Communicator: Volume 34, Edition 3

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Contents 34

37 08

12 NEWS

FEATURES

08 All That Jazz

24 Smart Start

Community High’s Jazz program continues to flourish under Jack Wagner’s lead.

Ann Arbor Public Schools propose later start time for all high schools in the district

16 Thinking Inside the Box Keeping transplant hearts in a warm, beating state preserves them.

26 When There Are No Answers One parent’s story of living and coping with a drug-addicted son.

30 Beneath our Feet Get updates instantly at CHSCOMMUNICATOR.COM

& DOWNLOAD THE APP! The Communicator @communicatorchs @chscommunicator 2

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How will Ann Arbor recover from decades of groundwater contamination?

37 64 EDITORIALS 46 The World Inside Our Phones Modern society and smartphones have become intertwined—and maybe for the worse.

50 Why Concussions Cannot Be Ignored After getting a concussion, athletes should not rush to play.

54 Undoing Evolution Studies show that sitting for extended hours everyday is an unhealthy habit, but alternative efforts can be made to minimize its resulting health problems.

Letter from the Editors Dear Readers, In the end, we’re just tired. We’re tired of reading the news and listening to horrible things occurring in America and around the world. We’re tired of reading over and over again how fast the Earth is warming and how nothing is being done. We’re tired of our president serving as a constant reminder of the ugliest parts of our country. The United States had a 57 percent voter turnout, the lowest for a presidential election year since 1996. Yet even with dismal turnout and millions of Americans prevented from voting due to mass incarceration, Hillary Clinton got about three million more votes than Donald Trump. But she is not our president.

We’re tired because we see so much bad in the world, so much injustice in the world, and being just one high school publication (one handful of students), we have to ask ourselves: Do we even matter? Do our opinions matter? Do our voices matter?

It seems like a lot of our voices don’t, especially with an Education Secretary who wasn’t familiar with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a federal civil rights law that requires schools to provide free and appropriate education to students with disabilities. Secretary Betsy DeVos has no personal experience with financial aid; she says guns should be kept in schools for grizzly bear protection (in 2015, there were 64 school shootings and zero school bear attacks); she believes that public education is a “dead end” despite the fact that slightly over 90 percent of American student in K-12 schools attend public schools. Secretary DeVos was nominated and appointed even though the people most affected by her appointment—teachers and students—have been subject to either systematic villainization for years or did not get to vote.

So what can we do about it now? How can affordable college be an option if the person in charge of education in this country has no experience with financial aid? How can children be safe in schools when “[it] is best left to locales and states to decide” if guns should be allowed in their classrooms? How can we take any steps in the right direction with Donald Trump as president?

The answer is simple in theory: we take steps forward because we know that we can. All of us at Community are currently attending a public school, and much of our student body has attended public schools for years before this. We know that this public school we attend is not a dead end, and so we can say with objective certainty that she is wrong. Yes, it is ironic that knowledge shall be our defense against an ignorant Education Secretary, but knowledge is the power we have.

And yes, it is simple in theory. In practice, however, we can be sure that it will not be so easy. Knowing you are right does not change who is in power. That is why we challenge ourselves and every student at Community High School, everybody reading this letter, to put down the magazine and contact the ACLU, or the Obama Foundation, or Planned Parenthood, or your state or local representatives to ask about volunteer opportunities. We challenge you to fact check the articles you share on social media before you click the retweet button. We challenge ourselves and you all to not just talk about what you know to be true, not to just talk about taking action, but to actually DO IT. And once you’ve done that, we’d like you to pick up the Communicator again and finish reading it, because we’re very proud of our third edition.

Your editors, ALEXANDRA HOBRECHT, JOSH KRAUTH-HARDING, ISABEL RATNER, HANNAH RUBENSTEIN, MEGAN SYER

Print Editors-In-Chief

Adviser

Alexandra Hobrecht Josh Krauth-Harding 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 Ella Edelstein Brennan Eicher Ally Einhaus Isabel Espinosa Kyndall Flowers Oliver Fuchs Abbie Gaies Allison Garcia-Hernandez Madie Gracey Madeline Jelic Ethan Kahana Jennifer Krzeczkowski Zoe Lubetkin Kailyn McGuire Ava Millman Sam Millman Jacqueline Mortell Kasey Neff Omolara Osofisan Alec Redding Henry Schirmer Jacob Sorscher Andie Tappenden Camryn Tirico Nicole Tooley Eleni Tsadis Sacha Verlon Ethan Ziolek

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

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 Hoffmann

Web Content and Business Editor

Mira Simonton-Chao

About the Cover (Designed by Josh Krauth-Harding)

As Donald Trump’s presidency started off with a bit of a bang, there were plenty of issues we considered for our cover design. In the end, we decided to tie it into the subject of our staff editorial: President Trump’s opinion on climate change and what it will mean for our country’s future. His first acts concerning the environment were to limit the rights of the EPA and appoint a director who does not believe in climate change. Therefore, we decided to name the editorial Trump v. Earth in the style of a court case. The name is faded into the smog of a factory to show how his destructive actions are being covered up by limiting what the EPA is able to share with the public.

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A TIME FOR ACTION

Linden Kronberg is a junior at Community who has been volunteering for much of his life. He is a member of the YAC, a council that helps organize volunteer opportunities. Linden values the new perspectives he’s gained through volunteering and the ability to help people.

BY MAGGIE MIHAYLOVA

How long have you been volunteering? I’ve been volunteering since I was 10 years old. My mom saw volunteering as a great way to get involved, so she signed me up for my first session, and after that I insisted on continuing. I’ve been on the Youth Advisory Council for one year. The YAC is the steering committee for the entire youth volunteer program at the YMCA—we are run through the Y but are not directly part of it. We run summer programs for kids, even school workshops, and pretty much everything. Whenever there’s a break you can count on a YVC (Youth Voice Council) project.

What is your position on the council? I do both volunteering and planning. I really enjoy volunteering, but there is also the whole logistics aspect too. Everyone on the council is required to do a mandatory minimum of hours, but we often go far above and beyond because we love what we do.

What is the most rewarding part of the job? You’re helping people, and that really feels good. I remember one time we went to a community center in Detroit on Cass Avenue, Cass Avenue Social Services. We were handing out lunches for the homeless people, and this woman looked up with a really, really heartfelt thank you—I got three hugs that day. It felt really good. It just feels great.

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What is one of your favorite memories in all your years of volunteering? We work somewhat closely with the Groundcover Newspaper. And one of the chief vendors, Joe, works on the corner of Main and Liberty. So I was walking home, I ran into him, struck up a conversation, and this led to a partnership between YVC and Groundcover. And he also told the entire YVC program the story of his life. This really makes you realize that many of the people that are often seen as people who have made these terrible decisions that led to their position in life but they’re not. You can’t control what happens a lot of the time; life can be terrible. It can do great things for bad people and bad things for the good.

So it kind of gives you this sense of perspective. This other time we were working with low-income students in Detroit, and this kid came up to me, and he had made me a book. It was literally three sheets of paper stapled together, but it was detailing the entire hour we were there. So that felt good. Volunteering has definitely steered me on the path that I want to take with my life.

To get involved, visit https://www.annarborymca.org/portfolio/ youth-advisory-council/ or speak to Linden.

Q&A

Voices Changing the World

BY KYNDALL FLOWERS

Y

oung Jeezy’s “My president is Black, my Lambo is blue,” has been quoted as a victorious response to our grandparents’ unwavering assurance of “We Shall Overcome” since Obama’s first Presidential win. The music video features toddlers to the elderly rejoicing in the taste of “someday,” a glimpse of the metaphysical Promised Land and the prophesized change we too often forget can come.

This free-ish “at last” mindset electrified the country the day we could call a

Black man the President of the United States Of America. While Obama’s victory didn’t usher in an era of post-racialism, and he was by no means a perfect president, having a Black first family was a powerfully luminescent beacon of hope after a tumultuous Bush presidency.

On Nov. 7, President Obama came to Ann Arbor to rally support for Hillary Clinton. As The Communicator spoke with people waiting in line to witness one of Obama’s last speeches as their President, optimism buzzed through the

air. Citizens of all ages and backgrounds gathered to recieve the hope they so desperately needed as voting day neared and the underlying bigotry America had managed to hide reared its head in a way our century hadn’t seen in decades.

Trump’s presidency has already tested the American promise to stand up for our Constitution, and for each other. As we navigate the next for years as both allies and the oppressed it’s important to remember Obama’s words—“Your voice can change the world.”

HARSHA AND FATIMAH

Where were you when Obama was first elected?

Harsha: In my house. I’m not from America; I’m from St. Martin and I was home with my parents and we were watching it. My family is half Black and half Indian, and I know that my mom thought it was really awesome that for the first time, a Black president was elected. I remember seeing all the people that were crying on the TV when he got elected. It was really just awesome.

Fatima: I’m half Pakistani, so it was nice to have someone who sympathizes with communities of color and is also not very xenophobic. However, I grew up in a more conservative area so people in my hometown are not fond of Obama at all. Everything he does, they find a way to criticize it, but overall I think he did a lot for this country and really stood up for minorities.

SHANNON, CATHERINE, BRANDON AND MILAGROS

Where were you when Obama was first elected?

Brandon: Back home, in Chicago. It was crazy.

Shannon: It was our first Black president and we were all like “Yea! We got Obama!” and not- I forgot who he was running against.

Who were you all with?

Milagros: I was with my parents. We were in our living room watching it and I remember seeing all of these primarily African American celebrities crying and so happy. It was just awesome.

What’d you learn from Obama’s presidency?

Shannon: That America is progressing, kind of. Even though now it feels like it’s going downhill, before it was kind of showing that America was progressing and actually caring about the future rather than living in the past.

Catherine: It also brought a lot of hope. I remember when he first got elected, everybody was talking about hope. I remember the posters. The red and blue and there was “hope” everywhere.

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Q&A

MARYAM AND JINA

Do you remember where you were when Obama was first elected?

Maryam: We were in Somalia. I was only eight years old at the time but it was really nice to see, an African American in office.

Even being that young, I still knew that it was a big change.

Jina: It was shocking. Very exciting. It was like history, you know?

Are you content with the state of the country right now?

Maryam: No, I’m not.

Jina: I feel like we’re going backwards, instead of improving.

NICOLLE BROWN

How did you feel when Obama was first elected?

It was emotional for me. It was emotional because when I first saw him come on the scene, there was just something about him and his energy and I just felt like it was genuine. It inspired me, that we could actually make change.

Did you travel to see him today?

I’m from Detroit. I grew up in Detroit. I drove about 40 minutes to come to this.

MARISA AIKINS, UREI KANAKARAJ AND LIZZIE EDGER

Where were you guys when Obama was first elected?

Marisa: I was a sophomore in high school, and I was sitting at home watching the election, probably screaming really loud that he won.

Lizzie: I was also a sophomore in high school, probably doing homework while watching the election results.

Marisa: I’m pretty sure I’d forgo homework to watch the results.

Urei: I was in Dubai, all the way back home. We were all watching the news.

What was that day like?

Marisa: Most of my family was texting me. They were all really excited. It was hard to go to sleep.

Lizzie: I remember being really hopeful that we were finally going to see some kind of change and [I had] an understanding of how monumental that result was.

What has this election taught you?

Lizzie: That our country is a lot more divided than I think any of us were even aware of, and that there’s a lot more work that needs to be done. Not just by our government, but by everyone to try and fix some of these gaping chasms that are dividing people who,a year ago at this time, weren’t divided.

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Q&A

EMELIE KOUATCHOU, GRIFFIN BINNICKER, CYDNEY CLARK, LEANNE ANTONIO, JUSTIN SHOWELL, ALLIE RE, CHRIS WASHSINGTON AND CHARLIE PATTERSON

Where were you when Obama was first elected?

Justin: I was in my apartment with my mom. I was in bed and it was sort of late at night but my mom woke me up and we just sort of celebrated. And I remember they were singing some old Motown hit that my mom and I both knew and we were so excited because it was the first Black president. It was really cool.

What was your favorite part of Obama’s presidency?

Griffin: For me it was when gay marriage passed, for sure. I thought that was a huge social movement. I actually felt like a part of a bigger movement that I had worked for and it felt like progress was actually being made.

Emelie: More recently, his effort to become more relatable. I mean, he always was but now I think of him as a dad. He’s become much more relatable to the American people and as a Black woman that means so much. He’s representing us in such a positive light. I think that’s awesome.

What change did you see within the Black community with Obama as president?

Emelie: I think the Black community has always been very adamant about sticking up for themselves, but I think we have become more vocal and more present with the Black Lives Matter movement, with rallies and stuff like that. I think we’ve just become more confident with ourselves and been able to outwardly reject the oppression that has been put on us for years, in a more vocal way.

Justin: It shaped the mentality of some of my peers to now have a mindset of “This is normal, this is something that is achievable.”

One of my friends just said that it was very odd that some people, like babies [and kids] that are eight years old have only experienced an African American president.

DARIN STEWART

What year were you in the Navy?

86-90. I was a boiler technition on the USS Dahlgren.

Where were you when Obama was first elected?

Here in Michigan. Nothing special, it was the best thing that happend though, I think.

How did it make you feel?

It felt fantastic. I was excited and he still has a way of exciting me.

He’s been a great president.

Why did he have that effect on you?

I really believed what in what he said. Hope, change, that things would be different. I do believe they are.

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NEWS

The Dead’s Greatest Year

ABOVE: CHS junior, and member of the Noodlers and Co. combo, Ethan Sayer, adds a fifth concert to his belt, after partaking in the jazz program since his freshman year.

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NEWS

All that

JAZZ Community High’s Jazz Program continues to flourish under Jack Wagner’s lead.

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BY SHANE HOFFMANN AND ALEC REDDING

n Dec. 20, Community High students, families and teachers filed into the Neutral Zone from the blustering December winds. Nearly one hundred people came and went throughout the night as various bands performed, ranging in skill level and age. The event started with a short performance by Jazz II students, before shifting to the more advanced groups, highlighted by combos such as Cold Tone Dreamery, Noise R Us and Arborland during the second half of the show. A biannual event, this concert gives jazz students the opportunity to showcase the skills they’ve learned throughout the semester from Community High jazz teacher Jack Wagner.

For Wagner, jazz became a passion during his childhood. During his time at an elementary school in Connecticut, he partook in what was, at the time, a rare jazz band. A group of students from around the district, led by director Sam Macaluso, met Thursday nights to rehearse. Macaluso was just one of several influential teachers throughout Wagner’s public school years that made jazz an enjoyable hobby. Although Wagner showed a steady interest in jazz, his college major was physics. However, in his time at Boston College his passion for jazz was rekindled, as he began taking lessons from well recognized tenor player and musical thinker Jerry Bergonzi.

Bergonzi’s teachings turned Wagner

on to bebop and hard bop jazz, as well as pursuing a jazz major. Boston College at the time, however, did not boast the strongest music programs, so Wagner took advice from Bergonzi and ultimately transferred to William Patterson in New Jersey. Over the next four years, Wagner spent time studying jazz and improvisation in both big bands and smaller combos and discovered his love for teaching.

What began with teaching private lessons and summer camps quickly turned to more in-depth teaching after Wagner acquired a teaching certificate and master’s degree. He set about teaching large groups of middle schoolers in Dryden, New York, where he began to implement his own teaching style and techniques. He taught his students scales, arpeggios, drum beats and improvisation, as well as classic jazz tunes. However, Wagner soon realized he wanted to go deeper with his interest in teaching.

“It struck me as kind of funny that the music that’s the most American, one of the arts that we call the true American art form is jazz and yet we only kind of teach it as an ancillary thing in high schools,” Wagner said. “I always just thought it’d be great to try to change that in any way I could. I got really into wanting to build a jazz pedagogy for kids.”

Wagner’s vision came to fruition when he arrived at Community High in 2008.

For Wagner, it was a perfect opportunity.

“Teaching improvisation in combos

is even more rare than jazz [band] in schools,” Wagner said. “If you have a big band in high school you’re lucky. You’re really fortunate if you have a combo in school. It was a dream job to be able to do that in a place like this. So forwardthinking, it has such a presence in the community. It’s a place where we could really get kids to learn how to be independent. To learn theory, to learn how to navigate a jazz band without a director to learn standards, to learn how to improvise and be in charge of their own sound, to have their own unique sound as a band not have it so prescribed by a composer is just a dream for me.”

Nearly 10 years into his Community High career, Wagner is still fine-tuning his program. One aspect of the program which he emphasizes and is never done tweaking is class size. Having dealt with varying band sizes throughout his teaching career, he is well-versed and knows what he is looking for.

“If [the band size is] too tiny then you’re kind of at the mercy of a few personalities that can really throw it off track, but what I like about [Community] is that we can have classes that are between twelve kids per class up to twenty and then split that into two bands like we typically do. That’s pretty perfect because you can kind of capitalize on the dynamics of the different personalities and strengths within that group, but yet it’s still small enough you can get into a lot of specifics that are really needed for february

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NEWS this music.” several ways.

With the program being such a big After working with remarkable teach“Jack is very intense, especially in Jazz time commitment between classes, pracers such as Sam Macaluso and Jerry Ber- II because Jazz II is where you’re real- tice and gigs, some students struggle gonzi, Wagner’s teaching style was heav- ly starting to learn what jazz is actually to fit everything into their schedules. ily influenced. Wagner has very high about,” Sam Uribe, a junior and jazz stu- Collins is one of these students. While expectations of his students and pushes dent at Community High, said. “So for he spends over an hour on homework them to reach their potential. me, it was very eye opening and I had nightly, he spends nearly double that “Kids often say it’s one of their hardest never worked that hard in anything so on jazz and it shows in his progression classes they have and I get secret satis- it was really something that pushed me through the jazz levels. After playing in faction out of that,” Wagner said. “I like and it showed me that I have a good Jazz II during his freshman year, he has knowing that I’m pushing them. I want work ethic.” played in Jazz IV the past two years and to get as much out of them as I can and I One key element of the CHS Jazz Pro- has risen through the ranks of the most think nothing disappoints me more then gram is the guest artist series. During talented student musicians at Communiwhen I see kids that have really high po- Wagner’s first year at Community, fellow ty High. For Collins, it’s music school or tentials in them but they’re not maximiz- teacher Dianne Dudley mentioned to bust, and Berkeley School of Music is at ing it. I’m not asking them to go home him that her sister was close friends with the top of his list. As a freshman, Collins and practice 10 hours a day, but if they well known bass player, Victor Wooten. was inspired by upperclassmen. Now he have a way in their has switched posilife to carve out tions, teaching and some time to really influencing lower give it a good go evclassmen as he preeryday, I know we’re pares for the home going to get some stretch of high “We’re all struggling in this modern era to make great results and we school and presense of everything that’s going on in this world and have. So that’s what pares for college.

I want.”

His journey through it’s healthy just to pick up your horn and play.”

While not all stuthe Community dents respond well High Jazz Program to Wagner’s intense perfectly illustrates teaching style, many the cycle of success are able to find an Wagner has creatappreciation for it, ed over the past dewhether it’s from the get-go or a year or Wagner was very familiar with Wooten, cade. two down the line. a five-time Grammy winner and one of Collins is not alone in his pursuit of “I think the jazz program here has his personal favorite musicians. He and music school as fellow juniors; Mei definitely honed in on my craft,” said Dudley pursued the idea of Wooten vis- Semones, Rishi Nemorin, Sam Uribe Clarence Collins III, a Community High iting the school until it became a reality. and Danny Frieband all hope to continjunior who has participated in the pro- Wooten became the first of many guest ue with their love of music at the next gram since freshman year. “It has shown musicians to visit over the next decade level, either studying music directly or me what it means to be a musician and as Wagner realized the program could participating in the study of audio enwhat it means to have a specific goal.” compensate for the talented guest mu- gineering. These students will follow in Collins appreciates the focus on fun- sicians with the money being brought in the footsteps of many who came bedamentals and technique in addition to through gigs and other fundraisers. fore them, such as recent Communimore advanced concepts. Wagner puts Over the next years, he reached out to ty High graduates Erez Dessel, Aidan huge emphasis on all parts of jazz and many musicians, local and international Wada-Dawson, Adam Kahana, Seamus making every student a well-rounded alike. After some time, word spread of Lynch and Aidan Cotner. musician. the hip, small school jazz program in For Wagner, seeing his students find “I always say it’s like building a car. Ann Arbor and agents as well as the mu- success at the next level, whether it is We’ve got to spend time on the axles, sicians themselves began to reach out. in the study of music or not, is very rewe’ve got to spend time on the engine Not only did Wagner bring in solo mu- warding and keeps him inspired to teach. block, we’ve got to spend time on the sicians and musical thinkers, but small “We’re all struggling in this modern era transmission, we’ve got to spend time on bands as well. to make sense of everything that’s going the frame,” Wagner said. “You’ve got to “I mean, these are people I would’ve on in this world and it’s healthy just to do all of it if you want to have a well- died 10 years ago to have,” Wagner said. pick up your horn and play,” Jack Wagrun machine. This music is really pred- “Now they’re calling me. These folks ner said. It’s wonderful and it’s so exciticated on the fact that everyone knows that are living as performers are so real- ing and thrilling to hear when they come how to be their individual parts of that ly rare, I mean there’s a lot of perform- back from going to college and how car. They have to know how to do it. ers in the world but, percentage wise, much they love it, how challenged they You’re just making them broader, deeper they’re just unusual people and I mean are by the situation, but how they feel artists by exposing them to all the beauti- that in the best respect. They’re incredi- thankful they had the opportunities they ful depths of this music and you’re mak- ble. They’re putting so much on the line had in high school to prepare for those ing them more critical listeners, I think. to live their art and so they have this per- things. It’s very satisfying to be a part You’re making them fans and we’re help- spective that is really deep and really in- of that and then the ones that are going them preserve this important, amaz- tense. For the kids to see them do that, ing past college and doing well it’s very ing music that’s sophisticated and can be to see them perform and do that in front exciting to see… as I’m getting into latchallenging but also so rewarding.” of them and then to be able to ask them er years, I’m starting to see that happen Some students who were apprehensive questions about that very life that they’re more often.” about Wagner’s style at first, but have living or about the music that they’re stuck with it, often find it rewarding in working on, is so powerful.”

