2020-04-15

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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‘Campus is pretty dead’: Students who stayed behind feel impact of living in empty town As virus spreads, once crowded places now stand unused, leaving population to adjust SAINI KETHIREDDY Daily Staff Reporter

Instead of leaving Ann Arbor to go home, Nursing junior Rachel Quigley still works as a nurse’s aide at the University of Michigan Hospital to fill the growing need for health professionals during the coronavirus pandemic. She said, in light of her lung condition, it’s reassuring to see the hospital taking extra precautions to keep their staff on campus safe.

“I love my job and the experience especially right now, it’s interesting to see how the hospital is handling the situation, and what my future workplace may look like if something like this were to ever happen again,” Quigley said. “I’m kind of worried about getting the virus but I trust the PPE (personal protective equipment). I have a lung condition so I can’t work with COVID patients, and they’re taking

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extra precautions in making sure everyone is safe.”

Quigley said campus looks vacant as people seem to be social distancing properly to help curb the

pandemic.

“The campus looks very empty and bare, it’s really sad,” Quigley said. “If you walk into the Diag or near the other buildings on campus,

it just feels kind of wrong … I’m glad though to see people social distancing. I’ll see when people are talking from different houses or groups, they are far apart. It looks

Letter calls for diversity in management

Rev. Al Sharpton asks ‘U’ to disclose demographics of team overseeing $12.4 billion endowment CALDER LEWIS

Daily Staff Reporter

Civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton called on the University of Michigan to release a report on the number of African Americans involved in the management of the school’s endowment in a letter to University President Mark Schlissel and Chief Investment Officer Erik Lundberg last month.

Sharpton, writing on behalf of his organization, the National Action Network, requested diversity data both on University staff managing the endowment and leadership of the asset management firms the University works with.

Citing numerous studies that show women and people of color are underrepresented in asset management despite performing at the same level as

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their peers, Sharpton argued that increasing diversity is not just a matter of moral responsibility, but “a question of fiduciary responsibility.”

“If a trustees’ responsibility is to maximize returns, why are

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elite institutions using women and people of color at palpably low rates?” Sharpton wrote.

Robert Sellers, vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at the University, responded to Sharpton’s letter

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by reaffirming the University’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

“The University is currently in the midst of a planning process where every school, college and campus unit created a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic plan addressing its unique local needs and opportunities,” wrote Sellers.

Sharpton cited a December University of California report on its diverse investment strategy as a model for the University and institutions across the country. The report detailed the UC Investment Office’s workforce diversity trends by racial and gender makeup, the number of minority- and women-owned investment partners and a qualitative survey of diversity and inclusion approaches at 15 of its largest investment partner firms.

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See LETTER, Page 3A

like people are actually taking it seriously. And if people are partying, it looks like it’s just their housemates in their front yards.”

See CAMPUS, Page 2A

ANN ARBOR

Candidates participate in virtual forum

City Council hopefuls debate local issues at digital event BARBARA COLLINS & BRAYDEN HIRSCH Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter

Candidates for Wards 4 and 5 of the Ann Arbor City Council participated in an online forum via BlueJeans Tuesday afternoon. During the event, students enrolled in Public Policy 456/756 at the University of Michigan asked candidates questions about affordable housing, carbon neutrality and the coronavirus pandemic.

Jack Eaton, D-Ward 4, is running for re-election.

See FORUM, Page 3A

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2A — Wednesday, April 15, 2020

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DOMINICK SOKOTOFF/Daily Members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) host a car rally for fair wages throughout the streets of Ann Arbor Friday afternoon.

Michigan Medicine receives 22,000 unusable surgical masks Defunct supplies from federal stockpile sent to hospital amid virus outreak EMMA STEIN

Daily News Editor

As part of its effort to curb the impact of COVID-19, the federal government shipped more than 700,000 surgical masks to the state of Michigan last week from its stockpile.

Michigan Medicine received 22,000 of those masks, but they are defunct, the Detroit Free Press reported on Tuesday.

Michigan Medicine spokeswoman Mary Masson told The Daily in an email that 2,000 of these masks were initially distributed to employees, but they, along with the remaining 20,000, were quickly removed from inventory after discovering they were less durable. She noted Michigan Medicine has enough masks without them.

“Michigan Medicine distributed about 2,000 of 22,000 ear loop masks we received from the strategic national

CAMPUS From Page 1A Engineering junior Simrun Buttar is still living on campus, primarily to keep her family members back home safe.

“My grandma lives at home with me in California and I’m kind of worried if I’m not absolutely sure I don’t have (the coronavirus), that I don’t positively put any member of my family member in danger,” Buttar said.

Buttar said it’s also helpful to be on campus for one of her engineering courses, which requires an extensive amount of understanding.

“It’s a class where I really struggle to learn the concepts, and I’ve tried a lot to go virtual with it, where my group member is in his apartment and I’m in mine,” Buttar said. “But, I feel it’s not the same substitutability as us being in-person.”

One difficulty she has faced with living off-campus is getting food, she

stockpile last week,” Masson said. “We found them to be less durable and so have removed as many as possible from inventory and are not distributing the rest. We currently have an adequate supply of face masks so we were able to provide others to our staff.”

This comes after Michigan Medicine nurses have expressed their frustration about the lack of personal protective equipment and the fact they are not allowed to bring their own personal protective equipment, such as N95 masks, to work.

Michigan reported 27,001 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on April 14, with 772 of those in Washtenaw County.

As of April 7, more than 100 Michigan Medicine employees have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Michigan, however, is not the only state to receive unusable equipment from the federal stockpile. Alabama received 6,000 masks with dry rot and

150 of the ventilators sent to California were broken.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer engaged in a public conversation with President Donald Trump from late March to early April where the two exchanged criticisms of their respective handling of the pandemic.

Whitmer asked for supplies from the federal government, including protective equipment and testing kits.

Out of the 25,000 ventilators requested

by Whitmer, she received 400 from the federal stockpile, as of April 7.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people wash their hands often and avoid touching their faces. Anyone who believes they have been exposed to COVID-19 should call their primary care physician or reach out to the local health department, which in Washtenaw County can be reached at 734-544-6700.

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

explained. Buttar cannot get groceries as she normally would as she doesn’t have a car, Instacart is already working with a high volume of deliveries and the rental car services in Ann Arbor, like Maven, shut down due to COVID19. She said she has since been using a meal plan at South Quad.

“Usually I’d just go to MoJo because it’s a lot closer to me and it’s my favorite dining hall,” Buttar said. “But now I’ll make the trek over to South Quad just because it’s the only one open, and I’m mindful of the groceries I still have because I know restocking it will be a challenge.”

Still, Buttar reflected on how an empty campus has allowed her to restart some of her old hobbies. For instance, she said she has recently started knitting again, ordered a paintby-numbers set and started watching TV shows to keep herself busy.

University alum Markeidus Hall worked at Markley Dining Hall until it closed due to the novel coronavirus.

He stayed in Ann Arbor in his off-

campus housing to not put his mother, who has a compromised immune system, at risk. He said his time spent outside and exercise have dropped significantly given the stay-at-home order.

“Before everything closed, I was definitely playing basketball at the CCRB (Central Campus Recreation Building) and doing outdoor activities and stuff,” Hall said. “I also got a decent amount of walking in getting (to) and working at Markley Dining Hall, too, before it closed and they recommended us to stay at home ...

Now, it’s basically a ghost town out there. The most exercise I get is pacing back and forth in my room.”

Hall graduated early last semester and reflected on the difficulties affecting his classmates graduating in the spring given the postponement of commencement and other activities pertaining to graduation.

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LETTER From Page 1A In an interview with The Daily, Sharpton offered advice to students on how to advocate for the University to lead on diverse asset management as well.

“They should demand transparency and they should demand to know,” Sharpton said.

“If they, in fact, get the data and there is not enough diversity, they should demand that there be an aggressive move to try and correct that without sacrificing the return on investment.”

Sharpton told The Daily that reporting on the diversity of asset management would help the University sustain its investments while growing closer to its core values of diversity, equity and inclusion.

“One, it could bring them people that could perform better, so they would benefit financially,” Sharpton said. “And second, it would show that they frankly practice what they preach ... It should be firms that can show that they can outperform or perform at the level of those agencies or companies that they were already dealing with. We’re not asking for charity here, but we’re asking for a lack of exclusion, and there must be an aggressive move toward that end.”

FORUM From Page 1A Challengers to Eaton include Jen Eyer, a former journalist for MLive and the Ann Arbor News, and Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist.

Erica Briggs and Dan Michniewicz are running for the Ward 5 seat, which is currently occupied by Chip Smith, D-Ward 5. All candidates participated in the forum.

Jack Eaton, Democrat for Ward 4 Eaton, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Ann Arbor in 2018, was first elected to the council in 2013 and then re-elected in 2015 and 2017.

Eaton said he has been working with various local Ann Arbor groups such as the Huron Valley Area Labor Federation and local civil rights groups to further his campaign.

“I believe that residents and voters in Ann Arbor deserve to be listened to and that the duty of an elected official is to weigh all of the diverse opinions that people have and to do the best to address the concerns of everyone, not just their supporters,” Eaton said. “My core issues have always been the environment, labor and employment issues and civil rights.”

Eaton said he supports addressing affordability issues in Ann Arbor. To do so, he said the city must focus on only constructing buildings that are needed and should not support unnecessary housing proposals.

“When we removed all the barriers to development in

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Robert Raben, founder and president of the consulting firm The Raben Group, founded the Diverse Asset Managers Initiative in 2014 and works with NAN to increase the number of, and assets under management by, minorityand women-owned asset management firms, according to its website. He praised the UC report for being the first of its kind among major universities.

