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Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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COLD AS HAIL Night Shift Issue
‘U’ PUTS A FREEZE ON CLASSES CALLIE TEITELBAUM & EMMA STEIN
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Daily Staff Reporters
In light of sub-zero temperatures and extreme wind chills predicted for Wednesday and Thursday, the University of Michigan has decided to cancel all events and classes on campus, beginning 12 a.m. Wednesday and intends to resume activity 7 a.m. Friday. This will be the third time in 40 years the school has closed due to weather. The University Record announced classes were canceled at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The last time the University halted activity was in February 2015, due to a winter storm that resulted in 18 inches of snowfall. Before that, there was a closure in 2014 due to extremely cold temperatures, specifically a wind chill of minus 30 degrees. The first time the University closed was in January 1978 due to climate conditions. Weather projections estimate a wind chill of nearly minus 40 degrees for Wednesday and part of Thursday. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency early Tuesday morning. The decision to cancel classes comes after of closures on campus and of local businesses around Ann Arbor on Monday. University student groups, such as the Michigan Student Power Network, also took to advocating for a
campus closure through their #UMichColdShoulder petition, which currently has over 13,000 signatures. The petition also encouraged students to call Schlissel as well as other University administrators. The University joins Michigan State University and Wayne State University, as well as other public universities in the state, in canceling classes due to extreme weather conditions. The delay prompted a flurry of social media posts critical of University administration, particulary Schlissel, although the official announcement was signed by Provost Martin Philbert; Preeti Malani, chief health officer; Laurita Thomas, chief human resources officer; and Eddie Washington, executive director of the Division of Public Safety and Security. LSA sophomore Kirsten Lanigan expressed her surprise at the class cancellation. “It definitely was an unexpected pleasant surprise,” Lanigan said. “I was definitely not sure whether a state of emergency would be enough for Schlissel to cancel, but it’s nice that he was willing to stoop to our level and pity us as students.” Lanigan said getting to class in this weather would have been difficult due to living offcampus. “It definitely would have been a really big struggle to get to campus,” Lanigan said. “I’m not sure exactly what I would have done because I definitely
live the distance where any of my classes would have been more than 10 minutes away and it would have been dangerous, so I’m really happy they canceled.” Though the University has ultimately decided to cancel classes, disabled, injured and commuting students have already been feeling the harsh effects of the weather for days. LSA freshman Madeline Walsh has a torn ACL, an injury that makes it difficult for her to get around campus. Walsh said the University has been doing a good job of getting the pathways clear in a timely fashion. “Slipping was a very real possibility, but the snow hasn’t been too bad,” Walsh said. “They’re doing a pretty good job of keeping it off the most important sidewalks, so getting to the more populated areas hasn’t been too bad.” Amir Baghdadchi, senior associate director of University Housing Association, told The Daily in an email the University staff works tirelessly day and night to maintain the campus conditions and keep the sidewalks walkable for all students. “We have a full Facilities team that is always ready, at all hours, with shovels and snow machines,” Baghdadchi wrote. “Instead of ‘shutting down’ during the cold, our efforts ramp up, because cold can disrupt so many systems, See SNOW, Page 3A MADELINE HINKLEY/ DAILY
ANN ARBOR
City signs deal on Library Lot suit Ann Arbor decides to settle case concerning proposed development downtown RACHEL LEUNG Daily Staff Reporter
Ann Arbor City Council voted to approve a settlement for a lawsuit filed against the city by Councilmember Anne Bannister, D-Ward 1, and former Councilmember Sumi Kailasapathy, D-Ward 1, at the Jan. 22 City Council meeting. Bannister and Kailasapathy filed the lawsuit in June to invalidate a $10 million contract Mayor Christopher Taylor and City Clerk Jacqueline Beaudry signed with Core Spaces, a Chicago-based developer which planned to construct a 17-storey high-rise in the Library Lot. According to the lawsuit, the Ann Arbor city charter stipulates any purchase or sale of a value exceeding $25,000 be approved by at least eight councilmembers. Since Taylor and Beaudry did not seek the approval of City Council, Bannister and Kailasapathy argued the contract was not valid. See LIBRARY, Page 3A
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Students, faculty talk pros and cons Professor of the LSA language requirement discusses CAMPUS LIFE
Mandated 4 semesters draw varying opinions across University departments DANIELLE PASEKOFF Daily Staff Reporter
LSA senior Aly Nedell is taking a course titled The Italian Mafia this semester. Any other student might elect to take Italian 240 out of pure curiosity, or to fulfill the distribution requirement in the humanities. But Nedell is receiving credit for this course as her language requirement. Nedell took three years of Italian in high school but placed into the beginner Italian 101 course after taking her University of Michigan foreign language placement exam. After taking a portion of the course and dropping it, fearing poor performance would lower her grade point average, Nedell was told by her academic adviser that she would have to take Italian 102 in order to compensate for not completing Italian 101. Unable to find information about alternatives online, she met with her academic adviser, who led her in the direction of petitioning the requirement. Soon after, she began exploring the process of finding an alternative to the LSA language requirement. “It was honestly one of the most emotionally exhausting experiences as a student because there’s so much research into people who just struggle with foreign language,” Nedell said. “But
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because LSA is so regimented with their requirements, it’s not easy to find information on alternatives.” After meeting with an academic adviser and completing an interview stating her case, Nedell took a 90-minute Modern Language Aptitude Test, which she described as similar to the placement exam that is required of most LSA students prior to starting at the University. “(I had) to schedule an appointment to take an LSA language aptitude test, but it’s in no particular language — it’s a fake language that you
have to try to teach yourself,” Nedell said. “During (the exam) they provide you with fake words, but you do what you would normally do when learning a language.” The score Nedell received on the aptitude test, in tandem with the academic adviser’s report, became her evidence to prove she could not learn and excel in language courses. In addition to these administered portions, Nedell was asked to provide two letters of recommendation from past Italian professors, explaining her inability to learn Italian. She also wrote an essay and submitted college
and high school academic transcripts. After nearly nine months of searching and requesting permission for an alternative to the LSA language requirement, Nedell was approved to take two equivalent semesters of Italian culture classes to satisfy the requirement. The LSA language requirement requires students to take four semesters worth of language courses in hopes the student will become proficient in a language other than English. See LANGUAGE, Page 3A
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INDEX
Vol. CXXVII, No. 64 ©2019 The Michigan Daily
interplay of race, design
Visiting fellow examines the racism in origins of American architecture ZAYNA SYED
Daily Staff Reporter
On Tuesday, Professor Mabel Wilson from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation read an excerpt from her upcoming book about race and architecture. The 30-minute event was part of the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities FellowSpeak series and explored the racial history behind the architecture of the Virginia statehouse and Thomas Jefferson’s history of belittling African-American intellect. Wilson is a Norman Freehling Visiting Fellow at the University’s Institute for the Humanities. Her talk was delivered to an intimate audience of 25 people, mostly consisting of department faculty and other fellows. Gretchen O’Hair, administrative assistant and fellows coordinator, said the FellowSpeak serves as an opportunity for fellows to share their research and learn from one another. See ARCHITECTURE, Page 3A
NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 ARTS......................6
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2A — Wednesday, January 30, 2019
MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers
TUESDAY: By Design
WEDNESDAY: This Week in History
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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: STUDENTS SIT IN TO PROTEST RESEARCH January 27, 1978 WICKED BLIZZARD BITES EAST, MIDWEST Winter dealt Michigan a cruel arctic blow yesterday as a severe storm--fueled by furious winds and the lowest barometric readings on record--whipped parts of the’ state with over a foot and half of snow. Governor William Milliken declared a state of emergency, and ordered the National Guard into five counties including Washtenaw, to help stranded motorists and assist in emergency calls. University classes will
be closed until noon today, University President Robben Fleming said late lat night. The deadline for Drop/Add and Pass/ Fail has been extended through Monday. Milliken’s declaration will allow the state to seek federal help for repairing and restoring public services and-facilities damaged by the storm. Southeastern Michigan, according to the National Weather Service, is expecting one to two inches of additional snow today and a high temperature of 16 degrees. Fierce winds, however, will continue
to drift snow and hamper the digging-out effort. The University shivering and sputtering under an estimated 19 inches of snow, cancelled classes after 1 p.m. yesterday, and the prospect for normal academic schedules today remains uncertain. The main libraries closed their doors at 4 p.m., food deliveries to the dormitories were curtailed, and many people in the academic community decided to remain at home, safe from the swirling snow. Local hospitals reported many
normal operations, but at least one facility, St. Joseph’s, cancelled routine surgery, according to a spokesperson. University Hospital, according to an official, maintained unhindered in-patient care and supporting services such as housekeeping and dietetics, but was forced to close many out-patient clinics. Emergency services, the spokesperson said, were “open and ready to go.” The only serious emergency procedures involved auto accident victims. STAY INSIDE? SNOW WAY So what do you do on a Thursday
afternoon when the world outside looks like a Jack London short story and the University has cancelled classes? Most folks looked forward to a Norman Rockwell sort of day-a quiet time in front of a fire with a mug of hot chocolate, a book, or perhaps some cozy company. BUT A BAND of crazies from West Quad’s Williams House had other ideas. “We’re just trying to prove that it’s all in the head,” said one inhabitant of what the group calls “The Zoo,” ignoring the kneehigh drifts all around him. He and
his hallmates had stripped down to t-shirts and shorts and were dashing through a set of relays between the steps of the Union and the “Daedalus” sculpture across State Street-barefoot. “Actually, we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque,” reported another. A slightly sauced crowd in front of the Cariage House apartments threw the day’s big social event”the first beach party of the year.” Lounging in drifts of “sand.” the snowbathers guzzled beer and other booze, all day blaring sound of the Beach Boys’ “Endless Summer.”
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CARTER FOX/Daily Tami Kesselman, founder of Aligned Investing Global, speaks about changes in the global approach to sustainability in recent decades, focusing on largescale collaborations that lead to long term solutions at the Ross School of Business Tuesday afternoon.
Local journalist discusses book on the history of Michigan pop company Faygo Joe Grimm holdsw event at Ann Arbor District Library about most recent work
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Grimm said. “Another reason Pearl Harbor was sugar, and the FINNTAN STORER Managing Editor frstorer@michigandaily.com was when you sold the pop, they last thing to be de-rationed was would sell eight-ounce bottles for sugar.” GRACE KAY and ELIZABETH LAWRENCE At the same time, Coca Cola three cents each, two for a nickel, Journalist Joe Grimm and Managing News Editors news@michigandaily.com but the bottles were worth a lot campaigned heavily for the use local radio host Martin Bandyke Senior News Editors: Sayali Amin, Rachel Cunningham, Remy Farkas, Leah Graham, Amara Shaikh of its products by American more.” invited community members to Assistant News Editors: Barbara Collins, Alex Harring, Danielle Pasekoff, Other issues, Grimm said, soldiers, so Grimm said Coca the Ann Arbor District Library Atticus Raasch, Ben Rosenfeld, Samantha Small, Emma Stein, Zayna Syed, Callie included the fact that pop had Cola advocates helped make Tuesday evening to discuss Teitelbaum, Liat Weinstein a shorter shelf life in the early sugar rationing more lenient. Grimm’s “The Faygo Book,” JOEL DANILEWITZ and MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 1900s, plus the Feigensons The Feigensons also donated to a collection of photographs, Editorial Page Editors tothedaily@michigandaily.com launched Faygo right before the troops. graphics and stories published Senior Opinion Editors: Emily Huhman, Alexander Satola, Elias Khoury, Another major historical event a worldwide depression. Still, in October 2018 that explore the Nicholas Tomaino, Erin White the Feigenson brothers were the Faygo company endured was history of local soda pop company MAX MARCOVITCH and ETHAN SEARS immensely successful selling out the 1967 rebellion over racial Faygo. About six people attended Managing Sports Editors sportseditors@michigandaily.com of the Jewish enclave of Detroit. tension in Detroit. Grimm said the event, which included a Senior Sports Editors: Mark Calcagno, Jake Shames, Matthew Kennedy, Anna Marcus, Paige Voeffray, Avi Sholkoff They profited off the city’s Susie Feigenson was working at presentation by Grimm followed Assistant Sports Editors: Aria Gerson, Tien Le, Rian Ratnavale, Bennett population growth, a result of Faygo at the time, and witnessed by a book sale and signing. Bramson, Theo Mackie, Akul Vijayvargiya destruction of many immigration and the burgeoning the Grimm, a University of JACK BRANDON and ARYA NAIDU storefronts in the neighborhood. car business. Michigan alum who