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Panel discussion reflects on Trump admin global experiences of refugees moves to ban Researchers express findings of migrant experience in Europe, United States flavored e-cigs Move follows Gov. Whitmer’s MI ban, enacted due to health risks MADELINE MCLAUGHLIN Daily Staff Reporter
MICHAEL BAGAZINSKI/Daily Dr. Odessa Gonzalez Benson, Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work, presents at the Strength of Refugees and Their Communities lecture in the Hatcher Library Gallery Wednesday evening.
ALYSSA MCMURTRY Daily Staff Reporter
University of Michigan Rackham student Andrea Belgrade hosted the opening event for the Strength of Refugees and their Community in the Hatcher Graduate Library Wednesday night. A group of about 50 students and Ann Arbor residents attended the event. Belgrade does research with psychology professor Fiona Lee focused on Muslim-Americans, self-identified multicultural people, immigrants and refugees. The gallery at the event was an extension of her work. Belgrade began the discussion with a brief introduction on her goal for her research with
refugees: allowing refugees to talk about their own experiences instead of having their experiences discussed on their behalf. “Refugees are one group that are very often talked about, but less often, their stories and their voices are not centered and a part of that conversation,” Belgrade said. “While a lot of people you might speak to might be supportive of refugees, it often follows the single story of victimization and trauma.” The reception led to a panel discussion about research the panelists had done with refugees. Dr. Mari Kira, a psychology research scientist at the University, worked at the University of Giessen and
University of Marburg, Germany in the early 2010s. She said the migration of millions of refugees to Germany in such a short span of time prompted her group to begin researching refugees and their lives in Germany. “We focus on their challenges that the resettlement is bringing, but also the positive aspects,” Kira said. “We grow through every experience we have; how does the path of refugees help them to grow and enriches their understanding of not only themselves, but also enriches their understanding of this world and how it works?” Kira and her group of researchers studied with refugees in the U.S., Canada and Germany. She was able to
find commonalities between the groups: the loss of control over their own life, uncertainty and discrimantion. “I had a Syrian refugee tell me, ‘We here as refugees are unsafe,’” Kira said. “‘Maybe one day the state will say we are to go back to our home country. And what should I do there? I lost everything there.’” Ayah Kutmah is the co-founder of REvive, an organization that goes “beyond the scope” of United Nations refugee resettlement organizations. She spoke about how stereotypes of refugees as helpless and in need of others’ help does more harm than good. See REFUGEES, Page 3
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer doesn’t think President Donald Trump is blowing smoke when it comes to dealing with the youth vaping epidemic. She praised the Trump Administration on Wednesday for its intention to finalize a compliance policy that would clear the market of unauthorized, non-tobaccoflavored e-cigarette products. Last week, Michigan became the first state in the nation to ban flavored nicotine products, after Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Whitmer’s chief medical executive, determined that youth vaping constituted a public health emergency. Whitmer applauded the Trump administration for their parallel move. “I’m glad this administration is doing the right thing and following Michigan’s lead to ban flavored vaping products,” Whitmer said. “This is great news for our kids, our families, and our overall public health… Banning these flavors is a bold step that will keep our kids healthy and safe from the harmful effects of vaping. I’m proud that Michigan has been a leader on this issue, and I’m ready to continue working to protect our kids and our
ADMINISTRATION
‘U’ adds Sister Helen Prejean discusses ethnicity new book about social justice selection Community members gather to hear renowned author, nun talk about importance of advocacy process U-M now gives specific identifiaction choices on Wolverine Access BEN ROSENFELD Daily Staff Reporter
Individuals can now voluntarily update ethnicity designations beyond standard federal definitions on Wolverine Access, University of Michigan administration announced in an email sent out to all students, staff and faculty in late August. To do so, individuals access the newly created “Extended Ethnicity” tab within the Campus Personal Information section of Wolverine Access, where they can add, delete or update ethnicity information. On Aug. 28, an email, signed by Robert Sellers, vice provost for equity and inclusion; Kedra Ishop, vice provost for enrollment management; and Richard Holcomb Jr., associate vice president for human resources, explained the highlights and the University’s commitment to “fostering an environment of inclusiveness.” According to the email, the ethnicity designations of individuals will not be published. However, the data may be used for statistical reports and approved research as well as for Student Life, Human Resource and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programming. See ETHNICITY, Page 3
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ALEX HARRING Daily Staff Reporter
Approximately 150 community members filled the pews of First United Methodist Church to hear Sister Helen Prejean, a renowned author and nun, discuss her book “River of Fire,” released in August. She described what it was like to see injustice impact others and her advocacy work.
“We can’t make ourselves wake up,” Prejean said. “We can show up for things like this where someone’s going to be blowing on the coals and a fire might happen, but it’s always grace when we wake up. And it doesn’t matter when we wake up. It’s what we do after that I think is really important.” Prejean, who has been featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and in the The New York Times,
began life as a nun at age 18. Her first book, “Dead Man Walking,” was turned into an opera and Academy Award-winning film. During her talk, she discussed her transition from a nun who grew up shielded from other cultures to living a life entirely devoted to social justice. Specifically, Prejean has been an advocate against capital punishment.
Prejean said she was inspired by an imprisoned pen pal, who was killed on death row two-and-a-half years after they met. When “Dead Man Walking” was released in the early 1990s, 80 percent of Americans supported the death penalty. Prejean said she attributes this support to fear and sees her role as changing the conversation. See SOCIAL JUSTICE, Page 3
ALEC COHEN/Daily Sister Helen Prejean discusses the background of her most recent book, “River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey” at the First United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor Wednesday evening.
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Vol. CXXVIII, No. 131 ©2019 The Michigan Daily
public health.” In a statement, Alex Azar, U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, explained the decision was an effort to combat the harmful effects of youth vaping. “The Trump Administration is making it clear that we intend to clear the market of flavored e-cigarettes to reverse the deeply concerning epidemic of youth e-cigarette use that is impacting children, families, schools, and communities,” Azar said. “We will not stand idly by as these products become an on-ramp to combustible cigarettes or nicotine addiction for a generation of youth.” Last week, the University of Michigan released the annual Monitoring the Future Panel Study, which has tracked substance use among American college students and non-college youth since the 1980s. The study found dramatic increases in the vaping of marijuana and nicotine among young adults nationally. John Schulenberg, t he principa l investigator of t he Monitoring t he Fut ure Pa nel St udy, discussed how public perception of vaping ha s a dra matic ef fect on yout h usage. See E-CIGS, Page 3
BUSINESS
Shortage of White Claw leads to concern U-M students react to lack of access to hard seltzer on campus MOLLY NORRIS Daily Staff Reporter
Move over, avocado — there’s a new shortage rocking American college students. The country is facing the first-ever shortage of White Claw Hard Seltzer. White Claw is the hard seltzer industry’s prized possession, accounting for nearly 5 percent of all hard seltzer sales the week of July 4 this year. Drink sales have grown 283 percent over the last year and have outgrown the speed of production. White Claw confirmed to CNN Business there is a nationwide shortage of their product. White Claw President Phil Rosse said in an email statement to The Daily they are actively working to ensure stock returns to normal. “White Claw is currently growing at 260 percent for the third consecutive year – all thanks to consumers that love our product,” Rosse said. “We are working around the clock to increase current supply and total capacity heading into 2020 so that we can get every consumer White Claw when they want it.” See CLAW, Page 3
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ACLU @ACLU We sent a letter to @umich urging it to stop requiring students who file sexual misconduct complaints to undergo cross-examination conducted by their alleged abusers.
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ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily The Young Americans for Freedom arranged 2,996 American flags to represent the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the Diag Wednesday.
