma Sandberg and LSA sophomore Josiah Walker proposed a resolution to the Student Assembly regarding the revision of the University’s sexual misconduct policy. In their presentation of the resolution, Sandberg and Walker explained the recent changes to the policy in which a cross-examination is now required in sexual misconduct cases. They said this change may cause emotional trauma to the survivor, as the survivor will be required to be directly questioned by the alleged perpetrator in the examination. See CSG, Page 3A
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its housing of the country’s political prisoners. During the event, Bill McCarren, executive director of the National Press Club, a professional organization for journalists, explained how the book also highlights the people and culture of Iran, as well as issues with freedom of the press globally. “I think it will change what you think about the region,” McCarren said. “It will change what you think about Iran and it will change what you think about journalism.” The majority of the event was a Q&A session between McCarren and Rezaian. After
anecdotes about Rezaian’s interests in sports, the two dove into questions about Rezaian’s imprisonment experience in a country he called home for several years of his life. Rezaian was born in the U.S. to an Iranian father and grew up in California before moving to Iran for part of his adult life to pursue journalism. From 2012 through 2016, Rezaian served in Iran as the Tehran bureau chief for The Washington Post. In July 2014, Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Rezaian, were in their home in Iran, getting ready to attend his
mother’s birthday party. After entering the elevator, the journalist was confronted at gunpoint by a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Rezaian described how after having his apartment ransacked, the IRGC took the couple into custody. Yeganeh remained in prison for 72 days and Rezaian remained in prison for 544 days. “I’m glad that my experience ended after 544 days,” Rezaian said. “At the same time, this should have never happened in the first place. But I realize it could’ve been much worse.” See IRAN, Page 3A
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Lecturer Anne Berg speaks at the panel titled “When Provocateurs Dabble in History: Ben Shapiro and the Enwhitenment” at Tisch Hall Tuesday evening.
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Shapiro’s new book
Faculty reflects on impact of author’s provacative historical interpretations JULIA JOHNSTON For The Daily
The University of Michigan History Department, in collaboration with the History Club, hosted an event on Tuesday called “When Provocateurs Dabble in History: Ben Shapiro and the Enwhitenment,” coinciding with Ben Shapiro’s speech on campus. Anne Berg, assistant director of Undergraduate Studies for the History Department and the History Club’s adviser, introduced the event, which focused on the title of Ben Shapiro’s upcoming book, “The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.” “There were some suggestions in here that there is a wrong side of history, as the History Club pointed out in their message, that the West is great, and that there’s a causal inference that reason and moral purpose made it so,” Berg said. At the same time as this event, Shapiro spoke in Rackham Auditorium to an audience of more than 1,000 people. The conservative political commentator acknowledged the History Club’s event in his on-campus speech. See PANEL, Page 3A
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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: OVER 13,000 ATTEND ‘KICKOFF’ ON ENVIRONMENT March 12 , 1970 A call for commitment, change and action to “Give Earth a Chance”, was the theme last night as over 13,000 people attended the kickoff rally for the University’s teachin on the environment. “We cannot defer for long a confrontation with the real debt that we owe to nature-
the total reorganization of our system of productivity to make it compatible with the ecosystem,” ecologist Barry Commoner told the mammoth crowd that filled Crisler Arena. Commoner, along with Sen. Gaylord Nelson, geneticist James Shapiro, Gov. William Milliken, actor Arthur Godfrey and University President
Robben Fleming, emphasized the urgency of environmental problems and the need for a sustained effort to solve them. “The important fact is that we’re sitting on a delayedaction bomb and we had better defuse it as quick as we can,” Milliken said. “Our responsibility is not just to save our own skins but to have
humanity.” Despite wide agreement that environmental problems exist, the peaceful rally was not without dissension. Many of the speakers were heckled by audience members and criticized in a fake program produced by Students for a Democratic Society, which also organized a card section.
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Remembering the life of Michigan football superfan Drew Haynam ZAYNA SYED
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Drew Haynam was no ordinary Michigan football fan. Haynam, who passed away on Feb. 26, seriously loved Michigan football — so much so that his family decided to host his calling hours in maize and blue and play the fight song at his funeral. In lieu of f lowers, his family asked for donations to be sent to the University of Michigan Alumni Association. Haynam graduated from John Carroll University in 1979 with a degree in business. He spent a year at Ohio State University and joined a fraternity popular with football players there. According to his daughter, Melissa Libertini, Haynam caused trouble by playing “The Victors,” the University of Michigan’s fight song, in the fraternity house. “I think he did it just so that when he was in his dorm room one day, or house, he locked himself in his room and started playing the Michigan fight song on his stereo super loud,” Libertini said. “Of course everybody in the house is going crazy, so they had to call his brother and they say, ‘You better come get your brother because he’s about to get the crap beaten out of him if he doesn’t turn this crap off.’” Libertini remembers Haynam as an easygoing father with a passion for strategizing about Michigan football. “He had the funniest sense of humor ever, it was just very dry, very sardonic,” Libertini said. “He was obviously a big Michigan football fan. Loved Starbucks coffee, and I don’t know, we always just had really funny conversations, about, especially in recent years — because
the Michigan Football team hasn’t been doing so good — just always hypothesizing about what they could do better. Every year, whenever they were doing their recruiting, and he’d find out they would get a good quarterback or some good player recruited. When they got Jim Harbaugh he was super excited.” According to Libertini, Haynam attended Michigan football games at The Big House as a child. This inspired his love of The Team. “I really think it was probably just because it’s the experience he had going to the games as a young kid, just the whole experience of it all,” Libertini said. “The maize and blue.”
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whole team and the mascot, he loved how the helmets looked, the fight song, the Big House. He just loved it all.” Libertini said if Haynam could offer any advice to the Michigan Wolverines “He had the funniest today, it would be this: “That they got to get sense of humor ever, their act together, so they it was just very dry, can beat Ohio State this year.” very sardonic. He Libertini spoke of her father’s good character. was obviously a big to her, he Michigan football fan.” According was open to having a conversation with anyone — even if they supported the Buckeyes. “He was a really, really “He loved Bob Ufer, nice, easygoing man,” the guy who did the Libertini said. “Even if sportscasting, he loved you were an Ohio State that guy,” Libertini said. fan, he’d still sit down “He just loved everything and talk to you. And he is about it, he loved the greatly, greatly missed.” She continued, saying Haynam’s passion extended to all aspects of Michigan football.
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SHAPIRO From Page 1A Shapiro said he regularly seeks out perspectives contrary to his own. “I actually like multiple opinions,” Shapiro said. “I am in favor of hearing multiple points of view.” Shapiro’s discussion focused heavily on the threat of government compulsion. He said the current political climate champions a government that extends too far into citizens’ lives. “When government is activated to invade the rights of other people, even for the purported good of the many, that’s when government is a bully,” Shapiro said. “That’s what we are seeing increasingly these days. The call for socialism, in essence, is a call to invade the rights of others, on behalf of yourself or on behalf of the greater good.” LSA junior Kate Westa, vice chair of YAF, said Shapiro’s decision to accept the invitation to speak at the University was fueled by a growing movement among conservative speakers to promote rightwing ideologies among traditionally left-leaning communities, noting the frequent protests on campus and the recent movement to divest from companies that do business with Israel. Westa compared the University to the University of California, Berkeley, a school with a wellknown liberal atmosphere.
IRAN From Page 1A During the event and as described in his book, Rezaian explained he was imprisoned at the start of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States and Germany) regarding the Iranian nuclear program. In an interview with U.S. News, Rezaian described how because he was taken by the IRGC, who did not want the Iran deal to continue, he quickly became a part of the negotiations. “So I see my arrest in that context,” Rezaian said in the U.S. News interview. “As an attempt by internal forces in the country to make problems for the (President) Hassan Rouhani administration at the time when they were engaged in these negotiations with world powers including the United States.” Rezaian said during his imprisonment his interrogators attempted to get him to admit to espionage. Though he found it difficult, Rezaian said he never admitted to this crime, which he did not commit. McCarren commended him for holding his ground in the high-pressure environment. “You’re not the first journalist to be held in prison,” McCarren
RACISM From Page 1A LSA sophomore Maya Chamra told The Daily after the event she felt the teach-in, a form of alternative programming, was the appropriate response to Shapiro’s visit. “I think that the idea of alternative programming is much more effective when responding to somebody like Ben Shapiro, because he thrives off of this perception that he is just presenting facts, and he’s presenting information, and he’s very logical and pragmatic, and that’s why a lot of people are attracted to him,” Chamra said. “And it’s not because they have very extreme views — they’re just intrigued by what he says.” Chamra said the teach-in did not feed into Shapiro’s narrative. The teach-in itself was attended by more than 30 students and focused on providing a history of white supremacy at the University activists say is largely ignored. “I think we can make change just starting by educating people, and I think a teach-in is much more effective in doing that, than say protesting, because Ben Shapiro and the organizers for that event can predict all the tactics for protesting or just buying tickets, and it feeds very well into their narrative, but a
“Michigan is such a powerhouse in the Big 10 for liberals,” Westa said. “I think that’s why a lot of conservative speakers are drawn to it. I think the first thing that comes to people’s minds when they think of leftist colleges is Berkeley and those kinds of places, but lately with the BDS movement and protests happening … a lot of people are realizing that we are going through a lot of the same things that Berkeley is, and want to come here and fight that.” Shapiro concluded his opening speech by discussing how the restoration of American values was key to maintaining a unified social fabric, not government policy predicated on compulsion. “If you want to fuel America … then we need to get together and we need to form a social framework without government forcing people to do so,” Shapiro said. “Then what we end up with is a government too big for anyone to control and a government that in essence ends up controlling all of us.” After his talk, Shapiro held a Q&A session, during which audience members broached various topics, ranging from abortion to school lunches. A student asked Shapiro if he considered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a violation of individual freedoms because it took away people’s ability to decide with whom they wanted to work or do business. Shapiro said while he personally opposed
News racism, he did not believe the government was properly situated to prohibit people from discriminating against one another. “I don’t think the law has any role whatsoever in banning race-based discrimination by private actors,” Shapiro said. “If I don’t have a right to your services then I certainly don’t have a right to ask the government to require you to provide me those services. That means discriminatory people are not punished by government, they are punished by everyone else who won’t go to the discriminatory restaurant because they realize it’s discriminatory. They answer to the market.” LSA sophomore Raj Aryal attended the talk. He praised Shapiro’s commitment to factbased arguments. “I went to the Shapiro event because I align with him ideologically,” Aryal said. “I really like his messages of having diverse opinions and perspectives on campus, and I wanted to hear a conservative voice … I feel that there’s a lot within the conservative movement that is controversial … I like the way he addresses his critics and how he leans more on the intellectual side of arguments.” About two dozen protestors gathered on the steps of Rackham prior to Shapiro’s talk, lining the entrance as audience members arrived. They f lew an LGBT pride f lag and carried posters in support
of transgender people. Robert Jay, media director for Metro-Detroit Political Action Network, an intersectional civil rights group, said hosting outspoken commentators like Shapiro potentially normalizes the dehumanization of minority identities. “It’s a great concern,” Jay said. “Anytime you’re promoting language that dehumanizes people, you’re conditioning people to accept dehumanization. No matter what reason, you’re dehumanizing someone. Once people get comfortable with that will start applying that to different things they don’t understand.” Counter-protesters in support of Shapiro assembled across the street from Rackham. Among them was Batts Adams, a resident from Lansing who supports Shapiro. Adams said having conservative speakers on campus is crucial to promote freedom of speech. “It’s a public university and being a public university and funded by the government, they should uphold the U.S. Constitution,” Adams said. “The U.S. Constitution grants every U.S. citizen the right to the freedom of speech, and so if somebody wants to come here on campus and they want to assemble and exercise their freedom of speech, they should be allowed to, whether I agree with or disagree with their personal views.”
said. “But there seemed to be a pattern where journalists could be released if they would state that a charge was real, even if it seemed like no one had believed the charges. You didn’t do that, you stood your ground … As a journalist, I was incredibly proud that you would do that.” LSA senior Olivia Abedi described to The Daily after the event how valuable she believed Rezaian’s actions against pleading guilty were, especially for students. “In cases like these, staying true to yourself and what you’re doing ring through,” Abedi said. “The fact that Jason never plead guilty to make things easier on himself was a good thing I think for all students and anybody to understand.” McCarren and the National Press Club, as well as the general spread in media awareness of Rezaian’s situation, contributed greatly to the release of Rezaian. Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House, described the organization’s vast efforts toward Rezaian’s case. “Bill and his colleagues at the National Press Club fought tirelessly for Jason’s release, even at one point holding a reada-thon where they read Jason’s work for 24 hours in shifts,” Clemetson said. “They made sure that Jason’s name stayed in the news and that his story stayed in
the news and that pressure stayed on the officials who needed to take getting him out of there seriously.” The conversation between McCarren and Rezaian ended with a discussion on Anthony Bourdain, who not only made an episode of his CNN show “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” about Iran and Rezaian, advocating on his behalf while Rezaian was in prison, but also published Rezaian’s book. Rezaian described his profound gratitude for the late journalist. “I think for Yeganeh and me, he’s our champion,” Rezaian said. “Lots of people had seen the episode of ‘Parts Unknown’ that we were on, some people know that he was a big and vocal advocate for us when we were in prison, but after we were released, he became a friend, and he was an incredible source of advice and inspiration.” The formal event ended with recognition of Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, a Mexican journalist in the University’s Knight-Wallace Fellowship program. Gutiérrez was recently denied asylum in the U.S., despite his fear for his safety upon returning to Mexico because of his reporting on crimes committed by members of the military in Chihuahua, Mexico. At the event, McCarren welcomed Gutiérrez onto the
stage and presented him with an honorary membership to the National Press Club, created for honoring outstanding journalists. An emotional Gutiérrez stood before a standing ovation from the audience as he received the recognition. “We have never extended this honor to an international journalist, someone who is not a U.S. citizen, and we want to do that today for Emilio Gutiérrez,” McCarren said while presenting the membership. “We want him to be one of our group, and to be one of that special group within our group.” Abedi described the importance of students learning about different cultures through the experiences of journalists such as Gutiérrez and Rezaian, and how understanding these experiences can help spread awareness globally. “It’s important to highlight the different parts of the world you may not understand,” Abedi said. “For instance, I think Iran is a beautiful country. I’ve been there, I love so many parts of Iranian culture, but unfortunately, the government and the treatment of its citizens isn’t always just. I think it’s important for students to see the inner workings of other countries and firsthand accounts of what people have done in order to raise awareness throughout the world.”
