Graduation Edition 2023

Michigan means a permanent imprint on every student that walks through its brick and ivy. Michigan means sidestepping the block ‘M,’ spinning the cube and striding through the fountain. Michigan means late-night study sessions for early-morning exams. Michigan means auburn leaves, ivory snow and blush pink peonies. Michigan means feeling the thrill of watching the Wolverines advance to the playoffs, win Big 10 championships and secure national titles. Michigan means using our voices to push for change: on the streets of Ann Arbor and at the ballot box. Michigan means more than a degree, more than a campus and more than a smattering of semesters — Michigan means a community, forever.

Wherever you go, go blue.

UMich President Schlissel fired

investigation reveals ‘inappropriate relationship’ with employee

University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel has been fired effective immediately following an internal investigation revealing Schlissel’s inappropriate behavior with a subordinate at the University, according to a Saturday press release from the Board of Regents.

The decision was made at a closeddoor Board of Regents meeting Saturday morning without a public vote after the board hired a third party investigator to determine whether or not Schlissel’s actions as president had violated the University’s supervisor relationship policy.

“It is with great disappointment that we announce that the University of Michigan Board of Regents has removed Dr. Mark Schlissel as President of the University of Michigan, effective immediately,” the Board of Regents wrote in a Saturday press release.

The policy, which was introduced in July 2021, states that “a Supervisor may not, implicitly or explicitly, initiate or attempt to initiate an Intimate Relationship with a Supervisee over whom they exercise supervisory authority,” and was implemented in July 2021 following allegations former Provost Martin Philbert had used his position to coerce women into sexual relationships.

The firing comes after an anonymous complaint submitted on Dec. 8. revealed Schlissel had been in an inappropriate relationship with a University employee. A subsequent investigation was performed which found he had used his University email account to inappropriately communicate with said employee. Schlissel’s existing contract contained a morals clause which stated his behavior as President “be consistent with promoting the dignity, reputation, and academic excellence of the University.”

The Board of Regents released

a letter transmitted to Schlissel informing him of his termination. In it, the regents outlined their justification for firing him, citing messages sent from his University email to a subordinate. Because the regents fired Schlissel for cause, he will no longer receive the golden parachute he and the regents negotiated when he announced he would resign in 2023.

Schlissel had previously provoked the regents’ ire for failing to to communicate with the board regarding the Detroit Center for Innovation. Talks broke down between donor Stephen M. Ross and Dan Gilbert, who owned the site. An anonymous administration official who spoke to the Detroit Free Press said the regents felt Schlissel left them in the dark as negotiations faltered.

In October, Schlissel announced that he would be stepping down from the job in June 2023, a year earlier than planned. The Detroit Free Press at the time categorized his stepping down early as a deal between the members of the board who were satisfied and dissatisfied with his performance.

The decision was announced Saturday night. A press release from

the University announced president emerita Mary Sue Coleman will serve as interim president. Coleman served as president from 2002 until 2014.

In a statement posted to the Board of Regents website, Coleman wrote she was sad to learn of the allegations against Schlissel but was honored to once again be leading the University.

“While saddened by the circumstances, I am honored to be asked to again serve the University of Michigan,” Coleman wrote. “When I left the U-M campus at the end of my presidency in 2014, I said serving this great university was the most rewarding experience of my professional life. I’m happy to serve again in this important interim role.”

The University has hired the private law firm Jenner & Block to continue the investigation into Schlissel’s behavior. According to the Detroit Free Press, the firm is also investigating whether Schlissel misused University funds to support his relationship with the unnamed subordinate.

In an email obtained by the Michigan Daily addressed to LSA employees Saturday night, LSA Dean Anne Curzan wrote she would

be meeting with fellow deans and senior leaders tomorrow and will communicate additional updates in the coming days.

Curzan wrote Schlissel’s firing reinforced to need for sexual misconduct prevention on campus.

“As I process this news, it only strengthens my commitment to continuing the work we have been undertaking in the college, with the wise, research-informed guidance of the Preventing Sexual Harassment Working Group,” Curzan wrote. “It is essential.”

Jonathan Vaughn, former University football and notable survivor of the late Doctor Robert Anderson who has been camped outside of Schlissel’s house for nearly 100 days in protest of the University’s handling of sexual misconduct tweeted Schlissel’s firing would help create a safer campus.

“This news is fuel for my mission: the safety & protection of the students of this university,” Vaughn wrote.

“After 99 days of being ignored in front of former President Mark Schlissel’s home, the regents finally made 1 good choice. But there must be many more if U-M is to be fully accountable.”

classes moved online in response to

COVID-19 virus

BARBARA COLLINS, CLAIRE HAO & EMMA

Kim Dong Yeon, the governor of the Gyeonggi province — the largest province in South Korea — presented the 11th annual Sang-Yong Nam lecture on democracy at the University of Michigan Museum of Art Monday afternoon. About 100 students and Ann Arbor community members attended the event, which was hosted by the Nam Center for Korean Studies along with the Ford School of Public Policy.

Kim earned his doctorate from the School of Public Policy in 1993 and has served as a Korean government official since 2014. After serving as the Minister of Economy and Finance and the Deputy Prime Minister of the country, Kim took office as governor on July 1, 2022.

The event is also where the SangYong Nam Award is presented, which annually grants $3,000 to a graduating senior or a recent graduate of the Korean Studies program. Nam Sang-Yong, the namesake of the Center for Korean Studies, was the department’s largest benefactor, having donated more than

students dead following shooting at MSU

$4 million to the program.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily at the lecture, LSA junior Jinny Kim said it was a special event because it commemorated Nam and his contributions to the department.

“I think this event is really big because it’s the one time that the Nam family comes out to celebrate (since) their father’s passing and also just what he has done for our center,” Jinny Kim said.

LSA senior Olivia Daniel was announced as this year’s recipient of the Sang-Yong Nam Award. LSA Dean Anne Curzan presented the award.

“The Nam Center shares Elder Nam’s commitment to create important connections across campus and around the world,” Curzan said.

In her acceptance speech, Daniel spoke about how the center facilitated her interest in Korean studies and culture.

“I immersed myself in Korean culture through Nam Center events, studied abroad at Yonsei University and presented at academic conferences devoted entirely to Korean studies,” Daniel said. “I am so grateful that I have been able to contribute to this vibrant community.”

Community honors lives of MSU students Brian Fraser, Alexandria Verner and Arielle Anderson

SHANNON STOCKING & SNEHA DHANDAPANI

Co-Editor in Chief & Daily Staff Reporter

The Michigan State University Department of Police and Public Safety confirmed that three individuals were dead following the shooting at Michigan State University Monday night. At 8:31 p.m., MSU Police issued a safety alert in response to reports of gunshots heard at Berkey Hall, urging anyone on campus to shelter-in-place or to “run, hide or fight.” The shelter-inplace advisory remained in effect until 12:30 a.m. when MSU Police reported the suspect was found dead and there was no threat to campus.

MSU police released the names of three victims Tuesday, all of whom were students: MSU sophomore Brian Fraser, MSU junior Alexandria Verner and MSU junior Arielle Anderson. Five additional victims were hospitalized with life threatening injuries Monday night and remain in critical condition Tuesday, according to MSU police.

Following the attack, MSU announced all campus activities would be canceled through Thursday and classes would be canceled until

Monday. MSU buildings remain open for students who live on campus. counseling services are also available across campus. A vigil to honor the victims will be held at 7 p.m Wednesday.

Statues and other community gathering points on MSU’s campus have been decorated with flowers and signs mourning the victims and encouraging the campus community to remain “Spartan Strong,” according to pictures from The State News, MSU’s student-run newspaper. The State News reported that several students were leaving campus Tuesday to return home for the rest of the week, telling State News they didn’t feel safe on campus.

In a joint letter to the MSU staff, faculty and students, MSU Interim President Teresa K. Woodruff and Marlon C. Lynch, vice president for public safety and chief of police, thanked the first responders and MSU community members for their support throughout Monday night.

“The safety and security of our campus community is our first priority,” Woodruff and Lynch wrote.“We want to thank all our campus residents for taking this threat seriously, securing in place and acting to protect themselves and others. We also want to thank the

hundreds of people from MSU, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and first responders who worked in a coordinated effort to respond to the shooting.”

In a news release Tuesday, MSU Police expressed their support and dedication to the campus community during the ongoing investigation of the shooting.

“We cannot begin to fathom the immeasurable amount of pain that our campus community is feeling,” the release said. “We want to ensure our community that our department as well as our law enforcement partners will conduct a comprehensive and thorough investigation regarding this tragic incident.”

The MSU Police commended the campus community for reporting updates on the shooting and looking after their personal safety, citing a caller’s tip that led the police to the suspect at 11:35 p.m. The suspect was found dead due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In a tweet Tuesday morning, MSU police reported that a threatening note was found with the suspect, leading several public school districts in the East Lansing area to close Tuesday. While the investigation remains ongoing, MSU Police

confirmed that the 43-year-old suspect had no affiliation with MSU.

The MSU Board of Trustees released a statement Tuesday afternoon, saying they have been in communication with the victims’ families and are encouraging community members to support each other.

“This morning, the Board talked with families who lost their children due to senseless violence our community is suffering,” the statement read. “We are devastated with them and for them. Please hold space with the entire Spartan community as we navigate the weeks ahead. We will get through this difficult time by healing together.”

The Associated Students of Michigan State University, MSU’s undergraduate student government, also released a statement Tuesday afternoon expressing the shared feeling of grief and loss across the campus and condemning gun violence.

“To all the victims and their families, we are absolutely devastated,” the statement read. “This is a loss felt by all of Spartan Nation, and the pain we feel is unbearable. It is one thing to acknowledge the horrible reality of gun violence in America, but it is another to experience it firsthand.

This morning, we mourn not only the lives of our peers and friends but also the loss of the feeling of security and safety on campus. To all students who experienced this campus tragedy last night, our hearts go out to you during this unsettling time.”

University president Santa Ono sent a statement to U-M community members Tuesday morning, emphasizing that U-M campus administration is working closely with MSU and encouraging students, staff and faculty to reach out to one another.

“I know many in our community are reeling from this event as you have friends or family who belong to the MSU community,” Ono wrote. “I encourage us all to take a moment to show our appreciation and support for one another. Support resources are available on campus for students, faculty and staff.”

Ono also ordered all flags on the U-M campus to be lowered to half mast until further notice to honor the victims.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

After two and a half semesters of virtual learning and social distancing, many students said they were excited to return to a semblance of normalcy yet still nervous about the delta variant as they headed back to the classroom this past week.

With 91% of this semester’s classes now in person, many students told The Michigan Daily they were relieved to make the transition from Zoom calls to lecture halls.

Between awkward breakout rooms and all-too-real Zoom fatigue, some students particularly felt the absence of one-on-one connections that once defined in-person instruction, LSA senior Alex Meyer said. “We were lacking face-to-face contact (during virtual learning),”

Meyer said. “It’s harder to build relationships with classmates and professors over Zoom.”

Looking back on the past year and a half, LSA junior Regan Monnett found that the challenges of virtual learning made this week’s return to the classroom all the more memorable.

“The past year makes me appreciate the classroom in person much more,” Monnett said. “It also helps me remember to be patient with everyone because everyone’s adapting as everything goes along.”

As eager as students are to be back in the classroom, concerns over the looming threat of the delta variant still linger among both the student body and faculty. COVID19 cases have risen in Michigan to nearly double their September 2020 numbers.

“I’m definitely nervous about how things are and have been in terms of

COVID,” Monnett said. “Some of the buildings have been very busy so far, which is nerve-wracking.”

Just as flexibility and resilience were key to navigating the last three semesters, the past week has already tested students’ ability to adjust in a period of unfamiliarity, Meyer said.

“Even just my habits of taking notes, it’s harder to get back into it now as opposed to before. It’s a lot harder to pay attention,” Meyer said.

Many students said they felt nervous in anticipation of this week’s in-person classes. This was especially true for LSA junior Brianna Evans, who transferred to the University this past year.

“I was really nervous because I hadn’t learned in person in a while and because I’ve never been here before,” Evans said. “I was anxious about finding classes, but so far, it’s been okay.”

Now that Kinesiology junior Peter

Grobel — who transferred to the University his sophomore year — is able to experience in-person classes for the first time, he said he is excited to finally learn what it means to be a Wolverine.

“I hope to get the full Michigan experience, having all clubs and all classes in person,” Grobel said. “It’s just nice to have everything up to full speed, albeit (with) masks and some restrictions.”

Students fill every classroom, residence hall and library, reviving the once-desolate campus he experienced during his first year at the University, Grobel said.

“Campus is definitely much more lively compared to last year when it was completely empty,” Grobel said. “There would be two people at the bus stop, and now you see lines of freshmen going and going. Campus is alive again.”

This spirited atmosphere has

welcomed many new faces to campus. Countless times over the past week, Art & Design freshman Mari Kamidoi said they witnessed campus-wide kindness firsthand.

“My first impression of Michigan was that everyone’s really friendly,” Kamidoi said. “I haven’t met a single unfriendly person.”

Uncertainty remains a defining theme of the 2021 school year, with many students unsure of what the fall semester will ultimately look like. While grateful for in-person instruction, Meyer anticipates a return to online learning in the coming months.

“Most of my labs are using a mixed format now with a whole section built around virtual learning,” Meyer said.

“I’m sort of expecting that we can see a return to virtual classroom classes come mid-semester, so I’m keeping my expectations low.”

Hundreds of University faculty

and Graduate Student Instructors have signed a petition calling for greater COVID-19 planning and safety precautions, citing the rising threat of the delta variant and its potential to infect vaccinated people.

In an email to faculty Thursday — which some faculty said they found insufficient — University President Mark Schlissel and Provost Susan Collins said classrooms are the “safest place” to be this semester in response to the faculty and GSI’s demands for more detailed COVID-19 guidelines. For the time being, however, students are making the most of in-person instruction as they continue to tackle school in the age of COVID-19.

“This next semester, I plan to focus on building in-person relationships with people here at Michigan after transferring,” Grobel said. “All in all, I’m really just excited to see what being at Michigan’s all about.”

3

Internal

GRACE BEAL/Daily

All

Dorms and dining halls will remain open while large events are canceled or limited

‘Campus is alive again’: classes return to in-person After two and a half semesters of virtual and social distance learning, 91% of classes are now in-person

2013

NEWS over the YEARS

The University of Michigan Graduate Employees’ Organization announced in a tweet March 27 that they will begin striking. The strike will officially start Wednesday, March 29 at 10:24 a.m., which will be initiated by a walk out at that time. This announcement comes after GEO members authorized leadership to call for a strike in their meeting a week earlier, with 95% of members voting in favor of a work stoppage. The last GEO strike took place three years ago in fall 2020.

The strike comes after five months of negotiations with the University without a compromise reached on a new three-year contract agreement. In a press release, GEO claimed that striking is the natural next step in their ongoing activism, including protesting Ono’s inauguration and filing unfair labor practice charges against the University in March. In the press release, GEO said they hope it will help encourage the University to meet their demands.

Throughout their negotiations, GEO has asked that graduate employee salaries increase to $38,537 per year, claiming that

2022 2023 2020

2021

MARCH 14 - On March 13, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in U-M on or off-campus housing is reported in the Vic Village apartment complex.

JUNE 23 - After the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, protests erupt across Michigan demanding an end to police brutality.

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OCTOBER 21 - After receiving a record number of applicants, enrollment at the University of Michigan reaches an unprecedented high of 50,000 students for the fall 2021 semester..

APRIL 3 - To celebrate its 50th consecutive year, Hash Bash alters its agenda to fit with current public health guidelines while continuing to advocate for progressive marajuana policy.

SEPTEMBER 7 - In the first week of classes for the fall 2022 semester, COVID-19 case numbers are triple what they were this time last year. Despite this, masks remain optional and classes continue.

DECEMBER 5 - As students attempt to vote in the 2022 midterm elections, they face long lines and technical difficulties.

JANUARY 31 - Ann Arbor sees decade-high temperatures. The average temperature is 6.8 degrees higher than the historical monthly average due to a combination of weather patterns and climate change.

MARCH 7 - Santa Ono is inaugurated as the University’s 15th and first Asian-American president. Ono’s inaugural procession route is interrupted by GEO protestors as he reaches the Diag.

what they are currently being paid is not a liveable wage in Ann Arbor. They have also asked for improvements in their current health care plan and for the University to make alterations to campus security.

In response to GEO members authorizing a strike, University

President Santa Ono and University

Provost Laurie McCauley sent out a joint email statement to the campus community March 24. In the statement, Ono and McCauley alleged that a strike would not only be a breach of GEO’s current contract with the University, but would violate Michigan state law. Ono and McCauley expressed the University’s intent to take legal action against GEO if necessary.

“The University will take appropriate lawful actions to enable the continued delivery of our educational mission in the event of a work disruption,” the email said. “Those actions will include asking a court to find a breach of contract and order strikers back to work, stopping the deduction of union dues, filing unfair labor practice charges, and not paying striking GSIs and GSSAs for time they do not work.”

University Spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald wrote in an email to The Michigan Daily that the University hopes to come to an agreement with GEO as soon as

possible, but that they believe the decision to strike is both illegal and unethical.

“Beyond any legal considerations is an ethical one: if collective bargaining is to retain its value, all parties must honor the terms of the contract they signed,” Fitzgerald wrote. “We urge GEO to reconsider breaching the agreement we reached through good faith collective bargaining.”

In a separate email sent out to the campus community on March 25, McCauley stated that the University will take measures to keep campus operations as normal as possible and ensure that undergraduate students will receive academic support for the duration of the strike. To do this, McCauley said the University intends to continue good faith bargaining with GEO and working to ensure that students receive accurate final grades for their Winter 2023 classes.

“Our school, college, and department leaders are planning for substitute instructors, alternative assignments, and other means for delivering instruction in the absence of graduate student instructors,” McCauley wrote. “Providing a high-quality educational experience for every student remains our top priority.”

Read

Since Oct. 8, survivors of late University of Michigan athletic doctor Robert Anderson have been camping outside of University President Mark Schlissel’s house in protest against the University’s handling of the nearly 1,000 individuals who have come forward with sexual assault allegations against Anderson. Over the past few months, survivors have appeared in front of the Board of Regents, rallied students and community members at numerous protests on the Diag and testified at hearings in support of legislation protecting survivors.

Protestors say the University has failed to adequately address their presence outside of Schlissel’s house for the month they have been camping through rain and increasingly frigid temperatures. Schlissel has apologized to survivors indirectly at Regents’ meetings and in the press, but the survivors are asking Schlissel and the Board of Regents to hold a formal conversation with them about the University’s role in perpetuating Anderson’s abuse as well as the larger culture of sexual assault at the University.