Petition demands University release documents from anti-immigrant alum Campaign created to raise awareness about Dr. John Tanton’s support for white nationalism DANIELLE PASEKOFF Daily Staff Reporter
A petition circulating around campus and the greater Ann Arbor community is calling on the University of Michigan to release the papers of Dr. John Tanton, a U-M alum and pioneer of the anti-immigration movement in the United States. The petition, entitled “Tell the University of Michigan: Stop Hiding White Nationalist’s Papers From The Public,” had more than 3,600 signatures as of Wednesday evening. The petition was created by third-year Law student Kerry Martin in an effort to raise awareness about Tanton’s ties to white nationalism, eugenics and anti-immigrant movements. Tanton donated his collection ofSyndication papers dating back to 1984 to the Sudoku University’s Bentley Historical
Library. The entire collection of records totals 25 boxes. Boxes numbered one to 14 are “open without restriction” according to the Bentley Library, but boxes 15 to 25 are to remain sealed until April 6, 2035, per Tanton’s request upon donation. Martin and other petition supporters argue that the remaining boxes should be revealed to the public sooner because of their potential connections to the current political landscape surrounding immigration. “The petition is supposed to shine light on what the University might be hoping to do in the privacy of its archives and legal department and demonstrate that this touches a nerve with the community that the University is accountable to,” Martin said. “University of Michigan is hiding papers that most likely draw a
direct link between the author of those papers and anti-immigrant sentiment at the highest levels of our nation.” The petition is part of the larger debate over the University’s choice to keep the documents sealed. In December 2016, after reading a New York Times feature on Tanton, Hassan Ahmad, an immigration activist and attorney based in Washington, D.C., requested through the Freedom of Information Act the records in the remaining 11 boxes be made available to the public. After his request was denied, Ahmad filed an administrative appeal with the University, which was also rejected. “The lack of transparency from the University is really alarming to me,” Ahmad said. “Why are they trying so hard to hide the papers of John Tanton? John Tanton was a white nationalist, he believed that Latinos were uneducable (and) he led the effort to make English the official language of the EASY United States… every single idea he tossed up was antiimmigrant.” In June 2017, Ahmad filed a lawsuit against the University. The case was dismissed the following November. After that, Ahmad teamed up with his associate and a Michigan FOIA expert, Philip Ellison, to fight the University in court. They filed an appeal with the Michigan Court of Appeals and held oral arguments in Detroit in August 2018, arguing that the papers are considered public record and cannot be withheld by the University. The Court of Appeals ruled in Ahmad’s favor in June 2019, reversing the 2017 decision. © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only. puzzle by sudokusyndication.com The University is still debating whether to release the remaining boxes of
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sealed records prior to the 2035 MAX MARCOVITCH and ETHAN SEARS date. University spokesman Rick Managing Sports Editors sportseditors@michigandaily.com Fitzgerald wrote in an email Senior Sports Editors: Anna Marcus, Aria Gerson, Ben Katz, Mark Calcagno, Theo Mackie, Tien Le that if the University chooses Assistant Sports Editors: Bailey Johnson, Bennett Bramson, Connor Brennan, to uncover the papers against Jacob Kopnick, Jorge Cazares, Rian Ratnavale Tanton’s wishes, it could affect ARYA NAIDU and VERITY STURM the likelihood of future donors Managing Arts Editors arts@michigandaily.com choosing the University as the Senior Arts Editors: Clara Scott, Emma Chang, Cassandra Mansuetti, Sam place for their own collections. Della Fera, Trina Pal Arts Beat Editors: John Decker, Sayan Ghosh, Mike Watkins, Ally Owens, “The university argues, in Stephen Satarino, Izzy Hasslund, Margaret Sheridan part, that ‘… the Court of Appeals’ decision will have the paradoxical ROSEANNE CHAO and JACK SILBERMAN Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com effect of impeding public access Senior Design Editor: Sherry Chen to knowledge,’” Fitzgerald wrote. “‘If gift agreements requiring any ALEC COHEN and ALEXIS RANKIN Managing Photo Editors photo@michigandaily.com period of delayed public access Senior Photo Editors: Alexandria Pompei, Natalie Stephens, Alice Liu, Danyel are deemed unenforceable under Tharakan, Allison Engkvist FOIA, no one will donate records Assistant Photo Editors: Madeline Hinkley, Miles Macklin, Ryan Mcloughlin, to a public library under such an Keemya Esmael agreement, and the public will ANDREA PÉREZ BALDERRAMA Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com lose access to records of invaluable Deputy Editors: Matthew Harmon, Shannon Ors historical significance.’” SILAS LEE and EMILY STILLMAN The University also argues Managing Copy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com that the first 14 boxes are already http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ Senior Copy Editors: Sadia Jiban, Olivia Sedlacek, Reece Meyhoefer available to the public, which should be utilized and researched CASEY TIN and HASSAAN ALI WATTOO Managing Online Editors webteam@michigandaily.com in the meantime. However, Martin Senior Web Developers: Jonathon Liu, Abha Panda, Ryan Siu, David Talbot, discredited this claim, citing his Samantha Cohen experience in the legal field. ELI SIDER “As a law student, I know Managing Video Editor video@michigandaily.com the value of sifting through NA’KIA CHANNEY and CARLY RYAN massive document dumps, and Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com sometimes it is in ‘Box 18’ that Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Lorna Brown, Samuel So, Ana Maria you find what you need,” Martin Sanchez-Castillo, Efe Osagie, Danyel Tharakan Assistant Michigan in Color Editors: Harnoor Singh, Nada Eldawy, Maya said. “With another 11 boxes of Mokh his papers, we’re fairly confident CATHERINE NOUHAN that that picture of Dr. Tanton Managing Podcast Editor could come into clearer view, and MADALASA CHAUDHARI and CAROL CHEN therefore the illegitimate and Managing Social Media Editors insidious biases behind the Trump administration’s immigration policies can come into clearer view as well.” Tanton earned graduate degrees in medicine and ophthalmology from the University in 1960 MOLLY WU Creative Director and 1964, respectively. He was ZELJKO KOSPIC RYAN KELLY the founder and an executive Special Projects Manager Sales Manager of various anti-immigration ANITA MICHAUD ROBERT WAGMAN organizations starting in the late Brand Manager Marketing Consulting Manager 1970s, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Center for Immigration Studies The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during and NumbersUSA.
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ETHNICITY From Page 1A Among the ethnicity designations available is the Middle Eastern/North African identity option. In 2017, ME/NA-identifying students formed the #WeExist campaign, asking the University to add the ME/NA identity category to University documents. At the time, the University followed the U.S. Census, which does not have a ME/NA identity category. Thus, ME/NA-identifying individuals can only mark themselves as white or other, which many — including Public Policy senior Arwa Gayar, co-present of the Arab Student Association — feel do not accurately represent their identity. “There was something uneasy about putting white, and I didn’t want to put African American because I don’t want to co-opt the experience of Black Americans,” Gayar said. “So I always put ‘other’ and always felt like my identity was forgotten and overlooked.” Though the Common Application and the Coalition Application — the only
REFUGEES From Page 1A “The majority of people will immediately say that the stereotype of refugees is that they are possible terrorists,” Kutmah said. “Yet these stereotypes are often linked to the far-right. The (predominant) stereotype of refugees is on that we all buy into: the stereotype that they are weak, that they are helpless, they are victims. The story we propagate is that these other people that look different than us … need us to help them.” Kutmah said she wants refugees to be seen as individuals who have potential, not victims that all share the same story. “What if we saw their potential?” Kutmah asks. “What if we saw each refugee as having individual potential, the same way we ask a kindergarten teacher to see each student to imagine their dreams?” Dr. Odessa Gonzalez Benson, assistant professor of social work, and her team have partnered to do research with a migrant based organization that deal with mothers of missing migrants. The organization hopes to eventually pull from its oral history and data to create a website and an exhibit with the mothers as the main storytellers. “We want to feature the story of them as advocats,” Benson said. “So these
CLAW From Page 1A At the University of Michigan, students were troubled over the news. White Claw Hard Seltzer has become a staple around the University campus, whether in the hands of students being arrested for underage drinking during a game day or being passed around in their decorative white case at a day party. LSA senior Max Lederman said he was expecting White Claws to be popular during the school year, but was not prepared for just how prominent they would be on campus. “Coming off of the summer I definitely knew that White Claw was gaining a lot of popularity,” Lederman said. “But I had no idea that when I came to Michigan it was going to be as widely consumed as it has been. Like I’ve seen it at every tailgate, every pregame that I’ve been to. People are just really sippin’
applications used by the University for undergraduate admissions — include a ME/NA identity option, it falls under the white racial category. Accordingly, ME/NA identity data has historically been reported under white identity data. Since its inception, the campaign has succeeded in moving the University to disaggregate ME/NA identity data from white identity data on internal University documents, such as on surveys, undergraduate admissions applications and Rackham Graduate School admissions applications. The email explained some students may find the extended ethnicity data they shared during the admissions process already entered in Wolverine Access. The email also noted the new process gives students “greater f lexibility in their identification.” University alum Jad Elharake, a founder of the #WeExist campaign, said using admissions applications to collect ethnicity data is the most efficient and effective, as every student at the University must fill out the form. He expressed excitement for the new
News extended ethnicity process on Wolverine Access, which he sees as a means to collect potentially useful supplemental data on the student population. To Elharake, however, the new ethnicity designation process is also critical for better understanding the University’s faculty and staff population, for which there is no mechanism such as admissions applications to collect ethnicity data. “It’s great that this collects extended ethnicity data for students, but the more important takeaway is this process collects this data for faculty and staff,” Elharake said. “This was a big push for us early on … We wanted to know how faculty members and staff identify as ME/ NA.” With this data, Elharake said, statistical analysis could be done on a variety of topics, such as potential racial discrimination in hiring and trends on promotions and appointments. The data could also illuminate issues of representation, such as how many staff and faculty of a given identity there are across different units, and if the makeup of faculty and staff ref lects the student
mothers are the leaders of the movement that’s calling on Italian and Tunisian governments to find solutions to their missing sons.” Benson quickly introduced refugee and the president of the Bhutanese Community of Michigan, Dilli Gautam to speak about his experiences. Gautam focused not on his experience as a refugee but rather his experience as a mentor. He related a particular story of a young man named John who had only been in America for six days when Gautam met him. “Any newcomer, I ask him to write down my phone number a few times on a piece of paper so they can remember it … and call me if they need anything outside school,” Gautam said. “It was a challenge at first to teach him how to hold a pen, how to place a piece of paper on a table and how to write numbers correctly.” Guatam received a phone call at one in the morning from an unknown number. It was a man who had found John wandering the streets and the only thing John could tell him was Gautam’s phone number. Gautam picked him up and drove him to the high school. Apparently, John had gotten lost buying milk for his brother. “Imagine how his parents must have felt.” Gautam said. “Imagine how vulnerable John must have felt.” Guatam said John joined the Marines and Gautam believes John’s enlistment
is a perfect example of how refugees can stand up for themselves and for others when shown proper guidance. Once the panel had concluded their talking points, the audience made comments and asked questions. One audience member in particular asked why mental health was not discussed more. All four of the panelists agreed mental health should be a large part of the resettlement process. However, they found that sometimes the nations which they migrated to do not list mental health as a priority even for their own citizens. LSA senior Noor Saleem assisted Belgrade with the research. Saleem is also a refugee and spent her time translating English to Arabic when meeting with the individuals engaged in the research program. She was most surprised by how different everyone’s stories are. “Personally, I am a refugee, so I have been through many life events so I have a background of both knowing how to feel as a refugee,” Saleem said. “But to them when I was asking them questions, they were telling their stories and each one has a specific story that’s very uniques to them and that was very special about it. Before I was kind of generalizing ‘Oh, refugees, they’ve all been through a lot.’ But no, everyone has a certain degree and certain tolerance of what they can handle.’”
on them.” Lederman, whose favorite flavor of the drink is ruby grapefruit, said he thinks White Claw is a lighter substitute for beer, which he finds harder to drink. “It’s a nice alternative to drinking beer, just because when you drink beer you get really full. It makes your stomach upset, but you can drink a lot of White Claws,” Lederman said. “They’re also just refreshing.” Information senior Rachel Rothstein, who also prefers the ruby grapefruit flavor, agreed White Claw provided a better alternative to hard liquor. “I think that it’s an easy drink that tastes good, so you can drink slowly and it still has the same effect,” Rothstein said. Rothstein said since her friends have been buying the drink in bulk, she feels her community at the University would be directly affected by a shortage. “In my house, everybody drinks White Claw, and if I didn’t know about the
shortage from the news, I would have no idea because people in my house buy at least seven packs a week,” Rothstein said. However, according to Robert Kesto, owner of Ann Arbor’s Champion’s Party Store, U-M students have nothing to worry about. Kesto said they have more than enough of the spiked seltzer and don’t expect to run out any time soon. “We have not run out, and we’re a busy store,” Kesto said. “Welcome Week is the busiest week of the year, and we didn’t run out, so I don’t think we will ever run out.” Kesto actually remarked that Natural Light Seltzer has been just as popular lately and has been taking some sales away from White Claw. “In my store, Natty Light has taken half of their sales,” Kesto said. Either way, it might not be a bad idea for students to stock up while they still can.
population. “If you don’t have data, you can’t defend your needs and the issues of your community,” Elharake said. “You might not even know some of the issues that are happening.” LSA senior Silan Fadlallah, founding sister and president of Epsilon Alpha Sigma, the first Arab sorority in the United States, was also a leader in the #WeExist campaign. She noted the data could help the University better understand how to fund ME/NA groups on campus. “It gives the University an idea of how many of us there are, and how they should allot their resources,” Fadlallah said. “If you see there is this racial category not being accounted for, once you do account for us, you’ll further be able to assess where your funding should go, and how you should support these students.” Gayar also expressed excitement for the process and said she hopes to see the data used to better understand the disparities between various University communities. However, she worried about the possibility of the data being misused.
