CELEBRATING OUR ONE-HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM Wednesday, November 12, 2014
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I T ’ S A L L A B O U T T H AT B R A S S
ATHLETICS
Schlissel addresses athletics comments University president follows up after his Monday remarks ZACH MOORE/Daily
Dwight Adams from Jazzistry performs at the Michigan League on Tuesday.
Sexual assault survivors share their stories in forum Speak Out event encourages attendees to take action in community
Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center’s 28th Annual Speak Out — one of the largest Speak Outs to date. Speak Out is an annual event aimed to offer survivors of sexual violence a safe place to share their stories. The Speak Out recognized rape, sexual assault, stalking, sexual harassment and intimate partner crimes as “sexual violence.” LSA senior Katelyn Maddock, co-coordinator of SAPAC’s Networking, Publicity, and Activ-
By LINDSEY SCULLEN Daily Staff Reporter
About 300 people filled the Michigan Union’s Rogel Ballroom Tuesday night for the
ism Program, said in her introduction that this definition is not exhaustive. Maddock and her co-coordinator, LSA junior Anna ForringerBeal, also assured attendees that the event was a “strictly confidential space.” Survivors were then given the floor. All was silent at first. In time, a survivor stepped up to the microphone. In the past, University staff and employees attending these
events have been required to report incidents of sexual violence in all situations. However, the University’s Office for Institutional Equity now allows University staff and employees to attend public awareness events and events like Speak Out without having any obligation to report incidents to the University. “Sexual violence isn’t something that’s talked about a lot,” said University alum Lindsay See SAPAC, Page 3A
By GREG GARNO and SAM GRINGLAS Managing Sports Editor and Daily News Editor
After delivering candid comments regarding University athletics at Monday afternoon’s meeting of the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, University President Mark Schlissel spoke with The Michigan Daily by phone Tuesday evening to clarify his statements. Schlissel arranged the interview through the University’s Office of Public Affairs after a story Monday resulted in both praise and criticism of the president’s frank assessment of the University’s Athletic Department. In Tuesday’s interview, he addressed three points: admission standards for athletes, the Athletic Department’s compliance with countable practice hours, and its relationship with English Prof. Anne
Curzan, who serves as faculty liaison to the department. Academic Performance At Monday’s SACUA meeting, Schlissel said, “We admit students who aren’t as qualified, and it’s probably the kids that we admit that can’t honestly, even with lots of help, do the amount of work and the quality of work it takes to make progression from year to year. These past two years have gotten better, but before that, the graduation rates were terrible, with football somewhere in the 50s and 60s when our total six-year rate at the University is somewhere near 90 percent.” Schlissel told the Daily on Tuesday that all students are admitted by the Office of Admissions, not by athletic programs or coaches. He said this process includes a holistic review of an applicant’s qualifications, including grades, test scores and special talents, such as athletic ability. “We don’t admit students that we don’t think can be successful,” he said. “It’s really not See SCHLISSEL, Page 3A
CAMPUS LIFE
BUSINESS
Veterans Day talk highlights LGBTQ history
‘U’ startups win big in statewide competition
Former service members address lack of legal protection, cultural stigma
Aerospace startup focusing on drones won first place
LGBTQ individuals from serving openly in the military — and Bostian-Kentes is the program manager for inclusive leadership education at the University’s Spectrum Center. She is also the co-founder of the Military Partners and Families Coalition, a nonprofit organization that serves LGBTQ soldiers and their families. Though the legislation was officially repealed in 2011, Stone said he and many others thought that DADT would be revoked sooner after President Obama took office. Stone added that the policy required LGBTQ soldiers and their partners to lie on federal documents and to their co-workers. Before the repeal, same-sex partners of those in the military did not the same benefits that spouses in heterosexual relationships received. Stone also recalled the difficulties those in the military See ROTC, Page 3A
By JOEL GOLDSTEIN Daily Staff Reporter
The University’s ROTC program hosted a series of events this week honoring servicemen and women in honor of Veteran’s Day. One such event sought to shed light on what life is like for LGBTQ military members, and Ariana Bostian-Kentes and Brian Stone were invited to the Wolverine Room of the Michigan Union to speak about their experiences. Stone served in the United States Navy when the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was implemented — a law that prohibited discrimination based on sexualorientation but also disallowing
ZACH MOORE/Daily
LSA Dean Andrew Martin talks to LSA students Shavon Edwards, Andrew Loeb and Natasha Dabrowski in the University of Michigan Museum of Art on Tuesday.
LSA Dean Martin hosts discussion with students Cider and donuts set stage for lively conversation By EMMA KERR Daily Staff Reporter
LSA Dean Andrew Martin addressed issues on students’ minds Tuesday night in an
open forum at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Topics ranged from evaluating class requirements to a perceived lack of diversity and gaps in socioeconomic status on campus and within LSA. Martin, who began his term as dean over the summer, posed questions from students and said he hoped to get a sense of the experience students have
had on campus thus far, as well as an understanding of what areas could be better addressed by the college. “I’d like us to be the liberal arts college that has the absolute best and most rigorous programs, that helps students do research often and early and be the college that has the best team in the country to support See DEAN, Page 3A
By HILLARY CRAWFORD Daily Staff Reporter
University startups swept the 2014 Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition last week. Eight University startup teams, composed of student and alumni, submitted applications to the competition, which aims to encourage innovation. Five of the teams — AlertWatch, Cribspot, HeelSecret, SkySpecs, LLC and Turtle Cell — sailed from one round to the next, eventually receiving prizes ranging from $5,000 to $500,000. Kristen Kerecman, Innovate Blue communications manager, said students are independently taking the first steps in turning their fledgling ideas into realities See STARTUP, Page 3A
The Statement Magazine More and more startups are popping up in Detroit. How are they reshaping the city?
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News
2A — Wednesday, November 12, 2014
MONDAY: This Week in History
TUESDAY: Professor Profiles
WEDNESDAY: In Other Ivory Towers
PRESENTATION
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THURSDAY: Alumni Profiles
FRIDAY: Photos of the Week
BORN TO BIKE
Police campaign for new bike lanes
AMANDA ALLEN/Daily
LSA senior Adam Eickmeyer speaks to faculty about his thesis project at the LGBT Faculty Alliance Annual Reception held in Rackham on Tuesday.
ON THE WEB...
A new campaign spearheaded by Michigan State University Police is creating a conversation between students and police about the lack of bike lanes on campus, The State News reported last Sunday. MSU Police Lieutenant Randy Holton emphasized the importance of bikers complying with motorist practices when bike lanes are not available. According to Holton, the most common accidents on campus are those in which a cyclist rides through a crosswalk and makes contact with a vehicle. He also blamed motorists and pedestrians for not paying attention when traveling through campus.
Columbia announces finalists for campus improvement grants
Stanford University contends with bed bugs found in dorms
Three finalists for Barnard College’s Student Government Association Endowment Grants are left with the chance to have their proposals for campus improvement become reality, the Columbia Spectator reported Tuesday. A panel of 10 SGA members will choose the finalists from a varied collection of proposals. The winning idea will receive a $17,000 grant. The three proposals are a request for additional printers and computers, the implementation of a mug-sharing program and the request for a mural of alumni.
Bed bugs found in two Toyon Residence Hall rooms have finally been exterminated, The Stanford Daily reported Sunday. The bed bugs were first discovered in a double room earlier this year and it took month to eliminate them. The students living in the affected dorm room were forced to seek temporary housing, which led to frustration about the lack of communication between the university’s Residential & Dining Enterprises Student Housing and the students involved.
CAMPUS EVENTS & NOTES
michigandaily.com THE FILTER
Zoolander By ZAK WITUS AND CONRAD FOREMAN Two Arts writers investigate cultural tensions in the 2001 comedy film. Though a goofy flick on the surface, “Zoolander” mentions issues facing minorities, people with eating disorders and others.
SPORTS
Six figures By GREG GARNO Interim Athletic Director Jim Hackett was alloted an annual salary of $600,000. He will work for an “indefinite” period, and his termination will likely occur when a new athletic director is appointed. Former Athletic Director Dave Brandon resigned Oct. 30.
The Stray Birds concert
HathiTrust presentation
AdviseStream workshop
WHAT: Folk group Stray Birds will perform, showcasing their songwriting and sound that is described as subtle and graceful. WHO: Michigan Union Ticket Office WHEN: Tonight at 8 p.m. WHERE: The Ark
WHAT: HathiTrust stewards will discuss the future prospects of the HathiTrust Digital Library. WHO: School of Information WHEN: Today from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. WHERE: Rackham Graduate School Amphitheatre
WHAT: This workshop will teach how to create an AdviseStream account, priotize tasks and use the features of the account. WHO: The Career Center WHEN: Today from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. WHERE: The Career Center
Wolves art exhibit
Rosetta lander Swing dance lesson presentation
WHAT: Marcia Polenberg and Ted Ramsay kick off their wolf -themed exhibit. The art showing aims to reveal the intersection of art and the environment. WHO: School of Natural Resources WHEN: Today from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. WHERE: Dana Natural Resource Building
WHAT: This presentation will feature pictures from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft’s attempt to land a probe on a comet, the firstever endeavor of its kind. WHO: College of Engineering WHEN: Today from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. WHERE: Space Research Building, Room 2246
WHAT: Swing Ann Arbor will teach University students how to swing dance. Lessons are free. WHO: Swing Ann Arbor WHEN: Tonight from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. WHERE: Michigan League, Vanderberg Room CORRECTIONS l Please report any error in the Daily to corrections@michigandaily.com.
— CARLY NOAH
THREE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW TODAY
1
Planetary Ventures, a Google subsidiary, signed a $1.16 billion lease agreement for a section of the former Moffett Federal Airfied, ABC News reported Monday. NASA said Planetary Ventures will renovate and use three hangars.
2
This week’s issue of The Statement Magazine looks at startup culture in Detroit, the new goals for the Trotter Multicultural Center and a Personal Statement about fashion and family. >> FOR MORE, SEE STATEMENT, PG. 1B
3
According to Michael McDonald from the University of Florida, voter turnout for last week’s midterm elections was 36.4 percent, MSNBC reported Tuesday. Observers attribute this low turnout rate to the gridlock in Congress.
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BUSINESS STAFF Madeline Lacey University Accounts Manager Ailie Steir Classified Manager Simonne Kapadia Local Accounts Manager Lotus An National Accounts Manager Olivia Jones Production Managers Nolan Loh Special Projects Coordinator Jason Anterasian Finance Manager The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are $110. Winter term (January through April) is $115, yearlong (September through April) is $195. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of The Associated Press and The Associated Collegiate Press.
Social Work profs. lead Prominent socialist immigration discussion figure talks World Wars Panelists say national policy worsened after 9/11
Author discusses what he sees as link between capitalism and imperialism
By JOEL GOLDSTEIN Daily Staff Reporter
The topic of immigration has evolved throughout U.S. history, though never lacking in complexity and contentiousness Social Work Profs. Sherrie Kossoudji and Laura Sanders took up the subject on Tuesday, leading a discussion on U.S. immigration reform. The panel discussion was hosted by the groups Common Sense Action and Social Work Allies for Immigrant Rights. Kossoudji and Sanders, who are activists for immigrants’ rights in the Ann Arbor community, Sudoku Syndication spoke about the “push factors” that motivate people to cross
the borders without documen- that they are treated fairly and tation. within their rights. The group “It’s really important for us to maintains an open phone line learn about the issues that cre- to help people who are facing ate the world around us, espe- abuse, detention or deportation. cially because you don’t get the The group also provides educawhole story on CNN,” said LSA tional programs for immigrants sophomore Daniel Karr, vice to make sure they know their president of policy for Common rights. By EMMA KINERY Sense Action. Sanders said the organization Daily Staff Reporter Sanders said immigration has received more than 526 calls policy took a turn for the worse over the past six years. WICIR On Tuesday night, the Interafter 9/11, following the estab- has also worked with the local national Youth and Students for lishment of the Department of government and sheriff to create Social Equality hosted “ImpeHomeland Security, referring to a more humane environment for rialism and the World Wars of what many say are violent and undocumented immigrants in the Twentieth Century: Hisdehumanizing detention and the community. Sanders emphatorical Lessons and Present deportation tactics enforced sized that new national immiDangers,” a lecture by David on the undocumented immi- gration policies have begun to North, the national chairman grant community. According to favor tough border security as of the Socialist Equality Party national reports, 369,000 depor- opposed to legal pathways. in the United States and the tations took place in 2013. “There’s a real necessity for chairman of the International Sanders is a co-founder of the legal pathways for the millions Editorial Board of the World Washtenaw Interfaith Coali- of people who are here right Socialist Web Site. tion for Immigrant Rights, an now,” Sanders said. The event, which coincidenhttp://www.sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ activist group that represents She also said the immigration tally fell on the anniversary immigrants and works to ensure system that is designed to house of the signing of the armistice permanent residents and the to end World War I, was one non-immigrant visitor system of 11 occurring in universibegan to merge in the ’70s and ties across the United States. ’80s, leading to the complicated North said his goal in particibureaucracy we have today. pating in the lecture series is “If you were to become legal to “contribute to the education HARD citizen today, you probably of students and the explanastarted around 1992, because of tion of the basic principles of how long the waiting lists are,” socialism analysis made by the Kossoudji said. Socialist Equality Party of the At the end of the lecture, Kospolitical situation within the soudji explained the benefits United States and international Americans gain from allowing (countries).” immigrants to enter the country. North focused on how According to Kossoudji, undoche believes capitalism and umented immigrants tend to the imperialist strategies he make less than minimum wage, associated with it lead to the doing jobs that Americans don’t world wars, drawing paralwant to do, which pushes down lels between the strategies prices throughout the economy. and goals of the capitalist
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that have occurred this month that he said show how close we are to an accidental war and how capitalist countries are leaving Russia and China out of trade organizations to create a new and — in his opinion — dangerous world order. North ended his lecture by urging students to learn more about socialist theory, saying he feels that the only way to prevent this World War III is through the collaboration of the working class. The audience mainly consisted of older individuals, with a few students who only voiced their opinions during the question and answer session that followed. Audience members questioned the validity of North’s strong belief in an approaching World War III and his comments that neither Russia nor China is an imperialist nation. Art & Design sophomore Wake Coulter, who had previous interest in learning more about the socialist movement on campus and in World War I’s influence on today’s politics, said he was glad to see there are people who are passionate about history and how it can affect today’s world. “There’s still an active section of even modern society that is very much not forgetting the benefits and also the downsides of the social movements of the early 1900s, and I think that those can have a really profound effect on today’s politics if we took a deeper look at them,” he said.
