ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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Faculty Senate considers vote of no confidence in Schlissel, admin Frustrated with fall reopening plans, professors float controversial motion DOMINICK SOKOTOFF Daily Staff Reporter
Courtesy of John Grieve Student ambassadors patrol campus with a DPSS officer on August 25.
Police officers will not patrol campus with U-M ambassadors
Change to program comes in response to community concerns; sworn or armed members of law enforcement will not walk with University students and staff CLAIRE HAO
Daily News Editor
Sworn or armed police officers will not walk and ride around campus to regulate student behavior in an “adjusted” Michigan Ambassadors program, the University of Michigan confirmed on Twitter
Sunday afternoon. The change came in response to “community concerns,” according to the announcement. The University’s initiative to enforce COVID-19-related regulations still includes some law enforcement involvement. The ambassadors are still not expected to “directly engage
BUSINESS
Ex-worker says he was fired over COVID-19
Former Tomukun waiter files lawsuit claiming he wrongfully lost his job for contracting coronavirus ISABELLA PREISSLE Daily Staff Reporter
Nicholas Prada, a former employee at Tomukun Noodle Bar on East Liberty Street, filed a suit in a U.S. district court Friday claiming he was wrongfully terminated after contracting COVID-19 in late June. According to the lawsuit, Prada and his attorney, Noah Hurwitz, allege that Tomukun’s actions violate numerous federal acts, including the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and Family Medical Leave Act. In an email to The Daily, Hurwitz said employers should not retaliate against employees in order to protect their public image. Instead, they should act with compassion and understanding for employees who may get sick, Hurwitz said. “It appears that Tomukun lost sight of its legal obligations to employees and punished my client for contracting COVID-19 when it wouldn’t put him back on the schedule after he recovered,” Hurwitz wrote. “While we are all tasked with being responsible and doing our best to avoid spread of the virus, businesses should not attempt to pass judgment on employees who fall ill.” See LAWSUIT, Page 3
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with large parties or situations where their personal safety may be at risk.” Addresses reported for repeat violations will be also dealt with by police, according to updated information on the University’s COVID-19 website. “As was the case prior to the Ambassador program, sworn officers from UMPD and AAPD
will still respond to emergency calls or other situations not appropriate for Ambassador involvement,” the website reads. The Michigan Ambassadors — University students and staff who walk around campus reminding students to wear See AMBASSADORS, Page 3
University of Michigan faculty members are considering a vote of no confidence in the administration due to the University’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and fall reopening plan, faculty members said at an emergency Faculty Senate meeting Friday. The meeting came a few days after a July 31 memo to University President Mark Schlissel from the President’s Advisory COVID19 Committee on Ethics and Privacy was inadvertently made public and began circulating online, sparking criticism toward University administration. The memo explicitly warned against the University’s reopening plan, and noted that the current plan would hit vulnerable populations the hardest. A successful vote of no
From the Editor: The Michigan Daily’s plan for publishing this fall
As long as students are living on campus, the paper will print once a week ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Editor in Chief
After almost six months of no physical paper, The Michigan Daily will be printing once a week this fall on Wednesdays as long as students are living on campus. In March, The Daily pivoted with the rest of the world to battle a global pandemic. We halted our print edition after March 13 as students fled campus, but we doubled down on our online presence and saw a growing digital audience. We worked hard to bring the University and Ann Arbor communities the news over the summer, too. The University has brought students back to campus for
an in-residence fall semester. However, COVID-19 is still very much a threat. Most classes are being offered remotely and University buildings will be at reduced capacity to allow for social distancing. Due to less campus and city circulation, as well the need for financial responsibility, The Daily is printing once a week rather than five days. We will also print special editions this semester — be sure to pick up a print copy of our Welcome Back issue on Monday, Aug. 31. We will not, however, continue creating digital PDF papers without a print counterpart on our issuu as we did in March and throughout the summer. None of this will impact our
core mission and responsibility: to inform our readers and to hold the people with power at this University and in Washtenaw County accountable. These past few weeks, we’ve reported tirelessly on various issues with the University’s reopening, from unenforced housing precautions to concerns about testing plans. Not to mention our summer staff’s reporting on racial justice protests, WilmerHale’s report on former Provost Martin Philbert’s sexual misconduct and The Big Ten’s football postponement. This coverage will continue. Check our website, michigandaily.com, for our latest print and multimedia content. Follow us on our Instagram,
Twitter and Facebook. Our handle on all platforms is @ michigandaily. Download our app. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, The Michigan Daily. Listen to our four podcasts: The Daily Weekly, Arts Interrupted, Pass the MiC and Highway to Hail. We have a new weekly newsletter, The Michigan Daily Weekly Roundup, that launches this Thursday. Subscribe here to have each week’s most pressing stories sent straight to your inbox. University students are automatically subscribed. Thank you to our readers for your support. You can always reach out to us with news tips or letters to the editor. We greatly appreciate your feedback.
confidence would mean the Faculty Senate no longer believes in University leadership’s ability to execute its role, which in this case applies to the University’s fall reopening plan, according to a copy of the motion obtained by The Daily. The virtual emergency meeting was held in response to an Aug. 23 petition signed by more than 200 University faculty members. All faculty hold membership in the senate. Faculty expressed frustration at the meeting over the University’s plans for the fall semester, which begins Monday. According to Faculty Senate Rule 4(1), a meeting can be organized by means of a petition signed by 50 or more Senate members. The Faculty Senate Office told The Daily that they believe this is the first time such a meeting has been called since the rule was established in 2011. See VOTE, Page 3
RESEARCH
Limits put undergrad research at ‘U’ on hold
Restrictions intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus impact in-person opportunities VARSHA VEDAPUDI Daily Staff Reporter
With classes for the fall term starting Monday, research labs are set to welcome students back as well. However, in adherence to social distancing guidelines, the University of Michigan Office of Research has limited research capacity to only 45 percent density during shifts, causing all undergraduate students except seniors to miss out on in-person research experience this semester. Though the University opened limited research over the summer, in-person undergraduate research was deemed “non-essential” and did not resume. Based on the latest weekly research reengagement update from the Office of Research, published Thursday, undergraduate students can only rejoin labs in which they “already have experience working with the same research team” and “may not be left alone in research spaces.”
ALEC COHEN/Daily After almost six months of no physical paper, The Michigan Daily will be printing once a week this fall on Wednesdays as long as students are living on campus.
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INDEX
Vol. CXXIX, No. 128 ©2019 The Michigan Daily
NEWS.........................2 MIC............................6 OPINION.....................7
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The Michigan Daily shares data collected from a demographic survey conducted over the summer of 2020.
An internal survey of The Michigan Daily’s staff members offers data on the publication as well as a view of the barriers to access in the newsroom CLAIRE HAO & NOOR MOUGHNI Daily News Editor & MiC Columnist
The Michigan Daily conducted a demographics survey during the summer of 2020 to gain a better understanding of the barriers to access in our newsroom. After keeping the anonymous survey open for one month, 282 staffers responded to the survey out of 488 staffers total in both the Editorial and Business halves of The Daily, a 57.8 percent response rate. The recently formed Access and Inclusion Committee created a report summarizing the findings. We created another survey asking anyone in the newsroom to share their thoughts on the results, anonymously if preferred, and have included all responses. The 2020 Demographics Survey largely confirmed that our newsroom is a majority rich, white, hetero and cis organization much like the rest of the University of Michigan. Latinx, first-gen and low-income students in particular are underrepresented at The Michigan Daily compared to the general campus population. While we acknowledge that this data is not entirely reflective of our newsroom because of nonresponse, the numbers still hold great value. The Daily has clear socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality disparities. Acknowledging this, The Access and Inclusion committee and the newsroom as a whole can move forward prioritizing diversity and inclusion. The Daily created two Access and Inclusion co-chair positions in 2018 for students outside of the newsroom to help with conflict resolution and diversity, equity and inclusion work. This summer, Access and Inclusion has expanded to a committee of four students, and we’re looking to hire one more. We are committed to ensuring that The Daily grows more representative of all identities on our campus. Without this, we know our newsroom and our coverage suffer because we do not accurately reflect the communities that we serve. Our purpose is not to fill some diversity quota or to uphold an appearance of diversity. Rather, we are committed to making sure that people from all backgrounds and experiences, especially those with marginalized backgrounds, feel welcomed at The Daily and feel encouraged to make their voices heard. Income Level and Student Status The Daily does not pay its staffers much for their work, and the survey reveals that we are not accessible to lower-income students as a result. Here are some of the most telling statistics: • There are three times more staffers from families making $200,000 per year than staffers from families making less than $75,000 per year.
•
Though 14.8 percent of undergraduates at the University come from families making less than $50,000, only 6.8 percent of The Daily’s staffers do. • Only 16 staffers who responded to the survey said they were work-study students. One staffer said he wants to know if the socioeconomic divide is even more apparent among editors at The Daily. He noted that editors have to commit large amounts of time to the newspaper before and during their tenure, which is less possible for lower-income students. Though the survey didn’t ask for the positions of those who responded, we believe an even greater stratification of income is very likely among editors based on the nature of editor roles. LSA senior Aria Gerson, a sportswriter on the football beat, said she “grew up solidly middle class, so I was pretty shocked to see that 70 percent of The Daily staff is richer than I am.” Similarly, LSA sophomore Haley Johnson, an assistant social media editor, said, “As a low income student, I was really shocked by the income distribution of Daily staffers. I hope we can work to get better class representation on our staff.” One thing The Daily should do is create an easily accessible list of Daily scholarships, third-party journalism scholarships and paid internship opportunities, Gerson said. Though The Daily sends these resources sporadically, Gerson said she’s largely had to find them on her own. 16.3 percent chose not to answer any income-level related questions. Race and Ethnicity The majority of staffers in the newsroom are white. Asian staffers, while still a minority in the newsroom, make up a much greater percentage of the newsroom than all other POC staffers combined. Gerson suggested that The Daily could work with other campus outlets to establish student chapters of certain national journalism
associations, such as Association for Women in Sports Media, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. “This would likely help recruit more diverse talent because students could see more people in this industry who looked like them and those orgs also provide tons of internship and scholarship opportunities,” Gerson said. Gender and Sexuality LSA junior Alex Harring, a senior news editor, said The Daily should consider creating employee resources groups, which exist at many professional outlets. He pointed to NBC, which has a Black Employee Network, OUT at NBC, Women at NBC. “(It’s a) great way to build community and have a space to share ideas and concerns,” Harring said. “Could be as simple as a pizza dinner once a month or something like that!” The Daily: Post-COVID-19 and the Death of George Floyd About 9 percent of those who responded to the survey or their immediate families have contracted
the coronavirus. Out of these 9 percent, about 16 percent said they or their family member could not access adequate medical care. Only 27 percent of staffers said they thought about their race on a daily basis prior to George Floyd’s death. That number shot up to 81.9 percent after George Floyd’s death. Other All 50 states and four countries outside of the United States (Chile, Hong Kong, India and Taiwan) are represented at The Daily. The Daily has a similar in-state vs. outof-state proportion as the general undergraduate population. The large majority of students (70.5 percent) are in the School of Literature, Science and the Arts. Notably, a significant proportion of staffers are new. Close to 60 percent have been at
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From the A&I Committee: A look at TMD’s Demographic Report The Daily for less than one year, while a bit more than a quarter of the staffers have been at The Daily for 4 semesters or more. Next Steps With this information, the Access and Inclusion committee has been taking the following actions to ensure our goals are upheld. First, we have been communicating with several other newsrooms who have succeeded in their inclusion efforts in attempts to emulate their achievements and learn from their mistakes. In the future, we will continue conducting more demographic surveys, publishing the results and remaining transparent with our progress. In these surveys, Art and Design senior Emily Considine, editorial page editor, said she hopes to see more section-specific data, “if only to help recruitment committees and section heads understand the ways in which our specific sections need to improve in attracting and representing the rest of the University.” This year’s Access and Inclusion committee chose not to ask staffers for their section. We thought some students might worry this information could be identifying, especially if there is only one person of a certain identity in a given section — which points to our newsroom’s lack of diversity. However, we will make this an optional question in the future, allowing for a deeper understanding of our demographics so that we can implement more effective recruiting strategies. In addition, we are in the process of planning a racial bias and reporting sensitivity workshop, and our hope is to make similar workshops routine every semester. This workshop will be mandatory for all students on staff. We will also compile past resources together to create streamlined guides on inclusive style and how to cover communities that one may not be a part of. Lastly, we want to build stronger and more trusting relations with communities who have historically not had such relations with journalists. The News section has reached out and met with several prominent student groups about their thoughts on our past coverage and how we can work together in the future. We encourage members of our community to hold us accountable to make all the changes listed above become reality. We want to ensure marginalized voices on our campus are heard and that we end the historical trend of The Daily being a predominantly white, cis, hetero and rich institution. To provide any feedback, you can reach us at the following email addresses: • A&I Chair Dannah Wilson (dannahew@umich.edu) • A&I Committee Member Noor Moughni (nmoughni@umich.edu) • A&I Committee Member Claire Hao (cmhao@ umich.edu)
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AMBASSADORS From Page 1
MADDIE FOX/Daily Students, faculty and community members gather on the Diag to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake and to advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement Saturday afternoon.
‘Don’t forget their names’: Hundreds rally for justice Protesters gather on Diag to call out systemic racism after police shoot and paralyze Jacob Blake in Wisconsin CALDER LEWIS Daily Staff Reporter
Police officers followed Jermaine Johnston down the Hatcher Graduate Library steps on a finals week night more than 20 years ago for no reason. He said he was used to it — being treated as less intelligent during office hours, asked what sport he played on the first day of classes and met with silence when he walked into an all-white room. “I had a bookbag on my back, a University of Michigan shirt, University of Michigan hat, proud to be in the place that didn’t always accept me,” Johnston. Johnston stood on those same steps on the Diag Saturday morning, addressing a crowd of several hundred protesting for racial justice after police officers in Wisconsin shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Johnston, now a minister and father to a University student, said he was getting into “good trouble.” “I refuse for my children to grow up the way I grew up, to continue to have these same arguments, these same discussions, 50 years from now,” Johnston told The Daily. “I want to close my eyes one day and know
VOTE From Page 1 The Faculty Senate Office confirmed the meeting was the highest attended on record with more than 550 attendees. A faculty member confirmed to The Daily that a motion of no confidence in the administration’s reopening plan was submitted to be considered. Other faculty members told The Daily there appeared to be support for holding a vote of no confidence during a portion of the meeting the press was not invited to attend. Information Professor Kentaro Toyama, a SACUA Representative and organizer of recent demonstrations against reopening campus, asked SACUA to consider a vote on a motion of no confidence in either the University administration or its reopening plans. “In my four years in faculty governance, I haven’t yet seen the administration give an inch on key issues, though they are very good at providing the impression that they care about our opinions. I don’t think this is governance, this is dictatorship,” Toyama said. “And, if that seems a little bit alarmist, it’s because I really believe we are in a moment in which we have to do something a little bit more than make polite requests.” Faculty express concerns over fall semester
we really had progress in this country.” University students, community members and elected officials of all ages and races took part in speeches on racial inequality on the Diag before marching through downtown Ann Arbor in an event organized by the non-profit Survivors Speak. Trische Duckworth, executive director of Survivors Speak, wore a shirt with seven bullet holes painted on the back to signify the seven times white police officers shot Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. “We never pose a threat,” Duckworth said. “You know what the threat is? It’s the color of our skin.” Duckworth and Tracy Van den Bergh, a candidate for Washtenaw Circuit Court judge, read aloud a list of dozens of people killed by police in recent years, including Tamir Rice and Eric Gardner. “Don’t forget their names,” Van den Bergh said. She implored the mostly white audience to challenge their friends and family who respond “all lives matter” to the Black Lives Matter movement. “If all lives really matter, there would not be the disproportionate murder of Black brothers and sisters in our streets, and so many people would be alive today,” Van den Bergh said.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich, said there is an “uncomfortable” reality in America. “If you are a Black man, you are treated differently than a white man,” Dingell said. Eli Savit, Democratic candidate for Washtenaw County prosecutor, held up a pocket knife he found on the floor of his car a few days ago and compared it to the knife police have said they found under the floorboard of Blake’s car at the time of the shooting. Savit said his pocket knife had probably been on the floor for months before he realized it. “I never once thought that because of the presence of that knife in my car that I would be dehumanized, that I would be presumed to be dangerous,” Savit said. “That is the systemic racism that we’re talking about.” After remarks from Nick Roumel, candidate for Washtenaw County Circuit Judge, and Krystal Dupree, candidate for Ann Arbor School Board of Education, as well as other local activists, protesters left the Diag to march. They walked down South State Street chanting “Black lives matter.”
