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Engler resigns “What else can a person do?” from MSU under threat of termination Eleven page resignation comes after commets about Nassar survivors ATTICUS RAASCH Daily Staff Reporter

DESIGN BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

Former ICPSR employee alleges wrongful termination after reporting harassment RACHEL CUNNINGHAM Daily News Editor

Gwen Tessier, University alum and former Student Administrative Assistant Intermediate for the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, alleges her employment was terminated as a result of reporting sexual harassment at the University

of Michigan. Tessier worked for the University from 1998-2004 and in ICPSR specifically from 20092015. ICPSR is an international research consortium providing training on data access, analysis and curation for social science research. She filed a complaint with the University’s Office of Institutional Equity on July 2, 2015

regarding the continued sexual harassment by her supervisor, Research Area Specialist Inter Dieter Burrell. Fitzgerald confirmed Burrell is still employed at the University. Burrell did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Tessier’s employment was terminated May 15, 2015. University spokesperson Rick

Fitzgerald said Tessier’s position was terminated due to financial concerns. “Gwen Tessier’s position at ICPSR was one of six positions eliminated in 2015 as part of a reduction-in-force, cost-cutting effort at ICPSR,” Fitzgerald wrote in a statement to The Daily.

Interim President of Michigan State University John Engler resigned Wednesday night in an 11-page letter to the Board of Trustees just hours after the board set a special meeting for Thursday with the intent to fire him. In the letter, Engler said it was an honor to serve the University. “In compliance with your request that I resign & in order to ensure an orderly transition to my interim successor, I hereby resign the office of President of Michigan State University effective 9 am, Wednesday, January 23.” The letter read, “It has been an honor to serve my beloved university.” Engler took over for former President Lou Anna Simon on January 30, 2018 in the wake of

controversy surrounding Simon’s handling of allegations regarding Larry Nassar. Recently, Engler has been under criticism after he made comments to The Detroit News on Friday stating that Nassar victims are enjoying the spotlight. “You’ve got people, they are hanging on and this has been … there are a lot of people who are touched by this, survivors who haven’t been in the spotlight,” Engler said. “In some ways they have been able to deal with this better than the ones who’ve been in the spotlight who are still enjoying that moment at times, you know, the awards and recognition. And it’s ending. It’s almost done.” A tweet from Brian Mosallam, a member of the MSU Board of Trustees, said the resignation of Engler is an end to a “reign of terror.”

See ICPSR, Page 3A

Barger Leadership Institute Fellows CSG posts Panel talks affordable undergo global feminism case study cognitive STUDENT GOVERNMENT

housing survey for students

Survey grades various property managers in A2 SAM SMALL

Daily Staff Reporter

Central Student Government released a housing survey Tuesday evening in an effort to help alleviate the struggle of finding affordable off-campus housing. Over 2,000 students responded to the initial survey sent out and about 700 responding students fit the criterion of those living offcampus within the 2017-2018 academic year. The idea for the survey was first conceived last year during the winter 2018 CSG campaign, when CSG party MVision created a portal where students could submit campaign ideas. Public Policy senior Lauren Schandevel, co-founder of the Michigan Affordability and Advocacy Coalition, responded with the idea for a landlord report card. “I actually got the idea from the last CSG assembly,” Schandevel said. “I met with them after their affordability guide came out and See CSG, Page 3

CAMPUS LIFE

Panel discusses the role of feminism in teaching leadership skills worldwide MELANIE TAYLOR Daily Staff Reporter

Ramaswami Mahalingam, director of the University’s Barger Leadership Institute, spoke to students Wednesday night about the role of global feminists in leadership. Mahalingam explained different theories of leadership to the group, switching between his lecture and conversation with the group. Mahalingam presented to advanced fellows in a BLI pilot cohort called the Mindful Leader Program. In order to become involved with the BLI, all members enroll in a one-credit leadership lab. Upon completion, they are afforded the opportunity to

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become BLI Leadership Fellows. Following an initial fellowship, students are given the option to either coordinate a capstone project or take on more advanced fellowships. Compared to the nearly 200 students pursuing a capstone project, this mindful leadership cohort of only six students is much more specialized and intimate. Business junior Kevin Liu is one of the mindful leadership fellows and was in a different advanced BLI fellowship last year. He said the mindful leadership program is different from any of his prior experience. “It’s about journaling and reflection and generally being mindful of our action,” Liu said. “This is a very small

cohort because it’s a pilot program. This is a lot more time commitment.” Mahalingam is an assignment contributor at the Global Feminisms Project, a digital archive of personal narratives chronicling the experiences of feminists in seven different countries across the world. According to Abigail Stewart, co-director of the Global Feminism Project and professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University, said the project’s two main goals are to aid teaching and research. “The teaching uses and the research uses both have been very broad,” Stewart said. “So there’s no disciplinary limit to the different kinds of uses they can be put to.”

Following Mahalingam’s presentation, the group delved into a discussion of the content from the archives. Mahalingam felt it was important for students to look beyond the pre-formatted images of leadership that are taught in a classroom. He encouraged the cohort to challenge the ideas they previously held about what a good leader looks like. Abigail Stewart, director of the Global Feminism project and professor of psychology and women’s studies, said that the ideas presented change the way society thinks about leadership.

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RUCHITA IYER/Daily Psychology Professor Dr. Ram Mahalingam speaks to the Mindful Leader Program on the importance of servant leadership at the Barger Institute Wednesday night.

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INDEX

health in carceral programs

State Project symposium reflects on mental wellness EMMA STEIN

Daily Staff Reporter

The Carceral State Project hosted a symposium Wednesday night in the Hatcher Graduate Library to discuss the f laws of the prison experience and the justice system. The symposium, which drew a crowd of over 100 attendees, is the third installation out of six events that will take place this academic year. The Carceral State Project is a University of Michigan program that encourages collaboration between faculty, students and the community in order to learn about and advocate for criminal justice reform. Michigan Mellon Fellow Nora Krinitsky, a host of the event, said the goal of the symposium was to allow students and community members to listen to people who have been incarcerated themselves or have a direct tie to the justice system. See PANEL, Page 3

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City driving results show more pedestrian deaths National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration shows increased fatalities in Ann Arbor since 2009 trian-right-of-way laws were tual enforcement operations expanded. The effects of the it would be more likely that Daily Staff Reporter Gainesville program were so the effects would be confined On Jan. 9, the city of Ann significant for decreasing pe- to sites that received enforceArbor received finalized redestrian deaths, a reproduc- ment.” sults of a two-year research tion of the study was done in Sergeant Bill Clock of the study about the effects on Ann Arbor to assure it wasn’t Ann Arbor Police Departdriver-pedestrian behavan isolated trend. ment shared that the increase ior related to an increase in During the timeframe of in pedestrian safety was not crosswalk signs, law enforcethe study, stopping for pedes- solely due to the increased ment and general awareness trians in Ann Arbor increased police deployment, but was of the pedestrian right-offrom 28.5 to 65.2 percent a combined effort from many way laws. where there was police en- city parties. SudokuAccording Syndication http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ to the study forcement, and from 34.2 to “The first year we did it, it 53 percent at the general- was strictly enforcement, but ization sites that did not then we went back and did receive police enforce- a follow up in 2018,” Clock ment. Police enforcement said. “With more education came in the form of warn- through city communications ings and tickets. department and the traffic MEDIUM Throughout the dura- engineers, we were not surtion of the entire study, prised at the improved re1,658 warnings and 844 sults.” citations were issued by Clock said he is unaware the Ann Arbor Police De- of any further police supervipartment. Some raised the sion of the crosswalks, but he concern that the increase believes the traffic engineers in stoppage came solely will continue their work to from the presence of en- make pedestrian crosswalks forcement, but Raymond more noticeable. Hess, transportation man“There’s nothing planned ager in Ann Arbor, stated for us, in regards to this acin a press release that the tivity, but we will continue final report concludes en- to check crosswalk and folforcement alone can’t ex- low up on complaints,” Clock plain the steady increase said. “But I think the city trafin cars that are willing to fic engineers will use data to stop. make crosswalks more visible “Evidence that the high to do further improvements.” visibility elements that LSA senior Ben Harshwere introduced in a step- berger owns a car on camwise manner contributed pus. Harshberger said he was to the overall success of aware of the law when it came © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. A LITTLE SWEATY puzzle by sudokusyndication.com the program,” Hess wrote Read more online at in the statement. “If drivmichigandaily.com ers only responded to aci n t o Generate and solve Sudoku, Super Sudoku and Godoku puzzles at sudokusyndication.com! CATHERINE NOUHAN

conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there has been an increase in pedestrian traffic fatalities since 2009. The study was originally conducted in Gainesville, Florida in an effort to decrease pedestrian-involved accidents. In large cities, pedestrians account for 40 to 50 percent of traffic fatalities. To combat this trend, deterrents for ignoring pedes-