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NEWS

ABOVE: Established member of the Community High Jazz Program, Clarence Collins III, performs with the program’s top combo, Cold Tone Dreamery and sparks the Neutral Zone with his powerful trumpet solo.

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NEWS

PHOTO COURTESY: DONALD HARRISON

Community High’s Place in Public Education Reform A look into Community High’s 40 years of history and what it means for public education.

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BY NICOLE TOOLEY

n April 13, 2016 a campaign that spanned 30 days ended with 452 backers and $53,694 to support a film featuring the alternative school that started in 1972: Community High School.

Six months later, the whole crew is hard at work on what will be an approximately two-year project showcasing the school’s history and what it means for public education reform.

HOW IT STARTED

Donald Harrison, the producer of “Commie High: The Film” and founder of 7 Cylinder Studios, served as the executive director of the Ann Arbor Film Festival from 2008-2012.

“When I ran the Ann Arbor Film Festival, it always struck me how the mural by the basketball courts has a whole picture 12

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of the city and there in big letters says, ‘Ann Arbor Film Festival,’” Harrison said. “And I always thought, ‘this school is really cool.’”

However, it wasn’t until two summers ago when Harrison was out with Ingrid Racine and Maisie Wilhelm, both Community High alumni, when he realized his interest in making a film about the school.

Reminiscing their high school years, Wilhelm mentioned camping out for two weeks just to get in to Community.

“I had trouble understanding why you would camp out for two weeks to get into a high school when, from what I understand, the other high schools here are pretty good,” Harrison said.

After talking with Wilhelm, Racine, other alumni and teachers about Community High, he began to realize that the

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40 year history of the school was quite fascinating.

“The further that I get into it, the more enthusiastic I get about telling the story because I think it’s a really unique place.

I think it’s a complex subject,” Harrison said.

BACKGROUNDS

Harrison did not start off as a filmmaker. He was interested in social phenomenon and understanding the world, and decided to study social psychology in college. After he moved out to California for a few years, Harrison realized that documentary films were going after the same things he believed in, but in a much more creative way.

“In hindsight, I realized I’m studying and interested in much of the same things but not as much from the aca-

NEWS demic research approach, but more from the creative, entertainments and educational approach,” Harrison said.

Unlike Harrison, Racine (the music director for the film) had known she wanted to go into the music industry in high school after her experience with the Community High Jazz Band.

“I played in a punk band when I was a freshman and sophomore,” Racine said. “Then, junior and senior year, I got more into the jazz program and doing that super jazz thing.”

munity is a public school it still has to comply with state and city education regulations.

“Things that are mandated from up above sort of changed the way things go in the school,” Racine said. “Things had to become a little constrictive.” Racine explained that when she went to high school, they were allowed to take as many classes as they wanted to. If they had time to take ten classes, then they were encouraged to. Now, students at Community may only take six classes unless they meet the special requirements

people that went to the school and experienced it for themselves first hand, but also for people who may just be curious about Community High. They want to try to answer a wide range of questions: Why is it different than other public schools? Why is it working? How did it come to be? What is their philosophy based on? “It really comes out of this whole other movement and we want to make sure that is captured in that,” Harrison said.

Racine hopes that the film will be a starting point for people to get into the CELEBRATING subject of public education COUNTERCULTURE in Ann Arbor as well as ComCommunity High, along munity High’s history. Ulti“The further that I get into it, the more with the rest of Ann Arbor, mately, he hopes it will enhas often been thought of as enthusiastic I get about telling the story courage people to take action synonymous with the word and get excited about it. because I think it’s a really unique place. counterculture, defined by “It’s going to be great, but dictionary.com as, “the culI’m like, ‘How are we going I think it’s a complex subject.” ture and lifestyle of those to put this out to the world?’” people, especially among the Racine said. “There is too young, who reject or oppose much information for just the dominant values and behavior of so- to take a seventh. “Here we are, doing one film.” ciety.” this CR and there were a lot of people “I think that there is just a spirit of the who were like, ‘Well I can’t take anymore CHANGE FOR CHANGE school and the city itself of countercul- credits,’” Racine said.

Change is what brought about Comture that needs to be celebrated,” Racine munity High School and perhaps this said. She hopes that the film will inspire 43 YEARS, ONE FILM film will help bring about more change current and future students to continue An incredible amount of history, ar- in public education reform. Although to celebrate counterculture. “There is al- chives and people can be accumulated Community High may not be exactways an alternative route,” Racine said. from the time Community High was ly how it was 40 some years ago, it has Whether it be music, politics or, in this founded in 1972. One of the biggest grown and evolved. case, an alternative model to education. challenges in creating the film will be “I think from what I’ve seen the funAs a former student of Communi- maintaining the vision they had in the damental philosophy is still in place,” ty and now a teacher of a Community beginning.

Harrison said. “It is not turned into just Resource (CR), Racine understands the “We could potentially have so much some ordinary high school that once had importance of the alternative approach material that we create a mountain when this experimental very unusual past. It to public education. She believes that we really just need to have a sculpture,” still actually has a different philosophy in the teachers are doing their best to keep Harrison said. They want to make the place and that is pretty cool.”

Community the way it is, but since Com- film accessible to anyone, not just the

ABOVE: Donald Harrison, director of “Commie High: The Film” at Liberty Plaza.

TOP RIGHT: Mural outside of Community High School featuring pictures of Ann Arbor.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Ingrid Racine with two Community students taking her music CR at the Neutral Zone.

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NEWS

New School on the Block Ann Arbor STEAM celebrates a fully rolled out school—and chickens.

BY MAGGIE MIHAYLOVA

I

n their third and fully enrolled school year, Ann Arbor STEAM at Northside is fuller, brighter and bluer than ever. Renovations this year have added two new classrooms, an entire second floor for middle school classrooms and a full-sized gym. The school’s exterior, a contrast between old brick and futuristic blue, is symbolic of the school’s dual curriculum. Ann Arbor STEAM Principal Joan Fitzgibbon claims that the physical changes at A2 STEAM are minor compared to their curricular metamorphosis.

In 2014, Northside Elementary School became A2 STEAM at Northside. The school did not only claim a new name, but a new curriculum and three new grades. A2 STEAM uses the Buck Institute for Education Curriculum, following the mantra of STEAM – science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. All students, ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade, are provided their own iPad which must remain at school. According to Fitzgibbon, technology is central in the classroom, and is used for activities and assignments. “[The kids will] videotape their work and show the teacher, they’ll read to their teacher, and they can capture their work,” Fitzgibbon said. “They do a lot of video documenting with an app called Aurasma. So when you record something and hover over it at another time, it comes to life. We try to use technology purposefully, because we don’t want kids to get too much screen time. It’s a tool, not ‘Here, be busy.’”

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In every classroom, there are screens. A STEAM education stems around handson projects and group learning. Applications such as Google Classroom, Excel, Aurasma and Raz Kids are useful in student collaboration and development. Bill Van Loo, the engineering teacher at A2 STEAM, is particularly passionate about technology and design within the classroom.

“At STEAM we are providing a well-rounded, approached education that includes the technology and engineering components,” Van Loo said.

“Projects give them a chance to explore a whole wide range of interests, whether it’s the hands-on piece of building something, the digital part of doing computer programming, the engineering and design process or sketching and measuring.

Whatever high school, college or career path they choose, those are going to be skills that serve them.”

Many of the A2 STEAM staff members agreed that through the project-based curriculum, students are better prepared for their future. The skills needed for presentations and group work are essential and more beneficial when learned at a young age.

Fitzgibbon, a former math teacher with background in science, appreciates how STEAM refines these soft skills.

“STEAM focuses on how you work in a group, how you share your ideas, and how you present, so that the first time you’re doing that isn’t in high school,” Fitzgibbon said. “We build those confidence skills and teach them to work

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in teams, how to respect people’s ideas when working in a group, and how to disagree and agree respectively. So we’re trying to get those skills taught to our kids at a younger age.”

Every in-class lesson is hands on, and ranges from raising salmon to building a wind turbine.

“It’s all about inquiry and students being able to take their interests and their questions and actually getting them answered,” Fitzgibbon said. “Instead of the teacher determining exactly what a kid’s going to learn throughout the day, the kids get to drive a lot of that. Even the younger kids can become experts and seek out their passions. Often times we develop products. Last year we raised chickens. We learned about the life cycle, we learned how to design and develop a chicken coop. We now have a chicken coop outside!”

Fitzgibbon believes this is influential in the students’ love for learning, and that it not only will aid them in the future, but in their current learning as well. “We have products that kids can actually see that their influence, and their learning comes to fruition. So it’s not just they’re drawing a picture in a book, they’re actually going and learning how to build and design things, and they come to life for them.”

Ryan Ruhl, an eighth grade math and science teacher at STEAM, stresses the importance of physical experiments as it relates to the world. “I think it prepares them for careers and jobs where they are expected to produce,” Ruhl said.

NEWS “Whether they’re producing reports or models or actual buildings, that will be an expectation of them in the future.”

And the students are already hard at work. Kindergarten through fourth grade is building things out of cardboard, and soon they will be moving into programming. Sixth grade is focusing on the design process, seventh grade on automation and robotics, and eighth grade on sustainable energy. They are both learning and preparing for their fall Expo, a night dedicated to showcasing the students’ work. “[At an Expo] the kids become ambassadors for their learning, and they have to present their product to a public audience,” Fitzgibbon said. “That helps the kids learn success skills, collaboration, cooperation, self-management and communication. So when they’re presenting their projects, they’re actually able to articulate what they’re learning, and actually getting experience, even as a kindergartener. Instead of: ‘Here’s the plan I drew,’ it’s: ‘Here’s the cycle of photosynthesis, this is what this does, here’s how temperature works, here’s why we wear these clothes..’ They’re really able to have more of an investment in what they’re learning.”

Despite their sharp focus on science and tech, STEAM also focuses on the “A” in their philosophy – the arts. From art to music, students are constantly linking together projects. When a place was needed for the chickens last year, fifthgrade students used 3D imagery to create concepts for a coop.

Fitzgibbon reports only one bump within the blossoming of STEAM – the divide between the younger and older grades. “Right now, we’re still learning about what it means to be a K-8, not a K-5 and a middle school,” Fitzgibbon said. “We have a buddy program, where older students will come down and support the other kids, sometimes it’s through reading and math, sometimes it’s where they do projects together. For example, kindergarten may be learning about the weather, middle school might be tracking the weather, so they can compliment each other and visit each others’ classrooms and talk about that common theme. It becomes a learning project for everyone.”

Fitzgibbon is proud of how far A2 STEAM has come and how passionate the staff and students are. In a fully rolled out year with new renovations, it seems as though the school is stronger than ever. With the dust and noise finally settling, Fitzgibbon is happy to be at A2 STEAM. “I thought that this would be a good challenge, and that it has been. A good challenge.”

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15

NEWS

Thinking Inside the Box Doctors at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital are changing medicine by keeping transplant hearts in a warm, beating state for a few hours for hours at a time.

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BY ABIGAIL GAIES

hree doctors were sitting outside the Sheraton Ann Arbor Hotel during a break in a conference, enjoying scones in the sun, when they started trading some outof-the-box ideas. They fantasized about new medical technology that would change the face of medicine forever.

The group of three was made up of two cardiologists and a cardiac surgeon at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital (Mott), and while they are some of the top in world, there are some things that they just can’t fix. “[Some patients] are either born with something that’s too complicated, they acquire something too complicated or we reach an endpoint where we can’t help them surgically or medically anymore,” said Dr. Gabe Owens, Ph.D., M.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatric Cardiology at Mott. “Those are the patients that need a heart transplant.”

At that conference, Owens, along with Dr. Richard Bartlett, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Surgery at the University of Michigan (U-M) and Dr. Martin Bocks, M.D., Program Director of Pediatric Interventional Cardiology at UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, started talking about the issues related to heart transplants.

“We began thinking about the problem, the [issue] of patients not getting the hearts that they [need], and we started thinking about the data, that only four of 10 hearts that are donated are utilized,” Owens said. The wait list for a heart transplant is one of the longest of any organ, and the mortality rate while waiting for an organ is the highest. She began to wonder why: why is it that only four hearts get used? Why are there six perfectly good hearts that get wasted?

Part of the problem is the way the hearts are harvested.

What is shown in movies is a doctor getting an organ and running through the airport with a cooler. This is not actually an over exaggeration of what happens in real life: a doctor harvests an or16

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gan, puts it in a bag of ice resting in an Igloo cooler and then hurries to get it to the transplant site as soon as possible. This method of freezing the organ keeps the cells alive by slowing down potential cell death.

Since the first heart transplant in 1967, this method has been used for all organs that are going to be transplanted. A frozen heart can only be preserved for up to six hours though, so anyone located beyond six hours from the harvest site cannot receive the heart.

“If I have a heart that’s a perfect match for the sickest kid who’s in California, they won’t get it,” Owens said. Because of the distance limitations, some emergent kids get hearts that are only partial matches with their blood and tissue types.

All of the doctors agreed that preserving hearts for transplantation was an area of pediatric cardiology, and cardiology in general, that could be improved upon. Their main goal was to extend the period of preservation time between donor and recipient to allow more hearts to be used and better matches to be made. Additionally, they wanted to make the heart healthier when removed from the donor and more available for transplant.

The question was, how?

Their outside the box thinking at that innova-

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PHOTOS COURTESY: GABE OWENS

ABOVE: This image shows an up close image of the heart in the box. The aorta and pulmonary artery are visible coming off the heart at the top. In a body, the pulmonary artery carries blood to the lungs to get oxygenated; the aorta sends blood to the body.

tional conference led them to try an inside the box idea. Literally.

They scrapped the idea of freezing the heart and started back at square one. Instead of evading death by freezing the cells, they wanted to work with the heart in its natural, beating state by mimicking the ideal environment of the body. Owens, Bartlett and Bocks tried to recreate the body in order to store the heart in between harvesting and transplanting it.

So they put the heart in a warm box.

“We can actually give it drugs to make it beat stronger,” Owens said. “We can optimize it, we can recover it if it was sick after the surgery and keep it in that type of environment until it is ready for transplant.” Additionally, they can give the heart nutrients and energy to help it beat at a normal rate and temperature.

This “heart in a box” method is technically known as ex vivo heart perfusion, or EVHP; ex vivo means outside the body and perfusion means delivering blood to an organ. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is an outside the body technique that provides respiratory and cardiac support, and was actually developed by Dr. Bartlett in 1975. Owens, Bartlett and Bocks took the ECMO technology and modified it to work for the EVHP. This research is similar to the clinical work that Owens does. “The patients I take care of a lot of times need heart

NEWS

transplants,” Owens said. “The patients Bocks have been able to begin collect- for EVHP research, the center’s goal is I take care of a lot of times need to be ing data so they can start applying for simply to do six hours in the box instead supported with mechanical devices simi- bigger grants that can support the entire of on ice. Owens, Bartlett and Bocks lar to the way we’re supporting the heart project. Without the funding, they can’t want to extend that period of time to as that’s in the box.” move forward as quickly as they would long as possible.

The similarity is very helpful. One of like to.

Another project that Owens is working the drawbacks of any new project is findEven without a large grant, there on goes hand in hand with this EVHP ing adequate time to work on it. Specifi- have been some major successes with research. By using stem cells, or unspeccally as a researching clinician, you often their EVHP project. “Nobody’s been ified cells that can change into any type have to juggle previously active research, able to keep a large animal heart [alive of cell (for example, heart cells) he is activities in other areas of interest and a for] greater than six hours [outside the looking to minimize the rates of rejecbusy clinical workload. “Delegation and body],” Owens said. “We’ve been able tion or the need for medications. finding people you trust and can com- to keep a heart beating and healthy for “There is a way that I could take a little municate well with is very important in 24 hours. We’re very consistent [with] bit of your skin cells, change the way the getting things done,” Owens said. keeping a heart healthy and strong for skin cells are genetically programmed As with almost everything so they look like heart vesin life, money is a factor that sel cells, and then I can inject contributes to the success them into a heart in a box, so of the project. The big inwhen I put that heart back “If I have a heart that’s a perfect match stitutions that fund research into you, your body recognizfor the sickest kid who’s in California, they have demonstrated that they es the cells as your own,” Owprefer established, low-risk ens said. Using skin cells and won’t get it.” projects: projects with a turning them into stem cells, high probability of success. the recipient of a transplantBecause they are so limited ed heart won’t need the anwith the projects they fund, only about 12 hours, and we’ve even taken some of ti-transplant-rejection medications that 10 out of 100 projects that are submit- those hearts and transplanted them back often cause side effects. Genetics and ted get funded, which means 90 proj- into recipient pigs, and those hearts have genome mapping can also help revoluects that may end with medical break- worked.” In the beginning though, they tionize transplant medicine. throughs never even get started. With a were using some odd methods to “wake Above every goal previously menproject like EVHP where there isn’t a lot the hearts up” and keep them beating, tioned, Owens just wants to continue of data to support the idea, it is hard to including flicking them with their fingers helping everyone he can. “We foresee get the funding from the national insti- and shocking them with electricity. This a future of having a big room full of tutes. type of progress shows true dedication, hearts,” Owens said. “And saying, ‘Who “We’re very thankful for the Frankel motivation and persistence. needs a heart? You need a heart? Well we family, [they] have been very generous Owens’s is driven by the potential of got hearts.’” funding our project,” Owens said. With making a difference in transplant meditheir donations, Owens, Bartlett and cine. While there is already a study center

LEFT: This is the heart on the box from another angle. The image is a bit less focused on the heart directly; it shows more the cannulas that connect to the aorta and the pulmonary artery.

MIDDLE: For the ex vivo cardiac perfusion system, blood that’s been used by the heart (blue blood) is drained from the heart into a reservoir.

Blood from the reservoir is then pumped to an oxygenator, whcih is basically an artificial lung, to re-oxygenate the blood to provide nutrients for the heart muscle. The oxygenated blood (red blood) is pumped into the aorta and into the coronary arteries (the main arteries that provide the heart muscle energy and nutrients). This system enables the heart to continue to beat and maintain a life-like state even though the heart is outside of the body.

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RIGHT: In this image, the heart is visible as well as the majority of the machines working with it. Underneath the heart is the pump. The reservoir can be seen on the far left filled approximately halfway with blood. The oxygenator is not very visible; it is located near the base of the reservoir.

The cannulas connected to the aorta and the pulmonary artery are also easy to be seen.

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17

NEWS

YOU CAN’T ALWAYS EAT WHAT YOU WANT

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NEWS

Examining reasons behind rapidly increasing allergy rates.

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BY ANDIE TAPPENDEN

igns are plastered on every other door reading “Nut Free Zone!”, “No Tree Nuts!” and “Pineapple Free Zone!” However colorful they might be, these posters are not for decoration. These are warning signs put up to alert whoever enters that what is inside their brownbag lunch could be fatal to another.

“An allergy is your body’s abnormal response to a normal environmental agent,” University of Michigan allergist Marc McMorris said. “That leads to allergy symptoms and that’s caused by IGE, the allergy antibody, because why would you respond to one thing and I wouldn’t? Well, your body’s decided to do that.”

In the past 20 years, the number of people with allergies has nearly doubled.

The allergy increase is not just for food allergies. It’s all across the board: asthma, eczema, allergic rhinitis and hay fever have also become more common.

Not only are allergies more prevalent, they are staying with children much longer than they used to. The statistics show that 20 percent of peanut allergies will leave, eight percent of tree nut allergies will go away and 90-95 percent of milk, egg, wheat, soy will dissipate as children mature.

“The issue is that your generation is delaying that versus the prior generation,” McMorris said. “The milk, egg, wheat and soy used to go away by kindergarten and now it’s late grade school, and I have kids in college who are still anaphylactic to milk. That was unheard of 25 years ago.”

But this increased allergy epidemic is not happening in every part of the world; parts of the world where there are fairly high rates of illness and infections, such as third world countries, have virtually no allergies.

According to Dr. McMorris, the immune system has two fronts: one to fight illness and germs along with bacteria and

viruses, while the other is to look for allergies.

“So, if the immune system doesn’t have to worry about illness as much anymore, it shifts over to the other side,” McMorris said.

In 1989, David P. Strachan, a professor of epidemiology at St. George’s University of London, published a short paper in the British Medical Journal about a study he did with British children all born in March 1958. He followed them for 23 years and looked at how many of them developed hay fever. Strachan found that children who had older siblings had fewer allergies because the younger children are exposed to more illness from their older siblings.

