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Thursday, January 24, 2019
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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BUSINESS
Businesses offer gifts of marijuana to customers ALEC COHEN/Daily
Smoke’s Chocolate finds loophole in regulations using medical cannabis
Vice President for Government Relations Cynthia Wilbanks discusses getting acquainted with new members of congress in an interview with The Daily Monday.
VP of Government Relations talks strategy, forming relationships
The Daily sits down with Cynthia Wilbanks to discuss lobbying efforts LEAH GRAHAM Daily News Editor
ALYSSA MCMURTRY Daily Staff Reporter
The Michigan Daily sat down with Cynthia Wilbanks, vice president of the Office of Government Relations, to discuss the University of Michi-
gan’s efforts to work with officeholders and agencies at the local, state and federal level. Wilbanks and her office manage interactions with government officials in regard to legislative and regulatory policy that affects the University and its programs. Organization including corporations, political action committees and nonprofits hire lobbyists to influence
government officials and agencies by advocating for or against certain policies. Wilbanks said the University’s strategy for working with lawmakers and government agencies takes a personal approach. “In this office, it’s relationships that are really the foundation of our work,” Wilbanks said. “We use opportunities that are both formal
and informal to establish those relationships and they come in lots of different settings, so it’s not always going up to the state capital, it’s not always visiting with offices in Washington. It’s a variety of ways that we work on those relationships and the same is true for the community relations work. See GOVERNMENT, Page 3A
ATTICUS RAASCH Daily Staff Reporter
Though marijuana is now legal in Michigan, the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs does not yet provide commercial licenses for recreational marijuana dispensaries. Following the Dec. 6 legalization, local and out-of-state businesses have identified a gray area in the law, allowing them to gift marijuana with the sale of other products such as sweets, snacks and even art. Smoke’s Chocolate, an Ann Arbor-based business created by Marc Bernard, has capitalized on the period between legalization of
marijuana and the opening of recreational dispensaries in Michigan, according to Jack Groom, Business senior and head of development at Smoke’s Chocolate. “On the day after legalization (Bernard) put his website up, just taking advantage of the way the law is written and how it exists, relying on precedent out of several different states where people have employed a similar business model,” Groom said. According to the Michigan Taxation and Regulation of Marihuana Act, gifting of marijuana is permissible in a restricted amount and manner.
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HopCat renames its signature side, Whitmer’s BLI poetry directives celebrates over a decade of operation workshop GOVERNMENT
target bias on the job New orders to protect members of LGBTQ community, women BEN ROSENFELD Daily Staff Reporter
Since her inauguration on Jan. 1, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has taken action to reform and increase access to institutions of government for minorities and women, particularly through the use of executive directives. In the last several weeks, two directives in particular have generated conversation over their potential impact on the economy and people of Michigan. The first directive, signed Jan. 7, prohibits any discrimination or withholding of opportunities from government employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The second, signed Jan. 8, intends to limit wage inequality by prohibiting state agencies and employers from asking about applicants’ previous salaries until a job and salary offer has been made. These orders are among ten signed by Gov. Whitmer in her first several weeks in office, aimed towards demonstrating her administration’s intent to resolve social disparities in income and employment. See WHITMER, Page 3A
CAMPUS LIFE
Local restaurant gives out promotional fries, goes from ‘Crack’ to ‘Cosmik’ CLAIRE HAO
Daily Staff Reporter
Just in time for its 11th anniversary, Michigan-based craft beer bar HopCat rolled out a new name for its awardwinning Crack Fries on Jan. 14. The newly deemed “Cosmik Fries” were the center of anniversary celebrations Saturday, during which free fries and a fries eating contest were offered at each HopCat location. According to Joe Sonheim, director of marketing for BarFly Ventures, the decision to change the name was made in early December by executives at BarFly Ventures, the parent company of HopCat. Although
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the name Crack Fries was originally meant to be clever, executives realized it could be insensitive towards the crack epidemic and drug addiction, Sonheim explained. “When we started the company, ‘crack fries’ was certainly meant to be a tongue-in-cheek reference,” Sonheim said. “But as the company grew and expanded into different markets, such as Detroit, we’ve had to figure out who we are in the community. We’ve gotten good feedback from the community … based on that feedback, we decided it was the right thing to do to change the name.” Despite the name change, a December statement by HopCat assures customers the
ingredients and recipe of the fries, named one of the ten best French fries in America, will remain the same. The new name for the signature side — Cosmik Fries — is inspired by the song “Cosmik Debris” by Frank Zappa, one of founder Mark Sellers’s favorite musicians. Featuring lyrics about a mystery man selling a magical substance made “with the oil of Aphrodite” and “the dust of the Grand Wazoo,” he says the song, and thus the new name, is more reflective of HopCat’s image. “A big part of HopCat is our relationship to music,” Sonheim said. “(The song “Cosmik Debris”) is a little weird, a little out there, definitely fun
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HopCat, located on Maynard Street, enters its 11th year of business in Ann Arbor.
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and we thought it was a pretty good tie-in to who we are. It speaks to the culture and vibe of our HopCat restaurant.” The name change has received much attention, even receiving coverage by national platforms like Fox News. Online reactions to the new name have been mixed. Some customers expressed the move conforms to a trend of political correctness. In one tweet which has been liked by 500 people and retweeted 48 times at the time of publication, Liv Brosofske, a student at Western Michigan University, claimed the name change is another example of oversensitivity. See HOPCAT, Page 3A
INDEX
Vol. CXXVIII, No. 50 ©2018 The Michigan Daily
examines creativity
Acclaimed author, poet Zilka Joseph oversees mindfulness discussions NESMA DAOUD
Daily Staff Reporter
On Wednesday, the University of Michigan’s Barger Leadership Institute invited Zilka Joseph, internationally acclaimed poet, author and teacher, to lead a poetry workshop in Weiser Hall for advanced fellows in a BLI cohort called the Mindful Leader Program. Joseph’s seminar focused on channeling creativity to engage with our lives and work. The Mindful Leader program is a contemplative practices program composed of a 10-person cohort. The cohort engages in mindfulness-related discussions, workshops and other immersive and experiential learning opportunities. It provides participants with diverse approaches to cultivating mindfulness, along with the language and skills to practice habits of mindful leadership. BLI Director Ramaswami Mahalingam introduced Joseph to the cohort and praised not only her poetry, but also her ability to immediately connect to students and explain nuanced poetic concepts efficiently. See POETRY, Page 3A
NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 SPORTS......................6
SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............5 ARTS...................1B- 6B
News
2A — Thursday, January 24, 2019
MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers
TUESDAY: By Design
WEDNESDAY: This Week in History
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THURSDAY: Twitter Talk
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Regardless of my family income I am a member of the proletariat and I know this because I am a UMich student who still does not have Airpods… if anyone has known oppression it’s me
UMSN’s @JodyRLori was named a recipient of #UMich’s 2019 Sarah Goddard Power Award! It recognizes people who have made “significant contributions to the betterment of women through their leadership, scholarship or other ways in their professional life.”
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#UMichMLK speakers Julia Putnam and Tim Wise explored topics of resistance, misremembering history, and unraveling injustice at yesterday’s memorial keynote lecture.
Congratulations to President Emeritus Jim Duderstadt on fifty years of contributions to U-M, national science policy, and the discipline of nuclear engineering, Thank you for your leadership and #GoBlue!
Our first tweet - The Michigan Men’s Basketball team mobs Charles Matthews after hitting a buzzer beater to take down Minnesota, photo by Natalie Stephens.
all other schools/colleges around Ann Arbor: *closes* umich: *pretends nothing happened*
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W O LV E R I N E O F T H E W E E K As a global University, why is it important to collaborate with outside countries?
“I think that it’s crucial for U-M to collaborate with outside countries to learn from multicultural perspectives and be informed about international affairs in pursuance of becoming intercultural global citizens. For example, as a member of Asia Business Conference, we believe open dialogue with business leaders will be a critical components to help students learn more about other cultures...” Art & Design Junior Po Yee Wong
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Recently opened shop takes an apothecary-style approach to organic medicine, patient service Daily Staff Reporter
A new pharmacy on E. Stadium Blvd. celebrated its grand opening on Tuesday. Ann Arbor Pharmacy is an apothecary offering customers service using a European and Middle Eastern approach. Manager Ziad Ghamraoui said he wanted to change the way his neighbors and other members of the Ann Arbor community
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received health and beauty supplies. After owning two pharmacies in the area, he decided to take a different approach to his new business endeavor. “I wanted … my community to have access to high-end, organic products,” Ghamraoui said. “I didn’t want to carry the mainstream stuff, so (I) decided to opt to carry high-quality products that you can’t find at a normal pharmacy.” These products include soaps, herbal and homeopathic medi-
puzzle by sudokusyndication.com
cation, as well as high potency multivitamins. Ghamraoui said he was deliberate in the products that he chose to carry. “Everything in the store is very well-curated,” Ghamraoui said. “We went through a very selective process and chose pretty much some of the best names out there that we believe the community can use and is to their best interest.” Nursing sophomore Caroline Baubonis said the pharmacy presented a creative take on self care. “Opening organic pharmacies in Ann Arbor expands the realm of medicine beyond the laboratory,” Baubonis said. Ghamraoui said he aims to change the speed and efficiency in which customers receive their prescriptions. “Usually it takes 15, 20, 30 minutes to get your prescriptions,” Ghamraoui said. “If you’ve been to the Middle East or Europe, you’re in and out in minutes. It shouldn’t take hours to fill a prescription, so we are a pharmacy that has a professional staff that allows people to be in and out in seconds. We pride ourselves on this.” Ghamraoui said while his staff is not comprised of physicians, they are knowledgeable in customer service and individualized patient care. “Our staff went to school for health care and did services on dermatology,” Ghamraoui said. “We have a background. We may not be certified as physicians but we know about skin care and the pharmacists are
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the most accessible health care professionals.” The design of the pharmacy mimics a European boutique and was created by Lisa Suave, a designer at Synecdoche Designs. Ghamraoui praised Suave’s work. “I told her this is what I want — this is what international pharmacies look like,” Ghamraoui said. “She did a good job on my vision.” LSA sophomore Maxine Taskin stopped into the pharmacy to take a look. She said she thought the store was a good complement to the local business community. “I think that this is a great addition to both the Ann Arbor and University of Michigan community,” Taskin said. “Many students have specific health or skin problems that they either have to order a variety of expensive products online to treat, or have to deal with alone and away from home. Having a resource to help not only provide high-end products but help diagnose specific issues is amazing.” Ghamraoui said a lot of friends and local business owners attended a grand opening party, mediated by the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti Regional Chamber of Commerce. “We were offering discounts and lots of people bought lots of products at the grand opening sale price,” Ghamraoui said. “It was very humbling … My mom and dad happened to be in town and beat the storm (that night), so I was happy they were there. We brought some sweets from Lebanon and Syria and catered Lebanese food.”
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HOPCAT From Page 1A “Hopcat is changing the name of their crack fries because of the crack epidemic in America,” Brosofske wrote. “y’all are getting way too soft [sic].” However, others on social media applauded HopCat and expressed their belief the original name was insensitive. David Sampson, CEO of Mariners Inn, a substance abuse treatment and recovery center in southeast Michigan, published an editorial representing Mariners Inn in the Detroit Free Press supporting the change. “Comparing a delicious food item with an illicit substance that is responsible for devastating our communities is objectively hurtful,” Sampson wrote in the editorial. “While I was not surprised to see negative social media commentary in response to HopCat’s decision, I was certainly disappointed that a company would receive such backlash over a move that was intended to create inclusion. The perspective that people are being too sensitive, too politically correct or that they are “just fries” is a surface-level look at a disease that has destroyed the lives of millions.” While eating lunch at HopCat Ann Arbor with family, LSA freshman Jake Moody, kicker on the Universit y of Michigan football team, said he comes to HopCat particularly for the fries. While he thinks the name change is unnecessary, he does not mind as long as
POETRY From Page 1A “It is rare to have someone who is a good poet but also a good teacher who is committed to teaching, because artists aren’t always the best teachers,” Mahalingam said. Joseph began the workshop by instructing the cohorts to maintain an open mind and proceeded to guide them through a number of exercises revolving around a topic as simple as food. Through the exercises, the cohorts reflected, reminisced and were able to share their diverse array of experiences and specific memories attached to them.
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the fries themselves do not change. “I don’t really think the (name change) was needed, but as long as everybody’s happy and the fries stay the same, I’m okay with it,” Moody said. Regardless of the name change, Cosmik Fries remain as popular as ever. According to Emmeline Jurek, general manager of HopCat Ann Arbor, 202 orders of Cosmik Fries were served to over 900 customers on Saturday at the Ann Arbor location in celebration of HopCat’s 11th anniversary, equaling to about 50 pounds of free fries. This does not include the fries set aside for the annual fries eating contest, which Jurek estimates contribute roughly another 20 pounds. A tradition since HopCat’s first anniversary, the fries eating contest collected $5 from each competitor, which was then matched by HopCat for donation to a charit y chosen by each HopCat location. According to Jurek, 12 people competed in the Ann Arbor contest, resulting in $120 raised for the Humane Societ y of Huron Valley. Plymouth resident Matthew Holowicki won the contest, eating 3.4 pounds of Cosmik Fries in six minutes. He received a HopCat prize package valued at $500 and will advance to compete for the championship against winners from other HopCat locations at the 22nd Annual Michigan Summer Beer Festival in Ypsilanti in July. He has won the last four HopCat Ann Arbor fries eating contests and has been the overall champion twice.
“(Cosmik Fries) are excellent, and there’s a reason they’re so popular,” Holowicki said. “Eating contests are better when you’re eating good food. When they’re tasty, it’s a lot easier to get it down … Though if they want to call them Cosmik Fries, that’s fine, but they’re always going to be Crack Fries to me.” Jurek said there have been comments from customers about the transition from Crack Fries to Cosmik Fries. She said the change is in line with HopCat ideals. “When a HopCat opens in a communit y, part of our mission is to enrich that communit y,” Jurek said. “We’re a ‘people first’ company. That shows in the way that we serve, in the way that we buy beer, the breweries that we promote, the ideals that we promote. The fact that we made the (name) change based on our ‘people first’ mentalit y is what we’re sticking to, which to us just embodies more of who we are.” Each HopCat restaurant is unique depending on the city that it is in, Jurek explained. HopCat Ann Arbor, for example, focuses on hiring local and supporting local charities. This investment in the communit y, according to Jurek, is part of what contributes to HopCat’s longstanding success. “I think we vibe really well with the funky, diverse, open-minded part of Ann Arbor,” Jurek said. “We’re a chain because people like us, not because we’re this conglomerate that’s going to take over the city.”
