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Enrollment of History majors in decline across midwest schools Students, faculty reflect on reasons for decrease in number of individuals pursuing the field
Protest takes place outside ‘U’ president’s campus house Activists dispute U-M Flint professor’s claim “Black Girls Code” is discriminatory BARBARA COLLINS Daily Staff Reporter
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LSA sophomore Jack Wroldsen came to the University of Michigan knowing he was interested in a history degree. Yet Wroldsen said he faced skepticism from parents and employers about the choice when he declared a history major. “My boss at my internship last summer basically told me that I shouldn’t major in history,” Wroldsen said. “I worked at a law firm, and he asked me ‘When do you ever think I’m going to hire a historian?’ which was interesting. I think people have reservations about it because it isn’t really a field you’d go get a job in unless you want to be a teacher of history or a professor or work in a museum.” Even so, Wroldsen said he chose to study history because
it complements most fields of study, even if others perceive the degree to be useless or unemployable. He’s pairing the degree with economics. He said a course on Europe since 1945 with Professor Rita Chin convinced him to declare history as his major, alongside economics. “I’m majoring in history in part because I love it, and it’s what I’m most interested in, but also because I can look at economic history, or business history, or things of that nature,” Wroldsen said. “And people can do that with medicine, they can do it with psychology. Any field has a history to it, and being a history major only supports those interests.” The skepticism witnessed by Wroldsen mirrors a trend found at the University and across the nation. Jay Cook, chair of
the history department, said the number of undergraduate students declaring a history major at the University has decreased each year for the past decade, reflecting a nationwide trend. A study by Benjamin Schmidt, assistant professor of history at Northeastern University, found that while the number of history majors is declining among students of all races, genders and geographic backgrounds, the dip is most prominent among universities in the Midwest. Since the Great Recession of 2007-2009 — when the U.S. labor market lost around 8.4 million jobs and a typical household saw their yearly income decline by $2,700 — the belief that majoring in history leads to low paychecks and limited employment prospects
has deterred students across the country from pursuing the major. Even at the University, where the history department is consistently ranked as one of the top ten programs in the country by U.S. News and World Report, the department has noticed the declining numbers in the major despite steady interest and enrollment in history courses. Degree reports from the Office of the Registrar show that while there were 251 History B.A.s conferred in 2006, the number of history graduates was down to 131 by 2016. That downward trend is matched at Michigan State University, where there were 262 declared history majors in the spring of 2006 and 137 in the spring of 2019. See HISTORY, Page 3
Monday afternoon outside of the home of University of Michigan president Mark Schlissel, demonstrators from the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network gathered to voice concerns regarding U-M Flint professor Mark Perry’s recent claim against Wayne State University. The claim, filed last week, accused Wayne State’s summer program, Black Girls Code, of race and gender discrimination. According to a press release, NAN held the demonstration to protest Perry’s claim. They argued Black Girls Code serves to educate and empower a marginalized group of women. “National Action Network activists are outraged that a University of Michigan Professor would work to stif le a program built to teach and empower disenfranchised, underrepresented, and underserved young women of color,” the press release reads. “In a climate when University of Michigan currently struggles with diversity in faculty staffing and student admissions activist(s) believe that University of Michigan should assess the relation
CAMPUS LIFE
Non-binary ISR, Rackham host Cultural Racism swimmer and American Social Structure speakers challenges Panel discusses historical mistreatment of minorities, current racial tensions stereotypes NOAH FISHER
Former ‘U’ athlete talks heteronormative culture in varsity sports ZAYNA SYED
Daily Staff Reporter
When G Ryan started swimming at 6 years old, they swam just to prove they could to an older brother. They continued the sport into collegiate athletics and eventually earned a scholarship to the University of Michigan. Friends described Ryan as a “big name” in their area, a kind teammate and a successful member of the distance squad of the women’s team. However, when Ryan came out as gender non-binary sophomore year, things changed. “People had to change in order to interact with me,” Ryan said. “They could not exist as they had previously. My pronouns changed and my name changed. That kind of had to be acknowledged.” Ryan, who uses they, them and their pronouns, graduated from the University in the winter of 2018 af ter spending four years competing in colleg iate athletics. See SWIMMING, Page 3
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The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and Rackham Graduate School sponsored the latest installment of the Cultural Racism and American Social Structure Speaker Series Monday morning. The lecture consisted of a panel of three faculty members from Washington University in St. Louis who discussed how today’s racial tension is a result
of historical mistreatment of minority groups, particularly African Americans. The audience included about 30 students and faculty members. Margaret Hicken, assistant professor of research at the Survey Research Center of the Institute for Social Research who oversees the RacismLab, organized the series to highlight how American culture is racist toward and marginalizes those who do not fit the ideal American image.
“We have an idea in this country of what it means to be American,” Hicken said. “If you don’t fit those ideals, then your citizenship and sense of belonging is questioned. The speaker series talks about the idea of who gets to belong in this society and the underlying idea of what it means to be an American.” The panel, which was presented on behalf of the Lasting Legacies exhibit at Washington University in St.
Louis, aims to analyze how the study of history is critical to understanding modern concepts of equality. The project’s goal is to demonstrate that history is continuous. Though the present-day United States may look different than it did in the past, its policy of undermining minorities has stayed the same.
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between the professor and the university.” Fifteen members of NAN attended the demonstration, chanting, “No justice, no peace,” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Professor Mark Perry has got to go.” Rev. Charles Williams II, president of the Michigan chapter of NAN, spoke on behalf of NAN at the demonstration. He said the University’s silence on the issue is unacceptable. “The University should either decide to send him (Perry) a message making it clear that this is not upholding the ideals of the University of Michigan, or they need to make sure they send out a statement letting the public know that this is not the University of Michigan’s stance,” Williams said. “We are calling on Schlissel, we are calling on the Board of Regents immediately to take a stand on where they are on this issue.” Williams said NAN plans to take legal action against Perry and will continue to protest until the University addresses the issue. He said the University needs to step up and be more accountable for Perry’s duties as a professor. See PROTEST , Page 3
CAMPUS LIFE
VP Harper talks frats, new U-M procedures Harper discusses new sexual misconduct, felony self-disclosure policies RACHEL CUNNINGHAM Daily News Editor
MADELINE MCLAUGHLIN & CALLIE TEITELBAUM Daily Staff Reporters
The Michigan Daily recently sat down with E. Royster Harper, vice president of student life at the University of Michigan, to discuss several issues on campus, including disaffiliated fraternities, the sexual misconduct policy revision and mental health resources on campus. The Michigan Daily: Within the past year, several University of Michigan fraternities have disaffiliated from the Interfraternity Council. They have since joined the Ann Arbor Interfraternity Council, which does not fall under University jurisdiction. As an administrator, what are your opinions regarding these actions and how will the University address issues that arise regarding the fraternities in IFC?
CLAIRE MEINGAST/Daily African and African American studies associate professor Geoff Ward speaks during the Cultural Racism and American Social Structure series at the Institute for Social Research Monday morning.
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SARAH KUNKEL/Daily Ph.D. candidate Nick Caverly presents his dissertation research, regarding how science and technology have led detroit to become a crisis city titled Beyond Crisis: Science and Technology Studies in the Age of Emergency” in Haven Hall Monday.
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SACUA talks vaccine policy, faculty handbook Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs discusses immunization requirement, Human Resources benefits and goals to improve cross-campus health and well-being regarding Flint’s by discussing the University’s the individual and the group, concerns immunization requirement. and how low vaccination rates lack of a separate employee At many universities, can facilitate infection of an handbook. She requested the provost not change the preface The University of Michigan immunizations are required entire community. “Who has to assume the risk of the handbook to suggest Senate Advisory Committee on for the entire student body; University Affairs met Monday however, the University only of vaccination in order to protect the rules only apply to the Ann to discuss immunization recommends them for incoming others?” Carlos said. “Would Arbor campus. “From my perspective, we’re you want your child to assume requirement policies and the students. provost’s recent revisions to the Atzmon expressed the rare but potentially serious in danger of having the bulk of concerns the University risk of vaccination in order to the protections of the faculty faculty handbook. code ripped away from the Flint preferentially draw protect someone else?” Laurita Thomas, associate might Other SACUA members faculty.” vice president of Human students who do not want to SACUA chair Neil Marsh Resources at the University, be immunized and asked if brought up concerns about also spoke to the committee a different policy should be the image the University is suggested they follow up on on retirement planning, suggested to the administration. presenting to the public by this issue with the Office “I think most of the Western adopting this stance and the of the Provost and add the health benefit programs, imposition on full handbook to the Senate future improvements in talent world has had a very practical additional acquisition and retention, and reasonable solution and students and faculty where Assembly’s website. Laurita Thomas then spoke preventing sexual misconduct most diseases have been vaccinations are required. Following the vaccination on HR’s successful programs and addressing the demands of eradicated so we don’t want discussion, SACUA that help University employees health and well-being across to go back — at least I don’t,” policy member Sarah Lippert, associate plan for retirement and provide campus. Atzmon said. SACUA member Michael SACUA member Ruth Carlos, professor of art history at U-M employees more health benefits, Atzmon, professor of nuclear professor of radiology, brought Flint, talked about Provost including help with in-vitro Sudoku engineering Syndication Martin Philbert’s revisions fertilization, facial feminization and radiological up herd immunity, or the concepthttp://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ sciences, began the meeting that vaccinations protect both of the faculty handbook. The surgery and extending parental faculty handbook, published leave. She discussed adapting by the Office of the Provost, to change and how HR will explains the guidelines for continue to improve the health University faculty behavior. and well-being of people at the The current version is abridged University after she retires in and lacks original content, October. MEDIUM “We see that there are many including any information about the faculty grievance changes in our community, in process which details the the environment, in the world, procedure regarding a faculty that are going to impact the way employment concerns. The we deliver HR services in the new handbook also includes future,” she said. She envisions future a statement in the preface to address stating it is only for Ann Arbor improvements recruitment and acquisition faculty. depression and “This is like crisis level strategies, for the Flint faculty and I anxiety resulting from stress would say Dearborn as well and burnouts in both students because they’ve added a and faculty and creating a safe statement,” Lippert said. “As environment by facilitating far as I can tell, it’s a new discussion with civility and statement that undermines respect. Increased attention and decades-long tradition that discussion of workplace sexual we are one faculty on three harassment and misconduct campuses. That one statement issues can also help improve is extraordinarily destructive the culture overall, Thomas in my opinion because it remarked. introduces all kinds of lack of clarity about who this applies Read more at to.” MichiganDaily.com FEB IS ENDING :( puzzle by sudokusyndication.com Lippert expressed her © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. HANNAH MACKAY For the Daily
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HISTORY From Page 1 Cook said while there are currently around 300 declared history majors at the University, compared to 1,390 computer science majors, there are more than 5,000 students enrolled in history courses this semester. This number, he said, has not changed since the 1990s even though the number of history majors has been cut in half. To combat this problem and raise the number of students interested in the history major, Cook said the department worked to improve its public relations and increase its social media presence. “The decline in majors around the country started around 2010, in the wake of the global recession,” Cook wrote in an email interview. “In UM History, we still teach more than 5,000 students every year and have growing numbers of minors. But it’s true that our majors are down over the past decade—just like every other history department in our conference. Our first response was to focus on messaging with our students— and their parents and friends— to help them understand that majoring in history at UM was not a bad decision at all in relation to
HARPER From Page 1 Harper: I’m disappointed for the fraternities that decided to disaffiliate. I think it was unwise. I think that’s pretty shameful. I can’t imagine a national organization knowing that the fraternities started on college campuses, have values related to college campuses and then would be encouraging students to disaffiliate from their University. I think it’s misguided and it puts our students in harm’s way because one of the things that happens is in the disaffiliated groups, (there) is more risky behaviors. In the affiliated groups, they have the support of the University. They’ve got resources related to the University. They are programming and doing mental health safety, all those kinds of issues that ensure when students are having fun and are together, they are safer. And so I worry about that for the disaffiliated groups, I worry about an external organization that’s not connected
SWIMMING From Page 1 They now work as the program specialist for education and training at the Spectrum Center. Ryan first realized they were non-binary after encountering uncomfortable situations in the women’s bathrooms on campus. “When I got on campus, I was having a really hard time using the restrooms, because I kept using these (the women’s) restrooms because I thought that was where I was supposed to go,” Ryan said. “And legally, that’s accurate, but then everyone kept getting upset that I was using them, so I kept running into really uncomfortable situations that I was struggling with.” After disclosing their problems with using the bathroom to a few people, Ryan was directed to the Spectrum Center. There, they talked to Director Will Sherry about where to find genderinclusive restrooms on campus. Sherry also introduced them to a packet of vocabulary terms for the LGBTQ+ community, most of which Ryan had never heard before. “I knew a handful of them,” Ryan said. “Ninety percent of what was listed, it was my first time seeing them. That was really influential. It was kind of a catalyst for me to go down the rabbit hole of the internet and just learn more about the LGBTQ+ community and identity terms, and get into this understanding of gender as a spectrum and not just two different points. And then really start reflecting on what that meant for how I saw myself and getting language for the first time to really describe my relationship to my body and to my gender, and what that meant as a
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Tuesday, February 26, 2019 — 3
the post-grad job market—the tracking data is very clear about that.” In 2017, the department also developed a HistoryLab program that stresses collaboration and projectbased learning. In the labs, a team of undergraduates works closely with a faculty member to develop a project relating to modern, real-life issues. Since the program began, there have been five history labs offered in subjects like immigration law, and race and the criminal justice system. “The larger goal is to arm our majors with impressive dossiers that go well beyond the older abstractions of ‘primary research’ and ‘critical thinking,’” Cook wrote. “We are still really good at teaching those traditional skills, but they are hardly the limit of what we do.” Although the number of students declaring a history major has declined since 2000, Cook and Anne Berg, history lecturer and faculty adviser for the Undergraduate History Club, stressed that public interest in the study of history has actually increased in recent years. Berg said current politics and changes to the way history is taught have made people more inclined to educate themselves about where their situation stems
from. “To me, right now history is really really crucial because these sorts of watered-down, simplistic references to any given figure in the past in any development are just doing more harm than good,” Berg wrote. “To me, it seems that there is a real interest in the general public of how we got to where we are, and where certain references and rhetorical moves and legal precedents come from.” Berg said the dwindling numbers of history majors do not ref lect a lack of interest in the field, but are instead products of poor marketing. “History has a problem— we don’t tend to market ourselves very well,” Berg wrote. “Most people think of history as stuffy old white guys. It’s an important image problem that the historical profession has, and you can see this across the United States with the decline in history majors and history students, and the decline in the humanities in general.” Schmidt’s study found that drops in history majors were most significant among Asian-American students and at private universities, where tuition averages around $43,000 per year. Even so, both public and private universities have suffered decreasing numbers of history majors.
