ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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ADMINISTRATION
UMich mandatory reporting policies stir anxiety among faculty, staff “It’s not in our interest collectively as an institution to have things that some students find offensive piped directly off to Washington, D.C..”
GLENN HEDIN
Daily Staff Reporter
On the reporting page of the University of Michigan’s Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX Office, students and faculty looking to submit a report are met with a disclaimer that ECRT reports are private, but not confidential. The website states that information in reports may need to be shared with some University officials. What the disclaimer does not say is that certain reports submitted to ECRT will eventually be submitted to President Donald Trump’s administration. In a resolution agreement signed June 14, 2024, the University agreed to share all ECRT complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry with the federal government’s Office for Civil Rights. By June 15, 2025 and June 15, 2026, the University is required to provide OCR with their response to all ancestry-based complaints they have received in the preceding academic year. Later, on Sept. 2, 2025, the University announced an update to its Standard Practice Guide that made all U-M employees mandatory reporters, requiring all employees to report alleged discrimination, harassment, retaliation or sexual misconduct learned in the scope of their employment to the ECRT office within 48 hours. In the wake of a series of investigations launched by the Department of Education, the University released updated procedures regarding discrimination, harassment and retaliation, defining discrimination as conduct both subjectively and objectively offensive. The DOE’s March 2025 investigation looked into the University’s responses to antisemitic harassment and discrimination violations while a June 2024 investigation resolved with a commitment by the University to reviewing its Title IV policies.
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Derek Peterson, chair of the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, told The Michigan Daily he believes this recent revision of mandatory reporting policies was a consequence of the resolution agreement. “Everything was centralized, in terms of investigation, in the hands of the ECRT,” Peterson said. “As part of that agreement, the University expanded what it is that we, as individual employees at the University, are obliged to report on. We’re supposed to report on anything that a third party might find offensive — a third party in this case being a member of a protected group of one kind or another.” In an interview with The Daily, Rackham student Kaitlin Karmen, chair of the Solidarity and Political Action Committee of the Graduate Employees’ Organization, claimed the agreement was spurred by allegations that the University was
not taking sufficient action to crack down on antisemitism on campus. “The agreement was based on a complaint lodged by different groups of people against the University of Michigan for purportedly not taking reports of antisemitism seriously,” Karmen said. “And largely those reports of antisemitism were (from) people that disagree with pro-Palestine activism.” Karmen said she does not believe the University and the federal government distinguish between pro-Palestinian activism and antisemitism, raising concerns that that the policy would target all proPalestinian speech. “We know that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, but of course that is not represented by what the federal government believes, and certainly not what the folks that lodged this complaint against the University of Michigan believe,” Karmen said. “The mandatory reporter policy at the University
of Michigan now is going to work as a way to punish pro-Palestine speech, and also to create this really disturbing surveillance state amongst workers.” While the agreement was signed under former President Joe Biden’s administration, Trump’s return to the White House has been marked by an increasing number of crackdowns on universities, and individuals associated with them, by the federal government and allied conservative groups. Peterson said Trump’s presidency has made faculty more anxious about the volume of information ECRT is supplying the federal government with, as Trump has not hesitated to use supposed civil rights infractions as ammunition to target universities over the past year. “All of us are aware of the fact that whatever you say, however well intentioned it might be, can get fed into a conservative outrage machine and, in turn, vitally impact
your life,” Peterson said. “It’s not in our interest collectively as an institution to have things that some students find offensive piped directly off to Washington, D.C..” In addition to the threat posed to faculty, Peterson said he worries the University’s mandatory reporting policies may also hurt students’ education, especially in liberal arts fields focused on the debate between different ideas. “It is in being stretched, in being prodded, that one gets educated, one gets the ability to respond to ideas with which you disagree,” Peterson said. “These new reporting obligations will be a disincentive for any of us, whether as teachers or as students, to say things that others might deem challenging or even offensive. It’s not that we want to encourage offensive speech in its own right, but much of what we do in the classroom will sometimes offend some people, and that has to be part of the educational process.”
