2020-07-30

Thursday, July June30, 11, 2020 2020

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

inside

AAPS board talks safety for 2020-21 school year

NEWS

Off-campus leases Students talk about the struggles of getting out of their leases amid COVID-19

Board of Education discusses details of possible methods of instruction

>> SEE PAGE 2

OPINION

Downplaying the pandemic Comparing Trump and Bolsonaro’s leadership and response to COVID-19 >> SEE PAGE 4

KRISTINA ZHENG Summer News Editor

Design by Hibah Chughtai

ARTS

Taylor Swift’s ‘folklore’ New album from the pop star both signals new directions and is a return >> SEE PAGE 6 to form.

MICHIGAN IN COLOR

My experience in a COVID-19 hotspot

Reflections of trip to a declared ‘hotspot’ of the coronavirus pandemic, Gatlinburg, Tenn. >> SEE PAGE 9

SPORTS

Shut down

Following positive COVID19 test results, four sports suspend voluntary workouts. >> SEE PAGE 11

INDEX Vol. CXXIX, No. 124 © 2020 The Michigan Daily

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

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Who are you voting for? Ann Arbor 2020 City Council election guide BARBARA COLLINS Daily News Editor

On the Aug. 4 primary election ballot, voters will decide on five seats on the Ann Arbor City Council. With one seat open in each ward and 13 total candidates running, The Daily has put together a City Council election guide with each candidate’s platforms to help Ann Arbor voters make informed decisions at the polls.

Ward 1 Anne Bannister (D), incumbent Bannister was first elected to City Council in 2017 and is seeking a second term on the council. She grew up and went to school in Ann Arbor and graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1986. She is a Certified Financial Planner and has worked for the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America for 10 years.

Bannister often voted against new housing developments in Ann Arbor during her time on the council, citing density and zoning concerns. She supported A2Zero, the recent initiative to help Ann Arbor go carbon neutral by 2030.

Bannister also supports the

Independent Community Police Oversight Commission and community policing techniques.

Lisa Disch (D) Disch is a professor in the political science and women’s studies departments at the University. She has lived in Ward 1 since 2008 and is a part of Voters Not Politicians, an initiative to end gerrymandering in Michigan, in 2018. According to her website, she is a “life-long Democrat.”

Affordable housing, safety and environmental sustainability are at the top of Disch’s platform.

She supports funding the development of affordable housing and has proposed the creation of a Renters’ Commission.

Additionally, Disch wants to implement more sustainable practices city-wide and strengthen community oversight of policing in Ann Arbor.

Ward 2 Jane Lumm (D), incumbent Lumm was previously on the council as a Republican from 1993 to 1998. She has served as a representative of Ward 2 as an Independent since 2011 and announced her decision to run as a Democrat in April.

During Lumm’s tenure on City Council, she has consistently

voted against new development in Ann Arbor, as well as against increased spending and taxes.

Lumm, along with Ali Ramlawi, D-Ward 5, is a City Council liaison to the Independent Community Police Oversight Commission.

She supports fiscal responsibility, as well as prioritizing spending on essential services and infrastructure.

Linh Song (D) Song is in her second term as president of the Ann Arbor District Library Board of Trustees. She has lived in Ann Arbor for 21 years and graduated from the University with a degree in political science and later obtained her Master of Social Work in policy and evaluation. Song has worked in the nonprofit sector doing antitrafficking work and serves on the board of directors for both Avalon, an affordable housing organization, and the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation.

In her platform, Song discusses city services, good governance and community.

She supports improving public bus routes and other forms of public transportation, promoting engagement within the

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With just over a month left before school starts for the Ann Arbor Public School district on Sept. 8, the AAPS Board of Education met Wednesday evening to discuss instruction plans for this upcoming school year, particularly with the Reimagine Learning plan.

The board meeting opened up with public commentary, and many AAPS parents and faculty raised concerns with changes to scheduling, resources for student mental health, details on attendance and safety measures.

Jeanice Swift, superintendent of Ann Arbor Public Schools, began the presentation with an update to the AAPS food distribution program. She detailed the decisions going into the fall semester with an emphasis on understanding the range of challenges students and their families are facing.

“We understand that our students have experienced trauma or have family that have experienced trauma, and we’re going to keep these things in mind as we put together the plan,” Swift said.

An important part of this discussion, Swift added, is considering the impact of the dense college student population returning to Ann Arbor. While Swift emphasized the pride in living in a college town with the University of Michigan, she said it is crucial to consider the reality of potentially inviting over 40,000 students from across the world.

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2 NEWS

Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Off-campus leases present challenges As the pandemic rages on, students struggle to break housing contracts SARAH PAYNE

Summer News Editor

The University of Michigan announced its hybrid plan for the fall semester in late June, allowing dorms to reopen and remaining flexible to students who do not want to return to campus. However, community members have raised questions about off-campus housing and what students are able to do about leases if they do not plan to return to campus in the fall.

Oxford Companies Associate Director Katie Vohwinkle told The Daily in an interview that they are working with students who signed a lease, but decided to not return to campus amid COVID-19.

“We have been in touch with the property owners, and every situation is a little bit different. But anyone that has come to us so far and expressed a need to get out of their lease, we are assisting them and trying to help them find someone to take over their lease,” Vohwinkle said. “In years past, there have been fees associated with that, us marketing for them, but we (are) not charging (now) and we have been very successful in finding people to take over leases, (but) they are still responsible for the lease.”

Many universities, including Harvard University and the California State University system, have announced plans to go entirely remote for the fall semester. Vohwinkle said if the University were to follow suit, they would have a different approach to the decision about their leases.

“We would look at the situation differently if that were to happen,” Vohwinkle said. “We would reach out to the individual owner about how to handle each individual property. But, they all do have leases (and) so far, we have been fortunate and we have been able to help every single person in that situation. We do not have a clause in our leases to break the lease… The students are on a 12-month lease, these are not academically driven (schedules).”

LSA junior Avaneesh Reddy told

The Daily in an email he signed a lease last December and is struggling to find a way to release his commitment to living in the apartment due to the pandemic.

“I signed my lease back in December at Landmark, as apartments were pretty much running out for next year,” Reddy said. “It seems like there’s no way to break the lease. I’ve spoken to the management and explained the situation that I shall not be returning to campus during the next semester, but they were pretty nonchalant and dismissive of the financial strain that it might put to continue holding such unoccupied space for most families.”

As an international student, Reddy said that the subletting process is complicated and these roadblocks have made a challenging situation more difficult to navigate since it is harder for him to return to the U.S. “Landmark has made things worse by preventing subleasing and only allowing reletting of the entire lease,” Reddy said. “Since almost no one is looking to take up a 12 month lease now, it seems I have no legal way to sublease my apartment. As an international student who travelled back to India due to the pandemic, I can say with confidence that I’ll be staying back and completing the semester online. I’m also considering taking a gap semester, but there’s a lot to be considered, and having a huge housing debt is not making things easier.”

Landmark declined to comment on their leasing and reletting policies. The Daily also reached out to Arbor Blu, The Hub - Ann Arbor, Zaragon West, Zaragon Place and University Towers, all of which declined to comment.

LSA junior Deedy Chang talked to The Daily about her experience working to sublease her room in a house for the upcoming school year.

“I am currently trying to find someone to take over my lease. If it doesn’t work I’ll probably switch to subletting,” Chang said. “I contacted my landlord when I found out that I might not return to campus or I might want to look for a space with less people because I live in a house of seven.”

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Downtown A lined with 200 marchers 2

Protesters fight against prospect of federal officers entering Detroit SARAH PAYNE & KRISTINA ZHENG Summer News Editors

Scattered on the front steps of the federal building in downtown Ann Arbor, approximately 200 Michigan residents of all ages and races gathered on Saturday afternoon to protest against racial injustice and the prospect of federal officers entering Detroit.

Protesters across the country have marched for months hoping to end police brutality and dismantle systemic racism.

However, Saturday’s protest in Ann Arbor took on another cause after President Donald Trump ordered federal officers to Portland, Ore., to quell protests, raising questions about whether the U.S. government has exceeded its authority and violated civil rights.

In late June, Trump signed an executive order to justify sending federal officers to Portland in order to protect federal property from destruction. Portland, a city known for its spirited activism, has grown to become an epicenter for protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police brutality.

The tense standoff in the Portland has not just involved protesters and the federal

Dominick Sokotoff/Daily

officers, as local officials have also said the situation amounts to federal overreach. Furthermore, federal officers have deployed tear gas into a crowd of Portland protesters, including Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, in late July.

Trump has since doubled down and committed to sending more federal officers to cities like Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia and Detroit, among others.

These recent events were at the forefront of the Ann Arbor protesters’ activism Saturday.

The event, organized by Jeff Gaynor, Ann Arbor School Board member, and local tutor Amy Lesemann began the protest with speeches from local activists and politicians including candidates for Washtenaw County prosecutor Hugo Mack, Arianne Slay, Eli Savit and other Washtenaw County officials.

Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor said the U.S. must undergo a major transformation to create an inclusive community.