In a statement to The Daily, University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald wrote that the University is currently in the process of confiden-

tial mediation and that they have been hearing from Anderson survivors since allegations surfaced.

“We will continue to meet in mediation with the attorneys the Anderson survivors have hired to represent them and we will continue to heed the judge’s direction not to discuss the process outside of the mediation sessions,” Fitzgerald said.

To document the day-to-day of protestors, the encouragement they receive from the University community and the challenges they face in making their voices heard, reporters, photographers and videographers from The Daily sat outside of Schlissel’s house from 10:00 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 5 to 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 6. Here is what we observed, hour by hour.

Friday, 10:00 a.m.

By 7:00 p.m. on Nov. 5, Jonathan Vaughn, the Anderson survivor and former Michigan football player who has been leading the protest, will have been camping out in front of President Schlissel’s house for 28 days.

On a normal day during the protest, Vaughn wakes up in his tent around 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. and heads to the Michigan Union, where he orders a coffee and breakfast sandwich from Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea. One of his favorite parts of the day is enjoying a morning cigar with his coffee.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

ARTS over the YEARS

ARTS over the YEARS

The Michigan Daily’s Arts section has impacted us all greatly. From the words we have written, to the friendships we have made, to the ways we have grown, our time here has helped make us who we are. Even for a group of writers, it can be incredibly difficult to put into words just how much this community has shaped us. However, we decided to take this opportunity to do just that. The Arts B-Sides always inspire the most vulnerable, intimate writings, and because this is the final B-Side that we will be participating in before we graduate, this felt like the perfect opportunity to write about how much Daily Arts means to us. And because this B-Side’s theme is “Firsts,” it felt even more appropriate: What better way for seniors to honor their time here than by writing about their favorite “Firsts” related to the Arts section, as we all contemplate the endings — the “Lasts” — that await us?

First interview: Meeting a hero is fine, just don’t call them a hero

There was a point in my junior year — right around the start of the second term — when I suddenly awoke from my albumreview-every-week grindset and realized that I hadn’t done a single interview in my four semesters at The Daily. I’d be lying if I said that nose-to-the-ground

2013

2020

JANUARY 31 – The final eight episodes of the Netflix original adult animated series “Bojack Horseman” premiere, solidifying its status as one of the best television shows to ever air.

MAY 7 – As the COVID-19 pandemic halts traditional releases, the Arts section starts a series titled “Art during COVID,” exploring the methods of creating art for oneself in quarantine, including environmental art, yoga, watercolor and protests.

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mentality wasn’t an escape from the monolithic task I had always envisioned interviewing to be. The irony was, in my hasty attempt to snag an interview at a concert, I stumbled into speaking with an all-time hero. The immense pressure didn’t wash over me until Phil Elverum (of The Microphones and Mount Eerie fame) replied to my email saying that he was starting his tour next week, so the interview had to take place within the next few days. I only had a day to come up with all of my questions. For the next 24 hours, nothing else existed in the world. My life became a maelstrom of logistics: what sources could I find, what questions should I avoid, how to even record a phone call — it was very much a learn-as-yougo process. And then the actual interview came, announced by my phone screen lighting up with a Washington area code. A gentle voice that was as recognizable to me as members of my own family gave a meek “Hello,” as if to gauge whether he had the right number. It was time. The conversation went about as well as I ever could have expected. We talked about infinity and the music industry and (because I couldn’t help myself) iconography. Ultimately, he found the sort of indie folk mythos fans build around him rather baffling and occasionally unnerving. Even in hearing all this, something in me felt like I would live to regret not mentioning how impactful his

2014

2021

MAY 30 – Standup comedian Bo Burnham releases his new special “Inside” on Netflix. Filmed and edited solely by Burnham, the special features musical numbers intertwining themes of mental health and isolation.

JULY 20 – Months after U-M alum and Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick donated millions to the University, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sues his company over allegations of harassment towards female employees.

2022 2023

MAY 13 – Kendrick Lamar releases his most confessional and controversial album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, half a decade after the Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN.

APRIL 8 – Before going on to sweep the Oscars, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” releases to critical acclaim. The multiverse epic features healthy doses of sci-fi goofiness and family drama, and is a perfect film to bring people back to theaters.

Saying goodbye to The Daily

work has been to me when the interview was over. His response was a sort of muted graciousness, one that couldn’t quite disguise a slight discomfort. It was then I knew I perhaps made a mistake.

Cut to several weeks later, I’m at the concert before Elverum’s set begins, and as I approach the front of the merch table, who is there but Phil selling his own stuff. The question of whether I should mention the interview was looming large in my mind. As I grabbed a poster and paid for it, my last opportunity was staring at me. But I realized I was just staring at a man. I walked back to my seat, waited for that man to come on stage and tell me his story in the one way he knows how.

First Race Day

The Arts marathon team was the first time I was convinced to leave my book behind to sweat it out across the finish line. Bizarrely, I credit the Arts section for pushing me toward physical fitness. While not the fastest runner, I found my way back to running through Daily Arts. The Arts section runs the Probility Ann Arbor Marathon as a relay team of four. We have written extensively and scrupulously about our experience training (and sometimes not training). An unlikely combination to be sure — media reviewing and sprinting — but it works. Besides the other memories made, I will treasure running in the Arb, making race T-shirts and navigating the

It’s time to talk about John Green

LILLIAN PIERCE 2022 Managing Arts Editor

No, John Green has not been officially “canceled.” In fact, his work remains quite popular: His latest book, “Turtles All the Way Down” (2017), debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and in 2018 Green confirmed its film adaptation. Last August he announced that he will be publishing his first work of non-fiction in May 2021. So, no, Green isn’t canceled in the sense that we have all agreed to stop reading his work and unsubscribe from his YouTube channel, but he is canceled for me. And he has been for quite some time.

To be truthful, I was always a great admirer of Green’s work, particularly in middle school. His Young Adult fiction is known for its young female readership, something that held true in my school district and friend group. I can’t remember which novel I picked up first, but “The Fault in Our Stars” was undoubtedly my favorite — a love story between two young and beautiful cancer patients? It was as if its sole purpose was to attract romance-giddy teens.

Regardless, by the time I reached high school, I separated myself from his work and most of YA fiction. This isolation wasn’t provoked by a controversy surrounding Green, nor had I simply grown out of the genre; I still loved the glorious romances that were stuffed into my bookshelves. I was just afraid to admit it.

It was around the same time others did fervently stop reading Green’s books because they were “for girls” or “not actually that good” or “overrated.” Maybe other YA fiction readers have encountered the same sentiment — that because we enjoy books with cheesy friendships or coming-of-age themes, we must be superficial. So I can’t blame my first dissociation with Green on him, but I can hold him responsible for the second.

Unfortunately for me and John Green, I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer when I was 17. It was an odd experience: The diagnosis and the scans and the surgery didn’t feel like they were happening to me, but to someone else. Maybe another me in a different universe, or someone else entirely. Either way, like many survivors of cancer, I had adapted a new perspective. A new way of

seeing things, both things trivial and significant, including the way society treats disease and diseased people.

Especially John Green. When I reread “The Fault in Our Stars,” it wasn’t so I could relate to Hazel or Augustus or the other cancer patients depicted. I subconsciously started reading it on one of the dark days anyone fighting illness, whether it be mental or physical, knows well. I picked it up out of muscle memory: I had read it on multiple occasions when I was in need of comfort or a distraction. It was simply one of those times. I depended on the trustworthy characters and their cliché remarks to provide some degree of relief. Something to softly pull me out of my reality and into another.

And the truth is, I both enjoyed and detested the book. Lines like “Grief does not change you Hazel. It reveals you,” and “But I believe in true love, you know? I don’t believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does” stuck out to me. As tacky as they may appear, they were successful in distracting me from my metastatic cancer.

But what also stuck out to me were the fallacies. Green invents the therapy that keeps Hazel alive. It’s not real. In the acknowledgements section of the book, Green writes: “The disease and its treatment are treated fictitiously in this novel. For example, there is no such thing as Phalanxifor. I made it up, because I would like for it to exist.”

And that’s not fair. Not for cancer patients like me whose cancers don’t have definitive treatments; not for those who live in constant uncertainty and fear; not for those who are told that we will just have to monitor our bodies for the rest of our lives, as long as we may live. And I know this is a work of fiction; I know that Green is entitled to create any fantasy he would like. But does fantasy belong in a book about cancer? Perhaps it is shocking because of Green’s other statements: “This is hopefully not going to be a gauzy, sentimental love story that romanticizes illness and further spreads the lie that the only reason sick people exist is so that healthy people can learn lessons.”

a made-up treatment, isn’t he glamorizing the scarce miracles and hope some cancer patients may have? By keeping Hazel falsely alive to share with us her newfound wisdom upon Augustus’s death, does it not turn into her and her experiences becoming a lesson for healthy people? And Green does not stop there. The other principal character and cancer patient, Augustus Waters, is said to have just been re-diagnosed with cancer right before embarking on a grand adventure to Amsterdam with Hazel. In what world is that possible? Having Augustus endure the long trip and the exhaustive tours around the city while simultaneously maintaining his emotional and mental capacity is another delusion I cannot forgive.

It is also difficult to ignore the other unreasonable decision to have the two cancer patients share their first kiss inside the Anne Frank house. Not to mention the heedless combination of cancer and the Holocaust, something like a kiss should — and would — never happen inside so sacred a place. Did Green think it would not matter because it is cancer patients performing the act? That they were not normal, healthy people, so in turn their actions should be excused in exchange for pity?

My particular position might make me overly sensitive to Green’s mistakes — but that’s another comment I’m sick of hearing. My sensitivity stems from my truth, as does my criticism. The errors of authors like Green do not deserve to be disregarded because of their merit or their well-intentioned ventures into sensitive subjects. Instead, that’s exactly why they should be held accountable. By putting their work and themselves into the world, they are inviting both criticism and praise.

“The Fault in Our Stars” is expertly problematic because its flaws can be easily overlooked. However, other errors of Green are not so deftly unnoticed: His repetitive usage of the same rudimentary character tropes and his lack of diversity in terms of race, gender and sexuality (noting a few exceptions: Tiny from “Will Grayson, Will Grayson,” Hasan from “An Abundance of Katherines,” and Radar from “Paper Towns”) make me wonder why Green has been, and continues to be, such an influential figure in YA fiction, and why he hasn’t been canceled before.

JANUARY 10 – Prince Harry releases his tellall memoir “Spare,” commenting on his time in the royal family. He shares just a bit too much about his life, including about his t-word.

APRIL 5 – “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” releases and has the biggest opening weekend of all time for an animated film. Jack Black’s musical number as Bowser becomes a viral hit and debuts on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

labyrinthine Michigan Medicine complex with Arts friends. I’m thankful to have seen the people whose brains, writing and personalities I adore in a new context. The Arts marathon team was the first time I was convinced to leave my book behind to sweat it out across the finish line.

First time I was personally vulnerable in an Arts article: The Queer B-Side I knew I’d wanted to write about Queerness, quarantine and my One Direction phase again; Katrina Stebbins’s announcement of the Queer B-Side a year ago

gave me the perfect opportunity. But to do it, I would have to come out — not only as a Queer woman, but as a Directioner. Luckily for me, Arts is an incredibly wonderful, welcoming, supportive space where I have never felt uncomfortable with my identity or with my opinions about media (everyone is surprisingly nice about my “Twilight” obsession). I was nervous about coming out in such a public way — sometimes, when I get an email from a random person who read my article, I’ll realize I’ve forgotten how big of

a readership The Daily really has. After all, someone could Google my name (no one is Googling my name) and have this article come up! Still, having this platform, and being able to use it to talk about things that are important to me, has been invaluable. It’s fitting, and somewhat bittersweet (and a little bit meta), that this is the last B-Side I’ll write for. I’m being vulnerable about my vulnerability. A Last about my First. I loved you then, Daily Arts, and I love you now.

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Gamer Girl

MADDIE AGNE Daily Arts Writer

The basement in my childhood home was equipped with a Magnavox box TV, a GameCube and a PlayStation 2. The furniture was old, and the basement was prone to flooding, but it didn’t matter so long as my older brother and I had the TV and at least one console. Before the days of homework and exams, my brother and I would spend every day after school in the basement: He would sit on the ottoman in front of the television while I curled up in the armchair behind him and, for hours, watched him play video games. He played any number of games — “Super Mario Sunshine” or “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” were the most popular, and if I was lucky enough, he’d let me play “Lego Star Wars” with him.

I spent years consuming games but spent hardly any time playing. By the time I reached my tween years, I had gotten decent at “Lego” games, “Animal Crossing” and “Super Smash Bros. Brawl,” and I was familiar with the mechanics of the Wii and PlayStation. But I intimately knew “Legend of Zelda” and “Infamous” games and others less suited to a little girl than “Animal Crossing.” I knew how to solve the puzzles in those games. I knew the lore and character biographies, and I knew that if you fell in water in “Infamous,” death was immediate, so steer clear. I watched the early days of YouTube gamers like ChimneySwift11 and iHasCupquake, and in recent years, I fell in love with Polygon’s “Unraveled” series. I had all the theoretical knowledge it took to be a “real” gamer, but my brother was the gamer, not me. No matter how much interest I showed, the video games underneath the tree on Christmas morning weren’t addressed to me. So what was a young girl to do? She gets smart. She learns everything she can about video games since she can’t afford to buy them herself, and she flexes that knowledge at every opportunity. And it surprises people — men, mostly. After they undergo a brief period of wondering how a woman could have so much knowledge about a sphere mostly exclusive to them, there are generally two ways they follow through. One,

they accept it and carry on the conversation with me. Two, and perhaps the more common option, is the testing.

If I know so much about one video game, then they want to see if I know everything about its predecessors and spin-off games. As a young woman, I am not new to men’s attempts to trip me up in an arena they do not deem suitable for me, but I never face it quite so poignantly as I do within the gaming sphere. Their singular desire is to act as gatekeeper to the academia of the video game community — meaning I am not allowed in unless I prove myself intelligent enough and otherwise ought to be kept on the fringes of their culture. And while I don’t mind saying that I can hold my own when it comes to discussion about a game’s story or characters, I will also admit that I begin to trip up when it comes to gameplay. If someone asked me to speak on the particular mechanics, special items or battles in, say, “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess,” I would be at a loss because even though I watched my brother play through the entire game, I have never laid hands on a “Legend of Zelda” game. All these years later, I still find myself wondering why?

That why has a number of answers, but advertising is at its core. Before the 1980s, video games were pretty neutral due to a lack of data. Yes, the industry was still largely male-dominated, but “there was hardly any player research being conducted.” No developers knew who exactly was playing the games, so the games were made for everybody.

Enter the 1983 video game crash: a recession in the industry caused by over-saturation. Consumers stopped purchasing games, and the industry lost money by the billion until a little company called Nintendo stepped in. Aiming to avoid repeat over-saturation and to create a more niche market, Nintendo conducted wide-scale market research into who was buying and playing the most video games — or toys, as they were marketed at the time to avoid the defunct title of “video game.” And what did they find? Boys were playing more. It follows that, in the ’90s, “Video games were heavily marketed as products for men, and the message was clear: No

girls allowed.” Marketing images and campaigns often featured hypersexualized women, the notion that increased gaming skill could win you more female attention and the age-old joke that video games were an escape from the old ball and chain.

This is why video games under the Christmas tree were never addressed to me as a child. They were good gifts for my brother — tools for him to be a regular little boy —while I was given baby dolls, which were tools for me to be a good mother.

As a future homemaker, I was represented in countless Disney princesses rescued from the clutches of evil only to become wives and mothers. The only kind of women I saw in the video games my brother played were these same damsels in distress. To my child-mind, Zelda and Princess Peach were princesses locked away in towers, waiting for Link or Mario to come save them from Ganon and Bowser. Even when the rare strong female character, like Lara Croft or even Samus Aran, did make an appearance, she was hypersexualized and seemingly animated for the male gaze.

The “gamer girl” identity is reflected in this representation. Somehow both fetishized and scorned, the internet’s definition of a gamer girl is, like Lara Croft, welcome in the gaming community, yet is more ornament than player and is non-threatening enough to be held at arm’s length within the community. She is an unfortunate, unrepresentative catch-all term that has been applied far too liberally to myself and other female gamers.

In 2014, Gamergate — the online harassment campaign in which “thousands of people in the games community began to systematically harass, heckle, threaten, and dox several outspoken feminist women in their midst” — revealed just how dangerous video game culture actually was for women, and particularly for transgender gamers. The campaign produced transphobic memes in order to push its agenda and highlighted just how long transgender women had been speaking against sexism and harassment in the community.

Design by Phoebe Unwin

My gay girl playlist starter pack, from the new to the nostalgic

Harry Styles, boy-bandhood and beyond

LAURA MILLAR Daily Arts Writer

I remember staring blankly at the ceiling and contemplating my emotions before falling asleep in middle school. Falling in love for the first time was overwhelming, especially with five popstars. As the months went by and my love grew stronger, my posters began to creep up my walls, mysteriously making their way into my line of vision. Eventually my ceiling was covered in One Direction posters. And I’m not ashamed one bit.

He’s not a singer or a songwriter or an actor. He is an artist. He shows this again and again. His three-time Grammy-nominated album Fine Line came out in 2019. It’s about “having sex and feeling sad,” as Styles said himself. He touched on topics he couldn’t dare confront while in One Direction, calling himself an “arrogant son of a bitch who can’t admit when he’s sorry.” Styles shows us vulnerability, honesty and a new style of music in Fine Line.

EMILIA FERRANTE 2022 Senior Arts Editor

Sometimes I wish I had gotten the gay college experience

I thought I would have –“experimenting” with girls until I figured out that, hey, they weren’t experiments at all. Instead, I figured out I was bisexual while sitting in my childhood bedroom during the deep quarantine of the early pandemic. It would be great if I could paint my quarantine as a beautiful, introspective time of self-reflection and challenging my internalized compulsory heterosexuality. And it was, to some extent — but mostly, I have to admit, I really just had a lot of

time on my hands. Time to think and ponder and take “Am I Gay?” tests. (At some point I realized that if you take enough “Am I Gay” tests on the internet, it probably means you are gay.)

Most people can’t pinpoint the exact date they realized their own Queerness. As my own realization came during the internet-steeped pandemic summer of 2020, I guess it makes sense that I can. Specifically, my Spotify history indicates a slew of sapphic love songs, all liked on July 6, 2020. This includes gay girl classics like girl in red, Kehlani, Clairo, dodie and King Princess. Looking back, I can’t remember having one big revelatory moment where I decided that yes, I was Queer — but clearly,

there was a day when I proclaimed (to my Spotify, at least) that I was.