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world before World War I and those of today, warning of an approaching world war. He started the talk by questioning the crowd of their knowledge of how World War I began and arguing that it was not an accident or a response to an assassination. While the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria triggered the war, North said even at the International Hague Conference of 1907 “it was very well understood that there was an indescribable link between war and capitalism.” “There was a sense, that without the intervention of world groups, political organizing and socialist movements, not only was war possible; it was inevitable,” he said. North went on to say it was and still is important for the international workers’ movement to actively rally against war, and that if war is to break out, the working class and socialists must work to “bring it to a speedy termination.” North argued WWI was instead a “preemptive” war that Germany chose to wage to demonstrate its hegemony. Comparing events such as the contemporary arms races, the recent emergence of one between nations in Asia and the militarization that occurred prior to World War I, North argued that the believed link between capitalism and war is still true today. He pointed to several events
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SAPAC From Page 1A Walker, an attendee. “I think that U of M, having SAPAC as a resource, is really progressive compared to a lot of other universities in that it supports talking about it and having resources for students to go to.” Walker, who currently works at Planned Parenthood, joined SAPAC as a sophomore at the University after hearing about it from a friend she met in class — the same friend who sat next to her Tuesday at the Speak Out. “It was just a really good experience for me,” she said. In addition to providing survivors with a safe place to discuss their
VETERANS From Page 1A experienced after the policy had been reversed, including official requests that service members be sorted according to sexual orientation so LGBTQ individuals wouldn’t be sleeping or bathing next to their heterosexual comrades. He also noted that while there was a lot of anxiety about the logistics of military members outwardly acknowledging their identities, there were almost no questions about the effectiveness of LGBTQ soldiers. “There were all these silly questions being asked, and it wasn’t ‘Are gay people going to be able to shoot guns, are they going to be able to find the enemy, are they going to fight as hard?’ Nobody questioned that,” Stone said. Stone, who graduated from the University of Michigan at Dearborn on the G.I. bill, now writes for The Huffington Post. He focuses on the discrimination and
SCHLISSEL From Page 1A science … where we’re trying to predict future performance of the students in a brand-new environment, but we do the very best to pick students that will be successful here and then provide them with the academic support they need to be successful.” Schlissel said the University previously struggled with promoting strong academic performance for student-athletes, but in recent years, particularly under Michigan Football Coach Brady Hoke, the University has been more proactive with academic success programs. Schlissel said initial performance data indicates the University could expect to see further improvements in the next few years. Hoke, in response, noted his team’s commitment to academics during Tuesday’s weekly Big Ten coaches’ teleconference. “The thing we’re proud of since we’ve been here, is that all 69 of the 69 seniors we’ve had have graduated,” Hoke said. “Our APR (Academic Progress Rate) number is the highest it has ever been. We really look at, in recruiting, we want to get guys who are academically able to succeed and do the work. We want the best football players and the best people.” At Hoke’s 12:08 p.m. slot to speak, he said he had not been in contact with Schlissel since his initial meeting earlier in the year. Schlissel told the Daily on Tuesday that he had apologized to Hoke for his comments on Monday and that he had asked interim
DEAN From Page 1A students transition out of the liberal arts education into wherever they want to go,” Martin said. The audience included a handful of students whose majors were in natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, and students from each field expressed a need for more and better research opportunities. They discussed a lack of such opportunities for students not qualifying for the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program and similar programs that target newer students, as well as a lack of opportunities for students majoring in the humanities. “I think one of the things that we’ve done historically well through a variety of programs is getting students involved in faculty research early and often,” Mar-
News
experiences, Maddock said Speak Out encourages people to take action. “When you come to events like these, you realize that behind every number, behind every statistic, is a person, a person who has a face and a story that’s uniquely theirs,” Forringer-Beal said. Action comes in different forms, she added. It could mean volunteering with SAPAC, organizing events, working at Safe House Center, an organization that offers support to survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, working on public policy or court cases, journaling or producing art that “breaks the silence.” Maddock added that calling out those who joke about assault is also an action to counteract negative influences.
“Every time you challenge those mentalities, you’re changing something,” Maddock said. Rackham student Ali Chetwynd, who donned a pink heart on his shirt, is a volunteer for the Networking, Publicity, and Activism Volunteer Program. He welcomed visitors to the event as a doorman and ensured that survivors sharing their stories were not interrupted by the opening and closing of the door. Chetwynd said Speak Out is a unique SAPAC event. “This is just one of those events where SAPAC itself is essentially silent. This is an event where people, survivors themselves, are able to come and speak out,” he said. “One of the important things about this is that it’s a space dedicated
purely for them to speak, be heard and recognize themselves in other people on campus as well.” In addition to Speak Out, SAPAC has other forums that work to counter sexual violence on campus. They have a dialogue series that gives targeted communities, such as those of people of color and the LGBTQ community, an opportunity to share their stories. “We really just want to get the message across that SAPAC is here, we have resources for people, and we’re here for the students,” Forringer-Beal said. “We’ll do everything we can.” The University’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center staffs a 24/7 crisis line at (734) 9363333.
adversity transgender soldiers still face. For example he said, transgender soldiers are not protected legally and can be fired for identifying as transgender. Stone cited an instance when a transgender corpsman wore clean nail polish on her toes and was brought to a superior, even though the military had no rules regarding toenail polish. “As far as I remember, American military haven’t run into battle barefoot in a very long time,” Stone said. He said he feels no one cares about how transgender soldiers are treated in the military. Because most of the effort by activists was put toward making it so gay and lesbian soldiers could serve openly in the military, Stone said there is very little political will to improve treatment for transgender soldiers. Bostian-Kentes shared a different perspective after entering into a relationship with a member of the armed forces who was deployed to Afghanistan in the early 2000s. She recalled the difficulty she had getting in touch with her partner,
not wanting to arouse suspicion that the two were in a relationship. “Whenever I sent her a picture, I made sure there was a man in it,” Bostian-Kentes said. While her partner was serving, Bostian-Kentes joined anonymous online forums used by other people whose partners were serving in the military. Eventually, the support group was contacted by the Pentagon and asked to come to Washington, D.C. Bostian-Kentes said she spoke to U.S. Army General Carter Ham about the difficulties she and others faced, and that the general eventually suggested that the military end DADT. Bostian-Kentes felt that the pressure to not be seen or photographed hurt her relationship with her partner. She pointed to that stress as one of the central reasons that she and her partner eventually ended their relationship. Bostian-Kentes said the stress for LGBTQ soldiers still exists today, explaining how she feels when soldiers and their families need help, it is often provided by chaplains who are some-
times members of religions that oppose homosexuality. “Imagine trying to get help from someone who thinks of you as an abomination,” BostianKentes said. Despite the adversity they have faced, both speakers still actively support the U.S. military and its troops. Stone is a member of a military family that has sent members into almost every U.S. war since the American Revolution. Bostian-Kentes started a new relationship with a member of the Michigan National Guard and the two made the decision to come out when Bostian-Kentes’ partner was promoted to the rank of captain. “I’m thankful that we get the chance to hear from these remarkable folks,” said Engineering freshman Jake Biegger, who attended the talks. “I would say that anyone who serves in the military is inspiring, and for members of the LGBTQ community to do it through such adversity is a testament to their love for their country.”
Athletic Director Jim Hackett to convey an apology to coaches of all of the University’s sports. “I did talk to Coach Hoke today, and I apologized to him for really not providing a full picture of all things all our teams — and football for sure — and our coaches do to support our student-athletes — and not just in their athletic roles, but in their roles as students,” Schlissel said. “I also had a discussion today with our interim A.D., Jim Hackett, and I asked Jim to convey those same thoughts to the other coaches and their teams, because I was concerned that I may have misrepresented things in a way that didn’t do justice to how hard our student-athletes work and how much support they get from their coaches and the academic advising staff.”
sion.” On Tuesday, Schlissel said he was paraphrasing the large number of e-mails from Michigan fans, including those regarding the Wolverines football program. “With the football team having a challenging year, some of that advice speaks to the head coach. As I said earlier in the season, all of our coaches will be evaluated at the end of the season on their full body of work and that will be done by the athletic director,” he said. “What I was referring to was the quote, which was accurately quoted but wasn’t clearly stated by me, is that there are people saying, ‘You gotta do this, you gotta do this.’ But what I say back is, it’s actually very important — the personnel that we have in place — and I want to hire an outstanding permanent athletic director. I don’t want to do the quick easy thing that some people are calling for, and that no decision has been made about the future of the coach and that’s the athletic director’s decision, almost certainly, at the end of the season.”
activities. “If I could wave my magic wand and really change things for these student-athletes, I would. The NCAA says 20.5 hours is the max, but it turns out nobody follows that,” Schlissel said Monday. “There are ways that they work around it and if it was only us, it’d be ridiculous, I’d clean house, but it’s everybody.”
Athletic Director’s role in hiring a new coach In response to a question from the Daily, Schlissel clarified his comments from Monday regarding his process in hiring a new athletic director and his role in determining Hoke’s future. “That’s why I’m taking a bit of time with the search for Dave’s successor,” Schlissel said Monday. “Some folks wanted me to hire an athletic director (earlier) so he could fire the current football coach and hire the next coach but I want to take the time to make sure we get someone who is not only technically adept, but can ensure that the program has financial and academic integrity, and also someone who shares the value system of realizing our mis-
tin said. “It’s a tough problem, and it’s not a problem that is ever going to be solvable because it is sort of the nature of the humanities. In the humanities, there are lots of scholarships that are given individually. It doesn’t have the same organizational structure that we would see in other disciplines.” Martin recommended the LSA internship program to students searching for new opportunities beyond classes setting a goal of placing 1,000 students in internships next year, a significant increase from this year’s 400 students. Students also asked about specific LSA requirements and how the school can help students beyond their time at the University in determining and succeeding in their chosen field. “We need to market what we have that is available to students and make it clear that we are here to help in any way that we can,”
Faculty oversight
Schlissel said the Athletic Department is fully compliant with NCAA regulations that limit the number of countable hours for which a student-athlete may participate in organized team activities. What he was trying to convey Monday, Schlissel said, was that student-athletes often spend far longer than the weekly 20-hour limit by participating in noncountable activities such as travel, medical rehabilitation, voluntary workouts and other voluntary
During his comments to SACUA on Monday, Schlissel added that Curzan, the faculty liaison to the Athletic Department, said it “often tries to keep her at arm’s length.” On Tuesday evening, Schlissel characterized his comments as “an over or misstatement on my part,” though he noted that sometimes there is tension in balancing academic and athletic priorities. “There’s a back and forth between pushing hard on the academic needs of students, while at the same time, making sure that the student-athletes can satisfy their athletic comments and pursue their sport as a member of a team at a very high level.” “I think Anne has full access to all the student-athletes, the coaches value her as a partner, there may be challenging circumstances that arise as students are balancing their academic commitments and their athletic commitments, but Anne is in the trenches working directly with both coaches and students helping them succeed in both. Co-Managing Sports Editor Alejandro Zúñiga contributed to this report.
Martin said. “One of my big priorities during the first term of my deanship is to take all of those programs and consolidate them into one single entity, and then bring it up to a scale that can fully support the breadth of our student body.” While some students offered opinions in favor of the Race and Ethnicity requirement currently in place in LSA, Martin and other students questioned the need for such a requirement, or at the very least, the need for Race and Ethnicity courses to be more concise and focused on current social justice issues that would be more applicable today and to current racial and social climates on campus. One student, LSA sophomore Karina Sanchez, who attended the talk, said she feels disappointed with the racial climate on campus and with the way the
University is handling racial and socioeconomic disparities. “One of the main reasons I transferred here was for your reputation, including your reputation as a diverse University,” Sanchez said at the forum. “As a Hispanic, it is important for me to see people like myself on campus. It has been very hard for me to find my place on campus,” Sanchez said. “This school is very segregated. I feel like I’ve traveled back in time, everything is so segregated. We need to have a community aspect where I can look at anyone in this room and feel connected to them.” While Martin said his position is not involved in admissions, something he and students pinpointed major contributor to diversity on campus, he said working toward inclusive communities within classrooms has been and will continue to be a goal of LSA.
NCAA compliance rules
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 — 3A
STARTUP From Page 1A at an unprecedented rate. “We have a really thriving entrepreneurial community around U of M and we have a lot of resources to support it,” Kerecman added. “I think it says a lot about the student initiative.” Competitions to facilitate the partnership of investors and later-stage startups. The focus helps to create business networks and grow promising local ideas, benefiting the state — hence the “Accelerate Michigan” title. At the end of the event, which is separated into rounds, the organization awards a collective $1 million to 10 new businesses. Four of the 10 teams receiving prize money have roots at the University. SkySpecs, LLC took the grand prize of $500,000. SkySpecs is working toward improving the safety of drones, which often crash to the ground, through technology they call “Sense and Avoid,” said University alum Sam Debruin, SkySpecs chief operating officer. This technology allows drones to better avoid obstacles and operate more safely while also increasing economic efficiency. The technology is being developed in two of the startups’ products: the Guardian, a “co-pilot” that completely takes over flight control when a collision is likely, and the Wingman, which allows the pilot to prioritize missions by automating the complexities of flight. “Drones are about to be everywhere,” Debruin said. “For us, to be drone people and really think of ourselves as shepherds of this industry, we saw a collision point coming where drones
are getting more and more popular, but the safety aspects are really keeping pace with the flight aspects.” Debruin graduated from the University in 2012 with a degree in computer engineering and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science engineering. He said considering the ways in which drone technology can change the world became a top priority. SkySpecs was accompanied at the competition by a variety of software and online websites. Cribspot, a website that acts as a marketplace for student housing in college towns around the country, has amassed more than 60,000 users as of late September. The website, founded by 2013 University graduates Evan Dancer, Tim Jones and Jason Okrasinski, took second place and received $100,000. Okrasinski said the goal of the company continues to be improving the transparency of what’s available in terms of student housing. “There’s a huge emphasis on mobile apps and being able to do everything on the go,” Okrasinski said. “We’re moving towards a more flawless mobile experience and working to build that up.” Okrasinski said the University has recently pushed entrepreneurship and its students have become more enthusiastic about taking chances with their own ideas. Okrasinski cited the University’s new entrepreneurship minor, the influx of innovationfocused funds and the ways in which courses incorporate guidance from established startup founders. “When we started Cribspot, it would have been hard to imagine all of this enthusiasm around startups,” Okrasinski said.