“The federal government, state government, local government, every community within the United States of America requires reworking and reimagining to meet our goals and aspirations,” Taylor said. “(Our goal is) a community that embraces everyone, where everyone has a role to play, where everyone can achieve what it is they wish to achieve.”

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Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

NEWS 3

Di ngel l, R ajput preepare for election pr The congressional candidates outline campaign strategy SARAH PAYNE & ARJUN THAKKAR Summer News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter

Participants reflect on COVID-19 campus challenge

Design by Hibah Chughtai

Students discuss next steps, lessons learned and shortcomings CELENE PHILIP Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan COVID-19 Campus Challenge, an initiative organized through the College of Engineering aimed to support and showcase student ideas for changes to be made on campus during the pandemic, hosted a virtual showcase on July 1. Teams presented their proposals in project categories including food insecurity, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, co-curricular activities, mental health, housing and transportation. Several projects from each category were designated as finalists.

Business sophomore Achintya Saxena participated in the food insecurity category and proposed improvements to the existing infrastructure of the Maize and Blue Cupboard. His team’s project was titled “Maize and Blue Cupboard 2.0.” The project included a scheduling system to keep students and MBC staff safe while connecting with local farmers, distributing easy and healthy recipes and increasing community engagement with the Cupboard in the long-run.

Saxena said he believes food insecurity grows with increasing economic problems, so health concerns and budget restrictions for some students may hinder them from getting the food they need.

“Because of COVID, people aren’t able to go to the Maize and Blue Cupboard because they may not be on the Michigan campus or if they are on campus they may be afraid to go to a public space,” Saxena said.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the challenge for Saxena was the collaborative nature of the development process “It was kind of different than some of the other case competitions I’ve done before in that it fostered a much more collaborative environment where you were given a lot of mentors and staff who you could reach out to and ask questions,” Saxena said. “For example, for food insecurity we had a meeting with MDining staff and we were also able to schedule one-on-one meetings with the associate dean of students as well as the director of the Maize and Blue Cupboard. That exposure was really good because it gave us a lot of access to information we wouldn’t normally be able to come across as students.”

Engineering sophomore Manasi Sridhar and LSA junior Meredith Ainsworth created a

project aimed at battling social isolation on campus during the fall semester. The project incorporates a survey — called the UMich Pal Pact — and a matching algorithm designed to help students connect with someone new and expand their social support network. Ainsworth explained how the makeup of the University’s smaller colleges and units coupled with the public-health informed fall semester can make campus a very isolating place for some students.

“I think it is more important than ever to bring people together and try to make sure that people are not feeling lonely and able to advocate for themselves in terms of mental health,” Ainsworth said.

Additionally, their team hoped to coordinate more virtual and in-person mental health wellness events. According to Sridhar, the problem with mental health services on campus is not the lack of them, but rather the lack of accessibility to them.

Sridhar, Ainsworth and their other team members have decided to continue on with their project regardless of if they are contacted by the University’s administration, as they believe it will positively benefit students.

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The Michigan primary election for Michigan’s 12th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is on Aug. 4. Solomon Rajput, a current medical student at the University of Michigan, is taking a leave of absence to run for Congress and challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who has served three terms as the representative from the 12th district. The Dingell family has represented the district for the past 87 years –– Dingell was preceded by her husband John Dingell Jr. and his father John Dingell Sr. Candidate Jeff Jones is running uncontested in the Republican primary for the 12th district.

The Washtenaw County Democratic Party recently hosted a debate for Rajput and Dingell where they discussed the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy and the environment.

Last week, The Daily met with both Democratic candidates to discuss their experience, main policy issues, campaign strategies and the importance of voting in the upcoming election before the primary.

Medicare for All and Healthcare Though both candidates support Medicare for All, Dingell cited universal healthcare as her top issue going into a new Congress in 2021 and was a lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act in 2019.

“The number one issue that I am going to get done is Medicare for All,” Dingell said. “I think every person in this country has a right, when they’re sick, to be able to go to the doctor (and) not have to think about ( being) able to

afford the treatment that they need. I have always felt this way but having been a caregiver for five years, and seeing this (first-hand), I know I’m luckier than many and the days that I was desperate, I couldn’t navigate the system. I couldn’t make it work.”

Rajput spoke on the current healthcare system’s need for reform, calling it a “dystopia,” and told The Daily that his campaign supports Medicare for All systems.

“We are ardently supporting a Medicare for All system, single-payer health care system that would guarantee health care for all people in this country, because right now, our system could not be more dysfunctional,” Rajput said. “Our health care system is kind of the health care system you’d find in a dystopia.”

Rajput also said Medicare for All is more necessary than ever amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “(People are) not only worried about getting the virus,” Rajput said. “They’re also worried about losing (their) job and losing their health care, and then not being able to get treatment for the virus because they no longer have health care. So still, (a) Medicare for All systems is something that we’re really fighting for.”

Rajput said his experience as a medical student gives him a unique, first-hand understanding of health care issues.

“We go see patients (and) we try to figure out what’s going on with them,” Rajput said. “So often, we have to tell patients we know exactly what’s going on with you and we got the perfect thing for you, but we can’t give it to you because your health insurance doesn’t cover it. And it’s some pretty sad, heartbreaking stuff.”

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4 OPINION

Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ISABELLE SCHINDLER | COLUMNIST

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ALLISON PUJOL | COLUMNIST

A

s I write this article from my home in Miami, Fla., my state’s COVID-19 rates continue to peak at tens of thousands of new cases per day. An article from The Guardian described the magnitude of the Sunshine State’s crisis as such: “If Florida was a country, it would be one of the world’s biggest hotspots.” Nonetheless, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has adopted an optimistic, yet somewhat dismissive outlook on the growth in cases. In June, DeSantis chose to veto an increase in health care spending from the state’s budget.

More recently, while advising Floridians to be cautious but not fearful, DeSantis quipped, “I think fear is our enemy here.”

DeSantis has been criticized for his lackluster response to the pandemic — and rightly so. In spite of expert medical advice, DeSantis has pushed to reopen the state’s businesses, its schools and even Disney World as soon as possible. His eagerness to open back up has been criticized by many as prioritizing economic gain over protecting vulnerable lives, but it’s also been criticized for its deference to President Donald Trump. Many local, state and international leaders have expressed concern with the commanderin-chief’s statements and policy regarding COVID-19. The Red Cross even spoke out against the U.S.’s response, deeming it divisive and ineffective.

In Brazil, however, Trump’s bombastic rhetoric may have found a receptive audience, especially within the Latin American country’s own executive branch, based on the leaders’ similar responses to the pandemic. In April, Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro had responded with a shrug when reporters pressed him about Brazil’s record number of deaths.

The real enemy “So what?” said the president of the largest and most populous country in Latin America. He continued dismissively, “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

It is unlikely there is any single explanation for the drastic rates of infection and death in the U.S. and Brazil. Americans and Brazilians are not inherently sicklier or weaker than the rest of the world.

While some structural factors — geography, public health resources and even the weather — can make disease spread more likely in any given country, the impact of irresponsible and reckless leadership on transmission is pronounced. To that extent, Brazil and the U.S. certainly have many geographic, structural and climatic differences but do share one eerie commonality: a lack of effective, responsible leadership.

I am often hesitant to assign too much theoretical power to any particular politician because government is inherently complicated and a single person is rarely the only one responsible for a larger phenomenon or problem. But the reality is that Bolsonaro and Trump do wield an incredible amount of persuasive power over some of their constituents. Many people do make decisions based on what their country’s leaders say, even if what’s being said is misleading or simply untrue.

As Brazilian media has reported, every time that Bolsonaro downplays the coronavirus on television, his supporters’ adherence to social distancing declines.

Likewise, to say that Trump has also been dismissive of COVID-19’s spread throughout America would be an understatement. Despite the massive scale of the outbreak that is raging through major metropolitan centers throughout the U.S., the decision to wear a mask

appears increasingly political. As the U.S. handles tens of thousands of new cases a day, the White House is planning to block funding for test-and-trace funds and other prevention measures. On July 19, Trump insisted in an interview on “Fox News on Sunday” that the coronavirus would eventually “disappear.”

Both countries’ leaders have publicly minimized the pandemic. That matters.

A politician’s ineffective leadership can affect the behavior of fervent supporters and casual observers alike as well as make the difference between a minor dip or a spike in cases. In the wake of misinformation and new data around COVID-19’s transmission and fatality rates, this much is likely true for the U.S. and Brazil: It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. That’s something we know based on scientific expertise and thoughtful analysis of public health outcomes from professionals who are trained to assess risk to vulnerable populations. Brazilians and Americans alike should continue to practice social distancing, wear a mask and encourage others who are reluctant to do the same.

Fear is not the enemy. Carelessness is the enemy. The willingness to sacrifice lives for economic and political gain is the enemy. Reckless behavior and misinformation serve as powerful vectors for disease. When Gov. DeSantis opens the public beaches — which he will, sooner rather than later — we should not take that to mean COVID-19 no longer poses a serious public health concern. Instead, we should acknowledge it means the very opposite.