teach-in does not look good to them,” Chamra said. “It doesn’t work well with their narrative because all we’re just trying to do is educate people.” Samei stressed that the goal of the event was to highlight the University’s role in allowing white supremacists to speak, including their decision to pay for Shapiro and other speakers’ security. “This particular individual really likes to create intellectual debate around saying really harmful things to people,” Samei said. “So instead of allowing for a platform for that violence to occur, we were like okay, we’re not going to make this between organizers and the white supremacists. We’re gonna make this the elephant in the room, which is that the University is paying for his security, and the University has paid for the security of white supremacists, which is actually a lot of money.” While the organizers of the event chose to utilize alternative programming for this particular speech, some maintained that direct action tactics are also successful. Music, Theatre & Dance senior Isabelle Malnar’s organization, Radfun, a social justice organization, co-hosted the teach-in. Malnar said direct action, such as protests and marches, were effective in
preventing white supremacist Richard Spencer from choosing to speak at the University, even if the University did not pursue legal action to prevent him from speaking. The University’s decision to allow Richard Spencer to speak last year caused controversy and spurred a protest movement dubbed #StopSpencer. “I would like to add that things like that have been successful,” Malnar said. “Last year there was a lot of direct action work against Richard Spencer and he didn’t end up coming, so I think that it’s not good to say that it isn’t always successful, but in this instance we thought more of a teaching and healing and discussion space would be more effective for this particular event.” Hoai An Pham, LSA senior, and Vidhya Aravind, a master’s student in the School of Information, led the teach-in. Pham and Aravind started their presentation by speaking to the power of student activism. “Everything good at this University exists because of student activism,” Pham said. “That includes SAPAC (Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center), Spectrum Center, the Department of African American Studies, and others.” The panel later addressed
the ways they believe the University has been complicit in white supremacy, such as administration’s initial refusal to rename the building formerly known as C.C. Little, a eugenicist, and the decline of African-American enrollment rates at the University in response to affirmative action lawsuits. Chamra said most members of the U-M community are unaware of the University’s history with white supremacy, something she claims the University has purposefully worked to hide. “I don’t think it’s widely known at all and I think the University plays a part in making sure there’s not a lot of bad information spread about them and it’s really fallen on organizers and activists to make the information known not just to themselves, but to the broader public,” Chamra said. “That’s why an event like this is really important, because it’s really hard to get involved in activism if you’d like to get involved, but it’s also even harder to learn about the ways in which the University’s been resistant to activism. And it really isn’t widely known and it’s really a shame. Because we could make a lot of great changes if more people knew about this information.”
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 — 3A
PANEL From Page 1A “Thanks, also, to the University of Michigan History Department, which apparently is sponsoring an event titled, ‘When Provocateurs Dabble in History: Ben Shapiro and the Enwhitenment,’ which seems mean … which will be really fascinating to hear how these history professors critique a book they haven’t read since it’s not released until next week,” Shapiro said in his speech. At the History Club discussion, Berg acknowledged that the panel had not yet read the book, and instead focused on its controversial title. “We haven’t read the book, so you can’t debunk something that you don’t know …” Berg said. “We latched onto the title of something that is deeply problematic.” Berg introduced the event by discussing the importance of accurately reporting history. “To me, when I see the use of history in the public sphere I think it’s a great thing, but I also think it’s important that you don’t use it to just provoke … rather than in a sincere intellectual way or in a sincere political way,” Berg said. Berg discussed the Enlightenment’s relationship to his book title’s emphasis on reason. She suggested Shapiro’s book title fails to recognize the negative consequences arising from the Enlightenment period, citing genocide, slavery and imperial regimes. “If you think about the Enlightenment as a source of thoughts and ideals that made all of those events, both the achievements of Western society and societies elsewhere possible ... but also those discontents that usually we can relegate to aberrations of history,” Berg said. Panelist Angela Dillard, associate dean for Undergraduate Education, continued Berg’s narrative on the importance of history. “There’s a national debate about history,” Dillard said. “I thought, this is a great thing to want to do, to think about how so many of the arguments that we’re having ideologically and politically really are about the nature of history, and what we think it is.” Dillard suggested Shapiro’s idealization of reason frames
CSG From Page 1A In September, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the University must change its sexual misconduct policy to give the student who is accused of sexual assault the chance to crossexamine the accuser. The University’s previous policy did not require a crossexamination or an in-person hearing, and the policy was revised to include these aspects in October. Following the ruling, the new student group Jane Roe created a petition asking the University to adjust the policy to have the cross-examination conducted by an advisor instead of the alleged perpetrator. As of March 12, the petition had 64,824 signatures. Jane Roe continued their efforts to change the policy by meeting with a sexual misconduct case manager, according to Walker. “We then met with a sexual misconduct case manager in the Office of Student Conflict Resolution,” Walker said. “In this meeting, we inquired about why this policy was implemented, whether students were notified about and given a chance to critique the policy and whether the University have plans to revise the policy, especially its crossexamination model. Similar to other exchanges with administrators, this conversation followed a pattern.” Walker further said the administrator told them the University did not want to turn an administrative process into a court-like proceeding and feared not all students would be represented by counsel. According to Walker, proposed Title IX regulations require institutions to provide an adviser for the duration of cross-examination. Walker said Jane Roe insisted the University include student input by forming an advisory board to revise the policy and to allow students to provide feedback, as well as to notify students about the policy change. “Although the University fulfilled our secondary request, the crossexamination model has not yet been revised,” Walker said. “As long as this policy stands, it will be applied to every single student case of sexual assault at the University of Michigan. This is likely to have a devastating impact on survivors and on our campus safety.” Sandberg agreed with Walker and said the policy did not ensure student safety at the University.
historical events in a problematic manner. “It’s a really horrifying vision about not accounting for the damage of slavery and colonialism and the robbing people of personhood,” said Dillard. The panel also discussed Shapiro’s other political stances, including his critique of higher education institutions in his 2004 book titled, “Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth.” LSA senior Nikola Jaksic, Vice President of the History Club criticized Shapiro’s insinuation of students’ lack of autonomy. “As a student of history, it’s pretty infantilizing to have him imply that I am somehow unable to have agency in my own education,” Jaksic said. “That no matter what I do, I’m just going to be indoctrinated into this dogma that he so fears.” Associate history professor John Carson discussed the perspectives of a Shapiro supporter. “Here’s someone who is telling me that at least some of the things that I have always believed about democracy and about religion are true …” Carson said. “(Shapiro’s ideology) re-instantiates a narrative and a world where they feel very lost as to what’s going on.” Prior to the event, the History Club received pushback from critics on Twitter and Facebook, who suggested the panel provided a biased view of the subject. Jaksic addressed this during the event. “We didn’t want to sacrifice having an explicitly conservative voice at the expense of, one, making sure that they people that are presenting … feel welcome and safe in the space and, two, to ‘pretend’ that there is any discussion in our history community about these topics,” Jaksic said. Berg said that while she appreciates a critical mindset, she stands by the panel’s qualification and depth. “The accusation of bias is one that I’m fundamentally sympathetic to,” Berg said. “I want my students to disagree. To me, it’s a signal to the kind of work that we do that people feel comfortable doing that … I don’t think that the panel was biased in a way that was trying to erase various parts, I think people were generally honest about their intellectual trajectory.”
“Enforcing this policy is a gross deviation from the University’s responsibility to protect its students,” Sandberg said. “This form of crossexamination is unnecessary, and I personally consider it to be cruel.” Sandberg called the crossexamination model inhumane and said the University’s investigative process will have consequences for both those who go through with the process or those who decide against it. “The University of Michigan has argued that those who decided on this cross-examination model have the best interest of survivors of sexual assault in mind,” Sandberg said. “To rephrase, the University actually believes that survivors of sexual assault would find it less traumatic to be grilled by their rapist or assaulter than by a third party. I can’t speak for all survivors of sexual assault, but I believe I can speak for the vast majority when I say that being questioned by one’s perpetrator would be significantly more traumatic than by any attorney.” LSA freshman Sam Braden questioned the equality of the policy. He discussed the possible inequity present if one of the parties can afford a more expensive lawyer and asked about how the University assigns a defense attorney to students. “I know we say the whole court system is very equal, but people who can afford better lawyers are more likely going to win a case,” Braden said. CSG Speaker Austin Glass, Rackham student, said although he understands equity concerns regarding the policy, clinical studies have shown a third party agent should conduct a crossexamination. He said administrators have not found the need to include student voices in the creation of the policy. “I recognize your equity concerns, but at the end of the day, the current system is almost unbelievable,” Glass said. “To a passive observer, I think the attempt here is to address the fact that the system is one which, in discussion with administrators, the student office on this hasn’t found any significant desire to make change to.” The Assembly referred the resolution to the Resolutions and Communications committees.
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Opinion
4A — Wednesday March 13, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MARIA ULAYYET | COLUMN
We must come back to our true roots on activism
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SOLOMON MEDINTZ | COLUMN
Why I’m striking for the climate on Friday
M
ost know the dangers Paris agreement. Her movement climate change poses has spread around the world, to both our present and and tens of thousands of students future, but I will give will be walking out of a refresher. We are classes on Friday to already experiencing protest global leaders’ its impacts. Climate failure to adequately change exacerbated address climate the drought in the change. Middle East that It is important partly caused the that everyone walks Syrian Civil War, out of class on Friday increased the at 11:11 a.m., comes to frequency of the the subsequent rally SOLOMON wildfires that ravaged at 12 p.m. on the Diag, MEDINTZ and to the march at 1 California in the fall and one intergovernmental p.m. because climate organizing report found climate change of this magnitude does not causes 400,000 premature happen often. The last march deaths every year. of this size was in 2015, when That is just the tip of the more than 600,000 people took proverbial (melting) iceberg. to the streets in 175 countries The Paris climate accord urged around the world to push for a governments to collaborate to strong Paris agreement. If we keep long-term global warming wait another four years before below 1.5 degrees Celsius, but making our voices heard, it will reaching that goal is becoming be too late. The most recent a pipe dream. With 2 degrees Intergovernmental Panel on Celsius of warming (the Paris Climate Change report called climate accord’s catastrophe for dramatic reductions in threshold), 98 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by coral reefs will die, sea levels 2030. We simply cannot afford to will rise by approximately 50 wait another four years. centimeters (displacing more While this strike will not than a billion people by 2060), have the same numbers as the the Mediterranean region will 2015 march did, it could be have 17 percent less freshwater more powerful. Striking is more available and heat waves could powerful than marching because increase. But now, 2 degrees it shows that we are willing to lose of warming is looking like a something to make our voices relatively positive outcome. heard, even if that something Pledging to get to these is as trivial as lab attendance or thresholds is meaningless iClicker points. without actually taking action. Furthermore, while in 2015 Right now we are more on course we were marching to show for long-term warming in the world leaders that we wanted range of 3.1 to 3.7 degrees Celsius, an ambitious plan for global according to Climate Action emissions reductions, now we are Tracker. There are few estimates calling out leaders for failing to that translate these predictions deliver on their promises. Hence, into direct loss of human life, but this strike is not organized if we are experiencing 400,000 by established environmental premature deaths with barely organizations and leaders; it is led 1 degree of warming, nearly 4 by high school students inciting degrees will be Armageddon. grassroots organizing around That all of these outcomes the world. Our claims have more are rough estimates is part of urgency and more authority now the problem. Climate change than they did four years ago. will bring about continuous, This strike is also important unpredictable and dangerous because we need to play our change — a complete loss of part by taking responsibility to normality for the rest of our influence the decision-making of and our children’s lives. And all the institutions we are a part of. of these impacts have and will If we do not actively try to change continue to disproportionately our institutions, we are complicit impact people of color, low income in their inaction. Conveniently, and working class communities, this strike comes at a critical women, LGBTQ individuals and juncture for our institutions at indigenous communities. multiple levels. The University These global challenges of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the are so daunting that it is hard state of Michigan and the entire to know how to start trying to United States all face critical fight them. This Friday’s Global climate decisions in the coming Climate Strike may be the last, months that we have the power best chance we have to broadcast to influence. student voices around climate First, the University. action. President Mark Schlissel The Global Climate Strike is just created the President’s being led by high school students Commission on Carbon around the world. This wave Neutrality, tasked with of activism began with Greta recommending emissions Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish goals for the University. The activist, who has skipped school commission’s members need to every Friday since August to know that students recognize demand the Swedish Parliament the existential threat climate uphold its commitments to the change poses to our futures, so
they act urgently to make the University carbon neutral by 2030. But the University needs to know that how they get to carbon neutrality is important too; purchasing carbon offsets allows the University to continue burning fossil fuels without accountability, while expanding the new Central Power Plant will bind the University’s hands in an enormous investment that will entrench our reliance on fossil fuels. In Ann Arbor, city councilmembers are considering abandoning climate action. In November 2017, voters agreed to devote 40 percent of a new millage to climate action, including the creation of a sustainability office, as part of a larger plan that set how the city would use the money. However, new city councilmembers want to nullify the resolution without an alternative plan for climate action funding. Last month, the Republican Michigan legislature rejected Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order to strengthen the Department of Environmental Quality by giving it greater oversight over water pollution. Nationally, our two Democratic senators, Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow, have not signed on to the Green New Deal, the ambitious framework for addressing climate change recently proposed in the Senate. While a massive strike may not directly lead to climate action from any or all of our representatives, our demonstrations matter. By showing we are willing to take risks and that we actively care about climate and our futures, our demands for climate action will be taken more seriously. In his terrifying article on worst-case climate scenarios, David Wallace-Wells mentions how Jim Hansen, one of the first influential climate scientists, criticized environmental scientists for “scientific reticence” — they knew climate change was an issue, but were not bold enough to declare it an unambiguous crisis. The University, Ann Arbor, Michigan, the U.S. and countries around the world are performing their own institutional reticence. They are taking it slow or doing nothing at all when it is essential to take dramatic action right now. It should be unacceptable for any of our institutions or representatives to continue slow-walking the process of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Our futures are at stake. Alone, we are just a bunch of college students yelling. But our voices are made more powerful in conjunction with the tens of thousands of students striking with us. Let’s play hooky Solomon Medintz can be reached at smedintz@umich.edu.