“I give them nothing but points,” Raben said. “Their numbers are low and they still put them out because they want to improve, whereas Michigan won’t even engage in the conversation.”

According to Raben, universities are the last major entity in the economy to widely release data on asset management diversity.

“There’s something very odd going on that an entire field won’t even talk about whether it’s working with women or people of color,” Raben said.

The University’s endowment was valued at $12.4 billion in June 2019, the ninth-largest in the country and third-largest among public universities nationwide. Sharpton also sent letters to other institutions with large endowments such as Yale University and Harvard University.

Raben said he believes lobbying large, established universities will

create a domino effect in diverse asset management reporting.

“There’s hundreds of billions of dollars in university endowments,” Raben said. “Our theory is that if Cal and Harvard and Michigan and Cornell and Stanford, Texas, etc. recognize that they’re missing out on talent and performance, then the rest of the field will follow. So, number one, we’re dealing with Michigan because of its importance in the field.”

Student activism led the University to freeze new fossil fuel investments in February, a first for a Big Ten school.

Diverse asset management is not an easy ask for chief investment officers, according to Raben. He said firms that university asset managers already work with have an incumbency advantage, making it hard for diverse-owned firms to enter investment pools.

“If I was persuaded that I should work with people of color or women, it means I would have to take $100 million or $500 million from somebody,” Raben said. “There’s no new money. And so it would mean that the CIO would have to go to JP Morgan or Carlyle or KKR or whomever it’s been working with for 20 years, and say ‘I want to move 100 million or 500 million from you to a Black asset manager.’”

The University’s website

our downtown area without making any requirements of the developers, what we ended up with was high priced luxury apartments,” Eaton said. “We have since revisited the zoning in those areas and required that tall buildings and dense buildings include some affordable units and some other considerations.”

Jen Eyer, Democrat for Ward 4 Eyer said she has worked with the Michigan Municipal League Foundation for the past year on their SaveMICity campaign. She said the campaign highlights Michigan’s broken system of municipal finance.

Eyer also said the SaveMICity campaign shines a light on how Proposal A, which addresses how public schools in Michigan are funded, and the Headlee Amendment, which placed limitations on the collection of local taxes among other provisions, have played off of each other.

“Frankly, the state’s lack of sharing revenue with cities, to the extent that they’re supposed to — those things have all combined with Michigan cities being chronically underfunded,” Eyer said. “ … That’s going to get worse in the next year because of the COVID pandemic.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, Eyer said she is connecting with citizens, listening to issues they are facing and trying to find a solution to their problems.

“I was a journalist for many years,” Eyer said. “In that role, it was my job to use technology to reach out to various people’s organizations, different segments of the community and engage

them with our reporting and also figure out what the issues were in their lives that we may want to report on.”

Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, Democrat for Ward 4 Savabieasfahani, a contestant speaking at City Council meetings and a participant in anti-Israel protests, said she has heard the council talk about affordable housing for as long as she has lived in Ann Arbor. Despite this ongoing discussion, Savabieasfahani said she does not believe affordable housing exists in the city and supports the implementation of public housing.

“I know public housing to the ear of Americans will sort of bring in mind dilapidated homes with crimes, et cetera, et cetera,” Savabieasfahani said. “But that is basically because the real estate industry has been pushing against public housing and has been very much against it, and that’s the result that you see here. However, public housing is the best way that we can make sure that people have a roof over their heads.”

During the forum, Savabieasfahani placed a large focus on the importance of establishing a minimum wage of $15 per hour. Savabieasfahani said this will help make Ann Arbor a more livable city for its residents.

“I am basically saying we must provide a much better living environment for our low-income population. Otherwise, COVID19 and many more epidemics that are on the way are going to break our back as they are breaking our backs now,” Savabieasfahani said.

“We need to make sure that people who work in this town can get $15 an hour.”

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 — 3A

states the endowment is shielded from “political pressures” and investment decisions are based solely on financial factors.

Additionally, Schlissel told The Daily in a Feb. 25 interview he doesn’t believe the University should shift the direction of endowment funds in response to the political beliefs of the student body.

“I think that’s both inappropriate and very risky,” Schlissel said. “You know, in a world where we value free speech and we value diversity, I think I can disagree with the owner of a business but still do business with the business. So, I don’t think those things should enter into investment decisions at all.”

Raben’s initiative recently surveyed the top 30 investment consulting firms in the nation on their diversity data. However, he said conversations with University officials have not been as productive as those with private industry.

“When I talked to (Lundberg) two years ago, he told me that he was willing to work with us, but he also told us that he didn’t engage in social engineering,” Raben said. “I took offense to that.

I said, ‘I don’t think working with talented people of color is social engineering.’ He said his board, his Regents instructed him not to engage in social engineering.

Savabieasfahani also mentioned her platform focuses on making sure Ann Arbor has enough money in its budget to run smoothly.

Erica Briggs, Democrat for Ward 5 Briggs, a walking and cycling advocate in the city, said she supports increased density in places like Ann Arbor. She said more density offers multiple benefits, such as better options for transportation and more housing.

“When you have more people grouped together, you have more services,” Briggs said. “I like the idea of neighborhoods where you can go to the corner grocery, you can go to that, go to a bakery, go to a department store. That’s only enabled by density.”

Throughout her career, Briggs said she has worked almost entirely in transportation. She said investing in alternate modes of transportation will help achieve the city’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030 through the A2Zero plan, which was launched March 30.

Briggs also talked about the coronavirus. She said citizens will be facing financial distress due to the pandemic long after the outbreak dies down.

“Evictions have been put off for now, but I’m really worried for when this stay-at-home order gets lifted. We’ll see hundreds and hundreds of folks evicted across our community,” Briggs said. “I think that’s something that our city council needs to be working on.”

Dan Michniewicz, Democrat for Ward 5 Michniewicz, who is a baker at Zingerman’s Bakehouse, said he is currently furloughed from his job

And I said, ‘If you’re only curating white people, would you consider that social engineering?’ He did not respond.”

University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald did not offer further comment on Raben’s conversation with Lundberg.

Lundberg’s 2019-2020 salary was $850,000, the sixth-highest at the University, according to the annual Salary Disclosure Report. Raben noted that CIOs are often among the highestpaid officials in universities and said their decisions are typically unquestioned by asset managers and trustees.

“This is the mindset of some of these CIOs, that a conversation about working with people of color is some sort of social experiment, like it’s 1941,” Raben said. “In every other area of American economic life, corporate boards, c-suites, employment — white people don’t quibble with the premise of diversity anymore.

Nobody quibbles with whether or not having Black people, Hispanic people in your employment is a bad idea. But in asset management, and the CIO of Michigan, they dispute the premise. They don’t think it matters whether or not talented people of color are included. And I’m just astounded by that.”

Reporter Calder Lewis can be reached at calderll@umich.edu.

baking bread. He said he has made a living working in restaurants, delis and kitchens since living in Ann Arbor.

“There’s 84,000 people who commute to Ann Arbor every day, and don’t you think some of them would like to live in Ann Arbor?” Michniewicz said. “And I say to that, well, I work with these people. I organize politically with people of this economic stature. And we can do a better job of advocating for our own interests and advancing our own causes than our current political leadership can.”

Michniewicz said his platform focuses on ecological action and economic inequality. Michniewicz also placed an emphasis on housing in Ann Arbor and making sure that all of the land is used to its full potential.

“I’m going to prioritize the creation of social housing like we see through the Ann Arbor Housing Commission,” Michniewicz said. “I’m somewhat pleased with the route that the current city council is taking by looking at things like surfacelevel parking lot property that we already own, and figuring out how we can maximize the amount of affordable housing that we put on those lots.”

A forum for candidates from Wards 1, 2 and 3 will be held at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday and will be broadcast on the CTN Network.

Elections for city council candidates will be held Aug. 4 along with other statewide races.

Daily News Editor Barbara Collins can be reached at bcolli@ umich.edu.

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

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, April 15, 2020

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The transition to life online

he coronavirus pandemic began as a murmur of distant contagion.

Like many other newsworthy tragedies, it seems unreal and somehow unthreatening until it happens to you. The world has been shocked by a wave of uncertainty. People were ripped from their comfortable nooks of life and normalcy with no warning, no time to process. As a student on the big, bustling University of Michigan campus, my daily routine has shifted largely.

However, I’ve chosen to develop a positive perspective on my new reality — a decision I know is a privilege not everyone has the opportunity to make in this unprecedented time. My routine can continue, and there are even new possibilities that were not available to me in Ann Arbor ( beyond that of quality New Jersey bagels and access to Wawa coffee). I’ve found peace in a new perspective and the prospect of technolog y.

With stay-at-home orders restricting many from leaving their homes, it becomes increasingly challenging to make days feel anything but mundane. It was not until a week ago that I realized the importance of something I had completely underestimated the role of throughout quarantine: technolog y. I would like to recognize that this is not a luxury enjoyed by all. This, however, made my realization even stronger: We need technolog y not only for ourselves but especially for individuals without the opportunities and resources we so often take for granted.

Zoom, BlueJeans, Google Hangouts and more video platforms have become the new classrooms for countries across the globe. Without technolog y, this would not be possible. While there is undeniably a difference in learning through my computer screen in my pajamas, I still have the opportunity to learn from professors I’ve grown comfortable listening to over a semester’s worth of work. I am grateful for the chance to

continue my education even if the circumstances are a bit unorthodox. I unexpectedly find myself longing for lecture halls yet remain grateful for the familiar vibrato of my professors’ voices through a time where nearly everything else is uncharted territory. Not only school but work, too, has been transitioned to remote operations — an unthinkable feat without solid WiFi and access to internet software.

