Freshmen make the best of an unprecedented fall semester Arriving on campus for the start of courses, new students try to adjust to college life in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic BEN ROSENFELD Daily News Editor
As the first day of fall semester approaches and students move into on-campus residence halls, freshmen have had to modify their expectations for what the semester will now look like. LSA freshman Elizabeth Wolfe, who lives in East Quad Residence Hall, said she has tried to make her first several days as normal as possible despite the semester’s clear differences. “Interactions have been limited but I’ve kind of found ways to just sit with people in the courtyard, be able to eat food with people socially distanced,” Wolfe said. “I guess the way I look at it is it’s not gonna be what freshman year would normally be but it just makes it into a new experience and I’m just trying to make the most of that.” With reports of many movein policies going unchecked or abandoned, many freshmen are fearful of a COVID-19 outbreak impacting students and classes shortly after the start of the semester. The first two cases of COVID-19 in residence halls were seen in West Quad this week. Wolfe said the idea of an outbreak on campus is even more worrying to her due to her preexisting condition. “I’m really concerned,” Wolfe said. “For me personally, I have asthma so I’ve been trying to take a lot of precautions.” Additionally, Wolfe said starting school almost entirely online adds extra difficulty to the first year experience. “I’m a little anxious about starting with online classes just because it was really difficult to do that at the end of
senior year (of high school) on such short notice,” Wolfe said. “But I trust the teachers here to do what’s right. I have a lot of confidence in them right now.” Kinesiology freshman Lauren Nemeh added that the difficulty with transitioning to online instruction and learning at the end of last year makes her more concerned for the upcoming school year. “With the second half of my senior year online, in some of my classes it was definitely tough because teachers were really unsure about what was happening too,” Nemeh said. “And it was hard because some of my teachers were super lenient with deadlines and were just like ‘get this in when you can,’ but others were trying to make it as close to the actual in-person (experience) as possible.” According to Wolfe, the biggest change between student activity during a normal semester and now has been in their social lives rather than in academics. “In terms of just day-to-day stuff, I think things have been pretty normal, just getting into a college routine and getting ready for classes to start next week,” Wolfe said. “So I think besides the social aspect, so far academically, things have been pretty normal.” Wolfe said she understands the urge for students to make the semester as normal as possible, but worries that it might interfere with the following of guidelines. “For the freshman class, we missed out on a lot,” she said. “We missed the end of our senior year (of high school), we missed graduation and our proms and I think that can kind of be taken two separate ways. I think for some people that was more of a motivator
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to be really responsible during this time and to try to not miss out on anything else. But I think people can also take that experience and want to compensate for that lost time, and they are going to go out and party.” However, Wolfe, like many other students, did not consider taking a year off before starting school, explaining that the uncertainty of the pandemic made this a difficult choice to make. “My family asked me about maybe taking a gap year but I really didn’t want to,” Wolfe said. “I just wanted to get right into freshman year. I didn’t want to take a break because I didn’t think it would be productive. It wouldn’t be likely that I could even get a job. I didn’t want to be sitting around for a year just waiting for things to get back (to normal).” According to Nemeh, students living in the dorms have found ways to meet each other in safe ways by interacting outside and wearing masks. “There’s definitely a lot more people walking around than I imagined,” Nemeh said. “I saw a bunch of people out there (Hill Neighborhood) playing basketball and tennis. So it looks like people are kind of hanging out that way and trying to meet new people.” Nemeh said residence hall GroupMe chats have been helpful for students to meet one another. “In GroupMes for East Quad where I live and my f loor, people are always texting, ‘Hey, anyone wanna go to the basketball courts or something?’’ Nemeh said.
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Instructors prepare to teach courses in person
Face-to-face learning presents challenges for faculty IULIA DOBRIN
Daily Staff Reporter
Faculty members are preparing for a fall semester at the University of Michigan like no other. For the majority of faculty members, this semester will require teaching over Zoom or preparing materials to upload to Canvas if their courses are taught entirely asynchronously. But others will teach face-to-face in socially distanced classrooms. Instructors across the University’s different schools and departments are still set to teach in person, despite some faculty pushback against the University’s reopening plans. Professor Kentaro Toyama organized a protest outside of the Fleming Administrative Building after an open letter requesting greater transparency from the University went unanswered. “I think, as instructors, what we would really like to see is the administration recognizing that we’re doing the hard work on the front lines and listening to our concerns,” Toyama said. Toyama is teaching a 500-level
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course in the School of Information in the fall, which will have the option of in-person discussions and office hours for students who wish to meet face to face. Despite electing to make his course hybrid, Toyama said he does not believe the University will make it through the semester without having to go fully online. “I don’t believe we should be having an in-person, in-residence semester,” Toyama said. “But if we’re going to do it, I think we need to do it as safely as possible. We probably need to test more often, we need to make sure that everyone’s wearing masks and socially distancing and so forth.” In June, University President Mark Schlissel announced the in-residence semester, with on-campus housing opening and a mix of in-person, hybrid and remote classes being offered. This plan is still in place, with residents moving in this week and classes starting Monday. Around 31 percent of undergraduate classes are set to be taught in an in-person or hybrid format. The School of Public Health and LSA are among those with the lowest percentages of
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in-person instruction, while the School of Nursing has some of the highest rates. In an interview with The Daily on Wednesday, Schlissel said going fully online would not make much of a difference, given the large percentage of classes already taught remotely, but he is hopeful the few classes that require students to be on campus remain in person. “Going fully remote is a pretty incremental difference from where we are right now,” Schlissel said. “It wouldn’t have left people at home. We’d still have lots of students in Ann Arbor, and we’d still have the challenge of working with students to help everybody understand what it takes to be safe from being infected and from transmitting the disease.” The Graduate Employees’ Organization, the union representing graduate student instructors on campus, has started impact bargaining ahead of the fall semester, calling for a guarantee of their members’ right to a safe workplace amid the pandemic.
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‘There’s just no follow-through’: Health protocols subject to lax oversight as new occupants fill dorms across University of Michigan campus Daily Staff Reporter
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In the main hallway of Markley Residence Hall is a selection of large blue move-in bins. Standing next to the bins is a portable whiteboard sign with a hand-written message: “Please wipe before & after use!” On the floor lies a tube of disinfectant wipes, empty. This week, thousands of students are moving into University of Michigan residence halls. Students still have roommates, highly contaminable areas like bathrooms are still cleaned twice a day and social distancing is difficult to regulate in the narrow hallways. Even on paper, the University has taken a less aggressive approach than other universities. By opening at about 70 percent capacity while closing all shared spaces, the measures that the University is taking puts its residential plan in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “more risk” category. Bowdoin College has reduced its capacity down to 40% and is requiring residents to be tested every other day during move-in and twice per week throughout the semester. Harvard University has instituted a phased introduction to campus for its residents that requires students to have three negative tests. The University of California Berkeley has converted all of its rooms to single occupancy. Michigan State University has told students they shouldn’t return to campus. In practice, many of the measures that the University says it’s taking are not being enforced, leaving some students confused and concerned. Amir Baghdadchi, senior associate director of the University Housing Administration, said spacing out time slots for students to move in is the most important change Housing is taking compared to previous years. Baghdadchi said time slots were assigned to ensure that roommates are not moving in at the same time to minimize contact between families. “Instead of moving about 7,000 students in two and a half days, we’ll be moving thousands of students over seven days,” Baghdadchi said. “Then we used
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socially distant, really outside the room.” Baghdadchi suggested students meet in the common areas within the residence halls. However, the University has closed these common areas. Baghdadchi said students are encouraged to meet outdoors, which, as he noted, would put them outside the purview of Michigan Housing. According to Baghdadchi, as long as residents are socially distanced, they are encouraged to explore campus as they would any other year. “We imagine a lot of students will be doing what students do every single year,” Baghdadchi said. “Move-in comes around — it’s at a ripe moment in the summer — and the first thing students do is they go out on campus and explore it, which is what they exactly should do. Going out and experiencing campus outdoors is a low-risk activity.” The days surrounding movein, which students refer to as “Welcome Week,” are usually chock-full of round-the-clock parties and extravagant social events. While Welcome Week may be toned down this year, some off-campus parties continue. Residents are required to adhere to all Ann Arbor city and University guidelines, which includes a 25-person limit on outdoor gatherings. When asked what the University is doing to prevent residents from attending parties, Baghdadchi said it is up to students to adhere to the Housing contract. “Ultimately, students have to make choices,” Baghdadchi said. “When you choose to live with us, you’re choosing to follow the standards. And if you’re not interested in following the standards, then you’re also not interested in living in Michigan Housing.” Baghdadchi said students understand that exercising caution is central to the success of the University’s in-residence semester. “I think they fundamentally understand there is a connection between what they do outside the residence hall and whether we can have a residence hall,” he said. But once a student is dropped off, the University has little control over residents’ behavior.
For some residents, this is a cause for confusion and fear. For others, it’s an invitation to act freely. For example, LSA freshman Ryan Mulliken, who moved in on Tuesday, said he would be open to attending fraternity parties. Mulliken said he contracted COVID-19 in March, and therefore “I wouldn’t say that I’m worried, because again, I’ve had it.” Mulliken acknowledged that his antibodies do not guarantee immunity. He said he would be careful because he’s worried about the fate of the semester but that he’s still hoping to go out. Topf said it’s unclear what students are and are not allowed to do. “They never went over the rules,” Topf said. “There’s no one in the halls making sure people don’t go into other people’s rooms. There’s a big group of freshmen sitting in a circle close to each other with no masks on.” Yetukuri said she is concerned about students socializing unsafely. She said enforcement from the University is ineffective in preventing her and her peers from partying. “The only reason I wouldn’t go is because I don’t want (COVID19),” Yetukuri said. When Resident Advisors pushed administration to give them more testing in a town hall with the Housing and Student Life offices, Robert Ernst, director of University Health Service, said, “Having a test doesn’t prevent you from getting COVID.” Ernst’s comments on testing, as well as University President Mark Schlissel’s, have been questioned by several public health experts. Topf said she had hoped she could count on University officials and staff, but her experience with move-in has shown her she can’t. “I wish I wouldn’t have to depend on other 17-year-olds to be safe and that I could trust teachers will help us and other adults, but it’s just not the case,” Topf said. After speaking with The Daily Tuesday, Baghdadchi wrote in an email to The Daily Wednesday that Michigan Housing is “recalibrating some of the policies.”
As students return to Ann Arbor, parties are held on off-campus
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what we use every year: time slots. This actually allows us to really regulate the number of people that will be arriving up to the curb and going into a building at one time.” The University’s new policy allows only one guest at a time to accompany a resident inside residence halls, which Baghdadchi said will limit congestion in spaces like elevators. “We’re really thinking about one family at a time, one student at a time, one helper at a time,” Baghdadchi said. But The Daily — and freshmen moving in such as Business freshman Anupama Yetukuri — saw multiple parents, siblings and other relatives all accompany students. “We definitely saw lots of people who just had their whole families,” Yetukuri said. LSA freshman Ashna Mehra said she moved into her residence hall room at the same time as her roommates and their families. Regarding the rule of only two people in an elevator at once, LSA freshmen Meghan Dodaballapur and Josie McCarthy said this isn’t being enforced either. Yetukuri said it seems to her that compliance with the University’s move-in policies is a matter of choice. “If you choose to do it, you’re doing it,” Yetukuri said. LSA freshman Laura Topf agreed: “There’s just no followthrough.” This includes the University’s mask requirement. The Daily saw students and guests in East Quad, South Quad, Markley and Oxford residence halls walking around hallways and sitting in common spaces maskless, even with Housing staff nearby. The University’s testing plan, which has faced skepticism from public health experts for not being extensive enough, requires that all residents test negative before coming to campus. However, Topf said that requirement is also loosely enforced. “We took tests, and they said to print it out and have it with us, but they never asked me for my test results,” Topf said. Baghdadchi said students are encouraged to “stop by” other students’ rooms and “drop into the doorway.” However, he said that “socializing needs to be
Nearly a third of freshman surveyed said they would be very comfortable to somewhat comfortable going to a house party, TMD survey says
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The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms 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. Subscriptions for September-April are $250 and year long subscriptions are $275. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid.
A group of girls dressed for a night out on Monday night. DOMINICK SOKOTOFF/DAILY
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Most University of Michigan students have yet to move back to Ann Arbor, but some were already partying Sunday through Tuesday as the pandemic rages on. These parties do not bode well for Friday and Saturday night, the two busiest going-out nights on campus and when most students who plan on returning will have moved in. The Daily’s reporters saw multiple parties near campus and many maskless groups walking around dressed for a night out Sunday and Monday. With classes set to begin in less than a week, the issue of off-campus parties has turned students against one another, prompting heated debates on social media and in group chats of University students. Out of almost 1,800 incoming freshmen surveyed anonymously by The Daily mid-August, 31.7 percent said they’d be very comfortable to somewhat comfortable going to a house party despite COVID-19. Even if the vast majority of students refrained from partying, unsafe gatherings can account for
a significant chunk of the student body. Out of the University’s roughly 30,000 undergraduates, even if only 1 percent chose to party, that would still total 300 students. Viral Party Photograph A photo of an outdoor party Sunday night with the banner “You can’t eat ASS with a mask on” sparked much conversation on social media. Many said in replies to the original tweet that they were disappointed but not surprised. Information graduate student Daniella Raz captured the viral photograph while she was walking home. She said she saw the party at about 9:30 p.m. Sunday night. She said the banner proves some students don’t plan on following public health guidelines. “The big banner (makes) light of a pandemic that has killed so many Americans,” Raz said. “This behavior was inevitable after the University’s decision to bring students back to campus, and the administration should reconsider their course of action.” Another banner in the photo referenced Phi Kappa Psi, prompting speculation that the party was fraternity-affiliated. University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen said Phi Kappa Psi
was not involved in the gathering. In an email to The Daily, Broekhuizen said the gathering “was of individuals who are believed to be members of the same household. Their socializing behavior would be in alignment with public health guidance as well as within the 25 person limit for outdoor gatherings.” She wrote that Michigan Ambassadors have “provided education” to students gathered at the home. “While the content of the banners does not reflect positively on the residents, the university or our public-health efforts, it is speech that is protected by the first amendment,” Broekhuizen wrote. “The banner was removed immediately by the house occupants. The university is in the process of doing additional followup and education with the students involved.” Broekhuizen wrote that the University “thoroughly condemns” those who are harassing and threatening the students at this party. Rackham student Joe Meadows said the photo of a party happening on campus represents a lack of empathy overall. “If people haven’t been personally affected by this, then
they don’t seem to take it too seriously,” Meadows said. “And for me personally, as someone who’s lost a couple friends to this since March, that just smacks of apathy of other people’s experiences.” Regulation of off-campus behavior In its efforts to regulate student behavior, the University has rolled out a program in which teams of students, faculty, staff and police officers walk around campus daily from noon to midnight to remind students to adhere to public health guidelines and to break up unsafe gatherings. The program, known as Michigan Ambassadors, has drawn backlash for its perceived lack of enforcement mechanisms and for working with local police, though Broekhuizen and University President Mark Schlissel have said it is designed to reduce reliance on law enforcement. The University also updated its Statement of Students Rights and Responsibilities, which Schlissel said could be used to give students a citation and a fine after multiple warnings.
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Thousands protest police UMich community battles brutality across Michigan anti-Asian discrimination CLAIRE HAO & CALDER LEWIS
Daily News Editor and Summer News Editor
Last weekend, The Michigan Daily reporters went to 11 different protests, driving 269 miles and speaking to almost 100 people in 10 cities about why they came out. Some said it was their first time protesting. Many more said they were used to protests in big cities, but they never expected protests of this magnitude — or even protests in general — in their suburban hometowns. When asked if not before, why now, almost everyone had the same answer: People are tired, and they want change. This article is the first installment of a four-part series on police brutality protests across Metro Detroit over the weekend of June 6 and 7. Check back at michigandaily. com this week for parts two, three and four. It was a sight many said they thought they’d never see. Ulysses Wright and Charlie Evans were working at the Hungry Howie’s in Ferndale on Saturday afternoon when thousands started f looding past their storefront window, marching in protest of police brutality. The two went outside to take in the sight, which left them speechless and nearly moved Wright to tears. Wright said the crowd meant so much to him because he is a Black man in America, but also because he has never seen people come together like this. “It makes me want to cry, like you don’t really care about anything else in the world,” Wright said. “I think the world kind of stopped for me, and I’ve never had that feeling. There was no existence except taking it all in. It’s hard to put it in words, because that’s just cheapening it. It was like literally if God himself came to show us he was God, that was it.” Over the weekend, tens of thousands wore masks to march in suburbs throughout Metro Detroit against police brutality, joining millions across the country and around the world in wave after wave of protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd. Throughout the latter half of the 1900s, the growth of the suburbs often came at Detroit’s expense, as capital and white residents moved out of the city in droves while Black residents were prevented from following. To this day, Detroit is unique among other metropolitan hubs across the country in that much of the wealth is concentrated in its outlying suburbs rather than in the city itself. The majority of those arrested in the first several days of Detroit’s protests lived in the suburbs. Through the week, protests began spreading to Detroit’s suburbs, many of which are predominantly white. According to Sterling Heights resident Megan Williams, her ancestors had been slaves and her mother had walked with Martin Luther King Jr. She marched in her very first protest in Ferndale on Saturday afternoon. “We don’t want to repeat cycles,” Williams said. “I refuse to birth a child into a world where they have to do any more than us.” Below are some of the protesters from Saturday on their experiences with racism and what this current moment means to them. You can read more from protesters on Saturday in Part Two of this series coming soon. 12 p.m. - Bloomfield Hills - 82.3 percent white and 2.21
percent Black - $187k median household income Despite its small size, the group of about 20 people standing in front of the Bloomfield Hills police station was hard to miss. They held signs condemning police brutality as some cars driving by honked in support. Southfield residents Nate and Tamika Taylor brought their two young sons to protest along Long Lake Road. Both said they were out to push for a better world for their kids. “We just thought it was disheartening in today’s age when you see an AfricanAmerican male lose his life on television,” Nate Taylor said. “That’s something I didn’t want to show my boys, but it’s something that they need to know goes on in this world. We just want to make sure they’re treated fairly as they grow and progress into young, African-American men.” Berkley resident Starr Bialk, a University of Michigan alum, said she thought the roadside protest was important because even a small number of people showing up is visible. According to Bialk, because Bloomfield Hills is a “really white, upper-class part of the area,” it felt to her like one of the more important places to bring the Black Lives Matter message. “If people aren’t here, it’s maybe easier for people to avoid it, if they don’t want to be a part of it,” Bialk said. “If you bring it to them instead, it
We just thought it was disheartening in today’s age when you see an AfricanAmerican male lose his life on television. shows them they can’t avoid it. It’s everywhere and it’s happening.” 2 p.m. - Southfield - 22.8 percent white and 70.3 percent Black - $54k median household income A few hundred protesters met in Southfield at Hope United Methodist Church before marching down Civic Center Drive. Detroit Resident Ronisha Bannerman said the Southfield protest was more soothing than the ones she had attended in Detroit. “Those (Detroit protests) were rowdy, more upbeat,” Bannerman said. “This one was more chill, and I really appreciated that. There was gospel music playing, and it was really calming for me. The one downtown had me really pumped up, this one was more laidback. It was what I needed today.” Southfield resident Myra Gracey, a retired Detroit police officer, participated in the march because she wants to see more reform, training and professional development in police departments. She said high-profile police killings like George Floyd’s are not lost on officers. “Being a retired police officer, what happened probably affected us more mentally than others, because we all have the job to protect people,” Gracey said. “Killing people with our hands is very
upsetting and disappointing.” Royal Oak resident Erika Swilley said she thought it was important to have protests in the suburbs to challenge all the police departments in the different neighborhoods. To her, taking a stance by coming to Southfield’s protest was an opportunity to not only talk the talk but also to literally walk the walk. “(The protest) was just a ref lection of what our country can be,” Swilley said. “People of all ethnicities coming together for one common goal.” 2 p.m. - Royal Oak - 90.2 percent white and 3.7 percent Black - $79k median household income The predominantly white protesters walked in circles under hanging f lower baskets on Main Street from 11 Mile Road to Fifth Street, before marching down and closing a portion of 11 Mile Road. One protester, Detroit resident Karl Jackson, is a combat veteran who was deployed in 2013 and now back in civilian life. He said fighting for his country is one of the greatest things an American can do. “Now, I’m fighting for my life as a Black man, and for my people here,” Jackson said. “We’re all Americans. When one of us hurts, we all hurt.” Growing up as a boy in Detroit, Jackson said he knew not to go past certain suburbs at a certain time. Jackson likened the protective measures he has to take to his experience as a soldier. “You may not have to take certain precautions driving, but as a Black man today I have to. You know, I have a veteran status on my license,” Jackson said. “I keep my phone positioned on the camera just in case. I keep my wallet where it’s visible. Those things are just like me being a soldier. I have to prepare myself, you never know.” As a soldier, Jackson said he defended everybody’s First Amendment rights, whether he agreed with them or not. When asked his thoughts on former NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s controversial act of taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem to protest police brutality, Jackson said the national anthem represents something “totally different” to him. “As a Black soldier or a Black veteran, when I looked and saw what Colin Kaepernick did, I wasn’t looking at the fact that he was protesting the military,” Jackson said. “It was him using his right, which is what I raised my hand and defended the Constitution up to my life for.” Among the stream of people in street clothes walking by, it was hard to miss the 20 doctors and medical students marching in their scrubs and white coats holding a sign that said “White Coats for Black Lives.” Many of them were from the family medicine unit at the Henry Ford hospital in Detroit. Those interviewed said they wanted to stand with and show their support for the community that they serve, one that is largely Black. Dr. Alicia Steele is a part of the inaugural class of the Wayne State University Urban Track in Family Medicine residency, and she is working to address health inequities and lack of access to health care for Detroit’s minority communities. She said every institution can have systemic racism and violence, specifically pointing to the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Michigan’s Black community.
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FRANCESCA DUONG
Summer Managing News Editor
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary Rose, program manager in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Michigan, felt her uneasiness grow about her public perception as she took her son to their local urgent care clinic. “I remember purposely wearing my Michigan t-shirt underneath my big winter coat,” Rose said. “As soon as I got inside I unzipped it. I felt like I had to consciously make an effort to indicate that I was not a recent immigrant, that I did not just come here off a plane from anywhere — I am a part of this community.” Rose noted her thoughts were fueled by social media and reports of Asian Americans being discriminated against and said sometimes she hesitates to go out by herself. “I weigh in my mind, ‘Is there a chance that I let my guard down and I go out and somebody might harass me, or do something, and I might not be with my family?’” Rose said. Melissa Borja, assistant professor of American culture, said she sometimes gets nervous about going outside, not only because she does not want to be infected, but also because she is concerned about racial harassment. “It just struck me as this great irony that in March and
in April, we were living in lockdown situations and we were told ‘get out’, ‘get some fresh air,’ ‘it’s good for your mental health, once a day just go for a walk,’” Borja said. “But, it’s a very stressful thing to ‘get out,’ ‘get fresh air,’ ‘go on a walk,’ as an Asian person, since Asian people were getting spit on, were having racist things yelled at them by drivers passing by.” According to the Center for Disease Control, on Jan. 21, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was identified in the United States. In March, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to the 2019 novel coronavirus as the “Wuhan virus” and President Donald Trump called COVID-19 the “China virus.” CDC Director Robert Redfield condemned the use of such language, saying it was “absolutely wrong and inappropriate.” As COVID-19 continued to spread, the Los Angeles Times reported a rise in hate crimes toward Asian Americans from February to April. The article echoed an FBI warning of the potential surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the pandemic. The warning detailed an incident in Midland, Texas, in which an Asian-American family was stabbed because the attacker “thought the family was Chinese, and infecting people with the coronavirus.” Rose, Borja and many other University community members are taking action to combat the rise in antiAsian hate crimes and to
raise awareness of racist and xenophobic acts. In this article, the acronyms AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders), A/ PIA (Asian/Pacific Islander American) and APID/A (Asian Pacific Islander Desi/ Americans) will be frequently used. Documenting hate crimes across the U.S. After being established on March 19, the STOP AAPI HATE Reporting Center recieved 673 reports of COVID-19-related discrimination in the United States within the first week of opening. Borja leads a team of researchers to analyze media coverage of anti-Asian hate incidents to understand the scope of these events for STOP AAPI HATE. University alum Jacob Gibson and LSA sophomore Amelia Navins are assisting Borja with the project. “We are going through news databases and identifying all articles we can that are related to Asian-American discrimination in relation to COVID-19,” Gibson said. “And then we’re tracking what the news stories are about, whether it’s about politician statements regarding antiAsian American racism or a statement that has been racist, or whether it’s been about individual incidents of harassment.”
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Twitter account posts anon sexual assault allegations JASMIN LEE & VARSHA VEDAPUDI
Summer Managing News Editor and Daily Staff Reporter
Content Warning: Sexual assault, sexual abuse. A Twitter account created Wednesday called “Assaulters at UMich” posted a series of tweets calling out alleged sexual assaulters on the University of Michigan campus, including a professor. The account asked for direct messages from students with claims of sexual assault and posted these submissions to their page with the name and picture of the alleged assaulter along with any fraternity or athletic team affiliation. The Daily reached out to the creator of the account via direct message, whose identity cannot be verified and asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns. The creator told The Daily via Twitter direct messages that they wanted to help survivors because the University has failed to protect survivors from their abusers. “At first I wasn’t sure if people would send in their stories, but once individuals started sharing their stories I was shocked at the sheer amount of individuals who have gone through these (traumas),” they said. “It just shows how prevalent sexual assaults (are) and that UMich needs to do a better job taking action.” The creator said though they are not able to verify the submissions of alleged abuse that they are receiving, they are vigilant about deleting posts that are proven to be untrue. The Daily reached out to the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center at the University, who cited a statement from Public Affairs.
