ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Ann Arbor, Michigan
michigandaily.com
County releases two-week order telling students to stay-in-place The announcement comes amid spiking COVID-19 cases in University community EMMA STEIN
Daily News Editor
DESIGN COURTESY OF MAN LAM CHENG
COVID emerges in fraternity and sorority life as some chapters party
Cluster of cases identified near campus after a party between members of two houses while several fraternities recruit freshmen in violation of IFC’s moratorim CLAIRE HAO & JOHN GRIEVE
Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter
Editor’s Note: The Michigan Daily has used several anonymous sources to report this story. As stated in the article, we are honoring our sources’ requests to be quoted anonymously due to fears
of retaliation from their sorority houses or the greater fraternity and sorority life community, which is commonly referred to as Greek life. The Michigan Daily has uncovered a previously unreported cluster of COVID19 cases connected to fraternity and sorority life on campus after a party between members in two houses. The Daily has
also obtained documentation that multiple fraternities in the Interfraternity Council conducted fall recruitment of freshmen — a violation of the IFC’s moratorium on fall rush for first-year students. The Chi Omega sorority had a cluster of COVID-19 cases and went on lockdown after members of the sorority attended a joint party with Delta Chi, a disaffiliated
University fraternity, according to four Panhellenic Association members. The Daily has obtained an email from University Health Service to Chi Omega residents about this cluster. The cluster is not publicly identified on the University dashboard. See CLUSTER, Page 3
The Washtenaw County Health Department issued a stay-in-place order for University of Michigan undergraduate students Tuesday to curb outbreaks of COVID19. It will take place effective immediately and last until Nov. 3 at 7 a.m. In a press release, Jimena Loveluck, Washtenaw County Health Officer, said they put the order in place because the situation has become “critical.” According to Loveluck, U-M-associated COVID-19 cases represent over 60% of local cases. “This order is necessary to reverse the current increase in cases,” Loveluck said. “We must continue to do what we can to minimize the impact on the broader community and to ensure we have the public health capacity to fully investigate cases and prevent additional spread of illness.” Undergraduate students, both on and off-campus, must stay in their residence unless attending class, accessing dining services or carrying out approved work that cannot be done remotely. Students who wish to return to a primary residence may do so only if they have completed the University’s procedures for leaving campus
safely. Students not experiencing COVID-19 symptoms may still leave their residences for a variety of reasons, including voting, getting medication and going to medical appointments, attending class, participating in varsity sports, going to work if it cannot be done remotely or exercising in groups of no more than two people. Under existing state orders, people must stay away from those not already in their household by at least six feet and wear a face covering when out in public or common areas. No visitors will be allowed in on or off-campus housing. The county emphasized there should be no in-person gatherings with people outside of people’s households. According to the county’s press release, the University also will take further steps out of an “abundance of caution” to provide options for students and instructors such as moving more undergraduate courses to fully remote instruction for the remainder of the fall semester. In a statement, Robert Ernst, executive director of University Health Service and associate vice president for Student Life, said the school was working in close coordination with the county. See ORDER, Page 3
Laws curbing union power limited graduate students’ options in strike, gave University of Michigan leverage
State legislation aided by US Supreme Court ruling, helped ‘U’ in dealing with Graduate Employees’ Organization in labor dispute EMMA RUBERG & LEAH GRAHAM
Daily Staff Reporter & Managing News Editor
When graduate students at the University of Michigan decided to strike in September, state law was definitively not on their side. On the first day of the strike, the University filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the Graduate Employees’ Organization, the union representing more than 2,000 graduate student instructors and graduate student staff assistants, and later followed up with a request for a preliminary injunction on Sept. 14. Members of GEO went on strike in protest of the University’s fall reopening plan and called for more COVID-
19 protections and the right to work remotely for all graduate student instructors. They also demanded the diversion of funds from the Division of Public Safety and Security, a request the University did not grant. GEO reluctantly accepted the University’s proposal to end the strike because of the legal pressure the union was facing. “In the face of our power, the University of Michigan decided to lean on a nearly hundred year old union-busting law to sue their own graduate students,” union leaders wrote in a Sept. 16 press release. “ … The University poured their immense resources into legal fees instead of simply protecting our community by implementing reasonable steps toward a safe and just pandemic response for all.” Striking is one tool unions
GOT A NEWS TIP? Call 734-418-4115 or e-mail news@michigandaily.com and let us know.
Follow The Daily on Instagram, @michigandaily
have at their disposal to increase their power when bargaining with employers. However, in Michigan, it is illegal for most public employees to strike under the 1947 Public Employment Relations Act. This ban is one of several pieces of legislation and court rulings that have restrained the power of unions both in Michigan and across the country. In December 2012, the Republican-controlled Michigan legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder passed a law cementing right-to-work legislation in Michigan. Under the new law, no employee could be required to be an official, duespaying member or to pay fees supporting the union’s collective bargaining. Unions are still required to
represent nonmember employees, who continue benefiting from many union activities such as legal representation and negotiations with employers, often resulting in higher wages and better benefits. Amber McCann, a spokesperson for state Sen. Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, who supports rightto-work legislation and voted for the Michigan bill in 2012, wrote in an email to The Michigan Daily that Shirkey believes workers should not be required to join or finance a union’s activities. “The driving force behind Senator Shirkey’s support of ‘Freedom to Choose’ (aka RTW Legislation) was choice,” McCann wrote. “He believes unions have the ability to make their case for membership and workers have the ability to choose whether or not that membership is beneficial to them.”
For more stories and coverage, visit
michigandaily.com
INDEX
According to Kate Andrias, professor at the University of Michigan Law School, who studies labor law, because this kind of legislation is labeled as right-towork, people often misunderstand its purpose, which she said is to weaken unions. “Right-to-work is not actually about a right-to-work — it doesn’t give anyone a job or protect anyone from being fired without cause,” Andrias said. “Rather, it is simply a tactic to defund and weaken unions. The effect of right-to-work laws is to weaken workers’ bargaining power at work and their influence in the political system.” The 2012 right-to-work law justifies the prohibition on strikes by public employees, claiming regardless of the merit of the controversy, they are an “economic waste” and that the
Vol. CXXX, No. 4 ©2020 The Michigan Daily
state’s residents should always be “considered, respected and protected.” Ian Robinson, president of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization, which represents non-tenure track faculty members, said the union lost approximately 10 percent of revenue when they first felt the effects of new rightto-work legislation. However, he added this is not where he thinks the union gets its power. “Power doesn’t really come from money, at least not at the margins,” Robinson said. “I mean, you need a certain amount of money in a union to hire quality staff people to help support the volunteers that are really at the core of the union work in union power. If you don’t have a good volunteer base and a high level of
NEWS.........................2 MIC............................6 OPINION.....................8
See STRIKE, Page 2
ARTS .........................11 S TAT E M E N T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4 SPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
News
2 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com
ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Editor in Chief esla@michigandaily.com
ANITA MICHAUD
Business Manager ammichau@michigandaily.com
NEWS TIPS
news@michigandaily.com
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR tothedaily@michigandaily.com
EDITORIAL PAGE
opinion@michigandaily.com
PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION
ARTS SECTION
photo@michigandaily.com
arts@michigandaily.com
NEWSROOM
SPORTS SECTION
734-418-4115 opt.3
sports@michigandaily.com
CORRECTIONS
ADVERTISING
corrections@michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor public schools are working together to adapt a learning environment which meets new safety standards.
BECCA MAHON/Daily
AAPS, local health department call for schools to reopen safely Washtenaw County agency, school district sign letter asking to bring kids back SHANNON STOCKING For The Daily
In an attempt to find a compromise between a COVID19 safe environment and in-person schooling, Washtenaw County Health Department and Washtenaw Intermediate School District released a call to action on Oct. 12, emphasizing the importance of a joint community effort to bring kids back to schools safely. “We wanted to raise awareness,” Naomi Norman, the interim superintendent of Washtenaw Intermediate School District, said. “Our ability to go back to school successfully face-to-face was dependent not only on our schools having really strong safety protocols, but that as a larger community, as families and all the people who touch our families, we all have to be working together on having healthy practices so that we can minimize the spread of COVID-19.” Ann Arbor Public Schools is one of the few school districts in Washtenaw County doing virtual learning. The call to action letter says all school communities have the responsibility to look after one another. “Even when you feel like
STRIKE From Page 1 commitment from quite a lot of volunteers, you can have a lot of money and still be very weak.” Kat Brausch, Rackham student and grievance committee co-chair of GEO, warned that right-towork laws could result in unions having too few members or funds to continue, but clarified this is not currently a concern for GEO. “Right-to-work is intended to set up a sort of financial death spiral in a way because people do not have to be members, fewer people are paying dues,” Brausch said. “The union has less money to spend on both our sort of dayto-day activities, our collective bargaining, our general support for our members and things like that. And we have to put more of our efforts into member organizing to make sure that we get as many members as possible.” “But with less money, we have less resources to put into member organizing, which means that then there were fewer people joining the union and less money to put into organizing,” Brausch added. LSA professor Bob King is a former president of United Auto Workers, a prominent union in the U.S. and Canada with more than 980,000 members. King said unions can retain members even when subject to right-to-work laws. “UAW is still able to have an effective voice and effective power to get good contracts,” King said. “So good contracts are what keeps high membership, I think. And so overall, unions that have that power in the industry or power
WMG-contact@umich.edu
you’re in your own bubble or in your own space, you are part of a larger Washington County community and we have to count on everyone,” Norman said. “Every one of us matters to this effort.” The letter said teachers and staff are missing their students and that there is mutual effort needed from both the school districts and the communities as a whole to bring students back. The call to action lists important safety guidelines to help minimize the spread of COVID19, such as hand washing, getting a flu vaccine, wearing face masks and practicing social distancing. Currently, 30 district officials, including the nine public school superintendents, have signed the joint call-to-action letter. Huron High School history teacher Jeff DeMoss is one of the many teachers who are striving to create a virtual community. He said Zoom is not conducive to a positive and healthy classroom environment. “Creating a community for me relies a lot upon people practicing some vulnerability and being willing to share things about their identity, about their political or social beliefs,” DeMoss said. “When it’s on a screen, and people are just in
their room frequently with their cameras off, students don’t feel safe to share.” AAPS has put effort into creating support systems for students and teachers. DeMoss said teachers went through weeks of professional development to establish the new virtual education proceedings. He also said students have been creating community through different clubs and organizations. Huron High School senior Aakarsh Verma said adjusting to online school has been difficult but has created a sense of camaraderie among students. “Overcoming a lot of those technical difficulties that are bound to arise when you transition to an entirely virtual platform for learning,” Verma said. “We’ve been patient with our teachers and we’ve been helping them where we can and that has established a sort of community through the shared learning curve that has brought us together.” DeMoss said he was concerned that virtual learning affects students’ mental health. “They are isolated,” DeMoss said. “But those connections are not able to fully be there, the same as if we were in-person.”
The mental and social health of students are one of the main concerns of virtual schooling, but many school districts are facing difficult decisions on whether or not these social and mental concerns hold precedence over the concern of a COVID-19 outbreak in a school. When contacted for comment, Andrew Cluley, AAPS director of communications, directed The Michigan Daily to the AAPS COVID dashboard where AAPS highlights the metrics the district is looking for to bring students back. These metrics include 14 days of a downward trend in positive cases across the country, 7-20 new positive cases per million and less than 3% risk rate determined by the MI Safe Smart Map. The call to action says there needs to be a joint effort from the community and the school districts to ensure a safe school environment. “I hope to see them (schools) following COVID guidelines,” Verma said. “These are not normal times — we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. And we can’t act like we aren’t.” Contributor Shannon Stocking can be reached at sstockin@ umich.edu
to the employer, they keep high memberships. If they don’t have, or if they have less power to deliver the kind of contracts they want, then I think it impacts membership more.” McCann said Shirkey’s support for right-to-work legislation is driven by the belief it would benefit the Michigan economy. “Michigan has absolutely experienced an economic recovery as a result of multiple factors, but the Majority Leader would argue that Michigan becoming a ‘Freedom to Choose’ state did factor into the decision-making for companies looking to Michigan to locate,” McCann wrote. “It was a policy that (made) Michigan much more economically competitive. Furthermore, union membership has not seen a significant loss of members — proving Senator Shirkey’s point that the union has the ability to make the case for the value of membership.” There has long been a national trend toward restricting unions and strengthening right-to-work legislation. In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public sector union fair share fees were lawful and could be used for collective bargaining in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. The ruling was overturned in 2018 with Janus v. AFSCME, making right-to-work the national norm. The decision meant public employees do not have to pay union fees to cover the costs of collective bargaining, undermining the laws in 22 states with “fair share” provisions requiring non-members to pay these fees. Michigan’s economy has
improved since the passage of the right-to-work bill, but pinpointing the impacts of a single piece of legislation is a difficult task. Many academic studies have sought to evaluate the results of right-to-work laws, but numerous factors contribute to economic growth. While this legislation can help foster a more business-friendly environment, determining those effects with certainty isn’t easily done. However, some studies indicate adverse results in terms of union membership and wage growth. According to a study by Frank Manzo, the policy director of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, and Robert Bruno, a labor professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Janus decision could reduce union membership among state and local government employees by 726,000 people. Manzo and Bruno also estimated wages for that group of employees could fall by an average of 3.6%. A different article in the Labor Studies Journal found that rightto-work laws had no impact on employment and negatively affected other aspects of the economy. While state law was on the University’s side in the labor dispute with the graduate students, the union and their supporters were frustrated with the school’s request for an injunction against GEO — the University’s own students. In the aftermath of the strike, GEO spokesperson Leah BernardoCiddio said the union felt like its hand had been forced. “We are all feeling a little bit upset and frustrated and devastated that we were backed into a legal corner,
and we had to choose between our demands and the future of our union,” Bernardo-Ciddio said. The graduate students aren’t the first on campus to resort to a strike — or the threat of one — when seeking concessions from the University. In the spring of 2018, after a monthslong bargaining campaign, LEO members came close to initiating a work stoppage, which also would have violated state law. LEO called off the work stoppage when the union determined that the University’s bargaining team had started to “move in the right direction” at a last-ditch bargaining session. Robinson said unions have to use the options available to them when making demands on behalf of their members. “The way I look at it is, over the years, there’s a series of promises that the University has made and not kept,” Robinson said. “Every now and then LEO should feel free to make a promise and to not keep a promise.” According to Robinson, striking is justified in certain circumstances. “My view has been, it’s the law, but we used to have apartheid laws, we used to have laws against Black and white people using the same water fountains,” Robinson said. “There’s laws that you should obey because they’re morally sound and everybody benefits from them and everyone should follow them, and there’s laws that really ought to be broken because they are unjust laws.”
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Editorial Staff ERIN WHITE Managing Editor
ekwhite@michigandaily.com
SAYALI AMIN and LEAH GRAHAM Managing News Editors
news@michigandaily.com
Senior News Editors: Barbara Collins, Claire Hao, Alex Harring, Ben Rosenfeld, Emma Stein, Liat Weinstein Investigative Editor: Zayna Syed Assistant News Editors: Iulia Dobrin, Julia Forrest, Jasmin Lee, Calder Lewis, Angelina Little, Hannah Mackay, Sarah Payne, Emma Ruberg, Julia Rubin, Jenna Siteman, Varsha Vedapudi, Kristina Zheng
EMILY CONSIDINE and BRITTANY BOWMAN Editorial Page Editors
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Senior Opinion Editors: Elizabeth Cook, Zack Blumberg, Krystal Hur, Min Soo Kim, Joel Weiner
THEO MACKIE and ETHAN SEARS Managing Sports Editors
sportseditors@michigandaily.com
Senior Sports Editors: Daniel Dash, Lily Friedman, Connor Brennan, Brendan Roose, Kent Schwartz, Lane Kizziah, Rian Ratnavale Assistant Sports Editors: Jared Greenspan, Nick Stoll, Drew Cox, Aidan Woutas, Abby Snyder, Jack Kingsley
JOHN DECKER and JULIANNA MORANO Managing Arts Editors
arts@michigandaily.com
Senior Arts Editors: Jo Chang, Elise Godfryd, Zoe Phillips, Jonah Mendelson, Ally Owens Arts Beat Editors: Samantha Cantie, Dana Pierangeli, Andrew Pluta, Cassandra Mansuetti, Anish Tamhaney, Sophia Yoon
CHRISTINE JEGARL and LIZZY RUEPPEL
Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com Senior Design Editor: Hibah Mirza
ALLISON ENGKVIST and ANNIE KLUSENDORF Managing Photo Editors
photo@michigandaily.com
Senior Photo Editors: Madeline Hinkley, Asha Lewis, Miles Macklin Assistant Photo Editors: Julia Schachinger, Ryan Little, Emma Mati, Sophia Afendoulis, Becca Mahon
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA
Managing Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com Deputy Editors: Andie Horowitz, Marisa Wright Associate Editor: Isabelle Hasslund
MADISON GAGNE and SADIA JIBAN
Managing Copy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com Senior Copy Editors: Olivia Bradish, Sophie Kephart, Silas Lee, Olivia Sedlacek, Ellie Scott
PARTH DHYANI and SIMRAN PUJJI
Managing Online Editors webteam@michigandaily.com Senior Web Developers: Abha Panda, Rohan Prashant, Jonathan Liu
ALEC COHEN and ELI SIDER
Managing Video Editors Senior Video Editor: Iulia Dobrin
video@michigandaily.com
MAYA MOKH and DEVAK NANUA Michigan in Color Editors
michiganincolor@michigandaily.com
Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Zoha Bharwani, Lora Faraj, Ana Maria Sanchez Castillo, Gabrijela Skoko
SAMANTHA SMALL and SONYA VOGEL Managing Podcast Editors
JOHN GRIEVE and BEN KORN Managing Social Media Editors
Senior Social Media Editors: Kristina Zheng, Ria Dubey, Ryan Postman, Haley Johnson, Atticus Raasch, Asha Lewis
Business Staff MOLLY WU
Creative Director
RYAN KELLY Sales Manager
The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is publishing weekly on Wednesdays for the Fall 2020 semester by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. If you would like a current copy of the paper mailed to you, please visit store. pub.umich.edu/michigan-daily-buy-this-edition to place your order.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
CLUSTER From Page 1 The four students quoted in this article — all members of sororities in the Panhellenic Association familiar with the party and the outbreak in Chi Omega — spoke to The Daily on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from their chapter. This article will refer to each student by a pseudonym. Grace, who is currently living in a sorority house on campus, told The Daily that she has seen very few changes in fraternity and sorority life in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’d say like 80 percent of Greek life is living life as normal,” Grace said. “I think that people got here, realized what was possible and threw caution to the wind.” Grace said it is hard to know how widespread COVID-19 is in fraternities and sororities because chapters are not forthcoming with their testing results. “I think everyone knows more than they want to admit,” she said. A party and an outbreak Members of the Delta Chi fraternity hosted a party Sept. 19 with dozens of members of the Chi Omega sorority in attendance, four students with knowledge of the event told The Daily. These four students include one student in Chi Omega who told The Daily that she chose not to attend the party and three Panhellenic members who have knowledge of the event but wished to keep their chapter affiliation anonymous. UHS sent a letter addressed to residents of Chi Omega confirming that a cluster had been identified in the house Sept. 24. The letter, obtained by The Daily, instructed residents to take part in voluntary testing. “As you may be aware, a cluster of COVID-19 cases has been identified within your sorority,” the UHS email read. “On the advice of the Washtenaw County Health Department, and out of an abundance of caution, you are asked to test for COVID-19 within the next 48 hours.” The Daily asked the University’s Office of Public Affairs if Chi Omega experienced a cluster in midSeptember. The Daily also asked for the total number of clusters and cases connected to University FSL. University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen did not answer these questions in an email to The Daily Wednesday morning. When asked the same questions, Susan RinglerCerniglia, communications and health promotion administrator of Washtenaw County Health Department, wrote in an email to The Daily Wednesday morning that she did not know the answers. She said the county health department does not collect specific data on FSL. “At the time of this cluster, there were several off-campus residences with cases/clusters,” Ringler-Cerniglia wrote. Approximately 15 members of the Chi Omega sorority tested positive for COVID-19 in the days that followed the party with Delta Chi, multiple Panhellenic Association members told The Daily. Most of the members who tested positive had attended the
ORDER From Page 1 “The university has been working closely with the Health Department all along in response to the pandemic and supports this decision to issue this stay at home order,” Ernst said. “This action is intended to reduce the strain on our capacities for contact tracing and quarantine and isolation housing. Many individuals and offcampus residences are cooperating fully, and we hope this additional guidance on limiting social activities reverses the trend of increased cases related to social gatherings.” According to the county press release, the stay-in-place order is not the same as a quarantine order. “During the stay in place order, official and essential activities are allowable when carried out using COVID-19 prevention measures including wearing face coverings, social distancing and frequent hand cleaning,” the press release reads. “While this order allows students to work and participate in official activities with preventive measures in place, it also limits the impact of exposures on
News
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 3
Delta Chi fraternity party, they said. The University publishes notification letters of confirmed cases in residence halls and campus buildings online. Cases in FSL are not individually noted in publicly available data on the University’s dashboard, though they are included in the total case count. This means the total number of cases specifically in FSL is unknown to the public. Other universities, such as the University of Washington and University of Southern California, publicly announce clusters within FSL. Ohio State University President Kristina M. Johnson told The Lantern, the campus newspaper, the number of fraternity and sorority houses under mandatory quarantine, but an OSU spokesperson would not confirm the names of organizations to protect members’ privacy. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill publicly alerted students to all clusters, including naming specific FSL houses. UNC Chapel Hill moved to all-remote instruction after a series of clusters emerged, including some in its FSL houses. Colleges around the country continue to grapple with outbreaks in FSL. In her Wednesday email to The Daily, Broekhuizen wrote that the University does not publicly post notifications for clusters in offcampus housing such as fraternity and sorority houses “for a variety of reasons; one of which is for the respect of student privacy.” She noted that the University does not own or operate fraternity and sorority housing. The University of Washington, the University of Southern California and UNC Chapel Hill do not own their campus’s fraternity and sorority houses. Ohio State University manages some fraternity and sorority houses but not others. While the University does not publicly identify cases in FSL, Ringler-Cerniglia said anyone involved in a cluster is contacted directly. “Separating out case numbers by location or house may be identifying in some instances, and we wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as useful given the current process,” Ringler-Cerniglia said. “Whether a total number of FSL cases can be provided is really a question for the university.” As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 880 positive cases of COVID-19 have been traced back to the University since the start of the semester, according to the school’s COVID-19 dashboard. According to Washtenaw County data, 18- to 22-year-olds account for 80 percent of confirmed cases in the county from Sept. 24 to Oct. 7. Grace said there is a tendency among members to treat cases in FSL as an internal problem, rather than something that can impact the surrounding community. “It’s not like we’re living in this little bubble off South U,” Grace said. “Greek life kids go into local establishments and they’re interacting with people outside of their own little bubbles every day. That’s when it gets really scary, when they break their bubble and it just starts to spread.” According to a Sept. 24 notice
posted to the University dashboard, “off-campus, congregate housing” accounted for a rise in cases in September. Between Aug. 21 and Oct. 9, on-campus residence halls have reported more than 200 cases and have dealt with at least nine clusters. Grace said she knew living in a house with dozens of other girls meant she had an increased chance of contracting the virus. However, she was not prepared for the risks she faced as her housemates and others in FSL continued to party. “I just didn’t think that when we got here the level of socialization would be as intense as it was. From day one, girls were automatically diving into frat basements,” Grace said. The IFC and the Panhellenic Association, the governing bodies of some of the University’s fraternities and sororities, decided to suspend all social events for the fall semester in a statement from the two groups at the end of July. “We cannot ignore the broader implications and responsibilities of being a member of Fraternity & Sorority Life during this unprecedented time,” the IFC and Panhellenic Association statement reads. “We must also be mindful of how the virus has disproportionately affected communities of color, and do our part to work against this inequity.” Not wanting to be subject to University policies, the University’s chapter of Delta Chi left the IFC voluntarily in the fall of 2018. Delta Chi and five other fraternities formed its own governing body called the Ann Arbor Interfraternity Council. The Panhellenic Association prohibits sororities from attending social events with fraternities that are “expelled from or temporarily suspended from” the IFC. The Delta Chi headquarters placed a “Cease of Operations” on the University’s chapter in October 2019, according to the IFC’s website. It is unclear why the chapter was reprimanded. Broekhuizen wrote Wednesday afternoon that the University’s Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life is aware that some chapters have “disregarded and violated public health and safety guidelines.” She said two IFC chapters are on probation, one has lost University recognition and “several” others have received educational sanctions. “Safety is a community responsibility and students ARE holding one another accountable by using the mechanisms the university has in place to report concerns and share evidence, and to submit formal complaints,” Broekhuizen said. “... Many fraternities and sororities have had no challenges honoring the public health guidelines and expectations.” The IFC, the Panhellenic Association and the University’s chapters of Delta Chi and Chi Omega did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Daily talked to more than a dozen people in the course of reporting this article and found no evidence that any fraternity and sorority organizations in the Multicultural Greek Council or the National Panhellenic Council, the governing body for the University’s Black fraternities and sororities,
engaged in fall recruitment of freshmen students or have outbreaks of COVID-19. Fraternities recruit against ‘U’ policy again A freshman recruit in Delta Chi had tested positive for COVID-19 before the Sept. 19 party, Emma and Grace told The Daily. Because Delta Chi is disaffiliated from the University and is not subject to University policies, the fraternity can recruit freshmen members this semester. For fraternities and sororities affiliated with the University, IFC regulations prohibit them from taking in new freshmen members until the winter semester. Last fall, The Daily reported that at least eight IFC fraternities violated this policy by recruiting freshmen members the first semester that the policy went into effect. Again this fall, The Daily confirmed that at least five University-affiliated fraternities conducted freshmen rush. The Daily reached out to two freshmen who confirmed that they participated in fraternity fall recruitment, but both declined to comment further. When asked how the University is enforcing its policy, Broekhuizen wrote that “a number of chapters are recruiting eligible students to learn more about their chapters which is in compliance with the university’s policy related to recruitment.” Chapters in the IFC and Panhellenic Association are allowed to host in-person recruitment events of eligible students — all students that have completed at least 12 credits at the University — as long as they follow public health guidelines and University COVID-19 policies. But members of three different University-affiliated fraternities used language explicitly targeting freshmen students in posts to Facebook groups meant for recruitment. The Daily reviewed the posts in some of these groups. “Now, as a high school graduate headed for Michigan, I’m sure you’ve all heard of welcome week,” a June 25 post in one fraternity’s fall recruitment group reads. “Frankly, words don’t do it justice. I hope you are ready for fourteen days straight of drinking, f---ing, and to keep it short, doing whatever the f--- you want.” Some IFC-affiliated fraternities create PowerPoint presentations of their new recruits, called pledges, after recruitment concludes. Several sorority members provided The Daily with PowerPoints from three IFC fraternities sent by fraternity brothers to various Panhellenic sororities. The PowerPoints created for the fall 2020 recruitment cycle featured mostly first-year students. Grace said she was worried freshmen rush would contribute to the spread of COVID-19, especially because most rush events are in person. “These pledges are rushing multiple frats, so they’re going everywhere,” Grace said. Dealing with an outbreak Broekhuizen wrote that the University works with the county health department, the four fraternity and sorority student governing councils and each chapter’s national headquarters to facilitate
COVID-19 communications and planning. These organizations also collaborate to handle positive cases and to address public health violations. According to Broekhuizen, chapters were asked to submit their quarantine and isolation plans to the University for review. When cases are identified among off-campus students, Broekhuizen wrote that the University offers “broader asymptomatic testing of individuals living in those locations” and directs these students to quarantine. Some fraternity and sorority houses have developed plans to deal with potential coronavirus cases, including designating specific bedrooms and bathrooms to be used for quarantine purposes. Engineering sophomore Sydney Swider is a member of Alpha Chi Omega. She said she thought her house was doing the best it could to quarantine and isolate given the circumstances of communal living. “With our shared living spaces, we’re more at risk than people living in houses by themselves or with two other people, but overall I think they’re taking a lot of measures,” Swider said. “If anyone has been in contact with a positive case, they’re quarantining or they have to get out of the house.” Swider said the girls in Alpha Chi Omega have to report their test results to their self-elected House Corps, made up of two other members of the sorority. According to Swider, the House Corps then reports these results to the University. The Daily reached out to 13 other fraternity and sorority organizations asking about their COVID-19 protocols, but none responded. In contrast to Swider’s experience at Alpha Chi Omega, students told The Daily that Chi Omega’s plan was insufficient when a large portion of the house had been exposed to the virus. The Chi Omega house set aside four double bedrooms in case members needed to isolate themselves, multiple Panhellenic Association Members told The Daily. “That was under the pretense that there would only be a few positive cases in the house at a time,” Grace said. “They did not expect there to be 15 cases all at once.” Rebecca echoed the sentiment that when cases actually broke out, the plan in place was not enough. “There wasn’t a plan B in case there were more than eight girls who got COVID,” Rebecca said. Ringler-Cerniglia wrote that some fraternity and sorority houses were “initially less cooperative than others” in working with the county health department. “Often the biggest question for us is whether a particular house is fully cooperating (i.e. responding promptly to investigators and following all guidance),” RinglerCerniglia wrote. According to Ringler-Cerniglia, the county health officer has the authority to issue quarantine orders to specific houses, which happened with 25 fraternity and sorority houses at Michigan State University in Ingham County. She said Washtenaw County has not issued any quarantine orders related to the University. The entire Chi Omega house
local businesses, workers and community members.” This comes amid a spike in cases on campus and a corresponding jump in the use of quarantine and isolation housing. In the first two weeks of October, people between the ages of 18 and 22 accounted for nearly two-thirds of cases in Washtenaw County. As of Tuesday morning, there have been nearly 1,200 COVID-19 cases on campus since the start of the fall semester and quarantine occupancy at 52.8%. On Saturday, the University announced it would begin to house students in quarantine and isolation in Northwood Apartments buildings with regular residents because all designated rooms are occupied. Washtenaw County issued orders on Oct. 7 limiting indoor gatherings to 10 people and outdoor events to 25. According to the order, the restrictions will remain in place until it is “determined by the Washtenaw County Health Officer that the threat to the public’s health and lives is no longer present.” In early October, the University released criteria for reevaluating campus operations during the pandemic. There is “no one number” that will prompt the
University to change its current plans, but there are a variety of metrics that would lead to the “consideration of further action,” according to the Campus Blueprint. These triggers include five consecutive days of COVID-19 test positivity rates above 20%, a cluster of over 100 contacts, more than 70 new cases per million in Washtenaw county, if quarantine and isolation housing is estimated to reach full capacity in the next 14 days or 80% of the beds are filled, among other criteria. By Oct. 5, the University had triggered two of its metrics when there were five days of sustained increases in infections among University students and staff, and when Washtenaw county exceeded 70 new cases per million.