Cook pointed to the University of WisconsinStevens Point, where a proposal put forth by the school’s chancellor in November 2018 suggested the elimination of the history major due a decrease in enrollment of more than 50 percent, as an example of the problematic decrease of history education at regional universities. At the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, around 46 percent of those enrolled are first-generation college students and many come from low-income backgrounds. Though Cook said the University does not face the same challenges as the University of WisconsinStevens Point, he described how the history department at the University is trying to appeal to students of all socioeconomic, racial and ethnic backgrounds. “At places like Yale or Princeton, the number of history majors are very strong,” Cook wrote. “But what that suggests to us— and those who track this sort of data— is that students who come from aff luent backgrounds don’t worry quite as much about future financial pressures as people going to, say, Wisconsin-Steven’s Point (sic). Moving forward, our goal is to ensure that traditional
liberal arts majors like history or English or philosophy don’t become boutiquey majors that only aff luent kids at places like Yale can feel confident about choosing.” However, interest in graduate-level history degrees and doctoral programs has remained relatively steady despite decreased declared undergraduate history majors, Rackham student Zach Kopin said. Kopin, who leads the Graduate Organization of Students in History, highlighted how the doctoral program sometimes has too large of a cohort due to over-enrollment of accepted graduate students. “We, over time, have to guess if we make a certain number of offers we’re going to get a certain number of acceptances,” Kopin said. “Some years that backfires. In 2009-2010, so many people accepted that there was not a cohort the next year.” Kopin said the history department’s strength comes from its dedication to teaching communication and writing skills rather than a collection of facts. “The value for us in history is that, I mean, it’s the cliché thing that you get to learn from the past, but we also teach transferable skills,” Kopin said. “Largely what we teach
is actually communication. It’s not historical fact — we hope you remember the historical fact, but what we largely teach is different ways of communicating, whether it be oral presentation, putting together a slideshow or writing an essay, these are all different transferable skill sets that will affect you whether you go into public communications or whether you go into finance or you become a teacher.” Echoing Kopin’s point, Cook explained the belief that history majors have limited employment opportunities or struggle to find a job after graduation is false, especially since the department stresses the importance of written and oral communication skills. “The data is pretty clear — U-M LSA majors’ placement rate is about 96 percent, and Engineering, which you could argue is the most practical major of all, is 97 percent,” Cook wrote. “So it’s basically identical between our number one ranked engineering department and LSA majors like history. So a lot of this is a kind of messaging issue and getting students to understand and parents to understand that they’re not creating a kind of dangerous (outcome) for themselves if they choose to major in a liberal arts discipline like history.”
to the University, actually doesn’t understand the policies and procedures of the University, trying to provide guidance and support. Not wise on so many levels, and I’m concerned from a health and safety perspective also. And proud of the ones that remained affiliated with the University. They are important. I think fraternities and sororities add value to the University and to the undergraduate experience. But we all know they come with some challenges. The more professional development, leadership training, those kinds of resources that we (the University) can provide, the better it is. … I’m hoping some of those fraternities will decide to re-affiliate with the University. The relationship, the response, what I believe is the focus and commitment of students in those organizations (IFC and AAIC) and their nationals, is very different. TMD: After a free speech watchdog group Speech First filed a lawsuit against the University’s use of the Bias Response Team last May, the University has restricted residential advisors and diversity peer educators from removing
speech on student doors — including offensive language. Why was this specific decision made and how does the University plan to address potential issues with student climate in the dorms? Harper: So let me say two things. One, we don’t suppress nor ignore speech … Secondly, we actually didn’t change the policy. One of the things that happens in a resident hall is that there is personal space, which might be space on your door (whiteboards) … there’s sort of community space where anybody can put something up or take it down, and then there’s space bulletin boards that the staff actually controls. And so what we tried to do last summer and what we continue to do is actually clarify the policy to make sure that our staff understood the difference between personal space — you can write whatever you want there — public space, and then the space they’re controlling. When harm is being done or offensive speech occurs in the resident hall or anywhere, our goal is to respond and to have conversations about it and to invite
the conversations. Because that’s what you do at an educational institution. You debate, you talk back and forth, we say, ‘What do you mean?’, ‘Did you intend?’ and so conversations like that happen all the time in housing and in classrooms and other places where there are students. … We have a group that responds to issue of climate. And so they are a response team, and so of course they are both concerned about the student who might have written or said something that was experienced as harmful, and the student who is experiencing it. So we try to actually have a conversation, or relationship or intervention with both sets of students. For us, that’s being an educational institution … we’re an educational institution where members of our community interact, and so we are always engaged in that conversation. But the intent really was to clarify to make sure the staff understood what the expectations were, not a change in policy. TMD: Recently, the University announced a revision to the student sexual misconduct policy, wherein
students take part in an in-person meeting between the accuser, the accused and any witnesses involved. Why did the University amend this policy? How does it aim to improve the general sexual misconduct policy? How does it respond to allegations that the revision benefits financially stable students who have the means to hire counsel? Harper: We changed our policy and went to an interim policy on direction of a Sixth Circuit Court. So, this wasn’t a decision on the part of the University to even make it more challenging or to re-traumatize or any of the issues that are being talked about in the community. And we share those concerns, actually appealed, tried to help the court understand why this wasn’t in the best interest of our students. But in the end, we were told we needed to change our policy. So, we created an interim policy and we started working with student groups and others to figure out who ought to be doing the hearings, how do we minimize the negative impact on the students participating. Right now, we are looking at having some hearing officers there
who will actually help facilitate the discussion and manage the environment and the discussion. The attorneys won’t be asking the questions, but they can be there — both parties can have an advocate with them to help them. Depending on what the student needs, depending on what the complainant needs, they might be in the room, they might be in another setting, so we’re going to try to, on a case by case basis, figure out what’s best in that environment for students. The other thing we are doing, because some students might decide, ‘You know what, I am not doing this,’ we are also increasing and making sure that students understand that they can engage in an alternative resolution process, which would not have a hearing component. Both students have to agree, the idea is to work through what is going on with the students, and to engage in a restorative resolution, which does not include the hearing.
student-athlete, as someone who’s a swimmer.” Swimming is not the easiest sport to participate in for a person coming out as non-binary, according to Ryan and their teammates on the swim team. The athletic clothing and emphasis on gender distinction can make it arduous for athletes who do not identify with the gender binary. “We show up pretty much in underwear and are asked to train and compete day after day,” Ryan said. “And that’s really uncomfortable sometimes.” This struggle with gender identity led Ryan to struggle with depression. “I was at times very disassociated from everything that was going on,” Ryan said. “It felt like I would be going through the motions, but not really mentally or emotionally engaged with my day to day activities. And that was one of the symptoms definitely of my depression, that once I was able to get help and find resources and try things like medication, that became much easier to control. As a swimmer every day, I would change into a swimsuit and have to walk around in a body that felt uncomfortable, that didn’t feel it was really my body in a way that I could claim. Which is just an odd sensation to live in for an extended period of time.” While Ryan came out as gender non-binary their sophomore year, they didn’t receive top surgery until after the end of their swimming career at the University. They first attempted to change their body through other means. “I tried a lot of different things to change my body,” Ryan said. “I was an athlete, so I trained harder, I tried different nutrition plans and I tried to change my
muscle mass, and really see if that was it, if it was something I could change in that way. But really, I was very uncomfortable about my chest and the way that it looked, especially in a swimsuit, and I kept having to see that day after day after day. And so that contributed to my decision to go through with top surgery, but only after my swimming career was done.” Ultimately, though, Ryan decided to wait to pursue top surgery because they were unsure of how it would affect their swimming scholarship or position on the team. “I felt that in order to maintain my eligibility and consistency in performance and maintain that scholarship and the ability to attend this institution, that I needed to not interrupt it with any kind of major surgery, especially if that surgery was elected,” Ryan said. “And so that was one of the primary factors in waiting until the end of my competitive swimming career… just kind of not wanting to jeopardize that.” Ryan said they considered switching to the men’s team or quitting swimming altogether at the end of each year. However, they said there was no alternative that seemed appropriate, an obvious conundrum for athletes who identify outside the gender binary in a binary sport. “I thought about what the options were quite a lot, especially at the end of each year,” Ryan said. “But ultimately, I chose not to take any action to change my position, because there wasn’t an alternative that worked better for me. And there wasn’t an alternative that allowed me to affirm or support my gender that I could continue training in the same way with the same support structure, and I was comfortable
in the routine of being part of the women’s team. It wasn’t quite right, it didn’t fit, but there was comfort in the fact that it was a habit.” While Ryan’s non-binary identity can sometimes serve as a cause for confusion in a binary sport, Ryan said their gender assignment at birth has its privileges, as the NCAA does not prohibit participants who are designated female at birth from competing in men’s divisions, whereas it does prohibit maleborn participants from competing in women’s divisions. “There’s definitely a privilege of people who are assigned female at birth competing in men’s division. There are far fewer restrictions than of people who are assigned men at birth competing in women’s,” Ryan said. “So the barriers to me are fewer than they could have been.” While Ryan said they struggled with gender identity during their years on the swim team, they also felt the camaraderie and success they experienced on the team illustrate how good and bad things can occur simultaneously. “Other times, being part of the team was really amazing,” Ryan said. “It was exciting and exhilarating. We accomplished some amazing things as a group, which was something I wouldn’t have be able to say as an individual, so that was being part of a team that was unique and valuable in my experience.”” When Ryan came out, they wrote an article in a swimming publication about being nonbinary and decided to come out to their team by alerting them of the article before it published. While Ryan said it may have been unconventional, the decision allowed them to come out to multiple people at once.