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told The Daily in an email they are not able to verify the validity of the accusations, and they encourage victims of sexual assault to report their experience through University resources. “We encourage anyone who experiences sexual misconduct within our community to report it to police and OIE so the concerns can be thoroughly and appropriately investigated,” Fitzgerald said. “Anonymous reports are very difficult or impossible to investigate fully. We are not in a position to confirm or deny any of this information. We offer these resources and encourage community members to seek any support or other assistance they may need, even if they choose not to report to the university or police.” University employees such as former provost Martin Philbert, late former athletic doctor Robert E. Anderson and former associate professor of music Stephen Shipps have been accused of sexual misconduct in the past. A sex discrimination lawsuit was recently filed by a former University athlete against the University and James Henry, a track and field coach. There has also been controversy surrounding crossexamination guidelines with Title IX regulations, which can discourage survivors from reporting assault. Students at other universities, such as the University of California at San Diego and the University of California at Los Angeles have created similar pages inspired by the “Assaulters at UMich” page to share experiences of sexual assault on their campuses.
University alum Joy Boakye had her experience being sexually assaulted shared on the page. Her message on the page included accusations of people disregarding her allegations because of the accused’s prominent role in the Black community at the University. Boakye told The Daily in an email that she feared reinforcing the harmful stereotypes against people of color, and that she was concerned with furthering white supremacy which also affects women of color. “I also think that this is an illustration of how race colors sexual violence,” Boakye said. “Survivors of color are discouraged or feel terrified to report because (it would) be reporting someone in the community and that looks like betrayal.” Boakye also shared she did not reach out to any organizations with her story because of how exhausting it was to speak of her trauma. She said the incident left her “suicidal,” “broken” and caused her to “sever ties with the Black community” because of how much more she claimed the accused person was valued than her. Boakye said having a leadership role in the University community has enabled assaulters to get away with crimes in the past. “If you are an athlete, if you are part of a fraternity, if you’re part of something that makes you the leaders and best, you know that you have the power to do whatever you want regardless of the consequences.” Boakye said.
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Monday, August 31, 2020 — 5
Regents approve tuition ‘U’ community examines hike after initial rejection use of N-word in classroom CALDER LEWIS & ARJUN THAKKAR
Summer News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter Reporter
The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents passed the administration’s 2020-21 budget in a 5-2 vote during a special meeting Monday night, days after a 4-4 vote at their June 25 meeting had appeared to sink proposed increases in tuition and fees. The approved budget includes a 1.9 percent increase in tuition for the Ann Arbor campus; a 3.9 percent increase for UM-Flint and UM-Dearborn; a 1.9 percent increase in room and board fees and a $50 COVID-19 student fee. Regents Paul Brown (D), Jordan Acker (D), Ron Weiser (R), Mark Bernstein (D) and Michael Behm (D) voted in favor of the budget, with Brown and Acker changing their votes from Thursday. Regents Shauna Ryder Diggs (D) and Denise Ilitch (D) voted against the budget. Regent Katherine White (D) was not present, though she called in to vote for the proposed budget at the previous meeting. After the budget initially failed to pass on June 25, University President Mark Schlissel said he anticipated the budget proposal the executive team would present at the July Regents meeting would diminish or eliminate a tuition increase for the Ann Arbor campus. Schlissel explained that the Board called for the special meeting on Monday because, without a budget, the University would not be able to operate and continue paying employees in the new fiscal year, starting July 1. Half of the revenue from the tuition increase will go toward increasing financial aid to address the pandemic, according to Schlissel, and the new budget also doubled the funds provided to Flint and Dearborn campuses from $10 million to $20 million. Schlissel defended the proposal and cited the University’s ongoing efforts to protect students and families from the pandemic and economic recession including COVID-19 testing, hiring freezes, the suspension of nonessential travel and spending, and the use of $400 million from the endowment. “We’re committed to do our very best to make sure that the COVID-19 pandemic does not result in a lost generation of students who are unable to continue or complete their Michigan education because of the circumstances we find ourselves in,” Schlissel said. Students have criticized the University for trying to increase tuition, claiming their learning experiences will not be the same with online classes and more
students are now struggling financially due to the recession sparked by the pandemic. After Schlissel’s introduction, most of the meeting was devoted to Regents explaining their support for or disapproval of the budget. Weiser, who supported the budget last Thursday and on Monday, addressed demands made by students and activists to use the endowment to balance the budget and cover financial losses. He said much of the endowment funds are restricted to particular units of the University and thus cannot be redirected legally. “While we are a university that’s blessed by having an endowment that’s gonna give us 400 million dollars this year, most of that money is restricted to certain areas,” Weiser said. “… It’s not a 12 million (sic) dollar endowment where we can take the income and spread it, put it any place we want. We have legal and moral and federal policy and law obligations about how we can spend it.” In opposition to the budget, Ryder Diggs criticized the proposal for continuing the trend of raising tuition when the public health and economic circumstances have deteriorated. “The administrative leadership team believes that tuition should always increase annually,” Ryder Diggs said. “The principle is that students should share the burden of increased costs from payroll, energy, infrastructure, food and housing, and even in health crises such as the coronavirus pandemic. I do not agree. Now I’ve consistently voted in favor of tuition increases, but this year is unlike any other in our lifetimes. When a global health crisis evolves into an economic crisis, we should not increase our tuition.” Ilitch, who voted against the budget, said the value of a mostly remote education is diminished. She added the University’s administration projects a 50-50 chance “(we) will not complete this semester.” “With this uncertainty, why would we raise prices on our students and families during this crisis?” Ilitch said. Ilitch also read from an email sent to the Regents by Rackham student Sarah Bork, president of Rackham Student Government, in partnership with Amanda Kaplan and Sav Nandigama, president and vice president of Central Student Government. The email called for a cost of attendance freeze, removal of the proposed COVID19 fee from the budget and the end of the $500 international student fee passed in last year’s budget. Acker said he voted yes on the
budget because it contains new pledges to eliminate uncertainty and will not increase tuition for in-state students whose families make less than $120,000 per year. Though regular Regents meetings include scheduled public comment, Monday’s special meeting did not. Acker said, however, that his vote was not an endorsement of the special meetings process taken to pass the budget before July 1. “I am extremely disappointed in the process over the last few days,” Acker said. “I feel it is extremely important to take public comments … The one thing that Regent Ilitch and I as (incoming) vice chair and chair have to really work on is to make sure the process is better going forward, with more public input, with more conversations about what the budget does, and most importantly, meeting the one area we must really improve next year, which is communication.” In Bernstein’s statement in support of the budget, he said the University’s sticker price is misleading, as most students do not pay the full price of tuition. He said one in four in-state undergrads — over 4,100 students — pay no tuition, and 100 percent of students with demonstrated financial need will not see their tuition and fees increased. “So who does pay tuition?” Bernstein said. “Students who can, and therefore, in my opinion, should, and are getting one of the great bargains in higher education, paying about half of what out-of-state students pay … Fundamentally, I believe that lower income students who struggle to pay tuition can depend upon those who can to reduce the cost of their college education.” Though Brown objected to the budget presented on July 25 out of concern that the Dearborn and Flint campuses would not receive adequate support, he said he was reassured after conversations with Schlissel and other staff members. He noted the increase in funding to Flint in Dearborn also impacted his decision to vote “yes.” “I am an enthusiastic supporter of this budget,” Brown said. “I believe the investment of 20 million dollars in our Flint and Dearborn campuses aligned with the chancellors’ strategic plans (and) created an unprecedented opportunity for those campuses to only increase the world class education provided at those schools so we can continue to say we are truly the leaders and best.”
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KRISTINA ZHENG Summer News Editor
LSA senior Dylan Gilbert was sitting in a class discussion with the other 20-or-so members of her class, when her English professor Scott Lyons read out loud the N-word from a short story by American writer William Faulkner. Gilbert, uncomfortable with the situation, left the discussion that day. Though the class carried on, the professor’s choice to read the racial slur and the student’s protest ultimately raised an ongoing academic debate: whether or not the use of racial slurs from academic text is appropriate in the classroom. In June 2020, around a year later, Gilbert told her story on Twitter, where she received an outpouring of support from fellow University of Michigan students, alumni, faculty and staff, many condemning the professor and the University for tolerating the behavior. “I was just kind of exhausted,” Gilbert told The Daily. “I don’t feel like I should have to sit in a room and have a non-Black person keep saying the N-word in front of me. So I just quietly packed up my stuff into my bag, walked out of class and did not say anything.” Details of the incident surfaced amid a renewed national commitment against systemic racism, thereby calling into question the impact classrooms have on perpetuating racial injustice. “The environment wasn’t comfortable anymore,” Gilbert said. “I felt targeted in the environment, and I felt unsafe in the environment, and I didn’t feel like I was learning the way I needed to learn. So when you use racial slurs in the classroom, you’re taking away some sense of equality in the classroom because now a group of your students aren’t feeling the way they should be feeling to properly learn.” Gilbert’s tweets also included screenshots of email exchanges between her and Lyons after the class, in which Lyons did not offer an apology but committed to “avoid uttering the word for the rest of the term.” For the next class period, according to Gilbert, Lyons assigned an article defending the use of the word. “I’m not sure I understand the distinction between assigning a work with the n-word (written by a non-black writer and read by mostly non-
black readers) and reading it out loud -- imagination versus exhaulation? -- but I do take your point,” Lyons wrote in the email exchanges. The Daily reached out to Lyons multiple times for a comment, but was referred to University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald. “Students have a variety of ways to raise concerns about their classroom experiences,” Fitzgerald wrote in an email to The Daily. “In this case, these concerns are being addressed through the appropriate channels.” This incident does not appear to be an isolated one, either. Universities across the country have struggled to address how professors should approach teaching racial slurs. Some institutions have taken to suspending professors for using racial slurs in an academic environment, while others have defended their use based on academic freedom. English professor Susan Parrish often teaches texts from Southern literature, which can include epithets against various groups. She explained how voicing these slurs can harm the ability for students to learn effectively and feel respected in the classroom. “The classroom is a space of analysis and a space of mutual learning and of (the) responsibility to (not only) take care of each other while challenging each other, but (also) challenging each other equally and fairly to increase our understanding,” Parrish said. “I also feel like epithets against any group … makes a classroom situation feel unequal and feel potentially hostile, and then it decreases certain students’ possibility to learn and to feel welcome and to feel like they belong.” Parrish said she usually addresses the use of offensive language at the start of the semester with her class. But ultimately, the violent and historical weight that many slurs against groups carry, Parrish explained, does not warrant saying the word. “I think where I ultimately come down is that you can’t have a student-by-student decision about this, it has to be something we set up at the beginning that if there are (slurs) in the text that have been associated with violence, suppression or oppression, we should not spread those words,” Parrish said. “Students do
have to look at them as they’re doing their reading, but there’s no reason that we have to give breath to those words in live time together.” According to Vershawn Young, an African-American studies professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, banning the use of the N-word in classrooms is also not a solution. After witnessing a similar situation in which a University of Waterloo professor used the N-word during class, the University of Waterloo released a statement in a June 2020 article, saying the university “unequivocally believes there is no place for the use of the N-word in class, on campus or in our community.” In response, Young wrote an article describing the harmful effects of completely banning the use of the N-word in the classroom, explaining that it censors his language as a Black man and scholar. Prohibiting the use of the N-word, Young further explained in an interview with The Daily, provides a disservice to the cultural complexity of the word. “If you ban the word and in text, especially AfricanAmerican cultural text, you are not only diminishing one way in which the word is used, but six or seven ways in which the word is used,” Young said. “You cannot get to an accurate interpretation or a deep cultural understanding if you ban the word or if you only say that the word can be the ‘N-word,’ because the ‘N-word’ itself does not capture the various ways in which the word functions in African-American culture.” Young further noted that censorship of any kind should not be enforced without careful consideration of its impact on not only particular groups, as well as the very meaning the author was trying to convey. “I believe that there is an easy answer,” Young said. “The easy answer is yes, the word should be allowed to be used in very careful, pedagogical ways and not in casual conversation. But I think in instructional conversations and texts where the word appears, it should not be erased because when you erase it, it is not true to the author’s intentions, is not true to the author’s text and it changes the meaning.”
Office of Institutional Equity. As the director of OIE, Walesby was responsible for investigating sexual harassment complaints against faculty. According to the report, when he tried to speak with the women, however, both declined for fear of retaliation from Philbert. Another member of the Philbert’s lab — a graduate student — reported Philbert had a “bad reputation with women” and that he asked another student for sex. Walesby determined OIE could not investigate further since women would not speak with him, the report says. In 2010, Philbert was in the running to become the Dean of the Public Health School. During the process, Paula Lantz, the chair of the Search Committee, became aware of the 2005 allegations and informed the Provost’s Office of the allegations. After meeting with Warner, Lantz did not inform the committee because “the investigation revealed no wrongdoing.” At the same time, then-Provost Philip Hanlon also learned of the 2005 allegations and
had more information than Lantz, after meeting with multiple people to further question. Both Lantz and Hanlon, along with the Search Committee were aware of a confidential survey in which a participant said “I was subject to inappropriate and unwanted sexual comments and suggestions,” according to the report. The report concludes that both Lantz and Hanlon should have turned the survey results to the OIE for further investigation. In 2017, Pierce was a member of the Provost Search Committee, which was chaired by University President Mark Schlissel. The report finds that the committee and Schlissel did not learn any information about Philbert’s alleged mistreatment of women during the search process, even though Pierce was one of the University officials Walseby reported the 2013 incident to.
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WilmerHale investigation finds two decades of Philbert misconduct, several ‘U’ officials knew CALDER LEWIS & KRISTINA ZHENG Summer News Editors
WilmerHale released its 88-page report of its independent investigation of allegations of sexual misconduct by former University of Michigan Provost Martin Philbert Friday. The report found “significant evidence” that Philbert violated the University’s Sexual Harassment policy. It identified numerous times when University personnel and administration received information about Philbert’s sexual misconduct. “Two things are clear: First, there is significant evidence that Philbert engaged in a wide range of sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment, for at least fifteen years,” the report reads. “Second, neither OIE (Office of Institutional Equity) nor the senior leadership of the University understood the seriousness or the pervasiveness of Philbert’s misconduct.” WilmerHale began its independent investigation in
January 2020. After six months, WilmerHale investigators interviewed 128 people, some multiple times, including current and former employees, former students and current and former University administrators. The report finds that Philbert normalized his inappropriate behavior and intimidated women who may have sought to report him. “Philbert had expressly threatened some of them—one witness, who in fact was in a relationship with Philbert, told us that he said: ‘If you ever tell anyone about us, I will make sure you go down. I will destroy your career,’” the report reads. The report alleges Philbert sexually harassed multiple members of the University community while he was an assistant professor, an associate dean, School of Public Health dean and provost. In his early years at the University, Philbert allegedly harassed women who worked in his research lab, making comments about their bodies, redirecting conversations toward sex and
insisting on getting hugs. The report found Philbert engaged in simultaneous sexual relationships with at least two University employees, and sometimes more, during his tenure as Provost. He stored nude photos of these women on University-owned devices and had “sexual contact” with them in University offices often. The report was released to both the University and the public at the same time. In an email to The Daily, University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said the University is reviewing the results from the report. “We have just begun to carefully review the full report and take all of its findings into account,” Fitzgerald wrote. “Yet, it is clear in the executive summary that the WilmerHale report – released publicly today at the same time it was shared with university officials – contains a shocking description of improper and unacceptable behavior by a university officer as well as failings by this institution. We will do everything in our power to prevent such misconduct
from ever happening again at the University of Michigan.” In 2003, a male lab employee, Tom Komorowski, was terminated by Philbert. He reported to University officials he was fired over a female lab employee because of her and Philbert’s close, personal relationship. A senior Public Health School faculty member questioned Philbert about the alleged relationship and did not find any indication of an improper relationship. A 2004 lawsuit by the male employee also did not find any such evidence. In 2005, specific allegations of sexual harassment against Philbert arose in the Public Health School. One of Philbert’s research assistants reported Philbert had “asked her for sex, to marry him, to run away together and to ‘have caramel colored babies’ with him.” The alerted Public Health professor relayed the information to multiple University officials, including the then-Public Health dean Ken Warner; Lori Pierce, vice provost academic and faculty affairs and Anthony Walesby, director of the
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6 — Monday, August 31, 2020
‘Adorn’
Michigan In Color
ANA MARÍA SÁNCHEZ-CASTILLO MiC Co-Managing Editor
g
Pools of carmel swirling around a black hole abyss My eyes call themselves beautiful. Candied flakes swallowing influxes of light,
s g .
I love this skeleton, Composed of bones proven durable From years of resisting wordly tarnish I love this skeleton, Despite the unevenness of my ribs The lopsided steel bars that Protect my fragile beating core I love my shoulders, Likened to soils drenched And weighed down heavy in the exhausted screams, of my mother of her mother and hers They are distinctly proud and poised I love how I am bound I’ve stretched my muscles like rubber, Then alchemized them strong Chainlinking flesh to bone Flesh I now love enough to not dig into, The places where crimson once percolated between slivers of once fragile skin Now fastened shut, scars nearly indistinguishable I love the places where mountains have formed proudly I adorn them in loose silks and velvets I’ve been told of the beauty of my deepest trenches I’ve come to love being the tree that grows the flower I’ve come to fall in love with melting into my souls warm embrace
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What I Learned in Quarantine: Patience ADAM BAZZI
MiC Staff Writer
Now more than ever before, I have found myself with a fuse shorter than imaginable. I am a ticking time bomb, eager to be set off preemptively. Harmless slights from my siblings lead to prolonged campaigns of verbal exodus consisting of every insult in the book and insignificant disagreements with my parents are the catalyst to what seems to be the next world war. It’s a marvel no one in my family has had some type of mental breakdown resulting from the compounding stress and anxiety being generated like electricity from a turbine of anguish. I have been on the brink of losing it quite a few times since this all began. I get into these moods. It happens intermittently, maybe about once every 2 - 3 weeks. And similar to the tide, the intensity of the wave that carries my emotions oscillates violently. These moods translate into episodes in which I just shout about all of the little things that have been eating away at me. As these moods swallow me up, I feel as if I’ve been thrown into the ocean accompanied by a sack of bricks to help weigh me down. My natural buoyancy isn’t enough to keep me afloat, and so I’m pulled deeper. Without any semblance of what’s pulling me down further, I become disoriented. As what feels like dark, cold saltwater fills my lungs I scream out. I try to remain conscious in an attempt to construe why I’m drowning, why it is that I am so distraught. Even as I eventually breach the surface, as suddenly as I was pulled to the depths, I struggle to understand what sequence of events, emotions, ebbs were to
blame for my episode. As I said, I haven’t been able to figure out what it is that drives me into the aforementioned moods. I’m not familiar with some dogmatic approach like the scientific method to better grasp the probably neurological devices facilitating my episodes. One virtue, however, has served as a floatation device. This virtue, patience, has kept me afloat at times when I was bound to have another episode. It should be made clear though, I am not describing inherent patience. The patience I speak of is learned, conscious and seemingly tangible. It’s easily attainable, though upkeep requires effort. It can be difficult, remaining stuck in our homes, virtually experiencing the same thing day in and day out. We begin performing familiar tasks, latching on to whatever brings us closest to that sense of normalcy, of a routine. These de facto routines that keep us from what seems like dying of boredom become monotonous and to an extent create faulty faculties of comfort. Once we’re accustomed to these routines, even the slightest deviations caused by external factors (i.e. a younger sibling rudely disrupting your mid-afternoon nap) can feel catastrophic. We’re snapped back into our current (and indefinite) reality, losing grip on those routines that ensured we kept pace. That’s where patience steps in. It acts as that intermediary, a breath before the yelling ensues and insults are hurled. It reels us in, offering a moment of clarity to decide whether the battle is worth fighting, if there really is a battle that needs to be fought at all. That insight, that awareness that creates those brief pauses
for patience to intervene are only half of it. We may learn that skill, but we still have a conscious decision to make. It requires willpower to deliberately take what’s commonly known as “the high ground.” I’d prefer to refer to it as a willful election of an alternative to conflict. I don’t think there is anything immoral about expressing human emotion (even if it may come in the form of shouting), so to call it “the high ground” would be an admonishment of those who choose to share their feelings in a more passionate manner. By resorting to that willful election we reaffirm that ability to defuse conflict and dissipate tension. It would be quite ignorant, foolish even, of me to place the responsibility of being patient on a single individual in an entire household. It goes in either direction, and just as we must practice patience we should be able to expect it in return. However, to think that the principal incentive of practicing patience is for oneself contradicts the act of willfully electing something other than conflict; as conflict requires more than one. This means that our attempt isn’t to become more virtuous or pious than those around us, but instead to guide those we reside with in being more thoughtful when interacting with one another — even if that requires taking the first step. That first step is practicing patience with others even if it isn’t reciprocated. Patience is a virtuous cycle that pays dividends in an invaluable, intangible currency. A currency that cannot be spent, yet is typically worth more than the value we assign it. It is best we hold on to it though, so as we continue on in these times we have something to keep us sane when facing total and utter uncertainty.
From Your Friendly Neighborhood Commuter DEVAK NANUA MiC Staff Writer
My mother is a 5 foot 2 inch Indian woman and I’m her only child. This statement alone should speak volumes about our relationship. To compensate for my lack of siblings, at times she acts like my older sister. At times when I’m overwhelmed with life and a bit lost (as one is inevitably bound to be in their early 20’s), she acts as my guide and greatest comfort. Somehow, she’s also managed to find the right balance of being my best friend and my greatest annoyance and even a few times what seems to be my arch nemesis. How a single person can encapsulate so many different roles and keep them all at various steady states is simply beyond me. It also shows that parenting is very much an art and a full time job. As a woman and an immigrant, society has not given my mother any favors. Like the majority of the incredibly strong women in my family, she’s had to kick some serious ass and is one of the hardest working people I know (trust me, raising me was no vacation). My mother had undoubtedly learned these qualities at an early age but they were definitely put to the test as she set out to fulfill the “American Dream” (whatever that may mean now) with my father. In her 5 foot 2 inch frame, my mother carries herself like Shaquille O’Neal. Her shoe size may be 5.5 but she leaves footprints that could be mistaken for those of an NBA All-star. She has a warmth and confidence about her that is bound to bring a smile to the face of anyone who interacts with her. But as her kid, she was also the judge and jury in my household with her blue Chevy Malibu being her courtroom. For anyone that doesn’t know, the Chevy Malibu is a car that screams “I’m a parent but I’m too cool for a minivan”. Car rides with my mom were often the time she’d take out of her day to painfully analyze the variety of stupid decisions I used to and still make. I knew upon entry through the passenger door that if my mother was speaking in English or Hindi then our interaction would be rather civil. But if at any point my mother started to speak in Punjabi, I knew I was in for a full fledged bar fight. But standing at a mighty 5 foot
2 inches didn’t particularly help my mom in her role as the disciplinarian. Imagine a courtroom for an example. You’ve got your plaintiff’s table, your defendants table and your jury box that are roughly at the same height. But the judge’s bench in comparison is significantly higher. The judge literally looks down on everyone and makes a decision. This was very much our relationship till the age of around 12-13. My mother would tower over my skinny four foot something self, make the meanest face she could make and bring me to swift justice — no trial or deliberation needed. Considering this, puberty pushing me over the height of 5’ 2’’ may have been one of the highlights of my early adolescent life. It’s as if the defendant now has a bench that’s taller than the judges - compromising the height difference that is integral to our justice system! And like any comic book villain with an epic origin story— at 5’ 3’’, my newfound sense of tallness gave me license to wreak havoc in middle school. This set off a longstanding back and forth between my mother and I of me making very stupid decisions and my mother somehow always being one step ahead of me and catching me within the act. Fast forward a whole decade to now, if you’re taking classes from home and living with your parents and particularly if you’re a freshman — reading this may not make you feel any better about your current living situation. But take it from a seasoned vet who’s commuted to campus for the last three years now — it’s not as bad as everyone thinks it is. Yes, I understand that living with your parents as a 21 year old isn’t a particularly attractive quality but hear me out. I’ve had the luxury of going to college in my hometown. I’m on campus for the majority of the day and to get home I take a Bursley - Baits and walk 10 minutes. Therefore, as a sophomore when I told my very Indian father about my idea of living with my friends in a house on campus I was met with a confused reaction. I was sternly reminded of how he immigrated to the United States not even dreaming that he’d end up owning a house in Ann Arbor and now I was asking him to pay for a second place in the same city? It was one of the rare times you see a person’s blood pressure rise visibly.
At the time I had my concerns. I mean I had lived in the dorms during my freshman year and was afraid of missing out on an essential college experience. Sure living away from home meant that I went from finding texts from my mother “annoying” to actively trying to call her when I could. But moving back in with them? I had done four years of high school and who wants to do that again? Whenever an adult tells me that they wish they could go back to high school, I promptly remind them that it didn’t get any better. But what I overlooked is the ability for relationships to change. If there’s anything that the 300 page Khan academy MCAT psychology/sociology review document taught me, it’s that the cerebrum — the part of your brain that is responsible for actions such as critical thinking and decision making — is far from fully developed during adolescence. Therefore, as a high schooler dealing with classes, hormones and trying to do every extracurricular out there to make your college resume special, some things are bound to just not stick. For me this was often the many conversations that my mother and I would have in her Chevy Malibu. Sure, some of those were about academics, but most of them were about growing as a person. I can guarantee that your relationship with your parents will not be the same as it was under the angsty pretenses of high school. Mine certainly isn’t the “catch me if you can” type of game that my mother and I have been playing from the ages of 13 through 18. In fact, many of those conversations from my mother’s Malibu have really started to resonate with me and have become an important part of my identity as I’ve gone through college. I’ve been truly blessed to have the best of both worlds of being from the town that I go to college in. I’ve been able to have my freedom and grow as an individual by being on campus while also keeping myself grounded with where I’m from. Continuously learning invaluable lessons from my parents about growing up and being an adult (responsible or not — the jury’s still out on that one). Take it from your now very boomer sounding friend, give your parents a chance. I promise they’re not as hopeless as you think they are.