Physics professor Dante Amidei echoed Toyama’s sentiment that the administration hasn’t done a sufficient job of taking into account faculty input. Amidei recently sent two petitions to the University administration that called for a more robust universal testing program and to which he said received no response from the administration. “What we have heard (from the University) is an ad-hoc argument to discredit the importance of universal testing,” Amidei said. “We have never seen a model or an analysis that predicts the risk levels for this U-M plan. Maybe there isn’t one and we are flying blind. Or maybe there is one and we wouldn’t like the answer.” Amidei said he wished the University would follow the lead of other peer institutions in using the pandemic as an opportunity to pioneer containment of illness. He said the University has no strategy, only “downstream crisis control.” University spokesperson Kim Broekhuizen emphasized that the University plans on increasing testing efforts in an email to The Daily. “Surveillance testing asymptomatic students, faculty and staff will occur each week. We will launch registration for our program next week and anticipate ramping up testing to approximately 3,000 individuals weekly by the end
of September,” Broekhuizen wrote. “Additional testing efforts include 1500 tests for students moving into affiliated fraternity and sorority houses.” Broekhuizen also said that prior to arrival on campus, 91 percent of undergraduates in on-campus housing have been tested, while the remainder are currently being tested. This means that of approximately 8,300 students living in dorms, around 750 are waiting for their COVID-19 test results. Engineering professor Michael Atzmon voiced his concern for compliance with University guidelines, after complaints of housing precautions going unenforced during dormitory move-in and reports of off-campus parties that potentially violate public health mandates. Atzmon criticized the University’s tweet to dismiss gatherings of 26, but approve those of 25, in accordance with Washtenaw County guidelines. “On Aug. 16, President Schlissel said he was a little insulted by the suggestion that our students will not act responsibly,” Atzmon said, referring to comments Schlissel made in an interview with The Daily. “So I guess President Schlissel finds reality offensive. Many of us have seen images of our students having a great time in recent days in large groups and without masks. Now there’s even a U of M tweet telling them to have parties with 25 people.” Atzmon said even if students
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masks and maintain appropriate distance from one another — are supposed to help students adhere to public health guidelines and manage off-campus student gatherings. Since its implementation on Aug. 20, the program has faced pushback both for its perceived lack of enforcement measures and for working with police officers. Now, unarmed DPSS security and administrative staff will be “provided to support” the ambassadors, according to the website. Prior to this reversal, police officers from the Ann Arbor Police Department and the University’s Division of Public Safety & Security patrolled with the ambassadors. It is unclear if the officers who previously accompanied them were armed. The University’s Office of Public Affairs did not respond immediately to request for comment. Critics said the program seemed tone-deaf after a summer of protests against police brutality. Music, Theatre & Dance senior Jack Williams, the chaplain of Alpha Phi Alpha, a Black fraternity on campus, previously told The Daily he was worried about the program because AAPD has a history of over-policing Black fraternities. “Let’s say we’re not having a party, and it’s just a small kickback, not a lot of people, but that the police will be called on us still,” Williams said. “That’s
LAWSUIT From Page 3 The lawsuit claims that Trifecta Productions, LLC, the company that owns Tomukun, did not respect Prada’s rights as an essential employee during the pandemic and fired him only after learning that he may have contracted COVID-19 at a party he attended earlier that month. It also claims that Prada was refused payment in the weeks he was out of work because of his illness. “As a frontline essential worker, Mr. Prada risked his health for the benefit of the restaurant and its customers,” the lawsuit reads. “After refusing to pay him legally required sick leave compensation, Tomukun Noodle Bar unceremoniously fired Mr. Prada after interrogating him regarding the origin of his illness and telling him that ‘for PR
and faculty follow University guidelines, he still believes there is a high level of risk related to in-person classes. Lisa Disch, the U-M political science professor who was recently elected to Ann Arbor City Council for Ward 1, said the risk of bringing students back to campus could impact the local community. Disch said the University’s plans impose a high level of risk on the community, so moving to an entirely remote format would be a better avenue to ensure public safety. “We live in the most segregated county in Michigan, and the pandemic makes us one community in the worst way. It does cross neighborhood lines and it does cross economic strata,” Disch said. “It will have the most devastating impact on county residents who are the most vulnerable. They are essential workers whose paychecks do not reflect the magnitude of the risks they take for this community.” Meeting comes on heels of leaked memo At the meeting, comparative literature professor Silke-Maria Weineck brought up concerns about the COVID-19 Ethics and Privacy Committee’s July 31 memo to President Schlissel. She said the memo highlights how unconfident community members feel about the current plan for reopening campus. “Our main point here is not to advocate for a specific solution, but rather to underscore, with urgency, our
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 3 my concern, and I think a lot of Black students at Michigan share that same concern.” The ambassadors are currently walking around campus and in off-campus residential neighborhoods every day from noon to midnight. After Sunday night, the ambassadors will work only Thursday through Saturday every week for the rest of the semester. Students are required to wear face masks while on campus and to stay six feet apart from those outside their household. Gatherings indoors are limited to 10 people, while outdoor events are limited to 25. The University’s Twitter account garnered criticism for using a Drake meme to signal that gatherings of 25 people are allowed while discouraging larger groups. All students were given the choice to opt into a voluntary address registry at the beginning of the year. When a concern is reported through the COVID19 hotline, the ambassadors will answer the hotline and text or call those responsible. “Students can receive updates from the ambassador program if a concern about their address surfaces before midnight during operating days of the program, giving them the opportunity to address the situation without police involvement as the first response,” the website reads. If a phone number is not available for that address, ambassadors will respond to the location of the reported concern. Prior to the update, the University has said the hotline will directly forward to DPSS
reasons it would be best for you not to come back.’” Prada began working at Tomukun in January 2018 and served as a waiter and assistant manager. According to the lawsuit, he reported feeling sick to his manager on June 24 and stayed home from work, later testing positive for COVID-19 on June 27. Prada was ordered by the Washtenaw County Health Department to quarantine for two weeks in his home following his positive test result. The lawsuit said that once Prada completed his twoweek quarantine, he had a 22-minute conversation about returning to work with Yong Hum Yon, Tomukun’s owner. During this call, Yon allegedly said there was social media evidence of Prada at parties and asked him not to return to work. Prada was fired on July 11. Yon did not respond to request for comment.
concern that current plans for Fall 2020 will not meet the reasonable standard for safety recommended by our report, that good alternatives exist, and that it is not too late to pursue them,” Weineck quoted from the memo during the meeting. Gilbert Omenn, chair of the COVID-19 Ethics and Privacy Committee and public health professor, confirmed that the committee still stands by its statements in the memo in an email to The Daily. Omenn also mentioned that the committee did not receive a response from President Schlissel, though no response was expected. Toyama said he is worried about the memo not having been made public by the University and that he hopes all of the final reports from COVID-19 committees in the provost’s and president’s offices should be made public. He highlighted that the memo states a coronavirus outbreak will be likely and will disproportionately impact people of color and low-income communities. In an email to The Daily, Amanda Kaplan and Saveri Nandigama, CSG president and vice president, said they believe constructive criticism can help improve the University’s decision-making processes. They also noted that the reopening plan was a University-wide effort and that criticism should not be solely directed at President Schlissel. “We believe that, no matter what the decision is, the
after midnight and on days when the ambassadors are offduty. Now, “callers will have the option of leaving a message (for non-urgent concerns) or being transferred to dispatch services to request a law enforcement response,” the website reads. Some community members have also disparaged the Michigan Ambassadors program for being too lenient in its initial outreach. In a previous interview, Public Health junior Bushra Hassan said she does not think the Michigan Ambassadors initiative will be effective without strong consequences for people who break the rules. “I don’t think they can effectively make people go home, because students can’t force students to do anything,” Hassan said. According to the updated website, “repeat reports will be addressed with warning letters, referrals and citations from law enforcement for noise and public health violations, as appropriate.” Other University offices such as Fraternity and Sorority Life and the Dean of Students may also reach out. Depending on the severity of the situation, students could also face “removal from housing, removal from specific courses or activities, suspension from the University or expulsion,” the website reads. Anyone who sees a violation of these policies can call the COVID-19 Concerns hotline at 734-647-3000. Daily News Editor Claire Hao can be reached at cmhao@umich. edu.
The lawsuit also invokes an executive order from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as evidence that Tomukun retaliated against Prada for contracting COVID-19. The order, as signed on April 3, says that employers are prohibited from discharging an employee because they stayed home from work due to illness. “Individuals permitted to go to work under Executive Order 2020-21 must stay home when they or their close contacts are sick—and they must not be punished for doing so,” the order reads. “Accordingly, it is reasonable and necessary to provide certain protections against workplace discrimination to such individuals, to ensure they can do what is now most needed from them to protect the health and safety of this state and its residents.” Daily News Editor Liat Weinstein can be reached at weinsl@umich.edu.
University needs to ensure that the needs of students, faculty, and staff are heard and addressed accordingly,” Kaplan, a Public Policy senior, and Nandigama, an LSA senior, wrote. “This report doesn’t change our opinion, but it does highlight and recognize the need to create an atmosphere that is conducive to the success of all students, especially those from communities of color and other vulnerable communities.” Peter Railton, a member of the COVID-19 Ethics and Privacy Committee and philosophy professor, suggested that faculty should work within the hybrid teaching framework to declare that they will teach their courses online without waiting for permission or policy changes. Railton noted that he was not speaking on behalf of the committee, but as a faculty member. “Some of the most dangerous steps in reopening universities such as bringing students back to the dorms have already been taken, and at this point it may be too late to stop the spread of the kind that we’ve seen at other large universities,” Railton said. “But we’re not powerless as a faculty to take steps that we think can materially increase safety for our students, faculty, staff and the wider communities.” Daily Staff Reporter Dominick Sokotoff can be reached at sokotoff@michigandaily.com.
News
4 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Schlissel: U-M could ‘prove to be like everybody else’ University president discusses plans for hybrid fall semester EMMA STEIN & CALDER LEWIS
Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Some students living in off-campus housing are unsure of how to keep their roommates safe if they have to quarantine at home.
Quarantining could be difficult with roommates Health procedures pose challenges for those living off-campus EMMA RUBERG Daily Staff Reporter
With less than one week until the first day of classes, some students, faculty and staff have raised concerns about how the University of Michigan will contain possible COVID19 outbreaks. Among these concerns is how students will quarantine or isolate themselves to prevent spreading the virus, particularly those living in offcampus housing. The University says there are 600 rooms available for students who need to quarantine, but it remains unclear how and to whom these rooms will be provided. According to the University’s Maize and Blueprint website, the hub of information related to various COVID-19 policies, there will be spaces identified for “any U-M student who needs quarantine/ isolation.” The page also specifies that the Washtenaw County Health Department, in coordination with the University, will determine whether a student’s off-campus living situation is adequate to quarantine or isolate them effectively. In an email to The Daily, University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen confirmed offcampus students could use the quarantine housing, assuming their situation meets certain qualifications. “The university isolation and quarantine plan does allow for off-campus students to be placed in the designated isolation or quarantine space,” Broekhuizen wrote. “(This is) if the current living arrangement is determined to be unsuitable and the student is unable to go to a permanent home.” The Health Department will evaluate each off-campus living arrangement on a case-by-case basis as people living there test positive for COVID-19. If too many off-campus students need space to quarantine, however, the Health Department may not be able to quickly manage all of those evaluations. Susan Ringler-Cerniglia, public information officer for the Washtenaw County Health Department, said the department’s resources could quickly be overwhelmed if cases spread due to students congregating. “All these factors could combine to mean that cases spread very, very quickly,” Ringler-Cerniglia said. “So we as a health department, of course, have a limited capacity and limited number of folks that are able to follow up and do that case investigation and contact tracing. So if there’s all of a sudden a very large number of cases related to the reopening, then yes, our resources could be quickly overwhelmed.” LSA junior Samuel Burnstein said he believes the University’s communication has been unclear about how students living offcampus should proceed if they or someone they live with tests positive for COVID-19 and needs to quarantine. “There’s been a barrage of emails in the last two to three months about changes to policies and updates to policies and revisions to policies,”
Burnstein said. “And it’s so hard to discern what the current (policy is), where to even find that policy. It’s not something that is easily Google-able. So if I were to get sick on the third day of school being open, I don’t know immediately how to go about finding testing and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. And that’s what is kind of very utterly frustrating.” Testing for symptomatic students is offered through University Health Services. In addition to the standard advice of limiting in-person contact, cleaning surfaces often and monitoring for symptoms of COVID-19, there are certain steps to take if someone in a communal living arrangement contracts the virus. Students who test positive after visiting a non-University affiliated testing site are asked to report their case here. For non-symptomatic students who want a test, the University has a list of outside vendors. According to guidance from Michigan Medicine, it is important to pick a “sick” bedroom and bathroom the infected person alone can use. Their laundry should also be kept separate. Roommates can help them track changes and ease their symptoms by helping them to eat and hydrate regularly. Visitors should be limited and those who live there should stay home. After the person has recovered, they should remain quarantined until they are fever-free without medication for three days, their respiratory symptoms have improved and 10 days have passed since their symptoms first appeared. Those exposed should also stay home for 14 days after they were exposed. More information from the University on quarnatining can be found here. LSA sophomore Saad Shami said he expects the virus to spread on campus, in part due to the lack of testing for students living in off-campus housing. “With all the people living off campus, none of them were tested before they arrived on campus,” Shami said. “So I think it’s pretty likely that someone off campus, maybe even in my apartment complex, has COVID at the moment. So yeah, I’m definitely concerned about that for sure.” Ringler-Cerniglia also stressed concerns about large, off-campus housing arrangements, such as Fraternity and Sorority Life housing, and said those living there need to take extra precautions. “Certainly those situations where there’s a large number of people in direct contact do present that possibility of quickly spreading,” RinglerCerniglia said. “It’s all the more important for them to be very conscious of additional socializing. Certainly, that would fall under the concerns we have about congregate housing and partying or socializing and spreading cases even further.” Parties at off-campus houses were seen around campus Sunday through Tuesday by multiple Daily reporters. Even if the Health Department can sustain caseby-case investigations, many
community members are worried 600 rooms will not be enough for everyone who tests positive for COVID-19 or who has ‘sustained personal contact’ with someone who tests positive for the virus. As of fall 2019, the University’s Ann Arbor campus had a total enrollment of approximately 48,000 students, with approximately two-thirds of undergraduates living offcampus. When asked about concerns that 600 beds would not be enough, Broekhuizen explained how that number was generated. “The 600 bed capacity was determined based upon benchmark comparison with similar-sized peer institutions,” Broekhuizen said. After one week of in-person classes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there were only four rooms left available in the dorm used to quarantine students who were close contacts of people who tested positive for COVID-19. Burnstein, who will be living in a co-op this year, expressed concern over how the virus will spread through co-ops, similar to how many have been worried about the safety of FSL housing. He said students in co-ops have to do chores, and one of the additional chores at his co-op is sanitizing doorknobs. But “that’s the extent of the changes that are being made to the lifestyle of those who are in the co-ops.” “I really think that a lot of attention will be paid to Greek life but not nearly enough attention will be paid to co-ops,” Burnstein said. “In my experience, at least in the last couple of weeks, they’ve signaled that they’ve done very, very little to prepare the houses and the students for you know, COVID in the fall.” Rackham student Paul Rizik disagreed. He moved into a co-op last week and lived in Inter-Cooperative Council housing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. He said there have been numerous changes to procedures to protect students from contracting the virus. “We no longer have communal meals (and) we have assigned bathrooms to minimize people’s exposure,” Rizik wrote in an email to The Daily. “We have a house policy dictating that everyone has to wear masks in public spaces until 2 weeks into the semester, and every cleaning chore I’ve done has taken nearly twice the amount of time it did before I left, since people’s standards are so much higher.” According to Sarah Kathleen Garcia, ICC’s vice president for finance, the ICC has assembled a COVID-19 task force to meet weekly and discuss how members can best be kept safe. She added that houses have taken various actions to limit the spread of the virus, including quarantining new members and requiring masks in common areas. Currently, Garcia said, the ICC dictates each house must discuss their guest policy at a general meeting as soon as possible and no guests are allowed during the move-in period.
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The Daily sat down with University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel to discuss the University’s plans for the fall semester during the COVID19 pandemic and the release of WilmerHale’s report on allegations of sexual misconduct against former Provost Martin Philbert. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Mark Schlissel: I wanted to start out if it’s OK with you by reiterating an apology that I’ve offered to a number of individuals, and then to a group as a whole that wrote me a letter — I want to get their name correct — the Queer Advocacy Coalition … I was making comments in one of the town halls around the logic behind our surveillance testing and the pluses and minuses of testing asymptomatic students in an effort to diminish transmission of the disease. And one of the things I said is a fear that if a student learns they’re negative, that might diminish their incentive to follow masking and distancing and the like. And I made what turned out to be a very bad and insensitive analogy with HIV disease — AIDS, and it was really hurtful to a lot of people. It was incorrect with the history. I feel very badly about it. So I just wanted another opportunity to say sorry, to promise to be more careful and to express my empathy with that group for any pain or discomfort that I caused with some remarks that just shouldn’t have been offered. The Michigan Daily: Universities that originally planned for some forms of in-person classes, like University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reversed their decisions and went entirely online after only about a week of classes. Meanwhile, Michigan State announced an all online semester and Eastern Michigan delayed move-in. So why is the University of Michigan any different? MS: Well, we may prove not to be, but I think that we are different. We’ve planned and worked very hard on getting things as optimal as we can. I have confidence in our students. But in reality, if you think about what the difference is between a remote semester and what we’re talking about now, as of now 77 percent of our student credit hours are being offered remotely. … Every young person I talked to, well, they’re always being honest. They say that they’d rather be with their friends. They’d rather not live at home some more. So, going fully remote is a pretty incremental difference from where we are right now. And 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 … I’ve been in pretty close contact with other campuses around the country, including UNC and including Notre Dame and including many of my colleagues in the Big Ten, asking them what’s worked for them, what hasn’t worked, what’s the most surprising. And so far, the campuses that have run into difficulty trace it to off-campus student life … So it could turn out that we prove to be like everybody else. I always try to be better. TMD: On that note, Chief Health Officer Preeti Malani told The Daily that one big party could shut the whole semester down. So then, if that’s the case and we’re seeing students at other schools and the University of Michigan already starting to party, why bring everyone back to then potentially send them home? MS: I don’t bring everyone back and I don’t send everybody home. Many of the students who are living here in Ann Arbor are gonna continue living in Ann Arbor in their private residences under their leases — not everybody of course, but many. I also think Dr. Malani was exercising a bit
of hyperbole by saying one big party is all it’s gonna take. I hope we don’t have one big party with a super-spreader event, but there will be spreading events. There were spreading events when you all were living at home … so there will be spread of the disease. It’s not the students’ fault. It’s not the University’s fault. It’s the pandemic’s fault. So it’s up to us to protect ourselves as best we can and to protect one another. Although there is a chance that there’ll be too many episodes where folks let their guard down, and too many people become infected and there’s too much spread for us to keep up with with testing, contact tracing and quarantine, then we would have to go fully remote. But recognize that doesn’t mean people are going home … The students in the dormitories, we can certainly encourage them to leave. There are a fraction of students in our dorms that don’t have other safe places to live, so I wouldn’t want to throw them (out) … it’s not as simple as saying “let’s go remote,” and then there’s no more risk. TMD: In a similar vein, schools like Tulane, for example, have banned gatherings of more than 15 people and threatened expulsion for students who did not follow the mandate. Will the University of Michigan consider similar academic repercussions for violating social distancing rules? MS: Well, I think as a very last resort, the Student Statement of Rights and Responsibilities does give the University the opportunity to do things of the type that you’re mentioning. Those aren’t first resorts. They’re last resorts. But I think people do have to recognize — particularly on our campus in our classrooms, in our dormitories, but also with one another in town — that they have to live up to the Student Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and then be subject to the downstream consequences of behavior that doesn’t live up to our aspirations. TMD: Some community members have called for more transparency with opening plans, models used and analysis done, and just more details about containment plans as we approach the beginning of the semester. Why has the University not provided such details to the members of the community who have to make important decisions about their safety and the safety of those around them, based on these plans? MS: With respect to those raising the question or the criticism, it’s always possible to provide more information. But if you look back on the number of communications that have come from me and other campus leaders in the last several months, it’s actually been an overwhelming number in very long and great detail — multiple town halls with different groups, dedicated and regularly updated Maize and Blueprint website, data on COVID-19 on campus that’s now up there and live. So there’s been a lot of communication. In particular, when we talk about what we would have to see in order to change our plans, everyone’s looking for a magic formula that if you have a certain number — like Dr. Malani said “one big party,” — we’d all go home. That’s not a complete statement. We’re tracking things like the rate of infection on campus, how many new cases per day. We’re looking at the distribution of where those cases are. Are they in clusters of events? Can we contact trace and quarantine downstream of those or does it exceed our capacity? … The difficulty for most folks is understanding that there’s not a magic formula. What there is is judgment in looking at the numbers and trends of a bunch of markers and taking advantage of our public health experts that are doing the same thing on behalf of the governor of the state. TMD: Students and administrators across the country have publicly battled over who’s responsible for COVID-19 outbreaks on campus. For example, a Syracuse official called students attending large gatherings “selfish and reckless.” On the other hand,
an editorial from UNC’s student newspaper argued “it was the University’s responsibility to disincentivize such gatherings by reconsidering its plans to operate in-person earlier on.” So who takes responsibility if there are large outbreaks on campus at the University of Michigan this fall? MS: I put responsibility squarely on the virus. So this is a pandemic. The virus isn’t prejudiced. It infects people when they’re susceptible and available for infection. I don’t think any of us wants to get sick. I don’t think anybody, no matter what their behavior is, wants to get sick. My job as a campus leader, working with our Student Life people and our academic leaders and our safety people, is to try to create an environment that allows students to be educated about the virus, to take responsibility for themselves, to make their own decisions as adults — as young adults, but adults — in how to keep themselves, their friends and their families safe. And my job is to provide the education and the environment, and then the backup and support for you to be able to do this, all the while making sure that this pandemic doesn’t trash your ability to have college … I don’t hold students responsible, I don’t hold Student Life responsible, I don’t hold myself — in that sense — responsible. It’s the virus. We’re all humans. We’re all capable of outstanding behavior. We’re all very obviously capable of momentary lapses in behavior… TMD: So then you feel like the University is as prepared as it possibly could be? MS: I think every day we become better at what we do. So I would of course not say that we’re optimally prepared, because none of us have ever been through this before … We’re all trying to make our way through a complicated and completely novel set of circumstances. For example, there’s been a lot of attention focused on this issue of testing. And there’s a notion that if we could simply test everybody all the time, nobody would get sick. And that’s an exaggerated statement, so I don’t want to get in trouble making more exaggerated statements, but testing detects if you’re already sick. It doesn’t prevent you from being sick. The whole state of Michigan right now is averaging around 25,000 tests a day — the whole state … If we were to test everybody twice a week, we would dramatically exceed the testing done in our 10 million person state. What we are doing is we’re recognizing that surveillance testing is an important part of keeping the community safe. … The way you work on these problems is you do as much sort of theoretical thinking in advance as you can, and then you have the flexibility to modify and change as you actually implement and try to make things better every day. So I don’t feel optimally prepared. I argue that nobody in the country probably feels globally prepared. Our nation was not optimally prepared and it’s struggling to get to that level, but we’ll get better at this every day. TMD: Tuition from students is a substantial part of the University’s revenue, and according to a survey conducted by Central Student Government over the summer, a majority of students surveyed said they would consider changing their plans and not enrolling full time if courses were fully online. If more funding were available from the state of Michigan and the federal government, would you have been more comfortable with a fully remote semester? MS: More funding is always welcome … But I think what we would have endeavored to do, regardless of resources, is provide the courses in person that students can only take in person, that they need for their programs, they need for licensure, they need to progress to graduation, which is, you know, pretty much, pretty similar to what we’re doing now. But the additional funding would have allowed us to do this, passing less of the burden onto students and their families.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 5
A2 City Council primary winners look ahead to the future of the city Challengers swept incumbents out of office with victories August elections BRAYDEN HIRSCH & JULIANNA MORANO Daily Staff Reporters
Courtesy of Mark Bernstein and Shauna Ryder Diggs Mark Bernstein and Shauna Ryder Diggs were nominated to seek relection at the Michigan Democratic Convention this week.
