125 YEARS
N E WS • A RT S • O PI N I O N S P O RT S • A RCH IV E S A S P ECI A L I S S U E CO M M E M O R AT I N G 12 5 Y E A R S O F E D I TO R I A L F R R E E D O M A conversation with former Daily editor in chief Ann Marie Lipinski • Page 3A Campus fashion through the decades • Page 4A The rich history of sports at the ‘U’ • Page 6A Why the Opinion pages matter • Page 8A Hill Auditorium’s star-studded history • Page 11A
NEWS
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Q&A: R
ebecca Blumenstein was editor in chief of The Michigan Daily during her last year on staff while at the University. Today, she is deputy editor in chief at The Wall Street Journal. She started her time at the Journal in Detroit in 1995 before becoming the Journal’s China bureau chief from 2005 to 2009. There, she led the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting in 2007. Q: What was your experience like working for the Daily and what about it do you think was unique? When I walked into the Daily, I didn’t know how to write a headline, I didn’t know how to write a news story, but I was taught by editors who were fellow students and it was a remarkable training ground for journalism. It really worked ... the most amazing thing about the Daily — I also met my husband there — was how much you could grow and learn how to do things while working with your peers. I never took a journalism class and I think it’s better that way because you can’t rely on anyone else; you have to do it yourself. The editors were pretty demanding and you worked your way up to other possibilities as you proved yourself. It was a place of excitement; I don’t think my parents understood why I was spending
Q&A:
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com
with Rebecca Blumenstein
so much time at the Daily instead of on my academic work. I think in retrospect that’s one of the best parts of the Daily, that it is independent of the University and you get out of it what you put into it. Q: So because, as you said, the Daily is completely separate from academic work at the University, how did you balance those two aspects of your life and how has that balancing act benefited your career? A: I didn’t sleep much. I took a more-than-full course load, which in retrospect was silly, and I also chose to double major in Econ and Political Science through the (Residential College) and I took a class there, “Economics of Inequality,” that really changed my life. I didn’t make it easy on myself — I would meet friends at the Brown Jug at midnight — but something about being young and not needing to sleep much helped. Q: What advice would you give to current Daily staffers and recent graduates? A: I would say that you have the advantage and disadvantage of being kind of on your own. You have to get an internship and have the clips and the experience and keep building from that. It has changed a little as journalism has
OBAMA GOES BLUE
changed because there are fewer smaller publications that offer internships in the way that there were when I was doing it, but there are still quite a few. It’s important to become a bit of a news junkie. It’s helped that I’ve known how to cover news stories, talk to people dealing with tragedies, and just being comfortable reporting on a range of things and hopefully getting the reporting and writing skills. Q: You’ve had a variety of internships and positions at different publications over the years — in places ranging from China to Florida to New York City. What guided you as you made those career decisions that ultimately landed you your current position as deputy editor in chief at The Wall Street Journal? A: I am from a pretty small town in Michigan and I always wanted to work in a big newsroom where there were people who really believed in the work they were doing, kind of like the Daily was for me. There were some situations where it was clear I had learned as much as I was going to and it was time to move on. So as far as working at the Journal, it’s just been a very stimulating place to be from the moment I walked in. I am always amazed by the level of discussion and challenge here, and the nice thing about being at a news organization is that I’ve had a variety of different jobs, but I’ve stayed at this same news organization for 20 years. - EMMA KERR
RUBY WALLAU/Daily
President Barack Obama speaks to students about raising the minimum wage at the Intramural Building on Wednesday, April 2, 2014.
From 420 Maynard to 1600 Pennsylvania Managing photo editor landed on the presidential campaign trail By LEV FACHER Managing Editor
with Jeremy Peters
M
ost people spend their college years preparing for the job they’ll have after graduation. But for Jeremy Peters, a Daily alum who now works as a political reporter for The New York Times, the job overtook the preparation while he was still in college — and he’s still doing it 16 years later. During his time at The Michigan Daily, Peters, a 2002 graduate of the University, covered the 2000 presidential campaign as a news reporter and editor. Today, he is covering the 2016 campaign for the Times, with a focus on Republican candidates. Q: What’s most memorable about your time at the Daily? I was fortunate enough to have been at Michigan during a presidential election year — this was 2000, and so it was when Bush was running against Gore and at the time Michigan was a very important swing state, kind of more so than it is now because there was
actually some hope that Republicans could win it. So the Daily would send us out, me and a couple other reporters who were assigned to the politics beat, to cover these campaign events, from Flint, to Lansing, all over the state. And we would pile into a University-owned station wagon or something like that with a photographer and head out to these big events and it was really a great learning experience because it’s not all that often that college students are able to experience first-hand a presidential campaign like that and surprisingly, the campaigns were very accommodating of Daily reporters who were covering it. Q: What was it like being a student reporter, getting your first experiences with reporting at these campaign events where there are a lot of national, professional news organizations around? I guess the thing was, is I always — maybe this was arrogant on my part, or the youthful inexperience
of a 20 year old, but I kind of always just considered myself to be a professional reporter right from the get-go, and I kind of expected to be treated as such. That was the thing that the Daily always instilled in me, was this sense that what we were doing was very important and it was a task to be taken very seriously. Q: Beyond the 2000 campaign, is there any news story that stands out to you from your time at the Daily? 9/11 happened when my class was editors. And I happened to be the news editor on duty that day, that Tuesday, September 11th. And that was certainly a horrifying experience, but also kind of one that really, I think, energizes your sensibilities as a reporter and really requires you to make decisions and judgment calls that you really never, in a way, never anticipated having to do. And it was also, even more importantly, it was an experience that showed us we could all work together and be the best versions of ourselves when the paper and the University needed us to be. - SHOHAM GEVA
Fresh out of college and in search of a short-term gig as a campaign photographer, David Katz marched into the Chicago campaign office of a young, relatively unknown state senator in 2004, armed with a portfolio full of clips from his time as The Michigan Daily’s managing photo editor. The campaign manager was impressed, and hired Katz on the spot. But the push for the open U.S. Senate seat was in its early stages and tight on cash, so Katz and the campaign manager struck a deal: He could start as a volunteer, and if their candidate prevailed in the Democratic primaries on March 16, Katz would become a paid staffer. “I said, ‘That sounds good,’ ” Katz recalled. “ ‘When do I start?’ ” The manager asked Katz to show up the next day. The candidate would be at a church on the South Side of Chicago. So he showed up at the church, photographed the event and followed the candidate to his car. The candidate gave him a confused look. “I said, ‘Oh, maybe they didn’t
tell you,’ ” Katz remembered. “But the campaign manager told me to photograph you and follow you around. He said, ‘Great — jump in.’ ” That was Katz’s first interaction with Barack Obama. The two quickly became friends, spending as many as 14 hours per day, six days per week together on the campaign trail. In the years that followed, both during Obama’s time as senator and as president, their friendship prevailed, manifesting in regular rounds of golf. Katz ended up moving to Washington, D.C. after Obama’s victory to work for the senator, before heading west to earn his MBA at Stanford. His time at the White House was far from over, however. When Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign kicked into high gear, Katz returned as a campaign photographer, chronicling the senator as he traveled the country. But as Katz followed Obama to Dublin, Ohio, for a campaign event that August — barely two months away from the general election — there was still somebody he hadn’t met. Katz remembers Obama’s words to this day: “Senator Biden, this is David Katz. He was the photo editor of The Michigan Daily, and as a Michigan grad, I’m sorry that we have to bring him here so close to Columbus.” The 44th president has a fondness for the University, it seems — in his seven years in office, he’s
made three trips to Ann Arbor. In 2010, Katz tagged along to see the president deliver an address to the graduates at Spring Commencement. “I got to ride on Marine One with him and land right next to the Big House and point some things out as we were in the air, like, ‘That’s the Michigan golf course, that’s where campus is.’ He appreciated those things.” At that point, Katz was working in the White House as a special assistant to the energy secretary. He later became a senior policy adviser for manufacturing before departing for the private sector. The move brought him to San Francisco, where he currently serves as the director of sales at Quid, a research and data analytics startup. Wherever his career has taken him, though, Katz says the time he spent at the Daily has proved invaluable. “Everybody’s used to working on deadline and working quickly,” Katz said. “The pace at which The Michigan Daily operates is similar to the pace of a presidential campaign.” All current and former Daily staffers know the pace at 420 Maynard Street can indeed be tough to handle. However, knowing the prospect of hearing the president of the United States utter the phrase “The Michigan Daily” isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility makes the frenetic work environment just a bit more manageable.
Sept. 26, 1957 Daily staffer reports from inside the newly integrated Little Rock Central High School. Oct. 19, 1893 Frederick Douglass speaks at University.
Oct. 1, 1927 Michigan Stadium opens.
May 3, 1941 Board “packing” plan draws protest. May 25, 1924 Reporters interview Gandhi.
April 12,1955 Polio Vaccine deemed effective.
May 30, 1961 Daily editorial page calls for changes in the Office of Student Affairs.
April, 1958 Two Daily reporters are arrested by Batista’s police for trying to score an interview with Fidel Castro.
Oct. 14, 1960 President Kennedy announces idea for the Peace Corps at the Michigan Union.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 3A
A conversation with Ann Marie Lipinski
By JENNIFER CALFAS Editor in Chief
Ann Marie Lipinski’s name doesn’t just grace the wall — it illuminates it. Her name, sitting alongside seven others, hangs on the wall at the entrance of the Daily’s newsroom — noting her Pulitzer Prize from 1987 that she received for her work as editor of the Chicago Tribune — where she was the first female editor. But her legacy goes beyond just that. As a co-editor of The Michigan Daily in 1977, she led a team of intrepid reporters. After her tenure at the Tribune, she became the curator of Harvard University’s prestigious Nieman Foundation for Journalism — becoming the first woman to do so. Changing history is a trend for Lipinski, it seems. But she doesn’t let her game-changing tendencies halt her from giving back to the place that gave so much to her: The Michigan Daily. For me, as another female editor in chief of the Daily, her legacy has had a powerful impact on me. Her story and drive are inspiring for not just women, but all Daily alumni. In honor of our 125th anniversary, I was lucky enough
to talk with Lipinski about all things journalism, Daily and beyond. LIPINSKI: The Daily has a big birthday coming up and you’re about to be overrun with a lot of nostalgic alumni. I’ve thought so often about the deep impact that place had on me, how virtually all of my journalistic values were shaped by something that happened to me there. What do you think accounts for the power of the experience? CALFAS: There’s something powerful about the experience of working at the Daily that seems to be so difficult to describe. I’ve met so many alumni who have all told me working at the Daily was the best decision they ever made. But I think the reasoning behind this can be best summed up in the words of another editor I’ve worked alongside with over the past few years: the Daily is addictive. Once you walk through the doors of 420 Maynard, you become enthralled by what this place has to offer. You become a different person — one who chooses to spend 50 hours (or even more...) a week inside this building, instead of going to class or partying each weekend with friends. This addiction may come
from the fact that everyone in the newsroom shares it; everyone shares the drive to produce work that serves an important purpose and informs our community in a way that nothing else can. But perhaps I can’t fully understand the full power and impact of the Daily until I leave in just a few months. For you, how did your experiences at the Daily help lead you to so many successes? LIPINSKI: The Daily made us apprentices of the adult world. That responsibility is a great gift and had a very powerful impact on me. In my first weeks as coeditor in chief, I recall a long Saturday in the newsroom debating not whether our editorial would stand for or against the execution of the infamous Gary Gilmore, but whether our opposition to the death penalty should run on the editorial page or boldly plastered across Page 1 — as if the governor of Utah or a justice of the Supreme Court would be any more likely to see it there. … Two decades later, while editor of the Chicago Tribune, I oversaw a multi-year examination of criminal justice issues, including an investigation of every Illinois death row case. We uncovered so many wrongs and irregularities that the gover-
nor of Illinois — who did read the Tribune — declared a moratorium on executions and then a dramatic decision to shut down death row. Our editorials about this won a Pulitzer Prize. It’s not a stretch for me to look at that work and see the shadow of college newspaper editors who lacked the full skill and influence to dismantle the nation’s capital punishment apparatus, but who were learning and honoring the promise of journalism, even if only in a dress rehearsal. CALFAS: The amount of time I’ve spent examining potential legal issues, holding a debate over whether or not we should pursue a story, or carefully editing a 3,000word investigative story line by line for 16 hours in the newsroom on Tuesday is much larger than I ever imagined. What’s interesting is that while we certainly do feel working at the Daily seems like a dress rehearsal, we’ve realized that what we do can have the same impact on people the way stories from a professional news source can. Several University policies have changed due to investigations and stories from the Daily during my three years here so far. Perhaps because we can have a broader audience now
because of the Internet and social media. I wonder: What would have been different about your time at the Daily if stories could be easily published for a global audience then as they can be now? LIPINSKI: I’m guessing everything except our journalistic values and the insane workdays, while maintaining, I suspect, a predominant focus on University news. I envy you having the tools you have now. I know the Daily faces the same business model challenges vexing all legacy print publications, and those are serious. I didn’t file my stories
on a computer until I went off to intern at the Miami Herald the summer following my junior year, and I returned to the Daily, where we still wrote on typewriters and were just making the transition from hot to cold type. (A prized possession: the lead Daily logo we used to print the last hot type edition.) But you have a core audience on campus that can adapt to new technologies and a staff of digital natives who are fluent in the new media forms. Will there be a print paper at the next reunion? How does the Daily exploit all of the See LIPINSKI, Page 9A
COURTESY OF STEVE KAGAN
Michigan Daily co-editors James Tobin and Ann Marie Lipinski watch the printing of the last hot type edition of the paper in the fall of 1977.
Reporters file from Daily editors juggle the scene of the story tradition, innovation Student writers arrested while trying to interview Castro in Cuba By WILL GREENBERG Daily News Editor
A college newspaper is supposed to be a place where young journalists take risks and learn through their successes and failures. At The Michigan Daily, plenty of writers have taken huge swings and had major success, including covering the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Ark. and interviewing Mahatma Gandhi. But for Bart Huthwaite and Jim Elsman, their reporting adventure would land them in jail — in Cuba — for trying to interview Fidel Castro. The two were students at the University and reporters at the Daily in the late 1950s. While on campus, Huthwaite said they met a couple of Cuban students on campus who knew Castro, who at the time was hiding in the mountains, on the cusp of taking power from Fulgencio Batista. Huthwaite and Elsman’s trip was just one assignment from a noteworthy list of Daily off-campus reporting trips. While the Daily’s audience is mostly University students, the news section has often looked for opportunities to do first-hand reporting on historic national and international news. Over the years, Daily reporters have been on the scene for events across the state of Michigan, covering the governor, reporting from the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. — wherever there’s an opportunity to write about something meaningful to stu-
Nov. 5, 1962 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at Hill Auditorium.
dents without blowing the travel budget. For Huthwaite, getting an interview with Castro — who was popular among students — would offer first-hand perspective for people back home. “I figured well heck, it’d be great to interview him in the mountains and see what he’s all about,” he said in an interview with the Daily. Huthwaite, who graduated from the University in 1960 and worked for the Daily’s news section, started out as a night reporter watching the police blotter. No longer in journalism, Huthwaite now lives on Mackinac Island. As a student, Huthwaite said he usually travelled to Florida for spring break, and said a trip to Cuba by way of Florida wouldn’t be too difficult. So, with a contact set up who would bring him to Castro, Huthwaite set out with Elsman to Cuba for his junior year Spring Break. But Huthwaite and Elsman weren’t able to complete their assignment — they were arrested soon after arriving at their hotel in Santiago de Cuba. “Unfortunately word got out (that we were there) and so Batista sent his boys over to pound on our door in the middle of the night, put us in a Jeep and take us up to (Moncada) barracks,” Huthwaite said, adding that the prison they were held in also held rebels against the Cuban government, some of whom were executed while Huthwaite and Elsman were there. “There was gunshots going off and such,” he said. The pair would spend several days in the jail until a New York Times reporter, who was also in Cuba to interview Castro, secured their release through the U.S. Embassy. When students returned to
school after the break, the front page of the Daily read: “Two Daily Reporters Jailed in StrifeTorn Cuba.” “Finally after 12 hours in the 90-degree heat of the cell, we started to sing the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ A machinegun-bearing guard ordered us to be quiet or he would ‘separate us,’ ” the article read, giving a first-hand account of their experience. “It’s one of the primary things in my youth because the people who were there, whether it was a guy like Tom Hayden or any other guy, it was always a wonderful place of free-thinking,” he said. “Our job was always to find, cultivate your own stories.” In more recent years, Daily news reporters have taken trips to cover political events — and have had much better luck staying out of Cuban jails. Bethany Biron, who was the Daily’s managing news editor in 2012, said she tried to give as many people as possible the chance to cover major off-campus events. While running the section, Daily reporters were on the scene at the Iowa Caucuses, President Obama’s second victory watch party and other political events around Michigan. While Biron acknowledged that stories written remotely are often still well reported, she said it adds to the Daily’s credibility and quality when reporters are actually on the scene. “Being there at the event kind of gives these events more color and more of a true taste of what’s going on,” she said. “When you’re actually there, there’s just a larger level of detail that you can include that really brings the reader in in a different way.” Rayza Goldsmith, a Senior News Editor at the Daily in 2012, was part of the team that covered See SCENE, Page 9A
March 24, 1965 Faculty hold first “teach-in” during Vietnam War.
Free-drop, focus on online coverage mark moments of Daily change By SAM GRINGLAS Managing News Editor
There was a joke staffers at The Michigan Daily told often in the 1980s. How many Daily editors does it take to change a lightbulb? “The answer was three,” said Joe Kraus, the opinion page editor in 1985. “Two to change it, and one to talk about how great the old one was.” On the surface, the joke seems silly. (Kraus says lightbulb jokes were pretty popular back then.) But in many ways, the dig encapsulates a dynamic every generation of Daily editors consider. The Daily not only must adapt in a field that’s changing at an incredibly rapid pace, but also must do it with 125 years of sepia-colored bound volumes staring down from the conference room shelves. That challenge is as relevant today as it was in 1985, when Daily editors voted to stop charging for the paper, or in the mid-1990s, when the Daily’s website carried breaking coverage for the first time. Ann Marie Lipinski, a former Daily co-editor in chief who now curates Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, said most college newsrooms are too conservative when it comes to change, and that was likely true during her time as editor. “I love Daily history, but we’ve sometimes been slaves to it, worrying too much about what predecessors will think,”
June 24, 2003 U.S. Supreme Court upholds Law School’s use of affirmative action.
she wrote in an e-mail. When Lipinski and Jim Tobin became co-editors in chief, they sent a letter to recent editors. Cheryl Pilate, co-editor in chief of the paper two years before, responded with the following advice: “You’re only editor of The Daily for one short year. So don’t waste your time shilly-shallying around and muttering about tradition. Try any creative thing that pops into your head. In most cases, the only thing you can really ruin is one day’s paper.” Neil Chase, a digital media consultant and chair of the Board of Student Publications who was the Daily’s editor in chief in 1985, said change is often the product of tough conversations. That was the case in the winter of 1985, when the Daily’s editors voted to initiate free-drop, or offering the paper at no cost from pick-up locations across campus. Until then, a Daily staffer would canvas the dorms the first week of classes, hawking subscription cards. Early every morning, local seventh graders picked up the papers and delivered them all over town with Michigan Daily bags slung over
their shoulders. The move was controversial, and Chase recalls that the final meeting on the topic elicited the kind of intensity characteristic of an all-staff election. “You’re thinking, ‘I’m going to create this thing and you’re going to throw it in a pile, and somebody’s going to pick it up and read it and throw it back down, or they’re going to be blowing all over campus.’ It just felt like it’s cheapening the product,” Chase said. “We thought we were creating something valuable, and we’re being told the new cover price for this product is now zero.” But circulation was down, and free-drop would allow the paper to attract more advertising dollars. At this time, the Daily also began printing five days per week, instead of the traditional six. “It’s exactly the situation that we’re in today,” Chase said. “The paper is doing well, it is not on the brink of any kind of disaster by any means, but revenue is way down.” In early 2015, members of the Daily’s Management Desk adopted an innovation report, which detailed these shifts and See INNOVATION, Page 9A
Aug. 23-31, 2005 University responds to Hurricane Katrina.
Sept. 11, 2001 May 22, 1964 President Johnson delivers “Great Society” speech during Spring Commencement.
Sept. 6, 1968 Dozens of students are arrested during a Diag protest criticizing the provision of welfare aid in Washtenaw County.
Dec. 20, 2013 The Daily reports Michigan kicker Brendan Gibbons was permanently Nov. 8, 2006 separated from the Michigan votes to ban University. affirmative action.
Feb. 10, 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Daily alum Arthur Miller dies.
ARTS
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Tuesday, September 29, 2015 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com
Tree Town’s stylish history A look back at Ann Arbor’s 20th-century fashion By CAROLINE FILIPS Daily Arts Writer
With locals defined by their trademark insouciance and a student population primarily invested in its studies, fashion has never been on the average Ann Arborite’s radar. By simply surveying the streets of Ann Arbor, the correct decade is indeterminate, with street style ranging from those who just can’t get rid of their perms to those imitating ’50s sensibility. Though a sizeable coterie of sartorial savants has sauntered through the Diag for nearly two centuries, truly fashionable ensembles remain a strikingly rare sight. Ultimately, University students past and present gravitate toward quintessential college garb that transcends the ages — some variation of pants, tees, sweats, sneakers and an endless cocoon of layers during the somewhat miserable days of winter, rendered tolerable by the rare and precious snow days. Though college permits those enrolled to experiment academically and socially, it also lends students an opportunity to define their own style. From the most transient of trends to classic wardrobe mainstays, it’s all been seen on campus. However, the student population of each decade seems to retain an overarching commonality in dressing. Without peeking at the date, photos of University women from the ’40s are evidenced by their penny loafers and angora sweaters, while those of the ’90s are easily spotted by their sheer stylish irreverence. Though University of Michigan style has never quite been that of the runway scene, it now seems a close reality while perusing the clothing racks of Bivouac’s women’s fashion section or poring over the pages of the student-run SHEI Magazine. With the obvious constraints of time limiting this chronicle of University fashion — namely late alumni unable to share their commentary — in collaboration with a crop of fashionably inclined alumni, this piece serves as a comprehensive examination of student fashions as far back as the late ’30s and as current as the now. Late 1930s to Early 1940s Student Lynne Ford’s “On the Clothesline” column for The Michigan Daily chronicled the trends of the ’40s — with her content ranging from her partiality for cinched waists to critical apropros of swimsuit trends. Ads from the late, beloved Metro-Detroit retailer Jacobson’s for women’s sportswear were the Daily’s primary advertisements. From 1939 to 1941, Jean Grillins might as well have attended the University — she dated and eventually married student Harvey Grillins, with whom she spent nearly every weekend on campus, always making a stop at The Marilyn Shop during its heyday. She attended her then-boyfriend’s formal date parties, mesmerized by women’s elegant long gowns, full skirts and bobby socks along with men’s formal tuxedos.
