Issuu

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Ann Arbor, Michigan

michigandaily.com

MI officials look ahead to primary election day Following mishaps with Iowa caucus, gov’t employees speak on preparations JULIA FORREST Daily Staff Reporter

CS instructional aides struggle to find adequate space for office hours DESIGN BY TAYLOR SCHOTT

Unlike professors or graduate students, IAs are undergraduates who do not have a designated place to teach students, leading to overcrowding in libraries FRANCESCA DUONG Daily Staff Reporter

LSA junior Stephen Dinka arrived at the Shapiro Undergraduate Library basement hoping to receive help with his Foundations of Computer Science course, EECS 376, homework at office hours. However, even though he arrived early, Dinka saw a massive crowd of students waiting for the instructional aide. “That one particular day was ridiculous,” Dinka said. “There were people standing around, right at the front door wondering, ‘Where’s the IA?’ When the IA finally showed

up, you have all these people just standing, and there’s no room. They literally go across the entire basement and take all these chairs just to sit around this one guy with a tiny whiteboard.” Students told The Daily overcrowding in the UGLi is a familiar issue for many students of theory-based computer science classes. IAs interviewed by The Daily said they do not want to be a nuisance in public spaces, but they need to use them because they do not have an official area to host office hours. Unlike professors, they do not have offices or designated spaces to

meet. Engineering sophomore Ryan Baker said he tends to arrive early to office hours, which IAs hold in the UGLi, but has also been in positions where he wasn’t early enough and there was not enough room in the UGLi to accommodate all the students who need help. “I’ve been in positions where there are so many people in that small space that the IA is trying to utilize that you can’t see what he’s writing or you can’t hear him at all,” Baker said. “It’s just kind of pointless going to office hours at that point because you can’t get the help you

need.” According to Engineering junior Ian Robinson, an EECS 376 IA, the overcrowding issue became exacerbated once the class was informally kicked out of the UGLi basement. For his specific office hours, Robinson moved to the Design Lab of the UGLi. Even after moving, he was still unable to fit all the students who needed help but had no other options as he does not have an office on campus. See OFFICE HOURS, Page 2

The Iowa caucuses have kicked off every presidential primary election race since 1972 and serve to narrow down the field of candidates in each political party. However, what ensued during this year’s Iowa caucus left both the importance and credibility of the historic event in question ahead of the remaining caucuses and primaries. It ultimately took party officials 15 days to get 100 percent of the votes in, with candidates Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie, D-Vt., Sanders determined as the winners. There were issues downloading a new app the Iowa Democratic Party rolled out, with only 439 people ultimately submitting their votes through the app out of 1,765 precincts. The mishaps of the Iowa caucus left many voters discouraged. LSA senior Jessica Kosticak, co-president for Students for Pete, was in Iowa as the caucus results unfolded. “It was an interesting sight to behold. It was just wild,” Kosticak said. “As I was

Panelists ‘U’ International Institute hosted examine conference, dialogue on migration injustice, The lectures focused on the socio-political implications of human movement violence CAMPUS LIFE

SUNSKRITI PARANJAPE

Experts talk impact of colonial-era discourse on immigrants of color, modern-day rhetoric SARAH ZHAO For The Daily

Approximately 50 students, faculty and community members gathered in the Rackham Assembly Hall on Monday evening to attend “Gender Violence, Immigrant Vulnerability and the State: A Symposium.” The event was designed to educate students and the community about how increased globalization and migration is affecting how society views immigrants in the postcolonial world. Debotri Dhar, women’s studies professor at the University of Michigan, organized the event along with other speakers. According to Dhar, residual ideals from the colonial era have resulted in immigrants of color being framed as burdens on the state in order to maintain hierarchies of race, social class and nation present in the colonial era. She said this also contributes to the relationship between immigrant vulnerability and gender violence in today’s postcolonial era. “This current moment in history is very politically divisive, not just for the nation but globally,” Dhar said.

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

Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan International Institute presented the Conference on Migration, attended by about 50 members of the University community, on Monday at Weiser Hall. The conference consisted of interdisciplinary dialogue driven by presentations from local and international

scholars. Topics covered include the migration of ideas and languages, causes and effects of migration, the socio-political implications of human movement, culture production and transferral and countering common narratives about migration. Alyssa Park, professor of modern Korean history at the University of Iowa, gave a talk explaining the history of

Korean and Chinese migration near the Russian border and how the rules and norms of migration changed over time. Due to a lack of land and natural disasters such as flooding in Korea in the 19th century, Park said Korean migrants moved in waves to Russia, particularly to Vladivostok province. “The region (of Vladivostok was) newly acquired by Russia, not many Russians there,” Park

said. “So they make do with the people who are closest and these would be Chinese and Koreans … and Vladivostok becomes a hub for these people.” Park also talked about Russia then claiming that the Korean immigrants were Russian “subjects,” the equivalent of modern-day citizens.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

traveling back to Michigan the day after (the Iowa caucus), my road trip partner was reading me poll results and as some of the precinct results started coming in, I was like, ‘Okay, but is it real?’ There was a lot of skepticism in person and online. There still continues to be, I think rightfully so.” The Michigan primary on March 10 is a key moment, since the state is considered a battleground state in the 2020 election. Donald Trump won in Michigan by over 10,000 votes in 2016 where, in previous elections, the state had voted Democratic, and since has voted in a Democratic governor. While acknowledging the mishaps of the Iowa caucus, Jake Rollow, director of communications at the Michigan Department of State, highlighted the differences between the way each state runs their primary elections. “I always use the apples to oranges comparison. Iowa’s run by caucuses, ours aren’t caucuses, they’re primaries,” Rollow said. See PRIMARY, Page 3

GOVERNMENT

Speaker discusses reform of patents Ford School presents conversation on drug pricing solutions, case study in global economy LILY GOODING

Daily Staff Reporter

The Ford School of Public Policy hosted a discussion with Priti Krishtel, the co-founder and co-executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge. The event titled, “To Solve Drug Pricing We Must Solve the Drug Patent Problem,” was a part of the Science, Technology and Public Policy speaker series at the Public Policy School. There were about 30 people in attendance Monday evening. Krishtel began to discuss her work as an advocate for drug patent reform. Throughout her career, Krishtel has worked with many global organizations and agencies such as the Indian NGO Lawyers Collective. She gave a brief history of India’s patent system and spoke about how high prescription drug prices impacted the community. “The common service we had to provide for clients was to draw up adoption and documentation papers. This was because parents knew that they were going to pass away and they needed to make sure their children were cared for,” Krishtel said.

RYAN LITTLE/Daily Roman Witt artist in residence Courtney McClellan explores how performance afffects a courtroom at the UMMA Monay evening.

Follow The Daily on Instagram, @michigandaily

For more stories and coverage, visit

michigandaily.com

INDEX

NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 CLASSIFIEDS................6

Read more at MichiganDaily.com SUDOKU.....................6 SPORTS...................7 ARTS...............5

News

2 — Tuesday, February 25, 2020

MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

TUESDAY: By Design

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

WEDNESDAY: This Week in History

THURSDAY: Twitter Talk

FRIDAY: Behind the Story

DESIGN BY NOAH FINER

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

ELIZABETH LAWRENCE

ANITA MICHAUD

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

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

NEWS TIPS

news@michigandaily.com

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR tothedaily@michigandaily.com

EDITORIAL PAGE

opinion@michigandaily.com

ARTS SECTION

PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION

arts@michigandaily.com

photo@michigandaily.com

SPORTS SECTION

NEWSROOM

sports@michigandaily.com

734-418-4115 opt. 3

ADVERTISING

CORRECTIONS

dailydisplay@gmail.com

corrections@michigandaily.com

Editorial Staff ERIN WHITE Managing Editor

ekwhite@michigandaily.com

SAYALI AMIN and LEAH GRAHAM Priti Kristel, co-founder of Initiatives for Medicine, discusses failure in the drug patent system during a lecture in Weill Hall Monday afternoon.

ALEC COHEN/Daily

#UMSuffrage2020 holds panel on 100th anniversary of 19th amendment

Researchers present their findings on spousal influence on voting behavior, political activities KARA WARNKE For The Daily

More than 40 University of Michigan students, faculty and residents of Ann Arbor gathered in the Eldersveld Room of Haven Hall on Monday afternoon to listen to a panel on the 19th Amendment’s legacy and its current implications. The panel was a part of the #UMSuffrage2020

speaker series in honor of the amendment’s 100th anniversary. Christina Wolbrecht, a professor of political science at Notre Dame University and director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, spoke about common views among female voters over the past century. Wolbrecht especially focused on the connection between the

FRED C.ADAMS

Ta-You Wu Collegiate Professor of Physics and Professor of Astronomy

THE DEGREE OF

FINETUNING IN OUR UNIVERSE

FEBRUARY 25, 2020 4:00PM PALMER COMMONS FORUM HALL

A public lecture and reception. For information please call (734) 615-6667.

voting choices of husbands and their wives since the time of the amendment. According to Wolbrecht, while the voting patterns of husbands and wives often imitate each other, the voting actions of the husband may not directly impact the political opinions of his wife. Her research has found it is likely a woman’s tendency to speak about politics frequently within her family and community causes her opinions to be shaped by others, but it is not necessarily an intentional action on behalf of her husband or her community. “Is it possible that men were telling their wives how to vote, and some of them were voting on that basis?” Wolbrecht said. “Absolutely. It’s probably even likely. We just don’t have a very good sense within this data about how likely that was.” Corrine McConnaughy, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, continued with her research on the number of women’s groups who were politically active before the 19th Amendment. She drew examples from history, such as a church sewing group becoming politically active by working towards goals such as purchasing and building a city graveyard. According to McConnaughy, the question of why political organizations would want to have women working for them was answered by two words: labor and money. She said women were extremely interested in advancing their communities and were willing to work hard for it. Additionally, McConnaughy said women often helped fundraise through

organizing. “Women doing politics might look different than men doing politics but that doesn’t need to translate into women doing women’s politics.” McConnaughy said. Before the meeting closed, Mara Cecilia Ostfeld, an assistant professor of political science at the University, presented the findings of her project in progress focusing on the effect of family socialization on voting habits and opinions. Her research is currently focused on why many women vote against policies that benefit women as a whole. Ostfeld said her research shows that regardless of whether one believes in an issue, people still tend to bend to what they anticipate would evoke the best response from their family members. “Perceiving your family would stigmatize you for supporting these issues is a really strong predictor of your own likelihood of supporting these issues,” Ostfeld said. Rackham student Zoe Walker said she was especially interested in hearing from the researchers and the extent to which topics regarding women in politics are studied. “There’s a lot of diversity in the study of women and politics,” Walker said. “There are historical perspectives, New Age perspectives, and they’re shaping the ways women organize and the way in which women think and behave politically. I think it’s really important to think about how complicated and interesting the study of women is.” Contributor Kara Warnke can be reached at kjvarnk@umich. edu

