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Wednesday, September 23, 2020
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GEO members say they accepted offer out of fear of legal threats
Facing a court challenge as the University files an injunction against them, graduate students agree to end their ongoing strike ALEX HARRING Daily News Editor
RYAN LITTLE/Daily After some confusion, the University of Michigan’s Faculty Senate leadership confirmed the vote of no confidence against U-M President Mark Schlissel passed.
Official ruling: vote of no confidence in President Mark Schlissel passes Faculty Senate leadership announces motion succeeded, reversing course from previous determination; motion means body does not trust Schlissel to lead ‘U’ LEAH GRAHAM & ALEX HARRING
Managing News Editor & Daily News Editor
The University of Michigan’s Faculty Senate leadership confirmed Friday that the faculty’s vote of no confidence
in University President Mark Schlissel passed, reversing course after an earlier ruling determined it had failed. The passage of the vote — which is symbolic and will not impact Schlissel’s employment status — means that the Faculty Senate does not have faith in the president
to execute his role as the head of the University. Faculty Senate members voted on the motion of no confidence during a virtual meeting Wednesday afternoon. In an email to faculty members, Colleen Conway, chair of the Senate Advisory Committee on University
Affairs and professor in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, announced the vote of no confidence in Schlissel had actually passed, despite the previous announcement that it had failed to receive a majority of votes. See VOTE, Page 3
After the Graduate Employees’ Organization voted to accept the University of Michigan’s proposal and end its strike, Rackham student Bec Roldan posted their feelings about the offer on TikTok. “To be frank, it’s a pretty s— offer,” Roldan said on the popular social media app, where they have been posting updates about the strike since it began Sept. 8. Roldan said in the TikTok that they were frustrated they had to accept the University’s second proposal — which was approved exactly one week after the first was rejected — because they felt the administration did not move enough on issues such as COVID-19 testing and antipolicing. But the looming threat of the University’s injunction, which University President Mark Schlissel filed with the Washtenaw County Circuit Court Tuesday in hopes of mandating the graduate student instructors and graduate student staff assistants GEO represents to return to work, ultimately pushed members to accept
the proposal, despite feeling it did not meet enough of their expectations. “Because it was very obviously a bad offer, there was not a single argument that was like, ‘This is a good deal, we should take it,’” Rackham student Dawn Kaczmar said. “All of it was weighing the risks of harm that would come to us if we didn’t.” GEO asked for the universal right to work remotely, added support for international students and diverted police funds when it began its strike last week. The strike, which had virtual and in-person picketing, and the union’s demands were both shaped and prompted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Members of the union say they accepted the University’s proposal begrudgingly and because they felt like they were running out of options. In interviews with The Michigan Daily, multiple graduate students echoed the same sentiment: They would not have accepted the University’s proposal were it not for rising concerns of retaliation and an impending injunction ruling. See STRIKE, Page 3
OBITUARY
Colleagues remember Prof. James S. Jackson, scholar ‘renowned’ for his optimism, energy Former Institute for Social Research director passed away at start of September; Researcher pioneered efforts to survey Black Americans JULIA RUBIN
Daily Staff Reporter
James S. Jackson, former psychology professor and director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, passed away Sept. 1 in Ann Arbor after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. His colleagues, students and mentees overwhelmingly remember him as warm, generous and brilliant. Jackson was born in 1944 in Inkster, Michigan. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Michigan State University, a master’s degree in psychology at the University of Toledo and a doctorate in social psychology from Wayne State University. He retired from the University this past year, where he had worked since 1971. Jackson was the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Psychology and research professor emeritus at the Research Center for Group Dynamics. He also served as the director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and the director of the Institute for Social Research from 2005 to 2015, where
he founded and directed the Program for Research on Black Americans. David Lam, current director of the Institute for Social Research, said on top of being a trailblazing researcher, Jackson was charismatic and personable. “He was a giant in ISR,” Lam said. “The PRBA was visionary. It was really a very pioneering research program to study Black Americans. It produced many generations of Black scholars of Black America, health disparities and racial discrimination. It was very pioneering for its time and it’s lasted for over 40 years.” Jackson was a major name in the field of survey research. He created the National Survey of Black Americans in 1977, the first national crosssectional survey of Black Americans, to understand the diversity within the Black community. Robert Taylor, School of Social Work professor, was a student and colleague of Jackson’s. He said Jackson’s work on the NSBA will be one of his enduring legacies.
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BECCA MAHON/Daily Around 50 U-M students gathered at Balke Transit Center to mourn several causes, including their loss of faith in the University leadership, Sunday evening.
Candlelight vigil commemorates loss of faith in U-M administration
Students mourn COVID-19 deaths, criticize ‘U’ leaders’ for handling of GEO strike HANNAH MACKAY Daily Staff Reporter
Students came together to mourn a variety of causes on Sunday evening: the 200,000 lost to COVID-19, the end of the Graduate Employees’ Organization’s strike and their loss of faith in University leadership. A crowd of approximately 50 undergraduate and graduate students gathered at the Blake Transit Center and marched to University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel’s front lawn for a candlelit vigil. Students associated with GEO and Students Demand
Representation organized the demonstration, which impeded traffic from Main Street to State Street as the group expressed their discontent with Schlissel, U-M administrators and local police. The group arrived at the front lawn of Schlissel’s house, where several students and organizers spoke and played music. Rackham student Lucy Peterson, a GEO member who helped to organize the vigil, said the goal was to commemorate the losses of both the organization and individuals during the pandemic in addition to raising concerns about the administration’s reopening. “What we wanted to do in GEO
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was mark a moment — the end of our strike — and come together and be able to reflect with one another,” Peterson said. “200,000 people have died of COVID in the United States … We have things to mourn: A lot of us have known people who have died, and the strike in some ways took our attention off of that.” GEO’s strike ended on Wednesday when they accepted the University’s proposal meeting some but not all demands, one day after the University filed an injunction. Members said they would not have accepted the University’s proposal had it not been for concerns over the potential financial impacts of the injunction and fears of retaliation.
Vol. CXXIX, No. 131 ©2019 The Michigan Daily
Students Demand Representation is a coalition of students across the University’s three campuses working to get student demands heard by upperlevel administrators. The group partnered with GEO for a rally last weekend. Peterson also said the vigil provided an opportunity for those who are discontent with the University’s response to COVID-19, the GEO strike or any other matter to come together in solidarity. She said U-M leaders, such as Provost Susan Collins and LSA Dean Anne Curzan, have made decisions that have hurt students.
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See VIGIL, Page 3
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The Graduate Employees’ Organization accepted the University of Michigan’s proposal.
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Graduate student strike highlights policing, public health relationship GEO’s demands to defund and reallocate funds from law enforcement on campus receive mixed responses, spark conversations and debate
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The Graduate Employees’ Organization found broad support for their demands for greater accommodations against COVID-19, but its anti-policing demands became a lightning rod issue for those trying to criticize or delegitimize the union’s strike. Negotiations between the University of Michigan and the Graduate Employees’ Organization have been at the center of conversation on campus since GEO announced their strike last Monday in protest of the University’s COVID-19 response. Among the demands were calls for a “disarmed and demilitarized workplace,” defunding the Department of Public Safety and Security by 50% and reallocating the funds to “community-based justice initiatives,” and for the University to cut all ties with the Ann Arbor Police Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The union rejected an initial offer the University made last Wednesday which did not address the antipolicing demands. Following the GEO’s extension of their strike and the University’s subsequent action seeking an injunction against the union, GEO accepted the University’s second proposal to end the strike last night. According to GEO’s statement following the end of the strike, the second offer included a commitment from the University to revise the Michigan Ambassadors program and create a policing task force to evaluate DPSS and make recommendations about policing. The task force will have representation from both the GEO and Students of Color Liberation Front, which is a coalition of the Black Student Union, United Asian American Organizations, La Casa, Arab Student Association and Students Allied for Freedom and Education. Though the University did not satisfy the group’s original demands, in their statement, GEO framed these changes as “incremental but real movement.” “Our victories on policing in particular came from our members’ refusal to abandon these demands by accepting a first offer with zero progress on them, and, importantly, from the work of some of our Black members to reorient
around and win strategic first victories in a longterm abolitionist organizing campaign,” the statement reads. GEO member Emma Soberano said she felt the University’s willingness to address policing was an important difference between the first and second offers. “In the first case, when we chose to continue the strike, what I heard was… that the University was not willing to even discuss policing,” Soberano said. “And the fact that we got any movement at all is really a testament to the power of our coalition building.” The University initially made statements implying that policing was not under the purview of union negotiations. In an initial Sept. 9 email regarding the work stoppage, Provost Susan Collins stressed that GEO could only negotiate matters regarding its employment. “GEO’s strike is based on a number of issues, many of which are unrelated to the wages, hours, and working conditions that define their employment as GSIs,” the email reads. “Issues that are not related to the employment of its members are not subjects that GEO can negotiate with the University.” In a schoolwide email sent Sept. 11, University President Mark Schlissel wrote that policing issues required broader community engagement. “Policing concerns are not readily solved through union negotiations,” Schlissel’s email reads. GEO, however, argued that policing concerns are related to their employment because of the relationship between policing and student health. At a press conference on Wednesday, GEO Vice President Erin Markiewitz spoke to this sentiment. “Policing, even when it does not result in violence, negatively affects the health of BIPOC and other vulnerable populations,” Markiewitz said. “As it affects the health and safety of our members, GEO asserts that policing is a labor issue and has a place at the bargaining table.” GEO member Katherine White explained the policing demands in terms of workplace safety. “The anti-policing demands specifically I think addressed feelings that Black and Brown
students had of not feeling safe with armed police officers around campus,” White said. “Safety doesn’t look the same for all people, and we should be protecting the people who don’t feel safe by police.” Members of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies published an op-ed Tuesday endorsing the GEO’s anti-policing demands. “We applaud GEO for linking their employment demands to calls for justice, the protection of the health and safety of our community and the absolutely relevant de-militarization of local and campus police,” the op-ed reads. Similarly, in an op-ed published Monday, faculty members from the School of Public Health expressed their support for GEO, asserting that policing is a public health issue that can result in harm to both physical and mental health. The piece specifically addresses the Michigan Ambassador program, which has drawn controversy resulting in modifications of the program by the University. Some students questioned whether GEO’s initial antipolicing demands were pragmatic. Engineering senior Yilin Yang said while he supported the group’s COVID19 related demands, he saw the policing demands as damaging to the group’s platform. “I explicitly support GEO’s COVID-19 related demands, and in my mind, that is by far the most important part of their platform,” Yang said. “The anti-policing demands, to me, seem unachievable in a purely practical sense. It seems to me that GEO is shooting itself in the foot by tacking on this underthought rider that the University can effortlessly exploit to discredit the entire union-strike movement.” Yang said his main concern with the anti-policing demands was his fear that cutting ties with police would worsen the spread of COVID19 by weakening the Michigan Ambassadors’ power to keep student gatherings in check. “It seemed to me like these demands would have the effect of rendering toothless the University’s efforts to enforce compliance with local and state-level public health orders, and that, to me, was the biggest red f lag that made me oppose those particular parts of the demands,” Yang said. Silke-Maria Weineck, chair of Comparative Literature and
professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature, wrote in an email interview with The Daily that, though she supports GEO, police reform is a conversation requiring more than one group’s voice to be heard. “With regard to the COVID safety demands, and by contrast, everybody would have benefited from enhanced testing and from true autonomy with regard to face to face teaching,” Weineck wrote. “But when it comes to policing, I may agree with GEO’s take, but I know many others do not. So I think hashing it out will be a long collaborative process — I hope the university will let it be a truly meaningful one.” But Ashley Lucas, associate professor of Theatre & Drama and former director of the Creative Prison Arts Project, wrote in an email to The Daily that she was disappointed with the way the strike ended. “A new task force is not an adequate answer to these policing concerns, but given that it will exist, I hope that university leadership will make sure that a member of the Carceral State Project faculty working group is appointed to the task force so that people who actually study policing can have some inf luence in the coming decisions,” Lucas wrote. “The abolishment of the ambassador teams is still very much needed, as are the disarmament of the campus police and the severing of ties between campus and city police.” Soberano also expressed some frustration over the University’s suggestion of a task force to address policing concerns. “As many people have pointed out, task forces are used by universities and other institutions not only to put the labor of solving the University’s problems onto its Black and Brown students — who are the ones hurt by these problems existing in the first place — but also is used to wrap up progress in bureaucratic hurdles,” Soberano said. “But I think the fact that they even allowed us a seat at the table is a big step. And we had to listen to especially the Black students in our community who were telling us, ‘look, we’re afraid of what the University will do to us if we continue this strike.’” Daily Staff Reporter Angelina Little can be reached at angelit@umich.edu.