From this study, Strachan speculated a link between early infant illness and the absence of allergies. This belief has since been dubbed “The Hygiene Hypothesis” and is one of the theories as to why more people are developing allergies as societies modernize.

The Hygiene Hypothesis argues that as children are immunized and not exposed to illness when they are young, they develop more allergies.

Many studies have been conducted looking at children growing up on farms in relation to how many developed allergies and what kind they have. Researchers have found that people who grew up on a farm have lower rates of allergies.

This is believed to be from the early exposure to lots of bacteria, viruses, and fungi from the feces of farm animals to the unpasteurized milk that the children drink. The seemingly “dirty” environment that farm kids grow up on actually helps them in the long-run, allergy-wise.

Similar to the farm studies, children growing up with pets, such as dogs and cats, tend to have less allergies.

In the 1990s, in an effort to stop the increase in allergies, allergists recommended waiting for babies to mature more, for a few years or so, before introduc-

ing foods with higher allergy risk (eggs, nuts, etc.) However, recent research has shown that introducing high risk foods to babies between five to six months to a year may be better than delaying them.

“We no longer are advocating delay of exposing babies to high risk foods like we did a year or two ago,” McMorris said. “And that’s part of a national movement to introduce foods earlier to babies so that they are able to develop tolerance.”

However, The Hygiene Hypothesis is not the only theory that tries to explain the influx of allergy rates.

Vitamin D deficiency could also play a part in the development of allergies.

More epipens are prescribed in northern states than in southern states, possibly due to more sun exposure in the South.

Some allergists are checking the Vitamin D levels in their patients and have found that patients who are prescribed Vitamin D supplements experienced a decrease in hives, eczema, etc; but it did not work as well with food allergies.

Additionally, women who are pregnant during winter months have a higher rate of having children who develop allergies than women who are pregnant in summer months because in summer they get Vitamin D, but in winter they get much less.

Ultimately, it also comes down to genetics. If a parent has allergies, there is a 50 percent chance they will pass it on to their child. If both parents have allergies, the risk increases to 70-80 percent.

Everybody is programmed in different ways, people with allergies are programmed differently than people without allergies.

“There’s no real good reason why one individual has a peanut allergy versus another individual, or why one person’s allergic to a dog and another person isn’t, it’s just a combination of genetics and environment,” McMorris said.

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NEWS

Chloë Root

The Community High teacher explains the importance of forum and the meaning behind her tattoos.

C

BY CAMMI TIRICO

ommunity High graduate Chloe Root, could not stay away from her alma mater. After graduating in 2002, Root went out of state to Brown University in Rhode Island to further her education. She came back to Ann Arbor because she “missed it a lot.” Root grew up with both her parents—who split after she graduated high school—and her younger brother Barnaby. Barnaby is seven years younger than Root and they are close now.

While growing up Root had a special connection with her mom. When asked what was the best advice she had ever received, she quoted her mom. “[She] said that she lived by her own principles or acted in a way she thought was ethical,” Root said. This was so powerful to Root because she realized that neither her mom nor she could control everything in their lives; they believed they could only be truly proud of something that they as individuals can control.

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“You can’t control where you start and you can’t control a lot of external barriers and frustrating things about the world around you but you can control whether you react in a certain way,” Root said. This affects the way Root sees people.

“When I see people trying to deal with certain circumstances, I don’t judge them based on the stuff they are facing, I judge them based on the way they react.”

“I often describe myself in terms of my job,” Root said. She continued, jokingly saying, “I also occasionally try to have a social life, like in the summers and stuff.”

But during the year, Root

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ABOVE: Chloe Root in her classroom.

Root’s classroom is filled with pictures and momentos about her life.

gives her everything to her teaching.

Root teaches U.S. History, Government, Gender Studies and forum. In addition, she is one of the coaches of the Mock Trial team.

Mock Trial is an after school club that is unlike any other. Meeting up to five times a week from 7-9 p.m., they are preparing for state and ultimately national competitions.

Mock Trial is a courtroom simulation where teams go head to head with one team being the defense and the other as the plaintiff or prosecution. With over 50 teams in the state, Community has won eight state championships, most recently in 2015.

Root joined the Community staff in 2010 after student teaching for Marion Evashevski in the 2008-2009 school year.

“My first year of teaching was my hardest year of my life because it challenged me in ways I didn’t know were possible,” Root said. Public speaking,

FEATURE at the time, was extremely difficult for is when the forum is all around the fire She also has a tattoo of a barn swallow, Root. “It used to be that I was worried talking and sharing about their lives. a small bird with a distinct blue back, that people would judge me for what I The Root forum symbol is √4m, pro- that she got when she was doing her stusaid, I think that I used to be judgmen- nounced ‘Root Four M’ or ‘Root Fo- dent teaching. tal so I think I projected that onto other rum’. Sophia Kromis, a former Root “It represents doing something that people,” Root said. “Luckily I have got- forum member who graduated in 2015 I didn’t think I could do,” Root said. “I ten over it.” and a self proclaimed math nerd, created used to be super shy and really afraid of Root got into teaching because she the √4m symbol. She wanted something speaking in front of people. The worst thought the content was important, but clever and original for her forum and put thing I could think of is to have to get soon realized that she loved the other her love of math into something else she up in front of people and like try to side of being a teacher. “When I was do- could be proud of, her forum. teach them something. Then I did.” ing my student teaching I was like ‘It’s Root has seven tattoos on various parts The largest tattoo Root has is a tiger on actually so cool and people are hilarious.’ of her body, all having different and her ribs, which she got after her first year And there is not a single day, where I get unique reasons behind them. of teaching. She says that was one of the through the day and everything was borRoot’s first tattoo was a planet on her hardest years of her life. ing because I am surrounded by so many hip. “It eminded me that that like plan“I got through it and I got the tiger fun people,” Root said. ets, people are only one tiny thing in the to show that I was fierce for getting In 2010, the Root forum replaced the universe but also like planets you can through it.”

Evashevski forum, coinRoot’s favorite tattoo is a cidently, the same teacher dog on her left arm. She got she student taught for. Afthe dog with her brother, ter seven years of teaching Barnaby. Both Root children the forum, Root looks backs had a love for dogs after hav“I felt like I was reclaiming my heart.” and recalls the first time she ing many different pets growhad seniors graduate after ing up. They got the tattoo having them for four years. the day after their grandfa“I was like ‘What am I gother passed away. However, ing to do? My forum will never be the have a huge effect on the things around they had already planned on getting it. same’,” Root said. “Then the next year, you,” Root said. “It was like a reminder “It is kind of a cool thing because it the kids came in and they were so amaz- to myself that I am important, but not ended up being kind of like a memorial ing. I was like ‘Oh, this is still going to that important.” tattoo,” Root said. be wonderful, this is still going to be like The seven stars on Root’s right arm On Root’s left shoulder, she has a tata family even though the members are honor her late aunt, Sandy, who passed too of a human heart. Root has this tatgraduating and changing, new people are away from breast cancer. “She was kind too matching with her now-ex-husband. coming in’.” of like a third parent to me in a lot of “When we finished long distance, we Root says her favorite thing about ways,” Root said. That was Root’s sec- got these heart tattoos together,” Root teaching a forum is that it feels like a ond tattoo. said. “But when we split up this past family. She also enjoys watching the stuThe meditation hand and third eye summer I decided to get these roots adddents grow as individuals. on Root’s right arm represents her new ed on to it. For a couple different rea“Watching people grow up in forum is found love for meditation. sons, partly because I like roots because really cool especially when they come in “I had a lot of changes this summer it’s my last name, partly because they totally clueless freshman year then end and I need to commemorate new be- represent things that represent things up being a leader in the forum by senior ginnings,” Root said. In the same tattoo, that are important to me. Also, having year, that’s really cool,” Root said. She there are an assortment of doors and my roots in the place I was raised. But also loves the forum overnight camp- windows which to Root symbolize pos- mostly to reclaim the tattoo for myself, I ing trip. Her favorite part of camping sibilities and opportunities. felt like I was reclaiming my heart.”

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FEATURE

Save a Dime & Commit a Crime A look at shoplifting from both sides of the register.

BY SOPHIA ROSEWARNE, CLAIRE MIDDLETON AND BELLA YERKES

“I just remember taking that first step out of the door. I had all this heat in my neck and my face, and at the same time I was just trying to look as nonchalant as possible, and then as I stepped out of the store and kept walking I was like ‘Oh, there’s no one following me or anything,’ said Sara Williams*, a CHS student, recalling her first shoplifting experience.

Williams first shoplifted when she was 13 from Urban Outfitters while she was downtown with a friend, Hannah White* who had become a somewhat regular shoplifter. It wasn’t planned, but after White took something, Williams felt the urge to join in and White helped her, providing her with tips. “Everybody has their own routine,” Williams said. “With the workers in the stores, I remember talking to them always felt so weird or was kind of like ‘I know something you don’t’... I would try stuff on even if I knew I wasn’t going to buy it.”

Soon after, Williams’s shoplifting became more frequent, though she never did it alone. “Honestly [I shoplifted] just because I could,” Williams said. “And I also could’ve bought all those things but it was sort of the mentality that’s like ‘Why would I buy it if I could just not pay for it?’ It was always fulfilling, it was always like ‘look at all this stuff I got.’

You’re doing something risky and you get a rush from it, like adrenaline.”

On one occasion Williams was downtown with White and two other friends.

They entered Bivouac to shoplift after having stolen merchandise from Urban Outfitters. “I remember feeling really not right about going in there,” Williams said. Williams allowed White to fill her backpack with merchandise, then Williams’s other friend, Ben Smith*, split from the group of four with their bags filled and left the store.

Williams and Smith were eating when they received a call from White, telling them they needed to come back to the store, Williams could tell by the tone in White’s voice that something had gone wrong. Williams decided to go back to the store while Smith’s initial reaction 22

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was to run.

“I wasn’t going to leave my friends like that,” Williams said. “If we were going to go down, we were gonna go down together.”

Williams arrived to see the manager and their friends gathered inside the store. They were told that Smith needed to come, or else things would be worse.

They called Smith and coaxed him back to the store. Once Smith arrived, Williams assumed it was going to be simple, they would give back the merchandise and it would all blow over. But the police arrived soon after, and the contents of their bags were laid on tables; the value of the stolen items were added up. Then the group of four were put under arrest and brought to the local police station, where their parents were called.

Security systems, staff tactics for prevention and strict dressing room rules were devices used to help catch the group of young shoplifters. Bivouac and another Ann Arbor business, Verbena, both take these measures to help combat the ever-present issue of shoplifting.

Bivouac Vice President, AJ Davidson, partially credits the location — a busy downtown area and the center of a large college campus — with the ongoing issue of shoplifting. Bivouac is equipped with a full security system and welltrained staff but even these preventative measures aren not foolproof. Bivouac’s staff is taught to recognize red flags in behavior and clothing.

“It’s just trusting your instinct that if they have the item and they don’t have it anymore, what happened to it?” Davidson said.

Williams’s case was not unique: Bivouac prosecutes all shoplifters. When there is a known shoplifter on the premises there is a fine line between what you can and can’t do for legal reasons, according to Davidson. But they have different ways to reach their ultimate goal of recovering the merchandise. Subtly letting shoplifters know that the staff knows what they are up to is technique used at Bivouac to reach the goal of recovering merchandise.

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Verbena, a locally-owned womens boutique in downtown Ann Arbor, experiences similar shoplifting issues. Kate Duerkson, owner of Verbena, has noticed that shoplifting affects customers in the store as well; she says other customers often become anxious or on-edge when they witness a theft. Shoplifting affects the employees and the trust they have in customers. It also puts a burden on the police and occupies the courts.

“Shoplifting is very bad for all industries, but we’re also a small business, a small store, so it’s not like it doesn’t matter to us,” Duerkson said. “Every sale matters and everything stolen has a huge affect on us...it just hurts the community when people are shoplifting.”

A 2008 study at Columbia University was able to conclude that most people do not steal with financial motives, meaning most people do not steal because they need to, they steal because they want to, like Williams. The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (NASP) backs up this claim stating, “The vast majority of shoplifters are non-professionals who steal, not out of criminal intent, financial need or greed, but as a response to social and personal pressures in their life,” also commenting that the majority of shoplifting is not premeditated.

Shoplifting is devastating to local businesses, but those responsible for losses do not always feel the effects that the companies do. Duerkson said even if they catch shoplifters, when the prosecution process begins many other court cases trump theirs. According to the NASP, shoplifters are caught approximately one in 48 times. After they are caught shoplifters are only turned over to the police about 50% of the time.

“If we have a 500 dollar bill to pay and a 500 dollar coat walks out the door, that’s our bill that we could have payed,” Davidson said. *Names have been changed to protect anonymity.

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GRAPHIC: AVA MILLMAN

Smart Start Ann Arbor Public Schools propose later start time for all high schools in the district

BY AVA MILLMAN AND WM. HENRY SCHIRMER

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7:30 a.m. ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN he parking lot at Community High School is almost full and the sun has yet to come over the horizon. Students slowly migrate across the asphalt toward the northwest door with an all too familiar tired daze lining their faces. Junior 24

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Katy Pasquariello is one of the blank faces that has been up since 6:30 a.m.

She has been running on six hours of sleep every weekday since Sept. 6. The exhaustion of high school seemed to be an unavoidable circumstance for all students in Ann Arbor Public Schools until a few weeks ago when an email survey was sent out to all students, parents

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and teachers regarding the possibility of a later start time. The subject line was “Assign your stars.�

The email was a survey about the start times of their schools. Their goal was to hear concerns and benefits of a possible later start time as well as any other thoughts and questions this topic may have brought up.

FEATURE

In the past three years, AAPS has been Ed Kulka, a math teacher at Communi- directly linked to current school start taking steps to allow teens the sleep they ty for over 20 years. “I think that people times, there is also an abundance of negneed to be more functional and produc- who struggle with sleep deprivation are ative physical repercussions. “It’s proven tive during school hours. These steps going to struggle with it no matter what that kids who don’t get enough sleep are include pushing start times for all high [the start time] is, some people just have at an increased risk of becoming obese, schools back to 7:45 a.m., moving the a hard time falling asleep. When we start getting diabetes, heart disease and motor bus schedule to start at the earliest 6:40 at a later time, there is just going to be vehicle crashes,” Dr. Troxel said. a.m. rather then 6 a.m., as well as offer- even less of a rush to get to bed early.”

If starting school later enables us to ing a full set of online classes to allow Many people in Ann Arbor feel the prevent suicide, diabetes, heart disease students to have a more flexible sched- same way that Kulka does: if this sched- and motor vehicle crashes, then why haule. They are continuing to take steps to ule has worked for so long then why ven’t we done it? further their research, including this sur- change it? Families’ lives have been built “Sports is a big thing, and I don’t know vey, and adapting the high school sched- around an eight to three school day, so how changing the start time will affect ule to benefit AAPS students. This ef- the question becomes, are the health sports,” Kulka said. This is not only the fort is admirable, but the thoughts of a high school question still remains: are math teacher, but also a these changes really necconcern that is brought up essary? by many in the communi“People have work, ty.

“You first have to understand that having people have after school Often when Dr. Troxactivities,” Pasquarielel talks to communiteenagers start earlier than 8:30 a.m. lo said. Her day is filled ties about the dangers of is really a public health issue.” with around six hours of sleep deprivation, one school, four to five hours of the overhanging conof work at Noodles and cerns about changing the Company, and around 2 schedule is sports. “Sleep hours of homework. It’s loss is associated with an no lie, the lives of a high school student benefits truly more important than the increase of sports-related injuries,” Dr. have become filled with school, sports, logistical problems.

Troxel said. “As well as longer recovand other activities.

“Change is always hard, but once you ery times, and slower reaction times, all The scientists providing the research understand the science you really can’t these things that are so critical for athfor later start times are aware of these is- turn back because we are doing teen- letes.” According to Dr. Troxel, one of sues but they believe the means of start- agers harm by starting school too ear- the major concerns from the genering school later out weigh the odds of ly,” Dr. Troxel said. “The health risks of al public about a later start time is aththe “logistical issues” filling teens day- sleep deprivation are many and I could letes are going to ruin their competito-day lives. go on and on.” tive edge. However, studies performed “Sports are important; other after According to Dr. Troxel, the main risk by Dr. Troxel and her colleagues have school activities are important; child care of sleep deprivation is with your mental shown that when elite teams have prioriissues are important; and transportation health. Lack of sleep is associated with tized sleep the athlete’s performance has issues are all important, but you first an increase of depression as well as sub- greatly improved. have to understand that having teenagers stance use.

For Dr. Troxel another major concern start earlier than 8:30 a.m. is really a pubMany teenagers who are sleep deprived is drowsy driving. “Teenagers are among lic health issue,” said Dr. Wendy Troxel, are using large quantities of caffeine, the highest risk groups for being drowsy a clinical psychologist and a senior be- which may be helpful in the moment, drivers,” Dr. Troxel said. “One studied havioral and social scientist at the Rand but will change their sleep cycle. “Your showed that motor vehicle crashes in Corporation. “It’s harmful to teenagers biology’s telling you to start the cycle lat- a district with later start times were remental and physical health.” er and you’re taking high quantities of duced by 70 percent.” For many teenagThe biology of human sleep patterns caffeine throughout the day just to stay ers high school is the first time they are temporarily shift during the time of ad- awake,” Dr. Troxel said. “Then you can’t able to drive; inexperienced drivers and olescence. Specifically, the excrement fall asleep at night because you have your delayed reaction times associated with of the hormone melatonin, which trig- biology and caffeine.” drowsy driving can be a fatal combinagers the brain to fall asleep, is delayed.

On average, Pasquariello has some type tion.

According to Dr. Troxel, melatonin in of caffeinated beverage three to four Pasquariello, Kulka and Troxel all agree adults and young children is released times a week. That might not seem like that sleep is important. However that is around 9:00 p.m. In teenagers however, much, but many students need to have where the agreement ends, Troxel says melatonin is not released until around caffeinated beverages every day just to that the current school schedule is fight11:00 p.m. get by. “This large consumption of caf- ing against teenagers biology, while Kul“If you can’t go to bed before 11:00 feine is leading to a tired-but-wired pop- ka claims that society is built around the p.m. and you have to wake up at 6:00 ulation of teenagers,” Dr. Troxel said. current start and end time. Pasquariello a.m. it’s physically impossible to even “Teenagers are learning at a very young says that students lives are already too get the bare minimum of eight hours,” age that they have to medicate just to get hectic and pushing school start times Troxel said. “That’s just the bare mini- through the day. Which sends a pattern back would take away from their daily mum, the recommendation is eight to that also increases the risk for other sub- lives. So who is right? ten. Most teenagers aren’t coming close stances.” According to Troxel, teenagers This issue will remain unresolved for to that window, and when teenagers ar- who are consuming large amounts of the time being. Results from the survey en’t getting the sleep they need their caffeine are at an increased risk of us- have not been released* and Superintenbodies, their brains and their behavior ing substances such as alcohol and mar- dent Swift chose not to speak with The suffers.” ijuana.

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“I really just don’t see the benefit,” said On top of all of the mental health risks *Since this article was written, the survey results have february

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When There Are No Answers In the United States, 700,000 young adults ages 12-17 battled a substance abuse disorder in 2013. This is the story of just one of those children, now 31 years old, independent, employed and addicted.

BY ALEXANDRA HOBRECHT

“I can’t help you anymore.”

The words came from Helen* as she sat with her son in their favorite breakfast restaurant, where they often split stuffed french toast with fruit and powdered sugar on top; where the food is quaint because they are both small people and don’t eat a lot; where she looked closely at him to see if he was clear-eyed and thinking straight; where she left hopeful, because he always took her seriously and she thought he might change.

For a year or so, he did.

Then it was back to the constant, endless cycle he had put them through before.

THE BEGINNING

Growing up, Jack* was an excellent wakeboarder and skateboarder. He was kinesthetically gifted and competed in world championships. But in school, he had trouble focusing; he was impulsive, teachers commented that he bounced off the walls and in fifth grade, he was diagnosed with ADD. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 11 percent of children ages four to 17 in the United States have received a medical diagnosis of ADHD; that’s nearly one in five high school aged boys.

Jack was prescribed Ritalin, a central nervous system stimulant, and there was a noticeable difference in his behavior. It seemed like an answer. He could focus more easily, but he hated taking the medication, saying it made him nauseous and exhausted at the end of the day. Unable to make him take it, Helen focused on getting him to graduate high school. Jack struggled with math but he had never been a troublemaker in class. He didn’t cause problems. Helen knew this firsthand because she had taught him in one of her English classes.

Outside of the classroom, Jack smoked pot, partied and hung out with kids who did the same. Helen wasn’t oblivious to his behavior, but assumed he would grow out of it as many of the people she knew had done. Jack also suffered from anxiety. He would self-medicate with a range of drugs and eventually found

an addictive sedative called alprazolam, commonly known as Xanax, that could work in about 15 minutes.

“People don’t always understand that when someone suffers from anxiety that it’s kind of beyond their control at times,” Helen said. “It just overwhelms them.”