Despite being isolated to a house with only my mom, my dad and my dog, I have the ability to regularly talk to my sister in Nashville, Tennessee, and my brother in a house around the corner.

Technolog y has presented us with the possibility to continue conversing with friends, family and colleagues.

My four-year-old niece has learned to ask us to “Zoom her” and my family regularly conducts games over different video chat rooms. Moving out of a constantly occupied dorm building to a home occupied by three people has felt much livelier than anticipated. With everyone experiencing this pandemic simultaneously, it seems communication is actually more common now than before our lives were essentially paused until further notice. The sheer possibility of communicating with the outside world — family, friends and beyond — helps to keep potential loneliness and the inevitable stir-craziness at bay.

The routine I had grown so comfortable replicating day after day may have been taken away from me. My trips to the University of Michigan Museum of Art cafe may now be trips down the stairs to my Keurig, but I am grateful to be able to adapt my perspective to the new circumstances around me. It is this adaptation that I encourage you to focus on.

The space around us can be refocused to provide the different sectors of our lives a temporary substitute for the musty tables in Hatcher Graduate Library and a Friday night trip to Frita Batidos.

While I yearn for my daily walks to CityRow, I am thankful for the unbelievable camaraderie demonstrated by fitness apps and instructors everywhere. Free memberships and Instagram/ Facebook Live have provided people the opportunity to continue to exercise, dance, sing and even act from the comfort (and safety) of their homes. In lieu of movie theater releases, movies have been streamed online and uploaded to different streaming networks.

The world has adapted and molded to fit this new technological way of life.

While all of these uses of technolog y and social media platforms are arguably incredible adaptations to a social-distancing lifestyle, it is the access to news and applications that augment safety measures that stand out amid the coronavirus pandemic. Being informed on the latest news is imperative to navigate this crisis in the safest and most effective way to “f latten the curve.”

Additionally, apps like Instacart allow people to avoid grocery stores and thus avoid potentially infecting others or themselves.

Though I encourage people to continue to go outside safely and avoid an overwhelming amount of screen time, it has been reassuring to find something positive amid a very negative time in history.

Without technolog y, life truly would be paused for everyone, but instead, we have found a way to adapt to this new, much smaller world available to each of us, albeit much more virtually than ever before. In the absence of The Michigan Daily paper to hold, we have continued to write and publish to our virtual platform. With my regular morning coffee, my phone acts as a substitute for the paper I know I will someday hold again. For now, I’m happy to report that my phone will suffice.

Jess D’Agostino can be reached at jessdag@umich.edu.

The sacred vote

obody should have to choose between their vote and their health, but Wisconsin voters faced this decision due to reckless and politically-motivated actions taken by the Republican Party and a complicit United States Supreme Court.

As COVID-19 forces stay-athome orders and social distancing, numerous states have postponed their primary elections in the name of public health. This is the right decision. Having people leave their homes in the middle of a pandemic and gather en masse at polling places, interacting with others and touching shared surfaces, is clearly a recipe for disaster.

In order to protect his constituents, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers tried to postpone the state’s primary election until June. However, the GOP had other plans.

The GOP sued to keep the April 7 election date, taking the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a five to four ideological split, the conservative justices voted to allow the election to be held on the original date. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, joined by the other three liberal justices, dissented, saying that continuing to hold the election “will result in massive disenfranchisement.”

This disenfranchisement of voters was clear during Election Day. Fears over COVID19 led to a shortage of poll workers and widespread poll closures. Milwaukee, a diverse city with about 600,000 residents, had their usual 180 polling places reduced to just five. This led to hours-long lines with people having to wait outside during bouts of rain and hail. Overall turnout was down significantly from 49 percent in the 2016 primary to 31 percent.

This lower turnout can in part be attributed to only one party having a competitive primary, but the inf luence of COVID-19 can also not be overlooked.

Though Wisconsin has no-excuse absentee voting, which allows people to vote via mail instead of in-person and is one of the most promising ways to vote during a pandemic, Wisconsin’s system has many issues.

Some voters did not receive their absentee ballots despite requesting them. Another major issue was that the appeals court upheld a requirement that every person who submits an absentee ballot must have a witness sign their ballot before it can be returned. For people who are self-isolating or live alone, this can be a major barrier to voting.

The inability for some people to vote was not a coincidence, it was a coordinated strategy to disenfranchise certain voters.

COVID-19 is mostly concentrated in the urban areas in Wisconsin, such as Milwaukee. Therefore, many of the less diverse suburban and rural areas did not experience the same poll closures and fears compared to the larger, more diverse cities. It is evident that holding the in-person election was a thinly veiled action on the part of the state GOP to disenfranchise diverse voters who overwhelmingly support Democrats.

The most important race on the ballot was not the Democratic primary, instead, it was a Wisconsin state Supreme Court race. There is currently a lawsuit pending before the court about a move by the state legislature to purge more than 200,000 voters from the voter rolls.

The decision will have repercussions for the 2020 election, given that President Donald Trump won Wisconsin by exactly one percent in 2016. The purging of the voter rolls is a move by the GOP to help Trump and once again disenfranchise young people and minorities. Wisconsin voters clearly understood the importance of this race, as they elected the Democratic judicial candidate in a shocking upset.

As infuriating and saddening as it was to witness this blatant act of voter suppression, it was still inspiring to see voters determined to exercise their basic rights. These were people who were willing to struggle for their vote.

They were willing to stand for hours in the rain and the hail. They were willing to put their own safety at risk all to exercise their right to vote.

However, there is something that we all can learn from this. So often when I talk to people on campus about voting, they say it is too hard or too complicated. We don’t know “hard.”

“Hard” is knowing that you can either put your life at risk and go to the polls or stay home but allow the fraudulent election of a judge who may take away your right to vote. Going to the polls took courage. So many people in this country and around the world cannot vote, but they would — and often do — risk it all for that right.

So the next time there is an election and you aren’t sure if you want to take the time to vote, think about the people who went to the polls in Wisconsin. Let their courage inspire you to participate in our democracy in a way that many people cannot.

Fears over COVID19 led to a shortage of poll workers and widespread poll closures.

Isabelle Schindler can be reached at ischind@umich.edu.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2020 — 5A

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

A profile of Ann Arbor’s legendary Rick’s Dancer MIRIAM FRANCISCO Daily Arts Writer

If you’ve been to Rick’s, you’ve probably seen Sam June dancing. A second-year master’s student in electrical engineering, June takes the stage for hours every weekend. Unusually, though, he usually dances alone and sober. While many people go to Rick’s for sloppy make-outs and cheap drinks, he goes to find solace in dancing solo.

It all started on June’s twentyfirst birthday. He and three friends went to Rick’s, and even though he’d never really danced before, he found himself enjoying the experience.

He decided he wanted to try dancing again, but his friends weren’t always up for it — so he went alone.

“I would get bored, so I would go to Slounge or Rick’s or Cantina, and for a long time I never really danced,” he said. “I just sat in the back corner and maybe listened to music and brief ly said hi to (a) friend or two if I saw them. I didn’t feel really comfortable dancing by myself at that time.”

At home, he found himself dancing for

fun. “My bedroom closet is like a giant sliding mirror,” he said. “I would dance by myself and see what it looked like. It helped me to determine if something looked stupid or if I was like, ‘Oh, that didn’t look half bad.’”

June kept going back to bars, but he hadn’t worked up the confidence to dance yet. “It went on for months where I wouldn’t really dance at all, and it would kind of suck because one of my favorite songs would come on and I’d feel like I couldn’t really dance to it,” he said.

This attitude helped June decide what was more important to him; his joy trumped other people’s opinions.

Finally, he decided to just go for it.

“One day, months down the line, one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs came on,” he explained. “I said ‘No, I’m gonna get up and dance.

I don’t even care if everyone makes fun of me, I’m gonna do it.’”

He positioned himself in the back of the dance f loor behind two groups of friends and began to dance. “That was the night a gate first opened up for me,” he said.

Rick’s can be sort of like a middle school dance — you see people you know, and you want them to see you, too. But for June, the

SAM JUNE

people around him don’t really figure into it.

“When I started dancing on stage, I never did it for the crowd,” he said. “In fact, at first, I got nervous of what other people were saying about me. A pair of friends would be standing off to the side and exchanging whispers while staring up at me. Some might point and laugh while taking a picture or Snapchat video. Initially, I thought most people were ridiculing and insulting me, but I didn’t let it bother me.”

This attitude helped June decide what was more important to him; his own joy or other people’s opinions. His joy won out.

“At a point, I realized that it didn’t matter if those two girls in the back of the room were making fun of me; it didn’t matter if that one person taking a video of me was adding a degrading caption; it didn’t matter if that friend group was laughing at how bad

my dancing was,” he said. “None of those things mattered because I wasn’t on the stage to seek validation or be the center of attention.”

Instead, he decided to just enjoy himself.

“I was happy because I was dancing and having fun in a way that made sense to me.

When I dance, I feel like I don’t have to hold back from being myself, and it’s a very empowering feeling,” June said. “Dancing never fails to make me happy, no matter what kind of negativity is weighing on me.”

Now that Rick’s is closed due to the pandemic, June is finding new ways to use dancing to express himself and connect with others.

“Once quarantine kicked in, I got the idea to make a TikTok to keep the dancing spirit alive, even though Rick’s is off-limits,” he said. “So now every few days I post a video of myself dancing to a song I like.”

