2021-01-27

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Wednesday, January 27, 2021

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Faculty Senate talks messaging

ACADEMICS

Updates on COVID-19 council include

how to best communicate to students MARTINA ZACKER Daily Staff Reporter

U-M Athletics on two-week pause Spread of B.1.1.7 variant cases prompts state health dept. recommendation ETHAN SEARS

Daily Sports Writer

All University of Michigan athletics will be paused for two weeks starting Sunday, Jan. 24 in accordance with a recommendation from the state health department according to messages obtained by The Daily and confirmed by a source close to the athletic department. The order, which halts all athletic activity including practice, is limited exclusively to U-M athletics after a recent influx of positive cases within several Michigan teams. According to a statement released by the athletic department Saturday night, the Wolverines have been following Big Ten testing and reporting protocals, but the Michigan Department of Health and

Human Services is taking a more stringent approach to the novel COVID-19 B.1.1.7 variant. A source told The Daily that there were five confirmed cases of the new variant, with 15 more presumed positives throughout the athletic department. The novel strain was first introduced to Michigan at the beginning of the semester by a U-M athlete traveling from the United Kingdom. All members of the athletic department are expected to quarantine for 14 days. “Canceling competitions is never something we want to do, but with so many unknowns about this variant of COVID-19, we must do everything we can to minimize the spread among student-athletes, coaches, staff, and to the student-athletes at other schools,” said athletic director Warde Manuel in the

statement released Saturday night. An MDHHS spokeswoman confirmed that five cases of the variant were found on Michigan athletic teams. An MDHHS memo provided to The Daily laid out the state’s recommendations for the next two weeks. Those include: Immediate 14-day quarantine for all Michigan athletes, household members and close contacts starting from Jan. 23 - A review of all positive test results in the past two weeks - Immediate PCR testing of all team members, including genetic sequencing of any positive tests - Thrice-weekly PCR testing during quarantine - The assumption that all cases linked to the outbreak

are variant infections, pending confirmation The memo also provides campus-wide recommendations, saying that if the variant is detected in an organization, there should be twice-a-week PCR testing for all members of that organization. It also recommends ramping up testing for the entire community, and a 10-day quarantine for any students returning to campus from out of state or abroad. This past week 22 studentathletes tested positive for COVID-19 per release, 13 more than the week prior. No coaches or staff tested positive. a Bulldog tested positive the day after the game, leading to two missed games.

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The University of Michigan’s Senate Assembly met virtually Monday afternoon to provide an update on the work of the Faculty COVID-19 Council, specifically discussing how to improve messaging from administration to students. Senate Assembly also heard from Kevin Hegarty, the executive vice president and chief financial officer, who will be retiring at the end of the semester, and voted for the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs’ nominating committee. Luke Hyde, a professor of psychology and member of the Faculty COVID-19 Council, said conversations between members of the council and administration revealed that members from across the University community should be offering their input on COVIDrelated changes. The COVID-19 Faculty Council was established in October to serve as a faculty voice in administrative decisions after the Faculty Senate passed a vote of no confidence in U-M President Mark Schlissel’s leadership in September. “The faculty COVID Council has met five times bi-weekly on Friday mornings,” Hyde said. “The President and Provost

have expressed that they have found it helpful for them to get feedback from sort of average or non-COVID medical and public health-related faculty.” Hyde assured faculty that Schlissel and Provost Susan Collins have been addressing all issues and ideas brought forth by Senate members. Hyde said Schlissel and Collins have been responsive to concerns, though he admitted that faculty members have differing views on how issues should be addressed. “Some of the major topics that we’ve addressed so far have been messaging and communication both about COVID broadly but also vaccine rollout, and also sort of messages to students,” Hyde said. Hyde said he was disheartened to hear that the University has the capacity to vaccinate more than 25,000 students a week but is not receiving enough vaccines from the state to do so. “I will be honest, probably the hardest thing that I had in the last meeting was learning that even if things go really well, they may not be vaccinating undergrads until the fall,” Hyde said. “And for whatever it’s worth, this is not U-M’s fault.”

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Dingell gives annual State of the District address

ADMINISTRATION

GOVERNMENT

U.S. Rep. tackles bipartisanship, climate change & more GABRIEL BOUDAGH Daily Staff Reporter

MADDIE FOX/Daily

‘U’ President Mark Schlissel: ‘Unlikely’ U-M will vaccinate most students this semester

In this interview, The Daily asks about vaccinations, the university’s climate goals, racial equity on campus & Jan. 6 riot CALDER LEWIS, JULIANNA MORANO & CHRISTIAN JULIANO Daily Staff Reporters

The down

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of Michigan President Mark Schlissel to discuss COVID-19 vaccinations, the University’s climate goals, racial equity on campus and the Jan. 6 events at the U.S. Capitol. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Mark Schlissel: First of all, welcome back and happy New Year. The inauguration’s tomorrow, and I know there’s some anxiety among many, or at least some people — students or faculty and staff — because of all the violence that occurred in D.C. and threats of violence in the statehouse, so I just wanted to reassure you and students that our public safety folks have been in communications with all the other security partners around the state

and around the country, and we’ve increased staffing and set up contingencies. We don’t expect problems on campus, but we just encourage the community if they’re anxious to talk about it. Talk about it with one another and try to stay balanced as we watch this change in the administration. The Michigan Daily: What is the biggest challenge facing the University of Michigan in 2021? MS: The biggest challenge remains the pandemic, and it’s the challenge of, how do we continue to deliver on the mission of the University while keeping people healthy and safe, and having a good Michigan experience to the extent possible given the limitations of the disease, the virus. TMD: So on that note, some health professionals are raising concerns over the more contagious coronavirus strain from the United Kingdom,

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which was discovered in Washtenaw County Saturday. What does this development mean for the University? MS: I think it is of concern. If there’s any good news so far, there’s no indication that it produces a more severe disease, so it’s not more dangerous for your health. The other bit of good news is it still remains susceptible to the vaccine. But the report of cases in Washtenaw County isn’t surprising. I think all of us have to presume that if it’s in Washtenaw County, it’ll be in our campus community. It’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t since we have so many people. We’re really one community, so I think we have to treat one another and presume as if the strain’s around. And so far as best we know, the methods to prevent transmission are the same — social distancing, See SCHLISSEL, Page 2

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., gave her annual State of the District address Monday morning to an audience of about 700 people via livestream. The event, hosted by the Southern Wayne County Regional Chamber, updated the community on Dingell’s recent work. To start off her annual address Dingell discussed the pandemic’s impact on the daily life of her constituents. “The most important thing for us right now is to stay safe,” Dingell said. “We are using technology to touch each other, stay close and talk about the issues we care about. There’s nothing normal about the year that we’ve been in. Because of all the chaos and the uncertainty, traditions are something that we actually hold on to tighter to give us a sense of normalcy and hope.” Dingell also discussed the riot at the Capitol Building that occurred earlier this month and her experience during the attack. Dingell, who is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group with equal numbers of Democratic and Republican lawmakers, said the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6 strengthened her commitment to fighting for democracy. “I didn’t envision the depths of division that we would experience over these last few weeks,” Dingell said. “Never in a million years did I think I would find myself sheltering in an undisclosed location in the United States Capitol, while my fellow citizens attacked a sacred building that gives young democracies around the world

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hope. … All of us have to be engaged for democracy to work. This needs to be a wake-up call for everybody.” During her address, Dingell discussed her early commitment to combating the spread of the coronavirus. “Confronting and combatting COVID has been my priority for the last year,” Dingell said. “I was one of the first members of Congress that wrote to anybody about it. I wrote to the CDC and said, ‘Why are we screening at some airports and not ones like Detroit?’” In early January, Dingell requested that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide an update on the steps they were taking to ensure all travelers coming from China — the early epicenter of the virus — were safe from COVID-19. The CDC expanded additional screening facilities at some major U.S. airports but some, including the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, still had direct flights to areas where COVID19 cases were being reported. COVID-19 screenings were first introduced at DTW on Jan. 28, 2020. Dingell also discussed the bills she plans to introduce in Congress this year, including legislation to help strengthen personal protective equipment supplies in hospitals and to ensure underserved communities are provided with clean water. “We’re introducing legislation to strengthen the Strategic National Stockpile, but we’re going to make sure we don’t get stuck flat-footed the way that we did last time where we didn’t have PPE equipment for our frontline workers,” Dingell said. “We’ve got to increase access to home & community-based care. I will be

Vol. CXXX, No. 16 ©2021 The Michigan Daily

introducing legislation, this week, that will prohibit water shutoffs nationwide and provide financial assistance for low-income households to pay for drinking water.” Dingell, who is on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said she plans to protect jobs at auto plants while introducing new technologies to this sector. “Last year, I talked about the undeniable shift towards electric vehicles that is gaining momentum and self-driving vehicles,” Dingell said. “Even with a pandemic that upended our daily lives, this shift is continuing … I want to make sure that we’re bringing in newer technology and newer products to the plants that we have down here and that people think that our communities are a good place to live.” Dingell said she plans to work with the Biden Administration to remove PFAS and other chemicals from local waters, as well as fix local infrastructure and introduce a renewable energy plan. After her address, Dingell answered questions about student debt and renewable energy incentives. The first audience question touched on the student debt crisis, to which Dingell replied that it is important to find a balanced solution. “I think some of them are going to be viable because I think our students are really hurting,” Dingell said. “The question is what’s the right formula … We have to figure out how to lower the cost of education to young people and make it more affordable to everybody on an equal playing field.”

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2 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021

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CAMPUS LIFE

La Casa releases statement on Victors Award following drop in Latinx enrollment

Organization claims new award disproportionately impacts the Latinx community LARA JANOSZ

Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan’s central Latinx student organization, La Casa, released a statement on Jan. 19 speaking out against the Office of Enrollment Management’s decision to change the amount of financial aid offered to out-of-state students with demonstrated need. The Victors Award, which replaced the Provost Award in April 2020, will be available for incoming out-of-state students in the class of 2024 and beyond. The Provost Award, last distributed to members of the class of 2023, met the full demonstrated need of outof-state students and did not include a merit component. The Victors Award offers a f lat $8,000 per year award and includes merit consideration. La Casa’s statement outlines the organization’s concerns about the change. They say the new award disproportionately impacts the Latinx community and resulted in a 16% decrease seen in first-year Latinx student enrollment for the Fall 2020 semester. Public Policy junior Juliana Collado, who recently finished her term as La Casa’s lead director, stated that though they know the COVID-19 pandemic may be a contributing factor, the decrease in Latinx first-year enrollment provoked La Casa to write the statement. “What we know is the numbers,” Collado said. “What we also know is that Latinx

SCHLISSEL From Page 1 masks, avoiding large groups, spending time outdoors when the weather allows, washing hands more frequently, those kind of things, and I think if we can remain vigilant about those things a very high percentage of the time, I think the campus will do okay despite the presence of this more transmissible strain. If we let our guard down more people will get infected if the strain is around. TMD: Can you talk about what the slower-than-anticipated vaccine distribution and administration means for U-M? MS: The good news is, having a vaccine that works as well as these two existing vaccines is just remarkable. 95% effectiveness is about as good as it gets for a vaccine. The challenge is the supply, you know, can we make enough of it and how quickly can we make it? It’s a novel kind of vaccine … and so it’s complicated, and ramping up the production to the level of hundreds of millions of doses has never been done before, and it’s challenging. Michigan Medicine has gotten our campus to the stage where we can deliver between 12,000 to 25,000 doses a week. So, if we had enough vaccines now, it would take us two weeks to vaccinate the entire student community in Ann Arbor. So, that’s great. The problem is we don’t have enough vaccines. We put in a request each week for how many doses we want, and in the last couple of weeks, we haven’t gotten nearly the number of doses. And it’s not the state’s fault — they don’t have the supply. So, we’re ready to very aggressively vaccinate everyone in the order of their eligibility as soon as we have the supply. TMD: We know you don’t gamble — you’ve told us that before — but what do you think the chances are that the University will be administering vaccines to the general student population this semester? MS: I think it’s rather unlikely that we will get to have enough supply and work our way through all the other priority groups to be able to begin vaccinating students before the end of the semester. I would love to be proven wrong. So the priority is to give the vaccine to people for whom the disease is even

students are particularly loan adverse. Because the transition from the Provost Award to the Victors Award (provides students with a) significantly (smaller) amount of money, it just is inaccessible for students that can’t afford (the University). ” La Casa has discussed the change with OEM. According to La Casa Internal Director Xalma Palomino, an LSA sophomore, La Casa’s discussions with administrators at OEM were responsive, yet brief. “They were answering our questions but it was only a 30-minute meeting so there wasn’t much that we could cover,” Palomino said. “The two main things that we took away from that meeting is one, they said that they weren’t going to change the policy this year, and two, that they wanted … other colleges across the University to pick up on that funding.” La Casa External Director Rebeca Yanes, an LSA junior, was also at the meeting and said she thinks OEM did not seem to have any plans to make changes to their decision to implement the Victors Award. “They made it clear that this was a decision that was already made and that they were planning on continuing it for the next year,” Yanes said. “It makes it seem like the University of Michigan isn’t reachable. It’s not accessible. We talked about members of the Latinx community being loan adverse (and) not receiving sufficient aid from the University is sending a message that (this University may not be

more dangerous. And because the students are in an age group that is least likely to have a lethal outcome, on average, your priority is the lowest. However, amongst the student body there are people that have high risk. People with certain underlying diseases that put them in a high-risk group, they might get vaccinated before the end of the semester. But healthy students that are typical — no unusual health issues — I would hope that vaccine becomes available by the summer. My hope for next fall is that we can have a high enough fraction of everybody in our community vaccinated that we can have a semester that looks a lot more like a normal semester. I don’t think it’ll look like a completely normal semester — we’ll still have to be careful. If you want to be realistically optimistic, I think next fall we’ve got a shot at a much higher sort of quality of experience with much more stuff in person. TMD: The President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality released its draft recommendations in December, and after opportunity for public comment it will deliver its final recommendations to you in February. We’re wondering what’s the process you’ll use to evaluate the final recommendations and decide which parts to act on? MS: The University has been continuing to work on its carbon neutrality goals and its other sustainability goals while we wait for this commission to tell us a timeline and a prioritized set of things we can do to get to neutrality, so I’m pretty excited that it’s coming up to its stage of making recommendations. All along, I’ve been meeting with the co-chairs of the process, Professor Forrest and Jennifer Haverkamp. What I can guarantee is the report won’t be taken and put on a shelf. The report, we’re going to address the things that are straightforward and simple to address immediately. And then, we’re going to spend enough time to really understand the bigger and more complicated things and then focus on those as well. The response is meant to be an action-oriented response. The biggest thing in that report that I’m most interested in and then we’re going to need to study is to convert how we heat and

accessible for them).” Rick Fitzgerald, assistant vice president for the University of Michigan’s Office of Public Affairs, stated in an email to The Daily that the decision to switch to the Victors Award came from the fact that the Provost Award was no longer financially sustainable. “While the Provost’s Award meets full demonstrated need for eligible continuing nonresident students, the amount awarded changes from year to year as individual financial need is determined annually,” Fitzgerald wrote. “It was important not to adversely affect the affordability of a Michigan education for nonresident students who were already here despite the unsustainable finances of this award in the longer term. The introduction of the Victors Award is intended to continue to support non-resident students.” Fitzgerald also noted that the University and the Office of Enrollment Management share La Casa’s concerns with the enrollment decrease, but suggests that further analysis is needed in understanding the factors that may have contributed to this decrease, including the COVID-19 pandemic. “The university is aware of La Casa’s concerns and shares La Casa’s goals of greater college affordability and diversity in our student body,” Fitzgerald wrote. “While La Casa points to the changes in financial aid awards as the reason, we believe more analysis is needed to fully understand how many

cool all the buildings on campus. To go from steam heat generated by fossil fuels to geothermal and electric heat pumping, which would require literally tearing up every pipe and replacing every pipe that goes through every building on campus and digging these boreholes into the ground, tens of thousands of them, to do this geothermal heat exchange. Other things they’re going to propose are likely to be shorterterm, more straightforward and well-justified and we’ll just do them. So those are the extremes, a decades-long, multibillion dollar project. And you can imagine with a multi-billion dollar project, we’re a university that has lots of resources, we surely do, but everything we do has an opportunity cost. So the question would be if we spent billions of dollars on one thing, what are the things we’re not going to do to balance that out. And that’s the discussion we need to have with the faculty, with the students, with the deans and with the regents. TMD: Carbon offsetting, according to the draft recommendations, is when an organization counterbalances its direct emissions by investing in or purchasing credits associated with verifiable emissions reductions or sequestration efforts somewhere else on the planet. Proponents argue that because climate change is a global problem, it makes sense to reduce emissions wherever it’s cheapest and easiest. But opponents argue that carbon offsetting allows wealthy institutions to externalize emission reduction while continuing to burn fossil fuels. What is your view on the proper role of carbon offsetting in carbon neutrality efforts? MS: You’ve laid out the problem. So, the leadership team and I and the regents need to understand it better. So it really is a dilemma. I understand where the advocates are coming from, it is a global problem. Of course, everyone in the world can’t buy offsets, because at the end of the day, what everyone in the world has to do is stop emitting so much carbon. We’ll run out of offsets. I also don’t want the purchase of offsets to compete financially with the investments it’s going to take for us to reduce our own carbon release. So, if we buy offsets for X number of millions of dollars a year, I don’t think that relieves

factors — most notably, the COVID-19 pandemic — may have inf luenced enrollment decisions … rest assured that the university is committed to doing this analysis.” As a part of La Casa’s efforts to challenge the Victors Award, the organization has asked community members who previously received the Provost Award to prepare testimonials explaining its impact on their educational experience. La Casa Undergraduate Advisor Tania Zaragoza, an LSA junior, was one of these Provost Award recipients. “It’s actually through (receiving the Provost’s Award) that I’m able to attend the University,” Zaragoza said. “It’s pretty straightforward. If you don’t have the money, then it’s just not a possibility, no matter how much you want to be here.” Moving forward, La Casa hopes to continue their conversations with the University to help further support not only the Latinx community, but all low-income first-year students affected by the new aid policy. “We’re not just here to protest (and) be angry at the University,” Collado said. “We have actively engaged with the University (and) we want that partnership reciprocated to us. The University has shoveled out millions of dollars to different DEI initiatives (and that) shows the value that they see in diversity, equity and inclusion. Here’s another way that they can show that they care about DEI, about having accessible education.”

us of the obligation to diminish our own carbon output. But, it gets rid of a lot of the resources that we would be using to invest in things like the geothermal system for example. So we have to study, that’s going to be a hard one. And from what I’ve heard, the committee itself is not of one mind about offsets, and then they’ve been getting comments back from the broader community of experts and advocates. So I think it’s something we’re going to have to look hard at, but I’m willing to consider anything that gets recommended. TMD: We wanted to follow up about the MLK symposium yesterday. In light of nationwide protests for racial justice, you said in June that “The important movements and calls for action we are seeing emphasize the need for us to do more to end systemic racism in our society and on our campuses.” What has the University done to address systemic racism on its campuses since then? MS: To put it in context — and this came up yesterday at the symposium — this is a marathon, racism. It’s been around almost forever in various forms — certainly throughout the history of our own country. And as hard as we work at it, I think we have to have a commitment to work on it basically forever. However, in the context of the awful events of the last year, particularly the multitude of police killings of Black people, most of whom were unarmed, it has focused societal attention on the issue in a way that gives us an opportunity to push harder. So amongst the things we’ve been doing on campus, most recently, we launched the task force that the provost and I set up around public safety at the University. I’ve spoken with many people of color, not just African Americans, but many people who don’t feel safe around the police. We need to understand how we do policing on our campus and how people feel about how we do policing, and try to make ourselves best in class. That effort just launched within the last couple of weeks. There will be preliminary reports during the semester, and then a final report at the end of the semester.

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Wednesday, January 27 , 2021 — 3

“It’s a new day in America”

GOVERNMENT

President Joe Biden calls for unity in inaugural address IULIA DOBRIN & KATE WEILAND Daily Staff Reporter

President Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States Wednesday afternoon, taking office at a moment of deeprooted political polarization in America following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol Building. “This is democracy’s day,” Biden said in his inaugural address, ref lecting upon what he called the “cascading crises” of the past year — including the COVID-19 pandemic, economic crash and racial inequity, along with the insurrection that led to then-President Donald Trump’s second impeachment on Jan. 13. Prior to the ceremony, Biden tweeted “It’s a new day in America.” The tweet came minutes after Trump left the White House for the last time as president. Trump did not attend the inauguration, though former Vice President Mike Pence did. The last president to intentionally skip a successor’s inauguration was Andrew Johnson in 1869 due to animosity between him and his successor, Ulysses Grant, after being on opposing sides during the Civil War. In his inaugural address, Biden thanked his supporters and acknowledged his commitment to all Americans, including those who did not support him. Biden emphasized the democratic right to dissent peacefully while maintaining a union. “I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as those who did,” Biden said. “We must end this uncivil war that

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily President-elect Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States Wednesday afternoon

pits red against blue … We have never failed in America when we have acted together.” LSA junior Ryan Fisher, chair of the University of Michigan’s chapter of College Republicans, reiterated Biden’s call for unity in an email to The Michigan Daily. “We wish for a peaceful transition to the Biden Administration, one that hopefully will be characterized by the unity and cultural healing that Biden spoke of so frequently,” Fisher said. During his speech, Biden also denounced extremism, white supremacy and domestic

terrorism, saying the country will confront these issues during his tenure. “We must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured,” Biden said. LSA sophomore Kenny Larson, a director of research and operations for the University of Michigan’s chapter of Students for Biden, said watching the inauguration was a surreal moment, particularly as Biden took his oath. “I think really the most impactful moment was just hearing him sit down and say

the words of oath,” Larson said. “It was really impactful for me not only as a citizen and a voter, but as an American and Joe Biden supporter, to hear someone that I genuinely believe will actually live up to the presidential and constitutional oath that he’s taking.” Biden closed the speech with a silent prayer for the over 400,000 American lives lost to COVID-19 and with an oath to the country. “I give my word that I will always level with you,” Biden said. “I will defend the constitution, I’ll defend

our democracy, I’ll defend America.” This transition of power came after Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president, making history as the first female, Black and South Asian American vice president in American history. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was appointed co-chair of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, attended the inauguration. “The country is ready for a leader who listens to medical experts to lead our country’s COVID-19 response and works on behalf of hard-working

Americans,” Whitmer said in a Tuesday press release. “I am honored to attend the inauguration … and ready to begin working closely with each of them to fight this virus, save lives, and put the country back on track.” Prior to the inauguration, LSA sophomore Julia Schettenhelm, a representative from the University’s chapter of College Democrats, said she was proud of the new leadership but said there is more work to be done. “We are looking forward to the next four years under the leadership of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris,” Schettenhelm said. “While today is a day to celebrate, we also acknowledge that there is a lot of work that needs to be done going forward.” Following the ceremony, Biden signed 17 executive orders, more than any other modern president on his first day. These sweeping executive orders seek to unwind policies issued by Trump administration, including halting construction of the wall along the Mexican-American border, reversing travel bans that target Muslim-majority countries and imposing a mask mandate on federal property. Biden also announced the U.S. would be rejoining international agreements like the Paris Climate Agreement and realigning with the World Health Organization. Larson said he felt Biden’s plan for the first day set a promising precedent for the months to come. “I think that Joe Biden’s gonna have a very bold plan and that that agenda will hopefully hit the ground running in the first 100 days,” Larson said.

As Kamala Harris is sworn in as first woman of color VP, students reflect on historic inauguration

GOVERNMENT

CELENE PHILIP Daily Staff Reporter

Kamala Harris, former Senator from California, was sworn in as the 49th vice president of the United States Wednesday afternoon, breaking barriers as the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American to serve in the position. The swearing-in ceremony was conducted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and Latina woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Two bibles were used for the ceremony, at Harris’s request. The first belonged to Regina Shelton, a family friend Harris viewed as a second mother, and the second belonged to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black member of the Supreme Court. LSA junior Jasmine Williams, a member of the University of Michigan’s chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha — a Black sorority of which Harris was a member at Howard University— said she is doubly inspired by Harris’s milestone. Williams is also a member of the executive board of the Black Student Union, which helped make food boxes for those voting on campus back in November. “Yes, we have had our first African American president, but to see a Black woman be the second most powerful person in the world, most people would say, it is almost surreal sometimes,” Williams said.