So why were these songs so important to my Queer awakening? Music is obviously crucial to a lot of personal moments and revelations, so it’s not like this was special. However, given the quarantine, they were the only way I could connect to a larger community. I couldn’t go to Necto or hang out at the Residential College. I couldn’t go to the Kerrytown Markets and buy nothing but still soak in the Queer energy of other 20-somethings with tote bags. I was in my bedroom, the same bedroom in which I had considered myself “straight” for so many years. I felt like an outsider in my own life, unsure how to

reconcile my Queerness with the purple walls of my childhood sanctuary.

This was where I listened to Taylor Swift and One Direction — staples of my tweens, teenagedom and current playlists — but in that music, there was no space for Queerness. The heterosexuality was overwhelming. When I played back “Love Story,” I remembered believing that — although I never dreamed of a big white wedding — the person I ended up with would unequivocally be a man. I never thought to think otherwise. Other people were allowed to be gay, and I wanted so badly to be one of them; but I thought because I liked men, there was no other option.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

‘Bad Vegan’ is a shaky retelling of New York’s strangest scandal

SWARA RAMASWAMY Daily Arts Writer

Everyone seems to love a good scam right now. With shows and movies like Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” and “The Tinder Swindler” and Hulu’s “The Dropout,” it seems like audiences are desperate to probe the minds of con artists and gawk at the losses of their victims. Netflix has fed into this craving once again with the documentary “Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.” From director Chris Smith, who also directed Netflix’s “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” “Bad Vegan” shines the spotlight on former famous raw-food chef Sarma Melngailis and her fall from grace.

Sarma Melngailis was conned by a man named Anthony Strangis — whom she met on Twitter — into draining almost two million dollars from her restaurant for him. The duo eventually married and ended up going on the run. Once caught, Melngailis was accused of failing to pay employees and defrauding investors.

Viewers get the story from all angles. The docuseries includes interviews with Melngailis’ former

employees, family and close friends, as well as an interview with Allen Salkin, the Vanity Fair journalist who wrote about Melngailis’s story back in 2016. The interviews are intercut with actual footage shot by Melngailis and Strangis, and most importantly, an interview with Melngailis herself. You would think that her interview would be more of a “tell-all,” complete with her own personal take on the whole ordeal, but she maintains a completely passive expression and almost monotonous voice throughout.

Viewers can barely discern an inkling of her own emotions throughout the interview, which can be chalked up to her feeling apprehensive about reliving the experience, as she tells us outright. But the feeling read as almost out-of-body, like Melngailis was telling someone else’s story.

“Bad Vegan” tells a tale that gets weirder by the minute. Early on, we learn that Melngailis met Strangis under an alias he was using — Shane Fox. When employees of Melngailis’s restaurant, Pure Food & Wine, found out his true name and the fact that he was a convicted felon, they (rightfully) expressed their shock. Melngailis’s reaction? Blasé. Apparently, Fox/Strangis had told

her he did work for the CIA and this was totally normal. Right, moving on. As if the identity situation wasn’t already a red flag, viewers are later told that Strangis made a number of promises to Melngailis about a “happily ever after,” including making her and her dog immortal. What was the price of immortality? Almost two million dollars funneled from the restaurant directly into Strangis’s pockets. Once again, in the retelling of her story, Melngailis maintains that deadpan expression and voice.

Melngailis’s interview is what threw the show off-balance. All of the interviewees describe her with roughly the same words: generous, kind, intelligent, etc. Are those the elements that led her to care so much for a man who sucked the money out of her business? Maybe, but Melngailis’s interview definitely does not allude to that. By the end of the far-too-long four-hour ordeal, I actually found myself getting frustrated with her. I was pleading with her, “Just give me something, anything to make me understand how you put up with this guy.” The result of all the interviews is a mixed bag of emotions — you genuinely have no idea what to feel, besides

impatience.

One of the few strong points of “Bad Vegan” is the coverage of the media debacle after Melngailis and Strangis were caught. Until Salkin’s Vanity Fair piece, Melngailis was being slandered for being a fraud and interestingly, being a “bad vegan.”

Police tracked the pair’s location to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, via an order for a Domino’s pizza and chicken wings that was sent to the hotel. Cries of hypocrisy went up everywhere as the finger was pointed at Melngailis, the vegan chef running a raw-food restaurant. After actually watching “Bad Vegan” and hearing about what really went down (the Domino’s was actually ordered for Strangis), you finally feel sympathy for Melngailis as the show splashes the smearing headlines across the screen.

“Bad Vegan” is a rollercoaster. It goes from normal to odd to straightup outlandish, and you can’t even fully rely on the main character for a proper explanation. For better or for worse, this show does not tell you what to feel until its final minutes. After the string of these new releases, though, I can say one thing for certain: I’m officially done with scam shows.

Harry Styles has taken me on quite a ride since the days when I would fall asleep looking into his eyes on a Seventeen magazine poster. It feels like I’ve been on the sideline of his life for nine years, cheering him on at every phase. From his blazer-wearing days of 2012 to his Vogue-modeling days of 2020, he has never failed to get my applause. If I could recall all the times that my jaw dropped as new developments demonstrated his genuine passion for art and utter self-assurance, we would be here all day. So I won’t do that. What I will do, though, is bring to light the hidden qualities and talents Styles has to offer. And it goes way beyond his luscious locks and pop star charm.

Starting off on the British TV series “The X Factor,” Styles originally had goals of becoming a solo artist until Simon Cowell decided to group him with four other singers, forming One Direction. Styles became a fan-favorite from the start. One Direction fans (a.k.a. Directioners) fell in love with his authenticity. He expresses his emotions. He’s not afraid to cry on camera. He doesn’t play the womanizer-cool-guy role everyone else created for him.

In a documentary following the band through their days on “The X Factor,” Styles speaks out on not being able to handle hate comments directed towards him on Twitter. His lips tremble and his eyes water as he admits, “I can take criticism, but if it’s just like a ‘I don’t like you,’ then I want to know why people don’t like me.”

Styles never really fit the cookie-cutter role he was expected to fulfill while in One Direction, and he didn’t always have the self-confidence he has today. And his fans could tell. He was always bursting out the seams with more to offer, suffocating from the confines of boyband-hood. From management to stylists to contracts, Styles was being molded into a lesser (but still genuine) version of himself.

When One Direction broke up in 2015, my heart broke into five separate pieces. Not to be dramatic, but it felt like the posters that tattooed my walls were mocking me. The critics were right. They were just a stupid boyband. Bound to break up and fail as solo artists.

But this was only the beginning of Styles. The bubble that once confined him was popped.

And while covering a range of different songs, from “Juice” by Lizzo to “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac, Styles again shows his genuine love for music. And when you really love something, you love all of it. That’s where range stems from: the absolute urge to cover all aspects of your interest at all costs using whatever opportunities you can get your hands on. Styles covers it all.

And he doesn’t just do it for enjoyment. Styles acknowledges his platform. He knows his reach, and he doesn’t let it go to waste.

In his unreleased song “Medicine” that he performed on tour, he sings, “The boys and the girls are here. I mess around with him. And I’m okay with it.”

At this moment, the self-conscious and insecure 18-year-old ripped off his tight-fitting blazer and exposed his inner core. Styles has been an ally of the LGBTQ+ community since his boy band days, but he’s become increasingly involved in the fight against gender norms and stereotypes as of late.

In December 2020, Styles became the first man to appear solo on the cover of Vogue. And he did it in a ballgown. He broke expectations in the best way possible and spoke up when Candace Owens, American author and political commentator, tweeted, “Bring back manly men”, regarding Styles’s cover. Styles spoke about the art of fashion and the blurring of lines between what is considered male and female clothing. He understands that art is about making a statement and does so with grace.

“Annette” tries to throw the audience off from the outset. Over a blank screen, a voice tells the audience that noise of any kind, including breathing, will not be tolerated during the film. This transitions right into the opening number, asking the audience for permission to start the film while introducing the main characters. It’s an opening that will either have you immediately hooked or rolling your eyes and looking for the exits. The film is not afraid to take bold risks, and once it has you in its grasp, it refuses to let go.

“Annette” follows the marriage of comedian Henry McHenry (Adam Driver, “Marriage Story”) and opera singer Ann Defrasnoux (Marion

Cotillard, “Inception”). These professions perfectly convey the film’s tone with the combination of the sadistic, dark comedy of a shock comedian and the big, emotional melodrama of an opera singer. The couple has a child named Annette, portrayed by a wooden puppet, the center of tension between Henry and Ann. By making Annette a puppet, the filmmakers avoid gambling on the performance of a child actor, while enhancing the themes of Henry’s control in all domains of life.

Director Leos Carax (“Holy Motors”) bombards the audience with unexpected twists, yet almost none of them would work without the completely committed central performances of Driver and Cotillard. It doesn’t matter what kind of ridiculous nonsense Carax asks them to do in a given scene;

both actors are fully on board and give everything they have to get earn the emotional investment of viewers.

Driver delivers one of the best performances of his already illustrious career as he compels you to be on the side of a truly despicable man. The physicality of his performance, aided by his tall frame and full use of his remarkable skill as an actor, captivates the audience. During the scenes where Henry is performing stand-up, Driver expertly navigates the conflict with both the crowds at his shows and himself, and he perfectly portrays the character losing his mind.

As expected from a film that swings for the fences almost every second of its 141-minute runtime, some choices strike out. The songs are surprisingly weak for a musical, and while they work fine within the

context of the film, they aren’t going to be stuck in your head for weeks after hearing them.

The film also drags on a bit in the second half. A new plot development at the midpoint means it takes time to ramp up a new conflict, killing the film’s existing momentum. Once the new tension between Henry and his daughter is developed, “Annette” once again becomes entirely engrossing, but the tedium may lose viewers who weren’t totally sold by the film from the start.

“Annette” has been a polarizing film since it opened the Cannes Film Festival back in July, which isn’t unexpected given the outlandish choices the film makes. However, these are exactly the kinds of films that make the medium so wonderful.

And Directioners awaited with hope for the star’s debut album as they recovered from the sharp blow. His self-titled debut album shocked the fandom with ballads like “Sign of the Times” and rock hits like “Kiwi.” He went from lyrics like “Baby, you light up my world like nobody else” to “I’m having your baby, it’s none of your business.” We saw the side of Styles that was hidden from us, shaded by the looming presence of One Direction’s management. We didn’t know what was hiding in the dark.

Styles’s range has become apparent in other ways, too. All the emotions he once had to hide were expressed in “Dunkirk,” a 2017 film where he played a soldier in battle. With no prior acting experience besides a quick performance with One Direction on “iCarly” in 2012, fans were worried. We couldn’t bear to see Styles cry again.

But he didn’t disappoint. Reviewers mentioned his “surprising amount of grit and pathos,” which made him “simply magnetic.” When everyone was doubting him, tagging his new career path as a rebound, he performed. He showed his range.

In his latest “Treat People With Kindness” music video, Styles and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”) co-star, wearing almost identical outfits while Styles does the more traditional “female” dance moves like dips and spins. And once again, he performs not just as an actor or a singer or a dancer, but as an artist, making a statement regarding the blurring of gender lines and just treating people kindly. But it doesn’t end there. In the upcoming film “Don’t Worry Darling”, Styles has been cast as the male lead. The film takes place in the 1950s and follows an unhappy housewife as she starts to question her sanity. Styles plays her manipulative and controlling husband, which is the exact opposite of what he stands for. After reading a draft of the script, I can’t imagine him saying the lines he’s scripted for, but that’s what makes it so exciting.

“Don’t Worry Darling” is just another way for Styles, as an artist, to make more of a statement regarding the abandonment of stereotypes and the push towards gender equality.

If Styles succeeds, as he’s done time and time again, this role will only add another layer to his already-versatile self, illuminating the inner workings of his mind that allow him to possess another personality so far off from his own. And I’m dying to see how he does it.

Range is about more than a singer-songwriter’s variety of styles or an actor’s type of role. When it comes to art, range is about expression. Being able to express what matters most to you in a number of different ways, whether it be through music style or acting or fashion, is what establishes range. Styles continues to surprise us with his undeniable creativity and authenticity.

If you’re still looking at Styles through a narrow lens that only captures his boyband days, I recommend taking a step back. You’ll come to find a well-rounded artist capable of making a statement in the most graceful and creative of ways.

Design by Reid Graham

‘Annette’ is an audacious, chaotic, mesmerizing tragedy

SWARA RAMASWAMY Daily Arts Writer

STATEMENT over the YEARS

ARTS over the YEARS

A senior in college is reclining on his front porch in the gray spring light of Ann Arbor. He’s trying to make sense of it all. He says: The tuition was $50,000 a year, frontloading on classes to wrap it up in three years, that’s $150,000. Plus food and housing, which totaled about $900 a month, that’s $180,000, but I’d have needed to eat regardless, so maybe only $170,000.

Eighteen hours a week of classes, assuming I’d attended them all, for 90 weeks, costs $105 an hour, which is expensive, but not too expensive, because my whole college life hadn’t been squeezed into just those 18 hours a week.

Bursley Residence Hall had those long, tunnel-like hallways — hallways with no windows that made me lose track of time — and the little convenience store with sushi that was always picked clean, minus the Philadelphia rolls. I remember I had this tree, growing outside my window, in the dorm, that changed color day by day that first fall. I’d never watched anything the way I watched that tree turn colors, which maybe speaks to my dependency on the room, but people visited me there, visited and laughed and slept on the floor and threw up on the carpet and listened patiently while I played them songs that, frankly, didn’t possess the sort of liveliness

2013

MARCH 25 – U-M seniors detail their disappointment and uncertainty moving forward with graduation and job recruitment in the early days of the pandemic.

SEPTEMBER 25 – Former Statement editors Marisa Wright and Andie Horowitz reflect on the influence and legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her passing on September 18, 2020.

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found in music that ought to be played around new friends, but they listened anyway, nodded and faked smiles and decided, after only a month or so, that they’d like to live with me once our class was kicked out of the dorms.

You sign a contract to become this little odd family, promise to nag each other about the dishes in the sink, the stains on the tile and oh, my god, why are there squirrels in the walls and mice in the basement, but it’s all okay because your housemate has a fighting spirit, just running in circles with a broom and a plastic tub, going to teach those squirrels a lesson. Your schedule picks up.

Everything moves faster. Walk to class; no, run to catch the bus; no, skip class and write your thesis and hole up in your room while the dishes pile higher and higher. See the housemates less, yes, but when you do, it’s a real outpouring, because just today, I heard Truth House is throwing, and just today, I have a coupon at Domino’s, and for just one more song, we can dance, please, let’s just keep dancing. And everything kind of crescendos, faster than you know it, and all of a sudden, there’s less can you believe our house has a front porch? and more by the time the next season of this show comes out, we’ll be living in different cities.

So 18 hours a week would really be selling it short. More like 120 hours a week, spent just absorbing the strangeness of it all. Say it’s only $16 per hour then, which isn’t too unreasonable. Though it’s not just 120 hours

2014

2021

2022 2023 2020

AUGUST 11 – Former Statement columnist Mackenzie Hubbard shares screenshots of their text messages as an unconventional way to memorialize and value the relationships in their life.

OCTOBER 5 – Former Statement correspondent Mary Rolfes comments on church burning protests that occurred after a mass grave containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children was found on the grounds of Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada.

MAY 24 – With the anticipated overturning of Roe v. Wade, Statement correspondent Emily Blumberg investigates the harmful ways in which the U-M community could be impacted.

JULY 15 – Statement associate editor Lilly Dickman shares her heartbreak following a shooting in her hometown. She reflects on the political issues surrounding gun control while mourning for other American communities forever changed by gun violence.

The art of farewell

because it doesn’t stop when you’re sleeping. I keep having this dream about a bowl of cereal, and I don’t know, maybe everyone has this dream, or some version of it, but the bowl feels warm to the touch, as if I’d just taken it from the dishwasher and the milk inside is cool. I’m eating heaping spoonfuls of Lucky Charms, all those alluring bright colors, eating, wondering what’s at the bottom, like I can’t wait to find out, but I’m terrified to find out, and at the bottom, it’s just an emptiness, lonely, like I’d never had any cereal at all. It’s easy to decide, then, to stay in the dream — to keep splashing around in the cool milk, stained with all the bright colors — but you move on because you have no choice, and I’m starting to realize, just now, as I’m coming to the end of it, that there is no end, no hard, fast line drawn in the sand to say, okay, it’s over, you’re an adult already, just pack it up and move on.

No, instead it all bleeds over, smearing like a child’s watercolor after you told them to let it dry, and the memories well up, just as everything else starts to go, and they leave you exhausted, gasping for air, washed up on a rocky shore, confronted by the images that keep appearing in your mind: You’re soaked to the bone in the pouring rain, grinning from ear to ear, walking quickly down South University Avenue, back when it was under construction; or you’re kneeling on Palmer Field, kneeling in the grass with a blank stare, like an idiot, because oh god, her ankle isn’t supposed to bend that way,

but maybe it’s alright because your pre-med friend looks confident; or you’re trudging through the snow, then drumming your fingers on 7-Eleven’s plastic countertop, making a joke to the man ringing you up, but he doesn’t laugh. The images flash past, too quick, really, to catch them all, so you’re stuck with just the brightest ones, chastising yourself for forgetting the details and replacing them with questions, unanswerable questions like, why did my English professor wear a mask some days and not others? or why had a photo editor worn bike shoes to a meeting? The little images start to haunt

MARCH 8 – For the 2023 Immersion Edition, Statement columnist Sammy Fonte put his cartwheels to the test when he “participates in” a Michigan women’s gymnastics team practice.

MARCH 20 – The Statement’s editorial team journeys to Port Huron, Mich. — the birthplace of our namesake, The Port Huron Statement. We investigate the origins of our section while reflecting on the role of creative nonfiction in journalism.

you: not constantly, but in uneven increments, so one day you’ll be working away, laser-focused on some peculiar comma placement, and the next day you hear someone accidentally use a specific word, like barn or implication, that takes you back to a place where the images well up, and for hours afterward the memories feel fresh again. So it only cost maybe $8 an hour, taking all that time into account.

I have to factor in the bad memories, though, and it’s hard to conjure them up now, in the warmth of spring, but I know times weren’t perfect. The everyday sort of bad occurrences have largely

faded to the background, but one memory stuck around: when I had to say goodbye. The pressure started during a weekly meeting with some columnists — our last meeting — when a thought popped into my head, and I suddenly wondered which of them I’d ever see again. The question didn’t spark a panic so much as an odd fascination — an urge to hold onto all of life’s little guest stars, people I loved, but not enough to keep in touch with — and so I learned to say a permanent goodbye, not out loud, but quietly in my head whenever someone left a room.

