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Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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CRIME

3 suspects at large for role in robbery at West Quad Unknown males reportedly brandished gun, demanded property from 3 students RIYAH BASHA Daily News Editor

ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily

University President Mark Schlissel, Former Republican Congressman Dave Camp, and Public Policy Dean Michael Barr discuss the federal tax reforms in Annenberg Auditorium Monday.

Bipartisan panel on tax reform contends with hasty Congress bill

Despite GOP support, many worry bill will hurt low-income families, graduate students COLIN BERESFORD Daily Staff Reporter

With a new tax bill on the horizon, the Ford School of Public Policy organized a panel on tax reform with Public Policy dean Michael S. Barr and former U.S. Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., moderated by University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel. The panel, which was arranged earlier in the semester, coincidentally took place Monday afternoon just as House

Republicans passed their version of the tax reform bill mid-November and Senate Republicans passed their version early Saturday morning. Camp served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 2015, and as chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means from 2011 to 2015. Barr served as the U.S. Department of the Treasury assistant secretary for financial institutions in 2009 and 2010. The panelists discussed different aspects of the tax reform bills — the

corporate income tax, impacts on higher education — as well as bills’ potential and expected economic impacts, and what happens next. “Right now, we’ll be looking at a conference committee and that’s typically what happens after a bill passes. Under our system, the exact same language has to pass both the House and the Senate before it’s sent to the president,” Camp said. “These bills are different in many ways, so they’ll have a conference committee. Now I think this will be a relatively short conference committee because they’re on

this time deadline. And the time deadline really is (regarding) the election in Alabama, that they don’t want to lose any votes.” As chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Camp worked on the Tax Reform Bill of 2014, which was never signed into law. He said the bipartisanship in writing the 2014 bill differed from the recent bills that have been passed along party lines in the House and the Senate. The proposed reduction of the corporate tax rate has been a key See TAX, Page 3

University of Michigan police officers are currently investigating an armed robbery that occurred Monday night in West Quad Residence Hall. Three unknown male suspects were involved in the incident with three other student victims, according to Division of Public Safety and Security spokeswoman Diane Brown. The suspects fled from West Quad, but their whereabouts remain unknown. Brown said a gun was brandished and property was demanded in the assault. Around 9 p.m., Brown said, three unknown students were in a resident room in West Quad. An hour later, two of those students were physically beaten by the suspects, though it remains unclear who exactly was party to the assault. Police were notified around 10:30 p.m.

City Council, residents demonstrate ‘U’ groups developing resistance against new developments

Residents were initially asked to stay in their rooms as a precaution in both West Quad and South Quad — as a possible person of interest was initially wrongly suspected to be in the latter residence hall — but as of late Monday night, residents were free to move around. “There is no lockdown, and no shooter,” Pieknik said. “We are still investigating … residents are OK to move around.” Resident advisers in both halls speculating about the incident initially asked residents to stay in their rooms, close their blinds and turn off lights. These preliminary precautions were lifted by DPSS shortly thereafter. West Quad resident Carola Jansohn, an LSA freshman, said she did not hear about the robbery until she saw officers in the South Quad lobby. “They said it was an armed robbery and he escaped,” See CRIME, Page 3

RESEARCH

ACADEMICS

household friendly AI

Questions of zoning, cost continue to surface in contentious council meetings

New teachout to delve into opioid epidemic

Engineering team finds success with robotic arms to boost accessibility tech

City Council was rocked again Monday night as residents continued to show resistance against a $146 million development plan on Broadway Street, near the University of Michigan Hospital. It was the culmination of yet another episode in the divisions that have characterized Ann Arbor politics in recent years. Though most council members agree increasing density and housing supply are crucial for the city’s development, some residents fear the character of their neighborhoods will be changed for the worse. At contention was whether to switch the zoning designation of the Broadway site from Planned Unit Development to Campus Business Residential District, or C1A/R. Proponents of the switch, like Councilmember Chip Smith, D-Ward 5, say C1A/R is will provide seamless integration for high-rises to the surrounding campus community. “The campus has expanded pretty greatly over the last two decades. I think it’s disingenuous to say that the Medical Campus is not part of the University complex and therefore it shouldn’t count (under C1A/R),” Smith said.

LIZZY LAWRENCE Daily Staff Reporter

Rosie the Robot Maid in “The Jetsons” and R2-D2 in “Star Wars” are highly advanced robots that can clean, prepare meals and even send secret messages. While the robots of today have not yet reached this level of intelligence, Dmitry Berenson and Jason Corso, associate professors of electrical engineering and computer science, are working with teams of graduate students in the hopes that they one day will. Their current research, supported by the Toyota Research Institute, involves developing algorithms to make a robot able to search for and find objects in assortments of several items. They refer to the project as “Manipulating Piles of stuff.” Berenson’s group focuses on the motion-planning and manipulation components — figuring out how to make the robot actually move the objects. Corso’s group focuses on the robot’s perception of the objects and the surrounding environment. Rackham student Abhishek Venkataraman, who works with Corso’s team, emphasized the See ROBOTS, Page 3

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ISHI MORI

Daily Staff Reporter

However, the highrises Smith is envisioning under C1A/R is the exact type of situation many residents who live on or near Broadway Street would want to avoid. There have been numerous rounds of negotiations between the city, residents and Morningside — the developer that also owns the land — on what the final development will look like, some residents are still

disgruntled. One resident said having a downtown-sized building in a quieter low-rise neighborhood would never be a prudent idea. Another resident, Steve Kaplan, questioned the amount of commercial activity that a C1A/R designation would bring, arguing that businesses must gather around an area organically. “We could build the hollow

boxes on the street and then hope for another decade they would fill up with hat shops and bodegas,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to come.” When a pro-development resident criticized those opposed to the development as not thinking about longterm benefits and called them “NIMBYs,” condemnation came quickly from all See CITY, Page 3

ARNOLD ZHOU/Daily

Ann Arbor City Council and the public convene for the City Council meeting in Council Hall Tuesday.

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Participants, experts to explore national health emergency in free course RENATA TERRAZZAN For The Daily

Michigan is one of eight states in the country with more opioid prescriptions than people. As a part of a public awareness campaign, the University of Michigan has organized an online teach-out course to deleve into the roots of the crisis—the freee course opened for public access Monday. James DeVaney, associate vice provost for Academic Innovation, explained University teach-outs are done in a collaborative effort from a variety of departments throughout the school and offer a platform on which faculty, students and global audiences can communicate through. “The opioid epidemic is a perfect topic for the U-M Teach-Out Series,” he said. “It is a complex problem that requires wideranging expertise in order to begin to develop meaningful solutions. It is a discussion that is strengthened by experts at U-M and the lived experiences of public learners around the world.” Opioids are commonly known painkillers that have a high rate of addiction, abuse and overdose. See TEACH-IN, Page 3

NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 ARTS......................6

SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............6 SPORTS....................7

News

2 — Tuesday, December 5, 2017

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ON THE DAILY: GO BLUE GUARANTEED AT THE GRAMMIES The University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance is guaranteed a Grammy win in this year’s Musical Theater Album category. All three albums nominated in the category have something important in common — they are all connected to Music, Theatre and Dance alumni. Ian Eisendrath, who earned his Bachelor of Music from the University in 2003, is the musical supervisor and arranger for acclaimed Broadway show “Come From Away.” Musical duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, honored at last year’s Bicentennial Commencement Ceremony, graduated in 2006 and composed and produced the original cast album for the musical “Dear Evan Hansen.” And Gavin Creel, a 1998 Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate, plays a lead role in “Hello, Dolly!” — the last show nominated for the award. Pasek and Paul were also nominated for Best Song Written

for Visual Media with their song “City of Stars” from the film “La La Land.” All three shows were also nominated for Tony awards earlier this year, with Pasek and Paul winning the award for Best Original Score Written for Theater and Creel winning Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. “I want to dedicate this to the musical theatre department of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance,” Creel said in his Tony Award acceptance speech. “My education there as a young person changed my life forever.” Several other Music, Theatre & Dance alumni have been nominated for Grammys as well. Tenor Nicholas Phan, an Ann Arbor native and 2001 University graduate, was nominated in the Classical Solo Album category for his album “Gods & Monsters.” The Choral Performance category also has strong Music, Theatre & Dance

representation. One of the nominations, Bryars: The Fifth Century, combines the PRISM Quartet with The Crossing, a mixed choir. The PRISM quartet is made up entirely of alumni — members Matthew Levy, Zachary Shemon, Taimur Sullivan and Timothy McAllister all studied under

Donald Sinta, associate professor emeritus of saxophone. The Crossing includes current doctoral student Kelly Bixby. The 60th Grammy Awards will take place at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Jan. 28, 2018. - MAYA GOLDMAN

“ W H AT W E R E YO U W E A R I N G ? ”

Biopsychology Colloquium

WHAT: Megan Fuller, a recreational sports instrucor, will guide you through a 50-minute Vinyasa yoga session, followed by a breakfast with bagels and yogurt. Bring your own mat or towel. WHO: Maize Pages Student Organization WHEN: 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. WHERE: Lurie Engineering Center, Johnson’s Room

WHAT: Jumo Borjigin, associate professor of physiology and neurology, will give a talk on the physiological basis of near-death consciousness. WHO: Biopsychology WHEN: Noon to 1:30 p.m. WHERE: East Hall, Room 4464

James DeVaney @DeVaneyGoBlue Reimagine public engagement. Shape the future of higher education. Design and lead a campus-wide initiative at the top public research university in the US. Join our talented team! @ UMichiganAI AUMich #NowHiring

Young Fettuccine @annad102 @ umich why don’t my bathroom doors have locks ALICE LIU/Daily

Students view the “What Were You Wearing?” art exhibit hosted by the campus chapter of HeForShe at the UMMA Monday evening.

CAMPUS EVENTS & NOTES Yoga and Yogurt

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Karanis: Archives and Futures in an ancient Egyptian town

‘The Boers at the End of the World’

What the Russian Revolution Meant for Modern Art and Culture

WHAT: Prof. Arthur Verhoogt will give a talk about the structures U-M archaelogists discovered in the ancient Egyptian town of Karanis between 1924 and 1935. WHO: Institute for the Humanities WHEN: 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. WHERE: 202 S. Thayer St.