Ryan called the team’s reaction “entirely positive,” even though the team might not have been familiar with non-binary identities or the gender spectrum. “I was terrified,” Ryan said. “I was mostly terrified, because I had no idea what people’s reactions would be and that unknown, that question mark, was really unnerving. Nobody’s reaction was bad. I had an entirely positive reaction to my coming out to the swim team, to everyone I talked to. Definitely a lack of knowledge, which made perfect sense to me, because I had only recently acquired this vocabulary to talk about my own identity, so I didn’t have an expectation that other people knew, but I was incredibly nervous.” While Ryan said the team’s reaction was positive, they did encounter obstacles with their decision to use they, them and their pronouns, which often felt exhausting. “It was hard to have people try and use my pronouns,” Ryan said. “I would say that was one of the biggest barriers, one of the biggest challenges, that I encountered during my time as a swimmer. It depended on the day. Some days I completely understood why it was happening and that people were still practicing and getting used to it, and other days I was kind of just over it. I was done with the understanding perspective and I was in my own frustration. It had been enough time that I feel like people should be able to use my pronouns. And I wanted to be affirmed in that.” LSA sophomore Claire Maiocco, Ryan’s former swimming teammate at the University, confirmed that teammates struggled to use Ryan’s pronouns, despite respecting Ryan and their abilities.
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“Even to this day, I know there’ll be people like, ‘Oh how’s G doing? Is she doing well?’ and I’ll be like, ‘No.’ Or, ‘Yes, they are doing well,’” Maiocco said. “It’s not that people didn’t really accept them, because they were a big part of the team — especially in the distance crew, they’re very well-respected on the team — but I don’t really think people could understand the same struggles that they had to go through every day, whether it be having to go into a locker room with the label ‘women’s’ on it, because that’s not who they are, or still constantly getting misgendered every day, even if somebody didn’t mean harm by it.” Another teammate, LSA sophomore Sierra Schmidt, said Ryan’s positive attitude sometimes concealed the difficulties they had to undergo. “G is such a strong person,” Schmidt said. “G always helped everyone. And they still do to this day. And I think because of that, there were a lot of times that I didn’t even know when they were struggling, because they were such a strong person that you could always depend on and go to.” In the end, Ryan said they prioritized certain things in the women’s team, such as the camaraderie and success, that contributed to their happiness. “I was part of a team that was successful,” Ryan said. “I was part of a distance swim group that had real camaraderie, and I would like to maintain that through the end of my swimming career because these were things that helped me to perform and compete and feel happy as a swimmer. So I prioritized those as I completed my swimming career.”
Opinion
4 — Tuesday, February 26, 2019
KRYSTAL HUR | COLUMN
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CAROLINE LLANES | COLUMN
I
(Not so) silently making history
n my immig ration have been lost to time — law class this week, accomplishments forgotten we watched a video by ever yone except their about the Bracero children and Prog ram, in which g randchildren? U.S. ag riculture There’s a industrialists saying that gets essentially circulated around recruited men the internet ever y from Mexico so of ten, attributed to do “stoop to ever yone from labor,” or the Marilyn Monroe to more undesirable Eleanor Roosevelt, farming jobs. and it goes, CAROLINE The video was “ Well-behaved LLANES obviously a piece women seldom of propaganda created by the make histor y.” I see California Growers Council, this quote ever y where, attempting to assert the whether it ’s being used to leg itimacy of the Bracero describe Susan B. A nthony Prog ram. On the worksheet or Cardi B. Whether it ’s we were g iven to analyze civil disobedience or just the video, there was one tr ying to have a good time, question that seemed to baff le the whole class: “ What was the role of women in the Bracero Prog ram?” The only explicit reference to women in the video was when the video attempted to convince the A merican public that the Bracero Prog ram benef ited A mericans: “ Who benef its?” the video asks. “Housewives!” This, of course, references the fact that women do the g rocer y shopping, and the Bracero Prog ram ensures that A mericans can have fresh fruits and vegetables this quote resonates with year round. When a student so many women today, raised their hand and asked women hoping to escape the the professor what the constraints put on them by deal was, he reminded us societ y. The quote’s orig ins of the housewife comment, are not quite as famous as and then said, “ You know, Marilyn Monroe: Laurel it ’s interesting that we’re Thatcher Ulrich, a professor focusing so much on the of A merican histor y at male aspect of the Bracero Har vard, coined the phrase Prog ram, because there in her 1976 paper “ Vertuous is a rich histor y of female Women Found: New England Filipina and Mexican Ministerial Literature, ag ricultural laborers and 1668-1735.” The context of truck drivers who organized the quote is a discussion and unionized for fair wages of women in the highly and other labor rights.” relig ious, Protestant, and Now, I don’t fault the of ten Puritan, New England professor for not telling us societ y. Cotton Mather, a more: The polar vortex put prominent Puritan writer ever yone a week behind, and and my favorite witch hunter, a lot of professors are still called these women “the scrambling to make up the Hidden Ones,” women who material. But that comment hoped not to be remembered did get me thinking: Just by histor y, but by God as they how many women have awaited eternal judgement, been reduced to footnotes hoping that he saw their in the pages of histor y? faith and piet y on Earth. How many women’s names These women will not get
Just how many women have been reduced to footnotes in the pages of history?
roads, schools, town halls or buildings named af ter them, but they are the cornerstones on which their communities are built. They have quite literally made histor y. “Ever y woman who’s ashamed of her body is a victim of torture,” writes play wright Carolyn Gage in “The Second Coming of Joan of A rc.” “Ever y woman who doubts her own judgement is a victim of torture. So how many women do you know who haven’t been pulled apart?” Perhaps I ought to have a g reater t hesis about woma nhood a nd what it mea ns to brea k f ree f rom t he const ra ints of being “well-behaved.” Perhaps I have somet hing g reater to say about t he fact t hat women must be “likeable” to be leaders, t hat t hough women no longer wea r corsets a nd hoop skir ts, we a re physica lly bound by t he const ra ints of ma keup a nd high heels necessa r y to perform femininit y. I’m sure somewhere in me, I do. But right now, I a m most ly just tired. The performa nce of being a woma n is exhausting. Ma ny f ind comfor t a nd empowerment in t his performa nce, ot hers delight in subver ting w it h it a nd play ing w it h what it mea ns, a nd for t hat I commend t hem. But I a m tired of t his performa nce. I a m tired of being pulled apa r t by what I a m supposed to be. The women who made histor y, t he ones who were not wellbehaved, were simply tired of being ca na ries in a coa l mine. While we celebrate women who have broken t he mold a nd have spoken out in t he face of g reat opposition a nd v iolence, I w ish we would a lso remember t he women who fought t he good f ight in silence, who cont ributed what t hey could w it h t he limited oppor t unities t hey had, w it hout expecting a ny t hing in ret urn.
Caroline Llanes can be reached at cmllanes@umich.edu
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I
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The strangest age of all
turned 20 years old last month, and it was just as lackluster an experience as the other milestone birthdays that films like “Sixteen Candles” and “Hannah Montana: The Movie” promised would be exciting. Like the elusive Sweet 16 bash that no one seems to actually host in real life, my 20th birthday lacked any fanfare that would perhaps be expected from a day that signaled my graduation from being a teenager to being in my 20s. It’s not that I was expecting to have a big party or celebration; I’m not a huge fan of either, and I enjoyed the cozy night in that my friends and I had to celebrate. However, I had expected to feel a little older and perhaps more like an adult as a result. Instead, turning 20 only brought forth a whole new set of questions and insecurities to supplement the ones Ihad already accumulated over my teenage years. I almost feel like I’m in the beginning stages of a quarter-life crisis; I’m 20, and yet it feels as though I haven’t accomplished as much as I should have. I’ve also realized that most of my accomplishments are tied to my academic career, which is great for my resume, but useless otherwise. As cliché and unnecessarily dramatic as this question is, if someone were to make a tombstone for me today, what would be written on it? “Well-rounded student”? Or maybe, “Involved in several extracurriculars”? Other than bringing forth a slew of unanswerable questions, being 20 also just feels awkward because I’m not a teenager but still can’t legally drink. While I don’t feel like a child anymore (which I’m aware is something that a child would say), and I haven’t in a while, I certainly don’t feel like an adult either. I’m not expecting to suddenly
feel like an adult once I turn 21, but being able to drink legally is at least some kind of noticeable way in which my growing older will be recognized. Such a change is nonexistent when turning 20. Being stripped of teenagehood doesn’t count since it doesn’t do anything but cause a shift in demographic placement and contribute to an identity crisis. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling like I’m in limbo, somewhere between being a real adult and a child — like I’m f loating
I almost feel like I’m in the beginning of a quarter-life crisis
between two distinct age groups I’m excluded from. The truth is, though, that I do belong in an age group — I’m in my 20s. This has also lent itself to revelations that made me feel simultaneously extremely young and old. Celebrities, whom I grew up watching on screen and therefore always perceived as being much older, can now be classified in the same age group as me. Jennifer Lawrence and I are both in our 20s. So are Taylor Swift and Emma Watson. They were teens when I was in elementary school, and entered their 20s at about the time I celebrated having an age that was two digits, and now we’re in the same age group. We won’t be for long, since they will inevitably enter their 30s, but that only serves as a reminder that the next time I enter a new age group will be when I turn 30
— only 10 years away. My friends also expressed similar feelings regarding my age on my birthday, quipping that I’m “so old” now. These friends are all younger than me or are 19 going on 20 this year, and I have no doubt that my birthday caused them to realize that they, too, will leave their teenage years sooner rather than later. Their reactions show that I’m not only the one who feels this way. Being 20 is a pregame for adulthood, and it invokes contradictory feelings and thoughts for a lot of people, it seems. I’m sure there are people who have no such thoughts when turning 20, but the majority of us are probably cognizant of what it represents: the last stretch in the transition between childhood and adulthood. After we cross that last stretch, there’s no going back. Whether we choose to act like adults or not, the law will eventually bestow us with privileges reserved only for people who are supposedly mature enough to handle them. Being 20 isn’t a hardship, and the quirks that come with it aren’t tangibly burdensome. Since my birthday has passed, I don’t think about my age too often, either. It’s more just a strange detail about myself that confuses me when I do remember. I’m starting to believe that the reason people are so eager to turn 21 isn’t because they want to be able to drink legally, but because doing so lifts the last of age-related bans and firmly sends them into adulthood. At 21, I can drink legally, buy cigarettes and I can even apply to be on “The Bachelor” (though the franchise’s last few choices of bachelors have been discouraging, to say the least). But to put reality shows aside, I hope turning 21 isn’t as disappointing as turning 20. Krystal Hur can be reached at kryshur@umich.edu.
