2020-04-08

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Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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AA homeless population faces sanitation, shelter challenges amid COVID-19 crisis Local shelters continue operations, struggle to adhere to social distancing guidelines LILY GOODING

Daily Staff Reporter

In recent weeks, businesses have closed their doors and restaurants have been forced to move to takeout only as residents have taken to self-isolation, all to slow the spread of COVID-19 as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines recommend. However, homeless shelters in Ann Arbor remain open, in full operation and at capacity.

Sarah Paspal-Jasinski, director of development at the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County, said day-to-day operations have shifted completely in response to the coronavirus. Two people housed at the Delonis Center, located on Huron Street, tested positive for COVID-19 in late March. Since then, they have been moved to the hospital.

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Paspal-Jasinski said SAWC has expanded the facilities to local hotels in order to provide more shelter for people experiencing housing insecurity while maintaining social distancing guidelines. In addition, they

recently hired more staff in response to the crisis.

“We’re continuing to try and house people so that they are not forced into homelessness, but it’s not as easy or as manageable as it was prior to this pandemic,”

Paspal-Jasinski said. “Our mission has temporarily changed from ending homelessness one person at a time to providing shelter for anyone that needs it.”

She also explained the difficulty shelters face in

Michigan Medicine workers catch virus

More than 100 employees at the hospital have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Monday BRAYDEN HIRSCH Daily Staff Reporter

728 Michigan Medicine employees have been tested for COVID-19 and 110 of those tests have come back positive as of Monday, according to a press release from Michigan Medicine.

“Importantly, please note these numbers don’t indicate how or where those who tested positive contracted the disease,” the release reads. “The numbers ref lect just those who sought testing at Michigan Medicine or those hospitalized at Michigan Medicine.”

Some Michigan Medicine employees may have been tested outside the system, and are therefore not counted in these numbers. Fewer than 10 of the employees were hospitalized for a

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DOMINICK SOKOTOFF/Daily More than 100 Michigan Medicine employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

day or more.

In a video announcement on Thursday, Jeff Desmond, chief medical officer at Michigan Medicine, addressed the concerns about medical professionals being kept safe from exposure to COVD19. Desmond explained the use of

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personal protective equipment and its importance in keeping medical professionals safe. He noted that Michigan Medicine is taking all of the necessary precautions advised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We currently have enough

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personal protective equipment and we have adequate, appropriate PPE in all our locations. That said, we are also taking steps to appropriately conserve PPE so that will last through this pandemic,” Desmond said. “Second, Michigan Medicine made the decision to have our entire employee population wear masks during work on March 23, 10 days ago. This was done to prevent potential spread within the organization and was focused on keeping our employees safe. We were one of the first health systems in the country to adopt this policy.”

Katie Oppenheim, chair of the University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council, spoke to The Daily about the safety of fellow medical professionals and the difficulty of getting access to testing for the public.

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complying with social distancing recommendations.

In each bedroom, there are three to four beds. While each bed is spaced six feet apart, there is still a risk involved.

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GOVERNMENT

Emergency declaration prolonged State legislature votes to pass 23-day extension EMMA STEIN

Daily News Editor

The Michigan state legislature convened in Lansing on Tuesday and voted to prolong Michigan’s state of emergency.

The extension is 23 days, until April 30, instead of 70, as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said last week was her desired extension.

However, under the Emergency Management Act, she needs the legislature to vote to extend the declaration.

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Students adapt to working at home by creating study spaces to help them focus on online lectures and discussions.

Students undertake global collaboration to stop virus

Young adults, professionals work together to pool resources, time to help combat worldwide pandemic, help communities JIALIN ZHANG

Daily Staff Reporter

During the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, students and young professionals from around the world have come together to form a global movement called #Students_Against_ COVID, which is dedicated to bringing students and allies together to spread awareness about the severity of the virus. They strive to facilitate effective and socially responsible collaboration and innovation while working to champion scientificallybased principles.

U-M alum Alina Haque, media outreach coordinator of SAC, described how she started the movement with her sister, Marina Haque, a 2020 dual Medical Doctor and Master of Public Health candidate at the University of Michigan. On March 16, she tweeted asking students to share what they were doing regarding the COVID-19 crisis using the hashtag #Students_ Against_COVID so people would be better able to connect.

“My sister started receiving more and more responses from student activists around the world who were eager to share and connect what they were doing to help with the COVID crisis,” Alina Haque responded.

“One of the first persons to connect with her was a medical student from Greece, who helped bring in several more health care students around the globe. Together, they decided to make a platform for all students and allies to more effectively collaborate.”

In an email to The Daily, Marina Haque said her primary motivation for starting the movement is to spread knowledge and credible information.

“The movement strives to champion science, foster inclusion, and support healthcare workers during this critical time,” Marina Haque wrote.

“A lot of what we are seeing happening around us in the world is because people did not listen to scientists. A lot of people worldwide are dying, and

now, more than ever, is the time to listen to scientists and quite frankly, keep listening to scientists.”

Alina Haque said the platform first started as a simple WhatsApp group chat but quickly expanded as people began taking on new initiatives.

“Someone would say, ‘I’m really interested in helping with a mental health initiative,’ and they will make their own separate group chat and report back to a team of lead facilitators,” Alina Haque said. “And someone else will say, ‘I’m really interested in collecting personal protective equipment,’ and they will make their own group chat.”

All of these small groups fall under the umbrella of Students Against COVID. Currently, the group consists of more than 150 students and spans across more than 40 countries.

When Ana Sofia Mota, a final year medical student in Lisbon, Portugal, first joined SAC, she said she was surprised by both the scale of the movement and the amount of coordination involved.

“I was overwhelmed by how big it was,” Mota said. “I got into WhatsApp, and I see so many messages, and I was saying, ‘What’s happening? How can these people be so efficient?’ They are all so different, yet they work together so well.”

Alina Haque said the main goal of SAC is to spread awareness about the severity of the crisis and offer educational information regarding COVID-19.

“One thing that we have is a translation team,” Alina Haque said. “They collectively speak 25+ languages to try to ensure our content is widely accessible. We’ve created COVID-19 informational flyers, for example, and paired with other health literacy movements to help widely disseminate information.”

Lolita Matishova, a second-year internal medicine intern at Kharkiv Medical Academy in Ukraine and a member of the translation team, said a platform like SAC is crucial to keep people informed during this time of

crisis.

“We are students with a lot of information, and we use this platform to spread that information,” Matishova said. “What’s even more important is that we also translated them into different languages, so other people can read them in their own language without any challenge.”

One of SAC’s recent efforts was the SafeHand challenge video, which had members from around the world demonstrating correct hand-washing techniques.

Aman Tahir, an incoming U-M student and part of the SAC media team, expressed her excitement at seeing a collective global effort unfold, particularly when watching the SafeHand video for the first time.

“It was an inspiring educational video, compiled by talented people from around the globe,” Tahir said.

“I felt immense joy watching the video knowing that there are such amazing people in this movement who have spectacular ideas and execution of projects. I know that this organization has so much in store, and I am optimistic about its future endeavors.”

SAC members not only work within SAC-managed platforms but are often part of various other forms of COVID-related activism in their local communities. Ramsha Akhund, a medical student at Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan and SAC member, is also involved with a local relief effort called The Student Taskforce Against COVID-19.

“We helped set up a helpline in the hospital so the students can answer questions on-call,” Akhund said, “So that the health workers can focus on the front line and students can help behind the scenes.”

Alina Haque mentioned a collaborative effort with MedSupply Drive to collect personal protective equipment for local hospitals and health workers.

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SHELTER From Page 1A “How do you shelter in place when you’re a homeless shelter, and you help up to 150 people a night? You can’t always practice social distancing,” PaspalJasinski said.

Lit Kurtz is a vendor at Groundcover News, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing economic opportunities to the members of the homeless population. Kurtz spoke with The Daily about her experience with housing insecurity.

Kurtz said like other vendors at Groundcover News, she relies

STUDENTS From Page 2A “My mom is a health care provider,” Alina Haque said. “So, I am very passionate about trying to help my local hospital collect PPE. With the use of the hashtag, I was able to connect with others to make a team here to collate PPE. We started calling places to ask for donations. We are also collecting thank-you cards and notes from our community to post in the staff entrance of the hospital to help boost morale.”

Marina Haque acknowledged the health risk associated with these efforts, and she recommended professional oversight for anyone who wants to initiate similar actions. She noted the importance of including these voices, as her group has done, when planning to ensure they are acting responsibly.

“Within Students Against

EMERGENCY From Page 1A This decision has no impact on Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, which is still set to end April 14.

Whitmer told reporters after the vote that the extension isn’t as long as she hoped, but the legislature can always extend it again at a later date, according to the Detroit Free Press. Whitmer said extending the emergency declaration protects the state from civil liability for actions taken by first responders.

“We don’t agree on the length of the emergency – the action they took today,” Whitmer said. “That’s their decision. They can come back as much as they want to, even if it is contrary to the best practices.”

State Rep. Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, told The Daily he felt there was no real purpose to the vote as Whitmer had the executive authority to legally extend the

HOSPITAL From Page 1A “It is challenging to even get tested,” Oppenheim said. “The criteria are pretty rigid. People have been denied getting tested for a number of reasons. It is hoped that it is going to change any day now where easy, quick

News

Wednesday, April 8, 2020 — 3A

on the profits she makes from selling papers to fund her living expenses. With operations at Groundcover News temporarily suspended, Kurtz said she is worried for those who cannot provide for themselves and are forced into warming centers.

Because the COVID-19 crisis has forced the organization to halt its print production, there is now an online subscription option with the revenue going to vendors.

Kurtz said based on her own experience, she believes it would be difficult to comply with social distancing guidelines.

“There definitely needs to be extra buildings so that people

are not on top of each other. It’s a critical time for there to be space and buildings available for people who are experiencing homelessness,” Kurtz said. “From my experience, when I was there, everyone was on top of each other.

There’s no way we would be able to practice distancing and being a safe distance from other people.”

Kurtz also urged the media to focus on the perspectives of those who have experienced homelessness when covering the coronavirus.

“Our voices needed to be out there as soon as this crisis broke because we were already in crisis,” Kurtz said. “Progress has

just lagged so far behind and we are so ill-prepared for this crisis and I just hope we’ll learn from this going forward. Some of the things that are put in place right now should have been put in place years ago.”

Eric Hufnagel is the executive director of the non-profit organization, Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness. On March 30, Hufnagel wrote a letter addressed to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that both thanked her for her response to the coronavirus and highlighted this need to focus attention on the homeless. The letter cited a recent study conducted by

the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University and the University of California, Los Angeles that provides evidence that the homeless populations are at a greater risk of contracting the coronavirus.

