2023-11-29

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Ann Arbor, Michigan

“

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Michigan 30 | Ohio State 24

SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN ON THIRD BASE AND ACT LIKE THEY’VE HIT A

TRIPLE Michigan wins The Game for third straight year PAUL NASR

Managing Sports Editor

M

aybe it isn’t all that surprising anymore.

A top-five matchup with Ohio State, a victory over the Buckeyes in The Game, a Big Ten East title punched in the process, a College Football Playoff berth all-but sealed by beating its biggest rival. In recent memory, all of it used to sound pretty out of the ordinary for Michigan.

Now, it’s normal.

Three wins over Ohio State in a row, three Big Ten Championship appearances in a row, a likely third College Football Playoff appearance in a row — for years such success looked like a fantasy for the Wolverines. But after 60 minutes against their biggest foe, it became something else: the standard.

That much was clear when the rumbling Big House turned into a mosh pit of fans storming the field as No. 3 Michigan (12-0 overall, 9-0 Big Ten) took down the second-

ranked Buckeyes (11-1, 8-1), 30-24, in an iteration of The Game that had everything on the line. Both undefeated squads entered with College Football Playoff hopes, but after converting on timely moments throughout the game — capped by a late interception from junior defensive back Rod Moore to seal the win — only the Wolverines managed to walk away with their lofty goals intact.

“This game is something we prepare for 365. It’s not a oneweek affair,” offensive coordinator and acting head coach Sherrone Moore said. “It’s not something we just dropped that week, so it’s something that’s planned out very strategically.”

No matter how normal a win like this has become, it was far from a normal afternoon at Michigan Stadium; everything was a little bit bigger. For one of the sport’s greatest rivalries, differences as minute as six Ohio State-branded benches sitting idle and empty on the visitor’s sideline hours before kickoff signified a clash anything but idle and empty to come. To

overcome its toughest test of the year amid the highest of stakes, Michigan had to make timely plays.

Be it a first-quarter interception by sophomore cornerback Will Johnson to keep star receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. in check and set up an easy score, or junior

striking in the second half. Ohio State first picked its spot by going smash-mouth in the third quarter.

Rush after rush after rush, the Buckeyes moved the sticks, capping off a touchdown drive that tied the game at 17 with eight straight rushing attempts.

No matter how normal a win like this has become, it was far from a normal afternoon at Michigan Stadium; everything was a little bit bigger. quarterback J.J. McCarthy hitting an extremely tight window for a touchdown strike to senior receiver Roman Wilson, the Wolverines made plays when they mattered to take a 14-10 lead into halftime.

But for most of the game, no one really dominated the other side, no matter how badly each side wanted to. So it came down to picking spots, picking moments and

Michigan needed to stay on time in response, but for a moment, everything stood still.

Because in the ensuing drive as the Wolverines were rolling down the field late in the third quarter, senior guard Zak Zinter went down with a bad leg injury. Strapped with an aircast and placed on a stretcher, his entire team gathered around to end the multi-minute stoppage. He

put his fist up in the air as he was carted off, showing support to a team and crowd that he wouldn’t be able to finish the game alongside.

And on the very next play, senior running back Blake Corum broke free for a 22-yard touchdown, flashing the number ‘65’ — Zinter’s number — with his hands in celebration. A timely celebration for a timely score, as Michigan retook the lead, got a quick stop and then tacked on a field goal to make it 27-17 early in the fourth quarter to start feeling comfortable.

“We came together and we knew we had to do it for (Zinter),” Corum said. “And the very next play — boom.”

From that “boom,” Michigan led for the rest of the game. And the Wolverines weren’t just feeling comfortable on the field; they were feeling comfortable in their new place in this rivalry and the college football landscape, too. A place that was once strange for them, and now their usual stomping grounds.

So comfortable that to ice the game after an Ohio State touchdown made it 27-24, they went back to

the basics, back to how they created this new reality in the first place: beating up the Buckeyes in the trenches and dominating on the ground.

The Wolverines got the ball with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter and churned out minute after minute of clock. A drive made so timely by how quickly the clock moved, it left the Buckeyes unable to respond, down six points with just over a minute left. Unable to fight back. Unable to stop a Michigan win, no matter how close they got.

“The mindset was get the first down, smash ’em,” Corum said.

“And then the last drive, we weren’t able to get the first down, and we were able to kick the field goal and go up (six). And then we relied on the defense, and they were able to get the job done.”

Getting the job done came through that late interception from Moore with 25 seconds left, leaving nothing able to stop the Wolverines from making a win in The Game no longer look surprising or shocking.

But instead, look normal.

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INDEX

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N E WS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ARTS........................5 MIC....................... . . . . 8

S TAT E M E N T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 OPINION...................11 SPORTS .....................14

2 — Wednesday, November 29, 2023

News

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ACADEMICS

School of Information board member verbally harasses Arab and Muslim students

The School will not punish or remove Carin Ehrenberg for harassing students at protest MILES ANDERSON Daily Staff Reporter

More than 100 University of Michigan School of Information students, staff, faculty and alumni have signed an internal letter to remove Carin Ehrenberg from the UMSI Advisory Board after videos of her verbally assaulting Arab and Muslim students surfaced on social media.

In the first of a series of videos posted to X, Ehrenberg is seen verbally harassing one student, saying, “Are you going to send one of your terrorists after us?”

The videos were taken on Oct. 13, during a protest led by students and community members in response to University President Santa Ono’s initial statement about the violence in the Middle East — in which he did not include any mention of Palestine or the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza.

In the second video from the same post, Ehrenberg attempts to grab the student’s phone, then shouts “rapists and murderers” at a nearby crowd of protesting students.

Besides being on the UMSI Advisory Board, Ehrenberg is a clinical psychologist, U-M alum and long-time donor.

Ehrenberg funds two scholarships at the Information School.

She contributes to the Roger Ehrenberg and Carin LevineEhrenberg Diversity Scholarship — a need-based scholarship for first-generation college students — as well as the Roger Ehrenberg and Carin Levine Ehrenberg Fellowship.

The letter is addressed to Elizabeth Yakel, interim Information School dean. The over 100 authors and cosigners demand that Yakel ensure Ehrenberg is dismissed from her position on the advisory board. The letter also calls on the Information School to remove Ehrenberg’s name from

the aforementioned scholarships and seek a formal apology from Ehrenberg.

“This type of rhetoric, left unchecked, leads to more violence,” the letter reads. “By remaining silent in the wake of a board member’s verbal and physical assault of a student and allowing this board member to continue in a role that provides access to — and requires engagement with — students, UMSI facilitates violence toward its own student body.”

Yakel responded to the internal letter in a Nov. 7 email that was sent out to students and faculty in the Information School. A copy of Yakel’s email has been obtained by The Michigan Daily.

In the email, Yakel acknowledged that Ehrenberg’s language in the videos was derogatory, but also said Ehrenberg might have felt unsafe at the protest.

“This language is not in keeping with our value of respect,” Yakel wrote. “I also recognize that in the heightened tension and emotion of a political demonstration, both the board member and student protesters likely felt psychologically unsafe and perhaps physically unsafe as well.

Restorative measures are needed.”

No retaliatory action against Ehrenberg will be taken, Yakel wrote in the email. Instead, Yakel committed to initiating a “listening project” in hopes that the community will focus on “restorative actions” over punishing individuals.

“I want to be clear that I do not intend to take any retaliatory action against anyone associated with any of the harms that have occurred,” Yakel wrote. “Rather, I intend to try to initiate restorative actions that help to reduce the distress that people have experienced and create the opportunity for deeper understanding and repair.”

LSA junior Zena Nasiri, the student who recorded and posted

the videos, told The Daily in an interview that they witnessed Ehrenberg yelling at students attending the Oct. 13 protest outside Ono’s house. They said they silently recorded the incident without engaging with Ehrenberg.

After the demonstrators moved to march up State Street, Ehrenberg started to verbally assault the students again, which Nasiri also recorded. They told The Daily that Ehrenberg scratched them while attempting to grab the phone from their hand.

“I didn’t engage,” Nasiri said.

“Then the group started marching along State Street, and then Ehrenberg and the man she was with were confronting students again there. So I walked over and I recorded that interaction as well.

And then (Ehrenberg) tried to grab my phone away from me. She ended up scratching my hand, and then she yelled ‘rapists and murderers’ at students.”

The Daily reached out to Ehrenberg for comment about the videos. She responded in an email confirming that she had yelled at Nasiri at the protest, though she said she did not intend for the label “terrorist” to be a personal attack.

“I asked (them) to stop recording me,” Ehrenberg wrote. “(They) did not and continued to ask my name, and so I turned to walk away and said to (them), ‘What are you going to do, send your terrorists after us?’

By terrorists, I was not referring to this student, or the other student marchers, but to Hamas or other hate groups who might view, share and act upon (their) video.”

Nasiri said they believed Yakel’s response to the internal letter was disappointing, calling the language used disingenuous.

Nasiri criticized the proposal to create listening circles, which they said were not helpful when students have already been harmed

by Ehrenberg’s language.

“The language around restorative justice feels

manipulative,” Nasiri said. “The listening circles just didn’t really make sense because I’ve been trying to talk about this … so I just don’t understand what that would help with.”

In response to Yakel’s comment about not knowing the full context of the situation, Nasiri said they didn’t know what additional context could possibly justify Ehrenberg’s behavior.

“It felt like I was being gaslighted about my experience,” Nasiri said. “There was a line where she said something along the lines of never knowing the full context of what happened. … There was another line talking about how Ehrenberg probably felt unsafe, psychologically and physically.

That felt like it was trying to justify the incident. I felt like the statement did a lot more harm than good. It was really frustrating and upsetting for me to read.”

In an interview with The Daily, a current Information student said they felt Yakel’s response was dismissive of the gravity of the situation. This student requested anonymity due to fear of academic retaliation. In this article, they will be referred to as Alex.

“I thought that the tone of the responses is really dismissive of the situation,” Alex said. “The way it was worded it acknowledged that there is Islamophobia that had happened, but the way in which it was worded was to not have anyone responsible for that Islamophobia.”

Alex said they believe the Information School’s inaction will have consequences on what future donors and Advisory Board members may see as acceptable behavior.

“It’s a signal to other donors and future donors that if you want to engage in anti-Arab hate (and) Islamophobia, if you give enough money to the University, then it’s okay,” Alex said.

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NEWS BRIEFS

Break-in at MDen causes $2,000 in damages

Three individuals broke into the second floor of the MDen on Nov. 17 SNEHA DHANDAPANI Daily Staff Reporter

Three people broke into the South State Street MDen on Friday, according to a police report filed Friday morning.

According to the Ann Arbor Police Department, the breakin took place between 2:10 and 2:25 a.m. The Ann Arbor Police Department is still investigating the identities of those who broke into the store, though it is currently suspected that two of the perpetrators were men and the third was a woman.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, AAPD spokesperson Chris Page said the suspects broke into the MDen through a second floor window with a hammer, which was found at the scene. The three suspects also damaged a door on the second floor.

In total, they caused about

HANNAH ELLIOTT and MYLES MURPHY

$2,000 in damages and stole various merchandise. Page said the burglary remains under investigation.

The University of Michigan declined to comment on the situation.

Anyone with information

about the break-in is encouraged to contact AAPD or the tipline at 734-794-6939 or tips@a2gov. org.

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CAMPUS LIFE

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 — 3

UMich community members gather for Trans Day of Remembrance in the Union

The campus came together to mourn the trans lives lost in the past year ALYSSA TISCH & EMILY SUN

Daily News Contributors Content warning: This article contains mentions of violence against transgender individuals.

Sixty-two faces f lashed across the screen in the Pendleton Ballroom of the Michigan Union at the annual Trans Day of Remembrance Banquet. Under each picture, there was a name, age, date of death and, for some, a cause of death listed. After every name was read off, a member of the University of Michigan’s Spectrum Center walked up to an altar at the front of the room and placed a red rose in a vase. Sixtytwo roses later, the screen faded to black, displaying the following statement: “Trans lives matter.

Say their names.”

More than 60 community members gathered in the Union Monday to grieve the lives lost because of anti-transgender violence this past year. Hosted by the Spectrum Center, the event hosted three speakers who talked about trans identities and violence against trans people and asked attendees to write messages of support for the trans community on a quilt.

Transgender Day of Remembrance was started in 1999 by advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith in honor of her friend Rita Hester, a Black trans woman who was murdered the year prior. Ange Baldado, a therapist at the Radical Well-Being Center in Southfield, spoke at the event about how Trans Day of Remembrance must not only remember those lost to anti-trans violence but also honor trans history, present and future.

“We cannot let today be a day where we just remember the dead,” Baldado said. “Our politics of memory can be filled with so much more: a remembrance of our history, a remembrance of the people who came before us and a remembrance of the lives

CAMPUS LIFE

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Ange Baldado speaks on Trans Day of Remembrance at the Union Monday.

that could’ve happened. It is in these memories that we can hold gratitude for the gains we’ve made today and hold a collective rage to fight for a better tomorrow.”

Ann Arbor has honored Nov. 20 as Trans Day of Remembrance since 2003. Tristan Morton, associate director of the Spectrum Center, who uses ze/ zir pronouns, told The Michigan Daily before the event that ze believes knowing trans history is impactful in understanding the community and its longevity.

“It is always good to learn and understand that history because you’re not the only one,” Morton said. “There are folks still alive doing this work that have been supportive of our community for

decades.”

Organizers of Monday’s event covered an altar at the front of the room with pink, blue, white, black and brown origami f lowers to represent trans people, including trans people of Color, around the world. Crystals, candles and a stuffed animal dinosaur symbolizing comfort, love and strength were placed next to a display of books by trans authors.

After reading off the names of the victims of trans violence and a subsequent moment of silence, attendees wrote messages on square scraps of multicolored cloth and glued them together to create a quilt. Some of the messages included affirmations such as “We will not be erased,”

“You are loved,” “Joy is your birthright” and “Someday.”

Morton said the Spectrum Center will hang the quilt in their office and plans to digitize it so people can view the messages online.

Twenty-four years after the first Trans Day of Remembrance, anti-trans violence still affects individuals worldwide.

Three hundred twenty-one transgender and genderqueer people were killed between Oct. 1, 2022, and Sept. 30, 2023, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring research project.

Anti-trans violence also disproportionately harms people of Color, with 80% of the 321 killed being people of

Color. Additionally, 94% of the victims were trans women or transfeminine people.

Morton explained the importance of considering intersectionality when thinking about trans experiences and violence against trans people.

“Intersectionality is a term that describes how folks with multiple marginalized identities are being oppressed,” Morton said. “So understanding that the experience, for example, of a Black woman experiencing oppression is going to be vastly different from a Black man experiencing oppression.”

At the event, LSA junior Jamy Lee spoke to The Daily about the sense of injustice she felt hearing

about the violence so many trans people have experienced.

“We already knew this was a problem,” Lee said. “But if we are convincing 14-year-old kids that they don’t deserve a place in this world, that’s really frustrating and another reason why we should continue to say their names.”

Morton also expressed zirs frustration about the rise in antitrans legislation in the U.S., but maintained faith that the trans community will continue to stay strong.

“Trans and non-binary people are not going to be legislated away,” Morton said. “We’ve existed before legislation and will exist after legislation.”

Campus Diwali celebration brings 800 people together for the ‘Festival of Lights’

The Hindu Student Council hosted the event in the ballroom of the Michigan Union ANNA JAVIER & TENZIN MENRINETSANG Daily News Contributors

About 800 University of Michigan students and community members streamed into the Michigan Union’s Rogel Ballroom Friday night to celebrate Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights. Hosted by the Hindu Student Council, guests dressed in colorful kurtas and saris were greeted by flashing lights, booming Bollywood music and aromas of Indian food as they entered the event.

LSA junior Mihir Kesavan, Hindu Student Council co-president, told

The Michigan Daily their Diwali celebration aimed to give students a chance to celebrate the holiday while away from home. “(The goal is to) give people, especially international students who are away from home, an opportunity to celebrate in … the same way that they would at home with friends and family,” Kesavan said.

Public Health junior Arul Rajeswaran, the other co-president of the Hindu Student Council, told The Daily that this year’s celebration saw its number of RSVPs increase by about 500 people when compared to last year’s event. Rajeswaran said the ample turnout was likely due to

increased word of mouth throughout the U-M South Asian community about their celebration.

“I think (it’s) because people came to the event last year,” Rajeswaran said. “People were already talking about it before we even started marketing, so I think that was a big reason we’re seeing an increase in turnout.”

During the celebration, almost everyone in the ballroom gathered on the dance floor, jumping and singing along to music performed by a live DJ and band.

In an interview with The Daily, School of Information graduate student Prajakta Bonde said she spontaneously attended this year’s

celebration after hearing about it through friends engaged in Indian American student organizations.

Bonde said she appreciated the opportunity to immerse herself in her culture on the U-M campus.

“I feel represented, I feel like I’m part of a community,” Bonde said.

“This is the time where I can see people from my background, from my culture.”

Sonia Singh, a recent graduate from Eastern Michigan University, told The Daily she attended the celebration to spend time with her sister, Anisha Singh, a U-M undergraduate student. Singh said while she did not intend to dance at the event, once she saw the

festivities, she couldn’t help but get on the dance floor.

“When I came, I was like ‘I’m not gonna get up and dance,’ ” Singh said. “But I went on the dance floor immediately.”

Since coming to college, Kesavan said he has sometimes found it difficult to maintain the religious and cultural traditions he grew up with, which motivated him to organize events like the Diwali celebration at the University.

“When you’re at home, you have all these religious practices that you do with your family — maybe your family makes you do it or you just kind of grew up with those traditions,” Kesavan said. “Once you

go to college, it’s hard to maintain that.”

While Kesavan said their event did not completely represent traditional celebrations of Diwali, which are characterized by fireworks and light, he said he believed the Hindu Student Council was able to put together an event that established a sense of belonging and home. “(Diwali) is a time to come together with friends and family, typically celebrate with firecrackers,” Kesavan said. “Of course, being here, it’s hard to do that. So what we do instead is have a gathering open to everybody in the University community with Indian food here and Indian music.”

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Engineering sophomore Andrew Pintar and Business sophomore Zoe Chang participate in the Polar Plunge for University of Michigan Special Olympics at U-M’s Sports Coliseum Lot Sunday.

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CAMPUS LIFE

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40 students arrested following sit-in at Ruthven administration building

Hundreds of students marched from the Diag to Ruthven to protest UMich investment in Israel EILEEN KOO & ASTRID CODE

Daily Staff Reporters Update 11/18 12:09 a.m.: According to University of Michigan spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald, local police arrested 40 protesters and there were two injuries.

“Those arrested were processed and released at the scene,” Fitzgerald said. “The building was emptied and secured around 10:30 p.m.”

DPSS Deputy Chief of Police Melissa Overton confirmed the number of arrests Saturday morning.

About 300 University of Michigan students gathered on the Diag Friday afternoon to protest the administration’s lack of a response to previous calls for the University to divest from Israel. The protest was organized by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, with about 200 community members moving into the Alexander G. Ruthven Building for a sit-in that lasted over three hours.