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JOHN JACKSON Statement

Associate Editor

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The weight we carry: college journalism’s untold grief

The first time I ever had to carry grief that did not belong to me was the day I began to report on survivors of former University of Michigan Athletics doctor Robert Anderson. Over a span of 37 years, more than 950 victims reported thousands of incidents of sexual abuse and misconduct at the hands of Anderson, remaining as likely the most sexual abuse allegations against a single person in United States history. There is an untold grief in reporting this kind of trauma, in reporting the tragedies that affect our schools and communities — the people we love and know — and what they ultimately leave behind. In time, even grief that does not belong to us has a way of becoming our own. College journalists are especially

vulnerable to the weight of reporting. The world sees them as too young to understand the heaviness of grief or to report on the shootings that fracture their campuses, the homicides that destroy their student bodies, the bomb threats and sexual abuse scandals that define the way they reckon with themselves. But oftentimes, long after national news outlets have left, when press conferences become a rarity and towns begin to quiet again, student journalists and student-run newspapers become the last to remain, to understand, to painstakingly cover all that happens in between. And at a cost few are ever willing to make. What becomes of college journalists in the face of collective grief? What does it mean to grieve, to process, to become angry, to be in pain, to know joy and love and healing as a journalist first, and as a student last?

I’ve spent the past month

researching college newspapers across the country, and more importantly, college newspapers that found themselves at the forefront of national tragedies — those that have had to contend with what it meant to no longer feel safe in your own libraries, classrooms, newsrooms and homes. Over the past few weeks, I spoke to Ava MacBlane, Editor in Chief of The Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia; Haadiya Tariq, Editor in Chief of The Argonaut at The University of Idaho; and Jasper Smith, Editor in Chief of The Hilltop at Howard University. These are their stories. This is the weight they carry.

The Cavalier Daily, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.

The Cavalier Daily — The CD or The Cav, for short — is the University of Virginia’s independently-run student newspaper. It employs approximately 400 staffers and is led

At the movies

TAYLOR SCHOTT Statement Managing Editor

This is not an essay about watching movies — this is an essay about going to the movies, about its likeness to ceremony, about how it makes me feel quite a bit less lonely. About how it saves my weekends. About why sometimes, (and I never know when that sometimes is going to be) being alone in public is comforting.

For the past three weekends, I’ve spent a Friday or a Saturday or both at the Michigan Theater and State Theatre. The stretch began with the hotly anticipated, box-office hit “Dune” in a packed showing room at the Michigan Theater. The following weekend it was a quieter, charmed “The French Dispatch” in their largest auditorium, and a rowdy “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” seen (for the first time) from the upper mezzanine the same night. “Dune” again the next weekend in the Michigan Theater. The night after, a chilling “Last Night in Soho” from the cozy, elevated rows of the State Theatre. An anniversary showing of “Blade Runner” is slated for this coming weekend.

It’s not like I had outright planned to spend my October and November weekends this way. It just sort of happened, as these things often do. I saw “Dune” and realized what I had missed so much about a communal viewing experience, and so I went again. And again. And again.

I’m enjoying this stint, as I tend to indulge in things for weeks at a time, only to abandon it once the novelty wears off. Next month I may be fervently knitting scarves that won’t see their ends, tossed in baskets with the needles still clinging to the last row I attempted. But I will have occupied myself for the month of December.

Like my pocket-sized copy of “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” that protects against preventable boredom, going to the movies

ensures a thing to do, it is something to put in your calendar. You can use it as a crutch. You can say, hey, I’m sorry. But I’ve got plans with red velvet seats, Bill Murray and incurable back pain tonight. And you can’t reach me. It’ll be dark and I’ll be happy. Or maybe not happy, but convinced of the possibility.

I take care to treat moviegoing as a ceremony, one I should smarten up for: eyeliner, coiffed hair, heeled loafers. A scarf? Let’s put on some Etta James and dance a little (to my playlist called “Songs to Secretly Dance To”).

Like when getting ready for the party is more fun than the party itself, going to the movies represents everything that surrounds the experience — it’s not actually about the movie, though I suppose it could be — it isn’t usually for me (even though “Dune” was actually quite good). And it’s never about the party.

It’s about if the butter has journeyed through to the bottom of the popcorn bowl, or the blessed moment the lights dim, finally introducing the sanctuary of silence.

Sticky floors. A glorified night to myself. A place where you are commanded to turn off your phone and where nobody can reach you. It is a wonderfully liminal space where you feel transported, not totally out of reality, but somewhere perched on its border.

Who is going to get offended when I say that going to the movies feels more religious than church? But how could you deny the parallels of a showing at the Michigan Theater: veritable gold banisters winding up to the second floor, the organ playing that precedes each movie. Gold leaf molding on the ceiling — a truly divine display. Enforced quiet. People congregating under the bright marquee. I pay more respect to going to the movies than I ever did going to church — and that should tell you all you need to know about my Catholic upbringing. At the movies, I am alone but

surrounded by people who are also alone. It is comforting. At parties, I am only surrounded by people who are better at pretending that they are not also alone. Or people — and I write this with jealousy — who are actually not alone at all. I feel less lonely going to the movies for obvious reasons, but also for less obvious ones. The presence of other people without the responsibility of having to interact with them is a nice thing. You’re all connected by a desire, however fleeting, to see this movie. To eat popcorn loudly. To laugh at the right time. To suck the air out of the room by collectively gasping at a jump-scare.

Durga Chew-Bose in her essay “Summer Pictures” puts it this way: “Going to the movies is the most public way to experience a secret. Or, the most secretive way to experience the public.”

When going to the movies, I am seeking out pleasure and entertainment. But I am also avoiding confrontation — I never like to interrogate why being home alone on a weekend night so disturbs me, but I imagine that much of this conception has to do with the social mores of college and conflicting ideas about solitude. Alas, it’s so much easier to watch Anya TaylorJoy dance to “Downtown” with the smugness of having escaped than it is to admit what we are escaping from in the first place.

This past summer, a “moviehouse” was built on the western end of my hometown’s main drag. Its construction was followed by a minimalist bakery, a tapas restaurant, and a “unique urban market.” All of these establishments were constructed within the same year, which has given this street a sort of faux-modernity. Like the youngest child of five that wasn’t planned, this street’s end is late and too young to understand much.

by Editor in Chief Ava MacBlane. The Cavalier Daily’s offices are located in the basement of Newcomb Hall, a student center that also houses the campus’s main dining hall. Staff sometimes take long naps on a couch chock-full of Squishmallows. A life-size cut-out of Will Ferrell sits in an odd corner, and there are lopsided frames of old newspapers from decades ago hung on the walls. Meetings are held in an area fondly dubbed “The Office” and on Fridays, when the production schedule is pleasantly light, the Copy staffers spend hours at one of the few empty tables gossiping about the day’s latest happenings. The newsroom here is well-loved. It’s the kind of place people visit just because they can.

On Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, University of Virginia students and football team members Devin Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis Jr. died after a gunman opened fire on a bus returning from

a University of Virginia class trip to Washington, D.C. Two other students were wounded. A shelterin-place warning issued a campuswide “Run, Hide, Fight” alert that lasted well into the next morning. Students spent the whole night cramped into libraries and a variety of campus and academic buildings, trapped in an uncomfortable state of limbo and a terribly unsettling cloud of fear, in search of a reason why.

MacBlane, who was the Managing Editor of The Cavalier Daily at the time, spent the entirety of the next 72 hours following the shooting, on the ground reporting. She missed meals and sleep, and much of her grief was experienced as a journalist first. Reporting on her community became one of the only ways she carried her grief, or rather, the only way her job as a student journalist allowed her to.

“You want to feel connected to people and to your community, but

you can’t because you’re still the media,” MacBlane told me. There is a heaviness that comes with reporting on fellow peers who left the world so violently, a half-removed kind of grieving.

While it became the sole responsibility of MacBlane and The Cavalier Daily to print the victims’ names, their hometowns, what they studied, the lovely, wonderful tiny things that made them who they were, there is also the realization that the journalists are students, too. They might have run into the victims of the shooting somewhere in line at a coffee shop or in the library, or the victims might have picked up a copy of The Cavalier Daily, because Devin Chandler, D’Sean Perry and Lavel Davis Jr. were here as fellow students, and now after a senseless act of violence, they no longer were.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

The real fake IDs of UMich

HALEY JOHNSON Statement Correspondent

Two months ago, I received an unexpected direct message on Twitter. It was from someone I had never met but vaguely recognized from the University of Michigan Twitter-sphere.

“I think my roommate found your fake,” they wrote. “It kinda sucks btw.” Said ID was not, in fact, my fake ID. It was my real Michigan driver’s license. It had disappeared somewhere between my apartment and Babs’ Underground Lounge after a night out about two weeks prior. I had been frantically looking for it ever since, tearing through my car, backpack and bedroom on a desperate mission to find it. In the meantime, I endured the humiliation of taking my passport to bars.

I didn’t blame the Twitter stranger for assuming my ID to be fake. My driver’s license photo was exceptionally bad. I looked terrible in it — I had forgotten you were allowed to smile so it looked more like a mugshot than a driver’s license photo, and I was still hungover from the night before. I wouldn’t blame someone for thinking it was taken in a dorm basement with a digital camera from the 1990s. And ever since I turned 21, I’ve been paranoid that my license would be confiscated at Rick’s or the liquor store because there’s something about it that just seems so unconvincing.

But there was something so stereotypically “college student” about that message that it was almost comical. It was a reminder of the absurdity of the fake ID phenomenon; they’re so ubiquitous that any driver’s license found left behind on the street is assumed to be a piece of fraudulent government documentation.

Fake IDs have become almost synonymous with college life since the legal drinking age was raised to 21 from 18 with the passage of the

National Minimum Drinking Act in 1984. The law was a bizarre quid-proquo that withheld federal funding for highways from states unless they raised the drinking age, meant to circumvent a provision in the 21st Amendment that prohibits the federal government from regulating alcohol. Four years after the National Minimum Drinking Age was passed, all states were compliant and 21 was the de-facto federal age.

Suddenly, 21 became the most important — and in my opinion, most arbitrary — social division on college campuses. Perhaps in recognition of how meaningless the divide really was, students almost immediately began trying to circumvent it with fake IDs. Utter disregard for the law became the norm. In one study published in 1996, 46% of college students admitted to using a fake ID to purchase alcohol.

For the most part, obtaining a fake ID is low risk and high reward. Minors can effectively purchase unlimited access to alcohol, weed or any other illicit substance. And it’s currently easier than ever to get highquality “novelty IDs” online, usually produced in China, that can be swiped and scanned. Sure, there’s the small risk of it getting confiscated by the bouncer at Charley’s, but chances are you’ll make it past him just fine.

Still, using a fake doesn’t come entirely without risk. Under Michigan law, it’s illegal to “intentionally reproduce, alter, counterfeit, forge, or duplicate an official state identification card or use an official state identification card that has been reproduced, altered, counterfeited, forged or duplicated.”

And using a fake ID to “purchase alcoholic liquor” is punishable by up to 93 days in prison and a $100 fine. Students have been arrested for possession of fraudulent identification before, often when police officers are waiting near the lines going into popular bars. In 2010, immigration agents arrested 2 U-M students and 1 MSU student after intercepting a package with

48 fake IDs arriving from Toronto. Regardless, it still seems like many illicit transactions do proceed everyday and uninterrupted, as students hand their ID to the cashier at Campus Corner, perhaps verifying their “address” or “date of birth,” and go on their way. Fake IDs are so common that it can be easy to forget the insanity of the concept: Minors have the opportunity to significantly improve their social lives and overall college experiences by committing federal crimes on a weekly basis. This isn’t to say underage drinking is bad or that people should boycott fake IDs; I actually personally support the lowering of the drinking age. Rather, I’d argue that this fake ID phenomenon that’s accompanied by ample, even grave risk is too often taken at face value.

If you don’t have a fake ID, there’s a good chance one of your friends does. One could go as far to say that the never-ending stream of parties, tailgates and smoke sessions that are so integral to campus life stand entirely on an informal network of fraudulent identities. And I think it’s time to confront this network for all it’s worth and all it does for this campus community. These are the real fake IDs of the University of Michigan.

***

“I thought I was totally screwed and lost everybody’s money. I was freaking out,” a Ross sophomore explained. The student, who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of legal and professional repercussions, will be referred to as Eric. Eric had placed a mass order of 14 fake IDs for himself and fellow Michigan students. He had meticulously tracked everyone’s information in a spreadsheet and, together, their false personas spanned the entire country — he had ordered “novelty IDs” from Illinois, Connecticut and Colorado, among other states.

SARAH A KAABOUNE

Statement

Deputy Editor

MiC over the YEARS

ARTS over the YEARS

2022 2023 2020

SEPTEMBER 1 — A Michigan in Color

Manifesto: “We urge all readers to continue to learn and unlearn.

Continue to question the systems that we are voluntarily and involuntarily a part of. Continue to readjust your lens when a new angle is presented — having the difficult conversations along with the joyful ones.”

2021

MAY 18 — Michigan in Color Collective Statement on Palestine: “The Michigan in Color community strives to emphasize and embody how the pursuit for justice and liberty anywhere in the world will never be in vain. We will continue the struggle for freedom until every human, in every corner of the globe, is free.”

APRIL 6 — A statement from MiC on anti-Asian violence: “Moving forward, the Michigan in Color team will continue to commit itself to being diligent about speaking out against systemic and interpersonal oppression in a timely and truthful manner. We owe it to the communities we serve to write and report meticulously on the issues as they unfold.”

To write myself into existence

JESSICA KWON 2022 MiC Managing Editor

The home my family and I have forged and nurtured is a remnant of our histories. When I was a kid, my parents chastised me when I spoke English in the house, told me the occasional ancient Korean myth during story time, fed me jjigae and banchan, and when I grew older, taught me about our past, especially Korea’s turbulent and oppressive 20th century (including the dictatorship, coup and military regime they grew up under). They ensured that, though I may be a gyopo, I would remain committed to my roots. I grew up in the Korean immigrant community, spending Friday nights at whichever firstgeneration parents hosted that weekend, moms chatting over coffee, dads playing poker and drinking beer and their kids and I chasing each other around and pretending to cast random spells from the “Harry Potter” series on each other. And I grew up observing how my parents’ marginalization was markedly different from my own as a native English speaker, when their accent wasn’t “respectable”

enough to some; my mom sometimes jostling me awake from a nap by shoving the landline in my face and gesturing frantically when in need of translation, while you could practically hear the bank teller or insurance representative — whomever it was at the time — rolling their eyes through the signal.

The home I grew up in was intrinsically an immigrant household: my parents, by turns naturally and very intentionally, enshrined my Korean identity and the memory of their displacement in my being and sense of selfhood. And now most of my friends, the people I gravitate to, are children of immigrants like me. I consider my support for immigrant justice to number among the few beliefs that glue me together, but recently I was forced to confront, for the first time, the fact that I had never once actively pondered with any intention and time even one of the many reasons why I stand with immigrants of all nations.

I realized this on November

2, when the Student Community of Progressive Empowerment (SCOPE), a University of Michigan student organization dedicated to advocacy and support for

immigrants and undocumented students, held a day of action at the Shapiro Undergraduate Library in collaboration with the U-M Beta Omicron chapter of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, to promote their “I Stand With Immigrants” initiative. I lingered awkwardly at their table for a couple minutes that felt much longer, when finally a couple SCOPE volunteers approached me. They greeted me with warmth and entreated me to fill out an index card for their posting wall in response to the prompt “I stand with immigrants because…”

My support for immigrants has always been an automatic and instinctive conviction, one which requires no debate or second thoughts — so the question of why I stand with immigrants took me aback. I feel similarly born into the question of why write? To put pen to paper has always been a ritual for me — one which I have often taken for granted. As an eight-year-old, I used to write endless “novels” that were essentially poorly plagiarized amalgamations of whatever fantasy or science fiction series I was consuming at the moment — horrible dystopian time travel thrillers about plucky white women with dumb names like Eliza Hunt — until my right hand cramped and the flesh where it met my pen was flushed and stamped with the BIC logo, and my mom insisted I set my binder down. And when I learned how to write Korean at the age of seven, I tried, briefly and also wildly unsuccessfully, to write stories in the hangeul characters. I wrote one about a 나 , or “tree monster,” that had barely any premise beyond the fact that I thought the phrase 나 (“namu gwaemul”) sounded cool in my head.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

A summer in the construction boots of my father

there. I was in the middle of nowhere Montana.

It was a ceremonial and cinematic day in Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango. The streets were flooded with families observing the ceremonies taking place throughout the city. At every angle of our peripheral, there were bandas playing corridos, food trucks selling elotes and raspados and a desfile full of mariachi bands accompanied with young women dressed in folklórico attire. We were making our way to the feria, which for many was the main attraction of the festivities. Though the cloudy weather may have discouraged many from being outside, there was no denying that the people of Santiago Papasquiaro were not going to miss the first day of their esteemed and most anticipated fair.

Since I was in the sixth grade, my family and I traveled to my parents’ hometown in Mexico every year. The month of July attracted not only a lot of domestic visitors, but a lot of other Mexican-American families that had ties to the state of Durango. I felt immensely joyous to be standing on the soil where generations of my family had grown up.

Except in 2016, I wasn’t really

The date was July 16. The frightening noise of my phone’s alarm jolted me awake at 4:30 in the morning. Reality quickly sank in, and I was upset that I was not a part of the vibrant crowd marching down the streets of Santiago Papasquiaro. Rather than spending the summer in Mexico visiting my abuelitas and primos, my dad insisted that my brother Oscar and I spend a couple of months with him in Montana to work at his construction site—the very opposite of Durango. The wind blew loudly through the many valleys and mountaintops of America’s ninth least populated state. Within those blue, green and gray valleys was scattered, sparse and rundown infrastructure. The very limited civilization seemed so insignificant when contrasted to the vastness of the state’s nature. People displayed classic American cordiality, of course, but rarely the hospitality and colors I had witnessed in Mexico just a year prior.

At 15 years old, the thought of making my own money seemed promising and offered some financial freedom my peers were not afforded. After doing my own research on the up and coming state, I learned that many other construction workers ventured to the Great Plains state of

Montana and made really good money. Hell, I was excited! Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

After two months of working with my dad, I somehow failed to get used to the monotonous routine he went through every morning. The pesky alarm, pungent smell of the drywall and joint compound boxes scattered throughout our temporary apartment competed with my overwhelming drowsiness from my lack of sleep. We had returned home from the construction site at 1:30 a.m., a few hours prior, so it was extremely difficult for me to find some sort of motivation to keep my eyes open.