“When compared to the general population, individuals experiencing homelessness are twice as likely to be hospitalized, two to four times as likely to require critical care, and two to three times as likely to die,” Hufnagel wrote.

COVID, we strongly believe that any all public health efforts or social services that potentially pose a public health risk (i.e. supplies rationing, food distribution, etc) should be led by or at least overseen by a certified health professional or someone capable of interpreting scientific guidelines,” Marina Haque wrote.

“These are the messages that we are trying to spread in our local and global communities; that yes, students can make incredible contributions to society during this time, but please do so responsibly.”

SAC also aims to address the mental health challenges COVID19 and social-distancing through a 30-day self-care quarantine challenge on social media.

“This brings in a sense of community,” Akhund said.

“Everyone did something similar today. They are as simple as creating a playlist or cleaning up your drawer and then sharing the

things they found or things they were looking for. Just little things that we put up to bring people together.”

Alina Haque said SAC has become a community for students around the world.

“The message I would want to give is that you are not alone,” Alina Haque said. “Even though we might be literally alone in our own houses, you are not alone.

There are people who are going through the same emotions and the same experience.”

Matishova said that though the pandemic has interrupted her education, joining SAC has given her a way to offer help and be productive.

“I met a lot of people at the start of the movement and as the movement spread who wanted to help people,” Matishova said.

“And it is really inspiring for me.

It’s also a really good thing that I get to do something, because I am in quarantine, and I can’t

work with my patients. And this way I can still help my friends, my family and my colleagues to have some information.”

Mota said SAC inspired her and showed her people from around the globe are capable of collaborating and working toward the greater good.

“This is proof that we can work together,” Mota said.

“This is incredible, people work together from around the world, from countries that I have never expected that I will be working with. During a time when people are stealing medical materials from each other, this is really important, because it can show people who are in charge now that we can work together, and despite all of our differences, we can achieve really cool things.”

In terms of long-run plans for SAC, Tahir said she wants the organization to continue even after the pandemic has been put to rest.

“While COVID-19 may be put out eventually, the next pandemic to happen is not an if but a when situation,” Tahir said. “All the research, hard work and dedication put into SAC can always be a reminder of how we all should be prepared for the next pandemic. A continuation of efforts will be more beneficial than starting from scratch.”

At the current stage, many members of SAC say their main goal is to make it through the current COVID-19 pandemic safely and help flatten the curve worldwide as much as possible so lives can be saved.

“Personally, my long-term goal would be to come out of this situation thanking everyone and taking everything as a blessing and not taking anything granted,” Akhund said.

Daily Staff Reporter Jialin Zhang can be reached at jialinzh@ umich.edu.

declaration by 22 days.

“It was a voice vote to basically extend by 23 days the governor’s executive order,” Rabhi said.

“There is some legal disagreement about how much of an impact that will actually have. The governor pretty much has maintained that she did not need the legislature to convene, who extended her authority that she already had … The legislature’s resolution extends her powers until the 30th … Which only really has the effect, in the end, of giving her one extra day.”

Rabhi said the legislature should convene for measures that have a more concrete effect.

“If we have to meet during this crisis, we should be voting on items that have a real impact,” Rabhi said. “There were alternative resolutions offered today that would have actually had a substantive effect.”

Rabhi explained Whitmer has

been pulling her authority from three laws: the Constitution, the Emergency Powers of Governor Act 302 of 1945 and the Emergency Management Act 390 of 1976.

He noted the 1945 act does not have time limitations, but the 1976 statute limits the governor’s authority to an initial 28 days and requires the legislature to vote to extend it.

There is a legal disagreement within the legislature, according to Rabhi, because the two statutes conflict with each other on the length of the governor’s authority.

The Emergency Powers of Governor Act is in effect until the governor declares the emergency no longer exists.

“Combining, essentially, all of that case law, you have the situation where the governor took a broad approach in terms of citations for her executive orders that she could rely on, a number of different statutes for the powers

that she has,” Rabhi said. “Again, under the 1945 Emergency Powers of the Governor Act, there is no time limit. And so there is a legal argument that can be made that she could continue to exercise her powers until the emergency has expired, until the emergency is deemed to be over by her.”

Rabhi said he felt Tuesday’s meeting was political, as many of Michigan’s Democratic members wanted to grant the 70-day extension Whitmer wanted, while the Republicans preferred a shorter extension.

State Sen. Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, said in a statement last week that while he does think the emergency order should be extended, 70 days was too much time.

“We agree that emergency circumstances persist in our state and are prepared to support an extension of the governor’s emergency declaration, but feel

a 70-day extension is too long,” Shirkey said.

Rabhi said he felt the legal discussion that took place today for this vote will likely be continued after this 23-day extension is over.

“And so after April 30, essentially, starting May 1, there could be a legal battle if the legislature chooses to not to re-up or extend her powers under the emergency manager act, she could still assert her authority through the Emergency Powers of the Governor Act,” Rabhi said. “... And that’s sort of some of the things that happened today. I would describe it as a little bit more theater, a little bit less substance.”

According to The Daily’s data, which pulls from the Michigan government, Michigan has 18,970 cases as of April 7.

Daily News Editor Emma Stein can be reached at enstein@umich. edu.

testing will be available at the health system. Hopefully, they will have thousands of people so that we can see the trajectory for this.”

Michigan Medicine nurses at high risk of contracting the virus have struggled to obtain testing, noting the difficulty of caring for patients during a pandemic and weighing the benefits of staying

home from work when there is a shortage of qualified medical professionals.

Oppenhiem also acknowledged the need to monitor for symptoms, especially among those who are on the front lines of this pandemic.

“There’s no special treatment for anybody about testing, health care providers, anybody

that works in the institution, everybody is treated the same based on symptoms,” Oppenhiem said. “The only time you stay home is if you are symptomatic, so if you were exposed and are completely asymptomatic, then you’re just going to monitor your temperature and continue to work.”

Symptoms of coronavirus

include fever, cough and shortness of breath. People who think they may have been exposed to the virus should call their primary care physician. Individuals can also contact the Washtenaw County Health Department at 734-544-6700.

Reporter Brayden Hirsch can be reached at braydenh@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, April 8, 2020

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SAM FOGEL | COLUMN

Coronavirus and the machine – what about 2020?

J

esus Christ. I think most of us can agree we didn’t see anything on this scale coming. It hasn’t been more than a couple weeks since the University of Michigan decided to suspend in-person classes, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently decided to join several other states and shut down nonessential services. More and more people in the United States are getting infected, and we’ve even passed China as the country with the most confirmed cases. Each state is trying its own methods to limit the spread, with the march of infections seemingly unstoppable at its current rate. Many criticize President Donald Trump for his refusal to make the hard decisions early enough. The bewildering thing about this mess is that there’s supposedly a presidential race running concurrently. If you forgot about it, I wouldn’t entirely blame you. The news cycle seemingly switched from the U.S. presidential elections and “Decision 2020” to exclusively covering the coronavirus, spreading information and possibly fear-mongering for ratings. Understandably, the focus of many citizens is on the ongoing pandemic. But where does that leave us on the path leading up to November?

The most immediate repercussion on the election cycle has been the delay in Democratic primaries, where former Vice President Joe Biden has pulled a political upset against the already unprecedented early lead of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Biden is now projected to win the nomination, a position almost nobody would’ve predicted just a month ago. The most recent state primaries were March 17: Arizona, Illinois and Florida. I personally hadn’t heard anything about them until the day after they happened. The news was supplanted by the ongoing crises in places like China and Italy, as the full brunt of the pandemic had yet to hit American shores. Ohio was also slated to have a primary that day, but delayed over early concerns about the virus.

Many of the future primaries — 14 states and one U.S. territory — have been delayed until a later date. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is scheduled

to meet August 17, but the status of the convention has been put into question. How long will the quarantine last? Nobody really knows. Trump extended his social distancing guidelines until April 30, but will that be long enough?

What happens next? We don’t know that, either. Not only is the primary put in jeopardy, but the general election in November is at risk as well. As of now, there are no plans to change anything involving the general, but there are still concerns to be addressed.

Congress has granted the states $400 million to prepare for the disease-rampant populace voting in the general election, but strictly defined precautions are nowhere to be found. Many politicians fear a delay in the election, which is a step many countries — such as Chile and the U.K. — have already taken in their referendums and elections to avoid further infections. Trump, however, hasn’t made any moves toward delaying the election, and actually wants us to believe the virus will reach its peak before April is over.

If we want to find the solution and prevent further fatalities quickly, the first instinct is to follow the leader in damage control — which happens to be China. Following an autocracy to uphold the sanctity of a democracy is a strange thing, but these are strange times. New cases of infection in mainland China have nearly stopped, and the Asian powerhouse is taking a leading role in assisting fellow nations slow the spread of the virus. One benefactor of Chinese influence seems to be Italy, gladly accepting aid after European contemporaries seemed too busy with their own coronavirus struggles to assist their neighbors. But as much as it would seem topical, I’m not here to prescribe a solution to solve the issue, rather to try and have some foresight for November.

As the U.S. is engulfed in its own crisis, the growing Chinese clout poses immediate and long-term implications.

But long-term implications are for people who aren’t impulsive.

The short-term is of course the standing of Donald Trump, who has long stood at odds with the Chinese state on a variety of

issues. Trump is hard-pressed to accept any aid from China and has tried his own hand at fixing the problem. From calling the panic a Democratic hoax to supporting a $2 trillion stimulus package, he’s quickly shifted his positions and tried to adjust to the continuous stream of bad news. Trump’s focus, however, has remained surprisingly consistent. He wants the economy to stay afloat. In a press conference on March 23, Trump went on record saying that “We have to save these companies.

These are companies that weren’t in trouble three weeks ago, and now they’re in trouble because of what happened. These are great companies, they’re in some cases triple-A companies,” giving infallible justification for ignoring the general populace. Even before this $2 trillion stimulus, he was dumping money into the stock market to avoid a recession.

Trump is put into a volatile position this November, as his response to this crisis will most definitely affect his chances in the coming election. He’s handled it with the grace of an elephant jumping off a skyscraper into a backyard pool, but his position in the polls remains uncertain.

In fact, Trump’s rating is rising amid the crisis. Trusting polls has made a fool of many before, but similar polls pitting Trump against frontrunner Biden show a closing gap between the two.

Only time will tell if his chances were hindered or helped by his contemporary decisions, but they will certainly define his campaign.

A return to normalcy is something that many people wanted to come this November, but that fickle and uninformed dream has been shattered regardless of your candidate. The future is uncertain and none of us could’ve possibly predicted this.

