Issuu

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Thursday, January 9, 2020

Ann Arbor, Michigan

michigandaily.com

‘No War On Iran’: Hundreds rally against military action ALEC COHEN/Daily

University students and members of the Ann Arbor community protest the U.S. attack that killed Iran Major General Qasem Soleimani on the steps of Angell Hall Wednesday evening.

Protesters call outTrump administration following U.S. airstike killing Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani Parnia MAZHAR Daily Staff Reporter

Following the U.S. airstrike that killed former Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 3, hundreds of students, faculty and Ann Arbor community members organized Wednesday outside Angell Hall for a demonstration against U.S. imperialism and potential

war in Iran. The event featured nine different speakers, including students from various multicultural organizations on campus and a University of Michigan professor. Each spoke against potential war in Iran and related their personal experiences to the events happening in the Middle East. LSA junior Amytess Girgis emceed the

demonstration. People gathered in solidarity at the event to oppose the imperialistic tendencies of the American government, Girgis said. As an Iranian-American, she told The Daily she felt especially devastated by the recent events. “We’re Americans, and we’re really, really frustrated with the way that our

administration is acting and the degree to which it can militarize around the world without many repercussions,” Girgis said. “So, as an Iranian-American and as an American, and as someone who cares about people here and around the world, I am frustrated.” Political tensions between Iran and the U.S. span several decades, and

have been escalated by the recent airstrike. The Trump administration and the Pentagon claim they decided to strike against Soleimani to protect Americans from a future Iranian attack and because past actions of Soleimani had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Iran retaliated by releasing more than a dozen ballistic

CRIME

Students Town hall talks prospective new bus arrested route from Detroit to Ann Arbor at Florida Regional transit authority hosts public hearing on potential new bus service Navy base GABRIEL BOUDAGH

Yuhao Wang, Jielun Zhang trespass, take illegal photographs, authorities confirm BARBARA COLLINS Daily News Editor

At least one University of Michigan student was arrested over the weekend in Key West, Florida after illegally capturing photographs at a Nav y base. According to the Miami Herald, two international students, Rackham students Yuhao Wang and Jielun Zhang, both from China, approached the g uard station at Sigsbee Annex in the Naval Air Station at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday in a blue Hyundai car. After being asked for military identification, which neither student gave, Wang and Zhang were asked to leave but instead drove into the restricted property, parking their car there. In an email to The Daily, University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen confirmed that Zhang is enrolled at the University of Michigan. See ARRESTED, Page 3

For The Daily

The Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan (RTA) is looking to make travel between Ann Arbor and Detroit less of a hassle. The RTA held a public hearing about a potential new bus service, in collaboration with TheRide, connecting the two cities on Wednesday evening at the Ann Arbor District Library. About 40 people attended the public hearing about the new pilot bus service looking to connect

ridership and people will be comfortable and already used to the service,” Webb said. The pilot program will provide a bus service connecting downtown Detroit and downtown Ann Arbor. This service will provide an hourly direct route between the Blake Transit Center (Ann Arbor) and Grand Circus Park (Detroit). It will operate from 6 a.m to 10 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays with a limited weekend schedule. Some attendees had concerns concern about the limited weekend schedule. Yuri Popov, an Ann Arbor-

Detroit commuter, praised the availability of the bus service during the weekdays but expressed his concern about the weekend schedule. “While the weekday frequency is excellent, I think the weekend frequency can be improved further,” Popov said. “With only four round trips per day, it is still comparable to the existing services. The main recreational riders, particularly U-M students, might be using this service if it is more frequent.” See BUS, Page 3

See WAR, Page 3

GOVERNMENT

Whitmer creates poverty task force Governer’s executive order looks to address struggling households in state of Michigan ANGELINA LITTLE Daily Staff Reporter

The Whitmer administration is looking to tackle poverty in the state. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order on Dec. 18 creating a task force within the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO) to focus on the impact of poverty on families and communities in Michigan. The Michigan Poverty Task Force will meet for the first time this month, working both to understand the impact of poverty in local communities and to advise the governor on how best to uplift Michigan residents from poverty. According to the 2019 United Way Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed Report, 43 percent of Michigan households struggle to afford necessities such as food, housing, child care and healthcare. The report cites the combination of increasing costs of living with low wages and reduced hours as a source of inequality.

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily Ann Arbor and Detroit residents voice their opinion on the new RTA bus routes from Detroit to Ann Arbor at the Ann Arbor District Library Wednesday evening.

GOT A NEWS TIP? Call 734-418-4115 or e-mail news@michigandaily.com and let us

the two major cities. Matt Webb, general manager of the RTA, said the pilot program aims to connect Ann Arbor and Detroit in a way that other transport services do not provide by evaluating the market ridership between the two communities to cater the service to them. “We will also use this to test the effectiveness and build the ridership base, so when the Michigan Department of Transportation looks to rebuild I-94 in the future, it might be a viable transportation alternative that is already in place, and

missiles at two military bases in Iraq that housed about 500 members of the U.S. military. There were no casualties. In response, Trump gave an address Wednesday morning, saying Iran seems to be standing down but that he will be imposing new sanctions on Iran. While speaking at the

For more stories and coverage, visit

Follow The Daily

michigandaily.com

INDEX

NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 CLASSIFIEDS................5

See WHITMER , Page 3

SUDOKU.....................2 SPORTS...................7 ARTS.................5

News

2 â€” Thursday, January 9, 2020

MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

TUESDAY: By Design

WEDNESDAY: This Week in History

Scott Bell @sbell021 If you want Michigan to recruit like a big-time program, then donâ€™t act like a child when the top-tier recruits do what top tier recruits do and enter the draft the first chance they can do so. Aya M. Waller-Bey, MPhil @Aya_Marie Waking up thinking about all the #Umich GSIs who were paid on Dec. 20th and wonâ€™t be paid again until Jan. 31st a whole 42 days later. Way to go @UMich!

#19 Barstool Blue @BarstoolUofM Happy first day of classes U of M students, good luck this semester!!

j @jaxon_flaxon So considerate of umich to start on a Wednesday to accommodate my sylly week activities đ&#x;Ľ° đ&#x;Ľ° đ&#x;Ľ°

Businesses discuss weed sales: high demand, limited supply

Dispensaries experience high demand following December 2019 legalization cities and counties to use for public schools, roads and infrastructure. Ann Arbor has had the most businesses with approved licenses of any Michigan city. It is also home to Hash Bash, an annual festival celebrating marijuana, which had one of its most attended events last spring. David Harns, spokesman of Marijuana Regulatory Agency (MRA), said they are continuing to grant licenses.. Many businesses do not yet

THURSDAY: Twitter Talk

FRIDAY: Behind the Story

Megan Pesch MD, MS @PeschMegan Within the last week weâ€™ve had a live bat and three cockroaches in our @UMich offices. This is not a rare event. Starting to affect my staffâ€™s mental health and well being. Little response from the administration other than to say â€œweâ€™re working on it.

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com

ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Editor in Chief 734-418-4115 ext. 1251 esla@michigandaily.com