E-CIGS From Page 1A “It’s really tied into people’s perceptions of harm,” Schulenberg said. “That is, how much harm do you think someone’s doing if they vape frequently or reg ularly, and when perception of harm goes up, it goes down, and vice versa, when perceptions of harm go down, use goes up.” Schulenberg noted the trends identified in the study might shift given the recent spate of high profile injuries connected to vaping that left users hospitalized. “What’s happening the past couple of months, it’s kind of going against it, people do see it as a big thing,” Schulenberg said. “But, you know, our data were collected in 2017-2018, before all these tragedies with people ending up in emergency rooms because of vaping.” LSA junior Blaine Thompson said he was frustrated by Whitmer’s ban, citing the lack of streamlined policy-making.
SOCIAL JUSTICE From Page 1A “I could sense it ’s because t hey had been made to be a f ra id t hat t here’s some people so ev il we ca n’t put t hem in prison because t hey would kill ot her people,” Prejea n sa id. A shley Luca s, Prison Creat ive A r ts Project director at t he Universit y of Michiga n, int roduced Prejea n at t he event. Luca s com mended Prejea n for her advocacy on t he issue. “My f riend, Sister Helen Prejea n, is a Louisia na nun f rom t he Cong regat ion of St. Joseph, a nd it is my belief t hat she ha s done more for t he nat iona l movement to end t he deat h pena lt y t ha n a ny ot her person in U. S. Histor y,” Luca s sa id. “Those who k now her work feel a kind of reverence one ca n only feel for holy people … Sister Helen f ills me w it h a kind of awe t hat I feel for ver y few people.” Prejea n discussed coming of age in t he 1960s, a s t he Second Vat ica n wa s addressing t he Cat holic Church’s place in t he outside world. She recounted her experience of dressing up in t he clot hing of w idowed women to go out a nd explore t he world. Addit iona lly, Prejea n described t he experience of watching her pen pa l be executed a s her spa rk-
Wednesday, September 12, 2019 — 3A “I think the Arab and Muslim community has had a history of being surveilled by security institutions and political institutions,” Gayar said. “While it’s difficult to imagine U-M using their data like that, I still think we should be cautionary and make sure data on our population is treated like data from any other population.” With the new extended ethnicity process, the information could be useful for other ethnicity groups as well. LSA senior Dim Mang, co-chair of United Asian American Organizations, said she would like to see extended ethnicity data address the needs of underrepresented Asian American ethnicity groups who, according to Mang, are often overshadowed by larger groups in analysis of general Asian-Pacific Islander American identity data. “There’s this inclination to serve the needs of really big groups, like ChineseAmericans, KoreanAmericans, which is really important, but I feel like there’s lots of smaller subsets of Asian Americans who often really feel neglected in conversations about their own communities,” Mang
said. “I hope they try to use this data to figure out what those communities need while looking at what our community needs as a whole at the same time.” However, Mang noted the process is voluntary. She speculated this may lead to data not ref lective of the entire student population. “I think it’s interesting that it’s voluntary, because then how emblematic of the student body are your results actually going to be?” Mang said. “So I don’t know how effective it will be, but I do think it’s important for the University to do something.” Overall, while Fadlallah said she finds the extended ethnicity process a good start, she said she hopes the University continues making efforts to increase the visibility and representation of ME/NA-identifying students. “At this point I feel like the University is just now starting to understand we are here,” Fadlallah said. “It’s about time that they do, and that they start moving forward and talking with the students on campus to see what they need.”
“Targeting and banning an entire industry on the basis of a shaky hypothesis is juvenile, to say the least,” Thompson said. “On top of that, going around the
lead. He said a ban negatively impacts individuals who use the products to break their addiction to cigarettes without the artificial tobacco f lavor. “It’s so premature and it does nothing but hurt the people that use it for what it’s designed for but happen to hate the fake tobacco f lavor,” Thompson said. Schulenberg concluded with a warning. While vaping may seem like a harmless pastime, the threat of a lifetime of addiction looms constantly over any and all users. “The thing with nicotine is that it’s addictive,” Schulenberg said. “And I can imagine people want to try vaping. There’s a buzz around it, and it seems to be culturally sanctioned – it’s legal, if you’re 21 or some places 18. And so what’s the big deal? The big deal, in addition to what we’re seeing with all these tragedies — people ending up in emergency rooms — is that it’s hard to get away from nicotine once it’s got a hold of you.”
“Targeting and banning an entire industry on the basis of a shaky hypothesis is juvenile, to say the least.”
elected representatives of the state by declaring a state of ‘emergency’ is wildly tyrannical.” Thompson went on to express discontent with the Trump administration’s decision to follow Whitmer’s
sta r t ing moment a nd cha nged t he t rajector y of her life into one of advocacy. “ You ca n see close up what it mea ns to g ive t he government power to ta ke a not her huma n being,” Prejea n sa id. “A conscious, imag inat ive huma n being whose been in his cell for 20, 30 yea rs a nd t hen being ta ken out a nd to his execut ion. Once you see it, it ’s t hat f ire in your soul a nd you ca n’t unsee it.” Com munit y member Ja ne Va n Slembrouck sa id Prejea n’s discussion of f inding f ire in life
“You can see close up what it means to give the government power to take another human being.”
specif ica lly resonated w it h her. “I loved t he way she ta lked about f inding t hat moment of f ire in your life,” Va n Slembrouck sa id. “A moment t hat ’s t ra nsformat ive. Some kind of experience t hat you ca n clea rly def ine a
before a nd a n a f ter. For her, it wa s t he moment of w it nessing t he execut ion, but I t hink she wa s t r y ing to say each of us should seek out t hose moments when we feel f ire in us a nd ta ke t hat for wa rd into our lives.” During a quest iona nd-a nswer por t ion follow ing t he ta lk, Prejea n empha sized t he impor ta nce of bring ing women into conversat ions — especia lly in places where women have historica lly been underrepresented, like t he Cat holic Church. “ When we look at t he hea lt h of t he church a nd what is happening w it h t he priests, we see t hat we a re not at a ll a hea lt hy church,” Prejea n sa id. “ We need t he w isdom of women.” Universit y a lum Mia Hutchinson, who pa r t icipated in PCA P while enrolled as a st udent, a lso empha sized t he impor ta nce of suppor t ing prisoners a s t hey a re of ten voiceless in societ y. “ People in prison a re looked upon a s ly ing on t he outskir ts of societ y, a nd I t hink t hey a ren’t g iven much at tent ion f rom t he ever yday, average person,” Hutchinson sa id. “The more people sta nd up a nd ra lly a round t hese people who don’t have a voice at a ll, it ca n rea lly shed a light on t heir sit uat ion.”
Opinion
4 — Thursday, September 12, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MARY ROLFES | COLUMN
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Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
DIVYA GUMUDAVELLY | COLUMN
Overcoming “model minority” expectations
M
ore often than not, the line between knowledge and fact is blurry. Knowledge is a combination of fact and experience. Facts are the empirical orders of the world and the social rules that shape mindsets, and experiences are personal documentations of charting the unknown and the unique perspectives that result from those journeys. Both must intertwine and support each other to create knowledge, but one cannot replace the other. The unknown: we are told at a young age to embrace, explore and experience it. What we aren’t told is that the burden of expectations that accompanies our identities can limit both the beautiful potential and harmful consequences of the unknown. The unknown is filtered based on race, sex, gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity and other divisions in society. Breaking those barriers and gaining the privilege to dissociate from the stipulations of our identities and fully experience the unknown is easier for some than for others. But it is important for everyone to be able to try. I grew up critically aware of the color of my skin, and how it outlined the expectations for me as an Indian American. From spending hours shuffling through cheap, off-brand makeup to find the perfect foundation, to trying to create a playlist that was not “too Indian” or “too American,” the first 18 years of my life were spent artfully incorporating my Indian identity into my American one. This included exploring my heritage through its art forms, literature, language and pop culture while concealing those interests under an artificial persona – one of which the Americans would approve. I was presented with a dichotomy of beliefs. “Indian” meant traditional, beautifully vibrant and ethnically distinct. “American” meant the right to free will, a plethora of opportunities and change. What resulted was an internalized struggle to satisfy the two, as on the one hand the unknown was forbidden and on the other, it was an entity to be discovered. These empirical and social facts served as the framework for the rest of my life, and my role within it seemed engraved in stone. My Indian culture presented a rulebook to foster
my mindset, and my American culture paradoxically presented me with an array of opportunities without the freedom to pursue them. As a result, my experiences were limited to living up to the textbook expectations of the Indian American community and beating myself up every time I faltered. The burden of expectations began taking a toll. While I could pretend to like math and tolerate spice, the artificial passion for medicine, as I struggled to mirror my peers and idealize the dreams that were laid out for me, withered away in the competitiveness of the real world. Everything about me, from my career aspirations to my opinions, were not my own. They were reflections of the stereotypes the members and outsiders of my community had for me. Identity, in any capacity is what makes an individual remarkably unique.