I don’t have some sweeping and all-encompassing prescription to solve everything I’ve listed in this piece, but I want you to stay on top of things. Make sure you aren’t caught off guard when the status quo changes. Stay informed and stay alert, and most of all, stay home.

Sam Fogel can be reached at samfogel@umich.edu.

We are not the virus

arch 27 marked the day the United States officially surpassed every other country in confirmed cases of COVID-19.

That day alone, over 3,000 people died globally, pushing the total death count past 27,000. And yet, as thousands lose their lives every day, I have seen one phrase circulate more than almost any other, second only to “wash your hands” — “we are the virus, and coronavirus is the cure.”

Beside insinuating that the deaths of COVID-19 victims are a good thing and equating the deceased to parasites being incredibly cruel, the statement is untrue. Most of the environmental “improvements” cited as proof that quarantine is healing the Earth actually have far simpler answers. The suddenly clear, fish-filled Venice canals, for instance, aren’t due to any change in water quality; it’s because there are no boats to kick sediment into the water when everybody is home. In some cases, the lack of human activity is detrimental to animal life, like the monkeys and deer in Asia who are now abruptly without their primary source of food — tourists — and are now wandering hazardous cities in search of replacements.

There have been some real environmental benefits to the mass quarantines, though, particularly a decrease in air pollution. However, coronavirus-related changes in emissions are temporary and relatively small in scope. If anything, the changes brought

by COVID-19, and the responses of our institutions, show us just how little the average person is to blame for pollution.

We are not the virus, industrial capitalism is.

Take for instance the air pollution drop.

The decrease in emissions in Italy and China is because their factories have been shut down en masse, not because people are driving less. Italy even continued to run public transportation, as it was deemed an “essential service,” and still saw these massive emission decreases. Simply put, it makes little difference that individuals aren’t getting in their cars when 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from only a hundred companies. These corporations and the people who run them are the virus, not the commuters and car owners.

Coronavirus will ultimately only make pollution worse as economic panic tempts governments to be even more permissive of corporate pollution. The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic has already called for Europe to “forget about the Green Deal” for the economy’s sake — his country happens to depend heavily on nuclear power and coal. Similarly, President Donald Trump has pledged a bailout for the airline industry, saying they’ll be “number one” in line, all while airlines are on track to emit a quarter of the world’s maximum manageable amount of carbon (carbon budget) by 2050.

We know for a fact that human beings are not fundamentally harmful to the planet because we’ve been living here for hundreds of thousands of years. Indigenous people have been living sustainably for as

long as people have existed, and they still are. Now, with most of the world living industrially, indigenous people care for 80 percent of Earth’s biodiversity and 28 percent of its land, despite being only 5 percent of the world population. Not only can human beings live without irreparably polluting the environment — we can live in ways that are beneficial to the planet, despite what Western environmentalists might say. We just need to adopt these beneficial practices on a much larger scale, and that means ending the harmful ones first.

To call industrial capitalism a virus is apt, because it sickens and kills people like a virus. It isn’t happenstance that the U.S. ranks first in infant mortality, obesity and youth poverty and last in sanitation and access to water of all the world’s developed nations despite having the highest GDP. Poverty and social inequality kill Americans as often as heart attacks and lung cancer, with 4.5 percent of U.S. deaths being traced back to poverty. This translates to 874,000 Americans who died in 2000, a toll over 32 times larger than the total COVID-19 death count by March 27.

These fatal issues in America have only gotten worse in the 20 years since 2000.

Coronavirus is set to combine with these already fatal issues in apocalyptic ways.

The U.S., as of 2017, has 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people. Compare that to Italy’s 4.0 doctors per thousand as Italy’s hospitals are overwhelmed with dying COVID-19 patients. Make no mistake: capitalism will be the primary reason coronavirus kills Americans. A system built on masses of impoverished people selling their labor to a few business owners ensures that workers will work unless they are given another way to survive. Unsurprisingly, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act neglects paid leave for millions. COVID19 belongs to a family of viruses we’ve known about for a long time, but a vaccine doesn’t exist yet — of course, now it will take months before one will be developed.

Still, our government is already itching to lift shutdowns and social distancing rules so that businesses can operate (and profit) normally. Some officials have even said, implicitly and explicitly, that the deaths caused by relaxing restrictions would be worth it for economic recovery.

As of March 17, COVID-19 is projected to kill 2.2 million Americans in total.

This sort of death toll is neither normal nor necessary; in China, only 3,331 have reportedly died and the number of cases has started to stagnate (although this number is disputed). Social distancing alone is not enough to save lives when some don’t have the option and others have no health care to save them once they have it, and yet even that bare minimum is falling by the wayside for the sake of profits. We can only hope that this will be the final case study against unfettered capitalism before we finally learn to care for each other and our planet. We’ve all but passed the point of no return already.

Ray Ajemian can be reached at rajemian@umich.edu.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2020 — 5A

COMMUNITY CULTURE STUDENT PROFILE SERIES

Creative Spotlight: SMTD senior, flautist Ayana Terauchi ELLEN SIROWER For The Daily

The social distancing rules put into effect in response to the COVID-19 crisis have affected everyone greatly, but those who are in creative and artistic professions — whose livelihoods depend on public engagements — have been hit extremely hard by these changes. In the University of Michigan community, important student and faculty projects have been postponed or canceled altogether, many of which were milestones in students’ artistic careers, like senior recitals and theses.

School of Music, Theatre & Dance senior Ayana Terauchi, a flute performance major from Midland, Mich., is one of those artists.

Terauchi has won top awards in numerous national competitions, including second prize in the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition, first prize in the MTNA Senior Woodwind National Competition and first prize and award for best performance of a newly commissioned work in the National Flute Association High School Soloist Competition.

She has been featured on the NPR radio show From the Top during their national tour in Kentucky, as well as the prestigious music program, YoungArts, held every year in Florida.

Terauchi chose to attend SMTD to study with Professor Amy Porter, her flute teacher and

mentor since high school.

“There was so much I was able to still learn from her, and I admired her so much as a musician, being so knowledgeable about not only the technical but emotional and general life aspects to her teaching,” Terauchi said.

“Professor Porter really strives to constantly be innovative with her pedagogy.”

Throughout her four years here at SMTD, Terauchi has had many memorable performance experiences, but one performance stood out the most. On Oct. 10, 2019, Terauchi was a featured soloist with the University Symphony Orchestra at Hill Auditorium, where she played the Liebermann “Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Op. 39” as a winner of the 2019 Undergraduate Concerto Competition. Performing at Hill Auditorium is an honor for any performer, but it’s especially notable for students at the University.

“It was amazing to be able to play as a soloist in Hill, knowing all the historical figures who have been on that same stage,” Terauchi said.

Terauchi not only reminisced on the performance itself, but also the camaraderie she felt from her peers and professors leading up to the performance at Hill.

“I’m really grateful for the support I got from everyone throughout the process, like the people in my studio class who held mock performances and auditions for me and all the support from my peers before and after rehearsals,” Terauchi said.

“It really made me appreciate the people around me a lot more than I already did.”

Teruachi was supposed to give her senior recital on Mar. 26. Senior recitals culminate the past four years of intensive study on students’ respective instruments. In SMTD, friends and relatives far and wide flock to the Earl V. Moore Building to support their beloved graduating seniors in concert, from that odd cousin twice removed you didn’t really know existed to both sets of grandparents. The recitals showcase every individual student, and are usually around an hour to an hour-and-a-half of formidable solo repertoire featuring virtuosic and artistic prowess. They are free and open to the public with a substantial reception to follow. The senior recital is a necessary degree requirement to receive a bachelor’s degree in music from any institution. However, at SMTD and other leading music schools, they have been canceled for safety reasons due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

“I had around an hour(’s) worth of music prepared that was mostly aligned with what I had prepared for graduate school auditions,” Terauchi said. “I had repertoire from all different eras, like the Bach flute sonata in B minor, the Gaubert Fantasy and the Franck violin sonata transcribed for flute.”

Terauchi loves rhythm-heavy romantic music, especially by German and Russian composers.

However, she decided to program music from a

range of musical styles and eras that have been pedagogically important to her playing.

“There are some pieces that are just so famous that you have to play them, like the Franck sonata, that are really challenging to learn, but fulfilling once you can finally play it. Once you learn to really play something, you learn to love it,” Terauchi said.

That process of really being able to play any piece is tough, according to Terauchi.

“Playing solo concerts is difficult because you have to work on so many pieces, you can’t hide behind a big ensemble or other musicians in a group, and they require so much stamina. It’s so emotionally charged because you’re there to show off what you’ve accomplished over four years in front of all your peers and colleagues,” Terauchi said.

Terauchi’s method of preparation is exemplary in its attention to detail and artistry.

“A few days before the performance, I lock myself in my room for a couple of days to really dive into the music and be completely immersed in it,” Terauchi said. “What that looks like, for me, is not only studying my own music to bring out the best interpretations, but also listening to many other pieces by the composers whose work I’m playing to get an even deeper understanding of the composers’ style and intentions. There’s a lot of important practice that can be done without actually playing your instrument.”

FILM NOTEBOOK

Scenes from an Apocalypse: Revisiting ‘Shaun of the Dead’ KARI ANDERSON Daily Arts Writer

Movies are projections. Yes, literally, in the sense of filmstock and screens and projectors and bulbs. But movies can also be projections of ourselves — a momentary snapshot of the internal, the introspective, the metaphysical. Given the circumstances, we as the film beat are seeing less literal projections in movie theaters and doing more projecting ourselves. So what are we thinking about? Among them are “Wicked,” Dcoms (Disney comedies, for uncultured readers) and of course, apocalyptic cinema. This series will traverse the cinematic doomsday in its eclectic iterations. After all, why grapple with an uncomfortable reality when you can watch movies that hyperbolize it completely?

— Anish Tamhaney, Daily Film Editor I don’t like apocalypse movies, or zombie movies, or any horror movies really. I’ve never gotten much joy out of the suspense before a grisly murder or the stress of watching the world end. Yet, for some odd reason, I really like “Shaun of the Dead.” Edgar Wright (“Baby Driver”) and Simon Pegg’s (“Star Trek Beyond”) zombie apocalypse movie is filled with stress and gore, but is also laced with humor and emotion that feels very true to life. In the time of coronavirus, it’s fascinating to see how a manufactured and somewhat comedic apocalypse can parallel a real one.