ANITA MICHAUD

Business Manager 734-418-4115 ext. 1241 tomedye@michigandaily.com

even more free,â€? Passerini said. NEWS TIPS â€œWe are now free to consume a news@michigandaily.com Daily Staff Reporter plant that is objectively one of LETTERS TO THE EDITOR the most non-toxic substances tothedaily@michigandaily.com After the legalization known to man.â€? EDITORIAL PAGE of adult-use recreational According to the new law, opinion@michigandaily.com marijuana in 2018 and the first a person will now be legally ARTS SECTION day of sales last month, both allowed to have up to 2.5 ounces PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION arts@michigandaily.com photo@michigandaily.com students and the Ann Arbor on them at a time. A person can SPORTS SECTION community have demonstrated keep up to 10 ounces in their NEWSROOM sports@michigandaily.com high demand for cannabis house if the extra product is 734-418-4115 opt. 3 products. locked or secured. The MRA ADVERTISING CORRECTIONS dailydisplay@gmail.com On the first day of sales postalso announced businesses corrections@michigandaily.com legalization, many businesses are currently allowed to experienced mass interest and transfer 50 percent of medical ran out of various products. marijuana product to be sold Many stores reported long lines for recreational use. ERIN WHITE prior to opening, with some In an interview with Managing Editor ekwhite@michigandaily.com customers coming from outThe Daily, Harns discussed of-state. In Ann Arbor, stores the decision to allow the SAYALI AMIN and LEAH GRAHAM Managing News Editors news@michigandaily.com with licenses include Om of transfer of product previously Senior News Editors: Barbara Collins, Claire Hao, Alex Harring, Ben Rosenfeld, Medicine, Bloom City Club, marketed as medical to be sold Emma Stein, Liat Weinstein Exclusive Brands, Greenstone recreationally. EMILY CONSIDINE and MILES STEPHENSON Provisions, Ann Arbor Healing â€œIf they have a license on Editorial Page Editors tothedaily@michigandaily.com LLC, Arbors Wellness and both sides of the industry, at Senior Opinion Editors: Alanna Berger, Brittany Bowman, Zack Blumberg, Skymint. that point you can only transfer Timothy Spurlin, Joel Weiner Mark Passerini, co-founder 50 percent of the product if it THEO MACKIE and ETHAN SEARS of Om of Medicine, discussed has been on your shelves for Managing Sports Editors sportseditors@michigandaily.com how legalization has impacted at least 30 days,â€? Harns said. Senior Sports Editors: Aria Gerson, Bailey Johnson, Ben Katz, Jacob Kopnick, his store, both in the first days â€œWe wanted to make sure that Anna Marcus, Rian Ratnavale of sales and more recently. businesses that had products Assistant Sports Editors: Connor Brennan, Lily Friedman, Lane Kizziah, Brendan Roose, Kent Schwartz, Molly Shea â€œWe were slammed for the that were languishing on the first few days,â€? Passerini said. shelves could move those over JOHN DECKER and JULIANNA MORANO â€œThat was until we started and sell them in the adultManaging Arts Editors arts@michigandaily.com running out of product. We are use market to help supply the Senior Arts Editors: Jo Chang, Elise Godfryd, Zoe Phillips, Jonah Mendelson, Ally Owens still seeing hundreds of people demand that was there and also Arts Beat Editors: Samantha Cantie, Dana Pierangeli, Andrew Pluta, Cassandra a day, but our supply is very to move out the product that Mansuetti, Anish Tamhaney, Sophia Yoon limited.â€? they have.â€? According to the Department Passerini said Om of SHERRY CHEN and CHRISTINE JEGARL Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com of Licensing and Regulatory Medicineâ€™s primary focus will Senior Design Editor: Lizzy Rueppel Affairs (LARA), there were be on supplying marijuana to $1.63 million of recreational clients using it for medical ALLISON ENGKVIST and ANNIE KLUSENDORF marijuana sales throughout reasons. In order to increase Managing Photo Editors photo@michigandaily.com Michigan in the first week, have licenses but have passed Horowitz is the president the supply for recreational Senior Photo Editors: Keemya Esmael, Asha Lewis, Miles Macklin Assistant Photo Editors: Olivia Cell, Ryan Little, Emma Mati, Alexandria generating more than a quarter prequalification, including a of Green Wolverine, an users, he said the state needs to Pompei, Alexis Rankin of a million dollars of tax background check and paying organization dedicated to provide more licenses. revenue. This revenue is drawn a $6,000 non-refundable providing education and â€œOur focus is on our medical MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA both from sales and excise application fee. networking opportunities patients that we have been Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com taxes. The first $20 million of â€œWe are approving to students interested in the serving for the past 10 years,â€? Deputy Editors: Emily Stillman, Marisa Wright tax revenue collected will be businesses on a rolling basis,â€? cannabis business. Passerini said. â€œWe will not risk MADISON GAGNE and SADIA JIBAN spent on medical marijuana Harns said. â€œAs people are According to Horowitz, the running out of medical product Managing Copy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com Sudoku Generator http://sudokugenerator.com/sudoku/generator/print/ research while the remainder turning in their licenses, we University has been more open to serve the recreational Sudoku Syndication http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ Senior Copy Editors: Olivia Bradish, Sophie Kephart, Silas Lee, Olivia Sedlacek, will be distributed to various are getting them through the to their work since the approval market. We need the state to Ellie Scott of Proposal 1. license more cultivators and TIM CHO and SIMRAN PUJJI â€œThey are definitely processors so that supply can Managing Online Editors webteam@michigandaily.com more interested in our catch up with demand.â€? Senior Web Developers: Parth Dhyani, Abha Panda, Rohan Prashant, Jonathan activities now that Harns also commented on Liu donors are interested the stateâ€™s desire to ensure ALEC COHEN and ELI SIDER in getting involved and consumers are using safe EASY Managing Video Editor video@michigandaily.com HARD in contributing to the products from stores licensed Senior Video Editors: Ryan Oâ€™Connor, Joseph Sim University, as opposed to to sell recreational marijuana. MAYA MOKH and ANA MARIA SANCHEZ CASTILLO when we were first getting â€œWe want to make sure we Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com off the ground and they start moving people away from Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Zoha Bharwani, Lora Faraj, Ayomide Okunade, Gabrijela Skoko didnâ€™t really treat us with the black market,â€? Harns said. Assistant Michigan in Color Editors: Cheryn Hong, Anamkia Kannan, Vaishali any respect,â€? Horowitz â€œWe want to move them into a Nambiar, Sean Tran, Angela Zhang said. regulated market where they SAMANTHA SMALL and SONYA VOGEL However, Horowitz said can consume products that Managing Podcast Editors his organization still faces have been safety tested through challenges in establishing state tests.â€? JACK GRIEVE and BEN KORN marijuanaâ€™s legitimacy. In addition to retailers, Managing Social Media Editors â€œGetting people to move LARA is also approving licenses Senior Social Media Editors: Jessie Norris, Mya Steir, Kristina Zheng past the stigma of cannabis for growers, transporters, event use, thatâ€™s probably our organizers, safety compliance biggest problem,â€? Horowitz facilities and processors. Before said. â€œConvincing people receiving a license, businesses MOLLY WU this is a real thing and must pass both prequalification Creative Director not just some drug, that is and licensing. really our main difficulty.â€? If a business passes RYAN KELLY Passerini echoed prequalification, they are Sales Manager Horowitzâ€™s comments, then vetted by the Marijuana adding that the legalization Regulatory Agency. If an The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during of recreational marijuana applicant passes this step â€” the fall and winter terms by students at the University OF Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the an achievement for the there are 17 distinct reasons ÂŠ sudokugenerator.com. For personal use only.was ÂŠ sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. Dailyâ€™s office for $2. Subscriptions for September-April are $250 and year long LA VIENO WAIT ENIâ€™M ROSE SCARED! puzzle by sudokusyndication.com state of Michigan. why an application may be subscriptions are $275. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription â€œThis is a huge step in denied â€” they must pay an rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. making our free country additional fee for each license. Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku, Godoku, Samurai Sudoku EMMA RUBERG

process. We have prequalified 100 business already and given out licenses to about 54 to 57 right now.â€? This change follows the approval of Michigan Proposal 1, a ballot initiative that legalized the recreational use and possession of marijuana for adults over the age of 21. The proposal passed with up to 57 percent of the vote in December 2018. The initiative allowed one year for LARA to begin accepting applications. Kinesiology senior Laurence

The Michigan Daily â€” michigandaily.com

Editorial Staff

â€œGetting people to move past the stigma of cannabis use, thatâ€™s probably our biggest problem. Convincing people this is a real thing and not just some drug, that is really our main difficulty.â€? - Laurence Horowitz, President of Green Wolverine

SUDOKU

7 1

2 9

9 4

1 2

Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokusyndication.com!

and Killer Sudoku puzzles at sudokugenerator.com!

Business Staff

News

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

BUS From Page 1A Another concern was the actual location of the bus stop in Ann Arbor. Resident Clark Charnetski said the Blake Transit Center is not the best bus stop for those commuting from Detroit. “People coming to Ann Arbor are coming to the Blake Transit Center and that isn’t usually their ultimate destination,” Charnetski said. “They may want to go to Central Campus, North Campus or the Medical Center. There may be a need for a shuttle service, possibly provided by the University.” Attendees also suggested advertising the service better, implementing a later bus service for people commuting to Ann Arbor or Detroit for late-night events. The proposed base fare for the bus service will be $12, one-way. By advance booking a passenger seat 15 minutes before

ARRESTED From Page 1 However, Broekhuizen was unable to conf irm Wang ’s enrollment as multiple students at the Universit y have the same name. All students with Wang ’s name are enrolled in Rackham, according to MCommunit y, the

the bus leaves, passengers can save $2. Senior citizens and people with disabilities receive a $6 discount. Earlier that day, the RTA held another public hearing in Detroit where residents and commuters expressed similar concerns about the frequency of the service as well as the fare. “In Detroit, we heard a lot of comments regarding the fare and a lot of comments regarding extended service,” Webb said. “They like the hourly frequency.” Webb also mentioned similar concerns about the later service during the weekdays and the weekend. It’s unclear when the service will begin running, as the RTA is currently going through the public comment period and will later have to get approval with the RTA board. The RTA will be accepting public concerns and comments until Jan. 13.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

families, the innocent people who are living in Iran, who will die due to our government’s actions in their nation — our illegal actions in their nation.” A g roup of students from the Persian Students Association ended the demonstration by performing a spoken word poem about some of the challenges and experiences of being Iranian-American. Counter-protesters in favor of American intervention in the Middle East and in support of Soleimani’s assassination were also present throughout the demonstration. Many attendees engaged in disputes with the counterprotesters about their differences in policies. LSA senior Courtney Weigal, a counter-protester, said she believes the killing of Soleimani was fully justif ied. “When it comes to looking at … all the buildup to the situation, all the provocation, it’s just common sense that you have to retaliate back, otherwise they’re going to keep pushing and pushing at you, and I mean we could have had another Benghazi with that situation,” Weigal said. “A lot of people just don’t understand just how dangerous Iran is right now and just because you’re antiwar for America doesn’t mean that war still won’t happen any where else.” The event also focused on how to move forward and learn from these situations, according to Girg is. Those who organized the demonstration plan on hosting teach-in events over the next several weeks in Washtenaw Count y to help people better understand the situation in the Middle East. Zaynab Elkolaly, Ann Arbor Cit y Commissioner, spoke at the demonstration. She said she found attending anti-war rallies encourag ing. “ You all being here has g iven me hope; you are the hope,” Elkolaly said. “If we continue to mobilize, and continue to show not only the Trump administration but every single administration, whether it’s Republican or Democratic, that we will not be silenced, we will not g ive our tax dollars to another war, that’s when we will be victorious.”

Opinion

4 — Thursday, January 9, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ALICE LIN | COLUMN

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

ELIZABETH LAWRENCE

ERIN WHITE

EMILY CONSIDINE AND MILES STEPHENSON

Editor in Chief

Managing Editor

Editorial Page Editors

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Alanna Berger Brittany Bowman Zack Blumberg Emily Considine Cheryn Hong

Krystal Hur Ethan Kessler Mary Rolfes Michael Russo

Timothy Spurlin Miles Stephenson Joel Weiner Erin White Lola Yang

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

NOAH ENTE | COLUMN

Michael Bloomberg’s dangerous rhetoric on China

ecent Democratic pro-democracy protests in Hong entrant into the 2020 Kong have seen Chinese-backed U.S. presidential race authorities perpetrate brutality against the students Michael Bloomberg who are simply has faced criticism for demonstrating their a series of comments support of autonomy he made about the from Beijing. People Chinese government. have been beaten, In an interview he shot and arrested in gave in September of connection with the 2019, the billionaire protests, which have founder of Bloomberg NOAH been taking place since and former Mayor of ENTE June 2019. China has New York City made the claim that Chinese President also tried to use its economic Xi Jinping is “not a dictator,” influence and large population to and that his leadership exists prevent criticism of its policies, as a result of enduring public as seen with its conduct towards support in China. Sen. Ben the NBA in October. These are just a few examples Sasse, R-Neb., notably spoke out against Bloomberg’s statement of Beijing’s actions that are of totalitarian defending Xi Jinping, calling emblematic it “nonsense.” Sasse has been a dictatorships. Xi Jinping has frequent critic of the Chinese proved his hostility to free regime, its well-documented speech, a willingness to oppress human rights abuses and its minorities and utter opposition overall authoritarian behavior. to giving real autonomy to He is but one of the many citizens. Bloomberg, in his Americans that understand interview, said that Xi Jinping the true nature of the Chinese is in power because of the desire of the Chinese people. What regime. Bloomberg’s comments are would the Uyghurs say about deeply problematic. For a man that claim? Would the students seeking to be the leader of the of Hong Kong share Bloomberg’s free world, he seems unaware view that Xi Jinping listens to of the extent of China’s efforts “the will of the majority?” Bloomberg’s sentiments appear to clamp down on freedom for their own citizens and even, more delusional when one considers at times, those of Americans. the makeup of the Chinese Under Xi Jinping, Beijing government and the changes that has created mass detention have taken place under Xi Jinping. and indoctrination camps for He has consolidated his own power millions of Uyghur Muslims by abolishing his term limits and in China’s Xinjiang province. giving himself the final say on Footage from overhead drones issues across all realms of political, has shown prisoners handcuffed economic and social life. This is to each other and blindfolded, not the behavior of a democratic while reports on the camps have leader who seeks to operate indicated that the prisoners according to the will of his people. are, among other requirements, These are the actions of a despot forced to pledge loyalty to the who was never directly elected by Communist Party of China and the Chinese population, enjoys a parliament that is completely loyal Jinping himself. Even outside of China, Xi to him and seeks only to preserve Jinping and the CPC are exerting his own grip on power. If that their influences to stifle dissent conduct isn’t emblematic of a and gain further control. The dictator, what is?

