2023-12-06

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

THREE-PEAT Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Ann Arbor, Michigan

michigandaily.com

Michigan wins third straight Big Ten Championship

Michigan 26 | Iowa 0

POWERED BY DEFENSE, MICHIGAN BEATS IOWA FOR THE TITLE CONNOR EAREGOOD Managing Sports Editor

I

NDIANAPOLIS — Ahead of the Big Ten Championship against Iowa, the Michigan football team knew what Saturday’s game against Iowa would come down to.

In a matchup between two of the best defenses in the country, the No. 2 Michigan football team’s defensive coordinator, Jesse Minter, said his own unit would be squaring off not against No. 16 Iowa’s flailing offense, but rather its stout defense. Whoever executed better would leave victorious. Whoever didn’t would leave Indianapolis with their head sunk low.

The age-old adage that defense wins championships proved prophetic Saturday night. Paced by a defensive performance that surged against the Hawkeyes (10-3 overall, 7-3 Big Ten), the Wolverines (13-0, 10-0) utilized turnovers to shorten the field for their offense to score. By the time confetti fell in Lucas Oil Stadium and the Wolverines climbed atop the stage to receive their trophy, their defense had mustered a 26-0 shutout that delivered their thirdstraight Big Ten Championship.

“It’s what our team had planned for, hoped for, worked for most

importantly, and they stayed with it the entire time,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said. “It was an incredible performance, and we’re just going to enjoy this one.”

It doesn’t take an incredible defense to stop the Hawkeyes’ offense — they rank last in the Big Ten in most offensive statistics — so the Wolverines accumulated those stops with ease. They held their foe to just 155 yards total and 59 sack-adjusted rushing yards all game.

However, the manner in which the Wolverines created stops and turnovers led to optimal field position. They recovered three fumbles, two of which were forced, and stopped Iowa on three desperate fourth down attempts.

“How many turnovers were there, three? Plus the four fourth down stops,” Harbaugh said, though his numbers were slightly off. “That’s like seven turnovers, and (it’s) important getting the ball to the offense and in great position.”

They needed such help, because the game sure wasn’t pretty — then again, what game against the Hawkeyes isn’t? Reminiscent of the teams’ previous title clash back in 2021, the Wolverines’ offense found itself stuck in the mud early on.

Those miscues came at a surprising time, with Harbaugh back on the sideline after his latest

three-game suspension. His return was seen as the panacea the offense needed to rekindle its midseason surge, but Iowa’s defense got the better of it throughout the game.

Issues particularly glared in pass protection, as junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy found himself sacked four times for a total of 40 yards lost, and multiple offensive line penalties bogged the Wolverines down even further. McCarthy

return by freshman receiver Semaj Morgan. That play set up a rushing touchdown by Blake Corum, which gave the Wolverines the 10-0 lead they carried into halftime. Even if they scored by rushing, their 16 first-half rushing yards were emblematic of the offense’s stuck nature.

So just when the offense needed a boost, the defense and special teams units gave them some help.

The same unit that brought it to this moment — the precipice of all their postseason aspirations — carried them to the finish. continued to miss reads, including a nearly-intercepted pass straight to Iowa linebacker Nick Jackson in the third quarter. Even with his coach and mentor, Harbaugh, back on the sidelines guiding him, McCarthy’s pedestrian 147-yard performance was far from his aweinspiring norm.

Under such struggles, their only first-half touchdown came thanks to optimal field position from a championship-record 87-yard punt

“The two biggest plays in my opinion were the punt return and then the turnover in the third quarter,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. “I would attribute … our offensive performance to their defense. They got a really good defense. It’s statistically proven, they give up 10 points a game, and (offense is) not our strength right now. And we didn’t match up well, that’s the way it goes.”

That third quarter turnover

proved emblematic of the plays that defined the game. On a second down deep in its own territory, Michigan’s pass rush overwhelmed Iowa, and quarterback Deacon Hill fumbled the ball at his own 12-yard line. An unsportsmanlike conduct penalty by Iowa cut the field even further. With six yards to go, Michigan took one snap before Corum burst into the end zone for a 17-0 lead, tying Anthony Thomas for the Wolverines’ most career rushing scores at 55.

Such was the story of Michigan’s game. When its defense and special teams created a short field to work with — say, five or six yards like on its pair of touchdowns — its offense showed no problems capitalizing.

But when the Hawkeyes’ defense had a longer cushion to work with, it played to its renowned defensive identity. The latter led to four field goals, the most the Wolverines kicked this season.

So Michigan continuously leaned into its defense. The same unit that brought it to this moment — the precipice of all their postseason aspirations — carried them to the finish.

The Wolverines emphasized the need for such help in the fourth quarter. A forced fumble by senior edge rusher Braiden McGregor led to a recovery at Iowa’s 15-yard line.

Yet an eight-yard sack backed them up further, and they settled for a

field goal and 23-0 lead. Even a 15-yard field proved too long for the offense to fully capitalize against Iowa’s defense.

If it weren’t for the Wolverines’ own defense, Saturday might’ve gone differently. But by making big plays to shorten the field, Michigan’s own defense defused the ability for the Hawkeyes’ unit to make a difference. Because of that, the Wolverines walked out of Indianapolis as three-peat Big Ten champions, denying any chance of an upset and keeping its College Football Playoff journey intact.

“To have three back-to-back-toback Big Ten championships, it’s a wonderful feeling. We’ve kind of changed the narrative how people look at Michigan,” Corum said. “So back-to-back-to-back feels great, but like I always say, like Kobe Bryant said, the job is not finished.

We set these goals at the beginning of the season, and we hold ourselves to such a high standard, we must accomplish those goals.”

As cliche as the “defense wins championships” mantra might be, the Wolverines didn’t care so much when they basked in the championship limelight. And as they remain on track for their postseason goals — namely the College Football Playoff in which they could be the No. 1 seed — they can thank their defense for getting them there.

GRACE BEAL/Daily | Design by Lys Goldman

GOT A NEWS TIP? E-mail news@michigandaily.com and let us know.

Follow The Daily on Instagram, @michigandaily

For more stories and coverage, visit

michigandaily.com

INDEX

Vol. CXXXII, No. 113 ©2023 The Michigan Daily

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

OPINION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 SPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 S TAT E M E N T. . . . . . .TA B LO I D

2 — Wednesday, December 6, 2023

NEWS

News

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

UMich cancels Israel-Palestine CSG ballot proposals ahead of results

UMich halted the election process for two ballot proposals concerning the University’s response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war THE MICHIGAN DAILY NEWS STAFF This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Correction 11/30: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the number of student organizations in the coalition and that the coalition used the University’s email system to send a message to all U-M Ann Arbor students. This article has been updated to reflect the correct number and that the email was processed and sent by University staff.

UPDATE 11/30: The TAHRIR coalition released a statement in response to the University’s decision regarding the election’s cancellation.

The University of Michigan has canceled the election process for two controversial ballot initiatives on the Central Student Government midterm ballot after finding that an email violated the University’s Responsible Use of Information Resources policy, which outlines policies for use of the University’s official email listservs. Wednesday morning, a coalition of more than 60 student organizations filled out a form to request the University email system to send a message to U-M Ann Arbor undergraduate students urging them to vote yes on AR 13-025 and vote no on AR 13-026.

The University administration then authorized, approved and sent the email.

In an email to The Michigan

Daily, University spokesperson Kim Broekhuizen said a staff member processed the email.

“We acknowledge that a staff member processed the email, but the content of the email violated U-M policy and proper procedures were not followed,” Broekhuizen said.

In an interview with The Daily, Engineering senior Zaynab Elkolaly clarified that the coalition drafted the email and a coalition member made a request to send it, but the email had to go through University approval to be sent.

“A request was made via the form, but we did not literally send it out,” Elkolaly said. “We don’t have the power to do that.

In an email to the U-M student body Thursday morning, Timothy Lynch, U-M vice president and general counsel, said the University had been previously called on to take action regarding the two resolutions, but initially declined to do so to ensure respect for CSG authority.

“The University of Michigan received numerous calls to block, delay, or oppose two resolutions being considered by the student body under the auspices of its Central Student Government, AR 13-025 and AR 13-026,” Lynch wrote. “The University honored the request of CSG that the University not take any of these steps. Thus, despite serious concerns about the appropriateness of putting these types of questions up to a vote by the student body, the University respected the CSG process.”

CSG also declined the University’s request that they

address the policy violation, which Lynch said was a clear threat to the integrity of the election process.

“That communication irreparably tainted the voting process on the two resolutions,” Lynch wrote.

Now that the resolutions are canceled, Lynch said voting results on the two ballot measures from the first two days of the CSG election will not be released.

“We take this action with deep reluctance,” Lynch wrote. “But the extraordinary, unprecedented interference with the CSG ballot process requires the significant action we take today.”

In a press release, CSG said while University policy had been violated by the mass email, CSG governing documents do not have any regulations on promoting or opposing student petitions.

“Central Student Government had no obligation and no precedent for terminating a vote in the middle of our election period,” the statement read. “The decision to deny students of a forum to voice their opinions on these questions goes against our governing documents and our morals as student leaders.”

CSG also said allegations that students stole the student body’s emails are not true.

“The email was approved by University personnel prior to its dissemination to the student body,” the statement read. “The doxxing of these students is inflammatory and Islamophobic, and this kind of rhetoric and the violence it inherently incites should not be tolerated by our University.”

The CSG elections commission released a similar statement reiterating that their team was not consulted by U-M administrators on the decision to close the ballot and that they hope to relaunch voting on both resolutions in the coming weeks.

“We have seen unprecedented student activism on campus around these elections, and we support all students’ efforts to amplify their voices,” the statement reads. “We support students’ rights to vote in alignment with their beliefs on all of these issues. Sadly, the administration seems to disagree with this position.”

Voting on candidates and other ballot questions will continue through 10 p.m. tonight.

In response to the University’s decision to cancel the election, the TAHRIR coalition, a group of about 60 student organizations, released a statement on Instagram around 9 p.m.

“We are deeply disturbed by this decision by the University administration to silence the voices of their students, and we staunchly reject their intentionally false accusations against our email,” the coalition said. “In the University email in which they canceled the election of these ballot initiatives, the University claimed that ‘an unauthorized email was sent to the entire student body of undergraduate students’ and that this email ‘irreparably tainted the voting process of the two resolutions.’ These statements are in direct contradiction to the statements from CSG and the University’s own policies.”

ANN ARBOR

Downtown Ann Arbor kicks off outdoor holiday market Four outdoor holiday markets featuring food, holiday wares and performances opened Friday

ABIGAIL VANDERMOLEN & ANNA JEROLIMOV Daily Staff Reporter & Daily News Contributor

Ann Arbor residents and University of Michigan students alike sipped mulled wine, enjoyed live music and watched a live ice sculpture carving of the Ann Arbor skyline Friday night as the city marked the start of the holiday season with four concurrent outdoor events: Kindlefest, Midnight Madness, Moonlight Madness and the Liberty Plaza Holiday Gift Market.

KindleFest, which occurs annually in the Ann Arbor Farmers Market location, is inspired by the German tradition of Christkindlmarkt, or Christmas markets. German Christmas markets normally last about a month and allow people to purchase Christmas presents and other wares from local artisans.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, KindleFest organizer Karen Farmer said though the market had a hard time recovering after the COVID19 pandemic, it is back to its usual state this year. Featuring vendors with holiday wares, food trucks, fires for roasting marshmallows and performances from three local groups, Farmer said she looks forward to the market’s variety of music and food offerings this year.

“One thing that I like about this year compared to years past is that we have a lot more food offerings, and we have three different types of music that’s happening,” Farmer said. “I think the music element of what we’re doing at KindleFest is a little different but really cool. In the past, we’ve had maybe three food vendors, and we have six this time. They’re all local businesses, so we’re super excited about that.”

German lecturer Vera Irwin, who used to live in Germany, told The Daily she comes to KindleFest year after year because it reminds her of the sense of community provided by Christkindlmarkt in Germany. “(In Germany), you meet people in (the Christkindlmarkt) and meet friends there,” Irwin

said. “It’s where colleagues go after work every day for a month.

So it becomes part of our daily routine: You stop by, get a waffle (and) listen to a concert. And we miss that part of public life here in the United States.”

This year, KindleFest ran in conjunction with the Liberty Plaza Holiday Gift Market, which was first organized by Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation in 2022. Jessica Black, recreation supervisor for Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation and organizer of Liberty Plaza Market, said the Liberty Plaza Market is intended to be a small, intimate and local shopping experience for Ann Arbor residents.

“My main goal in organizing the market is to provide an experience for the public and the vendors that is festive and positive and welcoming,” Black said.

Black explained that because Liberty Plaza is located between State and Main Streets — both lively streets for shopping — they decided to hold the Liberty Plaza Market on the same night as all of the city’s other holiday markets to provide a complete experience for shoppers. In order to promote connectivity between the various markets, Black said they worked with Boober Tours, an Ann Arbor pedicab service, to provide free pedicab rides between Liberty Plaza and the Farmers Market,

where Kindlefest took place.

Liberty Plaza hosted about 20 local vendors selling various wares, ranging from soy candles and cookie tin jewelry to pinecone bird feeders. Lori Tursak, who owns the small business Loreo’s, vended at the market to sell a variety of chocolates, including dipped Oreos, pretzels, marshmallows and more.

Tursak, who participated in KindleFest before the pandemic, told The Daily she jumped at the opportunity to participate at the Liberty Plaza Market. “(The experience) has been very positive,” Tursak said.

“There’s been a lot of people.

It’s just a wonderful, wonderful market. I hope they continue to do it.”

While residents purchased small wares at Liberty Plaza, Midnight Madness was run concurrently on Main Street.

Throughout the day, various shops on Main Street provided discounts as local performers provided live music for shoppers.

Vicki Joling, executive director of the Main Street Area Association, told The Daily that Midnight Madness provides a festive atmosphere to promote businesses on Main Street.

“My job is really ensuring that the downtown businesses, specifically in the Main Street District, always feel supported,” Joling said. “We try

to find creative and fun ways to get people to patronize their businesses. What I want is for (shoppers) to get excited about (Midnight Madness) and enjoy the experience while they’re downtown.”

Businesses along State Street offered discounts in celebration of Moonlight Madness, a similar market located in the State Street District, which featured live music and ice carving. Randy Finch, founder of the Grand Rapidsbased ice-sculpting company Ice Guru Entertainment, said the ice sculpture he and a colleague created was inspired by landmarks around Ann Arbor. “(The event organizers) pitched around different ideas, and they wanted something that kind of represented Ann Arbor,” Finch said. “So we took some of the iconic buildings and things like that and made a faux silhouette and kind of stacked it.”

In an interview with The Daily before the market opened, Angela Heflin, executive director of the State Street District, said she appreciates the community aspect of Moonlight Madness.

“There’s so many people and organizations that come together, and it’s such a community in downtown Ann Arbor,” Heflin said. “It’s really fun to plan and implement events like this that highlight fun, festive things at this time of year.”

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 734-418-4115 www.michigandaily.com

SHANNON STOCKING and KATE WEILAND Co-Editors in Chief eic@michigandaily.com

AARON SANTILLI

Business Manager business@michigandaily.com

NEWS TIPS

tipline@michigandaily.com

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR tothedaily@michigandaily.com

EDITORIAL PAGE

opinion@michigandaily.com

ARTS SECTION

PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION

arts@michigandaily.com

photo@michigandaily.com

SPORTS SECTION

NEWSROOM

sports@michigandaily.com

news@michigandaily.com

ADVERTISING

CORRECTIONS

wmg-contact@umich.edu

corrections@michigandaily.com

Editorial Staff JULIA VERKLAN

Joshua Mitnick, 92’, 95’ Managing Editor

jvmalo@umich.edu

ZOE STORER

Digital Managing Editor

zstorer@umich.edu

RONI KANE and VANESSA KIEFER

Managing News Editors news@michigandaily.com Senior News Editors: Riley Hodder, Irena Li, Joey Lin, Rachel Mintz, Sejal Patil, Carlin Pendell, Samantha Rich

JULIAN BARNARD and QUIN ZAPOLI

Editorial Page Editors tothedaily@michigandaily.com Deputy Editorial Page Editor: Lindsey Spencer Senior Opinion Editors: Zhane Yamin, Jack Kapcar, Jack Brady, Audra Woehle, Rushabh Shah

CONNOR EAREGOOD and PAUL NASR

Managing Sports Editors sports@michigandaily.com Senior Sports Editors: Charlie Pappalardo, Lys Goldman, Noah Kingsley, Lindsay Budin, John Tondora, Liza Cushnir

ERIN EVANS and LAINE BROTHERTON

Managing Arts Editors arts@michigandaily.com Senior Arts Editors: Annabel Curran, Ava Burzycki, Hunter Bishop, Kaya Ginsky, Nora Lewis, Zara Manna

ABBY SCHRECK and SOPHIE GRAND Managing Design Editors

design@michigandaily.com

Senior Layout Editors: Lys Goldman, Fiona Lacroix

ANNA FUDER and KATE HUA

Managing Photo Editors photo@michigandaily.com Senior Photo Editors: Grace Beal, Sarah Boeke, Lila Turner, Jeremy Weine, Julianne Yoon

LILLY DICKMAN

Managing Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com Deputy Editors: Reese Martin and Irena Tutunari Associate Editor: Valerija Malashevich

ABBIE GAIES and DANA ELOBAID

Managing Copy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com Senior Copy Editors: Tess Beiter, Leonor Brockey, Julia Brownell, Jackson Kobylarcz, Lizzie MacAdam, Sabrina Martell, Sofi Mincy, Chloe RangerRaimundi, Audrey Ruhana, Maya Segal, Jenna Weihs

ANGELA VOIT and SHANSHAN YE

Managing Online Editors webteam@michigandaily.com Data Editor: Matthew Bilik Engineering Managers: Vishal Chandra and Melina O’Dell Mobile Managers: Marie Yu and Frank Wang Design Managers: Jenny Do and Jingyi Fu Senior Software Engineer: Eric Lau

HANNAH ELLIOTT and MYLES MURPHY

Managing Video Editors video@michigandaily.com Senior Video Editors: Darrin Zhou, Nick Lyskawa, Ashley Wefel

DEVEN PARIKH and SAFURA SYED

Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Anchal Malh, Udoka Nwansi, Maya Kogulan, Claire Gallagher, Sarah Oguntomilade

CHRISTOPHER BROWN

Managing Podcast Editor Senior Podcast Editor: Martha Starkel

podeditors@michigandaily.com

MARTINA ZACKER and CHRISTIAN JULIANO

Managing Audience Engagement Editors socialmedia@michigandaily.com Senior Audience Engagement Editors: Cole Martin, Joey Goodsir, Avery Crystal, Matthew Eggers, Tina Yu, Ingrid Halverson, Emma Lefevre

MEREDITH KNIGHT and NAZIM ALI Chair of Culture, Training, and Inclusion

accessandinclusion@michigandaily.com

SOPHIA LEHRBAUM

Managing Focal Point Editor Senior Focal Point Editor: Nirali Patel

lehrbaumumich.edu

Business Staff IRENE CHUNG Creative Director

RILEY SULLIVAN Sales Manager

RUBY KLAWANS/Daily Cookie Tin Jewelry owner and Ann Arbor resident Christina Vallem showcases her work at the Liberty Plaza Holiday Sale Friday.

The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is publishing weekly on Wednesdays for the Fall 2023 semester by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. If you would like a current copy of the paper mailed to you, please visit store. pub.umich.edu/michigan-daily-buy-this-edition to place your order.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

News

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 — 3

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

TESS CROWLEY/Daily As part of the “Arts and Resistance” theme semester, students of Hula Performance classes AMCULT & ASIANPAM 372 present two original class choreographies of poetic texts.

CAMPUS LIFE

UMich students protest administration removal of ballot proposals

More than 300 students gathered to protest UMich canceling Israel-Palestine CSG ballot proposals SNEHA DHANDAPANI Daily Staff Reporter

With blue and yellow tape over their mouths, about 300 University of Michigan students and faculty linked arms all the way down South University Avenue Friday afternoon, chanting lines like “Ono, Ono, you can’t hide. You are funding genocide” and “All our childrens, sons and daughters. We will honor all our martyrs.”

U-M students and faculty members gathered in front of the Michigan Union to protest the administration’s recent cancellation of the Central Student Government ballot proposals AR 13-025 and AR 13-026, which were previously on the fall all-student ballot. The event was organized by the TAHRIR Coalition, a multicultural coalition composed of more than 60 U-M organizations, including Students Allied for Freedom and Equality and the U-M chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. After organizers delivered speeches about the event’s purpose in front of the Union, the protestors moved in front of University President Santa Ono’s house for more than an hour.

One of the event’s speakers, SAFE president Salma Hamamy, told the crowd she has lost count of how many protests SAFE has organized. Hamamy said though the organizers have repeatedly been doxxed, they will continue to protest U-M administration actions regarding the ballot proposal.

“In addition to that, we are under significant harm when

there are posts on accounts that have over a million followers, and people in the comments section are saying we are going to find these students and we are going to hire people to kill these students,” Hamamy said.

SAFE member Noor Sami also spoke at the event and helped organize the protest. Sami told the crowd that the administration’s investments in pro-Israel companies and its cancellation of the ballot proposals motivated the organizers of the event.

“The University’s failure to hear the voices of marginalized students and its persistent allocation of our tuition dollars to arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin … and Boeing Company perpetuates ongoing cycles of suffering and destruction that span generations,” Sami said.

In an email to The Michigan Daily, University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald wrote that the University canceled voting on these resolutions to protect the integrity of the CSG voting processes.

“The university took this action against interference with the CSG ballot process only after extensively conferring with CSG leaders,” Fitzgerald wrote. “This action became necessary after learning that a U-M staff member, without proper authorization, initiated the sending of an email to the entire undergraduate student body on the Ann Arbor campus at the request of a graduate student.

The email was an inappropriate use of the university’s email system in violation of Standard Practice Guide 601.07.”

In response to student

demands about divesting from companies that support Israel, Fitzgerald said these investments are decided in accordance with a University policy made almost 20 years ago and reaffirmed in 2017.

“It is university policy to ‘maintain an investment portfolio diversified across a full range of legally recognized entities.’ ” Fitzgerald wrote.

“To do otherwise would be to increase our risk and decrease our investment returns — perhaps significantly so. For this reason, our longstanding policy is to shield the endowment from political pressures and to base our investment decisions solely on financial factors such as risk and return.”

Halfway through the event, attendees put blue and yellow tape over their mouths to symbolize voter suppression in the CSG election. In an interview with The Daily, Zaynab Elkolaly, LSA senior and SAFE director of activism, said the University’s decision indicated they failed to protect U-M students.

“The tape on the mouse basically represents the voter suppression and silencing that Ono and the rest of the administration have enacted and are complicit in,” Elkolaly said. “And we’re here gathering today because a critical ballot was completely canceled and the reason that it was canceled was pinned on vulnerable Muslim women, who were not being harassed and doxxed. We’re gathering here to demonstrate power and prove to ourselves that we protect ourselves when the

CAMPUS LIFE

UMich OTS raises funds for education in Honduras with ‘Thrift SHHop’ One Thousand Schools hosted a pop-up thrift store to raise money for education initiatives in Honduras MARISSA CORSI Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan chapter of One Thousand Schools, a nonprofit organization that supports education initiatives in Honduras, raised more than $600 during the first day of its pop-up “Thrift SHHop” Wednesday.

The pop-up thrift shop, which runs through Thursday in the Michigan Union, is reselling donated clothing from the U-M community.

The proceeds will support OTS’ fight against poverty, violence and educational disparities in Honduran communities.

OTS was previously known as Students Helping Honduras — the “SHH” of “Thrift SHHop.” OTS was founded in 2006 by Shin Fujiyama, a University of Mary Washington student. According to OTS’ website, when he was volunteering in Honduras, Fujiyama noticed that children had limited access to

education, so he was inspired to try to change that and he started his nonprofit from his college dorm room.

Fujiyama’s early fundraising efforts resulted in the construction of Villa Soleada, a village in Honduras with adequate housing, proper utilities and a bilingual school. OTS has made it their mission to build 1,000 schools.

