2021-09-22

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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CAMPUS LIFE

Campus reacts to end of COVID-19 notices

Community no longer notified of classroom exposure JUSTIN O’BEIRNE Daily Staff Reporter

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Ann Arbor, UMich face a shortage of employees as students return to city

Local businesses, residence halls struggle to meet heightened demand for service EMILY BLUMBERG Daily Staff Reporter

From local coffee shops to Cuban restaurants to University of Michigan residence halls, Ann Arbor businesses say they are facing employee shortages, when the number of customers are increasing as COVID19 restrictions ease up and vaccination rates increase. This trend also exists nationwide, as labor shortages continue to challenge business owners and strain the productivity of their establishments. On campus, residence and dining halls are also facing similar

difficulties in searching for student employees. Economics professor Linda Tesar said that some people are still concerned about being exposed to COVID-19, especially in establishments where possibly unvaccinated customers are constantly coming in and out. Some people may have also begun to aim for higher pay and are willing to wait for a more ideal job to come along, Tesar said. “Some workers could be covering their expenses with the COVID stimulus support and therefore have time to look for the job they really want, rather than take the next job

that is available,” Tesar said. “And it could be that people’s views about how much they need to be paid to do certain kinds of work have shifted with the pandemic.” LSA junior Anthony Marx, a residential advisor in North Quad Residence Hall, said dining hall hours and residence hall activities have been limited due to the small number of available staff members. Some floors that are supposed to have two residential advisors are left with one, and dining halls are only open for a few blocks of time during the weekend, Marx said. Marx added that he hopes more people will apply to become staff

members and allow dining and residency to return to a more normal schedule. “I would say apply for those jobs at MDining or Housing,” Marx said. “They are really a great opportunity to get some work experience under your belt but also support the University and (help us) get back to those hours that (students) were used to.” During the first week of classes, as students faced long lines for busses, University spokesperson Kim Broekhuizen told the Daily it was due to a University labor shortage.

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Students have expressed concern that a lack of knowledge about potential exposures could lead to increased spread of the virus since the University of Michigan stopped sending classroom and building COVID-19 notifications on Sept. 14. Previously, after a student tested positive for COVID-19, the University sent out a notification to the class rosters for all in-person and hybrid classes that the student was taking. However, the notification did not specify which class the student was in, the date that students could have been exposed or if the student who tested positive had even attended class in-person recently. The University announced this policy change in an article published in the University Record. The announcement said that classrooms have not been associated with the spread of COVID-19, simply being in a class with somebody who tests positive for COVID-19 does not qualify as a “close contact” exposure and the notifications were confusing and of limited benefit. University President Mark Schlissel and Provost Susan Collins previously said classrooms are “the safest place to be on campus” due to mask and vaccine requirements. According to the Campus Blueprint, 95% of students, 83% of staff and 94% of faculty are fully vaccinated. Rackham student Ryan Glauser, COVID-19 caucus co-chair of the Graduate Employees’ Union, said the University did not inform GEO or Graduate Student Instructors prior to announcing the decision to end COVID-19 classroom notifications. Glauser said he would have preferred

to learn about this information from a supervisor rather than via a Michigan Daily story. “There is no reason that the union, or me, should find out that I’m no longer being told I’m getting exposed to COVID from a newspaper article,” Glauser said. “My supervisor should be the one telling me we’re making a substantial policy change here.” Though the University discontinued the notifications, they will continue to trace close contacts of people who tested positive for COVID-19, the Record article states. Robert Ernst, executive director of University Health Service, told the University Record close-contact tracing is a more effective mitigation strategy than the emails. “Targeted individual case investigation and associated contact tracing are more effective parts of the mitigation strategy designed to limit spread,” Ernst said. Glauser said he never received any COVID-19 classroom notifications, though several of his students personally told him they were diagnosed with COVID-19 or were quarantined due to close classroom contacts. “I’ve only found out because my students have told me, and in the first few weeks I’ve had about a quarter of my class miss a week because of COVID issues,” Glauser said. Music, Theatre & Dance junior Sam Todd said he believes the University should have improved the COVID-19 classroom notifications instead of ending them altogether. “(The University) would tell you that there was a COVID case … but (they’re) not going to tell you where it is,” Todd said. “It was confusing, but don’t throw the baby out the window.”

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ANN ARBOR

First Entheofest draws crowd to Diag

Event celebrated decriminalization of psychedelics LIAT WEINSTEIN, CALDER LEWIS, KRISTINA ZHENG & MARTHA LEWAND Daily News Editors & Daily Staff Reporter

Hundreds of local entheogenic and psychedelic plant activists gathered on the University of Michigan Diag on Sept. 19 for the first-ever Entheofest, a celebration and call for the decriminalization of plant medicines and fungi in Ann Arbor and beyond. The event began exactly at 11:11 a.m. and ended at 2:22 p.m. The celebration came a year after the Ann Arbor City Council voted to decriminalize the use and possession of entheogenic plants in September 2020. The resolution the council voted to approve stated that arresting individuals for use of entheogenic plants such as mushrooms would be the city’s “lowest priority.” At the meeting, many community members voiced their support for the decriminalization of these psychedelic substances. With the passage of the resolution, Ann Arbor became one of a handful of cities in the country to decriminalize psychedelics. Denver legalized entheogenic plants in May 2019, becoming the first city to do so. In January 2021, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit announced that his office will no longer prosecute individuals for use of marijuana or entheogenic plants. A few months later, in August, City Council declared September the Entheogenic Plant and Fungi Awareness month. Ellie Ribitwer and Marina Chupac, criminal defense attorneys in Wayne County, decided to attend Entheofest together in support of the decriminalization and destigmatization of entheogens. “This is the beginning of getting

everybody together, passing out information, setting up booths and having the prosecutors speak on it,” Ribitwer said. “There’s been a lot of prosecutions for this when really it doesn’t need to be categorized as a drug. I think it has crazy healing properties, the clinical tests on PTSD and depression and all of that is profound. And I think the War on Drugs is ending, and if Michigan can get ahead of it the way that California and Oregon have, let’s do it.” Chupac told The Michigan Daily she has “no shame” in admitting that she uses entheogens because she finds them helpful for improving her mental health. “I’ve used these psychedelic plants in the past to open my mind and my heart,” Chupac said. “It’s changed the way I live, the way I look at everything I see and my connection to other people and that’s important. I think that psychedelics, in general, help open up that gateway, and the more connected we are, the better off we are as a unit.” School of Social Work student Christian Smith attended the event and said Entheofest was planned in celebration of the anniversary of the council’s vote to decriminalize entheogenic plants. “Psychedelics … have been used by humans for thousands of years for healing, both (for) interpersonal and intercultural healing,” Smith said. “And this is a celebration of the year anniversary of decriminalizing sacred plant medicines in Ann Arbor.” State Sen. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, spoke to the crowd about his efforts to pass Senate Bill 631, which would legalize entheogenic plants and fungi for non-commercial use in Michigan.

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Landlords are suing the city of Ann Arbor over an ordinance that gives tenants more time before they have to renew their contracts.

HOUSING

Landlords resisting early leasing ordinance prompt frustration

Leasing companies sue city over requirement that they wait 150 days to show property ARJUN THAKKAR Daily Staff Reporter

Multiple landlords and leasing companies in Ann Arbor are suing the city of Ann Arbor for a City Council ordinance passed Aug. 2 that gives tenants more time before they can be asked to renew their contracts. The new Early Leasing Ordinance requires that landlords wait until 150 days prior to the end of a lease before showing a property to prospective tenants. Before this ordinance was passed, landlords only had to wait 70 days after a lease started before showing leasing units, though leasing

companies have historically found ways to avoid the regulations. Students and tenants have said the previous leasing timeline puts pressure on them to renew their leases or sign a new lease very early in the academic year. The ordinance aims to limit this pressure on tenants by giving them more time to decide if they want to renew as well as by giving them more time to search for the next year’s housing and roommates. Landlords shared their opposition to the restrictions during previous City Council hearings and are now considering ways to get around the regulations, which went

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into effect Aug. 15. The Washtenaw Area Apartment Association, a non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of rental property owners, filed a lawsuit on Sep. 10 against the city of Ann Arbor in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan seeking to overturn the city’s early leasing restrictions. The plaintiffs, which include several companies that lease to students in Ann Arbor, argue the ordinance violates the First Amendment’s protection of “restrictions on commercial speech” that apply to landlords. The landlord plaintiffs claim the ordinance did not have a specific

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governmental purpose and was solely created with the “private purpose” of catering to University of Michigan students. They also argued the regulations would expand the presence of unregulated renting. “By enacting the (ordinance provisions) at the behest of certain University of Michigan students, the City has exercised its police power in the service of special, private interests at the sole expense of Ann Arbor landlords,” the complaint reads. “The (provisions) simply serve (to) encourage off-books or blackmarket leasing activity.”

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CAMPUS LIFE

Student organizations discuss adjusting to in-person operations after a year online

Some clubs continue to meet virtually due to convenience and COVID-19 concerns KAITLYN LUCKOFF Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan is home to more than 1,700 studentrun organizations for students to join. Following a completely virtual year, many of these student organizations are now returning to in-person events, similar to pre-pandemic life. Others, however, are reaping the benefits of continuing with a flexible virtual or hybrid format. The Michigan Daily spoke to five leaders and members of student organizations to learn how they are adjusting to being in-person or choosing to stay virtual as the new semester begins. Pre-pandemic life and the shift to a virtual format Caiden Baxter, LSA Junior and member of the Adaptive Sports Student Interest Group, an organization assisting those with and without disabilities in physical fitness opportunities and increasing awareness of adaptive sports, explained that the group heavily relies on in-person interaction. “Being so closely tied to physical activity and sports, pre-COVID our events were almost entirely held in person,” Baxter wrote. “During the shift to a remote format, our organization had time to reassess our plans for when the campus reopened. We also worked with the (Adaptive Sports and Fitness) program to develop an accessible online physical fitness program for at-home use.” LSA senior Lydia Goff, co-president of Best Buddies, shared that both their weekly meetings and monthly in-person community events were impacted by the pandemic. Best Buddies is an organization that matches University students to an adult with

ENTHEOFEST FROM PAGE 1 State Sen. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, spoke to the crowd about his efforts to pass Senate Bill 631, which would legalize entheogenic plants and fungi for non-commercial use in Michigan. “We know these substances have tremendous medicinal benefits,” Irwin said to the crowd. “We know they have religious and cultural significance. And we know that they’re not particularly harmful to people and these substances aren’t likely to lead to addiction.” The bill, introduced by Irwin on Sept. 2, seeks to amend numerous sections of the public health code to include provisions related to the use and possession of entheogenic plants. “An individual is not in violation of this section if the individual manufactures, creates, delivers, or possesses with intent to manufacture, create, or deliver an entheogenic plant or fungus without receiving money or other valuable consideration for the entheogenic plant or fungus,” the bill reads.

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intellectual or developmental disabilities and hosts monthly events to build friendships and relationships. In an email to The Daily, Goff wrote holding events for Best Buddies is significantly more difficult when done online, but the rewards can also be greater. Depending on the comfort level of members with getting together with their buddies, Goff wrote that contact in friendships was mostly virtual or socially distanced. “COVID helped reinforce the importance of friendship and inclusion in our members, as social isolation touched all of our lives,” Goff wrote. “I think college buddies especially got a better understanding of how significant a simple phone call or texting conversation can be to both them and their buddies.” Doctors of Tomorrow is a partnership between the Medical School and two Detroit high schools — Class Technical High School and Marygrove High School — serving as a channel for medical students to assist high schoolers and increase their involvement in the medical community. The organization previously met completely in person, with high school students visiting the Medical School at least once a month. Medical School student Natalie Guzman, director of programming for Doctors of Tomorrow, explained that her role in the organization was significantly affected by the pandemic. “A big reason that I got involved with Doctors of Tomorrow was because I wanted to actually interact with students and serve as a mentor,” Guzman said. “But because of the virtual nature of everything, my role was slightly more administrative in terms of finding speakers, organizing small groups, things like that. I think if we were in-person I’d be able to interact with the students more.”

Deciding whether to return to in-person events and looking toward the future With some classes still in a virtual or hybrid format, many clubs and organizations are seeing benefits from continuing to meet virtually. Public Health and Social Work student Brandon Bond, president of the Public Health Student Assembly, explained the organization has advanced in a virtual format, despite the pandemic. “I believe many of us are fully vaccinated and COVID-19 cautious, however with a board of our size it is easier and more convenient to hold our meetings virtually,” Bond wrote. “With the protocols of the university and potential change of guidelines, meeting virtually helps avoid all of that (confusion).” Guzman said Doctors of Tomorrow was able to work with more students during the pandemic, a benefit of the virtual format. “Hopefully going forward we can do a hybrid type situation, in terms of getting to interact with students in person but also (maintaining) the pros of the virtual world,” Guzman said. Though Baxter wrote the Adaptive Sports Student Interest Group was able to reach a wider audience of participants with a virtual format, he wrote they were eager to return to meeting and collaborating in person as soon as possible. “We hope to continue to spread awareness of … adaptive sports, as well as increase the variety of the programming we offer,” Baxter wrote. Goff said that Best Buddies is looking forward to their first in-person event at the end of the month and they hope to expand their organization to include more buddies.

Daily Staff Reporter Kaitlyn Luckoff can be reached at kluckoff@umich.

State Rep. Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, chose to speak at Entheofest to stress how pharmaceutical companies are “greedy” by advocating for the criminalization of entheogens. “When you look at the pharmaceutical companies and the drugs that they’ve manufactured, look at the opioid epidemic — they have killed more people with the opioid epidemic than mushrooms have ever killed in their entire history,” Rabhi said to the audience. “There is no comparison. So, why are we allowing these pharmaceutical companies to continue to do their thing, and allowing these things to continue to be criminalized, when the real medicine is growing in the ground?” Social Work student Moss Herberholz, president of the Student Association for Psychedelic Studies, said research has shown plant medicines have significant therapeutic potential and that efforts to decriminalize entheogenic substances is a step forward in ending the War on Drugs. “Decriminalizing these substances reduces the number of people who

are incarcerated through the racist War on Drugs,” Herberholz said. The War on Drugs began during the Nixon administration and increased penalties for possession and use of marijuana, psychedelics, opioids and other substances. The heightened criminalization of drug use during this period coincided with a rise in law enforcement presence in predominantly Black and Latinx urban neighborhoods. As a result, Black and Latinx people make up about 80% of the total federal prison population. Michael Williams, co-director of Decriminalize Nature Michigan, secretary for Michigan Psychedelic Society and member of the Board of Directors for Students for Sensible Drug Policy, helped organize Entheofest and delivered a speech at the event. Williams has been in recovery from opioid addiction for 15 years and credits entheogens to the start of his recovery. “It was a single psychedelic mushroom experience trying to just chase another high, where I took a look in the cosmic mirror and saw myself and the things I was doing to my body, and realized that I needed

to make some life changes,” Williams told The Daily. “I then was able to give up opioids, able to distance myself from methamphetamines, and started looking at psychedelics as a way to connect with spirituality and find myself.” Though he ran into legal trouble for using entheogens, Williams said as a white person he saw people of color receive harsher legal consequences than he did, which inspired his start in drug decriminalization activism. “Having been in the opioid war and having been on the receiving end of criminal justice issues regarding drug law, I found myself recognizing that I may be a white guy getting in trouble,” Williams told The Daily. “But, quite frankly, for every one of me, there’s nine people of color in this situation. And I started to see the racial disparity (in) all this. So that’s when I became a drug policy activist.” Managing News Editor Liat Weinstein can be reached at weinsl@ umich.edu. Daily News Editors Calder Lewis and Kristina Zheng can be reached at calderll@umich.edu and krizheng@umich.edu. Daily Staff Reporter Martha Lewand can be reached at mlewand@umich.edu.

“Once my buddy and I were vaccinated, we took advantage right away of the opportunity to get lunch together indoors without masks — something we had not been able to do for over a year,” Goff said. “This year, I’m hoping our organization can continue to grow its impact. … I’m hoping that we can expand our overall outreach and become a more familiar name in the Ann Arbor community.” Recruitment during a virtual year Because Festifall, a student organization recruiting fair, was held in person this semester, many organizations found recruiting to be easier than when it was done virtually. Goff wrote the event was an immense help for recruiting many new students. “We’ve had a huge surge in prospective college buddies and have been overwhelmed by their excitement,” Goff wrote. “I think Festifall definitely helped us attract more members, as well as our social media platforms. Many college buddies choose to join Best Buddies after doing it in high school so that always gives us a solid membership base.” Baxter echoed this statement, saying the Adaptive Sports Student Interest Group is eager to return to in-person programming with many new members. “Recruiting members this year has been significantly easier than the virtual school year because so much of our programming has returned,” Baxter wrote. “We are excited to get people out and playing sports again.”