FROM “UM ALUMNI ASSOCIATION” COLLECTION OF THE BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
“They didn’t wear flats, I can tell you that,” Grillins recalled. “But, they did dress up.” Penny loafers, blazers, angora sweaters and long skirts were fashion markers of the era, as was the social calendar centered around J-hop dances complete with “dance cards” denoting who one was fated to dance with next.
of ’60s garments. An unofficial uniform of immaculate polish was often seen on campus — skirts, knee socks, penny loafers and crewneck sweaters. “Everything was very preppy,” Abraham said. “Everybody was very serious and we all looked alike.” Abraham recalled that informal
FROM THE “UM NEWS AND INFO” COLLECTION OF THE BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
1950s Though a member of the graduating class of ’63, Carren Sandall had a keen eye for style long before and after her collegiate years. Immediately following her academic career, Sandall modeled in New York City and emerged as a syndicated style columnist for The Ann Arbor News when she returned home to Ann Arbor. She continued to bridge the gap between the local community and the fashion world when she created her own course at Washtenaw Community College called “The Art of Fashion,” which accelerated her personal studies of fashion’s historical context. “Prior to the ’50s, Paris and London dictated fashion,” she said. “Then during the late ’50s, the
ensembles were seen only once weekly — casual Fridays were celebrated as a day permitting blue jeans, yet Abraham doesn’t recall a University-wide dress code in place. Prior to the counterculture movements of the decade, Abraham spoke on behalf of her era’s University women, noting the stark contrast to today’s feminist ideals — she believed being a wife and a mother was her imminent future. Yet as the ’60s unfolded, Abraham and her counterparts realized their power as educated women and sought brighter futures than their suburban housewife predecessors. Carefree, bohemian-influenced styles reflected the sociopolitical turn and continued through the rise of the ’70s.
FROM THE “UM PHOTOGRAPHS” COLLECTION FROM THE BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
youth started making a difference.” When cities like New York emerged as fashion capitals, the styles that trickled down into most closets were heavily influenced by the glamorous cinematic styles of Audrey Hepburn films. “You might take an element of film and put it in your wardrobe,” she said. “Hepburn heavily influenced the rise of capri pants.” 1960s “We dressed,” said Joan Abraham, University graduate of 1966 and current adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design in NYC. Translation: there was a certain formality to the arrangement
1970s The ’70s dressing on campus was partly disco and quasi-rogue, as guys and girls alike were often sporting fringe on nearly every garment and accessory, along with bellbottoms and distressed denim. Carren Landau, University graduate of ’77, recalls rocking a primarily peasant-inspired wardrobe. “I wore a lot of Frye Boots, long jean skirts and pea coats that were almost floor length,” she said. Length and volume, of flared pants, hairstyle or women’s skirts, were markers of the era. Students of the era even incorporated anti-war buttons into their
ensembles, as they protested the prolonged Vietnam War. Photos found in the Bentley Historical Library on North Campus showcase a University woman and her picket sign, sporting a sort of activist-chic hippie garb — a denim shirt accessorized with peace sign buttons, as she stands tall and proud in her extremely flared jeans. Late 1980s to Early 1990s “The least fashionable I ever was was in Ann Arbor, no question,” said Marly Graubard, current executive director of fashion and beauty at W Magazine and 1990 alum. Graubard stressed the era’s general disregard for fashion, maintaining the typical styles were those heavily influenced by the years’ music, art and film. “Our hair was big, we had tons of makeup on and I think we dressed kind of like preppy meets grungy meets college campus … it was all about the Michigan clothes,” she said. Scant shopping options on Main Street left students like Graubard either the option of Bivouac — where she recalled her first exposure to Lululemon athletic gear — or weekend retreats to the retail havens like Somerset Collection in Troy, Mich. or downtown Birmingham, Mich. The period was marked by the common garb of Levi’s, namely those of the loose and ripped varieties, plaid shirts and rugged boots. “It was sort of like anti-fashion, there was that sort of hippy contingence, sweaters and jeans,” Graubard said. “It was pretty Midwestern.” Early 2000s With the advent of the Internet, immediacy and clothing slowly became synonymous. The outside realm of retail was becoming extremely brand-oriented, which trickled down into the campus scene. Ashley-Brooke Sandall, 2003 graduate and current senior manager of strategic partnerships for the Council of Fashion Designers of America, recalled the preponderance of premium denim on campus, along with the overall utilitarian ways of dressing — jeans, sweaters and T-shirts. “My friends’ style influenced me the most,” she said. “Then, it was the trends that were so exciting. We would read Vogue magazine.” Along with the importance of brands, trends such as chunky, chain-link Tiffany & Co. necklaces and charm bracelets were the must-have accessories. Though a rather trend-centric time, structuring one’s individual style was gradually becoming the norm. *** Clothing existed as a primordial need of the masses long before the University’s founding, and continues to maintain its essentialism. Fashion at its best serves as a solace from a world of woes, a bubble outside of day-to-day routines, somewhat similar to the four-year journey of an undergraduate education — a window of time partially closed off from the frivolity of youth, just opening to the horrifying realities of adulthood (looking at you, taxes). And though Ann Arbor has never been regarded as a fashion capital, at the very least, one is sure to source inspiration from the eccentricity so essential to this beloved college town.
By MATT BARNAUSKAS Daily Arts Writer
Some may say that 1969 was the year of the Apollo 11 moon landing, but at The Michigan Daily, an even more momentous occasion was about to take place: the formation of the Arts section. While the Daily covered the arts in the years prior to 1969, it wasn’t until late August of that year that the section was formally listed on the Editorial Board, with Leslie Wayne as the section’s first editor. Arts coverage began with a diverse range of topics — a tradition that continues today. Reviews of records like B.B. King’s 1969 effort Live and Well, a recording writer Bert Stratton claimed “is the equal of any other electrical guitar recording and is unquestionably the best of B. B. King,” along with attention to classical and other popular music, like Pink Floyd’s show at the Hill Auditorium in October 1971, allowed the young section to cast a wide net. Film commentary was present in these early years with Arts as well, with some of the section’s earliest critics offering their opinions on films that would become cornerstones of cinema. Film critic Bruce Shlain asserted in 1972 that “director Francis Ford Coppola has flipped ‘the gangster movie’ on its ear. To say ‘The Godfather’ is merely better than the gangland-oriented movies which precede it, would hardly touch upon its uniqueness.” Closing out the ’70s, Arts continued its attendance of live music including some of the decade’s biggest acts. Writer Mike Taylor went to three separate Bruce Springsteen performances over the course of a couple weeks in 1978, while Dennis Harvey reviewed Fleetwood Mac’s performance at Crisler Arena. In his review, Harvey wrote, “Admittedly, the Mac is neither one of the best or the most original of 1970s bands … But their finest songs capture a feel of silky folk-pop-rock catchiness that’s effortlessly appealing.” Into the ’80s, Arts further grew with significant additions to the section’s leadership and coverage. In 1985, the year John Hughes’s “The Breakfast Club” — which the Daily said was a “flawed but still strangely compelling film” — released in theaters, the Arts section began to expand with the introduction of associate editors and beats (areas focusing on a particular aspect of the arts). The initial beats — movies, music, books and theatre — have developed and shifted in the 30 years since their beginnings with additions like TV/new media in 1997 and style in 2014. Meanwhile certain beats, including books and theatre, have exited or merged into new beats, notably community culture. Another introduction in the early ’80s was “The Weekend,” a weekly arts and culture insert that aimed at prepping the University’s students for their brief reprieve from the school week with “The List,” a collection of upcoming campus cinema, parties and shows. Also inside were features on culture, style and interviews with random students over
the phone. Amusingly, on Jan. 10, 2002 there was not one but two pieces about the mullet in “The Weekend.” The rise in prominence of television and cable TV during the decade led to Tony Sibler writing, “Throughout this entire country, our only common language is television. But it is much, much more than a common language. It is our pillow each night to shed tears into. It is our punching bag to strike. It is our dreamworld to escape to and our unattractive reality to come back to.” This fascination with other forms of media would carry into the ’90s with television coverage beginning intermittently with “Turn on the Tube” and becoming more consistent as the decade went on. The Arts section and the media consuming culture as a whole agreed with Podoisky, as DVDs replaced VHS. Arts began reviewing DVD releases, not just on the quality of films but the disc’s features as well. This led to some eyebrow-raising antics, exemplified by Bob Hunt’s January 2005 24-hour binge of the third season of “24.” These advances led to the 2000s, where “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy garnered three perfect, five-star ratings from the Daily. Where Hussain Rahim reviewed Kanye West’s debut album, The College Dropout. On the rapper who would later become notorious for his percieved arrogance, Hussain wrote, “He’s not trying to scare you with his prison record or tell you he’s the best rapper ever. He knows he’s not.” Where “Lost” premiered and took viewers, “On a horrifying thrill ride that is unlike anything on television today,” according to writer Doug Wernert. On Sept. 15, 2005, “The Weekend” magazine gave way to “The Statement.” To further fill in the absence, the pilot issue of “The B-Side” launched on April 12, 2006, then-Managing Arts Editor Jeffrey Bloomer describing it as “a new features section that will give us a chance to write about things that don’t usually fit on our page. It’s a work in progress, but in the fall, you can expect to see it weekly, and maybe — if we can find the money, that is — even in color.” With the title “The Sun Also Rises,” the premiere issue speculated about the coming summer’s entertainment offerings, including “Superman Returns” and Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere, and analyzed the legal quandary a burgeoning YouTube faced with copyright issues. Since then, “The B-Side” has turned its eyes to the local arts scene with extended pieces and profiles on various artists, organizations and events within and around Ann Arbor — and yes, Jeffrey, it’s printed in color. Today, the Arts section, run by Co-Managing Arts Editors, LSA seniors Adam DePollo and Chloe Gilke, continues to embrace the variety of coverage and respond to constantly shifting entertainment media that have been present since the section first began in 1969.
1990s A TV beat — known as “Turn on the Tube” — is introduced. In 1997 it is officially renamed “TV/New Media.”
1970 Writer Bruce Shlain’s review of “The Godfather” asserts that it “flipped the gangster movie on its ear.”
1969 The Arts section is formed with Lesie Wayne as the section’s
Daily Arts: A retrospective
1985 The Arts section begins to expand with the introduction of associate editors and beats, areas focusing on a particular aspect of the arts. The initial beats are Movies, Music, Books and Theatre.
2002 “The Weekend” features not one, but two pieces about the mullet.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 5A
An illustrious literary history at the ‘U’ Ann Arbor writing community continues to grow By HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK Daily Arts Writer
Last January, on one of those frozen nights where the coffee shop windows fog up too much to see in from the outside, I journeyed across campus to a cozy bookshop called Literati. The store, still in its infancy, opened by Mike and Hilary Gustafson in 2013, is a beacon of literary light for Ann Arborites and college students alike: a small but rich collection of books, spread on repurposed shelves, sided by an old typewriter on which visitors leave their own words behind. The store’s second level houses The Espresso Bar, a clinking counter that keeps a running tab of guests’ coffee. The room, light and airy by day, becomes dim and smoky by night; particularly that night, as dozens of writers and bibliophiles tucked in to hear Rebecca Scherm, recent MFA graduate from the University’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, read from her debut novel “Unbecoming.” The reading was the first of a country-wide tour; it was fittingly in an Ann Arbor coffee shop, much like those where she had first typed her story. I squeezed into a corner and watched Scherm as she watched us, her eyes welling up in tears. “This is just so weird,” Scherm said. “All of you here. Wow. Thank you, all of you. I wouldn’t have this book without you.” Her wavering voice clarified as
she began to read. The room grew silent save for Grace, living undercover in a Paris antique shop, running from her dark past. Professors, peers and I listened, enrapt, coffee spitting in the corner and the typewriter humming below. Words were alive here. Rebecca Scherm is not the first, nor will she be the last, brilliant writer to come through the University. In the 1920s, Betty Smith moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Ann Arbor for her then-husband to pursue a law degree. Though she hadn’t finished high school, Smith enrolled in University classes; under the guidance of Prof. Kenneth Thorpe Rowe, she mastered her skills in writing and drama, winning the Avery Hopwood Award for Drama in 1931. A little over a decade later, in 1943, Smith published her international bestseller “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” drawing from her own childhood experiences. During his tenure at the University, Prof. Rowe also taught two of the biggest names in literature: playwright Arthur Miller, class of 1938 and a Michigan Daily alum; and poet and art critic Frank O’Hara, class of 1951. Like Smith, Miller also grew up as a poor Brooklynite, delivering bread in the mornings to pay for college tuition. Miller thrived as a journalism major at the University, but his playwriting talent prompted his switch to an English major. In 1936 he won the Hopwood Award for his play “No Villain,” then received the award again in 1937 for “Honors at Dawn.” Miller went on to become a Broadway legend — his plays “Death of a Salesman,” “All My Sons” and “The Crucible” exploding onstage — and
a tabloid star, with his rocky marriage to actress Marilyn Monroe. Later in life, Miller retained his alma mater ties, establishing the Arthur Miller scholarship award for talented young writers at the University. While Miller’s plays flashed on Broadway, Frank O’Hara honed his poetry skills as a graduate student at the University, winning the Hopwood Poetry Award for “A Byzantine Place: 50 Poems and a Noh Play” in 1951. After receiving his MFA in English, O’Hara moved to New York City, where he became a curator at the Modern Museum of Art and established himself as a poet and critic. An unconventional writer, O’Hara believed that poetry should be written solely in the moment — scribbled on the subway, or in a room full of people — and his method spurred the poetry collections “Oranges: 12 Pastorals,” “Meditations in an Emergency” and “Lunch Poems.” O’Hara’s strong impact on the NYC art scene reverberates today. Season two of AMC’s “Mad Men,” about high-pressure advertising agencies in the 1960s, heavily referenced O’Hara’s poetry. The show’s final episode, appropriately named “Meditations in an Emergency,” shows protagonist Don Draper finding a copy of O’Hara’s book. While many students meditated on poetry and novels, others found their niche in journalism. Neal Gabler, who graduated summa cum laude in 1971, has worn nearly every hat in the writing world: His columns have been in The New York Times, Vogue and Esquire; he has published four books, winning the USA Today Biography of the Year
for “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination”; he has been broadcasted on the “Today” show and “Good Morning America.” Today, he’s a Senior Fellow at University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center and teaches graduate courses at State University of New York Stony Brook, covering a range of topics from biography to film criticism. Gabler has also taught at the University in the past, receiving the Outstanding Teaching Award from the University in 1978. He had close ties to the Screen Arts and Cultures department as a student and teacher — especially with Hugh Cohen, current SAC professor and his former mentor, who invited Gabler to give a guest lecture on film criticism this past April. In his speech, Gabler reminisced about his years as a film critic for The Michigan Daily, where he famously wrote more column inches than anyone in the paper’s history. Outstanding mentors and professors are crucial in cultivating creativity. Prof. Rowe inspired Smith, Miller and O’Hara, among others; Prof. Cohen piqued Gabler’s interest in film. Naturally, University professors, many who return to teach after receiving University degrees, are accomplished writers themselves. Laura Kasischke, a 1987 graduate of the Zell Writers’ Program and a current professor at the University, has published eight collections of poetry and nine novels. “Ann Arbor has really become an active writing community — the Zell reading series, and now Literati, and the many writers who live here have put us on the map,”
Kasischke said, about what draws writers to the University. “But, even when I started school here in the ’80s, there was an astonishing writing community. “Ann Arbor isn’t a large place, but the University obviously attracts people from far and wide who write,” she continued. Among many awards, Kasischke won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012 for “Space, In Chains,” a poetry collection with an underlying theme of grief, presented through her raw and resonant imagery. Kasischke’s fiction explores dark topics like global pandemics and school shootings, spun in the same startling realness as her poetry. “The Life Before Her Eyes,” about a survivor from a Columbine-like school shooting, was adapted into a film starring Uma Thurman in 2007. When discussing dark and twisted themes in novels, Megan Abbott’s name also undoubtedly arises. Abbott grew up outside of Detroit and graduated from the University with an English degree in 1993, then went on to pursue a Ph.D. in English and American literature at New York University. Inspired by the noir writings of Joan Didion and female crime fiction, Abbott edited “A Hell of a Woman,” an anthology of female crime fiction. She also wrote “The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir” and seven fiction novels. Her 2012 novel “Dare Me,” about a sinister crime covered up by a high school cheerleading squad, as well as her latest novel “The Fever,” about a sudden sickness that sweeps through a high school
clique, are both being adapted into TV shows for HBO and MTV, respectively. “It wasn’t until I started taking classes in the (University’s) English Department that I really learned how to write at all,” Abbott replied when asked in an e-mail interview. She continued, “And workshops, especially the one I took with the brilliant and kind Keith Taylor (a current English professor), offered me my first true experience of creative writing, of burrowing into the dark corners of one’s own head.” Abbott also attributes her writing success to her time spent at The Michigan Daily. “Working on the (Daily) Arts staff filled my last 12 months at Michigan,” she said. “I learned how to write book and movie reviews; how to be a rigorous editor of my own work and that of others. It was the first time in my life that I was surrounded by people for whom words mattered so much, story mattered so much.” Every University alum brings a different story to campus. It’s here that those stories are shared and fleshed out, where interests take root and relationships flourish. Even when they leave Michigan, writers’ words remain, spoken in bookshops on winter nights and bound in volumes in the Avery Hopwood room of Angell Hall. They’re read in undergraduate English classes, by young students who may someday cast their own stories into the world. “Every year, I find so much talent in both the undergrad and graduate classrooms that it seems like it should run out someday,” Kasischke said. “But it doesn’t.”
A timeless Michigan Theater keeps thriving By ALEX BERNARD Daily Community Culture Editor
Editor’s Note: As The Michigan Daily celebrates its 125th anniversary, take a look at another chapter of history — that of The Michigan Theater. “To go where so many had gone before.” I can’t tell if that’s a romantic sentiment or just how I feel about going into a public bathroom. After all, everyone’s been everywhere, or at least walked everywhere. So why did I care so much when I stepped into the Michigan Theater for the thousandth time to see another new indie movie with another awesome Kristen Wiig performance and buy another Coke, another ticket, another Screening Room seat? The theater is Ann Arbor’s cultural center, sure, but those are just words. Why care? Here’s why. In another world, the Michigan Theater might’ve been a food court. Really. It’s a true story. And Henry Aldridge — author of “The Michigan Theater” and head organist at the theater — had time to tell us the whole thing. “It was built as a movie palace and opened in January 1928 with a live show and a feature film,” Aldridge said. “It had a resident 13-piece orchestra and, of course, the beautiful Barton pipe organ. The Michigan ran silent films until June 1929 when it switched to talking films.” Talking films led to a rapid decline in live performances at the Michigan and across the country. Meanwhile, cinemas became the sole proprietor of the cultural and commercial phenomena: talkies. According to Russ Collins,
FILE PHOTO/Daily
executive director and CEO of the Michigan Theater and State Theatre, annual attendance at cinemas around the country reached upwards of 4 billion. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Collins likened the growth of film to the growth of the Internet: At first no one had it, then a few people did, then everyone did and no one could imagine life without films. And then they added talking. “People don’t think of movie history like that,” Collins said. “They
think of it like, ‘Well there was the silent era which was like pre-history and who gives a shit? It was all dinosaurs and that kind of crap, and it doesn’t have anything to do with what we do now.” The Michigan found similar success to other cinemas. Until the 1950s, when television surpassed film as the principal means of entertainment and every theater hurt. To combat declining audience numbers, the theater’s ownership authorized drastic renovations to the theater space.
Over the next two decades though, the Michigan’s new “modernized” appearance wouldn’t be enough to solidify its place in Ann Arbor, and, faced with stiff competition, Butterfield made plans to close the theater in 1979 and turn the space into a food court. But, of course, this was not to be, not if Henry Aldridge had anything to say about it. With 14 months advanced notice about the closing, Aldridge sought out colleagues and supporters of the Michigan. “Beginning in June 1978, when
2005 Art’s “The Weekend” section turns into “The Statement,” the Daily’s weekly feature magazine.
2004 Hussain Rahim’s review of Kanye West’s album The College Dropout says, “He’s not trying to scare you with his prison record or tell you he’s the best rapper ever. He knows he’s not."