Managing News Editors news@michigandaily.com Senior News Editors: Barbara Collins, Claire Hao, Alex Harring, Ben Rosenfeld, Emma Stein, Liat Weinstein Assistant News Editors: Francesca Duong, Julia Forrest, Brayden Hirsh, Jasmin Lee, Hannah Mackay, Parnia Mazhar, Alyssa McMurtry, Emma Ruberg, Julia Rubin, Michal Ruprecht, Arjun Thakkar

EMILY CONSIDINE and MILES STEPHENSON

Editorial Page Editors tothedaily@michigandaily.com Senior Opinion Editors: Alanna Berger, Brittany Bowman, Zack Blumberg, Timothy Spurlin, Joel Weiner

THEO MACKIE and ETHAN SEARS

Managing Sports Editors sportseditors@michigandaily.com Senior Sports Editors: Aria Gerson, Bailey Johnson, Ben Katz, Jacob Kopnick, Anna Marcus, Rian Ratnavale Assistant Sports Editors: Connor Brennan, Lily Friedman, Lane Kizziah, Brendan Roose, Kent Schwartz, Molly Shea

JOHN DECKER and JULIANNA MORANO

Managing Arts Editors arts@michigandaily.com Senior Arts Editors: Jo Chang, Elise Godfryd, Zoe Phillips, Jonah Mendelson, Ally Owens Arts Beat Editors: Samantha Cantie, Dana Pierangeli, Andrew Pluta, Cassandra Mansuetti, Anish Tamhaney, Sophia Yoon

SHERRY CHEN and CHRISTINE JEGARL

Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com Senior Design Editor: Lizzy Rueppel

ALLISON ENGKVIST and ANNIE KLUSENDORF Managing Photo Editors

photo@michigandaily.com

Senior Photo Editors: Keemya Esmael, Asha Lewis, Miles Macklin Assistant Photo Editors: Olivia Cell, Ryan Little, Emma Mati, Alexandria Pompei, Alexis Rankin

MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA

Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com Deputy Editors: Emily Stillman, Marisa Wright

MADISON GAGNE and SADIA JIBAN Managing Copy Editors

copydesk@michigandaily.com

Senior Copy Editors: Olivia Bradish, Sophie Kephart, Silas Lee, Olivia Sedlacek, Ellie Scott

TIM CHO and SIMRAN PUJJI

Managing Online Editors webteam@michigandaily.com Senior Web Developers: Parth Dhyani, Abha Panda, Rohan Prashant, Jonathan Liu

ALEC COHEN and ELI SIDER

Managing Video Editors video@michigandaily.com Senior Video Editors: Ryan O’Connor, Joseph Sim

MAYA MOKH and ANA MARIA SANCHEZ CASTILLO

Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Zoha Bharwani, Lora Faraj, Ayomide Okunade, Gabrijela Skoko Assistant Michigan in Color Editors: Cheryn Hong, Anamkia Kannan, Vaishali Nambiar, Sean Tran, Angela Zhang

SAMANTHA SMALL and SONYA VOGEL Managing Podcast Editors

JACK GRIEVE and BEN KORN

Managing Social Media Editors Senior Social Media Editors: Jessie Norris, Mya Steir, Kristina Zheng

Business Staff MOLLY WU

Creative Director

RYAN KELLY Sales Manager

LILLY HANSON

ANALISE DOORHY

TARA MOORE

Senior Account Executive

Senior Account Exeucutive

The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University OF Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. Subscriptions for September-April are $250 and year long subscriptions are $275. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

OFFICE HOURS From Page 1 “While we weren’t kicked out, we did sort of have this overcrowding issue because my office hours were coincidentally at the same time as another EECS 203 IA’s (office hours),” Robinson said. “We were sharing this really small space that was barely enough for a single office hour, and there were so many students there that we were told we posed a fire hazard.” On Feb. 5, a week after they had made the change from the basement to the Design Lab, Robinson was pulled aside by UGLi staff during his office hours. “When I was giving office hours, UGLi staff took me away and told me that basically I was getting kicked out of the UGLi,” Robinson said. “They showed me the printed copy of the email that had supposedly been sent out to the EECS department.” A copy of the email was provided to The Daily by Stephen Griffes, senior manager in library operations. Griffes sent the email to Brian Noble, chair of Computer Science and Engineering; Seth Pettie, associate chair and professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Mingyan Liu, Peter and Evelyn Fuss chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Dennis Sylvester, associate chair and professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science on Jan. 31. The email requested that for any courses planned for the future, the library should not be listed as a location and current office hours or related sessions must be relocated. The email noted the main reason office hours cannot be held in the library is because the library is not certified for classroom use. “The Library has not approved the use of library space for any scheduled office hours to take place, and the Library is not Bureau of Fire Services (BFS) certified to

PRIMARY From Page 1 “They are run by the party, ours are not, ours are run by experienced election officials to carry out elections, typically every year if not every two years. And we’re not using untested technology. We’re not expecting a similar scenario to what occurred in Iowa.” The Michigan primary differs greatly from the Iowa caucuses. Instead of going to a corner of the room to vote for your candidate, voters go to their local precinct and cast a ballot for whichever candidate they support. Voters in the Michigan primary are also able to vote with absentee ballots, allowing for more voters to take part in the election. In 2018, a law passed in the Michigan state legislature granting the right for any eligible voter to vote by absentee ballot regardless of reasoning. As of Feb. 18, over 666,000 absentee ballots had been distributed,

News

Tuesday, February 25, 2020 — 3

After leaving the UGLi, Robinson said IAs had to look for alternative locations to hold their office hours on Central Campus. He said that some were holding office hours in the Math Atrium and Fishbowl, however, not all transitions were that easy. Robinson noted that another IA he knew had a difficult time finding an office hour location. “Another location we tried was the IdeaHub in the (Michigan) Union,” Robinson said. “We were kicked out of the IdeaHub. They moved to the connector between Union

and West Quad.” Baker said he experienced this uncertainty in locations as his class was constantly being asked to move. “They’re being forced to move around to different places, which shortens their office hours, and they’re able to help fewer kids than they would be if the CS department had a little foresight and booked a room somewhere,” Baker said. Without a set room location, Baker said he sees this issue happening again in the future. Baker said if they don’t have access to announcements through Piazza, an online chatroom for many EECS classes, then people wouldn’t know where to go. “A lot of the time, it’s hard to communicate that to everyone, in real-time, because they don’t have a plan, they just move from place to place,” Baker said. Fu said there’s a delineation between the abilities of a student organization and an IA. Student organizations are eligible to book rooms on Central Campus, while IAs have the same booking rights as a normal student. However, the study rooms he is able to book as a student, he said, are not large enough to fit the number of students who attend his office hours. “As IAs, we don’t have the same power as a student organization, so we don’t have the right to reserve study rooms,” Fu said. “The study rooms that typical students can reserve are not big enough to sustain the 60 people that come to my office hours.” Bauer clarified that office hours can still be held at the Duderstadt basement and that the basement is separated from University Libraries. “We’ve talked it over — we have spaces where it’s appropriate to hold office hours, and we’re more than willing to let folks do that,” Bauer said. “The one email message that went out was from librarians and they have a part of the Duderstadt Center, but they are not the entire Duderstadt Center, so

they can’t represent the entire building. We certainly don’t have any problems with them being held as long as they are not mandatory. Mandatory office hours are more like a class, and our building is not certified for classes through the state.” Even though North Campus is open for office hours, Fu said many students prefer Central Campus office hours. Fu said he tries to keep his office hours on Central Campus to make them more accessible to students who need help. “It’s a lot more convenient for (students) to go to Central (Campus) office hours, and the class is already hard enough as it is, and I want to make sure that the students know that we’re there for them and we’re there to work through the class together,” Fu said. Dinka said he hopes these newfound solutions on Central Campus are long-lasting and office hours do not move to North Campus. “It’s ridiculous that EECS wouldn’t have office hours on Central Campus considering that’s where most people live,” Dinka said. “It’s a huge inconvenience taking time out of your day going all the way up to North Campus, and of course, North Campus will be just a bit more crowded at certain points of the day, too, because of it.” Some students The Daily spoke to attributed the inability to find spaces to house office hours to the growth in the number of students majoring in computer science. With more students in the course, there will be more students attending office hours, which requires a large space to accommodate all the students With the spike in EECS enrollment, students are beginning to become frustrated with more issues than spaces. In a different project-focused course, Baker said he sat in office hours for a total of five hours and was helped twice. He also said he was disappointed in the inability to register for classes he wants to take, and instead has to register for the classes left over.

“If they can’t properly make arrangements for the number of students they have in the CS program, then they need to find new ways to cap it,” Baker said. “They can’t keep taking our $60,000 and not be able to provide us with the resources that they say they are going to provide us with.” However, Fu doesn’t believe the situation should be solely attributed to over-enrollment. “In a way, you can attribute it to that, but I think it’s really hard to address a problem of over-enrollment because I feel like the alternative is denying people that want to pursue a career that they love the chance to do it,” Fu said. According to the CSE department, the number of students that enrolled in a CS-Engineering degree in Fall 2010 was 317. In Fall 2018, the enrollment was 1219. Joanna Millunchick, associate dean for undergraduate education for the College of Engineering, said they are trying to find solutions to the space issue, but they do not want to cap the program at a certain number of students because it leaves interested students out. “We can’t limit the number of students that want to do this, because then where are they going to go?” Millunchick said. “We’re also trying to create other avenues and awareness about other avenues. … We’re looking closely at other ways for students to be able to get degrees that are still meaningful to them.” To help alleviate the office hours problem, Millunchink said that she would be open to having the department rent spaces for office hours, and noted that the new Ford Robotics Building being built on North Campus will provide more classroom spaces for students. “We’ve got to get these students places where they can study and hold office hours,” Millunchink said. “I’m willing to do that.” Reporter Francesca Duong can be reached at fduong@ umich.edu.