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The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is publishing weekly on Wednesdays for the Winter 2021 semester by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. If you would like a current copy of the paper mailed to you, please visit store. pub.umich.edu/michigan-daily-buy-this-edition to place your order.

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NEWS

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 — 3

PUBLIC SAFETY

Three weeks into the Gov. Whitmer proposes semester, here’s the COVID-19 allocating federal COVID-19 outlook at UMich & in Ann funds to Michigan police Virus cases remain stable after sharp rise in late August ASHNA MEHRA Daily Staff Reporter

Since students returned to campus in late August, the number of positive COVID-19 cases associated with University of Michigan students has increased then decreased. The number of COVID-19 cases increased from 73 on the week of Aug. 22 to 195 the week of Aug. 29, the first day of classes. Preliminary data from the two weeks since then shows numbers have remained high at 156 the week of Sep. 5, then dropping to 82 for the week of Sep. 12. Since class began, positivity rates have remained under 2%. In an email to the University community on Friday, President Mark Schlissel wrote that per the dashboard, “case numbers and our quarantine housing usage have flattened.” In an email to The Michigan Daily last Thursday, Dr. Robert Ernst, associate vice president of student life for health and wellness and the director of COVID-19 Campus Health Response, wrote he believes the University’s mitigation strategies such as masking and vaccination reduce the risk of transmission on campus, even with the more contagious delta variant. “Given the repopulation of campus and many associated large social gatherings where masking is not universal, the finding of covid transmission among students early

in the fall semester is not surprising,” Ernst wrote. “Peer institutions like ours have seen similar early increases, and campuses like ours that started earlier have seen these early increases followed by a gradual decline.” In the past few weeks, doctors across the state have reported seeing a gradual increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in hospitals. According to Jakob McSparron, associate director of the critical care medicine unit at Michigan Medicine, the number of cases per week in the past month has risen from 25, to 35, to 45 as the delta variant has spread. “The rise is a little bit slower compared to the previous surges we used to see,” McSparron said. “This time it’s more of a steady increase in our numbers.” Hallie Prescott, a pulmonary care physician at Michigan Medicine, said in an email she believes these rising trends should be of concern to students. “It is certainly worth noting that COVID is circulating in our community, and therefore (it is) important to take extra precautions such as wearing a mask while in public indoor spaces,” Prescott said. “Even if one’s personal risk of hospitalization/death from COVID is low, these extra measures are important to keep case counts low and protect our community as a whole.” According to McSparron, the majority of patients in the intensive care unit at Michigan Medicine are unvaccinated. The few that

are vaccinated have underlying conditions putting them at risk, he said. McSparron said he believes things could start to look more normal if vaccination rates increased. “Unfortunately, I think we are seeing more young patients this time around in terms of the unvaccinated,” McSparron said. “It’s very hard to see a 20-year-old on a breathing machine knowing that so much of this was preventable.” LSA sophomore Lana King said she first started to notice the uptick when she received multiple “COVID-classroom” notifications, which have since been discontinued. “I personally don’t feel too scared because we’re all wearing masks and especially in class, you’re not getting that close to people,” King said. When asked if the recent trends in COVID-19 cases on campus should be concerning to students, Ernst said it’s too soon to predict further developments this fall. “There has not been evidence of transmission within residence halls and fortunately, as we would expect in a highly vaccinated population, most affected individuals experience only mild symptoms,” Ernst said. Ernst said the University is in a very different position compared to the last academic year, when Washtenaw County had to use stay-in-place orders and recommendations to curb the spread of the virus.

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Proposal responds to increase in violent crime in state KATE WEILAND Daily Staff Reporter

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed allocating $75 million of federal COVID-19 funds to provide Michigan law enforcement with better training, find and remove illegal guns from Michigan communities and fund community programs that provide more opportunities in education, jobs and the justice system. This proposal, which was announced in Detroit last month, comes in the wake of an increase in violent crime in Michigan over the past year, with the crime rate in Detroit increasing by 9.41% and the homicide rate in Detroit increasing by 19%. In her announcement of the proposal, Whitmer cited the importance of ensuring safety for citizens of Michigan as her motivation for the funding decision. “People are scared,” Whitmer said. “They’re afraid to pump their gas or merge onto the highway, pull up to a red light, drive to work, drop their kids off at school. That’s not right, and we cannot and will not accept this. No one should feel unsafe as they go about their lives.” Whitmer’s proposal for increased funding comes after protests erupted across the country last summer following ongoing police violence, as calls to defund law enforcement gained support. LSA senior Noah Streng, president of Young Democratic Socialists of America at the University of

LSA sophomore Alex Manthous supports Whitmer’s proposal and said he thinks this increase in funding will help promote safety across the state. “I stand with her decision not to defund the police,” Manthous said. “I am a proponent of getting illegal weapons off the street, especially since crime is closely associated with guns and illegal weapons.” Streng said he believes the police should be defunded with a focus on allocating more money to community programs in communities that have been divested from. This money would be used to bolster education, housing and mental and physical health, Streng said, which may subsequently decrease violence. “We cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” Streng said. “If we took federal funding and coupled it with shifting resources away from police departments and towards robust social services, jobs, education and health care, we would see a much different outcome, where people would have the opportunities and abilities to get themselves out of poverty and not have to turn to crime.” The governor’s proposal is awaiting support from the Republicanheld legislature, which has touted bipartisan support for increased law enforcement and funding of the police. Helps expressed his frustration at the lack of action to address the root causes of violence from both sides of the aisle.

Michigan, is discontent with Whitmer’s announcement. Streng said he believes that increasing funding of law enforcement will not decrease violence or crime and that this funding expansion does not address socioeconomic disparities facing Michigan communities as a result of the pandemic. “I think that Governor Whitmer is wrong when she says that police keep us safe,” Streng said. “It’s true that we have seen an uptick in violent crime over the past year, but crime doesn’t just happen for no reason. There are real material reasons why people are turning to crime.” David Helps, co-chair of the Graduate Employees Organization’s Abolition caucus, said he thinks lawmakers must look at more than crime rates when making policy proposals and decisions. He highlighted Detroit’s 45% unemployment rate during the pandemic and the impact that has had on communities and crime rates across the city. “People have been traumatized, people have been sick, have lost work, have known people that have died, and all of those forms of suffering have been concentrated in certain cities and in certain communities,” Helps said. “Those are some of the same places in which we’re seeing an increase in certain forms of violence.” Proponents of this proposal have argued that sufficient police training is key to decreasing violence among communities because it will help law enforcement better equipped to handle high-stress situations.

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CAMPUS LIFE

‘Florecemos de nuestras raíces:’ UMich kicks off Latinx Heritage Month with opening ceremony

Speakers talk cultural identity, history at event celebrating independence of numerous Latin American countries RONI KANE & PAIGE HODDER

Daily Staff Reporters

Latinx Heritage Month 2021 celebrations at the University of Michigan commenced Wednesday evening with the opening ceremony in the Rogel Ballroom at the Michigan Union. With Latin pop music blasting from speakers, the smell of Latinx food lingering in the air and students pairing up to learn salsa dancing, the ceremony marked the first event in a month of cultural gatherings. Across the nation, LHM is celebrated annually between Sep. 15 and Oct. 15, a period during which five Latin American countries as well as Mexico and Chile commemorate the anniversary of their independence. The holiday originated in 1968 as a week-long celebration called Hispanic Heritage Week, but was later renamed and expanded to a full month in 1988. Every year LHM has been celebrated at the University, the program has been given a different theme, with this year’s being

“florecemos de nuestras raíces,” or “we bloom from our roots.” The hybrid ceremony was attended by students in-person, with several viewing the festivities from the virtual livestream. Anamaria Lopez, Education graduate student and the LHM student coordinator, opened the ceremony by explaining the significance of the 2021 theme. Lopez said the theme acknowledges how the historical experiences — the “roots” — of Latinx communities shape their tenacity and resilience in the present day and allow them to “bloom.” “The (LHM) planning committee decided that we wanted to celebrate Latinx heritage by honoring the beautiful culture, vivid life and all the hard work that our ancestors and those who have come before us have put in,” Lopez said. The ceremony officially opened with a land acknowledgment and a welcome address from Martino Harmon, vice provost for student life. In his address, Harmon called upon attendees to reflect on the contributions of the Latinx community with those around them

BARBARA GRAZIOSI PROFESSOR OF CLASSICS AT P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y

THE GERALD F. ELSE LECTURE IN THE HUMANITIES

THE LEG ACIES OF LUIGI SETTEMBRINI

Michelle Ferrez, director of the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, gave the keynote address. In her speech, Ferrez spoke on her personal experience with encountering and fighting racial injustice during her time in college. She also described the “cultural capital” model, referring to the inherent value of non-quantifiable assets associated with a particular culture — including social justice, storytelling and aspirations — that promote social mobility. Ferrez gave examples of ways the cultural capital model could positively transform and equalize higher education, and challenged attendees to use their own cultural capital to improve their communities. “We need leaders like all of you with your Latinx (perspectives) and that capital each and every one of you have, to (address) racism, environmental justice, climate issues, needs of communities with water systems, access to food … not just in our communities in the United States, but in our home countries throughout Latin America, throughout Central America, throughout the islands,

the Caribbean throughout Mexico,” Ferrez said. Jesús Galván, program manager of the University’s Office of MultiEthnic Student Affairs, told The Daily Ferrez was selected by a committee of MESA members on account of the relevant research she has completed about educational equality for those identifying as a part of marginalized communities. “For one, (Ferrez) is familiar with the experience we’re trying to represent and speak about, but also, they’re part of us here at U-M,” Galván said. “So we shine light on the folks that are doing the good work and are critical components to student success on this campus.” Lopez said MESA began planning this year’s LHM over the summer, with an important part of the preparations involving MESA’s collaboration with Michigan Dining chefs who identify as Latinx. Throughout the opening ceremony, attendees were encouraged to try different food items from the buffet which included tostones, arepas, arroz con gandules and empanadas. The two main chefs — Luz Ruiz from Panama and Miriam Palacio

from Colombia — were also given the opportunity to explain their personal backgrounds and identities to the crowd as well as why they chose to prepare each specific dish for the event. Empanadas, Palacio told The Daily, are usually made using corn flourbased dough. But she had experience in Colombia making the dough with flour derived from the yuca root, which makes the dish gluten-free so more students can try it. “I used yuca to make the dough and it makes this food be gluten-free,” Palacio said. “I hope you guys enjoy … their Colombian flavor.” Autumn Battin-Flores, the senior associate director of retail and catering for the University, told The Daily MCatering has been collaborating with MDining and cultural organizations on campus for three years to serve authentic cuisine at various heritage month events. Flores said encouraging chefs to cook dishes from their individual cultures is a promising start to promoting culinary diversity within campus dining.

Congratulations To our 31E scholars, recipients of this year’s Class of 1931 Engineering Scholarship The class of ‘31E and its Scholarship Selection Committee welcomes their five new scholarship winners for the 2021-2022 academic year: Sidharth Anantha Hanna Chen Jose Diaz Peon Gonzalez Pacheco

Gina Kittleson Kira Woodhouse

They will be joining the ‘31E Honor Society and our sixteen current scholars:

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 29, 2021 4:00 P.M. MICHIGAN LEAGUE HUSSEY ROOM,

2 ND

F LO O R

A public lecture and reception. For more info, call 734.615.6667 or visit events.umich.edu/event/86627. Livestreaming will be available. Please visit lsa.umich.edu/classics for more information.

Jessica Houghton George Adamson Jacob Mackey Tyler Bartlett Benjamin Manley Alfonso Botta-Lopez Aditya Middha Robert Elliott Taylor Scott Michelle Gehner Chimmuanya Iheanyi-Igwe

Morgan Serra Joseph Taylor Allison Wilcox Laura Williams Claudia Zimmerman

All of these scholarship winners will be honored at the 39th Annual Scholarship Dinner of the Class of ‘31E, which will be held virtually on Friday evening, September 24th, 2021 at 5:30pm. Since the establishment of the ‘31E Scholarship Program in 1982, more than 200 aspiring engineering students have been helped to experience a University of Michigan education, and have gone on to productive and rewarding careers.

VONNIE C. MCLOYD

Ewart A.C. Thomas Collegiate Professor of Psychology

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Tuesday, October 5, 2021 | 4:00 p.m. | Weiser Hall, 10th Floor

CLASSICS, LOVE, REVOLUTION:

during the rest of the night as well as every day throughout LHM. “I encourage you to practice inclusive leadership and celebrate your community wherever you go, whatever you do,” Harmon said. “The roots of this history, this community, reach deep.” In 2020, 8% of University undergraduate students identified as Hispanic, with Hispanic faculty members constituting just 4% of total faculty at the Ann Arbor campus. Lopez told The Michigan Daily the University has been expanding campus LHM celebrations over the past several years, though last year’s activities were completely virtual. Lopez said it is important to highlight the contributions Latinx culture has made within the U.S. to empower what is often an underrepresented and marginalized community at the University and nationwide. “(LHM) acknowledges all of the movements and the history and the people who are of Latinx descent who have (also) made an impact within the United States,” Lopez said. “In reality, this should always be happening, but the truth is that it’s not.”

LSA COLLEGIATE LECTURE

A public lecture and reception; you may attend in person or virtually. For more information, including the Zoom link, visit events.umich.edu/event/84262 or call 734.615.6667.

4 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021

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The beautiful chaos of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ BRENNA GOSS Daily Arts Writer

Anna, an orphan in 15th-century Constantinople; Omeir, a poor woodcutter’s son, his cleft palate proof of a demon’s presence; Zeno, an old man in modern-day Lakeport, Idaho; Seymour, an autistic Generation-Z teenager raised in that same town; Konstance, a girl aboard a spaceship in some distant future with only a tangle of conscious wires to keep her company; Aethon, a fictional man whose story connects everyone else through time and space. These are the characters around which Anthony Doerr’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land” revolves. “Cloud Cuckoo Land” is a deeply ambitious book. Six stories spread across four ages, three nations and two worlds. It is part contemporary, part historical, part science fiction, part myth. For most authors, attempting a feat like this would result in a jumbled mess of plot lines and a desperate need to simplify. But Anthony Doerr is not most authors. The Pulitzer Prize winner for “All the Light We Cannot See” has a truly extraordinary ability to weave together different lives, deftly pulling the strings to cause them to crash into one another before spiraling away again. In chapters of only a few pages, full of prose that beautifully contrasts the stark humanness in each scene, Doerr manages to explore six multifaceted individuals — their ambitions, their families, their struggles and their fears — without losing sight of the common thread around which all of their lives pivot: a story from a different time, one that promises more than what their lives have given them. They each come to find solace in the fable of Aethon, the “dimwit” sheepherder who longed to become a bird so he could fly to Cloud Cuckoo Land, a magical city in the sky. For a story so grand in scope, the book still feels intimate and personal. It takes a great gift to make an audience sympathize with every character — to worry for them, care for them and forgive them — and it’s a gift Doerr thankfully possesses. There is no character whose chapters I had to slog through (a common occurrence in multi-narrative books), none that I grew disinterested in or lost my patience with.

Each time the narrative shifted back to a character who hadn’t been heard from in a while, it felt like catching a new episode of a well-liked TV show: short, sweet, and then you change the channel and forget about it until next week. Though there were moments when it was difficult to switch focus from one character’s narrative to another, and I was tempted to skip ahead so I could continue one story, I’m glad I didn’t. Doerr knows what he’s doing. Trust the process. In a characteristic fashion, Doerr centralizes the conflict between sets of characters. There’s Seymour, who attempts to bomb a library in which Zeno is directing a children’s play, and then there’s Omeir, who’s drafted to help bring down the city walls behind which Anna lives. Sworn enemies, who are bound to one another by pain instead of love, can nonetheless find the humanity in each other. Despite the complexity — Greek mythology, wars fought half a millennia apart and some spaceships thrown in for good measure — this is fundamentally a story of seeing one another and acknowledging whatever it is that makes us so intrinsically similar across all barriers. We meet Konstance as she’s bent over the scraps of paper she salvages from her food bags, stitching together the history of humanity in the limited hours of light she’s given each day; the makeshift pen and ink with which she writes is a lifeline to a world outside her sterile room. A millennium before, Anna learns in secret how to read, sneaking candles into the closet-sized room she shares with her sister so she can pore over the Odyssey every night, desperate for an escape from her miserably boring life. In another time, Zeno fights for democracy in Korea while Omeir fights for his family’s honor and his kingdom in Constantinople. Each is an entirely distinct path that somehow mirrors all the others. Each person is searching for Cloud Cuckoo Land. Upon closing the book, it’s impossible not to wonder how those who come next will perceive us. Which of our stories will last, which will vanish and which will only ever be remembered by an unlikely few, our words still forming invisible bonds between strangers long after we’re gone?