BOOK REVIEW

‘Followers’ depicts our alarming dependence on technology LILLY PEARCE Daily Arts Writer

Stuck inside, days blending together, time practically slipping through our fingers, it is technology that we cling to during this unprecedented period. Our reality is grounded with technology. It allows us to remain connected to the outside world. And though it’s true technology has become one of the most invaluable tools right now, this increased dependency has made us overlook the dangers of technology, the dangers that are explored in Megan Angelo’s debut novel, “Followers.”

With an extremely relevant look into our learned reliance on technology, Angelo makes you rethink your online presence — so much so that I now feel particularly paranoid when I find myself checking my Instagram feed and updating my Twitter timeline more than I ever have before.

Angelo tells the story in two timelines: one set in 2015 with ambitious blogger Orla, who is stuck working as an inglorious reporter for a gossip magazine, and the other set in 2051 with celebrity Marlow, whose entire life has been broadcasted 24/7 for the rest of the world to watch. Angelo alternates between these storylines, dropping hints to what has caused this distinct evolution of technology and transformation of American life known as the “Spill.”

Orla strives to do something more with her life.

She dreams of writing the novel that drove her to move to New York in the first place, but instead finds herself devoting the majority of her time to writing frivolous magazine articles on uprising influencers. We see her frustration growing while she resides on the outskirts of celebrity life, until her roommate, Floss, invents a scheme that will place both of them in the limelight of

fame. Floss is desperate to be known, and Orla is which technology influences both dystopian desperate to transform her life, so together, the societies, despite 2015 being very much grounded two capitalize on Orla’s position writing for the in present-day circumstances. That is what blog, Lady-ish, to propel Floss to stardom.Tired made the modern setting of the book so striking of being nobodies, they convince the world that — the fact that the majority of the events that Floss is somebody. occur could actually happen; as Orla and Floss Marlow, on the other hand, has been a manipulate social media for their benefit, the beloved celebrity since birth but is now growing feasibility of a modern dystopia revealed itself, suspicious of her fans’ adoration. Marlow lives and to be living in a time where we spend our by the stage cues of the Constellation Network days glued to our devices, I quickly became that orchestrates the lives of all its contributors, paranoid as I wondered about what opportunities deciding everything from the clothes they wear this increased reliance on technology presented to the food they eat. Only one hour every day, from for ambitious manipulators, hackers and even three to four a.m., is not just bored quarantined broadcasted to Marlow’s scrollers, all of whom have 12 million followers. But too much time on their despite her large following, hands. she wonders why she feels My paranoia eased “Followers” so alone. This curiosity when I read from Marlow’s Megan Angelo is only encouraged by perspective in 2051. This the questions that arise world didn’t feel as real Graydon House in Marlow’s path, the (and at times, was difficult Jan. 14, 2020 inexplicability that for me to visualize at develops as she learns more all), given the futuristic about her own past and the additions of robots and past of American society disturbing devices everyone that the Constellation had implemented in their Network has kept secret wrists.

These devices from her for so long. connect to the host’s brain, reminding me of Siri, Having grown up in Constellation, California, or Amazon’s Alexa, only in your head rather than all that Marlow knows is what the Constellation your device. Marlow can think of any question Network has told her. In her future state, she is and the device responds to her as if it were her aware of the Spill, but is unfamiliar with specific own thought. The devices ruled out the need for details. Any questions or conversations Marlow technology like cell-phones and computers, given has about the Spill are quickly suppressed by the the perpetual availability of knowledge in one’s network, which only piques her interest more. own mind.

She wants answers that she is not getting, so But though my paranoia had passed its peak, as she has done all her life on camera, Marlow that is not to say I am not thoroughly creeped out. decides to act.

I am already disturbed to find advertisements of It was harrowing to witness the extent to products on my social media timeline that I had

previously mentioned in passing, nevertheless actually searched, so I could not imagine having an even more powerful device linked directly to my inner thoughts.

Nevertheless, I found the alarming presence of technology to be one of the most interesting aspects of the book. But, as I was reading to discover more about the “Spill” that led to the eradication of modern technology and the imminent innovation of the devices in 2051, I found myself getting lost in the superfluous details Angelo includes about the regular lives of Orla and Marlow. Angelo neglects to really characterize either of their personalities and as a result, their personal stories never really captivated me. Maybe they were just boring.

There was incredible content for Angelo to run with, had she narrowed focus on the manipulation of technology by these characters, but instead, she focused on rather irrelevant details of the characters’ lives that slowed the progression of the novel. Orla was too caught up talking about her highschool crush, whose role was completely unimportant to the storyline by the time he was introduced; Floss was characterized to have an incredibly strange backstory we never got to hear; Marlow was written too placidly. Excitement seemed to run away from her.

While the applicability of the problematic technological usage made the book relevant, the unfulfilled characterization and dull, redundant backstories made the book feel a lot longer than it actually was. If Angelo would have focused on the dystopian effects of technology and taken more of the “Black Mirror” route with the presence and infiltration of our devices, the book would have been far more gripping. The commentary on our reliance on our phones and computers is stirring, but the overall book was not as enthralling as it had promised to be.

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Arts

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 — 6A

TV NOTEBOOK

Why the makeshift finale of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ works JUSTIN POLLACK Daily Arts Writer

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, “Grey’s Anatomy” halted production on their season, before eventually cutting it short by four episodes. While it wasn’t the ending that was planned, the Season 16 finale of “Grey’s” was a satisfying one. Time and time again, the longest running medical drama in the history of television has proved its ability to pivot when something unexpected happens. After all, the production shutdown wasn’t the first hurdle “Grey’s” had to overcome this season; earlier, adjustments had to be made after Justin Chambers’ abrupt exit. It still remains unclear if the four unproduced episodes will roll over to the next season, but this makeshift finale had enough action and drama to hold us all over until the start of Season 17 — which has been rumored to be the final season.

Time and time again, the longest running medicaldrama in the history of television has proven its ability to pivot when something unexpected happens.

For not actually being the originally planned season finale, “Grey’s” sure had some finale staples: a callback to an old “Grey’s” moment, a doctor who might die, another doctor going into labor, a voicemail of someone having sex with someone who wasn’t their fiance that plays on speakerphone during a surgery. Okay, well maybe not that one, but there is something oddly satisfying about watching someone get betrayed and humiliated in a public setting. What happened to Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd, “Star Wars Rebels”) and Teddy Altman (Kim Raver, “24”)

NBC

was true soap opera craziness, and I love to see it.

Right as Webber was about to get checked out of the hospital, our beloved Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo, “Catch Me If You Can”) realizes that whatever is happening to him is destroying both his mind and his body. Meredith and Dr. Bailey (Chandra Wilson, “General Hospital”) are about to do a biopsy on Webber when off-the-rails Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti, “Backpackers”) comes storming into the O.R. He’s figured out what’s wrong with Webber — cobalt poisoning from a hip replacement — but instead of using his words, he throws all the surgical instruments on the f loor to get Bailey and Meredith to listen to him.

Excuse me, sir? This man should not be allowed anywhere near the hospital, let alone an operating room.

He’s clearly not okay. Thankfully, at the end of the episode, as Meredith leaves the hospital, she finds DeLuca sitting on the f loor crying; he wants to understand why he’s been going manic. After he went to jail to help Meredith at the end of last season, now at the end of this season it appears Meredith is going to repay the favor. Had the season continued, one would assume that we would’ve gotten more insight into DeLuca’s bipolar-like symptoms and

how he copes with whatever diagnosis is coming his way.

While Amelia (Caterina Scorsone, “Private Practice”) is giving birth to her child with Link (Chris Carmack, “Nashville”), Bailey takes Link to do the surgery on Webber. Amelia forces Bailey to stay with her, even though Bailey recently had a miscarriage. But being the queen that she is, Bailey hops on the bed and sits behind her the same way that George O’Malley did for her back in the second season. Everything goes smoothly and now Amelia is a mother.

This episode works as a finale because enough of our questions about some season-long storylines have been answered while new ones have been posed. It remains unclear if the new season will continue these character arcs or if some sort of “reset” must happen. Regardless, we anticipate we will get answers as to what’s happening with DeLuca, the fate of Owen and Teddy’s relationship, some sort of resolution to the constant fighting between Webber and his wife Catherine (Debbie Allen, “Grace and Frankie”) and perhaps the answer to the scariest question of all to ponder: will next season be the final season? Only time will tell.

FILM NOTEBOOK

Film scenes from the Apocolypse, Part 3: ‘2012’ SABRIYA IMAMI Daily Arts Writer

Movies are projections. Yes, literally, in the sense of f ilmstock and screens and projectors and bulbs. But movies can also be projections of ourselves — a momentary snapshot of the internal, the introspective, the metaphysical. And given the circumstances, we as the f ilm beat are seeing less literal projections in movie theaters and doing more projecting ourselves. So what are we thinking about?

Among them are whether “When Harry Met Sally” is actually good, our Letterboxd log histories and — of course — the apocalypse. This series will traverse the cinematic doomsday in its eclectic iterations. After all, why g rapple with an uncomfortable reality when you can watch movies that hyperbolize it completely?

— Anish Tamhaney, Daily Film Editor “2012” isn’t an apocalypse movie, not really. Yes, the world is ending, which is technically all you need for an apocalypse, but at its heart, “2012” is a hopeful movie about family.

I had never seen the film before, so when I began watching it, I prepared myself for two and a half hours of death and destruction. There was death and destruction; in fact, IMDb says that the body count in this movie is over 7 billion. But what I wasn’t expecting was that the movie revolves around some really good people doing their best in an atrocious situation, which isn’t exactly an unfamiliar concept right now.