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Opinion
Page 4A — Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com PETER SHAHIN EDITOR IN CHIEF
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Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
FROM THE DAILY
Nothing to hide?
A pattern of obstructing transparency has emerged at the ‘U’
I
n the aftermath of former Athletic Director Dave Brandon’s resignation, questions have been raised surrounding the University’s public document retention procedure. Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act requires any public body to provide access to a public record to any person who submits a specific request. Additionally, the state provides a number of Retention and Disposal Schedules for state agencies to follow regarding appropriate maintenance and disposal of public records. Despite the fact that these retention schedules are required for state agencies, University administrators have argued that the school itself is “not a formal part of state government” and therefore exempt from the state’s document retention policy. While there are conflicting opinions about whether or not state document retention policies apply to the University, it’s also unclear why the school has taken itself to be an exception and is engaging in a larger pattern of behavior that obscures public transparency. When The Michigan Daily submitted a FOIA request for “all e-mails sent to and from Athletic Director Dave Brandon between March 13 and 14, 2014,” on March 28, Patricia Sellinger, the University’s FOIA coordinator, informed the Daily that such records did not exist. “It’s our policy that it’s up to individual users to determine their own document retention,” said University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald. So in this case, it appears that the University as a whole has no specific e-mail retention policy, and therefore allows its own employees to maintain a retention policy that makes administrative e-mails unavailable to the public in just two weeks at best. This hardly seems like a policy that promotes transparency. In fact, a document retention process that forces the public to file a FOIA request within a two-week window — further shortened by the five-day grace period granted for a response — actually makes access to public records extremely difficult to obtain. Regardless of the University’s legal status and responsibility to abide by state document retention policy, it’s morally impermissible for the University to neglect its responsibility to diligently maintain public records. According to Western Michigan University’s Record Retention Guide, “E-mail messages, both those stored in the computer and those printed out, should not be considered private. E-mail messages may be considered public records pursuant to Michigan and federal law and may be subject to disclosure.” WMU has stipulated that e-mails, along with several other types of documents, must be retained under certain established guidelines. For example, any correspondence designated under its retention guidelines must be kept for three years. Similarly, Michigan State University and Northern Michigan University closely follow state guidelines pertaining to record management and retention. MSU dictates that any record pertaining to general correspondence involving an administrator about the workplace must be kept for two years or as long as the record is active. While NMU doesn’t seem to give specific time periods for record retention on its website, it states that according to the Michigan Penal Code, disposal of university records without the approval of a university archivist or authorization of the approved Retention and Disposal Schedule may result in penalization by the state courts, suggesting NMU considers itself a state agency. But perhaps even more troubling is that in recent years, the University has developed something of a bad habit of obstructing access to public information. In 2011, the Daily filed a series of FOIA requests to multiple Big Ten schools and found that the University of Michigan consistently charged significantly higher fees for such requests. Specifically, the Daily requested the number of parking tickets issued by campus police within a one-year time frame. While Big Ten schools such as Indiana University, the University of Iowa, the University of Nebraska
and The Ohio State University all provided the information free of charge, the University of Michigan estimated a fee of $1,240. The total number of parking tickets provided was comparable across these schools, suggesting comparable corresponding costs at each university — unless, of course, the University of Michigan’s documentation procedure is highly inefficient relative to similar Big Ten institutions. The Daily also requested records for employee purchasing card transactions in a one-year span, for which the University of Michigan charged $1,800 for data on nine administrators. In comparison, the University of Iowa charged $181.50 for records on more than 2,500 employees. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Nebraska and OSU provided the information for free. Such excessive fees create a de facto barrier between the public and its right to access governmental documents. It is illegal for the University to charge substantial fees for the purpose of discouraging FOIA requests, but a disorganized and inefficient record-keeping process that leads to high fees effectively creates identical repercussions. In the end, the public is financially discouraged from pursuing University records. Earlier this year, the University again acted in a manner that effectively blocked access to public information. In late January, after former Michigan kicker Brendan Gibbons was permanently separated from the school for a violation of the Student Sexual Misconduct Policy, the University refused to confirm the separation and elected not to respond to public outrage over the four-year delay of disciplinary action against Gibbons. Among other reasons, the University used the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as an excuse to justify its silence, even though the text of FERPA does not prohibit the University from “disclosing the final results of any disciplinary proceeding … against a student who is an alleged perpetrator of any crime of violence, or a nonforcible sex offense … ” After declining to release information pertaining to Gibbons, Fitzgerald said school administrators considered “the spirit of the law” as well as “the letter of the law.” Looking at all these different cases, it is clear that the University is behaving in a suspicious manner. The problem is that it appears as though the University has become too fond of using “the spirit of the law,” often interpreting the law in different ways that always appear to be at odds with institutional transparency. In some ways this makes complete sense, and a strong sense of selfpreservation is to be expected. But in doing so, the University is mortgaging its future in order to inflate an artificial image now. A failure to openly admit flaws and mistakes prevents the University from wholeheartedly pursuing possible solutions. The school must adopt a long-term perspective for its own well-being, as engaging in dubious practices that mitigate today’s problems will only allow underlying faults to fester and reemerge in the future.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and viewpoints. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while viewpoints should be 550-850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
At the docks
very spent the Winter Semester studying abroad in Viña del Mar, Chile. On Wednesday I skip my 10:30 a.m. class and take a train down to the wharf. It’s a short ride away from my host family’s house in the suburbs, and I can smell the AVERY fish in the air long DIUBALDO before the doors open. Once inside, I pass along the stands where fishmongers tear the guts from conger eels and slop them in buckets, hacking off the heads without looking and handing them to their children to throw to the gulls. They keep their eyes up at the crowd shopping for lunch, at me, at the sea, their knives flashing away unsupervised. No gloves. Under a plaster statue of Saint Peter, a man in rubber overalls cuts slices from an enormous fish, vertically, as if from a loaf of bread. The statue memorializes “our martyrs, fallen in the fulfillment of their labors,” their names carved in the base and painted black. People have died for almost everything — stopwatches, television shows, car tires. But many people have died for fish. The want for fish, like for bread or for gold, is such an old and elemental thing that the ocean yawns open to match its hunger for human destruction. I walk to the jetties. Of the two of them, only one charges an entrance fee: 200 pesos for pole-fishing. The other is free and good for watching sea lions. A whole pack of them thud against the pier. In Chile they’re called lobos del mar — sea wolves, not lions — but they look more like
living sausages. I’ve come here once before, in February. I stood next to a middleaged man in a light suit who was on lunch break from his job in the city. The sea lions gathered in the surf below us. “What do they wait for?” I asked in broken Spanish. “The fishermen,” he said. “They feed them.” “What do they feed them?” “Fish,” he said. “Is that what they eat?” I asked. “In the ocean?” He looked at me as if I were a child. “Of course,” he said. “What else are they going to eat?” “Birds?” “No,” he said, confused. “Of course not.” A fisherman threw a bucket of fish heads over the edge of the pier and the sea lions foamed in the red chum. We watched until the fish were gone and the lions swam out to sea. “Is that really what you thought?” he asked. “That they ate birds?” I had only asked the question to keep the conversation going. To be honest, I’d never really thought about it. That was the height of summer. This afternoon, in cold May, a tourist couple dressed in dark rain jackets lean on the railing a few feet away and whisper to each other. A sea lion lolls on its belly and coughs at us, gaping. Nature can be majestic, but only when it’s not coughing. Distant yapping grows louder as a pair of hungry-looking street dogs
run down the beach toward the pier. They sprint from one end of the sand to the other in the endless task of policing their border, scaring gulls into flight. The smaller one catches a pelican. I’m not sure how he managed it — I was watching the sky when it happened, worrying about the clouds, dark with rain — but when I look down he’s already gripped the bird by the neck. Everyone is surprised: the dog, the pelican, the three of us watching on the pier. Now what? The dog whips the bird around in a few dizzy circles and lets it go, bored, or confused, and runs to join his partner at the pier. There, the waves sweep the lions onto the sand, where the dogs snap at them, and then the waves sweep the dogs into the water, and the sea lions do the same. It goes on like this. They’re waiting, all of them, for the fisherman to come with his bucket of chum, the dogs starving without the summer tourists to give them scraps, the sea lions dependent on the daily feeding, the lunchtime ritual. And the pelican, alone, clambers to its feet and leaps in the air. One wing flaps, but the other only shudders, and the bird hooks down to the ground. It comes in at a bad angle and hits the sand with all its weight. Pelicans are heavy. Dazed, it wanders to a pile of rocks and looks up at the gulls, hundreds of feet above, flashing in the sky like silver fish.
Nature can be majestic, but only when it’s not coughing.
— Avery DiUbaldo can be reached at diubaldo@umich.edu.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Edvinas Berzanskis, Devin Eggert, David Harris, Rachel John, Jordyn Kay, Aarica Marsh, Megan McDonald, Victoria Noble, Michael Paul, Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Matthew Seligman, Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Daniel Wang, Derek Wolfe
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Draw back the curtains
s an incoming college student, one of the questions that I was most frequently asked — up there with which classes I signed up for and where I was living — was whether or not I had bought football season tickets, and if I was excited for VICTORIA the season to NOBLE start. Some asked rather ironically — my all-girls high school didn’t have a football team, and unless you counted skiing, sailing or lacrosse, I never really cared much for sports. But some, maybe most, asked with genuine excitement, eager for me to experience what was, in their view, one of the best parts of life as a University of Michigan student. Before I even arrived on campus, I understood the privileged place that football held at the University. Things have certainly changed since then. A series of high-profile mistakes resulted in glaring media pressure and student protest, and ultimately, the resignation of former Athletic Director Dave Brandon. But that’s not what this column is about. Enough has been written already about the trials and tribulations of Michigan football. Univeristy President Mark Schlissel, in an earnest though decidedly awkward recent talk, put it rather well. “If we had won Nobel Prizes this year, we wouldn’t have gotten as much attention as did our A.D.,” Schlissel said. “It’s sad but it’s really true.” The public scrutiny that naturally follows an athletic program as big and profitable as ours, intensified by a lackluster season, prompted relentless information-gathering and commentary on a traditionally opaque organization, revealing key institutional flaws. This pressure is rarely, if ever, applied to other areas of University administration. The public just doesn’t seem as interested in playing a watchdog role on, say, the Board of Regents or Office of Undergraduate Admissions. But in terms of their effect on student experience, these groups are just as important. Yet, just like the Athletic Department’s well-
documented lack of transparency — deleting e-mails before they could be accessed by a Freedom of Information Act request and adjusting ticket prices and policies without student input and insight in the deciding process until after the fact — the University itself has practiced its own brand of opacity. But, I can’t give you the same kinds of examples for the University. It’s possible that the Board of Regents, each individual academic department, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and other University bodies hide from students’ evidence of mishandled situations similar to the way that the Athletic Department has. We just don’t know, because the information isn’t available or easily accessible. Whether or not the University is actually doing something wrong, our limited ability to know, in itself, is a problem. In July, The Detroit Free Press filed a lawsuit against the University for its alleged violation of the Open Meetings Act, which requires the regents to meet publically to formally vote. While the regents do hold public meetings, the Free Press called into question the use of private meetings to actually decide things, before formally voting, referencing their data that of 116 things voted on between January 2013 and February 2014, 12 were discussed by the regents at these meetings. The regents’ failure to include the public in important decisions is problematic regardless of whether or not they are technically violating any laws. By failing to include the public — or at the very least students and faculty — in major decisions, the regents and other University governing bodies are guilty of the same mistakes that probably contributed to some of the Athletic Department’s poorer decisions. When students aren’t informed about administrative decisions, there’s no way for them to voice their opinion and concern. There’s no dialogue, no exchange, no input. At its very best, the administration is actively
perpetuating an information problem between itself and its students; at its worst, the University makes itself appear as though it has something to hide. Either way, the lack of transparency makes it difficult for students to exercise any informed oversight of their school. And maybe students don’t want to anyway. It’s possible that students may not care to voice concern over issues that don’t involve nationally televised sporting events. I’d have to guess that this isn’t the case. The student body is distinguished in its high levels of engagement. In the past year alone, we’ve seen protest over the University’s role in international security (or human rights, depending on how you want to view it) and environmental issues. There have been protests about the handling of sexual assault cases and the experience and admission rates of racial minorities. Deeper access to the information surrounding these issues could have furthered debate on these issues, or given rise to debate on new issues altogether, allowing students to assume an even greater role in addressing problems that undoubtedly color their college experiences. It’s time that the University draw back the curtain on its decisionmaking processes and shed light on the rationale behind its policies. The University is an incredibly large organization that performs a huge array of functions, and governing it is more complicated than students often give it credit for. But despite the impressive research, high-tech development and lifesaving procedures that occur at any given time at the University, the school serves a more basic purpose for its more than 40,000 students: it is the framework within which their entire college experience will take place. Prioritizing those students means allowing them input and access to information on decisions made by the University.
It’s time that the University draw back the curtain and shed light on the rationale behind its policies.
— Victoria Noble can be reached at vjnoble@umich.edu.
Arts & Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
CONCERT REVIEW
W
WARP
”Ladies and gentlemen, we’re gathered here tonight for a most beautiful occasion.”