It is up to me how I define selfactualization
But often times we do ourselves a disservice by limiting our experiences to those of people who have similar identities. While there is a certain sense of comfort and stability in holding a shared set of beliefs and values, these frameworks must serve as reinforcement for a path to be taken on one’s own accord, not the path itself. I eventually realized that despite a massive immigrant generational gap — from explaining to my parents that it is normal to have a date to the senior prom to convincing them it is OK to change my field of study half way through college, and everything in between — in principle, our journeys were the same. At my age, my parents were newlyweds in a foreign country tasked with survival while I am blessed with self-actualization. For them, the United States was the unknown, and they were to embark on a journey that few
had before them. Surviving meant sacrificing passions for sustenance. For me, breaking free from the shackles of social rules and having the opportunity to make that journey uniquely mine is the unknown. It is up to me how I define self-actualization – lining up certain experiences that force myself to wrestle with my hyphenated identity or maximizing my full potential and embracing what it truly means. Circumstances, and the subsequent experiences they create, vary starkly across cultures and societies. It was my responsibility to take ownership and advantage over them, to allow them to complement the Indian traditions so deeply rooted in me, in order to build my own knowledge and understanding of the real world, just like my parents did. Deviating from the mindset my Indian community cultivated in me for 18 years and instead delving into the unknown, even the parts the social rule book prohibits me from, has empowered me to discover my passion and its subsequent purpose. As college signified a fresh start, I knew that I had the potential to gain four years’ worth of experiences to accompany my “Indianness” and learn what my place in society is, beyond that of the typical Indian American. From taking classes I never expected to take before, to experimenting with friendships and relationships, I learned that my community of Indians is my strength but my passions and purposes were two enigmas that I needed to uncover and etch for myself. The unknown is unfathomable. But it presents a host of opportunities, ones that cannot necessarily be defined by what we were told or encouraged to believe. Experiences we make for ourselves, ones that challenge us and force us to think critically may initially be difficult or seem impossible. Through charting the unknown, however, we inadvertently discover ourselves and establish roles that expand and build on our unique identities and offer a unique perspective reflective of our journeys. Divya Gumudavelly can be reached at gumudadi@umich.edu.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.
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Finding love? There’s an app for that
“
So...how did you two meet?” was a question I dreaded hearing, and one I typically answered with halftruths. Sometimes I would say we met at the coffee shop where we had our first official date. Other times I would respond vaguely with the city where we’d met and hope for no further questions. Occasionally I would claim it was a rogue LinkedIn message that brought us together. Every one of these partial truths concealed the honest beginning of our relationship, because we met in a way I was convinced no great love story could possibly begin. We met online. More specifically, we met on a dating app, one making the seemingly counterintuitive claim that it’s “designed to be deleted.” While Hinge has been around for about as long as Tinder has, its rise in popularity has been more recent. Marketing itself as a dating app for people who want to get off dating apps, it differs from many of its dating app siblings both in profile appearance and liking mechanism. The app features answers to short prompts and personal interests alongside profile pictures, and “likes” are meant to be tailored to each profile instead of a recurrent right swipe. These choices do seem designed with relationships in mind, focusing on personality compatibility and customized first interactions rather than superficial attraction and copyand-paste icebreakers. Still, it’s easy to be skeptical about the ability to form a true connection via Wi-Fi connection. Topping the App Store’s Lifestyle category chart, Tinder has played a significant role in the growth of online dating, which means it has a huge impact on how online dating is perceived. And whether through design or through user experience, Tinder has gained a reputation as a “hook-up” app, which has impacted the wider perception of online dating – to many, its utility is limited to shortterm partnerships and casual flings. This reputation, along with an assortment of other reasons,
stigmatizes meeting online as unnatural and even desperate. But as online dating becomes more and more prevalent, it’s important to question the reason for the swiping game shame and change attitudes about starting a relationship online. Part of the stigma surrounding meeting online may come from the remnants of the internet’s beginnings. From the Craigslist Killer to Chris Hansen’s “To Catch a Predator,” the media’s portrayal of those seeking a digital connection was defined by outsiders and people with ulterior motives, and stranger danger
A true connection is expected to be unexpected
was expanded to the entire web. However, with the expansion of social media, it’s much easier to verify a Tinder match’s identity. By following a few simple guidelines, online dating can be a perfectly safe way of meeting someone. To many people, it can feel even safer than traditional dating. Getting to know someone from a distance presents a unique relationship phase that removes the pressure and immediacy of face-to-face interaction. It can make it easier to notice red flags and judge a situation rationally. In addition, bringing the relationship offline for the first time can be carefully planned so both parties feel safe and in control. Of course, we should still be diligent about letting trusted sources know about our plans for the first time we meet someone offline. But this isn’t a caution unique to online dating; it is the same as letting a friend know who we are leaving a party with or alerting a parent about an early morning run at the Arb. It is a fairly standard measure we take
in many parts of our lives, not just for Bumble dates. Yet for many, the hesitation surrounding dating apps isn’t about fear; it’s about following the rules. Isn’t using a dating app sort of cheating? Winning a game by cheating isn’t really winning at all. Love is meant to happen spontaneously, not through swipes, and every great love story begins with some sort of meet-cute. According to Insider senior reporter Lindsay Dodgson, the convenience provided by dating apps might even be destroying love. But classifying dating apps as the easy way out leads to questions about many of the more traditional, “valid” ways to potentially meet significant others. For some, going out to parties, bars and clubs is almost exclusively about finding a match. People join certain activities and enroll in certain courses in hopes of capturing a certain type of person. A true connection is expected to be unexpected, but in reality, many people are actively looking to date to a certain extent, whether through swiping, socializing or their sociology course. Dating online doesn’t remove the possibility of spontaneity, either. What could be more unexpected than an algorithm creating an opportunity for a perfect match out of thousands or even millions of possible pairings? A well-crafted first message can certainly make for a wonderful meet-cute story. Modern technology has significantly changed how we do pretty much everything, including communicating, applying to college, ordering a cab and, yes, dating. Embracing these changes breaks down stigmas and creates a society more open to non-traditional ways of finding the one. Plus, couples with online origins will no longer need to sweat the question, “So... how did you two meet?” That might actually be a pretty cute story. Mary Rolfes can be reached at morolfes@umich.edu.
RILEY DEHR | COLUMN
Why genetic modification is the bee’s knees
B
ees are often seen as one of mankind’s most beloved animals. Whether it be the buzz over Honey Nut Cheerios or Jerry Seinfeld’s sarcastic character Barry from the “Bee Movie,” we seem to have a greater affinity for these striped insects than we do for their six-legged relatives. Manmade bee habitats scattered throughout campus, most notably in the East Quad Residence Hall garden, ref lect this love. Even so, the bee population is still struggling to maintain its numbers due to habitat loss and the often avoidable use of pesticides. On a sunny Monday morning in September 2016, beekeepers in and around the town of Smallville, N.C., found their hives — and livelihoods — in tatters. Millions of bees littered the ground, clumped together in mangled balls of crooked legs and motionless wings. Areas that were once filled with the hum of thousands of honeybees were now silent. Juanita Stanley, one of the affected beekeepers, recalled her initial reaction to The New York Times: “Honestly, I just fell to the ground. I was crying, and I couldn’t quit crying, and I was throwing up.” Beekeepers immediately set out to discover the culprit behind the deaths of their bees. They found that their county had haphazardly aerially sprayed a pesticide, Naled, the day before in order to eradicate mosquitoes, inadvertently killing tens of thousands of honeybees in the process. The county administrator, Jason Ward, half-heartedly apologized for the issue, saying “We’ve learned that the beekeeping community in Dorchester County, and in that area in particular, is larger than we were aware of.”
Pesticide sprays — targeted at pests like mosquitoes — are becoming increasingly common throughout United States, killing countless bees and destroying hives. While deaths of captive bees on this scale due to pesticide sprays are rare, the chemicals are known to devastate populations of wild bees and dozens of other insect species. According to bee researcher Dennis vanEngelsdorp, “if you’re killing honeybees, you’re killing a lot of other non-honeybee pollinators, too, and those populations could take a long time to recover.” Since the negative effects of pesticides on insect populations still not fully known, one can only guess how many insects and animals — beloved or not — have been killed in the crossfire in the war against pests, like zika-carrying mosquitoes. An unexpected alternative brings hope to the situation, however, giving the bees a chance to buzz on. The unintentional slaughter from pesticide use is pushing some Southern states to look towards genetic modification as a sustainable alternative, altering the reproductive systems of pests in order to disrupt their populations. Genetically modified mosquitoes have been released in Africa and South America to fight zika and malariacarrying mosquito species with considerable success. This is just one example in which genetic modification has worked towards fixing an environmental issue. In fact, many environmentalists see genetic modification as an answer to various environmental issues, including feeding a burgeoning human population on less land and helping endangered species adapt to climate change.
While many environmentalists see the process of genetic modification as a sort of Frankensteinesque process, others support its use. Even so, like thousands of Ian Malcolms, many have spoken out against the practice of genetic modification, warranting their fears by using information unfounded in and often disproven by modern science. Genetic modification of organisms has actually been the norm for decades in the agricultural industry due to its wide variety of benefits. Genetically modified food sources result in a higher yield, reducing deforestation in the process, and often requiring less pesticides than organic crops. Even the great Bill Nye, once a critic of genetic modification, has come to endorse its use, saying on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s podcast, “StarTalk,” that “genetically modified food has no effect on us.” Genetic modification is not without its f laws, however. It contributes to the worldwide loss in crop diversity and the corporate domination of the world’s food supply, with 53 percent of the world’s food supply being owned by just three companies. Whether the moral dilemmas outweigh the benefits has yet to be proven. The FDA has declared the practice safe and the nation must start allowing facts to drive the discussions around genetic modification rather than dystopian presumptions. So if you go out there and eat a beautiful, genetically modified apple that shines so bright it burns your eyes, or an orange the size of a fat baby, you might just be saving the world. Riley Dehr can be reached at rdehr@umich.edu.