Karmen said that as a graduate student instructor, she was also concerned about how students will now be unable to confide in graduate student instructors without worrying that their issues might be escalated to ECRT under mandatory reporting requirements. “I think the thing that’s more concerning is that students are now contending with the fact that GSIs, with whom they used to be able to talk and mention things without being worried that something would be elevated into a formal investigation process,” Karmen said. “They now don’t really have anyone to talk to at an informal level.” Peterson said the new policies created an environment of selfenforced surveillance where faculty would be incentivized to report on their colleagues and students, stifling free speech on campus. “It obliges us to be tattletales in many ways, on each other or on behalf of people who are not us, but that we fear might be offended by what another person at the institution says,” Peterson said. “It has the effect of making us all into instruments of surveillance.” The Daily reached out to ECRT director Tamiko Strickman for her response to concerns about the updated mandatory reporting policies but was redirected to the Office of Public Affairs. In an email to The Daily, University spokesperson Kay Jarvis cited the specific section of the SPG pertaining to the new policies and wrote the University intended to uphold its agreement with OCR. “The University of Michigan is committed to meeting its legal obligations while protecting the privacy, health and safety of our community,” Jarvis wrote. “The employee reporting requirement applies to information learned in the scope of employment about discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.” CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
GOVERNMENT
Ann Arbor community protests outside Tesla showroom for ‘No Trillionaires Day of Action’
Protestors opposed a recent pay package that could make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire KAYLA LUGO
Daily Staff Reporter
About 60 protesters gathered Saturday morning outside the Tesla Ann Arbor showroom on Jackson Road as part of a nationwide “No Trillionaires Day of Action.” Organized by Ann Arbor Indivisible, the protest opposed a recent pay package approved by Tesla shareholders that could make Tesla CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. The pay package will reward Musk with shares worth $1 trillion if the company meets certain financial and development goals over the next decade, including increasing the company’s value in the stock market by nearly six times. Protesters carried signs with slogans including “The rich didn’t earn their money they stole it from the middle class” and “Make Tesla pay taxes” while chanting “Feed kids not kings, no trillionaires,” and “Money talks but so do we, time to end their tyranny.” In the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term, Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency in an unelected role that has been criticized as unconstitutional. Musk left the White House in May after a public disagreement with Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Gus Teschke, a member of Ann Arbor Indivisible’s steering committee, said the protesters wanted to send a clear
Ava Farah/DAILY Ann Arbor residents Erica Gordon, Deanne Sovereen and Lourdes Heintz hold a sign at the “No Trillionaires” protest at Tesla Ann Arbor Saturday morning.
message against extreme wealth and for political accountability. “We’re just out here trying to say that no one needs $1 trillion,” Teschke said. “Musk has proved he’s going to use it to undermine democracy and to hurt people, kill people. So we’re against that. We want to replace the people that are supporting Trump with people who support democracy.” DOGE focused on reducing federal spending through cuts to government programs such as the United States Agency for International Development, which officially shut down in July. Since
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then, researchers estimate hundreds of thousands of people have died due to lack of humanitarian assistance. Bill Gates has publicly criticized Musk, saying he was responsible for the deaths of children in countries that lost foreign aid. Teschke said he disapproved of Musk’s past political and business actions, such as donating more than $200 million towards Trump’s presidential campaign, providing two Wisconsin voters with checks for supporting the Republican candidate in a Supreme Court election and cuts made by DOGE that were deemed unconstitutional.
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“He spent like $270 million to help get Trump elected,” Teschke said. “He tried to buy a State Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. He (led) DOGE that was gutting our government services that people need. He ripped apart USAID, and that’s estimated to have caused the deaths of 600,000 people around the world. He’s a criminal. He shouldn’t be getting $1 trillion. He should be in jail.” In an interview with The Daily, Ann Arbor resident Erica Gordon said the current U.S. political system favors the wealthy at the expense of average citizens.
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“There’s so much money in politics and special interest groups are buying politicians to sway policies in their favor,” Gordon said. “The working person, the average individual, doesn’t have these types of political systems built in to help them.” State Rep. Carrie Rheingans, D-Ann Arbor, told The Daily it was important to have public participation from everyone — including elected officials — in movements like this. “Right now, all the folks that are here are taking a step to publicly say there are no kings in America,”
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Rheingans said. “We don’t need to have trillionaires, and I think them seeing their representative, representing them, telling them they’re on the right side of history, helps people stay active and involved to keep demanding that we tax the rich and that we fund the things that we all need to live.” Rheingans highlighted the reallife impact of wealth inequality on her constituents’ health care struggles, arguing for the rich to be taxed to fund Michigan residents’ health care. “I have constituents that are losing their health care coverage,” Rheingans said. “I have constituents who even have health care coverage (but) they can’t even use it because they have such high deductibles or they have such high copays in order to even use their health coverage. And if we have enough money for Elon Musk to be a trillionaire, we certainly have enough money to cover all the health care needs of 10 million Michiganders. So I think we need to tax the billionaires and maybe even this trillionaire to make sure we have money for things that we all need, like health care.” Gordon encouraged more people to get involved in activism to strengthen democracy. “I hope more people get involved in protesting this government and the way our country is moving, and that they come out, they use their power of their voice, their vote and their activities to bring our country back to a real democracy,” Gordon said.
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