SAMANTHA SZUHAJ | COLUMN
“
Take a deep breath,” my mom used to say. This was always one of the f irst suggestions offered when I would come to my mom about how I was overwhelmed — when I did not know how to approach the ominous to-do list that sometimes felt too daunting to begin. As I later realized, the things I had to get done were not truly as scary as they appeared, but rather very possible, once I got past the initial fear factor. As life moved on, my tasks began to pile up, and the number of commitments I had g rew, but, following my mom’s advice, I felt like every thing was within reason if I approached every thing with a sense of calm. Coming to college, this to-do list g rew even more. I suddenly found myself rushing around at a rate I had never experienced. The regimented, stable schedule of the past was no longer, but rather, life had become always subject to change. It was not the level of involvement or the inconsistency of my schedule that became diff icult for me, but f inding time for myself. As we f ind ourselves in the throes of the semester, with midterm exams, papers, projects and other commitments, I can personally attest to the fact that I have pushed self-care to the side. Things get busier, there are higher stakes on assig nments and the general amounts of work and snow simultaneously continue to pile up. I understand that the hectic nature of college is to be expected. I also
Take some time understand that handling this does not pose a quandary for everyone, but I feel like in the hustle and bustle of every day, I forget to take f ive minutes to just be. Recently, my friends and I were recapping our days and arrived at this realization that, in this high-stress time, we could not remember the last time that any of us stopped, took a deep breath and maybe even did something for ourselves. Maybe we forget sometimes. Maybe, in the midst of every thing, it does not register that even the slightest means of slowing our productivit y is a possibilit y. We can press pause, and remember that, for example, sleeping, watching an episode of television, listening to a podcast or going on a run — though not when it’s too icy — are all things that can help make our to-do lists a little less daunting and improve morale in the process. Taking time for ourselves does not have to be a g rand heist of time or resources; it can be something small. It does not have to hinder our abilities to f inish our work or attend that meeting, but can be an incentive to get those things done. This semester has proved the busiest I have ever had and has led me to the understanding that there is always something else to work on. There is always an exam to prepare for or an event to attend. Those things are not going to go away. But it is actively choosing to sometimes prioritize my own well-being — my need for a break — that will serve as the
most benef icial in the long term. I feel as though in this bubble in which we live here at the Universit y of Michigan, sometimes it is easy for me to forget that I can take a step back. I do have the choice to make time for myself, even if it feels like said time is a luxury, because though it may not be f inishing my paper 20 minutes sooner, I will equally benef it from giving myself that break and doing something to break up the routine. It is with this that I challenge myself to make time, to put my work to the side and give myself the time and space to decompress before continuing on. Being completely candid, this is something that I am fairly vocal about but struggle with in practice. Moving forward, into the rest of the semester, onto the next and into life, I know that stressors will be forever present, and expectations will always accompany them. With this, I want to begin to form this positive habit of giving myself the option to take a break, or break with the schedule that seems so logistically coordinated that there could not possibly be a moment to stop. As tasks become checks in the box, I have to remember that my well-being and abilit y to feel as though I can handle every thing that comes my way is the most important, even if making time for myself is as simple as just taking a deep breath.
Samantha Szuhaj can be reached at szuhajs@umich.edu.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, February 26, 2019 — 5
BOOK REVIEW
STYLE INTERVIEW
‘Trump Sky Alpha’ proves the ultra-modern can fail JOHN DECKER Daily Arts Writer
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Styling food with Sarah Fennel at Broma Bakery TESS TOBIN
Daily Arts Writer
Sarah Fennel is on the precipice of a major inflection point in her career. Her fourth, actually. An impressive figure made even more impressive by the relative brevity of her career, Sarah is a food blogger and the creator of Broma Bakery, a popular mostly-baking blog dedicated to visually impressive yet accessible recipes. But before her career started, there was of course that first point of change, which happened to take place here, at the University of Michigan. Sarah had spent the first two years of college at New York University, but found herself overwhelmed and unsatisfied. “I just found myself feeling really depressed there, to be honest. I felt like the students were not what I expected,” Fennel said, in an interview with The Daily. While there, she decided to create a blog as a means of fulfillment and a way to combat the unhappiness she was feeling. “I was like, let’s do something fun and creative.” But after completing her sophomore fall semester at NYU she was still dissatisfied with her surroundings, so she decided to take some time to reassess. During this time-off, she visited the University. Not to view the campus, but to spend time with friends from high school. While all hanging out in a dorm room, her friend’s roommate casually suggested she should apply. The roommate herself was a transfer student, and assured Fennel that it was “the easiest application process ever.” So she applied, but had no serious intention of going. But, as life would have it, she got in. “I basically was faced with the decision of: Do I go back to something that has made me unhappy in the past or do I try something new? And so I just decided to go for it.” While at the University, Fennel majored in anthropology. “I loved anthropology, and biological anthropology in particular, because it examined humans in a way that bridged evolution with our intrinsic behaviors. I find it fascinating that we all have individual desires and goals, and yet somehow we’re so interconnected that we can evolve together as an entire species based on collective interest.” All the while, she continued to work on her blog, which at that time functioned similar to an online diary. “(I was not writing that much) and it was not a lot of original recipes, I would recreate things other people had made. And it was just baking.” After graduation, she took a job as the catering coordinator at Sava’s. But after a year at that position she felt burned out. “I sorta had a quarter-life-crisis. Or a 22-year-old crisis. Where I felt like I wanted to shift my focus onto doing something more like myself,” explains Fennel. “I was working super hard and not really reaping the benefits in terms of being able to go home at the end of the day and being like, ‘I created that.’ It
was creating for someone else.” So she quit her job. And for the second time she decided to take a leap. She gave herself two months to try to build her blog into something. “I really feel like because I had nothing to fall back on, in terms of — I had never made any money on my blog, I didn’t really have any job to go into if this wasn’t working out — it just made me work even harder.” Her hard work translated into success. In one year, she went from 30,000 pageviews to 200,000 pageviews, and her Instagram following increased from 600 to 10,000 followers. But even with the success, the transition was at times
In the year since launch, Foodtography School as been such a smash hit that Fennel has expanded it to include two additional courses, a more advanced version of the original course and a restaurant food photography course.
daunting. “There was really this gradual shift of worrying what I was going to do next month, and where the money was going to come from and just feeling like an imposter. (It wasn’t until) around the two year mark when I had had this momentum where the business was continuing to function, that that fear subsided. It wasn’t until then that I really started to feel truly confident in my work.” After working at the blog full-time for about three years, Fennel once more made a shift in her career, this time by launching an additional business, Foodtography School, a four-week virtual food photography course, where students are taught about subjects such as composition, light and color, as well as
marketing and social media. This expansion into online courses was not premeditated, though in some ways it was a long time coming. Fennel was constantly inundated with emails from readers asking her for help and resources on food photography. “So I started creating blog posts about food photography and teaching people how to edit, and my tips for compositions, and I what I used for lenses and camera recommendations and things like that.” But it was clear that there was opportunity beyond that. One day Fennel’s assistant pulled her aside, “[She said:] ‘Sarah, you need to do a food photography workshop, there’s never going to be a perfect time to do it, you just need to tell the world you’re doing one and plan it.’ And we did, and it was a huge success. It sold out in four days.” After dinner one night during this initial workshop, an attendee told Fennel she should consider turning the seminar into an online course. “I had come out of the workshop and had netted like $10,000 and I was like, yeah! Whatever, I’m a millionaire, I’m good,” Fennel said with a laugh. But a few months later that attendee followed up and doubled down—she had started her own business teaching others how to create online courses, and thought Fennel should seriously look into it. So the two had a few calls on the subject, and Fennel eventually ended up bringing her onboard as a consultant. In the year since launch, Foodtography School has been such a smash hit that Fennel has expanded it to include two additional courses, a more advanced version of the original course and a restaurant food photography course. One interesting consequence of the “foodtography” course is that she’s been able to speak to her readers and followers more directly. “The most interesting thing,” Fennel notes, “has been seeing how much people are craving content that is related but not necessarily foodcentric. They want advice on how to grow their own business. They want advice on how I stay fit while eating real sugar and butter. They want to see how I decorate my home and things like that. And people are just asking for those types of content at a rate that now feels like we would be doing a service to not offer that kind of content.” Herein lies Fennel’s fourth, and most recent shift: She’s refocusing the brand to be a more encompassing food and lifestyle brand that will venture into personal asides, such as how to stay fit while eating, in her words, “real sugar and butter,” as well as pieces on how she decorates her home. In the next nine months she plans to roll out new content and test what works best with her readers and followers. “I’ve teased this idea a few times on my Instagram stories (and) on my Instagram feed, to really get a sense of what people are looking for. It’s going to be trial and error. We’ll see what performs best. We’ll see what people enjoy the most and are asking for more of. And really go from there.”
It’s the era of Trump and we love to talk about it. Politics are everywhere (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Mark Doten’s “Trump Sky Alpha” represents a growing trend in literature where these politics, especially Trumpism and social media hypnosis, dare to foray into prose. It’s the new vogue for literature, apparently, to write explicitly about politics in fiction, with a splash of books in the last year that try to tackle just what the hell is going on. Certainly, these experiments can be delightful when done correctly. Subtle political suggestion can coexist alongside literature just fine. Socially relevant themes can deliver thoughtful messages and can bolster plot. Doten’s novel, unfortunately, does not quite do any of this. Even before the halfway mark in “Trump Sky Alpha,” it’s clear that “Trump” is just another paragon of the overworked, poorly-veiled pandering that seems to have soaked into the pages of some new wave literature. It’s a muddled world (and a desperately familiar one) where President Trump, riding his blimp above the United States, declares nuclear war in the days after a hacker group shuts down the internet and stomps the world into havoc. Ivanka is on her knees crying, too. Most everyone worldwide dies in ensuing bombings. Doten restrains himself here, though, and stops “Trump” before it can become merely an apocalyptic thriller (at least in the first half of the book — more on this later). “Trump” instead focuses on Rachel, a journalist living in a containment center some months after the destruction of the world. When she receives a call from an old boss asking her to write a piece on internet humor pre-doomsday to bolster the fragmented remains of US journalism, she agrees, given that she’ll be able to visit the location where her dead wife and daughter are buried. So, Rachel throws in the towel with her fellatio partner at the containment center and heads to the facility where the remains of
the internet are held. Once Rachel surveys the corpses of Twitter and Reddit, though, things of course go terrifically wrong, and she is implicated in a scheme to find Birdcrash, the man responsible for the initial crash of the internet. The government forces her to join the hunt for him, which lasts a brief 10 or so pages, before Birdcrash himself captures Rachel and starts torturing her. Birdcrash talks about Trump and drips acid on Rachel. It’s a lot. It’s a mess. Doten proves quite easily that he is meme-savvy. He evidences that he is a cool, woke kid, a
‘Trump Sky Alpha’ Mark Doten Greywolf Press Feb. 18, 2019
part of the 2019 resistance, and I am supposed to feel cool by association. The internet archives Doten imagines from the last day of the world feel eerily familiar — folks blaming jihadists, using (surprisingly accurate) memes and hashtags to eschew fears. It’s a well done and probably realistic imagining. Sadly, when this passage is complete and Rachel is done looking through the archives, readers are back in the mess of “Trump.” Maybe most detrimental are Doten’s characters, particularly that of Rachel, who feels shockingly underdeveloped. It is difficult to believe that she is traversing the nuclear-wrecked country and agreeing to dangerous government missions solely to see the resting place of her family. And Doten doesn’t even give the opportunity to see if this is, in fact, believable — Rachel rarely interacts with someone, there are few flashbacks or information revealed from her past and her actions feel arbitrary and without thought. The plot simply isn’t linear enough to understand Rachel’s psyche.