As a candidate for president, it is concerning that Bloomberg does not recognize the true nature of China’s political leadership. While his company has documented ties to China and a history of controversy in that regard, it should still be expected that Bloomberg, as a political figure, be informed about the country that many of his Democratic competitors have called the biggest threat to the U.S. If Bloomberg wasn’t a presidential candidate, his company’s connection to China would just be the concern of Bloomberg’s investors, consumers, employees and himself. Yet at this point, his political views toward the country, combined with his company’s record in China, can and should be scrutinized by the American public — particularly voters. Whether in the realm of trade or international politics, China serves as perhaps the chief competitor of the U.S. This fact should not prevent peaceful relations between the two countries. It should, however, cause a future administration to operate with skepticism and be unafraid to publicly call China out on what it currently is and has been for quite some time: a dictatorship. Any politician who remains timid about acknowledging that fact may be too timid to put the U.S. in a strong position to counter China’s rise to global prominence. Americans should be wary of any candidate who shows they are unwilling to stand up to Xi Jinping and show the world that America still provides a superior system of leadership and that civil liberties are worth protecting. Noah Ente can be reached at noahente@umich.edu.

ISABELLE SCHINDLER | COLUMN

Give us the time needed to vote

he University of Michigan prides itself on being a civically engaged institution. From hosting a presidential debate to engaging in voter turnout competitions, the school has touted its commitment to voting and political engagement. However, this is not enough: if the University truly wants to empower students to be active and informed participants in our government, it should work to give us the time needed to make it to the polls. The voter turnout rates of Michigan students in the past few elections have been shockingly low. In 2014, only 14 percent of eligible University students voted. This number was so low that it inspired Professor Edie Goldenberg to found the organization Turn Up Turnout, which engages students and faculty and helped nearly triple voter turnout in 2018 to 41 percent. While this is a powerful increase, it still means that 59 percent of eligible students did not vote that year. Even in 2016, when Michigan was a key swing state in the presidential race, only 44.7 percent of University of Michigan students voted. One likely cause for these numbers is that students lack the necessary time to get to the polls. A Pew research study from 2014 found that among registered voters who chose not to vote, 67 percent said they did not have the

time to vote, and of that group, 35 percent had specific work or school conflicts. This is something that I think all college students can understand. Between classes, studying, activities and jobs, it can be hard to find a free moment in the day, much less a few free hours to go and vote. This is especially true for low-income students, who are often working multiple jobs. Getting to the polls from campus can be a struggle in itself. The city of Ann Arbor has divided the area around the campus into five electoral districts, meaning that many students live far away from where their polling place is. Given that many students do not have access to a car, they have to walk long distances or wait for public transportation in order to vote, both of which take time. Once students get to the polls they can sometimes face two hour waits, as was seen in Ann Arbor in 2016. As we head into the 2020 election, there will likely be many “get out to vote” efforts on campus, including registration drives, voting themed events and the buzz around hosting a presidential debate. All of these factors will likely lead to higher levels of voter turnout in 2020. While this is a great thing, it also means that there will be even longer lines at the polls. The most effective way to solve this problem would be for the

University to cancel classes on Election Day. This would allow students the time needed to make it to the polls and perform their civic duty. As a pragmatist, I recognize that the chances of the University closing on election day are quite small. However, individual professors have a great deal of leeway over whether they hold classes that day. One of the best ways for students to ensure they and their fellow classmates have the time to vote is by addressing the issue with their professors. Even if professors choose not to cancel class they can decide not to take attendance or not hold any assessments on that day. Even these small actions can make a big difference in encouraging students to go vote. Some may argue that students would view this simply as a free day and not use the time to go to the polls. However, I have faith in my fellow students. So many of us are passionate about different issues. We chose this university because of its reputation as a place of engagement. We want to vote and we want the University to give us all the time and resources needed to make that a reality. That is why we must push to cancel classes on Election Day and help us become a community where all students have the opportunity to make their voices heard. Isabelle Schindler can be reached at ischind@umich.edu.

Call out China: Uyghurs repression

hina has always seen Islam as an extremist threat and sought to tighten control over those who practiced the faith — namely the Uyghur Muslims. Though China has long denied any maltreatment of the ethnic minority living in its Xinjiang province, a recent document leaked by a Chinese official confirmed the existence of Uyghur detention camps. The documents included a manual on how to operate and maintain these centers, which exploit the Uyghurs through forced labor and brainwash them into accepting governmentapproved propaganda. Not only is this practice a violation of human rights, but the response to China’s oppression of this minority group has been underwhelming. Human rights have always been a touchy subject in China, but the problem is that some of the individuals who are detained are not Chinese citizens. Now that there is finally concrete evidence of human rights violations in China, other countries need to step in and call on China to dissolve the internment camps and protect the rights of the Uyghurs, especially if China has no jurisdiction over some of the detainees. Though China is part of the United Nations, other member countries should stand up and do the right thing; the values of freedom and tolerance that the U.N. stands for should be upheld by all of its constituents. A lot of the problems surrounding China’s take on human rights and its actions toward the minority group stem from the way its government is run — the Communist Party works as a cohesive unit, dictating policy and maintaining control through censorship and propaganda. In this case, the government has labeled the Uyghurs a threat on the basis of terrorism — without much basis — and is taking control of the situation by concealing the truth about what it is really doing. While foreign nations

and organizations like the U.N. cannot do anything to change the fundamental structure of China’s governance and society, they can put pressure on China to change its approach toward the Uyghurs. Though China has already threatened the progress of trade talks with the United States, other countries should try to step in. An economic conflict should not deter countries from doing what is right and standing up for human lives. The U.S. cannot let China continue to torture and punish the ethnic minority over an ideology and belief system the Uyghurs practice; there is also no evidence of any supposed acts of “terrorism” China is vehemently taking action to contain.

We cannot simply turn a blind eye when it is more convenient to do so Regardless of the situation, there is no excuse to lock anyone up for re-education and exploit them for labor. One conflict of interest is that the U.S. has been accused of mistreating prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, which may make any action it takes come off as hypocritical. While it is true Americans need to address our own faults, we should not let them deter us from taking a firm stance on the issue. Furthermore, there is a lack of attention devoted to this issue. While articles have been written about it, they have largely flown under the radar. Lives were risked to bring the truth to light, yet there has been little official response. Chinese citizens are finding ways to access the article published in The New York Times, which has paved the way for transparency on the government’s actions. The

response of these citizens vary, but the fact they are going as far as breaking censorship laws to get the truth should prompt us to give more attention to the problem. The role technology and media have been playing in this is disappointing — TikTok temporarily silenced talk about Uyghurs when it deleted a post made to bring awareness to what China has been doing. While it has been said TikTok is trying to distance itself from its Chinese roots, it could do better to assert that separation by allowing the post to stay up as a way of standing up to the Communist Party. There are so many organizations and individuals who now have access to indisputable evidence of China’s human rights violations, yet nothing has been said to acknowledge the issue on a national or global scale. If the news and media can consistently report on Hong Kong and their fight for rights and democratic freedom, there should be no reason why they cannot do the same to give voice to an oppressed minority. Maybe the difference to these large news outlets is Hong Kong’s attempt to separate itself from Communist Party control and espouse more “American” democratic values, but the Uyghurs have done nothing to be locked up in internment camps. Taking a stance on Hong Kong may seem less problematic because it technically does not count as overstepping on Chinese authority, but that does not excuse inaction. If anything, we should champion their freedom of religion regardless of whether or not the concept exists under Chinese sovereignty. If the U.S. wants to be a leader, it should act accordingly; we cannot simply turn a blind eye when it is more convenient to do so. Alice Lin can be reached at alicelin@umich.edu

VARNA KODOTH | COLUMN

The dichotomy of the self

am happy to have noticed minorities making large-scale that recently there have strides within their fields. The been more and more women syndrome can affect anyone whose social straying away from identities result in the stereotypical feelings of being an definition of what it outsider. However, means to be a “girl” imposter syndrome or “woman.” They do is typically talked this by setting fitness about within goals, working three the context of campus jobs on the working top of being a fullVARNA environment posttime University of KODOTH graduation. Yet Michigan student to achieve financial stability when I look around me, I or a level of independence and recognize imposter syndrome by founding conferences and to be rampant throughout the undergraduate summits that empower their University’s fellow female executives. It’s community. Whether or not interesting to witness how by you want to label it imposter not conforming, we are in a syndrome is entirely a personal way actually embracing and choice, but I’m sure feeling like harnessing all the power you don’t belong in a certain that a woman or young girl space is not a foreign concept encompasses to redefine to most. A study titled “An preconceived notions set by societal standards. As Examination of the Impact we continue to shed light of Minority Status Stress and on gender inequities that Imposter Feelings” conducted exist, like the gender pay gap by Dr. Kevin Cokley, an ethnic (particularly the widening pay minority professor in his field gap between women of color of educational psychology and and their male counterparts), African diaspora studies at the the TIME’S UP campaign has University of Texas at Austin, been on a positive mission addresses the additional stress to highlight successful that discrimination adds to the women. This is exactly the minority student experience. type of advancement we The results indicate that while need to support. However, feelings of impostorism further the minority this campaign and similar complicate initiatives are just some experience, the mechanisms examples of representing one by which we receive and demographic and deepening respond to imposter syndrome the divide between who we is specific to the individual. Dena Simmons’ Ted Talk are and how we see ourselves. Another term for this sentiment on How Students of Color rampant amid all college Confront Impostor Syndrome students with high-achieving expands on this concept of syndrome being goals is imposter syndrome. imposter Her talk It’s easy to compare ourselves heterogeneous. to trailblazers and other is essentially an in-depth professionals in our future analysis of feeling like a fraud career fields and wonder: or that you don’t belong in a field or space. Simmons Where do I fit in? A Harvard Business Review emphasizes that “there is damage done article titled “Overcoming emotional Imposter Syndrome” defines when young people can’t be imposter syndrome best as themselves. When they are a term used to describe a forced to edit who they are collection of feelings of anxiety to be accepted. It’s a kind of despite evident success. I’d violence.” Simmons and Dr. Cokley recommend expanding the definition to apply to all touch base on what we can individuals in all stages of life, do to reduce the trauma we not only working women or induce upon ourselves from

imposter syndrome. The strategies proposed by The New York Times in “Dealing With Imposter Syndrome When You’re Treated as an Imposter” are easily applicable at the University. One strategy is to find a “you” in your chosen field. For example, if you’re a woman of color, find a professor who represents your identities in the classroom. By understanding the challenges that exist in the field, you’ll be better equipped to handle impostorism. While this may be the route less taken, when you experience a situation where you do not feel welcomed in a classroom space, reach out to the GSI or a faculty member and let them know. By far the most important technique is to find a platform to encourage yourself to keep moving forward. Whether this is through journaling or writing a Post-It note with a list of your accomplishments, find a method that allows you to be comfortable with your achievements. At the end of the day, the pervasiveness of imposter syndrome is a sign we are conditioned to feel that there is always more to achieve. So let’s make an effort to be kinder to ourselves. In the classroom setting, let’s do our best to create an environment where it’s a safe space, you’re allowed to be wrong, you’re allowed to ask “basic” questions and you’re allowed to explore. Despite social media trends and what we might tell ourselves, selfcare isn’t just about taking time out of your day to put on a face mask and watch Netf lix or take a break from academia to play Overwatch. It’s about not letting our success pass without celebration and finding areas for growth within the failures. As Dena Simmons asserts, “Every child deserves an education that guarantees the safety to learn in the comfort of one’s own skin.” Varna Kodoth can be reached at vkodoth@umich.edu.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Thursday, January 9, 2020 — 5