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ICPSR From Page 1A Tessier met with Adriana Ovalle, OIE Investigator, on July 2, 2015 to discuss the inappropriate behavior of Dieter Burrell and her firing. According to an Office of Institutional Equity report provided to The Daily by Tessier, OIE began investigating the matter on July 14, 2015. Tessier began interacting with lawyers on June 19, 2015. Attorney Charlotte Croson initially took on Tessier’s case but dropped it soon after due to a conflict of interest. Tessier said Croson did not explain what the conflict of interest was. Croson declined to comment because she does not currently represent Tessier. Tessier claims the harassment was enabled by former ICPSR director and Michigan State University Professor William Jacoby, who has been under investigation recently by both MSU and the University for sexual harassment against former students. University Spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald could not confirm or deny whether the investigation was still occurring, but stated that Jacoby was not involved with the 2018 summer program and will not be involved in 2019 either. “Jacoby did not participate in the 2018 program and he will not participate in the scheduled 2019 program,” Fitzgerald wrote in a statement. “The university does not provide confirmation of an investigation nor does it comment on investigations. It’s important to note that the university takes every allegation of sexual harassment or misconduct very seriously. Every report we receive is carefully reviewed so that appropriate action can be taken.” Jacoby also resigned from his role as Editor-In-Chief at the American Journal of Political Science after proclaiming his innocence on the journal’s website without proper authorization. According to the Detroit News, Jacoby is currently looking to appeal an MSU report detailing an investigation into the allegations against him. Michigan State University Media said Jacoby retired from the University on Jan. 1. Jacoby also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

*** Tessier’s OIE report details numerous comments Burrell made about women to other ICPSR employees, including “I would like to get a sex kitten like that” in February 2011 and “sex with a younger woman is better than exercise” in September 2012. In the report, Tessier complained of Burrell’s behavior towards her and accused ICPSR of employment discrimination. An example of this included favoritism towards younger female workers, who Burrell allowed to work on other projects not related to ICPSR. Tessier said she was not allowed to do this. Burrell explained in the report that he was called into an informal meeting with human resources and another unnamed official in 2011 regarding complaints of harassment and inappropriate language while at ICPSR. At this meeting, he recounts he was told to “be careful” about coming into physical contact with other people, and cautioned against even brushing against them as he passed. Tessier said one of the first instances of harassment she experienced was at a reception for the ICPSR program attendees in the summer of 2009, where Burrell allegedly began touching her without her consent. “For some reason he just started pinching my arm up and down, so I just left,” Tessier said. “He’s tipping a beer in one hand and grabbing me with the other. I left immediately and felt silly, I really did.” Tessier stated she did not know if Burrell was intoxicated. Tessier also said she noticed Burrell would concentrate on her breasts and genital regions when speaking with her. Tessier said she did not notice this behavior until a co-worker addressed these concerns to her. A legal timeline sent to The Daily by Tessier confirms both of these statements. Tessier explained that she approached Jacoby, who was director of ICPSR at the time, in March 2010 about the incidents that had occured with Burrell up to that point. “I said to Bill (Jacoby) ‘These things happened. Can you help me with this?’ because I was getting all this hostile attention and stuff from Dieter (Burrell) and I didn’t want it,” Tessier said. “It was bizarre … His only

response was ‘Well, I told Dieter not to do those things.’ In response to the repetitive integration, Bill said ‘Well, that was his doing.’ In other words, Bill had instructed Dieter to keep questioning me over and over again.” Another incident with Burrell occured in the summer of 2011, when Burrell allegedly yelled at Tessier for using a copier in the office, and then beginning to poke her body. “It’s a trivial thing but I’m being reprimanded for something that’s completely trivial and it’s part of your whole job process,” Tessier said. “At the end of this tirade, which I was actually crying at the end of … he pokes at me on my collarbone and my chest and then around the belly and hip area.” She said Burrell told her he was picking lint off of her clothing. “I said ‘What are you doing?’” Tessier said. “It happened so fast and he said ‘I’m just picking lint off of you’.” According to Tessier, she also complained to Rita Bantom and Diane Winter, both in the ICPSR Human Resources department at the time. Tessier said Bantom and Winter told her to tell Burrell off when he touched her and to keep record of these encounters. Bantom and Winter have not responded to requests for comment. Tessier addressed this with Burrell and Bantom via email, and Bantom said she would look into it. Email threads sent to The Daily confirm this. Tessier does not believe anything came of her request. Tessier said she was given negative performance evaluations by her superiors following her complaints, criticizing her for taking time off even though that time was for two separate periods of medical leave. One was for a shoulder surgery in May 2014. Tessier said she needed the surgery after overusing her shoulder from work related activities. Another leave was for a nervous breakdown she experienced on August 9, 2013. Tessier notified ICPSR her doctor requested medical leave on August 12, 2013.

PANEL From Page 1A “We very consciously decided to decenter faculty voices and to decenter campus voices in order to really hear from the folks who are most directly impacted by incarceration,” Krinitsky said. LSA junior Sydney McKinstry, who has attended both previous panels, said she keeps coming back because the speakers give her ideas on how to take her passion for the criminal justice system and turn it into tangible goals. “I think overall, every time I come, I have this sense of knowing there are things I can do to make it better,” McKinstry said. “I think it’s easy here in Ann Arbor, as a white student, to feel like I have ideas of wanting to make the system better but I don’t know how to put those into actual work. So it’s really incredible to see these people have careers all over the world, and to see that there are career paths you can take to make actual change.” Heather Ann Thompson, professor of Afroamerican and African studies and history, is chair of the Carceral State Project and was another host of the event. She began the event by asking the panelists whether they think the imprisoned have a fair experience in the U.S. justice system. Cozine Welch, managing editor of the Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing, has served 20 years in prison and said the justice system is not equitable. He said it criminalizes people of color, those with mental illnesses and other minorities.

Thursday, January 17, 2019 — 3 “So, we all assume that every human being is born the same,” Welch said. “Assume you don’t have any mental disability that allows you not to compute like an average human being. Assume that everyone is equal. Yet we look at our criminal justice system and we see a large overwhelming majority of a particular type of person that is being incarcerated. That right there shows you it’s not a fair shake at all.” Asia Johnson, a formerly incarcerated person and bail disruptor at the Bail Project and Detroit Justice Center, agreed with Welch and said the mentally ill are often criminalized. She added many imprisoned people are less privileged than others, which puts them at a disadvantage to begin with. “When you go into prison, you come in broken,” Johnson said. “Not just because of your crime, but because of your life. Because of what society has given you.” Gift Chowchuvech, former therapist at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, said most people she met were traumatized as children by the people they grew up with. She discussed how many prisoners never learned how to make good choices and how it affects their odds of ending up in prison. “Every man that I interviewed had a history of trauma,” Chowchuvech said. “Trauma that happened early in their lives ... what you have is a lot of intergenerational trauma because people don’t have those family groups to teach them how to make good decisions.” The discussion then moved on to mental health and its role in the criminal justice system. Welch, who has attempted

suicide three times, claimed the justice system does not want to pay to help convicts with their mental health and that results in many people never receiving the aid they need. “Because that requires extra work on the side of all of those involved, right,” Welch said. “And so we (the criminal justice system) have to now classify you differently and put more resources into you or find some way just to scoot you along and hope you’ll be alright.” Welch said he still feels scared to walk around Ann Arbor alone for fear of being arrested again. He also discussed how fear is used as a weapon in both prison and outside. He said prisoners are afraid of their correction officers, so they act tough. To give some insight on the perspective of law enforcement, he also claimed the correction officers, who are often very outnumbered, are also scared and often feel the need to prove they are in control. Welch went on to say prison is not fulfilling its main goal: rehabilitation. She argued oftentimes correction officers will punish the prisoners too harshly, and prison itself is punishment enough for one’s crimes. She said, as someone who worked in a correctional facility, prisoners become subhuman. “Prison is supposed to be about is rehabilitation,” Chowchuvech said. “What we often fail to understand is being incarcerated. There should not be other punishments for you while you’re there. What you’re ingrained with when you come to work in a prison is that ‘a prisoner is a prisoner,’ that’s it. They’re dehumanized.”

“DEPORTED: AN AMERICAN DIVISION” EXHIBIT

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Researchers find bacterial link to flu Scientists notice human bacteria clusters are associated with increased sickness SAM SMALL