Gregory Pardlo

Ross Diaries Story Lab

The New Cold War

WHAT: Gregory Pardlo will speak as part of the Helen Zell Visiting Writers Series. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University and is an associate editor for the literary journal Callaloo. WHO: Helen Zell Visiting Writers Series WHEN: 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. WHERE: Museum of Art

WHAT: Students across the Business School have completed a story lab workship and will now come together to share stories about events and experiences that have shaped their lives. WHO: Sanger Leadership Center WHEN: 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. WHERE: Ross School of Business, Robertson Auditorium

WHAT: David Martin and Mary Walsh of CBS News will discuss the complexities of covering modern-day national defense issues. WHO: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library WHEN: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. WHERE: Gerald Ford Library

WHAT: Join the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies for their Diasporic Film Festival. This movie is about the diaspora of the Boers to places like Argentina, and their journey back to South Africa. WHO: African Studies Center WHEN: 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. WHERE: Hatcher Graduate Library, Room 100

WHAT: This talk will cover how the Russian Revolution opened a new chapter in human history and culture. WHO: International Youth and Students for Social Equality WHEN: 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. WHERE: Pierpont Commons East Room

Undergrad public health students laud first semester of coursework

John Bartman @bartman_john84

I love UMich because when someone says “what are the odds of that?”, there’s a strong possibilitythat the next 10 minutes will be spent trying to solve the actual odds of that event occurring.

Ann Arbor Police @A2Police

Meet Barney, AAPD’s own naughty elf. Keep an eye out this month as he sneaks around our police department and the rest of the city. Hopefully he can stay out of trouble long enough to share some safety tips this holiday season

420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com

Outside of classroom, first-ever bachelors’ cohort still looking for networking

openness to feedback as a strength EMMA KINERY NATHAN GUPTA Editor in Chief Business Manager of the new program. She said the For The Daily 734-418-4115 ext. 1251 734-418-4115 ext. 1241 faculty has been very responsive kineryem@michigandaily.com nathankg@michigandaily.com to students’ input and suggestions regarding classes, professors and This fall, the University the overall atmosphere of the of Michigan launched an school, which has helped make her NEWS TIPS ARTS SECTION PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION undergraduate public health time a positive experience so far. news@michigandaily.com arts@michigandaily.com photo@michigandaily.com program for the first time, “The program has either met LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SPORTS SECTION NEWSROOM welcoming its first cohort of 95 or exceeded (my expectations),” tothedaily@michigandaily.com sports@michigandaily.com 734-418-4115 opt. 3 upper-level students. University Reynolds said. “I knew it was EDITORIAL PAGE ADVERTISING CORRECTIONS students applied to the program going to be a group effort (between opinion@michigandaily.com dailydisplay@gmail.com corrections@michigandaily.com the winter of their sophomore faculty and students) to getting the year, and planned to take classes best experience out of it, but I think through the School of Public it’s been going really well. I don’t Health throughout their junior and think anyone would really disagree senior years. with that.” AMELIA CACCHIONE and EMMA RICHTER The program offers two Omar Ilyas, a junior aiming Managing Photo Editors photo@michigandaily.com Senior Photo Editors: Zoey Holmstrom, Evan Aaron, Alexis Rankin, degrees. One, a Bachelor of Arts for the Public Health School’s REBECCA LERNER Zach Moore in community and global public sciences track, joined the program Managing Editor rebler@michigandaily.com Assistant Photo Editors: Claire Meingast, Katelyn Mulcahy, Aaron health, looks at public health for its strong emphasis on Baker, Sam Mousigian, Kevin Zheng through the lens of social and interdisciplinary training. For him, ALEXA ST.JOHN LARA MOEHLMAN Managing News Editor alexastj@michigandaily.com behavioral sciences by focusing on the program’s multidisciplinary Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com Senior News Editors: Riyah Basha, Lydia Murray, Nisa Khan, broader community issues related approach to public health made http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ Sudoku Syndication Deputy Statement Editor: Brian Kuang, Yoshiko Iwai Sophie Sherry to the field. The other, a Bachelor of it the perfect fit for his variety of Assistant News Editors: Jordyn Baker, Colin Beresford, Rhea Science in public health sciences, interests. Cheeti, Maya Goldman, Matt Harmon, Andrew Hiyama, Jen ELIZABETH DOKAS and TAYLOR GRANDINETTI Meer, Ishi Mori, Carly Ryan, Kaela Theut “I’ve always been interested Managing Copy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com in a lot of things — I was preANNA POLUMBO-LEVY and REBECCA TARNOPOL Senior Copy Editors: Marisa Frey, Ibrahim Rasheed Editorial Page Editors tothedaily@michigandaily.com law, I was pre-business, I was pre-med ¬— I studied a lot of DYLAN LAWTON and BOB LESSER Senior Opinion Editors: Anu Roy-Chaudhury, Ashley Zhang, different things,” he said. “The Managing Online Editor lesserrc@michigandaily.com Max Lubell, Madeline Nowicki, Stephanie Trierweiler HARD Senior Web Developers: Erik Forkin, Jordan Wolff beauty of this program is it’s BETELHEM ASHAME and KEVIN SANTO an intersection of business, of ABE LOFY Managing Sports Editors sportseditors@michigandaily.com health care, of policy. All the Managing Video Editor video@michigandaily.com Senior Sports Editors: Laney Byler, Mike Persak, Orion Sang, Senior Video Editors: Gilly Yerrington, Matt Nolan, Aarthi things I really enjoy, I found Max Marcovich, Ethan Wolfe, Chris Crowder Janakiraman, Emily Wolfe them in this program.” Assistant Sports Editors: Rob Hefter, Avi Sholkoff, Matthew Kennedy, Paige Voeffray, Mark Calcagno, Jacob Shames Ilyas said this JASON ROWLAND and ASHLEY TJHUNG multidisciplinary approach Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com ANAY KATYAL and NATALIE ZAK Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Christian Paneda, is also reflected in his class Managing Arts Editors arts@michigandaily.com Adam Brodnax, Halimat Olaniyan, Tanya Madhani, Sivanthy workload. He explained that Senior Arts Editors: Dayton Hare, Nabeel Chollanpat, Vasanthan even within the structure Madeline Gaudin, Carly Snider Arts Beat Editors: Danielle Yacobson, Danny Hensel, Erika of each class there is a ELLIE HOMANT Shevchek, Matt Gallatin, Naresh Iyengar Managing Social Media Editor comprehensive approach to Senior Social Media Editors: Kayla Waterman and Anna Haritos learning — classes incorporate MICHELLE PHILLIPS and AVA WEINER a mixture of discussion, Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com homework, research, tests, presentations and writing. CAYLIN WATERS Though this can be difficult at Brand Manager times, Ilyas said the challenges EMILY RICHNER CLAIRE BUTZ Sales Manager are worth it because students Business Development Manager JUEUI HONG will graduate with a strong JULIA SELSKY Special Projects Manager Local Accounts Manager foundation in a variety of types CAROLINE GOLD of work that will help them in SANJANA PANDIT Media Consulting Manager Production Manager future careers. Though he is happy with © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the JOB APPS! puzzle by sudokusyndication.com the program so far in terms University OF Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office concentrates primarily on the natural and applied sciences within public health. Looking back on the program over the course of the semester, Gary Harper, the director of the Office of Undergraduate Education at the School of Public Health, would consider its time so far overall a success. “I’m extremely happy with how it’s going,” Harper said. “As the director, I meet with small groups of our students in meetings we call ‘dialogues with the director.’ I’ve probably met with about three-quarters of our 95 students already in these groups, so I’ve been hearing continual feedback throughout the entire semester. I think that, in general, we’ve been able to do what it is we set out to do.” Faith Reynolds, a junior pursuing the school’s Bachelor of Arts degree, pointed to this

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See PUBLIC HEALTH, Page 3

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

TEACH-IN From Page 1 These characteristics are what make these drugs so dangerous, especially when nearly a quarter of a billion opioid prescriptions were written in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to Michigan State Police and a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, more Michiganders die from opioid abuse than firearms or car accidents. With the increased availability, deaths due to drug overdoses involving opioids are increasing — taking over 90 American lives a day. The teach-out will offer an in-depth look at the problem and these concerns, showing the multiple causes and results of the epidemic, as well as ways the public can help fight this growing plague. “Participants will have the opportunity to understand the current epidemic by exploring the topic from multiple perspectives,” Devaney said. “Before participants

ROBOTS From Page 1 cooperation between the two groups. “This is more of a collaborative effort,” he said. The two groups perform tests on two robotic arms manufactured by KUKA, a supplier of robotic hardware, in the Autonomous Robotic Lab. In these tests, they place a pile of bean bags or laundry in front of the robot and transmit the appropriate information so that it can find the desired object. This task is momentous for robots, according to Berenson. He explained it is difficult for robots to respond to complex assortments of several objects. “It turns out it’s much more complicated,” he said. “The reason is that when the object is by itself, you just kind of identify it. But when it’s in a pile or a stack, you have to actually move other objects out of the way first. You have to basically be able to reason

TAX From Page 1 feature of the recent tax reform bills and has been met with both criticism and praise, from the left and right, respectively. While Camp sees the reduction as opening the possibility for more economic growth and attracting business, Barr believes there are much more direct ways to raise wages and boost the economy. “I think for this tax bill, these ideas that we need more growth in the economy was really a priority,” Camp said. “And the second was, ‘How do we align ourselves with the rest of the world in terms of international tax policy?’” “This bill, if you say the basic goal is helping the middle class or working-class people, there are much more direct ways to do that,” Barr said. “You could expand earned income credit, you could not do some of the other provisions that have to do with eliminating health coverage, you could lower the rates at the bottom and increase them at the top.”