“That representation and just (thinking) you could be there one day if you work hard and set those goals (is possible), because you now have that example of someone who is there.” Public Health junior Subarna Bhattacharya, a member of the Indian dance group Michigan Sahana, said this year’s election stuck with her and her family because they could relate to

Harris. “I definitely saw more engagement from my parents because there was someone similar to our identity on the ticket, so it was exciting to see my mom talk about what she read on the news,” Bhattacharya said. Bhattacharya said even though she disagreed with some choices Harris made as senator, she believes her appointment

sets an important precedent and gives her hope for more women of color holding office in the future. “Even though I may not agree with a lot of the things Kamala Harris has done in her past political career, I do think that it is still a step forward (for Indian Americans) to see someone whose parents had similar immigrant experiences

as ours and who was able to reach a platform this high,” Bhattacharya said. “I think she definitely has created a very strong name for herself and hearing her say ‘I may be the first but I won’t be the last’ is very momentous for me, because in the future when I have children and they mention Kamala Harris, by that time hopefully it will be a normal thing to see women of

ASHA LEWIS/Daily

color in office.” Bhattacharya’s hope that more women of color will enter political office was echoed in remarks made by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., at Wednesday’s inauguration. In her speech, Klobuchar noted the significance of Harris’s role as the nation’s second in command. “When she takes the oath of office, little girls and boys across the world will know that anything and everything is possible,” Klobuchar said. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer attended the inauguration with her two daughters. In an interview after the event, she said despite the restrictions placed on the event by the COVID-19 pandemic and recent security concerns, she “will never forget” seeing Harris sworn-in. “To see (Vice President) Harris take her oath of office and to be sitting with my two daughters as that happened is a moment that I will never forget,” Whitmer said. Williams said she hopes the Biden administration will put more fuel into funding and supporting historically Black colleges and universities, something Biden has previously promised to do. “It would be really awesome to see more of an initiative to fund HBCUs and get them onto the same level as universities like the University of Michigan when it comes to funding and resources,” Williams said. “It is something (Harris) could use her platform to do.”

News

4 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

RESEARCH

U-M experts discuss social media’s role in politics, Capitol riot

University of Michigan social media experts are studying the influence of social media over politics, particularly through the rapid spread of misinformation and increased access KAITLYN LUCKOFF Daily Staff Reporter

University of Michigan social media experts are studying the inf luence of social media over politics, particularly through the rapid spread of misinformation and increased access. According to these experts, social media played a pivotal role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol last week. Sarita Schoenebeck, a School of Information associate professor, said former President Donald Trump’s presidency fueled the sharing of misinformation on social media by exploiting algorithms designed to reward content that’s popular, even if it’s fake or wrong. “Clearly the election of President Trump increased divisiveness in the U.S., and that kind of alignment increased social media use and misinformation, so these things can’t be disentangled,” Schoenebeck said. She said the future impact of large social media organizations banning Trump’s accounts is that more sites might take a second look at posts and filter out harassment. Following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, multiple social media platforms — including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook — announced they were banning the former president’s accounts to prevent the further incitement of violence. “I think the banning of President Trump was a reactive

decision, it was too little too late,” Schoenebeck said. “But, it was the right decision given the violence and I think going forward sites need to consider people and the content they share in the broader context.” Josh Pasek, an associate professor of communication and media, said social media provides an opportunity to meet people with similar ideologies, resulting in incidences like joining together to attack the Capitol building. “It makes it easier to do good things, and it makes it easier to do bad things,” Pasek said. “One clear role that social media had (in the riots) was in helping a group of people that might not otherwise find each other easily get more coordinated.” Because politicians and elected officials have more prominent platforms, Pasek said their endorsement of falsehoods helps further spread untrue information on social media. “In addition, you have an elite situation where a number of elites — in particular, the president — have not been particularly devoted to ensuring that the official information coming out was accurate,” Pasek said. “So the willingness of elites at various different levels to buy into the big lie that the election was stolen and that there was fraud and irregularities gives that claim more power and makes it far more pervasive.” Pasek also acknowledged the effects of the pandemic, saying it has led to many people

wanting to take action at a time when they feel out of control and more dissociated from society than usual. LSA freshman Anna Wilentz, an attendee of the event, said she feels social media inf luences young voters’ opinions before they are able to fully process monumental political events in the country, such as the 2020 election and the Capitol riot. “Social media has caused individuals to take their peers’ point of views on political issues, which prohibits them from forming their own educated opinions,” Wilentz said. “This is one factor that has led America to become more polarized, and has led to Americans speaking freely on social media and expressing extreme political beliefs and attitudes.” With the constant evolution of social media, Cliff Lampe, a School of Information professor, discussed the major increase in the number of users on platforms over the past years. “I think the biggest change over time has been the number of types of people who have started using social media,” Lampe said. “As the population of use has grown, so has the role of social media in society. It’s easy to spread misinformation on social media because there are fewer gatekeepers.” Historically, Lampe said the general population received their information from established news organizations,

Design by Cara Jhang

which have strict fact-checking procedures. With the rise of social media, Lampe said the media landscape is less regulated, which has resulted in quick and easy access to spreading false information. “In a traditional mass media environment, there would be editors, and there was 100 years of development of professional journalistic practices that determined how you could tell if (information) was true or not,” Lampe said. “Social media does not have the same kind of gatekeepers and same kind of history that mass media does, so anybody can share anything. Social media also tends to f latten hierarchies, so there’s no such

thing as expertise anymore.” To fight misinformation and harassment online, Schoenebeck suggested social media sites carefully monitor a user’s collection of posts instead of evaluating posts individually. According to Schoenebeck, they should consider the information in the context of the person’s past history and the history of people who are targeted by the post. Pasek said he has debated whether social media is a completely negative inf luence in our society. While it has caused many problems, he said he believes it also has many positive effects. “What’s become increasingly

clear this year is that we’re still working on figuring out the right norms for how to deal with social media,” Pasek said. “The way it interacts with our psycholog y is something that makes that a particularly pressing question, because (we tend to believe) information is more credible when you hear it from friends than when you hear it from somebody who you don’t particularly know.” Looking ahead, Lampe said it is a vital and monumental time for social media in our society because… . “It’s an interesting time for social media right now, especially as we see the platforms’ converging power,” Lampe said.

U-M study reveals lack of coronavirus aid for Black-owned businesses

BUSINESS

GEORGE WEYKAMP Daily Staff Reporter

A national study on coronavirus aid for small businesses led by University of Michigan researchers found that Black business owners were about 30 times less likely to receive government assistance than white business owners since the pandemic began in March 2020. The study was led by Felix Kabo, an assistant research scientist at the

Institute for Social Research’s Survey Research Center. In March 2020, Congress passed the $2.2 trillion dollar coronavirus relief bill (known as the CARES Act) in an attempt to help working families, small businesses, people paying off loans and a health care system staggered by COVID-19. The bill gave over $600 billion to businesses, states and other municipalities without much instruction on how to distribute it, leaving workers unsure of how to collect unemployment benefits.

The University’s study was nationally administered from May through June 2020 and surveyed approximately 6,300 small business owners and entrepreneurs from around the country. The business owners were asked whether or not they had received government aid between March and May 2020. While 6.9% of the total number of entrepreneurs surveyed reported receiving federal aid, only 0.3% of Black entrepreneurs said they received money from the government.

Design by Sam Turner

The study does not examine why this disparity between Black-owned and non-Blackowned businesses occurred. However, in an interview with The Michigan Daily, Kabo said he suspected that pre-existing barriers and unequal access to credit might contribute to Black business owners struggling to receive funding. “I’ve looked at work that’s emerged that’s showing a phenomenon where business owners and entrepreneurs were much more likely to receive stimulus funds when they had pre-existing relationships with financial institutions,” Kabo said. “A Black business owner or entrepreneur is … less likely to get credit, and if they do, they are more likely to be charged higher interest.” Kabo said Black-owned businesses are often denied loans because they sometimes lack the financial and accounting structures necessary to receive, process and account for stimulus funds. Many Black business owners in Washtenaw County expressed similar frustrations with accessing financial relief due to bureaucratic and systemic obstacles. In the fall, a group of local business owners created the Association of Businesses of Color to provide aid to businesses run by people of color. Melvin Parson, the executive director of We the People Opportunity Farm, a nonprofit farm based in Ypsilanti that mainly employs formerly incarcerated individuals, said there are a lot of bureaucratic obstacles that grassroots organizations and nonprofits face when trying to receive grants. “The more you can cut out the bureaucracy, the better off things will be in terms of money getting to organizations that have the potential to really make an impact,” Parson said. “And (money won’t) just make it into the hands of the few

organizations that are able to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.” Brian Jones-Chance, co-founder of the 734 Brewing Company in Ypsilanti and one of the founders of the ABC, said while he applied for and received Paycheck Protection Program loans as part of the CARES act, he has seen firsthand how many Blackowned businesses struggle to access financial aid. Like Kabo said, the lack of relationships between Black business owners and financial institutions deters some businesses from even applying for aid, Jones-Chance said. “We are finding that one of these issues is not having those banking relationships,” JonesChance said. “You just go and you deposit your money, you maybe run your payroll through there, but there’s no actual personal relationship.” Other local Black business owners said they chose not to apply for coronavirus aid because they weren’t sure exactly what it entailed. Robyn McCoy, a partner at McCoy and Associates, a law firm in downtown Ann Arbor that specializes in estate and trust law, chose not to apply for the PPP because she found it unclear whether or not the program functioned as a loan or a grant. The PPP provided loans to small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, though it was initially unclear whether it would be classified as a grant or loan when filing taxes. The CARES Act, which the PPP is part of, also includes programs for small businesses grants, such as advance payments for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. In an email to The Daily, McCoy called for greater education on the state, local, and national levels to increase transparency in the aid process. “There were concerns because it was set up as a loan and I’m not eager to incur any

more debt,” McCoy wrote. “I wouldn’t rule out possibly applying for something in the future, I would just want it to be clear — that if it’s a grant then it says it’s a grant.” Janice Johnson, the owner of Clothes Mentor Ann Arbor, said the responsibility of providing aid to small businesses should be shared by local, state and national governments. She said there were local grant opportunities that could have prevented her from having to use personal savings to pay her bills that were not well marketed. “There were other grants available that I missed out on that have since expired,” Johnson said. “So even if Ann Arbor did handle it directly, how would they spread the news that these (grants) were available?” Kabo proposed several solutions to the disparities between white and Black business owners’ access to aid. He said local governments in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati have begun initiatives to provide critical funding for debt financing, such as using government agencies to provide information to businesses owned by people of color. These strategies can be adopted in Ann Arbor and by other local governments across the country, Kabo said. Music, Theatre & Dance freshman Maya Boyd, whose father owns Boyd Beauty in downtown Ann Arbor, said it was more important to support local Black-owned businesses rather than large-scale corporations. She encouraged U-M students to explore Black-owned businesses outside of campus and around Ann Arbor. “I think that students have a lot of knowledge on how to spread information and support people,” Boyd said. “(They can help) just by going and exploring other businesses that aren’t the classic white-owned businesses and corporations.”

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 5

On science fiction, consciousness and the moral of the story JULIAN WRAY Daily Arts Writer

It is difficult to imagine myself on the path I might be on had I not read the books I have read. I have often heard about “the moral of the story,” but life is rarely so straightforward. Few stories have a lesson, but every story can be learned from. In lieu of a dissertation on one book, expounding interpretations pulled from subtext so deep it may as well be imagined, here is a tour of a few subtler points I have picked up on a problematic and elusive topic: consciousness. Picture: The sun is setting behind my childhood home. I am sitting with my back against the window facing southwest. I look up from my book to see delicate yellow light on the wall and turn around to see a heavy gold pouring through the trees. I realize that the sun will set tomorrow, but that I will not be here for that sunset. I will be somewhere else. Basic facts, invincible tenets of life emerge: The sun rises and sets every day. The setting sun will light up this room tomorrow + I will not be in this room tomorrow = I will not see the setting sun light up this room tomorrow. This seems like a pretty obvious observation, but the difference is that I can still picture myself sitting on that couch, watching the light change. It won’t happen, but I can see it as clearly as I see myself in that room as my mind wanders through this line of thought. I can also see myself sitting at my desk in my apartment in Ann Arbor, watching an entirely different version of the same sunset. Initial circumstances entail conclusions. I’m thinking in this strange, almost mathematical way because at the moment I am reading a stunning short story

called “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, the basis for the movie “Arrival.” In the story, aliens land on earth and the narrator, a linguist named Louise, is tasked with communicating with them. As Louise learns the aliens’ language, she begins to see time differently. The aliens perceive time non-linearly — they view their entire life simultaneously, each moment a predetermined scene in a play. As Louise becomes more proficient in the alien language, she gains memories of her future. The reader gradually comes to understand that the memories are not presented in the expected chronological order, despite Chiang using the present and future tense to relay them. As the reader learns about the unique abilities provided by the alien language, they realize that the perceived past is really the future. The use of tense makes perfect sense. “Story of Your Life” has an almost magical effect on the reader — it feels as though Chiang has broken a secret rule of storytelling, that of chronology. But this technical rebellion is perfectly welcome, as it brings me to that delicious event we all hope for in a book: the “a-ha!” moment. Great stories spark novel thoughts in their readers. The iconic quote from Dr. Ian Malcolm in “Jurassic Park” springs to mind: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Hearing this delivered in Jeff Goldblum’s impeccably stuttered cadence prompts legitimate consideration: How should we treat bioengineered animals? It seems like a distant question, one that our greatgreat-grandchildren will face, not us. And while we may not resurrect dinosaurs anytime soon, Michael Crichton’s original “Jurassic Park” novel does raise relevant questions

Daily Arts Top Five: What to read, watch & listen to this weekend ZOE PHILLIPS & ELISE GODFRYD

Managing Arts Editors Each week, Daily Arts writers evaluate the latest movies, shows, books, music, games and more. They watch, read and listen for the next standout artistic trends and then write about what that means for us in the art world and beyond. Come Friday, we highlight what Daily Arts loved most — here’s what will keep you captivated this weekend. — Zoe Phillips and Elise Godfryd, Managing Arts Editors

all at once, considers large, universal themes like nostalgia and sadness through a “loving observation” of the small things. Read: “On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light” by Marge Piercy In her review for The Daily, writer Emilia Ferrante describes Marge Piercy’s poetry as boldly introspective. The collection meditates on love and loss, sex and politics, family and religion. Within each, Ferrante notes that Piercy’s writing “thrives in small sentences and phrases.” The result is a book of poems that deserves to be kept

Design by Melissa Lee

Watch: “Pieces of a Woman” In her review for the Daily, Daily Arts Writer Mary Elizabeth Johnson commends the new Netflix film release “Pieces of a Woman” for its willingness to explore one woman’s experience of motherhood in a way that doesn’t shy away from the “often overlooked parts” of it. The film approaches pregnancy, childbirth and the post-partum period with empathy, honesty and openness. Though the film’s reception has been somewhat polarized, Johnson promises “it’ll make you want to call your mom, check up on her and thank her.” Listen to: Two Saviors Two Saviors, Buck Meek’s new album, is, in the words of Daily Arts Writer Rosa Sofia Kaminski, “like a love letter written upon waking up from a dream.” With this collection of songs, the Big Thief guitarist has created a breakup album that is as melancholy as it is danceable. Two Saviors, “tinged with sadness” and “suffused with light”

close by, available for revisiting when in need of comfort. It is, as Ferrante writes, “like a friend giving gentle advice” — a carefully arranged collection of words that “most people screaming into the void can’t express.” Watch: “WandaVision” “WandaVision,” the latest Disney+ endeavor into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is, according to Daily Arts Writer Jessica Curney, a solid and exciting beginning to Phase Four of the Marvel franchise. The TV series examines what happened to Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen, “Sorry For Your Loss”) and Vision (Paul Bettany, “Uncle Frank”) after the explosive events of 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” Curney assures us that any viewer, regardless of their experience with Marvel, can enjoy the “wild ride” that is “WandaVision.”

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regarding consciousness and life. Consider the velociraptor, a creature artificially created by geneticists in “Jurassic Park.” Does it have rights? Should we protect it, or let it roam free? The point that Crichton emphasizes in the novel is that nature can never truly be controlled, that life will escape any cage, will “find a way.” But when we do play God and create an animal, there is an undeniable implication: that we owe our offspring protection. Creation is paternal in the world of “Jurassic Park,” yet protection necessitates a certain amount of control. However, if we can never control nature, then it follows that we can never truly protect it. Crichton asks us to question our treatment of animals, an issue that is further complicated when we consider the role of consciousness in other forms of life. But how about another perspective, one where an animal is not created, but altered? In Stephen Baxter’s novel “Manifold Time,” scientists send a rocket to examine an alien object that has appeared in the solar system. It’s a one-way trip, so they can’t send a human to pilot the vessel. They opt instead for a non-traditional pilot: Sheena 5, a squid, biologically enhanced to have the intelligence of a human. Sheena can control the rocket, perform all the scientific functions necessary and inhabit a much smaller space than a human. This seems like a perfect solution, one that eliminates a loss of human life while mimicking the creative problem-solving abilities of a conscious person. But of course, if Sheena is conscious, then isn’t sending her on a suicide mission just as immoral as sending a human? To further complicate things, Sheena is — unknown to the scientists — pregnant

when she begins her voyage. Her offspring inherit her mental abilities, and a family of newly-conscious beings is created. The story unfolds like a logical extension of “Jurassic Park” as the squids find ways to survive in space and eventually reproduce to form a generational society. Reading “Manifold Time” led me to unexpected emotional leaps; I began to consider a squid the same way I would consider a person. Sheena thinks in the same internal monologue as myself, she feels the same fear of death that I feel and she turns out to be very similar to any other person, with the exception of certain tentacular differences. She leads me to wonder, is the gap between people and animals really all that big? Stephen Godfrey-Smith’s newest book “Metazoa” explores this topic in the same way that Sheena explores the solar system. Both a philosopher and a biologist, GodfreySmith observes animals the way an anthropologist observes humans. He describes encounters with octopuses and shrimp like they’re

simply other people, as if the difference in species is no more than a language barrier. One passage stuck out to me: “Two weeks later I went back again, implausible as it seemed to be driving three hours up the coast to visit a shrimp … He looked tired, very much on his own, and probably near the end of his days.” What Godfrey-Smith seeks to prove in “Metazoa” is that consciousness cannot be strictly delineated. It’s not as if there is a switch, as if the lights are on in one animal and off in another. More complex animals like octopuses, dolphins or house cats certainly feel emotions similar to ours. They also form memories the way we do, remembering locations and routes and feelings associated with different places. Most importantly, they use language. There was a moment over winter break when I sat in my living room and my family’s cat, Lily, started pawing at the door, wanting to be let in. She saw me stand up through the glass, and when I walked over she stopped pawing, looked at me and meowed. It wasn’t an empty utterance,

there was an intention behind it, a conveyance of meaning: Open the door, Julian. In that moment, it certainly seemed that there was something behind her eyes that resembled my own consciousness. But then the moment was over, and I sat back down and picked up my book, which brings us back to “Story of Your Life.” The other books I’ve mentioned here all brought me to think about consciousness differently in other beings, in animals. But “Story of Your Life” brought me to think differently about my own mind. I saw tomorrow as something halfcertain, as if today were a snapshot of a ball, just released from a hand, waiting to fall. I couldn’t tell exactly, but some present information entailed some future events. The sun will set, the room will glow, I will be there or I will be somewhere else. Fill in that last blank, and the future is not all that hard to see in my mind. It’s a little thing, a tilt of the lens rather than a full pan, but it’s important. Stories make us think; great stories change the way we think. Design byJessica Chiu

Rina Sawayama, ‘Minari’ and cultural ‘others’ NORA LEWIS

Daily Arts Writer

When we think of what defines good art, nationality and language are generally not the first factors that come to mind. Yet, in reality, the celebration of the arts is often heavily influenced by outdated ideas dictating what stories are deserving of recognition. The British-Japanese pop singer Rina Sawayama stands as one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon. When BRITs and the Mercury prize were released back in July, the 30-year-old musician’s critically-acclaimed album, SAWAYAMA, was noticeably missing from the lineup. Sawayama sat down with Vice following the news, describing her exclusion from nominations, and even the possibility to enter for consideration, as “othering.” Despite having lived in London for 25 years, Sawayama was not considered “British enough” according to stringent award guidelines, ones that she labeled as “border control.” Sawayama was born in Niigata, Japan, where she lived for five years before moving with her family to

London. She currently holds an indefinite-leave-to-remain visa, which grants Sawayama stay in the U.K. for an indefinite period of time and allows her to study and seek employment. Most of Sawayama’s family still lives in Japan, one of the few countries that prohibits dual-citizenship. She explains that “getting rid of my Japanese passport genuinely feels like I’m severing ties with them.” The situation shines light on a flawed definition of Britishness and the persistent view that non-European voices are unwelcome in British culture. But it’s not just a British issue; the Grammys are notorious for excluding Latin and other foreign language albums from their Album of the Year nominations. An album in a language other than English has never won Album of the Year, and for 2021 alone, there are only two nominations for Latin artists outside of the Latin categories. It’s yet another explicit example of the music industry’s tendency to pigeonhole foreign talents. The recently released film “Minari” (2020), which follows the story of a Korean-American family living in rural Arkansas, faces a similar barrier. Although “Minari”

was directed by American filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung and produced by American companies A24 and Plan B, the film was categorized as a foreign language film in the Golden Globes by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The HFPA guidelines stipulate that a film’s dialogue must be at least 50% English to be considered for Best Picture nominations. “Minari,” which features both Korean and English dialogue, as well as Korean and Korean-American talents, apparently didn’t make the cut. This exclusion comes on the tails of two similar cases at last year’s Golden Globes. The Oscarwinning film “Parasite” (2019), which was entirely in Korean, and “The Farewell” (2019), a film with both English and Chinese dialogue, were also ineligible for Best Picture nominations despite receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. Lulu Wang, director of “The Farewell,” tweeted in response to this year’s Golden Globe nominations, “I have not seen a more American film than #Minari this year. It’s a story about an immigrant family, IN America, pursuing the American dream. We really need to change these antiquated rules INGROOVES

that characterize American as only English-speaking.” So often in American pop culture immigrant stories, especially those of people of color, are labeled as outsider experiences despite their central importance to the American identity. So, is the only requirement for artistic recognition to speak English? As evident from past Best Picture nominations at the Globes, it’s not that simple. The 2009 film “Inglourious Basterds,” which prominently features dialogue in German, French and Italian, was nominated in the Best Drama category despite large portions of its story transpiring in a language other than English. Many of its stars, including Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent and Diane Kruger, are not American, calling into question why “Inglourious Basterds” and “Minari” have faced such different treatment despite their many commonalities. The problem that remains is that works in the Foreign Language category do not receive nearly as much attention as those in the Best Drama or Musical/Comedy categories. The Golden Globes in particular nominate Best Actors and Actresses exclusively from these two groups, nominations which are not afforded to actors in foreign language films. They’re treated as an afterthought — never truly equivalent to their “domestic” counterparts. It’s disheartening, to say the least. The experiences of Sawayama and “Minari” point to an overarching issue with xenophobic microaggressions in Western pop culture. When the recognition of art is overshadowed by arbitrary percentages and passport statuses, it is abundantly clear that Englishspeaking cultures are still unwilling to view foreign works as equal. These works are often placed inside the box of their “foreignness” and treated as some kind of novelty, a completely separate entity from mainstream American or British art.

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Arts

6 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“The Invisible Life of Addie The blurring of dreams and La Rue:” darkness, time and reality: Buck Meek’s ‘Two contentment Saviors’ dives into memory ZOHA KHAN

ROSA SOFIA KAMINSKI

Daily Arts Writer

After the past year, the phrase “these unprecedented times” and the nonstop messages of “we will get through this” have become, quite frankly, annoying. Yes, we know that pandemics are unpredictable, but these seemingly heartfelt remarks are constant reminders of our complete lack of control. They prompt us to question if our life and our time serve any greater purpose. Now, imagine if you have all the time in the world and a never-ending life. How would you spend your life? How would you use your time? “The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue,” a book by V.E. Schwab, follows the story of Addie and her 300-year struggle to “be remembered” and define her legacy. Desperate to escape a mundane, passionless existence in 1700s France, a young and naive Addie makes a deal with a dark, mysterious god for freedom and time. No deal, however, comes without a price. Though Addie will live forever, no one will remember her. Soon after making her deal, Addie realizes that her life is meaningless without anyone to remember her. She cleverly finds a way to leave behind a legacy, influencing artists and their works. These artists attempt to illustrate and bring to life a mysterious female presence whom they can’t quite put their finger on. Of course, art is timeless, everlasting pieces of culture and conversation. So, Addie goes through the years, living as a ghost and spending her nights with lovers, only for them to forget her in the morning. She whispers into the souls of artists, writers and musicians, causing them to embody her in their work. She lives like this until she meets Henry, who remembers her.