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VOTE From Page 1 “I as Senate Chair, along with the Senate Secretary, and SACUA have conclusively and unanimously determined that the University Senate Rules on voting using Robert’s Rules of Order for interpretation leads all of us to the same conclusion. Abstentions should not have been counted as votes, and Motion 6 should have passed,” Conway wrote. “We ask for your patience and understanding while we not only discussed how abstentions should be handled, but we also discussed in depth our concerns about the lack of accessibility to voting experienced by some of our colleagues.” David Potter, interim secretary of the Faculty Senate and professor in LSA, confirmed the motion passed in an email to The Daily. Conway said the vote of no confidence was the first in the University’s history. When asked about the result of the vote, University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald told The Daily Schlissel had no further comment. At the Wednesday meeting, 957 members voted in support of the motion with 953 voting against and 184 abstentions. While more people in the Faculty Senate said they did not trust Schlissel’s leadership than those who said they did, Potter initially announced that the motion had failed because it did not receive a majority of all votes cast, including abstentions. More than 2,200 Faculty Senate members participated in the meeting. The body, which is part of the University’s central faculty governance system, has approximately 4,300 members and is made up of professors, executive officers and deans, among others. Potter’s ruling sparked confusion among the faculty members. Conway declined to announce a decisive result. Faculty Senate leaders later clarified they would need a few days to review the matter. In an email to The Daily after the vote Wednesday, Potter said the Faculty Senate Office would “speak to the issue” of abstentions in a few days. “As I was counting the votes I was seeing four categories, three that registered (yes, no and abstain) and then that there were people present in the meeting who elected not to participate in the vote, hence my statement that motion 6 was not successful,” Potter wrote in the Wednesday email about the vote of no confidence in Schlissel. “It is possible that, after further exploration of the
JACKSON From Page 1 “He really believed and really pushed the fact that when you do research with African Americans, it is okay to look at in-group analysis,” Taylor said. “Before his first major survey, we were unable to do that. So every comparison was between African Americans and whites. But when you do that, you don’t learn much about African Americans.” Taylor said Jackson will also be remembered for his mentorship of students and postdocs. Taylor compiled a list of dozens of Black students and alumni of the PRBA who have gone on to become deans, chairs and administrators at schools including Yale University, the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. In Ann Arbor, nine former PRBA students became full professors, one became an endowed professor and one is the chair of the Department of Health and Behavior and Health Education at the School of Public Health. Taylor said these lists ref lect Jackson’s commitment to his students’ success and the impact the PRBA had on those he mentored. “He’d help people fill their potential,” Taylor said. “There’s a lot of people who would have left their doctoral programs if they hadn’t
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issue we will reach a different understanding.” The Faculty Senate’s rules do not explicitly answer whether abstentions count as votes. In this case, the Faculty Senate defers to Robert’s Rules of Order, a set of guidelines for parliamentary procedure that date back to the 1800s. According to Robert’s Rules, the vote of no confidence should have passed because abstentions do not count as votes. Among other claims, the vote of no confidence accuses Schlissel of ignoring scientific evidence regarding the risks associated with the University’s reopening plans for the fall semester. According to the resolution, Schlissel did not take into account a report by the Ethics and Privacy Committee when crafting the school’s reopening protocol and did not respond to the committee’s concerns. In a rare move, Schlissel addressed members of the Faculty Senate at the start of the meeting, emphasizing his dedication to the University. He elaborated on his reasoning for allowing some classes to be held in person despite most being offered online or in hybrid formats and discussed efforts to expand surveillance testing of asymptomatic individuals. He also acknowledged concerns about the administration’s shortage of engagement with the community and lack of transparency. “Criticisms and challenges are qualities that make universities great,” Schlissel said. “They also provide an opportunity to create solutions that benefit from multiple perspectives. We can and must work together as a university to solve problems.” The motion also states that Schlissel fell short in his response to allegations of sexual misconduct against former Provost Martin Philbert. At the virtual meeting Wednesday, Information Professor Kentaro Toyama pointed to the multiple highprofile sexual misconduct charges uncovered during Schlissel’s tenure, including the accusations against Philbert and former Music, Theatre & Dance professor David Daniels. Both men were removed from their positions as a result of the allegations. Toyama blamed Schlissel’s leadership in part for the University’s failure to address systemic problems and prevent institutional failures. “Schlissel was the president of the University during all of these issues,” Toyama said.
“The buck stops with him, and that’s why I’m voting no confidence.” Stephen Ward, an associate professor in LSA, submitted the no-confidence motion. He also criticized the University’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Schlissel’s handling of the allegations against Philbert. “The president’s actions and inactions, particularly over the last six months, but perhaps over the last six years, are setting a precedent that we cannot and should abide,” Ward said at the meeting Wednesday. Engineering professor Peter Washabaugh spoke in support of Schlissel at the meeting. “I’ve seen this president take the correct path, even though it might be difficult or uncomfortable,” Washabaugh said, adding that he believed Schlissel had “demonstrated thoughtfulness and caring actions.” At a University Board of Regents meeting Thursday, Regent Denise Ilitch (D) read a unanimous statement of support for the administration and the University’s reopening plans. She said the board, which acts as the University’s governing body, knows the administration needs to communicate better with the broader community.
started working with James in the PRBA.” Cleo Caldwell, professor and chair in the School of Public Health, is a former student of Jackson’s. She said without him, she would never have ended up in academia. Caldwell recalled that as her research mentor, Jackson urged her to gain valuable teaching experience despite her initial skepticism. “I said, ‘James, I don’t need teaching experience because I’m not going into academia,’” Caldwell said. “But he looked at me and he said, ‘You don’t know where you’re going to be, so what you need to do is to give yourself degrees of freedom so you can end up doing what it is you want to do.’ So for that year I taught, wonderful experience, and I left, and then I came back to academia.” Jamie Abelson, a senior research associate at the PRBA, said Jackson’s mentorship style had a ripple effect across the academic world and created generations of scholars who became mentors themselves. “He was renowned for his optimism and his energy, which helped propel everyone forward,” Abelson said. “And not only are all the people who ever worked with him grateful but they all acknowledge that they learned from him how to be a better mentor, so generations after those (who) worked directly with him have
benefited from him.” Abelson said 70 PRBA alumni joined a Zoom call the night of Sept. 14 to gather and remember Jackson’s legacy. “James was a powerhouse, even at age 27,” Abelson said. “One of the renowned researchers … was on the call and was saying, ‘Picture what you were like at 27, or what your children were like at 27. And just think, that this man was doing such important stuff at that point.’ He hit the ground running.’” Angela Dillard, professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and the Residential College, said Jackson was funny and brilliant. “He was enormously generous with his time and with advice,” Dillard said. “He was a really warm, collegial person, and a real role model about how to do first-rate academic scholarship, and then how to take on these administrative and leadership roles and really do them well. So I know that people say things like this when people die — they’re like, he’s a great person — but he really was incredibly warm, really funny, terrific smile, and is a kind of person who had the ability to really put you at ease.” University President Mark Schlissel expressed his condolences for those who knew Jackson and noted how his research changed the way race is studied in the United
“Our Board supports President Schlissel and the administration as they continue to lead our University through these tremendous challenges,” the statement reads. “We know that the president and the administration will continue to listen and adapt through these challenges, honor our common values and advance the mission of the University.” In his statement to The Daily, Fitzgerald noted the results of a sentiment ballot — a vote made available to faculty members who were unable to attend the meeting Wednesday. The majority of voters who participated in the sentiment ballot said they did have confidence in Schlissel. A total of 1,092 faculty voted against the measure, while 942 supported the vote of no confidence and 109 abstained. Before the official vote at the meeting Wednesday, Ward highlighted what he described as a failure of leadership at the highest levels of the University, particularly the president’s office. “He has engaged in evasion, misdirection, distortion and falsehoods,” Ward said. Managing News Editor Leah Graham and Daily News Editor Alex Harring can be reached at leahgra@umich.edu and harring@umich.edu.
STRIKE From Page 1 Regarding the accepted proposal, GEO spokesperson Leah Bernardo-Ciddio said the end result wasn’t the union’s preferred position. “At this moment, we are all feeling a little bit upset and frustrated and devastated that we were backed into a legal corner, and we had to choose between our demands and the future of our union,” BernardoCiddio said. “The commitment we made last night was to keep pushing in other ways while making sure our union survives and that it can continue to protect our most vulnerable members.” However, Bernardo-Ciddio said the union’s strike did allow for more progress on some of their key issues than they would have made otherwise. “We did achieve more than we would have if we hadn’t gone on strike or if we had accepted the offer last week,” BernardoCiddio said. Under the accepted proposal, GEO did not win the universal right to work remotely or partial diversion of funds from the Division of Public Safety and Security, two of their major demands. The proposal does, however, offer increased allocations for child care funding and the right to cancel class if students refuse to comply with the campus-wide mask mandate. The University also agreed to assemble a task force that GEO will be involved with to evaluate policing at the University. The University will also create a panel composed of a representative from GEO, the University and one mutually agreed upon person to review requests to work remotely. At the meeting Wednesday, 1,074 GEO members voted to accept the offer, 239 members voted to reject and 66 abstained. The majority of the GEO steering committee supported accepting the offer, citing concerns of retaliation and the possible harm the injunction could cause to the union. The University sought a court injunction and temporary restraining order to get graduate students to resume teaching earlier this week. In the complaint, the University claimed it has suffered irreparable injury as a result of the strike, including disruption of vital functions and a hit to its reputation. The University requested relief against GEO in excess of $25,000 for “any and all additional costs, expenses, salaries and other economic damages suffered by the University as a result of GEO’s breach of the collective
States. “Condolences to all who knew and learned from @ UMich Prof. James Jackson,” Schlissel wrote on social media. “He was a top scholar, leader, mentor, colleague & advocate for equity. He made our world better and smarter with groundbreaking research on the inf luence of race on the lives and health of African Americans.” Caldwell said that while it would be impossible to list all the areas where Jackson made an impact, he is remembered for his work in fields spanning from social science to health science to social work. “He was a giant in aging and physical health research, research on discrimination and social identity, research on mental health of Black Americans, political studies, neighborhood studies –– it’s so much, you can’t cover it all,” Caldwell said. “But with all of that, it was looking at Black populations, which allowed us to learn a lot.” Above all, Taylor remembers Jackson for his warmth. “One of the things that stands out was how warm he was to everyone,” Taylor said. “Anybody who visited James at the PRBA, James Jackson was one of the first people to come out and greet them and say hello. It didn’t matter who they were or where they were from, he was always very warm and very positive and very helpful.”
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 3 bargaining agreement.” University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald said the University worked with GEO to address all of their demands, claiming GEO membership’s overwhelming acceptance of the second proposal is proof that it was widely considered a fair offer. Fitzgerald also said the University never threatened criminal action or monetary damages against individuals. “The whole point of this — the whole negotiations and all throughout — the University’s commitment was to getting GSIs back in the classroom,” Fitzgerald said. “We were able to accomplish that by listening carefully, I think, and responding appropriately to almost every issue that was raised by GEO.” Because GEO members voted to accept the new proposal, the University said it will not retaliate against the union or individual students. Had the proposal been rejected and the court decided against the graduate students, GEO would be held in contempt of court, meaning GEO would be required to call for an end to the strike and any members still participating could potentially face fines of $250 per day of additional striking or arrests. The decision to accept the plan came down to if the union could afford to keep picketing amid the injunction, Rackham student Ryan Glauser said. One of his main concerns was GEO’s ability to fight an injunction, which raised the possibility that the union could be financially drained if the court sided with the University. “The Graduate Employees’ Organization is more important as an institution than winning small things in the short term,” Glauser said. “Once we lose our union, the University is going to take those small things from us, because they don’t have our trust.” GEO’s strike gained traction on social media, which the union used as a way to circulate their message. The union presented the strike as a way to make everyone on campus safer, both in terms of protection from the coronavirus and from policing, as a national reckoning about racial justice surfaced following the death of George Floyd. The strike served as a catalyst for other groups on campus. More than 100 resident advisers went on strike Sept. 9 — the day after GEO announced its strike — to demand additional personal protective equipment, enforcement of public health policies and hazard pay. Dozens of MDining student employees organized a work slowdown for two hours on Friday, with plans for a potential strike in the
VIGIL From Page 1 “This time is for us to come together and say, ‘Well, the University’s cruelty is on full display, we gave them every opportunity not to be cruel, they have every opportunity not to be, it’s a choice, in a big way,’” Peterson said. “These people have real power: President Schlissel has real power, Provost Collins has real power, Anne Curzan has real power, the regents have real power. So that all of them pander to us by saying they care and then make the choice that they did was quite devastating.” Several undergraduate students attended the vigil to express their disappointment with the administration’s handling of COVID-19. Engineering junior Joshua Sodicoff said his disillusion began in March when students were sent home from campus, adding that he has since gotten involved with an activist coalition that works with GEO. “Since March, I have been incredibly disappointed in the University’s response to the coronavirus — that started with their plan to send everyone off campus once they brought a whole petri dish of students back after spring break, and extended as they kicked people out of dorms without giving them a fair refund,” Sodicoff said. “Throughout the whole summer, a pretty large coalition of groups have been working on
future. A hundred theatre and drama students signed a letter saying they would not attend class until School of Music, Theatre & Dance leadership agree to their demands regarding pandemic procedures. GEO received a litany of support from different corners of campus, including the University’s chapter of College Democrats, labor unions whose members were commissioned to work on construction projects on campus and some faculty members. Central Student Government, the largest student government at the University, encouraged students to stand in solidarity with GEO and not attend classes for the duration of the strike. Members said they went into the meeting Wednesday night excited and anxious to see what the University had offered the second time around. They said they felt like awareness and support of the strike was rising and that the University would feel greater pressure to meet their demands as a result. But as the new proposal came to light at Wednesday’s meeting, Rackham student Katherine Wright said she realized the University had not made significant changes to what they proposed a week prior. The vote to accept the proposal, according to Rackham student Caitlin Posillico, was a result of “serious threats, not serious wins.” Wright, Posillico and other members agreed that the University’s injunction became a game-changer for members. They described strong-arm tactics used by the University to corner them into accepting a plan they didn’t feel adequately addressed their demands. “I realized that the University wasn’t going to budge on issues that we needed them to budge on, and that if we continued, we would be potentially putting ourselves in danger and our union in danger,” Wright said. “It just didn’t seem like that was the best course of action, given that there are other ways that we could push them to do the work that would be less risky for the union.” Ultimately, Wright said she felt resignation upon hearing the offer from the University, but she also felt pride. She, and other GEO members, said they felt like they used their power to hold the University accountable and ensure a safe environment for all members of the community. While there was a divide as to whether GEO should continue the strike, members agree that this proposal isn’t the end.
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trying to get their demands from the University. Everyone thought that there really wouldn’t be that many concessions to people’s health and safety.” LSA junior Trenten Ingell said he was displeased with the University’s response to the GEO’s demands for public health and safety, claiming that the University’s decision to reopen was driven solely by profit. “The University has still not met a lot of GEO’s demands when they canceled the strike, their anti-policing demands and even a lot of their COVID demands were completely rejected,” Ingell said. “Their intentions for profit have been very clear — how they really only understand what makes them money, and they have no idea how to care for people, how to provide a safe environment for campus.” The students at the vigil aren’t the only people on campus with a shortage of trust in the University’s leadership. Members of the Faculty Senate held two votes of no confidence in the administration on Wednesday, one focused on the University’s reopening plan for fall semester and the other on Schlissel’s role as president. The first failed narrowly, while the second passed. The symbolic measure means faculty members do not have faith in Schlissel to execute his job as head of the University.
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4 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
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‘U’ admin discusses testing plan at Regents meeting
Commenters unhappy with protocol for reopening campus DOMINIC COLETTI & JASMIN LEE Daily Staff Reporters
MADELINE HINKLEY /Daily Studying outdoors with masks is a new norm for students this semester.