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identify and propose new solutions to the crisis, they will learn about the build up to the crisis, the role of pharmacies, the role of the medical community, the role of the pharmaceutical industry and the role of families. Learners will understand how we got here, stigma and what it means for the crisis to be declared a national health emergency.” Jay Lee, a general surgery resident at Michigan Medicine and part of the faculty participating in the session, is also part of the research team at the Michigan Opioid Prescribing and Engagement Network, in which he has investigated physicians’ role in the epidemic. “In 2001, physicians embarked on a well-intentioned campaign to improve pain management for patients,” Lee said. “At the same time, pharmaceutical companies began aggressively marketing prescription opioids. The situation was further exacerbated by a study (Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics), which, when taken out of context, seemed

to suggest that becoming addicted to prescription opioids was very rare.” Lee is also a researcher in many opioid studies that aim to understand the number of opioids needed after surgery, a factor in the growing amount of opioid dependence. “This information is critical to making opioid prescribing safer,” he said. “Prior to these studies, physicians could only guess about how much opioid a patient would need after surgery. This led to misuse of these medications and an abundance of leftover opioid pills in the community, which frequently end up in the hands of people with opioid addiction.” Lee explained the teach-out will help integrate the public in the solution of the crisis. “These will help people better understand the tremendous dangers of these medications, how to use them safely and how to dispose of leftover medications,” he said. Rebecca Haffajee, an assistant professor of health and

management policy, is also part of the teach-out’s faculty. Haffajee said many policies have been put into place, like drugmonitoring programs and pain clinic regulations, but more are still needed for stronger effects. “We are still evaluating numerous policies, as well as piloting new ones, to tackle this crisis head-on without generating other public health unintended consequences — like reducing access to appropriate opioid prescribing or encouraging substitution from prescription opioids to illicit sources,” she said. The teach-out will allow a platform for conversation on this topic and provoke some new thoughts in the public. “We are aiming to reach diverse audiences through this teach-out, to provide views on the crisis from experts of varying fields and perspectives,” she said. “Since almost everyone has been personally affected by the opioid crisis, we all have something to contribute in terms of brainstorming solutions.”

about what you do when you can’t really see everything in the environment.” Venkataraman compared how challenging these actions are for robots to how inherent they are for humans. “What we feel as humans is so intuitive,” he said. “It’s like this is not even a task, it’s so easy. But looking at it from the perspective of a robot, this is a very complicated task. When (a robot) looks at an image, you need to isolate that this is there, then you need to make a plan. All of these are parameters you need to change.” Dale McConachie, an Engineering Ph.D. student working with Berenson’s team, noted the difficulty is enhanced by the fact objects like bean bags or pieces of laundry are deformable. They’re harder for a robot to manipulate than something hard and rigid. “Math is really good at describing where something hard and rigid is, and if I move my head, where does it go?” he said. “We

can do that to some extent with deformable objects, but it gets very computationally messy very quickly. There’s an infinite number of dimensions for something soft and squishy, so how do you describe that efficiently? Do you even need to?” However, to advance robots so they can succeed in a human environment, overcoming these challenges is necessary. Human homes, hospitals and a variety of other places are uncertain, sometimes hectic environments. Brent Griffin, an assistant research scientist in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, also works on the team and discussed the unforeseeability in human environments and the importance of trying to develop a robot that can solve many kinds of problems. “Robotics has a lot of success in industry because there’s a lot of predictability and certainty,” he said. “We can spend a lot of time tuning or preparing a robot for this specific problem. The thing

that we’re trying to get towards is getting to the point where you can have a general applications robot and be fairly robust to a lot of uncertainty in the environment, because that’s really what is more difficult about operating in human environments.” Griffin noted the robotics field has developed the appropriate hardware for achieving this goal. He has recently been working with a mobile robot named Fetch. According to Griffin, Fetch is just as physically capable as the robots in movies, but the software used to make it function isn’t yet up to par. Ultimately, according to the researchers, their goal is to make robots commonplace in the lives of humans, specifically the elderly and people with disabilities. Berenson believes their research can be applied to almost any realworld scenario. “Just anywhere you encounter a complicated arrangement where you have to find the object in that arrangement is where you can apply this kind of work,” he said.

Though Law student Shay Moyal does not necessarily agree with the reform bills, he said there are parts of it he still needs to learn more about. “I have a lot of feelings about

the tax bill and I still need to learn it. I believe it’s probably more aggressive than I think it should be, but everyone has (their) own opinion,” Moyal said. “I know something they missed a lot was the international aspect.” Following the Congressional Budget Office, which is recognized for doing nonpartisan analysis on

legislation, reported there would be a $1.4 trillion increase in the deficit — and Camp said there has not been as much talk about the possibility of raising the deficit as there has been in the past. “In 2010, I would say the deficit was just a white-hot issue,” Camp said. “Clearly, that has subsided significantly and there could be another reason for that, but in this last presidential election, we didn’t really (touch) on the deficit at all from either side.” Public Policy senior Connor Priest said he had heard many of the points made by the panel already and does not support the reform bills. “I think what they had to say was inciteful, but overall just echoes common, mainstream things you hear about tax reform if you read up on it,” Priest said. “I think it’s (the bill’s) absolutely horrible. I think it’s the most horrendous piece of legislation that has come to the floor of Congress in years.” Both the House bill and the Senate bill were rushed to the floor, in a manner neither Barr

nor Camp agreed with. Senate Democrats took to social media to show the handwritten provisions written in, despite being illegible. Schlissel introduced the concerns of many in higher education regarding the House bill, which would end tax deductions for student loan interest and tax tuition waivers for graduate students, and moderated Barr’s. Graduate students have expressed concern over the taxation of tuition waivers PhD candidates earn through teaching and research. “We use the federal government to support lots of activities in the economy that we think are important. It’s hard to imagine a part of the economy that’s more important than investing in our human capital, in our students and young people to get their education,” Barr said. “There’s always room for maybe a simplification of that … but if I were making the choices, I would be doubling down on the tax support we provide to our students, not reducing it.”

fine.” South Quad resident Amin Tonmoy, an LSA freshman, said he also asked officers he saw in his hall. “The chances of this happening seem pretty low, but it’s still pretty scary,” he

said. “He’s hiding and the police are after him, so I still feel okay (because) the police are right here. Knowing if he’s been found or not will be very helpful.” Both said they hoped for more communication and

clarity on the case moving forward, but recognized the complications in securing the scenes. “I don’t feel nervous going back to West (Quad) because no one told me to be nervous,” Jansohn said.

your economy is going to grow so much you’ll be thankful for us,’” said Kailasapathy, who was a refugee from Sri Lanka. NIMBY, or “Not In My BackYard,” is a pejorative term for people who oppose unpleasant projects in their own neighborhoods but will readily hand other neighborhoods the same burden. That being said Councilmember Chuck Warpehoski, D-Ward 4, criticized opposition for not having a coherent alternative vision for what to do with the land.

“This inconsistency, this lack of a voice, I’m hearing many completely different things from even the residents makes me highly skeptical that there’s a possibility to have a coherent negotiating position,” Warpehoski said. In the end, the motion to change the zoning passed, with Kailasapathy, Anne Bannister, D-Ward 1; Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2; and Jack Eaton, D-Ward 4, dissenting. Mayor Chris Taylor praised the decision, saying it is a positive step toward creating a more walkable Ann Arbor. “(Lower Town) is going to

be a part of our town that will be changed substantially over the next couple of years, and I believe that these changes will ultimately be difficult but … I believe it will be better for community,” Taylor said. Council also voted to approve the city’s winter 2018 deer management plan, which aims to kill 250 deer and sterilize does on a mass scale. The new plan has brought controversy as the city eliminated the rule in which a sharpshooter cannot shoot within a 450-foot radius of an occupied building or home.

These ideas that we need more growth in the economy was really a priority

Tuesday, December 5, 2017 — 3

PUBLIC HEATH From Page 2 of classes and subjects, Ilyas said he would like to see it become more accessible to undergraduate students by incorporating more connections to internships and jobs for the undergraduate level. “It was a public health graduate program, so a lot of the internships and opportunities the school offers are for graduate students still,” he said. “They’re trying to shift it more to give opportunities to undergraduate students as well. It’s in the process, so I hope to see more of that next year.” Harper also noted the need for an improvement in undergraduate internship opportunities. He explained while the school is currently exploring both domestic and global possibilities with which to connect students, the newness of the program is proving to be an obstacle in this area that has yet to be fully overcome. “Since the School of Public Health has previously only worked with master’s and doctoral students, we haven’t had the resources to really identify and support undergraduate internships,” Harper said. “It would be great if we could start to see funding for internships. Right now, we don’t have the money in the budget.” Harper said the school does have an individual from the Office for Student Engagement and Practice dedicated to working on exploring and expanding new internship opportunities. Going forward, Harper hopes the school will be able to identify more internships for students and find ways to communicate those opportunities effectively. He said the school hopes to see more resources dedicated to supporting internship funding to help offset potential costs, especially for students interested in international internships, thereby increasing accessibility. Reynolds, Ilyas and Harper all talked about professors and faculty as one of the main strengths of the program. The professors for the new undergraduate program are the same as those who teach the graduate program. “We have amazing faculty teaching the classes,” Harper said. “They do a great job of bringing public health into the classroom. They bring examples of the work they’re doing out of the real world. To have a professor that not only talks about a particular public health intervention, but is actually doing this around the globe, that’s a unique experience you don’t always get to see.” Because they all have hands-on experience in the field, Ilyas said, his professors have also been able to help give him direction by acting almost as mentors, discussing how they became involved with the work they do today and giving advice to students. Reynolds added the diversity of professors’ backgrounds strengthens the diversity of classes. As they are all experts in their various fields, she said, they are able to teach and communicate very

effectively about the topic. Reynolds said this wide range of classes has been helping her narrow her track as she explores different options. “Even if I can’t physically take a class, I know that they exist,” she said. “There are some graduate student courses open to undergrads if we’re interested … some things you wouldn’t even think about, but you would want to know later in your career. You can take a class on obesity, a class on cancer, a class on biopathology. Every little niche is covered, so you have a lot of options.” Emily Youatt, the managing director of the Office of Undergraduate Education at the School of Public Health, said students’ positive response to the Public Health faculty is not onesided. She said faculty, in turn, love being able to learn from interactions with undergraduate students and hear the new ideas they bring to public health. “The students this fall have made a really positive impression on the faculty here, who for the most part had not taught undergraduates before and were a little timid about working with them,” she said. “The students have really shown themselves to be amazing — they’re so engaged, they’re so bright. They’re eager to ask questions that sometimes graduate students wouldn’t. They’re a little less inhibited, which makes for much more interesting classroom conversations than you might get at the master’s level.” Youatt said because of this classroom interaction, faculty members are continually coming to her with new ideas for a class they would like to create and teach. She said a benefit of the program being brand new is there is always an opportunity to quickly incorporate these innovative ideas into the curriculum. LSA sophomore Sydni Warner heard about the public health program from a friend in its first cohort. Because she was not sure what public health really was at the time, Warner attended an informational session to learn about public health as a whole and the University’s undergraduate program in particular. “I liked the policy side of public health and the behind the scenes work that goes into it,” Warner said. “I think patterns of disease and disease is really interesting, so the epidemiology part especially I just fell in love with … I decided, ‘OK, this is what I want.’” Reynolds also encouraged prospective students to consider the public health program, regardless of whether they’ve always had an interest in the field or it’s entirely unknown to them. “For people that don’t know what public health is — either they haven’t heard of it or don’t know what it does — they should really look into it if they value public service and think they could lend a hand in any way,” she said. “If you’re interested in medicine, if you’re interested in politics, if you’re interested in biology, there’s a place for you in public health and you could find something you really love here.”