The titular Shaun (Pegg) is a loser, a creature of habit who doesn’t fully put in effort for his loved ones. His contentious relationship with his stepdad Philip (Bill Nighy, “Love Actually”) has caused rifts between him and his mother Barbara (Penelope Wilton, “Downton Abbey”). His flatmate Peter (Peter Serafinowicz, “The Tick”) is sick of Shaun’s excuses for his sloppy friend and roommate Ed (Nick Frost, “Hot Fuzz”). His girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield, “This Little Life”) is tired of his empty promises and his inability to put effort into their relationship. Liz’s friends Dianne (Lucy Davis, “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and David (Dylan Moran, “Black Books”) don’t know how to feel about Shaun and watch uncomfortably as his and Liz’s relationship

splinters. This all changes, though, when he is thrust into the zombie apocalypse, pushed outside of his sphere of safe comfort and forced to fight.

The onset of the apocalypse is subtle: a woman falling at a bus station, clips on the news, tanks rolling past the electronics store where Shaun works and the chronic sound of sirens in the background. It’s so subtle that Shaun and Ed don’t even seem to notice, still ignoring the signs of apocalypse even as the audience knows exactly what’s going on. On the street, Shaun and Ed comment lightheartedly on a pair of people who appear to be making out, but the man’s head falls off as soon as they turn their back. Shaun walks bleary-eyed past bloody handprints and dead bodies, oblivious to the clear explanations of what’s happening on the news. Ed starts taking pictures of what he thinks is Shaun fending off a romantic advance from what is clearly a zombie. All of the puzzle pieces are there, so it’s maddening to the audience to watch them take so long to understand the kind of danger they’re in.

By the time they figure out what’s going on, they’re immediately propelled into action.

Watching Shaun thrust into a survival situation is fascinating. The change between his boring (albeit safe) life one day to the zombie apocalypse the next is staggering — though he looks like the classic pasty-faced loser protagonist, he’s surprisingly good at taking down zombies with a cricket bat. A team is quickly formed in the throes of survival, an odd collection that includes Shaun, Ed, Liz, Barbara, Dianne and David, forced together in a time of trial.

As we’ve seen in the crisis today, the apocalypse brings out the best and the worst in us. In “Shaun of the Dead,” Shaun’s best is drawn into focus, as he becomes level-headed and confident in his decisions, as well as being a pretty good fighter.

However, it brings out the worst in David, who is so worked up about his negative feelings toward Shaun that he starts working against the group.

With coronavirus, we see this same dichotomy, seeing the best in the healthcare workers who work tirelessly to take care of patients, and the worst in the people ignoring CDC guidelines to party or the people stocking up on essentials to sell them for profit. The fight-or-flight response becomes commonplace during a crisis, and the characters in “Shaun” have to decide between

TM & UNIVERSAL PICTURES

helping others and saving themselves on multiple occasions.

“Shaun of the Dead” is the first film in the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy by Wright and Pegg, consisting of “Shaun,” “Hot Fuzz” and “The World’s End” (an alien apocalypse movie), and is consistent with the quirky, fast-paced humor that the writing duo is associated with. It’s, for lack of a better term, very British, with quick cuts, quick humor and an exorbitant amount of cussing. The threat of zombies is ever-present, but so is the humor, and sometimes they coincide: A particularly comical scene occurs when Shaun, Ed and Liz fight a zombie while accompanied by Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now,” hitting the zombie with pool cues in time to the music while Dianne and Barbara watch and bob their heads to the song. Throughout the movie, bickering between characters over personal struggles that seem insignificant in the face of the crisis is ridiculous, but also deeply human.

The parallels between the apocalypse in “Shaun of the Dead” and that of our current age are staggering, so much so that Pegg and Frost made a parody PSA of one of the scenes (and a sly apology for a joke that didn’t age as well). The slow realization of danger and the quick spread are similar, as well as the advice given by the authorities to isolate anyone who’s been bitten and to avoid physical contact, even with loved ones. The core characters’ main goals are to get somewhere safe where they can hole out until the

apocalypse ends. Sound familiar? This is how it feels these days, like we’re all just sitting around waiting for something to happen, with no idea when this will be over. Watching the characters in “Shaun of the Dead” holing up in a bar and talking about nothing while everything rages outside feels right.

On paper, “Shaun of the Dead” is a zombie movie, but in reality it is more than that. If you can get past the gore, you arrive at a movie about love and self-sacrifice, about weathering through the end of the world with the people you love.

One of the wildest parts of the movie comes at the end, when a news montage explains what has happened one year after the apocalypse with the title of “Remembering Z-Day.” Everything seems to have gone essentially back to normal.

This part was craziest to me because it was a wild reminder that, as hard as it may be to believe, this will all be over too. One day, we’ll look back on this crisis as a horrible period of time that happened but, thankfully, passed. There will probably be a catchy nickname that lasts for decades, and one day history books will talk about the global pandemic that took thousands of lives. But it will pass, eventually, and everything will seem to go back to normal, even as the scars of the ordeal remain.

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Wednesday, April 8, 2020 — 6A

TV NOTEBOOK

The troubling prediction ‘The Simpsons’ did seem to make BRENDON CHO Daily Arts Writer

Some Internet users claim “The Simpsons” predicted the coronavirus pandemic in two episodes: a 1993 episode titled “Marge in Chains” and a 1999 episode titled “Wild Barts Can’t Be Broken.”

In “Marge in Chains,” a disease called the Osaka Flu, featuring two stereotypicallyportrayed and sick Japanese workers, creates a chaotic domino-effect scenario that affects the Simpson household and Springfield at large. In “Wild Barts Can’t Be Broken,” Homer’s acts of vandalism cause Police Chief Wiggum to institute a nightly curfew for anyone under the age of seventy.

In response to these claims, Bill Oakley, one of the writers of “Marge in Chains,” spoke out against the misappropriation of these episodes, citing that these episodes were meant to be innocuous and those utilizing the episodes for nefarious purposes are “gross.”

Perhaps the more important foretelling taking place in these episodes, however, is the ongoing normalization of racism that is targeted towards Asians and Asian Americans. This normalization, in turn, skews overarching public perceptions towards Asian immigrants and Asian Americans.

It’s hard to denigrate “Marge in Chains” when you compare the episode to other contemporary, more visible instances of racism against PoC communities. “All American Girl,” which aired in 1994, was guilty of demanding Korean-American

actress Margaret Cho to “act more Asian,” while also hiring an “expert” to help her act in that caricature. As early as 1986, when “The Simpsons” was still a short on “The Tracey Ullman Show,” the show introduced Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a caricature based on another racist caricature portrayed by Peter Sellers in the ’60s and one of the only few South Asian character representations in its time period. As recently as 2016, Chris Rock hired East Asian children to portray prevalent East-Asian-American stereotypes for the Academy Awards. The gag of sick Japanese workers in “Marge in Chains” may seem innocent in comparison, though the comedic portrayal of East Asian workers as hardworking but unhygienic individuals provides a context of othering for those living in a Westernized society such as the United States.

Through the span of multiple generations, comedic television portrays nonwhite characters and actors, and people of color by extension, as different from their white counterparts — they, including those of Asian descent, are considered the other and the foreign even if these portrayals and stereotypes may seem benign.

But suppose you take the intentions of these problematic portrayals, including those in “Marge in Chains,” as innocuous. “The Osaka Flu,” inspired by the Hong Kong Flu of 1968, was portrayed outlandishly by the writers as

Perhaps the more important foretelling taking place in these episodes, however, is the ongoing normalization of racism that is targeted toward Asians and Asian Americans.

PXFUEL

an attempt to create an innocuous comedic plot device. The fact remains that there are current coronavirus conspiracy theories that originated from a supposed innocent joke about sick East Asians and an East Asian disease. In other words, there are those within anglophone countries who are eager to create racist fear-mongering in the midst of a pandemic by appropriating seemingly innocent comedic content.

This content goes viral and is widely shared on social media platforms.

Xenophobic content is being consumed by many others as a result, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

East and Southeast Asian Americans have long experienced verbal and physical assaults as a result of xenophobia, a trend that has only been exacerbated through the coronavirus pandemic.

Such racist attacks and xenophobic actions by both the public and the government are not new either: The 2009 swine flu outbreak saw a spike in discrimination towards Latinx Americans, the 2003 SARS outbreak unleashed a wave of bigotry towards Asian Americans and the 1892 typhus outbreak and cholera epidemics saw a governmental quarantine and public prejudice directed towards Eastern European Jewish immigrants.

Outbreaks of disease within the United States have historically seen the American public attempt to tie disease outbreaks and pandemics to often marginalized groups in society.

“The Simpsons,” more than it predicts the future, suggests the long history of racist narratives, both on and off the screen.

But suppose you take the intentions of these problematic portrayals, including those in “Marge in Chains,” as innocuous.

ALBUM REVIEW

R.A.P. Ferreira returns: this time more mature, meditative DREW GADBOIS Daily Arts Writer

The music of Rory Ferreira has seen quite the evolution since his debut mixtape in 2012. Under the moniker milo, he’s transitioned from a style of hip-hop tinged with nerdiness to now embracing art and jazz rap.

His side project Scallops Hotel was created to develop his more abstruse side, lyrically and in terms of production. He has made the leap from independent artist to founder of his own record label. Throughout his increasing success, he’s never sold out. In truth, it doesn’t even seem possible for him to sell out, for Rory has so firmly ingrained himself in his own niche. It hasn’t failed him yet. Recently, he’s given up the milo name and replaced it with R.A.P. Ferreira (literally

ALPHA PUP RECORDS, BMI & ASCAP

Rory Allen Phillip Ferreira). Now he’s released his second album under this name, Purple Moonlight Pages, which only further solidifies his presence in the underground rap scene.

The album is profoundly mature, even for Rory’s standards. At his most nerdy, he always used immaturity as a tool. Now, his insertion of obscure references doesn’t oversaturate the project. The last few albums have seen him approach rap from a more philosophical and poetic angle, but Pages feels different. Whereas before, it seemed as though Ferreira was forcing himself to come to profound conclusions, this album lets the epiphanies arise through his experiences. This is apparent in how the songs are structured in relation to each other. The album doesn’t have any real overlying narrative to it. Each song is its own collection of ideas that

comes and goes for the next collection of ideas to appear.

But make no mistake: The album is very cohesive. It’s akin to that one junk drawer we all have in the kitchen, where all the items have their own story, and the drawer itself is representative of these stories. A prime example of this is the track “LAUNDRY,” whose entire runtime is devoted to the process of doing laundry. As a result, he expresses his life at home. We get an understanding of the relationship he has with his family and how it affects his outlook. The song has a domestic charm. It stands alone, but it makes hearing the next story all the more enjoyable.