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 — 5

Spiritbox’s Mike Stringer on recording an album during the pandemic, his guitar style and heading back on tour ANISH TAMHANEY Daily Arts Writer

In March of 2020, Canadian metal band Spiritbox was raring to record. They had just gotten back from their first tour and were sitting on a pile of material. COVID-19 derailed that plan indefinitely. At one point, the band thought, “We might have to just do this record over Zoom.” Now, that material is an album titled Eternal Blue that will finally release Sept. 17. Completing the album took nearly a year and an excursion to the Californian desert. Spiritbox is made up of Mike Stringer, frontwoman (and Stringer’s wife) Courtney LaPlante, drummer Zev Rose and bassist Bill Crook. The band began in 2016 and has amassed a following that places them alongside metal acts like Underoath and Slipknot. Here’s more from Stringer about the album’s creative process, Spiritbox’s upcoming tours and Stringer’s guitar style. The following conversation between the artist and The Daily has been edited for clarity. *** Anish Tamhaney: Mike, how are you doing? Mike Stringer: Doing well, man. Gearing up to leave in a couple days and getting the new set ready. It’s just kind of funny, being home for a very brief period of time and then having to go right back out again. AT: So, Spiritbox’s debut album, Eternal Blue, is dropping in a few weeks, and I’m curious about your process for creating the album. Do you have a specific memory in the process of writing that album that really sticks out to you, or you cherish a lot? MS: While everything else in the world was changing, we had to keep redesigning in our heads what the recording was going to look like. It even went to the point where we were like, well, ‘We might have to just do this record over Zoom.’ Just remotely. Now, the plus side of that is, it allowed us to write more, create a lot more music and have a big pot to pull from, so to speak. But the moments that I will cherish the most are actually just going out and doing it, back in this last February 2021. We went to Joshua Tree. And we got a random house on a 20-acre property in the middle of the desert. The average coffee run took about 45 minutes because that’s how far out we were. Just living that, day in, day out for 30 days, coming out with the album, having a finished product at the end of it was definitely something I’ll never forget. But what a lead-up. Oh my god, that was a long time of just sitting around just waiting and hoping that we could get in to record it soon. So, frustration, but also very fulfilling at the end. AT: Going back to what you said about thinking about doing the album on Zoom, one thing I’ve heard you guys talk about is that years ago, when you were a smaller band, you were used to recording things in different rooms, maybe even across the country and then mixing them together later. Do you think that those early days prepared you for writing and recording an album during the pandemic?

MS: Big time. Everything up until Eternal Blue and the two singles we’ve done previously, “Blessed Be” and “Rule of Nines,” the first two EPs were done in my parents’ basement. We would hire an engineer to record my guitar and I would record bass as well. Then I would record Courtney’s vocals. We would send all those files off to Dan (Braunstein), who actually mixed and produced Eternal Blue as well. We’ve been working with him since day one. That do-it-yourself mentality — if that’s all you know, then you just become used to it. Going into a studio and physically recording it is such a treat, and it’s such a step up. Once we started doing that, with the first two singles “Blessed Be” and “Rule of Nines,” I was like, ‘I could never go back. I don’t want to do this in my parents’ basement

actually weren’t including Courtney on the writing process. I would make an entire song and show it to her. And then I’d be like, ‘You have to figure this out because I’ve spent a couple weeks on this, so I’m not going back and changing stuff.’ Moving forward for every song on Eternal Blue, whenever I would write something, Courtney would immediately get on the mic, and she would start humming a melody or whatever. In that way, we could figure out immediately if this was the right key or comfortable in her range. She ultimately is the most important part of this band — she’s the voice of it. So, with the clean and ambient elements, I feel like there’s a lot more of a balance on Eternal Blue because I was able to hear and see what Courtney was going to do on each part … It’s all about serving the part, it’s

anymore.’ With Eternal Blue, we did a lot of writing sessions over Zoom, with some stuff that actually made the album. Dan took control of my computer, I tracked it on and we just saved it. When we were thinking about having to do it all over Zoom, it was a bummer just because of the sheer amount of songs. “Holy Roller” and “Constance” were actually done over Zoom. So it’s not, ‘Oh, I don’t know, if we could pull this off.’ It was just more so like, ‘I know we can pull this off. But, I really don’t want to have to do an entire album, sitting in my apartment and hoping that the internet connection holds up the entire time.’ I definitely think acting in that way for so long really prepared us. AT: I’m actually a guitarist myself, and one of the things that I appreciate about your playing, in particular, is that you always save room for cleaner tones. There’s always a variety rather than just distortion all the time. I’m curious to know, how does that fit into your writing process? How did striking that balance play a role in Eternal Blue? MS: The album is very different from a lot of our stuff that we’ve done. It has the widest variety of styles that we’ve done … Learning the balance … beforehand was a big back and forth because we

all about serving the song … I’ve kind of taken an approach of stepping back a little bit and just having the guitar sit where it needs to. I’ve been learning how to do that, and I still have a little ways to go. But I think this effort, at least, is a lot more glued and cohesive around the board. AT: What you’re describing is more of a conversation than just you presenting a finished part. Do you see that maybe extending to your drummer Zev Rose and your bassist Bill Crook in the future, where you’re all having a more open conversation? MS: I’ve always written and recorded the bass. I don’t know if that will change. Zev actually did collaborate with me on this album, and I’m really happy that he did. He’s an incredible drummer, and I can only do so much … Zev and I would go back and forth, where I would present him something and then he would go on the e-kit and actually perform the parts and add some extra flair. That made it so much better because you can only program drums so much. The moment that you can actually take the performance of someone’s hands and put it in there, it’s a whole ’nother ball game …

Design by Grace Aretakis

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‘Come From Away’ understands we cannot move on from tragedy M. DEITZ

Digital Culture Beat Editor

This review is a companion piece to Katrina Stebbins’s “Stage meets screen in ‘Come From Away,’ a deeply empathetic retelling of lesserknown stories of 9/11.” There’s something special about the space that theaters inhabit, especially when they’re empty. The ghost light filters throughout the empty orchestra and mezzanine, the world-weary seats filled with the specters of past guests, people who once filled them in anticipation of being transported elsewhere for the next two hours. The stage stands bare, the curtains framing the proscenium like velvet bangs, the interior an empty picture full of potential: The potential for stage crews to push massive, scene-stealing set pieces out of the wings, the potential for the actors to egress from backstage into the world they exist in for a few hours a day, the potential to be someone else and the potential to entertain, inform and change the lives of those viewing the experience. The air singes with electric possibilities, the entire theater impatient for actors to once again fill the stages and audiences to fill the seats. There is a magic in theater that has been desperately missing from our lives since Broadway and theaters nationwide closed down due to the pandemic; the show simply could not continue to go on when we most needed it. I spent all four years in high school inside the walls of our theater. I had class there daily with people who became family, and I probably spent more time with them than at my actual house with my actual family. Coming to the University of Michigan, I was quick to get familiar with the various student theater groups, because, although I am now a film major, I could never let go of the stage entirely. Whenever I was home in New Jersey for the holidays, I tried to make at least one pilgrimage to Manhattan to see whatever show I could get tickets for. I was devastated when theaters closed for the pandemic, and I have been anxiously awaiting the day I will be able to sit down for a live show again. Whether it be straight plays, Shakespeare or musicals, theater has always been the constant in my life, the binding rock through fits of depression, anxiety, heartbreak and whatever other extra hardships life threw my way. I met some of my

best friends through acting and cannot even begin to count the number of shows that have had a profound impact on my life. Not having theater around in its traditional form for over a year hurt. So when I saw that “Come From Away” was finally available on Apple TV+, I clicked play immediately. “Come From Away” is the story of the townsfolk of Gander, Newfoundland, and how they came together in the aftermath of 9/11 — when airspace was closed over America — to house up to 7,000 diverted travelers who could not get home. The show has long been a personal favorite of mine; the music is folksy and engaging, the lyrics are often profound and help a slim, well-paced book tell the story of the hundreds of real-life people portrayed by 12 actors.

enhance the experience, often helping to focus the massive framing and blocking of live shows for smaller screens. Pro-shots are far from a new concept — they have existed within the Broadway community for years — but it was only recently that people woke up to the larger general demand for them and began to view them as a possible solution to the class problems plaguing theater. When a ticket costs upwards of $300 dollars for a single seat, maybe less if you’d settle for one in the nosebleeds, it becomes hard for everyone who isn’t from an upper-middle-class family to see shows. Productions as powerful and essential as “Come From Away” have a greater impact when more people have access to them; thus, it is a great boon for everyone that the pro-shot is available for wider consumption.

This image is from the official website for “Come From Away,” distributed by Apple TV+.

The simple wooden set works in tandem beautifully with the light design, giving a seemingly empty space incredible depth and versatility. In person, everything comes together under the direction of Christopher Ashley (“The Rocky Horror Show”), in both the theatrical and filmed production, to form a riveting and emotionally charged one-act show. Thankfully, Ashley keeps his keen directorial eye and transfers the in-person experience seamlessly into the pro-shot. Rather than being a film adaptation of a show, a pro-shot is quite literally a filmed version of a stage production. The camera movements and edits are there to help

Part of the reason that “Come From Away” is vital viewing for everyone is because it is not your typical 9/11 fare. The show is never saturated with American exceptionalism, calls to arms for our troops or the war that ensued after the attack; rather, it focuses on how the death and destruction affected everyone around the world. A majority of the characters in the show are not even American citizens, and those who are usually don’t let that define them. Married writing duo Irene Sankoff and David Hein focus the piece on empathy and compassion, on a community coming together to help complete strangers during a time of pure fear and tragedy. We follow all these

Newfoundlanders, their kettles always on and their beds always set for visitors because they put helping others ahead of their own daily lives and routines. *** Gander has an interesting history as a refugee-hub: As Newfoundland’s only international airport, and a place where flights from all over often stop to refuel, flights during the Cold War Era frequently emptied, only leaving the flight crew as everyone else asked for political asylum. Other events throughout history, such as Y2K, have unknowingly acted to prepare Gander’s citizens and its airport for the events that unfolded on Sept. 11. Since then, Gander has not experienced a refugee event of similar scale, but I imagine that doesn’t change the fact that the townsfolk are always ready and waiting to welcome more “come from aways,” should the opportunity ever present itself. It makes one sit and think: “Would we do that?” While individual answers may vary, I believe that, after watching America over the past two years of the pandemic, the answer is no, we would not. That’s the true power of “Come From Away” and why its release, not only in time for the 20th anniversary of 9/11 but also during a pandemic, is so powerful. The show lives and breathes friendliness and empathy, but is not afraid to delve into the darker parts of the rebuilding process, including the rampant Islamophobia and trauma that we as a nation still struggle with today. And that’s the key word here: trauma. We have all been subjected to a year and a half of unmitigated trauma at the hands of COVID-19. Our first responders have worked tirelessly since the beginning of 2020 and are far beyond running on fumes as emergency rooms continue to fill and overflow. It is so ridiculously easy to look at the news — to look at all the states banning mask mandates and all the people ignoring rules or falsifying vaccine cards — and be overwhelmed by the selfishness. Just like in the aftermath of 9/11, many people quickly moved back from “us” to “me,” but that doesn’t minimize the good that people are still doing. Acts of pure compassion and goodness still resonate like beacons of radiant warmth and remind us that for all the bad, there will always be good to balance it out. “Come From Away” floats above it all as a lifeboat of affection and community, highlighting the stories of those who helped

during the unimaginable. *** The best theater sits you down in that slightly uncomfortable velvet chair, whose armrests dig into your arms just a little, challenges everything you know and reaffirms your humanity. It may not have been live, but simply seeing people back on stage, performing in a room full of vaccinated and masked patrons, made me cry. Some deep unknown sadness voiced itself as the Newfoundlanders went through their own “Blankets and Bedding” for the sake of the plane people, and I cried. I cried for theater and how much I missed it. I cried for the majesty of seeing live performances again, of imagining myself one day soon in the audience supporting an art form I love and desperately miss. I cried for the beautiful story and the beautiful book and the beautiful songs and the beautiful actors finally getting to do what they love once again. I cried for the terrors that I know everyone went through on and because of 9/11, when I was barely even two, and my family had just moved back to the United States. I cried for the terrors and atrocities and traumas that we are going through now, the seemingly neverending variants always looming overhead, blocking the exit. I cried because deep down, I know we will get through this. Someday. But so many people have been and will be lost and the world will feel emptier and irrevocably different until it is all we know as normal. I cried because this pandemic will always be a part of our lives, a foundational piece in the puzzle of who we are decades from now when it seems like a funny memory but hurts like an open wound. I cried because it will be only then, years and years from now when hundreds of thousands more tragedies have occurred, that we will finally be able to sit down and fully accept everything that happened because it is too distant to change. I cried because in the face of all this death, all this selfishness and tragedy, people find it within themselves to be vulnerable, to love and care and extend a helping hand even to those who would not do the same. These are the people shows will be made about, not the ones who defined how we acted but how we want to believe we acted. Because if there is that much good in some of us, there has to be hope for the rest of us too.

Michigan in Color

6 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Demystifying the horoscope writing process ANDREW NAKAMURA MiC Columnist

When the fall semester commenced, I finally had the amazing opportunity to meet many of my fellow Michigan in Color writers in person for the very first time. Nearly every single person I’ve met so far has asked me something along the lines of: “So, how do you write those horoscopes?” I always try to stammer out a response that isn’t too longwinded but still encapsulates the process, even though it always ends up sounding like a different language to the other person. There is a misconception that horoscopes are just completely made up by the writers. However, they actually require a lot of research. Horoscopes are based on various astrological events in a given time frame. In astrology, space is divided into twelve 30-degree circular sectors that encompass all of the planets in our solar system. Each 30-degree sector is what we call an astrological/zodiac sign. In my weekly column, I mainly focus on planetary ingress (planets moving from one sign to another), transits/aspects (the angles that planets make with each other), retrogrades (when planets appear to move backwards) and both full and new moon phases (signals of the start or the end of a life cycle). The first step in my writing process is to find out which events are occurring each week. I always use cafeastrology.com to track each event every week, and then I compile all of the planetary movements and the dates and times at which they occur under the “Celestial Motion” section that appears at the top of every horoscope I publish. I use this section as a general guide so I don’t need to waste space on dates and information applicable to all signs in the individual zodiac sign sections. However, I don’t put the general information into paragraph form until I’ve finished writing each sign’s messages so that I know what topics I mention most throughout the piece and I can ensure my general information will set up the readers to understand their individual sign messages. I also know that people often skip the Celestial Motion section, so I want to make sure that everything within the zodiac messages can stand on its own. Up until this point, my process requires little effort since I’ve only taken down dates so far. Now that I’m ready to write the individual zodiac sign sections, I need more information that is zodiac-sign specific. I base my zodiac sign section on the type of astrological event, the planets involved, the signs of the planets and the astrological house(s) (another rotating wheel split into 12 sectors just like the zodiac wheel). The house

wheel makes one full rotation every two hours, which is why it’s important to note the exact time that these transits occur. There are different ways to determine where the houses start and end, but I use the Whole Sign House system, which neatly aligns the houses to the zodiac wheel. To find where each planet fits into a house, I use a website to draw a birth chart for the date and time of each event I want to track. You might know that each sign has its own properties: Aries is the sign of passion and anger, Taurus is the sign of love and luxury and Gemini is the sign of communication and intelligence. However, each planet also has its own set of properties: Mercury is the planet of communication, Venus is the planet of love, Mars is the planet of anger and passion and so on. Houses also have their own set of properties: the first house deals with selfidentity, the second house deals with money, the third house deals with communication and so on. While signs and planets typically deal with areas of someone’s personality, houses represent an area in a person’s life. For instance, if your birth chart has an Aries Sun in the seventh house of partnerships, your Aries sun traits of passion and straightforwardness will manifest in your relationships. This is where things start to get pretty complicated; houses in horoscopes aren’t exactly the same as house placements in natal charts. The houses are labeled from numbers 1 to12, and the planets fall somewhere in these divisions. When interpreting birth charts, you simply mark down the number of the house that contains the planet. For example, if Venus falls inside the house labeled fifth on the birth chart, we would say that Venus is in the fifth house; it’s pretty straightforward. While I haven’t been able to find exact instructions on tracking houses in any astrology-related articles online, I have read many other horoscopes and noticed patterns in the definitions of the houses and the descriptions of each sign’s horoscope. First, locate the planet of interest on the chart. Next, look at the sign and the house that contains the planet. Regardless of the numbers displayed on the chart, I assign this house as the first house for this sign. Each sign has its own definition of houses, and the house containing the planet in question is always assigned as the first house. The next numbers in the sequence are assigned to each house in a clockwise direction. Since I want to know the planet’s house number for every sign, I just go counterclockwise around the circle. For example, let’s say that Mars’ orbit has led it into Libra’s sector of the sky. This means that for Libras, Mars is in their first house. Virgo is one sign counterclockwise of Libra, meaning its first