LAURA KASISCHKE ALLAN SEAGER COLLEGIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

a poetry reading from

CRIME From Page 1 Jansohn said. “I was wondering why they didn’t tell us to leave. If they didn’t tell us to leave, then I guess it was probably

CITY From Page 1 sides. Councilmember Sumi Kailasapathy, D-Ward 1, urged the man and others like him to stop and think about the lifetime impact a development like this would cast upon each resident. “Coming from a Third-World country, this really bothers me because this is what the World Bank and IMF would tell Third-World people … ‘You’ll suffer in the short run, but

new and selected poems

December 5, 4:10 p.m. Rackham Amphitheatre A public lecture and reception For more information call 734.615.6667

Opinion

4 — Tuesday, December 5, 2017

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JOSIE TOLIN | COLUMN

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DAVID KAMPER | COLUMN

Government and abortion

oday, many people say America is more divided than ever. We see it in our discourse, the slurs thrown at one another, the struggle for moral high ground and even the violence in our streets. When I see this, I lament the lack of interest in nuanced conversation and appreciation for context in every discussion. I welcome and continue to engage with truly different perspectives from my own. Though, when I do try to reach across the aisle to my more conservative friends, the complex personalization of our discourse and reliance on platitudes has made me realize that why we have different viewpoints, particularly in how we view the role of government, is unclear. There lie the age-old questions we saw during the Constitutional Convention: How large should the federal government be and, more importantly, how should one define its role? Through my conversations, I began to think a lot about what our government’s role should be, and I think the answer might lie in how we should approach issues like abortion. As I have written about previously, I am a practicing Catholic. Many of my family friends are consistently singleissue voters on a pro-life view. Though I am a moderate liberal, I have come to the conclusion that I am both pro-life and pro-choice. Now don’t be confused: This isn’t, and shouldn’t be, perceived as a black-and-white issue. If I were sitting at an abortion clinic, discussing with my partner if we should consider getting an abortion, I would strongly lobby against doing so. This is because my decision would be based on my personal beliefs as a Catholic and someone who sees life separate from consciousness. Now this is all predicated on the notion that I was given the choice between moving forward in the procedure or stopping it. However, when approaching policy, matters of reproduction and intimacy are, as Tim Kaine (a “traditional Catholic”) explains “moral decisions for individuals to make for themselves.” And this is just it: I should not develop policy simply based on my personal identities and issues. If I were a politician, I would approach my

issues through logic and rationale, entirely separate from my identity as a Catholic or any other personal identity. Since we work as a society dependent on common ground, my identities should not be the entire basis for rationale in a political sphere, and nor should the id be a guiding principle in policy development. Therefore, I arrive at this question: Is abortion a right or is the right based on the choice between receiving or not receiving an abortion? I would think it is the latter. This is where, I posit, we arrive at this notion of government: Its defining role (other than protecting the public) is to offer the easiest access of choice to the general population, which upon given a range of options, can then incorporate their personal identities and beliefs. This isn’t just for abortions; it should be for guns, health care and a variety of other issues. This is why pro-choice should exist: so that there is an even playing field and the decision for the best course of action can be left up to the couple or individual. However, is the playing field actually even? Well, as abortion clinics are increasingly closing their doors, one can easily make the case that in some states, the playing field is not equal. Though much of this can be attributed to pro-life movements within state legislatures, I do question the general role of government in funding. One comment I hear my conservative friends (men and women) say is that they shouldn’t have to pay taxes that subsidize abortions. Though I might disagree on the notion that their personal identities as a part of a particular religious group should influence their decision, I recognize, in a light similar to Citizens United, that their money is “donated” against their free speech to support a procedure they vehemently oppose. They should not have to give money to an organization that directly contradicts their very sense of self, as if they are “forced” to “donate” to such an effort. Say ideally, then, these abortion clinics weren’t closing. The next question we should ask is: since it is the government’s responsibility to offer an ease of options to the individual, whether, if some tax dollars were removed from the

funding of such programs, the ease of options for the individual would significantly decrease. It is well-documented that 49 percent of people who seek abortions are below the poverty level, obviously unable to pay up to $1,500 for an abortion. But how do you confound the fact that these individuals who are pro-life are paying taxes to subsidize abortions? Last year, Planned Parenthood made a net income of $77.5 million, with 41 percent of its revenue (the largest amount) coming from the government: mostly through Title X and Medicare. It is important to recognize that only about 3 percent of the budget goes to abortion services. Complete removal of federal funding would significantly skew the playing field, since private donations only constitute 33 percent. The choice would be forced by lack of access: It should be entirely based on one’s personal beliefs, context and ideology. While this means there might be issues leveling the “playing field,” it certainly seeks to balance that with not having those staunchly against abortions pay taxes to that go toward these services. Obviously, abortion clinics could work simply based on donation and external affiliates; I would suggest that government stay entirely out of the debate entirely. Nevertheless, the solution, in my mind, can be only two-fold: that government remove itself entirely or we have to accept that the ability to choose is part of a social contract everyone has to accept. I would argue, given the former is certainly more difficult in maintaining this balance, the latter is the only solution at this moment. Moreover, when taking into account only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s work (328,348 total) is abortion services, I can better reconcile this notion. I recognize my decision is based only in the event of such an issue. My intent isn’t, and shouldn’t be, to impose personal identity on the decision process of others. The foremost priority is to maintain the balance of choice, then in a predicament where an abortion is contemplated, personal identity may enter.

David Kamper can be reached at dgkamper@umich.edu.

NATALIE BROWN | NATALIE CAN BE REACHED AT NGBROWN@UMICH.EDU

Power in a platform

’ve never been good at lasts. They’re hard to process in the moment, pulling me to either the most emotional end of the reaction spectrum or leaving me to stew in my own fabricated indifference. Balance clearly isn’t a strong suit of mine, either. It makes sense then, that as I sat down to write this article — my last for the semester — I had absolutely no idea where to begin. There’s so much to say about the current campus climate — white supremacist Richard Spencer’s possible future appearance at the University of Michigan, dialogues surrounding divestment, the Middle Eastern and North African community’s campaign to create a ME/ NA demographic category on campus forms. These are things I’ve been thinking long and hard about, things that matter with a magnitude of pressing urgency. Things that affect the day-to-day mental states of others to an extent I can’t possibly fathom as an uppermiddle-class white woman. As I scroll through The Daily’s fiery op-eds and the eloquently worded columns of my fellow opinionators, I’m hit with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. I’m grateful that this school is home to such a wellrun student publication that strives to give voices to many, maintaining self-awareness in its shortcomings. I’m grateful for the power journalism can have when its very existence rests on the cultivation of social responsibility, the discourse it can encourage in these select scenarios. And here’s a really broad sentiment: I’m grateful for words, for the people who use them to initiate positive social change and to demonstrate vulnerability. I’m grateful for language that empowers, that interrogates and that re-interrogates societal norms while exploring the stories of both individuals and the masses.

Simultaneously, I’m hit with a thought about what it means to write for a student publication like this one. Have I deserved the platform that I’ve been given, an inexperienced writer with semi-minimal campus involvement and no experiences of marginalization? It seems I may have shirked some of my own social responsibilities as a columnist with the privilege of white skin and a public platform. A self-titled “health and wellness” columnist for the semester, I’ve limited myself to columns that veer from the rigorous risk-taking and opinionstating of many of my peers. Maybe I was afraid of my own inexperience, that I might not know how to navigate these more complex issues in a totally productive way. My failure to use this platform to do so over the course of the semester is, essentially, the definition of privilege. I’m not proud of this in the slightest, but it’s something for which I’m accountable. However, I will say I don’t think this platform should be grounds for experimentation with discussions around such tough topics either. If I did approach these more socially charged issues in my columns, I wanted to be sure that my responses demonstrated 750 to 1,000 words of intellectual rigor, of consciously chosen language and moral responsibility. But regardless, the fact is that I didn’t really use this platform to create careful meditations on polarizing issues. I pretty much stayed within my comfort zone and rested on the more classical definitions of the “health and wellness” label I’d originally adopted at the beginning of the semester, without weaving this topic into the context of current events on campus. Upon reflection, this seems irresponsible. Especially in light of this country’s era of Donald Trump, the combination of privilege and a platform should

be enough to hold myself to a high standard of accountability for discussing these pressing issues, no matter the level of publicity my articles might be receiving. And what of the gratitude I feel for the power of the University’s student publications, anyway? I mean, it’s an easy gratitude for me to personally feel. I have the ability to sit back and watch as productive discourse unfolds, catalyzed by articles I more than likely did not write. The content addressed by the more socially responsible articles will not affect my own safety on campus. It will not affect the ease with which I can get my voice heard at the University the way it might affect that of some of my friends and classmates. Contemplating my own reasons for applying to be a columnist this semester, I do wonder: “Were they valid ones?” I’ve never been great at sharing my writing or expressing my opinions, and I guess I wanted to “challenge” myself — of course, I should’ve moved further past this original comfort zone and into some more commentary on timely campus occurrences. I think I was given a platform, and I don’t think I utilized it in a totally productive way. I think about laziness and poor planning, how some of my columns were written to meet deadlines rather than to commit to a standard of social responsibility. I think about privilege and the power of a platform, how I’m a white person who gets to selfinterrogate on this page while many important voices and stories remain unheard. I have a long way to go until I can say that I’m standing as tall as possible on the platform I’ve been given.

