October Edition 2016

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

1

Contents

50 5 NEWS

FEATURES

6 Tim Kaine visits U of M Democratic Vice Presidential candidate speaks to building “community of respect” at Ann Arbor rally.

10 Hillary Clinton Campaigns in Detroit Clinton speaks at Wayne State University just one day before voter registration ends in a last effort to encourage people to vote for her on Nov. 8.

12 Bernie Sanders Supports Clinton in Ann Arbor Senator Sanders campaigns for his fomer opponent, Secretary Clinton, at the University of Michigan Art Museum.

2

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

18

12 EDITORIALS

44 Incarcerated Injustice

50 Hillary Clinton for President

Working with prisoners to fight against the injustice within the American prison system.

A presidential endorsement from a staff that will be unable to vote in the 2016 election.

18 Tackling Stereotypes Isabelle Crumm and Camber Zeisler join Skyline’s football team.

34 New Faces for AAPS Board An experienced lawyer, an involved parent and a retired teacher join forces to bring change to the school board.

54 196 School Shootings since 2013 How gun violence has become an accepted aspect of American culture.

57 The Gay Voice An examination of the stereotypes surrounding the highpitched voices of the gay community.

Letter from the Editors Dear Readers,

The Communicator is back and, like a freshman-to-senior-year fashion transition, entirely redesigned (we hope for the better). Our website is fresh and crisp, like the leaves crunching underneath your feet on the way to school. Our similies are on fleek.

On a slightly more serious note, we’re told that high school is training for the real world. We’re told that by the time we get to college, to a fulltime job, to a marriage, to children, life will be so much harder. At the risk of sounding like naive and spoiled teenagers, we have to point out that the stresses in our life are not just “training”. We are worried about colleges, standardized tests, classes, sports and other extracurriculars, romantic and platonic relationships (both of which we humble editors struggle with), money and sleep, just to name a few.

With that being said, we can’t help but admire our peers. How is it that these students, each one with a unique set of pressures and concerns, are able to take the time to accomplish so much? There are seemingly countless clubs and organizations at Community, each full of members who are committed to taking a stand. We have a Forum Council where our voices can be heard. Not to toot our own horn, but we hope that The Communicator offers a similar opportunity to serve as a megaphone for the issues our student body believes to be most important.

As we heard at our opening day ceremony, this is the time for action, and Community is seizing it.

In particular, just several weeks before the election, it is a time for social and political action. The majority of our student body is under 18, yet there are so many ways to have a voice in the issues that we care about. One way is to make public our reasons for supporting the ideals that we do. Keeping that in mind, The Communicator has decided to endorse Hillary Clinton for president of the United States in this 2016 election cycle. We may not have the ability to vote, we may have less experience than the politicians in this country, but that does not mean we are powerless, nor does it mean our opinions are of lesser value.

We have shared our opinions on Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump on page 50, but if you believe in something else, anything else, share it.

Stand up for it. Write an editorial for the Communicator about it. The time for action is now.

Sincerely,

Print Editors-In-Chief

Adviser

Alexandra Hobrecht Isabel Ratner Hannah Rubenstein Megan Syer

Tracy Anderson

Staff Taylor Baughmam Elena Bernier Vivienne Brandt Marika Chupp Samuel Ciesielski Nicole Coveyou Nicole Diaz-Pezua Anna Dinov Aleksandra Dornoff Ella Edelstein Brennan Eicher Ally Einhaus Isabel Espinosa Oliver Fuchs Abigail Gaies Allison Garcia-Hernandez Madelynn Gracey Madeline Jelic Ethan Kahana Jennifer Krzeczkowski Zoe Lubetkin Kailyn McGuire Ava Millman Sam Millman Jacqueline Mortell Kasey Neff Omalara Osofisan Henry Schirmer Jacob Sorscher Katharine Tappenden Camryn Tirico Nicole Tooley Eleni Tsadis Sacha Verlon Ethan Ziolek

Web Editors-In-Chief Kate Burns Joel Appel-Kraut

Design Editor Josh Krauth- Harding

Managing Editors Francisco Fiori Gina Liu Maggie Mihaylova Suephie Saam

Photo Editor Grace Jensen

Social Media Editor Mary Debona

Mentors Bella Yerkes Claire Middleton Sophia Rosewarne

Fun Editor Emily Tschirhart

Art/Graphics Editor Caitlin Mahoney

Sports Editor Shane Hoffman

Web Content and Business Editor Mira Simonton-Chao

ALEXANDRA HOBRECHT, ISABEL RATNER, HANNAH RUBENSTEIN & MEGAN SYER

Get updates instantly at CHSCOMMUNICATOR.COM

& DOWNLOAD THE APP! The Communicator @communicatorchs @chscommunicator october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

3

A TIME FOR ACTION

Ruby Lowenstein and Jonah Eichner are two Community High students that are making a local and global impact. They are facilitators of Project GreeNZ, a club at the Neutral Zone that creates youth-driven, environmentally sustainable projects for the Neutral Zone and Ann Arbor community.

BY MAGGIE MIHAYLOVA

M: Can you tell me about your club?

R: It’s a program at the Neutral Zone that’s going to try to make the Neutral Zone community more environmentally sustainable through doing different projects.

J: We’re just making the Neutral Zone more environmentally sustainable, and maybe later moving onto the greater community.

M: Why is this important?

R: A lot of reasons. First of all, right now the Neutral Zone isn’t as sustainable as it could be. We’re in a time where [environmental sustainability] is really important because it’s not something people are worrying about a lot and there are things going on that are not good for the environment.

J: We live on this planet and we should take care of it. The Neutral Zone is a good place to start because it allows youth to run their own situations.

M: How’d the idea to make the club start?

R: I think it’s been something that people in the Neutral Zone have been thinking about for a while because it’s an issue that a lot of people care about, but it’s just not something that has been put into “being” yet. I talked to some people, because it was something I was passionate about too, and they told me to start [the club]. I talked to Alex, who is our adult supervisor, about it and she totally wanted to help us with it. We needed another facilitator, so we reached out, and Jonah wanted to do it, which is awesome. We kept on meeting and figuring out projects, how to get people involved, and now we’re here.

M: What are these projects that you have set for the future?

J: Before the school year started, we got a mug wall set up. It’s

4 4

||

THE THE COMMUNICATOR COMMUNICATOR

||

www.chscommunicator.com www.chscommunicator.com

filled with cups that are reusable, and so people can come into the Neutral Zone, write their name on it with a cool chalkboard pen, and then use it and wash it at the end of the day. We’ve saved hundreds of plastic cups, and it’s been great. Also, we’re going to work on getting the Neutral Zone a compost bin and making our recycling work better because it doesn’t work well. People see it as garbage and just throw their trash away in it. As for long term goals, in the next few years we want to get a rooftop garden for the Neutral Zone and partner with different community organizations to try to make our larger Ann Arbor community more environmentally sustainable through this youth driven lens.

M: And what is the importance of this being youth driven?

R: I feel like teens have so much passion and energy and optimism, and that maybe the older generations have become a little bit more jaded to this issues. I think that older generations are also doing a lot to address these issues, but I feel like teens have so much power that’s just untapped. Sometimes we don’t think we can do a lot, but we’re a really important group of people who can do a lot of really important things.

M: How can people get involved?

J: Come to the meetings!

R: We meet Thursdays from 6:30-7:30 at the Neutral Zone. They’re really fun meetings.

J: It’s gonna be awesome.

Talk to Ruby or Jonah if you want to get involved with Project GreeNZ!

FEATURE

Lost But Not Forgotten

Three decades after serving in the Coast Guard, Omar Jeffrey Lee is leaving the streets.

R

BY ALEC REDDING

eceiving the white takeout box, his face glowed like the vibrant neon signs shining on the streets clustered with people.

This was the life for Omar Jeffrey Lee. He sat on his bucket in front of the Liberty Street mural and held out his plastic cup for donations.

Lee is one of many homeless veterans.

He grew up in Detroit, Michigan and wanted to do something productive with his life. The first thing that came to his mind was serving the military.

He decided that he wanted to enlist in the Coast Guard and served from 1980 to 1983 in southern Florida.

“Coast Guard does a lot for the advancement and for the preservation of life,” Lee said.

Throughout the time Lee had served

in the Coast Guard, there were times where he was glad with his choice to enlist. There were also times where he contemplated if it was right for him.

“I was in an overseas mission and I was in southern Florida and the drug smugglers used to shoot at us,” Lee said.

After Lee had served, he went back to boxing as he was an aspiring professional. He also pursued a career in culinary arts. He resigned into Dewitt, Michigan and was offered a job at the Veteran Affairs Hospital in Ann Arbor, but Lee didn’t have a place to live.

“I use to sell the Groundcover newspaper to raise money to pay my room rent and what they called panhandling if I don’t have any papers,” Lee said. “So that’s why I’m out on the street right now, but pretty soon I’ll have housing

and I’ll get my first check.”

When Lee was younger, he wished he had pursued culinary arts and boxing more than he had.

“I could’ve went further than I did but I got distracted from the things that usually distract people such as drugs, alcohol, bad relationships, you know the usual,” Lee said.

Lee enlisted in the Coast Guard determined to help others and served for three years despite the conditions and situations they faced. He dealt with addictions as well as unhealthy relationships and through all of these experiences, Lee is still grateful. At the start, Lee had no place to stay, though he will soon be able to afford housing and will be able to start working again.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

5

NEWS

PHOTO: JOEL APPEL-KRAUT

6

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

NEWS

Tim Kaine Speaks to Building ‘Community of Respect’ at Ann Arbor Rally

BY HANNAH RUBENSTEIN AND JOEL APPEL-KRAUT

The sun beat down on Tim Kaine’s back as he took the makeshift stage, erected in the middle of the University of Michigan Diag. The Senator from Virginia stood before thousands of Michigan Wolverines, but showed no hesitancy in grabbing the microphone off of the podium and breezily shouting two words guaranteed to pull applause from his audience: “Go Blue!”

The Democratic candidate for Vice President, who came to speak in Ann Arbor on Sept. 13, was first introduced by Collin Kelly, the president of University of Michigan’s chapter of College Democrats, an organization that spreads across college campuses around the country.

College Democrats dedicate most of their efforts to electing democrats in local elections. Upon hearing that the Clinton-Kaine national campaign wanted to make a stop at the university that fall day, however, they wasted no time in volunteering to help with anything the campaign may need.

Kelly’s brief address to the crowd ended on the line, “Love trumps hate, and when students vote, democrats win.”

A few of the speakers following Kelly included Larry Deitch and Denise Ilitch, both members of the University’s Board of Regents seeking re-election in the coming months. Ilitch spoke about a hot button issue in this year’s election, college tuition price. He said, “You shouldn’t have to mortgage your future

in order to have one.”

After the line of introductory speakers, Kaine walked down to the stage, entering the diag from behind the doors of Hatcher Graduate Library and strolling down to the podium, waving happily at the crowd along the way.

Kaine’s quick familiarity with the crowd and their school pride transitioned easily into the remainder of his speech. He set himself an agenda early on during his address of the crowd: to explain why he was proud to be running with Secretary Hillary Clinton, to speak to the stakes of the quickly-approaching election and to tell the audience how victory could be made possible.

LEFT: Senator Kaine spoke passionately for slightly more than 30 minutes on the University of Michigan Diag. The crowd he drew is estimated to have been more than 6,000 people.

Kaine began with the story of how he was asked to be Secretary Clinton’s running mate. “Hillary called me on Friday, July 22 at 7:32 p.m., not that it was a memorable phone call of course, I get calls like that all the time,” Kaine said, joking with the crowd, microphone still in his hand as he walked casually back and forth along the stage. “And she called and asked if I would join her. And I’m going to tell you what she said because it shows you how she thinks. She said, ‘Look Tim, will you be on the ticket with me?’ I started to say yes and she said ‘No don’t answer, I want to tell you why’.”

He went on to explain why he had been chosen as the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee. Through such stories, he was able to humanize himself, and more importantly, his running mate, who has been described by voters in a poll from Quinnipiac University as a ‘liar’ and ‘untrustworthy’. Instead, Senator Kaine aimed those terms at the campaign’s Republican opponent, continued...

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

7

NEWS

PHOTO: JOEL APPEL-KRAUT

PHOTO: JOEL APPEL-KRAUT

8

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

NEWS

Donald Trump.

“I would trust Hillary Clinton with my son’s life, and Donald Trump scares me to death,” Kaine said, after mentioning his son Nat Kaine, who is currently serving overseas in the United States Marine Corps. “Building walls and tearing up alliances will make us weak, not strong,” he added, in reference to Trump’s foreign policy plans to defect from NATO. Sam Barkee, a University of Michigan student and Trump supporter, protested the rally and responded to Kaine’s attacks. “You know, I didn’t start off with Trump, but he’s our last conservative left standing,” Barkee conceded. “I think that Trump’s plans for this country can put us going back in the right direction, while Hillary’s plans are just four more of the past eight years of failed Obama policies.”

University of Michigan students and faculty were not the only ones in attendance at the rally; Ann Arbor Public Schools’ Superintendent Jeanice Swift and several members of the AAPS Board of Education were able to come and watch as well.

Superintendent Swift stated that she attended primarily to support the Huron marching band, which performed as the kickoff to the rally Tuesday, and declined to endorse any presidential campaign. AAPS Board of Education Trustee Christine Stead, however, did throw her support behind the Clinton-Kaine ticket.

“Hillary’s been in almost every government position one can be in without being president,” Stead said. “She’s probably the most qualified candidate in the history of presidential campaigns

LEFT ABOVE: During Kaine’s speech, he used Republican candidate Donald Trump’s book and his and Clinton’s new book, Stronger Together, as props. He held the books up to the audience to illustrate key differences in how he views the rhetoric from the two presidential campaigns.

LEFT BELOW: Kaine stayed to shake hands and take pictures with members of the crowd after his speech.

Members of many campus organizations had been invited to watch the speech, as well as students who were simply curious to see what the candidate had to say.

in our country. I think in terms of someone who has the kind of acumen to make good decisions, which is that job, you don’t know what’s going to happen on your watch but you want someone in there who is measured, thoughtful, understands how to get things done, and has the kind of acuity to understand the impact of decision.”

Molly Aronson, a member of the campus organization Students For Hillary, used Senator Kaine’s speech as an opportunity to judge the campaign’s consistency.

“I think you can tell a lot from the candidate from how they speak to a crowd, especially how they speak to college students,” she said. “I’ve seen Hillary speak three times, and so I think it’s really important for a campaign to be consistent in the underlying structural messages that they send, and I could definitely get the sense of that today.”

Aronson went on to detail the multitude of reasons she has endorsed the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

“[This campaign] comes from a place of common sense, compassion, progressivism and experience,” Aronson said. “I think both [Clinton and Kaine] bring really, really different experiences to the ticket which I think is really important, but they’re both centered on a history of helping people and moving society forward.”

Kaine acknowledged the topic of advancing society by speaking specifically about women’s rights and political representation. “We [Americans] are good at so much, but we are uniquely bad at electing women to public office,” he said, citing America’s 19 percent female congress (the highest it’s ever been), which places the country 75th in the world. “It’s been 240 years since we said ‘equality would be our yardstick’, and only 96 years since we figured out that equality means women should get the right to vote. It’s time to break that glass ceiling and show the whole word that we understand that equality means equality,” Kaine stated to the loudest applause of the day.

The theme of Kaine’s speech largely mirrored a question that the Democratic party is attempting to highlight this election season. “Do we want to build a community of respect, or a community where it’s acceptable to disrespect people?” Kaine asked. “If you cannot call out bigotry, if you cannot call out racism, xenophobia, if you cannot call it out and you stand back and you’re silent around it, you’re enabling it to grow, you’re enabling it to become more powerful.”

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

9

NEWS

Hillary Clinton Campaigns in Detroit

Hillary Clinton speaks in Detroit At Wayne State University just one day before voter registration ends in a last effort to encourage people to vote for her on Nov. 8.

BY CLAIRE MIDDLETON, SOPHIA ROSEWARNE AND CAMMI TIRICO

Oct. 10 - 4,000 people gathered in the Matthaei Center at Wayne State University in Detroit to see Hillary Clinton speak just 15 short hours after the conclusion of the presidential debate in St. Louis, MO with Republican nominee, Donald Trump. Upbeat, pop and Latin music filled the arena welcoming the diverse crowd as they awaited Clinton’s arrival.

“I’m with her! I’m with her!” the crowd chanted in unison prior to the speeches beginning.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan was the first to take the stage and was quick to confirm that he would be supporting Clinton throughout the remainder of this year’s election season. He brought Donald Trump’s downfalls into light and questioned the leaked audio alluding to sexual harassment, which Trump excused as “locker-room talk”, and applauded Hillary for “fighting for us every day, year in, year out.”

Wayne State Prof. Mark Gaffney focused his speech on the rising tuition costs. “Everyone needs to understand the importance of access to higher education,” Gaffney said. “The amount of money that you and your family makes should not determine whether or not you can benefit this nation by going to college.”

When Sen. Debbie Stabenow spoke she took stabs at Trump’s campaign. “If Trump is so concerned about American jobs, he can close those factories and bring those jobs home,” Sen. Stabenow said of Trump’s overseas factories. “The only change Trump cares about is the change in his own pocket.”

With every speaker, there was another push for people to get out and register to vote before the Voter Registration deadline, Oct. 11. Speakers at the event also 10

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

PHOTOS:CAMMI TIRICO

urged everyone to bring others along.

“If you’re not registered, this is the moment, this is the moment to register.

And then we have to vote as if our future depends on it, because it does,” Sen. Stabenow said.

One of the first points Clinton brought up and repeated throughout was that the government and economy should work for everyone, no matter race, gender or religion.

“I believe our economy should work for everyone, not just those at the top,” Clinton said. “And I’m closing my campaign the way I started my career, fighting for kids and families to make sure every single person in this country has the chance to go as far as your hard work and your talent will take you.”