Allison Pujol can be reached at ampmich@umich.edu.

O

Rename the bases

ur nation’s military bases should serve as a reminder of the courage and bravery of our country’s armed forces, not as monuments to men who fought to tear the United States apart. It is time the U.S. government remove the names of Confederate generals from our military bases.

Some of the nation’s largest and most well known military bases, such as Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Benning in Georgia are named after Confederate generals. In total, there are ten major army bases named after Confederate generals. The recent Black Lives Matter protests and growing national conversation about racial justice have put this issue back in the spotlight and reignited calls for the bases to be renamed.

Support for the name change has been channeled into action with lawmakers adding a provision to the National Defense Authorization Act requiring that all Confederate names be removed from U.S. military bases. A version of each bill passed the House and the Senate, however, the removal of names is not yet set in stone.

President Donald Trump has vowed to veto the bill if it includes a stipulation to rename bases. The House and Senate passed the bills by a veto-proof majority of over two-thirds in each house. However, if the president decides to veto the bill, Republicans in the Senate could switch their votes to prove their loyalty to Trump.

Additionally, since the versions of the NDAA passed by the House and Senate were different, the two chambers must negotiate a final version to vote on, which might not include a requirement to rename the bases. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a conservative Trump supporter who has a great deal of negotiating power as Senate Armed Services Chair, has vowed to fight to remove this provision from the final bill.

It is simply unacceptable that in 2020 we are still having this debate. We should not have our military bases serving as monuments to men who actively fought against the U.S. Army and were willing to tear our country apart in order to hold onto their slaves.

Instead, we should rename our bases after true American heroes who better represent our values.

Currently, there are no U.S. military bases named after women, despite the important role that countless women have played in

various wars. There are so many people to choose from, both male and female, who deserve the honor of having a base named after them, whether it be Harriet Tubman, John McCain, Ulysses S. Grant or other deserving individuals for whom the bases can be named.

Trump and some of his supporters have opposed renaming the bases, saying it is giving in to cancel culture and promoting a revision of history. They also argue changing the names takes away the honor of these bases, which have been critical to past U.S. military success.

President Trump reiterated this claim in a Fox News interview, saying “We won two world wars, two world wars, beautiful world wars that were vicious and horrible, and we won them out of Fort Bragg, we won out of all of these forts that now they want to throw those names away.”

Arguments such as these cheapen the hard work and dedication of those who served in the World Wars and other military conflicts.

The successes that have come out of these bases have nothing to do with their names — it has to do with the courageous men and women who serve there. By making this argument, the president is demeaning their commitment and sacrifice.

Our president should be focused on commemorating the legacy of true American heroes and patriots, not Confederate generals.

The whole argument of keeping up Confederate memorials to remember our history is ludicrous statues and namesakes do not serve as a reminder of history — they serve as symbols of white supremacy. We should not honor Confederate generals who fought to protect their right to own other people and tried to tear our nation apart.

Countries such as Germany have shown us that you do not need statues or monuments to remember history.

In Germany, there are no Nazi flags, no statues to Hitler or elementary schools named after Mengele. They recognize their sinful history and work to atone; they do not commemorate the monsters of the past.

Removing the names of Confederate generals from our military bases will not fix everything. It is a small step in the marathon of changes that we need to make in this country. However, it is an important step that must be taken to ensure that we commemorate the values and individuals who represent our highest American ideals.

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

Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

EVAN STERN | COLUMNIST

Ann Arbor invests in its future

A

s a student at the University of Michigan over the past year, I have come to love the natural beauty of the Ann Arbor region, whether it be the scenic Huron River winding through the Washtenaw County countryside, large expanses of open space or picturesque farms dotting the landscape. Unlike many other cities similar in size — along with most areas of Metro Detroit — Ann Arbor’s close proximity to the countryside in nearly all directions makes this city a rarity in southeastern Michigan. In only a couple of miles, you can easily travel from a dense, urban atmosphere to wide, open fields that give you a longing for Northern Michigan’s landscape, only a half hour from Metro Detroit.

These precious lands surrounding Ann Arbor don’t exist today by accident.

For nearly two decades, the city of Ann Arbor has led a valuable effort aimed at preserving the “Greenbelt” around the city limits in order to protect natural resources, the Huron River watershed and farmland. This effort began in November 2003, when Ann Arbor voters approved the Open Space and Parkland Preservation Millage, also known as the Greenbelt Millage.

Since then, Ann Arbor has protected over 6,100 acres of land within the boundaries of the Greenbelt District, in partnership with Washtenaw County and surrounding townships.

Far beyond simply preserving the rural character of the Ann Arbor region for decades to come, the Greenbelt Millage — which is a 30-year, 0.5 mil tax levy based on assessed value — has a wide range of benefits, as Remy Long, manager of the Greenbelt Program for the city of Ann Arbor, discusses in a video posted on the Ann Arbor website.

According to Long, “dollars and acres” are only one way to understand the far-reaching benefits of the Greenbelt effort. By preserving dozens of farms, one of the most powerful impacts of the Greenbelt is increased food security and a greater supply of locally-grown produce for residents in and around Ann Arbor to enjoy. The Greenbelt program, as Long explains, also makes it easier for new farmers to purchase land by removing the development rights, which lowers the land value and makes it more affordable. “Affordable land access is the number one barrier to starting a successful farm operation,” Long explains. “If we’ve removed those development rights from the equation and made it more affordable for beginning farmers to access, we are helping promote a new generation of farmers.”

In the nearly two decades that have passed since Ann Arbor residents approved the Greenbelt Millage, thou-

sands of acres of farmland and natural areas have been successfully protected.

According to an MLive report from 2014, the largest property preserved by the program is a 286-acre property in Ann Arbor Township, north of Ann Arbor.

Taking second and third place are currently a 265-acre property in Webster Township and a 218-acre property in Salem Township, respectively. In the first 15 years of the Greenbelt Program, more than 5,700 acres of wooded areas, wetland, prairie and farmland have been permanently preserved.

Many community members and officials agree that the Greenbelt program is so important because it protects the natural, undeveloped areas surrounding Ann Arbor from urban sprawl. Urban sprawl leads to a number of problems, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, including “increased energy use, pollution, and traffic congestion and a decline in community distinctiveness and cohesiveness.” Without the Greenbelt initiative, many feel that the areas of Washtenaw County surrounding Ann Arbor would begin to look more like the suburbs of Metro Detroit, with miles of never-ending strip malls and subdivisions. As a result of the millage, “So much beautiful property has been protected, and there’s also funding to protect more, so Washtenaw County is never going to turn into Oakland County. There’s going to be viable agriculture and there’s going to be close-by natural areas for people to enjoy,” according to Dan Ezekiel, former chairman of Ann Arbor’s Greenbelt Advisory Commission.

While a majority of voters approved the Greenbelt Millage in 2003 and the program has proven to show clear benefits for the Ann Arbor community, the Greenbelt does have critics. One common concern amongst residents is that the Greenbelt isn’t the best use of the tax revenue the city of Ann Arbor takes in, especially since most of the Greenbelt District is outside of the city limits. While I am not a taxpayer in Ann Arbor and I understand these concerns, I believe that the benefits of this program for the entire Ann Arbor region as a whole far outweigh the costs.

Not only does the Greenbelt safeguard natural resources and improve food security, but by protecting natural beauty and open areas, I feel this program is also beneficial for things like mental health.

According to research discussed by Harvard University, there is “a strong connection between time spent in nature and reduced stress, anxiety, and depression.”

Read more at MichiganDaily.com Evan Stern can be reached at erstern@umich.edu.

OP OPIINION 5

KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMNIST

“

Dear liberals, John Roberts isn’t our friend

If you can sit down with a family and see your own family in them … then you’re going to work hard for them.” — Barack Obama With arch-conservative and beer rights activist Brett Kavanaugh replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy, this Supreme Court term appeared bleak at best for liberals. LGBTQ+ rights, DACA, Trump’s taxes, religious freedom, abortion, Affordable Care Act and gun control were all on the docket this term, so most liberals’ expectations ranged from dismal to apocalyptic. However, the crisis was averted, for now, as the four Democratic appointees found an unlikely ally in many cases: the umpire himself, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. This term, Roberts sided with the liberal justices on an array of cases ranging from one opposing the administration’s cavalier behavior with dismantling the DACA program to one protecting a woman’s right to choose — for now. However, a deeper look into this surprising term exposes a startling and revelatory look into the philosophy of Roberts and his political gamesmanship. See, while Roberts has been reviled by conservatives as a “secret liberal” and praised by liberals as an “institutionalist,” this public persona is a façade to cover partisanship by manipulating the odd relationship the Supreme Court has with media, the public and his own colleagues, and we cannot allow him to fool us.

Famously, when describing his judicial philosophy during his confirmation hearings, analogizing judges to baseball umpires, Roberts said, “It’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” This bought him the support of 78 out of 100 senators, with nays on Roberts’ confirmation belonging to then-Senators Barack Obama, D-Ill., Joe Biden, D-Del., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., along with 19 other votes.