Daily Staff Reporter

A recent study administered by a team of professors and students within the School of Public Health and the Nicaragua Ministry of Health found that it may be easier to detect one’s susceptibility to influenza by simply looking at the bacteria present within the throat and nose. Betsy Foxman, professor of epidemiology and a lead researcher on the project, said the team was interested in how contracting influenza makes it more likely for someone to get other diseases. Foxman’s particular interest was how the microbiome, bacteria and other microbes that live in and on the human body might influence transmission. Aubree Gordon, assistant professor of epidemiology, researched factors that affect the susceptibility and transmission of influenza. By combining both of these areas of interest, Gordon designed a household transmission study to help gather samples and data to see how our ever-changing microbes affect our response to influenza. Foxman said the project started with how influenza contraction affects transmission of other diseases. “It started with the question, how come when you get influenza you might be more likely to get pneumonia off of strep pneumo and where does it come from?” Foxman said. “We thought that it would be

great to look at what happens in a household transmission study. So when Dr. Gordon joined the faculty and I heard about her study and immediately went to her and asked if she would like to collaborate. So, it was opportunity plus interest.” The longitudinal Nicaragua household transmission study took place between 2012 and 2014. In the study, members within a household of those affected by influenza were observed carefully for thirteen days to see if they would develop influenza. About 710 bacterial samples were then collected at the initial date of the study and then 695 samples were gathered at the final date of the investigation. After the study was complete, Foxman and her team carefully examined the samples of nose and throat bacteria collected from the initial enrollment and applied DNA sequencing to help identify the varying types of bacteria, which lead to the discovery of five diverse types of cluster communities. Foxman said being able to study the microbiome was made easier thanks to the “miracle” of DNA sequencing. “We can (now) take a sample and identify all of the bacteria that are living there without growing them individually,” Foxman said. “We sequence parts of their genomes and look relative to databases to see (which bacteria) is there and their relative abundance. Being able to do that allows us to look

at these communities.” After the sequencing, the team applied a clustering technique to group the data into clusters, or “community types,” which allowed them to see what groupings of bacteria appeared by looking at the similarities evident in the sequence. By analyzing these clusters, Foxman and Gordon could see if these clusters predicted risk of influenza.’ “We discovered that individuals with a certain community type or certain microbiome are more susceptible to influenza,” Gordon said. “Right now, it is pretty preliminary, we’re learning so much about the microbiome. It looks like it affects your response to vaccines and your chances of getting certain diseases — particularly in the case of respiratory diseases. The first step is to see how it works and the interactions in the workplace.” Foxman hopes to replicate the research in different geographic areas to better understand the mechanisms of the particular communities found in the Nicaraguan study. “What we’re looking at now is using the data from the study to look at how the microbiome might affect shedding a virus and symptoms, and seeing if the microbiome that you have affects how sick you are and for how long,” Gordon said.

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CSG From Page 1A we discussed some potential projects for making campus more affordable. They mentioned that Ohio State put out a landlord report card every year and I thought it was a great idea. Then, when Daniel’s party was campaigning for CSG, their policy director reached out to me for suggestions and I relayed the information to him.” CSG President Daniel Greene believes the report card empowers student voices in the off-campus housing process and provides a way to collect data, allowing students to be better informed in the decision making process. “We haven’t had the data to substantiate the things that go on [yet],” Greene said. “Now there is an open incentive for housing companies to better treat students and reward those companies and individuals who treated our Michigan students as if they were adults.” CSG worked with the University administration to set a standard so no housing management company is reported on the guide without having at least five responses. Using the Ohio State University’s guide as a model, CSG doubled the amount of questions, including queries pertaining to demographic data and specific housing costs. Engineering senior Sanjee Choudhuri, one of the main

creators of the survey, wanted to find a way to make it more interactive and appealing to students. The team decided to add three interactive graphs linked to the CSG website. “I was really interested in taking the PDF and putting

Now there is an open incentive to for housing companies to treat students better. it into a medium where students will want to read it and enjoy it,” Choudhuri said. “So I thought interactive infographics—done almost entirely through tableau graphs. In the end we wanted a medium where students could track the data, where they could tailor it to themselves and then share it. It’s simple, it’s fun and there is no f luff. You can use it immediately and anyone you send the link to could figure out how to use it.” The first interactive graph showcases a rent map of Ann Arbor properties listing the company that owns it, the rent price and the complete rating of the property out of 10. The second infographic

lists data on a multitude of different property managers, ranking them on a scale of one to 10 overall. Those ranking the highest were Horvath Properties, Spaly Group, Zaragon Properties and Wessinger Properties. Those placing on the lower scale of the survey were Tree City Properties and Cribspot. The final link is a bar chart composed of each of the sentiments poised on the original survey. By selecting which company listed, you can see the results on each of the questions. Questions include how quickly the landlords response to maintenance requests, the overall condition of the living space, the professionalism of the landlord and much more. “In an ideal world this will be continued by future administration,” Greene said. “We are hoping that we will reopen the survey now that students understand it. We know when there is a new resource on campus that it is often too abstract for students at first. Now that we have the results on the website we are getting a lot of interest and clicks and we hope that this guide would help perpetuate the conversation and put more momentum toward addressing housing affordability in Ann Arbor and also just hold housing companies accountable, as they often exploit students.”

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Jeremy Kaplan Sarah Khan Lucas Maiman Magdalena Mihaylova Ellery Rosenzweig

Jason Rowland Anu Roy-Chaudhury Alex Satola Ali Safawi Ashley Zhang Sam Weinberger

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

DYLAN BERGER | COLUMN

Washington must put country over party to get results

his month, Democrats nine federal departments are officially took back going without pay because of the House from Washing ton’s inability to pass Republicans after a spending bill. The eight years in the results of this inability minority. Powered to govern are being by suburban angst felt here in Michigan. over the president, The National Park Democrats come Service employees to office energized who operate Sleeping to oppose the Bear Dunes National president at Lakeshore in every turn. In Northern Michigan fact, Rep. Brad are not working DYLAN Sherman, D–Calif., because of the BERGER introduced articles shutdown. Despite of impeachment against the the valiant work of volunteers, president on the very first day the public is suffering due to of the new Congress. While this the absence of park service new development is significant employees. Visitors of that park given Democratic control of the are getting stuck in unplowed House, Democrats have pledged parking lots and a program that to impeach President Trump brings students to Sleeping Bear since he was first elected. to learn how to snowshoe has Whatever you may think been unable to start up. That’s about President Trump, a shame, especially considering this is wrong. While the how many Michiganders want president has certainly been to enjoy the treasures of our controversial, he was chosen beautiful national parks during by the American people to winter. Moreover, Native serve as our commander in American tribes in Michigan chief. Attempting to remove that rely on federal funding for the president before his essential services are suffering term is up is poisonous to as well. In fact, the Sault Ste. our politics. We send our Marie Tribe of Chippewa politicians to Washing ton, Indians is losing $100,000 a day D.C. so they can work for us, from the federal government not to play politics. However, for essential services such as some Democrats have been health clinics. gleefully anticipating President Trump’s impeachment since day one instead of working with him. Chief among them is newly elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D–Detroit, who said, “We’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherf-----.” By going on profanity-laden rants against our president, Rep. Tlaib and her cohort have damaged our democracy greatly by casting aside the results of the 2016 election in order to satisf y a The nation that defeated vendetta against the president. fascism during World War Washing ton politicians on both II and sent astronauts to sides need to put results over the moon should be able to politics to move our country pass a spending bill to keep forward. If we come together our national parks open and and achieve bipartisan results, maintain health clinics for America will successfully face Native American tribes. House down the Herculean challenges Democrats ought to work before us. with President Trump to fund An excellent place to start border security and re-open the is re-opening the federal federal government. President government. Thanks to Trump has asked Congress disagreements over border for more than $5 billion for security, the government shut border security while House down at midnight on Dec. Democrats are unwilling to 22. Despite the great harm make the investment in border a government shutdown has security. Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the functioning of our has refused to compromise on government and our standing this issue, stating, “We can go abroad, this shutdown has through the back and forth. No. dragged into 2019 and the 116th How many more times can we Congress. This shutdown has say no? Nothing for the wall.” already had adverse effects While Pelosi uses rhetoric both nationally and here in about the wall to fire up the Michigan. Nationally, 800,000 Democratic base, the money federal workers spread over Trump is asking for is sorely

Instead of calling for impeachment, Democrats should work with President Trump

needed. Though we have made progress in securing the border, our porous Southern border puts our national security at risk. Drug cartels that control large swaths around our Southern border ship their poison into the United States, fueling the opioid crisis that takes 130 American lives every day. Given that 90 to 94 percent of heroin in the U.S. pours in from Mexico, American lives depend on our ability to secure our border. Beyond drug cartels shipping deadly drugs into the U.S., murderous gangs such as MS-13 also take advantage of our leniency on border security. Just last week, three undocumented immigrants connected to MS-13 stabbed a high school student outside of a fast-food restaurant in New York. This heinous attack illustrates that our porous border allows gang members and other threats to public safety to cross into our country unencumbered. By approving full funding for border security, House Democrats would help secure the border by hiring more Border Patrol agents, purchasing updated technolog y and building physical barriers where needed. Following our actions to secure the border, we can take action to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and reform our deeply f lawed immigration system. In securing the border and reforming our immigration system, we will ensure our national security is protected and continue our tradition as a nation of immigrants. After passing a spending bill that secures our border, we can keep the bipartisan momentum going on other key issues. While campaigning for president, President Trump rattled many Republicans with his calls for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending, government action on outrageously high prescription drug prices, campaign finance reform and renegotiated trade deals. After winning the presidency on these unorthodox ideas for a Republican candidate, progress on these issues has largely stalled. Instead of calling for his impeachment, Democrats should work with President Trump on these bipartisan issues and deliver for the American people. By working together on our greatest issues, we can restore faith in our broken political system and ensure our nation’s best days remain ahead of us.