Clinton spoke about how she and Bernie Sanders collaborated on a policy for debt-free college. Clinton’s plan for college in addition to other platforms of hers have dramatically changed since the primaries after she began sharing ideas with Sanders. “Sen. Sanders and I ran a campaign on issues, not on insults, and I’m proud of that,” Clinton said, “If your family makes less than $125,000 a year, it will be tuition free. And if it’s more than that it will be debt-free.”

Equal pay and the gender wage gap were also issues brought up by Clinton.

“I want to finally guarantee equal pay for women’s work,” Clinton said.

Clinton also touched on her upbringing and her family’s history. “It wasn’t easy. My grandfather on my dad’s side was a factory worker. My dad was a small businessman who worked really hard.

My mom was abandoned and neglected as a child, and it was really only the kindness of people that she got through her childhood, and she was working as a maid and a babysitter by the time she

www.chscommunicator.com

was 14, so I take none of this at all for granted.”

“We all know who Donald Trump is, but the real question for us is who are we?” Clinton asked. “I would argue, we are not who he is. We are taught to and we should respect each other, lift eachother up and celebrate our diversity.

That’s the country I know and love and that’s the country that this generation is going to make stronger, more open, more tolerant.”

“Here’s a man who has insulted not just women, but African Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, Muslims, POWs and so many more,” Clinton said about running mate, Trump. “Donald Trump spent his time attacking when he should have been apologizing.”

Clinton also focused her speech on how she plans to win the 2016 election.

“That’s how we are going to win, with the biggest turn out that we have seen in a really long time and the reason it’s going to be a big turnout is because people know what’s at stake with this election,” Clinton said. Supporters in the audience raised “Love Trumps Hate” and “Never Trump” signs in agreement.

“We are getting more and more support not just from Democrats but from Independents and Republicans,” Clinton said.

Clinton also made sure to make a point about this election’s importance.

“The next 30 days will shape the next 30 years,” Clinton said.

Clinton’s final words to the crowd were, “We are stronger together and love trumps hate,” after which the crowd erupted into applause and “Rise Up” by Andra Day sounded throughout the venue.

NEWS

“Friends don’t let friends vote for Trump.”

HILLARY CLINTON

october october

||

THE THECOMMUNICATOR COMMUNICATOR

||

11 11

NEWS

On Oct. 6, Senator Bernie Sanders spoke in Ann Arbor about women’s rights, the wage gap, student debt and many other issues.

PHOTOS: ALEC REDDING

Senator Bernie Sanders Speaks at University of Michigan Art Museum

A

BY EMILY TSCHIRHART

n anxious and expectant crowd murmured excitedly as the main hall of the Ann Arbor Art Museum filled with people early afternoon on Oct. 6.

Latin and pop music played loudly as people gathered. From scrubs and skirts, to burqas and blazers, the people waited.

Alum and students took the stage and spoke about issues that have affected them on a personal level: the right to health care, the importance of abolishing student loan debt and the need to raise the minimum wage for workers. Paul Saginaw, co-founder of Zingerman’s Delicatessen, spoke on behalf of the severe minimum wage problems, and how raising the minimum wage not only creates better employees, but allows them to survive in an economy that doesn’t support those who only earn $7.25 an hour.

12

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

Sen. Sanders approached the stage and the crowd roared with admiration. He held the podium, humble and strong, surveying the crowd. Sanders began his 35-minute speech with an apology for those who couldn’t get inside. According to Sanders, our job as a country is to support and defend the middle class and it begins with the millions of Americans who vote on election day.

“If we are to start transforming this country, we need to start the day after election day, on a progressive agenda that demands we support the needs of the middle class and not just the millionaires,” Sanders said. “American workers are sick and tired of a government that allows massive levels of income and wealth inequality, a broken criminal justice system, they are tired of a government not moving as quickly as it could to prevent climate change, which must

www.chscommunicator.com

be done.”

Seeing as many American citizens end up with tens of thousands of dollars in debt from college and student loans, Sanders proposed his plan to make sure that the government is investing in the future of the country, and not just those who can afford it.

“When you leave school, we want you to go out and start your lives doing the work you want to do,” said Sanders. “[Hillary] is proposing to allow people with student debt to refinance their debt at the lowest interest rate they can find, significantly reducing the debt burden for millions of Americans.” Sanders painted an image of children who will never be able to attend college due to the massive amount of money that not all families can find. Sanders promoted public colleges and severe reductions to the amount of money that is required to

NEWS

attend colleges.

Donald Trump, during the debate on Sept. 16, described his unreleased tax returns as “smart,” damaging his reputation, seeing that he is the first presidential candidate who hasn’t released his tax returns.

“I’ve been running all over this country talking about the broken economy, and in one day, he did more than I did in a year, in a day, by exposing the corruption in our political system,” Sanders said.

Sanders pleaded with the crowd to steer clear of political gossip and polls, as the media is quick to judge with littleto-no evidence. People of America need to understand hard facts and solid evidence.

“You judge which candidate is better for me? Which candidate is better for my kids and my parents?” Sanders said.

“And I think any objective assessment of

Clinton’s agenda versus Trump’s agenda, it becomes clear, that by far, Hillary Clinton is the superior candidate and should be elected President.”

Sanders spoke on his fears that the United States is slowly becoming an oligarchy. One person, one vote. Those governed must give consent to be governed.

“Democracy means that billionaires should not be able to buy elections,” Sanders said. “Everyone needs to pay their fair share of taxes.”

Sen. Sanders talked about women’s rights and the wage gap. After each sentence the audience roared, the women of the mass whooping and hollering.

“This is not rocket science, this is basic justice. Equal pay for equal work. We are going to fight for pay equity for women workers,” Sanders said. Hillary understands, according to Sanders, that it is

an embarrassment that women earn 79 cents to a man’s dollar.

Hillary is a woman of science, according to Sanders. It is fundamental that a presidential candidate is intelligent and listens to fact-based evidence.

“Climate change is real, climate change is caused by human ability,” Sanders said. “[Climate change] will cause international conflict, as we fight for limited natural resources. That is what the scientists are telling us. Hillary Clinton is listening to science.”

“It’s easy to give good speeches,” Sanders said. “It’s harder to take bold action.”

The rally ended unceremoniously, the people edging forwards to shake the hand of Sen. Sanders and shouting praise. He humbly walked out.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

13

Q&A

PHOTO COURTESY: NATASHA KOMADA

Sunflowers and Superheroes An interview with Ross Gay, poet, gardener and former comic book collector.

BY KYNDALL FLOWERS

How did you first get into writing? I think I wrote little poems and things before I started thinking of writing, but I became sort of serious about reading and writing after being introduced by a teacher in college to Amiri Baraka’s poems.

I can tell an artistic community is important to you. How would you create or find one? It’s interesting, you know, from where I went to college I have two or three people who are still making art, and there’s no real calculus for how that happens. Except, maybe the fact that we were dissatisfied with what was available to us. And then in graduate school I became close with some other people, not around what we were dissatisfied with, but around what we fundamentally loved which was poems. But that’s

14

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

not entirely true. One of my best friends, and part of my poetic community, Patrick Rosal, we didn’t even talk about poetry at first when we became friends. We just played basketball. It was years later that we started talking about each others poems. So that’s a long way of saying that I don’t know.

But it’s utterly true that it’s crucial to have a kind of community that sees you and values you.

You went to college for football, and play basketball today. What affect do

www.chscommunicator.com

Ross Gay in the Bloomington Community Orchard. The Orchard works to provide fresh produce to community members.

sports have on your life?

You know it’s hard exactly to say, but I can sort of talk about what other people have said. Speculate a little bit. One of my friends Simone White, beautiful poet, writer, has talked to me about training, and sport as a kind of training. It’s a kind of discipline and, you know, one of the things about making art is that it is a discipline.

Partly, it just requires you to sit down and do it. She brought to my attention that if you can run a lot of miles, it’s kind of like sitting or a long time with a poem, with language or a line. It’s the same thing, because we want to do something else. It can be uncomfortable.

What kind of poems are easier for you to write? Bad poems. Really good poems

Q&A are hard to write, and they’re hard for me to write right now. That’s what I’m trying to write. Poems that I don’t know how to write.

Yea, I’m really interested in poems I don’t know how to write.

Is there a way for you to get into that “hard poetry” mindset? Good question.

I don’t know. I’m always trying to write poems I don’t know how to write. I’m always trying to write poems that will teach me something fundamental about my life, or about life. So mostly when I get into my writing, it’s always about that. If I’m going to write a poem I’m in that space.

Gardening is huge part of your life. What’s your favorite flower? I love sunflowers. But I also love zinnias. I mainly grow food, but okra, which is related to hibiscus, has a beautiful flower. I also love peach tree flowers, peach blossoms. They’re so delicate and beautiful. I love apple blossoms. They’re unbelievable. I’ve been growing for a long time. I love a lot of flowers.

Your first two books seem to be in a dark area, and your third one is all about gratitude. What was the process, the shift that happened? Its interesting. The first book is had the first poems I wrote that I felt were good enough to be in a book. There’s a couple of celebratory poems, that are more, I don’t even know how to say it. The second book is a really interesting book to me, and I feel like in that book you can see a kind of transformation where in the beginning of that book it’s just in a state of critique, and its really trying to engage in what it means to live in the culture that we live in. The country that we live in. It’s also trying to imagine a way out of that. By the end of that book I feel like there’s a kind of ethical transformation of the speaker or the imagination, or the imaginative horizons that are available to me as a writer, ideally to a reader. What arrives at the end of that book makes it possible for the third book to happen. The first two books were necessary for me to get to that third, and I’m glad that I was able to arrive at that third book. I always say it’s about that kind of adult joy, and when I say adult joy I mean how you manage to keep it above water, despite the fact of our lives, which is that it’s a struggle.

Do you have any specific practices that you use to take care of yourself? To keep it “above water”? I like tea. I like to sleep enough, and I exercise. And I have good friendships, good relationships. I take care of those.

What do you think poetry’s place is in activism right now? I can’t speak to that in a big general way, but I feel like poems always seem to be part of political movements. Always. Like poetry, whatever the point of the poetry is, it seems like it’s al-

ways part of the movement, which is to say it’s a necessary part of activism. And I assume it’s a necessary part of activism now, just like it was thirty years ago, and a hundred years ago. People use poems! They use them for activism, they use them for weddings, they use them for funerals. I was just at a funeral last night and on the inside of the [program], there was a poem. That’s what we do. When people say shit like, oh no, poetry its… First of all, it’s fundamentally not true that there are any problems with poetry. But it’s like, anytime you go to a wedding, anytime you go somewhere life

“It’s crucial to have a community that sees you and values you.” happens, you go to a march, you go to a rally, poems are part of it.

What did you read as a young poet? So, I didn’t start reading until I was in college.

I read comic books as a kid. You know like Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Etheridge Knight, and then Sylvia Plath, you know? I remember reading this Mark Strand book, like his selected poems. I read everything! When I started writing more seriously, my sophomore, junior year in college, I was just constantly reading… I didn’t read everything!

That’s bullshit. That’s completely bullshit! I read very contemporary poetry. That’s what I was interested in. And I wanted to read poems by people of color.

What was your favorite comic? Iron Man and Iron Fist. You know Luke Cage? Yea. So if there was like a black superhero, I was like “I need that”. I had every one except three.

They had a 100 or 120 comic run. But you know, my parents threw them away. They threw them away at college! My brother had a bunch of comics too. It hurts! God, I’d love to have those around.

What were your favorite parts about those heros? Power Man, I loved how he was a Black guy. I also loved that he was like a badass but he wasn’t. He had skin that was like steel. So it was like, that’s tough, but I’m not into those DC Comics with people who are almost entirely invincible. Luke Cage, he was tough but he wasn’t invincible by any stretch of the imagination.

You know, I used to read this thing called Marvel Universe, and it had stats of all the comic book characters, of all the heros. So you could find out what Luke Cage bench pressed, you could find out how fast he ran a hundred yard dash. He had a good bench, but it wasn’t crazy. He was superhuman but he wasn’t like, super super human.

He was just very tough and he had a good

outfit. He had a headband a butterfly collar, the tights. He looked good! He looked really good. He was fly as hell.

What has been your favorite imperfect, perfect moment? Something you’ve done or seen? There’s this marching band that I saw years ago, but they were pretty new the first time I saw them. I don’t know how long they’d been together but they were pretty new and they had like, acrobats and stilts and all this fire. I saw them two years in a row. The first year it looked like, “Oh, someone might get hurt.” Like, “someone might get their face burned off.” It was intense! And they were great. The second time they seemed perfect. So much less interesting. I’m actually way less interested in things that are represented as masterism.

I’m not very interested in mastery. I’m really interested in things that strain at an individual or group’s capacity and ability, such that mastery itself is only the willingness to obliterate one’s own mastery. So if you see footage of John Coltrane, to watch him and Elvin Jones do their thing… Talk about a master, like, there’s no doubt about it. It’s plain and simple. He could play a beautiful song but that wasn’t what he was doing! He was far beyond that. That’s partly what’s really beautiful about Kamasi Washington. From the little bit that I’ve gotten to watch online and stuff, it’s not just being great that he’s trying to do. He’s trying to tear something new open. Erykah Badu, too. I love Erykah Badu. She’s so good, but there’s something to her. Her pursuit is not just beauty. It’s something bigger. We’re so lucky to have so many good artists around.

What do you think ties together musicians and poets and artists and photographers? We’re all makers. We’re all sort of folks who are constructing a kind of vision and that’s significant. Thats a real thing.

What would you tell a youth poet right now? Let what you love be your engine.

Ross Gay is a poet from Youngstown, Ohio.

Gay has published three books: Against Which, Bringing The Shovel Down, and Catalog Of Unabashed Gratitude. Catalog won the 2015 National Book Critics Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Catalog was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, the Balcones Poetry Prize, and the Ohioana Book Award. Catalog Of Unabashed Gratitude is nominated for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Ross is also a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free fruit and community garden oriented project.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

15

NEWS

Argus Farm Stop: Local Food in a New Format

Downtown grocery and cafe lets you buy local, 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

J

BY ELLA EDELSTEIN

ust over two years ago, husband and wife Bill Brinkerhoff and Kathy Sample opened Argus Farm Stop on the corner of Liberty and Second.

“We were interested in doing something to help improve the local food economy,” Brinkerhoff said. Once a gas station, today the aroma of Roos Roast coffee wafts through the small store and two young children play at a table while their mother orders a drink.

“We came across a store with the same motto when we were dropping our son off at school in Ohio, called Local Roots ... a store that’s open every day, set up just like Argus,” Brinkerhoff said. “We thought Ann Arbor could really use a store like that because Michigan didn’t have anything like that that we’re aware of.” Now, Argus is a one-stopshop for those looking to buy local any day of the week. The store carries a wide array of produce, baked goods, coffees and drinks, prepared foods and dry goods, all grown or made in the local area.

Farmers, sometimes coming back from a long day at the Kerrytown market, drop off their products to be sold throughout the week. Once sold, the farmers receive 80 percent of profits.

16

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

“[At the Farmers Market] the farmers only get 18 percent of the retail sales dollar -- the smallest cut of anyone in the food chain,” Brinkerhoff said. “We love farmers markets, but the issue with the farmers market is that it requires the farmer to be there all day. There’s just not enough days in a year to make a business out of a farmer’s market as your only source of selling.”

In addition, Argus allows farmers to control their prices and the way in which they are sold. A large grocery store might buy wholesale from a farmer, who in turn will have no control over the selling of his or her products. Farmers frequently change prices based on what they have in abundance and what they don’t, and can choose whether they want products to be sold in bunches, by the pound, individually or in any other format.

While Argus is fairly new in the game, they have already begun to see the impacts that such a model can produce.

The store sold $1.3 million in the first year of business.

“We were amazed in our first year that sales were so high,” Brinkerhoff said. “The top 20 farms averaged over $26,000 in sales. A lot of the farms are

www.chscommunicator.com

on the cusp where a 10,000 difference in income can be the difference between staying in business and going out of business. So we are looking at, dollar wise, how much more can the farms get just by dropping off here and having us sell their products.”

Financially, Argus is not set up like your typical grocery store. The business is classified as a L3C, which stands for ‘low profit, limited-liability company.’

“We can pay staff, we can pay expenses but as a business we should be running the business in a way that benefits the local food economy,” Brinkerhoff explained.

In addition, the business must have a social mission and cannot exceed a certain amount of profit.

Brinkerhoff sees a promising future for this type of company. “I think Argus is a demonstration project that shows that this kind of food store—that benefits the farms and that consumers are so interested in—really works. If this was done in every town, multiple stores, it would completely enable local farms to make a living and could fundamentally change how food is sold in the US.” ABOVE: The vibrant storefront of Argus Farm Stop. Photogrpphed by Argus Farm Stop Staff.

FEATURE

PHOTO: ALEC REDDING

Teaching Outside of School Walls Craig Levin connects kids to unique learning experiences.

H

BY MADIE GRACEY

onors Calculus, Advanced lenged as a person, teacher and practi- many years to come. Levin also looks Statistics, Astronomy and tioner. According to Levin, T’ai Chi is “a over contracts and newly-created syllaMicroBiology are a few moving meditative practice. A sequence bi to make sure they have a clear course of many Community Re- of choreographed movements designed of study, achievable goals and objectives source (CR) classes Community High to quiet the mind, engage the body, and for the semester.

School teacher, Craig Levin supervis- awaken the spirit. It is a martial arts form “I also [check] the progress being made es. They are hosted at the University of involving strikes, blocks, etc., but is rare- and that the student is actually attending Michigan, Eastern Michigan Universi- ly used in combat. their CR,” Levin said. ty and Washtenaw Community College. “[Ta’i Chi] is said to be a ‘perfect deLevin gives each CR a careful overview.