2014 Senior Arts Editor Erika Harwood creates the Style beat.
we first heard of plans to repurpose the theater, I started calling and visiting anyone and everyone I could think of to see if we could come up with a strategy to save the theater. I was politely rebuffed by most people who saw no need for a slightly worn out old movie theater.” Naturally, not everyone was enthusiastic. According to Collins, some Ann Arbor locals wondered why their town needed another “big theater,” in part because the Power Center, which opened in 1971, was still relatively new. Despite some support, it seemed that the Michigan might not be saved after all, that Aldridge’s efforts would ultimately be impassioned but ineffective. But then Aldridge’s friend put him in contact with Mayor Lou Belcher, and the two came up with the idea of establishing a 501(c)(3) corporation to purchase the theater, or in Aldridge’s words: “Mayor Belcher knew how to get things done.” With Belcher’s know-how, Aldridge’s determination and the financial support of community members — specifically and especially philanthropist Margaret Towsley — the Michigan was purchased. On Sept. 28, 1979, after being closed for only six weeks, the Michigan Theater reopened with a showing of the feature film “Gigi.” The advertisement read, “The Michigan Theater’s Screen Glows Again.” “Within days, groups such as the Ann Arbor Film Festival, folk singers, rock bands and others approached us about booking the theater. We operated the theater until May l980 with a handful of volunteers until our first manager was hired,” Aldridge said. Since the reopening, the Michigan Theater has undergone a series of costly but crucial renovations. From the foyer, auditorium and ceiling to the addition of a screening room and offices, the Michigan Theater has left its “modernized” renovations in the ’50s, where they belong. According to Aldridge, “The Michigan looks very much like it did in 1928.” Now, beyond architectural and interior grandeur, the theater has returned to its roots. It keeps busy. Collins is the executive director of the Michigan, yes, but also operates the State Theatre, the Cinetopia Film Festival and the Art House Convergence, a national conference for independent cinemas that the Michigan runs in association with Sundance. In addition to films, the Michigan Theater hosts live music, concerts, symphonies, children’s programs, silent movies, standup, lectures, classes, Broadway shows and plays. The Michigan is the home of the Penny Stamps
Lecture Series, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, the Michigan Pops Orchestra and countless other events, from English department cocktail parties to Law School graduations. To list every brilliant, famous person who’s ever performed or spoken at the Michigan would give my editor an aneurysm, so I’ll just mention a few: David Sedaris, B.B. King, Pussy Riot, Joe Jackson, Iggy Pop, Mike Birbiglia (my favorite) and many, many more. As I sat in Collins’s office, on his visitor chair — which is, obviously, a small director’s chair — he told me many things, but one in particular that I didn’t understand at the time, not fully anyway: “The Michigan Theater is an interesting laboratory for studying how things are completely different and exactly the same.” The pipe organ. The renovations. The movies. Live performances — just like 1928. As he led me to his office, Collins and I stopped by the auditorium, where some tech guys were turning nobs on the soundboard, and a band tested their microphones. All I could think about was the theater, how it almost wasn’t there and then it was, and how much it matters to so many. To Henry Aldridge. To Russ Collins. To me. To freshmen who aren’t sure why there are two old cinemas right next to each other, but who eventually learn. To every theater employee who’s ever caught the end of “Birdman” right before clean-up. To so many who have gone before. More than 80 years of history, conflict, struggles, buyouts, sales, constructions, renovations, plans, performances, losses, gains, films, Cokes, 20-somethings. More than 80 years of students like me, caring about our theater, our theater that now sits between an Elevation Burger and the Tropical Smoothie Café, that rubs shoulders with Graffiti Alley. The Michigan Theater is still here. It’s not a food court. It’s an institution, an inseparable part of Ann Arbor’s wiring. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think what Collins said about film could (should) really be about the Michigan: “It didn’t exist, and then it existed and a few people had it. And then it existed and a whole bunch of people had it, but not everybody. And then, everybody thought it was really cool.” This week, the Michigan Theater is showing “Grandma.” I hear it’s pretty good. Maybe I’ll go alone. Maybe I’ll sit in someone’s old usual seat, and I won’t even know it. And that, well, that’ll be really cool.
SPORTS
6A
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com FILE PHOTO/Daily
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Inside 125 years of Michigan sports history By JAKE LOURIM Managing Sports Editor
The history of Michigan athletics is told through moments. People remember where they were when the Michigan football team outlasted Notre Dame under the lights at Michigan Stadium in 2013, one of the greatest games in Michigan Stadium’s storied history. They remember watching as the Fab Five rose to prominence in the early 1990s, captivating the nation in the process. They even remember tragedy, like the day legendary football coach Bo Schembechler passed away on the eve of the historic matchup between No. 2 Michigan and No. 1 Ohio State in 2006. Bob Ufer’s radio call of John Wangler to Anthony Carter in 1979 still rings through people’s minds. Photos of Charles Woodson’s No. 1 salute in the 1998 Rose Bowl hang on walls throughout America. Desmond Howard’s Heisman pose during the 1991 Michigan-Ohio State game is a fixture on college football highlight reels even today. These moments have filled the pages of The Michigan Daily for
125 years now. Hundreds of Daily sports writers have been inside all the action in all that history. Arguably, nowhere is that tradition more important than Michigan. This is a school that holds onto memories of past glory as a standard for the future. It cherishes the connections forged between teammates and coaches over the years. It even measures current success in relation to the past, most notably by comparing football coaches to Schembechler, the program’s patriarch. Over the years, Michigan has laid a foundation of remarkable consistency. At present, three varsity coaches are in their 32nd year at the University: hockey’s Red Berenson, softball’s Carol Hutchins and women’s track and field’s James Henry. From 1921 until 1988, Michigan had just three total Athletic Directors — Fielding H. Yost, Fritz Crisler and Don Canham. The Daily provided consistent coverage of their rise to the stature they occupy today. *** The University’s athletic history predates even the Daily’s by a quarter-century. This
year, Michigan Athletics will celebrate its 150th anniversary while the Daily celebrates its 125th. But the Daily has documented sports from its outset. It covered Yost’s famous “point-a-minute” teams in the early 1900s, back when a printing press below the newsroom was used to set type. A Nov. 12, 1905 story headlined “SUBSTITUTES SCORE FORTY POINTS ON OHIO STATE” details one of Yost’s teams’ victory. “The most brilliant run ever seen on Ferry Field and the longest run ever made anywhere … was the one feature of yesterday’s game with Ohio State,” the Daily wrote about a long touchdown run by Al Barlow. “Two fortyyard runs for touchdowns made by Garrels complete what was undoubtedly the most spectacular game ever seen in Ann Arbor.” Circumstances have changed immeasurably since then. Football is different, the Daily is different, the writing style
is different, and the University is different. But the concept of recording the highs and lows of Michigan athletics has remained constant. Many more stories since Yost’s teams have garnered much more attention as the media and the sports landscape have expanded. One of the highest-profile stories was the rise of the Fab Five and their success during a twoyear run from 1991 to 1993. In their second year together, they started the season ranked No. 1 in the country and took opponents by storm. “It was one of those situations where their experience just whipped our behinds,” legendary Purdue coach Gene Keady said after the Wolverines beat his ninth-ranked Boilermakers on Jan. 8, 1993. “I would not under any circumstances want to play Michigan again if they were playing like that,” said another legendary coach from the same state, Bob Knight, after his topranked Hoosiers squeaked past
“A Michigan man will coach Michigan!”
Michigan a month later. The Fab Five rolled into the NCAA Tournament and past Kentucky in the Final Four. “A-MAIZE-ING,” read the headline on the front of the SportsMonday section on April 5, 1993, with a photo of Chris Webber embracing Jalen Rose after the game. The next day, the headline read “TIME TO LOSE,” with Leon Derricks consoling Webber after the star tried to call a timeout in the final seconds of the National Championship Game. So it has gone for the Daily’s coverage of Michigan’s triumphs and struggles every day for 125 years. *** The Fab Five era was a momentous period in the University’s history, but the moments extend to many different ages, sports and issues. There have been moments of pride. In 1989, near the end of the men’s basketball season, Schembechler fired coach Bill Frieder for agreeing to become the head coach at Arizona State after the season. “A Michigan man will coach Michigan!”
Schembechler said. There have been moments of change. In 1934, Michigan had scheduled a football game at Georgia Tech, but the Yellow Jackets refused to compete if the Wolverines played Willis Ward, a black player on the team. Michigan forced Ward to stay home and traveled to Atlanta for the game, sparking outrage on campus. There have been moments of redemption. In 1968, Ohio State routed Michigan, 50-14, when Buckeyes coach Woody Hayes opted for the two-point conversion late in a 48-14 game. He said he did it “because I couldn’t go for three!” The next year, Schembechler’s team stunned No. 1 Ohio State to win the Big Ten and make the Rose Bowl. The rest of Schembechler’s tenure went down in history just like the beginning, as he went 194-48-5 in 21 seasons and served as an icon for the Michigan program. Those icons are all around, both the presence of current ones and the memory of past ones. The Daily has always told their stories, and will continue to do so as long as there are stories to tell.
1902 Michigan football Bowl.
1879 game, beginning a rich tradition.
1865 The University introduces baseball as the first competitive varsity sport.
1908 The men’s basketball team is formed.
1901 The football team wins its first national championship.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 7A
Schefter’s career began with Daily experience By MAX COHEN Managing Sports Editor
SAM WOLSON/Daily TODD NEEDLE/Daily
Before he was one of the nation’s most prominent NFL reporters, Adam Schefter was a freshman at the University of Michigan looking for something to do with his time. First, he tried to rush a fraternity, but that didn’t work out. Then he went to the football offices, looking to help out, but they didn’t have a job for him. He went to the basketball team’s office for the same reason, and they didn’t have anything for him to do, either. It took three misses, but Schefter eventually found something to pour himself into: The Michigan Daily. It changed his life. “I was always very curious about newspapers,” Schefter said in a phone interview. “I loved sports growing up, and that kind of combined two interests when I had no other opportunities. And it just led to, honestly, just a thought. I never, never, never imagined that it would turn into my vocation.” Schefter, now an ESPN NFL Insider who appears on a variety of NFL shows on the network, in addition to frequently contributing to ESPN.com and ESPN Radio, arrived at the Daily
as a timid freshman, one who was still finding his way. But eventually, he found a passion. By the time Schefter graduated from the University in 1989, he had served as the paper’s managing sports editor and covered Michigan hockey, men’s basketball and football for the Daily. “It was something that captivated me and interested me and motivated me,” Schefter said. “I loved it. I was drawn to it.” An airport conversation during what Schefter believes was his junior year helped solidify his career path. He was waiting for a flight to cover a Michigan men’s basketball game in Minnesota when he approached Detroit Free Press sports writer Thomas George, who was on the same flight. In their conversation and the ones that followed, George helped convince Schefter that sports journalism was actually a viable career path. “To me, that was something that was unattainable, something that somebody else did, not me,” Schefter said. “The more I talked to him, the more I thought, ‘Wow, maybe I can try this.’ ” And Schefter did. After graduating from the University, Schefter earned a master’s degree
at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism before starting a newspaper career. He worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post before transitioning into television. He considers the Daily to be the launching pad of his career, a place where he was able to learn about himself and his future profession. “If I didn’t go to the Daily, I wouldn’t have done this,” Schefter said. “It set me on a path to doing what I am doing today.” One of the experiences that stands out most to Schefter from his Daily career was the opportunity to cover legendary Michigan coach Bo Schembechler in his penultimate season, Schefter’s senior year. Schembechler held court at Weber’s Inn in Ann Arbor every Monday, and Schefter never missed a single one. He loved listening to the coaching icon and learning from his experiences. “I’d go and I’d have my best meal of the week, lunch on Monday, Weber’s Inn, and I’d get to listen to Bo Schembechler,” Schefter said. “What was better than that? Getting a free meal and getting to listen to Bo? It didn’t get better than that.”
Rosenberg reflects on lessons learned at Daily By MAX BULTMAN Daily Sports Editor
Last spring, on a particularly late night at the Daily, the Sept. 12, 1994 sports section of The Michigan Daily was sitting on the table in the center in the conference room. Surrounded by bound volumes on the shelves, and a few on the table, the standalone issue stood out. It was the oldest issue of the Daily the current editorial staff had ever seen that wasn’t contained by a bound volume or framed on the wall. But more thrillingly, it included a column from Michael Rosenberg — the 1995 editor in chief of the Daily, now a senior writer at Sports Illustrated — on the front of the sports page. Today, Rosenberg is one of the most prominent sports writers in the country. He has written for some of the top papers in the country, including The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Sacramento Bee. His work was featured in the 2005 edition of “The Best American Sports Writing,” and he has been featured in the Associated Press Sports Editors top 10 column-
writing awards multiple times. It was especially exciting, then, that on the front of the sports page from that issue was an especially moving feature by Rosenberg on then-Michigan receiver Walter Smith. Rosenberg has written several phenomenal stories throughout his career, but there was something about Smith’s that made it especially poignant. Smith injured his knee before his senior season, and Rosenberg set out to tell his story — a gripping, emotional tale about the life he had moved away from but had irreversibly shaped him. The following passage captures its essence: “ ‘I cried before every game last year,’ Smith says, ‘because I thought we were going to lose.’ He does not cry when his friends are killed. He cries when his football team loses, or might lose. People usually cry when a friend dies partly because it is a shock. When Smith’s friends die it is not a shock. It literally happens about as often as his football team loses.” Rosenberg had to treat this story with immense care in order to be fair to Smith, just one of many traits that make his work so respected.
So when the Daily caught up with Rosenberg before Michigan’s 2015 season-opening football game at Utah, we asked about the story — in writing it, Rosenberg exemplified one of the most important lessons he learned during his time at the Daily. “It’s not just getting your facts right,” Rosenberg said, “but (that) you’re taking the proper care.” The Smith story had such sensitive subject matter — about Smith’s upbringing in Detroit and his resulting distrust of people — that it was especially important to be careful and courteous. The Daily reached out to Smith to talk about the story. All these years later, he still has a copy of the piece, titled, “Selfmade man,” but he had no idea Rosenberg was now working at Sports Illustrated. Asked what Rosenberg did to make him feel comfortable sharing such a vulnerable story, Smith talked about how relatable and understanding Rosenberg was with him. At the time of the piece, Smith had injured his ACL and was reeling from the realization he couldn’t play football. But Rosenberg still
managed to connect with him, showing empathy and treating his life story with care. “He made me feel like I wasn’t hurt,” Smith said. “That’s an art.” The Daily strives to foster the growth of exemplary journalists like Rosenberg. And in order to grow, making mistakes is inevitable. Rosenberg learned that lesson at 420 Maynard St., too. Back in 1992, New York Yankee legend Derek Jeter briefly attended the University. Back then, Jeter was just a draft pick out of Kalamazoo Central High School. He wasn’t playing for the Michigan baseball team, so he was, for all intents and purposes, a regular student. Rosenberg decided to write a story on him, setting up what became an embarrassing learning experience. “I did a story on (Jeter), and for some reason, and to this day I have no idea why, I mentioned he played football, which he didn’t do,” Rosenberg said. “I must have, I don’t know, but I’m assuming I heard it from somebody in the newsroom, and being a freshman in college, I just didn’t check it. It wasn’t like I could Google it at the time because there was no Google.
It’s my fault, it’s my story, but it’s not like I came up with it on my own. “I just didn’t know what I was doing. I was literally 17.” Jeter and Rosenberg ran into each other a few times upon Jeter’s trips back to campus. Jeter was always friendly, saying hello and not mentioning the error. Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. “I found out years later that he was pissed about the story, cause his friends were giving him shit about it in Kalamazoo,” Rosenberg said. “And he should have been pissed! It was wrong!” Fellow Daily alum Ken Davidoff, now a baseball columnist for the New York Post, eventually clued Rosenberg in to his mistake, leaving him mortified, but allowing him to make good on it. After a couple years — Rosenberg doesn’t remember exactly when, only that Nick Swisher was on the Yankees at the time — he paid a visit to the Yankee captain at a Detroit Tigers game. “I went into the Yankees dugout, before a Tigers game, of course he remembers me,” Rosenberg said. “He might have forgotten me if I had gotten the
story right, but it’s years later, and I hadn’t talked to him since I’d heard that. And I said, ‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’ And he was entertained. He was like, ‘This guy said I played football!’ ” A friendly observer to the situation, Davidoff eventually asked Jeter about it. Asked about the error, Jeter said, “It’s not the first time someone wrote something wrong about me,” to which Davidoff replied, “Actually, I think it was!” In journalism, as in any field, errors shape a writer as much — if not more — than their successes. And while Rosenberg was already an established columnist by the time he found out about his Jeter mistake, he still counts it among the various ways the Daily helped him to grow. “You just learn,” he said. It was at the University and at the Daily that Rosenberg learned some of the most important lessons for a young journalist. “Just because a story is accurate doesn’t mean it’s fair — especially if it’s their personal life,” he said. “If you catch a coach breaking a rule, that’s fair game. If a coach’s wife has cancer, and doesn’t want you to know it, it doesn’t matter if you know it. That’s their life. It’s just a story to you.”
1989 The men’s basketball team wins its championship.
1973 1972 The passage of Title IX begins a new chapter, as women’s sports are introduced.
hockey begins as the first female sport.
2015 Former Michigan player Jim Harbaugh returns as the head coach of the football team.
1977 Diver Christina Seufert earns the 1948 Men’s ice hockey wins its championship.
2001 The field hockey team women’s national title.
individual national championship.