On the other hand, my dad had no problem with getting less than three hours of sleep. He somehow managed to wake up in a radiant mood every morning. Every other day, he would wake up earlier than the rest of the crew and buy us all donuts from the nearest 7-Eleven. It annoyed me so much in my tired grumpiness. How the hell did he do it? He urged Oscar and me to hurry because he did not want us to be late on our last day of work.

My dad has worked in construction for more than 30 years. In those three decades, he has mastered the craft of drywall finishing. Construction workers who specialize in this are referred to as tapers. Though the task of a taper is considered by many other construction workers to be one of the least physically demanding, the monotonous task of smearing joint compound across hundreds of different units still felt extremely strenuous. I had no idea how my dad, at the age of 54, remained poised through these conditions. Although my dad is nearing the age in which he becomes eligible for the plethora of benefits all elderly Americans are entitled to, my dad’s citizenship status deems him ineligible of receiving these perks.

Queer in Color — Michigan in Color releases Queer in Color, a space to amplify Queer students of color voices through forms of creative expression. All work featured in Queer in Color is created by Queer MiC members or collaborators.

NOVEMBER 2: Michigan in Color hosts its first annual Open MiC Night on the Diag — On October 5, Michigan in Color hosts its first arts expo, showcasing the talents of many students of Color. The night includes a variety of art forms including music, dance, spoken word, stand up comedy and a static art display.

FEBRUARY 1 — From the joint desk of Michigan in Color and Groundcover News: Michigan in Color and Groundcover News present a special collaboration, intended to raise awareness about Washtenaw County’s unhoused community and their experiences, and forge a connection with the U-M community.

FEBRUARY 1 — The Black Hair Series: With the mission to showcase the “multifaceted nature of Black hair,” 16 Black U-M students, alongside two barbers and hairstylists, are interviewed, recorded and photographed to gain insight on their own stories and personal hair journeys.

A letter to my future self

ELIYA IMTIAZ 2022 MiC Managing Editor

Sitting in a Detroit cafe, I’m currently typing away as I listen to a trio of middle-aged men jokingly bicker about their orders getting switched. “I ordered the cheese!”

“No, I swear it was me!” A pause as they continue chewing.

The silence breaks: “We’re good though.” And laughter commences.

I may be wrong, but something tells me that they’ve been friends for a while, a thought that puts a smile on my face as I sip my coffee, continue to type away and wait for my dad to pick me up from the A2D2 bus.

This year is the final one of my undergraduate career, and it seems like every passing day brings me closer and closer to a reality that simultaneously excites me but also frightens me: change. As a senior still recruiting for a full-time career (pity me!!!!), there’s a lot of ambiguity about what next year will look like.

I have my goals: purposeful work, the Big Apple and frequent trips back home. Translating those goals into specificity is what’s proven to be difficult, and there’s an undeniable sense of anxiety in thinking about what will last after this hurricane of change takes place — what will remain in the eye of the storm? This train of thought isn’t necessarily comforting, which brings me to you. Or me, I should say. How are we? Let’s say it’s us 10 years from now. We’re at 31, letting everyone who’ll listen know that “actually, your thirties are the new twenties!”

Did we get that J.D.? Have we started the family? Do we see Sara, Rubab, Mama and Papa almost every other day? I wonder if we’ve grown tired of New York at some point, the city that we swore up and down since age 11 was made for us; the city that we knowingly nod about

when someone says, “You just give New York vibes.”

InshAllah, there are some things that I know are true, simply because we’ll work to make them so. I’ll have my space and still see the Imtiaz clan frequently. I’ll get my J.D., because we told ourselves we would. Potlucks with Inaya and Mits may look different, but I know we’ll somehow find a way to bring an item from the classic menu every time. My friend Kat wrote about perceiving time in a non-linear sense, and, as always, her words have left an impact on me long after I initially read them. Apprehension of being on the precipice of capital A adulthood is understandable, but I’m trying to think that, barring unforeseen circumstances, we can always find a sense of stasis in any future universe. In a weird way, because I can see the future in this way, I’m determined to make it happen. So in writing to us, I know that maybe things aren’t picture perfect, rose-colored glasses, but I do know that things are. I think therefore I am, a really novel thought, right? Regardless, given that reality, we can keep on keeping on.

Suddenly, the record scratches.

I know we’ll have these cycles though. I wonder if we’ll still use every word beyond the it-word. Sad, melancholic, dejected (a personal fav), despondent, going on and on until the thesaurus.com suggestions expire. The reality remains that life will probably still be difficult as it will still be beautiful. We’ll call Marie in the wee hours of the night, and trade theories as to why it is that we think so much. Hopefully by then we won’t

be so embarrassed of that fact.

Still, you and I will probably scoff at “Everything happens for the best,” and immediately correct it with “Everything happens.” The only control is yourself and your faith. Currently, I’ve come to learn that life hits us with various circumstances, good and bad. We aren’t guaranteed the Good Life, but we’re guaranteed life, the basis of which we can forge our reality from. Does that mentality change throughout the years for us?

I’m sure the pendulum still swings back and forth, teetering between chasing what we want and accepting our reality. Shit, you’re just 31 — we’re still figuring it out.

In that sense, life is like people.

Sixth-grade debate class had us argue the pressing question on Schoology posts, “Are humans inherently good or inherently bad?” We’d type away until meeting the minimum of three sentences and maximum of five, some arguing we’re born angelic, others claiming we’re naturally evil.

Like some (not many) things, the answer is probably in the middle: we have the capacity to be both good and bad. And internalizing this perspective of free-will morality has helped me reframe any pessimism of how life sometimes just sucks.

Addressing Angell

Attending a 9 a.m. lecture. Setting up a table at the Posting Wall. Printing out a last-minute essay. Gathering for a student organization meeting after hours. As students at the University of Michigan, we spend so much of our time in Angell Hall, but how many of us actually know who James Burrill Angell is and what his legacy entails? Learned pieces of the University’s history seem to be met exclusively with shock and disappointment from students, faculty and alumni, and my moral outrage is growing weary.

As a third-year student, each passing term’s revelations have left me with more to consider in regards to my relationship to this institution and its roots. I feel tainted with remorse for the countless survivors of sexual misconduct denied their due justice. I stand in solidarity with the unmet needs of the Graduate Employees’ Organization and the Lecturers’ Employee Organization from an inadequate reopening plan. I remain appalled by the historically racist and exploitative practices of the Order of Angell, an exclusive senior honor society that disbanded just this past spring. Most of all, I am frustrated at the lack of accountability taken by the administration to address an imperfect history of the Leaders and the Best.

Over the course of the past month, members from my organization South Asian Awareness Network came together with organizers from the United Asian American Organizations, Central Student Government and LSA Student Government to discuss the legacy of former University President James B. Angell and the memorialization of his name to one of the highest-traffic student buildings on campus. Each week’s meetings worked toward brainstorming and planning a response to appropriately address

his legacy. Here’s what we came up with: a CSG resolution draft calling for the removal of Angell’s name from the University building, a teach-in and dialogue surrounding the present-day implications of Angell’s history, and a cultural fashion show on the steps of Angell Hall in celebration and reclamation of a space that the late president himself may not have expected our presence in.

For context, Angell held a 38-year term as the president of the University and was a nationally recognized leader in higher education, bringing in record number enrollments and increasing accessibility for many students. In addition to his presidency, Angell served as a U.S. ambassador to China during which he re-negotiated the Burlingame Treaty. While this treaty endorsed immigration at the high point of U.S.-China relations, the Treaty of Angell recognized the U.S. government’s power to regulate the immigration of Chinese laborers due to domestic economic tension. As American Culture professor Ian Shin explained during the midNovember teach-in, Angell signed on to this treaty out of a sense of public duty as opposed to actual support for exclusion. Regardless of his initial hesitations to sign, the Treaty of Angell paved the way for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, one of the most racist immigration bills in

American history. Regardless of his intent to bring students on campus together, the secret society Order of Angell — formerly known as Michigamua — eventually became known for its profane appropriation of Native American culture and its notoriously racist and elitist nature. President James B. Angell may have been a moral centrist, but the consequences of his neutrality leave a permanent mark on the University’s history. Is this someone worth memorializing?

On Nov. 17, 2021, CSG’s ongoing resolution passed for the renaming of the University building Angell Hall and Angell Scholar Award. While I consider this a necessary step in the right direction, I can’t help but admit to a qualm I’ve had since the teachin. As Professor Shin encouraged us to consider the various ways we may address the problematic legacies of historical figures, he gave an example of a previous name removal at the University: the North University Building was originally named after University President Clarence Cook (C.C.) Little in 1968, up until 2018. Little held a brief, unaccomplished term as University president from 1925 to 1929. He was a geneticist who actively promoted eugenics, the sterilization of the “unfit,” and called for immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws.

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EASHETA SHAH MiC Columnist

Eliya Imtiaz/MiC

Michigan in Color

Ode to Apartment #1

YASMINE SLIMANI MiC Columnist

To whatever poor, tortured soul occupies this apartment next, You will earnestly swing open the heavy front door, gleaming with a streaky coat of clinical, blueish-purpleish-greyish paint, and you will smell mold. You’ll learn to grow accustomed to the scent — no obscene amount of Febreze or air freshener plugs will ever succeed in masking it — but it will make you flinch upon entry. Unfortunately, this will be only the beginning of your torrid love affair with Apartment #1.

You’ll walk into the bathroom and look up at the ceiling, only to find it sloping downwards to greet you, slick with an impenetrable coat of orange stains and stray hairs embedded into the paint. You’ll wonder if you had come to the wrong address; this is not the shiny, pristine apartment you were advertised through the realtor’s photos. It’s on you, after all, for not questioning why they weren’t willing to let you tour any units prior to your arrival.

Do not expect the fridge to always work. Or any of the lights, for that matter. Your apartment is prone to power outages, water shut-offs and a plethora of other issues that are just enough to

begin eroding your already wirethin nerves. Your “sent” mailbox will become cluttered with emails filing for countless work orders so that you can shower or wash your laundry or repair the flooding toilet that had you and your roommate ankle-deep in dirty water for an entire evening.

Apartment #1 is, for all intents and purposes, a hellscape. Your roommate will joke that it isn’t meant to sustain human life: it’s the seventh circle of hell, or a cosmic joke or some bizarre purgatory you’ve been condemned to as penance for 20 years of bad karma — it must be. No other explanation seems to make sense. But if your experience is anything like mine, Apartment #1 is not just a subpar place for you to reside during your sophomore year. It will prove to be so much more than that.

— It might be the place where you have your heart shattered into a million pieces.

You’ll get the call on an unassuming August morning, rousing you from a deep sleep. (If you’re like me, you’re curled up on a mattress pad sans mattress, resting atop a half-built bed frame). You’ll know what the call is about before you answer, and you will never hate being right more than you do when you hang up the phone a brief twenty seconds later. You

come away from the call with no flowery summation, no eloquence or profundity or understanding, nothing at all except the truth: your world is heavy and someone you love has just died. Your family will leave the country the next day for the funeral, and they will be gone for months afterward. Your room will be cold for weeks.

You will lie in your bed, finally sporting a mattress, one October night. Your body will be tugged in and out of sleep, eyes heavy from the day’s exhaustion and body heavier from the weight of your bones and the world and whatever else. They’ll flutter open and peer up at the window situated over your head, and behind the slits of your shutter blinds, you’ll be met with another pair of eyes. Pressed against the glass stands a man, and you’ll realize he has been watching you sleep. You will not know how long he had been there, or why. But you will never forget the shape of his boots, with tattered laces and fresh dirt clinging to the worn leather, the eerie stillness of his stature, the dark shadows cast over his face and the unplaceable coldness behind his unblinking eyes.

The greatest love story

KATHERINA ANDRADE OZAETTA 2022 MiC Assistant Editor

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on what constitutes a friend. The qualifiers and the levels all associated with it. What distinguishes someone as a true friend versus someone you spend time with? An issue I had in the past (and still suffer from) is failure to define, creating the boundaries between different categories of friendship. I consider myself close with a lot of people, but am I actually? How many can I consider a true friend, a partner, a protector of my own interests who hold me in the same regard as I hold them? My friend Eliya sent me a TikTok the other day that featured a quote about female friendship — that it is a ferocious, ugly, messy, emotional creature we are never taught to train. My first reaction was to laugh, because it’s never that deep. Friendships are simple. Easy. It’s romantic love that’s the complicated kind. But the quote has rattled in my head as I’ve been studying abroad, separate from the people I call home. Sometimes I forget where my best friends begin and where I end. Their friends are my friends. My belongings are their belongings. Their house is my house. The lines

are blurry to nonexistent at times.

No topic is out of bounds. We consume each other’s emotions. We ruminate over situations, strategizing and theorizing in our imaginary situation rooms. We tell each other our secrets. Our shame. Our burdens. Our pain. Do you remember last winter when I held you in my arms after you told that boy you loved him? I do. The light reflecting off your tears, which I had never seen from you before. The tremble in your voice as you described his rejection. But it’s not just the difficult parts that we share. We also cheer for each other. Praise one another for putting ourselves out there. Uplift one another when we feel we might have fallen short. And although you were shaking, I could not stop thinking how strong

you are — for taking that risk, for being vulnerable. I am proud of you; I know you’re proud of me too. I could hear it in your voice months later, in the summer, miles away from one another as you cheered me on for going on my first New York City date. We give and give and take and take and take. I am a hopeless romantic. From the media I consume to the stories I write about, romantic love has always been paramount. It’s not like it’s hard to obsess over it. Media is saturated with love stories. Countless books, podcasts, movies, TV serieses and more are all dedicated to the pursuit of love and keeping it. My favorite TV show used to be “Sex and the City.”

Michigan merch and the mystique of “going away”

and laundry days. That is, with one notable exception: weekends when I travel home.

I, like many University of Michigan students, have amassed a collection of Michigan merch. T-shirts, hoodies, flannel pajama pants, beanies: you name it, I have it. Despite this, I rarely wear my merch outside of my dorm. I won’t say that I never do — I am guilty of occasionally repping on game days, or if I wake up 15 minutes before my class on North Campus and need something to wear — but my merch is mostly relegated to lounge wear

I am originally from La Porte, Indiana, an average mid-sized Midwestern city desperately wanting to be a part of “Da Region“. If you’ve spent any time in the Midwest, you could probably guess most of the following info: its name is borrowed from butchered French, the population is majority Republican and white and the primary life goal of every resident aged 25 or younger is to GTFO. La Porte has plenty of quirks too, such as being the hometown of MuggleNet’s

creator, being the (assumed) final resting place of serial killer Belle Gunness and having a literal meat slicer as a high-school mascot. With that said, it has treated me well for the most part. I graduated from its high school with a trove of joyful memories and experiences crafted by dedicated educators, I built lasting relationships with friends and mentors and I still enjoy the vibrant music and art culture found all across the county. My father was born and raised there, and my mother moved to the city from nearby Westville in her 20s; they’ve raised two children in their first

home there, through various trials and tribulations not unlike those of my other middle-class peers. College completion is below the national average in La Porte (according to census data, La Porte is roughly 8-14% behind in the “Bachelor’s degree” and “Bachelor’s degree or higher” categories for the 25 years old or older demographic), mostly as a result of its inaccessibility. La Porte sits between three towns with universities (Valparaiso, Westville and South Bend), yet all are a commute away and not always easy to get to year-round (lake effect

snow, Midwest roads, etc.). Thus, young people either default to one of the commuters, avoid college or — if you have the privilege and support to do so — “Go Away”. Despite being described as an academically “high achieving” cohort, my peer groups have been fairly split on going to college, and only a few chose Going Away. “Going Away” usually means picking a state school like Ball State, Indiana State or IU (the state has provided some demographic information, being provided on page 3) — I can count on one hand the friends who went out of state, including

myself. The opportunity to transfer to Michigan was a big deal to my family; dinner conversations were filled with coworkers’ and friends’ responses to the news for months. Even now, neighbors and old friends still celebrate my departure from my hometown. Despite seeking a niche arts degree (as opposed to, say, receiving a prestigious engineering degree), attending Michigan elevates me to the level of my hometown’s perception of the University – regardless of why they have that perception.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

GRADUATES! WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU AND THANKFUL FOR YOUR TIME AND DEDICATION TO MICHIGAN DINING DURING YOUR TIME AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN! GOOD LUCK AND CONGRATULATIONS!

CEDRIC MCCOY MiC Columnist

2020

2021

2022

2023

Opinion over the YEARS

ARTS over the YEARS

APRIL 16 — The emergence of COVID-19 sparks conversation about previous pandemics throughout U.S. and global history. A desire for better preparation for medical professionals and greater political response is popular among citizens.

SEPTEMBER 7 — The University begins classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, flaws persist in how the University approaches not only the pandemic, but other health-related concerns for students.

APRIL 19 — Gun violence continues to run rampant across the country in the form of mass shootings. Many members of the public make pleas for better gun control regulations and measures.

OCTOBER 27 — Amid many stressinducing events on campus and beyond, there is a push by students to expand mental health service coverage on campus.

From The Daily: The University can do more to protect its community

The University of Michigan’s reopening has been fraught with challenges and has met much criticism from faculty, students and Ann Arbor residents alike. Messaging from upper administration and University President Mark Schlissel throughout the summer months leading up to reopening has been remarkably inconsistent.

From saying that the assertion that students won’t follow safety protocol is “offensive” to analogizing student violations of distancing guidelines to the HIV epidemic, Schlissel especially has come under severe scrutiny,

resulting in the consideration of a vote of no confidence by the Faculty Senate. Reports of precautionary guidelines being unenforced during undergraduate move-in and unlawful student gatherings have only compounded on an increasing lack of faith in the University’s flawed reopening strategy.

We are calling on University leadership to re-evaluate its current plan for the fall 2020 semester. Provisions must include better contact tracing and the use of alternate testing methods, such as weekly wastewater testing in residence halls to monitor possible outbreaks and saliva testing, which is less invasive than the traditional nasal swab and expedites results so contact tracing and quarantining can be administered rapidly. The University must also follow the guidelines they have already put into place, ensuring that Student Life staff enforce mask guidelines and no-guest policies in dorms, as well as outlining the protocol for repercussions for violations.

To ensure the efficacy of this enforcement, the University must provide quality personal protective equipment to University faculty, staff and Student Life employees. The innumerable flaws in the current fall 2020 reopening plan, along with its execution, have been impacting the Ann Arbor and University community unequally.

We acknowledge that there are those who rely on some U-M classes being held in person, but the lack of robust planning to allow for those necessary classes to take place will only serve to weaken the institution even further in the long term. The University has been overworking Student Life staff without providing

adequate protection. Leadership has acknowledged but pushed against calls for widespread and alternative testing. Lastminute announcements and lack of adequate protections overall have put students, especially international students, students of color and low-income students, at risk since the partial closure of the University in March.