Levin’s previous students, JenHe believes the program has na Warner, Noe Barrel and Juswonderful potential to contin Hamilton, had taken CRs nect significantly more kids to which involved them working “I also [check] the progress being made and that the resources that are abunin a Nanoparticle Laboratory, dant in the Ann Arbor comthe student is attending their CR.” as a local metalsmith apprenmunity. Hundreds of local extice, as a local glass-blower apperts, such as native-language prentice and as a Trout-Fishspeakers, professors, carpening/Ecology student. fence’, a master of T’ai Chi cannot be ters and welders in town would love to From 2007-2008, Levin taught a T’ai hit, let alone beaten.” give students the opportunity to learn Chi CR that explored moving medLevin has been working for the CR de- from them. itation. He enjoyed getting to know partment for three years now and hanthe kids in his class, exploring Eastern dles about 60 students per year. He plans philosophies together and being chal- on continuing in the CR department for october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

17

FEATURE

Tackling Stereotypes

PHOTO: CAMMI TIRICO

Isabelle Crumm and Camber Zeisler join Skyline’s football team.

BY CAMMI TIRICO

In 1939, Luverne “Toad” Wise kicked six extra points for the Escambia County High School football team in Alabama.

Wise was the first female to ever play on a male high school football team. Now Isabelle Crumm is kicking and Camber Zeisler is playing right tackle for Skyline High School in Ann Arbor.

Despite neither of them playing in the first three games of the season (and their football careers) they are very much a part of the team. “We are changing the game of football,” Zeisler said before their game on Sept. 16. “Two girls on one team, that’s pretty cool.” This is special and wildly untraditional because most teams do not even have any girl on their team.

Crumm and Zeisler are able to play a traditionally men’s sport because of the Title IX law that passed in 1972 stating that “discrimination on the basis of sex 18

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

in any federally funded education program or action” is illegal. This includes school-based activities and school run sports. Nowhere is it stated that girls are not allowed to play football.

Crumm’s main sport is soccer and she joined the football team because her soccer coach told her she had to.

“I didn’t quite know what I was getting into,” Crumm said. “It was really random.”

Zeisler normally plays volleyball in the fall, but she decided she wanted to play a contact sport, so she chose football.

So far, they are both really loving it. “My favorite part so far is the hard work aspect of it. “It’s unlike any other sport, because we are always being pushed to our limits,” Zeisler said. “But also, I have made so many new friends on the team that I wouldn’t have ever made if I hadn’t joined.”

www.chscommunicator.com

Both Zeisler and Crumm said they got nothing but support from friends and family when they joined the team. Every week before and after games they get ‘Good Luck’ and ‘Congratulations’ texts from family, friends and even people they do not know well.

However, it is not all fun, as there are some downsides to being the only two girls on an all-male football team. “Having to do everything separate from the boys is hard,” Zeisler said. “When we go to games, we immediately have to go to another locker room and not be with the team. Later we can go back in with them but it’s still separation from the others.”

Crumm agreed. “We are for sure part of the team, but there is still separation,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like we aren’t really part of the team.” They both agreed it was hard not always being with their teammates.

FEATURE

At the beginning of the season, the football coaches weren’t really sure what to expect, since this was both of their first years playing. Early on they did not push as hard as the others. Despite not being under as much pressure, they have to do the same drills and workouts as the guys.

Since this wis their first year playing football, and it is a learning year for them, the coaches and other players are always happy to answer questions for them or to explain something. “The boys are more welcoming to our questions, and are more willing to help us than they would be to the other boys,” Crumm said.

“The boys are so helpful!” Crumm said. “They don’t push us as hard or lean on us as hard as the other male teammates. If we mess up, they are more supportive and less irritated with us. They all

understand that both of us are relatively new to the sport and they help us with anything we need.”

The male teammates are supportive both on and off the field. “I have made so many new friends on the team,” said Zeisler.

Despite both the coaches and other teammates being super kind, supportive and inclusive, the best part of the football for them is having each other. “Before Isabelle came I felt kind of alone but now that Isabelle is here it’s a lot easier,” Zeisler said. “It’s nice having her on the team too because we can figure things out together. For example, the guys on the team don’t have to worry about putting your hair into your helmet so other team can’t pull it.”

With Skyline’s first home game and win on Friday, Sept. 16, the team’s morale and energy is definitely up. The stu-

dents, parents, coaches and players are all very excited for this season. Skyline’s defense will be tackling their competition this season. However, that’s not the only thing Skyline is tackling; they are tackling gender stereotypes.

LEFT PAGE Crumm and Ziesler standing with fellow teammates for the national anthem before Friday, Sept. 16 game against Monroe.

RIGHT PAGE TOP LEFT: Delante Ridley tackling the Monroe punk returner late in the first quarter on the 16.

MIDDLE LEFT: Michigan State commited Hunter Rison pumping up fellow teammate after defensive stop.

BOTTOM LEFT: Skyline player watching on early in the fourth quarter.

TOP RIGHT: Young fan playing catch with his dad during halftime break.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Carlo Terranato clarinet player in the Skyline band performing the Skyline fight song before the game.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

19

NEWS

Forum Day River trips, camping overnights, nights at a forum member’s house, school lock ins, trips to Howell Nature Center and more. Community’s forums gathered the weekend of Sept. 23.

Kiley Forum

Anderson Forum

Kiley Forum 20

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

Levin Forum

Stapleton Forum

Levin Forum

TOP LEFT: The Kiley Forum gathers around in frisk weather whilst s’mores are made.

TOP RIGHT: Samatha of the Levin Forum paints senior Kate’s nails during their Forum lock-In. MIDDLE LEFT: Zach Baker teaches the Anderson Forum how to play spoons.

MIDDLE RIGHT: The Stapleton Forum plays with some ducks at West Park.

BOTTOM LEFT: Dinner is prepared at the Frantz residence as Courtney prepares for a selfie.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Quincy of the Levin Forum chows down on a Hawain slice of pizza from NYPD in the Library on Thursday night’s Lock In.

NEWS

Haidu-Banks Forum

Kiley Forum

Anderson Forum

Haidu-Banks Forum

Haidu-Banks Forum

Mankad Forum

Morgan Forum

Stapleton Forum

Morgan Forum

TOP LEFT: The Haidu-Banks Forum walks back from swimming in Crooked Lake.

TOP CENTER: The Frantz family shows off their adopted goats to the Kiley Forum.

TOP RIGHT: The Morgan Forum plays in the lake.

TOP-MIDDLE LEFT: The Anderson Forum spots Kasey Neff as she walks across ropes at Howell Nature Center.

TOP-MIDDLE RIGHT: Haidu-Banks members pose for a photo in front of the camp-fire Friday morning.

BOTTOM-MIDDLE LEFT: Sabina Fall, Juliette Nanos and Audrey Jeffords smiling under the morning light.

BOTTOM-MIDDLE RIGHT: Students enjoy a campfire.

BOTTOM LEFT: Avery smiles after being in the lake in the morning.

BOTTOM CENTER: The Stapleton Forum kayaks on the Huron River during the voyage from Argo Livery to Gallup Park. Seniors Jared Utsunomiya and Taylor Baughman float down the Huron River before launching their drone off of the kayak.

BOTTOM RIGHT: The Anderson Forum celebrates getting across an obstacle course at Howell Nature Center.

Anderson Forum october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

21

FEATURE

Creating Patos

PHOTO COURTESY: FERNANDO ROJO

Fernando Rojo builds a company selling trendy shoes with traditional textiles.

I

BY ANDIE TAPPENDEN

nspiration strikes in unexpected

places. For Fernando Rojo, a Community alum who will be a junior at Penn this winter, inspiration struck at a coffee shop in Argentina while talking with his sister. It was winter break in Rojo’s freshmen year of college and his family was taking their annual trip to Argentina, where they are from. Every year Rojo’s sister bought several pairs of shoes from one man at his stand in a flea market. She was constantly being complimented on them, and even brought back pairs for her friends to wear. On this particular day, while Rojo and his 22

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

sister were sipping cappuccinos under the Argentine sun, she was wearing a pair from two years ago. While looking at the maintained vibrancy of the fabric and how neat and together the shoes still were, Rojo couldn’t believe that they had been bought at some small flea market shoe stand two years ago.

“I’d always thought, ‘Wow they look really cool,’ but I didn’t think they’d be that nice quality if some guy on the street was making them,” Rojo said. “I’d think ‘Wow this is really nice, so why doesn’t he have a big business around it?’”

Rojo walked with his sister to the flea

www.chscommunicator.com

market, as it was just a block away from the coffee shop. There, he met the maker of the shoes, Rafael, and talked with him for a while.

“I saw tourists all over the place, getting stuff, and I said, ‘Dude, what’s going on man? How’s business?’ He explained to me how there isn’t really much upbringing with education or anything,” Rojo said. “He just decided to make shoes 20 years ago to make some money and now he’s so good at it.”

The next urgent question Rojo faced was how he was going to fit all the shoes he had bought into his suitcase. “I liked

FEATURE

the product a lot and I decided to sell consuming and difficult because I just ferent steps. It’s a really cool process to it here so literally what I did was I just found I wasn’t doing both 100 percent. see,” Rojo said. bought suitcases full and brought them Little by little I went in improving the After years of hard work and strughome, I stuffed my suitcase, snuck shoes and the product, getting it mov- gle, Rojo’s business is blooming. Rojo’s through customs, straight-up snuck ing. I think things really started shaping Kickstarter began Sept. 13 offering his them into the United States.” Soon, “Pa- up over the last eight months.” Rojo is new line of shoes at a discounted price, tos Shoes” was born. currently taking this fall semester off so with the goal of raising 45,000 dollars in Unfortunately, at the beginning, Patos that he can focus on developing his busi- one month. Rojo and his prep team had was not very successful. hoped to be able to raise 10,000 “At the beginning, no one dollars in 24 hours, a goal that really takes you seriously, you was exceeded significantly. The “My goal is to make hand crafting don’t get any support that you Kickstarter received 10,000 in just of any fashion product think you will,” Rojo said. “I four hours, which Rojo thinks is a tried to start selling my first good start. However, there is still incredibly efficient, from starting it products at the very beginning more to be raised to meet Rojo’s to bringing it to the United States.” when I had my first idea and I end goal of 45,000 dollars. had no clue what I was doing. I This Kickstarter is just the bethink I sold something like ten ginning for Rojo’s business. Ropairs in a week. It was just embarrass- ness. He will be returning to Penn sec- jo’s ultimate goal is to be able to create ing.” ond semester as a junior. his shoes as efficiently as possible.

Despite his disappointment, Rojo kept Rojo’s business is growing and cur“There are a couple fashion companies going. Although, it was confusing. Rojo rently developing an exciting new line that are able to make products incredibly knew that there would be a great interest from Peru. He set up a Kickstarter in or- quickly, because they own their suppliin his product, so why was no one buy- der to hire 15 Peruvian artisans full-time ers. There’s no company of my kind that ing? “What I learned is that having a re- to construct the shoes. The process of handmakes products, who’s done that. ally good product just doesn’t matter at making the shoes is a 15 step operation So, as a result, hand making products is first,” Rojo said. “It’s like a pre-requisite that is shown on the Kickstarter website, generally very inefficient.” to success, but it won’t lead to success.” starting at “sourcing local raw materials” Rojo gradually began improving his and ending when they’re shipped to cusproduct and his business, but being in tomers. “One guy cuts the fabric, differ- To access more information as well as see more college, he was not able to dedicate as ent parts of it, then the interior, then he pictures, watch the promo video, and buy the much time as he wanted to. “So, I kind passes it to people who sew it and they shoes visit chscommunicator.com and click on of went on, school was very, very time sew the insole and they do tons of dif- the link in this article.

|

|

THE COMMUNICATOR october october THE COMMUNICATOR

25 23

NEWS

Light the Night

BY BELLA YERKES AND SOPHIA ROSEWARNE

Shock swept across the crowd. Team Emma had raised $12,741.60 as of Oct. 8, 2016, when the Leukemia Lymphoma Society (LLS) Light the Night Walk in Ann Arbor took place. Team Emma was the number one fundraiser at the event and the donations towards Team Emma are still increasing.

Team Emma fundraises in honor of Emma Rubenstein. Emma Rubenstein was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia on Jan. 28, 2008 and passed away after fighting the disease for just over a year and a half on August 11, 2009 at 14 years old. “She was so smart and funny, graceful. She was kind and she wasn’t nasty to anyone no matter how sick she was, she was always kind, and she was the kind of kid that I felt could have really done something big, like found a cure for cancer. She was that smart, she was crazy smart, crazy smart,” said Pam Kangas, an inpatient nurse who worked with Emma Rubenstein throughout her treatment and began participating in Light The Night.

The Light the Night Walk is an event taking place across America in which cancer survivors, those supporting people with cancer and those remembering loved ones lost to cancer join together to donate money to LLS and walk in honor of those affected by Leukemia and Lymphoma. For the Thomas-Rubenstein family the event becomes a reunion of sorts.

“A lot of people who knew Emma 24

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

Rubenstein personally, which she’s been gone now for seven years, so a lot of her friends have moved on to college and beyond. It’s nice to be able to bring people together who remembered her,” said Dan Rubenstein, Emma Rubenstein’s father.

Team Emma was the top fundraising team in Ann Arbor not only this year, but in previous years as well. Hannah Rubenstein, Emma’s sister, is Team Captain for Team Emma. Hannah Rubenstein took over during her freshman year after Emma’s friend who had been the team captain for the first four years graduated from high school. Hannah Rubenstein, a member of the Quinn Strassel Forum at Community, stood up on her first day of high school and asked her classmates to join her in raising money for LLS. “I remember being blown away by her bravery and by the honesty that she showed on that first day,” Strassel said, “I remember thinking, ‘Is this girl really just a freshman?’ I was inspired.

And I think the other students were too.”

Members of the Strassel and Thomas forum, as well as many other Community High students attended the Light the Night Walk in support of Emma Rubenstein and her family, which include CHS teacher, Anne Thomas, and student, Hannah Rubenstein. “I feel incredibly supported by Community High School and always did,” Thomas said, “Throughout the time that she was in treatment, my colleagues, the students

www.chscommunicator.com

and my forum were always so supportive. I am so thankful to have a workplace that is so incredibly supportive.”

The Strassel Forum had set their goal around $600 the first three years they participated in Team Emma’s fundraising efforts. This year, Hannah Rubenstein’s senior year, the Strassel forum decided to aim higher and set a goal of $1,250, which equated to roughly $50 per forum member. Hannah Rubenstien wrote an email, which was forwarded to family and friends by the forum members, to help raise money and awareness and the forum also organized an event in which the teachers with the top donations got “pied”. The forum was hoping to raise a couple hundred dollars with the pie contest but they ended up raising over $500 with the pie contest alone.

LLS assists with financial aid for cancer patients, works to develop safer treatments and create cures. Light the Night takes donations from teams across Washtenaw County. The donations received are extremely important so breakthroughs and improved treatments can occur. “I come because I don’t want other families to have to go through what our family went through,” said Gayle Thomas, Emma’s Aunt, when talking about the importance of this event, “So I think that if we can raise money and if research can be done and if the odds become better and better that kids with leukemia can survive then we’ve done our work here.”

NEWS

ABOVE: Team Emma gathers together in memory of Emma Rubenstein, Anne Thomas’s daughter and Hannah Rubenstein’s sister, who passed away of leukemia in 2009 LEFT: Quinn Strassel’s forum huddles up and celebrates the results of their efforts to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

RIGHT: Red, yellow and white lanterns are lit to support or commemorate people who have struggled with cancer.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

25

FEATURE

Keeping Forum Alive

PHOTOS: JUDITH DEWOSKIN

Judith DeWoskin discusses the history and traditions of her past and present forums.

O

BY AVA MILLMAN

ver 30 years ago, Judith DeWoskin sat down in her living room with her very first group of forum students.

Since that first day DeWoskin has worked to make all of her forum members loving and hardworking students and young adults.

“I buy into the importance of forum and I guess taking special care of 24 students, who would not normally be friends together, sit together, go camping together, cook together, hang out together, and working hard to make them appreciate each other,” DeWoskin said.

DeWoskin knows better than almost anyone about the importance of forum and how the core values of forum shape the culture of Community High School.

“I think it’s a way for one teacher who might not be your classroom teacher to be checking up on you and making sure that everything is going well,” DeWoskin said. “It’s also a place for students to have a special kind of advocacy. If a student

26

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

gets into trouble or is having a problem the first person that student should go to is a forum leader.”

DeWoskin says that while the values of forum have stayed the same over the years, the growth in the student body has had a huge impact. In recent years the size of each forum has increased from 18 to 28. The popularity of Community has grown with time, causing a change from a first-come-first-served system for accepting students to a formal lottery.

Like many of the other forum leaders at Community, DeWoskin has never had a say in who is put in her forum. Each year she is challenged to bring together a group of teenage strangers and make a tight knit support network.

“My motto in forum is, I will love them to the ground,” DeWoskin said. “That’s how we do it. I once had a student say to me, ‘Judith, I have been trying really hard to love so and so to the ground, but I’m having a lot of trouble.’ By the end

www.chscommunicator.com

of that person’s senior year that person was entirely loveable.”

In all of the years DeWoskin has led a forum she has gained a repertoire of memories both good and bad, most of which centered around her annual forum day camping trips. Six or seven years ago DeWoskin’s forum was set to go on their camping trip when a massive storm rolled in. When it was clear the trip needed to be called off, DeWoskin quickly brought up the idea of sleeping over at her house.

“Back in the day when forum was 18 students, having a sleepover wasn’t a huge deal because 18 kids is not a lot of bodies on the floor and couches, but 26 is quite a lot,” DeWoskin said. At about 2:00 AM. DeWoskin got out of bed to check up on the kids. On her way to the living room she opened one of her hallway closets and all of a sudden an arm and a leg crashed out of the closet along with a pile of closet contents. “Apparently they were playing hide-and-seek

FEATURE

but I didn’t know that,” DeWoskin said.