Jackson Curtis (John Cusack, “Grosse Pointe Blank”) is supposed to be taking his kids camping when he finds out the world is ending, the Earth’s core is melting and the crust is breaking apart through earthquakes that authorities claim are nothing to worry about. And when he finds this out, what does he do? Everything he

can to protect his family, even his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. Though the draw of the movie is the apocalypse and scenes like Jackson and his family barely escaping a

Whether it’s a father who puts his life on the line on numerous occasions for his family or a young scientist whose mission is to save not just the billionaires but everyone, there are people who will do whatever they can in a truly awful time.

crumbling California in a tiny plane, the reason why the film is actually worthwhile is because you see that even in horrific, catastrophic times, there are people who are genuinely good. Whether it’s a father who puts his life on

the line on numerous occasions for his family, a young scientist whose mission is to save not just billionaires but everyone, a struggling president who stays with his sinking ship (or country) until the last moment or a mother who begs strangers to save her children even if it means she will die, there are people who will do whatever they can in a truly awful time.

And yes, of course you see the opposite of that as well: people whose selfishness comes to light in catastrophe, but even they have hearts. You may want to hate Adrian Helmsley’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor, “Doctor Strange”) superior Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt, “The Three Musketeers”) because he seems to only want to save the people who can pay their way into a new world or those who have been genetically selected, but you can’t help but feel bad for him when you see him saying goodbye to his ailing mother. Or Yuri Karpov (Zlatko Buric, “Pusher”), who stabbed people in the back multiple times, including his girlfriend Tamara (Beatrice Rosen, “The Dark Knight”) and even Jackson. But in the end, that arrogant Russian puts his kids before everyone else, even himself, which is admirable.

“2012” may be written off as an apocalypse movie, but it’s actually a movie about people who are struggling to do their best and remain good amid tragedy. The reason this movie hit me so hard was because that’s exactly what’s happening right now. While the coronavirus may be showing some people’s truly selfish colors, it’s also revealing that there are some genuinely good people out there. Healthcare workers, grocery store employees, teachers, people making masks to send to hospitals, families who are staying away from their loved ones to protect them … we rely on these good people. It’s difficult, unbearably so at times, but these people do what they have to for the greater good. I think Jackson Curtis would be proud of them.

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | A PR I L 1 5 , 2020

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHELLE FAN

2B Wednesday, April 15, 2020 // The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | A PR I L 1 5 , 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

The Campus Farm keeps growing

I

f there’s one good thing that comes out of this quarantine, it’ll be the little spinach plants my boyfriend Davis and I planted in a garden bed behind his childhood home. A few weeks ago, in a rare haze of productivity, we planned out a summer garden and ordered some seeds.

The first to sow? Spinach. (Which, to my uneducated surprise, does produce seeds.)

We planted them in some seed-starter pellets, shoved them under the couch to “simulate soil darkness conditions,” as Davis pragmatically put it, and waited for those suckers to pop. Lo and behold, they did, and yesterday, with more focus and precision than I’ve given to any of my classes during the past two weeks, I helped him transplant them into the soil outside.

During the past 24 hours, both of us have gone out to check on them.

He’ll gingerly hold the watering can over the buds or I’ll brush some dirt away from their emerging little leaves, which resemble actual spinach more and more each day. This morning I asked him how they did overnight. He replied with a detailed report of their nascent well-being. I imagine it’s how having children feels, especially if children came with far lower stakes, grew to adulthood on their own and then you ate them.

If their growth goes well and all our plants yield, we’ll have — by my comprehensive calculations — about 22 leaves of spinach to eat when all is said and done. Even though it’s not quite enough for a salad, I look forward to gently pulling the leaves off, rinsing them above the sink, and creating something with them. I feel grateful to be able to grow and eat some of my own food, even if it’s just a few leaves of spinach.

I have felt connected to where my food grows before this, though — all of us at the University of Michigan have, whether we realize it or not. Not far from the University’s central campus is the Campus Farm. Nestled behind the Matthei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, in what often feels worlds away from the urban Ann Arbor we’re used to, is organic, local produce growing in four hoop houses, two greenhouses and three acres of arable land.

The first time I volunteered at the Campus Farm was a freezing, rainy day in late October 2017 — we were outside harvesting swiss chard to be sent to the dining halls. I remember not being able to feel my fingers from the cold, but not caring because I was just beginning to realize that the swiss chard in my freezing, muddy hands was the same one I’d eat in East Quad once I got back home.

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

BY ELLIE KATZ, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

the quarantine is lifted.

Lead Manager Carly Sharp, a recent alum, and Student Engagement Manager Lydia Hsu, a senior in the School of Kinesiology, have over six years of experience working at the farm between the two of them. I’ve gotten to know both of them over the past few years through hours of pulling up drip tape and afternoons of harvesting dozens of pounds of spinach. Both Sharp and Hsu are still able to work at the farm during the quarantine.

One thing they’ve been prepping for is the annual plant sale in collaboration with Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum. Each May, the farm sells transplants of popular garden plants like tomatoes and peppers. In an interview with The Daily, Sharp and Hsu said that because of the stay-at-home order in Michigan, “There will literally be thousands and thousands of plants that could go to people and won’t (if the sale can’t happen).”

If the stay-at-home order continues PHOTO COURTESY OF ELLIE KATZ through the summer, the Campus Farm I started volunteering almost every week and won’t be able to plant their normal amount, which means throughout the past three years I’ve been able to help less produce to harvest in the fall and fewer sales made harvest the spinach that was later in my spinach pie in to M-Dining. “Because (M-Dining) is where a lot of our East Quad, the microgreens that were on my bowl of revenue comes from in the fall, it could mean fewer staff stew at Maizie’s Kitchen in the League, the tomatoes in and less programming that we’d be able to support in the the salad bar at South Quad and the squash I took home long run.”

But plants are plants, and they keep doing their thing and cooked for a Thanksgiving meal with my roommates during quarantine. There is still spinach that needs to be once I finally moved out of the dorms.

Initially founded by a group of graduate and harvested and chard that needs to be planted. Hsu said undergraduate students in 2012, the Campus Farm that because it’s been so warm, she plants something in has grown to employ more than 27 student staff; it a greenhouse one day, it will pop out of the soil the next.

Even though it may be a little stunted right now, the supports programming, volunteer and research opportunities, internships and classes; it is entirely student- farm is certainly not going away. “I feel super fortunate managed and makes over $100,000 in revenue and sells and am super proud to be part of an organization that’s nearly 35,000 pounds of produce each year to clients still supporting staff and students right now, and that we like M-Dining and Argus Farm Stop. It also supports have the means to be able to do that as an organization,” the Maize & Blue Cupboard, a food pantry that aims Sharp said.

The best part of the Campus Farm? “It allows so much to ensure “healthy, nutritious, and nourishing food” to those who may face food insecurity, with regular produce collaboration, and community, and autonomy,” Hsu said.

“Whatever ideas we have, we have the space to go forth donations.

Even with the coronavirus quarantine, the Maize with them.”

I know for certain that without my experiences at & Blue Cupboard and the Campus Farm remain in operation. For the Campus Farm at least, there have been the Campus Farm, my 22 leaves of spinach would not be some obvious but necessary changes: The dining halls growing in the backyard right now. This summer Davis have temporarily suspended all orders from the Campus and I plan to grow some jalapenos, cayenne peppers, Farm and nearly all Campus Farm staff are now working banana peppers and cucumbers. The place where they’ll remotely, doing administrative tasks and program and grow is just a small homemade garden bed built from development planning individually and through Zoom some scrap wood with a few screws sticking out, but it meetings. Student and community volunteer workdays does the trick. Virus or no virus, we’re all still learning have also ended until the stay-at-home order ends and how to grow.

Stressed? goPuff will bring you sex toys, canned soup

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 // The Statement 3B 3B

BY VERITY STURM, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

O

ver the past two weeks, my campus house has had 200 multivitamins, 48 beers, 10 bottles of wine, seven pints of ice cream, four bags of chips, two Monster energy drinks and one gallon of spring water delivered to our doorstep.

It’s a grocery haul far too depraved for Instacart or Shipt. We’ve been abusing goPuff, the millennialcatering-convenience-delivery-gigbusiness, with a regularity it was never designed for. Founded in 2013 by Drexel juniors Yakir Gola and Rafael Ilishayev, goPuff started as an on-demand hookah delivery service, hence its endearing moniker. Around a year later, however, these two poster-child disruptors noted that the demands for chips and paper towels were outpacing those for blunt wraps and shisha, and they responded to observed user needs by keenly rebranding as your friendly neighborhood mobile convenience store — a founding myth that will leave an enterprising tech bro absolutely weak in the knees.

In six years, goPuff has expanded to 150 United States locations with an emphasis on urban hubs and college towns, including our own lady Ann Arbor last May. I first heard of it last

variations of the endearment.

We killed time by surfing the site’s unusually comprehensive inventory, searching for some rhyme or reason to its generous definition of “convenience good.” Where else can you buy chewing tobacco, Hot Pockets, shampoo, single cans of Four Loko and $70 Fleshlights in one extremely foul swoop?

Puff Daddy will satisfy you, and you, and you and you, too!

(You get a Fleshlight! You get a Fleshlight!)