Flying Lotus: A master at work Acclaimed producer brings ‘You’re Dead!’ set to Royal Oak By ADAM DEPOLLO Online Arts Editor
I’ve been mulling this article over in my head for the better part of three weeks. Now, not every waking moment of those 18 days was spent curled in a fetal position on my bed, marveling in horror at the utter inadequacy of written language for the task at hand, but suffice it to say that the problem posed by this article has kept me up nights. It’s the type of problem any writer faces, but that doesn’t make it any less profound. Really, it’s the problem of written expression — to translate something intangible, a feeling, a moment, an image, into words that other people will understand, to tell the “truth” about the thing you’re writing about. And the truth is that two-and-a-half weeks ago at the Royal Oak Music Theatre, I experienced something uncanny, something that I’m not sure I have the literary wherewithal to articulate. In short, I went to a Flying Lotus concert. But I’ve already run into problems — really, “concert” isn’t exactly the right word to describe what FlyLo did. Yes, I was in what you might call a concert hall. Yes, there was a stage with a musician on it. Yes, a room full of people had come there to watch said musician make noises at them. But within moments of FlyLo taking the stage, it became clear that “concert” and all of the expectations tacked onto that term — the song, clap, witty banter, song, clap formula, the room full of gyrating twentysomethings in various states of inebriation — none of that imagery would adequately encapsulate the sublime artwork happening in that theater. FlyLo’s stage setup consisted of a massive prismatic cube flanked on either side by strobe lights and enormous speakers. Inside the cube, whose walls doubled as 3-D projector screens, a small set of stairs led up to a podium where the L.A.-based producer had set up his laptop and DJ equipment, looking a good deal like a conductor’s stand. Before he began his
set, FlyLo appeared with little ceremony from behind the right side of the cube. He walked out to the front of the stage, dressed in an undertaker’s black suit, and addressed his audience as the sound of funereal organs filled the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re gathered here tonight for a most beautiful occasion.” He slowly climbed the stairs to his perch, putting on a black mask with glowing yellow eyes. The organs cut out and he finished his speech. “But I’m afraid I have to tell you … You’re dead!” The frenetic opening lines of “Theme” from FlyLo’s latest release, You’re Dead!, blared out of the speakers, and the music would continue with only a handful of pauses for the rest of the nearly threehour set. He was doing largely improvised trap renditions of tracks from his entire Flying Lotus discography interspersed with a handful of Captain Murphy numbers, pairing his beautifully syncopated rhythms with stunning visuals projected onto the walls of the cube surrounding him. The one minute and thirty second track “Fkn Dead” expanded into a nearly fourminute-long trap/jazz fusion accompanied by animations of tastefully disemboweled and segmented bodies provided by Japanese guro artist Shintaro Kago. “Getting There,” a masterpiece of sound engineering off of 2012’s Until the Quiet Comes, came across just as crisply in the live setting as a lightly rotoscoped version of the track’s music video played on the screen. Throughout the performance, FlyLo stood at his podium, his mask’s yellow eyes shining through the animations surrounding him, rocking back and forth in time with the music. He was very clearly uninterested in providing the sort of inclusive experience one usually finds at a hip-hop concert. There was no call and response with the audience and certainly no call to “get turnt”; he didn’t even really ask how anybody was doing, All in all, he might have said 100 words by the end of the night, most of those at the very end of the show. But if this performance was impersonal, it was impersonal in the same sense that an opera
or tragedy is impersonal, which is to say profoundly beautiful and moving without feeling the need to be on a first-name basis. FlyLo wasn’t there to build a reputation or a fan base — he has already achieved both in spades, and his reward is the ability to create art divorced from the more practical considerations that bog down other artists. The crowd was unusually reticent for a hip-hop concert, but the gaping mouths and stunned expressions around the room showed that they understood their job: they were simply there to watch the master at work. That room full of awed expressions illustrates, perhaps better than any other image, the uncanniness and intangibility of this concert. You could not be in that room, staring at those glowing eyes behind the projector screens, and feel anything other than a sort of ecstatic wonder, a bewildered reverence for the man and his music. Flying Lotus is one of those artists, like the Abbey Road Beatles or the “Don Giovanni” Mozart or the Bitches Brew Miles Davis or even the MF Doom and Madlib of Madvillainy, who seems to have reached as nearly as one can, however fleetingly, to perfection. But perfection is a very different thing from being flawless. FlyLo made a handful of mistakes throughout the show — a mismatched visual cue here, a mistimed drop there — but even the errors seemed to have a sort of logic to them, adding to the performance rather than subtracting from it. And that’s precisely what makes him perfect: the ability to reconfigure flaws and mistakes into a workable whole, shoring up the gaps with his own innovations. Where hip hop falls short, he takes cues from jazz. When simply standing on stage with a laptop doesn’t work, he builds a 3-D projector cube on top of it. Hell, when Steven Ellison himself doesn’t get the point across, he becomes a masked, nameless undertaker with giant, luminescent yellow eyes. It is uncanny, it is intangible, it’s a kind of magic you can’t necessarily understand, but music can approach perfection, and you know it when you see it. Two-and-a-half weeks ago in Royal Oak, it looked a lot like Flying Lotus.
YOU KNOW THE BLACK PLAGUE? YEAH. WE’RE LIKE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT.
@MICHIGANDAILY
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 — 5A
Blurred and grey
ith an epidemic of sexual assault sweeping college campuses across the nation, as well as the University of Michigan, there are countless topics of uncertainty and controversy. In a four part series, James Brennan seeks JAMES to explore them BRENNAN with interviews and personal research This is part 1. In the past year, the University has become ground zero for the crisis of sexual assault on college campuses. From the school’s bungling of the sexual assault case involving former Michigan kicker Brendan Gibbons, to recent campus demonstrations, including the spray-painted phrase “EXPEL RAPISTS” across the Diag, students and administration alike can no longer sweep sexual assault under the rug. At the same time, a national movement to prevent sexual misconduct has gained steam, highlighted by the White House-sponsored “It’s On Us” campaign, which Central Student Government has enthusiastically supported. Meetings have been convened, profile pictures have been changed and PSAs have gone viral — but what does this all amount to for students? What will this mean for survivors and their allies from all walks of life? What exactly does “stopping sexual assault” look like? Over the past month, in interviews with dozens of peers, student leaders and members of administration, along with additional research, I’ve tried to make sense of these questions and dozens of others. What follows is the first column of a four-part series examining sexual assault on college campuses. My findings and opinions are by no means conclusive; this is an attempt to shed light on some of the many moving parts that students grapple with when it comes to this issue, especially the aspects we find most confusing, painful and polarizing. To any perspectives I left out or simply glossed over, I hope you will write to me so I can continue to learn. I also hope you’ll consider writing your own viewpoints in The Michigan Daily so that all students can hear your voice. *** When it comes to sexual assault and its endless list of related problems, the only true consensus amongst students seems to be confusion. While most of the students I interviewed gave relatively similar definitions for “sexual assault” as a term, their ability to confidently draw lines around consent, alcohol and coercion typically came up short. This is not because our student body is stupid, but rather due to the all-encompassing language that deals with sexual misconduct. According to the University’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, sexual assault covers a broad range of behaviors, from violent, penetrative rape, to one-time instances of groping without consent and everything in between. This was pretty consistent with the definition most students gave me. But SAPAC doesn’t stop there, also making sure to include any unwanted sexual contact obtained through threat of force, intimidation or coercion. A handful of students even went so far as to say that sexually explicit speech, gestures or text messaging fell under the increasingly large umbrella of sexual assault. Anne Huhman, SAPAC program manager for education and prevention, sat down with me to try and make sense of this terminology. Huhman, who has been at SAPAC for a decade, explained that the broad language is meant to emphasize the core issue behind consent: the experience of the individual. Because every person has a unique life and perspective factoring into their boundaries, the language around sexual assault is intentionally left open-ended. According to Huhman, this is a huge part of SAPAC’s Relationship Remix workshop for first-year students in an effort
to get students focusing on what they as individuals want out of relationships and sex. LSA senior Kathryn Abercrombie, a former SAPAC volunteer coordinator, expressed a similar viewpoint, saying that handling sexual assault should be all about empowering the survivor. In large part, the ambiguities of consent come from the intensely personal nature of sex and sexual assault. These individual variations are most clearly present in what may be the blurriest of the lines surrounding sexual assault: the role of alcohol. Drawing a line between consent and over-intoxication was by far the most challenging question for most of the students I interviewed. A handful of students emphasized a person’s ability to communicate or appear coherent, with one senior defining it as a person “doing things they would not normally do.” But this poses challenges. One senior noted her ability to appear completely sober and put together while blacked out, even to the point that her friends can’t tell she’s been drinking. Moreover, this strategy is hard to apply to a person you don’t know very well or have never seen intoxicated. “We try to validate that we know that happens,” Huhman said regarding consensual sex under the influence. However, she also expressed concerns about the confusing physiological roles played by food, sleep and a person’s tolerance. “If what we are aiming for is good, positive, healthy, satisfying sex, it’s sometimes harder to accomplish when under the influence of alcohol or other drugs,” Huhman wrote in a later e-mail, also noting that “it’s important to remember that people who sexually assault others will intentionally use alcohol and other drugs as tools to sexually assault. “It would be a lot easier if we could just draw a line,” she said, a sentiment that most students seemed to share. Like issues surrounding alcohol, there’s a lot of gray area when it comes to getting clear consent. Of the students I interviewed, most explicitly asked for or were asked for consent less than half the time they had sex. One senior told me that while he usually asks permission, many times he has been “too drunk to remember” if he asked or not. For the most part, however, men said they didn’t ask because they were familiar with
their partner or they thought it would be awkward and “kill the moment.” Abercrombie, when asked about these barriers to affirmative consent, answered with a pointed question of her own: “Are you honoring awkwardness over your partner’s safety and sense of security?” This fear of an awkward moment may also be unfounded; most of the women I surveyed had no reservations about a partner who paused to ask for consent, and many in fact preferred it. One senior said she thinks it would “actually be kind of awesome” if men made it a point to stop and ask. I should note that this line of questioning was asked, at first, in a very gendered, heterosexual fashion: men were asked about getting consent, women were asked about giving it. However, even as I began asking students without gendering the question or assuming their sexuality, men discussed getting consent while women discussed giving consent. As Huhman emphasized in the beginning of our conversation, sexual assault is an intensely personal concept. From affirmative consent, to alcohol, to just defining terms, erring on the side of caution is the only way to ensure a potential partner’s safety. At first, I was somewhat disappointed by my own inability to make gray areas black and white, a frustration that only increased when dozens of interviews failed to help me. But rather than being vague, these concepts are meant to be inclusive While the law may attempt to draw lines around what is and isn’t assault, and different levels of sexual violence, it can never come close to defining the trauma that each individual survivor feels from any variety of forced sexual contact. In accepting these terms as broad, we are in fact accepting the reality that caution is our only choice when faced with a decision that could potentially permanently ruin another person’s life. “I have witnessed these beautiful beings … they just change,” said Hannah Crisler, an LSA senior and campaign director of I Will — a student initiative to spark conversation about sexual assault on campus — describing friends who survived sexual assault. “The light is snuffed out.” — James Brennan can be reached at jmbthree@umich.edu.
Arts
6A — Wednesday, November 12, 2014
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
EVENT PREVIEW
ALBUM REVIEW
Renowned orchestra to perform at Hill San Francisco Symphony famous for its innovation By COSMO PAPPAS Daily Arts Writer ISLAND
Put your hands in the air because you just don’t care.
Nick Jonas grows up on solo album Self-titled effort features urbanleaning pop sound By GIBSON JOHNS Daily Arts Writer
Nick Jonas wants you to know that he’s a grown-up now: gone are the days when he dated Hannah Montana, sported a purity B ring and sold out arenas full of tween girls. Now he has sex, drinks, and he Nick Jonas knows what it Island really means to be in love and, subsequently, to be heartbroken. Though technically still a Jonas brother, Nick Jonas is desperate for you to realize that he no longer fits the image that the Jonas Brothers used to embody. And at certain points on Nick Jonas, his efforts pay off. At its best moments, Nick Jonas is an urban-leaning pop album with grimy, throbbing beats and sensual lyrics sung by an experienced — emotionally and sexually — Jonas. On “Numb,” which features a verse from Angel Haze, a brokenhearted Jonas reflects using a mature voice that he didn’t have before
Nick Jonas
with lines like, “Fuck with my head, like it’s nothing at all” and “Swallow my pride, you swallow me whole” over a pulsating, clubready backing. To be sure, there’s very little subtlety here — lyrics like these help him craft songs that are borderline erotic — but that’s not what he’s striving for. As has been abundantly clear from his numerous interviews and photoshoots this fall, Jonas is conscious of the need for Nick Jonas 2.0 to exemplify an extreme departure from his previous image. In order for his fans and the general public to disassociate him from it, he needs to shock them. So if he has to pose in his Calvins (gratuitous crotch-grab included) for a magazine or proclaim that he wants his fans to have sex to his new music for people to pay attention to him, he’s more than game. And the material on Nick Jonas reflects that. “Teacher,” a funk-infused dance jam that puts his impressive falsetto on display, sounds almost Timberlakeesque as he entices his love interest by singing, “It’s like your mama never taught you how to love / So let me teach ya.” Though Timberlake comparisons are apt — Nick Jonas is essentially Jonas’s Justified in that it signals his
emancipation from being just another boy band standout — Jonas doesn’t quite stack up. Yes, there are other bright spots in the set: The album’s declarative second single “Jealous” has proven to be a sleeper hit (and deservedly so) and the foot-stomping “Wilderness” channels OneRepublic in all the right ways. But Jonas’s strong new perspective and image too often gets dragged down by forgettable material. “Take Over” brings nothing new to the table and comes across as just another nondescript pop song. “Avalanche,” a soaring duet with Demi Lovato, could easily have been recorded when the pair still starred in separate shows on the Disney Channel. Nick Jonas isn’t what you’d normally expect from a Nick Jonas album and, in that way, it proves to be a generally pleasant surprise. Though he’s not being as groundbreaking as he probably thinks he is, Jonas has succeeded in shedding some of the squeakyclean boy band shine that the world had come to expect from him and replaced it with a racier, more mature varnish. Nick Jonas may scream more Timberlakelite than oozing full-on sex appeal, but it is indisputably a step in the right direction for the youngest of the JoBros.
Classifieds RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
One cannot lose sight of the fact that capital-A Art as an institution relies on a set of economic and social mechanisms to make it all happen. The municipal Nov. 13 at symphony 7:30 p.m. and orchestra as Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. we know it is largely an Hill Auditorium $14 to $85 invention of the 19th century and does not in any way reflect “a natural state of things,” as it concerns music in the public sphere. Even the ominous, rending calls-and-responses between baritone and horn cannot answer the question of how an orchestra will get flights booked, meals cooked and all the money needed to keep it going. These facts are so self-evident that they’re often just forgotten. As John Kieser, general manager of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), discussed in an interview with The Michigan Daily, the orchestra is something that lives by sculpting a public presence or, to use his phrase, a “brand.” Increasingly, this has meant confronting the power of social
San Francisco Symphony
69 “One more thing ...”