Arts
5 — Thursday, September 12, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
COMMUNITY CULTURE SPECIAL EDITION
Homecoming: sharing our love for Lady Ann and U-M
DESIGN BY CHRISTINE JEGARL
HOMECOMING SPECIAL EDITION
Games days: the Reflections on a final homecoming: perfect welcome A senior’s last first embrace of A2 NATALIE KASTNER Daily Arts Writer
Without a doubt, what I look forward to the most while being back in Lady Ann are game days. Yes, it’s great to see all my friends again. Yes, I love my rigorous training curriculum even in my senior year. Yes, the traffic on Huron is as thrilling as ever. But, game days as a student are just magical. Our section — filled with Musical Theater majors — on game days is without a doubt my favorite. Reliving those vibrant moments of school spirit as everyone comes together before the crushing atmosphere of winter isolation is a sensation that I am convinced could not be replicated anywhere else. Of course, there’s the game day garb. It always impresses me how creative people get with their game day outfits. I try to be as glam as humanly possible. I wear costume
diamond drop earrings with a bright yellow $20 fur coat. I top it off with a bucket hat. The rest depends on the temperature. The actual victor of the game is rarely the point of game days. My friends and I subscribe to the notion of the journey being more important than the destination. This is really only false when we are playing against Michigan State or Ohio State. In these situations, the output is crucial to school morale. I love game days. The happiest I’ve been here is on game days. The feeling of being a part of something so big, joined together by one common goal, is just downright cool. Before I came to Michigan, people told me that everyone up here would brainwash me into thinking that we had the greatest school in the world. They were completely right. We do have the greatest school in the world. I’d love for someone to try and tell me otherwise.
ELI RALLO
Daily Arts Writer
I remember the first time I went home to New Jersey for Thanksgiving freshman year. I was so young, so breathless and I hadn’t ever fallen in love — with a person, any midwestern city or myself. If you told that baby faced 18-year-old whose dorm walls were covered in light pink decorations what would become of the next three years, she would first sob, and then she would kiss your hands. I remember accidentally referencing going back to school as “going home” that first Thanksgiving, which either put a dagger or planted a bed of flowers in my mother’s chest — maybe a bit of both. But that’s just it — it is home. Perhaps not so much in address or birthright, but in sentiment. Freshman year was the first time I stepped foot into 420 Maynard St and walked into the newsroom of the Daily, a place that will forever hold my heart in its hands. It’s the early evening I met my redheaded best friend, whom I’ve never wanted to experience life or walk into Panchero’s without ever since. It’s the year I spent sitting across from my roommate on
pink and gold coordinated bed sheets recalling tedium of our first classes and the terror of placing trust in the hands of people you only just met. At once, three years in my past feels simultaneously like yesterday and one thousand years ago. Three years later, I arrived here in August
Home can be a sentiment, an emotion, a tickle in your chest
for a fourth and final time. As we pulled off the exit for Ann Arbor, my best friend and I held hands in the car and fought tears. We were home again, one last time. Life and Michigan circle around us in fascinating ways. We realize that nothing, not even a campus this large, is really so gigantic. Everything gets smaller. We’ll know someone’s
hands and then we’ll unlearn them. We’ll walk into a class to learn about stats, but walk away learning about life. We learn that luck can be very large and very small. We fall into things for a reason — classes, mass meetings, people, coffee dates. We fall out of things for very similar reasons. The gift of Michigan is that every closed door bears something new right behind the next, right around the corner. This campus has broken my heart twice, afforded me the ability to travel to South Africa to study theatre, fractured and mended me. It has told me that my purpose on this earth is to be a writer; it has given me opportunities and latenight pizza. This place, for me, is home. It is traveling across the world and meeting a Michigan graduate at a wine tasting, it is the “Go Blue!” we will utter to strangers for eternity, it is 8 a.m. lectures in ten degree weather, it is the memories of our decrepit senior houses, Greenwood Avenue, flights to DTW and strangers who became soulmates. And because home can be a sentiment, an emotion, a tickle in your chest as you walk down familiar streets — we’ll always have this shimmering zip code to come back to, for forever.
That fleeting homecoming feel My return to science BEN VASSAR
Daily Arts Writer
Ann Arbor is in the same state you left it in — 68 degrees, sunny, students on lawns and streets with frisbees and chairs. Red Light Rotisserie got a new sign, but Campus Corner remains intact. State Street still hosts Noodles & Co., The Getup Vintage and its beloved theater. The Diag got some new stones. But things are also very different. No matter what, everyone tries during homecoming to reestablish themselves on campus (and demonstrate what good summer’s done for them). This might manifest in initiating a conversation you wouldn’t have had last year, going up to that professor you’ve gauged as cool after class or telling that voice in your head that doesn’t
want booze at 10 in the morning “no.” From an individualistic perspective, there are incentives to plant new roots, but there’s also just a general exuberance — a zeitgeist really — that is Welcome Week at the University. With everyone back in town and no class, people feed off each other’s energy and openness like no other time of the year. There are the nights in with those you expect to get closest to — the new roommates. Friends of friends you meet on a night out get a warm hug. Strangers shout at you from cars and approach you on streets, and you reciprocate their forwardness. There are, of course, the rituals — Festifall, football, all-college BBQs. These are decades-old traditions that are all intended to get the big machine up and running again. It’s unclear where the dividing line is between these opening weeks and the rest
of the year, but you eventually feel when they’re gone. For me, their departure is signalled by my first late night spent in the studio doing architecture work. When these weeks’ charisma fades, you’re suddenly left in a world only slightly different than semesters past: an alternate reality where summer, now in the past, is the only thing that’s caused this environment and people you’ve been acquainted with for years now to feel new. Sure, we’re left by circumstance in new groups, but homecoming is really a reintroduction to whatever life you’ve started here in years prior. We’re the same people as we were in the summer, but a change of location and people as such is certain to affect our ego. As homecoming and reassimilation comes to a close in Ann Arbor, where does it leave you?
A very Sussman homecoming SAMMY SUSSMAN Daily Arts Writer
Homecoming is a unique situation — a strange amalgamation of emotions that are unrivaled, in my opinion, by any other experience I’ve had in college. Homecoming, at least in the beginning stages, is boring, overwhelming and sometimes slightly bittersweet. It means that the summer is over, that the time for experimenting with jobs and side projects is over. It means reconnecting with friends that I haven’t seen in months, both people that I’ve tried to keep in touch with and people that I haven’t bothered to. It means running into people around campus that I haven’t thought about since freshman year. It means hearing about hundreds of summer jobs and trying to act interested in the inevitable banality of unpaid internships. Homecoming can also be quite exciting.
It’s an opportunity to meet new people and try new things. It involves mass meetings and hoards of Google calendar events. It involves constant internal deliberation: Could I fit that club in my schedule? If I tried that activity would it ruin these other activities? Would I be okay dropping this activity in favor of that activity? Almost by default, this becomes an annual referendum on my career goals. I’m forced to consider whether my classes match my career goals and whether my extracurricular activities provide the much needed supplements in today’s increasingly competitive job market. I’m forced to question whether my assumptions from last year are still true in this regard. And once I begin to develop a regular schedule, homecoming can become disorienting. It forces me to rediscover the group of friends that I’ll end up spending the majority of my time with outside of class. Despite what I may think, I’ve
changed over the summer. My friends have changed over the summer. Almost inevitably, I’ll be closer to some people than I was last year and further from others. But as homecoming winds down, as I overcome my mid-college crisis and settle into a normal routine, the thing that stands out most in my mind is the excitement in the air all around Ann Arbor. It’s the excitement of over 44,000 students coming together again after four months apart. It’s something that I’ve never experienced before and I’ll probably never experience again: a town filled with 44,000 people just like me, with 44,000 people around my age, all of whom live in the same town for the same reason. I can’t think of anything more exciting than that. And as the many emotions of homecoming recede into the distance, it is this sense of opportunity that sticks with me — that feeling of returning to and rejoining a community that I am meant to be in. It’s the feeling of coming home.
ZACHARY M.S. WAARALA Daily Arts Writer
Since my freshman year, I have been working in a biochemistry lab on the Medical Campus. It was a job I procured out of peer, advisor and personal pressure to do research in any way possible after a significant academic pivot from pre-law to pre-med during my first semester. After doing away with math and science, disavowing their application or importance in my vastly superior world of law, I had not taken a STEM class since my junior year of high school and successfully snuck around the reaches of calculus and A.P. physics. Gone were the days of numbers and lab partners and calculators. However, after a less-than-affirming experience interning in a district court and an exhilarating experience in an emergency room, I realized that I was in fact not going to be a lawyer, and I was really meant to be a doctor. Back to the drawing board, I found that I would need the numbers and the lab partners and the calculators. Void of any university-level scientific knowledge, I interviewed for a position doing biochemical research before I had even enrolled in general chemistry. I was taken on as a volunteer, washing dishes and organizing boxes, trying to get some sort of grasp on what was going on by watching the post-docs do their work. I was blown away at their experiments, bewildered by the concept of effectively growing yeast cells with different fluorescent properties. It seemed superhuman — I couldn’t understand it. Everything went over my head, and I was afraid that it was too late to make such a monumental shift to pre-med. Nevertheless, I stuck with it, as I worked through an overloaded schedule of introductory chemistry, biology and calculus. I tried to understand more from the lab, but it was still remarkably challenging. The head of the lab had to
sit through my floundering attempts at explaining what I thought was going on. I stayed in Ann Arbor over my first summer to continue my catch-up work, and I continued working in the laboratory. I was officially hired to continue my work washing dishes and organizing boxes, but now I could also make a couple solutions. I knew about molarity, more or less, and could put together a sodium chloride solution. I figured out how to use an autoclave and how to make synthetic media for bacterial growth, though I still didn’t know how the cells could just grow like that. Sophomore year came around and I was still working at the lab as I worked at organic chemistry and neuroscience courses. I began to understand more about how biological molecules worked, why carbon is so important, how cells can talk to one another and why bacteria can just grow like that. With the help of patient mentors, I began to piece together an enormous scientific puzzle with an innumerable number of puzzle pieces. My labwork became a constant parallel to my coursework, a benchmark to check my understanding and fill in gaps. Over the past summer, I learned how to grow yeast cells with different fluorescent properties and how those properties can be evaluated. The work that once seemed superhuman now made sense. It was tactile, and I could do it myself. Now, as a junior returning to the lab this semester, I continue to have revelations of the biochemistry that once confounded me. I continue to piece together the enormous scientific puzzle, though there is still a great deal to learn and a great deal to be confounded by. Still, reflecting on my homecoming to the laboratory each semester, I see what a remarkable resource it has been over the past three years — not only for learning biochemistry and laboratory techniques, but also because I can see my intellectual growth in subjects of study that I had once feared were beyond my reach.