The University has failed to come up with a response sufficient for the scope of the problem in some of the most basic ways, particularly where housing is concerned. Not only are dorms operating at 70 percent capacity right now despite the percent of strictly online undergraduate classes being 78 percent, but they’re also operating in such a way that they fall under the CDC’s “more risk” category — as do all University spaces, currently. Guidelines like staying six feet apart and not sharing objects are the minimum precautions an institution can take right now. Many comparable universities have done far more to minimize the number of bodies on campus. Less than 10 percent of University of Washington undergraduate classes are in person, compared to our 31 percent; Harvard University and University of Chicago dorms are at 40 percent capacity, compared to our 70 (and everyone gets their own room); Georgetown University is housing 2,000 students, dwarfed by our on-campus freshman count alone; Brown, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and Yale are all alternating based on year which students can be on-campus, rather than welcoming everyone back at once.

From The Daily: Schlissel is gone, now what?

his decisions. However, many of the trademark bad decisions made by Schlissel were directed, or at least directly influenced, by the board.

When the Regents of the University of Michigan decided to terminate former University President Mark Schlissel, they released 118 pages of Schlissel’s communications along with their announcement. These documents, containing emails, text messages and images, while important in the name of transparency, were promptly snapped up by a ravenous student body. One reddit comment remarked that “Never had this many undergraduates been so keen to do primary source research on a Saturday night.” The emails were memefied immediately, with merchandise coming to the market within the week, making fun of our lonely president m.

This transparency is refreshing and Schlissel’s indiscretions were serious, but one naturally wonders, especially considering the predictable student reaction, whether this dump of salacious documents is anything other than an attempt to shield the Board of Regents — not necessarily the University as an institution — from blame and embarrassment.

It was no secret that Schlissel was not particularly popular on campus; discussions regarding Schlissel were frequently filled with frustration or disappointment. These grievances have led students to often question

Take the unpopular decision to prematurely bring students back to campus for the fall 2020 semester — prior to the development of COVID-19 vaccines. This was not a unilateral decision by Schlissel and his administration but was a subject of major frustration for students who felt they had no voice in this decision. One board member, University Regent Ron Weiser (R), who has a financial stake in off-campus housing, even donated $30 million to the University days before its announcement to reopen. No one can quantify the impact of the regents, especially those with vested interests, on these decisions conclusively, but we must reflect on their influence.

While Schlissel’s actions were both damaging to the University’s reputation and an abuse of the power he held over U-M employees, numerous faculty accused of sexual assault and harassment were allowed a far more graceful exit.

When former American Culture lecturer Bruce Conforth was reported to University officials for attempting to engage in sexual relationships with three students in 2008, he was allowed to retire otherwise unpunished in 2017 — inarguably a much more private departure than that of Schlissel.

Former Music, Theatre & Dance professor David Daniels was fired by the board for allegations of sexual misconduct in March of 2020. Not only did the board not include a similarly large disclosure report, they began the process of formally firing Daniels over a year earlier, in July of 2019, based on allegations made public in August of 2018. Schlissel was reported, investigated and terminated in under two months.

In the well-known case of former Provost Martin Philbert, the board released an 88-page report based on an investigation into his sexual misconduct. However, releasing 118 pages of memeable emails does not have the same effect that releasing a dense WilmerHale report does. Hundreds of jokes were not inspired by this in-depth report, only a fraction of which consists of Philbert’s actual communications. Secondary sources like this report tend to obscure the actual nature of the relevant content, as actual words inherently convey more than descriptions. The Regents’ decision to release a mass of personal messages deviates from its customary form of transparency about its activities, which typically consists of formal reports like the one regarding Philbert.

In their official release, the board said they were releasing Schlissel’s communications “In the interest of full public disclosure.”

Was this kind of visibility not necessary in those previous cases?

Was the speed with which the board investigated and removed Schlissel not necessary before?

This is not to criticize the Board’s decision to be transparent.

If the board is going to adequately combat the ongoing and historic issues of sexual assault and harassment in the University, as they should, a consistent approach is necessary. This is to say that releasing important documents related to similar allegations should be the norm — not exclusive to figures with a negative public image like Schlissel.

JANUARY 24 — Former University President Mark Schlissel is terminated by the University’s Board of Regents. His departure leads to new conversations about how the University must approach matters of sexual misconduct and public scrutiny.

JULY 21 — Following the release of the movie adaptation of her renowned novel, controversy from Owens’ past emerges. There are growing talks regarding the consumption of inherently racist media and how to avoid “white savior” attitudes.

JANUARY 22 — Following Winter Break, students discuss its length, timing, and efficacy. Weeks later, the University’s Board of Regents votes to extend Winter Break to promote student mental health.

MARCH 22 — The Graduate Employees’ Organization goes on strike following stalled contract negotiations with the University, raising concern.

From The Daily: UMich should consider expanding long-term counseling through CAPS

Michigan Daily.

As we collectively face midterms, it has become increasingly clear that many students are experiencing burnout, pandemic fatigue and an increase in mental health issues. These issues can easily be compounded by the growing exposure of sexual misconduct spanning decades on campus, tension over COVID-19 policies and recurrent issues with landlords. While delineating the variety of stressors students are facing is important, it is also critical to analyze resources the University of Michigan provides and pressure the University to adequately support students who are struggling with stress and mental illness.

The University offers Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) for students dealing with mental health crises, but the program is limited. There is not a solidified framework for long-term help, as CAPS has a goal of ‘graduating’ students in 4 to 8 weeks. What’s more, the CAPS waiting list usually grows during high-stress times, meaning students can’t access help when they need it most. Since so many of students’ stressors stem from issues related to the University, the University has both the responsibility and the capability — with a $17 billion endowment — to establish an adequate support system.

Some students don’t have healthcare access outside of University Health Services, so they cannot receive therapy outside of the University. Other

students have to consider leaving their regular therapists if they can no longer afford a copay for each session, but currently CAPS cannot substitute the depth and breadth involved in longer-term therapy programs offered by professionals. While short-term care is beneficial for some students, many students have chronic stress that cannot be resolved in 4 to 8 weeks. The University has not responded to this specific reality in a comprehensive and effective way.

As of now, CAPS best serves as an intermediary step toward longerterm help.

However, for some students, having a longer-term relationship with CAPS could be beneficial; specifically, CAPS counselors have extensive experience with student issues and are accessible due to their on-campus location. Therefore, the University should explore programs that would allow students with the most need to continue to see CAPS counselors for a longer period of time.

University spokesperson Kim Broekhuizen discussed the status of CAPS and other mental health resources in an email to The

“CAPS has been adding counselors and other resources to their service offerings for several years now,” Broekhuizen wrote.

“All of CAPS services are free to any student enrolled at U-M. The same is true for Wellness Coaching.” She also shared data on the rates of individual counseling sessions. Of students who came to CAPS seeking counseling, 81.1% of students only received one to five sessions. Only 18.9% of cases received additional counseling, with only 0.7% of cases receiving over 21 sessions.

According to Broekhuizen, these 0.7% of cases often include students who “do not have any insurance or are underinsured or insurance is not provided in the state of Michigan … do not have transportation or schedules that allow for off campus referrals.” This small fraction of cases represents that, while some students are receiving long-term support, there should likely be an expansion of access for these types of cases.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

From The Daily: A strike would be bad on your record

On March 7, 2023, University President Santa Ono was inaugurated as the 15th President of the University of Michigan, and was immediately greeted with a crisis inherited from presidents past. Promptly after his inauguration ceremony, freshly minted President Ono was met by hundreds of students in front of Hill Auditorium. Among those present were members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization carrying signs with their demands for the University, ranging from increased compensation to better healthcare coverage and childcare benefits. This picket comes on the heels of another unfruitful month of bargaining between the labor union and the University. On many occasions, GEO and the University have been able to come to a compromise — but at this moment in time, a strike is imminent.

GEO last went on strike in Fall 2020; for nearly two weeks, thousands of graduate student instructors didn’t show up to work. Discussion sections went unattended, some professors canceled class in solidarity and, for some students, education ground to a halt. Despite allegations by the University that the strike violated the bargaining agreement the union signed — a claim the University is making again — GEO was successful: They were able to achieve better childcare options, greater support for international graduate students and a safer working environment at the height of the pandemic. This strike, although generally disruptive to the learning environment of the University and its students, increased the visibility of graduate student conditions and inspired the action of other student employees.

Strikes are rarely a positive thing for the reputation of the aggrieving employer. Several times in its history, GEO has protested against the University, and each time these

protests have negatively harmed the University’s reputation. Canceled classes, increased media attention and many dissatisfied members of the U-M community could prove unpredictably damaging to the foundation of the institution, and could even dissuade parents of high school seniors from sending their children to the University of Michigan. In an ideal world, the University would be able to take GEO’s concerns into consideration without taking damage to its public image. However, the University’s lackluster reactions to GEO’s demands and proposals have all but necessitated this drastic turn.

These consequences are revealing. If GSIs can turn the campus upside down it is proof of the critical role that graduate students play in the University’s operations. GEO is well within their right to strike and, in using that power to attempt to change the framework of campus, they are making their platform and purpose at the University known. Whether they are in classrooms or lecture halls, labs or offices, graduate students play pivotal roles in the functioning of the University and undergraduate students’ lives.

Undergraduate students will be one of the primary groups affected by the strike. Many undergrads interact with a Graduate Student Instructor almost every day, whether that be in a lecture hall, office hours or in a GSI-taught class. Although many undergraduate

students support GEO’s cause, they are nervous about what a strike will mean for their academic experience, especially as the end of the term nears. The campus is looking down the barrel of a full fledged disaster, a dissolution of trust built between students and the University — between students who picket and students who will eventually cross the picket line. In addition to upset undergrads, the domino effect of disaffected parents and donors could cause the University an even greater headache in the long term. It is important to recognize, however, that this point could have been avoided by action on both sides. There have been moments where GEO’s demands have seemed superfluous in comparison to their core grievances, and there is a chance that if they had been left out, an agreement would have been reached by now. But it is the University that has, more often than not, prevented progress: the U-M administration has failed to handle these negotiations artfully, downplaying the necessity of their solution and conclusion. GEO’s most important demand, a $14,500 raise (about 60%), was initially met with a paltry $481.10 (a 2% raise) in the first year. After months of negotiations, the University increased their counterproposal to $721.65 (a 3% raise) in the first year.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Gun violence: Let’s actually do something about it

Last week’s shooting near Indianapolis marked the sixth straight week containing a mass shooting. We see the same cycle after every one. Thoughts and prayers are followed by Democrats generally calling for reform and Republicans generally accusing the former of politicizing personal injury. Then a few weeks later, we all stop talking about it and move on to something else we try and care about for a bit.

It seems as though everyone you talk to these days has their story of a shooting scare, or someone they know has such a story, ranging from the scare on campus a few years back to any number of mass shootings that have occurred — totaling 417 just in the year of 2019. What is even more disturbing is the racial breakdown of shooting victims, which is all too often left out of the discourse on mass shootings.

We have said it for years, but I will say it again: Enough is enough. With talk of removing the filibuster still kicking around, Democrats must force Republicans to vote against common-sense gun reform, which around 80% of Americans support in one form or another. Following the Parkland, Fla., shooting, I saw this cycle take place in my own backyard. Politicians from both sides swore such a shooting would never happen again, but as we all know, that was not the case. President Joe Biden has fought for years to implement gun control measures, but one of the only substantive things he has done was include $5 billion in his infrastructure plan for community violence prevention programs. It is a start, but it is in no way enough.

What we need is a comprehensive — and popular — gun control bill that would leave the more ardent Republicans with no choice but to cast a nay vote and face their constituents who would be in favor

of implementing such legislation. Moreover, if Democrats remove the filibuster, they would be less able to use gun control just as a voting issue and doing next to nothing once they are in power.

H.R. 1446 is on the docket for the Senate, but it is expected to be filibustered by Republicans. This bill focuses on background checks for gun purchases, which is a step in the right direction, but it is missing more aggressive forms of gun control. I propose a complete assault weapons ban and regulations on ghost guns.

The Assault Weapons Ban, which lasted from 1994 to 2004, was found to have decreased incidents of mass shootings by 25% and fatalities by 40%. This was a great piece of legislation while it lasted because it prevented people from purchasing military style assault rifles, which are the commonly used weapon for mass shootings in this country. Incidents including, but not limited to, the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., the Las Vegas concert shooting and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting involved assault weapons. These weapons must be banned for the sake of saving lives, and almost 70% of Americans agree with this sentiment.

A new and huge loophole to circumvent a lot of these regulations is ghost guns. Ghost guns are weapons that are assembled personally through kits, meaning not by a corporate gun

Design by Yassmine El-Rewini

manufacturer. This process has always been legal; law enforcement never deemed them to be too dangerous, since they thought individuals usually lacked the expertise to assemble such a device. However, the actual ease and efficacy of these ghost guns have troubled many.

Critically, these guns lack serial numbers or any other tracking mechanisms that law enforcement could use to regulate them. The solution to this problem is not an easy one, but we can begin by placing the same restrictions on buying ghost guns as are placed on regular guns. California did this and has had success in mandating serial numbers and background checks when applicable. New Jersey also criminalized the 3D printing of guns, another form of ghost guns. These regulations are incredibly important for preserving safety and reducing the amount of unregulated guns and subsequent violence in the United States.

These two states’ measures will not end the gun crisis in the U.S., but they will certainly save lives. The cycle of American gun violence always spikes right after a shooting and quickly subsides, but the problems do not go away for the communities affected.

Mass shootings and gun violence have long wakes, filled with withspread harm and fear. Democrats should take initiative and finally accomplish a goal they continuously run on.

What we can learn from the H1N1 pandemic

As the United States continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans working essential jobs put their lives on the line every time they go to work. In particular, hospital and health care workers across the country have risked their lives daily, working to treat patients fighting the coronavirus without the critical masks and personal protective equipment they need.

In a recent interview on “60 Minutes,” one medical worker from a New York City hospital described the scene inside the hospitals as “Hell on Earth.”

With the COVID-19 pandemic now claiming more than 30,000 lives across the nation — including a high but unknown number of health care workers who have succumbed to the virus — the coronavirus has set off a calamitous chain of events for our nation. Many Americans have questioned what the federal government has done over the years to prepare for the kind of event we find ourselves in today, along with the resulting medical and economic implications.

While our nation continues to grapple with the effects of the pandemic, it’s clear that our government wasn’t prepared to fight a highly contagious respiratory disease like the coronavirus. If the proper steps had been taken — and our stockpile of N95 masks, personal protective equipment and ventilators had been maintained — our hospitals and health care workers wouldn’t be so overwhelmed right now. As one nurse said in the same 60 Minutes interview, “Every health care worker infection, every health care worker death is preventable.”

In response to the federal government’s clear lack of preparedness, the Trump administration, which currently oversees the nation’s response to

COVID-19, has gotten the brunt of the blame. The New York Times wrote a recent article detailing what so many Americans believe to be countless missteps by the current occupant of the Oval Office.

It is true that President Donald Trump has had a lot to do with our country’s response to the coronavirus crisis. While many critics claim he should have taken action sooner, Trump has done the best job possible with the tools he was given by his predecessors and the data available at that time. The president has taken a number of common-sense steps that have protected millions of Americans from contracting COVID-19, as I detailed in my last column.

The truth is that in order to really look at our nation’s response to COVID-19, we have to look back in time. Long before Trump was elected president, history shows that our government had the chance to prepare for a pandemic like the coronavirus a decade ago, after the worst of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the H1N1 influenza virus was first detected in the U.S. in the spring of 2009. By April 2010, the CDC estimates that over 60 million people within our borders were infected while 12,000 people died. While the situation caused by H1N1 cannot be compared to the national shutdown we are currently experiencing today, this virus was considered a pandemic nonetheless.

In the midst of the spread of H1N1, which hit younger people who didn’t have the antibodies to fight off this flu strain harder, the federal government turned to its stockpile of critical medical supplies and equipment that is typically only used in extreme situations (like a pandemic).

According to a study in the journal of Health Security, “75 percent of N95 respirators and 25 percent of face masks contained in the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile (100 million products) were deployed

for use in health care settings over the course of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic response.” Despite calls from medical experts to build up the national stockpile in order to prepare for the next pandemic, President Barack Obama’s administration failed to do so, according to a USA Today Fact Check in response to a Daily Wire article published in March.

The truth is that Barack Obama was president during a medical event similar to COVID-19. His administration knew the risks of failing to rebuild the national stockpile of masks and other equipment, but failed to actually replenish that critical stockpile. While this inaction is not solely to blame for the fallout from the coronavirus, it undoubtedly has contributed immensely to the calamity we are living through today. Sadly, our depleted stockpile, paired with this highly contagious respiratory disease, has created the perfect storm, a storm that was somewhat preventable.

Ultimately, our society has had enough warnings. We lived through the H1N1 pandemic and continue to confront the COVID19 pandemic today. Meanwhile, we remember other health crises that threatened millions across the world in the past, including SARS, MERS and Ebola. There will be another pandemic, sooner than later, that makes its way into our country. Before that happens, we owe it to ourselves and future generations to invest in medical supplies and prepare ourselves, so we don’t have to watch thousands die and millions risk their lives at the expense of our inaction.

Once COVID-19 subsides, we must begin conversations immediately about how we will begin to rebuild our national stockpile of emergency medical supplies, because we cannot make the same mistake twice. We have an obligation to learn from our inaction after H1N1 and prevent something like the current pandemic from ever happening again.

Let’s talk about Delia Owens and “Where the Crawdads Sing”

OLIVIA MOURADIAN

2022 Opinion Senior Editor

As the top-selling fiction book of 2019 — selling over 12 million copies by January 2022 — “Where the Crawdads Sing” has seen a degree of popularity that few books achieve. In addition to topping the New York Times fiction bestseller list for an astounding 153 weeks, Delia Owens’ first work of fiction was also selected for Reese Witherspoon’s book club in September 2018 and adapted into a feature film that was released last Friday. Catapulting this novel to an almost hyperbolic level of attention, Taylor Swift even penned an original song for the movie adaption of what she describes as a “mesmerizing story.”

Clearly, in the context of book sales and public attention, “Crawdads” is a major success story that has left millions of readers, including the likes of Swift and Witherspoon,

with nothing but rave reviews. However, it only takes one quick Google search to see the thorny backstory behind this rose of the literary world.