Design courtesy of Andrew Nakamura

house is one house counterclockwise of Mars’ current position. Houses are counted in a clockwise direction, so Mars is located in Virgo’s second house. Leo is two signs counterclockwise of Libra, so this means Venus is in Leo’s third house. Continue with this cycle until each zodiac sign has a house number assigned to every planet with a notable planetary event. According to the event type, planet, sign and house, I can get an idea of what astrology predicts will happen. Using our earlier example, we will say that Mars is moving into the sign of Libra. Now, I want to know what this means for Capricorns. Capricorn is nine places away from Libra counterclockwise, so we know that Mars is in Capricorn’s tenth house. When a planet changes signs, it takes on qualities of the sign and house it enters. Mars is the planet of passion, Libra is a sign of diplomacy and the tenth house is the house of career and ambition. From this information, I would say that Capricorns will have some sort of breakthrough at work, and they should communicate their ideas with their coworkers and managers in order to progress. Repeat this process for every astral event for every sign. Once I’ve finished writing for every sign, I go back to the Celestial Motion section and note all the general information that I don’t

cover in the zodiac sign sections or information that I think is useful for all interpretations. These are pretty much the essential components of my horoscope configuration. There are other concepts I include in my horoscopes such as ruling planets that I didn’t include here, and there are concepts like moon signs, chiron and minor aspects that I don’t even include in my horoscopes because, in my opinion, they are too irrelevant and excessive for a weekly horoscope. The amount of time I spend on each horoscope depends on the number of events per week, but they can range anywhere between two to six hours. I cannot speak for every astrologer, but this is my method of writing horoscopes. As far as I’m aware, there is no definitive guide for horoscope writing, and I don’t particularly think there should be. While astrology is a practice with pretty defined guidelines, I think it’s important for people to define their belief system for themselves. Resources: If you’re completely new to astrology, I recommend using Cafe Astrology’s free birth chart reports to get familiar with the meanings of different planets, signs and houses as they relate to your life: https://astro.cafeastrology.com/natal.php

If you ever come across a word you don’t know in astrology, theastrologydictionary. com has a ton of definitions: http://theastrologydictionary.com/ If you’re interested in learning more about any astrological concepts like houses or retrogrades, astrology.com’s “Learn” page has great links to different resources: https://www.astrology.com/learn I use astrologyking.com for all my information on the dynamics of different planetary transits. This website also has good information on aspects in birth charts: https://astrologyking.com/aspects/ I use Astroseek’s birth chart calculator to draw charts for my horoscopes since this website allows you to easily change the date and time: https://tinyurl.com/535c2v9f If you want to read more horoscopes, I referenced these when I was trying to figure out how to deduce information for my column: https://staging.chaninicholas.com/ horoscopes/ https://www.vice.com/en/topic/monthlyhoroscopes https://www.allure.com/topic/horoscopes https://www.astrology.com/horoscope/ daily.html

Ode to Apartment #1 YASMINE SLIMANI MiC Columnist

SUDOKU

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

Release Date: Wednesday, September 8, 2021 Monday, September 20, 2021

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PUZZLE: ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

09/20/21 09/08/21

By Mark Steve Faiella By McClain ©2021 Tribune ©2021 Tribune Content Content Agency, Agency, LLC LLC

WHISPER WHISPER “God I hate you.”

“I love you.”

09/20/21 09/08/21

To whatever poor, tortured soul occupies this apartment next, You will earnestly swing open the heavy front door, gleaming with a streaky coat of clinical, blueish-purpleish-greyish paint, and you will smell mold. You’ll learn to grow accustomed to the scent — no obscene amount of Febreze or air freshener plugs will ever succeed in masking it — but it will make you flinch upon entry. Unfortunately, this will be only the beginning of your torrid love affair with Apartment #1. You’ll walk into the bathroom and look up at the ceiling, only to find it sloping downwards to greet you, slick with an impenetrable coat of orange stains and stray hairs embedded into the paint. You’ll wonder if you had come to the wrong address; this is not the shiny, pristine apartment you were advertised through the realtor’s photos. It’s on you, after all, for not questioning why they weren’t willing to let you tour any units prior to your arrival. Do not expect the fridge to always work. Or any of the lights, for that matter. Your apartment is prone to power outages, water shut-offs and a plethora of other issues that are just enough to begin eroding your already wire-thin nerves. Your “sent” mailbox will become cluttered with emails filing for countless work orders so that you can shower or wash your laundry or repair the flooding toilet that had you and your roommate ankle-deep in dirty water for an entire evening. Apartment #1 is, for all intents and purposes, a hellscape. Your roommate will joke that it isn’t meant to sustain human life: it’s the seventh circle of hell, or a cosmic joke or some bizarre purgatory you’ve been condemned to as penance for 20 years of bad karma — it must be. No other explanation seems to make sense. But if your experience is anything like mine, Apartment #1 is not just a subpar place for you to reside during your sophomore year. It will prove to be so much more than that. — It might be the place where you have your heart shattered into a million pieces. You’ll get the call on an unassuming August morning, rousing you from a deep sleep. (If you’re like me, you’re curled up on a mattress pad sans mattress, resting atop a half-built bed frame). You’ll know what the call is about before you answer, and you will never hate being right more than you do when you hang up the phone a brief twenty seconds later. You come away from the call with no flowery summation, no eloquence or profundity or understanding, nothing at all except the truth: your world is heavy and someone you love has just died.

Your family will leave the country the next day for the funeral, and they will be gone for months afterward. Your room will be cold for weeks. — You will lie in your bed, finally sporting a mattress, one October night. Your body will be tugged in and out of sleep, eyes heavy from the day’s exhaustion and body heavier from the weight of your bones and the world and whatever else. They’ll flutter open and peer up at the window situated over your head, and behind the slits of your shutter blinds, you’ll be met with another pair of eyes. Pressed against the glass stands a man, and you’ll realize he has been watching you sleep. You will not know how long he had been there, or why. But you will never forget the shape of his boots, with tattered laces and fresh dirt clinging to the worn leather, the eerie stillness of his stature, the dark shadows cast over his face and the unplaceable coldness behind his unblinking eyes. He will not move. Neither will you. Then you will scream. He’ll vanish just as soon as he realizes you’ve seen him, and your roommate will storm out of the apartment minutes later in search of him, only to find a blanket of darkness. You’ll write it off as a harmless peeping Tom. You’ll blame it on the basement-level apartment, call yourself silly for daring to place your bed near the window. You’ll tell your friends the story, elaborate and humorous, frantic hand gestures and laughs masking the discomfort that lays beneath it all. But you will have nightmares; rolling in your bed and strangled by an indiscernible sense of dread, you will fight off the insidious understanding that you are a woman and that means being watched while you sleep, that you are the property of everyone but yourself and that even your own bedroom cannot belong to you. You will buy blackout curtains. — The kitchen has just enough counter space for a microwave, and you will have to suck in your breath to slide past your roommate each day, narrowly ducking towards the fridge or cabinets. In the months spent shrinking under the grim fluorescent light, you will have to eat again. Winter is fierce, nipping away at you with unrelenting cruelty, and the gnawing pangs of hunger will slowly subside into a dull nothingness that sits in the pit of your stomach for weeks. You will have to relearn the hardwired, evolutionary underpinning of survival, and you will feel silly and incompetent and heavy, so heavy.

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Michigan in Color

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 — 7

Why I write ZAFIRAH RAHMAN MiC Columnist

Every now and then, I need to remind myself why I write. Especially on days where I sit in front of an empty Google Doc for hours on end. Lately, that’s been every day. Days in sunlit coffee shops and cafes where my fingers hover over the keyboard as I contemplate which thoughts should make it to the page. No, this one might be too corny. Maybe this one, but I can’t find the perfect words. Then there are late nights in the library where the only button I can seem to click is “delete.” I wish it were as easy as sitting at a desk for two hours and walking away with a draft at the very least. Instead, I find myself up at three in the morning typing away loose thoughts in the Notes app. Sometimes the sun sets into a beautiful pink as the perfect song (probably by Steve Lacy) begins to play, making all the words seem to come out just right. Most times, however, a successful day of writing looks like spacing out in calculus and squeezing out a dramatic line or two, like “I miss you, just not the way you made me feel,” in between scribbles of sinusoidal functions.

And yet most often, the pressure of having six hours left to a deadline and iced chai lattes are truly what get me writing. By the time I’ve hit submit, I am convinced I’m a shitty writer. I think about 8-year-old Zafirah telling anyone who would listen that I was going to be a writer. I remember how my mom nervously laughed every time I went into detail about traveling the world and writing stories along the way. I didn’t get it then, but now I nervously laugh at the thought of it too. She worried about me living off a writer’s salary, while I now contemplate if I can even become a writer. I am sure there are long lists of tips and tricks on improving one’s writing process — talking through one’s ideas, planning ahead, reading a whole lot more and so forth. But writing doesn’t exactly work like that for me. I can’t exactly plan how each piece will take a part of me with

it. Writing in its simplest form is a way to get my voice and thoughts on paper. To write everything down allows the moment to live on forever. It calls for honesty and vulnerability, all while internalizing the inherent demand to sound great. And once it’s all out on paper and I see things I didn’t before, I start to understand my emotions and experiences with a heightened awareness. This clarity that comes from

writing is a double-edged sword. While it brings peace and growth, it also replaces blissful ignorance with the pains of selfawareness. So after the grueling process behind each piece, I have to ask myself — why do I write? I love writing, I do. I love writing long birthday cards, reminding others of how appreciated they are with run-on sentences and lots of adverbs, and dotting Design by Zafirah Rahman my I’s with hearts in lengthy love letters. I love writing about my plans for the day on pastel post-it notes or filling a blank page with entire dreams for the future. I love writing with authenticity and excitement, hoping my voice and emotion are heard clearly. I write like this because I remember how it felt to read as a kid. The way authors could craft whole beings and worlds with words was magical to me. Books presented an opportunity to live

and learn through others. Even more special was how a string of words could easily make my heart jump. I aspire to be a writer who can make their reader feel. I’m especially thankful that I have the means to become that writer through Michigan in Color. But the truth is I write for myself before I do for anyone else. I write to remember all the delicate and pretty moments of life. I scribble down all the epiphanies, daily updates, growing pains and fears in a little blue book. I write to capture all that I feel onto a page or several. I want to be able to flip back and revisit these memories fondly through my words. I reread them months later with the foresight I didn’t have then, adding new reflections in the margins. I write to understand myself better as I continue to grow and live life to its fullest extent. So it’s okay if things are too corny or don’t sound entirely perfect because I write for me. And with the hope that my writing leaves the reader with a familiar memory or feeling. Right now, I’m writing this piece knowing I’ll revisit it a few weeks from now. It’s to remind myself that through writer’s block and shitty writing, it’s always a beautiful thing to give my thoughts a space to live.

Growing pains UDOKA NWANSI MiC Columnist

As my 20th birthday creeps around the corner, I’m grappling with a lingering feeling of whiplash. Time has been racing by and I’m short of breath trying to keep up. It feels as if it was just yesterday that I was celebrating my 18th birthday in my basement with my friends back home. But the clock doesn’t slow down for anyone. Even though the days feel painfully slow, time passes by quickly when you’re living through a global pandemic. This has also meant downing more hard-to-swallow pills than I had accounted for. Nevertheless, in approaching this threshold into a new chapter of my life, I’ve had time to reflect on the past and the future, as daunting as it seems. The growing pains have not been easy, but they’re a rite of passage through any significant life transition. For me, growing up is realizing that most of the time, life isn’t going to be like the movies. It’s so easy for me to get caught up in the overly romanticized depictions of adolescence that saturate the media. Spending a lot of time engaging with such media while growing up had me wondering when I was going to finally have my quintessential coming-ofage moment — something akin to the iconic tunnel scene from “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” where Emma Watson gracefully stands up in the trunk of a moving pick-up truck under the city lights of the Fort Pitt Tunnel, or the scene in “Lady Bird” where Lucas Hedges and Saoirse Ronan are joyously running through a vineyard. There was a point at which I had to realize that, in most aspects, my experiences won’t be the same

as the main characters in my favorite movies. A lot of the time, life feels less like the idyllic, rose-tinted, peaceful drive scenes of an A24 film and much more like an experimental film: shaky, unpredictable and confounding. Still, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and last spring made that very clear to me. In March 2020, my friends and I were trying on our graduation gowns and planning for what was supposed to be the quintessential prom night. By the next month, these milestones were taken from us in the blink of an eye, leaving us all feeling cheated by the world. Fortunately, at the end of our school year, I got the chance to end my own pity party. On our graduation day, rather than tuning into an unceremonious virtual commencement ceremony, I spoke at a local Black Lives Matter vigil during the peak of national protests. I got to speak about local social injustices in our hometown and organize with community members to plan future initiatives to promote racial equity. Even though my senior year didn’t conclude how I expected it to, I got to be a part of something bigger than myself last summer. Since then, I’ve found much more long-lasting joy in letting go of unrealistic expectations for how my life is “supposed” to look. I now appreciate any time spent with loved ones more than ever, whether we’re riding the train on an adventure through the city or just laying around binge-watching “Gossip Girl.” Growing up is coming to terms with the fact that not all of my closest friendships will last forever. Whether we drift apart naturally or harshly cut off all contact, some friendships are just bound to end. After such an abrupt ending to my high school

experience, this was made even more clear to me. I’ve had unfortunate falling-outs with people I once considered to be my ride-ordies. This is just a testament to the truth that at such a time in my life, when everybody is moving in different directions, relationships can be very impermanent. Even people that I’ve held close to my heart can be gone as quickly as they came. While this was one of the hardest pills to swallow, I’ve learned the importance of appreciating moments with the people around me for as long as I can and not spending too much time grieving faded friendships. Growing up is also realizing that I don’t always have to act grown. I don’t think I’ll ever fully grow out of my youth. And that’s okay. Though it isn’t always easy when scrolling through the latest news headlines, I’d hate to ever reach a point at which I’ve become entirely jaded by the world. Still, I think being able to silence my inner cynic at times is a necessity to maintain some peace of mind. For a while, I thought that one day I’d wake up and all at once be launched into adulthood. I figured that when the clock struck midnight on my 18th birthday, I would instantly be a grown-up. Yet 18 felt the same as 17, except with the ability to vote and finally own my own Costco card. Even now as I’m reaching 20, I don’t feel too far removed from who I was two years ago. My friends and I still like to send each other stupid memes and make funny TikToks. Now, I just

have to schedule time every now and then to file my taxes or tweak my resumé for a job application. The transition is much more gradual than I thought it would be. It’s as if I’m indefinitely teetering on the line between childhood and adulthood. Maybe I’ll be balancing on this line for a while, but I’m slowly beginning to find comfort in this “in-between” phase, especially with the knowledge that my peers feel the same way. I surely don’t have everything figured out yet, but really, who does?

Navigating this turbulent crossroad between adolescence and adulthood is anything but easy. It has been full of winding roads, sharp turns and dead ends. But I wouldn’t want the ride to be any other way. I’m surrounded by friends and family that I love very deeply, and I am better equipped now than ever to handle any curveball thrown my way. Usually, my birthdays are a bittersweet time for me. While it’s a time for celebration, it also means an increasing load of responsibility and having to confront my fears of the future. But this time around, I’m trying to face my 20th solar return with confidence that all things will work themselves out for the better. Cheers to growing older, in all of its perplexing glory.

Design by Sophia Kamien

By Meghan Dodaballapur, MiC Columnist

Core memories in poems the necklace and my mother amma opens the top drawer of the dresser that’s older than i am and pulls out a chain it lays twisted but not tangled it glitters but does not sparkle it is old yet it feels so new for i have never seen it but i know already i love it the chain wraps around her hand waiting to be worn around my neck amma hands it to me reluctantly she urges me to not lose it are you too young for this? she thinks out loud but gives it to me anyway and i wear it proud

proud of my mother who spent her first paycheck on this gold proud of my mother who wore this gold when she got married proud of my mother who immigrated to the states with this gold proud of my mother who is always so proud of me always wear it inside your shirt she fearfully says to me you can’t lose it she cautions me again i’ve worn it for seven years now and i always will because for the first time i think to myself maybe something gold can stay

the moon and my father blurry memories of sleepy car rides home with everyone asleep but dad and me he points to the moon and says to me, if you look at the moon it looks back at you can you spot it? he asks it can always spot you he tells me tales of when he was young clouds of smoke would fill the sky and leave the night with darkness monsters lurked in the trees the city lay asleep but he was wide awake not one star to light the way but the moon always did he tells me about his bike rides at night coming home later than he should

he would look at the moon and they would return together safe and sound he tells me how he thought there couldn’t be just one moon after all, how could only one moon always know his every move? he had me convinced and still does, for my child-like mind finds comfort that in the scary darkness the moon will light my path now as i walk to my home away from home i glance up at the moon just every now and then and i can’t help but wonder is he looking at the moon too?