When I explained this phenomenon to a neighbor during a socially-distanced porch hang they bark-laughed at me and replied, “Good to see neoliberalism is still doing well!” which was very effective in slowing my roll about it all because they’re totally right (though I know for a fact ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT my neighbors made Easter mimosas on Sunday morning with champagne they ordered week, though, when I reached the end from none other than Puff of my pre-quarantine booze haul and Daddy — so suck it, 412.) began openly complaining about the The skinny is that like every other dearth of wine. A housemate mentioned gig company out there, goPuff is a goPuff in conciliatory passing and I multimillion-dollar brainchild that looked it up because it sounded funny squeezes its own 1099-contracted (marketing warlocks). Twenty minutes workers for most all operational later I was the proud owner of two resources — vehicles, gas, maintenance, cheap pinots and a dum-dum taped to a phones, insurance — while paying “happy first order” card. Magic. them the minimum and leaving Within days my whole house was them to independently scramble obsessed. We were at the rice-every- for hours. On top of that, goPuff is night end of our pantry stock and backed by a dripping panel of venture trying to avoid grocery stores as long as capitalists including the notorious tech possible. The idea that Ben & Jerry’s or conglomerate SoftBank, aka the literal a full 30-rack of Natty Light could be at daddy of the military-minded robotics the door in half an hour, bing bang boom, company Boston Dynamics, aka the was manna from heaven. The flat $1.95 people loaning robotic dogs to the delivery fee (often negated with promo Massachusetts State Police. Even my codes like “DOUBLEUP,” wink wink) precious Puff Daddy can be traced back coupled with the fact that you don’t to some of the evilest capitalists out have to compete for a slot colored it in there. It begs the question, is anything a particularly miraculous pandemic-era truly free? These are thoughts that light. would make you run for the hills if there What I’m saying is that every 36 weren’t a pandemic. hours, as if by subconscious instinct, While rideshare services — the my house found itself huddling veritable emblem of the neoliberal around someone’s laptop to compose a business model — have tanked in the melodious, collaborative goPuff order. wake of COVID-19, food delivery We began affectionately referring to the gig-services are experiencing service as “Puff Daddy” and clogged one an unprecedented rise in demand, another’s Venmo feeds with half-wit goPuff among them. In a recent email

to The Daily, Liz Romaine, goPuff director of communications, reported “an increase in customer demand,” especially for “household essentials, OTC medications, meat, bread, pasta, canned items and water as well as baby products.”

Forget the impressive array of dip varietals and sex toys. With the arguable exception of certain college houses that may or may not prioritize alcohol over nutrition, most users are out there doing what they can to get what they need in the safest way possible, which includes leveraging an indulgent gig-grocery service for the bare staples.

Romaine did emphasize that goPuff’s “number one priority is keeping our driver-partners, employees, customers and community safe and healthy,” and that goPuff has implemented new policies and procedures to do so amid COVID-19.

For the record, all the driver-partners I’ve interacted with over the last two weeks have worn copious personal protective equipment and performed no-contact delivery, including scanning IDs from a distance when required.

Residents in Philadelphia, however, have had issues with medical gloves and personal protective equipment — all in the brand’s signature bright blue — discarded in public areas outside one of goPuff’s warehouses.

Romaine concluded her email with an announcement of a 90-day hiring push to meet increased demand, complete with links to applications.

Like most everything coronavirusrelated — which, nowadays, is almost everything — it’s hard to tell whether these changes constitute a temporary, passing phase or something seriously bound to internalize into more permanent industry patterns. Maybe goPuff/SoftBank/gig-groceries will ride this wave into oppressive Amazon-level omnipotence and I’ll kick myself for being forever complicit via that first bottle of Apothic Red. Or maybe I’ll be back at the Main Street Party Store next month (very dubious, but worthy of hypothetical address) and goPuff will be something forever and always associated with This Thing Alone, sayonara, book closed. I don’t know.

The one thing I’m sure of, though, is how to get a Fleshlight in a pandemic.

4B Wednesday, April 15, 2020 // The Statement

‘New Spirituality’: outlets for spiritualism in a now secular world

BY SARAH RAHMAN, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

T

he muezzin’s call rang out over the masjid speakers, reciting the Islamic kalima, or statement of faith, and my mother grabbed my hand as we separated from my father and brother to answer the call to prayer. It was one of the occasional times my family went to our mosque in Miami, but at age eight, I was already aware that we were walking to the women’s section behind the men’s, separated by a row of dividers across the middle of a large prayer room. The unpatterned wall of beige dividers towered over me when I was a child, but as time went on, they never really felt smaller.

They blocked our view of the imam, or religious leader, and we prayed, listening to his disembodied voice recite excerpts from the Quran.

After years of the same routine, I remember one day finally asking my mother why we had to pray separate from the men.

Her answer, somewhat vague, combined the notion of prioritizing spiritualism, that the separation allowed mosque-goers to focus on God alone and because of tradition — this was what had always been done. I was temporarily comforted by her answer, but I couldn’t help but wonder why it was the women who were delegated behind the barriers.

I wasn’t the first person to ask these questions, nor will I be the last. Members of the reformist Muslim community have combatted questions like these for years, with some groups staging protests against gendered practices. In 2003, activist and journalist Asra Q. Nomani challenged her mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia by praying in the men’s section rather than the secluded women’s section on the balcony.

She argued, “The prophet Muhammad didn’t put women behind partitions, and the barriers were just emblematic of sexist man-made rules.” Her actions resulted in a trial organized by the mosque. Years later, a group of women, led by Fatimah Thompson, in Washington, D.C., staged a similar act of civil disobedience and were consequently escorted out by police force.

Nomani spoke on NPR’s series “Faith Matters” to expand on the importance of breaking gender segregation, “... the mosque is not just a prayer space, it is a community hall. It is a place where public policy in the community is established. And what happens when you sequester women into these corners, is we dont vote at elections.

We don’t participate in policy development.

And so, you allow these places to become safe houses for ideology that may not be peaceful always.” She proposes that while she wishes to abolish gender segregation in mosques, she still respects women who feel safer praying in their respective sections and believes women should have the option to pray where they please.

Their movement is one of many across America — and the larger world — that reflect a shift in the way we approach spirituality in an increasingly secularized world. Traditionally, we have viewed organized religion and religious traditions as an applied, systematic reflection of one’s spirituality, but religion and spirituality are not always the same.

In a 2017 poll, the Pew Research Center reported that 27 percent of U.S. adults identify as spiritual but not religious. This number reflects a steady increase, which is estimated to increase by 8 percentage points in the five years after the study.

Other studies report Americans who identify their religious affiliation as “nothing in particular” have grown by 5 percent. Indeed, people are leaving their sects, but are they in search of something else?

My personal sense of spirituality centers around the belief that I am only a small piece of a larger, unexplainable world. Rather than letting this scare me, spirituality tells me that in my existence there is balance, and within the madness there is meaning. Growing up, I sincerely appreciated the role religion played in my life. I recall reciting prayers before I slipped my mask on at fencing tournaments, before taking exams or before just about any challenge I prepared myself to face. I didn’t pray to mystically improve my skills, but rather to acknowledge aspects of life that were beyond my own control. Praying was putting out the energy to “the forces that be” — asking for a just outcome.

My need for change regarding my spirituality arose not because of the way it was applied in my life. What troubled me was when forms of spirituality, which I have always held as a source of empowerment, seemed to disempower my existence. As I grew older, I remember continuing to ask my mother about why our experiences at the mosque felt so distant and different from those of my father and brother. Despite her honest efforts, I

no longer felt satisfied by the religious explanations for differences within our practices of the same faith. I found myself confused with what to do with the faith I still felt but had no way of directing. I felt I could never embrace a belief system that didn’t value me — and all people — in the same way.

Other modern worshippers within organized religion have often grappled with this sense of disempowerment within their communities, particularly those with marginalized identities, like women or members of the LGBTQ+ community. Oppressive beliefs within religious communities can even extend beyond marginalized groups in their impact and can inhibit the altruistic objectives that many religious groups strive to fulfill. In late March, a temporary New York City hospital intended to treat COVID-19 patients, funded by Christian evangelist group Samaritan’s Purse, required volunteers to agree to a “statement of faith” that says “marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female” before allowing them to volunteer.

As population statistics have reflected, modern ideas of faith have been changing, and members of established organized religions are left with the question of whether or not to adapt. The Muslim reformists protesting gender segregation demonstrate one of many ways policy changes are being made within religious communities to reflect a commitment to equity and inclusion. Similarly, recent years have seen the growth of Christian LGBTQ+ support groups, such as The Naming Project, which aims to “provide a safe and sacred space where youth of all sexual orientations and gender identities are named and claimed by a loving God” through camps and programming for LGBTQ+ youth. According to Catholic news publication Crux, Pope Francis has said that homosexual tendencies are “not a sin” and has famously answered, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about his stance on homosexuality.

Here in Ann Arbor, the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor has emphasized their commitment to inclusivity through a church resolution stating that church members must “speak out against hate-speech, physical attacks, and threats aimed at individuals or groups.

(They) work to make (their) communities free of hatred and intimidation.” These efforts aim to make faith more inclusive,

equitable and accessible to a broader range of people across socioeconomic, racial and gender identities, among others.

Still, as statistics show an increase of those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, new spiritual outlets outside of organized religions have

consciousness through awardwinning films such as “The Master” starring Joaquin Phoenix and the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which portrays Scientology and grants the public insight into religious ideologies that weren’t previously widely known.

Why people leave their religious increased in popularity. Pop culture has reflected a growing awareness of avenues groups or seek out different expressions of of spirituality that fall beyond popular spirituality is a question with multitudes of religions. Weekly astrological horoscopes answers based on experience and context. in magazines, like those in Cosmopolitan To understand a bit more about how and The Huffington Post, have become young people are dealing with the tension widely popularized. Film and television, between spirituality and religion, I spoke driven by magical realism and themes to a few college students on their own of environmentalism and spiritualism, journeys to a new spirituality.