A letter from the summer editors CHERYN HONG & GABRIJELA SKOKO
MiC Summer Co-Managing Editors
As the summer comes to a close, and our time as Managing Editors is now complete, we would like to close off with a letter and a hope for MiC — an ode to a summer of revolution, if you will. Neither of us could have predicted what we signed up for, but we are more than proud of what we were able to accomplish. Thanks to a group of brilliant and talented writers and staff, we were able to pull off a summer of enlightening and educational series of writing which not only shared personal experiences or ref lections, but provided scholastic and experiential insight into the many departments and institutions that feed the Black and Indigenous plight in America — a truth that is often rejected and whose existence is perpetuated through journalism. Not only did we learn so much from our peers, but we are so grateful to have been given this opportunity to amplify issues in our country which have been occurring since the genesis of our nation, and which built the nation. These issues will persist until we confront them in every system through which we function — social, governmental, economic, etc. — we hold our peers accountable for this same confrontation, actively educate ourselves on how these systems affect society at micro and macro levels and utilize that education to grow and change with an united front. Michigan in Color started out as a safe community exclusively for BIPOC to write and share their experiences at the University of Michigan and in the broad United States. We tried our best this summer to uphold MiC traditions while also adjusting to inevitable change and pursuing necessary actions as a section to carry on the change we instigated this summer. Before we give up our positions, we would like to remind others,
especially at The Michigan Daily, that the sentiment of change which began this summer can not and should not stop here. The newspaper’s responsibility does not only rest in its published content, but in the team that they hire to write, edit and administrate that content for the paper. In all of our efforts to expand content and staff, we must be adamant about centering the Black and Indigenous voice — especially those of womxn. As the MiC section, we also want to hold each section accountable for this responsibility as individual groups — it is not enough to have Michigan in Color at the paper; this work must be demonstrated by each and every section at the paper. Simply put, MiC cannot and will not be your excuse or your teacher. We must treat MiC as an individual section which operates on our own basis. We are not diversity issue scapegoats and we must operate as a whole group to rectify our wrongdoings for a greater future. But this conversation and demand for accountability is far greater than the paper — we would like to inspire a bigger call to action for our readers, as this time is one to take advantage of. We have sat comfortably for too long in great periods of performative activism. As we continue to stand complacent in the visual apologies granted to us by large corporations and brand names who participate in oppressive systems, we ourselves perpetuate them and we ultimately oppress one another. Amidst this pandemic and simultaneous civil rights and liberation movements sprouting globally, we have been given the opportunity to demand more from ourselves, from one another and from those who puppeteer these systems. We encourage you to be intentional and ref lective with each pursuit of activism you engage in: Is this truly the most beneficial way for you to wield your privilege and/or space for the liberation movement at hand? Do you know
who and what you are fighting for? Do you know what you are willing to sacrifice? Will you sacrifice it? Ask yourself these questions. As for me, Cheryn, I also wanted to give a big thank you to my co-managing editor Gabrijela. Without her, I do not know if I could have been able to do anything this summer. As a woman who identifies as Korean-American, I can’t and will never understand the Black struggle in America and wanted to make sure this summer I was able to work for and with Black Americans without silencing their voice, and Gabrijela has taught me so much regarding how to be a proper ally. I simply thought going into the summer this would be a job, but it was much more than that, and I know Gabrijela and I will always be a team and friendship, whether we are MiC ME’s or not. As for me, Gabrijela, I want to first thank Cheryn, my comanaging editor. With her, I was given the space and platform to create something greater than me and my own mind. My dear co-ME works like a racehorse, because that is simply who she is. And for all of your intellect, compassion and truth, I thank you. I want to thank our writers who were committed to their stories and to our community, and who I ultimately could not do my job without. I want to thank you readers, even if there are only two of you, and tell you that I have extreme hope for you and for our society’s future. But this hope is dependent on what we as civilians are inspired to manifest. If you want mental and economic revolution — as I so desperately do — then you will see it come to fruition. A big thank you to the Opinion EPE, Brittany Bowman, for putting her heart and foot into her contributions to MiC’s educational mission this summer; as well as our EIC, Emma Stein, and ME, Devak Nanua, for helping us create and finalize our vision.
Michigan In Color
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Monday, August 31, 2020 — 7
Kellon Yaani Kellon MAYA KADOUH MiC Staff Writer
Disclaimer: *names have been abbreviated in order to ensure the privacy of the identities involved In October 2019, the people of Lebanon began to fill the streets chanting “kellon yaani kellon,” which translates to “all of them means all of them.” All of them, referring to the corrupt sectarian government officials who have prioritized their own greed over providing the Lebanese people with fundamental aid and services for years, leaving Lebanon to be the third most indebted country in the world. Lebanon has a debt to GDP ratio of 152 percent, and has over 75 percent of its population living below the poverty line. The country is without a stable economy, stable
electricity, waste management services and food security for no reason other than the government’s inherent greed. When the Lebanese people chant, “kellon yaani kellon,” it is intended to leave no question that all politicians, whether the president or a cabinet member, are the problem. As long as the current ideologies perpetuated through political power persist, Lebanon will be stuck in an eternal cycle of corruption. Years of a broken economic system, characterized by corruption and heavy reliance on imports, the pegging of the Lebanese currency to the US dollar and a diaspora which endlessly pumps cash into a fragile banking system, has inevitably led to the toppling of Lebanon’s economy. In recent months, the Lebanese currency has crashed and prices have skyrocketed, creating a disap-
Illustration by Hibah Chughtai
pearing middle class and further distress on the poor. Over 49 percent of Lebanon’s population (6.8 million) are food insecure, and with the price of grocery staples doubling, or even tripling, low income people are destitute. Some parents have to decide if they are going to buy formula or diapers — as there is no way for them to afford both. HK*, who has lived in Lebanon throughout her whole life, including the civil war, told The Daily the
economic collapse has left Lebanon in the worst state she has ever seen. “During the civil war, we were mostly scared of bombings,” HK said. “We had hope that the war would end. Now, we are scared of tomorrow and we cannot see hope.” Lack of hope, a shared sentiment among the Lebanese, is reasonable, given the little to no aid the government is providing for the people. The government has failed to reimburse hospitals, making it impos-
sible to pay staff and buy medical supplies, exacerbating the effects of COVID-19. “COVID-19 is a problem, like it is everywhere in the world, but it is not our main problem,” HK said. “The economy is our biggest problem.” Videos have surfaced of pregnant women eating from dumpsters and mothers on the streets offering to sell their organs to feed their children. Among those belonging to the most vulnerable communities are Syrian refugees— 30 percent of Lebanon’s population. Over 87 percent of the refugees lack food, 73 percent lack a permanent home and each one of them are at devastating odds against Lebanon’s economic crisis and COVID-19. “With all the suffering going on, the government is not doing anything,” HK said. “We need a government that cares about their people — both the poor and the rich people.” Although the economic crisis
hits the poor the hardest, those with economic stability are still affected. Banks are limiting withdrawals and those who have bank accounts in dollars are getting paid in liras — which are worth nothing. “I went to the supermarket and spent around half a million liras. That bought me hardly anything, basically nothing,” HK said. Like most of Lebanon’s public services, electricity is poorly provided through a government-owned company. Electricite du Liban, the state power company, cannot afford to purchase enough fuel to provide twenty-four-hour electricity for the Lebanese people but can easily afford to put millions of dollars into the pockets of government leaders and their colleagues. When the protestors say kellon yaani kellon, they are talking about the government leaders who fail to keep the lights on, the garbage off the streets and the Lebanese children fed and in school. Kellon yaani kellon until the lights are always on.
A satiric review of Netflix’s ‘Indian Matchmaking’ IZZA AHMED-GHANI MiC Staff Writer
Heard the ruckus for the new Netflix reality TV show “Indian Matchmaking,” but not sure if you want to watch it? Don’t fret the details, I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll help you navigate whether or not this is a show for you. If you come from a Desi family like me, you grew up hearing about how the numerous relationships in your family were based upon an arranged marriage. While it is not as commonly practiced today, arranged marriages are super common within Southeast Asian house-
holds, as well as most Central Asian countries and the Middle East. That’s why when I saw the commotion around Netflix having a show focused on the South Asian community, I couldn’t wait to see this rishta aunty work her magic in what I understood as a nuanced modern take. While the show is based between both India and the United States, the relationships are inherently driven by regressive ideals of colorism, classism and gender stereotypes. Sima Aunty, the rishta queen of Mumbai, pulls biodata to form the most compatible pairs, in which contains information about the single men and women seeking to get paired based on
age, height, education, career and more. Needless to say, the show is extremely toxic but insightful on a harsh reality for many within Desi culture. A fun game Sima Aunty subconsciously plays is find-thebackhanded-compliment. If the man or woman does not fit the idealistic norm of being rich, fair, petite or beautiful enough, don’t worry! This rishta aunty might say their personality makes up for what’s lacking. And if the lad or laddie has the “better rated” for looks, education and stability, they’ll get the upper hand in Sima Aunty finding them more suitable matches. If you’re the bottom end of the pair — and to
make her job easier — she’ll recommend how you’ll have to compromise on personal desires in a future spouse in order to make the marriage work. Depending on the focus, be it the man or woman, the narrative changes but the superficiality is maintained. For all the girl bosses — independent and running their lives — Aunty suggests it will be harder to match them because they have a mind of their own and the financial mobility to do so, inconveniencing Sima’s search. Similarly, if a client was previously divorced or is not the ideal body weight, you’ve gotta give Sima more time because you’re burdening her with under-
sible characteristics. Meanwhile, the men on the show are in an entirely other ballgame. While you get the occasional sweet laddu padhus who will charm the audience with their wholesome charisma, Sima prefers they have stable careers and six-figure jobs. The best part about being a male on her show is the richer you are the more choices you get. These men get hundreds of biodatas to choose from because objectifying women is so much fun! And who’s to blame them? They, or rather the parents, have to make sure their son’s wife is beautiful and fair enough for their offspring because we all know it’s
the male that carries the brain in the household — so that is already guaranteed. Overall, if you’re looking for a show to make you feel better about yourself, this is the show for you! Let this show bring out your own insecurities. The best part is if you have immigrant families from similar backgrounds, they can reminisce, reliving extreme trauma from their own past, but this time with the whole family! As a female South-Asian American, I feel like this show is a mockery of cultural Desi traditions and households, only to be the laughing stock of the Western world. But hey, by all means Netflix—at least it sells!
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Opinion
8 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
ELAYNA SWIFT | COLUMNIST
NYLA BOORAS | COLUMNIST
U-M’s reopening plan promises nothing but failure
W
ith the end of summer drawing near, many students, faculty and staff fearfully anticipate the repercussions of University President Mark Schlissel’s vague and impractical plan for a public health-informed fall semester. Beside basic measures such as increasing social distancing in classrooms, requiring face masks on all campus grounds and offering a great number of online courses, few concrete steps have been taken to repress a COVID-19 outbreak on any of the three University of Michigan campuses. Schlissel himself stated that much of the reopening plan is dependent on students following public health guidelines, which — as we’ve seen as students begin to move back to Ann Arbor — is unlikely to happen. Despite the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill moving classes online after one week and Central Michigan University increasing their case numbers tenfold within the first week of classes, both due to student behavior, Schlissel somehow still believes that our campuses will have a different result. It could be considered f lattering that Schlissel is outwardly shows such strong faith in the student body. However, this outlook assumes that the immunologist running one of the world’s best public universities is naive and ignorant enough to believe his students, who have been partying throughout the summer, are suddenly going to stop. In his most recent announcement to the University of Michigan community, he implied that students who don’t follow public health g uidelines will be to blame if the University is forced to revert to onlineonly classes. Placing the responsibility on the students to follow public health guidelines upon returning to campus is an attempt to scapegoat the student body so that the administration cannot be held accountable for triggering the inevitable viral outbreak. While any student who hosts or attends a party with more than 25 people is culpable for whatever consequences that gathering has on their campus or surrounding communities, the University administration is still at fault for enabling them.
If the University had any true intent to keep our campuses open throughout the upcoming school year, there would be explicitly stated and properly severe consequences for any student found to be violating public health g uidelines. There would be a plan for rigorous asymptomatic testing of the entire campus throughout the semester. Ever y single course would have the option to be taken online. All students living in dorms would live in single rooms and be provided with adequate personal protective equipment. Bathrooms would have plexiglass bet ween sinks. Any and all testing and COV ID-19 related treatment for students, staff and facult y living on any of the three U-M campuses would be paid for by the Universit y. These demands are included in a petition created by #NotMICampus,
If enough people put this pressure on the administration, the University may just do something about it.
a coalition of students from various universities in the state of Michigan demanding changes in problematic reopening plans arising from their schools. The petition can be found here, and I strongly urge anybody concerned about the Universit y’s current reopening plan to sig n it. Still, if the administration truly cared about the wellbeing of its students, staff and facult y as well as the communities that host our campuses, classes would have already been moved online for the upcoming semesters. In fact, there would not have been a plan for in-person classes in the f irst place. The universit y with a leading School of Public Health would have lived up to its “Leaders and
the Best” slogan by leading the transition into an entirely online education throughout the rest of this pandemic. There would not have been a 1.9 percent tuition increase but rather a reduction in tuition for all three campuses to compensate for the lack of universit y facilities being used throughout the school year. The administration would have dipped into its massive endowment f und in order to provide f inancial support to its students, staff and facult y throughout the recession triggered by the COV ID-19 pandemic. Each of the demands arising from the Universit y’s ResStaff, the residential advisors and employees of Universit y Housing, would be met and respected. Students, who were forced to pay a $50 COV ID-19 fee for a safet y kit whether they were returning to campus or not, would not be required to pick up said kit in person during limited time windows. The Universit y’s COV ID-19 Emergency Fund, f unded by the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Securit y Act, would be more widely advertised and accessible. At this point, it’s nearly impossible to arg ue that the Universit y is still moving forward with its current reopening plan with the health and safet y of its students, staff and facult y in mind. Schlissel and his administration are likely aware of how problematic their current plan is but are still moving forward with it — even their own COV ID19 Ethics and Privacy Committee explicitly stated its disapproval in a statement released on July 31. In order to take action, we must sig n the #NotMICampus petition, sig n and share this petition that demands the cancellation of in-person classes and email the President’s Off ice ( presoff@ umich.edu) explaining our disdain for the current plans. Additionally, those who are willing and able to continue protesting must do so. If enough people put this pressure on the administration, the Universit y may just do something about it. Until then, stay safe Ann Arbor. Elayna Swift can be reached at elaynads@umich.edu.
DAVI NAPOLEON | OP-ED
An open letter to U-M students from a 1966 graduate
I
have real problems with my cit y and my universit y. It’s legal in Ann Arbor to gather outside in g roups of 25 and inside in g roups of 10. But it isn’t safe. The cit y also requires that we wear masks when in g roups, but even that’s not safe unless we are six feet apart. And how easy is it to wear a mask when you’re having a drink and a conversation? My cit y — the cit y I came home to 10 years af ter I g raduated from the Universit y of Michigan — is not doing all it should to protect students. And our universit y? Well, I hate to admit it, but Michigan State Universit y is behaving more responsibly on this one. They’ve opted to have all classes online, while our universit y is offering some in-person classes and students are f looding the campus. Full disclosure: I’m a senior citizen, which means this virus is more likely to kill me than it is to kill students. I live near campus with my husband and one of my sons. I have always loved living among students — it energ izes me. Now, not so much. I g rew up in New York and came to Michigan to go to the Universit y. Af ter g raduating, I returned to the big cit y to
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do a doctorate at New York Universit y. By the time I was f inished, I was married to a Michigan g uy, and we both missed Ann Arbor. We packed up and came home to
I’m asking you to consider being more responsible than the people making the rules around here.
our college town, and we’ve never reg retted it. I love this cit y and this universit y, but I worr y about the path we’re all on. Ver y few people get through this disease without suffering. If you’ve ever had the f lu, imag ine something much worse. And then there’s the possibilit y of dying, even for young people.
Even though the virus may be more dangerous for old folks like me, it can do irreparable damage to you, sometimes in ways that can’t hurt me any more — the loss of fertilit y may be one of the long-term effects of suffering from this virus. Too little is known to be sure of that, but some of the consequences are so unknown they aren’t even being investigated yet. So I’m asking you to consider being more responsible than the people making the rules around here. Wear masks whenever you’re out. Stand six feet away from others. Skip parties until there’s a vaccine. If you can opt to take your classes online, do that. This is a bummer. For all of us, but especially for you. I have wonderf ul memories of my college years, and social life was a major part of the college experience. I didn’t have to choose bet ween connecting with friends and staying alive and healthy, and you shouldn’t have to either. But you do. And the choice should be easy enough, however painf ul. Stay safe. Stay well. And we’ll all meet again on the other side of this. Davi Napoleon is a class of 1966 alum and can be reached at davinapo@att.net.
B
So, you’re worried about the “Freshman 15”
eginning college is an exciting and stressful time for most students. The anticipation of a new town, new campus and new friends brings all kinds of feelings, a majority of which are happy ones. All too often this excitement is tainted by warnings of weight gain in the form of the “Freshman 15.” Well-meaning older peers and family members warn you to “watch what you eat in the dining halls,” or outright suggest that you “don’t eat ‘x’ because you’ll gain weight,” as if such a biologically natural and necessary lifelong process is the worst thing that can happen to you. Well, I have news for you. Weight gain as a college student is natural, most times harmless and honestly, it should be the least of your concerns. The notion that weight gain stops at the age of 18 and that your teenaged high-school body is to be maintained for life needs to go. Let’s breakdown the fear and anxiety that comes along with the dreaded “Freshman 15” for what it really is — negative and anxious feelings toward weight gain as a result of a fatphobic society that has ingrained a mantra of “thin equals healthy and attractive” while being in a larger body is seen as unhealthy, undesirable and carries underlying assumptions about the person, namely that they are lazy. Yet, the fears surrounding this old myth are uncalled for. Not only is the saying an exaggeration, with the average weight gain being 2.5-3.5 pounds during the first year of college, it is also inaccurate to assume weight gain automatically equals unhealthy, overweight or “fat.” Even if one wanted to go by the BMI standard — which is misleading for its own reasons — a 2.5-pound weight gain, in the approximate average range, barely nudges one’s BMI. So, if you’re in the “healthy” category, odds are you’re going to remain right there. Even if one were to gain the “15 pounds” as the saying goes, it’s also entirely possible and common to remain within the “healthy” category. For example, a 19-year-old female with a BMI of 21 can gain 15 pounds and end up at a BMI of 23.5 which is still a “healthy” BMI, dependent on the height. However, I’d like to go beyond BMI since, as I said before, there are many reasons as to why it’s not an accurate measure of health. For one, the categories of “overweight” and “obese” are so ambig uous and lacking in evidence. In fact, in 1998, the categories changed, and as a result, millions became “overweight” or “obese” overnight — something the diet industry has made billions off of. Some may be shocked to learn that more studies are showing that being “overweight” can be perfectly healthy. A metaanalysis of a bunch of studies found that individuals who Design courtesy of Lauren Kuzee
are underweight have a greater risk of death than individuals falling under the “obese” category. Yet, no one criticizes very thin-bodied people the same way they do largerbodied folks. It’s actually the opposite — an immense glorification of very thinbodied people that more often than not is praise toward an eating disorder or disordered eating behaviors. So, this supposedly “well-intended” advice given to young adults under the g uise of “health” does nothing to support health since health is not a number.
This supposedly well-intended advice given to young students under the guise of “health” does nothing to support health.
The Health at Every Size (HAES) movement, which encompasses the principles of Intuitive Eating, is growing and so is the research backing it. If anything, warnings against the “Freshman 15” are way more hurtful than helpful and send diet culture messages that weight gain is inherently bad and unattractive — that we should actively be trying to suppress our body weight or pursue weight loss. No wonder eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors are rampant on campuses. What’s most frustrating about the “Freshman 15” message is the assumption that the weight you are at on the day of your high school graduation is somehow the weight you must be at during college, and pretty much the rest of your life. This is absolutely absurd. Young adults are actively growing and developing well into their mid-20s, so ill-advised measures projected on them to suppress their body weight do much more harm and zero good. Furthermore, more research in support of set point theory has come forward, supporting the theory’s belief that every individual has a predisposed set weight range in which their body functions optimally, and the body will actively fight to maintain this range. This is not to say that everyone’s setpoints will abide by the BMI standards. It would be foolish to think that every unique individual should be in a certain BMI range because that’s what’s healthiest for them. Who are we, as a society,
to determine that? Some people’s setpoint ranges are within the “healthy” category, and plenty of others are within the “underweight” or “overweight” categories. In terms of those in the “underweight” group specifically, the difference here is that one whose natural set weight range is in this category maintains their weight without effort, meaning without dietary restriction and/or the abuse of exercise to keep that weight. Even if they purposefully pushed themselves to overeat for a period of time, it would be just as unsustainable as is undereating for a period of time (cough, cough, diet). So, what to do? Surely, there must be some nutrition advice people must abide by, and surely, we must exercise. Well, yes and no. The forceful mindset of this statement is all wrong. What almost everyone gets wrong about the HAES movement is that it promotes obesity, and not only permits but encourages people to eat “junk” foods 24/7 and never exercise again. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The movement champions the idea that one can pursue health at any weight by listening to their body and eating intuitively. Our bodies crave balance by nature, so while some may find they crave the calorically dense foods deemed “unhealthy” by society on some days, accepting that craving and meeting it is the best thing to do, and often results in the body craving more traditionally nutritious foods at other times. Full body trust is crucial. HAES also encourages people to partake in physical movement that they enjoy and that feels good. By taking a step away from mainstream fitness (and diet) culture, which pushes “working out” on people as something they have to do on the daily, movement becomes more appealing and enjoyable. It’s no longer confined to a g ym or high-pressure environment. Instead, it includes walks or hikes with friends or playing tennis with a partner. All in all, if health is one’s true concern, then focusing on a number on a scale is a micro piece of the puzzle and largely irrelevant. Most times, it leads to poorer health as a result of unsustainable dieting measures. The best thing to target is behaviors, and that’s exactly what HAES supports by encouraging people to tune into their individual body’s needs and explore movement, with the goal to adopt healthy movement as an enjoyable, recurring practice. The healthiest thing for us college students, then, is to skip over the years of pointless and unhealthy dieting entirely and start practicing the principles of HAES and Intuitive Eating now. Nyla Booras can be reached at nbooras@umich.edu.