According to Nursing senior Grace VanBeek, the U-M OTS chapter president, they’ve already built over 60. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, VanBeek said the organization has worked to expand its network to numerous college campuses, such as The University of Michigan. “(OTS) just broadens our horizons, by talking about values like community ownership and sustainability and local leadership and job creation,” VanBeek said. “I think all of those things not only apply to Honduras, but can easily translate to lessons that we are learning here.”

The University’s OTS chapter

and other chapters around the country have previously hosted the thrift SHHop to raise money for the organization. LSA and Music, Theatre & Dance senior Therron Montgomery stopped by the pop-up Wednesday and said she was glad to be able to shop for affordable clothes and support OTS. “I just think it’s a great event,” Montgomery said. “I also love that it’s really accessible right here on campus. I’ve gone to an event like this before — last year — and I got a few pieces then. I like these types of events, so I’m excited about it.”

Information graduate students Spandan Sharma and Pragya Joshi said they were appreciative that OTS was able to fundraise in a sustainable way.

“I just like the concept of thrifting because I know a lot of the big brands are involved in fast fashion, and this was right here on campus so it was very convenient,” Sharma said.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

GRACE BEAL/Daily Students line South University Avenue in front of University President Santa Ono’s house as part of the community action protest.

administration doesn’t protect us.”

DPSS arranged a metal fence in front of Ono’s house during the protest. According to Elkolaly, the officers have arranged the fence regularly since the Oct. 13 sit-in demonstration at Ono’s house.

“We have been brutalized by the police, by the demands of administration because they’re afraid of us,” Elkolaly said. “They hide behind their guns and their tasers and their fists. They suppress students, and they bully them into silence because they know that our words have more power than they ever will.”

Elkolaly said in addition to bringing back the referendums, the protesters wanted the U-M

administration to address SAFE’s demands.

“We want them to reinstate the vote,” Elkolaly said. “We want them to reach out to doxxing parties because so far only one faculty member has. We want them to release a statement condemning the doxxing, admitting faults and enacting measures that’ll protect Palestinian, Arab (and) Muslim students on this campus. Of course, we want them to divest from any and all entities that promote the Zionist subjugation of Palestinians. Our demands are multifaceted, but they all are rooted in people, power and justice.”

Before protestors marched in front of Ono’s house, Hamamy told

attendees that all protesters need to take precautions and rely on one another to be safe, referring to the Nov. 17 protest at the Alexander G. Ruthven Building during which 40 peaceful protestors were arrested.

“I want you guys all to pay close attention to the marshals,” Hamamy said. “Follow their lead. We have something pretty impactful for you guys today.

Hopefully, no one’s going to get beat or thrown to the ground.

We’re going to keep each other safe, we’re going to keep each other protected and we’re going to continue loving one another because that is how we keep persisting. It is us that fuels our fire, and our fire is very, very hot.”

BUSINESS

Mochi donut chain opens location near North Campus

The first Mochinut restaurant in Michigan recently opened in Ann Arbor NOOR KHANAFER

Daily News Contributor

Mochinut, a restaurant specializing in mochi donuts as well as boba and Korean-style hot dogs recently opened a location on Plymouth Road near the University of Michigan’s North Campus. The Ann Arbor location is Mochinut’s first store in the state.

Mochinut was founded by CEO Jaewook Ha in Southern California, with the first store opening in 2020. The chain has since grown to more than 150 locations throughout the United States, as well as locations in South Korea and Thailand. The cafe’s signature item — their mochi donuts — have become popular in recent years for their unique shape.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Ann Arbor Mochinut employee Chloe Luke

said she thinks the chain will be successful in the city due to its diverse menu and contribution to the city’s food culture.

“The opening day was crazy,” Luke said. “Ann Arbor has a pretty huge diversity in terms of what you can get (to eat), so people are pretty comfortable with trying new things. … I think it’s been received pretty well.”

In an interview at the new Mochinut store, LSA junior Sydney Tran told The Daily she was happy with the quality of the food she purchased and was excited to see more Korean food options opening up in Ann Arbor.

“I actually work at a Korean restaurant … and they also serve Korean corn dogs,” Tran said.

“My boss actually told me that there’s a cool place opening up with the mochi donuts, and I got really excited.”

Though Tran enjoyed the food, she said Mochinut’s North Campus location may make it

difficult for students to reach the restaurant.

“I feel like the location itself would do a little better if it was on Central Campus, because right here, you’re not gonna get a lot of foot traffic,” Tran said. “You’re probably gonna need a car, or you’re going to have to take the bus and walk all the way here, which is kind of out of the way.”

U-M alum Ken Ngai also visited Mochinut for a sweet treat. He told The Daily he found Mochinut to be very versatile and said that boba and donuts would be a good go-to option for many customers.

“I think boba is definitely accessible to everyone now, everyone’s kind of used to it,” Ngai said. “It’s kind of like an alternative (to) coffee or tea. I feel like Mochinut can also serve a similar aspect of not just getting a donut … or a pastry from a cafe but coming over here for a whole experience.”

4 — Wednesday, December 6, 2023

News

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

CAMPUS LIFE

More than 2,100 UMich alumni sign letter of solidarity with pro-Palestine students Following the protest on Nov. 17, a coalition of alumni are condemning the University’s response to pro-Palestinian activism

JOSHUA NICHOLSON Daily Staff Reporter More than 2,100 University of Michigan alumni from across all three campuses have signed an open letter calling on the University to protect pro-Palestine students. Signees have pledged to sever ties, financial or otherwise, with the University until the group’s demands are met.

Alumni of UMich for Palestine — a coalition of alumni from U-M Dearborn, Flint and Ann Arbor — wrote the letter following the Nov. 17 protest in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building where 40 proPalestine student demonstrators were arrested by local police.

The letter directly condemns the administration’s response to the

protest and calls on the University to divest from companies supporting Israel. According to a Dec. 2 Instagram post from the group, signees claimed their actions would withhold nearly $3 million in donations to the University until their demands are met.

U-M alum Nisreen Khokhar told The Michigan Daily the group has long been critical of the University’s response to the ongoing war in Gaza, but came together to directly address administration after the Nov. 17 demonstration.

“There’s been a lot of shared sentiment from many graduates of collective horror at not only what’s happening but how the University is responding,” Khokhar said.

“I think specifically after what happened with the protests in

Ruthven and the events that happened afterwards, there was a sense of ‘What in the world is happening at the university that we used to go to?’ ” The University did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Khokhar said the open letter was the result of collaboration between multiple alumni groups whose members had individually been upset about the University’s actions. When members of different groups began connecting with one another in-person and over social media, Khokhar said they decided to openly protest the University’s actions together.

“There were multiple different alumni groups that were organizing on the network that they knew, and then somehow all of us got word that there was another

group doing this, so we collectively started brainstorming,” Khokhar said. “We decided (to write) out the emotions and feelings we were having into a statement that could support the students on campus and express our collective disappointment with how the University has been treating them.”

In addition to withholding donations, signees have pledged to stop volunteering to participate in networking and recruitment events at the University. According to Khokhar, many alumni were already withholding donations and discouraging people from applying to the University since the war in Gaza began, with the letter acting as a clear representation of their feelings.

“We were trying to put a voice to the feelings that people were

BUSINESS

Proposed high-rise threatens demolition of Pinball Pete’s Newly introduced plans for a 17-story high-rise would demolish multiple business on South University Avenue

having,” Khokhar said. “(The letter) was a means of making visible what was already happening so that the University and more general Michigan community could see that the actions of the University are having tangible impacts on the decisions its alumni are making (about) supporting the University publicly.”

In a statement sent to The Daily, LSA senior Salma Hamamy, president of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, said the open letter is a testament to student activism on the U-M campus.

“The open letter of support from alumni is a symbolic demonstration of the continuous advocacy that students on our campus have put forth for decades,” Hamamy said.

“Their support is more than just a letter, it is a powerful reminder to the university administration and

CAMPUS LIFE

CSG hosts Winter Wellbeing Day

Ahead of final exams for the fall semester, CSG hosted a Winter Wonderland on the Diag SNEHA DHANDAPANI AND MADISON HAMMOND Daily Staff Reporters

MELECKELDAHSHOURY/Daily

REBECCA LEWIS Daily Staff Reporter Plans have been introduced for a new 17-story high-rise building that, if approved, would require the demolition of the Galleria Building — home to iconic Ann Arbor arcade Pinball Pete’s, a Starbucks location, Pancheros Mexican Grill and other businesses along South University Avenue. The proposed development would be designed

by Myefski Architects and include 2,000 square feet of retail space, 211 rental apartment units and 34 garage parking spaces.

Since the announcement of the plan in November, Ann Arbor community members, University of Michigan students and alumni and Pinball Pete’s fans alike have united to try to stop the development. Ann Arbor resident Ryan Jurado founded a Save Pinball Pete’s campaign that provides residents and other supporters with a pre-filled email template addressed to “questions@ galleriamalldevelopment.com,” calling for the developer to spare Pete’s in their plans. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Jurado said he launched the campaign because he believes Pinball Pete’s and the other businesses in the Galleria Building hold significant value in the Ann Arbor community.

According to Jurado, within the nine days following the website’s launch, more than 500 residents and 600 non-resident locals have expressed their support for the cause.

Jurado told The Daily that while he understands that the city needs more housing, it should not come at the cost of vital businesses and community gathering points.

“Galleria Mall is a really important linchpin of the South University district and in the Ann Arbor community as a whole,” Jurado said. “The problem (with the development) is not new housing whatsoever. The problem is displacing community spaces, businesses and social services.”

Pinball Pete’s first opened in the 1970s and prides itself on being a place where people of all ages and identities can come together to play a variety of arcade games.

“Pinball Pete’s is a critical point of community gathering for people of all ages, for people of all creeds, people of all backgrounds,” Jurado said. “It is just this really wonderful melting pot of the metro area around Ann Arbor, and beyond that, we would be much poorer culturally (without).”

In addition to the loss of Pinball Pete’s, Jurado said he is concerned that the U.S. Postal Office branch in the Galleria building would also be demolished. Jurado said that particular office services residents of Ann Arbor’s Ward 3. If it no longer existed, he said Ward 3 residents might have trouble finding another accessible office. “(It’s) the only post office for all of Ward 3, which is about 20% of the residents of Ann Arbor, and will probably be more than 20% once these additional high-rises that are currently going in get built,” Jurado said. “For some of my neighbors, the round trip to the

post office on public transportation could go up to over two hours if that post office location goes down.”

The proposed building is still in the early stages of planning and is awaiting approval from the city before any final decisions about development are made. Bonner Advisory Group, a real estate consulting group, is hosting a meeting on Dec. 5 at the Ann Arbor District Library for community members to voice concerns to the developers about the proposed project. However, Luke Bonner, owner of the Bonner Advisory Group, told The Daily that the location of this development will likely not change.

“In all cases where a developer is buying a property in Ann Arbor, they’re only buying properties that they know they can redevelop,” Bonner said. “In terms of location, this developer has decided to acquire this site because the property owner who’s selling it has done everything they can to sell a site that would be ready for development.”

Pinball Pete’s owner Ted Arnold told The Daily in the event that they need to relocate, Oxford Companies, the company that currently leases the Galleria Building, committed to helping Pinball Pete’s find a new property.

“We didn’t expect this and we don’t want to move, we don’t want to change, but we’re totally willing to (do) whatever it takes to remain in Ann Arbor,” Arnold said.

Arnold said he was initially blindsided by the news of the possible development as he was not told about the plans prior to his

landlord releasing the information to the public. “(Pinball Pete’s) is everything to me,” Arnold said. “It’s all I’ve ever done since I was 8 years old, so it was quite a different day when my landlord released the information about the new development and I had no idea. … I was taken totally off guard.”

In an interview with The Daily, Engineering junior Karsten Van Fossan, vice president of the Urbanism Club, said the new development would have both positive and negative impacts on the Ann Arbor community. While the relocation of Pinball Pete’s could disrupt residents’ social lives, Van Fossan said the city desperately needs more housing options.

“In Ann Arbor, we have a great need for housing, and I believe that (the new development) will really go towards fighting that problem,” Van Fossan said. “The one thing that is an issue is the potential loss of third spaces … (which are) places where you can go that aren’t your home and aren’t your work where you can build community. Pinball Pete’s is a really good example of a third space.”

Ann Arbor resident Adam VanderMolen told The Daily he grew up going to Pinball Pete’s and said, particularly for locals, Pinball Pete’s is one of the things that makes Ann Arbor special.

“Pinball Pete’s is kind of the thing to do for Ann Arbor teenagers growing up,” VanderMolen said.

“It’s kind of what makes Ann Arbor Ann Arbor rather than just the University of Michigan.”

wider community that our work is sustainable, ongoing and has a meaningful impact.”

Alumni at other universities across the United States have similarly pledged to withhold donations and shown support for pro-Palestine students. Khokhar acknowledged these efforts at other institutions, but said their open letter is directly focused on enacting change at the University of Michigan.

“Our intention was to speak towards what the University of Michigan is doing, not to relate to anything that Columbia is doing or University of X or Y is doing,” Khokhar said. “It is very directly (saying), ‘University of Michigan, you have failed in your duty to protect your students and to stand as a moral guide within your own community.’ ”

About 200 University of Michigan students gathered on the Diag Thursday to eat donuts, chat with friends and skate on an artificial ice rink at the Chill Out: Winter Wellbeing Day hosted by Central Student Government.

Eight U-M organizations focused on mental well-being, including Wolverine Wellness and Pulse, tabled at the event to promote campus wellness resources and give away U-M hats and gloves.

Chill Out: Winter Wellbeing Day combined last year’s Winter Wonderland and finals wellness programming into one event.

LSA junior Terra Lafreniere, CSG’s chief programming officer, told The Michigan Daily at the event that the Student Assembly decided to combine the two was to emphasize the variety of wellness resources the University has to offer.

“We really just wanted to combine the two events and have that policy focus so that it wasn’t just an ice skating rink, even though that is such a big part of it and a really fun aspect that attracts students,” Lafreniere said. “Having (the rink) to pull (students) in and then being able to learn about resources at the same time can be really, really beneficial.”

LSA sophomore Joyce Jung, CSG’s deputy programming officer, told The Daily that the event promoted mental health resources that are sometimes overlooked.

“My freshman year, I didn’t know about any main mental

health and well-being resources on campus,” Jung said. “So last year when we started these events, and then this year, we just wanted to continue promoting what’s available to students.”

Joshua Lin, director of U-M student organization CAPS in Action” hosted the organization’s table at the event.

In an interview with The Daily, Lin said the timing of the event was important because it may increase wellness as exams approach.

“I think the goal is just to have a lot of student groups and University groups on campus be a part of an event together to promote well-being,” Lin said.

“It’s really important, especially with finals and winter right around the corner.”

Engineering sophomore Josefia Frydenborg, who attended the Winter Wonderland event last year, told The Daily she attended this year’s event to take a break from finals season. “(I came) just to catch up (with a friend) and also just de-stress because of final seasons and lots of assignments being done right now, so it’s nice to kind of do something for the holidays,” Frydenborg said.

Engineering freshman Anna Mauwong told The Daily at the event that she didn’t know about it until she walked by the Diag and saw a crowd of people. She said she felt the artificial ice skating rink was a good way to unwind.

“We’re all going through finals and we’re all stressing out, and I am just able to ice skate and have a little bit of fun before the semester is over,” Mauwong said. “It’s a great way to make the community of Michigan a little bit happier.”

Students ice skate on a makeshift rink at CSG’s Chill Out Winter Wellbeing Day on the Diag Thursday night.

JENNA HICKEY/Daily

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 — 5

Arts Talks: ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ and what’s coming next from Taylor Swift KAYA GINSKY, SERENA IRANI, GRACIELA BATLLE CESTERO AND REBECCA SMITH Daily Arts Writers

The Michigan Daily Arts section presents Arts Talks, a series where The Daily Arts writers gather to discuss their opinions on and reactions to the latest and major releases in the arts world.

In this segment of Arts Talks, four Daily Arts writers discuss 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and their thoughts on re-recording albums.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What did you think of the re-recording in general?

Serena Irani, Daily Arts Writer: Overall, I really liked the re-recording. I felt like the sound and the essence of 1989 was truly captured and just love her energy on this record. It was also just really fun to listen to and get a re-recorded version of this album all these years later.

Graciela Batlle Cestero, Daily Arts Writer: I agree, I really like the re-recording. I will say, I think my opinion has changed as I’ve seen what people on social media have to say about the re-recording, but my personal opinion is that it’s really fun.

Kaya Ginsky, Senior Arts Editor: Just echoing a lot of those sentiments, I think what made this re-recording special is that there’s something so youthful and exciting about (getting) to hear it again for the first time.

Rebecca Smith, Daily Arts Writer: Honestly, this has been one of my favorite re-recordings so far. It’s funny because 1989 has never been one of my absolute favorite Taylor Swift albums, but listening to the (re-recorded)

songs quite literally transported me back to 2014.

What is your favorite re-recorded song?

SI: My favorite re-recorded song is “I Wish You Would” because I really love that song from the original album, so I loved getting to hear the re-recording of it.

RS: I’ve got to go with “You Are In Love” for this one. I’m very biased, considering that this is one of my favorite songs ever, but it also made me nervous going into the re-recording. I was worried that the production differences between the original and the re-recording would make me not want to listen to it anymore. Thankfully, that is not what happened at all.

GBC: I think my favorite re-recorded songs would have to be “I Know Places” and “Wonderland.” They just have so much passion.

KG: I think the production (fell) flat on a few of the songs that were especially visceral, like “Style,” but I really liked “Wonderland” and “I Know Places.” I think those are two of her best songs ever.

GBC: On the “Style” point, (I agree) that it was a bit underwhelming because the original song was so punchy, but the other re-recorded songs sound really good, so that makes up for it.

What is your favorite vault track?

GBC: These vault tracks weren’t my favorite, but the ones that I like I really like. I think my favorites are the ones that are going the most viral, to be honest.

“Now That We Don’t Talk” was my initial favorite, (but) over the course of relistening, “Is It Over Now?” (has become) my favorite.

Also, initially I heard “Slut!” and I

Don’t discount ‘The Marvels’ because of box office numbers GABY CUMMINGS Daily Arts Writer

Superhero fatigue is currently a topic of hot debate in film circles.

With each passing movie, there seem to be worse reviews and lower box office numbers. But before you let these statistics dictate whether you watch Marvel’s newest release, “The Marvels,” consider franchise fans’ historical disapproval of women-centered stories. Box office numbers have little to no relevance to the quality of a film, and “The Marvels” was released on the tail of a historic actors’ strike, meaning actors were not allowed to promote the film until a few days before its release. Don’t let the numbers scare you, and give “The Marvels” a try; it has a lot more going for it than the internet might lead you to believe.

“The Marvels” follows Carol Danvers (Brie Larson, “Room”), also known as Captain Marvel, as she deals with the ramifications of defeating the alien Kree society from the original “Captain Marvel” film. She is uncontrollably switching places with fellow superheroes Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris, “They Cloned Tyrone”), her late best friend’s daughter, and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani, “Ms. Marvel”), her biggest fan. While this seems hard to follow — the Marvel Cinematic Universe has definitely expanded in recent years — the film covers everything audiences need to know with an early montage fitted into the narrative through a sci-fi style memory device that plays a few important moments from each character’s previous MCU appearances. If you’re not a Marvel regular, there’s no reason to avoid the film, though watching “Ms. Marvel” beforehand wouldn’t be a bad idea.

The film’s greatest strength is the charisma and chemistry between the three leads. The dynamic of Larson and Parris as established actresses and Vellani as the new kid on the block mimics the relationship between their characters. When all three

share the screen, the film is at its best; the audience explores the different facets of their developing relationship through quips and emotional beats. The story’s heart beats within each of these small moments. The story also gives each character an arc and multiple moments to shine.

While Carol struggles with the guilt of using excessive violence in the name of justice, Monica deals with resurfaced feelings of abandonment at Carol’s return and Kamala re-evaluates her blind faith in a woman she always called her hero. This film has three diverse female leads, which is monumental in its own right.

Any little girl will walk away from this movie knowing that she can be a hero too.

Nia DaCosta’s (“Candyman”) direction is essential to this film’s quality. The first fight scene is one of the best in the MCU because the camera moves with the characters, immersing the audience in each choreographed step. The new and improved fight style has the characters working together in seamless synchrony and introduces a fluid fighting style, making the fight stand out from the standard superhero battles. The stylistic choices — incorporating a comic book style intro, split-screen fights and a musical twist — allow the movie to diverge from the Marvel formula and the artists to shine.

The acting, direction, costume design and score stand out more when the artists are trusted to make unique creative decisions.

Although the film thrives in its individuality, it is constricted

by Marvel staples and imperfect writing. When it comes to films that have a simple good-versusevil set-up, it is essential to have an interesting villain — such a film is only as good as its villain.

While Zawe Ashton (“Velvet Buzzsaw”) gives an adequate performance as Dar-Benn, there’s not much development or background, and the film fails to properly explore the idea that Captain Marvel is responsible for her people’s suffering.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Design by Abby Schreck

did not like it, but I’ve been really getting into it (recently).

KG: As soon as I listened to (the vault tracks), I knew they would be some of my favorite Taylor Swift songs yet. It was really exciting to get new music that I’m going to consistently listen to. Honestly, I think all the vault tracks are solid. I would say my favorite is probably “Is It Over Now?” I’ve listened to it every single day.

SI: My favorites were probably “Say Don’t Go” and “Suburban Legends.” “Say Don’t Go” felt like a classic 1989 song to me. It had

all the right energy and vibes to it. “Suburban Legends,” too — it had a little bit of a Bleachers sound, and I could sense the Jack Antonoff production. “Now That We Don’t Talk” also had a very Bleachers sound.

RS: My favorite vault track is definitely “Now That We Don’t Talk.” I just love the way Taylor always writes songs that essentially anyone can relate to in some way. Whether it’s your most recent breakup, an estranged family member or your ex-best friend, this song has a lyric for you, which I think

Sudoku Syndication

is awesome.

GBC: A lot of people on TikTok were saying that these vault tracks sounded very Midnights, which I kind of agree with.

KG: With the whole Midnights (vibe), there’s going to be a lot of connections because (both are) bold pop albums. I think that “Slut!” is weirdly a Lover song, though. One thing I was really thinking as I was listening to the vault (songs was that) there were no features. I was kind of disappointed. I had been looking for easter eggs all week.

GBC: Something that was

ironic for me was that she had so many features on Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and none on 1989 (Taylor’s Version), since Speak Now was kind of like “her” album since she wrote it by herself. I expected no features on Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and a ton of features on 1989 (Taylor’s Version) just because it’s a huge pop album.

KG: I didn’t fully believe it, but I kind of had my hopes up that Harry Styles would (have been featured).

Read more at michigandaily.com

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

SUDOKU

SUDOKU

EASY

8

8

9

3

7

5

6

3

2 4

9

6

8

5 1

9

7

4

2

6 5

4

1

8 6

4

1

9 © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only.

sudokusnydictation.com Generate and solve Sudoku, puzzle SuperbySudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokusyndication.com!

1 of 1

1/7/10 12:28 PM

WHISPER WHISPER “For every minute you are angry,”

“you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

6 — Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘Stay True’ has transformed how I view my brief, magical college years PAULINE KIM Daily Arts Writer

College is a special time — everyone tells you that. It’s when you’re supposed to meet your best friends, make all your greatest memories and figure out who you really are. It’s supposed to be this glowy, sparkly, magical period where somehow everything and nothing matters, all at the same time.

“Stay True” by Hua Hsu is a college memoir that takes place in the ’90s, and it paints the best parts of college as they really are — moments of true joy and self-discovery, where life feels like a movie, but even better.

At some point you realize that those movies were really made to imitate these real-life moments: late night 7-Eleven runs, vulnerable conversations on a balcony with your best friend,

time spent despising someone only to later find a kindred spirit in them.

But the true magic of “Stay True” is that it’s not just sunshine and rainbows. Hsu also writes about the lows of college, the struggle to find where exactly you fit into the world, the uncertainties of romance and career prospects and even the insecurity and resentment that can bloom from being constantly surrounded by your peers. Hsu captures the essence of college so beautifully, in all of its mixed-bag glory.

Hsu attended the University of California, Berkeley as an insecure, indie intellectual who somehow found a best friend in Ken, a charismatic Japanese American frat boy from San Diego who was selfassured and energetic. In “Stay True,” they are like a couple of newborn colts, struggling to find their footing in their newly

minted adult lives. But it all works out okay — delightfully even — because they have each other to laugh cry with, to help each other move furniture and find new music records, to intellectually decipher what it means to be Asian American and to share their deepest fears and hopes and dreams.