currently Managing Arts Editors arts@michigandaily.com “The car business, and frankly However, she was surprised to teaches journalism at Michigan Senior Arts Editors: Clara Scott, Emma Chang, Rob Mansuetti, Sam Della Fera, Ford, were making Detroit and find the Faygo factory untouched. State University, kicked off the Trina Pal Arts Beat Editors: Verity Sturm, Sayan Ghosh, Mike Watkins, Ally Owens, Faygo’s safety during the riot everything around it grow like evening by introducing his career Stephen Satarino, Izzy Hasslund, Margaret Sheridan was ensured by its inclusive crazy,” Grimm said. and his experience writing the Grimm also shared facts about hiring practices. He said Faygo book. When asked by Bandyke ROSEANNE CHAO and JACK SILBERMAN Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com Faygo’s many flavors. He noted hired locals, meaning 60 percent how “The Faygo Book” came to Senior Design Editor: Willa Hua Faygo products are all kosher, of its male workers and 75 be, Grimm said after writing a unlike many other brands, and percent of its production workers book about Detroit-based chain ALEXIS RANKIN and ALEC COHEN Managing Photo Editors photo@michigandaily.com also pointed out Faygo’s Rock at the time were Black. Coney Island, he decided to Senior Photo Editors: Alexandria Pompei, Natalie Stephens, Alice Liu, Annie Klusendorf “I think what happened was & Rye! flavor is named after focus on Faygo next because he’d Assistant Photo Editors: Katelyn Mulcahy, Miles Macklin, Emma Richter, Hannah an alcoholic drink made of rye that the way they hired helped always appreciated the brand. Siegel, Allison Engkvist them out later,” Grimm said. whiskey and rock candy sugar. “I really liked Faygo ANDREA PÉREZ BALDERRAMA Moving on to Faygo’s “People said, ‘No, we’re not commercials and the fun of it all, Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com relationship with the federal messing up that place, that’s and I thought it would be a really Deputy Editors: Matthew Harmon, Shannon Ors government, Grimm said where we work.’” interesting book because it’s MADELINE TURNER and MIRIAM FRANCISCO Grimm concluded the such a colorful, varied product,” land and material shortages Managing Copy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com presentation by giving an have historically affected the http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ Grimm said. Sudoku Syndication Senior Copy Editors: Sadia Jiban, Olivia Sedlacek, Reece Meyhoefer company. In 1935, the federal overview of Faygo’s advertising Though the Faygo company government took over practices. He displayed several CASEY TIN and HASSAAN ALI WATTOO Managing Online Editors webteam@michigandaily.com some of Faygo’s property to images of historical billboards Senior Web Developers: Jonathon Liu, Abha Panda, Ryan Siu, David Talbot, construct housing for the local and TV commercials sponsored Samantha Cohen by Faygo, and named some of neighborhood. NOAH TAPPEN “They were told the federal Faygo’s past celebrity sponsors, Managing Video Editor video@michigandaily.com government needed the land such as Alex Karras, a 1962 Senior Video Editors: Jillian Drzinski, Aarthi Janakiraman HARD their factory was on to put in Detroit Lions defensive lineman. CARLY RYAN and NA’KIA CHANNEY In 1965, Grimm said, Faygo more housing for people in Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com Black Bottom,” Grimm said. began expanding its business Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Lorna Brown, Samuel So, Ana Maria “Black Bottom is crowded — geographically. The company Sanchez-Castillo, Efe Osagie, Danyel Tharakan was threatened by Coca Cola’s now we need high rises.” Assistant Michigan in Color Editors: Grace Cho, Harnoor Singh, Nada Eldawy, Maya Mokh The Feigensons bought advertising success in Traverse a horse market that they City and Toledo. CATHERINE NOUHAN and JOHN FABIAN “Faygo hurried up and the converted into a new factory. Managing Podcast Editors Grimm said the factory still Feigensons sent pop into those CARRINGTON TUBMAN and MADALASA CHAUDHARI exists, and in fact, Faygo is cities,” Grimm said. “People saw Managing Social Media Editors the last remaining soda pop the commercials, they went to the store, they bought the pop, bottler in Detroit. During World War II, they wanted more, and from that Grimm added, Faygo was point forward, Faygo started impacted by sugar rations. trying to get to be bigger than the ADRIANNA KUSMIERCZYK Creative Director Many materials were in short mostly Detroit area.” CAMERON COANE ZELJKO KOSPIC After speaking, Grimm supply due to the war effort, Sales Manager Special Projects Manager including tin, rubber, grease, accepted a few questions from ROBERT WAGMAN ANITA MICHAUD the audience. Bandyke asked meat and nylons. Marketing Consulting Manager Brand Manager “If you didn’t cut your why Faygo continues to be a consumption of sugar as a successful brand. Grimm said candy maker, cake maker, in addition to Faygo’s prizeThe Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the pop bottler, you had to cut to winning flavors, low prices and fall and winter terms by students at the University OF Michigan. One copy is available 80 percent of what you used tactful advertising, the company free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. BLIZZARD puzzle by sudokusyndication.com last year,” Grimm said. “The is dedicated to its local base. $2. Subscriptions for September-April are $250 and year long subscriptions are $275. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions first thing to be rationed after for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. See FAYGO, Page 3A was not interested in helping with the book, Grimm said he learned a lot about the company’s history by meeting regularly with Susie Feigenson, the granddaughter of one of the original founders. He also did his own research and found photos and information through social media. Grimm then held an hour-long discussion on the history and cultural significance of Faygo soda pop. Faygo was started in 1907 by brothers Ben and Perry Feigenson, Russian Jewish immigrants based in Cleveland. Perry, the older of the two brothers, moved to Detroit to start a bakery, but hated the early hours required by the job. Ben, who was working at the Miller Becker soda pop company in Cleveland, then moved to Detroit, and the two launched their own pop business. They started with three flavors — fruit punch, grape and strawberry — based off Perry’s recipe for cake frosting. Grimm said the Feigensons entered the industry at a time when it was difficult to make a profit off pop for several reasons. “People didn’t drink pop in the winter, like today was a no pop day, it was a summer thing,”
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LIBRARY From Page 1A After Ann Arbor residents voted in November to approve Proposal A, an amendment to the city charter that required the city to retain ownership of the Library Lot, City Administrator Howard Lazarus sent a letter to Core Spaces in December terminating their purchase agreement. The council voted 8-1 to settle the lawsuit with Bannister and Kailasapathy on Jan 22. This final settlement will require the city attorney to sign additional legal documents, preventing the city from selling the development rights of the Library Lot. Upon Taylor’s suggestion, Bannister recused herself from the vote, as she was a plaintiff
ARCHITECTURE From Page 1A “It’s an opportunity for our existing fellows and our visiting fellows to bring what they’re working on to the table within a 30-minute to an hour speech,” O’Hair said. Jessica Walker, an LSA collegiate fellow in American culture, said Wilson’s talk was beneficial to her research. “That notion that architecture is an extension of this notion of reason, that’s separated by Europeans and those who aren’t, I think is important to my work,” Walker said. “I work on kitchen and domestic spaces, and I think those also are designed with a similar type of, ‘They tell you how to cook in whatever nation you’re in, and that tells you how to be the right class, be a normal
FAYGO From Page 2A “They stood by Detroit and Detroiters stood by them,” Grimm said. Grimm also pointed out Faygo is now owned by National Beverage, which is highly profitable, despite declining soft drink sales, because it produces
SNOW From Page 2A and we have to be vigilant. Just like everything in Housing, it’s a 24-hour operation: once we’ve done each corner of the building, we start over again to maintain safety.” Walsh also said while the University has been doing a good job, she had to make sacrifices for her wellbeing and not attend her classes or club meetings due to the slippery sidewalks and roads last week. She noted her professors were accommodating of her situation. “I had to skip class on Wednesday [last week], the day it was really icy out, and there were a few club mass meetings I didn’t get to go to on Tuesday night of last week,” Walsh said. Walsh is one of many students who lives on North Campus and takes the buses every day. On Monday, a Blue Bus slid off of Fuller Road and crashed into a tree. She said the bus crash scared her, as she is already injured, and it made her think about other students and faculty who have to drive longer distances to get to campus. “When one of the girls said she had felt herself jolt when the bus crashed, that was a little scary, because I’m not looking to get any more hurt,” Walsh said. “It definitely was concerning, especially with all of the professors and students that drive to school. It made me think that we should probably not expect everyone to have to endure all of those conditions.” According to First District of the Michigan State Police, which includes Clinton, Eaton, Ingham, Hillsdale, Jackson, Lenawee, Livingston, Monroe and Washtenaw Counties, there were a total of 117 crashes in the district on Monday. The Division of Public Safety & Security issued a warning on Sunday about especially snowy and slippery roads on Monday
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in the lawsuit. Councilmember Jeff Hayner, D-Ward 1, was the only no vote on approving the settlement. Councilmember Chip Smith, D-Ward 5, was not present for the meeting. Hayner explained his reasons for voting no on the settlement, stating he was unsure of the council’s ability to invalidate a contract. He questioned the necessity of City Council to approve contracts like the one the city was engaged in with Core Spaces. “I would like this body to take a look at its rules,” Hayner said. “I don’t think it’s proper that a body reserve the right for itself to waive the final review of a contract.” Councilmember Jack Eaton, D-Ward 4, expressed concerns similar to Hayner’s but voted yes to approve the settlement. Councilmember Ali Ramlawi,
D-Ward 5, also voted yes on the settlement but wanted to clarify that his vote was only in agreement with affirming procedural requirements stipulated by the city charter and was not a vote to prevent the development by Core Spaces. “I would like to go on record saying I was under the impression that that’s what the lawsuit was about — it was not about preventing the construction of a building but about the procedures of a whole process,” Ramlawi said. “And if we are going to be consistent up here, we have to respect that principle.” After the vote, Bannister read a prepared statement thanking the city attorney for recommending settlement of the lawsuit and the council for approving the settlement. “When Sumi Kailasapathy
and I filed our complaint last June, we did not take that matter lightly,” Bannister said. “We did so because we believed that when City Council votes to approve a contract, that contract must be available for our review.” Bannister ended her comments by declaring her hope for the city to follow proper procedures, as written in the city charter, when approving contracts in the future. “By settling this case, we are acknowledging that the voters amended the city charter in November and we are agreeing that the city will not proceed with the sale of the Library Lot to Core Spaces,” Bannister said. “I hope we will also agree that going forward, that the city will approve contracts only when the contracts are written and available for review.”
person, belong to a group,’ food is very important to that. So I will take that with me especially.” Wilson said the most important discovery she made through her research relates to the long-standing and intense nature of racism in the United States’ foundation. “For me, the biggest revelation is that the challenges that the United States’ face have their DNA back to the founding in original colonial history of the nation,” Wilson said. “It’s not new. At all. So that’s been interesting for me at least.” For Keith Mitnick, an associate professor of architecture and Institute for the Humanities fellow, details of Jefferson’s disdain for Black intellect— saying the poems of Phillis Wheatley, a reknowned AfricanAmerian poet, were below the dignity of criticism and claiming
African Americans lacked the ability to appreciate beauty or comprehend the law, according to Wilson’s research — came as a surprise. “A lot of it surprised me,” Mitnick said. “I’m from Philadelphia, so I grew up with a lot of this kind of architecture from that period, and Thomas Jefferson’s always celebrated as the founding father of this idealistic view for a radical country that’s departing from the English model, and yet you find out how deeply-seated racism is in our culture, so the fact that it’s actually ingrained in forms of our architecture is both sobering and important to think about.” Wilson later expanded on the economic complications of slavery and how it relates to core American values. “I think that it’s a complicated
moral bind that people found themselves in. Some of the wealthy elites, they let their slaves free, because they recognized that they can’t say, ‘I believe in freedom and yet I hold another human in bondage,’” Wilson said. “Others, like Jefferson, were financially dependent, because not only do the slaves work, they have value. They’re worth money, so it’s like land. So there was this huge investment in slaves as property, essentially, as well as the labor that slaves did in order to build the wealth of people. So the complexity of the history of the slavery and its intertwined relationship to American ideas of freedom and to mercantile and industrial capitalism. It’s fascinating and there’s so many great scholars and artists doing work on the topic. Still much to know.”
popular sparkling water brand La Croix. Commenting on the presentation, Bandyke said he appreciated Grimm’s enthusiasm for his research on Faygo. Not every author, Bandyke said, can fill up their presentation time and successfully engage the audience. “You have the feeling that this guy just could have talked
for twice as long and have commanded your attention for that long,” Bandyke said. “Not every author has that passion that he does for the subject matter. It’s really impressive.” Ann Arbor resident Kathie Wilder said she found Grimm’s talk very informative, and was particularly struck by Faygo’s inclusive hiring practices in the
1960s. “I thought they were way, way ahead of the times,” Wilder said. “They were pathfinders, I thought.” Wilder added that as a nonMichigan native, she was excited to taste some of the flavors Grimm mentioned. “I’ll have to try some of these unique flavors,” Wilder said.