Daily Arts Writer

ELIZABETH YOON

Her entanglement with Henry is a beautiful love story — a boy and girl who find what they long for in each other. Henry’s history is tumultuous, highlighting the contrast between love and validation. He struggles to find emotional balance and satisfaction with his friendships, family and romantic partners, going through life without a solid anchor or purpose. When he meets Addie, he is able to journey towards emotional balance, learning what satisfaction and contentment with one’s self truly entails. For Addie, she is finally able to find someone who remembers her for everything she is. For a moment, everything is perfect, our characters living in bliss. Then, things go awry and Addie has to make a difficult decision. The ending leaves readers guessing and questioning if what they read was a love story, or something else. Having read some of V.E. Schwab’s previous works, I was confused by the focus on emotional character exploration and the “coming of age” vibe to the chapters leading up to the climax. “A Darker Shade of Magic” and her other series attempt to analyze themes such as morality, justice and human desires. But it all clicked when I read the last chapter. The ending

reaffirmed Schwab’s trademark style and changed my interpretation of the book drastically. The prose is full of figurative language and allegories. The flowery descriptions are so vivid, you can see the years falling like leaves. I was very suspicious of the writing, however, almost as if the author specifically chose to write so elegantly to give readers the wrong impression. If you look past the allure of the language, you might uncover a different story. Addie sought to leave a legacy for herself, for people to remember her name. She took the company of artists, writers and musicians at night, letting them immortalize her in their art. When the fog clears, I see a character struggling between validation in the eyes of others and oneself. Like the language, art is often used as a symbol of the more alluring attractions and superficial desires of the world. Addie chose to create her legacy through superficial means. When she finally does meet someone who remembers her, the emotional journey that ensues results in character growth for one, but does it change the other?

Dreams submerge one into an altered state of consciousness. So does music. The two become one in Two Saviors, Buck Meek’s new album. It is tinged with sadness and regret but suffused with light. Steeped in nostalgia and setting, Meek invites you into a slice of his memory. The album feels like a love letter written upon waking up from a dream: a little confused, a little unclear in its language but thoughtfully done — that is, if it is not the dream itself. The Big Thief member’s solo album begins with a daydream. “Pareidolia” is a breath of summer on an album released in the dead of winter. It is a vessel filled with clouds, a finger trailed lazily over a lover’s skin. Literally, “Pareidolia” is defined as the phenomenon of finding myths and

patterns in random stimuli, like seeing figures in the clouds. These stories we seek to find in the accidental nature of our lives, this search for meaning, is compressed here into a relaxed love song. Like the rest of the album, it is not eager to explore complicated, profound ideas. It does not desire purpose on an intellectual level. Instead, it finds purpose in all the small, human patterns of everyday life. Purpose is found through a loving observation of the details. Details are what give this album personality. Lines like “Thank God for coffee / and apple pie” from “Pocketknife” and “Well, did your eyes change? I remember them blue / or were they always hazel?” from “Candle” and all the specific names on “Cannonball! Pt. 2” welcome you into Meek’s world, one filled with birds and guitar twinges. Although the lyrics are difficult to understand at times, Meek does

a good job convincing the listener that this is due to their highly personal, interpretive nature, rather than a failure on his part to fully communicate his meaning. He tends to write with snippets of images, leaving the listener to sew together a quilt of meaning from them, allowing each person to adapt the images to fit into their own lives. Nostalgia and sadness are universal experiences. Meek, using these as his tools of empathy, does not write explicitly. That is, he does not force the listener to interpret his work in a certain way. Tunes such as “Dream Daughter” and “Two Saviors” drift in the lukewarm lake of memory, addressing someone directly. It feels like a photograph in which the subject smiles radiantly at the person behind the camera.

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“One Night in Miami” brings icons to life What would Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown say to one another? While this sounds like the prompt for a history essay, the movie “One Night in Miami” imagines these icons meeting on the 1964 February evening that Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, became a world boxing champion. Based on the 2013 play of the same name, it’s almost impossible to believe that this is Regina King’s (“Watchmen”) directorial debut. Using every cinematic tool to her advantage, she brings 1964 to Technicolor life with evocative staging, fitting musical choices (the song “Blowin’ in The Wind” is a highlight) and reimagined historical imagery. The film starts off with Ali fighting an Englishman in Liverpool, where the almost completely Caucasian crowd is uniformly hostile. This sense of conflict is threaded through the next three

a few scenes later, exclaims “we’re fighting for our lives” in a furious cadence that feels like watching the man himself. While both Aldis Hodge’s (“The Invisible Man”) Jim Brown and Eli Goree’s (“Riverdale”) Muhammad Ali are utterly convincing, Kingsley Ben-Adir’s (“The OA”) Malcolm X and Leslie Odom Jr.’s (“Hamilton”) Sam Cooke eclipse the other two characters. Throughout the night, Malcolm X and Sam Cooke draw one another into an intensifying conflict over their views on America. Malcolm X is appropriately severe in his outlook, pushing Cooke to stop singing love songs and to start fighting for social change. Cooke calls out Malcolm X for demonizing people who, in his view, could be won over through song. Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown try and put out the fires. Since Kemp Powers, playwright and screenwriter of the original play and now the film, the movie sticks closely to its theatrical roots. Most of the narrative takes place inside a motel room, where the four

introductory scenes, as Sam Cooke performs at a glitzy, sneering L.A. venue; a Southern elite patronizes Jim Brown and Malcolm X agonizes over leaving the Nation of Islam and threats to his family. “One Night in Miami” sets the historical stage through character, rather than relying on setting. This makes the ensuing character-focused story all the more thrilling because the audience understands on an emotional level what the four icons are up against in a white-dominated America. It is difficult enough bringing one momentous historical figure to the screen, let alone four. Yet the cast of “One Night in Miami” makes it look easy. The men are humanized enough to be relatable as characters, but they also bring history to blazing life when it’s right for the story — Malcolm X geeks out over his new camera and, just

characters converse about their historical moment and what it meant to be a Black celebrity in 1964. For a 2021 audience, the themes explored concerning race and American oppression are arrestingly relevant. However, since the bulk of the movie takes place in one room, with everyone talking almost non-stop, even the best-acted and most well-written conversations begin to drag. Thankfully, whenever “One Night in Miami” begins to lose its momentum, an emotional moment or a cutaway rips one’s attention back. The restraint in setting and plot, while occasionally one-note, gives the scenes of excitement a sublime air, like Muhammad Ali pulverizing a boxing opponent or Sam Cooke performing to a crowd that explodes with joy. “One Night in Miami” is a thrilling piece of historical imagination with great performances, and establishes Regina King as a director to watch.

ANDREW WARRICK

SUDOKU

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

Daily Arts Writer

Release Date: Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Make fun of 6 Consecrate 11 Like sashimi 14 Kind of acid in proteins 15 Paddled transport 16 Investment acronym 17 Later than late 19 Formal apparel 20 Ultimate goal 21 Welcome word in real estate 22 Prez on a fiver 23 Word with sky or spy 25 “Gypsy” star, 1959 27 Gleeful Bedrock shout 33 Happening, to Holmes 34 Campus leader 35 “Main” road 38 Discontinued iPods 39 [There’s another doc] 40 Tearful 41 Food on the trail 42 Ailing 43 __ strength 44 Busywork 47 Caterpillar casing 49 Bug 50 Word of good cheer? 51 Layered mineral 54 Flannel patterns 59 Salem-to-Boise dir. 60 Moonshine 62 [Not my mistake] 63 Adler of Sherlock Holmes fame 64 Stealthy warrior 65 Sound of disapproval 66 County bordering London 67 Toot one’s own horn DOWN 1 Like blokes 2 “My turn to sing!” 3 Be concerned with

4 “Young Frankenstein” role 5 Hipsters 6 Pre-A.D. 7 Metallica drummer Ulrich 8 Root canal procedure, briefly 9 Classic 1967 Sam & Dave hit 10 Like some rye 11 EGOT-winning actress from “West Side Story” 12 Curaçao neighbor 13 Like candles 18 Prince who inspired Dracula 24 Finally got there 26 Rat or squirrel 27 Yin’s partner 28 In the distance 29 Employee’s endof-year reward 30 Owie 31 Park seat 32 Start to park, perhaps 36 Acted like

37 Greek food truck offering 40 Moving, as one’s toes 42 Many prom attendees 45 Christina Crawford’s “__ Dearest” 46 Big wine valley 47 Pepsodent rival 48 Welcome desert sight

52 Pool equipment 53 Hathaway married to Shakespeare 55 Actor Kapoor of “Slumdog Millionaire” 56 Online sign-in fig. 57 __ vu 58 Law enforcement acronym 61 Ranch nickname

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

01/27/21

Amazon Prime Video

By Jeffrey Wechsler ©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

WHISPER “Knock knock who’s there? Tara. Tara Who? Tara McClosoff”

“Does anyone read this?”

01/27/21

Arts

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Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 7

‘Hades’ and ‘Immortals’: It’s not Greek to me M. DEITZ

Digital Culture Beat Editor

Regardless of what’s been going on in the outside world, 2020 was a pretty major year for games. “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” came out at the perfect time to help everyone get through the start of lockdown (check out The Daily’s Dylan Yono’s coverage here), Sony dominated the summer with the one-two punch release of “The Last of Us Part II” and “Ghost of Tsushima” and the next PlayStation generation began with a running start just last month. Despite the great games released, I didn’t expect to fall in love with not one but two games centered around Greek mythology. I love Greek myths. I spent my childhood buried in “Percy Jackson” novels and will steadfastly tell you I am a child of Athena. So I felt blessed by the gods when two high-profile, polished but vastly different games came out within months of each other. “Hades” by Supergiant Games concerns itself with Zagreus, the child of Hades and Persephone, as he tries to escape from the Underworld to find his mother. He can choose one of six powerful weapons to fight his way through the demon soldiers that inhabit Hades. (Note: Hades is both the name of the god of the dead and his realm — it’s confusing, I know.) When you die — and hoo-boy will you

die often — you get sent back to the start to try again. No run is ever the same: Each room, enemy and treasure are chosen at random. The gods may assist you, but the game relies on skill, so the more you play, the better you get and the more you can upgrade Zagreus and go further before you die again. Tie this addicting gameplay loop with a thoughtful, carefully paced story in a world full of compelling characters, and you come out with something that many are calling Game of the Year material. Oh my god this game is good. I was obsessed with “Hades” for a good two months and I know that I will be revisiting the land of the dead as soon as I’m finished writing this article. One important thing to note about the game is that it sets out to decolonize Greek history and mythology. It is admittedly silly to believe that the ancient Greeks were as white-bread as modern entertainment portrays them — Greece was a sailing society smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean, indicating a darker skin tone like their Italian neighbors. Supergiant Games set out to present the gods as a much more diverse, and frankly attractive, group of immortal beings. I truly believe it is impossible to view the portrait work of this game and not come out crushing on at least one character. The writing also elevates these static (but again, beautiful) portraits into complex, entertaining characters brimming with personality.

“Hades” is a wonderful first step in the direction of retracting the whitewashing of history, and hopefully sets a precedent within the games industry as a whole going forward. Another game, “Immortals Fenyx Rising,” from the team at Ubisoft Quebec, is much more standard, which is by no means a bad thing. Typhon the Titan has arisen once again and captured all the gods, so Zeus turns to Prometheus for help. Prometheus offers help, but only if the hero he creates fails. Thus, players get to create and control the titular Fenyx as they try to rescue the gods of Olympus and defeat Typhon. As soon as players are off the leash, the entirety of the Golden Isles is at their disposal. Do you want to save Aphrodite first? Or maybe Ares or Athena and oh, what’s this chest doing here? The world of “Immortals Fenyx Rising” is littered with enemies to fight, goodies to collect and vaults of Tartarus — essentially bite-sized themed dungeons — to explore. The exploration often feels great; being able to climb anything or glide anywhere helps make traversing the rather large world an easier task than it initially seems. Possibly the best part of the game is its comedic tone. Whether it’s Hermes and Aphrodite gossiping about the clothing of the other gods or Zeus and Prometheus bickering over the exact way an event happened, the game is full of laughs. However, that’s

SUPERGIANT GAMES

not to say everything is a joke. I was happily surprised to find moments of sincerity and self-reflection mixed in with the light tone. Ten hours deep into the game, I was just getting to the second exploration area, so I can say I was thoroughly enjoying my romp through the Golden Isles. The comparison between how the two games use specific characters is interesting to examine. In “Hades,” Achilles is a friend and mentor to Zagreus, providing him with the weapons needed to help slay the hordes of the underworld. Achilles is compassionate, slightly reserved and holds a mysterious past, bristling at the mention of his former friend and probable lover Patroclus.

We the PROUD Present ‘Pass Over’: a reflection on prejudice, privilege and pinto beans “Pass Over” DARBY WILLIAMS Daily Arts Writer

Those familiar with Samuel Beckett’s magnum opus, “Waiting for Godot” will immediately recognize the dramatic setting presented in Antoinette Nwandu’s absurdist tragedy “Pass Over.” Set “now, right now / but also 1855 / but also 13th century BCE,” the radio play features two men standing, eating, talking about nothing in particular and awaiting something that never comes to pass. Nwandu, however, adds a pivotal new dimension to the theatre of the absurd through his integration of the poignant and painfully relevant realities of racism and police brutality. We the PROUD, We the People Representing Our Unifying

Diversity Polycultural Productions, is a polycultural student organization here at the University. Their radio play “Pass Over,” presented via YouTube, serves as the final product of a semester-long investigation into the play, primarily focusing on the themes of police brutality, racism and the importance of everyday Black narratives. School of Music, Theatre & Dance senior Miguel Aviles-Elrod and LSA senior Bryce Foley star as both Moses and Kitch, switching roles from night to night to accurately encapsulate the multitudes their respective characters contain. The play opens with Moses and Kitch standing on the block of an unnamed ghetto, from which they hope to escape. The two are shown counting the ten wishes they will

Daily Arts Writer

receive when they “pass over” into the promised land. This grocery list of dreams spans everything from collard greens and pinto beans to the return of a brother from the dead. Their shared dream of getting off of the block is inextricably intertwined with an ever-looming

YOUR WEEKLY

A very hectic few weeks may be taking its toll on your mental health or your vitality. When this week’s Full Moon occurs in your health zone.

AQUARIUS

TAURUS

A Full Moon in your love zone this week finds you in an uncharacteristically demonstrative mood, Aquarius, showing open affection and love.

GEMINI

CAPRICORN

Be careful with how you communicate this week, Gemini. You normally pride yourself on your communication abilities, but with the dramatic Full Moon.

Affairs of the heart are front and center this week, notably during the Full Moon in your passion zone, which coincides with a Venus-Pluto conjunction in your own sign.

CANCER

SAGITTARIUS

Money worries may be highlighted as the luxury-loving Full Moon shines a light on your inability to afford something you would dearly love to have.

LEO

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PISCES

The Full Moon shines an emotional and sentimental light on your zodiac sign's family zone, and you may be commemorating a special event this week.

A Full Moon in your own sun sign is a good chance to take stock of these first few weeks of the year and to check that where you’re heading feels right for you, emotionally.

WE THE PROUD

fear of death, which Nwandu illustrates through the constant surveillance of the “po-po,” or police, who were responsible for the murders of dozens of Kitch and Mo’s friends.

This week’s energy is about learning limits, Sagittarius. Specifically, perhaps, limits to what you can and cannot currently afford, and why that matters.

VIRGO Got a secret, Virgo? If you have, you may find this week’s Full Moon rather uncomfortable, as it will tend to shine a light on things you’d rather have remain hidden.

LIBRA This week’s Venus-Pluto conjunction occurs in your home and family zone and could signify fireworks if someone is very controlling or manipulative within or around the family.

SCORPIO Don’t be surprised to feel extremely emotional regarding your career this week. The Full Moon falls in your career zone.

Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv

“Hades” and “Immortals Fenyx Rising” are two sides of the same drachma: the former using its Greek mythology for a story driven rogue-lite and the latter for openworld checklist game that Ubisoft is known for. These two approaches are nothing alike beyond their shared mythos. “Hades” limits player exploration in favor of randomly generated maps, skillbased combat and a slowly doled out story, while in “Immortals” the player can go anywhere, climb anything and do whatever their demi-god heart desires.

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‘Tiger’ is a cheap, but riveting, guess at the world’s most sensational golfer BEN SERVETAH

ARIES You may be very concerned with your public image this week, Aries, wanting to promote or protect your reputation in some way.

Conversely, in “Immortals,” Achilles is a wraith, one of four great heroes who failed to stop Typhon and has been corrupted into serving the Titan. He haunts the land, a literal shadow of his former self and is another thing for Fenyx to help set right on their path to save the gods. The Greeks gods’ characterizations also have interesting similarities and differences, always benefitting the tone and story of the game they are in. Much like Arachne, the gifted weaver in Greek mythology, the developers took the same starting material and weaved two startlingly different tapestries.

Memories of my dad watching golf (or napping through it) go back as long as I can remember. He brought me and my brother to driving ranges since we were little and that “fore!” means duck. He’s shown us how to hit out of a sand trap. Yet, he’s never been a fan of Tiger Woods. In fact, he admits that he usually cheered against him. But despite all of this, through every point of the man’s career, through the record-shattering highs and the gut-punching lows, my dad has maintained the same mantra: “Golf is more exciting when Tiger’s on the green.” The sentiment rings true in the two-part, HBO Max documentary “Tiger.” No matter the shortcomings of the filmmakers, delving into the sometimes admirable, and often controversial, life of Tiger Woods can never be anything short of fascinating. At a time when many of the clubs didn’t even allow Black people on the course, Tiger ripped through old Masters like they were children. In a sport known for its quiet meticulousness, Tiger pummeled his competition with vigor. He was the first and only golfer to become a pop culture icon, and the world could not get enough of him. In the eyes of his best friend and former Green Beret father Earl Woods, Tiger was a God-like prophet sent down to unite humankind. Of course, according to the documentary, these absurd expectations are precisely what led to his downfall. The end of the first part teases an interview appearance from Rachel Uchitel, a woman who has unfairly come to be known by the world for one thing and one thing only: Tiger’s mistress. From here on out, the series picks up, and it picks up quickly. Part two begins with the first rumors of Tiger’s infidelity and follows him through all of his vices, poor decisions and the over-thetop backlash he received for it. It notes that with just about every Tiger Woods cheating scandal, the women involved never described the

encounters as casual. Many of them loved Tiger, and most felt he loved them back. As the documentary clearly frames it, Tiger didn’t simply go out and have sex. This was a tortured man, and he needed help. At all points of the episode, the filmmakers remain empathetic to Tiger, his ex-wife Elin and even the mistresses — an aspect I really appreciated. Many women have been relentlessly crucified and slut-shamed for being with Tiger. Elin specifically was unable to escape paparazzi following the controversy. It’s important to note that there doesn’t have to be a single “bad guy” in the story. We can remain empathetic to Tiger’s uniquely difficult upbringing while having sympathy for those he hurt. Or, at the very least, that’s what the documentary tries to show us. But as interesting as “Tiger” can be, it is certainly not the most impartial. The documentary feels both too neat and too superficial to tell this story with justice. Relying primarily on the word of ex-girlfriends and former best friends, the series has moments that feel blatantly gossipy. For a project that often criticizes the way Tiger had his life forced upon him without his say, it feels pretty hypocritical to watch it do just that. Based on the book of the same name, it’s clear that the people behind this knew exactly the story they wanted to tell. There’s no input from Tiger himself, nor from anyone who remains close with him today. Interview footage is often used to supplement the precrafted ideas and guesses that old acquaintances have speculated, rather than to challenge or enrich them. In other words, it’s uninventive filmmaking. And at its worst, cheap journalism. Nonetheless, it’s exciting. Because at the end of the day, Tiger Woods is exciting. He’s an athlete unlike any other in history, and his story is so ripe with debate, it’s nearly impossible to not be intrigued. “Tiger” is a compelling guess at a man who lived a life like no other. I just want more. HBO MAX

Michigan in Color

8 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Black Art and Spirituality KARIS CLARK MiC Columnist

The irony of the Black arts being one of the most widely reproduced, shared and appropriated forms of art in the modern era — despite centuries of exploitation, maltreatment and oppression — serves as a testament to the universality it possesses, as well as its inherent spiritual nature. Looking closely at the intersection of Black arts and spirituality can give us a better appreciation for the profound beauty of art in itself and for our shared lived experience as human beings. Author Christine Valters Paintner defines spirituality as the “search for meaning in life.” She states that meaning — or what psychologist Victor Frankl refers to as the “primary motivational force” in a person — allows us to develop a relationship to the unanswered mysteries of life, and enables us to cultivate values, direction and hope in a world of suffering and pain. While religion, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, refers to a specific and particular set of faith and worship, spirituality refers to the quality of the human spirit or soul. Evidently, spirituality is often an integral part of religion and vice versa. As we see in the U.S., religion and spirituality play a pivotal role in Black culture, with 79% of Black Americans identifying with Christianity, 2% identifying with Islam, and 3% identifying with other nonChristian faiths. A. Wade Boykin, an African American education scholar, describes spirituality as being one of the nine interrelated dimensions of African American (and African Diasporic) culture and expressive behavior — the others being harmony, movement, verve, affect, communalism, expressive individualism, oral tradition and social time... all key aspects of art as well. It’s no wonder why artistry, which implores us to exercise our primal urge to bring something new into being or to partake in the act of creating, remains a key aspect of religions which establish faith in a Creator. Paintner states that the arts are “rooted in the existential capacity of the imagination to transcend literal reality, they present us with alternative ways of being

and present insights only available through non-cognitive means.” In a society where Black people have historically had to find alternative ways to subsist, survive, and thrive in our daily lives, this notion of transcendence carries with it powerful implications. Tricia Hersey, a Black performance artist and activist, states, “At the heart of us as human beings, I believe that it’s our divinity to create and invent. In the seat of our creativity is spiritual practice.” She recognizes that “our energy as spiritual creatures is to live, survive, connect, thrive, get to our highest self, and to remember.” Hersey’s work as an artist and community healer is rooted in that of Black liberation theology, which James Cone, author of “Black Theology and Black Power,” defines as “a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the Gospel, which is Jesus Christ.” By viewing Biblical texts as a redemptive means — one that liberates the oppressed — Hersey was able to connect her artistic creative practice as being one that fostered her inner divinity and relationship to God. This idea of the arts as a means for restoration is explored by author Stephen K Levine in “Art Opens to the World.” He asserts that the sensory-affective experience inherent in art-making helps us reestablish our ability to respond effectively to the world around us. To Levine, the process of making art requires us to give up control and transcend our barriers through faith. He insists that we must put ourselves in a state of “non-knowing” in order to achieve mastery. It’s easiest to see these notions in the realm of theatrical expression. In Sharrell D. Luckett and Tia M. Shaffer’s anthology “Black Acting Methods,” Shaffer discusses how actors must develop their capacity to respond organically to stimuli, or in other words, maintain a “sense of unpredictable aliveness.” She reinforces how this idea of “non-knowing” is prevalent in improvisation, which is characterized by an acceptance of the unknown. In the chapter, Biggs also examines how specifically Black actresses

are able to use improv as a means for cultivating their ability to survive in an unpredictable, fundamentally unstable world. Like Hersey states, “You have to be creative in a place that wants to see you dead.” Black actor Freddie Hendricks developed an acting practice known as the Hendricks Method which explores several aspects, including devising, spirituality, and the hyper-ego, the latter of which Luckett and Shaffer define as the “seat of the soul” of the method itself. His work is mounted on the belief that the Spirit will lead the way, and that it is crucial for the Black actor to draw upon this spiritual power in performance. This idea of the soul is a critical aspect of the Black musical experience as well. As African American jazz guitarist Bobby Brown once said, “Any great art is a transfer of emotion. Musically, soul is what we speak of as being transferred from the player to the listener, as in soul-to-soul.” As we saw in “Soul,” Pixar’s latest movie, singers, rappers, dancers and musicians put themselves in a state of optimal flow while performing when they allow themselves to be fully present in the moment in which their sense of time is altered. Black artists during performance reach this state of flow by establishing a connection with the internal rhythm of life, that in turn produces a profound emotional effect on the listener and observer. We can see this in gospel, soul, jazz, hip-hop, rap and a variety of other genres of Black music. Na’im Akbar, a clinical psychologist and University of Michigan alum, states that “the energy system of Black personality is rhythm.” Feeling the flow of rhythm unites us with the universe and the natural world around us. While these examples only begin to scratch the surface, it’s clear that the connection between Black art and spirituality continues to serve as a means of connecting with that which is transcendent. It reminds us that even in a time of great instability, uncertainty and tension in which many of us are feeling trapped, disenfranchised and marginalized, we can always look within to find something deeper than ourselves that can set us free.