implementing a campaign strategy in Michigan, focusing on reaching out to voters with their absentee ballots currently,” Shaeffler said. “Making these initial connections has been integral. Our club, in conjunction with Biden volunteers, have made thousands of calls to Michiganders and folks in other states, making direct voter contact.” Other political student groups like Students for Warren, College Republicans and Students for Bernie did not reply to requests for comment. While an increased number of voters for the primary isn’t expected, the rise in absentee ballots is projected to put more of a burden on clerks across the state. Since clerks aren’t allowed to start collecting results until 7 a.m. on the day of the primary, many clerks said they are worried about not getting the results in quickly enough. Jacqueline Beaudry, a city clerk in Ann Arbor, spoke to The Daily about how the city

is dealing with the influx of absentee ballots. “We have actually doubled the number of counting boards for this election compared to the March 2016 (election),” Beaudry said. “So we are obviously in support, moving into November, of any reforms that would allow us to start processing earlier or to extend the time to process ballots. But, in terms of March, we’ve doubled our workforce and our number of tabulators to count the ballots.” Though Ann Arbor is just one city that has hired more workers to deal with the influx of absentee ballots this year, the state is working to make sure all precincts can efficiently count the ballots in a timely manner, Rollow said. “Our goal is to count all ballots accurately and to provide results,” Rollow said. “We’re working with clerks across the state to help them have the resources they need to do their job. We’ve also called on the legislature to request they

be allowed to at least start processing absentee ballots prior to the Election Day.” LSA junior Carolyn Chen, field organizer for the University of Michigan’s chapter of College Democrats, is responsible for getting people registered to vote. Chen said waiting for results is acceptable if it means greater accuracy in the vote calculations. “I don’t think it was a huge deal that people had to wait for the results. If that’s gonna get you an accurate answer, then just wait it out,” Chen said. “I feel like I don’t go into elections expecting everything to go perfectly anyway.” Logan Woods, Rackham student and secretary for Turnup Turnout, an organization dedicated to getting students registered to vote, spoke about the importance of making sure all elections are secure, no matter if it’s a primary or a caucus. “The benefit of (having primaries and caucuses) within states is that states, counties or towns and cities, can tailor their

elections to what works best for their community,” Woods said. “The election system’s commissioner is bipartisan. I know that within states, all of the local election officials that I’ve spoken with, regardless of their party, have been professional and helpful, and they want elections to run smoothly. They want votes and voting machines to be secure and to work properly.” With the primary coming up in 16 days, voters and election officials alike are continuing to prepare to make the primary day run smoothly and efficiently. “We’ve done numerous things to ensure that our elections are safe,” Rollow said. “And we do that because of the importance of elections and also because we want voters to feel what they should feel, which is absolute confidence that their voice matters and their vote will be counted.” Daily Reporter Julia Forrest can be reached at juforres@ umich.edu.

hold class sessions in our buildings, such as the ones taking place in the Shapiro basement study space,” Griffes wrote in the email. “Since we do not have BFS certification, we are in violation of safety and fire codes every time your classes advertise their hours. On Monday night, there was a large class of 30 students in this space.” The email specifically mentioned that EECS office hours violated the fire code, and IAs were never given permission to hold office hours in the UGLi. “When library staff informed the GSI that we do not permit classes in our open study spaces, the GSI, who indicated they were from the EECS department, said that they had permission from professors Volkovich and Kamil to use the Library to host this class,” the email continued. “No such permission has been granted. Even when it is a smaller group of students receiving office hours tutoring and instruction, the cumulative effect violates the fire code.” In an email to The Daily, Liu confirmed Noble sent an email to all Computer Science Engineering faculty on Feb. 3 after receiving the initial complaint. Noble wrote to The Daily that the issue was resolved because he spoke to Kati Bauer, interim chief operating officer of the Duderstadt Center, who confirmed that office hours could be held at the Duderstadt. However, Bauer responded saying she only spoke for the Duderstadt, not the UGLi. Before the incident at the UGLi, Robinson had never seen the email, even though it was about his office hours. “This has already been out for nearly a week,” Robinson said. “I was unaware of this, this was not sent to the actual IAs ... the first time that I had heard this was when UGLi staff came over to me.” Rebecca Dunkle, associate librarian for Library Operations, said the purpose of the library is not for office hours. “The library is open to

everybody, but we get a lot of requests from different departments from faculty to GSIs, to see if they have office space for them to see if they can have conversations with their students, and we don’t have enough space for them,” Dunkle said. “We understand they need space, but the library can’t provide that kind of space for the departments.” LSA sophomore Harry Fu is an EECS 203: Discrete Mathematics IA and had coinciding office hours with Robinson. He also expressed frustration with the limits on capacity. “For my office hours, I get anywhere between 40 and 60 people,” Fu said. “I think the Design Lab and the library is supposed to be a tiny, quiet space — that really causes an issue with the people that are trying to make sure the library stays what a library should be.” Though Fu is sad about the loss of office hours at the UGLi, he said he understands why they were kicked out. “It’s inconvenient for me, but I can’t really blame them for kicking me out,” Fu said. “It is loud, and it is somewhat disruptive, and it’s just a function of so many people.” Baker echoed this sentiment. “I, 100 percent, agree with them and their safety concerns and us taking up a ridiculous amount of space,” Baker said. “I think that given the resources they’re provided with, the IAs are doing their best to combat that.”

with a projected number of over 850,000 to be distributed by the primary date. LSA freshman Andrew Schaeffler, co-founder of the University’s chapter of Students for Biden, expressed his concerns about absentee ballots. “I think that the absentee ballots are definitely going to be the thing in the Michigan primary,” Schaeffler said. “That if we were to have any problem that’s even similar to Iowa but in the same context of that.” The uptick in absentee ballots has also caused a shift in how presidential candidates have campaigned in Michigan. Trump and many Democratic frontrunners have focused on trying to rally early votes by setting up campaign offices, phone banking, door-knocking and other tactics. Schaeffler said former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic front-runner in the 2020 election, is trying to rally the early absentee ballot voters. “I think the Biden campaign is effectively beginning and

Opinion

4 — Tuesday, February 25, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

NOAH ENTE | 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 Editor in Chief

ERIN WHITE

EMILY CONSIDINE AND MILES STEPHENSON

Managing Editor

Editorial Page Editors

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Alanna Berger Zack Blumberg Brittany Bowman Emily Considine Jenny Gurung

Cheryn Hong Krystal Hur Ethan Kessler Zoe Phillips Mary Rolfes

Michael Russo Timothy Spurlin Miles Stephenson Joel Weiner Erin White

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.

JENNY GURUNG | COLUMN

Healthy equality is not equity

ccording to Healthline, 27.5 million people did not have health insurance in 2019, and about half of uninsured adults cited high cost of coverage as the reason for remaining uninsured. One of the main barriers to health care is the expense of the programs. High premiums, deductibles, copays and coinsurance of insurance plans are a major issue, especially given that most individuals in the U.S. have private insurance. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most uninsured adults came from low-income backgrounds. Among adults, 27.4 percent of those who were poor, 25.1 percent of those who were near-poor and 8.3 percent of those who were not poor lacked health insurance coverage in 2018. (“Persons categorized as ‘poor’ have a ratio less than 1.0 (i.e., their family income is below the poverty threshold); ‘near poor’ persons have incomes of 100% to less than 200% of the poverty threshold; and ‘not poor’ persons have incomes that are 200% of the poverty threshold or greater.”) The result of this: Americans with higher income have better health outcomes than those with low income because they are almost always guaranteed health care coverage. This “disproportionate risk of being uninsured, lacking access to care, and experiencing worse health outcomes” is called a health inequality, also known as a health disparity, which refers to a difference in the presence of disease, health outcomes and health care access between different populations. A health inequality can be an inevitable health difference based on age or, more notably, a higher likelihood of low-income individuals to suffer from chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes which have an adverse effect on quality of life. These health inequalities are closely tied to income inequality which is exceptional in the U.S. It has become increasingly important for federal and local governments to prioritize initiatives aimed at reducing income-based health disparities, especially as income inequality has persisted and health care costs have increased. In the past year, health care has been a defining issue many Democratic candidates have campaigned on. In 2019, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced the bill S.1129-Medicare for All, which would automatically enroll all U.S. residents for health insurance and cover essential medical services. Medicare for All is a single-payer health care proposal that would

streamline the current multi-payer health care system and eliminate the private sector’s role in providing and paying for health care. Currently, Medicare is a government-provided health insurance program only available to people aged 65 or older (and some younger people with disabilities). Medicare covers about half of all health care expenses and people often have to pay out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses or join another health insurance to cover the uninsured services. These OOP expenses include copays, premiums and deductibles, which go back to financing the insurance.

These health inequalities are closely tied with income inequality.

The new Medicare for All bill based on Sanders’s proposal is an expanded version of the current program all U.S. residents would be eligible for. It would essentially eliminate all private insurance, including employerbased coverage. The bill states that private insurance can only be “supplemental” to the program to offer coverage for services not covered under it. This would be a huge change to the current health care system, where over 68.9 percent of adults have private insurance. Furthermore, this current system costs significantly more than public health insurance. There are a number of defining health insurance proposals made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a cosponsor of Sanders’s bill, former Vice President Joe Biden and other candidates. Biden has proposed the Biden Plan, which is a public insurance program that would reshape rather than eliminate private insurance while increasing the scope of Obamacare (Affordable Care Act). Regardless of the type of policy, providing health care to all individuals is the first step toward eliminating health disparities in the U.S. The rhetoric, though, shouldn’t be about “insuring more than an estimated 97 percent of Americans” as Biden says. Everyone should already have access to health care, not just 97 percent of us. Health is a fundamental human right and

these policies only resolve the first problem, lack of access to health care. The availability of health care to everyone should be a given. These policies only make it so that everyone has access to the same level of health care, but does not address the systemic health inequities that have become deeply rooted in our health care system. Health inequities are specific types of disparities that are avoidable, unjust and the result of continued and persistent health differences. When health differences are “preventable and unnecessary, allowing them to persist is unjust,” writes Mariana Arcaya, Alyssa Arcaya and S.V. Subramanian from Global Health Action. The underlying difference between inequality and inequity is that the latter suggests injustices against a vulnerable population group based on race or ethnicity. Unlike age-related health differences, health inequities are clearly demonstrated in things such as higher rates of infant mortality among Black children than white children. This difference in mortality rate is seen among Black and white children in the same income group as well which suggests the underlying cause of this inequity is “rooted in social injustice.” A powerful visual for health equity is three people standing behind a fence, each a bit shorter than the person before him. If you give them all an equally sized stand, only the tallest one will be able to see beyond the fence. The two others still won’t be able to see beyond the fence. Health equity is the idea that you give each of them the correctly sized stand that lets them all see beyond the fence. Healthy equality is not equity. The current policy proposals presented only touch upon the underlying causes of health disparities and inequities in our health care system. Equitable health care access involves more than equal access to health care. It requires the equitable distribution of resources, finances and benefits to those who need it. Our current multi-payer system is neither equitable nor equal. We, as college students and voters, need to call upon our representatives to reassess the distribution of both resources and funding to fully understand how we can redesign and shape our current health care system to reduce persisting health disparities and inequities. Allison Pujol can be reached at ampmich@umich.edu

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL & WATER STUDIES SUMMER PROGRAM June 22 - August 15, 2020 STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA

Trouble for U.S. in Southeast Asia

ince before the formation of the post-World War II order, the United States has made notable efforts to create a network of allies and support throughout Asia. One of the earliest American partners was the Philippines, and the relationship between the two countries spans back to 1898. In the aftermath of the SpanishAmerican War, Spain ceded the rights to its former colonies — which included the Philippines — to the U.S. While the land remained an American territory and protectorate for nearly 50 years, formal diplomatic ties between the newly-independent Philippines and the U.S. began in 1946. Since then, the two nations have become frequent collaborators in defense, trade and other realms. The U.S. has also incurred heavy human costs in its commitment to the island nation, as the capital city of Manila houses the largest U.S. military cemetery of any other country. The histories of these countries are strongly intertwined, and their alliance has been mutually beneficial. These days, the status quo of U.S.-Philippines relations appears to be in danger. Last week, Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte announced his decision to annul the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement. This deal laid out the terms of U.S.-Filipino armed forces cooperation and the stationing of American troops in the Philippines, a fundamental aspect of the partnership. Duterte spoke of his belief that his country “cannot forever rely on other countries for the defense of the state.” The Filipino leader appears firm in his conviction and has given no indication of being open to negotiations. This tension has been building over the past few years. The Duterte administration has frequently clashed with U.S. leadership since his election four

years ago. Among the strongest sticking points between the two countries has been Duterte’s policy toward drug crime in his country. He infamously compared himself to Adolf Hitler and implied he would perpetrate genocide against drug users and dealers. Such disturbing language and resulting policies have resulted in Duterte’s alienation of the U.S., and the American response has been strong. This latest point of conflict came about after U.S. officials cancelled the visa of Philippine Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, who helped engineer Duterte’s violent policies against drug offenders. In response, Duterte threatened, then completed his country’s exit from the agreement, much to the chagrin of high-ranking Filipino foreign policy officials. The U.S. acted justly when it chose to set an example that figures like Dela Rosa will not be given special consideration and rights to visit the country. Duterte’s demagogic rule in Manila has set a negative tone in relations with the U.S and produced horrifying policies. Yet this case of erosion of the American-Filipino relationship also serves as a warning for those concerned about American interests in Southeast Asia. Throughout his time in office, Duterte’s Philippines has shown a pivot toward embracing China and moving away from American influence. One example of such behavior is the Filipino president’s willingness to collaborate with Chinese President Xi Jinping on an oil and gas project in the South China Sea, even with the key term of the agreement being that the Philippines would no longer pursue its claims against China for its activities in the area that undermine Philippine sovereignty. Such a development should be quite frightening to those who value a vibrant network of American international relations.

Though Duterte’s foreign policy is mainly a break from that of his predecessors, it is concerning that one of America’s longesttenured allies in Asia is quickly gravitating toward China’s sphere of influence at the expense of the U.S. If the Philippines can fall into President Xi’s hands, what is to stop other Southeast Asian countries from being lost as well? China’s meteoric rise to the upper echelon of the world’s economies has paid off in attracting new partners around the world. If it can successfully present itself to states in the region as an alternative to American partnership, the U.S. will be worse off in the future. Though the current state of affairs might represent a problematic emerging pattern, it is important to remember that Rodrigo Duterte is just one man. It is possible, especially given the opinions carried by the Filipino people toward China, that his time at the premiership of the Philippines will end shortly. Perhaps other Southeast Asian nations will look to the Philippines as an example of how not to approach a relationship with their American partners. Regardless, the U.S. must continue to invest its time, capital and energy in its relationships with nations around the globe, but particularly in Southeast Asia. At a time when China’s brand of authoritarian rule appears to be a fashionable model for foreign governments, America should continue to not only lead by example, but serve as an active and engaged partner for its friends worldwide. As for the Philippines specifically, the U.S. should not bend the knee to Duterte. It should remain willing and eager to continue building strong ties when a new leader steps into the president’s office in Manila. Noah Ente can be reached at noahente@umich.edu.

ALLISON PUJOL | COLUMN

Judge, jury and — too often — the executioner

hen cousins Walter and Gaspar came to the United States fleeing gang violence and widespread corruption in El Salvador, their fate was a sadly familiar one for many applying for asylum. The two men’s applications were denied and they were deported back to El Salvador. Once they were back home, Walter and Gaspar were taken from their beds and beaten for days by local police. Walter and Gaspar were lucky. After experiencing extensive physical and psychological abuse in police custody, they were eventually released. But not everyone escapes dangerous police interrogations alive. A week ago, rights advocacy organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report detailing the violence that many unsuccessful asylum applicants — much like Walter and Gaspar — often face when they are forced to return to their respective home countries after being denied asylum. No one really monitors what happens when denied applicants are sent back to El Salvador, and HRW’s recent report aims to help “fill that gap.” When an immigrant applies for asylum, their case will be reviewed in front of an immigration judge. That one individual controls the difference between life and death for asylees. In many instances of asylum application denial, a judge will rule that the applicant cannot demonstrate they had a credible and well-founded fear of persecution or harm in their home country or that the applicant would be a significant national security risk to the U.S. Several of the cases in the HRW report call into question whether many of the deportations that result from denied applications are to blame for

the deaths and injuries of asylum applicants upon returning to their countries of origin. President Donald Trump has made his hardline stance on immigration a cornerstone of his political agenda as well as a crucial rallying cry for his base. While the president has attracted attention for the crude language he has used to describe immigrants, Trump himself directly regulates and oversees little of U.S. immigration policy. Instead, administrative agencies within the executive branch, such as the Department of Justice, carry out much of the political changes and intricacies of the legal immigration process. Still, Trump’s widely-discussed executive orders that have attempted to restrict immigration flows — such as announcing a travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries or ending temporary protected status for Salvadorans, much to the protest of senior agency officials at the Department of State who strongly advised against the decision — are only the tip of the immigration iceberg. HRW’s recent report is powerful because it indicates some denied applications are dismissed all too easily. When establishing landmark decisions, immigration judges should be aware of the power they hold over vulnerable people and consider reports like HRW’s as evidence of the growing need for asylum approval. The U.S.’s current asylum policy clearly endangers lives. Previous immigration decisions — such as Matter of AB-, which overturned protections for victims of domestic abuse or gender-based violence — should be revisited by immigration courts and reconsidered when used as legal precedent in cases for those trying to apply for asylum relief.

It’s hard to grapple with the flaws in immigration policy when you aren’t an immigration judge or administrative agency official. While students at the University of Michigan can’t individually change the U.S.’s immigration policy, they can certainly show up to support a candidate who does in the Michigan primary in March and the presidential election in November. The remaining Democratic candidates have opinions about immigration that fall across the political spectrum, so it’s important for potential voters to be informed about what each of the candidates advocates for. Joe Biden’s plan for immigration, for example, is likely the most conservative of the remaining candidates, as it seeks to keep many current statutes concerning undocumented immigration in place and does not structurally change asylum policy. Protestors have been quick to point that out as well as express frustration regarding former President Barack Obama’s track record of deportations. Candidates such as Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Tom Steyer and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have all stated the need for improving asylum application reviews and eliminating or limiting family detention (Biden, Bloomberg and Klobuchar did not take a stance on asylum on either Politico’s or The Washington Post’s poll). The other candidates’ platforms would certainly be small victories in the larger fight for asylum applicants in the U.S., but important steps toward progress nonetheless. Allison Pujol can be reached at ampmich@umich.edu

SUMMER SESSION ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT FOR UNDERGRADUATE & GRADUATE STUDENTS COURSEWORK • RESEARCH • SCHOLARS PROGRAM

ewssummer.stanford.edu SMART

PROBLEM SOLVING

DESIGN THINKING

INNOVATION

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Tuesday, February 25, 2020 — 5

Empathy ill-defined in Lidia Yuknavitch’s ‘Verge’ EMILY YANG

Daily Arts Writer

Sometimes it’s actually worth reading the jacket copy — a lot hides there. Lidia Yuknavitch’s debut story collection, “Verge,” is, apparently, “a group portrait of the marginalized and outcast in moments of crisis.” Yuknavitch apparently “offers a shard-sharp mosaic portrait of human resilience on the margins.” The blurbs on the back of the book have more to say about this theme: the novelist Dorothy Allison writes that “I know these people, I know their dilemmas, and where I don’t recognize them, I believe them.” The essayist Melissa Febos offers that the stories “showed me how resilience is forged through survival, beauty through brokenness, joy by fire.” In the acknowledgements to the book, Yuknavitch writes, “to everyone anywhere living in the in-between of things: I get it.” As it turns out, this use of the term “marginalization” is used in a slippery, broad way; it encompasses anyone who is in a position somewhat illegible from the point of view of normative society. Yuknavitch writes about both war refugees and women frustrated with their relationships, incarcerated people and people who, dissatisfied with bourgeois life, begin to identify with elsewhere. The key is a sense of incongruity with the dominant narrative of what a person should be doing.

I am focusing on this peripheral material — jacket copy, acknowledgements, blurbs — because it necessarily primes readers for the text, and because Yuknavitch herself doesn’t frame these stories, yet they clearly go together. “Knowing people” and “believing them” are functions of compassion — the statements in the packaging of the book indicate an ethical bent to Yuknavitch’s fiction,

Verge: Stories Lidia Yuknavitch Riverhead Books Feb. 4, 2020

one where bearing witness to the lives of marginalized people is a way to find out about “the world we live in now.” Empathy seems to be the function of this book, its rationale. In this book, we as readers will bear witness to the stories of the resilient outcast, broadly defined; we will have compassion for them. This framing material is basically an insistence on Yuknavitch’s ability as an author to shape these particular experiences into a form that readers will be able to understand. I’m interested in the

assumptions inherent in empathy, especially as an ethic of literature, especially when “literature” means $26 books published by an imprint of MacMillan. I feel like an audience is implied when a book claims to be a vehicle for empathy. This is to say, two groups of people are created by books like this — the readers, the ones who empathize; and the subject, who is empathized with. This, of course, is common in fiction. The way Yuknavitch writes about her subjects is often troubling, though. The opening of one of the shortest stories in the collection, “A Woman Going Out,” is a minutely detailed description of a woman shaving her legs in the second person: “Take the razor up smooth against the slight resistance of stubble, flick the wrist at the top, dip the head into the water, swish it around, then back down to the ankle for the next run. Flesh smooth-appearing in a track through white foam. Do it again.” Like the flesh appearing from under the leg hairs, Yuknavitch likes to slowly reveal her subjects at the beginning of the stories, starting disorientingly close and then slowly zooming out. This story, which is less than a page long, reveals the woman’s genitalia in a moment that feels like it was meant to trip up the reader. “Over the knee to the thigh, pause; same with the other leg, pause; scrunch it inch by inch up the thighs to the balls pushed back up into the cave, to the penis tucked tight between the legs and secured with a

BOOK REVIEW

PBS

thong … ” We do not, in fact, see the trans woman going out. It stops here, in her bathroom, letting the body signify in place of the woman’s mind, personality or actions beyond the cosmetic; it effectively erases her personhood as separate from her body. The story relies on the reader experiencing the trans woman’s genitals as surprising and alien; the story gets its narrative shove from the othering of the titular character. I’m not mentioning this story because I take special issue with Yuknavitch’s fictional treatment of trans people. I’m mentioning it because outside of the context of the collection’s thematic umbrella, this story would be fully visible as a mechanism for othering a person. I found myself wondering after this story about how much of the depiction of people on the “verges” of things requires establishing their state as abject. This same kind of othering appears in different stories in other guises. In “Second

Daily Arts Writer

GUIDED BY VOICES INC.