The cohesion of Purple Moonlight Pages is also largely thanks to the production of the Jefferson Park Boys, whose members include Carmack, Mike Parvizi and Kenny Segal. Their brilliant mix of esoteric and organic beats functions perfectly alongside Ferreira’s poetry. Often, it feels like being inside a hazy jazz club. There’s a diverse set of sounds being explored on the project: A song like “DUST UP” that could easily be an ambient track without the presence of Rory is paired close to the latin guitar-flavored beats on “ABSOLUTES.” Then there’s “U.D.I.G (UNITED DEFENDS OF INTERNATIONAL GOOD WILL),” a banger that has a Laurel Canyon sound but with twice as much acid involved. Nothing is off the table for them, which lends a sense of momentum.

If there is one thing Rory seems to be promoting on Purple Moonlight Pages, it’s his idea of what art should be. No better is this expressed than on the track “CYCLES,” where he talks about

the difference between the underground and the mainstream, highlighting their respective priorities and how, at times, it feels like an uphill battle financially and in gaining the same amount of respect. With any other artist this would come across as bitter, but with Rory it’s sincere, as he says: “Swear I just know my worth, swear I just know my worth.” If anything, Rory seems happy with where he’s at. Sure, being underground versus mainstream means he has to fight a

Purple Moonlight Pages R.A.P. Ferreira Ruby Yacht

little more to keep going, but he’s also working to understand himself and the world more.

The image of the struggling artist has become sensationalized at this point. Rory even admits to being a part of this trend. As he’s matured, he’s come to understand that struggling for the sake of struggling doesn’t produce better art. To him, art is about gaining knowledge. “No starvin’ artists, just artists starvin’ to know.”

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | A PR I L 8 , 2020

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ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

2B Wednesday, April 8, 2020 // The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | A PR I L 8 , 2020

Managing Statement Editor Magdalena Mihaylova Deputy Editors Emily Stillman Marisa Wright Associate Editor Reece Meyhoefer

Designers Elizabeth Bigham Kate Glad Copy Editors Madison Gagne Sadia Jiban

Photo Editor Keemya Esmael Editor in Chief Elizabeth Lawrence Managing Editor Erin White

Passing down culture

BY CHELSEA PADILLA, STATEMENT COLUMNIST I

t was a Saturday afternoon. My family had been playing mahjong — a complex game in which players form sets of matching tiles — for an hour or two and we’d just finished a round. We shuffled the tiles for the next round, shifting the pink and white pieces around the length of the table for a few minutes. I wasn’t really good at the game: My brother and I had just recently been introduced to all the rules. My hands were still getting used to the feel of the tiles’ plastic, smooth against my fingers. As I stacked my row of tiles, the blank pink sides facing up, my mom spoke.

“You can pass this on to your children,” she said.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve thought and worried more about the idea of passing on something — like clothes, old dolls, recipes — to my own kids in the future. The actual question of having kids isn’t necessarily a subject of concern for me right now. But, if I were to have kids, I’ve always been afraid that I wouldn’t be able to pass an incredibly important aspect of culture: language.

My parents immigrated from the Philippines in the ‘90s. I was born in Chicago, which makes me a second-generation immigrant. I was raised speaking Cebuano (colloquially known as Bisaya), an official language of the Philippines that is closely related to Tagalog and mainly spoken in the country’s southern regions. We ate traditional Filipino food like adobo and lechón, practiced various holiday traditions like receiving ang pao — red envelopes — and occasionally attended Filipino parties where karaoke was the main event.

But the presence of Filipino culture overall was lacking.

Growing up in various states across the American Midwest, it wasn’t often that I found Filipino culture in places outside our home, save for the occasional trips to Asian grocery stores and the few times that I heard snippets of Cebuano when we’d go on vacation to New York City or visit our old friends in Chicago. Most of my extended family lived in the Philippines and those who lived in the United States were living in California, Washington or Texas, so any exposure to Filipino culture was limited to the confines of my house.

When I was still very young, my parents spoke to me in both English and Cebuano, aiming to raise me to be bilingual.

As young children usually do, I learned quickly, but there was a problem: Cebuano and English mixed together in my brain and sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference between the two. In preschool, I tried to explain to my teachers that my favorite food was pancit — noodles — but 3-year-old me didn’t know how to convey that. In another instance, I babbled to my babysitter about being sick and throwing up.

She didn’t understand me, because I kept using the word suka — to vomit. I didn’t realize there was an English equivalent.

After my teachers sat down with me and my parents to talk about my tendency to slip from language to language, my parents eventually started to use more English around me instead of Cebuano. I stopped mixing Cebuano words in my sentences. With no other Filipino children like myself at school, I hardly spoke the language at all. This isn’t a particularly unique situation. Many second-generation immigrants lose their ancestral language at some point.

In fact, according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, while nine out of 10 secondgeneration immigrants are proficient in English, only four out of 10 second-generation Asian Americans say that they can speak their parents’ native language decently.

I didn’t lose my grasp of the language entirely, I just kept listening but stopped speaking. I still know the words, and can fully understand spoken Cebuano, but I can’t speak it. While I can comprehend my mother’s instructions for help around the house or my dad’s sarcastic commentary on movies, the glottal stops of words like tuo feel strange in my mouth and my tongue stumbles over the language’s ng sounds.

I’m stuck, in a way, between being monolingual and bilingual. Any conversation with Cebuano that I hold now is stilted by the fact that I know what’s being said, but I can only respond in English. As I’ve grown older, I’ve found myself becoming more aware of how this holds me back, especially when I interact with my grandmother, whose knowledge of English is present but minimal. When I’m with her, there are often so many things I want to say, like how my day’s been, or that I’ve been working on a cool project at school. But there’s no easy way for me to get any of it across to her.

Due to my lack of fluency in Cebuano, I know I wouldn’t be able to pass on my knowledge of the language in the way that my parents could, especially with the likelihood of me continuing to live in the U.S. or some other English-speaking country. I’ve felt guilty about this for some time. Language has such an intimate connection to culture and Cebuano was one of the few things keeping me close to my Filipino roots. While my family still had Filipino-style meals and occasionally attended festivals hosted by Filipino-American organizations, I felt that language was something indicative of true connection to a culture. In some ways, I saw it as a tether.

At the same time, I’ve always questioned how strong of a tether I actually have if I can’t even fully speak my parents’ language. When I visit my cousins in the Philippines, I can’t help but feel a disconnect between us. At times, when we sit together for dinner, someone will say something that I don’t particularly understand and the others will laugh while I just listen, smiling as if I know what they’re talking about. They know both Cebuano and English and often slip between the two when they speak to me, but there are certain things — like jokes, references — that I can’t fully comprehend because I’m not a native speaker.

This inherent difference, of course, has never been something that anyone could change; it’s simply a result of the way things are — my parents decided to move to the U.S. while my aunts and uncles chose to remain in the Philippines. Regardless, it still makes me feel inadequate at times, like I’m not as “Filipino” as my cousins are. In a way, I suppose I’m not. I was raised an ocean away. Even still, I feel pride in being Filipino as much as I am American.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHELSEA PADILLA

At times, though, I find myself struggling to fit myself into either category. Would the generation after me feel even more separated from Filipino culture? Would my parents feel disappointed in their daughter for not sharing their culture enough? It’s not necessarily out of the question for them to teach my future kids, but I’ve always seen that scenario as me admitting defeat.

That Saturday afternoon, when my mom told me that I could pass on mahjong to my children, it almost felt like a form of reassurance. It was as if she knew that I’ve felt guilty about my lack of skills in Cebuano.

As I sat there, I realized she was right — there was an entirely different facet of culture that I hadn’t considered.

I’d been placing too much emphasis on language, when elements like Filipino delicacies, ang pao and even karaoke are just as important, if not more so. Even though language is definitely a large part of culture, it doesn’t encompass all of it.

Certainly mahjong, a game that I’ve seen Filipino adults play at family gatherings and parties, could be considered a part of our culture. Perhaps culture doesn’t really have a hard definition, and there is no “checklist” of things that you have to be or have. Ultimately, feeling connected and legitimized in a culture is up to you.

I know that it’s impossible for me to give the next generation in my family the same experience that my parents gave me.

I won’t be able to give them the language, and I might not know or even understand all of the Filipino customs. But I can share with them my own experiences and what I have learned. While I might not be able to teach them Cebuano jokes or show them how to make pancit, I can always pull out the old mahjong board with its pink tiles.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020 // The Statement3B 3B

On working with my grandpa, and building myself

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BY ELIZABETH BIGHAM, STATEMENT DESIGN EDITOR

hen my grandpa passed away over two months ago, one of my friends asked if we were close. I remember responding, “You know in school when you’re asked to write about a person who inspires you? He has always been that person for me.”

Throughout my life, my grandpa, Charles VanHampler, inspired me in many ways. In the way he patiently raised five daughters in a two bedroom and one bathroom home.

In the way he loved my grandma, bringing her flowers and holding her hand through the hardships of her dementia. In the way he’d sit in the bleachers for each one of my brother’s hockey games, standing close up against the glass to get the best view.

Grandpa was a carpenter for over 45 years. I do not know many details about the specific work he did except that he helped build the middle school I attended, even losing his wedding ring during the construction. Every time I would walk in a certain hall of the school, I would point to the ground and tell my friends, “My grandpa’s wedding ring is somewhere under these tiles!” Grandpa has always been drawn to fixing and building things, especially in creative ways. I was fortunate enough to grow up learning and participating in his creative processes.

At a young age, I spent most of my days at my grandparents’ house, which was thankfully a few blocks away from where I live. As a little 3-year-old who barely knew how to count, I would dial my grandparents’ number on my house phone, saying “Papa, come pick me up,” and his car would pull into my driveway five minutes later.

The time I spent with my grandpa was not ordinary: Our go-to activity wasn’t going on walks or playing with toys.

Instead, Grandpa always envisioned a project for us to do, some artistic vision that we would work to bring to life over the course of the day I spent there, or even lasting weeks. These projects depended on how old I was at the time, but all consisted of innovative ideas, a large set of tools and would end with us celebrating with a trip to get ice cream.

Our projects started quite simple, like when we painted trees on a canvas and then glued whole walnuts on the branches to make a walnut tree. In the winter, we used snow to build Barney and poured cranberry juice all over our sculpture to produce Barney’s purple hue. We constructed homemade puzzles, too — I would trace a drawing onto wooden tablets, paint over it, and then my grandpa would carve the wood into little puzzle pieces.

As I got older, the projects became more complex and were constructed on larger mediums. After my grandparents got a new TV, we used its box, which had been laying around idle, to construct a 3-foot cardboard cruise ship, which we

PHOTO COURTESY OF ELIZABETH BIGHAM

called “the Queen Elizabeth.” We glued on details like windows to the shift and small dinghies hanging off the side, making the ship a perfect place to play with my Polly Pocket dolls.