When Xanax is used properly it can successfully treat anxiety and panic disorders. When taken irregularly and in large doses, however, the drug can be very habit-forming. Jack became addicted. He tried therapy to deal with his anxiety, and Helen encouraged him to try exercise, such as yoga, for help. But years passed of Helen and her family watching him take anti-anxiety medications, not realizing the severity of his addiction, until he started to have issues at work.

REHAB

One side effect of the different drugs he was using was exhaustion. After falling asleep behind the wheel of a company car, Jack lost his job. It was then Helen realized he had a problem and held an intervention for him to visit a rehabilitation center.

“I think you name it, he tried it,” she said. “Or used it.”

Helen had been told rehab could only work if Jack was willing. He agreed; they were hopeful; and he left for one week.

“When he got out, it was like my son was back,” she said. “The old Jack I al-

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FEATURE ways knew and loved. He was calm and he was funny and he was clear-eyed and bright, and happy, and he was doing okay.”

And for a while, things were okay. But as years went by, Jack would fall off the wagon.

“I always knew, because I know the minute he is using something,” Helen said. “You can tell by looking at his eyes, you can tell by the way he talks, you can tell by his attitude and no matter what you say to him, he’ll lie and lie and lie.”

Whenever she confronted him, Jack would only say he was fine. At one point, Jack was falling asleep standing up at his sister’s house. It was a recognizable sign he was high, though Helen had previously told him it was not acceptable to be around his nieces when he was using.

She drove to his house and started going through his things, finding stuff and throwing it away thinking it would somehow fix him. It then hit her she wasn’t doing him any good. He was a grown man, he was 25 years old and she could not stop him.

“When you’re the parent, you’ve always been able to fix problems,” she said. “You’ve always been the one that can make things better, and in this particular case, you can’t.”

ton, MI, where Helen explained how she felt in black-and-white terms.

“I can’t help you,” she told him. “All I can tell you is this: if you are high, you can’t be around me. You’re not allowed in my house. You’re not allowed around your nieces. And that’s all there is to it.”

An apologetic Jack agreed, telling her he wanted to get better. She knew things weren’t perfect for a year or so, but it seemed like he was doing okay. Then, Jack’s girlfriend came to Helen, explaining Jack’s friends told her to tell Helen he was using, confirming her suspicion.

But when she confronted him, he only denied this. The next day, Jack crashed his work van.

A CONFESSION

The police called Jack’s girlfriend, who then called Helen around midnight. At the time, the police would not say if he was dead or alive. Helen believed he was alive in her heart of hearts because she thought they would have been told otherwise. They would know. But there was still “a pang of ‘what if,’” she said.

They arrived at the hospital to find Jack was physically fine. Mentally, however, he was a mess. He had driven off the road at five miles per hour and been picked up by the police. He kept falling asleep, his manner obnoxious and mean—nothing like himself.

“Emergency rooms feel dirty and cold,” Helen said. “I remember sitting there thinking about people with real emergencies and that I somehow shouldn’t be there once I found out he was fine.” She knew he needed rehab, not a hospital stay.

Then Jack confessed he had used heroin. Helen’s first thought was that she would not see him live to be 31.

Helen believed one reason Jack had never been able to kick his habits was because he never truly hit rock bottom.

Despite the two accidents he had been in, and the worry he had strung on his family, nothing too bad ever happened.

He was still employed, had a home and a family and girlfriend who cared about him. When one of the nurses pointed this out, Helen looked straight at her and said, “I told you.”

“I always hope and pray he doesn’t end up in jail, although for some people that is rock bottom, and maybe that is what he needs,” she said. “Oh, that thought drives me crazy, too. But it beats him ending up dead. And that’s my worst fear. I think about that a lot, that that could be it.”

Jack went straight from the hospital to rehab, though this time, he was on his own. Again, he was willing. Again, he cleaned up, and things were going well. Three weeks later Helen answered a call from Jack’s girlfriend, this time to say, “He’s high again.” They were the all-too-familiar words she had heard before. But this time, a new factor had emerged: his girlfriend was pregnant, and he was going to be a father.

A NEW BALLGAME

To Helen, the news was bitter-sweet.

“All I could think of is, ‘Well, if he dies When Jack came home, Helen told him of an overdose, I will always have this litsomething had to change. She found tle boy,’” she said. “I will have a piece of Nar-Anon online, a support group for him, always. It’s the first thing that came friends and relatives who are concerned into my mind and I thought, ‘God, what about a narcotics user or addict, and ata horrible way to think,’ but when you tended one meeting in Ann Arbor. Here, are the parent of an addict, that’s how she heard the same story over and over you think.” and over again.

They were hoping the news would be “I meet so many people who were a wake-up call to Jack. He often talks good, nice, educated parents and have about how excited he is and how he has other kids who are great,” to stay sober, though that Helen said. “But it’s this ad“doesn’t mean he does,” diction. It’s this disease of the Helen said. brain that changes that kid. “When you’re the parent, you’ve always been able to Jack is now doing a We all have the same strughe fix problems. You’ve always been the one that can 12-step-program gles.” claims to be following, make things better, and in this particular case, you She listened to the same but when Helen recently patterns she herself had gone saw him, he didn’t look can’t.” through, the same patterns right; something about Jack had gone through. The him wasn’t straight. His only difference was some of the parents “I just thought, ‘This is the beginning girlfriend is still expecting. The cycle told her she was fortunate. of the end,’” she said. is still going. For Helen and her family, Jack was employed, he had a girlfriend Because Helen was a teacher, she had there has not been a happy ending. and he cared. He wanted to get better seen the damage of heroin present in “Every time my phone rings and it’s for his family. Many of the parents she her classes. Sometimes students would him, I don’t want to answer it,” she said. spoke to had children who didn’t care fall asleep standing up or at their desks “Every single time I just go, ‘Oh god.’ about them, but lived in their basements as a side effect. Thinking of this, and her I just cringe. Sometimes I don’t answer and treated them horribly instead. Jack knowledge of heroin, she spoke to Jack’s it. Sometimes I just think ‘I’ll answer it had always been apologetic and didn’t girlfriend, whom she was fond of. when I’m somewhere else’ or I’ll wait want to disappoint her, making Helen “I told her, ‘You need to leave,’” Helen for a voicemail to tell me. Sometimes it’s feel “kind of lucky in that regard,” she said. “‘You need to go. You need to get fine and I think ‘Phew.’ And then if he said. out, get away from him and be done with doesn’t leave a voicemail, I panic.”

After the meeting, the two met for him.’ I said, ‘I’m his mom and I’m telling breakfast at The Breakfast Club in Brigh- you that.’” *Name has been changed to protect anonymity.

NAR-ANON

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FEATURE

RESOURCES AND HOTLINES University of Michigan Treatment Services (734)-764-0231

Ann Arbor Treatment Services (734)-544-1523

John Boshoven and Brian Williams CHS Counselors

Dawn Farm (734)-485-8725

Home of New Vision (734)-975-1602

Drugabuse.net 24 Rehab Hotline 1-888-241-8971

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 1-800-662-HELP february

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FEATURE FEATURE

BENEATH OUR FEET How will Ann Arbor recover from decades of groundwater contamination?

BY ELLA EDELSTEIN

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“Water is Life!” Native American protectors cried at the Standing Rock reservation, faced with the possibility of oil pollution in their water source. At the same time, taps in Flint, MI run brown and opaque, laced with lead. Instead of drinking water from the city, many of the citizens must drink bottled water or risk serious illness.

What is lesser known, is that many families living in Ann Arbor are also forced to drink bottled water. Their water supply is dangerous not because of oil or lead, but because of a poorly understood chemical: dioxane.

In 1958, Gelman Sciences built a major plant in Scio Township, west of Ann Arbor. The company produced filters, primarily used to detect water and air pollution. The irony: around a decade later, news of pollution arose. Gelman Sciences had been dumping excess chemicals into underground pools. Throughout the next decades, the chemical, called 1,4 dioxane, had formed a plume spreading through the groundwater of northwest Ann Arbor. Dioxane is likely a carcinogen, and can cause organ damage among other illnesses. Little else is known.

Over the years, some efforts were made to clean up the plume. An attempt to have water extracted, cleaned and reintroduced to the water system proved to be ineffective in such small quantities.

Gelman and the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) had an agreement, however, little was ever accomplished.

“The community gets skeptical. [Gelman] hasn’t necessarily been a good partner about coming forward and saying, ‘Okay, what can we do about this?’

It’s been much more secretive and behind the scenes,” said Laura Rubin, Executive Director of the Huron River Watershed Council (HRWC).

Recently however, the city of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, and the HRWC came together to take legal action on the issue. On Dec. 15, the Washtenaw County Court granted the parties permission to intervene in the case, in order to achieve better monitoring and cleanup.

“We have always been tracking the issue and been involved tangentially in trying to make sure that the clean-up was moving ahead and be there to exert public pressure, but the last year things have heated up more. Some of that is around the Flint issue and the lack of [involvement by] the DEQ,” Rubin said.

Before the Flint issue caught the public eye, the EPA had set a new, lower standard and state laws had changed from requiring clean-up of dioxane to merely “containment.” However, some rules have tightened.

“After Flint, the city council and legislature started putting more pressure on the DEQ to issue the cleanup criteria. They met with the governor, and the governor promised it would be done by the end of the year. There was pressure from the Michigan Manufacturers Association [to not include various other contaminants] so in the end they just

FEATURE

pulled out the dioxane one and issued an emergency rule,” Rubin said. The public health emergency rule was a short term plan that enforced a stricter standard on the amount of dioxane considered to be safe in groundwater.

Though the emergency rule seems to be an advancement, changing standards for dioxane concentration may not be effective.

“We don’t know that much about this chemical, and we didn’t thirty years ago,” Rubin said. Because little is known about dioxane, setting a limit is difficult. Although the state limit before emergency rule was about 80 parts per billion (ppb), the EPA recommends less than five.

As a citizen of Ann Arbor, this issue can be frightening; the plume continues to spread and its trajectory is largely unknown. Additionally, the effects of dioxane are uncertain, although only a couple parts per billion in drinking water is believed to yield a one in 100,000 cancer risk. As levels increase—which they continue to—risks increase.

In the coming weeks, the city, the county and the HRWC will spend time negotiating the terms of their involvement. When they come to an agreement, Ann Arbor will still be looking at a long road ahead. The clean-up and monitoring of the plume will not be quick or easy. However, the next months may be pivotal ones in deciding if major change will finally happen, or if chemical poison will continue to leak beneath our feet.

BELOW: A recent diagram depicting probable dioxane levels throughout Ann Arbor and surrounding areas.

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One Chicken at a Time The struggle of eating local in America’s monopolized poultry market.

P

BY MIRA SIMONTON-CHAO

erusing the aisles of your local grocery store, packages of plastic wrapped poultry are stacked high. Different brands and logos blink up at the consumer trying to catch their attention with bright colors and broad statements. Hundreds of packages of meat, but the majority of them beinging processed by the same companies, in the same facilities. In Jan. 2016, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) had counted a total of 2,718 slaughterhouses in the United States, and only 808 under federal inspection.

The average number of slaughterhouses per state from data taken from 43 US states in 2015 is 19, meaning that 19 slaughterhouses provide meat from populations anywhere from 500,000 to 38,000,000 with other meat coming from out of state. With four dominant meat processors in the US, local meat has been on the decline for years. Between 2015 and 2016 alone, 50 slaughterhouses closed in the US. Transitioning from smaller local processors to larger facilities that process upwards of a million birds a week has been a long transition. Spanning decades and as a part of huge cultural shift in the way society views poultry, the meat market has taken on an almost entirely different approach and process.

Starting the Michigan Farm council in 2012, Wendy Banka has worked hard these last few years to protect local food in Ann Arbor, trying keep the food on her family’s table as fresh and organic as possible.

“Food [has] changed, but you can’t really see it,” Banka said, reflecting upon a situation a few years ago where Banka was planning a small event and asked asked local restaurant owners for reliable

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meat providers. Banka was unable to find a truly USDA organic poultry provider. With a lack of USDA approved slaughterhouses in Ann Arbor and southeast Michigan in general, Banka soon realized that if she wanted a USDA approved poultry processor and distributor, she would have to be the one to make it.

More than five million poultry birds are raised annually in Michigan alone.

Each of these birds processed at one of the slowing decreasing 19 slaughterhouses in Michigan. By starting her own processing and distribution plant all in one, Banka hopes to not only inspire others to continue raising local poultry, but also take some of the work of distribution off the shoulders of the farmers. With so much changing information on nutrition and technological advances in the food industry, Banka’s plan is to take food back to a more simple process: a community of farmers bringing you fresh, organic and local poultry that you can trust.

After undergoing a feasibility study in 2015, Banka soon realized that a processing plant alone would not be sustainable. Many processors in Michigan have difficulty keeping their doors open, the price per bird to low and farmers unable to pay anymore. Banka was able to overcome this roadblock with a second proposition: facility that would act not only as a processing plant, but also distributor and maybe even restaurant. In early months of 2016, Banka wrote up a grant that would give money for the purchasing of a lot on the west side of Ann Arbor and for the design of architectural plans. Throughout the project, the question of money was a constant battle, but as a professional grant writer, Banka was able to access funds many

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other may not have known about.

“I’m just trying to move through the system in ways that I can get enough money,” Banka said. “I can’t invest a million dollars.”

Working with local food outlets like Argus Farm Stop and CSAs across Southeast Michigan, Banka’s project has been met with a wave of support. As a venue working hard to making shopping local for Ann Arborites as easy as possible, Argus supports not only the consumer but the farmer as well. With so few producers in Michigan, farmers find themselves driving themselves to far away processors and at the end of the day are barely able to break even. “[It’s] the most important bottleneck holding back local farm sales,” said Bill Brinkerhoff, owner of Argus Farm Stop.

“I think the value of local food is that it’s is an attempt to try to go back to a way when the food system worked and the food that was produced was good for you and that’s what the efforts really about,” Banka said. “It’s trying to reverse a 50 year trend that has taken us in the wrong direction.” With industrial chicken prices dropping lower every year, local farmers are finding it more and more difficult to compete with corporations processing upwards of millions of chickens a day versus a thousand. Michigan’s core laws are running against them as outrageous regulations, swathed in over technical words are flung at voters. Local food has fought a long battle these last few decades, but with more and more establishments like Argus Farm Stop popping up across the country and people like Banka, it might just be on the upswing.

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PHOTOS: LOEY JONES-PERPICH

The Hikone Exchange Program

BY ISABEL ESPINOSA AND MADIE GRACEY

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n the fall of 1979, a woman named Rusty Schumacher traveled to Hikone, Japan for the first time. She worked at Clague Middle School in Northeast Ann Arbor and was sent overseas for six weeks in order to learn about Japanese culture and spread it throughout the Ann Arbor area. Once she returned, she joined forces with the rest of the Clague staff and spent time sharing various items she had collected while in Japan. Most of these included Japanese food and stories from her trip.

Schumacher had one main dilemma after her trip: she wanted students to experience Japanese culture rather than just hear about it from her. “I can tell you about Japan and what it’s like, but it’s so much more real if you can experience it for yourself,” Schumacher said.

Schumacher hasn’t been to Hikone since 2005, but she still is connected because she started the program. She has a special connection with each individual that went on the trip.

At first, Schumacher was providing the money for the students to travel. Eventually, students had to start paying and fundraising for themselves. In the beginning of the program, students would travel to Hikone in the summer for 17 days. Summers in Japan can get up to 8590 degrees fahrenheit, so the trips began to occur in the fall.

No trip is the same; they alter which historical landmarks they visit. It varies from ancient temples where emperors lived to where the military fought to where an important figure had lived. Every year, there are new host families too.

Usually the students that get picked to do the exchange will get paired up and host each other in their home country.

Since 2015, Annette Ferguson has been the Business Partnerships and Volunteer Coordinator for the Hikone Exchange Program. Every two years, 14 students and two teachers travel to Hikone and 14 students and two teachers from Hikone come to Ann Arbor. In 2016, nine girls and five boys traveled to Hikone.

In exchange, also nine girls and five boys traveled from Hikone to the United States. They got to travel around in a yellow school bus. “They were excited to go on a yellow school bus to travel,” Ferguson said. “They wanted to ride the bus again.”

Students from Hikone and Ann Arbor are very similar. In Ferguson’s opinion, they both are curious, excited, independent, mature, gracious and outstanding.

These 14 students were picked to trav-

FEATURE el 6,508 miles to experience the culture and language of another country, halfway around the world. They were timid about the language that is not their first and their confidence grew just by speaking it. It also grew by just knowing that they had ventured out into the world.

“Every trip is different,” Ferguson said.

“Purposes are very different, but it affects people in roughly the same way.”

In order to participate, students filled out an application and completed a video interview. They also had to commit to fundraising, the cost and the classes, which took place every Wednesday from June to November. Then, a committee assembles to review these middle school candidates. “We look for students who express independence, maturity, curiosity,” Ferguson said. “We look for representatives of the district.”

Ann Arbor has sister school relationships between its schools and the schools in Hikone. Two students are chosen from each middle school, therefore, two students will visit each school.

The most recent delegation traveled to Japan from Nov. 6 through Nov. 18, 2016. Among the 14 middle schoolers was 14-year-old Loey Jones-Perpich. She wanted to travel with the program since she loves to travel and she feels it’s more interactive to travel with an exchange program than with her family.

“Japan in the back of my mind has always intrigued me and it just seemed like an awesome opportunity,” Jones-Perpich said.

“There was this whole application process where you had to fill out all this personal information,” Jones-Perpich said.

“I had to write a paragraph about my hobbies and a paragraph about my experience from people from other cultures.

I had to write a full 500 word essay about why I was a good candidate for the program and I had to get two teacher recommendations.”

After all that, she was interviewed by Ferguson. She asked the finalists a couple questions and filmed them in order to show other people on the board.

Once Jones-Perpich was officially selected, she had to go to classes over the summer to learn the language and the culture of Japan.

“There was a lot of mental preparation,” Jones-Perpich said. “I had to fundraise $600 and we folded 1000 paper cranes. We learned about things not to do and we prepared a musical presentation that we did while we were in Hikone.”

“We’re not allowed to ask to go to Tokyo because it’s too expensive and too far away,” Jones-Perpich said. “If you imagine Tokyo as New York, Osaka is like Chicago.” Jones-Perpich’s host family took her to Osaka during one of their personal days to experience a big Japanese city.

The delegations usually have set schedules when they travel. They are in Hikone with host families for a week and then have a week of group traveling time. During that travel time, they take trains to Hiroshima, to an island off of Hiroshima called Miyajima which has a huge famous shrine and to Kyoto, another big city in Japan.

One thing that Jones-Perpich learned from the program was that people in Japanese schools try harder. “There’s a test to get into high school so everyone wants to be there,” Jones-Perpich said.

“I go to Skyline and 600 of the 1600 students don’t want to be there and don’t try and every single student at that middle school in Japan wanted to be there and they tried their best.”

Among the 14 students in the 2014 delegation to Hikone was then 14-yearold Emma Cooper. She heard about the program through her school when they were looking for extra host families.

Cooper, now a junior at Skyline, remembers feeling very honored to be selected from the large group of finalists. “There were seven or eight people applying from my school and only two get selected so I felt really lucky,” Cooper said.

Cooper had to take language and culture classes in the summer leading up to the trip. She learned how to speak Japanese and other interesting facts about their culture. Her favorite thing that they did in preparation was going to a sushi restaurant and trying an eight-course fully extensive Japanese meal.

“It was so good, I ate so much,” Cooper said. “We tried all these different things like beef tongue, which I never actually encountered in Japan, but I got to try it.”

Packing was one of the hardest parts for Cooper, since they had to bring gifts for their host families, pack enough stuff to live for two weeks and still keep enough room in that suitcase to be able to take stuff home.

“Thinking about what I needed to bring and not bring was really import-

TOP LEFT: A Hikone Castle tour guide holds a drawing of the old view outside the Hikone Castle comparing it to the current landscape of the town below.

TOP RIGHT: Japanese letters on the window of a train that read “sayonara” in English as the 2016 Ambassadors leave Nagoya on the way to the airport.

MIDDLE RIGHT: The only building at Hiroshima that wasn’t completely destroyed on Aug. 6, 1945 by an American B-29 bomber.

BOTTOM LEFT: The three story Hikone Castle in its original hill-side location.

BOTTOM RIGHT: A view of restaurants, businesses and shops along the Dōtonbori River running through Osaka.

NEXT PAGE: The Miyajima world heritage shrine, taken on Miyajima Island in Hiroshima.

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FEATURE ant,” Cooper said. “We had to wear uniforms at the schools [and] our host students brought us our own outfits.”

The delegation also had to make sure that everyone had their passports, birth certificates and all of their legal documents ready. They had to exchange currency, making sure they had enough Yen for the trip.

“My parents set up a credit card at that time for emergencies, but that wasn’t required,” Cooper said.

Cooper feels that the time spent at Hiroshima was one of the the biggest points of the trip. “We really got to reflect on how our being able to come to Japan is promoting the whole idea of peace between our countries and that was a really touching moment for everyone,” Cooper said. “It really put everything in perspective.”

The most important lesson Cooper learned was the friendship she found with her host sister. “Friendship between two places that were once in conflict was so unifying,” Cooper said. “It highlighted the importance of being friends with people and how those relationships can last forever.” She became very close with her host sister and still emails her once or twice a week. Even though Cooper hasn’t been to Japan since the trip two years ago, the two families still exchange Christmas cards.