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Michigan In Color
8 — Monday, August 31, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Resentment: the politicization of Ok, America. Prove me wrong. emotion to liberate the colonized ALEXANDRA OWENS
GABRIJELA SKOKO
MiC Summer Co-Managing Editor
The revolutionary nature of Glen Sean Coulthard’s book, “Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition,” serves as a salute to radical scholar Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial work through its exposure of Canada’s systematic marginalization of the Native population. In like manner, the piece introduces an uncomfortable notion of indoctrinated white values, instilled to naturalize the corruption of Indigenous culture and self-value which persist today in relation to the Aboriginals who suffer from psycho-affective attachments to colonialism and an internalized justification of their own subjugation. Coulthard proposes that this subconscious surrendering of the Aboriginal people creates a stable environment for the Canadians’ perpetual, yet subtle, reproduction of colonialism today. However, at some point, the colonized becomes “aware” of the colonizer, birthing resentment within the colonized, and forcing progress toward proper recognition and reconciliation from the colonizer. Coulthard expresses modern society’s colonial persistence as straddled between the colonizer’s denial of the oppressive structure and the indoctrinated submission of the colonized. He does this by probing the non-Native’s refusal to decolonize through the implementation of “transitional justice” in a non-transitional structure and an ignorance regarding resentment’s political value. However, he goes on to challenge this “unchangeable” system, making use of Fanon’s embracement of resentment as an essential instrument in the resurgence of self and cultural affirmation. Attempts to reconcile injustices against Canada’s Indigenous people have taken form of reparative commissions and elaborate promises to rectify the unbalanced system, yet the implementation of these reparations have failed as a result of the non-Natives contradictory denial of colonial history, and a palpable refusal to practice their own proposed processes. Meant to guide the Canadian State through a somewhat seamless process of reconciliation, the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples details a productive practice of “transitional justice”: an approach to justice which must take place after the injustice has ceased and there is a clear distinction between the time of injustice and the time following. In Canada, society has perpetuated a “nontransitional” loop that maintains the settler-colonial relationship and erases any distinction between that of the past, present and future. Coulthard explains that regardless, Canada wields the proposal of this transitional system to disassociate past colonialism with their modern-day cultural hierarchy: “Where there is no period marking a clear or formal transition from an authoritarian past to a democratic present— state-sanctioned approaches must ideologically manufacture such a transition by allocating the abuses of settler colonisation to the dustbins of history.” Canada relies on the internalized system and manipulative policy enforcement which they exhaust to restrict the rights of Indigenous people. The enforcement of extinguishment, the Modified Rights Approach, the non-assertion approach and the Jobs and Growth Bill Act all served as mediums of institutionalized outlets for Indigenous subjugation. Coulthard explains that decorative language such as “restorative justice” creates an environment in which reconciliation becomes fixated on the “legacy of past abuse, not the abusive colonial structure itself.” When colonial corruption is categorized as historical, it liberates the colonizer from responsibility in today’s disparate relationship, assuming blame to the colonized who must have an inability to move on. This way, the colonizer can maintain
their systematic superiority by disguising the current settler-colonial structure as an invalid, negative emotion harboured by the Natives toward the non-Natives which prevents the advancement of their mutual relationship. In embracing the standpoint of transitional justice, the colonizer assumes the Natives’ resentment to be irrational and it is framed as the primal perpetuator of the social and political instability at hand. This common misunderstanding of resentment confuses the emotion for the subjectively less productive french term: ressentiment. Ressentiment is “portrayed as a reactive, backward, and passive orientation to the world;” under this definition, the once subjugated has been liberated in a literal sense but fosters this subjugation in a conscious refusal to move on from the past, ultimately subjugating themselves. The difference between the two terms is resentment’s politicized nature, making it a powerful foundation for reconciliation. Resentment is formed against a recognized “enemy of injustice;” recognizing this “colonial enemy” frees the colonized from their internalized subjugation and compels them to revalidate their individual and cultural worth. Coulthard defines this Fanoninspired process as, “a purging, if you will, of the so-called ‘inferiority complex’ of the colonized subject … In such a context, the formation of a colonial ‘enemy’ … signifies a collapse of this internalized psychic structure.” This liberation starts with oneself, but the cultural validation also inspires a unified “us” that is now conscious enough to recognize specific injustices and passionate enough to demand desired reparations. This is a necessary reallocation of the Indigenous peoples’ once internalized hatred and subjugation. Coulthard explains that this external reallocation creates an opportunity where “the colonized begin to resent the assumed ‘supremacy of white values’ that has served to ideologically justify their continued exploitation and domination.” Once these values are resented by the colonized, they realise that there is no justifying the long-indoctrinated exploitation or domination of their cultural group, and therefore, there is no validation in colonialism or the persisting political structure. What makes resentment particularly powerful as a political tool, is the emotional passion. In numerous situations likening the colonial-settler relationship, the “inferior” is aware of their position, but helpless or unmotivated in reversing the damage; resentment instills the anger and passion that motivates action. In the summer of 1990, a political agreement that disregarded the rights of the Native peoples and a non-Native attempt to confiscate Native owned land inspired the unification of Indigenous people to protect and assert their inherent rights. This opposition energized a new movement for the Indigenous people in which they apply their resentment to action, rather than fostering it within; in the wake of this, the RCAP was created, recognizing the demands of the colonized and responding respectively. “What originally began as an education campaign against a repugnant piece of federal legislation has since transformed into a grassroots struggle to transform the colonial relationship itself” (Coulthard 128). The proposal that an emotion serves as the foundation for reconciling institutional colonialism sounds absurd. However, I assert that this is a nearly necessary step for the colonized to validate themselves and their culture, and vocalize the desire for legitimate reparation and revolution. In “Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe,” by Roger D. Peterson, and “On Resentment and Ressentiment: The Politics and Ethics of Moral Emotions,” by Didier Fassin, the two authors uncover an unacknowledged
“victim” of some ambiguous sort, and debrief the instrumental role of these victims’ resentment in maintaining institutionalized discrimination. Peterson interprets resentment as an emotion based on a nation or state’s structure, which when shifted or reversed hierarchically, angers the once ethnically-dominant, and if feasible, leads to extreme ethnic violence. This interpretation strays from the notion that resentment follows a history of subjugation; However, what remains are clear distinctions between who causes the resentment, who possesses it and why. Despite the clarity of this approach, the manichean aspect removes the universality of such an emotion, almost restricting it to people who can directly credit their pain to a group, and restricting the “reaction” of resentment unto those who did the harm. Fassin, however, recognizes the global accessibility of the emotion. Fassin specifically analyzes the French police force and their ambiguous resentment as a more societal and ideological position that they release unto a feasible target. This interpretation invites a more palpable understanding of resentment from the social and individual perspective. Both concepts result in pragmatic institutional discrimination: Peterson’s approach is rooted in a clear ethnic hierarchy that has been disturbed and angers the formerly dominant to an extent of extreme violence, whereas Fassin’s concept accepts the obscurity of emotion and acknowledges the inaccurate direction of consequential emotional expression. In “Understanding Ethnic Violence,” Peterson delivers a concept of resentment that exists amongst the shattering of a distinguished ethnic structure, allocating blame to the oppressed who “wrongfully” gained power and are resented by the “rightful” owners of said dominance who will eventually retaliate with role-establishing violence. This concept of resentment relies on three necessities: a strongly established perception of ethnic hierarchy, the dominant group amongst the hierarchy experience a role-reversal and this now subjugated group see correction through violence as a feasible option. If a clear hierarchy is not established, nor can be violence from resentment. This interpretation renders resentment similar to the emotions rooted in nationalism which strive for an “ethnic homogenisation” where the “peasant” and “imperial” populations are ruled out alongside resentment itself. Within these imagined and consequentially forced communities, there is no alien within the structure, nor is there any fear of role-reversal. Whether this approach to resentment remains at the large nation with a maintained hierarchical structure, or expands to the forced homogenized communities, institutional discrimination is pursued at a structural level, rooted in the belief that the dominant deserves to be dominant at any justifiable means. Similarly pursuant of institutionalised discrimination, Fassin explores resentment as it inhabits the French police force, the ambiguity of the emotion’s roots and the unfortunate misdirected reactivity on the “vulnerable.” Fassin claims the emotions felt by the police force are relational to the emotions exhibited by the surrounding society: “the police are all the more aggressive since they view their public as hostile and through their aggressiveness render the public hostile.” This resentment against society, matched with the necessity for efficacy leads to targeted brutality, and inherently perpetuates the oppressive structure. This is not a justification of the cycle — rather a condemnation — but it is important to recognize the perspective that hierarchical roles possess in order to understand the process of one’s society on an ideological level. Assumption is political venom whether done by the subjugated or the subjugator, and equality can only see fruition alongside understanding.
MiC Staff Writer
At the turn of the 2010s, the ingenious use of social media by young activists during the Arab Spring set the world ablaze. In the blink of an eye, young people transformed social media from a prom picture party hub to an outlet of revolutionary information. Via f ledgling platforms like Facebook and Twitter, users shared demonstration sites, tear gas remedies and even tips to avoid identification by authorities should one choose to participate in civil disobedience. With its unprecedented ability to deliver not only crucial information, but also the sights, sounds and unmistakable aura of social upheaval to the palm of any user’s hand, social media seemed to be the last missing link to achieving real global equality. In case you missed it, the 2010s were not quite the pax romana we hoped they would be. Just shy of a decade after the events of the Arab Spring, social media’s stature as a beacon of hope, a catalyst of universal change has undergone quite the reversal. As Generation Z came of age over the course of the 2010s, we watched in real time as the sanctity of information found and distributed on social media was forever compromised. In addition to issues with misinformation, overwhelmingly, the outward facing nature of these platforms spawned a culture of normalized “slacktivism,” wherein the cultivation of the image of being “woke” by privileged groups has taken precedence over the actual substance of the societal issues which predicates such activism. The issues most often co-opted for social clout are related to the continued extrajudicial murder of countless Black Americans. But, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise for a country which enjoys its temporary forays into Black culture more than Miley Cyrus. More so than any other instance of Black-led rebellion seen in the previous decade, the most recent uprisings beginning on May 26 have been characterized by a suspiciously high amount of white endorsement and participation. But, these were not the usual white allies — these were white moderates. In the past week, my social media feeds have been f looded with the feverish reposting of artist’s renditions of the deceased, text posts demanding accountability on the part of all nonBlack Americans and of course, the black tiles. Although an increased awareness of the horrors of police brutality appears, superficially, to be indicative of promising social progress, I cannot help but shake my suspicions that these displays — like most things on social media — are just a part of a facade. While my skepticism could be misconstrued as a selfish attempt to “gatekeep” who can and cannot be politically active, in reality, this cynicism is a byproduct of coming of age in the span of years separating Trayvon Martin from George Floyd, Ferguson from Flint and Obama from Trump. Through these years, time and time again in school, and even in some social situations, I was looked to by my non-Black peers to rationalize why “all lives” and “blue lives” did not matter and why violence sometimes could be the only appropriate answer. And with each repetition of this cycle, with every new Black life taken prematurely, the same peers still refused to educate themselves any further than the information that was already laboriously spoon-fed to them by young Black people like myself,
just clamoring to make their people’s humanity known. As I observed the same people who were once “so concerned” with educating themselves retreat back to the comfortability of their privileged existences at their convenience, I began to see my efforts to inform had not just fallen on deaf ears, but actually replicated the existing system of Black subjugation to whiteness — where still, Black labor is readily substituted in the place of white effort. Although many white Americans — particularly Gen Z’ers too self-righteous to recognize their own similarities to their Boomer grandparents — are quick to ridicule the glaring hypocrisies of attempts to appear “of the people” by a Kendall Jenner or Gal Gadot, significantly fewer conversations are being had regarding the abruptness with which they themselves hop on the bandwagon of social responsibility, only to retreat back into the complicit silence of their “normal” existences once their friends stop posting Instagram stories, hashtags stop trending and the media moves on to the next Big Story™. It becomes difficult to read their mobilization as anything but hollow box-checking, particularly when Black people watched the 2010s close with no real progress made to the state of sanctioned murder. Oh, and Donald Trump was elected president. So, there’s that. The desecration of social media from subversive outlet to vehicle of self-congratulatory displays is pretty well encapsulated with the trend that emerged earlier this week, #BlackoutTuesday. This phenomenon, hauntingly similar to the promotional tactics used for Fyre Fest, involved nonBlack people posting an image of a black screen to their social media profiles. What was originally intended to be a mass silencing of the trivial uses of social media (e.g. beach selfies, Harry Styles fun facts) during a time of national protesting proved to be an all too easily accepted invitation for white people to engage in their favorite political strategy: passive silence. Predictably, I awoke Tuesday morning from more participation than I had seen all week. My feed was now populated by more black tiles than a Home Depot, and not to my surprise, the majority of people posting these empty gestures had been relatively silent for the past week. In theory, this trend was intended to highlight the severity of the issue of police brutality and the importance of listening to Black voices. However, the eye-roll inducing irony of this asinine trend is that it blatantly ignores the usefulness of privileged white voices to the movement. In civil rights history, substantial change has only ever been achieved when those in privileged positions finally feel compelled to stick their necks out for marginalized groups. When white people hold other white people accountable, magic happens. The only thing that has resulted from the proliferation of black squares has been a clogging of crucial hashtags with vacant displays of wokeness — a complete 180 from the example set during the Arab Spring. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The people who jump at the opportunity to conform to what they view as “trendy” give no credence to the historical precedents of social protest. The same people vapidly posting the square because they saw someone cool do it have no discernible political conscience beyond “I miss Obama” posts, and certainly have no grasp on Black history beyond what their APUSH teacher taught them. Posting a picture does not mean you have educated yourself on the
complexities of systemic racism. Posting a picture does not mean you will diversify your social circle beyond who you went to high school with. Posting a picture does not change the fact that your boyfriend voted for Trump. As our collective nostalgia for the socially transformative 1960s indicates, many young people have a desire to be swept up in a movement, to feel as though they are a part of something that will bring about positive change to their worlds. However, my burning (and unanswered) question for those suddenly compelled to channel Gloria Steniem is … where the fuck have you guys been? I acknowledge that, for those of us who have grown up Black and in America, the issue of police brutality is interwoven into the fabric of our existence. Whereas whiteness functions to insulate people from the harsh realities of our racist country, Black people are met with constant reminders unmatched outside of our community. Despite this truth, so many white people’s collective realization of the urgency of these injustices smells a bit funky to me because … when have Black people ever been anything close to silent about our outrage with police brutality? The maliciously fatal Minneapolis officer’s actions were, indeed, uniquely deplorable, but did mainstream white America forge a secret pact to just forget the Rodney King tapes? Were Philando Castille, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Sandra Bland just figments of Black America’s imagination? George Floyd’s untimely death is nowhere close to being the first Black death at the hands of law enforcement, so why the shock? Why the refusal to look in the mirror when confronting how such a brutal system has been able to persist? The amount of white Americans shocked into action by the video is not indicative of progress, rather a pervasive culture of naivety. This newfound fervor towards the Black cause only indicates a laughably obtuse ambivalence towards the last 10 years in America, let alone the last 400. As we find ourselves in week two of national protests and await the Moron-in-Chief’s legislative response. I have grown weary of social media’s role in the social revolution. I have grown weary of the cacophony of voices repeating the same empty platitudes with no actual progress to match. A phrase which summates my frustration with America’s cyclical mishandling of police brutality is “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” While the issues being protested may not appear the exact same as the ones from 50 years ago, the principles undercutting each conf lict remain unchanged. This phrase instantly comes to mind whenever I stumble across footage of elderly Black people marching for similar, if not the same, causes they did when they were our age — revealing the depressing truth that they’ve spent an entire lifetime without real rectification of societal issues. Band-Aid solution after Band-Aid solution. Regardless of the vogueish popularity of these social media trends in white spaces, it doesn’t appear as though anyone is itching for the displays to end and the change to begin. Because if they did, I wouldn’t be writing this piece. So, white and non-Black America, if you want us to actually take your “activism” seriously, put your money where your mouth is. I would love to be proven wrong. As the privileged majority of the population, real change cannot happen without your efforts. So, let’s hope you’ve got something better dreamed up than Black tiles.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Monday, August 31, 2020 — 9
JORDAN HUNTER | COLUMN
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ANDREW GERACE | COLUMNIST
T
he time to act is now. While COVID-19 may feel like it is pulling focus away from the issues that we care about, making it harder to communicate and plan actions and exhausting us emotionally and intellectually, there has never been a time where student action at the University of Michigan, especially collective action, will be as effective as it will be right now. The fundamental disruption COVID-19 has caused to the four-year, traditional college model is the perfect storm for holding institutions accountable and making institutional change. The four-year college model is a contrived but carefully curated system of educational and social experience designed to sequester money from students while theoretically providing them avenues for personal and educational growth. This model relies on the expectation that students will be focused on themselves rather than the larger community. Known for its brand strength and disappointing track record on issues of transparency and social change, the University uses this model to keep student voices quiet during their time at the University. After two years of personal experience and conversations with friends, classmates, alumni and others I’ve distilled the general University of Michigan college experience into this theory: The U-M undergraduate experience is designed so that students only have one year of focused activism and social awareness before they graduate. Freshman year, the year of many firsts, is when the University plunges students into the deep maize-andblue sea of unwavering school pride. Summer orientation in East Quad Residence Hall, Convocation at the Crisler Center, the thrill of life away from parents, a fall of Michigan Football games, UMixes on weekends, fraternity and sorority rush, basement band shows and other quintessential dreams of freshman year leave little room to look around at the systemic injustices at the University. At its core, freshman year is spent learning how to go to college and being taught to unequivocally love the University of Michigan. Sophomore year, the year where the initial shine fades, is a time when students actually begin to learn and to open their eyes to the systems around them. The stresses of living off-campus, declaring a major, saving grade point averages and moving beyond freshman-year friendships, all begin to crack both the student and the facade created by the University. Students observe what appear to be isolated incidents: Administration and faculty members being accused of sexual misconduct, the University making decisions on important policy behind suspiciously closed doors and whispers of inequality at the Dearborn and Flint satellite campuses. With freshly awakened senses, the University begins to fear sophomores. Junior year: the year of awakening. While there are students both cognizant of
Dear student activists the deep-seated institutional flaws and working to fight them throughout their entire career at the University, I’ve observed junior year is the year of change for most. No longer needing acclimation to college, and having spent two years at the University, many students open their eyes to the systemic problems that plague the administration. Two years of life at the University of Michigan is generally enough time to tear down the facade of compassion and community the University spends so much time and money cultivating our freshman year. Years of mistreatment, malpractice and lack of transparency shows that these are not isolated incidents but patterns of negligence, lack of care and betrayal. This realization leads many juniors to join activist groups, speak out about their experiences, and pressure the administration to make substantive change. Two years is enough for students to realize that the University does not have a commitment to transparency or action surrounding sexual assault and misconduct as seen through the need for the WilmerHale report and SMTD Climate Survey, and the allegations surrounding David Daniels,
All attention can and should be focused on the failings of the administration Stephen Shipps and Martin Philbert. Two years is enough for students to realize that the University does not commit to making itself do anything more than appear to care about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as evidenced by the constant mistreatment of the University of MichiganFlint and the University of Michigan-Dearborn, lack of substantive action on racial justice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and allowing Division of Public Safety and Security officers to remain armed. Two years is long enough for students to realize their voices will not be sought out when making critical and long-term decisions that affect them, especially the voices of disabled students, evidenced through the Michigan Union redesign and COVID-19 precautions. Two years is enough for many to realize the administration just doesn’t care, through actions like raising tuition during a pandemic and holding a University Board of Regents meeting without public comments when making this decision. Come senior year, many are either burned out and ready to leave or holding on as tightly as possible to the college experience vanishing before their eyes. Alumni I spoke to reflected on focusing on post-graduate plans or doing a highlight reel of their favorite experiences at the University,
pivoting away from the drive and focus of their junior year work. Understandably, senior year is a time to begin parting ways with the University of Michigan. This model comforts the administration as they generally only bear the full brunt of a student’s activism and attention for one year. However, COVID-19 has substantially disrupted this model for the first time in recent memory with students making the decision to take gap semesters, take classes fully remote and therefore become more distanced from the University. Student groups and activists must work to collectivize their efforts, push for broader support amongst the student body and apply as much pressure as possible on the administration. For the foreseeable future, all attention can and should be focused on the failings of the administration. No longer can the veil of game days, tailgates, late dinners in the dining hall with friends, on-campus events, musicals, Guy Fieri night at MosherJordan Hall and weekend ragers cloud the student body’s vision of the failings of the University administration. No “Go Blue” blinder will be put over the incoming freshman class’s eyes, this group being welcomed not by pageantry and celebration, but with increased tuition during a pandemic. We must turn their focus and anger towards the University’s mishandling of COVID-19 that will likely affect them for years to come. We must propel sophomores to turn their nervous energy and stress into a driving force for the movement, no longer needing the year to fully realize the systemic issues behind their isolated observations. Finally, no longer will seniors be able to relive their previous years on campus or be distracted by endless and extensive job searches. We must turn their focus and frustration towards leaving the University a better place than it was when they arrived for leadership for the initial push. Already groups and pages like @blackatmichigan, @FightBackUMich, @ AbolishMichiganIFCandPanhel, @HowCouldWeTrustUM and Students Demand Representation have been making appeals to both the student body and administration, cognizant of the critical window of opportunity to make change. Collectivizing these missions into coalition-like efforts will make these ripples into waves. Activist groups must seize this time to get their message out and consolidate their efforts, and work with other groups to mobilize action, even across seemingly disparate fields. The intersectionality between issues of racial justice, sexual assault and misconduct, COVID-19 care and general transparency issues will make collective efforts effective during this unprecedented and limited window of action. The time is now. Let’s work hard, work together and teach our leadership how to be Leaders and The Best. Andrew Gerace can be reached at agerace@umich.edu.
A one-size approach fits no one
T
he first thing I ever thrift shopped for was a University of Michigan sweatshirt. For just six dollars, I got the opportunity to wear the block M on my sleeve for the first time — and as I would find out about a year later, it wasn’t the last. Getting to rep my dream school wasn’t the only reason I showed off that sweatshirt for months. I thought that, because I thrifted it, I was single-handedly saving the planet, the next best thing to personally picking every piece of plastic out of the ocean and closing the hole in the ozone layer myself. But what was I actually doing? In terms of the bigger picture of saving the planet, the answer is honestly “nothing.” The idea of “shopping ethically” is everywhere in the world of fashion, where it’s marketed as the alternative to fast fashion. Defined by Investopedia as designs that “move quickly from the catwalk to stores to meet new trends,” fast fashion comprises the majority of the retail market. Despite the evidence that fast fashion, made from microfibers that don’t decay, is harming our planet in more ways than one, it was worth $35 billion in 2015. This figure can seem absurd at first glance, but it makes sense given how many iconic stores are classified as fast fashion, many of them adorned by college students. There are the obvious ones like Fashion Nova, H&M and Forever 21, as well as Romwe, Shein and Urban Outfitters, the latter of which has operated a location on the first floor of the historic The State Theatre for years. Though it seems like fast fashion is here to stay, sustainable brands such as well-established Patagonia, Levi’s and newcomers like The Reformation and Everlane, have risen in popularity as people make the decision to shop ethically. These brands have become as popular as they are because — to a former Shein customer, for example — they’re refreshing in their approach to garment-making. More
often than not, many of these sustainable brands are based in the United States and are transparent about the processes behind their clothes. As more and more people indicate that they would be willing to pay more for sustainable fashion, they’ve become forces in the fashion industry in their own right, not just an alternative but a first choice. A first choice among thin consumers with money, that is. One of the major criticisms of sustainable fashion is how it lacks inclusivity. From the Good Trade’s list of sustainable brands, only three carry sizes above a 2XL, equivalent to a 20/22. Most carry up to XL, capping their styles at a size 14. Think about that. In an era where the average American woman is between a size 16 and 18, many sustainable brands act like those sizes don’t even exist. Even if a customer is lucky enough to fit into limited size ranges, they still face the obstacle of just how expensive these brands are. Though they’re pricey for good reason, not everyone can afford to spend $74 on a blouse. Growing up low-income, I was always taught to “make money stretch.” The $98.00 spent on a pair of skinny jeans from Levi’s, I was told, could be taken to H&M instead, where I could buy five pairs of the same jeans. For many other low-income folks using the same logic, shopping from sustainable brands just doesn’t make sense. For us, the immense relative cost simply outweighs the environmental benefits. “If you can’t afford it, why not thrift?” is something I’ve heard and unfortunately said myself. From the moment I bought my sweatshirt, I began playing into the assumption that thrifting is somehow the perfect way to shop ethically and sustainably. But the concern of accessibility with buying from sustainable brands applies to thrifting, too. Contrary to popular belief, thrifting isn’t so affordable anymore. Giants like Goodwill and Salvation Army have raised prices in response to the rising interest in their stores
stoked by thrift haul videos like these. Money isn’t the only issue in terms of affordability — lowincome folks can’t afford the time required to comb through racks of clothes to find something that fits. For people working multiple jobs or long hours at just one, thrifting is nearly impossible. This is especially true if they’re plus-sized, where an already limited stock of plus-sized clothing is often bought by thin people riding the trend of the oversized t-shirt. So what are we supposed to do? If both of our sustainable options are bad and fast fashion is worse, where are we supposed to buy clothes? Truth be told, there’s no answer to this question. There’s no “one size fits all” solution to the issue of fast fashion because of how diverse we are as consumers and as people. I think it’s easy to dismiss all of this by saying there is no ethical form of consumption in late-stage capitalism, so obviously people should just buy what they want, but that isn’t quite right either. It’s true that it’s impossible to live in a consumer society without causing harm in some way, but that means our goal should be to reduce this harm to the best of our individual abilities. Though I wasn’t doing much by buying just one sweatshirt, I was doing what I could. I whad the time and money to thrift, so I did, and I wore that sweatshirt for almost two years. When I no longer loved it the same way I had when I first saw it back in November of 2018, I sold it in Depop and gave it to another girl who loves the University as much as I did then. So the next time you go to buy a new pair of jeans for a Friday night or a suit jacket for an interview, I want you to think about your options. I can’t tell you which is best, but I can ask you to think about this: Who loses from what you gain? Jordan Hunter can be reached at jhunterr@umich.edu.
JESS D’AGOSTINO | COLUMN
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2020: The importance of perspective
his year has been a memorable one in arguably too many ways. As a political science student, it has definitely been uncomfortably uneasy to be such an active part of writing history, unable to flip a few pages and read how it will all play out. We crave certainty, answers — something concrete to reassure us that the chaos will come to an end. However, as the summer continues, I’ve done a lot of personal reflection. Is 2020 really just continuously sucking, or is some part of this a result of my own perspective? Naturally, as one does, I took to the internet. It turns out that there is a great deal of research indicating that there are both positives and negatives to the “2020 strikes again” rhetoric. As a society, we need to start acknowledging both positions in order to preserve our own mental health and awareness as the year comes to a close. Whether it be the pandemic, the (justifyingly) divisive political atmosphere, the looming election, a hurricane on the East Coast or the raging wildfires on the West Coast, it is undeniable that there has been what has seemed to be unending awfulness to the start of the new decade. Speaking on a personal note, my entire family contracted COVID-19 at the very beginning of the pandemic, likely due to my family members working in NYC. Thankfully, we all escaped the virus relatively unscathed and with the presence of antibodies; I tried to count my blessings and confront my own gratitude for none of my seven infected family members falling ill enough to be admitted to a hospital or be hooked on a
ventilator. I will admit that this positive outlook seemed to not fit within the dialogue of 2020. If it is all written out and placed chronologically, it really does seem like the bad news never ends. I even saw a TikTok recently that described the “best part of 2020” as the lack of societal shock to literally anything. The TikTok user claimed he could convince anyone that trees were coming alive and attacking people and nobody would be surprised. Thinking more deeply about this perspective and the motivation to expect the worst of what has already been a historically devastating year, it becomes nearly impossible to recognize when anything not-awful happens. According to Dr. Susan Whitbourne, a Professor Emeritus of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, “Cognitive theory predicts that the negative beliefs you hold about yourself, or your selfschemas, cause you to view your experiences through a distorted set of perceptions.” The more negatively you anticipate something to turn out, the more likely you are to recognize the negative aspects in anything that happens. Of course, this is not to undermine or at all lessen the severity of so many horrible events that have transpired in the past eight months. Instead, it is perhaps an encouragement we societally could benefit from: take a deep breath and hope for better things ahead. Conversely, there is also much to be said about the potential benefits of “2020 strikes again” rhetoric as a means to make light of a really emotionally
challenging situation. Sometimes, making jokes or implementing sardonic humor can help lessen the weight of a troublesome circumstance. Dr. Gil Greengross, an evolutionary psychologist from Aberystwyth University, emphasizes, however, that it is also important to recognize possible negative consequences to an over-abundance of “negative styles of humor.” Over the past few months, I’ve accepted my role as a statistic in an eternally historical dataset of positive test results. I’ve confronted my white privilege as a female in an affluent New Jersey suburb. I’ve fought for justice, weathered a power-outage inducing hurricane, a tornado one town over and struggled through personal dilemmas with relationships and mental health. This year has absolutely been the worst year I’ve experienced thus far in my two decades of life. Of course, my experience is comparatively minuscule to so many individuals and families I can’t help but pray for despite my lack of faith. The year 2020 may go down as one of the worst in history, but it’s time to try and hope for better. I won’t stop laughing at the memes or partaking in the depressing, cynical humor on occasion. But I plan to make a conscious effort to watch the undulations of the world as it continues to ebb and flow through crisis and catastrophe; the human race has conquered so much in our past, let us now have faith in what we hope to be a positive future. Jess D’Agostino can be reached at jessdag@umich.edu.