Josie Tolin can be reached at jostolin@umich.edu.

LEKHA PATHAPATI | OP-ED

Hyderabad or hide-our-bad?

very Friday for as long as I can remember, I’ve concluded my day with a phone call to my Ammamma. While drinking her Madras coffee, she fills me in on the latest family gossip, and I reassure her that I’m well-fed and well-read, and update her on my newest futile attempt at preparing an Indian meal. This week, however, our routine spiels were interrupted by the incessant drilling outside her home in the HITEC city neighborhood of Hyderabad. Upon my inquiry, she revealed to me that the construction was due to preparations for Ivanka Trump’s upcoming visit to the city. A couple of hours of Googling later, I learned that the first daughter would be visiting India toward the end of November to speak at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. The summit, which will be hosted in South Asia for the first time, is set to host 1,500 entrepreneurs and world leaders from 150 countries. Preliminary efforts for the event have included extensive renovation to the city’s pothole-ridden roads, the hasty construction of an extravagant pedestrian shopping mall and, most significantly, the extraction of thousands of homeless civilians from public view. Hyderabad, known as the IT hub and economic powerhouse of South India, is the fourth-mostpopulated city in the country, with an estimated 13 percent of its population living below the national poverty line. The city’s attempt to rebrand itself as the Silicon Valley of India in recent years has brought in companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft; nevertheless, economic inequality has increased. For many living in slum neighborhoods, begging serves as the predominant means for survival. In one week alone, over 400 individuals caught begging were transported to separate male and female housing facilities, located on the grounds of two city prisons. Begging is listed as a criminal offense in the region; however, the law is rarely, if ever, enforced. When asked about the correlation of Trump’s visit and the sudden relocation initiative, V.K Singh,

the director of Hyderabad’s prison system, insisted that this has been a mission of the government for several years due to the “annoyance and awkwardness” of begging in Indian cities. An estimated 6,000 people are expected to be taken into these “rehabilitation facilities” prior to the summit, and city officials have stated that individuals will be offered a shower, bed and pair of clean clothes. While this may sound altruistic, many of these individuals are separated from their family members prior to being taken to a respective shelter. Moreover, everyone brought into a temporary housing facility will be fingerprinted under police supervision prior to their release with the threat of incarceration, should they be caught asking for money again. The summit, ironically titled, “Women First, Prosperity for All,” is not the first time impoverished locals have been characterized as blemishes and concealed from international visitors. Hyderabad took similar measures in 2000 in preparation for former then-President Bill Clinton’s visit. Ten years later, before the 2010 Commonwealth games in New Delhi, bulldozers tore through Delhi’s expansive blue-tent neighborhoods that served as homes for the city’s millions of homeless families with no relocation plan set in motion. Comparably, in China, government officials pushed thousands of migrant workers caught seeking work opportunities in the city center to the outskirts of Beijing to present a more sanitized and affluent metroplex for the 2008 Olympics. Trump spoke on a world stage about the importance of changing government policies in ways that empower women to produce healthier economies; meanwhile, her visit prompted the temporary lockdown of these very women with no sustainable plans for when they are asked to leave the rehabilitation facilities. Uprooting impoverished citizens and criminalizing poverty is not only ethically unsettling, it’s insufficient in moving toward

any kind of attempt at poverty eradication. Many of Hyderabad’s homeless have been stuck in the vicious cycle of impoverishment for generations. The challenge becomes even more convoluted when you consider the multitude of circumstances that lead to homelessness in the first place. Pervasiveness of the caste system, lack of education opportunities for women and the overwhelming stigma associated with physical disablements and mental illnesses all play a role in pushing individuals to begging. It is imperative to emphasize that this crisis isn’t isolated to the Western Hemisphere. New York City’s notoriously strained relationship with homelessness is evident by the 60,000-plus individuals shifting in between temporary housing clusters. Correspondingly, in Los Angeles, the number of individuals living on the streets jumped by 23 percent in the last year alone. In these cities, a combination of factors, most significantly skyrocketing rents, has exacerbated the issue. What’s even more daunting is that, similarly to India, the threat of incarceration looms over these vulnerable populations. Though many urban hubs, like New York City and Los Angeles, have attempted to increase the number of distributable resources for the homeless, a study found that 53 percent of these cities continue to ban sitting or lying in public places. Closer to home, in Detroit, homelessness has actually decreased by 20 percent. Michigan’s “housing first” policy, implemented in 2015, is largely attributed for this accomplishment, as the policy called for funding in permanent housing and social work initiatives to enable individuals to live sustainably. Detroit’s numbers support the abundance of evidence that indicates investments in longterm subsidized housing, alongside mental health and other social service initiatives, are needed to benefit those facing the harsh reality of homelessness.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com Lekha Pathapati is an LSA senior.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Arts

FILM INTERVIEW

COURTESY OF A24

Greta Gerwig talks ‘Lady Bird’ and growing up STEFFI CAO MiC Columnist

Greta Gerwig has hit the ground running with her directorial debut in “Lady Bird.” A vaguely autobiographical comedydrama about teen angst in 2002 Sacramento, Gerwig illustrates a mother-daughter relationship that has already captured several awards, earned a record-shattering 100 percent ‘Fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes with over 180 reviews and started Oscar rumblings. The numbers don’t lie: “Lady Bird” is a stunning film that takes everything cliché about cinema and turns it into something special. And it’s been nothing but a success for Gerwig, who has broken out of her acting role (“Mistress America,” “Frances Ha”) to prove that she can really do it all. And how? Well, those are the questions she answered in a phone interview with The Daily: *** How long did you have the story of “Lady Bird” floating around before it was produced? When did you start to convert your vision into a film? I spent a couple of years writing the movie. It always takes me a long time to write and it’s my process. And it’s because once I’m on set, I don’t do any improvisation. And once I had a good draft of the film, I decided to have it be this thing that would be my directorial debut. And then after that, it took another year to get financing and get going. So it was really, from the first time I started writing it to being in production, about three years. And then it took a year after that to finish editing it and bringing into the world. So filmmaking is a long process, but it’s a very rewarding one. One thing that really warmed my heart was that “Lady Bird” was a very mother-daughter centric film. Did comingof-age cinema influence the development of Lady Bird? Well, I was thinking about a lot of the different films that deal with both coming-of-age and growing up and occupying personal identity. And I wanted to make a film that was both one person’s comingof-age and another person letting go. And I wanted it to be as much about the adults as it was about the teenagers. And in particular, I guess I was thinking about the films that to me have to do with not just childhood but also memory, like Fellini’s “Amarcord” or Truffaut’s “400 Blows.” Films that are both about childhood and about the loss of childhood. Do you think “Lady Bird” will have that same effect on someone that feels they live in a place of cultural insignificance and they need to leave — that their life will start once they go to New York or L.A.? I hope it does. I hope that it connects to people who are from the cities that are less documented than in a New York or L.A. or San Francisco, or Chicago. Because I’m interested in those cities and those stories and those places. I think there’s a lot of richness there and a lot of things that we don’t get to see and that’s what I’m always looking for when I go to the movie theater and hope that in a way someone will watch this and feel like they

can make a film about the place that they’re in and not feel like they have to leave in order to make their artistic statement. The music in the film was very influential to the entire story. What went into choosing the specific music that you did of the time period and whittling it down to the certain songs that you actually ended up choosing in the film for it? Music is such an important part of what I think it means to be a teenager and how you form your identity, and your taste, and imagining an adult life for yourself. And so I was very careful about the music that I chose in the movie because I didn’t want it to just be music from the year 2002, I wanted it to have music from the ’90s, because in 2002, it’s before the streaming and all the other stuff, and you really got your music from the radio and people were still playing the hits from 10 years earlier or seven years earlier on the radio. So that was important to me. And I would be remiss not to mention my collaborator (John Brian), who wrote the music for the movie; I wanted it to feel like it was pop music at the time that teenagers would listen to, and that it also had this old-fashioned movie score. That combination was something that I was very interested in capturing. I was so lucky that he was willing to collaborate with me on that, and then also that all these artists gave their permission to use the music. 2017 feels like the year of the woman director — why is it that this coming-of-age story, that’s focused more on the female experience, would be so important? Well, I agree with you; I think that this year has been an amazing year for women in film. I think that the directors who’ve had films this year whether it’s a big blockbuster like Patty Jenkins with “Wonder Woman” or Angelina Jolie (with “First They Killed My Father”), or Maggie Betts with “Novitiate,” or Dee Rees with “Mudbound”; it’s just an extraordinary year and to be part of that conversation is very meaningful to me. And I think in a way, the story is a story that is so universal. But because there’s been a lack of female creators that it’s one that’s less documented than male comingof-age. I love male coming-of-age stories and I have nothing against them, but I’m always interested to see what the female version of that is, like what is “Boyhood,” but for a girl? What is the “400 Blows” but for a girl? And I felt that I had not seen that as much as I wanted to. So I wanted to make something that was about not only a young woman but about a mother and a family and a place. As a female filmmaker, do you feel like there’s an expectation portrayed in this relationship, and how do you portray these relationships realistically for all of their complexity and nuance? Well, I’ve made it a goal as a writer and now as a director to tell stories about women that the primary emotional relationship is one between two women. And in this movie, it’s between a mother and a daughter. I don’t feel pressured to tell those stories. If anything, I feel like they’re stories that are somewhat harder to get made or ‘green lit’ because they’re not — they don’t have a genre. But I think they’re important to tell because I think

that these windows into the lives of girls and women, to steal a phrase from Alice Munro, that we don’t get to see if there aren’t female writer, directors and creators. So for me, I love doing it and I don’t suspect that I will only make films about that. I’m sure I’ll make a lot of other films. But it was a deliberate thing on my part. And then in terms of making it realistic, I think I never want to turn away from the darkness, but I also don’t want to make villains, ever, with my characters. So I don’t try to present perfect people, nor do I ever want my filmmaking to take my characters down. I want them to be allowed to be flawed and to be loved.