Love of Self and Revolution: A short collections of poems on the possibilities of self love BY GABRIJELA SKOKO Managing MiC Editor

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The inherent politic of STEM: The weaponry of the DNA test ANAMIKA KANNAN Managing MiC Editor

Perhaps family is a set of relationships characterized by DNA or “blood,” as age-old proverbs may indicate. But this definition may not be so allencompassing; for one, it would render adoption illegitimate and negates what some of us consider our “chosen families.” When we shift our lens to Southeastern Asia, specifically Tibet, this rigidity surrounding the ways we define familial relationships becomes more complex. In Carole McGranahan’s essay “What is a Family? Refugee DNA and the Possible Truths of Kinship,” she discusses the story of Tashi, a Tibetan man who traveled as a refugee to Canada, leaving his wife and four children in a refugee camp in south Asia to await the legal process for later family reunification. The Canadian government, which employs DNA testing to verify claims of family relations (on the inaccurate basis that refugees are prone to lying and deceiving legal systems), asserted that Tashi would need to take a DNA test to prove that he was his childrens’ father, as he had claimed he was. When the results of the test returned, it was discovered that he was not the biological father of his children, indicating that his wife had an extramarital affair. This was the first time he had heard of this infidelity; yet, because the genetic father had never claimed nor met the children, Tashi had always been the father of his children. According to the Canadian immigration process, Tashi was untruthful and not the father of his children. But in Tibet, this test indicates nothing about the truth — or lack thereof — of Tashi’s fatherhood. The familial structure in Tibet can be described as patrilineal and sometimes polyandrous. Perhaps, though, assigning Western names and concepts to this may lead us astray in our understanding of Tibetan society. Non-genetic fathers may claim children that are not genetically related to them and, if not bound by marriage, genetic fathers can choose whether or not to claim their children. Whether or not children are absorbed into the patrilineage determines their roles in society and within the family. In a polyandrous family, wherein a Tibetan woman is married to a

set of brothers, all husbands are equally considered father by all her children. It is worth noting as well that extramarital affairs are not accepted in traditional Tibetan society and often result in physical punishment. But, knowledge of infidelity does not cancel out a father’s paternity of his children. Thus, family in Tibet much more than a biological marking — it is a system of care, kinship beyond blood and mutual understanding and service. DNA testing in the Western world is often the ultimate truth of fatherhood. TV shows, such as “Maury” and “The Jerry Springer Show,” have their premise entirely based on testing paternity genealogically. The moment that the test results are revealed, fathers (or nonfathers) jump for joy, revel in an I-told-you-so moment, or hang their heads in despair. And in that moment, they choose how to define their relationship with the child they may or may not have previously known — or at the least, they begin to wonder what they will do. This is a significant determinant of their fatherhood and their relationship (or lack thereof ) with the child. Understanding DNA testing as truth requires a rigid, medicalized lens, wherein the concept of family has entered the purview of medicine and is therefore intrinsically biomedical; in this medicalized perspective, family is defined strictly by genetic and biological indicators. Immigration processes in Canada, which require the use of DNA testing, are thus completely closed off to those who view their families and communities as anything other than biological. And as McGranahan argues, DNA testing relies on “categories of belonging that do not necessarily belong to the group being tested.” Canada’s family reunification process is more than simply a matter of truth versus lie; instead, it is a carefully exacted aim at determining worthiness based on Western conceptions and an actualization of harmful stereotypes and misconceptions about immigrants through biological tools. In Tashi’s story, family is medicalized, and institutions — in this case, the Canadian government and its immigration process — employ biopower (biological methods used to exert sociopolitical control over populations) to decide who is worthy of entry and livelihood. The biomedical perspective

employed by the immigration forces directly opposes the systems of collective care, family structure and lineage that exist in Tibet. The results of Tashi’s test were more than the results of paternity; they provided immigration officials a claim of power—a false notion that they had determined the absolute truth about Tashi’s family and that only they had the ability to determine this truth. As McGranahan notes, if DNA testing shows that a Tibetan parent and child are not genetically related as such, the Canadian government is not required to follow up on this claim. It becomes a burden that the applicant must take on to appeal the results of the test and provide substantial evidence through documentation that proves the familial relationship. But, in the case of Tashi and other Tibetan refugees, such documentation may not exist. In Tibet, birth and marriage certificates are not traditional processes; the legitimacy of birth, marriage, and identity are not determined by documents, as they are in Canada and in many cases, the Western world altogether. If these documents are unavailable to appeal the decision of the immigration office, the appeal process becomes reliant upon telling one’s narrative through an immigration attorney and from the letters of friends, acquaintances, and even Tibetan government officials. This process is often long and arduous, and requires notions of “proof” that may be inconsistent between these two nations across the globe from one another. Indeed, this truth in and of itself is inconsistent between Tibet and Canada. In Tibet, family is not so clear-cut; the truth of familial relationships is determined solely by those involved and is not a decision for the government. The lines between family and not-family are blurred within the system of community care and mutual aid that Tibetan society renders of utmost value. As the Canadian government and Western immigration offices define, family is a “yes” or “no,” a “true” or “false” determined by genealogical testing. When these worlds meet, with existing anti-immigrant rhetoric and bias on the part of the Canadian government, the Western refugee system is likely to employ its many loopholes that have been carefully constructed to restrict individuals and families from the lives they seek.

Initially, these poems were written in French, but they have been translated into English below for the sake of understanding. To read the original collection in French, visit MichiganDaily.com

Home is me. Home is me. Stubborn. Scared of your own Soul. so the Soul maintains residence behind flesh. Unsure if home should be insanity or if you are insane. Collecting remnants of human art and refiguring it into thought, And only the Conscience is maintained. I know I am insanity because You will not call me citizen — but what is insanity when defined by you, who will not even call me citizen. Kill me: Dirty country Dirty Water. Dirty Water. Dirty Water. Cleanse this skin of bullets springing off our brothers’ backs, into our mother’s homewe all return, yet we prefer to think of home nostalgically. “Remember spring.” We do not feel safe anymore so we cling onto season like it is our mother’s home. Dirty country sing. Dirty women come in spring. You see that we are thirsty for what is beneath us. Yet, we remain null of spring To drink from. To heal with. To bathe inSprung. Now void of communion, you force them to drink like bullock from spring. My brothers are not animals screaming “Kill me dirty, country pissing spring”. “Woe is me—” no, trigger is woe. See how sin brings spring and spring triggers Dirty Water — death. PANTHER PEOPLE’S PARTY Death is what you bring to thee. Death of an unforgiving self, Let me speak on what you have denied me. Actually, do not permit me, for I no longer seek your permission. Or your acceptance.

We will no longer waste our breaths, for now We are one person and one party. The people’s party. We are a mindset. We are a movement. We are an earth to build atop of. So, forget what they have taught you. Do not call them master, Master yourself. Remind them you are human. Tell them you disagree. Create life from your own soul. Fertilize freedom; new earth. You will be misnamed— but what you create will be understood. LOVE IN EDUCATION I am free at last— That is what you told me. Appease the man— This is what you meant. Redeem yourself in my expectation— This is what you meant. Lend me the fruits of your labor— This is what you meant. Accept your master as God; as savior— This is what you meant. Freedom is not for you— This is what you meant. I am not the fool— This is what I achieved. I am wiser than your wisdom— This is what I achieved. I am freer outside of you. But I will not give you thanks.

Design by Melissa Lee

A love letter to my nose NADA ELDAWY MiC Contributor

With your def ined cur ve, a bump at the bridge followed by a downward plunge, you took over my face, never f itting into what I thought was beautif ul. All around me were those cute button noses, slender with a gentle slope into a neat point. Even now, as I assess men, my eyes zero in on their noses, my mind telling me my f uture children deser ve a chance to inherit a nose they’ll love. I look in a mirror and my hand immediately migrates to

your tip, index finger pushing up gently and wondering “what if?” — the same hand whose thumb hovers over Snapchat stories of ‘non-surgical nose jobs’ whenever they (quite targetedly) show up on my feed. I often joke with my mom, cursing her for the genes that plopped you on my face. My mother — who has an identical copy of you on her face, adorned with a light dusting of freckles. When have I ever looked at her and thought she was any thing less than the most beautif ul person in the world? Have my eyes once seen her nose consume her face, as you do

the more I look at you? And why should I not afford you the same consideration? When I look in the mirror and my eyes inevitably zero in on you, I’ll tr y to see my mom. I’ll see her father, a man who passed away when she was 9 but whose pictures could easily be those of an old Eg yptian movie star. A lifetime of self-scrutiny imposed by deeply ing rained white, Eurocentric beaut y standards will be hard to undo. But you are my inheritance — a direct link to generations of my family before me. How could I look at you now with any thing but love?

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MRINALINI IYER | COLUMNIST

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Patriotism is overrated

uring a three-hour drive through the disastrous Bombay highways, my mom relayed the story of her citizenship ceremony. My parents became American citizens in 2005, but it came at a cost: They had to renounce their Indian citizenship. As “The Star-Spangled Banner” played in the courthouse, my mom grew misty-eyed as an integral aspect of her identity was replaced by that of a post-9/11 country where she felt uncomfortable wearing her cultural clothing in public. My sister and I exchanged glances of confusion as my mom continued by explaining that the Indian national anthem brought on a wave of patriotism in her, even today. Neither of us could imagine feeling so tied to our home country, nor the feeling of loss when unclasping yourself from your roots. I primarily think of myself as American. I was born less than 20 minutes from the University of Michigan campus and spent my childhood in small towns across Michigan. This is my home, and it always will be. Nevertheless, the feeling of intense patriotism that my mom feels for the place she was born has never resonated with me. At football games, I stand up out of respect for others and fear of retribution, not necessarily for the flag or because I feel the loyalty that sweeps the crowds. This country was not made for or by myself or my ancestors.

It’s possible that this lack of patriotism is generational. Only 32% of millennials believe that the United States is the greatest country in the world — a 16% drop from Generation X. Thus, it stands to reason that Generation Z would be even less patriotic than every previous generation. However, in America, Gen Z’s lack of patriotism may be due to its greater racial and ethnic diversity, as well as the higher number of immigrant families. Or, perhaps the growing criticism of the U.S.’s policies and institutions has contributed to a decreased sense of national pride. Nevertheless, it seems counterproductive to assimilation that a first-generation American like myself would feel such a deep disconnect with this increasingly diverse, melting pot of the world. Many would consider a lack of patriotism to be a fault of myself, my parents or even my education. Patriots are seen as the backbone of the country, the lifeblood of government and the basis for national pride. Naturally, patriotic sentiment has long been intertwined with wanting a country to succeed. Since the Cold War, patriotism has been considered necessary to be a true American. It was a tool to distinguish between those who belong in America and those who were threats. However, this crude, outdated idea of patriotism fails to recognize that it is no longer a dichotomy, but rather a spectrum of ideas about how people interact with their country and with Design by Yassmine El-Rewini

their fellow citizens. Patriotism no longer has any bearing on who does or doesn’t belong in America and shouldn’t be used as any measure of worth for an American. Over the past few years, members of my generation have had their eyes opened to the misdeeds of the U.S. It has become increasingly apparent that the financial freedom and “family values” for which America was once revered by its people were actually tools of oppression, designed to only uplift certain groups of people — namely wealthy white people. As people have come to these realizations, there have been calls for change across the country. But political parties on both sides of the aisle have co-opted patriotism as the way to restore unity to the country, which has only led to increased polarization as Republicans and Democrats alike believe that their definition of patriotism is the correct one. This tool of division is only doing what it was intended to do, and intense feelings of patriotism have not helped in restoring any sense of unity. Without this overwhelming allegiance clouding our collective vision, we would be able to look at this country through a more objective lens. Our love for this nation would be defined only by virtue of this being our home, the place where we have chosen to build our lives and not by some sense of American exceptionalism. Criticism of U.S. institutions and policies would be more poignant, and sensible foreign ideals might be able to permeate our unnecessarily thick skin. As a first-generation American, I am somewhere in the middle of the vast spectrum of patriotism. I see this country for what it is, but moreover, for what it can be. My parents came to this country for a better life, for education and for the promise of a bright future. And as an American, I am deeply invested in helping this country reach its full potential, regardless of my apparent lack of patriotic sentiment. I would not die for this country as it is now; I probably wouldn’t even mildly inconvenience myself for it. But I would die to make it better. Mrinalini Iyer can be reached at iyermili@umich.edu.

LYDIA STORELLA | COLUMNIST

Democrats should avoid sweeping progressive policy changes

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ith the victories of Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5, the Senate majority now belongs to the Democrats. Since the Democrats already control the House of Representatives and the presidency, the Democrats now have a unified government for the first time since 2011. Naturally, Democrats are excited about this prospect — especially having a Senate with a Democratic majority, which makes legislating far easier. They can bring bills to the Senate floor that otherwise wouldn’t have received a vote now that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is no longer the Senate Majority Leader, and they also should have the votes to pass such legislation. However, it’s easy for Democrats to dream of the policy that could be rather than the policy that should be. This election was a rejection of Donald Trump, not a rejection of conservatism or the traditional values of the Republican Party. By no means was it a vote for sweeping progressive policies. Although the Democrats maintained their majority in the House of Representatives, they lost seats, making this majority much slimmer than in the last session of Congress. The fact that Republicans gained seats in the House but lost the presidency is important because the House is the body that more closely represents individual voters. Voters have not abandoned conservatism or the Republican Party; they abandoned Trumpism. Individualism, limited government and republicanism are still valued by many American voters, especially those who split their ticket, voting for Joe Biden for president and for the Republican candidate for their congressional representative.

Similarly, in the Senate, the Democrats lost seats that they were expected to win, including seats occupied by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who both won their reelection campaigns. While the Democrats did successfully flip four seats, gaining a net three seats in the Senate, all of the flipped seats came from senators who were closely aligned with Trump: Martha McSally, Cory Gardner, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue all embraced Trump in their campaigns, and all lost to their Democratic challengers. In the Senate, ties to Trump in moderate or even center-right states doomed campaigns. The Senate, like the House, also has a small margin of dominance, the smallest possible: a 50-50 split with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker. Should the Republicans vote unanimously, a single “no” from the Democratic side would result in a “no” vote for that bill in the Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., would likely vote against any progressive legislation, as he comes from a deep red state and has voted with Republicans on consequential matters before. Progressive legislation would harm House Democrats who represent swing districts. Because House representatives are up for election every two years, they face an electorate that remembers their specific votes, especially votes on controversial bills and issues. If Democrats embrace far-left policies now, it will be at their peril come 2022. Representatives from moderate districts will almost certainly face strong challenges from more conservative, that is, Republican, candidates. Additionally, party members don’t always vote with their party — already this year, five Democrats voted against

reelecting U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as Speaker of the House. This is not to say that Democratic control of Congress isn’t a major win for the party. With McConnell out as Senate Majority Leader, the Democrats will be able to bring legislation to the floor for a vote that a Senate with McConnell would never have brought up. The most relevant example of this is the stimulus package, as McConnell refused to allow the Senate to vote on the Caring for Americans with Supplemental Help Act to give a $2,000 stimulus check to Americans, even though the bill was passed by the House. With a Democrat as the Majority Leader, the CASH Act will receive a vote in the Senate and will likely pass. Other actions a Democraticcontrolled Senate can take are appointing liberal judges to the courts, passing legislation to fight climate change and furthering former President Barack Obama’s health care law. The elections of Ossoff and Warnock are, without question, excellent for the Democrats. A Democrat-controlled House, Senate and presidency allow Biden to set the policy agenda and allow Congress to execute it. But just because the Democrats have the power to execute sweeping legislative change does not mean they should use it. Progressives in Congress will likely endorse major policy proposals such as Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, but these policies cannot be considered if Democrats want to maintain their congressional majorities in 2022 and keep a Democrat in the White House in 2024. Lydia Storella can be reached at storella@umich.edu.

JULIA MALONEY | COLUMNIST

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How a pair of sneakers represents American identity

eing the first to do something is a feat; it makes the accomplishment that much greater. For Vice President Kamala Harris, being a “first” can be considered one of her specialties. She is the first South Asian American senator in U.S. history, the first African American and South Asian American vice president in U.S. history and the first female vice president in U.S. history. Another topic in the recent discourse, however, is that she is the first politician to wear Chuck Taylors in the West Wing, boldly reinvigorating traditional political dress. To Harris, a sense of purpose and the means to accomplish it is epitomized by her Converse All Stars. In October 2020, Harris famously showcased her embellished white high-tops with badges pinned to the sides of her trainers. The messages included “Black Joy,” “Stop Hate” and “Love 2020,” nodding to the feelings of those in attendance to her Florida rally and the millions back home suffering from the loss of American lives as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as acts of racial injustice.

Throughout her grueling campaign, Harris stood wearing her self-titled “power pearls” and sneakers, confident that her political initiatives would soon take full stride. Yet the critics fixating on her clothing choices rather than policy proposals, assailing her style as distracting and trivial, make her Chuck Taylors all the more meaningful. Talking about her shoe choice is neither sexist nor distracting; it is instead a recognition of the sexism and judgment she pledges to overcome. Female politicians’ wardrobes have been a frequent topic of discussion and scrutiny, and are one thing that their male counterparts usually avoid press coverage about. While First Lady Jackie Kennedy was idolized for her iconic hats and colored sets, Michelle Obama was criticized for her inexpensive gowns and exposed arms. Whether praising or condemning, there is an inescapable gaze and assessment of women in politics’ physical appearance. Glass ceilings and the chains of fashion expectations are there for us to smash. Small acts of rebellion recognized by our nation’s biggest figures turn the initial fracture

into a successful breakage of these confinements. Harris’s shoes do matter, and what they represent is why she was elected as another “first.” They are not the traditional high heels common of a politician. They are not meant for presentation or special occasions. They are a new symbol. They are meant for action, productivity and doing. Although a pair of sneakers does not seem revolutionary at first glance, they are. The beauty of Chuck Taylors is that they evoke an authentic feel because they’re affordable sneakers etched in American history: a canvas sole with a rubber base, worn from the early 20th century until the modern-day. Converse sneakers were even exempt from the rubber rationing during World War II, as the American people viewed the iconic shoes as a central component to the American identity and protested against the ration. The growing influence of television and celebrity endorsements beginning in the 1950s was responsible for creating new sneaker archetypes: the athlete, the celebrity and the rebel without a cause.

Despite the famed sneaker’s shift in audience, its origin remains rooted in youth culture that has now moved to the mainstream. When speaking in an interview, Harris notes that “Chucks — whatever your background is, whatever language your grandmother spoke — you know, we all at some point or another had our Chucks.” Shedding light on American culture, Kamala Harris’s feet are firmly planted in our nation’s history. I myself own a pair of high-top Chuck Taylors and wear them frequently on campus. Prior to this year, I had not been aware of their history, nor that the shoes I had bought as a fashion statement would now be looked at as a part of a political revolution. Their significance is not limited to Election Day but instead applies to anyone seeking to be a “first” in their school, community or country. Adam Cohn, vice president of global brand design for Converse, shares, “The star chevron has been in use since the ’70s and we wanted to make it a major part of our identity — that part of the brief was clear: Let’s leverage an icon that’s part of our heritage that’s

Design by Beatrice Miller

also representative of moving forward.” Moving forward is representative of all genders, races, beliefs and orientations, of which Kamala

Harris is the exemplar. It is time to lace up. Julia Maloney can be reached at jvmalo@umich.edu.

Opinion

10 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

JULIAN BARNARD | COLUMNIST

Don’t let Biden forget about universal pre-k

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n the wake of a contentious “culture war” election, it is easy for important policy promises to be forgotten. Much of President-elect Joe Biden’s appeal to many of his supporters was that he is not Donald Trump. Still, Biden came with his own array of policy promises. Some of them were simple and required no apparent capital investment, such as Biden’s promise that his team will lead with “science and truth.” Many of the president-elect’s proposals, however, will require significant capital investments and political will. Biden’s promise of providing universal prekindergarten for all 3 and 4-year-olds falls in the latter category. A universal preschool program would be

sort of pre-elementary program, compared to over 90% of children in France, Israel, Germany and 11 other countries in the same age group. This disparity could have significant consequences for America’s place in the international order. Biden himself has claimed, “Any country that out-educates us is going to outcompete us.” Many children are deprived of a preschool education because of the cost — the median yearly price of child care in the U.S. has been calculated to be approximately $8,320. For a family living below the federal poverty line, up to a fifth of a family’s yearly income can be consumed through child care expenses. The benefits of universal preschool are not only

advantages a preschool education confers, universal pre-K also has economic benefits for the people who are not sitting in those little plastic seats: the parents. When preschool is taken care of for parents, they have greater freedom to fully participate in the American labor market. In Michigan alone, there are over 49,000 parents who had to quit their jobs or make significant cutbacks in participation because of child care problems, according to a 2016 survey. Losing this many workers has real economic implications. Over 49,000 fewer workers means that there are fewer people who are able to contribute to the economy in the forms of manufacturing capacity, a healthy labor market, state tax

Design by Lauren Kuzee

highly beneficial to American families; it offers lifelong skills, an immense societal benefit and dramatic financial opportunities for parents. Unfortunately, this is a promise that may be obscured by other, more politically advantageous issues. To understand the importance of a universal prekindergarten program, we must understand how many of our preschool-aged children are currently enrolled in prekindergarten programs. As of 2018, only 68% of 4-yearolds and 40% of 3-year-olds were enrolled in some sort of pre-primary program. These are worryingly low metrics and leave the United States far behind other developed nations. Less than 70% of Americans between 3 and 5 years old were enrolled in some

present for the poorest Americans — child care costs consume between 7% to 12% of a family’s income for most middle-class Americans as well. The benefits of preschool programs for 3 and 4-year-olds are significant. Children who are enrolled in preschool programs have been observed to repeat grades significantly less often, enroll in more honors classes and score better on standardized tests. The prevailing theory for why preschool is so important is that it offers an extra opportunity for children to become accustomed to the school environment while receiving beneficial stimulation at the same time. These gains are much harder to make up later in a student’s education. Aside from the developmental

revenues and more. There is also the matter of efficiency. Researchers estimated that every dollar spent on the city’s near-universal preschool yielded about two dollars worth of societal benefits. The development of self-regulation skills during the ages of 3 to 5 is crucial and is more costly to compensate for later in life. In the midst of economic calamity, and with an enormous federal deficit, it is a critical time to invest in policies that pay for themselves several times over and lay the foundation for a stronger next generation of Americans. Michiganders in particular should be at the frontlines of advocating for universal preschool. Many educators and legislators look fondly on Michigan’s Great Start Readiness

MADELYN VERVAECKE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU

Program, which has provided for the second year of kindergarten for many Michigan children. Michigan has seen the benefits for educating most of their 4-year-olds, but the end goal for preschool education should still be to provide for all 3 to 5-year-olds. While Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is pushing for universal preschool for 4-year-olds by the end of her term, Michiganders will still benefit from a broader, federal approach to universal preschool. Biden and his administration may need an additional push to put universal pre-K front and center. Neither Biden nor Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have tweeted (an arbitrary but still important metric) on the topic of universal preschool since July 2020. This topic has been obscured by many meritorious causes, but nonetheless should not be overlooked. Since the President-elect and Vice President-elect’s tweets last summer, the weakness of our nation’s child care infrastructure has been highlighted as millions of students fall behind in math, reading, etc. However, a president has a limited number of things that they can achieve. Though Biden comes into office with a clear mandate to captain a systemic recovery, his political purse nonetheless has a bottom. Former President Barack Obama, for instance, was very interested in expanding preschool, yet was met with a stony face from an unenthusiastic Congress. Biden will have a much better opportunity to affect change in pre-elementary education — unlike during the Obama years, universal preschool has many ardent supporters in Congress, such as U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-CT, the chair of the powerful House Appropriations subcommittee. Universal preschool has been demonstrated as a sound policy that will save Americans money in the long run while caring for our nation’s children. Even with Democratic control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, universal preschool legislation is unlikely to be enacted in the absence of strong, focused leadership. It will take passion from both the right and the left to ensure, amidst the ocean of change Biden hopes to enact, that this policy will stay in the spotlight. Julian Barnard can be reached at jcbarn@umich.edu.