It all comes crashing down when, in the summer after their junior year, Ken is killed in a violent, seemingly random carjacking.

I read most of this memoir on a warm, sunny afternoon when the leaves were just starting to fall from their trees like little delicate flames fluttering to the ground. I was lying in Law Quad with my head propped up on my backpack and my legs crossed, one over the other. It was the strangest juxtaposition — to have tears pooling in my eyes as I read about Ken dying, while all around me people were hanging

out with their friends, laughing or playing Spikeball or napping blissfully and soaking up the sun. It occurred to me that it was this very contrast that made Ken’s death so heart-wrenching; people just aren’t supposed to die in college.

Death is for the real world, while college is for kids. To be a student can feel like being wrapped in this safe, warm bubble where everyone’s invincible and anything is possible. But at any moment, life can viciously pop the protective bubble and suck you back into the outside world, forcing you to face the reality that people you love live and die, and it all happens in the blink of an eye and can end by what seems like sheer chance. It just doesn’t seem fair. I mean, death at any time feels unfair, but in college?

For a life to end right when it’s getting started feels like a cruel joke.

I don’t have any grand, insightful thought that will make everything okay, but reading Hsu’s memoir with the benefit of his hindsight has had a clarifying effect on my view of these precious four years. I went home to my apartment to finish reading the rest of the book, and when my roommate came home, I saw her with new eyes. I suddenly realized that she could die.

I know that sounds morbid and depressing, but seriously — isn’t that what makes each person so irrevocably precious?

The reality is, we only have people for so long. Whether we go, or they go, it all comes to an end at some point. Even as I write this, I feel a sense of dread for the day when I inevitably lose someone I care deeply about. In many ways, death is a defining characteristic of our lives, and I think it begs the question: Is there something more? There has to be something more, right?

If it all just ends here, why do we feel so resistant toward the idea?

If we are meant to just live and then die, where does this feeling of wrongness come from? It’s undeniably strange.

I’m a Christian, and my belief that everyone has a soul has certainly impacted how I live my life. But regardless of your personal take on mortality, the knowledge of our impending deaths causes us to view the people in our lives with more care, maybe even reverence.

When I saw my roommate, for a split second I felt like wwI was holding her existence in my hands, and I saw that it was a fragile thing; she could be taken away at any moment. I gave her a hug. Whenever we spend time reflecting on the end of life, it becomes obvious that the most precious things we own are our relationships with people.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

I owe Julia Fox an apology: Why ‘Down the Drain’ might be a masterpiece ARCHISHA PATHAK Daily Arts Contributer

Content warning: mentions of addiction.

Whether or not you are familiar with Julia Fox’s work as an actor, almost everyone is familiar with her famous sound bites and trends that more or less make fun of her and which constantly circulate the internet.

For the longest time, that is all I saw her as. I even laughed at her when she called her memoir, “Down the Drain,” a masterpiece before it was even completed.

But by the time I had finished this book, I was struggling to find a word short of “masterpiece” to describe it myself. This whirlwind of a memoir introduces itself to the reader with a 6-year-old Fox arriving in New York City from Italy, where she was born and had lived years prior. Her Italian heritage is important to the novel’s context, as she alternates between living in the United States and Italy several times over the course of her early life.

Fox covers her first five years in New York in the first chapter alone. She highlights her experience adjusting to America, being homeless, making a best friend (and immediately losing said best friend when Fox’s father has an affair with the friend’s mother) and her fear after experiencing 9/11 in the classroom. In spite of the fast-paced writing style, Fox handles every aspect of her story deliberately and with care. When describing her initial thoughts regarding the Sept. 11 attacks, she comments, “I think, ‘What a strange coincidence that two planes would both have accidents on the same day.’ ” Usually, memoirs comment on the past

COVER ART OWNED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER

from the perspective of their present selves, which is effective when the author intends to reflect and provide insight into how they’ve grown since. Fox does the opposite, allowing the reader to feel all of her experience from the perspective of her age at the time of the events. The choice to use present tense rather than past puts the reader right there with her, experiencing all of her confusion, fear and innocence.

It isn’t long before Fox begins to discuss her relationship with alcohol and drugs. It begins at age 11, when she experiments with weed and quickly becomes familiar with alcohol and the casual use of various drugs, including cocaine and eventually heroin. Fox’s portrayal of her

journey with addiction is raw and honest, going into the gritty details that so many shy away from. With her use of the present tense, it is difficult to tell if she actually means it when she says she plans to quit, so as readers, we are just as unsure of the future as she is. I believed her when she first said she planned to get clean and healthy, and I was therefore devastated in her moments of relapse.

For me, the most harrowing and heartbreaking part of the novel was the descriptions of the various abusive relationships Fox has experienced. She describes the physical form of abuse that many immediately associate with the word, but she also explains how tragic abuse can be when one

is torn between constantly loving and hating a person. She recounts her tumultuous relationship with her father, the back-and-forth with her drug-addicted boyfriend and the billionaire who became her sugar daddy. The unique thing about Fox’s novel is that she writes about each stage of her life as if she, and the reader, are in that moment. Suddenly, you are a 16-year-old girl abusing drugs, running away from home, stuck in a relationship that you are physically unable to leave, just as trapped as she was. The power of this presence is debilitating and impressive.

I appreciate the way that Fox manages to recenter the narrative around her experiences, especially when a lot of the later

parts of the novel focus on people far more famous than she is.

Those well-versed in pop culture are familiar with her monthlong relationship with Kanye West, though in her memoir she refers to him as “the artist,” which takes the focus off his fame and back to the relationship dynamic itself. Many may only pick up this memoir in order to see Fox’s rise to fame, in which case you will be sorely disappointed to learn that only the last few chapters that focus on this. Instead of Hollywood glitz and glam, the book tells the story of a girl becoming a woman who just happens to be famous.

Though “Down the Drain” features an incredible number of themes and “characters,” Fox

does not lose herself or the novel’s point. Though abuse and drug use are chapters in her life that come and go several times, there is one overarching theme that prevails and ties everything together: Fox’s female friendships. Each character is written with care and precision; she is careful not to skim over people she knew even at the age of six. From her first best friend, Mia, to her lifelong best friend in adulthood, Gianna, she expresses her love and admiration for all the women in her life. In her lowest and highest moments, it is the women alongside her who have created a future of love and happiness.

The most poignant parts of Fox’s relationships are the ones that seem insignificant.

Occasionally, we meet a minor person in Fox’s life who is mentioned on one page and never again. For that one page, however, Fox depicts just how important this person is to her at that moment. Fox has reminded me that, though the important people in our lives matter, sometimes it is the individuals we meet once and never see again who make lasting, impressionable differences in our lives.

“Down the Drain” is everything a memoir should be.

It carries so much honesty and life within it, and it’s a beautiful tribute to the women in Fox’s life and the people whom she has lost. It is so honest, in fact, that I can feel that she wrote this for herself before anyone else.

She does not handle sensitive topics delicately; she is blunt and unforgiving in her writing, which makes it all the more capable of causing visceral reactions.

I severely underestimated Fox prior to reading this memoir; I have been proven wrong in the best possible way, and I owe Julia Fox an apology.

‘Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’ resets a whole generation of icons SAARTHAK JOHRI & NICOLAS EISENBERG

Digital Culture Beat Editor & Daily Arts Contributor

The best way to describe “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” would be to say that it is a wonderful oddity of a show. It isn’t a traditional animated adaptation, but rather a collaboration between the original comic creator, Bryan Lee O’Malley, and Japanese animation studio Science SARU. The English voice cast consists of the same actors from the cultclassic film adaptation, reunited after nearly 14 years. An all-star team of creators was assembled to bring this show into the world, and I’m a bit shocked that Scott Pilgrim still has such mainstream appeal.

From Edgar Wright’s (“Last Night in Soho”) characterassassinating cinematic Scott Pilgrim adaptation, the “Scott

Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game” beat-‘em-up with multiple adorably animated, if not questionable endings, to the infamous NEGATIVE XP incelcore track “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Ruined a Whole Generation of Women” (eventually the sexist stanzas fade into exceptional instrumentation) — I have had to defend myself as a man in love with Scott Pilgrim for years. The comics I’ve read countless times since middle school make the Scott Pilgrim series so dear to me: the video game sprite/chibifused aesthetic ideal for an anime adaptation, the romanticization of living in a city like Toronto with its close-to-Michigan winters, O’Malley’s exploration of his mixed Korean identity through the whiteness of his protagonist, in addition to the series’s Asian elements. There are caveats, like our 23-year-old eponymous hero dating a high schooler and his

future love interest who has hurt so many people that she now has seven evil exes. The problematic nature of Scott Pilgrim also extends beyond its protagonists as an artifact of the ’90s era: its ableism, homophobia and racial stereotyping. These characters are seemingly irredeemable, but love redeems them anyway, with that same love paving the way to a new adaptation that I was hoping would get everything right.

This show isn’t just unique in a meta-textual context, but a fresh reinterpretation of the nearly 20-year-old story. After going on a date with Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, “Love Death + Robots”), Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera, “The LEGO Batman Movie”) is challenged to a duel by one of Ramona’s seven evil exes. However, instead of beating him like in the comic, movie or game, Scott seemingly dies. “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” isn’t just a clever title, it’s a

description of what happens in the story, as he is gone for a significant amount of the show’s runtime. In his place, Ramona becomes the protagonist, resolving unfinished business with her exes in order to find out what happened to Scott.

This reinterpretation was unexpected and is fairly radical for a TV adaptation, but it makes the viewing experience compelling for both longtime Scott Pilgrim fans and people discovering the franchise for the first time. Having Ramona be the one to settle things with her exes gives a new depth to both her character and her exes.

Ramona has a greater dynamism than she had in the comics or movie, and her very laidback way of exploring the zany world of Scott Pilgrim gives her a lot of charm. “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” provides a great entry point into the series, but still works well as a stand-alone story.

Not only does O’Malley kill his darling, but the first evil ex Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha, “Sense8”) winning the first fight against Scott and ascending through his victory holds exceptional weight throughout the entire anime. With this choice, O’Malley rewrites and therefore revives the only Desi character in the entire cast, letting the CEO-emo-piratethespian-mystic steal the show every time he’s on screen. It’s not just the protagonists and antagonistic exes that get fleshed out, but every other iconic side character: the best/worst gay Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin, “Solar Opposites”), naive savant Knives Chau (Ellen Wong, “GLOW”) and Scott’s own (honestly ambivalent, not evil) ex Envy Adams (Brie Larson, “HouseBroken”), along with others. While the comics took time to flesh these characters more than the adaptations ever

did, the anime allows for even more exploration as “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” juggles these characters into a mix of fights, flings and everything else that’s fair in love and war.

More than just a good Scott Pilgrim show, “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” is an amazing display of animated enthusiasm. Science SARU is known for producing shows overflowing with passion, and this is no exception. Every scene drips with style, from the most mundane shots of Scott waiting in his apartment for Ramona to the high-energy fight scenes where the exes fight with swords and mystical powers alike. It’s uncanny how well Science SARU is able to capture the comic’s idiosyncrasies; from the onomatopoeia appearing in fights to scene transitions, it feels like they ripped the comic from the pages and put it on TV. Read more at MichiganDaily.com

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Arts

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 — 7

How The Hunger Games series taught me how to feel GRACIELA BATLLE CESTERO Daily Arts Writer

I sat in my childhood bedroom, breezing through the pages of yet another random dystopian novel that BookTok recommended. I was reading yet another of those books to try to get through the droning COVID-19 quarantine, when my mother barged into my room. “¡Graciela! ¿No has considerado leerte los libros de The Hunger Games?” she asked excitedly. I had been asking my family for book recommendations the day prior.

My mom has been an avid Hunger Games fan for as long as I can remember. While I made my family sit through all eight Harry Potter movies after I finished reading each book in the fourth grade, my mom was being consumed by The Hunger Games series. She had recommended the books to me once when I was in sixth grade, but after reading the first page of the series’ first installment, I resigned from the task of finishing the rest.

I don’t know what my aversion to The Hunger Games stemmed from. Perhaps I viewed the series as too mature for my age, even if its target audience is 11 to 13 year olds. But by the time I reached age 16 and had still not read The Hunger Games, this fact kind of made me feel like a fake reader.

So, when my mom recommended The Hunger Games again, I felt I had no choice but to read them. At the very

Design by Kat Callahan

least, I was painfully bored and desperately needed a new set of books to entertain myself.

My mom didn’t have physical copies of the books and, at the time, I was opposed to reading on my Kindle. I thus resorted to pleading with my dad to let me buy physical copies of the books, even just the first one. He agreed. My parents almost always buy me books when I ask. I have come to understand that they consider it an investment toward my intellectual development and mental health.

Once I had the three Hunger Games books in my hands, I dove in. I planned to read each book and, once I finished it, watch its respective movie. Before I began reading the books, I never could have anticipated the effect they were about to have on me.

I started with the first book, “The Hunger Games.” Contrary to when I first tried reading the book in the sixth grade, I was hooked from the moment I read the first page. Suzanne Collins employed such specificity and imagination in her world-building that I began

to imagine myself as part of one of the Panem’s districts.

The characters felt so real to me.

Say what you want about Katniss Everdeen, but I related immensely to her emotional suppression. She clearly experienced many tough emotions since the first pages, but hid most of these in an attempt to protect both her mother and her sister. At the point where I was in my life, crying or outwardly expressing any emotion was an activity reserved for the confines of my bedroom. Even though I am more emotional and expressive

now, I related to Katniss at the time, and her character helped me understand myself.

Once I read the book and saw the first movie bring the world of Panem and The Hunger Games to life, there was no going back. I needed to know more. I quickly went from one book and movie to the next, picking up “Catching Fire,” arguably my favorite installment of the series with an especially interesting plot twist, and then “Mockingjay,” a heartbreaking series finale.

After I finished all three books

and four movies, I was emotionally attached to The Hunger Games. I don’t think I’d cried as hard or as much as I did in about a year before I read and watched the series. The pages of my Hunger Games copies are full of dry tear stains. I have too many videos of me bawling my eyes out hidden in my Snapchat “My Eyes Only” folder because of movie scenes that hit close to home. I had not thought that a fictional world could have such a real effect on me.

The morning after I finished “Mockingjay,” I woke up at 7 a.m. to get ready for online school. As I put on my school uniform and set up my computer to begin my day, my eyes wouldn’t stop watering.

I heard my mom moving around in the kitchen, so I decided to spend some time with her and tell her that I’d finished the series the night before. The second I walked into the kitchen, I fell into my mom’s arms and cried on her shoulder for a solid 20 minutes.

As I reflect on that morning, I don’t think I was crying over the events of the series. While I did love all the characters and the all-consuming story that Collins brought to life, there are only so many tears I can shed over people I don’t know and places I have never been. I was crying about something else. But only The Hunger Games books could catalyze this emotional reaction in me after months of being physically unable to express what I was feeling and going through.

The Hunger Games taught me how to feel again, and for that I’ll forever be thankful.

Three top-tier sitcoms you have probably never heard of OLIVIA TARLING Daily Arts Writer

Anyone who has ever met me can tell you one thing for certain: I love sitcoms. I love them so deeply that people who know about my passion for comedy TV often ask me for recommendations. But once I find out they’ve seen “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and basically everything Michael Schur has ever touched, I start to lose ideas. So I sat down and made a list. If you’re looking for a new TV comedy to binge, I have just the three high-quality, super random recommendations for you.

“Zach Stone is Gonna be Famous” “Zach Stone is Gonna be Famous” is the story, told mockumentary-style, of recent high school graduate Zach (Bo

Burnham, “Inside”), whose sole ambition in life is to become famous. The catch? He has absolutely no idea how he’s going to do this.

Zach does not sing, act, dance or anything of the sort, but he considers himself a “precelebrity.” He is determined to become famous despite an obvious lack of both talent and work ethic. In each episode, Zach experiments with a different kind of fame, becoming funnier as he grows more and more desperate for the spotlight and tries everything from recording terrible music to purposefully going missing.

Burnham’s ability to capture introspective, heartfelt ideas with intentionally cringeworthy comedy shines in “Zach Stone,” as the title character slowly recognizes the neglect with which he treats his friends and family while chasing a fantasy

that may not exist.

So if you have finished every episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and are looking for another series featuring awful people doing awful things for personal benefit, please, look no further. “Zach Stone is Gonna be Famous” uses Burnham’s signature satirical tone to highlight the ridiculousness of the illusion of fame, while featuring brilliant and cringeworthy dialogue only rivaled by that of the Paddy’s Gang.

“Zach Stone is Gonna be Famous” is available to stream on Netflix.

“Crashing” If you haven’t watched “Fleabag” yet, I’m not really sure what you’re doing. But if, like me, you’ve watched the whole thing multiple times and are suffering withdrawals from the comedic and dramatic genius of Phoebe

Waller-Bridge, I have a oneseason masterpiece for you.

“Crashing,” also directed by and starring Waller-Bridge, follows a group of 20-somethings living frugally in an old hospital building — an artist, a hardcore type-A and hardcore type-B with serious sexual tension and an engaged couple, to name a few.

But when an old school friend (Waller-Bridge) of one of the fiancés unexpectedly shows up, tension reaches an all-time high.

The series explores the life of the ragtag group while also delving into the friendships and romances found in certain pairings and trios. WallerBridge brings her awkward but emotional writing style to the table throughout “Crashing.”

And she’s got some serious on-screen help, including one of my all-time favorite actors and a talent for the ages, Jonathan Bailey (“Bridgerton”).

“Crashing” is “Friends” for fans of “Fleabag” — and your next hilarious binge.

“Crashing” is available to stream on Netflix.

“Cuckoo” Bear with me on this one.

“Cuckoo” is a complicated story but one entirely worth the confusion. After spending some time traveling, Rachel (Tamla Kari, “The Musketeers”) returns home to her loving parents in the U.K. along with a complete surprise — a new husband, Cuckoo (Andy Samberg, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”). Not only do Rachel’s parents have no idea who this man is or that their daughter is marrying him, they quickly realize that Cuckoo has a questionable personality, to say the least.

Due to “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”– related scheduling conflicts, Samberg is killed off the show relatively early, allowing Taylor

Lautner (“Twilight”) — you read me right — to make an entrance as Cuckoo’s long lost son, Dale, who shows up on the family doorstep, having been raised as part of a cult.

I know this seems convoluted, strange and timeline-wise, pretty questionable. But between Greg Davies’ (“The Inbetweeners”) blunt performance as Rachel’s father and the comedic genius of Taylor Lautner (this man was wasted in “Twilight,” I tell you), “Cuckoo” proves to be a bizarre, yet hilarious and heartwarming story, and a stellar sitcom.

“Cuckoo” is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

Whether you’re new to the world of sitcoms or an expert looking for new material, “Zach Stone is Gonna be Famous,” “Crashing” and “Cuckoo” are bound to give you the laugh you’re looking for.

Happy viewing!

The style evolution of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’: Buffy SERENA IRANI Daily Arts Writer

I’m not sure I’ll ever shut up about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Although it’s one of my favorite pieces of television, I am well aware that there is little left about the show that hasn’t been said. For more than two decades, critics and scholars alike have analyzed the show to death; everything from its overtly feminist themes to its long-lasting cultural impact to its creative controversies has been fair game. It’s like catnip for female TV critics. I am hardly the first person to wax poetic about the greatness of this show, nor will I likely be the last, but I’d like to dig into an oftoverlooked aspect of the “Buffy” canon: fashion.

For modern TV audiences, it can be difficult to distinguish the aesthetics of an older piece of media from the era in which it was created. Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) from “Friends” and Cher (Alicia Silverstone) from “Clueless” are the extent of much of my generation’s conception of ’90s style personified; John Hughes films are our window into the teen trends of the ’80s. But what made the fashion of “Buffy” so special is that it was more than just late nineties and early aughts fits against a supernatural backdrop. Although the outfits in the show reflected the everevolving trends of the time, they more closely aligned with the evolution of its characters and their respective senses of self and style.

For everything from the vampires’ sleek, leather-clad ensembles to the Sunnydale high schoolers’ everyday fits, we have costume designer Cynthia Bergstrom to thank for most of the characters’ signature looks. I’ll be taking a deep dive into several of the show’s fashion icons, and who other than our titular it-girl heroine to kick things off, in platform boots, no less?

In the show’s earliest seasons, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar, “Scooby-Doo”) is the epitome of a California cool girl. The outfits she wears to school are ultra feminine and girly, from miniskirts to tank-tops and pastel dresses, all adorned with matching flower hair barrettes.

She may not be the most popular girl at Sunnydale High, but she dresses like she is. At this point in the show, Buffy is still reluctant to step into her role as the Slayer, adamantly clinging to the “normal teen girl” aspects of her life. She keeps a clear boundary between her responsibilities as the Slayer and her social life, and makes an effort to keep up with trends and emulate the Valley girl aesthetic of her pre-Slayer self. She dresses to fit in: sunglasses at all times, bold and trendy prints, heeled boots and perfectly styled jackets in every shade imaginable. As her hairstyles vary from fringe bangs to pigtails to the “Rachel,” Buffy is always ahead of the curve.

When the two opposing forces dictating her life finally coalesce in the season one finale, Buffy is dressed for the occasion (when is she not?). In this episode, Buffy

is prophesied to die (for the first time), and even though all she wants is to go to the school dance with her friends, she doesn’t run from her fate. Instead, she steps up as the Slayer, ready to take down the forces of evil in a full-length flowy white gown and a black leather jacket, an outfit that perfectly mirrors both aspects of her life: 16-year-old and superheroine, all rolled into one. Buffy is coming to terms with the fact that she’s going to have to make some sacrifices in the “normal high-school experience” department, but that doesn’t mean that she has to give up her identity or teen girlhood. She’ll always be there to save the world when need be, and there’s no reason she can’t look and feel like herself as she plays the part of the savior.

Over time, Buffy learns to balance the dual nature of her life as both the Slayer and a teen girl, and her fashion choices reflect that gradual evolution. While her first season miniskirts and slip dresses may have slayed in Teen Vogue, they were a bit impractical for slaying demons. As she starts to embrace her role as the Slayer, Buffy picks more practical choices for fighting sequences without compensating for style — think Sporty meets Posh Spice. We see more of an emphasis on Buffy’s training at the library and her patrols at the cemetery as cute yet functional athleisure becomes a more routine part of her wardrobe; she wears the occasional pair of running shoes over platform sandals, hoodies instead of chic trench coats. Basically anything

Design by Sara Fang

an off-duty model would wear to run errands, Buffy has worn to stake vampires at the graveyard.

What marks perhaps the biggest shift in Buffy’s style is the arrival of Faith (Eliza Dushku, “Bring It On”) in season three.

For the most part, Faith acts as the anti-heroine Slayer, a direct foil to Buffy. She represents how Buffy could have easily turned out without the support system of her friends and family. Where Buffy’s friends keep her grounded, Faith is fiercely independent, a lone wolf hardened by the world. There’s a sharpness to her that Buffy lacks and a confident, tough-as-nails persona that shines through her bold outfit choices. She dresses

almost exclusively in intense shades of red, black and white (like a third member of The White Stripes), and did I mention leather?

So. Much. Leather. Leather galore.

Faith’s morals were always a little too gray to truly influence Buffy, but she showed her what a different path to being the Slayer could be like — a path of self-assuredness and joy in her powers without the weight of the world bearing down on her shoulders. Even long after Faith left, aspects of her style lingered in Buffy’s closet as she grew more comfortable with her role as Slayer. The infamous red leather pants and black leather jacket ensemble that Buffy became

known for was a total Faith look.

Leather never went out of vogue again for Buffy, and we might have Faith to thank for that.

Season four, the “college season,” features some of Buffy’s most experimental looks by far.

This season is characterized by the changes occurring in the characters’ lives, as we leave the familiar setting of Sunnydale High and are introduced to new additions to the Scooby gang.