Once Roberts replaced his old boss — noted segregationist William Rehnquist — as Chief Justice, he attempted to maintain a low profile, developing close relationships with his colleagues and cultivating a reputation for warmth, wit and good humor. This reputation for congeniality made Roberts a darling of the media, which lent the chief both credibility and goodwill.

However, the trait the media did not give Roberts enough credit for was his savvy. See, one of the main powers of the chief justice is to assign the majority opinions if he or she is on the winning side, so Roberts has sought to deflect the media criticism onto other justices in major rulings like D.C. v.

Heller (2008), which held that the second amendment guarantees the

right to firearms. While the case drew the ire of the left, most was directed toward Antonin Scalia — who I would normally make a joke about, but it’s just too easy.

As Roberts became more experienced, he began employing more overtly political tactics. For example, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebellius (2012), Roberts had the opportunity to deal a deathblow to Obamacare, but he sided with liberals, concluding that the law’s controversial individual mandate was constitutional, which became the headline. However, the decision’s arguably more consequential precedent was his conclusion that the law’s mandatory Medicaid expansion was unconstitutional, which deprived millions of people across the country, especially in red states, of access to health care. Further, the logic of his precedent could be applied to many liberal priorities at the federal level in the future concerning everything from clean energy to free college.

While Roberts’ media manipulation and political savvy are significant, they are usually overcome by two things: religion and racism. These are weak spots in Roberts’ arsenal, as, since he is a wealthy white Catholic man, he has never had to consider the issues of race or imposition of religion in his daily life, so he simply cannot relate. Therefore, he is completely tone-deaf to these issues, which has never been more apparent than in his majority opinion in Shelby County v.

Holder (2013) — one of the worst decisions in the Supreme Court’s history.

I could describe the gross incompetence expressed by one of the most powerful men in this country, but, honestly, his reiteration from a 2009 opinion does it best: “Things have changed in the South.

Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.”

If you don’t speak conservative nonsense, I can gladly translate.

Essentially Roberts is patting himself and white people in the South on the back saying, “Congrats guys, we did it. Racism is no more,” which is just about the most ridiculous — and statutorily illogical — point that I have ever read. Needless to say, this decision, which gutted Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, led to a wave of laws targeted at decreasing minority voter turnout across the country, especially in the South.

With the notable exceptions of Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which legalized gay marriage across the country, and Whole Women’s Health v. Hellersteadt (2016), which acts to maintain protections for a woman’s right to choose, the Supreme Court tacked conservative in most every consequential case after 2010. While these small, steady wins satisfied most legal conservatives, the evangelical base hungered for further victories. Moreover, many Democrats in the Senate and on the campaign trail began advocating for altering the structure of the Supreme Court. This national climate set the stage for the term in 2020 with Roberts, who is a bona fide conservative, at the center of the court and several consequential cases facing the justices.

This term, Roberts’s cunning was on full display in several cases, but the pinnacle of his strategic prowess was on the issue of LGBTQ+ rights. In Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), despite the chief voting against gay rights in Obergefell and other previous decisions, he provided his vote to pad the 6-3 majority. This vote secured the ability of conservative Neil Gorsuch to write the narrow majority opinion rather than allowing one of the court’s liberals to author an expansive one. Then, in a much lower profile case, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v.

Morrissey-Berru (2020), Roberts commissioned conservative Samuel Alito — who spent most of the term writing whiny dissents making me question his devotion to the rule of law and overall sanity — to write the opinion allowing LGBTQ+ individuals to be fired by religious organizations due to the ministerial exception. Thus, he and the conservatives dealt a victory to liberals, but they strategically undermined it at every turn, which is the same pattern that every liberal “win” this term has followed.

This term, Roberts has played political games while still making time to disenfranchise minority voters and help reintegrate religion into public life. Despite this, many political pundits who either lack expertise about the court or are too optimistic to view objective facts as such believe that this term marks a pivotal change of heart for Justice Roberts. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. Any analysis scratching even slightly below the surface of these opinions conveys Roberts’ true motivation, which is to save face for the court at all costs, even if that means losing in the short term.

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

6 ARTS

Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MUSIC REVIEW

TV NOTEBOOK

Ordinary histories MAXWELL BARNES Daily Arts Writer

The ‘lore’ of Taylor Swift’s new album KATIE BEEKMAN Daily Arts Writer

Not a month before quarantine started, my Taylor Swift™ snake ring snapped in half.

After anxiously twisting it on and off my finger for nearly two years, the silvery metal fittingly relented in therapy. Bulky, obnoxious and glittery green — I had come to think of it as a secret signal (“I knew you were a Swiftie!”) and a conversation starter. “Oh,” I began when anyone asked me about it, “I’m a really big Taylor Swift fan.”

So it’s hard to overstate the unconscionable joy and sheer terror I felt Thursday morning when I saw that Taylor’s eighth album, folklore, was going to be released in less than 24 hours.

Pre-album release rituals out the window (listen to all previous albums in consecutive order, wear all possible Taylor merch during release week, etc., etc.), all I could do was take a few selfies with the sepia-toned folklore™ filter on Instagram — and wait.

To anyone well-versed in Taylor’s meticulous release routine, folklore is an interruption.

Her lead singles are expected to roll out three to four months in advance of each new album, which are released every two years in autumn, and followed by a year-and-a-half long tour.

Right on schedule, if it wasn’t for COVID-19, I would have been preparing to attend LoverFest this week, the accompanying festival to Taylor’s 2019 effort.

But more explicitly, folklore is an interruption full stop. The pastel palette of Lover has been washed over with a melancholy gray. Sugary anthemic pop replaced with atmospheric strings, piano and acoustic guitar. Taylor has always been a poet, but with a subdued backdrop her lyrics have room to shine. While I’m not sure that one of the biggest pop stars in the world can, by definition, create something “alternative” or “indie,” folklore is certainly the closest Taylor’s ever come. With the help of The National member, songwriter and producer

Aaron Dessner, and longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, every song on folklore sounds like it could be made into a movie. The drama of love and loss is Taylor’s wheelhouse, but she’s never addressed these same themes with this kind of weight or maturity.

Take “my tears ricochet” for example. Any Swiftie worth their salt knows the significance that its placement as “track five” holds — the fifth track of any Taylor album is its emotional compass. From her self-titled debut to 1989, they were the Big Heartbreak Songs. reputation broke the mold with the hopeful “Delicate,” clueing fans in on the fact that she and her current boyfriend were in it for the long-haul. And on Lover, “The Archer” gives insight to Taylor’s struggle with loving herself. This time around, track five invites the listener to a funeral. Potentially Taylor’s.

“I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace” she admits, backed by ghoulish “oohs” and a gloomy keyboard, “‘cause when I’d fight you used to tell me I was brave.” If this doesn’t sound like your typical break-up song, it isn’t.

When Taylor’s 15-year relationship with her former record label executive Scott Borchetta fell through last summer, she was crystal clear about her feelings toward him and the person who now owns her masters, or “stolen lullabies,” Scooter Braun. In a back-and-forth made public online, Taylor claimed that Borchetta hadn’t allowed her to buy back the rights to her original recordings before he sold them to Braun, one of her career-long bullies. “my tears ricochet” tells the story from a ghost’s perspective. “If I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake?” she wonders while watching her tormentor attend her burial. This kind of creativity is threaded throughout folklore, demonstrating Taylor’s talent to seamlessly weave fact and fiction.

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Thirteen years ago, the first episode of “Mad Men” aired on AMC. The show’s television success was something of a marvel given its noticeably slow-paced, character-driven story. The legacy of the show’s accurate historical aura has only increased year by year as audiences reflect on Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) existential searching. Re-watching the seven-season long masterpiece in 2020 makes us question the proportions by which 1960s WASP culture dramatically reshaped notions of capital-driven success and the American Dream. Equally, a second look at “Mad Men” during the COVID-19 pandemic gives us pause to reflect on how living through history can often come across as mundane.

“Mad Men” is one of the most delicately thought out historical dramas to ever grace television. In the twilight years of Mad Men’s commercial appeal, numerous copycat productions sought to capitalize on the popularity of the 1960s aesthetic. Shows like “Pan-Am” and “The Playboy Club” attempted to glamorize the Madison Avenue lifestyle by replicating the ever-present misogyny that had been illustrated by “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner. What these shows ultimately got wrong was that Mad Men’s entertainment success never rested entirely on its nostalgic portrayals of male-dominated workplaces. While other producers latched onto surface-level images of vintage sexism, “Mad Men” slowly unraveled how the pervasive cultural ideals of the 1960s were anything but fulfilling. What greatly appealed to audiences was the accuracy by which “Mad Men” showed regular Americans living through extraordinary historical moments in ordinary ways.