and Tuesday. Similarly, the Ann Arbor Police Department advised city members and students to avoid driving during the snow and spend minimal amounts of time outside. LSA sophomore Shelby Alston commutes 90 minutes each way, five days a week. She drives an hour every day and then parks 30 minutes away from campus as part of the free parking program. Alston said she often has to decide whether her safety or a class is more important. “It’s been really tough, especially since, you know, every school from my house to the University is closing, and I know it’s going to be a dangerous drive and I find myself in my head weighing my options and sort of choosing between safety and a grade,” Alston said. “It’s really unfortunate sometimes to have to make those decisions.” Alston noted that Perry Samson, professor of climate and space sciences and engineering, live streamed his lectures and enabled students to continue to interact even if they were watching from home. She said she wishes the University would implement more classes like Samson’s. “I think the main issue (is) that they either need to be more lenient in their (attendance) policies or they need to have more classes that do things live streaming,” Alston said. “I thought it was amazing. He took a video of himself, had the audio streaming, and if we had any questions, we could type it in an anonymous platform and his GSIs would tell him. It was still interactive, and I wasn’t stressed because if there was snow, I could still attend lecture and still get the valuable teaching that I wanted. Because it’s not that I don’t want to go — I want to hear what my teacher has to say. Lecture is valuable, you know?” A Public Policy junior
who requested to remain anonymous due to the small size of her class said her professor is requiring the class to log onto an online Canvas chat on Wednesday to participate in a class discussion at the normal 8:30 a.m. start time, ending at 9:50 a.m. as usual. “She did make it very clear that if we do not have internet or do not have access to internet that she will excuse us from class — we just have to let her know,” the student said. The student expressed their understanding that the online discussion is being used to avoid falling behind in class material. “I understand where the professor is coming from,” the student said. “We only have only so many class periods throughout the semester to meet and getting behind even one can be difficult for a professor to make up, so I understand where Professor Lin is coming from.” While the professor said the grades of students without internet will not be penalized, the student said those people will be inherently disadvantaged by missing the class material. “It is just a little bit difficult when some students, if they do not have access to internet, they are now missing out on a class period that the rest of the class gets to enjoy,” the student said. “Also with it being on a chat based site and not even a video chat, we are missing out on face-to-face interactions with our other students regarding information that could be used later in the class, so to me it feels like I might be missing out on a particular environment that I could learn better in.” The student has never participated in an online class and said she is worried about being evaluated on this basis. “It’s going to be a big group chat from my understanding — like I said, I’ve never used it before,” the student said. “I’ve never had a professor use this
thing on Canvas, so I’m not 100 percent sure what its going to look like, which is also kind of nerve wracking.” The student said the online chat hinders the quality of discussion because students cannot speak face-to-face. “I feel like I learn better in an environment where I can see my peers around me and by forcing us to have this discussion online, it seems like it can hinder the very collaborative environment that the Ford School likes to promote, and so this just feels like we might be losing valuable time that we could be spending in the classroom discussing this stuff,” the student said. Northwood III Hall Director Stephanie Pocsi said in an email that students with meal plans can order Dining To-Go Meals on Wednesday and Thursday for either lunch or dinner, which will be delivered to students’ buildings or community centers. “The meal will be delivered to the (Community Center) according to the type of meal,” Poscsi said. “Lunch will be delivered around 12 p.m. and dinner around 5 p.m. as long as the weather allows. The dining halls will still be open; we just wanted to offer an option so folks didn’t feel that they had to either walk through the winter weather or not eat.” University buildings and local Ann Arbor businesses such as Espresso Royale will close on Wednesday and Thursday. Libraries will reopen on Friday at 8 a.m. The Ross School of Business will be locked from midnight Wednesday and will reopen at 7 a.m. Friday, but faculty and staff will be able to enter the building. Ann Arbor trash and recycling services will be delayed for two days. The Winter Engineering Career Fair, which was scheduled for Wednesday, as well as any related interviews and recruiting events, have been canceled.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019 — 3A
LANGUAGE From Page 1A According to the LSA website, more than 40 languages are offered across LSA to fulfill the language requirement. The number of language courses one must take can be minimized for some languages by completing a placement exam, which, depending on how well the student performs on it, can exempt students from as many as all four semesters of the requirement. Advanced Placement credit for language courses, among other examinations, can also aid students in expediting the process of completing the requirement. LSA last reviewed the language requirement in 2004 and upheld its original requirements. As fewer institutions require undergraduate students to take courses in a language other than English for two or more semesters, LSA continues to instill language proficiency of four semesters in its students. Angela Dillard, the associate dean for Undergraduate Education in LSA, wrote in an email to The Daily that despite other universities’ decisions to cut down language departments, LSA still believes strongly in the benefits of the language requirement. “Many of us are concerned that some institutions have begun to eliminate language study departments, and to offer less and fewer opportunities for second language acquisition,” Dillard wrote. “LSA remains committed to the two-year language requirement and to offering a wide range of opportunities, including those in less commonly taught languages.” Students have expressed concerns over the LSA language requirement since its conception, particularly in terms of its foursemester length and hefty time commitment. Many languages are recitation courses, meaning they are taught four days a week, limiting students’ ability to schedule other classes. Four semesters, or two years, are oftentimes only the prerequisites to pursuing a major or minor in a language. In the Romance Languages and Literatures Department, for example, five semesters of the student’s respective language must be completed before they can begin working toward the major or minor. Some students opt for this route, but those who are on pre-professional tracks or wish to explore other interests are boxed into taking a language for at least half of their college career. LSA freshman Natalie White is currently enrolled in French. After completing four years of French in middle and high school, she placed into French 103, of second-semester equivalency. White, who is on a pre-medicine track, expressed frustration with the fact that both her major requirements and pre-professional track pose a heavy course load, and her foreign language requirements require the same, if not more, time and attention. “I have a whole major I need to finish, and pre-med prerequisites I need to finish, and now I need to take three semesters of this language,” White said. “It’s been really frustrating because (French is) not a low-credit class.” The intense hours and extensive course work surrounding the language requirement cause some students to question the purpose of the requirement, and whether or not the language skills they acquire through LSA will help them in the long run. The demands of French, in addition to her other academic commitments, have pushed White to consider transferring out of LSA in order to avoid the language requirement. “I really love the school of LSA, but if I switch into another school I wouldn’t have to take this language requirement … it’s gotten to that point,” White said. While some students have strong opinions against the LSA language requirement and its effectiveness, LSA administrators and many faculty members voice their support for
the requirement, citing lifelong skills that learning a language can bring to students. “LSA’s language requirement seeks to prepare students for a world that has been profoundly transformed by the forces of globalization,” the LSA website states. “Learning a second language provides both a deep awareness of linguistic and cultural differences and a means to bridge them.” Echoing the mission of cultivating cultural awareness amid globalization, Hartmut Rastalsky, language program director for the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department, praised the LSA language requirement and its ability to create well-rounded and cultured students. “(Language) provides students with intercultural skills that will be invaluable to them both globally and locally, in their professional and personal lives,” Rastalsky said. “Learning a foreign language makes students more aware of how their own language works, and thus helps them to become better and more creative.” Dillard further emphasized the advantages of achieving proficiency in a foreign language. “Language study is (and ought to remain) a cornerstone of an education in the liberal arts and sciences,” Dillard wrote. “It gives students a value skill, an important way of understanding and navigating the world, and a competitive edge.” While acknowledging the importance of having knowledge in a language other than English, White noted the lack of enthusiasm and participation that exist in the requirementlevel language courses. “I get the point of having to take a foreign language because the U.S. is so ignorant to understanding other languages, but at the same time it should be a choice,” White said. “There’s nothing worse than sitting in a foreign language class and no one wants to be there.” LSA junior Yosef Gross is majoring in Spanish and also taking courses in Yiddish, but placed out of the language requirement after taking the placement exam. Continuing to take languages for fun, Gross stressed the importance of using language to communicate with people from different cultures. “I think taking a language can be a very eye-opening experience, because when you communicate with someone in their native language … it’s like you’re making an effort to meet them where they are,” Gross said. “A lot of times it can lead to more meaningful and productive conversations.” LSA senior Holly Wood is currently in a second-year Indonesian language course. After a self-proclaimed embarrassing placement exam experience with Mandarin Chinese, Wood decided to take Indonesian instead. She wrote in email to The Daily she recognizes the intense nature of the requirement but understands the overarching benefits as well. “While it is annoying to have a language as a requirement, I do think it is important for students to learn different languages and cultures,” Wood wrote. “I support the (two) year language requirement, especially because these language classes get students interested in a lot of the (culture) on campus.” To petition the LSA language requirement, students must go through the Office of Academic Standards and Opportunities’ Academic Standards Board, which reviews student petitions and provides the students with substitution culture courses if they prove their inability to learn a language. Prior to petitioning, a student must attempt a foreign language course, exert a “good-faith” effort in the course (including near-perfect attendance and strong participation), and then consult their foreign language instructor for assistance in seeking an alternative. Students can find the information regarding the petition process if they speak to someone at the Office of Academic Standards and Opportunities.
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
Opinion
4A — Wednesday, January 30, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
AARON BAKER | COLUMN
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com
MAYA GOLDMAN Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA AND JOEL DANILEWITZ
FINNTAN STORER Managing Editor
Editorial Page Editors
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Emma Chang Joel Danilewitz Samantha Goldstein Elena Hubbell Emily Huhman Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan Sarah Khan Lucas Maiman Magdalena Mihaylova Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland Anu Roy-Chaudhury Alex Satola Ali Safawi Ashley Zhang Sam Weinberger
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
FROM THE DAILY
I
#StudentPressFreedomDay
n 2018, the international community, the United States and our own university witnessed just what kind of impact journalists can make. The tragic killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian Washington Post columnist who galvanized both domestic and global readership to encourage change in his home country, sent a chilling reminder about the precarious nature of being a journalist today. Though his death was a shocking sig nal to stalwarts of the free press, it brought to light the impact that Khashoggi’s trenchant work had — both in the U.S. and the Middle East. In the United States, the press persists under the cumbersome weight of a president who continually impug ns the legitimacy of news and media outlets by portraying journalism as an anathema to the nation. Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated attempts to undermine the press, we have seen g roundbreaking reporting across the country. From the New York Times’ investigative work on Trump’s suspicious tax schemes to the Miami Herald’s three-part series on how Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta helped multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein get away with years of sex abuse and trafficking, journalists continue to diligently pursue the truth under a politically terse atmosphere. And here, at the Universit y of Michigan, the reporting of our fellow classmates reinforced how crucial the press is on our own campus. An article alleging 40 years of sexual misconduct by a facult y member in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance ultimately led to the professor’s leave, with The Daily’s own Sammy
Sussman receiving praise from the Detroit Free Press for his tenacious work. While we begin to make our way through 2019 and uncover new stories, we look to these writers with admiration and recog nize the unyielding power of our press. As students learning how to understand the world around us, our press continues to be a source of g uidance. No other institution can act
We want to empower every voice seeking a platform on this campus
as a pillar of our democracy while still critiquing the inevitable failings of our government. President John F. Kennedy once recog nized this dualit y. After receiving criticism from the press on his Bay of Pigs invasion, he said, “Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there
isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free societ y without a very, very active press.” It is with this sentiment that we encourage students to continue supporting the tireless work of our writers, both at The Daily and beyond. We must demand the most from our universit y, recog nizing when they uphold their promises as well as when they renege on such pledges. This can only be done with a robust press, one that is daring in its coverage and unafraid of delving into every corner of every establishment thats purported goal is to serve. Today, on Jan. 30, we’re publishing this editorial alongside other student journalists across the country to commemorate Student Press Freedom Day. We want to reinforce to our readership — those on this campus and beyond — that we will continue to be steadfast in our quest for the truth. We want to empower every voice seeking a platform on this campus. And, most of all, we want to implore everyone to be incisive, critical, and always demand veracit y from both our press and our institutions. Magdalena Mihaylova and Joel Danilewitz are the 2019 Editorial Page Editors and can be reached at tothedaily@michigandaily.com.
JOIN OUR EDITORIAL BOARD Our open Editorial Board meets Wednesdays 7:00-8:30 PM at our newsroom at 420 Maynard St. All are welcome to come discuss national, state and campus affairs.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.
A
The wall and unpopular populism
s if a wealthy scion and reality TV show star leading a whitecollar populist movement wasn’t ironic enough. President Donald Trump fits every definition of a populist, yet he is thoroughly and fundamentally unpopular. The government shutdown debacle over the wall is a perfect example. The fact that Trump’s populism is so unpopular should be a source of relief, but could also be something to worry about. Many political scientists define populism as a political strategy, applicable on the left or right, that claims to represent the “pure people” against a class of enemies. On the right, these enemies are usually minorities and, on the left, these enemies are typically the wealthy. The leaders of populist movements claim to represent the direct interests of the people. Historian Federico Finchelstein argues that modern populism is a historical product of World War II-era fascism. He writes that modern populism grew out of fascism after fascism was defeated ideologically and militarily by liberal democracies and communism during World War II. Federico writes the main differences between modern populism and fascism are that modern populism has shed the violence and authoritarianism of fascism. Most populist leaders after World War II, he writes, sell themselves as wholly democratic, often framing the problem they want to solve as anti-democratic. Trump, for example, talked about the “swamp” or establishment politicians as being corrupt or “crooked,” implying he was somehow the democratic solution to the crooked elites whereas World War II era fascists, like Mussolini or Hitler, were authoritarian dictators. The other main difference is that central to fascism is violence and the elimination of its enemies. Hitler terminated racial enemies and Mussolini terminated political
KRYSTAL HUR | COLUMN
I
enemies. Populists are rarely as violent. The connection between fascism and populism is important. Populism is so similar to fascism that the wall separating the two could collapse under enough pressure. As Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College, suggested a large enough crisis could lead a society dealing with populist politics (like ours) into one plagued by legitimate fascist political movements. This is important to remember in a world where populism is rising and Donald Trump is our president. Populism of all sorts tends to be bad. Populism is usually unpredictable, irrational and anti-empirical. It is often driven by emotions and resentment for a particular group of people, and it conflates the interests of the people with those of the populist leader. Trump’s populism is concerning for these reasons, but also because it is so unpopular. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post wrote an informative piece about the unpopularity of Trump’s central political objectives. Sixty-eight percent of Americans don’t support a trade war with China. Nearly 60 percent of Americans don’t support building a wall. Seventy-one percent of Americans don’t believe undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit crimes, and 59 percent of Americans don’t agree that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs from native-born Americans. These issues — economic protectionism and nativist nationalism — are central to Trump’s populist vision. Trump’s unpopularity is glaringly evident in the recent debacle over the funding of his “artistic” wall on the Mexican border. Forty-eight percent of Americans blame Trump for the longest shutdown ever. The fact that most Americans blame Trump for the shutdown indicates that his overall populist vision is unpopular. The wall is as strong of a symbol as any of Trump’s
nativist, “spurious” nationalism, to quote the late Sen. John McCain. Populists, to use the German sociologist Max Weber’s terminology, need to routinize their authority. Trump came to office riding an oppositional wave. He defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a moderate, establishment Democrat, and much of the establishment of the Republican Party — the selfidentified “Never Trumpers.” His election was an act of cultural and political rebellion against the commonly accepted arbiters of normalcy in the media and politics. But you can’t lead a country solely with the rebellious ethos Trump ran on. Rebellions and revolutions of all types, to be successful, usually need to stabilize into a new status quo and sense of normalcy. But Trump’s presidency has been everything but stable, despite his claim that he is a “stable genius.” Trump’s administration has seen an unprecedented rate of senior aide turnover and a shockingly frequent change of senior cabinet members. He has left hundreds of key positions in government agencies empty. He has picked up the habit of not reading his intelligence briefings and continues to flippantly tweet about serious political matters. On policy issues, he is continuing a trade war with China and pursuing an immigration policy and a Middle East foreign policy that are widely seen as unwise. In essence, to govern effectively, Trump needs to become less of a populist. He needs to be more stable and poised. He needs to be more rational and empirical. He needs to stop acting like a child. But after two years in office, Trump shows few signs he will mature in his role as president.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com Aaron Baker can be reached at aaronbak@umich.edu.