During hybrid semester, students see impacts on life outside academics
Attending school on campus during a pandemic prompts new conversations, circumstances for social lives of many SAINI KETHIREDDY Daily Staff Reporter
The seasons are changing on the University of Michigan campus, but many fall staples aren’t on the calendar this year. Events that usually characterize a fall at the University have been put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving students feeling less social compared to previous fall semesters. LSA senior Raquel Powers, who is on the cross country and track teams, said her team couldn’t continue the usual traditions that marked each fall, such as their annual camping trip in northern Michigan. These events usually allowed the new freshmen on the team to bond with the other teammates, she said. “(The freshmen) don’t know what the normal is yet, and they don’t know what the team traditions are and that we could be closer than how we actually are right now,” Powers said. “All the previous years, especially with the camp, we get to know our teammates very well. But this year we just have practice and then everyone just goes and does their own thing.” Powers said other restrictions, such as maximum capacities in the training room and locker rooms, also affect social interactions with her team. “Like the pre- and postwork that you used to do in the training room and locker room, where you’d really chit-chat with your friends and chit-chat with the trainer as you get treatment, you just don’t get that time anymore with the people you used to,” Powers said. Rackham student Holden Greene said he enjoyed playing intramural sports in his previous years at the University, even refereeing for f lag football. Without sports this fall, he said his days felt a lot less engaging. “Like every Monday or every Wednesday, you (would) have that sport to look forward to playing and it’s an otherwise nice break from classwork or especially if you were having a slow day,” Greene said. “In some ways, my days (now) feel more regimental, like, I do this one thing and then I go to sleep. It feels like every day is the same routine.” LSA senior Lauren Croxton said not being able to draw her energy from pre-planned events such as football games or her business fraternity’s events makes being on campus for her last year feel
very different. Though Big Ten has since announced the return of football, no fans will be allowed in the stadium. “I know the way I drive a lot of my own happiness is being able to look forward to events like that,” Croxton said. “I need to start making that happen for myself again. Like I need to set up events that I can look forward to on my own because there’s no one organizing that for me anymore.” Social life at the University has also been shaped by Washtenaw County guidelines, which limit outdoor gatherings to a maximum of 25 people, including those in offcampus houses. Fraternities and sororities have agreed not to host social events this semester. Engineering senior Josh Goldstein said he was excited about football season and to go to bars like Rick’s American Cafe and Scorekeepers Sports Grill and Pub. But even if the bars open, he said they won’t feel the same. Goldstein is glad he can at least spend time with his friends in small groups, though it affects his relationship with other friends he’s not as close with. “I am upset about that, but I’m also happy to be here,” Goldstein said. “And it’s nice to not be stuck at home. It’s nice to be able to be on campus and still see people I know … you get really close with the people you live with, but a con is you probably get a little less closer with your best friends and the circle gets a little smaller, which for some people, could be a good thing.” Music, Theatre & Dance sophomore Kliment Milanov said he and his friends usually supplemented their music education experience by performing in gigs and theatrical performances. However, with COVID-19, many of his usual gigs no longer take place. “It sucks because I don’t feel like I’m getting a great performance education,” Milanov said. “There’s just no more ability for (gigs) in terms of employment and performance, and that’s just something we’re not getting trained in and not getting experienced in.” Croxton, who still lives with some of the girls she met and joined a business fraternity with her freshman year, said she understands how difficult this year must be for freshmen, who are still
new to the campus and trying to make friends and be a part of organizations. “I think that every part of my life (now), while it looks very different today than it did freshman year, in some way, goes back to some connection or some experience I had freshman year,” Croxton said. LSA freshman Shruti Swaminathan said she expected more sociallydistanced activities to be put on by the University when she first moved into Mary Markley Residence Hall. Making friends has been difficult given COVID-19’s impact on social life, she said. “When I came onto campus, there weren’t many activities planned for us, and everyone was just on their own about how to spend their first week,” Swaminathan said. “I think making friends is going to be really different from past years … But everyone is on the same boat, so it makes it a little more easy and comforting.” Students living off campus have had to start new conversations among roommates about their expectations for each other. Croxton said she and her housemates held a meeting to come to an agreement on how they would keep each other and their community safe during COVID-19. She said this plays a role in missing out on time with other groups of friends. “Obviously the future is very dynamic and changing so we didn’t put any longterm rules in place,” Croxton said. “I think a lot of other houses have had similar discussions so people are definitely sticking with the people inside their house … So you may miss out on friends and being involved in those activities you normally would have gone to.” Goldstein said he and his housemates had a similar discussion. Some off-campus houses may have roommates with varying levels of reactions to the virus, he said. “I think it would be a lot different if you live with some people who take it very seriously and some people who don’t take it seriously at all,” Goldstein said. “It’s also hard to keep track of how other people are being precautionary so it’s hard to tell who would be down to see people and who wouldn’t.” Daily Staff Reporter Saini Kethireddy can be reached at skethi@umich.edu.
The University of Michigan Board of Regents held their first meeting of the fall semester Thursday afternoon over Zoom amid the turmoil over the reopening plan and following a recent Faculty Senate vote of no confidence in University President Mark Schlissel. The meeting began with remarks from Schlissel, who addressed the WilmerHale report published in response to allegations of misconduct made against former Provost Martin Philbert. Schlissel said misconduct reports of senior administration officials will be directed to the executive vice president and chief financial officer instead of the provost, and the University’s policy on consensual relationships will be updated as well. These policy changes comply with recommendations in the WilmerHale report and are designed to avoid a situation such as the one where Philbert was tasked with overseeing the department charged with investigating him. “This change removed the possibility of a conf lict or hesitancy in reporting due to our Office of Institutional Equity being overseen by the Provost,” Schlissel said. “It follows WilmerHale’s recommendations that we follow alternative oversight for sexual misconduct allegations involving members of the Provost’s Office, which is ordinarily responsible for overseeing the Office of Institutional Equity.” Provost Susan Collins then addressed what she referred to as “false statements” regarding the agreement the University reached with the Graduate Employees’ Organization on Wednesday after more than a week of striking. Collins stated the University never pursued criminal or monetary action against grad students. In its court filing, the University did threaten to pursue these actions if GEO continued its strike. University Regent Denise
Ilitch (D) read a statement of support for the administration and the University’s reopening plans on behalf of the board. She said the board knows the University needs to communicate better with the broader community, but they are committed to improving. During the Central Student Government report, CSG President Amanda Kaplan, an LSA senior, addressed the Big Ten Conference’s Wednesday vote to restart the football season. Kaplan said CSG was unhappy with the recently announced plan to play this fall. “We want to express our deep disappointment upon learning that we voted to reinstate college football,” Kaplan said. “Personally, I am a huge football fan. But as Student Body President, I know that this symbolically signaled to our campus community that ‘we are doing fine.’ A sentiment which will, without a doubt, enable larger student parties on the cusp of Halloween, already one of the most notorious party weekends at Michigan.” Kaplan also addressed the inequity some students feel with athletes being given priority for COVID-19 testing. “With the backdrop of all of the advocacy on campus, it also signals a profound favoritism to athletes who will be getting safety testing over GSIs, R.A.s, DPEs (Diversity Peer Educators), and other University Employees who have been fighting to be getting any testing at all,” Kaplan said. Schlissel commented on the testing for student athletes, saying it is provided by the Big Ten and will not “affect our campus testing capacity.” Public Health professor Emily Martin then shared a presentation about the COVID19 Sampling and Tracking Program and announced a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. Martin said the University had previously worked on widespread inf luenza tracing before COVID-19 and they used the skills from that program to work on the new surveillance
program. “It’s possible that everything we’re doing to prevent COVID could also prevent inf luenza,” Martin said. “That would be a great situation, but I think we need to prepare for the next phase of the pandemic.” During the U-M Flint campus report, Flint Chancellor Debasish Dutta expressed his satisfaction that the Flint campus will participate in a pilot to bring telehealth services to its residential students in conjunction with University Health Services. The pilot would also bring Student Legal Services to Flint for the first time. “We heard from our students as well as our faculty that student health services and student legal services need to be made available to U of M-Flint students,” Dutta said. “...We are able to provide a pilot at this point in time in the fall semester to give the telehealth services to our students in residence halls. We will work and see how best to make it available to all students next year… We are (also) pleased to report that all students at U of M-Flint now have access to Student Legal Services.” The One University Campaign and others had previously engaged in a campaign for these services to be extended to the U-M Flint and U-M Dearborn campuses. In a press release about the pilot program, the campaign expressed excitement at the addition of health services, while urging the campus to extend a program to its non-resident students as well. The statement and several commenters also demonstrated frustration with the board and Dearborn Chancellor Domenico Grasso for not implementing a similar program there. During the public comment portion of the meeting, 15 community members spoke to the board, addressing issues including testing on campus, the fall opening plan, divestment from fossil fuels and the GEO strike.
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After loss, Solomon Rajput looks to other progressives
Medical student founds organization following primary election EMMA RUBERG Daily Staff Reporter
Solomon Rajput decided to put medical school on hold in September 2019 and run for U.S. Congress in Michigan’s 12th district against incumbent Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, D-Mich. After losing the primary election in August, Rajput went back to medical school and started Done Waiting, an organization working to get other progressive candidates elected. “That night of the election and the day after we were thinking, ‘You know what, we found a really cool model here,’” Rajput said. “For progressive campaigns like ours, the only way that we can possibly compete with the establishment is through people power. We can’t out-raise the establishment. … And they’ve got all this name recognition, so how can we possibly compete? Well, we can compete with the power of people.” Done Waiting’s website lists 27 progressive causes the organization is prioritizing, including the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. They plan to endorse and offer support and resources to various progressive candidates, both in primary and general elections, across the country. Currently, the only candidate the organization has endorsed is Adam Christensen,
a progressive running in the general election for Florida’s 3rd congressional district. In the Aug. 4 primary election, Dingell received more than 70% of the vote. Though Dingell was initially elected in 2014, she, her late husband and his father have collectively held a Michigan congressional seat for almost 87 years. Alex Dumont, communications director for Done Waiting and LSA sophomore, began working for Rajput during the campaign. He said it can be difficult for new progressive candidates to run against more established candidates like Dingell. “When running for Congress, it’s really hard to come out of nowhere and run right away,” Dumont said. “That’s what Solomon did and, of course, that’s the only way to do it. … So, I think we all knew what we were getting into in the campaign. We realized the uphill battle ahead of us, but we really thought it was important to do it anyways.” Despite the election outcome, Rajput said he is still proud of many parts of his campaign. “Although we didn’t win, we won the hearts of 25,000 voters across the district. I’m just really proud of that,” Rajput said. “We created one of the biggest campaigns in the country, to our knowledge, in terms of manpower.
I think that we’re actually the biggest in the entire country for a primary challenger. We hit a couple hundred interns and fellows from across the country spending eight to 15 hours every single week working on our campaign.” Going into the primary, Dingell had received more than $1.14 million in total contributions, with over $495,000 cash on hand, while Rajput’s total contributions amounted to around $116,000. He reported a little less than $40,000 in cash on hand, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. Done Waiting has pledged not to take any corporate money. According to their website, if a candidate they have endorsed supports a “corporate” Democrat over a more progressive opponent, they will publicly rescind their endorsement and may mobilize against the candidate they previously endorsed. Nick Schuler, vice chair of the University’s chapter of College Republicans and LSA sophomore, said he disagrees with the policies supported by Rajput and Done Waiting. However, he said support for candidates outside of the traditional party establishment is beneficial, whether in the Democratic or Republican parties.
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Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 5
Report reveals racial gaps in county criminal justice system Local attorneys compile statistics on disparities in sentencing, prosecuting JULIA FORREST & SUNSKRITI PARANJAPE
teamed up with Linda Rexer, retired executive director of the Michigan State Bar Foundation and Alma WheelerSmith, former representative in the Michigan State House of Representatives, to form Citizens for Racial Equality in Washtenaw — a group that collects and analyzes felony case records from the county court’s website to explore whether and to what extent racial disparities exist in the county’s charging and sentencing practices. In August 2020, CREW published the report online detailing their findings after scraping through thousands of cases on the court’s website. The analysis covers more than 3,600 court cases in 11 felony categories — including capital and non-capital felonies — from 2013 to 2019. According to the report, Washtenaw County prosecutors have broad discretion in deciding whether or not to charge someone with a crime and what kind of charges to bring. Washtenaw County judges also have wide volition in determining the length of a sentence and choosing whether to accept a plea agreement or to sentence a person to probation, jail or prison. “While we found racial disparities among individual judges, CREW did not find that the Washtenaw County Circuit Court, as a whole, demonstrated a pattern of racial disparity in its sentencing of our community members across all eight case categories we studied,” the report read. “That is not to say, however, we found no instances of disparity across the court.” The data showed 44.1 percent of people of color convicted of homicide were sentenced to life in prison, compared to only 27.3 percent of white defendants. Additionally, most of the judges “contributed to a wide racial disparity in the average minimum/maximum sentence in armed robbery cases.” The report also highlights 23 instances in which individual judges were found to issue harsher sentences or whose sentences showed racial disparities.
Daily Staff Reporters
ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily Republicans challenge Whitmer’s pandemic response in Michigan Supreme Court on September 9th.