In DeWoskin’s opinion the most influential forum memory she had was her very first. “I think the most important moment is, when I came to Community High I was warned that students were really scary people: they were druggies, and burnouts, and basically terrible terrifying children,” DeWoskin said.

DeWoskin had taught for a few years so she could not believe it to be true, although a bit nervous she invited her brand new forum over to her house for a barbeque. She was pleasantly surprised to see that these “terrible terrifying children” wanted to teach her to play none other that duck-duck-goose. This made DeWoskin realize that there were some stereotypes created about Community High students that were nowhere near the truth.

“I think that forum just gets better and better,” DeWoskin summarized. The world has changed a lot in the last 30 years and yet DeWoskin has been able to keep the family traditions of her forum alive.

LEFT PAGE: The 2016-2017 DeWoskin forum pose for their group photo on their fall forum trip.

FAR ABOVE: A past DeWoskin forum take their forum trip picture in front of a campsite outhouse.

MIDDLE LEFT: A past forum pose in their matching DWOW forum love shirts at a CHS field day.

MIDDLE RIGHT: DeWoskin has made it a habit to take out her forum seinors for a special meal every year.

ABOVE: Members of the 2016 DeWoskin forum enjoy sausage and scrambled eggs around a morning campfire on their fall 2016 forum trip.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

27

FASHION

1

2

3

4

5

6

PHOTOS: ALEC REDDING AND GRACE JENSEN

Community Fashion

BY BRENNAN EICHER

1. Junior Sam Uribe gets ready for fall weather by wearing a maroon sweatshirt over top of a white graphic t-shirt.

2. Junior Sabina Fall prepares for autumn by layering her striped black and white sweater and her mustard rain jacket. Her black headband holding her hair back adds a dark color to her bright outfit.

28

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

3. Freshman Cammi Tirico, accessorizes with a Lokai bracelet which contains mud from the Dead Sea and water from Mount Everest.

4. Sophomore Sawyer Dupree sports a two toned navy blue and periwinkle sweater over an undershirt.

www.chscommunicator.com

5. Freshman Dominic Gatto adds color to his outfit by wearing baby pink Converse All Stars with navy blue pants.

6. Junior Ajay Walker displays loose fitting denim overalls with sheer tights and a fitted shirt with a blue and pruple pattern.

FASHION

1

1 2 3

2

3

4

5

6

5

6

The Arborialist: Ann Arbor Street Fashion

BY EMILY TSCHIRHART

1 Worn, holey overalls, white brandless sneakers, and a University of Michigan Engineering spirit t-shirt.

2 Floral Calf-Length Dress, strappy heels, a black choker, and a flowing white blouse, tied in the front.

3 A dapper Camelback corduroy blazer, beige trousers, blue button down, yellow bow tie, and black loafers.

4 A black and white-striped turtle-neck tank top, sepia Sperrys, tawny high waisted Palazzo pants, and rounded sunglasses.

5 A flint grey quarter-zip sweater, acid wash denim joggers, and hi-top black suede sneakers.

6 Grey lace long-sleeved shirt, highwaisted denim skirt, light cloud ruffle socks, and black work boots.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

29

NEWS

GRAPHIC: ELLA EDELSTEIN

Students Stand up for Their Democracy Preceding the Upcoming Election, Students Raise Their Political Voices in a New Club

BY MIRA SIMONTON-CHAO

F

or as long as Community High School sophomore Gina Liu can remember, she’s wanted to play her part in the political discussion of Ann Arbor. From listening to NPR as a toddler, to watching CNN at the age of seven, politics have always played a key role in Liu’s life. This interest did not end with her entry into high school, but was rather strengthened by the support of her fellow students and teachers. This year, Liu and her friend Ava Esmael acted on their common interest in politics—with the support of their teacher Matt Johnson—and began the Young Democrats club.

“We wanted to have a group where other people who have the same values as us—[and maybe] not even the same values—could talk about things we’re passionate about,” Esmael said.

For both club presidents, the shaping of their political standing has been greatly influenced by their sisters. While Esmael’s sister inspired her to start the 30

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

Young Democrats club, which she mirrored off of a similar club started at Huron High School, Liu’s sister taught her to appreciate politics in a different light.

With satirical shows like “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show” viewed

by Americans all over the country, comical politics are not a new concept. But for Liu, she’s found that politics in their outright form can be just as funny as any comedy/news show, no extra commentary needed.

“A part of politics is definitely just the comedic value too, because sometimes things that happen are just super funny,” Liu said with a laugh.

Hoping to bring awareness to the issues which they feel most strongly about, Liu and Esmael want their ideas to go beyond the classroom doors. Using protests, posters and social media they hope to bring another layer of action to their club. They want to make the Young Democrats a club that stands

www.chscommunicator.com

out from the array of student clubs that boast action, but are all talk.

In this technological era where information lies at our fingertips, Liu believes that people can still go uninformed. But as Liu puts it, “Sometimes [people] have good views but they’re just not educated about it.” The Young Democrats club wants to not only inform people, but arise political discussion among their fellow students. With this year’s election closing in, it’s important to Liu and Esmael that the youth of their country, state and city understand what’s truly going on around them.

“The heart and soul of our democracy is people getting involved, serving, volunteering and you know paying attention and all of these beautiful things that make up a democracy,” said Johnson. And that is just what Esmael and Liu intend to do as they work this year to live up to their club motto “Get active.

Get involved.”

FEATURE

The Importance of Grades Community High students and staff talk about their perspective of grades

J

BY WM. HENRY SCHIRMER

ack Cassell, a senior at Community High School (CHS), will soon begin the college application process. As with most students, this process will force Cassell to come face to face with the grades he received in his first three years of high school.

“With my grades, I have to strategically look at colleges that would accept me,” Cassell said.

Cassell’s situation is similar to many students this time of year. Many times he finds himself ignoring certain colleges that he may wish to attend because GRAPHIC BY SAM MILLMAN his grades make him unlikely to be accepted. ucation. Now that he is attending CHS, be a mastery system, a system where “They have been something that has he feels at though his education it bet- students can continue to work until they caused me to break down,” Cassell said. ter led. master the skill. Another solution McKThis is a real problem in school today, Fonte Basso, however, believes that night advocates for is one where teachaccording to Cassell, who remembers student should have multiple chances to ers offer a simple reflection or statement moments when grades became over- achieve the grades they want. This way, that indicates how much work and effort whelming. Stress is common in these grades actually reflect the work a student students put into the class. situations. We all have ways to deal with puts in. If they want to study and retake “I would say [grades] are an essential it. For Cassell, it’s simple: sit down, relax a test, over and over again, they should part in the economy of academics, but and work through the issue. be allowed to. That would show their de- it’s kind of like Bitcoins: their value is in Cassell is also part of Community En- termination and hard work. question,” McKnight said. semble Theater (CET). This is someJason McKnight, the Latin teacher at McKnight’s comments are worth conthing that he loves, but also adds to his CHS for nearly 15 years, has a very pas- sideration. How much are grades truly stress level. Having a job and being part sionate perspective on grades, which he worth? All those A’s may look the same of CET is a welcome distraction from feels have become very important be- on a piece of paper, but the effort and school, but can also lead to late nights of cause of the system in place. Howev- work that went into each grade is probaexcessive cramming. For Cassell, bly very different. that leads to more stress.

John Boshoven, a counselor For many students going to at CHS, believes grades are the class and learning is the biggest “I would say [grades] are an essential part most important thing in high and only priority, and grades are in the economy of academics, but it’s kind school. an important part of that.

“For anything that you want of like Bitcoins: their value is in question.” to do “You have to learn. You go after high school, a diploto school to learn,” said Giuliama is vital. In order to get the no Fonte Basso, a sophomore at best diploma possible, grades are Community High School. er, he believes the system is broken and most important,” said Boshoven.

Fonte Basso believes that students should be changed.

He believes grades are something that should put as much attention into grades “This false economy of points has cre- should be monitored starting in ninth as possible. According to Fonte Basso, ated a scarcity model for grades where grade. According to Boshoven, many grades tell everything you need to know students feel desperate enough to do students don’t believe the first year of about your high school experience. It whatever it takes to get a grade they high school is a big deal. Not true. The shows how much attention you put into think they want or deserve,” McKnight grades you receive in ninth grade are one each subject. said. third of the GPA looked at when applyBefore Fonte Basso was a student at He believes that grades have become ing to colleges and jobs.

CHS, he went to Rudolf Steiner, a pri- such a big deal in our society that stuBy the time junior year rolls around vate school in Ann Arbor. In Steiner, dents are willing to do anything for them. many students realize they have dug grades are not introduced until middle The system also encourages students themselves into a hole, noted Boshoven, school and even then are rarely used. who might struggle in class to cheat in- and that’s why it’s important from day This system aggravated Fonte Basso, stead of searching for outside help. one to begin working on a good GPA. because it gave no structure to his edMcKnight believes one solution would october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

31

FEATURE

Not So Split

ABOVE: Jessica Baker, center, stands out among her father’s side of the family.

How multiracial teens identify and coexist with their cultural layers.

J

BY MAGGIE MIHAYLOVA

essica Baker glances at the mirror propped across the room.

Her reflection blinks back, a 17-year old girl with features from her American father and Taiwanese mother. She talks about them freely, bubbling about their cultures and racial backgrounds. But when it comes to personal identification, she is hesitant to respond.

“Race wise, I would identify as halfwhite, half-Taiwanese,” Baker said. “I actually feel like I belong more to my white side. If I went up to a group of Asian people I would not fit in. They have a very different life than I have had. Like my mom, she grew up in the ‘typical Asian’ way: grades are everything, you can’t play sports. But I have a much different life. I play soccer and I can hang out with friends whenever I want. So I identify with the white – or want to identify with my white side a little bit more.

Baker’s Taiwanese features stand out, and she does look more Asian. But her childhood has been the “classic” white, American one – Christmas parties, trips to up North and weekend soccer games.

“The family dynamic is so much different,” Baker said. “On my dad’s side, we always get to get together, even though [my relatives] live in Cleveland. But with my mom’s side, my grandparents live in Ann Arbor, and I see them, but not as much as you would think. They’re a 32

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

lot more independent. I mean, they do come to some of our soccer games, but they are like: ‘oh, we’re going to Costco, so we’re not coming.’”

Baker has experienced frequent stereotyping in her life, in the form of repetitive questions, however she isn’t indignant. In fact, she reports that most of the comments come from friends.

“If I do something that’s more ditsy, they’ll say: ‘oh, it’s your white half ’ or ‘you’re white.’” Baker said, “If I have just got an A on a test, it’s: ‘oh, you’re so Asian!’ So you get both of them, being half. I think that I’ve just gotten used to it over the years. Because I feel like if I were to get upset every single time somebody said something, I wouldn’t be having fun, so I just let it go, laugh it off.”

Noah Dworkin, a senior at Community High School, often experiences the same kind of thoughtless, ineffective comments. Dworkin, who is three-fourths white and one-quarter black, encounters stereotyping that personally infuriates him.

“One thing is when people associate being white with being educated,” Dworkin said. “People look at me, and I’m well educated, so they say: ‘you’re not really black, black people aren’t educated.’ That sort of pisses me off, because I know a lot of black people that are educated and people don’t see that.”

Dworkin and Baker occasionally strug-

www.chscommunicator.com

gle with personal identification, however they also possess access to different cultures and means of connection.

“I think there’s a good part with being white, obviously, because you have a lot of advantages.” Dworkin said, “But also with being part black, I can connect with different communities. I’ll see a black person, they don’t know I’m part black, and the second I tell them, we are connected. I really enjoy that aspect.”

Baker enjoys her Taiwanese culture, and even wishes she were more connected with it.

“We celebrate Chinese New Year, and we do make a few Taiwanese dishes, but it’s not the same.” Baker said. “I also wish that my mom had taught me Taiwanese, because then I could speak to my grandparents that way.”

In the end, both Baker and Dworkin appreciate being multiracial. The benefits outweigh the annoying comments, which are so typical that they have lost their meaning. It is a split identity that somehow divides and combines, creating cultural layers that help them connect with the communities around them.

“Some people think that you have to deal with bad stuff with both [races], but I see the good side,” Dworkin said.

“Both cultures are influential in my life in different ways. If I could go back and change anything, I would do the same thing over. It’s the best of both worlds.”

BOOKS THAT CHANGE LIVES

BY SUEPHIE SAAM

BOOK AUTHOR

REVIEWER

GENRE

DATE PUBLISHED

Victor Frankl

Zach Baker

Psychology

1946

MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING

“

I started college at Washtenaw Community College. I was homeless at the time and really struggling to find a purpose and a meaning. I met with someone who ended up becoming my mentor and he was giving me all these books because he knew that I wanted to make this change and that I had a potential and it really helped.

The one that really stood out to me was Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”.

It’s kind of a classic. It’s about a person who went through the Holocaust and he survived. Before he went into the Holocaust he was a psychoanalyst. He had kind of a physiological way of viewing the whole experience, so [in the Holocaust]

some people were just executed and didn’t have a choice and other people died in the camps that were not executed but just became sick and ill and things like that. One of the things that he noted was that he believes the ones who survived are the ones that have meaning and the best way to connect to meaning is to figure out how you can help others. This was kind of a feeling I always had about myself in the world, this idea to create meaning and the best meaning you can create is figuring out how to make the world a better place by helping others.

I think it was really good for me because I was probably dealing with some depression at the time and for me when I’m in

that mode I’m always thinking about me, me, me, instead of the bigger picture and sometimes, by just opening up my perspective to the world a little bit, that helps me feel better.

I think part of it was a book can give you a connection to someone who is a mentor or a friend even if they aren’t there right. I was kind of in my feelings and in my own world and feeling kind of alone and no one else was feeling these kind of things.

By reading this book it made me feel like I wasn’t alone. It synthesized the ideas and feelings I had. It made those more clear.

I think the idea of community and clarity were the biggest things for me.”

- Zach Baker

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

33

FEATURE

PHOTO FOR GRAPHIC COURTESY: MIDDY MATTHEWS

New Faces for AAPS Board An experienced lawyer, an involved parent and a retired teacher join forces to bring change to the Ann Arbor Board of Education.

W

BY GRACE JENSEN

hen Hunter Van Valkenburgh, a lawyer and former teacher, ran for school board in 2014, there were 10 people competing for four open seats. With support from parents and students at Ann Arbor Open, where Van Valkenburgh’s two children attended and his wife teaches, he placed fifth.

Instead of giving up, Van Valkenburgh waited for the next school board election to run again, this time on a slate with two other involved community members.

Jeff Gaynor was the first to team up with Van Valkenburgh. Recently retired 34

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

from teaching at Clague Middle School, Gaynor had the valuable perspective of an Ann Arbor teacher to add to the slate. Harmony Mitchell completed the trio, a parent of four kids, three in the Ann Arbor Public Schools and one who will go when she’s old enough. The team began campaigning quickly, with “Hunter, Harmony and Jeff ” signs appearing on

www.chscommunicator.com

ABOVE: From left to right: Jeff Gaynor, Harmony Mitchell, Hunter Van Valkenburgh.

front lawns by August.

What sets the three of them apart from other school board candidates is not only that they are running on a slate, but their platform. While each candidate has a different order of priorities, the team agrees that there should be more public discussion and transparency in board meetings, less standardized testing and a budget that focuses on hiring teachers and reducing class sizes. They agree, in short, that Ann Arbor Public Schools needs change.

“I moved here about five years ago, and my initial interactions with AAPS

FEATURE

were great,” Mitchell said. “But I started to notice some things that happened in Washington DC that are starting to happen here, the privatization of pretty much everybody that works in the schools, and I started to notice that one test a year became two, and then two to three, and I noticed that my children weren’t being taught the things that, I, at least, was taught at school, and that they were now being taught to a test. And a greater part of why I’m running is because I come from a community that doesn’t get heard very often. Their voice is muffled by lots of people who have more money and it’s oftentimes that we are just drowned out. Our opinion and what matters to us just does not get heard.”

group that has as a particular issue, that gets a certain number of [signatures on a petition], we could argue about the numbers may be, 50 or 100 or something, then they would actually be given time on the agenda to have a representative of their group speak for all of them, so that there would actually be a dialogue,” Van Valkenburgh said.

that they’re having their students optout,’ our board decided, ‘We have to figure out how [to] force these students to take this, and we will threaten to kick them out of Open, Community, STEAM, Pathways... we will just revoke that privilege if you opt-out of the M-STEP.’ So in our opinion, they did the opposite of what they should have done. Instead of joining the protest, they decided to punish the protestors.”

Overtesting The M-STEP is the Michigan StuThe movement against standardized dent Test of Educational Progress. It testing is strong in Ann Arbor. In fact, is a compilation of the required testAnn Arbor STOP, or Stop over-Testing ing in Michigan, from state English and Our Pupils, is a group on Facebook with math tests to the free SAT provided at over 200 members. The concern is that school. Notably missing from this is the NWEA, Northwest Evaluation Association, one of the biggest tests kids take in Ann Arbor be“I think that students should consider fore high school.