LSA senior Jessica Selzer said this workshop dispelled misconceptions she had about poetry and motivated her to write more poetry in her spare time. “I was never a fan of creative writing,” Selzer said. “It’s more abstract, and there was always an assumption that poetry has to rhyme and be in a certain format. But the (techniques we learned in this workshop) are so simple, and make me want to continue writing what is on my mind since it broke the myth that poetry is supposed to be a certain way.” Joseph’s poetry is unique, drawing on her experiences as an immigrant from India and a member of the small IndianJewish minority and diasporic
community. These themes, as well as those tackling identity, are central to her workshops. Joseph has cited these experiences as motivating her to become more inclusive and sensitive to diverse backgrounds in her work. As the workshop continued, the BLI cohorts journeyed through vivid and poignant personal stories. According to LSA sophomore Olivia Chan, the workshop provided her with the specific techniques to advance her creative writing. “Although I have been dabbling in poetry, Zilka has encouraged me (to pursue it further) and I will use the techniques to declutter my mind and when I journal,” Chan said.
City concludes annual deer cull early Sharpshooters kill 112 deer in parks and nature areas across Ann Arbor LEAH GRAHAM Daily News Editor
Ann Arbor’s fourth annual deer cull ended a week ahead of schedule, the city announced Monday, resulting in the reopening of a dozen parks and nature areas. From Jan. 2 to Jan. 20, sharpshooters removed 112 deer, failing to meet the city’s goal of bagging up to 150. In a statement, Lisa Wondrash, communications director of Ann Arbor, said White Buffalo, the contractor hired to carry out the effort, decided to finish the cull early. “The earlier than anticipated completion date is a result of optimal weather conditions since Jan. 2 that enabled White Buffalo to operate on consecutive days without significant breaks in between and within budget,” Wondrash said. “Per the contract, White Buffalo is paid for time and materials, not per deer.” Ann Arbor City Council approved the deer management program — which takes both lethal and nonlethal approaches to reducing the size of the local herd — four years ago in response to complaints from residents about damage to landscaping and deervehicle collisions. Ecologists have also pointed out the problems an overabundance of the animals causes to the environment, especially to tree saplings. A total of 386 deer have been killed and 78 surgically sterilized as a result of the program, which has been the subject of long-running debate in the community and cost the city upwards of half a million dollars. Bernie Banet, member of Washtenaw Citizens for Ecological
Balance, said if the city was able to reduce the deer population to a sustainable level, then only smaller culls would be necessary in the future to maintain a healthy herd size. “If we have, indeed, reached a level where the population is acceptable according to those measures, then, by virtue of deer biology, further culling will still be needed, probably each year, to keep the population stable,” Banet said. “These maintenance culls will be smaller than the more aggressive culls that have been needed to actually reduce a population.” A 2016 report from the city found 54 percent of residents supported the cull while 45 percent were against it. Banet said residents have generally become more accepting of the deer cull now that it has been around for a while but noted that “passionate opposition from some groups has not gone away.” One of those organizations is Friends of Ann Arbor Wildlife in Nature, which has called the program unethical and ineffective. Since this year’s cull started, protestors have demonstrated near the sharpshooters’ perches around the city, including some on University property. Disruptions from anti-cull protestors were blamed in part when White Buffalo failed to meet the city’s goal in 2018, killing less than half of the 250 deer quota. Earlier this month, City Council voted down a resolution to take legal action against the demonstrators who interfered with White Buffalo’s sharpshooters. The measure, introduced by Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2, was based on a state statute
that makes it illegal for people to interfere with the “lawful taking of animals” such as Ann Arbor’s deer cull. On Jan. 9, an officer from the Division of Public Safety and Security warned protestors on Hubbard Road about the consequence of disrupting the work of a sharpshooter stationed on University property, a misdemeanor offense that carries a maximum penalty of 93 days in jail and a fine of up to $1000. Melissa Overton, deputy chief of police at University of Michigan, said the officer did not issue a citation — just a verbal warning. She said a DPSS officer was placed at each of the locations throughout the University where the cull was conducted. “We have officers assigned to those areas during the deer cull for safety reasons and the specific complaint that we got came from the cull operator,” Overton said. “That was the first time that we had received that complaint that they were actually interfering with that, so that’s when we took action.” Overton said the warning does not mean anti-cull protestors can no longer demonstrate and that they continued to do so on University property. “They can, and they have,” Overton said. “One night there were six of them in the Arb, and they did not interfere, so they weren’t screaming into the woods, they weren’t obstructing or interfering in the actual cull. They were standing there, they were chanting, they were all in one area. We had no problem.” In Read more online at an michigandaily.com email,
GOVERNMENT From Page 1A Major universities like Harvard and the University of Chicago have offices in Washington, D.C. to oversee their federal lobbying. The University has had one since 1990, one of only a few institutions to do so at the time, which Wilbanks said put the University ahead of the curve. “We manage the interactions with the members of Congress,” Wilbanks said. “We partner lots of campus faculty and staff who have their own interests in federal policy, try to help them advance their interests.” Lobbying in Higher Education Higher education has come to inhabit a prominent place in the capital’s lobbying scene. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, as of Oct. 24, the latest reporting deadline, the education industry spent more than $58 million on federal lobbying in 2018, employing a total of 991 individual lobbyists. The top spender was the Association of American Medical Colleges at $3,370,000, followed by $920,000 from the Apollo Education Group, which owns the for-profit online degree program University of Phoenix. The University of California system ranked third, with $900,000 in expenditures. The University spent $385,000 on federal lobbying in 2017 and, according to Wilbanks, $290,000 in total in 2018. Following the inauguration of a new class of elected officials earlier this month, Wilbanks said her office has remained consistent in its approach to working with politicians and government agencies. “You don’t walk in with an agenda right away, that’s not our favorite thing to do,” Wilbanks said. “Our first thing is getting acquainted: We’re here, we’re going to be really interested in getting acquainted,
Thursday, January 24, 2019 — 3A you know, you have legislative priorities, we have legislative priorities, they are not going to be terribly different than what we hear from other universities, but we’re here in the capital so you’re going to see more of us, and what you’re trying to do is just build rapport.” Policy Interests Research funding is one of the University’s main policy goals. In fiscal year 2018, research expenditures totaled a record $1.55 billion, more than half of which came from $852 million in federal funds. Given the school’s status as the top public research university, Wilbanks said securing funding for those programs was a priority. “That whole research agenda is really important for the University,” Wilbanks said. “I could pick out individual policies, but it’s really policies that support expanding opportunities for our researchers, our faculty to be successful in pursuing really interesting ideas that benefit the public good, so that’s sort of number one.” Like other schools, the University focuses on issues that impact institutional operations beyond research money, such as education policy or health care financing. Wilbanks said state and federal tax policy was another one of her office’s interests. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was signed into law in December 2017, introduced a tax on the endowments of private colleges, affecting schools like Harvard and Cornell. Wilbanks said the change did not apply to the University’s nearly $11 billion endowment, given its status as a public institution. “Many of the private universities were affected by it,” Wilbanks said. “There’s one thing that most private universities are focused on right now: repealing that certain section of the tax policy.” Dealing with New Controlling Parties
In the midterm elections, Democrats won the House of Representatives while Republicans defended their majority in the Senate, leaving the chambers of Congress divided between the two parties. Wilbanks said her office was comfortable advocating for policy objectives with members of the majority and the minority party as needed, but noted the partisan split between the Republican-controlled state legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who was elected in the “blue wave” that swept the state’s top elected offices. Whitmer was a state representative from 2000 to 2006 and served in the Michigan Senate from 2006 to 2015, where she was the Senate minority leader for four years. Wilbanks said she already had a working relationship with Whitmer. “This is the first time in a while that we will have a governor of one party and legislature in Michigan of the other party, so we’re going to learn how to navigate and what the interests are in the legislature in the majority and the governor who is of the opposite party, but we know the governor,” Wilbanks said. “I worked with her when she was in the state legislature.” Although Wilbanks said the University’s policy agenda was not particularly dependent on officials’ party affiliation, she added the new partisan makeup could alter the landscape for certain pieces of legislation. “There may be issues in the U.S. Congress, for instance, that the U.S. House is going to be really supportive on, but you have to get it through the Senate and the Senate still is the opposite party,” Wilbanks said. “There’s going to be some challenges. If life doesn’t bring you challenges, then you’re going to be bored and I don’t want to be bored. We look forward to it. It’s exciting in many ways.”
PE N NY STA M P S DI STI N G U I S H E D S PE AK E R S E R I E S
RUCHITA IYER/Daily Roman J. Witt Resident JuYeon Kim speaks on her artistic journey as part of the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series at the UMMA Wednesdy night.
WHITMER From Page 1A For many Michigan residents, Gov. Whitmer’s executive actions are seen as the fulfillment of continued campaign promises to pursue anti-discrimination measures. In her inaugural address, Gov. Whitmer assured her voters that she would cross party lines to address their concerns. “I will be a governor for everyone, and I am committed to working across party lines to ensure that all Michiganders have opportunity,” she said. This sentiment was echoed in the text of both directives, as the first directly states, “all Michigan residents deserve fair treatment and respect from their government — in employment, state contracting, and when accessing services from state government.” According to Katie Kelly, Public Policy junior and communications director for the University of Michigan’s chapter of College Democrats, both of these directives will benefit Michigan residents, particularly those soon to enter the workforce. “I only see this as impacting future workers in a positive manner,” Kelly said. “Especially for women, we have grown up in a world where we are not always considered equal. Having a governor sign something like this into law shows that the state of Michigan values women’s hard work.” Directive 2019-09, which bolsters opportunities for members of the LGBTQ community, expands on previous legislation signed by outgoing Gov. Rick Snyder. However, Gov. Snyder’s policy made exemptions for churches and similar religious organizations, allowing these groups to choose who they extend service and employment to on the basis of religious belief.
While Gov. Whitmer’s directive only applies to public employers, Kelly sees the omission of a religious exemption as eliminating the possibility of discrimination. “By allowing for exemptions, (Snyder) created loopholes that organizations could jump through to discriminate against certain people,” Kelly said. “Governor Whitmer’s covers all aspects of possible discrimination against LGBTQ people.” Will Sherry, director of the University’s Spectrum Center, was also optimistic about the effects of Whitmer’s new legislation, particularly for LGBTQ students at the University. “A lot of the work we do is advising and working with students to figure out what they want for their own lives, and how they want to contribute to the world,” Sherry said of the Spectrum Center. “When we talk about building a diverse workforce, I think these are the kind of initiatives that can really help retain talent in Michigan and bring new talent to the state.” Gov. Whitmer’s two directives have also garnered a considerable amount of bipartisan support, suggesting an increased support for government reform. Dylan Berger, LSA sophomore and president of the University’s chapter of College Republicans, explained in an email interview both directives were a step in the right direction for the people of Michigan. “We applaud Governor Whitmer for working to ensure that all Michiganders, regardless of gender and sexual orientation, have a chance to succeed,” Berger said . “By building on the progress made by Governor Snyder, Governor Whitmer has proved that fighting against discrimination is truly a bipartisan issue.” Berger went on to state that this collaborative policy-making effort
should be used by Gov. Whitmer in resolving other issues facing the state. “Governor Whitmer ought to build on this bipartisan momentum with other key issues for Michigan such as fixing our infrastructure,” he wrote. Nonetheless, arguments have arisen pointing out flaws in Gov. Whitmer’s plan. In an interview with Michigan Radio, Holly Wetzel, communications coordinator at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Gov. Whitmer’s policy would change little in the way of wage discrimination. “Unfortunately, (Whitmer’s) well-intentioned solution is a flawed approach to solving the wrong problem,” she said. “It has long been illegal for employers to discriminate financially or otherwise based on one’s gender.” While these two directives demonstrate top priorities of the Whitmer administration, they represent only a fraction of the goals the new governor has aimed to achieve at the start of her term in office. The other eight directives put forth within Gov. Whitmer’s first several weeks in office are aimed at increasing government transparency and minimizing ethics violations. In her inaugural address, Gov. Whitmer expressed an optimism for government reform, and a desire to build off her early directives with future legislation and grassroots involvement in policy-making. “I am so looking forward to working with you over the next weeks and months and years,” Gov. Whitmer said. “We may belong to different parties, but we are all here today for the same reason — we are proud Michiganders first and foremost, and we owe it to the people we serve to cast partisanship aside, to roll up our sleeves and to build bridges together.”