This might explain why Buffy briefly delves into a bit of a boho chic style — she dabbles with bandanas and print skirts, peasant blouses and earthier tones.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

MiC

8 — Wednesday, December 6, 2023

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Brain envy in the age of indulgence ANKITHA DONEPUDI MiC Columnist

Come rain or shine, my grandpa has faithfully embarked on his daily three-mile adventure for the past 20 years. Rising at the ass crack of dawn, he completes a regimen that includes a brisk hot-girl walk, a cold shower, a nutritious breakfast and a perusal of the news, all accomplished before I wake up. As a Gen Zer living in the era of indulgence and compulsive overconsumption, marked by technology and instant gratification, I struggled to comprehend his unwavering discipline. It wasn’t until recently when I came to realize that real peace comes from living a life of presence, a life in the now.

The brain orchestrates every facet of our existence — our thoughts, feelings, actions and interactions. It is the seat of intelligence, character and the arbiter of every decision we make. Last summer, inspired by my grandpa’s unwavering dedication, I committed to prioritizing my physical and mental well-being, embracing the concept of “brain envy” — the conscious care for our brain’s pivotal role in our lives.

We live in a pretty superficial world: We care more about our bodies than our brains. I realized the need for a conscious commitment to reshape my brain’s functioning when I observed my unexamined thoughts and habits influencing my decisions and overall life in a negative manner. If I let myself slump for a couple of days without being intentional with my actions, I would notice that I am not making decisions that align with who I am. If I have learned one thing throughout the past couple of months, it is the awareness to seriously invest in and nourish my health. Our brain is what

keeps us content and purposeful. It is always something that I create time and space for. Every single day, I aim to take small actions to boost my brain!

Understanding that a wellfunctioning brain is fundamental to a healthy mind, I embarked on a journey to instill discipline. Delving into a Reddit rabbit hole on how to concoct a routine that would work for me, I discovered the popular 75-Day Soft — a dopamine detox (fasting from dopamine-producing activities.

The irony wasn’t lost on me, given my penchant for media consumption at 3 a.m. (it’s the effort that counts).

Despite the humorous coincidence, I’ll share what I’ve learned about dopamine and how I’ve strategically applied this knowledge to my advantage.

Dopamine, often hailed as the “feelgood neurotransmitter,” serves as a chemical messenger that facilitates communication between neurons in our brain. It affects many physical and behavioral functions including sleep, learning, motivation, mood and attention. The brain releases it during moments of pleasure, like when we taste something good or while having sex, weaving a tapestry of pleasure and contentment that fuels our brain’s reward and motivation system. While dopamine does rise in response to rewards or pleasurable activities, it doesn’t actually decrease when you avoid over-stimulating activities, so a dopamine “fast” doesn’t actually lower your dopamine levels. Instead, as our brain strives for optimal function, it adjusts neurotransmitter levels for balance. In the face of excessive stimulation, however, it adapts by diminishing dopamine receptors through downregulation.

Consequently, to attain the same level of satisfaction in the future, more dopamine becomes necessary.

This cycle, over time, diminishes the capacity for genuine satisfaction.

Dopamine is the molecule of more — the more we get, the more we want until it turns into a vicious cycle of trouble. By giving into this perpetual cycle, we are exhausting the dopamine centers in our brain with overconsumption. Ultimately, we are being thrilled to death, wearing out the pleasure centers in the brain and making the highs less satisfying, leaving us wanting more.

Dr. Cameron Sepah is the creator of the dopamine fast. Sepah aimed to free his clients from dependency on specific stimuli, like phone alerts, texts and social media notifications.

Grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy — a therapy technique that aims to help people find new ways to behave by changing their thought patterns — his research diverged from the common understanding of the term “dopamine detox.” Dopamine fasting does not advocate for complete abstinence from all pleasures. Instead, the emphasis is on pinpointing specific behaviors that contribute to stress, impair daily work or life performance, or foster addictive tendencies.

Dopamine fasting doesn’t alter one’s health state, but entails curbing problematic habits by substituting them with activities that promote well-being and align with individual goals. Sepah identifies six compulsive behaviors as targets of the dopamine detox: emotional eating, excessive internet usage and gaming, gambling and shopping, porn and masturbation, thrill and novelty seeking, and recreational drugs. By refraining from engaging in activities that activate the brain’s neurotransmitters, individuals reduce their reliance on the emotional “hits” provided by dopamine.

The 75-Day Soft is a popular program centered around self-

discipline and personal development.

During a dopamine detox, addictive activities that provide instant gratification are limited to heighten awareness of impulses. By recognizing how your brain sends these signals, you can then initiate the process of breaking free from established patterns. The challenge aims to reset participants’ mental habits and increase discipline. By temporarily stepping away from instant rewards, individuals may experience heightened focus, improved mental resilience and higher creativity.

The daily rules for this detox are “simple”: Follow a diet of your choosing No alcohol or cheat meals Two 45-minute workouts, one of which must be outside Read 10 pages of a nonfiction book Drink one gallon of water While this may seem simple to some, I was definitely stumped at two 45-minute workouts a day. I spent a lot of the summer on healing and inner work as a method to dismantle the repetitive cycles of my life. Once doing this, I began to realize how much power I truly have to direct my brain versus allowing my brain to direct me, and started to subtly implement more of these dopamine detox practices. When we learn how to increase blood flow and take better care of our brain, it improves our mental health, happiness, energy and vitality. Although I could not completely commit to this detox, I have been actively taking the steps to get to a point where I’m not fearful of implementing a refined version — catering to my needs and priorities — of this detox in my life.

To allow myself to ease into this detox and reduce addictive and over-stimulating activities, I started off by creating micro-habits that act

A Bookworm’s Requiem ISABELLE FERNANDES MiC Columnist

Each time I lend out a book I am saying: Here is a piece of my soul I do not mind if you stain the edges with your coffee fingerprints, dog-ear a corner, accidentally tear the paper as you turn a page.

I used to harbor anger Meticulously inspecting the covers upon a book’s return, Searching always for the carelessness I knew was hidden there.

Creases telling me half a story, A crumpled cover horrifically filling in the gaps.

I did not understand, while I tucked my book in every night careful to slide it into place on the shelf, never shove, They cracked its spine, dragged its broken body across the floor: a violent end for a pampered prince.

Just the sound of it made me shudder.

One day I realized– the ripples on the pages mark where teardrops fell, A friend’s now-immortalized sorrow.

A smudge means the book made its way to breakfast sat next to the pancakes and the chocolate sauce, was devoured ferociously while a stomach rumbled.

And of course the crime of all crimes–a torn edge–

indicating a desire so strong to race to the end wildly flipping page after page after page, the thin paper could barely be expected to keep up.

Knowing this, I now say: Weave yourself into my story Do not be afraid to splash some water, to trickle in reminders of your existence.

I want to to know the source of your joy, of your grief, of your fears.

I invite you to press your sticky hands into the words.

Tell your story in the echoes of mine– I will smile when I read it.

as mood boosters to stabilize my experiences and leave me feeling content at the end of the day. I have been off social media for more than a month now and when I do go back on, I am able to regulate myself more and use it more intentionally instead of mindlessly scrolling for hours. I am more intentional about what I put in my body. Every day after I wake up, I tell myself, “Today is going to be a great day.” This allows me to direct my mind and puts my brain in a positive state. Right before I go to sleep at night, I ask myself, “What went well today?” I like to go on a treasure hunt looking for what went right in the day.

It allows me to create a mindset of abundance and positivity that carries onto the next day and how I perceive my experiences.

Following through on these basic habits has allowed me to accept, then act. I no longer am a reactive person toward an experience but rather am able to view it from a more openminded perspective. I am able to take whatever the present moment and circumstance contains and view it as my ally rather than an enemy. I am able to accept the situation as if I had chosen it and transform it to my advantage — all because I have made the simple decision to take care of my brain, simultaneously shifting my mindset in the process. The tiniest habits can be the most life-altering!

Here are a few simple micro-habits (that have helped me tremendously) to increase your dopamine.

Cold showers: Cold therapy has been shown to increase norepinephrine (another neurotransmitter) and dopamine.

Morning bright light therapy (open your fucking windows): It improves your dopamine and cognitive function.

Exercise: Our muscles are our protein reserve. You should be

Sara Wong/MiC

walking three to four times a week for 45 minutes a day like you’re going to be late somewhere and eventually add in light strength training.

Circadian rhythm: Use it to your advantage. If you know you have higher dopamine levels and motivation in the morning, finish your shit in the morning and vice versa.

Food: You can eat in certain ways to boost the neurotransmitters in your brain. Eat your protein, almonds and avocados.

Lastly: drip dopamine, don’t dump it. We want tiny bursts of dopamine and not big splashes. For example, cocaine, alcohol and nicotine are a big splash of dopamine until we have none left. This is exactly what we don’t want. Dripping dopamine means following through with these tiny habits and seeing where it takes you.

These consistent micro-habits have allowed me to have days of mindfulness, where I am fully present, and at peace and I am trying to maintain this. It definitely has been difficult as I struggle with the changes that come with the different seasons and I often find myself reverting back to instant gratification, like consumption, for comfort. I still struggle to find consistency in a whirlwind of adult responsibilities and a society that almost promotes gratification, but I’m taking the baby steps to continuously be aware of my actions and disrupt my negative patterns. It takes time to create change in our lives and that’s completely normal, so I’m not too worried when I take a couple of steps back. I give myself grace because I can only move forward from there.

I’m not sure I can fully commit to the idea of a complete dopamine detox though. What is our collective experience without a little bit of pleasure?

What happens when you kiss a boy What happens when you kiss a boy is not the sky parting and pink hues rolling in.

It is not the end to a magical evening And no one will crowd around you demanding All the steamy details, palms muffling excited shrieks.

The experience will not be memorable, So no matter if you never know his name.

It is an apologetic whisper before the clumsy joining of mouths Unidentifiable movements and An uncomfortable wetness that reminds you of a squid you saw once at the zoo.

It lasts for too long and yet not at all, and just like that, The moment passes.

When it happens it is dark out, With even the moon finding elsewhere to look.

But what happens when you lay down beside her is all twinkling lights and

ISABELLE FERNANDES MiC Columnist

radiant smiles It is laughing at personal memories and not knowing the time, talking until your mouth goes dry Sharing stories and photographs and body heat and a blanket.

Comfortable despite the obvious lack of room, Perfectly fitted all the same.

Eventually drifting off, wholly content, A tangle of warm limbs and silky hair Dreaming of eyes you will never forget.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MiC

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 — 9

What Spotify taught me about letting go KENNETH SUN MiC Columnist

1 — What Spotify taught me about letting go My Spotify Wrapped came out, and as I feared, one of my top songs this year was “Amsterdam” by Nothing But Thieves. I feared it in the same way that you fear coming faceto-face with your childhood best friend, and the constriction of your chest that follows when you can think of nothing at all to say. It represents to me an entire class of music that spanned my life from January to April — upbeat, alt-ish rock with lots of drums and an angsty tang.

Whatever genre you call that.

Part of me is embarrassed because I think the songs someone likes are reflective of who they are as a person. For a while, I was really into the angsty-indie-rock vibe, sort of angry and numb at the same time. I liked them because I was angsty, because I wanted to feel subliminally angry, to yearn, or maybe I wanted to be more outgoing, or hopeless, or more uniquely sad — and listening to those songs helped me feel exactly that. So that’s one selfish reason I sometimes feel embarrassed to be reminded of the people songs I used to love. To borrow from Paul Graham, just as there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded fashion, there is nothing so cringeworthy as the preferences of your most recently deceased self.

I remember when I first realized that I didn’t like this

song anymore. I knew there was something off about it, but I didn’t know why and I struggled at first with deleting it from my playlists.

I spent so much time with that song. You know that feeling, a few days after you meet someone and you click, that it’s as if you’ve known them for as long as you can remember?

You begin sharing straws and stories from your separate pasts, fascinating each other with time and attention, and it’s not always clear whether this spark will turn into a flame or a dumpster fire. You see yourself in the song, and that is why you like it. That is why it burns.

What is a dumpster fire? I think it could be a song who knows a distant version of you such that whenever you interact, you are invariably dragged into the past. It could also be a song with whom you’re never quite sure how you feel, never quite natural. Dumpster fires make me uneasy.

I knew my song had become a dumpster fire, so the correct thing to do was to remove it, right? But I was stressing out.

What if I started liking this song again? I didn’t want to just throw it into the void… and had it really gone sour in the first place? What if this was just a phase?

When I look through my top songs from this year, the feeling I find in each song is the result of what happened to that initial spark. Some songs burned hotly and then fizzled out. Some extinguished without reason.

Some unlucky sparks became scalding dumpster fires. Yet

there are others who continue to be steady flames, radiating warmly as they had always done.

And the thing about the steady flames is that they never used to be dumpster fires.

None. Not one. For some, there may have been a flicker or two, but that’s a far cry from the instability of a dumpster fire.

I think dumpster fires are the hardest to let go of because, in contrast to dead sparks, they are still burning. It’s tempting to hope that they would simmer down to something calmer, but that almost never happens. And it’s why even when you do cut them from your playlist, you can’t help but wonder how they’re doing, whether they’ve eaten today and so on.

The satisfying solution came from my friend who watched me struggle with removing this song. She told me that first, if I do start liking it again, then that would mean I get to rediscover my love for it, which is pretty great. And second, it was more important to consider how the song made me feel at the present moment, instead of leaning on the sentiments of my memories from before. Yes, there used to be a spark, maybe even a flame, but now I didn’t want to hear it. It wasn’t doing me any good, and it was tainting the entire playlist to boot— so there was nothing to be missed, really.

Since then, I’ve forced myself to be vigilant about pruning songs that have gone bad. It’s hard, but I think the difficulty of deciding whether or not to keep a questionable song speaks

volumes compared to how easy and natural it is to make the same decision on a song that I unequivocally adore. There are always so many things that are a better use of my time, and it’s really freeing to not ever have to worry about whether song X is mad at me or guess at song Y’s intentions.

Of course, people can change and it can be worth the energy to try to improve the relationship, so I decided that a good rule of thumb for deciding whether a situation is good for me is to ask whether or not it feels like high school. If it does, then chances are that someone isn’t making a good-faith effort to make the situation better. In high school, I got tangled up in several “dumpsterfireships” where I was stuck constantly ruminating about the state of our relationship. If I had a time machine, I’d tell my younger self: No. Stop. Why are you fighting for something that is so easily given, and that is so freely abundant elsewhere in your life? And when he protests, saying that he’s already invested so much time into this person, I would again ask — then why waste more?

High school kids are not always mature enough to give you clarity, compassion or kindness, but everyone should know better now, so there’s no reason to put up with any of this.

2 — Dolce, a piacere There will be snow soon.

Would you see it too? & think softly of me?

3 — Refrain

After my first relationship ended, I spent a long time (I won’t admit how long) still glued to its grip. I thought that after some time, the dust would settle and we’d be in each other’s orbits again. I kept some of his songs in my playlist and heard them from time to time.

They were good — a good mix of despair and yearning that I wanted to feel back then. We spent a lot of time together, and certainly, there was a flame.

I kept wondering how they were doing, whether they’d eaten today and so on, thinking that maybe it would die down to something calmer. What if this was just a phase?

Over, and over, and over again.

I think I’ve seen this movie before (the ending is a bit of a dumpster fire).

Sometime around the sevenmonths mark, it occurred to me to question whether there was a stable relationship to start with. We’d met and started dating pretty much the week after. “Love at first sight” is one way to put it, but in hindsight, I would opt to call it “rushing into things.” I realized that even early in the relationship, there were red flags that I should have seen, would have seen if I took the time to look.

In a playlist and with acquaintances, it’s relatively easy to add and remove whenever you want. The difficulty is only in recognizing that something is dead and should be removed. But in a committed relationship, it’s not so easy. To really know a person, you have to set aside some time

and listen intentionally.

It was important to look, and to resist the temptation to run in without looking.

I have a playlist called “Inbox,” where I put songs that I think I like so that they get a second listen before being sorted into one of my many playlists. I treasure these listens a lot. It’s a rare feeling to set aside some time, perhaps an evening, for only listening. Not the sort of half-assed attention like putting on Netflix while doing homework. It’s during these listens that I really get to know a song intimately. Some nights, when I’m propped up with a good album, I feel that I would be content to spend the rest of my life doing this. And I’ve learned to look for the same feeling in people, as well.

Obviously I can’t put people into playlists, but I guess the point is that it would be good quality control to give my attention completely if I actually want to know someone.

This way, if I’m more strict about what kind of songs I let in, I don’t have to remove them as much. Because no matter how much I might consciously recognize a song to be bad, it still hurts to remove it and kill the hope.

So it was equally important to remind myself that I can’t control dumpster fires, and to stop myself from trying because I get burned every time. It wasn’t worth the energy that I would rather spend tending to the many other warm, peaceful flames. Love (of anything) doesn’t have to be dramatic or difficult.

Why I almost exclusively read African Literature AYEYI ASAMOAH MANU MiC Columnist

I didn’t start reading fiction until later in my life. Correction: I did not begin to consciously read until I was 15; I was still subjected to mandatory reading time both at school and at home.

Back then, the books were exactly as you expected them to be: stories of little white characters, leading their little lives and weaving their little white lies.

Think “The BFG”, “James and the Giant Peach”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Charlie Brown & Snoopy” and so on.

Crafted by immensely talented authors like Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss, these stories were vibrant, fantastical narratives that, while easy to absorb, never seemed to resonate with me on a personal level.

There was always a certain foreignness in their stories and motivations. I remember reading the “Berenstain Bears” complain about their allowances for chores and audibly guffawing at the thought of that — imagine, my own traditionally Ghanaian parents trading our chores for money. I remember gawking at the “Diary of A Wimpy Kid”, wondering how he managed to pull off his antics unbeknownst to his parents, while mine always had me under a watchful (Ghanaian) eye.

I delved into the tales of “Caillou” constantly taken aback by the sharp differences in our lives. His childhood was marked by outward defiance, indulgent nagging and the ability to flat-out say “no” to his parents. This came as a stark contrast to the norms ingrained in me as a child, where the only acceptable form of “defiance” was a mumble under my breath and the Bible verse “Children, obey your parents” always somehow made its way as

a reprimand.

These fictional stories quickly proved to be exactly that: fiction — stories I could only see from afar, and never quite from within.

Thus, although reading burgeoned my worldview and highlighted the worlds beyond my own, I soon realized that it severely limited how I translated my own world. Constantly reading books in English, solely by English authors, unsurprisingly only framed my world in English, a language that often lacks the emotional weight to describe many of my experiences.

The world the characters grew up in suddenly became the benchmark against which my own experiences were measured.

For instance, I suddenly needed to understand what it was like to experience a white snowy Christmas like Charlie Brown did (despite never seeing temperatures below 60 degrees Fahrenheit). I constantly longed for the root beer I read Snoopy drinking, despite never really knowing which “root” it came from. I could tell all the fables of Mary Poppins and Sherlock Holmes, but could not define stories that intersected or, at the very least, ran parallel to mine.

These all helped vividly describe a certain world — a white, Western, detached world — and not the one I had grown up in.

By extension, the way in which Western literature was enforced very subtly but undeniably altered the way I viewed my own life. I had to suddenly live within the white narratives drawn out before me — an axiom for which my childhood was expected to unravel.

As I would come to realize, there was something so incredibly dangerous with this notion. I could no longer see myself reflected in the books I read, and ultimately I decided that books were not something

to relate to or find myself in.

They were simply an escape and a description of a life I would never truly know.

That was, of course, till I stumbled upon “Purple Hibiscus” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the corner of my mother’s bookshelf. Suddenly, the true role of reading became alive in my mind: to read stories of different lives, but to also find traces of yourself in the characters’ worlds.

“Purple Hibiscus” detailed the plight of 15-year-old Kambili (the same age as I was at the time) who grew up in post-colonial Nigeria under a politically unraveling state and a religiously tyrannical father.

Despite leading a life vastly different from Kambili’s — I mean, I knew nothing about what it meant to live under military coups or a violent father — I found myself fully captivated by her story. Centered around life in West Africa, the book’s nuances became so clear to me: the sweltering heat and unforgiving humidity, the earthy coolness of harmattan rain, the tradition of kneeling and genuflecting when greeting elders, and the cherished Saturday morning ritual of fried eggs with fluffy agege bread. Finally, I found characters I could actually relate to — characters who led lives similar to mine, who put down words to the same emotions I was feeling.

This realization was incredibly freeing, and in seeing specks of my own life sprinkled across the characters’, I craved more. Once I flicked through the last page of “Purple Hibiscus”, I knew that this was exactly what I was missing all these years: to read more books that featured more characters like me.

And so I proceeded to do exactly that. I read the entirety of Adichie’s repertoire, scouring through pages of “Americanah”,

Design by Evelyn Mousigan

“Half of a Yellow Sun”,”The Thing Around Your Neck” and more. And when my hunger was not satiated, I turned to other African authors — Yaa Gyasi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Tendai Huchu — all littered across the African continent, but telling stories of a shared experience. I then expanded to authors of the diaspora — Zadie Smith, Taiye Selasi, Aminatta Forna— before my brief stint with the African classics: “So Long a Letter” by Mariama Ba, “Things Fall Apart” and “No Longer at Ease” by Chinua Achebe.

“Hooked” did not even begin to describe my interaction with African authors. I was infatuated with it all. It felt like a neglected world had opened up before me, a world I had inadvertently left unexplored for far too long.

And so even as my family moved countries, away from the place I was born in, it was these books that allowed me to remain connected. Filled with nostalgia

from cover to cover, they always brought me home and planted me there.

Five years after first picking up “Purple Hibiscus”, I still find myself immersed in the world of African authors. Can you blame me? No one writes quite like they do. No one captures my stories and puts them on paper like they do. The experiences of the blond-haired and blue-eyed protagonists of my childhood have lost their allure, particularly when compared to the relatable and genuinely authentic characters I found in African literature.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily read books just because they are written by Black authors (although I’m always one to support Black creators and businesses). I read stories of Black characters — Black Stories — because for so long, these were so inaccessible to me. Though I might occasionally explore books by other authors, other authors

of Color (even those featuring said blond-haired, blue-eyed characters) I always read them tangentially. The connection lacked the intimacy and warmth I found with African literature.

I like to think of it as balancing the scale: a childhood of reading Western authors and an adulthood of reading African ones— a balance returning to a scale that had been tilted for so long. For me, African literature goes beyond mere entertainment; it validates my experiences as stories worthy of capture.

Whether I’m in Ghana or here in the United States, literature — African literature — provides a familiar home, a place I never hope to forget.

So I will always find myself returning to my African authors.

Because until other genres make me feel the same way they do, until I close a book feeling seen, heard and read, I will continue to read African literature — exclusively and unapologetically.

Opinion

10 — Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

SHANNON STOCKING AND KATE WEILAND Co-Editors in Chief

JULIAN BARNARD AND QUIN ZAPOLI Editorial Page Editors

Sophie Schreck Abby Grand Julia Storer Zoe Verklan Evann Seaman Nikhil Sharma

We don’t need mandatory attendance in order to succeed LIV FREY

Opinion Columnist

JULIA VERKLAN AND ZOE STORER Managing Editors

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Ammar Ahmad Julian Barnard Ben Davis Devon Hesano Olivia Mouradian Rushabh Shah Zhane Yamin

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Lindsey Spencer Evan Stern Anna Trupiano Jack Tumpowsky Alex Yee Quin Zapoli Nick Rubeck

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board.

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

I love drunk girl solidarity Design by Francie Ahrens

A

ttending classes is a core part of the college experience. Professors want students to come to class because simply showing up has correlated with students doing better. It is all very intuitive: A healthy attendance record reflects the effort you are willing to put in in order to be successful and actually engaged in class. However, attendance is just one way to get students to actively participate.

Written assignments, exams and projects all push students to engage with the material, yet classes still stress mandatory attendance, making little leeway for those needing to be excused for religious purposes, illness or mental health reasons without grades being negatively impacted.

Given this, it would make more sense for the University of Michigan’s administration to start standardizing policies to focus not wholly on mandatory attendance, but rather active participation in order to promote better student success for all types of learners.

Attendance is also linked to privilege. People who don’t have to worry about finances (like people who aren’t working while in school) have much more free time to focus on their studies. Additionally, attendance is not equal for all races and ethnicities: Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students are disproportionately affected by chronic absenteeism. Therefore, perfect attendance policies favor the already privileged, providing another barrier for

underrepresented communities to cross. Women, as well as other underrepresented minorities, are more likely to be silenced, shot down or discouraged from participating out of fear that they may “look stupid.” Not feeling fully wanted in the classroom can affect a student’s motivation to come to class and participate; mandatory attendance policies punish these students’ grades for feeling uncomfortable in a place where they should feel welcomed.