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fellow writer recently wrote a column with an interesting perspective on student activism and divestment that inspired me to give our campus community a quick history lesson. This column commandeered the impact of the late Martin Luther King Jr. in an attempt to highlight the need to practice activism to fight for the “outsider.” It is insulting to use King’s legacy to memorialize oppression as is done in the column. King himself was placed on an “enemies of the United States” list that included terrorists, spies or anyone the FBI perceived as a threat. Historic movements are seldom popular in the present and we only celebrate King now after years of a low approval rating. The passion behind this piece truly struck me and also inspired me to dispel the misconceptions on campus and beyond surrounding divestment and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Just as many rightfully possess a deep love and loyalty to their Jewish roots, I urge people to consider the sense of devotion that PalestinianAmericans owe to their roots as well. The on-campus push for divestment campaigns stems from a passion for human rights — not antiSemitism. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is referenced as “hate-filled,” in the column. As a form of nonviolent pressure on Israel, the BDS movement calls for boycotts against Israeli and international companies involved in the violation of Palestinian rights. Divestment campaigns urge the withdrawal of investments from companies involved in the Israeli violation of Palestinian human rights, encouraging sanctions to pressure governments to fulfill their obligations to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international agreements. Today, movements are decentralized with millions of participants, and thus it is impossible to credit such movements to a few individuals. Categorically calling out a few people on behalf of an entire group, as is done in the article, is racism in and of itself. According to the movement’s official website, the BDS movement “works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.” The author goes on to refer to the Middle East as a sea of “illiberal theocracies and failed states.” However, the author does not put this in its proper context, thereby failing to give justice to the complex history of the region. Unlike Israel,
the Arab countries share the characteristic of being post-colonial and are still suffering from the remnants of imperialism. The CIA has also openly interfered in Middle Eastern elections repeatedly, which has severely impeded their ability to form effective democracies. The support of the United States and other Western powers via aid to the Middle East has curtailed anything related to democratic reform, as the U.S. would rather work with puppet dictatorships instead of independent democratic governments. A democracy is defined as “a country in which power is held by elected representatives.” Just because Israel is a country that elects its own officials and is a “democracy” by definition does not mean that it is a nation of equal rights for all, nor that is not in violation of international law. The BDS movement is presented as looking away from the “real evil,” but what about the tangible policies that Israel implements and that place a barrier on other human beings? Currently, Israel is in breach of more than 30 UN Security Council resolutions for actions including the installment of concrete walls, military watchtowers, barbed wire fences on Palestinian land, as well as ethnic cleansing, which primarily consisted of the forced removal of 700,000 Palestinians and the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. Which is really the “real evil”? Furthermore, the Israel Defense Forces has functioned under the Dahiya Doctrine, in which it views civilian villages as military bases and justifies the use of disproportionate forces in such civilian areas. Israeli authorities have also been found to allow pharmaceutical companies to test weapons and drugs on Palestinian and Arab prisoners and children. The idea of harnessing such disproportionate force dangerously mirrors the principle of Manifest Destiny implemented by the United States that saw the genocide of Native Americans. Israel continues their version of Manifest Destiny today by building more than 1,000 homes for Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. These injustices are the exact types of issues that should be combated through student activism. As mentioned in my fellow columnist’s piece, Martin Luther King Jr.’s words “remind us all that it is our duty to stand against injustice, wherever it may exist” and that “none of us can sit idly by while our fellow members of humankind are denied their God-given rights.” I agree with the reverend and believe that my fellow columnist and I both have a shared mission towards
peace and equality. The Palestinian people’s drive for equality mirrors the “outsider” feeling embodied by the African-American community during the civil rights movement. The mission of movements such as BDS centered around human rights serves as a student’s outlet to stand against the injustices imposed by the Israeli government onto the Palestinian people. Peaceful coexistence is unfortunately not the reality in Israel. In the case of the ArabIsraelis that are referenced as “equals,” a recent Pew Research Center study found that 79 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that they should have preferential treatment over Arabs and that nearly half agreed “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.” Currently, thousands of Palestinians must go through Israeli military checkpoints, where they wait from 3 in the morning or earlier to secure a place in “cage-like lines” to Israeli and Palestinian cities beyond the Green Line, simply to go to work every day. Palestinian and Arab-American students alike here at the University of Michigan possess a care for the rights of their people and showcased this through the #UMDivest campaign. The campaign was simply intended to investigate alleged human rights violations committed by companies operating in Israel and urge the withdrawal of investments in companies involved in such violations. The movement by no means sought to propagate hate-filled rhetoric toward Jewish people or Israel as a country, but rather serves to provide a voice to the marginalized Palestinian community. Ignoring the state of the Palestinians and Arab-Israelis who are treated like second-class citizens is inhumane. Securing the freedom of some at the cost of others’ rights is hypocritical. Claiming anti-Semitism as a factor for all movements detracts from the discussion of human rights issues that are occurring. There is a historically emotional undertone to the anger within these movements, and this stems from the pain of decades of such abuses. This is the pain that Palestinian and Palestinian-American students face and deal with. I urge students to continue using their passionate voices to fight against the inequality and injustice they see and I hope we can all eventually see eye to eye in the search for peace through student activism. Maria Ulayyet can be reached at mulayyet@umich.edu.
TARA JAYARAM | OP-ED
I
Ghost traffic, a driverless problem
magine you’re driving in London or New York, inching slowly through patience-testing traffic. You look to your left, peer into the car next to you, and see that there’s no one there. You look to the other side and notice there’s no one inside the car to your right either. This is a future we can expect: rows of driverless gridlock, empty cars slowly roaming the city, dutifully cruising until their owners get out of work, all in the name of avoiding expensive urban parking fees. In a recent publication in Transport Policy, Adam Millard-Ball and his colleag ues at the University of California, Santa Cruz illustrate possible alternatives that autonomous vehicles can use instead of parking. Society doesn’t seem to have made up its mind on autonomous vehicles. According to a Pew Research Center study, Americans are both enthusaistic and worried about their adoption. In academia, scientists have split opinions on whether future driverless cars will positively or negatively affect the environment. On the one hand, driverless cars fuel urban sprawl, but since their design optimizes spatial efficiency, they are also seen as an opportunity to redesign cities to promote walking and cycling. In the face of future
ambig uity, there is one clear consequence of the adoption of autonomous vehicles: the effect on traffic. An inevitable but rarely addressed aspect of these cars is their ability to bypass expensive parking fees in ways that increase drive times and worsen already rising urban congestion. One option is to send the car home after the passenger is dropped off. While this may seem like a harmless high tech chauffeur, there are distinct environmental costs to this practice. The number of trips the car takes is doubled, resulting in more congestion and more vehicle emissions per person. Another, more eerie option, is called cruising. After the passenger is dropped off, the car drives around the city as slowly as possible so as to minimize fuel costs. Instinctively, the cost of driving all day seems higher than parking in a city. But Millard-Ball’s study found that it is by far cheaper than parking, costing less than 50 cents per hour in contrast to the $4 per hour cost of parking in many large cities. Also, when multiple cars engage in cruising, each with the incentive to go as slowly as possible, the chance of gridlock is high. Picture hundreds, even thousands of cars, sitting in the middle of residential streets, waiting patiently for the return
of their owners. Even in relatively small numbers, less than 4,000 autonomous vehicles are needed to slow some streets down to under two kilometers per hour. This traffic nightmare comes with a breath of solace in its possible solutions. Free or subsidized peripheral parking, similar to the cell phone parking lots in airports, can encourage more sharing of AVs and limit congestion within cities. It has also added credence to the proposition of municipal congestion pricing, a policy that has also been proposed as a response to the increased traffic caused by ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft. Without the offset of congestion pricing, cities stand to lose a significant portion of their municipal revenue from the decrease in parking popularity. For example, in 2016, New York City made $545 million in parking fines, a significant potential loss if not remedied by the approval of congestion charges. While the adoption of autonomous vehicles seems inevitable, we can’t know exactly how our cities will look when autonomous vehicles gain popularity. We can only hope that the traffic they bring doesn’t add to our road rage. Tara Jayaram can be reached at tjayaram@umich.edu.
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
COLUMBIA RECORDS
I loathe Billy Joel. Here’s why this is not a problem. JONAH MENDELSON Daily Arts Writer
I really cannot stand Billy Joel. Granted, there are a lot of artists I dislike, but none of their music is as pervasive and unavoidable as his. Billy Joel reaches for both the everyman charm of Bruce Springsteen and the campy virtuosit y of Elton John however, he misses both marks, falling f lat on his face in the middle. Billy Joel is no stranger to lukewarm critical reception — when asked about the critics in a 1982 interview with Playboy, Billy responded: “What they say has absolutely no effect on me! I really don’t care what they say. It doesn’t bother me. It’s irrelevant!” He has been known to rip up negative reviews on stage during his concerts, which is a
g reat way of showing that you are definitely not mad. Let’s move to his actual music, beginning with the mawkish piece of work that is “Piano Man”: The narrative is centered around the perspective of a dive bar musician who describes the lonely clientele that pass through on a Saturday night. Like almost all his songs, the central character, in this case the “piano man,” is a hammedup version of himself. While masquerading as a portrait of the common man, the song does not actually explore the emotional world of the patrons in any way, the only real observation being that they are lonely and dream of a better life. Instead, the narrative turns on how much they all come together to enjoy the music of ... Billy Joel. Likewise, any attempts he makes at empathy or
insight are painfully banal; take “The Stranger”: “Well, we all have a face that we hide away forever / And we take
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 — 5A
cool he is. In the Playboy interview, he tells this one: “I was in Turin for this press conference and this welldressed journalist with wingtip shoes from a left-wing paper asked, ‘Why did you play Israel?’ He was trying to create controversy. I said, ‘I played in Israel for the same reason I played in Cuba — to play for the people. We wanted to see what the people in Israel were like instead of listening to the propaganda we get in our country.’ The people at the press conference stood up and clapped.” This anecdote could come straight from a chain email circa 2005, right down to everyone in room standing up and clapping for him. He tells a very similar story about a show in Cuba as well — his self-agg randizement is not constrained by pett y politics! Let’s also look at the “A Matter of Trust” music video. It consists of Billy and his backing band performing an open-air basement concert while onlookers slowly cong regate, the event eventually turning into an impromptu concert. If
A lot of the criticism of Billy comes from a place of condescension — he is perceived by critics as middlebrow and uncool
them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.” A lot of Billy’s stories, much like “Piano Man,” seem to focus on how effortlessly
this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s almost exactly the same concept as The Beatles’s famous rooftop concert, except Billy Joel is under the
building instead of on top of it. Specifically, his feeble attempts to emulate the irreverent and mischievous public persona of The Beatles come across as arrogant. In regard to his experience with The Beatles, Billy says, “They don’t look like they were manufactured in Holly wood. They look just like me and my friends. I could see this look in John Lennon’s eyes that told me something: They were irreverent, they were making fun of the whole thing. It was this smirk on his face. They were a bunch of wise g uys like me and my friends! That’s when it all took shape. I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’” The problem with this is that Billy Joel, like most people, is much, much, worse at being a wise g uy than any of The Beatles. He paints himself as beleag uered by cultural elites at every turn — he’s just trying to be Billy and they won’t let him! And you know what? He’s not totally wrong. A lot of the criticism of Billy comes from a place of condescension — he is perceived by critics as middlebrow and uncool. This is a correct perception, but such criticism merely feeds into his desire to be perceived as the scrappy underdog who doesn’t care what the haut monde has to say about him. Of course, this image does not
square with the fact that he is one of the best-selling artists of all time, has five Grammys, and as of last summer, Jul. 18 in New York state is henceforth to be known as “Billy Joel Day.” Thanks, Andrew Cuomo. There are plent y of musicians who don’t really offer much of substance but are pleasant nonetheless because they create wellconstructed, consumable art. There’s nothing wrong with that! What makes Billy so much more offensive is that a large part of his brand is based on a supposed authenticit y, when in realit y his appeals to “man of the people” imagery are a cynical, self-serving act. When asked how he would define rock ‘n’ roll, Billy said, “It’s music that has passion in it, whether it’s a ballad or whatever. There’s some kind of intensit y.” Aside from being a terrible attempt at defining rock music, that answer explains a lot of the lurid melodrama Billy shoves into his tunes. Billy is keenly aware of what sig nifies “meaning ” in music and takes advantage of these tropes to create a veneer of poig nancy. It is a hollow imitation. It is the Applebee’s of pop music, a tepid microwaved repackaging of actual musical expression, and it deserves little more than contempt. I do think “ Vienna” is a good song, though.
He paints himself as beleaguered by cultural elites at every turn — he’s just trying to be Billy and they won’t let him!