Throughout “Mad Men” you can often trace singular episodes down to a specific historical date from on-screen news broadcasts or newspaper clippings. The story arc acts like a time machine - but not in the ways you’d expect. The cultural upheaval of the 1960s moves slowly from season to season, just as culture changes in real life. Furniture styles evolve, characters grow long hair and mustaches, and end-credit music slowly makes its way from Bobby Helms to The Beatles. Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss, “Handmaid’s Tale”) eventually ditches her schoolgirl bangs for a fashionable bob. None of these changes are ever mentioned outright, rather, we see the passage of time and mindsets from a forward lens. Rarely do we stop to consider how consequential the 1960s was for American politics, art, technology and life as a whole.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a rare instance of universal historical recognition. Most of us can safely assume that in the future, political dialogues around the pandemic will take the

shape of similar, recent historical events of great magnitude such as Hurricane Katrina or 9/11. What we won’t know, just as the characters in “Mad Men” don’t, is how asinine our most level-headed reactions might seem.

In season three’s episode “The Grown Ups”, John F. Kennedy is assassinated on the same day of Roger Sterling’s (John Slattery, “Modern Love”) daughter’s wedding.

Instead of calling off the reception, the entire event still occurs in full formality - albeit with many noticeably empty dinner tables.

Compare this situation to the present day: There are those of us who are trying to reestablish a sense of normalcy by baking bread from scratch or writing quarantine diaries at home. Others of us choose to go out to bars whilst bearing full knowledge of the current health risks and death tolls. Is it really that hard to believe that not every American was in tears on November 22, 1963? Later in the episode, following the death of Lee Harvey Oswald, Don’s wife, Betty (January Jones, “The Last Man on Earth”), says she wants a divorce.

In the Season 7 episode “Waterloo”, the nation is gripped in awe by the broadcast of Apollo 11’s moon landing. The next day, Don receives word of his longtime partner and boss’s passing. He has a vision of his boss, Bert Cooper (Robert Morse, Broadway’s “How to Succeed”) singing “The Best Things In Life Are Free”, which leaves Don visibly emotional. After this mid-season shake-up, the conclusion of Don’s story leads him on a rocky journey that ends with him reckoning with his past, finally becoming fulfilled and possibly creating a timeless advertisement for Coca-Cola.

“Mad Men”’s writers suggest that it’s not until times of absolute historical importance and clarity — the “we will be talking about this for decades” moments — that people will decide to make sweeping changes in their lives. The moments where character conflicts, both internal and external, remain constant are where the importance of time is not as recognizable. Throughout the series, the passing of history such as the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War is often unnoticeable.

The show handles prejudice of the time period with a similar degree of historical accuracy. Weiner and his writers purposefully didn’t try to make their characters exude white saviorship, which is the pitfall of so many period pieces. Don Draper and other ad men have open dialogues regarding the escalating conflict in Vietnam, and openly discuss their criticisms of the Civil Rights movement in the office, although not for very long.

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SUMMER SERIES

MUSIC REVIEW

Context in quarantine performance of dance ZOE PHILLIPS Managing Arts Editor

The last time I was in a theatre was an oddly outstanding experience. It was Feb. 29 — leap year Saturday — and I was nestled in one of the 2,256 red velvet seats of London’s Royal Opera House. That morning, I had crawled off the cramped seat of a transatlantic flight that had brought me there from Detroit and napped only briefly in my friend’s apartment. By the time the lights dimmed and the orchestra finished tuning, the jet lag had already made my eyes heavy and my body limp. Nevertheless, my mind stayed sharply awake: I had saved and splurged for a week-long Spring Break adventure, and the only available day to see the Royal Ballet was the evening that I got there. I was not going to waste it. I bought the cheapest tickets and got to the opera house a full hour-and-a-half early.

It was only upon opening the program that I realized I had unknowingly purchased tickets to the retirement performance of Thiago Soares, a dancer I had been watching on YouTube for years. When the show ended, supporters threw buckets of flowers onto the stage until the brown flooring was impossible to delineate from the white and yellow rose petals. I stood watching until the absolute end, so tired I could barely stand but still not wanting to leave.

At the time, I didn’t realize that this would be the last time I stood in a theatre for what will likely become over a year. I didn’t realize that it would only be a few days before the Royal Opera House closed in response to dangers regarding COVID-19. By the time I flew back to Michigan a week later, people were already wearing masks on their faces with panic in their eyes. But my ignorance of the sudden changes ahead did not decrease my perception of the extraordinary present: The shift in time zones and leap year calendar date were backdrops to the unannounced floral show and the sheer insanity of my feet on the Royal Opera House floor. Looming pandemic aside, I knew this experience was singular and special.

Friday, I saw the Royal Opera House again.

This time it was on my TV, because the company streamed a complete recording of “The Sleeping Beauty.” I sat on the couch in sweatpants underneath the warmth of two blankets and watched the entire two-and-a-half hour show. The music was beautiful, the costumes exquisite, the dancers delightful. But the opulence was, of course, not the same.

“The Sleeping Beauty” is a ballet full of tricks, especially for Princess Aurora, here played by Fumi Kaneko. In the first act, the princess makes an explosive entrance only

to be followed by the long and luscious Rose Adage, a dance with four suitors that is, undramatically, one of the hardest six minutes of a ballerina’s career. The scene is a marathon of brute strength masked by delicate grace that culminates in a set of balances atop one pointe shoe. The suspense of the whole endeavour makes it a performance especially well-suited for live audience. The balance is so difficult that it’s impossible to predict the ballerina’s success — instead, you sit helpless in the audience, willing her to succeed. The first time I sat in a dark theatre and watched a dancer step into her Rose Adage balance, my heart raced and my breathing became short. I felt intrinsically involved in her work.

On my TV, Kaneko hit each balance solidly. She even held the last one for an extraimpressive second before finishing to roaring applause. But my heart rate didn’t spike; I knew the Royal Opera House wouldn’t stream a performance with a faulty Rose Adage. The recording was too safe to be exciting. Plus, I was on my couch — there was a distinct lack of red velvet and golden lighting. The magic just wasn’t there.

At the show’s first intermission — on YouTube merely treated as a short pause and a repeated request for donations — I picked up my phone and absentmindedly allowed my thumbs to take me to Instagram. Then, on the Royal Opera House’s account, I read that Kaneko had only learned she was cast in this performance the morning of the recording.

She knew the role from past runs, but in this instance she had less than a day to prepare.

What a detail! The behind-the-scenes excitement suddenly piqued my interest. I thought about those balances again: How many times had she been able to practice? How many rehearsals did she have in that tutu? When the second act started, I felt more anticipation than before. Sure, I knew she’d land her turns and sustain her extensions, but instead I could take advantage of the up-close camera angle and look at her face and eyes. I imagined what she might be thinking, how her day’s chaos may have unfolded.

The amount of prep time a dancer has is not something that would ever be written in a performance’s program, nor would it be announced over a loudspeaker before the overture’s first notes. In the world of live performance, such details do not matter — when the curtain lifts, the world pauses. Asterisks about how one’s day went are less interesting than artists who can suspend reality. Over a screen, though, things feel a lot different.

Context matters — in fact, it helps.

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ARTS 7

Lianne La Havas’ new album is masterful CLARA SCOTT Daily Arts Writer

Lianne La Havas’s newest album, a self-titled record of anthems and lullabies, is perfectly representative of herself as an artist. The collection of 12 songs firmly defines her ingenuity as a singer-songwriter, encapsulating her chameleonic musical aptitude through the ebb and flow of a lilting guitar. Even in the most brash and declarative moments on the album, La Havas’s supreme control and calm when navigating the most climactic emotions is an astounding feat.

In the past, you could have compared her to a lot of fellow soulful singer-songwriters, but with this release, the musician has pushed herself to the highest echelon of creativity.

Lianne La Havas is the distillation of years in the business for the singer, and her dues have finally been paid — you can feel her heart in each word, reaching out for you to join her in a closer look at life, love and all the gray confusion in between.

In the five years since La Havas’s last fulllength release, Blood, our world has been turned upside down and inside out in every way imaginable. The singer captures this chaos within the bubble of her own experience, creating a case study in turmoil, emotional and physical, matched with the incredible beauty of her songwriting. Letting the waves of life roll over her, La Havas does not shy away from darkness or honesty throughout the record, providing her listener with a prismatic view of a love affair gone sickly-sweet.

On “Bittersweet,” the brightest point of the album, La Havas counters the raspy sensuality of each verse with a euphoric embrace of the refrain’s melancholy. “No more hanging around,” she sings, and the lilting guitar bursts forward into an explosion of percussion, vocals reaching new heights. Slower, more introspec-

tive tracks like “Green Papaya” and “Paper Thin” add a diary-like quality to the record, offering the listener insight into the intimate moments of her life.

Beyond anything else, La Havas’s newest material depicts the push and pull of self-doubt in striking clarity, whether it is an irresistible love in “Can’t Fight” or the flirtatious questioning of “Read My Mind.” The songwriter’s woven melodies and shifting chord structure illustrate the slippery slope of love just as well as her lyrics, mediating the outside world’s frenzy with a spiraling interiority of her own.

But despite the status of these songs in limbo between her brain and a potential audience, La Havas still feels grounded in an awareness of herself. Even on the brink of losing herself in the music, the singer always pulls back to reality, showing us how beautiful it can really be.