I hope that it connects to people who are from the cities that are less documented than in a New York or L.A. or San Francisco, or Chicago.

“Lady Bird” has been getting so much media attention for being so critically acclaimed, with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and everything. What’s it like to have such a personal film that’s also your debut be so wellreceived? It’s amazing to have it be received like this. Because I know how much love and care and effort every single person who worked on this film put into it, and that’s from all of the casts and the crew and the production team to our distributors, A24. Everyone has pulled so hard for the film and put so much into it and to get that love back is just extraordinary. It’s also completely intimidating but it’s great. It’s a good intimidation. When so many films put romance at the center stage, what was it about friendship rather than romance that you thought was more interesting to tell? Well, I love romance just as much as the next person, and I certainly love romance in movies. But I think romance, especially heterosexual romance, has got a lot of great movies. We’ve got a lot of good ones about that. And I didn’t feel that it was particularly for me at that moment. It felt like I was interested in emotional relationships that were just as deep and vivid and filled with love and complexity, but that aren’t just heterosexual romance. And I like taking things that are cliché and putting them in another capacity. Like, for example, when her mom drives back to see here at the airport, everybody knows the scene and the romance where someone circles back and runs through an airport to find someone they love. That tends to be between a man and a woman. And I wanted to take that cliché but make it between a mother and a daughter

Tuesday, December 5, 2017 — 5

and transform it that way. Many of the characters in “Lady Bird” have autobiographical similarities, but they’re not exactly the same as your own story. Can you talk a little bit more about writing from your own personal experiences? I always start from a place of something that I know where it’s close to my heart. And with this movie, I wanted to write about Sacramento because I’m from Sacramento. And I wanted to write about Catholic schools because I’ve been to Catholic school for high school. But I find this: It’s almost always they (the stories) start with some kernel that’s real and then very quickly the characters spin out and become their own people and the events of the film have their own shape and form that’s outside of the events of my life. And I think for me, it’s more, the impetus is starting from a place of familiarity and letting that be the thing that allows me to invent. It might not always be that way in my writing, but that’s sort of where it tends to begin. But it takes very odd paths and I think someone in the product, people might think that there are things that autobiographical that aren’t, and they might think that something is invented which is actually autobiographical. Because I’m not just writing one character, I’m writing a lot of characters. So sometimes I’ll hide a little piece of something that I know is real in a character that you wouldn’t suspect and things like that. I like filmmaking that’s personal, I like writing that’s personal. And whether or not it’s actually real is it’s not in my case. But it’s never mattered to me as an audience member, or as a reader, or as a consumer of arts, what the connection was to the actual autobiography. It always seems to be separate to me. What advice do you have for people that might feel that

same way as Lady Bird: not directionless, but having so many directions they’d like to go but can’t decide? I think when you’re 17, like Lady Bird is 17, I don’t know that many 17-year-olds with a very clear direction. I mean, they’re always the ones who are great athletes or they know exactly what they want to do, but I think the vast majority of 17-year-olds are figuring it out. And I don’t think that’s an indication of they’re never going to do anything. I think that’s an indication of being open and curious and looking for what the things will be. I think in terms of picking a direction, I think this is something another writer said, Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book about writing. She said you’re always — you always are going to be okay if you just follow your curiosity. Sometimes people say follow your passion. But she said that’s a very difficult thing to do. What if you don’t have a passion? That’s a pretty tall order, to follow your passion. But if you follow your curiosity, the worst thing that could happen is you live a life investigating your curiosities and even if you never find a passion, it doesn’t mean that you haven’t had a very interesting life. What’s your process like in creating all these characters that felt so relatable? I think one of the reasons that I’m interested in dramatic writing, in writing that is going to be said by actors, whether it’s in theater which is my first love, or now in cinema, which is my adult love, is that I’m always interested in the way words fail us and the way that we use language not to say what we mean. I think people do that all the time. And I think I’m always interested in the language underneath the language. And so many of the scenes with “Lady Bird” and her mom, I mean her mom wants to tell her “I’m so scared” and she can’t say that because it’s hard to say what you’re actually feeling particularly when

that feeling is fear. So you say a lot of other things. You say that your role is not picked up, or you say that — you fix it on something else. And I think so much of who I am as a writer is a person who likes to listen. And I think one of the things that’s great about New York, is that you’re always in this circumstance where it’s very easy to listen to people talk. And mostly people use language to not say what they mean at all. And I’m always fascinated by that. And I think one of the reasons for me that the ending is so moving is that “Lady Bird” is finally able to use her language to say what she means and she means that thank you and she says thank you. Are you surprised by how universal the Sacramento experience seems like it is based on how well “Lady Bird” is doing? Yes! I mean, it is really extraordinary because I’ve always been a believer in the more specific you make something, the more universal it will be. So I didn’t want to make it any town. I wanted to make it this town and this people and these people. Because I think the truth is that through that specificity, people would have a greater likelihood of connecting to their own life and their own hometown and their own families and where they’re from and where they’re going. And I didn’t expect though how much so many people would say to me I’ve never been to Sacramento, but I have a Sacramento in my heart. And it makes me incredibly pleased and also it’s also kind of incredible that everybody can understand it. But I think that, you know, that’s always been this thing that I love about movies, is they could take you into world you’ve never been in and you’ll never be able to go in and you feel like you know it. *** “Lady Bird” is playing now at the Michigan Theater.

PREVIEW

LITTLE STONES

‘Little Stones’ returns to Ann Arbor with a twist ISABELLE HUSSLAND Daily Arts Writer

The University of Michigan’s School of Education will be screening the award-winning documentary “Little Stones,” directed by Sophia Kruz, an alum of the University. The film finds its way back to Ann Arbor, after being released in March of this year, but this time with an exciting twist. Kruz, in conjunction with Darin Stockdill, the design coordinator for the School of Education’s Center for Education Design, Evaluation and Research, and the School of Education, will host a workshop for teachers to debut a curriculum used in conjunction with the film in both schools and communities nationwide. “Little Stones” is a documentary that features four women in different third-world countries who use the arts to fight against gender inequality in their country. Indeed, the documentary tells the story of Panmela Castro, a graffiti artist using her craft to speak out against domestic violence in Brazil; Sohini Chakraborty, a woman in India who uses dance to help victims of self trafficking reclaim their bodies; Fatou Diatta, aka Sister Fa, a Senegalese rapper using hip hop and rap to speak out about the practice of genital mutilation in West Africa and

Anna Taylor, an American fashion designer who gives impoverished women in Kenya jobs making high-fashion clothing. Kruz, in an interview with The Daily asked, “Who doesn’t like art? I think that (there is an) inherent humanity in art that draws people in a builds community, and you can channel that positive energy into fruition.” This documentary strives to go

School of Education presents “Little Stones” School of Education’s Schorling Auditorium Wednesday, December 6th @ 5:30 p.m. Free beyond a simple screening by giving its viewers solutions and tools to become more educated in the matters presented in the film and ways that its viewers can become active in the dialogue against gender violence internationally. “I think it’s so important to tell not just stories about the problems,

but to tell stories about solutions so you can inspire people, and then once people are inspired to find ways that they can get help,” Kruz said. “Everyone has something that they’re good at. It may not be graffiti, but it might be you’re a really good chef and you care a lot about refugee issues. So you could be hosting dinners for refugees in your community.” The creative team now announces their new addition to the documentary: an educational toolkit, which will be presented during a teacher development workshop at the School of Education on Dec. 9. The educational toolkit was developed by Stockdill and a team of two undergraduate students and a high school student. It includes three parts: a curriculum geared toward high school students, one geared toward a larger community setting and a third section that serves as a resource for those who want to take further action. “It’s a very powerful and moving film. It has great potential to be interesting and engaging and entertaining, at the same time, it is very educational and it has a lot of potential to develop student’s thinking about an important topic: gender-based violence,” Stockdill said.

Read more online at

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Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, December 5, 2017

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Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Tuesday, December 5, 2017 — 7

Two Michigan commits catch first glimpse of future team USNTDP defensemen Bode Wilde and Mattias Samuelsson played against the Wolverines in Saturday’s game BENJAMIN KATZ Daily Sports Writer

PLYMOUTH, Mich. — True to the variance in experience levels, Saturday night’s exhibition between the Michigan hockey team and the U-18 U.S. National Team Development Program ended in a lopsided victory for the Wolverines. In front of 3,715 fans — the largest home crowd for a USNTDP game ever — the college students handily put the high schoolers in their place with a dominant 7-3 victory. Despite the unfortunate outcome for the youngsters, two USNTDP players — defensemen Bode Wilde and Mattias Samuelsson — got their first taste of the program they will play for next season. Saturday night, both skaters saw what will follow the completion of their two-year stints with the developmental program based just 20 minutes away from Ann Arbor. “It was interesting,” Samuelsson said. “Playing them in our rink instead of Yost was definitely pretty cool. A lot of people came out to play, and just to see the way they play and what they can bring was a pretty good experience.” Added Wilde: “It was pretty exciting. I don’t know too many of those guys, so I got my first impressions of a lot of them on the ice, which was great.” Born and raised in Birmingham, Mich., Wilde always had the Wolverines on his radar. As a child, Wilde watched his first college hockey game from the stands of Yost Ice Arena. Years later, he’ll have the chance to lace up his skates and play on that same ice — donning the maize and blue. “I’ve had a relationship with

SAM MOUSIGIAN/Daily

Michigan coach Mel Pearson admitted that he paid attention to the players that will join him in Ann Arbor next season during the exhibition game Saturday.