ALEC COHEN/Daily

KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMNIST

Whitmer is fighting to create more opportunities for Michiganders

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Poor kids are just as bright ... as white kids.” When Joe Biden made this gaffe on Aug. 9, 2019, in response to a question about his education policy, I felt my skin crawl. While I think this was a genuine mistake in word choice, Biden’s comment had real resonance because it ref lects an America where your race and socioeconomic status are inextricably linked. Since schools are largely funded through property taxes, many majorityminority urban areas, especially Black and Hispanic ones, tend to have lowerquality schools and more financial hardship, which decreases their likelihood to obtain a postsecondary degree. This is a major reason why 54% of associate’s degrees and 63% of bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2018 belong to white graduates, while 36% of associate’s degrees and 25% of bachelor’s degrees belong to Hispanic and Black graduates combined. However, attainment disparities do not only fall on racial lines. Regional factors, especially the ruralurban divide, exacerbate the opportunity gap. As of 2015, 16.7% of rural families lived in poverty and therefore experience increased hardship in attending college. Thus Michigan, a state with significant proportions of urban Black communities (13.4%) and rural white communities (24.1%), has many institutional barriers for its citizens to attend college, contributing to only 44% of Michiganders between ages 16 and 64 having a postsecondary degree or equivalent certificate as of 2016. Enter Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In her State of the State address on Feb. 12, 2019, she announced the MI Opportunity Initiative, which seeks to increase the percentage of Michiganders with a postsecondary degree to 60% by 2030. One of the main methods of her threepronged approach is the MI Opportunity Scholarship, which g uarantees every Michigan graduating high schooler two years of free tuition at any community college in the state, regardless of means. It also provides a two-year scholarship of $2,500 per year to any public or private non-profit fouryear university in Michigan, provided that the student averaged at least a 3.0-grade point average and is from a household making less than $80,000 per year. This policy is modeled off of the Oregon Promise and Tennessee Promise scholarship programs, which both guarantee free community college to graduating high schoolers, and their success signals that the MI Opportunity Scholarship could have similar success in increasing enrollment at community colleges. According to Gov. Whitmer, the target population is Michigan adults as a whole, so the scholarship will likely serve that population well since the Oregon Promise increased across-the-board enrollment between 4% and 5% at community colleges.

Similarly, the Tennessee Promise increased enrollment 4% in its first year and sustained that rate in the following year. Additionally, the Tennessee Promise shows an increase, albeit small, in enrollment for minorities. While they are not the stated targets of this scholarship program, increasing the attendance of minority and rural students should be of paramount importance to lawmakers, and these programs alone do not seem to accomplish this goal to a large extent. Economically, the MI Opportunity Scholarship will cost $80 million to $100 million, but the upfront cost will be offset by the future economic benefits of having more educated professionals in the state. These professionals will be paying more taxes because they make larger sums of money and they will stimulate the economy because of more entrepreneurship, disposable income and community involvement. This benefit may be deferred, but it ultimately mitigates the upfront costs. The most salient argument against this policy is that political support is going to be difficult to gather in the state legislature, especially when Democrats control every statewide elected office while the Republicans control both houses of the legislature. This legislature has already made life exceedingly difficult for Whitmer’s administration, having blocked her environmental executive order and bringing the state to the brink of a government shutdown in her first year in office. This partisan environment is not particularly conducive to deal-cutting, but this bill could garner bipartisan support in the near future, taking inspiration from the Tennessee Promise program, which was passed by a Republican legislature with bipartisan support and signed by a Republican governor. If Gov. Whitmer and the Democrats make this a chief legislative priority, they could likely bring Republicans along, because everyone should be able to agree on educating our state’s children. It is just a question of expending political capital to pass the policy. Now, while I recognize that the MI Opportunity Scholarship has perils, it is nevertheless a step in the right direction toward mitigating harmful impacts of economic inequality and increasing educational achievement across the board. If this law passes, Michiganders will see the positive effects in the foreseeable future, which will make it easier to pass legislation further expanding funding for community colleges and incentivizing achievement in four-year programs. These laws can finally help Michigan close the opportunity gap, because all kids really do deserve just as much of a chance as the white kids. Keith Johnstone can be reached at keithja@umich.edu.

Opinion

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MEERA KUMAR | COLUMNIST

The aftershock of a COVID-19 semester

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n the overcast day of Nov. 22, 2020, like most occupants of the University of Michigan’s residence halls, I stuffed my belongings into cardboard boxes and dragged them to my mother’s car outside Bursley Residence Hall’s entrance. Once finished, I began the journey back home. Typically, college freshmen would be distraught at the prospect of leaving campus, their friends and newfound freedom. However, all I felt was relief. I especially took comfort in the fact that I wouldn’t be receiving the dreaded daily emails informing me that my building had multiple COVID-19 cases. The emails came at about 10 a.m. Often, they arrived during classes, with the “Notification of Positive COVID-19 Case in Bursley” subject line making me involuntarily grimace on Zoom calls. While reading the emails, I’d pray under my breath for no more cases to be found within my hall. Every time I left my room to get meals, I felt anxious knowing the virus was found at multiple locations in the building. Even going to the bathroom felt terrifying. If I saw someone brushing their teeth at the same time as me, anxiety spiked. Wanting to keep safe, I strictly adhered to COVID-19 restrictions, making it difficult to get to know people in my hall, which made the entire experience more taxing — it felt like our health was in strangers’ hands. According to the University’s Campus Blueprint, there have been 687 reported cases in the residence halls since March 8, 2020. Bursley Hall had 38 reported cases, while South Quad Residence Hall and Mary Markley Residence Hall had 158 and 160 reported cases, respectively. Over the summer, when I was deciding whether to live on-campus in the fall, it seemed obvious to stay in the residence halls. Everyone in my family was fighting for space at home and online classes felt incredibly taxing from my childhood bedroom. Although I was nervous about COVID-19, I convinced myself that University Housing’s plans would be safe — I was desperate to move after staying in isolation with my family for so long. If I followed housing rules and used enough hand sanitizer, I would be fine. Right? Wrong. The University’s seeming lack of a public health plan with little to no regular COVID-19 testing caused a public health disaster in the residence halls, jeopardizing students’ and community members’ physical health. In fact, another side effect of the housing situation was extremely strained mental health, both for myself and many other college students. The regular freshman feelings of loneliness and confusion were magnified — in a study conducted by Texas A&M University, 71% of students indicated increased stress and anxiety due to a COVID-19 outbreak. Such stress and anxiety can only be exacerbated by being confined to a tiny, enclosed room while trying to finish difficult online classes. LSA freshman Ayden Makar notes that “(residence hall life) was

often lonely … and it got much worse once it got cold and dark outside.” While leaving my room felt horrifying, staying inside was the opposite — hollow. I was completely alone — like many others, I was assigned to a double, but my intended roommate chose to remain at home. I spent my days entirely by myself, hiding away from the chaos outside and repeating my days in a hazy blur. I spent all of my time trying to pass difficult yet intellectually unstimulating online classes. People only existed on a screen. I was lonely and unhappy. Towards the end of the fall semester, the University announced that they wouldn’t reopen residence halls for the winter semester except for students with necessary circumstances. Residence halls would only be single residences. Additionally, the University finally decided to start mandatory COVID-19 testing for all residents once a week. However, their efforts were too little, too late. The University is now known for its poor public healthbased decisions made by both the administration and its students that resulted in a massive outbreak. Many firstyear students moved back home with distrust in the institution. First-generation and low-income students will undoubtedly feel the results of this emotionally isolating and physically dangerous experience the most. According to a report by Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a higher education consulting firm, COVID-19 has changed the ability of at least 22% of families to pay for college. Due to the pandemic’s economic effects, many people are struggling to provide for themselves, let alone pay hefty increased tuition and room and board bills. More families are in a financially vulnerable position, and when the college experience received is of such low quality, many feel discouraged from going back to college. Lastly, the “freshman experience” is often discussed as a shared experience where people experience their first taste of freedom, attend parties and start discovering their identities. The current freshman class won’t get to enjoy this experience, and our entire college experience will be significantly changed because of COVID-19 — to us, the University of Michigan has started to symbolize something different. The Class of 2024 knows of the University not for its stellar academics, student life or sports, but rather its public health disasters, poor treatment of Graduate Student Instructors and difficult online classes. The University is in uncharted territory, and their recent policies — or lack thereof — have had terrible effects. It’s impossible to rely on the University to assure one’s safety and well-being. Now, it is the University’s job to earn back student and community trust by ensuring that our health and mental wellbeing is being addressed and supported to their best ability. Meera Kumar can be reached at kmeera@umich.edu.

Design by Lauren Kuzee

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 11

ZOE ZHANG | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT ZOEZHANG@UMICH.EDU.

JESS D’AGOSTINO | COLUMNIST

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Validate body positive change in 2021

s we enter the new year of 2021, there is a unique energy in the air. It feels like the entire universe and cosmos are collaboratively wishing for concerts, crowded planes to faraway places and intimate reunions with loved ones devoid of this overarching fear of contraction and spread of disease. With the hope of widespread vaccinations and eventual development of herd immunity, this future has become a much more tangible reality; escaping the confinement of a quarantined, TikTok-heavy summer of wishful thinking, the new year resurrects the possibility of a return to a preCOVID-19 yesterday, or better yet, a COVID-19-free tomorrow. This concurrence with a dawn of a new year introduces something in desperate need of analysis: New Year’s resolutions. New Year’s resolutions are commonly considered the opportunity to change your way of life; when a new year begins, it creates a faux blank slate on which new habits or hopes can be established. A great majority of resolutions are wellness or fitness-related, which sparks controversy among some who argue that a goal to lose weight or adopt a “healthy lifestyle” is merely a manifestation of the societally-perpetuated skinny ideal — something that has been shoved

down our throats since the beginning of time. However, I argue that it is time to normalize wanting to change your habits as long as it is for a justifiable reason far beyond that of conforming to a societal standard. Arguably even more important than a person’s motivation is their chosen methodology for achieving this goal. Further, if it is a matter of choosing healthier foods, striving to workout and increasing daily hydration, that should not be shunned by hardcore #BodyPositivity influencers. However, if the chosen method even minorly involves excessive restriction or disordered eating, that reflects a far different problem than just resolving to lose weight. While #BodyPositivity and #Fitspiration aim to empower their largely female audience to be proud and confident in their own skin, there lies severely harmful rhetoric within the less prevalent communities like #thinspiration or #proAna internet bases. This must be underscored and understood. Thinspiration and Pro-Ana (proanorexia) groups on the internet are extremely harmful and social media platforms like Instagram have taken steps to ban hashtags and block posts that perpetuate this movement. However, the mere existence of these communities represents deep-seated problems that society has propagated

through many different vessels. The problem lies here: #BodyPositivity should be the freedom to choose how to feel in your body. Stretch marks, loose skin and all — it should not be a matter of comparison to determine your self-worth. Frankly, the underlying message is an important reminder I have to give myself as I traverse the artificial world of Snapchat filters that reduce the size of my nose and editing applications that can clear any imperfections on my skin. While I would argue the majority of #BodyPositivity members are aligned with these “healthier” ideologies, there are members of this community who judge and degrade other women who post their weight loss goals and results. They are told that you cannot be body positive and simultaneously want to change something about yourself. This is inherently untrue. Every time I enter the gym, I do so with the goal of gaining strength and endurance. However, I would be lying if I said I did not also leave the gym with the hopes that my efforts will provide me comfort in my clothes and a toned appearance. The imperative nature of differentiating between health and aesthetics must be emphasized. In a world where people strive to look like celebrities, we must first acknowledge that beauty media icons

like the Kardashians or Jenners did not achieve the results we see on their Instagram feed with merely a hard workout or a good facial. We cannot resolve to achieve these results without recognizing that they were obtained through expensive and time-consuming means. Having said this, there is nothing wrong with getting plastic surgery as long as it is medically safe. This fits within my belief that the ability to change something is a part of what #BodyPositivity really means. I strive to argue on a moral basis that the ability to change something about yourself is not mutually exclusive from loving who you are. It is human nature to want to better yourself and it is your choice alone how or if that applies to you. As we enter this new year, it is the choice of each individual what they opt to leave behind in 2020 and how they choose to enter 2021. Whether that means you are content as you are, or you want to get Botox or you want to swear off makeup altogether, #BodyPositivity should allow and encourage the freedom to choose. As long as the methods taken are healthy and the justification is for more than conforming to a societal norm, why should anybody else have a say? Jess D’Agostino can be reached at jessdag@umich.edu.

SHUBHUM GIROTI | COLUMNIST

If you genuinely care about BLM, follow CDC guidelines

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his past summer marked a period of time in which support of the Black Lives Matter movement reached a focal point. We all saw the outpouring of support on Twitter, Instagram stories and news platforms, but fast forward to today and Black Lives Matter has simply become a slogan for many young people. Black and minority populations in the United States have historically been both oppressed and suppressed. Many of these injustices came to light during the summer, leading many young people to take to the streets and demand equality — especially when it came to police brutality. However, many people neglected to acknowledge there was anything deeper than the injustices these groups face at the hands of the police. While police brutality is an important and legitimate part of the structural racism in this country, there are other factors that are just as important. Much of the overlooked inequity lies in redlining, Jim Crow laws, education policy, food deserts, gentrification, criminal justice discrepancies and, most currently, COVID-19 and the treatment of Black people within the American health care system. It is no secret that Black people in this country have been discriminated against in health care due to various individual biases and structural issues. A study conducted by The Health Care Financing Review found that there have historically been inequities in the health care system

which have contributed to systemic racism, highlighted by higher rates of morbidity and mortality among Black people than among white people for most indicators of physical health. These inequities have been accentuated by the ongoing pandemic. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that Black Americans are 4.7 times more likely to be infected with the coronavirus than white Americans, putting them at an increased risk of serious illness or death, not to mention disproportionately exposing them to long term impacts and economic insecurity. This increased risk derives from the inequities in care traditionally afforded to Black patients versus white patients, such as denying pain medication and rushing through their care, as well as the comparatively high rate of Black Americans who suffer from preexisting conditions. Remember last summer when your friends posted a black square on their Instagram feeds to show their support for the movement, followed by maskless selfies with a new friend every day? The irony is evident. The same people who would preach about the importance of protecting Black lives often had no intention of taking any substantive action to accomplish that goal. Instead, they were putting the people they purported to be advocating for in grave danger. Those who continue to disregard the pandemic can no longer claim to be allies to the movement when they play a key role in perpetuating

structural racism in this country. When we returned to school in August, the problems only worsened. It is no secret that the University of Michigan has struggled to contain the virus — numerous articles have highlighted the role of both students and the University in this failure. Once students came back to campus, massive parties quickly ensued. Under normal circumstances, this would merely be another weekend at the University. However, this semester, those parties were superspreader events which led to a surge in cases, some of which ended up permanently harming members of our community. I’m sure we can all name at least one individual who posted “Black Lives Matter” over the summer on their Instagram story and then, just three months later, posted pictures in a jam-packed living room kicking CDC guidelines to the curb in exchange for a little bit of fun with their friends. While they may not suffer any hardship from the virus themselves, many minorities in the community do not have this privilege and are more susceptible to negative outcomes. This begs the question, do individuals actually support this movement? Or is it merely a slogan to them, one that they can flaunt so they look good on social media? One of the biggest actions individuals can take right now, if they truly believe that Black lives matter, would be following CDC guidelines: Stay away from large social gatherings, wear a mask and allow health care professionals to allocate

resources to the communities who need it the most. Since the advent of social media, the prevalence of performative activism has been pervasive. Because of this, the events this summer rubbed me and many others the wrong way. Performative activism is loosely defined as being an advocate on social media or in conversation, but not following through with those platitudes in their actions. It was almost universally agreed upon among people our age that police brutality and racism have no place in this country. However, when it was time for many to finally step up for the minority communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19 by following CDC guidelines, they prioritized themselves and their own pleasure over the pain of others. This is textbook performative activism and selfishness. It is time for people to realize that when they disregard guidelines, they are endangering human life, deepening the racial divide in this country and saying that Black lives, in fact, do not matter to them — all so they could get drunk in a dimly lit room with people they will never see again after four years. The question one must ask themselves is whether their support for Black Americans stops when it inconveniences them, or if they truly intend to be an ally to a historically marginalized community. If so, then they should act accordingly. Shubhum Giroti can be reached at sgiroti@umich.edu.

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12 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021

For the chance of knowing something

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

BY ANNIE KLUSENDORF, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

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EW HAMPSHIRE | Seven people, clad in sleeping bags and down jackets, are gathered in the tiny cabin atop Mt. Cabot, an elevation of 4,170 feet. Outside, the White Mountains roll for miles, sliding in every direction after hours of rain. Inside, there’s one picnic table, four large plywood bunks and clothes drying on every available surface. The conversation drifts from directions to the nearest water source to hypothermia to poetry. Each student was instructed to bring a few poems, found in the camp library, that address the concept of the unknown. Four miles and three summits ago, the group had camped at Unknown Pond. They’d spent the evening reading short stories over the fire, fanning it with a frisbee to ensure its smoky survival in the damp forest. Now, the seven crowd around the picnic table, journals open and headlamps on. After someone pulls the instant hot pack from the first aid kit so one student can warm his hands, class begins. Tonight, the students are far from Ann Arbor, Mich., the quintessential college town home to the University of Michigan, and instead are deep in the New Hampshire wilderness. Sitting in this cabin is a privilege. They submitted essays, sat for interviews, paid tuition and drove across the country to be here. I suppose I should say “we” because the student peeking out of a sleeping bag reading poetry by David Budbill is me. We were the 45th class spending our spring semester on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee for the New England Literature Program. The 40 of the 53 of us (40 students, 13 instructors) were there to earn nine English credits in six weeks. Former Facebook interns bunked with medical school hopefuls and creative writing majors; the instructors ranged from published authors to a hairdresser, a law school applicant and an English professor. We filled our days with Emerson and Thoreau, Dickinson and Glück, Frost and Frederick Douglass — and with scrubbing toilets, baking bread, splitting wood, building fires, pitching tents, skinny dipping and writing of this world we’d created, our newfound love. Absent from this world was any form of modern technology, recorded music, alcohol or communication with the outside, other than through letter writing. It might be odd, but the recipe has proven successful and remained largely unchanged for 45 years. What is alternative education? The term “alternative education,” which can be “broadly defined as educational activities that fall outside the traditional K-12 curriculum” according to National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, has typically been reserved for students who are at risk of failing school: 35 states associate it with students who have behavioral problems. While such programs, who focus on the outdoors as a method of rehabilitation, exist, this reservation implies a correlation between “alternative” and “problem” — that those who don’t thrive in a traditional classroom are the issue, instead of questioning how everyone could possibly succeed in the same classroom. But NELP requires an entry fee, literally and figuratively, and every admitted student counts themselves as lucky. So, there’s a huge spectrum of alternative education, and the terminology can be confusing. But as the definition explains, it can really be anything. NELP is only one of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of alternative education programs in the United States, and it’s not even the only one at the University of Michigan. The University also offers Camp Davis, a geological station just outside Jackson Hole, Wyo., and the Biological Station in Pellston, Mich. Both programs provide Michigan students a break from the traditional classroom structure and pull them across the country towards their subjects’ source: Walden pond for Thoreau readers and the Teton peaks for geologists. Camp Davis operates on a rolling basis, meaning that classes drive out west from Ann Arbor one at a time, and periodically leave camp for one to three-day field trips into Yellowstone or City of

Rocks, Idaho. The professors, many of whom have been making the trek for years, bring their families and dogs, and every so often a graduate student instructor’s significant other will turn up for a weekend. One evening in July 2018, there were over a hundred people — more than the mess hall could hold — so the kitchen staff threw an outdoor barbecue. A few weeks later, at the end of the season, only half of one class remained at the camp (the other half had gone camping), so the kitchen donned freshly-cleaned aprons and cooked a three-course French dinner. Though the kitchen staff was mostly U-M students looking for an excuse to live in the mountains (I know because I worked there in 2017 and 2018), meal flexibility is representative of the camp’s ethos. The alternative education umbrella is wide. At the Alzar School, high school sophomores and juniors spend half their time at the Alzar campus in Cascade, Idaho and the rest in Patagonia, Chile, kayaking, backpacking and skiing their way through a fully accredited semester. Kristin Bierle founded Alzar with her husband, Sean, in 2004. The couple started out running one to three-week programs in the U.S. and Chile as they worked toward their vision. “When we sat down looking at the school, and what we need, what we wanted education to mean, we saw tremendous opportunities for growth and leadership development at the intersection of really engaging academics with cultural exchange,” Bierle said in a phone interview with The Daily. The school typically has 40 students per semester, many of whom haven’t spent much time in the outdoors (in fact, all three programs don’t emphasize previous outdoor experience upon entry, though enthusiasm for leaving your comfort zone is a requirement). Alzar instructors teach the regular high school classes — honors and Advanced Placement math, science, English, Spanish and history — but are also leading expeditions, traveling internationally with the students and pairing the outdoors with the class material to teach leadership skills. “We’re not an organization where you’re going to have someone with a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard, who has been teaching the AP physics class for 25 years,” Bierle said. “I think that’s a tremendous educator, and there’s tons of space in the educational landscape for that educator to exist and it’s really important, but for our model, that’s not where our power comes from.” Her ideology is echoed in most alternative education programs, but specifically at Deep Springs College, which calls itself a “unique institution of higher learning.” L.L. Nunn, an electricity mogul turned philanthropist and education experimenter, founded the school in 1917 around three pillars: academics, manual labor and student self-government. Total student enrollment caps out at 30, and the school isolates itself in Deep Springs Valley, Calif. There is no set form for what an educator looks like. Kristin Fisher, who led the Unknown Pond trip, has taught at NELP for the past five years and, like most of the instructors, is a program alum herself. She’s been in almost every kind of classroom throughout her teaching career. “When I’m planning a class, especially when we’re outside, I’m planning for a five-hour chunk of time. And I have to scout where we’re going and I have to know about the weather and I have to make sure that students are prepared with gear,” Fisher said in an Ann Arbor coffee shop, in February of 2020. “This is stuff that I don’t need to do in a classroom. I’m taking care of bodies. And in a classroom, I’m taking care of minds a little bit more.” But what does it look like? he NCEE’s study found four criteria to measure alternative education programs by: “whom the program serves, where the program operates, what the program offers, and how the program is structured.” Between Camp Davis, Deep Springs College, Alzar School and NELP, there were a few important similarities: Class sizes are small and instructor-tostudent ratios are high. They’re structured more