33 Officer-to-be 35 Unlikely tomboy 36 Pair on a football field 38 “Storage Wars” network 39 Boston Bruins’ home 40 Letters after mus 41 Lincoln Ctr. site 46 Man of fables 47 Sigh with relief, say
48 Carpe __ 50 Grazing groups 51 Wide awake 52 Insistent words from a sandbox 53 Commonly dusty room 54 Capital of Yemen 58 Open __ night 60 Ticket word 62 Bird: Pref. 63 Sporty Pontiac
DOWN 1 Louis XIV, par exemple 2 Ran over 3 Vegetarian side 4 Occupied, as a booth 5 Cocktail named for a Scottish hero 6 Bikini tryout 7 Mo. town ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: 8 Bikini feature in a 1960 hit 9 Field fare, briefly 10 2009 Peace Nobelist 11 Orange variety 12 Mournful ring 14 Fast flight 16 Radii-paralleling bones 18 Gossipy Barrett 22 Bewilder 26 See 34-Across 27 Network with the slogan “Not Reality. Actuality.” 28 Core muscles 29 Knee protector 32 Traffic problem 11/12/14 xwordeditor@aol.com
Wang x H&M is both bold and wildly popular By KATHERINE CAMPBELL For The Daily
Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
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“There is no other program that takes a live performance and builds around it an experiential documentary.” The SFS popularizes classical music at multiple levels: first, at the basic level of bringing classical music to more listeners and, second, by humanizing the people whose lives’ work underlies an area of cultural commonly associated with the esoteric, the inaccessible and the unpopular. The SFS has made itself known worldwide through its partnerships with international distribution companies. Their reputation is so well-based through these efforts that they were awarded the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Award) for their recordings of Mahler’s symphonies, a grand gesture for an American symphony by a German association. The SFS’s first-night program in Ann Arbor will feature Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, their second a bill of Liszt, Prokofiev and Ravel. To choose such different programs is a bold and demanding aesthetic decision. This creative breadth represents the innovative and adventurous attitude that the SFS exhibits in all aspects of its practice. With acclaimed conductor Michael Tilson Thomas at the helm, fans of classical music can expect a brilliant and enchanting performance from this Grammy-award winning orchestra.
STYLE NOTEBOOK
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Union foes 5 Sing like Joe Cocker 9 Cowl wearer 13 ’90s-’00s Lakers great 15 Kevin’s “A Fish Called Wanda” role 16 __ sprawl 17 Progressive Era muckraker 19 Walk away 20 Charms 21 Grain Belt st. 23 TV diner owner 24 “Spring forward” letters 25 “Pretty darn good” 28 Carte start 29 Settle up 30 More unusual 31 Hobby shop wood 33 “Terrific!” 34 With 26-Down, fashionable footwear 37 Assume a military posture 42 Child-care writer LeShan 43 Stirs in 44 Sunburn-causing emission, for short 45 Driving __ 47 Readers of MSS. 49 Corp.-partnership hybrid 50 Waved from the curb, perhaps 54 One of four in Minnesota: Abbr. 55 Chicago trains 56 Sun. address 57 Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior 59 In again 61 NSA surveillance activity ... or, the process needed to dig out the info hidden in 17-, 25-, 37- and 50Across? 64 Sink down 65 Villainous 66 Proofreader’s mark 67 Store 68 “Good shot!”
media in public relations. And in the world of classical music, the SFS has defined the cutting-edge of the social media savvy. “(When we created the label) we wanted to control all aspects of the media,” Kieser said. “So that includes not only what we recorded and when we recorded, but also how that media was produced and under what formats and how the distribution would work. So essentially, we became a kind of indie label.” This has meant not only an increasingly global presence across a variety of platforms and formats, but also the move to found an in-house record label. The SFS has been successful in centralizing everything from production to distribution to media relations. Beyond constituting a successful business model, the movement illustrates the interdependence of economic and artistic practice. With the integration of recording and distribution, the SFS grants itself that much more artistic license by not being accountable to an external agent. The SFS took an even bigger gamble by producing a multimillion dollar project spanning many years called Keeping Score, which exhibits broadcasts of performances, video and documentary media and educational resources. “It’s highly unusual for an orchestra or a performing arts entity to actually produce their own PBS miniseries, but that’s what we did,” Kieser said.
Alexander Wang’s highly anticipated H&M collection has f inally hit stores. On Nov. 6, Wang ’s desig ner pieces f iltered down into the public sphere and into malls ever ywhere, and the collaboration marks the f irst time an American desig ner has teamed up with the popular Swedishbased clothing store. The world went a little crazy af ter the Alexander Wang x H&M collection debuted on Thursday. The line caused such frenzy that altercations were reported outside of a London location and the entire H&M website crashed as ser vers were overloaded with visitors. Going on the site just a few days af ter the debut revealed that the majorit y of items had completely sold out. While the fashion world waited on tippy toes in sheer anticipation for the debut, I am surprised how quickly the public attached itself to the Wang line. Seeing as the pieces look like they’ve come fresh off the Star Trek movie set, I have a hard time seeing how the average person could feasibly be interested in wearing the desig ns in an ever yday setting. But perhaps that’s the point. Wang ’s st yle may appear casual-cool, but he is a high-end desig ner. They may just be plain sweatshirts, but they’re plain sweatshirts with Wang ’s name on them, and that can make all the difference.
The line stays in the context of Wang’s usual strange style. Af ter seeing the f irst few sets of promo for the collection, I was skeptical of the realism of the desig ns. The only place I can imag ine
wearing a head-to-toe skintight crop-top ensemble with Wang ’s named emblazoned across the body is the g ym, where I wouldn’t dare wear a desig ner outf it any way. However, the materials were custom blended for the line and def initely count as performance wear. There’s even a T-shirt with a logo that only appears when you sweat. This attention to detail is emblematic of Wang ’s approach to clothes and is impressive considering that the line is for a less well-heeled and less inquisitive crowd. The idea behind the line stays in the context of Wang ’s t ypical st yle, and it def initely doesn’t fall short of his usual weirdness. “Redesig ning the urban uniform” is stated under the collaboration’s main page on the H&M website before the shopper is allowed to sif t through the pieces. Ever y desig n is dominated by g ray scale, with the occasional pop of white, blue or neon yellow. Things like the “Scuba-look top” and a sports-st yle bra with Wang ’s initials in bold letters across the chest prett y much sum up the general strangeness. However bizarre the pieces seem, they’re undeniably interesting; f un and sig nif icantly over the top. There’s a lot of mesh and a lot of straps. It’s urban, it’s intimidating and most of all, it looks just as expensive as the real stuff. The collection manages to successf ully translate Wang ’s runway desig ns into ever yday wear — a feat not easily done. While it may not be a realistic line for me, the collection is clearly a huge hit with the average fashion connoisseur. While some of it may come across as tr ying way too hard, the pieces are prett y cool. Wang certainly has a distinct visual lang uage, and if you’re into wearing his name across your boobs, thighs and prett y much ever y where else, this collection is screaming your name.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 — 7A
ROWING
Barnes Arico coaches Team USA Wolverines recover, prepare for spring
By MINH DOAN Daily Sports Writer
Each year, men and women from across the country come to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado to train so that they can one day serve their country on the battlefield. Michigan women’s basketball coach Kim Barnes Arico also made the trek to Colorado Springs this summer to represent the United States — on the basketball court. Barnes Arico was an assistant coach for the USA Basketball U-18 National Team this summer, helping the team win the 2014 FIBA Americas U-18 Championship Tournament with an undefeated record. “The experience in Colorado was incredible,” Barnes Arico said. “Having the opportunity to put on a USA shirt and represent your country was a phenomenal experience.” The U.S. outscored its North and South American counterparts by a combined 530306 over five games, which led to a different problem than one Barnes Arico is used to facing. “You don’t want to embarrass the competition, while at the same time you want to make sure you’re going hard and getting better,” Barnes Arico said. “So it’s a fine line and balance of trying to do that, but it also gives the opportunity for everyone to play.” But even while rolling past opponents, the tournament victory didn’t come without its difficulties — especially when it was three college coaches training 12 high schoolers. “That was a little bit of transition when you have 12 kids who have never experienced a college practice,” Barnes Arico said. The players, while all talented, came from different
Large freshman class, winter conditions pose challenge for ‘M’ By SYLVANNA GROSS For the Daily
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily
Michigan women’s basketball coach Kim Barnes Arico helped lead the U.S. Under-18 Team through a perfect summer.
backgrounds. While some hailed from well-rounded high school programs, others came from environments where they were the superstar and never had a competitive practice. The biggest challenge was getting those players up to speed with the rest of the team. USA Basketball stresses an appreciation of playing for the country, which helped the transition. “They want to be great. So when they have the chance to work with college coaches before they go to college, they embrace that experience,” Barnes Arico said. “USA Basketball does a phenomenal job of really saying how fortunate and how blessed they are to have this opportunity and to be respectful of it, to be mature about the opportunity.”
The experience also gave Barnes Arico a chance to work with Dawn Staley, whom Barnes Arico calls “one of the best women’s basketball players ever” and now coaches South Carolina. Staley, who owns three Olympic gold medals for her play in the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Games, is known for her vocal leadership on the sidelines, which is similar to Barnes Arico’s coaching style. Except in this situation, Barnes Arico had to take a backseat. “I’ve only ever been a head coach so it was a great experience for me to learn from somebody else and have the assistant role, watch (Staley) work and assist her in any way I possibly could,” Barnes Arico said. “It was a good opportunity to have a different role.”
The tournament win qualified the United States for the FIBA U-19 World Championship, which will be held next year in Russia. The United States has won that tournament the last five times it has been held. The FIBA Americas U-18 Championship is supposed to be “a little bit easier” than the World Championships, though there is no denying that the leadership of Staley, Barnes Arico and Louisville coach Jeff Walz helped the United States to victory. But when asked if she would get a chance to coach in the World Championships or for her country in the future, Barnes Arico said she had no idea. She may have enjoyed her time with the red, white and blue, but now she turns her focus to the maize and blue.
If you ask Michigan rowing coach Mark Rothstein what the best part of the team is, he responds, “The kids are excited to compete.” Rothstein lost 17 seniors to graduation last year, and this year’s Wolverines are relatively young with a large class of recruited freshmen, rather than walk-ons who have previously comprised a major part of the roster. “At the beginning of the year, we were worried about the loss of leadership, but it’s been surprisingly awesome” said senior Alex Spaulding “It’s such a young team, so everybody has gotten a fresh start.” With three months before the spring schedule begins, the team is trying to maintain its competitive edge indoors as future opponents from the south can train outside. But training indoors can only bring a team so far. The team’s winter recovery will be essential to future success. “It was a really good fall, and we have a chance to have a good spring but we have a lot of work and preparation to do first,” Rothstein said. “This preparation means hours of indoor fitness training and trips down to Tampa, Florida, where the girls
are able to get back on the water.” The team performed well this past season. It finished second in the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston in the collegiate division and fifth overall. This past weekend, it posted the fastest times of the season in the Michigan Classic, coming in 20 seconds after the Michigan men’s rowing club. “We’re getting faster and faster every day,” Spaulding said. But can it maintain this learning curve over the icy cold Michigan winter for the spring season? Being at a slight disadvantage having to deal with a long winter, the team expects to spend the coming months in the erg room, working to maintain stamina and perfecting technique. They want to focus on steady stroke rates, recovering off the water and cardio. Rothstein said he thinks this team will bloom in the spring. “(The freshmen) have come in at a high level, and we’re trying to bring them to a higher level,” Rothstein said. “While (the senior class) is smaller, it’s potentially one of our best.” The winter will test whether the Wolverines will be able to pull ahead of the competition. “People become seniors and feel this pressure because of preconceived notions of what they should do, but I feel like I’m a part of this newfound Michigan team,” Spaulding said. And this new team has a lot of work to do, but it knows to work hard and row harder.
“We’re getting faster.”
Field hockey wraps up campaign Hackett to make ATHLETICS
By BRANDON CARNEY Daily Sports Writer
For the second straight year the Michigan field hockey team finds itself on the outside of the 19-team NCAA Tournament. Finishing 13-7 overall and going 7-2 in Big Ten play wasn’t enough to earn a spot, and the Wolverines were one of the last teams to be omitted from postseason play. Three Wolverines were selected to the All-Big Ten team: fifth-year senior midfielder Ainsley McCallister, fifth-year senior back Leslie Smith and junior back Lauren Thomas. That star power was a driving force behind Michigan’s secondplace finish in the conference standings. But in their Big Ten Tournament semifinal matchup with Northwestern, the Wolverines suffered their fourth overtime defeat and came a goal short of an NCAA bid. With its season concluded, the Daily breaks down the best and worst of this past season.
MVP: Ainsley McCallister McCallister was left off the preseason Big Ten Players to Watch list despite finishing last season with All-Big Ten first-team honors. But this year showed why she deserves national praise. Finishing the season with 18 assists — second in the Big Ten — McCallister was the creative player Michigan needed to run the offense. She earned a majority of her assists in the role of inserter off penalty corners, finding her teammates who capitalized off the opportunities. Late in the season, McCallister began to score as much as she was helping her teammates do so. In the final two regular season games, against New Hampshire and Ohio State, she scored four of the five goals including game winners in both contests. She had six total goals on the year. The fifth-year senior’s offensive production earned her another first-team, All-Big Ten selection. She finishes her career
fourth on Michigan’s all-time assists list and leaves a legacy of being a positive leader on the field throughout her career.
Best Win: 3-2 at Penn State (OT), Sept. 19 After losing their opening two games against North Carolina and Wake Forest, the Wolverines rebounded with a six-game win streak, with the most impressive victory coming at then-No. 6 Penn State. Michigan came back from a 2-0 deficit at halftime, scoring less than four minutes after the break and again with 15 minutes remaining in regulation. McCallister completed the comeback, scoring the game winner in overtime to give Michigan its fifth straight win. The victory was also the Wolverines’ first conference win, and the only overtime victory they achieved this year. Worst Loss: 2-1 vs. Michigan State, Oct. 24
ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
The Michigan field hockey team likely came a goal short of reaching the NCAA Tournament. It finished 13-7 overall.