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Opinion
10 — Monday, August 31, 2020
EVAN STERN | COLUMNIST
SAM WOITESHEK | COLUMN
Benefits of in-person learning outweigh the risks
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s K-12 students across the country prepare for the 2020-2021 school year, mounting research suggests that school districts can welcome students back to the classroom safely. However, from here in Ann Arbor to large cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, a flurry of school leaders have signed off on plans to keep millions of students home for remote learning in response to the ongoing COVID-19 threat. There are clear reasons for the widespread push toward distance learning, at least to kick off the upcoming school year. Since the coronavirus has the potential to spread easily in large gathering places like schools, experts fear that a return to in-person learning would spark a surge in COVID-19 infections. At a time when the United States just surpassed a total of 5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, many officials, students and health experts don’t think now is the right time to bring thousands of students together to learn. It is obvious that a return to in-person learning in the middle of this public health crisis carries risks. But evidence is increasingly emerging that the risks of keeping students at home are even higher. According to a statement released by the American Academy of Pediatrics, “children learn best when physically present in the classroom. But children get much more than academics at school. They also learn social and emotional skills at school, get healthy meals and exercise, mental health support and other services that cannot be easily replicated online. Schools also play a critical role in addressing racial and social inequity.” The truth is that while remote learning may curb the spread of COVID-19, it has devastating implications for all K-12 students, especially younger-aged children. Regardless of what many school leaders say about distance learning, it is nowhere near an acceptable replacement for the in-person education that so many students depend on. While many are expecting the second round of remote learning to be an improvement over the first in the spring — when the coronavirus first shut down our economy — it is becoming increasingly clear that the distance learning this fall will be another nightmare for students and parents alike. According to the Washington Post, “America is about to embark on Round 2 of its unplanned experiment in online education
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— and, for millions of students, virtual learning won’t be any better than it was in the spring.” As reported in the same Washington Post article, students will face numerous hurdles if forced to learn online this school year. In addition to instructors’ lack of experience with remote learning, “millions of students nationwide still lack devices and Internet access.” In the end, as risky as the COVID-19 threat remains, school leaders must weigh the equally dangerous impacts of inadequate learning from home, especially on students from poorer backgrounds. At a time when every student deserves a high-quality education more than ever, distance learning is deeply problematic.
Distance learning this fall will be another nightmare for parents and students alike While it’s painfully obvious that students will get an inferior education online, the threats that remote learning pose to student development go far beyond academics. More than ever, an abundance of evidence suggests that distance learning has disastrous social and emotional consequences for students, raising the chance that a destructive mental health crisis will arise from online classes. After the first round of remote learning earlier this year led to an increase in anxiety, depression and suicidal or self-harming thoughts for school-aged children, we cannot afford to make the same mistake twice. In addition to a way for students to develop academically, socially and emotionally, in-person classes also serve as a safe haven for students who come from troubled backgrounds and are endangered by violence and abuse at home. A significant number of school districts and law enforcement officers continue to voice concerns that distance learning prevents teachers and school administrators from finding out about abuse and intervening for the benefit of the student.
Finally, besides the direct impacts of online learning on students, a distance education has alarming effects on our economy, which is already struggling in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus crisis. One of the most glaring and obvious impacts of remote learning is the inconveniences and troubles it brings for working parents, many of whom are already suffering financially. As a result of mandatory distance learning, parents are forced to commit less time to their jobs so they can help their students successfully learn from home. Many others must also turn to costly child care options who have no other choice, which puts additional financial strain on families. In the end, it’s overwhelmingly clear that distance learning is no match for the valuable experiences that students derive from an in-person education. In addition to the inarguable and vast drawbacks to distance learning, research increasingly demonstrates that schools can reopen safely and intelligently in the age of COVID19, with both in-person and hybrid options available. Meanwhile, as our understanding of the novel coronavirus deepens, it has become exceedingly evident that COVID-19 is a mild illness for the vast majority of infected children. According to medical research published by Mayo Clinic, “While all children are capable of getting the virus that causes COVID-19, they don’t become sick as often as adults. Most children have mild symptoms or no symptoms.” At the same time, numerous experts also suggest that even if children do contract the coronavirus from in-person classes, the chance that they will transmit COVID-19 to higher-risk individuals remains low. At this point, the evidence makes it exceptionally clear that schools can reopen safely in the presence of strict safety measures — including social distancing, hand washing and face coverings — and provide an enriching and high-quality education for all K-12 students across the nation. While in-person classes do not come without risks to public health, the extreme risks posed by distance learning models are far deeper for both students and society as a whole. School leaders who have moved the beginning of the 20202021 school year online have an obligation to their students and their communities to make plans for in-person or hybrid classes immediately. Evan Stern can be reached at erstern@umich.edu.
SUBMIT TO SURVIVORS SPEAK The Opinion section has created a space in The Michigan Daily for first-person accounts of sexual assault and its corresponding personal, academic and legal implications. Submission information can be found at https://tinyurl.com/survivorsspeak2020.
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Canceling fall sports is disappointing, yet expected
et’s take a moment of silence. Take this time to reflect. To mourn. We have lost a valued member of our college experience — athletics. On Monday, Aug. 10, Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren announced the conference postponed all fall competition, including our beloved gameday weekends, until further notice because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The entire season is likely all but canceled. To call this a “tragedy” is a massive understatement. “The selfish answer is that I am sad because I want to watch sports,” Business freshman Matthew Berube said. “But at the same time, I think (canceling fall sports season) is smart. I have been hearing about all these athletes getting coronavirus and it has become really bad. With this new ruling, they can now return quicker when it is safe.” Like many of you, I was enthusiastic about collegiate athletics and everything that comes with them. From prior experience, there is nothing more satisfactory than the crisp autumn air, a sea of maize and blue and singing “The Victors” at the top of your lungs. For freshmen, this is just another disappointment in our already dismal year. If you’re like me, there’s the reason you told everyone you chose the greatest university in the world — academics, the alumni network, etc. — but then there’s the other major factor in your decision: football Saturdays. Yet before we grab our pitchforks and storm Director of Athletics Warde Manuel’s office, we should realize that the University of Michigan is just as heartbroken as we are. In any other difficult situation, our leaders would combine their respective intelligence and figure out a creative solution. Except we live in a world where one must both clothe their faces and stand 72 inches away from one another
at all times. How can we expect a myriad of contact sports, as well as those played in an indoor facility, to survive this virus’s wrath? Think about it: Linemen crashing into each other like wrecking balls every snap, two volleyballers meeting at the top of the nylon and sweaty locker rooms? I don’t think Dr. Fauci would approve. If you’re still skeptical of the motives behind the decision, look no further than the University’s pockets. By canceling fall sports, the University has sacrificed $122.3 million in football revenue, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and an estimated loss of $85 million to the city of Ann Arbor, via local business owners. If there’s one thing all of us have experienced these past six months, it’s making unpopular choices. We’re staying at home for the fall term instead of showering in a community bathroom. We’re isolating ourselves for the last fourteen days of summer when we should be soaking up the final rays of sunshine in our hometowns. We’re forcing ourselves to choose our heads over our hearts. It’s not necessarily healthy, but then again neither is contracting COVID-19. It’s why we, as students, should be able to understand the difficulty of this decision on both sides. Even though deleting fall competition from our agendas is undoubtedly infuriating, we cannot let it distract us from the ultimate goal: complete safety among the University community. In our attempt to achieve it, we must carry on valiantly. We must not become complacent with the current condition of our athletic climate, but rather seek to improve it by continuing to do our part: Masking up, washing our hands frequently and staying six feet away from each other. As of Aug. 14, Michigan athletics has two new COVID-19 cases out of 254 tested, via the Detroit Free Press.
The University is already taking a massive risk. Allowing students to live in dorms, occupy common areas like the Michigan Union and inevitably congregate — all while abiding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines — is a lofty request at best. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they’ve switched to total remote learning to reduce residential density. Little brother did the same. Could we be next? Maybe. One thing is for sure: If the University can attempt to safely accommodate us, we can patiently stand by for a safe resumption of athletics in return. College sports, in their infinite wisdom, have illustrated that the proper amount of time can improve the outcome of a player or team. Joe Burrow was a backup quarterback at The School That Shall Not Be Named for two years. In his senior season at Louisiana State University, he won the Heisman Trophy and a national championship, then became the first pick in the NFL draft. College sports also unite us through a common love of the game. If nothing else, the Big Ten’s decision verified the infectious passion that we have for our colleges. The shared despair is unprecedented, but then again, so are these times. This is why, when we comfortably return from this problematic state in the world, collegiate athletics will still be there. They will embrace us with open arms and an electric environment for us to revel in once again. In the meantime, we wait. The passion that athletes share for their sports is not lost on us, but neither is the well-being of our campus population. Sam Woiteshek can be reached at swoitesh@umich.edu.
ZOE ZHANG | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT ZOEZHANG@UMICH.EDU
Opinion
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From The Daily: The history of policing and the power of protesting
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n Monday, May 25, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer. This incident was a final breaking point and has galvanized outrage from communities all over the country, sparking protests and calls for justice across the United States. The unjust death of Floyd is not an isolated incident by any means, nor is it unprecedented, nor should it be a surprise to anyone who has access to news and media outlets — this is a tale as old as time, one that has happened to an unfathomable number of intersectional Black citizens.
Closer to the University of Michigan’s campus, in Ypsilanti, Mich., protesters gathered on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 26, after a video was circulated showing a white police officer punching Sha’Teina Grady El, a Black woman, in the head multiple times. Building awareness about and a consensus against these horrific, racist acts of violence has to be a priority. But doing so safely and effectively is important as a pandemic rages on and police departments continue to aggressively crackdown on those who speak truth to their power. First, it is imperative to offer a historical context into the nature of policing agencies in America when wanting to approach conversations about the current Black Lives Matter protests occurring across America and around the world. The birth of modern-day police officers in America can be traced to a multitude of political, economic, legal and historical conditions. Most importantly, perhaps, modern policing departments can be traced to slave patrols and night watch groups, which were both maliciously designed to control the behaviors and freedoms of minorities — most notably Black and Native Americans. In the southern colonies of the United States especially, origins of policing were rooted in racialized social orders and in the economy that so heavily depended on individuals that were enslaved. Slave patrols and night watches assisted wealthy landowners and maintained economic order by recovering and punishing both enslaved and freed Black individuals who did not adhere to white societal standards. The vicious and abhorrent rationalizations of slavery and racism did not end after the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the U.S. With the rise of so-called vigilante groups who resisted abolition and Reconstruction after the Civil War, America continued to perpetuate deep racism, oppression and injustice toward Black Americans. Due to the traditions of slavery and racism that are, unfortunately, so deeply embedded within this country’s history, these vigilante groups felt it their duty to uphold the narrative that Black individuals were sub-human. Coinciding with the onset of the second phase of post-Civil
War Reconstruction, the most infamous vigilante group, the Ku Klux Klan, was founded. Notorious for brutal campaigns of violence against Black individuals, “local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan or declined to take action against it.” Due to law enforcement’s involvement with the infamous group, Congress eventually passed the Enforcement Act of May 1870 and two more Force acts — also known as the Ku Klux Klan acts — which acted to prohibit the assembly of groups with the intention of violating constitutional rights of minority groups. However, this legislation, along with many more legal events, has not suppressed the inhumane practices of racial abuse and oppression that have persisted in America. Today, we are witnessing the continued perpetuation of racial injustices and violence from modern-day institutions against Black Americans. From being disproportionately affected by health inequalities that have been made most apparent during COVID-19 to repetitive injustices perpetuated by the criminal justice systems in America, it is clear that what has been done so far is not nearly enough. During this global pandemic, many disparities and corrupt systems have come to light — ranging from the exploitations of essential workers who are primarily POC to healthcare inequalities and biases to precariously unfair shortages of protective equipment for frontline workers — which has undeniably showcased where the values of our country’s leaders lie. While our healthcare workers are “at war with no ammo” — forced to use expired masks and perform invasive procedures on COVID-19 patients without any personal protective equipment — local police forces tout a saturation of protective gear and riot gear when confronting protesters. This disparity forces the financial hypocrisy of this country to light. In response to the jarring lack of PPE for healthcare workers, President Donald Trump stated, “the Federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping … we’re not a shipping clerk.” However, he quickly changed tune when American citizens took to the streets to protest, mobilizing
nearly a dozen federal agencies to “dominate” protesters. Right now, it is most important to stay safe and keep friends, community members and loved ones safe as well. However, The Michigan Daily Editorial Board understands the boundless difficulties of doing just that when our country is fighting both the COVID19 pandemic and racism. The fact that Black communities are having to gather in large numbers during a pandemic to protest their right to stay alive, all the while being disproportionately disposed to having higher rates of non-communicable diseases is not lost on us. This is why we, as an editorial board, encourage resourceful, respectful and safe protesting. Because of the pandemic, many individuals who would normally opt to practice activism in person at protests are not able to. This may be the result of immunocompromised family members, personal health reasons, working essential jobs, etc. If this is the case, there are many ways to protest unjust, racially oppressive systems from home. Considering donating to bailout funds for protesters who have been arrested, boycotting organizations or businesses that continue to perpetuate racism or exploit Black creators, researching ways to stop offering funds to local policing agencies while simultaneously supporting Black businesses are some of the first steps one could make. Social media right now is a huge platform for activism, information and resources. It is imperative, however, to utilize these platforms to the best of our abilities. This includes active interactions with the media while trying to educate yourself and/or others about current events and how we can move forward. It is very easy to be passive when dealing with social media activism, a term designated “slacktivism,” which can, unfortunately, block access to important, helpful information. Consider the recent event of #blackouttuesday, where millions of Instagram users reposted a black square with the hashtags #blacklivesmatter, #blm or the aforementioned #blackouttuesday.
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Monday, August 31, 2020 — 11
EASHETA SHAH | COLUMN
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Back to school, not to normal
hat felt like a distant reality for the past six months is finally here. In just few short weeks, students across the nation will be reckoning with school start-ups — whether that means cautiously moving into a new apartment on campus or logging onto Canvas from your hometown. As we gear up for the long-anticipated fall semester, inboxes are filled with campuswide public health-advised guidelines for courses, clubs and sports, and I can’t help but feel a little nostalgic for a time before COVID19 and masks. The optimist in me had hoped that summer would be the end of it, but now a corona-less future seems unimaginable — or at least until 2024. Working at a local grocery store this summer, I feel my current cynicism deepen with every customer that refuses to wear a mask during their 10-minute grocery runs despite Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s statewide orders — that, and seeing videos and Snapchat stories of “COVID19 petri dish” parties and gatherings. I’d like to think my peers and I will be more responsible and considerate on campus, but higher risk of infection on college grounds across the country has already been deemed inevitable by a New York Times survey prior to the new academic year. Unfortunately, this is not all that surpris-
ing given the night-life crowds that took over Ann Arbor bars after Whitmer’s rescinding of the Safer at Home Order in June and Theta Chi’s careless summer kickback. Our image as the Leaders and the Best was rightfully scrutinized then, and it is bound to face even heavier surveillance during this experimental semester. As university students, it’s high time our increasingly expensive schooling be put to productive use this semester. According to a New York Times article, we are impulsive, risk-taking college students that study together, live together, party together and sleep together. And they’re right. As thousands of students are welcomed back, campuses will become what psychologists call a strong situation in which external environmental forces define the desirability of potential behaviors despite an individual’s personal tendencies and personality. This is especially true in cultural systems like that of universities where the norm is the often anti-intellectual nature of college student culture. The enduring coronavirus calls for a reevaluation of hookup culture and reckless school spirit, and we must be the ones at the forefront of this battle against amateur human tendency. While reopening campuses seems like a doomed endeavor from the beginning, we should take this opportunity to rede-
fine our college experience apart from tailgating and Thursday night excursions — whether that means spending more time on Zoom meetings and nights in, or looking deeper into the flaws of our own college culture. Amid a global pandemic that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon, it’s time for a cultural reset, if you will — one that encompasses a little more accountability for our actions. The only question is: Are we up for the challenge? For everyone’s sake, I sure hope so. This quarantine period has woken America up to the glaring systemic issues of highly politicized public health initiatives, structural racism within every established institution and the collateral damage from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies. It would be for naught if we did not bring those issues back to our own schooling as many have done with the newly resurfaced review and reassessment petition for the University of Michigan’s Race and Ethnicity requirement as well as the student-led petition in response to ICE’s recent international student regulation.
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Easheta Shah can be reached at shaheash@umich.edu.
ZACK BLUMBERG | CONTRIBUTOR
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How COVID-19 exposed America’s failing values
rom the end of World War II through the present day, the United States has maintained a position as the world’s premier superpower. For decades, the American values of hard work, individualism, liberalism and free-market capitalism appeared to lead to massive successes, including technological advancement, economic prosperity and high standards of living. However, as COVID-19 has exposed, the values which people once associated with America’s brand of strength and prosperity now appear antiquated and outdated and are ultimately holding the U.S. back. While countries around the world have responded to the virus in different ways, American society’s fundamental focus on individualism, freedom and economic growth have exposed the inequality, distrust of government institutions and lack of protections for vulnerable populations within our country. First and foremost, the spread of COVID-19 has highlighted America’s extreme inequality, something which is largely a product of American society’s fanatical devotion to economic growth. As economist Milton Friedman declared in a 1970 New York Times Magazine article, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” In the decades since Friedman’s arti-
cle was published, it’s clear that America has taken his advice to heart. Today, the U.S. has 10 of the world’s 20 most profitable companies, but at a cost: It also ranks 39th worst in income inequality, worse than countries such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Turkmenistan. Last year, a study found that nearly 60 percent of Americans had less than $1,000 in their bank accounts, another sign of America’s staggering income inequality. Unsurprisingly, America’s focus on profits, and its acceptance of the inequalities that philosophy inherently produces, has greatly contributed to the nation’s disastrous response to COVID19. On April 21, a day on which over 2,600 Americans died of the virus, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said that “there are more important things than living and that’s saving this country.” Similarly, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie commented, “there are going to be deaths no matter what,” but “we have to stand up for the American way of life.” In saying this, Christie clearly implied that the American way of life is primarily focused on economic growth — inequality and public health be damned. When faced with skyrocketing unemployment rates, the U.S. Congress was both unwilling and unable to come up with an economic solu-
tion that addressed America’s income inequality. Although the federal government ultimately sent out a one-time $1,200 stimulus check to citizens, by April 23, only 10 days after the first checks were deposited, 84 percent of Americans said they already needed another check to make ends meet. That federal relief bill, which cost over $2 trillion in total, simply proved how unassailable American inequality has become. The COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed the problems with the American society’s support of free-market capitalism, as workers often find themselves under-protected and devoid of rights. Although there has consistently been some opposition to America’s overly laissez-faire attitude — such as Upton Sinclar’s 1906 novel “The Jungle” — support for deregulation and limited government oversight of the private sector is a major component of both America’s society and economy. As of 2015, American employees worked an average of 1,779 hours per year, the seventh most of any nation globally.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com Zack Blumberg is a junior in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts and can be reached at zblumber@umich.edu.
WHAT’S YOUR REASON? When we all closely follow public health guidelines, it slows the spread of COVID-19 — protecting those who need it most and giving researchers time to find the treatments we need.
“It’s important we work together to keep our campus safe.” JENSEN, STUDENT
Together, we will make a difference.
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Opinion
12 — Monday, August 31, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
From The Daily: Divest to invest — the reality of dismantling the police
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n Sunday, June 7, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council acknowledged that the current system of policing is not working and that they intend to “defund and dismantle” the city police department. Council President Lisa Bender stated, “(We need) to listen, especially to our Black leaders, to our communities of color, for whom policing is not working and to really let the solutions lie in our community.” While still in the process of planning exactly what these new, transformative and community-based initiatives may look like, the goal is to implement a model of public safety that actually keeps each community safe. Conversations of defunding and dismantling police departments have popped up all over the country, and many are concerned about what exactly this means.
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ast attempts at reform, even in Minneapolis, have been evidently ineffective and do not satisfy community demands. Instead of trying to change things from within the system — what reform sought to do — it is more essential to defund and dismantle the policing system that has disproportionately targeted and harassed Black communities for centuries. By divesting and funneling financial resources away from policing agencies, we can instead build and invest in municipal programs that work to fix the underlying challenges in communities — such as poverty, poor education, inadequate housing, food insecurity, drug rehabilitation, mental health problems, etc. There is reasonable confusion over the true difference between police reform and defunding the police, creating subsequent hesitance over the latter. When evaluating your own confusion, it’s essential to listen to the voices that have been most impacted by the continuous overabundance of policing and surveillance. Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza stated, “When we talk about defunding the police, what we’re saying is invest in the resources that our communities need. So much of policing right now is generated and directed towards quality-of-life issues, homelessness, drug addiction, domestic violence. … But what we do need is increased funding for housing, we need increased funding for education, we need increased funding for quality of life of communities who are overpoliced and over-surveilled.” When trying to disrupt a system that has been maintained through different mediums since slavery, we
must have a mutual understanding of what we are hoping to disrupt and of what our ultimate end goal should look like. Many activists have advocated for reforming the police departments; others, for a defunding model that would strive to divest large funds from national police departments and equitably invest that money into community services. However, we have seen, with a prime example being the Minneapolis Police Department, that reforms are not successful. TIME reports that “the same reforms were recommended time and again over the past two decades in the MPD to increase accountability, curb use-of-force violations and build up community trust — with seemingly little implementation.” A recent movement called #8cantwait advocates for banning unnecessary measures of violence, for requiring police officers to exhaust all alternatives before shooting and intervening and comprehensive reporting, among other things. Organizers claim this initiative could reduce police use of force by 72 percent. However, many activists are already criticizing this plan, calling it “copaganda” and saying it will improve policing’s war on the Black community, as it does not call for the removal of funds from police departments and does not address the entire issue of systemic racism and brutality within the institution. Decreasing police budgets is the first step in addressing the disproportionate amount of funding that police departments receive from the federal government. Calls for defunding do not mean the removal of efforts for public safety, but rather a demand to stop spending millions of dollars on military-style equipment
for poorly trained police officers. The protests against police brutality and the greater system that Americans are witnessing and participating in right now are nothing new. From many past demonstrations — including the 2014 Ferguson protests in Missouri that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement to the 1992 Los Angeles riots to the 1965 Watts riots — we are reminded that the stringent acts of racial profiling, oppression and violence enacted by police officers on the Black community is a centuries-old problem. As discussed in a recent editorial, modern policing agencies in the U.S. originated from slave patrols and night watches, which were primarily constituted of white men using vigilante tactics to further control and oppress Black individuals. These groups worked for wealthy white slave owners to punish, capture and return enslaved people who escaped or were believed to have violated plantation rules. These first police forces were overwhelmingly focused on responding to, and punishing, what they considered disorderly, non-white behavior rather than actual crime. As American slavery gratingly matured into a depraved regime that denied Black people humanity while still criminalizing their actions, they were considered capable of engaging in crime but “incapable of performing civil acts.” Similarly, while the 13th Amendment is credited with ending the concept of slavery we are taught in grade school, it stopped short of ending slavery for those convicted of crimes. The laws that once governed slaves were replaced with Black Codes governing free Black individuals, soon making the new
ALLISON PUJOL | COLUMN
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‘When do you think the protests will stop?’
When do you think the protests will stop?” My mother asked me this when we were both sitting in the kitchen a few days ago. “Didn’t they arrest the cop who killed that guy? I don’t understand why there are all these violent protests still. And how does it benefit anyone to vandalize a building?” My mother is the daughter of two Cuban immigrants. My father is the proud son of two Cubans who also came to the United States decades ago. Many older members of my family, including my grandparents, have likewise voiced concerns about the legitimacy of the protests erupting around the country in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. One of my late relatives was imprisoned in Cuba for more than 20 years for his activities as a political activist. I have been wondering lately what he would have to say about my family’s response, given Cuba’s own history of protest. Likewise, political activism before and during the 90s in Cuba bears notable distinctions from the contemporary protests in the United States, but there are also important parallels. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Cuba lost its main trading partner as well as the source of much of its international political support. An economic crisis soon unfolded within Cuba, resulting in strict rationing, rolling blackouts (for up to 20 hours) and severe medicine shortages. In 1994, nearly a thousand Cubans gathered at Havana’s Malecon (a sea wall along the country’s capital known for its tourist appeal) to voice their frustrations. Protesters broke windows and destroyed property as others recorded the events unfolding, desperate for their voices to be heard. The uprising was effectively quelled on the same day it started because police shot, beat or threatened protesters who would not leave the streets. Nobody really writes much about this uprising. But many Cubans solemnly remember it, even if they no longer live on the island. Cuban-American communities should bear those parallels in mind when considering their role and respective privilege in the broader context of police violence against people of color.