new guidelines were put in place because of “the high prevalence of cases in Markley and the lack of cooperation from a high proportion of residents.” Additional protocols include not attending in-person classes and only leaving the dorm room if necessary. The Campus Blueprint website says mitigation responses are currently targeted at the source of the outbreak, such as enhanced social distancing in Markley. However, broader, campus-wide changes might be warranted if enough metrics are crossed. “Tools and enhanced mitigation measures could include, but are not limited to, entrance screening enforcement, restriction of extracurricular activities, travel, gatherings, the suspension of in-person classes, or even the closure of residence halls,” the website reads. More than 360 cases have been confirmed in the residence halls from Aug. 21 to Oct. 17, according to the dashboard. More than ten clusters have been identified in the residence halls since move-in, many in the last two weeks. The Daily confirmed one cluster in a sorority house following a party with members of a disaffiliated
fraternity, as some in Fraternity & Sorority Life continue to party and recruit freshmen. Chief Health Officer Preeti Malani said in the weekly COVID19 briefing on Friday that the current rate of students going into quarantine housing is “not sustainable” and the University will “go through it within a couple weeks.” Especially towards the beginning of the semester, students sent to U-M quarantine housing voiced concerns about unsanitary conditions, lack of communication and confusing protocol. Many students are getting tested at offcampus sites, some to avoid being sent to U-M quarantine spaces and others out of reasons of access and convenience. When the University added off-campus testing counts to the dashboard in late September, the number of confirmed cases more than doubled. Symptomatic individuals and those who’ve been in close contact with a positive case are eligible for testing through University Health Service. Others have to sign up and be chosen randomly through the weekly symptomatic surveillance testing program, leading to
On Saturday, all residents of the Mary Markley Residence Hall were told to follow enhanced social distancing for two weeks after 17 new cases were confirmed in the building. Despite the orders, no further criteria were met, University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald told The Daily on Sunday. A notice sent to Markley residents over the weekend said the
eventually went into a “lockdown” for 14 days, according to Grace, Emma, Rebecca and Emily, a Chi Omega member. The girls said they did not know which authority required the lockdown. The UHS email to Chi Omega residents instructing them to perform testing came five days after the party. Emma said that the delayed response may have led to greater transmission of the virus. “It was a few days, but those few days when you contract COVID are your most contagious days, and I think that’s why it’s spread so quickly,” Emma said. The University provided selfadministered nasal swab testing for up to 1,500 FSL members in the first three weeks of September. Broekhuizen did not offer details on how many fraternity and sorority members chose to participate in this testing program. Some of Swider’s friends tried these self-administered tests. When they went to turn in these tests at the dropbox, Swider said the drop-off location seemed outof-service. “There were over 100 tests in that thing,” Swider said. “That made me really not trust (the University).” Symptomatic students and close contacts of positive individuals can get tested through UHS. Other students who wish to get a test through the University have to sign up and be chosen for the voluntary surveillance testing program, leading many students to test offcampus for reasons of access and convenience. Swider said she signed up to get tested through the University and went to the testing center three times at the beginning of the year, but no tests were available each time she went. Swider said many people in her house and in her FSL circles are opting to test off campus because they find on-campus options inadequate. “I’m at urgent care right now, and there’s almost 30 people here,” Swider said during a phone interview. “Most of them are in Greek life that I know from other houses.” After pressure from the campus community, the University added off-campus tests to its dashboard at the end of September, more than doubling the total number of recorded cases. These cases were previously known to the University. When interviewed in September, Ringler-Cerniglia said many of these off-campus cases were also discovered through rapid antigen testing. She told The Daily that these rapid tests are unreliable. “Let’s say they’re using this to justify going to a gathering. So I go and get my rapid test, and I go to a party,” Ringler-Cerniglia said. “We’d be highly concerned that that could be a false negative.” While detailed COVID-19 statistics for FSL are not readily available to the public, Grace said she would not consider Chi Omega an outlier. “This is going to get really bad. But the thing is, I don’t know how much will be revealed,” Grace said. Daily Staff Reporter John Grieve and Daily News Editor Claire Hao can be reached at jgrieve@umich. edu and cmhao@umich.edu.
criticism from community members and experts of the University’s testing plans. The Graduate Employees’ Organization, the union which represents more than 2,000 of the University’s Graduate Student Instructors, went on strike in September in protest of the University’s reopening plan. Facing legal pressure from the University, GEO accepted the University’s proposal and ended its strike after two weeks. Many resident advisers and some student dining hall staff also staged labor actions to demand safer working conditions. Resident advisers accepted the University’s deal soon after the GEO strike ended, but resident advisers and MDining staff continue to voice health and safety concerns. The Faculty Senate passed a vote of no confidence in President Mark Schlissel’s leadership but failed to pass a vote of confidence in the University’s fall reopening plan. The University is expected to announce its plans for the winter semester by Nov. 1. Daily News Editor Emma Stein can be reached at enstein@umich. edu.
News
4 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Joe Biden, Gary Peters campaign before election Presidential contender, senator go on the trail in Detroit SARAH PAYNE
Daily Staff Reporter
MADDIE FOX/Daily Quarantine housing in Northwood spikes as cases surpass 1,000 since start of school year.
Use of quarantine housing spikes as U-M cases cross 1,000 since start of school Occupancy rate gets close to hitting 50 percent while spread of coronavirus on campus continues to increase LIAT WEINSTEIN & ALEC COHEN Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter
As of Friday, more than one thousand cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed since move-in and quarantine housing is at 46% capacity, according to the University of Michigan’s COVID-19 dashboard. This comes less than two months after movein and the start of classes. During move-in, resident advisers and students living in University housing raised concerns that University Housing was not taking enough precautions to protect their residents. Members of ResStaff went on strike and called upon the University for better personal protective equipment and enforcement of Housing policies. There has also been a city-wide impact, with Washtenaw County Health Department reporting the possibility of exposure at two Ann Arbor restaurants, Brown Jug Restaurant and Chapala Mexican Restaurant earlier this week. Washtenaw County COVID-19 cases also crossed University metrics for reevaluation of campus operations earlier this month. These metrics include exceeding five days of increases in new infections using a sevenday average and more than 70 new cases per million. Meeting these metrics could prompt “further responses and strategies regarding campus operations during the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to Michigan News. In-person classes are still being held, though 70% of University coursework has been online since the start of the school year. During the University’s weekly COVID-19 briefing Friday, Chief Health Officer Preeti Malani said the current rate of students entering quarantine or isolation housing is “not sustainable” for the rest of the semester. According to Malani, this rise could prompt a change in the University’s current plan for a hybrid semester if quarantine housing fills to capacity. “This is very concerning — in the last week, there’s been a very robust increase in these numbers and I know many people are following them on the COVID tracker,”
Malani said. “There still is plenty of housing available, but at the current rate, we will go through it within a couple weeks.” When asked whether quarantine housing is projected to reach capacity in two weeks, University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald directed The Michigan Daily to the COVID-19 dashboard and said the number of students in quarantine housing continues to grow as more positive cases are revealed. “Quarantine and isolation housing is running at 46 percent of capacity,” Fitzgerald wrote. “As you may recall, we have 600 rooms reserved for isolation and quarantine. It’s clear from the graph that the numbers have been increasing steadily since about Oct. 9.” Fitzgerald did not confirm whether “not sustainable” meant that quarantine housing was projected to reach capacity in two weeks, instead echoing Malani’s point that students need to practice enhanced prevention measures in order to slow the spread. “It’s critical that each one of us act as if we are contagious by wearing masks, gathering only in small groups, maintaining social distancing and following public health guidance,” Fitzgerald wrote. Quarantine and isolation housing saw an average of 51 students check in between Oct. 13-15, Fitzgerald confirmed. LSA freshman Emma Dwoskin said she is concerned about the lack of testing taking place, especially for freshmen living in residence halls. “If there’s 1,000 cases, there’s probably four times as much because they’re not testing us, which is very alarming and concerning,” Dwoskin said. “I’m sure so many people are asymptomatic that it would be really beneficial to just be testing us.” According to the dashboard, as of Oct. 16, quarantine and isolation occupancy is at 46.2%. If a student living in a residence hall tests positive for COVID-19, they are required to either quarantine or isolate on North Campus or return to their permanent residence. They may also choose to book a room at a local hotel. Since move-in, there have been nine clusters identified
in the residence halls. The first cluster was reported in South Quad Residence Hall on Sept. 17. The most recent cluster was identified in Mary Markley Residence Hall on Oct. 13. In a recent interview with The Michigan Daily, University President Mark Schlissel discussed University Health Services increasing their testing capacity. “We’re telling (UHS) to ease up because we want students to use UHS,” Schlissel said. “It’s free, it’s convenient, there’s a oneday turnaround time, and we can work with students immediately when they get a positive result to help assure their health and to make sure it doesn’t spread to others, so we’re going to have the UHS folks be a little more relaxed.” Dwoskin said she was aware that UHS is providing more tests but became concerned when she was unable to receive one, even with cases on her dorm f loor. “(The University) said that UHS would start allowing testing to anyone who wants it, and then I called UHS, and they were not aware of this and were not able to give a test just if you want it, only if you’re extremely exposed,” Dwoskin said. As of Friday, 322 positive cases have been confirmed in the past 14 days, according to the dashboard. 2.3% of tests administered since Oct. 11 have returned as positive for COVID-19. Additionally, 142 students are still in quarantine, meaning they have either been exposed to the virus or are still waiting for test results. Members of the campus community with symptoms should isolate and contact University Health Service at 734-764-8320 for a free COVID-19 test. People with mild symptoms can use the University’s online assessment to initiate the testing process. Students who test positive for COVID-19 after visiting an off-campus testing site should report their case here. The University plans to reach a decision about the winter semester by Nov. 1. Daily News Editor Claire Hao contributed reporting. Daily Staff Reporter Alec Cohen can be reached at cohenale@umich.edu and Daily News Editor Liat Weinstein can be reached at weinsl@umich.edu.
Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden spoke in Detroit with U.S. Senator Gary Peters, D-Mich., to supporters in their cars Friday night: a little more than two weeks before the general election Peters, who is also up for re-election this November, said he is excited to have Biden back in Michigan and reminded attendees about Biden’s work for Detroit during the Obama administration, referencing his success in public office. “We are so happy that he’s right back here in Michigan,” Peters said. “Right here in Detroit, we know that Joe cares about this state and we know because he has been here before, and he’s been here when we need him.” Peters criticized the national Republican Party leadership in regards to their handling of the pandemic. He told the drive-in crowd that Biden would lead the nation with a more comprehensive pandemic plan. “President Trump does not know how to lead, and we need a president that leads, not tweets,” Peters said. Peters discussed the 2008 financial crisis, which he said Biden played a role in mitigating for everyday Americans, and said Biden would advocate for people instead of corporations. “There were people that said, let them go bankrupt, let them go away,” Peters
said. “Joe Biden said no, I will stand with American workers, (and he) will always stand with them to make sure that they have the opportunity to be successful ... He has stood with us in the past, he will stand with us in the future and that’s why we will elect him the next president of the United States.” American Federation of Teachers member Everett Whitfield, a teacher at Thirkell Elementary School in Detroit, joined Peters. Whitfield said he voted absentee in support of Biden just before taking the stage. “Joe Biden is the leader we can trust,” Whitfield said. “He has shown compassion and to others in various ways. Regardless of the party line, he shows that he cares, (and ref lects) our precise history of working with people of color.” Biden took the stage after checking out a couple of cars gathered around the stage. Biden told supporters that he loved cars and that he believed in Motor City. “I’ve always believed in Michigan,” Biden said. “We have the finest auto workers in the world here in Michigan. That’s not hyperbole. That’s a fact.” Biden emphasized the need for equity in the nation, particularly for communities of color in Detroit. “We need America’s leadership to seek deescalate tensions over the lines of communications to bring us back together again, to heal,” Biden said. “As President, that’s precisely what I’ll do.”
Biden said he is running to represent all Americans as president and that he will work together with others in order to enact change. “Today, trust is heavy, hope seems elusive, instead of healing, we’re being ripped apart,” Biden said. “I refuse to let that happen. We need to revive a spirit of being able to work together with one another. I’m here to tell you it can happen again, and that it must happen if we’re going to get anything done. I’m running as a proud Democrat, but I will govern as an American president.” According to Michigan Deputy Communications Director John Grandy, in Michigan, city and township clerks have distributed 2.8 million absentee ballots to voters. More than 1.2 million ballots have already been sent in. Clerks in a record number of cities, including Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, Grand Rapids and Lansing, have added weekend and evening hours. These additional hours will be used to expand access and raise awareness of early voting, which is available to all Michigan voters for the first time in a general election. On campus, the city set up a satellite clerk’s office in the University of Michigan Museum of Art for students to register to vote, vote early and return absentee ballots. Students on North Campus can return absentee ballots at Fire Station Number 5. Daily Staff Reporter Sarah Payne can be reached at paynesm@umich.edu.
MDining workers speak out after almost striking Employees criticize working conditions in dining halls IULIA DOBRIN
Daily Staff Reporter
LSA senior Mak Guenther, who had been employed by MDining since her freshman year and was working in MosherJordan dining hall this year, quit her job three weeks ago. According to Guenther, Mosher-Jordan was getting 1,000 more students than other dining halls. When Guenther asked her management and MDining administrators about efforts being made to mitigate this influx of students, she said she only got vague to no responses and saw no change. “It was like pulling teeth to get answers,” Guenther said. “I had to let it go because of how horrible the response has been.” Guenther said quitting was the best thing she could do for the strike efforts because she made it clear that she was leaving due to what she felt were unsafe working conditions. “Immediate managers were really great and it felt like they were on our side and they were also trying to get the answers for us,” Guenther said. “But from the wider dining administration, (I felt) just absolutely undervalued, very taken advantage of and just completely disrespected after sending in questions over and over and over again and never getting answers back.” Guenther isn’t alone in raising concern over MDining. Members of MDining had planned a walkout due to these concerns in solidarity with the September graduate student and resident adviser strikes. The walkout was postponed and changed to a work “slow down” out of fear of retaliation. Despite this action, student workers said they still feel unheard by administrators and will continue to push for
changes in their workplace. With the dining halls open, MDining workers complete shifts in-person, which they say elevates the need for a response to their pandemic-related concerns. LSA senior Nik Von Seggern, who also worked in MosherJordan dining, took a break from working due to what she also felt were unsafe conditions. According to Von Seggern, the workers were not provided with disposable masks as they had been told they would be. She said they had to use the University-provided cloth masks which some MDining workers felt were inadequate. Though there is a sick bank for workers to get paid sick leave, Von Seggern said many student workers used this bank back in March. “When we were all laid off, most workers took their sick bank,” Von Seggern said. “Now, when we come back, the pandemic is arguably worse than what it was, or we know more about it than what we did — there’s no sick bank.” Student MDining workers have been circulating a petition demanding increased workplace protections that has garnered more than 450 signatures at the time of publication. The petition calls for more testing, paid sick leave, severance pay for the remainder of the academic year if dining halls were to close again, transparent contact tracing, adequate sanitation and personal protective equipment and consistent COVID-19 policies for all units. Steve Mangan, senior director of Michigan Dining, said disposable masks would be available for any worker who didn’t have one in an email sent Wednesday to MDining student staff and obtained by The
Michigan Daily. According to Mangan’s email, there is a one-time sick bank of up to 80 hours of paid leave offered for MDining workers. He addressed that many students may have used this bank in March and April, and he said that it is not available for employees hired after June 7. “For those student employees concerned with our attendance policy, our philosophy of ‘don’t come to work if you are sick’ is still the guiding principle,” Mangan wrote. “Any absence related to COVID (going for a test, required quarantine/ isolation, etc.) will continue to be excused with no repercussions.” In an email to The Daily, Mangan said if student employees used up all of their eligible paid time off, there is no further paid time off unless that employee meets the criteria of the Michigan Paid Medical Leave Act. According to this act, employees may take paid medical leave for situations such as physical or mental illness or injury to the employee or a family member and preventative care for the employee or a family member. Paid medical leave is accrued at one hour for every 35 actual hours worked. Public Policy senior Nora Hilgart-Griff, who works at the Blue Cafe in East Quad Residence Hall, is in her third year of working with MDining. Employees in her unit wrote an email to management citing concerns about COVID19 screening before shifts, access to personal protective equipment and being able to take off work due to COVID19 related concerns without consequence.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 5
Michigan DHHS, local governments issue new protocols following MI Supreme Court ruling
Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s executive orders jeopardized after justices rule against her; government agencies fill gap JULIA FORREST Daily Staff Reporter
On Oct. 2, Robert Gordon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, received news that the Michigan Supreme Court struck down Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s authority to extend or declare any executive orders pertaining to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Gordon, who oversees many statewide health and human services programs such as Medicaid, Children’s Protective Services and food assistance, expressed his disappointment at the ruling, stating that it helped to save thousands of lives over the course of the past few months since the beginning of the outbreak. “I thought it was a bad decision,” Gordon said. “(The ruling) undermined rules that have helped to save thousands of lives.” Following the ruling, Gordon and the rest of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services released an order with mandates that mirrored those of Gov. Whitmer’s executive orders. The DHHS was allowed to set in place their own protocols by issuing them in accordance with Public Health Code Act 368, a law that resulted from the 1918 f lu pandemic that swept through the United States. The public health order requires those who attend a public gathering of 10 or more people to wear a mask and limits the number of people who can be in a store or restaurant at a time. Under the order, restaurants, retail stores, libraries or museums can reopen at 50% capacity
and gyms can reopen at 25% occupancy. The order also attempts to strengthen contact tracing efforts by requiring that all businesses mentioned in the order get the contact information of anyone who enters the establishment. The order also allows for bars to reopen, a provision that was not in any of Whitmer’s executive orders. In Michigan, there have been nearly 160,000 cases of coronavirus reported since the start of the pandemic in March, and over 7,000 deaths, according to the state government. Gordon expressed the need for the orders and a coordinated approach between the state’s health department and localities to ensure that the risk of COVID19 in Michigan remains low. “We know that shared goals help people know what they need to do,” Gordon said. “And there is a great deal of evidence that shared rules have been effective in the spread of COVID and the absence of rules has increased the spread. It’s our job to provide things for public health.” In order to enforce these mandates, law enforcement is authorized to enforce the order and investigate any possible violations of the mandates. Violators may be charged with a misdemeanor, which could be punishable by six months of jail time, or a fine of $200, or a fine of $1,000 if it is labeled a civil offense. The Washtenaw County Health Department also released a set of its own public health mandates in response to the Michigan’s Supreme Court’s decision. The public health provisions stated that indoor gatherings are limited to 10 guests and outdoor
events can only hold up to 25 people. The orders also act in accordance with those set forth by the DHHS, limiting the occupancy of bars and restaurants to 50% capacity. Susan Ringler-Cerniglia, Communications and Health Promotion Administrator at the University of Michigan, talked about the need for social gathering limits given that Ann Arbor is home to more than 40,000 students who attend the University. “There was a lot of concern just around college culture,” Ringler-Cerniglia said. “That there would be a lot of house parties and large gatherings
when folks came back to the area. (The order) was more about generally trying to reinforce smaller gathering size and precautions and making it a little easier to manage.” In Washtenaw County, there have been over 4,000 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic. The University of Michigan also recently triggered two of its metrics for reevaluating in-person campus activities, as Washtenaw County is seeing more than 70 new cases per million residents and exceeding five days straight of increased positive cases.