Mandatory attendance can also pose harm to students with disabilities. While the University is required by Title II and Section 504 to provide the appropriate accommodations for a student with a disability, services may not be adequate enough to ensure student success. Forty-six percent of students with disabilities do register for their disability office, but almost as many students (44%) do not. Students left to advocate for themselves in a college environment are more vulnerable to maladministration.

Even though accommodations are present, only 46% of professors will honor them fully.

Because of this, a hard choice must be made between going to class or prioritizing health.

In-person participation may not always be a feasible way for a student with a disability to demonstrate their knowledge of a subject, especially if the disability is chronic.

Mandatory attendance policies also harm students who are unable to get diagnosed.

Once again, underrepresented communities are more likely to not receive than their white counterparts.

Women are less likely to receive learning

disability diagnoses than men.

These individuals still have to follow the same attendance rules, even when it is harder to go to class.

The same logic can be applied for students who are simply dealing with a cold or a fever.

Presenteeism, or the feeling that you “have” to go even when you are feeling under the weather, does not actually increase productivity but can cause the spread of illness in a workplace.

At a rigorous academic institution like the University of Michigan, presenteeism may be heightened when students continue to come to class while they are sick because attendance policies are motivating them to do so.

I have experienced more lectures where I’ve heard students violently cough than not. When classes don’t allow any absences, they put students in a dangerous position that enforces a never-ending cycle of sickness on campus.

There are ways for classes to encourage consistent attendance without having to rely on forcing students to be “perfect.” Some of my professors, for instance, allow a certain amount of breathing room. One of my classes allows three “unexcused” absences.

Another allows seven. My professors also post their lecture slides, which helps students keep on top of their work without forcing them to attend class. In short, a good way for classes to restructure their attendance policies is by allowing a certain amount of unexcused absences, and drafting up a clear method of communication for when an excused absence happens.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Stereotypes or sisterhood?

SOPHIA PERRAULT Opinion Columnist

A

JAMIE MURRAY Opinion Columnist

I

’m in line for the bathroom at Rick’s American Cafe, and the girl next to me compliments the glitter I smeared on my eyelid moments before leaving my apartment. I gush about her hair, and how much I love the bubble braids that I know must’ve taken some time. We smile and laugh, enjoying this moment together. I never saw her again or learned her name, and if she had said it I would’ve forgotten it the second I left the bathroom.

It’s a scene many women know well: drunk girl solidarity.

But it’s not just the bathroom line. The whole night is filled with these moments.

When getting ready, it’s not uncommon for women to share wardrobes, do each other’s makeup and coordinate outfits.

It’s all a part of the solidarity women share during these nights out, but it’s not always revered as such. People have critiqued the fashion choices of women; the coordinated outfits become “basic” and the makeup becomes “trashy.”

Somehow, these little moments of joy become negatively perceived by society.

One study found that drinking is socially gendered — a phenomenon where a characteristic or action is not inherently gendered but is socially distinguished based on gender. Even the magazine portrayals of drinking are different for men and women. Sex Roles, a research journal, published a study demonstrating higher levels of dehumanization of women when they are seen drinking alcohol compared to water, while there is no change in the perception of men. The researchers specify that a dehumanized perception is

one that views an individual as lacking self-control and morality, as well as being driven more by motives, appetites and instincts, as one would compare to animalistic behaviors. When going out, women don’t know who is judging them about what, which can create a sense of anxiety about how they look and how they’re perceived.

Moments outside the male view, namely the women’s bathroom, become special for being a space where this solidarity can f lourish. A simple compliment can turn a bad night into a great one or just make someone feel good for a moment. A study published by the International Journal of Drug Policy found that just taking photos together can lead to an increase in fun and belonging for women.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA senior Lena McDonough talked about this phenomenon. She said when she was in a little town in Spain, she spent 20 minutes in the bathroom line talking to a girl she didn’t know, complimenting each other and having the best conversations.

“If it’s just two strangers alone, there’s always a moment there,” McDonough said, explaining how she normally experiences these conversations when she’s away from her group of friends.

There’s no shortage of stress for women in drinking environments.

We face scrutiny, increasing sexual aggression from men and a load of other insecurities. The findings of the study “Blurred Lines?” Sexual Aggression and Barroom Culture show that intoxicated women are targeted for advances of sexual aggression, making it necessary for this womanly solidarity to extend into protection.

As LSA senior Ella Simon

recounted in an interview with The Daily, she was recently at New York Pizza Depot with a friend when they checked in on a girl crying next to a guy.

“We just wanted to make sure that she felt safe with the guy and that she knew him and that she felt comfortable going back with him,” Simon explained. “It was a great moment of female protection.”

I’ve had similar moments myself, having to make sure a woman was OK in a possibly dangerous scenario, and I’ve heard plenty of stories from my friends about them rescuing female strangers from unsafe situations. We’re always on the lookout for potential danger, not only for ourselves, but for those around us, too. We’re afraid. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data on sexual violence, showing that more than 50% of women experience sexual violence in their lifetime, and one in three women experience sexual harassment in public places.

Women shouldn’t need this solidarity in order to feel welcome or safe. Today’s social culture is one that judges women for drinking, going out, having fun and dressing “slutty.” This forces women to support each other to ensure their safety.

Withholding judgment for the behaviors that make this solidarity necessary normalizes making fun of women in these situations. Consider the phrase “white girl wasted,” a phrase I myself have used endearingly, but others have used to make fun of girls who may not know their limits, judging them for drinking and going out at all.

I love the solidarity between drunk women, but I just wish it wasn’t necessary. Society has failed women by forcing them into a space where they must turn to each other for support.

few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a person who I had just met, and he was attempting to guess my major. When I offhandedly mentioned that I’m in a sorority while he was guessing, he immediately looked at me and said that because of my Fraternity & Sorority Life affiliation, my major obviously couldn’t be too smart. He isn’t the first person to assume that I’m dumb because I’m in a sorority.

Other times, people tell me that I must be basic, shallow or fake.

These are all common sorority girl stereotypes, ones we probably have heard or even believe.

However, these stereotypes conceptualize women in sororities in a wholly two-dimensional way, controlling the narrative of how we look and act — a misogynistic strategy that has historically worked against women. When people think of a sorority girl, they often think of a skinny, blonde, upper-middle class girl who loves to party and doesn’t care about her school work. Obviously, not every girl in a sorority fits this mold, and stereotypes like this only serve to hurt women in FSL and stigmatize FSL as a whole.

LSA sophomore Emily Mitchell is from Livonia and is a member of Alpha Gamma Delta. She’s had plenty of experience on the receiving end of these stereotypes, though she said they couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I also get the vibe that sometimes people think I joined a sorority just so I could go out and party all the time, which is not true,” Mitchell said.

Nursing sophomore Eve Collon is from Bloomfield Hills and is a member of Alpha Phi and has had a similar experience to Mitchell. However, she credits her chapter with helping ground her.

A sorority’s sense of sisterhood gives members a comfortable environment in which they know they’re supported, and this support helps members grow into the people they want to become.

“I have also received comments that insinuate that my purpose at (the University of Michigan) is solely to attend social events and go out on the weekends,” Collon said. “This disappoints me because these accusations couldn’t be more wrong. I am here to do one thing

and that is to receive my degree in nursing. I just happen to be lucky enough to have the opportunity to be surrounded by such strong and independent women that allow me to feel free and that also provide me with outlets to relieve my stress.

Many people on the outside of Greek life do not understand the meaning of sisterhood, but without my chapter, I would be so lost.”

There’s a continual pattern of America’s patriarchal society putting women down for enjoying their lives and being in spaces that empower them. These spaces are a necessity, especially in a time as confusing as someone’s early 20s. Empowering spaces like sororities can help women navigate this difficult time as they come into their own. It offers a safe environment for growth, which can often be difficult to find.

For example, in the sports world, women are often put down or treated differently, even though they exist in inadmissible amounts.

Surveys have found that 60% of female NFL fans have had football mansplained to them while attending games, and another 30% have been quizzed on their football knowledge by male fans. Another 20% of respondents said men called them “fake fans” and, sadly, 13% have reported feeling unsafe at a sporting event. Society puts women down not only in maledominated spaces, but in spaces by and for women as well.

While girls in sororities are used to dealing with these stereotypes, that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt.

These experiences affect how girls in sororities act around others, especially if they’re worried about being preemptively judged for their affiliation. LSA sophomore Samantha Doran is from Kingsford and is a member of Zeta Tau Alpha and, like both Mitchell and Collon, said she has personally struggled with telling others about her affiliation “These stereotypes make me feel uncomfortable when mentioning my affiliation, so I tend to not directly say that I’m part of a sorority unless asked directly,” Doran said. “I don’t want to be judged and associated with these preconceived notions.”

Sororities can be great environments for members, but by continually stereotyping girls that join, it collectively stigmatizes sororities. As a whole, spaces centered around women are often criticized. It goes along with

society’s apparent need to put down women for enjoying spaces strictly for them. To rob women of an environment that is dedicated to and centered around them only exacerbates the discrimination they already face.

Society attempts to place women into certain boxes, but if a woman fits into her box, it still isn’t good enough. A girl might try and fit into her “stereotypical sorority girl” box, but then she’s too fake, so she tries to fit into a different box — There’s no way to win. However, sororities offer supportive spaces where girls do not need to worry about what box they fit into.

Instead, girls can be whatever they want to be and they have sisters who will support that.

“I would say that overall sororities are created to form bonds between amazing, independent, intelligent, driven and strong women who share the same key values of life and treating someone based off of the above mentioned biases disregards the complexity of an individual,” Doran said.

Sororities don’t only help their members, but they also benefit the communities they are a part of.

Each organization has a different philanthropic cause, which they raise money for and donate to. It’s a way for members to get involved in their communities, while also giving back and learning the importance of charity. Supposedly, sorority girls are shallow and only care about partying. In reality, the organizations these girls join teach them the importance of giving back and help them turn into mature and three-dimensional women.

Collon is involved with her chapter’s philanthropy and knows her sorority will help her grow into a better person.

“I am the assistant to the director of philanthropy and applied to take over her position during my junior year,” Collon said. “Being in Alpha Phi means more than just friendship. It means serving a bigger community, raising money for a cause near to our hearts, and finding ways to grow into a respectable leader.”

Nonetheless, people blame sorority girls for feeding into and furthering the stereotypes that they’re fake, shallow and basic.

This belief often leads to sorority girls wanting to prove people wrong and actively work against stereotypes.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Opinion

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 — 11

Don’t buy Christmas gifts this year ETHAN BITTNER Opinion Columnist

Content warning: this article contains mention of depression and suicide anta Claus was not always the white-bearded, redsuited and stockingcapped fellow we know today.

This archetype, like many other beloved elements of Christmas, has consumerist roots. Santa’s modern look was standardized by a 1931 CocaCola advertisement. Prior to the advent of modern consumer society, depictions of Santa Claus were influenced heavily by local cultures and varied worldwide. Early celebrations of the holiday were different as well, characterized by modest feasts, family gatherings and small gift exchanges. Now, however, Christmas celebrations are characterized by extravagant events and excessive spending.

Although historically associated with love and happiness, Christmas causes many to make poor financial decisions that lower their well-being and the well-being of the planet. We should rethink how we celebrate Christmas and remove the commercial elements that have come to define it.

The culture of indulgent holiday gift-buying, while morally admirable, has adverse effects for many Americans. In 2022, 31% of consumers took on debt to finance their holiday spending. These were not strategic financial decisions, either. Sixty-three percent of people who took on debt in

S

2022 didn’t plan to do so, a large increase from 54% of people in 2020. Part of this trend results from the social pressure to spend a lot when gift shopping. Ahead of the 2022 holiday season, nearly one in four Gen-Z shoppers said that they felt pressured to spend more than they were comfortable with. The financial insecurity caused by holiday splurging is detrimental to mental health.

People with debt are three times more likely to have depression, anxiety and stress. These effects can have scary consequences, as those in debt are more likely to attempt suicide.

When people do buy expensive gifts, they might be wasting their money. Joel Waldfogel, an economist and associate dean of MBA programs at the University of Minnesota, wrote a paper in 1993 called “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.”

Deadweight loss is the cost to society when supply and demand are in disequilibrium. In his paper, Waldfogel asserted that people’s inability to guess other people’s gift preferences creates deadweight loss, meaning that gift receivers are left worse off than they would have been if given the power to make their own consumption decisions.

In a survey of Yale University undergraduates, he found that gift-giving eliminates between one-tenth and one-third of the value paid by the buyer.

Based on the 2001 aggregate holiday spending of $40 billion, Waldfogel found that the deadweight loss associated with Christmas is about 10% as large as the social cost created by income taxation. This percentage is likely far higher today, given

Design by Grace Filbin

that Americans are expected to spend between approximately $957 billion to $967 billion during the holidays in 2023. In an economic sense, people would be better off by planning not to give and receive gifts during the holidays, and instead just spend their money on themselves.

It is, however, difficult to quantify the emotional utility that giving or receiving a gift produces. A gift is rarely valued solely by its monetary value. We use the phrase “it’s the thought

that counts” for a reason. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Engineering sophomore Victoria Jan reaffirmed this notion.

“For me, I value gifts that are given with intent the most,” Jan said. “A gift that someone clearly put a lot of thought into finding based on what they know I would like feels like an extension of their care for me.”

This emphasis on thoughtfulness might be the key to reducing consumerism. Over-

consumption results in people buying things they don’t need for no emotional benefit. This trend can be reversed by giving more personalized consideration to each gift, bringing greater satisfaction to both the buyer and the receiver.

Holiday splurging is disastrous for the environment as well. In the United States, excess waste increases by up to 25% between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Nearly all of this ends up in landfills. Municipal solid

waste is the third-largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the U.S. — 14.3% of it in 2021. For the first 20 years after the gas is released, methane has a warming power 80 times greater than carbon dioxide. The Christmas season is just the most extreme example of excessive consumerism in the U.S.; buyers should adopt more minimalist purchasing habits year-round.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Want to live better? Maybe AI can help KATE MICALLEF Opinion Columnist

Y

ou come home to a barren fridge, realizing you have no idea what to make for dinner. So, you enter into ChatGPT all the miscellaneous ingredients at your disposal.

Within seconds, you have multiple recipes to choose from. Afterward, you follow a personalized workout routine, generated to meet your specific health goals and using only the equipment you have at home.

You end the night by watching a movie, but you’re in need of a new recommendation: You enter your three favorite films and genre of choice; artificial intelligence creates a list of recommendations specific to you.

As AI slowly finds its way into our everyday routines, it can

seem like our lives are starting to mirror a futuristic sci-fi movie. We’re finding uses for AI far beyond just the workplace and classroom. ChatGPT has become a household name, and it’s changing our lifestyle habits.

Data scientist Louis Maddox told the New York Times how he integrates ChatGPT into his daily life. When in a time crunch, Maddox describes his traditional gym routine to the AI and asks which workouts to prioritize. From there, ChatGPT works as a fitness coach, giving suggestions and an approximate time estimate for the workout.

Maddox said that using AI to complement his fitness journey holds him accountable.

Maddox is one of many individuals incorporating AI into their lifestyles. The New York Times highlights the diverse uses of AI — creating custom Spotify playlists, helping people

learn languages and planning outdoor garden arrangements among others.

Individuals are starting to turn to AI in their daily lives due to its flexibility and personalization. With so much lifestyle advice on the internet, it can be hard to find specific content tailored to your needs.

People like Maddox use AI because it can provide specific, detailed recommendations that are difficult to obtain elsewhere.

Although 52% of Americans are more concerned than excited about the increasing prevalence of AI in daily life, Maddox demonstrates what a healthy balance can look like.

AI is here to stay, and though it raises many valid concerns, AI has the potential to enhance our lifestyles and improve our habits. But it’s up to us how we define our relationship with this new technology.

Certainly, AI should not be used as a crutch for decisionmaking. The World Health Organization cautions users that AI can spread misinformation, and other research shows that it contains racial biases. We should be wary about the accuracy of health advice and not look to AI to answer all our questions.

However, when used correctly, AI can serve as a complementary tool for individuals looking to improve their habits at home.

One study found that chatbots — AI-powered conversational agents — were successful in modifying an individual’s lifestyle behaviors.

Lead researcher Ben Singh explained his optimism for AI in the realm of behavioral management. The results of the study support the idea that AI is capable of promoting a better quality of life and healthier habits.

Specifically, chatbot

interventions led to an increase in activity levels, better sleep quality and duration and more fruit and vegetable consumption.

Singh attributed the success of the study to the ability of chatbots to deliver interactive advice, uniquely designed from the user’s preferences and established habits.

Still, Singh warned users against leaning too much on AI for health advice. For now, he said chatbots should be used to complement human coaching, not replace it.

The personalization capability of AI as a life coach is also helping make people’s busy lives easier. By streamlining repetitive tasks, AI can be used to help with time management and increase productivity by subtracting unnecessary steps in one’s daily routine.

Kelsey Szemborski, for example, leverages the benefits

of AI as a shopping assistant. As a busy mom of three, Szemborski told the New York Times how ChatGPT dramatically cut down the time it takes her to meal prep each week. She requests a budget-friendly menu, listing her children’s preferences and several dietary restrictions.

Where she once spent hours searching the internet for glutenfree recipes that catered to her children’s allergies, Szemborski now has a list of recipes and a complete grocery list within minutes.

With AI continuing to be developed, we are still far from the point where we can place our trust in this technology. Nonetheless, AI has demonstrated its potential to help people live better. So if it can act as my personal shopper or simplify my routine when my day is especially hectic, why not give it a try?

Patching a post-COVID University back together LARA TINAWI

Opinion Columnist

L

ooking around a public space, there’s one thing you will certainly find: people glued to their phones.

Living on campus, I watch plenty of people — in dining halls, dorms or the library — sit alone, content as they watch something on their phone or are on a call with someone else. I can’t blame them — I do the same thing, and I genuinely don’t mind being alone.

However, since the pandemic and an increased reliance on smartphones, it’s almost as if people have lost the social norms that come along with being in public.

Having access to a world of information and communication is a game changer. The measures implemented during the COVID19 pandemic to limit the spread of the disease, such as social distancing and quarantining, influenced how people interacted with each other.

Studies have found the benefit of smartphones on morale and facilitating interactions between people during the pandemic, but their lasting effects have been detrimental to interactions following.

One difficulty of living on

campus is that your experience and comfort are heavily reliant on those who surround you.

Sharing rooms, common areas and restrooms with other people certainly has positives, but sometimes the negative aspects completely overshadow them.

From people not flushing toilets to leaving messes in the kitchen and common areas or being excessively loud at inappropriate times, it’s clear that many people have a sense of entitlement over public spaces. As someone who’s had a roommate who stole my things, left moldy food in our room for weeks and would leave her alarms running for two hours straight starting at 6 a.m., I have experienced this first hand.

People were stuck inside, with limited physical contact with others, and that has had lasting impacts on how we behave.

As a result of the pandemic, there have been significant changes in the norms of human behavior. Reports have shown rising rudeness and incivility, and studies have shown that people are more likely to be rude online than in person because they can hide behind their screens to do so. But since the pandemic, this behavior has begun manifesting itself during in-person interactions. All of this societal deterioration has led to people to argue that humans

have become more selfish as a result of the pandemic. It makes sense that people are putting themselves first in this increasingly individualistic society, but selfishness begets selfishness. We should not perpetuate this cycle.

A primary example of selfishness on campus can be found in the school gyms. One of the most infuriating feelings has to be waiting in line for one piece of equipment as the person using it spends 30 minutes on it, most of that time being on their phone as they “rest.” Smartphones have been ruining workouts for years, and it has only gotten worse since the pandemic. One’s experience at the gym should not rely on another person and when they decide to get off their phone.

The most detrimental effect of the pandemic has been on the socialization of children. Studies have shown that children born between March 2020 and June 2021 scored lower in language, motor skills and thinking tests.

Interactions with other children are essential to development, and many young children during the pandemic were extremely isolated from their peers and suffered because of it. Physical proximity is an important component in children’s friendships, and face-to-face interactions influence a child’s

Design by Arunika Shee

personality and behaviors. If we cannot rectify the wrongs in our social interactions by encouraging children to develop their social skills in physical settings, there is no hope for the future in faceto-face interactions. Primary schools need to reinforce the importance of physical proximity in their classrooms, rather than encouraging online learning alternatives, and incorporate social interactions to aid the development of children.

For those of us who are a little

older and in charge of our own fates, we need to return to prepandemic social norms in public spaces, while still incorporating positive improvements like safety and health measures.

It’ll be difficult to change how chronically online society is now, but put your phone away every once in a while and experience a space, respectfully. Be mindful of the environment you are in, and respect the unsaid social rules of the space, such as not talking in classrooms while a teacher

is lecturing or cleaning up after yourself in a public setting.

Though people might be more individualistic now, their actions still can impact others, and we need to be more mindful of our presence in public spaces.

So, this is for my next-door neighbor, who I lovingly refer to as guitar boy for his regular midnight jam sessions: The walls are thin, and there are music rooms three floors down. Go play those same three notes down there, thanks!

12 — Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Opinion

The Michigan Daily —michigandaily.com

The language requirement isn’t all bad, but it can be better QUIN ZAPOLI

2023 Editorial Page Editor

Originally published December 8, 2021 ne of the biggest advantages of going to such a large school like the University of Michigan is the overwhelmingly diverse suite of courses available.

Next semester I will be taking German 102. If all goes well, in the fall of 2022, I’ll be taking German 231. I will finally complete German 232, and the LSA language requirement, in late April 2023. However, there is nothing more discouraging than limping out of a difficult test knowing it’s not “just one tough course” but four.

LSA’s language requirement — “fourth term proficiency” — certainly has its benefits, namely cultural immersion and the opportunity to engage with students from different areas of study, but with them comes a slew of solvable problems.

The language requirement’s biggest drawback is the hefty credit requirement. A student taking a full 16-credit language sequence could otherwise complete an entire minor.

No other LSA requirement is as extensive. The area

O

distribution requirements necessitate seven credits in each of the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

The other skills requirements — race and ethnicity, writing and quantitative reasoning — can be met with one or two courses. More so, there are plenty of courses that meet both a distribution and a skills requirement, freeing up time for more major-related courses or enlightening electives. No language class can be used similarly.

Many avoid the full 16-credit sequence through placement tests. Students from less fortunate backgrounds who went to less aff luent high schools may not have that option. High schools in lowincome communities, often with a high proportion of minority students, offer less rigorous and less diverse foreign language programs that start at an older age.

Because of their high school background, some students may be forced into the foursemester sequence. Should they be placed into a higher-level language course, those with a less effective foreign language education might struggle. My own discomfort with jumping into second-year Spanish,

knowing I had not taken Spanish in years and hesitant to risk failure, is why I started over with elementary German.

The lack of choice, at least in coursework, makes the fourterm language sequence even more troubling. The language requirement is fundamentally different from other LSA requirements, which can be fulfilled through a varied set of courses. Yes, students can choose from dozens of languages, but the process of learning those languages is mechanically similar. Students will always have to memorize vocabulary, understand grammatical rules and practice pronunciation.

Compare that to courses that fill the natural science credit. STEMminded students can take rigorous courses in chemistry or physics, while social science students, like myself, have plenty of approachable options. For example, I took an ecological issues course, which allowed me to learn the basics of environmental science in part through environmental policies.

Despite the curriculum’s length and my own struggles with language learning, I like going to German class. I like my classmates and my instructor.

It’s time for a national service JULIAN BARNARD

2023 Editorial Page Editor

Originally published September 27, 2021. ey you! Do you want to explore the world? Do you want to do interesting things with interesting people? Do you want to get paid to do it? I’d like to tell you how you can, all while helping out your fellow Americans. Our country faces many problems, but today, I would like to focus on just three of them. The first is polarization. We are more divided than we have been in recent memory, and this polarization seems to spread to a new sector of our society every day. The second is physical infrastructure.

Our roads are covered with potholes, many of our public housing developments are in states of disrepair and the majesty of our national parks is obscured by decaying infrastructure.

Finally, our young people are more aimless than they have been in recent history. There is a solution to all of these things, and it is a robust national service program. It is time that we, as a country, invest in one year of service for 18-year-olds to do work that needs to be done, cut down polarization and help millions of young people find their ways in life.