Readers don’t even get to see their main character develop. Rather, Rachel feels like a faceless pawn, one that Doten uses to relay the absurdities of “Trump Sky Alpha.” It seems, strangely, that Doten could not decide if he was writing satire or not. Instead of committing to a theme, “Trump” oscillates between Vonnegutesque satire (Trump’s daily blimp that features moving chairs so everyone can catch a glimpse of the president) and what feels like a failed but genuine attempt at an action novel (dripping acid through holes in someone’s skull until they manage to fight back). While reading, it was difficult to come to terms with the very fact that “Trump” features a real-world cast of characters. There is no message to fight for while reading, no satire to even interpret. It is merely an author showing the world what he can do in his writing (which is not necessarily what he should do). By the final quarter of the book, “Trump Sky Alpha” devolves into a rambling chaos. These pages are filled almost exclusively with dialogue from Birdcrash, the person behind the internet hacks, who has captured Rachel and seems intent on torturing her while mumbling gibberish. Not one page of this was cohesive or conducive to some sort of meaning. Birdcrash speaks in a plural form, describing to Rachel encounters of gay intercourse, cancer and a sexually abusive father whom he likens to Trump. Even if this is meant to be some sort of mockery of politics, there is nothing to be gained from it. It is simply bad. Perhaps I am supposed to be impressed that an author is willing to talk explicitly about penile pain and poppers and “dank memes.” I was not. Truthfully, what potential “Trump Sky Alpha” had at its start is quickly eroded. There is a political fear driving the novel, one that many of us feel, but its fervor is dulled by endlessly random statements. These are obviously intended to prove that Doten is cutting-edge and has a grasp of the internet and its implications. But this is not enough to form a novel. For most of “Trump,” Doten seems to be writing simply for the hell of it.
NEW MEDIA NOTEBOOK
Finstagram and formality ELI LUSTIG
Daily Arts Writer
So, it’s been about an hour of sweaty, bass-thumping dancing at a house party that, in most respects, is identical to every other one I’ve ever been to. I walk outside to get some fresh air (and maybe a welcome whiff of cigarette smoke) when a friend approaches me complaining that a girl she clearly “cancelled” is still following her “finsta,” or “fake Instagram.” Let me dial this back a little bit. In fact, let’s dial it back all the way to 2011. I’m in middle school and I have just heard of a fledgling social media app called Instagram. In those tweeny days, most people I knew were active users on Facebook. However, as Facebook was becoming the conventional platform of choice, Instagram represented the Wild, Wild West: lawless with these new things called filters. I remember the days of Instagram when it was OK to post 10 photos of the donuts you just bought and then — that same day — post another photo of yourself eating pizza. With no etiquette established, Instagram was a free-for-all. Some would even nostalgically consider this age of 1:1 aspect ratios and endless troves of tacky selfies the platform’s “Golden Age.” Simultaneously, as Instagram was breaking new grounds, the godfather of social media (and ironically, now Instagram’s parent company) Facebook was being
decried as “dead.” As the first social media platform to gain international ubiquity, Facebook had changed since its college-student-only origins. In 2011, parents were starting to make Facebook accounts, which, as with any trend, can only signify waning cultural relevance. Ads were increasing their presence and, worst of all, people were actually beginning to put effort into things posted. Instagram provided relief from the increasing formality of Facebook. It was an oasis for the younger generation to express themselves fully. Now, fast forward to today. Facebook and Instagram still exist, yet things have changed. Facebook has become the “serious” platform used by all age demographics. However, as a result of the presence of everyone from your mom to your high school literature teacher, Facebook has descended into a realm that seems to be dominated solely by political bickering and other formal matters. The discourse can sometimes be so heated that it makes sense why Russian hackers would infiltrate it as a means to influence the 2016 Presidential election. Similarly, the innocuous Instagram of 2011 seems unimaginable in today’s culture of “influencers” and brand-crafting. Just like the Facebook of yore, people actually give a shit about what they post. This increasing formality has prompted some users to declare Instagram “dead” as well. In fact, it has become so formal that some users have moved
to other image-sharing platforms like Vsco or Pinterest as a means to express themselves without judgement; some have even created “finstagrams.” Finstagram, a portmanteau of “fake” and “Instagram,” ironically is the place where users feel as though they can be at their realest. As a reaction to the growing pressure of image control on Instagram, users have begun to open up side accounts. These side accounts, in contrast to the mains, are not under the user’s real name. In fact, finsta account names are normally derived from a pun or an inside joke based on the person’s name. Rather than letting anyone who wants to follow you, only your closest friends are allowed to access yout finsta. With these privacy precautions in place, the finsta has become the perfect place to reveal your true thoughts, tell embarrassing stories, talk shit about whoever, etc. This article is not about Instagram or Facebook, but a phenomenon that affects social media in general. If we naturally run from increasing formality, why does it continue to appear on every social media platform that gains popularity? It is a sad reality that as a function of time and success, social media platforms will all inevitably lose their harmless and youthdominated origins in the process. It seems to be a consequence of the fact that participation in social media is quickly transforming from a voluntary activity to a chore, a job, an economic resource.
Arts
6 — Tuesday, February 26, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
DAILY CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMN
DAILY FOOD COLUMN
DSO takes on ‘Become Ocean’
Hearty joe at Comet Coffee
DAYTON HARE
Daily Classical Music Columnist
Saturday night and Sunday afternoon the Detroit Symphony Orchestra brought to a close their 2019 midwinter festival, “American Panorama,” with a program of music by three American minimalist composers, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Luther Adams. Aptly titled “Maximum Minimal,” the program embraced one of the defining currents in American classical music of the last half century. It’s an interesting theme, and one that is ripe with both possibilities and challenges. Minimalism, after all, is a term that emcompasses a wide swath of composers and aesthetics, and programing a single concert dedicated to it would necessarily require the omission of some of the most interesting and evocative music to fall under that category. To do true justice to the theme one would really need to dedicate an entire festival to minimalism itself, rather than one concert as part of a larger festival — but under the circumstances the DSO and Music Director Laurate Leonard Slatkin have done reasonably well with the programming, in the sense that the three pieces selected for the performance touch on some of the most prominent trends within minimalism. The “American Panorama” festival itself, of course, was quite an undertaking. “This is the sixth (midwinter festival) that I’ve done,” Slatkin told me when we spoke over the phone last week. Initially conceived as a way to draw in audiences during a traditionallylean month for orchestra attendance, the DSO began with endeavors such as performing all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies over the course of a few weeks. Last year the orchestra undertook a French music themed festival. And this year, American music — a longtime interest of Slatkin’s — came to the fore. “What we have learned is that this period of time, these three
weeks in February, have proved to be both artistically satisfying and very lucrative in terms of being able to attract an audience,” Slatkin said. This year’s festival will likely be the last midwinter festival with Slatkin at the helm, as he has been stepping away from his duties as music director. “I’ll be 75 soon, and it’s a lot of work,” Slatkin said. “(But) I wanted (my last midwinter festival) to be dedicated to American music, which makes sense, because it’s been one of my passions for years.” The opener of Saturday’s program was Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music,” a short 1972 composition performed entirely by clapping. Written for two people, “Clapping Music” serves as an excellent example of rhythmic minimalism, and also an early example of Reich’s technique of “phasing,” which he developed further in subsequent compositions. Throughout the duration of the piece, one performer claps a single rhythmic line over and over, while the other performer claps this same rhythmic line except offset by one eighth note every eight or 12 bars. This process continues until the performers are once again clapping in unison, as in the beginning of the piece. For being such a far cry from what one generally expects to hear at an orchestral concert, the audience received the piece enthusiastically, many people leaping to their feet at the end of Joseph Becker and Andres Pichardo’s performance on Saturday night, which was tight and controlled. The Reich was followed by a lessor-known work of Philip Glass’s, the “Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra” (which, as an aside, often bears striking similarities to music from “Mission Impossible”). The choice of a timpani concerto is somewhat odd, but also bold, given the relative historical lack of music in that genre. The playing on Saturday night’s performance was skillful and well-executed, but some of the inherent difficulties of performing a timpani concerto
nevertheless shown through. The balance between the orchestra and soloists was a constant challenge, and often it was a strain to hear the orchestra over the sheer force of the timpani banging away at the front of the stage. Which isn’t to say the banging wasn’t exciting, and indeed the timpani cadenza in the third movement was probably the most compelling part of the piece, as the listener stopped being distracted by the fact that they couldn’t hear the orchestra and could focus on the thrilling technique and sensitive touch displayed by soloists Jeremy Epp and James Ritchie. Far and away the most compelling performance of the night, however, fell to the last piece of the evening, John Luther Adams’s “Become Ocean,” a meditative and immersive 42-minute work for full orchestra which, when I spoke with him in 2015, Adams described as “the culmination of years of work … (where) the music has been leading (him) ... for decades.” Kept at a single tempo for the entire duration of the work, the orchestra is divided physically into three groups on stage — the strings, the woodwinds and the brass. Throughout the course of the piece, each of these sections slowly fades in and out of prominence, each playing slow, repetitive patterns and swelling chords that imitate the movement of waves in the open ocean. Listening to it, one feels submerged in the texture, floating in its resonance, borne aloft by the slow-moving mass of its sound. The DSO augmented the meditative nature of this listening experience with the tasteful application of stage lighting, applying a separate soft-hued color to each orchestra section and intensifying or dimming the light in accordance with the section’s change in volume. It was a satisfying end to the “American Panorama” festival, and all the more so because it was a concert featuring exclusively living composers. “American music,” it seemed to say, “is a thing that is alive and among us.” Let’s hope that programing like this continues to come to the fore.