As of 7:50 p.m. Friday night, over 25 police vehicles from the U-M Division of Public Safety & Security, the Ann Arbor Police Department, and seven other local police departments’ fleets responded to the sit-in and were monitoring the situation outside the building until late Friday evening. Many police cars arrived before the march reached the Alexander G. Ruthven building, and some were armed with riot shields. The protest was peaceful and there were no reports of violence from protestors. Police attempted to push protestors away from the building before they rushed inside and prevented anyone else from entering after the initial group of protestors was inside.

According to Overton, the majority of the protesters began leaving the building after the police issued a dispersal warning at 7:30 p.m.. At that time, law enforcement announced that anyone who had not left the building within 10 minutes would be arrested.

SAFE president Salma Hamamy opened the protest by welcoming supporters and summarizing recent developments in the coalition of

student organizations calling for divestment on campus.

“Last time we stood here, the coalition at the University of Michigan pushing for divestment from Israel had 30 student organizations and today we are now at 54 student organizations,” Hamamy said. “We’ve only continued to grow and mobilize and we continue to fiercely fight for our university to take the moral high ground and to divest from any and all companies that profit off of the human rights violations committed

by Israel.”

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA sophomore Annabel Bean, co-founder of the U-M chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and co-chair of the U-M chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America, explained the purpose behind the SAFE protest and the demands made to the University.

“The big (demands) are to divest (from Israel) and support the students,” Bean said. “Ono and the regents have refused time and time again for weeks to meet with SAFE and the coalition of allied organizations. … They sent other (administrators) to meet with us. We have demanded to meet with (Ono) because he’s the one, him and the regents, that control investments. … That’s why we’re here today, is to make those demands be heard.”

At the protest, students held signs that read “Genocide is not a Jewish value” and “UMich Jews say Boycott Divest Sanction.” In an interview with The Daily, Bean said that as a Jewish student, she is often told that any critique of Israel is antisemitic. In her experience, that’s not necessarily true, she explained.

“Collective liberation means that we should be fighting for Palestinians and fighting for their liberation,” Bean said. “The violence against Palestinians does not make Jews safer. In no world can my safety come from the destruction (and) the ethnic cleansing of another group of people, and that’s really why I’m here.”

LSA senior and SAFE board-member Zainab Hakim stands admist a crowd of protestors within the Ruthven Building Friday evening.

LSA senior Zainab Hakim, SAFE Education Committee member, told The Daily participating in rallies may seem daunting to students, but urged them to overcome their hesitancy and join public protests to communicate directly with administration and the campus community. “(In) elementary and middle school, you’ll learn about history as this abstract thing, and it’s like oh, this was insane,” Hakim said. “This is a chance for you to face that fear and come out and be on the right side of history and contribute to something bigger than yourself. So yeah, it’s scary, but I feel like you’d have to look that fear in the face sometimes.”

Following the protest, U-M students moved into the Ruthven Building where the U-M chapter

of JVP began to livestream the sitin on Instagram. In the livestream, about 20 students sat in a circle singing chants and calling for the University to recognize the violence faced by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli incursion into Gaza.

A group of over a dozen students entered University President Santa Ono’s office and continued to protest there.

In the Ruthven Building, protesting students chanted “Solidarity forever” and “What side are you on now?”

University spokesperson Kim Broekhuizen sent a statement to The Daily about the protest, writing that the University is monitoring the situation as the sit-in continues.

“Late this afternoon, a group of pro-Palestinian protesters forcefully gained access to a

locked Ruthven Administration Building,” Broekhuizen wrote. “An estimated 200 protesters entered the building. U-M Police report building occupants have safely left the building and officers are working to restore order to the building. We will provide further updates as the situation evolves.”

Dozens of police cars were present on Geddes Avenue as students marched up to the building. Although police blocked the main doors, protestors were able to enter the building through a different entrance. Protestors then chanted from both sides of the main doors for the police to allow the rest of them to enter the building.

Bean spoke about how the police blocked protestors from coming into the Ruthven Building on the livestream.

LILA TURNER/Daily

“Well, clearly they’re not supporting their students because the police blocked us from coming into a public building that was open on the University that we attend,” Bean said “Now, they’re not letting our allies into the building even though it’s 4:37 p.m.. This building is still open for another 23 minutes.

They are not letting them into the building.”

As of 6:30 p.m., protestors outside the building were continuing to chant “We’re not leaving” and urged the police to give protestors inside the building access to water.

Just after 7 p.m., SAFE and JVP also posted on Instagram, calling on U-M students to send individual emails to Ono and the Regents about the fact that police are not allowing water to be brought into Ruthven.

ACADEMICS

Art & Design study abroad requirement is back for the class of 2024 Pandemic alternatives to the mandatory Stamps study abroad are on the way out JI HOON CHOI

Daily Staff Reporter The University of Michigan offers students various opportunities to travel internationally during their time as undergraduates, including in the form of study abroad programs. While study abroad is an option for most U-M students, it is a requirement for students in the School of Art & Design.

The Art & Design School announced in 2010 that starting in 2014, students would have to engage in an “International Experience” in order to graduate.

This requirement was waived for students graduating from 2020 to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though these students had to take two additional classes to substitute the International Experience — ARTDES 434: Global Studio and BA 310: Business + Culture. But now the study abroad requirement is back in place, meaning the winter 2024 graduating class is the first cohort of Art & Design students who have been required to complete a study abroad program or on-campus equivalency since the start of the pandemic.

In an email sent to all Art & Design students on Oct. 27 and obtained by The Michigan Daily, Sandra Wiley, director of international study programs for the Art & Design School, wrote that the two substitute classes will not be offered in the winter 2024 semester and that the Art & Design School is seeking student feedback to generate alternatives to the requirement.

Veronica Falandino, assistant dean for admissions and student services at the Art & Design School, told The Daily the classes may return in the future as elective

options and are currently being reviewed by Art & Design faculty.

“The instructor for that class is really taking this point in time to reflect and revisit the partnerships that drive that particular class,” Falandino said.

In an email to The Daily, Jennifer Hogan, director of communications and marketing for the Art & Design School, wrote that the School is looking to expand study abroad options for Art & Design students to include programs sponsored by the Center for Global and Intercultural Studies. CGIS offers over 120 programs in more than 45 different countries, with the majority of program participants being from the School of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

“In addition to STAMPSsponsored programs, students (would be able to do) select from CGIS-sponsored programs,” Hogan wrote. “Even more options

are under consideration and announced to students when they become available.”

Art & Design senior Santana Malnaik studied abroad in Paris on a CGIS program for her Political Science minor. Since she didn’t do an Art & Design sponsored abroad program, the credits did not fulfill the International Experience requirement for her bachelor’s degree in the Art & Design School.

Since she knew this would be an issue ahead of time, Malnaik said she proactively took BA 310 to fulfill the International Experience requirement. She said while she was grateful to find a way to get the credit outside of going abroad for a second time, she believes the Art & Design school needs to offer alternative in-residence classes that fulfill the study abroad requirement more consistently.

“I think the substitute classes are a great option, but the (Art &

Design School) has not been good about making sure they’re regularly offered,” Malnaik said. “The class sizes are not large enough to accommodate the amount of people who need to be able to take them.”

Malnaik said she hopes the Art & Design school will increase its communication and transparency about the study abroad requirement to avoid student confusion, especially with the substitute classes being removed from the course guide.

“There’s been a little bit of miscommunication with some advisors leaving and saying things that are incorrect to different students, which leads to a lot of confusion,” Malnaik said. “I think that (the Art & Design School) is trying to do their best, especially with this new adjustment of expanding what satisfies the requirement. But for some of us, it’s too little too late.”

Other students expressed excitement about having the opportunity to take part in the International Experience once again. Art & Design sophomore Yuri Cho told The Daily she hopes to complete her International Experience through Ewha Womans University in South Korea because she has family there.

“Because I’m Korean myself and I have family that lives in South Korea, I was like, ‘Okay, why don’t I use this opportunity to go visit them?’ ” Cho said. “So I looked into the Canvas site a bit and then emailed an international advisor.”

LSA COLLEGIATE LECTURE SERIES

Cho said while she is excited by this opportunity, she also believes the Art & Design School should be more flexible with the requirement to ensure that graduation is accessible and realistic for all students, regardless of their schedule and financial situation.

“I think it should be more heavily encouraged, but (the Art & Design School administration) are so adamant about keeping it a requirement,” Cho said. “Keep the other options accessible for people who cannot afford it. Because you’re just going to screw a bunch of students over if you don’t.”

Tuesday, December 5, 2023 4:30 p.m.—6:00 p.m.

Weiser Hall, 10th Floor

On the Road to Truth GORDON BELOT Lawrence Sklar Collegiate Professor of Philosophy

Decision Making and the Accuracy of Beliefs JAMES M. JOYCE Cooper Harold Langford Collegiate Professor of Philosophy

The Physics of Ignorance: Believe It or Not? LAURA RUETSCHE Louis E. Loeb Collegiate Professor of Philosophy A public lecture and reception; you my attend in person or virtually. For more information, including the Zoom link, visit https://events. umich.edu/event/110150 or call 734.516.1027.

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Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘Saltburn’ is an entertaining romp with not much under the surface

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 — 5

Amy Lea talks upcoming novel ‘The Catch,’ social media and romance tropes AVA SEAMAN Books Beat Editor

WILL COOPER Daily Arts Contributor

“Saltburn” revels in its audience’s discomfort. Director Emerald Fennell is no stranger to provoking viewers: Her Academy Award-winning “Promising Young Woman” leans into an unabashed, shock-jockey expression of contemporary feminist rage.

“Saltburn” continues Fennell’s trend of alluring and disgusting audiences with its modernist take on the English countryside. This image was taken from the official trailer for “Saltburn,” distributed by Amazon MGM Studios.

The film follows the middleclass Oliver Quick’s (Barry 4:3 aspect ratio fill the film these actors are able to sell their Keoghan, “The Banshees with historical anachronisms respective positions in social life. of Inisherin”) increasingly that lean into the countryside Keoghan is extremely believable interdependent relationship aesthetic Fennell used as as someone who is infatuated with his aristocratic Oxford inspiration and give it an ageless with the popularity and wealth classmate Felix Catton (Jacob quality. The whole film is of Elordi’s Felix, an infatuation Elordi, “Euphoria”). Felix is beautiful, and the shots’ textured that morphs into obsession. handsome, popular and uber- graininess is striking. One can Every one of Oliver’s actions, wealthy — everything that forget that they’re watching a from nerdy acts of attentionthe loner Oliver isn’t. The two film set in the mid-aughts until seeking to fabrication of details become best friends with a the family watches “Superbad” about his life, is in service of this healthy dose of erotic undertones, or sees Felix wear an outfit obsession. This key dynamic and Oliver earns an invite to ripped out of an Abercrombie & shapes the entirety of the film; any decision that moves the Felix’s family estate, Saltburn. Fitch magazine.

Oxford is not just filled film away from it makes it less At the estate, Oliver becomes intertwined with Felix’s family: with aristocrats, but with the interesting.

While the performances are his oblivious yet biting mother, English middle-class, allowing Elsbeth (Rosamund Pike, “Gone Oliver to work his way into captivating, “Saltburn” has an Girl”); aloof father, Sir James the Catton family. This class almost excruciating impulse to unfolds through constantly shock the audience (Richard E. Grant, “Can You invasion Ever Forgive Me?”); unstable Oliver’s manipulation of Felix. in a way that detracts from the sister, Venetia (Alison Oliver, The homoerotic, near-symbiotic characters and themes. Oliver “Conversations with Friends”) relationship between the two commits acts that would likely and stereotypically mean is the film’s primary appeal. get me kicked off The Michigan teenage cousin, Farleigh (Archie Keoghan and Elordi play off each Daily if I did them. While these Madekwe, “Gran Turismo”). other in an endlessly entrancing scenes are entertaining as they disturbing manner. unfold, especially in a packed Oliver and Felix experience the and ennui of an upper-class English Keoghan is a world-class talent theater where other viewers summer, but it’s threatened by who carries his trademark gasp and scream alongside you, Oliver’s entanglement in the awkward and somber style that they get increasingly exhausting is at first endearing, yet slowly every time as they present Oliver family affairs.

Nearly the entire film is reveals itself to be self-serving as some Machiavellian deviant. set at the estate. The gothic and malignant. The relationship Read more at MichiganDaily.com architecture and suffocating works because of how much

Quotes have been edited and condensed for clarity.

“The Catch,” a novel by internationally bestselling author Amy Lea, follows fashion influencer Melanie Karlsen, who gets an opportunity to escape Boston and spend a week at a resort in Nova Scotia, Canada, in exchange for social media content. After the resort mixes up the dates she’s supposed to stay, Mel finds herself in Cora’s Cove, a small fishing town on Canada’s east coast. It’s the kind of small town that thrives off tourism and has exactly one bar. When Mel arrives at the Airbnb she booked at the last minute, the first person she meets is the burly and not-sofriendly owner Evan Whaler.

After only a few days of knowing each other — which included an unfortunate boating accident that left Evan unconscious and concussed in the hospital with only Mel by his side — Mel declares herself Evan’s fiancee. Evan agrees to go along with the fake engagement to ease the tensions between his feuding family members.

His mother and his aunt haven’t spoken in years because they can’t decide whether to sell the bed and breakfast that has been in the family for generations but desperately needs repair. For the next week, Evan and Mel pretend to be engaged and end up actually falling for each other.

“The Catch” is the third and final book in Lea’s “The Influencer” series. Social media is a major part of the series, and all of the main characters are influencers — Crystal from “Set on You” is a fitness influencer,

Tara from “Exes and O’s” is a book influencer and Mel from the upcoming “The Catch” is a fashion influencer.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Lea shared that before she became an author, she had a “Bookstagram” account.

While Lea said that writing Tara’s story came naturally to her, she had to do a bit of “fun research” for the other two books, which meant following a lot of influencers and studying their profiles and the language of their posts.

“A lot of people sometimes don’t like the reality of social media or pop culture references in books,” Lea said. “I totally understand where they are coming from, but at the same time, I think it is just a fact of life nowadays. We socialize via the internet. If you were to ask couples, so many of them met online. That’s just how it is. So I figured it was important to highlight that aspect of life.”

In Lea’s “The Influencer” series, each main character has a different relationship with social media. She said she struggled to figure out how to portray Mel in “The Catch” because in the first two books in the series, Mel is only a side character, a friend to Crystal and Tara. Mel’s persona entails her dressing fabulously and looking amazing, showing off her seemingly perfect life making money from influencing. But in reality, because social media algorithms and trends change, Mel is losing money.

Influencing can be a fleeting profession. Lea said she wanted to show this change over time. At the beginning of her career, Mel loved putting together outfits and talking about fashion, but as negative comments accumulated and companies began dropping

her, fashion influencing failed to remain her passion. It just became a job, which, Lea admitted, happens to a lot of creative people in real life, specifically writers.

“When you overshare yourself online, it can lead to burnout,” Lea said. “You’re constantly subjecting yourself to criticism where people feel that they know you and can say whatever they want, as long as they’re anonymous and behind a screen.”

As the books in the “The Influencer” series came out over the past couple of years, Lea said that her own relationship with social media changed. When she started out as a Bookstagrammer, her relationship with books was purely one of a consumer.

Now, she’s other authors’ peer — and because of this, she’s more mindful of the books she shares on her account.

There are a variety of tropes at play in “The Catch.” Evan is a rugged, grumpy lobster fisherman while Mel is a sunshine heroine who definitely doesn’t spend as much time outdoors as Evan does — playing into the classic grumpy/sunshine, city girl/small town boy and opposite attracts dynamics.

Lea said she’s a fan of reading enemies-to-lovers stories for their built-in tension and the banter between characters, but the tropes she likes to read most change. When it comes to incorporating tropes into her own writing, she explained that she likes friends-to-lovers stories, though they are more challenging. She said that these plots require writing about the characters’ already established relationship and familiarity with each other.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Why Spotify is (most likely) going to fail Sudoku Syndication

http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/

NICKOLAS HOLCOMB Daily Arts Writer

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9/8/08 2:06 PM

WHISPER WHISPER “My tutorials professor lets me talk about Good Omens.”

“Ocean’s Twelve is a good movie.”

The Spotify versus Apple Music debate has become one of the fiercest music discourses of the 2010s. The battle between the two streaming giants is a battle of tradeoffs. Apple Music currently has music videos and album write-ups. Spotify answers back with better UI performance, a full toolkit for finding new music, nearly 400 million more users and full support for music sharing through features such as blends and shared playlists, making both finding and sharing new music with friends easier than ever.

Despite being the more popular choice, the ethics of Spotify’s practices are becoming increasingly important in user choice, especially after Spotify raised its prices, ridding the company of its affordability advantage. Whether because of Spotify’s controversial stances on misinformation or its new royalty policy that requires a minimum stream count for a payout, many users are beginning to question their brand loyalty, especially considering their product is sonically inferior.

While the decision to raise prices will ultimately yield the company hundreds of millions of dollars more per month, why change the price now? The answer is obvious: Spotify is struggling.

Many factors are stacked against Spotify. For one, the service doesn’t directly create its own revenue. Artists and labels take up to 70% of the profit from streams, meaning that Spotify only sees between $0.001 and $0.002 per stream — not nearly enough to make up for the close to $10 billion in royalties the service has paid since its inception.

Most of Spotify’s revenue must come from advertisements and premium memberships as a result, so raising the subscription price would be the easiest course of action toward increased profits.

Spotify has hemorrhaged 464 million euros (about $500 million) over the last two years before this price hike. This

significant loss means that, during this period, Spotify was being held up solely by investors.

As a last-ditch effort to maintain their low price, the company acquired Gimlet Media, a podcast production house, and spent millions on exclusive rights to podcasts like Call Her Daddy and The Joe Rogan Experience.

This investment doubled the ad revenue generated by podcasts but at a great cost to the company.

This year, Spotify has also entered the audiobook game to tap into a new potential market, but it’s too soon to measure whether this move will drive up company profits.

The issues plaguing Spotify point to an unfortunate truth for listeners: Current streaming service models simply aren’t profitable. How do others stay afloat? Services such as Apple Music and Google Play are anchored by large, profitable tech companies. Apple and Google can afford to take losses on music streaming because they have so many other markets and products to keep their services alive.

Spotify doesn’t have this same backbone and struggles to stay in the green as a result.

A premium price raise was a necessity if Spotify wanted to stay alive — but did it work? For now, yes. The company reported quarterly profit for the first time in over a year, which is good news for Spotify investors and executives. However, this profit is probably not sustainable. The company still has to keep artists and labels happy by churning out royalties, something that will prove difficult for the independent streaming service that lacks the same bottomless pockets as its competitors. The price hike was a mere band-aid for a larger issue.