Communication was hard for both Jones-Perpich and Cooper. Jones-Perpich talked to her host family through very simple English. She used google translate a lot and writing the words down seemed to make it easier for her

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family to understand what she was trying to say.

“I had to really condense the things that I wanted to say and sometimes I just gave up on trying to say something because they just didn’t get it,” Jones Perpich said.

Cooper knew a little more Japanese when she traveled to Hikone. She communicated with her host family through Japanese when she could, and English to fill in the blanks. In Japan, the students start studying English when they’re very young, so her exchange student’s English was decent. When Cooper’s Japanese wouldn’t make it she knew she could communicate with them in English.

This made Cooper think about how Americans don’t really focus on other people’s cultures in their own schools.

She feels that American schools should focus a lot more on foreign language. “[America] is not superior to anyone so our language shouldn’t be,” Cooper said. “It’s hard for exchange students just being in a place where everyone expects you to understand everything but you don’t.”

Cooper’s favorite part of her trip was traveling with the delegation. In Kyoto, the delegation went to the restaurant at the top of the Kyoto tower.

“We got to look out over the whole city and it just hit me that this is an amazing place with amazing people,” Cooper said.

Jones-Perpich also really enjoyed traveling with the group. Time with the host families took up most of the trip, but Jones-Perpich loved traveling with her

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delegation.

“My two favorite days were the days we went to Miyajima and Kyoto,” Jones-Perpich said. “In Miyajima, we took a ferry out to the island and we just had a couple hours and we got to explore. In Kyoto, we [took] a bus tour and then [went to a] temple where they have 15 rocks in a rock garden and you sit and you look at the rocks. [People in Japan] believe that the rocks are holy.”

“It was scary but it was probably my favorite time from [a] high school related activity,” Cooper said. To her, it was special simply being there with all of her friends and the people that she met while in Hikone. “All of them were just amazing people that I never would’ve met if I hadn’t done this,” Cooper said.

“I grew as a person, especially going to Hiroshima,” Jones-Perpich said. “I saw the world from a different set of eyes.”

After the trip, Jones-Perpich didn’t know how to wrap her mind around the fact that the program wasn’t happening anymore. “It was back to reality and that kind of sucked. I lived Friday, Nov. 18 twice,” Jones-Perpich said. This refers to the 14 hour time difference between Hikone and Ann Arbor.

“The exchange program is mainly administered through the school district, but the city does provide a certain amount of moral support,” said Christopher Taylor, Mayor of Ann Arbor. Taylor is both the mayor and a parent of two kids in the Ann Arbor public schools. He has been involved with the program since 2012 when he was on the city council. In 2016, he was asked

FEATURE to welcome the students and teachers from Hikone at Tappan Middle School.

“My role as mayor was to give a short welcome speech that was suitable for translation and then to personally greet them,” Taylor said.

Taylor has never been to Hikone himself, but he has traveled out of the United States to Canada and Europe. He wishes to someday travel to Asia, perhaps with a program such as this. “It makes sense to go in capacity of the mayor with a formal exchange program,” Taylor said. “It would certainly provide a structure for me to be [in Hikone].” Going through a program opens up new opportunities for individuals to experience a culture.

Taylor believes the students get four major things out of the program. First, they learn about the process of applying for something. Second, those who are fortunate enough to be selected will learn about long term preparation for a goal. Third, students get to learn another country’s culture and language. And fourth, they have the opportunity to see a culture that is so different from their own in a very personal and extended way. Taylor sees values in our community of openness, engagement, welcoming and interest of learning about others languages and cultures.

Taylor’s daughter is friends with Jones-Perpich. He had been to Jones-Perpich’s home to pick up his daughter and had the opportunity to meet Mizuka, her exchange student. As a parent, Taylor talked to his kids about whether it was something they were interested in or not. “Even if your child didn’t par-

ticipate, you get the opportunity to raise the question with you child,” Taylor said.

“They get a sense of options that they have and if it’s something they want to pursue or not.”

In 2014, a two hour documentary named “The American Ambassadors to Japan” was released. It was produced

by Tim Negae. It featured the group of 2012’s ambassadors who traveled to Japan and the students from Hikone who came to the United States. The 12 students that were chosen to be ambassadors were Chad Aaronson, Nathan Campain, Matthew Ferraro, Sophia Klein, Marrisa Modell, Vanessa Noble, Miranda Reed Twiss, Kenneth Simpson, Mia Sowder, Chris Schweitzer, Jane Taylor and Hannah Zonnevylle. The students from Hikone were left unnamed.

In the documentary, it shows the classes these ambassadors had to go through so as to learn new language and culture.

It also shows what it was like in 2012 to have an exchange student stay in your home and go to school with you. Later on, it displays the ambassadors traveling to Hikone and visiting Hiroshima.

In the movie, they exit a train station and run into some vending machines, receiving a variety of reactions that showed how these ambassadors reacted to things they have never seen before.

“They were very colorful,” J. Taylor said.

“It was the first thing we saw,” Schweitzer said.

“You never see a vending machine that serves coffee and alcohol before,” Simpson said.

Near the end of the movie, you can see the emotion in these students having to say goodbye to the person they have lived with for one week. There was crying, hugging and picture taking. They also had a ceremony in which they gave speeches in Japanese to the host families and Hikone representatives. They performed a song in English that well represented American culture, followed by a song in Japanese to show what they had learned.

The Hikone Exchange Program wouldn’t be possible without the support from the Mayor’s Office, the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, the University of Michigan Language Resource Center, the Japan Business Society of Detroit and a number of local businesses in Ann Arbor. These local businesses help with providing gifts for those in Hikone. “Gift-giving is an enormous part of [Japan’s] culture,” Ferguson said. “[There are only] a number of things that could fit inside a suitcase and travel with them to gift them when we got there.”

Other than Hikone, Ann Arbor has five other sister cities including Tubingen, Germany; Belize City, British Honduras; Peterborough, Ontario; Juigalpa, Nicaragua; Remedios, Cuba and Dakar, Senegal. These sister city relationships are established by friendship and peace.

“It is much bigger than the fourteen kids,” Ferguson said.

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A&E

LUKE CAGE

STRANGER THINGS With arguably the most Halloween costumes based on this show, Stranger Things has won the hearts of many students of CHS, including junior Maddie Timmer. “It’s cool that a big part of the cast are kids, and they’re actually really good actors.” Timmer said, whose favorite character on the show is Dustin. “I recommend this show to people our age and young adults.”

‘Luke Cage’ is an action superhero show based in Harlem, New York. “I like the way Marvel can be more realistic with the action and just everyday life,” Community assistant Kevin Davis said. “They get a little more gritty.”

WATCH WHAT TO

GILMORE GIRLS “It fills me with this warm feeling.” sophomore Audrey Jeffords said about ‘Gilmore Girls,’ which she gives four and a half stars out of five. “It’s about a mom and her daughter who live in a perfect world and they’re perfect. But not really. They have problems.” Netflix also offers a reboot series called ‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.’

NETFLIX ON

BY:GINA LIU AND FRANCISCO FIORI PHOTOS COURTESY: NETFLIX

PARKS AND RECREATION Originally aired on NBC, ‘Parks and Recreation’ has become a favorite for sophomore Aviva Satz-Kojis to watch on Netflix.

Parks and Recreation stars great actresses like Amy Poehler. “It is so good. It is so funny. I love the characters,” Satz-Kojis said. “Leslie reminds me of me a little bit.”

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AJIN: DEMI HUMAN FIREFLY ‘Firefly’ is a sci-fi show that has an ensemble cast featuring Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres. “It got cancelled after less than a season, so you don’t figure out what happens to everything.” freshman Lucy Scott said. “I really like how you don’t know how it finishes.”

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‘Ajin: Demi Human’ is an anime that focuses on one boy, Kei Nagai, and how he discovers he is an ‘Ajin’ with regenerative powers. “It’s a very interesting show that has varying characters,” sophomore Francesca Olegario said. “I’d recommend it to people who like thrillers.”

BOOKS THAT CHANGE LIVES

BY SUEPHIE SAAM

BOOK AUTHOR

Ta-Nehisi Coates

REVIEWER

Clarence Collins III

My favorite book is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I actually came across it in Harlem Renaissance class with Matt Johnson, and it probably was the best book I’ve read also within the best circumstances of me reading it. It was just like, I think being in Matt’s class, that being my favorite class. Also I think it wasn’t like your normal narrative book, it was in a format of a letter and it was giving you the modern take of what it’s like to be black in general and so I think that me reading that book and knowing what that’s like it didn’t necessary open my eyes more than they al-

GENRE

American HIstory

ready were, I think it put things in perspective for me that I guess I didn’t think anyone else was going through. So I mean reading Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, it brought things out of me I didn’t think it would.

First of all the language he uses, I think he is an incredible speaker and just writer and author is general. Ta-Nehisi Coates is actually writing on Black Panther now which is a comic series, it’s awesome. I also read a couple of his other books, he’s my favorite author right now. Not only did [the book] make me find my new favorite author but

DATE PUBLISHED 7.14.15

it helped me in a social sense and just being a orator as well and also being a writer. I think it just really grounded me as a speaker and just a person who can talk.

You know? I guess it helped me gather language and how to use words and how to convey a message because I think it has the best message out of any book I’ve ever read. The message was that not everything in this world is okay and that’s okay.

- Clarence Collins III

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FEATURE

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www.chscommunicator.com

1000 WORDS

1000 WORDS

BY GRACE JENSEN PHOTO: SHASHE KING

O

n the first week of summer break, Shashe King and her friends drove up to Paradise, Michigan looking for adventure. King documented her experience through photography.

“I like capturing moments, holding a specific moment, seeing it in a picture and being able to go back to it,” she said.

King and her friends spent their trip at the upper and lower Tahquamenon Falls.

She took this photo at the upper falls, inspired by the mist rising from the water. She enjoyed the beautiful scenery and spending time with her friends.

“I plan to go again,” she said. “My friends and I want to make it a tradition for every single summer at the beginning of the summer to go back and stay there again. And actually camp there this time, because we slept in our car, and we had to pull over on the side of the road. Then we woke up and there was a tow truck coming to pick us up.

We drove off really fast and she forgot to turn on her headlights, so then a cop pulled us over and told us where to go park and sleep. So it was really nice. My friend drove all night, and I woke up to us on the beach.

It was so pretty and so nice.”

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10 UNDER 10

10 UNDER10 10 THINGS YOU CAN GET UNDER 10 DOLLARS MIRA SIMONTON-CHAO

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1. Badger Cheerful Mind Balm - .60 oz Stick, $6.79 from Earthturns.com 2. The Blushed Nudes for $7.49 in store at Target or online. 3. TONYMOLY Panda’s Dream White Hand Cream for $6.75 at Sears (online only), and $9.93 at Walmart 4. EOS lip balm for $3.99 at CVS

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5. Shoot for the Stars Bath Bomb for 6.95 at Lush 6. TONYMOLY I’m Real Sheet Masks, 4 for $10.00 at Urban Outfitters.

7. Cow Desk Fan for $7.77 on Amazon. com 8. Starbucks Peppermint Hot Cocoa from TJ Maxx for $6.99 9. N.W.A Cassette for $1.99 from Urban Outfitters 10. Lord of the Rings Paperback for $8.99 at barnesandnoble.com

PICTURE THIS

PICTURE THIS

recalling influential loved ones through photographs

BY GRACE JENSEN

Abby Bogits highly values her relationship with her mom. Since she was little, she has known her mom will listen to her through good times and bad.

“She always listens to my problems and she gives me advice on everything, and I feel like I can come to her no matter what I have to say. She’s just always there for me, and I can tell that she really cares,” Bogits said.

Staying home and talking is one of Bogits’ favorite things to do with her mom, along with going to museums and traveling. Bogits feels she can speak honestly with her mother about anything, from learning to drive, to problems at school. She remembers one such occasion in elementary school when her mom helped her deal with

bullies.

“When I was in fourth grade, I was having a lot of issues with bullying, and so then my mom helped me to try to stand up to them and then she helped me practice things to say. I would come home in tears every day and she just helped me get through it. She really helped me become a stronger person,” Bogits said.

The mother and daughter are also connected through their Christian faith. Bogits’ mom will sometimes tell her to say a prayer, and Bogits believes these little reminders add up and help her get through the day.

“I think religion for me is more bonding with my family, and I have a relationship with God too, but it’s more being able to talk about that with someone else makes

you feel more comforted and like you have someone behind you, including your parents or whoever you’re linked to through your religion,” she said.

One of Bogits’ favorite memories was on a family vacation, when the roles were switched and she helped her mom through an anxious situation.

“I went to Cedar Point with my mom and my dad and my brother, and we were going on the Maverick, and she’s really afraid of heights, so I just remember trying to calm her down because she was really scared.

And then we got on the Maverick and I was next to her and held her hand, and then we got through and she really liked it. It was just really fun,” she said.

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STAFF EDITORIAL

Trump v. Earth

What a Trump presidency means for our environment—and what we’ll have to do to stop him.

BY THE COMMUNICATOR STAFF

“We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. Please don’t postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.”

On Dec. 6, 2009, President Donald Trump signed a letter to former President Barack Obama containing the statement above, just one day before the U.N.’s Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

On Nov. 6, 2012, President Trump tweeted the statement above, the first in a series of tweets from 2012 to 2014 calling global warming “a very expensive hoax.”

It has taken humans hundreds of years to damage the earth and deplete its resources in the way that we have.

Likewise, it will take many years to return our planet to a stable and healthy condition. Yet while the scientific community is virtually unanimous in stating the reality of climate change, as well as how much effort, legislation and time will be needed to reverse its effects, one of Trump’s most dangerous and destructive traits poses a serious threat to a planet that needs political stability and concrete action: a habit of changing positions drastically and without warning.

In December, President Trump nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.), one of his many potential appointments to spark controversy—and for good reason.

Pruitt has spent much of his career denying the reality of climate change (he acknowledged for the first time on Jan. 18 that human activity played any role in a changing climate) and fighting against the EPA (he has taken part in 14 lawsuits against the agency), yet now he has been placed in charge of it.

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Similarly, Betsy DeVos may be the new Secretary of Education even though she does not believe public schools to be effective and Dr. Ben Carson, long-time neurosurgeon, is officially the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

With so many important departments and agencies being headed by unprecedentedly ignorant people, the future of the United States seems entirely unpredictable.

If President Trump fails to take climate change seriously, the federal government may do very little to address the warming planet. This was only further confirmed in late January when the Trump Administration ordered a media blackout at the E.P.A., essentially censoring the very agency created to protect human health and the environment.

Specifically, the E.P.A. staff were barred from awarding new contracts or grants and prohibitions were placed on social media accounts.

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer spoke out against the contract freeze, saying it should be reversed.

“This decision could have damaging implications for communities across New York state and the country, from delaying testing for lead in schools to restricting efforts to keep drinking water clean to holding up much-needed funding to revitalize toxic brownfield sites,” Schumer said, according to the New York Times.

The most recent development is the suggestion to obliterate the E.P.A., a plan led by the organization’s own possible leader, Scott Pruitt, who is once again doing the exact opposite of his job. Myron Ebell, who led the President’s E.P.A. transition team, recommended the agency’s staff to be reduced by two-thirds. But perhaps the most concerning is that while Pruitt may not have the same dramatic style as Trump, his actions could have effects that last long after this president’s term. After all, in the words of President Trump, “if we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for hu-

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manity and our planet.” Perhaps those irreversible consequences don’t seem quite as pressing to 48-year-old Pruitt and 70-year-old Trump, but from the teenage perspective of The Communicator staff, they are a harsh reality that is not being acknowledged by our highest level of governance.

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order announcing the repeal of Obama’s regulations on carbon dioxide pollution after Pruitt is confirmed. However, neither Pruitt nor the President can make this change by simply signing a piece of paper. Even though many of the promises President Trump has made regarding the environment are anywhere from unrealistic to impossible (especially in regards to his proposed time frames), the country finds itself in the sobering position of having an unpredictable president with the power to destroy the Earth at his fingertips. As our title, Trump v. Earth, references, there are legal roadblocks that will stand in his way, but the damage could very well be irreversible, especially if the E.P.A. is dismantled and/or not allowed to share their findings with the public.

The question of “where do we go from here?” becomes even more difficult to address with a president who has held about every position on every topic. While we might look at his 2009 letter imploring President Obama to protect our environment as a sign of hope that he could change his mind again, we must assume (for now) that Trump’s present stances will be his presidential stances. And if we assume that what he has said more recently is an accurate portrayal of his thoughts, we need to be on guard, working to protect the Earth and inform ourselves on the issues even if the E.P.A. is forbidden from doing so. After all, President Trump seemed to sum up his thoughts on climate change in an interview with Chris Wallace in October 2015: “Environmental protection, what they do is a disgrace,” he said.

EDITORIAL

Slant Eyes and Emma Stone: The Old and New in the Practice of Yellowface How an all-time favorite ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ promotes yellowface and whitewashing.

BY GINA LIU

“Miss Go-right-ly!” screamed the landlord I.Y. Yunioshi in a thick Japanese accent, in the critically acclaimed 1961 movie ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’ “I protest! In 30 seconds, I going to call the police! All the time, a disturbance!

I get no sleep! I got to get my rest! I’m an artist! I going to call vice squad on you!”

The broken English of Mr. Yunioshi provides comic relief to those watching the classic film as he, a smaller man with buck teeth, squinty eyes and round frame glasses, continues to berate the beautiful protagonist Holly Golightly, played by renowned actress and activist Audrey Hepburn.

Mr. Yunioshi was portrayed by Mickey Rooney, an actor of European descent rather than that of his character. His look for the role used makeup and prosthetics to achieve stereotypically smaller East-Asian-looking eyes, crooked teeth and other features that made Rooney seem more East-Asian. This practice is

now characterized as ‘yellowface,’ where non-Asian actors use makeup to portray Asian characters. This, along with the accent, allow Rooney to transform into what can be considered the basic caricature for an East-Asian man.

While ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ has been criticized for its ‘old-fashioned’ casting problems, it still remains a beloved movie that has an 88% ‘Fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

How can this movie be praised? How can such a film be celebrated in 2016 when it blatantly mocks and stereotypes East-Asians?

I thought that yellowface had died out in recent years. However, there are still movies from as recent as 2014 that contain pure yellowface, like ‘Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows.’ which stars well-known American and White actor Robert Downey Jr. using yellowface in a scene. Downey wears a long wispy beard with long braids to go undercover as an East-Asian man during

his investigation.

I add, how is yellowface still happening in current films?

Even with all the times the phrase “I’m sorry you were offended” has been used, to truly heartfelt apologies from directors, producers, casting, actors and actresses, it is so important that the film industry and its audience make change.

The choice that directors, producers and movie-goers can make is to support movies with diversity or that focus on people of color’s stories. There are actors of color looking for jobs and an audience for them. It matters that people are angry. Representation means hope for young children of color, and even adults. Support these films for that child of color. That neighbor of color. Americans of color, because they 100 percent need it.

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EDITORIAL

GRAPHIC: ZOE LUBETKIN

The World Inside Our Phones Modern society and smartphones have become intertwined—and maybe for the worse.

BY SACHA VERLON AND ZOE LUBETKIN

O

n the first floor of Community High School, students sit around a table during their free block. All of them are on their smartphones, looking down at the bright screens as they converse.

Some of them are playing games, a few are scrolling through social media and some are simply holding their phones up to their face as they chat with others.

This isn’t a very rare scene: it can be found among students in American high schools. According to a study done

by Pew Research in 2013, 37 percent of American teenagers own a smartphone, and 94 percent of these teenagers admitted to using their phones during class. Students most commonly use their phones in class to access social media.

Students who own a smartphone tend to have their devices with them constantly. “I never not have my phone with me,” said senior Noah Dean.

Over the past decade, smartphones

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have become increasingly popular and have changed the way people interact with each other.

The impact of this device is especially prevalent among teens. Smartphones have integrated a resourceful and convenient technology into their everyday lives.

Ola Dornoff, a freshman at Community High School, explains their constructive qualities. “When I am doing homework or schoolwork, I can just look stuff up, and I will get a quick answer,” Dornoff said.

They are also an easy way to waste time, distract, and overall limit productivity. Accord-

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ing to a number of studies, the human brain doesn’t finish developing until age 25. This means that teens are especially susceptible to a variety of mental disorders that come with smartphone addiction, including anxiety and depression.

The teenager and the smartphone seem to be tied together. More and more, it is harder to find a teenager without their sidekick. Many regard this relationship as negative. Some teens even admit that it doesn’t impact them in good way—the cons are realized. But it’s hard to address the smartphone epidemic: this problem is widespread. If it’s not someone near you, it’s definitely you.

LOSING FOCUS ABOVE: The graphic shows how phones our ‘weighing us down’

Students admit to using their smartphones to procrastinate schoolwork and to take a break from a stressful day.