BOOKS NOTEBOOK

COMMUNITY CULTURE COUMN

Revisiting what I read over break Mozart’s unique, duplicativeappeal EMILY YANG

Daily Arts Writer

Daily Arts Writer Emily Yang delves into her winter break reads in five capsule reviews. *** n+1, issue 35 This is the only literary magazine I subscribe to in print, in part because it’s relatively inexpensive and in part because the writing it publishes tends to be both sophisticated and politically astute. It’s slightly under the radar, but occasionally individual pieces get wider attention. The piece that generated the most buzz from this issue is Tony Tulathimmute’s short story “The Feminist,” which was hailed as a spiritual successor to Kristen Roupenian’s late-2017 story “Cat Person” on at least one litblog. It’s a detailed psychological portrait of a self-professed male feminist. If you’ve been on the Internet for the past few years you can probably guess where that goes. This story is particularly protracted — he stays a virgin into his thirties; his resentment metabolizes into violence. The Roupenian story this reminded me of isn’t “Cat Person,” but “The Good Guy.” They both employ a close third person, narrate most of their titular characters’ lives, are way too long, start to frustrate after a while in their oil-and-water mix of character study, polemic and satire. Another story in this issue, “Parasite Air” by Trevor Shikhaze, has a similarly polemical aim, with more of a slant — a “discouraged worker” is paid by a billionaire to “offset his carbon” in a garish parody of consumer-choice environmentalism. The writing is crisp and witty, but the story is a bit of a nonstarter: as events become less causal, you can almost feel Shikhaze struggling to turn the one-liner of a premise into plot. Two pieces in the second half of the issue by Sarah Resnick and Alice Abraham operate in murkier ways. The former is an oblique, loosely sketched short story about a woman in New York dating two very different men, and the latter a personal essay about the author’s mother preparing to die of cancer. Both authors write incantatory, hypnotic prose — juxtaposition and inference running alongside logical progression and deduction. Resnick’s story is full of lists that read like annotated ship manifests or archival entries, unnamed or improbably named characters, actions seemingly with no motive and anxiety that silences. Its mood is the dense opacity of an unfamiliar city. Abraham is more willing to explain herself, but has a way of undermining herself: she wanders into discussions of her dreams and her romantic relationships, juxtaposes strange images, weaves between description and deduction as if one can be an answer for the other. She writes with an acute emotional intelligence and writes strangely in a way that recalls Didion. At one point she describes a date with her boyfriend with an image astonishing in its eerie lucidity: “We’re exposed, sensing ourselves — a hetero couple sitting across from each other — repeated in an unwavering pattern across the floor plan.”

Jeffrey Eugenides, “The Virgin Suicides” I felt icky after I put this novel down, as I think is right: Eugenides unapologetically seeks out beauty in cloistered female pain, turns voyeurism into a literary genre. This is, before it’s anything else, creepy. What’s interesting about this is that a true literary voyeurism is only partly sexual, or at least lives in a kind of uncanny valley between sexual and nonsexual curiosity about a group of people. Curiosity about other people, and their ultimate unknowability in the face of inquiry, is a common topic for literary fiction — the obsessive passion the boys have for the Lisbon girls is, therefore, generalizable to themes common to literature as a whole. The novel’s position in the history of both the U.S. and of literature might have informed the methods that Eugenides uses to represent voyeurism — bureaucratic, itemizing, both invasive and antiseptic. The boys that form the hivemind narrator catalog and number their “exhibits” about the girls, photographs and potholders and bed springs and the girls’ fingerprints on the grimy windows forming detached fragments of a furtive kind of knowledge. We get something resembling a police file, a fossilized outline that is repeatedly lamented for its ultimate inadequacy. I’m reminded of the critic Mara Smith’s diagnosis, after James Wood, that the defining trait of fin-de-millénaire Anglo-American literature is its “surfeit of undigested information”: its appropriative excesses. The difference between this novel and those by writers like David Foster Wallace, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith is that for Eugenides, this avalanche of information isn’t employed for texture or affect, but as a futile attempt to find real meaning. There’s a reason all of these lists are there, if only to index their own uselessness. Hiroko Oyamada trans. David Boyd, “The Factory” Oyamada based her first novel on her experiences temping at a subsidiary of Toyota. Temp work is usually pretty menial, filling in the gaps of what’s necessary in an office environment; usually the work temps do has little relationship to the real goals of the organization. Oyamada’s characters at the titular Factory (never mentioned by any other name) do work like this — one shreds paper all day, another proofreads opaque internal documents, the third works on an unsupervised project cataloguing moss. They occasionally have doubts about their jobs, but invariably remind themselves of how precarious the labor market is, how lucky they are to be employed at all. It’s less bleak than it sounds — Oyamada’s style is transparent and airy, rendering the increasingly mysterious factory in small details, from the smell of soap from a laundry facility to the small annoyances of office politics. After a while, you start to notice that surface detail substitutes for character development — she doesn’t really divulge characters’ backstories besides what you could get from a resumé, and instead devotes endless passages to the inscrutable, fine-grained details of the Factory, its rhythms and protocols, sometimes going as far as to resemble a piece of technical writing. It’s Oyamada’s impersonality that makes the novel such a strong, unnerving statement — we

start to see her characters not as individuals but as representations of replaceable workers within a system too large to even understand, let alone escape.

Robert Walser trans. and ed. Susan Bernofsky, “Berlin Stories” NYRB’s collections of short fiction as “___ Stories” tracks with the place-focused trend in 21st-century fiction and thus packages a kind of reading into an edited collection. Usually, I would disapprove of this, but for a writer like Walser, it makes sense: most of the pieces collected in this book were published in the feuilleton (art criticism) sections of newspapers and were thus intended to be some kind of document of life in the city in the first person. The result is a hybrid style that could be read as a distant predecessor to autofiction, with a lot of room for reportage as well as for fictionalization and embellishment. Accordingly, his narrators are both rather transparent and totally involved in goings-on: restaurants, train cars, holidays, artistic society, the theater. The writing can be needlessly saccharine at times, but it’s possible to catch an inkling of what Walser is really capable of when he writes about the complicated and slightly tragic figure of his landlady or about the small drama of his own writing process. His defining quality is an admirably small voice: he gives the impression of someone who sees everything but lays claim to very little. Jeffrey Eugenides, “The Marriage Plot” A novel that attempts to center marriage any time after about 1960 is swimming upstream — as the jacket copy says, “the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce” make marriage a thing that isn’t as final as it was in the past. This is, to be clear, a good thing; however, if you were, hypothetically, a novelist still curious about applying the 19th-century aesthetic to any decade in the second half of the 20th century, the reactionary 1980s is probably your safest bet. For Eugenides’ recent college graduates in limbo between childhood and PhDs, radicalism and retrenchment are both in the air. The Reagan era is a wonderfully tense moment to be intelligent and heterosexual. Neoliberalism isn’t the same thing as aristocracy, though, and Eugenides is missing the tightly-knit milieu that can be effectively energized by a marriage plot of the Victorian or Regency variety. This might be why this novel lacks a certain structural integrity: in a nineteenth-century novel, different parties having a stake in the success of different suitors means that romantic conflict becomes social and often material. There’s endless intrigue around marriage in a novel by Austen or Wharton only because marriage is never just marriage in this world. This might be why long sections of this 400-page novel sort of stall out into pointless backstory and limpid indecision. It’s fortunate, then, that Eugenides does backstory and indecision quite well; the digression of the novel ends up being its strongest feature. In the end, the answer to the question the novel seems to pose ends up being “no, but…”.

Read more online at

michigandaily.com

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

French class with Françoise Hardy MADELEINE VIRGINIA GANNON Daily Arts Writer

“Oui mais moi, je vais seule par les rues, l’âme en peine,” Françoise Hardy sang at the tender age of 19, “Yes but I, I walk the streets alone, the lost soul,” with a voice that, despite her age, carried the painful loneliness of a woman twice, three times her age. Her debut song “Tous les garçons et les filles,” (“All the boys and girls”) skyrocketed her to stardom in the early ’60s. A star at the forefront of French pop culture, Hardy quickly cemented her status as an enduring French icon. While her prolific career spans decades, it is her first album, Françoise Hardy, released in 1962, that I can’t help but return to as we enter a new year. At 19 years old, unsure of my direction or purpose, struggling to lay claim to family roots that I feel undeserving of, I take comfort in Hardy’s songs. In a sense, I see myself in the coquettish, knowing gaze on Hardy’s album cover. There’s a subtle, undeniable reassurance in Hardy’s songs. As she sings of memories, desires, grief beyond her age, my own self-doubt seems less foreign. Being as soul-searching and melodramatic as I am, however, is by no means a prerequisite to enjoy Hardy’s music. While an undeniably aged quality runs like a current beneath her flowing lyrics, she was a young girl, too. Playful flirtation, romantic daydreams and bright, animated singing are also trademarks of Hardy’s style. Her rise to fame came on the crest of the 60s Yé-yé wave, dominated by young female pop singers with playful songs, often featuring risqué innuendoes and suggestive undertones. Hardy eventually grew beyond the pop wave, but her earlier music, especially her 1962 album, captures the mischievous, tonguein-cheek style of the Yé-yé fad. I stumbled upon Hardy in an attempt to achieve the impossible: to master the French accent. In part, my ambition was born from

