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Four women allege sexual misconduct against former Michigan tight end Mustapha Muhammad ETHAN SEARS & SAMMY SUSSMAN Managing Sports Editor & Daily Staff Reporter
Content warning: This story contains descriptions of alleged sexual misconduct, and may be distressing for some readers. In the summer of 2018, Addy Walker found herself alone with Mustapha Muhammad in his Alice Lloyd dorm room. At the time, Muhammad was an incoming freshman on the Michigan football team. He was also in Walker’s Comprehensive Studies Program. A few hours earlier, Walker had confided in Muhammad that she was a survivor of sexual assault. She had shown him and a few other friends a tattoo on her left forearm inspired by one Lady Gaga got in solidarity with other sexual assault survivors. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Walker, now an LSA sophomore, said Muhammad began their encounter by kissing her with her consent. But she alleged that he soon began touching her without her consent. “He got on top of me and got really aggressive,” Walker said. “ … And I said no many times. ‘No, no, no, stop. No, no.’ And he would not stop.” Walker remembers Muhammad bringing up his status as a football player in response to her repeatedly saying “no.” “Really, you don’t want to do it with a U of M football player?” she recalls him saying. Walker told her roommate about the incident soon after leaving Muhammad’s dorm room. They both decided Walker should not report the alleged sexual misconduct to the University — they feared Muhammad’s standing as an incoming football player would affect the school’s response.
In an interview with The Daily, Walker’s roommate recalled their conversation about potentially reporting the incident. Walker’s roommate requested anonymity, citing privacy concerns. “Because he was a football player … she was scared what would happen if she had spoken about it, whether it be him hurting her … (or) any retaliation from the University,” Walker’s roommate said. Walker is not alone. An investigation by The Daily uncovered four previously undisclosed allegations against Muhammad ranging from sexual harassment to misconduct, including stalking dorm residents and unwanted touching. The Daily also found evidence the University was made aware of at least two of these alleged incidents in January 2019 in a report submitted to residence hall staff about accusations of sexual harassment. It is unclear if the University began an investigation into this report or if a finding was ever reached. Muhammad did not reply to multiple texts and emails from The Daily requesting comment for this article. Another female dorm resident alleged that she had a similar experience with Muhammad a few months after Walker. This former resident requested anonymity, citing privacy concerns. In this article, she will be referred to as Jane. Jane first met Muhammad during the summer term. She lived near him in Alice Lloyd Residence Hall — her room was across the hall from Walker’s. One night in November 2018, Muhammad invited Jane to his dorm room in West Quad Residence Hall. His roommate was out for the weekend. They began watching a
movie together. “He was just, like, asking me questions, like if I had a boyfriend, was I interested in having a boyfriend,” Jane recalled. “And I just said I wasn’t really interested.” About 20 minutes later, Jane alleged that Muhammad began touching her arms. “He was … touching my arms and my stomach,” Jane said. “And then he, like, as time (progressed) … he kept moving to places I didn’t want to be touched.” Jane remembered repeatedly motioning for Muhammad to stop touching her. “Every time I would try to move his hands, he would move them back,” Jane said. “And then eventually it just got to the point where he actually, like, put my hands on his penis. And I was just like, I’m not — that’s not cool.” Jane left Muhammad’s dorm room that night determined never to speak with him again. Though she continued to see him around campus and some of her friends continued to interact with him, she avoided speaking with him at all costs. Jane remembers struggling to share her story with her friends. In the few instances that she did tell her story to someone else, they said they had heard similar rumors about Muhammad. “I told a few friends, not in detail … maybe like three or four months later,” Jane said. “When I did tell them more of the details, they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, you have to watch out for him … he has the reputation for doing that.’” Walker’s roommate confirmed the content of these rumors. She remembers hearing them while living near Muhammad during her freshman year. See ALLEGATIONS, Page 3
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GEO votes to strike in Bridge Scholars Program protest of fall reopening becomes increasingly white
Graduate Employees’ Organization members held a “die-in” on the Diag to protest the University’s reopening.
Frustrated with administration’s plan for a hybrid semester, Changing demographics alter the make-up of an initiative graduate students’ union plans for a major work stoppage originally established to help Black students thrive at the ‘U’ DOMINIC COLETTI Daily Staff Reporter
The Graduate Employees’ Organization, which represents more than 2,000 graduate student instructors and graduate student staff assistants, announced Monday that its members have voted to strike in response to the University of Michigan’s fall reopening plans. This move could substantially disrupt academic operations through the course of next week. This is
the first GEO strike since 1975. In a press release announcing the strike, which is set to begin Tuesday, GEO noted the gravity of the decision. According to the release, 79 percent of GEO voters supported the work stoppage. “This is an historic moment; GEO membership has voted to strike in the middle of a pandemic at the beginning of the academic year, and is prepared to withhold our labor in pursuit of a safe and just campus for all,” the statement
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read. In a Twitter thread outlining its plans, GEO said the union will hold an emergency virtual general membership meeting Monday night ahead of the strike, which will feature both in-person and remote components. “Much of our picketing will be in person, and we’ll make sure that safety is paramount. Masks are required, and we’ll be physically distant on the picket line,” one tweet read. See STRIKE, Page 3
PARNIA MAZHAR Daily Staff Reporter
A program started in the 1970s to help Black students adjust to life at the University of Michigan — a predominately white institution — has become increasingly white itself in recent years. The Summer Bridge Scholars Program grew out of Black student activism at the University and was created for Black students. But in recent years, white students made up the largest portion of the program’s
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participants, according to Kierra Trotter, director of the Comprehensive Studies Program. To Black students like LSA sophomore Rhianna Womack, a Bridge participant in 2019, the changing demographics of the program are disheartening. “Having something made for you because of all of the historical … discrimination, but then seeing that one thing being taken away or being limited, it’s pretty messed up,” Womack said. “It’s something that a lot of white students even don’t understand.” Established in 1975, the Bridge
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program emerged from the efforts of Black student activists in the 1960s and 1970s. Students held protests demanding that the University increase Black student enrollment to 10 percent — a goal that administration never achieved. As a result of these and other protests, Black faculty fought for the creation of programs like the Comprehensive Studies Program and Bridge that focused on Black students’ education and transition into the University.
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LSA professor Bob King nominated Senator Bernie Sanders for presidency at the 2020 Democratic National Debate.
UAW head, LSA prof. Bob King has ‘always been a movement builder’ King, who teaches social theory and practice in the Residential College, spoke at the DNC to nominate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president JULIA FORREST Daily Staff Reporter
Three weeks ago, LSA professor Bob King, the former president of the United Auto Workers, heard his phone buzz. When he picked it up, he saw an incoming call from his longtime friend Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., the liberal firebrand and former Democratic presidential candidate. Sanders asked if King would speak at the 2020 Democratic National Convention the upcoming week to nominate him for president. It was an offer King couldn’t pass up. “He personally called me,” said King, who teaches social theory and practice in the Residential College. “I told him I’d be honored to do it. I thought there might be some other people who would be better. But he said, ‘No, I’d like you to do it.’” Given their shared history fighting for workers’ rights, it made sense that Sanders picked King to nominate him at the convention. While nominating the senator, King praised Sanders, calling him a “great champion of the working class.” King grew up in the Midwest, right in the middle of the nation’s automotive capital. But it wasn’t until college that King found himself working part-time summer jobs in auto factories in Metro Detroit. He strapped on steel-toed boots every day to head to work and got to know his blue-collar coworkers. Through conversations with his colleagues, King learned about the injustices faced by middleclass workers and the need for strong labor unions to organize employees. “A lot of the people I worked with didn’t have college educations or anything, but they were in many ways wiser, smarter than people who had a greater form of (education),” King said. “And then watching the struggles over the years, seeing what it took to really make change. It’s all played a role (in my life).” King completed two years of study at Holy Cross College in Indiana before transferring to the University of Michigan, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science. It was at Holy Cross, however, that King said he took classes that — like his conversations in the auto plant — helped to cement the core beliefs that guided him through his later work in the labor movement. “I took a French course by a Jesuit who really taught (me) …
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the way you have value in life is you raise human dignity and lessen human suffering,” King said. “And at the same time, I was taking a theology course from a person who believes in liberation theology and (in) the importance of caring about others. Life was about both kinds of ideas.” Those experiences in the classroom and from his summer jobs stuck with King after graduation as he joined the workforce. In 1970, he took
But when the Great Recession hit in 2008, the UAW lost more than 75,000 members as major auto companies like General Motors, Chrysler and Ford either went into or were threatened with bankruptcy and had to lay off thousands of workers. King said the experience tested his leadership. “Everybody had to be part of the plan. It was a very collaborative effort which did say something,” King said. “… (But) if the members didn’t
“I hope that in working with students and working with unions in the area that we really do build up a movement that will demand and achieve a much, much more fairer society.”
on a full-time job at Ford’s River Rouge Complex while completing a law degree at the University of Detroit Mercy. While working at the plant, he also joined a labor union — the United Auto Workers union Local 600 — and became president in 1984. King served two terms as president, chairing the UAWFord Negotiating Committee during his second term. Both positions allowed him to organize and mobilize union workers in the area to fight for their rights. In 1989, King became director of Region 1A, an administrative unit of UAW encompassing several counties across Michigan. He served three terms in this role, which he said was one of the most rewarding experiences of his career. “In that whole time, it was always a core part of what I believed — getting members more involved and getting into it — demonstrations, rallies, striking for recognition (in) places that weren’t organized yet,” King said. Nine years after becoming the regional director, King was elected vice president of UAW. At the time, he was still heading their National Organizing Department, a position he had been appointed to the year prior. During his tenure as vice president, King helped to attract more than 60,000 new members in the first eight years.
have a union, the company would have just unilaterally made changes (and) would not have had to step up and be transparent about what every stakeholder was doing.” “The loudest part of the discussions and negotiations were getting commitments from the companies to agree that with the turnaround, massive investments would go into UAW facilities in the United States. We kept a lot of jobs in our country (and) saved communities,” King added. After pushing through the financial crisis, King became UAW president. King’s predecessor, Ron Gettelfinger, told The New York Times in an interview he was thrilled to see King take over his position. “There is no question in my mind Bob King will be the right person to lead this union forward,” Gettelfinger said. “He is relentless and tenacious. Bob will move forward an agenda that will benefit all of our union, and he is a great negotiator.” King described being UAW president as the capstone of his union career, helping build up the international network of workers from the Big Three and pushing for increased worker protections. “The UAW members have a lot of courage, a lot of fight, so representing them was such an honor,” King said. After serving decades in the UAW, King decided to shift gears
and inspire the next generation of the movement by becoming a lecturer at the University. He also took on leading roles in a number of organizations, including the Lecturer’s Employee Organization, One University Campaign and the student-led Climate Action Movement. “I really appreciate and enjoy the classes I’ve done at the University of Michigan and continuing to do classes and workshops within the labor movement,” King said. “Getting the opportunity to sit down with students and/or sit down with workers and talk about important issues (and) have discussions where we’re all learning from each other — that’s really fantastic.” King said he hopes his work helps further the labor movement. “I hope that in working with students and working with unions in the area that we really do build up a movement that will demand and achieve a much, much more fairer society,” King said. LSA senior Amytess Girgis spoke to The Daily about her experiences with King while working with him on both the One University Campaign and LEO. She said he stayed committed to cultivating an atmosphere where both students and school administrators felt heard and tried to push for change. “Every time we go into these meetings (with administrators), we’re told that our ideas are great but it wouldn’t work because of X reason,” Girgis said. “And the fact that someone like Bob continues to come to the table and says, ‘No, this will work. You just need to rearrange your priorities and values in order to put your money where your mouth is.’ The fact that he’s continually able to do that really encourages us to be more confident in what we know is right.” Whether speaking to millions of viewers across the nation, a room of labor union organizers or a classroom of two dozen people, King has dedicated his life to furthering the fight for workers’ rights. “In some ways, I’ve always been a movement builder,” King said. “I really fully understand that you never get change if you don’t build the grassroots movement that developed over a number of years.” Daily Staff Reporter Julia Forrest can be reached at juforres@umich.edu.
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STRIKE From Page 1 The strike will be time-limited and run until Friday, with the potential for reauthorization if the University does not meet the organization’s demands. GEO is asking for the diversion of funds from the Division of Public Safety and Security and more COVID-19 protections, such as the right to work remotely for all graduate student instructors, more transparency in opening plans and protection from hiring discrimination for those who wish to work remotely amid the pandemic. GEO’s press release said policing and COVID-19 are closely linked. “We highlight that GEO views our anti-policing demands as inseparable from our COVID demands,” the release read. “They are linked explicitly, through the University’s decision to expand the policing of our community in a perverse effort to enforce social distancing, and implicitly, through the ways the crises of the pandemic and racist policing both disproportionately affect the most vulnerable among us.” GEO has called for a “safe and just” response to the pandemic and held a “die-in” last week to protest the in-residence semester. Local leadership came to the decision to hold a strike vote amid concerns the University was not adequately responding to their demands. GEO Secretary Amir Fleischmann, a Rackham student, told The Daily the organization’s bargaining team felt continued negotiation would be futile. “It’s the feeling of our bargaining team that there was not much more progress to be made at the bargaining table,” Fleischmann said. “And that’s why we feel it’s necessary to resort to these tactics. Because the University has shown that it’s not really been willing to compromise on a lot of these issues.” GEO’s announcement comes on Labor Day, a federal holiday in honor of American workers. The strike follows the ratification of the union’s new three-year contract with the University in April. In an email to The Daily, University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald pointed out that GEO striking violates both the union’s contract and state law. “The state of Michigan prohibits public employees from striking,” Fitzgerald wrote. “GEO’s contract with U-M also prohibits the union and GSIs and GSSAs from taking part in any action or interference with the operations of the university, such as failing to report for duty or the failure to perform their employment duties.”
ALLEGATIONS From Page 1 “I’ve had quite a few people (come to me) about something he has done,” Walker’s roommate said. “And they always asked me to keep it confidential, which is why I never spoke up.” Two others accused Muhammad of stalking them in their residence halls. A year after the alleged incident with Jane, Muhammad was living in West Quad in an all-male hall adjacent to a mixed-gender hall. In January 2019, Muhammad allegedly harassed two female West Quad residents living near his room, according to a report filed with residential staff. Though the specifics of this alleged harassment remain unclear, it was characterized to the University as “stalking.” One person with knowledge of this incident spoke to The Daily, corroborating the nature of the alleged harassment. The Daily was also able to verify the content of the report. Muhammad continued to live near these residents for the remainder of the year. The Daily could not determine what steps, if any, the University took to investigate this complaint. In November 2019, Muhammad announced he was entering the transfer portal to leave the University ten months after the report was filed. Though he was reported to have transferred to the University of Houston, a spokesperson for Houston
Fitzgerald said GEO had raised a variety of issues that “cannot be resolved as a matter of their contract or through a collective bargaining procedure.” He added that the University still intends to move forward with classes despite the strike. GEO’s press release accused the University of failing to discuss their members’ concerns about policing in tandem with demands involving the school’s response to COVID-19. “The University has again refused to bargain over these policing-related demands in our current impact bargaining negotiations, claiming that they are not relevant to University COVID-19 policies,” the release read. “GEO membership’s commitment to including antipolicing demands in our current stoppage platform demonstrates how urgent and linked our membership’s priorities are. The university administration has run roughshod over the lives of the community’s most vulnerable.” Some members of the University community have taken issue with the use of police officers to monitor student behavior for violations of social distancing guidelines as part of its Ambassador Program. Others worried the program didn’t have strong enough enforcement mechanisms. The University reversed course in response to the criticism. On Aug. 30, the University confirmed the program will no longer have sworn officers in patrolling teams. The teams still include unarmed members of the Division of Public Safety and Security. “As always, police may be called to activities that present a safety risk or are in violation of the law, but the idea is for Michigan Ambassadors to first proactively provide outreach in the community to communicate and remind students about public health best practices,” University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel wrote in a Sept. 3 email to students. Fleischmann said members are particularly frustrated by the University’s hesitance to address issues where it would not have to spend any additional money. “And in particular, some of these things are issues that would not cost the University a dime to implement,” Fleischmann said. “In particular, like the changes to the childcare subsidies that we’re asking for, or demilitarizing DPSS, that’s not something that would come out of the University’s budget. So there’s not really a good reason we can see for why they would do this aside from obstinacy.” GEO is associated with the American Federation for Teachers, which announced in July it will support “local and/ or state affiliate safety strikes on a case-by-case basis as a last
resort.” The Lecturers Employee Organization, a union representing non-tenure track faculty at the University, expressed support for GEO’s decision, claiming similar frustrations with the administration in a statement. “Like our graduate student colleagues, LEO condemns the way the Administration has mismanaged the return to classes this Fall: employees, including Lecturers, were not properly consulted; information about the Fall plan, and internal disagreements over it, have been withheld; and the testing regime in place appears inadequate to the task of keeping students and employees safe,” the statement reads. “We stand in solidarity with GEO and all of the graduate student workers concerned for their lives and livelihoods, and encourage Lecturers to support their efforts.” The University of Michigan’s chapter of the College Democrats also rallied behind GEO, issuing a statement in support of the union and encouraging their members to sign up for picket shifts. “Unlike University ‘leaders,’ we are proud to stand behind GEO as they take the bold leadership required to protect the safety and well-being of our fellow students and the broader Washtenaw County community,” the statement read. Ryan Glauser, a member of GEO, took to Twitter on Saturday to express his frustration with the University for not meeting graduate students’ demands. “... Grad students have asked for help for months!” Glauser wrote. “When we asked for emergency funding, we were denied. When we asked for pay raises that match (University) documentation on living standard, we were given an inflation rate increase.” Glauser was not alone in using social media to promote the strike vote. Several GSIs spoke out in favor of the strike and encouraged their colleagues to participate. Former GEO member Jean Hardy, previously a PhD candidate in the School of Information and now an assistant professor at Michigan State University, described the strike as a question of protecting the University community. “My former union @UMich is voting on a strike in response to the university’s inability to protect its students, faculty, staff, and community members during the pandemic,” Hardy wrote on Twitter. “As an alum (because I can say that now), the way the university is handling this crisis is deplorable.”
confirmed that he never enrolled there. Instead, he transferred to Kilgore Community College in Texas. It is unclear if his initial transfer, or his detachment from Houston, is related to this report. Jimmy Rieves, the athletic director at Kilgore Community College, confirmed that Muhammad was enrolled at the school this past spring and summer. “We didn’t have any knowledge of the allegations,” Rieves wrote in an email to The Daily. “He was referred to us by another 4 year school that had recruited him and they didn’t have enough scholarship money for him to attend their institution.” However, Rieves noted Muhammad would no longer be enrolled as of this fall. “He is not going to be enrolled here this Fall, not because of any disciplinary reasons,” Rieves wrote. It is also unclear if Muhammad’s decision to transfer from the University was based on this report of alleged sexual harassment. In an email to The Daily, University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald explained that the University is prohibited by both federal law and University policy from confirming or discussing allegations of sexual misconduct against students. Fitzgerald said “all student matters are handled” in accordance with the University’s policy on student sexual and gender-based misconduct.
“Similarly, all allegations of sexual misconduct reported to Athletics, Housing or any individual or unit at the University with reporting obligations would be referred to the Office for Institutional Equity for review,” Fitzgerald added. Football spokesperson David Ablauf and athletic department spokesperson Kurt Svoboda both forwarded The Daily’s questions to Fitzgerald. “We can tell you that all student matters are handled in the same manner. There is no difference in the process for student athletes or any other subset of the student body,” Fitzgerald wrote. Fitzgerald stressed the importance of reporting allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct to the University. “I also would emphasize how important it is that sexual misconduct be reported to the University and to OIE,” Fitzgerald said. “We want everyone to report any activity they believe may be a violation of our policies so those actions can be evaluated and addressed appropriately.” The football program has worked to increase awareness of the systemic problem of sexual misconduct on college campuses and in college athletics, specifically. Shortly after the alleged incident with Walker in summer 2018, Brenda Tracy, sexual assault survivor and activist, came to the University to speak to the football team. Photographs from that night show Muhammad was present for Tracy’s talk.
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SCHOLARS From Page 1 The programs were initially created “to give students— primarily in-state minority students from inner-city high schools—an opportunity to attend the University of Michigan during the summer to achieve a solid academic foundation for success in the fall term.” State law prohibits colleges from taking race into account in the admissions process. Michigan voters approved Proposal 2 in 2006, which prevents state entities, including the University, from giving individuals “preferential treatment” based on their “race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.” The United States Sixth Court of Appeals later overturned the proposal, but in April 2014, the appeal’s court ruling was reversed and the U.S. Supreme Court determined the law was constitutional. Though the University was prohibited from considering race and ethnicity when accepting students into CSP following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the proposal, Black students still made up the largest proportion of Bridge students. But for unclear reasons, in 2018, the demographics shifted, marking the first year white students made up the largest racial group in the program. As the program becomes increasingly white, some are calling out the demographic shift on social media. In a post on @ blackatmichigan, an Instagram page that posts submissions from Black students, alumni, faculty and staff at the University, “a fed up Bridge kid” said they were angered by the falling percentage of Black students in Bridge. Changing Demographics in the Comprehensive Studies Program The University’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions places selected applicants into one of two CSP programs over the summer: the CSP Summer Program or the Summer Bridge Scholars Program. The two programs have moderately different requirements, but “the intent behind both is the same,” according to Trotter. In 2020, there were 310 people total between the two programs, according to the University’s Office of Public Affairs. According to Public Affairs, Bridge was composed of 47.4 percent African American students and 18.7 percent white students in 2016. Those demographics changed to 21.6 percent African American and 39.8 percent white in 2019. White students made up the largest racial group in Bridge that year. CSP combined Bridge and CSP Summer in 2020 due to COVID-
In 1998, two members of the Oregon State University football team raped Tracy. She now talks to athletic programs, fraternities and other organizations about ending the culture of sexual violence in collegiate and athletic settings. At the time, her speech to the football team in September 2018 drew praise from football coach Jim Harbaugh. “It was an amazing experience,” Harbaugh said on his Attack Each Day podcast. “She shared her story with our team and was very powerful. Her courage is at a level it’s hard to even imagine. A remarkable story which she’s been able to overcome. So many things came out of that meeting.” In a recent interview with The Daily, Tracy explained that though she felt her conversations with the football players were productive, she was not surprised by the allegations against a former member of the team. “It was a good visit,” Tracy said. “And you hope that these things don’t happen. But they do, unfortunately. And that’s probably one of the most frustrating things about the work I do … No matter how hard I work, someone is going to be hurt.” Tracy ends every talk with a call to action, including asking her audience to sign her “Set the Expectation” pledge. For men’s teams, the pledge includes a commitment not to engage in “harmful behavior such as rape, sexual assault, physical violence, domestic/dating violence, stalking, bullying, hazing and
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 3 19, Trotter said. This summer in the combined programs, Black students made up 27.3 percent of students and white students made up 36.7 percent, once again making white students the largest racial group in CSP. According to Trotter, firsttime, first-year students and transfer students are eligible to be admitted into the program. Students told The Daily the University said the program was mandatory in order for them to attend the school in the fall. If students are not initially admitted into the program by OUA, they can also apply for CSP affiliation later on, according to Trotter. Erica Sanders, director of undergraduate admissions, said her office does not consider race and gender in the application review process for CSP, in compliance with Michigan state law. According to Sanders, the department looks at the entirety of a student’s application and considers many aspects of their background to determine if they should be in CSP. “Information shared in the student’s application materials indicated the program would provide a positive impact on her transition to the University of Michigan campus community,” Sanders said. Art & Design sophomore Nicholos Daniel, who participated in CSP Summer in 2019, said the University must begin changing whom it accepts into the program. “They need to reevaluate who gets admitted to the Bridge program and who doesn’t get admitted,” Daniel said. “This program is made for minority Black students. So to see majority white students attending the programs made for Black students, that’s an issue within itself that needs to be addressed.” Some Black students said they felt less comfortable in the program as the number of white students has overtaken that of Black students. Womack said she found herself changing her behaviors because she was afraid of being judged by her white peers. “Even just picking out what you eat, you don’t want to relate to any stereotypes,” Womack said. “That’s something that I shouldn’t have had to do, but it’s definitely something that’s always on my mind. Just noticing who’s around me, what they might be thinking, definitely because of my race and just how I wore my hair, just lots of things.” Inside the Bridge and CSP Summer Experience Many Black students said they felt CSP benefitted them both academically and socially. Daniel said Bridge gave him the tools he needed to feel prepared for the University.