What do I mean by a national service? I mean enlisting every 18-year-old and sending them off to work in a different part of the country for a year.

Filling potholes in Kentucky, giving vaccines in New York or killing invasive snakes in Florida. These are just a few of the things they will be doing,

H

each new public servant will be given a stipend of around $500 a month, as well as food and housing to go along with it.

I, along with many before me, propose that every person who graduates high school should be expected to serve, barring any major exceptions such as health problems or childcare responsibilities.

Our country is more divided now than it has been in recent history. A smaller and smaller number of Americans can say they have people close to them with differing political views.

Exposing young Americans to people with different views will do good for developing a more tolerant, less polarized society. We saw a similar effect occur when the military was desegregated in 1948.

Units that were desegregated showed more tolerant behavior towards those different from themselves, and unit performance improved. For many historical reasons, we are a politically polarized country.

Democrats and Republicans shop at different stores and work different jobs. We need a program to funnel young people together, even if only for 12 months, so that the next generation of Americans with different social identities can recognize each other’s shared humanity.

We live in a time with skyhigh rates of teen depression.

Many young people are aimless, often self-medicating the empty feeling they experience with drugs and alcohol. A national service would allow young people to connect with their labor in a way not possible throughout schooling.

It allows them to socialize with other young people while also affirming their commitment

to making a better world for their neighbors. Research has demonstrated that service for others is rewarding both because of the immediate feelgood effects of doing something good, but also because of the beneficial social relationships that people gain through it.

Ignoring the benefits to the conscripts, our country still has a lot of work to do. Take infrastructure for example.

The American Society of Civil Engineers reports that 43% of our nation’s roads are in either poor or mediocre condition.

Our national parks are also in states of disrepair, with billions of dollars of repairs needed to get them up to snuff. Rivers are polluted, the unhoused are suffering and forest fires are rampant. There is so much good that approximately 3.5 million civil service foot soldiers could do for a nation with problems like ours. A model for this sort of program can be found in the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s. The CCC did some of the most important work of the 20th century, and it is our duty to make sure that their work does not go to waste by allowing our country to wallow in disrepair.

Some critics cite this kind of program’s financial cost. But the cost of this program, even if it reaches the $75 billion mark, will be worth it several times over. It doesn’t just benefit the participants; it also enhances the ability of the federal government to get things done.

We absolutely can expect that the government will be able to utilize these millions of young people doing their national service to all areas of the government.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

The other requirements being so broad means some courses, like the ecological issues course I took last year, become inundated with social science students looking to meet a natural science requirement with as little stress as possible.

In other words, because the actual work of learning a language is generally uniform, it is easier to meet people from more diverse disciplines.

In German class, I’ve met and learned with a theater major, a computer science major, a nursing student and a law student, as opposed to the aspiring political science majors in every other course I’ve taken so far.

My instructor is a graduate student from Germany. This is her first time in the United States. Her knowledge of German culture, outside textbook blurbs, has yielded some of the most valuable and intriguing things I’ve learned.

I chose to take German not because I intend to become f luent in the language but because I find the culture and the history interesting.

We’ve read a famous German children’s book, watched the acclaimed German film “Run Lola Run” and learned about German politics, schools, food

and relationships. German class encouraged me to bingewatch the excellent Germanlanguage TV show “Dark.” Yes, I can order food in a German restaurant or ask for directions, but, for me, the real value is seeing Germany not through stereotypes but as a diverse and beautiful country.

Culture and classmates are the things that even someone like me, who both dislikes and struggles at language acquisition, cannot avoid benefitting from. It just so happens that LSA has a system in place which offers another option for those who struggle with traditional language learning while maintaining those benefits.

Students can petition for a language requirement exemption, allowing them to “substitute culture courses for language courses.” To do so, though, students must either have “a documented history of extreme difficulty” in language learning or have already taken and struggled in multiple language courses.

Allowing anyone to take culture courses in place of language courses would maintain the current requirement’s benefits while giving students who would

rather not learn a language a different way to engage. It would also allow LSA to reasonably lower the requirement from four semesters to two or three, because f luency, which takes time, would no longer be the goal. Instead of culture being assigned as a short reading at the end of every chapter, that aspect could be made central to classroom learning objectives.

More so, creating an alternative certainly would not limit those who enjoy studying language.

Giving students just two ways to meet the language requirement, culture classes or language classes, still would not match the broad freedoms of LSA’s other requirements. That means there would still be no way for students from similar disciplines to congregate in relatively easier courses, as seen with LSA’s other requirements. A second option would therefore maintain student diversity — a huge boon of the current system.

A cultural option would also strengthen the ability of LSA students to learn from diverse cultures, by allowing risk-averse students to experience cultures with a more challenging language.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Being a feminist and reality TV fan is possible Originally published November 28,2022. am a proud “Bachelor Nation” fanatic. From “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” to the spinoff “Bachelor in Paradise,” you can count on the fact that I will be seated in front of the TV live-tweeting and silently judging the romantic decisions of complete strangers. I

programs because of the drama and the “mindless” nature, and they are more likely to consume them than men by 3% when it comes to dating programs and by 8% in terms of docuseries viewership. Women are the primary targets for the advertising of these shows as well, along with the brand partnerships and the oftentimes highly sexualized love interests shown via promotion methodologies.

This amount of marketing care emits the false impression that female stories and situations will be factually shown when these

in reality television goes much further than harmful stereotypes.

Too often in these programs, women are pitted against one another in romantic, social and professional conflicts, and their suffering is treated as a marketing and drama-fueling tool. Even when women are depicted as strong and independent in these series through their goals and actions, which are usually considered positive traits, social media tends to perceive them as a “mean girl” or the “villain” of the program.

When it comes to representation

love the sweet dates and the formal dresses, but I especially feed off of the drama — miscommunication, deceit and betrayal are the heart behind these shows, drawing in an average of 3.26 million viewers for just the recent season of “The Bachelorette.”

From reality TV programs like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” to new-age Netflix original productions like “Love is Blind,” these shows rake in high viewership and social media presence. These programs bring people together over animosity toward certain “characters” and admiration for heartfelt love confessions, creating an important sense of community in the digital age. Still, reality television has the ability to create division as well, much further than choosing one love interest or sister over another; it has created a falsified account of how certain people are meant to behave, communicate and love, and the majority of the victims to these production tactics are women.

The primary demographic for reality television programs is women aged 18 to 34. Statistics show that women enjoy these

shows air, but in reality, women are stereotyped and misrepresented in disrespectful and borderline sexist ways on reality shows.

Rackham student Enrica Bridgewater is studying communication and media and psychology with a focus on the representation of minority groups in entertainment media. When I asked her about her perspective on gender stereotypes in reality television, she said there is a lot of “nuance” to them, but there are certain ways in which women are portrayed in these programs, especially as personalities like the “overly emotional” or the “sexually promiscuous” one.

These social labels are not negative in theory but tend to have more negative connotations when attributed to women, whether they be reality television stars or average members of society. Bridgewater said that “stereotypes are socially constructed but ingrained in our lives,” so it’s “hard to turn off our brains to not see them.”

These stereotypes tend to become especially destructive when shows driven by them are rapidly gaining popularity and influence.

The representation of women

in the media, women can’t seem to win, which proves negative for the female viewers of these programs — especially the young ones.

This negative portrayal of female personalities in reality television creates a dilemma: can we consider ourselves to be feminists while also being active enjoyers of such misrepresentative and harmful media? Bridgewater tells me that we can: “People who want equality for women can watch reality TV,” she said. “You can dissect the things you like and the things you think are problematic.”

Feeding off of sexist tropes and pure sexual objectification, there is national debate over whether or not reality television can be “feminist” or not, and there are multiple perspectives. Many argue that these programs promote toxic standards and misogynistic online spaces, while others, like Bridgewater, say that they have the power to open dialogues about gender stereotypes.

As a feminist and reality television obsessor myself, I am under the impression that you can do and be both.

LINDSEY SPENCER

2024 Editorial Page Editor

I

Design by Leah Hoogterp

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Men’s mental health is important to more than just men ZHANE YAMIN

2023 Editorial Page Editor

Originally published June, 28, 2023. Content warnings: Gun violence, suicide ccording to the CDC, men account for 79% of suicides in the United States. Suicide rates are two times higher for men than for women globally, and four times higher in the United States. It is the eighth leading cause of death for men, right behind influenza.

Yet, as Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close, it troubles me how absolutely little awareness I saw drawn to the issue.

There was little to no content on social media by higher education

A

or government institutions, companies, publications and especially by other men. Initially, I thought this may be due to confusion with the more general men’s health movement “Movember” in November. But unfortunately, many of our beloved institutions, such as the University of Michigan, haven’t drawn nearly enough accessible awareness to the issue during that time either (though there are five sentences detailing the issue and resources on the University’s Human Resources site).

So why does it seem like people don’t care about an issue that affects about half of the world? There are a lot of potential reasons. It could be that it’s not trendy enough for performative activists, like many companies, to create content. It could be that social media has

exposed us to so many injustices that we find it hard to truly and appropriately care for each one.

Or, it could be that it’s simply poor timing with Pride Month and that defending a historically privileged group during June leaves people with a bad taste in their mouths.

Despite the fact that this month may be deemed, or abused as, a distraction from other pressing injustices, supporting men’s mental health actually works to dismantle some of the other societal issues we face.

Whatever the reasoning behind the lack of awareness may be, there is a common but incorrect narrative that underlies them, one that’s visible even in the various publications that do talk about men’s mental health: Men’s mental health is only important to men.

This isn’t true, and it’s dismissive of how important the issue really is.

To understand why this isn’t true, it’s important to first understand why mental health issues disproportionately affect men. Thankfully, there’s been much research done in this direction and, maybe quite intuitively, the answer lies in traditional masculinity and gender roles.

While it’s true that the patriarchal structure of Western society has conferred numerous benefits to men, it has also enclosed them, to a certain extent, within that structure. This can cause men to suppress their true emotions in lieu of solitude or to characterize feelings of sadness, loneliness and guilt (feelings attributed to mental illness such as depression) as anger, hostility or self-destructive risky

behaviors. Even to those who don’t exhibit the typical “machismo” caricature of masculinity can still feel its effects.

More and more, people are starting to understand this interplay between toxic masculinity, men’s mental health and issues that affect other groups of people. Though not ideal, the social media trend about dads going to therapy and its potential positive effects is an example of this. When you consider that young people are more aware about mental health issues and that father figures are usually the clearest examples of masculinity in our lives, this doesn’t seem surprising. But, this only touches the surface of the impact that men’s mental health has on society.

Ninety-seven percent of mass shooters are men, many of whom

had a history of previous mental illness. Men are 50% more likely to be intoxicated during fatal car accidents and two times as likely to binge drink. Ninety percent of all homicides recorded worldwide were perpetrated by men. While these numbers are stark and indicative of the mental health epidemic men face worldwide, they are, first and foremost, sad and unfortunate.

In a patriarchal society where men hold most of the power, with the 118th Congress of the United States being 72% male, lapses in their mental health can cause negative reverberations felt by all communities, especially those who are already disadvantaged by this power structure.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com WRESTLING

ANNABELLE YE For the Daily

On Dec. 3, 2022, thenredshirt senior Lucas Davison of Northwestern stepped onto the mat for the heavyweight finals in the Cliff Keen Invitational. After two days of undefeated matches, one final battle stood between him and the heavyweight title.

His opponent? Former Michigan heavyweight and 2023 Dan Hodge Trophy winner, Mason Parris. In a tight 6-4 bout, Parris won and Davison finished the tournament as runner-up.

One year later, No. 3 Davison found himself in familiar-butopposite territory as he faced Iowa State’s No. 7 Yonger Bastida in the heavyweight finals of the 2023 Cliff Keen Invitational after transferring to the Wolverines this off-season. But a new singlet did not shift the narrative for Davison this time around as he once again found himself in the same position he was in the year be-

Sports

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 — 13

Lucas Davison hungry for more after runner-up finish at Cliff Keen Invitational fore.

Taking on an initially defensive approach, Davison was able to hold off Bastida’s first few attacks, even scrambling out of Bastida’s control after being carried above his shoulders then slammed on the mat. However, while Davison was unable to capitalize on offensive opportunities, Bastida sealed the deal with nine seconds left on the clock via single-leg takedown. The 5-3 decision left Davison at second place, once again.

“Obviously, second place is not what we’re aiming for, so it kind of burns and it’s my last opportunity at that tournament to win,” Davison said. “But ultimately, the goal isn’t this midseason tournament. It’s NCAAs, it’s Big Tens.”

And that looking forward mentality is shared by Michigan coach Sean Bormet, who described the Wolverines’ performance at the tournament as “mediocre” and stated that the team did not reach its fullest potential.

However, amid a series of disap-

pointing bouts, Davison stood out to Bormet as a leader within the team by being the sole podium finisher.

“I thought he was aggressive and got through a lot of his offense, with the exception of his finals match,” Bormet said. “He had a tremendous effort, he just needed to let his offense go a little earlier in that match.”

While falling short of the heavyweight champion title was a tough pill to swallow, Davison sees the outcome as fuel for his ambitions this season.

“If you don’t face hardship and you don’t struggle this early in the season, sometimes you don’t really have much direction or much focus for your training,” Davison said. “Sometimes a hiccup in a tournament or a match like that is really just a blessing in disguise. It just doesn’t always feel that way.”

Being a high performer and leading force isn’t a foreign concept to Davison. Throughout his time at Northwestern, Davison

had placed fifth at the 2023 NCAA Championships, was the 2022 Midlands heavyweight champion and was a two-time NCAA All-American at the heavyweight weight class. But Davison wants more after transferring to Michi-

gan for his final year.

“I felt that I needed to change things up and try to put myself in an optimal training environment, which I think Michigan provides,” Davison said. “That’s why I came here.”

A year later, this time dressed in maize and blue, Davison found himself in the same position in Las Vegas, and time will tell if he lives up to his championship goals in his final year of eligibility.

RILEY NIEBOER/Daily

GYMNASTICS

SOCCER

‘Turning the I can’ts into the I cans’: Leading the way, Mackenzie Gilmore provides hope to amputees Sierra Brooks begins by increasing their accessibility to soccer last campaign with Michigan JORDAN KLEIN Daily Sports Writer

June 4, 2021 was a typical workday for Mackenzie Gilmore — until it wasn’t.

Like any other day, Gilmore sat at her desk at Baker Orthotics and Prosthetics in Fort Worth, Texas.

Then, Dr. Fred Sorells — president of the faith-based nonprofit Operation Go Quickly — approached her about an opportunity that would eventually change her life.

Do you want to begin coaching amputee soccer?

The position was a perfect fit for Gilmore. She is a lifelong soccer player who coached able-bodied soccer for more than 10 years and committed her career to helping amputees through her work in orthotics and prosthetics. In 2019, she began working with the Adaptive Training Foundation to provide general athletic training for amputees.

“It was like God was preparing me to do this amputee soccer stuff,” Gilmore told The Michigan Daily. “You have nursing clinical knowledge, you have (orthotics and prosthetics) knowledge, now you have adaptive training knowledge.

Oh, you have soccer knowledge.

Here’s this beautiful opportunity to coach amputee soccer. So I was like, wow, all these opportunities (are) coming together. Yes — let’s do this.”

Two days later, Gilmore took the field to coach her first practice for Lone Star Adaptive Soccer, the start of a journey that has touched the lives of countless amputees and their families. Having only coached able-bodied soccer before, Gilmore had to adapt to the new style of play and different challenges amputees face on the field. She observed the biomechanics of the game and eventually discovered the importance of putting herself in the shoes of her players. Upon

doing so, she began walking around practice on a pair of “sticks” — the forearm crutches amputee soccer players use to move around the field — to simulate the movements of the players she coached.

While her growth of the sport most recently reached Ann Arbor for a camp at the University, her work with amputee soccer has brought her around the world. Gilmore has been to Western Africa and Ukraine for camps to spread the sport and to Istanbul, Turkey, for the 2022 Amputee Soccer World Cup. In 2022, Gilmore and Sorells launched and coached at Camp Possible — an amputee soccer camp hosted around the world — in Sierra Leone. This one in particular was created for women, with more than 40 women from five countries attending. They participated in a week-long series of skill development and scrimmaging while establishing a sense of community with their fellow athletes. Throughout the week, Gilmore saw the women’s confidence increase as players and, more importantly, as people. “(On) day one, they didn’t even want to really make eye contact.

Some of them wouldn’t even come onto the field,” Gilmore said. “Fast forward to the end of the week, we had a whole parade for them.

They’re dancing in the streets,

making eye contact, making friends.”

In September, Gilmore and Sorells — in collaboration with LynFit — held a Camp Possible in Ukraine amid its ongoing war with Russia.

“They’ve left everything behind.

Some of them have lost their limbs due to the act of war right now,” Gilmore said. “They’re told they’re never (going to) walk again. And for them to come out on the field, learn how to use sticks, learn more about their abilities than their disabilities … it’s been a huge impact.”

In addition to helping facilitate the camp, LynFit donated a surgical scope to a Ukrainian medical clinic to help doctors complete more efficient surgical techniques and amputations and held surgical education, wound care and provision of prosthesis training. Currently, Shepard’s Foundation — a nonprofit focused on providing relief for Ukrainian refugees — is funding the construction of a medical clinic at Camp Maximum, where Camp Possible was previously held.

Gilmore continues her work to increase opportunities for women in amputee soccer. Until recently, women did not have their own national teams. Now, the first Amputee Soccer Women’s World Cup is scheduled for next year.

At the same time, Gilmore — who

Courtesy of Alexandra Crilley

now serves as the President of the U.S. Amputee Football Federation (USAFF), a non-profit looking to advance the game of amputee soccer for all, is looking to increase the game’s accessibility for women at recreational levels by establishing camps and clinics around the country. USAFF board member Emily Eitzman, who was coached

by Gilmore as a kid, organized the October camp in Ann Arbor.

“Women are often not seen as equals in the able-bodied women’s game,” Gilmore said. “You’ve seen how much they’ve fought for equal rights, right? So we’re starting to preach that in the amputee world.”

Gilmore and Robert Maloy — her co-coach with Lone Star Adaptive Elite — began working with the American Adaptive Soccer National Team in early 2022. However, the American team was already wellstaffed, meaning Gilmore and Maloy’s coaching expertise was more valuable elsewhere. Haiti’s national team needed additional coaches, and upon the request of Sorells, Gilmore and Maloy enthusiastically stepped into their new roles.

“It was a challenging shift because I’m like, ‘I’m American, should I be coaching for Haiti?’ ” Gilmore said. “This is weird. My players are on the American team, but it was a beautiful unfoldment again, that community that’s around it.”

Gilmore and Maloy helped coach the Haitian national team to a fourth-place finish in the 2022 Adaptive Soccer World Cup in Istanbul. Gilmore, who served as the team’s physiotherapist — helping players through day-to-day pains and injuries — also coached the team’s goalkeepers. She remains proud of the decision to provide her expertise to Haiti.

“It just seemed like Haiti needed my resources more,” Gilmore said.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

GYMNASTICS

Michigan showcases depth in exhibition season opener ALINA LEVINE

Daily Sports Writer

Beaming with pride, graduate student Gabby Wilson struck the final pose in her floor routine, closing out a victorious meet as her teammates erupted in cheers. This solid finish mirrored many of those later executed by veteran members of the team, giving the audience a glimpse of the talent that made them last year’s Big Ten Champions.

Wilson’s landing closed out the Michigan women’s gymnastics team’s season-opening exhibition meet against Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan on Sunday. Here, the Wolverines showcased talent, both new and seasoned, culminating in a first-place finish with a total score of 197.100 points.

This triumph provided a glimpse into what the future may hold for this growing team and, more specifically, its newer members.

“We have people who don’t have

a lot of competition experience, so leaning on each other is really, really helpful here,” graduate student Sierra Brooks said. “I think just having the support of everyone makes us all perform a lot better.”

Indeed, the Wolverines showed their full support for the newer faces on their lineup. They cheered on freshman Haylen Zabrowski, sophomore Farah Liptez and sophomore Paige Thaxton as they competed in a variety of different events over the course of the meet.

Thaxton made her debut early as the first competitor for Michigan, scoring 9.700 on vault. Zabrowski and Liptez came later, making their debuts on bars.

Following Thaxton, senior Naomi Morrison, senior Jenna Mulligan and Brooks also competed in the vault, with Brooks placing first overall in the meet with a score of 9.900. Morrison and Mulligan were close behind, tying for second with a score of 9.850.

These standout performances propelled the Wolverines to a small

lead with 49.200 overall points at the end of the first rotation.

In spite of the meet being so early on in the season, the team was able to allow both veteran athletes and budding underclassmen to be in the spotlight.

They continued this momentum into the second rotation, managing to keep ahead of the competition thanks to a solid performance on bars from senior Carly Bauman, which earned her a score of 9.850.

With this score, Bauman tied with Western Michigan’s Sarah Moravansky for second place overall in the event, with Central Michigan’s Luciana Alvarado-Reid — a member of the Costarican National Team — narrowly taking first with a score of 9.875.

The strong performances by the veteran members of the Michigan team serve as a reminder that, while the Wolverines have many new faces, they also retained a lot of the talent locked within the squad last season.

Only three athletes departed from last year’s team, one that won its

27th Big Ten title and just narrowly missed out on qualifying for the NCAA National Championship meet.

“This group is amazing,” Michigan coach Bev Plocki said. “I’m going to cry great big crocodile tears when they leave because they’ve been amazing.”

Indeed, the senior members reminded the competition of their experience and skill, especially in the Wolverines’ third rotation on the beam. Brooks and Mulligan delivered standout performances in this event, scoring 9.950 and 9.925, respectively, with Brooks tying the Broncos’ Amanda Gruber for first overall in the event.

Brooks specifically was a standout competitor for Michigan at the meet as the all-around highest scorer with 39.650 total points.

“I just felt very calm,” Brooks said.

“I mean, I’m a veteran, I know how meets work … and it’s one of my last times here.”

JACK TIRSCH

Daily Sports Writer

Sunday marked the beginning of the end of graduate captain Sierra Brooks’ tenure with Michigan gymnastics.

In the Wolverines’ exhibition meet victory over Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Central Michigan, Brooks provided a consistent spark for her team.

Garnering an all around score of 39.650, she also held the highest individual event score for Michigan with 9.950 in both the beam and floor rotations.

After beginning her career as a Wolverine in 2020 with an exhibition meet against the same three teams, Brooks has since grown into a veteran. Her status had her evolved into a valuable asset for her teammates.

“I think it’s very exciting,” Brooks said. “I also think it’s very full circle.

And it’s a very good point to reflect.”

Brooks capped off her productive day with a strong performance in the floor event. After sticking the landing, her energetic final routine was adorned with an eruption from the crowd at the Crisler Center.

And with Michigan looking ahead at a full schedule of meets, Brooks sees potential in her teammates.

“It’s really good to have a whole entire team where … every single person has a really important place on the team,” Brooks said. “So I think that’s something I’m really looking forward to.”

During Sunday’s meet, the Wolverines’ chemistry was on full display — led by Brooks. They rushed over to congratulate each other after each routine, and Brooks was often the first person to praise her fellow teammates after finishing one.

Brooks was dominant in her first routine of the day in the vault rotation, finishing with a score of 9.900. And that team love was reciprocated for her. Not only will this chemistry be important for Michigan going forward, but it is representative of the togetherness the program has. The succeeding captains will look to preserve its culture that is so conducive to winning.

“It’s a very fun time to be able to … help our underclassmen and those who are competing for the first time,” Brooks said. “So I kind of use it as a teaching opportunity.”

For a relatively young Michigan team, Brooks takes a unique leadership approach. While she

is an imposing presence on the floor, the captain may not be the loudest in the gymnasium. And with a new group of underclassmen contributing to the team this season, Brooks’ impact could transcend into a new generation of Michigan gymnastics.

“I feel like (my leadership style is) a little bit more behind the scenes because I’m not a super energetic person,” Brooks said. “I’m … not the loudest in the room, leadershipwise too, so I’m fairly introspective.”

The guidance and authority that Brooks — along with co-captains Gabby Wilson, Naomi Morrison and Carly Bauman — provide appear intangible to the Wolverines as they begin their season. Michigan coach Bev Plocki recognizes the value her leaders contribute to the program as well. “(The captains are) just amazing,” Plocki said. “And I just hope … that the underclassmen are absorbing like sponges, everything that they can from these amazing leaders while they’re here.”