JOOST EVERS

stubbornness. When someone tells me I can’t do something, my knee-jerk reaction is to do it anyway. It’s why I spent a year learning Korean, why I spent hours locked away practicing scales and classical excerpts, why I own a Lebanese cookbook and why I wear my hair short, curly and ferocious. French, however, was a brutal foe. After weeks, months, years of garbled vowels and choked “r’s,” I decided my saving grace would have to be a return to the basics. After all, how does a child learn to speak? By listening. It was in the depths of Spotify that I stumbled across Françoise Hardy. A giant in her own right, but unfairly hidden in the digital stacks of Spotify. I learned French alongside Hardy. Dancing in my kitchen to the bounce of Hardy’s playful “Oh oh chéri,” or rainy days spent to the lonesome heartbreak of “J’ai jeté mon cœur,” to listen to Hardy is to feel all at once young and ancient, experienced and naive, French or simply a woman of the world. A tad dramatic? Maybe. But the French have always had a flair for show-biz, and my own French roots resurface from their sequestered slumber as I listen to the songs of that fateful debut album. Rolling into the new decade, it felt fitting to indulge in a bit of nostalgia and take a return to both musical and cultural roots. Hardy

remains a steadfast, entertaining partner. A bit somber and a bit childish, Hardy’s music is a good reminder to strike a balance between the obligations and demands of the coming years, and the joy of being young –– in spirit and in heart, not just inexperience and frivolity. Time and time again I find myself returning to my “Paris, France” playlist, filled with Hardy’s voice and ethos (lots of Yé-yé). Hardy’s allure, for me at least, is more than just a baseline of good music, or the celebration of adolescence. At the end of the day, it is simply refreshing to hear a voice that echoes my own life and experiences so well. A song-bird that reflects the turbulence of my own youth and naivety, and the (sometimes) stifling maturity required to try to figure out your entire life out at nineteen. I, too, hope for “Le jour où je n’aurai plus du tout l’âme en peine / Le jour où moi aussi j’aurai quelqu’un qui m’aime,” “The day that I will no longer be a lost soul/ The day that I, too, will get someone who loves me.” Maybe Hardy will be able to help me arrive at this fateful day sooner rather than later –– for now, I’ll be content with a familiar voice ringing in my ears, translation unnecessary. **Translations taken lyricstranslate.com

from:

https://

SAMMY SUSSMAN

Daily Community Culture Columnist

Over the past month, as I boarded four flights and about ten bus rides, I found myself listening to the same recording over and over: Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s 2012 recording of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. I’d set out to study the opera over the holiday break because I plan on referencing it in an upcoming project. “Don Giovanni” is a seminal work in the opera repertoire — some consider it to be the best opera ever written.

There’s a certain beauty, I realized, in the complexity of the performing arts. It’s every creative member of the production adding their own interpretation and insight to each manifestation of the work.

Given the meaning of this work, I figured the best way that I could go about studying it was pouring over the score. For those unfamiliar with opera, the score is the music notation from which all sound is derived. It contains the instrumental parts and vocal parts along with lyrics and some stage directions. Studying a score requires patience. Rather than idly listening to a recording, it requires the viewer to read, comprehend and imagine each part on the page. It also requires the listener to imagine how these parts might fit together were they not slowly being read and understood from visual notation. This is a skill I’ve worked on for years. It was something I struggled with as a high school composer and something I slowly but steadily improved over the past two years of undergraduate music theory. It’s something I am proud to have developed a fluency in, and something I like to exercise when possible. Though I hadn’t wanted to admit it, I imagine a small part of me wanted to revel in the fact that I could study score. Not everyone is capable of doing that, I realize, and there’s a certain amount of superiority that one inherently feels over the layperson (or even average opera fan) in possessing this skill. After a while, though, this study began to lose its interest. I began to wonder why I’d decided to study the work to begin with — the notes on the page stopped translating to sound in my head. I decided to put the score aside and focused instead on a recording. I listened to it constantly, starting from the beginning of the opera and the beginning of each act. I followed along with the score and the libretto as I listened. I memorized the intricacies of every aria and the many false cadences of the overture. And after my first listen, I knew my feeling of superiority at only needing a score to understand the work had been misguided. If the score represents the creator’s ideas of the work, the recording represents the creator and performer’s many additive creative thoughts about the work. If the score is what the composer intended, the recording is what the composer intended plus what the

performers added. This dichotomy is unique to the performing arts, that the creator’s idealized creation of the work rarely represents the final rendering of it. Is “Don Giovanni” best represented by its score, I asked myself, or by its recording? Does the work exist in the composer’s hand on paper or does it exist in the soundwaves captured by a computer — soundwaves bound for endless reproduction? And after I returned from my trip I became aware of another complicated aspect to this equation. “Don Giovanni” as Mozart expressed it exists both in the notated score and in the computerized recording. But “Don Giovanni” as most opera houses present it is so much more than that. The set design of specific productions, for example, can totally taint the audience’s understanding of the work. The costume design as well can make or break a production. And this is to say nothing of the staging and acting that goes into each production of the opera; the decisions that give each part in the score a physical presence. If I wanted to study “Don Giovanni,” or even experience “Don Giovanni,” merely studying the score or listening to a recording would not be enough. I needed to experience the work from the audience. (Assuming I couldn’t do that, I needed to experience it via video.) As such, I decided to watch one of the Metropolitan Opera’s online recordings of “Don Giovanni.” But the interpretative decisions made by the performers in this recording differed greatly from those made by the performers in Nézet-Séguin’s recording. And both interpretive decisions differed from those that I’d reached while studying through the score myself. There’s a certain beauty, I realized, in the complexity of the performing arts. It’s every creative member of the production adding their own interpretation and insight to each manifestation of the work. It’s the creator providing not a definitive blueprint for the artistic work but a loose set of guidelines within which the performer can thrive. And there’s also a certain beauty to be found in the temporality of this work, the uniqueness that every performance and every computerized reproduction provides. These products are all “Don Giovanni.” But they are also all discrete, distinctive works. One is Nézet-Séguin’s understanding of the work, the other the Metropolitan Opera’s,

If the score represents the creator’s ideas of the work, the recording represents the creator and performer’s many additive creative thoughts about the work.

another merely the notes as they existed in Mozart’s head and on the notated page. There is no empirical, definitive manifestation of a work of the performing arts, I’ve realized. This exists neither in theory nor in practice. There are merely various interpretations, each with their respective strengths and faults. There is, I’ve come to realize, no single artistic work that is “Don Giovanni” — and far as I can see, there won’t ever be. But by the same token, why should there be?

Arts

6 — Thursday, Janurary 9, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

COMMUNITY CULTURE

FILM NOTEBOOK

Inclusivity and The insightful music of ‘Hustlers’ the Voices Valiant ASIF BECHER Daily Arts Writer

DANA PIERANGELI

Daily Community Culture Editor

The Voices Valiant Choir is famous for their heartwarming and welcoming concerts. Young or old, everyone enjoys exciting music and audience participation. But the special part is no one feels old when they’re listening. As the wellknown American Choir Teacher

“It’s a great welcoming feeling group,” said Koi. “You never feel a sense of competition between the people in the group. It’s just a really, really friendly, welcoming, great place.”

Helen Kemp proclaims and the choir echoes, “You don’t stop singing because you get old; you get old because you stop singing.” Voices Valiant performed their Fall semester concert on December 14th at 11am in the STAMPS Auditorium. They are getting ready for the new semester by welcoming new members and beginning new music. The group was started by Jerry Blackstone eight years ago and is now run by Norma Freeman. Their audiences and members benefit greatly from the choir’s work. “There is tons of research out there that says one of the most

valuable things that seniors can do is to sing,” Freeman said. “It’s such a hard one to multitask, because you have to sing the right note. You have to sing it for the right length of time. You have to sing it with words, and sometimes the words are not English words, and then you have to sound like the person next to you. So just that from a mental aspect is looking over how your brain is firing on all cylinders that way.” Even the physicality of singing is beneficial to the seniors in the choir, according to Freeman. “And then physically, we work, but we do this in a gentle way. But you know, older people, we all tend to bend over, right?” Freeman said. “But to sing and to be able to sing with beauty in your voice takes a lot of breathing technique, getting those shoulders back, standing up straight and keeping your head up. And you know, we just think, ‘Why don’t we walk like this all the time?’” Not only does choir singing have many physical and mental benefits, but many have found a home in this particular choir. Mary Koi has moved around her whole life and sang in every place she lived. When she moved to Michigan from Dallas, she knew she had to find somewhere to continue her singing. She found Voices Valiant in 2016 and has been a part of the group ever since. “You never feel a sense of competition between the people in the group,” Koi said. “It’s just a really, really friendly, welcoming, great place.” Freeman feels this connection to her choir as well. “There’s just not a better feeling than loving to sing and having people on all sides of you that love to sing,” Freeman said. “It just gives you an immediate community and a community where you feel that you’re getting something, but you’re giving too.” With the new semester beginning, the choir of seniors aged 50 and above with any friends who want to join them is excited for new music and new friends. Their next concert will be toward the end of the semester and is sure to be a blast. “I’ve yet to see anyone leave the concert who didn’t have a smile on their face,” says Freeman. “That’s what we’re all about!”

Release Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Coffee holder 4 “Top Chef” host Lakshmi 9 Droop 12 Tapped-off remnant 13 Thread holder 14 T’ai __ 15 Club condiment 17 “Fiddler” meddler 18 Chemistry Nobelist Otto 19 Big musical number ... or what 60-Across is to four puzzle answers? 22 “My Friend” title horse 24 Coral creatures 27 “A Legacy of Spies” author 29 Makes a mess of 30 St. Teresa’s town 31 VII x XIII 33 Rodeo performer 34 Catchall abbr. 35 Pool tool 36 Eat in style 37 Dramatic accusation 38 Paris transit 40 Deca- minus two 41 GPS part: Abbr. 42 Smart __ 43 Eco-friendly certification letters 44 Tablet named for an organ 46 Kosher food carrier 48 Preserve, in a way 51 “The Joy Luck Club” novelist 55 Philosopher __-tzu 56 Short rest 58 Word for a woman 59 Hosp. area 60 Decisive ending 64 “I like that” 65 Cool beans or warm fuzzies 66 Great Lake city 67 MC alternative 68 Yoga pose 69 Word for men

DOWN 1 Dash attachment 2 NATO founding member 3 The Curies, e.g. 4 Propaganda battle 5 Tarzan raisers 6 “Cut it out!” 7 Con __: briskly 8 Syrian city 9 Member of a 1990s girl group 10 Spa sigh 11 Martini default 16 Musical revue performed in the nude 18 Musical whose first run won 10 Tony Awards 20 Gumbo pod 21 Refill a glass, say 22 Fire sign 23 Flippancy 25 Mambo legend Tito 26 Nutella, e.g. 28 Shines 29 Cutthroat, as competition 32 Meet-__: romcom device

38 Musical featuring ABBA songs 39 Musical awarded a special Pulitzer in 1944 45 Radius neighbor 47 “You said it!” 48 Justice Kagan 49 Pithy saying 50 Lawn game 52 Wonder Woman topper