Public Discussion supporting Hunter, Harmony and Jeff because “NWEA is optional,” Van An important aspect of the they really are open to dialogue on these Valkenburgh said. “It’s someHunter/Harmony/Jeff camthing the district pays for, just paign is their commitment to issues, and [are] really creating momentum to because the district wants data. making it easier for the Ann [The test] is supposed to allow Arbor community to voice con- try to improve conditions for public schools in teachers to create individualcerns or ideas at school board Ann Arbor.” ized learning plans for students. meetings. As it is now, public But it’s not supposed to be for commentary is a small portion teacher evaluation. It’s not really of the meeting’s agenda. The more peo- teachers are no longer given enough free- supposed to show student growth. But ple who have something to say about a dom to plan lessons that will help their that’s what the district has been talking popular topic, the less time each person students. Instead, teachers are forced to about using it for anyway.” has to make their case. Meetings have teach to a standard curriculum that preThe district is mandated by the state often gone late into the night and ear- pares students to do well on the many to use some type of assessment of stuly morning, and although there is a limit standardized tests they take throughout dent growth, but it is not required to be to how long they can run, a vote of the the year. Teachers are evaluated based on a standardized test. One of the biggest board can override this rule. Commen- their students’ test scores, so they have issues in the school board right now is tary is not scheduled first on the agenda, to concentrate on test preparation over the budget, or lack thereof. The NWEA so attendees may have to wait through everything else. The tests themselves is one thing that Van Valkenburgh would hours of promotional videos and stu- also take up valuable class time. Protest- eliminate in order to focus on other dent award recognition before having ers of over- testing believe there are bet- things. a chance to speak. After commentary, ter methods of student and teacher asboard members sometimes address is- sessment. sues brought up but sometimes just con“Teachers used to be considered pro- Budget tinue with the scheduled topics. fessionals,” Gaynor said. “We had the Although Rick Snyder and his admin“If there’s an issue that’s a hot-button autonomy to teach our students as long istration will claim otherwise, Michigan’s issue, people should be allowed to speak as they produced results. Now, it’s being public education funding cuts have been and voice their opinions,” Mitchell said. scripted. We don’t talk about kids any- crippling. According to a study by the “There should be dialogue between the more, we talk about data.”

Center of Budget and Policy, Michigan board and the public, and that’s not hapThis dissatisfaction with the school had the 12th worst state funding cuts pening at the board meetings. I would district’s tests produced a movement of in the country between 2008 and 2016, definitely lobby that we make some ad- parents choosing to keep their kids out when the per-student allowance dropped justments to the start times, possibly also of the test taking. The students would 7.5 percent. have more time for public input and re- work on something else while the test “Yeah, money is a real serious issue,” sponse from actual board members, in- was being given or stay home from Gaynor said. “I mean, it just is. It’s afstead of just the three minute commen- school that day. fecting every district in Michigan. And if tary and then the board member not “We have a difference with the board we don’t make some changes in Lansing really acknowledging what people have there too,” Van Valkenburgh said, “Be- it’s going to continue. I don’t think we to say and then moving on to what they cause when there was a significant opt- have answers for that. It’s how we’re gohave already decided before they count out movement at various schools, mostly ing to juggle it.” which way they’re going to vote.”

Ann Arbor Open, the board’s response, For Van Valkenburgh, Mitchell and “One idea that I had, that I would instead of writing to the state board Gaynor, the highest priority in spending certainly try to implement, would be and saying, ‘We have problem with the is hiring more teachers in order to reto change the bylaws to get a group of M-STEP, and we have number of par- duce class sizes. “And that’s the mantra,” parents or students or workers, or some ents who have such a problem with it Van Valkenburgh said. october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

35

FEATURE Parents’ Perspective Van Valkenburgh has twins who are sophomores at Community High School, Elena and Garnet Bernier. Mitchell has three kids in the AAPS system, at four different schools, including Ariel Mitchell, a freshman part-time at Community. Gaynor’s kids are grown but attended Ann Arbor Public Schools. All three of them know what it’s like to raise kids in our school system. For Mitchell, the biggest concern as a parent is transportation.

“Transportation is a huge issue,” Mitchell said. “I know my daughter... well, she catches the bus from Pioneer to Community in the mornings. But still, in the afternoons I have to pick her up, every day. And the buses have often been overcrowded, and I have witnessed students sitting on the floors, on people’s laps. It’s not safe. That bus gets into an accident and you have so many liabilities.

So many children hurt, it’s just a mess.”

For Sharon Simonton, another Community parent who has been working on the Hunter/Harmony/Jeff campaign,

she’s glad to hear candidates talk about the issues she cares about. Many of her worries align with the trio’s priorities.

“They’ve addressed many of the concerns that I’ve had over the last couple years attending board meetings,” Simonton said. “I’ve become increasingly concerned by lack of transparency, with many decisions being made after midnight, and concerned by privatization, and the increased standardized testing of students, and just concerned by the lack of communication between the Board of Ed and the public, a lack of dialogue and conversation.”

Bringing it Home Simonton believes all Ann Arbor Public School students have a stake in the school board election.

“I think you should care because many of the decisions by the Board of Education directly affect all of the schools in our district, and the educational offerings that are available to you, and the conditions of your classrooms, your transportation to school, the teachers you have,

and the amount of testing that you’re subjected to,” she said. “I think that students should consider supporting Hunter, Harmony and Jeff because they really are open to dialogue on these issues, and [are] really creating momentum to try to improve conditions for public schools in Ann Arbor that will then make the schools better for all students.”

Community students have another reason to be interested in this election, in that our school is different and therefore can be a topic of disagreement. The Hunter/Harmony/Jeff campaign has support from Ann Arbor alternative education advocates, and in turn, they are supportive of the alternative schools.

Community High School is a program they would defend.

“I think that Community is the high school jewel of the district,” Van Valkenburgh said. “Major awards that our students get [are] because they are going to Community. Your newspaper, the jazz band, other programs, they bring in, they give prestige to the district.”

“I’d want to make other places more like Community,” Van Valkenburgh said.

GRAPHIC: MEGAN SYER

36

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

ARTIST PROFILE: OLIVIA COMAI

BY WM. HENRY SCHIRMER

Olivia Comai is a senior at Community High School. She has been doing art since she was two or three, following her mother’s footsteps. She truly realized that she wanted to be an artist around the time of middle school.

What is the meaning of this piece [above]? This piece [Basic Peasant Drinking Tea] I did over the summer at an art camp in Chicago. The prompt was to take a piece you found at the Art Institute of Chicago, that really draws your eye and put a modern twist on it.

The original piece that I used was called “Young Peasant Drinking Tea” by Camille Pissarro. I decided to add a modern twist by putting half the dog face snapchat filter, because now everyone just takes pictures of coffee instead of enjoying it. Now social media is a big part of art and communication, so I wanted to show that.

What motivates you to be an artist? I feel like it’s the best way to express myself. It’s something I can use to show my emotion and communicate with people. I think it’s really important to use art to communicate all over the world. It’s a universal language, everyone can understand a picture even if they can’t understand words.

What mediums do you tend to work with? I enjoy paint mostly, I do oils and water colors. I also enjoy finger painting a lot it’s actually really fun. It’s definitely underrated. So are crayons.

What motivated you to become an artist? My mom went to art school and she does watercolor and painting. I thought that was cool, so I started to drawing at home and in school. Then I branched out to painting and stuff. Mostly it was entertaining and a good way to express myself.

Where do you draw inspiration from? I draw inspiration from stuff that happens to me in life. Such as important events and my friends. I do a lot of art of my friends, I did one drawing that was my friend’s pet, and it was their pets faces on their human bodies. That was really fun. I do a lot of artwork like that.

What do you hope about the future of your art? I hope it can get me into college. That would be nice. Go to an art school and then maybe go into some sort of job involving illustration or something like that would be fun. Or I’ll just become a starving artist and marry a rich person and be a gold digger. Either way is fine.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

37

SIGHTS & SOUNDS of

CHICAGO

BY MAGGIE MIHAYLOVA AND ISABEL RATNER

38

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

1 U of Chicago Located seven miles south from downtown, the University of Chicago is a gothically influenced campus in the heart of Hyde Park. On any given day, one may see college students dart to and from classrooms, on bikes or on foot. The campus extends for 217 acres and consists of two main quadrangles and interspersed neighborhoods with that classic college town feel.

2 Maggie Daley Park 3 DuSable Harbor Grant Park is a beautiful, relaxing area, however Maggie C. Daley Park (technically within Grant) is a spectacle in itself. It is hilly, wooded and has nature trails that echo the Central Park vibe. The 20-acre plot lines Lake Michigan and provides a great view of both the water and the skyline.

On warm, weekend days, DuSable Harbor bubbles with life. Each boat is filled with people, beer, music, or all of the above.

Kayaks dart between the channels and every now and then a swimmer dives off the wooden dock. The harbor was constructed in 1987 and can house up to 420 boats.

4 Magnificent Mile The Magnificent Mile runs from the Chicago River to Oak Street is a staple of Chicago. Lined with upscale shops and restaurants, the Mag Mile buzzes with life even on a Sunday night, and attracts about 22 million visitors annually.

1

22

5 NWU Lakefill The Northwestern University Lakefill is particularly breathtaking during sunset.

The “beach,� composed of large limestone slabs, is a great place to relax and watch the golden haze of the Chicago skyline.

The Lakefill came about when the university needed more room to extend their physical footprint.

3

4

6 Chicago Riverwalk The Chicago Riverwalk is a classic feature of this midwestern city. With a great boat channel and a lengthy pedestrian walkway, it is a breezy and enjoyable place to be on a September weekend. Construction of the riverwalk began in 2001 and in 2016 three additional blocks were added.

5

6

6 october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

39

humans of community MEET THREE FACES OF COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOL

DOM GATTO BY ALLY EINHAUS

“My brother is a big influence on my life. He has always been there whenever I needed him and he’s one of the strongest people I know...

40

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

He is definitely, 100 percent one of my best friends. He’s strong. Emotionally strong.

He’s done some really hard stuff and he handled it well. He’s really caring. Whenever something happens and it affects me, he’s always there to help me and he talks to me about it. I’m comfortable and I’m happy [when I’m with him]. I could go anywhere with him and feel comfortable. He’s one of the reasons I really wanted to come to this school. He goes here. I’ve been hanging out with him a lot since I’ve started. He’s been really nice and helpful. He helped me with my schedule and stuff and helped me find classes. I eat lunch with him some-

www.chscommunicator.com

times. Last year I went to a concert with him.

Even though he was technically on a date, it didn’t feel like they were excluding me or making me like a third wheel. They included me, they talked to me and we hung out as a group. The concert was in Grand Rapids. Diet Cig played first and the lead singer kept kicking their leg out which was really funny. Then Brick and Mortar got on and they went crazy, like it was really weird.

Then the Front Bottoms played which was why we were there mostly. I got a Diet Cig shirt which is one of my favorite shirts. My brother also has one. He’s mad at me that I own one because he had his first.”

FIONA O’RIELLY BY MARY DEBONA

“This summer, I went to Alaska with my camp and had a wonderful experience and I’d say it greatly impacted my life...

for multiple reasons. Mostly because I’ve never been camping for three weeks and there was so much time to think and learn about myself as I was hiking and backpacking. I would say also the people that I was with impacted my life. It was a cabin full of 15, actually 18 with counselors, strong women and we could learn so much from each other. But also our guides were great role models and had so many great stories to share. While I was there it felt like

a dream, I’d say once I got back into you could say the ‘real world’ from camp I realized how much it had impacted my life.

I just think that now I can find great things in such small moments, the trip helped me realize that. Before I did not find joy in small things. I felt like seeing a pretty flower, a nice sunset are so wonderful and I guess that the trip helped me realize that, because it’s made up of so many small things.”

MANEESHA MANKAD BY ANDIE TAPPENDEN

“I remember thinking rosebuds. That was my first feeling: she looks like a rosebud. All pink and ready to open..

up, and I still get emotional just thinking about it. Just holding her for the first time, having a baby. At the same time, it was kind of nerve racking, because I was thinking, ‘I am responsible for this life now’. It was a lot of feelings. The pregnancy was great! It was wonderful, I did not want to give up my baby! I talked to her all the time, I read so

many different books that were inspirational and I watched a lot of movies that made me really happy. It was a very happy time in my life, and just the feeling of having someone within me was so incredible. It was like having a companion constantly. It was a person who I knew and communicated with before and it was an amazing feeling.”

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

41

Q&A

Tattooed Thoughts

CHS senior Ella Ruderman explains how she made the decision to get her first tattoo over the summer and the meaning behind it.

BY ALEXANDRA HOBRECHT

Why did you decide to get a tattoo? I’ve always liked the idea of quotes, poetry quotes, because I’m super big into poetry. Especially Rilke quotes, that’s a German poet. That’s the poet that I have tattooed.

I used to keep a book of all the quotes that I wanted and they’re all from his sonnets.

It’s always been in the back of my mind.

The reason I decided to get it this summer was I think I just wanted to get a little bit of a fresh start and something that meant a lot to me. I was going through some hard times and I wanted as much of me, what made me me, as I could possibly get. So I cut my hair and I thought about getting a tattoo but suddenly I realized, “why wait?”

What was it like getting the tattoo? It did hurt. Everyone asks me that and I don’t know how to answer because yeah, obviously it hurt, you’re getting a needle in your skin. But it’s not that kind of pain that makes you yell and freak out. It was more like kind of a discomfort kind of pain. It kept stinging a little bit... but it wasn’t that bad for me just because I knew it was going to be worth it.

It wasn’t that bad. It hurt, but that’s not what I take away from it. It doesn’t outweigh the benefit at all.

42

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

What does the quote mean to you? To me, the flower and the quote go hand in hand. I love sunflowers. They’ve always just kind of been a reassuring symbol to me, like growth and sustainability and just kind of happiness in general. I think [that’s] the most important thing about the tattoo for me, what the quote means to me and a few people have asked me that. I think it can be interpreted a few different ways. The entire quote goes, I didn’t use the first two words, it goes, “Above all, don’t plant me inside your heart. I’d outgrow you.” To me, that speaks a lot about self-worth and self-love.

We’re grown into this idea that we need somebody else’s validation to make us feel worth something. That’s something I think I’ve struggled with a lot, craving the validation of other people and the love of other people to make me feel like I am who I am.

And I think what this quote really speaks to is the fact that we all outgrow each other all the time. We don’t need to be encapsulated by somebody else to have value and to be able to love ourselves.

Do you ever wonder what other people think about it? Not really, just because it’s my body and my decision. I haven’t gotten

www.chscommunicator.com

any negative connotations, any negative comments on it. It’s just an art expression like anything else. The only people that I feel like have that kind of view might be parents of kids in our generation because of them thinking about their kid. I don’t think it relates to me at all. Sometimes I don’t even remember it’s there because it’s not something that you consciously feel all the time.

Do you think you will ever regret getting it? I absolutely knew that it was something I wasn’t going to regret. There’s nothing immature about it, there’s nothing crass about it, there’s nothing cheesy about it, in poetry and language and sound and everything.

The words symbolize who I am and I just didn’t feel like there was a reason to wait. I mean, we could all die tomorrow and then you wouldn’t get a tattoo. You wouldn’t have those kind of things. It seemed worth it to me and I think it helped me and boosted my self confidence a little bit and my self-assuredness.

POEMS AND PROSE

“Sienna Party” - a prose poem by Clara Kaul

A glimpse inside 2016 Community Graduate Clara Kaul’s thoughts as she grapples with the reality of leaving Ann Arbor for college during a car ride with friends.

BY KENDALL FLOWERS

A screaming tongue drips out the stereo of the clunky blue sienna.

Julia Shapiro’s sarcastic voice leaks through the car your tattoos are so deep, they really make me think. Jaime sings along, their voice clear and stable, and the blur of traffic lights blink around us.

I swallow mouthfuls of cold Michigan air, we drive down the throat of Ann Arbor, and Julia sings we are having a party / and the city’s teeth break around us. Jaime kisses me on the cheek at a red light.

This is the opposite of stagnancy. To be moving forward faster than you can run, to be the foot pounding sidewalk, a bullet, a gulp of water swallowed and choked, to announce that you’re afraid. Are there others out there who think like us? Julia sings, breathless, the strum of an electric guitar behind her. I think about my best friend.

Their hair a slice of bright and unapologetic red, in Missouri. A new and ghostless world. A state I have never set foot in, one three hundred dollar plane and bus ride from me. If you dance , if you dance no girls will give you a chance. Julia tells us this, her voice looming in a tiny and powerful universe of this old and dented thing, a God, of sorts. What a parade we are. The bass shakes the floor of the car, and I cough on this sudden air, this 15 minute transverse down

this blushing, stupid, town. These are the ways we have carved out where it is we belong. No one knows better how to craft a kingdom better than the people I love. Jaime stocks their room full of plants, hangs a fake and luminescent sun from a string and this is their own universe. Loewe draws pictures on scrap pieces of paper, her loopy figures marking their own territory, turning it inside and out.

We are inviting our best friends so they can have a good time. Julia sings and I am thankful for my own flexible and impermeable love, what it fills, what it can contain, how it stretches, are they having fun? Julia says, I can picture her head twirling to the gentle guitar.

I am not ready to leave. But I am ready to go. Oh, are they having fun? We are both singing, as the town rolls under us. 4 months.

Then I will cut open fresh envelopes, lick them closed, seal them with everything I’ve got. We can create a long world. A map, a web, something concrete. Stretching from Northampton to Ann Arbor to St. Louis to East Lansing to Chicago to Ithaca to Toronto. Julia sings I think they’re having fun, oh I think they’re having fun. And a small world crumbles. And I open the car door.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

43

FEATURE

Incarcerated Injustice

BY SOPHIA ROSEWARNE AND BELLA YERKES

Organizations work with prisoners to fight against injustices within the prison system.

44

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

FEATURE

Section one of the 13th amendment correlation between income and incar- a long time to plan. The official callout states, “Neither slavery nor involun- ceration. The average income of a man date for the most recent strike organized tary servitude, except as a punishment in prison before incarceration is $19,650 by IWW was Sept. 9, 2016, Stapleton for crime whereof the party shall have while the average income of a male who states that this strike took about a year to been duly convicted, shall exist within does not become incarcerated is $41,250. plan. The IWW helps to facilitate comthe United States, or any place subject “The truth is you don’t go to prison if munication between prisoners and pristo their jurisdiction.” Slavery was to have you’re rich, you just don’t,” Stapleton ons, and Prison Action News works to been outlawed in 1865. It isn’t some- said. “Capitalists don’t go to prison. And spread the word outside of the prisons. thing that most people think still legally it’s not justice.”

The IWW also works to make connecexists today in United States, but it does.

There are risks involved on both ends tions with strong organizers that are inSlavery is still legal in the prison systems, when making a prison strike possible. carcerated within the prisons they work and it is not underused.