(Michigan assistant coach Brian Wiseman) for a while and when (coach Mel Pearson) came in, I had an opportunity to meet him,” Wilde said. “After that, it was a no-brainer for me. “Pearson just explained to me the style and way the team played. And I think it really suits how I play as a player, so it’s a good fit.” In 23 games this season, Wilde ranks third on the USNTDP in assists and points with 11 and 15, respectively. Almost half his points — two goals and five assists — have come against nine NCAA teams, many of which he may face again as a Wolverine. Wilde attributes his success to the daily — and intense — regimen of the USNTDP over the past year and a half, particularly noting the importance of facing a plethora of Division I and III opponents. “I think my play has grown

in all areas,” Wilde said. “I’ve become a lot sounder defensively and just learning how to create offense without the puck rather than with it.” Samuelsson has also put up impressive numbers, notching four goals and seven assists in 22 games, including two helpers Saturday night. Unlike Wilde, the Voorhees, N.J. native heard about Michigan through wordof-mouth before ultimately committing. “Ann Arbor is a great college town and then on top of that, it’s a great hockey program,” Samuelsson said. “I’ve heard a

lot about it from guys that I know there, and they have nothing but good things to say, so it just seemed like a great move.” Samuelsson hails from a hockey family. His father, Kjell, played in the NHL for 14 years and is currently the Director of Player Development for the Philadelphia Flyers. His brother, Lukas, plays at Western Michigan University. The six-footfour blueliner came into the USNTDP needing to put on some body weight. Through daily gym exercises, Samuelsson built his frame, and now the 217-pounder is a regular in the rotation,

We know who they are, we know all the good players

competing against some of the nation’s best young players. But even after making strides in the program, Samuelsson knows there is still room for improvement in his play, as evidenced by his takeaways from facing the Wolverines. “They win a lot of battles, and you could tell that when they have opportunities to score, they don’t mess up,” Samuelsson said. “You can’t take a shift off. These guys are older, stronger and they’ll take advantage of you if you’re slacking.” Wilde believes winning at the college level starts with keeping pace with other skaters and upping the tempo on the ice. “Just focusing on playing fast, that’s a big one,” Wilde said. “College players are big and strong, so I need to make sure I’m really focusing on what I do

in the weight room and work on my defensive game. That’s going to be big next year.” Wilde and Samuelsson will come to Michigan well-traveled, with impressive international resumes. As members of the USNTDP, the defensemen won the 2016 U17 Four Nations Tournament and 2017 U17 Five Nations Tournament. Wilde also secured the 2016 World Under-17 Challenge and Samuelsson received a gold medal in the 2016 Youth Olympic Games. Many Wolverines have similar achievements to their names. Ten icemen on its current roster — and 47 to date — played for the USNTDP. Over the past 18 years, many matched up against their future team in the annual contest before ultimately finding a home at Yost the next season. Coming into the weekend, Pearson admitted his gaze may wander during the exhibition to a handful of players in red, white and blue sweaters — like Wilde and Samuelsson, though he couldn’t comment any further. “I can’t talk about specific guys obviously, but there’s no question about it,” Pearson said last Tuesday. “Every year we play them, you’re always anxious and hope your guys play well against you. No question about it, you’ll have an eye on your team, but you’ll be wondering how player A, B, C does too.” After Saturday’s exhibition, Pearson had a similar response when asked how a certain few USNTDP players performed. “We know who they are, we know all the good players. They’ve got a roster full of players,” Pearson said. “But it’s hard to just focus on your team and try to judge our team as the game goes, so it was a good experience for us to watch our guys, but also to watch their team a little bit. “And I noticed some guys.”

‘M’ takes down Detroit Mercy Flaherty puts on clinic in win The Titans started off on top, but the Wolverines came back in full force to eventually blow out the home team SARAH HURST

Daily Sports Writer

DETROIT — The Michigan women’s basketball team’s game against Detroit Mercy started off in dramatic fashion on Monday night. The Titans drilled four consecutive 3-pointers to take the lead within the first few minutes. Detroit Mercy’s bench carried all the energy in the gym and got louder with every basket as the Wolverines slowly fell behind. At the sixminute mark, the Titans hit their fifth 3-pointer of the first quarter to take a 10-point lead. Michigan found its footing quickly, though, and finished the contest in dominant fashion to come away with a 86-50 win. “They came out of the gates locked in and focused and jumped on us right away, but we responded once we settled in,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes-Arico. “But they scored 17 points in the first four minutes — which was incredible — but I thought we did a better job defensively, and then they missed some shots later in the game.” The Wolverines had eight turnovers in the first quarter, which senior guard Katelyn Flaherty said contributed to the Titans’ early run. “I think our turnovers in the beginning really hurt us, and it really helped their offense,” Flaherty said. “So I think once we settled down and really locked in defensively, that gave us a lot of momentum on offense. And we knew that they really couldn’t guard us in the post with Hallie down there, so we got her a lot of early looks.” Slowly but surely, the Wolverines closed the gap and took the lead by one point with 40 seconds remaining the first quarter.

Michigan finished the first quarter in a tie at 20, and then came out more aggressive in the second quarter. Once the Wolverines took the lead, they never looked back, finishing the first half with a 47-28 advantage. The Wolverines started strongly again in the third quarter, going on an 8-0 stretch midway through the frame. While the Titans were able to narrow a 35-point deficit to 23 at one point in the third quarter, they still ended the frame down by 30. And when Michigan started the fourth

quarter with four unanswered points, it slowly began to empty its bench — a sign that the game was all but over. For the Wolverines, Monday was another memorable moment at Calihan Hall, where Michigan won the WNIT Championship game last season. “I love this place, it’s like our second home in Michigan,” Barnes-Arico said. “This university was so incredible for allowing us to host that WNIT championship. This place will always hold a special place in my heart.”

They came out of the gates locked in and focused

ETHAN SEARS

Daily Sports Writer

DETROIT — Katelynn Flaherty opened the second half with a pullup 3, the type of shot you take when you’re feeling it. When Flaherty released it from a few feet beyond the line, Detroit Mercy’s Brittney Jackson yelled an expletive loud enough to hear from press row. The shot rattled out. The sentiment, however, was warranted. On the Wolverines’ next possession, the Titans let her shoot again, leaving a crease for Flaherty to drive through. She took it happily, then hit the shot to boot. “I think it’s just funny,” Flaherty said, smiling. “I hear (expletives) a lot, especially when people are trying to guard me.” The senior point guard finished the night with 26 points, 22 of them in the first

half. Coming into the game, her season average was 23.7. She was 11-of-14 from the field in the first half, dotting her shot chart with runners, elbow pullups, transition layups, and two 3-pointers. In the second, she barely needed to play, having done her work early. “When I come out and hit my first couple shots, I know I’m pretty much gonna have a good night,” Flaherty said. “I still think that even when I miss, but obviously when you make it, it just gives you a lot of confidence.” Of course, this wasn’t her first rodeo at Calihan Hall. Flaherty scored 27 points, including two late 3-pointers to tie the game, against Georgia Tech in the WNIT Championship game last year. “We had shootaround today and it was incredible,” said coach Kim Barnes Arico. “Even pulling up, just the memories f looding back as to what that meant last year. So it was special.” Unlike other games this year where the focus has been more on distributing the ball from the point guard position, Flaherty was a pure scorer on Monday. She led Michigan with 19 shot attempts despite playing sparingly — just six minutes — in the second half. Not that anyone minded. “She’s the best scorer in the country, we need her to take 19 shots,” Barnes Arico said. “So if she’s not taking shots, I’m probably on her to take a few more. She needs to shoot the basketball every single time that she’s open, because she doesn’t really miss.” A month into the season, Flaherty’s adjustment to point guard hasn’t hindered her scoring. Her points per game, field-goal percentage, and 3-point percentage numbers

have all gone up this year. That doesn’t mean things have been seamless, however. At the start of the year, the Wolverines liked going to a side pick-and-roll set with Flaherty and junior center Hallie Thome. They’ve largely ditched that now, and have yet to find go-to plays that involve Flaherty distributing. “We have a lot of sets, we’ll go back to it I’m sure,” Barnes Arico said. “Offense seemed to be working, I dunno, we scored 80-something points, so maybe we didn’t need it. I always have something in my pocket, though, if we need it.” Michigan tried some HORNS sets early in the Detroit game. Those could serve that purpose in the future — one of them opened up a corner 3 for junior guard Nicole Munger, though she missed. The team is still trying to find the right actions and sets for Flaherty as a passer, according to Barnes Arico. “We put in a lot of new stuff,” she said. “We didn’t have (Flaherty) go through to the side pick-androll (against Detroit) in the first half, and we were going to go to it in the second half, but we didn’t need to. “Everybody watches every film of everything we play, so in games like this, we don’t go through our playbook. We try to keep it as simple as possible. But we put in a bunch of different actions to try and get Hallie and Kate on the same side, because that’s a difficult matchup.” On nights like Monday, however, scheme ceases to matter. Flaherty could hit from any place, at any time, against anyone. The only defensive solution: don’t let her shoot. Just ask Brittany Jackson.

She’s the best scorer in the country ... she doesn’t really miss

RYAN MCLOUGHLIN/Daily

Senior guard Katelynn Flaherty had her way against Detroit Mercy, racking up 22 points in the first half alone Monday.