Watch your language
, like many others, believe an argument with parents to be like a war: It requires careful preparation and a readiness to risk everything for a passionate (and often misguided) cause. You have to load up your arsenal with arguments that dance on being plain spiteful, yet are somewhat reasonable enough that your parents at least humor your futile attempt to win. When the fight’s over, you tend to the wounds inflicted on your angsty emotions and decide whether you should keep fighting or admit defeat. In other words, fighting with parents is essentially a mini Revolutionary War, in which you are the 13 Colonies and your parents are Great Britain — except in this version, Great Britain wins, and the Colonies learn that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are a privilege, not a right, young woman! But with immigrant parents, there’s an even bigger disparity between the child and parent’s ability to win. There’s often a disconnect between parent and child because the child’s primary language is most likely English, while the parent’s primary language is not. Thus, there becomes a situation where parent and child can either argue with each other in different languages, or one person bends and argues in a language they’re not 100 percent comfortable using. I am this person when I argue with my parents. While my Korean isn’t bad — in fact, I would say that it’s pretty good — I’m much more comfortable speaking English. However, arguing with my parents in English just wouldn’t make sense. I don’t speak with my parents in English ever, and I understand there’s no point in stating a well thought out argument if my parents can’t completely understand what I’m saying. So, when I argue with my parents, I feel like I’ve brought a mediocre sword to a machine gun fight. I know that even if I was the creator of the Korean language, I would still lose, as
my parents have the power and whatever they say, goes. Still, there have been times where I’ve privately thought to myself that if I had argued with my parents in English, I at least could have won. This isn’t an issue I take seriously, since most of my arguments with my parents stem from first-world problems. Do I really feel unjustly wronged because I couldn’t argue with my parents to my fullest capabilities about why they should’ve let me go to Lollapalooza with my friends? No. I also don’t feel as though not speaking in English has any true impact in the way that I communicate with my parents. Maybe I can’t quite explain to my parents why I need to see Drake in person singing about how he “used to bus it to the dance,” but when I have real, serious topics I want to discuss with my parents, language-based communication issues have never hindered our conversations. In addition, while there’s a language disconnect that exists between my parents and me, there’s also one that undeniably exists between monolingual parents and children. This is due to the myriad of slang terms, expressions and lines of reasoning children use that their parents don’t understand. Thus, the children have to alter their everyday language when arguing with their parents because otherwise, their parents won’t understand what they’re saying. While this isn’t true for everyone, a vast majority of us use language in our everyday lives that is completely alien to our parents. These differences are of course not as stark as those that exist between two completely different languages, but they’re impossible to ignore. Even if I did speak English with my parents, I certainly wouldn’t speak with them the same way I do with my friends, not just because of the different power dynamic between us, but because of the generational gap. They wouldn’t know half of the terms I use with my friends.
It’s strange to think young people seem to speak almost a different language than their parents — it’s a type of codeswitching that comes so naturally we don’t even think about it, and what implications it has. Are we at a disadvantage when we speak with our parents? If we were able to use the language we use when we speak with our friends, without fear of our parents not understanding us or not taking us as seriously, would we be able to communicate better with them? Our parents are not our friends in the same way that our actual friends are, since there’s always going to be an ultimately insurmountable (at least, to most of us) instinct to view them as authority figures. This leads me to believe that most of our communication issues with our parents stem from an uneven power dynamic and a generational gap marked by different beliefs, rather than language differences. So, while I’m not sure how this code switching negatively or positively affects the way we converse normally with our parents, it’s probably for the best that we don’t fight with our parents the same way we fight with our friends and that there exists a language disconnect that forces children to take on a more formal tone. If we spoke to our parents the same way that people speak to each other in Twitter smackdowns, I imagine that our relationships with our parents would all suffer dramatically and more than one kind of smackdown would ensue. Does this language disconnect go away as we all get older and all get lumped into the same, slangless, nondescript category of “old people” by the hip, younger generations? Is it possible to win in an argument against your parents at this point? I’m not sure, but I suppose I’ll find out in the future.
Krystal Hur can be reached at kyrshur@umich.edu.
Arts
5A — Wednesday, January 30, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
BOOK REVIEW
‘Hark’ is what happens when a Sad Boy, satire and misguided sincerity walk into a hip, new juice bar CLARA SCOTT Senior Arts Editor
If Gw y neth Paltrow was a wir y, indiscriminately-aged young ma n with the hea rt of a prophet a nd the social skills of a well-trained ferret, the result would most def initely be Ha rk Morner, the tit ula r cha racter of Sa m Lipsy te’s new novel “Ha rk.” When I initially picked this book up of f the A rts desk a few weeks ago, the rest of the writers were both shocked a nd delighted that someone had decided to dive into its biza rre my thos. A nd boy, was it biza rre. “Ha rk” is, without a doubt, one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. Of f the heels of his critically acclaimed 2004 novel “Home La nd” a nd its 2010 follow-up “The Ask,” Lipsy te has established himself in the litera r y world as a sort of satire boy genius, continuously challeng ing his readers with underdog male leads in scena rios that mirror our own world, through a slightly of fkilter lens. Lipsy te’s writing is just as f unny as it is uncomfortable, a n unca nny valley version of today ’s insa ne realities. The novel is equal pa rts social commenta r y a nd vehicle for Lipsy te’s most fascinating fever drea ms: a f ictional “A rmy of the Just ” wages a n a nti-capitalist wa r in Europe next to a talking catf ish. “Ha rk” surprisingly does not focus its na rrative a round Ha rk Morner himself, but instead on his loyal sidekick a nd spirit ual convert Fraz, a middle-aged ma n caught in both the whirlwind of Ha rk’s my tholog y
a nd also a brutal midlife crisis. This my tholog y, na med “Mental A rcher y ” in a tong ue-incheek nod to the new-agey practices of today ’s health nuts, is never explained in f ull detail throughout the book’s 284 pages. We hea r of a practice called “string ing the bow,” get a hint of “The A rcher ’s Pa radox,” hea r Ha rk’s call to “focus on focus” a n estimated hundreds of times, but never crack the surface of the pseudorelig ion’s ja rgon to see what ’s underneath. Instead, the a ntics of Ha rk Morner a nd those a round him f unction as whatever the reader imag ines them to be, heightening the satire of “Ha rk” to a hectic
ref lection of its audience’s personal opinions on the modern era. The novel almost entirely operates on metaphor a nd allusion, its foundational ideolog y resting on the backs of proverbs like that of Willia m Tell shooting a n apple of f a boy ’s head, of a rmies tightening their bows in bat tle hundreds of yea rs ago, of a ny thing a nd ever y thing a rcher yrelated in the least. “Ha rk” is a na rrative wrapped up in itself to the ma ximum extent, a n a rg uable feat in world-building that works to both the stor y ’s benef it a nd disadva ntage. The ba nter bet ween Fraz, Ha rk a nd the va rious cast members that Lipsy te at taches to their cause along the way is a def initive highlight of this world, f ull of insa ne phrases that require several reads to f ully understa nd, but work nonetheless. R ight a round the novel’s midpoint, there is a n excha nge bet ween Fraz a nd one of these ra ndom players, Seth: “‘Fraz, isn’t a fool,’ Seth says, ‘He’s a jester. A nd ever y sma rt king needs one.’” Af ter Ha rk of fers a rebut tal, Fraz explains that he is “just a troubled bitch.” This small excerpt of dialog ue ca n g ive a nyone the jist of what
The book may be a product of our time, of the desperate clamor that many artists feel to make something relevant to the current political and social climate.
“Ha rk” is at its core: a brutally humor with interesting ideas a nd honest depiction of life a mong the concepts. Yet the novel st umbles chaos of the modern world. In a too ma ny times for this to f ully traditional na rrative Fraz would work. There is a dif ference bet ween be a king ma ker (a nd is heralded as ma king a reader uncomfortable for a predestined one by Ha rk’s purpose a nd devotees later prolong ing in the stor y), their conf usion but here he is for seemingly merely a g uy no reason tr ying not to lose but to mess his mind in the with their midst of people perceptions. just as crazy, if “Ha rk” does not more, tha n not walk this himself. In line ca ref ully, Fraz’s unhappy “Hark” a nd veers from a nd seemingly solid satire aimless journey Sam Lipsyte into sad-boy through time, Simon & Schuster sincerit y in the novel a zigzagged presents a kind Jan. 15, 2019 pat tern that of eternal male is nea rly shrug found in impossible work like David to walk as a Foster Wallace’s reader. The “Inf inite Jest,” book may be a nd not in a good a product of way. Though our time, of there a re bright the desperate spots within the cla mor that pages of “Ha rk,” ma ny a rtists the desperation feel to ma ke that hides behind something each cha racter releva nt to ha ngs over the the current na rrative like a political a nd da rk cloud. social climate. The base Except Lipsy te elements of “Ha rk,” if assembled correctly, could is too obvious in this desire, a nd it have made a hila rious a nd poig na nt is the crux that the value of “Ha rk” stor y much like Lipsy te’s own “The bala nces on, teetering back a nd Ask,” one that bala nces its brutish forth until it falls.
DAILY HUMOR COLUMN
TV REVIEW
It is quite cold outside. You are going to listen to vinyl.
In a desperate attempt to become even more of a caricature of yourself, you decide to buy a record player. With this record player you will officially become defined by your owning said record player. You talk only of your recent record acquisitions and how great it feels to buy music again after stealing it for so many years. You pretend to like Jazz because it sounds like something that should be played on a record player and because Ryan Gosling tried to save it. You hide your speaker from plain sight — if you don’t own the record, it doesn’t deserve to be heard. You acquire a vast collection of comedy records to show people you have interesting interests. You listen to Joan Rivers before she got old and mean, just mean. You drink wine. You do this a lot. You post carefully curated Instagram stories of your ever-expanding record collection, posing them next to your candles and fairy lights to create the perfect #ambience. You dedicate a corner of your room for your record player. This corner is very cozy. You name your record player. The name of your record player is Madam Spinster. You and Madam Spinster spend many evenings cuddled together alongside Ella Fitzgerald and Julian Casablancas. One day, Netf lix reminds you that the new Ted Bundy documentary series is out. You watch all of season one in one day. You have trouble falling asleep because you are equal parts terrified of and attracted to the notorious serial killer. You eventually fall asleep to Madame Spinster playing “The Graduate” soundtrack. You go home for the weekend and stumble across your father’s old record collection. You see a lot of Tom Petty, then some Rolling Stones, then some more Tom Petty. You grab the good ones, some David Bowie, a Bob Dylan, leave the Tom Petty — your dad has a thing for him, you guess. You grab
a Beatles “White Album,” feeling like you scored the damn lottery. When you get home you place the record leaning against your dear Madam Spinster in eager hesitation. You go to class. You think of “Hey Jude.” You buy an expensive coffee. You
BECKY PORTMAN
You discover your hair is turning a sophisticated grey. You find that your wardrobe is made up solely of black button downs and Ferragamo loafers.
play “Blackbird” on Spotify. When you get home you make
a steaming mug of tea, kick off your snow-covered boots and slip into your fuzzy-ass slippers that make your feet feel equally sweaty and cozy. You take the “White Album” and ease the record out of its case only to discover it is not The Beatles’s “White Album” but Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedoes. You pass up plans to go to Rick’s in order to hang out with Madame Spinster and Tom Petty. You are starting to like him. You tell your friends you are — cough, cough — sick. You miss Sunday brunch even though you woke up at seven, went to the g ym and then sent 28 emails. It’s Monday and you figure there is no point leaving the house in this weather, this climate, this economy. So, you stay in, contemplating Nabokov’s essays on “Don Quixote” and listening to Chopin records. You spend 100 dollars on a rare Tom Petty album from eBay. You discover your hair is turning a sophisticated grey. You find that your wardrobe is made up solely of black button downs and Ferragamo loafers. Your socks are all mismatched because you can no longer tell what is navy and what is black, they just look too damn similar. You need bifocals. You read James Joyce for fun. You complain about your back pain and blame it on all those years of tennis from way back when. You make a photo montage of your family vacation to Aruba set to Tom Petty’s “American Girl.” You send links to articles to your family group chat with comments like “Interesting read!” or “Thought you’d appreciate!” You start smoking, not cigarettes or weed, but cigars – expensive ones, Cuban ones. The Wall Street Journal starts coming to your door every day and you don’t know why, but you read it, cover to cover. You spend 400 dollars on U2 tickets in Chicago. You don’t live in Chicago. And then it hits you, like the golf clubs you got for early retirement. You have become
SHOWTIME
‘Black Monday’ is very OK very interesting right now. Maybe it’s because the embodiment of that era currently sits in the Daily Arts Writer White House. Or maybe it’s that this moment of personal brands and soulless influencer hustle The worst day in American stock market history seems sprung from a Reaganesque mythos of was not in 1929, as one might expect. It actually individual responsibility. But “Black Monday,” came in Oct. of 1987 — a day dubbed Black Monday, however prescient it could be, never manages to when the Dow fell a steep, devastating 22 percent. say anything insightful about the decade beyond The crash began in Hong Kong, snaked through big hair, Marion Barry, denim and “Let’s Make a Europe and continued west, an early example Deal.” Whatever this is, it isn’t a satirical period piece of the complications posed by a contemporary globalized financial system. Nothing, not 9/11 nor so much as it is an overly long “SNL” sketch, the collapse of Lehman, has ever eclipsed Black replete with tedious ’80s jokes and references, a few too many of which are anachronistic (Crystal Monday, or even come close. When the dust settled, it wasn’t entirely Pepsi came out in 1992!). Several of them mine audience hindsight for their obvious what caused Black humor: In the second episode, Monday. Computerized a screenwriter shadows Mo as trading is a popular suspected research for an untitled Oliver culprit. Others point to the “Black Monday” Stone movie about Wall Street. weak dollar or previous Deployed with more restraint, overvaluation. There isn’t Pilot these would qualify as hidden one clear, satisfying answer. Easter eggs. On this show, “Until now,” says the opening Showtime they’re akin to what might sequence of Showtime’s Sundays @ 10 p.m. happen if Clayton Kershaw got “Black Monday,” a new gonzo his hands on a few cartons of comedy set a year prior to the Eggland’s Best and decided to crash that promises its own practice his fastball. imagined explanation. This brand of television — Mo Monroe (Don Cheadle, “Hotel Rwanda”) is the scrappy founder of The surreal, chaotic, irreverent — could probably be Jammer Group, an underdog Wall Street firm that very good. But “Black Monday” has few ambitions employs a boorish, ragtag bunch. To orchestrate a beyond shock value. There are some funny jokes, hostile takeover of the lucrative Georgina Jeans, but even those are something of a statistical Mo hires the wide-eyed Blair Plaff (Andrew inevitability given the show’s joke density — the Rannells, “Girls”), fresh out of Wharton with vast majority land flat. Tonally, “Black Monday” an algorithm that’s the talk of the trading floor. hasn’t quite decided who we’re supposed to care Dawn, the firm’s head trader and lone woman, for and how much. And sure, this is difficult to do played by the brilliant Regina Hall (“Support the when your show is about inherently unsympathetic Girls”) becomes a sort of audience surrogate who people in a much-despised industry. But littered can roll her eyes at the frat bros of Wall Street and across the TV landscape are successful examples their excesses. And, oh boy, are there excesses. — HBO’s “Succession,” even Showtime’s own Lambo limo? Robot butler? Cocaine? Check, “Billions.” The characters on those shows are by no means lovable, but at the very least, they’re check, check. There is something about ’80s greed that feels worth investing in. MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN
Arts
6A — Wednesday, January 30, 2019
FILM REVIEW
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ALBUM REVIEW
Toro y Moi’s ‘Outer Peace’ is an appealing fresh start SHIMA SADAGHIYANI Daily Arts Writer
NETFLIX
‘Fyre’ wasn’t a mess, even though the fest really was SAMANTHA NELSON Daily Arts Writer
Through new-age classics like “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Catch Me If You Can,” modern cinema contends that a brilliant mind is both amazing and dangerous. We can mar vel from afar at the charisma and genius of Jordan Belfort and Frank Abag nale Jr., while keeping in mind the sobering realit y that the remarkable visions and charming personas that launched these t wo men to the top are the ver y qualities that ultimately put them behind bars. Belfort and Abag nale both rose to the highest of highs, living lives of luxur y and g randeur, only to fall to the lowest of lows, ser ving double-dig it sentences in federal prison. Reminiscent of these infamous, big-
Netflix’s rendition of the Fyre Festival catastrophe leaves audiences with mouths agape, horrified and in a state of disbelief that such a beautiful mess actually happened.