Guided by Voices needs to stop: On their new album Guided By Voices has always basically been known as Bob Pollard and a bunch of guys with day jobs. He was the driving force behind the band in any of its iterations. Whether it was back in the ’80s when they were still recording out of a garage or in the ’90s when they sounded like they were recording out of a garage, Pollard’s presence has stayed the same. Aside from Pollard’s constancy, the structure of the band has never been consistent: The number of members present and prior is 21. The morphology of the band became so convoluted that there’s an official timeline depicting the change in formation on their Wikipedia. In all honesty, the only asset that really propelled Guided By Voices into becoming a wellrecognized member of the indie rock scene was Pollard. His esoteric lyricism and musical quirks were by far the band’s greatest strength. This was his band. That’s why it’s so surprising that he seems to be the one dragging the band down on their latest release, Surrender Your Poppy Field. This is not to say the instrumentation is anything particularly mind blowing or radical. If anything, the sound is a bit dated, drawing

Read more online at

michigandaily.com

Watergate’s ‘Slow Burn’ JUSTIN POLLACK

Daily Arts Writer

the new country, her experiences there. It’s more than a little painful to read. The ending is unsatisfyingly redemptive — the woman tells a Slavic folktale as a way of furtively hanging onto some aspect of her self-definition (“There was one thing besides her body that she possessed — a story, in a foreign tongue but still a story”) and in the end Yuknavitch’s story takes on the character of a folktale. The woman guts herself with window glass and spills her entrails onto the pavement, and in doing so calls down greywolves from the mountains surrounding Portland, who avenge her against her clients and her pimps. The ending of the story is something like the statement of a moral: “I tell you, do not go near that place. Do not go near it. Greywolves guard the ground there. Girls are growing from guts, enough for a body and a language all the way out of this world.”

TV REVIEW

ALBUM REVIEW

DREW GADBOIS

Language,” a Lithuanian woman is engaged in prostitution in Portland. She doesn’t understand English very well, and navigates her new country in a dissociative haze. The prose style Yuknavitch uses is intensely bodily and feels slightly unmoored from reality. “The front man lived near a freeway — what freedom was it meant to have? — in a snotcolored two-story house with black plastic in the windows where curtains in the windows where curtains should be. When she knocked on the door, her throat cords braided and her vertebrae rattled.” There is an intense fixation on this woman’s body, even outside of the sex scenes, the story is full of pale wrists, neck veins, intestines. The story’s fixation is on how the experience of prostitution robs the woman of her ability to understand herself or her world, her lack of fluency in English just another way she feels displaced. Her body becomes the only thing that signifies, and all it signifies is a use value — the meaning of this woman’s life is stripped away by

comparisons to Olivia Tremor Control or Semisonic. But even their critically acclaimed releases from the ’90s sounded dated. They were purposely going for a lofi approach, which, in all honesty, sounded better on Ween’s The Pod or anything by Beat Happening. The music on Surrender Your Poppy Field simply gets the job done with the occasional standout track. A

Surrender Your Poppy Field Guided By Voices Guided By Voices, Inc.

few notable tracks include “Arthur Has Business Elsewhere” and “Steely Dodger,” the latter of which sounds like The Books tried to make standard rock music. This is an improvement from their previous post-reformation records that inexplicably tried to hold on to their lofi endeavors from decades earlier. The biggest problem with this album is that Bob doesn’t have anything to say. This was never the

case beforehand, as his sharp wit was the biggest attraction to any Guided By Voices record. At best, he’s able to string together a few clever bars on the record. At worst ... oh God. At worst, there’s “Culde-Sac Kids.” Nothing about this song suggests a right to exist. How does a 62-year-old man sing “Culde-sac kids have the best parties” and “Boy, those sac kids throw good parties” with any sincerity? The answer: he doesn’t. It has all of the vocal absurdity of Frank Zappa’s “Catholic Girls” with just about none of the irony. Mix this with the worst instrumentation on the album and you get a real mess of a milkshake. This is one of those songs that completely halts any momentum for at least the next few songs. Unfortunately, the album doesn’t provide anything to bring it back from such a low. It’s a shame that one song functions as a grenade, wrecking the enjoyment of an album. Surrender Your Poppy Field had the potential to be a fairly decent record, at least relative to their more recent work. Instead, we’re given a confirmation that Guided By Voices should stop putting out records. At the very least they need to take more time crafting better sets of songs. When you’re putting out three records in one year, it suggests that you don’t understand the concept of b-sides. One can hope they’re only putting out two albums in 2020.

Adapted from the hit podcast of the same name, Epix’s new docu-series “Slow Burn” — which details the people involved in the events of the Watergate Scandal — has joined the trend of podcastturned-television shows, and it certainly will not be the last. In our current media climate, the endless profit possibilities that different intellectual properties offer has nearly every network or platform scrambling to attain the rights to reproduce stories we’ve already heard before, but just on their platform. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with adapting a series from one medium to another, but the qualities that make a podcast great are separate from what makes a television series great. Great podcasts make you feel close to the text. The voice speaking to you invites you to imagine and create your own understanding of the story as it’s being told. Podcasts-turnedtelevision series, on the other hand, command you to sit down and take in a single version of the story unfolding before your eyes. “Slow Burn” wants us to imagine what it felt like to live through Watergate in real time. It gives listeners a different perspective on the events we think we know so well, stripping away the collective knowledge of the event in order to tell the story from the very beginning.

The visual element that “Slow Burn” returns to the most is the image of an empty living room that screams 1970s — a wooden coffee table, a walnut bookshelf, an FM radio controlled with a dial. With each return, it becomes easier to imagine yourself being there, living through the events, catching a snippet of the daily Watergate news coverage as you go about your day. The brilliance of the title “Slow Burn” is how host Leon Neyfakh perfectly evokes the feeling of a literal slow burn

Slow Burn Series Premiere Epix Sundays @ 10 p.m.

with his suspensful storytelling. Recounting history through our collective memory often results in only remembering the popular assumptions and forced narratives. In other words, we remember the outcomes, but not the specifics, such as the people involved. “Slow Burn” is all about the people involved. Neyfakh repeatedly invites us to forget about what we already know about Watergate and imagine

ourselves as observers who have no idea what the “third-rate burglary” that barely made it into The Washington Post might eventually lead to. Neyfakh loves bringing our attention to figures who “played roles in the story that are larger than history remembers.” The series opener is centered around Martha Mitchell — the wife of Nixon’s Attorney General — and outlines her role as the initial whistleblower in the Watergate scandal. The episode also recounts the Nixon administration’s successful smear campaign to dismiss Mitchell as a crazy alcoholic in order to control the narrative. Without Mitchell, it’s very possible that the truth of Watergate would have never come out. Mitchell’s courage to speak out, the steps taken by the government to keep her quiet and to turn her into some sort of delusional person are not talked about as often as it should be. The relevance of Mitchell’s treatment by the press and the Nixon administration is particularly relevant considering the way our current president disregards and discredits anyone who speaks out against him. This episode details Mitchell’s role in Watergate, and the rest of the series should bring back important figures that have been forgotten by history and the slow burn of the truth. The next time someone tells you a story that’s so outrageous that you can’t believe it, remember that sometimes the craziest thing to come out of someone’s mouth may very well be the truth.

EPIX

Arts

6 — Tuesday, February 25, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

FILM REVIEW

Dorrance Dance tapped, stomped at Power Center of the evening, “Myelination.” Though different in style, all three pieces highlighted the crisp genius of each tapper onstage. “Jungle Blues” acted as an homage to older jazz. Dancers dragged their taps along the tap dance specific f loor and allowed the conveniently placed microphones to absorb the graceful sound. One member completed a blurringly fast section of improvisation, while another moved around the stage through exaggerated

EMILY CONSIDINE & ZOE PHILLIPS For The Daily & Senior Arts Editor

20TH CENTURY PICTURES

You’re better off if you ignore ‘Call of the Wild’ SABRIYA IMAMI Daily Arts Writer

I fell asleep while watching “The Call of the Wild.” For the first half of the movie it feels like nothing is happening. The first forty minutes are completely episodic, with almost no thread of continuity or consistency keeping each scene together, with the exception being that each story has the dog Buck as the central character. The whole movie follows Buck from his role as the spoiled house dog to his decision to accept his role in nature and the wild. And while the audience empathizes with because of the awful circumstances of his life — like the abuse he often faced at the hands of humans — frankly, the fact that the dog is completely CGI’ed threw me off. It’s not like I was expecting the creators of the movie to train a real dog to do everything that the Buck of the original Jack London novel did, but it still felt wrong. To me, watching a movie centered around animals becomes unnatural when they have almost human expressions on their faces. The animals become caricatures of the roles they are supposed

to have in the film when they become too similar to humans. The overwhelming use of CGI also begs the incredibly concerning question of whether or not we’ll even need people in the film business anymore, which is a little too ‘robots taking over the world’ for me.

The Call of the Wild Ann Arbor 20 20th Century Pictures

Harrison Ford (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”), while receiving top billing for the film in his role as John Thornton, only really appears midway through. When John and Buck meet, the story really picks up. Their blossoming relationship is easily the most tender part of the film. They genuinely care about each other and protect each other

against all adversaries. Throughout the film, there is a wild black dog figure that serves as a symbol for Buck’s instinct and desire to answer the wild’s call. Soon he begins to think that he should succumb to it. The love John and Buck feel for each other makes the ending of the film bittersweet, as John is pulled toward the human world and Buck toward the wild. However, their relationship is the only interesting and worthwhile part of the film. There are a few interesting action scenes, like when Buck leads his pack away from an avalanche, but those are few and far between. And since they all feel disconnected from one another, you lose interest quickly. Combined with a cringey voiceover from Ford throughout the whole movie and a weird hybrid of too much CGI and not enough reality, the film falls flat. I never read the book, so I don’t know whether or not true fans of the book will love or hate this movie. But, in my opinion, this wasn’t a movie that needed to be made. It’s a classic, a literary masterpiece in the eyes of many, but the depth of the story is probably best transferred through prose, not a nearly dialogue-less film.