Public Health junior Sophia Heimowitz spoke to The Daily about her growing concerns that without any public health provisions in place, college students and other residents in Michigan will totally disregard any attempt at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. “People already are not wearing masks when it was required,” Heimowitz said. “So to take any recommendations and requirements away, I think it drastically impacts (the spread of ) COVID way for the worse, and (the virus) would spread much more rapidly.” Therefore, to continue
to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, Director Gordon and other Michigan Health Department leaders will continue to enforce the provisions they set forth to continue to save the lives of people across the state of Michigan. “Our focus is what our role is in public health,” Gordon said. “Our role is ‘what will help as many people as possible?’ Our goal is to protect public health and protect all of our Michiganders.” Daily Staff Reporter Julia Forrest can be reached at juforres@umich.edu.
ASHA LEWIS/Daily Governor Gretchen Whitmer speaks at the State of the State in January 2020.
Amid pandemic, students pursue passion projects
Entrepreneurs start small businesses during quarantine ASHNA MEHRA For The Daily
While the pandemic brought restrictions on social interactions, it also provided time for students to explore their passions. During the past six months, some University of Michigan students tried their hand at new projects and even started their own small businesses. As the pandemic negatively affects the mental wellbeing of many young people, recent University alumni Maggie Li and LSA senior Emily Serhan created an app called “Nois” to facilitate mental health screening. The app uses artificial intelligence to assess people’s responses to a questionnaire and identify their mental health condition. Afterward, the app also connects users with local psychiatrists for further treatment. “What this app does is revolutionize the process from diagnosis to treatment,” Li said. “I feel like we’ve created such a cool, viable product, and even if it doesn’t end up blowing up, at least a few people can get something out of it.” Business junior Michael Sikand started a multimedia platform. His business Our Future consists of a podcast, a career-series, a newsletter and a merchandise line. In an attempt to bridge the gap between CEOs and college students, he publishes advice on how to enter the business world. “I get to interview business leaders from the most exciting companies and flesh out the
magic of what goes on behind the scenes in business,” Sikand said. “I like to take listeners beyond the headlines — get a little deeper, get a little more personal.” Similarly, LSA junior Bret Duntley created a social media platform, Jillion, that allows users to post any type of content they want through their own individual “pages.” His hope is that people will be able to engage with others about complicated issues in depth. Over the summer, Duntley spent 10 hours a day writing more than 30,000 lines of code. “I used to do a lot of art in high school, but I never really saw the connection between art and computer science until I started my website,” Duntley said. “What’s kept me going through this is the fact that I can be creative while designing something I’m passionate about.” LSA sophomore Annie Malek has a sticker-making business. As a creative outlet during the long months of quarantine, she took to drawing and designing. She uses the website Redbubble to sell stickers and face masks. “Honestly, I really love just making people happy with my designs,” Malek said. “Whenever someone receives something I make they’re always so thankful and it makes me super happy to make them something that they love. It also gives me something more creative to do, since I am majoring in chemistry and most of the things I do during the day are STEM-based.” The students emphasized that one of the more difficult
aspects of starting a new project is the fear of it not being successful. However, all three students trusted that it would work out in the end. “Starting a small business is a great way to get to know people who you never would have talked to before,” Malek said. “I love being able to put something I made on my laptop or water bottle and then creating conversation starters out of it.” The students said their projects have also brought them closer to their family members and teammates, whether through team meetings over Zoom or conversing with supporters. “One of my favorite parts about this process was being able to have conversations with my dad (who’s in business) that he and I have never had before,” Serhan said. “It was really insightful to be able to learn about his perspective of running a business. The amount of support that we received from people like this created such a positive contribution.” Malek said she would encourage others who are interested in trying new endeavors to not put too much pressure on themselves. Li agreed and added that an idea can grow into a hobby or even a larger passion project. “When you have an idea, you never know what’s going to come from it,” Li said. “Everyone’s brain is wired differently, and that’s what makes everyone’s ideas awesome.” Daily Contributor Ashna Mehra can be reached at ashmehra@umich.edu.
ALEC COHEN/Daily Rick’s announces its opening with limited capacity Thursday morning.
Popular local bar Rick’s reopens with restrictions
Student favorite returns to business with limited capacity BARBARA COLLINS Daily News Editor
After being shut down since March due to the pandemic, Rick’s American Cafe announced on social media they will reopen their doors Thursday with limited capacity. Complying with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, masks will be required for entry and guests will have their temperatures taken before being let inside, the post read. Tables will be spaced out to follow social distancing protocols. Rick’s is also requiring guests to save their place in line through the application LineLeap. “WE’RE BACK TOMORROW!” a Wednesday post on Rick’s Instagram read. “Due to limited capacity and high demand, the only way to get in is to reserve your spot through @lineleaptickets
SpotSaver feature on the LineLeap app!” To book a reservation through the app, guests are able to select a 30-minute time slot in which they plan to arrive that night. Upon arrival, customers must show the doorman their pass on their phone to be let into the bar. Rick’s recommends four to six people for each reservation with a maximum of eight people. A limited number of places are available for each 30-minute time slot. Guests with reservations are allowed to stay for an unlimited amount of time. Rick’s did not immediately respond to The Michigan Daily’s request for comment. LSA senior Margo Dickstein said she felt angry about Rick’s reopening. She said she does not understand how the bar will be able to accommodate guests in a
safe manner and foresees Rick’s potentially becoming the source of a COVID-19 outbreak. “It’s been kind of obvious in this semester that a lot of people simply don’t care that we’re in a pandemic, and they’ve been going out to parties,” Dickstein said. “But now it’s Ricks — it’s already always crowded and full of people. I just don’t understand how they’re allowed to be open.” Dickstein turned 21 in April and has not yet had the chance to go to Rick’s. “I would love to be able to go to Rick’s in a normal time, that would be really fun, it’s an experience I haven’t been able to have,” Dickstein said. “But I would never go there now because of public health reasons.” Daily News Editor Barbara Collins can be reached at bcolli@ umich.edu.
Michigan In Color
6 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘Peace’ in the Middle East EMAN NAGA MiC Columnist
The Middle East is the global West’s favorite foreign policy puzzle. Endless commentators and journalists alike aim to fit narratives that the Middle East is weak, and that imperialist nations such as the United States have a duty to save the Arab World from itself. Fueling the political agenda, numerous politicians have honed in on efforts to “bring peace” to the Middle East, with the latest attempt being President Trump’s treaty. A treaty that has been lauded by liberals and conservatives alike, between imperialist UAE and colonial Israel. This American infatuation with Middle Eastern politics is not lost on Arabs like myself and each take is more nauseating than the next. Whether ref lecting on 2011 during the Arab uprisings or focusing on current politics surrounding each nation and its relation to known adversaries like Israel, I am continuously dismayed by each twisted belief stated by the media and political elite. There is a false assumption that the Middle East can not govern or save itself and is solely dependent on Western interference for its survivalinterventions that have arguably caused the majority of the issues in the Middle East. It’s the white savior complex on steroids, and unfortunately this mindset and its detrimental effects have wreaked havoc in the region while affecting the mainstream American perception of the Arab World and
its inhabitants. With orientalist roots and an education system geared toward the erasure of settler colonialism both abroad and in North America, Western perception of the Middle East has been manipulated to ensure that the Middle East never truly has peace. In almost every impression, the Middle East is painted with a broad brush. Absolutely stupefying to have to state, it’s critical that I clarify that though nations in the Middle East are meshed together geographically, this does not mean that each country faces the same issues. The Gulf region — an area encompassing nations like UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — has in no way suffered similarly to other countries in the Arab world, as they, alongside the West, continue to exploit the rest of the Middle East for monetary and political gain. Nations like Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Eg ypt, Yemen, and Lebanon — though all impoverished — face varying crises, whether they be civil wars, famines, occupation or American-backed corrupt governments. Another affronting assumption is that the Arab general public agrees with the governments of their countries, an idea that is blatantly false. The Middle East does not have a single democracy, and the general public does not have a fair say in their politics. Using Israel as an example yet again, it is often claimed that citizens of Saudia Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain are in agreement with their governments who recognize the Zionist state. Such claims have been proven false as studies sug-
gest the majority of civilians are angered by their countries’ support of a nation they deem colonial. The Middle East, like every other region has nuance, but due to the failures of Western education systems and targeted political destruction, it is painted as having the same issues, when in actuality, issues strongly differ depending on the country. In regard to our education system, the way the West frames issues in the Middle East is alarming. Time and time again, marginalized groups have rightfully complained that the American education system, including higher education, has a dominant Eurocentric narrative. We often hear about issues like slavery, colonialism, imperialism and other forms of explotiation through the lens of Western perspectives. The system, rarely, if ever, mentions the Middle East or its history, and if it does, it only discusses its failures. Rarely discussed when analyzing the roots of a troubled Middle East are the f lawed borders in the Arab world created by a drunk Churchill and his allies, or Britain’s role in cultivating Israeli settler colonialism. With a purposeful framework, our history classes and political agendas have presented a seemingly frail Middle East; one that can only ever appear anti-Semitic, fraught with Islamic terrorism, war torn and unable to solve its own problems. Courses at the University of Michigan are surely not immune from this horrific framing. As a student studying
political science, I have heard awfully misguided opinions on the Middle East — opinions that lack a true understanding of the region. For instance, I have heard horrifying notions that the Iraq War was valid, a war that decimated a region and slaughtered the lives of hundreds of thousands. I have had to listen to long lectures about 9/11 and that the attack justifies the Afghanistan war — a war that the U.S. is losing and has led to the callous murders of civilians and alienation of a region. Mentioned in a variety of contexts, 9/11 is also spoken of in courses unrelated to politics and history as classes, like my basic French course, continue to emphasize narratives that victimize the West as the West continues to oppress the Middle East. Even though 9/11 was a tragic attack, multiple tales of terrorism were spun that solely depicted harm to white populations while conveniently leaving out that most victims of “radical Islamic” terrorism are Muslims and Middle Easterners themselves. I have listened to the justification of American forces in the Middle East and the nullification of Palestine and sentiments that Palestine is a terrorist state and Israel is the only “democracy in the Middle East,” purposefully excluding Israeli Occupation of Palestinian lands. Every single issue that relates to the Arab world gets its one-sided analysis, often leaving those affected daily by these topics lost and aching to respond. What makes a vicious cycle even worse is the prohibitions that keep me from
using my voice or speaking from experience, so to defend these ignorant narratives in the classroom, for if I do, I am overwhelmed by scrutiny from my peers. If I condemn American imperialism in the Middle East or emphasize the corrupted justifications for the Iraq and Afghanistan War, will it seem as if I am vindictive, my anger fueled by universal feelings of dread within the region? When I state that I believe Zionism is a threat to Arab sovereignty and the Palestinian people, will they assume I state that solely because I am Arab or because I have come to this reasoning through solid evidence? Everyone but fellow Arabs and I are able to speak without seeming as though we are predisposed. It is impossible to truly separate myself from my identity, nor do I want my identity as an Arab American Muslim to be disjointed from who I am. But unfortunately, these classes are consumed by people who would rather assume I am motivated by biases, because they refuse to accept this marginalization as colonial strateg y. Frankly, I am partially biased. It is impossible not to be when I have seen friends deported, cried with them over deaths overseas and felt deep pangs of fear whenever an attack occurs in the Middle East, fearing for my family and my friends’ families safety. Despite being emotionally fueled, these biases are backed by substantial data, and I, alongside allies, have history and human rights as foundations for our beliefs. As I, and others like me, are labeled
“biased” while everyone else is allowed a valid opinion, any possibility of peace in the Middle East dims as the Western voice is elevated. All of these factors breed the current toxic landscape of the Middle East. Intervention by political forces have exacerbated severe f laws in the Arab region and are the origins of the destruction that the U.S. and the West claim they yearn to pacify. The American political system supports Israeli annexation, makes financial gains from Saudi’s war with Yemen, and has continued to exacerbate wars in the region to appease the military industrial complex. It certainly did not have to be that way. With only Westerners having the ability to comment on Middle Eastern politics, American intervention in the region and a twisted education system geared to demean Arab History and prop up imperialism, there is a mainstream belief that the West is the only one that can save the Middle East. In actuality, the notion of a white savior complex has been ironically bred out of white destruction of the region. How can the Middle East depend on Western touch for the revival of a heart the West stabbed to decimate? If the West truly wanted peace in the Middle East, they would leave the Arab world alone to fight for their own liberation. But they don’t, and that’s why the Middle East will never truly have peace with Western intervention — not because Arabs do not want it, but because the West itself has an active stake in depriving it.
History is circular; A reflection on Japanese Internment VICTORIA MINKA MiC Columnist
SUDOKU 7
2
5
8
1
9
6 7
3 1
2
6
3
7 3 6
2
4
8
Release Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
5
4 3
8
2
9
3 2
5
6
4
7
2 6
5
9
WHISPER puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
Introducing the
WHISPER “60 characters. Bare your soul. Get featured in the Daily!”
ACROSS 1 “... where the sun / Came peeping in at __”: Thomas Hood 5 Willie Mays, twice 8 Bowler’s test 13 Carpet calculation 14 China setting 15 Soccer star Rossi 16 *Old bowling alley employee 18 Cry of dismay 19 Country singer Womack 20 Even things 22 Part of ESL: Abbr. 23 *Pass prevention strategy 28 Editor’s change of heart 30 “I agree!” 31 It’s north of Afr. 32 Not very exciting 35 Seasickness symptom 38 Cautionary workplace axiom ... or a hint to the starts of the answers to starred clues 40 Elk 42 Pre-discount prices 43 Not well 44 Dollop 46 Pacino’s voice, at times 50 *Bad homes for critics? 55 Golf standard 56 Deal with 57 Capitol feature 59 Like four Sandy Koufax games 61 *One-on-one golf competition 64 It’s good in Chile 65 Agree with 66 Shoppe modifier 67 Shakespearean forest 68 2000s TV forensic technician, to pals 69 Fly high DOWN 1 Breakfast condiment sources 2 Get one’s bearings
3 Go back on a promise 4 Org. in the biodrama “Hidden Figures” 5 WY winter hrs. 6 Compete 7 Pre-Rose Bowl tradition 8 Many an “SNL” skit 9 Two-time U.S. Open winner Stewart 10 Illicit rendezvous site 11 La Corse, par exemple 12 Play (with) 14 53 for I, e.g. 17 Split __: New Zealand band 21 Court sport 24 Astro’s finish? 25 Harris of country 26 Take to court 27 Stat for Justin Verlander 29 Spicy cuisine 33 Time and again, to Yeats 34 Driver’s license datum 36 Poetic verb
37 Cold War letters 38 Made waves? 39 Slight fabrications 40 Freak (out) 41 Every bit 45 Rose ominously 47 Swing era Harlem hot spot 48 Tea since 1892 49 Supplication 51 River to the English Channel 52 Resolute about
53 Danish shoe brand 54 NFL defensive end Ndamukong __ 58 Med. plan options 59 Home to Kings: Abbr. 60 “__ Gang” 62 Versatile card 63 “Much appreciated,” in texts
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
10/21/20
By Mike Peluso (c)2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/21/20
WHISPER “I’m just tired of this pandemic stuff”
“I think I’maddicted to technoblade :/”
I am often amazed at how little people know about Executive Order 9066 (deemed Japanese Americans as a threat to national security and allowed President Roosevelt to move them into camps), if they have any idea of it at all. Sometimes they’re even more distraught when I say that we have locked people up in of the many atrocities that the United States has committed. Yet this is a history that many Japanese Americans will never forget. While my family arrived here post-Japanese internment, it still is a scar that lays heavily on my mind and my community. This is a scar that is never left alone — it is picked at, made red and inf lamed every time the United States bans people from our country or locks them up for the sake of “national security.” While some may say national security is a necessity, I say that it is a way that the government has been able to excuse atrocities and misuse the bodies of those they deem dangerous for capitalist gains. In the case of Japanese internment, Japanese American men were only allowed out of camps if they agreed to fight in the United States Army and become canon fodder for Uncle Sam in World War II. Their choice was either to fight for the country that criminalized them for their racial identity or remain locked up for an unforeseeable amount of time. Japanese Americans were even forced to complete a “loyalty questionnaire” to determine their Americanness and whether they would be allowed to leave the camps (or sent to more strict prisons). The term No-No Boys was used to identify young interned men who answered no to the questions “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?” and “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of Amer-
ica and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?” When I first learned this, I couldn’t help but wonder what my answer would have been. If I would have been defeated enough to sign myself away to a country that despised me, or potentially lose any sort of freedom in the future. In some ways this is the kiss of death promised in the American Dream. Will you accept all of the ugliness of this country and its hatred for you, for the chance to survive? For a shot at the individualistic, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality that the State seems to worship? The legality of people in the United States has long been contested as well as what the State is able to do with the bodies of its citizens. Now more than ever, the ghosts of past atrocities seem like greater warning signs to people of today. While Japanese American internment may have fallen into some of the more forgotten shadows of American history, its legacy remains. This legacy of xenophobia, fear of the other and fabricated foreignness of anyone who is not white has been woven into the fabric of this country. It is not new and it never will be, as Ocean Vuong said “Some people say history moves in a spiral, not the line we have come to expect. We travel through time in a circular trajectory, our distance increasing from an epicenter only to return again, one circle removed.” Detention camps and the human rights abuses that happen there are not outliers or brief failures in American morality, they are a continued pattern of the intentional destruction the United States deems as other. And so often, we are taught to forget that such a thing has happened before so that the same violence can be practiced again.
Michigan In Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 7
‘Hamilton’ and the erasure of white supremacy CAMILLE MOORE
MiC “Off the Record” Blogger
If you know anything at all about musical theatre, you know all about the rise of ‘Hamilton: An American Musical’ in 2016. The musical, written by LinManuel Miranda and adapted from Ron Chernow’s book ‘Alexander Hamilton,’ debuted offbroadway in 2015 and since then, it has become the most popular musical in recent history. The show played in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles and now a recorded performance with the original cast is streaming on Disney+ for millions of streamers to watch in their own homes. I am not unique when I say
that I fell in love with this musical when I first discovered it. My friends and I would play the soundtrack every day after school and my high school’s marching band even performed its hit song, “Burn,” throughout the football season. My best friends even took me to see the show for my birthday in Chicago a couple of years ago (I have no idea how they swung that because we’re broke college students) and I absolutely loved it. At first glance, I’m sure many people would not expect a musical about Alexander Hamilton and other Founding Fathers to be a wildly popular sensation. However, the fusion of hip-hop and history is what makes it so entertaining and was the reason I loved it so much. But due
Photo courtesy of the author
ARIES
If you can keep calm in the face of provocation, Aries, his can be an exceptional week for your career. Teamwork shows you in a good light, so don’t neglect your colleagues. It’s not always about going it alone or being top dog.
TAURUS
Dip your toe into exciting waters by being prepared to try something new. From exotic travel to adrenaline sports or intriguing affairs, you’re willing to take a risk now if something stirs your soul. Beyond your comfort zone, Taurus, life takes off.
to my naivety and ignorance of accurate American history, I saw ‘Hamilton’ as a fun show with cool songs instead of a confusing and distasteful retelling of history. The show has received criticism since its debut at The Public Theater in New York, the majority of which stems from Miranda’s inaccurate retelling and framing of history. Many critics of color think it is necessary to remember that ‘Hamilton’ is nowhere near an accurate representation of the Founding Fathers. They were not underdog heroes or abolitionists, but capitalists who stole Native American land and enslaved and exploited Black and Brown people. They were white supremacists. Among many atrocities, Thomas Jefferson sexually assaulted Sally Hemmings, an enslaved Black woman who worked in his home, and then enslaved the children. George Washington’s teeth, that many of us were told were made of wood, were teeth from enslaved people. And of course, Alexander Hamilton purchased enslaved people to work for his family. How can we be so far removed from these horrors that we can sing and dance along to songs about these men and ignore the terrors they inflicted on Black people? After knowing this information, other points of criticism become increasingly valid. For example, some viewers question the choice of hiring nearly all people of color to play the role of white historical figures. In regards to this, Miranda stated he wanted the story to be “told by America now.” But I wonder how this can be successfully done when the whiteness of the Founding Fathers and their families is crucial to why they were able to rise into power. If the story of the Founding Fathers were to be told based on the way America looks now, they should still be portrayed as rich, white men who exploit and oppress low-income, Black people. By erasing that their race had an active role in the power they had to oppress others, we downplay the racism that they wrote into our country’s foundation. Another major critique focus-
PICES
YOUR WEEKLY
AQUARIUS
WHISPER “I've made my peace with college, it is what it is.”
CAPRICORN You have the gift of the gab this week, Capricorn, so you’re able to put your opinions quite forcefully without coming across as insensitive or dogmatic. Turn this to your advantage if you want to get someone to agree to a new idea.
“Meat book.”
CANCER In this romantic week, communication between you and your sweetheart is almost telepathic. You can make an unbeatable team now, Cancer, as your shared goals and dreams are coming to fruition. If you’re single, look out for someone who shocks you.
LEO An easing of financial pressures does a lot of good for your anxiety and mental health, Leo. However, it’s important now that you take control of your own emotions. Don’t leave yourself vulnerable, mentally, to fluctuating external circumstances.
This is a healing week for a close relationship, Pisces, which will benefit from as much fun and laughter as possible. Socialize as a couple if you can, because you’ll love seeing each other in a new light. Mix and mingle, enjoy good company, and shine.
Messages from your dreams become easier to recall and interpret this week. Spend some time with a dream journal if you can – there is a lot if insight here which could change your life, Aquarius. Don’t dismiss what you can’t quite understand.
GEMINI Allow yourself to listen to your inner instincts. Your intuition is strong, and your mind is able to recognize things that your conscious may actively choose to ignore. In doing so, you will be able to choose the path that is best for you.
es on the musical’s use of hip hop to portray white supremacists as relatable and comedic. Miranda believes “hip-hop’s the language of revolution and it’s our greatest American art form,” which I would have to agree with, but whose revolution? Black people were not included in the Declaration of Independence when slave-owner Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” So why appropriate Black culture to uplift white supremacists? If we want to make a statement about revolution and fighting for freedom in the United States, telling the story of the white men in power seems to be the worst way to do so. I am puzzled and conflicted about how I feel about ‘Hamilton’ today. I don’t believe Lin-Manuel Miranda or any of the crew and cast purposefully wanted to erase history or offend viewers, and for the most part, many people still love the musical. We cannot deny that ‘Hamilton’ has opened the doors for many performers of color to become household names on Broadway. But as a Black American woman, it makes me wonder how our ancestors would have felt about this story. They were the ones who built this country from the ground up, not Hamilton, Washington, or Jefferson. And yet, we collectively gloss over their stories and hard work. The criticisms and conversations that people around the world have been having about ‘Hamilton’ dig into important questions about how history should be told and who should be centered in those retellings. Could you imagine if, in 200 years, there were a musical called Trump? We would see actors of color portraying Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo instead of hearing the stories of Black and Brown people who were targeted and suffering at the hands of this administration. That would be outrageous, and yet, how different would that be from ‘Hamilton?’ We must pay attention to the way we are retelling the stories of the past as not to have our current reality be inaccurately retold in the future.
SAGITTARIUS
“in love with my best friend in love love love but I have to let it go.”
VIRGO Your superpower this week is your creativity, Virgo. You have a strong feel for lateral thinking and innovative ideas, or creations will get you noticed. Don’t feel that you have to do things the way they’ve always been done. Dare to be different.
LIBRA Loving support from your family means a great deal to you this week and you’ll feel blessed by those closest to you. If someone confides in you, Libra, it’s vital that you keep their confidence. Don’t turn this into an issue of trust.
Recognition at work is long overdue but welcome, nonetheless. This week, Sagittarius, stretch your ambitions by looking for new challenges. Not necessarily a new job, but new responsibilities within your existing role. You’re more than capable.