Listening to Lianne La Havas is like taking a Magic-School-Bus-style journey into the innermost memories of the album’s creator, as snippets of joy and frustration peek through mellow soundscapes. She makes everything her own, highlighting new facets of covers like Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” with a level of class and meticulous arrangement that has become her trademark. The record percolates La Havas’s thoughts and emotions through a filter of musical wisdom only she could provide.

Though this is La Havas’s third record, in many ways it seems like a reclamation of self, a debut-do-over of sorts. With this release, the songwriter consistently redefines the unique style that put her on the map in the first place — her skilled blues guitar, cheeky British vocalizations and soulful lyrics — with a more mature and lived-in perspective. It’s almost like we’re meeting her all over again, and it’s a joy to experience.

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8 MICHIGAN IN COLOR

Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

To students taking Arabic to join the CIA, FBI or the military VICTORIA MINKA MiC Staff Writer

Is it love or Asian fetish?

Graphic by Hibah Chughtai

JENNY CHONG MiC Staff Writer

“Look, I’m a tall guy; I’m just attracted to small, cute girls. They happen to be Asian, but I don’t have yellow fever.”

The friend I made in the beginning of the school year was trying to explain how he — a white male — did not have an Asian fetish, but he was doing a poor job at that.

Later on, I learned he was a dominant and masochist when he overshared his sex life and announced his BDSM test results to me and a few other friends. He liked the power dynamic between him and his petite Asian girlfriend. He was also an avid fan of Asian porn. Small and cute were the adjectives he used to describe his type, but in hindsight, I think they were synonymous with submissive and docile. To me, he has yellow fever.

The term “yellow fever” originates from the afterword to the 1988 play M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, who uses it to describe white men who have a fetish towards east Asian women. Similar to “jungle fever,” or having a fetish towards Black women, it holds a derogatory connotation. The attraction towards a person of color is not wrong or a problem, but a fetish rather insinuates the attraction to something that one should not like, and are therefore wrong or ill for indulging in it. The term has also broadened into a label for men with hypersexualized fantasies of getting romantically involved with stereotypical subservient Asian women exclusively or near exclusively.

This submissive Asian woman trope is manifested across pop culture and media.

Asian women are underrepresented in this sector, but when they are featured, their roles are often limited to either the innocent and dainty Asian or the bold and rebellious Asian with a hair streak — a failed attempt at subverting the former trope and even a reinforcement of that exact stereotype.

The character Lara Jean Song-Covey in the movie “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” is one depiction of the shy Asian girl commonly found in many other films, shows and novels.

One department with a high demand for Asian women, however, is the adult entertainment industry. The top two most searched terms on Pornhub in 2019 were Japanese and hentai, which is sexually explicit Japanese anime or manga. Not far below are Korean and Asian, ranked fifth and sixth, respectively. Yet, the representation of Asian women in pornography still lacks diversity and upholds the aforementioned stereotypes to a highly sexualized degree. They are infantilized and dominated, all while putting up a smile. Somehow, the model minority myth follows through in pornos, too. Our stereotypically compliant and obedient demeanor — which they created — is what makes others accept Asians more than other races in the real world and in adult entertainment. Given the lack of diverse Asian characters and the abundance of the same and typically sexualized archetypes in Hollywood and American media, it comes to no surprise we are fetishized by Westerners.

As a Chinese-American female, it’s off putting to see non-Asian men lewdly comment about our ethnicity or race as a means to pursue Asian women. It is not flattering to know the selling point of our attractiveness is the misperception of how subservient and exotic the women of our race are. Being categorized as “oriental,” “lotus flower,” “delicate” and “China doll” is far from a compliment and more of an oversexualized degradation of our ethnicity or race. Rather than approaching Asian women with sentiments of exoticism, understand we are not foreign creatures without an ounce of self-will who are in dire need of a strong non-Asian man to colonize our bodies. Many of us were born and raised in America and consume Western culture; we are capable of holding intersectional feminist beliefs as much as the nonconformist American women who these men are so afraid of.

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Since arriving at the University of Michigan, I have taken Arabic language classes every single semester. As a rising junior, I have grown to deeply love the language and the cultural history that informs it. If the pandemic permits, I am planning to study abroad this upcoming summer to improve my skills and immerse myself in an Arabicspeaking community. However, there has been an omnipresent and increasingly disturbing trend throughout my semesters of taking Arabic. In my classes, there has almost always been a student (often a cis white man) who is taking Arabic because they want to join the CIA, the FBI or the military in the future. While I understand the draw of learning a language to improve potential hireability, the fact that these institutions have directly harmed Arab communities for decades is an alarming truth. Taking Arabic to make yourself more valuable to a system which intensely surveils Arab communities in the United States and continues to back states who commit crimes against humanity against Arabic-speaking people — read Israel and Palestine — demonstrates a frightening level of apathy. Then to learn Arabic while also continuing to hold prejudices and negative stereotypes about Arabic-speaking people shows they will perpetuate the current systems of “enhanced interrogation” and turning a blind eye.

Even more concerning is their naivety when declaring their pride in such a career goal to the students, faculty and staff around them. Many of our peers are students who identify as being of Arab or Middle East North African descent. As a student who doesn’t identify as Arab or MENA, I am made uncomfortable by their presence, and while I don’t speak for those who do, I can’t

imagine what it is like for my classmates It has almost become a joke in our classes, to guess who the future FBI or CIA employee is. This normalization means this is an issue which absolutely needs to be addressed.

Learning a language to extract information, torture and continue decades of harm seems like an intense bastardization of the reason for learning languages in the first place.

What makes it even more important to have this conversation about Arabic is how these communities are treated and stereotyped in the United States.

I will now speak directly to you — you who is taking Arabic to join the CIA, the FBI, the military or something equally damaging.

First, it’s not too late to change. To learn. To be better. Educate yourself not only about the Arabic language, but also about the people and the culture that it comes from. Reevaluate how and why your use of this language could bring harm. How we outsiders — as non-Arab or MENA identifying Americans — need to hold ourselves accountable and intently reflect to see if we’re really living up to the best we can be. We need to question if we’re being revolutionary in our learning. If we’re learning for the sake of growth rather than destruction. I know this is a hard truth and giving up what could be a lifelong dream is terrifying and disorienting. I raise the point that if your dream brings harm to those around you, was it the right dream to have in the first place? I believe firmly in never isolating people in their worst moments or in their deepest ignorance. This is a call to action, to reevaluate how you show up in our classes and where we should or should not take up space. We are privileged in how we are able to learn Arabic without being directly impacted by all of the cultural...

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Graphic by Hibah Chughtai

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MICHIGAN IN COLOR 9

My experience in a COVID-19 hotspot IZZA AHMED-GHANI MiC Staff Writer

Recently, my family drove down to Tennessee to immerse ourselves in nature and find some peace and adventure during such dystopian times. While being up in the Smoky Mountains was beautiful and well worth the trip, it was also scary driving past the crowds of locals.

Tennessee is one of eighteen other states recognized as a COVID “red zone” with limited safety measures. The Center for Public Integrity defined these red zones as having more than 100 new cases per every 100,000 people within the last week. They were previously indicated to be in the yellow zone for test positivity between 5-10 percent. While federal recommendations have been made such as closing bars and gyms and encouraging more outdoor dining, this is far from what I saw.

As if the local Trump hats and Confederate flags weren’t disturbing enough, the majority of the tourists and locals refused to wear masks. Young and old alike would walk about downtown like nothing has changed. The only mask enforcement was inside shops and restaurants; even then those masks were worn with noses exposed.

The majority of the people in Gatlinburg, Tenn., where I had briefly stayed, were majority white and from the South, coming from states with few governmental restrictions imposed. Therefore any families who wore masks were openly ridiculed and mocked. The unspoken consensus was to be complicit in carelessness — as if “coronavirus is a hoax.”

Mind you, this isn’t some made up remark. Along the trip, I came across a family on a trail from Louisiana. She remarked that the case numbers are fake and that, at its

worst, the virus manifests like that of a common cold. “People aren’t really dying from COVID, the survival rate is 99.99 percent,” she exclaimed.

She begrudgingly mentioned the current state and public health protocols were impending upon watching their football games. I remember giving my brother an exasperated look as we left them.

I think the concept of social distancing and masking has some unnecessary negative connotations. The idea of wearing a mask has been seen as almost exaggerated to be oppressively restricting.

While the yellow zone indicated above for Tennessee may seem small, it demonstrates these numbers are only increasing and nationally indicates poor implementation of federalized mandates to diminish exposure.

How do you get someone to internalize what it means to be in a

Photo provided by Izza Ahmed-Ghani

global pandemic? These aforementioned sentiments and the lack of action in areas like Gatlinburg are not only recklessly naive, but they are selfish and a proven endangerment to not only American health, but America’s educational disparities, concerning magnitude

of unemployed people, homeless people, the food insecure and so many other people and institutions whose very existences are challenged viciously by this virus.

