2020-05-21

Thursday, May 21, 2020

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

inside

MI Gov. and former VP host virtual roundtable

NEWS

Autonomous robot A startup by professors uses technology to deliver food and groceries. >> SEE PAGE 3

Joe Biden and Gretchen Whitmer discuss nationwide responses to COVID-19 pandemic

OPINION

Millennials and milk Looking into how the milk industry will change forever. >> SEE PAGE 4

SARAH PAYNE

Disarming racism: community members fight anti-Asian hate

Design by Francesca Duong

ARTS

‘how i’m feeling now’ Charli XCX’s latest album is a collaboration between artist and audience, heralding new music in the age of quarantine. >> SEE PAGE 5

MICHIGAN IN COLOR

A/PIA Leaders

Recognizing historical AAPI figures who have shaped modern America for A/PIA heritage month >> SEE PAGE 8

SPORTS

Community

Through service, Nadav Aaronson finds out what it means to be a part of a team. >> SEE PAGE 11

INDEX Vol. CXXIX, No. 114 © 2020 The Michigan Daily

NEWS .................................... 2 OPINION ............................... 4 ARTS/NEWS..........................6 MiC......................................... 8 SPORTS................................ 10

michigandaily.com

FRANCESCA DUONG

Summer Managing News Editor

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary Rose, program manager in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Michigan, felt her uneasiness grow about her public perception as she took her son to their local urgent care clinic.

“I remember purposely wearing my Michigan t-shirt underneath my big winter coat,” Rose said. “As soon as I got inside I unzipped it. I felt like I had to consciously make an effort to indicate that I was not a recent immigrant, that I did not just come here off a plane from anywhere — I am a part of this community.”

Rose noted her thoughts were fueled by social media and reports of Asian Americans being discriminated against and said sometimes she hesitates to go out by herself.

“I weigh in my mind, ‘Is there a chance that I let my guard down and I go out and somebody might harass me, or do something, and I might not be with my family?’”

Rose said.

Melissa Borja, assistant professor of American culture,

said she sometimes gets nervous about going outside, not only because she does not want to be infected, but also because she is concerned about racial harassment.

“It just struck me as this great irony that in March and in April, we were living in lockdown situations and we were told ‘get out’, ‘get some fresh air,’ ‘it’s good for your mental health, once a day just go for a walk,’” Borja said. “But, it’s a very stressful thing to ‘get out,’ ‘get fresh air,’ ‘go on a walk,’ as an Asian person, since Asian people were getting spit on, were having racist things yelled at them by drivers passing by.”

According to the Center for Disease Control, on Jan. 21, 2020, the first case of COVID19 was identified in the United States.

In March, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to the 2019 novel coronavirus as the “Wuhan virus” and President Donald Trump called COVID-19 the “China virus.” CDC Director Robert Redfield condemned the use of such language, saying it was “absolutely wrong and inappropriate.”

As COVID-19 continued to spread, the Los Angeles Times reported a rise in hate crimes

toward Asian Americans from February to April. The article echoed an FBI warning of the potential surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the pandemic. The warning detailed an incident in Midland, Texas, in which an AsianAmerican family was stabbed because the attacker “thought the family was Chinese, and infecting people with the coronavirus.”

Rose, Borja and many other University community members are taking action to combat the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and to raise awareness of racist and xenophobic acts.

In this article, the acronyms AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders), A/PIA (Asian/ Pacific Islander American) and APID/A (Asian Pacific Islander Desi/Americans) will be frequently used.

Documenting hate crimes across the U.S. After being established on March 19, the STOP AAPI HATE Reporting Center recieved 673 reports of COVID-19-related discrimination in the United States within the first week of opening.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Summer News Editor

Joe Biden, former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate, hosted a virtual town hall with three state governors and over 9,000 viewers to discuss state and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden was joined by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Connecticut Gov. Edward Lamont to discuss the response of the Trump administration, the current condition of their respective states and what the future would hold for the nation Thursday afternoon.

Biden said local and state government officials have been taking action to flatten the curve and mitigate public fear during the pandemic.

“There are a lot of scared people all across the country and so often it’s all of you that they are looking to,” Biden said. “This is not a partisan statement. Governors, mayors, local leaders, you’re all stepping up all across the country — Republicans and Democrats alike.”

Biden emphasized the importance of opening the economy as quickly as possible while listening to the recommendations of public health experts.

“We are going to have to work harder and smarter than ever before to pull ourselves out of this economic tailspin,” Biden said. “I know what all of you know, that the only way out of this is following science: Listening to the experts and taking responsible precautions that are going to help us reopen the economy as safely and as quickly as possible. We have an opportunity, in my view, to transform the economy as we come out, to build a more inclusive and more resilient middle class.”

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2 NEWS

Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

COVID Corps helps lighten legal work 240 volunteers and law students assist lawyers during pandemic CALLIE TEITELBAUM Daily Staff Reporter

In an effort to assist the state of Michigan community groups and lawyers as they navigate the overflow of legal work related to the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of University of Michigan Law School student leaders formed the Michigan Law COVID Corps, a pro bono service with over 240 volunteers and student attorneys.

The organization does not offer legal advice or representation. Rather, volunteers offer assistance in the form of legal or policy research, data gathering or legal analysis. COVID Corps has worked with a variety of organizations, including the Michigan Workers’ Rights Clinic and Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, who requested their help through their online form.

Law School student Maiya Moncino founded the group in March. Moncino said she felt it was necessary for students to step up and help lawyers combat the shockwaves of the pandemic during this unprecedented time.

“It’s important for us to be invested in the community that is giving us a legal education,” Moncino said.

The COVID Corps is organized into four task forces: Decarceration, Workers’ Rights and Small Business Support, Voting Rights and Housing Rights. While the COVID Corps focuses on those issues, they are not limited to them.

Law School student Sian Last is a COVID Corps participant and has worked on two projects since joining the group. Last drafted a petition to release an incarcerated person from prison who had previously been granted parole but was being held due to the new COVID19 procedures, and he compiled research regarding the release of immigrant detainees.

“The really powerful thing about being a lawyer and being a law student is the ability to help people better their situation, espe-

cially in a time when things are as difficult as they are,” Last said. “It seemed like there was nothing better to do with my time than to try and help people in whatever way is possible to navigate these systems.”

Law School students Chris Chorzepa and Stephan Llerena are two of six leaders on the Workers’ Rights and Small Business Support task force.

Over 1 million Michigan residents have filed for unemployment, leaving the Michigan Workers’ Rights Clinic overwhelmed with individuals in need of assistance filing for unemployment insurance benefits. Llerena said because the Law School allows first-year students to participate in the Workers’ Rights Clinic, volunteers are equipped to support attorneys with research and intake calls.

Chorzepa was inspired to create the Small Business task force after researching relief options to keep his own family’s small business afloat. He knew the U.S. Small Business Administration was offering loans to help small businesses survive in the pandemic, so he learned how to file an application to receive the loan.

“I thought, if I can do this for my parents, I can definitely do this for small businesses around Michigan,” Chorzepa said.

Kerry Martin, a recent Law School graduate who has been working at Michigan Immigrant Rights Center since January, has delegated two projects to the volunteers. Martin said that with the help of the volunteers, MIRC is able to address extra research projects the center may not have been able to tackle due to the high influx of work.

“This volunteer corps comes at such an important time because so many legal service organizations are working in overdrive to respond to the crisis,” Martin said.

“Already, our creative muscles are at limit because there’s so many ways in which this crisis deepens the underlying issues and also the procedural obstacles for our clients to get some form or relief or justice.”

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7,200 freshmen expected to attend

Design by Hibah Chughtai. Each person represents 1,200 people.

Target class size increases by 20% amid enrollment concerns ALEX HARRING Daily News Editor

Approximately 7,200 freshmen are expected to begin taking classes at the University of Michigan in the fall, a 20 percent increase from the target class size six years ago.

The University was 500 students over target when 6,532 enrolled in the fall 2014 freshman class. In response, University leadership introduced a plan to ensure an end to the trend of overenrolling seen in previous years.

Now, the University is prepared to have 7,182 freshmen — its target class size — enrolled starting in the fall 2020 semester, according to an email from University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald.

Having a larger class size required more students to be admitted than in previous years, Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald said this larger target allows the University to lessen the effect COVID-19 could have on the class size. While he said that the matriculation rate has increased, the University is watching for “summer melt,” a term that refers to when students pay a deposit in spring but ultimately decide not to attend the school before fall.

A class size of 6,000 students would fall below the high-6,000 number the University brought

in over the past three years. For comparison, the University’s goal size for the fall 2020 class would include one additional student to every five in the fall 2014 target size.

The concerns with having 6,500 students in the class were partially rooted in West Quad, one of the largest dorms, being under renovation. But the University also had to expand its academic offerings to accommodate the additional students: LSA added 86 class sections and the College of Engineering hired more instructors to teach additional discussion sections for first-year courses.

There is the question, then, as to if these same issues arise with a class of 7,182 — 700 larger than the 6,500-person class that spurred these additions. Fitzgerald said they will not.

The University is simply more strategic when determining a class size than it was six years ago, Fitzgerald said, and the class was “purposefully increased” after consulting with the Office of Enrollment Management, Office of the Provost and the University’s colleges and schools.

He also pointed to the fact that University-wide enrollment has grown over the last several years.

University administrators and enrollment managers are hopeful the larger class size will also ease any potential impacts COVID-19 could have on the class size.

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The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers.

Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2 per issue. Subscriptions for September - April are $250, and year-long subscriptions are $275. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. Subscriptions must be prepaid.