SCORPIO Your words have a lot of power and presence this week, and once the Sun arrives in your own sign, Scorpio, your magnetism and charisma are off the scale. All of this means that people are taking notice of you – so you’d better have something meaningful to say.
Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv
Are you still watching?
Photo by Marcus Spiske via Unsplash
GRACE GARMO MiC Columnist
On a Saturday night, after being encouraged by my SI 110 professor as well as — ironically enough — nearly all of my social media feeds, a couple friends and I decided to watch The Social Dilemma, Netflix’s acclaimed documentary centered around the meticulously manipulative aspects of social media. The documentary claims that the principal intention of all social media is to exploit the vulnerabilities of human behavior for profit through engaging techniques such as constant notifications, precise algorithms that create personalized feeds, and exploiting different demographics of users in order to propagate agendas. The Social Dilemma incorporates interviews from high-up tech executives, shrouded in despairing instrumentals and horrifying infographics. Though the notion that social media can lead to addictive tendencies — especially in an attention economy — is no revelation, the documentary reveals exactly how companies achieve this: by capitalizing on our brains’ evolutionary demand for interpersonal connection. Upon finishing the film, my friends and I were, to say the least, terrified. The fact that our data and online personas were being auctioned off to advertisers felt like betrayal, and that isn’t even the worst part: We’re allowing it to happen. Very quickly, we all posed the same question: why would Netflix, a company that thrives off of manipulative techniques, highlight all of this information and make it readily available to its audience? The techniques described in the documentary, such as perfecting algorithms in order to keep audiences engaged and stay glued to their screens for hours, are precisely what makes Netflix such a successful platform. To produce and release The Social Dilemma almost feels like a magician revealing how they do their tricks. Why would you ever want your audience to know? Almost instantaneously, the answer to my question struck me, and I realized why Netflix, along with platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat were okay with being bashed in front of a global audience: They wanted to evaluate how successful their manipulative efforts really were. Millions of people across the globe were being presented with only negative information about our daily habits, yet we accept the loss of our privacy and the continued influence of our cognitive processes as a price for a little more convenience and easily accessible entertainment. In short, they’ve won. They have successfully gotten an entire worldwide population so addict-
ed and dependent on interpersonal connection and validation through social networking that all we can do is helplessly watch and accept the fact that this is something we need in our lives. The implications of our reliance on social media have led to an influx of surveillance capitalism, a form of our economy that mines human experience in the form of data in order to produce marketable inferences about the next thing that we will do, purchase or believe. Now, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably shaking your head right now and thinking “I’m not even addicted!” After all, as members of Gen Z, tech is kinda our thing. There’s no way it could be doing something to us that we don’t understand — right? The harsh reality is that computers don’t discriminate, and regardless of age or experience with technology, you’re just another product that they’re trying to make money off of. Despite being told by social media developers themselves that their platforms have gotten out of hand and that they wouldn’t even let their own kid use their creations, nothing in my life has changed. Why, after learning about how I’ve been manipulated, fed content that has trapped me in a filter bubble, and sold to millions of advertisers as a product was I still willingly supporting my own downfall? This documentary was the cherry on top of all of the other information I had learned in SI 110, and the detrimental effects of my social media usage greatly outweighed any surface level benefits. The documentary leaves its audience with an almost dystopian message of urgency: continue the conversation, and regain control of your life. The most dire question posed by The Social Dilemma is whether or not democracy can survive social media’s ability to blur the line between reality and fiction. Tristan Harris, president of the Center for Humane Technology and a key speaker in the documentary, poses “imagine a world where no one believes what’s true.” How do we rummage through conspiracy theories, propaganda and infamous “fake news” in order to discern facts from lies? More importantly, is this our responsibility as the consumer, or is it on the tech industry to actively make efforts against the spread of disinformation? While I personally don’t believe that everybody needs to delete all of their online accounts, we can collectively make efforts to limit our screen time and set aside blocks of our day for activities that don’t involve our devices. I understand, however, that this sounds extremely cliché, and it’s nothing that’s never been suggested before. I suppose that I, along with tech professionals, still don’t have a concrete answer to this social dilemma.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 8
JENNA SCHEEN | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT JSCHEEN@UMICH.EDU
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 Ajit Chilukuri 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
I
Combatting exploitative off-campus housing in Ann Arbor
t is now October in Ann Arbor and along with midterms comes another stressor for students: signing off-campus leasing agreements for the 20212022 school year. As with every year, landlords across the campus have started sending notices for renewals with a short time-frame for decisions. While the ongoing pandemic has created uncertainty around an in-residence 2020-2021 school year for students, this has not deterred landlords from pushing ahead with the lease renewals. This action brings into question not just the long-standing problem of early lease-renewal cycles and rising rent prices in Ann Arbor but also the ethics of landlords who do not put students’ best interests at the forefront. Students being taken advantage of by those with wealth and power on college campuses isn’t new; graduate students had to go on strike this fall in order for the University of Michigan to meet their basic requests and needs. It’s now clear that reopening as the University did was not safe, and landlords benefitted. This situation is indicative of a much broader problem of businesses and institutions in our community taking its backbone — college students — for granted, leaving students with their hands tied. One reason why Ann Arbor landlords are able to take advantage of students in such a way is the scarcity of good housing options, which incentivizes students to lock in houses as early in the season as possible. Landlords likely do this to combat one of the few safeguards students have in the off-campus housing market, which is a city ordinance requiring landlords to wait a minimum of 70 days from the beginning of a lease-term to officially show or lease a property to prospective new tenants. This early leasing period requires many students to pay housing deposits almost a full year in advance. This may be particularly difficult for low-income students who cannot afford to let a leasing company hold onto a large deposit for almost two years. The difficulty of paying a housing deposit a year early has been exacerbated by the pandemic and resulting economic downturn, where many families lost their primary source income and need the increased flexibility of holding onto this money for several more weeks or months. While the pandemic would seem like a great time for landlords who cater primarily to students to be accommodating and understanding, many have instead decided to capitalize on the insecure nature of student housing. The pandemic has enabled landlords to act with greed, and to act quickly, pushing students into a corner where they must choose between housing insecurity for the following school year or risk putting down a security deposit, sometimes over $1000, on a property in which they may never live. These landlords are, in essence, preying on an inescapable vulnerability shared by and fairly unique to nearly all college students. Rising rent prices in Ann Arbor further exacerbate the stress of the financial burdens that an early lease cycle creates. The city consistently ranks as one of the most expensive college towns to live in. Rent prices have been rising at a whopping 15.9% year-over-year, second only to Gainesville, Fla., the home of the University of Florida. There are several factors that have led to this high rent inflation in Ann Arbor. With off-campus student property occupancy at 98%, Ann Arbor is a landlord’s market that
leaves little power to tenants. Landlords are therefore able to get away with higher rents. Further, the fact that the University of Michigan has a relatively wealthy student body doesn’t help with the rising rent prices. According to a study by The New York Times, the median income of the U-M student’s family is $154,000, with about 9.3% students belonging to the Top 1% families in the U.S. by household income. Only 3.6% of students come from the bottom 20% in terms of household income. As long as students are able to pay the increasing rents, the trend of rents increasing will continue. Therefore, The Michigan Daily Editorial Board urges the Ann Arbor City Council to extend the Early Leasing Ordinance. Moving back the leasing deadline is necessary to allow students to fully consider their housing needs and options for the next year. For example, in Pittsburgh, Pa., which is home to the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and Chatham University, the typical lease renewal cycle for off-campus student housing doesn’t start until spring. That gives students ample time to decide if they like their current apartment and roommates, both of which are major factors in considering a lease renewal. It also allows students to have increased financial flexibility, since they don’t have to pay a housing deposit a year in advance. However, it’s important to note that extending the ordinance will not solve all of the problems with early leasing. Many Ann Arbor real estate companies have found ways to creatively interpret this ordinance. These leasing companies allow students to reserve, with a deposit, properties several weeks before the deadline. Students will then be provided with the official paperwork and tour on the 70th day of the current lease. If a student fails to sign the lease, they will lose their reservation deposit. This in effect allows real estate companies to lease their units before they are legally allowed, with no official leasing paperwork completed until the deadline passes. So, while regulations help to an extent, the onus is on students to unanimously organize themselves to sign leases only in the spring semester in order to bring a lasting change in moving the leasing cycle to later in the school year. Therefore, the Editorial Board also urges students themselves to fight against this early leasing period that landlords enforce on campus. While the situation may appear hopeless, students do have the power to inform themselves of the risks of buying into this transparent money-grab by our community’s landlords. We can use our voices to direct fellow students to resources that inform them of the nature of a student tenant-landlord agreement. We can use our voices to direct students to landlords who treat tenants with dignity and respect. And we can use our voices
to make very public the leasing companies in our community whose efforts are transparently profit-based. Unfortunately, our primary source of power in this instance is merely to expose large Ann Arbor landlords like Landmark and Campus Realty, who have long-standing, wellknown reputations on campus of treating their tenants poorly — at least according to online reviews. Because getting the entire student body together will become a challenge as long as there is a dearth of good housing options, an effective way to tackle this challenge is for the University to step in and offer more low-cost on-campus housing at convenient locations across campus. Since applications for on-campus housing start later in the spring, this reduces the pressure on students to quickly lock in offcampus options this early in the year. And regarding rising rent prices, the onus is once again on the City Council to enforce rent control. Alternatively, the University should step in to offer more low-cost, on-campus housing. This will help reduce rents and make the housing process more equitable for students from all sections and financial backgrounds. There is urgency in taking such measures, particularly in the wake of the pandemic which has disproportionately impacted students from lower-income financial backgrounds. At least on the local level, politicians have attempted to make housing more affordable around Ann Arbor through the proposal of a new tax levy, revenues from which would be dedicated to the construction of new affordable housing units throughout the city. The proposal, commonly referred to as Proposal-C, is on the November election ballots. That’s a huge step for the City of Ann Arbor, but as of yet there are little details as to where these new units may be constructed. Students have a voice in this. Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor (D) has been vocal in his desire to maintain flexibility with regards to potential sites for new affordable housing construction. Students who agree should feel empowered to contact the mayor’s office and communicate their beliefs. Student agency has been lacking on campus for much of this year, especially with regard to the University’s substandard protocols for managing COVID-19. Affordable housing can make a tangible difference to thousands of students at the University, just as improving COVID-19 safety measures made a tangible difference to the Graduate Employees’ Organization. Students with a vested interest in obtaining a more affordable living situation on campus should make their voices heard, just as the GEO did. This year has shown us nothing if not that progress has to be driven from the grassroots.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
SPIROS KASS | COLUMN
C
Revamp virtual learning, our wellbeing depends on it
ollege students have done everything they can to acclimate to the new pandemic lifestyle. Months of quarantine followed by continuous social-distancing and adherence to public health guidelines brought us to a point today where grabbing a mask before heading out the door has become a natural instinct. Though maintaining six feet of space between ourselves and those we encounter is not exactly how we planned to live our lives as students at a Big Ten university, we’re making it work. After all, University of Michigan students, for the most part, understand the severity of the pandemic and do their part in keeping our community safe. What I have not been able to acclimate to is remote learning, and I believe I speak on behalf of the rest of the student body when I say that it’s extremely challenging to do so. Quite frankly, our current virtual learning environment is making it hard to do so. Back in August, as the fall 2020 semester was approaching, University President Mark Schlissel’s optimism about in-person instruction and eagerness to get back on to campus made many students believe in the possibility of a positive virtual learning experience. Despite returning students’ apprehension to resume virtual learning after a dismal, lonely ending to our winter 2020 semester, it seemed like logging back on to Zoom and Canvas this time around would be different. After all, the University administration and instructors alike had four long months to brainstorm and execute new ways to create an effective and valuable virtual learning environment. Other than a few courses being offered in a hybrid format, very little has been modified since the commencement of remote learning in mid-March. It seems as though many instructors have done nothing to alter their curricula to better accommodate these circumstances, thinking that students would fare well learning material at a similar structure and pace as semesters past. We’re not well. This is not the “Michigan Difference” we signed up for.
In no way am I denying the necessity of remote learning; it is the safest option for continuing our education amid the adversity we are facing. That said, University instructors need to recognize that they are no longer in the classroom. They need to recognize that the majority of students no longer enjoy a refreshing walk to class in the morning, the ability to greet and catch up with their friends in the Diag or collaborate on assignments with classmates in the library.
Student mental health is only going to get worse as school work picks up. Our minds are continuously working while our bodies stay put; we spend the majority of our day in a cramped space, staring at a screen with little pause or break. This change of pace correlates to a decline in mental health across the student body — instructors and the administration need to adjust their current methods of virtual teaching to better accommodate our needs. Let’s further examine student mental health and why the current means of virtual learning is digging us into a deeper hole. In early August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released research in light of the pandemic which reported that a disproportionately high number — roughly 25% — of American citizens between the ages of 18 and 24 “seriously contemplated suicide in June.” To reiterate, one in four young adults between 18 and 24 years old reported having grievous thoughts of ending their lives. This research was conducted in June, a time when the weather was finally warm again and most students were relieved from their studies. If a quarter of young people in that age range were seriously contemplating suicide then, I cannot begin to
imagine what that statistic is now. October brings colder weather and shorter days, and though we used to look forward to this month to celebrate fall, game days and Halloween, our celebrations largely have been put on pause. The remainder of this semester is going to be dark — literally and figuratively. Student mental health is only going to get worse as school work picks up. Instructors must acknowledge this moving forward and reflect it in their teaching. On behalf of students, please attempt to make virtual class both more manageable and enjoyable. Enable rolling deadlines to account for the possibility of adverse situations. Make lectures more interactive and entertaining. Make yourself a resource for students to reach out to with concerns regarding mental health or any troubles they are facing. It is not enough to include a statement on COVID19 in course syllabi and never again address the topic for the remainder of the semester. This is not to say that virtual learning is necessarily easy for instructors, but you are the ones in control. University administrators, too, need to do their part, as they are the ones to oversee and facilitate our education. It is their responsibility to urge instructors to assess the needs of their students and adjust their curricula accordingly. Some students might be managing these changes well, but many feel lost, unable to break away from the mental fog that virtual learning is pressing upon us. We are not doing well now and it will only get worse, and we must reflect this in our approach to virtual learning. There was an expectation among instructors and faculty at the University that taking past curricula and implementing them virtually without any changes would work seamlessly. It does not. We are not coping. Let’s work together to make this virtual format as bearable and effective as possible before it’s too late. Spiros Kass can be reached at spikass@umich.edu.
Opinion
9 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
KAREEM RIFAI | COLUMN
LILY CESARIO | COLUMN
Bolivia is burning
L
andlocked Bolivia, a country nestled between regional hotspots Argentina, Chile and Peru, has skyrocketed to the forefront of the global geopolitical struggle. Bolivia’s 2019 election was fraught with allegations of fraud leveled against now-former President Evo Morales. Morales now faces accusations of crimes against humanity due to allegations that he organized food and fuel blockades in major cities engaging in protests calling for his ousting during the election crisis. The Bolivian interim government, headed by Jeanine Áñez, the right-wing former second vice president of the Bolivian Senate who ascended to power constitutionally through Bolivia’s line of presidential succession, has faced considerable backlash domestically and abroad following accusations that she is an acting coup president by leading fig ures of the Bolivian far-left due to the nature of Morales’s resignation. Bolivians will choose a new president on Oct. 18, ending the reign of Áñez. However, as political tensions continue to boil over, deadly forest fires have swept across the nation, with 62 active fires as of Oct. 7, according to the Autoridad de Bosques y Tierras, and more than 2.3 million hectares of land burned since January. The lungs of the world are burning in Bolivia, and no one is paying attention: In 2019, Bolivia’s forest fires contributed so astronomically to carbon dioxide emissions that the tiny developing nation of 11 million rivaled the tons per capita emitted from the United States, which is roughly 14.5 megatons per million people.
The expansion and soft legalization of slash-andburn agriculture, the primary source of Bolivia’s raging forest fires, occurred under Morales’s rule as he cozied up with Bolivia’s wealthy and powerful agribusiness elites. In 2013, the Morales government implemented a legal pardon for unlawful slash-and-burn land clearances between 1996-2011. Additionally, in 2019, the Morales government established laughable fines of less than $3 per illegally slashand-burned hectare. Morales’s unscrupulous abandonment of protecting Bolivia’s wildlife was only exacerbated by a beef trade deal initiated with China which required the extensification of Bolivian beef production. Consequently, in July 2019, Morales enacted a supreme expansion of the amount of legal slash-and-burn land clearance. This encouraged the use of fire despite serious ecological concerns for Bolivia’s forests, resulting in disastrous, uncontrollable fires being ignited in August as a result of the deregulated and unprosecuted slash-and-burn. Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in October 2019 to protest the Morales’s government’s gross negligence in fighting the rapidly expanding fires, which persisted until they were finally extinguished by heavy rainfall. I talked with a biologist and conservationist on the ground in Bolivia, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity because of the volatile political situation in the country. On Morales’s handling of the forest fires, he said, “When Evo appeared in front of the UN to applaud himself for his efforts at combating climate
change I was horrified. I had worked with the very volunteer firefighters who had died fighting the flames his policies had encouraged to be lit.” With Áñez’s ascension amid Bolivia’s ecological crisis, hopes were high that the new administration would tackle the issues that Morales’s regime had neglected for years. Unfortunately, Áñez initially ignored petitions to repeal the supreme decree enacted by Morales expanding the prevalence of slash-and-burn, instead, bizarrely focused on the expansion of GMOs throughout the country. When Áñez finally repealed the decree, likely to raise her abysmal polling numbers, she discreetly replaced it with a nearly identical edict designed to appease agribusiness lobbyists. On Áñez’s actions, the conservationist I spoke to said, “essentially Jeanine’s policies have been a major disappointment and have in practice, despite the rhetoric, largely been a continuation of those of Morales. The first signs of an end to impunity for arsonists are encouraging, but there’s a long way to go. While there are glimmers of hope, the fate of Bolivia’s forests will depend on the soon-to-beelected government.” As the fires in Bolivia rage on and continue to pollute and destroy one of the world’s most unique ecological landscapes, the world waits in anticipation to see if Bolivia will survive another election. Amid the anticipated political turmoil, environmental policies will undeniably be placed on the back-burner, but will still remain a pivotal policy point that will not only affect the future of Bolivia but the future of the world. Kareem Rifai can be reached at krifai@umich.edu.
NYLA BOORAS | COLUMN
Orthorexia shouldn’t be socially accepted
W
hen I was in the thick of my eating disorder, not many people in my life seemed to be concerned. Maybe they were, but it wasn’t shared with me, perhaps because they didn’t want to assume anything or offend me. If that’s the case, I know they meant well. But, beyond a lack of concern, what was more harmful was the praise and glorification I received for my eating disorder behaviors. And the reason they felt they should applaud my disordered behaviors is that we are engulfed in a society that not only normalizes disordered eating, and a toxic relationship with exercise, but deems it “healthy.” I was seen as “healthy” when I was restricting foods I deemed “bad” or “unhealthy” — a list which, when you’re in the midst of an eating disorder, only grows longer and longer — but the fact of the matter is, I was not. And when I was doing the most exercise and compulsive movements, I was very unhealthy. How could that be? The more exercise you do and the less “unhealthy” foods you eat — or the less you eat entirely — the healthier you become, right? Wrong. And not because the combination of exercise and eating nutritious foods are bad for you. I don’t think anyone has ever disputed that and I’m surely not. The problem lies in the assumption that this is a direct causal relationship; it is considered a given that if you do these things — exercise more, and eat less — you will become healthier. There are many cases where this has not been the outcome, and these are commonly the cases of those who transitioned into full-fledged eating disorders after embarking on a diet or the general path of restricting food. Yet, our society pushes exercise and restricted, or even “clean” eating, on us under the guise that they’re all-curing and will improve our health. They neglect to mention that even these habits can be taken to the extreme, and when they are it’s not guaranteed you become ultra-healthy. In many cases, extreme “healthy” or “clean” eating in particular yields health outcomes that are worrisome. Orthorexia has been gaining recognition in recent years as an eating disorder characterized by an unhealthy obsession with “healthy” eating. It’s not currently in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition as its own stand-alone eating disorder, but it does fall under the broad category of Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder: It entails avoiding (e.g. restricting) certain foods, and as a result, energy needs often aren’t met. Moreover, a lot of the signs and symptoms of the disorder may strike you as things people simply tend to do these days in the name of health. These include compulsively checking food labels, cutting out entire food groups (e.g. carbs, sugars, animal products), and not being able to eat anything outside of your narrow group of foods you’ve deemed “healthy” and/or “clean.” When people take these strides and engage these behaviors, they receive praise from those around them. Affirmations of how “healthy” they are and how much “willpower” they have poured in because diet culture, and more specifically the wellness diet, has conditioned them to believe that we need to purposefully abstain from certain foods as best as we can to be healthy. Orthorexia has become a socially acceptable eating disorder. Besides those rooted in the antidiet culture movement and eating disorder recovery community, most everyday people would not be alarmed by an individual only eating the vegetables at a social gathering or, my own past go-to, bringing their own food to events. Many turn to the latter because the thought of even eating an “unhealthy” food outside of the ones you’ve deemed safe, and often also outside of your own preparation, is just not possible. They likely applaud your decision to abstain from the “bad” food at the gathering, and worse, they might even say, “I wish I could eat like you do.” Everyone with an orthorexic past cringes at this comment. With these words, you’re not only validating the eating disorder as something ideal, but you cast aside any inclination they may have to move toward recovery. This, of course, is assuming that they’ve begun to realize they have an eating disorder. The acceptance and praise of orthorexic behaviors is one head of the beast that is society’s acceptance and fostering of restrictive, disordered behaviors around food. The other is the endless trend on social media promoting dangerously low-calorie eating (cough, cough,
TikTok) that’s unsustainable and only worsens one’s physical and mental health, yet for some reason, people are still under the impression that these diet trends are for “health.” These posts are blatantly promoting eating disorder behaviors to susceptible populations, like middle- and high-schoolers, with seemingly no consequences. It’s a slap in the face to anyone who has ever struggled with an eating disorder. Still, some may argue orthorexia isn’t a real eating disorder and is just one’s way of complaining and being frustrated by the fact that they have to eat healthy. They’ll say it’s just the price you pay for taking care of your body. This dismissive take on the subject is incredibly ignorant and will likely make the individual suffering feel like their struggles are invalid and that there is no hope to live a better life. Even if you believe the effect orthorexia has on one’s mental health is simply taxing and nothing more than that, the physical consequences on one’s health are serious. Orthorexia can lead to various negative health consequences, such as osteoporosis, kidney failure, infertility and nutritional deficiencies. Hence, it is vital that our society collectively begins to view the disorder as what it truly is — a serious eating disorder that deteriorates one’s health as it progresses, not as an ideal to strive for in the name of health. However, because orthorexic individuals are able to hide their disorder behind the intention of just wanting to eat healthy, the disordered component of their relationship with food often goes unnoticed. What’s more, because they mask their behaviors with a label of “health,” it is further encouraged and many don’t realize they have a problem until much later when health consequences ensue and their anxiety and fear around “bad” foods becomes unbearable. There is absolutely a better life outside of orthorexia, and a much healthier one at that. “Healthy eating,” which I put in quotes because its definition varies from person to person, like anything else, can be taken to the extreme. In short, that’s what orthorexia is. And taking it to this extreme doesn’t make one extremely healthy. Nyla Booras can be reached at nbooras@umich.edu.