Opinion

8 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Respect and support Umich unions ANDREW GERACE Senior Opinion Editor

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Students, push yourself to explore the University of Michigan SAM WOITESHEK Opinion Columnist

I

t’s another average Monday evening and I’m seriously hungry. Without fail, I enter a debate: Should I eat out, cook rice or ramen (yes, those two meals are the peak of my dorm cooking) or eat in the dining hall? Most nights, the dining hall wins, mostly because it feels free, and I can eat as much as I want. Tonight, however, nothing on the menu looks appetizing. I muddle over whether to get lamb marsala, beef stir fry or the classic pizza or burger. My gut reaction is to skip the dining hall and venture down South University Avenue or State Street in search of safe, dependable take-out. Convincing myself this is the right idea, I gather my things and prepare to leave my room. But wait. Something stops me. I didn’t come to the University of Michigan to operate within my comfort zone, including its culinary element. I came here to try something new. A few days later, I am strolling through the Michigan Union, traveling back to my dorm for my 3 p.m. political science class on Zoom. Suddenly, the study lounge — which bears a slight resemblance to the esteemed law library, in my opinion — catches my eye. Intuitively, I want to keep walking and plop down in the black leather chair that awaits me in my dorm, but I can’t help but feel that the moment is yet another opportunity waiting to be seized. I meander through the desks, the old wood creaking beneath me, take a seat by the fireplace and open my laptop. In my short time as a student on campus, I have made it a priority to challenge my comfort zone. Perhaps eating two plates of beef

stir fry and taking a class in the Union is not the best definition of “spontaneous and exciting,” but for me, it is. The meal was delicious, and the hour spent in a Hogwartsian lounge will lead me to come back more often. Yet, I’d have never known about either of them if I hadn’t ventured beyond what is secure. As humans, we like what we are accustomed to. The mere-exposure effect, as first developed by psychologist Robert Zajonc, states that “individuals show an increased preference (or liking) for a stimulus as a consequence of repeated exposure to that stimulus.” Additionally, we are guided by our brain’s dualprocessing systems. System 1 is our “brain’s fast, automatic and intuitive approach” to situations. System 2, comparatively, is the mind’s “slower, analytical mode where reason dominates.” In taking these scientific observations together, it is no surprise that we prefer options that we are familiar with. Yet, aren’t we ever curious about that Greek restaurant we haven’t tried? The abstract red sculpture outside the UMMA? A class about something we have zero prior knowledge about? To some students, these decisions are nothing special and, frankly, while it may be understandable, it is equally disappointing. In underutilizing the resources available to us, we are failing ourselves. We are students at a university offering a plethora of diverse opportunities, both in and out of the classroom. Not to mention the varied combinations of foods, study spaces and shopping that we often take for granted. Even the weather has variety. Parking too — much to the displeasure of

campus visitors — has its variety. Quite simply, I’m baffled by the number of students who are stuck in a routine, let alone the same routine. Yes, predictability is good, but too much of it can be a detriment to our mental health. Winston-Salem State University psychologist Rich Walker found that people who “engage in a variety of experiences are more likely to retain positive emotions and minimize negative (emotions) than those who have fewer experiences.” Additionally, cognitive psychologist Gary Marcus notes that a greater sense of personal growth and purpose is associated with living life to one’s fullest (eudaimonia). As we enter the midst of club recruitment season, I challenge you to find an organization that sparks your curiosity — even if it’s not the exact resume-booster you seek. It is easy, especially as a freshman, to come here and fall prey to the exact same experiences you had in high school. One of my friends from home is rushing a fraternity, simply because he doesn’t know what else is out there. Students, don’t do that! Educate yourself, then seek out and participate in student organizations that provide internal satisfaction, not external validation. Perhaps I’m waxing poetic or sappy, but I’ve always believed that diversifying our experiences is what college is all about. There’s a whole world out there, and we only have so much time to live. We need to talk to that person sitting by themselves, go to a place that we ordinarily wouldn’t and try our best to shake things up at every juncture along the way. Otherwise, how will we truly know what we enjoy? Now, pardon me, but I need to get in line for more beef stir fry.

The dark side of Apple’s new child safety features SIDDHARTH PARMAR Opinion Columnist

I

n early August, Apple announced some new child safety features, slated to arrive in the upcoming updates to iOS, macOS and iPadOS. The first change is that the Messages app warns minors (and their parents) of sexually explicit images and gives parents the option to be alerted if a child views or sends such an image. The second involves Siri and Search being tweaked to intervene when someone makes queries related to Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) . The last, and most major, introduces automatic on-device matching of photos (stored inside iCloud Photos) against a database of known CSAM content. If the system discovers enough flagged pictures, a report will be sent to a moderator for evaluation. If the moderator confirms the assessment, Apple will decrypt the photos and share them with the relevant authorities. These new features were announced with the stated intent of protecting children from sexual predators, and they do sound like measures with great intentions behind them. But the changes have been met with considerable backlash and feelings of betrayal. Of the three features, the changes to Siri and Search have been generally uncontroversial. The others, however, have seen massive opposition, ranging from discontent about the tweak to the Messages app to outrage

about the CSAM scanning. So much so that Apple was forced to delay (but not stop) the implementation of these features. It may still be unclear to you why there even is opposition or why I’m asking you to be scared. Even if well-intended, these new features are a massive invasion of privacy and have the potential to inflict serious damage. Coming from Apple, a company that prides itself on taking customer privacy seriously (extending even into their advertisement’s music choices), this is a huge disappointment. The largest change is the monitoring of peoples’ Photos app. Some might be tempted to think the detection process itself is novel and problematic. This emotion is a natural spillover from tech’s welldocumented issues with image scanning and detection. For example, studies show facial recognition software from IBM, Amazon and Microsoft have all underperformed for people of color and women. Recognition software is only as good as its training dataset. Train it on a homogenous dataset, and it will struggle with diversity when used. These are valid concerns, but they are not the whole picture. While it is not common knowledge, it is commonplace for major cloud service providers to scan for CSAMs hosted on their platform. This occurs with the help of a database of known CSAM content maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and a few checks to prevent false reports.

If this is an established procedure with checks in place to avoid false flagging, why is there backlash at all? The answer lies in where Apple is conducting these scans. Traditionally, all of this happens on a company’s servers which cannot see the contents of end-to-end encrypted data. Apple’s purported scanning will occur on-device, with an option to decrypt photos if need be. That’s very dangerous since end-to-end encryption doesn’t hide information from the device itself, which could lead to a potential backdoor for cyberattacks. Speaking of cyberattacks, Apple only recently came out with a security patch to protect iPhones from spyware attacks, which could turn on the camera and microphone on-demand and read messages and other local data, all without any visible sign. Apple, like any other tech giant, is only a few steps ahead of attackers at any given time (and perhaps a few steps behind as well in some cases). This leads to other issues. Countries could put pressure on Apple to report photos it finds objectionable, such as photos of protests or dissenters. Will Apple always be able to say no? Even if Apple does manage to resist these demands, many companies sell software exploits that give access to devices to governments. These are all scary scenarios. So while the cause for Apple’s new software updates may be noble, the risks are too high to be considered safe.

W

hether it be in Amazon facilities across the country or right here at the University of Michigan, unions and union activity have been making headlines in recent days. Unions have been relevant in American politics and life since the organized labor movement gained a foundation in 1886, when the American Federation of Labor was founded. As we come out of Labor Day and approach a potential strike by the University’s Lecturers’ Employee Organization, it is imperative to think about the role of organized labor both in our community and beyond. Apart from delivering things like increased wages, safer working conditions, eighthour workdays and the concept of a weekend, unions play a critical role in the operations of a vast place like the University of Michigan. Before last fall, when the Graduate Employees’ Organization struck, I doubt most of us could name a single union on campus, let alone understand the varied roles these labor organizations play. Many students don’t realize unions — such as GEO, LEO, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the American Federation of Teachers, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and others — represent workers from all across the job spectrum at the University. From graduate student instructors to lecturers, bus drivers, hospital nurses, construction workers, stage crewmen and countless other professions, union work is what keeps theUniversityofMichigangoing—and sometimes grinds it to a halt. Whether it involves GEO, LEO or another labor organization, understanding striking and its implications is both timely and important. If you were on campus this time last year, you most certainly saw, participated in or at least heard about the GEO and Residential Adviser strikes that took place on campus. Between picket lines across campus and chants of “U-M works because we do,” the presence of a strike was unmissable. A strike, or a work stoppage “in order to force an employer to comply withdemands,”accordingtoMerriamWebster Dictionary, is an incredibly powerful tool in a union’s arsenal when fighting against uncooperative management. Union strength comes from its numbers, promise of collective action and the possibility of a strike. Generally speaking, unions try

to avoid striking due to the potential ramifications of such action. Unions can face a misguided public backlash if they withhold labor from producing a popular product or service. Union workers also do not get paid during strikes and rely on strike pay, something that can diminish or disappear if strikes drag out. In some circumstances, unions may even face legal consequences. In the state of Michigan, public sector unions aren’t legally allowed to strike. In this instance, however, it is important to note that legality and morality do not always go hand-in-hand; striking is a form of speech and should be protected whether it’s being done by a private or public union. When strikes arrive, they deserve respect. As Mary Manning, the famous flashpoint of the anti-apartheid Dunnes Stores strike in Ireland, was taught by her father as a child, “no one loses a day’s wages and stands in the bitter cold without a good reason.” In GEO’s case last fall, the University’s lack of robust testing protocols, failure to provide sufficient resources for international students and unwillingness to provide graduate student caregivers with flexible, pandemic-sensitive childcare options were the tip of a dangerous iceberg. In addition, the University’s lack of substantive response to Black Lives Matter and policing concerns on campus was starkly apparent. After the University failed to come to an agreement with GEO regarding COVID-19 protocols and refused to have any dialogue surrounding policing demands, GEO voted to strike for a safer, smarter University reopening that wouldn’t needlessly risk the lives of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff and

again, disruption is the point — we were all safer because of it. While GEO’s strike focused primarily on ensuring the safety and health of its own members, the union’s successes were a victory for all students amid a deadly pandemic. As LEO continues to be stonewalled and gaslit by the University, the feelings of a strike are in the air. Regardless of whether or not University lecturers strike, here are a couple of things to keep in mind: First and foremost, don’t cross the picket line in the event of a strike. “Crossing the picket line” is an expression used to describe shopping or working at a store or business that’s workers are on strike. When a union decides to strike, whether it be outside Angell Hall, the shopping mall or an online retailer, cooperation from the public helps strikers secure their goals, which are generally in the public interest. Crossing a picket line and purchasing a product or partaking in a service is a tacit consent of whatever the strikers are fighting against and makes strikes drag out longer as unions and management struggle over leverage. Second, do research, understand labor laws in your state and advocate for positive change. At the federal level, consider supporting legislation like the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. At the state level, push back against exploitative laws and union-busting practices. And at the local level, work to understand how your company or university interacts with unions or organized labor, and advocate that they treat workers and unions with respect and dignity. Third, consider joining or starting a union. Labor has been and continues to be a strong force in politics and

MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily

the wider Ann Arbor community. While the strike ended under the threat of a cowardly legal recourse from the University, concrete gains were made to make the fall 2020 semester safer for all. In our own community, the GEO strike had a massive impact. While it was a bit disruptive to undergraduates for a week or two —

American life. Union representation and collective bargaining have helped the American worker secure political standing, increased wages, better working conditions and a host of other concrete gains. Unions have already helped you over the years in more ways than you probably can imagine.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Op-Ed: The Flint and Dearborn funding models perpetuate inequality JASON KOSNOSKI & DAILLE HELD Contributors

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ince our formation three years ago, the One University Coalition (1U) has called upon University President Mark Schlissel and the Board of Regents to provide the funds necessary to give University of Michigan – Flint and Dearborn campuses more of the opportunities already available on the Ann Arbor campus. As we see it, we have one University President and one Board of Regents; we are one university, and we should share resources so that all of our students — regardless of campus — can thrive. The current budget model relegates the Flint and Dearborn campuses to a state of permanent austerity, constantly subject to cuts in programs, incapable of offering fair wages and offering only about a quarter of the support spending per student found in Ann Arbor. These disparities are unjust. The current budget model is also unsustainable: If we extrapolate the experience of recent years, the College of Arts & Sciences in Flint will be thoroughly hollowed out in a decade. The current model must change if we are committed to strong Flint and Dearborn campuses. From the start of our campaign, we have faced intense resistance from Schlissel and his administration. In June 2020, after two years of organizing, the president and the regents finally agreed to transfer an extra $10 million to each of the Flint and Dearborn campuses, but it took a majority of the regents voting down Schlissel’s proposed budget to make that happen. Since his budget

passed, the president insisted that the extra $20 million for Flint and Dearborn would be a one-shot deal, to be spread out over three years, rather than be renewed the following year, as the regents favoring the transfers intended. This summer the 1U campaign won two more victories. First, the Go Blue Guarantee (GBG) — which waives tuition for students from families with an income of less than $65,000 — was extended from Ann Arbor, where it was adopted in 2018, to Flint and Dearborn. However, while finally bowing to community pressure and regental authority, the president truncated the transformative potential of the new policy by introducing a minimum GPA eligibility requirement. There is no such requirement in the Ann Arbor version of the GBG, and it could halve the number of eligible UM-Flint and UM-Dearborn students. Our second victory came when the student governments of all three campuses came together in the Fund Our Future rally to announce their common demand that U-M commits $10 million per year to the Flint and Dearborn campuses for at least five years. Lecturers’ Employee Organization, the union representing lecturers (i.e., nontenure-track faculty) on U-M’s three campuses, was already on the same page. When lecturers began negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement in January 2021, a core demand was that $15 million be transferred to Flint and $15 million to Dearborn, from funds controlled by the central (i.e., university-wide) administration, for each of the three years of the collective bargaining agreement.

LEO members attached high priority to this demand for two reasons: They are committed to fair salaries for their Flint and Dearborn members without raising student tuition or provoking cuts in programming and they want to help dismantle the institutional racism and classism embodied in the current budget model. Commissioned by LEO, research by university budget expert Professor Howard Bunsis of Eastern Michigan University shows that the central administration could easily provide this level of increased support for Flint and Dearborn, notwithstanding the challenges of COVID-19. The $30 million per year (for the two campuses combined) is 1.3% of the Ann Arbor General Fund budget for 2021-22, but would be a 12.8% increase in U-M Flint’s General Fund budget, and a 9.7% increase in U-M Dearborn’s. Nevertheless, the president continues to publicly say no to such a change in the budget model. No to the student governments and no to LEO. Every time LEO presented its demand for $30 million for the two campuses at the bargaining table, the administration bargaining team crossed it out. LEO has made it clear that the change does not need to be included in the collective bargaining agreement, so long as it happens, but Schlissel seems uninterested in either approach. Why is the president who was proud to allocate $85 million to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion goals on the Ann Arbor campus so opposed to applying DEI principles and money across the three campuses of U-M? We’re not sure, but the current budget model needs to change to align with our DEI values.

Opinion

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 — 9

Op-ed: I am a Michigan Man, and this is my Dr. Anderson story ANONYMOUS

Op-ed Contributor

I stumbled upon the article in bed in early 2020 on yet another sleepless night. As I absorbed the story about Dr. Robert Anderson and his sexual abuse of University of Michigan students, panic engulfed my stomach, and bile rose in my throat. Something was horribly wrong. I ran to the bathroom, vomited and lay down on the tiled floor. A dark memory came into focus. One I had hidden from everyone, including myself, but that had interrupted my sleep for 25 years. I flashed back to the events in a cold examining room that shattered my world, my self-confidence … my everything. What took its place was twitching anxiety and unfathomable shame that would consume much of my life, leading me to question every relationship, decision and emotion I have had as a son, husband, father, co-worker, neighbor and friend. It also endangered my health: Since that day, I have never visited a doctor. es, I am a victim of Anderson along with hundreds, if not thousands, of other former U-M students. I have long been consumed by the why: Why did this happen to me? Why didn’t I say anything? Why did no one take the allegations seriously? Why didn’t the University protect me? Was I easy prey? Was I weak? Was I expendable? I was a Michigan Man. A studentathlete. As a Michigan Man you live by standards others dare to attain. We practiced, studied and played with every ounce of our ability. We pressed through pain because that was what the coaches demanded and what the fans wanted. You couldn’t have any chinks in the armor, and weakness was never an option. And because I, along with the hundreds of other male student-athlete

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survivors of Anderson were “Michigan Men,” our experiences and traumas are largely unknown outside of Michigan and continue to be marginalized in a unique way. Because we were “Michigan Men,” the atrocities we encountered and traumas that continue to haunt us today are somehow lessened, swept under the rug in the shadow of our perceived strength and size. As if “Michigan Men” were built to endure the pain. But I was a naive kid, only 18, which in retrospect was prime prey. remember the moment I decided to no longer be Anderson’s victim. I had had enough. I ran from the examining room. My trust in authority was gone, as was my dream of being a U-M athlete. He had now stolen both. As a result, I quit the team that day to avoid Anderson and turned instead to Labatt Blue to camouflage my shame. Labatt turned into Jack Daniels, which turned into Nyquil. Thankfully, I stopped myself before it turned into something stronger. But by then, distancing myself from those closest to me had become my new norm. The emotional vacuum I created eventually led me to jump from jobto-job, industry-to-industry, friendto-friend. Instead of opening the door to relationships, I repeatedly, and purposefully, slammed the door shut just as I did the day I ran out of the examining room, vowing never to go back there and be hurt again. But when I killed my association with the sport I loved, I killed my ability to truly love. I now realize how much I have missed in life by feeling so little and am working to communicate more freely with my family and friends. But I am also angrier than ever before about what happened to me and so many others. As student-athletes, we put our trust in the University and those around us to do the right thing on and off the field. We knew the University made money off our

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Design by Jessica Chiu

talents, filling stadiums with paying fans. It was a relationship we accepted. But maybe the relationship with the fans and the University is a facade, maybe athletes are worthless to the University if we aren’t winning. And most definitely, part of that relationship was being aware that our coaches would uncomfortably chuckle when appointments with Anderson were mentioned, as would other athletes who either had firsthand knowledge as I did or had heard through teammates that the rumors were, in fact, true. ow, experiencing how the “Leaders and Best” are ignoring, neglecting and overlooking our experiences as victims disgusts me.