1997 The Michigan football team wins the national championship.
OPINION
8A
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Committing to objectivity
T
he relationship between Americans, newspapers and editorial freedom is a tangled mess of a story, with blood and ink dripping slowly down its winding pages. Evidence suggests this story began in 1690 when Benjamin Harris published the first and only edition of Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, in the then-colonial town of Boston. The publication was shut down by British AARICA authorities a mere four days MARSH after its initial installment for failing to obtain a publishing license from the government. The next American newspaper wasn’t printed until years later when, in 1704, the governor approved The Boston News-Letter, which was heavily subsidized and censored by the British government. Successive colonial papers received the same treatment, with several editors and publishers jailed when authorities did not agree with their views. Of course, that all changed in 1765 when colonial residents finally decided to act against the dictator-like presence of the British, starting a revolution that was heard around the world. During that time, America’s founding fathers instituted the Bill of Rights, with the First Amendment reading as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (emphasis mine). Thereafter, media in the United States was subject to censorship only through the lens of our first amendment; strict government censorship became a thing of older times or of other nations. With the spirit of a free press still fresh in the minds of citizens, the initial staff of The Michigan Daily printed its first edition on Sept. 29, 1890. Since that day, the Daily has remained editorially independent from all outside influences, including (and especially) the University. But without any external influence, how do you decide what stories to report and how to frame them? And how have those people’s decisions in the past affected their successors who make similar editorial decisions today? The evolution of newspapers and journalism has come a long way. As the sensationalism that filled the pages of the Penny Press decreased, journalists began to focus more on facts and objectivity. During the early 19th century, so called “news” and “editorial commentary” were often mixed together within one article, giving readers a sense of how the writers felt about certain topics and why they felt that way. Toward the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, journalism became a prestigious career with a code of ethics to follow. The first rule? Objectivity. Today, objectivity is the goal most journalists strive toward when reporting the facts to the public. The Society of Professional Journalists stresses objectivity and other journalistic ethics in its code of ethics, which is well known by reporters across the nation. With the evolution of objectivity came the natural separation of “news” and “editorial” pages. News reporters were striving for objective reporting when relaying facts to the public, while editors from the opinion section wrote stories in a purposefully unobjective format. At the Daily, a complete separation between the incompatible sections didn’t happen until the early 1990s. In an interview with the Daily, David Schwartz, a former news reporter turned editorial page editor (February 1990-January 1991) noted, “There was a tension during my
first couple years of the paper between those of us who thought journalism should be about objectively reporting the news and others who thought there’s no such thing as being objective. (The idea was that) everyone has their biases, and we might as well own up to what our biases are, and have the entire paper — including the news section — be activist.” During that time, all Daily staffers were allowed to become editorial board members, potentially creating a conflict of interest with regard to objective news reporting. Schwartz and several other staffers disagreed with the sentiment that the entire newspaper should be activist. Objectivity was a goal reporters around the globe were working toward, and the Daily was not about to be left behind in the world of journalism. Eventually, during the 1990 editor elections, objectivity won and activism was reserved solely for the Opinion section; the News section would stick to reporting the news without clear social and political biases. With the roles of each section agreed upon, the Daily’s editorial page began focusing on issues in which they could actually create a lasting effect. 1995-1996 Editorial Page Editor Julie Becker said in an interview with my co-EPE, Derek Wolfe, “One of the things that we really tried to do was move away from talking, especially about international issues, but also about national and domestic, because not only were they not going to be solved on the pages of the Daily, but we were not the most qualified people to be writing about that sort of thing.” By refocusing with a narrowed lens on the University community, the Opinion page transformed into more than just a group of students whining about news well beyond the scope of Ann Arbor. With both University officials and students reading our thoughts through a critical lens, editorials became wired with facts and reporting of our own. “It was very good for me to really have to defend my positions and really think about what my opinions were and why they were what they were and learn to support them with facts,” mentioned Becker while talking about what the Opinion page taught her. I first joined the Daily’s Opinion page during my sophomore year of college. As a newbie, I never quite realized how much journalistic skill goes into writing factually accurate and poignant arguments. My time as an assistant editor, then senior editor, then editorial page editor has taught me that there’s more to opinion writing than just letting others know what you think. You have to show your audience why your ideas are the right ideas. It’s like writing an argumentative essay for thousands of professors who are sometimes cruel and unjust. And while much of the criticism toward the Opinion page is directed toward the Daily in general, the Opinion staff and editors often face the weight of their decisions alone. “We don’t have a professional staff of journalists around trying to sort through that stuff, so we all had to do it ourselves and teach each other, which I think increases the pressure on you, the sense of consequence for failure, the fear that you’re doing it wrong. It all weighs on you really heavily,” Stephen Henderson, 1991-1992 editorial page editor and current editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, noted in an interview. Yet we bear the weight and continue to comment on stories that our staff deem important on campus. The losses are remembered as lessons and the wins as prideful memories. It’s a constant struggle of reflection and analysis, but it’s a struggle with which the Opinion staff will forever — gladly — remain entangled.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com
The purpose of the Opinion page
I
n the time I’ve been on the Daily’s Opinion staff, I’ve noticed something: This campus has a lot of opinions and no shortage of people who want to share them. It’s been that way for the last 125 years, and that trend shows no sign of slowing — just look at DEREK my e-mail inbox. WOLFE That reality, though, has left the Daily’s Opinion page having to deal with serious questions about its purpose. “Is the Daily a forum for all? Or is it a controlled forum?” Julie Becker, who was editorial page editor from 1995-1996, asked when we spoke in early September. “And if it’s controlled, who are we to be controlling it, and what are the standards by which we’re going to control it?” And as Stephen Henderson, the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press who served as the Daily’s EPE from 1991-1992, told me, “It’s said (the Opinion page) serves two purposes: one is to advocate for the positions the institution holds and is trying to advance, but the other is to provide a place for everybody, and especially for opposing points of view, to get some air time.” That said, I think it’s important to recognize what David Schwartz, who was EPE from 1990-1991, told me when I spoke with him. He mentioned how many issues like the Arab-Israeli conflict aren’t going to be solved on the pages of the Daily and effectively said the Opinion page, in many cases, is just a place to be heard. As the current editorial page editor, I grapple with the questions and comments from Becker, Henderson and Schwartz every day. Most of the time, those questions are answered for us; we don’t have enough content for the day, so we run what we have. But other times, we have to make a choice. If we received two or three pieces on sexual assault, the BDS movement or wealth inequality, how
Published 11/4/2008
— Aarica Marsh can be reached at aaricama@umich.edu. Published 10/20/1976
Published 9/12/2000
Published 10/4/1984
do we reasonably pick what is fit to print? How do we make sure those opposing points of view get the page space they deserve? And if we have to pick one person’s point of view over another’s, does that imply the opinion we choose is more important than another one? While often times we go with the piece that is the most “grammatically correct” or “well-written,” in many ways, we are ranking views, and that makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps even more uncomfortable than choosing individual pieces to publish is when we hire columnists each semester. We get more applicants than there are spots, and choosing who gets to write about mental health or environmental issues or politics can be as difficult or more difficult than choosing opinions to publish from issue to issue. Of course, there are also logistical factors that play into these decisions, like space on the page and the time we have to make these decisions. But the point remains the same: not all people and issues on campus, minus bigots, get the recognition they need or deserve. Activism on campus comes in all shapes and sizes, and I’m willing to bet that many, if not all, past EPEs desperately want the Daily to be a go-to space for activists to voice their opinions on issues they feel strongly about. Henderson spoke to this point when I talked with him in early September. “That part of the job (receiving submissions from campus groups) was at least as much work and took as much thought as the editorial part of the job did, because you had these deeply passionate groups and individuals. And deeply passionate about very serious issues,” Henderson said. “The stuff that they were talking about … was big stuff. It wasn’t little things. And so there was a lot of pressure, I felt, to handle all that in a sophisticated and fair way at a pretty young age, when I had no previous experience doing it.” I certainly feel that pressure, which seems to boil down to one question: How do you balance between wanting to produce a high-
quality newspaper with the best writers and the need to present diverse viewpoints? To me, that is a battle every opinion page will fight indefinitely. I see it as my role as EPE to work with groups to meet in the middle; I want to get their writing to a point where it is acceptable for our publication. This takes time and effort, but it’s important work. Arching over all of this, though, is what Schwartz said: Issues don’t get solved on the Opinion page. Homelessness in Ann Arbor was being written about 25 years ago, and it’s still an issue. Sexual assault was a relevant topic in the early 1990s, and it’s even more so now. The same goes for institutional racism at the University. The administration continuously fails to listen to students, and that leaves many frustrated. As Schwartz puts it, “I think that the dynamic is the same between activist students and an administration that is often much slower to adapt or to change than the students would like. I think that’s likely to be true of the U of M going back to the ’60s and going forward from here.” To me, what Schwartz is saying is all the more reason to maintain a vibrant, expansive opinion page. Though the issues themselves may not be solved in print, the voices fighting, explaining or advocating for these issues matter. Submitting a viewpoint or writing a column is an exclamation of the statement, “I am here and I matter.” Because of the Daily’s rather large audience, I feel an immense responsibility to give people that chance to announce their presence. Even though questions regarding how to do so must be wrestled with continuously, the Daily has been a place for sharing voices for the past 125 years, and will continue to serve that role in the future. The Opinion page is a place to say that we, the students of the University of Michigan, care about the world around us and will keep fighting the good fight — whatever that fight may be. — Derek Wolfe can be reached at dewolfe@umich.edu.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
LIPINSKI From Page 3 transformational digital opportunities and stay financially viable? I would love to listen in on the conversations you all have about this and know how you balance Daily values worth preserving with the need to train successful leaders and assure a relevant future for the newsroom. CALFAS: The issue of simultaneously adapting to a changing media landscape while maintaining the strong traditions and values is one of the most important conversations happening every day in our newsroom. What’s difficult is striking a balance between honoring our past and thinking critically about our future. The most memorable changes in the Daily’s history are now movements that we honor — so why can’t we make some changes ourselves and join the innovators of the past? Something I’ve tried to promote during my time as editor is the willingness to try something new. As a college newspaper, we must take advantage of our unique lens we bring to campus and Ann Arbor news as students, and we have a responsibility to explore new and innovative ways to produce and promote our content. If someone has a new idea, why not try it out? If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and that’s the worst thing that could happen. Whenever the topic of moving away from print comes up, we often look to the scores of bound volumes staring back at us in our newsroom. The tradition and legacy of the paper is something that carries us to where we are now, but the progress and innovation that came before us remind us that we too can leave a mark within our own newsroom. What does the value of the Daily’s print publication mean for you — and, perhaps, what’s the significance of its social media presence and new website design? LIPINSKI: I’m unsentimental about the print Daily. A few years ago, the bound volume I had received commemorating my year as co-editor was destroyed in a house flood. I was sad at first, then calmly resigned when I conceded that I rarely looked at it and that my fierce attachment was to the idea of the Daily, the amazing people I learned from and the collective we built there. (…) But my real education on Maynard Street was so much more profound. I remember as a young reporter watching the senior editors (all of a year or two older than me) investigate an accusation of plagiarism, a charge that ended in their painful decision to dismiss a gifted student peer. I won’t forget the seriousness of their deliberations, and years later I leaned into my memory of their ethical stewardship when as an editor I was put in judgment of a colleague similarly charged. You can’t lose that in a flood and as a student-run teaching hospital for journalists, I think the Daily is extraordinary. (…) My own bias is to be more bold, though I think a lot of college papers are surpris-
“My own bias is to be more bold, though I think a lot of college papers are surprisngly conservative about change.” ingly conservative about change. You’re right to ask, “Why not try it out?” and be grateful for the paper’s legacy but not a slave to it. May I change the subject? Here I am, a woman who was Daily co-editor, talking with the Daily’s presiding woman editor in chief. That’s already two more top women editors than most major news institutions have had, and you and I are but two of many women leaders in the Daily’s history. We recently published a lengthy story in Nieman Reports on female leadership in journalism and found the numbers dismal. I love that our college paper defies that. Although I certainly
One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
encountered my first instances of newsroom sexism at the Daily, I’m proud of the amazing history women have made there. What do you think accounts for that given the overall industry profile? CALFAS: When I was the managing news editor as a sophomore, I faced a host of difficulties, as I felt I had to prove my worth because I was both young for the position and a woman. Certainly, the majority of my staff did not consider these two characteristics as weaknesses, but a few did. Growing from the subtle sexism I faced in that post, I thought of how important it would be to have another female editor in chief — since it hadn’t been done for five years at that point. I can’t count how many times male sources of mine have called me “sweetie” or “honey” during an interview, or encountered someone who was shocked to hear that I, indeed, was the editor in chief of the Daily. At a certain point, I would think that it’s not the newsrooms that are inhibiting the growth and empowerment of female lead-
“We’ve stood on the shoulders of generations of editors who cared deeply about the institution and did their best to leave it in better shape than they found it.” ers, but rather the world around us. That’s a tricky issue to solve, and affects women in all career fields outside of journalism. How do you think women can empower themselves to take on these challenges? LIPINSKI: In 2004, while I was editor of the Chicago Tribune, seven of the nation’s 25 largest papers were run by women. A decade later, that number was three. Moreover, most of the country’s largest news organizations have never had a woman at the helm, making the Daily, even with the challenges you and others have regrettably faced, progressive by comparison. What I find more worrisome is that media managers of your generation are recreating the same gender and racial imbalances atop the new digital start-ups. I would have hoped for better. Given the opportunity to reinvent everything about legacy news organizations, the old management rules persist. I agree with you that there are broader forces at play, but the problem is so pernicious in journalism since you’re not likely to represent the community you cover if your newsroom is of a type. There’s content analysis suggesting an editor’s gender can have meaningful influence on what gets covered and who covers it, something I know we have both experienced. I wish we had talked more purposefully about this when I was at the Daily. You’ve prompted me to think back on some election assignments one year that had every significant candidate going to a male reporter, while more experienced women were relegated to down-ticket races. I was angry, but kept my head down and covered my stories, commiserating only with friends. So my first advice is transparency in talking about this. Diversity discussions were less common in newsrooms then, but should be daily occurrences now on behalf of improving our coverage and expanding our audience, a path that should naturally lead to more diverse leadership, if only as a business imperative. Women and men need to redefine success, which in newsrooms historically favored beats more common to men — politics, business, foreign news — while undervaluing others. The path to leadership needs to be wider and account for the fact that the bruising demands of so-called “hard news” can be incompatible with family life during stretches of a woman’s career. We, all of us, need to stop self-replicating
— favoring and promoting those who remind us of ourselves, a long game that has never favored any minority journalist. And we need to find and create role models at the earliest points in women’s careers. I feel fortunate that early in my Daily career we had an extraordinary co-editor in Cheryl Pilate, someone who took an interest in my work and modeled for all of us what strong leadership looked like. You have one semester left to your editorship, Jen, and the time will go so quickly. When others are recalling the Daily under your leadership, just as I’m recalling Cheryl, what do you hope they remember? CALFAS: When I think back to when I joined, I can’t help but remember how much I’ve changed and progressed as a journalist and as a person. With such little time left, there’s so much left I hope to accomplish — but so much of it is within the ideology of the newsroom as a whole. With a new website developed under my term, I hope this inspires future Daily editors and staffers to think creatively about how our content can be presented, with a digital-first goal in mind. But, more than anything, I hope I’ve served as an example or inspiration for aspiring college journalists to pursue their passions and think beyond just themselves and their individual accomplishments. Over any other goal, I’ve always viewed the Daily as a place where a bunch of young journalists come together and produce an informative, quality product for our audience. Working with collaborative rather than individual goals in mind is something I hope I instill in this staff and future ones as well. College journalists — including myself — can often get caught up in their own aspirations, internships and positions on the paper rather than the collective goal of the publication. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but something that may inhibit the teamwork within our organization. For all the work and passion I’ve put into this place, I hope others continue to sacrifice for the sake of strong, balanced and award-winning journalism. For you, Ann Marie, your impact as an editor left a continuous mark on every staffer who has entered the newsroom since your term. What did you imagine your legacy would be while you were the editor, and what advice do you have for us at the Daily now as we move forward in this publication and beyond? LIPINSKI: You’re kind to say so, but I got so much more from the Daily than I could ever give. We’ve stood on the shoulders of generations of editors who cared deeply about the institution and did their best to leave it in better shape than they found it. But there’s no denying that the Daily’s greatest contribution has been as a classroom. I made a lot of mistakes there and learned from them. The Daily’s culture of criticism could be harsh, as you know, and perhaps less forgiving than in a journalism school classroom since we were acutely aware that our efforts were made public. It was both thrilling and humbling to think of the history that was edited in that newsroom — coverage of Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral, the Freedom Riders, the Alger Hiss trial, news of the polio vaccine. The Daily made possible a deeper engagement with the campus and the larger world, and provided the place and the people who would challenge us to do our best work. We were the lucky ones who got to do more than read the history being made around us, and that made the paper an unusual campus classroom. When Henry Butzel and Harry Jewell founded the paper they called the U. of M. Daily, they had no capital, no publisher and virtually no advertising, but they did have the commitment to more fully represent the University community than did the fraternity groups publishing the two existing journals. “We built better than we knew,” they wrote of their creation some 50 years later. It’s not for me to tell future classes of journalists what building better might look like, but I hope the paper remains a classroom, a safe place for our successors to make the mistakes and discoveries that will define them. Happy anniversary, Jen. Take care of our Daily.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 9A
T H E D A I LY O N T H E D A I LY S H O W
ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
In July 2014, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” sent correspondent Jordan Klepper to the Daily’s newroom to film a segment in which the newspaper was satirically mocked for not practicing clickbait journalism.
Daily draws national attention for coverage Student reporters compete with the professionals By EMILIE PLESSET Daily News Editor
When a group of University students published the first issue of The Michigan Daily in September 1890, it was one of seven newspapers servicing the city of Ann Arbor. As the Daily enters its 125th year, it now stands as the city’s only daily print paper. Throughout its long history, the Daily has not only covered Ann Arbor and University news, but also generated national attention with its reporting. When The Ann Arbor News ended its 174-year daily print run in July 2009, the Daily became the only paper in the city printing five days a week. The Ann Arbor News is now run by the digital media platform MLive. MLive reporter Jeremy Allen, who predominantly covers the University, said there is some competition over who publishes a story first, but MLive and the Daily serve readers differently. The Ann Arbor News is charged primarily with serving the people of Ann Arbor, whereas the Daily largely caters to the University community. “We kind of work together to provide coverage across the entire spectrum of anyone who has an interest in the University of Michigan,” Allen said. University alum Gary Graca, who served as the Daily’s editor in chief when The Ann Arbor News
INNOVATION From Page 3 which detailed these shifts and suggested new initiatives like adding a position in charge of developing more special issues (with a revenue-generating focus in mind) and putting together a team to post more news content during the day. Kraus, now an English professor at the University of Scranton, voted against the free-drop proposal. He said it was probably the wrong vote in hindsight. But at the time, he felt compelled to vote in opposition to take a symbolic stand against what he felt the change represented. But Chase says that kind of traditionalist mindset is important, too. “It’s that conscience that makes the thing keep surviving no matter what happens to
SCENE From Page 3 the 2012 Iowa Caucuses. Like Huthwaite, Goldsmith wanted to make the political figures she was covering relatable to University students. Not only that, Goldsmith also said covering a story of that size while still a student provided an incredibly unique experience. “I felt like we got a real experience as journalists in determining what was worth putting in the paper,” she said. “That was definitely one of the highlights not just of my experience at The Michigan Daily, but at Michigan.”
announced the end of its daily print production, said though the Daily had always covered issues influencing the Ann Arbor community, the announcement incited the Daily’s staff to expand its coverage of the city. “It’s a stretch to say the issues of the campus and the city are not intertwined, and the Daily clearly has a strong edge and clearly has the ability to cover high-level city issues,” Graca said. “That was kind of the thinking. How can we do the city council issues, how can we do the interaction between the city and campus better, and the city ordinance issues that affect student lives better?” Throughout its long history as the University’s most prominent student publication, the Daily has found itself repeatedly making national headlines and, at times, breaking stories before its professional counterparts. In April 1955, Daily reporter Hanley McGurwin packed into a Rackham Building auditorium to hear Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. — the University’s head epidemiologist at the time and leader of the field trial testing the polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk — describe the vaccine as “safe, effective and potent.” The news, which the Daily reported first, was celebrated across the country, as parents finally had a scientifically-proven means of protecting their children from polio, a major cause of death for children in the first half of the 20th century. The Daily achieved national prominence again in September 1957, when it sent a staff reporter to Little Rock Central High
School in Arkansas to pose as a student and cover the school’s integration. James Elsman Jr., then the Daily’s editorial director, wrote an eyewitness-account of the Little Rock Nine’s first day of class, reporting that only a little more than half the school’s students attended class that day. The Daily has also garnered national attention as other newspapers have looked to the Daily for its noteworthy journalism. In 1967, The Washington Post published an article about the Daily after the student-run paper printed an editorial calling for the legalization of marijuana. The Post, quoting the article by Harvey Wasserman, then-University student, noted that the editorial described marijuana as having no worse effects than alcohol. More recently, The New York Times published a lengthy article about the Daily and its coverage of a University scandal involving a member of the football team. As the Times noted, the Daily was the first to report that Brendan Gibbons, former football starting kicker, had permanently “separated” from the University for violating the Student Sexual Misconduct Policy five years prior. The Times wrote that while the news of the scandal was shocking for the Ann Arbor community, the origin of the news was almost as shocking. “The story was not broken by the local, professional news organization, The Ann Arbor News,” the Times wrote. “Instead, it was uncovered by The Michigan Daily, the university’s independently-run student newspaper.”
the market,” he said. “There are smart people who will figure out what to do and how to take this very rare thing and make sure it survives.” Josh White, a current editor at The Washington Post, edited the paper in 1997 — a time when Daily staffers first started to see the website as something more than another platform to plop the day’s print content. In Dec. 1997, the Michigan men’s basketball team had beaten Duke with a game-winning dunk three seconds before the buzzer, and, in that same day, Charles Woodson won the Heisman Trophy. Class had concluded for the semester, and print production had wrapped up, too. The Daily’s website — then fairly primitive — hosted original, breaking news coverage for perhaps the first time. “A really good story about something really important
can touch millions of people, can get a conversation going globally, and there’s a lot of power in that. I think once people started to recognize that, the game changed,” White said. “We looked at The Michigan Daily as a way to try things, and to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes,” he said. “We cared intensely about it, we tried to do it very carefully and ethically, but it was a lab, it was a place where you could make a mistake and learn from it and recover from it and build from it.” So often, buzzwords like “tradition” and “innovation” are brushed in opposition. But maybe the Daily’s history tells us that’s simply not true. “The Daily has done a spectacular job of changing in the way that it needs to change,” Kraus said. “And that is precisely its tradition.”
Andrew Schulman was a government beat reporter when he was tapped to cover Barack Obama’s election night watch party in 2012. The party was in Chicago at McCormick Place, a large convention center along Lake Michigan. Schulman said he could feel the excitement in the room as election results were reported. At the same time, Schulman remembers, he had no idea what he was going to write before the event started, which was overwhelming. Still, Schulman said the experience helped him moving forward when he became a professional writer. He’s now a freelance reporter.
“It helped me, I guess, in the future kind of find a little bit more focus,” he said. “It was something that I think I learned a lot from.” Even for Biron, who is now working in public relations, getting to cover a speech delivered by Obama in Detroit and cover government for the Daily helped her realize her interest in public policy and shaped her career goals after school, she said. “I think I started as an English and Comm double major. Then I joined the gov beat and fell in love with it,” she said. “If I hadn’t, you know, done so many of those things on gov beat, I wouldn’t have been exposed to it — I wouldn’t have realized I’m passionate about it.”
10A — Tuesday, September 29, 2015
A history of race and activism
at U of M Compiled by the Daily’s Michigan in Color editors.
1890 George Jewett becomes the first African American to play varsity football. Jewett played even though he faced explicit racism on the field. For example, when he played against Purdue, students cheered as he left the field with an injury. 1934 African-American student Jean Blackwell claims she was denied residency at Martha Cook Residence Hall because of race, despite meeting the academic requirements of holding a B average, and despite there being vacancies. 1968 The Black Student Union takes over the Administration Building, now the LSA Building, in protest. Their demands include more scholarship funding for African-American students and more faculty members who are African American. 1971 The William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center opens as a result of the Black Action Movement strike throughout campus, and continues to be the only University building named after a person of color.
1987 United Coalition Against Racism and the University of Michigan Asian Student Coalition are both formed.
2000 The Students of Color Coalition occupies the office of Michigamua, a secret society of senior students, now known as Order of Angell, following a name change in 2006, in the Michigan Union. They protest the appropriation of NativeAmerican culture, along with a history of excluding minority students and women. 2013 On July 18, the University’s Board of Regents passes a proposal to extend in-state tuition rates to U.S. military veterans and undocumented students who graduated and attended a Michigan middle school for three years and a Michigan high school for at least two years. 2015 Reports from Fall 2014 enrollment data show that non-white students make up 34.04 percent of all students on campus.
One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
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Krulwich breaks a barrier 1817 At Fort Meigs, Ohio: A treaty is reached between Michigan’s Territorial Governor, Lewis Cass, and Native American Tribes (Ottawa, Chippewa and Potawatomy). Cass persuades Native Americans to give 3,840 acres of land in exchange for Native Americans becoming eligible to enroll at the University. Native Americans are never allowed to enroll and sue the University in 1971, but lose their case as the court ruled that the land grant was a “gift.” 1929 The University’s Board of Regents proposes Universityrun housing for AfricanAmerican women on Glen Avenue. African-American women activists, seeing this as segregation, protest, and the proposal is dropped.
In 1968, Daily photographer Sara Krulwich became the first woman to step on the field at Michigan Stadium when she refused to obey the “no women or children” rule on her press pass.
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Sara Krulwich, the Daily’s first female photographer, celebrated her 19th birthday by shooting at Michigan Stadium.
1949 Orval Wardell Johnson is the first non-white student elected LSA senior class president, beating out a white football player for the spot. 1970 The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies forms in response to the BSU takeover. In this same year, the Black Action Movement organizes a 12-day shut-down, which includes hundreds of classes cancelled, and results in University President Robben Wright Fleming agreeing to work to reach 10-percent African-American enrollment by 1973. This goal was not met. 1983 Native American Studies program is founded within American Culture.
1992 The highest point of minority undergraduate enrollment occurs in this year, at 21.4 percent. 2003 Gratz v. Bollinger: U.S. Supreme Court rules that the University’s affirmative action policy — which awarded points to applicants who came from underrepresented minorities — is unconstitutional for a state school. 2014 The #BBUM movement, which was started by students on Twitter in response to a poor racial climate on campus, makes national headlines. Later this year, the #UMDivest movement seeks an agreement from the University to divest from companies allegedly involved in human rights violations against Palestinians.
This timeline was compiled using the work of the University Library MLK Planning Committee from their 2014 exhibit.