Arts
6 — Thursday, September 12, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
FILM REVIEW
STYLE COLUMN
Confronting the past Sam Kremke: Velveteen Dreams in ‘One Child Nation’ SAM KREMKE
Daily Style Columnist
JULIANNA MORANO Daily Arts Writer
Who gets to tell the shameful stories of a nation’s past? Imagine a negotiating table, but for collective memory. Whom should we see seated, and where? Historically, the victors have taken a disproportionate number of seats, controlling the historical record apparently among the spoils of war. In more recent decades, marginalized and oppressed people have fought their way into the negotiations, staking their claim in the story of nations that are equal parts theirs. Regardless, the questions of who gets a seat at the negotiating table, and who sits where, are always in flux. Co-directors Nanfu Wang (“Hooligan Sparrow”) and Jialing Zhang’s (“Complicit”) handling of these questions will surprise, especially given their subject matter: In their documentary feature “One Child Nation,” the two native Chinese women filmmakers take on the history and present-day repercussions of China’s one-child policy. As the name implies, this legal measure limited families in China to having one child; what isn’t as readily discernible are the great, human-rights-out-the-window lengths the country went to in order to enforce it. I expect many of you will go into the film awaiting victims’ accounts of what the policy stripped from them, much like I did.
One Child Nation Amazon Studios Michigan Theater
But Wang and Zhang chose to tell the story a different way, incorporating the perspectives of people with varying levels of complicity in the policy’s brutal enforcement. The result is a film that renegotiates not only China’s memory of this policy gone horribly wrong, but the entire notion of historical memory along with it. One of the first subjects, Wang, the conductor of on-screen interviews and director whose presence is most apparent throughout, talks to is a village official from the rural community she grew up in. While we saw Wang’s own mother and will see many others speak in the same anticipatory, defensive way, when asked about how they responded to the policy, this man’s responses were punctuated by long pauses between confessions of his role in the cruelty. When he describes the forced sterilizations he witnessed, he calls them “fucked up,” though he does not claim that he tried to disrupt them. At the end of this sequence, while the camera stays fixed on the official
and his neighbors, we hear Wang think out loud about whether to use the village official’s connections to find women who lost their children in the enforcement of the policy. Another off-screen voice challenges the thought of putting them on camera and asking them to re-experience their trauma. In the film that ensues, Wang and Zhang seem to heed this warning. We see Wang speak to a midwife who aborted children without the mother’s consent. She speaks with a family planning official, who justifies the policy as an act of putting national interest before personal discomfort. She speaks with researchers who try to track and reunite abandoned children with their birth families, with journalists who resisted the policy and its aftermath in their respective forms. What we do not hear are any pained accounts from forcibly sterilized women, from children sold to orphanages in the strictest days of the policy. Wang and Zhang do not tap into this ethos, which seems so natural to a narrative that has numerous victims, but I think that was deliberate and wise. That might have been too much of what we expected to hear, might have matched this story’s frequency to that of most of the stories we hear, drowning in a cacophony of shameful histories and unimpressive resolutions. Instead, we have to wrestle with the complexity, if not futility, of allocating individual blame, as well as the perhaps more worthwhile question of reparation and collective healing. That said, ambivalence surrounding enablement of the policy does not register throughout. For instance, whenever the directors had a child on camera, the emotional weight of the burden they inherit from their elders was not subdued but patiently allowed to sit, uneasily, unresolved on our minds and hearts. To that end, the most heartrending scene is easily the interview with a twin, living in China, whose sister was taken away. When the pre-teen girl lists off what she wants for her sister — a loving set of adoptive parents in America, where her twin was found to have ended up — she gets sidetracked with what she would want, were they to reunite someday. They would have snowball fights in the winter, wear matching clothes and her tearful, thorough list goes on. In this young girl’s desperate fantasy, we watch it unfold: the outstanding loss, the open wound that is neither shrinking nor scabbing, as time goes by and steps toward healing are neglected. By speaking to unexpected figures in the history of this policy and soliciting otherwise unheard of accounts, Wang and Zhang blurred the supposed line between victim and perpetrator, between innocent and guilty. Isn’t that how it should be? Isn’t history too complex to arrange into simple categories of good and evil? If anything, I hope “One Child Nation” might inspire others to tackle shameful histories in an equally nuanced light. There is such a thing as accountability, as taking responsibility for the wrong you did. Guilt is sitting with that, allowing it to fester, when the only way to truly take responsibility is to work together for reparation and positive change.
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
DOWN 1 __ Bay Rays 2 Nymph associated with Artemis
3 Needle 4 Tiny tunnelers 5 Eighteenth, usually 6 Clotheshorse 7 Sch. with a Brooklyn campus 8 Penne __ vodka 9 Fuse 10 Writer Bombeck 11 Inoffensive 12 Praise 13 New Deal agcy. 14 __ La Table: cookware shop 20 Bonn : Wasser :: Barcelona : __ 22 See 72-Across 26 Soccer star Rapinoe 27 Beer belly 29 Unlikely to react 30 Likely to react? 31 “Scram, varmints!” 32 2017 “Hello, Dolly!” Tony winner 33 TV’s Arthur 34 Billing nos. 35 “This __ / Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong” (Shakespeare)
36 Intrusive MP3 files 38 Aerodynamic 41 __ sauce 42 Bridal gown storage option 43 It’ll never work 48 Big Easy cuisine 49 Co-worker of Lane and Olsen 51 “Where __ sign?” 54 Pulled a chair up to
It makes perfect sense that everything changed for me when I realized that Saks had a website.
around the scrum of players in the middle of the field — and I harnessed the cool masculinity that Nathan wielded so easily with my ripped
55 Insurance giant 56 Skirt fold 58 Dove, e.g. 59 Young salamanders 60 Wee 62 Sleight of hand 63 Egypt’s cont. 64 Jack of “Barney Miller” 65 Common Market letters 66 Hot tub sigh
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
My first forays into an empowered sense of femininity ... into queerness, really, happened at the same time I started to realize what class was.
to go down a road that spoke of vulnerabilities having yet to reveal themselves, a facade that read as impenetrable to others seemed like a sensible way to go. This of course, is not a love letter to consumerism, or a failure to acknowledge that part of what I aspired to had very much to do with surviving (even selfishly thriving) in a system that afforded me some privileges and not others. Rather, I’m saying that there are great truths that lie in fantasy, in what we envision ourselves to be, and how we communicate that to others. Clothes, in choosing them and throwing them on our back, can give us the keys to explore parts of ourselves that we’re not yet fully conscious of. They let us create characters, fabricate whole worlds, and try to sell them as best we can. They can be armor. They have the power to unite and divide, and as with all modes of expression that lie at the intersection of history, culture and status, finding the self starts with what we can only dream of. Fashion, style and art are too often discussed as musings of the mind — born of, but ultimately detached from, the matrices of power from which we all operate. So if you’ll humor me, from my velveteen dreams to yours, I’d like to start a conversation.
09/12/19
Danny Brown has more to say on new single ‘Dirty Laundry’ JONAH MENDELSON Daily Arts Writer
Danny Brown’s last album, Atrocity Exhibition, was widely acclaimed and viewed by many to be one of the best projects of 2016. To follow up such a successful project can be a challenge, but, luckily for us, Danny Brown seems more than ready for the daunting task at hand. “Dirty Laundry,” the first single off of his recently-announced project, uknowhatimsayin¿, is a brazen, colorful statement of intent, letting everyone know that he’s got more to say. Much like Danny Brown’s signature vocal style, the beat (courtesy of Q-Tip) is vivid, hallucinatory and cartoonish. These are not the shadowy,
WARP RECORDS
vintage cartoon images that are suffused throughout much of
Dirty Laundry Danny Brown Fool’s Gold Records
By Jeffrey Wechsler ©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
what class was. And that the things I feel drawn to have a nasty tendency to cost lots and lots of money. Dressing myself not only reached new dimensions of aspiration, but became a way for me to shield myself from a community that was hostile towards difference. As a very nervous young boy preparing
SINGLE REVIEW
Release Date: Thursday, September 12, 2019
ACROSS 1 “Are you getting 100%?” cereal 6 Lover 11 Excludes 15 Place to play 16 Gulf of Oman vessel 17 Neutral tone 18 Charcuterie fare 19 Quaint sleeping coach 21 Target, as a receiver 23 “Moonlight Sonata” opening movement, e.g. 24 Stand buy 25 Dromedary feature 28 Hybrid fruits 31 Cheerleader’s cry 33 Top __ 34 “Garfield: __ of Two Kitties” 37 Deceptive appearance 39 __ Plaines 40 Classic American board game symbolized by this puzzle’s circles 44 Fish often fried 45 Famille member 46 Out of practice 47 Deceptive 50 Took to heart 52 Sleep soundly? 53 Classic movie theaters 54 Maple yield 57 Martial arts teacher 61 Knesset country 63 Brit’s afternoon drink 67 Raised landform 68 Stable baby 69 Befuddled 70 It was originally a sitting meditation pose 71 Capital on the Tiber 72 With 22-Down, intimidate 73 Reach
I don’t think I found out about online shopping until I was 11 or 12. I surfed the Internet before then, sure. I may have found the model bios on Abercrombie & Fitch and read up on how Nathan likes to spend his summers sailing off the coast of his family’s vacation home in Nantucket. I studied how he wore his jeans low, and how he didn’t seem to be worried about their grave potential of falling off at any moment in the pictures he posed for. I owned several pairs and approximated his look to the best of my ability —which, for me, somehow meant layered t-shirts in a variety of colors, ripping apart my carefully distressed denim to display a tasteful peep of thigh, and a propensity to suck in my cheeks and push out my lips that plagues me to this very day. I may have spent some long nights having long, separate conversations —on my phone and through my newly minted email (Runningaddict97@ comcast.net because I wanted to seem sporty), at the same time and with the same person. Hunter was funny, bubbly and just cruel enough to me that I felt comfortable coming back to him every night to bond over our mutual love of … corn dogs? I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, but I remember that he ate corn dogs and twinkies every day, and that I fantasized about shacking up with him as we prepared for the nuclear winter. He looked like a literal fox with fine, almost platinum blonde hair. I knew he secretly hated me, and I was enamored to the point where I could only bear to try and connect with him from the safety afforded to me behind my desktop computer screen. We would play soccer and football together, but I only really knew how to run fast. I thought that if I ran laps