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Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

NEWS 3

AI Robots deliver food and groceries Two University professors launch new tech start-up NAVYA GUPTA

Daily Staff Reporter

Ann Arbor Public Schools acquires online platform

Design by Maggie Wiebe

“Schoology” approved

by Board of Education in 6-1 vote JULIANNA MORANO For The Daily

On May 13, the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education approved the district’s acquisition of the online educational platform Schoology by a 6-1 vote. The new platform will be adopted starting this summer, as teachers will receive training this month and begin instructing summer classes online with Schoology as soon as July. At the end of the summer, the platform will be reviewed and considered for future use in the event of a partially or fully online fall semester.

Superintendent of Schools Jeanice Swift opened the hearing of the proposal to acquire Schoology by identifying the district’s intentions to streamline communication with the unified platform.

“We are looking to streamline the learning management platform for the district,” Swift said. “The goal is to improve the tools by which our teachers do their work and to streamline the approach by which parents locate their communications from the district, their student grades, their student attendance (and) their student assignments.”

The Schoology platform boasts

efficient communication between students, teachers, parents and administrators, as well as interoperability with a number of popular educational tools and platforms including Khan Academy and PowerSchool, according to its website.

During the board meeting, Dawn Linden, assistant superintendent and district leader, presented the results of a preliminary research study conducted to gather teachers’ input on the Schoology platform. According to Linden, 186 teachers participated in an hour-long Schoology demonstration and 135 shared their initial reactions in the survey afterward.

“In general, the biggest concern was the ability to process change,” Linden said. “The major concern that we heard was learning a new tool.”

Peter Stenger, a junior at Huron High School, expressed similar skepticism regarding the benefits of the new platform in an interview with The Daily. He identified Google Classroom as the predominant platform his instructors have used since the district’s government-mandated transition into remote learning.

Stenger cited experiences using other platforms like Zoom, Flip Grid and Mango Learning across different subjects. He had no previous experience with the Schoology platform.

“Right now, Google Classroom is the unified platform (at Huron), so really, I don’t see a lot of major changes (coming with the adoption of the Schoology platform),” Stenger

said. “It might be a little harder for students to use the new platform if they’re not familiar with it. So yeah, maybe it could be negative in that sense ... I wouldn’t see a lot of benefit in moving to the unified platform.”

Several elementary school teachers expressed concern in survey responses regarding whether use of the platform Seesaw would still be possible. Linden said the acquisition of the Schoology platform would not necessarily preclude other platforms that teachers have grown accustomed to.

“Our goal is not to eliminate things that are working,” Linden said. “Our goal is to make things efficient and easy for teachers. … If (Seesaw is) the tool that works … we wouldn’t take it away.”

Lillian Losinski, a sophomore at Skyline High School, voiced support for the Schoology platform in an interview with The Daily. Though she did not have prior experience with the platform, she said it had potential to alleviate the confusion created by teachers using different platforms.

“From what I did read, it kind of seemed like (Schoology) was … like everything that we’re doing right now, but under one program,” Losinski said. “I feel like it’d be better because it would just be more, like, connected.”

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Driving alongside cars and bikes at 15 mph, Refraction AI’s autonomous robot, REV-1, is making food deliveries for four Ann Arbor restaurants and The Produce Station. The deliveries reach about 500 customers who order their food and groceries through an app after signing up for a pilot program on Refraction AI’s website.

Refraction AI, based in Ann Arbor, was co-founded by Matthew Johnson-Roberson, associate professor of naval architecture and marine engineering, and Ram Vasudevan, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, with the goal of creating an autonomous vehicle that could be used on a wide scale. The start-up currently has 17 full-time employees and eight autonomous vehicles.

REV-1 uses ultrasound waves to navigate its deliveries and is equipped with 12 cameras to ensure the safety of pedestrians and the robot while it makes its deliveries. Employees are able to work from home but are able to take over the motion of the robot in case of malfunction.

According to Johnson-Roberson, the robot delivery service is just what people need during this pandemic when access to food and groceries without contact is essential.

“People are excited about contactless delivery,” Johnson-Roberson said. “They don’t want to leave their house and this (is) a way they can avoid it.”

Jeremy Seaver, owner of Tios Mexican Cafe, one of the four restaurants currently using the robot delivery service, finds the delivery service extremely helpful during COVID-19 as it makes deliveries easier for his restaurant.

Seaver was optimistic about the robot delivery service’s success post-pandemic. He said he

believes it eradicates the struggle restaurants face in staffing delivery drivers due to the presence of delivery services like Grubhub and Doordash.

“It’s the most ideal thing possible. It’s completely contactless,” Seaver said. “I think this is a great way to do delivery.

I would love to switch to only using the robots.”

In a typical robot-delivered order, customers place orders through Refraction AI’s app and the restaurant is notified. The restaurant then processes the order and receives a notification of the arrival of the robot. After the robot is unlocked by inputting a code, the order is then loaded into hot bags. The robot is locked again and then sent to make the delivery.

According to Johnson-Roberson, Refraction AI’s robot delivery service is more appealing to restaurant owners because it is cost-effective. While services like Grubhub and Doordash charge restaurants about 30-35 percent of the restaurant’s cut, Refraction AI only charges 15 percent. The service is also especially appealing to restaurants during COVID-19 as it reduces the number of people involved in the delivery process.

“One less person means one less risk, one less challenge,” Johnson-Roberson said.

In addition to restaurant delivery, robots also deliver curbside groceries through The Produce Station, a produce market on South State Street.

Andrew Gorsuch, vice president of The Produce Station, found out about Refraction AI’s delivery service after their trial run with Korean eatery Miss Kim, and he said he is happy with the delivery service and the feedback he has received from customers of the store.

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4 OPINION

Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MADELINE PEERY | OP-ED

COVID-19 won’t solve climate change

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EMILY ULRICH | COLUMNIST

I

Millennials and milk

magine coming home from the grocery store, twisting open the seal on a gallon of milk that you just bought and pouring that milk straight down the drain. It seems unnatural — maybe even cynical — to waste perfectly good nutrients like this. However, many farmers in the United States are now left with no other choice. Instead of turning a seal on a carton of milk, they are turning the hatch on a 12-wheeler steel tank and dumping an estimated 3.7 million gallons of milk daily.

Due to COVID-19, many restaurants, hotels and schools have closed and as a result, the food system has been severely impacted. When all of the customers vanish, farmers are left with few options. Many have tried donating their produce to charities, however, these charities cannot accept large quantities of perishable food with limited refrigerator space and a shortage of volunteers.

As a last resort, farmers have buried 1 million onions in ditches, plowed fields of fresh vegetables back into the ground and smashed eggs that they could not sell. Additionally, many dairy farmers have begun dumping milk.

Milk processing plants have decreased how much milk they accept from farmers, and unfortunately, you cannot stop milking a cow abruptly.

Cows fall into a routine based on how many times a day they are normally milked and if they are milked less than that, it causes pressure to build up which can lead to serious medical conditions for the cow. This leaves dairy farmers with no other option except to milk their cows and dump the milk. However, for the dairy industry, their customer base began decreasing years before the

COVID-19 pandemic began.

Since 1975, milk consumption per capita has dropped by 40 percent.

Recently, plant and nut-based milks have become a millennial trend. There are a plethora of options now available: soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, coconut milk, oat milk, etc. Many of these types of milk still carry high nutritional value minus the fat and calories found in dairy milk. For example, unsweetened soy milk has almost the same amount of protein found in dairy milk and 11 grams less sugar. In 2018 alone, cow milk sales decreased 6 percent whereas plantbased milk sales increased 9 percent.

That same year, 2,700 dairy farms in the US shut down. In addition to non-dairy alternatives, these farms were also run out of business by environmental awareness, animal rights and industrial dairy competition.

About 3.6 percent of planet-warming emissions each year are due to the production of dairy products. Carbon dioxide and other harmful gases are released from dairy cows, manure and wastewater on farms where manure and fertilizers are not handled properly.

According to the Institute of the Environment & Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, if one person chooses oat milk instead of dairy milk, they can decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 71.8 kilograms in a year, assuming they drink two gallons per month. However, some of the nut-based dairy alternatives have large impacts on the environment as well. For example, it is estimated that it takes 15.3 gallons of water to produce only 16 almonds.

The abuse of dairy cows surfaced in the news last June, when a viral video

was released that exposed the mistreatment of animals on Fairlife Dairy farms.

Fairlife claims that they strive to provide a quality of life for their cows that minimizes mental stress and avoids pain, however, the graphic video of employees kicking and throwing calves suggests otherwise. This company is likely not the only one in the dairy industry lying on their labels. The practice of dairy farming in itself seems far from ethical. Cows are intentionally impregnated and then their calves are taken away from them at birth.

The milk from the mother is bottled for humans, instead of used as nutrients for her calf. Furthermore, if the calf is male, farmers either kill the calf themselves or hire a knackerman to perform the job.

Large-scale dairy farming has taken over and forced many family businesses to close their farms. Post-COVID-19 pandemic, it is doubtful that any small dairy businesses will survive. For example, in Wisconsin, the number of industrial dairy farms increased by 55 percent within the last decade. Other states that are top manufacturers of milk have seen similar trends. In addition, the COVID19 pandemic has put even more pressure on these family-run farms, forcing many small businesses to close.

Millennials might have some logic in their choice to abandon dairy. Shutting the door on the dairy industry could contribute to the fight against climate change, as well as animal abuse. The intensified milk market crash due to the COVID-19 pandemic could be the final step in closing many dairy processing plants as well as dairy farms.

Emily Ulrich can be reached at emulrich@umich.edu.

O

ver 4 million people around the world have now been diagnosed with the new coronavirus disease, COVID-19. Since major countries and cities have enacted stayat-home orders to decrease the spread of COVID-19, multiple images showing empty tourist destinations have gone viral. The most famous post was a tweet showing the water in the Venice canals had cleared enough to see fish. Another viral photo going around shows Los Angeles’s clear skies, side-by-side with a smoggy photo taken weeks before the pandemic started, among many others.