Last season, Michigan fell short of its lofty expectations of a National Championship. However, Brooks thinks the team is in a better position than it was last year. With younger players and a hungrier mindset, the Wolverines have their eyes set on raising another banner after this season concludes. But, Brooks is more focused on the immediate tasks at hand.

She doesn’t want Michigan to get ahead of itself before winning the meets necessary to reach a National Championship.

“I think truly looking at it one meet at a time and not looking so forward,” Brooks said. “I think it’s really good to have goals … but at some point you get a little consumed.”

Despite how distracting those goals can be, the Wolverines see light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a National Championship.

Brooks already won one National Championship in 2021, and adding another to her resume would cement her legacy in Michigan gymnastics history.

Yet, aware of the obstacles that stand in their way, Brooks is cautiously conscious of the potential the Wolverines have to get themselves back to the national stage. And with Brooks nearing the end of her Michigan career, the Wolverines hope to capitalize on her remaining leadership prowess and reclaim their title as champions.

Sunday’s meet was the first step for Brooks and Michigan to fulfill their potential.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com LILA TURNER/Daily

Sports

14 — Wednesday, December 6, 2023

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Olivier Nkamhoua’s volatile presence evident in Oregon loss LINDSAY BUDIN Daily Sports Editor

For nearly all 40 minutes on Saturday, Olivier Nkamhoua was nowhere to be seen. The gradu-

ate forward may have spent 28 minutes on the court during regulation against Oregon, but there were scant moments that he left his mark.

But when he did, it was potent — in both directions.

Transferring to Michigan this offseason, the impact Nkamhoua brought with him was more than just his production. It was also his potential leadership. And for a team returning just two starters and being led by a sophomore in point guard Dug McDaniel, that leadership was imperative.

Instead of steering the ship, though, he remained stuck below deck in the Michigan men’s basketball team’s loss to the Ducks. Until the waning minutes of action, that is.

After serving as a trivial contributor for most of the second half, the team captain finally emerged from the shadows, making his impact in the final five minutes of play. And while some of his contributions helped fuel the Wolverines to overtime, others held them back from emerging victorious in regulation.

Committing a turnover, snatching two steals and going 1-for-3 from the free throw line headlined SAM ADLER/Daily Nkamhoua’s performance to end

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Michigan wins foul battle with sharp free throw shooting in win over Harvard MEGAN SMITH Daily Sports Writer

The referee’s whistles were hot during the Michigan women’s basketball team’s 80-66 win over Harvard, constantly stopping the run of play and making it difficult for either program to get into a rhythm.

But the Wolverines eventually found a way to use that to their advantage, coming from behind to secure a victory against the Crimson.

After the first few possessions, it was clear that the officials would not be allowing much contact, calling three personal fouls by the 7:49 mark. And for a physical team

like Michigan, it made it difficult to play the type of defense it is accustomed to, resulting in key contributors getting into foul trouble.

In the last two minutes of the half, junior guard Jordan Hobbs and graduate guard Elissa Brett both picked up their third personal fouls, adding to 12 total first-half fouls for their team.

But with the help of the Wolverines’ deep bench and a change in playing style, they were able to take the heat.

“We thought (Harvard) was initiating some of that contact which is something we talked to the officials about,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said. “(The refs) were catching the second part of it.

(But we) still have to make shots.

(Hobbs and Brett had) six fouls at half. We definitely needed to adjust to that in the second half.”

Despite the first-half struggles that led to the Wolverines trailing by two, that halftime shift proved to be the difference in the game.

Michigan continued to pick up fouls on defense, but it became more selective in when it chose to go after the ball and didn’t allow any shooting fouls for Harvard in the third quarter.

On the offensive end, the Wolverines took advantage of the active whistles, driving into the lane and finding ways to be aggressive in the paint — consistently earning their way to the charity swipe.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Stressed out?

the second half.

Nkamhoua’s two steals served as additional opportunities. The first one had the potential to give Michigan the lead, and the second could have made it a three-point game.

But neither of those chances materialized. A missed 3-pointer and a disappointing 1-for-2 performance from the free throw line is all Nkamhoua had to show for his efforts.

“We had one fast break point, we have to play with better pace,” associate head coach Phil Martelli said. “It starts with getting stops and getting out and running. And we have to have multiple initiators of offense, not just one guy.”

Michigan’s inability to add production through fast breaks was merely one element of an inept and one-dimensional offense on Saturday. With sophomore guard Dug McDaniel as the only source of offense against Oregon, someone had to step up. And as a team captain and proven offensive threat, Nkamhoua was a keen option to do so.

Both of his steals had the ability to facilitate just that.

The lack of fast break success is an issue that goes beyond Nkamhoua and to the team as a whole, though. On the other hand, his lackluster performance from the charity strip is something in his own control. And he was wayward from the line against Oregon.

“You have to look at other numbers,” Martelli said. “You can’t shoot 66% from the foul line at the end, in a game that we have, we’re 1-for-4 in the last 1:30 and 16 turnovers.”

With 30 seconds left and the Wolverines in the bonus, Nkamhoua’s first free throw was in a one-and-one opportunity, and by missing the front end, Michigan essentially lost a possession.

After trailing by five points with 4:26 left, Nkamhoua tried to make up for earlier struggles, stepping up and taking the wheel leading the Wolverines to overtime. And in overtime, his presence didn’t dissi-

pate. But Michigan’s offense — McDaniel, and McDaniel alone — did, going 0-for-3 from the field.

The Wolverines needed someone to be McDaniel’s second mate in regulation, and while Nkamhoua flashed his abilities to be that person, those flashes couldn’t be sustained. In overtime, when Nkamhoua tallied four of Michigan’s 10 points, as well as all three of its rebounds, he proved he could serve that role. But it was too little, too late.

For most of the Wolverines’ overtime loss to the Ducks, Nkamhoua was imperceptible. And when he finally stepped out of the shadows, his presence had high highs, but also low lows.

Together, that helped Michigan reach overtime action. But by then, it didn’t matter. Because when he became present down the stretch, nobody else was. And if there’s one thing the Wolverines demonstrated in their loss, it’s that they cannot be led by one player alone.

ICE HOCKEY

Penalty kill prevails, comes in clutch in final two minutes to aid Michigan in win over Notre ANNA MILLER

Daily Sports Writer

SOUTH BEND — With 1:34 left in the third period and the Wolverines up 2-1 over the Fighting Irish, comfort was out of the question for Michigan. Junior forward Dylan Duke was in the penalty box, forcing the Wolverines to play down a man for the remaining 94 seconds. Michigan had seen this play out before, and the majority of the time, the ending has not been in its favor.

However, the Wolverines wrote a new ending in those 94 seconds, the penalty kill maintaining a hold on Notre Dame’s offense and holding them scoreless in the most important stretch of the 2-1 win.

As of late, the No. 13 Michigan hockey team’s penalty kill has wavered under pressure.

Sitting near the bottom of the nation in penalty kill percentage, the Wolverines have given up games and hurt their record due to their penalty kill. So when they receive a penalty — which they often do — they have to be on their Agame. Especially in the last 94 seconds of a one-goal game.

Both teams entered the arena hungry and aggressive, which, of course, meant each team was granted numerous penalties. Although half of them came from scrums that resulted in even strength play,

Notre Dame had three power play opportunities and could not capitalize on any of them.

“We’ve been working on it a ton,” graduate defenseman Marshall Warren said. “It’s been a point of emphasis for us. … I think tonight was another stepping stone for us in that area. It was good to do well on that tonight.”

In the first period, sophomore forward Kienan Draper received a tripping penalty, sending him to the box. In the Wolverines’ recently implemented diamond formation on their penalty kill, they were clearing pucks behind young Michigan players who stepped up.

Not only did Michigan’s top penalty-kill unit prevail and reveal progress from past weekends, but the momentum carried through the entire lineup. Freshman forward Tanner Rowe was a dominant force during his shift, pressing on the Fighting Irish and winning races to the puck. While the Wolverines couldn’t fully clear the puck out of the defensive zone, it was able to block shots from entering the net.

“It’s not some crazy change in structure,” Michigan coach Brandon Naurato said. “We’ve been preaching the same thing, it’s just guys being bought in, wanting to get the clear all the way down, block the shot and wanting to box out in front of the net.”

A third period cross-checking penalty from senior forward Jacob Truscott put that penalty kill right back to the test. Returning to their diamond, the Wolverines used it to block shots and stood strong in front of an even stronger graduate goaltender Jake Barczewski. With the lead and 13 minutes left, Michigan just needed to hold on.

And it was doing so, until a familiar whistle blast sounded through Compton Family Ice Arena – a late game penalty.

With Duke in the box, the Wolverines would have to rely on their penalty kill one last time to carry them to victory.

Steadfast in the formation, Barczewski made three saves, while sophomore forward Gavin Brindley and sophomore defenseman Seamus Casey each had a block in the 94 second time frame.

“Blocking shots is the biggest thing you can do on the penalty kill,” Brindley said.

“So good sticks, and pressure when you can. We did a really good job of that today.”

Michigan was determined to not have another late-game collapse and hold Notre Dame to two scoreless periods — just as they had done to the Wolverines on Friday. And when the final horn went off, Michigan did that. It hadn’t given up the close lead and stepped up its defensive game in the process.

We can help.

This hectic time of year can be a bit overwhelming. If you’re feeling out of sorts, check out the many tools and resources at U-M that can help you manage stress — from wellness classes and apps to useful information and counseling options.

Helping Leaders Feel Their Best: wellbeing.umich.edu GRACE LAHTI/Daily

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com FOOTBALL

Sports

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 — 15

Mike Sainristil leads defensive effort as Big Ten Championship MVP

PAUL NASR

Managing Sports Editor

INDIANAPOLIS — Receiving mementos after games is starting to become a habit for graduate cornerback Mike Sainristil. Two weeks ago against Maryland, when Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended, he watched the game at the home of his brother, Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh.

Safe to say, John was pretty impressed with Sainristil as he watched the game with Jim. He was “blown away” by his performance, going as far as giving Jim a lion spike to gift to Sainristil — something John gives to a Ravens player who makes the final kill to win a game. It’s a badge of honor at John’s NFL franchise, and those NFL honors are starting to trickle down to Sainristil already.

So much so that Sainristil’s momento after beating Ohio State was a verbal one. John made sure to tell Jim after The Game about how Sainristil is shooting up draft boards — words not to be taken lightly when they’re coming from an NFL head coach.

But Sainristil is still in college after all. While these NFLthemed badges of honor may be nice, especially considering

Sainristil’s goals of playing at the next level, a college-level one doesn’t hurt either. And in the No. 2 Michigan football team’s Big Ten Championship win over Iowa, he went ahead and got one of those. As his teammates walked into the tunnel toward the locker room holding confetti, newspaper front pages and new merch, he was cradling a memento just a little bit sweeter — the MVP trophy.

“Just a playmaker. When a play has to be made, when the magic needs to happen, Mike makes it happen,” Jim Harbaugh said postgame. “It’s been game after game. Especially down the stretch here these final four games, he has been a stalwart.

He intercepts. He makes the big hit. He makes the big hit in the fumble, causes a fumble. Just an incredible player.”

That knack for making big plays was evident, especially in one of the game’s signature moments. In a title game that quickly turned into a defense battle, field position became of utmost importance. When Iowa’s Jaziun Patterson caught a pass in the flat, he experienced Sainristil’s big-play magic first hand.

Patterson tried to get low to break an open field tackle attempt, but Sainristil got even lower. Striking him like a missile, the hit forced the ball

out, and Michigan pounced on it to flip the field. For a guy collecting mementos over the past few weeks, he handed a couple to his team — a Hawkeyebranded football and the chance to wear turnover buffs in Indy — with one big hit.

And when it all boils down, it isn’t all too complex for Sainristil to do what he does.

“He does it by always being in the right place where he’s supposed to be, playing the right technique at all times, leading other guys to do the exact same thing,” Harbaugh said. “But he also does it as a superior athlete. That combination comes together, superior athlete and a guy that does everything right. It’s fun to watch.”

Fun to watch is the name of the game with Sainristil — even his big plays turn fun because of their potential to have been even bigger ones. Early in the second quarter, he jumped a curl route, getting low to the ground and breaking up the pass. Although the breakup was key and scooping it up would have been difficult, Sainristil wanted more.

Scooping up the then-dead ball, he had nothing but green grass ahead of him. Prancing down the sideline jumping in disgust, he reeled at the yards ahead of him toward the end zone and what could have been.

GRACE BEAL/Daily

But maybe that’s the point, even plays he is disappointed in are often positive ones for the team. It’s an MVP-caliber mindset, one that got him an MVP trophy in the conference’s grandest stage. One that he’s always trying to instill in the teammates who look up to him.

“This team is constantly maturing, getting better as men every single day,” Sainristil said.

“It’s been a process, but it’s been a very great process, a learning process, learning experience. I

FOOTBALL

don’t think that you could paint a better picture, but the picture also isn’t done being painted.”

After such a big career moment, Sainristil couldn’t help but reminisce on his journey at the most whimsical opportunities.

When the discussion surrounded senior running back Blake Corum at the press conference, Sainristil chimed in to say that he hosted Corum as a recruit. Harbaugh then seconded that he hosted Sainristil, and they recalled

watching a movie together as part of that process.

It took a second, but Sainristil remembered which movie they watched: “Don’t Breathe.”

In the Big Ten Championship, he had the Hawkeyes holding their breaths in an MVP performance. And now, with another momento in tow, Sainristil has the chance to keep his streak going — performances like his leave plenty of hardware up for grabs come playoff time.

FOOTBALL

Blake Corum sets touchdown records in Michigan defensive line stiffens slow paced contest with Iowa’s defense against Iowa CHARLIE PAPPALARDO Daily Sports Editor

INDIANAPOLIS — Midway through the third quarter in Indianapolis, Blake Corum ran into the endzone with the football, and ran out of it with records.

With his 57th career touchdown and 24th of the year, the senior running back became the No. 2 Michigan football team’s modernera leader in all-time total, rushing and single season touchdowns.

Corum, with 18 multitouchdown contests, has made a career out of high scoring, high yardage and high impact games. But Saturday against No. 16 Iowa was not one of them. Facing off against one of the nation’s premier defenses and playing behind a bangedup offensive line, the cards were stacked up against the senior running back from the start. Given the hand he was dealt, Corum was imperfect.

Past the touchdowns and the records, he struggled against the imposing Hawkeyes defense. His 16 carries for 52 yards, 3.3 yards per carry and

having his longest rush be just six yards were less than pedestrian when compared to his career numbers.

“We made some mistakes,” Corum said postgame. “I wish I would have ran a little better.

We had dropped passes, pass pro. There’s just things we can clean up.”

And with Corum’s outsized inf luence, his stagnation was both related to and fed into the entire offense’s struggles. The Wolverines, in uncharacteristic fashion, couldn’t move the ball much of anywhere on Saturday.

Coasting off of two red zone turnovers for their only two touchdowns of the night, the rest of Michigan’s performance was lackluster — and much of that started and ended with Corum.

Corum struggled to find holes in the defensive line and struggled even more in hitting them. But on a night when Corum made history for the Wolverines and scored their offense’s only two touchdowns, Corum made one thing clear above all else — a great portion of the Wolverines’ offensive fate rests squarely on his

shoulders.

In many respects, Corum is a litmus test for Michifan’s offense. When Corum moves, Michigan moves. On Saturday though, Corum couldn’t move much. Time and time again against Iowa, Corum’s runs were minimally efficient. With a plethora of three or four yard carries, the Hawkeyes gave very little. They stacked the box, they baited runs and they were unfazed by Corum’s shimmies and cuts — the result was Corum’s second least efficient game of the year.

But even lacking efficiency, Corum still embodied Michigan’s offense.

He was imperfect, but so was quarterback J.J. McCarthy and the offensive line. And when the Wolverines were given opportunities near Iowa’s goal line, Corum was as he has been all year — methodical.

Twice, Iowa knew what was coming and the Hawkeyes still couldn’t stop it.

Early in the first quarter, Corum rammed his way through a cluster for two yards, and then did it again for a touchdown. And midway through the third, Michigan’s offense only needed one

play from the six yard line — Corum bouncing left, breaking contact and dragging his way into the end zone for a touchdown and a record.

“That six yard run, that was a great run,” Harbaugh said.

“That was the best six-yard run I’ve seen.”

In many respects, despite Harbaugh’s praise, Corum’s 57th touchdown was the same as the one two quarters earlier, and dozens of his previous touchdowns. It was close to the goal line, grimy and most importantly put six points on the board.

And his performance as a whole can be described in a similar manner: grimy, minimally efficient, but just enough to get to the goal line.

However, the stakes will soon be raised. With Michigan all but guaranteed a College Football Playoff spot, it will be unable to count on a shutout and two gifted red zone turnovers from its defense.

In the CFP, Michigan will need more than just records and an amassed career of work from Blake Corum. Because as goes Corum, so goes the Wolverines’ offense.

GRACE BEAL/Daily

JULIANNE YOON/Daily

JOHN TONDORA Daily Sports Editor

INDIANAPOLIS — Postgame after securing his third consecutive Big Ten Championship as the Michigan football team’s head coach, Jim Harbaugh sang what some might call a familiar tune. “(Sophomore) Kenneth Grant had a dominating game,” Harbaugh said “So did (sophomore) Mason Graham, (senior) Kris Jenkins, (graduate) Cam Goode, those interior edge guys. The edge guys were incredible.”

To the trained ear, these monologues are nothing new. In fact, they can become borderline monotonous as Harbaugh intricately works through every piece of the position group. Often, in dominant win after dominant win for the Wolverines, the listing of names can become a mantra — simply one complimentary lull after another.

But this time was different.

Because amid the brightest lights of the season, and with a championship on the line, No. 2 Michigan’s defensive line and its depth quietly shined.

“They’re very well-coached,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said.

“They’ve got a lot of girth inside.

It was tough to get anything going in the running game, and they rotate guys through. They have four, five, six guys that are pretty good in there.”

Up and down the lineup, Michigan’s defensive line strength, and depth, did its job.

Against a struggling Hawkeyes offense that even looked underwhelming on its best days, the Wolverines were still firing on all cylinders. From stuffing

the run to clogging passing lanes and even forcing a fumble, the defensive line made sure Iowa’s offense posted a blank slate. And it all started on the line.

The line of scrimmage was a pesky plane for the Hawkeyes all night. A run-oriented offense that finds success in offensive possession and ball control, Iowa’s attack found itself bottled up by Michigan for 60 minutes.

Four separate Hawkeye rushers combined for 51 total yards on 18 attempts — good for a difficult 2.83 yards per carry.

Stuffing the run time and time again, the Wolverines forced Iowa’s offense into disadvantageous offensive situations. Ten times alone on the night, the Hawkeyes found themselves in 3rd-and-five situations or longer — and they converted on just two. Set up for failure due to a struggling passing offense, Iowa was inevitably forced to drop back.

Then Michigan’s defensive line went to work.

“I would attribute Michigan’s defensive performance or our offensive performance to their defense,” Ferentz said. “They have a really good defense, and it’s statistically proven. I think they give up 10 points a game.”

In this case, the Wolverines gave up none as the Hawkeye’s offense found itself caught between a rock and a hard place on the line of scrimmage.

As Iowa quarterback Deacon Hill dropped back to pass, in part, due to a struggling rushing attack, Michigan’s defensive line hit its groove. When it could get to the quarterback, the line brought Hill down with ease, logging three sacks and five tackles for loss.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

The Michigan Daily — 16

SPORTS

SportsMonday: If Michigan is the best, who it plays next shouldn’t matter PAUL NASR

Managing Sports Editor

F

or the first time since 1998, Michigan is ranked No. 1 in the country. So for the first time since 1998, it shouldn’t matter who the Wolverines are asked to matchup against — they should have the upper hand anyway.

NO. NO.

about the College Football Playoff committee if you want. I’ll join you.

The committee failed college football by denying undefeated Florida State a chance at the playoff. The SEC bias is real, and it cost a team that did literally everything right — including beating a top-15 team in a conference championship without its starting quarterback — only to find out that those wins don’t matter if mighty Bama gets hot at the right time.

But none of those complaints should affect Michigan’s outlook on the playoff. Sure, the number one team has earned the right to the ‘easiest’ draw, and maybe the Seminoles would have been an easier one. Maybe Florida State would have given the Wolverines the easiest playoff path. Maybe the committee’s mistakes give Michigan a larger challenge than expected after earning the highest seed.

WEDNESDAY

Alabama. It’s Roll Tide,” Harbaugh said at a head coach selection Sunday teleconference. “It doesn’t get any better, to be playing in the Rose Bowl — just going to appreciate the tradition of the Rose Bowl, playing a great team like Alabama. I mean, it always has meaning.”

The No. 1 team in the nation should be excited to play anyone.

Michigan may not be an SEC power, but right now it’s labeled as the national power. You can mourn Florida State’s brutal rejection while also accepting the fact that it shouldn’t affect the Wolverines.

If anything, it just serves as an even more intriguing matchup — both sides have their starting quarterbacks healthy, after all.

And that’s not a slight at the Seminoles. I’ll say it again, they should be in. Put them in. Go back to ESPN’s drawn-out, overdramatic

If you’re the best, any draw is a good draw.

It doesn’t matter if the committee asked them to play the Alabama Crimson Tide or the Liberty Flames. It doesn’t matter if Michigan was lined up with the Florida State Seminoles or the Toledo Rockets. When you’re ranked at the top of college football, you should be fine with playing anyone, and the only matchup complaints should come from opponents asked to battle you. ‘One’ is more than just a pretty number, it’s a statement that any draw is a favorable one.

So go ahead, complain

But it doesn’t matter. The Wolverines are the top seed in this playoff — ‘experts’ have named them the best team in the country — so they shouldn’t bat an eye at who plays them versus who doesn’t.

If they’re really the cream of the crop, like both the AP poll and CFP rankings suggest, it doesn’t matter whether or not Michigan faces a tougher matchup in the semifinal as opposed to a theoretical national championship. For the first time since 1998, the Wolverines are the standard. So treat them like it.

No matter who they play, they’re expected to beat them. If they don’t, the committee wouldn’t have just made a mistake placing Alabama ahead of Florida State, they would have made a mistake putting Michigan ahead of everyone else.

No matter who the Wolverines draw, they should have a legup on everyone on the path to a championship — if their ranking is accurate. Take it from Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh. He seems excited about the draw, at least publicly exuding the mindset expected of a topranked team.

“No, we’re excited to face them. It’s iconic. It’s

reveal show and add them to that graphic if you can. Just don’t give the Wolverines the benefit of being treated like an underdog anymore. They didn’t get robbed of anything. They didn’t miss out on an easier path to the championship.

Because they are the path to the championship — that’s what being number one means.

Complaints against the committee are welcome. They made mistakes in their selections, and the ACC can tell you all about that. But in Indianapolis on Sunday, the Wolverines were named the nation’s best.

And if you’re the best, any draw is a good draw.

JULIANNE YOON/Daily Design by Lys Goldman

sex edition designed by leyla dumke illustrated by sara fang

2 — The Statement // Wednesday, December 6, 2023

STATEMENT EDITORIAL STAFF

Well, Wolverines, we have reached that point in the semester once again: The snow sticks to the sidewalks as the crisp wind bites back on commutes to class, homework problems and readings pile up on our to-do lists like the laundry on that one chair in our bedroom, and the annual Statement Sex Survey, detailing all the intricate intimacies of the sex lives on our campus, has finally been released for the 2023 season.

Some may say this Sex Edition is the greatest annual tradition at the University of Michigan — screw the OSU game, screw running naked through the Diag, screw walking

through the Ingalls Mall fountain.

Above all, evidently, U-M students love screwing each other — and reading about it.

Here at The Statement, we are deeply committed to poking around and asking questions that other researchers are simply not inclined to.

Who is having sex? Where are they “doing it”? And what can we learn about our campus by exploring what goes on in the bedroom?

The Statement debuted its firstever “Sex Issue” on this very day in 2012, which outlined stories such as a very-failed threesome and the shift of gay cruising from physical to online spaces.