53 Pungent 54 Zaps for dinner 57 Sketchbooks 58 “The Da Vinci Code” priory 61 Supervillain Luthor 62 Hermana de la madre 63 __ B: 9-Down’s professional name

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

“Hustlers” isn’t just a story about ex-strippers performing a series of heists aimed at the Wall Street con-men who tanked the economy. It’s also not just the best movie of 2019 (though to this writer, it is most certainly that). “Hustlers” is a time capsule. It conjures magic through the story it tells in that specific way only cinema can — by plunging the viewer directly into the characters’ world. Its set design and costuming give the movie a distinct texture, evoking a highly specific place and time — in this case, New York City during the financial crash of 2008. Everything from the bedazzled “Bebe” T-shirts to the Juicy Couture sweatsuits, to the tanning beds, to the massive handbags, evokes an early aughts culture of fast fashion and glitz. “Hustlers” is a glittery movie, start to finish, but it doesn’t sparkle like a diamond — it sparkles like a rhinestone. The excess and the kitsch is the point, and the film is a masterclass in how to build a sensory world for the characters (and by extension, the viewers) to inhabit. Brilliant performances and an electric script by director Lorene Scafaria (“The Meddler”) fill that world, but a significant piece of the film’s power is derived from how real it feels. Nothing is more evocative, however, than the music of “Hustlers.” My theory is this: If you listen to the soundtrack start to finish with an ear for context and history, you’ll be treated to a complete economic history of the late 2000s in the United States. I can’t think of any film that uses music better or more intelligently than “Hustlers” — not just in recent memory, but ever. “I guess I’m just a people person.” The very first words we hear in “Hustlers” aren’t spoken by a character, they’re sung by Janet Jackson. She sings: “This is a story about control,” as strip club newcomer Destiny (Constance Wu, “Crazy Rich Asians”) peers at herself in the mirror before heading onstage. Within the first 10 seconds, we understand something fundamental not just about Destiny, but about the act of stripping itself and what it means to her. Later in the film, in voiceover, Destiny explains that when the high-flying financiers of Wall Street come to the club, it’s likely “... the most honest transaction he’s had all day.” Money changes hands, more clothes come off. Simple enough. But because this is a story about control, Destiny learns to manipulate that interaction to her advantage, to use her looks and her brains to control what men think of her. She learns these skills from Ramona (Jennifer Lopez, “Second Act”), a veteran stripper who’s introduced while dancing to Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” Fiona sings, “It’s a sad, sad world / when a girl will break a boy just because she can,” as Ramona performs gravity-defying feats up and down the pole, and the stage floods with cash. “Criminal” was written in 1996 by Fiona Apple when she was 18, allegedly in just 45 minutes, when her management team said her album lacked a hit. They made a video featuring Fiona rolling in her underwear around a dirty apartment filled with sleeping, half-naked people, and the song was a smash. It’s fascinating the way “Hustlers” repurposes “Criminal,” a song about voyeurism and desire written by a teenage girl who was presented to the world to be ogled. It invites the viewer to see both the song and Ramona through a different plane on their respective prisms. The power of Jennifer Lopez’s physical performance and her obvious dominance over everybody looking at her in the scene teases out the

hit the charts were uncomplicated from here on out. There was an aggression to “Gimme More” that songs like “Beautiful Girls” just didn’t have, a darkness and danger to it. When Destiny and Ramona dance to “Gimme More” in the Cadillac, they’re intoxicated with the idea of wanting and getting more, maybe even seeing themselves in lines like, “Cameras are flashing / we’re dirty dancing / they keep watching.” But they fail to hear that “Gimme More” isn’t just a celebration — it’s also a warning. “Hands where we can see ‘em.” If “Gimme More” was an inflection point in the pop charts turning them incrementally darker, “Royals” was the true sea change. Lorde’s 2013 debut wasn’t just a massive hit, it was also a key moment in defining the textures and fabrics of the pop music landscape for the rest of the decade. EDM drops and “hands in the air” hooks were out. Trap hi-hats and low, smoky vocals were in. The ease and lightness of early 2000s dance pop was a thing of the past. It’s not a coincidence, then, that “Royals” is used to mark the true end in “Hustlers” of the reign of Ramona and Destiny. The song starts playing in the film as Ramona walks down the street to take out cash at the local ATM, and by the time she turns around, she’s surrounded by police officers, ready to arrest her. All the women involved in the scheme are arrested one by one, and when the song ends, the bars of the holding cell slam shut. It’s clear it’s the definitive end of an era, not just for these women, but for a moment in pop culture as a whole. “That kind of luxe just ain’t for us,” Lorde sings right as the rhinestone sweatshirts and massive designer bags stop making sense in the world of “Hustlers.” When we see Ramona next, she’s working at Old Navy and wearing a flannel shirt. There are little details that tell us she’s still herself: Her nails are still perfectly pressed and glamorous, her makeup is flawless and her hair is still long and shiny. But she looks different, a little sadder and a little wiser. Destiny too, looks different. Her house in 2015 is pristine and white and so are her clothes, but she has none of her old glamor. Her hair is chopped short and she wears cardigans instead of fur coats. Her house looks straight out of a Crate and Barrel catalogue. Their worlds have changed, not for better or for worse necessarily — “Hustlers” is far too complicated a movie to make those kind of value judgments — but their worlds are quieter now. Less flashy and less sparkly. Ramona and Destiny’s aspirations for a specific kind of wealth have been put through the wringer not only by the financial crisis, but also by a world and a culture that’s changing around them in real time. Their dream of living a life glittering with the crystals and diamonds Lorde sings about are dashed — reduced to nothing more than a fantasy. Sure, there were moments when they had everything they wanted, when everything was so glamorous and so cool. But for now, they’re not caught up in that old love affair. At least, until the next heist.

Revisiting ‘Phineas and Ferb’ Daily Arts Writer

01/09/20

wryness and the irony in the song. Lines like “I’ve got to cleanse myself of all these lies ‘til I’m good enough for him” become winking jokes, because how could Ramona, a person with a presence that fills the room, a person so in control, ever wonder if she’s good enough for the men tucking money into her underwear. It’s a laughable question. The song also brings out a seriousness to Ramona, a plea for redemption for the people she would go on to hurt. “Save me from these evil deeds before I get them done” indeed. “2007 was the fucking best.” The first act of “Hustlers” takes us through Destiny’s rise to the top with breakneck speed. She learns quickly from Ramona, and makes good money. Each moment of success — Destiny’s first shopping spree, being invited to swanky parties, buying her dream car — is punctuated with a montage and an early 2000s club song. It’s a dizzying tour of the pop charts in 2007, with songs like Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls,” and in easily the best cameo of the last decade, Usher’s “Love in this Club.” As the music plays, wads of money are zipped into knee high boots, credit cards are swiped, apartments are purchased and giant designer handbags are bought with massive stacks of singles. These songs aren’t chosen just for nostalgia’s sake, or even just to remind us that it’s 2007 on the movie’s timeline. It’s excess in its purest, giddiest form, but it’s excess rendered on two fronts. They spend money like they’d always have it, and the music matches that idea. Early 2000s club radio had an ease and a buoyancy to it, as though joy was a limitless currency. There was no darkness in 2007’s Top 40 because, as Destiny says, “For one last moment, everything was so glamorous and so cool.” There’s a scene in the film where Destiny and Ramona are sitting in a car in a Cadillac dealership, decked out in their new purchases — big gold hoops, fur coats, perfect makeup. Destiny decides she’ll buy the car, turns on the radio to celebrate and “Gimme More” by Britney Spears blasts through the speakers. The pair immediately starts dancing, and then we cut to a Wall Street trading floor, where panic ensues. Britney’s voice is robotic, almost post-human as she sings, “Gimme gimme more /gimme more / gimme gimme more” over footage of massive banks hemorrhaging cash. It’s the perfect culmination of the excess of the music and culture the movie showed us just a few moments before. “Gimme More” was released at a time when Britney Spears was sick of people touching her, sick of people judging her. So she threw away the premise that she was supposed to be respectable, threw away the idea that she was supposed to fit into any preconceived notions about what a young woman in the public eye should be. She shaved her head so people would stop looking at her and she altered her voice under layers of digital distortion to release one of the great pop statements of the 21st century in the form of Blackout. It was the end of an era in music — dance songs that

TV NOTEBOOK

JUSTIN POLLACK

01/09/20

Gloria Sanchez Productions

The launch of Disney+ in Nov. 2019 gave rise to original content such as the ultra-meta “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” and the Kristen Bell-hosted reality show, “Encore!” At the platform’s disposal is the abundance of licenced content that Disney has racked up over the years. One of the ways streaming services attempt to lure you in is not just with exclusive f lashy original series but also through content that has been around for decades. While Disney+ boasts their Marvel library and the animated classic “The Simpsons,” my mind has been wrapped around the agelessness and rewatchability that surrounds another animated show —“Phineas and Ferb” — a children’s show about the impossible adventures of two kids’ summer vacation. Originally airing between 2007 and 2015, “Phineas and Ferb” was an animated show intended for kids, but came with an adult sensibility that also welcomed older viewers. The humor is not just slapstick but surprisingly clever, with recurring gags that have lasted

since the first episode of the show. Like the fact that Ferb never talks, but when he does, it’s always an insightful sentence in a British accent. Or when someone asks Phineas “Aren’t you a little young to be doing [insert activity]?” and he replies: “Yes. Yes I am,” then continues to build whatever it was that he’s too young to be doing. Every single episode boats sarcasm, weird scenes with f loating baby heads and fantastic subplots involving Phineas and Ferb’s older sister, Candance, in her attempt to “bust” her siblings. Even as she tries to report them, Candace is aware of how the crazy thing her brothers are doing will be over as soon as she brings her mom to the backyard. She’s aware of the unwritten canonical rule that Phineas and Ferb will always get off the hook. We can relate to her frustration when her mom tells her to cool it. Though somewhat of an antagonist, even Candace was able to have dimension — her obsession with her boyfriend Jeremy transforms her from cold-hearted to a bundle of joy, perfectly capturing how all of us once acted around an early-teenage crush. Then there’s the B-plot that surrounds their pet platypus, Perry, who doubles as the secret Agent P who fights the evil plots of Dr. Doofensmirtz, who

encapsulates what it means to be an adult. He’s the villain who tries to take over the world — in this instance just the Tri-state area — but is always stopped by the good guys. Additionally, every episode features a catchy song that is never more than 90 seconds. I’m not just talking about “Gitchy Gitchy Goo” but the actual gems like “You Snuck Your Way Right Into My Heart” and “S.I.M.P” and “There’s A Platypus Controlling Me.” Not to mention the fact that everyone from my generation knows the plastic tip at the end of the shoelace is called an aglet because Phineas and Ferb wrote a song about it. The optimism and curiosity that surrounded Phineas and Ferb’s daily projects and Dr. Doofensmirtz’s failed “-inators” are enough to keep us endlessly entertained despite the inevitable same result. Phineas’s line “I know what we’re going to do today!” ref lects the inspiration, spirit and joy that drives the entire show. There is truly no other show like it, which at least partly explains why people still watch it today. The title sequence told us to “stick with us cause Phineas and Ferb are gonna do it all,” and they did just about everything they could.