Democratic incumbents nominated to defend seats on Board of Regents
Following state convention, Mark Bernstein and Shauna Ryder Diggs will seek re-election in the November general election after first being elected in 2012 SARAH PAYNE
Daily Staff Reporter
Mark Bernstein and Shauna Ryder Diggs, both Democratic incumbents and University of Michigan alum, were nominated to defend their seats on the University’s Board of Regents at the Michigan Democratic Convention this weekend. Both have served as regents since 2012. U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., spoke to nominate Bernstein, while University Regent Denise Ilitch spoke to nominate Ryder Diggs. In a video posted online earlier this month, Bernstein detailed his previous work as a University regent, including advocating for making college more affordable. “It is an honor to have run and won eight years ago with my friend Shauna Ryder Diggs,” Bernstein said. “We’re eager to continue serving as Democratic regents at the University of Michigan … As a regent, I have aggressively advanced our Democratic vision for affordable, accessible and excellent public higher education, while embracing diversity, honoring labor and protecting the environment.” In another prerecorded video, Ryder Diggs also discussed the importance of college affordability, noting her own experience with student loans. “As a daughter of two university professors, I believe in the power of higher education to improve the
lives of us all,” Ryder Diggs said. “I’m a physician in solo private practice, and I attended Michigan for college, medical school and residency. Those years were wonderful and I built long lasting friendships and was trained by the best doctors in the nation, but they were costly. Even when my family supported me, I still had to take out large loans to pay for this extraordinary education.” Ryder Diggs emphasized several policy issues she has focused on over the past eight years, including support for more equitable funding across all three University campuses and organized labor. “I believe in the power of collective bargaining,” Ryder Diggs said. “That is why I’ll continue to support the faculty and staff doing the work on a daily basis … but there is still much more work to be done.” The two will appear on the ballot for the general election in November. According to campaign finance documents filed prior to the convention, Bernstein’s campaign has raised a total of $25,964.25 in contributions and other receipts. Of that, $20,000 came from a direct contribution Bernstein made to his own campaign on Aug. 3. Meanwhile, Diggs’ campaign had a total of $4,799.65 in contributions and other receipts. On Aug. 19, Diggs reported a late contribution of $2,500 to her campaign.
While both are Democrats, they have not been in lockstep with one another in their time as Regents. Over the summer, as the Board debated a tuition increase to help the University deal with a budget crunch brought on by the COVID19 pandemic, Diggs voted against the initial budget proposal while Bernstein supported it. That proposal, which failed with a split vote, would have increased tuition across all three campuses while providing additional funding for the Flint and Dearborn campuses. The move drew swift criticism from students, who argued that classes will not be as valuable as they would be under normal, pre-pandemic circumstances and that the heightened monetary burden was a blow to people facing financial straits of their own. At another meeting several days later to consider a new budget proposal, Diggs and Bernstein maintained their initial positions: Diggs voting no and Bernstein voting yes. That budget passed in a 5-2 vote and included 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. In February, Bernstein announced the Board of Regents would reevaluate the University’s policy on investing in fossil fuel, freezing any new investments during that time. The decision followed months of public
commenters highlighting the threat of climate change and the University’s responsibility to combat it. At that same meeting, Bernstein also advocated for ensuring that major capital projects undertaken by the University align with its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. In December 2019, when the Climate Action Movement and One University members expressed frustration at a lack of direct response from the Board regarding climate change, Diggs was the only Regent to respond to their questions. She noted that the Regents do take into account public commenters’ arguments and sympathize with their views. Bernstein’s efforts to support the University have not always been well received. In July 2016, he withdrew a $3 million donation he had made to the new Trotter Multicultural Center due to concerns about naming the building after Bernstein. The Trotter Multicultural Center, which honors activist and newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter, is the only building on campus named after an African American. Bernstein said his intention was not to minimize Trotter’s legacy, adding that the decision came after feedback from the University community.
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Challengers swept incumbents in the Aug. 4 primary election for open seats in each of the five wards on the Ann Arbor City Council. Each candidate is currently running unopposed in the Nov. 3 general election and will take office later that month. The Daily spoke with Lisa Disch of Ward 1, Linh Song of Ward 2, Travis Radina of Ward 3, Jen Eyer of Ward 4 and Erica Briggs of Ward 5 to discuss their reflections on their campaigns during a summer of an unabating pandemic and civil unrest, as well as their priorities when inaugurated in November. Lisa Disch, D-Ward 1 As a University of Michigan professor in political science and women and gender studies, Disch said she will bring a unique perspective to city council after her inauguration. In an email to The Daily, Disch wrote she feels very lucky to have the opportunity to regularly interact with students who bring different political viewpoints into the classroom. “I have developed skills of communication and habits of listening and working in the classroom that I hope will make me a more effective representative,” Disch wrote. “I’ve also always thought that my job is more about learning things than it is about knowing and ‘professing’ them. This is a political moment when openness to learning in the face of unprecedented challenges might be a very good thing to have.” Disch wrote she was excited about her win considering it was her first time as a candidate. “Nobody does systematic polling in an election like this one, and my excellent campaign manager and advisors had warned me throughout the campaign that Council elections are often very close,” Disch wrote. “I can honestly say that the results surprised me and my team — and thrilled us.” On her platform, Disch cites urban and environmental stewardship, civic engagement and safety as some of her top priorities. Disch wrote she wants to improve the tone of council meetings and work collaboratively with other council members to put problem-solving ahead of personal and political differences. She plans to push for more affordable housing and the redevelopment of North Main Street.
“There are many pressing issues in Ward 1 that I want to be prepared to take up right away with staff,” Disch wrote. “Such as traffic management on residential roads like Pontiac Trail and Barton Drive that have become major commuter through-ways, and implementing the parts of the City’s sustainability plan that help reduce the disproportionately high costs of energy for lower-income households.” Disch said the unavailability of affordable housing intersects with so many other challenges that Ann Arbor faces. “It means that too many people in Washtenaw County are paying too much of their incomes for rent and that too many people are commuting too far to their jobs,” Disch wrote. “It is a top priority for me because it is a contributing factor to economic stratification, to structural racism and to the climate crisis.” Linh Song, D-Ward 2 Throughout Song’s campaign for a seat on council in Ward 2, which her former opponent Jane Lumm first held in 1993-1998 and again from 2011 to the present, Song emphasized Ann Arbor’s national ranking as the eighth most economically segregated community in the U.S. As the Black Lives Matter movement swept the nation with renewed energy following the killing of several Black men and women at the hands of police, Song said her campaign shifted gears from an emphasis on affordable housing to focusing on issues of racial justice. “So if I keep saying, ‘We are the eighth most economically segregated community in the U.S.,’ that’s what we’re talking about: that history of racial economic segregation,” Song said. “And we need to own up to it.” Song said knowledge of Ann Arbor’s racial history — from restrictive housing covenants to the political pushback following the election of Ann Arbor’s first and only Black mayor Albert Wheeler — must guide any conversations about the future of the city, including conversations around affordable housing and policing. In 2014, police officer David Ried fatally shot Aura Rosser, a Black woman living in Ann Arbor, and faced no charges. This prompted protests and the creation of a police oversight commission.
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Pizza Bob’s moves to new location on S. State Street Local eatery expands seating with increased space; owner says move will allow restaurant to accommodate more patrons ANGELINA LITTLE Daily Staff Reporter
After more than 50 years of operation at its original location, Pizza Bob’s will find a new home this Tuesday just 110 feet north at 800 S. State Street. The new location, previously home to Red Light Cafe, will offer both indoor and outdoor seating. According to owner Pam Pietryga, the move was largely motivated by a desire for more space. The seating in the original location was limited to a front counter and a single round table, whereas the new location offers space for both indoor and outdoor dining while maintaining appropriate social distancing. Pietryga plans to use the basement of the restaurant to host larger parties when COVID19 restrictions no longer apply. The space also makes it possible for one of the restaurant’s most well-known items, the Chipati sauce, to be prepared in-house. The owners
had previously rented a kitchen in Ypsilanti to make the sauce. Pietryga said another perk of the new building is its public bathroom, which the previous space lacked. She also hopes the placement at the stoplight on the corner will increase visibility and foot traffic. Kailana Dejoie, LSA sophomore and Pizza Bob’s employee, is hopeful that the new location will improve business. “I think it’s going to be a great development for Pizza Bob’s and I think it’s a good location in terms of the community too,” Dejoie said. “I know a lot of people were sad that we switched locations because that’s been there for 50 plus years, but I think for the business it’s a good move.” Pietryga said she plans to retain as many aspects of the original restaurant as possible in the new space, including its posters, frames, handmade signs and the plexiglass wall filled with postcards sent to Bob Marsh, the original cook and the restaurant’s namesake. The
restaurant will also be painted in the original maize and blue color scheme, with plans to recreate the past location’s Pizza Bob’s mural. “All the different things people come to notice and point out about Pizza Bob’s … we’re not forgetting any of that,” Pietryga said. “We’re taking as much with us, and trying to find a good way of displaying it, so that we always have that memory and history and stuff that people like to see.” Pietryga said while it’s hard to say goodbye, the benefits of the larger space outweigh the losses. “I think the customers are gonna like it much better because … with all the renovations done, we’re going to be able to seat more than we ever could, and then when all this passes and we’re all back into our normal life, we’ll definitely be able to enjoy the customer interaction,” Pietryga said. “We’ve missed that now, the past four months. One of the things we love about Pizza Bob’s is the camaraderie
PENNY LAM/Daily
Pizza Bob’s, a popular spot for U-M students, will move to a different location on S. State St this coming Tuesday.
with the customers.” Pietryga said Pizza Bob’s has been able to stay open during the pandemic due to the support of loyal Ann Arbor customers. According to Andy Lansing, a University of Michigan alum and Pizza Bob’s customer, it is this companionship that sets Pizza
Bob’s apart. “What makes it special is just that it is today what it’s always been,” Lansing said. “In a world of chain restaurants and a world of sort of similar concepts, similar styles of restaurants, I think Pizza Bob’s is a mountain of its own… I think that the
environment and just their style of service is really special and there’s something about it that’s really magical — and of course, the sauce.”
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
6 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Michigan In Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
A Michigan in Color Manifesto MiC Editorial Staff
When we conceptualize our nation as an ecosystem, our national and societal wounds — and their urgent need for repair — become deeply apparent. Despite this dire need for healing, it is also society’s responsibility to strive toward that reparation — to strive to nourish, to thrive effectively and efficiently. Michigan in Color’s was established in pursuit of healing and education. And while we attempt to distinguish ourselves as a section, we must continue with dignity and unwavering reclamation: The kind of resonance we can use to amplify your sentiments, stories, ideas and truth — inspiring a community understanding and safety. A creation of a new form of justice. Despite society’s superficial attempts to placate people of color, this space was created to actualize empowerment and f lourishing in a nurturing community until these safe spaces are not an abnormality, but an expectation. The people have shown us the amount of revolution that can happen in just a few short months. They have further elucidated— there exists a dire need for a nuanced approach to political and social movements, with knowledge of our historical past championed by the minority. We have learned that revolutions begin with education. We intend to start off the year on that note and ensure that the movement lives unapologetically in our work. To our amazing summer managing editors, Gabrijela Skoko and Cheryn Hong, we thank you for bringing the fire and diligence to MiC that allowed this section to be a platform for that education, and we thank all of our amazing writers for providing us with content that could enlighten week after week. Let’s keep it rolling. Michigan in Color is an entity whose work is grounded in ancestral and world knowledge, pursuing and springboarding valuable change with empathy and unity. In everything we do, we hope to inspire others to center intersectional voices, injustices and systems of oppression in order to properly establish a route toward restorative justice. In doing this, one will inevitably learn about the surprisingly universal ways in which we have all experienced life; we are not as different as we may proclaim to be. The colonial violence that oppresses Black people in America is the same that oppresses Palestinians across the ocean, is the same that separates immigrant families at the border, is the same that draws district lines and upholds systemic
poverty and mass incarceration. It is intolerable, if not deplorable, that a small fraction of the population, the billionaire elite, are given the power to destroy and exploit the environment to the exponential degree that they have. The voices we give a platform to in our space are voices of change, ones that have experienced some degree of oppression and who work to actively deconstruct the systems perpetuating that oppression. These voices and our editors strive to empower individuals and bridge communities, but most importantly and overwhelmingly to incite transformation, to incite revolution. This is a call to action. A call to join the ceaseless fight until all of our communities have the same access to opportunity that we have as students at this University. A call to requiring and demanding dignity and respect as a human right. To expose and dispose of systems and mechanisms that use “—the consistent application of violent solutions to nonviolent, and often nonexistent, problems.” Michigan in Color needs your energ y and your art, your peace and your presence, not only as tangible documentation of our dissatisfactions, but also of our jubilations. To the university and to communities across campus, it is not enough to be aware. “Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best as they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands;” why is it radical to demand what our nature inclines? We urge all readers to continue to learn and unlearn. Continue to question the systems that we are voluntarily and involuntarily a part of. Continue to readjust your lens when a new angle is presented — having the difficult conversations along with the joyful ones. We urge all artists, all creators to continue sharing your stories with MiC and in general. We are currently hiring columnists, bloggers and graphic designers. If you are a student of color interested in contributing go online to apply and learn more about open positions. You do not need to hold one or any of these positions to write for the section, we accept contributions regularly, which you can submit to our email: michiganincolor@umich.edu. Do not underestimate your voice or your intellect — they are the foundations of peace and revolution, of hope and understanding and they are integral to societal development.
“There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now” – James Baldwin
Photo courtsey of DANIELA LUGO
SUDOKU
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
Release Date: Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Protective wear for swimmers 5 Disaster response gp. 9 Jessica of “The Politician” 14 Turner and a president 15 Cockpit calculations, briefly 16 Think tank output 17 Pirates’ offensive 19 “Drop it!” 20 Popular ISP 21 Fabled broom rider 22 Trees with light wood 23 Tour amenity 27 Sicilian mount 28 Copy room purchase 29 Sign of spring 32 Homing pigeon, e.g. 37 Pioneer in canned soft drinks 40 Pool toy 41 Newlyweds’ adventure, maybe 45 Emotional poem 46 Cat’s back shape, at times 47 Wanders (about) 51 Happy ending to a kidnap saga 55 Gambling spot 58 Tot’s little piggy 59 USDA section: Abbr. 60 Drama Desk Award cousins 61 Schoolyard dare intensifier ... and a hint to the five other longest answers 64 Starbucks offering 65 Rubik’s __ 66 Trig function 67 Trick alternative 68 Hawkish god 69 Gives a bit DOWN 1 Face 2 Barely manage 3 Keep from escaping 4 Org. using wands
5 Greek salad toppings 6 Tchotchke stand 7 It’s big at the Golden Arches 8 “That’s a big __” 9 Spring scent 10 “Rolling in the Deep” singer 11 Barclays Center hoopsters 12 Bonkers 13 Those, in Taxco 18 Start of many Grisham titles 22 Chain in the Bahamas 24 Workshop grooves 25 Hi-__ audio 26 Dye holder 29 Bit of eBay input 30 It might be bookmarked 31 ’50s pres. monogram 33 Yolanda’s “Yay!” 34 Hawaiian thanks 35 Trick 36 MLB Hall of Famer Wade 37 Pi follower 38 Fish with chips 39 Signal to enter
42 Ocean State sch. 43 __-1701: Starship Enterprise markings 44 London Underground 48 Park near Bar Harbor 49 Manatee cousin 50 Suit fabrics 51 Michelangelo work in St. Peter’s
52 Start 53 Bedroom closet hangers 54 Sushi bar fare 55 Wild West weapon 56 It’s often walked into in jokes 57 Browsing target 61 Reagan Airport code 62 Word for us 63 Soft opening?
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
09/02/20
By Pam Amick Klawitter ©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
WHISPER “Being 21: Old enough 2 know ur responsibilities but still ignoring them.”