So what can Spotify do besides periodically raise prices? Not a lot. It is clear the current music streaming model isn’t sustainable long term, and Spotify can only ride on the coattails of investors for so long. Beyond expanding product reach to podcasts and audiobooks, the company has to make music streaming profitable.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Arts

6 ­— Wednesday, November 29, 2023

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Twee is not dead at the Slaughter Beach, Dog concert NINA SMITH

Daily Arts Writer

Jake Ewald of Slaughter Beach, Dog at Saint Andrew’s Hall in Detroit

RUBY KLAWANS/Daily

Bonny Doon on stage at Saint Andrew’s Hall.

RUBY KLAWANS/Daily

If you think twee pop is dead, go to a Slaughter Beach, Dog concert. Rest assured, you will encounter more awkward, Midwest-artsy, greasy-haired white guys in Dr. Martens and tiny beanies than you ever thought existed in the Detroit metropolitan area. On the night of Saturday Nov. 4, Saint Andrew’s Hall crawled with them.

In fact, two of these guys took the stage just after 8 p.m. They’re called Bonny Doon, and they sang in raspy harmony with slow, drawn-out melodies and warm guitar chords that I described in my Notes app as “kind of depressing.” With lyrics that don’t do justice to the emotion with which they were sung and a complete lack of stage presence, Bonny Doon’s set dragged on.

Photo of two men on a stage in front of an audience, holding guitars and singing. There is the rest of a band set behind them.

The lighting is dark blue.

Bonny Doon on stage at Saint Andrew’s Hall. Ruby Klawans/ Daily. Buy this photo.

Their lack of enthusiasm made even less sense when, a few songs in, they told us very dryly that they were from Detroit. Most artists would at least act excited about a hometown show. Not Bonny Doon.

“We grew up going to shows here, so we’re just like you,” the one in the turtleneck said. (Did they say their names? I don’t remember). “And when you look at us, it’s you in the future, so I hope you like what you see.”

There was a sparse smattering of applause. Personally, I was not not sure I did.

Bonny Doon was exactly what an opening act should be: like the headliner but a little worse.

As unimpressive as their stage presence was — I wrote in my notes, “It’s like he’s dissociating while speaking to us” — their folksy, mellow, Bright-Eyes-forthe-2020s sound was just good enough to get us excited for the real thing, like an appetizer that doesn’t spoil the entree.

The entree, of course, was Philadelphia-based indie rock band Slaughter Beach, Dog, on tour following the September release of their fifth studio album, Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling. As we milled around listening to their preshow playlist, the band members themselves crisscrossed the stage prepared their equipment.

It was the first act in a night that became all about humility.

When the lights came up, five of those same awkward hipsters greeted us from behind their mic stands — retro haircuts, corduroy blazers and all.

The set began slowly with a few milder tracks from the latest record, but older favorites like “Gold and Green,” “Your Cat” and the band’s biggest hit, “Acolyte,” really got us going.

The crowd didn’t dance, per se — Slaughter Beach, Dog’s target audience is fittingly shy and earnest, much too inhibited for moshing. But the enthusiasm was there. When lead singer Jake Ewald told us, “If you can whistle, now’s the time,” during “Acolyte’s” dreamy instrumental, I saw a few teenagers with nose rings following his orders.

Photo of bassist Ian Farmer of Slaughter Beach, Dog playing the bass guitar.

Ewald barely sang and sometimes sing-talked, decorating quintessential indie rock beats with bashful honesty

and deft, illustrative songwriting.

Guitarist Adam Meisterhans took his job very seriously — the solos he was awarded several times throughout the night elevated the show to a capital-P Performance.

And bassist Ian Farmer was a funky fan favorite, to which all he had to say was, “Hi…Hello.”

But it wasn’t about them — that much became clear when Ewald, three or so songs in, asked for the front lights to be turned down on the band’s faces.

From then on, they were awash in darkness, outlines silhouetted by the smokey blue air. They weren’t doing stand-up between songs, though they were funny in their sheepishness. Ewald first asked us, “Are you awake?” and then requested we rate their performance out of 10 on our fingers. Pairs of outstretched hands went up all around the room.

Slaughter Beach, Dog is not a group of rock stars. In fact, it’s a bit like if the little boys from “Stranger Things” were an indie band instead of a D&D club. As performers, they were slightly uncoordinated and not particularly dramatic.

When prompted, they gave us an encore and then left again without a word. But they were sincere, and at the end of the day, talented. For the few hundred delicate millennials and high schoolers with shag haircuts that composed their Saturday night audience, Slaughter Beach, Dog’s music spoke more than enough for itself.

They shouldn’t be rock stars. If you came to a Slaughter Beach, Dog show looking for rock stars, you’d be in the wrong place. But if you came looking for music, real human music, and artistry to which fans can genuinely connect, you would have hit the nail on the head.

In defense of Weezer fans AMINA CATTAUI Daily Arts Writer

Hear me out! It doesn’t have to be Weezer. If you’d prefer, you can swap in AJR, or Imagine Dragons or — if you’re old enough to remember — Nickelback.

Weezer (and, by extension, their fans) are the butt of at least 40% of the music jokes you hear online. Why? Weezer lovers don’t love everything about Weezer; Weezer haters don’t hate everything about Weezer. Both groups tend to have pretty similar opinions on Weezer: 1. The band peaked with the Blue Album and Pinkerton.

2. Matt Sharp’s departure was their shark jump.

3. Subsequent albums have been spotty, but better than you’d expect.

So what gives? Why play collective pretend? Whether it’s the proto-incelism of Pinkerton or the gimmicky commercialism of the Teal Album, there’s a lot to disagree with in Weezer’s discography.

Even the “good albums” were polarizing upon their release; from there, the bad ones are absolute stinkers.

Today, frontman Rivers Cuomo makes his name as a calculating sellout; if you think his recent lyrics sound like they’re plucked from an Excel spreadsheet and decided by committee, it’s because sometimes they are. It’s been a long fall.

This wound cuts especially deep for music writers. When Pitchfork writer Jill Mapes asked, “Will Weezer Ever Stop Being Disappointing?,” a part of her still identified with the band enough to feel disappointment, like the band was her high-school sweetheart who let themself go. As Kelefa Sanneh writes in his book “Major Labels,” music magazines are known for their rockist streak: They valorize the artist who makes “albums, not singles; portrays (themself ) as a rebellious individualist, not an industry pro; (and) give(s) listeners the uncomfortable truth, instead of pandering to their tastes.” They accept only 100% pure, uncut rock; no Swedish songwriters here.

Design by Evelyn Mousigian

To the devout rockist, Weezer — perhaps the “last true rock band” that’s been pandering to meme culture since “Pork and Beans” — represents an uncanny parody of music critic catnip. It’s all profoundly unsexy.

Even so, Weezer’s early work is known for its catchy, selfeffacing ’90s alt-rockiness, stuff that’s destined to be in a coming-of-age film’s soundtrack (and was … many times). Weezer plays like they’re downtrodden and unlucky in love, but they’re clearly having fun — as the band’s Spotify bio says, “Just keeping it weezy.” Without

their reputation, you’d mention them in the same breath as Pavement or Nada Surf. But now, your brain probably goes to Swans or Neutral Milk Hotel or any other band associated with lonely music nerds.

Taste is an extension of self; by expressing it, you leave something of yourself vulnerable. Now, everyone’s got a Letterboxd, a Rate Your Music, maybe a Substack if they’re so inclined — taste is woven into our public personas.

And yet, to borrow from Natalie Wynn’s video “Cringe,” the Internet hasn’t “reached self-consciousness about the fact that the fear of public

humiliation rules us like it’s the 17th century.” By adopting the taste of the tastemakers, you make yourself legitimate.

For everybody who grew up downtrodden and unlucky in love, who once had the balls to openly relate to “Pink Triangle,” unironically loving Weezer becomes a mark of shame, and much of the hatedom carries the unmistakable stench of collective self-loathing.

Weezer, then, is one in a long line of cringe culture’s victims: Opinions of them are formed not out of real criticism, but out of fear of regressing into the inconceivable teenage dork who once loved them.

It’s easy to get lost in the fog of public discourse: What’s hot, what’s mid, what’s a light six. But taste is not what you consume; it’s how you feel — not the dish, but the experience of f lavor. Commodifying taste — trading it in Topsters — quantifies those big, slippery feelings onto a grid, into a number out of 10. This is a natural consequence of platforms that answer only to streams and stars and metadata.

By enforcing a deontolog y of taste (“Kendrick good; Nickelback bad”), something of yourself is lost. It does not have to be this way.

I’m guilty of performative

Weezer-hating, too; I still groan sympathetically at the mention of bands like Weezer, regardless of what I think. That disdain, that incorrigible social ritual, still controls me like an animal ref lex. Imagine my surprise when someone asks, naïvely, “Why?” So, in the name of confessionals: My high school playlist was full of The Smashing Pumpkins, Neutral Milk Hotel and (eek!) Weezer.

There is a recording of me out there singing “Hash Pipe.” I still don’t think “Beverly Hills” is that bad! Live your truth.

Everything will be alright in the end.

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 — 7

More than just textbooks: Why you should read nonfiction CLAIRE ROCK Daily Arts Contributor

There is one genre that makes even seasoned, self-proclaimed readers shudder. It is cloaked by imagery of old, dusty middle school textbooks and dense pages filled end to end with texts and tacky graphics or maybe hours spent on mirlyn looking for the right article. It is tiring, boring and unimaginative — it is nonfiction.

I am here, economics book and memoir in hand, to defend the honor of this noble genre that has been degraded by your high school history class assignments. If you peer behind the cobwebs and sweep the dust off the “boring” genre, I promise it will enrich your life in ways you have never imagined.

I know what you’re thinking: “Sure, there’s no lack of information to be found in the nonfiction genre, but why should I care? It’s boring information.” I once thought the same thing, too.

Before my senior year of high school, I was someone who avoided nonfiction at all costs.

That summer, I was assigned a book for my macroeconomics class called “Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science”

by Charles Wheelan. I absolutely dreaded reading it. I knew nothing about economics, other than that it was boring enough to be called the “dismal science,” and I did not want to spend a second of my summer reading a nonfiction book.

I was shocked when I started reading it because I actually really liked it — so much so that

Design by Arunika Shee

I disregarded my other books and blew through it, reading, annotating and writing down concepts for future research.

Wheelan was funny, engaging and intelligent. I laughed at his jokes and was guided along by his easy-to-understand examples of concepts, which I still use today as an economics major.

Wheelan’s writing opened my eyes not only to economics and how it can explain the world around me, but also to the nonfiction genre and all that it has to offer. Nonfiction doesn’t have to be boring — it can be whatever

you want it to be. Missed out on AMCULT 234? Read about it. Want to learn about constitutional law?

Read about it. Still wondering just what went through Britney Spears’ mind during her infamous 2007 breakdown? You can read about that too. Seriously, the world is your oyster here.

After this nonfiction awakening, I began picking up nonfiction books whenever I had something I wanted to learn more about or better understand. Here are a few of my favorites.

“Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This bold, powerful piece is a letter from Coates to his young son. He considers the construction of race in the United States, his history and growth at Howard University, and his thoughts on grappling with brutal historical and present discrimination. At a young age, Coates discovered the omnipotence of his race in his life experiences but couldn’t quite grasp why. When he attended Howard University, which he calls the Mecca, he dedicated himself to learning why race played such an important role in his life. Coates guides readers through his time

there, during which he gained consciousness of historical and systemic oppression and learned that the “American Dream” — the standard of freedom and opportunity for all — was built upon the backs of Black Americans.

His views made me see America through a lens never offered to me in my past U.S. history classes.

“Between the World and Me” is immersive and pressing — Coates discusses, frankly and tragically, what it is truly like to be a Black man in America.

“Why We’re Polarized” by Ezra Klein

After the 2016 election, many Americans were surprised and confused at what felt like such an unprecedented turn of events in American politics and even more so at what felt like insurmountable polarization. In his book, Klein explains that the results of the election were inevitable. Given the rise of identity politics, our political identities have become almost inseparable from our personal identities, which explains why voting patterns are so highly correlated with things like race, religion and location. Or why, for example, you associate blue hair with liberalism and pick-up trucks with conservatism. Once you finish reading, you’ll be armed with a new perspective and a sense of understanding of polarization and identity politics as unavoidable functions of democracy.

“In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote This is a classic nonfiction book.

Capote, the father of true crime, tells the story of a shocking murder.

One night in Holcomb, Kan., a small, safe town where everyone kept their doors unlocked, four members of the Clutter family were murdered in their home.

There were no suspects, no clues and no apparent motives. Capote guides readers through the case and investigation, describing all sides of the case and presenting readers with a complex, holistic view of crime. If you love true crime podcasts or TV shows, this is the book for you.

You can find a book on just about anything you’re interested in. So next time you’re looking for a good read, try a nonfiction book!

‘Invincible’ season two slips up, then subverts and soars SAARTHAK JOHRI Digital Culture Beat Editor

Superhero stories usually have a few basic rules: The good guys win in the end; the hero is incorruptible; the status quo is maintained.

Meanwhile, in a series far from these basic rules, Earth has been taken over in “A Lesson for Your Next Life” (the first episode of “Invincible’s” second season) by corrupted hero Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun, “Voltron: Legendary Defender”) aka Invincible, who is subduing opposition alongside his intergalactic colonizing father Nolan (J. K. Simmons, “Gravity Falls”) aka Omni-Man. As the two exchange casual conversations about putting down protestors and razing cities, Yeun’s and Simmons’ laid-back deliveries are chilling in the face of all the destruction they enact. This disparity is especially haunting when juxtaposed with the anguished and pained performances of Mark’s former friends and teammates like Robot (Zachary Quinto, “Superman: Man of Tomorrow”) and Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs, “Ten Year Old Tom”). Newcomer Sterling K. Brown (“Solar Opposites”) also carries the character of Angstrom Levy with both measure and

mutiny, acting as a careful spy for the rebellion of this world and speaking out against the murderous Invincible and OmniMan right to their faces before a portal to another universe opens up beneath his feet and saves him. If the viewer hasn’t already guessed, this is not the universe in which the first season of “Invincible” took place.

Now, multiverse media usually has a few basic rules: There’s at least one universe where the good guys lose; the hero has one evil version of themself somewhere; those who use the multiverse to gain power (think the Scarlet Witch, Kang, the Spot) are a threat.

Meanwhile, in another world still not bound by those rules, an alternate-universe Levy breaks the buff clone genius duo the Mauler Twins (Kevin Michael Richardson, “Young Justice”) out of maximum security. He notes that the universe from which he rescued them is odd because in every other Earth with an Invincible, the superhero doesn’t stop Omni-Man but joins him in colonizing the planet and beyond — instantly subverting and setting the stakes of a multiversal threat sky-high. He reveals his powers of creating multiversal portals and his plans that are

completely unrelated to beating Invincible: Use the Mauler Twins’ technological prowess to transfer the collective knowledge of every one of his collected, communal cohabitating multiversal selves — including that of the Levy who was almost killed by the alternate Invincible — into his brain, giving him the ability to solve every universe’s issues.

In the sequence that precedes this, we see Mark — our Mark — trying his best to save people, especially those suffering in the aftermath of the fight between him and his father. Not only is the grief evident in every frame of Mark’s face, but you can hear it through the somber strums and stanzas of “Karma Police,” another superb choice by the music supervision team that juxtaposes John Paesano’s (“Daredevil”) traditional bombastic superhero orchestration against contemporary song choices that the teenage characters would actually listen to (“Blitzkrieg Bop” is indeed a Spider-Manworthy bop, but you can’t tell me that 15-year-old Gen-Z nerd Peter Parker is cool enough to listen to that instead of anime music and Star Wars parodies). Thom Yorke’s wails cast a darkness over all the light Mark tries to bring into the world by doing his superhero

duties. As Mark falls to Earth, it seems like he would rather collide with the planet than keep going until he hears another cry for help.

“Invincible” really only has one rule: Before the title card of each episode, someone is about to say Mark’s superhero name, but it cuts to the blood-spattered title and theme stinger instead.

“A Lesson,” unlike past episodes, instead takes multiple points to tease its title card, complete with totally unnatural pauses in sentences preceding the I-word. Yes, they’re for dramatic effect, but the joke is made so often (beyond the comedic rule of three!) that it ends up being more annoying than endearing.

This issue carries across the entire episode; “Invincible” usually employs self-aware comedy in spades, as a deconstruction of the superhero genre, but this brand of humor clashes with the somber tone of an episode entirely centered on grief. It would have been beneficial to have just one episode that doesn’t feel dangerously close to swapping serious sentiments for quips like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Unfortunately, the MCU’s influence doesn’t stop there.

Of course, critics will note the multiversal cinematic similarities even though the stories — which

use Mark’s multiversal selves as prisoners of their cycles of abuse — were adapted far before the MCU was even a possibility for Mr. Feige. But it’s the MCU-esque subversion for subversion’s sake that’s concerning.

Let’s talk about the Amber (Zazie Beetz, “The Bad Guys”) elephant in the room. Last season, Amber dumped Mark for not telling the truth about being a superhero (standard protocol for protecting loved ones, subverted for seemingly no solid reason) and being an inconsiderate partner as a result (actually his fault, but wait), but then rekindled the relationship when Mark was at his most vulnerable after his father left. It’s an uncomfortable contrast to all the lovingly written relationships in the show — like Mark and his mother Debbie (Sandra Oh, “Turning Red”), who set off on the messy journey of learning to mourn together.

Scenes taken straight from the comics that are clearly intended to be sweet, like Mark and Debbie getting into college together, come off as much more sour — especially when you know she’ll become another fictional female character for men to interpret misogynistically rather than rightly blaming the mostly-male writing team that failed her.

One last unfortunate carryover from the first season is the recurrence of animation pitfalls.

After taking so long to release a new season, what’s seen in “A Lesson” still shows “Invincible” clearly conserving its animation budget. Scenes like Mark’s aforementioned fall to Earth are let down when character models aren’t so much animated as laterally translated so that fight scenes and massive explosions can look their best — and they do; but the heart of “Invincible” is as important as the musclebound mania in which it indulges.

Its serene slice-of-life scenes deserve as much attention as its extravagant action.

The source of this strain is obvious when you remember that a show about how superior strength is always in service of others is being funded and streamed by Amazon, where moral grayness indulged into outright evil is entirely too relevant. Still, I have a feeling that as the show continues to grow in popularity, the arcs will only improve in quality and revolutionary themes.

“Invincible” will win out in the end. Just like its title card, “Invincible” isn’t bound by its blood, by conventions, by cycles of abuse — it only brings up these bounds to eventually break them.

‘Loki’ finds its glorious purpose MINA TOBYA Daily Arts Writer

Despite a hectic start, “Loki” has crafted the most brilliantly heart-shattering finale possible for its titular character. As an entity cursed to be the conduit for painful destruction and the selfactualization of his opposition, Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston, “Crimson Peak”) identity has centered around chaotic selfpreservation for centuries.

Finally, in line with his comic transformation, he sheds his old hedonistic skin to find the heroic god he was always supposed to be.