For context, Owens and her former spouse, Mark Owens, spent 22 years in Africa — traveling first to Botswana and then elsewhere — working as conservationists, a period of time that Jeffrey Goldberg describes in detail in the New Yorker. The couple seemed to leave a trail wherever they went, earning “a reputation in the valley for their intolerance of local people.” They were expelled from Botswana in 1986 after attempts to rally international support against the conservation policies of the country’s government which is how the locally unpopular pair ended up in Zambia.

In 1995, almost a decade after the couple arrived in Zambia, ABC did a segment on their conservation work. In the segment, which aired in 1996 on national television, an unidentified alleged poacher was shot and killed. The details of this shooting have remained

incredibly vague: The body was never found, the shooter was never officially identified and, as a result, nobody has been charged with the crime. The discourse I’ve seen around this controversy has largely been sparked by cavalier questions about this murder. These questions are often subsequently met with claims that Delia Owens wasn’t involved or even less comprehensive responses

arguing that it was her husband who was involved and that they’re now divorced. Regardless of these claims, Lillian ShawaSiyuni, Zambia’s director of public prosecutions, has confirmed that Owens — along with her former husband and stepson — are still wanted for questioning for the alleged televised killing of the individual.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Design by Priya Ganji

Students, push yourself to explore the University of Michigan

SAM WOITESHEK Opinion Columnist

It’s another average Monday evening and I’m seriously hungry. Without fail, I enter a debate: Should I eat out, cook rice or ramen (yes, those two meals are the peak of my dorm cooking) or eat in the dining hall? Most nights, the dining hall wins, mostly because it feels free, and I can eat as much as I want. Tonight, however, nothing on the menu looks appetizing. I muddle over whether to get lamb marsala, beef stir fry or the classic pizza or burger.

My gut reaction is to skip the dining hall and venture down South University Avenue or State Street in search of safe, dependable take-out. Convincing myself this is the right idea, I gather my things and prepare to leave my room. But wait. Something stops me. I didn’t come to the University of Michigan to operate within my comfort zone, including its culinary element. I came here to try something new.

A few days later, I am strolling

through the Michigan Union, traveling back to my dorm for my 3 p.m. political science class on Zoom. Suddenly, the study lounge — which bears a slight resemblance to the esteemed law library, in my opinion — catches my eye. Intuitively, I want to keep walking and plop down in the black leather chair that awaits me in my dorm, but I can’t help but feel that the moment is yet another opportunity waiting to be seized. I meander through the desks, the old wood creaking beneath me, take a seat by the fireplace and open my laptop.

In my short time as a student on campus, I have made it a priority to challenge my comfort zone. Perhaps eating two plates of beef stir fry and taking a class in the Union is not the best definition of “spontaneous and exciting,” but for me, it is. The meal was delicious, and the hour spent in a Hogwartsian lounge will lead me to come back more often. Yet, I’d have never known about either of them if I hadn’t ventured beyond what is secure.

As humans, we like what we are accustomed to. The mereexposure effect, as first developed by psychologist Robert Zajonc, states that “individuals show an increased preference (or liking) for a stimulus as a consequence of repeated exposure to that stimulus.” Additionally, we are guided by our brain’s dualprocessing systems. System 1 is our “brain’s fast, automatic and intuitive approach” to situations. System 2, comparatively, is the

mind’s “slower, analytical mode where reason dominates.”

In taking these scientific observations together, it is no surprise that we prefer options that we are familiar with. Yet, aren’t we ever curious about that Greek restaurant we haven’t tried? The abstract red sculpture outside the UMMA? A class about something we have zero prior knowledge about?

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

EVAN STERN Opinion Columnist

2013

Sports over the YEARS

ARTS over the YEARS

All University of Michigan athletics will be paused for two weeks starting Sunday, Jan. 24 in accordance with a recommendation from the state health department according to messages obtained by The Daily and confirmed by a source close to the athletic department. The order, which halts all athletic activity including practice, is limited exclusively to U-M athletics after a recent influx of positive cases within several Michigan teams.

According to a statement released by the athletic department Saturday night, the Wolverines have been following Big Ten testing and reporting protocals, but the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is taking a more stringent approach to the novel COVID-19 B.1.1.7 variant.

A source told The Daily that there were five confirmed cases of the new variant, with 15 more presumed positives throughout the athletic department. The novel strain was first introduced to Michigan at the beginning of the semester by a U-M athlete traveling from the United Kingdom. All members of the athletic department are expected to quarantine for 14 days.

“Canceling competitions is never something we want to do, but with so many unknowns about this variant of COVID-19, we must do everything we can to minimize the spread among student-athletes, coaches, staff, and to the studentathletes at other schools,” said athletic director Warde Manuel in the statement released Saturday night.

An MDHHS spokeswoman

2014

2022 2023 2020

2021

MARCH 18 –

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MARCH 12 — Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the remainder of winter and all of spring sports are canceled. The Big Ten postpones the beginning of fall sports to err on the side of caution and resumes on October 23.

MARCH 31 — No. 1 seed Michigan men’s basketball advances to the Elite Eight under second-year coach Juwan Howard. After winning the Big Ten regular season championship, the Wolverines’ lose to UCLA, 51-49, failing to reach the Final Four.

APRIL 17 — The Michigan women’s gymnastics team wins its first ever national championship.

DECEMBER 31 — The Michigan football team achieves its first College Football Playoff berth but fails to reach the National Championship, losing to Georgia, 34-11.

Michigan Athletics put on 14-day pause due to surge in COVID-19 cases

confirmed that five cases of the variant were found on Michigan athletic teams. An MDHHS memo provided to The Daily laid out the state’s recommendations for the next two weeks. Those include:

Immediate 14-day quarantine for all Michigan athletes, household members and close contacts starting from Jan. 23

A review of all positive test results in the past two weeks

Immediate PCR testing of all team members, including genetic sequencing of any positive tests

Thrice-weekly PCR testing during quarantine

The assumption that all cases linked to the outbreak are variant infections, pending confirmation

The memo also provides campuswide recommendations, saying that if the variant is detected in an organization, there should be twice-a-week PCR testing for all members of that organization.

It also recommends ramping up testing for the entire community, and a 10-day quarantine for any students returning to campus from out of state or abroad.

This past week 22 studentathletes tested positive for COVID-

19 per release, 13 more than the week prior. No coaches or staff tested positive.

As of Sunday morning, 87.2% of Michigan’s athletic contests have been played. By the end of Jan. 6, that percentage will plummet to 59.6%. Saturday, the women’s basketball team rescheduled its postponed game against Michigan State for this week. The Wolverines had their own outbreak in early December after a match against Butler in which a Bulldog tested positive the day after the game, leading to two missed games.

The men’s basketball team played on Friday at Purdue, even as a Boilermaker tested positive the day of the game. The volleyball team had their opening contest against Penn State this weekend postponed because of positive tests within the Penn State program.

While reports indicate that neither of the basketball programs or hockey programs have had no positive tests, they still not will be allowed to play.

According to the release, no determination has been made on how the pause will impact schedules after Feb. 7.

MARCH 28 – The Michigan women’s basketball team advances to its first Elite Eight in program history after beating South Dakota 52-49, but the Wolverines’ historic runs ends after a loss to Louisville, 62-50.

DECEMBER 4 – In its second straight Big Ten championship, the Michigan football team beats Purdue, 43-22, after defeating Iowa in 2021 for the title.

The Michigan hockey team wins in its second straight Big Ten championship over Minnesota 4-3. Led by freshman forward Adam Fantilli, the 2023 Hobey Baker award winner, the Wolverines also advance to their second straight Frozen Four.

MARCH 30 – Michigan fifth-year heavyweight Mason Parris wins the National Championship in his division. Parris also becomes the first Wolverine to win the Hodge Trophy for the nation’s best collegiate wrestler.

Michigan tops Minnesota, 4-3, wins second straight Big Ten Championship

systematic offense outlasted Minnesota’s fiery rush and pushed it to a 4-3 victory.

MINNEAPOLIS — As the No. 4 Michigan hockey team hoisted the Big Ten Trophy following its victory over No. 1 Minnesota, there was almost an overwhelming sense of familiarity to the night’s events.

It was deja vu all over again.

The minor details changed, the stars were different and the Wolverines sported a newer, younger coach. But on Saturday night, against the same Golden Gophers (26-8-1, overall) in the same arena and by the same score, Michigan (24-11-3) accomplished what it had a year prior — again.

And for the first time in program history, the Wolverines captured a second straight Big Ten title.

“It feels great. It feels great,” Michigan coach Brandon Naurato repeated. “That’s a really, really good team over there and an unreal atmosphere this year and last year. …You really have to earn it.”

In a contest that came down to the wire in front of a rowdy sellout crowd, that was what Michigan just managed to do. Its patient,

But for a contest featuring two of the nation’s highest flying offenses, the night started at a subdued pace. The Wolverines and the Gophers toiled in the neutral zone for most of the first period, each side unable to string chances together.

Seven minutes in however, Minnesota caught a break.

Michigan sophomore defenseman

Luke Hughes launched a point shot that was blocked and sent the other way for a 2-on-1 score from forward Brody Lamb.

That breakthrough was all either side mustered, and the rest of the period played out as a prolonged feeling out process.

“I thought we were just OK, almost very average in the first period,” Naurato said.

In the second period though, the wait-and-see tactics were thrown out the window and replaced with a flurry of goals.

The Wolverines pressed early, maintaining zone possession and moving pucks low-to-high.

Three minutes in, that all paid off for freshman forward Rutger

McGroarty as he ripped a bobbling puck top shelf. And 34 seconds later, back in front of the net with another rebound on his stick, it paid off for McGroarty again as he put his team up 2-1.

“I don’t think those guys (on the first line) were happy as a line with how they played in the first,” Naurato said. “ … For them to come out and just get to the net, as simple as that sounds, good things happen.”

With two back-to-back goals, McGroarty almost instantaneously flipped the game script by putting the Wolverines up 2-1. And for the first time, the Gophers were put on edge. In danger, Minnesota returned to what was working — its rush — and the Wolverines had little answer for it.

Midway through the second frame, a wayward pass from McGroarty in Michigan’s offensive zone ended up on the stick of forward Jimmy Snuggerud, who found Cooley with open ice where he tied the contest. And again, it was the Gophers’ explosive rush that put them back in front early in the third when forward Rhett Pitlick picked his way through three Wolverines defensemen and scored to put Minnesota ahead 3-2. That lead didn’t last long though, as freshman forward Seamus Casey tied the affair four minutes later with a standard point shot, again built off of sustained pressure. The Gophers were playing with speed, Michigan with systematic patience, and as the clock ticked down, there was nothing to separate the approaches.

But then with less than eight minutes to play, sophomore

Michigan escapes Sweet Sixteen with win over South Dakota, 52-49

WICHITA, KAN. — The Michigan women’s basketball team knew it was do or die.

With a trip to the Elite Eight on the line — potentially the first in program history — the third seeded Wolverines (25-6 overall) rose to the challenge.

Taking down No. 11-seed South Dakota (29-6), 52-49, in the Sweet Sixteen, the Wolverines once again made history.

“The moment we had today is never going to go away,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said. “So I’m just so happy for this group. … We’re still playing. There are eight darn teams left in the country playing and we are one of them. That’s pretty incredible.”

From the opening tip, it was a gritty, back and forth game.

Throughout the entire game Michigan struggled to score, never truly finding an offensive groove. Instead, short spurts of efficient scoring kept the Wolverines afloat against a physical Coyote defense.

In the first quarter, trying to push the ball in transition, sloppy turnovers plagued Michigan. The Wolverines looked to their onetwo punch of senior forward Naz Hillmon and senior guard Leigha Brown, but to no avail.

Hillmon — who was tripleteamed on every possession — notched zero points in the first quarter and just six in the second. Brown faired slightly better, but

any limited success she had was unsustainable. Working deep into the rotation early, Michigan tried to get something going. A short run at the end of the first quarter kept the Wolverines from fully breaking.

But opening the second quarter with two missed 3-pointers from junior guard Maddie Nolan and a shot-clock violation, Michigan quickly fell out of what little rhythm it had gained. Short offensive spurts from freshman guard Laila Phelia kept the Wolverines in the game — and a strong defensive showing forced South Dakota into tough shots — but nothing seemed to stick.

It quickly became clear Michigan wouldn’t magically overcome its struggles, but would have to fight for every possession. On this night, nothing would come easy.

With their offense faltering, the Wolverines dug into their defensive identity, trying to keep South Dakota contained on offense. Clogging the paint and hedging high on ball screens, Michigan tried to disrupt the Coyotes offensive game plan.

“We play a different style than a lot of the teams that (South Dakota) played,” Barnes Arico said. “Just going back and watching the film of their first two tournament games, who they beat, two Power Five opponents that are awesome teams, they defended it differently than we did tonight. We wanted to give them a different look. I think it sped them up and made them take quicker shots than maybe they wanted to take.”

Yet, South Dakota still jumped out to an early lead. Failing to put

together a complete game, the Wolverines allowed the Coyotes to hang around throughout the half, entering the locker room down by two points.

“They were definitely scrappy, they fought and clawed to the last minute,” Hillmon said. “They were in there running around for every rebound, trying to take charges throughout the game, everything in between.”

Despite obvious halftime adjustments, the third quarter followed the same narrative of offensive struggle. Doubling down on finding Hillmon and senior forward Emily Kiser in the paint, Michigan finally found the shots it wanted — but failed to capitalize. More short spurts of successful offense from Hillmon and Brown kept the Coyotes from deepening the wound, just barely.

The Coyotes continued to force the Wolverines out of rotation and score at every level. Draining 3-pointers and finding their forwards inside, South Dakota kept Michigan from gaining any momentum. Regaining the lead at the tail end of the third quarter, the Wolverines narrowly escaped with a one point lead.

With the game very much within reach for either team throughout the entirety of the fourth quarter, Michigan continued to struggle finding offensive consistency and keep the game within its control.

Coming down to the final play, the Coyotes had a chance to secure the lead with 20 second left on the clock. South Dakota launched an open 3-pointer for the lead — only for the ball to bounce off the rim into Hillmon’s hands, with a foul following. The next possession, another Coyote foul sent Brown to the line for the first time all night. Draining both, Brown put the Wolverines back in control with a four point lead.

Michigan would hold on, emerging victorious.

And for the first time in program history, with just eight teams left vying for a national championship, the Wolverines are still dancing.

INDIANAPOLIS — The Michigan men’s basketball team rode its offense to reach the Sweet Sixteen. On Sunday, it used its defense to punch a ticket to the Elite Eight.

In a game they dominated at every stage, the Wolverines (23-4 overall, 14-3 Big Ten) downed Florida State (18-7), 76-58, to keep their season alive for at least one more game.

From the beginning, that defense frustrated the Seminoles. Michigan forced 14 turnovers, including nine in the first half alone, and limited Florida State to 40% shooting from the field. In transition, the Wolverines capitalized on the Seminoles’ miscues, scoring 16 fastbreak points while surrendering just six. Florida State looked out of sync all night long, going on two separate scoreless stretches lasting over four minutes. The dominant defensive effort was something that Michigan coach Juwan Howard envisioned for his team from the day he took the job in 2019.

“Defense has been one of our staples of our identity as far as on the offensive end,” Howard said. “We have habits on how we developed it last year when I first arrived, and when we returned to the campus in June, first thing that we met as a staff, and then also the first meeting when we were able to have our first official practice, we talked about how we’re going to be a better defensive team.”

On the offensive end, the Wolverines got a lift from junior forward Brandon Johns Jr. Starting in just his fourth game of the season, Johns scored a season-best 14 points to lead the way, punctuated by a series of high-flying jams. On the defensive side, Johns drew two charges and notched a steal, coming through on both ends in

the biggest game of his career.

“We always tell him that he can really be the best player out there when he steps on the court,” sophomore wing Franz Wagner said. “So we have huge confidence in Brandon. I think he does too. You can see, he played a stellar game today, got some key offensive rebounds, and those little things, I think, are very important when you try to win the championship.”

Wagner produced another all-around statline with 13 points, 10 rebounds and five assists, routinely scoring inside on crafty finishes and finding teammates inside of the dribble.

“I think I always try to attack the basket, be aggressive,” Wagner said. “But like I said, I think all that only happens when we move the ball and don’t dribble too much. That’s when really everything opens up.”

Facing off against a Florida State team with an average height of 6-foot-7, Michigan dominated on the glass. Led by four from freshman center Hunter Dickinson, the Wolverines hauled in 11 offensive rebounds and scored 17 second-chance points off of those opportunities.

“Our guys came with a mindset,” Howard said. “We talked about it leading up to the game. We showed it on film. We also talked about it before the game, about we have to attack the offensive glass. We can’t sit

Eight

back on our heels and leave it untouched.”

On the opposite side of the court, Michigan prevented the Seminoles from ever establishing an offensive flow. The Wolverines limited Florida State to a 5-for-20 shooting night from beyond the arc, and proved themselves to be disciplined inside as well, allowing the Seminoles to shoot just six free throws.

In the second half, Florida State appeared to gain momentum for the first time since early in the first half with its first two 3-pointers of the night. The Wolverines quickly ensured that any hope of a Seminole comeback would be relinquished quickly, countering with an and-one from graduate guard Mike Smith before senior center Austin Davis followed with two straight finishes inside to key a 7-0 spurt to push the lead back to 46-36.

“I think you can see that out there on the court that people are really confident out there and just confident and comfortable within their role out there,” Wagner said.

In the game’s final moments, Howard called for a timeout and brought in his reserves. As freshman guard Zeb Jackson dribbled out the clock, the Wolverines clinched their 23rd victory of the season. This one brought them one step closer to their ultimate goal.

ALUM MADDIE HINKLEY/Daily

Photo by Brett Wilhelm/NCAA Photos via

Michigan shocks Ohio State, ends eight-game losing streak in The Game

For 3,653 days — long, arduous, hollow days — the Michigan football program lived in the shadows of its unremitting failures against Ohio State.

There won’t be a 3,654th day. At long last, that futile streak is over.

After eight consecutive bitter losses to the Buckeyes, the Wolverines emerged from The Game victorious. No. 5 Michigan (11-1 overall, 8-1 Big Ten) shocked No. 2 Ohio State (10-2, 8-1), 42-27, clinching the Big Ten East and punching a ticket to next Saturday’s Big Ten Championship Game.

“One of my favorite sayings of all time is, ‘When there’s a will, there’s a way,’ ” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said after the game. “And the will was very strong for our team.”

As the fourth quarter wound to a close, reality melded with

imagination. Senior running back Hassan Haskins stood in the endzone with outstretched arms, celebrating a touchdown that handed Michigan a 15-point lead with 2:17 minutes to play. He blew kisses to the crowd, beckoning the raucous sea of maize pom poms that serenaded him for an electric five touchdown performance.