In a phone interview with The Daily, such as “My Neighbor Totoro,” have been Sydney Merydith, an incoming college freshman at The New School in New York City, described her relationship with astrology as “providing a greater sense of understanding whatever life presents,” and that while she uses astrology to define herself, she wouldn’t describe the practice as a religion. In fact, she turned to astrology after feeling what she describes as “the danger of the rigidity that comes with organized religion.”

Merydith’s concerns about rigidity are echoed by researchers studying the driving forces behind the religiously unaffiliated. In journalist Kevin Shrum’s analysis of James E. White’s book “Facts and Trends, Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated,” he remarks that one of White’s key explanations for movement away from the Christian church is that “the church is too narrowminded and unbending on moral issues” and “antiquated in its methodologies.” Essentially, some have felt that the restrictions of organized religion do not fully encapsulate what spirituality means for them and that its methodologies are alienating.

Raised Catholic, Merydith said, “My experience with organized religion made me scared and angry at the idea of any religion — but as I discovered more aspects to spirituality, I realized that believing that was in itself a rigid way of thinking. Astrology helped INFOGRAPHIC BY JONATHAN WALSH me open up to finding my own spiritual path.”

Indeed, astrology has acted as a critically acclaimed and widely viewed, grossing over $30 million at the box office. mechanism for many to expand their A core theme of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” conceptions of spiritualism. Pew Research the second highest grossing film of all time, Center data shows that 29 percent of Americans believe in astrology and its is environmental spiritualism.

Even social conceptions of organized growing cultural acceptance has been religion have broken into the public unseen since the 1970s. The data also

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 // The Statement 5B

reflects that many couple their belief in organized religion with a belief in other spiritual conceptions, labeled “New Age” by the Pew Research Center, like astrology.

In The New Yorker, journalist Christine Smallwood describes the growing population of those who believe in astrology as remarkable. “It’s not just that you hear (about astrology). It’s who’s saying it: people who aren’t kooks or climatechange deniers, who see no contradiction between using astrology and believing in science. The change is fuelling (sic) a new generation of practitioners.” This reveals another aspect of some modern spiritualists; they question the balance between faith and science.

Shrum’s summary of White’s book “The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated” addresses this notion by explaining that another reason we can see a population shift away from organized religion, particularly Christianity, is because of its lack of evidence or scientific explanation regarding key tenets of the religion, such as the creation myth. This struggle is heightened within an increasingly secular world.

Gehenna Garcia, a sophomore at the University of Michigan, described growing up in a Christian household in which she was told reading religious magazines, such as “The Origin of Life - Five Questions Worth Asking,” would answer her broader questions regarding faith’s relationship to science.

“It explained that the chance of the Big Bang and evolution was minuscule, but they never gave evidence regarding their God. It was extremely hard for me to believe in one omnipotent God.” Even after moving away from Christianity, she maintained her spirituality, “While in the religion, my beliefs were that spirituality was the belief in God, praising his name, and spreading his word throughout the world. After moving away from conventional religion, I began to realize that spirituality was our connection to ourselves and this world.”

After identifying as agnostic, Garcia recently discovered Wicca, which she described as “the belief that we should worship the Earth and give back what it gave us,” from her roommate who was taking a history class on witchcraft. She now identifies as a pagan and also believes in astrology.

Garcia discovered paganism, a religion not related to the three major world religions — Islam, Judaism and Christianity — and that invovles nature worship, after she had already begun to practice witchcraft, and found it easy to merge the two belief systems. Describing the process, she said, “I still felt as if I was missing something. I had always had issues believing in one god, but with paganism, there are pantheons of gods and goddesses … after discovering paganism and doing extensive research, it was easy to change my path in witchcraft to please the gods and goddesses that I prefer to give offerings to and work with.”

Her synthesis of belief systems reflects an increasing personalization of faith and spirituality. As some choose to believe

in a structured faith system as well as astrology, or a combination of a number of spiritual-based ideologies, modern spirituality can be a customized process, self-determination based on the factors one aligns with.

Merydith navigates astrology with her friends with the same sense of fluidity.

“We like to read as much as the stars have to tell us, and decide for ourselves if it’s something we believe, something that could guide our actions or something that just isn’t really useful or applicable.”

Yet for those who choose to explore “new age” outlets for spirituality, how have they connected to each other without the traditional meeting places we expect from organized religions?

Some, like Garcia, have turned to the internet. For every subgroup, there are pages on Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr and other social media websites connecting believers across cities and continents.

Garcia discovered astrology through the blogging website Tumblr and discovered other spiritualists like her through the app TikTok. “TikTok has actually connected me with other people who have the same beliefs as me … the people who have been in my faith for a long time help those of us who are fairly new. It was and still is, really difficult to find people who have the same ideology as me in real life. Many people are scared or turned away from my beliefs,” she said.

Shared spirituality also allows one to feel connected to a greater purpose or meaning.

Across traditional organized religions, reformed religions, “new age” spiritualism, niche spiritual sects or a combination thereof, there’s a common part of us that gains comfort in being an accepted part of something bigger than ourselves.

In this time of year where Instagram feeds are flooded with pictures of celebrations of Passover, Easter and Ramadan, it’s obvious that traditions of togetherness, family and reflection are still important vehicles that drive spirituality and religious practice.

Maybe before focusing on where religion is headed, we must consider what it has been for us thus far: Something that brings us together.

As my family gears up for Ramadan, I am once again faced with the question of what exactly I believe. Spirituality has been a journey for me, and I still find it hard to fully place myself at a single destination.

However, while this uncertainty used to give me anxiety, writing this piece has been truly therapeutic. Realizing that new methods of spirituality are growing in popularity and acceptance, that millions of other Americans don’t quite have their own spirituality narrowed down and that there are people out there I can connect with when I do feel like connecting, has given me the reassurance I’ve been searching for. Spirituality is not all or nothing, it just simply is. I do not have to be the perfect Muslim. I do not have to be anything at all.

I simply believe — and that’s enough.

Sarah Rahman is a freshman in LSA studying Political Science and Economics and can be reached at srah@umich.edu.

6B

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 // The Statement

Confessions from a real-estate brat

BY MAXWELL BARNES, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

W

here are you from?” is a hard question for me to answer.

“Do you mean, where do I live right now?” is usually my most common rebuttal.

I don’t mean to be difficult, I just want to provide an honest response. For me, it’s tricky to stick to a consistent story, and I try not to get too bogged down in the details.

Before I turned 18, I had already lived in 12 different houses and attended eight different grade schools.

I am jealous of my friends who can so easily whip out a response to the same question. “I’m from X city in X Midwestern state. I’ve lived in the same house my whole life.” The most straight-forward answer I can provide is that I’m from Charleston, S.C., which is where my family and I have resided since 2012. But the reality is I’ve lived all over the Southeastern coastline.

I was born in Orlando, Fla., and lived there for probably a grand total of three months before my family moved to South Carolina for the first time. From there, we circulated Virginia for a decade, moving towns about every four years, first living around the Norfolk and Virginia Beach areas in the Chesapeake Bay before then heading upstate to Charlottesville in the Blue Ridge Mountains before eventually relocating back to Charleston, S.C., when I was 13.

When I returned, it had been a decade since I last lived there. My mom pointed out to me that many of my classmates were kids that I had also been in preschool with, only I had no recollection of them. It made me wonder how many potentially fruitful and long-lasting relationships might have been thrown away due to my family’s constant relocation. I was furious. What was the point of moving so much if we just kept coming back to the same places? My parents eventually started calling me a “real estate brat” to our new neighbors at housewarming parties, as an obvious play on the term “military brat.”

Two years later, in 10th grade, I ended up heading back up to Virginia to attend boarding school. The school itself was all-boys, all-boarding and had a military dress code. I rarely left campus on the weekends, and the consistency of attending boarding school gave me a little bit of geographic security, even if it made my backstory even harder to trace. As I would walk to class along the brick walkways of the lush, Jeffersonian-style campus,

homes to supplement our losses, but I wasn’t so shaken since I was no stranger to dropping my obligations on a dime’s notice.

Even years before the market crashed, when I was eight or nine, I was playing with my toys when I realized I lost a Playmobil figure somewhere in my bedroom. Instead of crying and complaining to my mom, I remember thinking “It’s fine. It’s somewhere in here. I’ll find it when we move again and all the furniture is packed.” I can’t even remember in which house this occurred, but I can remember that feeling of knowing we were going to need to move again, eventually.

I even acquired a sleep tactic that I still use fairly often, passed on to me from my father. It’s a popular old wives’ tale that if you’re having trouble going to sleep, you should resort to counting sheep in your head in order to drift off. I learned to do things a little differently: Instead of mindless counting, I try to remember every wall of every room I’ve ever lived in. I’m pretty certain this little trick works because I usually doze off before I can reach the room where I currently sleep.

I start by trying to remember the placement of the windows, the closets and if there was a bathroom attached. I try to remember desks and picture frames and where my toy chest or lacrosse stick might have been placed. Where were the Dell computer console and the chalk easel? What clothes might have been left on the ground or tucked into my dressers? Before I can get into the detailed specifics, I’m fast asleep.

But moving to 12 different houses was in no way all for naught. Over the years I naturally learned how to be charismatic by repeatedly being dropped into new social settings. I survived new classrooms and sports teams by learning to be funny. I also learned to be quiet when it was strategically necessary for me to make a good first impression.