Despite the destructionist tactics used by protestors, the Maleconazo riot is a point of pride for many Cubans who now reside in the U.S. If my own community’s continued willingness to speak out against past injustice at the hands of Fidel Castro’s military and police force is any indication, many Cubans who now reside in the United States would not be so quick to condemn the Maleconazo riot more than 25 years ago. I struggle to imagine any of my grandparents criticizing those protestors who vandalized buildings in a display of their frustration against their country’s deteriorating economic conditions. No Cuban-American I know speaks out against those who stole boats that same year to flee to the United States. In some ways, the lack of understanding that many Cubans in my community have exhibited towards those protesting police brutality and the United States’ long legacy of systemic racism is surprising. In many ways, however, this reaction is predictable. Despite the history of anti-Latino sentiment in the United States, Latin American communities have not always been compassionate or responsible partners in the fight against racism. Even though people of Hispanic descent have been racially profiled by police or are increasingly the target of hate crimes, racism has been deeply internalized in many immigrant communities. As Karla McKanders, a clinical professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School, writes, instead of seeing themselves as natural allies in the fight for social and economic justice, many white and white-passing Cuban-Americans see themselves in competition with Black Americans. Furthermore, George Martinez, a professor of law at Southern Methodist University, writes that some Latinos “often sought to ‘pass’ as white … because they thought that becoming white insured greater economic, political and social security … [which] meant gaining access to a whole set of public and private privileges, and was a way to avoid being the object of others’ domination.” Like many privileged Cuban-Americans, I personally have been guilty of implicit bias and
racism — both intentional and not — and am still learning how I can most effectively dismantle the subtle, yet powerful hatred that often exists in my own community. Whether these comments are intended to belittle Black activists or not, many of the critiques I have heard of the ongoing protests are nonetheless reflections of that same subtle hatred. Deflecting to concerns about property damage belittles the real and immeasurable pain that police brutality has inflicted upon Black communities. Responding to the international outcry over the irreplaceable loss of lives with reports of damaged vehicles or stores suggests that perhaps, in fact, you might not think Black lives matter as much mass-produced, replaceable objects from Target. (As an aside, it is never a good sign when a multimillion dollar corporation’s response to looting is more charitable than your own). Dismissing these protests as “violent” and thus irredeemable avoids an important discussion about why protests are taking place at all and does not consider the larger history of protests across the world. This response in particular also reflects a choice to be ignorant about the way the police have responded to protests about police brutality with more police brutality. The protests in the United States today are not about me or my family. I chose to write this article because I thought it was necessary to use my platform as an opinion columnist to purposefully critique the response many of my family members and members of my community have taken toward the protests and this country’s history of anti-Black racism. The way to begin to destruct internalized racism in our own homes and communities is to acknowledge privilege and have conversations about ongoing discrimination and injustice, no matter how painful or uncomfortable.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com Allison Pujol can be reached at ampmich@umich.edu.
criminal justice system of America central to strategic racial control. These methods of oppression intensified whenever Black people asserted their autonomy or achieved any degree of success. For example, during Reconstruction, white policymakers and other white people in positions of power invented offenses used to target Black individuals. These included breaking strict curfews only for Black people, loitering, vagrancy, not carrying proof of employment from a former slave owner, etc. Those caught for such actions were quickly apprehended and American slavery persisted in the form of convict leasing, where Southern states could lease their prisoners to large plantations, mines and railways — all for profit. Later, in the second half of the 20th century, a new political fear would emerge during protests over harsh inequalities and civil rights. Black and brown people are still disproportionately targeted by these policies that were not as explicitly racialized as the Black Codes, although their implementation has been characteristically similar. Former President Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs,” “broken windows” policing, mandatory minimum sentences, three-strike laws, children tried as adults, etc., were all implemented. The rhetoric of “law and order” and subsequent focus on suppressing the Civil Rights Movement was adopted as a centerpiece for Nixon’s platform, which white authorities heavily utilized to criminalize Black individuals fighting for equal rights. As “cracking down on crime” became a codified tune, no distinction was drawn between civil rights activists, traditional petty crimes and rebellions. Within the past
weeks, we’ve seen President Donald Trump invoke the same racist rhetoric as he declared himself the “president of law and order” and also quoted a racist 1960s Miami police chief by tweeting, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Unfortunately, many prominent politicians, including Joe Biden, former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee have not voiced their support for what Black communities across the country are calling for and are instead “opposed to cutting police funding and believed more spending was necessary to help improve law enforcement and community policing.” Many activists advocating against reforms at this time are calling for politicians to “read the room” and to listen to the people. However, many fear that instead of taking political risks to implement the much needed systematic changes in this country, politicians are more worried about alienating moderate white voters. For example, in response to an uproar of protests against systemic racism and police brutality in May 2015, former President Barack Obama and a selected team crafted “The Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.” This report consisted of various reform approaches, many similar to those of the #8cantwait campaign circulating recently. These reforms have made no permanent or effective progress and local activist groups are continuing to reject broader pushes for more reform-based training. Johnetta Elzie, a civil rights activist and organizer, stated, “People in power — politicians and policymakers — are still talking about reform. We’re beyond that. We’re over
that. If they wanted reform, they would have done it six years ago when we actually had the chance to. But that’s not what happened.” Instead, it is time to reimagine the ineffective and systemically racist notions of policing agencies and their superficial procedural reforms by defunding the police and investing in specific, community-focused safety and prevention programs. Productive steps forward could include the installation of multiple community departments and facilities that interactively work with community residents, to an equitable degree. This is suggested in the #8toabolition initiative, which was initially made by activist group Critical Resistance and was then reproduced by an ad team that created a website providing a variety of shareable graphics for social media. In Minneapolis specifically, a report was published in 2018 that outlined all the reforms the police department has embraced, including body cameras and various training sessions that cover mindfulness, implicit bias and crisis intervention. The Minneapolis Police Department also forfeited money to training programs and better equipment, but there was little to no decline in Black fatalities caused by law enforcement. With that in mind, it is pertinent that a budget seeks to resolve the facets of life that often incite petty crime such as drug abuse, mental and physical illness, food insecurity, poverty and the other impairments that disproportionately affect the disadvantaged areas of the larger city.
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MAX LUBELL | CONTRIBUTOR
W
The final $2.50 Wednesday latte
hen I first learned Espresso Royale was closing all of its locations in early June, it felt like just another thing fighting for my attention. Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor — only two examples of white supremacy that have sparked recent uprisings — the news that the coffee chain was closing seemed rather insignificant. That’s not to say Espresso Royale’s closing, or the closing of any business predicted to not make it through the pandemic, won’t have a real impact for some of the 38.1 million Americans employed in the service and retail industries hit the hardest. Still, Espresso Royale’s closing did not seem like the greatest cause for concern at the time. As I have had more time to reflect on the news, I am left with all of my memories sitting at Espresso Royale, an incredibly important place for me and many of my peers throughout college. It was where we would study on countless mornings, afternoons, evenings and late nights; met with friends in between classes; went on or observed awkward first dates and organized to work on group projects. Espresso Royale was a reliable study spot where you were bound to run into people you knew. While my peers and I ostensibly went to Espresso Royale to study, my favorite memories there were when we barely got any work done at all. You could always count on finding someone to talk to when you were avoiding homework. As a very extroverted person who loves to procrastinate, I would often go to Espresso Royale between classes, even when I had no work to do, just to take refuge from the cold and find someone to chat with for a couple of minutes. While I stared at blank Word documents hoping my essay would type itself, I got to talk with friends or acquaintances about what was new in our lives, how we felt about school, where we were coming from and where we wanted to go. Since Espresso Royale was open until 11 p.m., we took shelter there for hours on end.
During my junior year, I found myself bewildered by how much time my peers and I had spent at Espresso Royale’s State Street location, or ERSSL as we would commonly abbreviate it. It was impossible to walk into ERSSL without seeing at least three people you knew. One night — while I was once again procrastinating completing my course readings — I took this bewilderment online. On Feb. 20, 2017, a fellow Michigan Daily opinion editor and I started the Espresso Royale (State Street) Fan Club Facebook Group, an unofficial fan page for people — mainly myself — to post Espresso Royale memes and commentary. The posts in our unofficial fan club ranged from a variety of topics: jokes about Espresso Royale’s renovations or the infamous “coffee12” wifi password, photos of people drinking Espresso Royale in their 8 a.m. class, questions about how much to tip for a $2.50 latte and general posts about the Espresso Royale experience. There weren’t any rules dictating what was appropriate to post, as long as it was Espresso Royale-related. Despite the page never gaining more than 342 members, I reveled in the local fandom and small-town popularity the group provided me, loving the attention I got from strangers who grew to know me as “the Espresso Royale guy.” While it was all just for fun, our devotion to Espresso Royale left me with the same question that inspired me to start the page in the first place: Why the hell do we spend so much time at this coffee shop? My peers and I must have clocked hundreds of hours each at ERSSL. Given the wide array of coffee shops in Ann Arbor, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Espresso Royale was not the greatest option in town. This is no fault of Espresso Royale. After all, how is one to compete with the likes of Literati Coffee or Roos Roast? Still, even without these elite alternatives around to serve as points of comparison, it’s not as if Espresso Royale was trying very hard. The coffee, service and seating, albeit
reliable, were all just okay. One day during the summer after I graduated, I went into ERSSL with some friends to work on job applications only to find the A/C was out. This memory is representative of many ERSSL experiences: Showing up only to find something massively uncomfortable, yet staying for at least an hour anyways. While I would never go on the record saying ERSSL was perfect, the popular Zucchini bread, strong cups of coffee and camaraderie kept me coming back. With so many other great cafes to choose from, why did so many of my peers consistently congregate at ERSSL? There are certainly some pragmatic reasons. Espresso Royale’s State Street location was relatively accessible, convenient and open late. Espresso Royale’s prices were not radically different from other options nearby, such as Starbucks, but they generally let you use their space without buying anything. Their openness to letting people loiter in addition to the charm and $2 Latte Wednesday deal — a tradition celebrated like a holiday in the Espresso Royale Facebook group — made it a sufficient college study spot. You could find several friends in ERSSL on Wednesday mornings even when, to our collective horror, the latte deal was raised to $2.50 Latte Wednesdays. I am certainly not saying Espresso Royale’s storewide policy was to let anyone loiter. Although baristas tended not to care about people loitering, or were just too busy to notice, I have still seen Espresso Royale staff ask homeless residents to leave. The best solution to the lack of places to go without spending money in a city as unaffordable as Ann Arbor — whether to study, see friends or simply take refuge from the rain — is increased investment in affordable housing and public community spaces, not private coffee shops.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com Max Lubell is a graduate of the University of Michigan and can be reached at maxlubell@gmail.com.
Arts
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Monday, August 31, 2020 — 13
‘Trinkets’: A show made ‘I Used to Go Here’ is a perfectly for Twitter different campus return KARI ANDERSON Daily Arts Writer
Photo provided by Netflix
JOSHUA THOMAS Daily Arts Writer
It might seem that if a Netflix executive wanted to get a grasp on what the kids were up to these days, all they would have to do is log on to Twitter — a pseudo soapbox of what new generations value and want to see change in — and soak it all in. Needless to say, Twitter is not the real world, but it occupies a very strange role in American society. When users start asking if crimes like
shoplifting can be normalized, they are (mostly) joking. But apparently no one told Netflix this, because they took gen-Z Twitter quips and ran with it for two seasons. “Trinkets” is just another addition to Netflix’s diverse catalogue of original comingof-age stories. The show centers on Elodie (Brianna Hildebrand, “Deadpool”), a socially-awkward lesbian junior in high school and her two girl friends — the stubborn, loud-mouthed Moe
(Kiana Madeira, “The Flash”) and the rich, popular Tabitha (Quintessa Swindell, “Euphoria”). Each character has their own semi-separate subplot revolving around love, typical of Netflix teen shows. Season two continues where the first left off: Moe struggles to be the girlfriend her lover Noah (Odiseas Georgiadis, “Sacred Lies”) wants.
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A return to campus is always a return to the familiar. We see the friends we’ve missed, the places we’ve been thinking about and the routine we’ve been craving. That said, to say that this year will be different is an understatement. It’s difficult right now to imagine the normal college experience. Imagine what returning to the University will feel like in a year, or five, or fifteen. Watching “I Used to Go Here” in this context was interesting. Kris Rey’s (“Unexpected”) indie flick, which was supposed to appear at this year’s South by Southwest before it got canceled, follows struggling writer Kate Conklin (Gillian Jacobs, “Community”) as she returns to her alma mater in Carbondale, IL. Kate’s crumbling life is immediately established — within the first few minutes, she talks to her
publishers about her canceled book tour while toting a box of invitations to her canceled wedding. Going back to her old university not only distracts her from her failing book sales, it draws her back into her college days. It’s clear that Kate’s alma mater awakens a deep nostalgia — she begins every conversation with “I used to,” as in “I used to live here,” “I used to dance in this room,” etc. She reunites with her old mentor, creative writing instructor David Kirkpatrick (Jermaine Clement, “What We Do in the Shadows”). She runs into old classmates, played by Jorma Taccone (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”) of The Lonely Island, and Kate Micucci (“The Little Hours”) in a short but memorable cameo. She visits her old house where she and her friends lived while they were students, and eventually befriends the kids who live there now. All throughout, she gives updates to her (very pregnant) friend
Laura (Zoë Chao, “Love Life”), who chats with her about all of their old college spots but also serves as a reminder: Kate is an adult who has been out of college for a long time. With the nostalgia comes what I can only describe as a regression in behavior. Within the first day of returning to college, Kate parties with the kids who live in her old house. Her realignment with David indicates a mentormentee relationship that is complicated at best and problematic at worst, and she finds herself jealous of April (Hannah Marks, “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”), David’s star student. She makes cringeworthy and juvenile choices, because something about a college campus reignites the impulses of her college days. But this is apparently what can happen when you come back to college.
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‘The Best Parts of Us’ celebrates our ties to the Earth TRINA PAL
Daily Arts Writer
Sally Cole-Misch dedicates her debut novel, “The Best Part Of Us,” to “every living thing.” An environmental communicator by profession, Cole-Misch refers to more than just humans or other animals. Her dedication encapsulates the entire natural world. Clusters of birch trees, steep rocky cliffs, vast lakes and bays — Cole-Misch recognizes that everything around us is
living, pulsing, with energies unique to its spirit. “The Best Part Of Us” is a captivating celebration of nature that pushes us to consider our connections to the Earth. ColeMisch tells her story through the eyes of Beth Llyndee, an adolescent girl who returns to her family’s island in the fictional Lake Wigwakobi every summer. Beth’s summers on her island are the most treasured part of her childhood, a place where she can hike on trails and swim in
waters she knows by heart. Lake Wigwakobi is a part of Beth, much more a home than her house in Ann Arbor. When Beth’s tight bond with nature suddenly shatters, she’s forced to choose between her family and her cherished island refuge. Cole-Misch’s strength lies in her formation of setting, writing about Lake Wigwakobi in an evocative and compelling way that immediately draws readers to the island. Upon first viewing of the lake, Beth “leaned over the
bow to watch the water change from aquamarine to indigo as the lake deepened, and to brilliant white when the bow broke its stillness and collected it into waves.” Similar descriptions accompany everything from picking blueberries on the island’s peak to watching the sky dance with northern lights on a summer night. “As Beth absorbs her view— the water, people, trees, rocks, and sky—her back lifts, her arms fall to her side, and her legs relax to cross at her ankles,” Cole Misch
writes. Her words paint the Earth as our ultimate refuge, a source of strength to draw from and live intimately within. “The Best Part Of Us” is a lighthearted read that shines in its simplicity. The novel’s plot isn’t exceptionally noteworthy or adventurous — the spotlight is instead on the natural world. “... some of us need to step outside what man creates and does to one another to find peace and clarity in the woods, water, and sky,” ColeMisch writes. Each character is
multilayered and built beautifully to show how variable human relationships to the environment can be. Beth thinks clearly when sitting on the forest floor surrounded by pine needles, while her mother thinks only of the island’s dangerous cliffs posing a threat to her family’s safety.
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The Michigan Daily’s Albums of the Summer Photo provided by Taylor Swift
DAILY MUSIC WRITERS Daily Arts Writer
Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher Phoebe Bridgers is the master of emotive storytelling. She didn’t reinvent or revolutionize the art of it though, and she’s not pretending that she has. “I think I’m pulling from a lot of different places, stealing from a lot of different people,” she said in an interview with NPR. Most overtly, she “steals” from idol Elliott Smith, his name all but mentioned on title track “Punisher.” Here, she details her self-proclaimed “obsession” for Smith and addresses the song directly to him, using his conventions. The opening lines, the chorus, her signature double tracking and detailed storytelling all hark back to his work. But Smith isn’t the only clear influence here— frequent collaborator and bandmate Conor Oberst has his share on the lyrics, and the pops of baroque instrumentation are reminiscent of Illinois-era Sufjan Stevens. However, Punisher isn’t about Bridgers’s obsessions and idols so much as it’s an honest exploration of where she finds inspiration for her music. Oftentimes, her lyrics read like quiet ruminations, unfurling to reveal intimate details that grapple with personal and interpersonal relationships at their most unsettling. Bridgers thumbtacks specific moments, ideations and people that have
impacted her and, in many ways, haunted her on this album. The lyrics get so intimate and vulnerable that they sometimes feel as though they shouldn’t make sense to anyone outside of that experience. There’s a moment on “Garden Song” I revisit often that goes: “The doctor put her hands over my liver / She told me my resentment’s getting smaller.” Lines like this have connotations that are poignant enough to stick around long after the song is over. Bridgers balances the very personal, sometimes emotionally scarring details of her lyrics with her soft, dreamy instrumentation and her gentle voice. I’ve spent nearly every day of summer in private conversation with Phoebe Bridgers’s Punisher. So much so, it soundtracks many memories for me. It’s not that complicated: The future is indecipherable most days, so, much like the album, my mind retreats to more private moments of the past. Diana Yassin — Daily Arts Writer Taylor Swift, folklore As a shameless Swiftie, folklore was the answer to my summer music prayers. It wasn’t just because one of my favorite artists had released an album I didn’t see coming, it was also because it arrived just when I needed it the most. A few days after its release, I ended a long-term relationship and wore “Cardigan” like a warm
blanket for the following weeks. Its imaginative, love-sick mood comforted me and reminded me of why young love is such a powerful thing. And that’s what Taylor does best — she romanticizes love in a way that makes us feel nostalgic for lost relationships and missed chances, even if we’ve never experienced them first-hand. Many critics say that folklore sounds a lot like Swift’s older music, but I have to disagree. While I can certainly see where they’re coming from — folklore is more tame than Swift’s previous releases Reputation and Lover — the album possesses an organic sound that we’ve never seen in Taylor’s work before. In a moment when the world is overwhelmed by all of the bad things going on, it’s nice to sit with Taylor’s soft acoustic songs and take a moment just to dream. folklore is a dreamy ode to love, filled with allusions to fairy tales and stories Swift came up with herself for the album. Perhaps the most striking part of folklore is that Taylor created the album from start to finish all while in isolation. The fact that she was able to write an entire album, record it, and then market it with a killer music video is impressive, but this project is also a sign of hope during these troubling times. Even while we’re apart from the people we love and longing for life to return to some form of normalcy, folklore reminds us that there’s still a space to create and dream.
Kaitlyn Fox — Daily Arts Writer Music has been a crutch for everyone during 2020. For a lot of us, we went back and listened to music from our childhood or adolescent years, or even dove head first into new types of music. This year has been rough for the music industry in countless, unimaginable ways. Inevitably, music persists, adapting to change. Taylor Swift has tapped into and thrived off of this change, capturing this summer of solitude with folklore. Swift never fails to surprise the world with her various eras, ever-changing from album to album. 2019’s Lover was both a fan favorite as well as a critical success. It was arguably Swift’s most masterful look into the beauty of love, which many know was inspired by her long term partner, Joe Alwyn. folklore was a bigger Swift surprise than usual, to say the least. One of the biggest departures from her last two albums, reputation and Lover, folklore is everything Taylor Swift hadn’t done yet. The album is simple and digestible. It has some of Swift’s most powerful lyrics and showcases her wildly impressive vocal range. The understated aesthetic of the album, from the simple cover to the lowercase stylization of the song titles, makes the beauty of each song stand out more. Swift has taken a step back from the spotlight on this album, leaving each song to
speak for itself without any of the drama or glitz of her 2017 and 2019 releases. The album itself is raw, but it really came out at the perfect time. A breakup-esque, escapist album in the middle of a pandemic is something the world needed. Who better to get it from than Swift, the girl who writes about love and heartbreak better than anyone else? Giselle Ciulla — Daily Arts Writer Deerhoof, Future Teenage Cave Artists If there was any band that could pull off a concept album about the youth population living through an absurdist’s post-apocalyptic world, it would be Deerhoof. The experimental rock group hailing from San Francisco has been going on for more than two decades at this point, and they aren’t getting any easier to define stylistically. With Future Teenage Cave Artists, they moved towards a more narrative approach. The brilliant songwriting and texture play is what really allows the concept to come alive. The atmosphere can only be described as a cross between an “Adventure Time” episode on acid and a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape. The guitar tones, of which there are numerous across the album, vary from downright face-melting to grotesquely playful. The drums are played in such a drunken haphazardness
that it leaves the listener either in awe of the talent or concerned for the drummer’s wellbeing. Add the iconic high pitched singing of Satomi Matsuzaki and what’s left is a final product that both excites and unnerves. Perhaps the best part about Future Teenage Cave Artists is that it isn’t reliant on its narrative to be great. While it’s true that the stylistic choices they made create a world, it isn’t totally obvious at first what that world is. The greatest indicator might be the title itself. After several listens, it slowly becomes more clear what the band is trying to communicate. As amazing as Deerhoof is at building a dystopian world that blurs the line between fun and nightmarish, they are just as great at crafting a collection of absurd rock and pop bangers. Honestly, there might not be a better summer for it. Drew Gadbois — Daily Arts Writer The Chicks, Gaslighter In the same manner as Beyonce’s Lemonade, Gaslighter is a chronological, sonically explorative case study of a broken relationship. The “girl who left the tights” on lead singer Natalie Maines’ boat, a recurring motif on the record, might as well be the countrified “Becky with the good hair.” title track.
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14 — Monday, August 31, 2020
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‘Folklore’ and intimate isolation Review: ‘How I’m Feeling Now’ KATIE BEEKMAN Daily Arts Writer
Not a month before quarantine started, my Taylor Swift™ snake ring snapped in half. After anxiously twisting it on and off my finger for nearly two years, the silvery metal fittingly relented in therapy. Bulky, obnoxious and glittery green — I had come to think of it as a secret signal (“I knew you were a Swiftie!”) and a conversation starter. “Oh,” I began when anyone asked me about it, “I’m a really big Taylor Swift fan.” So it’s hard to overstate the unconscionable joy and sheer terror I felt Thursday morning when I saw that Taylor’s eighth album, folklore, was going to be released in less than 24 hours. Pre-album release rituals out the window (listen to all previous albums in consecutive order, wear all possible Taylor merch during release week, etc., etc.), all I could do was take a few selfies with the sepia-toned folklore™ filter on Instagram — and wait. To anyone well-versed in Taylor’s meticulous release routine, folklore is an interruption. Her lead singles are expected to roll out three to four months in advance of each new album, which are released every two years in autumn, and
followed by a year-and-a-half long tour. Right on schedule, if it wasn’t for COVID-19, I would have been preparing to attend LoverFest this week, the accompanying festival to Taylor’s 2019 effort. But more explicitly, folklore is an interruption full stop. The pastel palette of Lover has been washed over with a melancholy gray. Sugary anthemic pop replaced with atmospheric strings, piano and acoustic guitar. Taylor has always been a poet, but with a subdued backdrop her lyrics have room to shine. While I’m not sure that one of the biggest pop stars in the world can, by definition, create something
“alternative” or “indie,” folklore is certainly the closest Taylor’s ever come. With the help of The National member, songwriter and producer Aaron Dessner, and longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, every song on folklore sounds like it could be made into a movie. The drama of love and loss is Taylor’s wheelhouse, but she’s never addressed these same themes with this kind of weight or maturity. Take “my tears ricochet” for example. Any Swiftie worth their salt knows the significance that its placement as “track five” holds — the fifth track of any Taylor album is its emotional compass. From her self-titled debut to 1989, they were the Big
Heartbreak Songs. reputation broke the mold with the hopeful “Delicate,” clueing fans in on the fact that she and her current boyfriend were in it for the long-haul. And on Lover, “The Archer” gives insight to Taylor’s struggle with loving herself. This time around, track five invites the listener to a funeral. Potentially Taylor’s. “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace” she admits, backed by ghoulish “oohs” and a gloomy keyboard, “ ‘cause when I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave.”