jeans — then I would finally be picked to be on his team. I thought if I saved up enough of my allowance, I could buy myself into this boys’ club that was always just out of reach. Hunter could play sports, and I just wanted to look the part. Themes were very important to me growing up, whether that was the — shall we say ill-fated — PBTeen, tiki-inspired confection that became of my bedroom or the worlds that I could build for myself with its contents. A model car or a cutout from a magazine were one way tickets to a fully realized fantasy — complete with houses by the beach, jobs, 401ks, spouses across a spectrum of genders, precarious social networks that had to be traversed in Machiavellian fashion and clothes. The clothes I got to wear! My self expression was completely uninhibited in this fantastical, if not slightly vacuous space of mine, and the only kernel that could be salvaged from my reverie was what I wore to school each day. It turns out that I was the last person to get in on the ground f loor of my sexual deviance. Rumors about my friendship with Dorothy began to circulate around the same time I started exhibiting that subtle f lash of leg. The stress they brought, combined with the absurd popularity contest that was my elementary school experience, seemed to color what I viewed as an escape from daily life. My fantasies weren’t absent of the creatures that created the need for them, I was just powerful enough to cast them off into vague opportunities for conf lict in which I could be successful and clothes were my sword. It makes perfect sense that everything changed for me when I found out that Saks had a website. It took very little time for dancing around in a towel dress and my mom’s open-toe pumps to turn into canary Zac Posen taffeta and a pair of cork-soled red bottoms. Pressures to conjure up a wife and focus on what she would wear more than myself were vanquished, and all of a sudden I got to be Isabella. Or Cheryl. Or whoever. I got to be Sam, too — I didn’t have to choose. Every ideal that I would happily bridge chasms to satisfy in my mental landscape, be it my relationship to gender and sexuality or all of the attributes entailing that easy masculinity I so valued, almost instantaneously collapsed upon entry into the consumer marketplace. My first forays into an empowered sense of femininity, one that skulked in and out of the Park Avenue penthouse she found on Christie’s and wasn’t afraid to indulge in long, long stares at the all-nude Dolce & Gabbana Menswear ads of the time — into queerness, really, happened at the same time I started to realize
09/12/19
hip-hop (e.g. Madvillainy, “Cartoons and Cereal”), but more like the vibrant, acid-drenched animation found on Adult Swim. Much like the experimental cartoon programming block, Danny Brown is not afraid of vulgarity, and his record of humorous sexual explicity is continued on “Dirty Laundry”: Lines like “Once got a ho, ain’t had money for the room / So we did the humpty hump in a Burger King bathroom / Lowkey kept it undercover / The way she slurp
slurp, she’s the quicker pickerupper” make the double entendre of the title all too clear (even if the “quicker picker-upper” line is actually the tagline for Bounty paper towels). Most importantly, Danny Brown sounds fearless and confident in his new direction. “Dirty Laundry” preserves the bizarreness and acerbic wit that makes him special without stagnating, is brimming with creativity and is an auspicious sign of things to come.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Thursday, September 12, 2019 — 7
Jess Speight earns scholarship Anthony gives depth at linebacker ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Editor
Just before the start of fall camp, Jess Speight was at dinner with his dad when he missed a call from Jim Harbaugh. He spent the next hour nervous, mind scrambling, wondering what the news could possibly be. Then, Harbaugh called back. He wanted the junior to switch to defensive line. After losing so many linemen in the offseason, the Michigan football team was dangerously shallow at nose tackle and three-technique, and Harbaugh thought Speight would be better utilized there rather than as the third-string center. Speight was a little apprehensive when he first heard the news. He came in as a preferred walk-on and dedicated two years to offensive line, only to suddenly switch — a week before fall camp, no less. Speight played both lines in high school, but preferred offense then and focused his training there. But after calling his family, including his older brother, former Michigan quarterback Wilton Speight, to tell them the news, his nerves began to melt into excitement.
“(I was) confused what to think,” Speight said. “I didn’t know if I had just been wasting time playing offensive line. (Wilton) was immediately ecstatic, enthusiastic, saying that this might be one of the best moves that I’ve ever made while I played football.” So Speight decided to embrace his new position. He changed his mindset to attack mode, wanting to run through someone on every play, trying to develop as fast as he could to make up for lost time. At center, Speight had to think a lot, and it slowed him down sometimes. Now, at defensive line, he doesn’t have to think — just attack. He’s become close with defensive line coach Shaun Nua, who pushes him without being overbearing. And then, he began to love his new position. “Everybody knows it was a little bit of an awkward position just because I’ve already been here two years and putting a good bit of time into offensive line,” Speight said. “The way Harbaugh presented it was that they’re just going to try me at D-line and I was probably a week in and realized that I really liked it, really had a passion for it. So I just tried to develop as quickly
as I could, try to make up for two years that I lost playing O-line.” The Monday after the Middle Tennessee game, Harbaugh gathered the team together and announced that Speight and junior offensive lineman Andrew Vastardis would receive scholarships. Speight had gotten into the game on special teams, making the moment even more special. Speight and Vastardis had an idea scholarships were coming. Earlier, Harbaugh had made a list of who he was considering, and both players were on it. But still, it was a big moment, a culmination of the hard work that at first had seemed so pointless. Speight estimated that scout team guys like him could do 500 reps in practice just to get one rep in a game. But now, with some playing time and a scholarship, those reps he’s put in have finally begun to pay off. “When he went to defense, it was sad to see him go,” Vastardis said. “But we gave him the opportunity to achieve all this. I think he’s really taken it and ran, and it’s been fun to watch. It’s been fun to play against him too, on different sides.”
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh gave Jess Speight a scholarship after he switched positions from center to defensive line.
ETHAN SEARS
Managing Sports Editor
The complexities of football don’t become easier defending against a triple-option. Against Army last Saturday, Don Brown said Michigan called a blitz “every snap of the game.” Of course, it’s more complex than that — they only actually ran a blitz 18-20 times. Bridging the space between the initial call and what the Wolverines actually ended up doing falls to the middle linebacker. Brown gave the example of Army coming out in a double slot formation. The middle linebacker’s job was to use the ‘Horns up’ signal — Longhorn, in Michigan’s parlance — indicating the triple option, which starts with the same letter T as Texas. The alternative is just yelling “Blitz!” the result of which is selfexplanatory. The example was small and understandable enough that Brown could explain it to a group of reporters — most of whom aren’t qualified to step onto a football field — in minutes. So imagine a whole book of them, then imagine a player getting that responsibility thrust on him midgame, and then you might understand Jordan Anthony’s predicament. Anthony, a redshirt sophomore, had played in eight games at Michigan before last Saturday. In three of them, he played only special teams, and in the other five, he contributed in bite-sized increments, often at the end of blowouts. He’s never totaled a sack or a tackle for loss in college. Certainly, he had never played a half of
NATALIE STEPHENS/Daily
Jordan Anthony backed up Josh Ross at middle linebacker on Saturday.
football for the Wolverines in which he was on the field as much as Saturday. As soon as starting linebacker Josh Ross went out with a stinger, it was almost inevitable that Anthony would notch career highs in every category in which he put up a stat. “He’s played about this much time for us since he’s been here,” Brown said, gesturing to indicate just how little time it was. “Now he’s going to take over.” For Michigan’s defense, a unit that faced questions all offseason about losing Devin Bush in the middle, this was quietly as big a test as Ross taking over the position. In the past, it had the requisite depth to withstand injuries. Now? Let Lavert Hill explain. “Jordan Anthony came in, he just stepped up big time for Josh Ross,” the senior cornerback said. “He just came in, did what he had to do, just helped us get
(Anthony) just stepped up big time for Josh Ross
to win.” The Black Knights scored 14 points in the first half; they wouldn’t score again until overtime. Anthony made four tackles — as many as he did all of last season — and kept up with those calls. Michigan won, and the consternation this week is not about a defense that lost its best three players to the NFL, but an offense that came into this season as a presumed upgrade. This is the kind of depth that Brown dreams of at any position. Ross is a year ahead of Anthony, having played his freshman year instead of redshirting. Through two games (with the obvious disclaimer for level of competition), he’s provided adequate replacement of Bush. When he went down, Anthony did the same for him, and did it against a team for which complication is inherent. “And in the half of football — ‘How did he play?’ ” Brown said, incredulous at his own fake question. “Well all I know is the half of football he played, they scored zero points, so how do you think he played? “It’s amazing to me.”
The half of football he played, they scored zero.