H
ow you prepare for a psychedelic trip can make or break your experience, not to mention ensure that your community stays safe. As community members of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County and the wider world, it’s important to be knowledgeable about the risks associated with psychedelic use and how to minimize them. For students and faculty members at the University of Michigan, the first thing to know is that despite the recent measure taken to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi in our area, federal law still criminalizes psychedelics. Since the University still favors federal law and university policy over local law when it comes to alcohol and drug use, decriminalization may not necessarily extend to U-M property. Unless the University and the federal government say it’s OK in the future, it’s still best to avoid using psychedelics on campus. If you are planning on offcampus use, know what you’re putting in your body — this is especially important with psychedelics since they’re unregulated. While it may seem like a hassle, using a testing kit or doing some extra research on the compound you’re taking may save your life by helping you avoid adulterated and dangerous substances. Whether you are seeking out a traditional healing journey or planning on tripping with a guide, approach it cautiously. These medicines can be a good thing — some Indigenous communities use entheogenic plants like ayahuasca to help remain spiritually resilient and in touch with the natural world. But in some cases, it’s possible to be taken advantage of if the drugs being purchased are not legitimate or masked as something else. Psychedelics put you in a different mindset, for better or worse. If it’s worse, the openness you experience could leave you in a vulnerable position. Despite the immense healing that legitimate traditional plant medicine can bring, there have also been instances which lead to people being sexually abused or dying as a result of their participation.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Trip responsibly
Design courtesy of Katherine Lee
You have to be careful about who you get substances from and who you take them with. If you choose to use psychedelics with a new organization or individual, trust your intuition. If something feels off, it probably is. Check multiple sources for reviews of psychedelic effects, do your research and don’t trip alone. While psychedelics, when taken in the right context, can be generally safe and potentially beneficial for most people, they aren’t for everyone. Bipolar disorder and other underlying mental and physical conditions may cause some people to have negative reactions. Before embarking on a trip, research effects of psychedelics on conditions you may have. In addition to talking to trusted family, friends and medical professionals, you may also want to check out local psychedelic support groups and other resources. If you do decide that psychedelics are safe for you, the old idea of “set and setting” still matters. Set refers to your mindset; setting refers to your environment. In other words, it’s a bad idea to have a psychedelic experience in the Arb, the Diag or anywhere else by yourself. To get the most out of your trip, it’s important to be in a good mindset and in a place where you feel comfortable and with people whom you trust. For a more meaningful experience with psychedelics, setting an intention beforehand and creating space afterward for reflection can help you integrate what you’ve learned into your life. While each of these points are a start for what individuals can do to prepare for a safe trip, a community-based model could perhaps reduce the most harm. Going forward, it may be in the interest of retailers in the Ann Arbor community to consider providing testing kits and informational material to increase accessibility to education and reduce harm. If our community were to take these measures, like the Zendo Project does at music festivals, we could further ensure safety and responsibility.
Furthermore, in the interest of expanding our consciousness beyond our own health and safety, it’s also important to consider community and environmental well-being. Certain psychedelic plants and animals are becoming endangered. As we’ve seen in recent years with the Sonoran Desert Toad, Peyote and Ayahuasca, the demands of nonnative American psychedelic tourists are overwhelming supply, leading to resource depletion and a neglection of Native American communities. In the case of the Sonoran Desert Toad, its species is becoming endangered by nonNative American psychedelic tourists due to 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic/spiritual molecule found in the toad’s venom. Since the toad’s absence is considered a precursor for drought by communities like the Yaqui tribe of the Southwest U.S. and Mexico, endangerment of its species represents a risk to the ecosystem in which it inhabits and a loss to the Native American communities who rely on it. Peyote, a psychedelic cactus containing mescaline, has long been endangered in a similar way. On March 12, 2020, The National Council of Native American Churches (NCNAC) and the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative (IPCI) made a request for Peyote to be excluded from Decriminalize Nature’s campaign due to its endangered status and significance to Native American communities. If you are a non-Native person, please reconsider using Peyote and other endangered species. Spontaneity and the opportunity to explore the unknown are part of the draw of psychedelics. But taking precautions, paying attention to set and setting and respecting Native American communities are fundamental parts of ensuring personal, communal and environmental well-being in years to come. If you decide to trip, have a good one — but please make sure you do so safely and thoughtfully. Lily Cesario can be reached at lcesario@umich.edu.
MADELYN VERVAECKE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MAX STEINBAUM | COLUMN
ANDREW GERACE | COLUMN
Vote if you can, use your voice for those who can’t
Banana Republicans
D
uring the 12 years that followed the adoption of the Constitution, the two men who served as president were the nominally independent but Federalist-inclined George Washington, followed by his vice president, Federalist John Adams. During these administrations, an opposing party — the DemocraticRepublicans — solidified under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In 1800, the DemocraticRepublicans fielded Jefferson as their standard-bearer to oppose President Adams. The 1800 presidential campaign was a notorious mudsling — perhaps one of the dirtiest presidential elections our republic has seen — and resulted in Jefferson’s victory over the incumbent Adams. The eyes of Americans, and the world, fell upon the capital. Would Adams and his Federalist allies cede their power? Adams and Jefferson, at this time, had a bitter personal rivalry, and it was matched by the political chasm between the Federalists and DemocraticRepublicans. But on March 4, 1801, Jefferson was inaugurated as the third president of the United States without delay. The 1800 presidential election is sometimes referred to as the “Revolution of 1800.” It is called this because it was the first time that power exchanged hands between parties at the national level, and crucially, it exchanged hands peacefully. The Federalists knew they had lost, and they respected the democratic process. It proved that the American Revolution’s republican drive — to this point untested — was realizable. The American experiment could work. 220 years and 20 such exchanges later, it appears that tradition could be in danger. President Trump has, on many occasions now, insinuated that the presidential election will be fraught with voter fraud from mail-in ballots. He has repeatedly claimed “the ballots are out of control,” called the ballots a “scam” and accused Democrats of harboring this knowledge. The president has even flirted with rejecting the electoral outcome should Joe Biden win
on Nov. 3. When asked point blank during a White House press briefing in late September whether he’d commit to a peaceful transition of power, Trump gave an astounding answer: “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens.” There is a right way, and only one right way, for a sitting U.S. president to respond to that question. “Of course, I am committed to a peaceful transition of power, just as every president before me. That’s the bedrock of American democracy. What a ridiculous question.” Unfortunately for our nation’s proud republican legacy, that an American president may not concede defeat and voluntarily give up his power is a legitimate concern in 2020. Since 1800, with the exception of the outbreak of the Civil War, our government has always accepted election results and willingly transferred power when defeated by an opposing party. Trump’s repeated failure to respect this legacy ought to shock and disgust every American. The vast majority of what comes out of Trump’s mouth is bluster and nonsense. There is a real and frightening possibility, however, that he truly means what he’s saying here. But how would Trump’s rejection of a Biden victory theoretically work? And more importantly, could he actually pull it off? Trump is already laying the groundwork for this sort of power grab. He’s started by discrediting mail-in voting, suggesting that it will lead to voter fraud of massive proportions (even though mail-in voting is one of the safest ways to vote right now.) We know that Biden voters are more likely than Trump voters to use mail-in voting for the upcoming general election. Trump knows this too, and should he lose, will likely use it to fuel the narrative that many mail-in votes were fraudulent. As such, Trump’s pre-planned narrative appears to be that a hypothetical Biden victory, the product of mail-in fraud, will be illegitimate. So, how exactly would Trump go about stealing the election? The answer is tied to our terribly flawed mechanism of electing presidents: the electoral college. According to the Constitution,
individual state legislatures are charged with appointing electors to the electoral college. Historically, the winner of the popular vote in each state receives that state’s electoral votes. But — and this is the big but — state legislatures still reserve the right to select their own electors, regardless of the popular vote outcome. So, if Trump screams on Nov. 4 that rampant voter fraud cost him the popular vote in key battleground states, it could potentially be followed by a recommendation that state legislatures appoint pro-Trump electors, so as to deliver the “correct” electoral result. In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — blue-leaning states that could deliver the decisive electoral votes for a Biden victory — both the State Houses and Senates are controlled by Republicans. If they “determine” that Biden won through fraudulent mailin votes and decide to “correct” the situation themselves, there’s a real scenario where they try to bypass election day results and deliver their electors to Donald Trump. What is most disturbing about all of this is that massive voter fraud is absolute fiction. The apocalyptic scenario (already being peddled by Republican soothsayers) of rampant mailin fraud tainting the election in Biden’s favor is a design to mar a fair Trump loss. Don’t take my word for it. Take Ellen Weintraub’s word for it: As the commissioner of the Federal Election Commission said, “There’s simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud.” That’s all this is. A conspiracy theory, peddled by Trump and promoted by Republicans, aimed at preemptively discrediting a legitimate Biden victory and stealing the election. At the end of the day, Trump and his minions don’t give a damn about our democracy. These folks are willing to lie — and in doing so, soil the democratic tradition America has had since 1800 — if it means keeping power. There’s a word for that: treason. Max Steinbaum can be reached at maxst@umich.edu.
LYDIA STORELLA | COLUMN
A
Respect American institutions
fter news broke that an anti-government militia had plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, I was sent a clip of an interview with Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf regarding the news of the arrest of Michael and William Null, two of the suspects in this case. Leaf knows William Null through a rally protesting Whitmer’s stayat-home order, which became a topic of conversation when Leaf was interviewed by Fox 17. When asked whether he regrets sharing a stage with someone charged in a plot to kidnap Whitmer, Leaf said, “It’s just a charge, and they say a ‘plot to kidnap’ and you got to remember that. Are they trying to kidnap … Because you can still in Michigan if it’s a felony, make a felony arrest.” Leaf diminished the kidnapping attempt on Whitmer as an attempt of arrest. In the same interview, he uses a Michigan law that states that private persons can make arrests in certain situations to make this case. Leaf believes this kidnapping plot could be reasonable, and even legal, because of the anger towards Whitmer and her executive orders concerning COVID-19. This mindset in excusing a kidnapping attempt as a citizen’s arrest is the same mindset that led to the plot in the first place. There is a lack of faith in institutions that has led to a lack of trust in government. This distrust of American institutions comes from the severe polarization that exists in the United States today. People see the actions of members of the opposite party as illegitimate, which leads to suspicion of the institutions that allowed those actions to occur. Whitmer is a Democrat, while the people involved in the attempt to kidnap her are linked to a rightwing militia group.
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 10
The plot to kidnap Whitmer stems from a belief that the actions she took to prevent the spread of COVID-19 made her a tyrant and in violation of the Constitution. Because Whitmer was committing a crime, the men accused in this kidnapping plot believe they were taking legal action to arrest and try her for the crimes she committed. The view certain citizens have — that the institutions allowing Whitmer to make these executive orders are illegitimate — have created backlash against these institutions as we know them to exist. On May 6, the Michigan Legislature filed suit against Whitmer challenging her emergency orders regarding COVID-19 as “improper and invalid”; the plot to kidnap Whitmer began to take shape June 20, about a month and a half after. People who have faith in institutions do not subvert legal processes with illegal action. Not everyone defines legality the same way. The U.S. government and I do not believe that this attempt to kidnap the governor is legal. But others, such as Leaf, believe that rather than kidnap Whitmer, the accused might have been trying to arrest her for felony charges. This is not to say that Leaf’s views are valid, but because he is a sheriff and therefore someone in a position of authority, they cannot be dismissed. As law enforcement, sheriffs must be accountable to the law as it is interpreted by legal systems, not personal definition. This is why a lack of faith in our institutions is so dangerous. If people are not in agreement that we must respect our basic institutions,
we live in a state of ambiguity about our laws. The role of the citizen is not to interpret the laws, but to change the laws they find unjust through other democratic functions. But what do we do when people disagree about what democratic functions are? The suspects in the plot to kidnap Whitmer had previously expressed dissent in a constitutional and democratic way; the Null brothers were involved in protests in Lansing against Whitmer’s executive orders. Unfortunately for the Null brothers, concrete plans to kidnap a U.S. governor, or anyone, are not included in the right to protest. Our country will not be able to withstand a citizenry that does not respect its institutions. Intolerance encourages and enables people to engage in whatever activity they see fit because they do not believe in the legitimacy of American institutions. The motivation to behave in accordance with what our institutions mandate disappears when respect for them disappears. Belief that the government is illegitimate leads to dangerous ways of thinking. It allows people to think that illegal action they take is acceptable because the law itself is wrong. In the case of Whitmer, the suspects believe they could enforce the law, and define what terms in the law mean, because they disagree with the actions Whitmer took. In order for American society to remain stable, both citizens and government officials must respect our institutions and express our grievances through accepted means of dissent. Lydia Storella can be reached at storella@umich.edu.
“
Have you registered to vote?” is an impossible question to escape. I’ve found that I can’t walk through the Diag, scroll through Instagram or even order a pizza without encountering some iteration of this question. Dominating nearly every space, it certainly is a pertinent question given our current environment. Assuming the answer to this question is yes, as we transition into this election and prepare for electoral outcomes, we need to ask ourselves a different question: What is our role in making this nation a functioning and healthy democracy? A healthy democracy requires far more than just electoral participation, including the ongoing intellectual and physical engagement of an informed citizenry. Think of it this way — as students, we need to do more than just register for the semester and pick our preferred classes; participation like staying informed, having discussions and completing other course tasks are essential to succeed both in a course and in democratic society. While voting is essential, using our voices through other means of engagement can further progress our country toward justice and equality — the highest ideals of democracy. Simply put, voting is a civic duty: something we should see as a first step or baseline of political participation if we have the privilege to vote. In particular, as a white, cisgender man, I believe it is my duty to vote, as voting is one of many tools to amplify and represent the voices of those who are otherwise silenced in government and the electoral process by gerrymandering, iterations of poll taxes for the formerly incarcerated, racially targeted polling station closures, other forms of voter suppression and more. I can use my privilege to support and vote for candidates who commit to expanding the franchise. I can have conversations with those who can’t vote and consider their perspective on ballot issues and candidates. I can vote for candidates who I believe will enact systemic change. Voting has the potential to make change through the electoral process. At the very least, it can publicly signal approval or disapproval of a candidate or set of ideas. While a candidate or party may not satisfy all or even most of my policy preferences, I don’t believe it’s fair to let my ideals blind me from the reality others may face as a consequence of my non-voting. That being said, voter shaming, or bullying people into voting, does little to motivate nonvoters, often fails to recognize the difficulties and barriers
that exist for many and can turn off people, even usual voters, from voting in the future. Voter shaming has taken many forms over the years, from callout posts on Instagram to postcards with voting records attached. This unproductive behavior should be modified. Recognizing any inherent privilege we may have and refocusing on positive motivations for voting will bring more people into the fold of electoral politics and democratic society. While voting in national elections is a necessary civic duty, a functional democracy needs more than people showing up to vote once every four years. In our democratic republic, we elect officials who theoretically represent us in federal politics. After an election, we are left to consider members of Congress relatively unaccountable until their next
Silence on issues that do not affect us directly is what created our current situation. election cycle. While we can’t recall members of Congress via election, contacting them about issues you care about by calling or writing their offices, sending emails or using services like ResistBot can actually have a significant effect on the way elected officials vote. I urge everyone to find issues they care about —whether they be racial justice in the United States, solidarity with Armenia, the environmental crisis or practically anything else — and call your congressional representatives daily or weekly. An action as simple as leaving a message for a staffer to pass along or having a conversation with a college intern, while both fun and frustrating, can ultimately push our Congress and democracy to listen more closely to the people it claims to represent. If we all took the four to six minutes of our day to make these calls, public officials would have no choice but to rethink some of their less favorable positions and be more representative of their constituents. In addition to conventional politics, activist work is imperative to steer our country and government to be one that is truly functional, healthy and just. Silence on issues that do not affect us directly is what
created our current situation: a system that only supports those already in privileged groups. While I am not suggesting people spend the entirety of their free time taking to the streets to protest in person, it is crucial to consider the reality of those who have no choice but to do so to survive, like those targeted for their race or gender identity or those evicted from housing. A multitude of options exist besides protesting: providing mutual aid, writing awareness pieces, having difficult discussions with friends and family, standing up for classmates and many other methods. I urge everyone to find ways to get involved in protesting, organizing or supporting the work of others. Work we do outside the conventional electoral norms, especially in terms of independent impact, is equally if not more important than what happens at the polls. Looking for ways to get involved? There are plenty of brilliant initiatives and organizations at the University of Michigan and beyond that are working to create a more just and functional democracy, both through electoral politics and other means. The Prison Birth Project, a student organization that “aims to inspire students and community members to advocate for incarcerated mothers and birthing people,” is an example of a student organization working to better the community through participation. The PBP uses tools like pressuring elected officials into action and providing direct aid to help make the justice system actually judicial and aid incarcerated mothers and birthing people. Other advocacy groups like Students Demand Action and Students Demand Representation use similar methods to make their voices heard. These groups and efforts are what make democracy work beyond the use of the ballot. Overall, participation in electoral processes and other avenues of engagement is vital to the health of our democracy. When we use our voice to help our peers in whatever capacity we can, we take another step toward creating a government by the people and for the people, and a society that truly values and respects all of its members. Like with our education, our democratic society will reap the benefits we sow. We need a student mindset of growth, change and constant learning to put our society on the right track. Get ready to vote, and get ready for what comes next. Andrew Gerace can be reached at agerace@umich.edu.
ANNA GETZINGER | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT GETZINGA@UMICH.EDU
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 11
The wound that was never fatal: On ‘The Changeling’ JO CHANG
Senior Arts Editor
The first time I found a copy of Joy Williams’s “The Changeling,” I was 19 and wandering around the public library searching for it — though I wasn’t aware of this yet. It was a few months before summer break and I was on the brink of a spectacular mental breakdown. This would be unexpected news for everyone, including myself, because I had my life perfectly compartmentalized, my days carefully cut and quartered and neatly wrapped. Every day I went to class and sat in the seats closest to the walls, and ate the same veggie sandwich at the same dining hall at exactly 5:30 PM, alone. I was working three jobs, doing private research with a professor, my GPA was way above average and I was so incredibly numb. Every weekend I would walk 40 minutes to the public library and pick books at random from the shelves — vapid romance novels, epic fantasies, ones that promised to teach me a foreign language in 10 days. And I would let them sit, accusing and untouched, on my desk until they were due back home. Nothing really interested me but I was desperate to find a book to teach me how to feel so I went back again and again. “The Changeling” became the first book I finished in months. At surface value, its plot surrounds Pearl, a young alcoholic mother of a baby boy,
Sam. She flees her first marriage to run away with Walker, her exciting lover, but ends up a widow in a devastating plane crash that only she survives. Pearl, and a child who looks like Sam but she is convinced is a changeling, a child who is secretly swapped with another in infancy. Pearl and this child begin living with Thomas, Walker’s brother, on an unnamed island inhabited by several adults and a seemingly endless number of children who sometimes seem more animal than human. Pearl finds herself becoming a sort of surrogate mother to these children, a role that she cannot understand. The children appear to love and torment her with equal amounts of fervor, which only hastens her loosening grip on reality and herself. With Sam and the other children of the island, Pearl feels an unbridgeable gap between them and herself as a maternal figure. Every day, Pearl drinks by the pool as the children clamber around her. They enthusiastically ask her questions about herself, the island, the world, but “... she had developed a trick to take herself out of their range … she concentrated, she rose in her mind, she moved of a distance. Her body would lie there, surrounded by the laughing children, but she would be gone. Having knowledge without knowing, her thoughts far away, her body there, but in darkness, stroked by the whispers of summer.” This novel reads as a sort of
fever dream; with each page you are unsure of how much of the narrative is actually based in fact. It is a strange and dizzying landscape, one that captured me as soon as I reached this line — it was as if these were my words, my thoughts, laid out bare on this page: “She felt that if she could only get interested in and knowledgeable about a kinky subject, for example hockey or sharks, she would be a more contented person. She could not just be fucking all the time. Soon something more would have to happen. Pearl did not feel that she was a real person.” That summer, just after coming home from college for break, the hole in my chest tore open and I became so sad that it hurt to even breathe. I stopped sleeping and eating, went on hours-long walks every night, just wandering around the woods behind my house in the dark listening to the same playlist on repeat. The bones in my chest and the knobs of bone in my shoulders surfaced, the skin on my face was peeled back so tight it was easy to picture what my bare skull looked like underneath. I looked inhuman. My skin was a gross yellow color, eyes bulging out of their sockets, fingers like claws, jagged spine like scales. I often found myself unable to recognize myself as I casually passed a reflective surface. My mother was distraught and confused as she held this creature, shaking with sobs again over nothing at all, nothing that it could name
DESIGN BY JO CHANG
in any language. Why are you crying? she asked. Let me help you, what’s wrong? My treatment center was quite far from us but my parents drove me there multiple times a week to get electricity zapped into my brain; it was an hour and a half’s drive across the Tappan Zee bridge, and I remember feeling choked up with rage and self-hatred, overwhelmed with guilt about making my parents have to miss work to drive me to a place that taught me how to feel human, how to do basic tasks that even infants know how to do. Like clockwork, I started crying as soon as my ass hit the car seat. I don’t understand, my mother said. How could you love someone like me? I demanded. I was disgusted by everything about myself. I was coarse and twisted, ugly and helpless. I don’t know, she answered, But I still do.
At the time, I heard that as “I have to.” Isn’t that what mothers are supposed to do? Provide the kind of love that blinds you, has you reaching into the dark, but stupidly unafraid? I was furious. How does it make sense to love something you cannot understand? “The Changeling” doesn’t make sense, but that was just what I needed. Love, fear, violence, joy all blend into an indistinguishable haze. The children quote Dante and plot murder, a boy pulls a length of Christmas lights and star tree topper out of his stomach. A man dreams of “[seizing his lover’s] throat with his jaws (to) worry it with joy until the bones [break] like seeds on his teeth.” Pearl’s vagina is compared to a wound, “the wound that opened again and again. The wound that was never fatal.” This same wound — the one that delivers Sam into the world — allows for them to “fold back the flaps of skin and unfold the baby from her like a
bridal gown … her terrible dark wound [that would become] a nest for the flying creatures of the night.” When my mother was pregnant with me, she had a dream that she was fishing and caught three fish. The three fish were supposed to foretell me and my two sisters. She tells this story whenever she is feeling particularly sentimental. You were the biggest one, she’d tell me. You were the first and the most beautiful. And you were mine. At the end of that summer my poor health landed me in the hospital with heart complications. The first night I had to run some tests, including an ultrasound of my chest. The technician smeared cold gel on my skin. In the monitor, my black and white heart stared back at me. It looked like the glassy eye of a fish, swimming around in its fluids. Senior Arts Editor Jo Chang can be reached at changje@umich.edu
When art meets algorithm: artists’ dual-edged sword EMILIA FERRANTE Daily Arts Writer
William Deresiewicz sees a crisis in the arts, and he needs you to stop it. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that simple, because the problem comes from something that is increasingly woven into the fabric of our daily lives: The Algorithm. By “the algorithm,” Deresiewicz means the coding of apps and programs that we use every day to consume content, that show us certain posts or songs at the top of our feed — the invisible hand that, as Deresiewicz said, “picks up things that are already viral and makes them more viral.” Any non-Luddite knows that this is how the Internet works, and Deresiewicz himself will acknowledge that in some cases, the algorithm has been good for small artists who make it big
seemingly overnight — think Lil Nas X or Rupi Kaur. But these artists are the exception, not the rule. Overwhelmingly, the algorithm swallows small artists whole, forcing them to the margins or completely eclipsing them with viral acts. In terms of seeing new artists, the power tips away from the audience and toward the big tech companies — all the while allowing us to think we are still in control. This is an uncomfortable reality for everyone, not just artists. The general public, the consumers of art, don’t want to think about art as something dictated by the market forces of large tech companies. After all, “the artist” is a quasi-mythic figure in our culture — moody, mysterious and Walden-esque. If talking about money in daily life is mildly unpleasant, talking about it in the arts is practically sinful. Artists
Lessons from Ethnography
Online Event: Thursday, October 29, 2020 | 4:00 p.m.
Can Ethical Critique Change Society?
WEBB KEANE George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Anthropology
An online lecture. For more information, visit events.umich.edu/event/75454 or call 734.615.6667.
are supposed to exist outside of the market, unmarred by capitalistic whims. Thinking about art in relation to money thus feels wrong, because we want our art to be above it all — to make commentary about economics, sure, but never participate in it. A truth we don’t like to apply to our artists, writes Deresiewicz in his book “The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech,” is that “wanting to get paid does not mean you’re a capitalist. It doesn’t even mean that you assent to capitalism. It only means that you live in a capitalist society.” But as long as artists exist in that capitalist society, and as long as they want to make art, they are part of a fundamental paradox that “cannot be resolved; it can only be endured.” Here lies the tension that today’s artists must endure — so how are they doing it? For his book, Deresiewicz interviewed hundreds of artists from a range of mediums, including music, writing, poetry and visual art. He doesn’t downplay the crisis he sees, explaining in his book that a title like “creative entrepreneur” for an artist is simply “sugar for the turd of gig work.” Most fulltime artists work paycheck to paycheck, piecing together funding from selling art, doing live events, Patreon (a subscription service for artists’ content) and other assorted income streams. This is because, he told The Michigan Daily, any artist “who wants to follow their own vision and be interesting and say what they want to say is going to be at odds with a system like that.” This means they probably won’t make much money — “and that’s the problem with the system.” Aside from making a compelling argument, Deresiewicz’s book also manages to create a nonfiction work of literary merit. His writing style is direct, just like his interviewing style; he has no time for you to waste, and he won’t waste yours. He writes without mincing words in a straightforward way that makes the reader trust what he has to say. He describes the Ramones, the Talking Heads and Blondie as “the archetypal threechord punk quartet, a cerebral art-school act, and a disco-scented dance band fronted by a singer with a cotton-candy voice.” A bland, purely informational voice
ALEEZA JILL NUSSBAUM
wouldn’t appeal to the bulk of people reading his work, a large percentage of whom are either middle class or upper-middle class people, or are artists themselves. His writing in the book manages to captivate both audiences, which is good, because those are exactly the people he most wants to reach. These are the ones who have been conditioned away from paying for art but who have the means to do so. One thing that has made it infinitely harder for artists, along with everyone but the billionaires, is the pandemic. Deresiewicz’s book was written in 2019, but he seemed to unfortunately predict the future when he wrote “People don’t make art in isolation, and online interactions are incomparably impoverished relative to those that take place in real life.” This year, to contextualize this new normal, Deresiewicz reached out to all of his interview subjects for the book and completed follow up interviews with ten. What he found was both completely expected and very distressing — “It’s been a disaster for the arts.” Deresiewicz’s entire book lays out how the digitization of art, especially music, has led to dramatically decreased revenue streams (think Spotify plays vs. CD sales). This reality has led many artists to rely on live events for money. Without income from those live events, many artists now struggle to make money off of their art, even after adjusting to the digitized art world.