There are many things to love about tap dancing. There is the shuff le, an even beat made from the balanced forwardbackward brush of the ball of the shoe across the f loor. More rhythmically, the f lap involves a syncopated brush forward that ends in a separate tap with the ball of the foot. For more complexity, the riff requires the toe and heel to dig through the ground in separate movements that create a deeper and longer sound. The riff le combines the riff and the shuff le, which can also be combined with a f lap for a fuller opening sequence. Each of these steps makes up a distinct sound that must be perfected with a clarity similar to hitting keys on a piano. When put together, the individual notes create a sequence of taps and stomps and scuffs and drags that create rhythmic music with the feet. When done at the highest level, these sounds are crisp and energizing to watch. When performed by Dorrance Dance at the Power Center last weight changes complemented weekend, they are downright by the loud noises made by his shoes every time he fell. The mind-boggling. The 10-member company, piece warmed the audience to headed by MacArthur “Genius” the sounds of distinct beats and recipient Michelle Dorrance, happy music. “Three to One,” darker in spent the weekend in Ann Arbor as part of the University presentation, built off of this One dancer, Musical Society’s 2019-20 introduction. season. On Saturday night, wearing tap shoes, stood in the audience took up almost between two barefoot men every available seat in the at the center of downstage. they completed theater, clapping and gasping Together, of the same and wooing for the entire sequences 70 minutes of the dancers’ movements — three sets of rhythmic art. The group feet, two of them silent and one performed two shorter pieces of them loud. The dichotomy Syndication fascinating, and a bridge — “Jungle Blues” and “ThreeSudoku to was One” — before the titular show section of jumps with eerie

At the end of “Myelination,” we joined the entire crowd as they stood up and cheered.

contemporary dance added to the piece’s dark beauty. “Myelination” was more than twice as long as the first two, with a myriad of moodshifting vignettes to showcase individual dancers’ talents. The choreography blended impressive shades of hip-hop alongside the tapping. The range between the two styles created a breadth that visibly excited the dancers; all ten beamed with joy. Unlike the prior pieces, “Myelination” also incorporated a live band onstage. The music melded seamlessly with the energetic percussion of the tapping. At times, a dancer would join the band playing instruments — one was handed an electric guitar, another surreptitiously took over the drums — blurring the lines between music and movement. In essence, Dorrance Dance asked: Why separate the two at all? One of the greatest advantages of tap dancing over other dance styles is its potential for noise. Often the only noise considered in tap is loud metal percussion, an unapologetic clanging that is most impressive when it is clear, precise and rapid. Dorrance Dance included plenty of this skillful, crowd-pleasing noise. But they also explored the less obvious musicality in tap — the soft swish of a body crawling across the f loor, thump of knees on the ground, the way a melodious voice can make every staccato ding feel ten times more intense. At the end of “Myelination,” we joined the entire crowd as they stood up and cheered. It was a dance performance that felt like a rock concert. And at the end of the night, it made both of us want to dig up our old tap shoes and surrender to the joy of noisy energy oncehttp://sudoku again.

SUDOKU

HARD

CLASSIFIEDS dailydisplay@gmail.com

Release Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2020

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

ACROSS 1 Rene of “Ransom” (1996) 6 Not as expensive 10 A bit loopy 14 Part of “the works” on a burger 15 Old man, in German 16 Needle case 17 1950 Gloria Swanson film 20 Peanut butter choice 21 Like wax fruit 22 Note from one who’s shy? 24 Laser pointer chaser 25 1979 Jim Henson film 33 Get out of bed 34 Jazz instruments 35 Peruvian singer Sumac 36 Squirrel’s hoard 37 Credited in an endnote 38 Place to tie up a boat 39 24-hr. cash source 40 Equestrian 41 “That’s __!”: “Piece of cake!” 42 1988 Demi Moore film 45 News initials 46 __ bunt: productive MLB out 47 Looks at closely 52 “John Wick” star Keanu 57 2002 Woody Allen film ... or what each of the last words of 17-, 25- and 42-Across can be 59 “Garfield” dog 60 Baseball family name 61 Dalai Lama’s land 62 Have a craving for 63 Appraise 64 Clairvoyants DOWN 1 PBS painter Bob 2 E pluribus __

3 Chinese: Pref. 4 Fair-to-middling 5 Previous 6 Chem class 7 Fair-haired Wells race 8 Flabbergast 9 Chose 10 Actor Danny who appears in M&M’s commercials 11 Run __: drink on credit 12 Roll and bind, as a sail 13 Laundry soap brand 18 Commandment pronoun 19 Red-wrapped cheeses 23 Positive aspect 25 “The __ is out there”: “The X-Files” catchphrase 26 Blackjack request 27 Handy Scrabble tile 28 Eucharistic plate 29 Applies, as pressure 30 Competing (for)

31 “Know what __?” 32 Wyatt of the Old West 33 Future MD’s class 37 1860s NorthSouth conflict 38 Letter before omega 40 Settle, as a debt 41 Climbs 43 Rental from a renter 44 Tortoise racer

47 Website with step-by-step instructions 48 “Star Wars” sentence inverter 49 Tiger Woods’ ex 50 1970 Kinks hit 51 Chimney residue 53 Actress Falco 54 Vague feeling 55 The “E” in DOE: Abbr. 56 Some NCOs 58 Deserving

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

02/25/20

FOR RENT

7 3

5 1

3 7

2 puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

7 6

FOR RENT - avail fall 2020 2BR close to central. Info at www.tcapts.com

8 3

“Ron Paul 2020”

7 6

WHISPER

Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokus

“This one is for a tall Northern European Barista”

“Prime SH knows, Alex. They see all and hear all.”

SUBMIT A WHISPER

734-418-4115 option 2

1 of 1

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

BASEBALL

Freshmen must step up T

wo weeks, seven games and one-tenth of a championship-length season have already transpired. But only some of those games are guaranteed, and based on the tinkering Michigan coach Erik JACK Bakich is performWHITTEN ing with his pitching staff, it would appear he’s gunning for game 70. “On paper,” Bakich said, “we have some key pieces that we know that have a resume that have had success in the past, and then we have a bunch of unknowns.” Whether an entity is known or unknown, the priority is winning games. Bakich hasn’t shied away from giving pitchers role-defying work to that end. No pitcher’s ego or desire for a calcified position has proven to be more important than winning. “I’m not worried about where I fit right now in the rotation,” junior right-hander Blake Beers said after his first appearance of the season. “Our biggest goal right now as a staff is to continue getting better this week. Whatever spot I’m pitching in, and whatever spot the rest of my teammates are pitching in doesn’t really matter as long as we’re contributing to our team and contributing to wins.” The team strategy when dealing with hitters and the lineup, on the other hand, is often incongruous with that of the pitching staff. One might argue in favor of the status quo on offense, pointing to four of seven games in which Michigan has

scored five or more runs. Look closer. Seven runs were accrued on only four hits in game one of the series against the Huskies, including five off just one in the first. Eight runs against Cal Poly were scraped together without a single extra-base hit. The problems at the plate start with junior shortstop Jack Blomgren, who hit into three fielder’s choices in the opening weekend alone and who has hit just .250 on the season, a far cry from his .314 clip last season — two qualities undesirable for a tablesetter. They continue with junior catcher Joe Donovan, whose average and slugging percentage are sitting at the Mendoza line and sophomore second baseman Riley Bertram and his .176/.267/.176 slash line. On the other hand, players in the back half of the lineup — freshman outfielder Clark Elliott, freshman third baseman Ted Burton and fifth-year senior first baseman Matthew Schmidt to name a few — have been powering the offense, combining for 11 RBI. Senior outfielder Dominic Clementi started at the cleanup spot in the first game, but has since hit the cover off the ball largely in the bottom third. All are either freshmen or new to seeing consistent game action. Bakich stashed the freshmen at the bottom of the lineup in the opening series, away from the spotlight. “I made the mistake of shoving ( junior center fielder) Jesse Franklin up in the four-hole his freshman year,” Bakich said. “Probably not smart on my part to put those kinds of expectations on a young kid. We did that again to (freshman catcher) Jimmy Obertop against Vanderbilt in

the fall game, put him in the four-hole — that was a nice four strikeout game.” But with the end of the season constantly staring Bakich and the team in the face, how many games will it take for him to prioritize a higher quality lineup in front of dimming the spotlight on his newbies? When will the freshmen invade the top half of the lineup, providing increased protection to the hitters around them than the veterans currently installed in those spots? Just like Burton and company benefited from beginning the year at the bottom of the order, so too could the struggling veterans. Redshirt sophomore outfielder Danny Zimmermann’s usage is certainly a bright spot. He started the season coming off the bench, but Bakich has since begun to allow him and his team-leading 1.059 OPS to do maximum damage in the cleanup spot. After redshirting the 2019 campaign, Zimmermann is an example of a relative unknown whose talents are being used to the fullest. “There were so many different breakout candidates that could be on the horizon,” Bakich said after the MLB4 tournament on Feb. 16. “Just guys that had their moments in different games that could be positive contributors for the entire season.” The breakout candidates have revealed themselves. It’s time to use them in ways that maximize win possibility: benefiting from and providing lineup protection, with more chances to hit with runners on base. In other words, it’s time to treat them like the pitchers. Whitten can be reached at jackhw@ umich.edu or on Twitter @JackWhitten6.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020 — 7

‘M’ confident after UConn losses JACOB COHEN

Daily Sports Writer

Last week, Baseball America ranked Michigan No. 1 for the first time in school history — a first for any Big Ten team. Such a ranking is obviously a high honor, but it comes with expectations as well. Any time a No. 1 team loses, it’s the kind of upset that receives national attention. Still, Michigan coach Erik Bakich made it clear that he sees such a response as an overreaction in the case of the Wolverines’ (4-3 overall) 2-1 series loss to UConn (3-3) this weekend. Bakich cited letting innings get away from the team as Michigan’s chief problem from the weekend. The Wolverines’ bullpen struggled, and their hitters were not as competitive in the box as Bakich would have hoped in the team’s two losses to the Huskies. But Bakich emphasized that these problems are uncharacteristic of his team. “It’s not like I’m seeing these guys for the first time these past two weeks,” Bakich said. “I’ve learned a lot about the team and their consistency through the

entire fall and how they go about training up until this point, so I do think we have a very tough, hard-working and resilient group of kids who had a tough weekend.” The idea of staying the course pervaded the Wolverines’ postgame message, typifying the team’s belief that this weekend will be remembered as nothing more than a mere blip in an otherwise successful campaign. “I’ve learned that the team has a high level of believability in themselves and a high level of confidence after opening weekend,” Bakich said. “And hearing them today when we were down 9-1, I didn’t hear a team that was defeated thinking they were out of the fight. I mean the verbiage coming out of the dugout, the way we competed those first four at bats in the ninth — if we had done it every at bat of the weekend, we’d have had a different result.” Michigan’s current 4-3 record looks unimpressive at first glance, but the Wolverines feel that they have all of the pieces necessary to compete at the level of their current ranking. “We just have to get it out consistently, we’re too good of a team to have slip ups like this,”

Bakich said. And Bakich has a plan to get this consistency out of his team. “We need to simulate situations in the games that hurt us this past week,” Bakich said. “Imitate high-leverage situations and just try to create an environment that’s faster than the speed of the game to recalibrate our eyes and what we’re seeing. ... I think just the more we can have training reps that are random and chaotic in nature and unexpected and challenging then these situations that arise in the games, we’ll be able to handle them better than we did this weekend.” Bakich and his coaching staff used that technique a lot last season, and anyone who watched Michigan play in last year’s postseason saw its effectiveness. Multiple players mentioned before opening weekend that the goal for this season was to get back to Omaha and end the season ranked No. 1. They never mentioned wanting to be No. 1 in February, and while the Wolverines may have just lost their early season No. 1 ranking, the team still believes it can possess that title when it matters most.