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The Michigan Machine that relied on us for revenue now views us as an uncomfortable chorus of complainers. The money we helped them make is now being used to hire law firms and investigators to minimize our existence. Staff, many of whom may still be working in the athletics department, likely knew more than they shared with investigators. Now, witnessing how the “Leaders and Best” are denying survivors transparency and attempting to avoid accountability for the decades upon decades of their institutional failures sickens me. Along with the acts of Anderson, the University’s lack of transparency should also sicken former and current athletes,

students, staff, alumni and the public. o the largest alumni base in the world, to Michigan fans everywhere, to donors, corporate sponsors and prospective studentathletes, I ask you to stand up as you do for us in Michigan athletic venues. Do what we did for you: rise up, persevere, press on. Tell University leaders we do not accept what happened, nor will we allow it to occur on any college campus, any institution or in any sliver of society again. Let’s uncover the uncomfortable truth about what really happened and change the conversation forever. Because that is what Michigan Men (people) do: We do what is right.

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Sports

10 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Michigan maintains underdog mentality despite early success JARED GREENSPAN

Daily Sports Editor

Cade McNamara has thrown three touchdowns in three games this season.

GRACE BEAL/Daily

How Cade McNamara became Michigan’s stabilizing factor DANIEL DASH

Daily Sports Editor

Ten months ago, with the Michigan football team trailing 17-0 in Piscataway, N.J., Jim Harbaugh turned to quarterback Cade McNamara. The move was seen as a last resort. McNamara, then a sophomore, began the season third on the Wolverines’ quarterback depth chart behind Joe Milton and Dylan McCaffrey. He had never seen meaningful game action, but after the former played his way to the bench and the latter transferred, McNamara was thrust onto the field. He made the most of the opportunity, steering the Wolverines’ comeback win and saving the program from a catastrophic loss. He completed 27-of-36 pass attempts for 260 yards and accounted for five total touchdowns in the 48-42 overtime victory. But above all, he showed the leadership traits Michigan’s previous quarterbacks lacked. “That’s probably the biggest statement you can make,” Harbaugh told reporters on Monday. “Coming into a game like that, that’s your opportunity. Seventeen points down, rally the team, comeback victory. That does a lot — that does a tremendous amount for your own confidence and the belief everyone has in an individual.” Nearly a year later, that confidence has only grown stronger. McNamara has emerged as the Wolverines’ stabilizing

factor, leading to a 3-0 start this fall. Even in Michigan’s run-heavy offense, McNamara’s consistency through the air maintains a valuable dimension of any college offense. Despite limited opportunities to throw, he’s completed 24 of his 37 passes so far — a 64.9% completion rate — and has three touchdowns through the air, including an 87-yard bomb, the third-longest in program history. McNamara’s early success dates back to the end of last year, when he went into the offseason as the program’s unquestioned starting quarterback. That allowed him to take on a bigger leadership role following a dismal 2-4 season in 2020. “When something’s not right, he’s going to speak up,” fifth-year senior safety Brad Hawkins said. “He’s going to point it out. He’s a great guy, a great leader. He wants to be successful, he wants his team to be successful and he does everything he needs to do for the team to win. He’s a great leader. Everyone looks up to him. Everyone listens to him when he talks. He’s going to continue to be a great leader, he’s going to continue to play well and he’s going to continue to do great things.” Immediately following Shea Patterson’s departure in 2019, the Wolverines struggled to find a reliable pocket presence. That’s not for a lack of trying, though. While McNamara patiently waited his turn, others gave it a shot at the helm. Milton, for all his untapped potential, never panned out. McCaffrey decided to opt out and enter the transfer portal before

last season even began. Yet, any newcomers brought in to add depth to the roster haven’t been able to pry the job from McNamara. Texas Tech transfer Alan Bowman still hasn’t thrown a pass in a Michigan uniform. Five-star freshman J.J. McCarthy has shown flashes of special talent, but he lacks the consistency of a veteran like McNamara. Since the two-year Patterson era ended, McNamara is the only quarterback to establish firm control over the job. He hasn’t earned it with style points or circus throws — rather, his fundamentally sound approach has set him apart. “He’s been consistently good since he’s played in games,” Harbaugh said. “The ability to drive the team for points, that’s getting really impressive. His overall confidence, ability, time on task, reps … just like anybody when you play in a game and realize you can do this. Not as hard as it seems. Get better at football by playing football.” When McNamara takes the field against Rutgers this upcoming Saturday, his journey from third-stringer to starter will come full circle. And his grip on the job has only grown tighter since leading the Wolverines’ memorable comeback against Rutgers 10 months ago. “He capitalized on his opportunity and took the bit and ran with it,” Harbaugh said. “Got to give great credit to Cade for doing that, for having the fortitude to step in there and take the bull by the horns. And he hasn’t given it up, so that’s all to his credit.”

Last November, the Michigan football team stumbled into Piscataway, N.J., on the heels of three consecutive losses and required three overtimes and a quarterback change to escape with a victory. The game made for a stunning indictment of the state of the program, exposing the depths to which the Wolverines had fallen in Year Six of the Jim Harbaugh era. Now, as Michigan prepares to face Rutgers again this weekend, the 3-0 Wolverines appear to be back on the upswing, causing others to take notice. “Sounds like Michigan’s back to being Michigan,” Rutgers coach Greg Schiano told reporters on Saturday. A calamitous 2020 season resulted in Michigan entering the 2021 campaign as a national afterthought, a first under Harbaugh. But that perception is beginning to change. Having outscored their opponents 141-34 through three games, the Wolverines find themselves ranked 19th in this week’s AP Poll. And, according to ESPN’s SP+ metric, Michigan is the sixth-best team in the nation, sandwiched between Ohio State and Penn State. The obvious disclaimer is that these marks are both wonky and meaningless, by no means an indication of what is to come. Each of the Wolverines’ three opponents have been unranked — their stiffest competition was Washington, which dropped its season-opener to FCS level Montana. Michigan players recognize the insignificance of a national narrative themselves. “We’re just looking at it as if we haven’t won anything,” fifth-year senior safety Brad Hawkins said on Monday. “We haven’t done anything yet. Yeah, we’re 3-0, but we still haven’t done anything. We’re just gonna continue to play with that chip like we haven’t done anything, which we haven’t. That’s just where we are.” That mentality is quickly becoming the mantra for this iteration of Wolverines. After the season-opening victory over Western Michigan three weeks ago, senior defensive end Aidan Hutchinson offered, “We haven’t done a damn thing. We’re not content with this at all.” Senior cornerback Vincent Gray echoed Hutchinson’s sentiment, chipping in, “We haven’t done anything yet.” That phrase is a common trope among sports teams, often used as a way to restrain egos and focus on expectations. Now that Big Ten play and a subsequent uptick in competition are

imminent, Michigan continues to adhere to that mindset. “We know as soon as we lose one game, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Michigan sucks again.’ We’re just taking every game as an underdog,” junior linebacker Mike Morris said. “I feel like we’re underdogs against Rutgers. Everybody probably thinks we’re gonna lose that game. Everybody probably thinks we’re going to lose every game in the Big Ten right now. We’re just taking it as us versus everybody. We don’t care if that team is 3-0 or 0-3. We’re just taking it one week at a time and just kicking everybody’s butt.”

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily Michigan looks to continue its strong start to the season Saturday against Rutgers.

The collective chip-on-the-shoulder disposition can in part be attributed to Michigan’s culture change, starting with the coaching staff — a common talking point through fall camp. In the offseason, Harbaugh turned his staff upside down, bringing in four new coaches in a youth infusion that instilled a new energy within the program. That vigor has carried over into the season, painting a stark difference through the first three games. “As you can see on the sidelines, we’re having a bunch of fun,” sophomore running back Blake Corum said. “Last year, when you looked at the sidelines, we weren’t having much fun. We’re dancing now, we’re cheering each other up. We’re here for each other.” The true test of the team’s new culture will come with the inevitable adversity. And as it heads into the gauntlet of Big Ten play, Michigan is sticking to the same mentality it shaped in the offseason. “What we’ve done to this point is good,” Harbaugh said on Saturday after the team’s 53-point victory. “But now, it really starts counting.”

SportsWednesday: Is Michigan’s rushing game the floor or the ceiling? On Wednesday, Michigan running backs coach Mike Hart told reporters that his biggest regret from the Wolverines’ matchup against Washington was keeping Donovan Edwards on the bench for LANE so long. On KIZZIAH Saturday, we saw why. With just under seven minutes left in the third quarter, the freshman running back came barreling down the middle of the field with the ball in his hands and one thing in his sights: his first college touchdown. With just four yards between the line of scrimmage and the end zone, Edwards easily made it through, putting Michigan up, 56-3. Edwards had picked up a handful of yards in the Western Michigan and Washington games — 27 and four, respectively — but he made his first true impact on the stats sheet this weekend against Northern Illinois with eight carries, 86 yards and two touchdowns. Two minutes after his first, he found the end zone again. At the 42-yard line, Edwards waited for the Wolverines’ offensive line to create an opportunity, and then he took it. Finding a hole in the Huskies’ defense, he outran every defender en route to a 76-yard touchdown. Together, these two moments were emblematic of Michigan’s offense this weekend: systematically grinding down Northern Illinois’s defense while creating and taking big offensive opportunities whenever it could. More than that, it kept the ball almost entirely on the ground. After receiving criticism for last week’s run-game-dominated

performance, the Wolverines did pick up the passing game, securing 233 yards in the air compared to 44 against Washington. “That was a goal of ours going into the game. We wanted to rush for 200 yards, we wanted to pass for 200 yards,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh told reporters after Saturday’s game. “Felt like the timing is there, the execution has been there in practice.” Yes, the Wolverines were passing, but it wasn’t the driving force behind the offense. It was barely an afterthought. Out of nine touchdowns, only one resulted from a pass — an 87-yard bomb

registered 373 yards on 48 carries. In each game so far this season, the Wolverines have picked up more rushing yards than the one before. Michigan now leads the nation with 1,051 yards on the ground. This identity — an identity it seems offensive coordinator Josh Gattis has been trying to find since arriving in Ann Arbor three years ago — could serve as a strong, stable foundation for Gattis to build upon. Even with the implied asterisk that comes with a win over an inferior opponent, a 63-point trouncing isn’t meaningless. It’s an identity built primarily on the backs of sophomore Blake

anticipated that the run game would be a focal point of this offense. “We’ve got really good running backs,” Gattis told reporters before the start of the season. “Those guys need the ball. We’ve got to make a firm commitment to run the ball. That’s how your numbers go up from that standpoint.” Adding Edwards as a valuable third wheel adds stability to that strategy. “It’s so tremendous with (Corum) and (Haskins),” Harbaugh said. “You talk about that kind of tandem at running back. Each is so good. Add Donovan in there.

good at that.” If Haskins and Corum are thunder and lightning, Edwards is a downpour: maybe not as flashy, but relentless and powerful all the same. This trio could be planting the seeds for an offensive identity that defines Michigan not just this season but for years to come. Or it could be a ceiling. Yes, give Haskins the ball and you can beat Northern Illinois. You can beat Rutgers and probably Minnesota. But Penn State? Ohio State? The Wolverines are going to struggle to find the success they’re looking for in the long term without an equally strong passing game.

GRACE BEAL/Daily Michigan’s run game has fueled its 3-0 record this season. But the run game alone may not be enough to shatter expectations.

caught by junior receiver Cornelius Johnson. Michigan’s offense is still irrefutably defined by its run game. Saturday, the Wolverines

Corum and senior Hassan Haskins. The duo holds a combined 688 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns this season. Going into the season, it was

Donovan, he’s quite the back himself. He does a great job with ball security, it’s important to him. Some people are just better at that than other people, and he’s really

A common football truism is that the team that controls the rushing game usually wins. Think back to the Wolverines’ most recent triumph over the

Buckeyes in 2011. Michigan was focused on the run game. It outran Ohio State 277 yards to 137 and the Buckeyes out-passed the Wolverines 235 yards to Michigan’s 167. But a regression analysis published in the Sport Journal showed that having a first-half passing-yard advantage increases the probability of winning whereas an advantage in rushing yards has no effect. As such, the saying is probably a case of reverse causation — teams that takes the lead will likely pull ahead in rushing yards as well. Now, think back to 2016. Michigan had an offense anchored by running backs Karan Higdon, De’Veon Smith and Chris Evans. The Wolverines started the season with a 63-3 win against Hawaii, a blowout that started a nine-game win streak. It was a good Michigan team, but in big moments it couldn’t pull through. An Iowa defense was able to stop the run game, and there was no passing game to fall back on. An intercepted pass in the third quarter caused the Wolverines to blow a 17-3 lead against Ohio State. Michigan notched two passing touchdowns in its Orange Bowl appearance, but it wasn’t enough to prevent another loss to another ranked opponent. No one can say that 10-3 is a disappointing season. No one can say that the Wolverines weren’t good in 2016. But it didn’t hit the benchmarks of success that Michigan has set for itself, that Michigan fans have come to place their blind faith in — and it hasn’t done so since. If the Wolverines really hope to live up to their own expectations, they can’t rely solely on the run game. But, it’s a great place to start.

Managing Sports Editor Lane Kizziah can be reached at lkizziah@umich.edu or on Twitter at @KizziahLane

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

On Senior Night, seniors lead Michigan to comeback victory NOAH KINGSLEY

For The Daily

Fifteen minutes into extra time, senior midfielder Meredith Haakenson collected the ball at the top of the box. After surveying the field, Haakenson slipped it past the defense to the foot of junior forward Dani Wolfe. Wolfe dribbled to the end line before finding sophomore

defender Janiece Joyner in the box led to a penalty kick for the Illini. Fifth-year goalkeeper Hillary Beall made the save, but the ball bounced off her hands onto the foot of Illinois attacker Makena Silber, who gave the Illini a lead just two minutes into the game. Despite senior defender Sydney Shepherd — who had started every game to this point — being unavailable, and Joyner

MILES MACKLIN/Daily Senior midfielder Meredith Haakenson spurred the Wolverines to a 2-1 victory.

forward Sammi Woods, who sent a shot just past the goalkeeper’s outstretched arm, into the back of the net. Woods’s goal completed the 21st-ranked Wolverines’ (1-0-0 Big Ten, 7-1-1 overall) comeback 2-1 victory over Illinois (0-1, 4-4) on Friday. Despite trailing for nearly 80 minutes of the game and needing two extra time periods, Michigan’s strong defense and slew of offensive chances eventually propelled it to the win. The defense got off to an unpromising start, however, when an early foul by senior

going down with an injury in the 15th minute, Michigan’s defense tightened up after the early goal. Senior back Alia Martin and junior midfielder Emily Leyson held the unit together as their replacements. “This is where you are very thankful that you have some depth,” Michigan coach Jennifer Klein said. “Typically (Leyson) plays in the midfield, but we slid her back there … She did a great job.” But while Michigan’s defense rebounded, its offense stalled. Despite holding the ball in the offensive end for most of the

half, strong defense in the box from Illinois prevented quality chances, limiting the Wolverines to six first half shots and maintaining the Illini’s one goal lead into the break. The Wolverines came out of halftime energized, doubling their shot total within the first 10 minutes of the half. Still, many of the chances were not high quality with shots constantly being taken from the top of the box and sailing way over the top of the net. Though it outshot Illinois 20-2 throughout the half, it would take until the 80th minute for Michigan to even the score, when the Wolverines earned a corner kick. As the ball flew in, Illinois goalkeeper Naomi Jackson made an aggressive move, attempting to punch the ball out of the box. Instead, it hit off her hand, right to the head of senior midfielder Raleigh Loughman. Loughman hit it up to Haakenson, who headed it into the back of the net, knotting the game at one. “I got to give credit to Raleigh,” Haakenson said. “It was a great ball … I didn’t really have to do much. She’s a senior, and I’m a senior … On senior night it was a present for all of us.” Though Michigan earned a few more chances throughout the rest of regulation, nothing resulted. The first 15 minutes of extra time carried on similarly, with the Wolverines creating chances but not capitalizing. Finally, in the 105th minute, Woods put the ball into the bottom left corner of the net, completing the comeback win. “Overtime is always a lot of high emotions,” Woods said. “Being the team that gets that golden goal is always a surreal feeling, but being the one to actually get that goal is even better.”