Opinion
4A — Thursday, January 24, 2019
TARA JAYARAM | OP-ED
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MEGAN BURNS | OP-ED
T
The ethics of scamming in the millenial age
he art of scamming has been fascinating to me ever since the term “influencer” came to light. A scam can take many forms: It can be as simple as knowing how to get a free drink at a bar or as complex as manipulating financiers and loan companies into lending you money that doesn’t exist and buying Macaulay Culkin dinner to convince him that you’re German royalty. We live in a time when the internet provides anonymity at extreme consequences. Identities are stolen, music festivals are lied about and learning the secret to making an orchid crown is priced at a remarkable $165. Recently, reporters have begun to pick up pieces on scams large and small, and it’s drawing a lot of attention. With the release of the Fyre Festival documentaries on Netflix and Hulu, a TV show dedicated to Anna Delvey (the German woman who convinced New York’s elite crowds she was a European heiress) in the works, and a recent Twitter thread exposing the scams of Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway (whose Instagram bio reads, horrifyingly, “No not that writer, the one you love!!!”) it’s safe to say that scams are very in. Each of these scammers has been white, middle class and undeniably privileged. But does who their scams target matter? I started following Caroline Calloway on Instagram about three years ago. My interest in her at the time was mostly fascination. I didn’t exactly like her, but I was curious about her. Her posts were less about her pictures and more focused on sharing long, detailed retellings of parties in castles and traveling abroad. Her Instagram stories depicted her beautiful life with her beautiful friends, accompanied by lengthy, and at times, TMI descriptions of her current life. This was not an account for purely visual inspiration, and the target demographic was not your average American teen. Calloway was an icon for the girls who read fairy tales later into adolescence than they’re probably willing to admit and who still hold onto the romantic notions found in “Notting Hill” or “The Princess Diaries” — an impressionable group of middleclass white girls who wanted a life more exciting than their own. So when Calloway decided to produce “creativity workshops” in a national tour, it’s no wonder that her first event sold out in several hours — with tickets priced at $165. Calloway differs from Delvey
and Billy McFarland of Fyre Festival in a few distinct ways. Where Delvey and McFarland sought large-scale multimilliondollar scams, Calloway’s scams have been small and not blatantly manipulative. But where Delvey and McFarland exploited the wealthy, Calloway’s scams target her audience — mainly obsessed tweens, teens, and twentysomethings — and they’ve been going on for quite some time. Part of Calloway’s pull has been her extreme commitment to honesty through detail. Following Calloway on Instagram is like following her in the literal sense. It’s as if you’re standing two steps behind her as she goes throughout her day. She shares everything: her wake up, breakfast, trips to the gym, flower shopping, (oddly frequent) thank you note writing and especially her salad dinner parties that she seems to have almost nightly with various successful and vaguely famous friends. She doesn’t have a job and she doesn’t seem to need one. She lives in a studio apartment somewhere in the West Village. So if Calloway is spending her days stretching, eating salad and wandering around New York, how is she making money? Recently Calloway has denied her wealth (claiming salad ingredients are cheap and that she eats a lot of toast), but anyone who follows her knows she’s wealthy. Though Calloway claims total openness and honesty in her social media interactions, her followers aren’t tricked into thinking her life is perfect. They know she shows them what she chooses to: parties, boys, friends and orchids. When Calloway chooses to show the more negative aspects of her life, these insights are carefully cultivated with a victim-based narrative. First, it was her fall-out with the publishing company and her lost book deal (which she used to later sell individual chapters of the book she never published for $5 a digital pop, totalling to a staggering $50 for a DIGITAL book). Then it was digging up nostalgia and sadness for her days at the University of Cambridge and her ex-boyfriend. Most recently the sob story has consisted of mysterious and vague photos of her father’s messy home in Virginia, his mental health problems and her recovery from these childhood traumas — from which she has gained inspiration to pursue her most recent endeavor of creativity workshops. These creativity workshops
have been Calloway’s breaking point. Having promised orchid crowns, professional photos and the “super salads” she shares with her friends, Calloway delivered very little. But Calloway did more than promise salads to her fans — she charged them $165 per ticket and planned a full American tour, one for which she never booked venues. Yes, Calloway got in over her head and planned very, very poorly. Yes, Calloway’s fans have mainly given positive reviews to the workshops Calloway has given so far. But is it right for Calloway to take money from her fans to list off cliches and life stories that they’ve already heard? Meet and greets are sometimes ticketed events, and Calloway’s fans seem more than willing to pay the price to meet their icon. But Calloway isn’t exactly an influencer, and she isn’t exactly a celebrity. She’s a 27-year-old woman who probably read fairy tales much later into her adolescence than she’s willing to admit and who secretly views the fantasies of “Notting Hill” and “The Princess Diaries” as aspirational. Calloway’s fans love her because they know she’s essentially just like them (albeit a prettier, wealthier version). By charging these like-minded women nearly $200 to “be like her,” Calloway is manipulating her power to exploit a group of people who already hear her words as gospel. Calloway is, of course, just one of many twenty-something influencers trying to make a living off of an abstract brand she’s built for herself, and she’s certainly received her taste of internet backlash over the past few weeks for her exploitative endeavors. Yes, Calloway is a product of the broken influencer system. Yes, Calloway is likely not trying to exploit her fans on any conscious level. But had Calloway taken this criticism to heart and apologized earnestly, I wouldn’t be writing this piece. Calloway’s apologies were half-hearted, self-serving and angry. I’ve continued to monitor Calloway’s stories and each day they become more despicable. Privilege lets people get away with a lot and Calloway is no exception. Her scams have hurt her fans and will continue to do so. Her denial of any and all wrongdoings are what makes her actions all the more horrifying. She’s gotten away with it so far — why not keep going? Megan Burns is a senior studying philosophy and psychology.
LENA SISKIND | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT LENASISK@UMICH.EDU
It’s never too early!
I
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Hold on to the horizon
used to think I was the only one. The only kid to spend their car rides tearing through books, replacing themselves with the protagonist, stretching and pinching the character until I recognized myself in the ref lection. I was always sorely disappointed when the movie adaptations of my favorite novels came out, not only because the characters rarely looked the way I expected but because they didn’t carry the same experiences and histories I had molded for them in my mind. The specificity of a movie never afforded itself the kind of shapelessness I’d grown to love in novels. I kept these behaviors hidden from most until I came to the realization I wasn’t alone during conversations with friends in my sophomore year of college. Someone mentioned they spent the larger part of their seventh grade staring out of the window of their bedroom at a grey brick wall as if there was a window with a “boy next door” to fall in love with, prompted by the music video for Taylor Swift’s ballad “You Belong With Me.” Assurances followed, and parallel stories f lowed of instances where all of us had made insertions of ourselves in the gaps of stories. Each of us had cherry-picked the experiences of the characters which we identified with and skimmed past the ones we felt were foreign. They took their form in songs, TV or movie characters and many books — each as imaginative and ignorant of details as the next. Lately, I’ve felt the impulse to focus my time and energ y more on forwardfacing pursuits. I’ve switched out my fiction reading for academic journals and news publications. When I have free time during my walks
to class, I gravitate towards podcasts instead of albums — avoiding the latent guilt I feel if I listen to music and daydream when I could be learning something new. I’m driven to pursue this constant search for information out of a romanticism I’ve tied to my incessant curiosity. I continue to hope that perhaps the next topic I’m exposed to will be “the one.” I’ll discover the statistic that changes my mind on what I want to do with my life, or maybe I’ll read the article that opens up a world I could see myself dedicating my future to. But maybe, in these habits, I’ve lost sight of the things imagination affords to our lives. There’s an implicit hierarchy in my mind of the importance of consuming things that inform me about the world around me and those that fuel my daydreams. I forgot what imagination and mysticism taught me about myself, how I see myself and who I want to see in the mirror in my own future. All of that time I spent molding the characters in stories — highlighting the characteristics I appreciated — can serve as a sort of “word bank” when toying with the puzzle of who I want myself to be. College is a time when we’re told to hunker down, ground ourselves and prepare for our futures. We’re given a vision of the “real world” that we’re on the cusp of experiencing —harder and harsher than the one we’re accustomed to. The pursuit of imagination and daydreaming in the view of a cold and “real” future seems foolish. But something beautiful happens when you experience something as if it was created for and about you. You are transformed into a distorted version of yourself, too far to see but close enough to feel. At the beginning of this
month, I was sitting on a f light back to Ann Arbor from my hometown, and, as I typically am on all modes of transportation, I was hit with a wave of introspection. It’s my last semester at the University of Michigan, and I ran myself through all of the things I needed to get done over the next few months. I made a mental to-do list with boxes for my job search, mapping out my future, saying goodbye to friends, making the most of a barrage of “lasts.” It felt as though I was drafting a will for my childhood, planning how I was going to change and what parts of myself I was going to leave or take with me. I considered letting go of these behaviors that felt like testaments to my youth: my spontaneity, juvenile curiosity and resilient imagination. I felt it was time to ground myself in reality and find a more logical structure for my impending future. At that moment, I looked out the window of the plane and, in a scene that would prompt groans of cliché from readers, I saw a fierce and fiery sunset. Instinctively, my mind dropped all the preoccupied planning and I was overwhelmed with the sense that this was a sign. I realized I would never lose my imagination. I’d never stop playing the protagonist in my life, thinking of my world as if it was a story created for and about me. Every sunset is a sign, every character can teach me about myself, every song stuck in my head can be part of my soundtrack. Your imagination may not teach you about the realities of the world, but it can teach you about the role you’d like to play in it. So maybe it’s time to “unground” ourselves. And in your own lives, next time the sky is on fire, imagine it’s burning for you. Tara Jayaram is a senior in LSA.
KIANNA MARQUEZ | COLUMN
Why I have hope for the future of our environment
O
ver the recent holiday, I attended an event as part of the 2019 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Symposium at the University of Michigan. I heard about the harsh experiences three women faced as they participated in a student-led committee to confront racism in the South during the 1960s. Someone asked how the civil rights movement became as powerful as it was, and one woman reasoned that the might of those oppressed during that time period was aligned with the spirit of the youth. In other words, these women claimed part of the reason why the movement began to peak in the ‘60s was because of how relentless and driven they, as young individuals at the time, had to be not only to gain their freedoms and their rights but more importantly to survive in a setting that favored white terrorism. Today, there have been strides that mirror those of past movements in terms of collaboration among youth and the drastic nature of change necessary to find solutions to improve the quality of the environment. Since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House of Representatives committee on climate change would be revived, newlyelected U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has made known her adamant support for the Green New Deal as a plan this committee can pursue to create an economy. Driven by the stories and the mentality of people in America’s working class, Ocasio-Cortez has demonstrated herself as the standard bearer of this mentality for radical social and economic change. Referencing the New Deal pursued during the Great Depression and other major revolutionary plans that have been implemented during our history, she rationalizes the magnitude of this change to the economy towards improving
the environment is necessary: “The only way we are going to get out of this situation is by choosing to be courageous. (The Green New Deal) is going to be the Great Societ y, the moonshot, the civil rights movement of our generation. That is the scale of the ambition that this movement is going to require.” Ocasio-Cortez and other politicians have presented themselves as a beacon of inspiration for youth, while also contributing to the g row th of the Sunrise Movement. Following the 2018 midterm elections, Sunrise activists made themselves visible to the public by occupying Speaker Pelosi’s off ice and demanding newly-elected cong ressional representatives beg in to discuss and work on the log istics of the Green New Deal. In essence, the spirit of this organization encompasses the idea that ever yday people are the ones affected by the decisions of their authorities and lawmakers and, therefore, are the ones who can validate their demands for appropriate actions from the government. As these activists assume the position of demanding better from the government in terms of environmental health, fair economic activit y and just social standards, they are undoubtedly inspiring more youth to join them and more adults to gear their decisionmaking towards pleasing the majority that has become composed of youths. In other words, the Sunrise Movement is working to collect supporters and make climate change a deciding factor in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, in addition to strides they have already made for awareness towards the necessity for the improvement of our environment. Past and present movements show that the spirit of the
times during any era is carried and propelled by its young people. Today, the Sunrise Movement and their supporters are educated, level-headed and capable of addressing the concerns that we have about the world we are living in. We are the ones who are realizing that something has to be done to make a better future possible. We are the ones who are willing to work to make it happen. Just as Ocasio-Cortez mentioned in her contribution to Bernie Sanders’s national town hall on climate change, it is natural to fear change and to believe change on such a massive scale is impossible. However, today will be another example of the benefits that result from showing persistence and resilience in the fight for the life we want and the fight for demanding our authorities do what is right. As a youth today, my commitment to advocating for the improvement of our environment is exemplary of the spirit of the times. While I am constantly thinking about the purpose I will serve in this world as an engineer after graduation, I also think about the thousands of students here who will have an equally significant purpose to serve after graduation. Whether their majors direct them towards the medical field, public health, criminal justice, the natural sciences, mathematics, history, political science or even the realm of art, every student will have the advantage of belonging to a community that values progress in all sectors of our society. Because I know we and people like us across the nation and around the world will ensure history favors the bold, I have hope for the future of our society.
Kianna Marquez can be reached at kmarquez@umich.edu
Sports
5A — Thursday, January 24, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘M’ tops Michigan State, 30-10 Chiara Lommer, Lanie Van Linge
highlight improvement for Michigan DANIEL DASH
Daily Sports Writer
MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily
Redshirt junior Stevan Micic took six points against Michigan State’s Anthony Tutolo in last Friday’s match.