I was in disbelief when I first saw these tweets, especially the side-by-side photo of Los Angeles pre- and postshutdown. I thought they might be Photoshopped, but eventually, I started noticing changes in my community.

Within a week of classes being canceled and students moving back home en masse, the air in Ann Arbor did feel cleaner. Maybe it was real, or maybe it was just a placebo, my mind trying to trick me after seeing those photos on Twitter.

As an environmentalist, tracking the environmental effects of COVID-19 has been interesting. In a world filled with panic and uncertainty, people seem to feel comforted that at least Mother Nature is benefitting from this.

Numerous photos have been posted on Twitter and Reddit from users living in polluted cities that now have clear skies out their windows. Emissions in China have been reduced by a quarter and air pollution is improving globally.

By all means, this is great news for the environment. However, I am also painfully aware that these effects will be fleeting. There has been lots of talk of certain aspects of society not going back to normal after this pandemic is over — we may no longer hug or shake hands to greet each other, and some employees may shift to working from home permanently. Lots of things are expected to change. But when this is all over, the environment will almost certainly go back to normal. Planes will start flying again, cruises will continue to dump trash into the oceans and factories will still pollute. Asthma and lung cancer rates will continue to rise due to environmental exposures like they were pre-COVID-19. The smog will return to Los Angeles, and the fish will disappear from the Venice canals. We will witness the regression of our newly clean environment back to its normal state: dirty.

When this happens — and it will happen — I hope it instills anger in people as much as it angers in me. A global pandemic is not the cure for climate change. This pandemic has shown that we desperately need systemic change and that our society needs to revolutionize its relationship

with the environment. For the first time, we’re seeing that it is possible to live in a cleaner world — why should we let things go back to the way they were when this way is clearly better? When we’re allowed to throw parties with our friends again, I suspect most of us will try to forget this period of our lives in an attempt to move on and embrace a pandemic-free future. But I hope that people will always remember what they felt the first time they saw that picture of fish in the Venice canals or the clear picture of the Los Angeles horizon, and I hope it motivates people to fight for a permanently cleaner world.

A greener planet is not incompatible with economic growth. Now is the perfect time to start funding and implementing aggressive climate policies like the Green New Deal, which calls for increased renewable energy and green jobs, while we have a head start on decreased emissions around the world. In fact, some have argued that investing in the Green New Deal and decarbonizing the economy may actually help us with the incoming recession. We finally have the chance to slingshot ourselves into a future where staying below a global net temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius — which will help to prevent the most extreme climate effects like mass animal extinctions and major droughts — might actually be possible to achieve. In fact, we have less than 10 years to do so.

Yet, rather than prioritizing the environment, the government is prioritizing polluters by providing bailouts to the airline and cruise line industries. The Trump administration has rolled back Obama-era policies, withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and is currently pushing back emissions regulations for corporations, meaning corporations are no longer held accountable for how much they pollute during the pandemic. In fact, air quality in America is currently the worst it’s been in years, largely due to these emission rollbacks. We have been working for decades to lower our carbon emissions to prevent reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius, and now that we may be on a trajectory to reach that goal, the government is prioritizing the fossil fuel industries for the sake of the economy, despite renewables being the cheapest they’ve ever been.

Individual action is not enough.

This pandemic has only emphasized that individuals are not the problem — corporations and governments are.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com Madeline Peery is a senior in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts and can be reached at peerym@umich.edu.

Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

EASHETA SHAH | COLUMNIST

A

Pandemic profiteers

mid the pandemic, it’s disheartening to see our country’s poor response to this public health crisis, and daily COVID19 updates highlight our nation’s inability to separate business and politics from basic human rights. While most of the country has focused on bills like the Affordable Care Act and Medicare for All, this problem ultimately starts with the wrath of “Big Pharma,” a pejorative alias given to the pharmaceutical industry and its heavily debated motivations. Big Pharma is known for its notorious role in pushing overpriced drugs onto desperate consumers with patent brand-name medication, just like in the case of America’s ongoing opioid crisis.

Since the early 2000s, drug companies have focused their efforts on profits, spending 19 times more money on marketing than on proper research and development. This negligence of the latter is telling of their prevailing misaligned priorities, and there seems to be no sign of change amid a global pandemic. In fact, industry lobbyists have ensured that the aid package for coronavirus funding allows them to ultimately maximize profits from the pandemic with no limitations on intellectual property rights for drug makers and limited government intervention. Take heart though, this reigning power pharmaceuticals have over drug price controls is largely exclusive to the United States. Prioritizing profits over basic human health is nothing short of outrageous, but after all, it is the American way.

Biopharmaceutical company Gilead recently revisited the antiviral drug remdesivir which was first developed to treat Ebola. When the first known case of COVID-19 in the U.S. presented escalated symptoms at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash., they turned to Gilead’s drug. After being approved by the Food and Drug Administration under “compassionate use,” the drug was administered. Compassionate use allows “unapproved drugs to be given under select circumstances outside of clinical trials.” Note: unapproved drug. Remdesivir is still an unapproved drug that requires clinical trials to prove its efficacy, test its dosages and observe any side effects. During a public health emergency, temporarily waived standards for experimental drugs are often necessary for preliminary administration to assess potential benefits.

Even so, the drug was used in hopes to ease the burden of the pandemic on the health system by not only reducing the intensity and duration of the virus, but also offering the tiniest sliver of

hope to us all. However, if easing the burden on the health system was ever the true goal, abiding by strict public health protocols and investing in extreme preventative measures early on would have been the appropriate course of action. While the drug did reduce days for recovery in its first patient, later trials proved the effects of remdisivir to be insignificant and inconclusive.

Why, then, was information based on preliminary data released to the public at all? The answer is disappointing yet unsurprising: market manipulation.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spontaneous announcement of the data was possibly motivated by concerns that leaked information would cause the stock market to drop, as are most actions taken by Big Pharma.

While the stock for Gilead temporarily rose, the minimally researched remdesivir dangerously raised hopes for patients in critical condition. The drug escalated in demand so much so that Gilead stopped accepting requests altogether because they simply could not keep up. While the company’s released statement alluded to efforts focused on an alternative, the lack of transparency from both the company and the federal government has yet to offer satisfactory information as to how the administration of the drug is determined and why.

This mess of insufficient data and widespread false hope stems from profit-oriented drug companies that are left unregulated by a federal government that is far more concerned about its administration’s re-electability. Within both, the blatant disregard for anything but their self-fulfilling motives is reckless and irresponsible. A system that chooses to profit off a global pandemic — off of more than 300,000 deaths — is utterly abominable. It’s cruel to publicize a drug that is minimally researched, and like infectious disease specialist Dr. Andre Kalil said in an interview, compassionate use is “treating emotion.” We are all desperate for good news, but releasing inconclusive data is nothing short of sensationalism.

Time and time again, pharmaceutical profits and public health prove to be irreconcilable. The industry ceases to invest in research without financial incentives, but with current federally unregulated financial incentives, the industry completely neglects its consumers’ needs in terms of affordability and accessibility.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com Easheta Shah can be reached at shaheash@umich.edu.

OPINION 5

KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMNIST

A

Voting while Black in Trump’s America

s my father drove to the California polls on Election Day in 1988, he heard the local radio broadcaster announce that George Herbert Walker Bush would be the 41st president of the United States. Even though he knew the result, he continued on his 30-minute drive and cast his ballot for Michael Dukakis. When I asked him why he would waste his time like that, he indignantly replied: “Son, our ancestors fought with their lives for the right to vote. The least we can do is sit in traffic and walk into a booth.”

That statement stuck with me as I grew up, because it forced me to remember how much those who came before me sacrificed for my rights. I needed to make their struggle worthwhile by fulfilling my civic duty. Thus, Nov. 8, 2016 shook me to my core — and not because Americans elected a former steak salesman to the presidency. I was shaken because, across the country, my brothers and sisters weren’t voting. Black voter turnout fell 7 percent nationally in 2016 from 2012, but it fell significantly further right in my backyard, the industrial Midwest. Black turnout was down 7.5 percent in Ohio, 12.3 percent in Wisconsin and 12.4 percent in my home state of Michigan in 2016 — all states that Barack Obama had won in 2012. While these people may not have believed that their votes mattered, they effectively made Donald Trump the successor to the first Black president. After seeing the trends in 2016, Trump’s administration, court appointees and Republican cronies have actively sought to deny Black people the voting rights for which our ancestors fought.

Since 1870, we have had the right to vote regardless of “race, color or previous condition of servitude,” but this did not prevent state governments from taking away that right, through methods like poll taxes and literacy tests. These practices continued until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which enhanced our right to vote but immediately drew the ire of judicial conservatives who waged war on the law following its inception.

Enter the Roberts Supreme Court, which in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, invalidated Section 4(b), which reduced the scope of Section 5 of the VRA, opening the floodgates for Republican states to suppress their citizens’ rights. These subsequent efforts have been met with, at best, a shoulder shrug from the court’s justices, especially Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch. In 2018, Gorsuch even said that the Voting Rights Act does not prohibit race-based gerrymandering, which is such an unpopular interpretation that it has only been echoed by fellow Justice Clarence Thomas.

Ohio Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, a member of Trump’s inauguration team, took the Court’s decided conservatism and Trump’s election as a signal to begin purging the voter rolls. Upon his 2018 election, LaRose ordered the state’s 88 county election boards to begin purging more than 460,000 voters from the state’s rolls. However, once the flawed process garnered scrutiny for erroneously purging thousands of Ohioans from the state’s most diverse areas, LaRose backtracked, calling their system “unacceptably messy.” Though these voters’ registrations have since been restored, the state of Ohio has not taken any additional actions to make sure that further such “software glitch(es)” will not occur.

In 2020, following Ohio’s lead, Wisconsin’s Board of Elections released a list of nearly 209,000 voters whom they will purge from the rolls, most of whom vote Democratic. However, the board’s Democrats delayed those purges until after the 2020 election.