screen-dramatized frauds, is the stor y of Fyre Festival: a shockingly catastrophic entrepreneurial venture led by the mag netic, yet arg uably mad co-founder Billy McFarland. Exposing the festival’s failure from conception to ashes, Netf lix’s rendition of the Fyre Festival catastrophe leaves audiences with mouths agape, horrif ied and in a state of disbelief that such a beautif ul mess actually happened. At f irst, Fyre Festival was nothing more than a dream of Billy McFarland’s. Already a successf ul, youthf ul and trusted entrepreneur among the New York upper class, McFarland set his sights on advertising his latest undertaking, an
entertainment booking app called “Fyre.” What better way to do so than with a massive music festival
looks perfect, framed within the dimensions of our iPhone screens, we mistakenly decide that it is perfect. The
“Fyre” Netflix
catered to the millennial elite on a private island in the Bahamas? Wasting no time, McFarland and the rest of his posse, including notorious rapper and Fyre co-founder, Ja Rule, jet off to the Bahamas to shoot a sexy promotional video with a crew of top models. In no time, their brainchild transforms into the most desirable bucketlist item for ever y millennial inf luencer. There appears to be trouble in paradise, however, as McFarland’s promises to the festival’s investors and g uests beg in to pile up, each emptier than the last. Though, money is initially enough to patch up the holes that McFarland’s false claims keep creating, it soon becomes clear that Fyre Festival is a sinking ship, far from the picturesque fantasy of models, music and lavishness it was intended to be. If one thing is for certain, it is that this documentar y could never fall into the unfair yet common stereot ype within the genre of being dr y or boring. Watching such a visionar y and massively expensive project collapse to literal shambles before our eyes, we cannot help but feel captivated by the account of Fyre’s misfortunes. The f ilm rotates bet ween present-day inter view clips, showcasing a mixture of Fyre employees, festival goers and journalists exposing the harrowing tale of Fyre festival, and retrospective clips about the festival’s construction process. One of the recurring expressions that inter viewees hit on over and over again is the tremendous sensation of g uilt. Guilt from believing in and sticking with McFarland despite his g rowing derangement, g uilt for never compensating the hundreds of Bahamian workers responsible for building the festival’s infrastructure and g uilt over all the hoops jumped through, lies told, and vows un-kept. If there is one takeaway from the f ilm it is this: We live in a world ruled by appearance. If something
illusion of celebrit y, aff luence and extravagance that Fyre promoted with yachts and models to its inf luencer millennial audience is ironically the same illusion Fyre’s management team fell victim to. Hypnotized by an unshakable image of Fyre festival as an ethereal paradise, even as its foundation was literally crumbling, McFarland couldn’t awake to recog nize the nightmarish realit y of what Fyre truly was. Like all of the juiciest stories, the Fyre Festival calamit y is something that must be seen to believe. Netf lix’s unveiling of this unimag inable failure will
On the cover of Outer Peace, singer-songwriter and multiinstrumentalist Toro y Moi sits on an exercise ball in front of a glowing computer screen. Surrounded by different types of paraphernalia (read: keyboards and what appears to be a large glass of wine), Toro y Moi seems almost boxed in by all the various objects that help him make music, his gaze transfixed on the computer screen, backlit by muted tones of red, orange and yellow. Overall, the effect is distinctly otherworldly — a gauzy dreamscape that the album’s title seems to reference as well. Outer Peace provides the surreal terrain needed for Toro y Moi’s music to f lourish. Saturated in bright, electronicpop melodies and inf lated with funk and R&B tunes, Toro y Moi has never sounded quite as carefree as he does now. In the scheme of his entire discography, Toro y Moi seems to try on subgenres like different shirts. In 2010, his debut album Causers of This placed him firmly within the chillwave category, garnering comparisons to the hazy bedroom pop of Neon Indian or Tycho. 2011’s EP Freaking Out expanded past chillwave into a sound that could have emerged straight from the post-disco revival of the ‘80s. 2013 saw the release of Say That and Toro y Moi’s deep exploration of everything house music alongside the halting indiosynchries of J Dilla-inspired loops. From there, Toro y Moi continued to expand and traverse musical boundaries, collaborating with artists such as Nosaj Thing, Chromeo and Travis
Scott, never staying in one place for too long. After Boo Boo’s release in 2017, he shifted again — initially moving from Portland to Oakland and then winding up in rural Sonoma County where he spent several weeks in solitude creating what would eventually become Outer Peace. Even though every Toro y Moi project has upheld its promise to be vastly different than the one that came before it, Outer Peace contains the most drastic stylistic shift: Gone are the wandering
Outer Peace Toro y Moi Carpark Records
ambient contemplations, the at-times nebulous production, the lo-fi quality. Rather, Outer Peace emerges like a fresh breath of air — crisp, distinct, energetic in a way that many past projects were not. Powered by disco-driven melodies and held aloft by the perfect fusion of house and pop, the album beckons like a strobe light — a bright and beautiful break from reality neatly packaged in distinctive rhythms and clean production. In an interview with Apple Music, Toro y Moi stated that Outer Peace mainly focuses on appraising labor within the 21st century. “It’s less of a love/heartbreak record,” he said. “It’s more of a youcan-do-it, motivational, life-is-hard-because-all-you-
Classifieds
do-is-work record.” Indeed, there is a certain optimism to each track, a drive to keep moving and creating. The opening song “Fading” shimmers with a pulsating effervescence, glitching beats interspersing with soaring vocals. “Everything is fading, fading, fading / Guess I gotta have that faith in, faith in,” he says and there is a sense of continuation in spite of disillusionment, the pursuit of organic creativity in spite of superficiality. Its a theme that carries throughout the album, apparent in “Ordinary Pleasure”’s “Oh this world makes a lot of noise / Makes it hard to feel what I’m thinking,” in “New House”’s measured inquiry into societal expectations, in “Who I Am”’s electro-dance explosion of selfexploration. The pinnacle of Outer Peace comes through its very first single “Freelance.” It’s here that everything Toro y Moi was working towards in this album comes through the clearest. The track’s polished funk pays homage to the spinning kaleidoscope of an underground discotheque while lagging programmed beats climb to obscurity underneath Toro y Moi’s monotone drawl. “Nothing’s ever worse than work unnoticed / Freelance now I guess you earned it,” he states, and the strained notes of futility within his proclamation are at odds with the song’s buoyant production. The boundary between work and life has never seemed as blurred as it does here, and overarching everything is a desire to escape. “Cloud hidden and my whereabouts unknown,” he says over an unceasing beat. Disenchantment has never sounded more appealing
Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
Release Date: Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
SUBLETS
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
McFarland couldn’t awake to recognize the nightmarish reality of what Fyre truly was.
drop your jaw to the f loor, set your mind spinning in distress and make you count your blessings for the simple life in good ol’ Ann Arbor, far, far away from the mayhem that transpired.
ACROSS 1 Arrangement holder 5 Pursues with bloodhounds 11 Pampering, briefly 14 Mideast airline 15 Ace, in poker 16 That lady 17 Blink of an eye 19 Poison __: villain in Batman comics 20 Tip of a wingtip 21 Oprah’s channel 22 Quick cut 23 Former Soviet orbiter 24 “The Life of Pablo” hip-hop artist 26 Half-brush partner 29 Old AT&T rival 30 ’60s pigskin org. 31 Grows faint 34 Hank with 755 homers 38 Comb and scissors, to a stylist 42 Sean of “Stranger Things” 43 In any way 44 Bakery order 45 Aunt, in Andalusia 47 Flat-lying volcanic flow 50 Tucked-in clothing part 55 __ heartbeat 56 Formally surrender 57 Did some laps 58 Put into gear? 61 Liquid in a drum 62 Musical ensemble ... or what the ends of 17-, 24-, 38and 50-Across comprise 64 Lyrical tribute 65 Periodic reviews 66 “M*A*S*H” star 67 “Deck the Halls” contraction 68 Inky goofs 69 Set in a purse DOWN 1 Suit piece 2 Gravy Cravers pet food brand
3 Stephen King novel featuring vampires 4 Draw forth 5 Butter amt. 6 Kick oneself for 7 Major maker of can material 8 Rodeo __ 9 Saxophonist with 17 Grammy nominations 10 Normal: Abbr. 11 Your, old-style 12 Wranglers competitor 13 Chamber in a vampire movie 18 Pool protector 22 Get bleeped, maybe 24 Item in a kitchen block 25 Coup d’__ 26 Pollster’s collection 27 Aerial enigmas 28 Hurly-burly 32 “Total Request Live” network 33 Seaside souvenir 35 Competition where rhymes are exchanged
36 Garfield housemate 37 Have to have 39 Petrol purchase 40 Tizzy 41 Cy Young Award winner’s stat 46 Naturally lit courtyard 48 Home improvement guru Bob 49 Fur-lined jacket 50 Hurry along
51 “America’s Got Talent” judge Klum 52 Lazes around 53 “Storage Wars” network 54 “The Jungle Book” setting 58 Get bleeped, maybe 59 Actress Lamarr 60 Flight sked info 62 “That __ close!” 63 NFL period
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Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, January 30, 2019 — 7A
Luce, Martin bring stability to inconsistent Michigan defense BAILEY JOHNSON Daily Sports Writer
To say the Michigan hockey team’s defense has been inconsistent this season is an understatement. The Wolverines have given up the fourth-most goals in the Big Ten this season with 77 goals against — 24 more than No. 4 Ohio State, which has allowed the fewest goals in the conference. Those goals, though, have often come in bunches. Take this past weekend’s series against No. 15 Penn State, for example. Michigan allowed only one goal Thursday night and then got torched for five goals Saturday night. The Wolverines have allowed less than three goals in 12 of their 25 games this season. On the other end of the scale, they’ve given up five or more goals eight times. But amid all that inconsistency, junior defensemen Luke Martin and Griffin Luce have backstopped an up-and-down group of blueliners. “They’ve played well,” said Michigan coach Mel Pearson. “I think they complement each other. They might not be the most offensive, prolific guys, but this time of year, defense wins you hockey games. They did that last year, too. They played extremely well the second half, and they’ve taken up where they left off last year.” On a team filled with twoway defensemen like sophomore defenseman Quinn Hughes and freshman defenseman-turnedforward Nick Blankenburg, Martin and Luce exemplify an older brand of blueliner — one that lets offense take a backseat to focus on defense first. This season, the pair have combined for seven total points. Luce tallied his lone point when he scored a goal against Western
Michigan on Oct. 19. Martin has chipped in six assists. Pearson tends to combine two-way defensemen with guys like Luce and Martin when creating defensive pairings, but Luce and Martin have played together more than half the games this season. And once he saw how successful the duo is when they play together, losing some of the offensive production that comes with having a two-way defenseman on the ice didn’t cross Pearson’s mind again. “We’ve discussed that in the past,” Pearson said. “We’ve talked about our defense — we talk almost every week about, ‘Do we like the pairs, are we sure, do we need to change some things up?’ They’re playing so well that — and we like all our
pairs. Why change them if you like them?” One of the things that allows Luce and Martin to have such success together is how long they’ve known each other. In addition to their three years together with the Wolverines, they both played on the U-17 and U-18 teams for the U.S. National Team Development Program. And both players agree that their friendship is key to their success on the ice. “We’ve been close,” Luce said. “We’ve been together here for going on five years now, so we know each other really well. I think when you’re able to go and play out with one of your best friends (it) definitely makes a difference. We have a good chemistry going and we
know each other really well, so that makes it easier.” Martin added: “I think it’s just really easy to communicate with (Luce) on the bench. There’s no — no one’s attacking anyone or talking about a play or a bad read or something. It’s just a lot of open communication and a lot of trust. We trust each other to give each other advice and it’s working out well.” At Michigan, the best friends have grown into mirror images of each other. They both stand 6-foot-3 and weigh in only one pound apart. Martin shoots
right-handed and Luce shoots left-handed, making them ideal matches on a defensive pairing. When you combine that with the pride they take in their roles as purely defensive defenseman, it creates a partnership that the Wolverines can count on in just about any situation — particularly on the penalty kill, a responsibility both players take seriously. In nearly every game, both blueliners can be found blocking numerous shots on the penalty kill and shutting down the threat from the opponent’s man advantage.
At Michigan, the best friends have grown into mirror images.
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Junior defensemen Luke Martin and Griffin Luce have provided stability to a defense and a penalty-kill unit that has otherwise been inconsistent this season.
Against the Nittany Lions, the duo blocked a combined 17 shots in the two games — including six for Martin and five for Luce in Thursday night’s win. “They’ve taken some pride in penalty killing,” Pearson said. “They’re blocking shots. They’re doing all those little things you need to do to win and have success. “(Blocking shots) especially on the power play (is) really important. It’s gonna be important this weekend. Minnesota has got a really good power play. In conference, they’re operating at about 30%, which is unheard of. They scored six power-play goals last weekend against Wisconsin, so you’re gonna have to get in shooting lanes and block shots.” And speaking of the upcoming series against the Golden Gophers, the fact that Minnesota plays on an Olympicsize ice sheet adds a layer of difficulty to Martin and Luce’s jobs this weekend. The ice is 15 feet wider than the ice at Yost Ice Arena, leaving more space for the defensemen to cover. But both are up for the task. “They recruit to their ice, I’ve always thought, so they have really small, fast guys who are really good at playing in the corners on that ice,” Martin said. “It’s just staying in between the dots and recovering extra hard. (Luce) and I backing each other up will be key this weekend.” This weekend’s series against the Golden Gophers is key for the Wolverines as they try to string together some wins to get into the NCAA Tournament conversation. And with Martin and Luce adding much-needed consistency and calm to Michigan’s defense, a strong performance from the two of them may be the answer for the Wolverines.