MILES MACKLIN/Daily

The Michigan baseball team is keeping its confidence high despite dropping a series to UConn last weekend.

New faces

Wolverines go 1-3 on weekend, trying different lineup combinations and throwing pitcher Chandler Dennis NICHOLAS STOLL Daily Sports Writer

When something doesn’t work, you change it. When it still doesn’t work, you keep making changes in order to find the solution. Michigan softball was searching for a solution this past weekend. The problem: an uncharacteristic lack of offensive production. The solution: making changes to the lineup. Going into the weekend, the Wolverines were averaging 5.22 runs per game, a respectable number by any measure. But in the first three games of the Gamecock Invitational, Michigan only managed to put up two runs. Total. “We didn’t do a real good job at the plate of swinging well and swinging free,” Michigan coach Carol Hutchins said. It was no coincidence that in those three games, the Wolverines suffered their first two losses of the season. Their only win on the weekend came from a 1-0 victory over Liberty, held together by pitching and defense. Hutchins knew something

needed to change. “We moved people around as we’re trying to find something to spark our offense,” Hutchins said. Some sparks were found. Senior Abby Skvarce found a place in the batting order as designated player and left fielder, previously only getting a chance as a pinch hitter. Skvarce hit .333 on the weekend in her new role. Senior Thais Gonzalez was also able to find success, producing for Michigan wherever she was placed in the lineup. Gonzalez showed versatility by hitting in the eighth, ninth and second spot in the batting order over the four game slate. The final game was the one in which she took up the most responsibility by batting second, and still she produced, batting 1-for-2 with one run in the game. Another notable adjustment came from freshman second baseman Julia Jimenez moving into the lead-off position ahead of struggling outfielder Lexie Blair. The sophomore is hitting just .175 this season — a stark contrast to her .406 average a year ago. Here, the Wolverines may

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Freshman second baseman Julia Jimenez moved into the lead-off spot.

have found one solution. “Juju (Jimenez) I thought did a really nice job,” Hutchins said. “Juju didn’t make it any bigger than it was. Which was, ‘I’m batting.’ She doesn’t care when.” Jimenez echoed Hutchins’ thoughts: “I just have to be on my A-game. No matter what happens, I just have to keep rolling with it and just do my best to stay up there. Just help my team out.” Skvarce, Gonzalez and Jimenez were responsible for 10 of the team’s 20 hits on the weekend as well as three of its seven runs. Each member of the trio — whether they were a starter before this weekend or not — found themselves in a new position in the lineup. With their new positions came new roles, and they delivered. That was the purpose of Hutchins’ changes — move players around and see what works. So with Skvarce, Gonzalez and Jimenez producing in new spots, one could reasonably expect them to remain there. For Hutchins though, it’s not that simple. Because although there were sparks, they didn’t start a fire. The Wolverines finished the weekend 1-3, and they only scored more than one run in the final game. The trio made a positive impact, but the entire puzzle wasn’t complete. “I don’t think there’s any right answers or not,” Hutchins said. “You know when our offense definitely isn’t clicking, it’s definitely difficult to know who to put where. … We’re going to continue to give people different looks and different opportunities. “The people that can handle it and compete when they’re called upon are those who are going to end up with it.” New opportunities bring new changes to the lineup. Hutchins is prepared for that. She knows that eventually, the lineup will settle, but now is not that time. Now, Michigan needs solutions. And for solutions, it needs change.

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Freshman right-hander Chandler Dennis pitched in her first collegiate games over the weekeend as Michigan went 1-3.

NICHOLAS STOLL Daily Sports Writer

Freshman right-hander Chandler Dennis entered the circle. At the plate stood Hannah Carter, Dennis’ first collegiate opponent. Shortly after, Dennis got the Cyclone swinging — strike three. That was it for Dennis’ first time on the rubber. One batter. She came in to relieve sophomore right-hander Alex Storako on Saturday in an inning where Iowa State had put up four runs on the Wolverines. Prior to Dennis’ entrance, the Cyclones were winning 5-1. The stakes were low. Any damage a freshman pitcher like Dennis may have caused was already done before she stepped up to pitch. For Michigan coach Carol Hutchins, this was the moment she needed to give Dennis a chance. “Well we’ve been watching her in practice since she got here,” Hutchins said. “And at some point, when we’re behind in the game, it was a good opportunity to get her in.” It was. In her small opportunity, Dennis showed enough to be given another chance. Later that day, Michigan played No. 22 South Carolina, and Dennis was given a

bit more responsibility. It was another relief situation where the Wolverines were down, but instead of only facing the final batter, Dennis was handed the ball with over an inning left to play. She finished the one-and-athird innings of the game allowing just one hit. Again, Michigan lost, but Dennis had proven her ability against a true opponent. Hutchins had seen enough this time to raise the stakes once more. Sunday morning, Dennis was given her first start. “Getting my first start of course got a little bit of the nervous juices flowing,” Dennis said. “But I love competing with my team, and there was no doubt in my mind that they had my back on defense.” Dennis went through four-anda-third innings pitched allowing six hits and one run with only one strikeout. After Dennis put two on in the fifth, Storako came in to relieve and gave up a threerun homerun, tacking two more earned-runs onto Dennis’ total. Her first start wasn’t perfect, but Dennis knows that. “I think I just need to work,” Dennis said. “I think I could have done better at getting ahead in the count. I think I pitched to contact a lot this week.” On that, Hutchins and Dennis are in lock-step. Where they aren’t,

is in whether the problems were as isolated as Dennis seems to think. “I think today’s performance they got a lot of bat on the ball,” Hutchins said. “We need to see (Dennis) paint the corners. “But to be fair, every one of our pitchers has got to paint the corners much better. All of our pitchers are putting too much ball over too much plate. And as you see, we’ve given up too many big hits and we need to dig in here.” Despite their superior experience, starting pitchers Storako and junior left-hander Meghan Beaubien threw similar games to Dennis over the course of the invitational. This lackluster pitching no doubt contributed to its 1-3 record on the weekend. And while it is not the result Hutchins would have liked to see, it opened the door for a third pitcher in the Wolverines’ rotation to show her worth. “I think (Dennis) is really capable of some great things,” Hutchins said Jan. 28. “And I think she needs to see herself as great. She needs to have some determination everyday and every pitch — like all of them. They’re always a work in progress.” This weekend, Dennis made her debut as a Wolverine. It wasn’t perfect, but it was progress. And that’s just what she needed.

Sports

8 — Tuesday, February 25, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wolverines’ defense leading team How the Irish stymied ‘M’ offense HOCKEY

JACOB KOPNICK Daily Sports Editor

When any team is searching for its identity, it deals in moments. Players, fans and pundits alike look for one game, one tournament, one shot to define a season or sometimes even entire programs. For instance, the Wolverines’ miracle run to the final game of the 2018 NCAA Tournament is defined by Jordan Poole’s 3-point prayer to advance past Houston. This season, it’s been The Bahamas. Early in the season, it was all anyone could talk about when discussing Michigan basketball. And it’s easy to see why. The Wolverines marched into Atlantis an unproven, untested team with a million question marks and a brand new face on the sidelines. They delivered an incredible three-game stretch downing two top-10 teams. It was the type of tone-setting performance that programs dream of and coaches froth over. But once Michigan hit a fourgame skid after losing star junior forward Isaiah Livers to injury, the performance in The Bahamas became a double-edged sword — an expectation against which everything else was measured. And perhaps the comparison wasn’t unfair. Even Michigan’s own players would often compare the team’s mental fortitude and in-game attitude to its peak in the Caribbean. Freshman forward Franz Wagner was one of the first to highlight this disparity when discussing the team’s apparent lack of emotion in a loss on the road to Iowa, stating that during the team’s string of losses the team hadn’t had the same emotional level as in The Bahamas. But now the Wolverines have won five straight and the comparisons are starting to resurface, but in the best way possible for Michigan. Assistant coach Phil Martelli wasn’t shy to make the comparison following the Wolverines’ road win against Purdue.

TIEN LE

Daily Sports Writer

EMMA MATI/Daily

Freshman wing Franz Wagner has been key in Michigan’s defensive improvement.

“I thought in The Bahamas, we looked like an offensive team,” he said. “Now I think we look like a winning team.” With Livers back in the starting lineup and Michigan convincingly winning games at an elite level, not only are the Wolverines playing like they did in The Bahamas, but they might be even better, according to Martelli. So what’s the difference now? The short answer: defense. And the stats flesh that out. In The Bahamas, opponents averaged 68 points per game and now over Michigan’s last five wins, opponents averaged 60.4 points per game — an astounding near eight-point drop off. Along with overall scoring, opponents’ shooting percentages have taken a dip as well. Rivals in The Bahamas shot 42 percent from the floor and now are connecting on just 37.2 percent of shots over the last five games. Where things get particularly bleak for the Wolverines’ foes though comes from 3-point shots. In The Bahamas, Michigan was effective in limiting perimeter shots with opponents shooting just 29.7 percent from three in the Caribbean. Recently though, the Wolverines have been on another planet. In Michigan’s last five games, players not wearing maize and blue have shot just 23.32 percent from 3-point range. The Wolverines have effectively neutralized any shooting advantage a team may

possess from deep, especially focusing on limiting 3-point attempts while also guarding oneon-one. Now it’s just a matter of seeing where this defensive change has come from. “For people to understand, ‘Where did this come from?’ This came from the defensive side of the ball,” Martelli said. “And the tribute goes to Juwan (Howard) and (assistant coach) Saddi (Washington) as the defensive coordinator insisting on shrinking the floor. We’re a lot sharper now in our scouting reports.” Giving Michigan’s perimeter defenders — highlighted by junior guard Eli Brooks, Wagner and senior guard Zavier Simpson, among others — the sharper scouting reports on opposing guards has made all the difference. The Wolverines lost the second half against the Boilermakers on Sunday — Purdue scored 42 to Michigan’s 35. But it didn’t matter because after only scoring 21 points on the Wolverines’ stalwart defense in the first, the Boilermakers just couldn’t score enough to win. “That wasn’t a thing of beauty offensively in the second half,” Martelli said. “We’re maybe not built that way, but defensive side of the ball — if we stayed out there the next 20 minutes, they were not gonna score enough. “And that’s what’s happening to these teams, they’re just not scoring enough.”