But the risks taken by those on the out- with. The organizers send contacts that Not only do prisoners suffer from pris- side are minimal when compared to the are interested in participating in the on labor, there is also racism in the pris- risks taken by the prisoners. “The risks strikes to Stapleton and those he works on systems as well as a correlation be- are enormous [for the prisoners]...They with and they send the prisoners matetween income and incarceration. These are really putting their lives on the line, rials, including messages about when a factors are causing prisoners across prisons can do whatever they want to strike is going to happen. And because America to protest against the injustice prisoners, prisoners are people who have the prison looks at the mail that goes in in America’s incarceration system. no rights,” Stapleton said. and out the materials they send also have African Americans make up 12.3 perOrganizers on the outside like Staple- to be coded. They also provide some cent of the American population ac- ton also may be watched by the govern- prisoners with contraband cell phones. cording to NBC News, but they make ment, and the IWW, which he is a part Stapleton hopes that these strikes help up 37.8 percent of the incarpeople realize that slavery is cerated population according still legal. “Whenever you do to the Federal Bureau of Prissomething like this there is the ons. “You’ve just got glaring “The truth is you don’t go to prison if you’re rich, provisional, quote-on-quote reexamples of the way that in- you just don’t,” Stapleton said. “Capitalists don’t alistic goal and then there’s the carceration fuels racist, capiphilosophical underpinning of go to prison. And it’s not justice.” talist, patriarchal regimes and why you’re doing what you’re the way that our country emdoing.” Stapleton said. “I’m in bodies that,” said Joe Stapleit for freedom of the prisoners ton, full-time student at Duke and a full- of, is considered a terrorist organiza- and liberation of the oppressed. It’s realtime youth outreach minister who also tion in some states. “You’re pretty sure ly the goal of any sort of action like this, finds time to work with The Industrial if you’re going to be doing this kind of revolutionary action has revolutionary Workers of the World as an organizer work, and if you’re going to be doing it goals, and this introduces a more provion the outside to help fight the injustices for long enough, and if you do it loudly sional picture. I hope that what this alto prisoners. Prison strikes first struck enough, you’re going to be looked after lows people to see is that slavery is still Stapleton’s interest when a family mem- by someone, whether it’s local or author- legal, that it did not end with the civil ber of his was incarcerated. “Our job ities, or whether you’re put on a list, it’s war and that police and prisons have on the outside is really bring attention to kind of unclear,” Stapleton said of a risk been a long project in the re-enslavethe organizing that’s already being done he takes while partaking in the organiza- ment of black Americans as well as poor by prisoners,” Stapleton said. tion of these strikes.

Americans.”

The statistics of prisoners in the prisThe security in prisons creates commuon system show racism as well as clas- nication barriers that complicate the orsism. Prison Policy Initiative shows the ganization of a strike so each strike takes

88.4% 37.8%

13.3%

of inmates are African of the US population is of the US incarcerated American.

African American. population is male. october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

45

FEATURE

BY KASEY NEFF

F

ear crept The fact that this could have happened hundred rioters. The police intervened up on the showed how severe the riots were. There in this riot before it even began. There y o u n g were always a few “bad eggs” who par- was visible violence giving the police t e e n a g e ticipated in the riots and they tended to reason to step in. The result if they had boy as he travels go to the extremes. not stepped in could have been “horrenthrough the halls The rioters were not after just one dous” Neff recalls. of his own high group, they would go after all races.

Neff never caught on to the real reaschool. He was not There were no adults taking part in the son for all the violence. He knows there aware they were riots; the majority of the rioters were was a big black movement at the time, gathering that day young black men of high school and and he believes that the riots at Pioneer for yet another riot, college age. were inspired by this movement. The Tim Neff accounted.

The riots drew in the attention of the movement was what inspired the DeNeff has lived in Ann Arbor his whole Ann Arbor police. Neff remembers that troit Riots. life. He attended Pioneer The racial tension Neff witHigh School from 1972 to nessed while attending high 1976. is still continuing today.

“The anger people around me had from the school Pioneer High School was He has noticed it and believes things that happened, is what I remember it deserves more attention, like very different then. According to Neff, there was the Black Power Movement. most clearly.” a smoking lounge at his The Black Power Movement school. That was not the originated in the 1960’s and is only danger present; there was a siz- they mostly stood around waiting for peaking again since then. It emphasizes able amount of riots by students during noticeable violence. He believes that if racial pride and social equality through the 1970’s. The riots were mostly in the today a bunch of high schoolers gath- the formation of black political and culspringtime and they began to die down ered with the plan of rioting and po- tural foundations. There was a noticehis senior year. tentially taking over a school, the police able increase in police brutality in the A riot is defined as a large display of would step in instantly. past couple of years and that gained a something, or a violent disturbance of Since Neff had a lot of black friends lot of attention towards the movement. the peace by a crowd. Neff witnessed he was lucky. His friends would inform demonstrations, for most of his high him if a riot was going to take place that school career, that can be defined as so. week. One of Neff ’s best friends, named Neff ’s high school experience was in Clyde, was his main informant. Neff ’s the prime of the riots. The ones at Pio- closest friends would be called “oreos” neer were a direct result from the rioting for hanging around with him. It meant that took place in Detroit a few years be- black on the outside and white on the TOP LEFT: Neff’s senior school picture.

BELOW: Family picture of Neff and his daughter Kafore. “It’s the splash after that, because inside. the riots in Detroit were 1968-69,” Neff The school would usually close when sey Neff, taken in 2003. said. the rioters came. Neff would then just When comparing the riots in Detroit to go downtown and play games at Pinball those at Pioneer the violence was much Pete’s. “They were kind of like days off,” less. That does not mean the ones held Neff said. These “days off ” did not perat the high school were not important or sonally affect Neff ’s education, though serious. he does believe it quite possibly affected “I found out later that very few [riot- other students’ educations. ers] were from Ann Arbor,” Neff said.

“The two things that always baffled “There were a lot of them from Willow me were: one, why the police let them Run, Inkster and other [Detroit] sub- happen?” Neff said, with a look of anurbs. Maybe even some from Detroit ger and confusion. “And two, like I said, City.” it was an excuse to act. I really believe Hundreds of kids would gather at the that the majority, based on this kind of school and walk the halls as though they ‘mob’ rule, wouldn’t do anything. Some owned them. It continuined for a few were just walking around, ‘being cool’.” days before something awful would ocNeff would not personally call them cur and the Ann Arbor Police would in- protestors. To him they had no goal or tervene. true reason for going to Pioneer. This A peer on Neff ’s gymnastics team once could be described as mob mentality, went to his locker alone and was beat up when people are influenced by the peoby a couple of his classmates. This was ple around them causing them to act. due to the riots allowing kids to believe To Neff ’s best recollection, some peothey could get away with anything. ple were arrested. Neff was not a firstOne year there was a young girl that hand witness to the more aggressive side was allegedly raped in the library of the of what was going on.

Pioneer High School. Neff remembered The last riot to arise during his time this one well since it was so serious, but at Pioneer High School was in his sehe can not quite remember if it was a nior year. There were approximately two rumor or truly a thing that happened. hundred Pioneer students against two 46

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

FEATURE

HGTV Urban Oasis Comes Home to Ann Arbor

BY CAITLIN MAHONEY

In the prestigious Waterhill neighborhood in Ann Arbor, MI rests a green craftsmen home. The 1,500-square-foot, two bedroom and two-and-half bath home is being given away as a part of the 2016 HGTV Urban Oasis Home sweepstakes. The TV channel will be giving the $650,000 home away and taking entries for the sweepstakes starting on Oct. 4 through Nov. 22nd. This is the seventh home HGTV has done for Urban Oasis to complement their other giveaways, the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway and the HGTV Smart Home Giveaway.

These other two giveaways have been two of the most successful promotions in cable TV history.

The Urban Oasis giveaway started as luxury, highrise properties in large U.S. cities like Chicago, Miami and New York City. Starting last year, the project got a new focus on urban communities and remodelling older homes. The new idea took off and the number of giveaway entries doubled from 2014 to 2015. The HGTV team chose Ann Arbor for this year because of the eclectic people and the home’s proximity to downtown and campus.

“I love Ann Arbor, and it just has a great feel to it, especially the Waterhill district. You have older generations, younger generations, college students, just a mixed background of people and you are right around the corner from downtown,” said Scott Branscom, urban project manager for HGTV. “The people here have been fantastic to work

with. I really have fallen in love with Ann Arbor so I’m really going to hate to see this [house] given away.”

A lot of focus went into making the house ecologically friendly and using sustainable features. Many of these features are found in the backyard. Students from the University of Michigan’s landscape architecture program worked on implementing native plants and a raingarden bioswale to make a beautiful and ecological backyard. “[The students] are very sharp, they did some great design work with the original concept plan and ran with it, and added whole layers of sustainability and ecological design to the final project,” said Stan Jones, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at University of Michigan, “The original design focused a lot on pollinators and native plants, some of it got installed, some of it didn’t. The bioswale really transformed this side of the yard, and when those plants grow up, it will really create a very nice outdoor room to compliment this [porch].”

The garden also has a herb garden and a chicken coop to emphasize home garden to table sustainability.

The home was designed by local architect Dawn Zuber of Studio Z and renovated by local contract company Maven Development.

An unexpected touch of whimsy is found in the garage doors made by Clopay. These doors are made from a composite as an alternative to wooden garage doors. Not only is this more

sustainable, it is also lower maintenance.

Through the garage you can access the back porch though another garage style door that is all glass to let light into the cozy space. This nook is ideal for watching football games and entertaining. This also allows for the garage to be opened up for one large entertainment space.

When you enter the house, you open up into a large space that has the living room, dining room for six, and a modern black-and-white kitchen. Back behind the kitchen is a laundry room, powder room and a guest bedroom. In the guest bedroom there is a patterned ceiling, a spectacular view of the backyard and a one of a kind painting of a wolverine.

There is a bathroom ensuite with floor to ceiling geometric tiles and innovative shower fixtures. Upstairs is the master suite which includes the bedroom, bathroom, and massive walk-in closet. The bathroom walls are covered in blue, penny stone tile. The space also has a large soak in tub and a shower. The bathroom leads into the large walk-in closet. The bedroom, like the downstairs, has vaulted ceilings and paint is in a relaxing grey green hue.

Starting Oct. 5 you can enter to win the HGTV Urban Oasis home twice a day on HGTV’s website until Nov. 22nd.

The TV special will premiere on Oct. 5 at 11 p.m. EST, and will be hosted by Matt Blashaw of DIY Network’s Yard Crashers, and the designer of the home, Brian Patrick Flynn.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

47

FEATURE

A Welcome Home

LEFT: Peter Ways enters his third floor classroom, which he shares with fellow social studies teacher, Chloe Root. He greets his seventh hour class with a smile and prepares them for the class ahead.

PHOTO: ALEC REDDING

After more than half a decade, Peter Ways returns to the halls of Community.

BY SHANE HOFFMANN

As Peter Ways entered Community High for the first time in the 2016-17 school year, he began a new role within the school. This time, unlike in the past, he entered as a teacher.

“I have been interested in coming back to Community since I left, just over seven years ago,” said Ways, a school teacher at Ann Arbor Open and previous dean at Community. When he first applied, Ways was unsure about his role at Community due to his teaching schedule at the Ann Arbor Open school. It soon became apparent that picking up a single class at Community would work best for Ways, allowing him to keep all his classes of substance at Ann Arbor Open, aside from his lone elective class.

“It’s not an even trade from my perspective; I have a significantly larger work load, but I was ready for a change and yet I didn’t want a super big change,” Ways said. “[US History] was the only thing that was on the table. I mean it was that and Economics, but I love US History. It just played out in a perfect way.”

The transition back to teaching high school started out rocky for Ways in the first weeks of the year, as he dealt with the adjustments in age groups and curriculum between the schools. Not to mention the fact that at Community, everything will go on the student’s permanent academic records unlike at Open.

48

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

“I know how middle school students react to my quirky personality and it’s not obvious to me how high schoolers react... I have to sort of guess ‘am I annoying them?’” he said. “I’ve been a little bit nervous, a little bit unsure on how I’m coming across.”

When teaching, Ways is heavily involved with his classes, asking many questions to keep his students interesting and thinking. He is a cerebral person who encourages his classes to challenge authority and venture beyond the basic curriculum. He enjoys learning about his students and sharing personal experiences with them. Although it was not easy at first, Ways has adjusted in the past weeks and is beginning to find a routine at Community High.

“I love Community and I think that Community is either the best or one of the best high schools in the country,” Ways said. “So I’m honored, privileged and lucky. It means a lot. Plus I know most of the teachers and a bunch of the kids. It’s sort of a warm welcome back.”

Among others, one key thing he appreciates about Community is the relaxed atmosphere and open school philosophy.

“High school has some built in stress, so why do you have to add Mr. Hoffmann and Dr. Ways and bells ringing?

And I just don’t see the benefit of hall passes,” Ways said. “I think when you’re a high school age student you have the

www.chscommunicator.com

ability to act grownup. At times you’re going to act like a kid and at times like a grownup, but if you’re in a place that treats you like a grownup it’s going to be a nicer place to be.”

The relaxed style is nothing new for Ways, as Ann Arbor Open also adopts the “open school” philosophy.

“The students take ownership for the school more, so they care about what happens there and are responsible for making it good,” Ways said.

He believes that coming from Ann Arbor Open has made it easier to transition to Community due to these similarities. Previous experience as the dean of Community from 2006-2009 and a job as principal for a school in Seattle has also benefited Ways in his return.

“Whatever students dished out, I dealt with,” he said. “I had a certain comfort level dealing with students, what they might throw at me as an admin, I kind of carried that into the classroom.”

“The first few years back to teaching, it felt like I was on vacation,” Ways said How long Ways remains at Community this time around is unclear, but as long as he is here, he will make the best of it.

“It depends on how it goes, you know if it crashes and burns then I suppose we shouldn’t keep going, but it’s a pretty sweet gig,” Ways said.

FEATURE

PHOTO: CAITLIN MAHONEY

A Pledge to My Motherland

A Personal Narrative Written by Tawaiah Yalley, CHS Senior, in Writing Composition.

BY TAWIAH YALLEY

“I promise on my honor to be faithful and loyal to Ghana my motherland”.

These first two lines of the Ghanaian National Pledge have been my personal vow. Every day this phrase reiterates through my head, never failing to remind me of who exactly I am—a Ghanaian.

In my zealous infancy, I had never understood who a Ghanaian was until my mother, who was pursuing a doctoral degree in the U.S, decided to bring my three siblings and me along. So on August 20, 2010 we left Ghana to start our new lives.

In order to begin my own personal rendition of the American dream, my mother enrolled me in Forsythe Middle School. On the first day of school, the first question I was asked by a fellow student was a question I would grow all too familiar with, “Where are you from?”

I told him, “I am from Ghana.” In the years to follow that moment, I strived to adapt to my new life, but everywhere I went I was pestered with that same question, “Where are you from?”

Eventually, my family was presented with the opportunity to return to Ghana for a year after four years of living in the U.S. I was ecstatic that I would finally get to see my father, former friends and my beloved country. On September

6, 2014 we set off for our country with immense elation. Two months after we returned to Ghana my parents enrolled me in the best high school in Ghana, Prempeh College, so I could begin my tenth-grade year. The first day, as with all new adventures, was a frightening experience. It started with a chaotic assembly of all the students in the school. As was tradition, the students were directed to recite the Ghanaian national pledge.

When 3000 students started to recite the pledge I had so much reverence for, I was filled with nostalgia and joined in.

After the recitation, the student standing next to me asked me that same question I had heard so much during my time in the U.S., “Where do you come from?” I responded with the same choreographed answer I had been giving for years. Surprisingly, after I finished giving my answer, the student replied “No you aren’t.” I couldn’t believe his audacity, as I just stood there sheepishly with nothing to say.

Admittedly, I had never thought about what exactly made me a Ghanaian until that moment. Later, I found out from my friends why a Ghanaian would surmise that I was not a Ghanaian; the common answer was, “You speak like an American.” I was not convinced that

something so shallow and transitional was what determined nationality. However, I began to grasp terms such as African-American, Asian-American, and Euro-American. I made it my mission to find out exactly who a Ghanaian was.

And by the time I returned to the U.S. I had learned an extensive amount about my background and what Ghanians think about who a true national of a country is. I learned that a true national of a country is one who loves a country and gives back to the country. For years I had been calling myself a Ghanaian without fulfilling my duty of giving back to Ghana. I have always wanted to see a positive change in my country, and to cease the reign of poverty, disease, hunger and corruption over Ghanaians, but I had not considered that in order to see this change, every Ghanaian has to do their part and give back to the country by helping one another. Ever since this realization, my mission in life has been to work arduously and to make my existence more meaningful, so I can finally give back to the country that has given me so much.

“I pledge myself to the service of Ghana with all my strength and with all my heart.”

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

49

STAFF EDITORIAL

Hillary Clinton for President

PHOTO: Cammi Tirico

A Call to Vote — From Those Who Can’t.

BY THE COMMUNICATOR EDITORIAL BOARD

On Tuesday, Nov. 8, the voices of approximately 25 million Americans, ages 12 to 17, will not be heard. Their ballots will not be counted, yet the next four or more years of their lives are as dependent on the winner of this election as any citizen of this country. As a highschool publication, our staff, editors and readership are overwhelmingly a part of that 25 million.

In an effort to speak for at least a portion of these minors, the editorial board of the Communicator finds that Hillary Clinton is by far the most qualified candidate of this election cycle, if not ever.

Her unwavering courage in the face of adversity is inspiring, while her strength, conviction and experience show that she is more than ready to serve this country.

While comparing the two candidates, we have found a key difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Clinton cares for people, while Trump cares for things.

On the topic of appointing a Supreme Court Justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, both candidates have laid out their priorities. Clinton has made it clear she wants to appoint a 50

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

judge who will protect people, somebody who won’t push to overturn abortion rights for women (Roe v. Wade) or the protection of same-sex marriage under the law (Obergefell v. Hodges).