The Wolverines suffered a number of heartbreaking, last minute defeats on the year, but the loss that hurt the team the most was to in-state rival Michigan State at home. Michigan allowed both Spartan goals in a two-minute span in the first half, and could only score once in the following half despite drawing four penalty corners. The Wolverines dominated all aspects of that game, outshooting and out-cornering Michigan State on the day, but the unranked Spartans had the winning touch that the Wolverines couldn’t find. The defeat was Michigan’s only loss to an unranked opponent, and, with it coming late in the season, ultimately hurt the Wolverines’ chances for an NCAA Tournament bid. Top Freshman: Sam Swenson The addition of goalie Sam Swenson to the team created fierce competition with sophomore goalie Chris Lueb for the number one spot. The freshman from England won the starting job easily though, and kept it after not allowing a goal for over a 230-minute stretch through five games in September. Swenson played in all 20 games and started 17. She boasted 63 saves through the year, and earned three solo shutouts. Her best game was a sevensave performance against then-No. 4 Maryland. Despite conceding two goals, Swenson came up with save after save, singlehandedly preventing a massive blowout at home, and kept the Wolverines, who would go on to lose 2-0, in the game late against their highest-ranked conference foe. The addition of Swenson this season was a large factor in Michigan’s 13-win campaign. She improved each game in the cage and became a player the defenders in front of her could constantly rely on. Looking ahead, Swenson will be one to watch through her remaining three years for the Wolverines.
$600,000 yearly By GREG GARNO Managing Sports Editor
Interim Athletic Director Jim Hackett could be in office for another year or another month. Either way, he will be paid handsomely. Following former Athletic Director Dave Brandon’s resignation Oct. 30, Hackett will work in an interim role for an “indefinite” period of time, for which he will be paid an annual salary of $600,000. This information comes after the University released Hackett’s appointment letter Monday evening. The letter also stipulates that Hackett will be eligible for University benefits, including health and life insurance, as well as compensation for housing for as long as he is in office. Hackett’s salary is less than Brandon’s $900,000 annual pay, which also featured potential bonuses and deferred compensation that would have given the former athletic director a total annual compensation of more than $1 million. “The term of your employment is indefinite at
the will of the president, and is expected to continue until such time as a new Athletic Director is installed,” the letter stated. Hackett signed on Nov 3. — two days after the appointment became effective. University President Mark Schlissel told The Michigan Daily last week he had not yet begun the search for a new athletic director, nor had he determined how long the process would take. In a speech to the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs Monday, Schlissel said he aims to find an athletic director who will inspire integrity within the department. “Some folks wanted me to hire an athletic director (earlier) so he could fire the current football coach and hire the next coach but I want to take the time to make sure we get someone who is not only technically adept, but can ensure that the program has financial and academic integrity, and also someone who shares the value system of realizing our mission,” Schlissel said.
8A — Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘True freshman’ only ‘Doyle’ a familiar name a label for Mason Cole By SIMON KAUFMAN Daily Sports Writer
Offensive lineman has impressed, started all 10 games for ‘M’ By MAX COHEN Daily Sports Editor
Mason Cole doesn’t fondly remember the first day of his college career. He moved into his dorm room last January in minus-15 degree weather, a difficult temperature for a recently graduated high school student arriving in Ann Arbor from Florida. If the weather made the winter months difficult for the freshman left tackle, it didn’t show on the football field. Instead of using his first semester at the University purely for adjusting to college life, Cole used his time as an early enrollee to put himself into contention for playing time. “The coaching staff when I first got here, they said everyone’s got the same opportunity,” Cole said. “Everything was open.” Cole finished his high school career as a highly ranked recruit, but the task facing him was still daunting. Offensive linemen usually need time to grow when they reach college, often redshirting in order to build the muscle mass associated with collegiate weightlifting programs that is necessary to fend off older defensive linemen. Cole is listed at 6-foot-5 and
292 pounds, not as massive as many fully polished offensive tackles. Working with offensive line coach Darrell Funk, Cole found ways to adjust. “When you’re not as strong and not as big as some guys, you’ve got to play with great technique,” Cole said. By fall camp in August, Cole began to realize he had a legitimate chance of seeing extensive playing time. Having finished a full semester at the University, Cole felt completely adjusted to college life. He credits those around him for the easy transition. He listened to the team’s older offensive linemen, his coaches and other support staff around the program. “With the staff here, they really help you, and the support here, that’s really helped,” Cole said. “Just staying on the path and doing what the people here ask me to do.” With that attitude, Cole earned the role of the team’s starting left tackle in the season opener against Appalachian State on Aug. 30. The feat was significant. Despite Michigan’s long history of success grooming linemen, Cole was the first true freshman to start the team’s season opener on the offensive line. Cole didn’t take much time to dwell on the achievement. He had a difficult job in front of him, tasked with protecting quarterback Devin Gardner’s blind side. So far, the results have been positive. Cole has started each of the team’s 10 games this
“You don’t hear us talking about him, and that’s ... a good thing.”
season, helping stabilize an offensive line that endured numerous shakeups in 2013. The Wolverines have had 100-yard rushers in back-toback weeks, a statistic that would’ve seemed unachievable this late last season given the team’s poor offensive line play. Entering the season, many thought starting a true freshman would be a liability, that Cole’s growing pains would be glaring. That hasn’t been the case. “You don’t hear us talking about him and that’s kind of a good thing, that he’s doing a good job when you look at protections,” said Michigan coach Brady Hoke in Tuesday’s weekly Big Ten teleconference. “He’s getting stronger, and so he’s a little more stout.” According to his teammates, Cole no longer acts like a freshman. Though Cole says redshirt junior offensive lineman Jack Miller is the leader of the offensive line, sophomore running back De’Veon Smith sees some leadership characteristics developing in Cole. “I’m really proud of him,” Smith said. “He’s shown that he’s becoming a leader. I’m pretty sure, by next year, guys are going to be looking up to him, even older guys.” If he can survive another Ann Arbor winter, that is. NOTE: Michigan announced Tuesday afternoon that its game against Ohio State on Nov. 29 will kick off at noon.
For updates from Brady Hoke’s weekly press conference today
Check MichiganDaily.com and follow us on Twitter @theblockm.
Ricky Doyle hasn’t played a single minute of college basketball yet, but the freshman forward already has his name in the Michigan men’s basketball program’s record book. Richard Doyle — of no relation to Ricky, whose given name is also Richard — earned the program’s first All-American honors for his play during the 1925-26 season. The elder Doyle played for the Wolverines for three seasons, from 1923-26, under Michigan coach E.J. Mathers. He was part of the starting five each year. During his final season, he captained Mathers’ team to a 12-5 record and helped it go 8-4 in the Western Conference, clinching a share of the league title — just the school’s second conference basketball championship. Richard played the center and guard positions and appeared in all 17 games during his AllAmerican season, averaging 4.8 points per game. The team averaged 30.4 points per contest that year. If you’ve never heard of Richard Doyle, you’re not alone. The team’s current Doyle barely knew who he was. “I’ve seen (his name) on the wall,” Ricky said of Richard. “I don’t know much about him. I just know we have the same name.” He might not know about one of the program’s first stars, but if Ricky Doyle turns out to be anything like Richard Doyle, the Wolverines could have another special season in store. Despite the 90 years that separate their careers at Michigan, the Doyle duo might not be too different. Ricky, a 6-foot-9, 245-pound product of Cape Coral, Florida, describes himself as a physical player. “I’m not afraid to get hit,” he
TERESA MATHEW/Daily
Freshman Ricky Doyle has many similarities to Michigan’s first All-American.
said. “I’ll put myself on the line to win the game. I’ll dive after a loose ball; I’ll take a charge.” Ninety years earlier, another Doyle also didn’t shy away from physicality — almost to a fault at times. A Daily article from Dec. 16, 1924 about a Michigan win over Michigan Agricultural said, “Doyle appeared to be in form until he forgot etiquette in the first part of the second frame and was put out of the game on personal fouls.” Ricky seems like a polite kid, but Michigan coach John Beilein might be OK with him occasionally forgoing his etiquette this year if it helps stymie opponents’ offenses. And his physical play isn’t his only link to the program’s first All-American. Both Doyles stand out for their versatility. A Daily article from Jan. 8, 1925 previewing a matchup against Northwestern noted, “(Richard) Doyle will jump center then drop back to standing guard. His ability on the tip-off and his defensive
powers make him a good man for his position. In addition, he is a good shot.” Ricky could frustrate the opposition on the offensive side, too. Beilein warned not to underestimate Ricky’s outside game, noting a nice jump hook and ability to run the court. But the freshman is most touted for his back-to-the-basket style of play in the paint, a quality the coach called “old school.” The ability to back down defenders, shoot and get up the court are the types of skills that made the original Richard Doyle stand out, too. Ricky could have a long career ahead of him, and assistant coach Bacari Alexander compared the freshman’s ceiling to a “room without a roof.” Michigan has plans of playing deep into March again this season, and Doyle has plans of reaching his full potential. And for those to happen, it wouldn’t hurt if Ricky played like Richard.
Sinelli to showcase versatility By JEREMY SUMMITT Daily Sports Editor
ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
Tackle Mason Cole has impressed despite being the first true freshman to ever start on the offensive line for Michigan.
Every team could use a player like senior Andrew Sinelli. And according to Michigan hockey coach Red Berenson, the Wolverines are the team that needs him most. Seven games into the season, Michigan is struggling to score goals, and it’s conceding far too many. For nearly three weeks — a stretch in which Michigan has lost three straight games — Sinelli has been sidelined with a groin and shoulder injury. On Monday, he finally returned to a full team practice for the first time since sustaining his injuries against New Hampshire on Oct. 18. His welcome-back present was an opportunity to play on the top forward line with junior Andrew Copp and sophomore Tyler Motte. Sinelli expects to play this weekend, and he’ll likely be starting on the first line as he has all week in practice. “If he can add something in terms of his speed, and his grit and some good puck touches and some defensive awareness, then he’ll get a chance to play that role,” Berenson said. After starting the season on defense, Sinelli was pushed up to the fourth forward line on Oct. 17. Only one day later, he played on the third line. He has always had the capability to play smart defensively and create hard-nosed chances in the offensive zone, making
Sinelli a luxury to have on any team’s roster. A fine balance between a player’s offensive and defensive work rate is something Berenson constantly stresses to his players. If they don’t live up to his expectations, they’ll find themselves as a healthy scratch. “Our team needs more of what he brings to the table, whether it’s on defense or on forward,” Berenson said. “On forward, it’s his speed, playing with grit, his compete level and his defensive awareness in the defensive zone. We can use that on all our lines.” By placing Sinelli with two of Michigan’s most accomplished scoring threats in Motte and Copp, it’s Berenson’s hope that the line will gel into a trio that complements each other in a way a top line should. “Sinelli will push the pace for us a bit on that right side,” Motte said. “He’s got some speed as well as the work ethic there. The chemistry is coming along here in the first couple of days of practice on Monday and Tuesday and so far, so good.” The Dexter, Michigan native is just itching to get back into game action with his teammates, and he’s understanding of the large opportunity presented to him. Whether he’ll flourish in this new role has yet to be seen, and it might be a daunting task less than a week removed from the injury list. But Sinelli has been forced to play the role of a utility player for much of his career. After appearing in just six games his
“Our team needs more of what he brings to the table.”
freshman year, he continued to be thrown into different roles. And even in the middle of his senior season, he’s back to testing out another fresh opportunity. “He’s played (defense), he’s played forward, he’s played center,” Motte said. “He’s played everything but goalie so far.” While it’s highly unlikely Sinelli will ever strap on the goalie pads and a mask, if Berenson asked him to do it, there wouldn’t be any questions or second thoughts. There’s a reason Sinelli is so wellrespected in the locker room. “I just want to play. I don’t really care where it is,” he said. “I’ll do anything that coach tells me and anything that the team needs.” Sinelli does all the gritty and demanding work of a hockey player, and many teammates in the Michigan locker room agree that he plays like his personality. Copp describes it as “laid-back” off the ice, but focused in the weight room and during practice. Copp and Motte are known to be less relaxed, and they often take their on-ice personalities off the ice, at least in comparison to Sinelli. They both take practices seriously, often the first to finish conditioning drills and the last to leave the ice. After every practice, Copp and Motte work on tip-in drills, with Copp shooting from the blue line and Motte attempting to redirect one past the goaltender. They both admit they need to lighten up sometimes. “It’s good to have those different personalities on our line,” Copp said. “Hopefully that loosens up me and Motte a little bit.”
SHOULD MEN BE ALLOWED TO WEAR SALMONCOLORED SHORTS?
IS THIS AMERICA?
2B
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 // The Statement
T H E L I S T B U Z Z F E E D, B U T B E T T E R FIVE REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD BE EXCITED FOR MICHIGAN BASKETBALL As the Michigan football team fights for a spot in a mediocre bowl game, the basketball season has begun, and it might have more to offer in terms of excitement. Here’s why you should pay attention to John Beilein’s program.
1. LE T’S STICK BY THE WINNERS
Michigan got off to a slow start last year, but it improved enough by January to win the Big Ten comfortably. Look for similar improvements this season, too.
2 . WATC H O U T F O R T H E L E A D E R S
Caris LeVert is a preseason Big Ten player of the year. Spike Albrecht provides a spark off the bench. The talent on this team starts with the upperclassmen.
3 . PAY AT T E N T I O N TO I R V I N
Under Beilein and strength coach Jon Sanderson, players have made big improvements between their freshmen and sophomore years. Forward Zak Irvin looks poised for a breakout year.
4 . T H E TA L E N T E D F R E S H M A N C L A S S
There are six newcomers who could become household names by February.
5 . G R OW T H A N D M AT U R AT I O N
Get ready to watch a young team develop into what would be a national contender. There may be growing pains, but don’t count out a Beilein-coached team.