Legislation prompted by ‘U’ doctor looks to alter statute of limitations
Former University of Michigan student-athletes hold a press conference with lawmakers in Lansing on Wednesday in support of reform package LEAH GRAHAM & ARIA GERSON
Managing News Editor & Daily Sports Writer
Several former University of Michigan student-athletes joined lawmakers in Lansing, Mich. to announce legislation to extend the statute of limitations on certain sexual abuse cases and reform governmental immunity. Standing on the steps of the Capitol Building, the survivors of alleged abuse by late University doctor Robert Anderson called for systemic change to hold predators accountable. The “Empowering Survivors” legislative reform package is co-sponsored by state Rep. Ryan Berman, R-Commerce Township, and state Rep. Karen Whitsett, D-Detroit. Berman described the legislation as a necessary step to empower survivors of sexual abuse and assault. If passed, the two bills would reform Michigan’s statute of limitations to create a one-year window from the time the laws are passed for survivors of criminal sexual assault to sue if their abuse happened under the guise of medical care or if the abuser was in a position of authority such as a medical doctor. The package would also alter the state’s governmental immunity
law to prevent universities from mischaracterizing sexual assault to avoid lawsuits. “This type of behavior must be stopped, as should the legal tactics used to protect these institutions from lawsuits when abuse occurs,” Berman said. “Our purpose today is simple: Survivors must be allowed to pursue justice as they see fit. It’s my privilege as a legislator and citizen to have the opportunity to help these people who are sent to college as teenagers, our best and our brightest, only to be abused and ignored. Well, I say, no more.” The allegations against Anderson span decades. In February 2018, former University student-athlete Tad DeLuca, who participated in the announcement Wednesday morning, accused Anderson of sexual misconduct at a press conference in Southfield, Mich. Other former studentathletes later came forward with their own stories of abuse. The University has since set up a hotline number for survivors and sent letters to thousands of former student-athletes about the alleged sexual misconduct. That effort has expanded to include the more than 300,000 former students who were on campus during Anderson’s tenure from the middle of the 1960s to the early 2000s. A judge ordered the University in August to inform those students of litigation involving Anderson.
Jon Vaughn, who played running back for Michigan in 1989 and 1990 before spending four years in the NFL, said as a student he trusted the University would give him the best care. Instead, he said he was frequently abused during medical appointments. At the press conference, Vaughn said he now has trouble going to the doctor or placing trust in doctors after what happened with Anderson. He called on the Michigan state legislature to pass the bills to help protect other survivors. “It has also become very clear that the University of Michigan knew,” Vaughn said. “They made a choice not to protect us. Instead, the University enabled our abuser.” DeLuca, a former wrestler, described the difficulty he has had dealing with the alleged abuse he endured as a student in the 1970s. He added that his coaches knew because he wrote them a letter in 1975 telling them about his experiences with Anderson. DeLuca said serial predators and the people who enable them should not be allowed to “run out the clock” on the statute of limitations to avoid prosecution. “Serial sexual molesters and their accomplices should be subject to perpetual overtime,” DeLuca said. “Why should an institution like the University of
Michigan be allowed to hide the conduct long enough so they can hide behind the law and never have to answer for the abuse they allowed for all these years? It makes no sense and it must be changed. The University of Michigan failed to be the Leaders and the Best.” Dr. John Lott, who played football from 1979 to 1983 and is now a licensed clinical social worker, also spoke. Lott said he had to endure exams from Anderson every year, which took a toll mentally. Recent testimony revealed a former University of Michigan vice president overturned a decision to fire Anderson in 1979. In a court deposition, Thomas Easthope, former vice president of the Division of Student Life, accused former Athletic Director Don Canham of ignoring allegations against Anderson and allowing the doctor to assume an influential role in the University Athletic Department. The school is facing various lawsuits over Anderson’s alleged abuse. Outside law firm WilmerHale is conducting an external investigation into the allegations against Anderson on behalf of the University.
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MaryAnn Sarosi, an attorney in Washtenaw County, sat at her desk one day in early April, combing through court files while preparing for a case. She eventually stumbled across data that caught her eye: criminal court cases revealing vast racial disparities in Washtenaw County’s legal system. She said the task at hand — sifting through data to get statistics on racial inequities — seemed daunting at first, but nationwide revolts against police brutality reinforced her commitment to seeing it through. “We lamented for a long time that these things weren’t transparent,” Sarosi said. “And then I realized, well, they are on the court records, on the court website. It would be tedious, but we could do these by hand, and we started doing by hand. And then after George Floyd was murdered, we realized, ‘Oh, we really got to do this. We really got to do this on a broader scale.’” The numbers Sarosi found reveal large gaps in the treatment of different racial groups in the county’s criminal justice system. According to a report documenting her findings, prosecutors charge people of color more often than they do white people. The extent of the disparities varies depending on the felony category. For the felony category of suspended license, prosecutors charged people of color 22 percent more than white people. For the category of “Weapons - Felony Firearm,” people of color were charged 1,150 percent more often than white people, meaning POC faced charges at a rate 12.5 times that of their white counterparts. In 10 of the 11 categories, prosecutors filed more charges against people of color, on average, than white people, ranging from a 12.8 percent to 62.9 percent difference. People of color also received more convictions per case, on average, than white people in 10 of the 11 categories. The report was a team effort. After initially combing through the files with her colleague Rev. Joe Summers, Sarosi
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COVID-19 reported at Brown Jug as semester began Popular Ann Arbor bar shut down from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8 after a cluster of cases emerged among employees on Aug. 28 JULIA RUBIN
Daily Staff Reporter
The Brown Jug, a popular student restaurant and bar on South University Avenue, has reported at least six positive COVID-19 cases among staff since late August. A server, who requested to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from their employer, told The Daily six employees tested positive for COVID-19 in the past month. Both the server and the restaurant’s owner, Perry Porikos, confirmed these cases. The entire staff was then tested for COVID-19 — those tests came back negative. The Brown Jug then shut down from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8 after a cluster of cases emerged among employees on Aug. 28, according to Porikos. He said he immediately contacted the Washtenaw County Department of Health and shut down the restaurant for deep cleaning on Aug. 30. He also told all employees who tested positive to quarantine, following health
department protocol. “I decided for the benefit of everybody to shut it down,” Porikos said. “You know, informed the health department right away. They informed me that, listen, legally, (you don’t have to) shut down.” However, the server said the restaurant did not close while the employees were awaiting results from their tests between Aug. 20 and Aug. 30. “The problem is, with this testing … when (management) says ‘OK, everyone has to get tested,’ you don’t close, everyone still comes into work, even if they’re waiting on test results,” the server said. Nate, a bar manager who asked to only use his first name for privacy concerns, said he was the first to get a positive result back for COVID-19 on Aug. 25 after going in for a test four days earlier. He said he felt sick the day before and took off from work, and then got tested. “The earliest (positive case) was actually mine,” Nate said. “I
was like, ‘I’m not gonna come in for a shift, I don’t feel right, I felt weird.’ So I actually didn’t come in. I tested positive on the 21. I wasn’t even in contact with anybody. I got it from an outside person.” Nate said another employee later tested positive who, days earlier, had tested negative. The employee had worked nearly every shift in between the test days, so the entire staff got tested again, Nate said. From that group, four more came back positive. “One of the workers was asymptomatic the whole time, but that person was working almost every shift,” Nate said. “Everyone got scheduled to get tested, and the second person that came back positive, we were like, well, the rest of you are probably going to test positive as well. It was only five of us altogether that got it, and that’s when we shut everything down.” Nate said he believes The Brown Jug is doing everything it can to protect its staff and patrons from COVID-19. “We’ve been cleaning, self-
FILE PHOTO/Daily
At least six people have tested positive among staff the the Brown Jug since late August.
quarantining, getting checked,” Nate said. “I mean, there’s not much more we can do. Everything is sanitized after touching everything, capacity is limited. We had a line outside the other day and it was aimed away from our patio. And we can only control people as much as we can control
people.” The server said all employees were told to wear masks at all times and usually left tables open to maintain social distancing and wiped down menus and tabletops with a bleach solution. However, the server said employees did not always follow
these precautions. On weekend nights and during other peak hours, employees did not have time to clean menus or enforce social-distancing limits, they said.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Michigan In Color
6 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The Remarkable Brevity of Grief SARAH AKAABOUNE MiC Columnist
The hospital has a distinct smell. A smell I have tried in vain to find a worthy comparison for, an alternative the rest of the world could understand, maybe the smell of gasoline, or nail polish, or moldy socks, or dirt or a locker room that hasn’t been cleaned in months. You see, the smell of the hospital is so particular, so stubborn, that it renders itself immune to any attempts at description or computation. It is a smell that burrows itself underneath your fingernails, within the strands of your hair, the fibers of your clothes, coating your nerve endings, seeping into the folds of your grey matter, so that in time, the hospital no longer becomes synonymous with healing and care and new beginnings but rather, soley that smell. It is the smell of grief, of remarkable grief, the kind that blurs your vision and boils your blood so that it roars in your ears, of dirty parents who haven’t showered in days, of bad news, news so bad it f lips your world onto its axis, eliminating all that is familiar, all that is known; news delivered by doctors with plastered smiles, just the right mixture of synthetic sympathy, a twinge of relief perhaps, that this is not their life, this is not their pain. It is the smell of
shattered glass, of fatigue, of broken dreams, of wishes made on shooting stars, of prayers, of meals with the consistency of cardboard that only managed to get by FDA regulations simply because they met nutritional value standards and nothing else, the smell of the knowledge of the inevitable, of death and of the tiniest shred of hope. The timeline of my life is divided into B.C. and A.D., Before Cancer and After Diagnosis. Much like in the years leading to the coming of modern religion, my reality was primitive, ruled by kingdoms whose lifeblood was fantasy and naivete, where constellations danced and leaped across the night sky, where dragons breathed fire and the f lick of a wand was a worthy opponent to the world’s greatest problems. Grape popsicles that melted within a minute of opening, rivulets of violet sickly sweet staining the notches in my hands, the lines etched in my palms, pooling into the valley between my thumb and my finger, so that in due time corporate America’s idea of what artificial grape f lavoring should taste like became infused within the twists and spirals of my DNA. The utter and raw simplicity of childhood being the only thing that could bend the laws of the universe. In the year of our Lord, my anno Domini, in the way that worship and faith brought
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brother was born again, with a crooked face, and eyes that were unable to close, and sores in his mouth, and arms marred with grey residue from medical tape, and thick white bandages that oozed yellow pulp. So that doctors, young doctors with an aura of smugness, knowing that they were the very embodiment of the American ideal of success, in the way they carried themselves, in the way they handled stethoscopes with whip smart accuracy, told us my brother would never be able to read or write again. I read in some magazine somewhere, a waiting room with peeling walls and f lickering f luorescent lights, or in line at the grocery store, or in the school library reading as a desperate attempt to mask the fact that I had no friends, that the sense of smell has the longest evolutionary history out of any of the senses, that the body’s sense of smell and memory retrieval have an instantaneous connection. Like how the smell of wax crayons and soap remind you of the irreproachable purity of kindergarten, or how freshly cut grass and barbecue invoke the sense of summer or how the smell of the hospital, still so tenacious after all these years, reminds you of pain and grief and scratchy eyes from no sleep, and wilting f lowers and half def lated helium balloons and sick brothers and sad moms and desolate dads.
Release Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2020
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advancement, progression, chaos, and divisions, cancer swept through my brother’s life and in effect mine with the same ferocity. It is an anomaly, it creates chinks in the social chain, tearing big, gaping holes in the already threadbare fabric of your life, and it has no mercy; it will gnaw muscle right off the bone, it will fray heart string, it will pulverise connective tissue all without discriminating by race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status or power. When I was 11 years old, my brother, 6, was diagnosed with stage 4 Medulloblastoma. A tumor in his brain no larger than overripe plum upended my life. Of course as with anything we regret, there are so many what-if’s, what if we had realized it was a f law in his genetic code, that all that needed to be done was to switch an A with a T, what if we had caught it sooner, that his slurred speech and inability to walk straight were something much deeper than viral meningitis. For 10 hours, he was suspended on the thin line between life and death, they sawed into his skull, prodded within the crevices of his mind with cold, foreign instruments that had no business being there, haphazardly snipping nerves and nicking arteries, his blood splattered on their shoes, smeared across their clothes, embedded within the granules of their white latex gloves. My
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Introducing the
WHISPER “60 characters. Bare your soul. Get featured in the Daily!”
ACROSS 1 Bits of trash often swept up with popcorn 6 Outdoor party rental 10 Creek croaker 14 Like much beer 15 “Dude!” 16 Nashville highlight 17 University offerings 20 Open patio 21 Original angel on “Charlie’s Angels” 22 Driver’s role in “Star Wars” sequels 23 Easiness exemplar 25 Johns in Scotland 26 Bob Dylan title lyrics that follow “in my heart you’ll always stay” 31 Hopeless, as a situation 34 Tears to shreds 35 Cause of some royal insomnia 36 Leave out 37 Ties together 38 Go no further 39 Hill worker 40 Works in Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends” 41 Provided light 42 “The Wrestler” Oscar nominee 45 Gets moving 46 Luau finger food 47 Lead-in to a texter’s afterthought 50 Words said in disbelief 53 Canadian metropolis 55 Judge’s words ... and a hint to this puzzle’s circles 57 MM and MMXX, for two 58 Tire (out) 59 Beat, with “out” 60 Enzo’s eight 61 Where Southwest Airlines is LUV 62 Puts in like piles
2 Fed. security 3 One-eighty 4 Port on Italy’s “heel” 5 Watch surreptitiously 6 Sched. uncertainty 7 Shows one’s humanity? 8 Zip 9 Hitchcock thriller set in Bodega Bay 10 Piemonte city 11 Confides in 12 Region 13 Start to function? 18 Bahrain bigwig 19 Charcoal pencil shades 24 Like “Halloween,” and then some 26 In good shape 27 Mobile payments app owned by PayPal 28 Finally arrives (at) 29 Second-lightest noble gas 30 Stare slackjawed 31 Linguist Chomsky
32 Luxury hotel name 33 Prejudiced investigation and harassment 37 Father Flanagan’s orphanage 38 “__ sells seashells ... ” 40 Actress/author Holly Robinson __ 41 Mountain resort aids
43 South Korean subcompact 44 Solar panel spot 47 Reason for spin, briefly 48 Limited message 49 Hospital sections 50 Refuses to 51 Newsman Lewis? 52 LAX postings 54 Rock’s Ben Folds Five, surprisingly 55 NBA great Ming 56 Minecraft material
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
09/23/20
DOWN 1 Words often suggesting unmet By Joe Deeney goals ©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/23/20
WHISPER “Happy fall everyone! Go throw some leaves.
“I don’t think this is the right way to pick up girls...”