Then, liking their chances in the court system, Republicans filed a suit to force Wisconsin to purge the rolls immediately. While actively litigated in the courts, the board’s Republicans have ramped up the rhetoric, calling Democrats’ efforts “terribly disgusting” and disparaging the outrageous process.

Now, Republicans in these states have argued that these restrictions are necessary to maintain accurate voter rolls

and prevent voter fraud in accordance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

While the law was written to make voter registration easier, its provision empowering states to maintain accurate voter rolls has given wide discretion to Secretaries of State; some of whom have abused this vast power in the name of “election security.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, the integrity of our elections is a valid concern, as they are core to our democracy. However, the in-person ballot fraud rate is between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent, which is about nowhere near the level that could potentially affect a Detroit City Council race, nevermind a national election. Further, restrictive voter ID laws have disenfranchised minority and young voters with almost surgical precision because these voters are less likely to have “valid identification,” which somehow includes a gun license but not a student ID. From restrictive voter ID laws in Texas to blocking 53,000 new voter registrations in Georgia to the aforementioned suppression in Wisconsin and Ohio, Republicans in certain states have shown us all one thing — they’re scared of our votes, and, quite frankly, I understand why.

On Jan. 20, 2009, my whole family gathered to watch a charismatic Black man with a wide grin and funny ears take the oath of office. Though I was only nine, I took in the moment and thought for the first time that one day I could be the president of the greatest country on Earth. As he uttered those famous words, the room erupted in applause, as did the National Mall because we saw that when Black people unite together to fight against the system, we can accomplish previously unimaginable feats.

On Nov. 3, 2020, we need to speak strongly with our votes to turn the page on the Trump era, and we can only do that by actively registering ourselves and our neighbors to ensure that we can exercise the rights for which our ancestors died.

Keith Johnstone can be reached at keithja@umich.edu.

6 ARTS

Thursday, May 21 , 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

SUMMER SERIES

Professional dance, meet Instagram Live ZOE PHILLIPS Daily Arts Writer

It’s said that every theater is inhabited by at least one ghost, and contrary to legends propagated by Halloween, these ghosts do not like the dark. Thus, when the curtain WIKIMEDIA COMMONS falls and a theater’s house empties, an employee will leave a light — a ghost light — to burn onstage until the performers return.

Across the world, ghost lights have remained on and untouched for months. But the lives of performers continue offstage, each day adding pressure to find performance spaces on digital platforms. What happens when the ghost lights keep burning and we’re left with a stage wholly mediated by posts, on May 15. shares, comments and likes?

Making how i’m feeling now was not just a The New York City Ballet sent its danccute idea or an experiment — it was an unbeers home and closed its doors on March lievable success. The final album is a weirdly 26, a month before the company was set to 21st-century product of a pandemic, an unbelievably relevant concoction and nothing short begin its 2020 spring season. At the time, NYC museums and cultural centers had of brilliant. already been shuttered and dance compaLyrically, how i’m feeling now lives up to its nies around the world were simultaneously title, reflecting the torrent of emotions Charli has felt over the months cooped up in her home lowering their curtains. Ballet schools followed a similar pattern: Suspended classes in LA. The album kicks off in an aggressively became virtual or cancelled and end-ofsinister fashion with “pink diamond,” where year recitals became objects of distant Charli sings maniacally about her desire to memory. Within a few weeks, dancers of go out. The hook repeats “I just wanna go all ages began the harsh transition off the real hard” almost like a broken robot, a party stage and away from the studio. Dancers, animal’s internal breakdown. notorious for their inability to stand still, She describes her attempts to stood frozen at a collective crossroads of manifest party energy while confined to video chats, singing where to turn next.

Then, the side projects started: NYCB “Watch me shine for the boys Principal Dancer Megan Fairchild and the cameras / In real life, launched a series of fascinating interviews could the club even handle us?”

She doubles down on this senti- with other industry professionals, Cloud & Victory dancewear owner Min Tan started ment near the end of the album her #GoodBalletJuju podcast and NYCB on “anthems,” featuring a verse Principal Tiler Peck joined the list of many she wrote on Instagram Live professionals who took to Instagram Live that actually evolved based on to teach ballet class. fan input. One of the most gutPeck’s classes quickly became archeting lines in the verse that gets to the heart of types of a ballet world in quarantine: an Charli’s primal party urges — “Wanna feel the elite figure spending her time democratizheat from all the bodies” — was actually suging ballet for her digital family. Peck is one gested by a fan on the livestream.

For the most part, this is a love album. Charli of the many dancers to have increased her online presence in the last few months, oscillates between a sense of impending doom for her relationship and a romantic renaissance, and she’s arguably the most successful.

A class with Tiler Peck would normally a spectrum of emotional discord that captures be considered an expensive anomaly, most the highs and lows of love in quarantine. likely reserved for the occasional celebrity Where the heartfelt balladry of “forever” is a musical sendoff for a relationship on its last leg, workshop. Now, anyone from anywhere can become Peck’s student. She has taught the romantic nostalgia of “7 years” acknowledges a shift from distance to inseparability. At a rigid six-days-a-week schedule for almost two months now, providing asynchronous times these emotions are captured in musical feedback to dancers who tag her in their delirium, with intense infatuation on “claws” posts and never asking for compensation in and conflicted paranoia on “detonate.” vocals exchange for such dedication. The process suiting the lovesick lunacy within the lyrics. is a beautiful gift of educational generosRead more at michigandaily.com ity — ballet training has never been easier

‘how i’m feeling now’ exceeds expectations DYLAN YONO Daily Arts Writer

COVID-19 has given the phrase “bedroom pop” a whole new meaning. High profile musicians across the world have flocked to video conferencing and streaming platforms like Zoom and Instagram Live to perform and chat with fans more than ever before, often from the comfort of their bedrooms. British singer and experimental pop superstar Charli XCX took this ascending intimacy between artist and listener and cranked it up to the max. Her new record how i’m feeling now was recorded and produced at lightspeed — all from scratch over the course of a month — and Charli documented the process live all along the way.

Fans were able to tune in as she wrote lyrics, filmed music videos and collaborated with pop music’s most cuttingedge producers, providing an intimate look into the synthesis of an electropop gem.

The project began on April 6 when Charli announced it on a Zoom call. She simply said she was starting a new album from scratch, promised to open up the creative process to her fans and set a release date just over a month away. And thus Charli and her fans embarked on a grand pop music experiment, every day between announcement and release being a part of the journey to how i’m feeling now. Charli modeled in “photoshoots” (pictures her boyfriend took on his phone in their bedroom) that were shared with and edited by countless artists to make alternate covers for each new single, ranging from professionally designed album covers to humble fanart. She live streamed with an eclectic bunch of musicians, celebrities and public figures including Paris Hilton and 100 gecs. And maybe most impressively, Charli stuck to the arbitrarily imminent finish line she set for herself: The polished, full-length LP released without delay

how i’m feeling now Charli XCX

Asylum Records

to come by.

The generosity doesn’t stop at just ballet. Most every day, Peck also invites a new guest from her seemingly endless list of artistically gifted friends to join her on Instagram. Broadway stars, ballet legends and Juilliard graduates make up a few of the categories featured. Each day, Peck and her guest offer a quick collaboration for one section of class. On April 2, “The Little Mermaid” Broadway actress Sierra Borgess sang “Part of Your World” while Peck danced an adagio combination. A few days later, former NYCB Principal Heather Watts took 10 minutes to teach Peck’s group the beginning of “Serenade,” an iconic George Balanchine composition.

On April 21, Peck danced to the piano and vocals of John Batiste, the musical director of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

These appearances are more than highlights to an already exhilarating online experience — they are emblematic of a growing camaraderie across artistic fields.

Ballet is an art form marinated in a history of haut monde audiences who kept their content segregated from much of the larger artistic world. Tradition can sometimes be the most beautiful part of ballet, but when that tradition swerves too far toward preserving elitism it can also turn dangerous.

Coronavirus may be fast-tracking ballet’s transition away from such danger.

As dancers on Instagram erode layers of distance between audience and performer, Peck offers a quintessential example of this change: A ballet class usually occurs in a studio with a wooden barre and a special floor accompanied solely by classical piano music. Now, Peck and her almost 200,000 followers take class from kitchens and basements, accompanied by Broadway lyrics and supported by whatever floorboards or carpeting one’s home offers. Old boundaries crumble every day, offering glimpses into a new world of balletic accessibility.

Last Thursday, Peck’s guest may have been a familiar face to Ann Arbor audiences: Michelle Dorrance, the Mac Arthur “Genius” tap dancer who brought her company to the Power Center in late February.

Dorrance used a nuanced control of her tapping feet to create rhythm for Peck’s ballet combination. Much like the February performance, Dorrance’s contribution was a crisp explosion of brilliant sound created solely by her two feet. The collaboration was suggestive of ballet’s new synergetic horizons, and Dorrance and Peck’s enthusiasm offered new perspectives on what constitutes music, what constitutes movement and the suddenly possible new intersections between the two.

Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

SUMMER SERIES

TV NOTEBOOK

‘Moominvalley’ is a cozy, profound show TATE LAFRENIER Senior Arts Editor

Yoga practice: a balm for pandemic stress TRINA PAL

Daily Arts Writer

This piece is part of a series on “Art during COVID,” an exploration of art forms to keep our idle minds creative during this pandemic.

With many of us at home, our minds have ample time to wander, wonder and create.

This series highlights accessible and immersive art forms to both produce and consume during the pandemic months and beyond.

I’m sure every Ann Arbor student remembers where they were when they heard the news that would change the rest of their semester. I was standing by the storage cubicles of aUM Yoga Studio when my phone started erupting with text messages: University classes were moving online.