Famous speakers at the ‘U’
The Daily’s archives hold countless stories covering notable speakers on campus. Pictured here are just a few from a list that includes Frederick Douglass and Lyndon Johnson, among many others.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Hill performances through the years
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 11A
Sports writers recall their favorite road trips Traveling to cover games across the country is a sacred Daily tradition By KEVIN SANTO Daily Sports Writer
There’s only one thing that could connect the dots between an impounded car in Chicago, a week in Hawaii, a 1,000mile drive to Oklahoma City, a 24-hour Greyhound trip to Omaha and a journey to Alaska. It’s a hypothetical line labeled, “Michigan Daily Sports Road Trips.” But those trips are much more than just stories told around the newsroom from time to time. When former Daily writers look back on them, they remember how it felt to drive back to Ann Arbor on a random interstate at some ungodly hour, wondering if the road would ever end. But they also recall the thought they had immediately following that: how hundreds of Daily writers have been on that same interstate throughout the past 125 years. One of those writers, Liz Vukelich, covered the Michigan hockey team’s most recent NCAA Tournament appearance in 2012. The lesson she learned on the drive to Green Bay was rather unfortunate. Vukelich and her fellow beat writers— Everett Cook, Zach Helfand and Matt Slovin — stopped in Chicago for dinner en route to the tournament. Due to the traffic in the city, the group resorted to parking in a Walgreens across the street from their restaurant of choice. An hour later, after dinner, the hockey beat returned to the Walgreens only to discover their car was missing. “We were kind of freaking out, like, ‘Oh my God, did the car get stolen?’ ” Vukelich said. “Then we realized there was this big sign saying, ‘Parking for Walgreens customers only.’ We thought we were in the clear because we had gone in (the store) to buy a stick of gum.” According to Vukelich, they were visibly distressed in the parking lot when a cab driver came to their rescue. The driver explained that he saw the car get towed, and offered them a free ride to the car impound, where they found Slovin’s car. Though the debacle set the four reporters back a few hours and a few hundred dollars, they arrived in Green Bay in time to cover the game. “It’s funny, because I live in Chicago now, and I walk by that Walgreens all the time,” Vukelich said. “It’s weird that one of the most memorable road trip experiences I have is almost part of my daily life here. Every time I walk by it, I always have to Snapchat a picture of it to my friends that were on the beat with me that year.” While Vukelich had an unpleasant experience on the road, Sharat Raju’s time as a 1998 Michigan football beat writer was entirely different. The Daily paid for Raju, along with fellow beat writers Mark Snyder and Jim Rose, to spend a week in Hawaii to cover the final regular-season football game against the Rainbow Warriors as well as the Maui Invitational,
in which the men’s basketball team was competing. Given that the trip happened over Thanksgiving Break, the paper was rarely printed, essentially giving Raju and the beat writers a Hawaiian vacation with a side of sports writing. “It was almost all down time,” Raju said. “It was over Thanksgiving, so we didn’t have that many stories during the week. I think Jim Rose wrote a column the day before classes let out. It was something to the effect of, ‘The light in the hotel bathroom in Maui isn’t working. And that is the only bad thing that has happened so far.’ ” Raju, Snyder and Rose stayed at the media hotel, which happened to be on the beach, and celebrated Thanksgiving together at the hotel buffet. As if that wasn’t enough, the trio went kayaking and took a scooter tour around Honolulu — led by a high-school friend of Raju’s, who was serving in the Army and stationed in Hawaii at the time. As he recalls, the group’s free trip to Hawaii warranted some jealousy from veteran reporters. “I remember the Free Press or the (Detroit) News reporter said, ‘Oh, good. Answering the ageold question: How many Daily reporters does it take to cover a football game in Hawaii?’ ” Raju said. While Raju was part of the Daily’s most enjoyable warmweather trip, writers have faced a fair share of cold climates in order to provide sports coverage as well — none more notable than Geoffrey Gagnon’s historymaking trip to Alaska. On October 22, 1999, Gagnon took part in the Daily’s first trip to Alaska to cover the Michigan hockey team’s exhibition against Alaska-Fairbanks in Anchorage. “(This) represents the latest renewal in the Daily’s efforts to spare no burden and avoid no distance in providing comprehensive coverage,” Gagnon wrote in his column upon arrival. “As we settle in on the Kenai Peninsula near the Turnagain Arm we embrace a chance to make a bit of Daily history of our own.” Yet not even a nine-hour flight to Anchorage can beat the voyages Greg Garno and Jamie Turner took to cover College World Series in Oklahoma City and Omaha, respectively. In 1978, Turner stayed in Ann Arbor to take summer classes, and three staff members were rotating on coverage of the Michigan baseball team. When the Wolverines punched their ticket to the College World Series in Omaha, Turner was the only writer available to cover it. However, the Daily could only pay for a hotel, leaving the other expenses to fall on Turner’s shoulders. Turner’s solution for making the trip more affordable was to take a 24-hour-long Greyhound bus ride to Omaha, which warranted surprise and sympathy from some of his fellow passengers. “You (would) have some conversations with people who inevitably will say, ‘I’m going from Chicago to Rockford. Where are you going?’ ” Turner said. “I’d say Omaha and they’d just say, ‘Oh my god.’ ” Despite the exhausting bus ride, Turner did receive a small
reward when he arrived at his hotel in Omaha. While he was waiting in the lobby of the hotel, Turner ran into Tom Hemingway, the radio voice of Michigan athletics at the time. Since Turner didn’t have a credit card, ATMs didn’t exist and the hotel wouldn’t accept an out-of-state check, he struck up a conversation with Hemingway to ask him to cash a check for him. The conversation evolved to the point where Turner told Hemingway how he occasionally broadcasted games for the student section, at which point Turner got a job offer. If the Wolverines defeated Baylor on Thursday, they would play again Friday, the same day as Hemingway’s daughter’s high school graduation. After Michigan shut out the Bears, 4-0, Turner broadcasted the following game against thenNo. 1 Southern California. Though the eventual national champions walloped the Wolverines, 10-3, Turner was still left with a lasting memory and memento. “My parents recorded (my broadcast) on a cassette,” Turner said. “It’s buried somewhere in my mother’s belongings. I’m sure she’s the only person who ever heard the whole thing, because it was terrible.” Thirty-five years later, with almost no one available during the Daily’s summer production, Garno was forced to take his 1999 GMC Jimmy, which had already accumulated 110,000 miles, on a trek to the Women’s College World Series with photographer Nick Williams. He was awake until midnight on Wednesday producing the Daily’s summer edition, and left immediately from the Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building that night to begin his drive. As he traveled to Oklahoma, he realized there were rainstorms moving toward the same destination. Garno said he was pushing the speed limit to race by storms that would have become tornadoes, but arrived safely to cover the event that day. Friday, however, his luck ran out. Garno recalled how at one moment it was extremely sunny, before the sky turned dark almost instantaneously — a sign that a tornado was about to touch down in Oklahoma City. “Eventually, (while) I’m running on six hours of sleep, there was a tornado warning in a mall, where I’m (hiding) in an unfinished basement area,” Garno said. “The entire time I don’t really know what’s going on because my phone doesn’t have any service. Eventually, the tornadoes passed and we were okay. My car was intact, and we celebrated with Chickfil-A.” The Wolverines were knocked out of the tournament on Sunday, and Garno immediately started the drive back to Ann Arbor because he had class Monday afternoon. Garno’s trip — along with those of the writers who came before him — are the most concrete representation of the lengths the Daily sports staff has gone to in order to provide Michigan sports coverage for 125 years. If there’s a story to be found, there are few length Daily sports writers won’t go in order to find it.
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12A — Tuesday, September 29, 2015
PHOTO
One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
While The Michigan Daily’s photo staff no longer has to ration out the limited number of exposures on a roll of film or spend long nights working in the darkroom, much of the job has remained the same. The Daily’s photographers place themselves in the middle of elation, conflict and sadness in order to document and preserve key moments in the University’s history. On this page we have selected from our archives a limited collection of important points in Michigan sports and examples of activism on the University’s campus to showcase the continuing work of our staff.
KRISTOFFER GILETTE/Daily
Sophomore forward Chris Webber, upset over his last-minute timeout error, is consoled by a teammate as he exits the NCAA championship game on April 5, 1993.
TODD NEEDLE/Daily
Point guard Trey Burke is congratulated by his teammates after sinking a game-tying 3-pointer in the Sweet 16 game against Kansas on March 29, 2013.
MARISSA MCCLAIN/Daily
Redshirt sophomore offensive tackle Taylor Lewan lifts up junior quarterback Denard Robinson to celebrate during the 2012 AllState Sugar Bowl. The Michigan football team beat Virginia Tech in New Orleans to finish 11-2 in coach Brady Hoke’s first season.
ANDY SACKS/Daily
Deputies from the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department attempt to arrest a woman after a sit-in at the Washtenaw County Building on September 5, 1968. 52 protesters - 28 of which were students - were removed from the building as they demonstrated in support of a supplemental grant for welfare mothers to purchase school clothing for their children.
ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
Kinesiology sophomore Capri’Nara Kendall in a protest organized by the Black Student Union in front of Hill Auditorium on January 20, 2014. The speakers gave university officials seven days to respond to factors influencing decreased minority enrollment.
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Football coach Bo Schembechler is lifted up on the shoulders of his players as he celebrates his first Rose Bowl win on January 1, 1981.
ADAM GLANZMAN/Daily
Senior quarterback Devin Gardner leaves the field in tears, audibly crying, after the University of Michigan vs. Ohio State University football game at Michigan Stadium on November 30, 2013. Ohio State defeated Michigan 42-41.
JIM DIEHL/Daily
A crowd greets leaders of the Black Action Movement as they announce the Regents’ decision to accept the goal of 10 percent Black enrollment and employment on April 1, 1970. The agreement between the movement’s leaders and the University ended an 18-day strike that shut down campus.
RUBY WALLAU/Daily
Students perform in a simulation checkpoint during Palestinian Awareness Week on Diag on October 7, 2014. The demonstration was part of the larger #UMDivest movement which called for th University to divest from companies that support Israel.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Ann Arbor, Michigan
T R O T T E R TA L K
CAMPUS CONTEXT
Schlissel: Choosing Hackett led to success
ROBERT DUNNE/Daily
Scott Richard Lyons, associate professor and director of the Native American Studies Program, introduces the program he directs at the Native American Student Association kickoff BBQ at the Trotter Multicultural Center on Monday.
BUSINESS
‘U’ president touts Detroit ties at Amazon conference Online retailer to expand downtown office into company ‘tech hub’ By ISOBEL FUTTER Daily Staff Reporter
University President Mark Schlissel was on hand in Detroit Monday as online retailer Amazon announced plans to
expand their presence in the city. At a press conference at Cobo Center, Amazon officials said the company plans to build a “technology hub” in downtown Detroit. Their current office, located on West Jefferson Avenue, will be expanded to multiple floors early next year. It is not immediately clear how many employees will be hired with the expansion. In remarks at the announcement, Schlissel said Amazon has a strong
relationship with the University, providing recruitment and internship opportunities to students. Amazon is the technology sector’s top recruiter for business students. “I am thrilled that Amazon’s investment will create more opportunities for U-M students and graduates to contribute to the resurgence of Michigan’s economy,” he said, according to a copy of the remarks as prepared for delivery. During his comments,
Schlissel touted the work of University students in Detroit as interns and volunteers, including the annual studentled Detroit Partnership Day, which engages 1,500 student volunteers participating in projects across the city. He said Amazon’s expansion will likely play a role in encouraging some students to stay in Detroit post-graduation. “Over the last several months, I have had the See AMAZON, Page 3B
Athletics returns to a more traditional vibe one year into new administration By JAKE LOURIM Managing Sports Editor
University President Mark Schlissel and his administration have spent the last academic year working to roll out new policy initiatives around several campus issues — most notably athletics, diversity, alcohol abuse and Greek life. This week, The Michigan Daily reviews the events that got the ball rolling. Today, we consider a year of transition in the University’s Athletic Department. The overview: The University is roughly a year removed from a chain of events that resulted in a reevaluation of the state of its Athletic Department. Former Athletic Director Dave Brandon stepped down amid general backlash —
ARTS
CRIME
‘Hamilton’ soundtrack is worth the hype Popular musical retells history with a relevant spin By CATHERINE BAKER Daily Arts Writer
“How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” The opening line of LinManuel Miranda’s most recent musical creation, “Hamilton,” sets the stage for a fast-paced, informative, moving and rebellious recounting of classic American history. With a cast of primarily Black and Hispanic actors to play the Founding Fathers,
Miranda reckons that this is representative of America as it is now — a melting pot of cultures and diversity. This casting call and many other details solidify Miranda’s role as one of the greatest playwrights of his generation. It seems like the entire world is buzzing about “Hamilton.” Since its recent debut on Broadway, the musical and its cast have received more praise than ever for exceptional performances, impressive vocals and unique linguistic characteristics. The album, which was released on Sept. 25, combines history with hip hop and educates a modern population on how America was founded. Rap, R&B and ballads intertwine seamlessly to tug on heartstrings and remind us of what it means to strive to prove your worth. Last spring, I had the privilege of f lying out to See HAMILTON, Page 5B
marked by resentment of high student ticket prices and controversy after former football coach Brady Hoke put a concussed Shane Morris, a then-sophomore quarterback, in during the September 2014 matchup Minnesota. The changes: Since University President Mark Schlissel’s arrival on campus, drastic changes have been made. Student season football ticket prices fell from $295 to $175. The team is 3-1, and is ranked at No. 22 in the AP Top 25 poll. Coach Jim Harbaugh has lived up to the hype so far, and Schlissel attributes much of the Athletic Department’s success to Interim Athletic Director Jim Hackett. The context: When the University hired Schlissel last year, no one quite knew what to expect with regard to the Athletic Department going forward. Previously the provost of Brown University, Schlissel came from a school with a far less prestigious athletic pedigree. While Brown competes in 37 varsity sports to Michigan’s 27, almost none are on the same level. The brand is lesser See SCHLISSEL, Page 3B
Two armed robberies reported off campus
HALEY MCLAUGHLIN/Daily James Holloway, vice provost for Global and Engaged Eduction, discusses the possible release of student evaluations at the Fleming Administration Building on Monday
University plans release of course evaluation data Members of SACUA criticize plans at weekly Monday meeting By GENEVIEVE HUMMER Daily Staff Reporter
Engineering Prof. James Holloway, the vice provost for Global and Engaged Education,
said Monday the University could implement plans to release course evaluation data as early as this semester. Holloway’s announcement at Monday’s Senate Assembly Committee on University Affairs’ meeting came as a surprise to many of the committee’s members. According to Holloway, the University will release numerical data from the first four questions on student course evaluations via
a website accessible only to those with a University uniqname account. Holloway said the prototype website has been up and running for six to eight months. Though the site has featured limited data, he said it provides a rough outline of what the actual site will look like. In an interview with The Michigan Daily after the meeting, SACUA chair SilkeMaria Weineck, a professor of See SACUA, Page 3B
Incidents occurred near Packard and Vaughn Streets and on Pauline Blvd. By ISOBEL FUTTER Daily Staff Reporter
A crime alert reporting two armed robberies off campus was issued by the University’s Division of Public Safety and Security on Monday. The incidents, as reported to the Ann Arbor Police, occurred at 11 p.m. Sunday and 12 a.m. Monday. The first incident reportedly occurred near Packard Street and Vaughn Street, east of the Athletics campus. The second occurred on Pauline Boulevard near Arbordale Street, west of campus. The incidents were separately reported to the Ann Arbor Police Department. In each case, an individual pedestrian was approached by two unknown See CRIME ALERT, Page 3B
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A Way of Tea ceremony sponsored by the “Geisha: Arts, History and Politics” class is performed at the Hatcher Library on Monday.
THREE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW TODAY
Costume design
Lecture on disability
Camp Davis info session
WHAT: Fisher Investments will will take questions and inform students about opportunities within the company. WHO: The Career Center WHEN: 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. WHERE: The Career Center
WHAT: This display has 100 years of the Department of Theatre & Drama’s designs. WHO: School of Music, Theatre & Dance WHEN: 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. WHERE: Duderstadt Center
WHAT: Stephanie Kerschbaum, an associate professor at the University of Delaware, will discuss identity and disability. WHO: Department of English Language and Literature WHEN: 1 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. WHERE: Angell Hall- Room 3222
WHAT: For students interested in attending Camp Davis, this information session will cover classes, financial aid and course fees. WHO: Earth and Environmental Sciences WHEN: 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. WHERE: Dana Natural Resources
Film screening
Economic history
Philharmonia Sustainable Systems Forum Orchestra
WHAT: The Anonymous People is a film about people living in recovery from addition to alcohol and drugs. WHO: Office of Digital Education and Innovation WHEN: 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. WHERE: Trotter
WHAT: Assistant Professor at George Mason University Mark Koyama will cover the heterogeneous effects of the Black Death and Long-Run Growth. WHO: Department of Economics WHEN: 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. WHERE: Lorch Hall
WHAT: The Biomimicry Institute is hosting a talk about how entrepreneurs are applyig lessons from the natural world to solve a variety of challenges. WHO: Center for Sustainable Systems WHEN: 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. WHERE: Dana Natural Resources Building - Room
comparative literature, said the plan was formed without sufficient faculty input. “It has not been debated at SACUA and it has not been debated at Senate Assembly, and so we feel like there hasn’t been enough broad consultation because this is something that affects everyone, faculty and students,” Weineck said. Comments written on the evaluations will not be released, nor will the data collected from course evaluations of classes taught by graduate student instructors or instructors with fewer than seven terms of teaching experience. Holloway said though student organizations have compiled course evaluation data in the past by obtaining the information through Freedom of Information Act requests, the process has often been inconsistent. “It was sometimes done in some rather idiosyncratic ways,” he said. “And of course it’s difficult for a student group, with students cycling in and out, for them to maintain some consistency in quality. So the data was being released but not always presented in a meaningful way.” Holloway said the data, which
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had been requested by Central Student Government, LSA Student Government and the Rackham Graduate School Student Government, is important to students. “The primary drivers for this are that the students have requested it and have made the point that the data is data they give us with their own volition, and they have some agency and interest in this data,” he said. However, SACUA members expressed concern with the University’s plan to release current course evaluation data. Weineck said a majority of faculty members dislike the current course evaluation methods. “In my 17 years at the University of Michigan, I have not heard from a single person that thinks this is a good instrument providing good data,” she said. “In sum, nobody thinks that these are good data. And whatever they are, they were not designed to assist students in choosing classes; it is the wrong instrument for that. So what we’ve been saying at the Senate Assembly, it’s not that we don’t think students don’t have a legitimate interest in having more and better information on how to choose classes, but we think at a world-class University it behooves us to design an instrument that can actually deliver the data
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WHAT: This is the first Philharmonia Orchestra concert of the year. WHO: School of Music, Theatre & Dance WHEN: 8 p.m. WHERE: Hill Auditorium Please report any error in the Daily to corrections@ michigandaily.com.
needed for that purpose. “ Kinesiology Prof. Stefan Szymanski, a SACUA member, questioned the University’s decision to release data that could affect faculty’s personal and professional lives. “I’ve met people who have had their lives more or less ruined by this,” Szymanski said. “What happens if some day somebody commits suicide because this went public and all their students were talking about how bad it was. Is it a good idea for us to uptake a process that might wind up ruining people’s lives?” Responding to Szymanski, Holloway said he “rejects the premise of the question.” Engineering Prof. Bill Schultz, SACUA’s vice chair, questioned the educational implications of releasing course evaluation data. “Are you at all concerned that if more emphasis is put on this that faculty will teach to the evaluations and will that have a negative learning effect?” Schultz asked. “I think the answer has to be yes.” Committee members also debated the extent to which final student grades, as well as a professor’s gender and race can invoke bias in course evaluations. Weineck said faculty governance, student government and experts in assessment at the University — such as the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching — should work together to form a new evaluation instrument, one that will better address student and faculty needs. In response, Holloway said the process would take too long. “It’ll take longer than a year,” he said. “We’re a long breath institution, but I think our students who are here for a shorter time deserve a faster response than that.” SACUA members and Holloway did not reach a consensus during the meeting, and Weineck said it is hard to know how the plan to release course evaluation data will proceed from here. “We don’t know what his long term reaction to this meeting will be,” Weineck said after the meeting. “But we will discuss this at the next Senate Assembly meeting in October because we think lots of faculty members should be consulted.” The next Senate Assembly meeting will be held Oct. 26.
1
At a press conference on Monday morning, NASA announced it had found signs of liquid water on Mars. According to CNN, liquid water has never been detected beyond Earth. NASA found signs that water formed dark streaks on the surface.
2
The Michigan men’s golf team finished second at the Windon Memorial Classic in Glencoe, Illinois. Kyle Mueller, Nick Carlson and Chris O’Neill each finished in the top 10 for Michigan. >> FOR MORE, SEE SPORTS, PG. 7B
3
The Taliban have overrun the Afghan city of Kundunz, BBC reported. Kundunz, a transport hub, is the first provincial capital taken by the Taliban since they lost power in 2001.
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BUSINESS STAFF Hussein Hakim Finance and Operations Manager Claire Ulak Production Manager Jordan Yob Marketing Manager Matt Pfenning UAccounts Manager Chris Wang Classifieds Manager Asja Kepes Local Accounts Colin Cheesman National Accounts Anna He Special Guides and Online 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.
125TH ANNIVERSARY
Daily changes with news industry shifts Print paper continues while growing online presence By TANYA MADHANI Daiily Staff Reporter
In the past 25 years, The Michigan Daily has cut its print paper down from more than 12 pages to eight, adopted a more digital-focused platform, started a weekly news magazine and created several smaller online blogs to add in extra digital content. And all of these changes are in line with the shifting nature of the journalism industry. Chris Baxter, one of this year’s Knight-Wallace Fellows and a statehouse reporter for NJ Advance Media, said the shift to promote online content is nothing to be surprised by. “The reality is, the Internet changed everything in terms of delivering the news and presenting the news and how the news is being consumed and who is consuming it,” he said. “So really, a wide array of the way things have been done have changed very quickly with the advent of the Internet and news essentially becoming free rather than a public commodity.” While physical copies of The Michigan Daily have been available for free for decades, major newspapers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today still charge for theirs. With the rise of the online content, Baxter said these papers have also been forced to offer up their content for free on their website — or at least part of it. The question for most newspapers trying to keep up with changing technology is how to continue making money.
Business models like online paywalls are an effort to increase physical paper circulations and print advertising revenues, both of which have, according to the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media 2014 report, continue to fall each year. Digital ad revenues, on the other hand, digital advertising has grown, with $50.7 billion spent on digital ads last year alone. University alum Joseph Lichterman, who was the Daily’s editor in chief in 2012 and now writes for the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said print advertising continues to make up a larger chunk of advertising revnue than digital advertisement, even as print circulation decreases. “That’s probably the biggest reason why the Daily is still printing every day,” Lichterman said. “It’s because print advertising really makes far more.” LSA senior Rose Filipp, the Daily’s current business manager, said print advertising is critical to the paper’s operation. “Many people I have talked to assume that print advertising is dead, but that just isn’t the reality yet,” she said in an e-mail. “Advertisers still value the ability to put their information into their clients’ hands. Additionally, the Daily has put out some new special guides, which we consider to be niche advertising products.” Baxter said print papers aren’t going away just yet. “Even at The New York Times, while digital revenue at companies that are making a go of it is increasing double digits every year, it’s still way behind what print advertising revenue was,” he said. “Print advertising revenue still far eclipses digital revenue and frankly, that’s why the age-old prediction that’s been being made since I was in high school, that newspapers are going
to die, that’s why it hasn’t happened.” But many newsrooms are increasingly embracing a digitalfirst model, according to Danya Bacchus, another Knight-Wallace fellow. Bacchus, an NBC anchor in San Diego, said when she works on a story, the first thing she does is post it on the web. “I’m tweeting and I’m posting on Facebook,” she said. “They want us to periscope. Now they want us to Snapchat so the main focus isn’t about putting the product on air, but it’s more so getting it to digital first and then trying to figure out how you can get the viewer or the person who’s looking at their phone to then watch the newscast.” But with the increasing use of social media among journalists, Bacchus said, they should also take increased precautions when using sources obtained through social media. “There’s still room for so many little mistakes,” she said. “Though it’s all this access to information, you still have to do your due diligence in making sure that information is correct.” But despite the majority of news moving online and mobile, Baxter said the core journalistic values remain the same. “There is a lot about journalism that hasn’t changed and that really is the foundation of the skills of what makes a good journalist,” Baxter said. “Rampant curiosity, ability to ask, sharp insightful questions, an ability to see through noise and nonsense, an ability to ascertain documents and work human sources and structure complex stories and write in a way that’s clear and concise and accurate, these are all skills that are just as relevant and important and necessary for high-achieving journalists now as they were 25 years ago.”