Dylan Berger can be reached at dylberge@umich.edu

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es — the day we have all feared is fast approaching. With health issues including two cancerous nodules recently removed from her lungs and broken ribs, it seems as if the day Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must step down is coming quicker than we had hoped. Imagining the court without the “Notorious RBG” requires a dynamic analysis. First, we must assess the effect that Ginsburg uniquely has on the court, and then measure the effect (or damage, as we liberals like to call it) another Trump nominee would have on the rulings of hot-button cases such as gun control and abortion. Let’s start with what we would be losing if Ruth Bader Ginsburg was no longer an associate justice. Justice Ginsburg is most famously known as a maverick and trailblazer for women’s rights. As one of the first women on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg has made the greatest contribution of any justice towards promoting women’s rights. Ginsburg is known as “the last vestige of an old guard of liberalism,” and is the last pillar holding up the fragile balance between an oppressive court and a fair one. While Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer remain associate justices within the court, Ginsburg, being the most senior left-leaning justice, has had a rich history of finding creative new ways to uphold the rights of all marginalized groups, especially women. Whether it be in creating new levels of scrutiny within the law to address gender-based discrimination in United States v. Virginia or protecting the rights of intellectually disabled individuals in Olmstead v. L.C., her legal expertise has created liberty and equality under the law for all Americans. So, who could possibly replace RBG? In the midst of the Trump presidency, one

thing that is certain is that another staunch conservative will be appointed to take the position of an open seat on the court, as was the case with Trump’s two appointments thus far. The additions of accused sexual assailant Brett Kavanaugh and National Rif le Association-endorsed Neil Gorsuch have pointed the court in a decisively more conservative direction even with Ginsburg still there. The significant ideological differences that exist between Justice Kavanaugh and his predecessor, retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, suggest that narrowly made decisions in favor of women’s rights such as Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt and Obergefell v. Hodges would most likely not be upheld had they been argued in the SCOTUS of 2019. Now, if we factor in the removal of Justice Ginsburg and the addition of another fairly conservative justice, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority would definitely favor a right-wing agenda. Much of this could be seen as just angry words from another paranoid liberal. I mean, how much has the Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee ruling changed the way you brush your teeth every morning? While many people do not readily admit to the large impact of the Supreme Court, just ask yourself — how many normal events that occur in your day-to-day life are affected by an entity of the government? As we move closer to a “nanny state,” we somehow come to find the government in every nook and cranny of our lives, with the consequences of the issues being litigated applicable more to young adults than ever before. With the tremendous hyperpartisanship in both houses of Congress creating either extreme policies or no policies at all, we end up relying more on the courts to rectify change when

desperately needed within the country. Little did you think that the person you are allowed to marry, how you were admitted into college or any higher learning institute and, of course, how much control you have over your body would be decided ultimately by the Supreme Court. In a sense, how could you not care that Ruth Bader Ginsburg may be leaving the Supreme Court? The issues listed above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Supreme Court cases that Ginsburg has played an integral role on. Call this some sort of emotional ode to the woman herself, but if you are an individual who cares about equality, women’s rights and expanding the rights of the people, there is so much to be concerned about with this woman leaving because, frankly, nobody can do what she does. Was my goal in writing this piece to scare you? No. Though my words may seem to imply the potential for a large negative shift in a young adult’s life if RBG were to retire during the Trump presidency, the truth is that we all should be realistic about the effect this woman has had in our lives and on our country. With so much trust based in the Supreme Court as the arbiter for partisan-poisoned politics, there is a lot of room for things to go wrong. And while I can cite cases RBG presided over that may not have elicited the best result, the resolve and the commitment of Ginsburg has remained a ray of sunshine on dark days. Maybe America will see another maverick in the future, or maybe the seemingly “alt-right” conservative ideolog y of the court will be cemented for decades to come. Only time will tell what lies in the future. Ambika Sinha can be reached at ambikavs@umich.edu.

REED ROSENBACHER | COLUMN

Why all gossip lovers should love the NBA

atching sports has become one of the least relevant parts of professional sports fandom. That may sound like a controversial and even nonsensical statement but upon closer examination it makes perfect sense. Fans are no longer driven to sports because of their dedication to a hometown team but rather to personalities, long-term storylines and the drama embedded in every sports league. The NBA is the shining example of this burgeoning brand of fandom. Fans are addicted to following players and their carefully crafted images. For young fans, this transition away from hometown solidarity seems obvious. Why spend your entire life following a team solely because they are from your city when you can pick a star player whose personality speaks to you? Why spend years hoping that a historically crummy team will become good when you can follow players and storylines? In addition to a dedication to superstar players, NBA fans also have a passion for following the overarching narratives in the league. For example, at the end of December, Zach Lowe — widely considered to be the NBA’s most prominent writer — declared that “Anthony Davis trade talk is the biggest story in the NBA.” That’s right — the biggest story in the NBA has nothing to do with how a team is playing but rather where a player might play in the future. The best part about the Anthony Davis drama is how convoluted the situation is and how feverishly NBA fans are following it. Stick with me through the minute details because they really help to display absurdity of new fandom. Davis is 25 years old and widely believed to be a top-five player in the NBA but is playing for the historically and currently forgettable New

Orleans Pelicans. In short, Davis has the opportunity to sign a contract extension with the Pelicans this summer. If he signs the extension, he will stay with the Pelicans. If he doesn’t, he will spend one more season with the Pelicans and then he will leave. Well, the Pelicans aren’t stupid — if Davis leaves in two years, then the Pelicans will be left with nothing. However, if the Pelicans trade Davis, they can get a lot of good players in return.

Fans are addicted to following players and their carefully crafted images But who will the Pelicans trade Davis to? If Davis doesn’t want to play for the Pelicans, where does he want to play? These are the million dollar questions that every NBA fan is trying to answer. Fans and journalists alike are picking up on all the smallest details such as the fact that Davis and LeBron James have the same agent and that James, who recently became an Los Angeles Laker, got dinner with Davis in LA. In essence, fans are predicting what players will want to do in two years, following details such as who’s getting dinner with whom. This can help fans make clear predictions what a player’s eventual decision may be. Tracking dinner plans and the social implications of those plans sounds much more like an article out of People magazine than it does an article from ESPN. The gossip- and drama-filled narrative that is Anthony Davis’s future is not an anomaly. Other popular recent

storylines include a player’s mom installing cameras in his house, superstars Kevin Durant and Draymond Green yelling at each other and former teammates calling each other “cupcakes.” This new wave of fandom is not some kind of fluke — it has clear roots in new communications technology. In the past, fans could only watch the locally broadcasted games and highlights were rarely displayed on television. Simply put, there was no way to live in Ann Arbor, watch Anthony Davis play in New Orleans and learn about his dinner plans. Social media and the internet have made it extremely easy to share highlight clips, watch games from across the country and follow every decision a player makes. What’s more fascinating to me is how this shift in fandom is discussed. Most of the discussion, somewhat unsurprisingly, is about how fans are choosing to watch highlights and follow gossip instead of watching games and why that is costing broadcasters money. The more interesting storyline is this: A shift away from the X’s and O’s of sports seems like an incredible opportunity for leagues like the NBA to appeal to a new set of fans. Instead of selling high-flying dunks, the NBA can sell America’s favorite things: reality TV and gossip. How the NBA will go about attracting people to juicy gossip — instead of actual basketball games — remains an unanswered question. So, here is my appeal to anyone who watches reality TV and says they hate sports: the next time you inevitably get thrown into a sports conversation, try to ask about the drama and the rumors and see how things go.

Reed Rosenbacher can be reached at rrosenb@umich.edu.

Arts

5 — Thursday, January 17, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Shortlisted Man Booker Prize novels are enthralling VERITY STURM Daily Books Editor

The Man Booker Prize is about as coy and mysterious as the work it honors. The award was inaugurated in the UK in 1969 according to “just one criterion — the prize would be for ‘the best novel in the opinion of the judges’,” which you may recognize as the literal definition of “book award.” If you go to the Booker Prize Foundation for something more specific, you’ll learn that the aim of the prize is to “increase the reading of quality fiction” and “attract the intelligent general audience,” some very conventional, slightly pretentious ambitions. And then, somewhere along the line, the prize is casually promised to “transform the winner’s career.” From a cynical eye, everything about this begs to be grilled: the near-satirical ambiguity, the slight air of superiority — all of it. The thing about the Man Booker, though, is that they pull it off, resoundingly. Although absent from their bare mission statement, the Man Booker does an excellent job of sniffing out innovative fictions: prose that’s perhaps a touch too edgy to sell in the mainstream and may just need a little £50,000 kiss for momentum. Consequently, the program has created and maintained an impressive

cohort of now-household names in the world of literary fiction, absolute Gs like Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee and Kazuo Ishiguro, whose work has challenged and tempered what we can do with language. The Man Booker’s reputation for the slightly odd renders it a particularly exciting and unusual prize. Graphic novels, black comedies and “historiographic metafictions” have graced both long and shortlists, genres typically underrepresented in the world of literary accolade. This year’s winner, “Milkman,” follows the story of unnamed characters in the unnamed town of an unnamed country overrun with violence between unnamed political groups. Its author, the Northern Irish Anna Burns, plans to use the prize money on an operation to alleviate the intense nerve pain that complicated the release of “Milkman.” In an interview with The New York Times, Burns shared that “If it’s successful, I’ll be able to write again.” The Booker Prize Foundation is using their power to promote and protect the weird, and we at The Michigan Daily Book Review are here for it. We’ve covered the shortlist for you: texts ranging from longform poetry noir to a psychological retelling of “Oedipus” on a houseboat — odd birds that might be the household names of the next decade.