FILM REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
‘Never Look Away’ is ‘Motor City’ needs a Tylenol a portrait on beauty NATALIE ZAK Daily Arts Writer
ROSS ORGIEFSKY
This film is remarkably moving. Von Donnersmarck’s treatment of the war is raw. One particularly disturbing Clocking in at three hours and nine and somber scene, in which mentally minutes, “Never Look Away” is an epic ill women walk into a gas chamber to journey through the life of Kurt Barnert be euthanized, provokes a melancholy (Tom Schilling, “A Coffee in Berlin”), feeling of profound disgust. The film a young artist seeking to find his sense addresses life and death, particularly of self through art. His youth was how living and dying affects those around influenced by World War II — his aunt us. Mother and child, birth and loss, Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl, “Lore”) creation and destruction. The viewer was sterilized and euthanized by a Nazi is engaged for every minute of the film; doctor due to her “mild schizophrenia.” every scene adds to Kurt’s intricately layered history. When we first This is not your meet Kurt and average biopic. Elisabeth, he is Despite the five or six years old intense and and she is taking artfully woven him to the famous plot, the film 1937 “Degenerate would not be as Art” exhibition moving without in Dresden — one its remarkable of the greatest score. Composed exhibitions of by Max Richter, modern art in the wonderful history. It is here music elevates where Elisabeth Sony Pictures Classics the film. It is tells Kurt to “never fluid, powerful look away” as and engaging. “everything true I am always is beautiful.” Kurt drawn to never forgets these repeated motifs, words, and the small visual loss of his aunt moments which affects him deeply. tie characters Raised in East and scenes Germany, Kurt together. “Never attends art school in Dresden. There, he meets his wife Look Away” features a few of these, Ellie (Paula Beer, “Transit”) with most notably Elisabeth and Kurt’s whom he ultimately leaves for the West. separate moments of aural rapture: Despite rising above his classmates, he An unexpected mechanical chorus is restricted by the prescriptive nature provides the blank canvas from which of Socialist realism. Kurt desires a Max Richter’s score erupts, sending greater artistic freedom, which he finds chills down the viewer’s spine. In “Never in Dusseldorf. Throughout the film, we Look Away,” film meets music meets see how World War II affected Germany, painting to create a portrait of human personally and societally. Directed by suffering and flourishing. Growth, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck decay, regrowth — this arc emerges in (“The Lives of Others”), “Never Look Kurt and Ellie’s passionate romance, Away” addresses the war with brutal in Kurt’s art and in the career of Ellie’s honesty, reminding viewers of the father. I would say Von Donnersmarck Nazi slaughter of non-Jewish Germans paints a portrait himself, of being human with mental illness and “undesirable in the face of inhumanity. This is not genetics.” Von Donnersmarck based this your average World War II film, either. film on the life of German artist Gerhard Von Donnersmarck gives the viewer an Richter. The biographical accuracy has intimate look into mid- and post-War been debated, but the similarities remain Germany. It is a film about passion and unquestioned. Kurt’s ultimate artistic perseverance. The viewer is ultimately style is very Richter-esque; some of the reminded to appreciate art and love works Kurt paints in the movie are direct wholeheartedly, for how else are we to cope with life and loss? references to Richter’s works. For the Daily
‘Never Look Away’
In the next week, the Book Review will be featuring works from Gimmick Press, a independent publisher of niche literature and art based in Detroit, Michigan. Gimmick was established in 2015 by Josh Olsen and Katie MacDonald with a commitment to diversity and inclusion of both subject matter and voice throughout all aspects of their work. Gimmick publishes digitally through “Worthless Treasures” and calls for printed chapbook and anthology submissions throughout the year. They’re currently accepting submissions for an anthology of creative nonfiction about pop culture obsessions. I find it necessary to preface this: I don’t have much experience reviewing poetry. I’ve spent most of my time with nonfiction, the remainder with fiction and poetry only when a particular poet has been introduced to me within a larger academic context or a stroke of luck brought me their way. So I enter this reflection on Mark James Andrews’s “Motor City is Burning” by defining it as exactly that — a reflection, not a review. Which is fitting, in the end, because this collection is much more about evoking a sense of place rather than challenging and advancing the contemporary canon. And that place is the grimy, Beatnik basements scattered throughout Detroit during the ’60s and ’70s. It is the rock ‘n’ roll, blues-laden scenes and rioting in the streets that lit Detroit on fire during a tumultuous era in our country’s history. We identify and recall beat poetry based on its distinct, mythologized features and the lifestyle it inspired: a dirty and progressive use of language, the flagrant abuse of drugs and alcohol and a privileged assumption of antimaterialism and counterculture ideas. Andrews’s collection is reminiscent of the beat style, and self-aware in its endeavor: In the poem “Words Can’t Describe,” Andrews writes “I lifted my pages off the green felt and began to chant / my own personal Howl / derivative to be sure but I was pure and sincere / and the young crowd was with me.” Most of the poems unfold like this, following a stream of consciousness rhythm, written as if Andrews couldn’t get the words out of his mouth and onto the page fast enough. They all contain this performative air, meant only to
be read to an audience at Dick’s Bar or Samsara Lounge — settings for many of these poems. Often enough though I find that it’s easy to confuse good poetry with a confident speaker. And much of a beat poet’s allure is in their delivery, their undeniable style. This is what I think about when I read Andrews’ poetry, how, were I seated before him at Dick’s Bar listening to him perform in a daze of smoke and a cloud of alcohol, I could be swayed by it. But on the page, in 2019, these poems seem anachronistic. Even when he’s talking about current
‘Motor City is Burning and Other Rock and Roll Poems’ Mark James Andrews Gimmick Press Nov. 22, 2018
events, a suicide on Belle Isle Bridge, the language harkens back to a style and demographic from which poetry has distanced itself. And it’s one reason I cringe when reading some of these poems. I’m not sure sincerity is enough to compensate for the derivative nature of them, the feeling that, because I’ve read Ginsberg and Thompson and Burroughs, I’ve read Andrews before. And I’m not sure sincerity makes the heady sexual imagery of some of these poems any easier to swallow. Perhaps one of the most explicit examples of this is an excerpt from the poem “Rusty Cage,” which seems to take place in a strip club or cabaret: “I’m waiting for the next one / a stunning amazon / lanky, goofy, sneaky pretty / bare midriff top. / I hope her gig is a belly dance / or anything with a little bravery.” Given the opportunity to briefly glance over the collection, anyone can notice the prefuse objectification of the
female body employed in many of these poems (I gave it to a co-worker and they commented on it, unprovoked). Because, of course, with the tradition of this era and its poetry comes the tradition of extraneous sexual imagery, often to the detriment of the female body (The poem “Revolution” opens with the statement that “Revolution was about pussy / more pussy / strange pussy / better drugs”). The narrator dismisses the ’60s revolutionaries in this poem, as he gazes upon the Occupy Detroit protesters in the park. But with the employment of over-sexualized language and a kind of bebop rhythm, he still romanticizes this era and draws us back to it. “Satan bebopped into Detroit / with a wad that would choke / The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse / with a Saturday Night Special,” begins the poem “Boom Boom.” Each poem in the collection is dedicated to a different rock or blues musician. “Boom Boom,” dedicated to John Lee Hooker, is more straightforward in its dedication than the rest, seeming to narrate a bit of Hooker’s importance in the Detroit jazz scene. But this connection between dedication and content is hard to locate in many of the poems. Most serve a symbolic purpose, anchoring the poem in time and memory, making them only accessible for those familiar with the musician or a specific historical instance. His use of allusions do this as well, especially in “Boom Boom” where the substance of the poem is weighed down by references lost on me and, I’m sure, other readers. The strongest poems in “Motor City is Burning” are the ones that both speak to a unique experience and don’t sink under the weight of history. “Looking at You,” dedicated to Wayne Kramer & MC5, is one of these. Recounting the night he saw MC5 play The Magic Stick, Andrews moves from a party on one end of Detroit to the crowded floor beneath the stage, and captures the rush of excitement and adrenaline that pushes a night forward from one place to the next before ending, in this case, “with a mic upper-cut popping my chin” as the narrator stood in front of the stage. There are moments in this poem where the sincerity Andrews speaks of in “Words Can’t Describe” break through gauzy descriptions and reach the surface. Moments like small children waving “as if our passing was an event / and I felt foolish just for a minute.”
Arts
6A — Wednesday, March 13, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
DAILY ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN
ALBUM REVIEW
Weezer’s latest goes dark Can GoT’s end satisfy us? MATTHEW GALLATIN Daily Arts Writer
Nearly two years have passed since I last listened to Weezer. At my worst, I was listening to “No Other One” no less than dozen times a day. I’d go weeks avoiding calls from my mother, huddled in the dark corner of my dorm room under an Edward Hopper “Nighthawks” print pressing play on “Why Bother?” My friends would ask where I was. I’d tell them I was too tired, too busy. And then, with great guilt but even greater pleasure, I’d resume “Say It Ain’t So.” Since that rock bottom, I have had to seriously recalibrate myself. What are my priorities? Does my social circle have my best interests in mind? Who are my role models? Each day, each decision I have approached with a simple question: “Will it make me listen to Weezer again?” I have tried my best to live a life that, in aggregate, answers this question with a resounding no. But because I am a self less, giving, loving, effervescent person, I have decided, just this once — I swear — to relapse in the name of good journalism, and review the thirteenth album by the Los Angeles based emo-pop-rock band. Weezer (“Black Album”) is their fifth self-titled album, in case you were forgetting what Rivers Cuomo calls his band, and their second album of 2019, following Weezer (“Teal Album”), which included covers of Toto’s “Africa” and TLC’s “No Scrubs.” In the less than three months between the “Teal Album” and the “Black
Album,” Weezer have yet again found the darkness: on the cover of the “Teal Album” the band dressed in fun, beachy attire. Here, they don full latex BDSM bodysuits. But the latex suits are bit of a fake out. If you’re like me and have also gotten into hardcore BDSM and latex over the last three months, then you’ll be let down by the dissonance. These songs are not hardcore and abrasive, like some of their best and earliest
Weezer (‘Black Album’) Weezer Universal Music Group
material; instead, they lean heavily on a pop mentality that can be as annoying as it is fun. Nearly every track has the easily recognizable, repetitive nature of a radio pop song. “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” “Zombie Bastards” and “Living in L.A.” could all feasibly rotate on an FM station and you probably wouldn’t blink an eye. That’s not to say they’re not fun and catchy. “Zombie Bastards,” for example, is quite so. But none of the three are so memorable, and unfortunately, this applies to the majority of the album. Somehow Weezer has made even BDSM unexciting. For better or worse, what once made Weezer so popular (and so addicting) was their ability to make songs about angst that sounded
like angst. When they complained about sex and drugs and loneliness, they did it with guitar riffs that sounded just as disaffected and jaded as Cuomo. When Cuomo said he was “Tired of Sex,” you believed him, as embarrassing and angsty a sentiment that might be. Weezer was never afraid to sound like the feelings you weren’t supposed to have. On Weezer (“Black Album”), the band hasn’t ditched its emotional core. The loneliness is still here (“But I feel so lonely, feel so lonely / Uh, uh, yeah, I’m living in L.A”), as is the sex (“Like the sex appeal of your sick dance moves / Ooh, wee, ooh, wee”) and drugs (“Let’s do hard drugs / Fix our problems”). But those feelings are no longer tangible. Whether it’s the pop background, the proximity to an album with an “Africa” by Toto cover, or just that Cuomo is getting old, these songs speak of sadness but don’t feel like it. Certainly, pop music can use the dissonance between sound and lyrics to an advantage. When done effectively, the song resonates more deeply, not less, like when Robyn sings of being alone over the uplifting beat of “Dancing On My Own.” But on Weezer (“Black Album”), the result is the opposite. Both the upbeat instrumentation and the lyrics feels performative, one trying to accomplish a different task than the other. If the “Black Album” leaves a mark, its only to remind me of the better, unhappier moments in Weezer’s discography, and the worse, unhappier moments my own musical progression. Here’s hoping we all get well again.
With last week’s release of the much anticipated trailer for Season 8 of the HBO megahit “Game of Thrones,” one thing is clear: The end is near. After eight seasons, almost 10 years, and more than two decades of waiting for George R.R. Martin to pull his story together, the Westerosi Saga will finally reach it’s end. Or at least, it will reach an end. As anyone who has become wrapped up in this tale of zombies and dragons knows, author George R.R. Martin is nowhere close to completing his “Song of Ice and Fire” novels upon which the show is based. The most recent book, “A Dance With Dragons” was published the same summer the HBO show first premiered, back in 2011. Since then, the showrunners have adapted and then expanded upon Martin’s work, going beyond the narrative established in the novels and crafting their own material beyond the source. Many believe that the show has dipped in quality since passing the material in Martin’s original books. However, the truth is that the show has simply shifted in structure and in subject matter. Where the early seasons and novels focused on the intricate political intrigue between the various forces of Stark, Lannister, Tyrell, Bolton and other houses vying for control of the Iron Throne, later seasons have slowly pruned the narrative excess, eventually bringing the battle against the White Walkers into sharp focus as the central conflict of the series. What began as “House of Cards” with dragons has become “Lord of the Rings” with nudity. Whether or not that bothers you is up to the individual viewer. Whether or not that was always going to be the case, and whether or not Martin intended to make the same kind of pivot in his novels, is unclear. Six episodes. A little more or less than an hour each. That’s all that the “Game of Thrones” creators and writers have to wrap up one of the most
sprawling fantasy epics of all time. Despite the work done in the past few years to prune away the fat from the show’s cast, dozens of characters still exist whose storylines need
IAN HARRIS
to be brought to something resembling resolution. But what kind of resolution can possibly satisfy the legions of fans that have spent in some cases their entire lives speculating about how this is all going to end? Just ask the people behind the “LOST” finale — it’s not easy to end a mythology-heavy show. If Daenerys or Jon Snow take the crown and sit the Iron Throne, will that feel earned or will it feel cheap? If both die and another takes the seat, will it come off to audiences as a cop out? Is there any way to still shock an audience that expects to be shocked at every turn? Is it a little bit lame that the ultimate “no good guys, no bad guys” show is going to end with an army of good guys against an army of faceless CGI zombies? I don’t know the answers. But, the questions are real. It seems inevitable that “Game of Thrones” Season 8 will disappoint. How could it not? Nothing can ever live up to the individual expectations and desires that each viewer has in their own head. Not everyone’s favorite character will have enough screen time, not everyone will get a happy ending. Many book readers have all but given up on the show, and are just
watching now to see how it all ends up. With such a contracted season coming almost 18 months after a sixth season that was also shorter than usual, the days of getting 10 straight weeks of “Game of Thrones” seem as far away as Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon. Many have referred to “Game of Thrones” over the years as “The Last Water Cooler Show.” In the current age of diversified content and splintered viewership, it is becoming more and more difficult for shows to garner huge followings and break out of their niche. “Thrones” is one of the only shows that people still feel the need to watch in the moment, week to week, like a live sporting event. It came of age during “the golden age of TV” but it will leave as “the last of its kind.” Undoubtedly, imitators will come and go (Amazon is already planning the most expensive series of all time with their “Lord of the Rings” streaming show), but it seems highly unlikely that any show will shock the world as constantly and as consistently as “Game of Thrones” did. If it is the journey that is important, and not the destination, then “Game of Thrones” has already done more than enough to make its mark on the history of television. It’s one of those pieces of media, like “Harry Potter” and “Star Wars” before it, that ingrains itself so fully in your memories that you will never forget where you were when certain scenes hit you, nor will you forget the people you were with. As the next two months unfold, the death toll mounts and the nostalgic wave that comes with all endings sets in, it’s worth it to take a moment and remember how far we’ve come. Just like the Stark children, many of us have grown up with this show. Winter has at last come and will soon be gone. From George R.R. Martin, to the cast and crew of “Game of Thrones,” to the powerful spirit of imagination that has allowed this show to enchant audiences all over the world, may we all continue to dream for spring.
TV NOTEBOOK
Oprah & Gayle on tragedy Classifieds MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN Daily Arts Writer
Surely, you’ve seen the photo: R. Kelly, on the verge of tears, sprung from his seat and Gayle King, leaning back in hers
SERVICES Release Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 Cascades peak 7 Cap’n’s aide 11 Classic British sports cars 14 Character builder? 15 __ Domini 16 Vein contents 17 Not yet proven 19 __ drop 20 After 18-Down, actor/golfer combo 22 Wrestling duo 25 Innocent 26 Charlottesville sch. 27 Like a cool cat 30 Edible root 31 Depended (on) 35 Sunlit lobbies 37 After 34-Down, crime writer/poet combo 42 Worthy of a standing O 43 Pay for one’s crime 44 Suisse peak 47 Sisters, say 48 Spam holder 49 “American Horror Story” actress Paulson 51 Contents of a teacher’s key 55 After 50-Down, president/novelist combo 59 TV buying channel 60 Host of a Friars Club event 64 One of a comic trio 65 Invite feedback? 66 Nissan sedan 67 18-, 34- __ 50-Down 68 Votes for 69 Oppressive ruler DOWN 1 Minded the kids 2 “What the?!” 3 Pigged out, say 4 Little pig 5 Yankee manager before Girardi
6 __ rock: Queen genre 7 Attend to a leaking boat 8 How some data is stored 9 Sound made using two fingers 10 “The Dark Knight Trilogy” director Christopher 11 Family nickname 12 Mourn 13 It’s not for everyone 18 Generic guy 21 Canadian brewery 22 Steak metaphor seen on menus 23 State with conviction 24 Charity event 27 Wears 28 “There’s more” letters 29 Jab to keep them dogies rollin’ 32 Slacks measure 33 Prefix with car 34 Generic guy 36 “How was __ know?”