THE WEEKLY REEL DAILY DIGEST: PIE (TWO WAYS)
THE
statement
Magazine Editor: Carlina Duan Deputy Editors: Max Radwin Amrutha Sivakumar Design Editor:
Photo Editor: Ruby Wallau Illustrator: Megan Mulholland Editor in Chief:
Managing Editor: Katie Burke Copy Editors: Mark Ossolinski Meaghan Thompson
Peter Shahin
Amy Mackens
COVER BY AMY MACKENS AND RUBY WALLAU
the writer’s notebook: the ‘writing process’ process BY MA X R ADWIN
I
read about the writing process a lot, or talk to people about it. There’s apparently some process that you’re supposed to develop so that your writing becomes as good as it can be, some way of going about writing things that’s the right way. I mean, there’s no right way but there’s certainly a wrong way, or so I’ve been told. One Master of Fine Arts student told me that before writing a story, he will, for several months, just think about plot and themes without ever writing a word. Some creative writing teachers have told me they write everyday. Others, only a couple times a week. On computers, or at first on yellow pads or on their phones hastily on the bus. But I don’t have a process yet where I write things in certain modes systematically, not really. I tend to write in my room for about an hour at a time, on my computer, at my desk or in my bed. That sounds not-so special. But I get sort of hyped up for it. The door has to be closed, and my phone tucked away somewhere, not talking to anyone or going on the Internet. It’s not like doing homework or writing some paper. It’s like a Zen Buddhist thing where I clear my mind. Or, at least, ideally. Most times, I wind up leaving the computer to get something to
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND
drink, while trying to avoid Facebook and things like that, maybe eat a little food, but not a lot since it takes time and the point is to clear your mind and get back to the computer as soon as possible. The idea is that you get focused in and write through to the end
of the thing that you’re trying to write, but that’s hard to do. Sometimes you have to step away. I know this writer who gets up at 4 a.m. and runs five miles then locks himself in his office and writes for six hours everyday. He keeps himself in there and his kids aren’t allowed to bother him too much, and I can’t imagine the amount of words he’s getting out each day. If he’s writing nonstop he could be getting out maybe 12,000 words. I don’t think I could write for half that time. After an hour, maybe, maybe two, I can feel my brain deflating. I can get 6,000 close-to-polished words in a week, on a good week. I guess I just still don’t know how it’s supposed to go. Some people write for hours and hours and some people write sparingly. Some on the go and others in a quiet space. I guess I do both, mostly the second, which results in better writing but also less writing, so it’s a tradeoff. In both cases most of what comes out of a draft is shit anyway, but it’s about making it as lacking in shit as possible. Like I said, there’s no right or wrong way, there’s only the best way, for you.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 // The Statement 3B
ON THE RECORD
famous by association: why i want to be an olsen twin
POTUS ON PROGRESS
“There are times … I think we have not been successful in going out there and letting people know what it is that we’re trying to do and why this is the right direction … So there’s a failure in politics there that we’ve got to improve on.” —U.S. President BARACK OBAMA in a Nov. 9 interview with CBS News on the Midterm Election results
THE THOUGHT BUBBLE RUBY WALLAU/Daily
BY MARIAM SHEIKH
I
mean, honestly, who wouldn’t want to be an Olsen twin? Contrary to popular belief, me wanting to live the life of an Olsen twin has nothing to do with their role on “Full House,” or their series of books and not even their various destination movies (however “Passport to Paris” is an all time classic and should’ve won an award). It isn’t because Mary-Kate is basically about to become French royalty (although that is an added perk that would not come unwelcomed). It is quite simple really. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are the real fashion icons of today’s generation. Forget all about the other celebrities whose job it is to be photographed in certain brands and at specific events. Forget about the Hollywoodpackaged stars who are dressed by stylists and manufactured to be in Us Weekly or on E!. Kim Kardashian (even after Kanye revamped her wardrobe) is irrelevant. And all the
single ladies in the world cannot help Queen Bey get up to par with the likes of MK&A (sorry I’m not sorry). They not only have established themselves as being the epitome of high fashion, but they are bringing back simplicity and minimalistic style that hasn’t been seen since the days of Audrey Hepburn, Princess Diana or Jackie Kennedy. Where did society get off track? Who established that the color black was only meant to be “Goth?” Who said that people needed to be dressed in tight, gaudy clothing in order to be fashionable? Style is something that is unique to each individual, always changing. Fashion is timeless. The Olsens embody true and pure fashion, in all its simplistic glory. So, are you a Mary-Kate or an Ashley?
LET’S BE HONEST HERE — IT’S THE OLSEN SISTERS WHO ARE THE ONES TRULY EMBODYING PURE FASHION, AND IN ALL ITS SIMPLISTIC GLORY.
“I would say that we have a responsibility to the changing society … and racism and sexism do not have to define the future. I want to see a world where people feel free to think and love and socialize as equals, and people feel safe to be themselves. I think that definitely we’ve seen the society and the campus get closer to that every time we have fought for human rights and civil rights and immigrant rights.” –LEROY LEWIS, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY (BAMN) MEMBER
P R I N T S : W H Y O R H OW
BY ANDREW FULLER
4B
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 // The Statement
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 // The Statement RUBY WALLAU/Daily
RUBY WALLAU/Daily
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RUBY WALLAU/Daily
A S S TA RT U P S CE N E G ROWS , D E T RO I T FACE S N E W CH A L L E N G E S BY RACHEL PREMACK, SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
I
nternet memes typically don’t reflect complex urban issues or hint at long-running race and socioeconomic issues. Yet, upon glancing at the White Detroit Entrepreneurial Guy meme, a viewer can tell. It’s a response to often misguided public giddiness over “revitalizing Detroit.” The image, which surfaced in April 2013, features a background of buildings, set behind a white man smiling into the distance. The text on each meme varies, with satirical phrases like, “Everything tastes better when you’re across the street from an abandoned building” or “Those that have the capacity to create change have the right to do so, like me and Dan Gilbert.” Detroit-based blogger Aaron Foley wrote about the meme last year in car culture blog Jalopnik Detroit, owned by Gawker Media. He affirmed the meme’s message, which intended to show that Detroit’s problems cannot be solved by tech startups and microbreweries. Moreover, revitalization efforts have been focused in Greater Downtown — a 7.2 square mile region that are comparatively whiter, wealthier and better educated than other positions of the city. The Downtown area accounts for 40 percent of the city’s total employment, despite being just over 5 percent of the city’s space, according to a 2013 data report from the Detroit-geared Hudson-Webber Foundation. “We haven’t really seen the effect yet on
the rest of the city,” Foley said in an interview with The Michigan Daily. “It’s not quite like it’s spreading outward. There’s development going on here and here and here, but there’s no rolling through.” While 98 percent of Midtown and Downtown apartments are occupied, blight continues to be a problem in many other parts of the city. The majority of jobs in these neighborhoods pay more than $40,000 annually, but 38.1 percent of Detroit residents citywide live below the national poverty line. Incorporating the other 132 square miles into the Greater Downtown’s economic comeback, which has been hailed by nationwide media, may soon come. Leslie Smith, president and CEO of TechTown, Detroit’s first and biggest tech accelerator, named this a key priority at her organization. “For me, if that’s not the outcome, we can’t declare a success,” Smith said. At the very least, Foley noted there hasn’t been another White Detroit Entrepreneurial Guy meme since last year. A new industry Detroit Free Press business reporter and author of Reimagining Detroit John Gallagher said that Detroit’s startup scene was integral to the city’s rebranding. “It’s part of the culture that gives Detroit this
reputation as on the comeback trail,” Gallagher said. “Startups are sort of a lively phenomena and they help give Detroit this air that it has now of a very interesting urban experiment that’s taking place.” Following decades of racial tensions, a notoriously high crime rate and setbacks in the auto industry, Detroit is looking for a new economic driver. And it might just come in the expanding startup scene, where millions have been invested from the public and private sector this decade. Detroit has lost more than 20 percent of its population 25 years and over in the last decade, according to U.S. Census Data. But a more shocking statistic indicates a different narrative: the population of college-educated residents under 39 year olds increased by 59 percent in the 7.1 square mile area of Greater Downtown from 2000 to 2010, according to a Forbes report from 2011. “There is a certain demographic that comes to Detroit that is well-educated, affluent and white and wants to do something,” said Associate Prof. Nick Tobier, who teaches topics like social entrepreneurship in the University’s School of Art & Design. “I mean that in good and bad ways.” Now, Detroit is building an ecosystem of entrepreneurship, including venture capitalists — those who provide early-stage funding to promising startups — entrepreneur-
ship-focused non-profits; lawyers; a tech-savvy Chamber of Commerce; office hubs, the vibrant urban areas that innovators crave and monthslong programs that provide funding and mentorship to innovators. Jim Martinez, Detroit Regional Chamber director of communications, said tech entrepreneurship in Detroit has grown in the last 10 years, particularly in the past three to five years. He affirmed that the public and private sector were making a “concerted effort” to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Martinez added that Michigan universities, which provide talent, are also a key part of that growth. Most cities began their entrepreneurial push in the ’70s or ’80s. Until recently, the Motor City’s fortunes were based almost exclusively on the auto industry. Large manufacturers and suppliers dominated much of Detroit’s economic history, and leaders were apt to keep their money rather than invest in creating new businesses. “Detroit, for the last 100 years, was a big corporate market. We relied on big corporations, big government and big labor,” Gallagher said of business culture in Detroit. “The notion that someone would let just a little startup in was just a joke.” Smith, the president of TechTown, said the corporate culture created a stable and thriving period for the auto industry in the mid-20th century. Entrepreneurial activity and innova-
tion blossomed within the auto companies as the company enjoyed their heyday. In 1955, the bosses of General Motors weren’t losing sleep over their own job security as they dominated 50 percent of the American vehicle market and was the world’s largest employer. At its peak in 1979, GM employed around 600,000 Americans. In the decades following oil shocks, fierce new competition, and increasingly outdated technology and management practices led to the Big Three losing their prestige, market share and steady cash flow. And as that happened, their employees were laid off and needed new jobs. “The biggest factor was that the change was forced on us,” Gallagher said. “We had to do it.” The nascent stage of entrepreneurship is attracting young people who are excited about creating something new in a city with a complex past. “There’s not a lot of followers,” said Jacob Smith, a University alum and director of Business Development at tech startup UpTo. “If you’re going to be in Detroit right now, you’re not a follower because it’s not popular among the masses. Everybody is here to make their impact.” It’s easier to begin your startup in Detroit than in more prosperous cities due to cheaper rents for office space, and the presence of a wealth of non-profits keen on building Detroit’s
startup corridor. The concept of opening a tech firm in Detroit is also still somewhat revolutionary and press attention is easier to attract, which concerns Foley. University alum Michael Williams, a Detroit native, wrote his Afroamerican and African Studies honors thesis on gentrification in Detroit. He said there was a “hipster aesthetic” and drive for social justice to those who moved to Detroit. “It’s hot to move to a place that’s struggling, that’s a bit off the beaten path, that’s unique or atypical. It has its appeal with all its challenge and struggle,” Williams said. “We have an opportunity here not just to work or have a job, but really be invested in something greater than yourself, a movement to improve humanity and quality of life.” Gallagher said the culture and identity of Detroit is changing. “Detroit’s public space is being identified a little bit more,” Gallagher said. “All else being equal, they (entrepreneurs) would probably take the chance on Detroit right now over other cities. It is viewed as a place where startups and entrepreneurs are welcome. It’s fun — it’s getting to be a fun place.” However, building a startup in Detroit is not as clear-cut a process as creating one in, say, San Francisco or Austin. Here, Foley said, there are questions of what happens when a business that serves and employs almost exclusively college-
educated people — like tech firms — in a predominantly middle and working class city. Greater Downtown Detroit vs. everybody Forty-two percent of Greater Downtown residents aged 25-34 are college educated, compared to 11 percent citywide, according to the data report from the Hudson-Webber Foundation and U.S. Census data. The report also reflected that from 2000 to 2010 in Greater Downtown, the Black population decreased 5 percent — 12 full points lower than the rest of the city — and the white population increased 3 percent. The proportion of whites downtown is twice that of the the rest of the city. The differences in privilege cause a chasm between old and new residents, as well as a difference in what each segment of the population can accomplish. “A lot of entrepreneurs were sort of self-serving and not fully conscious of what their actions had on the community around them,” Foley said. “When people would move into a neighborhood and be completely insular to their neighbors and what not, it would create tension. A business would open up shop and say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna cater to a certain clientele without being conscious of what other businesses were doing.’ It created a problem that shouldn’t have to exist.”
Organizations like TechTown are starting to recognize the tension between the white, wealthy Greater Downtown and the nearly 132 square miles which don’t attract 40-dollarsa-plate Brazilian restaurants. Leslie Smith of TechTown emphasized the need especially to ensure economic developments in Detroit’s neighborhoods as its fractured transportation structure prevents all Detroiters from benefiting from jobs created downtown. TechTown partners with community development nonprofits to assist initiatives in seven neighborhoods throughout Detroit. These businesses aren’t start-ups, but daycare providers, retail storefronts and small- and medium-scale manufacturers. One tactic TechTown employees might teach the business owners is how to effectively track sales, inventory and financials, easing the local business’ process of obtaining a bank loan. More difficulty may come with reconciling longstanding racial tensions in the city, which Smith said has impeded opportunities in Detroit. It is a “priority focus” for her organization. “One of the obvious issues is that most of the action in downtown and midtown applies to a primarily white population,” Smith said. “How can you have a city center that doesn’t reflect the balance of the city?” Smith said her colleagues in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and other revitalizing Rust Belt cities
6B
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 // The Statement
Redefining a space: Trotter hopes to expand its community by Sam Gringlas
I
n a darkened basement on Washtenaw Avenue, half a dozen students gathered Nov. 7 to watch old episodes of “Scandal” over Coldstone ice cream and waffle cones. Attendance was slimmer than the previous week’s event. On Halloween, a few dozen people crowded the Trotter Multicultural Center for an afternoon showing of the film “Hocus Pocus.” That group was so large the hot soup bar ran out early. With new programming and advisory boards, formed under the leadership of recently appointed Trotter director Jackie Simpson, the center is hosting a full lineup of its own programming for the first time in years. Trotter previously served largely as a facility that student cultural groups, such as the Michigan Gospel Choir or the Michigan Sahana, used for their own practice or meeting space. But apart from a 72-hour study break during finals, Trotter lacked a unifying program schedule to directly facilitate interactions between communities of different racial or ethnic identities. Many students and Trotter staff say weekly programming represents a broader shift in vision for the role the center should play on the University’s campus. Jessica Thompson, Trotter operations and events coordinator, said the center is trying to do a better job engaging a wide cross-section of the University community. “We’ve got to encourage community, but we can’t just say it,” she said. “We’ve got to be about it and we have to teach what community looks like.” School of Social Work student Charisma Hoskins, a member of Trotter’s programming board, said she noticed a significant number of new people to Trotter at last month’s Halloween event. “It gives them the feel that this is an open space for everybody and everyone’s welcome,” she said. Founded in 1971, the Trotter Multicultural Center emerged from the Black Action Movements of the late 1960s as a dedicated space for Black students on a campus that was primarily white. The first house at the corner of South and East University Streets hosted workshops led by Black artists, parties, dances, a weekly luncheon and a chess clinic. When a fire destroyed that facility a year later, Trotter moved to its current location on Washtenaw Avenue, in a former fraternity house built in 1924. Though Trotter had its beginnings as a Black cultural house, the center was officially rebranded as a multicultural center in the early 1980s. Simpson said Trotter’s mission has changed with the University’s student body, whose population of minority students has grown to include a more diverse array of cultural backgrounds. Today, Trotter is still trying to refine a vision for the space and the kinds of commu-
TERESA MATHEW/Daily
Jessica Thompson, Trotter operations and events coordinator, at the Trotter Multicultural Center.