“NOTHING MATTERS (except climate change)”
09/02/20
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 7
ANONYMOUS | OP-ED
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com
ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Editor in Chief
BRITTANY BOWMAN AND EMILY CONSIDINE Editorial Page Editors
ERIN WHITE Managing Editor
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Zack Blumberg Brittany Bowman Emily Considine Elizabeth Cook Jess D’Agostino
Jenny Gurung Cheryn Hong Krystal Hur Min Soo Kim Zoe Phillips
Mary Rolfes Gabrijela Skoko Joel Weiner Erin White
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
RILEY DEHR | COLUMNIST
Why in-person classes are a racist mistake
I
rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and reached through the darkness for my phone. It was 4 a.m. on a March 2020 morning and the screams coming from outside my apartment were making it impossible to sleep. I sat up and looked down from my second-story window to the thin road below. Bathed in the orange light of a street lamp a group of people were dancing in a circle, their maniacal laughs and screams echoing up and down the otherwise silent street. While this alone wouldn’t have made it a notable event on the famously raucous Greenwood Avenue, the fact that this group of dancers was wearing nothing but their smiles was a little too crazy even for this party-street. But I was hardly surprised. Ann Arbor had been abuzz with massive parties for days on end. After a student tested positive for COVID-19 and classes were canceled, many rushed to party with their friends and enjoy one final week of college life before returning home. Despite the University and public health experts telling us to remain in our dorms and apartments, on every block, from sunup to sundown, a party seemed to rage. Adding to the danger of the situation, University students had just returned from spring break a week earlier, likely bringing more than just souvenirs and wicked hangovers back to Michigan. A few weeks after witnessing this naked dance party in the middle of my street, Michigan, particularly Detroit, had already gained the unwanted designation as a dreaded COVID-19 “hotspot.” Unlike most other American metropolises, citizens of the Motor City and other communities throughout southeast Michigan were uniquely vulnerable to this new respiratory disease. Like it had done in New Orleans a few weeks prior, the coronavirus took advantage of the states’ glaring legacies of racial and environmental injustice. While many nursing and senior living facilities were devastated by the disease, communities of color throughout southern Michigan were hit even harder. Of the 1,000,000 Black Michiganders tested for COVID-19, an average of over 16,000 test positive. For white people, the positivity rate per million is only a fraction of this, at less than 6,000.
Michiganders of color, as a consequence of generations of environmental racism, also find themselves significantly more likely to succumb to the disease. Heavily polluting industries, like the Marathon Oil refinery and trash burning facilities, have been allowed to nestle their ways into minority communities and dirty the air with government approval for decades. Filling the workplaces, hospitals and homes of Detroiters with stinking, chemical-filled air — unfit to breathe by anyone’s standards — has resulted in higher rates of chronic asthma. This, paired with less access to green areas, healthy foods and exercise facilities, is linked to other health problems later in life, like obesity and diabetes, which Black Michiganders also have higher rates of. The prevalence of preexisting conditions in these communities has had devastating effects.
The school has chosen to endanger the very Michiganders it was founded to serve. Black Michiganders, despite making up less than 14.5 percent of the state’s population, constitute nearly half of the total death count from COVID-19 and are four times more likely than individuals of other demographics to succumb to the virus. While the pandemic has shined an intense and tragic light on the effects of environmental injustice, public health officials have long been aware of them. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allerg y and Infectious Diseases, said that he hopes the pandemic will be the wake-up call for America to narrow these inequalities. “We will get over Coronavirus, but there will still be health disparities, which we really do need to address in the African American community,” Fauci said. The University of Michigan’s Michigan Medicine, one of the most prestigious health institutions in the world, could play an essential
role in this mission. With University President Mark Schlissel himself a renowned immunologist, I at least expected our University to acknowledge the fact that our nation is not ready for in-person classes to resume. My street alone is littered with broken bottles, destroyed furniture, beer cans and red solo cups from the countless parties I saw there in just a two-day visit. The University could have chosen to be the role model on how to safely and innovatively adapt to yet another surmountable challenge in its 203-year history. Instead, the school has chosen to endanger the very Michiganders it was founded to serve. With the pandemic still increasing in intensity in many parts of the country, the responsible move would be to make classes fully remote, encourage students to stay at home and avoid a highly predictable public health disaster. With students at many universities calling for tuition cuts for online classes, and some opportunistic ones even suing their schools, the University has instead bucked common sense and morality and has let greed become its g uide. In the attitude of the multi-billion dollar corporation it often resembles, the University has chosen to ignore the health of Michiganders for money. Even worse, the effects of this dangerous choice will be felt disproportionately by Black communities. In wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, and with Michigan State University canceling classes two weeks ago, the fact the University is trying to feign ignorance that this choice will put thousands of Black lives at risk is inexcusable. By beckoning students back to Ann Arbor with this “hybrid semester,” the most brilliant minds in Michigan are tempting an explosion of coronavirus cases. With a massive student body, the Black communities of not only Ann Arbor and neighboring cities are at risk but all of southern Michigan. While it is impossible to say if Michigan students will resist the partying and irresponsible behavior that they fell prey to at the beginning of the pandemic, it’s difficult for me to get those glistening buttcheeks from March out of my head. Riley Dehr can be reached at rdehr@umich.edu.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com. Full op-ed submission guidelines can be found at tinyurl.com/TMD-opeds.
E
The University’s summer of lies
ditor’s Note: The author of this op-ed is a staff member at the University of Michigan. They have been kept anonymous due to their fear of retaliation. Listening to the University of Michigan’s President Mark Schlissel for the last five months, I am shocked by the degree to which a Trump-like disregard for truth has overpowered our institution. In Donald Trump’s America, obvious lies are told without consequence, and unwelcome truths are silenced to avoid confronting inconvenient or unprofitable inevitabilities. Watching Schlissel mislead and lie to reopen the campus, I’ve asked myself: has truth become meaningless here, too? The answer is yes. For the past four years, I’ve held out hope that our institution could serve as a respite from the madness of Trumpian rule. I believe that despite its flaws, the university remains the most important institution in society for its contributions to freedom, democracy and reason. But I was wrong to believe we could avoid the deterioration and rot that has run through our country. Now Schlissel runs our college like Trump runs America: with dishonest impunity, at grave risk to us all. President Schlissel often reminds us that he is a scientific authority. He told us we could reopen in-person “while maintaining the same level of safety we’d be experiencing if we were fully remote” and bragged that he has “the best research.” But he ignored requests from thousands of faculty, staff and students to see this “best research.” He refused to share the science behind his decision to call 30,000 students from all corners of the world back to campus in the middle of an uncontrolled pandemic, even after admitting we lack sufficient testing capacity. President Schlissel said testing played a harmful role in the AIDS crisis, so we shouldn’t pursue more testing now. But a legendary AIDS activist called this the most egregious lie he’s heard this year. President Schlissel demeaned worker demands for widespread testing as “science fiction” that was “not essential.” But a study out of Harvard and MIT said there was no way to prevent a neartotal outbreak without testing everyone on campus every two days. Another Harvard expert said Schlissel showed “a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of testing.” President Schlissel proclaimed the University’s efforts were informed by our top public health experts. But a U-M respiratory infectious disease expert told The Michigan Daily that none of the colleagues she’s spoken with believe the University’s reopening plan is safe, and top experts nationwide harshly criticized Schlissel’s “lack of commitment to keep[ing] everybody safe.”
President Schlissel blamed students for forgetting their ethical responsibility to our community. His office placed culpability for controlling the virus’s spread squarely on their shoulders — if they didn’t avoid hooking up altogether, the outbreak would be their fault. But in July, his office failed to release a report from its own COVID-19 Ethics Committee that expressed “with urgency” that the U-M administration’s plans to reopen were unsafe and the negative consequences were predictable. The suppressed report leaked on social media in late August, after most students returned to campus. President Schlissel lists diversity, equity and inclusion among his top priorities. But U-M’s Chief Diversity Officer sat on that ethics committee, and the suppressed report emphasized that “communities of color and other vulnerable people will be the hardest hit” by the University’s actions. President Schlissel spoke of reducing law enforcement. But he supported a new policing program that formalized a citywide anonymous snitch system and expanded the mandate of the AAPD, which has still not been properly investigated for killing Aura Rosser. Similar programs elsewhere have been applied disproportionately on communities of color. President Schlissel claimed he “didn’t know how to interpret” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s call to all state universities to close their campuses and tell students to stay home. But her words were clear. President Schlissel called U-M a “family.” But he admitted that the University may fire its most vulnerable staff members and dismissed the idea of using the $10 billion endowment to protect workers, asserting that new construction projects will take precedence over existing staff. All of this provides plenty of reason to worry, but we now come to perhaps the most troubling development of all. President Schlissel said he is guided by U-M’s values as a public institution. But when the decision was made to reopen, U-M’s Board of Regents was chaired by one of Ann Arbor’s largest landlords, Ron Weiser — a billionaire Trump megadonor who has given more than $100M to U-M in the last six years. He closed a new $30M gift within days of U-M’s decision to reopen. In one of the biggest conflicts of interest imaginable between public health and private wealth, Weiser’s company McKinley, which he founded and of which he is majority owner, stands to take a financial hit if students didn’t come back and pay rent. To sum things up, President Schlissel said this would be a “public health informed in-residence semester,” but the public health experts are
upset and afraid. Thousands of community members are upset and afraid. And our megadonor landlord regent is satisfied that he’ll profit from the students told to return to campus by President Schlissel. People will soon begin dying avoidable deaths from COVID19 and the University will be culpable. Why did it come to this? Thousands of us were shouting warnings and demanding answers all summer, but we were ignored, silenced, made to feel powerless in our isolation. Authoritarianism happens wherever an institution lacks the safeguards to hold its leadership accountable to facts. I would tell you we stand at the edge of authoritarianism, but the truth is we have crossed that line. In front of our noses, a tiny group that is supposed to serve us has consolidated power over the largest public research university in the world, rendered truth meaningless and led us into an avoidable public health disaster. To point out the obvious invites harsh punishment, so this editorial is published anonymously. Many of you will be too afraid to even share it publicly; such is the culture of fear these rulers have created. If we learn anything from this, I hope it’s that the current leadership model has and will continue to fail us when we need it most. Perhaps in hindsight, this public health failure is not so different from the repeated failures to diversify the university. Or the failures to contribute positively in Detroit. Or the failures of allowing top offices to be occupied by sexual predators. If we ousted President Schlissel tomorrow but did nothing to change the increasingly privatized model of public education, we should not be surprised when history repeats itself with even more devastating consequences. We are out of time to save our community from the most immediate consequences of President Schlissel’s public health lies, but I still hold out hope for a better future. This university is composed not only of a few powerful people at the top, but of tens of thousands of committed students, faculty, staff and surrounding community members who care passionately about education, intellectual freedom, truth and justice. We can run the University collectively and sustainably by forming representative stakeholders’ associations that prevent anyone from making major decisions without justification or accountability. Together, we can better serve the interests of our students, our workers and our society. Another university is possible. The necessity of building it has never been clearer.
MADELYN VERVAECKE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU
Opinion
8 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
ELAYNA SWIFT | 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 guidelines will be to blame if the University is forced to revert to online-only 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 guidelines. There would be a plan for rigorous asymptomatic testing of the entire campus throughout the semester. Every 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 between sinks. Any and all testing and COVID-19 related treatment for students, staff and faculty living on any of the three U-M campuses would be paid for by the University. These demands are included in a petition created by #NotMICampus, 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 University’s current reopening plan to sign it. Still, if the administration truly cared about the well-
If enough people put this pressure on the administration, the University may just do something about it. being of its students, staff and faculty 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 first place. The university 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 university facilities being used throughout the school year. The administration would have dipped into its massive endowment fund in order to provide financial support to its students, staff and faculty throughout the recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of the demands arising from the University’s ResStaff, the residential advisors and employees of University Housing, would be met and respected. Students, who were forced to pay a $50 COVID-19 fee for a safety 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 University’s COVID-19 Emergency Fund, funded by the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act, would be more widely advertised and accessible. At this point, it’s nearly impossible to argue that the University is still moving forward with its current reopening plan with the health and safety of its students, staff and faculty 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 COVID-19 Ethics and Privacy Committee explicitly stated its disapproval in a statement released on July 31. In order to take action, we must sign the #NotMICampus petition, sign and share this petition that demands the cancellation of in-person classes and email the President’s Office (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 University 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 city and my university. It’s legal in Ann Arbor to gather outside in groups of 25 and inside in groups of 10. But it isn’t safe. The city also requires that we wear masks when in groups, 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 city — the city I came home to 10 years after I graduated from the University of Michigan — is not doing all it should to protect students. And our university? Well, I hate to admit it, but Michigan State University is behaving more responsibly on this one. They’ve opted to have all classes online, while our university 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 energizes me. Now, not so much. I grew up in New York and came to Michigan to go to the University. After graduating,
I returned to the big city to do a doctorate at New York University. By the time I was finished, I was married to a Michigan g uy, and we both missed Ann Arbor. We packed up and came home to our college town, and we’ve never
I’m asking you to consider being more responsible than the people making the rules around here. regretted it. I love this city and this university, but I worry about the path we’re all on. Very few people get through this disease without suffering. If you’ve ever had the f lu, imagine something much worse. And then there’s the possibility 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 fertility 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 wonderful memories of my college years, and social life was a major part of the college experience. I didn’t have to choose between 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 painful. 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.
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NYLA BOORAS | COLUMNIST
So, you’re worried about the “Freshman 15”
B
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 Design courtesy of Lauren Kuzee
found that individuals who 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.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 9
ISABELLE SCHINDLER | COLUMNIST
Protect the post office
F
or my family, United States road trips were always a summer staple. Each year brought new adventures and experiences as we traversed the country. We visited small towns and big cities. We drove through Trump country and saw places where Democratic lawn signs dot the landscape. From Alaska to Florida, Hawaii to Maine, I have visited all 50 states and seen not only the differences in our nation but also the similarities, such as our use of the post office. Anywhere you go in this country, you will notice the post office. From the blue mailboxes along the road to the distinct white, cubed postal trucks to the hundreds of thousands of dedicated postal carriers working rain or shine to deliver for us, the post office is universal. Over the past few months, we have seen a coordinated attack on the post office by the Trump administration. The head of the post office, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, has been trying to gut the post office. He has directed a major overhaul of the post office, including slashing overtime, reducing business hours at certain locations and removing mail sorting machines. These changes have resulted in a major slowdown in the delivery of mail, a major concern given that millions of voters are expected to vote by mail in the November election. This slowdown of the post office is part of a
concerted effort by Trump to disenfranchise voters and prevent Democrats from voting. Democrats are statistically more likely to vote by mail, so it makes sense that Trump does not want these people to vote. Recently, the postal service confirmed these fears by informing 46 states that they won’t have the capacity to deliver ballots on time. Since these letters were sent, there has been a major outcry about the impact that these changes will have on the election. Twenty-one state attorney generals, including the Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, threatened to sue over the changes. Due to this backlash, the postmaster general reversed the plan until after the election. While this is a great development, we cannot let it distract us from the overall attack on the post office by Republicans. For decades, Republicans have attempted to dismantle and privatize the post office — a downright terrible idea. The post office employs more than 600,000 Americans who serve the entire country. For many rural communities, private companies such as FedEx and UPS do not serve them. The U.S. Postal Service is so important for delivering medication and keeping people connected, especially during the pandemic. There are many things we can do to help protect the post office. Buying stamps and other items from the post office can help to fund them. You can also call your legislators to ask
Design courtesy of Lizzy Rueppel
them to support the post office and continue to properly fund this critical organization. There is also a lot that Michiganders can do to help guarantee that we can safely vote and ensure that our votes are counted. Michigan is one of the states that will likely see record-breaking numbers of voters casting absentee ballots. Since the passage of Proposal 3 in 2018, any Michigan voters can vote absentee without an
excuse. In the August primary this year, 1.6 million voters cast an absentee ballot — more than any other in Michigan history. The 2020 election is expected to far surpass this, leading to major concerns about the capacity of the post office. In the August primary, over 6,000 ballots were rejected because they were received after Election Day. If you want to avoid any issues with the post office, there are a few options
that you can take to ensure that your vote is counted if you want to vote absentee. You should request your absentee ballot sooner rather than later. Instead of mailing back your ballot, you can deliver directly to your clerk’s office or leave it in an absentee ballot dropbox. There is a plan to have a dropbox put on the University of Michigan’s Central and North Campuses, making it easier for students
to deliver their absentee ballots. As we look to November and beyond, we must remain committed to protecting our postal ser vice in order to protect not only our elections but one of the most important governmental organizations that always delivers for all of us. Isabelle Schindler can be reached at ischind@umich.edu.
GEO AND LEO MEMBERS | OP-ED
O
U-M’s reopening plan — a Wolverine culture of carnage
ver the next couple of weeks, universities across the United States will welcome back facult y, staff and students in the midst of the recent and sustained national surge in COVID-19 cases. The Universit y of North Carolina, Universit y of Notre Dame, North Carolina State Universit y and Universit y of Alabama showed us the dangers of bring ing students back in this environment. Over 100 students have tested positive for COVID-19 within the f irst week of classes at all four universities. Like Notre Dame and NC State, UNC responded to the g rowing public-health crisis by going fully remote for this semester. Facult y, staff and students had made this demand for months, vociferously opposing UNC’s reopening plan and condemning the administration’s initial responses to early COVID-19 outbreaks on campus. Here in Ann Arbor, the Universit y of Michigan continues to plan for in-person, hybrid and remote courses. Universit y Housing aims to f ill residences at about 75 percent capacit y while requiring only one COVID19 test before move-in, as well as an opt-in sur veillance testing scheme for residents. In a town hall, Universit y President Mark Schlissel told the communit y, “I wish you could see the scientif ic basis of our decisions” about the reopening plans. His Ethics and Privacy Committee Report said the Universit y “has a substantial obligation
to help students, students’ families, facult y, and staff be aware of (i) the actual, evolving health risks … and (iii) our actual and projected levels of success, as best we can gauge them.” The Graduate Employees’ Organization, Lecturers’ Employee Organization, tenure track facult y and staff have all requested access to the modeling and reports that informed the Fall plans. Yet, U-M administrators still refuse to release them. The Universit y has chosen not to enter any meaning ful dialog ue with its workers and students by excluding them from the decisionmaking process and hiding information from them about the risks we are walking into in a few weeks. Since May, GEO has been asking to be included in decisions, starting with an open letter sig ned by over 1,800 members of the U-M communit y. For over four months, U-M failed to address any of the demands and actually withheld information on reopening from the entire communit y until late June. In response, facult y members petitioned for the abilit y to opt-out of in-person teaching without penalties. At the time of publication, they gained 612 sig natures. Shortly thereafter, staff circulated a petition, gaining 261 sig natures, requesting that “all staff … be g iven equal opportunit y and full autonomy to determine whether they return to campus or continue to work remotely.” The Universit y has not publicly responded.
Despite the calls for transparency, inclusion and choice in the reopening plans, the Universit y continues to ig nore its entire communit y. This blatant disregard for public health and people’s lives has led all spheres of the U-M communit y to come together in opposition to the Universit y’s reopening plan. Our calls for remote teaching, increased testing capacit y and overall transparency are desig ned to ensure the safet y of the entire U-M communit y, including the year-round residents of Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn. Instead, the Universit y’s poor leadership has resulted in departments — like the Stamps School of Art & Desig n — forcing new students to commit to being in-person, and assig ning mostly lecturers, several of them new to the school, to teach those classes regardless of the instructors’ preferences. Lecturers are both being put at high risk for contracting COVID-19 and are being laid off in alarming frequency — 41 percent of lecturers on the Universit y of Michigan-Flint campus were laid off this summer. The Universit y has made the conscious decision to force in-person classes down the throats of the communities
It is dangerous, potentially deadly and puts all residents of Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint at risk.