Naz Hillmon thriving in role, ‘M’ wins 4-1 at ITA Kick-Off ready for potential of more JACK KINGSLEY For The Daily
TEDDY GUTKIN Daily Sports Writer
It’s rare for a freshman to rank second on her team in scoring. Even more so when that freshman shoots over 68 percent from the field and comes off the bench. Naz Hillmon — the forward who has become one of the Michigan women’s basketball team’s top contributors and one of the Big Ten’s biggest rising stars — has been a revelation for the Wolverines this season, currently ranking fifth in the nation in field goal percentage (68.5) while also putting up 12.6 points per contest. Despite being a bench player, she has found ways to make an impact and make the most of her role. “Coming off the bench, you can see everything a lot better than a starter would just because you can take from the sidelines and see how your opponent is scoring as well as how you’re scoring,” Hillmon said. While she is currently playing a key role as the team’s sixth
man, Hillmon could potentially find herself in the starting lineup for Thursday night’s home contest against Iowa after senior forward Nicole Munger suffered a devastating injury in Sunday’s 77-73 loss against Michigan State. Michigan will need someone to step up if its senior captain is sidelined. Luckily, it has Hillmon waiting in the wings. Hillmon, who admitted that she doesn’t know anything about Munger’s status, says that she is prepared to make the jump to the starting five if needed. “It’ll be a difference,” Hillmon said. “But I just know that I just have to be locked in and ready to go whenever my number is called.” After Sunday’s tough loss, Michigan now sits at 3-6 in the Big Ten conference and 12-9 overall. While most teams would be discouraged by a subpar record, the Wolverines believe they are close to a breakthrough and, after a series of tight conference losses, are doing what they can to right the
ship. Rather than focusing on what could have happened had these nailbiters gone the other way, Hillmon says that the team is focusing on looking forward. On the court, Hillmon could be part of a solution. “Right now we know that we have some work to do, but we also know what that is,” Hillmon said. “In practice, every day we wanna keep trying to work at it and get those close games to flip the other way.” One thing Hillmon has been working on is developing a midrange shot. While she admitted that the shot has never been a major part of her arsenal, she said that she’s doing her best to extend her range in order to open up more space for her teammates. Though she made a free throw line jumper in Sunday’s contest, Hillmon cautioned that “it’s not there yet,” but added that she’s “getting more comfortable” from that range. Could a 3-pointer be next? “I’ll have to make some in practice first.”
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
Freshman forward Naz Hillmon is the second-leading scorer on the team despite coming off the bench.
Coming off a disappointing 4-3 loss to No. 22 Alabama, the No. 24 Michigan men’s tennis team had tremendous motivation to succeed on Saturday at the ITA Kick-Off against North Carolina State. Besides wanting to notch their first win of the season, it was the first time that the Wolverines had hosted the event and they wanted to prove that they could compete with the other teams participating, since the winner would earn a spot in the ITA National Team Indoor Championship. “It means a lot. I told the guys yesterday that it took a lot of work to get here,” MIKE ZLONKEVICZ/Daily said Michigan coach Adam Coach Adam Steinberg was pleased with Saturday’s bounceback performance. Steinberg, “I told them we have to take advantage of it though. straight sets, 6-3, 6-3. Senior and ride the wave,” Fenty said. We can’t just be happy to be Gabe Tishman, the only “The way we’re playing right hosting. Our goals are way Michigan singles player to not now we feel like we could beat participate in doubles, had anyone.” bigger.” Added Steinberg: “That’s And take advantage they possibly the most dominant did. After dropping the first singles win for the Wolverines, what we practice for. That’s game, the duo of sophomore 6-0, 6-4, while junior Connor what these guys live for, to Johnston won go to the National Indoors. It Mattias Siimar 6-4, 7-5 to give doesn’t get better than that. I and freshman Michigan the know the guys are excited.” Andrew Fenty deciding point Michigan would go on to won six straight and a 4-1 win. lose a hard-fought match 4-1 on to win their “Connor at Sunday, with their only point match 6-1. four, and how coming in doubles. Freshman he’s played While the weekend did not Patrick Maloney the first two end as they would have liked, and senior matches is the Wolverines proved that Myles Schalet a big lift for they can play with anyone. also took care of our team,” their Wolfpack Steinberg said. opponents with relative ease, winning 6-2, “He didn’t really play singles and giving the Wolverines the his first two years and now he’s playing high and he’s doing doubles point. “Doubles was unbelievable,” great.” Added Fenty: “To come out Steinberg said. “That’s the best I’ve seen us play doubles in a here and win, and the way we really long time. That was the did, with that much intensity and that much passion, it’s kind biggest positive obviously.” Michigan did not have much of sick.” After their win over the difficulty in the singles portion the Wolverines of the day either. While Siimar Wolfpack, lost his match, giving NC State looked to take the momentum its only point, every other from Saturday’s win into Wolverine player either won Sunday as they took on No. their match or had the lead 11 Baylor for a spot in the ITA National Team Indoor when play ended. Schalet capped off an Championship in February. “We’re just trying to use it impressive day with a win in
That’s the best I’ve seen us play doubles in a really long time.
Sports
8A — Wednesday, January 30, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Position review: Quarterbacks In 2018, Shea Patterson helped lift Michigan’s quarterback room to new heights. What’s in store next year and beyond? MAX MARCOVITCH Managing Sports Editor
With the Michigan football team’s 2018 regular season in the books, The Daily looks back at the performance of each unit this year and peers ahead to the future in 2019. In this edition: quarterbacks. Coming off a 2017 season handicapped by poor quarterback play — one which ended with John O’Korn in tears at the podium after the Ohio State game — even average quarterback play would have sufficed. In 2018, Shea Patterson cleared that low bar with room to spare. Patterson threw for 2,600 yards, the highest total since Jake Rudock in 2015. He threw for 22 touchdowns, the most since Chad Henne also posted 22 in 2006. His touchdown to interception ratio — 22-to-7 — was the best since Drew Henson’s in 2000. There’s a very real case for it being the best season from a Michigan quarterback this decade. In fact, it might not even warrant an argument. Whether that surpassed the massive expectations planted on Patterson after his transfer from Ole Miss is subject to personal evaluation. He did not merit AllBig Ten or All-American selection. He was no “savior of the program,” as some optimistically posited. But one thing is clear: With Patterson at the helm heading into 2019, the Wolverines are as comfortable at quarterback as they’ve been in quite some time. HIGH POINT: The Michigan offense got the ball back in the middle of the fourth quarter with a four-point deficit and a quarterback oozing confidence. Just hours earlier, Northwestern had jumped out to a 17-0 lead in the first half, threatening to derail the Wolverines’ season before it even took flight. With one loss already under their belt, a loss to the
Wildcats would have effectively served as a death knell. Slowly but surely, Patterson helped awaken Michigan’s offense from its prior doldrums. Then he orchestrated a decisive 11-play, 67-yard drive in 5:59 to grab a 20-17 lead that would soon become final. On the drive, Patterson showed the tools that made him effective all year. He rushed for nine yards into Northwestern territory on a key 3rd-and-6. Then, two plays later, he rifled a missile to the back shoulder of tight end Zach Gentry, sending Gentry lumbering down to the six-yard line. Above all, he showed the moxie to carry the sputtering Wolverines out of Evanston with a win when the alternative seemed inevitable
all evening. “I just know there’s something about him,” said fifth-year senior defensive end Chase Winovich after the game. “I saw it the very first time we had met. He was a major factor in me coming back because there’s just an aura about him. … He’s a football player. “But something about Shea is special. People can see it. Being on the team with him, you can feel it.” LOW POINT: Somewhere between the first interception and the second interception, Michigan viscerally lost hope. Much of what derailed in the Peach Bowl was out of Patterson’s control. Florida rushed 40 times for 257 yards, eviscerating the porous, under-manned Wolverines defense. Michigan’s leading rusher
in the game, Christian Turner, totaled just 32 yards. But a stinging 41-15 defeat falls in part at the feet of its leaders — and Patterson earned his share of the blame. For him, the game represented an opportunity to move past the debacle at Ohio State. He had a chance, playing without many of the departing stars, to usher in optimism for the year ahead with his play and his demeanor. A chance, in short, to lead. Patterson’s sloppy play did nothing of the sort. The junior quarterback ended the day with middling statistics — 236 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions on a season-high 36 attempts. In the first quarter, he guided the lone touchdown
drive with three pinpoint throws, including a back-shoulder pass to Donovan Peoples-Jones for a score. It was that ease which made the ensuing stagnation all the more frustrating. Early in the first half, Patterson tried to throw a deep post-route to Nico Collins. Underthrown and misread, Patterson’s pass fell easily into the arms of Florida safety Chancey Gardner-Johnson, symbolically turning the tide of the game. From there, the Gators scored 28 of the game’s final 33 points, including a 30-yard Gardner-Johnson pick-six to twist the knife already entrenched in the Wolverines’ back. Patterson doesn’t assume all the fault for the loss, of course.
KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily
Junior quarterback Shea Patterson threw for 2,600 yards, 22 touchdowns and just seven interceptions, returning in 2019 to headline a strong quarterback room.
And the loss, in a vacuum, changes little about the overall outlook of Michigan’s season, one congruent with the ethos of Michigan football these days: just good enough to tantalize, not good enough to win anything meaningful. But the Peach Bowl was Patterson’s to seize. Having already announced his return, Patterson held the trajectory of the program and the present mentality of the team. The ambivalent performance did nothing to satisfy either. THE FUTURE: In terms of present upside and future depth, Michigan’s quarterback room is in as good a position as it’s been in over a decade. While Patterson enters next season as the presumed incumbent, Joe Milton and Dylan McCaffrey both offer future starting quarterback potential. McCaffrey showed brief glimpses of that potential in 2018. He completed 4-of-6 passes and, anecdotally, looked comfortable in relief duty at Notre Dame. He rushed for a 44-yard touchdown against Wisconsin and had an 80-yard rush called back on a holding call against Nebraska. In a mop-up appearance against Penn State, though, McCaffrey injured his collarbone and was out for the remainder of the year. For Milton, the hype remains just that — largely centered around whispers of practice feats here and there and one 60-yard missile against Ohio State. He didn’t clear the four-game threshold, remaining eligible for a redshirt if he and the coaching staff so choose. With Patterson in tow, and highly-regarded new coach Josh Gattis in control of the offense, there’s reason for tepid optimism ahead of 2019. Amid an offense returning most of its core, the quarterback position represents one of the team’s biggest strengths.
Simpson leads way with triple-double in 65-49 win over Ohio State ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
Kaleb Wesson barked at Zavier Simpson. He was frustrated with the junior guard’s relentless defense after Simpson blocked a shot seemingly out of nowhere. Simpson, of course, barked back. It wasn’t long before both teams got involved, exchanging words and shoves before the refs broke it up. In the end, both teams got two technicals plus a common foul on the Buckeyes. Junior center Jon Teske sunk both free throws and the Michigan men’s basketball team — buoyed by a chorus of boos — had all the momentum against Ohio State. The Wolverines scored
five straight points afterward to cap off a 9-0 run and extend Michigan’s lead to 18. “That’s our motivation, when things get chippy in the game,” Simpson said. “We thrive off that. That hungers us, keeps us going. That makes us wanna make the next best play.” And the Buckeyes’ frustration with Simpson started long before the fight. On the previous possession, Simpson hit a 3-pointer to break up a three-minute scoring drought. Before that, he was a constant presence, grabbing
boards left and right and dishing out assists. He finished with a triple-double, the first of his career — scoring 11 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists and acting as the Wolverines’ catalyst in its 65-49 win. The Buckeyes stymied Michigan at first with different defensive looks, including a threequarters trap and a 2-3 zone. The Wolverines couldn’t get any shots to fall — for two or for three. Ohio State, though, gave the ball away and fouled so frequently that it minimized its own volume of
That’s our motivation, when things get chippy...
EVAN AARON/Daily
Sophomore point guard Zavier Simpson posted a triple-double Tuesday night, with 11 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists.
chances. In the first minute of the second half alone, the Buckeyes had two fouls and two giveaways. Parts of the game seemed like an exercise in not scoring. But despite its lack of efficiency, Michigan generated enough chances to build up a lead. On one possession, Poole missed two triples before finally making the third. Two minutes later, Ohio State committed another turnover late in the shot clock. Sophomore forward Isaiah Livers hit a 3-pointer on the other end to give the Wolverines their first lead of the game.
From there, the shots started falling. Michigan took the lead for good on a trey by redshirt junior wing Charles Matthews and finished with 10 3-pointers on 37 percent shooting from beyond the arc “(We) were confused a little bit and once we got a rhythm for it, we started to play with a better rhythm, whether it was zone or man in the first half,” said Michigan coach John Beilein. “In the second half they played a couple sets of zone and I think (Poole) hit a three and somebody else hit a three and they didn’t play
Parts of the game seemed like an exercise in not scoring.
zone anymore.” During the final media timeout, two assistants whispered to Simpson a simple message: “Get another rebound.” It was then that he realized he was approaching a milestone. With 2:49 left in the game, following a missed jumper, he finally got his 10th. “My teammates, they told me to get it,” Simpson said. “So having it come up, two of them could’ve gotten the rebound. I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ They kinda let it bounce. … That means a lot.” A minute later, Simpson was called for a foul and removed from the game, but instead of the usual boos to accompany such a call, Simpson exited to cheers of “triple-double” and “Zavier Simpson” and then, finally, a standing ovation.