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Photo from Wikimedia Commons
DYLAN YONO Daily Arts Writer
COVID-19 has given the phrase “bedroom pop” a whole new meaning. High profile musicians across the world have flocked to video conferencing and streaming platforms like Zoom and Instagram Live to perform and chat with fans more than ever before, often from the comfort of their bedrooms. British singer and experimentalpop superstar Charli XCX took this ascending intimacy between artist and listener and cranked it up to the max. Her new record how i’m feeling now was recorded and produced at lightspeed — all from scratch over the course of a month — and Charli documented the process live all along the way. Fans were able to tune in as she wrote lyrics, filmed music videos and collaborated with pop music’s most cutting-edge producers, providing an intimate look into the synthesis of an electropop gem. The project began on April 6 when Charli announced it on a Zoom call. She simply said she was starting a new album from scratch, promised to open up the creative process to her fans and
set a release date just over a month away. And thus Charli and her fans embarked on a grand pop music experiment, every day between announcement and release being a part of the journey to how i’m feeling now. Charli modeled in “photoshoots” (pictures her boyfriend took on his phone in their bedroom) that were shared with and edited by countless artists to make alternate covers for each new single, ranging from professionally designed album covers to humble fanart. She live streamed with an eclectic bunch of musicians, celebrities and public figures including Paris Hilton and 100 gecs. And maybe most impressively, Charli stuck to the arbitrarily imminent finish line she set for herself: The polished, full-length LP released without delay on May 15. Making how i’m feeling now was not just a cute idea or an experiment — it was an unbelievable success. The final album is a weirdly 21st-century product of a pandemic, an unbelievably relevant concoction and nothing short of brilliant.
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The arts as a form of protest How and why we save the arts TRINA PAL
Daily Arts Writer
This piece is a part of a series on “Art during COVID,” an exploration of art forms to keep our idle minds creative during this pandemic. With many of us at home, our minds have ample time to wander, wonder and create. This series highlights accessible and immersive art forms to both produce and consume during the pandemic months and beyond. Summer graciously lends us picturesque lazy evenings, and I use them to create art. Sitting on my deck with a packet of oil pastels, or on my driveway with a palette of watercolors, is my way of winding down against the background of a warm summer twilight. I usually let my mind wander as I create, and recently I’ve been thinking about what exactly art is. Even dictionary definitions are ambiguous, and rightfully so: How can you define something that encompasses such a diverse range of personal expression? If I had to define it, I would settle for
“a form of expression that holds meaning to the creator and the viewer.” Under that label, the Black Lives Matter protests I’ve been attending fit squarely under the art umbrella. I attended two protests last week, one in my hometown of Canton and the other in neighboring Northville, towns that are 69.6 percent and 95.2 percent white respectively, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Despite their proximity to each other, both protests were different — I marched with a diverse crowd in Canton, but stared out into a sea of white in Northville. Regardless of demographics, in each protest I felt a pull to those I walked with — a sense of solidarity, as if the world was crumbling but we were creating something beautiful out of the ashes. Protests can be a form of communal art, often the most powerful of art forms. Community-oriented types of art, such as collaborative murals or community dialogues, can be a poignant way to create bonds within a neighborhood, and its
message is heard with more vigor than art created by one person. Everyone has a piece to add, a role to play, a story to tell. I love the conversations that arise when I create art with a friend or loved one sitting by my side. It seems natural to share such a gratifying experience with another person. Protests are making national headlines in part because of the sheer number of people turning out and the enormous geographic range they cover. I’ve lived in the suburbs of metroDetroit all of my pre-college life, and I’ve never seen protests like these before in my own hometown. I feel an undeniable connection with the strangers I march side by side with, even though I know next to nothing about them. Linked by invisible threads, protesters create a visible movement, a passionate piece of art that is now receiving international recognition. This intangible art can be turned into something concrete as well, such as the wall of protest art now surrounding the White House, but the intangible is
just as valuable. Activism isn’t unknown territory for me. I was raised by a family of political activists, and I’ve been campaigning for political causes around my hometown before I was old enough to vote. But today’s Black Lives Matter movement feels different to me. Half of my battle is getting someone to listen and be agitated enough to care about topics close to my heart, like voting or the environment. I struggle every November to get my friends to the polls, and many of my attempts to engage my friends politically end in frustration. Now, I finally feel the tide turning. We’re angry, but eager to channel this exasperation into change. The art of protesting allows us to express this frustration, and each local march adds to the larger, international, illustration. There’s still mountains of work ahead of us, but, as I see open ears and accepting hearts around me, in my mind a small part of the battle is already won.
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ZOE PHILLIPS Senior Arts Editor
It’s said every theatre is inhabited by at least one ghost, and contrary to legends propagated by Halloween, these ghosts do not like the dark. Thus, when the curtain falls and a theatre’s house empties, an employee will leave a light — a ghost light — to burn onstage until the performers return. Across the world, ghost lights have remained on and untouched for months. But the lives of performers continue offstage, each day adding pressure to find performance spaces on digital platforms. What happens when the ghost lights keep burning and we’re left with a stage wholly mediated by posts, shares, comments and likes? In late May, superstar ballerina Maria Kochetkova posted a ghostly photo of the Berliner Ensemble theatre on her Instagram: An aerial shot of what was supposed to be the audience’s thicket of red velvet seats was now an otherworldly scene of
deforestation. Every third or fourth seat had been unbolted and ripped from the ground, leaving socially distant pods of one and twoseat arrangements scattered across the f loor. The photo was originally posted on the Berliner’s Instagram account with a caption that translated to “the new normal,” but Kochetkova’s thoughts proved more striking: “Why are the theaters forced to do this,” she wrote, “and not the airlines?” The controversy began immediately: Some praised Kochetkova for making a political statement, others accused her of advocating for the violation of health codes. In reality, her question fell into neither category and the curiosity was well-founded. Like in theatres, airplane passengers sit in seats next to each other, wrestling over elbow room and breathing each other’s exhales.
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Arts
ARTS NOTEBOOK
BOOK REVIEW
On the intersection of sports and the arts
CULTURE NOTEBOOK
SEJJAD ALKHALBY Daily Arts Writer
KALAMAZOO PUBLIC LIBRARY
Review: ‘Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism and You’ LILLY PEARCE Daily Arts Writer
In April 2016, author, historian and professor Ibram X. Kendi published his National Book Award-winning “Stamped from the Beginning.” In what he subtitles “The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” Kendi’s exhaustive research chronicles the timeline of anti-Black racist ideas and their shifting power throughout American history. Kendi, one of America’s leading antiracist voices, was the youngestever winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2016. The same year, Jason Reynolds’s “Ghost” was nominated for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature. This prestigious celebration of the best literature in America is where the two men met. But, it wasn’t until March of this year, nearly four years later, that “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” was released — the remix of Kendi’s original book, reimagined by Reynolds. In an interview with “CBS This Morning,” Reynolds reveals that he initially declined Kendi’s request to write the remix: “I said no because I’m careful about tampering with things that I believe are sacred.” Yet, he finally agreed
Monday, August 31, 2020 — 15
when he realized “this work was bigger than the both of us, and it’s not about either one of us.” Reynolds’s remix is geared toward a younger audience, readers 12 and up. While Kendi is a scholar who holds a position as the Director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University, where he is a professor of history and international relations, Reynolds is a writer of books and poetry for young adults and middlegrade audiences. On his website, Reynolds declares that he plans to “not write boring books.” He goes on to say that “I know there are a lot of young people who hate reading… but they don’t actually hate books, they hate boredom” — which is one of the initial obstacles he faced with the remix. So Reynolds, who has said that young people don’t like to read history books, decided that his remix wasn’t a history book, “but a book about the present: here and now.” Like Kendi’s original version, Reynolds structures the book using five historical figures: Puritan minister Cotton Mather from the 17th century, founding father Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, writer and activist W. E. B. Du Bois and radical activist and writer Angela Davis. The division of the book
into five sections coincides with the five guides, spanning from the 1400s to modern day. While that encompasses over 600 years of history, Reynolds’s remix caps at 248 pages, half of Kendi’s 500-page original. Another important similarity in the remix is the three different definitions used to identify and describe the people explored: segregationists, assimilationists and antiracists. These three categories are repeated frequently throughout the book, helping us to understand the historical figures represented along with their motives and beliefs (which we often discover to be contradictory). Reynolds simplifies the definitions to help young readers grasp the complex material, calling segregationists “haters,” assimilationists as “the people who like you, but only with quotation marks” and antiracists as “the people who love you because you’re like you.” Later, when discussing figures like Abraham Lincoln, it was helpful to have these definitions as we approached his contradictory views — like that he wanted slavery gone, but didn’t think Black people should necessarily have equal rights: an assimilationist. An Read more online at
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Pop culture would have us believe that the Venn diagram between sports fans and art nerds is more or less two separate circles. As a humble representative of the tiny sliver in the middle, I want to introduce my friends on both sides to the world of their culturally prescribed adversary. There are some similarities between the two that few would expect to find — similarities that, I argue, allow us to view sport as art. Let’s set the scene. Our protagonist is NFL analyst Adam Schefter, who stakes his reputation on his straight-shooter, no-nonsense reporting. Schefter’s Twitter feed is the Associated Press of the NFL world; if he says something, it’s true. A few weeks ago, Schefter put on his best suit, set up his webcam in front of his wellstocked bookcase, and joined an ESPN broadcast held over Zoom, complete with all the aggressive rock music, flashy graphics and artificial urgency we’ve come to expect from the network. The occasion? The announcement of the order in which next season’s NFL games will be played in. One might think the order of games isn’t particularly interesting news, perhaps worthy of a short segment highlighting interesting matchups, but ESPN had other thoughts. They instead hosted a three-hour show breaking down each team’s schedule with such pressing commentary as “X team won’t be able to handle so many games in cold cities in December,” or, “Y rookie quarterback will be demoralized by difficult opponents early on.” This was stated with a baffling level of confidence, despite being months away from a season whose fate is already uncertain due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Schefter desperately tries to do the impossible and fill the home stretch of this painfully long production with anything resembling objective analysis. How did Schefter find himself
in this position? The ESPN show is an extreme example of the increasing role of narrative in professional sports. A three-hour show for a schedule release is a bit excessive, but the stories that the media constructs around games are a large part of what makes them so exciting. Each NFL team plays 16 regular-season games. Though the average broadcast is over three hours long, the ball is only in play for about 11 minutes per game. To make these short bursts of action feel consequential, the media sets up elaborate storylines in the hours and days leading up to games. They do so by creating characters out of athletes and framing games such that they follow a traditional narrative arc, putting their characters in situations where they have to overcome obstacles larger than the game itself. The week one matchup between the Saints and the Buccaneers, for instance, becomes not just a potentially good game, but a battle between veterans Drew Brees and Tom Brady to solidify their legacy as the best quarterback in the league and to push the limits of how many years they can play at a high level. Analysts will routinely praise the determination and perseverance required of Brees and Brady to play through their 40s. Each play thus carries far more weight, as it’s not just the game on the line, but also a whole host of abstract values and principles. In this light, analysts can be considered analogous to storytellers — more so than regular journalists, as they add far more narrative to their subject matter than a reporter covering a “real” news story. That is to say, the difference between the actual events and their portrayal in the media is greater in sports journalism than it is in other branches of journalism. Athletes are, in a sense, analogous to performers, coaches to directors, referees to stage managers and so on. The result is a coherent “show” so to speak, a circular system consisting of the game and the media’s commentary about the game. The tendency to
Bob Dylan in 2020: Love, violence in the end of times DYLAN YONO Daily Arts Writer
On Dec. 13, 1963, Bob Dylan was given the “Tom Paine Award” by the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee for his political activism. A visibly shaken, and likely drunk, Dylan said he accepted the award on behalf of “everybody that went down to Cuba,” then unleashed a doozy: “I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald … I saw some of myself in him.” The crowd booed him off the stage. A few days later, Dylan released a statement that read, in part, “If there’s violence in the times, then there must be violence in me.” * It’s 2020, and the times are more violent than ever. They have been for a while. Where has Bob Dylan been in the era of Donald Trump, mass shootings, climate crisis and COVID-19? Where’s the singer who marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. and wrote searing political anthems like “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” and “Only a Pawn in Their Game?” He was releasing Sinatra cover albums — three, to be exact — from 2015-2017. It
seemed, for those who hoped for a guiding message from rock’s poet laureate, that Dylan had decided to sit this one out. Yet, in June 2020, Bob Dylan is back with his first album of original music in almost a decade — Rough and Rowdy Ways. It’s a career-defining masterpiece, an album both bracingly current yet timeless in its compositional breadth, pulling from the best of Dylan’s work through the decades. Rough and Rowdy Ways has the enthralling auditory grit of 1997’s Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind, the socio-political layers of Highway 61 Revisited and the personal revelations of Blood on the Tracks. “Today and tomorrow, and yesterday too,” Dylan begins the album’s first song, “I Contain Multitudes.” “The flowers are dyin’, like all things do.” Dylan’s message is clear from the start: These are the end times. Yet after this apocalyptic pronouncement, he implores an unnamed woman to “Follow me close … I’ll lose my mind if you don’t come with me.” In Dylan’s world, where “Everything’s flowing, all at the same time,” one can “sleep with life and death in the same bed.” Basically, even if everyone’s going to die, they don’t have to die alone. In a whimsical, almost snide cadence, Dylan throws in a myriad of other personal complexities, but one line stands
out: “I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones and them British bad boys the Rolling Stones.” The lyric bristles at the ear, mainly because it’s so impenetrable. How is the 79-year-old Dylan, while a rock star like the Rolling Stones, like Anne Frank or Indiana Jones? Right from the start, Rough and Rowdy Ways is sonically striking. Dylan’s last original album, 2012’s Tempest, was chock-full of crashing drums, out-of-control guitars and a voice that sounded like Dylan had swallowed a gallon of rocks. Dylan has self-produced every one of his albums since 1997, and generally favors a raw, unfiltered performance by both himself and his tour band. This time, though, he’s meticulously crafted every aspect of the album. The instrumentation and his voice transform to reflect the subject matter of each song. “I Contain Multitudes” is almost completely acoustic, intimately shading the confessional lyrics as the listener is drawn in by Dylan’s soft voice. This comfort is ripped away on the second track, “False Prophet.” Amid crashing drums and smarmy guitar, Dylan continues the dark lamentations in a Tempest-style bark — “I know how it happened, I saw it begin. I opened my heart to the world, and the world caved in.” While he doesn’t yet reveal what
narrativize games can be found in other sports, but the NFL and its media apparatus have used these techniques the most. It pays off for them too. The NFL has for some time been the most watched sports league in the United States. One might argue that this phenomenon is just a way to sensationalize the game and increase profits. Though I’m inclined to agree, the narrativization of sport has nonetheless created the conditions by which sport can — and I think should — be considered art. Coinciding with the rise of narrativized sport, we’ve seen athletes and sports journalists broaden the scope of the issues that they’re willing to discuss. Whereas sports media in the past generally had a narrow focus on the sport itself (e.g. play-by-play recaps, statistics, trade and contract negotiations, etc.), it now doesn’t shy away players’ personalities, drama and even broader social issues that don’t directly relate to sports. This is mostly an organic process, without any motivation outside of generating more content for its own sake. People in sports media are probably not intentionally making sport like art, and if they are, it is only for the practical concern of making games more entertaining. There are, however, real stakes to these conversations. Sports media, especially NFL media, often uses rhetoric that praises athletes’ toughness, determination, grit and other similar attributes. This traditionally masculine rhetoric is often channelled to destructive ends. Athletes’ toughness is used to justify and downplay the serious health risks associated with playing a contact sport like football. Countless football players have suffered from CTE, and though the NFL has made some small gestures to player safety, the problem remains largely unaddressed. Violence by athletes is routinely swept under the rug.
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MUSIC NOTEBOOK
POETS.ORG
caused this apocalypse, Dylan asserts with haggard surety “I’m no false prophet, I just know what I know.” Things get weirder in “My Own Version of You,” a song backed by a mournful steel guitar straight out of a retro horror flick. Dylan details his plan to dig up “limbs and livers and brains and hearts” and “bring someone to life … someone who feels the way that I feel.” Again, love and death are bedmates. While Dylan, parroting Victor Frankenstein, swears to act with “decency and common sense … for the benefit of all mankind” with his creation, he also asks “What would Julius Caesar do?” Like Caesar, and all authoritarians, Dylan considers his actions, however inhumane, permissible since he believes himself to be working for the common good. Adding to this prescient commentary, Dylan
invites the listener to “Step right into the burning hell, where some of the best-known enemies of mankind dwell.” In these flames, Dylan somehow finds a way to sing a masterful love song, “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You.” “I’m sitting on my terrace, lost in the stars,” he begins. The Sinatra phase has paid off — Dylan’s voice hasn’t sounded this sharp in decades, a cavernous croon that soars with genuine affection. The soft instrumentation builds to a sublime electric guitar solo that’s one of the best moments on the album. There are also faint, almost imperceptible backing singers, one of which just might be Fiona Apple, whose soft choral drone gives the song a sense of deep melancholy. When Dylan sings, almost tearfully, “I don’t think I could bear to live
my life alone,” it’s as moving as anything from his love-sick opus Blood on the Tracks. Thankfully Dylan meets someone, telling this unnamed lover “I’ll lay down beside you when everyone’s gone.” In a time when reality itself seems to be falling apart, Dylan’s honesty is piercing. Then comes “Black Rider.” To the tune of a slithering acoustic guitar, Dylan criticizes an unnamed man for womanizing, violence and arrogance (all of which Dylan has displayed thus far in the album, making one wonder if the song is a soliloquy, critiquing Dylan’s own dark, masculine shades). Whoever the black rider is, Dylan tells the guy “You’ve been on the job too long,” before giving one the album’s most brutal, unexpected lines.
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16 — Monday, August 31, 2020
statement
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Going forward: an open letter to our readers
D
ear Readers, The Statement Magazine is a unique student-driven publication that is dedicated to providing long-form reporting, political and cultural commentary, along with lighthearted narratives. We are committed to providing accurate and thought-provoking content. As millions of
Americans across the country have taken to the streets to protest George Floyd’s murder and the ongoing racial inequalities that plague the country, we feel the need to honor our magazine’s origin. In light of the recent outbreaks of protests, our priorities have changed, and we will not be publishing the scheduled pieces for this week’s edition. We recognize that our role as a news publication has a serious responsibility to amplify the voices of those who have been silenced, and are dedicated to doing so in future editions. Our current cohort is made up of non-Black writers and editors, and thus we acknowledge that we will never personally understand the experiences that the Black community faces. We are committed to consistently checking our privilege both as individuals and as a team, as well as actively pursuing anti-racist efforts through unlearning of status quo. As contributors to a large publication, we fundamentally believe that silence is not the answer. We vow to take the time to educate ourselves on racism, injustice, and violence,
and dedicate ourselves to amplifying the voices of those who have been wrongfully silenced. We are frustrated and heartbroken by the brutal murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, as well as the numerous other innocent members of the Black community who have unrightfully been targeted by years of systemic racism. The current state of the world represents anger that is rooted not only in these murders but also centuries of violence, injustice, and oppression. We stand in solidarity with the Black community and the Black Lives Matter movement. We believe that everybody deserves to be treated with respect and to live without fear. We are determined to play a part in making a long-overdue change and fighting for what is right. We also want to voice our support for the journalists in the field covering the ongoing protests, and working to expose the horrific and cyclical injustices harming our country. Many are being silenced, mainly by the police, while risking their lives in an attempt to shed light on the developing situation. Still,
we want to acknowledge the media’s historic role in propagating biases against the Black community. In line with our mission and determination to provide a platform for student voices, our publication, as always, is accepting contributions. If you would like to submit a piece, or if you have suggestions for how The Statement can best serve the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor communities going forward, please contact our team at statement@michigandaily.com We encourage our readers to join us in educating ourselves through engaging in active conversations, checking our biases, holding friends and family accountable, diversifying knowledge, and leaning into the discomfort that may arise in doing so. We thank you for your continued support of The Statement Magazine. Sincerely, The 2020 Summer Statement Staff
Living through the culture war about trans and queer BY EMILY YANG, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR & MANAGING ARTS EDITOR
A
common misconception about “coming out” is that it represents a clean break, where there is a definitive moment when you’re in the closet and when you’re fully out in public. Most queer people will tell you that coming out is instead something you have to do over and over — that the people you will meet will most likely assume you’re straight until you inform them otherwise. This conception of coming out might be more true for trans people, especially trans women, than anyone else: It’s hard to avoid being “read” as trans. Even if I wanted to go “stealth” — that is, to pass as a cisgender woman 100% of the time — I probably couldn’t. Too much about me gives me away: my broad shoulders, my deep voice, the facial hair that’s difficult to hide without gaudy amounts of makeup. Transition is a slower, more tentative process than a lot of people think it is. I experimented for about a year with all sorts of variants on my name, pronouns and dress; even when I had pretty firmly decided on formal transition, I only told a few people about it at first. I wasn’t able to get on hormone replacement therapy and pursue electrolysis until nearly a year after that. For a long time, I was called “sir” by service workers, and acquaintances and friends of friends mostly called me by my deadname. There are a lot of potential stories I could extract from this process, but it mostly feels amorphous and tentative, even now. I’m still unsure what being trans is supposed to “mean.” A friend once asked me how I knew that I wanted to be a woman, and I wasn’t sure how to answer, or if I even had a good answer at all. Even if I can’t speak to what it might mean to be a woman in some metaphysical way, I can speak more confidently about being treated differently as a woman. A few months after starting hormones, I was walking home at about 2 a.m. from a party, and a man caught up to me. He walked alongside me for a block or so, asking if I would just stop to, “have a conversation.” He wanted to know if he could, “ask me a question.” I was kind of tipsy and kept demurring without saying very much, trying to make it clear from my body language that I wanted him to leave me alone. He eventually did. I had never experienced anything remotely like that, and while it wasn’t earth-shattering, something changed for me after. I’ve only had a small handful of things like this happen to me since then, but I still noticed that I felt a little less safe in public, and started to feel more nervous about walking somewhere on my own. This is normal, probably; it is the sort of harassment cis women are privy to and have experienced for much longer than I have. But I know that among trans women, I’m not even remotely the worst off. My parents didn’t reject me, I didn’t lose my job and I live in a place that is relatively accepting of people like
ILLUSTRATION BY CARA JHANG
me. I’m reminded of this every day when I log onto Twitter and see people crowdfunding transition expenses, food, housing and emergency medical care. Though I see the names of murdered trans women proliferate on social media, it seems like most cis people are generally unaware of how many of us find ourselves in sudden need of help, how often we find ourselves shut out of society. It seems like most people don’t know how precarious our lives are. The way trans people are talked about in public might give you a different idea. The amount of discourse around the issue of our existence in the media seems grotesquely out of proportion given that trans people amount to less than 1% of the U.S. population. We’ve become a sort of sticking point in the culture war, now that it’s becoming increasingly apparent that rights for cis white gays and lesbians have been, for the moment, asserted and accepted in public life. Conservatives who want to win mainstream appeal have found that trans people are an easier target than our gay counterparts. This strategy has been particularly effective in the UK, where the most virulent transphobia is now more or less mainstream. In the U.S., the mainstream media is less saturated with this sort of rhetoric, but we see legislative debates about trans access to bathrooms, locker rooms and school athletics. It’s frustrating to find oneself on the other end of this, especially given that trans people are not often allowed a seat at the media apparatus or the legislative debates to which we
are subject. When we are given a voice, the case for our continued existence is framed as one side of a “debate.” For most of us, the recourse we have is to continually check the news, watching as the specter made of our community is endlessly scrutinized. t’s been a weird couple of weeks to be trans. One of the more high-profile celebrities who have revealed themselves to be transphobic is the author J.K. Rowling, who posted a nearly 4,000 word essay on her website on June 10 titled “J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues.” The original title of the piece was “TERF Wars,” the acronym standing for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” I’ve always found the label of TERF to be a little dubious, because it allows transphobes to claim the legacy and historical cause of feminism, which J.K. Rowling at least purports to do. I’m reluctant to close-read the essay and pick it apart piece-by-piece. Other people have done it better, and moreover there’s nothing new in it. If you’ve spent any amount of time reading transphobic writing — which I have, probably to the detriment of my mental health — you’ve seen all these talking points before. Generally, the transphobic media landscape operates like this: No matter how banal or easily refuted their points are, you keep seeing them crop up in another article, another forum post, another tweet thread. Sometimes it feels like these points are repeated so endlessly with the hope that people will be convinced by them, and more to saturate the public nar-
I
rative around trans people’s existence. The more time trans people and our allies spend refuting these points, the more public airtime they get, and the more these same talking points filter into public consciousness in the form of truisms and “common sense.” And so, in summary: Rowling sees trans women as predatory men seeking access to “single sex spaces,” particularly bathrooms and locker rooms designated for women. Her appraisal of trans men is essentially that they are women, and therefore passive victims of patriarchy whose transitions represent false solutions to the ordinary kinds of alienation women suffer from in adolescence and early adulthood. Her deterministic, essentially binary thinking is apparent, even though she assures us that she doesn’t categorically hate trans people. She’s just against what she calls a “theory of gender identity” or “the current trans activism” that persuades people to transition when they should be doing something else. To back this up, she points to an (unsourced) statistic that “between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.” Her writing is couched in a peculiar appropriation of the language of concern. Of course, we are led to believe, Rowling is simply concerned about trans activism going too far, overstepping its rightful place. To give some idea of what she sees as the rightful place of trans activism, she at one point describes a trans woman friend whose transition she deems appropriate, and contrasts it with the current trans activism: “She went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass.” There’s a term that trans people used to use in the ‘70s and ‘80s known as “crash landing.” This referred to rejection from a gender identity clinic after this “rigorous process of evaluation.” The medical establishment basically told these trans people that they were out of luck, that they couldn’t live normal lives as women or men, and so they should just try to live with the gender they were born with. One wonders, in this light, how many fewer trans people would exist if Rowling’s “rigorous process” was the norm — if clinicians once again were the final arbiter of who could transition or not. The important thing here is that someone else is deciding for us. Generally, I don’t like those odds. I could go on and on but I’ve already given Rowling too much space. I’ve encountered these same ideas so many times that my reaction to her essay wasn’t even really one of anger. I just felt my heart sink a little bit at the sight of someone in such a position of influence making these kinds of statements.