Loki begins this season timeslipping through the Time Variance Authority after its mysterious creator, He Who Remains (Jonathon Majors, “Creed III”), also known as Kang the Conqueror, is slain by Loki’s variant self Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino, “Yesterday”). Without anyone to keep the multiversal timelines from branching out or collapsing in on one another, Loki spends six episodes attempting to stabilize the timelines with

the help of his friends at the TVA. His monumental task pushes him to strengthen his magic as he strengthens his convictions, highlighting a vital faculty of the character and his wily nature that series viewers had previously forgotten. The God of Mischief lives up to his name and shows that he’s not afraid to carry the burden of his now unbridled power. Loki doesn’t lose the dangerously roguish aspects of his personality that made him an incredibly compelling villain in past Marvel projects. Rather, he is allowed to use them for a new, heroic cause.

Also central to his character development are the relationships he cultivates with his friends at the TVA. Until this point, Loki has practically betrayed everyone he has ever known (sometimes by literally stabbing them in the back) to meet the “glorious purpose” of his throne. Now, however, the love he has for those around him makes that course of action unthinkable. Mobius (Owen Wilson, “Zoolander”) and Sylvie, along with inner-circle TVA staff, become the entire reason

for his conviction to save the TVA. When the people he loves are plopped back into their original lives on the timeline, forgetting who he is entirely, he realizes that he doesn’t want to be alone like he has been for so long. He says that a throne is “the last thing” he desires now; he “just (wants) his friends back.”

This is where his greatest tragedy lies. At the exact moment he finally finds a family of friends and renounces all claim to any throne, he is cursed to an eternal, solitary rule. The love of his friends allows him to control his time-slipping and return to the moments just before the implosion of the timelines.

Through the connections he forms with beloved friends in this series and with his brother in past films, he discovers that life on a lonely throne would truly be a burden. However, trapped in a trolley problem of the choice between returning the status quo or letting the timelines run wild (both at the cost of countless lives), he realizes that the only right answer is to sacrifice himself and take the place of He Who Remains, alone on the most

powerful throne at the end of time. Loki has come full circle — as evidenced by the matching titles of his series premiere and finale — only now he understands what it means to be “burdened with glorious purpose.” It is a poetically cruel and beautiful culmination of his arc.

The scene showcasing his choice is shell-shocking. His friends scream for him to come back to no avail; he is heartbroken as he affirms he is doing this “for all of (them).” In this moment, he looks to the camera with tears in his eyes, yet smiling that he is doing it “for you”: the audience, so we can have more of these stories, and for his friends, so they can forge their own stories too. Loki descends onto the radiation-filled temporal platform as it rushes toward him, burning away his TVA uniform into the forest green robes of his comic-accurate God of Stories costume. As a set of black and gold horns take shape on his head — a nod to the Kintsugi concepts of accepting change and following fate — he pulls the timelines apart with his bare hands. Stabilizing them into the

shape of Yggdrasil, the Norse tree of life, Loki allows for the continuation of every life on every timeline at the cost of his own happiness.

The bittersweet moment is made cosmically grand by the stunning visual effects. The physical manifestation of each timeline into a tree root, the green glow of Loki’s familiar magic all coupled with the transition into the God of Stories wardrobe caused me to scream at the top of my lungs. The sheer quality of visual storytelling builds this imaginative world beautifully, even when it begins to unravel in spaghetti-like coils.

The VFX team has outdone themselves with this feat, as has the team behind the grand score that builds an air of highstakes resolution to this finale.

Most impressive, though, is Hiddleston’s performance in what may be his final appearance as Loki. The frustration and pain, the terror and solemn acceptance of the journey on which his character must go is expertly displayed in every shot. Hiddleston’s love for Loki is apparent in his tear-jerking

portrayal.

Loki develops into an entirely new version of himself. Until now, within the MCU, he has only been the God of Mischief — an agent of chaos, disorder and mistrust who exists as a villainous supporting character. All he has known is how to destroy. By binding the timelines in the sacred formation for growth, he becomes an agent of harmony. He transforms into the God of Stories, an entity able to rewrite time, and becomes the most powerful character in the MCU as a force for good. By shouldering the burden of the loneliest throne in the universe for the sake of protecting everyone alive, especially his friends, he becomes a hero in his own right. The love he has always possessed finally has a place to go, as does the goodness. He has come such a long way since his first appearance, yet he is still unable to achieve his happy ending. This is not a punishment by the narrative, as some fans might want to believe, but rather a bittersweet amalgamation of this character’s many destinies.

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MiC From Detroit to Palestine, police violence is a crime

8 — Wednesday, November 29, 2023

ANONYMOUS MIC CONTRIBUTOR Content warning: this article contains mentions of violence and suicide.

Since early October, Palestinian flags have cut through Ann Arbor’s cold rain, wind and apathy. Protesters, denouncing the University of Michigan’s support of Israel’s oppression of Palestine, have gathered at campus landmarks, like the Diag, the steps of Angell Hall, the President’s front lawn and the President’s office, located in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building.

The protests, organized by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, highlight the interconnected nature of oppression and liberation. In many of their chants, SAFE emphasizes how repressive tools used against Palestinians are not isolated to the region but rather are utilized by oppressive systems worldwide.

In a multi-part series, I will dive deeper into these chants and explore how oppression manifests itself across the globe in horrifically similar ways. The first chant that caught my attention: “From Detroit to Palestine, Police violence is a crime.”

State-sponsored policing forces, like the United States’ police forces and Israeli Defense Forces, utilize unwarranted and arbitrary violence against marginalized groups. When working with a narrow definition of violence — actions causing bodily harm or lethal injury — police brutality is often the focus. Police brutality violates basic human rights to life

and safety. When policing forces disproportionately infringe on marginalized groups’ rights, they reinforce and exacerbate systems of oppression.

In the United States, Black Americans are more than two times as likely to be killed by police compared to white Americans.

Over the last decade, the country witnessed egregious police killings that sparked the Black Lives Matter protests — Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Ahmaud Arbrey, George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, to name a few. This violence is part of a longer history of racialized brutality that extends to U.S. policing’s very foundations.

Policing forces utilized violence to uphold the White Supremacist institutions of slavery and Jim Crow. After the Civil Rights movement, police continued to weaponize violence to maintain white supremacy. In the late ’60s and ’70s, the FBI dismantled Black Power organizations that threatened white supremacy and resorted to killing many of its leaders, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. In 1992, the beating of Rodney King at the hands of the Los Angeles police sparked race riots. Even these examples are a limited view of the intertwined nature of police brutality and racial oppression in the United States.

The Israeli National Police, the Israel Border Police and the IDF similarly inflict wanton violence.

Israeli forces killed approximately 10,559 Palestinians from 2000 to the onset of violence after Oct. 7. Their pattern of brutality has extended throughout the 75 years of Israeli occupation. The routine denial of Palestinians’ right to life and safety entrenches the

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Israeli government’s apartheid policies and the dehumanization of Palestinians.

Violence’s conceptualization, at the same time, can also extend beyond physical attacks and includes human rights violations, as well as social, economic and psychological harm. These acts are often just as significant and impactful as physical violence.

Therefore, under this broader understanding of violence, police violence includes a wider array of police actions such as arbitrary or discriminatory imprisonment — a state tool used to break the spirit of communities and rob them of their sense of safety and autonomy, thereby denying oppressed peoples their basic humanity. More than one in five Palestinians have been arrested under the 1,600 Israeli military orders placed on Palestine. When looking at just Palestinian men, the rate doubles. Policing forces target male-presenting individuals with more intensity since men are often regarded as greater security threats. The United States enacts a similar system of violence against Black Americans: one in three Black men will be sent to prison in their lifetime, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. U.S. police forces arrest Black Americans at five times the rate of white Americans. Many of these arrests take place under U.S. laws stemming from the “War on Crime” and the “War on Drugs” — structurally racist policy that superseded Jim Crow.

Unwarranted imprisonment is also practiced by both countries.

As of August 2023, Israel was holding more than 1,200 detainees — 99% of whom were Palestinians — without charge or trial. This

“administrative detention” can last from months to years. These detainments are reminiscent of Kalief Browder, who was held at Rikers Island in New York for three years without trial, with almost two years in isolation, just for the charges to be dropped. Kalief’s alleged crime: stealing a backpack.

Kalief attempted suicide many times in prison and ultimately died due to suicide after his release.

Black Americans are more likely to be held in jail pretrial in large part due to the cash bond system where Black citizens, on average, receive twice as high bail amounts.

Another common form of police oppression is protest suppression.

Repressing nonviolent resistance protects systems of dominance by silencing dissenting voices and obscuring existing oppression.

During the Black Lives Matter protests, state and local governments deployed heavily militarized forces that committed unwarranted violence against protesters, medics, journalists and legal observers. These actions prompted United Nations human rights experts to denounce the police’s actions.

On Friday, our campus saw this exact tactic in action.

Police attempted to break up a nonviolent sit-in protest organized by a coalition of 54 student organizations, including SAFE, Jewish Voices for Peace and Graduate Employees’ Organization. Officers from the Division of Public Safety and Security and local police forces resorted to aggressive and violent tactics to prevent students from entering, including physically forcing their way into the building entryway, pushing protestors away from the public building during

business hours and ripping a student’s hijab off.

In Palestine, while Israeli forces utilize violence with similar intentions to U.S. forces, the levels of violence they employ are much more significant. In 2018, Palestinians organized widespread demonstrations in Gaza. The “Great March of Return” protested the border wall during the 11th anniversary of the land, air and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip and the 70th anniversary of the Nakba.

Despite the marches remaining overwhelmingly peaceful, Israeli officials gave orders to shoot any demonstrators within several hundred meters of the fence.

During the demonstrations, Israeli forces fired at protestors, bystanders, children, paramedics and journalists, resulting in 183 deaths and 6,106 injuries from live ammunition. Israeli security forces injured an additional 3,098 Palestinians by bullet fragmentation, rubber-coated metal bullets or tear gas canisters.

Only four Israeli soldiers were injured during this time. No Israeli soldiers were killed at any protest sites. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry found that during the protest, Israeli forces “committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”

The two systems of policing are not isolated from each other.

Programs sponsored by the United States and Israeli government entities and outside groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, have facilitated connections between each nation’s law enforcement. As part of these programs, members of U.S. police forces, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI, among

others, have traveled to Israel and received training from Israeli forces. These programs have also sponsored workshops, conferences and meetings between Israeli and American police. The program has specifically been found to have allowed techniques related to racialized profiling and breaking up protests to transfer between the groups.

Oppressive policing is also not isolated to just these two locations. SAFE’s chant recognizes this reality, using the words “from” and “to” rather than “and.”

Police violence is carried out by oppressive systems around the world.

In France, riots and protests broke out in June in response to the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French boy of Algerian and Moroccan descent.

The act of brutality sparked anger over the French police’s practice of racial profiling. Young men of African and Arab descent are 20 times more likely to be stopped by French police than the rest of the French population. The French authorities tried to ban peaceful demonstrations against police brutality following the riots.

In Venezuela, Fuerzas de Acciones Especiales — a branch of the Bolivariana National Police — was established by President Nicholas Maduro in 2017 to stop an ongoing crime wave. FAES routinely conducts extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests in poor communities that no longer support Maduro. FAES operatives, known as “death squads,” were responsible for more than 9,000 killings in an 18-month period in 2018 and 2019.

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Your Animal Crossing villagers will be OK without you SARA WONG MiC Columnist

I found my solace from the summer storms when I became the mayor of Otter, a seaside town where peach trees thrive and cats collect seashells by the bay. Each morning of my first summer home from college, I would wake up at 7, get my sole human interaction through tutoring my online ESL students at eight 8 and at 10, flip open the screen of my sister’s old Nintendo 3DS to play Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Press A. I’d usually be greeted with one of the early risers, like Daisy, the little white dog with lavender ears and pixel dots for eyes, and I’d watch her waddle around town until I pressed the next button.

If I started playing later in the afternoon, it would show me someone like Bob, the lazy purple cat I’ve met in multiple save files by random chance. I think we’re bound to each other at this point, like destined best friends.

Continue?

I’d pass my day selling fish, designing clothes, ignoring my soul-crushing property debt to Tom Nook and then I’d do it all again. At the end of each session, I’d pass the town tree on the way back to my home. On my first day as mayor of the town, my villagers and my assistant, Isabelle, held a commemoration ceremony for me in the town’s event plaza.

There, they asked me to perform my first task as mayor: plant a fragile sapling at the heart of our town. It is a symbol of our community’s new roots and new beginnings, and as such, the tree grows as our community grows.

When you sit on the tree’s brick border, the screen will display to you the town name, its residents and the entire history of the town, from the day you became mayor, to each new shop opening, to the community-funded public works projects you’ve banded together to

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complete.

Though Animal Crossing doesn’t have a set ending, it is here, beneath the town tree, that you can watch the credits roll to a twinkly medley of the game’s most iconic musical themes. At the end, energetic bells ring, their pulsing reminiscent of the sound of the train connecting your town with all of the others, of the train that brought you to this village that fateful, first day. See, Animal Crossing: New Leaf only ends when you no longer want to play, or really, when you no longer need it.

Save and quit?

These villagers kept me grounded through a numbing stretch of loneliness, agoraphobia and one of the worst depressive episodes I’ve ever experienced.

And two months later, I abandoned them.

Animal Crossing is fundamentally concerned with loneliness and community.

There’s a reason the series soared in popularity with the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons

during the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. We know, whether from personal accounts or qualitative studies, that these games provide a sense of stability, and they give us enough of a purpose to make it to the next day.

At the age of 21, Animal Crossing creator Katsuya Eguchi left his friends and family behind in his hometown of Chiba to move to Kyoto to pursue a career in game design at Nintendo.

Three hundred miles away from home, Eguchi floated through the motions of work, silent commutes, an empty home, and back to work.

He longed for community, for the time he could no longer spend with his loved ones. Through hours of isolation, he began to understand the importance of connection, and these feelings inspired the series that has comforted so many of us in similar seasons of turbulence and isolation.

Community, then, is rooted in the game’s execution. The games provide opportunities to cultivate and foster relationships not only with your virtual villagers and

other NPCs through conversations, presents and letter-writing, but also with the people in your life.

One of the games’ most overlooked features is the ability to create multiple playable characters within the same save file. In an old interview with Game Developer following the international success of Animal Crossing: Wild World for the Nintendo DS, Eguchi explains why he developed this style of game. “I’d always get home really late…,” Eguchi said. “It’d be nice to have a play experience where even though we’re not playing at the same time, we’re still sharing things together. So this was something that the kids could play after school, and I could play when I got home at night, and I could kind of be part of what they were doing while I wasn’t around. And at the same time they get to see things I’ve been doing.

It was kind of a desire to create a space where my family and I could interact more, even if we weren’t playing together.”

I’m 6, or 7, or 8. Memory is always ambiguous, but I know

I’m at an age where I’ve given up on expecting things from my parents — pats on the head, dinners together, small talk, I don’t know, time. I’m at an age where I follow my sisters, one seven years older, one five, like a lost duckling navigating the real world for the first time. All of their interests and hobbies are mine. If one likes Bubbles, and the other Blossom, then I like Buttercup. Peach, Daisy and Rosalina; Azula, Ty Lee and Mai; Violet, Klaus and Sunny. I don’t even care that I’d get the leftover third, because it’d be a shame to leave a set incomplete.

The rule of threes was invented for us, after all.

My sisters are enamored with Animal Crossing after watching our rich cousin play it countless times, so our dad eventually buys both of them their own copies of Animal Crossing: Wild World to play. I wait months for them to get bored and abandon their save files to start my own town. I name the town Southpol, because South Pole doesn’t fit the eight-character limit, and my character Katara

from “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” our favorite show. One day, my second oldest sister notices me playing and joins my town, and together, we make Toph, Aang and Sokka, too, and we spend our summers shoulder to shoulder on the old leather couch, sticky with sweat from the stationary hours we’ve spent on the Nintendo DS. My oldest sister clicks away at her laptop on the other couch, popping in to exchange Vocaloid songs or YouTube videos or funny Tumblr posts. We only get up to heat the rice and leftover morning side dishes when our stomachs growl, and we’ve forgotten how to miss our parents while they’re at the restaurant, and we’re too cool and mature to say it out loud, but we know that all we really need is each other.

I’m 9, or maybe 10. Animal Crossing: New Leaf comes out for the Nintendo 3DS, and my oldest sister lets us make our own characters in her town. Our characters have our own names, and our houses are decorated according to our own aesthetics, so the town truly feels like a world for us to share the way Eguchi and the Animal Crossing team always intended. I sneak in my time on the 3DS while my sisters are at band practice or studying for the ACT, but they still fight over who gets to play first on the weekends. When we’ve exhausted every activity the town has to offer for the day, we’re cracking jokes about our villagers and looking forward to the next day.

Animal Crossing only ends when you no longer want to play, or when you no longer need it.

We were bound to stop playing together. My sisters get older, prettier, acquire new phones and new friends. I dread each day their departure for university grows nearer. I want to be happy for them, for all of the new things they will experience and people they will meet, but I can’t.

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STATEMENT

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 — 9

‘Why is it so essential that I die in here?’

What I learned visiting ‘Ninja Killer’ Temujin Kensu in prison: He’s innocent

Design by Abby Schreck Photos curtosey of Imran Syed

LIAM RAPPLEYE

Statement Correspondent Have you ever been to prison?

Temujin Kensu has. In fact, he’s been in prison for nearly twice my lifetime: 37 years. Kensu is currently serving a life sentence he received after being convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Scott Macklem in 1987. This is usually how things go in the American justice system: If you murder somebody, and it’s proven in court that you really did it, you go to prison for a while. Sometimes for your whole life. This is what has happened to Temujin Kensu.

There’s just one small problem: Kensu was more than 400 miles away from the scene of the crime when Scott Macklem was murdered in 1986. For 37 years, he has maintained his innocence. An amalgamation of politicians, police officers, judges, record producers, journalists and private investigators — all of various political affiliations — have publicly called for his freedom.

That freedom is yet to come.

No matter how many people stand for Kensu, as I pulled into the Macomb Correctional Facility parking lot, I felt alone. I stood in the parking lot and emptied my pockets down to the bare essentials: drivers license, notepad, pen and a handful of quarters for the vending machine. In a few minutes I would be getting a pat down before sitting down with Kensu. I was nervous. I tucked my shirt in and shuffled my hair in the reflection of the driver’s side window. I took a deep breath and walked in.

But this is not a story solely about me or Kensu’s crimes and conviction.

This is a story about a man who has been battered and wronged continually by the American justice system, a man whose hopes have been tested and laid bare by every strand of red tape imaginable. This is a story of a man who wakes up each day with hope in a world where hope is hard to come by.

But to know about Temujin Kensu, inmate number 189355, you should know how he got here.

The Case Despite the messy and ugly aftershock of Scott Macklem’s murder, the actual murder itself was relatively simple. At about 9 a.m. on Nov. 5, 1986, Macklem was shot once with a shotgun in a parking lot outside of St. Clair County Community College in Port Huron, Mich. While investigators have revealed that Macklem was struggling with his grades and possibly involved with drug dealers, any motive for his murder was unclear. There was very little evidence left at the scene, other than

a shotgun shell and an empty carton of ammunition, which carried a fingerprint. A matching print was never found.