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis DOWN 1 Secret stash 2 “Straight Outta Compton” actor __ Jackson Jr. 3 Some German cars 4 Italian rice dishes 5 Religious rifts 6 Gave a darn 7 Neruda wrote one to common things 8 Layered mineral 9 ’50s-’60s nonconformists 10 Run faster than 11 *“Have a nice day” graphic 12 Great Salt Lake state 13 TV award 18 Egyptian fertility goddess 22 “Mork & Mindy” planet 24 Largest ring of latitude 28 Hard-to-ignore impulse 29 Start of Popeye’s existential maxim 30 Gen-__: postboomers
31 The bad guys 32 Auctioned auto, perhaps 33 *Celtic peepers of song 34 Champagne choice 37 Idle talk 38 Kin by marriage 40 Oversees, as a gallery collection 41 Social outcasts 43 “__ Sera, Sera” 44 Stretch across
47 Slowly wear down 48 Expression shared by the answers to starred clues 49 Relaxed, as rules 50 Hunter’s trap 51 Do as you’re told 52 Zap for dinner 53 Courageous one 57 Country singer Tillis
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
By Peter Koetters ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
Daily Food Columnist
There’s something wonderfully charming about that perfect cup of coffee. For so many of us, coffee is so much more than a drink — it’s a stirring inside our chest, the first taste that graces our lips every day, waking us with the sun. It is common ground for conversation, for overcoming challenges, for wordless displays of tenderness and exhausted gestures of affection. Coffee is not a beverage; it is a necessity, it is a tradition, it is a heritage. We drink coffee for the jolt and the ritual of it all, not just for its lovable, distinct flavor. No matter how ever changing our worlds, coffee is a tradition. Above all, coffee is a staple of American culture and lifestyle. For the many who don’t rely on a Keurig or, perhaps, a fancy espresso machine to bring us a morning, mid-afternoon or oh shit I’m pulling an all nighter cup of Joe, the places that we choose to go for coffee, for convenience or preference, become part of the daily sacrament of java as well. There aren’t many strangers in our lives that we feel like we know as much as local baristas. My mom gave me my first cup of coffee when I was 12 — a sickly sweet, half drunk decaf caramel macchiato handed over on a Washington D.C. metro, and I’ll never forget that moment: the paper cup to my lips, the lukewarm temperature, that masked, deep flavor. I’ve graduated from caramel macchiatos and decaf coffees to develop a more mature, grown up palate for the flavors that can be garnered from stand alone plain black coffee. When I’m staring at the menu in a coffee shop, I generally prefer a single espresso or an almond milk cappuccino. I like my coffee dark, strong and in steady supply, but not unpleasant and bitter. I like a cup of coffee that cuts to the chase, is poignant in flavor and aroma, and leaves me feeling warm and bright. Sometimes that means walking
the line between too dark and just right, and anyone who can fill my mug with that happy medium is added to my list of favorites. In New Jersey, I have two go-to coffee shops, both with their own personalities, and they always welcome me back with open arms and caffeine abound. Both shops have a feeling akin to coming home, and I always gravitate toward them when I’m lucky enough to have a break from school. Few places can compare to the first coffee shops that compelled me to fall in love with coffee — not just the beverage, but the culture behind it. The places where we go for coffee say so much about who we are as people. They reflect us in our most vulnerable form: Monday morning pre-coffee, Saturday morning post-night out coffee or the Tuesday afternoon cup just because. Within coffee shops, we suddenly feel comfortable having serious conversations, rekindling relationships, writing our deepest prose or most enlightening poetry. Coffee culture is one thing, but coffee shop culture is another beast entirely. Coffee shops need a few things: a distinct personality, a potential for shared experience and a comforting space. On an Ann Arbor coffee tour, few spots can even compare to the nostalgic emotions that fill the cups that have warmed my palms in New Jersey; however, one settles right alongside my beloved hometown coffee shops, and takes the cake as the best coffee in Ann Arbor. Comet Coffee, run by Ann Arbor’s own java wizard Jim Arborio, is a small, independently owned coffee shop that has made home in Nickels Arcade, a stone’s throw from the diag. Arborio has his own coffee origin story, as so many of us do, dating back to 1992, when he was a barista as a senior in high school. From there, his passion for the bean grew. “I was always involved with coffee, roasting at home when I was growing up in Saline, Michigan,” Arborio said, in an interview with The Daily.
“I moved back to Ann Arbor in hopes of opening my own business in 2001, and I knew it was coffee.” Comet Coffee is small but mighty, with few tables and a bit of counter space, warm with light green walls and a handful of golden suspended lights. To the left of the register is the espresso machine in all its glory, and to the right is a case of perfectly handcrafted French pastries and the pour-over station, where the baristas master the art of the perfect cup. Comet Coffee was born of a cocktail of experience with heart and sentimentality. “The shop is sort of named after the guy who taught me to make drinks on an espresso machine,” Arborio said. “My experiences in my favorite coffee shops tend to be places that gather people, shoot them far away some place, and bring them back slowly, like a comet.” Comet Coffee certainly provides somewhat of the same experience, taking students and professors away from the stressors of their individual lives and providing them with a space to enjoy conversation. “People find a lot of identity in the place they get coffee, so we cultivate this space so that it feels relevant to the people who constantly frequent here,” Arborio said in referencew to that special coffee shop culture. Comet Coffee is different in the midst of hundreds of coffee shops in Ann Arbor because it are centered and focused on human connection, reserving half of their tables for “non-electronic” patrons. I’ve made good use of those conversation-only tables, constantly gravitating toward them with a friend of mine as tradition to get tea after weekly hot yoga. Many other customers have similar attachments to the electronic-free area of the intimate space, a rare find in this technology-obsessed 21st century.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
MUSIC REVIEW
Release Date: Tuesday, February 26, 2019
ACROSS 1 Brewery in Golden, Colorado 6 Fast-food package deal 11 Color variant 14 Gelatin garnish 15 French word of farewell 16 24-hr. cash source 17 *Wonderland feline known for disappearing 19 Nonstick spray brand 20 “Hints from” columnist 21 Weaken from disuse 23 Manhattan area to the right of Central Park, on maps 25 __ a soul 26 Corp. symbols 27 Stopgap remedy 31 Small jazz groups 34 “Designing Women” actress Delta 35 Senate approval 36 One of a bath towel pair 37 Rocky outcroppings 38 Capone facial mark 39 Prefix with dermis 40 Laundry slide 41 7-Down and such 42 Virus-transmitting insect 44 __ Francisco 45 Sting or smart 46 Musical wrap-ups 51 Free sample restriction 54 Title savant in a 1988 Oscarwinning film 55 Invest in 56 *Da Vinci’s “La Gioconda,” to some English speakers 58 Scratch (out) 59 Dog-__: folded at the corner 60 In finer fettle 61 “Absolutely” 62 Swiped 63 Gothenburg native
ELI RALLO
02/26/19
02/26/19
‘While We Wait’ redoes Kehlani DIANA YASSIN Daily Arts Writer
Since her successful 2017 debut with SweetSexySavage, Kehlani’s life has shifted into the media spotlight. From a (disproven) cheating scandal involving ex Kyrie Irving and PartyNextDoor to scrutiny over her sexual orientation, Kehlani’s love life has garnered particularly invasive attention. She’s faced a lot of love and a lot of heartbreak over these last few years, and none of it was private. For these reasons her announcement of her pregnancy in October came as a shock. “i don’t want to hide,” she wrote in her twitter announcement. “i want to walk around belly out everywhere.” A lot of these ideas manifest themselves into her most recent release While We Wait. If SweetSexySavage introduced her as a strong-willed, sexy and intelligent woman to the world, her sophomore attempt destabilizes this immaculately cool image. A nine track mixtape, half of it collaborations, shows a less selfassured Kehlani, more vulnerable. But she’s okay with that. And whereas the ambition with SweetSexySavage was to churn out confident, radio-friendly bangers, While We Wait is less lavish, making greater use of negative space and sparse, wispy instrumentals. It feels more genuine this time around. Sonically, the album is dynamic, with its tone, pace and energy scaling the board. It finds cohesion in its ability to strip away layers from songs just as fast as it builds them. It starts with the sound of trickling water in the intro track “Footsteps” and builds from there, a soothing, whimsical backbone to every song. This adds more character to Kehlani’s artistry, providing a greater sense of character to her musical identity; despite some
trivial, superficial ’90s R&B worship, tropey genre conventions aren’t too prominent. There’s an elegant deliberation to the sound of this album. The instrumentation perfectly parallels the lyrical content at some points. The trickling water from the beginning actually ties to a metaphor of a relationship slipping away like cupped water. There are also points where the sounds change the meaning of the songs. This is most prominent in “Love Language,” a song that details a desire to better understand a new partner. However, the song carries the cadence of a nursery rhyme, suggesting it references her situation as a new mother. More than anything, While We Wait serves as a snapshot to the emotions that tag along the turmoil
‘While We Wait’ Kehlani Atlantic of new changes. Songs like “Nunya” are scathing, challenging a former lover. “Why you worried ’bout who was fuckin’ me?” Yet more endearing and personal cuts like “RPG” coexist, admitting “you told me I’m beautiful/ ‘cause I told you you don’t tell me enough.” But the album far from veers into extremities; it captures the elegance of lingering between security and doubt despite its meager tracklist. “Morning Glory” is a quirkier track, with lyrics like “this ain’t BK, you can’t have it your way,” dedicated to a male partner who may judge her appearance beneath the morning makeup glam.
That being said, the album, from a thematic viewpoint, is a bit derivative. “Morning Glory,” despite its charm, isn’t at all profound in the sentiments it conveys. The same goes for much of the rest of the album; it’s ideas surrounding romantic love are shallow and redundant, with constant iterations of “take it or leave it” and “I’m sorry” attached to nearly every song. Despite the length, the concepts explored by the album stale not too far into it, the second song “Too Deep” a subpar echo of “Footsteps.” This isn’t to say Kehlani’s ideas and the way she expresses them aren’t original — they are — she simply misses the mark in expressing anything we haven’t heard before. Characteristic for mixtapes — and not Kehlani — are the number of features on this album. Surprisingly, they dodge the trap of cheapening the content or serving as any sort of promotional boost for any of the artists involved (not to say the potential isn’t there). The inclusion of Ty Dolla $ign on “Nights Like This” adds a duality to the album, emphasizing the role of bisexual love in Kehlani’s life, as both artists croon to the story of a mutual female lover. Jazz icon Musiq Soulchild on the other hand, is deterministically in his element throughout “Footsteps,” adding a slick, buttery quality to the smooth track. Nonetheless, this isn’t to say all collaborations on the album proved necessary. Dom Kennedy on “Nunya” is forgettable, his verse void of the artistic and emotional energy of the song. Overall, While We Wait serves as a strong follow up to the brilliance that is SweetSexySavage. Despite veering away from her traditional sound, her sophomore attempt conveys more personality and shows potential for even more growth as her life and understanding of it changes.
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tuesday, February 26, 2019 — 7
With one game to go, three takeaways from the end of Michigan’s win streak CONNOR BRENNAN Daily Sports Writer
When the buzzer sounded at the end of the Michigan women’s basketball game against Michigan State on Sunday, the Wolverines were met by an unfamiliar feeling: defeat. Prior to its loss to the Spartans, Michigan hadn’t lost in the month of February, winning seven straight games. Though the Wolverines battled throughout, a few trends re-emerged from the team’s struggles at the beginning of the Big Ten season. With that in mind and just one regular season game remaining — against Wisconsin on Sunday — before the team prepares for the Big Ten Tournament and possibly beyond, The Daily looks at three big takeaways from Michigan’s defeat in East Lansing. Amy Dilk struggled with Michigan State’s pressure The freshman point guard played 29 minutes against the Spartans, nearly doubling the amount she played against Rutgers a few days earlier in her return from a knee injury. The defensive aggressiveness of Michigan State’s guards caused Dilk — and the rest of the team — problems all afternoon. Dilk herself, turned the ball over seven times. “We really struggled handling Michigan State’s pressure,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico. “Right from the start of the game, we turned the ball over and they were able to get up big
on us. Amy struggled a little bit as well. She hasn’t been in this situation in a while and probably not in her career being in a game like this.” From an offensive perspective, Dilk made great strides prior to suffering her setback against Nebraska on Feb. 7. Between the beginning of Big Ten play and Nebraska, Dilk averaged nine points and just over five assists a game, while limiting her turnovers to 2.5. In her absence, the Wolverines had to grind out wins against Penn State and Indiana. Dilk’s replacements at point guard, whether it was sophomore Deja Church, senior Nicole Munger or even junior Akienreh Johnson, didn’t look completely comfortable as the primary ball-handler and Michigan’s offense looked discombobulated at times. On Sunday, it was Dilk who wasn’t completely comfortable at the helm. She looked a little rusty and a step slower than her normal game speed. The Spartans took advantage. But with a full week before the Badgers come to town, Dilk should have time to continue her recovery and return to form. One of the most talented players on the f loor, even as a freshman, her play will be critical to the Wolverines’ success on Sunday and in the postseason. “Going into the postseason, it’s just important that she has
(We) have an opportunity to work on ourselves.