It was safe to say the Michigan hockey team had finally found its groove offensively before heading into last weekend. The Wolverines have averaged 4.2 goals per game since the winter break, dominating teams with an onslaught of goals. They were making the right passes. They were syncing on set plays. They were finding the back of the net. Yet against Notre Dame, Michigan could muster only a single goal over the course of two games — and it was scored by an extra attacker on an empty-net situation. The Fighting Irish stymied the Wolverines’ hot hands, sweeping them over two games at Yost. Here’s how they did it. *** Limiting Michigan’s opportunities in transition Part of the Wolverines’ offensive success as of late was due to the high number of opportunities they created — high shot count, high amounts of Grade-A chances. “Look at the game,” graduate transfer forward Jacob Hayhurst said. “We had chances, but they played such a structure and laid back game that we didn’t get the volume of chances that we wanted to get.” The Irish’s structure that helped limit those opportunities was centered around their transitioning format. In the earlier series in South Bend, Notre Dame had played a 1-1-3, which meant it had three players fall back into the defensive zone, one player chasing the puck and one person there to help in the neutral zone. After getting swept, however, the Irish knew something needed to change. So they adjusted their

systems to play an entirely defensive and more patient approach with a 1-4 structure. That meant four players would drop back and let only one person push forward. The fact that four players clustered in the defensive zone meant that the Wolverines would have a tough time with zone entry. When it’s hard to bring the puck into the offensive zone, it’s hard to create offense in general. Michigan’s counter to this was to dump in the puck and chase after it, using speed to get to the puck behind the net before the other team does. But Notre Dame was ready for that as well. Disr upting Mich iga n’s forecheck A large part of the Wolverines’ offense is their forecheck. They run a double forecheck system, which allows two players to contest for the puck behind the net in order to retain possession in the offensive zone. “You’re trying to do ABCD to create those opportunities,” Michigan coach Mel Pearson said. “And part of that is establishing a good forecheck, and we never could. “Shouldn’t say we never could, but we had limited success at that.” The Wolverines tried dumping the puck into the zone and as they met opposing players behind the red line, they’d forecheck. But what they ended up doing was shooting the puck behind the net for Irish goaltender Cale Morris to corral and control, and that creates another target to contest, which makes Michigan’s two-person forecheck less effective. “Then, now we have three ‘defensemen’ you have to forecheck instead of two,” Pearson said. “We just didn’t work hard enough or weren’t in sync enough on our forecheck.” Already unable to carry

the puck into the zone, the Wolverines’ struggles to dump and chase meant there were going to be limited opportunities to get set and work the zone for extended periods of time. Frustrating an offense overall Michigan was not prepared coming into the weekend. It knew what to expect out of a defensive game — pace, low shot count, physical play. But the players weren’t prepared for just how limited the amount of chances they’d get. “I think if we were better prepared with the mindset that you just got to really bear down on the chances you get,” senior forward Will Lockwood said. “Because you’re not going to get many. These guys really just pack it, and you got to understand that I think the shots were like 20 shots between the two teams after two periods. “I think we got to better prepare next time, going into a game like that where, you know, you’re not gonna get too many chances, but you gotta bury them when you do.” The Irish were doing everything to frustrate the Wolverines. They sit back to prevent breakaways. They put a body on every puck handler. They know how to disrupt an offense. Michigan players had come in expecting more opportunities. They always do. But when they were limited and not converting, it thinned their patience. “If you’re chasing the game all the time,” Pearson said, “then they just even collapse more on you and then you can get more frustrated.” Added Lockwood: “A team like that, no one in the nation, is going to put up more than three or four goals. It’s a different mindset going in.”

Michigan rolls past Edinboro, 33-6 Hailey Brown makes her impact STEEL HURLEY Daily Sports Writer

Sometimes, it’s just about staying the course. The No. 21 Michigan wrestling team (7-6) had come out of a tough stretch of Big Ten dual meets, losing three matches in a row against three of the top-12 ranked schools. With the Big Ten tournament coming up, a trip to Edinboro (10-8) could have caused some trouble. But the Wolverines did not overlook the Scots, dominating in a 33-6 win on Friday. Michigan was led by a gritty effort from fifth-year senior Jackson Striggow at 197 pounds. Down several points in the first period, Striggow fought back and took control of the match in the later periods, pushing the pace and getting several takedowns to ultimately secure the comeback. “I didn’t let it get me too much — being behind in the first — because I knew I am in better shape than anybody that I wrestle,” Striggow said. “My pace would wear him down to where I could score points on him and take the lead back.” At 125 pounds, No. 18 redshirt sophomore Jack Medley also had a strong showing, getting several back points to claim a 23-5 technical fall. Redshirt

senior Austin Assad next claimed a forfeit victory at 133 pounds, and freshman Cole Mattin secured a decision at 141 pounds. No. 9 redshirt junior Kanen Storr kept the momentum going for the Wolverines, as he picked up a 6-2 decision at 149 pounds. Redshirt freshman Will Lewan also secured a decision at 157 pounds to give Michigan a large lead, as it headed into the break up 20-0. “We wrestled a really great dual,” Michigan coach Sean Bormet said. “The guys wrestled with a lot of confidence, a lot of energy, as a great finish to our dual season.” Following the gauntlet of Big Ten duals, and with the Big Ten championships coming up, this meet could have been overlooked. But Michigan avoided the potential pitfall. “Sometimes coming off of a long stretch of Big Ten duals, in front of a smaller crowd, there could be a letdown,” Bormet said. “So I wanted to make sure to avoid that, and for them to focus on the type of wrestling and matches that they were gonna have at the Big Ten championships.” The Wolverines head into the Big Ten championships on Mar. 7. Coming out of the tough schedule of Big Ten play — with losses in four of the last five dual

meets — this non-conference dual was a useful tune up to get the team executing at the highest level again, so they could be as effective as possible during the imminent postseason. Added Striggow: “I looked at it as something to build off of heading into Big Ten (championships). Keep getting better, keep building on the good things I did last match and the match before that to keep giving myself confidence.” Michigan kept rolling out of the break, as redshirt junior Tyler Meisinger got his first fall of the season with his firstperiod at 165 pounds. After a couple tough losses for redshirt freshman Max Maylor at 174 pounds and redshirt sophomore J.T. Correll at 184 pounds, the Wolverines got back on track through Striggow’s determined victory. No. 2 sophomore heavyweight Mason Parris finished things off for Michigan with a resounding major decision, 10-2. “We’re measuring how we wrestle match-to-match regardless of opponent,” Bormet said. “So we just wanted our guys to focus on wrestling to their fullest potential, executing the way that they need to to have success at the Big Ten championships.”

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Fifth-year senior Jackson Striggow got several takedowns to come back and win at 197 pounds against Edinboro.

JACK KINGSLEY Daily Sports Writer

Naz Hillmon’s free throw hit both sides of the rim before bouncing out, right in the direction of Hailey Brown. The junior forward saw her chance for an easy putback layup. But when Brown went up for the rebound, she gave Michigan State guard Tory Ozment a slight push and was called for a foul — her fifth. She seemed unhappy with the call, just as she had on some of her earlier fouls. Despite her frustration in the moment, she moved past it quickly. As she walked off the court, she looked at her teammates and yelled, “Let’s go. Win this.” The Michigan women’s basketball team led the Spartans by five with three minutes remaining on Sunday when Brown fouled out. A minute later, senior guard Akienreh Johnson fouled out, with the Wolverines still leading by five. With Michigan’s two most experienced players out of the game, it had to hold on with a lineup of three freshmen and two sophomores. And despite being stuck on the bench for the final three minutes of the game, Brown knew her role was as important as ever. She was nearly as vocal as she is on the court, encouraging her teammates and alerting the players on the court when a screen was being set or there was an open player. “I was so proud as a coach,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said. “That’s leadership, and that’s what we needed at that moment.” The Wolverines held on to win, 65-57, and despite Brown finishing with just six points in 19 minutes, her impact was stamped on the game’s outcome. Michigan State coach Suzy Merchant said after the game that the Spartans may have been better off if Brown didn’t get into foul trouble because freshman center Izabel Varejão scored more than her. But as big of an influence as

ERIN KIRKLAND/Daily

Junior forward Hailey Brown often makes an understated impact on the game.

Brown had while on the bench, her presence was felt when she was on the court. Brown doesn’t always light up the stat sheet. She’s fourth on the team in scoring and fifth in rebounding. While she’s Michigan’s best 3-point shooter — shooting 36.4 percent from beyond the arc — opportunities from deep aren’t always plentiful in an offense that runs through Hillmon in the paint. Sunday, when points were hard to come by for Brown, she made her impact doing what she does best: anchoring the interior of the Wolverines’ defense, making it difficult for opposing players to get easy shots near the basket. The two players that Brown guarded most, Kayla Belles and Taiyier Parks, combined for just three points, and Michigan State as a whole shot 11-for-32 on layups. “She brings that edge, that grit, she wants to guard the best post player,” sophomore guard Amy Dilk said. “She takes on the challenge each and every night. She’s a great defensive player for us.” Brown seamlessly switched off screens, preventing Michigan State players from getting separation. Midway through the fourth quarter, with four fouls and Michigan

leading by four, Belles set a screen up top for Spartans guard Nia Clouden. But Clouden couldn’t get anywhere near the basket as Brown forced her to the corner without committing a foul. When players did get free in the paint for open looks, Brown sent their shots right back. Early in the third quarter, Ozment got free from Hillmon on the baseline, and Brown came out of nowhere to reject what would have been an easy layup, her second of two blocks on the night. “She’s been one of our biggest helps on defense, really trying to clog up the paint … blocking a lot of shots and just altering everybody’s shot in there,” Hillmon said. “It was tough, having her in foul trouble.” With Brown on the floor, Michigan State’s offense struggled to get into a rhythm. It was no coincidence that the Spartans’ two highest scoring quarters were the two that Brown only played three minutes in. Brown’s impact this season has gone unnoticed at times. But despite what the box score or Merchant said on Sunday, her role in the Wolverines’ win — both on the court and from the bench — was unquestionable.

She brings that edge ... she wants to guard the best player.