ADAM RICH
Daily Sports Writer
Forty-one seconds. That’s all it took for redshirt junior Stevan Micic at the 133-pound weight class to reverse the momentum in Michigan’s favor during its Friday night dual against in-state rival Michigan State. Micic attacked early and often, and by the 30-second mark of the match was halfway in on a singleleg takedown. In an attempt to sprawl and evade being taken down, Micic’s opponent, the Spartans’ Anthony Tutolo, dove beneath him. Micic, sensing the opportunity in hand, took advantage, driving Tutolo to the mat and onto his back. Seconds later, the referee blew his whistle, and Micic had seized six team points, an early lead and the momentum. Including Micic’s match, the fifth-ranked Wolverines (7-0 overall, 3-0 Big Ten) cruised en route to six consecutive match wins, icing the dual in the process. After sophomore J.T. Correll at the 184-pound weight class was pinned, Michigan responded by squeezing out wins at 197 and heavyweight, finishing the dual with a 30-10 victory over Michigan State (4-5, 1-3). “I really liked our team’s
aggressive style of wrestling last night,” said Michigan coach Sean Bormet. “I thought we did a really good job of pressing our offense and extending ourselves throughout the entire seven minutes. It was a great dominating win.” One particular wrestler who dominated for the Wolverines was a redshirt junior in the 165-pound weight class, Logan Massa, who scored nine takedowns, including four in the first period. Massa ended his bout with a 20-9 victory, securing four team points in the process. Another bright spot was redshirt sophomore Kanen Storr at the 141-pound weight class, who flashed his prowess from the top position, and battled his way to a 13-7 victory after falling behind 3-0 in the first period. “(His riding) is an area he is very capable in, and something that he has put a lot of work into, so to see him really commit himself to riding that kid, it really paid off,” Bormet said. “It was a big difference in that match.” Also paying off has been the return of fifth-year senior Alec Pantaleo at the 157-pound weight class, who in his third match back from injury dominated en route to a 12-3 major decision. His presence at 157 has given Michigan a boost
WOMEN’S TENNIS
Fahey displays tenacity JACK KINGSLEY For the Daily
Kate Fahey might have many attributes, accolades and awards to her name, but the senior Michigan women’s tennis player is arguably best defined by her determination to win. This was clear during a disappointing 6-1 doubles loss with senior Brienne Minor at the Michigan Invitational on Saturday. Fahey’s frustration with her play, even slamming her racket on the court at one point, was obvious as the 15th-ranked pair struggled to stay competitive with a lowerranked opponent. “It was tough,” Fahey said. “They’re a good team but I think Bri and I definitely needed to compete better.” Fahey, the third-ranked singles player in the country, had the opportunity to put the loss behind her with a win against an unranked opponent in Tennessee senior Sadie Hammond. While she was looking forward to coming back focused and ready to compete, Fahey quickly fell behind 0-3 in the first set. “The first match of the season, I think everyone was a little bit nervous, especially coming out of doubles,” Fahey said. “The momentum was
kind of on the other side.” While some players may not have been able to overcome the early deficit, Fahey’s motivation to come back and win the match was clear. Her early struggles did not get in her head, and she continued to compete, tying the set 3-3 and eventually going on to lose a hard-fought set 6-7. Despite losing the set, Fahey shook off her early failures and returned to her typically dominant play, winning the final two sets and only dropping two games combined over that span. “It was a tough first set and she let it go, and mentally was tough from the start of the second,” said Michigan coach Ronnie Bernstein. “So I think that’s the difference. She could’ve, after that first set, struggled a little bit mentally and not been positive, but I think that’s what turned it around.” As Fahey’s play improved, so did her attitude. Her screams of “Come on!” after each point went from ones of frustration to motivation, getting louder as the points got bigger and keeping her focused on the task at hand. “I’m a super competitive person,” Fahey said. “I definitely express my emotions a lot, everyone knows that. I think it helps me kind of because when I get within myself and I kind of shut down it definitely brings my level down. So I like to yell ‘Come on!’ I like to get pumped up.” Added Bernstein: “When you have her on your side you’re in good shape. She’s the best competitor.” Fahey finished the tournament 3-0 in singles with wins in straight sets on Sunday and Monday, and 1-2 in doubles. The final chapter of Fahey’s storied Michigan career has just begun, and Fahey just might be ready to lead the team to places it has never been.
to its already vaunted lineup. Though the match was officially a victory for the Wolverines following redshirt junior Myles Amine’s victory at the 174-pound weight class, redshirt junior Jackson Striggow’s match at the 197-pound weight class provided quite the drama late. Leading 6-4 (with 1:12 of riding time, which would add a point at the match’s end) with one second left in the third period, Striggow had a mental lapse, and was driven to his back for a two-point takedown immediately before time expired. Unaware of the riding time rule, the Spartan fans erupted, believing the match was headed to overtime, tied at six. On the mat, Michigan State’s Brad Wilton knew his opponent had the riding time advantage, but believed he obtained a takedown with several seconds left on the clock, and thus deserved near-fall points. Upon further review, the officials determined that because time had expired, Wilton did not hold Striggow on his back for more than two seconds. Furious, Wilton hurried off the mat, while Striggow breathed a sigh of relief. Reflecting on the match as a whole, Bormet could not help but be happy. “It was fun,” Bormet said. “It was a dominating win.”
took a blow when freshman Lanie Van Linge and sophomore Bella Lorenzini dropped their match, 7-5. Moments later, Ohio State clinched the sweep by toppling junior Giulia Pairone and freshman Anca Craciun, 7-6. Bernstein’s cup of coffee certainly paid dividends. Saturday’s losing pairs were separated on Sunday and Monday, and the new partnerships propelled the Wolverines to a combined five doubles wins over No. 14 Georgia Tech and Tennessee. Van Linge and junior Chiara Lommer stood out most among the new tandems, clicking instantly despite having little experience with each other. “In college doubles, you need to be ready to play with any one of your teammates,” said senior Kate Fahey on Saturday. The Van Linge-Lommer duo showed flashes of potential in a 7-5 win over Tennessee’s Johanna Silva and Rebeka Mertena on Sunday. Lommer’s left-handed serve and Van Linge’s quick reflexes at the net made the team’s serve tough to break, but Michigan’s hiccups on the serve receive kept the match close. Monday presented the new partnership’s tallest task — a showdown with the 14th-ranked Yellow Jackets’ pairing of
Nadia Gizdova and Dalila Said. With pressure mounting in the weekend’s final stages, Van Linge and Lommer played their best tennis of the young season. Behind Van Linge’s natural net instincts and Lommer’s heavy topspin forehand, the tandem put an exclamation point on the Wolverines’ night-and-day improvement with a convincing 6-2 victory. “I was happy with how the change went on Sunday and Monday,” Bernstein said. “Because we were more energetic, we were able to compete. (Our players) are so used to playing for themselves before they get here, so they need to figure out that energy piece and playing for a team. They’re hearing it a lot, and it was a completely different Sunday and Monday from what we saw Saturday.” A weekend which began with a deafening slew of “Go Bucks” in Michigan’s home building during a painful sweep took a 180-degree turn for the better. Monday’s success punctuated the team’s doubles improvement in encouraging fashion as “Go Blue” cheers echoed off the complex’s maize and blue championship banners. In the end, a mere cup of coffee saved the Wolverines’ weekend from catastrophe.
Ronni Bernstein poured herself a cup of coffee as she pondered some decisions she probably didn’t want to make just yet. Stunned, Bernstein was faced with one question after stumbling out of the gate: How do you move forward after a nightmare like Saturday? “We could see some (doubles) lineup changes,” Bernstein said after Saturday’s matches. “It’s something I’ll think about over a cup of coffee.” No team wants to start its season on the wrong side of a sweep — let alone one at the hands of its rival. But Saturday, the No. 10 Michigan women’s tennis team did just that, prompting some brainstorming from the coach. The first leg of the Michigan Invitational — the team’s annual three-day exhibition tournament over Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend — did not treat the Wolverines well. Unranked Ohio State marched into Ann Arbor’s Varsity Tennis Center and, just two hours later, left with a triumphant sweep in the fourmatch exhibition doubles series. Repeated cheers of “Go Bucks” rained down from the stands when the Buckeyes began the afternoon with a pair of dominant wins. After dropping the first two matches, 6-1 and 6-2, Michigan kept the scoreboard close in the last two. Despite the damage already being done, the hope of a quick turnaround injected life into the four remaining Wolverines’ teammates, who looked on from the neighboring courts. Just when it looked like the ball was starting to bounce Michigan’s way, the Buckeyes slammed the door shut. The MAX KUANG/Daily Wolverines’ rally aspirations Chiara Lommer helped turn around Michigan’s fortunes after a loss on Saturday.
Michigan places second at Windy City Invitational
NATALIE STEPHENS/Daily
Michigan coach Kurt Golder said his team hung in, but it was hard to be satisfied with a second-place performance at the Windy City Invitational.
BAILEY JOHNSON Daily Sports Writer
Justin Hopgood had competed just five times in his Michigan career. In 2017 — his sophomore year — he competed four times on high bar, earning a high score of 14.40 in his first-ever competition. Last year, he competed just once on floor exercise for the Wolverines. But on Saturday, Hopgood stepped up to the high bar with Michigan looking for a hit routine. Michigan had earned a lackluster 66.30 on parallel bars, with just two scores above the 12-point range. On the next rotation, high bar — Hopgood’s specialty — the Wolverines needed to get things back on track. Hopgood calmly delivered to the tune of a 13.950 score for a clean routine that ended with a stuck dismount. And while Michigan competed on that apparatus early in the meet, his score held up throughout the rest of the meet, and he notched his second career event win.
In part thanks to Hopgood’s routine, the Wolverines went on to place second out of the six teams at the Windy City Invitational with a score of 402.00. “It was surreal,” Hopgood said. “There’s really no feeling like that, hitting a great set and then finishing it off with a stuck dismount and then going back to a bench full of guys that had your back. There’s nothing that compares to that.” Prior to Hopgood’s set on the high bar, Michigan struggled on parallel bars, its first event of the night. It was similar to last April at the NCAA Championships, when the Wolverines began the meet on parallel bars and put themselves in an insurmountable hole. When faced with the choice of which event to start on at the Windy City Invitational, Michigan coach Kurt Golder decided to face the Wolverines’ demons head on and start on the parallel bars. “We did a pretty decent job there,” Golder said. “Not fully what we’re capable of, not what we’ve done in practice, but we
came away — that being our first event, usually you’ll see scores escalate throughout the meet, but one of our guys held for the first-place score, (junior) Mitchell Brown. We were really pleased with that.” Brown has been a more consistent figure in the lineup than Hopgood, but his role is typically to contribute a clean, dependable routine — not to be one of Michigan’s highest scorers. But when Brown took his turn on the parallel bars on Saturday, he flipped and swung his way to a score of 14.350, a career high and three-tenths of a point higher than the next closest competitor, sophomore Cameron Bock. The two Wolverines were the only gymnasts to score above 14.00 on the event. “(Brown) has kind of been a regular for the last couple years, but never producing the super big scores,” Golder said. “For him to come out the champion, and particularly that being our first event, was really good.” But Brown and Hopgood
weren’t the only gymnasts who notched event-title wins on Saturday. Sophomore Nick Guy’s score of 14.50 on vault put him in a threeway tie for first place on the event and broke his previous career high by a tenth. Outside of the three eventtitle wins — and Bock winning the all-around title — the nerves and jitters that come along with the first meet of the season reared their heads for Michigan. Multiple gymnasts fell or had other large mistakes, which left the Wolverines settling for second place rather than the meet win they felt they were capable of. “I’d give us a B,” Golder said. “The one thing is, all the other teams had a competition before this. Usually, you get a lot of the bugs out between the first and second competition, so I think they were all at a little bit of an advantage to us. “We hung in there with them, but like I said, you can never be satisfied if you could’ve won and you didn’t win.”
Sports
6A — Thursday, January 24, 2019
Michigan’s offense must improve
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
‘M’ looks to win on road TEDDY GUTKIN Daily Sports Writer
At home this season, the Michigan women’s basketball team has won all eight of its contests. On the road, it’s just 2-6. Yes, the Wolverines have had a solid season thus far and find themselves squarely on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament, but road games have been their kryptonite. With recent losses at ranked opponents Maryland and Iowa, Michigan squandered two opportunities to boost its resume with victories away from Crisler Center. With another road contest on the horizon Thursday night against Indiana, the Wolverines need to fix their road woes if they wish to return back to the Big Dance for the second year in a row under coach Kim Barnes Arico. A date with the unranked Hoosiers is the opportunity to right the ship. Michigan’s players don’t see the upcoming bout against Indiana — which is currently projected to make the NCAA Tournament — as a daunting task. In the end, it appears that the team is more concerned about staying together and taking the Big Ten gauntlet one game at a time. “It’s definitely different going to someone else’s house with their crowd,” said freshman forward Naz
Hillmon. “In those moments we just really need to be a team and lock in and cheer for each other.” Hillmon, who had 20 points and eight rebounds in Sunday’s 62-58 victory over Ohio State, has emerged as a key contributor along with freshman guard Amy Dilk. The two were instrumental in sparking a fourth-quarter comeback, something that the team had failed to do against the Terrapins and Hawkeyes. “(That win showed) us that we can do it,” Hillmon said. “When we’re down, we’re going to know that we can get back in the game or we know that teams can do it to us so it’s a learning experience either way for us.” Added senior forward Taylor Rooks: “We’re showing growth. We’re learning how to play 40 minutes and keeping our intensity all the way to the end of the fourth quarter.” Senior forward Nicole Munger knows that every game left on the schedule will be a battle, but she knows that the team is hungry and ready to take on any opponent, even if it’s away from the friendly confines of Crisler. “Every game in the Big Ten is gonna be like this,” she said. “It’s gonna be a grinder. We try to stay hungry and keep attacking each day, try to get a little bit better.” If Michigan wants to achieve its goals, that starts Thursday.
It’s definitely different going to someone else’s house.
We’re going to know that we can get back in the game.
O
n Saturday, then-No. 2 Michigan went into the Kohl Center and was repeatedly stymied. It was a frustrating afternoon that saw the Wolverines shoot just 40.7 percent from the field, score a seasonlow 54 points and drop their first game of the season. THEO But despite MACKIE the woeful offensive performance, Michigan coach John Beilein remained unconcerned — at least outwardly. The loss, he insisted, was a product of Wisconsin’s stifling defense. Though Beilein made sure to remind reporters that he never wants to lose, it was seen as a welcome opportunity for the Wolverines to reflect and improve after two months of straightforward wins. “Credit Wisconsin, they had a great game plan defensively,” Beilein said. “They made us score over them, like Wisconsin teams always do. … So it’s just a typical loss to Wisconsin.” And for three days after the loss to the Badgers, that line of reasoning held water. Wisconsin ranks ninth in adjusted defense and has allowed just four opponents to top 70 points this season. Then, Minnesota came to town. Wisconsin is objectively good at defense. Minnesota is not, ranking 12th in the Big Ten in adjusted defensive efficiency. And still, Michigan couldn’t score. For over two months, the Wolverines had not dipped below 60 points in a game. On Tuesday, they did so for the second time in four days. This time, Michigan escaped with the win, thanks to a baseline jumper by redshirt junior forward Charles Matthews that beat the final horn by milliseconds. But despite the win, Beilein’s postgame presser carried a much different tone.