38 Maneuver through moguls 39 Flier on a string 40 Mideast mogul 41 Strong desires 44 Bronchial disorder 45 “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary 46 Tended to topiary 50 Generic guy 51 Germane 52 Desert wanderer
53 Like many bad jokes 54 Bridge positions 56 Bridge position 57 Vena __: major blood line 58 Sacred symbols on pyramid walls 61 Reward for waiting 62 Confessional music genre 63 Maze scurrier
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
By Ed Sessa ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/13/19
03/13/19
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GO BLUE
The week in pop culture has been dominated by two profoundly disturbing stories: accounts of child sexual abuse perpetrated by music icons R. Kelly and Michael Jackson, whose alleged misdeeds were ignored for far too long, no doubt because it was much more convenient to enjoy the genius of “Ignition (Remix)” and “Billie Jean” at weddings and birthday parties than it was to confront those other ugly, distressing possibilities. HBO’s “Leaving Neverland” — the Jackson exposé — and Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly” both speak to the power of the televised documentary to change minds and fuel conversations. But the ensuing discourse has sometimes veered into unproductive and even malicious territory. On the tamer end are the circular, oft-hashed debates about separating art from the artist. At worst, though, the films have been met with a deluge of unhinged apologia. And amid the very fan-centric introspection, a clearer sense of how we might treat victims and deal with abusers in these situations still feels lacking. Enter Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, the trusted TV hosts and best friends, who both demonstrated a remarkable ability to take stock of horribly sad, fraught circumstances and treat them with nuance and care. Winfrey, herself a survivor of child sexual abuse, hosted an hour-long special following the “Leaving Neverland” premiere in which she interviewed the documentaries’ subjects, TK and TK, along with a child trauma psychologist and other victims-turned-advocates. A few days later on CBS, King sat down with R. Kelly in his first televised interview since the premiere of “Surviving R. Kelly.” Both women brought a deft, careful balance of compassion, composure and journalistic rigor. Oprah’s was done in her signature group
therapy style, weaving in personal reflections and audience input. The audience, it should be noted, was made up almost entirely of survivors, all of whom had just watched the 4-hour “Leaving Neverland.” Winfrey began the segment by noting that she had devoted over 200 episodes of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to discussing sexual abuse, and her familiarity with the material shined through — her questions were informed and incisive, sometimes belaboring points to make the contours of the conversation clear to viewers while remaining respectful of the trauma victims she spoke with. All in all, it was low-key, subdued affair. King’s was the more lurid of the two — maybe you’ve seen the myriad of clips or the GIFs by now. Surely, you’ve seen the photo: R. Kelly, on the verge of tears, sprung from his seat and Gayle King, leaning back in hers, with an unmoved expression that says, “It’s OK, I’ll wait.” It couldn’t have been easy to interview someone who looked like he could detonate at any moment, but she did it spectacularly, with focus and poise. And she navigated the interview with him and his zealous apologists in a way that let her emerge supremely level-headed by the segment’s end. Neither spends much time on the question of separating the art from the artist — that’s the sort of thorny dilemma that doesn’t make for a compact primetime special. But what Winfrey and King both do well is to give their viewers the tools to make those decisions for themselves. And each host, in her own way, probes at the problem of fandom itself. We might not find ourselves grappling with “cancel culture” had we not filled celebrities with our own nostalgic attachments in the first place. What allowed Michael Jackson to ingratiate himself with his victims, Oprah explains, is the same thing that has kept his legacy mostly intact until now: He was Michael Jackson! He was God. She quotes a Maureen Dowd column that stuck with her: “How can you see clearly when you’re looking into the sun?”
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Sports
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 — 7A
First tough competition brings ‘M’ looking forward to home crowd mixed results for Wolverines LILY FRIEDMAN Daily Sports Writer
ABBY SNYDER
Daily Sports Writer
When the No. 23 Michigan baseball team (9-4) hopped off their plane at LAX on Feb. 27, there were a lot of questions to answer. The Wolverines were undefeated. Their bats were hot. Their pitchers were dominant. But the only competition the Wolverines had faced were virtual pushovers in Binghamton and the Citadel. Michigan’s eight-game, ten-day California swing, in which it faced face California State-Northridge, California State-Long Beach, No. 25 University of CaliforniaIrvine, No. 3 UCLA, Southern California, and No. 19 Oklahoma State, presented its first tough competition of the season. The California trip now behind them, there are just as many question marks swirling around the Wolverines. They defeated Northridge handily in the first three games of the series, but dropped the fourth, suffering their first loss of the season. Michigan defeated UCLA, which Bakich called “maybe one of the best teams in the country,” but ended the trip on a two-game losing streak, falling to Southern California and Oklahoma State. “We showed a little bit of everything on this trip, but as a position player group we had opportunities to execute on this trip that we didn’t get done, whether it was getting bunts down or moving runners over,” said Michigan coach Erik Bakich. “Those are the things that just need repetition. Those are the things that we haven’t been able to do in training, and the areas we need to work on the most.” Going forward, the key to the Wolverines’ consistency will be their pitching. The pitching staff has showed flashes of brilliance this season, from a complete game one-hitter by junior left-hander Tommy Henry to a 10-strikeout
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Senior infielder Jimmy Kerr hit two homeruns during the Spring Break trip.
gem from junior right-hander Karl Kauffman against Binghamton. When its pitchers are firing, Michigan has proven difficult to beat. But when its pitchers struggle, as they did in California, so does Michigan. Long Beach scored six runs in the bottom of the third inning off sophomore righthander Blake Beers. In the game against Oklahoma State, freshman right-hander Willie Weiss, who has stepped into a closing role this season, loaded the bases on a walk and two singles before walking in the winning run. “A couple of hits, not getting a couple calls, and ending up with a couple of walks – sometimes that happens,” Bakich said. “It was magnified because it was the 10th inning, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story here. (Weiss) made some gutsy pitches in some huge spots.” The Wolverines’ bats were hot for most of the trip, continuing the tear they went on in their first two series of the season. They beat up Long Beach for seven runs and scored four runs off UCLA starter Zach Pettway – one of college baseball’s top pitchers – in the top of the first inning alone, going on to win the game 7-5. Senior third baseman Jimmy Kerr had two homeruns over the course of the
trip, one of which was a two-run homer to move the Wolverines within one run of Long Beach in a late-game rally that eventually fell short, leaving the tying and go-ahead runs on base. The offense struggled to find consistency over the trip, however. Michigan’s offense was only able to put two runs on the board in its first loss of the season at Northridge. In the Long Beach game, the Wolverines’ ninthinning comeback rally fell just short. They only put up one run against USC and fell a run short once more against Oklahoma State in extra innings. “All the games were close because of our pitching and our defense,” Bakich said. “We’re not even close to firing all cylinders offensively. That’s our biggest area for improvement right now. But I am 100 percent confident that our offense is going to start surging very soon.” Michigan’s upcoming home opener, a four-game series against Manhattan, will be something of a return to easier matchups, but with contests against No. 3 Texas Tech and in-state rivals Michigan State not too far down the road, the Wolverines will need to find consistency – especially offensively – to remain in contention this season.
When sophomore infielder Natalia Rodriguez played at Alumni Field for the first time last season, she didn’t expect how many fans would show up. They packed the stands. They brought volume. And they gave the recently snowedover stadium energy. Alumni Field brings excitement, and starting its home season Thursday, the Michigan softball team needs to adjust to that energy to succeed. Though the environment the first weekend in Ann Arbor can carry some like Rodriguez, playing at home can also present new challenges — ones that the Wolverines plan to shed in favor of home-field traditions and hype. One such tradition, senior catcher Katie Alexander mentioned, is writing in the sand before games, along with a ‘no phones’ rule in the locker room for team bonding. “Especially since we get to be in our own locker room, there’s definitely some pregame rituals and then the whole momentum,” Rodriguez said. “We also have
our playlist, our walk-ups and that home feeling.” Despite those team traditions, nerves accompanied Rodriguez’s first game at Alumni Field, but letting loose and playing the game she knew allowed her to overcome those pre-game jitters. Rodriguez expects the team’s six freshmen, following her lead, to also enjoy playing at home and focus on their game with the new environment and colder weather. “Nerves are natural, but I think the way I took it differently is that I’m still playing the same game and having fun with it,” Rodriguez said. “I know we’ll play in the colder weather, but it’s natural. We’re used to it by now and you get thick skin pretty quick.” Coming off a mixed start to the season on the road, with two sub.500 weekends, the Wolverines (12-10) have had success recently in tournaments in the Judi Garman Classic and ASU Invitational. Particularly, Michigan’s wins against No. 2 UCLA and No. 5 Washington kickstarted the team’s momentum. The Wolverines hope returning home will bolster that momentum even further. Regardless of players’ excitement
and familiarity with the field, where they’ve practiced since this fall, coach Carol Hutchins noted the issues players may face coming home. Distraction from fans, working on their own schedules and dealing with schoolwork are some struggles that could affect Michigan this weekend. “We’ve been playing on the road for 22 games and we don’t know how to play at home,” Hutchins said. “Being at home is a new distraction. They’re going to come straight from class. … They’re going to sleep in their own beds and they’re going to be away from all of the boundaries and rules and regulations that we give them.” Despite those worries, playing at home still holds tremendous importance to the Wolverines, and they hope to carry that feeling from the locker room to the field this weekend in their first homestand. “Whether it’s your first time or your 500th time, we’re playing on our home field in front of our home fans, in the place that we love and are so proud of,” Hutchins said. “After being on the road for five weeks, I’m going to tell you… if they’re not excited as hell to be out on the field I’d be shocked.”
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Sophomore infielder Natalia Rodriguez expects the Alumni Field crowd to provide an important boost to the team.
Trending up Unlike in past years, the Michigan women’s basketball team ended the regular season comfortably in the Tournament
T
he NCAA Tournament is just around the corner, and on Monday night the Michigan women’s basketball team (21-11 overall, 11-7 Big Ten) will find out if it will receive a second consecutive bid. ROHAN Last seaKUMAR son, the Wolverines got what they wanted, reaching the tournament for the first time since 2012-13. The season before, they expected to earn a spot but ultimately did not. Still, the Wolverines went on to win the WNIT. Heading into the previous selection shows, those Michigan teams each had 22 wins under their belts. This year’s group has 21, yet it’s in a better position to get a bid — and to actually do something with it — than past groups. Why? Because this team is trending up. “I definitely think this team is going in a positive direction,” said senior guard Nicole Munger, before Tuesday’s practice. And there is evidence to prove it. Michigan has now won nine of its last 11 games, dating back to the start of February. In the final 11 games of the past two years, the Wolverines had secured just six and seven wins, respectively. “Not to dwell on past years too much,” Munger said, “but there was a different feel around them.”
That different feel is in part due to fewer losses in this final stretch. But the losses also appear to be more quality defeats. This team’s two recent losses came against Michigan State, over two weeks ago, and against No. 8 Maryland, Saturday night in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals. In East Lansing, the Wolverines fell 74-64 in a game they could have easily won, if they hadn’t committed 25 turnovers and given up 27 free throw attempts. That said, some credit should be given to the Spartans, who were a quality team that had spent considerable time in the top 25. The defeat against the Terrapins, too, had some positives. Michigan entered that game as the clear underdog, but came within arm’s reach of reaching the program’s first ever conference tournament final, eventually falling 73-72. “(The Maryland game) is something to be proud of,” Munger said. “We were down ten going into the fourth quarter. I think what’s most important is the team fought. We didn’t roll over and die, and we could have done that a couple times throughout the game. And they made their runs but we fought right back. I think that just goes to show that we know we can play with anybody, and I think we’re really excited for that.” Saying this year’s team trends up more than past groups isn’t an aside to those teams. The differerent iterations of the Wolverines found success at different moments in the season, too. It’s difficult to make sure everyone
And this team, like I said, it’s just very confident.
ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily
Senior guard Nicole Munger said this year’s Michigan women’s basketball has a different feel from the previous three she has been on during her career.
is healthy and harmoniously at the peak of their game heading into tournament time. However, timing can pay dividends and Munger takes note. “I think timing is everything,” Munger said. “ … And this team, like I said, it’s just very confident moving forward and I think that’s what makes a team very dangerous to play. When a
team is feeling really good, playing with nothing to lose, that’s really tough to beat. So, it’s exciting going into the final few weeks.” Assuming Michigan does make the tournament, it has just over a week before it starts. Munger mentioned taking care of the basketball and defensive transition as two areas the
We’re focusing solely on... what we can do better.
team hopes to sharpen during the break. It’s important for the Wolverines to maintain the momentum during the down time. If they do, they could ride the upward trend when it matters most. “I think we’re lucky that we have this week,” Munger said. “ … We’re focusing solely on what we can do and what we can do better, and
that’s pretty exciting going into the ‘final season,’ as we call it, of the full season. It’s gonna be an exciting time and I’m excited to see what improvements we can make moving forward.”
I think we’re lucky that we have this week...
Kumar can be reached via email at kumarrp@umich.edu.
Sports
8A — Wednesday, March 13, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘It’s really slowed down for me’: How Jon Teske grew beyond his height ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
Jon Teske warms up down below as his grandfather sits. It’s a Sunday in mid-January at Crisler Center and Jim Zuidema is up in the corner wearing a Michigan pullover, sitting near the aisle. Zuidema grabs his phone and pulls up his texts, looking for one in particular. It’s to his grandson and it’s a message to play “Teske basketball.” Three hours later, a victory over Northwestern in hand, Teske has 17 points and 11 rebounds to his name. He hit three 3-pointers and blocked two shots, affecting the game on every level. This, in the months before and since, has become Teske’s norm. “I think it’s like (John) Beilein says,” Zuidema says on the phone the day after that game. “It takes a couple years to learn. And Jon, I think Jon’s right on course from what Beilein told me a few years back, how he thought Jon would progress.” How Teske has progressed is this: Two years ago, he came to Michigan and his biggest skill on a basketball court was being tall. He got his ass kicked in practice and rode the bench in games. On the year, he played 60 minutes, made one field goal and blocked seven shots. Since then, his development has proceeded with the slope of a 45-degree line. The next year, Teske backed up Moritz Wagner and looked good doing it. Then Teske broke out at the Big Ten Tournament final against Purdue, creating the lasting image of the game by dunking on Isaac Haas and yelling into oblivion. When Wagner went to the NBA last summer, Teske stepped into the starting role seamlessly. He started every game of the regular season, averaging nearly 10 points and swatting
away 7.8 percent of shots while affecting countless more, the backbone holding up a defense that ranks second in the country in adjusted efficiency. “It’s really slowed down for me,” Teske told The Daily. “I think it’s just taking time. Some people get it right away, but others don’t.” Teske’s path is rarely followed in college basketball nowadays, but it’s one that fits him. “I know Jon will hate anything that I said about him, that you write, OK,” Zuidema says toward the end of our conversation, and he’s doubtlessly right. Zuidema talks the way grandfathers are supposed to talk about their grandsons. He adulates and adores, all while staying level about what his grandson wants and about his role in guiding him on the path. He is more interested in talking about Jon Teske than Jon Teske himself, which is both expected and defining. Teske is one of few people on the planet who stands over seven feet tall and doesn’t automatically dominate every room he steps into. He’s cautious and circumspect, thinking through every word he says in front of a camera and falling back on polite clichés when the real answer has a chance of being twisted or misconstrued. When I ask when he knew Wagner would leave, meaning he would start, Teske rejects the implicit assumption that there was no competition at center coming into this season. “I knew the job would be open, that spot would be open,” Teske said. “Austin (Davis) and I, we worked hard all offseason. We knew Colin (Castleton) and Brandon (Johns) would be ready to come in, too, possibly. So I just knew we had to continue to work hard and try to help the team win. Just be ready for whoever won that spot to just go in there and do their job, right?”