‘Circles’
E15, MONTAÑITA, ECUADOR - ANDRÉS MEDINA VIA UNSPLASH
KATHERINA ANDRADE OZAETTA MiC Columnist
So it begins. The bass drums through me as I move my body to the music, my eyes closed. Psi U is full of bodies, all moving in a haze. If I swing my hips too quickly to one side, I find myself grazing a hip, but if I miss the rhythm, a hand creeps along my side. The dance f loor is a careful game, where if you are with the music, you are rewarded — by not getting body slammed. There are rules. Never open your eyes or look for too long either, but I forgot that momentarily. Beat. Eyes open. Beat. Eyes go to the front. Beat. I see you. How long has it been? A month since the last time we’ve seen each other, but months since we’ve looked at each other in the eyes like this. Beat. Another beat comes to mind, coming straight from my head, the music filling the room fades in my ears. I begin to hear “We Lied to Each Other” playing in my head and we lock eyes. The average person lies two times a week. That was my first lie of the week. In reality, the average person lies two times a day. So I g uess that was my first lie of the day. I wonder if that includes sustained lies, which go on over time. Does your lie count go up automatically each passing day, or is it just one offense? I thought about this whenever I cried about my dad, curled up into myself and alone. My mom and my dad met at the University of Michigan, where an engineering and biolog y student fell in love despite all odds. He was from Costa Rica, an international student proud of his Lebanese roots, who was destined to inherit his father’s company. She was from Ecuador, more or less “fresh off the boat,” naturalized three years before starting college. They came together and, in the same breath, fell apart. My father wasn’t supposed to be with someone not Lebanese and definitely was not supposed to be with someone from Ecuador. It was his father’s company or her. My father knew that from the start. But she didn’t. When I grew inside her, he left. I stretched her belly, while the distance stretched between my mother and father, as he married the woman he left her for. I sometimes think about how my mother received her new baby as my dad received his new wife. If my dad did not lie about his circumstances, would I be here? Here I was, in my mother’s home country, and I felt like an alien. It’s funny how people associate you with an identity before you claim it for yourself. Before I even knew what being Hispanic was, I was it. There was no discovery. Just a comment about how I’m a funny wetback and here I am. If only they had seen me struggle to understand my mother’s tong ue or witnessed how much I stuck out from the average Ecuadorian. They didn’t see it, but I did. I felt so removed from this place, and by extension, removed
from my mom. I would never understand what it would be like to be truly Ecuadorian, to be forced to move to another country. But under the clear blue water in Ayampe, I could exist. With the surfboard pressed between my legs, I felt it all. I savor the Ecuadorian sun pressing against my back, the salty Ecuadorian water burning my eyes and, for a moment, I feel Ecuador. Standing powerfully on my surf board. I feel like my mother. I feel like my mom every now and again, but never as intensely as I did in this moment, standing with you at the CCTC. We had been talking for two months. Everything was falling into place, as I began to feel like my place was right next to you. You, who explained derivatives to me in your “I’m an Engineering student” voice. Your roommates began to feel like mine. Your dorm began to feel like mine. You were mine, and I was yours. When I’m surfing, sometimes I can feel the board about to slip out from under me the moment before it actually happens. For a split-second, before, I am aware that I will fall and the board will shoot out from under me. We were walking back from a date, where you took me out to ice cream and poked at my cheeks for how messy my face got, and I was hit with the same feeling. Maybe it was the look in your eyes or how your pitch changed, but I just knew. As you cradled my hand in yours, we were over as quickly as we started. This really is happening, huh, at the CCTC? You told me how you couldn’t lie to us anymore. Your parents wanted you to be with another Armenian. Not me. Your breath catches for a moment. You push out the rest, how they’ll stop paying for college if you stay with me. You held my heart in your hands and now it’s bleeding. A part of me wonders why I’m not yelling at you for getting me into this mess, for letting me fall in love with you when you knew it was non-viable. For using one of your two lies of the day to lie to me about what you wanted. I couldn’t help but think about what a waste this all was. A waste of time, energ y, vulnerability. And then it hit me. I was my mom. Is this also where my dad ended things with her? What did she feel like when she heard the very same lie? Did she also feel like her heart was torn out of her chest for someone who was unworthy of her love? Are we bound to repeat history over and over again like our parents? I laughed at the sheer irony, and you looked confused. I laughed till my stomach ached and the bus came to take me back to my own dorm. I laughed as you turned into a small fig ure and the bus moved farther and farther away from you. I laughed as I pressed my face against the glass, willing myself to look away from you. I laughed until my breath caught and I thought to myself, “Is this what it took for me to feel closer to my mom?” I laughed until I heard my mother’s voice on the phone, which brought me to my first tear. So it begins.
Michigan In Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 7
Social Media: The sweetest poison EMAN NAGA Photo from UNSPLASH
Does American culture make succumbing to COVID-19 inevitable? KAYLA THOMAS MiC Columnist
Throughout American history, the nation’s culture and mainstream ideologies have undergone significant changes, but one sentiment that has stood the test of time is the concept of the American Dream. This dream states that we can achieve anything we want if we work hard enough. Through this concept, society has been convinced that, as individuals, our fate is completely dictated by our own choices. And as a result, we have learned to see the actions and outcomes of our lives as entirely separate from that of other people’s, completely disregarding the societal and communal factors that can affect one’s livelihood. Fast forward to the present day, where we are now being told about how one individual’s cough or breath could start a chain reaction of coronavirus infections that could eventually take someone’s life. Living in the midst of a pandemic has proven how our lives are interconnected with everyone we come into contact with, strangers and loved ones alike. In response, many public health officials and politicians have been encouraging and requiring the country to follow guidelines such as wearing masks that pass the flame test and social distancing. Though these guidelines promote the well-being of those who follow them, they have been primarily regarded as actions that are necessary for the safety of those we cross paths with. The expectation that people will see the health of others as their responsibility, and continuously sacrifice for the sake of those they don’t know completely opposes America’s individualistic value system. With this being the case, it is only fair to ask: is this country willing to abandon its cultural roots in order to promote the livelihood of its people? The observable answer is no. This has shown to be the case
ARIES
This week, the Sun moves into Libra at the equinox – a point of balance, when light equals dark. Mercury is also on the move, arriving in Scorpio. Mercury in Scorpio can have a dark edge, but this energy is excellent for research and strategic thinking.
TAURUS
Focus on your physical and mental wellbeing this week. You can’t serve others if you’re not well enough to look after yourself. Negotiating with a partner gets easier once Mercury changes sign, but you may still struggle to ask for what you need.
GEMENI Feel the joy of the Sun, now illuminating the most fun-loving and creative part of your chart. This is a fantastic week for artistic expression or simply for enjoying yourself. If you can take a vacation, do it! Definitely a week to remember.
in recent weeks, where the start of the fall school semester at the University of Michigan has brought on an influx of large gatherings, creating potential breeding grounds for COVID cases. This result is unsurprising considering what we know about the nature of the disease. “COVID is a very social disease,” said Gary Harper, a health behavior and health education professor within the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. “It spreads through the air. So if you have students who are drinking, laughing, and singing, plus they’re drunk so their inhibitions are down, that’s a virus’ playground.” With the virus’ ability to thrive in tightly-packed spaces, many have been questioning the logic behind people willingly and unnecessarily creating situations that allow this fatal virus to spread. The answer could lie within our culture. According to the unwritten rules of an individualistic culture, people are only going to continuously follow guidelines that show visible benefits to themselves and their livelihood. Social psychologists have attested that people within individualistic cultures are more prone to making decisions based on individual needs, and only feel responsible for taking care of themselves and their families. This norm makes the discrepancy between the identities of people participating in these large maskless events and the communities being overwhelmingly impacted by COVID19 extremely relevant. The demographics of the gatherings in question are mainly young, middle to upper-class white university students. This population of people is known to be the least impacted by the dangers of the virus . Some believe that this causes this population to be disconnected from the reality of the disease. “These aren’t the people being disproportionately impacted by the disease,” says Dr. Harper about this disconnect. The
racial disparities when it comes to the impact of COVID have been acknowledged at both the local level and the national level. “When the virus hit Michigan, specifically in Detroit, 60% of the people who tested positive were Black,” continues Harper. In the United States overall, Latino and African-American residents are three times more likely to become infected, compared to their white neighbors. And yet race is not the only thing that separates these partiers from the reality of COVID. There is also their age to consider. “Even when it comes to age, the majority of the people who are dying from it are older. With all of these partiers being young, if they catch the virus, they are very likely to recover from it,” Harper said. This acts as a further separation that Dr. Harper summarizes with a very telling statement: “COVID isn’t real to them.” Yet it is very real to many others, including people of color, older citizens, and lower-income residents, especially those serving in essential worker positions that do not provide paid time off nor proper personal protective equipment. With the people leading these parties on campus being socially and geographically separated from the hotspots of the virus, as well as the communities most affected by it, there is likely to be an attitude of either indifference or ignorance among the attendees. Many might not believe that their actions have tangible repercussions, or they may be too disconnected from the impact to care. With the societally-promoted desire to care only about oneself, this leaves many of these students without a visible reason to care. Since this is a problem that lies within the value system of this country, many of the proposed solutions are located there too. “We must change how we define ‘community’ in this country,” says Dr. Harper. Harper, who
PICES
YOUR WEEKLY
LEO This very busy week finds you packing in far more than 24 hours a day allow – so don’t be surprised if you end up exhausted! There’s a strong sense of satisfaction here though, and the progress you make will be very pleasing indeed.
The Sun stirs up deep emotional depths within you, but releasing these emotions is healthy. Look ahead several years and decide where you want to go. Don’t worry too much about the details at this stage – it’s your overall vision that’s important.
AQUARIUS
WHISPER “I see that you’re watching the best show in the world. I approve.”
Your restlessness increases as the Sun shifts signs, and there’s an underlying need for adventure. If you can ring the changes in your daily routine, you’ll benefit from this. Do something different. Stretch your mind.
CAPRICORN The Sun shines brightly from your career zone now, allowing you to step into your full power and authority. Mercury brings you extra persuasive powers too, so it’s likely that whatever you say this week will be listened to and respected.
“Pumpkin pants.”
CANCER Give full reign to your naturally nurturing instincts, perhaps by taking someone lonely under your wing. You have a lot of compassion to teach the world, but your confidence may be lacking. Perhaps you could express it creatively?
has done HIV community work and research since 1985, and has worked extensively in Kenya for the past 15 years, looks to the collectivism mindset of the East African country when proposing a solution. “In Kenya, there is a very collectivist mindset,” Harper said.“They had curfews almost immediately. Now they’re kicking COVID’s butt instead of COVID-19 kicking their butts. There, the mindset is that if one person has COVID-19 the whole community has COVID. The saying ‘it takes a village’ isn’t just a cute saying there. It’s how they live.” The mindset that one person getting COVID is equivalent to the entire community getting COVID is not as far-fetched as it may appear. The easy mobility of infectious disease makes the potential of an individual case turning into a community concern quite possible. Because of this, the community-based mindset that has been ingrained into Kenyan society is what has resulted in relatively lower proportions of deaths compared to the U.S. Given these outcomes, it is very possible that normalizing the idea of being a team player as elementary as it sounds - could be a saving grace to American. This may not be easy to do. The United States is the same country that has allowed its individualistic values to prevent it from providing their citizens with universal healthcare. The pervading mindset that one should not be responsible for financially supporting the livelihood of a stranger is the reason why millions in this country have neglected health needs due to economic strain. It is also the reason why tax-supported healthcare programs like Medicaid remain under constant scrutiny. The ability of this country to redefine its values to encourage a lifestyle that considers and cares for the national community continues to be an uphill battle. The question of whether the ravaging impacts of COVID will change that is yet to be determined.
SAGITTARIUS
“And they were roommates!”
VIRGO The Sun leaves your sign this week, and now is a good time to focus on your finances. Even though you’re not materialistic, you appreciate the value of money because it provides for safety and security – so use that as your primary motivation.
LIBRA With the Sun arriving in Libra, you’re showcasing all the very best of your sign. This is set to be a happy, sociable week, and if you’re single, it’s a good time for dating. Planning works well too, with your thought processes becoming more methodical.
You feel driven to accomplish things for others this week, especially in a humanitarian or charitable sense. Don’t allow guilt over what you have or have not done in the past hold you back. You know better now, and you’re doing better.