Wolverines meet Nittany Lions with both teams at a crossroads RIAN RATNAVALE Daily Sports Writer
At the beginning of the season, Michigan was ranked fourth in the country and Penn State was ranked fifth. Now, the Nittany Lions are last in the Big Ten, with the Wolverines only one point ahead of them. Out of all the teams in the tight Big Ten this year, there might not be two with more similar season-long trajectories meeting than when the Wolverines and the Nittany Lions face off at Yost Ice Arena Thursday and on the national stage at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. When the two teams split November’s series at State College, Michigan found itself in a sizeable hole in each matchup through the first two periods. But in the blink of an eye, the Wolverines racked up a four-goal third period to win the first game, and another one to send it to overtime in the second, only to watch Penn State’s Nikita Pavlychev score six ticks into the extra period. At that point, the Nittany Lions seemed set. With college hockey’s most dominant offense and AllAmerican candidates like Evan Barratt and Alex Limoges, Penn State seemed destined to establish
itself as one of the best teams in the Big Ten. But since then, Penn State and Michigan are 4-7-2 and 2-4-6, respectively, since that rollercoaster of a series. After lurking around the top 10 of the Pairwise, the Nittany Lions find themselves at 18th. Like the Wolverines at the beginning of the season, Frozen Four hopes were not an unrealistic ideal. But also like Michigan, it’s on the outside looking in. “They’re a good team,” said Michigan coach Mel Pearson. “They can score a lot, they’ve scored 40 more goals than us on the year. I was looking at it — they’re dangerous. Just because they have an off-week or month doesn’t mean they’re not still dangerous. … It’s been a shot here and a bounce there, we’ve actually played pretty good. You can look at the record and say that’s not true, but a few breaks and bounces here and everything is different.” The parallels don’t end just quite there. To Michigan’s loss of sophomore forward Josh Norris to an undisclosed tear suffered at World Juniors, Penn State can raise its own World Juniorsinduced loss of freshman forward Aarne Talvitie and his 16 points. The difference? The
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wolverines have been here before — and it shows. When they lost then-sophomore forward Will Lockwood for the season last year, they still rebounded and found a way to get hot. Since losing Norris, Michigan has started a similar momentum with top-10 wins over Ohio State and Notre Dame. “(Penn State’s) going through what we’ve had the last couple of years,” Pearson said. “Now they haven’t had that before, I don’t know how they’re going to handle it, but it’s a similar situation.” To vault back up into the top of the Pairwise, both teams need this series to be more than a mirror of their inconsistent last one-and-a-half months. Michigan had a chance to sweep Ohio State, but let it slip through. But for all of the Wolverines’ blunders and inconsistencies, they still have a chance to be where they want to be. “Even if they’re 8-4-4, if we play our game, we’re going to be fine,” Pearson said. “And that’s what we need to make sure we’re doing, all the little things we need to do to have success. … We’ve been in every game since November 9th.” Getting back to the promised land, though, will mean more than just being on track.
“We gotta grow a lot,” he said. “We gotta grow a lot. We lost a 13-point lead late. How many times do you see that happen at Michigan, where we let it go like that?” Beilein was, of course, referring to the four-minute, 51-second scoreless stretch before Matthews’ buzzer-beater, in which the Wolverines went 0-for-6 from the field and missed a pair of free throws. But that sentence — How many times do you see that happen at MichiNATALIE STEPHENS/Daily gan? — could be used to describe Ignas Brazdeikis finished Tuesday’s game 4-of-18 from the field. to any number of stretches from it. Cause we’re jogging up the the past two games. was their best offensive possescourt, we gotta sprint. We don’t It could describe the 2:52 sion to that point, but as soon as run. (Minnesota’s) numbers in Michigan went before scoring Brazdeikis — who was shooting defensive transition, they’re not its first point Tuesday. Or the 18 42 percent from deep just five great. But we jog up the court minutes the Wolverines went games ago — released, he took without hitting a 3-pointer down and so, we can’t do it. So this is two quick hops of resignation, what they get, you end up getthe stretch. Or the nine-minute instantly knowing that he had ting scores in the 50s and 60s if stretch of Saturday’s second missed his ninth three in a row, you’re not willing to bust your half when they scored just five dating back to Jan. 10 at Illinois. butt to get up the court.” points, allowing a four-point It ended up as one of six That sloppiness on the fast lead to become a six-point defimissed threes for Brazdeibreak reared its head on Tuescit. kis, who finished 1-for-7 from day, when junior guard Zavier “We definitely didn’t play beyond the arc and 4-for-18 Simpson threw a pass away in our best game,” said freshman overall — part of a 3-for-22 team transition, allowing the Golden forward Ignas Brazdeikis on performance from deep. Gophers to curb Tuesday. “And “We just gotta make them an 11-point Wol(Beilein) let us when we’re open,” Beilein said. verines’ run and know about that “Some of our guys aren’t getting kickstart their for sure.” open, it’s because they’re chang13-point comeThe biging the basketball rules, saying back. Against ger problem, we don’t care. Wisconsin took Wisconsin, it was a player and just face guarded though, is that sophomore forMichigan has one of our players. And he didn’t ward Isaiah Livno discernable have any help D, but that was the ers who couldn’t solution. On Satthing, ‘this guy’s not getting a find Matthews a urday, Beilein look.’ And they’re making other 2-on-1 fast break attributed people do it. And every game is that would have the offensive different how they play us.” put Michigan up by five with woes to his team’s 16 turnovers. Then, a reporter brought Against Minnesota, the Wolver- 8:41 to play. The Wolverines Beilein back to his comments never led by more than one ines slashed that number to six, after the Wisconsin loss, when again. but were equally unimpressive, he called the loss a teaching But even when Michigan undone by a lack of ball moveopportunity. checked its sloppiness at the ment. Were you expecting more door and moved the ball like “The ball’s stuck a lot and the growth? Beilein wants it to, it couldn’t ball’s not moving,” Beilein said, Beilein, again, had no choice find bottom. when asked to diagnose Michibut to be candid. At one point midway through gan’s struggles. “I was. I was. … Probably the first half, trying to cut into a Then, he paused and offered foolish of me to think, ‘Geez, we up the type of candidness that he nine-point deficit, the Wolverwatched two days of film and it’s has rarely needed to display this ines ping-ponged the ball around just gonna carry over.’ ” the perimeter, from sophomore season. guards Eli Brooks and Jordan “And here’s another thing, Mackie can be reached at Poole to Matthews and, finally, the fast break. Sometimes, fast tmackie@umich.edu or on to Brazdeikis in the corner. It break, we shouldn’t even do Twitter @theo_mackie.
We just gotta make them when we’re open.
Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
Release Date: Thursday, January 24, 2019
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 It can cause a bad trip 4 Renders speechless 8 Late-night host with an orangeblimp running gag 13 Show of hands 14 Some Pequod crewmen 16 Tapped pic 17 Many Bach compositions 18 Sources of “Family Feud” answers 20 Soccer officials 21 Till this moment 22 Utah lily 23 Hush-hush org. 26 Rebuffed, with “off” 29 Mob scenes 31 In bygone days 33 Retailer with blue-and-yellow megastores 34 Does penance (for) 35 Clothing line 37 Go-aheads 39 Eye layer 40 Say 42 Hops hot spot 44 “Things Are Fine in Mount __”: Charley Weaver book 45 Augment 46 Unborn 48 Scale members 49 Preserves, in a way 51 Baton-passing event 54 Switch partner 55 Makes moist 57 Electrical generator 61 “The Matrix” actress Carrie-__ Moss 62 Clothing accessory, perhaps ... or what you can see in each of four groups of circles? 63 Cupcake decorator 64 Andean shrubs 65 Little piggies
53 Belgian river 34 Boss’ backup: 54 Phi __ Kappa Abbr. 55 Dish (out) 36 Witty remark DOWN 56 Son of Zeus and 38 __ de toilette 1 Center of power Hera 41 Strict diet 2 Panels illustrating 57 TV network restriction film scripts with much 43 __ paper 3 High capital Shondaland 46 Whole 4 “Hey, sailor!” programming 47 Get to work again 5 General 58 Summer sign 50 Japanese concerns? 59 Solace for a sad aborigine 6 Unit of work BFF 52 Subsidiary 7 Let off 60 Ref’s ruling structure 8 Solace 9 Responsibility ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: 10 Wii forerunner, briefly 11 Onassis nickname 12 Foreign policy advisory gp. 13 Plastic choice 15 100 sawbucks 19 Place for pins and needles 22 Salts, say 23 King’s philosophy 24 Jousting mount 25 Test for purity 27 Scottish isle 28 Half a giggle 30 Letters for short people? 31 Equidistant 32 Sparkly stone 01/24/19 66 Nero Wolfe creator Stout
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01/24/19
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2B — Thursday, January 24, 2019
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The machine and gears of art and administration ALIX CURNOW Daily Arts Writer
A body of art is a sum of a thousand twisting gears moving together in simultaneous harmony. Everything must be perfectly in order for the final piece to be complete. Among the most important gears in this elaborate machine are space (the location in which the art takes place), people to witness the art and, most of the time, funding for the art to be made. While the artists themselves are vital to fueling the art machine, arts administrators are the machine’s main source of power. Arts administrators provide the ammunition so the three important gears listed above can move easily side by side. “It was thrilling. It was terrifying. And still is,” Literati Bookstore owner Mike Gustafson said about opening the store in downtown Ann Arbor. The venue is home to hundreds of books and monthly literature events. When I asked Gustafson if he found support in the Ann Arbor community now, years after he and his wife realized their dream of opening up an independent bookstore, he didn’t hesitate to praise the community. “The wonderful thing about Ann Arbor is, we didn’t have to invent the ‘buy local’ wheel,” he said, “There was and is a very strong ‘buy local’ movement and culture here in Ann Arbor, and we are one little aspect of that. This community values local businesses and its independent mindset.” Although the community values local business, that doesn’t mean his work is easy by any means. “Every year, we have to reinvent ourselves internally: staffing, communication, our own roles as owners. But the original passion — to be a bookstore that helps people find books that can change lives — remains the same.” Gustafson’s impassioned attitude does not simply apply to booksellers and stores. It is this passion for the art itself that all arts administrators share. During my interview with Mary Steffek Blaske, executive director of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, the passion she had for both the music and the administration behind the orchestra pulsated through the room. “You need to have both hats. A hat of a for-profit with the heart of a non-profit. You’re running a business,” she said. “It’s amazing to work with a spirit that wants to be creative and serving people that way. You need to have the mechanisms that want to make it happen. There are so many layers — we are all working together. Whether it’s the orchestra, the musicians on stage, the board and the audience. We have to be working together. The artists know that we can’t do it without them and we can’t do it without us either.” Steffek Blaske smiled at me, her eyes glimmering with confidence in the seamless process of art creation. While her passion for the orchestra was riveting to witness, it also made
me a bit melancholic. I hear of people going to football games all the time, but the phrase, “Want to go to the orchestra?” isn’t tossed around in nearly enough of my conversations. When I expressed this concern to her, she shook her head knowingly. “Arts and culture in Washtenaw County fill up the Michigan Stadium more times in a season than the football does,” Steffek Blaske said. “We are hard-wired as human beings to make sounds, to make sounds together. Even if it’s sitting here
“It’s amazing to work with a spirit that wants to be creative and serving people that way. You need to have the mechanisms that want to make it happen”
at a coffee shop hearing the music, the voices. Going to a concert and watching this story happen with sound is beautiful. It’s something people don’t want to miss out on.” However, bringing people in to witness the orchestra takes a certain type of strategic planning. Administratively, she explained to me that the orchestra tries to draw in people from every stage of life. They do this through niche programming. The orchestra puts on programming specifically meant for elementary, middle and high schoolers as well as concerts for the elderly and everywhere in between. I asked her to delve further
into her children’s programs, and her face lit up with joy. “It’s so important to have artistic education engagements. To give kids, who are like sponges, this gift, which they might have not been able to find on their own,” she said. “Exposing kids to artistic works at an early age has the potential to inspire them to create art of their own.” And again, the balancing act of a fiery passion or a “non-profit heart” overcame Steffek Blaske. “It’s about humanity and making everybody have a chance to be their best selves,” she said. Soon enough, though, her “for-profit” hat was quickly donned. “And all this sounds great but, because of the way arts are structured, they need to be funded. That is why you need the organizational savvy of arts administrators,” she said. “How do you make the two circles, artist and administrator, intersect in a Venn diagram? This is real meaningful work. You need the board to be out there letting people know that what we do has value.” Funding is a huge part of arts administration and the creation of arts in general. As much as we’d like to create everything our imagination can think of, a lot of this can only be done if we possess the proper funding. Mary Cambruzzi, owner of Kerrytown store Found which features art made from recylced materials, told me about her attention to funding. “With a store this size, you have to have enough product turning over all the time in order to have the numbers work,” she said. Cambruzzis focus on the numbers allows Found to be successful. The store expands each year with new products and artisans. Cambruzzi said it can be difficult to pursue artists and ideas because she is also trying to run the business. “At some point, I hit a stride about six or seven years into it ... Where we were constantly evolving what we had, I had a good sense of what’s going to sell and what isn’t,” she said. Similar to the passion of the artists whose work she chooses to sell in her store, Cambruzzi holds a deep sense of passion for her work with administering arts. “With Found, you have a person you can count on to care about the stuff they’re putting in their space. I care about the stuff, whether it’s imported or from Ann Arbor, I care deeply about the stuff we put in our space,” she said. Caring deeply is a common thread I found in all three of these arts administrators. Crunching numbers, publicizing and strategizing allow the deep care to be illuminated for all to see. Arts administration requires an individual who is quick on their toes and who has great personable skills. And most importantly, who cares deeply about the finished work. The gears of a piece of art are endlessly shifting and molding to fit into one another. It is under the oversight of arts administrators that these gears move smoothly in order to create a well-oiled final artistic machine.