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like a community than a classroom, and the goal is to offer more than educational learning. They’re selective, and students want to be there. *** U.S. Highway 191 winds its way north through the rolling Gros Ventre wilderness, toward Jackson and the sharp peaks of the Teton range. It’s punctuated by turn-offs to ranches with names like Bourbon Whiskey, Broken Arrow and Spotted Horse. Like NELP, the trip to Hoback, Wyoming begins in a U-M van, five students each. Camp Davis’ driveway is signaled by its hanging wooden sign, emblazoned with the University’s block ‘M,’ but anyone will tell you it’s the large metal moose, property of Bourbon Whiskey, that declares the geology students have made it. From above, the driveway looks like someone draped a ribbon across the land. It’s a full mile of packed dirt and gravel road with a 15 mph speed limit. On the group’s third day of driving west, a caravan of tired strangers inches their way toward Mt. Anne and the small camp tucked in at the base. Even though all four programs are housed in the realm of alternative education, they operate differently. Camp Davis, Alzar and Deep Springs have campuses designed for educational use, meaning they have classrooms, labs and computers for some lessons. The rest take place wherever the instructors deem appropriate. At Alzar, that means anything from English class on the banks of the Payette River, though an empty classroom is nearby, to learning about environmental stewardship in the woods with a drill in hand. Camp Davis students chatter about their upcoming Yellowstone trip over the morning’s scrambled eggs and bacon. An hour later, they’re running across the driveway, towing tents and hiking boots and the occasional floatie for relaxing after class. Unlike the other three, NELP doesn’t have a permanent space. All of its materials — tents and camping equipment, kitchen utensils and hundreds of books for the camp library among other things — are packed into a shipping container for the winter. All 53 members of the community participate in Work Day, where the camp transforms into a working, educational space. In my six weeks there, I attended class on three different docks, in the woods, in a tent on a backpacking trip, in the camp kitchen and taught my optional, student-led elective class in a treehouse. All four programs also emphasize isolation. Though Camp Kabeyun had perfect cell service and sat only a few miles from two towns, NELP’s world rarely extended beyond the camp’s grounds. Just across Lake Winnipesaukee sat our flashing green light of civilization, visible and audible all hours of the day. We were self-isolating. “We value hard work and simple living at NELP,” the educational philosophy explains. “As a way to build a solid foundation for our intellectual explorations during the program, free of unnecessary distractions.” As it turns out, reading that sentence and living it were two very different things. During the seven-week academic semesters at Deep Springs, no one is allowed in or out of the campus, except the student driver. Camp Davis students are allowed to leave only on their off days and at their professors’ discretion. NELP students can drive into town once a week for supplies or stop on the way back from a backpacking trip. Alzar students live and study on campuses on two continents, but the focus rarely leaves those two places unless it’s an expedition. And, of course, physical isolation is just the first step. Such small, remote communities are key to tight-knit, highfunctioning ones. “You just have to have higher expectations of your students. They’re embedded in it. They don’t get to go home,” Fisher said. “And that’s a privilege. That’s a privilege to be able to do without — some people need to go home.” During the last week of NELP, I attended Maya West’s class on Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” in the art room. Maya has been teaching at NELP for years and was probably in the double digits with this text, but because this wasn’t a lecture, the lesson changed every time. A handful of us sat on the freshly stained porch, frustrated with each other

and with what felt like a book devoted to contradictions. Across the camp, another instructor rang the bell to signal that class was over, and the group split off into different directions to unwind. Maya and I walked to the kitchen together (for week five, we both worked for the lunch crew). “Honestly, where does Thoreau get off?” I asked, exasperated. “He comes from a huge seat of privilege to be able to refuse government services on the grounds that he, himself, is in a position of not needing it.” Maya swung open the screen door as Sayali Amin, a fellow student, walked in from the mess hall. A rising junior in LSA who splits her time between studying neuroscience, English and working in The Daily’s newsroom, she’d taped the NELP flyer to her refrigerator weeks before she applied. As we went through the walk-in fridge for leftovers, heated-up stew and washed lettuce, our frustration with Thoreau’s essays spilled over into the cooking. We kept poking at his ideas, asking questions while chopping vegetables, until we plated the food and I felt like I’d finally cracked open the meaning of his writing. “Learning never ended,” Amin said months later on the couches of The Daily newsroom. “Which was really cool. It just kind of bled through every part of your day, like into your meals and into cooking and into cleaning and everything that I really appreciated where it just never felt isolated. It never felt super concentrated and it never felt overwhelming.” The emphasis on community in alternative education landscapes is essential to the entire operation. NELP and Deep Springs thrive on a co-op style of living, where everyone contributes and cultivates the living environment. At Deep Springs, work shifts divide up the farm, ranch and everyday chores. Each rotation typically lasts for two months. “The labor pillar is valued most for its pedagogical function,” the college explains. It’s designed to harbor responsibility, trust, leadership, and appreciation for everything in your community. NELP conducts interviews during the application process, but I didn’t realize until after that it was mostly to see who would — and wouldn’t —thrive in such a small community. There is no invisible janitorial or kitchen staff to ensure camp runs smoothly and food appears when the dinner bell is rung. “There’s an obvious necessity to the work we do here,” Michael Leger, a 2016 Deep Springs graduate, explained about the school. “Cows need to be fed. The garbage needs to be taken out. Eggs need to be rinsed so that they can be used for breakfast. You need to take your responsibilities seriously because there are immediate and urgent consequences if you don’t do your job well.” These programs are framed as educational experiences, with the understanding that education doesn’t come solely from classes. At Deep Springs, current students choose the next class, and about 200-300 people apply for 12-15 spots. After writing six essays and sitting for interviews, a small portion of the pool spends a few days at the school. They mimic Deep Springs life to see if it’s the right fit for them. Maybe, more importantly, it’s a test to see if they’re the right fit for Deep Springs. All of these programs assemble a class of strangers, place them into an isolated area, add on pressures like academics, a new environment and shared responsibilities, then use whatever happens as teaching moments. With that community comes redesigned relationships, specifically between students and teachers. Sometimes, own the third day of a backpacking trip, an instructor gets tired. They’re hungry, someone in the group twists their ankle and everyone’s frustrated. The instructor is only human, and that’s just as much of a learning opportunity as when a professor lectures to a roomful of scribbling hands. It’s just different material.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

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Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 13

Constructing a culture: Dilemmas of first and second-gen Americans

BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

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risa Lico grew up in Ravonik, Albania in a tiny village surrounded by mountains. For the first eight years of her life, she lived on a farm, in a twobedroom house with 12 other family members. They grew their own food and produced their own milk and cheese, traveling to the nearby city of Korçë only in the wintertime when they needed groceries. Until moving to the United States in 2008, Irisa had never met a Black or Asian person. She had never been exposed to any culture other than her own. “In my village, we only had one shade of (makeup) foundation because everybody looked the same,” Irisa told me during a Zoom call last week. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and Irisa and I were chatting about culture — hers, Albanian; mine, Bulgarian. As she called in from her parents’ house in Westland, Mich., and I from my college apartment in Ann Arbor, Mich., we laughed over our loud families, the bowl-cuts we endured as children and the cryptic recipes our mothers have shared with us. (What does “adding a finger” of something even mean?) As a child of immigrants, I have recently been contemplating which parts of my cultural background I can claim as my own and how my identity will change as I move out of my parents’ home. While I’m bilingual and consider myself in touch with my Bulgarian side, I’m not sure if I will choose to reside in Bulgaria, let alone have children with another Bulgarian. And though starting my own family is still very much a distant event, I feel a pressure looming: Will my family’s Bulgarian heritage

— in language, tradition, identity — end with me? I wondered if other first- or second-generation Americans feel the same. For those who immigrated here, was facing assimilation a choice between remaining loyal to old traditions or fully adapting to American values? Did they have to pick one culture to reign over the other, or do they exist in perfect balance? For those like me, who are born and bred in the U.S., do they worry they are too far removed from their parents’ culture to properly pass down that legacy? Irisa, who has lived in the U.S. for over a decade, described how changing her political and social mindset was necessary evolution, albeit one that took a number of years to accomplish. “I was eight years old (when I moved to the U.S.). I remember being so anti-everything. I think I was even a Republican in 2008,” she said with a laugh. She explained that like many rural Albanians, her conservatism was largely borne out of a lack of exposure to anything different from what is expected. “Racial issues, issues within the LBGT community — I was not exposed to those kinds of conflicts,” she said. “I was just in Albania where ‘race wasn’t a thing’, and ‘sexuality wasn’t a thing’.” As she spoke, I had a hard time envisioning Irisa as a child eagerly waving around a McCain flag. Irisa, an LSA Junior majoring in International Studies and Middle East Studies, describes herself today a democratic socialist, mentioning that “liberal isn’t left enough”. But as she explained moving from an Alba-

nian village of about 1,000 people to metro Detroit, that juxtaposition of past and current beliefs made a little more sense. “I understand why Albanians think the way they do back home,” Irisa said. “But coming to the U.S. and learning, and going to a super diverse school... having my best friends from all different cultures — they taught me so much about their identities and the issues that they face in their own communities.” It’s an inspiring point, and while listening to her, I felt within me a small twinge of patriotism. Indeed, the U.S. is a melting pot, a salad bowl, a meeting point — whatever you want to call it. We are a nation built by immigrants and home to nearly 45 million of them. There are over 350 languages spoken within our borders. Our economy depends on the contributions of immigrants. Despite the hateful and exclusionary rhetoric of former U.S. President Donald Trump and his followers, a majority of Americans still believe in a diverse, welcoming nation. For Irisa, that diversity is one of the few tethers that make her feel connected — and even proud — to be an American. “I appreciate America in terms of the different cultures that I’ve learned about, and that makes me proud to be an American,” Irisa said. “But with anything else — I don’t have a strong connection to the U.S... I don’t want to live here for the rest of my life.” I wondered if that was an easy conclusion to come to. Were there other aspects of American culture that would be hard to leave behind? “There’s no culture,” she said. ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY

“What is the American culture? Like, McDonald’s?” *** One of the things Batuhan Akçay misses most from home is getting together with his friends for “cry sessions.” Batuhan, a first-year master’s student studying computer science, moved to the U.S. from Turkey four years ago to attend the University of Michigan as an undergraduate. When we spoke over Zoom, it was nighttime, and he laughed as I probed for more information about the aforementioned “cry sessions.” “Turkish people like to listen to a lot of sad songs,” Batuhan said. “We have these kinds of cry sessions with friends — some people do cry, some people don’t. But like, we love being in a really romantic, depressing environment sometimes, listening to music.” I think I would love Turkey, I thought to myself — I am also a fan of creating romantic, depressing environments. But as our conversation progressed, and laughter turned into seriousness, I noticed parallels between Batuhan’s perception of the U.S. and those of the other firstand second-generation Americans I had spoken to. “When I was in Turkey, I never thought about cultures that much, because Turkey is very mono-cultured,” Batuhan said. “A lot of the people are very similar and act in certain ways, but when I came to the U.S., when I saw people from many different backgrounds, many cultures, then I realized the importance of cultures and how (culture) affects people’s lives.” Like Albania, Turkey is relatively homogenous, with the majority of the population being Muslim and ethnically Turkish. For this reason, Batuhan explained, many people share similar ideologies and have trouble understanding issues faced by minorities. Again, this struck me. When I had been thinking about my Bulgarian culture, and how to maintain it, I figured this would be an attempt done in spite of the U.S., not by way of it. But talking to Batuhan and Irisa made me wonder if culture is best celebrated when it evolves — not when it is carefully polished and delicately handed down to the next generation. Maybe, I thought, my hybrid version of Bulgarian-American culture is actually a necessary one. “The way I view life and people and cultures is that some of them are better in some ways, some of them are worse in some ways,” Batuhan said. “To be able to survive in a different environment with people from different cultures, different mindsets, you have to adapt yourself … some of the things that come from your culture — you will have to let them go.” Batuhan said that one aspect of Turkish culture that he rejects is a patriarchal mindset. “Turkey is very patriarchal,” Batuhan said. “I would say like a

typical Turkish man, they would want their wife to be at home, just cooking or cleaning, taking care of the kid.” He said that the general Turkish population also has a problematic mindset surrounding sexuality. “They believe that being gay, or bisexual or transgender are not good things and they think of them as like, ‘Oh you’re committing a sin,’” Batuhan said. Batuhan explained that even before moving to the U.S., he mostly rejected this mindset because he had exposure to different cultures through travel and education. Still, like Irisa, moving to the U.S. helped him learn more about and solidify his views on equality, whether it be through talking with LGBTQ+ peers or women in his STEM classes. This is not to say that Batuhan — nor myself, nor should you — views Turkey as a wholly close-minded place and the U.S. as a haven for acceptance. It was clear from our conversation that Batuhan is deeply proud of his Turkish identity, and that while he aims to raise his family in the U.S., this decision is not based on some fairytale ideal of the American Dream. Like many immigrants, his is rooted in factors that transcend abstract feelings of belonging and homeland. “The reason I would like to live in the U.S. in the future is that the politics and economy in Turkey is not that great,” Batuhan said. “And I don’t think I’ll be able to have a decent life out there, both ideologically and financially... In the future, if it was the case that the politics change, the economy changes, and Turkey is back again as a vibrant country, then I would actually like to go back.” Indeed, the diversity that Batuhan and Irisa mentioned ranks low on the reasons immigrants choose to move to the U.S., according to a study conducted by the U.S. Department of State. Economic and educational opportunities clearly rank higher, and more so, the fact that there is diversity in the U.S. doesn’t necessarily mean it is celebrated. When Irisa told me about the misogyny that women in Albania face, she didn’t note the U.S. as its inverse of perfect equality. She noted it as a step up. When Batuhan mentioned the diversity of cultures in the U.S., he didn’t indicate celebratory, communal potlucks. He actually later lamented how individualistic Americans can be. In an age of increasing nationalism, it is dangerous to inaccurately categorize people and places into binary camps: the “backwards, leftbehind” nations of the East versus the “modern, progressive” West. It also made me realize that my search for a strong sense of Bulgarian identity could play into this tribalist sorting. Trying to “pick a side” or determine which culture is better to identify with is not merely impossible, but destructive to any movement towards inclusion. Read more at MichiganDaily.com

statement

14 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

For the memories BY LILLY DICKMAN, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

I

was sitting at my kitchen counter with my mom when I got the notification that my “Year in Review” on Snapchat had been uploaded for 2020. With not much else to do on that December morning, I opened the application, excited to relive both favorite and forgotten memories that made up an unparalleled year. The review began with a video of my uncle on New Year’s Day wearing 2020 glasses from the night before and dancing with strangers on a pool deck — all for the entertainment and embarrassment of my cousins and me. I showed my mom and we laughed. “Oh, simpler times. Little did we know what was coming,” she chuckled. “Show me more.” After I exhausted the curated slideshow of moments, I scrolled through other pictures and videos from deep within the Snapchat memory vault. And so we sat tapping through the entirety of 2020: Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash in January, videos of my classroom in February on what were then just average high school days. Continuing to tap through, we reached March 12, which showed a video of my friend screaming at the cafeteria table. “This is literally not a big deal,” he yelled. “All the scientists are saying they don’t know why everyone’s freaking out. Everyone needs to calm down!” At the counter, my mom and I laughed and shook our heads at the irony and naivete in his confident, assertive voice. Little did my friend know what was coming either. A video from the next day records the dean’s voice coming over the high school’s loudspeaker announcing we would not be returning to school until a week after spring break. Ah, the beginning of the end. We kept watching — it was like a movie. But as my mom and I observed my life unfold in pictures and videos, I began to think about the medium through which we tell stories and recall memories. I realized that my understanding of my family members’ lives before I came into them are based primarily on their words, rather than recorded images. This is especially true for my grandfather. For as long as I can remember, I’ve listened to him outline scenes from his life with humor, wit and great detail. His most colorful stories take place during the Great Depression. He tells of his days as a peanut salesman when he and his dad stood on the corner trading nuts for nickels. Other favorites include the year he refused to go to school because he was scared of the garbage man — after watching his father beat the guy up in his driveway for catcalling his mother, he hid under the couch every time the truck arrived. There was the time he made his “ma” pick him up from Camp Freedom after they forced him to catch bologna sandwiches flung from a truck. He also frequently details his performances as a Vaudeville dancer and how he tapdanced on stage with his graceful

ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE

mother and father in glory. He tells the story of when he was held up at gunpoint while working the cash register at his dad’s currency exchange, and of the first time he saw my grandma in Eli’s Deli, though she was uninterested in his introduction at the time. From his words, my mind concocts its own videos. Characters since passed away come to life in my head through his anecdotes. My grandfather’s stories make me laugh without fail, usually because of the plot or his word choice. But what stands out to me the most is the ambiguity surrounding the line between what actually happened during those harrowing times and what he relays, because the truth of it all is so unknown. Only my grandfather was at the scene of the hysterical, terrifying or beautiful stories he tells — there’s no other documentation of the man’s colorful life. I just have to take his word for it. Meanwhile, my mom and I are able to visually witness a moment from almost every day of my past year. We reach the end of winter: a video of my family crowded around puzzles in the dining room, a picture of me on the couch, my prom dress stretched over my sweatpants and my hair in a tangled bun. We watch spring turn to summer: a video of me pressing a button, committing to the University of Michigan. There’s us walking my dog and us in the backseat of our car on rides to nowhere. We see us at a Black Lives Matter protest, chanting with thousands of strangers. There’s my dad sweating in my residence hall room suffocated by layers of masks as he attempts to loft my bed during my move into college. There are more stories to tell my children or grandchildren one day about the year 2020 than in the entirety of an ordinary decade. Maybe my grandfather would say the same about his experiences during the Depression. But unlike my grandfather’s past, my experiences will never boil down to my word alone. Many of my generation’s experiences are documented, and I think that’s fascinating. Moments that might become stories, along with moments that might have otherwise faded from my mind, remain pristine and permanent on my phone: videos of me sitting in my residence hall room with fear in my eyes as John King outlines the beginning of the election returns, of my friends and I screaming in our pajamas as we read the email announcing that freshman housing contracts would be canceled for winter semester, of the moment Biden won the presidency. I have smaller moments too: the (masked) faces, Zingerman’s sandwiches, breakout rooms and Zoom shenanigans. It’s all there, in living color. Not only is Generation Z’s everyday life documented, it’s shared and it’s communal. Through memes on Instagram, Twitter and many TikToks, Gen-Z has the ability to bask in shared experiences. We have the benefit of processing and coping together — often with humor — in the moment. Wheth-

er videos record a person’s funny conversation with their therapist, tragic relationship stories or the miseries of quarantine, I watch and know that millions of people are watching (and often laughing) with me. In that, there is vulnerability, connectedness and understanding. I wonder what this means for our generation. Something about it makes me hopeful. I believe, unlike previous generations, we have a heightened understanding of what makes us human, what pains us, what gives us joy and how we’re more similar than different. Hopefully, we’ll grow up with these shared sentiments in mind and become leaders who make decisions based on them, not blind to them. Yes, perhaps, with our experiences documented we will lose the magic of storytelling. When I’m able to pull up a video for my kids of my friends’ cars parked in a circle while we yelled at each other across an empty parking lot after being locked in our homes for three months, the aforementioned line between what actually happened and the way they perceive it will be less blurred. The possibility of the extinction of imagination, embellishment and freedom

to concoct pictures in the mind is upsetting. This begs the question: Would my grandfather recall his childhood stories the same way if he had documentation of them? Something tells me the answer is no. Memories change with age, and there is something to be said for revisionist history. From living through 2020, I understand how surviving the Depression would’ve been traumatic and painstaking, yet my grandfather’s stories sometimes seem romantic. I fear his Camp Freedom story wouldn’t follow quite the same plotlines or have the same colorful commentary if he had a Snapchat memory of it. But I also think about what I’d give to see footage of a 15-yearold version of my 90-year-old grandfather tap dancing on a stage or standing on the street corner selling peanuts with his dad whom I’ve never met. For the sake of knowledge, understanding and truth, I think our generation and those to follow possess something powerful. As we’ve seen through recent times, blurry lines, as magical as they may be, can also be dangerous, and fact is important. Perhaps storytelling according to memory will be sacrificed for tangible documentation of others’ different realities. May-

be that’s a positive sacrifice to be made. People may no longer be as ignorant about the lives and history that came before them, or about the lives, feelings and sentiments of people surrounding them at the moment. People may not have the ability to dismiss others’ realities, either. After all, a viral video documenting the truth of George Flloyd’s death sparked the BLM protests this year. For better or for worse, as I scrolled through my 2020 on Snapchat, I was acutely aware that the way we relay experiences has changed forever. For 2020’s sake, I’m glad. I don’t think I’d have the energy to rehash the year in words alone. I’ll need the help of all Snapchat memories, TikToks, videos and memes I can get. I closed out of the application and took a picture of my mom at the kitchen counter. My half-finished smoothie, her daily crossword puzzle and a Time magazine with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as its “Person of the Year” on the cover cluttered the table. Behind her on the television, NBC covered the distribution of the first vaccines. Now that’s a good one, I thought. I saved it for the memories.

If you give a girl a chevy

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

statement

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 15

BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

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ike many milestones that make their anticipated entrance throughout adolescence — among them the first kiss, first date and the other usual suspects — my first time driving was awkward but wholesome. After months of tedious driver’s education coursework and haphazardly prepared traffic sign note cards, I was finally ready to take to the road. Per Indiana law, I was required to supplement my online driver’s ed with a handful of driving lessons — the last step before I would finally be able to make the coveted march into the Department of Motor Vehicles and take my driver’s test. Most of the kids in my grade took driver’s ed from the same online academy, so the program’s pool of driving instructors had become a sort of cast of characters often gossiped about between the driversto-be. In geometry or English class, I would hear the latest tale of the frizzy-haired instructor who spent the majority of the lessons ranting about her relationship problems, or about the pale-faced man who kept his clammy hands gripped around his clipboard during each drive. As I listened to my peers exchange lesson anecdotes like cigars in a boys’ club, I was eager to graduate into this sphere of driving adventure. And then my time finally came. My mom offered me a swift “good luck!” before dropping me off in my high school parking lot, where my instructor would soon take me out for my first lesson. I was met by a friendly older man clad in a gray windbreaker and black slacks, standing in front of a silver car plastered with driver’s ed logos. He had a wispy mustache, the kind that reminded me of my grandfather. After firmly shaking my hand with the seriousness of a business deal, he gestured me towards the driver’s seat — the seat. The star of today’s outing. “You can call me Clarence,” he said, buckling his seatbelt and fidgeting with the paper and clipboard in his lap. I glanced at his handwriting, which was scribbly and hurried, like a substitute teacher’s. “Ready to finally take to the open road?” he asked. I offered a reluctant nod before turning the keys in the ignition, prompting a low, growled rumble from the vehicle and a pang of excitement in my chest. I was driving. *** Often heralded as the epitome of freedom in a country long claiming to be the land of the free, we’ve come to believe there is something sacred

about the first time an American gets behind the wheel. The sensation of taking the open road, hands gripped onto a leathery steering wheel, basking in the power of utter control: We’re driving towards an idealistic future only American-born individualism can breed. Surrounding media has branded this kind of experience as one of “adventure” and “exploration,” supplemented by commercials of sleek Jeep Wranglers and beastly SUVs shown conquering rocky terrain. And towards the end of each advertisement, a gritty, all-American narrator tells you this automobile is for trailblazers, the American pioneer — the white-colonial, anti-indigenous narrative blazes red, white and blue in the advertisement’s final remarks. To own a car is to assume the tropes that have long defined what it means to be American: To charge (or drive) boldly in the direction of the American dream, and a rugged conquest awaits. The archetype carries into literary manifestations as well: Arthur Miller’s 1949 stage play “Death of a Salesman” casts protagonist Willy Loman’s American-made Chevrolet as the principal symbol of his enduring struggle to realize the American Dream. In the climax of the piece, Loman drives the car out into the darkness, ultimately leading to the termination of his life and the figurative death of his ambitions. And in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel “The Great Gatsby,” the titular character’s Rolls-Royce is drooled upon by narrator Nick Carraway, who prizes the “rich,” “triumphant” vehicle as the ultimate sign of luxury, wealth and success. It wasn’t until I purchased my first car that I began to truly reflect on how these tropes of car ownership as freedom, as American individualism, as wealth deeply affected me as a teenager. I was a young person with the license to drive but nothing to drive with. The process of changing that title started a few days into this winter break. My best friend from home had just driven me from Ann Arbor to Indiana, and I was soon due back up to northern Michigan, where I would purchase a well-loved Chevy from my uncle. Like most used vehicles, the car was bestowed upon me along with a list of imperfections, including a leaky gas tank that needed to be examined right away. My first few days of car ownership were littered with trips to AutoZone and my dad endearingly poking at parts of the en-

gine to ensure everything functioned properly. Finally, after substantial analysis, I was cleared to drive the car back home, where I was eager to accessorize her with all the essential features: an aux chord, a pine-scented air freshener and feminist bumper stickers. (To my dismay, my mother vetoed my “Keep Your Laws Off My Body” sticker for a fear of it provoking other drivers on the road against me). Almost immediately, I formed an oddly admirative connection with this car-turned-friend, and I knew I wanted to name her. Her slightlydented black exterior and silver detailing inspired me to go with something mysterious, like a wise old witch who had lived a hundred lives before this one. After lots of deliberation with friends and family, she was named Svetlana. After the arduous process of transferring the title of the car then registering it in my name, I was finally able to take to the open road in my own car. I quickly classified myself as a car owner as if I’d been promoted to some imagined, glistening sphere of superior beings. But why I felt so prideful to be cruising with the Gatsbys of the world, I did not yet fully recognize. n the weeks following Svetlana’s adoption, when I would drive around the streets of my hometown — a picture-perfect suburb tucked north of Indianapolis — I found myself surveying the same flurries of Jeep Wranglers and BMWs I was once so accustomed to seeing. I remembered high school: countless, dewy mornings vibrating with the excitement of these sleek vehicles buzzing through the parking lot. And the dreaded seventh-period-bell that emancipated those lucky licensecarriers to their same cushy wagons, with me pitifully departing on foot. I remembered all the weekdays that began with one red-nosed walk to school — in rain, snow, slush, sleet and sun. That one, short commute felt hours long as I fixed my gaze towards the ground, attempting to avoid eye contact with anyone who might pass by and pity the upperclassman with no car to drive. The end of the school day proved more difficult; the street parallel to my high school was always immediately flushed with a parade of student traffic in the minutes following the final bell. This meant crossing a stampede of student drivers, all with their car radios blaring, windows down, sitting cool with a kind of eased cockiness all upper-middleclass kids seem to inherit. My task was simple: stay on the sidewalk and

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wait patiently for an opening in the mass of vehicles to make my pattering escape to the other side of the street. But in high school, in front of those drivers, the endeavor seemed disastrous, fatally embarrassing even. I then thought of my junior year, when my brother and I shared a used 1995 Ford Mustang during its last months before it broke down. I thought of all of the times I sheepishly avoided driving friends so they wouldn’t see my rickety pair of wheels, the small convertible cowering in comparison to my town’s brigade of SUVs. During after-school hours, I made sure to borrow my parents’ nicer, newer car when visiting friends’ houses, my body tensing at the thought of my decrepit Mustang acting as the sore spot of some Crest-white neighborhood made up of brick mansions and money-green lawns. Recalling these things meant confronting a brutal classist ideation I had long carried since high school: a fear that my peers would know my family wasn’t as wealthy as theirs. In retrospect, I feel a little ashamed knowing that I grew up in this cushy suburb, went to a well-funded public high school, had a loving family, a warm home and so many other privileges yet still engaged with the hallmarks of class envy, treating a stroll to school like a walk of shame. And truthfully, acquiring my first set of wheels proved to be as underwhelming as anything my adolescent self once treasured, the first kisses and the prom dances and the homecoming games. The transaction was not magical; It did not grant me some kind of divine confidence I once thought was only earned via a breezy drive to high school. It didn’t make me prettier or richer or more of an adventurer. And therein lies the issue created when American-brand industrial efforts are intensely amplified by streams of literary and media messaging. To me, to us, a car has always been more than a car. It is a vessel with which we conquer new terrain, like colonizers on wheels. It is a throne on which we display wealth. It is a launchpad from which we reach for some vastly unattainable version of ourselves. And for whatever reason, it took finally sitting behind my own wheel to see that all of these things a car is ‘supposed’ to represent fizzle down to nothing. The view beyond the wheel is no grander than it was before. The only thing that’s changed is the girl who once took her first driver’s lesson, who grew up a little bit the day she bought her first car.