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it ser ves in a haphazard and secretive manner. In addition, Universit y Housing forced all residents to sig n an amendment that g ives the Universit y the authorit y to evict positive COVID-19 residents and protects the Universit y from any liabilit y at the same time. If that weren’t enough, the Universit y’s Board of Regents approved a 1.9 percent tuition increase at Ann Arbor and Dearborn campuses and a 3.9 percent tuition increase for Flint campus, as well as a $50 COVID-19 fee for all enrolled students. The realit y remains that universities knew about COVID19 for over f ive months before they released their reopening plans. There was time to engage with GEO, LEO, facult y, staff, students and parents in a transparent manner. In particular, President Schlissel called testing the entire U-M communit y “science f iction,” which he justif ied by reiterating an old, homophobic and inaccurate claim about HIV testing — we shouldn’t test people because “testing can g ive you a false sense of securit y. That happened in the HIV epidemic when people got a negative
test and presented it to their sex partner and spread (the) disease nonetheless.” Contrar y to this statement, reg ular and asymptomatic testing is an essential part of HIV public health. COVID-19 remains fairly controlled in Michigan compared to other parts of the countr y. But the Universit y’s reopening plan could quickly undo that, as the Ann Arbor Public School Board noted when they decided to go fully online because of the Universit y’s reckless reopening plan. Not only is the reopening plan unsafe and unjust, but it is dangerous, potentially deadly and puts all residents of Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint at risk. This is yet another strain on the not always rosy relationship between the U-M communit y and the permanent residents of Ann Arbor: Cit y Councilmember Julie Grand noted the increased tension the Universit y’s decisions have created within this relationship, stating, “I don’t like that this (reopening plan) pits students against people living in the communit y.” At this point in the pandemic, the Universit y knows that COVID-19 will kill facult y, staff, students and their families and neighbors. If someone sur vives the disease, there remains about a 33 percent chance of “prolonged illness even among persons with milder outpatient illness, including young adults.” All of this led to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer calling for all public universities to not bring
their students back in the fall due to the pandemic and likelihood of in-residence semesters spreading the virus throughout the state. The Universit y of Michigan’s plans for the fall term contradict the governor’s advice, as well as that of federal and state public health experts. The Universit y’s reopening plan is eerily similar to UNC’s plan — which has been referred to as a “clusterfuck” due to the explosion of positive COVID-19 cases across the universit y. How much longer before the Universit y, in particular President Schlissel, admits that we cannot safely house or teach in-person this semester? Will we have to wait for hundreds of positive COVID-19 cases on campus within the f irst week of classes, as the UNC, Notre Dame, NC State and UA communities have experienced? Or will the plan be to push forward to “make it through the semester,” until someone in our communit y dies? And if that were to happen, where the loss of life acts as the tipping point for the Universit y — is the price of an in-residence experience worth the lives of ser vice and custodial workers and other campus staff ?
The authors are from the Graduate Employees’ Organization COVID-19 Caucus and the Lecturers’ Employee Organization and can be reached at covidchair@geo3550.org and communications@leounion.org, respectively.
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Arts
10 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
On my belated encounter with ‘Pride and Prejudice’ EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer
I’ve been having a hard time keeping track of time, but Goodreads indicates that it took me just under two weeks to read “Pride and Prejudice.” For some reason it feels like longer. Or maybe not? Time is passing in strange ways now. Maybe it’s that everything I do now has a greater tendency to completely fill my field of vision. When I decided to read Austen’s classic, it was all I really wanted to do. Her long, intricate sentences seemed to take up my entire brain. My housemate, who is the kind of person who read these novels in her adolescence, lent me her copy. It’s one of those ugly-but-useful Dover Critical Editions that has a bunch of essays and an eye-wateringly extensive bibliography in the back. She told me she’s read it six or seven times and you can tell. Her marginalia is that of someone with a real affinity for the material, as well as someone who knows what’s going to happen almost by heart. When Wickham tells Elizabeth his (misrepresented) life story, my housemate filled the margins with skepticism. “Consider how unusual at the time it would be to just say all of this directly to someone you just met,” she wrote. Elizabeth says something similar later on: “She was now struck with the impropriety of such communication to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before.” My housemate’s experience of this book reminds me of Zadie Smith’s analogy for rereading: like walking into a house whose rooms you know very well, and you can see clearly the placement of the objects and their relationships to each other. Elsewhere, my housemate’s
annotations are enthusiastic. “OMG he is so bad at this,” she writes next to Darcy’s awkward attempts to converse with Lizzy Bennet. “Awful,” she writes next to one of Mr. Collins’s ponderously misogynistic speeches. Austen is a writer who inspires this kind of immediate affinity, fandom even, in a way that a lot of other literary writers don’t. I wanted to share this affinity, but I couldn’t. Even though I felt a sort of affinity for her style and methods, I never felt fully absorbed by it. This is, of course, my fault and
It’s one of those uglybut-useful Dover Critical Editions that has a bunch of essays and an eyewateringly extensive bibliography in the back.
I immediately felt bad about it. I don’t really care about the canon, not exactly, but it does bother me a little bit that when someone asks me what my favorite novel is, I will answer with something published in the last 5-10 years. Uh, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”? Maybe “Conversations With Friends”? I could lie and say “The Last Samurai.” That’s a book that people who want to be writers are allowed to have as their favorite, I think. It’s not that these are not good books, but it’s that I feel a little bit of shame at their topicality. They feel like news items and therefore whatever the opposite
of edifying is. Of course, it’s not that I haven’t read “Jane Eyre” or anything, it’s just that I am not the kind of person who loves that kind of thing. What is “that kind of thing,” anyway? Maybe it’s the ethos Austen depicts. Her characters— mostly the lower end of the gentry who are, in their own way, precariously situated— spend a lot of their time visiting each other. They are constantly coming in and out of each other’s houses, being entertained in rooms specifically designed for the purpose, having conversations and judging each other’s conversational abilities. Conversation is like a game for these people: they are always trying to impress other people and (sometimes) trying to be fair and judicious in their own assessments. Darcy, who pretty early on refuses to dance with anyone at a ball and barely speaks to anyone, is met with such universal disdain by the Hertfordshire set because he basically confronts the concerns that animate these people’s lives and says “no, thank you.” No one seemingly dislikes him more than Elizabeth Bennet, who, as we know, ends up with Darcy in the end. Elizabeth’s opinion changes over the course of an uncountable number of social gatherings and chance encounters. Elizabeth visits Netherfield to see her beloved sister, who has fallen ill, and in the process is in the same room as Darcy in the evening. Later, she visits her friend Charlotte Lucas and her husband and Darcy happens to be in their social circle. It proceeds like that — largely by accident, and modestly. Austen’s characters are constantly making guesses and suppositions about their friends and relations that have
This novel attests to the hyphenated A/PIA life ELIZABETH YOON Daily Arts Columnist
Seven days without electricity last August delivered me shaking and stimulus-starved on the steps of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer.” Hurricane Isaias had taken out most of Connecticut’s electrical infrastructure, along with all contact with the outside world. Only when removed from 21st century comforts could I approach Nguyen’s award-encrusted novel. Nguyen combines historical fiction with spy thriller,
following a nameless man with divided allegiances. Initially, his dense pages repelled me. However, Nguyen’s cutting social commentary drew me deeper. After being educated in the United States, the book’s protagonist returns to Vietnam to fight in the Vietnam War. He works as a communist sleeper agent in the office of the Americanbacked South Vietnamese. As his moniker suggests, the man’s identity and allegiances are not clear cut. He muddles through life and war, sympathetic to all sides yet indecisive when it counts. His uncertainty makes him a
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questioning yet pliant cog in a larger, destructive war machine. While traveling between California college campuses, warscapes and movie sets, the man makes cutting observations about war, military, America, academia and, perhaps most significantly, his own confused identity. The man is both Vietnamese and American. He is innocent yet a killer, unwilling yet complicit. He is born of a poor Asian mother and a proselytizing European father. He fights for the South and North simultaneously, for both Capitalism and Communism. In many ways, his circumstances dramatize the hyphenated experiences of A/ PIA (Asian-Pacific Islander American) individuals. A/PIA individuals are routinely asked by society or conscience to assert an allegiance, to define themselves and their ethnic identity within pre-scripted denominations of social acceptability. However, as the protagonist finds, the narrow range of Asian-American expressions is stifling. In “The Sympathizer,” pre-scripted roles of spy, communist and killer hamstring the unnamed protagonist. His mind ultimately fractures under his two-minded multinational duality. Yet, what I gleaned from “The Sympathizer” is that self-destruction is not the only resolution to the hyphenated A/ PIA question. Within the novel, another character faces the allegiance question. It is through the protagonist’s co-worker and brief lover, Ms. Sofia Mori, that we are pampered with a fully realized thesis of the Asian-American experience. Reclining at the bar, smoking a cig, Mori takes the position that A/PIA individuals
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to be confirmed by another visit, another noticed gesture. Even after it’s clear that Darcy and Elizabeth finally have chemistry, there are an intervening three or four visits and encounters before he proposes. It’s civilized in the extreme. Austen is not even-handed or particularly realistic in her depiction of human beings, and veers into caricature more often than I would like. Austen has a particular disdain, it seems, for people whose education in manners has resulted in incomplete, stunted or overly self-possessed personalities. Mr. Collins, the ridiculous parson who proposes to Elizabeth in the first section of the novel, is an example of the kind of character who receives the most scorn from Austen’s narrator. Ditto for Mary Bennet, Elizabeth’s younger sister, who, by virtue of being “the only plain one in the family” is the most “accomplished,” meaning that she spends all her time with books and pretends not to care about balls or social functions where she would have little success. Her manners are rigid and solemn, and she sometimes repeats the lazy, misogynistic moralisms that Mr. Collins spouts. These two characters lack the natural, unstudied grace of Elizabeth and Jane. Maybe this is an ethos of sorts for the novel as a form — drawn, as it is, as much from life as it is from other books, all the while
disguising its source material. Even so, I didn’t like that Austen needed a character like Mary to make this point. More than once, I wrote in the margins ‘THIS IS A REALLY CYNICAL BOOK’ and meant it. Of course, a more fair assessment should take into account the very real social pressures placed on women in Austen’s world. She insists on women’s subjectivity in a world determined to deny it, and even if the result is a narrow, bourgeois kind of freedom, it’s something. Elizabeth Bennet is certainly an appealing character — judicious, kind, capable of changing her mind. Maybe my favorite part of this book is the close, intimate bond that Lizzy has with her sister Jane. The former almost seems to be capable of predicting the latter’s thoughts and has an intense feeling for her happiness and unhappiness. There’s a lot to admire here, even if parts of it I found off-putting. One would think that a lush Regency novel where the stakes are ultimately rather low seems like the perfect distraction right now, but it was like my eyes kept slipping past the text. As much as I want to just shut out everything that’s happening and become an art monster, I really can’t bring myself to. Like a lot of people with too much time on their hands, I’ve been checking Twitter and news sites compulsively. In the absence of other stimuli, my inner life
starts to resemble a constantly refreshing timeline: jittery, fragmented, important-feeling, ambiguous in composite. I’m already pretty ADHD but this has been making it worse. To pull my brain back from that flickering state to Austen’s long, intricate sentences frequently didn’t work. I found myself rereading paragraphs and losing the thread in the process. She writes like the second movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto, just constantly unspooling dripping elegance that resides mostly in details. Austen is resolutely against the grand gesture. I’ve been feeling the need, maybe, for something dramatic now that there is very little opportunity to make a grand gesture without being grossly irresponsible. Still, it hurts a little bit that nothing in my life really gets to the pitch I want anymore. Maybe this book is trying to convince me to seek validation in repetition and confirmation rather than this persistent desire for drastic change. It’s not the fault of the work that I happened to run into it at a uniquely bad time. Like any great work of art, “Pride And Prejudice” makes the reader adapt to it, and it could be that I was just resisting what the work is asking of me as a reader. Ideally, you have to meet a work on its own terms and not be always imposing yourself on it, as difficult as it might be.
do not need to defend themselves or hold their identity accountable to anyone but themselves. Her theory of A/PIA identity requires steadfast stubbornness and self-reliance, existing beyond governmental policy or national status. Despite others’ opinions, only oneself can arbitrate selfworth and identity. As Mori’s American experience implies, neither state nor society can resolve the allegiance question. Relatedly, Mori’s boss, the Department Chair of Oriental Studies, often laments her inability to speak Japanese. He wishes she would “honor her culture” and Mori responds by venting after work hours, questioning the double standard applied to non-white Americans. Why should Mori safeguard her Japanese-ness if President John F. Kennedy does not need to hone his Gaelic? While lacking the modern terminology, Mori is alluding to the Perpetual Foreigner stereotype. During World War II, Japanese-Americans were forced out of their homes and into temporary concentration camps. As a survivor of Executive Order
9066, Mori is intimately familiar with the Perpetual Foreigner Stereotype. The U.S. 1942 policy was underpinned by the idea that Asian-American individuals are incapable of successful assimilation into mainstream American society; the styeroptye posits that regardless of circumstance, any non-white individual will be regarded as a dangerous, subversive “other.” Some may take issue with Mori’s “disregard for heritage” in the novel, but her frustration with her homeland resonates. Despite America’s sins against her family, she cannot relinquish or erase her American birth and upbringing. She has known nothing other than her American culture. And five years after publication, the animosity and identity-policing Mori describes in “The Sympathizer” still rings true. In 2020, Mori’s identity war of attrition is still ongoing. More than anything, “The Sympathizer” provides a very smart, very human treatise on the Asian-American experience and the ramifications of America’s militarism. Chapter by chapter, Nguyen juxtaposes the horrors
of war with American promises and homely realities. Privy to capitalist boons, propaganda and the American Industrial Complex, the characters make unrelenting, uncomfortable and contradictory social commentaries. Through absurd circumstances and vivid supporting characters, Nguyen does the hard work of articulating the strangled song of displacement and AsianAmerican identity, scattered in the meandering cavities interconnecting our brains, lungs and tongues. And somehow, even when the world feels careless and chaotic, Nguyen provides a timely insight into the American past and present. *** A recommended dish to devour alongside Nguyen’s novel is a classic bowl of pho, tripe optional. And if you’re still hungering for more, you can also view the guest lecture Nguyen gave at U-M in 2018 and his 2018 interview with The Michigan Daily’s Michigan in Color. Daily Arts Columnist Elizabeth Yoon can be reached at elizyoon@ umich.edu.
COURTESY OF ELIZABETH YOON
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘You’re basic!’ and its gendered implications SAMANTHA DELLA FERRA Daily Arts Columnist
There are few eras more difficult in a woman’s life than adolescence. Within these years, every action she takes is analyzed and critiqued, not just by friends, parents and teachers, but by society as a whole. In the past few years, one common critique has been directed at young women: You’re basic. From Snapchat filters to song lyrics, “basic” has become a foundational slang term for young people of the 2010s. So what does the term mean? For many, calling someone basic recalls the Ugg boots-wearing, pumpkin spice latte-drinking girls of 2015. Over time, these “basic bitches” have evolved beyond their original form, becoming the image of anyone deemed a follower. Or, for the most part, any young woman that dares to have interests. I want to take a look back at history — the year 1964, to be exact. In the music industry, this year would be the catalyst to the British Invasion, as The Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show and threw America into a frenzy. When you look at images from this iconic moment, they do not show the cliché Beatles fan we might picture today. There are no 54-year-old white men in faded ringer tees lamenting over the death of “real music.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. “Beatlemania” was characterized by screaming, crying, obsessing teenage girls. Yet this did nothing to discredit the band, and they are still remembered today as one of the greatest groups of all time. Ironically, today a teen girl wearing a Beatles shirt is usually scoffed at by exactly that cliché fan. And if they can’t name the title of the first demo off of a scrapped album that John Lennon wrote in 1963 well, then, they can’t even call themself a fan. This disdain for alleged
imposters stretches beyond popular music. Teen girls listening to Led Zeppelin are tryhards. Electronic fans are festival hoes. Rap fans are bandwagoners. Name any genre and it conjures the face of someone who represents something wrong with the fans of that style, and all too often, that face is young and feminine. And all too often, it is the men of a particular fanbase who scoff at their female counterparts as if they are of less worth and credibility than them. You may be thinking, “Hey,
Arts
inherently see womanhood and everything associated with it as less than. At least in my life, dealing with internal misogyny can be an everyday battle, especially when many older generations of women base their worldview in it. I buried my nose in books and barely brushed my hair as a child because I thought caring about looks would mean I was superficial and stupid. And these mantras never end. Women should cover up to make a man’s life easier. Women shouldn’t have ambition because that hurts their family. Women need to wear dresses and makeup and keep their hair long to be pretty. Women are forced into little boxes that others construct for them in order to be accepted, and in order to preserve such a system, they must constantly have their worth attacked. I have a radical request: Just let women live. Someone’s intelligence and worth as a person is not determined by the culture they consume or produce. Being “basic” does not exist. Whether one views themself as alternative or mainstream or somewhere in between, there are a million other people in the same position as them. There are enough forces acting against the interests of women, we don’t need to drag each other down as well. Watch “Love Island” with your friend in the Slipknot shirt or throw on your Air Force 1’s to go see that new foreign film with the girl from class. Individuality is a waste of time when there is a world of interests to be tried out and different people with whom to engage. If all else fails, get a group together and stand in your local record store comparing One Direction to The Beatles; sometimes it’s nice to just have a laugh. Daily Arts Columnist Samantha Della Fera can be reached at samdf@umich.edu.