GARAGE
Instagram is the newest mode for art consumption BEN VASSAR
Daily Arts Writer
White walls have made way for white screens as Instagram has replaced the art exhibit or high fashion store as the public’s primary mode of art consumption. While at one time the art consumer was forced to move from one work to another in clockwise fashion around a room, the Instagram user can take any number of paths from one item to the next through tags, likes, follow suggestions, etc., in a never-ending loop of promotion. In this way, the art consumer is never independent of the material consumer. One man who was cognizant of this long before the days of Instagram is Japanese artist Takashi Murakami (@ takashipom). Throughout his career, Murakami has taken elements of traditional and contemporary Japanese pop culture and incorporated them into his recognizable cartoon-style graphics (you may recognize his work — it first came into American consciousnesses through Kanye West’s Graduation cover art). These graphics have been produced and reproduced in so many contexts over the years that one begins to question where one draws the line between art and commodity. The only thing that outpaces Murakami’s art is his Instagram. He’s now made over 7,000 posts, and it doesn’t take much scrolling
to find similarly inclined artists on his feed. One such artist is Virgil Abloh, founder of Off-White and now creative director of Louis Vuitton’s ready-to-wear menswear collection. “My brand started in the alleys of the internet,” Abloh told The Guardian in 2018. Unlike Murakami, who came to adapt to the newfound power of social media, Abloh’s success is solely dependent on its capabilities. Abloh’s trademark creation to date is the addition of bold, allcaps Helvetica Neue words in quotation marks to clothing, furniture and art for this brand Off-White. While the point of this was to highlight the deceitful nature of marketing and the superficiality of consumerism, the internet has powered these items to never-before-seen levels of hype and blind consumption. With nothing but a knack for popular culture and a bad social media habit (plus a masters in architectural design), Abloh rose himself up through the ranks from being an intern at Fendi to being the head of menswear at what could possibly be the world’s “it” fashion brand. Though he may be 38 and married, Abloh now flies nearly every day to and from offices, DJ sets (you get paid to have the aux when you’re head of Off-White and Louis Vuitton), and fashion shows as one of the many entrepreneurs of our generation’s catered interests. To supplement this interconnected online market
of fashion, art and music are companies like Complex and Highsnobiety, who make their money hiring 20-somethings to follow the daily activities of influencers like Abloh and Murakami (seriously, what must their employees do all day?). On top of their main Instagram accounts, which tally 3.8 million and 2.6 million followers respectively, each has a variety of side accounts like @highsnobietydesign and @complexsneakers that tally upwards of a million followers each as well. These pages maximize the likelihood that you will find these companies through some path on the internet (like sports? Find @ complexsports on your discover feed) and view their posts. It doesn’t matter whether Instagram indicates that these are ads or not. No matter the reason we follow these pages, each and every post makes some sort of plug that at the end of the day aims to have us buy something. Yes, there’s always been a tension in art between design and commodity, but never to the extent that we see it today. While the exchange of art and high fashion was once an activity reserved for the elite, it now permeates all levels of society. Although it seems that creators like Abloh are genuinely invested in their designs, we must always question the sincerity of companies that solely produce and share products catered to the masses.
SINGLE REVIEW: ‘ALL I WANT’
FABER AND FABER
“All I Want,” released Jan. 22, is the first single from the Toronto-based Broken Social Scene’s upcoming EP Let’s Try the After — Vol. 1. The track has a warm, dreamy, almost oversaturated tone in line with their most recent album Hug of Thunder. It bursts with urgent creativity, as though the band is rushing to fit as many ideas as possible into a single song. Broken Social Scene has always had a knack for creating a cohesive whole out of bizarre sounds, making the dissonant sound harmonious. The group has not lost its touch on this front quite yet, managing to make ALLISON ENGKVIST/ MICHIGAN DAILY
a distortion-heavy track feel like a balmy summer day. The experimental elements are made natural, and the whole
“All I Want” Broken Social Scene Arts & Crafts
package goes down easy. However, while “All I Want” is enjoyable, it lacks that same gravity that we know Broken Social Scene is capable of producing. Most Broken Social Scene
songs forcibly command your attention; they grab you by the lapels and dare you to stop listening. Instead, “All I Want” ambles by, pleasant and unremarkable. It’s not particularly catchy or memorable, almost as if you spend the whole time waiting for the song to really kick in. For any other band, “All I Want” would be a very encouraging single release. For Broken Social Scene, it feels like stagnation.
— Jonah Mendelson, Daily Arts Writer
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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VULF RECORDS
How the internet changed the way artists are signed RYAN COX
Daily Arts Writer
When I returned to school after winter break in elementary school, there was only one thing on everyone’s minds: What sort of gifts did everyone get? Everyone seemed to be interested in seeing if their presents were as cool as everyone else’s. In fifth grade, my good friend Tyler and I had each received iPod Nanos. However, there was one difference between our two devices — while I had about forty songs on my iPod (Radio Disney Kid Jams Vol. 1 and 2), Tyler had hundreds. I didn’t know it at the time, but there was no way Tyler was listening to all of those songs as a fifth grader. But either way, I was jealous. I wanted to have more songs on my iPod. So after asking Tyler about how he got all of those songs on his iPod, I learned about a website called Limewire where you could (or as I understood it), “Download songs for free.” And so began my relationship with music and instant gratification. Music streaming has been almost seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives. And with this emergence of a new
way to access music comes those arguing for and against that method. Many claim that streaming services hurt the artists, while others think that it allows listeners to experience much more music than ever before. Both sides are right, in some respect, but the argument that the artists are losing money from streaming services is only partially correct: Artists that relinquish control of their streaming rights to labels are really the ones losing out. Relying on an internetbased music platform without adapting to an internet-based plan of making, producing and serving music is not a recipe for success. With increased ease to produce and release music due to advancements in technology and the proliferation of the internet and an increased demand for instant gratification from consumers, the need for artists to have a label is becoming almost irrelevant. One of the most famous examples of an independent artist is Chancelor Bennett, or, as he’s more commonly known, Chance the Rapper. Bennett started by releasing his debut mixtape, 10 Day, to the world, garnering upwards of 500,000
downloads on the mixtape sharing site DatPiff. After being recognized as one of the most prolific up-and-coming artists by publications like Complex and Forbes, Bennett released his second mixtape, Acid Rap, in 2013 to even more widespread acclaim than his previous mixtape. However even after achieving such a high level of success and working with artists like Childish Gambino, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar, getting millions of streams on streaming services, and selling out stadiums across the country, Bennett continues to stay independent. When asked if he would ever sign with a label in an interview with Rolling Stone, Bennett replied, “There’s no reason to. It’s a dead industry.” A lesser known but still very familiar artist is Claire Cottrill, better known by her stage name, Clairo. Although Cottrill is now signed to Fader, a record label based in New York City, and has also been accused of being an “industry plant,” her initial success can be completely attributed to herself and websites like YouTube and Bandcamp. When I first saw Cottrill’s music video for her song “Pretty Girl” on YouTube
OWN
Celebs: Did you know they like to read? Just like us. Senior Arts Editor
Like it or not, celebrities play a pivotal role in our society. Whether it’s to take a stand politically or to promote a controversial diet, there’s no doubt that they have an extensive influence on the way we live our lives and how we fill our time. Consequently, it’s no surprise that their impact reaches beyond our screens and into the books we read. In 1996, the publishing industry saw a drastic shift in the way books were marketed to
the world with the introduction of Oprah Winfrey’s book club. The program ran for 15 years and many of the books went on to become bestsellers, certain titles selling over 1 million copies. Since then, celebrities everywhere have joined the book club craze: Reese Witherspoon and Jimmy Fallon both have prominent clubs of their own, and the books they endorse have had similar successes. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the books celebrities enjoy and publicly support experience positive public feedback. What’s concerning is the fact that authors and
books may suffer because of the individual tastes of the people directing what the public is reading. One economist pointed out that while Oprah favored certain classic books, the sales of genres like romance and mystery tended to suffer from her directed interests because the public was simply busy reading something else. Balancing a book’s role as a product while remaining true to the art form is difficult, especially in a world where people are ever more distracted by their phones and the newest thing on television. While celebrities can often
released, it’s not surprising to see how saturated the music industry has become. Every minute, twelve hours of music are uploaded to Soundcloud. That’s a lot of music. The amount of new music that people have not heard yet continues to grow at a rate that is unachievable for the average listener to catch up to. So how do listeners decide which new artists they want to discover? The purpose of a record label used to be to produce artists’s records and then promote them. Well, artists are already capable of producing their own work, so how has this new age of the internet and technology influenced that? Are labels still necessary for that? Well … sort of. While it’s true that labels might have more money to promote artists and send them on tour, artists are still fully capable of marketing themselves, and even booking their own tours. Social media has completely revolutionized the way we communicate with each other and has changed the way we advertise as well. It’s now easier than ever to reach billions of people that are connected online for free or close to it. The DIY music scene and its continued emergence in culture exemplifies the ease of selfpromoting and booking in the 21st century. Countless studentrun bands from Ann Arbor
have put on tours of their own, traveling across the Midwest and beyond without the help of a label; simply asking friends if they know anywhere they can play is enough of a start for them to go on tour. But self-funded shows go a lot further than DIY basement shows. Bands can easily book their own national tours, and even fund them. Sites like GoFundMe and IndieGoGo make it possible for bands to raise funds for tours on a grander scale. Ann Arbor favorite Vulfpeck figured out a way to fund a national tour back in 2014 using resources that would have only been available to them in the internet age. By uploading an album of silence to Spotify, asking their fans to stream it while they sleep and then using the money made through streaming to fund a tour, the group was able to fund a tour that was completely free to fans spanning from Los Angeles to New York. A musical artist’s metaphorical tool belt continues to grow and grow each and every year. The more resources they have, the less they need a label and the more they can focus on expanding their brand on their own terms. Consulting professionals can still be helpful, but the need for artists to sign daunting and binding contracts is just not there anymore. FADER
be the bridge between these two worlds, their constant advertisements pushing this or that book can change the way we perceive the text. The book becomes increasingly more like a product someone is trying
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EMMA CHANG
in late August of 2017, it had a couple hundred thousand views. Now, the video has surpassed 26 million views on YouTube, and although the single wasn’t added to streaming services until a short while after the videos initial release, the track has over 34 million streams on Spotify. All for a track produced completely by Cottrill on equipment she described as, “pretty shitty.” Although she has only been signed to a label within the past two years, one can see music released from Cottrill from as far back as 2013 on various online platforms. From covers to originals, Cottrill has the freedom to post whatever she wanted for everyone to listen to. And although she’s been accused of being a sellout many times, the consistency in sound of Cottrill’s music begs to differ. Sites like Bandcamp, Soundcloud and YouTube have allowed artists like Clairo to release their music to the world without going through a label. Although this can give artists a lot of freedom and options for their music, it also complicates things a bit. Because these services exist to artists for basically no cost, and home recording is becoming a cheaper and cheaper activity (many current computers including multitrack recording software upon launch), basically anyone can release music. Like, anyone. With all of this music being
Thursday, January 24, 2019 — 3B
Balancing a book’s role as a product while remaining true to the art form is difficult, especially in a world where people are ever more distracted by their phones and the newest thing on television
to sell, instead of a piece of art meant to help us understand the world. And maybe it could be argued that books have always
been products, that publishers have always been trying to push the sales of their new book, but celebrity endorsements seem to emphasize this point, rather than draw attention away from it. Often times, with their fans being such a reverent audience, their opinions become muddled with “expertise” and their recommendations with principles. Eventually, the books that are promoted lose the very individuality that made them appealing to the celebrities in the first place. Creating a book club is an art in itself, a potential key to understanding a difficult text or cultivating relationships one might not otherwise make. But clubs on such a wide scale, like that of Oprah’s book club, take on a corporate quality and lose the intimacy that makes reading a book with a group of people so enjoyable. On a local level, Ann Arbor’s own Literati Bookstore runs a variety of book clubs that present an interesting understanding of the way a book acts as both a catalyst for relations and discussions while also remaining a lucrative product for the store. It’s a perfect marriage: The monthly clubs provide a platform for Literati to advertise their store and their books while the local atmosphere of the coffee shop preserves the personal connection between books and people, overall avoiding the downfalls that come with celebrity endorsements. None of this is to say that celebrities are without their good intentions. They’ve changed the publishing landscape and the way we experience books — we can connect not only with each other but with our favorite stars through the books they read. Nevertheless, while the clubs are meant to encourage
reading and can often have a positive impact on book sales, their prevalence marks a society that yearns to confirm the idea that “Stars, they’re just like us.” We shouldn’t rely solely on Emma Roberts or Sarah Jessica Parker to tell us what books we should or should not read. Part of the experience of reading is browsing a bookstore or a library and stumbling on an up-and-coming author or an
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the books celebrities enjoy and publicly support experience positive public feedback
old classic that may or may not have a huge following. Even recommendations are integral to the process of finding a book — it’s when books undergo mass marketing, with the help of celebrities, that the real threat is evident. The process of reading is a personal experience and, if people continue to rely as heavily as they do on celebrities for book recommendations, books stand to lose the very thing that makes them marketable.
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4B —Thursday, January 24, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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The aesthetic of being a couple in the workplace MARGARET SHERIDAN Daily Style Editor
KEEMYA ESMAEL / MICHIGAN DAILY
Discovering works of art over at the Business school SAMANTHA DELLA FERA Senior Arts Editor
When you walk through the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, a lot of things may catch your eye. Perhaps it’s the flock of sharply-dressed men, unwavering and determined, barreling forward to an unknown destination. Or maybe it is the brazen coloring that targets your eye like a harsh ray of sunlight – orange paneling, yellow bricks and blue windows eerily mirroring not the colors of Michigan but the electric uniforms of Stephen Ross’s Miami Dolphins. And maybe, just maybe, it’s the bizarre interior design of the school — hanging cyndrilic lights and zig-zagging staircases to nowhere that are as if someone had a fourth grader read Kurt Vonnegut and then draw what it made them feel. I admit I am a bit of a hypocrite for poking fun at the atmosphere of Ross; I study there more than anywhere else on campus (though in large part to the fact there is a Starbucks, a cafè and it is a five-minute walk from my apartment). And for me, everytime I enter the extensive building there is one thing that draws my attention more than anything else listed above: the art. Yes, believe it or not, Ross is full of art. Twohundred and fifty pieces of it to be exact. It is hard to notice the collection, especially after a seven-hour bender in the Winter Garden that leaves your eyes feeling like they got the “A Clockwork Orange” treatment. But it’s there, in all of its beauty, irony and oftentimes weirdness, art permeates Ross from floor to ceiling. I will begin with the horses. You have to know the ones — beasts of welded steel protecting the entrance to Robertson Auditorium, a room named after the very man who gifted these impressive brutes. The horses are a duo, one is titled “Forgetting the Other” and the other “With the Current.” I love these horses, I really do.