“For me, it definitely was beneficial, just because I am a very energetic, outgoing person and it definitely did help me get used to college,” Daniel said. “It helped me in terms of adjusting and getting to know the do’s and don’ts and where to go for certain resources and stuff.” Other Black students required to participate in the program did not find it as helpful. LSA junior Rochelle Sims, who was in the CSP Summer Program in 2018, said she did not understand why the Office of Undergraduate Admissions placed her into CSP because she felt like her high school prepared her for the University. “I feel like they want Bridge to help you transition into college life, and I didn’t think I needed that,” Sims said. “In the fall, I didn’t use CSP programs or anything like that, and I did fine, I aced my classes and everything … I just felt like it just got me familiar to the campus and some of the resources that the University had to offer.” Rackham student Michole Washington, a former CSP math instructor, said while programs like CSP Summer and Bridge can be beneficial in helping some students of color transition to college, the University should not assume that because a student is a minority, they automatically need additional academic support. “In my research right now I’ve been wondering … what is happening in these Bridge programs when you’re saying, ‘Oh, this is for Black students,’ and you’re just assuming that all Black students are at the same academic ability?” Washington asked. Many Black students, regardless of their background, agreed that the program should increase the number of Black faculty members teaching the courses. Five students told The Daily they had either one or no Black instructors during their program. According to Trotter, in summer 2020, 25 percent of the Bridge faculty identified as Black. Daniel said he and many of his Black peers had trouble relating to the way one of his white instructors spoke about transitioning to the University. “They were talking about … adjusting to college as if I came from this home where I had a mom and a dad in the house where we had decent income,” Daniel said. “Like it was plenty of people who kind of felt uncomfortable because they did not fit the criteria that (the teacher) was talking about when it came to adjusting to college.”
taking or sharing photos and videos of a sexually explicit/ violent nature,” with a penalty of dismissal from the team. The Michigan football team did not sign Tracy’s pledge at the end of her visit. She explained that while she speaks at many football programs, few agree to sign. “It’s interesting that some coaches sign and some coaches don’t have their players sign,” Tracy said. “And I think that different coaches are in different places of accountability, what they’re willing to do and not willing to do. And so I’m not making a formal statement about anybody, but there is a certain level of commitment that comes with making your players sign the pledge. Because once you’ve signed it, then we can expect accountability.” The Michigan football team invited Tracy back to speak in 2019, but still has not signed her pledge. “I hope that someday coach Harbaugh will have his players sign,” Tracy said. “That’s my hope. But I can’t make him do it. But hopefully, someday we get to that point where he’s ready to do that.” Given Muhammad’s status as a football player, Tracy said she understood why two alleged survivors declined to report allegations of sexual misconduct to the University. “This culture of survivors being afraid to come forward against football players is something we really have to work on,” Tracy said. “That doesn’t surprise me
… that you had survivors who are afraid to come forward against really high profile athletes.” Walker’s roommate expressed concern at what she described as Muhammad’s belief that being a football player entitled him to sex. “I remember her telling me that he had said to her that … he didn’t think that she could come into a football player’s room and not do something,” Walker’s roommate said. Jane recalled speaking with friends on other athletic teams about Muhammad. She was shocked at their knowledge of rumors about Muhammad’s alleged behavior. “They said, ‘Oh, yes, he has a reputation,’” Jane remembered her friends saying. “All the girls in the athletic field try to avoid him.” Walker said she wishes she had acted on her allegations sooner. “Now that I know there’s been other girls, I really regret not coming forward when I should have,” Walker said. “I didn’t want to go through reporting and answering questions and doing all this and that. But now that it’s been a good amount of time ... and I’m hearing about these other girls that have been affected, I’m absolutely willing to come forward with them.” Daniel Dash and Arthur Potter contributed reporting to this story. Managing Sports Editor Ethan Sears and Daily Staff Reporter Sammy Sussman can be reached at searseth@michigandaily.com and sbsu@michigandaily.com.
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News
4 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
GOP Regent candidates run on pro-life, pro-2A agenda Republican hopefuls look to unseat Democratic incumbents LEAH GRAHAM, EMMA STEIN & LIAT WEINSTEIN
Managing News Editor & Daily News Editors
FILE PHOTO/Daily Michigan and Ohio Democrats come together to agree that President Trump’s response to COVID-19 caused the Big Ten presiden’ts decision to postpone athetlics this fall.
MI, OH Dems put rivalry aside to criticize Trump for fall without football
Politicians pinpoint administration’s response to COVID-19 as cause of Big Ten presidents’ decision to postpone athletics SARAH PAYNE
Daily Staff Reporter
The University of Michigan’s football rivalry with Ohio State University’s spans more than a century. This year, the two teams will not have the opportunity to play after Big Ten presidents and chancellors, including University President Mark Schlissel, announced that the season would be postponed with hopes of assembling a spring schedule. Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, brother of Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh, has continued to advocate for a football season, telling reporters Wednesday, “Free the Big Ten. Let’s go. Let’s go play some football.” Jim Harbaugh has loudly advocated for playing football this fall, releasing a lengthy statement citing his team’s low positive test rate last month. On Saturday, Jim Harbaugh attended a protest organized by Michigan football parents calling for a fall football season. “Free the Big Ten, like my brother John Harbaugh said,” Jim Harbaugh told reporters. “I mean, (it) says it all. We want to be free to play.” Schlissel was one of the Big Ten presidents who voted in favor of putting off the fall season. In an August statement, Schlissel noted there were “too many poorly understood health and safety concerns unique to intercollegiate athletics to move forward with practices and competition at present.” On Saturday, Jim Harbaugh said he “would have rather been coming to a game than a rally,” adding that “We should’ve been playing a game today.” While the Harbaughs criticize the Big Ten, local politicians and university chapters of College Democrats in both Michigan and Ohio are shifting the blame to the Trump administration. In a virtual press conference Friday morning, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein and students from universities across Michigan and Ohio criticized the Trump administration’s pandemic response while endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden’s policies and campaign. Trump has been in
contact with Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren recently, discussing how the conference can resume playing as soon as possible. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that discussions put them on “the one yard line.” At the press conference Friday, Dingell described her love for Michigan football and her disappointment in the canceled season. “There’s nothing better on a Saturday than a Big Ten football game,” Dingell said. “Quite frankly, I like football more than I like politics and suddenly we don’t have a season this fall ... the way that COVID has been handled from the very beginning is determining what’s happening in this country.” Dingell said she wears a mask and practices physical distancing to lead by example. Trump has wavered on supporting COVID-19 precautions such as masks and distancing. Most recently, the majority of attendees did not practice these safety precautions at the Republican National
coming together to discuss COVID-19 policies and the importance of economic recovery. “The greatest rivalry in college sports: Ohio State versus Michigan in football,” Klein said. “The fact that we’re coming together to talk about the importance of COVID, recovery, sports, the economy, our health I think is really summed up in the cancellation of a football season.” Klein said college sports have a massive impact not only on universities themselves but on their surrounding communities as well. “Our economy is failing and we have no football,” Klein said. “All of that is because of failed presidential leadership. The economy is COVID and COVID is the economy and until the president of the United States recognizes it for what it’s worth and takes it seriously ... not only are we not going to have football, we’re not going to have the economic rebound for the families that deserve it.” Ben Schuster, Business senior at the University of Michigan and presidential campaign organizing director for Ohio students, spoke about Trump’s slow pandemic response, saying Trump failed to heed warnings from scientists about the impact of the virus. “Donald Trump did not take the steps that we need(ed) to control this pandemic,” Schuster said. “He’s had six months to come up with a plan but instead he’s ignored warnings, downplayed the threat COVID-19 poses and attacked social distancing measures that would have slowed the spread.” Schuster said he is disappointed by the lack of action from Trump on policy issues pertaining to COVID19. “I take this rivalry very seriously and Trump always says he’s doing something to get football back but he isn’t,” Schuster said. “Like always, he is tweeting demands with no follow-through.” Managing Sports Editor Ethan Sears contributed reporting. Daily Staff Reporter Sarah Payne can be reached at paynesm@umich.edu
“I take this rivalry very seriously and Trump always says he’s doing something to get football back, but he isn’t.”
Convention. She acknowledged the frustration of both players and fans and addressed the economic strain these decisions put on towns like Ann Arbor. “Our college athletes are upset,” Dingell said. “Do you know what this does to a town like Ann Arbor and the surrounding communities or any of the other Big Ten hometowns? It hurts those small businesses and there’s no question — what we don’t need is a president playing politics with a very f lammable situation.” Klein, an alum of Ohio State University, said he was disappointed about the cancellation of the fall season but celebrated the two states
The Michigan Republican Party announced Sarah Hubbard and Carl Meyers as its candidates for the University of Michigan Board of Regents this weekend. They will face off against incumbents Shauna Ryder Diggs (D) and Mark Bernstein (D) in the November general election. Currently, Regent Ron Weiser is the only Republican serving on the board. Meyers, a longtime political operative and former Michigan Republican Party treasurer, ran unsuccessfully for regent in 2004 and 2016. He also made a bid for the position in 2014 but did not receive enough votes at the state nominating convention. Meyers, a U-M Dearborn alum, is currently the senior vice president of Investments at Raymond James. Meyers thanked the Republican Party for the nomination in a Facebook post and said if elected, he wants to freeze tuition at the University. “After all athletes are back on the field and students back in the classroom, my first order of business will be to propose a freeze in tuition,” Meyers wrote. “Yes, freeze tuition … U of M is now one of the most expensive public universities in the country. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board chose to raise tuition costs … this is just wrong.” In 2016, his platform focused on fiscal conservatism, budget transparency and accessibility. His priorities for 2020 are similar, noting the need for financial discipline in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Meyers’s pre-convention campaign statement, Meyers’s campaign has raised a total of $179.68 in contributions and other receipts, all of which came from Meyers himself. Meyers did not respond immediately to request for comment.
Hubbard, his co-challenger and University alum, is a small-business owner and has experience working in Republican politics. According to her campaign website, she will try to lower tuition by taking efforts to “rein in out of control spending.” The website also notes that she wants the University to reopen for in-person classes amid the pandemic and emphasizes the need to promote freedom of speech on campus, claiming that conservative voices are “consistently mocked and stymied, even to the point of being banned” on campus. In an interview with The Daily, Hubbard said her Republican values informed her campaign for regent. “I’m conservative, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment — that’s something that just as a regent I think is important and a matter of representing the Republican Party,” Hubbard said. “But as far as issues before the Board of Regents, I haven’t really had a chance to look at those and how it applies at this point.” Hubbard expressed support for the University’s decision to bring students back to campus for a hybrid semester, a decision that has sparked criticism from both students and faculty. “It’s important that students be back at school and I admire the fact that the University has found a way to bring kids back to the dorms,” Hubbard said. “I also wish that we could move forward with a football season, just like a lot of our peers are across the country. Unfortunately, the Big Ten made this decision to basically cancel football … and it’s too bad because it plays such an important role for the entire athletic system at Michigan as well as the University as a whole.” The Big Ten has not canceled the season entirely. Instead, the season is tentatively postponed, though the organization has not said how long this postponement will be. According to campaign finance documents filed prior to the convention, Hubbard’s campaign has raised a total
of $2,675 in contributions and other receipts. Of that, $1,000 came from her father, Jerry Hubbard, who previously served as a supervisor of Branch County Commissioner and Union Township. In addition to advocating for Second Amendment rights, Hubbard’s campaign website lists supporting anti-abortion voices on campus as a priority, a stance she doubled down on when speaking to The Daily. “I think it’s important for all voices, really, to be brought to the fore(front) related to discussions on campus,” Hubbard said. “It’s important to make sure everyone’s heard pro-life conservatives in classrooms, and that they are able to make sure that their points are made and that they’re understood, that there are several points of view on lots of different issues and we want to make sure that that kind of speech is protected.” In a June 2 Facebook post detailing his campaign priorities, Meyers also highlighted what he sees as the stif ling of conservative voices on campus. “From the Governor’s office to our universities, civil liberties are being eroded. I believe in protecting free speech on campus and assuring fair admissions for all,” Meyers wrote. “The University must foster an environment on campus where all students feel free and safe to express their thoughts and views, without fear of retribution from fellow students, faculty or the administration.” Meyers also acknowledged the difficulty of running against incumbents, arguing that the Democratic supermajority on the Board of Regents must go. “This is going to be a tough race…,” Meyers wrote. “I expect to be running against two sitting liberal Democratic incumbents. It’s going to be a real fight, but I’m up to the challenge!” Daily News Editors Liat Weinstein and Emma Stein can be reached at weinsl@umich. edu and enstein@umich.edu. Managing News Editor Leah Graham can be reached at leahgra@umich.edu.
Executive order clears way for reopening gyms, sports
Whitmer allows for some organized physical activities to resume BEN ROSENFELD Daily News Editor
Gyms and pools can reopen subject to restrictions to uphold public health protocols amid the COVID19 pandemic, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Thursday. Some organized sports will also be permitted to resume as part of the state’s gradual reopening process. Following the governor’s executive order, the University of Michigan’s Department of Recreational Sports announced plans to begin reopening its facilities to the campus community in the next several weeks. The department noted that the process would not take place immediately, nor without the proper health and safety measures recommended by state and federal officials. “The exact reopening dates for each facility will not be determined until we evaluate the amount of work still needed,” the update read. “We will then develop timelines for how quickly this work can be completed and ensure we can meet all additional state requirements.” In the press release,
Whitmer explained that her order is in accordance with the public-health informed policies her office has tried to pursue during the pandemic. “Throughout this pandemic, we have followed the best science and data available to make decisions that will keep Michiganders safe, and our hard work is paying off,” Whitmer said. “Today we are announcing the reopening of gyms and pools with strict safety measures in place to protect patrons and their families.” In an interview with The Daily, Mike Widen, director of recreational sports at the University, said the plan will be rolled out in phases and with students’ health in mind. “We put together a phased reopening plan that will include some reduced hours when we open,” Widen said. “We wanted to reduce the hours a little bit so we get a chance to really get some extra cleaning done in between times. Luckily we have three facilities in order to make that happen. So we’re gonna look at less hours per day for each facility but we’ll try to make sure that each facility, we get the most utilization time.”
In addition to frequent cleaning and spaced out exercise equipment, Widen said that intramural sports would occur in a safe manner, only with activities that allow for a greater degree of social distancing than the intramural sports students usually play “The intramural sports program is starting this fall with outdoor and virtual programs only,” Widen said. “So the outdoor programs will be those that we can physically distance, so we’re doing things like (for) basketball we’re playing HORSE instead of fiveon-five or three-on-three. We’re playing beanbags, we’re playing Kan Jam, we’re playing Pickleball, we’re playing singles tennis.” The Department of Recreational Sports anticipates needing time to fully reopen gyms in order to “complete the necessary hiring, training, maintenance and safety precautions to prepare our facilities to safely operate in a COVID19 public health informed environment.” Daily Staff Reporter Ben Rosenfeld can be reached at bbrosenf@umich.edu.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 5
Flint, Dearborn campuses talk familiarity with online teaching Both U-M locations offer centralized departments for virtual instruction AYSE ELDES
Daily Staff Reporter
Graphic courtesy of Web Team Student responses to the question ‘where will freshmen be in the fall?’
Meet the Class of 2024: Freshmen embark on unprecedented year
A survey from The Daily showcases first year students’ feelings, attitudes on topics ranging from social life, academics to responses to the global pandemic KRISTINA ZHENG Daily Staff Reporter
The Michigan Daily anonymously surveyed nearly 1,800 incoming University of Michigan freshmen to gauge their feelings on everything from schoolwork to social life as they begin college amid a global pandemic and period of social unrest. The unprecedented nature of 2020 is not the only thing that sets the incoming class apart. The University aimed to enroll approximately 7,200 students for the freshman class this fall, a 20 percent increase from the target class size six years ago. Out of the 65,899 total applicants for fall 2020, 17,054 were admitted and 7,188 matriculated as of July 26, according to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions student profile. The University admitted 25.88 percent of its applicants, compared to the 23 percent acceptance rate for the fall 2018 applicants reported by U.S. News & World Report. The fall 2020 incoming class earned a median high school GPA of 3.90, with a middle 50 percent range of 1380 to 1550 for the SAT and 32 to 35 for the ACT. University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald wrote in an email to The Daily that as of Aug. 19, 69 percent of undergraduate
classes will be taught remotely, and 31 percent will be taught in an in-person or hybrid format, not including independent study courses. The following data was collected from a survey sent to 6,685 freshmen on Aug. 10, which received a total of 1,785 responses over three weeks. Approximately 58 percent of those surveyed identified as female and approximately 41 percent identified as male, with 1 percent identifying as other. Fifty-three percent of respondents are from Michigan, while 44 percent hail from other states and 2 percent are international. CAMPUS LIFE Where will freshmen be in the fall? Despite close to 70 percent of undergraduate courses being taught remotely, 66 percent of incoming freshmen surveyed said they plan to be on campus in the fall, taking at least one in-person class. Another 18 percent of respondents said they will be living on campus and taking all online classes, and the other six percent reported they will live off-campus and take classes either online or in-person. Only 10 percent of those surveyed, on the other hand, will be completing coursework at home. How comfortable are incoming freshmen with
attending house parties in light of COVID-19? Results show 68.4 percent of respondents are either very or somewhat uncomfortable with attending house parties amid the pandemic. The other 31.7 percent are either somewhat or very comfortable. Of the freshmen who said they were somewhat or very comfortable with attending house parties, the majority of students were interested or very interested in Fraternity and Sorority Life. Concerns about students partying during the pandemic have been central to criticism of the University’s plan for reopening campus. Engineering freshman Catherine Jiang is an in-state student who is living in the dorms this semester. She said those going to parties during this time are neglecting to protect themselves and those around them. “If it was a normal college semester, going to parties is like whatever, that’s their prerogative — you can do whatever you want,” Jiang said. “But right now, if you’re going out to parties, you’re endangering people living around you, and you don’t know what situations they have at home. So it’s like endangering a much larger population. And I just don’t agree with people who
are willing to take that risk at this current state of the world.” How interested are incoming freshmen in Fraternity and Sorority Life? The University is home to more than 60 sororities and fraternities, and 17 percent of the undergraduate population is involved in Fraternity and Sorority Life. In recent months, certain FSL chapters have been the subject of increasing scrutiny from college communities for enacting exclusionary practices. LSA freshman Eliana Kraut said she is hoping to rush a sorority at some point in her college experience. She explained how the campus social life was one of the reasons why she decided to attend the University, but she said she would rather hold off until it is safe before going out. “That’s part of the reason I came to Michigan, among the really strong academics, really strong art side, the environment, football games — parties were part of it,” Kraut said. “So now, not having that kind of sucks, but at the same time, I’d rather it not happen until it’s safe, because otherwise we just risk being shut down and that would be so much worse.”
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When Nick Gaspar saw an article about the Chinese government’s rush to build a new Wuhan, China hospital in February, the University of Michigan-Flint distance learning director started silently working on a new website in February. Gaspar, an adjunct lecturer in nursing, didn’t think the page would ever be used, but in case the University suddenly moved to remote learning, he wanted faculty members to have a resource guide on what to do. He built what is now the Academic Continuity page on the U-M Flint website. The first item on the Academic Continuity page is a video Gaspar didn’t think anyone would see. A month later, Gaspar stood in a faculty meeting as everyone watched it. “Hello, I’m Nick Gaspar, director of the Office of Extended Learning,” he says in the video. “If you are watching this, then there is likely an emergency preventing you from teaching on campus.” Gaspar described the week of March 9 as exciting rather than troublesome. Because the University’s Flint and Dearborn campuses have regularly offered online courses each semester, many faculty members have previous experience teaching online. Both campuses also had centralized departments responsible for online instruction assistance before remote teaching became universal, which faculty said helped ease the transition. Jill Darling, a lecturer at the College of Arts, Sciences and Letters on the Dearborn campus, has been teaching online for nearly four years. Usually, she teaches one online section and three in-person sections of a writing course. “I was pretty comfortable with it, but also teaching online is so different than teaching in person,” Darling said. “It’s like you have to continually learn and improve the class every time.” This year, Darling gained access to Zoom to connect with students in her asynchronous classes. Rather than technical issues or online experience, Darling’s primary concern during the remote transition in the winter semester was her students’ well-being. Similarly, for Stevens Wandmacher, a philosophy lecturer on the Flint campus, the only difference this semester is teaching synchronously with Zoom. Wandmacher had been
teaching at least one online course each semester before COVID-19. He once had a former student take another course with him online because it fit the student’s schedule better. “We had all that, a wellestablished staff dedicated to those sorts of things for when COVID started, and people who had never taught online had to switch,” Wandmacher said. “We had people that were prepared to help them with experience and whatnot, and I think that helped us a lot in Flint.” This pivot felt more rigid for instructors on the Ann Arbor campus, according to Kirsten Herold, a lecturer at the School of Public Health who serves as the Lecturers’ Employee Organization vice president. Herold, whose union represents lecturers on all three campuses, said transitioning to online instruction has been particularly difficult for Ann Arbor faculty members, who have less experience with online teaching than faculty on the other campuses. “I think the main difference really was that Ann Arbor until this point had not really embraced online education,” Herold said. Looking back at the winter term, when faculty had five days to convert classes to online formats, Cindee Giffen, a Biology lecturer on the Ann Arbor campus, views that time as crisis management. When preparing to teach this semester, Giffen didn’t anticipate certain challenges — for example, the large time commitment needed to build an accessible online course. She spent nine weeks converting her Biology 171 course to a digital format over the summer. “I would say that what we were doing in March was emergency online teaching, it was not really possible for us to use good online pedagogy at that point,” Giffen said. “And so it was anxiety-inducing, it was difficult. It was learning a ton of new things all at once.” Giffen and her co-instructor recorded lectures, rewrote exams, edited old recordings, modified course content and added COVIDrelated material, split videos into smaller clips and wrote guiding questions to keep students focused during videos in preparation for fall semester, which she didn’t have time to do in March.
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Multiple residence halls confirm cases of COVID-19 South Quad, North Quad, Bursley relocate students with positive coronavirus tests following first week of classes JULIANNA MORANO Daily Staff Reporter
Multiple residents across three University of Michigan residence halls tested positive for COVID19 less than a week into the fall semester. One resident of South Quad Residence Hall, two residents of Bursley Residence Hall and one resident of North Quad Residence Hall tested positive for the virus over the weekend, according to notices from Danielle Sheen, executive director of the Environment, Health & Safety Department, obtained by The Michigan Daily. All four students were relocated from their respective residence halls after receiving their results, and spaces where they were present have been disinfected. University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald confirmed all four cases in an email to The Daily. He said the notifications to residents and staff of affected dorms are part of the University’s efforts to be proactive in informing the community
about the presence of the virus on campus. “Public health community notification is designed to proactively make the U-M community aware of positive cases on campus,” Fitzgerald wrote. “We are following our normal protocol for sharing publicly about potential exposures to infectious diseases, like COVID-19, mumps, norovirus.” Also according to protocol, Fitzgerald said residents and staff “identified as close contacts” of the four residents who tested positive were contacted separately by the Environment, Health & Safety Department and that those who did not receive a follow-up are considered at low risk of having been exposed. Fitzgerald did not confirm whether these four residents have been relocated to University Quarantine & Isolation Housing, which the University’s COVID19 dashboard shows to be at 5.8% occupancy currently with nine positive COVID-19 cases and 26 who were either exposed or await test results.
The list of positive cases in University Housing continues to grow with these four, after two cases were reported in West Quad Residence Hall during move-in week. The COVID-19 dashboard reflects an even greater total of 26 positive cases among students within the past 14 days. These additional cases are being reported less than two weeks after the majority of incoming residents moved into University residence halls. While University Housing made modifications to their move-in procedures to minimize exposure and crowding, several students told The Daily these precautions — such as limiting students to one guest to help them move and requiring masks in common areas — went unenforced. Residential staff voiced concerns prior to move-in and demanded increased protections for both themselves and their residents, such as an increase in testing, more personal protective equipment and bathroom sanitation to occur three times a day. Regarding the latter, Fitzgerald wrote that bathrooms in
DOMINICK SOKOTOFF/Daily
Cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed at North Quad, South Quad and Bursley Monday afternoon.
residence halls are “sanitized twice a day using EPA-regulated agents.” The University is also a week into its hybrid semester, with 31 percent of undergraduate classes featuring in-person or hybrid instructions. The partially in-person mode of instruction has drawn criticism as well from faculty in particular.
The Faculty Senate will meet next Wednesday to consider a vote of no confidence in the University administration regarding its fall reopening. Any member of the campus community with symptoms should contact University Health Service at 734-764-8320 for a free COVID-
19 test and isolate themselves. Those with mild symptoms can also use the University’s Online Assessment system to begin the testing process.
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6 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Michigan In Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Op-Ed: A call to end the Michigan Ambassadors program
Check out ‘Miseducation’
ALEC COHEN/ DAILY
BRITTANY BOWMAN Editorial Page Editor
Over the course of the last few months, The Daily summer staff collaborated to produce a special edition on systemic racism, titled “Miseducation.” Articles from all sections — including Michigan in Color, Opinion, The Statement, Sports, News, Arts and Photo — were curated and arranged into different categories with the ultimate goal to educate our community and report on the fight for racial justice in our country and across the world. Articles chosen to
best represent the special edition are centralized here on a Magnify website. Our mission statement: As students at the University of Michigan, we recognize that our newsroom, and the University, is a majority white, cis, ablebodied institution. We have taken this summer to create a collection of educational materials which dissect systemic tendencies and cultural norms which work in tandem to create racial inequality in America. We have sought to use writing, comics, graphics and video footage to discuss issues of education, policing, consumerism, slack-
SUDOKU
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
tivism, proper allyship, protests, abolition and privilege. This collection serves as a reminder to the student body, the University administration, the Washtenaw County community and the nation that this is a diseased system which we must invest in uprooting religiously. We hope “Miseducation” raises awareness and encourages readers to educate themselves, their peers, their family, colleagues and friends in regards to systemic oppression and injustice of Black and Brown individuals in the country. We also hope this challenges The Michigan Daily staff as a journalistic body to be
more representative and intentional with all of their articles and the information they extend to the community. Hopefully this project will ignite a passion to uphold this responsibility. Summer staff including Editor in Chief Emma Stein, Managing Editor Devak Nanua, Michigan in Color Managing Editors Gabrijela Skoko and Cheryn Hong and Editorial Page Editor Brittany Bowman played key roles in the production and curation of “Miseducation.” We also afford a great “thank you” to The Daily’s web team, for their hard work in creating the website.