I have a radical request: Just let women live. Someone’s intelligence and worth as a person is not determined by the culture they consume or produce.
it’s really not that deep.” And in some ways, you would be correct. Calling someone basic has become so common the word barely has meaning anymore, and there are much more harmful words and actions thrust at women — so many, that talking about them could become an entire anthology. But ridiculing any interests of a young growing girl can be impactful in ways beyond just forcing them to spend summers listening to sad indie white boys instead of Megan Thee Stallion. Everybody has an individuality complex: the desire to be special, to be one-of-a-kind. To be able to say “I liked that show years ago” or “I wore that shirt first” and somehow derive superiority from their taste. This superiority often manifests itself as internalized misogyny, actively rejecting femininity or what are traditionally considered feminine interests because they
Animated classic ‘Mare’ now streaming in the U.S. JACOB LUSK
Daily Arts Writer
In a parallel world, moviegoers, blissfully unaware of the COVIDs and the Faucis and the curves — f lattened or otherwise — are settling down in front of the silver screen at their favorite theater for a rare Hungarian treat. Their throats and noses gloriously exposed, these parallel-people are being dazzled by a tale of mythic proportions: haloed heroes travel across realms to save fairy royalty from the clutches of dragons with a strange
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fixation on securing mates of a decidedly non-draconic nature (isn’t there any love amongst the dragons?). But these inter-species affairs shouldn’t come as a surprise — this is the 1981 animated odyssey “Son of the White Mare,” from the Hungarian filmmaker Marcell Jankovics (“Johnny Corncob”), and the title is not exactly figurative. The rest of us have to settle for being dazzled on our laptops. “Mare” premiered almost 40 years ago, but August marked its firstever premiere in the United States. Originally intended for theaters, the switch was made to local theaters’ virtual
platforms (hosted through Vimeo) once the pandemic hit. “Mare” is something of a classic among animation aficionados, the psychedelia it provides showcasing the unique and limitless possibilities of the animated medium. Its U.S. premiere, Vimeo or not, is long overdue. Based on a 19th century Hungarian epic poem and the folktales of the nomadic Avar, Scythian and Hunnic peoples, “Mare” presents a simple story with simple fairy-tale logic. Once upon a time there was a horse who gave birth to three superhuman boys named Treeshaker, Stonecrumbler and Irontemperer, so named
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 11
The viral ballet video we misunderstood
GOOD MORNING AMERICA
ZOE PHILLIPS
Daily Arts Columnist
The world first saw Anthony Mmesoma Madu dance back in June — his teacher and studiofounder Daniel Owoseni Ajala posted a video of the 11-year-old student turning and leaping in the rainy outdoors of his native Nigeria. The boy’s bare feet propelled him off the muddy ground through an impressive combination of classical ballet, and the clip soon went viral. In the United States and Europe, professional dancers with large followings on social media reposted the video and offered words of admiration for Madu’s tenacity. New York City Ballet superstar Tiler Peck invited him to join her as a guest on her daily IGTV ballet classes. Viola Davis posted the video to her Instagram, and Nigerian journalist Fade Ogunuro announced over Twitter that she planned to pay for the rest of Madu’s academic expenses through the end of college. Earlier this month, the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School offered him a full scholarship to their virtual summer program, including additional funding for his internet. The news coverage started quickly. BBC, NPR, Washington Post, Good Morning America, Reuters, People Magazine and TIME make up only a partial list of publications that covered the story. This attention makes sense; Madu’s is a tale of opportunity in a world currently stricken by loss. The dance industry in particular has already hemorrhaged millions, if not billions, of dollars in the wake of waves of COVID19 and there continues to be no
because they can shake trees, crumble stones and temper iron with their bare hands, et cetera, et cetera. At one point an adolescent Treeshaker says to his equine mom, “An old man told me to ask you to nurse me for seven more years and then I will be strong!” and she just goes with it. And in classic mythological fashion, every narrative obstacle occurs three times (the third time usually being the charm). But these unsophisticated story beats are easy to forgive — myths are usually f luid, often simple and almost always silly at their core (even when plumbing grimdark depths). “Mare” is a story of mythic logic but psilocybin proportions. From beginning to end, color, sound and shape crash in a phantasmagoric display, sampling the very best of French classic “Fantastic Planet,” the Beatles-driven “Yellow Submarine” and that weird alcohol-induced trip in “Dumbo.” The art style is simple — largely solid colors and f lat shapes — but in motion the setting and characters twist and shimmer and transmogrify. In one particularly remarkable segment, colors pulsate as a horse’s womb enlarges into a great cosmic tree only to morph back into that same
clear date for the safe reopening of theaters and performance spaces. When the ABT JKO School’s director Cynthia Harvey announced Madu’s scholarship, she touched on this context. “Here, we’re complaining about not being able to open our buildings,” she told the The Cincinnati Enquirer. “But in that video, I saw a boy who was a perfect example of the tenacity someone can have when they have love and a dream. It was immediately obvious how much determination he had.” Madu’s work ethic can indeed feel humbling in an environment stricken with complaints surrounding the discomfort of dancing in one’s own airconditioned living room. The imagery of his dancing in the rain seems to have rekindled the dwindling motivation of many dancers currently training at home while living on tiny unemployment checks. Nevertheless, all of this attention feels narrow: If this student is truly the world’s paragon of tenacity, why did he have to become a viral sensation to even be noticed? Socioeconomic accessibility in ballet became a revitalized conversation topic this summer. In the wake of a global reckoning with systemic racism, activists continue to push ballet’s leadership to acknowledge and rectify the deep roots of elitism and white supremacy upon which this art form was built. Even today, FiveThirtyEight predicts that a ballerina in training may spend up to $100,000 before landing a professional contract (minus the female-only pointe shoe category, the number is still close to $70,000). As the
pressure mounts for rich, white dance institutions to increase their support for communities cut off by such insurmountable price tags, Madu’s story offers a dangerously easy narrative of change — a young prodigy finally given the opportunity his talent deserves. But this narrative only includes the story of one student; the story would be exponentially more powerful if we sought to include the empowerment of Madu’s classmates as well as other underserved communities across the globe. Madu’s studio, the Leap of Dance Academy, is a prime example of organizations deserving of such financial support and community validation. The founder, Daniel Owoseni Ajala, is a self-taught dancer with a dream of expanding dance education for his own community. He teaches his students from his own apartment and doesn’t charge for lessons. In addition to dance, he provides academic tutoring and a weekly meal. As Madu’s video made the rounds on social media, Ajala received an influx of donations and an invitation to ABT’s twoweek teacher training program, but these parts of the story were left out of the vast majority of coverage. Instead, the articles and video featurettes focused solely on Madu’s talented turns and jumps — almost all of them mentioned the boy’s talent as a motivational symbol for a world crushed by an ongoing pandemic. Apparently, students and communities like Madu’s only become relevant with a global health crisis as the backdrop.
horse’s vulva as a little baby boy pops out and shifts into a panorama of the night sky whose stars transform into
peddles in the geriatric gender politics required of almost any mythos story, with damsels simultaneously being in distress and screwing over the whole world in Eve-fashion. Treeshaker fashioning a sword from another man’s beard and swooshing it around between his legs isn’t too subtle either, but can one really expect an adaptation of myth to not feature heavy phallic imagery? Animation is often at its best when it accomplishes something live action cannot. “Mare” is a firm example of such a film, a visual journey that should satisfy mythology nuts, cartoon geeks and anyone looking for a brief sojourn in a parallel world.
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The rest of us have to settle for being dazzled on our laptops. “Mare” premiered almost 40 years ago, but August marked its first-ever premiere in the United States.
the sweat and tears of the proud mare as she licks her newborn colt. The miracle of childbirth! Jankovics matches the psychedelic display with expert choices in art direction that marry myth to modernity — the sinister dragons that Treeshaker and his brothers must vanquish are not the scaly reptiles of yore but are fashioned after machines of war and cyclopean cities. These f lourishes make the age-old story fresh and interesting, but unfortunately these modern touches don’t extend too deep, as “Mare”
Son of the White Mare Cinema Lamont/ Vimeo Arbelos Films
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12 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The calm before the storm: Michigan and the ethics of uninformed reopening
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n Tuesday of Welcome Week this year, I had dinner alone on my porch. The house I had moved into just a few days earlier was still uncomfortably hot, so I fled to the cool breeze and quiet murmur of the street. Settling into a chair, I watched the world go by in front of me as dusk faded into night. Usually, when I sit still in such a bustling environment, I like to imagine where people are coming from, where they are going, who they are talking to on the phone and other mildly entertaining things. This time, though, I was focused on whether or not people were wearing masks. Since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Executive Order 2020-153, Michiganders have been required to wear face coverings in public spaces — both indoors and outdoors — to stop the spread of COVID-19. Adherence to these and other guidelines represents crucial public health measures for the state of Michigan, which has suffered more than 6,700 of the approximately 180,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States thus far. By my count, it seemed that less than half of the people who walked past my house that evening were wearing masks. In addition to inadequate mask compliance, the return of students this fall has also increased the probability of super-spreader events. Large universities like ours, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Notre Dame University and the University of Alabama, have already succumbed to spikes in cases that have been traced back to bars and off-campus parties. With each new day, another university learns the same lesson about trusting its entire student body to restrain itself during one of the biggest party seasons of the year. Over the course of the past week, I conducted interviews collecting people’s perceptions about our campus community’s response to the pandemic, as well as our chances of maintaining in-person instruction. How likely was it that our campus would experience similar outbreaks to those at other colleges? While there were differences in opinion on many issues, one particular prediction proved unanimous: the University of Michigan is next. To me, this was cause for alarm. Practically everyone I asked predicted the University would be completely online within one or two weeks, and that the freshmen would likely be sent home before they even got a taste of the much-advertised “First Year Experience.” It was quite confusing to watch other people, especially my peers, go about their daily lives as if nothing especially odd was happening. At the outset of my investigation, I wanted to explore the fatalism that had taken hold of our campus community. Operating under the assumption that a move to allonline instruction was a litmus test for our ability to contain the virus, I struggled with the question: Is the closure of campus inevitable? Or, in metaphorical terms: Are we living through the calm before the storm? he belief in the likely failure of the University’s reopening plan was certainly widespread, but I still questioned the prevailing wisdom that there was nothing I could do to stop it. As a senior, the social connections and experiences I have built here over the years give me a relatively small, but relevant sphere of influence. I could still choose not to attend social gatherings that might endanger my health or the health of others, and encourage my friends to do the same. But what if I had just arrived on campus, desperate to make friends and wriggle my way into the fabric of college social life? This is the plight of the current freshmen, who since March have had major coming-
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BY ALEXANDER SATOLA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
of-age events such as prom, graduation and now Welcome Week canceled or severely limited to virtual equivalents. I remember when I was a freshman; the first few weeks were a mad dash to attain the sense of feeling established and comfortable in my own skin. My intuition is that most upperclassmen like me have probably not thought much about this year’s freshman class, let alone interacted with them in any meaningful way. To better understand their perspective, I talked with a few freshmen who decided to study on campus for the fall term this year. The first freshman I spoke with was David Welch, a student in the School of Engineering and an Ann Arbor townie. In our phone conversation, I asked David why, even with the pandemic still raging, he would still opt for the perennial college experience of living in the dorms rather than at home just a few miles away. “What I want to do is meet new people,” Welch said. “I feel like that’s the most important thing that I could potentially miss out on if I didn’t, you know, live in a dorm.” For the majority of undergraduates, returning to campus offers the opportunity of connecting with their peers. There is nothing wrong with that, though I did find it unfortunate that the parties thrown by the elder undergraduates would likely lead the first-year experience to be more of a firstfew-weeks experience. Bea Brockey is another freshman who will be starting her first semester in the LSA Residential College, a living-learning program especially geared toward underclassmen. RC students have the privilege of living and taking classes in East Quad Residence Hall for their first two years, though the uncertainty of the pandemic has made students like Bea wary of getting too comfortable. “I really hope we get to stay as long as possible but I think we’re gonna get sent home in, like, two weeks or a month,” Bea said during our phone conversation. I then asked Bea whether she thought campus closure was inevitable. “College students aren’t necessarily notorious for their ability to follow the rules, and I think people are going to party. They have been partying at other colleges that have reopened. And if they do that, I think it’s likely that we will be sent home.” I felt empathy for the freshmen I interviewed about the upcoming semester, if only in the sense that I also felt I had very little control over how things would play out. I wondered: Is there any evidence out there that Michigan will be able to stop the spread of the virus and deliver a quality in-person education at the same time? he first data source I probed was my own lived experience. On two consecutive nights, I went out
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also involved in the Graduate Employees’ Organization’s COVID Caucus, pointed out the irony in Broekhuizen’s statement during our phone conversation. “It seems to me like what the University is already doing is letting people off the hook and assigning no sort of criticism at all for that kind of behavior, while actively criticizing the people who call it a potential problem.” When I asked Lockhart for his opinion on the University’s reopening plan more generally, his response caught my attention. “We know that this University administration is living in fantasy land, right?” He then referred to an argument Schlissel made during a “Virtual Faculty Town Hall” in mid-August about testing; namely, that students who tested negative for COVID-19 would be emboldened to take ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT greater risks, just as gay men late in the evening to scope out the streets, supposedly did during the HIV/AIDs epiand this time not just from my porch. demic. As Greg Gonsalves wrote in his arDonning a face mask, I set off on the first ticle for The Nation, Schlissel’s statement night for a walk around campus. I walked was “a fabricated tale, stigmatizing gay men by a group of guys playing a game of beer all over again as vectors of disease and infecdie, blasting music and shouting as the dice tion.” plummeted toward a carefully painted taLockhart further criticized Schlissel’s ble. I passed by several restaurants where statement as a justification for not carrying bare-faced diners were wolfing down their out regular asymptomatic testing on-cammeals in the outside seating area. Wherpus: “Anyone who knows anything about ever I looked, it seemed like more people HIV public health knows that regular aswere wearing their masks around their neck ymptomatic testing is crucial … so for him to than on their actual faces. I even had a few say that HIV testing is an example of why we minutes completely to myself as I walked shouldn’t have asymptomatic widespread down an empty State Street, but the relatesting; it is the most backward, nonsensical tive solitude was interrupted when a group thing.” of roughly twenty girls dressed up to go out In fairness to Schlissel, he has since made ran past me on the sidewalk. several apologies for this statement in the The next night, I interviewed some of wake of criticism from U-M’s Queer Advothe late-night revelers. The prevailing senticacy Coalition. Nevertheless, his slip of the ment among the people I talked to was that tongue was not merely a mistake; it was a they were just having a good time (all spoke window, an invitation to discover a wealth on the condition of anonymity). They did of unsettling evidence regarding potential not believe what they were doing was harmcorruption in the University’s reopening ful, and many said they felt poorly informed scheme. about the consequences of getting in trouble Lockhart shared with me two key docuanyway. ments that reveal a suspicious misalignment This lack of awareness was not surprisbetween expert knowledge and University ing. In fact, the University has largely avoidpolicy: The Report of the Ethics and Privacy ed addressing disciplinary action in its COVCommittee that Schlissel himself charged ID-19 messaging but instead has appealed to with investigating the University’s options students’ sense of responsibility. In an interfor reopening, and a more recent document view with The Daily, University President titled “Update on the current situation and Mark Schlissel complained that “I get a litplanning for the Fall Term” by the same comtle insulted when everybody says there’s no mittee. The Report assesses the ethical imway that students are going to wear masks, plications of a return to in-person instruction and there’s no way that they’re not going to “from a diverse array of standpoints,” taking party in dangerous fashions, and there’s no into account the moral obligations the Uniway they’re mature enough to recognize the versity has to its students, faculty, staff and importance of the moment and behave like surrounding communities. Its publication on the adults that you all are.” June 8 preceded the announcement of the But students disagree, and for good reaUniversity’s Maize & Blueprint plan for what son. Schlissel called, “a public health-informed In an episode characteristic of mature in-residence semester this fall.” adults, a Twitter user captured a photo of a However, the Update memo, originally social gathering that featured a banner with sent on July 31 according to the memo’s the words, “You can’t eat ASS with a mask header, was not made public until Dr. Silkeon.” The photo also featured another banner Maria Weineck — a professor at the Universithat seemed to have “Rush Phi Psi” written ty — shared it on her Twitter account on Aug. across it in red letters, referring to the fra24. The main assertion of its authors is that ternity Phi Kappa Psi. we, as a University, would likely turn Ann ArThe University’s public response was one bor into a COVID-19 “hot spot” that placed of mild displeasure toward the students in members of the campus community as well the photo. In an email to The Daily, Univeras all members of adjacent communities in sity spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen wrote serious danger. that even though the banner was “embarThe publication of the document was just rassing,” it constituted protected speech one of a series of actions by University emunder the first amendment. She also mainployees demanding greater accountability tained that Phi Kappa Psi was not affiliated and transparency from the University. On the with the gathering and that the people in the Friday before classes began, the Faculty Senphoto were not breaking any public health ate considered a vote of no confidence in the guidelines. On the other hand, she wrote administration, one day after an anonymous that she “thoroughly condemns” those who staff member published a scathing Op-Ed in were harassing or threatening the residents The Daily. on social media. Jeff Lockhart, a sixth-year Ph.D. student Read more at in sociology and complex systems who is
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Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 13
A new normal ILLUSTRATION BY AHMAD KADY
BY MARISSA SABLE, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
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n November of 2009, a special election in New York state meant that school was cancelled, so my mom decided to take my sister and I into New York City for a girl’s day. We planned to shop for hours at our favorite stores, stuff ourselves with classic New York pizza for lunch and venture to Midtown Manhattan. Before we left for the city, my mom explained that I would need to give a urine sample to the doctor. Since I had never really had to go to the doctor for anything major, aside from the pneumonia I had gotten in August two months prior, I was skeptical, but I quickly forgot about it as we drove into the city. Under any other circumstances, I would have been having a blast, but this girls day trip was different. I was too tired to walk around, too busy thinking about when I could get my next bottle of water and too focused on how badly I needed to use the bathroom to really enjoy myself. I tried to ignore how I was feeling and relish the day to the best of my ability, but I passed out from exhaustion the second we got into the car for the ride home. My first stop when I walked into the house was the bathroom, which had become a part of my normal routine for the past three months, and then I asked my mom for ice cream as a snack. After getting me ice cream, she checked the answering machine on the landline. She noticed she had nine missed calls from the doctor, so she called my doctor’s office back immediately. The next thing I knew, my mom grabbed the ice cream out of my hands as she frantically called my dad, and we were getting back into the car. After driving for what felt like hours, we arrived at a hospital 30 minutes from my house, where the doctors were expecting me. Yet, unlike the doctors, I was not expecting anything that would happen that day. As I sat in the hospital bed, feeling con-
fused, hungry and scared, I was told to get comfortable. I was told I’d be there for a while, and I tried my best to tune out the grumbling inside my stomach as the doctors emphasized the importance of conducting tests on an empty stomach and pricked me with needles. Words were thrown around the room. Words with meanings I didn’t know. Words that scared me: “Juvenile Diabetes,” “type 1,” “manageable,” “treatable, not curable,” “injections” and “pancreas,” just to name a few. The word pancreas was particularly new to me. I had never used, heard or seen this word before, but the doctors kept mentioning it to me and my parents. While my parents tried to understand what the doctors were saying, their faces scrunched up with concern and focus, I sat in my hospital bed feeling like I was watching somebody else’s life, in disbelief that this was actually happening to me. It didn’t take long for the doctors to realize how lost I was in this sea of new information. After a few minutes, the head doctor sat at the end of my hospital bed and asked me if I was familiar with the game Pac-Man. Pac-Man is an arcade game in which the player navigates the Pac-Man icon through a maze containing various dots, known as Pac-Dots, and four multi-colored ghosts. The goal of the game is to accumulate points by eating all the Pac-Dots in the maze, completing each level of the game. My doctor told me to think of my pancreas as the Pac-Man icon and the process of how my body functions as a type 1 diabetic as the whole game. The function of the pancreas is defined as a gland that produces enzymes that are released into the small intestine to help with digestion. It also contains clusters of cells called islets. The cells in these islets produce hormones such as insulin and glucagon, which help to control the level of glucose (a type of sugar) in the blood. Simi-
lar to Pac-Man eating the dots, my pancreas needs to eat the carbohydrates that enter my body. Without eating the carbohydrates, my body cannot function properly and move on normally, just like Pac-Man cannot move on to the next level of the game without eating all the dots. Ultimately, Pac-Man will reach game over if it fails to eat the dots, and my body will begin to crash if my pancreas does not fulfill its responsibility of producing enough insulin. Unfortunately, the doctor explained, my pancreas had already experienced a game over, which means the insulin hormone had stopped being produced and there was a build-up of dots in my body. This build-up was affecting my everyday life. I always felt weak, I could never quench my thirst, I was constantly urinating and headaches were too frequent to keep count. The doctor explained to me that I would have to manually give myself injections of insulin, which would act as the Pac-Man for my body. The doctor used this analogy to emphasize the importance of taking care of myself — if I wanted to stay in the game of PacMan, I had to be constantly focused and win. The days following my diagnosis, I entered a new world and my life became a large scale Pac-Man game. Every nutrition label became the layout of the game screen. Every time I had food, it became a new level to conquer and overcome. Every time I was able to correctly follow my mom’s lead to fill a syringe — with enough insulin to capture the number of carbohydrates in the food while keeping my blood glucose intact — was a step in the right direction and allowed me to progress. My house became diabetic-proof. We designated cabinets for all my new medications, a shelf in the refrigerator for my insulin and containers around the kitchen to put used syringes in. My mom hid the Halloween candy I had eagerly collected only a few days before. She would have to come
into school three times a day to give me injections and pack me a different snack when people celebrated birthdays. The challenges didn’t end as I grew older; rather, I learned how to respond to them positively and with perspective. When I was on a trip to Australia a few summers ago, I wasn’t able to go scuba diving with my friends because of my diabetes. Instead of harping on the fact that I had to sit on the boat and watch them swim below the surface, I spent the day snorkeling and learning about the reef. You cannot technically beat Pac-Man, just like there is no cure for diabetes. But I have learned just how manageable this disease is and that it is possible to live a normal life. It has taught me to deal with adversity the same way Pac-Man deals with the ghosts: finding new routes, taking it level by level, remaining focused and diligent. Almost 11 years after my diagnosis, I am, like the rest of the world, living during a pandemic. I find myself feeling the same way I felt in that hospital bed 11 years ago: confused, scared, overwhelmed, anxious and unprepared. The fear of having to accept, comprehend and adapt to a new diagnosis mirrors the way we all now have to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the start of the school year. This idea of being forced to adjust to a new normal forces us to question how we, as young people, should approach this new year and this virus in a way that is productive and smart. It is not easy trying to adjust to a new normal, especially when it is a new normal we did not choose. And while analogies like Pac-Man can help one comprehend and adjust to a situation, the work, much like my journey with diabetes, should not stop there. In the coming months, we cannot deny our diagnosis — we must stay focused on the reality that we are still in the heart of a pandemic — because with that negligence comes the obvious truth: game over.