Not only are they the result of extreme horse-girl syndrome (Deborah Butterfield, the artist, said “I knew when I saw my first horse that it was the most important being on earth”), but they’re really fucking cool. Giant horses made of steel? How hardcore is that? I like to think they come alive at night à la “Night at the Museum” and gallop freely through the empty halls until sunlight returns them to their permanent home. Journey past the magnificent beasts to the water fountain next to the Starbucks and you will be greeted by a series of sketches and drawings by California artist Chris Johanson. Entitled “Perceptions,” the pictures depict humans, ants, bottles and other objects accompanied by phrases like “PLEASE STOP YOUR HORRIBLE WAYS EARTH PEOPLE” and “IT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, ACT NOW.” The irony in these pictures being hung in a business school at the University of Michigan comes flowing in heavily from every direction. Johanson wanted to make the sketches look like kids drew them because, as he said, “I hated school, and I hated education.” Johanson’s work is also seen as a critique on advertising and capitalism — need I say more? As we walk out of Ross and into the Blau building, may I turn your attention to the man who made this all possible. A portrait of Stephen M. Ross hangs not from every rafter of the ceiling and above every doorway as you may expect, but rather in a humble corner in the lobby of the building. I have witnessed many a misidentification of Mr. Ross, from a poor, confused boy commenting that he didn’t think Bill Gates looked like that to a young girl proclaiming “Grandpa!” as she pointed at the image (though honestly, that may have been his actual granddaughter). Yet his persona should not be mistaken. Ross stands poised in front of a window bearing the same orange and blue that pervades his namesake school. He looks
presidential, all the way down to the small American flag cufflink exposed on his left wrist. And in fact, the image was done by American artist Everett Raymond Kinstler, the same man who did the official presidential portraits of Ronald Reagan and Michigan alum Gerald Ford. Rumor has it, if you stand in front of the painting and say Ross three times outloud, J.P. Morgan will contact you about a junior year internship within the hour. Walking through Blau, the poetic younger sister of mighty Ross, your eyes will be directed towards frame after frame of abstract modern art. My personal favorite hangs from the left as you walk out of the building, a geometric little piece by American artist Sol LeWitt. The piece is entitled “Irregular, Angular Brush Strokes” and is composed of colorful — you guessed it — irregular, angular brush strokes. Much like a business education, this art is straight to the point. When I first looked at and subsequently tried to interpret this art, I thought the lines were an abstract take on stick figures, welding together people of all colors to speak towards inclusion and diversity. Apparently, the true meaning is highlighting the unexpected aspects of our mental process. Either way, they’re pretty cool lines. As you leave the building, what do you feel? Do you feel enlightened? Inspired? Indifferent? Annoyed by this treatise? I could write 900 more words about the art in Ross. I want to know who chose it, where it came from, why they chose it, how much it cost. It’s like a friend’s annoying habit, once you notice it you can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve highlighted a few pieces of art, but there are still over 200 for you to seek out yourself. If nothing else, I hope you feel encouraged to look around while you’re walking through life instead of straight forward. You may be surprised by what you see.
KEEMYA ESMAEL / MICHIGAN DAILY
Spouses have been and still are designing together, and they’re doing it well.As early as the ’60s with the prominence of designers like Charles and Ray Eames, to today in the Chip and Joanna Gaines phenomena that was once the HGTV series “Fixer Upper” and has fabricated itself into a interior design collection at Target. Blending the romantic and creative, couples are redefining what it means to work in a team. Even high-end brands like Tory Burch are making things a family affair, Burch naming her husband Pierre-Yves Roussel the chief executive of her company. Why, you might ask, would people mix home life with work life? Or even choose to share something you’ve made with someone else? Coming from an artist’s perspective, I am not sure I could so willingly share my creative endeavors. Yet, when looking at such power couples, something clearly seems to be working. Ray and
Charles Eames revolutionized the worlds of mid-century modern furniture, graphic and architectural design. And Tory Burch is a timeless, high quality brand in the world of fashion. These couples have shaped design so much so that other spouses are following suit, inviting their significant others to design alongside
Why, you might ask, would people mix home life with work life? them. When looking at the relationships of these creative pairs, it begins to make sense that one would want to work so closely with their spouse. While it is an extremely personal process, design is one that relies on the people around you to challenge and better your ideas. Why not choose someone who will be
brutally honest with you or will listen to random creative discoveries that pop into your head at three in the morning? Designing is a lifestyle, so why not blend the personal and professional? When you have constant conversations, brainstorms and sketching, the outcome is almost always better designs and new discoveries. When including a spouse in the process of design, brands inherently become more family-oriented in the eyes of the consumer, creating a sense of comfort. Knowing that not one, but two individuals are constantly revising, bettering, thinking about the product they are creating, customers feel connected to the product they are buying, knowing the investment is one of true value. While on the surface, Burch’s decision to elect her husband as CEO narrows her field of work within the company, what she is doing is showing herself as a true professional, willing to do what is best for her work and the world of design as a whole.
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In pursuit of a paycheck, or, how I learned to stop worrying and not get paid DIANA YASSIN Daily Arts Writer
Unlike the students who were willing to test the waters with some brand of a biolog y major and organic chemistry, I learned really early on that pre-med wasn’t for me. Maybe it’s my lack of willpower for work of disinterest (i.e., anything my parents expected of me). Or, perhaps, my willingness to better exert myself into topics of my interest. I can’t truly put my finger on it. All I know was that there wasn’t enough space for me in physics, so I took an art class my sophomore year of high school and my life changed forever. While my grade in the class soared and I scored a place in the city-wide art show, my math exams were about as dismal as they had ever been in my entire life. My mother scorned me, but in retrospect, it strikes me a lot more as a tradeoff than as a failure; I’ve gone through a lot of charcoal over the years, but not very many math books. And though I still do believe I embody this artistic spirit, I can’t help but think of my earlier perceptions of what it meant to be a disillusioned artist. At 16, I saw artists on a different plane from people who had more “pragmatic” goals for the future in mind. Who really needed to know anything beyond their purest craft when g uided by passion? I thought that simply because I enjoyed portraiture (and, not gonna lie, I was pretty damn good at it), I would make it as an artist simply by merit of this fact and the idea that other people who were g uided by fear of financial stability were sellouts. For people like a 16-year-old me, I have one thing to ask you: Are you miserable yet? As heav y consumers of art, whether it be on Soundcloud or at the Detroit Institute of Arts, we’re quick to blame artists when it’s obvious their piece was produced for mass appeal. We challenge them to revert back to truer versions of themselves, to adopt a style
that strikes us more genuine. But can you truly do this when you base your entire career off of art? Is it really that easy to brave your most personal work to the world without fear of rejection? I say all of this because I wanted a career based off of art. I wanted all my life’s accomplishments latched onto a project that spoke to my personal experiences and those of others. And perhaps that might’ve come to fruition if I stuck at it. But when I graduated high school, it struck me that passion and talent alone wouldn’t get you
So go on, make your YouTube channel, post your photography on Instagram. I think the problem for me was that I couldn’t find the balance between the two
anywhere; you had to be able to sell yourself and if there’s anything I can’t do, it’s that. I opened myself up for commissioning and Instagramming my artwork a few months prior to starting college. My art teacher recommended me to some people in the city interested in portraits and then people on the internet would message me. I remember thinking, “This is my big break.” I just had to get my name recognized. I tried everything from submitting my work to art galleries to buying fancy frames to make my work look
more professional. It was a lot of paper filling, a lot of time inside and alone in the summer. But it was worth it for what I loved, right? I quickly learned that the thing with trying to get people to buy your art is that your vision doesn’t mean much to them. This isn’t to say your signature and work doesn’t matter — it does, and people will appreciate it regardless. The thing is, you lose a bit of what makes your art yours when your production is dependent on the approval of others. I remember looking back at my art at the end of that summer and despising everything I made; it struck me how different it all looked from pieces I had made in the past. It lacked the pops of color I liked integrating into my black and white pieces, the 3-D textures I carved in for a signature style. There was no development as far as I could see; there’s just not much leeway when people request very specifically that you draw a photoreal portrait of their dog in black and white. I don’t think these feelings apply for everyone. Some people master the art of business and the business of art. So go on, make your YouTube channel, post your photography on Instagram. I think the problem for me was that I couldn’t find balance between the two. I was always either way too fixated on promoting my art or not doing enough of it. Perhaps I could’ve done things differently as an artist — found projects I liked or stuck to a more authentic representation of my art before promoting it to others. All things considered, I don’t think I wasted my time with this experience. I learned that even though I love producing art, it requires a lot of alone time, something I’ll already apt at providing myself with as an introvert. And now, as I study to become a teacher, I find my artwork a lot less prolific, a lot more deliberate. I’m genuinely content with my portfolio slowly expanding in the top right corner of my dorm room, even if no one ever gets to see any of it.
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Thursday, January 24, 2019 — 5B
‘American Idol,’ American audiences and America ALLY OWENS Daily TV Editor
It should come as no surprise that American audiences utterly devour the televised talent competition: It’s one part sadistic g uilt y pleasure, one part inspiration porn and one part fantasy fulf illment of having the same deciding power as an L.A. talent executive. Yet, at its core, the televised talent competition is emblematic of the “American Dream” ideal we claim our societ y operates upon. Just in case you didn’t read “The Great Gatsby” at some point in your schooling, the American Dream is the common my tholog y that each and every U.S. citizen has equal opportunit y to attain the highest of their aspirations. All it takes is hard work (and apparently not the right ancestry, genitalia or religion)! This rose-tinted idealization of the mechanics of our societ y is integ ral to the formula of the talent competition. Just as the American Dream blindly posits that the next g reat entrepreneur could very well be from Section 8, the talent competition promises that the Next Big Thing™ will not be found as a result of nepotistic connections, but could be spotted among the crowd at one of the many cattle-call
auditions across the United States. And while moments of shock generated from a random North Dakotan who can walk and pose like Naomi Campbell or a backwoods woman who can sing like Céline Dion seem to bolster belief in the egalitarian utopia the American Dream advertises, the lack of success for the majorit y of the winners postshow reveals the true nature of the American Dream that many of us are more familiar with: a scam, unabashedly orchestrated to fool the masses and serve only the elites at the top. In 2019, it does not take a seasoned cultural critic to predict that the winners of these competition shows will be has-beens by the time the season f inale concludes. This is not a new pattern. Originally running from 1983 to 1995, “Star Search” ironically did more for the contestants who did not win than those that did. Through its vag ue promise of stardom for an unknown and its use of a panel of judges to deliberate the skills of contestants, it is clear that “Star Search” walked so that “American Idol” could f ly. And f ly it did. For those of us born between 1996 and 2000, we were too young at the time of its 2002 launch to recog nize the mag nitude of its popularit y. The widespread acclaim was in no doubt related to the
In 2019, it does not take a seasoned cultural critic to predict that the winners of these competition shows will be hasbeens by the time the season finale concludes
VH1
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: ‘DE AQUÍ NO SALES’
FABER AND FABER
“DE AQUÍ NO SALES (Cap.4: Disputa)” stands out as one of the most antagonistic songs off of singer/songwriter Rosalía’s dynamic 2018 release El Mal Querer. “Yo que tanto te camelo / Y tú me la vienes haciendo” she howls at the space around her, and the words have only just been wrenched from her body before they are swallowed whole by the snarl of revving motorcycle engines. The song inspires the same kind of images that are reminiscent of Mad Max’s apocalyptic wasteland — as hostile and wretched as Fury Road itself. The recently released music video for “DE AQUÍ NO SALES” does not stray far from these preexistent associations. It starts with Rosalía half-submerged in a
pond, dressed as an incarnate
“DE AQUÍ NO SALES” Rosalía Universal Music Group
of Björk’s Vulnicura cover and surrounded by twisted hunks of metal. From there, the images flash between
ABC
fresh (at the time) convention of allowing the audience, through SMS text, to have f inal say over who would ultimately become America’s newest sensation. Thus, it should come as no surprise that one of the show’s most (if not the most) recog nizable winners, Kelly Clarkson, was crowned during the season in which the most people were glued to the screens watching her journey. “American Idol” was so successful that it was only a matter of time before troves of imitators emerged, hoping to capitalize on the current trend of audience determinism. To name a few, there’s “America’s Got Talent,” “So You Think You Can Dance,” “America’s Next Top Model,” “Last Comic Standing,” “American Superstar,” “The Next: Fame Is At Your Doorstep,” and then a second wave led by “The Voice,” “The Four,” “The Face” and “The Rap Game.” Nevertheless, as the seasons of “Idol” and the others waxed on and their audiences diminished, it became evident that, despite the repetitive declarations of the “lucrative” prizes to be awarded to the victors, these shows were not even capable of producing a solid C-list celebrit y, let alone the A-list icons they initially promised. The people running the prog rams, those already entrenched in the business, have always retained the knowledge that it takes a bit more than a check and a competition prize (a six page spread in Seventeen magazine, a record deal with Sony, a contract with So So Def Records ... the list goes on) to conquer an entire industry. As the years prog ressed and more new shows continued to materialize, it has become clear that executives have exploited and are continuing to exploit the remaining audience’s belief in the American Dream, as well as our ig norance of how show business really works from the inside. After all, what experience does the average mechanic from Tennessee have in show business to know that a contract is not the suref ire ticket out of obscurit y? Despite the promise of instant stardom, the talent contestants only have 15 f leeting minutes of fame to show for their participation
while network executives continue to prof it off of the lies they spin to both participants and loyal
As the years progressed and more new shows continued to materialize, it has become clear that executives have exploited and are continuing to exploit the remaining audience’s belief in the American Dream, as well as our ignorance of how show business really works from the inside
viewers. Don’t believe me? Consider the fact that Simon Cowell and Simon Fuller, executive producers on “American Idol” and “X
Factor,” each maintain a net worth exceeding 500 million dollars, yet the only thing “Idol” season seven winner Taylor Hicks maintains is a spot on “Where Are They Now” lists. These executives treat the usually organic starmaking process as though it is mass production. And in recent years, as winners become more and more inconsequential, it appears as though they realized the futilit y in investing even the bare minimum of time and money in convincing the public to fall in love with a new “top” model, dancer, rapper or singer every year. Thus, new strategies are undertaken to ensure that audiences are still engaged and, most importantly, prof its remain high. This is evidenced in the shift away from contestant-centric content to content that overwhelmingly centers the already-established celebrit y judges; or worse, a celebrit y who creates a shameless vehicle for themselves. For “American Idol,” it is no coincidence that the high turnover of judges coincided almost precisely with mainstream audiences’ apathy toward whoever won the show. What’s more memorable in recent “Idol” canon: the Mariah CareyNicki Minaj beef or the name of the season 13 winner? Another example of this phenomenon is exhibited in “The Voice,” where media coverage unmistakably touched moreso on the celebrit y judges in the chairs and their relationships than the contestants. Even in cases of celebrit y vehicles like Tyra Banks’ “America’s Next Top Model” or Jermaine Dupree’s “The Rap Game,” buzz is not generated from winners (in fact, I cannot think of a single mainstream sensation produced in either show’s history). Buzz is derived from the celebrit y attempting to revamp their careers. The contestants — the reg ular people — in their attempts to live out an idealized fantasy of transcending whichever barriers stand in their way of wealth and fame quite ironically end up becoming instruments perpetuating the system they tried so hard to confront. So much for the American Dream.
shots of Rosalía dressed as the ultimate badass of any of “Fast and Furious” film, doused in flames and back again in water, yet each time we come back to this shot, she sinks lower and lower. By the time the song’s last spoken line “Caramelos también tengo” is uttered, her head is the only appendage we can see above the water; she is nearly consumed by the murky depths. Then, the tempo picks up, and a shot of a windmill exploding into flames takes us into the image of a trumphiant Rosalía rising from the fire. She boards a motorcycle and rides into the moonlight countryside. She doesn’t look back.