The result of his demeanor is two-pronged: Teske doesn’t cause controversy or make himself a target for opposing teams or fans. He also doesn’t get the media attention that should naturally come to the anchor of one of the nation’s best defenses. But Teske deserves that level of attention, even if he doesn’t want it, because he is just that. *** “No one wanted Jon on their team,” says Drew Zuidema, Teske’s cousin. “Not at the young age.” There are 18 cousins on Teske’s mother’s side of the family, nine boys and nine girls. At a young age, living in Grand Rapids, they spent the summers at their grandparents’ house, with a hoop in front and a pool out back. While everyone else swam, the boys played in front — basketball, football, wiffle ball FILE PHOTO/Daily — as their grandmother fretted about little kids near a busy road. Junior center Jon Teske grew up playing playing pickup basketball with his 18 cousins at his grandfather’s house. It would be an idyllic scene, had Medina and Grand what I think I’m capable of,” he Teske been on the winning team. underclassman at Medina High both At that elementary-school School in Ohio, playing under Rapids. Beilein had a record said. “Obviously my teammates age, Teske was gangly and Anthony Stacey. A former player of developing players, and he and coaches have always seen uncoordinated. He would take and current assistant coach — along with then-assistant that in me, since I’ve gotten the ball and run with it instead of at Bowling Green, Stacey was coaches Bacari Alexander and here. I think it was just, for me, dribbling, and when the cousins tough and demanding. The Jeff Meyer — did the legwork just go out there. Just on that big split up, old versus young, he’d Teske family moved from Grand in building a relationship with a stage, and Moe being in foul trouble, it all kinda came out to Rapids to Medina when Jon was Teske and his family. be on the losing team. There’s also the education be like that.” “They’d kinda push and blow in middle school, and Stacey saw Teske isn’t brash — he’s not their way to wins,” Teske said. the potential in him right away. aspect of it. When you ask “Sometimes cheat their way to After eighth-grade graduation, Teske, and those close to him, Ignas Brazdeikis or Jordan Teske estimates it was less than about his recruitment, words Poole. He won’t say he’s the best wins.” Drew, in contrast, speaks a week before he started for the like, “degree” and “graduate” free-throw shooter in the world, become motifs. On one visit, a or that he expects every shot with the verve of a winner. summer high school team. “He was at that awkward On this day, Zuidema sat in the coach showed Zuidema a trophy he takes to go in. He’s caught off-guard when asked about the stage and didn’t know what he stands and watched as Jon stood cabinet. “He said, ‘I want your decision in front of him after was doing,” Drew said of Teske. at the top of the key and checked “He was always very tall and the opposing point guard. “I grandson to win me another this season, but knows full well gumpy.” about fell off the bleachers,” trophy,’ ” Zuidema said. “And, he’s earned the chance to make But Teske has always been Zuidema said. It’s important that didn’t go over very well it. “Um, I wouldn’t say that tall. When the boys would lower to note here that Zuidema has with his grandma.” has) changed When Zuidema sat with (decision the 10-foot hoop to try and touch kept relationships with all of Teske said, the rim, he was the only one who Teske’s coaches, calling them Beilein, the Michigan coach told anything,” could dunk. The rest, that came after games, and isn’t afraid to him that yes, he wanted Teske to swallowing his sound. “I think help him win games, but there just coming in, I knew I wanted let them know what he thinks. later. Stacey came up to Zuidema was more to his pitch than that. — I wanted to go somewhere Zuidema likes to tell a “He’s gonna be with you four that had a good place I could go story from when Jon was an after that game to get his thoughts. “Well, I got a years, coach,” Zuidema recalled get a good degree at. Just coming question,” he responded. “Why saying. “You do what you have in here, I knew I was capable of you got Jon out at point guard?” to. Remember, I don’t want him doing it. And so we’ll just see “I’ll tell you why,” Zuidema here just to win trophies for what happens.” In October, the question recalls Stacey responding. “I you.” Of course, the decision wasn’t of whether he could replace know Jon’s gonna become a player in college. I don’t know if Zuidema’s to make, and nor is Wagner seemed as if it may he’ll play Division I, II or III, but the one that will be in front of define Michigan’s season. It he’s gonna play somewhere. And Teske when the season ends. took Teske all of a couple games I want him to learn how to play Back then, he was a three-star to answer, and the question recruit. Now, if he wants to go soon shifted to whether the defense and move his feet.” Wolverines are better off with Near that time, college pro, he can. It’s easy to see the Big Ten Teske, and whether he deserves coaches began taking notice. final against All-Big Ten honors. First a trickle of MAC schools, Tournament But Teske’s story is one of then a slow but steady increase. Purdue last season, when Teske By the end of his sophomore scored 14 points off the bench, linear development. He’s built year, Teske had Big Ten coaches dunked on Haas and helped strength and conditioning with calling him, and that summer, Michigan to a trophy on a Jon Sanderson in the weight John Beilein started roaming postseason stage, as the turning room to the point of being able to play up to 35 minutes at 85 point of his college career. the sideline at his AAU games. “I know that everyone talks inches. He’s gone from a one*** The decision to come to Ann about the Purdue game being my dimensional hand in the face Arbor, when it came down to coming out party,” Teske said, to an all-around threat on both it, was easy. Teske made it in stopping short of answering sides of the ball. That shift, more than height the first few weeks of his junior whether he himself sees it that alone, has come to define Teske way. That’s fitting. year. “It just kinda showed people basketball. Michigan was close to
ANNIE KLUS/ Daily
statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | M A RCH 1 3 , 2019
Creative writing issue
2B
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 // The Statement
statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | M A RCH 1 3 , 2019
2009
Managing Statement Editor Andrea Pérez Balderrama Deputy Editors Matthew Harmon Shannon Ors
Designers Liz Bigham Kate Glad Copy Editors Miriam Francisco Madeline Turner
BY SEBASTIEN BUTLER
The smell of chlorine and freedom lives sharp my mind. I could recreate our bonfire dances for you.
The houses have roots here. Even the air is entrenched, an aftertaste of passion. The breathless trees trap with resin, and for
by fraying textbooks and burnt Ramen soup. I feel it on the soles of my feet: Pavement. Burning. Solid. Neighborhood cement and chalk. Remember this: we pretended we started a tribe of kid bandits in the woods behind my house. We listened for deer and tried to drown out the highway. Intrusive in our fantasies, we knew the snow was magic and would
Editor in Chief Maya Goldman Managing Editor Finntan Storer
Smalltown
BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA
But how can you not remember? It is as if July slipped away, replaced
Photo Editor Annie Klusendorf
good reason. The dark fields of the republic are sinkholes. You can melt into the earth’s black carcass easier than you think. These hills know how to make one from two, they were once the glaciers’ lovers. If in need of a guide, look to the steeple, rising like a North Star, and nestle around its glow. Do not be afraid if your heart sprouts stakes. Things that aren’t bolted down get lost here.
catch its blare. Do you remember? Frayed size 5 cleats, Tate’s old Honda truck, cannonballs into icy blue water. The dream of a generation written into the knees of children. Time capsules in their grinning cheeks. Our slender youth. We could hold onto it forever with this memory. A year etched into minds, frozen in numbers.
A man
BY JOE RIESTERER
Afterlife
BY SEBASTIEN BUTLER
after Seamus Heaney
Poem makes me think of pomme, apple, eden, pomme de terre, myth in earth, God caked in mud and root. Spading at the clay, Prometheus became the first poet. Bite with the mouth bones he gave you and feel like Heaney. Potato digging is heaven---resurrection, collection, storage-- heaven is death---absorption, amalgamation, collapse onto a lover--a relief. Completion. My thought apple is picked, furrows harvested. The work is corked and buried.
There is a man who listens to no song twice. Or a woman, as always their gender irrelevant. Every thought is new – containing a mental puzzle missing thousands of pieces that he will never finish. An analytical mind salvaged from a scrap yard full of toddlers. Each flowering thought stemming from ‘why?’ He returns to nothing in leaving everything. His ambitions collapse into piled past actions, sand castles forged from too-dry sand. Everything is washed away in waves. Who relishes in the wonder of unanswered questions Who owns no mirrors And who stares down the cavern of his consciousness instead An unlit tunnel that he is still assembling. In leaving the tunnel, outside colors vibrate in living saturation and he hears gravel squirm under the burden of passing cars.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 // The Statement
3B
Dissociation
BY JENA VALLINA, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
i. I’ve been feeling more and more lately that there are two girls trapped inside of me. Like the proverbial angel and devil on each shoulder, this conflicting two wage constant battle and I find myself deeper pulled into their tangled web as each day passes me by. There is the good girl. If you’ve met me before, this is the one you likely came across. She wears a smile on her face, maybe a little bit forced, but nonetheless earnest. She is crisply if not ornately packaged, wearing nice clothes bought in shiny bags. She applies her lipstick with a delicate hand, careful not to smudge around the edges. She is normal. But normalcy is tenuous, and if you know the other girl you do not know the good girl. If you know her, if you’ve had the distinct displeasure of witnessing the anxiety and the neuroses and the impulsions which the good girl tries so hard to scrub away after she reappears, I should apologize. Not only to you, but to her, the girl you could have known. Because lately I’ve been feeling that there are two girls inside of me, and they are playing tug-of-war; but what they do not know is that this is a game without any winners. I am not me, I am them, but I cannot be them at the same time and yet one cannot exist without the other. So, you see, I am in a conundrum. Who am I, when all I am is chemicals working wrong and all I feel is an illusion? Let these be the whispers in your ear. ii. I am not special. Everybody wears masks to hide the truth, and nobody is how they appear on the outside. Reality is an incomprehensible television show wherein we are all playacting our best self. Some of us are just better actors than others. And I would like to tell you now, that I do not know where I am going, but that I am trying so hard with every molecule in my body to get there. They do not tell you how difficult getting better is in the pamphlets they give you. Those bright smiling faces do not express the tears which brim beneath the surface, and even as I bite my lips I cannot keep them down. The words written in Sharpie marker tell me to smile, that there is joy in this world, but the words inside my head suggest otherwise and they are carved in stone. Some nights I cannot leave my bed. The papers gather, the phone calls go to voicemail, and still I resist returning
up for air. I have learned how to find comfort in the wallows of my depression and how to be soothed by the familiar lullaby of my anxieties. “Better” is a foreign word, a far-off planet. This is all just a dream, and it is simpler to stay asleep than to pinch myself awake. iii. College is a time of expectations. The only thing heavier than these expectations is the urge to not let everybody down. I want to be better. I see her sometimes, when I close my eyes, the girl I might be if I could only get better. There is the better girl. The better girl is unpolluted. Her every smile is genuine. No other girls bury themselves within her. I want to become her, to shed my skin and wear hers instead. Sometimes I feel I am growing closer to her, but I have always found that certain parts of me hold on tight. Like jealous lovers, they hold me closer each time I try to run away. I suppose I should feel flattered, but I was never good under observation. iv. A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Better: Brush your hair. Brush your teeth. Smile, even if it isn’t natural, because one day it will be natural, and all you are doing is practicing for that very day. Let go. Let go of the bullshit dogging you down, let go of the thoughts in your head, let go of the people who leave their fingerprints on you, nothing is irreversible, no stain cannot be cleaned, nobody and nothing is permanent but you. Let go. Let go. Let go. v. Someday this will be the past, and I will be in the future. I imagine the future all the time, until it feels like a book I’ve read and loved. But like a book, I wonder if it is just a fiction I have written for myself, or if the reality I dream of is nothing but another byproduct of my mind that I cannot control. Yet I still believe in it. I believe that the good girl and the other girl will eventually hold hands. I believe that the better girl will be close enough to touch someday. I will be happy, a temporary sort of happy, a normal sort of happy, and it will be enough. I will be enough. There is a version of me somewhere who wears her hair short and who does not feel like she needs to change, and I trust that I am that someone, and I believe that someday gets closer every day.