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Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Monday, August 31, 2020 — 17
Players feel voices weren’t heard in postponement
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Fifth-year senior Carlo Kemp is frustrated by the Big Ten’s decision to cancel fall sports without consulting players.
ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
Carlo Kemp isn’t on social media, so he didn’t see the petition Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields circulated this week. Signed by 281,000 people as of Wednesday afternoon, it asks the Big Ten to reinstate the fall football season. Told about it, Kemp had a question. “Where is it?” “There’s people that want to play and there are people that are willing to accept or take on the risk we talked about being able to play,” Kemp, a fifth-year defensive tackle, said. “However many votes it has, it doesn’t matter, but it shows you that athletes want to play and people want to play football. Hearing and listening to that, I do think there’s a way this could have been done.” In a lot of ways, that sums up the criticism many players, parents and coaches have for the Big Ten right now. They want to play. And they feel their voices weren’t heard in the process.
The Big Ten isn’t standing alone in calling things off — the majority of the FBS has, and the FCS schedule has been reduced to a handful of guarantee games. But it is the only conference that’s suffered a complete, unmitigated public relations disaster because of its decision. The timing, just days after a conference-only schedule was released, was poor. The reasoning wasn’t explained clearly. It’s been over a week and it’s still unclear whether school presidents actually took a formal vote, and if so, what the count was — not just to the public, but to the conference’s own athletic directors. “If you’re going to affect someone’s livelihood, I think it’s really important that you hear from them,” Kemp said. “Personally, I do think we should’ve been heard. I think there were some great efforts to get that done. I think people did go to good lengths to hear from their student athletes. But it’s just the tip and you’re hoping that more can be done in the future.
“Do student athletes want to play, do they not want to play, and I think that should really influence the decision a little bit more. And then hearing how we feel right now is where I go back to this limbo that we’re in. The decision was made and we’re just expected to go along with it. A lot of things change once you do that, and I don’t think that was really taken into consideration how a lot of this stuff gets affected going forward.” Student-athletes aren’t paid, but no season means they won’t have a chance to show their skills to NFL teams. It means guys who weren’t on the NFL radar won’t get a chance to put themselves there. As Heisman winner and No. 1 overall pick Joe Burrow tweeted, that would have been him a year ago. When coach Jim Harbaugh broke the news to the team that the season had been postponed, some players cried, fifth-year senior tight end Nick Eubanks said. Others just thought about what’s next — a question that still doesn’t have an
How the Michigan men’s soccer team found out its season was over
answer. The Big Ten might try to play a spring season, but there’s been no plan developed — let alone released — as of yet. To the outside world, it looks like the conference didn’t plan for the possibility of a cancellation until it actually made the decision to cancel. Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Eubanks and Kemp both made the same points as Harbaugh did last week in a statement advocating for a fall season. Michigan followed the protocols, had low rates of infection and felt they could have continued to do so during the season. Whether it would have withstood the return of students to campus, and whether other schools would have been as successful, is unclear. They would have liked the chance to find out. “Honestly I think we could’ve did the same thing for our conference as well as other conferences,” Eubanks said. “It’s quite frustrating. A lot of guys had a lot riding on this season coming up. Just for it to get shut down, it really hurts a lot of teammates and players.” It hasn’t quite hit Kemp yet, the idea that while he’s on his couch during Saturdays this fall, he might be watching other college football games. The idea that guys might get a season while he doesn’t. He’s just trying to work on his game with the limitations in place, coming into Schembechler Hall and practicing whenever allowed. “I hope all the information is being distributed and talked about throughout the conferences, not just for football reasons, but for safety,” Kemp said. “If we’ve canceled, you want to make sure that the remaining players in the other three conferences are as safe, as well.”
Juwan Howard to stay at Michigan: ‘This is where my focus is’
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Juwan Howard confirmed his commitment to Michigan amid NBA rumors.
ABBY SNYDER
Daily Sports Writer
Michigan men’s basketball coach Juwan Howard said that he will stay at Michigan in a statement responding to a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that Howard has been gaining traction in NBA front offices as a potential head coaching candidate. “While I am flattered, and know it will more than likely happen again, I am not exploring, seeking or listening,” Howard said. “I am the head coach at the University of Michigan.” The NBA buzz surrounding Howard is not surprising; he interviewed for coaching positions with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Lakers before taking the job at Michigan. His strong 19-year stint as a player and successful transition into assistant coaching in the NBA both make him a strong candidate. This already-impressive resume was likely only bolstered in the eyes of front-office executives by
Michigan women’s soccer team devastated by canceled season
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
The Michigan men’s soccer team’s fall season was postponed last week due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
JARED GREENSPAN Daily Sports Writer
Tuesday morning marked a long-awaited return to normalcy for the Michigan men’s soccer team. Players and coaches took the pitch for the first full-team training session of the summer. Masks were worn and safety measures followed. Smiles were contagious. Even amid a particularly ominous backdrop — their fall season rumored to be teetering on the brink of cancellation — the team left practice upbeat. “Being together, it was very much missed,” coach Chaka Daley said. “Just being back, seeing each other, having a bit of banter, watching guys compete and play soccer, that’s what we’ve missed over the last five months.” At 5:30, the team gathered again. The morning’s joy had turned into melancholy, grins wiped away by long faces. Daley briefed his players on the afternoon’s news — due to the unrelenting COVID-19 pandemic, the Big Ten had postponed all fall sports. A hush descended over the team. The reality set in. One precious morning — that would be it. “It’s really hard right now,” senior forward Mohammed Zakyi said. “There’s so many uncertainties. I’m just trying to keep my head up and not sulk about all this.” The Big Ten’s decision leaves Zakyi and his teammates in limbo.
Question marks are pressing and copious. Answers, largely absent. “Seniors, we don’t even know if we have another year left,” Zakyi said. “I have so much stuff to figure out, with my eligibility, with my visa, with everything. What options come after this year? I aspire to go to the MLS, but I don’t know if there’s going to be a draft, if I’ll get to train here, if we’ll have a season. It’s just really hard.” Up until Tuesday’s coup de grace, the team remained optimistic that a fall season could safely take place. Closely adhering to University guidelines, players filtered back to campus the first week of August to prepare for the season. Players followed the 14-day pre-report risk assessment prior to their return and complied with the sixday resocilization period, which involved a series of tests and health screenings. Monday, the team met as one for the first time. Tuesday was meant to kickstart the first week of preparation for the fall slate. But with the pandemic still at large, the Big Ten decided that college athletics weren’t feasible. “Obviously, we’re disappointed,” Daley said. “No competitive student-athlete is going to take this news well. I do know that they all had a very good sense of realism, going into it understanding that we are in a global pandemic and that we’re fortunate just to be back. “We just didn’t know the timeliness of this, that it would’ve happened as quickly as it did when we started our preseason.
We were hopeful to have a little bit more time to see if things could work, but all the medical professionals, our University, our Athletic Department and the Big Ten made a decision that’s best for all the student-athletes.” The team will continue to meet on a regular basis, likely a mixture of in-person training, scheduled workouts and Zoom calls, Daley said. As per a potential season, all eyes turn toward the spring — a scenario not without its own issues. “I don’t know how it would work because there are so many other sports going on,” Zakyi said. “If you add all the fall sports to that, it could get pretty overwhelming.” The spring, though, presents itself as the only option for a season. Putting the uncertainty of the situation aside, Daley knows his team would embrace the idea. “If we can compete this academic year, I’m sure the student-athletes would welcome the challenge and enjoy it,” Daley said. “And there are challenges with everything now. Playing in the fall, playing in the spring. You look at the spring sports, they already lost a season last year. “Hopefully, we get through the other side of this in a positive way. And if we’re afforded the opportunity to play in the spring, our players will be motivated, hungry and ready to go.” “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Zakyi said. “But it would just be great to have the opportunity to play again.”
Howard’s impressive first year at Michigan. Howard showed level-headed – but still animated – leadership over the course of a season that saw junior forward and top scorer Isaiah Livers struggle with lingering injuries, a suspension of star senior point guard Zavier Simpson, and postseason cancellations due to the coronavirus. Despite these and other significant roadblocks, Howard led the Wolverines to a solid 19-12 overall record. But Howard’s decision to stay in Ann Arbor is also somewhat unsurprising. He was visibly emotional in the opening press conference when his hire was announced, especially when his old jersey was brought out. He has moved his family to the Ann Arbor area, put his younger children in schools in the area, and brought his son Jace onto the team with a scholarship. “This is where my focus is,” said Howard. “We have goals, dreams, and championships to win.”
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Michigan coach Jennifer Klein was excited about the Wolverines’ upcoming season before it was postponed.
LILY ISRAEL
Daily Sports Writer
The decision was highly anticipated and largely expected. But, nonetheless, it was met with heartbreak and devastation. Coming off one of the best seasons in recent history, the Michigan women’s soccer team was poised for another stellar season. But, like the rest of the college sports world, that chance at redemption will be put on hold until at least the spring as the Big Ten announced that all fall sports would be postponed. “I think what’s one of the things that has been the biggest disappointment is the excitement that this whole team had around this upcoming fall,” Michigan head coach Jennifer Klein said. “(We know) what this team would be able to accomplish and (we) really wanted to get out there and get tested and see if we could raise the level of our program.” Regardless, the team acknowledges that this is bigger than sports, however tough it is to accept the season’s postponement. No one has experienced anything of this magnitude before — it’s beyond even a season-ending injury. “Injuries are easier,” senior goalkeeper Hillary Beal said. “You go through them and there’s kind of an endpoint and you determine when you’re allowed to return to play. But this is (different) because you don’t know when there’s an end
(in) sight and you don’t know when you’re going to have the opportunity to take the field again and start competing.” The Wolverines had just finished their first week of practice back together after a lengthy off-season and the team picked up right where they left off last season in terms of competitiveness and togetherness with the team. “There was a lot of great energy and just appreciation for being back together as a team,” Klein said. “(We) really had optimism and hope that we would be able to pull a season off in the fall. ... But it just didn’t make sense for us to move forward in that way.” Now, with the season officially postponed, the focus will shift from preparing for competition to developing the freshman class, focusing on the future and keeping the morale of the team high. Klein sees this challenging time as a defining moment for the future of the program. Each player is affected in a different manner, but no group of players is affected as much as the senior class. The seniors recognize that they can use this time to develop the freshman class and, although they may have finished their careers, they can impact the future. Beal sees a silver lining in this unprecedented situation. “For now, we get to be around each other,” Beal said. “I think it’s more gratitude and just being thankful for the opportunities we get to have together as a team.” As a fall sport, Michigan is
used to jumping straight into the season without having much time to adjust to a new team. The new extended offseason has its pros and cons. “It does give us more time to prepare and to reach those goals,” sophomore forward Danielle Wolfe said. “Also having that much time you’re prone more to being relaxed and falling back. (But), this team, everyone has their eye on the prize and everyone knows what they want.” Every college athlete is going through a similar range of emotions, but Wolfe is especially proud to be a part of this team during this time. “Going through this together with them is like a blessing for all of us,” Wolfe said. “The good and bad, I think that’s a big part of being a part of this team.” For Klein, it is essential during this time that the team stay focused on what they have worked on in terms of accountability and owning your development. “Dealing with adversity, dealing with sudden change, all those things existed at different points of our life,” Klein said. “I think everybody has a time in their life where they look and the path in front of you isn’t clear, but you have to trust the process and trust the people around you that you’re going to eventually see the end. “(You have to) stay optimistic and positive that it will turn out. It might not look exactly like you thought it would, but it’s going to have to. There’s going to be something that is going to be positive at the end.”
Sports
18 — Monday, August 31, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘It’s going to be devastating’: In Ann Arbor, businesses stare down a fall without football
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Zingerman’s Delicatessen is expecting to lose $250,000 in catering revenue without football season.
THEO MACKIE
Managing Sports Editor
Nancy Eubanks’s job isn’t one that lends itself to social distancing. She’s the catering director for Zingerman’s Delicatessen, a job that like so many in Ann Arbor, is made possible by large groups of people. Especially every other Saturday in the fall. Eubanks has a routine on those Saturdays. She wakes up to the sound of the 400-member marching band practicing at Elbel Field, a few blocks away from her house. She traverses her way through throngs of tailgaters to the deli, where dozens of workers prepare upwards of 2,000 sandwiches, just for catering. Then she goes out to deliver those sandwiches to tailgates, some of them with hundreds
T
of fans, all preparing to watch a football game with 110,000 more. It’s a routine that makes the deli $250,000 in an average season. It’s also a coronavirus nightmare, which is why it won’t be happening this fall. That’s a decision Eubanks understands. She wants Ann Arbor to stay safe and knows that desire is incompatible with football. But for Zingerman’s, and countless other businesses in the region, the financial impact is catastrophic. According to a 2015 economic impact report performed by the Anderson Economic Group, the average Michigan football season brings roughly $82 million into the Ann Arbor economy. And while that’s only 0.16 percent of the Ann Arbor GDP, according to Stefan
Szymanski, a professor of economics at the University, it’s concentrated in a handful of industries. The overall economy, Szymanski says, is propped up by big money makers, like University tuition, the medical center and major technological and manufacturing companies. Those revenue streams won’t be affected much, if at all, by a lack of football season. For others, though — think hotels, restaurants and apparel shops — it’s an unmitigated disaster. “A lot of these businesses are facing absolutely catastrophic financial situations and many of these businesses are likely to go bust,” Szymanski said. “In the long term, these businesses or other businesses will return to these locations once the crisis is over. So we’ll come out of this one day. But
that’s not much consolation if your life savings are tied up in a business that’s going down the tubes now.” And that’s where the real problem lies for Ann Arbor. The pandemic, now in its sixth month, has already brought a “pain point” Diane Keller has not seen in her 18 years as the president of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Chamber of Commerce. Now, for many local businesses — and their workers — the loss of football serves as a calamitous cherry on top. “It’s going to be devastating,” Keller said, letting out a deep sigh. “And the thing is it’s going to affect certain levels and some types of businesses more than others.” Rishi Narayan owns one of those businesses. When he co-founded Underground Printing in 2001, it was exclusively a custom printing venture. And while that’s still its biggest revenue stream, the chain relies on college towns more than most. Of Underground Printing’s 24 brick-and-mortar stores, 21 are in towns with FBS football teams, including every Big Ten city except Columbus — out of principle. In Ann Arbor, its downtown location shuttered over half its floor space last year when a new MDen moved in next door. Now, the future of its remaining locations is in peril. Five months after originally shutting down, those locations have yet to resume full hours — a move that will be indefinitely delayed by lack of a football season. “On a face level, you would say, there’s (these) sales from gamedays,” Narayan said. “But on a much more macro level,
there’s an overall economy that’s spurred from football. It’s the local businesses that are gearing up and those businesses are customers of ours. “…Maybe one day, we’ll look back and try to quantify it. But it is unquantifiable.” The impact for Underground Printing is such that football season rose to the forefront of Narayan’s concerns back in April, as soon as it became apparent the pandemic wasn’t going to end anytime soon. For a while, he found comfort in the belief that there would be a season, even without fans. While that would have done little for the brick-and-mortar locations, custom printing still sees a boost during football season. Now, like Eubanks and so many others, he’s left scrambling again. “Things are constantly changing,” Narayan said. “… It’s really hard to make committed plans. So for a lot of businesses in the area, it’s all about having variable plans and plans that can flex pretty easily or having a lot of iterations of plans. Everyone’s got their own strategy.” On a larger scale, the persistent uncertainty terrifies Keller. Back in March, she says, each business concocted its own plan to stay afloat. But as the pandemic mows down each window of economic activity in its path — first graduation, then summer, now football season — those plans have become increasingly untenable. “Every business is different and I don’t know how all businesses are going to be able to pivot,” Keller said. “And so that’s why I’m worried
that we’re going to lose, or that we have lost, businesses that have been mainstays of our community that may not be able to make it through depending on how much longer this pandemic lasts.” With football’s cancelation comes the added devastation of lost tourism dollars. According to the AEG economic impact report, 87 percent of ticket holders at Michigan games come from outside Washtenaw County. And each dollar those visitors spend, Keller says, recirculates through the local economy 17 times. The effect of lost tourism is especially profound at hotels, such as Weber’s Boutique. Almost every night, hotels like Weber’s offer their rooms at steeply discounted rates. Those nights keep Weber’s afloat. Football weekends — complete with packed rooms, a Saturday tailgate and a pregame brunch buffet — are what have helped Weber’s thrive for 83 years. “If football came, it’d be great, we could start making money again,” Michael Weber, the company’s vice president, said. “But right now, we’re planning for the worst and just trying to stay afloat with all the regulations and lower demand that’s in place,” Weber, though, is among those who greeted the Big Ten’s decision to cancel fall sports with a glimmer of optimism. Football season without fans, he says, would have provided minimal benefit to the hotel. Now, he can hold out some hope, however faint it is. And maybe, just maybe, come March, Nancy Eubanks can hop in her truck across town, 2,000 sandwiches in tow, and make Ann Arbor smile again.
The stories we’ll miss without a fall season
here’s this moment I can’t get out of my head. I haven’t been able to for five months — not since midMarch, when COVID-19 shut down college sports. It’s Duncan Robinson, and he’s ETHAN standing in SEARS the far corner, poised behind the 3-point line. There’s a little over two minutes left and Michigan, in a packed maize and blue Staples Center, is close — so close — to the Final Four. From where I’m sitting, up in the auxiliary press box, up near the ceiling, you can see Robinson’s defender leave him, the ball come to him and then f loat towards the net. All those fans down there in maize and blue, they lose their collective minds. Robinson turns to the bench and yells. The game is all but over, and that weird, improbable run is going to go for another week on the sport’s biggest stage. In that singular moment back in March of 2018, it feels like the whole world is coalescing around Michigan basketball and every character on that team, Duncan Robinson chief among them. That singular moment, it’s why we love sports. Robinson’s story has been told again and again. You’ve almost certainly heard it before, but as a quick reminder we’ll rehash it here. Robinson started his college career playing Division III ball at Williams College. He transferred to Michigan and, after sitting a year, worked his way into the rotation as a 3-point specialist. In his senior year, he struggled and got replaced by Isaiah Livers, then a freshman, in Michigan’s starting lineup. He came off the bench the rest
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Without fall sports, we will miss out on the stories that sports bring, such as tight end Nick Eubanks playing in memory of his late mother.
of the year, found a key role on a team that went to the Final Four, and it seemed likely that the story would end there. Out of college, he signed a two-way contract with the Miami Heat and seemed consigned to basketball purgatory. Then he started hitting threes for them, too and now he’s in the NBA bubble, playing a key role on a playoff team. When his contract is up, he’s going to make a ton of money. That’s cool as hell. I’m not telling you this because you didn’t already know — this is probably the
100th time you’ve heard Robinson’s story. I’m talking about this now for the same reason I can’t get that snapshot out of my head: When I think about why it’s a shame the Big Ten postponed fall sports, I think about Duncan Robinson. Hold on a minute. Don’t laugh. I know Duncan Robinson plays a winter sport. I understand there’s better reasons to have sports or not, there’s more at play here than one guy’s human interest story. Playing sports right
We’re reaping what we sowed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t lament it.
now might not be the smartest Robinson and all the other thing. Having students back on stories that make sports worth campus — especially if, like a watching. lot of schools, your coronavirus Remember when Jordan mitigation plan amounts to a Poole hit the shot? If you’re shoulder shrug this far into this and an eye roll story, you prob— might not ably remember Think about all end well. where you were The Big sitting and who the athletes at Ten’s decision you were with. Michigan puts moral and I’ll never forget public health (and elsewhere), talking with obligations Duncan Robinall with their over financial son after Jordan own stories. gains and, Poole hit the all told, it’s shot. the right call. Robinson had The U.S. has fouled out of the done a terrible job at fighting game. He thought it’d be his the coronavirus. We’re reaplast college game, thought he’d ing what we sowed, but that been partially responsible for doesn’t mean we can’t lament a crushing loss. The look on it. So let’s get back to Duncan his face, the tone in his voice
when he spoke in the locker room. That was something to remember. “I don’t think I’ve ever cried tears of joy,” Robinson said that night. “But I was damn close.” Forget, for a minute, about the fact that Robinson is now an NBA player with an NBA career and all the amenities that come with it. Because right then, he was a college kid and the best thing he’d ever been involved in had just gotten improbably extended for another week. Now think about all the athletes at Michigan (and elsewhere), all with their own stories and hours of work and breakthroughs to get to where they are, and what they all must have been on Tuesday when the announcement came down. Think about Nick Blankenburg, a junior defenseman on the hockey team who plays every game for his grandfather, and Nick Granowicz, his teammate, who’s playing for his mom. Think about Mohammed Zakyi and Omar Farouk Osman, who started their soccer careers playing with paper bags and folded clothes, and now likely won’t have their senior years. Think about Paige Jones and all the people in New Bremen, Ohio watching her play volleyball for Michigan. Think about Maddie Nolan working her way back from a microfracture to play basketball for Michigan. Think about what they’re feeling now, after their fall seasons got canceled. Those that play in the winter can’t be feeling good about their chances of having a season either. The Big Ten made the right decision. But as long as we can acknowledge that, let’s also take a minute to appreciate all the stories, all the players, all the games and everything else we won’t get to have this year, because it’s all improbable, and at any moment it could all be over. Now, more than ever.
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Monday, August 31, 2020 — 19
Big Ten postpones fall sports season
MARISSA MCCLAIN/Daily
Following a presidents’ meeting, the Big Ten conference voted to postpone fall sports earlier this month.
KENT SCHWARTZ
Summer Managing Sports Editor
There may finally be some clarity surrounding college football. After a meeting on Tuesday morning, Big Ten Presidents and Chancellors voted to postpone fall sports. “The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward,” Big
Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said. “As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.” Men’s and women’s soccer and cross country, field hockey, volleyball and football will all be
affected by the decision. The unprecedented move comes in times dominated by confusion. The decision was made a day after the Big Ten refuted multiple reports that the college Presidents of the conference voted to cancel fall athletics over the weekend. Reports are that the PAC-12 will follow the Big Ten’s path and postpone its season, with hopes of a Spring season for the sports affected. “For the second time in five months, the Big Ten Conference
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made the unfortunate but necessary decision to postpone an athletic season in order to protect the health and well-being of our studentathletes, staff, and community members,” Michigan athletic directory Warde Manuel said in a release Tuesday. “As a result, all fall sport schedules have been postponed. This latest decision was reached after careful consideration and the grim knowledge that this pandemic continues to affect our country adversely. I am deeply saddened for our student-athletes and remain committed to our ongoing promise to provide them with a world-class education. We remain grateful to our global Michigan family for their unwavering support.” The decision to cancel contradicts the wishes of its players and coaches, who took to Twitter Sunday to tweet support for playing football. Jim Harbaugh on Monday released a statement in support of playing football, saying his program has been able to limit the spread of COVID-19. Nebraska coach Scott Frost said Nebraska will explore every option to play football, even if the Big Ten votes to cancel. “Our football team, our coaching staff, our support stadd in Schembechler Hall have all stepped up, followed every rule, and done everything in their power magnificently to give all the opportunity to compete,” Harbaugh’s new statement on Tuesday said. “I am extremely proud, thankful and appreciative
of our team and how they have conducted and represented our program and university.” A spokesperson for the football team told The Daily that the team will continue to hold voluntary practices, meetings and strength and conditioning for 20 hours per week, including practice on Tuesday. The statement released by athletic director Warde Manuel says that all athletic activities will be suspended immediately, including practices. The Daily was told that line will change on the announcement, as the Big Ten cleared Michigan to work under the 20-hour rule. University President Mark Schlissel released a statement on Twitter supporting the decision to postpone, in contrast with Harbaugh. “I fully support the difficult Big Ten decision to postpone fall athletics competition,” Schlissel wrote. “There are too many poorly understood health and safety concerns unique to intercollegiate athletics to move forward with practices and competition at present -- and the impact of extreme physical exertion on the health risk of COVID-19 has not been wellassessed. “I join athletic director Warde Manuel and everyone at Michigan Athletics in expressing my empathy to all who were looking forward to competing, coaching, supporting and cheering us on as members of the Wolverine family. I particularly feel badly for our student-athletes who gain so
much from participation in their sports and are such outstanding representatives of the university. We will work hard to return them safely to competition.” The delay gives both America and colleges time to contain the spread of the virus and adjust to the return of students, one of the biggest hurdles that still faces colleges trying to return safely and educate its students. In order for there to be sports, first the student population on campus must be healthy and the Big Ten needs to know the impact that students have on the numbers of COVID-19 cases. “While I know our decision today will be disappointing in many ways for our thousands of studentathletes and their families,” Warren said, “I am heartened and inspired by their resilience, their insightful and discerning thoughts, and their participation through our conversations to this point. Everyone associated with the Big Ten Conference and its member institutions is committed to getting everyone back to competition as soon as it is safe to do so.” Time, right now, is all the Big Ten has that can make the possibility of any sports a reality, something that schools across the country have been trying to get more of throughout the summer as the decision has been delayed time and time again. Now, it has until spring to make a the final decision. Nicholas Stoll and Emma Stein contributed to the reporting of this story.
20 — Monday, August 31, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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