16 — Wednesday, January 27, 2021

statement

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

A lighthouse beacon for climate change:

PHOTO BY RACHEL MCKIMMY

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what an encounter with elephant seals taught me

uly 1st, 2019. The morning was bright as I hiked with my dad, my aunt and her family on the coast of Northern California — the so-called “Lost Coast.” The day was warm and only a few wisps of clouds were visible in the blue sky along the edge of the coast. The smell of salt filled my nostrils. The shushing sound of the powerful Pacific Ocean toiling against the rough, dark rocks and sandy shore joined with the soft whistle of the wind to create a soundtrack of white noise, punctuated by the seagulls’ harsh cries. We arrived at the Punta Gorda Lighthouse, a lone figure standing along the wild west coast, not long after detouring around a rattlesnake sunning itself in the middle of the trail along the top of the beach. Just past that lighthouse, lying out on the fine gray sand of the beach, were a colony of elephant seals. They didn’t appear to be the most graceful of creatures with their enormous stature, blubbery bodies and huge bulbous noses. And while I typically can identify most animals quickly, I was at first puzzled because I had never seen these creatures in person before. The Northern Elephant Seal makes its home off the coast of Mexico and Southern California, while its larger Southern cousin makes its home in the cold waters of Antarctica. The Northern Elephant Seal, a colony of which I found before me, can weigh over two tons and can easily crush a human. Growing up on the coast of Northern California and hiking there now, the only marine mammals I had ever encountered were sea lions, which are much smaller with sleeker bodies, longer flippers and cute, pointy noses. Yet, as I realized what I saw in front of me was in fact the Northern Elephant seal out of its natural habitat, I found myself drawn to these majestic creatures, despite the clownishness of their appearance. With a demanding curiosity, I crept closer to them, keeping a large log between myself and the mostly slumbering giants. One individual seal close to me opened her eye, then closed it again, deeming me too small to be a threat. My family watched the seals from a safe distance away, warning me warily to stop being reckless. I waved away their concern as I circled cautiously around the colony. These giants can move quickly over land when they want to,

their blubber rippling like water as they lumber forward. I was slower on the loose, dry sand, my shoes dragging no matter how lightly I tried to step. I watched in fascination from around the curve of a grassy hill as two males fought, their sharp teeth gouging into each other’s already-scarred flesh. I counted around 40 individual seals, in awe of their presence and large quantity. What were they doing there, far away from where they were supposed to be? I remembered when a Great White Shark washed up on the beach and how it’s not uncommon to see sea lions, but I couldn’t recall ever hearing of elephant seals this far north. And when I had backpacked this same trail with my father and brother in the past around the same time of year, they certainly weren’t there. Later that day, we talked to a park ranger who said they in fact had come farther north from their usual beaches and began showing up in Punta Gorda “around a year ago.” While this statement may appear insignificant to some, its implications stayed with me. Later that summer while studying at St. Peter’s College at Oxford University for an abroad program, I did some research. The most helpful source I found on the subject was a book titled “Elephant Seals: Population Ecology, Behavior, and Physiology.” One map in it showed the locations of rookeries, or elephant seal breeding colonies, as of 1991 and their alleged historical locations. The historical rookeries extend south to Mexico and north past San Francisco, but not to Punta Gorda. Within the 28 years between 1991 and 2019, the elephant seals migrated about 280 miles north of their historical northernmost rookery, about 10 miles a year. But why was this so? I guess the circumstances were right for me to be thinking about this question, as my study abroad program that summer focused on anthropogenic climate change. At some point, I made the connection that it is climate change that is affecting the patterns of these animals. It’s well established that climate change is causing rising atmospheric temperatures. But oceans absorb a lot of the heat that would otherwise be absorbed by the atmosphere. The Environmental Protection Agency shows a re-

cent rise in ocean heat content above the 19712000 average, which is consistent across different measurement sources. There is evidence that distributions of marine mammals are changing as climate changes. It is possible that as ocean temperatures rise, the elephant seals are moving farther north to waters that are more comfortable or which provide better access to food sources. And while this one instance may serve as a key indicator of the significance of climate change, its impact on living organisms is not confined to the oceans, nor is it confined to animals. Plant distributions can also be affected by climate change as temperatures and precipitation levels change. Even the smallest of creatures can be affected by temperature changes, as shown by one of the EPA’s climate change indicators, Lyme disease. Occurrences of Lyme disease have been rising steadily since the 1990s. Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi, which can be carried in a certain species of tick called a deer tick. Ticks infected with this bacteria, when biting a human or animal, can transmit Lyme disease. The illness causes skin rash, fatigue and joint pain; if left untreated, the illness can cause Lyme arthritis and nervous system complications. Deer ticks are active when temperatures are above 45 degrees Fahrenheit and prefer areas with 85% humidity. Global warming is expanding the range of deer ticks, increasing the prevalence of health hazards in humans and animals by spreading Lyme disease to new populations and areas. his occurrence has important implications for the state of Michigan. In July 2020, it became clear that Lyme disease is becoming more prevalent in Northern Michigan and other parts of the state. Unlike humans, who regulate the environment to survive, animals and plants and even bacteria rely upon climate to provide hospitable conditions. If the environment in which they can live expands, so will their distribution patterns, and if the environment is no longer hospitable, they will move to a place that is hospitable. As shown by the el-

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ephant seals I encountered a year and a half ago, the results of climate change are happening right before our eyes. Climate change does not only affect the climate; it has the potential to affect species of animals and plants and as a result, the distributions of diseases like Lyme disease. By paying attention to such signs and not dismissing them as unexplained coincidences, we acknowledge the impact that we as humans have on the natural environment. When I think of the far-reaching consequences of anthropogenic climate change, I think of the time I saw the elephant seals. The changes that are occurring are far more than changes in the weather — they affect the ecology of the places we live. And regardless of what we consider ourselves to be, we are animals, too. We can brace ourselves for the impact of climate change by recognizing when our actions have affected the environment, and respond adequately by anticipating what other consequences climate change may have. Our disconnection from the environment ends when we encounter animals where they’re not supposed to be, when the plants that grew in a place before don’t grow there as well anymore because of drought, when a disease spreads to a new region. We are not as separate from the environment as we may think, and the consequences are apparent in strange, seemingly innocuous occurrences — like the elephant seals on the beach. After lunch on the hill above the elephant seals, we headed back the way we had come, the lighthouse being the predetermined turning-back point of our hike. It was almost as if, without knowing it, we had come all this way just to see the elephant seals: an anomaly of climate change that may become a norm in the years to come. Signs like these are a lighthouse, guiding our ship through treacherous waters so that we don’t hit the sharp rocks of the coast and sink. It is our decision whether to pay attention to them or not.

BY RACHEL MCKIMMY, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Implications of 14-day pause for the men’s basketball team JARED GREENSPAN Daily Sports Writer

At 9:01 p.m. on Friday night, Chaundee Brown stood near halfcourt, dribbling out the waning seconds of the Michigan men’s basketball team’s decisive victory over Purdue in West Lafayette. His teammates danced on the sidelines behind him, serenading themselves with a chorus of cheers and high-fives. The final buzzer blared. Players and coaches bounced diagonally across the court, faces clad in smiles and disappeared one-byone up the tunnel. We don’t know when we’ll see them again. Saturday, news broke that all Michigan athletic teams would enter a two-week pause, beginning on Jan. 24, due to an influx of positive cases of the novel COVID-19 B.1.1.7 variant amongst several Michigan programs. At a minimum, the men’s basketball team will miss

The 2020-21 college basketball season was always going to be like this. Making it through the schedule unscathed, with COVID-19 continuing to ravage the nation, would have required a near-miracle. Michigan now becomes the fourth Big Ten team to go on an extended pause, joining Penn State, Nebraska and Michigan State. Penn State went 18 days between games. Nebraska has been on hiatus since Jan. 10; Michigan State last played Jan. 8. Michigan’s situation is unique. As of Saturday, the men’s basketball team didn’t have any active COVID-19 cases, according to David Jesse of the Detroit Free Press. Its pause is entirely preemptive, indicative of heightened concern over the novel B.1.1.7 strain, which is more contagious than other variants of the virus. “Health is always number one with me,” Michigan coach

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The Michigan men’s basketball team had won seven of its last eight games prior to the shutdown by double figures.

four games — against Penn State, Indiana, Northwestern and Michigan State. It could miss more. “We all just tell each other you gotta be grateful for every game we play because you never know, the next game can get canceled,” senior forward Isaiah Livers said on Dec. 9, following Michigan’s win over Toledo. “Last year, the tournament stuff got taken away from us, so we just try to be grateful for each day. Be blessed, wake up, be excited to come to practice, be excited to see your brothers because that can all go away with three or four tests.”

Juwan Howard said on Dec. 9. “Basketball is last. And I’m speaking health as well as mental health. … Our guys are doing a phenomenal job of doing whatever they can — wearing their masks, washing their hands, staying away from social gatherings. They want to play basketball. They wanted to have a season.” In a best-case scenario, the Wolverines will return for their scheduled Feb. 11 contest with Illinois. Should that occur, 20 days will have passed since Michigan last played a game. The earliest the team could even return to the court for practice is Feb. 7.

The Wolverines previously endured a 12-day scheduling break between games in December, making a prolonged absence not entirely unprecedented. Still, unprecedented or not, a hiatus creates a new set of problems for a team that hasn’t looked like it had many. “When you play a lot of games in a row, I feel like you kinda get into it a little bit,” sophomore forward Franz Wagner said on Dec. 23. “The practices before the games, the way you prepare. And now we didn’t have that playing rhythm … that’s the difficulty, maybe at the start of the game we’ll see that, maybe not. But you kinda get out of your rhythm if you don’t play for a couple days.” Again, this break is markedly different and all the more daunting. All Michigan athletic programs, men’s basketball including, are abiding to a strict quarantine: No drills, no weight room sessions, no scrimmages. The pause occurs at an inopportune time for the Wolverines, who climbed to No. 4 in the nation in the most recent AP Poll. They sit alone atop the Big Ten — 1.5 games ahead of Iowa — and have obliterated their opponents, registering double-digit victories in seven of their last eight games. A conference title is not outside the realm of possibility, nor is a long run in the NCAA Tournament, provided it happens. Michigan has operated with an unspoken sense of urgency this season, COVID aside. Five of the eight prominent rotation players are seniors. Additionally, Wagner seems a good bet to enter the NBA Draft come May. This season posed as a final hurrah for a group largely in the twilight of their collegiate careers, a chance to atone for the crushing cancellations that truncated last season. COVID-19 always ran opposite to those plans, ominously looming as a threat to upend them. Now, in the heart of the season, it has. Powerless, all Michigan can do is wait.

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 17

Men’s swim and dive sends off Spartans in dual meet win CONNOR EAREGOOD Daily Sports Writer

Before Friday night’s dual meet against rival Michigan State (0-1), Michigan coach Mike Bottom lectured his team about gladiators: “We talked a little bit about in the amphitheaters when they used to battle man-on-man, the old warrior coming in and the new warrior coming in; the old warrior knowing that this is his last round, the young warrior’s going to beat him up,” Bottom said. “We talked about what that warrior would have said. What a true gladiator would have said was ‘Give me your best.’ ” That story played a heavy hand in the No. 9 Michigan men’s swim and dive team’s (2-1) final regular season bout against the Spartans due to Michigan State cutting the program. During the meet, the Wolverines concentrated on honoring more than a century of competition with their in-state foe, focusing not on their 159-77 victory but rather the meaning of the last meet against the Spartans. “I think anybody that looks at the Michigan State program over the years has got to respect them,” Bottom said. “We’re far beyond selfish in understanding that we wouldn’t be where we are without Michigan State.” That respect took centerstage as Michigan put its best efforts forth for Michigan State. While midseason dual meets can see lighter competition, the meet had the air of a championship grudge match. For a program devastated by transfers, the Spartans came close to victory early in races. The thinness of their roster showed down the stretch, though, as Michigan swimmers took more commanding leads. Michigan, in an effort to avoid running up the score against an undermanned opponent, chose not to score many of its racers, having them enter as exhibition instead. The Wolverines often only counted their victor in each event, all of which were won by Michigan. “We want to make sure that we’re playing on a level playing

field,” Bottom said. “And when Michigan State has lost some of their best because of the decisions of their administration, we want to be able to respect that.” Winning the 200-yard butterfly, junior Jared Daigle raced an event he hadn’t swam since he was 16. Michigan State’s Cristofer Gore pushed for victory, coming close to overtaking Daigle at the third turn but falling behind in one of Michigan State’s best performances of the night. Daigle also swam on the second-place team in the 400yard medley relay. The team that won that race included junior Will Chan and freshman James LeBuke, two swimmers who

said. “I think this year a lot of our breaststrokers … are going to have a huge breakout season.” Michigan sophomore Danny Berlitz made the NCAA “B” cut in the 400-yard individual medley, meaning he can enter the NCAA Championship once all “A” cuts are in. Other swimmers came within striking distance of the cuts in their own races, including freshman Wyatt Davis and LeBuke. The Wolverines may have vanquished the Spartans in the arena, but like the gladiators Bottom referenced, that did not affect their respect for their foes. “I know all these last meets, everything they go to — their

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Junior Jared Daigle won the 200-yard butterfly and came in second on the 400-yard relay team.

made a significant impact in the meet. Winning the 50-yard freestyle and contributing to a victory in the 200-yard freestyle relay, LeBuke gave a sneak peak of Michigan’s future as the swimmer flexed his adjustment to American swimming. “(LeBuke) is just getting his feet under him right now and learning,” Bottom said. “He’s not a yard swimmer. From Canada, he’s a meter swimmer. It’s important for him to learn how to swim in the short pool and enjoy his time here.” While LeBuke gave Michigan a first glimpse at what he could do, Chan seemed to be one of the Wolverines’ best swimmers overall with a victory in the 200yard breaststroke. “(Chan) has already made such a huge impact in his freshman and sophomore years,” Daigle

last home meet, their last away meet, their last time in the University of Michigan pool — it’s special for them,” Daigle said. “And it’s special for all the teams that came before them.” Members of the Michigan team threw their full support behind their visiting rivals, chanting “Go green, go white” across the pool to close out the meet. The Spartans also brought masks emblazoned with “Save our Sport” for the Wolverines to wear. “We told them to keep fighting at the end,” Daigle said. “We know they will.” With its third meet under its belt, Michigan made key steps in its ability to hold leads. While the end to the in-state rivalry brings intense feelings of sorrow, the Wolverines seemed to leave it all in the pool for the Spartans.

One way or another, a two-week quarantine was necessary The entire University of Michigan athletic department is on lockdown. This comes after a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services recommendation Saturday that the University suspend athletic activities as a result of the introduction and ongoing spread of the newest B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19 within the athletic NICK department. STOLL The variant — first discovered in the United Kingdom — is estimated to be around 40-70% more infectious than the current SARS-CoV-2 strain that is COVID-19 as we know it. It was brought to Michigan (both the state and university) by a Michigan athlete traveling from the United Kingdom at the start of the winter semester. Now, with all athletics suspended and the entire program subjected to a full 14-day quarantine, questions arise about how this could have happened. What it comes down to is exactly what’s being done right now — two entire weeks of isolation. Currently, the United Kingdom is on the CDC’s list of countries with high risk travelers, and travel from the UK to the United States is prohibited — with a few exceptions. Included within those exceptions are F-1 student visas and US

FILE PHOTO/Daily

A required quarantine period when traveling to Michigan could have prevented the athletic pause.

citizens returning to the states, one of which the U-M athlete almost certainly fell under. Now, I’m not saying people should not be able to return home to the United States or that a student should not be able to visit their family in the UK and come back. That’s not what inherently caused the B.1.1.7 outbreak in the athletic department. Instead, it’s the inability to enforce quarantining on individuals. The CDC requires a negative COVID19 test result one-to-three days prior to traveling back to the United States, and although that is a good procedure,

it is the only enforceable step and not impervious to the transmission of the virus, as proven by the U-M athlete. The CDC recommends a 14-day quarantine, but at every level, it has no power to actually enforce it. A lot of the things CDC recommends during travel can only be enforced by the privately owned, for-profit operating airlines who wouldn’t do anything to discourage travel because they’re already struggling as is. And once a passenger lands, they can only be regulated by state protocols, which have a huge degree of variation from

mandatory quarantine to not even requiring masks. In Michigan? No travel restrictions. No required quarantine. At the University of Michigan, we can assume the athletic department requires a quarantine until a negative PCR test after arrival. Unfortunately, tests can come back negative despite the person being infected with the virus. For three to five days after being exposed, a PCR test can still turn up negative, meaning if a student athlete contracted it on any part of their journey back to Ann Arbor and tested negative up to five days later, it is not guaranteed they are virus-free. But how much difference could a full 14-day required quarantine make? Honestly, quite a bit. Just look at Australia, one of the more COVID-conscious countries with stringent policies: “All international travelers are required to quarantine for 14 days at the first point of entry, unless they’re granted an exemption upon request,” per the Australian health department. “Quarantines take place in statedesignated facilities and fees depend on the state, ranging from $2500 for one adult in the Northern Territory to $3000 for one adult in New South Wales.” This requires quarantine in a state facility, meaning it is truly mandated.

And though it doesn’t account for the entire scope of reduced cases, the numbers speak volumes. Per one million people, Australia has 1,128.08 cases and 35.65 deaths. The United States has 74,868.97 cases and 1,251 deaths per one million people. That’s 67 times the cases and 35 times the deaths after being adjusted for population. Quarantining and other COVID protocols work, but we don’t have them in the state or majority of the country. There was never a way to prevent the B.1.1.7 strain from coming to the US, and Michigan for that matter, with the current system we have in place. It’s unfortunate it came to Ann Arbor and is making its way through the athletic department, but it was almost inevitable. Michigan followed all Big Ten protocols and violated no federal or state regulations, it’s just that none of them were — or are — enough. If the athletic department implemented its own 14-day mandated quarantine after the return, a system-wide pause could have been avoided with just one athlete taking a pause. Now, in a last ditch effort by the MDHHS to contain the B.1.1.7 variant, Michigan shut down the athletic department for 14 days. If the right regulations were in place and enforced, it never would have had to.

Sports

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 18

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Michigan coach Mel Pearson reflects on what pause means for season JOSH TAUBMAN Daily Sports Writer

On Friday night, the Michigan hockey team was celebrating its win over Notre Dame and looking ahead to its next game. On Saturday night, the team suddenly had no idea when its next game might be. On Jan. 23, the University of Michigan announced all athletic activities would be paused for two weeks following confirmed cases of the COVID-19 B.1.1.7 variant within the athletic department. The hockey team has had no positive cases since it began practicing in October. “I guess my initial reaction was a little bit of shock, a little bit of surprise, a little bit of disappointment, a little bit of anger.” Michigan coach Mel Pearson said. “But here we are and we’re looking to spin this into a positive.”

Pearson also understood and supported the administration’s decision and instead turned his focus to how he could help his team through the next two weeks. Following the news, the Wolverines held a couple of team meetings to discuss the next steps. “The main point of the calls was just to reinforce the message from our athletic director in our department as to what this means and what our responsibilities are as student-athletes,” Pearson said. “And to make sure that they were all OK and (the coaches) are going to be a resource available to them.” After the players got over the initial disappointment, a big concern they expressed was how they would be able to practice during the pause with the team required to quarantine and practices prohibited. They want to continue to train, but

without being able to gather in large groups or use indoor ice rinks, that may be difficult. “They’ve got a regiment from our streng th and conditioning coach,” Pearson said. “We’ll do a lot of zooms

and stay in touch with them, give them different games to watch just to make sure that we’re keeping them mentally into the game; and then they have to do what they can physically to stay ready.”

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Michigan coach Mel Pearson felt disappointed about the two-week pause.

Michigan had been playing some of its best hockey since it returned from winter break. The Wolverines won five of their past six games and are currently the seventh-ranked team in the country. Following the Notre Dame series, they were already scheduled to have a 12-day break before facing Penn State at home on Feb. 3 and 4. As of now, those are the only games to be postponed. Pearson also mentioned it would probably take the team 4-5 days to get back into game shape and they currently are scheduled to play Michigan State on Feb. 9 — just two days after the shutdown is supposed to end. “We’ve had past experience with this almost every year with the (Great Lakes Invitational) tournament,” Pearson said. “Normally we have a two and a half week break, we reconvene

after Christmas, maybe have three and a half, four days of practice and then we play. And we’ve been able to manage that. “Now the only difference here is are our kids going to have access to ice somewhere? And when you’re in a quarantine, that answer is no.” The Wolverines are faced with a lot of uncertainty, but that was expected with a season being played amid an ongoing pandemic. When players returned to Ann Arbor, they didn’t know when their season would begin and what health and safety protocols they’d be under. The shutdown is just one more challenge they’ll have to overcome. “We’re all dealing with adversity in our lives,” Pearson said. “It’s how you handle that adversity. We’ve got to come up stronger on the other side whenever we’re allowed to come back.”