With each project, I was in awe of how we could create something special together with just the tools and objects sitting around in Grandpa’s house. I was proud of how meticulous we were in making sure our projects turned out precisely as we wished. Even though I was young, Grandpa let me work on much of the construction, trusting me to carefully carve with an Exacto knife or diligently spread Gorilla Glue on a surface, thus giving me hands-on experience with building and designing.

However, as I got older and busier with school, I spent less time at my grandparents’ house. Our projects became less frequent and more oriented around school assignments I occasionally needed help with. A fifth-grade project requiring a presentation on tectonic plates led us to continue our favorite activity of making puzzles, but this time the puzzle was made up of plate boundaries. My favorite was an elementary school science assignment where I had to create a circuit that lit up a lighthouse. With Grandpa’s help, I was able to set up the web cables and circuit board

that hardwood stores are not a necessity because any spare pipe, string, or slab of wood lying around Grandpa’s garage always became an essential part of the project. I reflected on Grandpa’s drive as he tinkered and toyed with the positioning of materials until they fit as perfectly as he envisioned them.

For most of my life, I thought of myself as analytical: I love numbers and was planning to study an analytical subject in college. Yet, my creative, artistic side had been brewing within me since the time spent in my grandparent’s basement. It first made its appearance when I started working with graphic design in high school as a designer for my high school newspaper.

It continued growing when I got to college and continued with newspaper design at The Michigan Daily and graphic making for an application being built in BlueLab. It finally established itself as part of me with my recent acceptance to the School of Information.

Now, I plan to carry out my dream job as a user experience (UX) designer, working with the branding, design, usability and function of a product. More specifically, I want to work with the redesigning of websites and apps. This “designer” identity I so often felt with my Grandpa is now becoming a truly important part of my identity and career. I wish I could tell my grandpa, because I know how proud he would be. I also believe he would feel gratified to know that all the time and energy he focused on me throughout the years has impacted my life goals.

As I carry out my future experimenting with the usability, usefulness and desirability provided in the interaction with a product, I plan to approach these situations the same as I did when we drizzled our snowman in cranberry juice, built puzzles and crafted ships. Though my imagination is not as vivid as it was when I was seven, I plan to channel the work ethic, attention to detail and innovative values that I learned with Grandpa.

Saying goodbye to someone you love is never easy. Especially with being away at school for the past two years, it made me feel like I missed out on more time I could have spent with him. Those first couple weeks after he passed away I felt regret and grief. However, thinking about his creative impact on me, especially with my admission into School of Information, has helped process that grief. Even though Grandpa is no longer physically here, I feel closer to him now than I have in a while.

quickly. But we always had to go above and beyond, so we spent the next few days perfecting a paper mache mountain that the lighthouse was built upon.

During my childhood, I thought the activities Grandpa and I did during the day were common between granddaughters and grandpas. I just assumed that my friends were doing the same thing during their summer break — at their grandparent’s house sawing pieces of wood and drinking Boston Coolers on a swing they constructed just a few hours before.

As I got older and noticed our relationship was unique, I realized how special it was for him to share his passion for design and construction with me. It is even more special for me to have gained that same passion as I watched him work. We were two minds with different ages and perspectives, but were able to envision and accomplish such innovative projects.

At the time, each project felt like fun, not work. Yet each day, my skills were evolving, and as I watched my grandpa lead us through each creation, my imagination was growing. I mimicked his meticulous Elizabeth Bigham is a sophomore planning craft, not moving on to the next step of to start in the School of Information next a project until we mixed the perfect sky fall. She is a Statement Design Editor and blue shade of paint or until a shape of wood can be reached at ebigham@umich.edu. was completely sanded evenly. I learned

Love inside the dopamine machine 4B Wednesday, April 8, 2020 // The Statement

BY CLARA SCOTT, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

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here is nothing like a good romantic comedy to make you reevaluate your love life. Watching any movie with a boymeets-girl plot results in what my mother calls an “I’m going to die fat, broke and alone” moment, as terrible as that sounds. It’s the kind of feeling that makes you want any semblance of validation immediately, especially from a potential romantic partner.

In one of these moments during my freshman year of college, to the rolling credit music of “27 Dresses,” I downloaded Tinder. I imagine I’m not the only one of the dating app’s millions of active users who decided to take the plunge in a flash of self-pity, searching for the immediate embrace of dopamine from a mutual match, just a few leisurely swipes away.

Soon, the late-night curiosity that drew me to temporarily try Tinder had transformed into swiping during a dull moment during class, browsing the app as a distraction from my homework, during parties I didn’t want to be at and, of course, while on the toilet. At first, I didn’t consider my fascination with Tinder to be related at all to my own actual romantic life.

I thought of it more as a tool, one for a brief burst of dopamine in the form of an unexpected match. I looked at my participation in the online dating scene more as another source of digital entertainment and a self-esteem boost, rather than a realistic way to find a boyfriend.

But a few months later, I was on all the apps — Tinder, Bumble (which requires women to message first) and Hinge (which markets itself as a dating app that is “designed to be deleted”).

Needless to say, none of them are truly a foil to the cons of the others. Instead, they offer different options to fulfill the same perpetual human need: the constant search for love, sex and everything that falls in between.

Before I came to college, I had a lot of knowledge about relationships but not much experience, having gone to an all-girls Catholic school for my entire secondary school education. I was very familiar with plaid skirts and where I could find discount Oxford shirts in the Walmart boys’ section, but had only gone on one date in my whole life, which went badly not because of my own inexperience but rather that of my date. I knew about the hookup culture on campuses like the University of

Michigan’s, but assumed I would never be confident enough to partake, still working through my mix of ignorance and anxiety when it came to dating.

There were several contradictions mixed into this anxiety, too. I wasn’t Catholic and had no qualms about premarital sex, but growing up in that environment had stuck me in a state of arrested development. I knew I wanted to date, sure, but I wasn’t sure how to navigate that scene in any way, shape or form. It wasn’t like I was saving myself for Jesus — my parents had sent me to a private school that just so happened to be Catholic, but that still meant a life away from boys. Reading Cosmopolitan makes a 17-year-old girl feel well-versed in sex by herself, but when faced with the real thing, it was a different story altogether.

Once at U-M, the sheer number of romantic choices I had to make was overwhelming, with thousands of boys my own age swarming around me at parties, on the Diag, everywhere I went. People constantly talked about sex, about hooking up, about sloppy blacked-out flings and the excitement of meeting new people around every corner. For someone who hadn’t even had her first kiss yet, I was simultaneously exhilarated and terrified. I wasn’t the only one many other people I knew were having their first truly mature romantic experiences on dating apps, something that seemed to be the norm for my generation of young adults.

The allure of these apps comes with how easy they make dating. With just their phone, a person is immediately able to access hundreds of people online that they might have never met in person, especially on a college campus. It’s a lot less daunting flipping through ready-made packages of people than trying to chat up someone in a bar. Thus comes the paradox of that ease: There are even people scrolling on dating apps while physically in a bar, so they are a lot more hesitant to engage when there are a million more options in the palm of their hand.

When everyone has agreed to a silent transaction, even the people who have chosen to eschew Tinder for the old way are looked at funny when they try to chat someone up. It’s a whole new world.

An advantage I saw in dating apps was the mutual understanding between me and the person I’d be

messaging: If we were messaging, it meant we were attracted to each other, that we were both interested. There was no confusion in the intentions either I or a potential match had on the platform; all one had to do was look at my bio to see I was looking for a relationship. It took some of the terror out of the risk of putting yourself out there, as I still felt overwhelmed by the options and norms of college dating life, even after one brief and seemingly innocent tryst freshman year that didn’t lead anywhere.

Two years later, I’m in love, actually in love for the first time in my entire life. It’s making me think a lot about why I never really fell before, why I ended up in love by surprise and not by searching for it. The cliche of never finding what you want until you’ve given up is true for me, at least. Maybe it’s in that choice, in the selectivity and apparent promise of these apps, that some of us set ourselves up for failure and some for success in love. Is there a secret recipe? Does the fact that we are often starting our adult love lives through these apps mean we will always approach love with something so specific in mind?

Beyond that, I wonder whether the paradigms set up by apps like these are changing the way we look at romance completely. We all select our partners judgmentally, as much as some people claim to transcend prejudices, whether it’s in person or on an app.

It’s a biological imperative, especially for those in their reproductive prime: pretty, healthy, tall, skinny, strong, attractive people are immediately more appealing than the rest. But is that flurry of preferences somehow worsened by the ease of an app interface, where one rarely can show their personality? Is true love — as some people have posited in the wake of hookup culture’s moral panic — dead? Or has it just turned into a game?

The modern meet-cute looks very different than it used to — this time, it’s the wonder of getting texted consistently that spells love, not necessarily a collision walking down the sidewalk or hand touch over spilled papers. Trying to decode in real time whether or not an interaction in person is inherently romantic seems harder than before; I don’t think I would ever go off my instinct alone before asking someone out today, if I knew I could play it safe and learn more about that

person’s intentions ahead of making my decision by Googling them or even taking a glance at their Instagram.

Imagining the grand gestures of yesteryear — the boomboxes outside of windows and surprise appearances at airport gates — I feel legitimately uncomfortable. All I want from romance is a nice good-morning text and a coffee once in a while, really.

It’s obvious that our idea of what is romantic has changed, but the need for romance hasn’t. Instead, it’s just gotten more complicated.

Though attachment styles that are formed during childhood largely end up making a person more insecure or secure in their love lives, the ways in which we approach creating those attachments is rapidly changing. I can see it in the way people talk to each other in these coffee shops, on the streets, at parties and in my own circle of friends. The getting-to-knowyou stage of dating has flipped from an incline to a parabola: Before even meeting a potential romantic partner or hookup, most of us have “talked” to them already, stalked their social media accounts, asked friends or at least Googled them.

Thus, we go into the first date with the information about the person that is usually exchanged as you get to know someone. After the appropriate amount of time has passed to break through the wall of self-marketing that many of us put up for these apps, then, maybe we can get to something deeper than purely physical or intellectual attraction.

These apps become addictive through an erratic matching system that provides hits of the feel-good hormone dopamine in knowing someone finds you immediately attractive.

The fact that these systems exist and are so widespread seems like a perfect opportunity for psychological research on our generation, dating and media. To get a better idea of how much the combination of selfmarketing, selection and opportunity that dating apps offer is potentially changing our perception of love, I sought out University professors who were asking the same questions as me in their research.

But what I found, at least initially, was discouraging. People have only been using apps like Tinder and Bumble — which have been active on

the App Store since 2012 and 2014, respectively — for less than 10 years, so psychologists and sociologists don’t have much data to work with.