This is a self portrait I created in photoshop that contains all my own photography and illustrations. -Lauren Kuzee
4B
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 // The Statement
Wednesday, March 13. 2019 // The Statement
Otis
BY ABIGAIL PROVENZANO, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
T
he rapping is light, light enough that Otis wouldn’t have heard if he wasn’t (gasping) awake. Fortunately (unfortunately), Otis hasn’t been sleeping since the incident, so he stumbles across the dark apartment to reach the door even as fair knuckles brush against peeling wood again. Maple, maybe. Or pine. Otis doesn’t care much for details. Another man (an earlier Otis) may have checked the peephole. Otis grapples with the door chain. He yanks the door forward. Otis cannot afford to be a drinking man, and he has learned from longer and longer stretches of highway in his semi-truck how to stay alert enough without sleep. So, when the arm standing upright on its shoulder in the poorly lit hallway waggles slender fingers at him, his mouth opens just a crack (real) before he waves back. It’s Sunday. A week has passed. Otis is tired; Otis has been tired since he was 13 years old and working late nights washing dishes to help his mama pay rent. He stares at the arm, glowing pale white in the dim. It (she) tilts to one side at the wrist, listening. “It is the cause,” Otis mumbles, and he has been expecting (her) company. He opens the door wider. The arm passes through on dainty fingers. “It is the cause.” tis had always found driving comforting. There was something about that control as he gripped the steering wheel, that stretch of unknown road, that known that he was leaving behind. Some truck drivers griped about the distance, or slow tolls, or tasteless food dripping with grease, or stiff necks and backs and who knows what else could ache besides, but that feeling (control, freedom) was enough for Otis. Otis was a simple man. Desiree hadn’t found nearly the same thrill. She liked to listen. She’d driven her parents’ groaning old station wagon for as long as Otis had known her, so maybe that was part of the problem. Still, she’d come along most of the time, most of the time halfheartedly. It had been easy enough to get her into the car that night, then, even as the lingering sun cast dark shadows up and down the street. he apartment is quiet, and Otis shifts his weight while he rubs the back of his neck. He can feel a headache starting to spread, and he wonders wildly when he had last cleaned up around here, made it presentable. It has been a week (still weak), at least. Otis knows he must be the first to speak, (she can’t say anything) but what can he say? There’s no room for small talk here. He clears his throat, opens his mouth, clears his throat again. “How
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The last time he’d seen her, her eyes had been closed; her skin was a soured milk; her hair was fanned out and curled but much too (lifeless) dull. She’d been silent. She’d seemed small. Stiff. He felt he couldn’t get to her, but maybe he hadn’t tried enough. There had been too many relatives pushing against him, the room was stuffy and salty with tears, he couldn’t think. It was no wonder they’d opted out of a big family wedding and gone to the courthouse instead. Simple. Yet here Otis had ended up anyway, exactly as he had avoided. Alone. Nobody had known, though. They didn’t. He had made sure of that. The last time he’d seen her, really seen her, she’d been silent, too. In a different way. Otis hadn’t minded — he had been driving — but having her scrunched in the passenger seat of her battered station wagon with her arms tight against her chest, then one dangling out the window wasn’t easy to forget. She was chewing on her bottom lip. Otis could feel the embers of her kindling anger. He remembered being afraid she’d draw blood, a trickle that’d run down her chin. After that, he didn’t remember much — the way a child will gaze at the night sky and rush home to scribble the stars in crayon, but when the picture’s done, they see all they’ve really managed to capture is the black. tis wants to turn on the radio. He isn’t sure if the situation will be made better or worse with a wailing, fading ’80s band filling the corners of the silence. He decides the situation is ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL already leaning towards the worse side of things regardto wear his heart upon his sleeve. He prefers to less of soundtrack, so crosses the tiny living room carefully cover it with a jacket. to turn the knob on. Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” esiree had had the brightest red hair washes through the dark. You got a fast car. Is it Otis had ever seen; it had the frighten- fast enough so you can fly away? When Otis turns ing, beautiful quality of fire. Fire was back around, the small white hand is in his. He knows the hand, perhaps better than his (destructive) mesmerizing, after all, and spread (devoured) quickly. He had told her without mean- own. A man doesn’t spend too much time holding to when he’d first seen her at the downtown ing (caressing) his own hand. The hand is soft and pharmacy. She’d laughed, and Otis thought — at slightly dry from the unforgiving October air. The the time — that the hair and the laugh could keep nails are short and neat and strawberry-pink. Desiree’s father had been rich, so she had never him warm for the rest of his life, if she’d allow it. Seeing her while she saw him, came to him, had had to work. Not until she’d been with Otis. Her filled him with a wonder that didn’t ebb away. His hands should have been pristine. Otis hated even mama had always said to be careful with pretty then (even now) the scraggly skin of hangnails girls, but Otis found that that was wrong. The she’d pull on while she waited for the lawyer’s office phone to ring. She didn’t mind, it was fun pretty girls had to be careful with you. have you been?” Barely a whisper. The question stands between them in the cramped darkness. Pale fingers pause in stroking the carpet. The arm raises. The (empty) ring finger beckons slowly to him. Otis slides to his knees without registering he is doing so, feels the edge of the couch press into the small of his back. “How have I been?” Deflection. He’s always been a fan. The hand closes once, opens again slowly. “It’s been, it’s been-” Otis studies his own hands, wide and calloused and smudged with grey. “Quieter and lonelier than I thought.” Desiree had used to say Otis was the most passionate man she’d ever met, but he does not like
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to talk to all those different people, she’d say, but Otis knew better. He usually did. So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car. The hand in his tugs him forward, away from the radio, to the carpet. Otis closes his eyes (kill the lights) and sways. And I had a feeling that I belonged. I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone. He’s not much of a dancer, but then again, he’s never been. It’s easy to pretend, always easier, and Otis thinks that despite everything he deserves easy. I’d always hoped for better, thought maybe together you and me find it. I got no plans, I ain’t going nowhere. He feels the hand in his hair slide down to the back of his neck. How many times had they danced in front of the couch, Desiree’s shoes off and her laugh making new harmonies while her hair tickled his ear? And your arms felt nice wrapped around my shoulder and Otis keeps his eyes closed. hey had wanted to keep her closed, but Otis didn’t think that was fair. Or right. Or something, he hadn’t been sure, he hadn’t been thinking clearly, but he knew that she could not, should not, be contained in that way. Besides, she looked fine, the people had done a remarkable job with her, those who loved her (those who loved her) had the right to — wanted to — should see her. Just that one little thing was missing, was all, and it wasn’t as great of a deal as some of them seemed to think. It could be (worse) hidden. Though he couldn’t help but wonder where exactly it was and why they couldn’t find it. There was only so much edge to a road, and even pieces are eventually found. Tragedy, that was the word they all murmured. Thrown in whispered grains of rice at a wedding they hadn’t (been invited to) attended. And it had been, it was, Otis had never argued. Yet the word had never been enough, nor had its de thesaurus brothers. Perhaps this stemmed from Otis’ blankness on the night, in the night when he was questioned by the blue men when they found him. You don’t remember, they’d assured him. Was that relief? Otis couldn’t tell. But sometimes he thought he’d seen her — next to him, then gone, then standing in the street incomplete, red and blue and white strobes slicing through the darkness of the night. She was looking at him, he knew, but he couldn’t see her eyes. tis has lost his sense of time, though on the road he’d been one of the few to glimpse the full, peach-orange blush of dawn. He has not seen a night like this. He may not be seeing it now. The radio is only sound (you gotta make a decision, leave tonight or live and die this way) and she is only touch, but by God, how he’s missed feeling. Warm (cold) fingers trace his ear and he remembers more, remembers less. “Is there pain?” The hand moves slowly to his shoulder, and the patch of neck left behind suddenly erupts with gooseflesh. Otis tries to catch it at his waist, hold it there (keep her there). The forearm slides down his leg, is flat, is still. Otis gazes at it, his own hands frozen. A snap of fingers sends him reeling back, sharp and then gone. Had there been pain is perhaps the better question, the one that’s crossed his mind the most, most difficult to dissipate away. There must be, there must have been, but he’s sure, he’s sure that
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it matched his own after that (he shouldn’t have stayed for that conversation, he shouldn’t have, it was just gossip, just rumors, why had he accepted drinks and truths from a coworker after a too long shift) conversation. Otis’s mama had once told him to look out for turning points. He’d scoffed and said he didn’t think real life was as cut and dry as that, thank you very much (but oh God, he could see it, feel it, now). There was pain. There always had been. He just hadn’t uncovered it until that night in the smoky, dark bar. Otis knew he had not taken for granted that he was a lucky man. Sure, he had worked hard and long to get that promotion, but he didn’t disregard luck’s role in it. He heard what people whispered, but he didn’t mind. He knew Desiree was too beautiful (good) for him, but he had not once (until then) considered that she would look somewhere else. Need someone else. She had seen him, been his, and chosen him. Otis. If she had left, Otis would have followed. Otis would have eventually stopped, watched her go until she was just another color of the horizon. Otis would have been sad, but that would be all. Instead, Otis had been angry — a surprising and ugly color on him. It flared deep in his belly, alive for the very first time and greedy, reducing everything to blacks and reds and Otis couldn’t see anything until everything was over. Then he saw it all, oh yes, vivid and so (beautiful) grotesque. tis grips his coarse hair and pulls, gritting his teeth. He is getting ahead of himself, or not ahead enough. The hand is slowly slinking over the nearly bare shelves of the living room (Desiree’s lipsticks and candles and candies are gone, Desiree is gone), somehow elegant, somehow belonging. She’s looking for something, Otis realizes, but doesn’t make a move to help. “How long?” He whispers, and he doesn’t know what matters most — how long (she’ll stay, she’ll love him, it’s taken to get to his corner of nowhere) has it been since they danced? The hand closes around a pen. hey had told him to see someone, just to talk, just to cope. Talking isn’t a solution. Words are words, nothing more. Any rational mind knows, and Otis has never (before) lacked in rationality. Still, when the car crashes (though you’re making a living driving) and your wife is (not whole) taken and the thing you’re most stuck on is her (possibly) cheating, maybe talking is the best you can do. Maybe talking is the life preserver (it just takes one) that will scoop you out from that dark and treacherous and unforgiving water. But Otis hadn’t listened. Otis hadn’t talked. He (had already sunk too far) couldn’t. She’d never given him an indication that she was unhappy, unsatisfied. He hadn’t questioned her. What happy man would? She had been content sucking on a strawberry lollipop, feet bare, eyes bright while he (exaggerated) described his travels — that was their love. Desiree had never gone far herself — though now she had, she’d beaten him now, in a way. In other ways it’s as it always had been, him ending up on top. She whispered that he was good enough for her while he slipped away in the morning, keys in hand, so he believed he was. He was under her
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spell (the world was) but goddamn if it wasn’t ecstasy. Watch your temper, his mama had said, squinting at split knuckles. Otis had, but it’d slipped away in the dark. he hand grasps the pen, tilts it up so the gold in the nib glints in ever failing light. The pen passes (scritch, scratch) over a crumpled newspaper clipping with a big (black) bold headline. Otis (cannot look away) isn’t sure if he watches for a minute or an hour. The pen drops; a crease in the newspaper is smoothed out. Fingers linger over the headline before moving aside. The hand is poised on the shelf like a miniature (broken) ballerina. Otis’s stomach is ice (what is he feeling) while he bends over the paper. The words are in his handwriting. I am not what I am. Otis reads them as if there is a question mark. tis hadn’t been (isn’t) a saint. He’d never claimed to be. But he had been good to Desiree, he had (for the most part). And it seemed that the most part was the best a hardworking man could do. Otis was a hardworking
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Darkness seems to press close around him, yet in it, somehow, is light.
man — he got enough money to scrape by, plus a little extra; he was respected; he could buy her pretty things. Like the cardigan, the emeraldgreen (like the green-eyed monster, his mama had told him to beware the green-eyed monster) cardigan that reached her knees and seemed to make her hair glow. It was Desiree’s favorite thing to wear. She’d slip it on as soon as she got home from work (maybe that’s why Otis came to loathe it), he’d feel the softness on his cheek while she’d kiss him hello (warm and milky sweet and fire), he’d grasp it fully for a moment, clenched tight in his fists before he released it to the floor while she slid onto the bed. How he loved her skin under his fingers, the paradox of it all, and maybe it was this accompanying sensation that had made him so (crazy) angry. The beer slurred his senses, made his movements (his mind) sloshy, but the anger burned red and bright and he hadn’t noticed her or her pretty, pinched face as much as he’d noticed the absence of the sweater. “Where is (he) it?” It had been too loud, but Otis was too hot. Perhaps she’d tried to answer, but he remembered only grasping her arm (tight, naked, tight) and shaking her (he’d never hurt her before, he wouldn’t again). “You left it in his bedroom, didn’t you? Draped across his couch?” Proof. Perhaps she was confused. Indignant. Angry.
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All he’d known for sure was that she’d cried. And sure, a sobered Otis huddled on his own sofa with a cup of black coffee and a nervous, skirting Desiree could admit that this whole nasty episode was perhaps an overreaction. Except. The sweater was nowhere to be found. Not in their apartment, anyway. t’s amazing how easy it is to unravel him (Otis is a simple man). Just the one line, yet Otis feels (tired) undone. He can wear a mask for everyone, anyone else. He should have known he wouldn’t be able to hide from her. He hadn’t had to. Wasn’t he lucky? Otis considers the drying ink, the sentence, and wonders how much she knows. Foolish. She cannot know anything. She hadn’t when she’d gotten into the car. He hadn’t when they’d gotten into the car, not really. Long ago he could’ve said that there was nothing else to do. Otis doesn’t care to lie. She’d look radiant in white (but he never got to see her) and her father wasn’t there, and he should’ve known or maybe somehow the promise (the cause) had been less, reduced, left like a crumpled cardigan in a corner somewhere where no one remembered to look. She’d loved him, though. Hadn’t she? Hadn’t he? “No.” He faces the hand, the arm (his love) and it stills in the careful caressing of the bookshelf. “I’m not what I am.” White fingers grasp a corner, crumple the paper into an orb. “And neither were you.” The apartment is still. Otis isn’t sure how much time has passed. Laughter grapples for footing in his throat, but he’s not sure he’s won. Darkness seems to press close around him, yet in it, somehow, is light. Otis thinks of the violence in the flash of a comet plummeting to (reality) earth, the flash of headlights, of triumph. The fingers crawl slowly towards him, and Otis realizes that he isn’t afraid (was that what it had been, had it been fear in her face?). The hand strokes his chin, comes to rest on the side of his face. She is still perfection. He wishes for an instant that he had kept her fingerprint, her handprint, the kiss of her mouth somewhere on a napkin. The hand is warmer now, and Otis thinks he can almost feel a pulse there. There is much (and less) left to do. Otis thinks to make himself a cup of tea, to release the patient parade of words waiting in his throat, to turn off the music. He declines all three. His bare feet scuff the floor as he strides to his (their) bedroom. At the doorway, he pauses, turns, extends his own arm out to the one that perches, unmoving, on the living room carpet. She (not halfheartedly) accepts. It is not hard. Otis slides under the covers and moves to his customary side for the first time since the incident. She will stay, but soon she will leave, and her presence is softer now. He will leave it to time, and all will eventually be well. Otis hasn’t been sleeping, but his eyes fall shut and he sighs into the blackness of the night, asleep as soon as the hand rubs his neck, curls up against his pillow. He is still sleeping when the first cold rays of sun slope in through the window, when pale fingers crawl across his chest and close around his throat.
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Wednesday, March 13, 2019// The Statement
Fate’s fault
BY JESSICA GARDINER, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
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This is a symbol of how I, as an international student, received both Eastern and Western education. -Maggie Huang
No sound but the wind
BY DE’SIA BLACKWELL
n Saturday, he came for the ticket at 3:15 and she came at 4. He went towards that way and she went towards the other way. The event was in a week. It required sun, which he hoped for. She wanted rain. He spent the Sunday with nobody to tell jokes to and she spent it with no one to laugh at. Sometimes he would tell a joke out loud, to the dense, green trees, just for fun, and take the sound the wind made through their leaves as laughter. When she flipped through the television channels, hoping for entertainment, she couldn’t understand why people were laughing at others for falling, slipping, embarrassing themselves. She just wanted someone to tell jokes. Monday before bed he wrote in his journal, so did she. Each day he would write an entry about what happened. Each day she would write about what she wished would happen. His were getting shorter and hers were getting longer. On Tuesday, the weather forecast predicted rain on Saturday. But only a 60% chance, he thought, it should be fine. She was relieved; It ought to rain at 60%. While he was at the store on Wednesday he reached for the same carton of milk as a woman in a blue dress. Her eyes sparkled at him, her hair was a perfect mess, and he let her have the milk. While she was shopping, a man tried to take the carton of milk she was going for. But then his smile seemed so pure, she forgave him, took the carton back, and wondered at what time of day he liked to drink milk. On Thursday, he was able to leave work on time for once. He used this extra time to admire and care for his newly grown pink and yellow tulips in the backyard. He took pictures of them to show to others, not really knowing who. After she came home she practiced piano and wondered where the notes flew to when there were no other ears to listen to them. She started to hope for sun. Friday’s rain made him late for work, but he enjoyed watching the millions of droplets create pictures on the windows of his car. She got caught in the rain on the way home without an umbrella, but she liked the way warm rain felt on her lips. Saturday brought back the sun. On the way to the event his mother called and said her house had flooded, he was worried and said he would go help. She was on her way to the event, wearing her favorite pink lipstick, and stopped to admire the day. She continued on to the event, he went the other way.