Trump has stated that his priorities are protecting the second amendment, and choosing somebody very much in the mold of Scalia, who wrote a dissenting opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges. As students who identify as, are the children of, or simply have empathy for LGBTQ identifying people, Trump’s stance on same-sex marriage is unforgivable. Having recently lost a peer to gun violence, the necessity for stricter gun control is more relevant than ever before in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. And finally, to take away legal access to abortion is to legislate women’s bodies, and to take away their right to self-determination.

It is no secret that this editorial board is liberal-leaning, but our allegiance to Hillary extends far beyond party lines.

Trump is not only a bad politician, but a hateful person. We simply cannot watch him call immigrants “rapists,” discount a federal judge’s ability to preside based on his Mexican heritage or brag about assaulting women, and treat these things

www.chscommunicator.com

as isolated, innocent incidents. He leaves a trail of discrimination, anger and violence everywhere he goes, and we must not allow such traits to enter the Oval Office.

While a vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or the Green Party’s Jill Stein may seem like an alternative to both candidates, it operates as an abstention. Because the two have almost no chance of winning a state, let alone the election, a third party vote to avoid both major party candidates only increases Trump’s chances.

We cannot force you to vote for any candidate, and the basis of a democracy is for your vote to be your voice. But we can remind you that for some, ourselves included, this concept does not apply. If you are below voting age, we encourage you to be active in this election cycle.

Educate yourself on the issues that matter, and volunteer for a campaign. And if you’re able to enter that ballot box on November 8th, think of the children, in the most literal sense. We need to put Hillary Clinton in the White House, and we need your help.

WE’RE WITH

HER...

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

51

EDITORIAL

100 Years of People in Parks

As we celebrate the National Parks Service, we look 100 more years into the future.

O

BY MARY DEBONA

n Aug. 25, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service, President Obama signed a law that turned more than 87,000 acres of land located in central Maine into the newest addition to the NPS, Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. This monument was the 25th addition to the NPS to be approved by Obama during his presidency out of 413 total sites (parks, monuments and

52

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

other units).

The oldest national parks such as Yellowstone, Sequoia and Yosemite have been open to the public for longer than the NPS has been in existence, and are showing the effects of over 100 years of visitors, which are increasing by the numbers every year.

www.chscommunicator.com

ABOVE: Visitors admire Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring. the largest hot spring in the United States during June 2015.

As good as crowds are for the national parks, they are not the best for former President Theodore Roosevelt’s idea of them being open forever, “There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their

EDITORIAL majestic beauty all unmarred,” Roosof the ozone layer. Change in climate help maintain them. There was a line to evelt said. negatively affects animals. It can affect get into Zion when I was there. Maybe In addition to the record number of hibernation patterns of mammals and have limits of daily entrance…sign up 305 million visitors who brought revemigration of birds (which is even causfor entrance to the parks that are more nue into the parks in 2015, new records ing some birds are even permanently popular.” are also being set in the amount of air departing their homes because they’re Increased alternative forms of transpollution that is being released inside no longer fit for them). portation, such as bussing systems the parks from vehicles. The most obAcadia isn’t the only park that’s enbeing established in the parks and advious instance of air pollution is the couraged visitors to park their cars vertising to notify visitors is the most smog that settles 6,500 feet up in the air somewhere nearby or inside the park effective way to decrease air pollution in Sequoia National Park, located just and get shuttled around on a bus to in the parks. NPS only allowing a ceran hour and a half outside of tain number of vehicles to Fresno, California. Although enter each park per day will the majority of the polluonly help to solve the issue tion can be accredited to the “Crowds are good... it means that people are inter- because it will reduce the traffic nearby in some of the ested and they’re exploring their parks,” McCor- amount of traffic in and most polluted cities in the around the parks, therefore mick said. “They’re paying entrance fees which reducing the length of time country, it’s not to say that there is nothing that the Nathat visitors are sitting in help maintain them.” tional Parks Service can do their cars while they’re runto help. ning and spreading exhaust Starting in 2002, the Maine-based comminimize pollution. Glacier, Grand fumes into the air. pany L.L. Bean began donating what is Canyon, Yosemite and Zion are just By expanding the transportation sernow more than $3 million to Friends of some of the others. Persuading visitors vices in parks as well as creating a sysAcadia to help preserve Acadia National to take buses rather than cars solves tem to reserve visits, we can ensure Park located on the east coast of Maine another problem, which is traffic in the 100 more years of the National Parks as well as promote getting outside. The national parks. Why should we have to Service. If we minimize the amount of money has gone towards the transdrive for hours just to sit in our cars gas that we release out of our cars and portation system on the island and has even longer, and by the way, end up pol- into the air by using buses, our chilallowed people visiting the park to park luting the air for an extended period of dren and our children’s children will their cars and ride around the island on time, when there are ways around it that too be able to experience the parks the any one of a few dozen propane powhave already been established? same way that we’ve been able to, full ered buses, free of cost. When visitors Marcy McCormick, Community High of plants, wildlife and streams so clean choose to travel the park by bus rather School teacher who aspires to visthat one can drink from. When asked than by car, less vehicles are polluting it all of the national parks shared her about where she’d like to see the Nathe air, which is better for the lifespan ideas on how traffic and pollution in tional Parks Service in 100 more years, of animals and plants living in the park. the national parks can be decreased.

McCormick said, “More. I think that we Climate change can also be caused by “Crowds are good…it means that peojust need to maintain them, get more.” air pollution, where gases released into ple are interested and they’re exploring And of course, we there’s no better way the atmosphere by cars causes more their national parks,” McCormick said, to keep the National Parks Service alive of the sun’s heat to be captured inside “They’re paying entrance fees which than create more parks.

BELOW: The National Parks Service and all of its beauty. LEFT: Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park. RIGHT: Lake Josephine, Glacier National Park.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

53

196 EDITORIAL

school shootings since 2013.

BY ALEXANDRA HOBRECHT

Jan. 7, 2013. Fort Myers, FL. A 27-year-old is shot and killed at the Apostolic Revival Center Christian School.

Three days later a student injures two classmates with a firearm in Taft, CA. On Jan. 15 in Hazard, KY, a shooting takes place at Hazard Community and Technical College killing three. A 14-year-old suffers a gunshot wound to the head at a middle school in Atlanta, GA just one week following. This pattern continues through the month of January and the year; there have been 196 school shootings since 2013 in the United States.

While school shootings have taken place since the 1700s—the earliest documented case on school proper54

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

ty occurring in 1764—some argue the first mass shooting of school children happened on Jan. 17, 1989 when Patrick Edward Purdy opened fire on the playground of Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA. He fired 106 rounds, killing five children and injuring 29, before ultimately shooting himself.

While the motive of many shootings is unclear, it is believed Purdy had a specified hatred against Asians, which the majority of the school was attended by. The incident was covered nationally across the U.S. and led to President George H.W. Bush signing an executive order in 1989 to ban the importation of foreign-made semi-automatic assault rifles in an effort to limit their availabil-

www.chscommunicator.com

ity in U.S. markets (Spooner, 2016). In addition, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was signed by Bill Clinton in 1994.

The act expired ten years later when Congress did not extend it and the demand for assault weapons skyrocketed.

Granted, the AWB (officially the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, a subset of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994) had many loopholes; according to the Washington Post, experts tend to agree it was ineffective. But with the exception of Columbine in 1999, the number of people killed in mass shootings did decrease while the ban was in place. It’s just questionable whether this was a result of the AWB

EDITORIAL or an irregular decline. However, studies have shown the amount of mass shootings per year nearly doubled after it was repealed.

But how closely are gun safety laws connected to school shootings? The CDC reports homicide is the second leading cause of death among five to 18-year-olds. Shootings at K-12 schools where the age of the shooter was known reveal 56 percent were committed by minors. Seventy-nine percent of the guns used were from either the shooter’s home or that of a friend/relative. For example, when 12-year-old Jose Reyes fatally shot a teacher and wounded two other students with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic Ruger handgun in 2013, his parents confessed he had obtained the gun from an unlocked cabinet above their refrigerator. This is not an uncommon case when it comes to shootings perpetrated by minors.

We have become highly accustomed to this all-too-familiar story. Had Reyes’s parents taken stronger precautions to owning a gun, his shooting could have been prevented.

Similarly, in 2013, six-year-old Brandon Holt was fatally shot by his fouryear-old neighbor, who was able to retrieve the gun from where his parents kept it: underneath their bed, loaded and unsecured. Three years later, Holt’s parents were awarded by a judge $572,588.26— their son’s monetary worth.

Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, a nonprofit organization that advocates against gun violence, reported that 95 children under the age of 18 had accidentally shot themselves or another person in 2016

by May alone. They found 278 unintentional shootings of similar nature happened in 2015; at least 100 took place between Dec. 2012 and Dec. 2013.

That’s an average of two occurring per week. And between 2013 and 2015, an average of two school shootings took place at K-12 schools each month.

Yet shootings by minors only account for about half of school shootings. This suggests responsibility belongs to the gun safety laws in America. But again, such might not easily be the case. Katherine Newman, a sociologist who led a research team in a two-year study of school shootings, discerns that if a person is determined, they will find a way despite federal laws. It may not matter what rules are in place if a shoot-

er, often mentally ill, is set on breaking them. So even under the assumption all said laws are rightfully in place, if people disobey them, how can we prevent shootings? “...by ensuring that adults make themselves available to kids in completely confidential settings, reassuring them of their privacy when they take that risky step to come forward,” Newman wrote in Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. “In the end, though, there will be troubled boys, and some of them will become killers. To the extent that we can capture the warning signals they send out to their peers, we can do our best to stop them in their tracks, even if we do not always succeed.”

According to two Gallup polls published in 2012 and 2013, more people in the U.S. believe mass shootings result from mental illness than

easy access to guns; 80 percent of those surveyed consider mental illnesses to be involved in said incidents. (The technical definition of a mental illness is any condition that is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.) This belief has helped shape our government.

In 1968, congress passed the Gun Control Act, prohibiting the sale of firearms to anyone who had been committed to a mental hospital or “adjudicated as a mental defective” (Konnikova, 2014). Along with statewide measures, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System Improvement Act was then passed in 2008, further restricting gun access to people with mental illnesses.

Jeffrey Swanson, a medical sociologist and professor of psychiatry, analyzed the connection between mental illness and violent acts. Through research he found mental illness was only a factor in four percent of the incidents he surveyed. He found violent acts were more likely to be committed by those who were male, poor and abusing alcohol or drugs. These three factors alone could predict violent behavior with or without any knowledge of mental illness. He ultimately concluded while the connection exists, it is quite small.

In 2014, Ann Arbor Public Schools put in place the current emergency system ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate).

“They showed us videos and they were reenactments of Columbine,” said FOS teacher Liz Stern. “It was really traumatic, honestly, because I think they had actual sound recordings of what went on. But it was just, it was too real.”

District staffers trained to act if/when an intruder entered the building and how to talk about the issue with students. In addition, meetings were held to inform parents of the new procedure, which centered around the idea to eliminate the concept that students became “sitting ducks” during a dangerous situation. Previously, students and staff were to remain quiet and stay in their classrooms, hoping for the intruder to leave the building. ALICE urged them to do everything in their power to not only stop the shooter, but escape.

“We were taught to evaluate the situation and decide to either get out of the school if we could, or if we had to, we could fight back against the attacker,” CHS senior Sean Tichenor said.

Over the intercom, Dean Marci Tuzinsky spoke to classrooms during drills, telling them where the shooter was in the building. If the gunman was on the right side of Community, for example, those on the left would have an opportunity to flee the building.

“The main thing they said...that was really shocking and horrible, is that kids were in the library and there were exit doors that said ‘DO NOT EXIT OR ALARM WILL SOUND,’” Stern said. “Kids could have gone out. And they didn’t. Because they were so programmed to follow the rules.”

We might not know the motive behind every shooting, the cause or what could have been done to prevent it.

There are many cases in which all of these questions are unanswerable, rhetorical even. We can also ask ourselves how many children could still be alive today if parents locked up their guns; if we had harsher gun restrictions; and overall, when did this become an acceptable part of American culture?

“I keep my [classroom] door locked a lot more now than I used to,” Stern said. “I never used to keep my door locked. It was always open. And now I do lock my door, and close it.”

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

55

EDITORIAL

The Truth About Tyson Foods

BY TAYLOR BAUGHMAN

Tyson Foods is a major kingpin in today’s food industry, with 40 billion dollars in sales last year and over 300 facilities worldwide. When it comes to ethics and food quality however, Tyson isn’t exactly the best role model. For example, they recently recalled over 130,000 pounds of chicken tenders because consumers were reportedly finding bits of hard plastic inside them.

Most consumers don’t know that this is just one of many recalls put out by the company in recent years. In fact, Tyson foods has had a major recall every year for the past 3 years, removing a total of 300,000 pounds of chicken from US store’s for various forms of contamination.

As if that’s not enough to weaken a consumer’s trust in a company, they were also involved in a lengthy federal investigation regarding contaminated water in Sedalia, MO. In 1997 it was discovered that a Tyson Foods poultry processing plant may have been the causing the pollution, two federal search warrants were obtained and the facility underwent a thorough investigation. It was then determined that the contamination in Sedalia’s water supply was caused by untreated wastewater being dumped from the plant. After it was determined the Tyson plant was responsible for the pollution, they continued

56

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

to dump untreated water until a lawsuit began.

“Having done this work for nearly 20 years, I don’t recall any case where violations continued after the execution of two search warrants. That’s stunning.” an EPA senior trial attorney said. Tyson eventually pleaded guilty to over 20 environmental felonies, all of which were direct violations of the federal Clean Water Act. In addition to their new criminal charges, Tyson paid $7.5 million in fines and hired a consultant to perform an environmental audit.

Tyson isn’t just known for it’s poor treatment of the environment, but also it’s employees. In 2016 a handful of anonymous workers from Tyson plants stated that they were denied basic human necessities like bathroom breaks.

The workers went on to say that this happened extremely frequently and as a way to cope some began to eat and drink considerably less before shifts to prolong the need for breaks. Others even began to wear adult diapers to work, so they could urinate and defecate while working on production lines.

Companies love to show consumers how their food is good for you using labels such as “organic” or “contains no gmo’s”. These “health labels” can help boost sales. In 2007 Tyson decided they wanted to join the new health trend, by

www.chscommunicator.com

putting a “Raised without antibiotics” label on all of their packaging. Unfortunately there was a small problem... it wasn’t. An antibiotic called ionophores was still being used in the early stages of the chicken’s development, before it hatched from the egg. This went unnoticed for about a year, until the USDA became aware of the situation and prompted Tyson to change the label to “raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance on humans”. They agreed to adopt the new label, but for two of Tyson’s competitors, that just wasn’t enough. The two companies decided to join forces and take action by suing Tyson. Tyson lost the lawsuit and shortly after revealed that they had been using yet another antibiotic the entire time. The use of the antibiotic “Gentamicin” had been hidden from federal inspectors during the entire lawsuit. As a result of this new development, Tyson agreed to stop using the “raised without antibiotics” label on current and future products.

All of this is just a small portion of Tyson Food’s bad practices. There have been many more lawsuits and incidents.

Hopefully the company will clean up it’s act before it’s too late.

EDITORIAL

E

BY JOSH KRAUTH-HARDING

ight-year-old Jack Cassell replayed the video again on his computer as he stared confusedly at the screen.

“That’s not what my voice sounds like in my head,” he insisted, “this is a weird camera, it’s making my voice sound weird.”

It wasn’t. His voice was high. “My little gay voice is immortalized forever on Youtube,” Cassell recalled. Now 17, Cassell is openly gay and has been for three years.

Cassell wasn’t alone. Tim Gunn, a famous TV personality admitted that he had similar feelings. “I’m used to hearing my voice now, when I would first hear it, I quite frankly would be appalled,” Gunn said. “It’s an incredibly stunning rude awakening.”

A “gay voice” isn’t a new concept to the majority of Americans. In fact, a study done by the University of Toronto in 2002 revealed that a study group of 47 people were able to distinguish homosexual males from heterosexual males in 62 percent of the cases.

The same study suggested that this may be due to gay men subconsciously emulating the voices of females in their life, potentially at a young age.

“I know that when I was growing up I didn’t have a lot of guy friends — [mostly] because I was scared and intimidated by them — so I mostly had female friends. I [also] grew up in a house with two older sisters,” Cassell said. “I probably [spoke] how they speak.”

Cassell hit the nail right on the head.

Professor Benjamin Munson, a speech scientist at the University of Minnesota

offered a similar explanation: “Everyone of us is presented with lots and lots of models of what language should sound like. So we hear men, we hear women, we hear kids our own age, we hear adults, we hear older adults. And in all of these interactions, we have different opportunities to emulate different aspects of those people’s speech.”

Or, when gay men spend more time with more effeminate people, they reticulate those same motions.

The explanation is harmless, so why is it perceived as such an unacceptable trait by a chunk of the modern society?

According to Pew Research Center, only 55% of the nation openly supports gay marriage.

The answer is misogyny. To sound gay is to sound like a woman, and in the culture that has been built up today, hypermasculinity is the star of the show. It’s almost as if a test, that proving oneself to be ‘not-not manly’ is essential for any gay man. To be feminine is to be weaker and to be worse.

Most of the time, the concept isn’t even thought that far into. It’s just, don’t be a ‘fag’. “[I was in] eighth grade and we were all playing cards,” Cassell said. “I forget what it was, but I started laughing really hard because someone said something, and then a straight boy said ‘dude, you sound like a fag’.”

Because of this, it’s no mystery as to why gay men themselves don’t like their own ‘gay voice’ stereotype.

“I’m embarrassed to say this, but sometimes somebody will say, ‘I didn’t know you were gay.’ It’s like, why does that

make me feel good?” said David Sedaris, an American humorist frequently featured on NPR. “I hate myself for thinking that.”