Release Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 “The Grapes of Wrath” family name 5 Pay attention to 9 Havana houses 14 Court legend Arthur 15 On the ocean 16 Pixel pattern 17 *Feature of Santa Claus’ beard 19 Kind of wave 20 Colorful birds 22 Woodworking tool 23 Arouse 26 Enjoys now and then, with “in” 28 __ hand 29 Skater’s surface 32 Auditioner’s aim 33 Santa __: dry winds 34 Chess pieces 35 Peaks 38 Polite address 39 *Out-of-control guy 41 Primitive dwelling 42 Bothers quite a bit 44 Tiny ammo 45 Rocky Road holder 46 Italian peak 47 Holiday veggie 48 Bridle strap 49 Many map lines 52 Genre for the Village People 53 Lipstick container 54 Custard-filled pastries 58 Challenging tests 60 Roughhousing, or a hint to both parts of the answers to starred clues 64 Permissible 65 Roused 66 Roof overhang 67 Signed 68 Church recess 69 Sometimes seedy loaves
DOWN 1 Word with bone or breaker 2 __Kosh B’gosh 3 Tuna type 4 Routes that contain the letters in “routes” 5 Half a food fish 6 Golfer Aoki 7 Actor __ Patrick Harris 8 Took a risk 9 Op. __: footnote abbr. 10 Friendly 11 *Bobbysoxer’s footwear 12 Staring intently 13 Monica of tennis 18 Bard’s “before” 21 Cutting talk 23 Temporary stage 24 Ancient Greek region 25 *Football field director 27 Partner of raised, in bios
29 Copy 30 Cartoon frame 31 Finish no later than 36 Long, loose top 37 Courtroom staple, for short 39 Ebb 40 Corp. VP’s degree 43 Metal marble 45 Lettuce keeper 49 Grey Goose rival
50 Shroud city 51 The “u” sound in “census” 52 “__ Day”: 1993 rap hit 55 Circuit 56 Slow-moving boats 57 “Now it’s clear” 59 Normal: Abbr. 61 Put down 62 Hail, to Hadrian 63 Cry of success
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
09/09/20
By Susan Gelfand ©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/09/20
WHISPER “BLACK LIVES MATTER”
“RESPECT THE GRADS!!! and the grass”
We, the Black Student Union, the United Asian American Organizations Executive Board, La Casa and the Arab Student Association E-Board are calling for an end to the Michigan Ambassadors program. We demand an intentional, genuine inclusion of our organizations prior to future Student Life decisions. BSU, UAAO, La Casa and ASA believe the reasons listed below justify an end to the Michigan Ambassadors program. Student Life did not consult BSU, UAAO, La Casa and ASA in the creation and implementation of the Michigan Ambassadors program. While the University called our organizations into meetings to discuss policing policies on campus, they did not genuinely give us the opportunity to weigh in on decisions that deeply impact the campus community and disproportionately affect Black and Brown students. On July 1 and July 21, 2020, Central Student Government invited BSU, UAAO, La Casa and ASA to discuss policing on campus. CSG used public health concerns to justify their plans to increase police presence on campus and informed our organizations of their flawed plan to protect students of color. This culminated in the creation of a voluntary address directory where organizations could submit their residential addresses to Ann Arbor Police Department. CSG claimed that AAPD would forward complaints of gatherings to the contact point of those organizations if there was a disturbance at an affiliated address, and that contact point would have 45 minutes to see the notification and break up the party before the police showed up. BSU, UAAO, La Casa and ASA took issue with CSG’s plan because it did not genuinely protect the communities we serve. After this meeting, BSU, UAAO, La Casa and ASA began to draft our own proposals in order to prioritize our communities’ safety. There was no further communication between CSG and our organizations. However, before receiving the opportunity to release our own program, on Aug. 17, 2020, Dean of Students Laura Blake Jones presented the Wolverine Culture of Care Ambassador program to the Ann Arbor City Council. Dean Jones gave the Ann Arbor City Council three days’ notice before the program’s expected launch date. On Aug. 20, the AAPD Twitter account posted an announcement informing both their followers and the Ann Arbor community of the formation of canvassing teams, omitting the program’s formal name. Two hours later, The Michigan Daily published an article detailing AAPD and Student Life’s ambassador program. On Aug. 21, Student Life sent out a newsletter that mentioned the launch of the Michigan Ambassadors program and the opt-in registry. We were blindsided by the University’s announcement of the Michigan Ambassadors program before we were able to contribute any of our knowledge. Our organizations were clearly not at the decision-making tables that led to the Michigan Ambassadors program, and thus were not consulted meaningfully. Student Life did not provide the “Level 1” Michigan Ambassadors with bias and/ or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training. The University did not disclose who, why or how it chose its initial canvassers to enforce COVID-19 guidelines. While these canvassers may not harbor any prejudice, there cannot be assurance due to the aforementioned lack of communication and the available training modules — which include public health information related to COVID-19, a basic orientation to the Ambassador program, conflict resolution and de-
escalation skills and bystander intervention skills. Given the canvassing role of the Michigan Ambassadors, it is inappropriate that the Michigan Ambassador training did not address biases, especially with the harm of policing disproportionately marginalizing race, gender and other identities. Without modules appropriately ensuring that ambassadors have a solid understanding of racial bias, gender bias and broader DEI topics, Student Life puts students of color in danger. The Michigan Ambassadors program works with Ann Arbor Police Department and Division of Public Safety and Security officers. Michigan Ambassadors program canvassing teams rely on AAPD and DPSS, which build upon a historical and current legacy of police harming communities of color, despite President Schlissel’s claims that the Michigan Ambassadors program utilizes peer-topeer accountability “to reduce the need for law enforcement.” Moreover, the Michigan Ambassador program’s use of Community Engagement Officers from DPSS further weaponizes existing power dynamics to substantiate warnings from its canvassing groups. The University cannot cultivate an inclusive campus community while perpetuating an antithetical dynamic that gives a select group of students undue power over their peers, allowing hateful attitudes and feelings of superiority to fester within canvassers. The deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, David McAtee, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude, Dijon Kizzee, Deon Kay, the nearfatal shooting of Jacob Blake and countless others build on this legacy of police distrust and cannot be overlooked in promoting public health and safety. BSU, UAAO, La Casa and ASA demand the University respond to these tangible action items in order to address the needs of students of color. If the University, AAPD and DPSS are to create a system of peer-to-peer accountability — as emphasized by President Schlissel — then the University must hold itself to the same standard of accountability. To achieve institutional accountability, the Division of Student Life, AAPD and DPSS must be transparent and public about who is responsible for the creation and implementation of the ambassador program, how Student Life recruited and selected ambassadors, the relationship between the Michigan Ambassadors program and AAPD and which University offices are the ambassadors’ point of contact. Additionally, if the University, AAPD and DPSS are to create a system that’s dedicated to, as Student Life puts it, “facilitating student learning and the development of the whole student while cultivating a diverse and inclusive campus community,” then Student Life must forefront the voices of students of color to have jurisdiction over-policing on campus. U-M Student Life must commit to intentional, genuine inclusion of our organizations prior to any decision regarding campus safety and communication regarding policing on campus. Fellow students and University constituents, there are tangible action items that you can complete to join us in calling for an end to the Michigan Ambassadors program. Anyone may sign this statement, as an individual or organization, in support of our message through this Signature Form (https://tinyurl. com/y3qrr7e8). Furthermore, we created a Michigan Ambassadors Program Concerns Form (https://tinyurl.com/y4gny6r3), open to all submissions, to help us build our case in calling for an end to the Michigan Ambassadors program.
The authors of this article are members of University of Michigan organizations including The Black Student Union, United Asian American Organizations Executive Board, La Casa and the Arab Student Association E-Board. They can be reached at bsueboard20-21@ umich.edu, uaao.board20-21@umich.edu, lacasa.board@umich.edu and arabseboard@umich.edu, respectively.
Michigan In Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 7
Legacy and liberation: an ode to the Greats GABRIJELA SKOKO MiC Senior Editor
It is difficult to chalk up truth, emotion and productive analysis into a piece of literature — worthy of publishing or being seen by others — when talking about a body of people you consider your world, your light, your kin and your spirit; it is difficult to know what to say to a group of people, looking at you to produce “content”, when you want to say nothing and you feel you know nothing. What I know is this: American society, along with the large majority of the world, runs off of indoctrinated thought. This is not to condemn any individual or to suggest that this societal functioning or any group is inferior — it is not to place judgement on anyone or anything in any way. It is to say that we as a large body of people, who are inherently good willed, have a responsibility to start living with compassion as a principal of life — that we must see one another as extensions of ourselves and guide one another in compassion to a greater way of being. In the beginning of the summer, I felt a responsibility to respond somehow to the uproar of anti-racist activism spreading the globe. I felt a responsibility to say something on behalf of the newspaper. I wrote editorials with my co-managing editor Cheryn Hong and the editorial page editor Brittany Bowman, who are two boldly intelligent beings, capable of more than even they have begun to imagine. The three of us took on this project for the summer, which has now extended into the school year and will probably go on for longer than any of us ever expected. I am proud of it and of them, and of our writers, editors, our photo team, graphic designers, our video team and our web designers who all made it happen. With that being said, it does not satisfy much. This is not to say the work is not incred-
ible, that it is not powerful or significant — it just means we have done the minimum, we have begun and we have enormous ways to go; a lifetime. There is a lot to be said about racism in America and in the world. There has been a lot of conversation about revolution in recent months, a passionate response to a sort of “awakened” society following the killing of George Floyd — mind you this societal awakening alone is a sort of unfortunate and symbolic truth about America reminding Black people that these last two hundred years of civil right efforts have fallen upon broken ears. I want to help, but in all of my small efforts — like our wMiseducation project here at The Daily and sporadic protests across spring and summer months — I end in a sort of unsatisfied hopelessness. I believe it is rooted in an understanding that I have only done so much, or so little. I feel this persistent and inexplicable passion to pursue ‘freedom’ for society, but for so long I looked at the word as some ominous future, intangible. What was essential for me was to instead pursue intellectual, spiritual and psychological development — and ultimately, to pursue everything with compassion. I have spent a large majority of my time honoring the Greats, to name a few: Bob Marley, Damian “Jr Gong” Marley, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Tupac, Talib Kweli and Nas. They have taught me about the world through myself and most importantly, my mind. I want to share some of their words with you all. A song that has at some times engulfed me, by Nas, titled “You Can’t Stop Us Now” celebrates our power, our truth and our passion while confronting numerous mediums and systems through which the Black and Indigenous communities have been exploited and oppressed. The first verse following into the chorus goes like this: “I know your hunger, kid. I know they hung
your dad, burnt your mama crib. I know that hurt you bad. Minstrel shows, from gold to shackles and back to gold. We act like we home, matter fact, we are home. Bad attitudes, octoroon skin tone. Slave food turned to soul food, collards and neck bones. Betsy Ross sewed the first American f lag, but she had a n**** with her to help her old ass. As James Baldwin says ‘You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world considers a n*****. No matter how hard you try, you can’t stop us now. No matter how hard you try, you can’t stop us now. Can’t be stopped.” Whether speaking literally or metaphorically, Nas first pays homage to the reality of being a Black kid in America and travels through history spanning oppressive abuse, exploitation, rape. He circles back, reminds us this is indoctrinated thought, that no matter how much effort has been put into neutralizing our mentalities or ridding us of our identities — our histories — we will prevail. Mos Def pays these injustices a similar respect in his song “Mathematics”: “Killing fields need blood to graze the cash cow. It’s a numbers game, but shit don’t add up somehow. Like I got sixteen to thirty-two bars to rock it, but only 15% of profits, ever see my pockets like, sixtynine billion in the last twenty years spent on national defense but folks still live in fear like nearly half of America’s largest cities is one-quarter black. That’s why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack. Sixteen ounces to a pound, twenty more to a ki, A five minute sentence hearing and you no longer free. 40% of Americans own a cell phone, so they can hear everything that you say when you ain’t home. I guess Michael Jackson was right, ‘You Are Not Alone’...Young teens and prison greens facing life numbers. Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients. Youngbloods can’t spell but they could rock you in PlayStation. This new math is whipping motherfuckers
PICES
ARIES With Mars, your ruling planet, turning retrograde, this is your chance to dial down the noise and to turn inward for a while. Focus on getting the background details right at work; good preparation now will ensure success later.
TAURUS
Mars turns retrograde in your spiritual zone, so now it's time to allow spirit to unfurl around you, instead of trying to force spiritual growth. Keep an eye out for synchronicities and weird happenings, but essentially, stop trying too hard.
YOUR WEEKLY
WHISPER
Choosing to believe the best of people is a good strategy this week. The SunJupiter trine makes it much easier to deal with difficult emotional situations, as you can spread love and optimism. Keep your spirits and your moral standards high.
“If you aint about it, don’t be about it!!!”
CAPRICORN
“It’s all good in the morality hood”
CANCER Mars Retrograde in your ambitions zone suggests that you've been focusing too much on trying to get ahead. Let work take care of itself this week and instead, focus on your interpersonal relationships. Communicate, love and communicate again.
LEO The Sun-Jupiter trine opens up business opportunities, especially if you are, or would like to be self-employed. This is an excellent time to sell your talents and abilities to the wider world. Focus locally to begin with due to the Mars Retrograde.
A shortage of money could result from Mars turning retrograde in your finance zone - perhaps you no longer have the energy for a side hustle. It's temporary. If you're doing less work, however, be sure to spend that time wisely with your loved ones.
AQUARIUS
GEMENI If you need financial or practical assistance, distant family members may be willing to step in - it doesn't hurt to ask. Meanwhile, Mars Retrograde asks you to tone down your social life for a bit. Enjoy your own company for a change.
ass. You wanna know how to rhyme, you better learn how to add, it’s mathematics.” He closes with an ode to the struggle of being a Black body and a warning, “Young soldiers trying to earn their next stripe. When the average minimum wage is $5.15, you best believe you gotta find a new ground to get cream. The white unemployment rate is nearly more than triple for black, so front liners got their gun in your back. Bubbling crack, jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty and end up in the global jail economy. Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence, budget cutbacks but increased police presence and even if you get out of prison still living, join the other five million under state supervision. This is business, no faces just lines and statistics. From your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits. The system break man, child and women into figures; Two columns for who is, and who ain’t n****s. Numbers are hardly real and they never have feelings, but you push too hard, even numbers got limits. Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret: The million other straws underneath it, it’s all mathematics.” Though Nas and Mos Def both sow a certain sorrow into their lyricism, there is also a bold conclusion coming from their work — they have both come to understand that this senile history, the consequential modern institutions of slavery and the racism that has pervaded society exists separate from our existence. The sentiment of Black inferiority is a sort of world or mindset, it is not a truth to be burdened with. The physical manifestations of pain and strife that have confronted Black and Indigenous communities because of this are what we seek a solution to, and we must continue to do so until we resolve a greater problem, but it is the humanity itself that is in dire need of resolution. Ms. Lauryn Hill has put out invaluable work in her lifetime, my favorite being her work from “MTV Unplugged
Family life should become more peaceful and less drama-filled for a while this week, as Mars Retrogrades in your home zone. With some extra free time on your hands, this is a great time to look into expanding your education.
SAGITTARIUS
“The chances of me having rabies are extremely low, but if I do, and don't get treated I will die a terrible death. ”
VIRGO Some of the anger and hostility you feel towards others is being directed inward now with Mars Retrograde -which isn't healthy. Seek a more positive outlet for all that angst, whether that's through sports or the creative arts.
LIBRA If your relationship has been going through a rough patch, things should settle down a little as warrior planet Mars turns retrograde in your love zone. Adopt a calmer approach. It's a good time to investigate, as a couple, your shared spiritual links.
You're not normally one to play it safe, but with Mars now retrograde in your risk zone, your urge is to protect the status quo. You can use this period as a breathing space, or perhaps work on a long-term plan for your future ambitions.
SCORPIO Things may start to become rather disorganized this week, as Mars Retrogrades in your everyday zone. Don't be surprised to feel tired or lethargic. You can keep up your energy via positive socia I interactions with friends. Say yes to those invitations!
Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv
No. 2.0”. This album is a tribute to spirit and a complete understanding of self. It serves as a rejection to our social systems and to our way of life; it serves as an acceptance of the truth, which you must pursue on your own with diligence and great curiosity. I want to share excerpts from three different songs. First, “Mr. Intentional”, speaking to the individual and community ego that prohibits us from true progress: “We give rise to ego by being insecure. The advice that we go desperately searching for. The subconscious effort to support our paramour. To engage in denial, to admit we’re immature. Validating lies, Mr. Intentional. Open up your eyes, Mr. Intentional. Stuck in a system that seeks to suck your blood. Held emotionally hostage by what everybody does. Counting all the money that you give them just because. Exploiting ignorance in the name of love…” In “Adam Lives in Theory”, the same analysis continues: “Masquerading like he got it figured out. Cut off from the sunshine, only smart in his own head, leaving his descendants to hope and doubt. Left to his devices, those worthless sacrifices, praying to the altar of himself. Making pilgrimages, thinking he’s religious, like he’s got all the light and no one else. He takes the unsuspected, cause he knows they’re not connected, and he shows them how to be just as he is. Virtually real, and commercially appealed, to the lust of all the people where he lives.” She closes the song with this, “Now if we can agree with who created us to be, who says we’re guilty everyone before his eyes. Making no exceptions, since the day of our conception, predisposed to hating truth and loving lies. Stop walking in pride, let the thief be crucified. Unlearn everything you know and let Him teach you; Line upon line, and precept upon precept, say goodbye to this decaying social system.” When you pursue the development of yourself, you pursue the world, because once you understand completely who you are, once you accept change as a principle of life and you live in complete empathy, you will have the ability to give everything to the world. With this however, is a responsibility to pursue an ever-evolving education in order to maintain a solid conscience regarding self and the world throughout continuously challenging social systems. Damian “Jr Gong” Marley and Nas share an album that should be treated like classic literature, to be pursued continuously throughout life, called “Distant Relatives” — in which they confront the aforementioned social systems while also confronting the personality that comes from living within the system, challenging their audience to begin with deconstructing this illusive “self” they have created. In their track “Patience”, Marley begins, “Pay no mind to the youths ‘cause it’s not like the future depends on it, but save the animals in the zoo ‘cause the chimpanzee them make big money; This is how the media pillages, on TV the picture is savages in villages, and the scientist still can’t explain the pyramids. Evangelists making a living on the videos of ribs of the little kids; stereotyping the image of the images and this is what the image is.” He continues, “Some of the worst paparazzi’s I’ve ever seen and I’ve ever known put the worst on display so the world can see and that’s all they will ever show. So the ones in the west will never move east and feel they could be at home, get tricked by the Beast but where they gon’ f lee when the monster is fully grown? Solomonic lineage where they can’t defeat and they
could never clone my spiritual DNA that prints in my soul and I will forever own, Lord.” In the next verse, Marley asks for introspection:, “Are we growing wiser, or are we just growing taller? Can you read thoughts? Can you read palms? Can you predict the future? Can you see storms coming? The Earth was f lat, if you went too far, you would fall off. Now the Earth is round, if the shape changes again, everybody would start laughing. The average man can’t prove most of the things that he chooses to speak of. And still won’t research and find out the root of the truth that you speak of. Scholars teach in universities and claim that they’re smart and cunning. Tell them to find a cure when we sneeze and that’s when their nose starts running.” The more one pursues themselves and the world, the more one understands within these excerpts. All of these prophets have shared one recurring and ever present thought which is that these oppressive institutions and the thought that inspires them are not the way of life, but rather a social system that we have all succumbed to and lived within. Bob Marley is the foundation of revolution music. He is a foundation of revolution, a well of compassion and a prophet of sorts. I want to offer this sermon from “War”: “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war, Me say war. That until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes, me say war.” He continues, “That until that day the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain in but a f leeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained, now everywhere is war. War. And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique, South Africa, Sub-human bondage, have been toppled, utterly destroyed, well, everywhere is war. Me say war.” I promise to put my entire being into working toward a world and society beyond anything we can imagine in our current indoctrinated state — a world where what I’m saying doesn’t sound painfully radical, but rather a long overdue understanding that to call notions of equality, peace, equity, love and compassion should be principles of life. I want to end with the third excerpt from Ms. Lauryn Hill. This is from one of my favorite songs of all time. The song is “I Get Out”. In it, she preaches this: I won’t be compromised no more. I can’t be victimised no more. I just don’t sympathize no more ‘cause now I understand. You just want to use me. You say “love” then abuse me. You never thought you’d lose me, but how quickly we forget that nothin’ is for certain. You thought I’d stay here hurtin’. Your guilt trip’s just not workin’. Repressin’ me to death.’Cause now I’m choosin’ life, yo. I’ll take the sacrifice, yo. If everything must go, then go, that’s how I choose to live... No more compromises. I see past your disguises. Blindin’ through mind control. Stealin’ my eternal soul. Appealin’ through material. To keep me as your slave. But I get out… Knowin’ my condition, oh, is the reason I must change...I’ve just accepted what you said, keepin’ me among the dead. The only way to know is to walk then learn and grow. But faith is not your speed, oh, you’ve had everyone believe that you’re the sole authority. Just follow the majority. Afraid to face reality. The system is a joke.``
Opinion
8 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
JOSHUA E. TUCKER | OP-ED
Youth is no guarantee
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
BRITTANY BOWMAN AND EMILY CONSIDINE
Managing Editor
Editorial Page Editors
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Ray Ajemian Zack Blumberg Brittany Bowman Emily Considine Elizabeth Cook
Jess D’Agostino Jenny Gurung Cheryn Hong Krystal Hur Min Soo Kim
Zoe Phillips Mary Rolfes Gabrijela Skoko 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.
FROM THE DAILY
The University can do more to protect its community
T
he University of Michigan’s reopening has been fraught with challenges and has met much criticism from faculty, students and Ann Arbor residents alike. Messaging from upper administration and University President Mark Schlissel throughout the summer months leading up to reopening has been remarkably inconsistent. From saying that the assertion that students won’t follow safety protocol is “offensive” to analogizing student violations of distancing guidelines to the HIV epidemic, Schlissel especially has come under severe scrutiny, resulting in the consideration of a vote of no confidence by the Faculty Senate. Reports of precautionary guidelines being unenforced during undergraduate move-in and unlawful student gatherings have only compounded on an increasing lack of faith in the University’s flawed reopening strategy.
Design courtesy of Ahmad Kady
We are calling on University leadership to re-evaluate its current plan for the fall 2020 semester. Provisions must include better contact tracing and the use of alternate testing methods, such as weekly wastewater testing in residence halls to monitor possible outbreaks and saliva testing, which is less invasive than the traditional nasal swab and expedites results so contact tracing and quarantining can be administered rapidly. The University must also follow the guidelines they have already put into place, ensuring that Student Life staff enforce mask guidelines and no-guest policies in dorms, as well as outlining the protocol for repercussions for violations. To ensure the efficacy of this enforcement, the University must provide quality personal protective equipment to University faculty, staff and Student Life employees. The innumerable flaws in the current fall 2020 reopening plan, along with its execution, have been impacting the Ann Arbor and University community unequally. We acknowledge that there are those who rely on some U-M classes being held in person, but the lack of robust planning to allow for those necessary classes to take place will only serve to weaken the institution even further in the long term. The University has been overworking Student Life staff without providing adequate protection. Leadership has acknowledged but pushed against calls for widespread and alternative testing. Last-minute announcements and lack of adequate protections overall have put students, especially international students, students of color and low-income students, at risk since the partial closure of the University in March. The University has failed to come up with a response sufficient for the scope of the problem in some of the most basic ways, particularly where housing is concerned. Not only are dorms operating at 70 percent capacity right now despite the percent of strictly online undergraduate classes being 78 percent, but they’re
also operating in such a way that they fall under the CDC’s “more risk” category — as do all University spaces, currently. Guidelines like staying six feet apart and not sharing objects are the minimum precautions an institution can take right now. Many comparable universities have done far more to minimize the number of bodies on campus. Less than 10 percent of University of Washington undergraduate classes are in person, compared to our 31 percent; Harvard University and University of Chicago dorms are at 40 percent capacity, compared to our 70 (and everyone gets their own room); Georgetown University is housing 2,000 students, dwarfed by our on-campus freshman count alone; Brown, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and Yale are all alternating based on year which students can be on-campus, rather than welcoming everyone back at once. While some college students rely on an open campus for food, housing and basic amenities like a stable internet connection, Michigan students are exceedingly unlikely to be in this situation based on their financial demographics. Add to this the fact that the few basic regulations the University has offered are, more often than not, going unenforced, and it becomes clear that the blame cannot fall squarely on the shoulders of students. Yes, we are already on campus, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late for the University to make changes and move people out when there’s no need for them to be there — that’s precisely what happened last March. We are calling upon the University to respond to the pandemic with the gravity it deserves and do as much as possible to protect its staff and students, rather than as little as possible. As a university with such an immense pool of resources, there is no reason we cannot adapt to our current circumstances, if not lead the way for colleges across the U.S. Michigan is ranked among the best colleges for medical research in the country and even the most innovative in general. COVID-19 related research
is being conducted in a multitude of University programs, as it ought to be, but we’re still behind when it comes to implementing our knowledge into our plan of action. At present, required testing is limited to those who are already exhibiting symptoms or who have had close contact with someone else who has tested positive. The University recently announced a new opt-in surveillance testing program that aims to test 3,000 individuals by the end of September. This program is a step in the right direction, but its effectiveness for a campus community of over 40,000 remains to be seen. It can be true that asymptomatic testing is less important than other measures, as this guide is quick to state, while also being true that if we have the means, we should do so anyway — and with one of the largest endowments in the U.S., it is hard to argue we don’t have the means. The current contact tracing method similarly falls short, limited to a phone call about proper quarantine to those close to individuals who test positive; muchmoreeffectiveis“retrospective” contact tracing, in which tracers look for the sources of their cases, not just possible resulting cases. At the very least, the University should also be testing proactively rather than relying solely on individuals to voluntarily test themselves. Rochester Institute of Technology’s testing of residence hall wastewater and similar forms of pool testing are simple but effective at monitoring large populations like our student body, and we believe the University should take advantage of them. We’ve been told over and over again that it is an unprecedented time and that no one is to blame except the virus. However, the University had the time to plan for this fall and the resources to do far more than that plan entails. We cannot expect such a large, interwoven population of people to make it through a pandemic on bare minimum precautions. If the University insists on having an open campus and in-person classes, it must act to make sure this system is as safe as possible for everyone.