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 — 11

Michigan fails to complete late comeback MARK PATRICK

Daily Sports Writer

The Michigan men’s soccer team faced a tall task in its first Big Ten opponent of the season: No. 8 Maryland. While the Wolverines (3-31 overall, 0-1 Big Ten) played the Terrapins (5-1, 1-0) close, they were not up to the task, ultimately falling, 2-1. The first half was largely dominated by Maryland. It was able to dictate the tempo of the game with its ability to move the ball up the field, get traffic in front of the net and create numerous scoring opportunities though it wasn’t able to capitalize. The Terrapins’ best chance of the half came with ten minutes left on a mad scramble in front of the Wolverines’ net, but the defense was persistent. Junior defender Evan Rasmussen was key in getting the stop on the play.

The game remained scoreless heading into halftime with the Terrapins having a 6-to-3 shot advantage. Michigan hoped to limit their chances in the final 45 minutes. But as the second half kicked off, the Wolverines were unable to stick to their gameplan. Maryland’s offense was even more ferocious in the second half, creating numerous opportunities and drawing penalty kicks. Ten minutes into the second half, the Terrapins drew a foul, resulting in a penalty kick. Maryland midfielder Joshua Bolma buried a goal on a curve shot that just barely missed the gloves of freshman goaltender Hayden Evans. The Terrapins kept riding their momentum and just nine minutes later, scored another goal. Maryland’s trio of midfielders worked a tictac-toe play which ended with Justin Harris scoring in front of the net. He broke through

the Wolverines defenders and buried the goal to make it a 2-0 game. Despite allowing two secondhalf goals, Evans finished the game with eight saves. With the game winding down, Michigan was able to cut the deficit to one with a goal from senior forward Derick Broche. Broche scored off a nice pass from senior midfielder Kevin Buca which froze the Terrapin goaltender. Despite the late push by the Wolverines, they ultimately came up short. The Terrapins finished the second half with ten shots, further elevating themselves from their first half performance. Michigan failed to keep up as it only tallied six shots compared to Maryland’s sixteen. If the Wolverines want to stay competitive in the Big Ten, they will need to breakout offensively, after only scoring eight goals in the first seven games. No players or coaches were available for comment.

MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily Derick Broche scored a goal in Michigan’s loss to Maryland.

Women’s volleyball wins to sweep invitational

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily Michigan dispatched Boston College with ease, winning in straight sets.

JAKE SINGER

For The Daily

The Michigan volleyball team (7-2) cruised to an easy victory against Boston College (10-4) on Friday evening, winning 3-0 in its final match Friday. The Wolverines jumped to an early lead as they took the first set 25-13 behind senior outside hitter Paige Jones’s five kills and junior middle back May Pertofsky’s three aces. “In the gym, we talked a lot about first contact, which is serving and passing, and that’s something that we really focus ourselves on,” Jones said. “First contact wins games, so if we can get them out of system and serve aggressive, it makes our lives easier on the defensive end … it’s like our staple of what we’re trying to do.” Jones played exceptionally well, slamming a series of kills at a speed too fast for the Eagles to handle. This aggression worked in the team’s favor, as she and Petorfsky finished with ten kills each throughout the match.

“Since my freshman year, I’ve been learning how to serve more consistently with the hybrid since it’s not something that I did before college, and we’ve put so much time into it over the years and really worked on a lot this year,” Pertofsy said. “We’ve been really working on location and tempo … I think that the communication is really open when I’m with my team and with my setters, so it’s really nice just to tell them what I need, or if it’s my fault.” The second set was no different as the Wolverines carried the momentum from the first set to win 25-17. Part of Michigan’s overall success resulted from an emphasis on countering the Eagles’ style of play. “Early on, we knew that they run a really fast offense,” Pertofsky said. “We saw that when they played Dayton and so we scouted that, and early in the game, just made sure that we were set up out wide. Working from the outside in (allowed us) to make sure that we were on the pins.” Michigan did have some hiccups along the way. Early in

the third set, the Wolverines found themselves trailing, 18-14, and called a timeout. Boston College turned four pancakes into kills, and the momentum was in its favor. The Wolverines, though, appeared to have regrouped after the timeout as they went on a 7-1 run to take a 21-19 lead. “Their system is so fast, that when it’s clicking, it’s hard to stop,” Michigan coach Mark Rosen said. “But I don’t think you can sustain it very consistently. I really wanted to just talk about being patient but urgent. We needed to keep serving tough. They were passing pretty well during that time, but if you keep serving tough, sooner or later, you’ll get them. Even though they’re scoring right now, sooner or later, the errors will come and they kind of did.” After a loss to UNC last Sunday, Michigan has been on a hot streak, sweeping the Michigan Invitational over the weekend. With Big Ten play this week, the team looking to carry the momentum forward after a strong stretch.

12 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021

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1 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021 // The Statement

A stitch in time: Fiber artistry during the pandemic Design by Cara Jhang

BY MELANIE TAYLOR, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT The World Is Ending, and All I Got Was This Dumb Sweater I picked up crochet a few months before the world shut down. I’d been dabbling with sewing and embroidery in fall 2019, a few of the many crafts that had come and gone from my list of hobbies, when I saw a crochet TikTok that seemed doable. That’s how they get you. I was trying (and failing) to crochet one of my first ever projects — a mask, inspired by Billie Eilish at the January 2020 Grammys — when the University of Michigan sent students home. How fortuitous, right? As the world collapsed inward, gatherings dwindled and commutes were eliminated. Many of us found ourselves trapped inside with a lot of time on our hands. Some replaced that time with baking, Animal Crossing or binging Tiger King. Some replaced that time with a ball of yarn. When Information junior Julia Kaplan was sent home from school, she and her roommates tried out a few different activities to fill their empty schedules before landing on crochet. Most notably, Kaplan wanted to teach herself Adobe Photoshop. She quickly realized that a digital hobby was only exacerbating her online fatigue from Zoom. “In the beginning of quarantine, I started picking up a couple of new hobbies, but they were still on my computer,” Kaplan said. “I realized that I just needed something tangible because staring at a screen all day is honestly exhausting.” So Kaplan ventured into Kerrytown to grab two skeins and two hooks for her and her roommate from the local yarn barn, Spun. Kaplan brought the haul home and began to weave the yarn together into whatever she could manage. “We just searched up YouTube videos of how to crochet, and we both sat in our beds for like two hours just trying to start it out,” Kaplan said. The widespread accessibility and digital community surrounding the fiber arts flourished during COVID-19. There were hundreds of YouTube tutorials and TikTok videos catering to beginners, encouraging people to think creatively about the possibilities these art forms offer. LSA sophomore Nandini Arya credits this modern textiles Renaissance as the reason that she got into the craft. Arya never saw herself as a crochet artist. Her only association with knitting was the chunky sweaters Molly Weasley knits for her kids in Harry Potter. But when she saw a TikTok of a Perry the Platypus amigurumi, inspiration struck. “I looked at like four YouTube tutorials and decided it was achievable,” Arya said. From then on, Arya would take to crochet in “bursts,” a few days on and then a few days off, following tutorials and churning out projects. She started with beginner videos and worked her way up the levels of difficulty. Arya still calls herself a beginner. When I argued that she must be at least intermediate at this point, she insisted that she thought her friends would disagree. Regardless, Arya continued to drill the differ-

ent techniques for hours at a time. Sometimes, she would spend all day on a project — and she wasn’t alone. “I remember our friends forced us to leave (our bedroom) because we got so into it so quickly,” Kaplan said. This sudden, all-encompassing obsession was a common theme among lockdown fiber artists. There were days when I would spend hours toiling over a needle and yarn. The sun would set before I realized how much time had passed. LSA senior Reagan White also found her foray into crochet devolving into obsession. White started a private Snapchat story with her best friend for the sole purpose of swapping crocheting tips and tricks. They were both novice crocheters but soon became enamored with the craft. “I definitely did it every day during lockdown, 24/7, even in times I maybe shouldn’t have,” White said. Fiber arts are a great hobby because they can be done with only part of your attention. Many crafters, myself included, would use this time to catch up on their favorite TV shows, chat with friends or even attend online class. White found that the practice actually helped her focus on whatever else she was doing. “I have ADHD, so it’s really helpful for me to be doing something with my hands while I’m listening or watching something,” White said. “It helps me digest the information that I’m consuming.” As a member of the community service fraternity Alpha Pi Omega, Engineering senior Ryan DaCosta learned to knit by making scarves and hats which were donated to shelters around Ann Arbor. DaCosta began knitting recreationally when lockdown went into effect and spent a good amount of time practicing when in isolation with COVID-19 early on in the pandemic. “At the beginning of quarantine, I was knitting probably every day because being at home and being online for a while, there’s not much to do,” DaCosta said. “It’s also kind of a stress-reliever.” DaCosta also found himself splitting his attention between knitting and other tasks. He enjoyed having something simple and repetitive to occupy the part of his mind insistent on wandering. “It’s a great way to divide your attention while still staying engaged,” DaCosta said. “Being able to get that energy out while still focusing was really helpful.” Kinesiology sophomore Sage Feldbruegge, who learned to crochet from her mother at a young age, was inspired to take it back up after her sister came home during lockdown and gifted her a new handmade cardigan. She wanted to be able to someday return the favor. “I want to be able to make things for myself and not have to rely on my sister to ship it to me from her apartment when she moves back,” Feldbruegge said. As a self-proclaimed “multitasking kind of person,” Feldbruegge shared that she rarely crochets without some secondary source of entertainment to accompany the task. That being said,

Feldbruegge was doubtful of her ability to crochet during a movie she’d never seen before, much less while attending Zoom classes. “I don’t think I could be one of the people that crochet in class,” Feldbruegge said. “I would learn things, but I would forget them. Because I would start counting my stitches, and I would forget to listen.” That was certainly the case in my few failed attempts to crochet during class. And that’s okay. Crochet patterns get complicated fast, and it can be difficult to focus on something new in the background when you’re still building up expertise. Feldbruegge said there were often times during class where she would yearn to pick up the project. The half-completed sweater would taunt her, sitting there unchanged as the moments ticked by. It could be done, if only she could devote her full attention to it. But eventually, Feldbruegge would find respite in a nightly Netflix binge, roommate hangout or dog sitting job. She would use the hobby as a stress-reliever at the end of her day, or simply a way to occupy the passing hours. “I did a lot of crocheting before I went to bed,” Feldbruegge said. “I’d be like, I just want to finish this one part, and then I’d end up getting so into it that I’d crochet until the middle of the night.” Repetition, Repetition, Repetition When I was younger, my Bubbie armed me with all the knowledge of a good Jewish grandmother. I listened to her advice — learned to play Canasta and got pretty good at knitting (for a nine-year-old). But Bubbie told me I was spectacular, so rather than discard the needles, I tucked them away in my coterie of craft supplies, never to be seen again. That is, until lockdown. Knitting, much like riding a bike or learning a language, is something that you never really forget how to do. This is especially true if you learn at a young age. It’s the kind of skill that’s all about muscle memory. Once you practice it enough, it becomes second nature. The very essence of fiber arts is repetitive. It requires the maker to stack stitch upon stitch upon identical stitch until suddenly, they coalesce into something entirely new. “Watching the project grow while it’s in your hands, you can see your progress so clearly,” White said. “And even though some projects will take a lot of repetition of the same thing, you can see the whole bigger picture of it being built in your hands.” This makes fiber artistry a particularly valuable skill to have during a months-long lockdown. Even though you’re not necessarily accountable to anyone for creating or completing projects, it’s nice to have physical evidence of your productivity — to be able to point to something and say, I made that! “Especially with the last part of quarantine … it got harder to perceive time passing at the end there, so it was nice to know it actually hap-

pened,” Arya said. “To have proof that it did in fact occur.” In the beginning, progress isn’t going to amount to entire blankets produced in a single day. Still, any change is good change when your daily routines are shattered and conventions of life are forgotten. “One of the reasons that I love crochet is because you can see the little bits and pieces of progress so even if you just got one row, it’s one more row than you used to have,” Kaplan said. “It’s a very rewarding craft.” And those rewards are certainly hardearned. It takes time to build up the muscle memory to be able to knit or crochet — typically up to three months. You must reap before you are able to sew (pun intended). “It can be super overwhelming when you first get started,” White said. “It can be really foreign to hold the yarn in the ways that they suggest you do for crocheting and knitting as well. I think the best advice would be to just keep trying the same very simple tasks.” Every single person I interviewed said something to this effect, and I completely agree. For beginners, there is a huge learning curve associated with mastering the stitches and getting comfortable with the tools. Arya advises newcomers to take things bit by bit. She recommends finding a pattern involving only one or two simple stitches to start out, because when you finally do make something successfully — even something simple — the ego-boost you receive is unrivaled. “Once I made my first successful circle, I was so happy that I was like, ‘I can crochet anything,’” Arya said. “And that was really the reason why I kept up with it instead of quitting.” Feldbruegge did quit after her mom taught her to crochet when she was younger. But having started it back up again, she was determined to master the skill. A few months in, after practicing for countless hours, Feldbruegge started a new project: a hat. She was anticipating another bout of days laboring over hook and skein, but after just an hour and a half, the hat was complete. Feldbruegge went to show it to her dad, who joined her in shock over just how quickly she was able to produce the garment. “The fact that I was not very good at crocheting when I was younger and I just got back into it this year and was already going fast enough to get things done, like finish a project in one day, was just really cool to see,” Feldbruegge said. Feldbruegge said that people new to the fiber arts should try out different methods of learning before becoming discouraged. Unlike almost everyone I talked to, Feldbruegge preferred written patterns to YouTube tutorials. Once she figured that out, though, she was able to explore the archive of patterns shared across the global digital crochet community.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 // The Statement — 2 Design by Erin Shi

BY ANNIE RAUWERDA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

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I fill a significant portion of my spare time with dumb thoughts that strangers post online. I’ve been on the internet since the late-aughts, spending after-school screen time with Fred videos and Webkinz, floating from site to site on the family PC. The online world allowed me to be anonymous — even though I met “friends” on Club Penguin chats and GirlsGoGames comments, I was just a chaotic username, not Annie Rauwerda. My bubble of anonymity popped when my dad told me that the public comments I’d made on High School Musical videos (“Vanessa Hudgens is sooooo perfect for Zac,” etc.) were all associated with his name and that I should “please not do that.” I spent my middle school years under my actual name on Google Buzz and Facebook, poking and posting. By high school, the tech giants had hooked me on algorithmically-curated content. The 10-year anniversary of my Instagram account approaches, and I’m not sure if I should celebrate or mourn. The internet hosts mazes of feverish connection; it takes our social incentives (to be liked) and disguises them as performance incentives (to get likes.) After I meet someone in real life, I search their name on the internet to get a read on their vibe — a habit that, when I take a step back, seems deranged. Why can’t my perception of a person be complete without knowing their online presence? In a digitally-mediated world, it’s easy to make life inextricable from social media. Many of the good and beautiful parts of life— the jokes, the inspiration, our communities and our families— are inseparable from the internet, too. People I’ll never meet are saying nothing and saying it all the time, and I’m frequently sucked into the abyss, viewing it all from my digital peephole. Opaque algorithms present me with curated content that updates every few seconds; apps send me FOMO-inducing push notifications when I haven’t logged on in a while. Occasionally, the trash vortex yields something useful, like

this Chrome extension that hides pop-ups and long personal stories from food blogs. Other times, I’m absent-mindedly scrolling through acquaintances’ vacation pictures, wasting my time watching their carefully constructed lives. A stranger made a Rube Goldberg machine. Another stranger had a gender reveal at a ski resort (she’s a girl). More strangers had a reunion at an airport, and I watched until the end. I’m happy for them. Hong Kong now has a meme museum. I become invested in the day’s happenings and I move to the couch to continue my scroll. Female octopuses throw things at males that are harassing them and a stranger thinks this is pretty hashtag girlboss. Now there’s shaved soap, a close-up of gloved hands popping blackheads and a picture of a frog that says “I live in Poland but the la is silent.” An ad for a bank for gay people. A mukbang. My brother’s ex-girlfriend did a Tough Mudder with her dad who has cancer and my high school nemesis is asking her followers to join her pyramid scheme. Vaccine disinformation. A cow got stuck in a tree. Someone changed their Tinder location to the Olympic Village and is matching with Olympians. Neat! There’s a gif of a rapper above an Amber Alert above a deep-fried-meme above a notice of neighborhood raccoons above ASMR cooking tutorials above viral recipes for air-fryer tofu above a stranger’s açaí bowl above a 5-yearold opening a neon slime kit. Rapper Nicki Minaj spreads misinformation, claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine caused infertility in her cousin’s friend, and reputable sources rush to correct her. My high school assistant swim coach marks herself safe from a minor hurricane. The New York Times Magazine ran an article about how to catch a bat, making me wonder if this is a skill I’ll ever need to know. There’s an ad for a dating app for dogs. Rudy Giuliani is on Cameo. An influencer posted