In 1986, DNA forensics as a method of obtaining evidence was in its adolescence, and the St. Clair County police were left with very little information to discern who could have committed the murder.

It didn’t help that there were no witnesses to the crime. The police interviewed Macklem’s family in the days following. They spoke with Crystal Merrill, his fiancée, and her teenage sister, Tracey.

Tracey suggested that a man named John Lamar could be responsible for Macklem’s death; he was an unpopular and intimidating character Crystal had been seeing.

He wore a leather jacket and listened to loud music. Tracey would later testify that when Crystal was around him, she felt like she lost her sister.

The police were intrigued. They followed the lead and discovered Lamar, the rambunctious martial artist who Tracey Merrill spoke of, was actually a man named Fred Freeman who used aliases to dodge warrants for bouncing checks. This, of course, was before Freeman converted to Buddhism and changed his name to Temujin Kensu. From then on, Port Huron police pursued Freeman (now Kensu) as suspect number one for the murder of Scott Macklem, and they bent over backward for a conviction.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Imran Syed, clinical assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and co-director of Michigan Innocence Clinic, said, “From the very beginning, (the police) were getting evidence only that said Kensu was the wrong man, but they never let that stop them.”

Syed has been the lead attorney on Kensu’s case for the majority of the last decade. “Every time they would see something that showed it wasn’t Kensu, they would see that as evidence that he was some mastermind that was covering his tracks.”

And that is how Robert Cleland, the St. Clair County Prosecutor at the time, portrayed Kensu to the jury: a cunning mastermind — a “ninja killer.”

How the prosecution landed a conviction Bill Proctor, a Michigan Journalism Hall of Famer, first brought Kensu’s claims of innocence to mainstream media in the spring of 1995 with a five-part series of stories on Channel 7, evaluating the conviction of the “Ninja Killer.”

Proctor was the lead story reporter for WXYZ-TV Channel 7, the ABC affiliate in the Detroit

Metro area. He built a nearly 33-year-long career as a smoothtalking truth seeker on the screens of southeastern Michigan televisions.

Ten years ago, he retired from news to pursue a career as a private investigator and founded Seeking Justice, a private investigative firm for those who have been wrongfully convicted. For years, Proctor was an investigator for Kensu.

I met Proctor in Ann Arbor to discuss the case. He spoke with a steely, measured tone and an air of earned confidence. In his reporterly timbre, he called Kensu’s conviction “the most ludicrous thing ever in the history of the world.”

I agree.

When Kensu was arrested and charged with murder, Cleland, the county prosecutor, had a tough case to make without strong eyewitnesses or a matching fingerprint. Lacking hard evidence, he painted Kensu as an elusive member of an American sect of the Yakuza (hilariously misspelled as “Akusar” throughout the 2,200page trial transcript) who carried poison darts in his shoes and was capable of controlling people with the “Ninja mind control” he had honed from practicing martial arts.

Kensu’s defense presented a strong alibi, though. At the time of the trial, nine witnesses placed him in Escanaba, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, before and after the murder. The gap in witness testimony left him with 10 and a half hours to make the 16-hour round-trip drive from Escanaba to Port Huron to shoot Macklem and drive back. According to court documents, witness Paul DeMars testified that he helped Kensu jumpstart his broken-down car until 1:30 a.m. on the day of the murder.

Another witness places Kensu back in Escanaba by noon.

So Cleland lofted the theory that Kensu — who was so broke he was on welfare and jump starting his car 400 miles away in a Big Boy parking lot at 1:30 a.m. — could have chartered a private plane from Escanaba to Port Huron, ambushed Macklem outside of his college, shot him in the parking lot, and flown back to Escanaba, doing all of this under the radar of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Crazy, right?

The narrative gets even harder to believe when you consider that pilot Robert Evans, the expert witness Cleland put on the stand to bolster his charter plane theory, was Cleland’s own private pilot who flew him around while he campaigned to be Michigan’s attorney general in 1986, according to findings revealed by private investigators. The jury was not aware made of this conflict of interest.

Cleland’s masterful demonstration of prosecutorial misconduct continued with the

testimony of Philip Joplin, an inmate who met Kensu when he was first arrested.

Initially, Joplin’s testimony was damning.

He said Kensu admitted to murdering Scott Macklem in the St. Clair County Jail when they were held there together in 1986.

“He said that when he shot this guy, he screamed,” Joplin told the jury in response to Cleland’s questioning. He paints Kensu as a sick killer, bragging proudly about his slaying of Macklem, smiling while recounting the story.

The problem: Joplin was lying.

In 1995, Proctor interviewed Joplin on camera. He fully recants his testimony, admits to lying and later signed an affidavit swearing that Kensu never admitted to the murder.

“Why did you write in your letter (that Kensu) was a confessed murderer?” Proctor asks him.

“To see if it would get me out,” Joplin said.

Even with damning testimony from a jailhouse snitch, Cleland’s theory wasn’t bulletproof. Kensu’s court-appointed lawyer, David Dean, had a solid alibi — a nail in Cleland’s coffin. Unfortunately, Dean — who would later be disbarred in the state of Michigan for alcohol and cocaine abuse that took place while representing Kensu — failed to call that alibi: Kensu’s girlfriend at the time of the murder, Michelle Woodworth.

Woodworth was never called to testify at trial, despite being able to place Kensu in their home in Rock, Mich., at the exact time of the murder.

She closes the 10 and a half hour gap in which Kensu was supposedly flying across the state. In 2019, Proctor and Herb Welser, former Port Huron police officer-turnedprivate investigator, prepared a nearly 400-page collection of evidence not considered by the jury. In their findings, they detail how Woodworth has submitted affidavits and passed two polygraph examinations in which she insists on Kensu’s innocence.

She never spoke at trial. The nail in the prosecution’s coffin was kept in the carpenter’s tool belt and never hammered home before the jury.

And so, without Kensu’s most important witness, Cleland’s hail-mary plane theory landed, supported by Joplin’s testimony and legitimate concerns regarding Kensu’s character.

Syed, Kensu’s attorney, told me Cleland’s team had carefully crafted witness testimony to convince the jury that Kensu was a manipulative, womanizing master of ninjalike mind control. Though his Yakuza ties and mind control skills were likely exaggerated, Kensu’s portrayal as an abusive, uncouth womanizer, was, in many ways, accurate to who he was.

Crystal Merrill, Macklem’s fiancée, testified that in 1986, she met a man named John Lamar (Kensu’s alias at the time) in the video rental shop she worked in.

Merrill described Kensu as suave, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, sporting a mullet she asserted was “stylish.”

“He didn’t seem like a bad guy,” she said to the jury, adding that Kensu successfully courted her with a slick message written on the back of the receipt and a bouquet of flowers. She agreed to go on a date with him.

According to Merrill’s testimony, when they went out, he dragged her from Port Huron across the state to a variety of “ninja karate shops,” before dining at a Pizza Hut in Flint.

She alleges that before the end of the night, he raped her.

I was deeply troubled by this when I first read it. I still am.

From a legal standpoint, though, Syed thinks this testimony should have never been admitted.

“A lot of the trial became about what kind of a person Kensu is, as opposed to evidence of him committing this crime,” Syed said.

“None of (the testimony) got to: ‘Does he have a gun? Does he shoot people?’ It’s all about mind control, ninja practices and his army of ninjas in Canada.”

Regardless of who Kensu was, Syed thinks he should have never been convicted of the murder of Macklem.

I struggled to reconcile my emotions here: Even if it is true that Kensu was rambunctious — consumed with vice and poor intentions — was that the crime he was charged with? But also, even if the alleged rape was never elevated to criminal charges, is it worth my breath to tell the story of a possible abuser?

I asked Proctor if he ever struggled to reason with Merrill’s testimony. He reminded me that most of her testimony was absolutely unreliable, even if Kensu was a problematic figure.

“The boy was an uncouth thug. He used women as play toys,” Proctor said. “But the law is absolute. You get punished for what you are convicted of, not your reputation.”

He’s right, but it wasn’t a totally satisfying answer.

Regardless, in the eyes of the law, his conviction raises important, troubling questions about the American legal system. Syed asked me one of those questions, and it’s been stuck in my mind since the moment he said it: “If getting it right is not the whole point of the law, then what is?”

To this I have no answer, because after about five hours of deliberation, the jury unanimously convicted Temujin Kensu of the

murder of Scott Macklem. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The prosecution reacted to the conviction with excitement.

Elwood Brown, an assistant prosecuting attorney at the time, celebrated the conviction, calling Kensu the “most dangerous person” he had encountered, “a Charles Manson type.”

Cleland, too, was boosted by the conviction. Three years later, in 1990, he earned a lifetime appointment to the District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan from President George H.W. Bush. He served 23 years as a federal judge.

Cleland, now retired, declined to speak to me.

Instead, his clerk at the Eastern District Court directed me to the St. Clair County Prosecutor’s office.

I emailed the current prosecutor, Mike Wendling. He, too, declined the opportunity to comment, sharing a 2022 press release from his office, standing by the conviction.

Merrill did not respond to email requests for comment either. Macklem’s brother, Jeff, did not respond to requests for comment via Facebook.

But anyone who would talk to me rejected the conviction vehemently. Proctor, the first time I met him, explained Kensu’s trial simply. Through a series of punctual, thunderous slams of his fist on the table between us, he told me this: “(His conviction) is a horrific miscarriage of justice, and everybody who ever hears his name, Temujin Kensu, should come to the conclusion he is an innocent man, serving time for a murder he did not commit.”

Going in and getting out Before I went to meet Kensu, I met with Proctor again. This time, we spoke at his home in Metro Detroit. He took me up to his office, which was neatly organized with files upon files regarding falsely incarcerated people. An Emmy award sat above his desk. To the right, a framed poster for “Just Mercy,” a movie about a man who is incorrectly sentenced to life in prison, ironically, in 1987.

From his desk, with a voice that was at times booming, and otherwise jovial, Proctor expressed how frustrated this case has made him, specifically regarding the political barriers standing in Kensu’s way.

“It’s ridiculous how many times you come up against politics when it comes to government misconduct and what they will and will not fix,” he said. “It’s that kind of madness that drives me fucking crazy.”

Continued on Page 10

10 — Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Continued from Page 9 In 2020, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel conducted a review of Kensu’s conviction via the Conviction Integrity Unit. The unit’s mission, according to its website, is “to determine whether new evidence shows that an innocent person has been convicted of a crime, and to recommend steps to rectify such situations.”

The Conviction Integrity Unit closed Kensu’s case in 2022, determining that there was not enough new evidence to warrant a new trial or commutation. The unit did not speak to Kensu’s innocence or guilt, but rather said that the new evidence provided by his attorneys was simply not enough, or “cumulative.”

Proctor, along with many of Kensu’s other advocates, wonder why Nessel’s team didn’t articulate why they refused to hear Kensu’s case further.

“I would like to have a great deal of faith in the existence of a government entity which essentially is charged with evaluating wrongful conviction claims,” Proctor said.

“But I am extremely concerned about the amount of political bullshit that stands in the way of them doing their job.”

When Nessel published her disappointing and confusing findings, it wasn’t the first time Kensu had been tempted by freedom. In 2010, educated by paralegal degrees he earned while incarcerated, he filed a writ of habeas corpus. Writs of habeas corpus are rarely granted, only 3.2% of the time.

Kensu’s was granted.

Federal Judge Denise Page Hood issued an order — from the same courthouse that Cleland worked in at the time — that Kensu be freed or given a new trial. She says Kensu was denied a fair trial on the basis of a few claims, chief among them being ineffective assistance of counsel.

Hood agreed that Dean, Kensu’s lawyer, failed to adequately represent Kensu by not calling Woodworth and prohibiting Kensu from testifying on his own behalf.

Two years later, Hood’s decision was overturned by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals because Kensu filed the writ too late. He was hung up and left to dry on a technicality.

Syed and the Michigan Innocence Clinic have spent the last decade litigating on Kensu’s behalf, bringing a variety of new arguments before judges. The Conviction Integrity Unit was one of their final hopes.

With all possible appeals exhausted, clemency from Governor Whitmer is “his last realistic shot,” Syed said.

I emailed Whitmer’s press secretary Stacey LaRouche about Kensu’s potential innocence, asking for a comment about Whitmer’s

STATEMENT

attitude toward false incarcerations in general. She declined to comment regarding Kensu’s case, saying she was unable to do so, but responded with an email outlining the steps for an individual to receive a pardon or commutation — just the red tape one must cross in order to be granted freedom. If I ever find myself falsely incarcerated, perhaps then I will find that email useful.

Days before that email, though, I did find myself in prison. I was visiting Temujin Kensu— 37 years to the day after he was first arrested in 1986.

I walked into the visitation room and quickly scanned for the face I had come to recognize through photographs and mugshots for the last six months. I didn’t see him first.

He saw me.

I’m not sure how he recognized me, but he shouted my name and I went to greet him, slightly struck by how surreal it was to see him in the flesh. It was like seeing a celebrity, except the celebrity had been convicted of murder and living in prison for the last 37 years. It seemed like he wasn’t real.

I shook his hand and quickly learned that Kensu is, in fact, very real. He wasn’t intimidating, and as far as I know, he didn’t command my attention with the power of an international mind-controlling ninja organization. He greeted me with a smile and a firm handshake, even asking permission to hug me. Then we sat down in the sterile, plastic chairs in Macomb Correctional Facility visiting room.

Kensu immediately cracked open his encyclopedic knowledge of his own misfortune. He started firing off stories and facts about his trial in 1987.

The first note I wrote down, before I could ask him how he was doing, was “882 DHH,” a license plate number that was used as evidence against him.

Kensu explained how Cleland used this license plate to push a theory that Kensu convinced a woman to participate in his yearlong scheme of lifting a license plate from a car in Washington and placing it on the car he drove to the murder scene, before scrambling off in some murder induced frenzy. He made it very clear how absurd this was.

I was captivated by him. We had quickly established a genuine rapport, and for the first 20 minutes, he spoke at a furious pace, explaining in waterproof detail how ludicrous his trial was.

Kensu told me he saw himself as a sort of political prisoner. “This was never about the crime. This was about what they did to me,” he said.

Semi-seriously, I wondered if he truly could’ve been manipulating me. Then we started talking about puppies. He started crying.

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Bill Proctor, former journalist turned private investigator, pauses during an interview outside his Bloomfield Hills home November 13.

Jeremy Weine/DAILY

He told me about a dog he bought for a recently-exonerated man he spent time with in prison: Larry Smith Jr. “I’m probably going to get sniffy about this,” he said. Through welled-up eyes, he spoke of Smith’s dog. “It’s just a little thing to love, dude,” he said.

Suddenly, I forgot I was speaking to a convicted murderer. And look, I’m not blind to the fact that this reads like a sitcom: Convicted murderer cries about puppies while meeting with a journalist. But it wasn’t disingenuous. They weren’t crocodile tears, and it wasn’t the only time he cried.

He cried again while telling me about Carl Levin. Levin served as U.S. Senator for 36 years. He was one of Kensu’s most fervent — and powerful — advocates. He died from lung cancer in 2021. Again, Kensu began to cry.

“He went to war for me,” he said, pausing for a moment. “By the time I found out he was dying, I couldn’t even call him to thank him.” His voice shook. “I would do anything to give back to the people who advocated for me.”

Kensu’s wife and fierce advocate, Paula, told me that he uses his paralegal degrees to help advocate for others in the criminal justice system, too. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘Temujin helped write my appeal and I couldn’t sleep at night, but I could go to sleep because I could hear him clicking away on the typewriter, working on my

appeal,’ ” she said. “He’s always helping people.”

As I sat across from Kensu, I realized he was not the abusive hellion I had read about. What happened?

Kensu told me that much of what has been said about his character was true. In the last 37 years, he’s changed.

“Before this happened to me, I had nobody,” he said. “My life was really pretty empty, full of vacuous relationships.”

He told me about his childhood.

He was an orphan, abused, spending time in and out of foster homes and Christian ministry organizations. “I’d come home from school and get beat into a coma. I wasn’t living my life well, either. I wanted to be cool. I was in with the wrong crowd.”

Kensu spent his childhood “trying to be good at everything,” rolling around with the wrong people, lifting weights and practicing martial arts. And, as a skilled martial artist, he wasn’t afraid to fight. For some time, he really was the rough-and-tumble guy I read about.

As we reached the end of our conversation and corrections officers began to escort me towards the door, I asked him the question that had been weighing on me. I asked about Merrill’s troubling testimony of abuse, manipulation and rape.

He said it was untrue, but it was a testament to the fact that he was “A

jerk. Arrogant. And awful. I cared about all the wrong things. I hate who I was,” he said. Kensu looked me in my eyes. “A lot of this is my fault. If I was living a better life, they wouldn’t be able to do this to me,” he said. “There was a lot of good and a lot of stupid. Unfortunately, the stupid outweighed the good.”

Hours prior, I stood at the end of Bill Proctor’s driveway. I asked him flatout: Do you think Temujin Kensu will ever be free?

Proctor paused for five seconds.

Leaves fell from the trees and were whipped around by the mid-day breeze.

He refused to answer my question.

And as I sat there, inside those walls with Kensu, I realized that it was a question I didn’t really have an answer to, either. No matter how clown-like and comically evil his conviction was, there is a slim path to freedom for Temujin Kensu. At 60 years old, it’s a path he may not be able to walk down.

I know the prisoner who sings of innocence is usually to be treated with a degree of skepticism, but Kensu earned my trust; not just because he could detail precisely how Cleland’s forensic theory was incorrect, or how absurd certain witness testimony really was, but because he held himself accountable and demonstrated an impressive level of self reflection — finding peace in becoming a better man. This was a man who was confident of his innocence. His

dedication — tangible and intagible — is difficult to argue with.

As I walked out of the Macomb Correctional Facility that day, after faking nice with the officer at the front desk, I began crying.

I stood in the parking lot and looked at the sky — the sun was setting — a beautiful swirl of purple and pink. For a moment, the sky was all I saw.

I focused my eyes. When I realized how easily I could filter out the razor wire that framed the sky, the same razor wire Kensu might never escape, I lost it.

It wasn’t the obviously broken justice system or the haphazard smattering of questionable facts that convinced me of his innocence. It wasn’t the fact that Kensu was 400 miles away at the time of the murder nor the double-wide, California king-size mattress of strange bedfellows who have rallied in his corner through the decades that made me decide with confidence that he was innocent.

It was his earnest dedication to himself and his own story. It was his ability to laugh at the absurdity of it all. It was the way he teared up when talking about puppies and Carl Levin. It was his demeanor and the legitimate connection we made that day that told me all I needed to know about Temujin Kensu.

Either that, or it was mind control. I’ve heard that he can do that.

Proctor speaks about Temujin Kensu’s “ludicrous” conviction in his home office.

Jeremy Weine/DAILY

Opinion

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Wednesday, November 29, 2023 — 11

What use are food labels?

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When gender roles infiltrate the classroom TÉA SANTORO Opinion Columnist

O

ld-fashioned gender roles tend to sneak their way into our everyday experiences, shaping the expectations and roles individuals play throughout their lives. Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of academic collaboration, where group projects serve as petri dishes for skills that seemingly define our roles in society.