Overwhelmed by the sudden flood of information, I powered my phone off, folded it inside my jacket and tucked the bundle deep inside the cubicle. I could afford to stay in denial for one more hour.

As I walked into the yoga room, the irony of it all hit me: I’d received life-changing information seconds before starting a yoga class, a space that encourages detaching from the external world and turning your attention inwards. I heard jittery whispers as I unrolled my mat, all in disregard of the sign hung on the front door, “We honor noble silence.”

That March 11 class was one of my last at aUM’s studio, located on the corner of South University and South Forest Avenues. Less than a week later, aUM Yoga owner Jessie Lipkowitz decided to move all classes to a virtual platform, as did other yoga studios in downtown Ann Arbor. Shortly after, I found myself in my childhood home, isolated from my friends and sorely missing Ann Arbor.

But I didn’t give up my yoga practice.

ARTS 7

After frustrating hours of online classes, too much screen time and too little social contact, an hour of yoga has kept me going from day to day. I see yoga as art for the body. By the end of a practice, I’ve created something — a series of movements, a new energy, a cultivated breath. My body is the vehicle that creates and carries this energy and breath, allowing it to execute postures and balances. I take comfort in knowing that this art can be created with virtually no materials or preparation, but can be just as exciting and cathartic as painting a masterpiece.

If you’ve been hesitant to try yoga, I was once in your shoes. I was skeptical of exercising in a sauna-like room, of judgement from other students, of the countless Lululemon logos emblazoned on leggings, sports bras, even yoga mats. At the same time, I knew that yoga had often received the short end of the stick, labeled as a rich people’s form of exercise, an exaggerated form of spirituality, movement shrouded with mystical meaning. After three years of practicing, the expense and branding associated with yoga still bothers me. But if you can put this aside and focus on the art itself (which can be accessed on free platforms), the benefits are unparalleled.

The health advantages of yoga are well known. Many osteopathic medical schools in the U.S. include yoga in their curriculum as a form of preventative medicine and natural healing. For me, the emotional benefits of yoga have been the reason I come back to my mat every day. A yoga practice forces me to remember that my mental strength is just as valuable as my physical strength. Even if I start a class relaxed and calm, I somehow come out even more grounded and mindful.

It’s a feeling that I want everyone to experience.

Many unexpected developments have happened over the course of the past several months, but for me, the most unexpected has been my new-found love for a family of furry hippo-like trolls. It started at the beginning of the fall semester, when I noticed a stuffed hippo-creature my Finnish friend had. I asked what it was, and she informed me that it was a “Moomin,” a cartoon troll that’s immensely popular in Finland. I didn’t give the matter much thought, and the Moomins receded from my mind for much of the next six months, rearing their heads every so often to remind me of their existence.

Fast-forward to around the start of quarantine. I already felt pretty homesick for Ann Arbor, and was rather dejected, if not totally bored, by the entire situation. I suppose this primed me for the pending visit by the Moomins, because they soon inched back into my periphery, thousands of miles from Finland, in the form of music. More specifically, music from an animated Finnish television series called “Moominvalley” that premiered in 2019. The series’ soundtrack and list of featured artists happened to appeal to my favorite genres of folk and indie-pop (which is probably why Spotify recommended it to me in the first place), and so I happily let the soft and upbeat melodies envelope me, at first not realizing the origins of the song.

After listening to the first track, I checked the album it was from and, to my surprise, there was a group of Moomins staring back at me. In spite of my bewilderment, I listened on. This was the point of no return,

and there was no averting the collision course I was on with the Moomins. It wasn’t long after that my curiosity gained the better of me, and, wanting to hear the songs in context, I watched the first episode of the 2019 adaptation. And then another. And another.

Needless to say, the Moomins were just what I needed while isolated in quarantine.

As it turns out, the Moomins are much more profound than I at first believed. Created by Finnish-Swedish writer Tove Jansson in 1945, the Moomins are a family of trolls consisting of Moominmamma, Moominpappa and their son, Moomintroll. Stories typically follow Moomintroll and the adventures he has with his friends. Debuting in a series of children’s books, the Moomins were surprisingly progressive for their time — Jansson wove feminist and queer themes throughout her stories, using her characters to encourage acceptance of these ideas.

Maybe it was Jansson’s openness about her own bisexuality, or her being raised by accepting parents, but regardless of the reason, Jansson’s creations have always reinforced the importance of unabashed love.

However, these elements weren’t what drew me into “Moominvalley.” Though the sincere stories added to the charm, the show itself was a source of radiance and warmth.

I went for a walk through the woods the other day, and as the warm sunlight filtered in through the trees and the leaves crunched beneath my feet, I felt relaxed. Watching “Moominvalley” felt a bit like that. The way that the animation worked in tandem with the music and story just struck a chord with me.

Read more at michigandaily.com

8 MICHIGAN IN COLOR

Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Asian Pacific Americans who shaped America CHERYN HONG

MiC Managing Editor

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and the recent racially charged discrimination towards the AsianAmerican community due to the COVID-19 pandemic, below are several crucial, historical AAPI figures who have shaped America today. Many have used their outlets of entertainment, sports, activism and personal experiences to shape the world for many Asian Americans today and paved the way for racial and ethnic equality.

ANNA MAY WONG Anna May Wong, whose given name is Wong Liu Tsong, is widely considered as the first Chinese American film star. Growing up outside of Los Angeles’ Chinatown, she and her older sister persistently suffered racial bullying. Wong taught herself how to act by studying films at local movie theaters. First as an extra in “The Red Lantern,” and soon landing a role in “The Toll of the Sea,” she developed a fan base over time.

She pioneered the American film

industry when many states had anti-miscegenation laws, racial conventions which prevented on-screen biracial displays of affection or embracement, and yet American filmmakers continued to refuse to give her a romantic leading role. And for Chinese roles, Hollywood producers would prefer Hungarians, Mexicans and Native Americans, which ultimately caused Wong to leave the States in 1928 and find success.

All the men received a $3,000 fine and no prison time.

While Chin’s murder didn’t make national news, Ebens and Nitz’s lack of sentences sparked protests across the country; before there were some instances of panAsian American activism, but his murder marked a turning point for all Asian American communties who previously didn’t identify with “Asian American” interests.

founded the first surf club, was voted Sheriff of Honolulu over 10 times and his funeral in 1968 was the biggest Hawai’i had ever seen.

DR. HO FENG-SHAN

Chinese American Vincent Chin was beaten to death in the summer of 1982 by two white men. His death inspired a push for Asian American rights. Chin was born in Guangdong province in China, grew up in Detroit and worked in his hometown in computer graphics. He was working in Detroit when automotive manufacturing was in decline and many American auto workers blamed Japanese car manufacturers. Thus, when he and his friends went to a strip club to celebrate his engagement, Chrysler Foreman Ronald Ebens and his son, Michael Nitz who had recently lost his job at Chrysler beat Chin to death, mistaking him for Japanese.

Olympic gold medal-winning Hawaiian surfer and swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, or in full known as, Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku, was known as the greatest freestyle swimmer in the world for several years. He was famously known for developing the flutter kick, which replaced the scissor kick.

Kahanamoku is considered the father of modern day surfing, as he is solely credited with the popularization of surfing across the globe in the 1920s.

He has set three swimming world records in the 100-yard freestyle (from 1913 to 1917) which have been universally glorified.

He became a Hawaiian icon, as he

Ho Fen-Shan was the Chinese Consul-General in Vienna who issued Chinese visas to Jews in Vienna, despite clear order from his superiors. There was an intense pressure for 185,000 Jews to leave the country after Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany, and Nazis required Jews have entry visas or boat tickets in order to leave. Unfortunately, many of the world’s nations refused to change their restrictive immigration policies. Because of his work, Ho is considered the “Chinese Schindler” as many people believe he saved more than 5,000 lives, and was probably the first diplomat to truly take action to save the Jewish community.

The visas Ho gave out were unique, as they were solely for Shanghai, an open port city without immigration controls and was occupied by the Japanese army, thus anyone could enter without a visa. His visas didn’t require everyone to travel to Shanghai,

underlying health conditions that are created by the system. The impact of this virus is not limited to just the health of our communities, but it engenders financial catastrophes and even changes the way we will vote in forthcoming elections.

Many states have already postponed primary elections to avoid large gatherings at the polls for safety measures. The predicament expands to the upcoming presidential election in November as many fear a second wave of COVID-19 will befall right when it is time to go to the polls. A very easy resolution to this crisis would be voting by mail; however, the GOP claims that voter fraud is the only reason they are refusing to expand this approach. Nonetheless, there is absolutely no evidence regarding voter fraud being caused by absentee ballots. This is just yet another way to suppress voting due to the historic patterns that reveal high voter turnout benefits the Democratic Party. Especially in the

midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have to exercise our right to vote.

In some states, absentee ballots can be requested which allow you to vote by mail. This is a sufficient way

to avoid the virus, yet also execute your responsibility as a citizen.

Absentee ballots can be requested through:https://www.vote.org/ absentee-ballot/. Eligible voters can also request an emergency

VINCENT CHIN

DUKE KAHANAMOKU

as they were able to use them to escape to other countries such as the United States, Palestine and Philippines.

DALIP SINGH SAUND Dalip Singh Saund was a American politician who served the 29th District of California for 6 years, and was the first Sikh, Asian and Indian American elected as a voting member of the United States Congress. Saund was first a lettuce farmer and a distributor of chemical fertilizer in the Imperial Valley of California. When he achieved his American citizenship in 1949 and was elected judge of Justice Court in the Westmoreland Judicial District in Imperial County, California, he was denied his seat for not having his citizenship for one year. He was elected as judge once again in 1952 and also served as a California delegate to the Democratic National Conventions.

Throughout these elections Saund’s ethnicity, race and religious beliefs were a constant issue and interfered with his candidacy.