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ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | JA N UA RY 3 0, 2019
Dispatches from the Night Shift
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019 // The Statement
statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | JA N UA RY 3 0, 2019
Managing Statement Editor Andrea Pérez Balderrama Deputy Editors Matthew Harmon Shannon Ors
Designers Liz Bigham Kate Glad
Photo Editor Annie Klusendorf
Copy Editors Miriam Francisco Madeline Turner
Apple has played copycat for a decade — and is winning E
veryone remembers the kid who sat next to you in high school and conveniently turned his head toward your Scantron to “cough” during an exam. Even worse are the ones who peer pressured you into letting them copy the entirety of your homework. Copycats are a nuisance — a fly you just can’t seem to swat for good. Even in the team-oriented corporate world, there are colleagues who ride the coattails of your work. But what happens when a $700 billion company strategy is rooted in these very grounds? Apple has created an ecosystem that most students at the University of Michigan have bought into. Send a text on your iPhone, track your workout on an Apple Watch, write your essays on a Macbook and indulge in your morning podcast on those AirPods. When you run out of storage, make sure to upgrade your iCloud storage for only 99 cents. Every picture you take, place you go, thought you have and person you talk to circles back to these environs. But beware: The ecosystem comes with a side effect of allegiance. The easiest way to start a friendship on the wrong foot is observed when you carefully type a new number into your phone and watch the green text fail to turn blue. When the iPod became wildly successful after its release in 2001, Apple looked ahead and accurately predicted the inevitable smartphone takeover. Thus, it quietly began creating the iPhone. The iPhone was groundbreaking when its first few models came into fruition, capturing 3.4 percent of the smartphone industry’s market share within the first quarter on the market. And by 2012, the iPhone made up more than half of Apple’s revenue. A quick glance at Samsung and Apple’s timelines show the iPhone broke grounds first. The debut iPhone was released in January of 2007, while the Samsung Galaxy was released in 2010. While the first 8GB iPhone cost a whopping $600 (approximately $740 today), it was widely regarded as the most anticipated gadget of the decade, and thus saw booming success. But since its first few models, Apple has let its branding and consumer loyalty take the lead, working in the shadows of
Editor in Chief Maya Goldman Managing Editor Finntan Storer
BY ROMY SHARMA, STATMENT COLUMNIST
Samsung while carrying the gold medal. Excited for the AirPower wireless charging technology set to release later this year? Samsung debuted this capability back in 2015, even featuring it in an ad mocking Apple. Tired of getting the “Not Enough Storage” notification right as you’re about to snap the perfect photo? Samsung introduced microSD expandable memory in 2014 with the Galaxy S5 — it can now expand up to 400 GB. And while your water-resistant 2016 iPhone 7 may save your life during a poolside Instagram photoshoot, the Samsung Note7 introduced waterproof technology that same year, after implementing water resistance since its S4 in 2013. The 2016 Note7 also debuted facial recognition technology, which Apple picked up for its iPhone X in late 2017. The mimicry pattern runs deeper than surface-level features. After Steve Jobs bashed OLED screen technology in 2012, Tim Cook ultimately implemented it in the Apple Watch in 2015, then the Macbook and iPhone soon after for better picture quality and power efficiency. But while Samsung has used OLED screens since its 2010 Nexus S, Apple deserves some credit, as OLED technology has been argued to be primitive until used in Apple products. Though the Samsung versus Apple rivalry can often feel as bitter as that of Coke versus Pepsi, what many tend to forget is that Samsung actually produces a substantial number of processors and OLED screens for Apple. While their supplier relationship altered in 2018 with Apple’s decision to bring on a second OLED supplier to reduce their reliance on Samsung, the South Korean mogul once made $110 off of every iPhone X that was sold. And while both companies continue to play tag in legal battles year after year, they still lead a critically symbiotic relationship. As they say, keep your friends
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
close, but keep your enemies closer. It is hard to deny Apple is winning in the smartphone race in the U.S. Despite Samsung being a global leader in market share, their smartphone market share in the U.S. hovers near 25 percent, while Apple’s sits at 45 percent. Apple was also the largest company by market cap last year, while Samsung took 12th place. Beyond getting kids acclimated to their products through elementary school classrooms equipped with iPads and Macs, Apple also continues to offer features that are deeply integrated in our daily lives: iMessage and FaceTime. It can be argued Apple is leading in the U.S. because of these features, while other countries use third-party apps, such as WhatsApp, and thus find more value in Samsung products. While Samsung often innovates earlier, Apple still capitalizes on a rare pairing of luxury branding and ubiquity to hold on tight to their domi-
nance. But perhaps Apple’s lack of innovation will eventually catch up to them. Three months ago, Goldman Sachs slashed their stock price forecast of Apple, citing a lack of success in China as well as the iPhone XR’s flop in performance. And just 4 weeks ago, Apple announced they too are slashing their own revenue forecast for these same reasons, ultimately causing their stock price to plummet by 10 percent. Minor model changes and steep price jumps may no longer be the ticket to success in Apple’s playbook. You can only play copycat for so long. But for now, as enticing as cutting-edge technology and waterproof systems are, no one wants to be a pixelated Snapchat, or worse: a green text message. Want to defend the brainchild of Steve Jobs? Feel free to spark conversation at rsharm@michigandaily.com.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019 // The Statement
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ilms are meant to, among other things, transport their audience. It is an art form with the ability to invite viewers to spend a night in the humid Hong Kong air, heavy with stolen glances and stolen spouses. Or hold the audience’s hand through the many dialects of the Chinese language as the director escorts viewers through the subtleties of a character’s sadness, as in “In the Mood for Love.” A film is also a window into a French dairy country cabin in World War II with pipe smoke snaking around, as in the opening scene of 2009’s “Inglourious Basterds.” Or perhaps they prefer to stay in their Greenwich Village apartment — the one with the “Rear Window.” But the movement I want to talk about exists in a different place and time entirely — The French New Wave. It disturbed the streets of Paris and wreaked havoc on the paradigms of cinema. The French New Wave didn’t just transport the audience — it also facilitated and created a transition in the way filmmakers think about the art form. Starting in 1958 and continuing into the late ’60s, The French New Wave, known
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in French as the “La Nouvelle Vague,” sought to make films in a different style than the hyper-continuous aesthetic that had originated in Hollywood. Directors like François Roland Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Demy created a new language for film that gave the audience more credit. They believed their viewers would not only enjoy the narrative stories they told, but would also understand the artistic, formal choices having to do with time. According to the title of Andrei Tarkovsky’s legendary book, cinema is “Sculpting in Time.” Until the New Wave, time on film was replicated as close to reality as possible: Days or weeks were sometimes compressed with a dissolve transition technique if a story had to be told over a long time, but still allowed the narrative beats to unfold minute by minute. New Wave directors abstracted time in two main ways: jump cuts and real time sequences. Both equally revolutionary and equally upsetting to the establishment, these techniques allowed for more complex stories to be created and began to really expand cinematic artistry beyond the page.
A short appreciation for The French New Wave BY KATE GLAD, STATEMENT DESIGNER Courtesy of Kate Glad
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019 // The Statement
Wednesday, January 30. 2019 // The Statement
NIGHT SHIFT ESSAYS
NIGHT SHIFT
Confessions of an ambivert
This series is an ode to the college lifestyle that rarely warrants the time to wallow in your own thoughts and write for fun. Every month we pose a prompt and receive personal essay submissions from students across the University of Michigan. The following four writers explored the January prompt of duality. ILLUSTRATION BY WILLA HUA
On straight girls and social spaces BY EMILY CONSIDINE, CARTOONIST
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his past summer, I found out that my Bursley Residence Hall housing assignment had been moved from a mixed-gender hall to a same-gender hall. It really wasn’t a big deal — I knew it might happen and I still had a decent room. But I was still struck with this irrational nervousness for something I shouldn’t have been nervous about. I’m a girl. I have friends who are girls. I already knew half of my floormates from living with them last year and I knew they were all really nice. A same-gender hall shouldn’t have been an issue, and rationally, it wasn’t. But as the days crept closer and closer to September, I found myself getting more and more anxious about living in that hall. I kept trying to bring it up to friends, subtly, with lines like, “Hey, it’s gonna be strange living in an all-girls hall, haha!” and they’d just respond with, “Why is that an issue?” Which I totally get, because it really isn’t an issue, but there was still something worrying me that I couldn’t seem to make people understand. One of my friends even said, “You know, for a lesbian, that’s kind of sexist.” It wasn’t the first time that I tried to explain how my reservations were not grounded in dislike, but rather, I just didn’t know how to deal with girls. Women can be awesome. I’d be the first person to say that. I’m the “raging feminist” of my family. I’ve marched, called representatives, and signed petitions for gender equality and women’s rights. The theme of my cartoon in The Daily is “women’s issues.” But there’s a
difference between large-scale societal issues and complex personal relationships, and I still couldn’t shake the anxiety of living in an all-girls hall. I used to be a hostess at this fancy restaurant where I was the only young woman on the waitstaff. It was just me and a bunch of 20-something waiter guys and it was chill. We’d talk about hair gel and salsa dancing and how much we hated our customers. I slipped into my “dude-bro” voice, the one that sounds like every stoned surfer I grew up with. They still treated me differently because I was a girl, of course — it took time for them to warm up to me. But once that initial awkwardness left, I had it figured out easy. About a month later, another hostess was hired. She was my age, but nothing like me. Long hair, high heels, YouTubetutorial makeup. We were stuck together at the hostess stand for hours, with nothing to say to each other. It was like we came from different ecosystems, and scientists were just now putting the two species in the same habitat to see how they would interact. Eventually, this hostess started talking to me, most likely because she realized that she could talk about anything for as long she wanted and I wouldn’t object. Her musing about her personal life was better than nothing. She told me about her college applications, her sisters and most of all, her ex-boyfriend. One day she came in to work and said, “Emily, I’ve finally figured out what I want in a man. He needs to be attractive. Physically.” This mutual rapport lasted
for a few shifts, but then it all went to hell. One day, she asked me if I ever had any boyfriends, and I responded, pretty plainly, “I’m gay.” My remark was met with a one-word response, “oh.” And then she was silent. I don’t know if it was deliberate, and I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t, but she didn’t talk to me much after that. I’m pretty familiar with the whole straight-girl-suddenly-gets-reallyuncomfortable-and-then-the-friendship-is-kinda-over thing. It’s been happening since I was a kid, even before I really understood it, to the point where I’m always a little surprised when straight girls are kind to me. It’s really cool when they are, but there’s a part of me that’s always suspecting they’re going to realize they hate me and tell me to leave them alone. Honestly, that’s a terrible way to think. It’s its own kind of prejudice. I approach too many straight girls with the expectation that they’re not going to want to be around me, or that we don’t have enough in common. This belief directly influences who I befriend and spend my time with. I know, it’s pretty messed up. I think I’ve gotten better at checking those assumptions since I’ve arrived at college. At least, I hope so. But sometimes, I still get paranoid, and I can’t figure out if it’s me or someone else who has the problem. Is that girl being rude to me because she’s running late, or because I have short hair? Is she avoiding me because she’s busy, or because I make her uncomfortable? I don’t know.
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I don’t make it easy for myself — my haircut and clothes and lack of makeup all signal “this kid never grew out of the tomboy phase.” I know that is not how it works. But that doesn’t stop me from believing people are thinking it. My freshman year, I went to an audition for a campus dance group. I had been dancing since I was five, so I had been trying out for a few ensembles, thinking I might have a shot. However, the moment I walked into this audition, I immediately felt every girl’s eyes on me. Glaring. A room of leggings and ponytails and the unshakable thought that every single person there wanted me gone. Like in a staring contest I wasn’t prepared for, I made it 20 minutes before blinking. I sighed. I mean, what was the point? They weren’t going to want me on their team. So I just left. I’ve been living on this all-girls hall since September now, and it has obviously been fine. Everyone is nice, supportive and fun to be around. Looking back, there was genuinely no good reason to be nervous in the first place. But that anxiety still sticks around. Despite being a woman myself, whenever I’m in majority-women spaces — whether it’s in a bathroom, a classroom, or a party — I keep catching myself worrying if I’m making someone uncomfortable by being there. Maybe someday I’ll get over it. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy this hall while I’m on it. However, not accidentally, I’m the only woman living in my apartment next year.
BY SAM ROSENBERG, DAILY ARTS WRITER
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am a constellation of contradictions. I eat vanilla and chocolate ice cream, often mixing the two together or finding a flavor somewhere in between. I listen mostly to indie music and classic vinyl, but I indulge in the stylings of top 40 pop from time to time (yes, I still like Maroon 5, what of it!). I enjoy serious and silly movies, from “The Godfather” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” to “She’s the Man” and “White Chicks.” But perhaps my greatest personal paradox is that I’m an “ambivert,” or rather, both an introvert and an extrovert. For most of my life, I thought I was just an introvert. From elementary to middle school, I was painfully shy, riddled with social anxiety and frequently desired to do things on my own. In class, I preferred working independently as opposed to group projects. At home, I read books, drew still lifes of the plants in my backyard, watched TV and filmed my own wacky short films on my iMac G5 — all by myself. Going out anywhere for an extended period of time — particularly a place that was crowded, loud and overwhelming like the mall, a busy restaurant or a bar mitzvah party — was a major struggle. Even though I cherished my aloneness, a part of me knew deep down that I might also be an extrovert, but that I just hadn’t found the right people to surround myself with. My lack of interest in sports alienated me from my male peers, while my general fear of social interaction made it difficult to find ways to connect with people my age. Still, there was something missing, an experience I was craving but that also somehow felt far beyond my reach. Once high school approached, I found myself becoming friends with people who shared my passion for pop culture and began making plans to hang with them out over the weekends. While I credit my summers at Jewish sleepaway camp and the Jewish youth group I belonged to for exposing me to a wide network of like-minded individuals, high school was what provided me the opportunity to meet people I wouldn’t normally engage with. I started to genuinely like being around people: going to movies with them, having deep conversations, getting dinner, venturing to concerts, having sleepovers. The more social circles I immersed myself in, the sharper I was at socializing. It was as if a key to that part of myself had been unlocked and I had finally found what I was looking for. And yet, every now and then, my introversion pulls me back. Between the end of high school and the beginning of college, I began to notice the limitations of my newfound extroversion. Talking with someone became stimulating at first, but exhausting after a while. I’d click “Going” on Facebook invites to upcoming events, but on the day of, I sometimes couldn’t exert the effort to follow through with my initial plan to go. After sophomore year, I stopped going to tailgates because I knew what to expect
and didn’t feel compelled enough to day drink for four hours and dance to the same old sing-a-long jams almost every Saturday of the fall semester. Depending on my mood, I found myself getting irritable whenever I was with a group of people that would rather go to Rick’s or a house party than stay in and watch a rom-com. When I am at a bar or a party, and enough conversations have been had and enough drinks have been consumed, I’ll stand in the corner, space out, check Instagram or look at the clock to see when is the most appropriate time to leave. At a school as intensely extroverted as the University of Michigan, the pressure to hang out with people on a constant basis is especially draining. The social environment of a college like Michigan is built on a rather cruelly idealistic expectation that in order to truly have fun and embrace the undergraduate experience, we must interact with our friends as often as possible. We aren’t, however, conditioned to just be by ourselves. Aloneness is often negatively associated with loneliness. For me, being alone is not the same thing as being lonely. When I spend a long amount of time solo, my body will tell me — even sometimes force me — to explore the outside world and catch up with friends over dinner or coffee. But when I maximize my time with other people, my body will persuade me that I’m in desperate need of a me-time recharge and soon, I’m sitting in the swivel chair in my bedroom, catching up on a Netflix show, stuffing my face with whatever snacks are left in the pantry. The weird thing about being an ambivert is that I don’t have a preference for my introversion or my extroversion. They coexist with one another. It’s a symbiotic, “both-and” relationship rather than an “either-or” dynamic. It’s not because I can’t make up my mind. It’s because I don’t want to feel constrained to just one thing. Confining myself to a singular trait or interest makes it harder for me to grow. If I just stick with being one thing, it would be like a betrayal to my inner self — a complete suppression of who I am. Though I am totally comfortable with my ambiversion, I worry a lot about balancing these two sides of myself. A contradiction is a blessing and curse, but as a cynical optimist, I’d like to think it’s more of the former.