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News
Tuesday, September 22, 2015 — 3B
UHS now offering sexual assault exam The University Health Service now provides an exam for survivors of sexual assault. A Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner conducts the exam. These nurses are trained to identify physical trauma as a result of a sexual assault, give preventative measures for sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy, as well as collect evidence for survivors to use if they would like to press charges. It’s recommended for survivors to come in for the examination within five days of the sexual asault. Survivors can also be examined at the University Hospital Emergency Department any time. The new initiative was created as part of a push by Central Student Government to increase services for survivors of sexual assault.
ALLISON FARRAND/Daily Interim Athletic Director Jim Hackett holds a town hall meeting with students on April 1, 2015.
University joins coalition to improve admission process The University joined the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success on Monday. The coalition is composed of more than 80 colleges and universities across the country to work together to create online resources for students applying to college. The first online tool is set to be launched this January. It will include a digital portfolio, a place for students to collaborate and an application portal. The coalition hopes these online tools will improve the application process for minority and low-income students.
University receives $9.5 million grant to study child health The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences gave the University a $9.5 million grant as part of a nationwide study on the impacts of the environment on children’s health. The grant comes as part of the newly created four-year NIEHS Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource Program. Six other universities were awarded funds as part of the study as well. The University’s research will focus on obesity, ADHD, preterm birth, autism, abnormalities in reproductive tracts, asthma, allergies and early puberty.
EMU loses money on beer sales at football games Eastern Michigan University lost about $3,000 when the university tried selling beer at their home game against Ball State University two weeks ago. The University of Michigan does not currently sell beer at the Big House. A report in The Ann Arbor News indicates EMU paid $7,000 for a beer truck and increased security measures, but only netted $4,000 during the game. The 16-ounce cans of beer sold for $7. After the loss in sales, EMU’s athletic director reported the school will no longer sell beer at games.
Mich. Democrats announce end to popular fundraiser Jefferson-Jackson dinners are historically popular fundraisers for state Democratic parties. Recently there has been a national trend for Democratic parties to drop the dinners because both Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were slaveholders. — EMMA KINERY
JAMES COLLER/Daily University President Mark Schlissel takes a photo with football fans at the Alumni Association’s tailgate in Salt Lake City before the game against Utah.
SCHLISSEL From Page 1B known, the level of competition lower and the revenue far smaller. As a symbolic measure of comparison, Michigan Stadium’s listed capacity is 107,601 spectators. Brown Stadium’s is 20,000. Schlissel stepped into a world that was, at least in this respect, much different than the one he left. While he doesn’t have to run this world, he does have to oversee it, and his first year forced him to be more involved than a number of school presidents. Despite this, Schlissel is quick to note that he’s no stranger to the athletic realm. “I don’t think I was as naive as many people suggested I was,” Schlissel said in a September interview with the Daily. “I’ve been a sports fan as an individual my whole life. I played basketball and tennis growing up, played golf in high school, went to baseball games with my dad. It’s not as if I’m unaware of the sports world.” The University Athletic Department was at a crossroads when he arrived. Ticket sales for the department’s flagship sport, football, were low, while prices were at an all-time high. The football team was struggling. Athletic Director Dave Brandon was on uneasy terms with the Michigan fan base. But the department has rebuilt, stabilized and built up its good will with the fans. Ticket sales have rebounded, Jim Harbaugh has taken the helm of the football program and Hackett has pleased the fans, by and large.
AMAZON From Page 1B wonderful opportunity to talk to groups of these students,” he said. “Many tell me that the work they do here is inspiring them to live and work in Detroit after they graduate. When companies like Amazon make a lasting commitment to the city, those dreams become reality. We have a great partnership to build on.” During his first year in office, Schlissel made several efforts to engage members of the University community with Detroit. In August, he hosted an event for University students interning in the city. When Schlissel first moved to Michigan, the first stop on his tour of the state was Detroit. The president has also emphasized efforts to encourage high school
Before those situations got better, though, they got worse. *** When Michigan historians look back on this year and all of the upheaval it brought, they will see Oct. 31, 2014 as the turning point. That day, Schlissel accepted Brandon’s resignation and replaced him, for the time being, with Hackett. Since then, the Athletic Department’s personality — and the public’s perception of its success — has changed immeasurably. Before then, morale among fans was at a historic low. Schlissel took office at the beginning of football season, and that season brought an average attendance of 105,371, the lowest since 1991, according to the Bentley Historical Library. Many sports, especially the non-revenue sports, were thriving. Brandon had upgraded a number of facilities and had plans to upgrade more, and the teams had been successful, too — men’s gymnastics and men’s swimming both won national championships during his tenure. But ticket prices and other offfield issues in football bothered fans, and as the on-field product worsened, so too did the image of the department. On Oct. 23, 2014, in a dual announcement with the Central Student Government, the department lowered student season ticket prices from $280 to $175. It seemed like a last-ditch effort to save Brandon’s job, but it wasn’t enough. Schlissel said student backlash went “beyond having a football team that didn’t achieve a record that met people’s expectations.” “It was part of the issue, why people were anxious, but it
wasn’t the main issue,” he told the Daily in September. “I think, what people felt was, football in particular and perhaps the other sports were becoming more distant from the campus. That they were becoming more of an enterprise and less of an activity. I think our non-athlete students … felt estranged — they felt like customers. “I think we’ve gone a long way in the months since … to reset the way the Athletic Department views its role on the campus,” he added. When Brandon resigned on Oct. 31, Michigan was 3-5 and coming off a second straight blowout loss at Michigan State University. Students had printed shirts that read “Fire Dave Brandon” and planned to wear them to the next day’s home game against Indiana University. Chants calling for Brandon’s firing had become regular at Michigan Stadium. The Athletic Department had been embarrassed off the field during Schlissel’s first months, too. There were, of course, the lighthearted incidents, such as the promotion to give away two free tickets with the purchase of two Coke products at the Michigan Union. But more serious, of course, was the incident regarding quarterback Shane Morris’ injury against the University of Minnesota on Sept. 27, just more than three weeks into Schlissel’s tenure. Morris sustained a jarring hit to the helmet and was slow to get up early in the fourth quarter. Then-head coach Brady Hoke then left him in the game for one play, took him out and re-inserted him three plays later. That incident, and the Univer-
students in Detroit to apply to the University and in May, he visited with students at Detroit’s Cass Technical High School. “I look forwarding to building on this energy as we continue to engage in Detroit — because Detroit is essential to our campus and its future,” he said. “And to the state of Michigan and our collective future.” Lou Anna Simon, Michigan State University president, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Dan Gilbert, the founder of Bedrock Real Estate Services and chairman of Quicken Loans, also attended the press conference. Amazon also said the company would donate $10,000 and 30 Amazon Fire tablets to the Carver STEM Academy program in the Detroit Public Schools. Amazon was not the only company to announce Detroit investment
plans on Monday. Lear Corp., a Southfield-based auto supplier, will purchase a building in the historic Capitol Park neighborhood. The company will buy the building from Gilbert’s Bedrock Real Estate Services, with plans to convert the building into a design studio.
sity’s handling of it in the coming days, became a national story for the entire week that followed. Brandon stood by Hoke, and vice versa, but it became clear at that point that change was inevitable. In this atmosphere, Schlissel handed Hackett the keys to the Athletic Department and asked him to start picking up the pieces. *** Little by little, Hackett has turned around the perception of Michigan athletics in the eyes of fans. His biggest step in doing so — almost as big as Schlissel hiring him — was bringing Harbaugh to Ann Arbor. “I think hiring Coach Harbaugh was fantastic,” Schlissel said. “I think he was the … best coach on the market, college or pro, at the time we were looking for a coach. So boy, that was fortunate for us that he was available. And it was a testimony to the recruiting skills of Jim Hackett, but also the allure of the University of Michigan to an alum who sort of grew up here.” Overall, Schlissel added, Harbaugh’s presence on campus marks a “wonderful honeymoon.” Exactly four weeks passed between the day Hackett fired Hoke and the day Harbaugh was introduced as head coach. Hackett had his sights set on Harbaugh for much of that time, and in the end events conspired to allow Harbaugh to fly on a private plane to Michigan on Dec. 29, 2014. The coach has dominated headlines for most of the past eight months, but Hackett has still been busy in the shadows. He has had the benefit of a new supporting cast as well. That includes Chrissi Rawak, who heads external relations and strategic initiatives, and Rob Rademacher, who heads facilities and day-to-day operations. Hackett also brought in Bob De Carolis, the former Oregon State University athletic director, as a senior adviser. Hackett has not set a timetable for his future as athletic director. His title still carries the “interim” tag, and though it hasn’t been discussed much lately. He took the job soon after retiring as chief executive of Steelcase Furniture, and he hasn’t decided on his future between Michigan and his family. When he was asked in April about how long he plans to have the job, his wife, Kathy, interjected. At that time, the Hacketts had two sons, two grandchildren and a third grandchild on the way and had to balance family and the job. “We’re back and forth, we don’t really have time,” Kathy Hackett said. “I will answer: There’s lots to be done and he will see to it (until) he feels it’s all good.” Once Hackett replaced Brandon and public reaction to the Morris controversy died down, the rebuilding process could begin. In the days after Morris’ injury, Schlissel called for “a thorough review of our in-game player safety procedures, particularly those involving head injuries.” Brandon called for two immediate changes to the injury protocol. First, he put an “athletic medicine professional” in the press box to have a bird’s-eye view of the game as well as the benefit of replay. He also said the department was “examining how to reinforce our sideline communication processes” to communicate that information. The review Schlissel requested was published on the University’s website on April 16. It concluded that the University’s medical team, medical staff on the field, abilities of the medical team and policies regarding health were all comparable to other schools from
CRIME ALERT From Page 1B subjects. One of the subjects displayed a black handgun and demanded property. The suspects were described as two Black males in their early
the Big Ten, ACC, SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12. The review did, however, call for an extra trainer in the press box instead of on the field to provide an overhead view. It also laid out a plan for communication between the trainers during the game to avoid another incident similar to what happened last September. That effort has been in effect this fall at Michigan Stadium. The concussion incident was only one roadblock in the Athletic Department’s way as it tried to overcome the problems of 2014. The changes appear to have accomplished that as Michigan forges on toward a new future. *** The final effects of many of Hackett’s actions have yet to be determined, but the decisions he has made, he has made with conviction. Earlier this year, Harbaugh hired childhood friend and Marine veteran Jim Minick as his director of operations. Minick was later promoted to associate athletic director for football, was arrested for drunk driving on May 8 and blew a blood alcohol concentration of 0.185. On July 8, Hackett revealed that he had refused a letter of resignation from Minick. “This is a man who served seven tours of duty (in the Marines),” Hackett said. “Selflessness is a way I would describe him. He got thousands of e-mails, most of them from people who served in war with him, urging him to soldier through this. “He and I had deep conversations about it, and I was convinced this is a guy who will learn from this mistake.” In the same meeting with reporters, he said he declined an offer for the Michigan football team to play a game at a neutral site in front of 160,000 fans. “I thought about it,” Hackett said. “But I don’t think that’s going to be the kind of game you’ll want to see.” One of his biggest decisions has been signing a new apparel contract for the Athletic Department. After being with Adidas for the past eight years, Hackett chose to sign with Nike for a nationleading $169 million over 15 years starting in 2016. Moving forward: It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say these changes have reshaped the Athletic Department over the past 12 months. But the biggest difference might be Hackett’s overall philosophy, which he elaborated upon during an April fireside chat with students. He told the students he doesn’t want Michigan athletic events to feel “corporate.” “I don’t want to sound sarcastic,” Hackett said. “What I don’t want is more entertainment that’s not football. I think that works in the pros, but we’re in college. I believe college shouldn’t be like the pros. It shouldn’t cost like the pros.” So that’s where the Michigan Athletic Department stands after one year of Schlissel’s tenure. Schlissel faced a bevy of tests out of the gate, but he, Hackett and Harbaugh appear to have stabilized things heading into another football season. “What I’m responsible for is selecting good people and making sure that we share a common set of values and we agree upon a strategy,” Schlissel said. “But it’s up to folks like the Interim AD Jim Hackett in the same way it would be up to the LSA dean to be responsible for their unit and its success — and to get credit when it’s successful.”
20s. One was wearing a dark hooded shirt and the other was wearing dark clothing and a floppy bucket hat. Anyone with information is being asked to contact DPSS at (734)763-1131 or the Ann Arbor Police Department’s tip line at (734)794-6939 or tips@a2gov.org.
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4B — Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com JENNIFER CALFAS 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
Fixing sex education
Bill would add definition of consent to curriculum
L
egislators have finally laid a foundation to fix the dire state of sex education in Michigan with a bill that would teach sexual consent — its definition and application — in classrooms across the state. Alarmingly, the term “consent” is nowhere to be found in sex education laws in Michigan, making the amendment, formally introduced by State Rep. Tom Cochran (D–Mason) and State Sen. Curtis Hertel, Jr. (D–Meridian Twp.) last Tuesday, all the more necessary. Sex education in Michigan, beyond meeting basic guidelines set forth by the federal and state governments, is largely decided by individual school districts and the advisory boards appointed by the district. These guidelines include teaching important issues regarding sexual contact, such as how to reduce risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections or unplanned pregnancy, and details of legal codes surrounding sexual relations. However, only requiring these base standards gives districts and teachers the opportunity to instill various biases toward the subject material, be it for religious or political reasons, leading education to differ from district to district. Further, by only explaining the ramifications of unprotected sex and continuing to emphasize abstinence-only or abstinence-based relationships, sex education in Michigan continues to perpetuate the status quo of either unrealistic or unsafe sexual relationships. Without a definition of consent written in the guidelines and a discussion about why consent is important, sex education in Michigan fails to foster behaviors that prevent dangerous sexual situations. This means students are left with a haphazard education about cultivating safe and fulfilling sexual relationships. Given that limited understanding, among other reasons, the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses is no surprise. H.B. 4903, commonly called the “Yes
Means Yes” bill, sets forth a definition of sexual consent as an agreement that is affirmative, conscious, voluntary and made by both parties. Lack of any of these parts renders an act non-consensual — silence, lack of resistance or a prior history of sexual relations do not fulfill this agreement. With 22.5 percent of female undergraduates at the University reported to have experienced “some form of nonconsensual touching and kissing or oral, vaginal or anal penetration,” it’s clear a culture change is sorely needed. Though a “yes means yes” definition of consent may be considered extreme or unrealistic by some, removing ambiguities in sexual encounters is absolutely essential if sex culture in this country is to change. That said, the wording of the bill lacks precision in how consent is taught by stipulating that the agreement is true only if it is made by “conscious” individuals. The bill needs to specify that consciousness is not black or white, and acknowledge that there is a grey area where an individual is conscious but impaired due to alcohol or drug use and therefore unable to make safe decisions. While the bill only covers the way consent is taught in Michigan’s classrooms, the newand-improved definition must soon appear in Michigan’s penal code. In the meantime, it is critical that this bill passes, and that legislators don’t allow religion, politics or potential awkwardness get in the way of ensuring a safer future for all.
DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY? 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 article, writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com. JOE IOVINO
E-mail Joe at jiovino@umich.edu
“W
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Making a safer campus hatever you do, don’t linger,” warned the lead-
er of one of my student organizations. “If the police shut down the party, you need to leave.” Her advice was valid. Lingering around a party with a police pres- VICTORIA ence — if under NOBLE 21 — is a great way to end up with a minor in possession citation. However, having to scurry off at the first police sighting comes with serious costs. Friends get lost and separated, and some friends get left behind amid the chaos. Especially when alcohol is a factor, it’s easy to see how this combination of events could produce dangerous, sub-optimal situations. Police shutdowns of tailgates have become a regular fear of football Saturday at the University. Sometimes this is justified — these parties can get out of control. But when students are more fearful of potential legal trouble than they are for their own and their friends’ safety, we’ve got to rethink our policies toward underage drinking. There are few things that have thus far characterized Mark Schlissel’s short tenure as University president more than his very public crusade against college “party culture.” At the school’s first-ever all-Greek meeting, he warned that extreme party behavior devalued the degrees that students work so hard to earn. He’s not completely wrong. Schlissel’s call to come together to address the problems caused by alcohol overconsumption is justified and well-deserving of attention. Unfortunately, his punishment-oriented approach to our campus party problem is far less
commendable, and may actually exacerbate the problem. New University policies allow administrators to call the parents of certain first-year students caught in violation of school alcohol policies on a “case-by-case” basis. Tattling on students away at school is a thin strategy at best. For one thing, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to encourage responsible behavior by taking away students’ responsibility for their own actions and handing it back to Mom and Dad. Added to the fact that roughly half of students are now out of state, and the vast majority of in-state students don’t come from Ann Arbor or the surrounding area, it’s unlikely that students’ parents can control their child’s behavior remotely anyways. At the very best, this approach prompts students to change only the behavior that could get them in trouble with Mom and Dad, like medical transport or property damage. Presumably, the goal is to help students develop safe and healthy drinking habits. It’s concerning that these policies are essentially equating safe with not-hospitalized. The bigger problem with these policies, though, is the University’s continued focus on enforcement, not education. Underage students already face stiff legal consequences — specifically a minor in possession citation — if caught drinking. Adding the threat of parental involvement is unlikely to provide an effective deterrent for a behavior that has been normalized as part of the college experience, despite its legal status as a misdemeanor crime. One look around most college campuses — and even some high school social circles — will tell you that neither University policy nor Michigan’s underage drinking laws are effective deterrents for most minors. According to a 2013 survey, more than 60 percent of those polled had broken that law by the end of high school.
Maybe, as some argue, we need stiffer penalties to keep youngsters away from the jungle juice. If you believe that, phoning home might make sense. But just to put into perspective how harshly Michigan treats underage drinking, other examples of misdemeanor offenses in Michigan include lighting up to $1,000 worth of someone else’s belongings on fire and beating your significant other. While most teenage drinkers aren’t going to receive the same punishment as an arsonist or wife beater, the current law does put underage drinking in the same legal, criminal category as arson and wife beating. It’s likely that taking a harsh, crime-and-justice approach to underage drinking is pushing behavior to the extremes, as minors sneak alcohol and drink in unsupervised basements instead of regulated bars, and drink with the explicit goal of getting drunk. This is supported by the fact that minors are much more likely to binge drink than legal adults. The Michigan State Senate introduced a bill in May that would reduce first-time underage drinking citations from a misdemeanor crime to a civil infraction. It is imperative that this legislation becomes law. As the rest of the state considers reforming detrimental underage drinking laws, it’s essential that the University encourage this effort, instead of instituting more punishments for students to fear and hide from. Instead of attempting to strengthen failed deterrence policies, the University should focus on improving existing programs like Stay in the Blue, and develop new initiatives to help students drink responsibly. In addition, the University should aggressively support Senate Bill 0332, recognizing it as a step toward a safer campus community and better decision-making. — Victoria Noble can be reached at vjnoble@umich.edu.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh, Adam Morton, Victoria Noble, Anna Polumbo-Levy, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Stephanie Trierweiler, Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe
Addressing drinking through public health
I
’m weighing in on University President Schlissel’s address to Greek life a bit late, but how and what he spoke about at the meeting is an example of poor public health communication. If the University wants to foster an ongoing discussion with students about PEGGY unsafe drinking KORPELA practices, and by extension our rates of risky and non-consensual sexual activities, they need to get a handle on this. In my public health risk communication course, we discuss the best way to connect with a given individual and population about health risks. The goal may be to make individuals more aware of risk or motivate them to take meaningful action to change their risks. There are also very specific rules about motivating and communicating with individuals to change their behaviors and ideas around alcohol use. Schlissel should have placed greater emphasis on the fact that this is not solely a University of Michigan Greek life problem. According to the Association of College Unions International, the age of the drinkers, participation in intercollegiate athletics, involvement in student organizations where there is socializing with alcohol, involvement in fraternities/sororities, sex, family attitudes toward alcohol, experience with alcohol in high school and life satisfaction at school all predict the likelihood of binge drinking. It just so happens that Greek life has a higher profile on our campus and an increased number of problems than the rest of the undergraduate population. The National College Health Assessment for the University reports that 65 percent of Greek life students do not pace themselves to one drink or less per hour (an indicator of binge drinking) in comparison to 52 percent of the non-Greek life undergraduate population. Only 45 percent of Greek life members chose to not
drink at all in comparison to 60 percent of the rest of the undergraduate population, and only 49 percent of Greek life students report alternating between alcohol and nonalcohol compared to 64 percent in non-Greek undergraduate population. While Greek life might have an amplified set of problematic drinking behaviors, the University seems to be grabbing for lowhanging fruit by publicly chastising Greek life undergraduate behavior. Compared to mainstream student organizations and the general undergraduate population, it’s easy to get an extremely well organized, loyalty-bound and socially savvy group of people together if you threaten them with fines and suspension from social events. When presented with the task of winning people over with your argument for change, the last thing you want to do is create an atmosphere of coercion. Along with acknowledgement that they’re not the only ones with a problem, public health theory states that it’s important to express non-judgment and empathy for individuals’ risky health behaviors — especially in the case of alcohol use. Administrators and faculty should actively express understanding. It’s one thing to know that students are in a stressful, high-pressure peer and academic environment, and it’s a whole other thing to connect and empathize with that reality. Understanding and empathizing with alcohol use in this context is essential. Confrontation and blame is counterproductive and is more likely to make the individuals who are in denial defensive and unwilling to entertain the idea of change. This also makes individuals who are willing to change their behavior feel resentful and attacked. Ultimately, all undergraduate students have room for improvement in their alcohol use. In the same 2014 survey, 41 percent of undergraduate students reported binge drinking in the last two weeks, and binge drinking was found to be positively correlated to an increased number of sexual partners, misuse of prescription drugs and incidents of physical
victimization (sexual and physical assault). Health professionals and administrators must give students information about how they can change these numbers, and if students want to change their behavior, professionals must ask students what actions they feel good about taking to change the behavior. Schlissel also should emphasize and support undergraduate and Greek life students’ agency. Either Greek life and undergraduates can partner with the University to create their own solutions and remedies for their problem behaviors, or they can continue their behavior, owning the consequences that come with it. Finally, we must acknowledge that some students will be resistant to changes in their drinking behaviors, and that this is natural, not a sign of more serious problems. This means we can allow the respectful dissent of certain individuals and still continue the dialogue and find common ground for change. That said, public health research has found that one of the best ways to make individuals understand and make good choices surrounding risk behaviors is to have someone they feel they can identify closely with presenting health risk information. In the case of Greek life binge drinking, work has begun on having leaders from their community discuss binge drinking and health, but it could be done with greater organization and also focus on combating other problem outcomes of binge drinking that need to be reduced, such as injury or sexual assault. Within the undergraduate population, athletic team captains, student organization presidents and resident advisors could take a leadership role in speaking about the risk factors of binge drinking and work with students to create a game plan for changing problematic drinking habits. The University prides itself on its collaborative environment, as well as being the cutting-edge in academics and campus life. Let’s not fall short when working to improve the health and quality of life of our students. — Peggy Korpela can be reached at kpeggy@umich.edu.