MiC Columnist
Twitter has always been my social media drug of choice. My timeline — essentially Arab twitter, Muslim twitter and Leftist twitter, speaks to my personality and beliefs to a concerningly accurate degree. As my relationship with Twitter has adapted — what was once a 30 minute daily check-in has seamlessly transitioned into a pandemic ritual of daily two hour blocks — I’ve come to the realization that Twitter, as well as other forms of social media, has had an engrossing, personal effect on my life, especially within the past six months. Remember that one week where everyone posted passive aggressive tweets followed by a red heart? I used the same mannerism in nearly every text conversation that followed, thinking it was comedic gold. In April, when everyone was absolutely fascinated by bread, specifically of the banana variety, I bought multiple bags of flour and made banana bread at least three times a week. The intrusive effect social media has had on my psyche and social life has intensely heightened throughout quarantine. Unfortunately, the same can be said for a concerning number of young adults. Online, where the need to create viral content reflects an internalized need to feel validated within public circles, social media directly translates to the urges we have as social creatures because of its unique ability to gather people. The sense of gratification when a post gets more likes than expected, the second guessing we feel before we hit post and the tweet in our drafts that will never hit our followers timeline, all indicate an emotional dependency that technological giants have spawned for their users. And during the pandemic, that addiction has never been stronger. As how I choose to spend my day and how I communicate increasingly stem from social media interactions powered by consuming algorithms, the compelling allure has held me and others captive. Amassing a sizable following and receiving likes are parts of a system designed to psychologically persuade users to utilize these apps, each usage followed by immediate dopamine hits. This potent neurotransmitter is responsible for making us feel pleasure, and in moments filled with heightened sadness, consumers are desperate to fend off secluded sentiments of sadness. This has been particularly severe among young adults, as Gen-Z’s dependence on social media was excessive prior to the pandemic, and screen times have only elevated during the numerous phases of lockdown. Further, the CDC has conducted studies that have shown that Gen-Z is facing the brunt of mental illnesses during the pandemic, with one in four young adults, aged 18-25, experiencing heightened anxiety, depression,and suicidal thoughts. The social fabric of society is unraveling. While that percentage can be broken down and expanded across a multitude of issues such as financial stress, anxiety surrounding health and academic pressure, the lack of human connection is just one more centrally detrimental factor for the mental psyche of young adults across the world. In this emptiness, social media networks have rooted themselves as essential connecting points amid daily pursuits for companionship while quarantining. Before the pandemic, it
was clear that Gen-Z, the first generation born in the internet era, was already facing higher numbers of suicidal thoughts, feelings of isolation and anxiety than generations prior. And the pandemic has only exacerbated already augmented statistics. Social media’s ability to offer quickly digestible media headlines and regulations as the world shifted through stages of lockdown, left users on the application long enough to consume other forms of information. Conspiracy theories are one example. The United States has been politically — and morally — polarized for some time, but social media platforms; namely Reddit, Facebook and Twitter have stretched out an exceedingly thin line in the COVID-19 era. False conspiracy theories such as QAnon; a theory asserting that Donald J. Trump is the only one who can “save the children” from alleged sex traffickers Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, have grown exponentially. As people struggle to grasp onto any idea that seems rational in irrational times, Twitter has immensely furthered these divides, pushing leftists further left, and far-right users further into the fringe. According to Pew Research, users on Twitter, second only to Reddit, are more likely to be exposed to conspiracy theories. This has serious implications as it continues to bleed into political discourse, and the danger of entrapping users in a bubble remains a societal threat. The role social media has had in fostering communities based on common interests and beliefs has also been socially beneficial. Social media applications allow people to form niches, causing users to view strangers as close friends, despite never having truly interacted with the individuals off the internet. With apps like TikTok dominating the airwaves, other platforms remain social media powerhouses, wielding influence in fostering connections based on personal affiliations; whether it be a horoscope sign, brand or fandom alignment. While social media can rightfully be analyzed as a dangerous way of promoting groupthink, the possibility to cultivate a community with people who share your quirks and interests are endless. Especially in a sociallystarved society, it manifests as a way to feed our aching cravings. If a user can focus their time and energy on stan culture, analyzing movies or engaging in debates online, there is less time to stress on truly immediate issues. This is a severe form of escapism, but in a period filled with so many unknowns, confusion and tension, social creatures are looking to escape what’s off our screens. Despite all the apparent danger, I can’t help but wonder how the platform will become more enmeshed in my life and the lives of others as the weather chills and any small window we have to be social outside pushes us back into our homes and onto digital spaces. This dangerously enticing human connection we have to mere applications is the basis of commentaries like Black Mirror, but in a world where our social selves are left wanting, users, including myself, will continue to sacrifice our time, energy and personal data for a swell of gratification. Time has proven that our ravenous reliance on social media harms our collective consciousness, but right now, when the hunger for interaction overwhelms our fears of a technologically-consumed society, consequences be damned.
SCORPIO Your natural instinct is to seek solitude as the Sun shifts into your privacy zone. However, with Mercury arriving in your sign, you’re actually feeling more sociable and chattier than normal. Engage with the world – new friends are waiting.
Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv
no love - Prateek Katyal via Unsplash
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 8
FACULTY FROM THE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH | OP-ED
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ANDREW GERACE | COLUMN
Solidarity forever: an inevitable and necessary strike
I
f you’ve been on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. this past week, you’ve likely heard chants of “Solidarity Forever,” impassioned speeches about quarantine conditions and a noticeable lack of construction noise. If you haven’t figured it out by now, the Graduate Employees’ Organization, non-unionized resident advisers and a host of MDining staff have been striking to protest the University’s inexcusable mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. GEO has additionally emphasized the deconstruction of the University’s relationship with and reliance on the Ann Arbor Police Department and armed campus police. Simply put, these strikes on campus are necessary for the collective health and safety of the University and Ann Arbor as a broader community. On Wednesday, Sept. 16, GEO ended the strike after accepting an offer from the University. However, the broader problems of community health and systemic injustices still stand and ought to be analyzed after the historic strike came to an end. For many at the University, U-M’s COVID-19 planning has been an utter letdown. Between public health experts’ assessments, the University’s own ethics committee and the general student sentiment, the University has dropped the ball on any semblance of a “healthinformed” fall semester. This fumbling of critical decisionmaking and lack of transparency has had widespread impacts that affect the entire University and Ann Arbor communities. For undergraduates, the lack of transparent communication from the administration on decisionmaking, the absence of randomized testing and increased tuition make it incredibly hard to navigate the complexities of life as a college student, let alone during a pandemic. “The lack of details and transparency about the University’s reopening plans was very concerning,” Art & Design junior Maggie Wiebe said. “By the time it became apparent how ill-planned and dangerous the University’s reopening plan was, it was already too late for most people to change their plans for the fall.” For R.A.s, lack of sufficient personal protective equipment, no enforcement mechanisms for social distancing or mask-wearing and little transparent communication from the University make the risk of transmission and fear of transmission unnecessarily high. For graduate students, the lack of a universal right to work remotely, no representation in the decisionmaking process and an insufficient universal child care subsidy make their lives as instructors and students dangerous and incredibly hard to balance. For the wider Ann Arbor community, public schooling has been remote in lieu of the University’s decision to bring students back to
campus, and online schooling is more detrimental to K-12 education than to college. These mounting stakes and tensions made a strike effectively inevitable as negotiations and communications with the University were unproductive for both GEO and ResStaff. “We feel that a strike is necessary because the U-M admin has chosen to continue with their reckless and unsafe reopening plans without following the guidance of public health experts or their own ethics committee,” Dominique Bouavichith, a graduate student in Rackham Graduate School and member organizer of GEO, wrote in an email statement to The Daily. He continued, addressing the necessity of a strike itself, “GEO has tried to bargain toward our demands at the table, and the administration refused to budge in any substantive way…” This lack of action precipitated not only the GEO strike, but a strike of non-unionized R.A.s with similar sentiments. An R.A., who wishes to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from the University, expressed frustration and stated “The fact that (the administration) felt they needed to bring everyone back to campus to make money, when we don’t even have a firm enough pandemic plan so that students in quarantine are getting snacks, getting hot meals and consistently getting fresh soap is ridiculous.” The problems highlighted by this R.A., and the fact that they fear losing their housing for making these points publicly, are indicative of an administration that is blinded by corruption, stumbling into a dangerous “wealth-informed” fall semester. As corruption has plagued this particular administration, from repeated sexual assault and misconduct scandals to the mistreatment of the Dearborn and Flint campuses, a strike is the most — if not only — effective way to enact change. It leaps over the typical constraints that prevent action, having to operate on the University’s schedule and trying to separate activism and labor, and hits the University where it matters: the financials. Striking, or withholding labor, is technically an illegal action for public unions to take in the state of Michigan. University President Mark Schlissel and Provost Susan Collins have leaned on this law in their initial patronizing messages to the wider university community as a scare tactic to push undergraduates away from taking actions in solidarity with GEO. This messaging should be ignored, and we should question whether this law has any relevant purpose except to prevent substantive institutional change from occurring. I urge unions and non-unionized groups across campus to consider this perspective while examining the possibility of joining GEO and the R.A.s, who will continue to organize despite the official strike ending.
When the strike was ongoing, whether groups were moving forward as a union to strike alongside GEO or seeking actions to support their efforts, solidarity is important for the success of these collective demands. “It’s crucial to be supporting labor and workers … solidarity in organizing is how we will win,” University alum Hoai An Pham said. She continued, “The history of organizing and relationships that have been built up and cultivated until this point have undoubtedly made this strike stronger … one example of this could be from construction workers who are now striking because GEO workers joined construction worker picket lines years ago, or all of the undergrads who saw organizing done in years past and are joining the picket lines now because of that.” Solidarity among community allies is a must to support this necessary strike. Admittedly, many are just beginning to understand the importance of strikes and hold some confusion about what has been occurring on campus. “Two big misconceptions … people think they can’t support or participate if they aren’t members of the union and that the workers are being selfish in shutting down the school. Both are false,” Vidhya Aravind, University alum and former solidarity and political action chair of GEO, stated. She continued, “Everyone is welcome on the line but there are a ton of virtual ways to show up too. The more disrupted campus life is, the more pressure UMich will face to rectify things … Remember, the people that care for us deserve comfortable work environments, and fair compensation and benefits. If they don’t have those things and the University refuses to give those things (as they are now), then they feel forced to strike.” GEO went on strike for anti-racist, abolitionist and community health demands, and continue to organize; R.A.s are still fighting for safe treatment, transparency from the administration and proper treatment of quarantined students; community members stand in solidarity with their work. Now, it is important to consider what comes next. While these efforts that are working toward community safety certainly have continued momentum, a general strike should have guaranteed that intersectional demands were met. Transportation, MDining and University faculty shouldn’t have to go on strike to be able to receive better hazard pay. Undergraduates shouldn’t have to walk out of classes that professors don’t cancel in solidarity. Ann Arbor families shouldn’t have to virtually or physically join the picket line to protect their community health, which is directly related to an outbreak at the University. But the swifter the collective action, the more effective it will be. Support organizers and strikers now. Solidarity forever.
CHRISTINA KIM | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT CKIMC@UMICH.EDU
Andrew Gerace can be reached at agerace@umich.edu.
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Policing is a public health issue
f you’ve been on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. this past week, you’ve likely heard chants of “Solidarity Forever,” impassioned speeches about quarantine conditions and a noticeable lack of construction noise. If you haven’t figured it out by now, the Graduate Employees’ Organization, non-unionized resident advisers and a host of MDining staff have been striking to protest the University’s inexcusable mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. GEO has additionally emphasized the deconstruction of the University’s relationship with and reliance on the Ann Arbor Police Department and armed campus police. Simply put, these strikes on campus are necessary for the collective health and safety of the University and Ann Arbor as a broader community. On Wednesday, Sept. 16, GEO ended the strike after accepting an offer from the University. However, the broader problems of community health and systemic injustices still stand and ought to be analyzed after the historic strike came to an end. The Graduate Employees’ Organization strike has highlighted two issues confronting institutions of higher education: the pandemic response and policing. Many see these two issues as being disconnected, believing that one is a public health issue while the other is not. However, policing is an important public health issue that should be considered as part of a “public health-informed” semester that reflects a commitment to addressing structural racism. The field of public health is primarily concerned with preventing death and illness. Police can cause both direct and indirect physical and mental harm. Between 2012 and 2018, 6,295 men were killed by police, and from 2001 to 2014, boys and men aged 15-34 were treated in hospital emergency departments for injuries caused by police violence at a similar rate to that of pedestrians injured by motor vehicles. Black women are disproportionately represented among women who are killed by the police, and women of color are more likely to experience sexual violence at the hands of police. Many other groups — like LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, homeless people, those with low-socioeconomic status or mental health disorders — also experience heightened risk of police violence. Policing also negatively impacts mental health. Even police encounters that are not physically violent, including being stopped on the street or verbally harassed by police, have substantial and disproportionate public health impacts. Such encounters are linked to heightened depressive symptoms and higher rates of trauma, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Negative encounters with
law enforcement are also linked to heightened mistrust and avoidance of health care institutions, which is particularly concerning amid a pandemic. Racial bias in surveillance, arrests and sentencing contribute to a disproportionate risk of incarceration and associated adverse mental and physical health impacts. Decisions made by postsecondary institutions regarding campus policing and relationships with local police departments are critical for the health and well-being of students, faculty and staff, as well as the surrounding communities. There are opportunities for colleges and universities, including our own, to divest from harmful policing practices and instead take a public health-oriented approach, addressing policies and practices which disproportionately impact marginalized groups. The current conversation on the University of Michigan campus offers opportunities to critically examine responses by the University to the COVID-19 pandemic using a public health lens that encompasses consideration of policing practices. For example, the Michigan Ambassadors program — a student-led initiative that partners with campus police — involves surveillance and reporting of “nonemergency compliance issues” related to COVID-19 (e.g. failure to wear a mask, large social gatherings). Unfortunately, given wellestablished patterns of racial bias in policing and reporting on campus, such programs place students of color at a disproportionate risk. Alternate strategies to slow disease transmission through a focus on structural and community change, rather than surveilling individual behaviors, should be considered. In 2018, the 25,000 member American Public Health Association formally recognized policing practices as a public health issue with disproportionate adverse impacts on racialized communities. APHA’s evidence-based policy statement, states, “Physical and psychological violence that is structurally mediated by the system of law enforcement results in deaths, injuries, trauma and stress that disproportionately affect marginalized populations.” Other major health organizations — like the American Medical Association — have issued similar declarations. Recognizing the essential role of community safety in supporting public health, the APHA policy statement advocates for community safety through investing in the social determinants of health (e.g., housing, education, jobs); decriminalizing poverty, mental illness and substance use; and implementing communitybased alternatives to addressing harms and preventing trauma (e.g. transformative justice, restorative justice). The point is that ensuring
safety does not require funding armed police but rather investing in programs that address root causes. Institutions of higher education can reduce the harmful effects of policing by critically examining existing contracts with local police departments, actively pursuing alternatives and modeling the type of transformative change that is required through the management and funding of their own campus safety programs. Resources currently invested in policing can be redirected to expanded mental health services, evidence-based sexual assault prevention, affordable housing, tuition, equal pay and other factors critical to supporting a diverse, equitable and just campus and community. Creating a campus environment that prioritizes these supports over armed police facilitates learning and allows all members — particularly those most negatively impacted by policing — to thrive. Many institutions of higher education have already begun to take these steps. Following a request by Jael Kerandi, student body president of the University of Minnesota, and the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel severed ties to the Minneapolis police force in May 2020. More than 85 graduate student unions, faculty unions, undergraduate groups and thousands of university-affiliated individuals have signed a crosscampus statement calling for their respective institutions to similarly cut ties with local police. Additionally, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University and Yale University have all recently questioned the role of campus police. Campus policing practices, including contracts and agreements with local police departments and federal agencies, have powerful implications for efforts to foster a diverse, equitable and inclusive campus that supports the physical and mental well-being of students, faculty and staff. A truly “public health-informed” plan for workplace safety on campus must recognize how policing impacts health and must work actively to improve upon the health of all members of the community. All authors are faculty members from different departments at the University of Michigan. Amy Schulz, Paul Fleming, William Lopez, Carissa Schmidt and Riana Elyse Anderson are all faculty from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health. Melissa Creary and Julia Wolfson are faculty from the Department of Health Management & Policy, School of Public Health. Additionally, Alexis J. Handal is a faculty member from the Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health. All can be reached collectively at Polpubhlth@umich.edu.