BOOKER PRIZE FOUNDATION

THE LONGLIST

MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER

FABER AND FABER

‘Milkman ’ investigates JOHN DECKER Daily Arts Writer

When I’m asked about “Milkman,” what usually comes first is a facial expression. It’s unconscious, I think, involving a fusion of shock and delight — a raising of the eyebrows, an open mouth, a slight grin — and holding for only a brief moment before I get to a synopsis of the book that ends with an aggressive recommendation. For good reason, too: Irish author Anna Burns’s 2018 novel is increasingly popular. The novel beat out other favorites for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and has soared in sales in recent months. These accomplishments of Burns’s are rightfully harvested. “Milkman” is, quite simply, an arresting masterpiece. Telling the story of a young woman planted in late-twentieth-century Northern Ireland, “Milkman” is a chilling story that Burns uses — both outstandingly successfully and covertly — as a lens to apply to the world readers interact with in “Milkman.” With prose so reliably detailed and engrossing and an audacious, yet still intricate, cast of characters, it is no question the Booker Prize fell into commendable hands. It takes only a page or two of reading to realize that the cover of “Milkman” is deceptive. The binding of the 2018 winner of the Man Booker Prize depicts

an innocuous, fluorescent-pink intervene in a village of scattered Surprisingly, sunset — one of those once a year, revolutionaries. stop-and-snap-a-photo sunsets though, this war-zone setting is that makes “Milkman” stands out but an offhand normality in the book. Instead, it is Milkman, a among its fellow books. The sedative lightness paramilitary that begins making of the cover seems to admit unwarranted advances on Middle innocuousness. But “Milkman” Sister, that takes the place of chief is not innocuous. Nor is it gentle, antagonist in the book. At first glance, Burns lays out an or quiet, or apologetic — nothing that the cover may suggest about invidious landscape that seems to a subdued, romantic narrative. hyperbolize the dark experience To say I wasn’t excited to read of growing up as a woman in the the Booker winner would be a late 20th century. Maybe, Burns lie — based on the superficiality seems to suggest, the descent of of covers and excerpts, I have society would look like this for all rooted for “Milkman” since its genders. But on second thought, nomination on the long-list — the landscape Middle Sister walks — and how her but the way hyperaware, I fell in love rightfullywith reading paranoid “Milkman” Anna Burns thoughts congeal was not in in it — becomes the pleasant, Faber and Faber painfully real. blushing manner May 15, 2018 Middle Sister’s I had expected. encounters It was a cycle of with Milkman shock, recoil and while walking, her fears of being return. Anna Burns’s third novel drugged, the pernicious comments narrates the story of an 18-year- coming from third brother-in-law, old girl (referred to as “Middle all resonate uncomfortably with Sister,” as none of the characters in the realties meeting women today. This daring, critical kick at that “Milkman” are prescribed actual names) over the course of two experience of being a woman pays months. Her unnamed town is off. The apotheosis of the book’s saturated with violence — violence dark and applicable portrayals from the ubiquitously demonized is perhaps Tablets Girl, a “girl enemy countries “over the water,” who was actually a woman,” that violence from the renouncers is one of the local outcasts in of the state that control Middle Middle Sister’s town due to her Sister’s town and violence propensity to poison people. This from the state police as they usually takes place, most suitably

“Milkman”

THE SHORTLISTED

and without retribution, in bars. People flee from Tablets Girl, people watch their drinks when Tablets Girl is around. It’s not just Burns’s clear allusion to daterape that that is to be appreciated here, but her spiked humor and exaggeration also. This is not to reduce “Milkman” down to a forced, constricted focus on gender-politics though. Burns’s writing alone is remarkable (something I refuse to say passively). “Milkman” is brimming with endlessly long paragraphs, lose-your-trainof-thought stretched sentences and digressing thoughts from Middle Sister that render the book incredibly complex. At first, I was perturbed by this formal and royal-esque writing, especially upon an encounter with a paragraph spanning four, almost five, pages. But as I continued, I found myself — in an unlikely way — reading Middle Sister’s voice in an uninterrupted pattern even more critical and translucent than I expected possible. This is assisted by Burns’s near-perfect draw of synonyms through the book, making her writing appear dependably careful and personal. I was enamored by the characters in “Milkman” and the abrasive humor that was tacked onto them. It isn’t often that I get a full cast of characters (narrator, antagonist, family) that are so real, so exciting to encounter. Most memorable are the “wee sisters,” Middle Sister’s three younger sisters who, despite their young ages, are infatuated with topics such as French revolutionaries, going through “Kafka phases” and eavesdropping every moment they get. Characters like the wee sisters offer unexpected gratification along Burns’s dark timeline of events. The real humor displayed make “Milkman” all the more authentic and pleasurable. I love “Milkman” because it is a fruitful attempt to offer me hints of a human experience I will never be able to understand, let alone be familiar with. Perhaps the most evocative and vivid account in the vein of social-rebellion and unwanted-gaze I have ever encountered, “Milkman” is a narrative that has been told repeatedly, even frequently in the 21st century. Burns’s unequivocal writing turns this narrative into a fearsome chant, one well worth shouting along to.

THE SHORTLISTED

‘Everything Under’ tries ‘The Long Take’ explores ‘Oedipus,’ doesn’t succeed poetry, noir and the city JULIANNA MORANO Daily Arts Writer

“Everything Under,” Daisy Johnson’s 2018 Man Booker prize-shortlisted novel that relocates Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex” to modern-day England and reinterprets the story through what some may call a feminist lens, has been praised for its daring alone. Well, here’s that pat on the back. Now, on to evaluating Johnson’s story itself — or, the point at which praise for Johnson ceases. Instead of mining the depths of a classic like “Oedipus” in pursuit of contemporary insights, Johnson opts to skim the story for its most base content — the fated patricide and incest — and exploits their sensationalism. Johnson makes the most of what she’s skimmed, smearing it into the likeness of a novel. Yet all that offers her audience in terms of a reading experience is the sensation of being dragged through the muck. Still, the opening chapters of “Everything Under” will beguile, like an off-key siren song. Gretel, the main character who arguably did not deserve to be (more on that later), narrates in relentless second person, employs a relentless active voice and harnesses a tone of relentless accusation. The addressee of the second person narration and the tireless accusations is Gretel’s mother, who raised Gretel in poverty on a canal boat only to leave her daughter when she turned 16. Two-thirds of Johnson’s parallel sequences in “Everything Under” slogs through this fraught relationship: one chronicling

Gretel’s search for her mother and the other capturing their continued dysfunctionality even after Gretel finds her. For a short while, Johnson’s narrative techniques work, ensnaring readers in the anxiety, apprehension and resentment Gretel has felt since being abandoned. Soon enough, however, the sharp edge of Gretel’s narration dulls with overuse. What once read as rhythm now induces the flat, chronic pain of a headache. And once the headache sets in, Johnson’s borrowed, unremarkable observations (e.g. “Children are supposed to leave their parents … Parents are not supposed to leave their children”), for all their writerly flair, lose their

“Everything Under” Daisy Johnson Graywolf Press Jul. 12, 2018

disguise and their charm. Midway through the novel, another story — that of Margot, Oedipus’s counterpart — takes over. Anesthetized by Gretel’s redundancy, not to mention the unwavering wretchedness of most every other character (especially Gretel’s mother) up to this point, readers may mistake this shift in favor of multidimensional character Margot for a breakthrough. Of course, it cannot last. Gretel has commandeered this story from the

beginning, and it’s too late for a coup. This internal battle for control of the story and its unfavorable result illustrates the broader identity crisis stifling “Everything Under.” One of Johnson’s tasks as the re-interpreter of a classic is to supply readers with a useful lens through which to re-examine the original story, one that offers new insights. It might be useful to imagine the re-interpreter as the optometrist and their readers the patients seated before the many lenses of the phoropter. It is the author’s job, in this instance, to help their reader see something new and see it clearly, which is why Margot’s arc stands out. In Margot’s story, Johnson reevaluates “Oedipus” through the lens of gender, and readers have a fresh encounter with the malleability of gender: Specifically, the ways gender can be weaponized, both in one’s favor and to one’s detriment. For the rest of the novel, Johnson struggles to pick an equally apt lens (motherhood, family and fate are attempted), and the dizzying confusion of lenses makes it nearly impossible to see anything else valuable in Johnson’s reinterpretation, compounding the reader’s headache. A prominent innovation in Johnson’s retelling of “Oedipus,” likely spawned by her reliance on bewildering her audience in order to maintain their attention, is the canal thief. Or, as Gretel and her mother call it, the “Bonak”: a menacing, elusive beast that stalks, steals and commits murder along the canal on which they lived.

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general impression and a sense of having been in the presence of something meaningful. This is both frustrating and enticing, and it’s only at the end of the book that things start to come together in such a way that you can say, “right, this is what it’s about.” What it’s about is The City. And the traumas of war, and the isolating nature of pain, and homelessness and cars and ingratitude. But mostly The City. There’s a moment, not too far into the story, when the protagonist, Walker — a returned and traumatized World War II veteran from the North Nova Scotia Highlanders

“The Long Take” Robin Robertson Picador Feb. 22, 2018 — is interviewing for a job at the Los Angeles Press, making the case for why he’s a worthwhile person to take on.