Quinn Cleaveland, a senior at Community High School, explained how his smartphone takes away from his pro-

EDITORIAL

ductivity. phone goes away,” Kiley said. “I am not regular off-line self, is created to com“It affects me negatively because it on my phone in front of my kids... That pete in a game that is very hard to win. distracts me a lot,” Cleaveland said. “If is not something I want to encourage in When one is constantly comparing to I’m trying to do homework in my ILC, them.” other users’ profiles that aren’t accurate or if I hear it in class and I feel it vito their life, it can lead to self esteem isbrate, I’ll take a look at it and see who FOLLOWING THE TREND sues. If all one sees of someone is their texted me. I could probably stand to put OF FOLLOWING social media, they will think that is how it down and maybe focus a little more.”

With more and more teens having that person is. It is hard to win when Courtney Kiley, a teacher at Commusmartphones, social media is more one compares oneself, and all their nity High School, completely detests popular. These platforms are available flaws, to a perfectly cultivated personalsmartphones and everything about as apps, almost always free, and always ity that they know nothing more about them. This is her ninth year teaching at accessible. Staying connected is one of than what is currently posted on this Community, and she said she has seen the reasons social media has so much personality’s profile. a negative impact towards productivity appeal, and with many more people Kiley explained how she had read with students. having smartphones, it’s almost too easy about a study chronicling the change “I think just ability between teens ten to pay attention has years ago and togone down,” Kiley day, differences in said. “It seems like part due to social “It’s just distracting in a world that is already some kids physicalmedia. ly cannot separate “[Teens] have a distracting.” themselves from lot more emotional their phones, which problems because is disturbing to me.” of these false relaKiley also believes tionships you make that the presence with other people of smartphones amongst students has to stay updated. on the internet,” Kiley said. “That’s not greatly affected how students interThis constant connection can appear a real friendship. Like how many likes act with each other. “I walk down the to be a good thing, but in reality this you get and having that ‘validation’. hallway and there is an entire table full connection can become excessive. As That’s not real life.” of kids, all on their phones, not talking well, certain apps can place emphasis Social media may not be real life, but to each other,” Kiley said. “In my foon superficial things. Instagram, with it is still a prominent aspects of teens’ rum…. instead of sitting down and its appeal being almost all visual, is one lives. Whether or not this aspect imbeing like ‘Hey! How is your day goexample. pacts teens lives in a good way or not is ing?’ kids immediately retreat to being “[Social media] puts emphasis on the still unknown. on their phones. So you’re losing social wrong things, like how you look,” Kiley “I like it, but I think it’s not a posiskills.” said. “You’re not having real conversative impact because it takes up a lot of Smartphones in schools have their tions with people.” my time that I could be using for other uses. “[Phones are] very beneficial to Social media limits productivity as things,” eighth grader Marria Samuel, an extent,” said senior Isaiah Crisovan. well. “I talk to my friends a lot on soweighs in. “And personally, it kind of “You can use it for a lot of good things, cial media, and it takes away from my makes me feel bad.” but you can also use it for a lot things school work,” said freshman Ola DornThe pull to be connected - due in part that can impact you negatively.” off. “If I have it next to me and someto the accessibility of social media - has They can be helpful, yes. But is this body texts me, then I will text them become a part of teens’ everyday life. worth the constant distraction, or the back and stop what I’m doing.”

Is the time spent on social media platlack of productivity?

The nature of social media is to share forms worth it?

According to James Roberts of Baylor about one’s life, and to stay connected Kiley doesn’t think so: “It is just disUniversity, smartphones pose a real risk and updated to what others are doing. tracting in a world that is already disto students. Roberts is the lead writer But it is easy to fall into the pattern of tracting.” of an article on smartphone usage titled embellishing what is shared. It is hard Social media, while being easy, conve“The Invisible Addiction: Cellphone to not compare one’s life to what others nient, and fun, can very quickly become Addiction and Activities among Male share about theirs on social media, and excessive. The ease of connection can and Female College Students.” Roberts often, the former comes up lacking. To lead to anxiety when not connected. thinks that smartphones can be an esmodify content to make it seem more This is true for phone usage as well, escape mechanism from their classrooms, interesting before posting is easy and pecially with teens. When phones are so and are also used to dodge awkward so- convenient: there is a multitude of apps accessible, it becomes easy to overuse cial situations. and filters to help, and validation and them.

This behavior amongst teens is growlikes are just one click away. ing in part because adults are finding “I think you make your life seem TEMPTATION TO TEXT: CELL PHONE it more acceptable for teenagers to interesting… I think the only reason ADDICTION frequently be on their phones. A study people actually post on Instagram is to The rise of smartphones have condone by University of Michigan stumake what they’re doing seem intersequently given rise to smartphone addents show that people find it more apesting to other people, and to make diction, which has increasingly become propriate for kids and teenagers to use themself feel cool, even if they don’t a problem amongst students. Although their smartphones at the dinner table realize they’re doing it,” explained Sierra some would say that smartphones are than adults.

Lubetkin, an eighth grader at Ann Arthe best things that have come about in Kiley, the anti-smartphone activist, bor Open. the 21st century, they have become intetries not to fall into this demographThis aspect isn’t healthy: an online grated into people’s everyday lives—and ic. “When I come into my house my persona, usually different from one’s maybe too much so. february

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EDITORIAL Kiley has already seen effects of cell phone addiction in her classroom. She said her students are less willing to work as hard to engage in learning thanks to smartphones. “[Students] are so used to things coming immediately,” Kiley said. “Information is [now more] immediate. You don’t have to look for things very hard and so I see a lot of… less resilience.

More giving up, like if I don’t get this then it’s ‘stupid’ and I’m not going to do it, instead of persevering and really like... going down to the library and finding information from books.”

Kiley makes a great point. Having all the information at your fingertips can be a good thing, but this means people don’t have to work as hard to find information. Why would you drive to a local library when all you have to do is pull out your phone and type something into a search engine? This sort of logic can be applied to a variety of different things. Why would you need to hang out with friends when you can just call and text them? Why would you ever need to go out to shop when you can just shop online? The list goes on.

Another symptom of smartphone addiction is experiencing ‘phantom vibration syndrome’, which is when one feels their phone vibrate when in actuality it hasn’t. This shows that phones have already altered how people’s brain works. According to a study conducted

by Dr. Robert Rosenberg, a philosopher at Georgia Institute of Technology, nine out of 10 people suffer from this syndrome.

Some people have become so addicted to their smartphone that they are scared to be without it. This fear, called

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nomophobia, is now considered an anxiety disorder by doctors. According to a study conducted by a professor at Baylor University, 60 percent of students admit to being addicted to their smartphones.

A study conducted of 10 students at Community High School revealed that students were on their phones for an average three hours 47 minutes per day. Students surveyed did not see their results as much of a surprise. Most consciously knew they were on their phones frequently.

Kiley finds this very unsettling. “I think some kids have a really strong addiction: wonderful, great kids cannot put their phones away,” Kiley said.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

Every year, kids seem to be acquiring smartphones at a younger and younger age. Many parents give their kids an iPad or let them use their own smartphones to play games and to keep them occupied in certain situations. These kids are getting introduced to phones far earlier in life than the current high school generation did, which may be harmful for them later in life. These kids will most likely get diagnosed with smartphone addiction at an early age, which will negatively impact their brain growth for their later years to come.

It’s undeniable: smartphones are not going to go away. They are ingrained in our lives and way of life. The question of the matter is, what can people do to make smartphone usage more of a positive than a negative?

First step, of course, is to question whether or not pulling out a smartphone is really necessary in the cur-

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rent situation. Be conscious of what is urging you to check your phone. Are you bored? Anxious? And remember, just because someone texts you doesn’t mean you need to check that message right away.

Secondly, try to only use your smartphone when it is necessary, not just when it is convenient. Instead of pulling out your phone to look up the definition of a word, find a real dictionary and look it up. Keep your brain active instead of having your smartphone do the work for you.

Lastly, to help future generations, don’t give toddlers smartphones to entertain them. Have them engage in other activities that are more active and learning based. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but in the long run you are setting them up for an unhealthy habit. If you are trying to calm them down at a social gathering like a restaurant, refrain from giving them your smartphone and try to calm them down in other manners.

Smartphones can be great. They are undeniably convenient. There are many varied uses, and they are accessible at times where other methods of technology are not.

It is when mindless use occurs that there is a problem. This happens when one uses their smartphone at almost all times of the day: when they wake up, when they are brushing their teeth, while they are doing homework, and so on. It happens when one does not realize how much time is being wasted. After too much of this, a habit forms and this is very hard to break.

EDITORIAL

College Out-Of-State

A surge of students are straying from their home states in pursuit of higher education.

J

BY KASEY NEFF

ohn Hocking, 19, opened the door with a mile-wide smile.

He didn’t feel the need to knock; he had been to this house a thousand times. His stubble had turned into a full beard over the last four months and the air in Michigan was colder than he remembered.

Hocking had just finished his first trimester of college, a giant and new step in his life. It was winter break for most students in the United States, a time for holidays and reunions. For about two weeks college and university students often return to their hometowns to reunite with friends and family. For Hocking, it felt like a breath of fresh air from the chaos of college.

Hocking grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After completing his senior year at Community High School, he chose to continue his education and attend college at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Going 2,000 miles away changed his life after living in one place for the first 18 years of his life.

The biggest motivation Hocking had for making his journey into an unfamiliar place was to try something new, to put himself out there.

“I figured if I’m going to go [to college] I might as well go on a big adventure,” Hocking said.

Hocking believes that there are many exciting things that come with any decision in life. Whether or not to pursue a higher education is arguably one of the biggest decisions with which someone can be faced. Deciding to attend college/university comes with many more smaller decisions, like where to go. If the distance from home, family and friends is an issue, then going to a college in-state is most likely ideal. It often helps with the total costs of tuition.

The Department of Education’s data suggests that in the last decade there has been a notable increase in students traveling across the country and globe for college. It can especially be seen among incoming freshmen and in public colleges and universities. Since 1986 twice as many young adults chose to go out-of-state. What is prompting this migration of students?

Hocking’s motivation is like that of many others; he seeks an adventure and independence in a place he has never been. When faced with the question of where, he was also faced with the ques-

LEFT: This graph represents the migration of students leaving their home states for college. The darker the blue the more students chose to leave that state.

tion of how far.

“If I wasn’t going to stay in my hometown I might as well just go really far,” Hocking said. He saw the issue of money as small compared to an education in a place perfect for him.

Although the tuition did not turn away Hocking, it can be substantial enough to cause people to stay close to home. In 2014, over half of the freshman students accepted into the University of Michigan were from out-ofstate. Out of the almost 44,000 students enrolled in graduate and undergraduate classes, 21,500 were from Michigan.

California, New York, and New Jersey had the most migrants. There was also a wide margin of students coming from across the world.

The rise of acceptance rate for outof-state students is not out of the ordinary. Colleges and universities from across the United States have all been encouraging students to apply from across state lines and even country borders. There is a lot of benefits that the they can than receive, especially the benefit of more money. According to the admissions website of the University of Michigan, a student born in Michigan has an average freshman to sophomore tuition of $14,000-$16,000.

The total cost includes room and board, and depends on whether the student is an undergraduate or graduate. It is also without aid and scholarships. Students that are born out-of-state can have a significantly higher tuition no matter their graduate status. The tuition is between $45,000 and $49,000 total.

For Hocking’s family, money was not everything, it was well worth the price.

In some cases seeking education in distant places just makes sense. It opens more opportunities for certain people than staying in the same place.

Ella Mosher, currently a senior at CHS, is interested in leaving her hometown of Ann Arbor. She has nothing against staying in-state, she just sees more benefits in putting herself in a place with new people, sights and culture.

“I have Ann Arbor as a community,” Mosher said. “But to stay right here isn’t enough change for me. I want to make new relationships and find new spaces that can be a new community.”

Looking for new experiences is not the only motivator for students; sometimes their home state does not have the same educational programs that they want to pursue. Many colleges and universities only offer certain curriculums. Others may offer the curriculum a student could want, but do not focus as much on it as the student may desire.

An education should be taken seriously, so when someone knows definitely what profession they want, it makes sense that they go to a school that offers the best education for that profession.

There are many factors that can pull students across the country. All should be taken into account when it is time to make the decision of a higher education. While rates have been going up, this should not be discouraging. It should be taken as good news. Universities and colleges can then have more funding and diversity, while students can have easier transitions into new places. february

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EDITORIAL

FACTS FROM THE SPORTS CONCUSSION INSTITUTE

47%

of athletes (estimated) do not report any symptoms after a concussive blow.

53%

of high school athletes will get a concussion during their high school career.

36%

of athletes at college level have a history of multiple concussion.

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EDITORIAL

WHY CONCUSSIONS CANNOT BE IGNORED After getting a concussion, athletes should not rush to return to play.

D

uring her first hour class of sophomore year, Allie Milot, now a senior at Skyline High School, attempted to focus on the computer screen in front of her before noticing something was seriously wrong; everything was fuzzy. After calling her mom and going to the doctor to take some standard tests to check her reactions and balance, Milot was told she had a concussion. The previous day, Milot was in goal at water polo practice for her winter club season, and an unlucky skip shot off the water from her teammate resulted in the ball ricocheting off the post and hitting Milot on the upper right side of her head. At first she was dizzy and the back of her head hurt, but she quickly shook it off and kept playing.

After being diagnosed with a concussion, everything changed. In order to heal her brain, she had to cut herself off from most light, loud sounds, large groups of people and, of course, screens. She was out of school for nearly two weeks and fell behind in all of her classes, missed Orchestra Night and almost her second trimester finals. She even missed the first week of her high school water polo season. It took her about a month to fully recover and reintroduce herself to the game and everything she had to let up on.

A recent report by Blue Cross Blue Shield outlined that between 2010 and 2015, concussion diagnosis increased by 43 percent in the United States. Moreover, during that same period of time, concussion diagnosis for patients ages 10 to 19 increased by 71 percent. These statistics have drawn attention to a growing problem that affects youth through professional athletes.

It is estimated that nearly 47 percent of athletes report no symptoms after being impacted, according to Sports Concussion Institute. While proper equipment and safe play remain the strongest measures of prevention currently, when impacted, it is important for athletes, especially youth, to take a break from the sport in order to recover and decrease the likelihood of further damage.

Athletes who return to play without fully healing may develop Second Impact Syndrome (SIS), which can be diagnosed if an individual suffers a second concussion before their first is entirely healed. According to BrainandSpinalCord.org, when impacted, the brain cannot properly control automatically within the skull or regulate its cerebral perfusion pressure (blood flow to the brain). “This may lead to cerebral edema (severe

BY MEGAN SYER

swelling of the brain) and possible brain herniation,” according to BrainandSpinalCord.org. “Loss of consciousness after the initial injury followed by secondary brain damage creates ionic fluxes, acute metabolic changes, and cerebral blood flow alteration.” These outcomes, as a result of SIS, can increase the brain’s vulnerability and may raise the risk of death, even if the second impact was not as extreme as the first.

In addition, according to BrainandSpinalCord.org, the majority of cases with SIS occur in young athletes, especially those who are involved in sports including boxing, baseball, football, hockey and skiing. SIS can occur on the same day or weeks following the first concussion if they do not take a break from the sport they play and typically occurs immediately after the second impact and expands rapidly over time. Often, SIS is fatal and death occurs within minutes. Long-term effects for those who do not pass away will most likely be in the same state of those who suffer from severe traumatic brain injuries.

It is important that athletes and coaches take this into account when an individual is first impacted during a sport as the long-term effects can result in further consequences.

One example of a long-term effect that is found in athletes who suffer from multiple concussions is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). According to Brain Injury Research Institute (BIRI), CTE is a degenerative disease that grows in the brain over time due to repetitive traumatic impacts. For athletes, this includes multiple concussive, as well as subconcussive, blows sustained over time, although CTE is a disease that can also affect non-athletes.

CTE is currently considered to have a connection with tau proteins, which play a critical role in having healthy neurons. Tau is a protein that correlates with microtubules and is aligned on the inside of the nerve cell, which stabilizes and regulates it. There are four outlined stages of CTE, according to Dr. Ann McKee, neuropathologist at Boston University School of Medicine. The first stage shows no visible symptoms, but inside the brain, tau proteins begins to form around blood vessels and kill them. During stage two, the tau expands and impacts even more nerve cells towards the frontal lobe, causing the patient to show symptoms such as rage and depression.

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EDITORIAL During the third stage, the tau will travel towards the temporal sections, impacting the amygdala and hippocampus, causing emotion and memory to be harmed. Because these sections are impacted, athletes suffer from confusion and memory loss. In the fourth stage, the tau protein has killed so many nerve cells that the brain will have shrunk to nearly half its original size. By this stage, cognitive function is extremely restricted.

Professional football players, such as those who play in the National Football League (NFL), are perhaps at the largest risk for CTE. According to a recent article by Jason Breslow in Frontline, a study executed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University revealed that out of 165 deceased former professional, semi-professional, college, and high school football players, 135 tested positive for CTE in their brain tissue. In this study, 96 percent of the National Football League (NFL) players examined showed signs of CTE and nearly 80 percent of football players showed signs. Offensive and defensive linemen that collide with one another nearly every game made up 40 percent of those who tested positive for CTE. This detection supports previous work, which indicated that multiple minor head injuries that take place in football present a greater risk than a more substantial collision that could cause a concussion.

However, since diagnosis is not possible yet while alive, the question as to whether researchers are left with a misrepresented population has been raised, as the athletes who donated their brain recognized the symptoms associated with CTE before death. In addition, similar symptoms can be demonstrated in people who have not had repetitive head injuries.

Due to this, researchers are currently working on developing methods to see damage in living brain tissue. New and current research builds upon the idea that people with these continuous collisions to the head are at a higher risk of developing CTE, according to Breslow.

For youth, the risk of getting a concussion is high for those who participate in sports, and the aftermath of acquiring a concussion can be detrimental. A child’s brain has less fat that insulates nerve fibers—myelin—which makes the brain more vulnerable to easier damage. According to

“Concussions and Our Kids” by Robert Cantu, clinical professor of neurosurgery at the Boston University School of Medicine, and Mark Hyman, journalist and author, until a child is nine years or older, the head is substantially larger than the rest of the body and the neck is weaker than an adult’s. This means that when the head is impacted, the neck cannot fully support the head the same way an adult would be able to; this will remain in effect until the child is 14 years of age or older. Another reason why children are at a higher risk is because of old equipment used in group sports or activities and coaches with less experience.

As sport-related concussions grow in prevalence from young athletes to professionals, the best defense is prevention. One example of how this is currently taking place is through The Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

They have developed the HEADS UP program to raise awareness with athletes, coaches, parents and healthcare professionals to protect youth athletes from concussions and other brain injuries. This has helped promote an understanding of how these injuries occur and what can be done when playing the sport to prevent athletes from being harmed.

They provide guidelines on issuing proper equipment to players and publications that focus on what coaches can do to minimize head injuries. In one of their publications on ice hockey, they recommend that coaches discourage helmet-to-helmet contact, body checking, and collisions.

By reinforcing fair and safe play, coaches can minimize the amount of sport-related concussions. The importance of having trained coaches to be able to recognize the common symptoms of a concussion after a player has been impacted is equally important and can decrease the likelihood of SIS and other threatening outcomes in athletes by removing them from the game. Whether it be a practice or the play-offs, the conditions that can result from having a concussion should be taken into account at a higher degree instead of returning to play immediately. By providing a basic knowledge to athletes, coaches and parents, the chance of these conditions, such as SIS and CTE, will hopefully decrease for future athletes.

SIDELINE EVALUATION FOR CONCUSSIONS ACCORDING TO MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY COMMITTEE ON STUDENT HEALTH AND SPORTS MEDICINE

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1

LOOK FOR SYMPTOMS SUCH AS CONFUSION, DIZZINESS, HEADACHES, IRRITABILITY, LOSS OF MEMORY, NAUSEA, SENSITIVITY TO LIGHT AND SLURRED SPEECH.

2

IF THESE SYMPTOMS ARE PRESENT, REMOVE THE ATHELTE FROM THE GAME EVEN IF THEY ARE ACTING NORMAL LATER.

3

BE MINDFUL OF REPORTED CONCERNS BY OTHERS.

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PERSONAL NARRATIVE

In a summer of unknowns, I found a given.

I

BY MAGGIE MIHAYLOVA

t was late evening. My sweater was soaked through - a concoction of sweat and rain. My feet moaned with pain, begging to be released from their rubber confinement. My legs were dirty, covered in dried strawberry gelato and other unknown liquids. My watch taunted with the approaching time: 11:00 p.m.

Curfew.

Yet I wasn’t in discomfort, pain or panic. Sure, I was so tired that I feared I would sleep through my stop, and sure, the AC from the subway chilled my neck, tempting a cold. But I was happy. I felt independent, sitting on the Q train, awaiting my transfer like a seasoned pro. My metrocard lie in my purse, ready for wherever the next swipe would lead. A text remained unread on my lock screen, sent from my mother: “Dad says to take the red train.

Call him so he can help.”

For the first time in my life, I felt in control. Growing up the “baby” of the family, I was a freeloader who coasted through life with the assurance that my brother would always bail me out. In the many years I had visited New York

City, I had never once looked at a subway map in detail. I had always relied on the instructions of my parents; I followed like a lost sheep, content in my dependency.