Read more at michigandaily.com

An inclusive guide to voting in 2020

SHARON (SHAY) SZABO MiC Staff Writer

Past years have proven that there is no blueprint to winning the presidential election. The election season never fails to surprise us.

Even though it is understandably early in the presidential campaign calendar, there are notable measures we should take before walking into the voting booths in November.

1. VOTING IN THE MIDST OF COVID-19 As of May 20, 2020, Michigan’s COVID-19 cases have spiked to a high of 53,009 with the death toll reaching up to 5,060.

Although every population is vulnerable to COVID-19, there is an indisputable, unequal impact on communities of color. There has been a disproportionate amount of COVID-19 recorded deaths in communities of color due to

GRAPHIC BY CARA JHANG

ballot which can be submitted after the deadline for absentee ballots; this must be submitted before 4 p.m. on Election Day.

Read more at michigandaily.com

Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

How I broke up with my breakdowns ANA MARIA SANCHEZ-CASTILLO MiC Staff Writer

This year I battled with psychosis and my clinical depression and it changed my life.

I was confronted with some of my darkest demons. I felt out of touch with reality and my identity. Illusions and sensations became so terrifyingly vivid that my ability to function in everyday life had been disrupted.

I saw the darkest parts of my psyche, and yet I came back with a completely altered perception of the world. I learned that just like the outside world, our minds can be dangerous places and this is, to a large degree, out of our control. You see, with mental illness, chemicals alter our perceptions of ourselves and our positions in the world. It can completely warp the world and how we view it, it can completely alter relationships and major life decisions. I spent almost a full month in an extremely warped state and as terrifying of an experience as it was, it has allowed me to develop into a stronger, more intentional person. It also connected me with a plethora of resources and support I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Of course, no two people have the same brain or journey and experiences with these tools may differ, but with hard work and support, I am able to lean into myself, my needs and I am able to feel strong.

1. I TOOK TREATMENT AND RECOVERY SERIOUSLY Therapy If your mental health is damaging your ability to function optimally or at all, seeing a health professional is extremely important.

Friends and family can be a wonderful support system, but a licensed professional can give unbiased, credentialed guidance. I’ve found cognitive behavioral therapy, psychiatry and music therapy to be the most helpful in my recovery.

Trusting someone and being genuinely vulnerable to another person can be extremely challenging, but with time comes the development of a relationship with a health professional that can not only provide guidance, but also provide another pillar of emotional support.

If you are unable to afford traditional therapy, there are a plethora of free mental health apps as well as online mental health resources, including books that you can cater to your personal experience or sentiments.

In the case of an emergency, please do not hesitate to reach out to crisis text and phone lines. The numbers for these can be found in the link above.

Medication It was very difficult for me to become comfortable with taking medications; it can

be hard to come to terms with relying on a substance to remain balanced. I found developing a relationship of trust with my psychologist and therapist to be the most helpful in making my decision on taking substances.

Medication is not always accessible, and for many people it is against cultural beliefs, and this can pose an issue as well. This is okay. Take your time, do what you need and rely on alternative therapy and the other listed methods.

Sometimes the chemical imbalances in our brains can’t be remedied without the help of medication. My tía says it’s like “driving a car without oil.” Medications can be a really sustainable way to balance your brain chemicals. Personally, finding the right medication has been really helpful in allowing me to sustain my progress — of course it may not work for everyone and everyone is affected differently.

Do not feel rushed or pressured to make a decision on this matter right away (it took me years and I am far from done). Connect with your support system and weigh out the pros and cons as you see fit. Your mental health is ultimately in your own hands and this matter requires you to be intuitive as well as your own biggest advocate, which can be difficult in itself.

2. I SPENT MORE TIME WITH LOVED ONES

Open to Love The circumstances of my most dangerous depressive episode showed me the value of unconditional love. The interactions I had with my family and friends during this time helped me immensely in my recovery.

Unconditional love can remind you of what you value, ensure you feel supported, show you tangible aspects of your reality and teach you how to think outside of yourself in your current mental space.

Becoming Aware of How My Mental Illness Affects Others How you feel affects those who love you and your relationship with them. When in a deep depressive state, it is difficult to see beyond that. That can include the sentiments and challenges that your loved ones are experiencing both related and unrelated to your situation. By starting to take active intention into staying mindful and aware of how those around you are doing, I was able to focus on others rather than being con-

3. I FOUND ROUTINES THAT SET ME UP FOR A HEALTHY AND PRODUCTIVE LIFESTYLE Read more at michigandaily.com

MICHIGAN IN COLOR 9

Bridging cultures at the supermarket

HIBAH CHUGHTAI

JENNY CHONG MiC Staff Writer

It was one of the few days out of the entire year that my mom had a day off work. On that bright and early Sunday morning, she decided there was no better way to spend her free time than to go grocery shopping with her eight-year-old daughter at Pathmark, Brooklyn’s equivalent to Michigan’s Meijer. Expecting to buy groceries in bulk, my mom pulled out her red, four-wheeled foldable shopping cart from the living room closet. Without a car, we lugged the cart with us from our apartment on 7th Avenue to the supermarket eight avenues away.

After enduring the 0.9 mile walk to Pathmark in the 80 degree heat, I grabbed a weekly ad beside the automatic doors as my mother searched for a supermarket grocery cart in the parking lot. Immediately after entering the supermarket, I rushed towards every kid’s favorite place: the snack aisle.

After a brief moment of deliberation, I tossed a pack of frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts into our shopping cart.

At the same time, my mom was standing in the middle of the aisle flipping through the colorful pages of the weekly ad, forming a mental list of the items she needed to buy that day. Honey glazed ham and La Yogurt were must-haves every time we shopped here, and we made sure to grab them from the deli and frozen goods section. A gallon of Lactaid milk, a family pack of boneless chicken breast and two dozen eggs later, our shopping cart began to reach its limit.

Before heading towards the checkout line, however, my mom suddenly remembered that we were running low on cooking oil at home. We searched through all twelve aisles, passing by shelves holding Bounty paper towels, birthday cards and dog food. Still, corn oil was nowhere to be seen. At last, my mom decided to not waste any more time and approached a nearby Pathmark employee, a young Caucasian man, restocking the shelves

with spaghetti boxes.

With her strong Cantonese Chinese accent, she got the attention of the man by performing her own rendition of the phrase, “Excuse me.”

“Ex-suh-cu-seh me,” she said with an oddly higher-than-normal pitched voice as if she were mocking Barbie’s voice. It brought shivers down my spine and not in a good way.

The man put down the box of spaghetti from his hands and tilted his head 90 degrees to face my mom, giving her a nod of approval that he was listening.

Without knowing how to say “corn oil” in English, she began conversing with the man using her limited English vocabulary.

The conversation consisted of her using broken words and phrases, including “use make food” and “help look,” in addition to her making gestures of cooking with a pan as if she and the man were playing a game of charades. She looked silly doing so, and I couldn’t help but feel second-hand embarrassment. I wanted no association with the scene and I was sure the employee felt the same. Observing his facial expressions as she spent a minute trying her best to describe what she was looking for, I could tell that he was flustered and getting lost in the conversation.

My mom grew frustrated that he couldn’t understand her and called me over to help translate. In spite of learning English as a second language in school, I was able to read, speak and write in English fluently — even better than in my native language.

This made communicating my mom’s needs to the employee easy. Asking him, “Where can I find cooking oil?” was a simple interaction for me. With that one question, he understood me right away and prompted us to head towards aisle three, where we were able to find our oil and finally check out. At that moment, I realized how powerful being able to speak English in America would be.

Read more at michigandaily.com

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Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wake Forest transfer Chaundee Brown commits to Michigan DANIEL DASH

Daily Sports Writer

Just over three weeks ago, it appeared the recruitment of Wake Forest transfer Chaundee Brown was winding down when he released a final group of suitors that included Gonzaga, Illinois, LSU and Iowa State on Apr. 25.

That didn’t stop Michigan coach Juwan Howard from trying to get his foot in the door. And now, less than a month later, Brown is heading to Ann Arbor.

Brown, who has one remaining year of eligibility, announced his commitment to Michigan via Instagram on Tuesday. He averaged 12.1 points and 6.5 rebounds on 45.6 percent shooting across 23 games last season, with his most impressive performance coming in a 26-point effort against Xavier on Dec. 14.

The Orlando, Fla. native

also declared for the NBA Draft on Apr. 15, but now appears set to return to college. Brown is the third transfer to commit to Michigan this spring, joining Columbia graduate transfer Mike Smith and former Purdue guard Nojel Eastern.

In his three years with the Demon Deacons, the former top-40 recruit established himself as a physical presence around the rim. Brown’s 6-foot-5, 225-pound stature will improve the Wolverines’ physicality on the wing, while his 74 career starts and wealth of ACC experience could prove invaluable from a leadership standpoint.

Though he’s never shot above 35 percent from beyond the arc in a single season, he’s shown an ability to stretch the floor as a jump-shooter when necessary and knock down free throws consistently.

That versatility, success and experience in a high-major

conference should translate well to the Big Ten. Like Eastern, who also announced his intention to transfer to Michigan last week, Brown will not be eligible for the upcoming season without a waiver. But given Wake Forest’s decision to fire coach Danny Manning, Brown may have a better case for immediate eligibility, though it’s worth noting he entered the transfer portal prior to Manning’s firing.

If Brown is ruled eligible for next season, expect him to carve out a sizable spot in the rotation. While Michigan’s biggest needs are backcourt playmaking and defense, Brown isn’t a conventional ‘2’ guard. His play style resembles that of a strong undersized power forward rather than a shot creator.

That being said, Brown is more than just an insurance policy on junior forward Isaiah Livers’ impending

PHOTO COURTESY OF WAKE FOREST ATHLETIC COMMUNICATIONS

Chaundee Brown transferred to Michigan, filling its last remaining scholarship slot for 2020-21

NBA Draft decision. Given his ability to get to the rim, finish through contact and cash in at the free throw line, the Wolverines could easily carve out a role for Brown in either of the next two seasons.