Cliff Keen: Tales of a Michigan Legend MADDY STONE-WHEATLEY

For The Daily

Cliff Keen grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. In college, he was an undefeated wrestler, a football player and a track athlete for Oklahoma A&M, which is now Oklahoma State. He came to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan Law School, from which he earned his law degree in 1933. He then stayed in the community, working at a small law firm in Ann Arbor while coaching the wrestling team. Just a few years after he became the head varsity wrestling coach, he left his law job to focus on coaching full-time. During his time as the wrestling coach, Keen was also part of the football coaching staff for 33 years and was an assistant coach under the helm of Michigan greats: Fritz Crisler, Fielding Yost and Bennie Oosterbaan. Keen was also the head coach of Michigan’s 150-pound football team during the 1947 and 1948 seasons — the only two seasons in which the team existed. He won national titles both years and brought the T-formation into Michigan football. As a wrestling coach, Keen had the longest tenure of any coach in University athletics history and holds the record for the longest career of any collegiate wrestling coach. He was the head coach at Michigan for 42 years, spanning from 1925 to 1970, with a three-year break during World War II where he spent his time as a naval commander. During his tenure as the head coach for Michigan, Keen led many teams to outstanding success. His accomplishments include 12 Big Ten Conference Championships, 11 individual NCAA champion wrestlers, 68 All-Americans and 81 Big Ten Champions. In 1977, Keen was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. A few years later in 1980, he was inducted into the University of Michigan Hall of Honor. In 1981, he was inducted into the State of Michigan Sports Hall of Fame. Statistically speaking, Keen is one of the greatest coaches of alltime at Michigan in any sport. But what makes him truly a legend is his value in building the character of his wrestlers and those around him by setting a positive example with his coaching style. “You know he was quite a task master, but he had a unique style that he used to motivate people,” Rick Bay, a former Michigan wrestler and Keen’s assistant coach from 19701974 and successor, said. “His way was really to always let you know that he thought you could do better, but at the end of the day, his philosophy was even if he had been getting on somebody during practice for one reason or another, at the end of each practice if that had been the case he would take that person aside and say something positive. He always felt like you should leave any coaching situation each day with something positive. “He was inspirational in a way that was sort of quiet and philosophical … he wasn’t much into chewing anybody out, especially in front of the team,” Bay said. “He would say, ‘You know, it takes a long time to build up someone’s confidence, but a person with authority can tear it down pretty quickly,’ and so he coached in a positive way. You know there are coaches who coach negatively that works too for some but not for him.”

Jesse Rawls Sr., an All-American wrestler for Keen during the last years of his coaching career, spoke about the impact that positive coaching and reassurance can have on an athlete through an experience he had with Keen. “He said to me one day, came up to me (after) I won the match. I did something, I don’t know what, I was losing, I ended up winning and I didn’t quit. I can remember sitting beside him, and he hit me on my knee and he said, ‘Boy you’re one hell of a guy, one hell of a wrestler.’ And that just did a lot for me as a person, because when a coach says you did a fine job and you know that, deep down inside, you tried to do a fine job. That really gave me a big plus sign. “I went on that year and won the Big Ten Championship without a doubt, and he was very proud of that.” Keen believed in coaching the fundamentals and he often taught wrestlers by stepping on to the mat and giving demonstrations himself — even at the end of his career, when he was in his late 60s. Even at matches, Keen would sometimes demonstrate a move that he thought would be a good strategy. “Even though at that moment he’d be in coat and tie and I would Legendary Michigan coach Cliff Keen was inducted to the State of Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 1981. too because we were the coaches, we “I first met him in 1968, Sports didn’t matter as much as the would take our team out and heck, always root for you and so forth and when he came to Lawrenson, health of his boys, in other words.” he’d take off his suit coat if it popped you would root for them.” Keen also believed strongly that Jerry Hoddy, an All-American Minnesota (where) we had into his mind, he’d get down on the mat (and say), ‘Rick jump on top of me wrestler for Keen who wrestled the Junior College National being a student came before being I wanna show this,’ ” Bay said. “He during the last years of Keen’s Wrestling Championship,” Rawls an athlete. Hoddy spoke about the was wearing a coat and tie and he was coaching career, also spoke about said. “That’s when I met him importance of academics to Keen. “He took great pride in his rate of demonstrating on me for the sake of how close the team was and how the and that’s when he offered me a the wrestlers trying to make a point, team had each other’s backs even in scholarship at the University of graduation, of the people that went Michigan. And his words to me — through the wrestling program and of course he’d mess up my shirt difficult times. “One of his favorite sayings, that I will never forget — was that there at the University of Michigan.” and he elbowed me in the ribs while he was demonstrating all this, but particularly under duress when we he had never recruited a Black Hoddy said. “He was always talking about (how it’s) not so much what you that was kind of the way he did it. It were traveling, was when something wrestler. “And he came to Minnesota do while you’re here in Ann Arbor, it’s was sort of off the top of his head, but would go wrong … (he) had his boys and if we got anywhere and there was to recruit the best wrestler in the what you do after you leave.” he had a lot of experience.” Keen also believed that lessons Even after his retirement, Keen some sort of snafu — and about 9 out tournament. And I happened to be continued to influence Michigan of 10 times there was — Cliff would the best wrestler in the tournament learned on the mat could be used in wrestling. In his career as a get into a dither and you’d hear this and happened to be Black. So, the athletes’ lives outside of sports as wrestling coach, Bay incorporated booming voice say well I got my boys we recruited. And he said ‘If you well. “There was one time when there many coaching techniques that he here,” Hoddy said. “He was just an come to Michigan, I’ll give you a learned from Keen when he became immense father figure for everybody full scholarship,’ and my whole life was a guy named Byron Dean in my that came through that program for changed. That stuck with me and I weight class and we would wrestle Michigan’s next head coach. “I used everything I learned from years and years and years. Everybody will always remember that. And he off to see who gets to represent Michigan and who was going to go him,” Bay said. “I mean I talked about cherishes that time and I think most was true to his word.” Stone also spoke about the values down and wrestle Illinois,” Stone positive reinforcement, I was not a people would say (they) unabashedly said. “I actually won the match and integrity that Keen had. screamer, I did not swear at my team loved Cliff Keen dearly.” internally. And I really wanted to get or individuals on the team, I always this, now he would beat me 6-3 or tried to treat everybody with respect. 8-4, so that night I couldn’t sleep half I tried to be more organized than I the night and I was so charged up, thought (Keen) was, but that was just went out there and I beat him 5-0. my own personality.” And I found out that if I just put forth Rawls also incorporated many of regular effort, I’m sort of average, the coaching techniques he learned average at a high level of course, from Keen when he coached at not off the street, but if I really Harrisburg University after his wanted something and really put my playing days. effort into it without reservations, “If you talk to any of my wrestlers, how much better I could be. And I I would always say, ‘Son do this, son carried that over the years. I learned do that’ and I always prepared them that from Keen while wrestling. for the next step,” Rawls said. “I said Multitudes of us were made better that ‘cause coach Keen used to always people for having wrestled under use these terms.” Keen.” Keen’s coaching style also led to a Keen cared about his athletes close-knit team atmosphere that was very much and still had strong commended by those who wrestled PHOTO COURTESY OF RICK BAY connections with his wrestlers for him. Legendary Michigan coach Cliff Keen made wrestling a family. after they graduated “We’re going out here, the A boys, In 1975, Rawls needed In the Big Ten dual meet, That team dynamic not only led and we’re gonna act like men and we’re gonna wrestle and we’re gonna Keen’s wrestlers to want to win for Michigan’s Larry Nelson won his somewhere to train for the 1976 themselves, but also win for Keen and previous round, but not without Olympics. Where else but with an be tough,” Rawls said. cost. Nelson was injured and with it, elite program at Michigan? There Bradford Stone — my grandfather the University. “You wanted him to be proud of Michigan’s chances of a championship was just one problem: He had and a class of 1950 wrestler for Keen — had similarly positive memories you,” Bay said. “That was always a lowered. Stone, who was standing nowhere to live, but Keen looked from his time competing with the dynamic that was pretty pervasive, nearby, suggested Nelson make after his wrestlers. “He said, ‘Let me see what I Wolverines. He especially enjoyed so you wanted to win for yourself, but an appearance despite his injury you (also) wanted to win for coach — the appearance would help the can do for you.’ I got there Labor the camaraderie of the team. Wolverines’ chances of making the Day, which was September 1975,” “That’s what separates wrestling Keen.” Keen was a man who was true conference championships. However, Rawls recalls. “I called him, and from a lot of other team sports is that that … Tuesday or Wednesday I you have no one,” Stone said. “Look to his word and who highly valued Keen refused. “And he said, ‘I would not take had an interview, and Friday I was to your left, look to your right, there’s integrity, hard work and old school a chance on injuring a young boy.’ moving into housing. Just that nobody there, (but) they would sportsmanship.

PHOTO COURTESY OF RICK BAY

fast. That’s how much pull that he had.” At his retirement party after 42 years of coaching, wrestlers decades apart in age came together to share their well wishes. “And all his former wrestlers that were still living all came back to pay him homage upon his retirement.” Stone said. “It was an evening just full of love and full of respect and that was a remarkable evening.” “He was an immense father figure for everybody that came through that program for years and years and years.” Hoddy said “Everybody cherishes that time and I think most people would say, unabashedly, they loved Cliff Keen dearly and everything that he did to represent the University of Michigan was a proper thing.” Keen’s legacy lives on through the University and the sport of wrestling. The wrestling supply company he founded in 1958, Cliff Keen Athletic, is one of the premiere companies in the business and wrestlers across the country use the signature Cliff Keen headgear designed by the coach. Keen positively impacted many people’s lives during his coaching career and his legacy will live on. “You gotta say he is one of the great Michigan coaches of all time in any sport,” Bay said. “He was a unique individual. Nothing one dimensional about him. He was dignified. He was a gentleman coach. He coached the way I always felt you should coach. I think the principles he stood for are still important today.” Even now, Keen commands a high degree of respect in wrestlers of all ages, including those too young to remember his time at Michigan. “Last year at a shopping mall in Livonia, we saw a teenager wearing a Cliff Keen Wrestling Club shirt.” Stone said. “We asked him about it. He was a high-school wrestler. I told him that I had wrestled for Cliff Keen. He said, with an expression of awe, you wrestled for Cliff Keen? “I realized, (as) if I didn’t already know, that his influence spanned generations.”

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Sports

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 — 19

If shutdown derails the season, let’s take a moment to appreciate it It’s around 10 a.m. on Sunday, and Katelynn Flaherty is calling. We’d set this up on Saturday afternoon, before the news of a department-wide shutdown for Michigan athletics hit. I wanted to ask Flaherty, the leading all-time scorer for Michigan basketball (men’s and women’s), about this year’s team, which looks like it might do ETHAN something spe- SEARS cial. My plan was to talk to her, to get on the postgame Zoom call after Michigan-Purdue in the afternoon and to write a column about the arc of the program’s growth. Then news got in the way. The women’s basketball team — along with every other Michigan athletic program — is in quarantine until Feb. 7. This quarantine means no games and no practices, so it is unlikely that they can return to play immediately after it ends. Right now, there are six games left on the Wolverines’ schedule, with the status of eight postponed games unclear. Exactly if or how those games get made up, or what it means for the Big Ten standings if they can’t be played, is unclear (a Big Ten spokesman didn’t return a text asking how standings would be decided if games can’t be made up). It’s worth noting as well that this is the best-case scenario. As of Saturday night, there were no COVID19 cases in the women’s basketball program (or men’s basketball or

MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily

Prior to the athletic department’s two-week shutdown, women’s basketball coach Kim Barnes Arico’s team was on the verge of a historic season.

hockey, for that matter). As pertains to everything else regarding the pandemic, that could change. The University, and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, aren’t playing around with the B.1.1.7. variant of the virus. It’s thought to be up to 50% more transmissible and, according to Matt Hancock, the health secretary in the United Kingdom, 10-50% more deadly. If this two-week shutdown doesn’t halt the spread of the variant, it’s unclear what happens next. But even this best-case scenario is a shame, for the reasons Flaherty was calling me for in the first place. The Michigan women’s basketball team is 10-1, their first loss coming this week after a record 50-point performance from junior forward

Naz Hillmon wasn’t enough to get past Ohio State. They look like a team that could get to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament — which would make them the best team in the history of the program. “I do think that when we are 100%, we can compete with anyone,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said after a win over Wisconsin took them to 10-0. “I think our team really believes that.” “That’s what coach (Barnes) Arico has talked about when she was recruiting me initially and then from the time that I was there,” Flaherty said. “Just to see it all happen, it’s incredible.” To put that into context, when Flaherty came into the program as a freshman in 2014, Michigan had made the NCAA Tournament

four times in program history. The Wolverines finished eighth in the Big Ten that year, and they’ve steadily climbed upwards since. In Flaherty’s junior year, they won the WNIT after an unexpected snub from the selection committee. “But I think after that, it kind of was the expectation. ‘OK, make the NCAA Tournament,’ ” she said. The next two years, they did. Before COVID-19 canceled last year’s tournament, they were expected to make it again. And it seemed like — barring another act of God — they’d be in a position to do so again this year. Problem is, no one accounted for an act — or to use their phrasing, a recommendation — of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

‘How does this make any sense?’ How Michigan’s student-athlete coalition formed in the wake of athletic department shutdown THEO MACKIE

Daily Sports Writer

In the wake of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ directive to shut down all Michigan athletic department activities late Saturday night due to detection of the B.1.1.7 COVID19 strain, Christian Hubaker began reaching out to fellow studentathletes. Hubaker, a senior on the track and field and cross-country teams, felt especially aggrieved by the decision, as it prevents the Wolverines from competing in

alone. Hubaker said he and Joe Pace, a sixth-year utility player on the baseball team, were the leaders in crafting the statement and petition that were eventually posted to social media Monday afternoon. The letter, though, was signed off by a “coalition of student-athletes,” which Hubaker said includes athletes from nearly every program on campus, including the men’s basketball and football programs. “We’ve been trying to have it be a big, collaborative effort because we really want to have a unified voice out there between

That’s a sense shared by teams who have been affected by the shutdown. “We heard about the new strain and they gave us all the information,” Pace told The Daily. “And the initial thought process is, OK, (most teams) on the campus have no COVID cases, how does this make any sense?” As of Saturday night, there were no positive tests on the men’s basketball, women’s basketball or hockey teams. Hubaker, meanwhile, said that the cross-country program

MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily

After a weekend of uncertainty, a group of athletes took to social media on Monday to express their frustration over the athletic department’s pause.

this week’s Big Ten Cross Country Championships. In turn, that will leave Michigan athletes ineligible for NCAA Championships. The source of Hubaker’s frustration, though, was a sense that the MDHHS directive was poorly aimed. “It’s foolish to think that the variant isn’t gonna be around in two weeks and it’s probably gonna be a bigger deal,” Hubaker told The Daily. “Because we’re the only sector of the community that’s being shut down right now. And we’re, in my opinion, the safest and have the strictest guidelines of anyone else in the community. “So if we had it, the community definitely has it. And we’re worried, a lot of us are worried … and we’ve heard this two-week period thrown around a lot before and we’re worried that this isn’t gonna be a two-week thing.” As soon as Hubaker began reaching out to athletes from other programs, he realized he wasn’t

all athletes,” Hubaker said. As of late Monday afternoon, that goal had succeeded, with the petition receiving over 2,880 signatures in just six hours. Pace said that over 100 athletes were in a GroupMe to help collaborate on the petition. Additionally, Pace said that athletic director Warde Manuel and the rest of the administration “support us voicing our opinion and standing up for what we believe in.” The athletes in charge of creating the petition stopped short of involving coaches, who Hubaker acknowledged are in a “tricky spot” as the bridge between athletes and the athletic department. Hockey coach Mel Pearson said on Monday that his “initial reaction (to the shutdown) was a little bit of shock, a little bit of surprise, a little bit of disappointment, a little bit of anger. Our players have done a great job. We’ve been negative since early July.”

has had one positive case since returning to campus in the fall. The case occurred approximately two weeks ago and was not the B.1.1.7 strain. The athlete who tested positive was quarantined and no other members of the team tested positive. Also as of Saturday night, there were five known cases and 15 presumed positive cases of the B.1.1.7. strain in the athletic department. Michigan chief medical executive Joneigh Khaldun said in a Monday press conference that there were 13 known cases of the variant in Washtenaw County. Because cases of the B.1.1.7 variant have been limited to a handful of programs, athletes and coaches alike have struggled to come to grips with the shutdown being enacted throughout the athletic department. “The consistency of the mandate to have a quarantine when we’ve all been testing

daily and the team was testing negative, people feel like it hasn’t been a consistent application when it’s only Michigan athletics that’s chosen to kind of be in this position,” volleyball coach Mark Rosen told The Daily. Currently, he said, his program does not have any cases of COVID-19. “So I think there’s frustration and disappointment in our coaches right now.” Paul Juda, a sophomore on the men’s gymnastics team, shares Rosen’s frustration. Juda was among a group of Wolverines’ gymnasts in Lincoln for a meet with Nebraska that was scheduled for Sunday when he found out about the shutdown. Due to the requirement that athletes enter a two-week quarantine as soon as possible, he and his teammates had to abandon plans to return to Michigan on commercial flights, instead taking an 11-hour bus ride back to campus. “Not something our team was very happy about knowing our team is completely COVID free so that wasn’t fun at all,” Juda told The Daily, adding that neither the men’s nor women’s gymnastics teams have had any positive COVID-19 tests of any variant in the past two weeks. “Given the fact that it is not only up to 50% more contagious, and the fact that it’s already here … I don’t see (the shutdown) not being extended past two weeks,” Juda said. In light of that concern, the primary goal for the coalition of student-athletes is now for the two-week mandate to be revisited. “We think that on a team-byteam basis, if there are teams that have had no contact with the variant strand, if there are teams that have all healthy people right now, then they should be allowed to resume athletic activity immediately,” Hubaker said. “If that doesn’t happen, we’re mostly looking to get more transparency from the health department to athletes. Because as these things continue to be ruled out, these requirements of us, and as they have been all year, we haven’t had a good line of communication with the health department.” Ethan Sears and Lane Kizziah contributed to the reporting of this story.

“No. Not at all,” Flaherty said when asked whether she could imagine being in this situation. “Just because I’m someone that wanted to be out there individually, working out all the time. That’s something that I did every single day when I was at Michigan. “But also the team aspect. Being able to run, just communicate, talk about everything, it’s definitely different if everyone has to quarantine. And then like you said, not being on the floor, just staying in shape and having that connection with your team. That’s really what’s going so well for Michigan right now, just how they’re playing together out there. I think that’s hard and it’s just hard not doing that for two weeks and then (coming) back and (being) expected to go out there and pick up where you left off. “I don’t think that’s fair to put that expectation on these athletes just because it’s very, very different if you’re not doing anything for two weeks.” The program declined to make Barnes Arico and players available for questions on Sunday morning, which is understandable given they’re still processing the news. Suffice it to say, though, they have every right to be upset even if they believe the decision to be correct. So does every other athlete, coach and administrator at the University who’s been trying since October to pull off games and practices safely. This might have been the year the Michigan women’s basketball program took the

next step. It still could be. But the questions hanging over it now are much bigger than just a couple of days ago. This team may no longer be defined by Hillmon setting program records, winning the Big Ten or an NCAA Tournament run. If that’s the case, it’ll be hard to swallow. Getting the program to this point hasn’t been easy. Having it ripped away for reasons beyond the team’s control would border on tragic. So, to make sure someone gives Barnes Arico and the program that credit, we’ll give the last word here to Flaherty. “She wanted to build up the program, she wanted to compete with the UConn’s, the Kentucky’s, whoever was at the top at that time,” Flaherty said. “And she wanted to pick people to come to Michigan that believed in that vision and wanted to be different than going to those high-caliber schools. To kind of be the start of something special, make a name for yourself. So I think that just attests to who coach (Barnes) Arico is, how far the program has come, but also all of the girls that have been recruited, everyone there, just for a bigger mission. Everyone’s working together. “So I think that’s really important to note. She told me that however many years ago and here it is coming to fruition a few short years later.” Sears can be reached at searseth@umich.edu or on Twitter @ethan_sears.

Michigan defense needs improvement after first loss

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily

Against Ohio State, Michigan gave up the most points it had all season.

ABBIE TELGENHOF Daily Sports Writer

Defense wins championships. It’s an old adage that the Michigan women’s basketball team (10-1 overall, 5-1 Big Ten) struggled to adhere to in its loss to Ohio State on Thursday. It was a game that exposed one of the Wolverines’ biggest weaknesses — defense. This season, Michigan has prided itself on holding teams to low scoring, a product of controlling defense. Typically switching from man to zone looks effortless, and scrappy defenders like fifth-year senior guard Akienreh Johnson and sophomore guard Maddie Nolan make opposing teams’ offense look sloppy. But in the Wolverines’ closest win against Nebraska, winning by only two points, and their first loss of the season against the Buckeyes, defense was the difference. As the number one team in the Big Ten conference in both offensive and defensive rebounds, Michigan doesn’t allow many second-chance points. But against Ohio State, it allowed 14. For reference, in their first match-up with Wisconsin (where the Wolverines beat the Badgers by 43 points) they allowed only three second-chance points, dominating the boards by a large margin. Most of these secondchance points occurred early in the first half, but kept the Buckeyes in the game as they grew a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Even in a game where junior forward Naz Hillmon scored a schoolrecord 50 points, Michigan

couldn’t overcome their defensive struggles to win. “Our defense, I mean firsthalf defense, was not our best,” said Hillmon after the Ohio State game on Jan. 21. “So there’s definitely something that we want to work on. We really try to pride ourselves on being great on the defensive in transitioning into offense, and in the first half, we didn’t really do that.” Fast-break points are another area the Wolverines need to contain. These points happen in transition defense, something Michigan struggles with at times. Against Ohio State, the Wolverines allowed nine fast-break points, and against Nebraska, they allowed four. While nine and four may seem like small numbers, in two games where the score was within four points, those nine points made all the difference. “They are also a team that … scores well in transition and I thought that’s how they got their run early on was on transition and off of our turnovers,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico after the Ohio State game. “We’ve got to get better at the transition (defense), especially against them.” The continued loss of junior wing Leigha Brown due to COVID-19 protocol has also posed its challenges on the defensive end. Brown’s an aggressive defender that adds another layer of depth to the defensive end. Her lanky frame closes passing lanes and helps Hillmon down low with double teams and rebounding. As conference play becomes increasingly competitive, the Wolverines can’t just rely on their offensive production but will need a cohesive defense to propel them to victory.

NOSPORTSWEDNESDAY

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

ANN ARBOR, MI

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2021

PHOTO GALLERY

ON PAUSE

SPORTS

Daily photographers recount their experiences shooting sports during a pandemic

Hours before it was officially announced, teams were working toward scheduling games. What happened? THURSDAY NIGHT Michigan releases a statement that the first case of the COVID-19 B.1.1.7 variant in the state was a member of the University of Michigan community and that two more members of the community with ties to that person were confirmed cases of the new strain. In total, seven cases were linked to the first positive test, though five were not yet certain to be the B.1.1.7 variant. FRIDAY 6:30 pm: Michigan basketball plays Purdue after Boilermaker guard Sasha Stefanovic had tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, as both teams felt confident in the protocols put in place by Purdue to prevent transmission prior to games.

“Women’s gymnastics is the most fun I’ve had shooting a sporting event. Despite limited fans the chemistry between the teammates was electric. Knowing that this is the last sport I may be shooting for a while makes it so much more meaningful.” -Julia Schachinger/Daily

7 pm: Volleyball continues to wait for their first match of the season, since their games against Penn State were postponed due to COVID-19 issues within the Nittany Lions’ program. SATURDAY AFTERNOON 2 pm: Michigan women’s basketball reschedules its postponed game against Michigan State to Tuesday, adding a second game between the in-state rivals in three days. SATURDAY NIGHT 8:30 pm: Rumors begin to swirl of COVID-19 issues within the athletic department. 9:45 pm: The Daily confirms that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that all Michigan sports go on pause. The athletic department pauses all activities for a 14-day quarantine, with sources telling The Daily that there are five confirmed positives and 15 presumed cases of the new B.1.1.7 variant. SUNDAY MORNING 12 pm: An MDHHS memo provided to The Daily confirms the number of cases and recommends that the athletic department go on pause and review all positive tests for the new variant.

Shooting the Notre Dame hockey game was one of the most unique experiences I’ve had as a member of the Daily’s photostaff. Between driving three hours away from Ann Arbor in the middle of the first week of school and navigating my way through an unfamiliar campus, it was certainly an adventure. I’m glad to have had this opportunity during my last semester in Ann Arbor, and I hope I get another chance to feel the cool air of the ice rink before I leave. -Ryan Little/Daily

MONDAY AFTERNOON 1:21 pm: Michigan wrestler Myles Amine tweets out a statement from a “coalition of studentathletes” advocating for MDHHS to revoke its order and a petition is started by cross country senior Christian Hubaker that garners thousands of signatures, signalling serious pushback from athletes within the University.

Design by Jack Silberman

A sense of finality already surrounded last weekend’s swim and dive meet against Michigan State – It marked the last time that the two teams would ever face off due to the ending of Michigan State’s program, and the respect for this was plainly clear across the entire team and coaching staff. This energy made for a special meet to see, especially before a short-term break from the pool. -Becca Mahon/Daily

VISIT MICHIGANDAILY.COM FOR MORE COVERAGE Alec Cohen/Daily