I
t’s highly likely that the folks reading this are younger rather than older. You’re probably reading this on your computer or phone. Maybe you’re laying in bed, e-commuting to class or, most likely of all, sitting on the toilet. Whatever you’re doing while reading, I’m positive this next part will spark some curiosity, cause you to miss a step or — hopefully, because that’d be funny — produce a combo of the two. Contrary to the invincibility complex of young adulthood’s hype, you, reader, are not too young to have heart disease. Before you object, I challenge you to take a deep breath and keep reading. It could save your life. I’m propagandist-level enthusiastic about preventive medicine and early intervention because there’s something about being in control of one’s health that feels naturally good. I’m the kind of guy who signs up to get the flu vaccine the first day it’s available at CVS Pharmacy. Who practices intermittent fasting most days of the week. Who’s always on the lookout for new evidence-backed senotherapeutics. Who, after noticing the slightest androgenic alopecia this year, started taking Propecia (it’s working!). I’ve been a runner since 2018, and my waistline (and arms) pleasantly bear witness. I haven’t eaten red meat or pork for half a decade, and I’m not really a natural fan of birds and fish, either. I don’t write any of this to build myself up. I work really hard to be well now because I want to be present for others later. I want to be around to meet my great (at least)grandkids, see life-saving rather than life-extending treatments arrive for humankind’s most offensive cancers and celebrate a majority non-white United States. I have — just as you do and every generation before ours did — a lot of good to offer my fellow humans. The opportunities for us to exceed expectations and right our parents’ wrongs are literally limitless. The way things are going now, though, I just want enough time to finish my education (not necessarily to have to pay back the loans, though). Which is why I’m writing this. I received some blood work Aug. 24, and it looked nothing like it should. Instead of an active, plantbased, health-obsessed 25-year old guy, my veins and arteries look like a 60-year old’s who loves tobacco as much as he hates exercises. I went to see my doctor the next day. Here’s what she told me:
Design courtesy of Samuel Turner
Adult men’s total cholesterol should be less than 200 milligrams per deciliter. My total cholesterol is nearly 32 percent higher than it should be. My LDL (“bad”) cholesterol should be less than 100 mg/dL. I’m carrying 65 percent more than that. My HDL (“good”) cholesterol should be 60 mg/dL or higher. I didn’t make the cut-off. “If we don’t get this under control now,” she said, “you’ve got about a 50 percent probability of living to 60 and roughly 40 percent of having a heart attack before 50.” That translates into a roughly 90-fold increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease in the next decade or so. My stomach twisted into knots of anxiety. I’m not much of a crier, but I felt tears well up. Why was my blood so unhealthy? Well, apparently, it’s always been that way. I was diagnosed with a relatively common — if you call one in 250 (0.4 percent) common — atherogenic genetic disorder called heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). I’ve had atherosclerotic plaques building in my blood vessels since I was born, and no amount of exercise nor leafy greens would’ve been enough to keep me safe. It means my two sisters each have a 50 percent chance of having it, too. It also means my kids will have a 50 percent chance of being born with it, and that it’s likely behind the very premature death of my uncle. Just 15-20 percent of individuals with FH are diagnosed and only 16 percent of those individuals are on cholesterollowering pharmacotherapy. This is despite medications, known as statins, being extremely helpful for managing FH. Usually, a diagnosis isn’t made until a catastrophic (and completely preventable) cardiovascular event has already occurred, such as myocardial infarction or stroke — an ageunbiased event which can easily be fatal. The reality that FH is very underdiagnosed due to poor awareness in the population combined with the coronavirus’s tendency to damage the human cardiovascular system would spell disaster for folks of all ages with hidden FH — including myself. If I had come down with COVID-19, I would’ve stood little chance. Seeing as COVID19 doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, knowing what I know now stings a little more.
I’m by no means saying you need to run out and wrangle yourself a cardiologist today, tomorrow or even this month. For many of us, youth is indeed on our cardiovascular side. That said, the coronavirus is a known cause of premature stroke and clotting in young, otherwise healthy people, as well as arrhythmia, myocarditis, cardiac ischemia and sudden death. Fully one in three COVID-19 patients develop cardiomyopathy and in many cases, the virus could increase risks of heart failure. And as we go further into this thing, it’s younger people — like, our age — whose case numbers are on the rise. This should and does concern you directly. The best bet with your health is to know what you’re up against earlier rather than later (when catching up is a lot harder). The COVID-19 pandemic may be a once-in-a-century occurrence, but it’s still within the realm of applicability of physicians’ eternal recommendations to eat healthfully, exercise regularly and undergo yearly physical and laboratory examinations. When individuals know the goings-on of their insides, they’re bound to make better health decisions for themselves and others by proxy. Beyond simply reaping the benefits from preventive medicine we all know about — at least abstractly — as young people, knowing our individual numbers empowers us with clearer, fuller choice-making capacity for the present and the future. If you truly want to express bodily autonomy, consider learning about the biological and chemical systems that make you, well ... you. Be proud of your body and take care of it. It’s the only one you have. Schedule a physical with your doctor, especially if you have a family history of early heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes or obesity. One last statistic: from an estimate based on the total number of students at the University of Michigan, roughly 192 current Wolverines have FH. They are 192 friends, brothers, students, sisters, sons, daughters, partners. I don’t have to know you to take pride in our shared missions as Wolverines, and the world we have right now can’t afford to lose a single one of us. Know your numbers because youth is no guarantee. Joshua E. Tucker (he/him/his) is a second-year graduate student in Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health. He can be reached at tuckjosh@umich.edu.
JENNA SCHEEN | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT JSCHEEN@UMICH.EDU
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
LYDIA STORELLA | COLUMN
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NATHAN LA HUIS | COLUMN
Check your politician
s tribalism deepens in the United States and around the world, political polarization follows. The tendency of people to group themselves based on ideolog y creates environments where beliefs outside of one’s norm aren’t present and ultimately lead to echo chambers that make people unable and unwilling to listen to other perspectives. We can clearly see this in the way people become ardent fans and supporters of the political stars of the day. People across the political spectrum — from progressives to moderate Democrats to conservative Republicans — have their own politicians who they worship without question. For example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., former President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and, lastly, President Donald Trump all have their strong supporters who find no f law in their policies, beliefs or actions. When people start admiring someone, it becomes inexplicably difficult to find f laws. I grew up in the ultraliberal Oakland, Calif. and Berkeley, Calif., and now attend the University here in Ann Arbor. In both places, I have seen many people shout their love of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Sure, there is a lot to love. RBG has an inspiring life story that includes taking care of both her sick husband and young child while in law school. She has almost become a cultural phenomenon due to her years defending civil liberties as well as her role as a liberal dissenter on the Supreme Court. An article titled “52 Reasons Why Ruth Bader Ginsberg is My Favorite Human” provides a clearer understanding of how deep this kind of love goes. Articles like this, however, also explain why this type of worship is dangerous and shows a lack of awareness and critical thinking. The author states that RBG is her “favorite human.” While this is obviously a hyperbole, it is important to remember that we know very little about
politicians and, unfortunately, judges are political figures. How someone presents themselves in the public spotlight is not necessarily who they really are. Consider some of RBG’s other actions. For example, her decision not to retire in 2014 while Obama was still president haunts me whenever I open Twitter and see “RBG” trending. If she had retired in 2014, Obama could have nominated her replacement, ensuring a liberal justice on the Supreme Court and keeping its relatively even balance of four to five liberal to conservative justices. If Trump is reelected, he will likely fill that spot and cause the Supreme Court to lean further toward the conservative side. RBG also joined the Court’s conservative majority to allow a natural gas pipeline to be built under the Appalachian Trail, a project both environmentalists and several Native American tribes oppose. Liberal Democrats’ lack of real critique allows RBG to escape the consequences of her actions, or inaction, that have caused harm. On the other side of the aisle, let’s consider the cult of personality that surrounds Trump. The hypocrisy starts with more mundane things like his criticism of Obama for golfing too much — despite the current president golfing more than Obama at this point in his presidency. On a more serious note, he recently claimed that mail-in voting will lead to a “corrupt election” while he himself voted by mail in August. The Republican Party refuses to hold Trump accountable for the statements he makes that are a threat to our democracy. Sending federal agents to arrest protesters, as Trump did in Portland, Ore., is not just undemocratic, but, according to a Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, unconstitutional. But still, Trump’s supporters continue to defend him at all costs, while claiming to be the party of the Constitution. They only rebuke him on the most egregious of accounts, such as when he threatened to postpone the election.
Additionally, idolizing political figures often pushes people to believe in unrealistically simple solutions for complex problems. Take Sanders, who is adored by progressives and has a lot of support from college students. Many of his proposed solutions as a politician are oversimplified, yet not met with proper critique from his supporters. Sanders fully supports Medicare for All, a singlepayer health care system. It sounds so easy — Medicare works, let’s expand the program to cover all Americans. But Sanders’s view ignores political reality. President Barack Obama’s health care law took two years of negotiation and compromise for it to be narrowly passed in 2010. The Affordable Care Act was controversial when it was signed into law, and it remains controversial today; there have been repeal efforts as recently as 2017 and the Supreme Court will hear arg uments regarding the constitutionality of the health care law in November. The Affordable Care Act is a much more modest reform of health care than Medicare for All would be, and the possibility of Medicare for All becoming law seems politically remote. Yet Sanders continues to push for it. Realism is important in politics, and supporters of progressive ideas seem unable to separate the ideal from the realistic. The lack of criticism for Sanders from his supporters made him a viable candidate for president, despite his lack of notable accomplishments in the Senate. Sanders is a senator of big ideas, but he does not have the ability to make those ideas American law. Even congressional Democrats are deeply divided over Medicare for All. You can like political figures, love political figures or pick your favorite political figures. But it’s important to recognize that these people are not perfect, and we should not pretend that they are. Lydia Storella can be reached at storella@umich.edu.
JOSEPH JACKOWSKI | OP-ED
University overreach in the era of COVID-19
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ver the last few months, the University of Michigan has issued guidelines and rules for its students regarding the ongoing spread of COVID-19. Of course, intelligent containment efforts are necessary, as COVID-19 represents a serious threat to the health of the University community and the challenges administrators face are remarkably difficult. However, this containment goal does not justify the means the University is employing. Further, it is what the University risks by employing these means that matters. The directives the University has issued and the means by which they intend to enforce them violate the higher-order principles that constitute the University’s mission as an institute of higher learning. The manner in which the University is monitoring contact tracing risks an invasion of privacy. Contact tracing — the attempt to track who has come into contact with whom, and by extension, who is at risk of infection — is acceptable in principle. Contact tracing is a tool. The question is how it is being used or enforced. The University’s recently announced program protects students’ autonomy by making it a voluntary opt-in. However, in the University’s FAQ page under the heading “What is U-M’s plan of COVID-19 testing and contact tracing?” they note that students will be allowed to manage contact tracing efforts under the supervision of professionals. In addition, per the Recognized Student Organization safety measures, RSOs must keep meeting rosters for 30 days and, “when directed by U-M administrators,” must provide a list of those in attendance. RSOs must also report to the Center for Campus Involvement should any of their attendees test positive for COVID19, though it’s unclear whether they
are required to report students’ names or the organizations they are affiliated with. The issue is that administrators and fellow students — not health officials bound to protect the privacy of their patients — will be conducting contact tracing efforts. Chillingly, these efforts extend off-campus, beyond the purview of the University. Recently, the University posted a job listing for the Michigan Ambassadors. These ambassadors are responsible for “Offcampus Community Canvassing Responsibilities,” which comprises 70 percent of their responsibilities. This suggests that these students will be confronting and reporting individuals off-campus, leaving the ill-defined scope of their jurisdiction remarkably broad. This must also be done through a “diversity, equity, and inclusion lens,” suggesting that one’s gender, racial, ethnic or religious background will be taken into account and, hopefully, held to the same standard, when canvassing and enforcing the rules. While this may be the University’s attempt to mitigate discrimination against protected classes, it would seem that the University may still be risking the unequal enforcement of its policies off-campus. Furthermore, the Ann Arbor Police Department and the University of Michigan Police Department “response teams” will be deployed if an emergency is reported through a hotline the University has set up, and the circumstances of this call can be reported to the Office of Student Conflict Resolution and the Dean of Students Office. Assuming the University’s guidelines aren’t a perfect reflection of the laws that AAPD is responsible for enforcing, by what right can AAPD enforce the University’s guidelines, which don’t reflect those laws? Furthermore, the academic and personal consequences of such reporting remain unclear.
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 9
For some, it may be difficult to see past the potential risk of not implementing these measures. But the risk to the privacy of students among us and those non-students who may be caught in the fray — who could suffer dearly when who they associate with is revealed — is equally as great. For example, say a student who is gay or questioning their sexuality and has not opened up about this to anyone. This person would be deeply concerned about their privacy. They may go to an LGBTQ+-related RSO meeting to find answers or meet likeminded individuals. They may go to a party with fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community, risking exposure to the virus. Maintaining their privacy outweighs that calculated risk. However, the aforementioned University guidelines risk potentially outing students in situations such as these, the consequences of which are personal and grave. Because they may be exposed in the most public way one could imagine — by one of their fellow students showing up to their gathering, calling a hotline, having the police show up to their door and reporting all of the names of those who gathered to administrators and fellow students — that person’s privacy and journey to personal identity would be sacrificed on the altar of “care.” And all of this could occur in a place where the University has no right to impose its power: off-campus.
Trump’s interference with our voting system hints at his Jim Crow fantasy
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Design courtesy of Mellisa Lee
t seems like ever y day the president f inds a new way to attack the leg itimacy of the upcoming presidential election. In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump ref used to accept the results of that year’s election unless he won. But his most recent offense, which is garnering support among the fringe supporters of his reelection campaig n, has been to eliminate and invalidate mail-in voting. This administration has beg un attacks on our postal system to make sure that mail-in votes are delayed, not counted and not even cast in the f irst place. He is opposing new f unding to the United States Postal Ser vice, suing Nevada for expanding access to mailin ballots, intimidating voters by making the only method of voting in-person — something increasingly dangerous in a pandemic — and discourag ing Americans from trusting the validit y of their absentee votes. By doing this, Trump has once again set himself up to deny the results of the 2020 election and to use mail-in voting as a way to claim that it was “rigged” if he loses. Trump went on a Twitter rant regarding the alleged illeg itimacy of mail-in voting while the death toll from COV ID-19 in the U.S. surpassed 180,000. Beyond his dangerous and unconstitutional proposal of delaying a federal election, and beyond his false claim that absentee voting is somehow more secure than mail-in voting (they’re essentially the same thing), he wants to make voting in our countr y a life or death choice for millions of Americans based on the misinformation of voting practices. Trump rages on in his efforts to stop mail-in voting and at the same time pretends that the pandemic affecting our nation is
going away. It is proven that COVID-19 disproportionately affects Black and Latinx communities relative to white communities. This means that while a white man may be able to vote in person without any substantial risk, a Black woman, who may need to take public transport for a greater distance and wait longer in line, will be at a greater health risk. In addition to the racially disproportionate health risk posed by the pandemic, Trump is further disadvantaging people of color in the democratic process through his attacks on mail-in voting, essentially establishing 21st Centur y Jim Crow laws.
Though the voices of support for the Black community from our predecessors were too few and too quiet, we are now given another chance. When asked about Trump’s new attack on voting in America, Allayna Hight, a Black LSA freshman and active member of the Multicultural Housing Community on campus, did not hold back. She commented, “Low-income areas with high minority populations tend to have higher numbers of COVID19 cases, and I’m afraid many minorities may decide not to vote if they can’t do it by mail.” She continued, “Especially because of the recent events surrounding police brutality against Black people, I feel like it’s more important than ever to secure my vote in
the election. Donald Trump does not show any support for the Black Lives Matter movement and it scares me to hear him denounce mail-in voting.” Though his assault on mailin voting disproportionally affects Black Americans, this is an issue even white people are having to face. We white Americans live in, and inadvertently support, a system that is set up to favor us and now we are getting a glimpse at what Black individuals lived and continue to live through. We, too, are now being told that our votes do not matter. We, too, are being forced to risk our health to simply participate in this democracy. We must acknowledge that we were privileged over the past t wo hundred years to be exempt from literacy tests, propert y ownership requirements, purg ing of names and even being subjected to violence only for voting. Thoughthe voices of support for the Black community from our predecessors were too few and too quiet, we are now given another chance to defend the right to vote and must seize this opportunity. That includes passing the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019 to restate our commitment to racial justice in our electoral process. This issue is about whether we will let all Americans vote safely like so many white Americans have in the past or force people to risk their lives just to have their voices heard. Voting is a right that must be protected with the utmost care, clarity and accessibility. What is happening now is a president taking a move from an old and racist playbook to suppress his opposition. America is too great of a nation to once again stay silent as justice and democracy fall apart. Nathan La Huis can be reached at ndlahuis@umich.edu.
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Read more at MichiganDaily.com Joseph Jackowski is a senior in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts and can be reached at joejack@umich.edu.
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Opinion
10 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
AFFAN SYED | OP-ED
A reopening more concerned with theatrics than safety
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he University of Michigan has already reopened with no plans of reversing course. The University has created a thorough reopening plan that is supposed to provide a safe and secure learning experience for all students. However, the plan — despite having good intentions and some good ideas — exists more to provide students with the feeling of safety rather than actual safety: a concept known as security theater. To explain what security theater is, how it works and what its purpose is, one only has to look at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Current procedures of the TSA have frequently been cited as examples of security theater, such as the usage of full-body scanners which, according to The Atlantic, have been shown to be ineffective and easily manipulated. The TSA’s purpose, according to the article, is not to provide actual security but rather an illusion of security and was put in place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to give passengers the feeling that air travel was safe. Bruce Schneier’s 2003 book, “Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World,” discusses why security theater exists and which parties benefit from it. According to Schneier, there are players who all have different defining interests and different relationships with one another such as elected officials, corporations and the public. Depending on the player, at times they might have other concerns that trump security. He writes, “Security is partially a state of mind ... one of the goals of a security countermeasure is to provide people with a feeling of security in addition to the reality. But some countermeasures provide the feeling of security instead of the reality.” In the example of the TSA, major airlines and elected officials’ chief concern was getting passengers back in the air and they needed to provide an appearance of security through a strict screening process — despite that process being ineffective. In a 2009 opinion piece written for CNN, Schneier noted that the best terrorist prevention is not combating specific plots but instead carrying out covert investigations, speaking to cultural experts and attacking the core ideologies that lead to international terrorism in the first place by building bridges with communities in the Middle East. However, these tactics do not provide the feeling of security, which is why the U.S.’s terrorist prevention strategy has morphed into the TSA. Similar to the aftermath of 9/11, security theater has reemerged in the pandemic with certain
Design courtesy of Ahmad Kady
countermeasures being of little use in the fight against COVID-19. The pandemic, and the subsequent lockdown associated with it, led to the entire economy coming to a near standstill. Therefore, a chief concern of many businesses, and even the government, was attempting to reopen as fast as possible to combat the economic downturn. However, as states began to reopen, cases began skyrocketing and the concern quickly went from attempting to reopen to convincing the general public that it was safe to resume normal life. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that temperature checks are not reliable in terms of detecting possible cases because things like hot weather can cause readings to be inaccurately high. Furthermore, many businesses such as Planet Fitness, AMC Theatres and Applebee’s have touted extreme and strict sanitation routines despite the fact that the virus mainly spreads through person-to-person aerosol transmission not fomites (surfaces and objects). Similarly, the University, though currently pursuing actions that are effective, still misses the mark in terms of actual security. The University, to their credit, has made changes that will make this semester safer for students — for example, making 78 percent of credit hours remote, allowing many classes to be taught in a hybrid format and requiring all bus riders to wear masks. However, the reopening plan as a whole is still flawed. On Aug. 12, a virtual town hall was held where the stated plan was to make the situation as safe as fully remote with contact tracing, a reserve of 600 quarantine rooms and outbreaks of disease being “anticipated.” Frequent universal testing was criticized by the administration as impractical during this meeting; however, the risks posed by proceeding without it were never addressed. University President Mark Schlissel later revealed in an email that Michigan Medicine could only process 10,000 tests a week and planned to increase capacity as the year continued. Even with that lowered expectation, according to the COVID-19 dashboard, only 1,500 tests were conducted during the week of Aug. 23. Without universal testing, an asymptomatic student could spread the disease and start an outbreak. The biggest issue is that the University has not communicated its reasoning behind all of the measures implemented. When discussing testing, the University deemed frequent universal testing as impractical yet never
explained how it was still safe to open without that in place. This is concerning since a Yale and Harvard University study found that students would need to be tested every two days to prevent an outbreak and that “symptombased screening alone was not sufficient to contain an outbreak.” Furthermore, the administration has given no quantitative risk assessment nor accounted for or explained how much risk is posed to the Ann Arbor community at large. One example of this behavior is that the administration has repeatedly touted that the plan was made with public health experts, yet have not explained how much risk will be posed to students, faculty and the Ann Arbor community. Moreover, there has been no adequate explanation on why the administration is deciding to focus on symptomatic students and not striving for universal testing when COVID-19 is known to spread asymptomatically; how residential advisers are expected to enforce the strict new guest policy when they can’t possibly know who might be an outsider; how exactly they plan on controlling parties and how effective that plan will be among countless other questions. Despite having aspects that are known to be effective, the plan as a whole ends up just being a theatrical display created to convince students it is safe to come back to campus. If the University truly believes in the idea of a “public health informed” in-person fall semester, then they should strive to be as open and transparent as possible about what went into their plans and prove to the students, faculty and the community that their plan has the least risk with the most benefit for all parties involved rather than expecting us to trust them and find out for ourselves. This is especially relevant in light of recent faculty protests and outbreaks at other schools, and especially if they hope to have an in-person semester in the winter term. The main issue with security theater, especially during a pandemic, is that it often takes away from measures that actually help. Applying that logic to the University, the proposals put in place and the school going hybrid, rather than fully remote, has convinced a significant number of students it is safe to attend when they may otherwise not have returned. That takes away from what has been proven to actually keep students, faculty and the community safe: a fully remote semester — which is a proven public health informed option. Affan Syed is a junior in the College of Engineering and can be reached at affsyed@umich.edu.
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NOAH ENTE | COLUMN
U.S. sanctions on Chinese firms make a vital, strong statement
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n Aug. 26, the United State’s Departments of State and Commerce announced a plethora of sanctions that are set to be enacted against leaders of construction companies — owned by the Communist Party of China (CPC) — which officials deemed as participating in malign state projects in the South China Sea. The relevant measures include export restrictions, withholding visas and decreased access to U.S.created technolog y without permits. These policies serve as an important step toward curtailing Beijing ’s long-running problematic behavior. In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the commencement of the “Belt and Road Initiative,” a comprehensive foreign policy and economic strateg y dedicated to augmenting Beijing ’s soft and hard power around the globe. Since then, the CPC has taken on various projects to achieve this goal, with one notable example being the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea. Chinese officials say they have rightful control over nearly all of these international waterways, yet such ambitious claims conf lict with the policies of other states in the region who dispute the legitimacy of China maintaining full control of the sea and who may pass through it. The South China Sea serves as one of the most important maritime trade routes in the world — trillions of dollars worth of shipping pass through these waters each year. Having control over the sea does not merely grant symbolic power; it carries immense global economic consequences.
These islands often serve as fortified military installations, further adding to the impact of Beijing’s marine aggression. With missile systems, landing strips for fighter jets and other advanced equipment, these naval forts represent China’s ambitions to be a hegemony in Asia and beyond. They have emboldened Beijing to become aggressive to military craft that simply enters these international waters, including U.S. reconnaissance f lights far from China’s coastline. These actions are not only threats to international law and established norms, but also toward the U.S. and the Southeast Asian nations whose coastlines brush against China’s “nine-dash line” that outlines the waters it claims on regional maps. U.S. military leaders have spoken strongly against these developments and the clear threat to American interests that they represent. In May 2018, Admiral Philip S. Davidson, head of U.S. IndoPacific Command, testified before Congress and said “short of war with the United States,” China could achieve full control of the South China Sea “in all scenarios.” If China achieves such a stranglehold on these strategically vital waterways, it could spell disaster for the military and economic interests of the U.S. and its allies, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Without taking military action, the sanctions announced this week are important and potentially impactful steps toward deterring Chinese naval aggression. Closely targeted against the leadership of about 25 state-owned construction firms, these restrictions can help to handicap any further development of existing or
planned military islands by preventing them from attaining American-made supplies and technology for hostile Chinese purposes. The China Communications Construction Company and other CPC-funded companies could likely find other sources for materials and funding. Yet, the export and visa restrictions by the State and Commerce departments will certainly make Beijing’s work more difficult. These provisions will also assure that the U.S. and American companies do not inadvertently fund or support efforts to shift control of one of the world’s most important shipping passages toward a foreign adversary. In 2015, Xi promised former President Barack Obama, and the world, that his country would not militarize the Spratly Islands, where the Chinese military had already begun “relevant construction” in areas where, in Xi’s words, China had maintained legitimate sovereignty “since ancient times.” Five years later, China added the Spratlys to their network of menacing naval installations throughout the South China Sea. Years of passivity in response to Beijing’s military actions have led Xi and his CPC to become further emboldened to expand their illegitimate grip on the international waterways and achieve the goals of their Belt and Road Initiative by sea. With strong sanctions on the way, the U.S. has indicated that while not showing aggression toward China, we are ready to play hardball to justifiably protect our interests and global free trade from Beijing’s unlawful attacks. Noah Ente can be reached at noahente@umich.edu.