Without a waiver to play this season, Brown would be a fifth-year senior on an inexperienced Michigan team

in 2021-22. As of now, the only upperclassmen on scholarship for that season will be Eastern, Brandon Johns Jr., Adrien Nunez and Franz Wagner, and there’s a realistic possibility the lattermost declares for the 2021 NBA Draft.

With the addition of Brown, the Wolverines are now sitting at the 13-scholarship

limit for next season. If Livers returns to school after testing the NBA Draft waters and there is no further attrition, Michigan will not be able to offer a scholarship to any high school recruits who reclassify from 2021 to 2020 or any more high-profile transfers that enter the portal over the summer.

Gattis ‘nowhere near’ naming starting quarterback DANIEL DASH

Daily Sports Writer

Leading up to last season’s Citrus Bowl, Josh Gattis was already planning for the future.

In the waning days of his first season as the Michigan football team’s offensive coordinator, he knew his offense was only months

away from losing quarterback Shea Patterson to graduation.

So as the Wolverines zeroed in on their matchup against Alabama, Gattis pulled aside backup quarterbacks Dylan McCaffrey, Joe Milton and Cade McNamara to zero in on a matchup of their own.

“This is the opportunity right now to start this (starting quarterback) competition and

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Dylan McCaffrey is just one of three quarterbacks vying for starting job

compete,” Gattis recalled telling them in December.

In hindsight, that trigger might’ve been pulled too early.

“It was a little bit unfair (at the time), because they still (were) not taking the reps needed,” Gattis said during a teleconference on Thursday.

“They’re still taking backup reps because we had to prepare. Shea was our starter — there were no ands, ifs or buts about it. …

But I challenged all three of those guys to step up in any kind of way, show me that you can lead this team, show me that you can lead this offense.

And I met with them after practices and I told them, ‘Hey guys, we’ve got to start now.’

“So just challenging the mentality of those three guys. We want a healthy quarterback competition. We want a balanced quarterback competition where we can give those guys the right reps needed. We just couldn’t do it right then in December.”

The Citrus Bowl practices came and went, as did the months of January and February. Soon enough, it was time for a spring practice slate that was supposed to be defined by the muchanticipated quarterback battle.

But Michigan’s spring slate — like every other program across the country — was canceled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, robbing Gattis of the opportunity to see McCaffrey, Milton and McNamara duke it out over the course of 15 practices.

Though leaving spring ball with a clear starter never seemed likely, its cancelation only added more uncertainty to the situation.

One way or another, someone needs to fill Patterson’s shoes.

And without a spring slate to determine the best candidate, one would think the natural next step is an examination of last season’s pecking order.

Not for Gattis.

“No guy is out front, no guy is behind,” Gattis said during a teleconference on Thursday. “There is no order.

It’s not based on last year, it’s not based on the depth chart (from) last year. Those things are not important. What the depth chart last year was irrelevant because we had one quarterback who was our starter.”

In Gattis’ eyes, it’s the same three-horse race for the job that he envisioned back in December. Ultimately, one of the quarterbacks will win the keys to an up-tempo offense that returns most of its playmakers.

Now entering his fourth year with the program, McCaffrey has the most experience of the group. He’s attempted three times as many career pass attempts as Milton, even after missing time due to injuries during each of the last two seasons.

Milton, on the other hand, boasts a cannon for an arm, and he showed flashes

of a high ceiling during limited playing time in 2019.

McNamara did not see game action last season, but his passing accuracy and touch drew praise as a four-star recruit coming out of high school.

Kick all that to the curb.

To Gattis, it’s an even playing field heading into the summer.

“We’re nowhere near having a frontrunner,” Gattis said. “We lost our starter, obviously. We’re in a threeman competition, coming into the spring, with Joe, Dylan and Cade, and no one’s got a competitive advantage over anyone. We’re excited about the guys that we have on the roster. We’ve got to solve that question later down the road when we get the opportunity to. “… Every guy is going to get the right opportunity to go out there and lead this team.

When we have that answer is when they’ll know.”

As of now, that answer remains months away.

While serving, Aaronson finds a team JARED GREENSPAN Daily Sports Writer

have been more inopportune. With high school in the rearview mirror, he hoped to prolong his swimming career at an American university.

Then suddenly, he could make it to the pool just twice in an eight week span.

“That was hard,” Aaronson said.

“I just really wanted to swim.”

Dealt a hand out of his control, Aaronson had to choose how to take the change. Deciding what to do was easy.

“I just had to have the state of mind that I need to do (my service) and it doesn’t matter, because everyone needs to go through it,” Aaronson said. “Basically every citizen in Israel has done it. So you just do it.”

It’s an attitude that speaks to both Aaronson’s maturity and positivity.

Israeli citizens had sacrificed in the IDF for seventy years; now, it was his turn. Dwelling on it wouldn’t change the reality.

With a new outlook in tow, Aaronson grew to relish basic training and its simplicity.

“Everyone is wearing the same uniform, everyone is shaved, everyone is buzzed,” Aaronson said. “You have no idea what their backgrounds are. I learned from that to not judge and think things about people from their appearance. I tried to understand more about the person behind what you see.”

Aaronson cherished each interaction, going out of his way to strike up conversations with peers from every corner of the country. He treasured the time spent swapping stories and jokes into the early hours of the morning, unbothered by the early wake-up calls that loomed. Even the draining workouts

and incessant yelling from his commanders became tolerable.

As Aaronson recounts these experiences now, there’s a tinge of nostalgia in his voice. He was without swimming. But that was okay. It would be there on the other side.

“Sometimes, I would want to do other things, want to swim,” Aaronson said. “But when I look at the big picture, it’s all worth it.” *** When the recruits were given their permanent assignments, Aaronson’s swimming status made him one of the more fortunate ones.

The IDF designated Aaronson an elite athlete, subsequently sparing him from the front-line combat that many of his friends would soon endure. His duty would be in an office role, leading training programs for higher ranked commanders and organizing sets of activities for incoming units.

On top of that, he was free to swim again.

Juggling swimming with service meant long days — 6 a.m. starts and 7 p.m. finishes, with training sessions sandwiching a six hour stint at the Wingate Base. Aaronson concedes that each day was “really challenging,” until he put his situation in perspective.

“Whoever’s not an athlete goes to be a combat soldier,” Aaronson said.

“Compared to the service that my friends did, to see all my non-athlete friends having to go into combat, I’m just always grateful I had the opportunity to combine service and swimming.”

Gradually, Aaronson’s dream to swim collegiately in America came back into focus. Israel lacks wide-

As others his age embarked on their final year as college students last August, Nadav Aaronson set foot on campus for the first time. The native of Ramot Hashavim, Israel was a wide-eyed freshman — at 21 years old.

Aaronson found himself surrounded by new classmates who, at three years his junior, were the same age as his younger sister, and all had mostly followed the same linear path. High school bled into college, one a stepping stone for the next.

It’s a path Aaronson wasn’t offered.

“Look at 18-year-old Israelis and 18-year-old Americans,” Aaronson told The Daily. “Americans, they graduate high school and they’re free to continue in their life, go to college, do the stuff they want. In Israel, it’s not like that.”

Instead, the Israeli Defense Force beckons. *** The IDF’s use of conscription dates back to its establishment in 1948. Accordingly, Israeli citizens view their service as a right of passage.

“It’s basically what defines us Israelites,” Aaronson said. “It’s something that everywhere you go, every time you meet someone, one of the first couple sentences you have with someone is about what they did in the army.”

As Aaronson enjoyed life as a high school senior, his stint in the IDF grew imminent. Having already turned 18 — satisfying the draft’s minimum age requirement — he was bound for a 2-to-3 year tour of duty when the school year finished.

On February 5, 2017, his life upended.

“The transition was really difficult,” Aaronson said. “To go from living at home and being in high school with all my friends and having a normal life as a kid, it’s really different. And at basic training, I couldn’t train for swimming.”

It was a predicament Aaronson never faced before. From the moment he took up swimming as an eager 10-year-old, the water had been his second home. During the two-month basic training stretch in which recruits are taught military fundamentals, his pastime was brought to a jarring halt.

For any athlete, a hiatus from one’s sport poses a substantial challenge; PHOTO COURTSEY NADAV AARONSON for Aaronson, the timing could hardly Freshman Nadav Aaronson (left) served three years in the Israeli Defense Force.

Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Gradually, Aaronson’s dream to swim collegiately in America came back into focus. Israel lacks widescale collegiate athletics. Amongst Israeli athletes, Aaronson said, heading overseas is fairly common.

He’s seen teammates and idols alike make the leap after their service. He wanted to be next.

Amongst a slew of options, only one school filled his criterion.

“Really quickly, I found that Michigan was something more than my individual swims,” Aaronson said. “I just wanted to be a part of something that is bigger than the individual sport.”

There’s a dichotomy between swimming, a sport so inherently individualistic, and the notion of team. Aaronson, more so than many of his peers, values the group aspect of swimming because of his time in the IDF, where his individual sacrifices opened his eyes to the importance of the whole.

Michigan coach Mike Bottom runs his swimming and diving program under a core value system.

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The values, ranging from purpose to progress to integrity, span five different tiers, each tier designating a level of importance.

One value stands alone at the top.

“The team is the building block of the value system,” Bottom said.

“That’s what sets us apart from a lot of other programs, our focus on the team. It’s something that Nadav saw in us, and again, it’s a part of who he is.

“Nadav, he’s like the glue that pulls people together. Everybody wants to be a part of that.”

That’s all Aaronson wanted — to be a part of a strong team culture.

That’s why he committed to Michigan in May of 2018, even with his IDF service still ongoing.