NEXT MONTH’S PROMPT The February “Night Shift Essay” prompt is all about dishonesty. We are taught the risks of lying from a young age with the tale of Pinocchio’s growing nose. Yet, it would be naïve to think that human beings never lie. Sometimes we mess up and tell big lies. And sometimes versions of the truth squeak by as white lies. We lie to ourselves, our friends, our family and even strangers. Be honest about your dishonesty in 800 to 1200 words. Email your submission to statement@michigandaily.com by February 22. We can’t wait to read what you write.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019// The Statement
NIGHT SHIFT
When thinking about virginity
BY ELI RALLO, DAILY ARTS WRITER
to church.” This was ironic considering Lauren had never really gone to church throughout her childhood — her dad always went alone and she wasn’t ever religious. The car was quiet while they drove to the church, the silence was uncomfortable and large, awkward and inevitable. She sat in the pew, next to her father and figured maybe she was supposed to meditate on her sins for a while. Maybe, since her first go at pre-marital sex was so ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL awkward, God would give her a e were walking through the get out of jail free card — just this once. “What would you have said?!” she Diag when Lauren first told me that her mom walked in on remarked through laughter. I thought about losing mine. It wasn’t her losing her virginity. Life went on around us in Ann Arbor: Diag noises. Whir of a bike such a catastrophic event like the one she tire. The stir of leaves on a tree. The way she just described — but, rather, pretty unrespoke was almost blasé, with the laugh I’ve markable, in the way losing your virginity grown to know well. Initially, I didn’t believe can be. It’s a milestone built up to be such a her. She’d been my best friend for more than life changing moment, but often times you a year, and yet this story had somehow never leave that moment quite the same. Diag noises. Whir of a bike tire. The stir of come up during our late night conversations in sticky Pizza House booths. After going leaves on a tree. back and forth for a while, she’d managed he year is 2015 and I am 17 years to convince me, despite the fact that I was old. I’m standing in front of a full initially surprised by her emotionless declength mirror in my bedroom, gazlaration of virginity (or lack thereof.) As I ing at my reflection. My eyes are green, and reflected upon her confession, I concluded I narrow them as I look at myself, scrutinizthe situation wasn’t the end of the world — ing every last detail. I never wear makeup, crippling embarrassment and the awkward so I don’t know why I’d spent time shakily fumbles that come with a “first time” mag- brushing mascara against my eyelashes. I nified a thousand times when your mom don’t feel like badass Rizzo in “Grease” opens the door. I realized that years later, when she sneaks out of her window to go she is no longer scarred from the memory, pick up football player Kenickie and drive she looks back on that day with a lightheart- to the infamous lover’s land on the edge of ed attitude and a dose of humor. town. Instead, I feel a contradictory mix of It’s just sex. Right? reserve and anxiety –– calm in my choice, I asked her what happened next — how her but anxious in the buildup. I’d never been so mom reacted or what she said. The answer self-aware before — in a state of wondering was nothing; her mom was completely about myself in the most inward way, scrusilent, until the next morning when her dad tinizing everything, reflecting on everywoke her up and simply said, “We’re going thing. I feel the beat of my heart against my
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rib cage, and feel tranquility in its rhythm. I sit down on the edge of my meticulously made bed, smoothing out the denim of my loose-fitting jeans. The outfit I’d planned feeling somehow not right. It’s one of those moments when you know you’re about to do something that you think is risky and mature and provocative, but looking back on it now, it was just a first-time life event –– losing your virginity. Something that most people experience in the course of a lifetime. They say there’s a first time for everything, but when you’re 17, there’s something frightening about only getting the chance to have one first time. I run my fingers through my hair and tug on the hem of my softest sweater. Is this the kind of outfit you wear to lose your virginity? This all felt like a whispered secret between me and my boyfriend and my sweater. After overthinking my outfit for far too long, I forfeited any attempts to change my appearance or change my mind. I was sure of myself. I was sure of my choice. I went downstairs. “I’m going to Daniel’s house,” I said to my mother. “Make good choices,” she responded. I got my car keys and drove to his house. My hands were shaking. Make good choices. I thought about her words as I drove. Was this a “good choice”? I’d certainly thought my decision through plenty; I trusted the other person, had dated him for a long while before this night, and we both felt ready. But did all of that mean it was a good choice? I couldn’t tell if sex made me nervous, or if the stigma surrounding sex made me nervous. ex and religion are tightly bound when you are raised Roman Catholic. I was taught at church and in Bible study about what I was supposed to do and what I wasn’t supposed to do. In fifth grade we had to take an abstinence Bible study course through our religious education. The teachers showed us pictures of deformed genitalia in attempts to scar us for life, then told the boys not to masturbate as everyone giggled under their breath. At the end of the course, we had to take a pledge of virginity, writing our promise down and signing our sloppy, 11-year-old signatures on a piece of paper. We then had to drop our pledge into what my religious education teacher called “the chastity box.” I wrote, “I promise I will be a virgin until college (maybe)” on the paper, signed it and sweat profusely as I put it in the box. I didn’t want to promise God something I wasn’t sure I could stick to. I didn’t want to go to Hell. With sex as a staple of American culture, and an even bigger hallmark of col-
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lege hookups, societally, sex isn’t widely regarded as an action of sin. If everyone had to go to church every time they had sex, some people would never leave. When I was growing up, the stigmas attached to sex shaded the act not as an adult choice, but rather a life-shattering sin that could guarantee my eternity in Hell. I wondered about how many people waited till marriage. I respect them for this choice, yet back then, couldn’t help but worry that in order to be a good Catholic, or a Christian at all, I had to abstain, too. In religious education, they treated the subject as though I’d go to Hell the minute I broke my chastity box promise. But six years later, there I was — promise broken, in my Jeep Wrangler, driving home and not toward Satan’s gates. I came home that night and thought about the 11-year-old pledge I’d just shattered. Something about it all made me feel guilty, or immoral. Like I’d done a truly bad thing. I went upstairs and took a shower, and stood there under the hot water for an hour. I was not trying to wash off what I’d done, but rather attempting to wash away my guilt for what had just happened. To wash away feeling like I’d sinned, or feeling like I was going to Hell, or that God hated me, or that I couldn’t be Catholic anymore. I thought about how people cherry-pick the Bible. There are people who believe that God hates gay people, but they aren’t virgins. There are people who go to church every Sunday, but who also cheat on their spouses. There are people who get divorced, but pray to God every night. Religion to me suddenly seemed overwhelming and impossible to navigate. I couldn’t imagine that God or Jesus would now hate me because of something that felt so trivial, especially when I’d always tried my best to find a connection to my faith. I also thought about Mary Magdalene, whom the Catholic church links with penance (reconciliation of sins) because she was arbitrarily identified as a prostitute, despite the fact that she was one of Jesus’ largest supporters and witness to his crucifixion, burial and resurrection. I couldn’t sleep that night. I tossed and turned for a few hours, thinking about the implications of my decision swirling in my mind — wondering if it’d ever find a way out. Wondering if I was sorry, deciding that I wasn’t. After a while, I didn’t know what to do anymore, fighting exhaustion and the inability to close my eyes. My legs like lead, my head heavy, my body different — but my mind the same. I thought about all the plausible solutions for an impossible predicament for so long I could barely think straight any longer, so I put my hands together, and I prayed.
Wednesday, 2019 // // The The Statement Statement Wednesday, January January 30, 16, 2019
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NIGHT SHIFT
Infidelity from the “other” side BY RAMISA ROB, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
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21-year-old man and my childhood friend, whom we will call “X,” had a serious girlfriend for two years in college, and was very happy with her (evident in his Instagram feed with recurring captions: “Grateful for my best friend”). But he was actively approaching other women and professing his feelings for them. As an outsider, I would condemn him as a hypocritical womanizer. I always held the blunt belief that infidelity is the betrayal of trust, and those who help the cheater are complicit in the immoral act of violating relationship norms. Thus, getting with X was nowhere on my moral compass. Being on the other side of an infidelity equation was definitely not a place I ever imagined myself, but in a twist of fate — one nebulous night in New York City over the summer— I became the “other” woman. Amidst aimless bar-hopping,
of his girlfriend’s existence because I was, honestly, ashamed. A part of me even knew our fling was built on his insecurity. But I wanted to be flattered. I didn’t want anything to do with what was happening under the surface. Yet I was still, not so deep down, disgusted at who I was over that summer. However, admitting to myself that I have consciously betrayed my values and in turn ignited my inner dark cravings for the forbidden fruit was the inevitable self-confrontation I wanted to avoid in order to “live in the present.” In other words, I was the conflicted ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily “other” woman. Soon enough, summer came when he tried to kiss me, I rejected him because I knew he had to an end and confessions of his a long-distance girlfriend. But love for me arrived with it, which he was insistent, saying, “We contradictorily enshrined the are still young, we should live a guilt-painted reality that he had little,” and I drunkenly thought, a girlfriend. I was devastated that I helped a man cheat on a “why not?” woman who had no idea what her Terrible decision. I observed the dangerous boyfriend was doing behind her effortlessness to indulge in my back. So I denounced the affair vices just the next night. An and we agreed to distance ourirresponsible fling subsequently selves when we returned to our respective colleges, and he went bloomed. Although I felt nauseous from back to living with her. Yet, nothbeing with him, there was a sinis- ing stopped. We regularly fired text mester excitement in the affair. After a long week of competing in cor- sages, where he couldn’t stop porate internships, I itched for reminiscing on our summer dalour fancy dinner dates in SoHo liances and I couldn’t contain my and the movie nights followed by guilt. He implied we should orgaromantic strolls through Times nize some New York City escaSquare. I was living with a cou- pades because “a guy who works ple and they thought he was my out and has a lot of testosterone needs to have sex.” Two months long-term boyfriend. The scenario was great, except earlier, I woulddeliberately disit was all a lie and I was fully regard such alarming statements. aware of it. But in my mind, I But now, I was the consciencehad already enforced a denial stricken “other” woman, so him
excusing his infidelity with the precursor of masculinity was a red flag for me. I made some new discoveries. While he was seeing me and still in a relationship with his girlfriend, he was also pouring out romantic messages to another childhood friend’s college roommate — a girl he had never met, but admired through stalking her Instagram. He was simultaneously telling his high school girlfriend that she was “the one” ever since they broke up four years ago. She was shattered when X misled her to believe that he wanted to rekindle their relationship but later refused to leave his current girlfriend. With the growing tide of morality burning within myself, I started confronting my perverseness for feeding his fallacious ideas that he could just play with four different women’s emotions and presume there would be no repercussions. So I pressed his need to be truthful to his girlfriend for his own good. My role now changed to “the good friend.” In the following turbulent days, a mutual friend of ours, whom X would habitually approach for relationship advice, discovered his cheating and also urged him to tell his girlfriend. This is when X called me crying and said: “I have told her everything, she is sitting right in front of me.” I knew him well enough to know he was falsifying a mental breakdown just to stop conversations that made him uncomfortable. But I didn’t disclose that I didn’t believe him. I was exhausted. A few sleepless nights later, our friend showed me new posts of X and his girlfriend together that confirmed he faked the whole event of telling his girlfriend. Now, I felt the necessity of slamming the brakes hard on X. I was too guilty for fueling his twisted romantic perspective. I knew he would keep going if no one stopped him and I knew his girlfriend would be the one to suffer the most. After a month of pondering
about her well-being, I sent an email to her with screenshots of texts between me and X. I owned up to my complicity in getting with her boyfriend, despite knowing she existed. Within an hour, X tried calling me and I firmly refused to talk to him, because him desiring my reasoning for sending the email only demonstrated his ongoing belief that his “obedient girlfriend” (in his own words) was not entitled to learn of his mendacity. But parts of me were crumbling — I felt awful for doing this to my friend, even though I believed I did the right thing by coming clean to his girlfriend. With contradictions flaming in my mind, I ultimately texted him to close the chapter. Although without animosity, he expressed his devastation for hearing his girlfriend say, “You are dead to me,” and requested for me to forward the email so he could explain his “thought process” for every event. Of course, I was not going to help him sow more excuses. Instead, I implored him to face the situation with veracity, as I was now the “good moral being” in addition to my previous role of the “good friend.” He finally expressed an interest in understanding the root of why he kept on doing all this. After that, we blocked each other from everything (including Venmo and LinkedIn). I never received a reply from his girlfriend, but I only hope I’ve helped her future in some way. Sometimes I wish this story never happened. I distressed my friend and possibly ended his relationship. Yet, I remain content with the thought that perhaps we all learned to never drive down the roads of infidelity, deceit and lies again. And as days pass, I’m tempted to shelf this experience as a faint, vile memory. But I precariously attempt to hold on to the trajectory of willfully abandoning my moral codes and rediscovering them. After my stressful ride to the “other” side, I commit to exercising selfcontrol next time my impulses try to hijack my beliefs.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2019 // The Statement
VISUAL S T A T E M EsnowNdayT BY M A D E L I N E H I N K L E Y