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Thursday, January 9, 2020 — 7

Haarms could pose problems for ‘M’ After rough start, Jacob Hayhurst looking to make the most of chances TIEN LE

Daily Sports Writer

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Senior center Jon Teske will go up against Purdue’s Matt Haarms, a 7-foot-3, 250-pound center on Thursday night.

CONNOR BRENNAN Daily Sports Writer

There are few big men in the Big Ten — and possibly even the country — that can match the physically-imposing frame of Michigan’s 7-foot-1, 265-lb, senior center Jon Teske. On more than one occasion so far this season, Teske has looked and played like a man amongst boys. While dominant performances against Appalachian State and UMass Lowell are to be expected, Teske also posted stellar statlines against the likes of Creighton, Gonzaga and Louisville. In short, Teske’s unique size has troubled some of the nation’s best teams — mainly because they lack an equivalent big man. Thursday night though, when 9-6 Purdue travels to Crisler Center, Teske will square off with one of the conference’s few exceptions: 7-foot-3, 250-lb Matt Haarms. “This is nothing new with Purdue,” said Michigan coach Juwan Howard. “They’ve always had a guy that’s pretty similar in height. They’ve always had a guy who’s been an inside presence.” While it is true that Haarms is just the latest Boilermaker big man to develop during head coach Matt Painter’s tenure, his skill set differs from past bruisers like

JaJuan Johnson, A.J. Hammons, Caleb Swanigan and Isaac Haas. Haarms, who’s averaging 11.5 points on 57.4-percent shooting, is a versatile offensive player — something Howard is aware of. “They use him both on the perimeter and in the low block,” Howard said. “I’ve seen him where he’s posting up a lot, I’ve seen actions where he’s ducked in on a high-low pass, I’ve seen a few pick-and-pop shots, I’ve seen when teams sag off on him and he’s able to make them pay from the outside. He’s a very skilled player for his size.” Much like Teske has been for opposing teams this year, Haarms could be a matchup nightmare for the Wolverines. While Teske is strong enough to contest Haarms in the paint, asking him to defend Haarms’ jumper and three-point shot is a tall task. In moments where Teske’s on the bench, senior forward Austin Davis or sophomore forward Colin Castleton will likely draw the responsibility of guarding Haarms. Davis is a strong and industrious presence in the paint, but gives up five inches to Haarms and, like Teske, will struggle to guard Haarms’ perimeter shot. Castleton, on the other hand, is athletic enough to contest Haarms away from the basket but has yet to show the strength needed to keep

opposing post players off the glass. Anyway you slice it, the Michigan defense will have its hands full with the Dutch big man. “We just have to be ready to take away some of those duck-ins and high-low passes and stuff like that, but it’s hard to do,” Howard said. “They’re very creative with their offense and the misdirections and surprising you with a few duck-ins here and there.” Haarms’ shot-blocking ability on the other end is also important to note as he averages 2.3 blocks per game. While Haarms will undoubtedly be one of the tallest and most skilled bigs the Wolverines face in the Big Ten, this current Purdue squad has been wildly inconsistent offensively. The Boilermakers hung 69 points on Virginia’s tenacious defense and 83 against Minnesota just a week ago, while also scoring just 55, 56 and 37 points in losses to Marquette, Nebraska and Illinois respectively. Meanwhile, Michigan has scored at least 70 points in all but three games this season. Haarms might manage to get his but if the Wolverines neutralize the rest of Purdue’s offense, even without leading scorer Isaiah Livers, who is still day-to-day with a groin injury, Michigan should get back on track with a win.

A moment stuck with Jacob Hayhurst from the day the Michigan hockey team lost to Michigan Tech in the Great Lakes Invitational finals. The moment he missed ate the graduate transfer up in the proceeding days. Even five days after, he still found himself worked up at the thought of it. He had dreamed of the opposite outcome, of burying the puck into the back of the net to give Michigan a chance to win the tournament, a chance to lift the ALEC COHEN/Daily first-place trophy and a chance to Graduate transfer forward Jacob Hayhurst was upset after Michigan’s GLI loss. start the second half of the season Norris’s departure. High school was tested on all four lines, given with two much-needed wins. Instead, in the final minute of commits weren’t an option. Most a variety of minutes, but he still play, Hayhurst hit the post twice, of them commit years in advance, wasn’t able to produce. But being paired with ultimately unable to convert his leaving few viable options left for chances. He couldn’t score the Pearson to probe. But Hayhurst sophomore forwards Garret Van game-tying goal, and when the was available and immediately Wyhe and Nolan Moyle offered a glimpse of what Hayhurst is Wolverine captains lifted the eligible as a graduate transfer. runner-up trophy, there were no His skillset in particular stuck capable of doing. smiling faces. out to Pearson and the coaching “I think as it came to the Everyone was upset, but staff, and they brought him in. But Christmas break, you could see Hayhurst most of all. his lackluster showing thus far that as a line, and as an individual, “I was pretty upset about it, has netted a mere five points in 20 that my game kind of just was on an uprising,” Hayhurst said. because it would have been a games. “I don’t mind saying he’s had, “It was going up. And then even fantastic victory for a team,” Hayhurst said. “And ultimately, I think, a disappointing first half coming back from Christmas the opportunity was on my stick at as far as his offensive production break, I think the line I’ve been that moment. And I didn’t do what of play goes,” Pearson said. “We playing with, Garrett Van Wyhe, probably expected more from Nolan Moyle, and myself. I think needed to be done.” He hadn’t just wasted two him and ... I’ve given him the we’ve created a lot of chances golden opportunities in crunch opportunity and ice time that he’s together, and I think it’s just a time. All throughout the game, he received and the players he’s been matter of time before they start going in for us.” was given chances, put in spots able to play with. “And I’ll tell you it’s It’s the fit Pearson hoped others on the team would have disappointing, and I’m sure he Hayhurst will find, and he thinks loved. success will follow. “He had one in the first period, would say the same thing.” “The silver lining of all of this is High expectations were set for wide open in the slot all by himself, stone cold, 20 feet out,” Hayhurst from the start, when there’s a lot there,” Pearson said. said Michigan coach Mel Pearson. the coaching staff pitched him on “So hopefully he can get it together “Buried it right in (the goalie’s) the top line with senior forwards and have a real strong second half chest.” Jake Slaker and Will Lockwood, and we need him.” Hayhurst doesn’t want to hear It was emblematic of his scoring the returning two highest scorers from the year before. He was given the sound of the post, the clank struggles all season long. When then-sophomore forward top-line minutes, but the top-line that sends him hoping it would Josh Norris left Michigan to sign offense failed to click, and he was go post-to-net. He wants to turn things around and score goals, so with the Ottawa Senators, Pearson a large reason why. So Pearson shifted him around, that moments like the GLI won’t desperately looked around for ways to fill the gaping hole left by trying to find the right fit. He haunt him anymore.

3-point shooting central to success Amy Dilk’s injection of confidence BRENDAN ROOSE Daily Sports Writer

Sometimes, the shots just aren’t falling. Many teams can withstand rough spells if they’re at an easier point in the schedule or have favorable matchups, but the Michigan women’s basketball team was not that lucky. In their two December losses against No. 8 Florida State and No. 12 Maryland, the Wolverines put up two of their worst 3-point shooting performances of the season, going 3-for-17 and 1-for-12 from beyond the arc, respectively. And with matchups against rivals Michigan State and Ohio State — as well as a rematch against the Terrapins — not far away, Michigan needed to find its shooting rhythm again. Following the first Maryland game, Penn State provided that opportunity. The Nittany Lions allow 70.1 points per game — tied for 80th in the country — and their opponents shoot a combined 34.1 percent from three, tied for 275th in the country. The Wolverines seized the opportunity, shooting

8-for-19 on 3-pointers in an 82-48 victory over Penn State. Perhaps most crucially, junior forward Hailey Brown shot 3-for-6, after shooting a combined 1-for-11 the previous two games. “I think it’s more of a confidence thing,” Brown said. “At the end of the day I feel like I had to get more reps up before practice and after practice. It was up to me. So I think I came into (the Penn State game) confident in the work I’ve been doing since the Maryland game.” That confidence made a major difference against the Spartans on Sunday, in a game where Michigan needed to score well to win. Michigan State scored a respectable 69 points on 45.6 percent shooting, but it was no match for the Wolverines’ 89-point spectacle. Yet again, Brown was right in the middle of it, shooting 3-for5 from beyond the arc in the win. But the 3-point shooting didn’t end with Brown. Sophomore guard Amy Dilk, senior guard Akienreh Johnson and sophomore forward Emily Kiser each added a 3-pointer.

This strong team shooting performance helped Michigan to space the floor, creating opportunities for Dilk and sophomore forward Naz Hillmon to attack the basket. “When we miss (key 3-pointers), it’s a different kind of game,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico. “But (against Michigan State) we made them, and that’s something our team works on every day, is making those shots and having the confidence to take those shots in big games.” Hitting threes against a poor defensive team like Penn State isn’t particularly impressive. One individual strong game against Michigan State doesn’t mean much, either. But the two consecutive solid performances — especially coming off a cold streak — are a good sign for the Wolverines moving forward. With the Jan. 12 rematch against Maryland looming after Thursday’s game against Ohio State, Michigan will need to stay in this offensive rhythm if it wants to pull off the upset at home. If not, it’s looking at another disappointing game against a top opponent.

OLIVIA CELL/Daily

Junior forward Hailey Brown has seen an uptick in her 3-point shooting since Michigan’s win over Penn State.

EMMA MATI/Daily

Sophomore point guard Amy Dilk’s play has picked up over the last month.