JORDAN HUNTER | COLUMN
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The problem that doesn’t exist
he month of May this year had been shaping up to be an excellent time for Doja Cat. The Los Angeles rapper and singer is an undeniable hitmaker, with her song “Mooo!” becoming a viral hit in 2018 and her song “Say So” reaching No. 1 on the Billboard charts on May 11. However, her success soon turned to controversy later that month when she was accused of hanging out in internet chat rooms with racist incels the same day her unreleased song “Dindu Nuffin,” a term which is disparaging to victims of police brutality, resurfaced from the depths of 2015. As #DojaCatIsOverParty began trending on Twitter, it was clear that the internet had made its decision: Doja Cat was canceled. Doja Cat, to some of her defenders and fans, was a victim of “cancel culture.” Defined by dictionary.com as the “popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies” when they’ve done something that the public finds “objectionable or offensive.” The goal of canceling someone is to punish them. Both former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have lambasted the idea, with the latter calling it “the definition of totalitarianism” in a speech at Mount Rushmore in early July. To many people in the public sphere, cancel culture seems to be, and often is, public enemy number one. It stops its targets from being able to grow from their mistakes and does nothing but show how intolerant and polarized we’ve all become.
Cancel culture isn’t without its supporters, though. Adherents to cancel culture see it as a way of teaching the person, brand or retailer being canceled, a lesson. They did something wrong, so to boycott their work can seem like an obvious solution to those who support the idea of cancel culture. According to American writer Camonghne Felix, cancel culture can serve as “a way for marginalized communities to publicly assert their value systems through pop culture.” In that way, cancel culture gives those typically silenced in mainstream conversations a voice. In their eyes, this works. However, I have to disagree: Cancel culture doesn’t work because it doesn’t exist. Can you name someone who has actually been canceled? R. Kelly? J.K. Rowling? PewDiePie? R. Kelly, currently facing, 18 federal counts of various sex crimes, enjoys morethanfivemillionSpotifymonthly listeners — albeit from a Chicago correctional facility. Additionally, J.K. Rowling, childhood icon-turnedTERF, still reaps the profit from her seven-book Harry Potter franchise and the accompanying movie series. PewDiePie, the gamer who had more than a few antisemitic moments, has more than 106 million subscribers on YouTube after signing a livestreaming deal with the media giant. The word “canceled” has always had a sense of permanence to me, and by that standard, none of these people were really canceled. Maybe “paused” could be a better word for it, but by all accounts, Kelly, Rowling and PewDiePie have all lived on and
continued to amass enormous wealth. Hardly anyone labeled as a victim of cancel culture ever really suffers longterm. Doja Cat’s canceling in May of 2020 wasn’t even her first time being canceled. It happened August of 2018 when Twitter users discovered her tweets containing homophobic slurs from 2015, and the subsequent apology still gets heralded as one of the most hilarious celebrity apologies ever. After that, Doja Cat was “canceled” for about a year, but once the “Hot Pink” rollout began, the rapper was back and even more successful than before. That still leaves me with the question: Has anyone ever been canceled? Despite what happened in May 2020, August 2018 and the rest of Doja Cat’s problematic history — including, but not limited to, appropriation of Hindu culture in her “So High” music video — the rapper is thriving, having just performed a medley of two of her biggest hits in this year’s MTV Video Music Awards show. Even the people we assume to be the most thoroughly canceled still retain strong followings outside of mainstream approval, however small and quiet their supporters might be. People like what they like, and some are able to separate the art from the artist. To them, it doesn’t matter what the artist has said because they can’t “make the music not bop,” as explained by YouTube vlogger As Told By Kenya.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com Jordan Hunter can be reached at jhunterr@umich.edu.
Opinion
9 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
JENNA SCHEEN | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT JSCHEEN@UMICH.EDU
SAM WOITESHEK | COLUMN
Improve your mindset to improve the mindset of others
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iserable. If I had to think of one adjective to describe the impacts of COVID-19, it would be miserable. With everything we as a nation have encountered these past six months — quarantine, a heightened intensity of the Black Lives Matter movement and a divisive presidential election — you would think we’ve reached our collective breaking point. Yet, for many of us, personal events have brought an additional source of despair in this already discouraging time. Recently, Fox Sports 1’s Skip Bayless criticized Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott for publicizing his emotions following his brother’s suicide in April. Prescott said that he “experienced emotions he’d never felt before” during the period of isolation, including “anxiety and depression.” Bayless responded by stating that he doesn’t “have sympathy” for Prescott’s depression as “the quarterback of America’s Team.” He emphasized that a quarterback shouldn’t show signs of “weakness” because it hinders his credibility as a leader. People eventually die, yes. It is the most inevitable outcome in life, right alongside taxes. However, suicide is perhaps the most unexpected cause. One person takes their life every 40 seconds, yet few people can pinpoint warning signs, making it an extremely traumatic event to process. Personally, I am shocked at the senselessness of Bayless’s judgement. Mental illness cannot be controlled with a switch; it doesn’t instantly shift from on to off. It’s uncontrollable — Prescott can’t choose whether or not he has it. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, there are roughly 16.1 million other Americans who
JESSIE MITCHELL | COLUMN
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suffer from depression as well. Additionally, individuals internalize grief differently. What if Prescott opening up in an interview facilitates his recovery? Maybe he’s finally reached the acceptance stage in his grieving process. Bayless, on the other hand, has yet to even learn the psychology behind it. Not to mention, Prescott speaking up about a “taboo” subject makes him a stronger leader. The action itself can inspire others to use their voices. I imagine Prescott’s teammates are ready to run through a wall for him and may confide in him before other players. When a support network is created through an emotional circumstance, especially at a poignant time, it creates unbreakable unity.
Even a small, concentrated effort can make a big difference. As much as some of us would like to categorize how we feel solely as “pandemic-related depression,” we cannot. These days, it is nearly impossible to separate the causes of our internal emotional status. Someone can simultaneously be anxious about contracting the virus and saddened by forced isolation from others. Worse yet, the two distinct emotions can be strikingly similar. Now, add the impact of a family member’s death. That burden bears exponentially more weight. In our society, there are too many individuals who fail to understand both the
seriousness of depression and lack the ability to sympathize with those affected by the illness. Bayless could have publicly apologized the next day on his show and emphasized that he made a grave error in judgement. But he didn’t. How apathetic can a person be before they realize the extent of their words? I believe we, as humans, are compassionate at our core. Even though we don’t always show it, we always contain the ability to help others. We want to counsel those who are grieving, by lessening their isolation and thus easing their pain. Why should we settle for anything less? In this current time especially, we have to be proactive in assisting those with mental illness. We cannot idly stand by, watching them become worse while knowing we can help. Instead, we must ask ourselves — and others — how we can facilitate aid. For those of us who are unsure of how to do so, we can start by educating ourselves. We don’t need to be heroes, but even a small, concentrated effort can make a big difference. When COVID-19 reaches its conclusion, I hope that people realize the power of altruism to produce good in this world. This selflessness can come in many forms, but it is required. The ability to sympathize with and comfort those in pain will be different for everyone. Regardless, providing emotional support is a task we are more than capable of accomplishing. If you or someone you know has a mental illness, is struggling emotionally, or has concerns about their mental health, there are ways to get help. Call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text “HELLO” to 741741. Sam Woiteshek can be reached at swoitesh@umich.edu.
Block the ‘M’ posts
hen I think of a social media influencer, I typically think of a young, white woman promoting skin care products and niche clothing brands to her 10,000 or more followers between posts about her glamorous life. I follow a couple of influencers, vaguely interested in the pseudo-fame that comes with having an Instagram platform and occasionally taking their book recommendations or recipe ideas. I associated these influencers almost exclusively with young people and direct-toconsumer brands until I stumbled upon an article about Brooklyn and Bailey. Brooklyn and Bailey are twins who attend Baylor University in Waco, Texas. They have almost six million followers on Instagram. Their feed is filled with wholesome pictures of themselves in lakes and parks with “highlights” about dating, hair and clothes. Other than their unusually large number of followers, they fit my preconceived notion of Instagram influencers. However, they do have one unusual paid partner — Baylor University — which has paid them for one to two promotional posts per semester since 2017. Neither Baylor nor the women have said how much they get paid for this partnership, but with millions of followers, Brooklyn and Bailey are considered “macro-influencers,” a status that allows them to garner up to $25,000 per post for product placements. It is likely that I never would have heard of them had they not recently contracted COVID-19. Brooklyn and Bailey want to make sure you know that Baylor has “taken every precaution” and that “it is NOT due to in person classes that this happened.” The post is not sponsored by Baylor, but the sisters seemed to have anticipated that people would have questions about where they contracted the virus, and that as paid emissaries, they would be best-off supporting Baylor’s policies. Schools want to sell an experience. That’s why they hire young, “cool” students to post on their personal Instagram or Youtube accounts. Because COVID-19 forced students to forgo most of the campus experience that they’ve been sold on, there
is conflict. Brooklyn and Bailey got caught in the middle, getting paid to make their school look fun and inviting while simultaneously contracting a disease that makes the fun and inviting campus experience impossible. While Baylor may not be explicitly paying Brooklyn and Bailey to promote its COVID19 safety plan, the University of Missouri is doing just that. The Missouri school contracted with an outside firm to hire up to six campus social media influencers to spread information about campus COVID-19 guidelines. The amount paid to each ambassador has not been made public, but Missouri paid the outside firm, Glacier, $10,300 for the project. The student ambassadors’ captions read like they were posted by the University of Missouri itself. “I’ve partnered with the University of Missouri to encourage the safety measures outlined in their Renewal Plan (available through the link in my bio!),” one post reads, later promoting the campus symptom checker app. Other student posts are slightly more colloquial, telling students “we gotta be safe” or including emojis. Most of the Missouri students have between 1,000 and 2,000 followers, which is nothing compared to the reach of Brooklyn and Bailey, but still a sizable number of followers for what is an inherently local campaign. I can’t quite figure out how I feel about the practice of paying students for social media promotional material. On the one hand, at least before COVID-19, social media promotional posts were almost certainly more effective than the thousands of emails and brochures that college send to students during their junior and senior years of high school. Peer to peer marketing, especially for my generation, is an increasingly successful and common marketing tactic. As students who are usually only a few years removed from high school, undergraduates are likely to have high schoolers, who are prospective undergraduate students, following their accounts. On the other hand, as blogger Anne Helen Petersen points out, it is ridiculous that influencers get paid for promoting their school, but college athletes, who often promote
their schools on national television, do not. NCAA regulations expressly prohibit schools from paying students for name, image and likeness activities, which includes social media. Additionally, students of color are regularly used in school promotional materials without compensation. To schools, these students prove that their campuses are diverse, welcoming places in much the same way that paid influencers do, just without payment. Paying students to be COVID-19 safety influencers seems different in that their target audience is primarily people who already pay tuition. It’s about behavior, not directly about generating future tuition revenue. But as cases spike in Boone County, where the University of Missouri is located, it’s hard not to feel like a couple of social media posts calling on students to wear masks and use the symptom tracker serves only to gloss over the severity of a pandemic potentially spreading across the campus and university community. The University of Michigan doesn’t pay social media influencers for promoting COVID19 safety measures or otherwise, at least publicly. And why should they? During a normal September, Instagram would be flooded with thousands of unpaid students posting pictures of themselves smiling and dressed in head-totoe U-M gear. This September, I’ve reflected on whether or not I want my personal social media feed to be an inadvertent advertisement for the University. In wake of the University’s botched responses to sexual violence in our community, disregard for the safety of faculty and staff and seeking an injuction against its own Graduate Employees’ Organization, I can not bring myself to post with pride about the Block ‘M’ anytime soon. Number of followers aside, personal posts about U-M are advertisements for a university I cannot in good conscience advertise right now. To my fellow students who may be tempted to post a cute picture of themselves in Maize and Blue: I get it. But free advertising for the University of Michigan? I don’t think so. Jessie Mitchell can be reached at jessiemi@umich.edu.
KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMN
As a Black man, I am ashamed of John James
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omething seemed off. On an unseasonably cold Thursday evening in Freeland, Mich., the “American Carnage” president stood sideby-side with the so-called “American Dream” Senate hopeful. The crowd broke out into a chant, yelling “we love you,” at the bi-racial duo. President Donald Trump ceded the f loor as, miles from a Black Lives Matter protest, a former victim of police violence praised law enforcement. In the automotive capital of the world, the businessman lauded the president’s trade war that hurt the manufacturing sector. In a former hub of the underground railroad, the great-grandson of a slave celebrated the president who called his ancestral homeland a shithole. John James stands with Trump 2,000%. On the campaign trail, John James, a Republican candidate for Senate, likes to tell the story of his family going in four generations from slave to sharecropper to truck driver to potential senator. However, James’s retelling of this story omits some key details: While his father did work as a truck driver, he also founded a multibillion-dollar company. While James likes to claim he hit a triple, the reality is that he was born on third base. James was raised in the upscale Detroit community of Palmer Woods. He attended an overwhelmingly white Catholic high school, Brother Rice, in the posh northern suburb of Birmingham. At Brother Rice, James learned the values of a warrior — their official mascot — despite the school’s logo resembling a rejected first draft of Chief Wahoo. Naturally, these values led James to become an actual warrior, graduating from the military academy at West Point in 2004 and serving as a combat pilot for eight years, including multiple tours in Iraq. After obtaining his MBA from University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, he was hired at his father’s company, the James Group International, and became the director of operations. JGI has a complicated business model which cannot be easily summarized in a sentence or two, but crucially, they rely heavily on the automotive industry. In 2012 — with the industry revitalized by the Obama administration’s bailout — business was booming. James leveraged the company’s success to obtain media plaudits, earning a place on Detroit Business Journal’s 30 in their 30s — producing an incredible picture — and The
Michigan Chronicle’s 40 under 40, but he was not content to rest on his laurels. Instead, once he was promoted to the unclear position of “president” while his brother, Lorron, leapfrogged him to become CEO, James waded into the political arena, challenging popular incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., in 2018. If John James wasn’t qualified to lead his family company, he isn’t qualified to lead Michigan.