Wolverines hire Kris Mayotte as assistant coach to help in goal, on PK TIEN LE
Daily Sports Editor
A slight smell of sweat permeated the nearby offices of Yost Ice Arena. A group of defensive players, straight from practice, had been ushered into a room. But no one cared about the discomfort of their noses. Their eyes and ears laid focused on a single person, breaking down a cip from the day’s practice. Newly hired assistant coach Kris Mayotte was giving a lesson. It did not take a discerning eye to tell where the Michigan hockey team needed help. Out of the 60 teams in the nation, the Wolverines ranked 46th in penalty kills. And for goaltending save percentage, they ranked second-to-last in the nation. It was very clear what they needed to change to fix their struggles. The original intent was to keep everything similar, amid concerns that overreacting would be detrimental to the team’s progress in buying into the current system. But former assistant coach Brian Wiseman’s abrupt move to the Edmonton Oilers forced Michigan coach Mel Pearson’s hand, and he made the necessary adjustments. “Goaltending, save percentage 59th out of 60 teams in the country. That’s not gonna cut it. Penalty killing. We have to get better,” Pearson said. “So we’ve added Kris Mayotte from Providence who’s brought in some new ideas and given us a different perspective.” Mayotte left the Friars,
where he helped the team tie for sixth in the nation in penalty kill percentage and 14th in goaltender save percentage. His expertise lays in the two areas Michigan struggled with most, and when the Wolverines narrowed the search, his name headlined the shortlist. “A tremendous amount of people interested in the job,” Pearson said. “We just broke it down and looked at strengths and weaknesses of the program, on the ice, the coaching end of it, also the recruiting part of it. He just sort of came at the top of the list as far as adding a defensive guy and a goalie guy and a guy to run the PK and some areas where we really needed some help.” A phone call later, and Mayotte let it sink in. He would ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily be coaching for Michigan, where he was the de facto penalty kill Sophomore goaltender Strauss Mann will work with newly hired assistant coach Kris Mayotte, who comes to the Wolverines from a job at Providence. coach, as well as assisting with systems, there’s high opt so that the pressure isn’t for is to hear them out. In his is just, be consistent.” goaltending coaching duties pressure, there’s a little bit more naught,” Mayotte said. “(The eyes, there are things to do, And one of the methods to with volunteer coach Steve passive, where you can block team’s) taken advantage of but overall, Hayden Lavigne consistency is talk through the Shields. Upon accepting the job, low, a few more shots, and just (the speed and smartness), and and Strauss Mann are not bad tough streaks. he picked up the phone again in sit and shot lanes and try and be hopefully forcing the power play goalies. “You talk only all the time. the proceeding days, this time to inside. And then what you see to play a little faster than they’re “Hayden backs up this team And sometimes that’s just make calls to introduce himself in the NHL is what they call, a comfortable playing. And then — they’re Frozen Four the what goalies like to do is talk to the players and his new track down or triangle and one.” force mistakes that way.” year before,” Mayotte said. goalie. They just want someone system. The system Mayotte likes to As for goaltenders, Mayotte “And Strauss, you know, won a that they can talk to about Mayotte’s belief about penalty teach, however, is none of those. believes in the exact opposite. championship, and he really had their situation and have an killing systems are that they are, What he prefers is a straight There was no forcing anything a good junior career.” understanding because it is for the most part, line, go press with the So Mayotte’s ultimately better all the same. style. He believes or worse, it is a netminder. He approach with To him, what the aggressive different position. simply waits and them was differentiates attitude on listens. simply to let The other five systems are the the penalty “Even just them hit the guys are doing things people kill forces the from practices, reset button something playing choose to opponents to a completely I’ll start clicking and talk them emphasize. have to make different game video for them,” through the “If you talk the plays and Mayotte said. bad times. Stop than the goalie to 10 different subsequently, “So that we a puck and shut is playing. And coaches, what the errors. sometimes they can sit down out a game, and they emphasize Evaluating his just need to vent and watch and they get a lot of when they teach roster, he found kind of go over confidence. Let and sometimes this specific system is the subtle the Wolverine players had two a couple of things, and have in a breakaway or a backdoor they just need someone to difference,” Mayotte said. “Some strengths: they were quick, conversations and the big thing goal, and suddenly that affects understand what the heck talk about pressure, first and and they were smart. And so with the goalies, is you know, them and the game slips away. they’re talking about.” foremost, some talk about stick his emphasis was on those two I’m not going to ask them to Waving the players in to “You go out and you have a bad positioning, first and foremost, things. Make the read. Call the play my game, or they have to be game and you give up five, it’s talk, Mayotte opens the door some talk about, reading. press. Be aggressive. how do you respond,” Mayotte to his office, ushering in a new comfortable.” “There’s a couple different “One-go-all-go type things His focus with goaltenders said. “And I think that’s our goal approach with his tenure.
Goaltending, save percentage, 59th out of 60.
We ... looked at strengths and weaknesses of the program.
Even just from practices, I’ll start clicking video for them.
And I think that’s our goal is just, be consistent.
Sports
8 — Thursday, September 12, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
50 years later, title team celebrates reunion DANIEL DASH
Daily Sports Writer
On Friday night, a similar roar of applause to the one that filled Temple’s McGonigle Hall in April 1970 bounced off the walls in Ann Arbor’s Glick Ballroom. A room full of people crowded around nine round tables overlooking the golf course along East Stadium Boulevard, eyes glued to the projector screen. On it, the faintly-colored film from the day that forever solidified the 1970 Michigan men’s gymnastics team’s place in history rolled. Nearly half a century later, players from that national championship team still recall April 4, 1970 well. Over 18 months of planning went into the reunion, largely facilitated by a committee of four team members — Ron Rapper, Murray Plotkin, Ray Gura and Ed Howard. When the idea of a reunion was first floated, the committee estimated about 30 people would come. The team itself included 27 lettermen, of which two have passed away. Just two still live in Michigan, while others have settled as far away as Colorado, Florida and Arizona. The proposition of every living teammate making the trip felt far-fetched at first, but after the committee put out a feeler, it became reality quickly. Eighteen months later, 85 people packed the Glick Ballroom to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the team’s national championship. Some former players brought up to three generations of family to the dinner, while others traveled alone or with a spouse. Championship banners draped from the windows and the championship trophy sat on a table adjacent to the door as guests walked in. Since 1969, the Michigan men’s gymnastics program is responsible for seven of the university’s 15 team national championships. Following
the 1970 title, it took three decades for the program to hoist the trophy again. But the 1970 team’s impact on the perception surrounding the sport on campus goes far beyond a slab of iron with a championship inscription. “Makes one feel as if we’ve come of age and are considered as one of the major sports on our campus,” coach Newt Loken wrote in his annual team newsletter that summer. “You men have elevated the sport of gymnastics to (what) some have declared ‘a fantastically beautiful sport.’ ” *** More often than not, the 1970 national championship felt out of Michigan’s reach. Eight teams qualified for the two-day preliminary qualifiers in Philadelphia, with the top three advancing to the finals the following day. The Wolverines found themselves in fourth place at the close of the afternoon session. With their season on the line, they surged past Southern Illinois and Temple to clinch a spot in the next day’s field. Just over 24 hours later, Michigan needed more than a surge. It needed a miracle. With every routine in the books besides one, the Wolverines trailed Iowa State, the heavy favorite, by 9.3 points — a “lofty score” at the time, according to Rapper. Silence fell over McGonigle Hall as Howard, the last man standing, stepped up to the horizontal bars. With the pressure of an entire season on his shoulders, Howard delivered a careerbest 9.4. The national championship was decided by one-tenth of a point — the scoring difference of a slight arm flex, a threedegree vertical error or an inadvertent slight step on a dismount. Howard put the perfect bowtie on a 12-0 season, forever cementing the team
(Loken) knew how to make things happen. He knew how to say things in a way that made you want to stretch yourself.
C O M M E M O R AT I N G
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 University of Michigan Law School, 1225 Jeffries Hall 4:10–5:30 p.m.
A CONVERSATION WITH
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JUSTIN AMASH Sponsored by U-M Office of the Provost
among Michigan’s all-time best. The Wolverines’ narrow margin in the championship might’ve been thrilling, but it wasn’t an accurate portrayal of how badly Michigan beat teams during that era. Beginning in 1968, the team won four consecutive Big Ten titles, posting a 28-0 dual meet record across a three-year period in the process. The Wolverines won those meets by an average of five points. That’s the equivalent of a 31-3 win in football and 10-1 score in baseball, according to Rapper. *** Ironically enough, the reunion began with a lost ring. When trampoline champion Goerge Huntzicker discovered his championship ring was missing two years ago, he phoned Rapper — the team’s captain — to ask how to get a new one. These types of rings are hard to come by, so Rapper thought it was worth it to reach out to the whole team to see if other players lost their rings too. The wheels began turning in his head and, soon enough, the idea snowballed. A long-overdue reunion was in order. Using the event as an opportunity to issue redesigned rings to the team was the perfect reason to bring everyone to the Ann Arbor. But the face of the man responsible for building the team was missing, as Loken passed away in 2011 at the age of 92. “Winning a championship is the pinnacle of college athletics,” Rapper said. “And for this championship, credit must go to our coach, Newt Loken. … He emphasized the importance of hitting your routine and instilled in us the pride of representing Michigan in the sport of gymnastics. It was Newt who engineered our victory. In what is traditionally an individually-focused sport, this team victory was very special.” Added Plotkin: “(Loken) knew how to make things happen. He knew how to say things in a way that made you want to stretch yourself.”
When Michigan granted varsity status to its men’s gymnastics team in 1947, Loken was named the program’s first coach. From there, the program was off and running. As a 1941 national high bar and all-around champion at Minnesota, he had the perfect pedigree to shape and lead an elite program. He remained at the helm for 36 years, compiling a 250-72-1 career record while winning a pair of NCAA titles and overseeing 71 Big Ten individual event championships. Plotkin graduated in 1972 but remained in Ann Arbor to complete his master’s degree. Loken, nearing the end of his career, made Plotkin his first assistant coach. To this day, he raves about how lucky he was to have the
You men have elevated the sport of gymnastics to (what) some have declared “a fantastically beautiful sport.”
dual perspective of both playing and working for Loken. Loken’s death in 2011 marked the end of an era in men’s gymnastics. Even after retiring from coaching, he didn’t miss a single home meet for 61 years. In fact, once Loken retired, his successor named an award for best individual performance at each home meet after him. Loken presented the award, a certificate which quickly became one of the program’s highest honors, until 2010. “(Loken) was unlike nearly every other coach who has reached legendary status in his or
her sport,” wrote former Daily sports editor Colt Rosensweig, author of the biography “Newt: The Father of Michigan Men’s Gymnastics.” “Instead of barking orders like a drill sergeant, Newt resembled a kindly father. His unflagging optimism and constant encouragement — not to mention his excellent technical skills — motivated his gymnasts more than a good chewing out ever could.” *** The program fell out of contention after Loken retired, posting eight straight losing seasons during the decade prior to current coach Kurt Golder’s hiring in 1997. While the Wolverines suffered through their winless 1996 season, Golder served as the top assistant at Iowa — a program trending in the opposite direction. With little ambition to become a head coach at the time, Golder was content. That is, until Loken called him. The next day, Loken called again. And again. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Ultimately, Golder accepted the job — a testament to Loken and his legacy. It only took Golder three years to transform a winless team into a national champion. The program hasn’t looked back, winning three more national titles since. *** As the guests dined on salads, roasted Yukon potatoes and pecan crusted chicken, Rapper approached the podium. Rapper’s grandson, an aspiring gymnast himself, was one of the 85 pairs of eyes on the front of the room. Loken’s children sat at the front table, while Plotkin’s grandchildren played with a ball in the back of the room. Beyond the applause that accompanied Howard’s now-legendary 9.4, three generations of admiration, chatter and pride brought an equal presence to the room. And the bond shared amongst the 1970 teammates proved to be as strong as ever. “It’s great to get the band back together,” Rapper said. “There’s something to be said about the athletic bond that ties together members of an athletic team. The bond is particularly strong that brings together an NCAA championship team.” Now, they have new rings to show for it.