Sports

8 —Tuesday, December 5, 2017

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Inconsistency shows Michigan suffers 71-62 loss to Ohio State The Wolverines held a 20-point lead, but then fell apart in Columbus again for ‘M’

MEN’S BASKETBALL

MAX MARCOVITCH

ETHAN WOLFE Daily Sports Editor

OLUMBUS — If you’ve tried predicting much about the Michigan men’s basketball team, you probably haven’t been too successful. You’re not to blame, though. Coach John Beilein’s squad has been a mashup of different lineups and star performers on a nightly basis. The revolving door that has rested on Beilein’s psyche has revealed both the question marks and the potential for the Wolverines this season. It’s perhaps the lingering uncertainty that keeps him up at night. The closest semblance of a hero in Monday night’s 71-62 loss to Ohio State was sophomore point guard Zavier Simpson. Did you guess that? Me neither, but no hero should have been required — win or loss. Michigan was up by 20 points at one point, and the Buckeyes had no answers to combat the offensive onslaught. But just 19 second-half points by the Wolverines — their worst half output of the season thus far — provided Ohio State with more chances than it could have imagined, and Michigan paid the price. “Anytime you lose in the Big Ten, but especially when you lose to your rival the way we did, it’s just frustrating,” said senior guard Muhammad-Ali AbdurRahkman. “We just gotta go back to the drawing board.” In their two-point loss to LSU in the Maui Invitational, the Wolverines faltered late, which overshadowed scintillating scoring outputs from junior Moritz Wagner and redshirt sophomore Charles Matthews. In the smackdown by North Carolina — a game that Michigan was expected to lose — underclassmen showed promising signs of composure on the road. Against the Buckeyes on Monday night, Michigan was cruising and no star was needed. Ohio State finished the half on a 7-0 run, closing the Wolverines’ lead to 13, injecting signs of life into an otherwise lulled crowd. “I actually told them I’m glad we aren’t up by 20 at half,” Beilein said. “Because if they make a run,

they just made a run. Now, let’s go out there with some purpose.” That purpose was realized far too late. Right out of the gate, the Buckeyes went into overdrive. Ohio State hit seven quick field goals, while Michigan could hardly decipher how to put the ball in the basket. And after a 26-3 run — with a lone 3-pointer from Eli Brooks for the Wolverines — the Buckeyes were staring at their first lead all game with 12:29 to go. “We couldn’t score and we couldn’t stop them,” Beilein said dejectedly. “This is something, it’s gonna be a journey all year for us until we grow our young kids, right? And our veterans embrace their new roles as being the guys, right? Being the guy that’s gotta make a shot, that’s gotta make a play at a certain time. “Our freshmen and sophomores made some baskets, but there weren’t many in the second half, were there?” Sure, Michigan quickly battled back to make it a tit-fortat contest, but Ohio State knew it was the better team on the court then, and it wasn’t going to blow its comeback efforts. Jae’Sean Tate and Keita BatesDiop were unflappable versus the Wolverines’ frontcourt, a response that wasn’t met in kind. When CJ Jackson’s free throws gave the Buckeyes their final, unadulterated lead with 2:59 to go, it was a game of “hot potato” to resurrect the Wolverines, but no winners emerged. “We like to play as a team, nobody wants to be considered a hero or playing hero ball,” AbdurRahkman said. “We just try to play within the offense, and we didn’t get good shots and passed up some good shots, too.” Beilein has emphasized that it’s still early and that his team stumbled against the Buckeyes last year and rebounded. The players say they will have to have short-term memory about this game, but Michigan is already almost at the halfway point of its season. That begs the question: When do results like this happen just too late? Wolfe can be reached at eewolfe@umich.edu or on Twitter @ethanewolfe.

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Daily Sports Editor

COLUMBUS — On the road, with the crowd roaring during Ohio State’s 14-0 run, the Michigan men’s basketball team needed a bucket. It prompted the predicament the Wolverines have faced so far this season: Who would come up with a basket with adversity in their face? Gone are Zak Irvin and Derrick Walton Jr. — two former Michigan players capable of fending off pressure at the most opportune times. When it mattered most Monday night, no Wolverine proved capable of stopping the bleeding in time to escape with a win. “I called every number I could call,” said Michigan coach John Beilein, “and it didn’t happen.” Spurred by an energetic 26-3 second-half run, Ohio State (2-0 Big Ten, 7-3 overall) overcame what was once a 20-point Michigan lead to secure a 71-62 win. The loss sets the Wolverines

(1-1, 6-3) back to .500 in Big Ten play, and sends them into two big non-conference matchups with a sour taste in their mouth. Michigan followed up Saturday’s 16-2 start against Indiana with another strong start against the Buckeyes, taking a 14-6 lead early. With similar offensive precision, the Wolverines assisted on four of their first five field goals and 11 total in the first half. Eight different Michigan players scored in the first half and six hit at least one 3-pointer, en route to a frame in which the Wolverines made seven threes, turned the ball over just twice and scored 1.42 points per possession. They appeared to be on their way to a comfortable victory — their second convincing win in the early stretch of Big Ten play. But Jae’Sean Tate, Keita BatesDiop and the Buckeyes had other ideas. Initiated by a rare, five-point possession late in the first half, the Buckeyes carried their momentum out of the halftime break, scoring 19 of the first 22

points in the half and stymying Michigan’s once-potent offense. “As good as we were in the first 18 minutes of the first half, we were equally as bad in the second half,” Beilein said. “We couldn’t make a basket or couldn’t make, really, a right play in that time. … When things got a little tough, we really had trouble stepping up.” The Wolverines never regained their composure, playing a half eerily reminiscent of the second half against North Carolina. Midway through the second half, Tate attacked the rim with vigor, lowering his shoulder into the chest of junior forward Duncan Robinson, and finished through contact to narrow the deficit to only one point. Robinson, regularly the target of the duo’s attack, struggled to handle their physicality in the post. “We try to be positive (when facing opposing runs), kinda get back to what got us there,” said fifth-year senior Duncan Robinson. “That noise happened, we have to band together, do a better job of that. We kind of frayed when we hit some

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Michigan coach John Beilein said his team simply couldn’t stop the Buckeyes on their decisive run in the second half.

adversity.” Tate and Diop combined for 21 of their team’s 45 shots and 32 of their 71 points, challenging Michigan’s forwards all night and dictating the physical nature of the second half. There were some positives from the Wolverines, particularly from unexpected sources in the first half. Two days after watching the entire Indiana game from the bench, fifth-year senior guard Jaaron Simmons looked the most comfortable he’s been in a Michigan uniform, notching three assists in his seven first-half minutes. Two days after watching his younger counterpart — freshman Jordan Poole — steal the show, sophomore Ibi Watson earned the first minutes off the bench at the shooting guard position and immediately rewarded his coach with a 3-pointer and defensive energy. And two days after not scoring, sophomore Zavier Simpson showed poise in the pick-androll, scoring seven of the team’s first 19 points despite coming off the bench once again. Simpson brought a modicum of composure to the Wolverines as they began to crumble in the second half. His ability to attack the rim off the pick-and-roll proved to be one of the team’s only sources of scoring down the stretch. Despite those efforts, the game was decided in the second half. Michigan shot 18 percent from the field, scored just 19 points and made only one of its last 10 field goal attempts — the lone make being an uncontested dunk with the game essentially over. With no ability to counter Ohio State’s punches, the Wolverines will have to head back to Ann Arbor with its most frustrating loss of the season. “They came at us,” Beilein said, “and we did not respond.”

2017 Season in Review: Offensive Line ORION SANG

Daily Sports Editor

One step forward, one step back. That described the state of Michigan’s offensive line this season. The Wolverines’ running game blossomed, featuring as the clear focal point of the offense. At times, if you squinted hard enough, you could see shades of Jim Harbaugh’s Stanford outfits — more so than through his first two years in Ann Arbor. After a few inconsistent performances early in the season, during which Michigan seemed to run an equal amount of gap-blocking and zone schemes, the Wolverines hit their stride midway through the year. It wasn’t very nuanced. Michigan found success by becoming less diverse, running mostly powers and counters. But it got the job done. Pass protection, meanwhile, was another story. Quite simply, Michigan regressed badly. Through 12 games, the Wolverines gave up 34 sacks, ranking No. 112 in the nation. Last year, Michigan ranked No. 27, allowing just 18 sacks total. This year’s struggles haven’t just manifested themselves in sacks allowed, though. Time after time, the Wolverines’ quarterback — whether it was Wilton Speight, John O’Korn or Brandon Peters — had to evade heavy pressure. That dictated what Michigan could do on offense, from the routes receivers and tight ends could run to how many extra blockers the Wolverines had to use. Of course, allowing your quarterback to take so many hits isn’t optimal. That’s something Michigan learned twice this year, with both Speight and Peters suffering injuries after big hits. Much like blocking itself, everything on offense is interrelated. The carousel under center made it difficult to run

the ball, as tougher opponents could key in on it. Despite how well the Wolverines ran the ball at times, their struggles in pass protection show that a blend of the two is needed to field a successful offense. HIGH POINT: The Wolverines spent plenty of time paving holes in the run game. Those efforts began at Indiana on Oct. 14, when Michigan gashed the Hoosiers for 271 rushing yards on 44 carries with three touchdowns. That day, Karan Higdon became the first Wolverine since Denard Robinson in 2012 to run for 200 yards — and the first running back since Mike Hart in 2007 to reach that mark. Against Rutgers, Michigan totaled 334 rushing yards and four touchdowns. The Wolverines improved upon that only one week later, averaging 10 yards per carry against Minnesota en route to 371 total rushing yards. “It was a stalwart

performance,” Harbaugh said after that game. “... I’ve never seen that many plus 50-yard runs in one game, any team I’ve ever coached or been on.” LOW POINT: Well, this could either have been the lasting image of Speight lying crumpled on the ground, three of his vertebrae having been cracked, or Peters knocked out cold after a jarring hit. Against No. 5 Wisconsin, Michigan gave up two sacks and seven tackles-for-loss. One week later, No. 9 Ohio State racked up five sacks and seven tackles-forloss. The ground game couldn’t get going against any of the Wolverines’ tougher opponents, either. Michigan ran the ball 39 times for 102 yards in a 14-10 loss to Michigan State, 37 times for 58 yards in a 24-10 loss to the Badgers and 36 times for 100 yards in a 31-20 loss to the Buckeyes. THE FUTURE: Michigan’s

problems with pass protection might not be immediately solved. Michigan will lose Mason Cole, a dependable four-year starter at left tackle, without any obvious replacements. Right tackle also remains a question mark entering next year. The interior of the line does appear to be set, with some combination of Ben Bredeson, Cesar Ruiz and Mike Onwenu. With those three, Michigan has a strong foundation to build upon in the run game. All three fit perfectly in a gapblocking scheme, with each displaying the requisite agility and strength to block powers and counters successfully. Mental errors — which plagued Bredeson his freshman year and Onwenu earlier this year — were cut down as the year progressed. But that trio, too, will need to improve its pass blocking if the Wolverines are to make strides on offense next year. It all starts up front, and Michigan was far too inconsistent this season.

AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily

Sophomore left guard Ben Bredeson and the offensive line had a fair share of ups and downs over the course of the year.