Pandemonium had officially set in.

When the clock struck doublezeroes, everyone seemed to forget about the freezing cold and the endless nightmares from previous defeats. Droves of fans plunged from the stands and spilled out onto the turf, reveling in their newfound glory.

Michigan, champions of the Big Ten East.

“It was a surreal moment,” junior quarterback Cade McNamara said. “It’s something we’ve dreamed of. Every 6 a.m. (practice), that feeling is the reason why we do it.”

Saturday offered an opportunity

for the Wolverines to exorcise past demons, escaping the recent doldrums and persistent pain of the rivalry. A win would vault them into the Big Ten Championship Game and buoy aspirations of a berth in the College Football Playoff, two hurdles that the program had yet to clear as of the morning, seven years into Jim Harbaugh’s tenure.

But just as toppling the Buckeyes began to feel sisyphean, the Wolverines punched first — and refused to relent.

“It was really like a war out there,” senior defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, who wreaked havoc on Ohio State’s offense with three sacks, said.

On Michigan’s opening possession, sophomore receiver

A.J. Henning found the endzone on a 14-yard touchdown run, whipping Michigan Stadium into an immediate frenzy.

In the second quarter, even as Ohio State took a brief 10-7

lead, Michigan proved unfazed, embodying its season-long serenity. A 13-play, 82-yard touchdown drive sent the Wolverines into halftime clenching a 14-13 lead.

In past years, Michigan unraveled in similar moments, particularly in The Game. On Saturday, the team merely grew stronger.

The second half started to a tee. The Wolverines’ defense forced a crisp three-and-out, and the offense blazed down the field, running the ball three times for a total of 81 yards; Haskins capped the drive with a touchdown. They had kicked Ohio State back onto its heels, and the Buckeyes would never recover.

Michigan’s offense, having re-discovered its rhythm, operated with machine-like efficiency.

A 31-yard pass from freshman quarterback J.J. McCarthy to sophomore receiver Roman Wilson set up a 34-yard flea-flicker from McNamara to junior receiver Mike

Sainristil.

So hapless were the Buckeyes that only a brief kerfuffle could slow down the Wolverines.

After a scrum triggered an unsportsmanlike conduct on Ohio State’s Cameron Brown, Michigan found the endzone again. Haskins bounced outside, scoring for the third time on the day, staking the Wolverines to a stunning 15-point lead.

The result incited delirium and momentarily broke the Michigan Stadium scoreboard — an apt microcosm for the shock of The Game’s result.

Even as Ohio State scratched and clawed its way to an early fourth quarter touchdown, Michigan responded with yet another emphatic, methodic drive. Haskins wiggled his way down the field, ultimately plowing into the endzone for his fourth touchdown.

In the game’s waning minutes, when Stroud’s fourth-and-18 heave fell shy of a first down, the reality

set in. Bleachers rattled. The stadium shook. Hutchinson and fifth-year safety Brad Hawkins shed tears.

“We have (a sign) inside Schembechler Hall, ‘What are you doing today to beat Ohio State,’ ” Hawkins said. “And today, we beat them. It’s a blessing.”

A blessing, perhaps, but certainly not a product of luck.

“Every workout, every practice, every game, everything that we put into this season — that’s something that we kept in the back of our minds every single day that we entered Schembechler Hall,” McNamara said of Ohio State. “We did enough to beat them today.”

After nine years of perpetual suffering, Michigan had achieved the unthinkable. It’s a game that no one will soon forget.

“We’ve got a lot of hours left today,” Harbaugh smirked, allowing himself to digest the gravity of the moment. “… Celebrating long into the night.”

Michigan defeats Ohio State for second year in a row, 45-23

the packed Horseshoe could sense that Ohio State was thoroughly outplaying the Wolverines in the first quarter, and yet, there was an uneasiness settling in.

Last year when the Michigan football team finally broke its decade-long curse against Ohio State, when the Wolverines stormed the snowy streets of Ann Arbor and when Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh deemed it just a “beginning.”

It was the Wolverines’ biggest win of the millennium. And on Saturday in Columbus, Michigan did it again.

Whenever they needed to, the third-ranked Wolverines (12-0 overall, 9-0 Big Ten) delivered blow after blow to Ohio State (11-1, 8-1), as they defeated the secondranked Buckeyes, 45-23.

“It feels great to sing ‘The Victors’ in Columbus,” Harbaugh said Saturday. “Our team really earned it in every way.”

The Game this year was different from the last, and that was obvious from the start. Ohio State’s offense took the field first and immediately got to work. A 12 play, 81-yard drive capped off by receiver Emeka Egbuka’s touchdown sent the Horseshoe into a frenzy.

Not even five minutes into the game, Michigan was already in an unfamiliar situation: For the first time all season, the Wolverines didn’t score first. The discomfort was obvious.

Sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy was erratic. He dipped out of the pocket before he needed to, he was missing throws — nothing was working.

“In the first half, I was a little amped up because I’ve been waiting to play this game so long,” McCarthy said. “But once the nerves kind of calmed down and everything settled, I knew it was over from there.”

It took a while to get to where McCarthy knew the outcome — his team, at times, looked like they were just trying to survive the first half. The Buckeyes smelled blood, and they were trying to run away from Michigan. Everyone in

Michigan was just hanging around. After giving up the opening drive touchdown, the Wolverines’ defense regrouped — only allowing three points on the next three possessions.

“We felt like any kind of stop was going to be like gold,” Harbaugh said.

Without junior running back Blake Corum able to play through injury, Michigan’s offense didn’t look like its normal self. But somehow that was alright.

In a wild, back-and-forth second quarter, McCarthy found senior wide receiver Cornelius Johnson for long touchdowns on two consecutive plays. The Game was turned on its head.

Ohio State had its chance to bury Michigan, but it couldn’t, and the Wolverines made the Buckeyes pay for it.

After converting a fourth and one on its own side of the field, Michigan drove down the field and McCarthy found freshman tight end, Colston Loveland, for a 45-yard touchdown. After the Wolverines’ first drive of the second half, the Horseshoe fell silent.

“After that touchdown coming out of the half, we were able to do everything we wanted at that point,” McCarthy said.

Michigan never looked back.

Two drives later, the Wolverines finally found their running game.

TESS CROWLEY/Daily

Their offense slowly leeched the life out of Ohio State’s once ravenous crowd on a nearly eight-minute-long touchdown drive. When McCarthy ran in a three-yard touchdown on third and goal, extending Michigan’s lead to 11 right as the fourth quarter started, the anxiety that hung over the Horseshoe was as nauseating as it was palpable.

“We looked at their sideline and they were over there hanging their heads,” senior defensive back Mike Sainristil said. “We knew… they’re vulnerable right now.”

That was a mindset shared by every Wolverine.

“You can feel when their will breaks,” graduate linebacker Michael Barrett said. “… You can feel it when it goes out of them.”

That’s when the avalanche came. With only a one-score lead the Wolverines were faced with their biggest offensive possession of the season. On their first play, sophomore running back Donovan Edwards found daylight and burst through to the right for a 75-yard touchdown.

In one final attempt at victory, Ohio State drove down the field only for a desperate flick from quarterback C.J. Stroud to fall into the hands of graduate edge rusher Taylor Upshaw. To add insult to injury, Edwards subsequently broke an 85-yard touchdown run and hordes of scarlet and gray headed for the exits.

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Michigan captures elusive Big Ten Championship in 42-3 win over Iowa

College Football Playoff.

INDIANAPOLIS

— Nobody took Jim Harbaugh and Aidan Hutchinson seriously back in July. Yet there they were, sitting behind a podium at Lucas Oil Stadium during Big Ten Media Days, insisting the Michigan football team was ready to take the next step.

Asked about beating Ohio State and reaching the Big Ten Championship Game, Harbaugh said the Wolverines would “get there or die trying.” Hutchinson, too, affirmed his willingness to die for it. Given Michigan’s dismal 2-4 season in 2020, it was easy to scoff at claims of culture change and national contention.

But on Saturday night, their July words came to life.

The second-ranked Wolverines (12-1 overall, 9-1 Big Ten) defeated

No. 13 Iowa (10-3, 7-3), 42-3, capturing the program’s first Big Ten title since 2004. When the clock ticked down to double-zeros, maize and blue confetti rained down on the same field where everyone wrote off Harbaugh and Hutchinson in July. “We defied all expectations,” Hutchinson said. “Nobody thought we could do this. Nobody thought we could ever do this, especially not this season. And, man, we did it. And we did it in a very dominant fashion.”

Standing outside the postgame locker room, shouts of “6-6” and “two percent” reverberated through the tunnel — references to the Wolverines’ projected 6-6 record and the 2% chance

ESPN’s preseason algorithm gave Michigan to win the Big Ten East.

ESPN’s calculations also estimated the Wolverines had a 0.7% chance to win the Big Ten Championship and a 0.0% chance to make the

“There’s always that little external motivation,” sixthyear offensive lineman Andrew Vastardis said. “… Sometimes, just some of the stuff that’s out there, you just take it and ride with it and (add) fuel to the fire. So that’s where that was from.”

That fuel was apparent on Saturday night. From an identity standpoint, Michigan and the Hawkeyes appeared to be mirror images entering this week. Both programs pride themselves on physical, run-first football.

When they stepped foot on the field, however, it quickly became apparent that wasn’t the case.

Iowa hadn’t allowed a run of 30-plus yards all season, but it didn’t take long for Blake Corum to change that. The sophomore running back took an inside handoff 67 yards for a touchdown on the Wolverines’ second possession.

On their next offensive play from

scrimmage, junior quarterback Cade McNamara threw a lateral to running back Donovan Edwards in the flat. But instead of turning the corner, the freshman reared off his back foot and threw a deep ball to junior receiver Roman Wilson, who ran streaking behind the defense all alone. The double-pass went for a 75-yard touchdown, giving Michigan a quick two-score lead.

“(That play) has been ready for prime time about seven weeks,” Harbaugh said. “… We had it planned early. As soon as we got into the left hash after the fourth play, we were going to run that. And (Edwards) has never missed on that throw. Sometimes he throws it off his left, his right foot. He’s always on the move running when he throws it. And every time, it’s a dime.”

On the other side of the ball, that was more than the Wolverines needed.

After allowing a field goal late

in the first quarter, Michigan’s defense gave up just 160 more yards. The Wolverines held Iowa to a 5-for-18 mark on third down and didn’t surrender a single point following the first frame.

Hutchinson recorded four tackles, a sack and two quarterback hurries en route to Big Ten Championship Game MVP honors.

He’s the first defensive player to ever win the award, but his teammates believe he belongs in the conversation for a bigger one.

“It’s pretty self-explanatory. He deserves to be the Heisman Trophy winner,” Vastardis said. “He showed out every week, been a game-changer.”

Senior running back Hassan Haskins padded the Wolverines’ lead with a pair of second-half rushing touchdowns, becoming the first player in program history to tally 20 in a single-season.

Michigan’s 42 points were the most the Hawkeyes’ vaunted defense had

allowed since the 2015 Rose Bowl, sealing their worst postseason losing margin in program history.

Saturday’s victory cements the Wolverines’ first-ever College Football Playoff berth, helping Harbaugh restore his alma mater’s place in the upper echelon of college football. Prior to 2021, Michigan’s seventh-year coach had yet to beat Ohio State, claim a conference title or lead his team to the College Football Playoff. The fact that he checked all three of those boxes during the past week solidifies this season as an inflection point for the program.

Most players on the Wolverines’ roster hadn’t even started elementary school the last time Michigan won a Big Ten title. Now, that drought is over. And it ended in the very stadium where nobody thought it was possible in July. That is, except for Harbaugh, Hutchinson and the rest of the Wolverines.

TCU ends Michigan’s season in stunning Fiesta Bowl, 51-45

it too.”

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Three hundred and sixty-five days ago, the Michigan football team experienced agony.

After a long, arduous season, tears ran and hopes were broken after the Wolverines had their spirits crushed by Georgia in the College Football Playoff.

Everything Michigan worked toward was washed away by red and black confetti. Saturday, a full year later, Michigan got another chance.

Once again, the Wolverines were enveloped in their opponents’ colors. No. 3 seed TCU’s purple and white permeated the air while No. 2 seed Michigan looked down at the ground — the site of another disappointment. In the 51-45 loss, the score didn’t matter as much as the outcome; any margin of defeat spelled the same result: the Wolverines’ season, and any hope of a national championship, would be over.

And now, it is.

“When we were winning the games, it was like nothing was wrong,” senior defensive tackle Mazi Smith told The Daily. “So sometimes, things don’t go your way. It’s the game of football. It’s a will versus a will, and they wanted

The evidence that something was wrong, though, appeared early. At the beginning of the game, Michigan looked lost.

The Wolverines capped their first three drives with a turnover on downs at TCU’s two-yard line, a pick six and a three-and-out. The Horned Frogs quickly jumped out to a 14-point lead and Michigan was floundering.

For the remainder of the half, the Wolverines squandered drives.

Most notably, junior running back Kalel Mullings fumbled on the goal line after the defense brought in an interception against quarterback Max Duggan. The play before the turnover, sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy delivered a bomb to junior receiver Roman Wilson.

Initially, the play was called a touchdown. But after review, the call was overturned, placing the ball on the half-yard line.

Whether the initial play should’ve resulted in a touchdown or not, Michigan’s next job was simple.

“We got to execute on the goal line there and put it in,” senior offensive lineman Trevor Keegan told The Daily. “And that’s what we’ve done all season. There’s no excuse for us not to get in there.”

Between gut-wrenching turnovers and anemic Wolverine drives, Duggan began to work his magic. While the ship Duggan

commanded sailed to another touchdown, Michigan’s mistakes sank it to depths where it would eventually drown — no matter how close it got to resurfacing.

“We were so close,” junior defensive lineman Kris Jenkins told The Daily. “(But) we made too many mistakes — they kind of got the best of us.”

A last second 59-yard field goal by graduate kicker Jake Moody made it 21-6 at the half, but the Wolverines were still flailing. For any chance of a turnaround, Michigan needed to change something during the break — and fast.

At first, the Wolverines appeared to do that.

Out of half time, the defense got a stop. A sputter in the red zone, and Moody made it 21-9. A flea-flicker touchdown to graduate receiver Ronnie Bell cut the game to five points. But just as Michigan gained momentum, TCU took it away. A marching touchdown drive and their second pick six of the day put the Horned Frogs up 34-16.

Then, all hell broke loose.

In three minutes and forty seconds, there were five touchdowns. McCarthy and Duggan rushing touchdowns went back-toback, followed by a touchdown run from Mullings. After Smith forced and recovered a fumble, an 18-yard rushing touchdown from Wilson cut the deficit to three. Then, a 76-yard touchdown reception from receiver Quentin Johnston put TCU back up by 10.

“In the moment, I can’t lie, it’s kind of exciting,” Wilson said. “Battling with my friends, my teammates, and just bouncing back. It sucks that we lost, but it’s fun going back and forth, being there just playing football.”

And the back and forth simply continued.

The Horned Frogs notched a field goal, while Michigan’s offense briefly stalled. Then, the Wolverines marched down the field, and with McCarthy rolling right, a TCU pursuer nipping at his heels, he lobbed the ball to a wide-open

Michigan clinches first National Championship title in school history

Michigan second, based on the semifinal scores, but the Sooners were never given a chance to shine.

The 2021 gymnastics National Championship came down to the very last routine of the meet. Junior Abby Heiskell stared down the beam as she mounted it. As she performed her routine, she completed each skill with an intention to do it perfectly, a lesson Michigan coach Bev Plocki has drilled into the mind of her gymnasts all season. Heiskell showed no ounce of doubt in any of her skills, and when she finished the routine with a stuck dismount, she proved that she was capable of being there for her team in the moment it needed it most.

Heiskell, joined by her teammates, could not peel their eyes from the scoreboard, and neither could Oklahoma. Waiting for only junior Olivia Trautman’s score on floor and Heiskell’s score on beam, the teams sat tied at 198.0750. Trautman’s score came in at a 9.9375, leaving Heiskell’s routine to need a score of 9.8500 or better to win the meet for the Wolverines.

When the number came in on the scoreboard, a 9.9250, the team, the coaches and the fans erupted. Michigan would be the 2021 National Champion, the first Michigan women’s gymnastics team to ever win a National Championship. The team clinched a program record 198.2500 in the competition of its life.

“We’ve talked about this for so long, and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is actually happening. Oh my gosh, the meet is over, and we’re national champions,’ ” sophomore Sierra Brooks said. “So much went into this, it’s so amazing seeing our hard work pay off.”

Michigan clinched the win, in the end, by securing the lead they held onto the entire meet. Coming into the Finals, Oklahoma was ranked first and

Michigan started the meet on floor with six strong routines, all counted scores at a 9.9125 or higher. Junior Natalie Wojcik led the pack, scoring a 9.9500, landing all of her tumbling passes smoothly and without fault. Sophomore Gabby Wilson also posted an impressive score of 9.9375, and the solid performance from the rest of her teammates landed the Wolverines at a 49.6250, only 0.0250 points short of their record floor score yesterday.

Oklahoma’s start on vault left them trailing by 0.0500 to start the meet, a deficit they never overcame. Utah had a solid bars rotation as well, scoring a 49.4250. Florida, who, prior to the weekend, was seeded to place first, had two falls on the beam, forcing the team to count one extremely low score that they would never recover from.

Michigan carried their energy to the vault for the second rotation, where it was not only seeded first in the country, but had the highest team start value of any team in the competition, all vaults starting with a 10.0 start value. Heiskell began the event, sticking her one and a half

Yurchenko, forcing the judges to search for any deduction. Her vault, and its score of a 9.9750 started the consistency of the event, which was followed up by another stuck vault from Wojcik, earning herself a 9.9375 and Brooks, who notched a 9.9750. The team’s vault performance extended their lead over the rest of the field even further, gaining a 0.1375 lead over Oklahoma at the halfway mark.

“(Vault’s) just been amazing,” Michigan coach Bev Plocki said.

“At the beginning of the year, we were doing big vaults, but we couldn’t get the landings, and it was a process. We absolutely peaked at the right time this year. … Right before the championship part of the season, we started being able to nail those 1.5s.”

Heiskell started off Michigan’s next rotation on bars with a stuck dismount. The Wolverines’ top scores of the rotation came from Brooks and junior Abby Brenner in her first competitive routine in months since hurting her ankle at the Big Five meet on Feb. 27. Their clutch performances earned both gymnasts a 9.9250, and kept Michigan with the same lead over Oklahoma as they had going into the event.

NICHOLAS STOLL 2022 Managing Sports Editor

ALUM MILES

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