Moreover, due to the personal nature of these apps, they have nearly impenetrable data firewalls, to the point that most researchers have to build a lookalike tester app to use on their subjects.

The lack of long-term data on dating apps and human behavior poses a unique problem, as we don’t know how these apps are affecting the present, but also how they will affect the romantic lives of users in the future.

working in Ann Arbor.

The winter wind biting my face, I walked to the psychology department on campus and found myself pushed into the maze that is East Hall. It almost felt like I was inside a giant brain. After 10 minutes of wandering the greycarpeted corridors of the department, Dr. Chopik came to retrieve me from the depths of the hallways. Questions were whizzing through my brain already. Relieved to finally be walking with direction, I followed Chopik to his office. “Ready to talk about Tinder?” I asked. He nodded, laughing.

Chopik is no stranger to research on what makes love actually tick. He has done several studies on how couples

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

However, dating services like eHarmony and Match.com have been using algorithms and selection mechanisms similar to the ones used by Tinder and other dating apps for a long time, and researchers know much more about them, especially because their software developers modeled their systems off of data from long-lasting relationships. When I read the studies around these models, one researcher’s name kept popping up again and again: Dr. Bill Chopik, an assistant professor of Social/Personality Psychology at Michigan State University and a visiting scholar here are U-M. I was happy to find out that he was currently

who have been together for decades have lasted throughout the many changes in life, trying to crack open the secrets to a good relationship by working backwards.

“I tell people I study how relationships and the people in them change over time,” he explained.

“Basically, I’m most interested in what makes people happy and healthy.” He settled in his seat, the snow falling leisurely outside the office window.

Chopik has been interviewed many times before on this same topic, as people grapple to find meaning in this new age of dating. No one really knows how a technology will eventually

Wednesday, April 8, 2020 // The Statement 5B

affect the way we approach and act in relationships, and that’s scary.

But that change, Chopik said, might not necessarily be a bad thing.

“So there’s a bunch of people who will look at college students today.

And they have this moral panic about how they’re on their phones. They’re zombies. They’re out of touch,” Chopik laughed. “You know, totally unengaged with the world. And I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. I think young people are engaged in all sorts of things.

And they’re reflecting on the role of technology and relationships. And so the same question you just had, I’m sure a lot of your friends think about too.”

Indeed, when I told my roommates I was planning on writing about Tinder, they all told me the same thing: We’re all interested to see how this affects us in the long run.

“I will also say that a lot of people have that mentality (of going into relationships casually) when they’re young; people maybe 20 years ago also had that mentality. A lot of college students think that way and they’re at an exciting time in life, or they might not be sure where they’re going to be in two years,” Chopik explained.

Listening to him talk, I was reminded of stories my parents had told me about their various partners throughout college. Though they hadn’t met their lovers online, they had still had the youthful impulse to make spur-ofthe-moment romantic decisions, to meet new people, to explore. It wasn’t as streamlined as with an app, but it still existed. Putting a young person in a vacuum doesn’t take away the fact that they’re young in the first place, Dr. Chopik argued.

I’ve made some of my best friends through technology, keep up with ones who’ve moved away via social media and despite the stigma of it all, dating apps did, in a way, make me feel better about myself. Though I was never successful in finding a long-term partner through Tinder, matching and chatting with people on apps offered a boost in my self-esteem and a path to practice romantic interaction when I was barely competent at the beginning of college.

I believe that the changes in how we form attachments based on technology would have happened anyway, even without dating apps. Even standard social media can serve as a dating app these days, with Tinder and Bumble giving the option to integrate your other social media accounts into your profile. As long as there is an option to connect with other people, through direct messages, comments and likes, people will find a way to make those connections romantically or sexually

suggestive, if not direct.

In Chopik’s words, “technology often mimics society, not necessarily the other way around.” hen I first thought about writing on the realities of dating apps in the love lives of young people, specifically about how much of a game dating has become, I immediately thought of an article in Vanity Fair, where reporter Nancy Jo Sales scoured a Manhattan bar and a few college campuses for the first signs of change in the dating scene due to the rise in apps like Tinder. I remembered reading articles on dating apps like hers, feeling like they were windows into another world, one where I wasn’t stuck in my polyester plaid with 30 other girls in a chapel five times a week.

Rereading the article now, on sad, printed-out computer paper, I still find myself gasping at most of what her interviewees said about their respective love lives and the ways that apps like Tinder had both helped and hurt them. To put it in the words of one of the interviewed women, the piece would make any reader think that our era could easily be christened as the “Dating Apocalypse.”

Or, to put it in the words of one of the interviewed males, a young musician: “‘I would just be sitting at home and playing guitar, now it’s ba-ding’ — he makes the chirpy alert sound of a Tinder match — ‘and …’ He pauses, as if disgusted. ‘… I’m fucking.’”

In the years since that piece came out, Sales has been hard at work cracking open quotes like these, trying to get inside the minds of those behind the new age of dating. All of this went into a particularly interesting HBO documentary last year, cleverly entitled “Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age.” While watching the documentary, I was slack-jawed in the same way that the article had made me, simultaneously in awe of not only how the apps were used, but how they were designed.

In a podcast interview with Vox, Sales discussed the careful construction of the apps, how they suck us in and whXat this means for us.

“You swipe, you might get a match, you might not. And then you’re just, like, excited to play the game,” Sales said. “We’ve become products ...

We are providing valuable data on a pretty consistent basis to people who are making money off of us. We’re laborers, in a sense, to people who don’t really care whether or not we fall in love or get married or whatever.”

As I closed the podcast on my computer, Sales’ words still echoing in

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my skull, I whipped out my phone and re-downloaded the Tinder app, just to see my old profile. My bio welcomed me like an old friend: There were the same photos I had remembered, the same links to my Spotify and Instagram, the same coy caption: If you can name all 5 members of Fleetwood Mac, you’re in the right place. Writer, musician, addicted to VICE documentaries on YouTube. I physically cringed at that last line. The same photo that’s my profile picture on all my social media stared me in the face, and I swiped through the rest of the photos, slightly proud of the seeming perfection of the bio. I used to call this profile my “masterpiece,” and for good reason.

Even if it never got me a boyfriend, it definitely hit the spot to get me some attention.

Still, it felt gross to be back in the interface, looking at my old messages like an elderly lady reading her diary entries from childhood. Even if my heart was never really in the bad dates I went on, the apps still had their time with me and did whatever they were going to do to my mindset.

No matter what you do, there is no way that the culture around dating apps doesn’t touch you. But will the supremacy of dating apps last, and how will they fare in the long run?

As Sales said, we’re the guinea pigs here. We’re the first generation to do romance online, whether it’s through apps specifically for dating or not.

What is that actually doing to the way we form relationships? It seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, to some extent — what we believe about these channels of connection seems to come true in our own lives, just because of the way we interact with them. But if this is true, is there some secret way to get what you actually want out of them? Or will they stain our romantic histories like spilled tea, a momentary mistake or attraction that seems to influence the rest of our connections?

I look at my partner sometimes and wonder, what if this hadn’t happened?

What if I didn’t fall in love with you? I think that is what makes the long-term questions of what these apps mean for our generation so hard to answer, because the answer is only a collection of these questions themselves, a collection of instances where we look at our lives and think about the choices we have made. Falling in love is easy, but getting there is hard. Even if it seems to be just beyond one swipe.

Clara Scott is a junior studying English in LSA and Creative Writing & Literature in the RC. She is a Daily Arts Writer and can be reached at clascott@ umich.edu.

Running through quarantine

6B

Wednesday, April 8, 2020 // The Statement

BY ELI RALLO, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

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don’t remember when I fell in love with running. I cannot remember my first run or my first pair of running sneakers. Early on, I recall equating running to a mundanity, something I did to stay in shape and keep active as an incredibly uncoordinated individual who failed when it came to team sports. As a child, I hadn’t discovered the runner’s high or that sweaty addiction. But between cross country camps and routing solo long distance Sunday mornings, running turned into a part of my daily life — a part of who I am. I went from being a person who ran, to a runner. I never had the grace or the long legs or the innate talent as an athlete, but I had the drive. As I recognized the onset of anxiety in my early teenage years, I found that running quelled my anxiety the way nothing else seemed to.

Though I don’t remember the impetus to begin, I do remember my mother dropping me off to middle school cross country practice in 2008, me with unlaced mud-caked sneakers holding a water bottle, wet with condensation.

I remember my first five mile race, 11 years old, looping the roads of my hometown, the longest I felt I’d run in my life. I remember the near unending, heat soaked runs I took in St. Louis two summers ago, the 100 degree sun tanning my sunscreened shoulders as my legs willed another five, six, seven miles. I remember the first time I ran 15 miles, with my brother trailing me in a beach

ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT

cruiser bike, down a New Jersey beach adjacent sidewalk in August. I remember rounding the final corner of the Detroit Marathon, a finish line of red and blue balloons swaying against a freezing, navy October Michigan sky.

I remember falling deeper down the rabbithole of near dependency on such meditative movement, when I moved to Michigan as a college freshman and strained to hang on to some part of home within my new routine. Somewhere in the midst of paper bibs pinned to pink athletic shirts, roads and miles and paths and ankle injuries and Gatorade bottles and pairs of sneakers, I fell in love. I became addicted to the golden flush behind my cheeks as I finished a blissful jog, runner’s high radiating through me.

I’m addicted to the sweat, the thrill, the motion. I’ll never stop. unning has always been a solace, a safe space where I can sort out my thoughts, an invisible place that helps me find answers to complex questions and scenarios that seem murky or impossible to untangle.

Running has steadied my breath when I feel like I can’t inhale; it puts unsettling emotions at ease and consistently reminds me to remain grounded in times of tribulation. It’s been a form of moving therapy since I can remember, a method of calming panic when I’m anxious. There’s something about the repetition, resolve and regularity that has rendered running a constant in my life — an activity to fall back on in times of uncertainty.

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It is through running, specifically after completing the 2018 Detroit Marathon, that I’ve learned to have an unabashed appreciation for my body, in the short, muscular legs I’ve always detested.

They’ve carried me, according to the Nike+ running application I sometimes use to track my outdoor running distance, 935 miles in the last year. Anytime I feel stressed about schoolwork or my future or a relationship, I lace up my sneakers and I take to the road.

With wind in my face and concrete under my feet, I have the ability to choose — to turn left or right, to stop and look out at a body of water, to focus on everything or nothing, to slow down and to speed up. If I slink out of my childhood home before 8 a.m., as my parents and brothers sleep, the roads are quiet, devoid of car engines, and the air smells of salt water.