Why does it make homosexuals feel better to hear this? Sedaris certainly isn’t alone, both Cassell and other secondary sources confirmed similar interactions.

One theory is provided by Dan Savage, an LGBT activist. “A lot of gay men are self-conscious about sounding gay, because we were persecuted for that when we were young. When you’re young and closeted and trying to pass, you police yourself for evidence that might betray you, and it’s how you walk and how you talk.”

For readers not familiar with some of the gay slang used, ‘closeted’ implies they’re not yet openly gay to the community, where ‘trying to pass’ signifies trying to pass as a heterosexual person.

So does a gay voice exist? Yes. Although it doesn’t mean every homosexual man’s voice under the sun will be in the treble clef, it does seem to be a frequent pattern. And not surprisingly, that’s how stereotypes happen.

But as a final take away, Cassell thinks a bigger point is in store. “I feel as though one thing we need to recognize, is there such a thing as a straight voice? Is that the default? There are definitely straight people who have higher pitched voices. That’s something we need to think about.”

This article features quotes and concepts drawn from the documentary: “Do I Sound Gay?” DOISOUNDGAY.COM

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

57

a2ptothriftshop.org

2280 S. Industrial Hwy. 734-996-9155 A non-profit resale shop with all proceeds benefitting Ann Arbor Public Schools and student enrichment.

SHOP

Mon-Fri 9-7 Sat 9-6 Sun 11-5

DONATE

Mon-Fri 10-6 Sat 10-5 Sun 12-4

Find us on Facebook

FREE

furniture pickup call 996-9155

Follow us on Twitter

Athletic Equipment Books Clothing Toys Furniture Household Goods and More 58

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

We are proud to print

The Communicator for

Ann Arbor Community High School

Full Service Book and Journal Manufacturing Since 1893

www.edwardsbrothersmalloy.com

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

59

EDITORIAL

More Than Looks: Objectification in Our Media

BY ZOE LUBETKIN

O

n Sept. 21, “Gentleman’s Quarterly” released an article combining three premier rock climbers and high fashion. This article featured three male climbers, arguably some of the best in the world, climbing in designer clothing off of the runways. Also present in the photos were a few unnamed women, mentioned only as “cute friends” in seemingly random places in the photographs with an unclear purpose.

This article was initially compelling to me because of the climbing. I am a climber and had heard of the climbers in the article, and the combination of climbing and high fashion interested me. Climbing, as a whole, is about trying things again and again until you succeed, and not being afraid to get dirty in the process. High fashion is traditionally more sleek and removed, something to be worn once and then put away in a place with easy viewing. To merge that culture with a outdoor climbing seemed fairly inaccurate. However, that juxtaposition could have been the desired effect.

At the second glance, however, the presence of the models was striking.

Why were they not climbing as well?

Climbing is not inherently exclusive to men. One the most accomplished climbers in the world, if not the most accomplished, is a 15-year-old girl.

Yet these models were placed there only to appreciate the men. This perpetuates the idea that climbing is a boy’s club.

If they were just sitting in the article looking pretty, why were they present at all? The placement of the women in the climbing article had no purpose; they were not related to the climbers or the sport of climbing. They were placed as

60

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

objects, with no relation to the article, to increase the appeal of the photograph.

This is, unfortunately, common. Too often, women are used for their looks only, for no other purpose than to add to the lure of the piece. The piece can be anything; whether it is a photo essay or an advertisement, women can be objectified in it.

When women are placed as a prop, it shows women as objects, not actual humans that are admirable on their own. This goes back to the larger scale problem of the blatant objectification of women. Women are placed there because it is convenient. Women are placed there because it is an easy and lazy way to appeal to the mass male audience. It says women are only as useful as what they can be to men.

When women are objectified it says women are not as capable. It says that they are not able to do what men do, and it is not worth it to try. In a photograph of the above mentioned article, women sat while the men climbed, pushing through difficult moves as the women looked on apathetically. The way this is set up creates a scene exclusive in nature. It is suggesting that climbing is a sport for men to enjoy and for women to watch. It suggests climbing is a sport unique to men.

This occurrence isn’t only in climbing.

When other media shows women passively, as outside participants, it creates a line between what men can do and what women can do. And that line, once drawn, is very hard to cross.

The use of women as an object, as an accessory to men, is present in our media too regularly. This trend is misogynistic, shallow, and appears to be everywhere. It creates boundaries

www.chscommunicator.com

between what women can and cannot do. It reduces them down to only their looks. It uses women for only what they can add to the media - how they can increase the appeal, - and not on their own merit.

And there is so much they could do if we were not constrained within these boundaries, if their worth was measured in more than their looks.

We need media that features women as active participants. Instead of seeing only women as an accessory to men, we would see them engaging in things previously shown to be done only by men. We already have some of this; not all media is blatantly misogynistic. Not everything objectifies women.

But it happens too much. It’s frequent enough that it’s a problem. It’s a problem that we need to solve, and we can.

We need to see women in more and varied situations across all media. Women as participants, not objects. That exposure would be crucial. It shows that we can do more than look pretty. There are current portrayals of women - passive ones, removed, only there for the men - that occur too often. What if this wasn’t the go-to, worn out woman depicted in the media? Instead of one inaccurate representation, we could have enough to represent all of them.

Imagine if the women were climbing in the article. Some of the strongest climbers I know are women. It’s not unrealistic.

We can do it. It is difficult to change something that is so ingrained in our society. It is hard to confront something we see in media consistently. But it is not impossible.

We could sit and watch the men. Or we could go out there and climb.

10 QUESTIONS

Donald Harrison

ing what I’m going to say by saying, ‘this is really funny’. Two things that I’m working on cutting back.

6. Where would you most like to live?

Right here. I’ve chosen to live exactly where I want to be. I love being in this area; I love being in Washtenaw County and this is exactly where I want to be and want to stay.

The man behind the scenes for the documentary currently in the making, “Commie High: The Film” shares stories of bowling, juggling and more.

7. What is your most treasured possession?

My go to answer would be my primary camera which is like my baby in a way. It’s the lens through which I capture and do what I do, but I don’t know that it’s got sentimental value.

It probably would have something to do with one of my bowling moments.

I was raised to be a professional bowler in the Detroit area and so for me, there’s a lot of nostalgia with my relationship with my dad and having this destiny I did not pursue. I didn’t become a professional bowler I became a filmmaker instead! I now run a bowling league and have a fond relationship with bowling.

BY ALEX HUGHES

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Being fully comfortable with yourself.

2. What is your greatest fear?

I feel like I’m not going to get it all done. I want to do so much; I want to see so many things and create so many films and projects. I have so many interests that I think my greatest fear is that I’m just going to run out of time to get it all done. That’s a very motivating piece for me.

8. Which living person do you most despise?

I guess I don’t like to define who I despise. I’ll leave it at that.

9. What is your favorite occupation?

My favorite occupation is juggler. I love to juggle and literally I love to juggle and metaphorically I love to juggle. In the profession I’ve chosen I have anywhere from seven to 12 active video projects, films that I’m working on at all times. It keeps me engaged in the world and different relationships, different systems in a way that really works for me.

3. What is your current state of mind?

I’m at a good place in juggling a lot.

I’m feeling really good about the tension between taking on too much and not doing enough. It’s a good time.

4. On what occasion do you lie?

One is, and I do less of this now but my sense of humor sometimes is to see what ridiculous thing I can convince someone of. So the fact that I had an internship at NASA and I was actually doing some flight simulation in space shuttles, that was a very formative experience for me back in college and that’s completely untrue, but I love convincing somebody that it is!

But also with some elderly relatives like my mom right now it’s really in the best interest of everyone to agree with something that might not be true.

5. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

I’ve been told amazing is a word that I’ve overused so I’ve tried to cut back on that one. I think another phrase that I’ve been told I overuse is prefac-

PHOTO: ALEC REDDING

10. What do you value most in a friend?

I most value my friends where we are very honest with each other, very direct with each other and even challenge each other but in a way that is supportive. As I look at my friendships that have staying power, it’s my friends where we tell each other things we might not want to say to people, and that it’s a level of trust you get to and if you don’t have friends who tell you the things you don’t want to hear I think you’re missing out.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

61

PICTURE THIS

FISCHER MEONO

KT Meono recalls memories with her older brother.

BY MARY DEBONA

Before KT Meono was a year old, she already loved her brother, who she calls her role model today. Meono’s brother is five years older than her and she credits their closeness to their age difference as well as there not being a lot of other kids growing up in their neighborhood.

“Lots of my friends tell me that they think that their siblings are annoying and they’re only a year apart,” Meono said. “But since my brother’s so much older than me, he was just kind of always nice to me, like he wouldn’t pick on me and I wouldn’t pick on him. We would just kind of get along. I don’t have a lot of kids in my neighborhood, we were the only kids, so it was pretty much that he and I would hang out together all the time. So I just always looked up to him because I spent so much time with him.”

She doesn’t remember, but her parents have told her about how she would sneak up on her brother while he would be watching TV. “He would always lay on the ground on his elbows watching TV,” Meono said. “And I couldn’t walk... I would always crawl over to him and jump on his back and just sit there... I just liked to sneak up on him and surprise him.”

The only reason that Meono is able to recall the moment so well is because of the photo that her parents took of her one of the times that she snuck up on her brother. “I think [it] is my favorite and I am just pouncing on top of him and I know that’s weird,” Meono said. “But it’s just one of my favorites.” Even though she was unable to find the picture, she knows what it looks like by heart. Pictured left is another photo that she recalled captured her love for her brother at a young age.

62

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

TEACHER RECIPES

Janelle’s Homemade Mac n’ Cheese

Beloved forum leader, Pioneer graduate and BSU advisor, shares one of her creamiest and most scrumptious macaroni and cheese dishes.

INGREDIENTS INSTRUCTIONS 1 box of elbow macaroni 1 1/2 cups of shredded mild cheddar cheese 1 1/2 cups of shredded sharp cheddar cheese 1 1/2 cups of choice shredded white cheese 1/2 cups of shredded colby jack cheese 1/2 cup of milk 1/2 stick of butter salt, pepper and seasoning

Preheat your oven to 350-370 degrees Farenheit depending on your oven. Boil the elbow macaroni in water with salt. Once boiled drain in colander. Season your noodles with pepper and salt. Next, layer your macaroni with all four cheeses, and drizzle butter and milk into a glass pan with the noodles and the cheese. Stick the dish into the oven for 45 minutes. Halfway through, turn the dish, and put it back in the oven for the rest of the time. After 45 minutes is up, take it out of the oven and cool for 10 minutes before eating.

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

63

SONG OF THE DAY

“WHY III LOVE THE MOON” PHONY PPL Listening to a song like “Why iii Love The Moon” is like dancing to a fast-paced EDM version of an Adele song. You can easily jam out to it with pals and not digest the lyrics, but once you’re alone on the bus or in your room, it takes time to really learn what the lyrics mean.

“Why iii Love The Moon” is off Phony Ppl’s 3rd album “Yesterday’s Tomorrow.” Made up of vocalist Elbee Thrie, rapper Sheriff Pj, guitarists Elijah Rawk and Bari Bass, percussionist Matt ‘MaffYuu’ Byas and Aja Grant on the keyboard, their origins are from Brooklyn, New York, but currently they are located in the California area.

What makes Phony Ppl interesting is that they are in their own unique genre: ‘ThisNewGenre.’ ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrow’, an album two years in the making, gained recognition through praise from the L.A. Times and artists like Chance the Rapper, reaching #6 on the iTunes R&B chart.

Sheriff Pj does a great job of describing beauty and pain with interjections like ‘yo’ to give what I think is a overlaying sense of masculinity on top of all these deep metaphors. “Love is blind to the flame, that’s why I never look up never hide behind the skies when it rain.” However, these lyrics can be interpreted differently among everybody. For example, skies can also be sky’s, referring to a sky’s flame.

Besides the fact that the theme can be vague and unclear, the message is coherent to me. Love is hard to find, and outer space is a beautiful constant you can always seek when you’re lonely.

- Gina Liu

64

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

www.chscommunicator.com

COVER ART ANDERSON PAAK

“AGNES” GLASS ANIMALS

Brandon Paak Anderson might simply be the coolest human alive.

Everything about him oozes cool. He’s got cool hats, a cool nose piercing and most importantly, cool music. And though the artist previously known as Breezy Lovejoy has a bevy of songs that are cool simply due to their audible aspects (check out “Might Be,” “Drugs” and “Paint” off of “Venice”, “Heart Don’t Stand a Chance,” “Put me Through” and “Come down” off of “Malibu” and “Suede” off of “Link Up and Suede”), his most meaningful work may be his 2013 mixtape “Cover Art.” But to understand why the tape is so important, we must take a quick trip down “Privilege-and-power-allow-white-artists-to-take-advantage-of-black-ones Boulevard.”

From the 1920’s through the late 1940’s, black artists recording traditional African-American music such as Jazz, Blues and Gospel marketed their music to white audiences under the umbrella of “Race Records.” And while this term might seem derogatory today, it was actually pushed forward by black managers, record labels and publications due to how well the records sold, and subsequently supported black artists and black music. But within the decade, white artists caught on. They recreated and repackaged the race record--Rock and Roll was born.

In an effort to reverse this oppressive cycle that has plagued the music industry since it’s American inception, Paak released “Cover Art”. He took classic rock songs by white artists, ranging from Toto to the Beatles, and reclaimed them as black music. For Paak, this means mixing shades of Hip-Hop, R&B and Jazz to recreate these classic jams.

On The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” he replaces the iconic bassline (you know, the one you sing at sporting events to get riled up) with a laid back and smooth guitar. The entire song is slowed down, And while paak sings the vocals, he also plays a locked in drum beat, which really brings the song together. If you like your music served with a steaming side of social awareness, this is the song for you.

It is hard to pick just one song to talk about from the up and coming UK band, Glass Animals sophomore album, How to be a Human Being. This album expands on the funk, psychedelic and pop sound that was laid down in their full length debut, Zaba released in 2014, and executes this with much more confidence. Every song on the album holds its own and has great replay value. The album as a whole has a colorful and fresh sound. That being said, my pick of the album is the closer, “Agnes”.

The song starts out with some witty beats that introduce you to a catchy pre-chorus. The percussion escalates and drops you into a complex, busy and yet relaxing, climax of the song. It is very layered and it is hard to focus on just one instrument or voice without noticing another one you didn’t hear previously. This is what I find appealing and gives Glass Animals great replay value, each thing individually is hard to focus on, but all together it creates a great and surreal soundscape. This song is a perfect example of that, it fully immerses you into a new world of music.

- Caitlyn Mahoney

-Joel Appel-Kraut

october

|

THE COMMUNICATOR

|

65

1

4

7

In My Room

3

Ella Edelstein Photographs by Aliama Schaumann 2 1. “I’ve been drawing and painting since I can remember! My sister was so skilled and I wanted to be that and I’m still trying.”

2. “I may not be the best at painting or drawing, but I can cut my crease like a piece of cake.”

3. “Being in love with reading was abandoned when it became required. All my books are probably almost as old as me.”

4. “I take care of plants because I can’t take care of myself.”

5. “I’m attracted to holographic things.”

6. “Plants are a way fo me to feel or prove responsibility.”

7. “I love colorrful things and black. Skirts are my favoite thing to wear.”

5 66 66

||

THE THE COMMUNICATOR COMMUNICATOR

||

www.chscommunicator.com www.chscommunicator.com

6

with ALIAMA SCHAUMANN

WHERE WAS THE LAST PLACE YOU MADE A BIG PURCHASE?

WHERE WAS THE LAST PLACE YOU MADE A SNOW ANGEL?

At Footprints downtown I bought Dr. Martens and they were like $100. I got my mom to buy them [for me]. I felt so happy because I’d been waiting so long for them and I did so much work for them.

And [I asked] what’re the best shoes, and will these be good for winter? I’m still so happy about them.

It was nice because they would’ve been like $120 but they gave me a discount because they were three months late.

Umm… never? Maybe 3rd grade.

Dicken Elementary School.

WHAT WAS THE LAST ALBUM YOU BOUGHT? I buy records. I think the last one I bought was probably the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. I got it at Antelope Antiques and Coins and it was on sale for $10 and it had a picture book in it. It’s such a great record. I have a record player in my room that I got on Amazon.

one

WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU BUMPED INTO? Sophie Swan, I like physically ran into her. We stopped running, and I wanted to catch up to my friends, but I tried to move past her but then I hit her. Accidentally. With my arm. And that’s how I bumped into Sophie Swan!

WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU COOKED FOR? I made mac and cheese for my sister. She’s young so she can’t do anything, and I come home really lazy and tired and she just makes me do things. When I gave it to her she goes “Thank god, finally!”

last thing yasmeen

shakour WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU GOT MAD ABOUT?

WHERE WAS THE LAST PLACE YOU SWAM? Lake Michigan, Labor Day weekend.

I was with my family, my dad, my sister and brother. We swam and then we went to my uncle’s house which is like huge and it was empty because he was out of town, and we spent the whole day exploring. We found a lot of old pictures and old books.

I got to meet one of my idols, and I was there with my friends and when we got to take a picture my friend and my friend ended up touching him, not me. Y’know how you go up to the person and put your hand around them? She did that, not me.

WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TOOK A WALK WITH? I took a long stroll with a [few of] my friends, and it was after we met our idol, and we were just walking around the block wasting time and talking about how awesome it was that we met this awesome person!

october october

| |

THE COMMUNICATOR THE COMMUNICATOR

| |

67 67

ART THROB: ALEC REDDING, JUNIOR “I was staying in Japan at my grandma’s house which is in Gifu, Japan, and it was just a random day. I went out on my bike, there was lightning, it was thundering outside, so I just decided to go and see if I could take a cool picture of the thunder. So I just—I didn’t actually know where I was gonna go­—but I traveled along the river and found a really cool spot where there were a lot of Cormorant fisherman.”

68 | THE COMMUNICATOR | www.chscommunicator.com