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MENA: America’s ‘white’ minority group GRACE GARMO MiC Staff Writer

Throughout the course of my academic career, my race has “changed” three times. In elementary school, I was advised by my teacher to bubble in “Asian” on a standardized test since my parents’ mother countries of Iraq and Lebanon are geographically located on the continent of Asia. A few years later in middle school my race was suddenly “Other” since Asian was reserved for Southeast Asia and India. Then, when I went to take the PSAT my freshman year of high school, there was a startling new addition to the race category: “White (including Middle Eastern origin).” Of all the questions on the exam, and this was the most confusing bubble I had to fill in — to identify myself.

The generalization and erasure of Middle Eastern and North African culture has been a constant tumultuous addition to the already ongoing identity struggle many young adults go through. MENA Americans and white Americans have different reputations, different cultures and different struggles in the United States. Even now as I write in a newspaper section designated for students of color, the U.S. government continues to label me as white. These two statements

directly contradict each other, yet it is a perfect analogy for how we are treated and perceived in America.

Bubbling in “white” in the race category on any standardized test or legal form almost feels like disrespect, because throughout my life, several of my white classmates persistently made it a point to socially isolate me and made sure I knew that we were not the same. Tokening Middle Easterners as “white” when convenient and “Other” when convenient is how American society interacts with us historically, and now, it has been declared on a piece of paper.

When I bubble in “white,” I am actively neglecting my arched eyebrows, my enlarged nose, my olive complexion and my thick dark hair.

I am repressing all the times my peers have asked me if my family is associated with terrorist organizations and snuck judgemental looks at my parents while speaking our native tongue. I am shoving aside my identity struggles as an Arab-American who has no race to identify with because we were an afterthought without a spot left for us. As a community, MENA individuals socially receive the negative consequences of having a minority status, yet on legal documents we are forced to check a box that misrepresents us.

As a student of color, diversity

Design by Hibah Chughtai

was a tremendously crucial factor in my college application process.

I was excited to add to the universities’ cultural variation and share my experiences with my new peers.

However, every time I got my hopes up, the same realization would dawn on me: I won’t be counted.

When researching the University of Michigan’s undergraduate demographic, I couldn’t even tell how many MENA students there were. All I could see in the pie chart was a large slice of ‘white,” and my identity was lost somewhere within it. Despite the Common Applica-

tion allowing students to make the distinction between “white (European)” and “white (Middle Eastern),” all this did was give MENA students a false glimmer of hope despite a total lack of practicality. The fact that MENA students get excited when our existence is officially acknowledged on a form blatantly illuminates the problem at hand.

On the U.S. Census, tens of thousands of Hispanic or Latinx individuals bubble in “white,” yet also have the opportunity to make the distinction of their ethnic back-

ground which shows up on virtually every legal form. This distinction is commendable, and I believe that MENA individuals should have the same opportunity. Especially in a post 9/11 world, Muslims and Arabs have become a larger target for discrimination, and it is crucial that we have a separate legal identification to ensure that the MENA population is showing up to the polls, securing jobs at a consistent rate, and graduating from high school.

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Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

In bubble, Mikie Schlosser is only focused on winning DREW COX

Daily Sports Writer

In coming weeks, fans of major professional televised sports leagues like the MLB, NBA and NHL will see the highly anticipated returns of sports in the form of abbreviated, COVID19-adjusted seasons. The NBA is creating a local bubble, while the MLB is trying its best to keep its employees socially isolated — the latter of which being an incredibly difficult avenue that college athletics will most likely pursue, should there be sports this fall.

But before most of these leagues even begin, fans of Major League Lacrosse (MLL), one of two major professional field lacrosse leagues in the United States, will already have seen their season come and go barring any disruptions.

The MLL’s 20th season kicked off its nine-day stretch last weekend and will conclude this weekend with a four-team playoff starting Saturday and championship game for the Steinfeld Trophy on Sunday.

Throughout the week, the league has carried out its regular season with all six teams playing five games in seven days inside an empty Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. To ensure proper social distancing and public health measures are taken, all players were tested prior to arrival and are receiving daily temperature checks. In addition, team benches reside on opposite sidelines as opposed to their typical configuration of side-byside.

Since its inception in 2000, the MLL has endured a series of business booms and busts, expansions and contractions, in an attempt to grow the game of lacrosse in markets across the country.

So, after 20 years, it is only natural that the MLL has adapted to the hurdle of COVID19 and has been able to put forth another season.

Although a plethora of talent exited the league in 2019 to go to a newer touring league — the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) — some, like Denver Outlaws midfielder Mikie Schlosser, remain committed to the

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Midfielder Mikie Schlosser became Michigan’s first junior captain when he played for the Wolverines from 2014 to 2017.

league. And while this season’s parameters are less than ideal, Schlosser is just grateful for the opportunity to play lacrosse.

“I think the league is very resilient,” Schlosser said.

“They’ve done a lot to change and keep up with the times. I’m just very fortunate that they’re able to put on (this season) and give us a chance to play and the fans a chance to watch. That’s what it’s all about.”

Schlosser played for the Michigan men’s lacrosse team from 2014 to 2017 and was a key offensive contributor during all four years, recording 50 career goals and serving as a captain his junior and senior seasons.

Since graduating college and entering the MLL, Schlosser has dished out 41 goals and 10 assists in three seasons with the Outlaws. Last year, Schlosser scored 17 goals and earned his first trip to the MLL AllStar game, but the Outlaws failed to win back-to-back championships after a 10-9 loss in the 2019 MLL championship game to the Chesapeake Bayhawks.

With a shot for redemption and the season up in the air with COVID-19, Schlosser spent the past couple months of quarantine training to get back to that moment.

“Our goal every year is to

win a championship,” Schlosser said. “That’s the only thing we are trying to achieve here. The individual stuff guys couldn’t really care less for. … At the end of the day, things are fun if you’re successful. No matter what happens during the game, if we win, I’m happy. It’s kinda all or nothing. It’s hard to have fun if you lose in my opinion.”

With the season underway, his training has paid off.

Through four games, Schlosser has already notched three goals and one assist. The Outlaws are undefeated and, having already clinched a playoff berth, are poised to have another shot at the title.

CARRIE GAMPER/MLL

Midfielder Mikie Schlosser is playing for the Denver Outlaws in Major League Lacrosse’s bubble during the 2020 season.

This season, the MLL expanded the active day roster for teams from 19 to 25 players.

Schlosser believes that a deeper roster has allowed Denver to overcome the physical stress of playing so many games in such a short timespan. In a typical MLL season, teams will play once a week, but this week, each team is guaranteed to play at least five games.

“We’re able to cycle through a lot more players,” Schlosser said.

“I think our games seem pretty fresh still just considering we have extra subs that we normally wouldn’t have. So I think that is allowing people to get their rest and not (exert themselves) as hard in the games.

“So far I think we’re off to a good start. We just gotta try to keep getting better each game and keep having fun.”

In the MLL bubble, Schlosser and his teammates have made an effort to cram a typical summer’s worth of fun and memories into just over one week inside their hotel. Whether it’s playing Wii Sports in someone’s room, joking around in the shuttle to the stadium or getting together after a game for a team dinner, the Outlaws are working on building a tight team bond off the field with the hopes that it will produce positive results on the field.

“I think a big thing, especially at this level, is that there’s a lot of talent everywhere, so you have to enjoy the moment and enjoy being with the guys,” Schlosser said. “Because that’s what ultimately makes a difference in the end. I love competing with my teammates and winning. I think that’s kind of how I put it all together.”

The lacrosse community will look back on the MLL’s 20th anniversary season someday, and it will be impossible to ignore its peculiarities. It will mark a period of adversity, excitement and quite possibly evolution, for a league that has struggled to manage the rise of the PLL and its own internal battles.

Still, despite those daunting challenges, it’s a season that’s happening because it could bubble its players — the one sure-fire way to protect athletes and staff without a vaccine available.

Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

SPORTS 11

Four sports shut down voluntary workouts due to COVID-19 ETHAN SEARS

Managing Sports Editor

Less than a week after Michigan State football halted its practices and went into a 14-day quarantine, Michigan is pausing voluntary workouts for ice hockey, volleyball, swimming and diving and field hockey, an athletic department spokesperson told The Daily.

Workouts have been paused because of both positive COVID19 test results and contact tracing, according to a statement sent by the athletic department.

The hockey team will resume workouts this week, with other programs scheduled to resume the week of August 3.

The University’s latest release last week revealed that 12 of 559 student-athlete tests returned positive, and just one of 170 staff members tested positive. Men’s and women’s basketball and football have been on campus since mid-June, and their low test rates have not forced a shut down of activities.

“I would feel good with the medical oversight of the students, student athletes,” football coach Jim Harbaugh said on a Zoom call with media in early July. “I

would want the responsibility. I would want the responsibility of keeping our players safe and also educating them. I would not want to come off of that guard tower of educating and keeping our players safe.

“Now, if it comes to a point in time where you say that we can’t play, it’s obvious, it’s clear, then everybody would be reasonable and know that was the right thing to do. COVID is part of our society. Wasn’t caused by football or caused by sports. And there’s no expert view right now that I’m aware of that sports is going to make that worse. It’s part of our society, we’re going to have to deal with it.”