One such role, often thrust upon women from a young age, is that of the organizer and coordinator. But, as we progress from childhood to the professional world, we find a stark contrast between the leadership qualities cultivated in women and the scarcity of their presence in corporate leadership roles.

Try to remember your elementary group science fair project. Maybe you were assigned to create a model of the solar system or figure out how to light up a lightbulb using a potato. Even then, you probably remember the girl in the group taking charge — distributing tasks and making sure everyone had a role. Flash forward to college and the script remains remarkably similar. In the latest group project, that girl from elementary school once again finds herself in the organizational driver’s seat, but this time the stakes are way higher.

It’s a narrative ingrained from youth that suggests women are natural leaders, who possess a gift for orchestrating the intricate landscape of teamwork.

However, the disconcerting reality reveals a different story when we shift the spotlight to the professional realm.

Despite the early cultivation of organizational prowess, women find themselves

navigating a labyrinth of obstacles on the path to leadership in the workplace. But at what point does childhood leadership turn into corporate underrepresentation?

In 2015, The New York Times found that fewer women ran large companies than men named John. Despite subtle growth over the past few years, a more recent study revealed that even in 2021, women held only a mere 31.7% of top executive positions across U.S. industries.

And although the American workforce is 47.4% women, they hold only 42.1% of all managing positions. The proverbial glass ceiling persists, despite the strides made in acknowledging and dismantling gender-based barriers.

From early childhood, girls are often encouraged to be nurturing, cooperative and organized. These qualities, while valuable, are not those typically associated with leadership. The result is a generation of women who excel in organizational roles but face implicit biases when aspiring to attain leadership positions.

Research finds that leadership positions are filled by people seen as assertive and dominant.

Not so coincidentally, these perceived attributes tend to be associated with men.

Corporate cultures, usually unintentionally, perpetuate stereotypes that associate leadership with traditionally masculine attributes. When women do try to exemplify these qualities they are often written off as being bossy or aggressive. The consequence is a professional landscape where women who excelled in organizational roles during their academic pursuits are overlooked when vying for leadership positions.

In the academic realm, women find themselves time and again in the role of the “invisible leader,” coordinating

efforts and managing schedules.

While these responsibilities are crucial to the overall success of the group, the irony lies in the erosion of women’s authority within this framework. The demands of organizational tasks often overshadow their potential contributions to the more research-heavy and data-oriented aspects of the project. The organizational skills cultivated in academia become a double-edged sword when transitioning to professional settings. In the workplace, women find themselves shouldering the lion’s share of administrative tasks, such as scheduling and team management, mirroring the patterns established during academic collaborations. Their professional contributions may be overshadowed by the stereotypical expectations that associate them more with organizational roles rather than positions of strategic leadership.

The solution lies in redefining leadership qualities and challenging the existing norms that confine women to certain roles. This starts in academia.

It requires a shift in our understanding of leadership, one that recognizes and values diverse styles and approaches.

College campuses serve as incubators for future leaders, making it a pivotal space where stereotypes can be challenged and a more inclusive definition of leadership can be built.

Group projects, a staple of academic collaboration, should be structured to encourage a collective leadership approach.

Assigning roles and responsibilities based on individual strengths rather than conforming to historical gender roles allows for a more inclusive distribution of leadership within the group.

Educators play a pivotal role in this transformation by fostering an environment where mutual respect prevails.

Design by Hannah Willingham

NICK RUBECK

Opinion Columnist

Content warning: This article discusses eating disorders. urious about your food?

Just read the label!

In the United States, most packaged foods and chain restaurant menu items need to display their nutrition facts, with exceptions for smallbusiness manufacturers and some unprocessed foods. When you pick up a packaged snack, you should at least be able to see its total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, total sugars, added sugars, protein and a few key micronutrients. There is also a handy column, “% Daily Value,” that estimates how much of a given nutrient the food provides to an average 2,000 kilocalorie (i.e., calorie in common speech) diet. Whether those values are minimums, maximums or median targets is entirely up to the consumer.

While they offer critical transparency about food contents, nutrition facts should be taken with a grain of salt. A 2013 study found actual median serving sizes of several “energydense” snack foods to be 1.2% heavier than reported on their labels. After accounting for the serving size discrepancy, the researchers measured 4.3% more calories in their samples of food than advertised on the items’ labels. To be fair, the labels are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which occasionally updates requirements to reflect scientific consensus about diet needs and consumer habits.

Labels make food a numbers game. Even if you don’t track your calorie intake, the big, bold number on the side of a snack’s packaging probably catches your eye every so often.

While it can be useful in certain situations to know roughly how

C

much energy you can expect to gain from half a cup of breakfast cereal (without milk), it’s far too easy for consumers who otherwise needn’t keep a strict daily quota to get swept up into an obsession with counting calories.

According to the FDA, serving sizes are supposed to roughly match a typical amount of a certain food or beverage consumed in one sitting, potentially along with other items of varying nutritional values. The website makes clear that serving sizes are not recommendations of how much to eat or drink, but it still asks the reader to pay attention to the serving size of food to understand how many calories are being consumed at a time.

Aside from calories, however, labels are important for following dietary restrictions, whether health-oriented or self-imposed. For the most part, ingredient lists provide valuable information for religious and ethical diets.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA sophomore Marley Davis spoke about the complicated role labels have played in her relationship with food.

“I think for a while (food labels) were harmful, but it was more of the calories,” Davis said.

Davis told The Daily that, as a vegan, she checks food labels or restaurants’ ingredient lists at least once per day. Depending on where she is, however, she’ll read for different information.

“Usually at a restaurant they’ll only have a few vegan options, so I just eat whatever they have because I’m not picky about it and I don’t want to be a burden,” Davis said. “But at stores, I’ll definitely look and see if it has specific ingredients that I’ve heard are not good.

Then I’ll not buy them or look for a different option.”

My own experience reading labels mirrors Davis’. I will

easily choose restaurants and packaged foods that advertise their vegan status over more obscure choices, and it’s nice to know about how much sugar is in a treat I might get after class. On the other hand, like Davis, I also had a restrictive relationship with labels and calorie counting in high school.

I wouldn’t consider any of my past or present eating habits to fall under a disorder, and I was never diagnosed; today, I’m quite content with my relationship with food. Still, every once in a while, I get the urge to add up how much I’m eating every day, even removed from any tangible fitness goal.

Resources and studies on food labels, especially on serving sizes and calorie counts such as those I have referenced, often pathologize obesity and higher daily caloric intake levels. This is a complex and sticky topic, and a full takedown of medical fatphobia is beyond the scope of this column, but labels nonetheless play a curious role in food choices to this end. According to a 2018 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, nutrition fact labels appear to reduce consumers’ intake of nutrients like sodium and trans fat (when present).

At the same time, a 2017 study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders found that the presence of menu labels doesn’t significantly exacerbate dangerous habits of anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder.

Food labels aren’t perfect, but they are helpful. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to measuring the nutrients and energy found in food, and there shouldn’t be. Outside of injecting nuance into dietary health care, we all need to be careful about how we talk to ourselves and others about what and how much we eat.

Don’t fear the label, but please, don’t worship it either.

Artificial intelligence should unlock the past, not the future HAYDEN BUCKFIRE Opinion Columnist

A

rtificial intelligence has long been heralded as the technology of the future — but not without its fair share of criticism and fear. The rapid shift toward AI within the past year has elicited more concern than excitement. This apprehension is not exactly a new phenomenon.

Dystopian movies, both new and old — such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” — possessed this same anti-AI sentiment.

There is some merit to these ideas, as negative outcomes can come about from technological advancement — climate change, nuclear weapons and widespread misinformation, to name a few.

However, these consequences distract from the numerous possibilities for positive change, such as AI’s potential to restore and interact with historical artifacts. We’ve thought of AI as a way to create, but its purpose right now should be using its unbridled potential to connect us with the past.

AI and machine learning have been surprisingly effective in academic and artistic endeavors.

Historians have used machine learning and neural networks to analyze centuries-old documents that have degraded or been smudged in storage. AI has also been useful in restoring lost artwork. For instance, the often discussed “Faculty Paintings” by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt.

The paintings were plundered

by Nazi Germany in World War II and subsequently burned, lost to time, besides black and white photographs, which could not do the originals justice. However, machine learning technology used historical accounts of the paintings, along with other works

by Klimt, to colorize the black and white photos. The result gave researchers and the public a better idea of what the paintings looked like, while maintaining the integrity of the original work.

This restoration process can also extend to other art forms, such as music. The Beatles, who broke up in 1970, recently released their “final” single, “Now and Then,” on Nov. 2, 2023, with a little help from AI. The famous quartet became a trio following the death of John Lennon in 1980, and a duo following the death of George Harrison in 2001.

Surviving band members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along

Design by Rumaisa Wajahath

with director Peter Jackson, used machine learning to enhance a low-quality home recording made by Lennon in the 1970s.

Importantly, nothing new was generated by AI — McCartney and Starr used the extracted Lennon vocals to overdub new instrumental parts on top of Lennon’s home recording. The single received critical acclaim from critics who commended the song’s production and integrity.

There are obvious drawbacks to this technology that are worth mentioning. Just as it is easy to interpret history in a new way through AI, it is arguably just

as easy to falsify and obscure the true historical record. For instance, “deepfakes” have become commonplace on the internet, enlisting AI technology to create fake, or alter existing, historical media out of thin air. An example that received attention in 2020 was a computer-generated video of former President Richard Nixon announcing the failure of the Apollo 11 launch — in reality, Apollo 11 did reach the moon. This could lead to a host of problems. Another example is a now-common scam, enlisting deepfakes to solicit money by disguising the voice of

a supposedly distressed family member in need of quick cash.

However, there are many ideas for possible solutions, such as adding synthetic watermarks on AI images to identify them as computer-generated or developing secret code words among family members.

Some artists are notably against the use of AI in their field.

Common grievances include the possible copyright that AI models infringe upon, as they rely on older, already-created artwork by humans for inspiration. Another commonly cited complaint is the fact that complex computer-

generated illustrations may devalue human skill as a whole.

These are obviously legitimate concerns and emblematic of the need to tread carefully when mapping out AI’s future. It also provides a compelling case for more active regulation in controlling AI — such measures, which many support, can remove many of the less desirable effects of AI, while leaving the door open for the many benefits.

Using AI as a means of restoring and working with what has already been created should serve as a model for how it can be used both on college campuses and beyond. It is not, and should not be used as, an additive process, but a restorative and collaborative one.

Much is still unclear as to how AI should be used in an academic setting. This approach to using AI, as a tool that complements human ingenuity, removes many of the ethical concerns inherent within other uses. Through these restorative modes, the future of technology should be a means for us to explore and navigate the past. While fears surrounding AI are valid, its efficacy and consequence are largely dictated by the intent and wisdom of its use.

Opinion

12 — Wednesday, November 29, 2023

The Michigan Daily —michigandaily.com

Can you afford another rent increase?

MACKENZIE KILANO Opinion Columnist

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hen I first moved to Ann Arbor, I knew it wasn’t a cheap place to live. Just last week, I was told that my rent will be going up next year. Now, I have to consider whether I should renew my lease or go through the overwhelming process of finding a new place to live. This is the same stressful situation that many other University of Michigan students face every year. Should they live in a high-rise or a house?

On North Campus or Central Campus? Near the Big House or the Diag? How do they find a place they can afford?

According to Rent.com, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Ann Arbor is $1,992, nearly double the average in East Lansing, home of Michigan State University, standing at $987. With both universities reporting similar enrollment numbers, there is high demand for housing in both places. Rent in Ann Arbor is absurdly high.

Similarly, only 27% of students at the University of Michigan live on campus, but at Michigan State University, 43% of students are able to live on campus. This is because the University of Michigan does not have nearly enough on campus housing for its growing population.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA sophomore

Simone Fletcher described her struggle to find affordable housing in Ann Arbor.

“I have noticed a big problem with housing costs in Ann Arbor,” Fletcher said. “I’ve already started my search for homes for next year and I’ve noticed that they’re significantly more expensive than even just last year.”

The University is not unfamiliar with this housing issue. In fact, it’s a driving force for the new residential building that will be built on Elbel Field and provide 2,300 more beds for students. However, this building will not be ready to house students until 2025. Adding more dorms is a step in the right direction, but it’s a long term project and even with 2,300 more beds, Ann Arbor will need more housing. Many community members have posed various solutions to this issue at the state and university level. However, students need a fast solution to rising housing costs: rent control and stabilization in Ann Arbor.

Many people are unfamiliar with the difference between rent control and stabilization. Rent control is a limit on the price of rental units placed by the government. Rent stabilization is when the government caps how much rent can increase by. These two changes would be particularly useful in Ann Arbor. There are problems with rental prices that are far too high to begin with and yearly rent increases. The city first needs to

impose rent control to lower the prices on Ann Arbor rentals, and then utilize rent stabilization to manage rent increases citywide.

Using rent control and stabilization to solve cost-based issues in the Ann Arbor housing market has been discussed before. The largest barrier to actually implementing these measures is that rent control was outlawed in Michigan, placing this ban in 1988 because a few cities were moving towards making local rent control laws. This means that the state government needs to overturn this ban to allow the city of Ann Arbor and other local governments to make the decision to keep housing affordable.

Rent control also boasts a plethora of benefits. It can make power between landlords and tenants more equal, advance housing stability and prevent unjust eviction crises.

Research on policies in areas such as San Francisco and New York City found that rent control did decrease rent. Studies also found that rent control decreases tenant turnover in controlled units. Additionally, housing stability is linked to positive mental and physical health outcomes. However, rent control has a bit of a bad reputation.

The Urban Institute, a social and economic policy think tank, explains that this reputation can be attributed to an economic focus on models rather than actual case studies where the

KEITH MELONG/Daily

impacts of rent control are observed.

The effects of rent control on the broader market has often depended on location, but its goal of creating housing stability and lower rent has been a success.

In Ann Arbor, it comes down to the simple fact that there isn’t enough housing and someone always loses out. Without rent control, it is those who have less money that lose out.

Beyond the general benefits of rent control and stabilization, Ann Arbor has specific dynamics that make the city a unique place for these policies to thrive.

With enrollment at the Ann

Arbor campus reaching 52,065 students, it’s no surprise that a housing shortage coupled with the need for students to live a short distance from campus has caused landlords to raise prices.

Landlords continue to raise the cost of rent knowing that after freshman year, students are not guaranteed a dorm. This forces students to look to the offcampus housing market in order to keep going to school. For Ann Arbor specifically, many of the people living in the downtown area are students. With the schedule of a full-time student, it is nearly impossible to also work full time. This means that

for students who don’t get much financial support from outside sources, paying for expensive Ann Arbor rent on their own simply isn’t viable.

So, ask yourself, can you afford another rent increase in Ann Arbor? Plenty of students at the University of Michigan cannot.

Affordable housing is a necessity for students and it should not be so difficult to find in Ann Arbor.

It is time that U-M students demand change. The state and local governments need to work together to repeal the rent control ban and implement rent control and stabilization in Ann Arbor.

“Happy Holidays” isn’t enough Why Democrats are losing the culture wars LARA TINAWI

Opinion Columnist

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rowing up in the United States meant that school vacations coincided with federal holidays, and most school systems accommodated and celebrated Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter. When we would do activities in class, like writing letters to Santa or dying eggs for the Easter Bunny, my teachers would either try to give me a separate activity relating to my religion, or I would just participate, not entirely understanding what I was doing. I vividly remember being told by teachers in the second grade that instead of creating a f lipbook of things I wanted for Christmas, I should make a f lipbook about Eid and explain what it was and its history to my classmates.

It should not have been my responsibility as an 8-year-old to educate my classmates about my religion and culture while they got to do a fun activity.

Schools need better infrastructure to educate children about other cultures to foster inclusivity and awareness of the diversity that surrounds them. They do designate time for teaching about other cultures, with many school districts observing Black History Month, among other notable examples. But schools are not doing enough.

The history of Asian Americans is practically ignored in schools, which has resulted in detrimental effects on the community, as anti-Asian American hate crimes have

surged at an unprecedented rate in the past few years.

When we educate children about different cultures, we build the foundations of inclusion that create a society where differences are respected and celebrated.

Children begin noticing the physical differences society frets over from as early as 6 months old. If we as a society want to promote a more inclusive future, educating children about cultural differences is a good place to start.

According to a study by Brown University neuroscientists, children learn at a much faster rate than adults because they have a larger amount of GABA, or gammaamino butyric acid. Children soak up new information like a sponge and that information lasts with them for much longer than adults. We can utilize this inclination toward learning to our advantage by aiming towards a more accepting society through the education of children.

While the Supreme Court has set the precedent that public schools cannot sponsor religious events, schools can teach about religion and religious holidays as long as it is secular instruction, rather than promotion of a particular religion. Many schools get away with this classification — sitting on Santa’s lap is not an educational activity, but a promotion of a Christian holiday. More should be done to educate students about other cultures in an entertaining and engaging manner to promote positive associations with these cultures. Schools should work to include the holidays

of the entire demographic of students they educate, so that they all feel represented and students can learn about their classmates in a controlled, accepting and impartial environment.

Cultural background is an essential part of identity and plays a significant part in most people’s lives from birth.

According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, exposure to dominant social biases — such as favoring able-bodied, Christian, U.S.-born people — can make those who don’t fit the narrative look unfavorable in society’s eyes. This can negatively impact children psychologically and stunt their development.

In order to educate on cultures and holidays in an acceptable manner, schools need to distinguish between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation.

Celebrating these holidays is not an opportunity to dress up in costumes or dishonor traditions. Rather, it is an opportunity to learn about different cultures and respectfully partake in certain traditions that are not inherently religious. For example, exchanging gifts during Christmas time and enjoying a large feast during Eid are not inherently religious activities.

In comparison, lighting a menorah is a religious activity and it would be disrespectful to do if you are not part of the culture or have not been invited to do so by someone who is.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Design by Avery Nelson

NIKHIL SHARMA Opinion Columnist

A

s debates on contentious social and moral issues rage across the United States, the country finds itself ensnared in a never-ending string of culture wars. Though both the left and right have harmed the legitimacy of their political platforms with frivolous scuff les over less pivotal cultural issues, Democrats in particular have suffered. By giving in to the party’s caricature of “coastal elites” who lack tolerance for the moral views of the heartland, Democratic culture warriors have substantially harmed the party’s image and jeopardized its legitimate policy initiatives.

While some subjects like abortion are important and worthwhile fights, other attempts to engage Republicans on cultural f lash points such as corporate activism, free speech in academia and cancel culture have proven to be losingissues that paint Democrats as out of touch with everyday Americans.

To refocus debates on concrete policy proposals and constructively engage voters on social issues, Democrats must learn to pick their battles and back down from inconsequential culture feuds.

Though social media and a 24-hour news cycle have made embracing reactionary politics tempting, elected officials must develop a better filter to identify cultural issues that are worthwhile to act on.