JACK ROSHCO | COLUMN
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Biden succeeded before, he will again
n Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I see myself. I see my family. I see my community. I see my country. This may seem like a strange sentiment for a 20-yearold, white, Jewish college student from New York to hold about a lateseptuagenarian Roman Catholic grandfather from Wilmington, Del., and a 55-year-old Black, progressive attorney and stepmom-of-two from Oakland, Calif. So, why do I see myself and my experiences in the Democratic ticket? Because these two leaders don’t let their backgrounds define their policies. Young voters of all races, colors and creeds, all ethnicities, income levels and hometowns have a home in their campaign. “Joe Biden isn’t good, but at least he’s better than Donald Trump,” is an argument all over social media in recent months, and it encourages people to vote for Biden simply to end the current administration. That argument is absurd. It generates no enthusiasm for a candidate who both warrants it and desperately needs it to combat the cult of personality he seeks to defeat. Further, it ignores many of Biden’s key accomplishments, particularly those that pertain to recent national conversations. He championed the Violence Against Women Act, shepherding it through the Senate and to President Bill Clinton’s desk. In the #MeToo Era, a movement led by young Americans, who better to lead our country than a man who’s been on the frontlines of the fight against domestic abuse for 30 years? When he was vice president, the administration instituted a pandemic response apparatus widely considered to be a strength by his campaign. In the middle of a pandemic, he’ll have the experience — and the belief in science and data — to save lives. In a time when children have lost parents and grandparents to a preventable, unnecessarilypolitical coronavirus crisis, who better to lift us out than Biden? Biden has experienced firsthand this kind of senseless loss, when his first wife and daughter were killed. He empathizes with the losses our country has felt this year and is uniquely qualified to console our nation and to heal the wounds this pandemic has caused us. His wife, Dr. Jill Biden, is a gifted and universally respected educator, a voice we no
doubt need as the debate around how to safely educate young people during a pandemic becomes more politically charged by the minute. As millions of students around the country struggle to pay their tuition as incomes have been decimated by the pandemic, President Donald Trump has pushed for capital gains and payroll tax cuts. As we struggle to afford the education that will provide for our futures, Republicans have sought to cut benefits for those in need, including a radical restructuring of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and a strong scaling-back of the new virus relief plan. Cutting these benefits will impact thousands of students at our University of Michigan, in an effort to further enrich the alreadywealthy, who have thrived off of this crisis while so many others have suffered. Biden’s work on issues that affect young voters has been overlooked, and it stretches beyond what is plainly obvious. His support for paid family leave, Social Security reform and his belief in climate science, will, if he’s elected, have both immediate and lifelong impacts on our generation. The simplest reason why Joe Biden is the candidate young voters should support is that he cares about us, while Trump cares only for himself and his cronies. This is evident in their personalities, their policies and even their running mates. If Biden “isn’t good,” you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who is. The running mates in 2020 present microcosms of the campaigns themselves, more so than any election in recent memory. For Gen Z, the choice has never been so stark, the right answer never so blatantly obvious. Biden chose in his running mate a breaker of glass ceilings. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., is a juggernaut for positive change in this country with her policies, such as Medicare for All, education and racial justice, but this election is about ushering in generational change, and that’s Harris’s ethos. Harris is a daughter of immigrants who grew up in Oakland, Calif. and attended a recently-desegregated, majority-white school via a busing program. Her mother, as Harris said in her convention speech, came to America with a dream of helping
others — by helping cure cancer as a cancer researcher. Harris was raised in an environment where she had to constantly go above and beyond simply to receive the same opportunities as her whiter, wealthier and more well-connected peers. She’s not going to fight for tax breaks to the top one percent. She’s going to fight for student loan relief, health care for all people and the racial justice for which our generation has taken to the streets the last few months. In response to the U.S. outbreak of COVID-19 in February, a Northwestern University journalism professor, Steven Thrasher, who studied Indiana’s outbreak of HIV/ AIDS in 2015 and also researched LGBTQ+ health issues, was quoted in an Associated Press article as saying, “Pence’s response as Indiana governor raises real questions about whether he’s the best person to helm the response to the virus.” Thrasher reflected on the time Vice President Mike Pence allowed an HIV/AIDS epidemic to ravage his home state while governor of Indiana. He refused to proactively implement a needle exchange program that would have spared thousands from HIV infection. Pence claims he staunchly believes in the right to life for all people, unless those people do intravenous drugs. Pence doesn’t merely believe that LGBTQ+ people should be deprived of equal rights under the law (though that is something he does, categorically, believe). He has also espoused the idea that there is something wrong with them and even stated that “Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior” on his archived 2000 congressional campaign website, a statement widely interpreted to be reflective of his support for conversion therapy. Additionally, Pence has claimed that the administration is deserving of praise for its handling of COVID19, to which more than 180,000 Americans and counting have lost their lives.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com Jack Roshco can be reached at jroshco@umich.edu.
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Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 11
You’re not too old to enjoy Candace Flynn’s return KARI ANDERSON Daily Arts Writer
Take yourself back to the summer of 2007. Tiger Woods was at the height of his career. The first iPhone had a triumphant release. I went to a week of summer camp and returned with a couple hundred mosquito bites. And in August, Disney Channel previewed an animated show called “Phineas and Ferb.” As someone who started watching the show early on, “Phineas and Ferb” was one of my longest-running influences. It ran from 2008 until 2015 and consisted of four seasons with over 30 episodes each, plus a few hour-long specials and a feature length Disney Channel film in 2011. The show itself may have been set (somewhat hilariously) over the course of one summer, but for many of its watchers it was an entire childhood. I watched the show consistently through elementary and middle school, always finding joy in the silly jokes and catchy songs. In 2015 when I heard that the show was ending, I cleared my schedule so that I could watch the finale, even though I hadn’t watched the show in a year or two. And when the show went on Netflix a bit later, I found myself watching every episode — enjoying the ones I had missed, and rewatching the ones I had recorded and watched repeatedly in 2011 but loved all the same. As I have watched “Phineas and Ferb” over the years, regardless of whether I was 10 years old or 20, I have always enjoyed it. I kept expecting myself to be “too old” to watch the show, and yet that age has never come. This is one of the things about “Phineas and Ferb” that sets it apart from most animated shows aimed at kids: It’s truly enjoyable for all ages. It’s a show that is brightly colored and silly enough to keep kids engaged,
but also filled with jokes that hit differently with age. Creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, along with their team of writers, somehow found the perfect comedic balance of silly punchlines and deep social and self-awareness. I have never seen another show master breaking the fourth wall in quite the same way, but it’s delightful every time they pull it off. Plus the show is rife with pop culture references that span across the decades, riffing on everything from ’80s pop stars to the “Twilight” movies. Of course there are also the songs, which are fun, endlessly catchy and occasionally become cultural phenomena — there’s an entire generation who knows exactly what an “aglet” is, and anyone who says they don’t know the words to “Gitchee Gitchee Goo” is probably lying. So this brings us to “Candace Against the Universe” (2020), the first return to “Phineas and Ferb” — other than the crossover episode in Povenmire and Marsh’s “Milo Murphy’s Law” — since the show ended. If I’m being honest, Candace (Ashley Tisdale, “Scary Movie V”) is probably one of the least likable “Phineas and Ferb” characters. There’s an episode in “Phineas and Ferb” season 2,“Split Personality,” where one of Phineas and Ferb’s creations split Candace into her “essence,” which consists of only two parts: her obsession with Jeremy and her one-track determination to bust her brothers. Despite this, she isn’t entirely one-dimensional. The thing that has always struck me about Candace, especially as I’ve gotten older, is the way that she creates her own misery — she’s so wrapped up in her negativity and single-minded motivation that she is unable to enjoy her own life. The first “Phineas and Ferb” movie, “Across the Second Dimension,” is primarily focused on Phineas
and Ferb’s relationship with Perry after they find out about his role as a secret agent; this film offers an intriguing chance to focus on Candace. “Candace Against the Universe” starts with an opening song that does three main things: it reestablishes the world with quick reminders of some of the boys’ more memorable creations, it weaves in a series of incredibly clever lyrics that made me realize how much I had missed this show, and it tells us how miserable Candace is from her summer of failure. She feels overshadowed by her brothers when all she wants to do is feel special (don’t we all), and feels like the universe is acting against her (don’t we all). And then, somewhat suddenly, she gets abducted by aliens, and is faced with a chance to be special after all. From some perspectives, “Candace Against the Universe” is a classic story: girl wants to feel special compared to genius brothers, girl gets abducted by aliens, brothers go to rescue girl, girl and brothers fight together against aliens and learn some important lessons along the way. The film’s plot is chaotic at times, but that’s the first rule of watching “Phineas and Ferb”: Suspend your disbelief, and give it the benefit of the doubt. The film, and the show, are animated for a reason and can mess with the rules of time and space within this animated world of infinite possibilities. The film is even more remarkable, however, when you realize that the majority of it was made in the middle of a global pandemic. Production continued even as the creative team was completely isolated: The cast recorded their lines individually from home, and the animation team coordinated between three different overseas animation studios to create the film. When taken in that context, “Candace Against the Universe” is all the
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more impressive. What grounds the film is the familiarity throughout. Almost the entire cast was able to return: Tisdale as Candace, Vincent Martella (“Everybody Hates Chris”) as Phineas, Alyson Stoner (“Cheaper by the Dozen”) as Isabella, Maulik Pancholy (“30 Rock”) as Baljeet, Povenmire as Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and many more, with David Errigo Jr. (“Milo Murphy’s Law”) as Ferb since Thomas Brodie-Sangster (“The Maze Runner”) was unable to reprise his role. There are the same delightful moments of self-awareness and fourth wall breaks, and the same brand of hilarious and toe-tappingly fun musical numbers. There are long and silly bits that are borderline slapstick, but there are also jokes requiring societal context that are much funnier for adults than kids. And all throughout there are references and running bits from the show that put a smile on the face of any “Phineas and Ferb” fan. For many of the jokes, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s the stupidest thing ever thought of or the most brilliant. For example, a running gag centers on the idea that the aliens that abduct Candace occasionally explode from the waist up — and that the sound it makes when they explode sounds like “Candace.” That in and
of itself is a lot to take in, but after some research I found out that the voice of those “Candaces” is none other than Tiffany Haddish. The fact that Tiffany Haddish is in this film and is actually billed as “The Sound Someone Makes When They Explode From the Waist Up” sent me into a three-minute stunned silence. But balancing silly and ridiculous without tapping into flat-out stupidity is what “Phineas and Ferb” has always been good at. Things like the alien leader being named Super Super Big Doctor (Ali Wong, “Always Be My Maybe”) or this film hinging on a device called a “chickenreplace-inator” are exactly what I expected, and wanted, from this film. There’s certainly a predictability to the movie, but you have to remember two things: one, that it is technically for kids even if it doesn’t always feel like it, and two, that predictability is what the show operated on for eight years. Every episode of Phineas and Ferb had a formula: Phineas and Ferb make something cool, Doofenshmirtz makes an inator, Candace tries to bust her brothers, Perry defeats Doofenshmirtz, the inator inexplicably helps with cleaning up Phineas and Ferb’s latest creation, Candace fails at busting, they eat pie, and there’s a song
somewhere in there. What makes the show unique is that, even with this formula, every episode feels different and exciting. That is impressive, and it’s what makes “Phineas and Ferb” so special. Unfortunately, we don’t get the endless summer that “Phineas and Ferb” have been enjoying since 2007. School is coming back, in the strangest way we’ve seen yet, and there’s a lot happening in the world that needs to be acknowledged and paid attention to. Still, I enjoyed being able to put myself back into that endless summer, even if it was just for 86 minutes of funny jokes, hilarious songs, heartwarming moments and familiar characters. It’s a lovely story about family — I’d be lying if I said the reconciliation between Candace and her brothers didn’t make me tear up a little — and it’s a return to the “Phineas and Ferb” that I love while finding ways to expand the world a little more. For me, this was the perfect movie to be watching in my bedroom in the middle of a Michigan thunderstorm in the middle of a global pandemic. Maybe it’s not, as Phineas might say, the Best Movie Ever, but it’s exactly what it should be. And so if anyone wants to know: “Aren’t you a little old to be watching a “Phineas and Ferb” movie?” Yes, yes I am. But who cares?
‘Sputnik’ is a familiar, yet moving, sci-fi thriller tale ANDREW WARRICK Daily Arts Writer
In Russian, “Sputnik” means “fellow traveler.” The Soviets used the term for their early Cold War satellites, perhaps to give the ships a sense of community, or offer a friendly invitation to extraterrestrial life (if they happened to speak Russian). In the 2020 film of the same name, a Russian spaceship picks up a “fellow traveler,” sometime in the 1980s. Sadly for the cosmonauts, this Sputnik is anything but friendly. The easiest movie to compare “Sputnik” to is 1979’s “Alien.” In both films, parasitic extraterrestrials prey on terrified humans. Both also have riveting female leads. Ellen Ripley’s “Sputnik” counterpart is named Tatyana Kilmova, played by Oksana Akinshina (“Quiet Comes The Dawn”). Like Ripley in “Alien,” Tatyana bravely meets every horrendous situation thrown her way and puts the inadequate, cowardly and power-hungry men around her to shame. There are wounds behind her steeled eyes, and Akinshina’s layered performance makes the movie worth watching twice, even once one knows the truth about her character. “Sputnik,” like “Alien,” is also rooted in the sci-fi genre’s existentialist roots that trace all the way back to Shelly’s “Frankenstein.” While the aliens are scary and mysterious, the finely-drawn human characters are what bring viewers to the edge of their seats, clutching the arm rests with tears in their eyes. From the first scene, this film’s focus on character colors its science fiction elements, because the viewer cares about
who they affect. Viewers don’t even see the creature until almost 30 minutes in. More importantly, in the alien’s single “appearance” before its reveal, the camera stays on the astronauts’ horrified reaction to something lurking outside their tiny spacecraft. As they tremble and stare, wide-eyed and slack jawed, one does not need to see the Sputnik to know that it doesn’t come in peace. When the monster is finally revealed, it comes with a twist that yanks the film out of “Alien’s” shadow in a startlingly touching fashion. While the twists are best left to the screen, one sublime moment is when the alien, laying on the f loor, curls around a baby rattle. It was hard to decide whether to shudder or to cry.
Sputnik Sony Pictures Now Streaming
The creature is no computergenerated plot device or excuse for jump scares. While immaculate on a technical level, it is both revolting and disgusting to watch this realistic parasite go about its slimy, predatory habits; the alien, like Tatyana, is also wrapped in thematic layers. It makes the characters question their lives, relationships with others and place in the universe. Human nature is explored through bloody, imaginative twists and turns right up until the credits. “Sputnik” differentiates
itself from “Alien” (and its inferior sequels and imitators) by taking place on Earth, at a Soviet research center. The juxtaposition of the drab late-Soviet aesthetic with the gooey interstellar monster is an original, arresting palate. It is almost instantly clear that, while the alien is no ET, the cold industrial environment certainly isn’t helpful, either. It’s interstellar entropy versus the Iron Curtain. The emotionless authoritarians function similar to how Ash did in “Alien,” attempting to control the uncontrollable alien. To paraphrase Ian Malcolm from “Jurassic Park,” they are too busy thinking about what they can do to think about what they should do. Thankfully, like in “Park,” “Alien,” “King Kong” and all the other great monster movies, these exploitative fools get what’s coming to them. It’s absolutely thrilling. “Sputnik” follows in the footsteps of iconic science fiction films while simultaneously pushing the genre forward. Even Ridley Scott, who directed the original “Alien” and returned to the series with 2012’s “Prometheus” and 2017’s “Alien: Covenant,” has never quite achieved this. It’s genuine, thoughtful science fiction that’s both escapism and an opportunity to contemplate humanity and its capacity for love and violence, friendship and tyranny. Movie theaters in Michigan are shuttered, the fall semester is already chaos and things just look like they’re going to get worse. So, fellow travelers through 2020’s very real horrors, why not take a break with an unusually cute alien parasite, some Russians and a strong female lead? There are worse ways to spend one’s time.
‘Desert One’ offers glimpse into the Iran hostage crisis
GREENWICH ENTERTAINMENT
ROSS LONDON Daily Arts Writer
In her most recent documentary, Academy-Award winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple (“Harlan County, USA”) takes an apolitical yet not impartial look at the human challenges of combat. “Desert One” is the story of a failed rescue mission, told by the men who, in the words of their British colleagues, “had the guts to try.” In 1979, when revolutionaries took 52 Americans hostage in the Tehran embassy, President Carter did everything he could to avoid taking military action. Kopple does a cursory job of setting the stage for this crisis but covers the main points. In the decades after a 1953 CIA coup shifted power to the Shah, outside voices preaching about a theocratic state fomented a revolutionary spirit among Iranians (particularly college students). The Shah’s military overreach and oppressive leadership was unwelcome, and the U.S. was seen as his enabler. Iranians wanted the Shah gone and would have liked the U.S. to go away with him. When the Shah was finally ousted, and particularly following the Shah’s hospitalization in New York City, anti-American sentiments grew.
Students stormed the US embassy compound in Tehran and took scores of hostages. Ayatollah Khomeini, wanting the Shah returned to Iran so that justice may be exacted, tried to use these hostages as leverage. Carter was unwilling to extradite the Shah, and the days began to pass. Months later, with little movement regarding the hostage situation, Carter acquiesced to military action. The Pentagon’s plan was “simple.” The operation would be conducted from an airfield off the coast of Oman. Under the cover of night, a number of planes and helicopters would land in Tabas, Iran, before entering Tehran to extract the hostages. However, that’s not quite how it came to pass. I’ll leave the details of the bungling to Kopple, who tells the story better than I ever could, namely through interviews with the surviving members of the Special Operations team who landed in Tabas, Iran in April of 1980. We hear firsthand accounts of what went wrong and why. Visually, the story is told with vivid graphic-novel style illustrations. This film is a captivating tale of hope, loss and regret. Kopple’s interviewees represent an impressive variety of perspectives (hostages, soldiers, decision makers,
bystanders, etc.) from both the Iranian and American sides of this crisis. These diverse perspectives tend to share one common denominator: emotionality. The personal tolls taken by this endeavor are presented in such a way as to supersede the political and tactical. Consequently, the truth is watered down. Kopple’s focus on the men “in the room” comes at the cost of any account of historical and cultural circumstance. Further, by failing to properly represent the intricate and nuanced cultural politics of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, America is portrayed as a victim. Any student of history will know that this is rarely the case. American greed for oil, the motivation for much of our meddling in this region, was of course omitted from this story. That the American troops took hostages (albeit for less than 24 hours) in the process of rescuing hostages, is mentioned but glossed over. Instead, we see video of American flags burned and American corpses defiled. Oh, and do beware, the viewer is given no warning before images of charred, naked bodies, frozen in infinite agony appear on screen.
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Another slightly tone deaf real estate show premieres MAXWELL BARNES Daily Arts Writer
The Hamptons: where your richest friends go on summer vacation. But reality TV’s focus this time is on realtor JB Andreassi’s opportunity to sell his first milliondollar real estate property. His listing at 21 Kellis Way, marked at nearly $7 million and a two minute drive from the shore, includes eight bedrooms and eight and half bathrooms. The house, unsurprisingly, is the primary focus of our quick entry into the world of luxury real estate in “Million Dollar Beach House.” JB’s mentor, the property mogul James, reminds him to say that the house is two acres instead of 7,000 square feet. In the face of mountainous stress, JB admits that he prefers this new line of work in The Hamptons over the rat race of New York City. He professes he’s a “rookie” again, looking to make an impact on the far reaches of Long Island. Despite his humble nature, the beach homes that JB and his team peddle are way beyond the normal margins of commission for any amateur housing rep, and far above any median income level. It’s the type of attention to the stress of wealth that constantly draws our eyes into the theatrics of reality television. In the COVID-19 economy, where so many Americans face the threat of imminent evictions, Netflix’s sudden premiere of a reality show featuring elegant mansions occupied by carefree yuppies could easily be viewed as somewhat tone-deaf. Still, as a son of two architects, I am captivated by the allure of houses as more than simply somewhere to sleep. As a grandchild of two native New Yorkers, I am deeply in love with the sight and smell of the Long Island shores. I just wish these homes were going to more wholesome people. The Hamptons branch of Nest Seekers International currently
has around 125 employees listed on its company website. “Million Dollar Beach House” focuses on five Nest Seekers brokers: JB Andreassi, James Giugliano, Michael Fulfree, Peggy Zabakolas, and Noel Roberts. Similar to “Selling Sunset,” the series reveals the day-to-day routines and SNAFUs of working in luxury real estate “You can’t do this part-time and watch your kids,” Giugliano says amidst the foreground of a monochrome white living room. “It’s impossible to make money unless you’re all in.” In order to make $2.5 million in commission every year, he claims you’ll need to
and feeds our well-groomed team of real estate professionals. Surprisingly, what separates these homes from most others within the sphere of reality television is the genuine style and artistry of the architecture. These houses, for the most part, are not the gaudy kind you’d typically see from “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” or “Chrisley Knows Best.” Additionally, the Nest Seekers team shares personal anecdotes about how they want their lives to be changed by selling these homes. Michael, JB’s lifelong friend, announces his plans of becoming a father. Peggy, the only woman on the team, is looking to prove herself after dominating the Manhattan markets. JB compares his worries about becoming a successful broker to his trials as a football player at Dartmouth. Maybe the most significant moment, though, belongs to Noel, the only Black person on the Nest Seekers team. The show quickly glosses over his appreciation for The Hampton’s geographic beauty and instead cuts strangely to his coworker Micheal. “Have you seen him yet? Noel? Noel? — whatever the f***?” he laughs. “Very polished, right?” This strange cutaway seems to trivialize the presence of Noel within the brokerage. Later, when newcomer Peggy accompanies Noel to a home-buying pitch later in the episode, she scolds his intelligence behind the scenes after he proposes a whopping $35 million in order to convince the homeowner to sell. For all its entrepreneurial glam and attention to detail, Nest Seekers seems to be obsessed with drawing in young, wall street bachelors as their clientele. “Million Dollar Beach House” comes across like a fever-dream of clout chasing. The luxury homes showcased present unhealthily high expectations of living for even the most carnivorous NYU Stern alumnus.
Despite his humble nature, the beach homes that JB and his team peddle are way beyond the normal margins of commission for any amateur housing rep, and far above any median income level.
eat, sleep and breathe the game of home buying. But the game itself is relatively easy to play if you can afford the buy-in. Eighty percent of all homes within the Hamptons are secondary properties, meaning that most of the surrounding hamlets are purely for vacation purposes. Nest Seekers International, the real estate group featured in “Million Dollar Beach House,” is in a more comfortable position than the other 2,500 realtors on the eastern-most tip of Long Island. The small confines of the Hamptons allow Nest Seekers to deal exclusively in the sale of ultra-luxury, multi-million-dollar homes. Memorial Day to Labor Day is known in the area as “selling season,” where the fast-paced nature of the luxury home market eats at the pockets of the ultra-rich
Why I’m reading Stephen King during the pandemic EMILIA FERRANTE Daily Arts Writer
Over the last six months, I have (understandably) turned to reading books that comfort me. I reread the first “Harry Potter” book out loud to my six-year-old neighbor; I revisited the meditative poetry of Walt Whitman and the remarkable prose of Tom Robbins. The words that I had read time and time again consoled me while everything else seemed impossibly crazy. More and more, though, I began to return to the genre that my friends think I’m insane for craving when I need
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a night alone, curled up in bed: horror. Part of horror’s intrigue is the ability of talented horror writers to pinpoint the aspects of society or our own subconscious that bother or scare us, and turn them into something tangible. Effective horror unlocks fears we do not even realize we have, or personifies it in a way that makes it simultaneously fantastical yet much more real. Horror movies get a lot of attention in the media: horror books, less so. However, horror books, when done well, are infinitely more terrifying than horror movies. They force the reader to create the
thing they fear in their own mind. Every reader creates a different universe from the words provided by the horror book, no matter how specific the author’s description is. In other kinds of books, this can be beautiful; the love interest resembles the person we love, and the houses of characters look like the homes of childhood friends, tucked away in a corner of the brain until a book unlocks it. But when a book requires us to create something we fear, we do the same thing — we draw from our own life to create a parallel yet imaginary world. We have to create something uniquely terrifying to us. It
‘Chemical Hearts,’ full of cliches, is unwatchable
AMAZON STUDIOS
SABRIYA IMAMI Daily Arts Writer
If there were ever a perfect movie to describe the trajectory of 2020, it would be “Chemical Hearts.” Much like this year, every time you think that this movie can’t get any worse, it does. There isn’t any one thing that makes “Chemical Hearts” difficult to watch. Rather, every individual flaw of the film builds on each of the others, creating a beautiful disaster. It starts with the premise: an overused, wellknown story that everyone has seen. Henry (Austin Abrams, “Paper Towns”) meets Grace (Lili Reinhart, “Riverdale”) who is jaded and cynical and has a past. He quickly falls for her and wants to be with her. She doesn’t want that, or maybe she does. Nobody really knows. The story of their love begins with a montage and happens too quickly for it to be realistic. At the same time, it happens slowly because neither of them are ready to be with each other. Nothing about the film is unique or special. While imperfections can sometimes make things better, that’s not the case here. The imperfections of the movie are obvious and right in your face. They hit you at the very beginning and continue as the film plays out. Hearing “you are never more alive than when you are a teenager” in the very first line of the film had me rolling my eyes and physically cringing, because as someone who is a teenager, I’m pretty sure that’s
holds a mirror up to our fears, namely the darkest ones that we prefer to hide away. If horror unlocks and personifies our deepest fears, then why would anyone read horror? This is, of course, a question I have been asked many times. Why do I choose to watch horror movies alone? Why do I read so much Stephen King? Don’t I get nightmares? Unlike a night spent ruminating over both irrational and rational terrors, a horror book is expected and contained. The images may linger, but the story ends. There is always a final page, a point at which we can definitively put the book down. Real-life fear does not work like that — it’s incredibly (and terrifyingly) open-ended. Especially in the COVID era, fear surrounds us. For the vast majority of the population, the various ways one could get hurt or killed doing everyday activities never cross the mind. Now, of course, it is imperative that we think “fearfully” in order to protect ourselves and others. Every time we leave our “bubbles” and venture out into the world, that fear (for most) comes to the forefront of the mind. Horror does not create terror, necessarily; it consolidates it. Horror novels allow us to set aside time and space to be scared, and
false. The whole point of life is to find reasons to be alive, to find reasons to be happy and joyful, and if you peak when you’re a teenager, then what kind of life have you lived? That’s the way the entire movie feels. Like it tries too hard to mean something that it could never mean. The characters are twodimensional at best, the story is predictable and flat and the meaning is contrived. The very first day he meets her, Henry falls in love with Grace, a girl who was injured in a car accident. But Grace doesn’t want to love him, or feels like she can’t, because her boyfriend died in the accident. And Henry, who partakes in the Japanese art form Kintsugi, which involves mending broken pottery with seams of gold, wants nothing more than to make her happy, to fix her. That isn’t exactly what makes a healthy relationship. Another strange thing about the movie, perhaps the most unsettling thing of all, is its relationship with death. From Grace’s boyfriend’s accident to the high school newspaper’s theme, death, and especially suicide, are annoyingly and inorganically prevalent in this movie. The film doesn’t glorify death, per se, but it comes close. Teen movies have featured death a lot more than necessary in recent history, but for some reason, it seems much more obvious in this film than in others, and not in a good way. I’ve seen tons of films like this: cheesy, teenage love stories that are all unrealistic and all nearly clones of one another. And frankly, I was
hoping that the trend of making those films was coming to an end. It’s not something that we need anymore, and in all honesty, teens deserve movies that portray them in a better light. Not all teens are overly dramatic like they often seem in teen films. Teenagers should feel a connection to the people that are meant to represent them on screen. One aspect of the film that is potentially the root of its many problems is the issue with the film’s perspective. As is the case with so many of these similar teen movies, the story and perspective mostly follow the male protagonist, Henry, in this case. While I’m sure this is done to keep a sense of mystery that typically surrounds the girl’s character, it tends to seem wrong. Grace is without a doubt the more “interesting” character in the film because of her past and the issues that she is working through. To have the film follow her would be much more interesting and unique. However, “Chemical Hearts” does what so many other John Green-type films do, in having the film follow Henry, the “observer” who falls for the “different girl.” Bad movies can be entertaining for the sake of making fun of them, but there are different levels of bad movies. There are some that are enjoyable to watch because they’ll make you laugh in shocked disbelief that such a film exists, and there are some where you sit in silence waiting for them to be over. “Chemical Hearts” is the latter. Arts writer Sabriya Imami can be reached at simami@umich.edu.
to let out all the vague daily anxiety we have. It packages fear between two covers, thus allowing the reader to set their
reminds us of the control that we surrender each time we get on an airplane. This resonates now especially since air travel contributed so heavily to the spread of the coronavirus. The pandemic adds yet another level of surrender to the experience of f lying. King could not have foreseen the effects of 9/11 or the COVID19 pandemic on air travel back in 1990 when the collection was originally published, but he understood the basic underlying fear. In the story, the characters look out the window to see their world being eaten alive by darkness. This was never something I was afraid of before reading “The Langoliers,” but the image has stuck with me because it turned an abstract fear into a concrete image in my mind. It is therefore easier to compartmentalize that fear. It focuses it on a specific image. King said it best himself, when asked by NPR in an interview about fear in the pandemic: “It’s not panic. It’s not terror that I feel, that I think most people feel, it’s a kind of gnawing anxiety.” Horror is a break from the “gnawing anxiety,” while still feeding it the fear it needs to be satiated. Daily Arts Writer Emilia Ferrante can be reached at emiliajf@umich.