But it was different this time. I wasn’t forced to lead myself, to be my own compass and provider, rather I flowed into this position as if it were meant for me all along. On the surface, I was a “country girl,” a Midwestern, college town blossom. I thought that no matter where I bloomed, my roots would belong on the lush lawn of the Diag or on the wooden porch swings that line Ann Arbor’s colonial homes. But upon my arrival in New York City, I realized how inaccurate my prediction was. Despite its seeming-

ABOVE: Taken from the top of the Empire State Building while staying at Columbia University.

ly insignificant occupation, the city was inside me. It always had been. My eyes: headlights of a taxi. My arteries: the 1 train. My heart: Grand Central Station.

Within this realization I was able to fully appreciate the hidden gems of the city, the unrelished accents that made me feel so at home here in the concrete streets. The obnoxious screech of metro on tracks became a melodious sound that meant let’s go. The bitter smell of chestnuts from miniscule food carts grew into a nostalgic fragrance. I loved how tired I felt each night; it made me feel accomplished.

I knew that I was just a temporary resident. I was at peace with the fact that I would return to Michigan, return to pickups on pristine soccer fields and cornhole by the Dixboro church. I wasn’t one to claim possession of my New Yorker-ship just because I had experienced a ideal week of life in the city.

However, despite my realism, I knew that I would eventually metamorphosis from the suburbian hopeful to the skyscraper fantasist. Just like the feeling of an impending subway, I felt my urban future approaching the station. february

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EDITORIAL EDITORIAL

Undoing Evolution

Studies show that sitting for extended hours everyday is an unhealthy habit, but alternative efforts can be made to minimize its resulting health problems.

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EDITORIAL

BY MARY DEBONA

W

hile I walked home from school, I checked the Health app on my phone—an app included in those preinstalled on recent iPhones—to see how many steps I had taken that day. Walking to and from school is the only exercise that I get some days, and most of those days I spend more time seated than anything else. The Health app, among other apps on my phone, provides an incentive for me to walk “the long way home,” as I see the number of steps that I take in a day as an attempt at decreasing the time that I spend sitting. In a world where the time that we spend sitting is increasing—between schools, workplaces, in front of screens and commuting—we are constantly facilitating a habit that is negatively impacting our hearts and blood pressure as well as undoing evolution. The more time that we spend sitting is more time spent hurting the work of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who, despite unideal living conditions, had healthier hearts as result of how they spent their lives: on their feet and active.

As observed in a study published in the American Journal of Biology of a current-day hunter-gathering tribe, the Hadza, they discovered that their constant moderate exercise resulted in excellent health. Among the members of the tribe, the majority had healthy cholesterol levels and low blood pressure.

Older members, some in their 70s, were

7.7

NUMBER OF HOURS THAT THE AVERAGE PERSON SPENDS SITTING PER DAY WHILE AWAKE.

able to be as active as much younger members.

This degree of fitness is not extremely difficult to incorporate into an often busy school or work schedule; occasionally getting up from one’s seat and engaging in an activity such as walking, is proven to better health and minimize health issues. Diabetes and heart disease are the most prevalent among the health issues that are often facilitated from repeated extended periods sitting.

Alternatives to typical classroom and office settings of sitting desks, such as standing desks, though they are not as effective as moderate exercise, are more effective than sitting in that they lower the risk of weight gain, heart disease and diabetes and improve energy and productivity. Walking burns many more calories than standing, which is why moderate exercise, such as walking, is a more simple, less expensive and more effective solution to combatting the negative health effects brought with sitting for 6 or more hours.

In extension of the health concerns that are growing in concurrence with the time people spend seated, the probability of experiencing mental health problems including anxiety and depression decreases by at least 40 percent when the amount of time spent exercising increases to at least 30 minutes everyday.

Alternatives to the standard practice of learning from a chair for six or more hours inside of a classroom can

94

PERCENT OF WOMEN WHO SIT FOR MORE THAN SIX HOURS PER DAY ARE MORE LIKELY TO DIE EARLER THAN PHYSICALLY ACTIVE WOMEN WHO SIT LESS THAN 3 HOURS PER DAY.

only help to end the epidemic of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers in the United States. Effective approaches to decrease the number of people who are being diagnosed with these sitting-induced health effects include increasing the amount of time that students spend active during the day, such as the Community High School FOS 1 field trips to Traver Creek, conducting labs in class, five or more minute breaks during block classes, etc.

As I mentioned earlier, standing desks are proven to be effective and are ideal not only in offices, but classrooms too.

They are likely to create a more productive environment, encourage students to move around the room more and to freely exchange ideas with other students. Sitting desks are beneficial, which is why we still have them in schools.

For example, standing desks are not the most ideal for lectures or tests—and can be physically tiring to stand at all day—but they are optimal for science laboratories and other classes where being able to collaborate with one another and move around is beneficial for students.

This is why it is so necessary that we incorporate solutions to lessen the negative effects as the result of this inescapable habit, through reducing the time spent sitting into our lives, which starts in our schools and our offices.

48

50

PERCENT OF MEN WHO SIT FOR MORE THAN SIX HOURS PER DAY ARE MORE LIKELY TO DIE EARLIER THAN MEN WHO STAND.

ADDITIONAL CALORIES ARE BURNED WHILE STANDING AT A DESK RATHER THAN SITTING AT A DESK.

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EDITORIAL

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BY JOSHUA KRAUTH-HARDING

then eighth grade Ella Mosher glanced at the clock during sixth hour and sighed as she sunk back into her seat. 25 more minutes. She redirected her attention to the board, where the infamous Mr. Smith* grunted another misogynistic joke and returned to the tedious lecture he was instructing. He’d just finished another personal rant about his inappropriate home life, and not a face in the room looked amused.

Mosher swung to her left, where a nearby friend was sitting. “Can you believe this guy?” she whispered. “He’s terrible.”

Her friend merely shrugged.

“It is what it is.”

I hate that expression wholeheartedly.

The phrase is an empty excuse. It’s a reason to shut down creative problem solving and it implies defeat. In context, the idiom suggests that it’s the end of the line. That it’s time to stop thinking about it. It’s time to give up.

In Mosher’s case, it was the ideology that no matter how vulgar the notorious teacher got, she was supposed to hunker down and take it.

“I remember it was so frustrating,” Mosher said. “We are raised to think we can make change and affect our surroundings, but at the same time people [say] stuff like ‘it is what it is.’ I don’t want to sit there and let bad things happen when I think there’s a solution!”

The expression is a tautology, or “the saying of the same thing twice.” Other examples of this might be “boys will be boys” or “a man’s gotta do what a man’s

gotta do.” These mottos are redundant, dismissive and are usually used as an empty excuse to shut down a situation.

If looked at literally, the saying is almost nonsensical, or uselessly simple. Its execution in everyday conversation is just as useless: nothing disregards the feelings of another person like “it is what it is.”

What bothers me most, however, is the fact that it’s so unempathetic.

Linda Sapadin, a psychologist and success coach wrote about the notion for a psychology website called Psych Central. “Sure, six million Jews were murdered during World War II,” she wrote.

“It is what it is. There’s nothing you can do about it. Besides, that was 70 years ago.

Tell that to the many organizations who work tirelessly to prevent any genocide from happening today. Tell that to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the mission of which is to have people reflect on their moral responsibilities.”

The point that Sapadin so strongly explains is that there’s such a lack of effort to the saying. It implies that nothing can ever or will ever be done, and it’s a finished topic of conversation, which for a subject such as the Holocaust is far from finished.

As a parting thought, I will admit that one valid use of the phrase is as a coping strategy when nothing can be done about a negative situation or if the situation is one that relays no personal or ethical bonds.

But, the idea behind a phrase can say a lot, and in the business of ‘it is what it is,” in my eyes, the phrase says: “Too bad.”

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EYE SPY

BY ALEC REDDING AND ISABEL RATNER

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from left to right: Adrian Huntley, Iosmani Frometas, Mei Semones, Kaleb Doughten-Priuska, Brynn Stellrecht, Avani Carter, Sam Uribe, Camille Konrad

Can you guess the faces behind these eyes?

HUMANS OF COMMUNITY

humans of community MEET THE FACES OF COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOL

ANDREW BLAKE REYNOLDS BY MIRA SIMONTON-CHAO

“I already knew about all my allergies and I started feeling a lot better.

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Claritin Clear, ha ha ha. No, I used to always procrastinate before I do my work. I still do it quite a bit but I remember one time my dad told me, ‘You’re going to do the work either way, so you might as well do it sooner rather than later,’ and sometimes it helps me do my work, usually not. Usually I still procrastinate, but when I do, that’s what gets me going. [My dad and I] have a good relationship. [We go on] bike rides.

Sometimes we throw a football. Chess. He is better than me at chess. He’s a good biker. We haven’t been on a bike ride in a

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while though. You know, this cold weather, it’s hard. He watches Wheel of Fortune every night and Jeopardy. Usually he falls asleep during Wheel of Fortune, but then he wakes back up for Jeopardy because really, Wheel of Fortune is just the pre-game for Jeopardy. Sometimes I also sit and watch Wheel of Fortune and then Jeopardy. I always call the answers, usually I get them wrong. I go for quantity over quality when I’m calling out the answers, and he’s the other way around.”

CHARLIE KOTILA BY ELLA EDELSTEIN

“[It] makes you able to say what you want to say to people and be able to give your opinion out.

Being a captain for the Huron High School varsity soccer team has taught me many things. I’ve become a better teammate and leader. It made people listen to me and respect what I was saying on the field. I think that being a captain helps make you able to say what you want to say to people and be able to give your opinion out. It is al-

HUMANS OF COMMUNITY

ways better to state your opinion and have other people know and tell other people what you think, so they can decide whether or not what they’re doing is right, or if what you’re doing is right. It definitely helps with any energy you have because you get super tired and it helps you sit down and focus. It definitely makes me happier.”

DYLAN HEARN BY ELLA EDELSTEIN

“After one of the biggest races, spring season for crew, we DFL-ed; we got dead last.

Our coach was pretty rough on us afterwards and we were all feeling pretty devastated. I think in that moment I learned what it meant to lose. Of course the sadness that comes with it, but also looking forward and how to learn from it because the reason why we did lose was a pretty big mistake. I think that was the first time I was like, I should really try to learn from my mistakes more than I have. I try to apply that outlook on more facets of my life. I think after that we all kind of sat down. We were

pretty devastated, so we were like ‘we can’t let this happen again’. We spelled out exactly how we’re not gonna let this happen again. [We decided] we should be bringing our A-game all the time, and if you want to do well, you really have to care more than what’s the bare minimum.”

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SIGHTS & SOUNDS of

COSTA RICA

BY MAGGIE MIHAYLOVA

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1 San Ramon

A small, sleepy town on the outskirts of the much larger San Jose, San Ramon is known for its charming demeanor and rich culture. The town is home to over 10,000 residents. Many residents drive into the capital for work, but others cultivate their land for Costa Rica’s most prosperous exports, such as sugarcane and coffee.

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS

2 Arenal Nat’l Park 3 La Paz Waterfall Arenal National Park is breathtaking, enough said. The Arenal Volcano looms over the lush jungle, seemingly uninhabited, and hot springs fill the few resorts in town. While the volcano is active, it is safe to hike in lower areas. There are spectacular views and interesting attractions, such as a bed of dried volcanic rocks. The volcano also warms the mineral water that flows through the mountain, making for some pretty relaxing (and popular) hot springs.

This waterfall, unfortunately, is not a staple of Costa Rica. It is too unknown, located in a rural area a couple steps off the side of a dirt road. However, waterfalls are a great attraction of the country. They are beautiful and elusive, and you can find one like La Paz in any area of the jungle in Costa Rica.

4 Playa M. Antonio

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At night, the beach of Manuel Antonio is far from peaceful, as this picture suggests.

In fact, one could argue it’s even more lively than in the daytime. People line the sandy shore to party by bonfires with cervezas in their hands and music playing softly through the air. This doesn’t diminish the parties that occur during the day, although when the sun is high, people choose to lounge in the salty warmth.

5 M. Antonio Park This historic, bountiful jungle is home to 109 species of mammals and 184 species of birds. It also attracts over 150,000 visitors yearly, but this is not a surprise. The park is not only biodiverse, but also houses secluded, white-sand beaches. Many tourists take the opportunity to dip into the warm, clear water, making the park not only an educational and natural place, but a fun one, too.

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6 Poás Volcano

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The Poás Volcano is an active volcano in Costa Rica. Its crater doubles as a lake, but not one you can swim in. The “lake” is actually a deadly pool of liquid sulfur. However, there is another lake near the summit: the southern lake. This one is cold and clear, and sits in an inactive zone. The volcano also frequently emits acid rain, which is damaging to the nearby ecosystem and often people who reside near it.

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FASHION

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Community Fashion

BY BRENNAN EICHER PHOTOS: ALEC REDDING

1. Senior Sophie Jones dresses in a cropped sleeveless low shoulder red shirt with simple black tights.

2. Senior Griffin Hall accesorizes a simple white shirt with a white Calvin Klein belt.

He combines colors with a dark maroon coat.

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3. Sophomore Jonah Eichner shows his pride by wearing a Hanukkah sweater that is comfortable and good looking.

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4. Senior Cheyanne Anderson wears a low cut forest green shirt and ripped denim jeans.

5. Junior Kaleb Doughten-Priuska sports athletic adidas joggers with neon green stripes.

FASHION

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The Arborialist Ann Arbor Street Fashion

BY EMILY TSCHIRHART

1 Black parka with a beige flower decorated scarf, rosy sunglasses, patterned leggings and brown work boots.

2 A grey petticoat paired with a cyan scarf, grey beanie, black gloves, black leggings and brown lace-up boots.

3 A tweed coat, white sweater, a grey skirt, green tights & black ankle booties.

4 A suede Wilmington tan jacket, courdoroy pants, a white turtleneck sweater, a white scarf, a light brown ivy cap and brown loafers with black socks.

5 A black parka with patched jeans and a set of yellow and black dog’s winter boots.

6 A beige coat with a red dress, black nylons, and knee high suede auburn boots. A grey beanie with a pink scarf, green army jacket, purple deco dress and booties.

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A&E

Soaring colors, cringy ‘80s music, impromptu dance routines and yet another White love story.

S

BY MIRA SIMONTON-CHAO

mooth jazz, hypnotically annoying ‘80s music and something comparable only to Vulfpeck fills your ears. A blur of swirling color and dancers fly out from all edges of the the screen. The booming music is so loud you can feel every word like an earthquake. Suddenly you’re absorbed into a story of love, ambition and in a way, growing up. And as the real world falls away, “La La Land” begins.

Forced into the theatre by mother, I was unexpecting of the emotional roller coaster that would soon overtake just about everyone in the theatre — including the sobbing couple behind me. Featuring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as two struggling young artists in Los Angeles, CA, “La La Land” follows the couple’s troubled story through failed auditions, huge successes and all time lows.

Though “La La Land” is branded as a modern-age musical, it borders on the edge of fantastical with its kaleidoscope scenes of space. Kaleidoscope, as in you aren’t sure where to look, and are slightly confused as to why they are in space and are therefore lacking a better word to describe it. Taking place at the legendary Griffith Observatory — featured in the pivotal film “Rebel Without a Cause”

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— “La La Land” takes you on a dizzying tour of downtown Los Angeles.

Throughout the film, Stone and Gosling’s characters, Mia and Sebastian, struggle with ambition and love. Their careers often intertwine with their relationship as they motivate each other in their respective professions. Stone, as a struggling actress, makes her way through audition after audition while maintaining her job at a cafe in Hollywood. At the same time, Sebastian, a dreamer at heart, follows a bumpy road towards the grand prize — his own jazz club. A passionate pianist and self proclaimed follower of the “pure, true jazz,” Gosling shines with his deep voice and somewhat surprising piano skills.

“La La Land” hits a tender spot for many musical lovers and is a true lyrical masterpiece that blends genres and features John Legend’s fantastic voice. But in reality, the film really only touches the surface of jazz culture.

“La La Land” lacks diversity and accurate representation of the city of Los Angeles, where 47.5 percent of the city’s population is Hispanic and 10 percent Asian. Los Angeles is a diverse city crawling with culture, and “La La Land” struggles to represent that. With two

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Caucasian main characters, I struggle with the idea represented in the movie of a white male “saving jazz” as Sebastian sees it. With so much of the culture of jazz surrounding around African-American heritage and history, the concept of a white male swooping in to save it was baffling. It felt like whitewashing. As if jazz needed the white male to save it.

Sebastian’s rigid views of jazz go against my own beliefs of the genre: as an ever-ebbing, and changing construct.

Jazz is sacred, it has a past, a present and most importantly a future. Jazz is an ever changing entity. But Sebastian, confronted by his friend Keith saying just about the same thing, is steadfast in his belief of a one and “true” jazz.

“La La Land” could have been amazing. It could have been a groundbreaker changing the whitewash culture of American musicals. But instead, it follows in the same pattern of many before it. Though it has fantastic music, “La La Land” boils down to being yet another romantic comedy starring two beautiful Caucasian actors in a seemingly never ending cycle.

A&E

Mover//Shaker

PHOTO: LIAM RUSH

BY ALEX HUGHES

Experiencing technicolor gloom rock for the bad kids on the block.

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n the midst of a recent boom in guitar driven music, one local band has stood out to me in particular. I saw this band play a show in the spring of 2016 and was blown away by their performance. That band is Detroit’s very own Mover Shaker. Formed in February 2014, the group consists of vocalist and guitarists Jack Parsons and Gabriel Miller along with brothers Ryan and Colin Shea on bass and drums respectively. Mover Shaker released their debut LP, titled “MICHIGANIA” on Dec. 9, 2016.

The band recorded “MICHIGANIA” with Thomas Dobbins at Rax Trax Recording in Chicago. “Thomas was an acquaintance from high school for a few of us,” Miller said. “He left for Full Sail University right after high school and graduated right around when Mover Shaker was looking to record an EP.” The Mentioned EP would go on to become their debut release “The Living Standards ” EP. Over the following year, the band spent their time crafting a solid set of songs and “working awful jobs to save up for weekend trips to Chicago,” says.” Miller said. Mover Shaker worked tirelessly in the studio, as described by Miller. “We spent around 140 hours recording, overall. We would work for 20 hours straight through the night, often times ending our sessions in the early morning.”

The phrase found on the band’s Facebook page, “technicolor gloom rock for the bad kids on the block” hits the nail on the head when describing the wall of sound and emotion that is “MICHI-

GANIA.” Combing crazy Tera Melos like time signatures with desperately delivered vocals, “MICHIGANIA” blew me away from the first track.

Some highlights from the album include tracks such as “No Backyard,” “Quiet Room” and “Low.” “No Backyard” is the most powerful song on the album. Catchy guitars and strong drumming are evenly matched by a solid bass line. The lyrics are vulnerable and are delivered with an incredible amount of passion, “Back Yards and Cigarette Smoke / for loved ones you’ve had to let go / you’ll bend in the Michigan heat / I just wanna sing something sweet.”

“Quiet Room” was one of the first singles released off of the album and is one of the most flawlessly written songs I have heard in a long time. The intro, comprised of a peppy riff, builds perfectly into a dark and powerful chorus “I can’t scream to let you know / I can’t bear to let this go / and all the

ABOVE Left to right: Parsons, Miller, R. Shea, C. Shea

colors in your eyes / I don’t wanna see you cry anymore.”

“Low” is a shoegazers dream. It is very clear there were a few pedals and a hearty dose of vibrato used on this one (not that there aren’t on every other song on the album) giving the guitars a shimmery sound that washes around underneath the vocals. Just as with every other track, the vocals feel true and passionate and the instrumentals are delivered with a strong sense of conviction.

When asked how the band feels the album is being received by the public Miller said, “It’s really hard to gauge how well your own music is doing. All our friends love it, but you can’t really count on your friends to tell you if your music sucks, ya know?” Since the release of “MICHIGANIA” the band has been receiving messages from a number of fans across the country requesting they play shows in their city or telling them how much they and their friends love the album. “I know we’re a relatively small act now, but creating a stable following comes with time,” Miller said. I don’t think they are going to have any trouble cultivating a large following.

“MICHIGANIA” is an incredibly impressive debut release and shows that this Detroit quartet is going places. Miller ends the interview with some words of hope for the band, “We all believe in this record, we believe in this band, and we’re ready to push ourselves to the brink of exhaustion and back to make our mark on music.”

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Q&A

PHOTO: KYNDALL FLOWERS

Do You Know Junot?

An interview with Pulitzer Prize winner and National Book Award finalist Junot Diaz.

BY KYNDALL FLOWERS AND EVA ROSENFELD

You speak often about decolonized love - the search for a love that transcends colonization and patriarchy. Have you ever experienced it personally? I don’t believe in these things - that you can transcend. I think that that’s the way that these structures perpetuate themselves. The best way to keep patriarchy alive is to dream that you can transcend it. I just don’t believe it. I think that this is going to be in our relationship, and for me [if] it’s going to be in our relationship we should try to be honest about it and we should try to manage it and try to reduce it.

Dreams of transcendence - that’s like dreams of transcending life. From what I see that’s not gonna happen. We’re not gonna live forever, life has got its price and I’ve always been someone who’s more inclined to live life by life’s rules, which is to understand that I’m in no position to transcend its most terrible demands. Learning to live with these things is, for me, more hopeful, more practical and more realistic and less fantastic than saying that I can tran70

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scend them. I think it takes a lot more to admit to oneself that these will not be, these ideologies, these social forces that hold us and bind us will not be so easily evaded. I find it much easier to recognize that and work at that level, but to each their own.