A spokesperson for the football program confirmed the team is moving as scheduled as of now.

The NCAA is currently allowing 20-hour practice weeks, split up by up to eight hours for weight lifting and conditioning, up to six hours for walkthrough practices and up to six hours for team meetings. Helmets and pads are not yet allowed.

As for the sports whose training has been stopped, this isn’t a death knell for anyone’s season.

But, like every other program in the country that’s needed to stop

workouts, it highlights just how hard a season will be to pull off.

As of now, the Big Ten is trying to do so by playing a conferenceonly schedule for fall sports.

What those plans will look like two weeks — or one month — from now is anyone’s guess.

“That whole process is going

about as smooth as it could, but there’ll be a lot of hiccups,” volleyball coach Mark Rosen told The Daily in an interview last week. “One of the things I’ve learned through this process is that you have to be flexible and you have to understand that things are going to change. They

literally change by the minute almost.

“We know our plans might get blown up any minute. We have to be ready for that.”

Daniel Dash, Kent Schwartz, Alex Harring and Bailey Johnson contributed to the reporting of this story.

ALEC COHEN/Daily

The Michigan hockey team was among programs whose workouts shut down due to COVID-19 testing and tracing.

Former Wolverine Morgan Overaitis transfers to Virginia Tech NICHOLAS STOLL

Summer Managing Sports Editor

Back in April, just a month after Michigan softball lost their season to COVID-19, the Wolverines also lost former No. 18 FloSoftball prospect Morgan Overaitis to the transfer portal.

Overaitis made the decision to transfer to Virginia Tech after her sophomore year and will be immediately eligible to play after enrolling in classes this fall.

This spring, Overaitis started 14 games and appeared in 20, splitting time between right field, second base and designated player. In her freshman season, she started just nine games, hitting at a .255 clip.

From Canton, Michigan, Overaitis was a stud in high school.

She was awarded Softball Player of the Year by the Detroit Free Press in 2018 and was a four-time All-State first-teamer, earning

her a spot amongst the nation’s best prospects. At Salem High School, Overaitis holds the school

record of 38 home runs with 223 RBI, all while posting a .586 batting average and .643 on-base

percentage.

At Michigan, however, Overaitis’ skills were slow to

KELSEY PEASE/Daily

Incoming junior Morgan Overaitis is set to become a Hokie next spring following her transfer to Virginia Tech.

translate and resulted in less playing time than what might be expected based on her high school career. Her .265 batting average across two seasons, accompanied by lowly slugging percentages of .333 and .319 in her freshman and sophomore years.

Fellow sophomore Lexie Blair, who came in as FloSoftball’s 28th-ranked player, claimed her role in the lineup with her .406 batting average her freshman year. In Blair’s sophomore year, she hit .307 despite early-season struggles. The result for Blair is 81 games started across two seasons, 58 more than Overaitis. With competition like Blair, Overaitis was never able to find a consistent spot in the starting lineup.

By leaving Michigan to become a Hokie, Overaitis may find a fresh start and a more comfortable location to prove herself worthy of that No. 18 ranking.

12 SPORTS

Thursday, July 30, 2020 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Barriers remain between Black athletes and college athletics KENT SCHWARTZ

Summer Managing Sports Editor

In the 1880s with Moses Fleetwood Walker, Michigan baseball became one of the first colleges to have a Black baseball player. In 1890, George Jewett joined the Michigan football team as a halfback — the University and the Big Ten’s first Black football player.

Forty years and Fielding Yost passed until Michigan had another Black football player with Willis Ward, and even then he faced racial discrimination after being barred from playing against Georgia Tech for the color of his skin. Just 12 Black players played for the University prior to 1941, and those athletes had to meet a criteria of excellence. For most, including William DeHart Hubbard, that meant Olympic champion performance.

The basketball program championed its lacking diversity until 1951, when Ernie McCoy finally integrated with Don Eaddy and John Codwell — three years after Bill Garrett and Indiana broke the Big Ten’s gentleman’s agreement to keep Black players off the court. And in baseball — the first sport to have a Black athlete at Michigan — from 1880 to 1972 just seven Black players lettered on varsity.

In 2019, 41.55 percent of Big Ten men’s basketball athletes were Black and 38.86 percent of football players were Black. Most other sports in the Big Ten are far from those inclusive representatives.

If men’s and

women’s track and field, men’s and women’s basketball, and football did not exist, the percentage of Black Big Ten athletes falls from 14.39 percent to 6.55 percent. The total number of Black athletes plummets from 1,628 to 512.

The Big Ten’s history is fraught with racial pioneering and foot dragging, however, the lack of Black athletes in sports outside those five competitions isn’t a byproduct of a gentleman’s agreement or overtly racial policies. It runs much deeper and subtler.

David Ogden’s Welcome Theory breaks down one reason why the number of Black players going into the MLB is decreasing — Black children don’t see people that look like them play the sport. When children see people that look like them in a sport or profession, they are more likely to have aspirations in that field. In basketball and football, Black children know they won’t be singled-out for the color of their skin as often. The same can’t be said for lacrosse.

In baseball — a sport ripe with racial history — the breakthrough of Jackie Robinson saw a skyrocket in Black professional baseball players, reaching as high as 27 percent of the MLB in 1975. Now, that number is down to eight percent, with the college game looking even bleaker.

Just six percent of Division 1 baseball student-athletes were Black in 2019. In the Big Ten, that number rests just under 5 percent. That’s 23 Black players. Michigan had five, and

only because of a concerted effort to recruit Black players. In 2013, Michigan coach Erik Bakich’s first season, Michigan had an all-white team and all of the Big Ten had nine Black players — just seven years ago.

There aren’t a lot of Black athletes playing baseball in college anymore, there haven’t been a plethora of Black role models in the sport for years.

While suburbs and small towns can fit plenty of baseball fields, cities — where a large portion of America’s Black population resides — don’t have that same luxury.

Beyond the Welcome Theory, another reason for the lack of diversity is that there aren’t as many scholarships available for sports outside the big three (men’s and women’s basketball and football), so potential Black student-athletes who excel at sports like swimming or tennis, yet struggle economically, can’t afford to go to college and play those sports.

In college baseball, there just aren’t enough scholarships. A maximum of 11.7 go to the baseball team, which has a roster of 35 players, and ends up only sparing athletes about 25 percent of the cost of tuition. And, until August 2020, need-based or merit-awarded scholarships counted against that total, directly affecting poorer Black athletes.

Tangentially related to scholarships is that youth sports — lacrosse, hockey, field hockey — all cost money. These sports cost hundreds to thousands of

THE DAILY ARCHIVES/Daily

Halfback Willis Ward became the first Black football player in 40 years when he joined Michigan in 1932.

THE DAILY ARCHIVES/ Daily

Sprinter William DeHart Hubbard won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics.

dollars a year to sign up for leagues, tournaments, uniforms and equipment, a burden that hits most middle-class families hard. But when taken into account that the median Black family in the United States earns $28,000 less than the median white family, those pay-toplay sports become nearly impossible to afford and thus, these children are never exposed to high levels of them.

Travel ball, which is a must for any player hoping to compete in or beyond college baseball, can cost upwards of $5,000 a year from tournament fees, uniforms, hotels, equipment and so much more.

“There are so many outstanding players of color often hidden in poor communities who just aren’t able to play on those expensive travel teams or make their rounds on the summer circuit,” Bakich told The Daily in 2019. “So when you can find those guys and target those guys and have kids from all backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. … I think it’s a win not only for them and their families but also for our program and for everyone on our team, which is why we recruit the way we do.”

Not all coaches can be as proactive as Bakich, not every coach in the nation can look four hours West and see a hotbed of under-appreciated talent. There aren’t programs which subsidize tournaments or scouting camps for every sport like Chicago White Sox ACE does for baseball or Nike and Adidas do for AAU basketball.

To get a field hockey equipment

grant from The Hockey Foundation, the program you play for has to fill out an application. To play in MLS’s DC United youth academy, the highest domestic level of youth competition, you have to pay $1,500, with scholarships you need to apply for.

It’s an issue that’s persisted since the 70s, when G. Anderson White, the first Black diver for Michigan, said in a 1972 interview with John Behee, “How many Black kids can afford to go to Florida and shell out the $80-100 a week costs? … The lack of opportunity to learn from talented coaches, coupled with a lack of pools and pool facilities for competition, therein lies the explanation for so few Black swimmers.”

And still, even with the ACE program and a proactive mentality, Michigan baseball played its 2020 season with just five Black players on its roster. The men’s basketball program — with a roster less than half the size of baseball’s — had seven.

Today, the reason for lack of diversity isn’t nearly as explicit as it was during the first half of the 20th century. No coach can deny a player a place on their team solely because of the color of their skin, or say that the problems their skin color brings outweigh their talent. Instead, like the broader issue of inequality, it’s an institutional issue rooted in economic and demographic barriers that prohibit Black children from exposure to high levels of sport that White children take for granted.