In addition, arts institutions from museums to theatres have had to close as a result of the pandemic. “A lot of them might not survive,” Deresiewicz said, “especially the smaller ones, the independent ones that produce interesting work and artists that are still getting traction.” Even revenue streams
Overwhelmingly, the algorithm swallows small artists whole, forcing them to the margins or completely eclipsing them with viral acts.
from day jobs like food service or Uber driving have dried up. Deresiewicz and his interviewees acknowledge that this could be a chance to reset the art world, but more likely is the notion that larger institutions will get larger, and smaller ones will get swallowed — the game of the algorithm playing out in real life. The paradox of art and money is, according to Deresiewicz, inherently unsolvable in the current economy. Like other systemic issues, the power of the individual is limited. There is hope, though, for both consumers of art and for artists themselves. People have already become more
conscious consumers of food, clothing, plastic water bottles and more — so, Deresiewicz argues, why not art? Often, he said, at “other end of the arts economy, of the supply chain, from you the consumer, is not a corporation” but rather an individual artist, struggling to make a living. Deresiewicz warned, “If you’re getting something valuable to you and you’re getting it for free, you really need to question that.” As consumers of art, we must learn to not expect art to be free (or simply equate exposure with payment). There is hope for artists as well. Young gen z artists, for example, despite having a complicated relationship with self-marketing, have a leg up in terms of pure online experience. They can use that experience to their advantage, says Deresiewicz, if they have good art — which comes from separating the online self from the “authentic” self. Deresiewicz’s culminating advice for young artists is simply this: “Instead of starting with the question ‘What can I make that’s going to get attention and make money?’, start with the question ‘What do I want to make?’ and then make it, and then figure out how to get attention and hopefully money for it,” he said. Art first, promotion second. We must learn to seek out art that makes us think, that challenges us, that makes us cry or laugh or feel something — and then we have to pay the artist who makes it. Daily Arts Writer Emilia Ferrante can be reached at emiliajf@umich. edu
the b-side
12 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
THE B-SIDE: PARADOX
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
THE B-SIDE: PARADOX
Paychecks & paintbrushes The true tragedy of snob ZOE PHILLIPS Senior Arts Editor
School of Music, Theatre and Dance alum Maya Ballester started her career at the University in the vocal performance program, but soon realized her heart lay closer to musical theatre. Through the Bachelor of Musical Arts track, she customized her degree to add acting and dance classes and then started work as a photographer as well. “It’s hard for me to tie down one thing that I want to do at a time,” Ballester said recently in an interview with The Daily over the phone from her native Kansas. She graduated last May, at the height of COVID-19’s first wave. Now, she joins the ranks of an arts industry endangered by and dying from the country’s mishandling of this pandemic. But those stressors aside, Ballester faces even deeper conundrums when it comes to personal income. “There’s this kind of switch that goes off in my head that when I am doing something for income, and to survive, it automatically becomes less fun, and becomes less expressive,” Ballester said. Her art comes from a place that she aches to keep separate from money — but without a paycheck, will she have the resources to make more art? Stamps and Music, Theatre & Dance senior Rhett Shepherd currently navigates a similar paradoxical question. Their senior thesis involves the development of a videogame that uses characters from diverse working-class communities, a group rarely represented by the white, straight and wealthy communities of online gaming. The project aims to fill a gap in representation, but Shepherd’s thesis must also reckon with the fact that videogames remain luxury products that are out of reach for many low income families. How can their art make the difference it intends to without access to the group that it’s made for? These questions leave both Shepherd and Ballester running in circles: Art and money compete
for attention but also never seem to find a compromise. Stamps professor Rebekah Modrak is quite familiar with this paradox. As an artist, she makes work dedicated to the resistance of consumer culture — her “Re Made Co.” installment replaced Best Made Co.’s $350 artisanal designer axe with a $350 toilet plunger. The piece offered cutting humorous commentary on the absurd consumption of glorified tools and Modrak eventually received a cease and desist document from the company’s lawyers. “Resistance to consumer culture was part of my upbringing,” Modrak recently wrote in an email to The Michigan Daily. Her parents started by teaching her to ask “why we pay companies money to advertise for them.” Now, as a professor, Modrak teaches the Stamps Interventions in Commerce class. This evolved from an older class on Shopdropping, a project in which students made false products to leave in a store — a reverse shoplift. The idea started in 2004, guided by Modrak’s question: “How can we take opportunities to encounter audiences outside of a gallery system, to introduce messages (critical, poetic, personal) contrary to the narrow conceptual boundaries of branding?” For Shepherd’s videogame, this separation starts by reimagining the power of ordinary objects, an idea that started while mopping the floor at a summer housekeeping job. “I look at this mop,” Shepherd said, “and I think to myself, ‘this mop could be a really great weapon!’” The realization sent them into a world of imagined Expo marker jousts and cleaning pole lances, the result of which will become fully fledged working-class video game characters, aptly titled “The Working Clash.” Shepherd sees power in a choice like this, lifting the mundane into the creative, moving from mandatory to leisurely. The game will hopefully make space for products and professions often
considered boring or less-than to take on new meaning beyond their measurable contributions to the economy. Finding space outside consumption is also quite important for Ballester. At home in quarantine, she watched the country’s economy melt, leaving millions to live on small unemployment checks. As the weeks turned to months, Ballester grew resentful of the system at large, maddened by America’s workaholic tendencies. “I’ve grown very irritated with capitalism in general,” she said, “and how that has led to people defining who they are by their career, defining their worth by their career.” At the same time, this conclusion doesn’t solve her conflict — “I’m still struggling to form a healthy relationship with making money and also getting to do what I want to do,” she said. Shepherd echoed Ballester’s sentiment: “You can talk in circles about it for a long time,” they said, “I don’t really have a good answer for it.” For Modrak, the answer lies in actively disentangling oneself from consumer culture. “I used to exhibit [my work] in gallery spaces,” she wrote, but now it’s “intentionally net-based,” meaning it can reach any browser of a consumer space. The result gives Modrak independence and control over her own ideas and, according to her, is far more liberating. This idea holds special importance for Modrak now that we live in an age of “selfpromotional culture.” The growth of influencers and freelance artists pushes individuals to think of themselves as brands and thus “define success according to the narrow rationale of corporate culture,” she wrote. Ballester’s work in acting and photography are both heavily operated by such models of self-promotion — “you are your business,” she said. There are drawbacks to both, but performance work feels especially vulnerable to her.
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
NINA MOLINA Daily Arts Writer
In his 1988 poem “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins laments the way his students have been taught to read poetry. Rather than “hold it up to the light like a color slide,” or “press an ear against its hive,” he writes that the students torture a confession — in this case meaning or significance — out of the poem. Once they have found its meaning, analyzed its metaphors and discussed its themes, they leave. Collins hates this; he wants the experience of art appreciation to be as ongoing as the admiration of nature in everyday life. I agree with him. As one learns more about a subject — in this instance, art — the less one seems to appreciate it. This is the paradox of the snob. Critics and experts’ knowledge about art ultimately lead to bitterness and disillusionment about the direction of that particular art form. Slowly, the initial passion for the form is replaced with unending criticism. We are taught to approach art in this paradoxical manner. In my creative writing classes, I’ve learned to employ the syntax of Alice Munro, Raymond Carver and Alice Walker; we read the words and then tear them apart and put them back together in carefully crafted academic prose of analysis. But I don’t want to tear the story into shreds of clever sentence turns, front versus backstory and particular verb usages. I wonder when I’ll start seeing writing as work. Perhaps that’s what the best artists do — they have routine and practice, what outsiders conf late with divine inspiration. Walking the line between creating a writing routine while also giving in to the whims of inspiration is tricky. Perhaps therein lies my question: Why does art
DESIGN BY YASSMINE EL-REWINI
criticism exist if it turns us, the art critics and consumers, into cynical curmudgeons, ready to attack any artist, musician or writer? In one of my English classes, we’re learning about Romantic-era literature. At the peak of 19th-century Romanticism, nature and emotion became art’s purpose. And, for the first time in literary history, art’s purpose became oppositional from societal, morality and value systems. We just finished reading Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” the 1774 German novel about a young man’s infatuation with an unavailable girl that leads to his suicide. Werther’s foray into the reality of unrequited love is painful to watch, even with Goethe’s beautiful prose. And yet, the epistolary novel is f looded with reasons to continue loving the world, despite the trials and pain that they bring. Though Werther is no exemplar on how to handle romantic rejection, his youthful intensity and sensitivity are highly admirable. He writes to his best friend, “I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.” This vulnerability to the world is enjoyable and interesting to watch unfold, but it’s also a virtue that us art
consumers can — and should — learn. As an English major, I live in constant fear of becoming this snob. I worry I will approach every piece of literature I pick up ready to annotate the margins and always keeping the essay prompt at the forefront of my mind. But, I agree with Collins when he writes that he would rather “walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch” than beat a meaning or significance out of a poem. It seems some art enthusiasts find comfort in that they are the few “chosen” followers who are enlightened enough to have better taste. I’ve encountered people who correct the way you say Van Gogh. They are the ones who gasp at you for not knowing that the drummer of Nirvana was the lead singer of the Foo Fighters and book-shame you for not having read “Fahrenheit 451,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Frankenstein” or any Oscar Wilde. But I have yet to find joy in being the “select” few. In some ways, this makes me excited to have space away from this kind of analysis after my formal education. I’m determined to never let go of that excited, playful state of being enraptured in a novel. Like Werther, I’d be sorry to lose the beauty of nature in the name of art. Daily Arts Writer Nina Molina can be reached at ninamolina@umich.edu.
THE B-SIDE: PARADOX
Love is a mess of paradoxes in ‘Eternal Sunshine’ MARY ELIZABETH JOHNSON Daily Arts Writer
“Oh, my darling, Clementine. You were lost and gone forever. Dreadful sorry, Clementine.” So croons Joel’s (Jim Carrey, “Dumb and Dumber”) mother as she bathes him in his distant memory of infancy in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” It’s strange to think how you could know someone’s name from a song before you ever meet them. Of course, this is not not actually a coincidence; screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (“I’m Thinking of Ending Things”) chose this lullaby specifically to fit the narrative of his movie, but it’s not that far-fetched. We sometimes make up parallels in our lives with our loved ones even if they don’t make sense. Like Phoebe Bridgers wrote, “I didn’t know you then / And I’ll never understand why / It feels like I did.” “Eternal Sunshine” begins with Joel meeting Clementine (Kate Winslet, “Titanic”) on an impulsive day trip to Montauk. Joel is enamoured by Clementine’s boldness — the way that she invites him, a stranger, into the intimacy of her life and apartment. After spending a night together, the film abruptly cuts to what we’ll eventually realize is a f lashback to when Clementine and Joel broke up, shortly before the opening of the film. Clementine went to a special medical clinic to have her memory of Joel erased from her brain, and, upon discovering this, Joel does the same to his memory of Clementine. The film follows Joel as he regrets trying to erase her, and they both eventually
realize that even with all of their baggage, they’re willing to give their relationship one more shot. Even the mind-bending science-fiction angle of the film feels like something grounded in reality — who hasn’t ever wished they could, like Joel
It’s a sciencefiction version of the universal fear that you can spend so much time in love with someone only to end up as strangers.
and Clementine, be strapped to an examination table and have your heartbreak surgically removed? The most painful moment for Joel wasn’t just the sight of Clementine walking out his door, but the moment when she acts like she has never (because, in her current consciousness, she hasn’t) met him before. It’s a science-fiction version of the universal fear that you can spend so much time in love
with someone only to end up as strangers. That’s the paradox that really matters, not the nonlinear storytelling that begins the day after Joel has already had his memory erased. With no memory of Clementine, he meets his ex-girlfriend as if they are strangers, leaving a disconnect between their bodies and minds. After two years of love, they erase each other through a procedure that takes about as long as it might take you to finally block your ex’s number. If the sentimentality doesn’t get you, the cinematography will. There are great visual paradoxes when Clementine walks down a street only to appear to return right where she began, like an urban Penrose staircase, or the Eldritchian version of Patrick (Elijah Wood, “Wilfred”), the man using knowledge of Joel’s memories to seduce Clementine, in a comatose nightmare sequence where, no matter how many times Joel turns him around, he never sees his face. But Kaufman’s portrayal of these inherent contradictions of the human condition isn’t just about the body horror of these faceless creatures in Joel’s dreams — it’s the way that Joel and Clementine are cosmically magnetized to each other. Though they’ve forgotten about each other, they remain drawn to each other. Their bodies could not forget. Perhaps this is because Mark Ruffalo’s (“Spotlight”) character fucked up the science, or maybe it means that we can’t ever really forget people as much as we want to, no matter how much we shill out for an experimental psychological study. Kaufman has something to say about the repressed feelings
FOCUS FEATURES
we hold in our bodies, too. Sex is probably the most intimate thing you can do with someone second only to, I don’t know, dying in their arms. But, in Kaufman’s film, Clementine uses it as a conversation starter — not to express any meaningful or established feelings. The implication in Joel’s vitriolic “I assume you fucked someone tonight. Isn’t that how you get people to like you?” is that she doesn’t have any depth to her personality, that she uses her body to get to know people. Avoiding the possibility of an argument about sex positivity, Kaufman uses this sequence to point out how weird it is that the bodies we’re in feel so separate from who we are inside our heads. Nearly the whole film is spent in Joel’s outof-body experience during the procedure. Maybe Joel thinks (while Clementine denies that she’s at all promiscuous)
that Clementine sees physical nakedness as less incriminating than emotional vulnerability, or maybe she sees her body and her mind connected in a way that Joel can’t. When her mind tells her body that she wants to eat off of Joel’s plate the first time they meet, she does. “It was so intimate,” Joel recalls about the bizarre moment. “Like we were already lovers.” There’s a scene where Joel and Clementine venture out onto a frozen lake to lie down and stargaze. The frozen lake is revisited multiple times, even if the characters don’t realize it. “What if it breaks?” Joel asks. “‘What if?’ Do you really care right now?” Clementine says. Is the ice going to crack? Is the view of the stars worth the risk of hypothermia? Is the love worth the heartbreak? It’s the paradox of loneliness when you
know how much it hurts to be with someone who hurt you, but you still want it anyway; of knowing no one can force feelings of love but still hurting when they don’t love you back; of Valentine’s Day intending to be all about love, but ending up being about heartbreak; of everyone having the shared experience of childhood but somehow forgetting how lonely it is to be a kid when you finally grow up. All we’re supposed to want is survival. We’re supposed to shave off anyone who might hold us back. But instead we go against all our instincts to protect ourselves when we choose to love someone, even with all their weaknesses laid out on the surgical table. Maybe love is the ultimate paradox. Daily Arts Writer Mary Elizabeth Johnson can be reached at maryelzz@umich.edu
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 13
BOOK REVIEW
TV REVIEW
Review : ‘Anxious People’ Review: ‘The Right Stuff’ SEJJAD ALKHALBY Daily Arts Writer
Most of us like to think we have a handle on our lives. We make careful plans, we budget, we organize, all so that when we come home after a long day, we have the peace of mind to enjoy a few moments of relaxation before getting back to business the next day. But deep down everyone knows that at any point, catastrophe can strike forcefully enough to reduce the calmest and most level-headed of us to a state of sheer panic. If that wasn’t evident before, it certainly has been since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Still, this isn’t something we openly talk about, and perhaps for good reason. It would certainly be a bad idea to invite your friend out to lunch, then casually remind them that there’s a non-zero possibility someone will call in the next five minutes and inform them that their sibling has been hit by a bus. Of course, we’re still reminded every once in a while that this and any number of life-changing events could occur at any moment. Reminders like these can cause people to do stupid things like trying to rob a cashless bank and then accidentally hold hostage a group of prospective buyers at an apartment viewing, which happens to be the plot of Fredrik Backman’s novel “Anxious People.” The novel takes on a third person narrative structure that distributes its attention evenly between twelve characters who are all somehow involved in the hostage situation. There’s the bank robber, a father-son cop duo, a real estate agent, a newly engaged couple, a middle aged couple, an elderly lady, a struggling actor, a therapist and a bank executive whose collective anxieties result in easily avoidable stress and confusion. Though ostensibly about a hostage situation, the real content of the novel is the frequent
flashbacks that reveal trauma in the characters’ pasts. Each step of the main action is interrupted by a flashback that explains why a character made the strange or poor decision they did. This method sounds confusing, but it’s surprisingly elegant in practice. The characters, though
It is this delicate balance that allows Backman to construct scenes with real emotional weight in a story that’s essentially a comedy
a bit flat at times, all feel distinct and easy to keep track of. There are few points where the reader feels lost. The novel’s clarity is in part due to Backman building an intentionally confusing and stressful scene to demonstrate the characters’ anxieties before revealing a small piece of information that comically deflates the situation and lowers the stakes. Backman does this frequently enough that the reader can start reading about a convoluted scenario with the trust that it will soon be resolved. This allows Backman to progressively heighten the confusion toward the climax of the novel without
losing the reader. The narrator regularly pokes fun at the characters’ predicament, but with a compassionate tone that never ridicules and instead functions as a reminder that they’re all fundamentally okay. It is this delicate balance that allows Backman to construct scenes with real emotional weight in a story that’s essentially a comedy. There are only a few points where this balance slips. Jack, the younger police officer witnessed a suicide when he was younger. He later runs into someone else about to jump from a bridge and is able to talk them out of it. These two incidents are part of why he decides to become a police officer. These memories cause him a lot of distress throughout the novel, but the way this subplot gets tied up in the end feels over the top. Up until this scene, Backman does a good enough job of creating scenes with emotional depth out of situations with far lower stakes, but using suicide to heighten the emotionality of the scene felt unnecessary. There is also a scene where Zara, the bank executive, is speaking with her therapist and they have an incredibly interesting back and forth where they each struggle to take control of the conversation and avoid talking about what the other wants them to talk about. Then, at the very end of the conversation, the therapist plainly states what Zara is worried about, even though the scene itself demonstrates it clearly without beating the reader over the head with “the point.” These are, however, relatively minor issues that don’t significantly hurt the reading experience. “Anxious People” is about compassion. It is about characters in distress who learn to use love instead of force to solve problems. The novel is especially salient today, when it seems like every week there’s a new anxietyinducing world event. It gives us a blueprint for how to love each other in the midst of chaos.
BEN SERVETAH For The Daily
Have you ever wanted to explore the minds of people you don’t normally see on TV? To challenge what you know about our country’s history, and to see one of the most significant moments in humankind from a whole new perspective? If you answered yes to any of these questions, do not watch the new Disney+ anthology series “The Right Stuff.” It won’t give you any of the above. Based on Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book of the same name and the 1983 movie adaption, “The Right Stuff” is a historical drama about the United State’s first team of astronauts, known as the Mercury Seven. As these hard-working average Joes prepare to change history, they become instant American celebrities and must deal with the scrutiny that the newfound fame brings upon their families. The main conf lict is between John Glenn (Patrick J. Adams, “Suits”) and Alan Shepard (Jake McDormand, “Watchmen”). Both men are members of the Mercury Seven, and out of their mutual desire to become the first American to travel into space, they form a competitive rivalry. While Glenn is the perfect family man with charm and charisma, Shepard is the rogue bad boy who hooks up with “chicks” and then leaves them to fulfill his American duty. It’s a conf lict that feels just as played out and tired as a 2020 show about the Space Race should. To the show’s credit, none of it feels sloppy or unsure of itself. It knows who its target audience is, and it gives them everything they want: cool cars, pretty women and unbridled patriotism. Every
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
scene tries so desperately to amaze the audience that even reading the amount of people on a signup sheet is met with an over-dramatic score. Essentially, if you asked every white dad in America what their favorite movie moments were, and then forced a bot to write a
There is literally no reason you should watch “The Right Stuff.”
screenplay based on those moments, you’d have the groundwork. The most surprising aspect of “The Right Stuff” is its ability to pass the Bechdel test. Halfway into episode two,
Annie Glenn (Nora Zehetner) and Trudy Cooper (Eloise Mumford, “Fifty Shades”) discuss the hardships of marrying an astronaut and their personal goals. It’s an honest attempt to finally give the women some agency. Only, that’s exactly how it feels. After over an hour of white men mansplaining bravery, this “girl power” moment is comically disingenuous. It isn’t inherently problematic or ill-spirited. It’s just poor writing. Certainly, stories like this are not worthless or insignificant. Their monumental roles in shaping the history of the country are undeniable, and the impact they made on people is immeasurable. However, these are the exact stories we have been told over and over again without any new perspective. In the modern era, another show that celebrates white male American history without a single reservation isn’t just irrelevant — it’s blissfully ignorant. As one of the first adultoriented shows on Disney+, 2020’s “The Right Stuff” is a hugely generic and unnecessary adaptation. As we enter the new decade, let’s leave “stuff” like this behind. Contributor Ben Servetah can be reached at bserve@ umich.edu.