Do you think there’s a point in imagining things in a not so negative way or do you find hope in imagining what civilization would be if colonization never happened?

Sure! That’s utopic and there’s value in everything.

There’s value in imagining what if women had never been enslaved by men.

I think these are important fantasies and important sort of “thought ex-

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ABOVE: Diaz slips into Spanish when he asks if there are any Dominicans in the crowd.

periments.” I don’t find any problem with it. There are multiple tactics for all of the things we aspire to, and that’s certainly a legitimate and viable one.

What would you tell someone who’s overwhelmed and hurt by the election results and oppression sects of this country perpetuates? It’s always going to victories and there’s always going to be losses. This is a particularly grievous loss. I think we can’t sugarcoat it, this was a thunderous blow to many of us. But, truth of it is we are really gonna win some and we’re gonna lose some. For me, as someone who did community work, every time I was dealt a huge loss it was always easier, or it worked out better when I got through the gloom sooner [rather] than later. If I became entirely disheartened for a long period of time that’s a self fulfilling prophecy in some ways.

I kept reminding myself that ultimately, we have no idea how any of this is going to end. Therefore, we have to have enormous amount of faith that even when things turn

Q&A incredibly dark that our work really matters… That this is not going to be just futile. That faith has to be clung to. That helps, that helps, but there’s no way to sidestep the agony of defeat. That’s not gonna happen so you better metabolize that as soon as you can. There’s no way to make it any less - this one was like falling out of a ten story building. Every part of you feels broken. You’ve got to metabolize that. If you can do it productively, not blame yourself, not blame your community, not become bitter, not fall back into confusing or demoralizing and demotivating fiction, all the better. If you can cleave towards your friends and to your collectivity and your higher values, all the better. If you can keep working through the darkness, all the better. Not always easy, but I think it’s perhaps worth aspiring to.

Is your activism different than how it was in college in regards to how it is now? I hope so. If we’re supposed to be static our whole lives, that sounds horrible.

Everything has got its time and everything has got its season. Some people have different trajectories for it. I’m looking at 48 years old. I have a lot of friends who I came up with as activists, and you know, you’ve got to try different things. You have to try different things. You don’t have the same time and the same sort of space at 48 that you had when you were 18. That’s not going to happen. You’ve gotta stay to your strengths. I’ve got friends of mine who’ve got kids and, you know, things will get altered.

I’m not sure that it’s only young people are really fired up and older people are like laying down, like I’m laying down right here. I’m not sure that’s actually always the case. I do think that young people’s energy is extraordinary. It’s one of the great gifts of being young, this tremendous creative vitality. [It can’t be] falsified or duplicated or recreated. It’s just an extraordinary gift it gives to many of our movements. But again, we need it all. We need people who are kind of sober minded, we need people who are absolutely splenetic. We need folks who are kind of long and deep thinkers, we need folks who are much more reactive and passionate. I’m about it all.

I always had a wide community when I was at Rutgers. It wasn’t just organizing with college students. There were folks who had been in the game for a really long time and there were folks, who themselves were only like part time activists and there were peo-

ple who that was their entire life. They were like lifestyle activists. I got access to a whole wide range of ways that one does community work. I was actually very cool. Well, not that I was very cool, I was cool with it. I wanted that diversity. When people would try to sell me that there was only one way I’d be like “Yo, you scare me.” I’m not looking for progressive orthodoxy. It’s bad enough I got oppressed by a hegemonic orthodoxy that tells me, “You’ve got to be one way

definitely could point to two or three moments for myself where I feel like my life changed irrevocably.

Would you mind sharing? Why? They’re just so personal. I’m not sure I completely understand them myself. But you know, my brother being diagnosed with cancer, my family spending the rest of my childhood coping with that, that’s certainly one of them. Immigrating to the United States, that’s certainly one of them. I think most people have them.

I think enough people in the United States have them that I don’t always feel terribly alone.

What do you think the work is of a journalist or an artist or anyone who’s trying to make sense of, or contextualize Trump and his presidency is going to be? I don’t know, because we don’t know exactly how horrible this is going to be. We know it’s going to be horrible. The exact extent of the horror? Still not available to us. I think that this is going to challenge our endurance. It’s going to challenge our ethics, it’s going to challenge our imaginaries. There’s no question of that. I use context not to minimalize the challenges that face us, but to remind us that this is connected to a long arch of struggle. Yeah man, we’ve have defeats before. Are they this particular defeat?

Hell no. Hell, no. From Obama to Trump?

That’s some sh**. So, you know, the past can guide us. But we need to experience the trials ourselves, and we will be tested.

I tell my godchildren “Listen, they won last round. They ain’t gonna win the game.

We got this one. It’s gonna take a while, and we’re gonna fight it, but we got it, and you’re safe, I love you, we’re here for you.

No matter what happens, we’re gonna be together.” And there’s very little else that you can ask for in life.

“I do think that young peoples’ energy is extraordinary. It’s one of the great gifts of being young: this tremendous creative vitality.”

and do things one way.” That was tedious and soul breaking enough. I don’t need that from the progressives. I don’t need litmus tests and tests of authenticity and tests like, “Are you woke enough?” That is boring. And the people who are tempting to impose that tend to people who themselves have, I would argue, real questions about these things inside of themselves and they’re externalizing them. They’re sort of discharging them on other people. I saw that coming up, and I was always much more happy with heterogeneous community and the debate between strategies.

I never liked it when one strategy would “win”. I don’t think that’s the way it’s going to work.

Do you think that growth happens as a gradual process or are there moments in your life that changed the way that you look at people? I hope so. There’s all sorts of things. There’s gradual, there’s episodic, there’s invisible, where you don’t even know what’s happening, you don’t even know you’ve changed, and then there’s these inflection points, or these points where something, everything feels like it absolutely alters. I think there’s multiple approaches to the way people evolve and change. And yo, there’s some people who claim that after a certain age they became the person they were and they’ve never changed. I believe that too. It strikes me that all things are possible, but not all of us experience the same thing. I think there’s people who’ve experienced multiple deep shocks, and other people who have not.

Junot Diaz is the author of the critically acclaimed “Drown”; 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”; and National Book award finalist and New York Times bestseller “This Is How You Lose Her.” Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, he is the current fiction editor at Boston Review. Diaz is the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of Barack Obama’s favorite writers.

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edition 3 playlist: currents CAITLIN MAHONEY AND GINA LIU

what to listen to

listen when you’re

Redbone Childish Gambino

after thanking migos for bad and boujee

Fall in Love Slum Village

stubborn about having a crush

Make Me (Cry) Noah Cyrus

sobbing your eyes out

Neighbors J. Cole

walking down your street

Girls On Film Duran Duran

having the best dance party

No Scrubs TLC

curving someone

Genghis Khan Miike Snow

pumping your friends up

Location Khalid

making a missed connection

Constellations Danny!

midnight stargazing

Me, Myself and I Beyonce

ready to DANCE!

Love$ick Mura Masa

trying to get out the feels

No Patience. Abdou

hanging out with that special someone

No More Interiews Big Sean

cutting off your ex

Kids... A Tribe Called Quest

chilling

Gamewinner Vulfpeck

playing basketball with your crush

Lady America Tim Gent (feat. Drisana DeSpain)

marching for your rights

White Ferrari Frank Ocean

given the AUX cord from your parent

Dear No One Tori Kelly

dreaming about love

Pursuit of Happiness (nightmare) Kid Cudi

ambitious and excited for the future

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LISTEN ONLINE! https://open.spotify. com/user/wizardoftherefrigerator/playlist/0lPZi3eSmovZpCjwbmMHDt

ARTIST PROFILE: CHLOE DI BLASSIO

BY WM. HENRY SCHIRMER

Chloe Di Blassio is a sophmore at Community High School. She spends much of her time drawing and painting the human figure as well as the natural world.

What is the story behind this piece? (Above) This piece is a figure drawing from a figure drawing class that I took at the Ann Arbor Art Center a few weeks ago. I just really love figure drawing. I find the human form incredibly fascinating and it’s also really fun to translate what I am seeing in the real world onto a piece of paper.

What made you want to become an artist? I just knew I would really love it and I wanted to be able to translate these emotions of the people and things that I see around me onto a sheet of paper.

It’s something that I’ve always done and that I really enjoy doing.

It’s has now become a very large part of my life.

When did you beome interested in art? I think I have been creating art as long as I can remember; I’ve just always loved to draw and paint and have always just used whatever mediums were avalible.

What motivates you to be an artist? I just really love it. I love that I am able to express myself through it, and I can create constantly.

It’s just a really wonderful feeling.

Where do you draw inspiration for your artwork from? From everything around me - the natural world and humans. Like I mentioned before, I love the human form; it’s really interesting. I love to draw faces because emotions can be expressed through them so much.

What do you hope for the future of your art? I just hope that I can continue to do art, because it is something that I really enjoy and am very passionate about. I hope that I will continue growing and doing art my entire life. I hope that I can continue art in college; I want to go to an art school. I don’t know which one yet, but that’s definitely a goal that I have.

What do you wish you could do better as an artist? I wish I had more time to work on things. I think that I need to make more time in my own life, so that I am able to create bigger and more elaborate works of art, as well as just making more.

What mediums do you tend to work with? I do all sorts of stuff.

Mostly two dimensional things, such as drawing, painting, printmaking. I don’t really do a lot of sculpture otherwise. I would like to do more oil painting. I haven’t done very much at the moment, but I am about to start working on big piece, so that something that I am really excited about.

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RECIPES

Nutella Stuffed Pumpkin Cookies

Perfect for staying warm and cozy on these chilly, winter days.

1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 egg white (no yolk) 1/4 cup pumpkin puree 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour 3/4 tsp baking soda 1/4 tps salt 1 1/2 tps cinnamon 1/4 tps ginger A pinch of nutmeg A pinch of cloves 1 cup chocolate chips 1 jar of nutella (you use about 15 tps), chilled

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INSTRUCTIONS 1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

2) Melt butter in a saucepan and stir until completely melted. This is called browning the butter so your butter should have a brownish color to it. Set the butter aside in a bowl to cool for 5-10 minutes. Mix sugars into the melted butter. Make sure the butter is cool, then add in the egg whites, vanilla and pumpkin puree, mixing well.

3) In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. If you have pumpkin pie spice you can replace all the other spices with 1 and a half teaspoons of that. Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients, stirring consistently.

4) Once everything has mixed successfully, add chocolate chips.

5) Refrigerate dough for an hour or freeze it for 20 minutes. This isn’t necessary, it just makes the dough easier to handle. Roll the

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dough into a small ball and then flatten it out. Place a scoop of nutella into the center and roll the dough around it. If the nutella is chilled it is easier to scoop. Make sure the nutella isn’t seeping out of the dough.

6) Now you can place the dough balls onto a cooking sheet. Make sure to flatten them out slightly, but not enough to squeeze the nutella out. Bake for 12-13 minutes or until they are firm and golden. The nutella will be very hot when you take them out, so make sure to wait at least around 15 minutes before eating.

A special tip from Kasey and Ally: You don’t have to be too strict on the amounts of ingredients. Add your own little flare!

Add as much cinnamon and as many chocolate chips as you want; we like to add lots of both in our cookies!

“In Wisconsin” POEMS AND PROSE

A POEM BY ELLEN STONE

Sunday afternoon, late sun slanting down the highway gassing up to drive, I make a U turn from the station knowing I am wrong.

There are signs telling me but, wanting a quick get away for the long road home.

When the police officer appears at my car window, I mention my daughter’s graduation on campus. My aging mother in the front seat. I do not mention whiteness.

We sit in the road while vehicles swarm, then bend around us, like a creek when a branch blocks its flow, making a way.

Just a warning, he says.

Later, over a rise on the hot asphalt toward Milwaukee, swirls of red lights flash by the side of the expressway.

Four police cars hum there, and one lone man, young, brown skinned, stands hands above his head in a gesture akin to prayer or a plea to the sky while his wrists are shackled. We hurtle past, this image imprinting already into a kind of archetype that follows us, silently, past the city around the lake, and across the fields green with corn. Jesus, left there.

Us, driving by. Summer, just beginning to swelter.

Ellen Stone is a teacher at Community High School. Her poem “In Wisconsin” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016, and was published in The Citron Review. february

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SONG OF THE DAY

“THE LESS I KNOW THE BETTER” TAME IMPALA

‘The Less I Know the Better,’ released by the Australian band Tame Impala in July 2015 off their album ‘Currents,’ follows a young hero and his sad but relatable journey through love and pride.

A psychedelic rock band, Tame Impala was started by Kevin Parker in 2007. The band now consists of five members including Parker, guitarist/synthesist Dominic Simper, bass guitarist/vocalist Cam Avery, guitarist/synthesist/vocalist Jay Watson and drummer/ vocalist Julien Barbagallo. Parker, however, remains the frontman of the band and their main songwriter. The interesting thing about ‘Currents,’ is that it is all autobiographical stories from Parker. In a project so rich with feelings all over the spectrum, Parker does a great job telling stories through synthesizers and rock solid guitar parts.

On ‘The Less I Know the Better,’ the song follows the story of our narrator, who sees their crush with someone named Trevor leaving a party together.

Our main character begs his interest to forget about Trevor, but she tells him to be patient. “She said, ‘It’s not now or never / wait ten years, we’ll be together.’” Our narrator pleads for her to not make him wait forever, but at the end of the song realizes that Trevor is truly who his love wants. “Is this what you want / is this who you are?”

Trevor’s name, has been so wildly popularized through Tame Impala’s song, that the members of the band have created “F*** Trevor” merchandise.

Listen to ‘The Less I Know the Better’ when you’re looking for simplicity and the beauty of a good story, or when love is on your mind.

- Gina Liu

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“OVERLOAD” JOHN LEGEND FT. MIGUEL

John Legend’s love life has changed drastically throughout his music career. From his debut album “Get Lifted”—a brutally honest confession of how often he cheated on his girlfriends—to his highest charting song “All of Me,” a promise to give his everything to one woman forever, romance has always been at the forefront of his music.

On Legend’s fifth and newest album, “Darkness and Light,” he stuck to his guns and relied heavily on love as a topic. People seem to still be intrigued by it though, as the most popular song off the album is actually titled “Love Me Now.” While I have grown slightly bored of the lovey-dovey, Chrissy-Teigen-is-my-only-muse John Legend, he has simply created a masterpiece with “Overload.” Reflecting on how love can be affected by fame, Legend begins the song with a lone guitar and some stunning lyricism.

“Yeah we used to flirt with freedom / ‘Fore everybody knew our name / We became their favorite secret / loved for love and not for fame.”

Legend teamed up with R&B icon Miguel on this track, and the two combine for some fantastic harmonies, particularly on the chorus.

Legend, who broke onto the scene as an R&B singer, has slowly moved into the pop world. Yet on this track, you can feel his internal musicality and respect for the instrumentalists. How many pop songs have trumpet and guitar solos in them, or give more than half of the singing parts to a feature?

But the truth about this song is that there is no fantastic backstory. There is no inspirational tale of its creation, no moral hidden in its words. This song achieves SOTD status for one reason and one reason alone: It is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. Since I can’t do it justice with my vocabulary, have a listen for yourself.

“DREAMING” SMALLPOOLS “Dreaming” by Smallpools is one of the most upbeat songs I know. It starts off with a quiet sound that crescendos into a beat to set the bass of the song. The song has a very electronic sound to it, but the singer’s voice is very real.

The band was founded by Mike Kamerman (guitar, vocals), Sean Scanlon (lead vocals, keyboard, piano), Joe Intile (bass guitar, vocals) and Beau Kuther (drums, vocals). They met and formed Smallpools in Los Angeles, California in 2013, releasing “Dreaming” in May of that year. Their first official, full-length album, “LOVETAP!”, was released in March 2015.

While it is easy to simply get caught up in the vibrant and upbeat music on “Dreaming,” listening to the lyrics reveals a deeper meaning to the song. Although many of the phrases can be interpreted in different ways, lyrics like “We’ve got nowhere to run / they’ve all got loaded guns,” seem to reflect a sense of feeling trapped.

Throughout the song there is a sense of restlessness and desperation in trying to make a place for yourself. It captures the feeling that the world is against you.

However, there is a slower moment that feels different from the overall tone of helplessness. The vivacious beat underneath remains, but the atmosphere of the song changes for a brief section, with lyrics such as “I think the air is finally safe to breathe again,” and “the world is in your palm now.” This middle section is a fleeting moment of acceptance and success, hidden in a song with a more desolate nuance.

Give a listen to “Dreaming” when you feel on top of the world, if you feel forgotten or if you just want to dance.

- Andie Tappenden

- Joel Appel-Kraut

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IN MY ROOM with

CINDY HAIDU-BANKS

BY ELLA EDELSTEIN

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1. “When I teach Native-American studies, one of my favorite books is “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie. I love teaching that book because that book can make you laugh and cry. It is so humorous, but it’s so serious. It teaches you quite a bit about Native culture and the struggle of someone Native holding on to their identity and also moving forward in modern society. I think [it] captures so many aspects of being Native in the modern world. It is one of my favorite books.”

2. “This is Anishinaabe. ‘The creator gave us Mother Earth, Mother Earth gave us life. All we have to do is show love and understand her needs.’ There are the seven grandfathers. It is just filled with symbolism from the people here in Michigan, the Anishinaabe people. It was an Anishinaabe artist who drew it, and so I really like that one.”

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3. “I talk to my students about images and words that are around us that are Native. She is an example of stereotyping native people as being in the past and wearing traditional clothing that would be from the past. She’s actually a little childrens’ chair. I picked her up on the curb, somebody was getting rid of her. I am always looking for ways that Native people are depicted both positive and stereotypical ways, to show that we are surrounded by a lot of images, though we might not know much about the people themselves.”

4. “That is a painting by a friend of mine, Louis Thunderhawk. He is Lakota, native from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. He was a political activist and probably still is. Part of his political activism was going to Big Mountain in Arizona where a coal company was proposing this huge uranium mining project on Navajo land. The Hopi [another Native group] are kind of in the center of Navajo land. The US government portrayed a conflict in the media that the Hopi and the Navajo were fighting each other over their boundary lines, which in fact was not the case.

Louis Thunderhawk went and protested and he lived with this grandma. Her name is Grandma Dio and she does not speak English. [In a documentary about the issue] she is holding a rifle and she’s standing on the line between the Hopi and the Navajo people, not against the Hopi, but against the military that are coming out to tear down the fences between the two groups and also bulldozing hoguns, hauling people out of their houses and arresting people for refusing to leave their homes. He drew this portrait to honor her, as a grandmother and as a political activist. There is a rainbow which is a huge symbol in the Navajo nation. There is also a sand painting which is a ceremony which honors the directions.

It is overlaying her radiating from her heart, because she is doing this sacred work protecting her land and her traditional way.”

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WHERE WAS THE LAST PLACE YOU GOT HURT? At Wide World during a soccer game. It wasn’t like a rough injury or anything like that, but I have this weird thing in my knee, it comes and goes, but if I do a bad movement or something, my knee gives out a little bit and it’ll hurt for a week. I had to stop playing. I had three games that day and I actually hurt it during the first game of the day, but I really wanted to go back in, so I said ‘screw it’ and went back in for the other two games. It was definitely worth it. We won both games.

WHAT WAS THE LAST SPORTING EVENT YOU WENT TO? I went to the Huron/Skyline basketball game. I don’t usually go to basketball or football games but some friends wanted to go so [I went]. They went to triple overtime which was pretty cool. It was pretty fun.

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WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU SAW OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL?

Clarence. We had a rehearsal for a band we’re in called Rosewood.

[We play a] mix between Jazz, neosoul, hip-hop, a mix of all that stuff.

I play saxophone.

WHERE WAS THE LAST PLACE YOU HAD ICE CREAM?

At my house. It was coffee ice cream, that’s the best ice cream to have with tiramisu. So good.

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? The last book I read completely through was Hyperspace: a Space Time Odyssey by Michigan Kaku.

last thing WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TOOK A WALK WITH?

My friend who goes to WiHi, his name is Ben Simón, took a walk with him last weekend. We just talked about how school’s going [and] what we’re going to do for break.

WHAT WAS THE LAST TV SHOW YOU WATCHED? I have to think about that… It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It’s a classic. [My favorite character] is Frank. He’s so funny.

WHAT WAS THE LAST MEAL YOU HAD? I just had lunch, I had a chicken sandwich that I made myself, it was just some leftover chicken we had.

I usually don’t buy food, I usually just have stuff from home, either I make my own lunch or my parents make it.

sam uribe WHERE WAS THE LAST PLACE YOU TRIED ON CLOTHES?

Urban Outfitters. I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular, just my friend wanted to go in.

I saw a shirt that I really liked so I tried it on and I bought it. [I don’t] usually shop there. If I do shop it’s usually online honestly.

WHAT WAS THE LAST CONCERT YOU WENT TO?

I went to see Mac Miller at the Royal Oak venue. Great concert.

The place was packed with people, and the way he performed was very cool. He was very good at contrasting songs, so he’d play a melodic or smooth song, or a heartwarming song. And then he’d switch to a crazy banger or something. It was a fun concert. february february

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ART THROB: COMAI, SENIOR 80 |OLIVIA THE COMMUNICATOR | www.chscommunicator.com