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
HAMILTON From Page 1B New York for 24 hours to see “Hamilton” off-Broadway. Sitting in the second row and being spat on by Jonathan Groff dressed in full monarchial garb is still one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton’s rap battle is one that awill live on in my heart forever. “Hamilton” keeps the audience’s attention through its subtle humor and quickly executed lyrics and presenting a figure of American history often overshadowed by his presidential counterparts.
I am currently taking an English class titled American Adolescence, which focuses on common themes throughout children’s and young adult literature, such as revolution, rebellion and friendship. “Hamilton” is truly a story of America in its adolescence, morphing into different ideals and setting the precedence of what is to come. It speaks to and incites youth with ideas of uprising and transformation, and reminds the world of the fragility of the era. Rather than staying stagnant as a play about the past, Miranda creates a story that allows people to become deeply nostalgic for not only America’s history, but their own.
“Hamilton” makes history accessible to a younger generation and inspires others to look into their own past. Despite how important we may think we are, millions have lived before us and millions more will live after us. In focusing on the life of one man and watching his impact on history, it forces the audience to recognize its relationship to others and the inf luence they have on lives around them. “Hamilton” ’s story is one that identifies the brutality of war, the pain of defeat and the glory of success. So … what is your story?
TV REVIEW
CBS
Life moves pretty fast.
‘Limitless’ can’t live up to its full potential By BEN ROSENSTOCK Daily Arts Writer
CBS’s new series “Limitless” is the latest story to build on the misconception that humans only use 10% C+ of their brains, and if we Limitless were able to Series Preaccess 100%, miere we’d become superhuman. Tuesdays at Like the 10 p.m. eponymous film, and like CBS other movies that utilize this same myth, the show rarely exploits the moral quandaries that naturally arise from the premise. At least the film “Limitless” and last year’s “Lucy” had a lot of stylish fun with the wacky ideas, and the “Limitless” pilot occasionally attains that sense of absurd entertainment. Unfortunately, the show seems to promise little to sustain an ongoing series past its premiere. Jake McDorman (“Manhattan Love Story”) stars as Brian Finch, the basic equivalent to Bradley Cooper’s character in the film. When his father (Ron Rifkin, “Brothers and Sisters”) becomes sick, Brian realizes he hasn’t done anything in his life to make his dad proud. Luckily, Brian’s friend Eli has access to NZT, a drug that allows its user to access the entirety of the brain. Now Brian can solve complex math equations, vividly
remember every moment of his life and digest huge quantities of information with the quickest of glances. From the beginning, there are signs that the show won’t be able to match the heights of the movie. McDorman works fine as a protagonist, but he’s not nearly as charismatic as Cooper, so when he uses his powers to suavely show off and flirt with women, he’s not as amusingly smug. He’s also saddled with the most pointless, annoying voiceover since the later seasons of “Dexter,” explaining every move he makes instead of just allowing the viewer to watch it happen. The rest of the main cast is mostly uninteresting. Jennifer Carpenter as FBI agent Rebecca Harris is disappointingly tame after her erratic performance on “Dexter,” and a third-act reveal that her late father used NZT fails to make her a threedimensional character. The other two agents who round out the cast, played by Hill Harper (“CSI: NY”) and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (“The Color of Money”) are stock types, two bland agents who serve only to question Harris when she blindly trusts Brian. At least most of the pilot burns through plot at an impressive rate. Brian becomes addicted to NZT, solves the murder of a friend, faces off against Harris on multiple occasions, schemes to move his sick father to the top of the liver transplant waiting list and meets Eddie Morra, Bradley Cooper’s
character from the film. The episode’s kinetic pace keeps it entertaining until the last act, when Brian and Harris enter into a partnership that promises a boring procedural structure for upcoming episodes. As soon as Harris calls Brian’s abilities a ‘resource’ and utters the world ‘consultant,’ it’s clear the show isn’t interested in maintaining the fun of its first episode. This was all meant to set up a standard boring formulaic cop show, with the ‘twist’ being that the consultant has pharmaceutically-induced superhuman abilities. TV shows based on movies and books often struggle to find a way to tell a similar story stretched out to the format of an ongoing series. “Limitless” tries to solve that problem by turning the story into a procedural, a reliable way to have a new plot each episode to distract from the sluggish main narrative arc. Ironically, though, “Limitless” would improve by sticking more to the plot of the movie, having Brian do something new and interesting with his powers instead of just helping out another law enforcement agency. The ending of “Limitless” was so compelling because Morra acted entirely in self-interest, using NZT to indulge his delusions of self-grandeur and ascend to a position of power in the Senate. “Limitless” would do well to have its protagonist be a little more selfish and a little less noble.
Write to Gilian for a Cultural Cure and your question may be published in her column! e-mail her at deargilian@michigandaily.com
Lovelorn? Need nurturing?
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 5B
TV REVIEW
‘Reborn’ a heroic but unnecessary effort By DREW MARON Daily Arts Writer
“Heroes” returns to television for the first time in six years with the 13-part miniseries “Heroes: CReborn.” Instead of Heroes: re-introReborn ducing viewers Series Preto the miere world of “Heroes,” Thursdays at 8 p.m however, NBC. “Reborn” settles for making the same mistakes as its predecessor. The story picks up several years after the events of “Heroes.” In the years since the events of the fourth season, those with powers (now called “Evos”) have revealed themselves to a world that has come to fear them. It’s a concept we’ve seen thousands of times in comics, television, and film, and “Reborn” doesn’t improve on or reinvent what “X-Men” and “True Blood” already accomplished years ago. That being said, the series opening did seem like an interesting place to start for fans: the absolute destruction of the Primatech building. The fatal incident occurs at the beginning when, during a peace rally held by the reformed Primatech, an explosion levels Odessa. Hundreds are killed, including Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere, “Nashville”), or so we’re told. Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy, “Covert Affairs”) has claimed responsibility, and things are becoming less and less like we remember them: invulnerable Claire dies in explosion? Flawed but ultimately noble Mohinder is a terrorist? The surprises with known characters were one of the more welcome aspects of “Reborn,” however, killing the Haitian, one of the best characters of the series, seems like the wrong move. Another unfortunate aspect of the series is that like the
NBC
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a bad show.
original “Reborn” lacks a cohesive storyline. Instead, the show gives its audience misappropriated, unwanted new characters that confuse and use unearned melodrama in a way that devalues its already questionable status as a serious television drama. The end product is a show that frustrates fans and newcomers alike, falling apart long before it even comes together.
We have an unquenchable desire for the superfluous. The attempts to combine superhero tropes with social commentary in the Carlos (Ryan Guzman, “Step Up”) storyline is admirable and at least at the moment, the most interesting of the series’ additions. Creator Tim Kring (“Heroes”) and his fellow writers should be applauded for giving us a Latino superhero, and Carlos, a nonEvo, could prove a fascinating answer to this world’s Batman. The other storylines are less fruitful, to say the least. Tommy (Robbie Kay, “Once Upon A Time”) does feel pleasantly old-fashioned, something like an homage to the teen angst of classic Spiderman comics.
Unfortunately, his home and high school life feel much less fleshed out than Claire’s did back in 2006. We’re also introduced to Luke (Zachary Levi, “Thor: The Dark World”) and Joanna (Judi Shekoni, “Backstrom”) who lost their son in Odessa and are now indiscriminately killing every Evo they can find. It’s an incredibly disturbing story and one that does create interesting and darkly understandable villains, but it seems like we needed more than just a lost son before having the couple go full-on “Natural Born Killers.” But the single biggest sin has to be the Kiko story. Her power, the ability to transport between the real world and a video game, is a cool idea, if it had been done right. Unfortunately, here it just feels out of place, under-developed, and incredibly cartoonish in a show whose melodrama constantly undermines its aims at making quality drama. We seem to have an unquenchable desire for superheroes. There is undeniable evidence in comics, film, and television that the genre can sustain a certain level of prestige. “Marvel’s Daredevil,” for instance, proved to have more in common with “The French Connection” than the city-destroying madness and pretentiousness of “Man of Steel.” “Reborn,” however, falls far below the genre’s best, making the return of “Heroes” feel neither deserved nor needed.
FILM NOTEBOOK
John Hughes and the value of teen movies By BRIAN BURLAGE Daily Arts Writer
“I grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly girls and old people,” John Hughes once said about his upbringing. “There weren’t any boys my age, so I spent a lot of time by myself, imagining things.” Hughes, one of the most prolific and talented moviemakers of the 1980s, did what no other director before or since has been able to do, even with half the same heart or reality: tell the stories of teenagers. Let me elaborate. In the span of years between 1982 and 1990, John Hughes wrote or directed 10 films that still run repeatedly on TV and are widely beloved today. You know them as: Some Kind of Wonderful; Sixteen Candles; Breakfast Club; Weird Science; Pretty in Pink; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Uncle Buck; Christmas Vacation; and Home Alone. Think about that for a second. How many of those movies have you seen or heard about? How many of them can you quote linefor-line? How many memorable scenes or songs immediately come to mind? If Shakespeare created the human being, John Hughes created the teenager. For better or worse, he catalogued those pubescent years with a genius’s
eye for detail and a poet’s sense of heart. His characters were jocks, nerds, troublemakers and homecoming queens. They were cynical (Cameron Frye), irresponsible (Uncle Buck), resourceful (Kevin McCallister), dedicated (Clark Griswold), criminal (John Bender) and larger-than-life (Ferris Bueller). We remember them not as stars or icons or archetypes, but as unrealized versions of ourselves. And it all goes back to Hughes’s upbringing, a time of imagination and introspection. He quickly figured out that knowing people — knowing what they think, how they feel, why they behave the way they do — is really an act of imagining them as slight variations of ourselves. Take Andrew, Emilio Estevez’s character in Breakfast Club, for example. As a star high school athlete, Andrew has a different way of thinking about things than, say, Brian, the class brain. And Andrew and Brian each have different ways of thinking about things than Allison, the girl with personal issues. But in Hughes’s films, these differences don’t matter because, as Andrew explains, “We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.” It’s a cliché thing to say, but when John Hughes died in 2009—at the age of 59—he left an enormous void in the world of
Hollywood. The greatest documenter of teenage angst left without having taught us how to approach the current generation, without giving us a blueprint for telling the millennial story. And that’s a problem. Of all the generations that have come to pass in the world, the millennial generation, our generation, is the hardest to connect with, the hardest to pin down. We come from cities, small rural towns and suburbs, from the East Coast, West Coast, Third Coast, from rich and from poor, from private schools, public schools, boarding schools, charter and trade schools, from countries on the North American continent and countries that aren’t. As young adults bombarded with information in just about every variety and from every screen, we develop individualized, highly personal opinions. We love to look at ourselves, but we hate to talk about ourselves. All this is to say that, well, we’re all very different from one another. As it stands now, there exists no great record of who we are as a generation. We don’t have our Breakfast Club yet; we don’t have our Ferris Bueller. Without such stories and characters, we remain faceless in the chronicles of history. So I ask: will the next John Hughes please stand up?
Arts
6B — Tuesday, September 29, 2015
COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
FILM REVIEW
Get off Instagram ‘Intern’ ’s mature look and enjoy your life at office friendship Destroying the ability to live in the moment, one Insta at a time By BAILEY KADIAN Daily Arts Writer
My sisters have been telling me to get an Instagram for years. But I refuse. This isn’t some subtle indicator of being “above” the age of social media, or my acting completely naïve to it; I just think pictures have become the center of experiences. People need to take pictures while going out and doing something exciting. While traveling or visiting friends or celebrating holidays, it’s fun to take pictures. And it’s necessary. We live in age where documentation is valued and is easily accomplished. I’m not denying what a gift photography is, but it has become an obsession. There is an obvious differ-
ence between taking pictures to remember, and engaging in a new experience just so you can have a bunch of stuff to post and share. These pictures seem less about remembering events; they are the event itself. If you can’t imagine a weekend spent doing something exciting without an album of pictures, you have likely missed the moment entirely. It’s no wonder live performances have such an effect on people. For two or three hours, the theater asks that you put your phones away and just allow yourself to enjoy the show. You aren’t distracted by the interruption of a camera, nagging you to document every little thing you see. There’s value to an experience where you allow your mind to be fully engaged. Memories are valuable, but they can’t be formed through taking a thousand pictures just to remember something. Therein lies the irony. You want to remember what an exciting thing you saw or did. So you take pictures, again and again, to the point
where the thing you’re trying to remember, you’re actually forgetting thanks to your distraction. Let yourself be fully engaged in the experiences that surround you. It’s become an activity for people to sit around and take pictures of everything in sight and by the time that excessively long task is finished, the thrill and excitement of the event itself has likely dwindled. I don’t want to scroll through all my photos and see every part of my life laid out. I want to be able to see a few snapshots of moments that I could talk endlessly about. So no, I don’t have countless pictures from every life event I’ve ever experienced. Nor will I be able to provide that for friends and family who want to follow me in a picture play-by-play. But I’ll have my memory. And if someone asks about it, I’d be happy to talk endlessly about everything I saw, because I can guarantee you, the picture can’t speak for itself. You must be the one to do it.
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Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 Diagram with axes and coordinates 6 Very top 10 Shift neighbor, on PC keyboards 14 St. __ Girl beer 15 Guard site 16 Nabisco cookie 17 Like stickers that smell when rubbed 20 Buckwheat dish 21 Court order to all 22 Fruit seed 23 Drop-down __ 25 Like some microbrews 27 Little girl’s makeup, so they say 33 Crisp covering 34 Welfare 35 Firebird roof option 38 What cake candles may indicate 39 On the rocks 42 Bart Simpson’s grandpa 43 See 44-Down 45 City near Colombia’s coastline 46 Leica competitor 48 Terse 51 Sounded sheepish? 53 Pop singer Vannelli 54 “Life of Pi” director Lee 55 Flood preventer 59 Louisiana cuisine 62 Old Glory 66 Words starting many a guess 67 Kind of dancer or boots 68 Atlanta campus 69 “Auld Lang __” 70 Follow the leader 71 Metaphor for time ... and, when divided into three words, puzzle theme found in the four longest across answers DOWN 1 Navig. tool 2 Pool hall triangle 3 Saintly glow
4 Some flat-screen TVs 5 Until now 6 Remnant of an old flame 7 Blacken 8 Prefix with series 9 Remnants 10 Grifter’s specialty 11 Exaggerated response of disbelief 12 Equip anew 13 Towering 18 “How many times __ man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?”: Dylan 19 Freeway hauler 24 Boot from office 26 Work with a cast 27 Natural cut protection 28 Strong desire 29 “Still wrong, take another stab” 30 Alfalfa’s girl 31 Coming down the mountain, perhaps 32 Push-up target, briefly
36 Reed instrument 37 Cooped (up) 40 DVD predecessor 41 Catches, as in a net 44 With 43-Across, outstanding 47 Historic Japanese island battle site 49 Partner of 9Down
50 Merriam-Webster ref. 51 Underlying principle 52 Restless 56 “Othello” villain 57 Door opener 58 Periphery 60 Well-versed in 61 Uncool type 63 AAA suggestion 64 Dim sum sauce 65 Part of PBS: Abbr.
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By NOAH COHEN Daily Arts Writer
Who knew Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway still had this movie in them? De Niro (“Taxi Driver”) plays Ben Whittak- Aer, a cute old man looking to The Intern re-engage with Quality 16 a brave new world; Anne Warner Bros. Hathaway (“The Devil Wears Prada”) plays Jules Ostin, a 30-year-old corporate peopleperson, beset on all sides by the pressures of an environment that calls for 30 hours in a day. The magnetism of these two wonderful human beings bleeds into every aspect of the movie, shimmering over the movie’s molasses plot and dumbed-down dialogue until this otherwise forgettable comedy glows with peace and warmth. The two of them conjure a universe where people come before business. We know De Niro as a man of hardness, but he plays softness so convincingly, the audience wonders if maybe De Niro was really a sweetheart all along. Through all those years of playing the antagonist, no one ever gave him a chance to be gentle. This was probably his last chance, and he knocks it out of the park. From start to finish, “The Intern” is a conspiracy to make us fall in love with Robert De Niro all over again. “The Intern” falls perfectly into the golden center of Hathaway movies, more serious than “Ella Enchanted” or her more forgettable rom-coms, less serious than “The Dark Knight Rises” or “Les Miserables.” “The Intern” fits snugly between “The Princess Diaries” and “The Devil Wears Prada.” Hathaway plays the suffer-smiling people-person as an island in an ocean of personal and bureaucratic turmoil. De Niro paddles his little boat up to her island to dock, and it’s exactly what both of them need. “The Intern” features a more benevolent portrayal by De Niro. He draws the directionless to him, and the cast, fraught with 20-somethings, exchange
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competencies with him with remarkable ease in mutual learning experiences. The best emotional comedy flows with unnoticed direction – friction that could have been, but wasn’t. “The Intern” navigates the glaciers of its terrain marvelously. Hathaway spends a large part of the movie looking for a CEO, and the audience can’t help but imagine De Niro climactically filling this role. The movie is smarter than the audience here; it doesn’t give us what we think we want. It gives us De Niro as the unassuming emotional CEO, who offers guidance when prompted, but never does anything to take power away from Hathaway. In many ways, this is the movie our decade has been waiting for.
De Niro paddles his little boat up to her island to dock. Contrary to the trailer, Hathaway is the protagonist, not De Niro. The dialogue isn’t perfect, but one major win is its fearlessness with the F-word. Feminism isn’t leveraged as a prop. Instead, we get a gentle reminder to take a step back and ask ourselves how gender politics are working in context, and what we would feel if we were
in Hathaway’s shoes. Though young men get the narrative shaft in this movie, it’s nice that we, the protagonist princes of Hollywood, can get the experience of being leftof-center-stage without undue scolding. The trailer utterly fails here. Sure, there’s the one scene where Hathaway compares her 20-something employees unfavorably to De Niro, but that’s the worst scene in the movie. Judgement and interpersonal criticism, thankfully, do not pierce to the gooey heart of this comedy. Orbiting that gooey center are several fleshy minor arcs. Zack Pearlman (“Mulaney”), newcomer Christina Scherer and “Workaholics” stars Adam DeVine and Anders Holm each get time in the sun as the people whose lives revolve around Hathaway’s. De Niro handles each with care. DeVine rambunctiously lowers the cast’s mean IQ, but maybe the movie needed that. This movie’s trailer was dreadful, totally overlooking the centrality of Hathaway and the warmth of intergenerational friendship. The ill-toned hype will punish it at the box-office and leave it an underrated gem in the annals of IMDB. It’s true that the ending is a bit heavyhanded. This is a comedy that teaches to forgive, and some audience members will disagree with it. But if you’re the kind of person who can sidestep the political dance, you’ll come back to this movie more than once, and you’ll like it more each time.
BOOK REVIEW
Fascinating ‘Earth’ By SOPHIA KAUFMAN Daily Arts Writer
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Robert De Niro’s very last chance to play nice?
There is no doubt that the Holocaust was one of the bloodiest events in the history of the West- Black ern world. Earth: The But in “Black Earth: The Holocaust Holocaust as as History History and and Warning,” Yale Prof. Warning Timothy Snyder argues Timothy that to rele- Snyder gate the Holo- Timothy Dugcaust to the gan Books context of our Sept. 8, 2015 history classes is to do ourselves a great disservice, and a potentially dangerous one. He argues, using sources from a variety of languages, that we need to delve deeper into the causes of the Holocaust, especially Hitler’s worldview and the role that ecological panic and the destruction of statehood played. Snyder begins in Hitler’s mind. He fleshes out Hitler’s beliefs in detail, going far beyond the idea that Hitler hated Jews to claim that Hitler didn’t consider Jewish people, along with Soviets and Ukrainians, part of the human race. He explains that Hitler’s preoccupation was about the survival of Germans and the cleansing of the land by the extermination of Jews, as he conflated politics and the natural order. This
comes back again in his conclusion — Snyder points out that we as a current society have already begun to adopt the catastrophism so prevalent in Hitler’s mind. He reminds us of the need for a separation between science and politics. Snyder’s explanation of Hitler’s beliefs and perspective are riveting, but he also tends to focus on details, like the roles of Polish politics and Palestine, that, while interesting, don’t feel immediately necessary to understanding the Holocaust. It’s at parts like these where Snyder gets caught up in political theory details that aren’t necessary for the average reader; much more relevant are the parts in which he deconstructs popular Holocaust rhetoric and debunks myths about Nazis and concentration camps. In one of the most fascinating chapters, he unpacks the significance of Auschwitz, what it really was and what it has become in our current discourse. But while thorough knowledge of European history and the World Wars is presumed in most of this book, and though the heavy academic rhetoric can be dense, it’s almost always clear. As with any true story, the personal accounts leap out from the page, striking the sympathetic chords in our hearts. We’re familiar with not only the horror stories that have come from the weary mouths of survivors, but also stories of improbable, miraculous life in the face of almost certain death, and stories of those few
who braced their backs against the tide and reached out their hands to help.