My time in Ann Arbor has been the best of my life so far, but I know I won’t stay here much longer. I’ve told many of my friends and family that the first place I move after graduation — though I’m not sure where, yet — will be my home for the next 20 years. I’m hoping New York so I can be there when the Knicks eventually turn things around and win a championship. I know long-term residency will be difficult to accomplish along with the looming uncertainty of our national economy and the volatility of the job market for young people, but I’m going to try my hardest to stick to one place for continuity’s sake.

I know I have lived in enough childhood bedrooms to keep me counting them in my sleep for an eternity.

However, I think there’s some emotional strength I could develop from staying in one place. In the past, I’ve always looked forward to new beginnings as a way to reset my personality and start over. Instead, I need to learn how to ride the emotional ebbs and flows that come with living in one location for a long time and seeing I’ve been able to grow over time. Being able to say you are from somewhere speaks volumes to your identity and comfort as an individual. In the future, I hope I can answer “where are you from?” a little more simply.

I would ponder: Am I from Virginia or South Carolina?

Neither answer felt right with my identity, and I couldn’t decipher which felt more like home, let alone answer it in an icebreaker or to a new acquaintance.

The reason for all this moving around was my father’s occupation as a real estate developer. In the business of neighborhood development, there’s always a new project.

For my dad, that meant acting as a land management consultant for a Virginia winery or designing the street layout of a new community in suburban Charleston. The liquid nature of his job meant that every couple of years my family would have to haul our belongings to my dad’s new workplace — a new city, a new house, a new school.

My dad grew up as a military brat to my grandfather, who was a fighter jet pilot in the Navy. Having moved from Texas to California to Italy, my father had lived across tens of thousands of miles across the nation and globe by the age of six. I often wonder what imprint this left on him as he transitioned to his adult life. Was a consistent nature of moving something that never bothered him? Or did my father learn to view moving around as being financially pragmatic? I wonder if his seemingly casual stance toward moving ended up having a bleeding effect on me.

I remember playing SimCity on CD-ROM and oftentimes having my dad inspect my computer model town complete with art museums and universities. I had him double-check for infrastructural errors with traffic patterns or commercial zoning. Afterward, I would destroy everything I’d built with a click of a button, whether it be a nuclear weapon, a tornado or a robotic Godzilla. Little did I know it, but I was quickly learning to let my deep-seated feelings and attachments go.

Anything I could create or become invested in could disappear. My Tee Ball League, Cub Scouts, teachers and friends from school could all vanish in an instant.

I was slowly becoming an incredibly hard-bitten child.

I had developed no concept of geographic permanence as I internalized the hit-or-miss tendencies of the real estate industry. This habit only grew when my family’s financial security collapsed along with the entire housing market during the 2008 recession. The Maxwell Barnes is studying Communication and Media financial meltdown also left my mother, a freelance in LSA and is a Daily Staff Writer for Arts. He can be architect, out of a job. I knew we’d soon have to move reached at mxwell@umich.edu.

With no sports, there’s a void

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 // The Statement 7B

O

BY FINNTAN STORER, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

n March 11, I sat in my small, dimly-lit apartment watching ESPN as footage came in of health officials sprinting out onto the court of Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City, setting off a delay.

Minutes earlier there was no official explanation for the delay to the start of Jazz vs. Thunder, but now there was — Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus.

Sports actualized the threat of COVID-19 to the American public. After the chaos in Oklahoma City, numerous leagues across the globe, like the Big Ten and the Premier League, made plans to move forward and hold games without fans. One scene made me realize that sports would not be able to go on: the image of Nebraska men’s basketball coach Fred Hoiberg. In an early round of Big Ten Tournament play, Hoiberg sat on the sidelines, visibly ill. Sweat poured from his forehead as he was doubled over on the bench, clearly not feeling well. The assistant to his left put on hand sanitizer. Twitter was ablaze with fans questioning why Hoiberg was on the court, seemingly putting his team and others in danger. While he eventually did not test positive for COVID-19, the scene of him interacting with players and referees while visibly ill left a collective thought: What the hell is he doing out there? What the hell are we doing, letting him be out there?

As a fan of European soccer, I saw the sporting world’s first response to COVID-19 a week earlier. Serie A, the Italian soccer league, initially moved to play “behind closed doors” — no fans, just teams and media. League leaders Juventus met challengers Inter Milan at an empty Allianz Stadium. The eerie shouts of jubilation rang out from the Juventus bench as Argentinian forward Pablo Dybala scored a second goal to seal the win for the Old Lady.

Days later in England, the same day as the incident with Gobert, Liverpool Football Club attempted to come back against Atletico Madrid in the second leg of their UEFA Champions League tie. Anfield, the home of the Reds, was packed to the gills and filled with song.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp walked on to the pitch, greeted by fans putting their hands out to get a last-minute high-five. Klopp, normally one of the most friendly and flamboyant figures in world soccer, shouted at the fans, “Put your hands away you f*cking idiots!”

Watching the video back, it’s obvious that Klopp was seething. As COVID-19 began to engulf Europe, Klopp knew holding a game was, as he described it, “criminal.”

I held out hope. I hoped the University

of Michigan’s men’s basketball team would be able to make a run in the NCAA tournament, even with no fans. I prayed that Chelsea Football Club, my team, would be able to play their next Premier League match against Aston Villa. I looked forward to the Masters with optimism, hoping to see Tiger Woods defend his title — Surely it will be over by then, I thought.

Now, it’s April 15, 2020, and a return of sports seems distant.

A return of sports with packed stadiums feels near impossible. Who would’ve thought that my last game at The Big House might be the last one for years, not months?

To many, and to me early on, sports seemed immune to the virus.

Games and matches could continue on, without fans if needed. Athletes with their health and physical ability could push through any infection.

With over 604,000 cases in the United States as of April 14, it’s clear nothing is immune to COVID-19. Schools, restaurants and small businesses are all shuttered. This spring, it’s guaranteed there won’t be any rabid crowds of Michigan fans on South University Avenue celebrating a trip to the Final Four, no matter how slim the chances already were.

Moments of joyous celebration like when the University reached the National Championship in 2018 showcases the feeling of community triumph created by sports. Now, charging out of the Blue Leprechaun onto the street to celebrate victory seems unimaginable. In times like these, with people dying from COVID-19 at alarming rates each day, with people shuttered in their homes and away from loved ones, that common thrill and excitement that sports bring is needed — something communities across the country can root for and unite behind is needed.

Even in times of violence and terror, sports were there. Mere weeks after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush strode out onto the field at Game 3 of the World Series in the Bronx, donning a Fire Department of New York jacket and delivered a first pitch straight down the middle. Say what you will about the damn New York Yankees and say what you will about George W. Bush, but that first pitch in 2001 offered the same unity we could use now. It offered something we could rally behind and get away from the realities of everyday life — distract from the horrors and tragedy wrought. I’m not old enough to remember the moment live, but watching it again on Youtube, quarantined in my apartment, there is

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHELLE FAN

an undeniable energy of optimism and strength to move forward.

Our country can only dream of a moment like that now. We cannot gather in a stadium to heal together, and to parallel Bush’s Fire Department of New York jacket — a symbol recognizing our collective strength and pride — the present-day jacket would have to be a bit larger to accommodate the doctors, nurses, caregivers, grocery store workers, postal workers and more who have sacrificed in this widespread battle against this virus.

For some, the virus denies a stalwart of everyday life. In most of my waking moments of the year that were not spent in class or with other people, I listened to soccer podcasts — Men in Blazers, Talking Tactics, London is Blue Podcast, the Football Daily, to name a few.

Now, with virtually all sports canceled indefinitely, I no longer get to wake up at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning to watch the Premier League. I didn’t get to make a bracket for the NCAA Tournament. I didn’t get to watch the Masters on my computer in class on Thursday and Friday.

It seems juvenile, and to a degree it is, but the shared adoration for something that transcends boundaries of politics, race, nationality and religion isn’t replicable.

That adoration seems normal until we step back and see the uniqueness of it — so many of us distract ourselves in the same way through sports.

There’s also something to be said for the most vulnerable populations being robbed of seeing their teams succeed.

My great-grandfather Richard Robinson, better known as Pop to his loved ones, lived his whole life in Massachu-

setts and always rooted for the Boston Red Sox. When the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series and broke the Curse of the Bambino, Pop witnessed it all.

The following year, he passed away at the age of 93. A pennant from that year hangs in my childhood room to this day.

There were similar stories when the Chicago Cubs won in 2016. Those moments of jubilation and the moments of relief and celebration might not come for fans for some time in the wake of COVID19. Liverpool haven’t won a league title in England in 30 years. As things stand in the Premier League table, Liverpool are only a couple wins away from clinching their title that has seemed inevitable since December. No one knows when, or if, they will be able to resume their march to glory. Some supporters will likely have to spend another year waiting for their triumph.

For all the virtues of sports and my love for them, I do not advocate for their imminent return. Those who are pushing to return to sports soon are kidding themselves and endangering both fans and athletes. At this point, I don’t think there will be another Saturday at The Big House with 100,000 fans until there is an effective treatment or vaccine for COVID-19. Sports might be what the country needs, but they are not what it deserves. Whenever sports return with fans in seats, it will undoubtedly be a special moment — a true mark of victory. With any hope, fans can sit in the sun, take in a game and recognize those who sacrificed and saved to get us back to what we crave right now: safety, normalcy and peace.

8B Wednesday, April 15, 2020 // The Statement

V I S UA L S T A T E M E N T: N A T IO N A L PA R K S B Y A L IC E L I U