But when a book requires us to create something we fear, we do the same thing — we draw from our own life to create a parallel yet imaginary world. We have to create a parallel yet imaginary world.
fears to rest. For example, I consistently return to one of my favorite short stories by Stephen King, taken from his collection of short stories Four Past Midnight, called “The Langoliers.” This is a story I read when I know I am a long way away from my next f light on an airplane, because it addresses the tiny, nagging question that a master of horror like King is able to pinpoint: What would happen if you woke up on an airplane and nearly everyone was gone? In a larger and more metaphorical sense, it
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Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 13
Lana Del Rey ventures into spoken word poetry MADELEINE GANNON Daily Arts Writer
In between the transition of tracks one and two, I fire off three successive texts: “Holy f#$%ing sh$t. Nothing has ever wreaked havoc on my soul like this single track has done. I am CRYING.” My friend responds with the picture of a small child who appears to embody the worldweary disgruntlement of a man amid a mid-life crisis: “Lana always chooses emotional violence.” Does that make me a masochist, then, for loving every blow of Lana Del Rey’s spoken word poetry, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass? Perhaps. Suffice it to say, the audiobook format is emotionally eviscerating in the hands of Del Rey. Her voice, with the trademark siren’scall edge, adds a layer of intimacy that ink and paper can’t quite capture. That, combined with the background music and evocative writing, makes for an experience like none other. The Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass audiobook, released July 28, 2020, features just 14 poems read aloud by Del Rey. The hardcover release, coming at the end of this month, will feature over 30 original poems and original photography from Del Rey. Her first release since 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell album, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass is distinct in both its audiobook format and intense vulnerability. I walked into Violet Bent Backwards with the assumption that I knew what to expect; my mind still hasn’t walked out. Physically, I am here in my apartment — mentally? I’m in San Francisco Bay. It is to the Bay that Del Rey takes us first: “I left my city for
San Francisco.” Track one eases us in, like a graceful dip into water. The sounds of passing cars and lapping waves makes the California Dreamin’ feel all too real. Where the words provide the emotional ammunition, the addition of background music sets the scene. It’s as if Del Rey is weaving together a new world piece by piece. The sounds give way to the sights; they act as a thread of connection between poems, and a buffer between the raw, unedited moments that Del Rey brings forth. Much like an album, the audiobook format provides for an uninterrupted experience, transitioning smoothly between tracks. Poems, like songs, are curated and structured with
Does that make me a masochist, then, for loving every blow of Lana Del Rey’s spoken word poetry, ‘Violent Bent Backwards Over The Grass’?
intent; short, brighter poems provide reprieve from heavier, soul-searching expositions. Del Rey, while still artistic and vulnerable in her music, breaks a new wall — heck, a new dimension — with her spoken-word poems. Words, and often silence, hang heavier. There is no chorus to fall back on, the only option is to move forward. But rather than an ode to SanFran, track one is penned as a letter to home. “L.A. I’m from nowhere, who am I to love you? L.A. I’ve got nothing, who am I to love you when I’m feeling this way and I’ve got nothing to offer.”
Filled with longing, Del Rey writes of the tempestuous relationship between ourselves and the places we call home. Beneath the beauty of Del Rey’s written verse, there lies the steady melody of life (and notes) passing by all too quickly. With adoration, longing and conflict, Del Rey pleads to L.A. as a child might plead to a parent for love and understanding. “Home” becomes both a place of safety and refuge, as well as a space of oppression and painful experience. Track one speaks to how our origins mold us — sometimes too harshly. Del Rey repeats, “Can I come home now?” This question rings out, a yearning for a return to the familiar, whether that be the comfort of home or the ugliness we know best. As she pleads permission, a harder confrontation arises — would our “home” take us back? Del Rey ends with a somber promise, “I’m yours if you’ll have me, but regardless, you’re mine.” Here, Del Rey asserts her connection to her home, her beautiful and cruel L.A., yet perhaps a more striking statement exists beneath: the claiming of herself fearlessly and without doubt. Del Rey speaks to this dynamic of childhood, of L.A. as an equally nurturing and neglectful “parent,” and in turn she edges into a motherly role. Audiobooks recall the beginning and end of life. Some of our earliest memories are of parental figures reading aloud to us. In turn, as our bones grow old and eyes dull, we return to audiobooks for ease, and perhaps comfort, too. Her poems tell stories of her life. In this, Del Rey appears as a mother to us all, loving us where L.A. — or any other home — did not. As a New Yorker with deep East Coast loyalty, even I found myself longing for the “Eucalyptus trees” and mountains of the West Coast. Del Rey’s true talent isn’t merely good writing or her creative
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format, but rather her ability to captivate your mind and make you see things through her eyes. From start to end, there was no distinction between my own feelings and those of Del Rey. Her voice, hypnotic and powerful, crafts a space undisturbed by time or conflict. I still struggle to articulate why exactly Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass feels more encompassing than the traditional album — be it a Lana Del Rey classic, or anyone else. Every track is untitled, save for its identifying number. Unlike with songs, where the title often provides a hint of things to come, Del Rey’s poems remain small mysteries. Songs can be hypnotizing in their repetition, and there is a natural shortterm gratification system built into traditional song structure: Listeners are rewarded with fun, melodic chorus for every verse they wade through. Spoken-word poetry, when done right, is like a hand reaching into your mind. If not for the steady lull of comfort, Del Rey could easily be part of a classic sci-fi brainwashing scene. The West Coast is better than the East Coast, L.A. is cooler than New York. I shudder to imagine such a reality. From the Audiobook format, there is an underlying apprehension to this lack of control that I instinctively shy away from. There is no page to turn. There is no helpful Spotify sidebar that lets me know how popular each song is. There are no titles to clue me in
on what to think, or how to feel. The end result is a deep dive into an alternate reality. I imagine this is what pulling on a VR headset feels like: alarming, deceptive and addictive. In fact, the experience of listening to Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass is wholly divorced from her music. Only track one has been released by Del Rey on Spotify; to listen to her poems, I was banished from the comfort of my musical “home” to the dark depths of the iPhone Books app (which I had to re-download). To be sure, Del Rey’s poetry is by no means a musical Trojan horse. It does, however, provide a tentative bridge between her musical audiences and the anticipation of hardcover release — a Big Girl serving of poems sans music. The entirety of Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass is, admittedly, dramatic. Even as I write praise, I recognize the unavoidable glamor and glitz — the “L.A” of it all. But isn’t that why we love Lana Del Rey? If it were not for the emotional poignancy of Del Rey’s voice, her poems may appear self-serving and pretentious. I’m left with the suspicion that no one else would ever be able to pull this off half as well. Track two filters Del Rey’s voice with the static of an old recording or scuffed vinyl disc. Jazzy saxophone riffs weave in between verse and stanza. We are left to rest on the shores of Vintage Beach, Nostalgia, U.S.A. As this
sensory journey continues, her poems grow more dreamlike. The dam-break of the first two tracks give way to an interlude of shorter poems, as if Del Rey is taking a breath of air. At one point, I grew so lost in Del Rey’s soft-spoken words that I forget where — and when — I was. My trance ended to the final beat of track four, where Del Rey whispered “You don’t want to be forgotten, you just want to disappear.” Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass is a little psychedelic, too. For some, the lack of steadying audio structure (the anchor of the verse and chorus) may be too distracting. As enjoyable as Lana’s spoken word poetry is, it is not interchangeable with her songs. Her poems are an experience. They’re a character study of a woman who perhaps seems as intimately close as a friend, and then as distant as the moon. As such, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass is a fantastic adventure into something strange, something new. For the poetry-wary, Del Rey strikes a comfortable balance between storytelling (moments and lessons from her life) and thematic, exploratory poems that are begging to be picked apart word by word. It’s perfect for a cloudy day, curled up in a quiet room, or the background track to some gritty, old-fashioned selfreflection. For writers and artists like myself, it’s like a straight IV of creative inspiration threaded into a pulsating vein.
‘Freaks’ is fun, even if it doesn’t have much to add of.
KARI ANDERSON Daily Arts Writer
Even in a post-Marvel Cinematic Universe world, there is always going to be a desire to make movies about superheroes. There’s so much potential in them: the coming-of-age aspect, the tensions between the “real” world and the supernatural, the government censorship and more. The problem is that, when there have been hundreds of superhero films made in the last 50 years, it’s difficult to make something truly new. “Freaks: You’re One of Us,” a German superhero film that dropped on Netflix last week, does its best — with a result that is entertaining, if not quite unique. The film centers around Wendy (Cornelia Gröschel, “Heidi”), a woman in her late 20s working as a fry cook to support her family. Her husband Lars (Frederic Linkemann, “Die verlorene Tochter”) and son Karl (Finnlay Berger, “Der Geburtstag”) are kind and sweet, and the three of them are a great family even when they struggle with money. Still, her job as a fry cook is less than ideal: She gets paid little money and can’t work up the courage to ask for a raise. But, as is always the case, there is more to the story. An opening scene featuring an ominous view of an elementary school with a gaping hole in the wall and a sobbing young Wendy gives us the clues we need: Wendy is gifted with superpowers. Still, the incident as a child has led her to repress those memories, and a special daily pill, prescribed from somewhere in the government, physiologically represses her powers. As a result, she has no idea what she’s capable
So when Marek (Wotan Wilke Möhring, “Who Am I”), a strange man with apparent invincibility, tells her to skip her pills, she discovers that she has superstrength. There are people with powers hidden throughout her society — even her somewhat goofy coworker Elmar (Tim Oliver Schultz, “The Red Band Society”) is gifted with power over electricity. Wendy’s powers lead
people with superpowers mean that there’s a need for superheroes? Elmar — whose obsession with comic books greatly influences his understanding of his powers — views superheroes in a very idealistic way; Marek, on the other hand, takes a more pragmatic approach. Over the course of the film, Wendy must decide which approach she wants to live her life by. In the end, the shortfalls of “Freaks” come from underdeveloped worldbuilding. You meet a few people with various superpowers, but the majority of the superheroes are extras in the background that you never get to meet. Wendy’s “psychiatrist” Dr. Stern (Nina Kunzendorf, “Phoenix”) serves as the face of the institutions keeping superheroes hidden — yet we get little information about these institutions beyond the basic goals. Much of the film is predictable, filled with moments that come off as cliché — possibly a result of translation from German, but most likely because of the somewhat formulaic plot. “Freaks” does well enough for what it is: a superhero movie with an unconventional protagonist and a conventional plot. Within somewhat fluid pacing, there are enough amusing moments and cool visual effects to keep an audience entertained — not to mention a chance to watch Wendy absolutely thrash a group of catcalling creeps. “Freaks” is a very solid international film about power and responsibility, playing under a solid ’80s soundtrack from Wendy’s sticker-covered CD player. I just wish that it was a little less predictable.
One of the biggest things that sets Wendy apart from other superheroes is that her life is already established before the inciting event.
to a transformation beyond the ability to bend metal trays in half: She becomes more assertive about taking what she wants, but also starts becoming more reckless. This film has a lot of promise in terms of creating something new. One of the biggest things that sets Wendy apart from other superheroes is that her life is already established before the inciting event. Many superhero movies are about loners; Wendy, on the other hand, has her family unit, which only makes the stakes all the more intense. Because of this, “Freaks” explores interesting tensions surrounding power and family. The movie also dares to pose the question: does the presence of
‘Vow’ makes you wait for it
HBO
ANYA SOLLER Daily Arts Writer
When news broke in 2018 that a well-connected cult leader and a former Hollywood star were indicted for sex trafficking and multiple other felony charges, a docuseries was almost guaranteed. With the recent explosion of the true-crime genre, it was only a matter of time before NXIVM became the country’s next morbid obsession. “The Vow” opens on a series of interviews with former NXIVM members. Actress Sarah Edmondson (“Geronimo Stilton”) and documentary filmmaker Mark Vincente (“What the Bleep Do We Know!?”) are featured heavily as narrators, slowly unraveling the story’s confusing and bureaucratic exposition. Before NXIVM was known worldwide as a hive of abuse and exploitation, it was a selfhelp seminar series. Founded in 1998, NXIVM began as a vaguely sciencebased multi-level marketing scheme. Leaders Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman promoted the organization as a way to optimize a person’s potential by eliminating “limiting beliefs” that stand in the way of
his or her success. Edmondson and Vincente recount the rapid growth of the semi-spiritual group from hotel ballroom Powerpoint presentations to a business conglomerate backed by the two heirs to the Seagram beverage fortune. As the premiere unfolds, the average viewer might start to question why exactly a primetime HBO series has spent the last half hour talking about colored sashes and personal questionnaires. Slowly, a sense of unease creeps into each tearful interview as the audience wonders, “How did a self-esteem building method become a waking nightmare?” But “The Vow” offers no answers in its enigmatic debut. If you didn’t know anything about NXIVM before watching this, you’d still have no idea what the point of “The Vow” is after the first episode. In fact, the show’s entire feeling of suspense relies on viewers already knowing the story that’s about to be told. Its foreshadowing is vague, almost nonexistent. But is that pacing problem an issue with “The Vow” or with its audience? When a documentary premieres about events that occurred not even a few years prior, a certain amount of
background is assumed. When a documentary premieres about events as heinous as the sexual abuse of NXIVM, a certain amount of morbid fascination is assumed. Often works of the true-crime genre cash in on disturbing content to keep audiences interested. HBO, however, has taken a subtler approach to capture attention. Before it exposes each of Keith Raniere and NXIVM’s crimes, “The Vow” wants to show exactly how a seemingly innocent (and convoluted) self-help course became international news. In outlining every step of the organization’s creation and belief system, the documentary thus far avoids addressing the twisted horror story that dedicated true-crime fans already know and came to see. It’s hard to make a judgement on “The Vow” because the show itself is saving its most powerful moments for the final episodes. The choice to bury the lede may have been in order to bait viewers into watching past episode one or to attempt to explain how exactly someone falls victim to a cult. Whatever the motivation, the story of NXIVM and its victims is waiting to be told, just as its audience is waiting to hear it.
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14 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Back to School: How we’re failing those who support us
BY ANNE KLUSENDORF, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
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y mother has always told me I’m allowed to be an English major, but I’m not allowed to become a teacher. As a senior studying creative writing and literature, I haven’t strayed far from the world I grew up in — one where education was a daily topic of discussion. My mother is a public high school English teacher whose biggest project is a class called College Writing, which she created over a ten-year span with peers and mentors. I grew up fully immersed in her academic career. I graded her students’ quizzes at swim meets, sprawled on the concrete and wrapped in the thick chlorinated air, oblivious to the excitement around me. (I later found out they were Scantrons and that I was a gullible, eager twelve-year-old). I rode in the passenger seat while my older brother drove to an after school test, quizzing him on research acronyms and grammar intricacies. I took College Writing my junior year of high school, finally writing poetry and digital stories like the “big kids” I’d watched growing up — though after a year in my mother’s classroom for freshman year English, we decided another teacher might be best for me. After I finished College Writing, my mother would tape notes to her students’ portfolios strewn around our kitchen counter. Not sure about this one. Thoughts? We’d typically differ half a letter grade, with an A- from her and a B+ from me. During my first few years of college, I brought home textbooks littered with sticky notes, emailed her essay drafts hours before they were due and called at odd hours when I couldn’t remember specific words. I grew up listening, and then participating, in discussions of curriculum, standardized testing, racism and discrimination, keeping digital projects relevant and eventually remote teaching frustrations, among many others. But I grew up into a world that replaced those conversations with ones of worry for everyone’s safety, from school shootings to a pandemic, into a world that let outside problems fester and swell and force their way into brick-walled classrooms, trapped with no place to go. And our educators bear the brunt of it. f course, safety and education have always been complementary. Educators are responsible for a group of human beings, after all — a duty that comes with inherent uncertainties. American teachers, in particular, accept daunting truths that may appear foreign to other professions, such as the reality of school shootings and their role as protectors. But 2020 brings new challenges: Teacher safety is not only jeopardized by a small possibility of unpredictable danger, but instead by the very unknowns schools are swinging open their doors to. Six months after COVID-19 was first reported in the United States, I watch on Facebook as my former math teacher posts photos of the plexiglass shield her husband constructed for her desk. In some classrooms, the desks are as little as 23 inches apart. Across the country, teachers with serious pre-existing conditions are writing wills and calculating loss of income if they choose not to go back. And just like that, with schools reopening, we’ve successfully crammed another problem into a classroom that didn’t ask for it. “I’m not asking for a zero risk. I know there’s risk in my job,” my mother said in a phone interview that was as formal as you
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can get with a parent. “There’s risk in my job every day with school shooters. But I’m asking to be treated respectfully and humanely.” Respectfully and humanely by whom? By administrations, who are tasked with opening schools at the objection of their teachers. By parents, who only want their kids back in school. And by college students, some of whom still spend their free time attending bars and parties. Kentaro Toyama, a professor in the School of Information, feels the same as it applies to in-person classes on college campuses. “I feel reasonably confident as long as I take moderate measures in terms of social distancing and wearing masks and the students do too,” Toyama said. “But I’m also completely sympathetic with many of my colleagues who are either older or have various health conditions for whom this is potentially life or death — you meet with the wrong student for just a little bit too long and it could mean coronavirus.” Dennis Mihalsky is a high school English, Journalism, and Speech and Debate teacher at the City College Academy of the Arts in New York City, who had a different opinion on meeting students face-to-face. “For my own boundaries, I am pretty nervous and hesitant,” he said. “I’m going to go in (to school) but I will be very cautious of everything that I do, follow as many of the procedures as possible and get my students to as well.” My mother, who now hates the word “feasible”, mentions that her school has tossed the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines in favor of what they consider to be practical or possible — meaning instead of desks six feet apart, it’s now “as far apart as feasible.” “I’m torn. I don’t want to get sick,” my mother says. “I certainly don’t want to have long term consequences. But I also feel like we need to do our best to try to open schools. And if it doesn’t work, then we at least tried.” would like to believe that universities, and especially public universities, would be leaders in showing what well-run, enlightened leadership would do in a crisis situation,” Toyama said. We call ourselves the Leaders and Best, yet hundreds of faculty remain suspended in conflict with the University. Toyama explained that the University left many decisions regarding COVID-19 and reopening up to individual units, meaning departments, programs or other clusters of faculty. Some units embraced the challenge of online learning, while others soldiered on with in-person teaching. Toyama explained that the instructions for his department were unclear, but that the deans went instructor to instructor, asking what each was willing to do to make a remote education possible. Allowing individual units to make decisions for themselves allows for flexibility, but also exposes employees with less agency within the University. “There are units on campus where, for example, all of the tenure track faculty declined to teach in person,” Toyama said. “So (now) the lecturers are being required to teach inperson classes, but they have much less occupational stability than tenure track professors, and that seems grossly unfair.” Just one unit — be it an academic department, class, lab, or faculty group — affects many different populations of Ann Arbor, pressuring people into unjust situations that others can opt out of. “We’re a large community,” Toyama said, speaking on U-M faculty. “We have not seen evidence (for) the people
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who are on the front lines that the leadership has their back.” In the past few months, Toyama watched his colleagues, staff and peers who ensure the University functions smoothly be pressured into in-person work. He began organizing protests and encouraging faculty to voice their concerns so the administration could make decisions with input from its constituents. “In my five years in faculty governance, I haven’t yet seen the administration give an inch on key issues, though they are very good at providing the impression that they care about our opinions,” Toyama said. “I don’t think this is governance, this is dictatorship. And, if that seems a little bit alarmist, it’s because I really believe we are in a moment in which we have to do something a little bit more than make polite requests.” U-M is not alone in turning deaf ears to its employees. By April 28, 68 New York City teachers and staff members had died of COVID-19, which can be attributed as a direct result of schools remaining open longer than the faculty wanted. “We sort of lost our trust, almost, in the school district, because they just didn’t act fast enough,” Mihalsky said. “But the union really went to bat for us.” In addition to teaching, Mihalsky is a chapter leader in the United Federation of Teachers, where he “protects and defends” the fifty educators in his chapter from action taken without teachers’ input. The UFT helped close schools in March, then found itself in uncharted territory as it turned to face the new school year. “The UFT was very clear with the city’s administration and the mayor that we need to start planning for next year now, and not wait until the last minute. Of course, they didn’t. They didn’t listen to that,” Mihalsky said. And this past week Mihalsky was preparing his chapter for a strike ahead of NYC schools’ reopening on September 10, but was told at the last minute that the Union had reached a deal with the Department of Education and the De Blasio administration. They never voted to begin the strike, but their uneasiness still lingers. The plan pushes the school year back by two weeks, meaning students will begin September 21, buying the districts time to acquire all the necessary PPE, place social distancing stickers on the floors, check ventilations systems and plan for any other potential necessity. If any of the requirements are not met, the school is supposed to shut down. Mihalsky called the deal unrealistic. “Teachers are intimidated by administration,” he said. “They don’t want to say anything.” Beyond that, he finds it problematic that schools could be open and functional one day, then completely shut down the next. “What are the parents supposed to do? They didn’t plan for their kid to be at home the next day. It’s messy.” He was hoping for a fully remote year, but like many others, spent his summer preparing for any possible contingency. What the general institution overlooks, individuals like Toyama and Mihalsky must provide for their students, their parents and the educational system at large. ihalsky is in his fourth year of teaching, my mother in her 25th. They’re typically fixated on college prep, students’ mental and emotional health, school shooter drills, standardized testing or any number of things. Their newest responsibility will be to police how
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their students wear masks and if they social distance in the classroom. “I never know where to put my focus. Am I there mostly to help my kids be stable, happy human beings and if I can teach them to read and write as well, that’s great?” my mother said. “Or am I mostly there to make sure we have well informed citizens who can read critically, think clearly, write and communicate clearly, understand what is fake news versus real news?” With the pandemic, these concerns increase tenfold. The beginning of September brings an increasingly confusing and complicated world. We’re asking our educators to assume roles as unscathed physical protectors — a role they never asked for. “We don’t need to be called heroes. We don’t need to be called any of that,” Mihalsky said. What they do need is for society to recognize their humanity and adequately address their needs through systemic and societal support, funding and respect. “Give us the resources and the opportunity to do our jobs, and (we’ll) do our jobs well,” Mihalsky said. “Teachers are sort of patted on the back and told, ‘You’re a hero, look at you, you can do this and not get paid a lot. But that’s just not enough to get things to work.” When we label someone a hero and put them on that pedestal, we effectively take away any responsibility we feel for their safety. We don’t have to think critically about them as people and their needs because they’re categorized as superhuman. And if they die, or they’re hurt, it’s viewed as less tragic — it was for a noble cause. This pseudo-martyrism makes it easier for us to accept their fate rather than show enough gratitude to implement a system that actually protects them. The COVID-19 pandemic has put the world on hold, or at least stalled its momentum. We inch along, one day at a time, doing our best to carry on as normal. We bake bread and watch Tiger King, play Animal Crossing, turn to the streets to protest for Black lives and turn inward when the virus rages on. But at some point, we’ll be thrust back into motion again, and the students in today’s classrooms will be moving forward into the next part of their lives. So how will they have spent this historic year? It’s impractical to think everything we expect educators to impart and students to absorb can fit into one classroom or year, even without a pandemic. And it becomes virtually impossible to do these things without the support of education’s institutions. “It can be challenging to feel like you’re doing a good job,” my mother told me over the phone. We began the interview while she drove home from an errand, and I could tell she’d made it home and curled up in the driver’s seat, too deep in thought about her life’s work to walk into the house. I haven’t been in her classroom for a few years now, but at one point it was the backdrop of my life. The east wall is lined with pennants from universities her students have gone on to, some as a direct result of her help. Her passion for education is so strong it’s spilled over into my life, too. I’ve watched her change the way my friends and peers write, and subsequently think about the world, how they process information and define themselves on paper. By some people’s standards, she’d be considered a hero. She’s one of mine. But this distinction does not absolve us of the responsibilities we carry for the educators we’ve been privileged to have in our lifetimes.