DIGITAL CULTURE
Born on the internet: video sharing for the soul M. DEITZ
For The Daily
It’s hard to imagine a time when watching videos on the internet was not a simple, unified process. I certainly can’t, my youth allowed me to skip the era of downloading the latest 240p movie trailer from the Pirate Bay using dialup internet, feeling the joy and anticipation of the prize waiting for you in forty-five minutes — wait, no now it’s twenty, but now it’s an hour, well maybe just sleep and watch it when you wake up. By the time I discovered the joys of watching videos, the whole process was much simpler: go to YouTube.com. Oh, YouTube circa-2010, a wonderland of emerging content creators pioneering a field that seemed at once impossible and tantalizing: people were being paid to make videos for a living. These were the proto-inf luencers, spending their days making comedic videos with their best friends, raking in the cash. Some channels like Rocket Jump Productions were pumping out Hollywood-level videos, while others got popular by parodying a popular song. This was the golden era of YouTube, the era of Ryan Higa, Shane Dawson, Ray William Johnson of =3 and, most importantly to my life, Smosh. The power duo of Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox shook the world with their Pokémon theme song lip-sync and found success week in and out with skits and parodies. These two teens from southern California suddenly found out, not only that their voices mattered, but also that people wanted to hear them. Whether it was Food Battle, Boxman or one of their million parodies or “if BLANK were real” videos, audiences craved the content Smosh put
out every Friday, and I was right there with them. I still remember following the launch of Smosh Games, bringing in a whole new crew and jumping into let’s plays, the new hot thing on the video-sharing site. Fall 2012, New Jersey ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, and there I was, on my phone using my Dad’s data hotspot to watch the latest “Boss Fight of the Week.” Thanks to recommendations, I roamed around the gaming side of YouTube, stumbling through Pewdiepie and TobyGames to find JonTron and PeanutButterGamer. These videos weren’t merely wastes of time for me, they were my vice. A video while I ate a pre-homework snack, a few episodes of the Completionist before bed, it didn’t matter if I knew the games they were talking about, I was intoxicated by what they were doing. After years of viewing, I wasn’t content on staying to the sidelines — I had to be a part of this somehow. So I bought a recording device and a microphone and roped my best friend into starting a YouTube channel with me. The wistful, ignorant blessing of youth. Late one August day we sat in my basement, Audacity running on my rundown laptop, and played “Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga” on the Wii U. It only got better from there. Snow, rain or shine, whenever I could gather my friends to record, all crammed onto my small couch in my basement, we would do it. Now, don’t get around thinking I was popular: We capped off at 80 subscribers and never grew from there. Frankly, I’m still surprised knowing people watched four high schoolers struggle to tell jokes and fail at playing “New Super Mario Bros. Wii.” Some of them were friends, some were strangers, but they all gave us a chance. I gave my all into this channel, convincing a
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
friend to edit the videos while I was learning the ropes, or
This was the golden era of YouTube, the era of Ryan Higa, Shane Dawson, Ray William Johnson of =3 and, most imporantly to my life, Smosh. having another one essentially be our brand manager as I ran new show ideas by them on a nearly daily basis. I paid an
artist for assets, learned how to (barely) use Photoshop and tried, and so very badly, but inevitably failed, at sticking to a schedule of two videos a week. There was nothing that would stop me from being the next Pewdiepie, y’know that except I wasn’t Swedish and the YouTube algorithm doesn’t benefit small channels in the slightest. In the end, my gaming channel was me and three other people, all of whom are now some of my absolute closest friends, spending four years goofing around and playing games together. We were never successful, we were absolutely the furthest thing from it, but that never stopped the process from being a blast. Every recording session was an excuse to spend hours with friends, either failing at getting through World 9 of “NSMBW” or playing “The Evil Within” at 2 a.m., and looking back now, I could never ask for anything more. YouTube gave me the chance to try something new
and insane and find a passion for creation while doing it. It allowed me to learn skills I use to this day, it bonded my friends into a family and above all else, it let me live a dream. I may not have ever reached the heights of SkydoesMinecraft, but that didn’t matter to me. I’m grateful for the experience I had. When YouTube was at its best, it wasn’t a vehicle for Late Night Show clips or dozens of useless advertisements. It was the Wild West, inviting people from all over to throw their hat into the ring to be the next big thing. The only bad idea was one you didn’t try. People rose and fell overnight, but everyone put their hearts and souls into it and, most importantly, had fun doing it. I miss the old YouTube. Sure, I go on the app daily and still subscribe to people putting out quality content, but it’s different. Now, people rely on sponsorships and Patreon so they can do the thing they most enjoy— somehow it became a
true job to do what you love. I’m lucky to have found YouTube when I did, this magical, mythical place that encouraged everyone to lie about being 18 and take a shot. Make that let’s play. Do that make-up tutorial. Write that long, wholly unnecessary essay about why “National Treasure” is a classic and deserves a third movie. Everyone had the platform to do whatever they wanted, it really put the you in YouTube. Let’s all take a moment to take a deep breath and remember that terrible, funny, sincere viral video or favorite Smosh song (I’m partial to “Firetruck!”) and remember a lighter, weirder time on the internet. Think about if Dr. Seuss beat William Shakespeare in that epic rap battle. Pour one out mentally, or physically if you’d like, for what was and then get back into life a little happier and a little more fantastic than before. M. Deitz can be reached at mdeitz@umich.edu.
statement
14 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
ILLUSTRATIONS BY EILEEN KELLY
All you need is love — and a phone T
he music is loud and the room is dark, lit up only by banal string lights dangling on the side of the wall. There are guys playing beer pong in a brighter part of the house, showing off and making drunken noises. In the tiny kitchen where the counter is filled with red cups and variations of alcohol, sorority girls throw up in the sink as their sisters kindly hold up their hair behind them. You are surrounded by a room full of people, kissing and grinding against each other. Your friends are already drunk and dancing on the platform with some frat boy you have never met before. You try to vibe along with the beat — a rap song that you hear on the radio all the time but don’t know the name of. Even though you want to head home, you are not sure if walking the streets alone at 12 a.m. is the best option for a girl. That’s when your eyes meet. Another pair of anxious yet curious eyes across the dance floor catch your gaze, longing for comfort in a crowd of strangers. You reach a tacit agreement and unconsciously move toward the door together. After a quick self-introduction, he offers to walk you back to your house, indulging in the get-to-know-you questions and even a little banter. Before you part, you exchange phone numbers and a kiss. his would be a common, cheesy scene of “love at first sight” from any typical 2000s romantic comedy movie. Of course, this has not happened to me, or anyone that I know for that matter — though young women have plenty of awkward experiences with men who suddenly start grooving next to them at a party, only to ask for their number. Nevertheless, the media has always placed emphasis on the initial encounters of intimate relationships. Two complete strangers are expected to be magically brought together by serendipitous incidents: bonding over The Smiths in an elevator ride to work, meeting in a local travel bookshop in a foreign country, kissing a stranger to prevent an embarrassing confrontation with a past crush.
T
BY LOLA YANG, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
While these scripted scenes inevitably dictate our expectations of romance, I couldn’t help but wonder how realistic they are in our ordinary lives. As technology becomes more integrated into our social life, are the oh-so desired “organic” encounters possible? What is the likelihood that we will find “the one” amid the rise of COVID-19 cases on campus and enforced social distancing protocols? The most recent data shows that even in a pandemic, young people are not giving up on their chance at romance. Dating apps owned by Match Group —Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, etc. — have all experienced a direct growth in revenue since March 2020. College students have also become more creative with the ways they build intimate relationships, with people going as far as designing a Zoom dating site or a matching survey algorithm to battle social isolation. While the creations of these technologies were well-intentioned, many users complained of a lack of success due to the short nature of online conversation. I could easily see why. As someone who suffers from extreme Zoom fatigue and online social anxiety, I have always had my doubts about building meaningful relationships through technology. However, my inner romantic offered a shimmer of hope, peeking through a crack in my skeptical heart and prompting me to properly investigate my questions. In turn, I spoke to five people regarding their experience with dating apps, long-distance relationships and chasing love during a pandemic. he first person I spoke to was LSA senior Emma Carter, who met her girlfriend, Annie, on Hinge. On the Sunday morning of our interview, I rolled out of bed and rushed to Zoom. Emma arrived at our meeting a few minutes later in a gray zipup hoodie, much more awake and refreshed than I was. I started off with the basics, asking about why she got the application and what she wanted from it. Emma explained that she first downloaded Hinge when studying abroad for a semester in Barcelona. She was never intending on finding a relationship through the app, as she is “not a huge fan of online dating,” but
T
instead downloaded it just to meet new people. When asked about why she selected Hinge over other popular apps, she explained, “I wasn’t really looking for a relationship necessarily, but I don’t like Tinder. It kind of just implies a hookup and that’s not what I am really interested in.” While the two apps belong to the same parent company, Match Group, Tinder and Hinge serve entirely different purposes. Whereas Tinder is mostly known as the “hookup app,” especially among college students, Hinge is for people who look for a deeper connection. Nevertheless, the two share a similar demographic, with their core users being millennials ranging from the age of 18 to people in their 20s. “Hinge is a really good one because it’s not just about how a person looks,” Emma elaborated. “On Tinder, it can just be like ‘hey you’re cute.’ That’s how the conversation starts and there’s not much to talk about with that. (On Hinge) when there are these preliminary questions, it is easier to generate more organic conversations about something real.” Though Emma has always been a little skeptical about dating apps, a conversation with her dad’s coworker completely changed her perspective. He told her that if he were a young person in this pandemic, he would “100% use dating apps.” The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forces people into quarantine and smaller social circles, giving way to intense feelings of loneliness and isolation. Public health officials have even recommended wearing a mask when engaging in sexual activities with individuals outside one’s social pod. However, the forced absence of physical contact and need for social distancing has also hindered people from forming serious relationships. When asked about how she makes efforts to maintain her relationship in this pandemic while protecting those around her, Emma shared her own experience. “I think it’s definitely respectable to suspend online dating during the pandemic right now, though I don’t know if we could suspend meeting new people forever,” she explained. She additionally pointed out the importance
of being socially-aware and transparent in her and Annie’s communication. “I am not necessarily freaked about getting COVID-19,” Emma said. “I am freaked out about spreading it. (Annie and I) are working together really well to minimize any risks of doing that. At the end of the day, we don’t see many people.” Emma told me that despite having found a serious partner through a dating app, she remains skeptical about the effectiveness of these technologies. She is convinced that if she and Annie met in person instead of through Hinge, they still would have been together. “In person personalities play a huge role in attraction to individuals, and I don’t think you can get that through these apps,” Emma explained. “I didn’t think I was going to find someone I like this much from online dating. I don’t like the idea that much, but it worked out.” he next person who I talked to was LSA senior Kate Kachmer, who is one of Emma’s housemates. However, unlike Emma, her experience with Hinge was not at all successful. Kate felt a sense of a fear of missing out and loneliness while quarantining with her siblings, who are both in serious relationships. With the constant romance in front of her face and the future of socializing appearing uncertain, Kate decided to finally give dating apps a shot. However, after setting up her profile, she found Hinge’s set of personal trivia questions insufficient and inauthentic. Like icebreakers before a meeting, Hinge’s set of profile prompts were created to spark conversations, with T.M.I.-style prompts like “a shower thought that I recently had.” “Anyone could look through a list of questions and send it to their friends and ask ‘what’s a funny response to put,’” Kate explained. “It’s more like who has the best one-liner they can put in response to a prompt and make someone like them.”
T
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
The Michigan D
statement
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
On analog technology I
came to the University of Michigan because film students here actually get to shoot on film. At most other institutions, the only cameras available are digital. So much of what’s important to me about my studies and this art form is linked to shooting physical film. Film’s hallmark is the physical grain it leaves on an image. What is between those particles? What does it mean to say “We’re shooting this on film,” or using any analog technology for that matter? To better understand these questions, I spoke with two former teachers and asked them to go more in depth about why they teach and use analog technology and what it means to them artistically and philosophically. Terri Sarris is a Film, Television, and Media (FTVM) professor at the University. She was the first person to put a working, 16mm movie camera in my hands — a Canon Scoopic. Standing there in the basement of North Quad Residence Hall, about five students to one camera, I thought about the scraps of 35mm negatives and little Kodak slides littered around my family home and in every drawer. When I was little, I’d hold them up to the light and see my parents looking so young and cool, wearing sunglasses in their cream-colored apartment. In the basement, we had huge, sealed flat metal canisters where reels of footage, my dad’s film, lived. My friends and I would peek over my fuzzy orange couch while our parents watched the film after dinner. When I got older, my dad let me see them for real. They were so unlike anything else that existed — yellow and inviting and alive. Back in the North Quad basement, Terri instructed us on how to focus the cameras and make sure they were at the right settings for the lighting. I knew I had to listen to every word she said because she was finally explaining how to make something yellow, and inviting, and alive. Terri explained how special the first day using film cameras with a new class is special to her, too. “Usually students have had little or no exposure to it and so it’s actually, for a lot of people, really exciting,” she said in our Zoom call. “It also can be sort of mystifying ... it’s such an amazing piece of equipment.” Terri chooses to teach 16mm film not just because it is a practical skill for the industry, but because she sees an artistic, methodic value in the physicality of shooting, cutting and splicing. In fact, the intentionality is twofold: in terms of film theory and historical context. “The idea of film as a physical medium really gives students, I hope, an appreciation for the decades of people who worked on film before digital was developed,” she said. “You think about from the very earliest days of the Soviet filmmakers shooting those amazing films on film. And then all the editors — a lot of women, by the way.” There is a sense of purpose with film. No matter what you make, you’re making it with the same tools that very serious, talented people have been using since the start. It makes me feel like they’re with me while I am filming — as if I’m making something not just for, but also with, the Soviets and women. It makes me feel like my eyes get to see through the same machine and glass lenses as the
BY KATE GLAD, STATEMENT DESIGN EDITOR
people from the past. Along with the historical intention behind analog technology, there is a specific effect from using it too, Terri explained. “I think it makes you really consider an edit and timing and pacing … it really is part of the palette of filmmaking,” she said. “(Shooting on only digital) would be like taking some colors away from an artist.” Listening to her, I started to understand. Yes, film is a kind of communion or time travel, but it’s also a choice at the present moment, like any other variable a filmmaker can manipulate. She explained how in her own work, the choice of film stock is part of the way her projects relate to the past. Different film stocks have different dimensions, sensitivities to light, and color balances. For her films, where she uses
toys to act out short stories, she uses 16mm. “I shoot them on 16 partly because it’s a legacy technology, and then I always make the credits with a typewriter,” Terri said. “The idea is to use the old stories in these old formats very deliberately in conversation with each other.” For other films that are portraits of her friends and family, she uses Super 8 in the same camera she’s had since grad school. A Super 8 camera is a small film camera designed for home use that has a cartridge system for the film instead of a system one has to thread in the dark. “I use my Super 8 camera to make films ... that might be nostalgic because often it’s about something that’s disappearing from the world,” Terri said. “So they’re like elegies for friends who are passing or family who are passing
or who I know are passing ... it’s almost religious to me.” As Terri explained, I saw her understand and use film as both history and present choice. I can’t imagine my studies without her or her work without film. The next day I talked to Fritz Swanson, a lecturer in the English department who runs Wolverine Press; he also has a background in film photography. I went into our conversation with the practical details from Terri, looking for someone to explain more about how some of these concepts like nostalgia or history relate to the visual signatures we discussed. I now understood the importance of the practice and the choices of artists looking to say something, but I was still unclear on what we’re all saying. Fritz framed the issue philosophically with a discussion of the author Virginia Woolf and her printing press. “She hates being edited by men, on some level, she probably hates being edited by uppermiddle class men, when she’s clearly better than them,” Fritz said. “And so she just goes out and buys the press and that’s the thing. For her, owning a press and being able to start her own publishing company was a prerequisite for really fulfilling her own ambitions as a writer.” So the choice then is who — meaning what technology — an artist wants to be their co-author. And the implication of having the choice is that you own some kind of means of production. Isn’t this true of all technology, any medium? “Analog mediums are so interesting, because they resist intrusion from the author in interesting and unpredictable ways,” Fritz said. Digital technologies are a coauthor designed to help in their own way and be easy and appealing to a mass market. Analog technologies are transparent and selectable and can hurt more than they help — they are not designed to be a helping hand, but a tool in a kit. Nothing is stopping you from using the wrong stock. In describing how sensitive to light a certain film emulsion is, filmmakers use the adjectives “fast” and “slow.” You can see in the finished product that the grain on a fast stock, for low light, literally moves around faster. If you look for it, you’ll see it change throughout a movie depending on if the location is brightly or dimly lit. When I notice it, a film becomes much PHOTO BY KATE GLAD more dimensional. I can actually observe it like one would a sculpture and walk behind, or maybe inside, the camera. I don’t know if I’m nostalgic or determined to master the signature of film. Maybe both. But after exploring more, I think those are both good words holding the place of another concept. The completely random, consequential movement of film grain that is chosen by an artist is the aesthetic that makes each of us feel our specific way about images shot on film. The choice of a type of movement to make a type of image, but what each particle does to produce that whole is up to chance. Grain. It’s a somewhat ineffable aesthetic that, after examination, says I chose this and I know how and why to use this and my means of production worked on this WITH me. And that is what looked yellow and inviting and alive to me all those years ago.
statement
1 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The hard truth about exam software
BY ALEXANDER SATOLA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
P
eople say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. However, when it comes to technology, the opposite holds true: You don’t know what you’ve got until you’re stuck with it. Over the course of the pandemic, technology has creeped further into our lives, education being no exception. All of my classes this semester have been conducted online, as have my club meetings and social events. Practically every interaction I have with the University of Michigan happens through a webcam. However, there is one new technology that has seen particularly rapid adoption since the beginning of the pandemic: exam proctoring software. here are a number of companies competing in the remote proctoring space, including ProctorU, Respondus, ExamSoft, HonorLock and Proctorio. ProctorU, for example, offers four levels of online proctoring: record, record+, review+ and live+. The most basic service available is “record,” which offers identity verification and end-to-end recordings of the students’ camera and screen. During the exam, the artificial intelligence records instances of possible suspicious behavior — anything from eye movement to background noise. The service then produces a report including flagged events that may require further review by an instructor. In comparison, “live+” offers more deterrence features designed for high-stakes exams. Along with monitoring exam-takers via artificial intelligence, this service includes a proctor who supervises students and intervenes when they suspect cheating. With the breakneck transition to virtual learning, there has been a documented increase in cheating, and exam proctoring services have stepped in to address this issue. In an email to me, Scott McFarland, CEO of ProctorU, touted the advantages of software solutions to deter academic dishonesty. “Changes in assessment design can mitigate some risks of misconduct,” wrote McFarland. “But so long as there are remote tests that require demonstrated knowledge in the form of a test, proctoring will be necessary. As of now, the only alternative to remote proctoring is not proctoring, which increases the risk of academic misconduct.” owever, all of this increased business for remote proctoring has coincided with a backlash over privacy and accessibility concerns. Without the backing of their schools, some students have taken matters into their own hands. Daniel Farzannekou, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, was featured in The New York Times for his act of resistance against the Respondus proctoring software. Before the exam could begin, Farzannekou replied to directions to scan his face, room and ID by holding a profane slip of paper up to his webcam and uninstalling the software. He called the software “dystopian,” comparing his peers’ numbness to its dangers to the placating tactics of authoritarian regimes. When I reached out to Respondus via email to comment on criticisms of this kind, they actually addressed the issue of privacy head-on and sent a list of industry-standard protections. “With online proctoring, students often have the misconception that Respondus views and uses the webcam videos for its own purposes,” wrote Jodi Feeney, Vice President of Operations at Respondus. “The data is owned and controlled by the university. Respondus doesn’t have human proctors reviewing the videos; the proctoring is done by an automated system.” According to Sowers, Respondus also does not watch students while they take exams, sell or share data with third parties or access files on students’ computers. Sowers wrote that the software “exceeds the requirements” outlined in data protection legislation such as FERPA, GDPR, CCPA and frameworks like Privacy Shield and SOC 2 certification.
T
H
Nevertheless, the use of exam software has still resulted in legal controversies over privacy. When the Faculty Association of the University of Santa Barbara expressed its concerns and advocated a policy of refusal towards ProctorU in a letter to the Chancellor, ProctorU’s legal counsel levelled spurious allegations of trademark infringement, copyright infringement and defamation. Finally, artificial intelligence implemented in these services tends to perpetuate discrimination. The behavior of students suffering from chronic illnesses, anxiety or other conditions are singled out by the algorithm. The facial recognition technology also discriminates against people of color. The fact that facial recognition systematically fails to recognize non-white faces is well-documented, so it should not come as a surprise that this phenomenon is being reproduced in the sphere of remote assessment. When I asked if there has been criticism of their services, none of the software providers I reached out to for this story addressed discrimination or algorithmic bias in their email responses. hough this national conversation has been brewing since the beginning of the pandemic, it was only after a few of my friends finished the Law School Admission Test in the first week of October that I began to take notice of the invasive nature of proctoring software. Hearing about their experiences — such as showing proctors their rooms or allowing proctors to control their laptop’s function — was pretty unsettling, and I was curious to know whether automated remote proctoring had penetrated into regular college courses as well. The college of Literature, Science and the Arts has staked out a clear position on remote proctoring technologies. On the LSA Technology Services website, the college specifically recommends against the Respondus Lockdown Browser, which prevents students from navigating away from a webpage, and other third party services. They enjoin faculty to “Avoid the Temptation for Invasive Technology Solutions to Address Issues of Academic Integrity.” And indeed, the LSA students that I spoke with had not experienced remote proctoring software in their college courses. When I spoke over the phone with LSA senior Teresa Clark, she indicated her gratitude for the way professors were handling assessments. “To accommodate people’s schedules, professors will give you the entire day to complete the exam,” Stark said. “They’ll release it at the beginning of the day and give you the entire day to work on it so they have been definitely
T
require students to have access to a computer and a good wireless connection. In Michigan, the rift between those who have internet connectivity and those who do not, known as the “digital divide,” poses a huge challenge for online education. Research conducted by The Education Trust shows that the percent of students without digital access in some counties in Michigan is around 30-40%, and a recent report from The Brookings Institution stated that 70 out of 83 Michigan counties have internet connectivity rates below the national average. To the extent that adaptation is happening, it is actually students and faculty adapting to technology, not the other way around. For students to even be able to take exams, they have to download software or Chrome extensions, subject themselves to invasive security procedures and allow artificial intelligence to gather extensive data on their behavior. I suppose that for many of us who have become accustomed to pervasive online surveillance, this does not seem like too much to ask. Here is the thing about erecting digital fences around university exams: Clever computer science majors will always find ways to hop over them. Some of them have even posted lists of possible circumvention methods online ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY for everyone to see. The Virtual Machine, for less stressful and less high stakes than in-per- instance, lets people run computer programs on software embedded within their physical son exams.” Stark also took the LSAT earlier this month, computers. Even something as simple as Postand the easygoing nature of her professors it Notes on one’s screen can work around the stood in sharp contrast to the ProctorU em- most basic software solutions. The result will not be the ultimate victory ployee who kept an eye on her during the LSAT. of proctoring technologies, but an intermi“You have to record your entire room,” Stark nable arms race between software providers said with a laugh. “Which did cause some conand cheaters. As the methods of security and fusion because my room was pretty messy and prevention advance, so too will methods of they apparently prefer that they don’t see anycircumvention. We might even see a revolving thing in the video.” door between the makers of remote proctoring When I asked Stark how she would have resoftware and a growing suite of circumvention acted if she had been accused of cheating, she services. explained that the business about her cluttered Ultimately, educational institutions need room might have weighed against her. to understand that any technological “solu“My room had like a bunch of random stuff tion” comes with its own host of problems. in it,” Stark continued. “And I would have found There are not side effects or unintended conit difficult to prove that I didn’t have some exsequences; they are latent in the design of the tra material around me.” technology itself. That is why many professors Outside of LSA, some colleges have emhave turned to alternative methods of examiployed different methods to deter cheating. nation that require students to demonstrate During our phone conversation, Business and their thought process and engagement with Engineering junior Vikas Chanduri explained class material: some examples include ditching how exams work in those two colleges. multiple choice exams for in-class essays, or “In the entire engineering department, the having students present material in a presentaengineering honor code works in a way where, tion or project. even when we have in-person exams, there Remote proctoring technologies have actually isn’t a proctor in the room,” Chanduri some utility, especially when professors need said. Instead, in pre-pandemic times, the honor to deliver high-stakes exams to hundreds of code allowed engineering students to walk into students. But where a relationship of trust an auditorium and take exams surrounded only already exists between student and teacher, by other students, with professors or Graduate this is what should be relied upon rather than Student Instructors waiting outside the exam technology. room in case anyone had any questions. Perhaps we should also turn our attention The College of Engineering simply places to the education system in which an overtrust in its students — what a concept! That whelming number of students believe they attitude, however, differs quite a bit from the must cheat to get ahead. If only indirectly, Machiavellian world of the Ross School of proctoring software companies benefit from Business. institutions that believe themselves to be full “In all my (pre-COVID) Ross classes there of tricksters and thieves. Therefore, they do were always (GSIs) walking around and my not really want to solve the problem of acaprofessors were at the front of the classroom demic dishonesty, even if such a thing could for questions,” Chanduri explained. “So I guess be done. What really matters is whether uniin a way that has been transferred into a virtual versities suspect their students of cheating environment, exactly the same way that it was and can think of no better way to stop them. before.” espite his reputation for advising Chanduri then talked about his experience deceit, Machiavelli himself recogusing the Respondus Lockdown Browser durnized that the ways of treachery ing one of his Business School classes last secould win a prince, “power, but not glory (immester. perio, ma non gloria).” Deep down, I think we “It was kinda weird at first having the camall share this intuition that fraud impedes true era on the whole time,” Chanduri explained. greatness. And, therefore, that aspiring musi“But I guess it’s the same idea as if you had a cians, athletes and artists should avoid fraud proctor watching everyone in an exam room … as much as aspiring accountants, lawyers and so I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.” engineers. n my view, however, the problem with In the end, no matter how well exam exam proctoring technologies is that proctoring technologies can deter cheating they are not really helping us to adapt. through surveillance and fear of punishment, Rather, they are providing a vulnerable technothey never will be able to convey its real cost; logical crutch we will be stuck with long after that in developing the skill of cheating, one the pandemic ends. neglects the virtue of learning. Consider the fact that most of these services
D
I
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 17
Wolverines finding silver lining in lengthy offseason
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Michigan assistant Saddi Washington says the events of the past few months brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have given the men’s basketball team an opportunity to reflect and reset prior to the new season starting.
CONNOR BRENNAN Daily Sports Writer
For the Michigan men’s basketball team, the COVID19 pandemic and everything that’s accompanied it from an athletic perspective — namely, the cancellation of postseason tournaments, long periods of self-isolation, the inability to practice or workout as a team, frequent testing and the uncertainty surrounding the start of a new season — has been inconvenient at best and at times, incredibly daunting. As Michigan’s sophomore forward Franz Wagner summed it up: “It was really weird. I didn’t see a lot of people. ... Just seeing the three, four people every day. I love my family, but I think everybody agrees, you gotta see somebody else. It was definitely a frustrating transition with the season cut short.” The past few months have been unlike any other. It’s been different. The next few months will be different. The only thing that’s certain is uncertainty.