Snyder warns against falling into the trap of pathos. But Snyder warns we must not let ourselves fall into this pattern of those emotions we’re used to feeling. We can’t just bear witness to these stories and let ourselves get caught up in the pathos. We have to understand them in their complexity. Snyder reminds us that for a long time, the study of history was dry; it was about facts and figures and the heroes who won the wars. Then there was a cultural shift, and we started caring more about the three-dimensional stories — about the people who had been relegated to the footnotes, if mentioned at all. But caring about the experiences, though important, can’t take the place of understanding. The idea that something like the Holocaust could happen again is terrifying and feels impossible, but Snyder argues it wasn’t just a phenomenon. It wasn’t only a hideous combination of time and space and a madman who wielded hypnotizing rhetoric. It really could happen again — especially if we fail to recognize the warning signs.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MEN’S GOLF
‘M’ enjoys strong outing in Illinois By MIKE GRIFFIN Daily Sports Writer
One week after a thirdplace finish at the Inverness Intercollegiate, the Michigan men’s golf team continued its fall schedule with a trip to Glencoe, Illinois, for the Windon Memorial Classic. Monday, the Wolverines placed second out of 14 teams, improving on their third-place finish last season. Michigan was carried by three outstanding performances: sophomore Kyle Mueller and freshman Nick Carlson tied for third and senior Chris O’Neill came in ninth. Mueller sealed his third-place finish with an excellent second round in which he shot a fiveunder 67. After a record-breaking freshman campaign that ended in a trip to the NCAA Regionals, followed by his exceptional performance Sunday and Monday, he has proven himself to be a team leader. Only one month into his sophomore year, Mueller continued his steady improvement over the course of the fall season. After starting the year with an underwhelming round at the Gopher Invitational in Minnesota, he finished second at the Inverness Intercollegiate last weekend — the Wolverines’ best-ever finish at the event. “I played really well this week,” Mueller said. “I hit the ball great all week, (but) just struggled with putting today. I know what I need to work on for (The MacKenzie tournament next weekend). My ball striking has been great the past two weeks. I just need to be able to convert the birdie putts.” After coming off a one-
over par performance at last weekend, Carlson also played a part in Michigan’s second-place finish. He finished the first day of competition tied for 12th, but rebounded exceptionally on the final day of the tournament. Monday, he posted a 69, the third-best final round out of the top 12 golfers, and tied with Mueller for third place overall. Despite his success, the true freshman was hesitant to praise his performance. “I managed to limit my mistakes and miss in the right place when I did miss,” Carlson said. “My game was so-so, but I put the ball in the hole, and that’s what’s important. The team played solid. It could have been a better week for all of us, but we have a lot to take from this, confidence and things to build on for the rest of the season.” Meanwhile, Purdue posed the greatest challenge for the Wolverines. After a fourthplace finish at the Inverness Intercollegiate, the Boilermakers redeemed themselves with a team win. Despite being overpowered to some extent, Michigan coach Chris Whitten was proud of his team’s performance and lauded his three top producers. “O’Neill and Mueller had good weeks again, and they are leading with their scoring for sure,” Whitten said. “It’s great having two anchors in the back of the lineup who will compete hard every time out. Nick Carlson has given us a spark too. I just hoped he would adjust to the college game and manage his responsibilities well for the first month, so for him to have a high finish like this is great. He should take a lot of confidence from this week.”
Sports
Kalis realizing potential, appreciating every minute By JAKE LOURIM Managing Sports Editor
This past summer, during the conditioning program before his redshirt junior season, Michigan offensive guard Kyle Kalis thought to himself. He had shown potential as a five-star recruit out of Lakewood, Ohio. But in the two seasons he had spent on Michigan’s inconsistent offensive line, the Wolverines had finished 12-13. And then he told himself, “I’m going to make this year the year I need to have to go where I want to go.” Everything has come together for Kalis since then. Another moment this summer fed into his resurgence. Kalis was working out in Michigan’s weight room early in the morning when Rick Finotti, his football coach at St. Edward (Ohio) High School, walked in to say hello. Finotti was tremendously successful at St. Edward, going 62-15 over six seasons with two state championships, one in Kalis’ junior season. The day Kalis saw Rick Finotti in Ann Arbor, Finotti interviewed for the director of football operations job under Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh. Later that day, Kalis learned Finotti got the job, and suddenly he had one of his mentors with him. Kalis also became very close with Finotti’s family. He was best friends with Finotti’s son and estimated that he spent the night at their house three to four times per week. On the field, Kalis made big strides under the new coaching staff in the offseason. He came out of St. Edward as a U.S. Army All-American, and he arrived at
125TH ANNIVERSARY
Training journalists in the newsroom, not classroom By LEV FACHER Managing Editor
On a recent Monday, The Michigan Daily, in its weekly sports insert, ran a cover photo taken by a dual-degree student working on one degree through the School of Art & Design and another in biopsychology, cognition and neuroscience. The game story below it was written by a Business student, and the byline below the SportsMonday column belonged to an editor who happens to also study economics. Glance around the rest of any given edition of the Daily and you’ll see the same trend: The University’s aspiring journalists are spending their classroom time studying anything but journalism. That’s the way things have been since the University stopped offering a journalism B.A. decades ago. The decision didn’t slow down the Daily, however. At a school that offers no formal journalism education, the newspaper has taken it upon itself to provide that education, informally and experientially. Perhaps fittingly, one man who understands the paper’s knack for training successful professionals better than most is neither a University nor a Daily alumnus. Nonetheless, John Lowe, who recently retired as the Detroit Tigers beat writer for the Detroit Free Press after 29 years covering the team, has spent as much time at 420 Maynard as many current and former Daily staffers. Sunday afternoons and evenings during the baseball offseason, Lowe would join the paper’s Sports section for its weekly meeting, patiently sit through a lengthy and often inane round of “icebreakers,” then briefly address the assembled staff, frequently offering pearls of wisdom that remain with alumni throughout their careers, in journalism or otherwise. “John always asked,” remembered Tim Rohan, the 2011
managing sports editor, “ ‘What’s the first thing you’d tell your college roommate when you come back from the game?’ ” That concept stuck around, Rohan said. Lowe’s presence and mentorship, however, sum up the Daily’s spirit better than just a brief advice tidbit after a staff meeting. Lowe would often stick around late into the evening, available for edits and advice, but never solicitous. If a writer wanted edits from Lowe, he’d be sitting on a couch in the back of the newsroom. If not, there were no hard feelings. Lowe still remembers the first time he showed up at the Daily, at the invitation of former managing sports editor and then-Free Press intern Nick Cotsonika, a current editor at that paper and a former Yahoo! hockey writer. “I was going to turn 40 in 1999,” Lowe said. “The only reason I mention that is that’s the age when you’re qualified to be a mentor. As I was in my late 30s, I was greatly enjoying my career, but I was also starting to get this urge to work with young writers.” Cotsonika could never have envisioned the phenomenon Lowe’s presence would become. He reached a full generation of Daily up-and-comers, joining the paper on a regular basis beginning at the Sunday Sports meeting on January 24, 1999, and extending through October 2014. Lowe was immediately struck by the newsroom atmosphere, the dedication and, above all else, the fact that the students were doing everything. “I would just say that of the many schools I have been to, what I feel definitely sets the Daily apart is, among other things, the thoroughness of the editing process,” Lowe said. Cotsonika’s innocent suggestion worked out well for the man at the end of that editing process in 1999, Rick
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 7B
Freeman, who spent more than a decade at the New York offices of the Associated Press before transitioning into a gig as a copy editor at Al Jazeera America. “My memory of (Lowe’s first visit) evades me, because it just seemed at the time that this guy I knew who was a very good beat writer for the ‘Freep’ was like, ‘Hey, can I come by and talk to your staff?’ ” Freeman recalled. “It wasn’t very formal at all.” The flexible structure, both in Lowe’s visits and in the paper’s organization, often paid dividends. “Knowing that the Daily was our only outlet to getting into the field, you had to pour your entire self into it,” Rohan said, calling his experience at the Daily a “real education.” The time Lowe spent at the Daily, immensely valuable in and of itself, also encapsulates the spirit of the paper and its self-reliance. Alumni teach older students. Older students teach younger students. Younger students teach one another. When there are no extra resources to lean on, leaning on friends never hurts. “I realized I can figure it out on my own, and that’s the most fun part,” Rohan said. “It became like a competition. You’re there with friends, and you’re like, ‘Oh, man, Mike wrote a great game story last week.’ You feel like you have to try to beat him.” The camaraderie fosters a sense of territorialism, Freeman said — the sense that the Daily is the students’ responsibility, their domicile. That sense is alive and well in 2015, and isn’t going anywhere. “People are always surprised to learn that Michigan doesn’t have a journalism school, because there are a ton of us who majored in Daily,” Freeman said. “It always feels good to say, ‘No, I was a history major.’ It’s always fun to see how surprised people are.”
Michigan after decommitting from Ohio State amid NCAA sanctions. He started nine games in his redshirt freshman season, but just seven last year. As part of an offensive line that took criticism as one of the worst in the Big Ten, Kalis struggled with consistency. “It’s one of those things where the past couple years as I’ve been playing, we’ve been doing good things as an O-line, we’ve played well the past couple years, we just weren’t playing 11-man football,” Kalis said. “It was hard to single out somebody. It was hard to give a group credit when everyone wasn’t on the same page. But on the flip side, it does feel nice to start getting some recognition for what I’ve been doing.” He has started all four games this season at right guard on a rejuvenated offensive line for the 22nd-ranked Wolverines. Michigan has rushed for more than 200 yards per game so far. And after facing his share of struggles, Kalis is enjoying every minute. “I’ve always had fun — I would have quit if I wasn’t having fun — but having the success like we are, that’s the fun you’re supposed to be having,” he said. “The feelings and emotions that we’ve been having these past couple weeks, that’s the kind of fun you’re supposed to be having. “It’s always been fun, no matter what anybody says. It’s just more fun.” Part of Kalis’ improvement comes from new coaches,
ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
Kyle Kalis has made a big improvement as Michigan’s starting right guard.
namely Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Tim Drevno, who have brought the best work ethic and talent out of him. Part of it comes from playing on a better overall offensive line, with three other fourth- or fifth-year players. But a big part of it, too, comes from a personal change: With two years left, Kalis has simplified things and begun to take ownership of his success. “Lately, for whatever reason, I’ve been playing football for the reason that I started playing football,” Kalis said. “And that’s because I like to be physical, I like to hit people, that’s fun for me. But at the same time, you want to do it in a way where you’re successful, and in a way where people are going to say, ‘Wow. We want to do it like that guy.’ ”
“I’ve never dialed (the intensity) back.”
Kalis admitted that he had to grow up, a process that came with experience. He always had the physical talent and the intensity. His growth has been about harnessing it and using it to help the offensive line. As a veteran, part of the growing-up process was becoming a reliable leader in the offseason. Kalis also admitted that he was a “wild dude” when he arrived at Michigan, and that showed up on the field. He still is, to some extent — it’s almost a prerequisite when you sign up to play football. But this year, he’s using that wildness to his advantage. He’s using it to spring a block for junior running back De’Veon Smith on his 60-yard touchdown run, and then to run toward the end zone to celebrate with Smith. “I’ve never dialed (the intensity) back,” Kalis said. “I’ve been playing more relaxed, and I don’t think so much. That’s the key — you just gotta learn how to control it and filter it and then use it when you need it.”
Sports
8B — Tuesday, September 29, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
For Henry Poggi, switch to offense was a family affair By MAX COHEN Managing Sports Editor
In the minutes before the Michigan football team began its rout of Brigham Young this weekend, an unfamiliar face flashed across the Michigan Stadium video boards as an offensive starter. He had been a defensive lineman as recently as last season, but now he would be blocking on the other side of the ball. Henry Poggi never expected to be running out of the tunnel as an offensive starter for the Wolverines. The redshirt sophomore arrived on campus before the 2013 season as a bluechip defensive line prospect, a cornerstone of a Michigan recruiting class that was ranked sixth in the nation by ESPN. The arc of his career did not go as planned. The 6-foot-4, 273-pound Poggi redshirted his freshman year and played in just six games during his second season. The arrival of Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh this past offseason offered the opportunity for a fresh start, but that, too, threw a wrench in Poggi’s career. Soon after Harbaugh’s arrival, the new coach told Poggi that he wanted him to play on both sides of the ball as a fullback/ tight end hybrid during spring practice. Poggi was initially disappointed. He had played a similar position in high school, but did not anticipate the same task in college. So Poggi did what he often does in times of need: He called his father, Biff. Biff Poggi is different from most fathers of Michigan football players — he is a coach himself. The elder Poggi has led the Gilman School football team in Baltimore for more than a decade.
The Greyhounds have been a powerhouse throughout his tenure, entering this season as the No. 3 team in USA Today’s Northeast regional preseason football rankings. Poggi and his two older brothers played for their father. The coaching philosophy of Biff Poggi and his coaching staff, as documented in the book “Season of Life,” by Jeffrey Marx, is one in which nurture takes precedence over screaming, and kindness overrules it all. Those guidelines were not always applicable to the coach’s son. “We’d be having a bad practice, and instead of yelling at our team, he’d just kind of yell at me,” Henry Poggi said. Despite the extra flak, Poggi said that he would not trade the experience of playing for his father for the world. It was natural, then, that he called Biff Poggi to discuss his position change. Even before the phone call, both Poggis were aware of Harbaugh’s past success at moving players around the field. Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, widely considered the best cornerback in the NFL, had played wide receiver before Harbaugh switched his position at Stanford. And Harbaugh told Poggi about San Francisco 49ers fullback Bruce Miller — a defensive lineman in college who became a second-team AllPro fullback under Harbaugh in San Francisco. By the end of his conversation
with his father about the possible position change, Poggi was sold. He realized that he trusted his new coach. “Pretty much whatever he says, I think he knows a little bit more about football than me,” Poggi said. “So if he thinks I’ll do well there, I was all for it.” Eventually, before the start of fall camp, Harbaugh told Poggi that he wanted him to play offense full time. He felt it was a disservice to Poggi to play him both ways, because he wasn’t progressing as well as he would if he focused on only one spot. So far, Harbaugh’s experiment has been successful. Poggi has played consistently enough to see the field on a regular basis. Describing his role is a different matter. Even Poggi himself doesn’t know exactly what to call his position. There are plays when he lines up in the backfield as a fullback, and other plays when he lines up as a tight end. “Kind of like an H-back … fullback, tight end, I kind of play all three,” Poggi said. “I don’t really know what to call it. H-back is probably the best thing.” Whatever position he was playing, Poggi made the first reception of his career on the first play from scrimmage in Saturday’s game. It was no sight to behold — he fell to the ground with the ball in his clutches when there was open field in front of him — but the two-yard gain still represented a milestone, one he never would have been able to earn as a defensive lineman. There are times when Poggi
“H-back ... fullback, tight end, I kind of play all three.”
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Barnes Arico earns extension By BRAD WHIPPLE Daily Sports Writer
ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
Jim Harbaugh has a history of converting players from defense to offense.
misses his defensive lineman friends, with whom he spent the first two years of his career. Now, he seeks advice from fifthyear senior Joe Kerridge — who, Poggi jokes, is old enough to be a coach (Kerridge is 23 years old). There’s always his dad, too. Poggi says they talk every day, even when there aren’t pressing position changes at hand. Despite his high school coaching schedule, Biff Poggi has made it to two of Michigan’s three home games this season. Poggi will return to his home state this weekend, when the Wolverines travel to play Maryland. He expects at least 18 of his family members and friends to be in attendance, and a few of his former high
school teammates play for the Terrapins. They will see the new version of Poggi, the one who still gets to “smash skulls,” but in a different fashion. Poggi is under no illusion that his transformation is complete, and he said that he needs to work on both catching the ball and moving around it, instead of toward it. “My biggest thing coming in here was I wanted to do whatever I could to help Michigan win, no matter what my role was,” Poggi said. His position change, however little he expected it, provides him that opportunity. Serving as the latest example of a successful Harbaugh position change would be a nice bonus.
It wasn’t chance that led last year’s Michigan women’s basketball team to the WNIT Semifinals for the second time in program history. Rather, it was the intense work ethic that Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico had instilled in the Wolverines. And when the day comes for Michigan to hang its first banner in Crisler Center, there is now an increased likelihood that it will be Barnes Arico who leads the Wolverines there. Monday morning, Interim Athletic Director Jim Hackett announced that Barnes Arico agreed to a three-year contract extension, which will keep her at Michigan through the 2020-21 season. The contract sets Barnes Arico’s base pay at $360,000 in addition to supplemental monetary bonuses based on team performance, such as winning the Big Ten Tournament. “When I came to Michigan three years ago, I really believed it was a place my family and I would be at for a long time,” Barnes Arico said in a statement. “I left a top-20 program and the region I grew up in because I believed in the vision of Michigan, everything it has to offer its studentathletes and its commitment to excellence.” Added Hackett: “I know what an outstanding coach we have in Kim, and I’m thrilled to get this extension in place. Kim has done a fantastic job of developing students both academically and athletically.” In 2012, Barnes Arico left the Big East, ending her 10-year stint at St. John’s.
125TH ANNIVERSARY
The rise of ‘M’ women’s athletics By JAKE LOURIM Managing Sports Editor
In the October 16, 1973, edition of The Michigan Daily, a box no bigger than one square inch represented the change of the Michigan Athletic Department forever. “Oops!” the header read. “Michigan’s women’s field hockey team bowed to Western Michigan last night in Kalamazoo, 2-0. Michigan’s coach was proud with her team’s performance due to the superlative competition.” Eight days later, a Daily sports writer wrote a seven-paragraph story in the bottom-left corner of page six. “Michigan coach Phyllis Weikart said she though (sic) her team might have been a little overconfident, and when they fell behind, just couldn’t get it together.” Throughout the past 125 years, both Michigan sports and the Daily have been overcome by change. And while both Michigan women’s sports and the Daily’s coverage have come a long way since then, those early days were the beginning of the movement. In 1972, the United States passed Title IX of the Education Amendment Act, comprised of the 37 words that would irreversibly change the nature of college athletics: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Though schools were slow to enforce the law at first, those words laid the foundation. The next year, University President Robben Fleming created the Committee to Study Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. The committee wrote a report on women’s athletics, prompting Michigan to begin competition in the 1973-74 season in six varsity women’s
sports: basketball, volleyball, tennis, swimming and diving, synchronized swimming and field hockey. That year was merely a starting point: The field hockey team went 1-3-1, the volleyball team 7-9 and the basketball team 3-8. The off-field appearance were even less promising. The women’s teams enjoyed far fewer resources than the men: no scholarships, no practice uniforms, no topnotch facilities. They paid their way as walk-ons, wore their own T-shirts and shorts and played wherever they could find space. With progress slow at first, one might have wondered how long it would take for Title IX to create real change. That was until 1978, when up the road in East Lansing, a new figure in the women’s sports movement began to make headlines: Carol Hutchins. *** Hutchins, who is still the head coach of the Michigan softball team, has been a pioneer in the process of legitimizing women’s sports from the outset. She is now known as one of the leading figures in a successful movement. Back in 1978, she was just a player on the Michigan State women’s basketball and softball teams. The previous season, Michigan State’s Athletic Department allocated $776,000 to men’s sports but less than $85,000 to women’s athletics. So Hutchins did something about it. She and her teammates sued the university before the federal Office of Civil Rights. The court ordered universities to stop discriminating against athletes and teams on the basis of gender. In the same season when Hutchins’ team brought forth the suit, Michigan started its softball program, along with women’s golf and women’s track and field, bringing the total to nine women’s sports, compared to the 12 it has today. The softball team debuted on
April 8, 1978, with a 7-2 win over Northwestern. Its home opener was two days later against Grand Valley State, another 1-0 win. Support was slow at first — as the Daily wrote, “There were no stands and only a handful of fans, but that didn’t bother the woman’s (sic) softball team, the newest addition to the Michigan sports scene.” But the Daily still covered it. “Ferry Field came alive as the Maize and Blue fast-pitch squad pulled out an exciting 1-0 victory over Grand Valley State College,” sports writer Dan Perrin wrote. Five years later, Hutchins was an assistant coach for the Michigan softball team, and two years after that, she took the head coaching job. By that time, the team was on its way to becoming one of the Daily’s most prominent spring sports storylines. After almost two weeks on the road, the Wolverines opened at home on April 3, 1985, losing both games of a doubleheader to Toledo. “We don’t execute with runners on base,” Hutchins told the Daily after the games. “We just don’t bring them in … I just don’t think our team came out there to win today.” Today, after 38 years, the Michigan softball team has never had a losing record, a model of consistency not just for the University’s women’s sports but for all sports on a national level. Hutchins has led the team for 31 of its 38 years of existence. The days of only Daily coverage didn’t last. The Wolverines eventually went national. *** The early days of women’s sports paved the way for a slew of memorable moments in Michigan women’s athletics. In 2001, the Wolverines took home their first women’s national championship in field hockey. The next day, Michigan made Page 1A of the Daily. “Field hockey team
wins title,” the headline read, above a big photo of the three captains holding the national championship trophy. The Daily sent a sports writer to Kent, Ohio, for the day’s top story. “Years from now, people won’t remember that yesterday the Michigan field hockey team played the consensus No. 1 team in the country,” Bob Hunt wrote. “They won’t remember that its opponent had six senior starters. They won’t remember that its opponent had beaten the Wolverines just two years earlier in the same game. “But they will remember that these women were the leaders and best.” Indeed, women’s sports had come a long way. “I’m happy to bring another one home for the Wolverines,” Michigan field hockey coach Marcia Pankratz told the Daily. “Men’s programs, women’s programs, revenue, non-revenue, it doesn’t matter. We’re just really proud to be a part of the University.” Four years later, the softball team joined the club by becoming the first team east of the Mississippi River to win the national championship. The Daily covered it with a special section in the summer edition, with sports writer Scott Bell and photographer Mike Hulsebus in Oklahoma City to cover the historic moment. “This is obviously a great moment for Michigan and for Michigan softball and all the alums in the Big Ten Conference,” Hutchins told the Daily. “I’m mostly so proud of these kids because they are incredible and have been all week.” Hutchins’ mantra of Michigan softball radiates throughout the program today, a sign of the continuity she has been able to establish over the years. She has done it because she had the chance, starting with her courage in action 37 years ago.