15 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
statement
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
A mosh pit, an email and COVID-19 BY ALIX CURNOW, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
I
’ve been settling recently. I’ve settled into a new home. I’ve settled into a new ro vcutine. I’ve settled into a global pandemic. I watch as my friends and family seem to do the same. The mention of “COVID-19” sounds like the name of an estranged relative my family likes to gossip about. While I get annoyed when my mother brings it up at the dinner table, I can’t help but listen to every word, waiting for the next update in the soapbox drama that is the havoc of our lives. But we should be on the brink of panic. There have been more than 188,000 deaths in the United States due to COVID-19. Yet, here we are. We’ve settled. Perhaps it’s a testament to the persistence of the human condition — we have to adapt or else we’ll fall behind. Though we’ve only begun to settle now, early March seems like a childhood fever dream — hazy, intense and difficult to decipher what’s real and what’s not. But it was at that moment that I was still settling into a city I had been in for only two months, away in London on a study abroad program. I miss the feeling of being unsettled. “Drinks are so much cheaper here,” said Abbey, another study abroad student from New Jersey, as she tossed the convenience store cashier five pounds. We drank Strongbow Dark Fruit on the tube to a punk show in Shoreditch in an effort to not buy the expensive drinks the venue sold. We were both scholarship students, and we couldn’t afford expensive nights out like our cohorts. Yet, we were also both huge fans of punk rock music, and we were absolutely thrilled at the prospect of going to a show in Britain — the birthplace of punk music, which later became politicized in places like Latin America and Australia. Though today, the genre has shifted greatly from the punk rock of the 70s, we were drawn to the outspoken anti-establishmentarian politics it still possesses. We finagled our way into spending as little as possible while enjoying the evening as much as we could. Abbey was wearing black lipstick to match her black eyeliner and hair. I was wearing something not as fashionable, I’m sure. Abbey was cooler than she thought she was, which made her even cooler. She was the one that introduced me to the venue, and I was just happy she’d asked me to go with her. I borrowed cigarettes from strangers all night, exhaling the smoke from the burnt tobacco into the foggy London air. The smoke traveled into my own lungs and the lungs of the punk rockers on the streets. We shared stories with one another, we shared our cigarettes and we shared our drinks, too. It seemed like we were sharing just about everything. I feel unsettled by the idea of this now, but then, sharing a drink wasn’t something to be afraid of. One of the smokers had graduated from the university I was attending in the United Kingdom. He studied drama, just as I did, but he told me he regretted his decision, lamenting his past mistakes and failed job prospects. He finished off his drunken ramble by scuffing his cigarette butt into the cement and saying, “There’s no way you can control anything. Anything at all!” I agreed with him then, but I’d soon realize even more just how right he was. Inside the venue, I pressed my body against the hordes of people at the foot of the stage, bumping and thumping to the heavy drums of the band before me. We crashed
into one another, letting out screams and embracing each other’s sweat. I view the mosh pit of a punk show as the epicenter of what punk stands for: a collective of people, typically lower class, coming together to release their pent-up anger toward a system that has failed them. Historically, punk music has been a symbol for anarchy; in fact, as is stated in an article by CrimethInc., a decentralized collective website, “A large proportion of those who participated in the anarchist movement between 1978 and 2010 were part of the punk counterculture at some point, indeed, many were first exposed to anarchist ideas via punk. This may have been merely circumstantial: perhaps the same traits that made people seek out anarchism also predisposed them to enjoy aggressive, independently produced music.” The lyrics we were moshing to were full of angry words directed at demolishing a flawed government. Being in the mosh pit becomes synonymous with an overwhelming sense of belonging. As odd as it seems,
crashing my body into hordes of sweaty strangers brought me a feeling of comfort as I partook in a collective rage toward a failing government system. If only I had known then that in the months to come, the U.S. would fail to protect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Clutching the empty can of Strongbow we’d snuck into the venue, Abbey said, “I’ve got to pee.” We headed to the bathroom. Rows of people were sloshing around, falling into and over each other. As we passed a couple making out in the corner and a man yelling at his friend under the TV, I saw a familiar pair of eyes peering at me. It was Thomas, a student in my study abroad program from Michigan State University. “Hey! What are you doing here?” I laughed. I couldn’t believe I saw someone I recognized in a city so big — the anonymity of London was one of the most unsettling things about it. Running into a familiar face felt like I was back at a party in Ann Arbor. “Hey,” he replied, his response colder than I expected. I was surprised; we’d had a few classes together abroad, and we’d developed some type of comradery over being from rival schools in the U.S. His response was more stoic than usual, so I asked him what was going on. “Have you seen your email?” he asked. I hadn’t — my phone was deep in the pocket of my winter coat, buried under piles of others by the front door. He showed me his. The words of the drunken drama student earlier in the night — you can’t control anything! — echoed in my head. The email had to do with a newly discovered coronavirus that was infecting thousands and threatening the lives of millions. The email was clear: Our home
universities were calling us back to the U.S. Over the next few days, the city of London began to shut down. The tube was scarily empty, and on the off chance you’d sit in the same row as someone else, they’d pierce you with a look of panic. Hand sanitizer, toilet paper and Cadbury chocolate bars were among the many goods that were missing from the grocery store shelves. Companies were offering discounts on major tourist attractions because there were no tourists to attract. I had about a week until my flight back to Ann Arbor, where I’d remain for the foreseeable future. I wanted to embrace the last moments of what the city had to offer: West End shows, double-decker bus rides and curry from the East End. Yet, it seemed as though there was no city left. I watched what happened in the U.S., and the next day, the U.K. would follow suit. When Broadway in the U.S. shut down, so did the shows in London’s West End. When the University of Michigan went online, the universities in England
started to close because the pubs are never closed here … like ever.” When I FaceTime my friends across the pond, I am met with strange relief. We are oceans apart and time zones away, but in a way, we still were in the punk show mosh pit — now as a combined force battling against the threat of the virus, begging our leaders to prioritize our lives in their decision-making. Yet, it seemed as though our leaders were more focused on the economy than us. In the U.S., much of the COVID-19 relief ended in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. The Republican Senate rejected extending the $600 enhanced unemployment benefits that expired for almost 30 million Americans on July 25. “If you are making $50,000 a year, it is more advantageous to be on unemployment insurance than it is to go back to work. That’s an example in this legislation of something that’s going to hurt, not help the economy,” Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told CNBC. Yet, going back to work means more exposure to the virus, and for many Americans, that ILLUSTRATION BY ????? could lead to some serious health issues. It brings me immense sorrow to think of my fellow Americans returning to a deadly work environment just so they can pay their rent for the month. In the U.K., changes to benefits have left disabled people facing poverty. According to the Guardian, “The Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) said in an open letter to the work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, that changes introduced last week to raise the weekly rate of universal credit by £20 would not apply to those on legacy benefits. Many claimants will not receive the increase, worth more than £1,000 a year, because they receive employment and support allowance (ESA), a disability unemployment ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE benefit that pre-dates universal credit.” did the same. I watched as a country I was This will lead many disabled citizens to so familiar with changed completely, and a face an unforeseen loss of income and fedcountry I was just starting to fall in love with eral support. Many of my friends and family morphed into something I could’ve never members that live in London are feeling the predicted. I was grappling with the pain of same kind of immense sorrow for their felchange two times over. low citizens that I do for those in the U.S. Like in the mosh pit, I was again expeIn our phone conversation a few days ago, riencing a collective feeling; though this Ollie said that London looks entirely differtime it was fear instead of rage. We weren’t ent than it did in May. “It’s super busy. The alone in this. Browsing the headlines out of streets are packing up again, the tubes are both countries and talking with my friends getting busier. There is a strange sense of abroad, it was clear the same thing happen- normality now.” This may be due to the fact ing there was happening here, and we were that, in an effort to resurge the economy, connected in our struggle. many U.K. businesses have opened up. This During my flight’s layover, the enormity is not unlike the businesses reopening in the of this crisis finally hit me, and grief ensued U.S. in an effort to continue collecting sales as I walked through the Dallas Fort Worth tax. This reopening does not come without a Airport. During my time abroad, I had no- price, as the U.K. has contended with a secticed many similarities between the U.K. ond wave of COVID-19, while the U.S. is still and the U.S. Though I didn’t know it while grappling with more than 40,000 new cases I was sitting at the airport, our two coun- daily. After my conversation with Ollie, I was tries would grow even more similar. Both again amazed at the similarities between the the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- U.K. and the U.S. I told him that it seemed as tion and the National Health Service would though both of our governments valued savcall on their citizens to wear masks so as ing the economy over saving the lives of their to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Social citizens. distancing would be enforced in both coun“It seems like people are dropping dead tries. U.K. citizens would be asked to stand left, right and center over there,” he said. I two meters apart; equivalent to the six feet nodded my head to agree, and we were silent in the U.S. for a moment. “I’m scared,” I admitted. “I am As the quarantine days dragged on and too,” he agreed. spring turned into summer, I kept in contact I felt comforted to know I wasn’t alone in with my friends and family in London. Shar- my fear. These past few months have been ing our collective fear, though we were miles filled with self-quarantining and social disapart, made me feel less alone. The other day, tancing, both of which only bring a sense of I spoke with my friend Ollie from the U.K. unsettling isolation. But similar to the punk via FaceTime, and we mourned over those rockers bobbing about in the mosh pit, I’ve last few days of normalcy before the world realized it is our collective feelings that alturned inside out. He commented with a sad low us to feel some sense of belonging, even laugh, “I realized it was bad when the pubs during these frighteningly isolating times.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 16
Zoom fatigue: A new way to be exhausted in college
BY LEAH LESZCZYNSKI, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
W
alking briskly to my French class to escape the Michigan chill, I savor the blinding morning sun and let the autumn breeze tangle my hair as I weave through the bottlenecks of people in Angell Hall to arrive at my first class just a little bit early. My classmates line the narrow Tisch hallway, most of them scrolling mindlessly on their phones, some chatting about today’s homework — what they did not understand or failed to complete, fighting sleeplessness under a dim, dorm-room light. When 9 a.m. hits, I exchange smiles with the cute boy leaving the previous section, make a joke about being unable to speak French and head in for 50 minutes of the bittersweet pain that is LSA’s language requirement. A year later, these are little moments that I, that we, do not have this fall. Now, with approximately 78 percent of University of Michigan undergraduate credits taking place entirely online this fall, most of our education is entirely remote. Bright lecture halls and poorly painted discussion rooms with more bodies than desks have been replaced with our own homes, apartments and hours upon hours of Zoom meetings. At the beginning of the pandemic, the rapid replacement of in-person gatherings with video calls sparked extensive discussion of “Zoom fatigue,” a widelyused label for the impacts of excessive virtual meetings on one’s well-being. Though some of us forgot the annoyance of sitting through an unfulfilling virtual discussion once winter classes ended, Zoom fatigue is making an unwelcome return in our student lives with the beginning of the fall term. Engineering junior Braden Crimmins commented on this
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
phenomenon in an email to The Daily. “I’m a computer science major, so I spend a lot of my time on the computer just to get my work done,” Crimmins said. “Having all of my classes over Zoom only adds to the time I spend looking at a screen.” Even if you find joy in not having to rush from Angell to your organization meetings, seize the opportunity to get ready only from the waist up or revel in the ability to leave the camera off, Zoom fatigue is one of the many new obstacles of our current, unfamiliar learning environment. The situations in which we attend our virtual classes are stressful in new, profound ways for many of us. Student issues of housing, food security and internet access have been exacerbated by the pandemic, with many students experiencing the financial and emotional strain COVID-19 has created. On top of these stressors, there are also aspects of the virtual classes themselves that inspire the term Zoom fatigue. Grainy screens and unstable connections fail to provide us with a large amount of the nonverbal cues that help us learn and engage with our professors and peers. Priti Shah, professor of Cognition & Cognitive Neuroscience and Educational Psychology at the University, explained in an email interview with The Daily the difficulties a lack of nonverbals can create. “Face-to-face interactions rely a lot on visual cues. It is easy to tell if people are paying attention,
whether someone wants to speak, whether they are agreeing or disagreeing and so forth. In a Zoom meeting, it is much more challenging to read people,” Shah said. “There is no eye contact, or shared eye gaze to provide these cues.” The nonverbal cues we are fortunate enough to observe are analyzed with more effort, energy and assumption, as much as can be gleaned from reading a person solely from the shoulders or head up. “Even if people are explicitly nodding or raising hands, it takes extra effort to scan through all the people. … There is often a temporal delay,” Shah said. “All of these factors make it necessary to consciously think about things that normally would be fairly automatic.” The conscious attention to these little things is part of what makes hours of online classes and student organization meetings so exhausting. The ability to multitask during virtual meetings also opens the gates to a flood of distractions that are less acceptable (and oftentimes banned) during in-person classes, allowing us the opportunity to lose focus during class. “As an educational psychologist, I know that under the best of conditions, students’ minds wander while listening to lectures,” Shah said. “At least some studies have found that mind-wandering is more pervasive for online lectures than in-class lectures.” In our Zoom lectures, we are tempted to text, wander into the alluring abyss of social media and respond to emails while trying to learn — actions many of us avoided during in-person classes to maintain our focus and avoid disapproving looks from our professors. Relatedly, Shah commented on how the ability of professors to be engaging may be affected by virtual classes, explaining that, “Students also tend to be motivated and attentive when they feel that the instructor genuinely cares about their learning … the caring may be communicated with eye contact, or smiles or a brief interaction.” For many of us, these seemingly trivial interactions help us feel more involved in a class, which would explain why their absence can create a less engaging setting, where the constant allure of seemingly higher productivity poses a threat to our focus and learning.
With all these stressors and changes to our education in mind, it makes sense why so many of us are experiencing the tiring toll of Zoom fatigue. Even more daunting is the fact that virtual meetings are not only replacing our classes, but numerous other social interactions as well, making the onslaught of constant video calls overwhelming at times. Our student organization meetings are now via Zoom — even Festifall used Zoom to interact with potential new members instead of seducing open-mouthed, starryeyed freshmen with its endless tables and scarily enthusiastic canvassers that are guaranteed by the usual, in-person format. On the personal side, FaceTime dinners, birthday parties and hangouts are now a larger part of our social lives than ever. But constant video calls are exhausting and a reminder of the fact that we are unable to experience the oncenormal ebb and flow of last-minute plans and spontaneous, in-person connections that create some of the best memories. I miss watching my friend from across the hall eat eight cookies from the MosherJordan dining hall after a night of surprisingly competitive pick-up basketball at the Central Campus Recreation Building more than anything (except Mo-Jo cookies themselves), but I try to be grateful that I can still see her over FaceTime. There are greater issues of this time than Zoom fatigue, and while exploring the additional stressors virtual classes create for many of us, we ought to acknowledge the monumental benefits video technology provides. We are still able to receive a Michigan education (albeit, at an increased price), connect with our family and friends and continue our lives in many ways because of platforms like Zoom and FaceTime. LSA freshman Megan Mattichak explained some of the benefits of her virtual classes in an email to The Daily. “Asynchronous lectures help me learn at my own pace, and move ahead of schedule earlier in the week, so that I can be free on days for extracurricular activities that I may have not previously been free during,” she said. It is obvious this pandemic — prolonged by an ignorant presidential administration and many people unwilling to follow public health measures — will continue to change our world in profound ways, and the pandemic’s implications for the future of education are no different. I hope that in the future, we will once again have the luxuries of dreading a walk to class in an unpredicted Michigan snow, politely turning down canvassers at the front of Mason Hall and cramming onto a Blue Bus to get to our next class. But for now, I’ll continue in this new reality: starting each morning after savoring an extra half hour of sleep, watching the sun dance off the calleryana leaves shining through my childhood bedroom windows and wandering to my desk donning third day hair and sweatpants, grateful for another day and another 50 minutes of the bittersweet pain that is LSA’s language requirement.
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 17
Michigan parents arrange ‘We want to play’ protest ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
On the day the Michigan football team was supposed to kick off its season against Washington, several Wolverine players and parents instead gathered at Michigan Stadium to protest the season’s postponement. The protest, which was primarily arranged by Michigan parents Peach Pagano (Carlo Kemp’s mother), Melissa Hutchinson and Lisa McCaffrey, included over 50 people in total, including a handful of players and coach Jim Harbaugh. When the Big Ten postponed its fall football season in August, the players were not given input into the decision. According to senior quarterback Dylan McCaffrey, they weren’t even told of the decision, instead finding out news through Twitter. Rumors have swirled for weeks about when the conference will restart, with dates ranging from October to the spring. Those who gathered at the Big House intended to make their voice heard and send a message that they wanted to get back on the field as soon as possible, as well as to call for greater transparency around the conference’s decisionmaking. “We’re just hoping to get the word out that it wasn’t our decision not to play at all,” senior quarterback Dylan McCaffrey said. “Our players were fully supportive of (playing) and we frankly didn’t really know they were gonna cancel. … We just
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
Michigan football players said they would be ready to play at any time during their protest against the Big Ten’s decision to cancel the fall season.
feel as if the decisions were made by a lot of people that it doesn’t directly affect. I guess we want to know who was involved and who voted against it. And in that we’d love to just be able to talk to them, and share our point of view as well, which we feel like we were not able to share at all.” After leaving Michigan Stadium, the group marched down Hoover Street and continued to the Diag. According to Pagano, the protest was originally intended to end at
University president Mark Schlissel’s home, but that plan was scrapped due to construction on South University Avenue. Once on the Diag, protestors chanted, “We want to play!” and sang The Victors. Then, Chris Hutchinson and Jack Harbaugh, Jim’s dad, addressed the crowd. “What an exciting day, just think what it could’ve been had they allowed us to play,” Jack Harbaugh said. “This would’ve been kickoff time. In the locker room, looking
Cam York and the rise of the offensive defenseman
around at the sweat beads coming off their foreheads, looking at each other knowing that you’re gonna have the chance to play the greatest game in America.” Fifth-year senior defensive lineman Carlo Kemp emphasized that throughout history, college athletes have traditionally not had much of a voice in issues that impact them. For Kemp, participating in the protest was a platform to make noise about an issue he cared about. He marched with a handmade sign that
read “We want to play” on one side and “I say when I play” on the other. Kemp’s sign was a reference to the lack of agency he felt Big Ten players had around whether they would be comfortable playing. He pointed to the SEC, ACC and Big 12 as examples of the opposite, where players have the opportunity to opt out or to take the field. “None of us here at Michigan, in the Big Ten, or in the Pac-12 really had the opportunity to talk to our families or
‘It’s using your power for good’: City Police Chief hoping student-athlete protests lead to change
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Sophomore defenseman Cam York was a key part of the Michigan hockey team’s penalty kill last season.
JOSH TAUBMAN Daily Sports Writer
Entering last season, after being drafted 14th overall by the Philadelphia Flyers, sophomore defenseman Cam York had a lot on his plate. Not only did York surpass those expectations, he obliterated them. By the end of the season, York was a Big Ten Rookie of the Year finalist and his defensive prowess was apparent. As a first line defenseman, he helped the Wolverines allow just two goals per game, the fewest of any Big Ten team while also boasting the second-best penalty kill percentage, defending 84.3 percent of power plays. Ultimately, though, what sets York apart is his two-way ability. York’s game is representative of a bigger trend across all levels of hockey. Defensemen are no longer bruisers whose main purpose is to block shots and make checks. Instead, defenders are quick, elusive players who can operate as a fourth forward when their team is on the rush. York proved that he was one of these new-age defenders by contributing five goals and 11 assists in his freshman campaign — tied for fourth in points on Michigan’s roster and third among all Big Ten
freshmen. To set up a goal last season against New Hampshire, York came flying in from the left side, took the puck in stride, glided below the net and then snuck in the wrap-around attempt for the goal. York displayed his offensive skill set with a dangle to drop the defender and force the goaltender to over-commit to the wrong side. A more typical defender would have stopped at the point and tried to throw a puck on goal. But not York. As soon as he caught the pass, York’s intention was to take it all the way to the net. He possessed the confidence and the hands to create this offense. His ability to generate scoring opportunities like this as a defenseman makes Michigan’s offense all the more dangerous, especially with a shot as good as his. In the second period of a win against Ohio State last January, York took the puck off the faceoff and went to work. He moved to the left and then faked a shot before continuing to skate toward the opposite faceoff circle. The defender was anticipating the earlier shot and York recognized this and exploited it, catching the defender flat-footed, causing him to stumble. York then loaded up and
shot back across his body to the right. The goaltender had been following York as he moved laterally and York was able to take advantage and fire into the space that opened up on the right side for the goal. York’s offensive ability goes beyond scoring, his presence can wreak havoc on opposing team’s defenses just by touching the puck. In a win over Notre Dame last February, York took a pass and stick-handled the puck before he pulled back and dished it over to sophomore defenseman Nick Blankenburg, who ripped home a shot for the power play goal. On the surface, all York did was pass it over, but there’s a lot more to this assist — drawing the defenders toward him opened up a shooting lane in the center of the ice for Blankenburg to exploit. Just the fact that York had the puck gave the defense a lot to think about. He had the ability to score as soon as he collected the pass. The defender couldn’t overcommit to blocking the shot, though, because York could have made a deke move and took it down low. The depth chart may list him as a defenseman, but York has proven he’s far more than that. He’s an all-around weapon for Michigan to deploy on both ends of the ice.
make a decision about going forward as if we’re gonna play the season,” Kemp said. “Am I gonna play the game, am I gonna opt out, they gave me the option to opt out but we didn’t even get that choice like some of the other Power Five conferences have right now where they have a voice, they can decide if they want to play this season or not, and we didn’t have that choice.” Pagano told The Daily that she, Hutchinson and McCaffrey arranged the protest to support their children on what was supposed to be gameday and to voice their support for having a season. “Our goal is to let them play,” she said. “That’s the whole thing.” Kemp originally came into Saturday not knowing how he would feel waking up on what was supposed to be his last first day taking the field as a Wolverine. But attending the protest gave him a purpose as well as an outlet to voice his frustration. Though he’s not sure if any greater change will come from it or when the season will start, for now, Kemp is satisfied he was able to speak up. “I woke up and I woke up pretty happy and excited today,” Kemp said. “I didn’t think this is how I would wake up this Saturday, the first Saturday of college football, but I haven’t had the chance to even think about that and I’m happy because my mind’s been here, focusing on Michigan and focusing on trying to get the season again. Right now I’m happy, I feel good, I’m joyful. “I didn’t think I was gonna be saying this on Saturday, so I’ll take this right now.”
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Ann Arbor Police Chief Michael Cox supported Black Lives Matter protests from Michigan’s student-athletes.
BRANDON TRACHTENBERG Daily Sports Writer
A sea of maize and blue mixed with Eastern Michigan’s green colored the sunny Diag. Cardboard signs raised over the crowd of mask-clad heads, broadcasting the words that have become the slogan of the summer: “Black Lives Matter,” “Say their names,” “Racism is the virus,” “Why not now?,” “Skin is not a crime” and many more. Passionate chants reflecting the written words filled the silence amid the windy air. In the middle of it all was Ann Arbor Police Chief Michael Cox — a 30-year public safety service professional originally from Boston. Cox’s son — also named Michael — played football at the University of Michigan from 2009-2011 before transferring to the University of Massachusetts and going on to get drafted by the New York Giants. Cox Sr. thought he had seen the last of Ann Arbor but came back when offered the Chief of Police job in 2019. Cox, who is Black, showed up off-duty Aug. 30 in support of the student-athlete-led Black Lives Matter protest. “Well, actually I got an invite to participate or at least show support for Black Lives Matter,” Cox said. “And it’s not the first time I’ve done that.” There are few who know the
horrors that Black people face in this country better than Cox. While undercover in Boston in 1995, he was brutally beaten by his fellow white police officers. He was mistaken for a suspect; the result was extensive head and kidney damage. It was reported — in a CBS Boston article — that Cox was met with plenty of resistance when trying to receive compensation and the incident was even attempted to be covered up. He and his family also faced several threats from the public and the police department. Cox ultimately gained compensation via a civil rights lawsuit, but the aftermath over the beating caused even more damage. “Being a Black person and understanding what it’s like growing up in this world, being discriminated against and racial inequalities and all the things that people talk about — that’s me,” he said. “I’ve certainly been through a lot of things.” Cox, though, refused to leave the department after the incident. Within two decades, he rose to the second-highest position in the Boston Police Department, superintendent, and led the Bureau of Professional Development and the Police Academy. Cox certainly does not have a perfect record; in February he was placed on administrative leave due to allegations that he created
a hostile work environment. An investigation ordered by the City of Ann Arbor concluded this: “There is no evidence that the Chief was behaving in such a way (yelling, etc.) as to create a hostile work environment. However, there is evidence that people feared retaliation by the Chief, and they had a legitimate basis for that fear, whether or not that was the Chief’s intent.” Still, Cox has dedicated his career to trying to fix some of the many issues that police departments in America have. “I’ve made it my passion to try to get rid of some of these things for as much as I can control and it’s not easy,” Cox said. “It’s not easy cause you don’t always have the support because what happens on the inside, most people don’t understand the culture of the things you have to try and change.” In the past few months of protests and marches calling for an end to mistreatment of Black people in America, police have come to the center of attention. The videos of George Floyd, Jacob Blake, Rayshard Brooks and countless others being brutalized by police officers serve as daily reminders of the deep flaws in the justice system.