— Shima Sadaghiyani, Daily Arts Writer
ITV
Arts
6B — Thursday, January 24, 2019
ARTIST
IN
PROFILE
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
B-SIDE SECONDARY
English, Business & arts SAMANTHA CANTIE Daily Arts Writer
ALICE LIU / MICHIGAN DAILY
Lillian Li on publishing and her role in business JULIA MOSS
Daily Arts Writer
According to Lillian Li, Universit y of Michigan MFA and author of “Number One Chinese Restaurant ” (2018), the success of Chinese restaurants in A merica is the best-kept secret in the business. Following the Gold Rush and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, Chinese immig rants were blacklisted from most industries by white workers who feared they would drive wages down and were conf ined to the “women’s work” of laundr y and cooking. Many of the orig inal owners of Chinese restaurants had no culinar y training and could only estimate the f lavors of their homeland, making them sweeter, saltier and tang ier when they realized that A merican palates preferred bold f lavors. In an inter view with The Daily, Li pointed out that “Now there are more Chinese restaurants in A merica than McDonalds. It ’s actually one of the most inspiring stories of entrepreneurial underdogship, and it ’s crazy that most people don’t know it. A merica loves the underdog, but they don’t like the underdog when it has a foreig n face.” “Number One Chinese Restaurant ” is a dark family epic in the tradition of t wo other Universit y MFAs, Celeste Ng (“Little Fires Ever y where” and “Ever y thing I Never Told You”) and Jesmyn Ward (“Sing, Unburied, Sing ” and “Salvage the Bones”). The novel follows three generations of the highlydysf unctional Han family and their employees at the Beijing Duck House, a thriving Chinese restaurant in the D.C. metro area, as they attempt to reconcile their competing visions of business success with their tangled personal relationships. When a mysterious f ire razes the Duck House, this ensemble cast of characters is forced to confront the tensions that have simmered beneath the surface for years, and to choose where their f irst loyalties lie: to family, to ambition, to integ rit y or to sur vival. The novel is loosely based on Li’s own experience working in a Chinese restaurant, a job so strenuous that she lef t af ter only four
weeks. Li said, “It gave me a look into the emotional diff iculties of a ser vice job, particularly a ser vice job where you’re working in a Chinese restaurant and have a Chinese face. There’s an extra level of alienation and dehumanization that happens with the customers to the ser vers. It made me wonder what it would have been like if I had been in that space for longer than four weeks, if I hadn’t had the opportunit y to leave.” This notion of being trapped — by a toxic work environment, by family obligation and by the characters’ own insurmountable f laws — resonates throughout the novel in a way that steadfastly resists sentimentalit y or idealization. Li’s worldview f lirts with pessimism but never steps f ully over that line, landing instead on a sometimes g rim, of ten f unny and always sharply obser ved realism. She said, “I think it ’s a worldview that is interested in the darker side of human connection and intimacy, but also understands that you have to have some moments of joy and g race, even within that darkness.” In Li’s novel, these “moments of g race” tend to be rooted in love, v ulnerabilit y and self-sacrif ice, while darkness manifests in the desire for wealth, prestige and power, embodied most clearly in the nefarious, Godfatheresque f ig ure of Uncle Pang. In a t wist on the Faust legend, Jimmy Han, owner of the Duck House, must decide bet ween selling his soul to Pang in exchange for f ulf illed ambition and freeing his family at last from the mobster’s clutches. For Li, this kind of moral arithmetic is t y pical of the way business and ambition require people to rearrange their value systems. She is suspicious of highly prof itable businesses in general, and her novel f unctions as a t wist on the A merican Dream narrative, a national my th that positions economic success as the
Now there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds
key to true belong ing and respect. Li said, “I think the A merican Dream is an incomplete narrative. It ’s all about g rand success for your life, that you can end with much more than you started with. A nd I think that that can only happen if there is some kind of orig inal sin. If you trace any success stor y far enough back you will see a real crime. Success basically means that you have more resources than your neighbor, so how did you get those resources? A nd how did you get so many more resources than your neighbor did? But those little crimes are ver y normalized in our societ y.” Li’s work also speaks eloquently to the ways these calculations of success change across generations. For the f irst generation of Duck House owners, success can be measured in purely economic terms, while their sons realize that no amount of money can buy them the respect and prestige that they truly desire. Li said, “I was tr ying to speak to this idea that for most g roups of people, no matter how much money you have, you still can’t buy your way into inf luence. Because money has entered the bloodstream of our societ y so much, it seems to be the only way to get the universal things that people want: to be desired, to be attractive, to be respected, to have dig nit y. What this book says is that money can’t buy ever y thing, but there is a reason why we think it can.” Li’s distrust of prof it as the primar y measure of success expands into her own experience with the publishing industr y, as an author and as a bookseller at the cultfavorite bookstore Literati. Li has no desire to make writing her main source of income, and her respect for the publishing industr y comes precisely from the things that decrease its prof itabilit y. Li said, “ What I love about the publishing industr y is that they are uniquely bad at business. Bookstores can return any books they don’t sell. There’s no formula. Nobody can predict what book is going to sell well. It kind of def ies a lot of attempts to make it a really prof itable, smoothlyrunning business machine. You can be bad at business and still be successf ul, and that ’s really heartening!”
What I love about the publishing industry is that they are uniquely bad at business
“My job is all about how do we get people to move,” Marcus Collins, the chief consumer connections officer at the advertising agency Doner Company, said. “That is, how do we leverage what we know of the behavioral sciences, the evolving media landscape and a close proximity to culture in an effort to get people to adopt behavior.” In addition to working for Doner, Collins is an intermittent marketing lecturer at the Ross School of Business. Collins started as a musician before entering the business world and has collaborated on marketing with dominant cultural forces like Beyoncé and iTunes. This unique background gives him critical insight into the crossover between business and the arts, and how to go about knocking down the partition that consistently separates the two. In a sit-down conversation with Collins, we touched on the polarization of the arts and business, specifically within higher education: “There’s a certain pragmatism to business, I mean the business school, it’s a practice school.” Collins elaborated on the natural inclination to discount the arts due to its theoretical nature, with a recurring theme of “art for the sake of the body of knowledge that we amass.” However, Collins shifted to note how critical it is for the arts and business to collide. “When we look at art as a manifestation of culture, it’s completely different,” he said. Collins referenced Emile Durkheim, a father of sociology, when he defined culture as “the system by which beliefs, values, communication and artifacts are adopted by a populace of people.” He noted that “when the culture moves, we move in concert. That is, the people who align to the culture, they act in solidarity with the group of people.” In simple terms, it moves as so: Who do businesses want to influence? People. What influences people? Culture. And the arts, well, they play a ridiculously large part in culture. For English and Business students, like myself, who consistently feel like oil and water, Collins established a clear mix of the two. When we view art as a manifestation of culture which dictates human behavior, it becomes extremely practical and businesslike to be in close proximity to the arts. Collins highlighted this relationship when he discussed how culture, and consequently the arts, is used to develop strong marketing tactics. He described art as “a lever that you pull from a pragmatic perspective of going to market, of being a business person.” Collins reiterates art as quintessential to human behavior: “What we feel drives what we do. Art is evocative that way, it stimulates particular emotions, which stimulate particular behavioral outcomes.” In this way, business cannot be without the arts. How humans exchange and transact with one another is so closely related to not just culture, but to how we feel, which largely comes from artistic influences. Collins masterfully put this into perspective, using my own writing as an example to draw from. “We discount art on a theoretical level, we say, ‘this is subjective or this has nothing to do with commerce.’ Like you writing an essay, what does that have to do with commerce? But when your essay becomes the manifesto for a populace of people
and their culture, now you as an author of said prose, are really powerful.” Collins emphasized that “culture is the vehicle by which art becomes tangible.” This operationalization of art is wildly powerful for businesses. Art allows them to connect with their consumers and develop the genuine relationships necessary for the success of a firm. This, however, suggests the other inevitable link between business and the arts: authenticity. The seemingly inevitable event of a “sellout” is something that all creators fear. Collins explained how artists and businesses alike must maintain their convictions to capture human admiration, matching their behaviors to their belief systems. “Authenticity comes from one’s ability, one’s grit, to maintain their convictions,” Collins said. “Living up to your convictions is a cool thing. And when a brand does that, it gets adopted by people who see the world similarly.” Collins provided clarity with examples, detailing how Pabst Blue Ribbon saw dramatic increases in sales when their belief system of self-expression and egalitarianism matched with “hipsters” who believe in the same values that PBR does. Collins illuminated the idea that businesses and artists approach authenticity in similar manners: “This is my belief system and the populace of people who believe what I believe connect to it.” Collins referenced “the old Kanye” as a prime example of having a belief system and finding a dense community that readily connects with it. The crossovers between business and the arts are clear, and Collins’s career speaks tribute to that. On an everyday basis, however, how does one interact with academic entities that are so often placed on opposite ends of the spectrum? After attentively listening to my trials and tribulations as a Business and English student, he provided immense hope, delving into the means of operating with agency in the “business-arts” space. When asked what combines the arts and business together, Collins responded immediately. “Humanity,” he said. “You have to see the humanity in the business like you see the humanity in the arts. The idea of transaction is personal. Business is about exchanges. We try to humanize things to make meaning out of it.” Business and the arts share connection and empathy, even when humanization seems miles away from the likes of business. “If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business,” Collins said. “Business is all about people. Everything we do in business is about getting people to take on a behavior.” Collins constantly reminds his students that marketing is about so much more than just selling things. “Marketing is going to market,” he said. “Well, what is the market? People.” Lucky for me, and lucky for Daily Arts, the arts spur emotion and behavior like none other and therefore have a powerful capability to alter the market. Collins summarized what students in the space of business-arts should hold steadfast in: “How do you leverage the arts (visual, written, audio) and use those as vehicles by which we interact with humanity?” To Business and art students striving keep their energy flowing, this ode from Collins may spark your zest. “Your foot in each world is what makes you so powerful,” he said. Collins elaborated that artists
do not only know the culture, they drive the culture and at the end of the day, businesses latch onto culture manifested by the arts. “Brands who lead culture are more successful than brands who follow ... it’s more so about, ‘how do I make these things come together by leveraging the power of the arts to solve problems creatively?’ And then look at the world of art and find, ‘how do I operationalize this from a transactional perspective?’” he said. As a student who started out business-focused and now desperately clings to the arts, I decided to seek out the inverse perspective. For students who start with arts and follow with entrepreneurship and marketability, how do they move towards the avenue of considering their art from a transactional perspective? Daily Arts reached out to Jonathan Kuuskoski, assistant professor of music in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and chair of the department of entrepreneurship & leadership. Kuuskoski made it glaringly apparent that students with the inverse of my academic path converge into a similar space of mixing the arts with business and that the resources to do so are abundant. Kuuskoski works to help students in the performing arts live a sustainable life, and provides them the correct resources to do so. Kuukoski’s department provides over 20 courses in topics such as arts management, arts marketing and financial management, in addition to providing immersions, coaching and funding for internships and ventures. Kuuskoski noted a commonality in students who want to make their art at all costs, but need help selling it. He guides students in navigating this process, particularly in reaching for collaborations and partnerships and in establishing their personal strategy. His advice included finding a vision. “How would the world look in 10 years if you achieved your goal?,” he said. “What’s the vision for your work, that goes beyond the generic ‘make great art?’” Just as Marcus Collins spoke of authenticity, Kuuskoski emphasized the importance of holding true to one’s convictions. “Start by reflecting back on your core values, so you can articulate what is distinctive about the ways in which your artistic output will set you apart,” he said. Moreover, Kuuskoski touches on humanity as a means to traverse business and the arts, just as Collins reiterated that “business is all about people.” Kuuskoski relays to his students that “every successful artist has a circle of collaborators, of people who were meaningful to them. These people could be potential investors and supporters.” In reflecting upon my conversations with both Collins and Kuuskoski, it became extremely apparent that businesses aim to infiltrate our culture and ways of behaving, and that these ways of behaving often spur from art, even if companies aren’t aware of it. As Collins said, “Being close to the culture means understanding the artistic artifacts that come out of the culture. Having proximity to the arts allows you to operationalize that in a business realm.” Consistent closeness to art is not only a passion of mine, but it’s also extremely powerful when used in a continuous manner with business. I aim to harness the power of this concurrence, and Collins and Kuuskoski gave me the assurance and moral to do so.
ALEC COHEN / MICHIGAN DAILY