Arts

6 — Thursday, January 17, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

THE SHORTLISTED

DAILY COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN

‘The Overstory’ trades Aaron Sorkin’s ‘TKAMB’ intimacy for advocacy JOHN DECKER Daily Arts Writer

Is it possible to achieve the environmental call to action of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in a work of fiction? Richard Powers is resolved to find out. Powers’s “The Overstory,” which made it onto the 2018 Man Booker shortlist, is his first attempt at literary environmentalism; it is reasonably and enjoyably successful. While the novel was not predicted to transcend the English prize’s shortlist, “The Overstory” remained a 2018 favorite. The novel, clocking in at just over 500 pages, features a near-overwhelming eight central characters, the likes of which range from a Vietnam War veteran to a loveable patent attorney to an unruly college senior. The curvation of all eight stories are brought together (or at least near one another) over the course of the novel by trees — which appear spiritual and conscious, intervening in the characters’s lives and thoughts — when they sound a call to environmentalism. The environmentalism that all eight characters, through varying spouts of time, succumb to, take disparate shapes. For Patricia Westerford, it is scientific research; for Nick Hoel and Mimi Ma, it is joining a radical environmentalist group working desperately to preserve trees still standing in the United States. When a sampling of the characters break the law in the name of the environment and things go unsparingly wrong, they are forced into shadows. The intensity of the story slowly defuses here. Implications ensue for some characters. For

others, less so. Powers is most heralded for his ability to capture such a large narrative arc in a novel. “He (Powers) would probably be Herman Melville of ‘Moby Dick’,” writes Margaret Atwood. “His picture is that big.” And yes, “The Overstory” is surely substantial. Not only does the novel incorporate so many characters, but Powers devotes generous prose to each, allowing for considerable backstory and development of psyches. This shines brightly in the first 150 pages. The introduction of each character — with each cast member consuming about 20 pages — is well paced, calculated to appear almost as separate short stories. Especially striking are passages about Adam Appich and Ray Brinkman. Powers details a blushing love story

“The Overstory” Richard Powers W.W. Norton & Company Apr. 3, 2018

and a complex childhood that bring the novel to life for readers. These lengthy, brave introductions make the characters sticky and easy to form loving attachments. This praised and intense narrative capacity, however, is also why “The Overstory” stumbles. Once the interweaving of the eight narratives begins, switching routinely between different characters’s perspectives, readers are left grappling for a central thesis or story to follow. Unfortunately, one is not found. It is too difficult to be moved by one event or character when these scenarios are merely glimpsed at, disregarded as the

narrative flits to another plot. Thus, while the characters are well crafted upon exposition, they are left behind as Powers takes on too large an idea in too small a space. Conceivably the only central body in “The Overstory” is Powers’s refrain of environmentalism. It involves trees, trees and more trees. This is certainly an interesting and narrow selection of plot to choose as the factor to propel a reader through a novel. At times, this environmentalist focus is interesting. Powers traces over wonderful descriptions of nature and its power, scientific prose about flora’s communicative traits and, of course, forces readers to glare head on at deforestation and, implicitly, climate change. However, there is little emotional investment here. It is perhaps easier to be moved by the activists themselves — in the small pieces of them readers see — than by the destruction of the environment. If there is something profound and new that Powers is trying to express in his work, especially with respect to environmentalism, it remains behind the curtain. Despite its shortcomings, “The Overstory” probably deserved its place among the other shortlisted novels for the Booker Prize. The story is undeniably bold, undertaking (with moderate success) a fascinatingly broad narrative with a well-meaning cast of characters. Powers’s writing is clean and consistent, and his literary environmentalism is original and intriguing. Still, these feats subdue potential character intimacy and the novel fails to stand by a robust, explicit thesis. For a paradigm of these latter features done well, see the prize-winning novel, “Milkman.”

MUSIC VIDEO: ‘THE SEDUCTION OF KANSAS’

Over the winter break, I was lucky enough to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway. The script for this new production, which opened on Dec. 13, was written by Aaron Sorkin. It was an incredibly spellbinding experience, easily one of the best plays I have seen all year. Jeff Daniels’s Atticus Finch was refreshing, in both ambiguity and strength, as Daniels managed to capture Atticus’s flaws and finer moments in this production without sounding overly preachy. Celia Keenan-Bolger’s Scout, furthermore, was quite convincing — she expertly straddled the boundary between child and adult, oscillating between adolescent memory and adult reflection. As with many Broadway productions, especially those based on books of this stature, the production value behind the play was superb. The sets were great, the courtroom with empty jurors’ chairs in particular standing out in my mind. And while the music and lighting were not much to speak of, they perfectly underscored the childish simplicity of the narrative. A little after attending the play, however, I began comparing it to the novel. In doing so, I became aware of many striking departures Sorkin took in this production — many of which seem to rob the story of its greatness. Sorkin complicates Atticus, for example, painting him not as a perfect figure but as a flawed man working to do what he believes to be best. The best example of this comes in the middle of the play, as Sorkin adds a tense scene between Calpurnia and Atticus, two characters previously described as having a sibling-like relationship. At the height of this scene, Calpurnia accuses Atticus of muttering “you’re welcome” under his breath at her after taking on the case. Atticus’s interactions with Bob Ewell are also quite different in this telling of the story. Ewell is now a virulent racist and anti-Semite. He claims that Atticus’s work as a lawyer must be an indication that he is secretly Jewish, and he criticizes Atticus among his white peers for this (alleged) Jewish ancestry. Later, when Ewell comes to confront Atticus, they engage in a brief altercation. Unlike the Atticus of the movie and the novel, this Atticus does not refrain from engaging in this fight, which eventually culminates in Atticus pinning Ewell’s hands behind his back and holding him by his hair.

One of the aspects of Harper Lee’s novel that I have always found most compelling is the ambiguity that she brings to Southern race

SAMMY SUSSMAN relations. Unlike many other novels, she portrays Southerners as neither entirely bad nor entirely good. Scout’s young age further enhances this narrative, as the reader is forced to confront early 20th-century race relations from the point of view of a naïve adolescent, losing any stereotypes that they may hold regarding these issues. Sorkin, on the other hand, modifies the story to make it more acceptable to our Trumpera left-wing prejudices. These modifications felt slightly cheap — unlike Lee’s novel, it felt as though Sorkin was giving the audience exactly they wanted, leaving in no ambiguity and provoking no higherlevel questioning surrounding Southern culture. Sorkin deflects criticism of the “white savior” trope, for example, by adding the confrontation between Calpurnia and Atticus. To my great surprise, Atticus responded to this criticism by apologizing to Calpurnia — rather than demonstrating the flaws in this “white savior” trope, Sorkin takes it further, portraying Atticus as aware of his own prejudices though his actions seem to perpetuate them. Atticus’s fight with Ewell was similarly flawed in my view. Though some may argue that this speaks to his flaws in terms of his inability to control his own emotions, I saw it instead as a cheap attempt at solidifying Atticus’s masculinity and strength. This was yet another instance in which Sorkin’s additions, rather than adding intriguing complexities to the narrative, merely served to create new flaws. Just as with Atticus’s newfound introspection, I found Ewell’s antiSemitism to be a cheap attempt at pandering to modern sensibilities. It served no purpose in the narrative besides engaging further with modern audiences — a surprisingly surface-level reference to the

Classifieds

resurgence of neo-Nazism. If anything, Sorkin seems to be grasping for more prejudices that he can give to Ewell. It almost seems as though Sorkin thinks that Ewell’s initial racism wasn’t enough — that saying the n-word a couple of times and accusing a Black man of a crime he did not commit is not enough to provoke the audiences anger; that without this addition of antiSemitism, the audience might not despise Ewell to the proper degree. On the other hand, Lee’s controversial sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Go Set a Watchman,” chose to depict Atticus not as a slightly introspective saviorlike figure but as a deeply flawed and hypocritical man, a lawyer who spends his free time with racist individuals and engages in racist discussions even as he voluntarily defends a Black man in the South’s racist courts of law. Though I was initially upset by this new novel, (as were many readers), this play served as a helpful reminder of the frightening yet powerful message that this book seems to send: that we all hold racial prejudices and that even a flawless pro bono attorney like Atticus can still hold deep racial prejudices. Lee destroys the idyllic Atticus in favor of the flawed, racist Atticus, forcing the reader to examine their own prejudices. Sorkin’s play, however, instead reminded me of the pitfalls of our hyper-polarized cultural climate. We live in the supposedly “postracial” era, where a Black man could be elected to the presidency. Our entertainment is expected to reflect these post-racial attitudes, whether it be the criticism of Atticus or the addition of Ewell’s anti-Semitic prejudices. Lost in this climate, I fear, is the ambiguity and complexity that gives the performing arts their thought-provoking qualities. This is not to say that Sorkin’s additions are not more culturally appropriate, or that they might not reflect a better, less-prejudiced society. But at the end of the day, they are not original to the text — they give the audience what they want to see instead of what they might be forced to see. But, as I have said before, the performing arts are not meant to comfort us, they are meant to challenge us. They should make us slightly uncomfortable. They should force us to confirm our prejudices, not confirm to us that we have overcome other people’s prejudices. And in this regard, unfortunately, Sorkin’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” fell flat.