There are places they tell us not to go, like that tiny town six hours outside of Philadelphia. Where pale skin will reach inside your chest and pull out your dignity with a rope. A rope they’ll try to cinch around your neck, and make you gasp for air while they laugh. While you struggle to breathe struggle just to breathe. In the air full of thick hatred. Full of whispers from mammas telling their babies not to step foot in the place that hates the same Blackness that lives inside of them. Or they’ll snatch your life right out of you and parade you around the town, one less monkey out of the cage. They tell you not to shake the table— not to poke the sleeping bear. To tip toe around the hatred and then maybe it won’t seep into you. But the sleeping bear always finds a way to wake, the one legged table is always rickety; one toe is always a tiny bit too big. And when they hang you, in an empty forest full of unknowns, nobody will know. Your momma will miss you but nothing will get done. As a statement they’ll leave you strung to the tree… with no sound but the wind.
Wednesday,January March 16, 13, 2019 2019 // // The The Statement Statement Wednesday,
Between us and the sun
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BY ELLA JOEL, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
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he outer planets don’t have phases. The moon has phases, and Venus and Mercury have phases, because they sometimes come between us and the sun. To us, they are sometimes made partially of shadows. But the outer planets are too far away. They could care less about us, let alone what lies between us and their sun. They don’t want our perspective of them. They’re immune to our labeling of phases and our view of shadows. It’s worked out for them so far. That’s the thought that put me to sleep. I’d never thought of the planets much, but for some reason — maybe it was sleeping outside or the edibles we’d stacked on our s’mores — that night the planets were my new obsession. I closed my eyes on the stars, so many more than I’d ever seen in the city, and rolled onto some sharp twigs and let myself feel them for all they were worth through my sleeping bag. Ezra was already snoring, his fingers intertwined with Nicola’s, asleep beside him. Her beanie had slipped halfway off her bald head. I was tempted to pull it back on, but she’d been having insomnia lately and it would’ve been cruel to wake her. Chemo fatigued most people, but it’d just made Nicola nocturnal. I woke up before the others, those twigs finding new spots on me to prod me in during my restless sleep until I had to give it up. My breath shone like the morning dew I had to shake off with my sleeping bag. Fog rose from the lake, or maybe it was steam, or maybe those two were the same thing, but, either way, I was pulling off my quarter zip and fleece pants and walking down to the water’s edge, naked but for a pair of spandex, the only thing that would dry afterward. I felt a twinge of guilt for disturbing the glassy surface of the water, but, damn, was it warm. Was it warm or was I cold? It didn’t seem to matter as I walked in up to my breasts, goosebumps adding to the imperfections of my skin, crawling across the surgical scars on my neck. I paused to consider the contrast of the temperature above and below the meniscus, the difference in the kind of soft the air was and the kind of soft the water was. As an experiment, I leaned forward and dipped one frozen nipple into the lake. It softened. The lake was warm. You’d think all the good stories come out of freezing, stormy water that wrecks ships and destroys island nations, but there are stories about calm water, too. They just always involve the water getting disturbed in some way. Like, in Greek mythology, there was this guy called Tantalus who was an amazing cook, and the gods made him cook them a feast. Tantalus wanted to put all he could into the meal, so much so that
he sacrificed his own son and made him the main course. The gods hated human sacrifice, which you’d think Tantalus would’ve known, and once they realized what they’d been served, they damned Tantalus never to be able to eat or drink again. Tantalus was forced to stand in a pool of fresh, clear water under a tree hanging with ripe fruit, but whenever he reached up or down to eat or drink, the fruit would shrivel and rot or the water would recede from his outstretched hand. Water is an agent of vengeance. Another myth was about a god called Alpheus who fell in love with Artemis, the goddess of nighttime or something, and to hide from Alpheus, Artemis ran into a river and covered her face with mud so that he wouldn’t be able to distinguish her from the nymphs and dryads. Then Alpheus was turned into a river himself for being a creep and was used by Hercules to clean horseshit out of some stables. Water is a place of refuge (and nature’s poop scoop). Lifting my knees to my chest, I slipped down under the water. It was murky, but not in a way that made it too dark, and I dug below the rocky bottom to where the sand began and pulled a handful up with me to the surface. I rubbed it into my face, just like Artemis, scrubbing away the oil that had accumulated overnight on my cheeks, my forehead and behind my ears. For how warm the water was, the sand was cool, and it felt as though it drew all the heat from my head. I blinked open one eye and looked back to our campsite. Elio had woken up and he was standing over at the edge of our clearing, facing the woods, peeing. His nest of curly hair was all flopped over to one side and his scrawny back hunched forward. He finished and turned around. We blinked at each other for a few moments, and Elio raised a hand. I waved back, toward myself — join me. He pulled off his sweater and T-shirt, leaving just his boxers, and dubiously picked his way around the still-sleeping couple down to the water. He waded in slowly as I had, but once the water reached his knees, he dove under. I dipped my face in to wash off the scrub and opened my eyes underwater, watching him swim toward me until he had his hands on my hips and was kissing my waist. We sat together around the breakfast campfire. Ezra and Nicola looked suspicious through their sleepy eyes but I didn’t address it. Better to let them make their own assumptions. I fried eggs in a little stone pan over the tiny flame while Elio sliced the tops off strawberries with his hunting knife. Ezra unscrewed his water bottle for Nicola while she counted out her pills and
swallowed them one by one. Ezra had the types of hands that boys can have, the kind with impossibly long fingers that seem as though they could wrap around an entire basketball or reach across four octaves on a piano and the tiny orange pill canisters were lost in them like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. While the eggs fried, I laid back and rested my head on my rolled up pants. Above us, pine needles danced in the morning wind and considered raining down on us, only to send flecks of sap in their place. The sky was gray, nothing but clouds, but the sun was all the brighter for it, diffracting across its entire domain, looking like the mouth of a tunnel that was already behind us. Nicola scooted toward my side of the fire and rolled down next to me while Ezra took over my egg duty. She laid her head on my chest, facing me, the tip of her nose tickling my chin. I felt her warm breath on my neck, the breath that always seemed to smell like nothing at all. Sterile, like the hospital rooms she’d been in and out of for the past five years warding off a particularly stubborn bout of leukemia. I’d joked before that her breath was due to her never breathing fresh air anymore, and I’m sure she must have only invited me camping to make me watch her take deep breaths. I felt her blow on my neck, then laugh at herself. She reached up and slapped her hand to my forehead, let it slide down my face, pulling my lower lip down my chin. I licked her fingers and she snatched back her hand, wiping it on my sleeve. She rolled her head to face down to my feet. Nicola didn’t like to look up. I think she was afraid of the sky. It rained during our hike. Like an idiot, I wore a fleece jacket and my fleece pants, and by the time we were halfway up the mountain breaking for lunch, I was soaked through. The others had spare clothing and were all smart enough to wear windbreakers, so I assembled a new outfit and wrapped a tarp from my pack around my shoulders as a sort of rain resistant cape. Elio picked me up by the waist, “Dirty Dancing” style, and ran a few paces while I kept my arms stretched out, the Superwoman of the Rockies. We paused on an overlook, the lake visible a mile or so away from our vantage point. It was sunny over there, the cloudline breaking just over the beach. A strange sort of promised land in the direction whence we’d come. The stretch of damn forest and rock that separated us from that sunny oasis felt impassable, a horizontal expedition equivalent to trying to reach outer space, only with more obstacles standing in the way. I tossed a rock experimentally off the
cliff. It was lost in the fog and made no sound over the din of the rain drumming on the earth. Ezra came up behind me and handed me another rock the size of his fist. I lobbed that one, and we both tracked it with outstretched hands until it was lost in the trees. Ezra swore he heard a thud. I swore I heard my shoulder pop out as I’d thrown that one, but he didn’t believe me, either. At the summit, the rain stopped. Or maybe we were above the clouds, but that seemed unlikely, given how easily even Nicola could breathe. The air hung with that post-storm tension, unsure whether it could relax, exhale. We padded across a composite of pine needles and dirt and pebbles all glued together with sap in a cross-stitch of browns and greens, absorbing the sound of our footsteps and leaving no tracks. I wondered if animals could still smell we’d been there, whether the damp ground trapped or masked our scent. Would Nicola be detected at all? Riding on Elio’s back? I’d been hunched over for the past few miles, staring at her dangling ankles to keep on course, watching them swing limply, parentheses around Elio’s scrawny legs doing their best not to drag his feet. Ezra led our pack, walking stick in hand, a fallen branch he’d picked up at the base of the mountain. Ezra was easily the strongest of all of us, but was still getting used to balancing on the new leg, a gift from his sarcoma in exchange for the original leg, and he leaned heavily on the stick on his right side. It looked as if he was rowing a gondola. I told him that and he reached back to whack me with the stick. Four kids (or, I guess, young adults), all who’d been closer to dying than to living lately, unsupervised in the middle of nature with absolutely no means to get help should it be needed, allowed to go off for a week and tempt their odds. Test nature. We were all climbing for a different reason. Ezra to prove he could do it, Nicola to find some sort of absolute silence to forget her world of beeping monitors and whirring generators, Elio because I’d asked him to, and I to shorten the distance between me and the sun. It wasn’t as romantic as it probably could’ve been, but we’d never had great luck with how things could be. My own story had begun and ended within the course of nine months. I never really counted myself among the others, I hadn’t suffered for it, really. Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I’d felt the swelling in my neck and had a few months of treatments before the doctors went in and pulled out what hurt. Now, I just had gnarly scars that I planned to adorn with tattoos after college and an annual checkup. See BETWEEN, Page 8B
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Wednesday, March 13, 2019 // The Statement
From Page 7B It was weird being the lucky type of cancer patient. Everyone gives you sympathy and you have to go through most of the same stuff as the other kids with cancer, but it’s like getting a sample. I did intravenous treatments for three months. I stayed in the hospital for a total of about four weeks. I attended a depressing support group twice. My condition never got bad enough that I went to church or made right with my enemies. There were a few bad nights and one or two real scares when the cancer began to spread, but it was never anything that couldn’t be fixed within the next two or three rounds of treatment. I got to miss a bunch of school and was made prom queen, so all in all it wasn’t so bad. The shitty thing is saying all of that. Like, “Yeah, I had cancer, not too bad, actually.” I was the asshole in the World War I camp whose tummy was a little upset while everyone else around him was dying of dysentery. I was the princess in the castle complaining about a dry pastry at the ball while the peasants tried to outlive the plague. Try and complain that your suffering wasn’t bad enough. To anyone who hasn’t suffered, you’re still someone to be pitied. To anyone who has, you’re worse than you think you are. I met Elio during those intravenous treatments. What a classic, sick kid love story. I think our medicine bags touched while we complained about the slow internet not letting our Twitter feeds load. Elio was in for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which means he won the “whose odds are worse” game we’ve all played a hundred times. He was in intensive chemo for a year, though now he’d been in remission for two. He got two checkups a year, and he was pre-med on track to graduate a year early. The other two were from that support group Elio and I went to those two times. We hated them. Ezra and Nicola were so into it, they were spreading their positivity and making people weep with hope and they lead the prayer at the end and, wow, did Elio and I want to just punch them in their self-righteous faces. Unfortunately, outside of group, Ezra and Nicola were just as hilarious and cynical as the two of us, even if they were a sickeningly cute couple. I’d dared Elio to ask them to do a lunch date with us, assuming they’d say no because they had to go build a house for homeless kittens or something, but they said yes, so the four of us got hotdogs and Diet Cokes and bitched about bad hospital staff for an afternoon. Nicola was the only one of us who still lived in the hospital. Nicola was also the only one of us with odds less than 40 percent and the only one of us who’d gotten a Wish from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She called it having a “time of departure,” meaning that at some point about three months ago some doctor who thought he knew everything said she had six months to live, which is a fucked up thing to say
to somebody. She used her Wish on a cash donation to the hospital which had done hardly anything to extend her life, in exchange for four vacation days hiking with her friends. Enter Elio, Ezra, and Shannon. The hospital trusted Ezra, as did Nicola’s parents, and they collectively tolerated Elio and me, so here we were, with tracker bracelets around our wrists like a band of delinquents and a way-overthe-top mess of camping supplies, chasing sunsets and existential meaning. Lunch on the summit was a bougie affair. We had peanut butter sandwiches, potato chips, baby carrots and miniature cheesecakes. Nicola chased the meal with her second round of pills, and I watched my feet while she did this, that feeling of guilt spreading in my stomach. Nicola then pulled a book out of her backpack and held it up. “Anyone mind spending an hour or two hanging out? Rest up for the way back?” We agreed. I grabbed a Coke
from Ezra’s pack and strung up my hammock between two trees, then hopped in for a nap. A nap, however, I did not have, thanks to Ezra, who climbed into my hammock with me and began pontificating, in a way that only a man with half a metal leg can. “Shannon, I am not an old man, I am not a young man, I’m am not evenly wholly a man at all.” He indicated his leg. “I do not pretend to be an expert in many things. I have never been to New York City or written a novel. I have not experienced great loss, though that one is coming. And until today, I had never even climbed a mountain. But, that is why we are still here, is it not? We still have too much to do, too many people to meet, and too many stories to tell.” “Very good,” I told him. “The timing needs a little work.” He pressed on as if I’d said nothing. “Take the four of us. We are the band of
misfits to star in any teen movie for which they need us. We have it all: charm, wit, tragic backstories — one of us even has a pending time of death. Tell me that’s not a compelling group of protagonists.” “Is there a point coming?” “Is there ever? I’m just observing. Be an observer, Shan. Don’t think so hard about everything, alright? You’re stressing the rest of us out.” “I am not.” “You’re stressing me out.” “That sounds like your problem.” “Well, add it to the list.” Ezra hopped out of my hammock and crossed the clearing to join Nicola. When he approached, Nicola began reading out loud so he could hear. She did that a lot, like she was trying to create a firm impression of what her voice sounded like while she could. I wondered if I would have the foresight to do things like that, were it me. Probably not. I just listened.
Drawing each and every wrinkle and hair strand really allowed me to engage with the woman and experience the hardships that she went through in her life. -Christine Jegarl