14 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
A faulty diagnosis and a dream deferred BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
W
aiting for a financial aid offer is a lot like waiting for a medical diagnosis. The unknown creates a fear so piercing, so allconsuming, that when the anticipated phone call or email finally comes through, holding your fate in a short string of sentences, your life halts for a second. And then, the shock: Maybe it’s a temporary loss of hearing. Maybe your heart begins to race so much you forget to breathe. Maybe you grow limp, wilting under the weight of lifealtering information. And you can’t quite decide what’s worse: The anticipatory dread that precedes the news or the physiological, traumatic reaction that the news elicits. I’ve experienced this kind of reaction only a few times in my life before one night at the end of July, when a handful of large numbers on a financial aid document told me I might not be able to return to the University of Michigan in the fall. The earliest time I can remember was when I first got my period. I had just returned home from going sledding with a couple of friends, and I pulled down my snow pants to find my baby-blue underwear stained with a small streak of beet-red blood. I clumsily redressed myself and hysterically reported my cherry-colored discovery to my mom. I remember feeling like I was speaking inside a fishbowl, the words muffled and distant. Then there was the time I came home from sixth grade to find my house had been robbed. Neither the driveway littered with my mom’s jewelry nor the front door that had been left swung open and battered on the perimeter registered in my brain as red flags. It was the gaping space left next to our fireplace, where a TV had been the day prior, that finally triggered my primal fight-or-flight response. Panicked, I incorrectly dialed 911 a couple times before finally collecting myself and dialing the correct digits. And then there was the night I got rejected from Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism. The purple text on my application portal seemed to distort in front of me until I finally found the words: “We regret to inform you ...” The place I had spent months researching and fantasizing about and pining for had closed its doors to me; I felt like I had lost a future I hadn’t been able to live yet. Shifting my sights from the fiercely capable version of myself I dreamed I would be at Northwestern to some other, unknown person that would excel at a different school felt impossible. This, compounded by a brutal flare-up of my generalized anxiety disorder, meant that I would need to navigate a life-changing college decision process inside the headspace of someone I didn’t recognize. Like most of my peers, I was tackling countless admissions essays and scholarship applications, but found myself trying to navigate anti-anxiety medications and intensive therapy, too. In a moment of panic, I told my mom I didn’t want to live like this anymore, constantly adjusting my dosages and undergoing therapy to counteract my worsened symptoms only to be back at the same place: Anxious and uncertain and unsure about where in the world I wanted to go to college. A couple weeks before college decisions were due, my mom sat me down on our brown leather couch and told me college might not be the right choice for me. Her eyes, big and blue and brimming with tears, looked into mine with intense worry. She knew that the version of me sitting in front of her was not ready for any sort of undergraduate education come August. Then I was accepted into the University of Michigan. A younger version of myself in a better frame of mind might have seen my acceptance letter that spring and cried with joy. She might have then seen my official financial aid offer a few weeks later and be overcome with pride looking at the considerable amount of aid I had received in grants and awards. That single offer, that single document told me where I needed to be. But my anxiety told me otherwise — that I was incapable, damaged, too mentally unstable to go to college. And when I was at my senior prom, dateless and severely bummed out, I looked around at my classmates, all of whom I’d known since first grade, and knew in my gut that I owed it to myself to start over, outside of Indiana and at the University. So, after a few more months of therapy, leaning into friends and family and allowing myself to regain the kind of confidence I carried before my Northwestern rejec-
tion, I found myself in Ann Arbor in the fall of 2019. I was anxiety-free and confident in my ability to excel in my classes, constantly riding a high of meeting new people and going to new places. Even when I would experience a wave of anxiety, a quick trip to a buzzing and happening Shapiro Undergraduate Library would remind me that this place and all the people in it are so much bigger than my anxieties will ever be. Come Halloween, I found a group of people I loved to be around, I had two work-study jobs and I was writing for an online magazine. Even throughout quarantine and the transition to online classes, I was talking with my U-M friends every day, naively hopeful for a fall semester back in Ann Arbor, where I would be a sophomore once again living off of over-priced lattes and the thrill of shortlived eye contact with a pretty stranger. When the isolation grew to be disheartening, I would picture myself in the places I thought would be waiting for me in the fall: An East Quad Dining Hall bustling with professors and students speaking different languages; a crisp, leaf-covered lane leading me to Tappan Hall; a bright window seat in the Literati Coffee shop. One year as a Wolverine meant that I had this bountiful stash of memories and experiences to store away and return to, pockets of joy and contentment to relive when life grew dull. This made it all the more devastating when my parents delivered the crushing diagnosis this past July, a month before my sophomore year was supposed to begin: You cannot afford the University this year. My heart sank in disbelief and that odd, fishbowl-type of sensation came over me as my parents’ voices warped into muffled noises. After a few moments, the news found its place in the logical part of my brain and I started panicking. Was I supposed to bail on my roommate? What would happen to my credits? What would I tell my friends with whom I was supposed to live junior year? Where would I transfer? The morning after I received Michigan’s diagnosis, I sent in my transfer application to an in-state institution with tears streaming down my face. I was overcome with panic — how could one document usher so much change into my life? I couldn’t eat or sleep for two days. Every waking moment was spent attempting to grieve the loss of the life I created for myself at U-M, while frantically trying to secure admission and housing somewhere in Indiana. My family and I called the financial aid office to inquire about the reasoning behind the significant reduction in my aid package. The officers spoke of formulas and the FAFSA, essentially attributing the entire reduction in my aid to a shift in our household as shown on the FAFSA. “Michigan” or “no Michigan” was determined by one highly-intricate financial aid formula calculated in just the right way. During this award cycle, the office explained, a faulty number was plugged into my application. So, it seemed, the answer was “no Michigan.” But nevertheless, I am here, writing this article as a U-M student, as a sophomore gearing up for the beginning of a year marked by social distance guidelines and other COVID-19 precautions. While my original diagnosis seemed to be completely inalterable, extensive communication with the financial aid office helped me undo the faulty digit that led me to the blunt, cold end of a “no Michigan” equation. And so, I along with all of my peers are met with the sour taste of a different diagnosis: One that marks this entire academic year with “cautious optimism” toward delivering a “health-informed semester.” One that involves a Michigan Union meticulously reconfigured so students study from a safe social distance, dining hall lines stretching for blocks and a campus-wide animosity that allows us to berate freshmen for partying. And we’re paying full, even increased, tuition for all of this. Campus does not look like the University I remembered while straining for first-year memories during an isolating quarantine or sitting across from my parents, crying at the thought of not being able to afford returning this fall. We’re struggling, endlessly irritated with our administration and with each other as we clumsily navigate a “culture of care.” Nevertheless, all we can do with the reality of this school year is conduct ourselves in a way that ensures no one else has to grapple with a similar fate. The diagnosis is seemingly crushing, but we’ve got to make do with it somehow.
ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCNOTT
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An old school center, Hunter Dickinson built for Big Ten competition
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 15
Meet Howard’s Herd: How eight guys made Section 130 fun again
PHOTO COURTESY OF MIKE JONES
Freshman center Hunter Dickinson will bring post presence to Michigan, according to his high school head coach.
JARED GREENSPAN Daily Sports Writer
Hunter Dickinson is comfortable in his own skin — all 7-foot-1, 255 pounds of him. In an era of basketball where the traditional post-up center is an endangered species, Dickinson’s bruising style of play makes for a refreshing throwback. “Hunter, he understands he’s a post player,” Mike Jones, Dickinson’s high school coach at DeMatha Catholic in Hyattsville, Md., said. “He’s unique. He can shoot threes and pass the ball as well as anybody, but he also knows he can be extremely effective on the block close to the basket. A lot of bigs don’t want to do that. He’s very good at it.” The Wolverines need Dickinson, a four-star center and the 42nd-ranked recruit in the 247Sports composite rankings, to contribute right away. Twoyear starter Jon Teske graduated in the spring, leaving Dickinson and fifth-year senior Austin Davis — who has yet to start in
his collegiate career — as the only centers on the roster. To contend in the Big Ten, having a viable center is essential. The conference ran through the position a year ago, and figures to do the same in the upcoming season. No Power Five conference features a more potent collection of big men than the Big Ten. It’s a group headlined by first-team All-American and Naismith Award finalist Luka Garza, who comes back to anchor Iowa in his senior season. Kofi Cockburn, a 7-foot1, 290 pound wall of muscle, turned down the NBA to return to Illinois for his sophomore campaign. Micah Potter and Nate Reuvers make for a dynamic duo of stretch-fives at Wisconsin. Purdue’s Trevion Williams torched Michigan for 36 points and 20 rebounds last season. Trayce Jackson-Davis is a budding star for Indiana. The list goes on. It’s no easy task for an experienced center to tackle, let alone a freshman embarking on his first foray into college
basketball. But if anyone is up for the challenge, Jones is confident that it’s Dickinson. “He’s always performed well against guys his size, guys with reputations,” Jones said. “When the bright lights come on, Hunter’s there. He’s a big-game player. He’s used to playing in big games with the spotlight on him, getting a ton of attention. I think he really thrives in that environment.” Playing at a perennial basketball powerhouse in DeMatha afforded Dickinson multiple rendezvous with premiere talent. In January, the Stags squared off against Rancho Cristian in a nationally-televised showdown on ESPN. The meeting pitted Dickinson against Evan Mobley, the nation’s third-ranked recruit and consensus No. 1 center. While Mobley poured in 22 points and 11 rebounds, it was Dickinson who stole the show, anchoring DeMatha with 28 points and three blocks in a 69-61 victory.
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Matthew Beniers adds more elite playmaking ability
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Howard’s Herd, previously known as Beilein’s Bee-Line, reinvigorated section 130 at Crisler Center.
TEDDY GUTKIN Daily Sports Writer
Whether you’ve been to a Michigan men’s basketball game in person or watched one on TV, you’ve seen them. Perched in Section 130, eight individuals decked out in cow costumes jump up and down over the course of two hours, pumping up the Wolverine faithful and jeering opposing players. These costumed students, known as Howard’s Herd and previously known as the Bee-Line, have become one of the most visible and recognizable parts of attending or watching a Michigan game. Three years ago, Section 130 was a more relaxed alternative to the student section. Featuring cushioned seats instead of benches found in Section 129, where the Maize Rage student section resides, most fans seated in Section 130 spent much of their time sitting down and casually watching the game. But in 2017, the Maize Rage
decided it was time to change the culture of Section 130. One meeting, the Maize Rage announced they were looking for eight members to attend every game in Section 130 to try and increase its spirit and engagement. For senior Drew Hirselj, the decision was a no-brainer. “I mean, getting free food vouchers and guaranteed seating?” Hirselj said, “It was one of the biggest no brainers of all time for me. I was sold right away.” Then freshmen, Hirselj and seven friends attended Michigan’s first game of the season against North Florida, where they led Section 130 in chants, distracted opponents taking free throws and wrote quips on a whiteboard to poke fun at Osprey players. The group had succeeded in energizing the section, but they still felt like they needed an identity to separate themselves from other Maize Rage members. “We were actually called the 130 Boys for those first few games,” senior Josh Goldstein
BRENDAN ROOSE Daily Sports Editor
Here’s the thing — the Michigan hockey team didn’t need another forward in its incoming recruiting class. It already had two commits likely to go top 10 in the 2021 NHL Draft, and another two borderline first-rounders eligible for the 2020 Draft. Without Matthew Beniers, the Wolverines would have an elite class of scorers and playmakers coming in this season. With him it’s downright ludicrous. Beniers also projects as a top10 pick in 2021, and it’s easy to see why. His quick feet and puck skills helped him notch a teamleading 18 goals in 44 games for the U.S. National Under-18 Team last season, but he’s more than just a pure goal scorer. “His competitiveness on the puck, his willingness to win puck battles, to block shots, to do the dirty things that help you win hockey games really is what makes him special,” Seth Appert, a former U.S. National Team Development Program coach, said. “And then his talent combined with that makes him very unique.” Beniers’ quick hands give him an inherent advantage in one-on-one situations, and his
positioning at the turnover was enough to create that scenario. But what makes this play impressive is that he wasn’t even the first to the puck — the replay clearly shows that the defender hacked at it first. From there, Beniers manages to collect the bouncing puck, push it through the defender’s legs and still control it enough to deliver a perfect pass to his teammate. In a span of seconds, he showcases impressive speed, puck control, vision and balance. It would have been the assist of the tournament if not for a ridiculous save from Sweden’s goalie. This is an example of two teammates perfectly in sync. From the moment he picks up the loose puck in front of his own goal, Beniers knows where he’s going with it. He waits just long enough for his teammate to get past the defense while still avoiding an offside, and then delivers a perfect puck for a golden scoring opportunity. The ability to see the play developing, identify a passing lane and send a flawless pass that quickly is invaluable at the collegiate level. That level of instinct and understanding can create odd-man rushes and, ultimately, goals. “(At the NTDP, we) try to get our players to play this aggressive, attacking, instinctual
game,” Appert said. “He has a lot of those things innately as well, and I think those things were just enhanced here.” Again, Beniers knows exactly where he’s going with that puck, but this time, he’s deceptive about it. He uses his eyes to draw the defender toward teammate Dylan Peterson — No. 25 in the video — opening up space to hit fellow Michigan commit Thomas Bordeleau just outside the slot. Bordeleau casually undresses the defender, and the rest is history. When the season starts, college hockey will likely be an adjustment for Beniers. He’ll be playing against opponents that are older and more experienced, and he could be in for a rude awakening. But he’s been through that before. In 2019, at just 17 years-old, he was called up for the Under-18 World Juniors Championship, where he played alongside a certain Jack Hughes. “The beauty of him getting called up that first year is that he can slide in any role,” Appert said. “He’s skilled enough to play with Jack Hughes if there’s a spot on Jack’s line, but he’s also gritty enough to fulfill roles that the bottom six forwards have to fill.”
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Three positives for Akienreh Johnson’s fifth-year
COURTESY OF RENA LAVERTY / USA HOCKEY’S NTDP
Freshman forward Matthew Beniers and some teammates are projected to be top-ten picks in the 2021 NHL draft.
said. “Then someone had the idea to have us dress up in bumblebee costumes to honor John Beilein and things really took off from there.” As Big Ten-play kicked off in 2018, so did the “Bee-Line.” Decked in bee onesies, the eight freshmen presided in the front row of Section 130 and served as one of the most visible figures of the Crisler Center crowd that saw Michigan start 15-1 at home. “In the first half, we’re doing what we can to help on offense,” Goldstein said. “In the second half we’re helping out on defense.” When the season came to a close, Beilein took the time to meet the group that paid homage to him at each game, giving them fist bumps and handshakes before posing for a photo. The moment served as validation for the Bee-Line, who were starstruck by their namesake’s support.
EMMA MATI/Daily
Fifth-year senior guard Akienreh Johnson can help Michigan with her six-foot height and smart post-entry passing.
ABBIE TELGENHOF Daily Sports Writer
In a moment of pressure, Akienreh Johnson knows how to deliver. Johnson receives a pass out of the paint from Amy Dilk. She fires it around the three-point line to Haily Brown. Brown sinks the three. It’s the biggest assist of senior guard Akienreh Johnson’s career. With under 20 seconds left in the fourth quarter of the semifinals of the 2020 Big Ten Tournament against Northwestern, Michigan has just secured the win. Johnson delivered, and Michigan will need her to continue to deliver this season as a fifth-year senior. Johnson was granted a fifthyear by the NCAA in early April. She suffered from a seasonending ACL injury during her freshman year and petitioned the NCAA shortly for a fifthyear after last year’s season was canceled due to COVID-19. Last season, the guard dominated the floor, securing her spot as a starter for Michigan. As one of two seniors last year, the Wolverines counted on her to lead the team both on and off the court as the captain. This year, the Wolverines will continue to rely on Johnson’s leadership and versatility on
the court. To better understand Johnson’s best assets, The Daily breaks down some film: Post-entry passes This clip, from Michigan’s Big Ten Tournament semifinal game against Northwestern, highlights Johnson’s crucial post-entry passes. She assesses her options, pivoting multiple times before committing to the pass in the paint. She finds then-freshman forward Naz Hillmon under the basket for an easy layup. Hillmon and Johnson have proven to be a formidable duo on the court. Their ability to read each other leads to multiple assists and points. Most of the time, Johnson’s post-entry passes lead to buckets. But it’s not just the passes that make Johnson useful in the frontcourt. Equally important is Johnson’s willingness to be selfless. Later in this game, she dribbles around the arc waiting for the opportunity to give it to Hillmon. She understands her role on the team, and had the third-highest assists last year with 76 — only one behind Hillmon. 3-point shooting Even with her high assist stats last season, Johnson dominated the three-point line all season. Here, she looks calm under pressure, with a Rutgers defender flying in her face. Last season she made 22
threes, with a .364 shooting percentage, the second-most on the team. Johnson’s ability to shoot makes her an even bigger threat offensively. It makes her challenging to guard. With her snappy post-entry passes as well as her impressive shooting, defenders have a hard time covering both aspects of her game on the offensive end. Height Johnson is tall for a guard, standing 6-foot. In NCAA Division 1, the average height of a women’s basketball player is 5-foot-6. Here, she bodies one of Rutgers’ guards, forcing her to make a bad pass. Johnson easily blocks the pass and takes the ball down the floor for an assist to then-sophomore guard Amy Dilk. Her height also factors into her high rebounding and steals stats. Last season, Johnson averaged 6.5 rebounds per game, with 208 on the season. In steals, she led the team with 49. Overall, it’s Johnson’s variability that makes her irreplaceable in the Wolverines’ lineup. Her shooting and passing ability, coupled with her height, make her virtually unstoppable on the court.