KEEMYA ESMAEL/Daily
Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico is looking to take advantage of an extended rest before Michigan’s next game, when it finishes the season against Wisconsin.
her confidence back and feels ready so we have our f low back again,” said freshman forward Naz Hillmon after the win against Rutgers. The Spartans dominated the boards If turnovers were at the top of Barnes Arico’s list of grievances after the Michigan State game, Michigan’s rebounding struggles followed closely behind. The Spartans controlled the glass all afternoon but their dominance was particularly evident in the second half while the Wolverines were mounting a
Right from the start of the game, we turned the ball over.
comeback. In the third quarter, Michigan State extended its lead from four to 11 points on the back of seven offensive rebounds. Excluding Hillmon, who finished with a game-high 11 rebounds, Michigan’s bigs — senior center Hallie Thome, sophomore forward Hailey Brown and junior forward Kayla Robbins — combined for seven. Rebounding is one of the Wolverines’ greatest strengths, as they are top20 nationally in rebounding margin. With that in mind, one off-game against a team
with Michigan State’s size is understandable, but if their rebounding struggles persist, it could cost them come the postseason. Michigan can still finish fourth in the Big Ten In terms of the Big Ten, Michigan’s recent surge up the standings gave it some wiggle room heading into Sunday. With a win against Wisconsin, the Wolverines would finish fourth in the conference, giving them a double-bye in the Big Ten Tournament. Tentatively situated in the NCAA
It’s nice to have a chance to work on Michigan.
Tournament field as an 8-seed according to ESPN’s Charlie Creme, an automatic entry into the third round of the Big Ten Tournament would leave Michigan one win away from the semifinals, likely ensuring them a bid to the Big Dance. First though, the Wolverines must learn from their mistakes ahead of their regular-season finale. With the benefit of their first full week of practice in six weeks, they will have that opportunity. “We’re really struggling right now with handling some pressure as well as blocking out and not giving up offensive rebounds,” Barnes Arico said. “We’ll have a couple days to work on that before we have to start preparing for Wisconsin, but it’s nice to have a chance to work on Michigan.”
Wolverines fall to Tar Heels, 5-2 Heidt, defense shine in ‘M’ victory ALEX WALKON
DREW COX
For The Daily
The Michigan women’s tennis team and No. 2 North Carolina captivated an audience on Sunday at the Varsity Tennis Center with a rollercoaster match flooded with tiebreakers, momentum swings and everything in between. The Tar Heels defeated the Wolverines, 5-2, resulting in Michigan’s second loss of winter play. Tar Heel Cameron Morra vaulted to a commanding 5-3 lead in the No. 4 singles match against junior Chiara Lommer. With her back against the wall, Lommer mounted an imposing comeback, tying the set at six off a cross-court winner. But the comeback fell short as Morra grinded out the final rally to take the tiebreaker, 7-3. Lommer was unable to overcome her first set defeat, yet maintained her relentless drive in a 6-1 losing effort in the second set, even after the Tar Heels clinched the match. “We were pretty even and every single game was (decided by) one point here and there,” Lommer said. “This was a really big opportunity playing UNC, and I wanted to stay out there for everyone.” Junior Giulia Pairone had a similarly turbulent No. 2 singles match against North Carolina’s Makenna Jones. Decisive groundstrokes earned Pairone an early 4-1 lead before Jones rattled off three straight games. Jones completed her comeback in a back-and-forth set, coming away with a 7-6, 8-6 tiebreaker victory. Pairone was unable to stall Jones’ positive momentum, falling 6-1 in the second set after an emphatic serve from Jones, the clinching point for UNC. “Those girls especially do such a good job competing, and losing like that, it’s kind of deflating,”
Daily Sports Writer
MAX KUANG/Daily
Chiara Lommer mounted a comeback but ultimately lost the tiebreaker.
said Michigan assistant head coach Teryn Ashley-Fitch. “But you’ve got to figure out a way to keep going and keep the pressure on North Carolina.” Senior Brienne Minor started off her No. 3 singles match against Tar Heel Alexa Graham, taking a 2-1 lead off a flawless winner down the line. But Minor’s lead was short-lived. Graham took the next three games, en route to a 6-4 first-set victory. Minor remained unfazed in the highly-contested second set, but it wasn’t enough, as Graham took the set 7-6, winning the tiebreaker, 7-3. Sophomore Bella Lorenzini struggled against North Carolina’s Jessie Aney in their No. 6 singles match. Lorenzini’s net play was incapacitated by Aney’s perfectly executed passing shot, leading to a 6-0 Tar Heels first-set victory. Lorenzini’s adjustments came too late, falling 6-3 in the second set. At No. 5 singles, sophomore Alyvia Jones initially struggled against Allie Sanford’s serve, falling behind 1-2. Jones responded by taking a crucial 3-2 break and never looked back on her way to a 6-3 first-set victory. Jones built on her momentum, jumping out to a 5-2 lead before forcing an error off a powerful forehand to take the second set, 6-3.
These girls especially do such a good job competing.
Senior Kate Fahey built on her illustrious career in her No. 1 singles victory over North Carolina’s Sara Daavettila. Fahey quickly had Daavettila running all over the court with perfectlyplaced groundstrokes, earning an early 3-0 lead en route to a 6-1 victory. Fahey responded to Daavettila’s second-set adjustments, winning a pivotal, endless rally to take a 3-2 break before walking away with a 6-2 second set victory. The Wolverines struggled against the Tar Heels’ fundamentally sound doubles play. Minor and Alyvia Jones lost their first four points at No. 2 doubles against Graham and Aney, setting up a 6-1 North Carolina victory. Michigan’s No. 3 doubles Lommer and Lorenzini had their chances against Sanford and Daavettila, but were plagued by no-advantage scoring, losing two consecutive games at 40-40 and eventually fell, 6-3. Fahey and Pairone were the lone victorious doubles team among the Wolverines. After building a 3-1 lead, the No. 1 doubles team found itself down, 0-40. Fahey and Pairone showed their sense of urgency, climbing all the way back to take the 4-1 break. The comeback was capped by a volley winner from Fahey after a seemingly eternal rally. Michigan led 5-2 before the match was abandoned. “They really feed off each other’s energy,” Ashley-Fitch said. “Kate is really consistent and Julia has that fiery energy and ability to attack at net.”
Down one goal with 11.8 seconds left in the game, Jacksonville midfielder Evan Tyler dodged ferociously off the wing and dished the ball off to midfielder Jack Dolan, setting up what seemed to be the perfect opportunity for a game-tying goal for the Dolphins. But fifth-year senior goalkeeper Tommy Heidt stood FILE PHOTO/Daily his ground, warding off Dolan’s Michigan coach Kevin Conry praised Tommy Heidt after Saturday’s game. shot as time expired, icing the game for the Michigan men’s defenseman Nick DeCaprio also tie up the game at six, with nine minutes into the third quarter. picking up three on the day. lacrosse team, 11-10. “We have been trying to “When we had (faceoffs and “I was in the right spot, so it ground balls) rolling, that just recreate some of these scramble hit me,” Heidt said. With 15 saves on the day, Heidt means extra possessions for us,” situations in practice,” Conry said. “What we are really stood tall between the pipes Conry said. For the Wolverines, those focusing on is just our situational —aided by a strong, punishing defensive unit — to lead the extra possessions led to even awareness… when we need to Wolverines (2-1) to a narrow more goals, including seven push the ball, when we need to victory over Jacksonville (0-4) different goalscorers by the day’s swallow it a little bit.” Throughout the rest of the end. on Saturday. With five minutes remaining second half, the Wolverines’ lead “Most of the shots I saw were the shots I wanted to see … That’s in the first quarter, freshman never extended to more than credit to our defense,” Heidt said. attackman Bryce Clay fired a two goals again, as both sides shot in tight past Jacksonville exchanged a series of goals to “(They) played incredible.” Following a heartbreaking goalkeeper Hunter Sells to tie bring the score to 10-10 with 17-16 loss in double overtime to the game up 1-1. The Wolverines five minutes remaining in the the Drexel Dragons on Tuesday, then went on to score three more contest. With fewer than three Michigan was eager to bounce unanswered goals, including back against the Dolphins on the a pair of goals from junior minutes remaining, Clay fed attackman Jason Brown and Noseworthy from the wing, road. “I had a tough game last one from senior midfielder Brent who then launched what would become the game-winning goal (Tuesday) against Drexel,” Heidt Noseworthy. At the half, Michigan led past Sells to give Michigan an said. “We went back down to the fundamentals … I did a lot the Dolphins, 5-3. As DeCaprio 11-10 lead and himself back-toof mental preparation to get this sprinted down the field and back hat tricks As time wound down, Heidt one back … (I think) we fixed a lot rocketed a top-shelf goal past Sells in the final minutes of the and the Wolverines’ defense of the kinks.” Added Michigan coach Kevin first half, the Wolverines’ bench came up clutch, stifling the Dolphins’ offense when it Conry: “Tommy Heidt stood on was electrified. The defense featured strong mattered most. his head. He was terrific and it “(We) didn’t give up in those was a great bounce-back game individual performances, like that of senior defenseman last 11 seconds and worked really, for him.” Like Heidt, the Wolverines Brandon Shima, who mustered really hard,” Heidt said. “(We straightened out and dominated two ground balls and led the team gave) everything (we had) while the gritty aspects of the game. with four caused turnovers on trying to stay mentally dialedSophomore face-off man Connor the day. Freshman defenseman in.” Despite other challenges, Cronin frequently won the clamp Andrew Darby caused two against his opponent, going turnovers in his first game as a Michigan’s stellar goalkeeping and offensive consistency 12-for-20 on faceoffs, to aid an starter. Nevertheless, like its past two allowed it to escape with another offense that had struggled to gain possessions off faceoffs in games, the Michigan defense narrow, yet impressive, victory. “There’s nothing like the value its past few games. Michigan allowed its opponent to get back of experience,” Conry said. “By also dominated ground ball play, into the game. However, persistent struggles going through the wringer now, scooping up 27 of 50 ground balls, with Heidt contributing on situational defense allowed we have learned what it means seven ground balls and senior Jacksonville to crawl back and to win.”