a picture in Cabo but when she photoshopped her small waist, she inadvertently made her thumb really fat. Timothée Chalamet was spotted eating a sandwich. The Daily Mail puts out another bizarre headline: “EXCLUSIVE: Tech bro boasts about hanging with ‘notable celebrities and execs’ at UNOFFICIAL Burning Man as rich kids bring their own stages, Porta Potties and DJ equipment to Black Rock Desert ‘Playa.’” A Russian content farm on Facebook asks if you can name a song that mentions the weather, and your parents’ next-door neighbor comments “It’s Raining Men.” I suppose she’s right, and I take a screenshot to send to my brother but never get around to sending it. A girl I met at a slumber party in eighth grade moved to Texas with her boyfriend. A BuzzFeed video shows how street lights work. Polka-dot bralettes are on sale. Bugs Bunny is wearing a tux and wishing “all darty-ers a very calm down it’s 9 in the morning.” A church youth pastor says that the new rec room has everything a teen could want: Blu-rays, a foosball table, a board game shelf and several types of potato chips. Someone posted a video of their “obnoxiously strong toes” and it met my (admittedly low) expectations. “Ali express is a beautiful name for a girl,” says a stranger. A multi-millionaire I’ve never heard of is quitting his job at a one-billion-dollar company to work at a different billion-dollar company, and a cat fell off the upper bowl of a stadium during a football game. Someone brings up the guy with two penises from Reddit. Someone thinks their chin looks like the city of Dallas. It does. Another meme arises based on a nostalgic form of children’s entertainment that people in their twenties enjoyed as elementary schoolers. A stretched, saturated stock image of Paris Hilton holding a massive Hello Kitty purse is overlaid by glowing yellow text that reads “I am so based.” It has 60,000 likes. Someone in a Twitter argument says “touch some grass,” an insult implying that one has lost touch with reality so entirely that they

must interact with a plant and reflect on their actions. Like a lab rat with a lever, I wade through endless content in search of a meme that induces a strong exhale. I don’t know if the mess of content adds up to anything, but I do know it feels thrilling on good days and overwhelming on bad days. There are plenty of voices saying social media is bad — just as critics warned about TV (called a “vast wasteland” in 1961), or the once-newfangled concept of the written word, which Plato said would “implant forgetfulness.” As someone who loves the way the media landscape always provides something new to learn, I don’t mean to be a Luddite. Still, when I don’t set limits, I find myself exhausted by it all. I mourn the way it can fuel hate groups, decimate mental health and pressure its users into constant performance. Huge concerts may have a stage in the middle surrounded by seating in every direction, but on social media, it’s as if the performers are in the stands and there’s no stage — we’re performing for no one but each other. I have my gripes with the internet, of course, but I keep coming back to it for several reasons: I frequently find things I really like (like this 101-year-old lobsterwoman) and it connects me to my friends. Gen Z has been dubbed “digital natives” because we grew up in close contact with the internet. The term implies the internet is my home country, and it sure feels like it: I speak our shared language of memes and phrases with a certain dialect, and I get a homesick longing for content if I go for too long without it. The other day, I saw in an online article linked from social media that ducks can learn to say phrases, and one said “you bloody fool.” “Maybe I am,” I thought, and then I scrolled to a tweet from user @afraidofwasps. It read: “You only live once — you should try to spend as much time on the computer as possible. After you die, you won’t have access to it anymore.”

3 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021 // The Statement

From footprints to festifalls: relearning LILLY DICKMAN, STATEMENT a non-virtual reality BYCORRESPONDENT I am single-handedly running Earth into the ground. I know this because I had to calculate my ecological footprint for my environmental studies class last Thursday. For reference, an ecological footprint is a measure of an individual’s personal impact on the environment — a comparison between the demand one puts on Earth’s natural resources versus what the Earth is actually able to supply. To determine mine, I answered questions about my food intake (how many animal-based or processed products I consume), what type of house I live in, my modes of transportation, how often I buy new clothes or gadgets and so on. Upon finishing the survey, the result page came up and presented me with the statement, “If everyone lived like you, we would need 5.3 Earths.” Ah jeez. I scrolled to the next statement. “If everyone lived like you, by March 9th, we would have used as much from nature as Earth can renew in an entire year.” “Oh gosh,” I verbally announced. I could seriously be the sole reason we’re in a sixth mass extinction right now. I then turned to the response questions for the assignment, where I was asked how I could improve my footprint, more specifically, how I could “be the change.” I sat back and thought through my past week, trying to identify times when I had tanked nature’s future. From reflecting, I realized that while my ecological footprint was through the roof, my actual footprint was possibly higher — my activity app measured 18,000 steps the other day. During my first week of classes, I was so overwhelmed that I called my mom crying from the floor of my bedroom. The conversation provided no huge insights into bettering my ecological footprint, only proof that the Earth and I were actually in tough competition for exhaustion levels — I’ve been energetically and socially stunted from the pandemic. “It’s hard,” I panicked. “I don’t know how to do regular school. I have to walk to my classes. I have to figure out where to walk in-between them when I don’t have time to deep-dive into a huge assignment but also have too much time to just eat a snack. Then I walk back and forth from the house all day for my meals. And of course, I have to interact with everyone while I do it.”

“You’re just not adjusted to regular life,” my mom told me. “You’ll get there.” Continuing to reflect on my week, I thought about my first game day as a Michigan Wolverine: entering the Big House, chills rising on my arms as I looked down at the sea of students, beaming and cheering, all overjoyed about making their debut from two years of hibernation. I was again exhausted that night from such a surreal yet overstimulating day. I guess I could’ve skipped the half-time hot dog? Avoided food from animals? I laughed to myself as I pictured my Graduate Student Instructor reading my response that I’d “be the change” by boycotting stadium meat. The reality was, I had no idea how to fix my ecological footprint. I had no idea how to even navigate normal life on campus, and here I was, trying to cough up ideas on how I could “be the change.” While I was unable to find a legitimate way to improve the Earth’s life, I had identified a pattern of overstimulation and tiredness within my own. This week, a hundred percent of my effort has gone towards trying to figure out what floor of what library is a good spot to do my work, how much of the professor’s words I should get down as he spews into the unpausable abyss, and if I have time to stop at home for dinner or go straight to dance practice before then going out for the night. I may be a

sophomore in name, but I feel like a freshman in mind and body. And I’m not the only one. My friends and I joke that we’re like astronauts who returned from space with bones and muscles ill-equipped to handle the pressure of gravity. It’s an odd concept — having to “catch up” to a “normal” life, struggling through what is supposed to be “an average day.” I, along with my entire age group and perhaps even the entire student body, am realizing that I didn’t know what I was missing while I was missing it. I regressed as a functioning, social human without even knowing. Being a stranger to the school at which I spent a year of my life is weird. I knew the University of Michigan was a “big school,” but I didn’t actually comprehend its vastitude until I went to Festifall last week. My intentions included adding a club to my repertoire — perhaps something

Design by Cara Jhang

would help me contribute to the community, to “be the change.” I walked around in awe, taking in the number of people, the diversity of students, their styles, conversations, initiatives, interests. I walked and walked, read material at booths, analyzed the buzzing Diag. Overwhelmed, I added no clubs. Suddenly, the ones I already belonged to sufficed. I sympathized with the Earth as I left, unable to provide all the personal resources that felt demanded of me. I needed to listen to my own body and mind’s needs. I’m acutely aware that now is not the best time for self-focus, though. Within the past month or so, there’s been a deadly hurricane, an abortion ban, continued Taliban chaos, wildfires and more. Usually, I like to stay updated, know current events and contribute charitably wherever I can, whether that entails reading the New York Times at night or FaceTiming my family to discuss confusing details. I like to be able

to understand issues and their players and participate in conversations with friends or in classes. I like being informed. But right now, I don’t feel like I have the capacity to do so. I don’t know nearly enough about any of these events as I should. In full transparency, I can say I know that they happened and that’s about it. My awareness is not looking good — I feel civically irresponsible. Not to mention, I’m apparently taking down the environment, too. Keeping up with the news, staying politically and globally educated, contributing to causes you care about and of course, staying relatively environmentally friendly requires a concerted effort, regardless of the time period or what’s going on in the world. But as college students today, we are expected to keep up with the world beyond ourselves, while also re-learning real life here in Ann Arbor. I question if it is acceptable to hold off a semester on joining a new organization or if it is irresponsible to know less about current events. Is it lazy to not have the capacity to figure out how to improve an ecological footprint? Generally speaking, I do not believe anybody has the privilege to dismiss life and issues outside their personal bubble. It’s negligent and selfcentered.

But I also have a small voice — one which I’m afraid to let speak up — saying that right now, focusing on myself is OK. It’s OK if I skim the news when I can, engage in conversation when possible and provide a heartfelt contribution to bettering our environment at a later date. I’ve got to obtain the footing itself before I can shape my footprint. This means, at least for a little while, maybe I don’t have to hold myself to the same standards I did before the pandemic. Maybe I don’t need to “be the change” — at least for right now. This slightly disheartening, yet nonetheless unavoidable truth probably goes for all aspects of life: the bar that was achievable in 2019, is, at least for now, lower. We should be easy on ourselves. We should lower our expectations of what we can and need to do. Right now, I’ll “be the change” by making sure I healthily balance my academics, social life, extracurriculars and downtime. I’ll take things off my plate that nudge me closer to feeling too overwhelmed. I’ll reach out to my peers and discuss the difficulty of this adjustment that they may be too nervous to outwardly express, thinking they’re the only ones struggling. I’ll write this piece admitting that I’m not as politically or current event-ly fluent and active as I used to be, like to be or know I should be. I’ll get there soon enough. Soon I’ll genuinely work on “being the change.” First, I must figure out how to just “be.”

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 // The Statement — 4 Design by Madison Grosvenor

Giving hometowns a second chance

BY OSCAR NOLLETTE-PATULSKI, STATEMENT COLUMNIST As I walk past the Undergraduate Science Building, the early September sunset paints a gradient from blue to orange on the reflective windows. I should be wowed by this: the brilliant sky, the comfortably warm weather, my first week back on campus. Instead, my mind wanders back to the streets of my youth. The suburban ones with singlefamily ranches dotting the sides of the road, the quiet ones that couldn’t quite keep high-school me satisfied, the long ones that had iterations of car dealerships and fast-food restaurants for miles. The streets that resemble a midwest automobile wasteland. Yet here I was, eight days after moving in, yearning to touch the ground that I had so happily left. How did I get here? I have lived in Grand Rapids, Mich., for the vast majority of my life, only moving once before that from Brooklyn, N.Y. This first move happened just after kindergarten, and by the time first grade was over, I had thoroughly exhausted my teachers and peers with my fun fact about being from the Big Apple. How many five-year-olds can say they just came from the cultural center of the Western world? At North Park Elementary, I was the only one, and took a unique pride in where I was born, despite only having lived there for five years — eighteen months of which I actually remember. This affection for New York stood in stark contrast to my feelings towards Grand Rapids. Our modest yard, which enthralled my urbanite parents, did not live up to the hype (in my fiveyear-old opinion). The grass was brown and dry from midsummer’s heat and prickled the soles of my feet with disdain. In Michigan, there was no subway system to whisk our family around, only minivans and five-lane roads. The crickets and cicadas nonstop symphonies scared my brother and me to tears while trying to sleep on our first night. The city — or should I call it a town — was too small and too far away from the childhood I knew and loved. This negative first impression of Grand Rapids created a pessimistic lens through which I viewed the city for the remainder of my time there. It was much too hot and humid in the summers, with 90º becoming less foreign and more annoying. The limited activities within walking distance weren’t as much as a problem while my younger brother and I required parental supervision, but as we grew independent, the entertainment desert that existed within our lush, tree-lined streets became painfully obvious. By high school, my friends and I would simply drive from strip malls to chain restaurants

and back again, the asphalt roads a conduit to a cure for boredom. Exciting events on the weekend included hunting the aisles of big box stores for Squishmallows or discount holiday candy, a place to exist away from our families and school. I had always hoped that my parents would move somewhere else, swooped to the West coast by the winds of a new job, or a lack of inspiration from this silly midwest river town. They consistently lamented the conservative politics, the name of rich corporate executives plastered on every vertical surface and the culture scene that was small enough to make their art school sensibilities feel claustrophobic. Somehow, my father’s sisters and mother were enough of a glue for us to stay put, and my parents have now lived there longer than they did in the Big City. I graduated high school with the determination to not do the same. And so I ended up in Ann Arbor, barely saying goodbye to my dad when he dropped me off at East Quad Residence Hall on that late August afternoon. There were things I missed about home of course: my cats, my family, my own space. Nevertheless, I relished my freedom in a new city. Stringing together extended itineraries of campus events, bike rides to new parts of the surrounding city, trying new dining halls and eateries under the changing leaves and crisp skies of fall. I avoided home over Fall Break, instead opting for a backpacking trip in the Upper Peninsula. By the time Thanksgiving recess appeared on my calendar, my parent’s house was foreign. Even though it felt good to be home for the holidays, my Grand Rapids cabin fever caught up to me by Christmas, and Ann Arbor was the place I would have rather been. Similarly, winter semester went by without visiting home once, until University Housing’s infamous pandemic email kicked me and my hallmates out of the dorms. In an instant, living with my parents in

Grand Rapids went from a rarity to reality. There was a sense of premature conclusion when my mom and I pulled into the driveway of my childhood home, under the drab gray sky of mid-March. Though I felt a new sense of ease, this breath of release from uptempo university life soon became a sleepy trudge through online school. My decorated desk at school was now a laptop on top of a clothing storage bin. My limbs hurt in this crouched position, their only movement being between computer tabs. My need for variety hurt as well. I did homework, interspersed class with three half-prepared meals, watched TV and went to sleep, all within 20 paces of each other. As final exams faded into early summer, I woke up in the same bed, ate the same food and lived with the same people. The only ounce of change I experienced was the season I saw outside my window. I sought to make some change for myself, and rode my bike extensively around the city on my days off from my return at my high school job. I rode along rivers, traced trails and biked through the sloping subdivisions and tired traffic lights of my hometown. Without the typical hum of midwesterners driving the streets, the city spoke for itself in a way. I went through neighborhoods I knew existed but never got to know, digging into the landscape that shaped my youth, stripped back from the rhythms of daily life. By the end of that monotonous stay-at-home summer, I was ready to move back to Ann Arbor, even if it only was for a new laptop background. I felt like I knew Grand Rapids, or at least a version of it, inside and out, and a change of scenery was necessary. I vowed to never spend that much time at my parent’s house again. I quickly accustomed myself to a new routine, immersing myself in the new hybrid world of school and work for the semester.

Once in a while, I would see classmates from high school walking through the nearly empty landscape of a university online. We would talk, trade surface-level feelings and anecdotes, before eventually turning to Grand Rapids as something we had in common. Through these conversations, we shared snapshots of our favorite views coming into the city: the skyline rising in the distance driving north on US-131, the lookout from the west side bluffs looking over the river. These were visual cues of knowing that we were home, we were safe and we would soon be in the calm of our childhood bedrooms. This came as a surprise for me: actively wanting to return to my roots. This initial feeling of familiar comfort is what I realized I miss most about being home, and the thought of upcoming semester breaks tempted me to relive that experience. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and the same proved true about Grand Rapids. Though there was less to do than ever during my extended pandemic stint at my parent’s house, something about the homogenous nature of my time at home made that okay, and made me appreciate the calmness of society’s relative standstill. I became more comfortable with boredom, and more mundane activities like going on walks and waving to neighbors became highlights of my existence. I once despised the place I came from because it was so familiar, so last year, so boring. To be separated from my former self by geography was something I was grateful for. However, being away from home has illuminated facets of a more reliable daily routine that I now miss, and places that I once dismissed as too suburban, too normal, glimmer positively in my memory. This past summer, in an effort to differentiate from that of 2020, I took jobs that pulled me away from Grand Rapids, and I was gone from my parent’s home save a couple of weeks in May and some days in August. I relished my independence and freedom that came with the distance, but perhaps I did not give myself enough breathing room, forgetting about the valuable oxygen that comes with leisure time at home — the sense of refreshment it gives before moving on to a new academic year. I underestimated my hometown, and upon my eventual return, I hope that I will savor the sunsets that reflect off my living room window; coloring my childhood street with a rose-colored tint, and my memories of it the same.