In being forced to put his own life pursuits on hold, to look past his own swimming feats, to be uprooted from his cushy high school life, Aaronson found perspective that few 21-year-olds have: “You’re something that is much bigger than yourself.”

W BASKETBALL VAREJÃO From Page 12 At the beginning, only local schools recruited her — Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State — but as more and more schools from around the country came to visit her and Izabela, the offers grew and the world of recruiting surrounded her.

In that first round of recruiting, Varejão spent little time thinking about playing at Michigan. Born and raised in the warm climate of Brazil, the fear of a harsh winter scared her off from committing to any colleges that far North.

Yet as the months passed by, when Varejão needed to make a decision, she was stumped. There were no campuses calling her name, no schools that felt right. Her AAU coach, in the summer before her senior year of high school, asked her where she wanted to go.

“Coach, I don’t know,” she told him. “Like honestly don’t know how to decide, when to decide and where to decide.”

He made a call to Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico.

“They called and just said ‘Izabel is open and going through the process again,’” Barnes Arico recalls. “I said, ‘Well okay, we’ll be down tomorrow, how can we get down there as soon as we can.’ And coach (Melanie Moore) and I got

on a plane immediately and went down and had a home visit with her and her family.”

Their sales pitch appealed to Varejão, enough to set up an official visit. Varejão called her mother, telling her about the new school and convincing her to make the trek up to America to see the northern school.

“It was important to her mom where her baby was going to wind up next,” Barnes Arico said, “because her being so far away from home, she wanted her to be in a place where people could take care of her.”

At the end of a recruiting Saturday in October, Varejão and her family were sitting with Barnes Arico at a dinner table. She’d spent most of that weekend soaking in the campus, confused by a football game and bonding with one of Barnes Arico’s daughters, who’s about the same age as her younger brother.

Varejão started gesturing to her family that came on the visit with her, to no avail. It was time to make her decision, and she wanted her family to be prepared. Soshe said a few words of Portuguese and had a quick side conversation with Stacy about the commitment. Again, she didn’t hesitate to get into the carriage.

When told, Varejão swears, Barnes Arico jumped two feet in the air.

12 SPORTS

Thursday, May 21, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Izabel Varejão’s epic journey through basketball KENT SCHWARTZ

Summer Managing Sports Editor

Six-foot-four and cramped in the seat of an airliner, Izabel Varejão kept thinking, What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing?

Mom? Suddenly, in that steel cylinder, the reality came crashing down on her. There would be no cousins in Cary, N.C. for her to lean on, and her mom was a 17-hour flight away. She was landing in a completely foreign culture, and the winters would actually be cold.

Her brother was six. She was 16.

And now they were 5,000 miles apart.

It wasn’t the first time she’d left her home and her family for basketball. In October of 2013, at 14 years old, Varejão had to choose between two paths: basketball or modeling.

Days of coming home, tears in her eyes, to her mother’s queries and torturous periods of self-reflection haunted the 14-year old as she stared down her first major fork in the road.

One path would take her toward a modeling career.

After a months-long process, she had been accepted into a trial phase in São Paulo to undergo a boot camp for aspiring models.

Two grueling weeks later, she received offers from three modeling agencies, and they all told her the same thing: We would love to have you, but you would need to lose 15 to 20 pounds.

The other path was basketball.

As a young child, Varejão wasn’t keen on basketball — she didn’t like to be touched. Instead, she danced, taking ballet and jazz dance lessons.

But the allure of sport, and a bad case of scoliosis, forced her into swimming.

“My parents,” Varejão recalls.

“Since I was little, they were like, ‘No matter what you do, if you want to just go straight to school, don’t care about sports. No matter what you do, you gotta do something outside of (school).’ You gotta do something like exercise, something like that.”

Her cousins played basketball, her mom played basketball and her uncle, Anderson Varejão, was a world away in Cleveland, playing in the NBA. The sport was omnipresent, and as the swimming helped her back, she slowly grew into basketball. Until another health

issue appeared.

When she stood, the world spun and darkness clouded her vision.

The faintness overwhelmed her and any sport became nearly impossible to play. Varejão had anemia.

“I could barely stand up, I would almost pass out,” Varejão said.

“I stopped basketball, I stopped everything for almost two years.”

As she recovered, she tried a couple other sports before returning to basketball. Varejão was good, and tall, and with time she became more and more focused on basketball. It became her passion, her work.

And then, two weeks after being given an offer to become a model, a scout for a club called Bradesco, headquartered in São Paulo, watched her play and saw something in her. Her talent was clear, her vision superb, but she looked a little rough around the edges. Still, the scout offered her a spot in Bradesco’s academy. The offer was extended in late October, 2013, the same month as the modeling spot.

Of course, there was a third option. She could stay home.

Her family lived in Vitoria. Her grandparents, uncles and cousins all resided there, a key part to her life.

For Varejão, family is everything, and it had just gotten a new addition.

For the first 10 years of Varejão’s life, her parents tried to have a second child. After two miscarriages, they managed to have a son. She had a brother. When she was confronted with the choice of what to do with her future, he was four. He was just becoming his own person, with his own personality.

And now, she had to decide whether or not to leave him.

Her father, though, offered her a piece of advice that would stay with her for life, “Sometimes, the carriage just passes by your door once.” *** Two weeks into living in São Paulo, the homesickness set in. The store that sold candy down the street became less and less appealing as she yearned more and more for the beach that was omnipresent in her childhood. For the friends she’d left behind. For her family.

For her brother.

Now, she lived in a house with other girls her age, all of whom missed their own families.

“It was hard in the beginning, and people thought I was going to give up,” Varejão recalled. “My best friend (Daniella’s) mom, was like ‘Can you do it, you know how

you are, you’re very close to your family.’”

At first, she only practiced three times a week instead of the usual five; she needed time to adjust to the rigorous practice schedule. The club was built around sport, and while Varejão had grown up around it, the intensity at Bradesco was something new.

She needed to adjust to the distance, too, and for that, she turned toward her family.

“I had a cousin that lived in São Paulo,” Varejão said. “So sometimes on the weekends, I’d go to his house and stay with a familiar face.”

Her parents were only four hours away by airplane, and Varejão, with her friendly personality, quickly created her own family in São Paulo with the other girls at the club.

She caught up to the practice schedule, too, and quickly grew as a player. The next year, at 15, she tried out for the Brazilian under-16 national team. They cut her.

The next year, after trying out again, Varejão waited to hear her name called, to join the team and go to Mexico for the Americas Cup, representing her country and competing at the highest level. She never heard her name. She was cut, a second year in a row. A second time, she returned to her club, dejected.

The dejection wouldn’t last.

After an injury to one of the players above her on the roster, they called her, and she immediately pounced on the opportunity to go to Puebla, Mexico.

First, though, she had to practice and join a team that was already midway through its preparation.

Varejão, who started playing competitive basketball much later than most of the girls on the team, is a quick learner, and the transition into the team was quick.

Her talent caught the eye of an American AAU coach, who ran a team in Raleigh, N.C. Three of her teammates on that national team had already played for him for six months, and he had a good relationship with the national team’s coach.

After one of the practices, he approached Varejão and asked about her dream to come to America. A quick conversation later, he vowed to talk to her more about it, but first, there was a tournament to play.

The Brazilians made a deep run, even bouncing out the Americans in the semifinal, setting up a finals meeting against Canada. The Canadians and Hailey Brown —

one of Varejão’s future teammates at Michigan — won by one point in overtime.

From there, the AAU coach ramped up his communication with Varejão and her uncle Anderson, who spoke better English than her parents.

This time, when faced with a big decision, she knew what she wanted from the get-go. Since she was a child and begged her father to buy her a foldable anatomy book, she knew she’d wanted to be a doctor.

Growing up, her uncle and his life in the United State had appealed to her.

This was the place she wanted to be, and when the carriage plopped itself outside her door, she didn’t hesitate to get in.

Her life, her family and everything in São Paulo that she’d spent two years building up was left in the rearview mirror. *** It was snowing when she landed in Cary during January of 2016.

She was first set up with a young couple, friends of her AAU coach, Eric Hemming. They weren’t prepared to handle a 16-year old Brazilian, despite their best efforts.

Awkward months went by as both parties navigated this new world of theirs, but when things started settling down, they left.

They moved, 40 minutes away from Varejão’s friends, school and basketball team. Just after getting settled in, she had to look for another host family.

“We found another family that could do it that were friends with my coach and they were a very big family, four kids, one had just graduated high school and another three were still in school,” Varejão

recalled. “So they were not driving yet, the logistics were really hard because they had to take care of those three and then me. So that was really hard and I had to change again.”

In the midst of this turmoil, she also switched schools. After starting out with her friends Babalou and Geassy at Friendship Christian, she was uprooted again — this time, just down the street to Neuse Christian.

Yet despite the chaos surrounding her life, when the turmoil hit its hardest, Varejão opened up, instead of closing herself off.

“If I struggle, I will find friends, or I will look a lot for help,” Varejão said. “And also I am very, very, very social. I make friends super easily.

I feel like that helped me a lot.

Also having other Brazilians there helped me a lot, too.

“I make friends very easily, I talk to people a lot. I talk to everybody.

Literally if I’m on the street and I’m bored, I’m going to start talking with someone and become best friends with them, just like my dad.”

On her third host family and second school, Varejão was finally in a permanent spot in America.

She grew, on and off the basketball court. The bond between her and her new host family tightened, her English improved, her passion for biology blossomed and in her three years of high school basketball in America, Neuse Christian made the state finals every year behind a troop of talented Brazilians.

Varejão’s sophomore season, Maria Albiero — a guard from Londrina, Brazil — drew attention from collegiate scouts, eventually accepting a spot on BYU. Her junior year, the two Iz’s — Izabela and Izabel — drew crowds to the small Christian school in Cary.

See VAREJÃO, Page 11

EMMA MATI/Daily

Sophomore center Izabel Varejão has moved three times for basketball.