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18 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
I
t’s too bad we couldn’t see Jim Harbaugh’s face underneath his mask on Saturday. It might have been revealing. Speaking to reporters while participating in a parent-led protest on the Big Ten’s postponement of footETHAN ball season, SEARS Harbaugh was asked six times in seven minutes about University president Mark Schlissel. He did his best not to publicly criticize a man who’s technically his boss, but the subtext wasn’t hard to see, even without the benefit of Harbaugh’s facial expressions. His conversations with Schlissel? “I have had none,” he said. Does that upset him? “You think maybe I’ve got some inside information or something. I really don’t,” he said. He said later that he’s texted and emailed Schlissel to show him the football team’s COVID-19 testing results. Has Schlissel responded? “Talk to Warde (Manuel). Warde talks directly to President Schlissel,” Harbaugh said. You don’t need me to explain what that means. The very reason Harbaugh was there on Saturday was to protest a decision that Schlissel helped make. “Free the Big Ten,” Harbaugh said. You know, because Schlissel and 10 other University presidents shackled it.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Jim Harbaugh protested Mark Schlissel, so where does that leave Michigan?
ALLISON ENGKVIST & RYAN LITTLE/Daily
University president Mark Schlissel and football coach Jim Harbaugh are publicly at odds over the Big Ten’s postponement of the season.
So let’s stop here for a minute. The football coach, whose salary and public profile dwarfs the University president’s, publicly protested a major decision that the University president helped make. That’s a huge deal in a vacuum. But let’s add in some context. Harbaugh is in the last year of his contract and extension talks got tabled because of the pandemic. Harbaugh also left his last job in large part because he clashed with people in the San Francisco 49ers’ front office, a pattern that’s followed him throughout his career. So, forget the 2020 season. Michigan football might have a bigger issue on its hands if this doesn’t get sorted out. Schlissel’s transparency, in all aspects — be it the football season or the fall semester writ large — has been embarrassingly poor. As it relates to this column, his only com-
ment on the season was a statement on Twitter in support of the Big Ten’s decision last month. The Daily requested to speak with him this week and was told questions on the Big Ten and football season are being referred to Manuel, the athletic director. That’s fine — and it’s worth noting that Manuel, not Schlissel, is Harbaugh’s direct superior. (He also declined an interview request through a spokesman). But Manuel didn’t have a vote in the decision to postpone the season. Manuel won’t have a vote in whether to play later in the fall or during the spring. Jim Harbaugh didn’t protest Warde Manuel’s decision on Saturday. He protested Mark Schlissel’s. It’s one thing for Schlissel to duck questions from reporters. It’s another for him to duck questions from his own football coach.
Players at the protest on Saturday said Schlissel hasn’t shown up at Schembechler Hall and hasn’t seen Michigan’s protocols at work. It’s unlikely that Schlissel, an immunologist, would be convinced to change his mind by seeing some football players in masks, but it says something that he hasn’t shown up to explain what’s going on, why the decision was made, or even just to tell the team the decision was made. Schlissel has bigger things on his mind than football right now, namely getting the University’s COVID response in order before it derails the fall semester. But it’s not asking much for him to explain why he voted to postpone the season, to the people whose season he voted to postpone. Whether you agree with the decision or not, that’s a courtesy they’re owed. “We were getting our infor-
mation from Twitter,” senior quarterback Dylan McCaffrey said. “And we’re the ones it’s directly affecting, unfortunately.” Speculating on the relationship between Schlissel and the football program would be unfair, but at this point, it’s not speculation to say it’s not good. And it’s not unfair to start asking what that means for the relationship between Schlissel and Harbaugh. For all the criticism Harbaugh gets as a football coach, he’s gotten Michigan to a level it hasn’t seen since Lloyd Carr was coaching. He’s got a five-star quarterback coming next year and, quietly, built a team this year that was poised to surprise some people. It’s hard to see the Wolverines getting an upgrade if he were to leave. More than that, it’s hard to see him wanting to leave. He grew up here. His family
is here and his kids are in the schools. His parents are here, and his dad even showed up to protest on Saturday. He’s built Michigan up, but leaving without a win over Ohio State, a Big Ten title or a New Year’s Six bowl — if not a Rose Bowl — would leave a bad taste. In July, he said a contract extension was “right there,” prior to the pandemic. As for Schlissel, he signed a five-year contract extension in September 2018. Barring some kind of disastrous fallout of this school year, it’s hard to see him going anywhere. That puts Manuel between the two of them, in an impossible position of trying to appease Harbaugh, Schlissel, donors and everyone else on down. I don’t know where that leaves everything, but my mind is landing on this quote from a 2016 profile on HBO’s Real Sports, when Andrea Kremer asked Harbaugh about his propensity to alienate people. “That must be true,” Harbaugh said. “Cause I’d wear out my welcome. … People just don’t want to be around you after a while.” On Saturday, asked about the details of the season he wants to play — number of games, College Football Playoff consideration — Harbaugh would only say this: “We want to play.” His mouth moved underneath the mask, in either a smile or a grimace. It would’ve been nice to know which. Sears can be reached at searseth@umich.edu or on Twitter @ethan_sears.
Notebook: Michigan reiterates readiness to play, Evans returns ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
Whenever the Big Ten decides to resume its season, Michigan will be ready. That was the overwhelming consensus among players who attended Saturday’s “We want to play” protest at Michigan Stadium. The Wolverines haven’t stopped practicing — although practices have been non-contact, without pads — and according to junior offensive tackle Ryan Hayes, Jim Harbaugh has used rumors of a mid-October start to motivate players to stay ready. While the exact amount of time the players would need varies depending on who you ask, all of them felt it wouldn’t take long. “If they told us we had a Sunday game, we’d be ready tomorrow,” senior quarterback Dylan McCaffrey said at the protest. “We’ve been going at it for as long as we can. Mentally I think our team is sharper than ever, physically we’re probably more in shape than ever because we’ve been training for so long. I was really proud of the whole team the way they came back from quarantine in shape and ready to go, so I’m confident we would be ready tomorrow.” Fifth-year senior defensive lineman Carlo Kemp agreed, saying that the team would’ve been ready to play Saturday if they’d had a game — despite the fact that Kemp, who missed the Citrus Bowl with an injury, hasn’t been in pads since November. Harbaugh and junior defensive lineman Aidan Hutchinson didn’t have quite as accelerated of a timeline, but both said that all it would take was two weeks in pads for the team to be ready.
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
Michigan football players said they’ve been prioritizing social distancing in hopes that few positive cases could lead to a reinstatement of the fall season.
“We’re gonna be ready to play a game in two weeks,” Harbaugh said. “Get the pads on and our guys have trained without a pause since June 15. So that’s our position. We’re ready to play as soon as we possibly can play.” Michigan’s spring season ended before it could start and the Big Ten has not yet allowed for padded practice. For some players, it’s been nearly a year since they were last in pads. That could seem like a disadvantage in getting back to the field, but there are some silver linings for the players. It’s given them more time to learn the playbook and focus on technique, which could prove useful in the future. “It’s been really nice because we can start working on our
footwork and hands really well, so once we do put the pads on we’ll definitely have more technique down,” Hayes said Thursday on Zoom. “So that’s been one positive about it.” Chris Evans returns Chris Evans is in a unique situation. The fifth-year senior running back was suspended for academic reasons before spring practice in 2019 and was only cleared to return for the Wolverines’ bowl practices in December. Since then, Michigan got a new offensive coordinator in Josh Gattis and two younger running backs have emerged in Zach Charbonnet and Hassan Haskins. It was already a long road back for Evans, and the pandemic has only made it
longer. “Just trusting in the process, just getting ready to play, day in and day out,” Evans said at the protest. “It’s gonna be tough, me being out, not being able to play football since ‘18, but I’ll be ready to go when the time comes.” Evans said he attended the protest because, “I love football and I want to play. It’s best for our team right now.” He described Gattis’ offense as faster and more hands-on but also easier to learn because of the hand signals and boards. Evans also said the offensive line and running backs room were both “looking good.” Some upperclassmen have decided to opt out of whatever potential season there is to focus on the NFL Draft. Evans
hasn’t made a choice yet on that front. “I haven’t decided,” Evans said. “I don’t know what’s going on yet. All I’m focused on is whenever they say we play, be ready.” Practicing in a pandemic In fighting for a season, Harbaugh has locked onto a particular refrain: Since June 15, the football program has conducted over 800 tests, and all have been negative. Michigan’s lack of positive tests doesn’t necessarily mean that playing another Big Ten team would be as safe — Maryland and Iowa have both shut down practice after widespread outbreaks on athletic teams in the past week. But clearly, the Wolverines’ protocols are
working. Players must wear a mask and undergo a temperature check to enter the building for practice or a meeting. They’re also discouraged from leaving their homes for anything other than class or practice. “Don’t go out, keep wearing a mask, practice social distancing,” Hutchinson said. “All the same rules apply. Obviously it gets a little more difficult when most students get there because you have that aspect of it but I think our guys have been doing a good job staying away from other people and social distancing on their own.” There’s an obvious source of motivation for Michigan: The fewer cases it has, the more likely the players are to be able to play. According to Kemp, the motivation to avoid testing positive has led players to avoid activities they would normally do, such as going boating on the weekends. Beginning in June, the team built a culture of distancing based on the mindset that they wanted to play, and that if they didn’t help create an environment where it was safe to do so, the season would be called off. Clearly, based on the Wolverines’ test numbers, it’s worked. “We go from the facility to our houses and back to football, and that was a true testament to everything we believed in and what we were trying to accomplish,” Kemp said. “And we knew that for us to play football, this is what we’ve gotta do, and guys bought into that and they’re still buying into it because at any point we’re hopeful that the season could come up, a game could come up, something. And being able to just keep that discipline is a testament to that character.”
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 9, 2020 — 19
The sights, sounds and smells we’ll miss in a fall without football THE DAILY FOOTBALL BEAT On Saturday, the Michigan football team would have been opening its season against Washington in Seattle. Next week, it would have been opening its home slate against Ball State in Ann Arbor. And The Daily would have been there for it all. Instead, like everyone else, we’ll be sitting at home, missing the joys of fall. So on the day that Michigan’s season would have started, here’s what we’ll miss most: Daniel Dash: A certain smell of waffles, French toast, eggs and biscuits wafts toward the Big House press box elevator on the morning of each noon gameday, but it’s what comes before the first bite that always stands above the rest. The walk through central campus, down State Street and into the sea of maize and blue flowing toward Michigan Stadium never fails to energize the soul. When I sit down for my first plate of Big House breakfast, I’m never able to shake the sense of appreciation. And without football this fall, the classic college town camaraderie that’s become synonymous with Ann Arbor for over a century is what I’ll miss most. Next Saturday, I’ll be sitting in my apartment instead of filing through fans, tailgaters and marching band drummers on my way to what would’ve been Michigan’s home opener against Ball State. As ironic as it may be, the football game itself is the most replaceable component of a game day in Ann Arbor. I’ll miss the two hours leading up to kickoff and the two hours after the final whistle infinitely more than the three in between, and most of
FILE PHOTO/Daily
The Daily football beat missed walking through tailgates on Hill Street on the way to Michigan Stadium’s Main Street entrance on Saturday.
all, I won’t be the same without the lasting memories and relationships that only a football season can create. Aria Gerson: Being on The Michigan Daily football beat is a constant refrain of telling people you can’t do something, except instead of a normal excuse, you’re telling your professors, roommates and friends, “Sorry, I can’t, I have to go talk to Jim Harbaugh,” or, “Sorry, I can’t, I’m gonna be in Indiana.” One of the coolest things about covering Michigan football is that in 2019, I had the opportunity to attend every away game and the Citrus Bowl. I felt the press box shake at Camp Randall Stadium. I saw Beaver Stadium all lit up in white. I even saw that Quinn Nordin 57-yard field goal. Each school had its own little quirks.
Memorial Stadium at Indiana has a ton of stairs (which isn’t so great when you injured your achilles the week of the game). Illinois serves frozen custard, hot cider and beer in its press box. In Madison, we got heckled by Wisconsin fans for the block ‘M’ bumper sticker on our rental car. The Big Ten is one of the oldest conferences in college football. Every game was a new lesson in history, culture, tradition and occasionally absurdity. This year, I was excited to see the gopher on the big screen at Minnesota, watch tailgaters in Husky Harbor and — yes — watch Michigan lose again in Columbus. So that’s what I’ll miss the most. Yes, I love the game of football. I love getting frustrated by short-range field
A year after his breakthrough debut, Hayes ready to anchor offensive line
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Ryan Hayes has grown into a leader along the Wolverines’ offensive line.
THEO MACKIE
Managing Sports Editor
It’s forgotten now, amid the dawn of a fall unlike any other in Ann Arbor, but a year ago this week, Ryan Hayes was the talk of Schembechler Hall. Three-hundred-sixtyeight days ago, Jim Harbaugh walked to the podium in one of those strange scenes that used to be the epitome of normal but now induces shutters. A few dozen reporters sat shoulder to shoulder and scribbled notes as Harbaugh spoke. The strangest note that day was that Hayes was Harbaugh’s offensive player of the week for his performance in Michigan’s mundane, 40-21, seasonopening win against Middle Tennessee. It was unexpected then, because Hayes was a late injury replacement for Jon Runyan Jr. at left tackle. To his right along the offensive line, there were four future NFL Draft picks. But Harbaugh’s primary takeaway wasn’t about them. It was about Hayes. “We learned Ryan Hayes is pretty darn good,” Harbaugh said then. That revelation was important for the Wolverines because of this week, and what this week was supposed to
bring. Michigan, back in the before times, was scheduled to travel to Washington this weekend, a mighty challenge for the first game of the postShea Patterson era. Making that challenge even more difficult was the anticipated departures of Runyan, Ben Bredeson, Cesar Ruiz and Michael Onwenu along the offensive line. All of which is why Hayes’s revelation as a trustworthy left tackle was so critical, even back then. This month, though, Hayes became even more important. When Jalen Mayfield — a potential firstround pick next April — declared for the NFL Draft on Aug. 18, Hayes suddenly became the centerpiece of Michigan’s offensive line, even with just two career starts. From Kwity Paye’s vantage point across from Hayes in the Wolverines’ pad-less practices, Hayes’s growth in the new role was evident instantly. “Ryan Hayes has taken that leadership role on the O-line,” Paye said Thursday. “I feel like he’s been getting those guys right.” Hayes, for his part, is reluctant to accept that praise. He says his nature is to lead by example. In the wake of Mayfield’s departure, he says he’s “been trying to be a little
bit more vocal and work on that side of leadership than just work by example.” What he doesn’t need any adapting to is the on-field work. That part has been a work in progress since he arrived on campus as a lanky tight end. Over the past year, he’s completed his transition into a filled-out offensive tackle. “From here to last year, I definitely feel bigger, stronger, I feel more capable to do things,” Hayes said. Most of that work, though, came while redshirting his freshman year and learning the finer points of playing offensive tackle from offensive line coach Ed Warinner — and guys like Mayfield and Runyan. “To see what he looked like from his first day to Saturday, it’s like night and day,” Mayfield said after the Middle Tennessee game. “It’s crazy to see how much he’s grown and how much he’s learned over this past year and I just can’t wait to see how much grows this year.” A year later, compare that to how Hayes speaks about his younger teammates. “Two younger guys that really impress me: (sophomore Karsen Barnhart)’s really stepped up since Jalen left, been playing really well,” Hayes said. “And then Zak Zinter does not look like a freshman at all. Zinter has really impressed everyone.” Here he is, the guy who just a year ago was the young player being talked about, now doing the talking. It’s a role Hayes could never have expected this time last year, when Mayfield had two years of eligibility left. But now, whenever Hayes’s next game comes, it’s a role he’ll be ready for. “I was pretty nervous going into (the Middle Tennessee) game, not knowing what would happen, not knowing anything,” Hayes said. “This year, it feels completely different. I’m not scared.”
goals and sack celebrations and rivalry trophies. But most of all, I love the experience of immersing myself in a new slice of college football culture every Saturday. I hope I get to do it again. Theo Mackie: The walk from my house to the media entrance at Michigan Stadium is 27 minutes, according to Google Maps. On fall Saturdays, it feels like about five. Every time, my routine is the same. I start the walk with my earbuds in, trying to put myself in my own world before kickoff. But then I get to Hill Street, where throngs of tailgaters walk around by the dozen, all clad in maize and blue, and I realize what I’m missing out on with earbuds in. So I take them out and listen. I listen to the tailgaters stressing about which party they should
go to. I listen to the party songs blasting from behind the blue tarps walled up around every yard. Later, walking down Hoover Street past Elbel Field, I listen to the drumline. When I get to the corner of Hoover and Greene, I listen to the middleaged graduates returning for their annual visit to Ann Arbor, reminiscing on the glory days. Sometimes, I even listen to the crazy guy screaming about Jesus for a second before tuning it out. Next Saturday, when Michigan would’ve played its home opener against Ball State, that’s what I’ll miss most. Of course, I’ll miss the football too. I’ll miss the constant debates and controversies. I’ll miss the early-morning and late-night McDonald’s stops on road trips and the desperate searches
for the media parking lots in Bloomington or Champaign or State College. I’ll miss putting the finishing touches on my story amid the serenity of an empty stadium, three hours after 110,000 people have headed home. But most of all, I’ll miss the energy of Ann Arbor on a gameday. And when it returns some day, I’ll leave my earbuds in my bag and never take it for granted again. Ethan Sears: Each week before a home game, Dave Ablauf, the team’s main spokesperson, sends a form email with media policies and procedures. I don’t read it anymore, but when it lands in my inbox, there’s a little jolt of excitement I get. It’s one of those small things that you take for granted, a tiny little reminder on a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon that there’s football happening on Saturday. I’ve been missing that email this week, and on Saturday I’ll miss the walk to Stadium and Main, the ride up the elevator and the hours before and after the game in an empty, silent stadium — back when that felt special and not like a reminder of everything bad in the world. Being in the part of the country that’s chosen not to play football while others do feels like your best friend didn’t invite you to their birthday party. Instead of having fun, I’m running through memories and imagining what it would be like if things were normal — instead of writing this on Friday afternoon, I’d be on a flight to Seattle. I don’t know if I’ll watch any of the games on Saturday or how it’ll feel if I do. It’s probably not healthy to have this much of your life tied into football, but here I am thinking about a form email and wishing it would come.
Mike Smith ready to embrace a new challenge at Michigan
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Juwan Howard’s persistence helped secure Mike Smith’s next destination.
CONNOR BRENNAN Daily Sports Writer
Sometimes it’s as simple as honesty and interest. At least it was for fifth-year senior Mike Smith. Last spring, as the former Columbia point guard narrowed down his list of transfer suitors, the candid and persistent approach of Michigan coach Juwan Howard stood out among the rest. In early April, Smith chose the Wolverines over Gonzaga, Arizona and Seton Hall. “I think coach Howard just showed a little more interest than some of the other schools,” Smith said. “He just reached out to me and from day one, he’s always been honest in telling me where I’d fit in and what kind of player he’d need for next year. “He said it was between me and Bryce Aiken, who is now at Seton Hall and went to Harvard. He said me and him were the only two guards he was recruiting and from everything I had seen back then, I knew he was being honest because nobody else was being recruited. So I knew he was trustworthy and a man of his word.” With Zavier Simpson graduating and junior guard David DeJulius transferring to Cincinnati, Michigan entered the offseason in need of backcourt
depth. Smith, who led the Ivy League with 22.8 points per game as a senior, provides exactly that. Though Big Ten competition is a significant step up from that of the Ivy League, Smith is no stranger to high-level opponents. As a senior at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Ill., Smith finished second in Mr. Basketball voting, helped the Friars win the notoriously competitive Chicago Catholic League championship and a school-record 28 games, and finished his career second on the school’s all-time scoring list behind 14-year NBA veteran Corey Maggette. Smith committed to Columbia relatively early his senior year. Just 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds at the time, most of his suitors were at the mid-major level. Smith’s success that season earned him a bit more attention on the recruiting trail, but he stayed committed to the Lions throughout. Looking back now, he wouldn’t change a thing. “I think Columbia was the best decision of my life,” Smith said. “There’s always going to be a life after basketball. I’m setting myself up now for when I’m 36, and I can’t touch a basketball anymore. I’m going to be set for life with just the connections I’ve made and the Ivy League degree that I have.” With a bachelor’s degree in Sociology in hand, Smith is now
pursuing his master’s at Michigan. He’ll have the opportunity to test himself in one of college basketball’s best conferences, too. It’s a challenge those who know him best think he’s ready for. “Mike’s got a great personality and a lot of charisma and confidence,” Fenwick basketball coach Staunton Peck said. “One of his best traits is his confidence. He instills confidence in his teammates as well. It didn’t matter who he was playing against, he thought he was as good or better than the guys he was playing.” Smith attributes that confidence to his work ethic and practice schedule — both of which have improved under the tutelage of his mentor and friend, Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler. The two first connected during Smith’s senior season at Fenwick when Butler played for the Chicago Bulls. They’ve trained together ever since with Smith even spending summers out at Butler’s home in Calabasas, Calif. “Being around Jimmy so much and our little crew, we all work out together,” Smith said. “We work out four times a day in the summer. And ultimately, since he’s in a spot I wanna be in — you know, I want to be able to play in the NBA, I want to be able to make that type of money and play in those types of games — if that’s what it takes, then that’s what I’m going to do. I think my confidence comes from my work and repetition. “If you continue to work hard, you can feel confident in yourself when you get stuck that you’re going to make that shot that you shot 300 times the day before or the morning before the game. With all things in life, when you do things repetitively and keep doing that, then you’ll feel more confident.” Smith’s relationship with Butler also gave him unique insight on Howard’s demeanor and coaching style due to Butler’s connections around the league. Read more online at michigandaily.com
Sports
20 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Jim Harbaugh protests Big Ten’s postponement, says he hasn’t talked with Mark Schlissel ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
Originally, the plan was for Saturday’s protest to go from the tunnel entrance of the Big House to South University Avenue, where University President Mark Schlissel resides. Organizers scrapped that due to construction. If they hadn’t, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh would have been protesting outside his president’s house. Schlissel, according to documents obtained in a lawsuit by frustrated players from Nebraska, was among the Big Ten presidents who voted to postpone the season by an 11-3 margin. His only public comment on the situation has been a statement
on the day of the season’s postponement supporting the decision. The Daily requested to speak with him this week and was denied. He hasn’t spoken with Harbaugh — or anyone else with the football program — either. “I have had none,” Harbaugh said when asked about his conversations with Schlissel. “We’ve texted and (athletic director) Warde Manuel’s done all the conversations with President Schlissel.” Players said Schlissel hasn’t been to the practice facility and hasn’t explained his reasoning to them either. Harbaugh said he’s sent texts and emails, but when asked whether Schlissel has responded to any of them, he only said, “Talk to Warde.
Warde talks directly to President Schlissel.” Showing up at Saturday’s protest, organized by Michigan football parents to rally in favor of a fall football season, isn’t the first time Harbaugh has publicly contradicted
Michigan’s lack of positive COVID-19 tests. According to an update sent Saturday morning, Michigan athletics had four new positive tests in the last week among players and coaches from all
Well I mean, would have rather been coming to a game than a rally. But (that) definitely hits you. We should’ve been playing a game today. Schlissel on the issue. The day before the season’s postponement was made official, Harbaugh sent a lengthy statement outlining why he believed it was safe to play. Chief among the reasons was
teams. The football program went the entire month of August without a positive test. “You think maybe I’ve got some inside information or something. I really don’t,” Harbaugh said. “I can tell you how
practice was, I can tell you how the workouts have been. I can tell you we just had another 120 tests that were all negative. That’s close to 1,000 tests in a row completely negative. I can tell you how the guys’ grades are right now. That’s really the things I’m focused on is just training and coaching our guys.” In other words, without publicly saying he’s upset at the University president, Harbaugh explained why he would feel that way. All the coaches in the Big Ten want to play, he said. High school football in Michigan is back on. The team feels it can be ready soon, and Harbaugh has told them playing in October is a possibility despite conf licting reports on the matter. “You give me a
couple weeks in pads, two weeks, I’m ready to go,” junior defensive end Aidan Hutchinson said. “We haven’t stopped practicing.” It’s not a given that playing would be safe right now. A game between TCU and SMU was just postponed due to positive tests. In the Big Ten, Maryland had an outbreak this week. “I don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world,” Harbaugh said. “I know what we’re doing.” Walking as thin a line as he could with recorders in front of him, Harbaugh didn’t leave much about his position to the imagination. “Well I mean, would have rather been coming to a game than a rally,” he said. “But (that) definitely hits you. We should’ve been playing a game today.”
Alec Cohen/Daily
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