Constructive political issues — as opposed to less productive issues that fuel anger and drive little progress — have tangible impacts on the rights, wellbeing and equality of specific groups. Instead of focusing on nebulous problems, Democrats should promote issues that are grounded in empirical evidence with clear policy solutions. Fights about reproductive rights, climate change and police reform are all productive issues that deserve the attention of Democrats, which is in sharp contrast to clashes over performative activism,

regulation of free speech and feuds over terminolog y that lack the potential for inf luencing systemic change.

By shifting their focus, Democrats can protect the party from attacks on its “woke” image and focus on issues with more achievable legislative targets.

One of the most successful “anti-woke” candidates has been Gov. Ron DeSantis, who — as an incumbent — swept the 2022 Florida Gubernatorial election with his promise to combat corporate activism and outof-touch Democratic policies.

Targeting Disney as his chief nemesis, DeSantis struck a chord with voters who didn’t believe corporations had a role in dictating the political beliefs of consumers. Though he offered few concrete solutions and struggled to make positive change in his fight against Disney, DeSantis still successfully formed a populist coalition centered on his perceived fight against corporate elites.

A prime example of performative activism is corporate involvement in politics, typically motivated by a corporation’s desire to improve brand image in the eyes of their young and very-online consumer base. Activism serves as just another profit-maximization strateg y. With a majority of Americans unsupportive of corporate activism and many enraged by their favorite brands engaging in hot-button political issues, encouraging corporate political initiatives is likely harming the Democratic Party’s electoral chances. Additionally, since many brands use a faux “woke” exterior to distract from harmful internal practices and protect their business from government regulation, mainstream Democrats must stop supporting activism that aligns the party with the interests of big business and alienates rural and lowincome voters.

In addition to toning back “woke” ideals in corporations, Democrats should pull back on the strict enforcement of liberal values in academia.

While it’s no secret that universities are bastions of progressive ideas, there’s been a sharp drop in tolerance

toward moderate and conservative thought over the past decade. With 63% of university students afraid of reputational damage from voicing their true opinions, free speech on college campuses is dying.

Though some extremist or hostile ideas should be prohibited, many students without bad intentions selfcensor their views on major issues to avoid academic and social repercussions. While increasing inclusiveness on college campuses is a worthy goal, punishing students solely because their ideas are unpopular is a poor way to achieve that aim. As institutions of higher learning, universities should aim to foster vibrant and thoughtful debates throughout campus communities, which can’t occur without open discussions on difficult topics.

This wave of — sometimes student-led — censorship and intimidation on college campuses occurs as fights over liberal values in grade school education are taking place across the country in rowdy school board meetings.

Despite the insignificance of many parents’ complaints relative to other national issues, the introduction of explicit political beliefs in the classroom has clearly galvanized voters. While it may be tempting to engage Republicans on cultural issues in education, doing so only plays into the hands of Republican politicians, who’ve used outrage over education to triumph in multiple major races.

Ultimately, if Democrats hope to win the culture war, they must hone in on important issues — such as abortion and voting rights — where they can offer voters actionable steps toward progress. Fighting Republicans on issues like free speech and engaging in performative activism fails to spread liberal messaging and aggravates voters who reject ideas that are forced upon them. With the GOP in chaos, Democrats have a prime opportunity to present themselves as responsible leaders. It’s time for the party to give up on the petty cultural fights Republicans embrace and focus on serving the country.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 — 13

When it comes to cash bail reform

MICHIGAN WILL BEAT OHIO STATE

To learn more visit: bailproject.org/michigan-vs-ohio

14 — Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

FOOTBALL

SportsMonday: A eulogy for The Game as we knew it

CONNOR EAREGOOD Managing Sports Editor

For 126 years, stakes were never higher than in The Game. Conference titles, national championship hopes, even the Heisman Trophy at times hinged on whether Michigan or Ohio State won. In a college sports landscape defined by its feuds, The Game stood unrivaled.

But The Game, as we know it, took its last breath Saturday. It died like all good things tend to die — at the hands of corporate bean counters who wanted to rake in record revenues. The Big Ten’s expansion plan killed it, leaving behind a family of millions of fans on both sides who tied their fandom to The Game’s traditional result.

Never again will the stakes be higher than Saturday, a death knell of the tension between two undefeateds desperately chasing glory.

In front of 110,615 fans, the Wolverines’ 30-24 victory punched their ticket to a third-straight Big Ten Championship Game and probably the College Football Playoff. In the process, they sent Ohio State reeling, its playoff hopes sunken and the direction of its program in question. For the last time for a long time, it all came down to this.

Because throughout 126 years of tradition, the winning team asserted a dominance that the other

couldn’t just rebound from next week. It put the losing side in a long, somber era of reflection that had fans wishing to fire 11-1 coaches. Such emotion flowed from both sides on Saturday — some crying tears of frustration, and others those of elation. This was it. This was the moment that each season hinged upon.

That’s what made The Game so special.

“You’re not going to be recognized for too much success,” former Buckeyes coach Earl Bruce told ESPN a decade ago. “We’ve had 11-1 and 10-1 football teams that lost to Michigan and they’re not even mentioned in the second breath.”

Because of the Big Ten’s expansion, that will never happen again.

In the quest for ever-higher profits, its new division-less format pits the top two of 18 conference teams in the championship game.

Even as a protected rivalry, The Game might get its redux should both teams enter in similar positions. Those 11-1 and 10-1 squads now get a second chance. The Game, as it was, has become The Games.

Such an instant shot at redemption kills the stakes — even if The Game might continue to feel like a heated rivalry with so much fanfare, the determining bloodlust is gone. There’s not as much riding on The Game from here on out.

The year-long wait to see if a pro-

gram can get even? Forget about it if they’re just going to play a week later. And with a 12-team playoff, they could face each other three times if the cards fall right.

The future of The Game is a bitter contrast to its past. Born in Ann Arbor in 1897, The Game created ample animosity between two of the sport’s most historic programs ever since. Legendary players carved legacies in The Game — Charles Woodson and Dwayne Haskins, Tim Biakabutuka and Cardale Jones. They became idols for fanbases for their standout performances against their blood rivals. And while players have a chance to make waves in future iterations of The Game, it just won’t be the same.

The outcome determined whether Michigan or Ohio State won their conference championship 22 times; it decided who

would represent the east division four times. National championships hinged on its outcome. Now, it might only decide playoff seeding. Its former finality is gone.

The Game died on Saturday.

Thanks to conference expansion, The Game as we know it has gone the way of the dodo, just like the storied Pac-12 and the lovable Big Ten West. They’re survived by a regionless jumble of college football icons, all programs with histories to fill volumes, and yet little tradition that hasn’t been bastardized by the new way of life.

In lieu of flowers, the Big Ten asks that you send your hardearned money to Peacock and NBC Sports. Sympathy cards can be withheld, because the conference doesn’t care anyway.

Rest in peace The Game, 18972023.

KATE HUA/Daily

MEN’S BASKETBALL

From band to basketball: The keys to Tarris Reed Jr.’s success

LINDSAY BUDIN Daily Sports Editor

It’s fitting that Tarris Reed Jr. plays basketball. Always bigger than his peers growing up, and now standing at 6-foot-10, his perpetually-towering stature made him a prime candidate for the sport.

But basketball wasn’t his first love. In fact, it wasn’t any sport at all.

Years before establishing his passion for basketball, Reed had already dedicated himself to another activity.

It’s not a typical activity for someone of his size. It’s not typi-

cal for someone with his athletic frame. And it’s not typical of someone who is now a starter for the Michigan men’s basketball team.

A young Tarris Reed plays the saxophone at band practice.

Courtesy of Darlene Reed But for the Reed family, not only is it typical, it’s expected.

Because in the Reed household there’s a long-standing rule: you need to play an instrument.

And for this Reed, it was a reed instrument — the saxophone. “(Tarris) started playing the saxophone, I want to say roughly fifth, sixth grade,” Darlene Reed, Tarris’ mom, told The Michigan Daily. “It was a requirement in the

family to play an instrument. You had to do something musically, whether it was singing, or playing the saxophone, he had to do something musically.”

Nearly a decade later, Tarris doesn’t need to continue playing the saxophone. He satisfied his familial tradition in full while taking his other passion, basketball, to the collegiate level.

Tarris may not need to continue playing the saxophone, but that doesn’t matter. Because now, he wants to keep playing it. *** Although he didn’t pick up a basketball until the summer before eighth grade, Tarris was always athletically driven. He be-

SARAH BOEKE/Daily

gan playing football before giving track and then soccer a shot. But it wasn’t until that summer when he took up basketball that he discovered a sport he truly was passionate about.

Tarris Reed poses alongside his basketball team and Jason Tatum next to the bleachers.

“I mean, he just loved sports,” Darlene said. “… And he just wanted to put his mind to each sport, to be able to master something in that sport. And when he got to basketball, that’s what he fell in love with.”

Basketball didn’t replace the saxophone in his life, though — it accompanied it.

During the school day, Tarris remained seated in front of a music stand, analyzing musical notation. But once the final bell rung, he mobilized, roaming the court and honing in on physical skills.

On the surface, the similarities between playing the saxophone and basketball may seem sparse.

But for Tarris, the connection was crystal clear. “(The) saxophone, it’s all about rhythm, it’s all about tuning,” Tarris told The Daily. “So on the court that’s what it is. You need rhythm, you need tuning. You need to know where the defender is on the offensive side, where to be on defense, when the time is right.

And that’s the biggest thing in music. You have to be able to play a specific note at this time, in this pitch, in this rhythm. So I’d say that’s probably the biggest thing, the rhythm.”

Read more at michigandaily.com

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Jonathan Wuchter: Michigan can be greater than the sum of its parts JONATHAN WUCHTER Daily Sports Writer

It’s not exactly an easy task to improve after losing two firstrounders to the NBA draft and an All-American to the transfer portal.

But how to improve is clear.

So clear that it’s more than plausible that this year’s Michigan men’s basketball team outperforms its underwhelming preseason predictions.

It just needs the team to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Because on paper, the parts just don’t stack up to last season. The talent of Hunter Dickinson, Kobe Bufkin and Jett Howard is unmatched by this year’s roster. And while their roster spots may be filled by several transfers and a freshman, their roles won’t be filled by those same players.

Their roles likely won’t be filled by any one player.

Now-Kansas center Dickinson, the Wolverines’ centerpiece for three seasons, averaged 18.5 points per game last season. His “replacements” aren’t incapable themselves.

Graduate forward Olivier Nkamhoua was a high-level starter at Tennessee and sophomore forward Tarris Reed Jr. has flashed talent. But for either of them to replicate Dickinson’s production is unlikely.

And just the same, none of Michigan’s pieces on the wing are going to be drafted anywhere near where Jett Howard and Kobe Bufkin were taken in last year’s NBA draft.

Graduate guard Nimari Burnett was a five-star recruit — many moons ago — and graduate forward Tray Jackson can score — at least against Division-II Northwood. But neither will be watching closely at which NBA team’s ping-pong balls show up in the lottery come May. But if you believe that talent directly projects to wins in college basketball, then you’re watching the sport through the wrong lens.

Look no further than last season’s national champions: Connecticut.

The Huskies produced just two draft picks, both of whom were taken after Howard and Bufkin. Even internally, Michigan’s best team in recent years, the 201718 national runner-ups, had just one player taken in the draft following that season.

I’m not saying this team will achieve as those examples did.

One would have to be as dense as osmium to put this Michigan team as a national championship favorite. But a team’s success is not determined by its top-end talent. It’s determined by how its pieces come together.

And the Wolverines have already shown how little a team can do despite having highlytalented players. They did it just last year. Michigan had the two highest draft picks from

the entire Big Ten conference.

Yet, it sported an eight-seed and was sent home in its first game of the conference tournament.

College basketball as a whole — and even just Michigan from year-to-year — constantly shows us that you can win without the best players and lose with them. Think of the fifteen-seed Cinderella stories in Saint Peter’s and Princeton over just the past two NCAA tournaments. Those teams encapsulated the triumphs of having its players come together at the right moment.

Last season, Michigan underachieved because it kept shooting itself in the foot. The product we saw on the court never lived up to the pedigree of the players that stepped onto it. Michigan struggled with passing and possession — seeing its assist-to-turnover ratio fall from 1.4 during coach Juwan Howard’s first two seasons to 1.2 across the latter two.

Even more evident was the Wolverines repeated knack for letting winnable games slip through their hands at the last minute.

“If you go back and watch the Vanderbilt game, there’s no possible way you can lose that, none, zero,” associate coach Phil Martelli said at Michigan Media Day Oct. 17. “You’d have to do 11 out of 10 things wrong.

And we did 13 out of 10 things wrong at the end of that game.”

And while Michigan was without Jett and Bufkin for the season-ending loss, that’s just one of several well-documented collapses. With all its stars, the Wolverines flashed a high topgear, like holding a 12-point lead over Indiana in the second half — who earned a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament. But Michigan blew that lead.

It’s unlikely that this year’s group has the ability to take a commanding lead on topof-the-conference foes like last year’s squad did at times.

But the Wolverines may find themselves in close contests with the bulk of the Big Ten. And Michigan has enough talent, albeit less, to win those games, it comes down to executing with the teamwork and competency that disappeared too often last season.

For the Wolverines, hope glimmers in their maturity and experience. The graduate transfers and returning starters have all played a ton of games at this level. While that group may not include players who can single-handedly catapult the team every night, collectively they can prevent winnable games from slipping through the cracks. And that is all Michigan needs. Because if the collective product is sound enough to wear off lapses and show the mental fortitude to avoid late collapses, the Wolverines will improve.

And despite the net loss of talent, that may make Michigan greater than the sum of its parts.

FOOTBALL

James Turner delivers under pressure against Ohio State

CONNOR EAREGOOD Managing Sports Editor

James Turner is quiet. He’s prone to two-word answers in press conferences and being direct. He isn’t the kind of guy who thumps his chest with big speeches or calls attention to himself.

But all eyes fell on Turner nonetheless for big contributions as the Michigan football team took on Ohio State. In a 30-24 win, his three field goals — including a 50-yarder — played a major role in the Wolverines’ third straight victory in the rivalry.

“He was money, you know what I’m saying,” senior running back Blake Corum said. “He was calm, cool and collected, hit all of (his kicks). Couldn’t ask for

a better kicker than my guy. So, ‘Jolly Good Fellow’ to him.”

Not a jolly good fellow in the sense of smiles and laughs — jolly good fellow as in the award that the Wolverines give their impact players. Various personalities have won it, like graduate linebacker Mike Barrett and even suspended coach Jim Harbaugh.

In the biggest game of the season, Turner’s leg made its own impact, too.

He made that impact felt as the stakes rose. In the third quarter of a neck-and-neck ballgame, Michigan called on Turner for a 50-yard kick. As the ball sailed through the uprights against a backdrop of cheering fans, he walked off the field to pad slaps and hugs from his teammates.

Just a week ago against Maryland, they didn’t seem to

trust him to do that. On two fourth downs that could’ve been long field goals, the Wolverines opted to go for it on fourth downs instead of letting Turner attempt to boot in three points. After the

game, acting head coach Sherrone Moore said the decisions came down to maximizing points considering the kick line — where they felt Turner could make a kick from.

KATE HUA/Daily

It didn’t help Turner’s case that the most recent kicker to compare him to — Jake Moody — is one of the most legendary kickers in program history. As a transfer from Louisville taking over those massive shoes, expectations were high for Turner.

And perhaps for lack of opportunity, it felt like Turner didn’t have such abilities in him.

Before Saturday against Ohio State, he only kicked 11 field goals on the season with nine makes.

Only two attempts came from 50-plus, including a 52-yard miss and 50-yard make in the opening game against East Carolina.

Thirteen weeks later at the other bookend of the regular season, the Wolverines called upon their largely untested kicker to come through. They trusted him, whether he’d proven

his abilities in front of the crowd or not. With his 50-yarder, he converted in a game that seemed destined to be low-scoring. His final two field goals — from 38 and 37, respectively — represented the winning sum from the 30-24 win.

His 12 points tied with Corum for the most in the game.

That’s Turner, quiet and under the radar, in a nutshell.

Few expected the game to be impacted by his boot. Few might’ve expected him to nail another kick from 50. But on the biggest stage — with a win in The Game, a chance for a Big Ten Championship and a berth in the College Football Playoff all on the line — Turner cashed in.

He didn’t have to say much about it, because his play did all the talking.

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 — 15

FOOTBALL

Corum, Michigan rally around Zak Zinter after injury in The Game PAUL NASR

Managing Sports Editor

It wasn’t how Zak Zinter’s senior day was supposed to go.

After his family walked into Michigan Stadium as part of the festivities, Zinter ran down the tunnel and slapped the banner just like dozens of games before. But he left out of that same tunnel far sooner than he wanted to, and in a far different way than he wanted to.

While many of his Michigan football teammates exited the field through that same tunnel in a scene of elation, dodging through fans that had stormed the field after the third-ranked Wolverines’ 30-24 toppled second-ranked Ohio State, Zinter left it strapped to a stretcher on the back of cart, an aircast wrapped around his left leg.

In a moment, everything changed — for both Zinter and Michigan.

It served as a stark contrast to the play, too. Senior tight end AJ Barner had just rumbled for an 18yard catch-and-run, helping the Wolverines coast down the field.

As most of the team headed toward the new line of scrimmage to keep the tempo going, some stayed back as they noticed Zinter was down.

“When it happened, and I looked back and Zak was screaming, and (graduate offensive lineman) Kars-

en (Barnhart) was literally holding (Zinter’s) foot as it was just like, limp,” junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy said. “It was a sight that I don’t wish upon anyone to see.”

The unfortunate sight was all Michigan could focus on in the moment. After getting strapped in the stretcher, the entire Michigan football team gathered around, along with Ohio State players and coach Ryan Day, showing concern from a distance too. ‘Let’s go Zak’ chants rang on and off throughout the multi-minute stoppage. And as he was carted off, Zinter put his right fist in the air multiple times, stirring the crowd and showing his appreciation for their support.

His replacement, graduate lineman Trente Jones, pointed back toward Zinter on the cart before entering the huddle. If that meant one thing, in a game knotted at 17 late in the third quarter, it was that the show must go on — and Zinter was going to be on Michigan’s mind for the rest of it.

“Everyone on the team loves that guy,” sophomore tight end Colston Loveland said. “… Seeing a guy like that go down definitely hurt us. A lot of people (had) tears falling, just sad to know that he got that taken away from him. But I think that definitely motivated us to ‘let’s get this for Zak.’ ” It didn’t take long for the Wolverines to deliver on that motive.

FOOTBALL

Charlie Pappalardo: For Michigan, there is no next year

As the crowd of Michigan fans jumped back over the stanchions and onto the field, and the dust, the pom-poms CHARLIE and the dirt PAPPALARDO settled on the No. 3 Michigan football team’s victory over No. 2 Ohio State, what should have been apparent for most of the season became painfully obvious: For the Wolverines, this has to be the year for a national title. And if it isn’t, what will be remembered is the fact that it should’ve been.

In each of the past three years under Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, the Wolverines have gone one step further than they did the year prior.