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Sports
16 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
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FILE PHOTO/Daily
THERE’S NO FOOTBALL SEASON, SO WHAT HAPPENS TO THE BANNER? ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
On fall Saturdays in recent memory, Claiborne Green always follows the same routine. About an hour and a half before kickoff at Michigan Stadium, he goes next door to Crisler Center and meets some of the facilities workers. They know why he’s there. He doesn’t walk with them. Somewhere in the hallways that run along the edge of the arena and underneath the seats, a banner reading “Go Blue, M Club supports you,” sits in storage, under lock and key. Green, the director of academic services for Michigan football, is the person in charge of getting it from that room to the 50-yard line in time for the Michigan football team to run out of the tunnel and touch it. He doesn’t know where it’s kept. Not exactly. He thinks it moves around within Crisler, an added touch of security. “They kinda keep it,” Green said. “Either way, they lock it up in Crisler and they go get it.” This Saturday, the banner will keep gathering dust. Instead of opening the season with a trip to Washington, a parent protest on the season’s postponement is the only event scheduled at Michigan Stadium for the foreseeable future. If there is a football season, be it in January, April or sometime in between, it’s an open question whether the banner, a landmark ubiquitous to the football program since
1962, will be used. The tradition has survived multiple attempts from Ohio State coach Woody Hayes to tear the banner down in the mid-1970’s and a group of Syracuse fans stealing it before a 1998 game at Michigan Stadium. In a normal world, this would be Green’s routine starting with Michigan’s first home game. After getting the banner from Crisler, he and about 10 other banner crew members go down on the field to set up. Pregame festivities go by a minute-byminute script that’s distributed to everyone involved in pregame operations. It’s a way of setting things up to be perfect for TV, and it means everyone involved has to be just that: perfect. If the team is supposed to take the field at 11:54:30, it will take the field at 11:54:30, or throw off that careful schedule. Green and his team usually get about 90 seconds to get the 30-by-4 foot banner up in the air, though it’s been as tight as 30 seconds before. Thanks to meticulous practice, they’ve never failed, though there have been some close calls. When Michigan installed new astroturf prior to the 2018 season, it nearly doubled the size of the block ‘M’ at midfield. The markings Green’s crew had grown accustomed to were all wrong. They didn’t realize until moments before the game, and the crew had to improvise. There was also an incident against Ohio State during the Denard Robinson era in which one of the fiberglass poles holding the banner up broke during the entrance.
Both cases helped the banner crew adapt. They started practicing on the new field, changing the designated spots where people stood. The poles were changed back to wood from fiberglass. “We’re the ones that are nervous before the game,” Green said, “because we don’t enjoy the game until the banner’s up and the banner’s down successfully.”
The banner’s such an icon and such a fixture in what the team does The gameday protocol has changed immensely over the years. When Amy Stevens, the current president of the M Club (an organization for former Michigan athletes), attended Michigan as a track athlete, getting to hold up the banner was as simple as being one of the first 20 or so student-athletes who showed up. “There was always more than enough,” Stevens said. “And then we would go out, hold the banner, the team would run through and we’d go over and join the cheerleaders for
the Let’s Go Blue chant. And then the cheerleaders would like, boost us into the student section.” When Green joined the athletic department as an intern about a decade ago, the Student Athlete Advisory Committee was in charge of the banner. That changed because having student athletes who might rather be tailgating in charge of something so important was a little too scary for Green. Now, Stevens is one of the people governing the banner. In addition to the one at Crisler, the M Club has a duplicate kept in a storage facility off campus. They’ve also got banners of varying sizes with the same message, a way of trying to incorporate a football tradition into different sports. Stevens says they’ve gotten a banner out to golf, baseball, softball, volleyball and track and field, among other sports. They’d like to find a way to use it in Crisler for basketball games and Yost Ice Arena for hockey games. When Michigan’s color scheme changes slightly, like with the move from Adidas to Nike or with the new turf, Stevens calls New England Flag and Banner and starts working on commissioning a new one. She looked at samples for the latest recently. Matt Strommer, the art manager for the company, says the turnaround time for a project like that can be as short as a week or longer than two months, depending on demand, and the cost is north of $2,000. “In this particular case, we
started with the blue field and then we created a life-size stencil of the letters, transferred that stencil onto the nylon by rubbing this, it’s a combination of mineral spirits and Taylor’s chalk,” Strommer said. The image from the stencil goes into the nylon. From there, it’s an easy job for seamstresses, who sew the letters on, and all that’s left is to cut excess material away. New England Flag and Banner does all of the banners for Michigan athletics, including those at Crisler. (For the record, Strommer said no 1992 or 1993 Final Four banners have been commissioned since Juwan Howard’s hiring as men’s basketball coach.) There are usually 20-30 people who help hold it up each week, a combination of Green’s banner crew, members of the M Club and donors or Make-aWish kids who are able to get on-field. Only about eight or so are needed to keep it upright, Green says, so perhaps it’s possible to find eight people who are already needed in the stadium even if it’s limited to essential personnel. “I imagine the banner in some form or fashion would be up there, even if there wasn’t fans in the stadium,” Green said. “I just think the banner’s such an icon and such a fixture in what the team does that at least the facility workers — and it wasn’t my crew that typically does it — somebody would’ve been out there to make sure that the banner was going up for the team to run through.”
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T
ariq Speights has been a Black man in America for 20 years. That’s 20 years of living the pain inflicted by prejudice — the pain of living in a country where he never feels fully welcome, where he’s constantly judged by the color of his skin. The pain, he THEO says, has been MACKIE a constant in his life. But on Sunday afternoon in Ann Arbor, Speights did something he never thought he’d have the chance to do. He stood in the shadow of the Hatcher Graduate Library with a white megaphone in his left hand and began speaking. “It doesn’t matter what we look like, what we do, where we come from,” Speights said. “Everyone can use their platform today.” It’s a message aimed at everyone who, someday, may be in his shoes. On Sunday, hundreds gathered in the Diag in solidarity, hoisting signs and donning t-shirts with messages of support. Speights had been in groups like that before, protesting in his hometown of Santa Clarita, Calif. But he’d never been the one to take the megaphone and demand change. Now, Speights, a linebacker at Eastern Michigan, sees his role changing in real time. And he sees that change because he’s a college athlete in a time when college athletes have an unprecedented voice, whether that’s fighting racial inequality or fighting for their
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 17
Student-athletes are finding their voice
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Michigan defensive back Hunter Reynolds leads a student athlete Black Lives Matter protest throughout Ann Arbor Sunday afternoon.
rights as athletes. “Any protest, any people standing up and speaking on what they care about is important, but for me, it hit a little different, it being student-athlete led and I’m a student-athlete,” Speights said of Sunday’s protest. “So yeah, that was huge and to see how many of my teammates, how many Michigan student-athletes came out, it’s big. Us student-athletes have a unique ability to be able to touch people. So being able to get people to come out for who we are and not as much of what we do is big.” Over the summer, college athletes’ voices dominated the landscape of American social media in a way they never had been before. When George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police
officer, college athletes spoke out, demanding change. When the Big Ten canceled fall sports, college athletes spoke out, demanding transparency from the conference. When other conferences threatened to follow suit, college athletes spoke out, demanding comprehensive safety protocol. Six miles away from Speights’s Eastern Michigan, Hunter Reynolds was one of those athletes discovering his voice. Reynolds, a senior cornerback at Michigan, understands the voice playing for the Wolverines gives him. Even as someone with limited playing time in his three years in Ann Arbor, he has the ingrained influence that comes with wearing the winged helmet. “Due to social media, you’re
Michigan athlete creates group to battle racism
just seeing it more because there’s been numerous incidents over the course of the summer where something’s happened and a player’s just tweeted something out and the tweet ends up with 50,000 likes and 10,000 retweets,” Reynolds told The Daily on Saturday night. “In 2005, if a college athlete spoke about something, they were really just limited to the local press.” For Reynolds, that’s meant sharing the struggles he faces as a Black man in America in a way he never has before. This summer, he founded College Athlete Unity, a group of Michigan players demanding an end to racial injustice. So when Speights reached out to him earlier this month with the
idea of an athlete-led protest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man in Kenosha, Wis., Reynolds knew there was a unique opportunity at hand. “(Speights) felt it was important to host something where we keep the conversation going and let people know that Black men and Black women being killed by police isn’t normal,” Reynolds said. “Things shouldn’t just go on as normal. And he reached out to me and once he described what he wanted to do, I was all in for it.” For other student-athletes at both Michigan and Eastern Michigan, the message resonated. Alexis Alston, a freshman on the Eagles’ soccer team, was one of them. All summer, she had protested
KENT SCHWARTZ Daily Sports Editor
Last week, NBA players boycotted games after police shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wis. This summer, the Big Ten created a coalition against hate and racism with members from every school in response to the police killing of George Floyd. But this June, amid the Black Lives Matter protests, Briana Nelson felt she needed to do more than protest. The senior track athlete created Wolverines Against Racism (WAR), a studentled group within Michigan athletics focused on studentathletes coming together to use their unique platforms to help fight against social injustice. “My ultimate goal would be for members of WAR to essentially go out and be the change,” Nelson said. “There’s a great variety of people we have. We have coaches, we have student-athletes, we have support staff members and there’s a lot of different members and each person has a unique opportunity to use their platform because everybody has different followers.” As a track and field athlete at Michigan, Nelson recognized she has a platform that most don’t — and she planned on using it to make lasting change
at the University. After a conversation with a couple members of the administration she, along with fellow track athletes Jeryne Fish and Roland Amarteifio, hosted a “unity call” over Zoom with other Wolverines. Coaches, studentathletes and support staff listened and shared their own experiences as Black studentathletes expressed the many emotions they were feeling at the time. From there, the idea in Nelson’s head grew into a full-on plan. “After that I felt really good about the community that we had and that space that we had created,” Nelson told The Daily in early August. “I felt that it should be an ongoing effort — not only just have a space to talk, but also a space to act, a space to create movement amongst my peers and staff that want to be involved and just create a continuous ongoing act that I felt was long overdue.” On Juneteenth, Nelson hosted a second unity call, this time to help educate those on the call who might not know about the holiday and to discuss further ideas for what WAR could be. The positive responses and dialogue that came from that call affirmed both Nelson’s desire to start the organization and the importance of opening a communication among those interested in the cause. “I think that we’re a lot
stronger when we’re united,” Nelson said. “Everyone who’s interested has great ideas and wants to see change and that’s why they’re a part of it, but as we come together the effort will be a lot stronger.” Nearly every varsity sport at Michigan had an athlete attend one of the unity calls, from water polo to women’s basketball. Going forward, that breadth of involvement will be important for WAR to both continue and have its biggest impact. Because those athletes will have conversations with their teammates, their families, their coaches. And right now, most Michigan athletes are white. A lot grew up in communities lacking in diversity. Many play in sports with very little diversity at the college level. So, as the country begins to reckon with racial injustice, white Wolverines will, too. WAR helps bring the issue to a level relatable for those student-athletes by sharing the experiences of Black people in a way they didn’t get growing up. “Seeing that there’s representatives and there’s people interested from all these different teams,” Nelson said, “and knowing they’re going to go back and be a leader on their team and then educate and lead their teammates and then their teammates are going to go out — it’s a domino effect.”
Mackie can be reached at tmackie@umich.edu or on Twitter @theo_mackie.
Jacob Blake shooting spurs ‘M’ and EMU student athletes to protest
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Briana Nelson felt inspired by the Black Lives Movement and began her own group at Michigan to fight racism.
in her hometown of Amherst, Ohio. But as soon as she heard rumblings of Sunday’s protest, she knew it had the potential to be special. “A lot of people are inspired and look up to college athletes and it’s important for them to also know they have a voice,” Alston said, walking down Liberty Street amid chants of “No justice, No peace.” “And people will listen to it. Coming from a college athlete, more people are bound to listen and take note of what they say.” On Sunday, that was the message of the day. Really, for these athletes, it’s been the message of the summer. And watch out, Reynolds says, because the next time Michigan Stadium is packed with 110,000 people, it’s still going to be the message — even if he hasn’t decided what form that’s going to take. “Anything that’s done, it’s seen by millions of people,” Reynolds said. “So due to that, any messaging that we have has an opportunity to fall upon many eyes.” Four years ago, when Colin Kaepernick was blackballed by the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem, doing the same would have been unthinkable for most college athletes. But on Sunday, Reynolds wore an image of Kaepernick kneeling, his afro replaced by the outline of a Black Lives Matter fist. And as he and so many other athletes made their voices heard, the unthinkable felt within reach.
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Eastern Michigan linebacker Tariq Speights helped organize a Black Lives Matter protest in Ann Arbor Sunday.
JACOB COHEN
Daily Sports Writer
As droves of spirit wearclad Michigan and Eastern Michigan student-athletes marched through downtown Ann Arbor, senior defensive back Hunter Reynolds and Eastern Michigan junior linebacker Tariq Speights belted “Say His Name” through their megaphones. A second passed, and then the names George Floyd and Jacob Blake rose from the crowd with equal emotion and equal volume. Until Aug. 23, when Blake was shot by police in Kenosha, Wis., the response to Reynold’s and Speight’s call would have been a resounding “George Floyd.” Instead, there was confusion over which name to chant. There have been so many names. That’s emblematic of why Speights organized Sunday’s protest. “Just seeing all the stuff on social media, it’s to the point where I’m past being tired of seeing the videos, seeing the hate that’s in our country against people of my skin color,” Speights said. Speights organized the protest, and though he had attended numerous protests near his home in California, the Jacob Blake shooting galvanized him into leading one of his own. He knows he has a powerful voice, and he
felt that the time had come to use it to a fuller extent. “Everyone can use their platform today,” Speights said. “There’s a lot of studentathletes in the crowd right now, and we have the unique ability to reach people because of what we do. In this age of social media, we have thousands of people, as soon as we post something, eyes on that post.” Athletes, like many of those who marched Sunday, have thousands of eyes on what they do and what they post. Speights wants to make sure they use their voices for good. “Organizing it took a conversation with (Reynolds),” Speights said. “We just put together something, put it on social media, and reached out to our teams.” Nearing the end of a summer that saw almost constant protests across the country, Reynolds and Speights were delighted to see how ready their teammates and fellow student-athletes were to join the cause. Each athlete has their individual following — up to thousands on social media — but those are amplified when combined with the followings of other athletes, especially as many as marched on Aug. 30. The number of people currently protesting social issues could be mindnumbing, but Sunday’s
protest is better thought of as an extension of Speights’s philosophy for using his own voice. “If you’re able to inf luence one person, that one person could go inf luence someone else,” Speights said. “So you can really end up inf luencing a lot of people for change just by inf luencing one person.” Almost anyone with social media accounts has seen the hashtags promoted by those whom Speights echoes. They’ve seen other names, names he doesn’t want to get lost. They’ve seen #AhmaudArbery, #BreonnaTaylor and #ElijahMcClain. They’ve seen #GeorgeFloyd, and, most recently, they’ve seen #JacobBlake. The promulgators of those hashtags have been affecting change for months now with the goal of dismantling all forms of systemic oppression, and the change Speights is trying to inspire resembles that which people have heard about on repeat since George Floyd’s death in May. Speights’ various motivations for organizing Sunday’s protest — increasing voter turnout and education, ending housing segregation and police brutality, promoting equality in education — may seem separate, but the purpose boils down to the words of another chant he led: “No more hashtags.”
Sports
18 — Wednesday, September 2, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MORE THAN AN ATHLETE Student-athletes organize protest for Black Lives Matter
NICHOLAS STOLL Daily Sports Writer
On Sunday afternoon, student-athletes gathered together. Not for practice, not for a game or team meeting, but for a protest. The march in support of Black Lives Matter was a joint effort from Michigan and Eastern Michigan athletes. Eagles linebacker Tariq Speights and Wolverines senior defensive back Hunter Reynolds were the official organizers of the event. The football players are members of the group College Athlete Unity — an organization that aims to “collectively address injustice and affect positive change using our privilege and considerable platforms.” “Today, we are going to unite as studentathletes, we’re going to unite as a community, we’re going to unite as fellow brothers and sisters,” Speights said
to the crowd from the steps of Hatcher Graduate Library. “And we will take the first steps to rebuild the relationship between African Americans and law enforcement in this community.” After speeches from Speights and Reynolds, athletes standing on the steps next to the organizers put on shirts that read “RACISM” with a red line through the word. With megaphones, the organizers led a sizable crowd out of the Diag and onto State St. “I think the issue is important,” Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton told The Daily. “I admire the young folks. They have a voice; they’re using their voice and I want to support everything that they’re talking about.” “Before I was sheriff, I was a Black man — 55 years on this planet,” Clayton said to the crowd later in the
protest. “As sheriff, I’m can’t breathe,” “Black a Black man. When I’m Lives Matter” and not sheriff anymore, I’ll “White Silence = White be a Black man. I have Compliance.” three sons from 20 to 32 After rounding and my wife and I are the final corner onto traumatized every time William Street the we see another situation march made its way back of a Black person being to the Diag and people shot, hurt, brutalized, took the opportunity to not just by the police but speak after Speights and by society in Reynolds and of itself. opened And If it the So many people up doesn’t stop megaphone say don’t mix now, when is to everyone. it ever going Morgan politics with to stop.” Iverson, sports, but human an Eastern Amid chants of Michigan rights is not “No justice! track politics. No peace!,” athlete, was “Black Lives one of the Matter” and first to take “Hands up! Don’t shoot!,” the stage. Her message Ann Arbor residents was clear: vote. Iverson watched on. The front of urged those attending the protest, spearheaded to make a difference in by the athletes, caught their local elections, not the eye of those in stores, just presidential. driving by and eating Following her lunch. Staring back at announcement, Eastern them were signs held by Michigan football coach the marchers: Chris Creighton stepped “SKIN COLOR IS up to take his turn to NOT A CRIME,” “I speak.
“Look around and I’d imagine every single one of us has somebody here in this courtyard that we love,” Creighton said. “It’s really easy when you think about it that way to say that Black Lives Matter when you love someone who’s sitting in this courtyard right now. It’s a big thing in the world right now, but it becomes really personal and individual when you take the time to think about the people that you’re with, the people that you know and the people that you love.” LSA sophomore student Maya Ferguson came to pledge her support. She expressed that she’s tried to do all she could this summer to support Black Lives Matter and incite change and found it most important to simply talk to people. “Social media is such a big thing right now,” Ferguson said. “So it reaches so many people.
So I really feel like when you have conversations with people and you talk about what’s going on sometimes you can really change people’s perspective or minds. So many people say don’t mix politics with sports, but human rights is not politics. It’s something that needs to be discussed.” In that, Ferguson and the protest’s organizers are in harmony. The event was advertised and spread via social media, and the protest was a way to create and engage people in conversations about race and society. To the student-athletes and people in attendance, that is the way forward. “Trust me, I don’t want to hold (this) in all to myself,” Speights said. “I’ve been doing that my entire life. Ask me the questions. I’m here, we’re all here, we want to have those conversations. We want to break down those barriers. We want change.”
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