nities its designed to serve. “I’m sure that at one point or even now, this may have felt like a members-only space and it is so not that,” Thompson said. “This is a space for all of our students ... But for those students who aren’t looking for that, who don’t need that, how do we also support them?” Simpson, who led the University’s Spectrum Center before taking the helm at Trotter over the summer, said it’s not unnatural for students to crave a space designated for people with identities similar to their own. “If I spend all day in a primarily heterosexual world, well when I go home to relax, I don’t necessarily want to spend my relaxing time in spaces where I don’t know whether people are going to accept me,” she said. “I’m going to naturally flow to places where I think I’m going to be supported. ” With new programs that have the potential to draw a wider audience, staff and student leaders are trying to mold an institution that can challenge students to step outside of their cultural comfort zones while maintaining a space that’s comfortable and homey. “So if we have a space that’s for student organizations that might have different opinions and different philosophies, that’s going to be a different space than a space that’s designated as a lounge to hangout,” Simpson said. “In this area, these are the principles. If you’re in this big student org space, it’s expected there’s going to be challenge and dialogue and debate. But when you come here, that’s not what we’re trying to create here. This isn’t a debate space. And that’s OK. And we’re just going to have to be clear about what the spaces are meant to elicit.” Trotter’s likely move to a new Central
Campus location in the next five years could exasperate this challenge. Though the University’s Black Student Union called for a Trotter that’s closer to campus — a demand the University has preliminarily agreed to — the center’s off-the-beaten-path location has shaped the facility as a destination spot. The current distance from campus means it is less likely that passersby will stop in to explore. That reality has resulted in a space that’s feels homey and safe for students who frequent the facility, but also a space that is not well known or widely used by the general student population. Though a more constant flow of students into a Central Campus location might make it difficult to maintain Trotter’s atmosphere of refuge, Simpson said the benefits of increased traffic outweigh the challenges. “I see it as a good thing,” she said. “Because the truth is we all have to learn how to engage with each other — (with people) who don’t have the same kind of experiences we do, who don’t have the same skin color we do, who don’t have the same sexual orientation we do, the same gender, the same religion. This is a practice site in some way to have the opportunity to learn how to do that and expand on this notion of not only creating a global society, but a peaceful one.” However, Rackham student David Green, co-supervisor of Trotter’s programming board, said it is critical that students new to the facility understand Trotter’s legacy and purpose. “It will not be a place normative students can claim as their own without recognizing the historical weight of the situation,” he said. A Central Campus location may alleviate
some of Trotter’s current challenges, but for now, the center is still grappling with how to raise awareness about its re-envisioned programming mission. Green said that for many people, particularly white students, Trotter is perceived as a place primarily meant for people of color. He said that’s just not true. “Everyone is part of the multicultural-ness, if you’re white, if you’re Black, if you’re Native American,” he said. Thompson said there has been a lack of awareness of Trotter’s offerings and the staff has to do a better job reintroducing the facility to campus. “We can’t just sit right here and expect folks to come,” she said. “We have to go out and get you.” Many of Trotter’s leaders recognize the potential for increased education about the center’s programs, but Green said the University has failed to introduce incoming students to Trotter’s offerings, particularly during freshman orientation. “I don’t think the University has done enough. If you talk about diversity and student life, it should be the first thing that students know.” Though Trotter may not be the most recognizable building on campus, especially in comparison to iconic structures like Angell Hall or Hill Auditorium, it has garnered increased attention in recent months. During a year when several incidents, followed by a series of protests led by the BSU, catapulted issues of diversity, identity, race and inclusion to the forefront of campus conversation, Trotter emerged as a key piece of the dialogue. Since last year, the University spent $650,000 to renovate the current facility and an advisory team has begun meeting with architects to plan for a new space in the next three to five years. And though Green said Trotter should have a voice at the table, it can’t be the only organization driving the conversation. “This is a space where it’s productive and generates ideas, but it’s not the only institution on campus that needs to address these things,” he said. For Thompson, student protests, combined with the goals and leadership of the center’s new director, forced Trotter to consider change. “I think we got comfortable being what we were, therefore not pushing ourselves and challenging ourselves to be what we need to be,” Thompson said. “(The students) forced to us to hold the mirror up and we’ve made some changes. I don’t know that we’ve nailed it just yet, and I’m okay with not nailing it because that’s me willing to accept that we will continue to have to revisit this and grow and change with the times and the needs of our students.” READ MORE AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 // The Statement
7B
Personal Statement: I didn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral by Katie Burke
ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND
M
y grandmother was my fashion icon. As a single mother raising six children in Queens, her hats always matched her gloves, which matched her shoes. Her kids were always the best dressed on the block and consistently sported camelhair coats and knee socks. Seriously, my dad and his brothers look like British royalty in their childhood photos. My grandmother would refer to my female cousins and me as the “Glamour Girls,” and would always have an extra sequined clutch or beret to hand out once she figured out online shopping. Sipping her gin martini — which had the tendency to make her “toes tingle” — after Christmas Eve mass each year, she would divulge her thoughts on the outfits of the church crowd. Because of my grandmother, I dress up to travel. I dress up for doctor’s appointments. Heck, if it weren’t for the Michigan weather and my lack of a “normal” sleep schedule, I would dress up for class, too. One of the most important lessons she taught me was how the effort in your appearance can convey how much effort you are willing to put in to other parts of your life. She hammered that lesson into my dad, too — his nickname around the bleachers at mine and my siblings’ sporting events was “Blazer Man.” When my parents would go out of town, my grandmother would come stay with my siblings and
me. I can’t count the number of times she chided me for throwing my clothes on my bedroom floor or wearing a wrinkled school uniform. I’ve never seen anyone so appalled as when she discovered my mother donated our ironing board to a local charity. My grandmother was also a creative problem solver. On one of her babysitting stints, we came home from one of my siblings’ sporting events to realize we had locked ourselves out. Being a quickthinking 10-year-old, I grabbed the nearest rock and presented it to my grandmother. Without hesitation she took it from me and smashed in our back window to reach in and unlock the door. The incident has become slightly embellished in its repeated retelling within my family, and has now become the, “Katie, get me a brick,” break-in of 2003. My grandmother died the spring of my sophomore year. My family knew it was coming. She had been living and firing on all cylinders in her apartment in D.C., but at 96, had finally started to slow down. By Easter of that year, she had moved to an assisted living facility. My grandmother’s funeral was during final exams, and my parents told me to stay in Michigan. I regret that decision to this day. Though I dressed to the nines and headed to St. Mary’s in Ann Arbor that day, I never felt the closure a funeral ceremony where you’re surrounded by family seems to give. One of my last and favorite
memories of my grandmother is sitting in her apartment during Fall Break earlier that year, drinking coffee and discussing our favorite topic: clothes. Specifically, we talked about the perfection of navy blue. It has the slimming effect of black without the drabness. It goes with almost anything and adds that put-together feel. It can be worn at just about any time of the year. Since then, to me, navy blue has been my grandmother’s color and holds a dominant place in my closet. It has come to represent her mantra of looking polished every time you step out the door — one I have failed at frequently in my senior year — and putting your glittery-shoed foot forward. Navy blue has been a constant reminder of my relationship with my grandmother, one I thought could never be replicated. This year, however, I have added a new, slightly contrasting color to my closet, which has come to represent a woman who has had a similar impact on my life. Ann and her husband George run their own cleaning business. Every Monday and Wednesday night, they come in and clean the Student Publications Building on 420 Maynard Street, or the address of my second home, The Michigan Daily. I met Ann shortly after my grandmother died, when I was working on the summer staff of the Daily. The newspaper’s weekly production was on Wednesday
nights, and that summer I had developed the bad habit of procrastinating by socializing with anyone willing to chat. Ann calmly put up with my blabbering about whatever had happened in my life that week, and pretty soon, would come in with some great life advice for the crisis of the month. Once the school year started, Ann began to ask me if I was keeping up with my homework and going to class as I gradually started spending more hours in the Daily office. She has threatened to call my mom on more than one occasion if my grades were in trouble of slipping. Ann makes sure I’m never walking alone at night, and that I’m being safe when I drive to Detroit. She hugs me when I’m upset and tells me when I’m freaking out too much over little things. When the stress is male-related, she never hesitates to reiterate the well-known fact among women that men are generally stupid. My favorite topic of discussion with Ann, however, is fashion. Ann is the first person to tell me if I’m showing people up in my outfit or look like I just rolled out of bed. She tells me about the fabulous blue jacket she bought over the weekend, and shows me pictures of her sundresses when we feel like complaining about the arctic weather. Last winter, Ann showed me pictures of her well-dressed son, who had just passed away from cancer, and the beautiful outfit she
wore to his funeral. Every time we look at those pictures, she smiles. Ann is one of the strongest women I have ever met. The best days are when my hot pink sneakers match Ann’s hot pink shirt. Those days always spark the discussion of how great hot pink is. It’s a bold statement; it’s approachable. It adds some flavor to an outfit and it’s visible from far away. When Ann came in a few Mondays ago, she said she had something for me. She went out to her car and came back with a hot pink T-shirt, just like the one that matched my sneakers. Now I had the complete outfit, hot pink from head to toe. Looking at Ann’s gift some days later, I thought about my grandmother. I thought about how she would tell me about going to the different shops in New York City to make sure her hats and her gloves matched. I thought about her all-white outfit — complete with white patent leather Go-go boots — she wore to open presents with my cousins on Christmas morning. I thought about her vivaciousness, her flair, her strength. I didn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral, and I still regret it. However, I no longer have the feeling that I’m missing something, that the closure I was meant to feel by being with my family at the ceremony will never come. I’ve learned to see my grandmother in other people and in other colors. And for that, I am forever grateful to Ann.
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Wednesday, November 12, 2014 // The Statement
DETROIT From Page 5B RUBY WALLAU/Daily
are addressing the same concerns. “I don’t think anyone has it solved.” A changing demographic Not only does Greater Downtown differ economically and racially from the rest of the city, many argue that there’s a lack of integration within Downtown. The Black, working or middle class population and the white, wealthy newcomers are hardly mixing. Some even say these new firms, and the people they bring, are the harbingers of gentrification. Williams is one person that argues that gentrification is occurring in Detroit. The controversial concept is defined as the buying and renovating of houses and stores by affluent people in a rundown urban center, raising property values but displacing poorer residents as they’ve gradually priced out of these neighborhoods. Williams proposed a new sort of gentrification called “cultural displacement.” This phenomenon is reflected by the strain occurring with the chasm between the affluent white demographic and lower income Black demographic. Retailers in Greater Downtown are increasingly catering to a white, educated and wealthy demographic. Lunch spots in this area used to be $5 or $6 for a meal, but now customers are expected to fork over around
$10. Even Smith, of UpTo, said his apartment building changed. When he moved in three years ago, it was a mix of families, elderly folk, Blacks and whites. Now, it’s entirely young and white. And rent has increased, too. “It’s very noticeable how the demographics has shifted toward young white professionals,” Smith said. This type of interaction is creating “a Detroit of old and a Detroit of new,” Williams said. Williams lived in Midtown as a University student when he participated in the Semester in Detroit program. In a city that’s more than 80 percent Black, he often socialized with white people. “By being based in Midtown and Wayne State, I felt like I was in a part of Detroit I did not know growing up,” Williams said. “I felt like I was in the same bubble that Ann Arbor represents that is shielded from different communities challenged socially and economically.” Indeed, Smith, of UpTo, said his Detroit was a “contained community” of young people who work at QuickenLoans, Blue Cross Blue Shield, law firms, nonprofits or startups. Just about everyone is working on community projects. “We go out and I know people everywhere
we go,” Smith said. “It’s awesome. I love the community.” Foley wrote in his blog last year that tech startups, microbreweries and vegan cupcake stands are not going help the city. “That’s not gonna do anything for the old lady who goes to church on Sundays,” he said in the interview. However, Thomas emphasized that bettering Detroit schools, police and other public goods requires cash. And that’s only going to come through property and income taxes. “I used to have arguments with Michael (Williams),” she said with a small laugh. “He was trying to shape that thesis of gentrification, and my argument would always be but what’s the alternative? Detroit was being emptied out, completely abandoned. The quandary is that in spite of what people might see as cultural displacement or discomfort, the fact is that Detroit was suffering.” The split of Detroit, into old and new, into decades-old storefronts and shiny new startups downtown, might be a necessary evil to rebuild the city and give it the funds it needs. But Williams is still hopeful Black and white, rich and poor, college educated and not, will converge. He said Detroit is the place where it must occur. “We offer an opportunity that allows us to shift our thinking and our spirit on how we
define our community,” Williams said. “You have different, mixed communities coming together in a space. If we hone the power of that, it is a potential to seize on the challenges of Detroit and do it better than ever before.” Back downtown, in Dan Gilbert’s M@ dison Building, University alum Reid Tatoris works as the co-founder of Are You A Human, a service that aims to make the process of typing out words in an image before logging into a webpage fun. Many of his employees live in the city. For Tatoris, the decision to live and work downtown was a no-brainer; he said Detroit was the most interesting place he had ever lived in. “It’s not comfortable yet,” Tatoris said. “We don’t have a Target or a Starbucks on every corner. It’s kind of like a scavenger hunt, looking for bars or coffee shops. But when you find them, they’re some of the most unique places you’ll ever see in the world.” He opened in Detroit because he wanted to help rebuild the city. He said he has bad days all the time while growing his startup, but the exhaustion is ameliorated just from looking out his window. “We think to ourselves, ‘Maybe this day was bad for us, but for this community we’re part of it was a good day,’” Tatoris said. “I find that really motivating.”