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

Release Date: Thursday, January 17, 2019

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

SUMMER EMPLOYMENT

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

SISTER POLYGON RECORDS

“It’s almost like the version of Priests that made Nothing Feels Natural really died,” D.C.based trio Priests are quoted as saying in a preview of their new album, The Seduction of Kansas. This death, which was followed by prompt rebirth, Jenn Pelly writes, came in part due to bassist Taylor Mulitz’s decision to devote himself more fully to his other project, Flasher. Priests seized the opportunity to reimagine themselves in a more poppy vein, also bringing in producer John Congleton, who has worked with artists ranging from Earl Sweatshirt to bands like Modest Mouse. The resulting sound, or at least what’s hinted at by “The Seduction of Kansas,” is something that not all listeners seem particularly thrilled about it, as evident from the comments on the YouTube upload of the music video and this thread on the r/indieheads subreddit. To their credit, Priests anticipated the divisiveness of their new material. Back in Nov., vocalist Katie Alice Greer tweeted from the band’s account,

“I don’t think these are the songs some of you will have *wanted* us to make, especially if you liked (Nothing Feels Natural) & just wanted (Nothing Feels Natural) 2.” In any event, to point to the

“The Seduction of Kansas” Priests Sister Polygon Records band’s reorientation towards pop as evidence — or, worse, proof — that they have “sold out” is to miss the point entirely. “The Seduction of Kansas” is accessible but ominous and, lyrically, just as politically charged as 2017’s Nothing Feels Natural, if more vaguely poetic. In the song’s music video, Greer, drummer/vocalist Daniele Daniele and guitarist G.L. Jaguar dance across various ballrooms of a Victorian estate, sometimes pausing for close-ups in which they caress the busts of

white men whom I presume are now dead. We occasionally watch the video from an additional remove, as guests in a movie theater, able to see other seats lined up before the screen. As a direct tie-in, the song’s most biting lyric comes at the end of the first verse, when Greer sings, “It’s the last picture show, all the cowboys they get ready / For a drawn-out charismatic parody of what a country thought it used to be.” It’s a line that immediately calls to mind every instance that anyone, from a powerful politician to a stranger on Twitter, has said, “This is not what America stands for!” in the past two-and-a-half years, while also addressing the tired absurdity of it all. America has been up to all kinds of skeevy bullshit for as long as it’s been around, and Priests have always been — and still are — interested in putting the mindset that ignores that fact on blast.

— Sean Lang, Daily Arts Writer

ACROSS 1 Fear of spiders, usually 7 Google Earth predecessors 14 Aesthetic feature? 16 Hillary supporters 17 Lumberjack’s favorite pirate phrase? 19 Theater award 20 Actor Holm 21 Slender Olive 22 Lumberjack’s main interest in naval records? 27 Eero Saarinen’s father 30 Many Sinatra recordings 31 Pipe shape 32 Quick cuts 33 Gig gear 35 “__ pinch of ... ”: recipe words 36 Lumberjack’s way to punch an opponent? 39 Reverberate 40 Baltic capital 41 Store __ 42 Small matter 43 Toon crimefighter __ Possible 44 Check phrase 45 Lumberjack’s preferred ABC News reporter? 49 Civil War soldier 50 __ of the woods: mushroom type 51 Athlete who wrote a history of African-American athletes 55 Lumberjack’s reaction to an overly hard crossword? 60 Track foundation 61 French’s product 62 Bottomless pits 63 Ignore DOWN 1 Sideways whisper 2 Crackers once sold in a red box 3 Actress Lena 4 Quail group 5 Having four sharps

6 Pertaining to a heart chamber 7 PEI setting 8 Meteorologist’s scale: Abbr. 9 Veal piccata chef’s needs 10 Contrary to popular belief, its name is not derived from its trademark sandwich 11 Described in detail 12 “For all in vain comes counsel to his __”: Shak. 13 Old draft org. 15 Jane Hamilton’s “__ of the World” 18 Med. specialist 22 “__ la vie!” 23 A, as in Athens 24 __ dixit: unproven claim 25 One who knows the ropes 26 Tumbler, e.g. 27 13th-century Norwegian king 28 Sensor that detects objects using closely spaced beams

29 Texter’s modest intro 32 How things are going 33 Jungian concept 34 Corp. gettogether 35 Mate’s greeting 37 Bearded flower 38 Burn a bit 43 Food on sticks 44 Repressed 46 Cries out for 47 “Please explain”

48 Cowpoke’s polite assent 51 Tsp. and oz. 52 Places to unwind 53 Cilantro, e.g. 54 Watery swirl 55 Nest egg acronym 56 __ rule 57 Novelist Harper 58 Mormon initials 59 Mex. neighbor

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Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Thursday, January 17, 2019 — 7

Michigan faces test against Iowa TEDDY GUTKIN Daily Sports Writer

When the Michigan women’s basketball team enters Carver-Hawkeye Arena Thursday night, it will face one of the biggest challenges of Big Ten play, both literally and figuratively. While the Wolverines’ (11-6 overall, 2-3 Big Ten) game against No. 23 Iowa (12-4, 3-2) could have major implications for their NCAA tournament fate, Michigan will face a big challenge on the court in the form of Megan Gustafson. The junior is currently the nation’s leading scorer, averaging 26.4 points per contest while also hauling in 12.9 rebounds. Senior Hallie Thome, who is averaging 12.4 points per game along with 5.4 rebounds, will have her hands full with Gustafson, her likely assignment. Even though the Hawkeyes — who average 80.6 points per game — have the edge

in the scoring department, the Wolverines hold the upper hand on the offensive glass, which could be key to spurring an upset against a team that features a big as its focal point. The Wolverines grabbed 18 offensive rebounds in a loss at No. 9 Maryland last week, but were unable to seal an upset after turnovers turned a one-point fourth quarter deficit into a fourteen-point defeat. “We typically turn the ball over way too much but I think we’ve gotten better at that throughout Big Ten play,” coach Kim Barnes Arico said. “A lot of the Big Ten teams … like to play an up-tempo paced game. It lets them get out and run and score easy buckets. So I think it’s twofold, we need to do a better job executing off the glass rebounds and then just not turning it over.” While Thome will garner the most attention given her matchup with Gustafson,

freshman guard Amy Dilk and freshman forward Naz Hillmon will be instrumental. Playing big minutes in their first collegiate season, the two have impressed at times, though their success has not been without bumps in the road. “It really doesn’t slow down and become that easy until your junior season,” Barnes Arico said. “So we’re expecting a lot from a lot of young kids and I think they’re continuing to improve and continuing to buy into the process every day.” Thursday’s game against the Hawkeyes provides a major challenge for the Wolverines, but that will be nothing new in one of the nation’s toughest conferences. “The Big Ten is stronger than it’s ever been before,” Barnes Arico said. “Our league from top to bottom is just tremendous this year.” On Thursday, Michigan will experience that in full.

ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily

Senior center Hallie Thome will have her hands full Thursday, up against the nation’s leading scorer: Megan Gustafson.

It’s time to capitalize on Lavigne

fter

Hayden Lavigne saved 30 of 32 shots at then-No. 6 RIAN Notre Dame RATNAVALE on Jan. 5, one couldn’t help but think back.

both ways. At their best, with Quinn Hughes, Will Lockwood and Josh Norris, there’s no denying that the Wolverines can keep up with any offense in the country. Meanwhile, senior defenseman Joseph Cecconi, freshman defenseman Nick Blankenburg and freshman forward Garrett Van Wyhe are the ones forcing turnovers, winning faceoffs and defensively out-grinding teams to make Lavigne and Mann’s job easier. As the first three months of the season have shown, though, Michigan is also that

goal. “If you could bottle the effort in the victories, you’d be a billionaire,” Pearson said after the Wolverines’ 3-2 victory over Ohio State on Friday. “You’d sell it to every team just so they make sure your team comes out the same way and as hard every night ... I think we got a good wake-up call (last) Tuesday that you can’t take anybody lightly. Regardless of the record, the ranking, whatever it is, any team can beat you, especially if you don’t play up to your potential.”

At this point last season, the junior was locked in a battle for the starting goaltender job with Jack LaFontaine when Michigan coach Mel Pearson named Lavigne the full-time starter. And by this time, you’ve probably heard about how Lavigne and the Wolverines caught fire in January and rode that momentum all the way to the Frozen Four. This season, Michigan has looked like a Frozen Fourcaliber team at times, with dangerous skaters, versatile defensemen and two capable goaltenders in Lavigne and freshman goaltender Strauss Mann, who have started 12 and 11 games, respectively. At then-No. 4 Ohio State and ALEC COHEN/Daily the Fighting Irish, the WolJunior goaltender Hayden Lavigne started both games at Ohio State last week. verines — who entered the rare team that can lose in stretch ranked 28th in PairThe way for Michigan wise — went into hostile road many ways. The Wolverines to solve all those questions environments with everything can point to their 4-2 loss to involves it jumping off a deciMerrimack and blame it on on the line. sional cliff, and as it seems to To its credit, Michigan went Norris and Hughes being gone be doing, start Lavigne for the for World Juniors, but they out and did Michigan things long-haul again. convincingly beat a Notre on those days, beating the For every strong stretch Dame team 40 places higher Fighting Irish on a national that Lavigne and Mann have than the Warriors just days stage and splitting with the had this season, shuffling before without the duo. Buckeyes, in no small part them around makes it that If Michigan, without its two much harder for them to build thanks to Lavigne’s play in best players, can completely those three starts. on it. stifle a team that went all the Teams like Ohio State and It’s time to choose one of way to the NCAA ChampionPenn State can turn every them, and squandering Laviship and beat Ohio State on matchup into a high-scoring gne’s recent heroics against track meet. Notre Dame wants the road when healthy, what’s such tough foes could be a the explanation for a threeto grind it out and let Hobey season-defining mistake. goal third-period meltdown to Baker award-winner Cale the Warriors? Morris and a stout blue line The one commonality control the game. Ratnavale can be reached through those good and bad But Michigan, despite its at rian@umich.edu or on games? The revolving ques8-9-6 record, has remarkTwitter @RianRatnavale. tion of who is — or isn’t — in ably proven that it can win