In 2021 they took a massive leap, reaching the College Football Playoff for the first time. In 2022, they matched that progress and looked competitive in their semifinal loss to TCU. But now, the time for incremental growth has to be over.

A Big Ten Championship, or even a CFP semi-final victory won’t be enough to stave off the bitter feeling that this should’ve been it if Michigan doesn’t summit the mountain. Because the Wolverines have the tools now. Next year, and in the short term future — they won’t.

In all likelihood, in a year’s time less than half of the Wolverines’ current starters will be taking the field again.

With junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy, senior running back Blake Corum, almost the entirety of the offensive and defensive lines and two-of-three starting cornerbacks and wide receivers likely gone, Michigan will be nearly unrecognizable. At the same time, it will be staring down the gauntlet of its most challenging schedule in decades.

And furthermore, there is no guarantee that Harbaugh returns next year. If the NFL

comes calling, or if the threat of an NCAA punishment is enough for him to go calling on the NFL, he may very well leave, and if he does many of Michigan’s blue chip recruits may look for greener pastures too.

It would be unreasonable to expect growth, or a CFP berth or anything other than a major regression from a team that will look as drastically different from this year’s team as the 2024 Wolverines will.

But it isn’t unreasonable to imagine that this iteration of Michigan truly could win it all. All year, it has looked championship caliber behind McCarthy and its stifling defense. At first, the caveat was strength of schedule, then it was that there were too many distractions. But now, there are no more caveats.

The Wolverines controlled and won a game against the second best team in the country. Jim Harbaugh will be back on the sidelines next weekend and — barring unexpected developments — the sign stealing scandal will be mostly behind them. For the first time this season, there’s no reason to even question what Michigan is capable of.

But precisely because Michigan looks better than ever, the stakes and the expectations have to be higher than ever as well. Because on the other side of this peak is a valley with an unclear timeframe for a return.

With a third straight win over Ohio State, a spot in the CFP all but secured and a third straight Big Ten Championship, the Wolverines are flying higher than they ever have before. But with the NCAA investigation still looming over next season, half their starters likely gone and an uncertain future with Harbaugh — the wax is starting to drip as they approach the sun.

If Michigan doesn’t reach the sun this year, it’ll fall to the ocean in the next. And so for the Wolverines — there is no next year. This has to be it.

ANNA FUDER/Daily

The Buckeyes had just put together their best drive of the game to tie it up, and Michigan needed a response. Without Zinter, the response became that much harder.

But the Wolverines made it look easy, turning the awful play of his injury into another timestamp of the game — the last moment they weren’t leading for the rest of the contest.

Because on the very next play, behind an adjusted o-line that shifted Barnhart — usually a tackle — to guard and slotted Jones at right tackle, Corum broke free. He cut and bounced his way 22 yards to the house. He flashed the numbers six and five to the camera in honor of Zinter. He did it for Zinter.

“Zak’s my guy. He’s another guy that came back for unfinished business, that’s why we came back,” Corum said. “Seeing him go down (in) the last game hurt, very emotional seeing what he was going through down on the ground. But we came together, we came together and we knew we had to do it for him, and the very next play — boom — we went up. I know he’s gonna come back stronger than ever.”

Michigan may have scored on that play anyway had the injury not occurred. In fact it’s more likely that the Wolverines would have — it’s almost always easier to rush behind the starting offensive unit.

That’s what made the injury and

the play after it so impactful.

By rallying around Zinter, Michigan overcame an adverse moment at a critical time. It played the tougher hand it was dealt, and behind a reworked o-line and a senior in Corum who finally was getting his moment in The Game, the Wolverines came through and took command from then on.

After the game, celebratory remarks in the press conferences

were sprinkled with sorrow and well wishes for Zinter. When acting head coach Sherrone Moore entered the room for his press conference, he at first hung back as other players kept speaking and he was on the phone. When Moore eventually took to the table, it was clear why he was on it.

“It was hard, especially a kid of his caliber on and off the field,” Moore said. “… Just got off the

phone with his mom, we got some positive news. He’ll heal and he’ll be ready to go down the road at some point.”

Perhaps good news went both ways on that call. If not, that sliver of good news mixed in the difficult situation will reach the Zinters at some point if it hasn’t already: Michigan rallied around their injured teammate, and took control of the game at that moment.

KATE HUA/Daily

FOOTBALL

J.J. McCarthy outduels Kyle McCord in recruiting revenge game

JOHN TONDORA Daily Sports Editor

On April 30, 2019, a young J.J. McCarthy received unexpected news.

After growing up a fan of Ohio State, working his way to the highest heights of the high school football world and taking a visit to Columbus — coach Ryan Day and the Buckeyes were going in another direction. Less than a month after Day promised McCarthy in Columbus that he wouldn’t commit to a final quarterback recruit until the end of the summer, Day tapped his quarterback of the future in the spring.

His name was Kyle McCord.

And now, with McCarthy sitting victoriously atop back-toback wins over No. 2 Ohio State as a starter, it’s safe to say he didn’t forget.

“Obviously I have a personal story with that,” McCarthy said in regards to his recruiting relationship with the Buckeyes postgame.

“But, it’s just a blessing in disguise because this university is the best university in the world. And I’m so happy to be a part of it. So happy to be a part of this team.”

Tossing 148 yards and a touchdown, while chipping in 22 yards on the ground rushing, McCarthy’s numbers don’t jump off the

page. But that’s not the point. On Saturday, McCarthy didn’t put together the best performance of his career.

And yet, under the bright lights, with the weight of the college football world on his shoulders and standing some 20-odd yards away from the man who “lied” to him three and a half years ago, McCarthy wasn’t entirely his best self.

But he outdueled Kyle McCord.

And that’s what mattered.

McCord may have thrown for more yards than McCarthy. He chipped in an extra passing touchdown too. But in the moments that make, or break, the biggest rivalry in college football, McCarthy came through. As McCord tossed two interceptions — one that set up Michigan’s first touchdown of the game, and another that ended the game entirely — McCarthy’s unblemished performance took him from good to gold. And it was a stark reminder to Day and Co. of what they could have had, and what could have been.

“It hurts — it’s really the only word for it,” McCord said. “To work that hard for that opportunity and just to come up a few plays short hurts. There’s really no way around that.”

Those plays, as Day soon found out, rested in McCord’s hands. Behind a strong offensive line, and

with an embarrassment of skill position wealth at his disposal, McCord turned the particular into pedestrian. Whether it was his relative inability to expose a Wolverines’ pass rush that was unable to corral him at times, or his reliance on receiver Marvin Harrison Jr.’s acrobatics, McCord made stand outs stand still.

To his credit, McCord was not the only reason the Buckeyes left Ann Arbor at 11-1. Nevertheless, in a potentially signature moment, he didn’t come through.

“I think the biggest thing is that games like this come down to one or two plays,” McCord said. “You prepare all offseason, you prepare all year long and your season comes down to a handful of plays, whether you make them or you don’t.”

All the while, McCarthy did the opposite. It wasn’t a herculean effort by any means. McCarthy still has ample things to work on if the Wolverines want to capitalize on their “job’s not finished” mantra.

But as the winning quarterback, in front of the player who took his job in Columbus, and the coach who gave it away, McCarthy did just enough.

And ‘just enough’ is sometimes all that’s needed. The crowning jewel of the afternoon, McCarthy’s lone touchdown lace to Wilson through double coverage

presented a polar opposite to McCord. The Wolverines’ field general did what he does best, and often worst. He took a risk. As McCord’s inability to capitalize on the big moments hampered him, McCarthy’s unintimidated presence took Michigan to the promised land, and the endzone too.

“I mean, it’s JJ so I was like, ‘Ohhhhh’ — ‘Ah.’ I knew he’d make a play,” acting head coach Sherrone Moore said. “I told him before the game: ‘Listen here, when the game matters in some critical situations, I’m (putting) the ball in your hands, because I know you’re gonna make a great decision. You’re gonna help us win.”

Nearly four years ago, in an interview that may go down as infamous in the minds of Ohio State and its fans alike, Tim Racki, McCarthy’s former head coach from Nazareth Academy said that McCarthy would “make them pay for it,” after going with McCord.

A year ago, McCarthy went into Columbus and won the game with his arm, going into the place that would not call him home and making it his own nonetheless.

And on Saturday, in perhaps his final rendition of The Game in the maize and blue, McCarthy outplayed the man who took his job.

Day wouldn’t let McCarthy play, and the signal caller made him pay.

FOOTBALL

Michigan secondary tempers Marvin Harrison Jr. in win over Ohio State

CONNOR EAREGOOD Managing Sports Editor

The matchup read like a boxing card. For Ohio State, the best receiver in college football, Marvin Harrison Jr., lined up ready to end the Michigan football team’s two-game win streak in The Game. For the Wolverines, star sophomore cornerback Will Johnson sought to stop him.

But in reality, the fight was a lot more complex. In a matchup that Michigan knew could decide the game, it didn’t take any risks. So, it committed to making it an unfair fight.

“I don’t know if I got doubled more in a game than today,” Harrison said postgame. “The safety help they had overtop or inside, I’ve never seen anything really like it until today.

The bracket coverage in the red zone that we got, I got doubled a lot more today than I ever have before.”

The Wolverines sent safeties and even linebackers at Harrison to keep him from making key grabs. They played high zones to keep him from

breaking big plays. And even in a game when Harrison left with a game-leading 118 yards and a touchdown, they did just enough to slow him down in a 30-24 win.

The plays Harrison made were standouts. His back shoulder, 24-yard grab in the first quarter kept a drive alive that led to a Buckeye field goal.

Then a 44-yard seam pass near the end of the first half put them in scoring position again.

The plays he didn’t make, though, helped decide the game. In the first quarter on his second target of the day, Johnson jumped the pass to Harrison and picked off Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord. The Wolverines set up on the 7-yard line and eventually scored.

Despite the momentary heroics, Johnson wasn’t perfect.

He got beat on that seam pass, as well as the spectacular back shoulder catch that Harrison pulled off. Perfection might’ve been an aspiration against Harrison, but it wasn’t really realistic. The performance Johnson handed in did enough to put his Wolverines in control.

But Johnson couldn’t always

be there to lock down Harrison.

With what acting head coach Sherrone Moore called a lower leg injury, Johnson left the game in the third quarter. That left it on the rest of the defense to hamper Harrison’s abilities.

So, the linebackers and safeties stepped up. It wasn’t pretty — especially when Harrison pulled linebacker Junior Colson in coverage and ran a 14yard catch into the end zone to cut Michigan’s lead to 27-24.

At that point, it felt like Harrison would finally break out and make an even bigger impact for the Buckeyes.

Harrison had his chance.

On a deep throw aiming for a game-winning touchdown in the last minute, Harrison watched as an underthrown ball fell into the hands of junior safety Rod Moore.

“Obviously in that situation we were gonna have to take a shot down field. We had to get the ball moving,” McCord said of the second pick. “It looked like they played cover two (and covered a receiver), so I went back to Marvin, kinda got hit as I threw it and obviously didn’t get as much on the ball

as I wanted to. And they made a play.”

With 25 seconds left in the game, Harrison crouched on the field in disbelief as the Wolverines celebrated the interception.

“The guys just adjusted well,” Sherrone Moore said. “I mean, end the game with a pick — pretty good. So (I’m) excited for the defense and what they did and how they adjusted. Just great team defense.”

In total, Harrison caught five passes on nine targets, with two of his targets intercepted.

It was exactly the type of performance Michigan needed. A player as talented as Harrison will make plays every game.

He’ll probably even score. But by slowing him down with coverage help, the Wolverines ensured he wouldn’t be the kind of game-breaker that he can become.

In a surprise to most, they did so as a unit. This title fight wasn’t Will Johnson vs. Marvin Harrison Jr.; it was Michigan vs. Marvin Harrison Jr. And through tag-team coverage, Michigan left with the belt.

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

The Michigan Daily — Page 16

Rod Moore calls game against Ohio State with game-winning interception CHARLIE PAPPALARDO Daily Sports Editor

W

ith 31 seconds left in The Game, all that was left to be decided in Ann Arbor was the outcome of the No. 3 Michigan football team’s season.

With rivalry, legacy and a berth in the College Football Playoff on the line, a sinking hush had come over the Big House. The Wolverines had missed an opportunity to ice the game with a first down, and the Buckeyes now had the ball.

Michigan had the lead, but Ohio State had Marvin Harrison Jr. And three plays and 44 yards into the Buckeyes’ drive, with the end-zone now just 39 yards away, all of the tension came to a head.

Ohio State had quarterback Kyle McCord, and Michigan had junior safety Rod Moore.

And in the biggest play of the Wolverines’ season, Moore won.

As he got up off of the turf with a win-sealing interception, he sprinted to his sideline and waved to the crowd. The Game had been decided — and Moore was the decider.

“I really can’t put into words

how I’m feeling,” Moore said postgame. “I was on the field just looking like, ‘I just called game, like, I did that.’ I can’t really explain it to you, just a dream come true.”

For 59-and-a-half minutes, Moore and the Wolverines’ secondary had played through the ebbs and f lows of The Game. In much of the contest, McCord and Ohio State had utilized mismatches in the secondary to break for major

whether the secondary would be Michigan’s downfall or its savior. But what was clear was that everything rode on which version of the Wolverines’ secondary showed up.

However, as the ball was snapped, it wasn’t the secondary that McCord had to contend with. Harrison and his other primary target Emeka Egbuka had found small pockets of space. But almost immediately, McCord faced

The Game had been decided — and Moore was the decider. yardage with an impressive six passing plays going for more than 20 yards. But at the same time, sophomore cornerback Will Johnson’s interception to the Buckeyes’ 7-yard line was the offense’s early catalyst.

So as Moore lined up with the clock forcing Ohio State to throw, it was unclear

pressure from senior edge rusher Jaylen Harrell who swarmed him in the pocket and got a hand on him just as he threw.

And with the pressure — both from Harrell and from the stakes —the ball missed Harrison short. Moore dove down, and he stood up with the

game in his hands.

“Before the defense went out there I told myself, you’re either going to make the play or someone else is, to seal the game,” Moore said. “I told the up-front they got to get to the quarterback. I believe Mason (Graham) and Jaylen (Harrell) did, and I made the play.”

Even with the opposite perspective, McCord too saw everything that Moore described. He read the defense, felt the pressure, and agreed with Moore’s assessment of what the Michigan safety had done.

“I went back to Marvin, kinda got hit as I threw it, and obviously didn’t get as much of the ball as I wanted to,” McCord said. “And (Moore) made a play.”

In an instant, Moore made himself the face of The Game.

The other touchdowns, the other lapses, even the other plays he had made over the past 59-and-a-half minutes were all dimmed by just how brightly Moore’s moment shone.

Because with 31 seconds left and everything on the line — Moore made “a play.”

And it wasn’t just another play in The Game, it was the one that ended it.

ANNA FUDER, KATE HUA/Daily | Design by Sophie Grand & Lys Goldman

CALLED GAME SPORTSWEDNESDAY

Sherrone Moore’s coaching shines in aggressive play calling win JOHN TONDORA Daily Sports Editor

S

herrone Moore started calling plays for the No. 3 Michigan football team at the onset of the 2022 Michigan football season.

In six years with the thirdranked Wolverines, Moore has been the tight ends coach, offensive line coach, co-offensive coordinator, sole offensive coordinator, and as of just three weeks ago, the acting head coach for Michigan. His ascension to the top of the program — albeit momentary and under grave circumstances — was a long time coming. And in the biggest game, and the biggest moment of his coaching career, Moore didn’t cool off.

He turned up the heat.

“Coach Moore said from the get-go that he’s gonna call the most aggressive game he’s ever called,” junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy said. “For the big boys, for Blake (Corum), for myself, that’s just music to our ears. Just knowing that he has the confidence in us to go get that extra yard or go get that two yards, it means the world because that’s who we are. That’s who we are.”

In his third game as acting head coach, after a sturdy rushing attack against No. 11 Penn State, and a scare in College Park, Moore came out swinging. He pulled out all the stops.

“I told them we were going to be aggressive, wanted to be aggressive, wanted to attack it,” Moore said.

“And those guys went out there and played their tails off.”

Moore came out early and often.

As No. 2 Ohio State coach Ryan Day attempted a conservative gameplan to outlast the Wolverines, Moore asked himself and his players to rise to the moment. Aggressive at every

step of the way, every time Moore had an opportunity to ease back, he instead stepped on the gas.

After two opening drives stalled, the Buckeyes gifted Michigan a first-and-goal courtesy of a Kyle McCord interception.

Three straight rushes later and the Wolverines couldn’t find the end zone. Faced with a fourth-and-1, and a scoreless ballgame, Moore decided to take the points — all six of them.

With one final smashing attempt, senior running back Blake Corum crossed the goal line and set the tone for the rest of the contest.

“We always talk about never flinching and our guys don’t flinch, regardless of the situation.” Moore said.

That unflinching mentality came through on the very next drive.

Stalled at midfield on yet another fourth-and-1, the Wolverines looked to build on a 7-3 lead. Sending Corum out once more, a one-yard rush made all the difference, and gave the Wolverines a fresh set of downs. That is, until a fourth-and-1 four plays later put Michigan back at square one.

Cue the lack of flinching — in grand fashion.

Utilizing a play-action pass, the Buckeyes bit on another Corum grind up the middle. What they didn’t see was tight end Colston Loveland leaking toward the flats.

Seven yards and a first down later, and the Wolverines were back in business.

In part, Michigan needed to play risky. Finishing three-for-three on fourth down in the first half, the Wolverines often struggled on third down and required the aggression of Moore’s coaching decisions. On the other sideline, Day didn’t feel such intensity. Ohio State didn’t attempt a fourth down conversion all afternoon.

Moore’s decision making wasn’t limited to downs either. As Michigan entered the second half leading in a one-score game, Moore had to reach deeper into his bag.

“I’d be doing them a disservice if I tried to be conservative when they’re going out there running 150s in the summer. Blood, sweat, tears, working their tails off in the weight room — doing everything they can,” Moore said. “They put the trust in me as a play caller on offense to be aggressive in these games. That’s what they want. So that’s what we gave them.”

Moore gave it in spades. On the first drive out of the half, the interim head coach sent out McCarthy — and then sophomore quarterback Alex Orji. Faking a jet sweep run to freshman receiver Semaj Morgan, the Buckeyes didn’t know what to make of the sight. Rushing twice for 22 yards, Orji drove the Wolverines into field goal territory.

Three points later, and Moore’s aggressive play calling had resounding benefits once again.

Not every play call worked.

Forced screens to Morgan and junior running back Donovan Edwards were sniffed out with ease at times. Continuous runs up the gut for one yard may have felt like agony for an impatient observer.

But when it came time to take the gamble, Moore knew the call. And his players executed it.

Up 24-17, Michigan’s offense was rolling forward after an emotional touchdown run by Corum. In a rhythm on the next drive, Moore called another trick in stride. An outside pitch to Edwards turned into a loopy pass to tight end Colston Loveland, and eventually ended in another three points. And a 27-17 lead would prove all the difference.

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