If I wait until after 4 p.m. to chase golden hour, the neighborhood smells of dinnertime and the inaugural use of barbecue grills. As I traverse familiar streets and head toward the beach, I pass handfuls of other runners and podcast walkers, people with this mutual affinity for the road, and we smile at one another, lifting a sweat-slicked hand in acknowledgement. We connect in the way you can with strangers handling a circumstance the same way. t’s no surprise then, with the onset of pandemic COVID-19 and physical isolation, I found myself looking forward to and welcoming consistent outdoors runs. When the University of Michigan closed the Central Campus Recreation Building and the Intramural Sports Building after canceling in-person classes and transitioning online for precautionary measures, I was forced from my winter treadmill routine to the streets of Ann Arbor. With the spring weather just starting to show, I had no complaints. On rainy or colder days, with nothing else to do, I waited for the best moment — when the sun peeked out or the sky temporarily dried up — to leave the house with no determined path or plan except to run until I couldn’t anymore.

Many students, trapped in the house with roommates or family, feel the same tug to running outdoors.

Lana Wolf, a junior at Cornell University and a New Jersey native, has picked up running as a part of her daily routine since COVID-19 dispeled her from her college campus. Never a regular runner in the past, Wolf is now running near every day and said, “There’s something special about running right now and being in nature exercising … seeing families playing in their yard and other people out exercising — I just feel

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like I’m part of a community.”

I feel similarly in the undefinable comfort of distant connection, especially in a time where I go hours and even days only meeting the eyes of my immediate family members. Even when the infrastructure of our country shakes and crumbles, our overarching sense of community remains firm — we’re all navigating a disconcerting time in our nation’s history, we all need ways to cope. Being quarantined with my 15-year-old cousin, a runner herself, has had a tremendous influence on our relationship. At least three times a week, we run side by side, talking each other through our current circumstances.

The ungovernable and unmanageable emotional toll that COVID-19 has taken on so many of us leaves us craving some way to have a semblance of routine or sovereignty over our lives.

Olivia Kem, a senior at Santa Clara University and Phoenix, AZ native, was a semi-regular runner before quarantine and has found herself much more drawn to the activity with the dawn of social distancing. She has upped both the mileage and frequency of her running since the pandemic altered daily life.

“I realized that a huge reason I enjoy running is because it gives me something that I can control and improve on. I can push myself to go a little farther or a little faster everyday and this is something no one can take away from me,” she said, “This is especially important now when it feels like everything in my life is controlled by COVID-19. I did not realize until now how much I value this control.

Running has also given me the motivation to get out of bed early in the morning to beat the Phoenix heat, which has also helped me stay sane by providing me with a sense of purpose each morning.”

Since I moved back home to quarantine nearly three weeks ago, I’ve noticed a large increase in the amount of runners in my neighborhood. Running has gone from a pastime some people in my town enjoyed, to a hobby dozens of people have picked up. Workout studios and gyms have temporarily closed, leaving people without a way to release stress through exercise. Largely in part due to my own infatuation with running, and my giddy desire that everyone find the same solace I feel when running, I am ecstatic to see people eagerly jumping on the runner train, and their newfound — or reinvigorated — love for running.

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Leaving on a jet plane

Wednesday, April 2020////The The Statement 7B 7B Wednesday, January 16,8,2019 Statement

BY MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

to draw the proper conclusions or make the most profound creative statement about the current state of the world. Sloane Crosley of The New York Times somewhat ironically warns against this phenomenon, pointing out that “from an artistic standpoint, it’s best to let tragedy cool before gulping it down and spitting it back into everyone’s faces.”

But while this virus is a big collective experience, it’s also inherently solitary — as from our little self-isolation bubbles we attempt to conceptualize where, as individuals, we stand with this new reality. So this is me attempting not to draw any big picture conclusions or spit in anyone’s face, but rather put words to an experience that — like any heartbreak — is PHOTO COURTESY OF MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT immensely personal. I’m dealing n March 25, I boarded a flight from Detroit with the loss of Ann Arbor in the way that I’ve dealt with to Southern California, where I grew up. The every previous heartbreak I’ve gone through — writing airport was eerily empty, the Transportation about it, breaking it down, hoping that doing so will help Security Administration workers wore masks and make sense of the current moment in some small way.

Leaving Ann Arbor was a conscious choice on my behalf, televisions throughout the terminal were broadcasting the latest fatality numbers of COVID-19. Rolling my suitcase which is in large part why it was so difficult to go. Students to my gate, the few people in the terminal gave each other were urged to leave campus, but I was living in off-campus a wide berth, exchanging nervous yet empathetic half- housing. I had an apartment, I had access to a roommates’ smiles. This is weird, everyone said wordlessly to each car, I had friends living around me I could lean on in case of emergency. I could have stayed through the summer other. Things are not as they should be.

I found my seat on the mostly empty plane, leaned as I’d previously been planning on. I could have tried to my head against the freshly disinfected (courtesy of prolong my college experience as long as possible, tried to my antibacterial wipes) window and queued up Peter, take in every last drop of Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor has been my home for the past four years. I Paul and Mary’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Cliche? Most definitely. Yet the lyrics, describing leaving behind a lover have grown into the person I am in this city — in fraternity for some future unknown — “I’m leaving, on a jet plane basements and dingy bars, Mason Hall class discussions / don’t know when I’ll be back again / Oh babe, I hate to on the modern political system where I can’t help but be go” — hit a little too close to home, and I cried, hard, the distracted by the orange-hued leaves of the Diag trees continuation of the past three days of non-stop tears since outside the window, strategizing meetings with friends I’d made the decision it was time for me to leave Ann Arbor. from various campus orgs over Espresso Royale’s wateredAs the clouds soared beneath me, I allowed myself to down Hazelnut blend, late night roommate talks on fully delve into the melodramatic-film-end-scene mood fraying, passed-down couches in run-down college houses of the moment, indulging in feeling shamelessly sorry for weakly lit by a bulb the landlord insists is sufficient for the myself. This global pandemic has unlocked a whole lot of space. I’ve met people that inspire me to take action and weird, big-picture feelings — a sense of uprootedness, a advocate for others, people that taught me to love deeply, floaty kind of dread, grief on a broad, existential scale — all people I now consider my best friends.

This year, my senior year, full of evenings gathered emotions I hadn’t experienced before and didn’t (and still around the living room TV with roommates to do The don’t) really know how to put into more explicit words.

In a perhaps futile effort to make sense of it all, though, New York Times crossword puzzle, weekly wine-fueled I’ve come to the realization that many of these feelings book clubs with friends, and familiar friendly faces in my resonate as variations on one, nastily familiar one: regular coffee shop haunts, Ann Arbor has felt like exactly heartbreak. Leaving Ann Arbor feels, for lack of a better where I needed to be. It’s felt like where I am supposed to comparison, like a breakup — and a pretty shitty one at be — surrounded by a community that knows me well, that supports me, that sees me for who I am. that.

Ann Arbor and I have had a good relationship, a healthy Everyone has their own tragedies right now, a friend of mine aptly put it, whether it be a canceled commencement, one, for the most part. But as in any relationship, things a postponed performance or a more immediate and life- change. Ann Arbor has changed — it’s shuttered, quiet, threatening threat such as loss of a job, a bad home isolated. It’s not the same brimming, full of energy city environment that’s impossible to escape or the disease that I know and love, with coffee shops overflowing with itself. In the grand scheme of people who are impacted by friends, young parents walking their dogs in the Nichols COVID-19, my exodus from Ann Arbor is not a big deal. I Arboretum with offspring in tow, flocks of students toting backpacks and bemoaning upcoming midterms crossing know this. Yet, I’m struggling.

I know the virus is all everyone’s writing about right the Diag on their way to class. The community, the now, in a way that can sometimes feel like a desperate race collective being, has become a shadow of what it once was,

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reduced to a few solitary joggers and roommates braving the outdoors for aimless socially responsible walks.

Surrounded by the echoes of the past four years of my life, it took everything in me not to play dumb, to let myself be convinced that this new status quo was anything close to what had once been. I wanted, so badly, to believe that the community and support I’d felt in this town was still there. It would have been easier, perhaps, to stay. To prolong the stage of life that was Ann Arbor. But, I quite reluctantly forced myself to recognize that staying in Ann Arbor was hurting me more than it was helping me — it was just a constant reminder of what was and what could have been.

I chose to come home to California. I chose to be with my family in a time of widespread uncertainty, to let myself have some stability for the moment, to spend time in the sunshine, read and wait. Still, though, letting go wasn’t — and isn’t — easy.

Having to make the choice to leave, to break-up with not only this city, but the person I am there, is terrifying.

I’ve left before of course, for summers or study abroad, but I’ve always come back. Who am I without even the future promise of Ann Arbor to remind me? Ann Arbor is where I’ve had the space to question who I am as an independent human being, to shape an identity free of the constraints of my hometown. The person I am in Ann Arbor is selfassured, knows who and what she values and is confident in her role in her friendships and her own ability to take on the world. Is that person still there, if Ann Arbor isn’t anymore?

This transition was going to come anyways. I wasn’t going to stay in college, and in Ann Arbor, forever. But the suddenness, the lack of resolution or clarity has made the change hit so much harder. I wanted this relationship to end with some real closure, where Ann Arbor and I could reflect on all the growth and good experiences we’d had with our time, celebrating the end of an era with graduation caps and champagne. I was planning on leaving Ann Arbor with my friends in tow, an entire class of college graduates entering the post-graduate world with each other to lean on. Instead, we’re all scattered back to our parents’ houses, hiding from the shadow of our 17-year-old selves — prematurely leaving behind the city that’s given us so much, the friends we’ve made, the sense of self we’ve forged in this place.

Despite how unfair it feels and how badly I wish I could get those last two months back, I’m trying to come with terms with the fact that it’s time for me to let go. Maybe someday Ann Arbor and I can reconcile — but I don’t know, and I’m not counting on it. So for now, I’m saying my goodbyes, while retaining what I can of the person Ann Arbor has taught me to become.

Now, at home, I’m trying to make sense of what my new role is in this weird in-between stage of life, while the world does the same around me. Unlike most conventional breakups, I can’t really rebound right now. I can’t go out to my town’s movie theater, sit in the square outside the café and have my cup of coffee, fall in love with the laughter and community and collective being of another place.

So I’m doing what I can. Writing, lots. Processing in the only way I know how. Talking to friends on the phone. Trying to not beat myself up for the days when productivity seems near impossible, when I give in to consuming various forms of mind-numbing media from the comforts of my couch. Recognizing that, as with all heartbreaks, I will heal — it’s just going to take some time to get over this one.

8B

Wednesday, April 8, 2020 // The Statment

V ISUA L STAT E M E N T: PORTR A ITS OF INDI A PHOTOS BY RYAN LITTLE