When there’s nothing left to say Sixteen coaches have tried and failed. They’ve all offered an iteration of the same: Michigan is just that good.

hris Collins stepped up to the podium last Sunday, faced with the unenviARIA able task of GERSON putting into words a summation of his team’s 80-60 loss to No. 2 Michigan. “Seventeen teams have tried,” the Northwestern men’s basketball coach said. “And 17 have failed.” That’s 17 postgame press conferences for the oppos-

ing coach, trying to grapple with what had just happened and finding some positive takeaway to tell reporters. “You’re down 22 at half,” Collins said. “I was proud of our g uys to not roll over. We came out in the second half, we fought, made a couple runs, think we got it to 14 or so. … Hopefully that can be something good. Our young g uys got a lot of experience.”

Michigan coach John Beilein, of course, downplayed the accomplishment. Beilein isn’t one to dwell on achievements — even when those achievements include a 17-game undefeated start, the best in program history. Instead, he complimented the Wildcats. The game, he said, was closer than the score indicated and the Wolverines remained focused on the day-to-day. His words

“Seventeen teams have tried. And 17 have failed.”

sounded far from those of a coach whose team had just achieved history. “Everybody would like to have me make some great statement about being 17-0,” Beilein said. “It’s just another game.” But maybe, Beilein didn’t need to make some sort of sweeping statement about his team’s performance. Collins’ words — that he was proud of his team for cutting the lead to

just 14, that the young kids getting playing time was a big positive — already spoke volumes. Sure, Collins’ Northwestern team isn’t very good. But he’s not the only one that has given similar soundbites. Last week, coach Archie Miller took his No. 21 Indiana squad, featuring five-star freshman g uard Romeo Langford and preseason All-Big Ten forward Juwan Morgan, to Ann Arbor. The Hoosiers lost by 11 instead of 20, but the overall outcome was no different — just another team that had tried and failed to solve Michigan. The first words of Miller’s postgame presser? “Michigan did a great job.” He concluded his opening statement by saying, “They’re really good and I give them credit.” There it was again, that the Wolverines were simply really talented and hard to beat. Sure, he nitpicked his team’s f laws like all coaches do, but it was all couched in the context of how a squad that good will put all your weaknesses on display. Back in December, it was Purdue’s Matt Painter who found himself in a similar situation. The Boilermakers, then ranked 19th in the country, had lost by 19 points. He echoed the same refrains. “You gotta give them credit,” Painter said. “They’re a good team.” Then, he rattled off

When you’re 17-0, reporters inevitably ask how it feels.

his team’s mistakes. Bad defense. A slow start. The list went on. “When you’re not disciplined, they’re gonna get you,” Painter said. “They’re gonna get you anyways.” Michigan is that team now. The one you can’t expect to give you anything. The one that provides opposing players a good “learning experience.” The one that leaves coaches at a loss for words to the point where the only thing left to do is tip their hats to the Wolverines for being the better team. When you’re 17-0, reporters inevitably ask how it feels. Beilein doesn’t bite, because that isn’t who he is. Instead, he undersells the team’s success — pointing out the day’s impressive performances, talking about things to improve, then moving on. Meanwhile, for the opposing coaches, the press conferences are an exercise in futility, a laundry list of what went wrong. Then, inevitably, an acknowledgment. Give the Wolverines credit. It’s hard to beat a team like that. Unlike Beilein, these coaches don’t need to stretch to justify their compliments. In fact, they don’t really need to justify them at all. The way Michigan has been playing speaks for itself. And that makes a statement louder than any Beilein himself could.

...the press conferences are an exercise in futility.

ANNIE KLUS/Daily

In his 12th season at Michigan, coach John Beilein leads a group that has won 17 games to open the season for the first time in the program’s history.

Gerson can be reached at amgerson@umich.edu or on Twitter @aria_ gerson.

Sports

8 — Thursday, January 17, 2019

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Notebook: Coaching hires, Gattis contract and offering a seventh grader THEO MACKIE

Daily Sports Writer

Minutes after Michigan’s Peach Bowl loss to Florida last month, a reporter asked Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh whether he anticipated any changes to his coaching staff. The answer, perhaps predictably, was a simple “no.” Three weeks later, that prediction has proven incorrect, as Michigan has already seen three assistant coaching jobs change hands. The Wolverines were unexpectedly thrust onto the coaching carousel on Jan. 7, when Greg Mattison — who had spent eight seasons in Ann Arbor, including the last four as defensive line coach — was hired as Ohio State’s co-defensive coordinator. Less than 24 hours later, Mattison was joined in Columbus

by linebackers coach Al Washington, who left to take the same position with the Buckeyes. After a week of uncertainty, Michigan has filled both holes, quickly replenishing its defensive coaching staff to the five assistants it had before Mattison and Washington’s departures. The Wolverines’ first defensive addition came last week, when they hired Boston College co-defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile, as first reported by 247Sports and later confirmed by the University Athletic Department. “Anthony has a strong reputation for developing all-

conference performers and future NFL players,” Harbaugh said in a news release. “Our student-athletes will benefit greatly from his mentorship. Anthony is an excellent addition to our coaching staff and provides great flexibility with his experience working on both sides of the ball and at multiple positions.” Campanile worked as the Eagles’ defensive backs coach for the past three seasons, including one when Washington was there, after two as the tight ends coach at Rutgers. Michigan already has two defensive backs assistants — safeties coach Chris Partridge and cornerbacks coach Mike Zordich — meaning it could

“Anthony is an excellent addition to our coaching staff”

move Campanile to work with linebackers. Harbaugh could also opt to shift one of Partridge or Zordich, and assign Campanile to one of the defensive back groups. Then, on Wednesday, 247Sports reported that the Wolverines filled their second vacancy by hiring defensive line coach Shaun Nua from Arizona State. Nua spent the past season with the Sun Devils after five seasons at Navy, all as defensive line coach, making him a direct replacement for Mattison. Now, three weeks after Harbaugh’s proclamation, the Wolverines may actually be done with their coaching changes. The one remaining void in the coaching staff is at wide receivers coach, after Jim McElwain left to become the head coach at Central Michigan before the Peach Bowl. However, Michigan is currently at its NCAArestricted 10-assistant limit, meaning any hiring would have to coincide with a departure or firing. Gattis contract finalized Michigan’s biggest offseason splash through three weeks has been its hiring of Josh Gattis from Alabama, where he was co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach. Gattis was hired as the Wolverines’ offensive coordinator and play caller — a first under Harbaugh, who had previously forgone a traditional playcalling offensive coordinator. Gattis has brought an air of excitement to Michigan’s offseason, promising a highflying modern offense, similar to what he left behind in Alabama. Gattis’ contract, obtained by The Daily via a Freedom of Information Act request, runs three years with a base annual salary of $900,000, making him the Wolverines’ third-highest paid assistant after passing game coordinator Pep Hamilton and defensive coordinator Don Brown. He will also receive a signing

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh has now made three changes to his staff.

bonus of $200,000 and could earn up to $400,000 per year in bonuses. If Gattis leaves for another assistant coaching job before Jan. 10, 2020, he owes Michigan a $400,000 buy-out. That figure drops to $250,000 if he leaves between Jan. 10, 2020 and Dec. 1, 2021. However, the buy-out will be voided if Gattis — who has never previously been a head coach — leaves for a head coaching job. The contract also permits him to freely interview with NFL teams. Harbaugh offers seventh grader One month after Michigan signed 25 players to its 2019 recruiting class, Harbaugh extended another offer — this time to a quarterback who won’t graduate middle school until 2020, making him the first offer of the Wolverines’ 2024 recruiting class. Isaiah Marshall is just 13 years old, making him the youngest recruit — and the second seventh grader — that Michigan has ever offered. He is the son of former Northwestern running back Brian Marshall, who currently coaches at Southfield A&T outside of Detroit.

“He’s pretty laid back and humble, we keep a controlled environment for the most part,” Brian told the Detroit Free Press. “He’s pretty grounded. My brothers and I have all played Division I football, we’ve been there. We have experience on our side. We control the social media thing. “But I still remember the (recruiting) process. And we coach the kids through it now. He grew up watching Sam Johnson play high school and youth ball, he was the first middle school kid in Michigan to get an offer. So he’s seen the process. He’s not your normal kid when it comes to the distraction factor.” Because Marshall still has more than five years before he can graduate high school, this offer carries little practical meaning. The Wolverines offered linebacker Owen Pappoe — then an eighth grader — in 2015, but were not among his final choices when he ultimately committed to Auburn last month. However, it does show early interest and generate media and fan interest during a quiet time of year before National Signing Day in February.