KENT SCHWARTZ Daily Sports Writer

Going into the season, sophomore guard Amy Dilk was hyped up. A year older, stronger and more experienced, she would take the reins of the offense, she would be the f loor general. A dominant double-double to start the season over Western Michigan furthered the hype train. And then, she struggled. Forcing passes where none dare enter, doing too much. But throughout Sunday’s 89-69 victory over Michigan State, Dilk was unstoppable. Multiple times, Dilk brought the ball up the court, took half a second to diagnose the defense, then drove to the basket for an easy layup. In what’s becoming a common source of offense, she did the same against Penn State, and No. 12 Maryland before that. Yet all three of those games came in the aftermath of her best game as a Wolverine against No. 8 Florida State on Dec. 22. Against the highestranked team Michigan has played all year, Dilk went deep into the game without missing a shot — almost single-handedly keeping the Wolverines in it with a careerhigh 26 points. Her recent offensive potency is the manifestation of what her coaches and players knew

she needed to be all along. “I think for her to take those next steps in her development, similar to what we talked about with (sophomore forward) Naz (Hillmon), is she’s gotta be a more consistent shooter,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico at media day prior to the season. “She’s gotta be willing to take those shots and knock down those shots, and she has worked hard on that in the offseason.” Senior forward Kayla Robbins added at the time: “Her scoring ability has really gone up, and she has been able to score the basketball. And her passing, of course. She was one of the leaders in the Big Ten in assists. I think that if she can be a double threat in terms of passing the ball and scoring the ball, she’s going to be really good this year.” For a while, though, it wasn’t obvious if Dilk would realize her potential. She struggled early in the year with an eightturnover game against Akron and seven against Notre Dame in the Wolverines’ first loss of the season. Dilk’s performances forced Barnes Arico to take her off the court after her first turnover

of a game, giving her time to watch the game and dissect it from the outside before going back in. Even when her turnovers were kept under control, she struggled to score — averaging 5.6 points per game over a five-game streak in December. Still, after every game, Barnes Arico kept repeating, “I feel like I have one of the best point guards in the country.” Last season, Barnes Arico said it took Dilk a while to settle into the rhythm of the court. After all, starting as a freshman in a top college basketball conference isn’t easy. This year, it took Dilk some time to settle down again. “Sometimes as a point guard you need to figure out your team, you need to figure out yourself,” Barnes Arico said on Dec. 30 before beating Penn State. “You need to figure out who can catch what passes. You need to figure out your decision making, and that was a little bit of a process coming into this season.” Now, in her second year, and fully literate in the offense, she’s turned into a monster for the Wolverines. “She’s playing with a lot more confidence, I think,” Barnes Arico said. “She can f lip the game. Whether that’s her scoring, her passing, her rebounding or her defense, she’s the total package. I’m happy that she’s playing with the confidence that she is because she’s impacting our team. “She can beat anybody to the basket. She’s faced incredible defenders in the last couple of weeks and still has the ability to get to the rim when she wants to.” Should Dilk remain confident, Michigan’s offense will be deadly, as the Spartans found out on Sunday.

As a point guard ... you need to figure out yourself.

8 — Thursday, January 9, 2020

michigandaily.com

One of the Wolverines Photos courtesy of University of Washington Athletic Department | Design by Jack Silberman

WASHINGTON COACH Elise Ray-Statz’s TEAM PREPARES TO TAKE ON HER ALMA MATER ARIA GERSON Daily Sports Editor

The first phone call was from a former athlete to the coach she loved. Elise Ray was at a crossroads. After finishing her career as a gymnast at Michigan, she’d performed for Cirque du Soleil for three years, then worked briefly as a trainer and broadcaster. Like many athletes whose careers had come to an end, Ray wasn’t sure what was next. So she called Bev Plocki, her college coach, and asked for advice. “I haven’t really found that thing that I love,” Ray told her. Plocki responded: “Elise, in my opinion, you were born to coach gymnastics.” It was the first of three phone calls that came to define Ray’s career. A decade after that first call of advice, the two women — at the helm of their own programs in Michigan and Washington — scheduled a meet against each other. It should have been perfect, a coach and her protege, reunited where it all began, this time as competitors. Except, in a twist of irony, Ray — now known as Elise Ray-Statz after getting married in 2017 — is pregnant and due in a few weeks. She wasn’t cleared to travel to Ann Arbor. But Plocki has no doubt that the Washington team she’ll be seeing Saturday, part of a tri-meet with Texas Woman’s, will have Ray-Statz’s fingerprints all over it. Elise Ray hadn’t been any average gymnast.

She was a star. She trained under legendary coach Kelli Hill, reached the elite level as a teen, then won a USA Gymnastics national championship at the age of 18. Later that year, she went to the Olympics. The 2000 Olympics were in Sydney in September. Ray was selected as one of six gymnasts to represent the U.S, the team captain of what was supposed to be a follow-up to the “Magnificent Seven,” which four years earlier had become the first American team to win Olympic gold. There were heaps of expectations. Everything went wrong. Ray dislocated her shoulder during the competition. She competed through it, but wasn’t the same. Not only did the team fail to defend its gold, it came away without a single medal (at least until a decade later, when the team was awarded a bronze medal due to the retroactive disqualification of the Chinese team). In the all-around final, officials accidentally set the vault two inches too low. After sitting both her vaults, Ray fell off the beam. Though she got a doover on the vault, the beam score stood, and she finished 13th. “It was a very heartbreaking experience in Sydney just because the expectations were really high for us and so many things went wrong on multiple layers, and so we just left there and came home feeling like a disappointment,” Ray-Statz said. “ ... And I just really felt like I wanted to be done with gymnastics because I was heartbroken.” “I just was done.” But her career was just beginning. Only three months after getting back from Sydney, Ray joined the Wolverines as a freshman. Her first meet was less than two weeks later. The second phone call came from a coach in need. It was 2011, and Joanne Bowers had just done the hardest thing she’d ever had to do: She’d fired an assistant. Wanting someone to confide in, Bowers — at the time the head coach at Washington — turned to Plocki, with whom she had worked as an assistant coach at Michigan. Bowers told Plocki of the sudden opening on her staff and asked if Plocki knew anyone who might be interested. “As a matter of fact,” Plocki told her, “I don’t know if you can get her to come to the other side of the world in Seattle, but I know that Elise Ray is interested in potentially coaching collegiate gymnastics.” As a competitor, Ray had been a natural observer and frequently asked questions of her coaches. She knew how to lead a team, and her name came with built-in respect. Unlike many former elites, Ray had always been a team player, and that stood out from the beginning. Maybe, just maybe, Ray thought, this could be the next step she was looking for. Bowers offered her the job, and in 2011, Ray-Statz officially became a college coach. The first time she competed on vault as a Wolverine her freshman year in 2001, Elise Ray did a Yurchenko layout. Here was the captain of the U.S. Olympic team, already a national champion, doing a vault with oneand-a-half fewer twists than the

one she’d done in Sydney just months earlier. People expected her to come flying out of the gate, so it was shocking when she kept it simple. But that was part of Michigan’s plan. Ray had been injured, and she was still hurting from her Olympic experience. Plocki wanted to afford her the space to heal, physically and mentally. “She’s been through a ton and we’re trying to give her some space and a little bit of down time and healing for this,” Plocki said. “There’s no need for us to go a thousand miles an hour out of the gate and I just kept telling her, trying to reassure her and people who would ask me, don’t you worry about that. When she needs to be ready at the end of the season, she will be ready.” Sure enough, that very season, Ray won an NCAA title in the all-around. And the team environment provided Ray with the tools she needed to truly heal. In college gymnastics, rosters are bigger, so gymnasts only have to compete on their strong events. The lowest score on every event is dropped. And the best teams require high-level contributions from everyone. Ray struggled to open up to her coaches and teammates about her experience in Sydney, but people could sense that something wasn’t right. So they helped convince her that this experience would be different. With Michigan, Ray wasn’t expected to be perfect. She wasn’t Elise Ray, Olympic Gymnast. She was just one of the Wolverines. “You are competing for your teammates, you’re competing for your university, and that’s a very different feeling than I ever had competing in gymnastics,” Ray-Statz said. “And it was incredible because you’re doing something beyond yourself, which is always more motivating.” Ray quickly gained respect among her teammates. She cheered on their successes as much as her own. If she believed Michigan could do something, everyone did. Plocki likened Ray’s college journey to the stock market. There were always ups and downs. It wasn’t a straight upward trajectory; things like this never are. But everyone noticed that the Ray who joined the Wolverines wasn’t the Ray who left them. When she competed, Ray’s eyes began to sparkle and her face began to glow again. Little by little, Plocki watched as Ray regained her love for gymnastics and grew into the best gymnast the program had ever had. Ray set numerous Michigan records, winning 14 All-American honors and three individual national championships while leading the Wolverines to the Super Six finals three times. But the part that will always stick with her is the transformative environment her coaches created. Plocki and Sherman, too, say their greatest accomplishment with her wasn’t the titles she won, but the spark she found. Though she never questioned her decision to come to Michigan, Ray was ready to be done with the sport after the Olympics. At the conclusion of her Wolverines career, she wanted a way to stay involved. Michigan had given Ray a place where she could fail. A place where she could heal. A place that planted the seeds for

the next stages of her life. In 2016, Bowers stepped down to be closer to family. Ray was offered the job. So she turned to Plocki, the woman who had helped her find love in gymnastics again, looking for guidance. That was the third phone call. “What do you think?” Ray asked. “What do you mean, what do I think?” Plocki responded. “There are so many people around the country that have put in years and years and years as assistant coaches that would die, a Division I, Pac-12 head coaching position is gonna fall into your lap and you’re calling me asking me, ‘What should I do?’ ” Ray had always been a homebody. She wanted a family and children, and she wasn’t sure how a head-coaching career would fit into that. But if there was anyone who knew how to juggle those considerations, it was Plocki, who’d successfully balanced coaching and family life for years. “The beauty of being a head coach, Elise, is that you have the ability to create, to build your staff in a way that works for you,” Plocki told her during the conversation. Plocki assured Ray that she could juggle family life with gymnastics. All she needed was to be upfront about her desire and hire assistants who could take some of the stress off, particularly in recruiting. So Ray took the job. Washington isn’t the easiest place to win in gymnastics. Ray-Statz’s Huskies have to compete with Pac-12 powers like UCLA, Stanford and Utah. But in her first season at the helm in 2017, Ray was named the Pac-12 Coach of the Year after leading Washington to nationals for the first time in 19 years, where it finished eighth — the second-best placing in program history. The next year, the Huskies followed that up with another record-breaking eighth-place finish, this time in the regular season, and won the floor championship at NCAA Regionals. Last year, Michigan’s coaches found out that an opponent they’d scheduled had pulled out of a meet. So they sent out an email to the coaching body, asking if anyone was interested in filling the empty date. Texas Woman’s was the first to respond. But when Ray-Statz and her staff got the email, they couldn’t let the opportunity pass. So the dual meet became a tri-meet, with the Huskies added in. No one knew when the meet was scheduled that Ray-Statz would be eight months pregnant and she wouldn’t be cleared to travel with the team. But maybe that’s a testament to everything Ray-Statz took from her former coach. Plocki showed Ray-Statz how to find a passion for gymnastics again. She served as a model for how to lead a program and how to foster gymnasts’ growth. And she told RayStatz that coaching was something she was meant to do — and something she could make work. There’s something Ray-Statz likes to call “the Washington bubble.” When it’s time for a meet, the Huskies focus only on themselves. The other team doesn’t play into the equation. But Ray-Statz knows that during the meet on Saturday, she’ll be glued to social media. And for that day, she’ll closely follow not just her own team, but Michigan, the place where all this started.