“It’s been a lot of unknowns,” Michigan coach Juwan Howard said. “It’s been a lot of learning throughout the process, learning what the ‘new’ is gonna look like. At the end of the day, you still try to keep forging ahead.” The unprecedented nature of the pandemic has been a common refrain. It’s forced all facets of society to change, pause and in some cases stop altogether — college athletics being one of them. But, as much as the pandemic has taken away from sports, and specifically from college basketball programs like Michigan, the Wolverines have also found a silver lining through it all. “I think it’s been a time of ref lection and an opportunity for a reset,” assistant coach Saddi Washington said. “I say that both personally and professionally because I think what it’s allowed everybody to do is realign their priorities and perspective in life based on what we’ve had to go through and what we’ve had to go without that we thought was important. We’ve learned
to be much more efficient with our time. I think it’s also been an opportunity to reset some things in life or in our program.” From a basketball standpoint, it was difficult at first for some players to sharpen their game during quarantine. The resources and situation of a player’s hometown determined the extent to which they could play. Senior walk-on guard Rico Ozuna-Harrison had to revert to running and boxing in order to stay in shape since his native city, Detroit, closed all outdoor parks and removed the basketball rims from the courts. Others, like senior guard Eli Brooks, at least had access to a friend’s gym and could shoot around. According to Washington, though, the imperfect conditions may have been a blessing in disguise. “I think also that once something is taken away or paused for a while, that’s when you get this new love for the game again,” he said. “It challenged our guys to really re-evaluate, you know, ‘How much do I really love this game?
Because right now, I can’t even get in the gym, so I gotta find a park outside somewhere, or I have to do ball-handling, pushups and sit-ups and a lot of stuff at home.’ “The message to our guys, though, was, ‘Hard work is never wasted work.’ It’s still on us to remain diligent in terms of working out and staying ready. … Those are all things we can control.” When many of the players returned to campus in June, they still had to abide by Michigan state regulations limiting the size of group activities. This meant working out in small groups and focusing on their conditioning and skill development. “That’s at the core of who we are, we’re a skill-developing program and we always have been,” Washington said. “It allowed us to really focus in and hone in on specific parts of guys’ games and really grow those areas.” Added Brooks: “We’re pushing harder than we ever had before, like with conditioning and that aspect of getting people in shape quicker.
It’s been good to be able to slow down and do the development stage instead of rushing into plays and stuff — being able to really see the bigger picture.” As much as the Wolverines are looking forward to organized, team-wide practices commencing this week, the unique and individualized workouts had their advantages. “There’s gonna be a lot more five on five (with practice starting),” senior forward Isaiah Livers said. “Other than that, I feel like a lot of guys, especially the young ones, are more locked in than I thought they were. … I feel like everybody’s adjusting very well and I hope it trends that way.” As Washington suggested, quarantine also gave the team a chance to focus on their wellbeing off the court as well. Amid the pandemic and the ongoing occurrences of racial injustice, Howard and the coaching staff encouraged their players to speak their minds during team meetings. As a result, Michigan established its culture and incorporated new additions earlier than ever before — even if it was over Zoom.
“This summer opened up some space for us to really have some honest conversations about what’s really going on in the world that normally, within our athletic bubbles, may go off of our radar,” Washington said. “Our team really dialed into the issues, took it to heart and allowed it to bring us closer together. Through adversity you really get to see who are the people in your corner and I feel like our guys understand that at a higher level now.” The events of the last few months have upended our sense of normalcy as a nation. For Michigan’s players and coaches, this meant an abrupt ending to last season and time spent away from the game they love. But these hard times may not have been for nothing. “I’m just excited, and I think our guys are just excited to play again,” Washington said. “Whatever it’s gonna look like, it will look like, but to have that abrupt end to last season without any closure really gives us a newfound motivation to go out there and take nothing for granted.”
Through zero waste initiatives, Charlie Pilon’s journey from Australia to Ann Arbor isn’t done yet Michigan is improving its sustainability
FILE PHOTO/Daily
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Building on his success golfing in Australia, Charlie Pilon took his experience to Ann Arbor for college, citing the team culture and U.S. golf opportunities as reasons for making the move to the U.S.
JIMMY MALONE For The Daily
9,673 miles. That’s the distance from Ann Arbor to Wagga Wagga, Australia, the rural hometown of Charlie Pilon. Pilon, now entering his senior season on the Michigan men’s golf team, found his love for the sport at a young age, a passion that would eventually take him across an ocean to compete against some of the best golfers in the world. “When I was four or five, my dad got me a little plastic set of clubs, and I would whack plastic balls around the house,” Pilon said. “I started traveling for events at the age of seven or eight, driving five hours both ways to Sydney with my family.” Pilon quickly built up a reputation as one of the best amateur golfers in Australia, ranking third in the Australian Boys Ranking and 117th in the men’s rankings. He competed in multiple events as an amateur in Australia and won back-to-back 16-17 age division titles, becoming the first to do so since former world number one Jason Day. His success garnered interest from various universities in the United States, but Pilon eventually chose Michigan for its strong golf program and
prestigious academics. “I moved to Queensland for boarding school when I was 14, so I was good at being by myself for long periods of time,” Pilon said. “The transition to America on the other side of the world for college wasn’t too bad.” The golf team has always had foreign athletes, ranging from Australia to Italy. As a freshman, Pilon found his niche on the team with the help of the athletes around him. Now, in his senior year, he looks to replicate that leadership. “The guys we’ve had come in as freshmen are a great bunch of guys,” Pilon said. “They’ve really molded really well with the team.” The prominence of golf in the U.S. played a big part in Pilon’s decision to come to the U.S for college. Since joining the Wolverines. He has built off the success he experienced in Australia, being named to the All-Big Ten Tournament Team in 2019. Pilon has also found more opportunities to compete in big tournaments against quality competition in the U.S. “A lot of guys on the tour right now came through the college system, so it was a great opportunity to compete with some of the best amateurs in the world and get a degree at the same time,” Pilon said. “There’s great events all around the
country all the time. We definitely have a handful of great events in Australia, but America just has a ton of them, so you’ve always got something to play.” With the upcoming season still an unknown due to the COVID19 pandemic, the team continues to prepare while following new guidelines. While in team facilities, golfers must wear masks, in addition to participating in mandatory weekly testing. Even with these new restrictions, the team practices with the intent that they will be playing a full season in the spring. The team aspect of college golf, which is a rather individual sport, is something that Pilon values highly. “Team golf is really cool,” said Pilon. “That was one of the things that kind of attracted me to play college golf. Golf is a bit of a lonely sport, but being on a team makes it more enjoyable everyday.” Now, as Pilon looks to the season ahead and his career beyond college golf, he hopes to follow the path of many top collegiate golfers by joining the professional tour. “I’m hoping to stay in the states and turn pro to try and make a living out of it,” Pilon said. “I’ll go back to Australia and train a little there. Then I’ll try and go to the Asian circuit and onward to either America or Europe.”
Since 2017, the grass has been greener for the University of Michigan athletic department because of its zerowaste policy.
SPENCER RAINES Daily Sports Writer
Remember the yellow pompoms that they used to give away at home football games? The things that were part of so many unforgettable nights at the Big House? When the athletic department shifted its focus to zero-waste game days back in 2017, the pom-poms — which produced a lot of waste — were placed on the chopping block in favor of rally towels. “There was a little bit of pushback early on in zero waste, because we weren’t gonna offer pom poms,” associate athletic director in facility operations Paul Dunlop said. “So we did rally towels instead, because we did find that most people would take them home, and most people do.” The rally towel has proven to be a more environmentally and waste-conscious way to spice up game days in Ann Arbor. Even when the rally towels are left in the stadium after games, Big House staff picks them up. Instead of throwing them away, the athletic department
uses them as rags or shop towels in their workshops around the department. The rally towels are just one instance of the University’s shift toward sustainability as a whole over the last few years. “Waste reduction and recycling have almost become part of our everyday operations,” Dunlop said. “Back in (2013) it was kinda newer back then, where we did not necessarily have recycling in every building. But walk through our buildings today there’s recycling in every corridor, a lot have regular compost collection. It’s like night and day.” Waste reduction doesn’t only mean physical waste though. It’s also about energy conservation and the reduction of the University’s carbon footprint, which has been a big priority of the athletic department of late. They have started to shift their lighting schedules to be as tight as possible, so as to not burn any unnecessary electricity. Accoring to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the The Daily, the University spent $50,333
powering the Big House in the month of April, and $31,959 as well as $25,056 in the months May and June respectively. “(We really focus) that we are not wasting any unnecessary utilities,” Dunlop said. “We have a lot of big buildings like the Big House, and Crisler, and Yost. And, in order to keep those places running, we need a lot of electricity. So it’s a big focus for multiple reasons.” In this coming football season, composting will be off the table for a wide variety of reasons, one of which is obvious — no fans. The University is unsure of the nature of their contract with the janitorial company that runs gameday operations regarding waste and cleanup — one of the many trade-offs the COVID-affected football season has brought with it. It’s clear though, even if true zero-waste game days have yet to be achieved, that the athletic department is moving with the times and making strides towards energy conservation and waste management. The Maize and Blue has got a bit more of a green tint than it used to.
Sports
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Welcome to the strangest game week of your life
A
round 2:15 p.m. on Sunday, an email from a Purdue spokesman landed in my inbox with the subject line, “Jeff Brohm Tests Presumed Positive for CoVid19.” Welcome to game week in the Big Ten. Until now, it’s been easy to feel a little removed from things as the rest of the country has played college football. Not anymore. We watched Georgia and ETHAN Alabama on SEARS Saturday, but at this point, Tuscaloosa and Ann Arbor feel like they’re in separate countries. That sentiment is even more pertinent when the camera cuts to the stands at BryantDenny Stadium and Crimson Tide fans are lined up in columns, as if the coronavirus doesn’t spread vertically, with their masks in several variations of on. Football has been a sideshow to distract as we’ve worried about the virus here on campus, where even the administration at the University has started to publicly admit there might be a problem as quarantine housing hits 50 percent and keeps climbing and Mary Markley Hall goes into pseudo-quarantine for two weeks. The University said this week that an announcement on the format of the winter semester would come by Nov. 1. It’s not particularly easy to argue that the fall has been a success, unless they’re
only looking at the death toll (thankfully, zero) or their own bottom line. Now, we’re supposed to worry about … how Joe Milton plays at quarterback? Purdue’s head coach is likely positive for COVID19. Hopefully he recovers in full. Based on what we’ve seen in the conferences that are already deep into their seasons, though, we can glean two things: Brohm won’t be the last positive case. This season is a farce. In the AAC, Houston has had five games postponed due to COVID-19. In the SEC, Florida coach Dan Mullen called for a crowd of 90,000 at The Swamp after his team lost a game, refused to walk it back, then tested positive for the virus all in the span of a week. In the Pac-12, California state regulations didn’t permit teams to hold an actual practice ahead of the conference’s Nov. 7 start date, then things got changed around so they could (though Stanford must go to a local high school). Two of the current AP Top 10, Ohio State and Penn State, have yet to play a game. Exactly how anyone is supposed to rank teams in this environment is an impossible question to answer. So is exactly why anyone should care who makes the Playoff or wins the national title. Let me expand on that a little. I will watch, report on and write in detail about Michigan football this season. The Daily will have as many writers at as many games as regulations allow for. It’s fantastic to have college football back, and the distraction it provides from everything is wonderful. But this feels weird. The entire
season is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Let’s be real. Has there ever been a Michigan football game that feels less important than this one? It seems wrong that football players can get tested daily when regular students have trouble getting asymptomatic testing. It doesn’t sit right that, beyond a brief moment in August, the entire conversation around football coming back failed to include the idea that players should be paid for what is an obvious exchange of service to make universities money — and one in which their health is even more at risk than usual. It is bizarre that we’re having a season and acting like everything is OK when games are getting postponed every week because players have caught a pandemic disease. Following the daily machinations of a season — who’s hurt, who’s healthy, how does Michigan match up against its opponent this week — in this environment feels like clinging onto a routine when the world is burning. It’s hard to blame anyone for trying to have games given the economic circumstances and the general public being OK with — even actively wanting — football. I’m not sure that I can blame anyone or be upset, given that games happening are an objectively good thing for me, my career aspirations and The Michigan Daily at large. That doesn’t change how weird this feels. Welcome to game week. Stay safe. Sears can be reached at searseth@umich.edu or on Twitter @ethan_ sears.
Harbaugh indicates Gemon Green likely to start at cornerback THEO MACKIE
Managing Sports Editor
Ever since Ambry Thomas announced he would opt out of the season back in August, uncertainty at cornerback has loomed over the Michigan defense. Other than Vincent Gray, who appeared in every game last season, the Wolverines don’t have a single returning corner with substantial experience. The names floated as possible starters opposite him have ranged from freshman Andre Seldon to sophomore safety Daxton Hill — “Maybe the most talented player on the team,” according to Jim Harbaugh on WTKA’s Inside Michigan Football, but one with no viable replacement at safety. On Monday, Harbaugh and linebacker Josh Ross finally hinted at the real answer: junior Gemon Green. “Gemon Green’s doing a very good job,” Harbaugh said in a Zoom press conference when asked about the second cornerback spot, before mentioning Sammy Faustin, D.J. Turner and Jalen Perry. In Harbaugh’s world, that’s as concrete of a depth chart proclamation as exists (a few minutes earlier, he demurred when asked whether surefire starter Joe Milton will indeed be Michigan’s QB1). Later in the afternoon, Ross seemed to agree. “Coming into this year, we had a lot of questions about who our second guy was going to be, especially with Ambry leaving,” Ross said. “Brad Hawkins, Dax (Hill), Vince (Gray), Gemon Green, too. Those guys have been playing really, really well.” Hawkins, Hill and Gray have been presumed secondary starters since January. If Green is the fourth name in that group, it’s fair to presume Michigan’s
biggest defensive question mark has found its answer. That’s not to say the questions end there — Green has seen action on defense just once, last year against Notre Dame. For most of his time in Ann Arbor, his duties have rotated between the scout team and occasional appearances on special teams. Still, if he starts against Minnesota on Saturday, it indicates an offseason of rapid improvement. Earlier this fall, Turner and Perry were the
providing cover for an oftenporous rush defense. This year, the Wolverines face an uphill battle to have the same luxury. Regardless of who starts across from him, the path to getting there starts with Gray. Arriving as a relatively unheralded three-star in 2018, Gray quickly became key secondary depth, seeing time in nickel packages and starting against Illinois when Hill was out injured. “One guy that’s standing out
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
Gemon Green is likely to fill the hole at Michigan’s second cornerback spot.
hottest names set to replace Thomas. Green starting would mean he’s impressed sufficiently to pass them. There are other uncertainties in Michigan’s defensive depth chart, of course — chiefly at defensive tackle and VIPER. But the Wolverines’ cornerback situation has always stood out as unique. Gone is Thomas, an NFL talent who was among the Big Ten’s best corners last year. So too is Lavert Hill, a two-time first-team All-Big Ten selection in 2018 and 2019. Between them, Michigan boasted one of the country’s most formidable secondaries a year ago, finishing 10th in passing yards allowed and
to me, it’s a big year ahead of him … is Vince Gray,” Ross said. “He’s been doing everything the right way. He’s covering so well.” On Saturday, that offseason development will be put to the test against Minnesota’s Rashod Bateman. A year ago, Bateman led the conference with 20.3 yards per reception, finishing with 1219 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns on the season. It’s the type of matchup that could have seen Thomas shadow him around the field had he returned. Instead, the burden will lie on Gray and, at times, whoever lines up opposite him. As of Monday, that seems most likely to be Green.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Stay-at-home order won’t affect Michigan athletics
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Washtenaw County’s newly-issued stay-at-home order will not affect the Michigan athletic department.
THEO MACKIE
Managing Sports Editor
On Tuesday afternoon, Washtenaw County issued a stay-at-home order for all Michigan undergraduate students. However, the order will not affect Michigan athletics, per the health department press release. According to an email from a University spokesman on Oct. 16, there have been 104 total positive cases from 11,889 tests administered to Michigan student-athletes, coaches and staff since teams began returning to campus in June. Since Sept. 30, the football team has been tested daily with antigen tests provided by the Big Ten. Michigan
coach Jim Harbaugh said Monday that no players are currently positive for COVID19. Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck told Minnesota reporters at the same time that he would not share the number of players on his team that were out with the virus. Big Ten protocols dictate that games and practices will be cancelled if 7.5% of personnel test positive within a seven-day period. Over 10% of scheduled college football games played this season have been cancelled, though the Big Ten’s testing protcols are the most stringent in the country. While all non-revenue fall NCAA sports have been postponed to the spring, Michigan’s football season is scheduled to begin on Saturday at Minnesota. The
Wolverines’ first home game is scheduled for 12 p.m. on Oct. 31 against Michigan State. No Big Ten games are being played with fans in attendance, but parents will be permitted to attend. It is unclear whether that will change with the most recent order. According to Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, the Wolverines do not currently have any positive COVID19 cases. The University as a whole reported 301 positive cases last week, though that figure only includes testing conducted by University Health Services. 66% of positive cases in Washtenaw County over the last two weeks have been from 18-22 year olds, implying a high caseload from the University.
Offense is up around college football. Can Michigan adapt? ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
Jim Harbaugh reads the team statistics before practice. One of those stats is that the team that scores first has the definite advantage in the game. For a defensive player like Paye, that’s a matter of execution: Stop the opposing offense and hope your own guys can get points on the board. For the offense, this scoring trend means a renewed focus on explosive plays. Last year, the Wolverines saw the importance of big plays from both sides; Penn State’s execution of such plays helped lift it to a win against Michigan, while a failure to finish drives against Alabama proved to be the offense’s undoing in the Citrus Bowl. “As an offense, we know what
puts on the game plan for us, we love the way he sees the game. We gotta create more explosive plays as a unit to be able to take some of that pressure off of him.” Jay Harbaugh also spoke to a philosophical shift in teams’ defensive approaches. Back when college football was predicated on the run, teams often stuffed the tackle box with eight linemen. That’s no longer a realistic approach in most situations given the growing threat of the pass. Now, with defenses forced to cover more of the field, the likelihood of a conversion goes up. That’s the theory behind the spread offense, which first came into use in college football in the early 2000s. Now, though, more and more teams are using some
Of 29 FBS games played last week, 21 had 50 or more total points scored. The previous week, that number was 20 out of 32. Even teams known for defense have struggled to contain the scoring — just look at Pitt’s 31-30 loss to Boston College or Alabama’s 63-48 shootout with Mississippi. Whether it’s a pandemicinduced blip on the radar or a further transformation of college football into a game dominated by offense, there’s no doubt offense is up this year across the board. According to MLive, 55% of teams that have played at least one game are averaging 30 points or more per game, up from 45% in 2019. If that trend carries over to the Big Ten, it would be a transformation in a league somewhat infamous for its lowscoring games. Michigan players and coaches have their own theories on why this is and how to adapt to the new trend. Defensive line coach Shaun Nua thinks that the lack of spring ball and a fall camp without pads affected defense more than offense because defense requires more cohesion. But that doesn’t explain everything. ALEC COHEN/Daily “It was harder to build a team With a clear increase in scoring across college football this season, thing and defense is all team,” Michigan and other Big Ten teams will have to keep up. Nua said Wednesday. “If you don’t have all 11 guys bought in, that’s we need to do to be able to score variation of the spread — including hard to do. It’s hard to play sound, more points, move the ball the Minnesota, the opponent the aggressive defense if you don’t have way we want to and beat the Wolverines will face in just over a all 11 guys bought into it. … (But) we teams that are gonna be on our week. “It’s the spread offense, run can’t always blame it on, oh they schedule and one of those things missed spring ball or fall camp, is being more explosive,” running principles, spread offense, RPOs,” because the offense is doing good. backs coach Jay Harbaugh said defensive coordinator Don Brown on Oct. 7. “ ... Playcalling is harder said Sept. 30. “That’s what we So hopefully we can figure it out.” Even with teams passing more when you’re just inching down the anticipate getting.” The Big Ten has in general frequently and utilizing up-tempo field, that’s where I think myself no-huddle offenses, Nua believes and (offensive line coach Ed) been slow to adapt to the growing the key to his unit’s performance Warinner and (tight ends coach offensive trend in college football. still lies in stopping the run. An Sherrone) Moore collectively, all But maybe a long layoff for the offense can only go so fast, Nua of us plus (quarterbacks coach league this year will help. Now, Ben) McDaniels, we buy into the its teams have seen the rising said, if its run game isn’t working. According to senior defensive vision of the offense, we love what offensive tide and with it, have end Kwity Paye, Michigan coach (offensive coordinator Josh) Gattis their own chance to adapt.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
BIGGEST TEST YET As University locks down, Michigan readies for opener ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
Every morning, the Michigan football team comes in to get tested for COVID-19. They get a nasal swab and then wait 15 nerve-wracking minutes for the results. With the season on the horizon, players must test every day, with negative tests required to practice, travel or play. But according to fifthyear senior linebacker Josh Ross, the tests have become second nature — just another part of the
team’s daily routine. Seven weeks after what was supposed to be their opener, the Wolverines will finally take the field in Minneapolis on Saturday. But there’s still a lot of
uncertainty. The Big Ten’s schedule includes nine games in nine weeks, concluding with a championship weekend in which all 14 teams play. But so far this season, 10.6% of scheduled games been postponed or canceled due to the virus, calling into doubt whether the Big Ten will complete its season. Those doubts have only intensified with Purdue coach Jeff Brohm testing positive Sunday, taking him out of the Boilermakers’ opener. Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck told reporters Monday that he knew how many players were out this week but would not share an exact number, implying that there were multiple players who would miss the game due to testing positive. Big Ten protocols state that players who test positive will be out of competition for 21 days. Coaches who test positive can return after 10 days as long as they have been symptom-free for 24 hours. Additionally, teams may not practice or play if 7.5% of team personnel test positive within a seven-day period. For its part, Michigan is good to go for Saturday. According to Jim Harbaugh, the team does “not currently” have any players out against the Golden Gophers. At a protest against the season’s postponement on Sept. 5, Harbaugh touted that the team had zero positives since the end of July. That streak is no longer — Harbaugh said Monday that there had been positive tests since then, though he did not say how many or when the positive tests happened. With no one unable to play against Minnesota, those positive tests were presumably before Oct. 3.
It’s unclear how severe the Golden Gophers’ outbreak is, other than that it must not include more than 7.5% of the team. When asked in September how he would feel playing a team that had an outbreak, Harbaugh didn’t give a direct answer. “I don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world,” he said then. “I know what we’re doing.” Harbaugh has consistently expressed confidence in Michigan’s protocols, and they do seem to be working. While other teams — including Michigan State, Rutgers, Maryland, Iowa and Wisconsin — had to shut down practice due to large outbreaks, the Wolverines have been able to hold every scheduled practice since returning to campus in June. The 21-day sit-out requirement has also served as a strong deterrent against players breaking protocol. “Not doing nothing at all,” Ross said Monday. “Chilling. Staying home, coming to (Schembechler Hall), doing schoolwork and staying out of the way. That’s all I can do.” Still, the presence of the virus looms large. Harbaugh refused to name a definitive starter at quarterback Monday, maintaining that he couldn’t guarantee any player would be cleared to play — he did say that junior Joe Milton was “running with the ones.” And when defensive line coach Shaun Nua was asked about the Golden Gophers matchup last Wednesday, he complimented the team’s potent offense but also acknowledged what’s on everyone’s mind as the season begins. “I’m not nervous about the game,” Nua said. “I’m nervous about the COVID thing. I wanna make sure that thing is not getting to us.”
CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR 31E SCHOLARS ON THE
38th ANNIVERSARY OF OUR CLASS of 1931 ENGINEERING SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM The class of ‘31E and it’s Scholarship Selection Committee congratulates and welcomes their FOUR new scholarship winners for the 2020-2021 academic year. CHIMMUANYA IHEANYI-IGWE TAYLOR SCOTT
MORGAN SERRA CLAUDIA ZIMMERMAN
They will be joining the ‘31E HONOR SOCIETY and our SEVENTEEN current scholars: GEORGE ADAMSON TYLER BARLETT ROBERT ELLIOT ALFONSOBOTTA-LOPEZ LINDSEY FURNESS MICHELLE CEHNER JESSICA HOUGHTON CONNOR INGLIS JACOB MAKEY
BENJAMIN MAHLE ADITYA MIDDHA GABRIELLA RODRIGUEZ JOEY COSTELLO ERIN DEUTSCHMAN JOSEPH TAYLOR ALLISON WILCOX LAURA WILLIAMS
All of these scholarship winners would normally be honored at our annual Scholarship Banquet but this years event will be conducted online as a Zoom meeting on the evening of October 23rd at 6 PM, stay safe. Since the establishment of the ‘31E Scholarship Program in 1982, more than 200 aspiring engineering students have been helped to experience a University of Michigan education and have gone on to rewarding careers. George E. Anderson FILE PHOTO/DAILY
-
Director of Media Relations
-
Class of 1931 Engineering
20 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com