Sports
8 — Tuesday, February 26, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tom Izzo reverses rivalry narrative A look at the defensive mindset of ‘M’ ETHAN SEARS
ABBY SNYDER
Managing Sports Editor
Daily Sports Writer
Tom Izzo was standing at the podium and making a point about defense when the shout came. Hey Tom! Hey Tom! Hey Tom! A fan on the Crisler Center staircase — it didn’t matter what colors he wore — wanted Izzo’s attention. The Michigan State coach stopped talking. He leaned his head forward and obliged. “Yeah, thanks.” After Sunday, he deserved all the credit he got. For the last year, the MichiganMichigan State rivalry has been defined by Izzo’s unwillingness to change — and John Beilein subsequently tearing the Spartans to shreds. Prior to the second matchup between the two last year, the adjustment was out in the open for Izzo to make: put Jaren Jackson Jr. at center to match up with Moritz Wagner, switch ball-screens, neutralize Michigan’s pick-and-pop game. Instead, Izzo changed nothing. Jackson sat for key stretches of the second half. The Spartans kept hedging ball-screens. Beilein’s offense — predicated on ball-screens with Wagner — hummed to the tune of 75 points, 15 of them from the German. The Wolverines won, easily, and the root cause stood on the sideline. So, maybe it’s understandable that Beilein didn’t anticipate Izzo would switch up his defense ahead of Sunday’s game. After the fact, it’s certainly easy to understand why Izzo did just that. Jackson and Wagner are both long gone, but on Sunday, Michigan State switched screens anyway. Beilein and the Wolverines were caught offguard, forced to play one-on-one basketball. The result: a 77-70 win for the Spartans — one in which Michigan totaled all of six assists, its lowest since last year’s national title game against Villanova. “We have certain habits that
Mishandling a grounder off a short hop. A bare-hander just a split second from being a web-gem play if the runner hadn’t slid in. The briefest of fumbles behind the plate blocking a pitch in the dirt. The stat sheet lists all of these plays as slip-ups. A fielding error. A wild pitch. But these kinds of plays are the exact kind of slip-ups Michigan coach Erik Bakich wants his team to make. “We want aggressive mistakes. We don’t want passive mistakes,” Bakich said. “If we’re going to make a mistake, it’s going to be because we’re going for it, we’re taking the chance, trying to make the great play. We’re okay with that.” As the 17th-ranked Wolverines continue to shake off the rust of their eight-month offseason, they’ve made a few of these mistakes. In the opening series against Binghamton, senior infielder Blake Nelson made five errors at third base over the first two games. Bakich then benched Nelson, moving fellow senior infielder Jimmy Kerr from first to third base. It’s early enough in the season that these small inconsistencies in Michigan’s infield defense haven’t
ALEC COHEN/Daily
Tom Izzo’s adjustments helped the Spartans beat Michigan on Sunday.
are not good for some one-onone situations,” Beilein said. “And we’re trying to break those habits, but when that’s been going on for 10 years, it’s hard to break it in the short time we have.” Izzo’s adjustments worked and worked well. By the end of the game, Michigan was left with multiple scoreless stretches and no answer to the question of who should get the ball late. “We didn’t make the right decisions at times,” said freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis. “I feel like we could’ve definitely done better offensively, for sure, that (there) was definitely matchups and stuff that we could’ve went to. I feel like we’re gonna be more ready next time.” On the other sideline, Beilein tried playing off Michigan State’s Kenny Goins, daring the center to shoot. He hit three 3-pointers in the first half, all of them wide open. Michigan’s defense — ranked third in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency — gave up its most points per possession all year. It forced just six turnovers. It let the Spartans get to the free throw line 30 times. For a group whose identity
rests on doing the exact opposite, getting picked apart by Izzo and guard Cassius Winston was a rude awakening. Even when junior guard Zavier Simpson managed to get over ball-screens, Michigan State’s point guard manipulated space in a way befitting of the likely Big Ten Player of the Year winner. He scored 27 points, and the Wolverines could do nothing about most of them. But when the topic of ballscreen defense came up late in the press conference, Beilein was a little more revealing. “(Winston’s) gonna get himself into a one-on-one situation with (Jon) Teske,” Beilein said. And he’s deceptive enough to get around him a couple times. A couple of times, (Simpson) wanted to get back but (Simpson) didn’t have leverage yet. So then he got back and there, (Winston’s) going into the basket. “So, we’re a really good ballscreen defense team. We weren’t good today. And credit him.” Credit Winston if you want — you wouldn’t be wrong. But in a rivalry defined by two Hall of Famers on the sideline — one future, one current — the latter came out on top.
I feel like we’re gonna be more ready next time.
We want them to just go for it. ... We want them to be fearless.
DARBY STIPE/Daily
TIEN LE
SOFTBALL
Infield finding footing LANE KIZZIAH
Daily Sports Writer
Daily Sports Writer
ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Junior forward Will Lockwood was ejected during Michigan’s double-overtime loss to Ohio State on Saturday.
familiar. The junior had spent the majority of his sophomore year sidelined, though due to a shoulder injury back then. Instead of missing the games or sitting in the bleachers, he stayed close to the ice. After his ejection Saturday, Lockwood, instead of going to the locker room like two other ejected players had done that day, stood behind the glass paneling leading to the Wolverine tunnel like he had done much of last year. It was the same back then as it is now. Unable to play, he stood behind the glass, a gesture his teammates appreciated. Instead of being on the ice, he stood. And he watched. And he waited for the result of his absence to unravel. Two minutes later, with a Jobst goal, it did. “I was angry at the ref, but more angry at myself, I have to control my emotions a little bit better,” Lockwood said. “Overall, it was kind of a selfish act. … It was unfortunate what the outcome was, but I wasn’t
going to miss the chance to see what the outcome was.” Ohio State initiated the first push down ice after the call. Winning the faceoff, the Buckeyes shot toward the net but the puck deflected out of play. Lockwood watched helplessly, pointing to things happening on the ice while a student manager comforted him to the side. “Being a former player, you don’t feel good,” Pearson said. “Especially if it’s a bad penalty. When you’re in the box and get scored on, it’s not a good feeling. That’s my personal two cents on it.” After Ohio State started its second push, a two-on-one breakaway, Lockwood couldn’t help but pound on the glass after sophomore defenseman Quinn Hughes and freshman goaltender Strauss Mann stopped the odd-man rush. And then, after a few more pushes up and down the ice, the clock began ticking. The Buckeyes’ penalty which kept the game even-strength was about to expire.
I owned up to it in the end, and made sure everyone knew.
on its toughest challenges of the season so far. Next week, Michigan will play eight games in 10 days on a trip to California. The Wolverines will face their first two ranked opponents of the year in No. 3 UCLA and No. 19 Oklahoma State in the Dodgertown Classic, which will be played at Dodger Stadium, on March 8 and 10. The Bruins have scored 45 runs in a season that is seven games old. The Cowboys have scored 48 in as many games, including one where they scored 17. It will be a trial-by-fire for Michigan’s aggressivemistakes strategy. But Bakich is confident in his mindset. “In sports, there’s a lot of talk about some teams getting the breaks and some teams not getting the breaks,” Bakich said. “And you can make your own breaks just by taking more chances, by being the aggressor, and finding those opportunities wherever they are. “That’s the mindset we want our players to have. We want them to just go for it. We want them to be on the attack. We want them to be fearless.”
Senior infielder Blake Nelson committed five errors over two games against Binghamton before being benched.
Behind the glass, Will Lockwood waits for worst Throwing out his hands in disbelief, Will Lockwood simply couldn’t believe it. In his eyes, his stick had simply lodged in between the Ohio State player’s legs, and he quickly dropped it to prevent any calls. Nothing intentional. No ill-intent. But the whistle was blown anyways, and despite the junior forward’s pleas of it being a mishap, his emotions got the best of him when the referee refused to alter his call. “What? What kind of call was that?” Lockwood shouted, according to Michigan coach Mel Pearson. The stoppage came right as a double-overtime period began in the Michigan-Ohio State matchup — a game that ended in a 4-3 double-overtime Wolverine loss. Right as the first overtime ended, freshman forward Dakota Raabe drew a penalty on Buckeye forward Mason Jobst, sending him to the box and giving Michigan a full two minutes on the manadvantage to start the suddendeath second overtime period. However, right as the Wolverines fought for the puck during a faceoff at the opening of the period, the penalty was assessed on Lockwood, and the reaction ensued. “I mean, Lockwood didn’t say anything,” Pearson said. “Usually you get a misconduct if you say something that’s going to embarrass the referee or swear at him or something like that.” Lockwood, however, lost focus and allowed his emotions to get the best of him. It was a critical juncture in a rivalry game. The thought of ruining the man advantage prompted an unwarranted attempt to kick his stick that had dropped on the ice. He missed, of course, but the referee didn’t miss the sight of his tantrum. An additional whistle was blown, ejecting him from the game. And just like that, Lockwood found himself in a spot all too
cost the Wolverines any games. A few issues at the beginning of the season are expected and give the team motivation to work harder and something to work on. “Physical errors happen. That’s baseball; that’s opening weekend,” Bakich said. “Nobody expected us to come out firing on all cylinders, and we wanted that; we wanted mistakes. We challenge our players to make these aggressive mistakes, and there were some good, aggressive errors that were made.” Since the Binghamton series, Michigan’s defense has already shown improvement. The Wolverines had no errors in their second series of the season at The Citadel last weekend. Sophomore catcher Joe Donovan caught a runner trying to steal second with an aggressive cross-diamond throw to get the out, and kept any pitches in the dirt well under control. Kerr also appeared to settle into his new starting role at third; he had no errors on the weekend series and made several strong plays off grounders. But the defense is coming up
“I was watching the clock,” Lockwood said. “And I don’t think many guys really knew exactly what was happening and when you’re tied up in a game like that, it’s really tough to be aware of that.” But he saw it coming. Jobst rushed out of the box and into a one-on-one with Mann after all three Michigan players were caught off-guard in the offensive zone. The Buckeyes’ leading scorer finished the job, hammering the puck into the net. “It’s just kind of unfortunate when you’re three-on-three, and you don’t know whether the guy’s coming out in a whistle to come back to three-on-three or what the deal is,” Lockwood said. “So it’s kind of just an awkward situation, unfortunately. It’s bad timing for us.” Lockwood remained in his spot, staring at the pile of Ohio State players building up on the ice as they rushed to celebrate the game-winner. Afterward, he apologized to the team for his mistake. It was on him, though no one seemed to press him about it. “I owned up to it at the end,” Lockwood said, “and made sure everyone knew it wasn’t going to happen again.”
So far this season, the Michigan softball team has been erratic, at best. While it’s easy to point to an offense yet to find its rhythm, scoring a total of 52 runs in 14 games, the defense has seen its fair share of uneven performances, particularly in the infield. No two games better sum up the strengths and pitfalls of this season’s infield better than the two losses against No. 7 Louisiana State (13-3) this weekend. The Wolverines (6-8) made several smart plays in both games, giving up four total runs to the highly-ranked team over the course of the weekend. The second inning of Friday’s game, in particular, highlighted Michigan’s defensive prowess when freshman right-hander Alex Storako caught a runner trying to steal third. The infield is composed of several veteran players including senior second baseman Faith Canfield, sophomore infielder Taylor Bump, junior third baseman Madison Uden and sophomore infielder Natalia Rodriguez, among others. Theoretically, this should work in the Wolverines’ favor. “(Having an experienced infield) is a huge advantage,” Uden said on Feb. 5. “Faith does a great job communicating, Natalia has a really great glove. But it’s really nice having Natalia and Faith there because you kind of already know how they play, what their range is, what you can expect from them, honestly to the nittygritty of how they throw the ball to you is huge because
it’s consistent and you know what to expect.” This hasn’t always been the case, though, as there were also several times this weekend when the infield faltered, starting with a fielding error by Uden in the third inning of Friday’s game. The error allowed a runner to advance to second and eventually cross home, the deciding factor in a 1-0 Michigan loss. Communication was particularly an issue in the bottom of the fourth inning during Sunday’s game when Storako misread a cue from senior catcher Katie Alexander. While the ball was caught in left field, the miscommunication could have been costly as Louisiana State had two runners on base. “I think we can all communicate a little bit better,” Bump said on Feb. 19. “I don’t want to say there’s been a lot of hesitation but there’s definitely been instances where we can communicate a little bit better where someone in the infield can call timeout and bring us all together when we’re struggling, when our pitcher’s struggling.” Stronger communication is likely to develop over time as the Wolverines adjust to a consistent lineup, something that has yet to materialize. With the lineup still varying from game to game, Michigan will have to work a little harder to develop a strong dynamic amongst the infield players. “I think our entire infield is working on their trust relationship,” Bump said on Feb. 19. “I think that’s something we’ll get toward by the end of the season.”
I think we can all communicate a little bit better.