This year, 11 Sex Editions later, we invite you back to indulge in the sexual dispositions of your peers as

we garner a detailed insight into all things sex, pleasure and kink. In early November, the Statement and Web teams sent out the annual sex survey to all 52,065 undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In turn, we received 7,611 responses — our highest number of respondents to date. *** Demographic results reveal that 16% of respondents were freshmen, 18% were sophomores, 22% were juniors, 21% were seniors and 22% were graduate students. In terms of gender identity, 54% of respondents identify themselves as female, 40% as male, 3% as nonbinary, 1% as genderqueer and 1% as other. 64% of respondents characterized their sexuality as heterosex-

ual, 16% as bisexual, 7% as lesbian/gay, 5% as queer, 3% as asexual, 2% as pansexual and 1% as other.

It must be noted that, despite our attempts to minimize bias in the survey questions and results, the statistics presented here may be skewed or not representative of the entire U-M population. Some respondents may have refrained from answering certain questions or withheld information, while others may have answered the questions dishonestly. We also acknowledge the presence of survey bias in this questionnaire, as some individuals are more comfortable answering sex-related questions openly and honestly.

THE STATEMENT

SEX SURVEY 2 0 2 3

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 // The Statement — 3

Further, others are more prone to checking emails from The Michigan Daily, the mode by which the survey was distributed.

Furthermore, more than half of the respondents in this survey were women, which means that the final results may be skewed toward the femaleidentifying perspective and, due to the nature of the survey questions, will likely be representative of individuals who are generally more sexually open and curious. The distribution of sexual identities in our sample does not necessarily reflect the distribution of sexual orientations of the entire U-M population, so it is important to keep in mind that these results may not accurately portray the sex lives and inclinations of 100% of the entire student body.

We’d also like to acknowledge that a heteronormative skew may be present in the survey questions and answers. In particular, the questions about sexual education, contraception, relationships and kinks may not have been fully representative of all sexual orientations and their experiences.

College and Class Standing This year, 63% of U-M students engaged in some form of sexual intercourse during the fall semester, which is only one percentage point higher than 2022. One would think that the proliferation of dating apps, reduction of pandemic anxiety and restrictions or even just one more win over OSU would contribute to a higher amount of students getting “play,” but it’s good to know that students are prioritizing their schoolwork over sex just as much as they were last year.

Putting the “sex” in sex education, the students in the Marsal Family School of Education have had the most sex this semester — shagging seven plus times a week. Students in the School of Kinesiology and School of Music, Theatre & Dance rank in a close second for the horniest colleges on campus, putting their skills in movement and dance to good use it seems! Yet not everyone on North Campus can get as lucky as Music, Theatre & Dance students; 47% of Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Engineering students did not have sex this semester followed closely by the 43% of College of Engineering students who, too, remained chaste. To our engineers, this is the

first time in many sex surveys that you have out-done your peers (even if only slightly). As the second largest college, we encourage you to “do” a little more (until next year).

According to this year’s results, the higher in class year that Wolverines climb, the more sex they have.

Seniors, on average, had sex five times this semester, while freshmen had sex less than three times. So for you freshmen without a snuggle buddy in your twin XL, there is still hope — as long as you’re not an architecture major (statistically speaking).

However, the frequency at which U-M students engage in the good ol’ rump in the sack (or, in some cases, the rump in the LSA Building bathrooms) does not faithfully reveal the totality of our underlying backgrounds, perceptions and preferences on sex. Join us as we delve further into the sex lives of Wolverines and perhaps learn a bit more about your own sex life (or lack thereof) along the way.

Sexual Education and Safe Sex Practices In terms of acquiring knowledge about how to get down and dirty, 70% of students first learned about sex through the internet or social media.

This suggests that access to a proper sex education curriculum is still lacking for a majority of students, as many are turning to informal alternatives as their main source of sexual education, rather than official sources from within the classroom and doctors’ office. Further, our survey finds that only 45% of students either somewhat or strongly agree that their education regarding sexual and physical well-being in school was positive, informative and helpful.

Speaking of informal education between peers, U-M students are, generally, pretty open about discussions of intimate topics — 41% of students frequently discuss sexual topics with friends and 40% occasionally discuss sexual topics. Levels of “open discussion” of sex also vary by college: Rackham Graduate School students are most private about their sex lives, with only one in five frequently discussing sexual topics with friends. In contrast, more than 50% of Social Work and Nursing students talk frequently about their sex lives. Expectedly, students are much less likely to talk about sexual

activity with their parents, with almost half (47%) of Michigan students never touching the topic.

The one thing that remains constant and available to all students is access to on-campus medical resources for sexual health, such as the services offered by University Health Services, which only 19% of students have utilized this past year. To the 81% of students who have not yet explored the variety of sexual health resources available to you: The next time you’re gearing up for or winding down from some sexy time, consider exploring the U-M Sexual Health website as intimately as you’d explore your partner’s body.

This is not to imply that Michigan students aren’t safe when it comes to sex — more than 30% of respondents reported that both they and their partner(s) purchase and take contraception. Is this percentage high, or is the bar super low? The most popular method to ensure safe sex is male/female condoms, which more than 65% of students who purchase contraception claim to use, followed by 35% of respondents using birth control pills and 20% relying on the withdrawal method. For those of you who enjoy the adrenaline-filled game of “pulling out,” we here at The Statement would love to inform you that condoms, lubricants and dental dams are available to all U-M students free of charge at the Wolverine Wellness center, and remind you that there’s nothing more important than keeping it clean while you’re getting down and dirty.

Relationships and Consent An important part of what determines who’s “doing it” and who’s not rests in Wolverines’ definitions of what “doing it” even means at all.

According to our results, 68% of the student body considers sex to be penetrative, followed by 12% believing the deed to consist of other genital contact. And in terms of consent, 67% of students believe that a verbal, sober “yes” is the only form of consent. We relay with great sorrow, but unfortunately not so great surprise, that men are more likely to believe that a verbal, sober “yes” is not the only form of consent. We wonder what went on in the middle school male classroom during that one day when we got separated by gender.

Regardless of any disagreement about such definitions, 60% of students agree that they’ve had mostly positive sexual experiences in college. Most students have sex “for pleasure,” followed by a second majority who has sex “out of love” — how wholesome! But not more wholesome than the respondent who informed us that they have sex to “have kids, that’s what it’s made for.”

And although we assume most Wolverines are not yet family planning, their sexual habits certainly would lead us to believe that they are.

Fifty percent of you have had one to three sexual partners since being sexually active, with a small and mighty 3% having had more than 31! While a majority of students have had one to two sexual partners this semester, Education (closely seconded by Music, Theatre & Dance students), had the most, boasting a staggering 10+ partners for this semester. Perhaps bedroom activity is a weekly assignment.

Either way, the School of Education is clearly into group work. More than any other school, 13.5% of Education has had a fivesome or larger.

Not so far behind, the School of Social Work put their social savvy to practice, with 8.6% of them having had a foursome. Their professors must be so proud of their students’ fieldwork.

Regardless of group projects or solo work, though, all Wolverines have been going to great lengths to get the assignment done. On average, students are willing to travel 77 minutes for sexual purposes. The minimum amount of time willing to be traveled is zero minutes. Perhaps this student holds the empowering belief, “If they wanted to, they would.” Well, we know someone who would: The person who responded that they’d travel 360 minutes for sexual purposes. We hope they bring water and snacks on their six-hour journey.

Some respondents may be more rewarded by such travel than others, as we have yet to close the orgasm gap on our campus: Men are almost twice as likely to never fake sexual satisfaction (45%) compared to respondents who identify as female (26%), and more than 12% of female students attest to faking sexual satisfaction often, compared to 2% of male respondents.

Read more at michigandaily.com

4 — The Statement // Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Becoming “sexy”: My boudoir photography SRIMATI GHOSAL

Statement Correspondent

In the summer of 2022, I sat in a hotel room in suburban Delhi. The soaring temperatures, rush-hour traffic and the general lethargy of tropical summers had discouraged me from stepping outside. Instead, I had spent the day inside rewatching French film noir — their beautiful, dark heroines were swimming in my imagination. Perhaps it was the beauty of Joan Crawford in such harsh lighting that defined that era of film making. And perhaps it was my secret desire to be the subject of such frames that I decided to take a few pictures.

Knowing I would neither have the money nor courage to hire a professional photographer, I put my own phone camera to work, an average iPhone with tolerable-quality cameras.

I turned the camera setting

to a basic monochrome filter and snapped a few pictures of myself in a hotel room mirror.

Nude. Only my long, curly hair fell over my shoulders in an unstyled mess.

Photography as an art form has always fascinated me.

The practice was a major inspiration for my academic engagement with cultural studies. It was also a political weapon for my student activism during my undergraduate years in a quickly polarizing, fascist India; I photographed evidence of attacks on minorities and civil rights, and shared it on social media, public platforms and even in a few exhibitions.

Photography was also the only way to carry with me people and places I loved while continuously moving from city to city, navigating continents and oceans after I graduated and left my hometown. Yet, the act of using photography to im-

mortalize the intimate nudity of my flabby stomach, misshapen breasts or rolls of fat that are completely out of place by modern beauty standards had been absolutely unthinkable. I always imagined that boudoir photographs, characterized by their featuring of intimate spaces and sensual, romantic poses with nearly the entire body on display, were limited to professional models. I assumed that pose training, the possession of an already perfect body further sculpted by a battery of professionals and stylists, and the ability to flaunt a careless comfort in front of the lens were prerequisites for the genre.

However, the boredom and the social media explosion generated by the pandemic lockdowns created a sudden boom in the boudoir genre in early 2020. These new boudoir photographs, mostly monochrome, were of mundane

people — bankers, lawyers and housewives — and they looked smashingly beautiful. Sure, they had stretch marks, belly rolls and uneven breasts like me. These were not bodies that were sculpted by professionals or used to having the lens pointed at them, but this was hardly noticeable, (or perhaps it was noticeable in a beautiful way), as the pictures emphasized the ethereal aura of the human body in its natural form.

As I lounged about the hotel room after finishing the french films, I browsed through a few of these photographs under the Instagram hashtag #boudoirphotography. Perhaps this beauty could be true about my body, too, I thought to myself. I had looked too long and too critically at my body for nearly two decades.

All I could see was its flaws.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 // The Statement — 5

The thirst for squirt MARY-KATE MAHANEY Statement Columnist

Content warning: Descriptions of negative body image What does it mean to “squirt”?

If you asked me in middle school, I would have told you that it meant females could ejaculate in a nearly identical manner to males. A few months ago, I thought — perhaps like many people — that it was a euphemism for a urination kink. I have met women who will tell you it’s not real, while also knowing men who worship the all-mighty feminine spritz. Even governments have weighed in on the conversation; in 2014, the U.K. banned squirting in porn due to its supposed misrepresentation of urination, which was later met with massive criticism claiming the law was sexist and not entirely adherent to science.

Some may argue that sex education, or a lack thereof, is the perpetrator of the discrepancies around squirting, but this perspective omits the massive knowledge gap present in existing literature on female anatomical function.

A centuries-long drought of scientific study on female bodies is the main reason our society is congested with differing ideas about the topic. Males have made up the majority, if not the totality, of clinical trial participants since the dawn of the scientific renaissance — male supremacy is so ingrained within research that even most mice studied are male. The scientific neglect of women has resulted in inadequate, incomplete and inconsistent data about the female body: How medicine is metabolized, what the leading causes of death are and how our reproductive systems function all remain, for the most part, a mystery.

Despite their exclusion from medicine, female bodies have not been completely ignored — sex work and sexual exploitation have created a fierce, insatiable appetite for women’s sexuality. Porn brings in an annual revenue equivalent to the amount that the U.S. government

spends on foreign aid each year.

With just one Google search, you can access thousands of women’s bodies for free. Nowadays, online pornographic content is often naively taken for educational material, as websites such as Pornhub arise as the leading space for sex education.

Squirting, having risen 15 spots in Pornhub’s 2022 category rankings, has fallen victim to the false promise of porn education. The deceptive entertainment regularly features women urinating, though creators slap “squirting” onto the titles of such videos.

But why is a squirting woman so desirable?

Perhaps, since males provide visual proof of pleasure through penile ejaculation, they desire equivalent proof from women — something to help them feel confident in their sexual performance. Or maybe the taboo nature of the act itself is thrilling to males and fuels the complexities of the Madonna-Whore complex. Regardless of how men theorize the mechanics, the fascination with the activity remains, and no matter what type of secretion a man thinks squirting is, there is pressure among women to provide.

Ever since I entered

puberty, I’ve tirelessly pursued projects intended to form myself into the “ideal woman.” At one point, my life’s crowning achievement would have been to lose weight, while

maintaining voluptuous assets (a social standard I would not endorse to anyone I love, yet admittedly try to fit into). In truth, I’ve probably spent hundreds of hours thinking of ways to mutilate and manipulate my body in order to be desirable and meet societal expectations — and forming an ability to squirt is among the potential options.

I spent many nights on the messy floor of my bedroom listening to podcasts in hopes that they’d give me instruction on how to be attractive and worthwhile for men. One night, I listened as porn star Chloe Cherry said that all one needs to do is drink a gallon of water in order to squirt — which intuitively implies that squirting releases clear pee. I was calmed by this; surely, I could consume some water! Without even a second thought, I’d risk falling ill due to water toxicity for a man. Months later, when I was listening to multiple discussions about squirting on the “We’re Having Gay Sex” podcast, my sense of comfort was ripped away. The podcast alluded to squirting being more of an involuntary release of liquid occurring during vaginal stimulation, which caused a familiar fear to flare: My body, as it is, may not be enough to satisfy.

Consequently, I redirected myself away from the anecdotal evidence of podcasts, since any information that can sway my self-esteem so drastically cannot possibly contain truly informative content, and instead moved to a scientific approach.

Unfortunately, as aforementioned,

the amount of research around the topic is limited; the lack of sufficient literature makes even existing hypotheses seem fallible at best and improperly representative at worst.

However, studies thus far have led to the creation of two categories of female sexual excretion: squirting and female ejaculation. The first is a thin, transparent-to-yellowish liquid excreted from the urethra that can be up to hundreds of milliliters in volume. In contrast, female ejaculation involves a thick, milky-colored fluid secreted from the Skene’s Gland, also known as the “female prostate.” Female ejaculation usually only expels up to one milliliter in volume. Neither of these excretions is purely urine, but orgasmic urinary incontinence can occur simultaneously. Squirting also isn’t just a women’s game; a study from 2018 revealed that it is possible for men to squirt, as well.

The research suggests that strong contractions from a male’s prostate following ejaculation can trigger secretions from the urethra that are akin to female squirting or female ejaculation.

Many women report feeling empowered when they squirt or ejaculate. A lot of them relish in turning a sexual “party trick” into a meditative method of connecting with their body. Zoë Ligon, a sex educator and journalist, hails squirting as “an affirmation that I’m a living, breathing, fertile creature” and “a very real and intense, worthwhile sexual experience.” Ligon posits an uplifting narrative that I wish to emphasize, mainly because so many women have experienced needless guilt around their sexuality. At the same time, she makes sure to assert that “people who squirt aren’t having ‘better sex’ than those who don’t” — a facet I also find crucial in squirting discourse.

Media, namely porn, showcases squirting as a feminine superpower, and while that does ring true for some, other women wrestle with feelings of discomfort around it and therefore elect to do it less — if at all.

Read more at michigandaily.com

6 — The Statement // Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Sex re-education ELIZABETH WOLFE Statement Columnist

Content Warning: Mentions of sexual harassment The first time I used a tampon, I was over the age of 18. I had an article from Playtex open on my phone called “How to Use a Tampon”. I was approaching the time when I would need a pap smear, and, up until that day, I had never had something inside my vagina before. After several read-throughs and a phone call with my mom, I propped one foot up on the toilet seat, my knees quivering as I pressed on the end of the wand. Three attempts failed before I finally succeeded. Nonetheless, the tampon shifted with each step I took, even though the article said I shouldn’t even feel its presence. I tried to nap off the discomfort, but when I awoke to the same irritation, I panicked and yanked it out. I promised myself to try again one day in the future, but that day has yet to come.

There is nothing in this world that demands I use tampons over pads.

People use a variety of menstrual products; in a study measuring preferences for menstrual products, the percentages of people who prefer pads compared to tampons isn’t too low — 46% and 51% percent, respectively. Personally, my reason for trying a tampon wasn’t related to ease or comfort. I just wanted to prepare myself — gain a little experience so that I’d be less nervous when I had other things in my vagina, like an ultrasound wand or a penis.

Before college, nothing in my educational career taught me that using the word “penis,” even in a clinical manner, was okay. The word “tampon” wasn’t used either. My sexual education, in both private and public schooling, always took a conservative approach. My private Catholic elementary school describes health education in their handbook as “an integral component of the physical education” in which, deductively, “values and morals are those of the Catholic Church.” During fifthgrade sex education, girls were seated in the lunchroom and boys in the multipurpose room. Sex was hastily explained. The teacher got the basic anatomy out of the way before shifting to the importance of marriage and childbirth.

I remember imagining how much intercourse must hurt and wondering why the elementary school even felt the need to discourage us so much — I required no convincing. It seemed to me that a woman would only put herself through something so terrible if she really wanted a baby. I was afraid and also confused: Why would the school bother explaining sex to us if it’s not something we should do until marriage?

After fifth-grade health, I concluded that being female meant being in pain. Sex, childbirth and periods promised nothing but pain. I was dissuaded from having sex, as well as from engaging in health education, entirely for fear of exposure to sex.

Such fear wasn’t rooted simply in childhood naivety, but a deep sense of religious anxiety. I wanted to be

“good” in the simplest, purest sense, and I felt exposure to sex was a threat to that dogma.

I carried this guilt and discomfort with me into middle school, where health education took place over one week in February during students’ English periods. Similar to the values of my elementary school, my public middle school explicitly refers to sixthgrade health education as abstinencebased, and, from my memory, seventh and eighth grade followed the same trend. In the sixth grade, I convinced my parents to write me a note exempting me from the lessons.

I told them that I didn’t need to learn about “this stuff” yet, and I could use the time to do work. In reality, it wasn’t that I didn’t need to learn it, but, rather, I was too nervous to engage. For each of those five days, I spent an hour in the library, while my classmates attended health lessons. Maybe this is when they explained how sex didn’t have to hurt, how to manage menstruation pain or how sexual harassment is wrong. The rhetoric in the handbook leaves me doubtful.

In seventh grade, I attended the health classes in February but made a conscious effort to sneakily do homework and drown out the teacher’s voice. I faintly remember a video about saying no to drugs, but that’s about it. I still felt that I was protecting my innocence and my Christianity by avoiding conversations about sex. Though I began to swear that year and wear makeup, activities I also feared would taint my innocence, sexual purity was the bedrock of my conscious.

Eighth grade solidified my anxiety surrounding health education.

When I made it to the English-turnedhealth classroom with little time to spare, I was thrown off by the sight of my classmates in new seats, split by gender down the middle of the room.

Amid the busyness of school and extracurriculars, the annual health week had slipped my mind. There were no seats left on the girl’s side of the room. A boy mockingly announced that I could sit on his lap instead. I quickly seated myself as far away from him as I could.

As the health teacher introduced herself, the boy caught my attention again. He turned to me and made a circle with one hand and, with the other, began thrusting his pointer finger into the hole. I quickly turned away and stared at my lap until the lesson was over.

That English class, by the virtue of the male students enrolled in it, had already been a hotbed for suggestive teasing, but sex education seemed to have inspired a whole new shift in behavior. More sexual jokes followed in the coming months, whispered between desks as we read “Flowers for Algernon” and snippets of Anne Frank’s diary.

But while sex education fueled the harassment I faced in my English class, it wasn’t the sole instigator. In a completely unrelated circumstance, one of my friends approached my locker. He had something to tell me, something he didn’t want to say but couldn’t keep hidden anymore.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 // The Statement — 7

Sexual insecurity, young men and the manosphere JOSHUA NICHOLSON Statement Contributor

Content Warning: Descriptions of sexually offensive or insensitive language A few months ago, I saw a video on Instagram of a student in a nondescript high school.

The student, responding to some unidentified incident, was defying his teacher, referring to himself as the “alpha” and rejecting the teacher’s authoritative ability to punish him. The video’s caption made reference to Andrew Tate, a prominent online figure and self-proclaimed misogynist who frequently encourages followers to live a life of financial extravagance through the lens of male supremacy.

While I don’t know if the student was familiar with Andrew Tate, his reference to the “alpha” mindset – an ideal adopted by Tate and others in the online manosphere, a loose group of online “alpha male” influencers – betrays his indoctrination by an online ideology which elevates male promiscuity at the expense of female sexuality.

The absurdity of this video may either overshadow or shed light on the fact that the online space has secretly radicalized portions of today’s young men into misogynistic ideology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, TikTok users began to see a rise in “alpha male” podcasts, a genre of media where one or two men espouse misogynistic rhetoric into a microphone. Aided by the algorithm, videos of Tate and other “alpha males” overtook users’ feeds, specifically targeting young men in a manner not seen since the YouTube alt-right pipeline.

Today, such content created by the manosphere persists on TikTok and has found new life in YouTube shorts.

The overarching theme of this content, outside of an agreedupon hatred for women, is sex.

When “alpha male” podcast hosts

bring on guests, they often pay scantily clad women, some of them OnlyFan models, intended to be representative of the entire gender.

The hosts ask about body counts, complain about female sexuality and argue that they should have their pick of women for being “high value” men. Even when the topic at hand isn’t related to sex at all, their schtick requires them to shift the conversation back toward it. In a conversation about Robin Williams’ suicide and the effects of depression, Tate opened his dialogue with a question. “(Robin Williams) could be banging 19 year olds the rest of his life,” Tate said.

“How can he possibly kill himself?”

In some of my first encounters with “alpha male” influencers, through the protective lens of critical YouTube video essays, I remember one clip standing out to me. It was a man in his late 20s confidently telling his co-hosts and a group of female guests that the average college woman has sex with 25 to 50 men every semester. I laughed at that absurd claim, which would assume most college women have sex with around three different people every week. This conclusion, drawn from a man’s uninformed perception of what women in their late teens and early twenties are doing, ends up as a kind of brain rot for its proponents, preventing them from thinking about women outside of the confines of sex. These influencers present themselves as so offensive and out of touch with reality that it’s easy to laugh them off. What’s not easy to laugh off, however, is the effect they have on young men who don’t know any better, such as the middle school boys who scroll on TikTok and the male high schoolers trying to find the reason as to why their female peers aren’t giving them attention.

To investigate how Tate and other influencers in the manosphere are affecting male youth, I spoke with a high school teacher. The teacher, who has been granted anonymity to protect his job, will

be referred to as Jason in the rest of this article. In our interview, Jason said he first came face-to-face with Tate and the manosphere through slang used by his male students.

“The first time I’ve heard kids reference stuff from (Tate’s) social media personality, (a) kid asked another kid, ‘are you a simp’ or ‘are you an alpha or beta?’ ” Jason said. “At first I was like, what the hell is wrong with you guys? But it only took three minutes of research to know what the hell they were talking about.”

Jason expressed a concern for how this rhetoric impacts his students and younger generations at large. He stressed that it’s disturbing to see the influence of Tate and other misogynistic creators on these students, especially due to the influential careers they might one day possess.

Although it’s difficult to speculate, the fact that young people are having less sex in general could be a potential explanation for the rise in this kind of misogynistic rhetoric and violence. A study by Indiana University concluded that nearly one in three young men have not had sex in the past year.

On our own campus, according to the the Statement’s 2023 Sex Survey, 38.4% of men report not having had sex this semester, consistent with national studies. Although this lack of sex is probably explained by cultural shifts, it can’t be assumed that it is wholly wanted or welcomed by young men. Speaking about the Indiana study, co-author Peter Ueda, a researcher with Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, raised concern over how this decrease emotionally affects males.

“A key question is, to what extent is

sexual inactivity associated with dissatisfaction?” Ueda said. “While being sexually inactive is a choice for some individuals, it could be a source of distress for others.”

Tate and other manosphere influencers offer the solution to these sex-lacking young men, promising fame and wealth through their advice and online courses.

At the same time, they entrap their listeners into an echo chamber, repeating their presuppositions about women and encouraging them not to go to therapy, but to become the “chads” of the society that they feel has oppressed them.

Read more at

michigandaily.com

survey free response 2023 “Doing the deed”

“Meet them that night and don’t really talk to them after”

“A few hours of sex with some cuddling and getting to know the person”

“Do a little flirting and make our way to the bed or couch, make out, and get jiggy with it.”

“One and done”

“um freak”