I cannot justify voting for James, especially when the man’s hypocrisy is so blatant. During the campaign, James became a darling of the right wing, dubbed by party leaders as a rising star due to his unicorn status as a Black Republican. In the primary, a perfectly timed Trump endorsement carried him over the line, beating Sandy Pensler by 9.4%. However, in the November general election, Michigan voters brought the rising star down to earth, delivering James a swift kick in the rear and reelecting Stabenow by a 6.5% margin. For most politicians, this would be the end of the story, but John James’ ingratiation with the president boosted him to the top of the list of candidates to run against Michigan’s other Democratic senator, Gary Peters, D-Mich., in 2020. James announced his second bid for public office on Fox and Friends on June 6, 2019 — the anniversary of D-Day — by highlighting his military service and railing against “career politicians.” In the early days, the campaign looked the same as before — with many appearances on Fox News and other conservative outlets in a craven attempt to raise money. However, about a year later, when George Floyd was tragically murdered in Minneapolis, Minn., James saw blood in the water. As a Black man, James was uniquely positioned to talk to several audiences, and he threaded the needle like a true politician, releasing a Twitter video days after the incident where he said, in part: “Ending injustice in this country is not a political talking point, it’s a matter of survival for me and my boys …
That said … normal officers are heroes. They put their lives on the line every single day for us, even when provoked by rioters like last night.” While this statement sounds nice, in the last part of the quote, he refers to the peaceful protests in Detroit on May 31 as “riots,” which is simply an egregious mischaracterization of the facts. It’s waffling, double-talking, misleading statements like this that have earned James praise from the media on both sides of the aisle, and that is fundamentally wrong. The man talks out of both sides of his mouth on race, knowing that he can manipulate mass media into giving him positive coverage. Meanwhile, his paid advertisements in the Metro Detroit area include almost no mention of his conservative policies, while many of his ads in Upper and Western Michigan feature almost no mention of his race. However, since we are at a time when white journalists aren’t in the position to oppose a Black man on race — especially now — James’s strategy has been largely successful, peeling off some Black support from Peters while bolstering his support among rural whites. Many journalists may be scared to call out James’s lifetime of privilege, his lack of clear policy goals and his disturbing record on race, but I am not. John James is a fraud. Growing up, as a Black man from the northern suburbs, I would scoff at the idea that someone like me could ever have success on a national stage. When I first saw James, I smiled for a second, proud to see someone who looked like me with a background like mine attaining a momentous achievement as the first Black major-party nominee for Michigan Senate in my lifetime. However, once I did more research on the man, the grand illusion of the 36-year-old combat veteran was shattered along with my hopes that he was above the party line. Sadly, James succumbed to the bright lights of Fox News, revealing himself to be an inauthentic politician whose praise of the racist, sexist, transphobic orangutan with a bad dye job in the White House offends my sensibilities as a human being, an American citizen and a Black man. I cannot justify voting for James, especially when the man’s hypocrisy is so blatant. That is something that everyone, Republican, Democratic and Independent can understand. Keith Johnstone can be reached at keithja@umich.edu.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MADELYN VERVAECKE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 10
MAX STEINBAUM | COLUMN
I
Jackasses in a hailstorm
t’s hard to say how many undecided voters there still are, but to a good deal of them — perhaps, even, to a good deal of those who have already made up their minds — the idea of voting for presidential nominee Joe Biden or for President Donald Trump in November presents something of a Sophie’s choice. Trump has joked on Twitter that “Sleepy Joe” doesn’t know “what office he’s running for,” and that the former vice president “doesn’t know he’s alive.” Jackassery aside, the president has a point — Biden isn’t as sharp as he used to be. On the other hand, we have Trump — a narcissistic, woefully incompetent, grade-A lunatic. Hunter S. Thompson’s description of Richard Nixon as “... a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena ...” is an apt branding of our current president, except the average hyena is probably more trustworthy and has a better command of international politics and morality. With less than two months to go, many Americans must be scratching their heads: Really? These two are the best we got? As The New York Times’s Giovanni Russonello reported in June, the 2020 election “could become only the second presidential contest in the history of modern polling in which both candidates are seen negatively by most voters.” The first was in 2016. It wasn’t always this bad. With the exception of the 2016 election, each of the five presidential contests in my lifetime featured candidates who were reasonably likable. Since 2000, the Democrats have nominated Gore, Kerry and Obama; the GOP has tapped Bush, McCain and Romney — all fairly likable and sane guys. So, what gives? Are the 2016 and 2020 matchups just aberrations? Or is this what presidential politics will look like from now?
It is tempting to point to the benefits of a parliamentary system here. Under that framework, a party, rather than a specific candidate, gains the most seats in a national election and that party’s leader becomes the prime minister. In this alternate universe, a parliamentary system would likely deliver us “Prime Minister” Nancy Pelosi in the event of a Democratic win, or “Prime Minister” Kevin McCarthy should the Republican Party take back the House. Excluding those on the left who are unwilling to recognize the degree of Biden’s decline, and those on the right who are members of the Trump cult, these two are probably more palatable options than the ones we will have in November. The impossibility of the U.S. adopting the Westminster model aside, it is important to point out — if our metric is providing Americans with two fairly solid alternatives — that our electoral system has worked pretty well in the 232 years of its existence. Does it have other problems? Absolutely. What’s unique about our country’s political landscape today is the extent of our polarization. Intense political divides are of course nothing new, but looking at the past 50 years for context, it appears there hasn’t been as much philosophical real estate between the left and the right as there is today. Republicans ultimately respected people like Al Gore, and Democrats didn’t broadly question John McCain’s character. By 2016, something changed. To the left, Trump was a neo-fascist, race-baiting Putin wannabe and his base was too thick-skulled to realize how much damage he would do. To the right, Clinton was a calculating, condescending, sanctimonious tick, with an untrustworthy base that would lick the floor to put her in the
Oval Office. The rhetoric, on both sides, became unhinged; it was, and is even more so today, vicious and visceral in the absolute. Couple this intense polarization with incessant media coverage every time Trump fires off a tweet or Biden jumbles his words, and it’s no wonder why we all become further entrenched in our predispositions against the other guy. For better or worse — and it’s probably for worse — we have entered a Brave New Age of information inundation. That’s not going away in November, even if Trump does; that’s the world we live in. Democrats believe that a Biden presidency will bless our country with a return to normalcy, which the Divine Providence knows we need. If we’ve paid any attention the past four years, however, it’s easy to see that these hopes are misguided. If Biden is sworn in as the 46th president on Jan. 20, 2021, Fox News will do what Fox News does best: lament the senility of the man in the Oval Office, predict the chaos and anarchy — perhaps even death of the republic — that a Biden presidency will allow and generally stir a conservative firestorm. The liberal media outlets will defend him tooth-and-nail against these attacks. In short, the roles will reverse, and the coverage will be more or less the same. Lyndon Johnson said that being president “is like being a jackass in a hailstorm … There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.” Nearly 55 years later, that’s what it feels like to be an American citizen. A change in president will not bring a change in the weather. The hailstorm will still rage, and we, the jackasses, will have to stand there and take it.
Max Steinbaum can be reached at maxst@umich.edu.
ALEXANDER NOBEL | COLUMN
T
Water is life, so don’t mess with it
hree minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water and three weeks without food. These are the rules of survival in the wilderness. The rule of three makes President Donald Trump’s most recent attack even more sinister, as he continues to spend his time in office trying to undo Former President Barack Obama’s legacy. Hidden by distractions of a global pandemic, nationwide protests and an economic decline, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency removed coal plant regulation that revised the Clean Water Act passed in 1972 and will have catastrophic results on public health. This move was completed with the purpose of maximizing profits without any regard for the environment and the detrimental effects on health that will follow. Proving once again that his “drain the swamp” campaign slogan was a complete and utter lie, Trump nominated ex-coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run the EPA. Throughout both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Trump has put an emphasis on saving the dying coal industry. In Trump’s most recent attempt to revive coal, Wheeler revisited the adjustments made
JACK ROSHCO | COLUMN
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his week, President Donald Trump came to Michigan to ask for our votes in an election that’s now less than 50 days away. But Trump didn’t come to Michigan to campaign to undecided voters. At no point did he make any discernible attempt to have an honest conversation with Michigan voters about issues and policies that affect their lives. Instead, Trump’s superspreader grievance tour touched down in Saginaw on Thursday night. The president urged his supporters to show up at polling places to confirm their absentee ballots had been counted, a move intended to both call the results of the election into question and to encourage his supporters to intimidate other voters at the polls. This wasn’t the first time he made such a ridiculous request — he’s been repeating it since his rally in North Carolina earlier this month where he told attendees to “vote twice in the November election.” But as the president continues to push people to trust only an election result in his favor, it is worth looking into why
by the Obama administration in 2015 requiring coal-fired plants to invest in treatment technology that keeps toxic wastewater out of the waterways, therefore protecting drinking water. The new revision cut out the requirement for state-ofthe-art water treatment technology. This move would save the plants money in the short term but would no longer require them to protect their neighboring waterways, likely causing more costly health problems and expenses down the road. Over two and a half million people have died from unclean water and the corresponding diseases that result from it. Depending on the type of chemical pollution, polluted water can cause liver damage, skin cancer, Dysentery and Malaria. Possibly the most disturbing and horrifying aspect of the new rule is that it will not require coal plants closing by 2028 to follow any of the wastewater regulations, setting up potentially disastrous health and ecological effects on the surrounding community. Coal-powered plants leave behind wastewater filled with arsenic, lead and selenium which, if leaked into drinking water, can lead to cancer, reproductive problems and even neurological problems.
Unfortunately, the residents of Flint, Michigan know just how devastating tainted water can be when water protection isn’t taken seriously. Insufficient water treatment and testing, paired with a slow, sometimes nonexistent, government response left Flint residents with health issues that could plague them the rest of their lives. In an attempt to close a $25 million budget, former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager in 2011 to help balance the budget. Two years later, that manager decided to temporarily pump water from the Flint River, where the water was highly contaminated, through aging water pipes where lead found its way into the drinking, bathing and cooking water. This led to developmental and growth damage, skin rashes and an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, a rare form of pneumonia that took the lives of 12 people. At the same time, Nestlé was paying $200 a year to pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, just two hours away from where Flint residents were struggling to find clean water to drink and cook with. Trump’s EPA has continued with the principles we saw showcased in Flint by putting profits over the health
Design courtesy of Madison Grosvenor
and safety of communities. Following in the spirit of Ayn Rand, Trump has continued to roll back corporate and industry regulations, including nearly 100 regarding the environment. So far, four water protection orders have been overturned with seven more in the process of being erased. In an attempt to save the coal industry money, Trump has cut through the bureaucratic red tape that requires the plants to look out for the environment they currently occupy. On paper, the recent EPA deregulation would save
the coal industry $140 million every year but not without putting the health of over 1 million Americans who live within three miles of a coal plant at risk. Environmental deregulation puts millions of lives at risk in exchange for short-term economic gains. This forces us to talk about how we value human and ecological life. Is a shortterm bump in stock dividends worth adversely hurting so many people? The answer to this question should be extremely clear. Human life is
priceless and should be treated as such. Every single person needs clean water to survive, so it must be seen as what it is: a necessity. We need to reevaluate our relationship with the environment and how we interact with it. As a country and global community, we must stop putting the profits of the few before the health and safety of many. Most importantly, we must remember that water is life. Alexander Nobel can be reached at anobel@umich.edu.
Trump using Kanye as an electoral pawn Trump is so sure he’ll lose an election fair and square, and why Michigan could hold the key to ridding our democracy of its greatest threat since the Civil War. Michigan played an integral role in handing Trump the keys to the White House in 2016. Whether or not the swing state was legitimately up for grabs isn’t the question – of course it was. While most polls consistently showed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with an edge in the state, it was close to the margin of error as the election drew close. How Trump managed to come out of that night with Michigan’s sixteen electoral votes should serve as a cautionary tale in 2020. His margin of victory was less than the number of votes received by minor candidates. Former President George W. Bush proved in 2000 that all you need to win a close election is a spoiler. While the president of the United States is a world-renowned idiot, he has some politically-savvy minds working to muddy the electoral waters in his favor. “I like Kanye very much,” may seem like a
strange thing for Donald Trump, a candidate for the presidency, to say about Kanye West, a “candidate” for the presidency. Why would a candidate like Trump, a man whose reputation is literally built on the back of treating his opponents like human garbage, offer such kind words about an opponent with the name-recognition and unorthodox appeal that West has? It probably isn’t a blistering shock to discover that while the GOP knows West has no chance to win the election, it also knows his campaign can serve a purpose for Trump. If, by colluding with West, Trump can trick enough people into voting for the rapper, he has a fighting shot in multiple swing states where he’s currently running well behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden. A 537-vote difference in Florida brought on by liberal activist Ralph Nader’s third-party candidacy ensured Bush’s victory in that election. In 2016, thencandidate Trump again showed the value of a third party candidacy in a polarizing campaign, capitalizing on third party spoilers to win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in
2016. In 2020, he has weaponized the spoiler candidacy, no longer just incidentally benefitting from it, but actively exploiting it for his own gain. While Biden’s polling edge is bigger than Hillary Clinton’s at this point in the race four years ago, so is the spectre of third party candidacy in 2020. Gary Johnson was a perfectly nice guy and Jill Stein was a perfectly (probably) unwitting Russian asset, but neither candidate’s campaign was as titillating as West’s, and neither had such a strong opportunity to make genuine mainstream inroads. Of course, though, neither was actively accepting assistance from allies to the sitting president of the United States. West’s name recognition, especially among young voters, makes him a uniquely haunting prospect for our democracy. All West has to do is pull enough uninformed voters underneath his umbrella to earn a truly catastrophic place in American history, and people our age have the best opportunity to stop it. West has a unique resource for a candidate: a personal image cultivated outside the scrutiny of Washington, D.C., and the political
press. Because that same press treats his candidacy as illegitimate, it has become derelict in its scrutiny. In 2016, that political mythologizing of Trump — “He’s a successful businessman,” “He tells it like it is,” “He’ll run the country like a business,” actually came true, but only if you had rampant nepotism and corruption in mind — was one of his strongest appeals on his way to winning the election. If it resonated on such a large scale four years ago, who’s to say West, with Republicans at his side, can’t exploit that phenomenon on a much smaller scale? That’s all he has to do. Through that lens, his candidacy is not funny; it is not a joke and it is certainly not to be taken lightly. Anybody who has ever set foot on a college campus knows how hard it is to get young adults to take anything seriously. That’s a challenge that gets amplified exponentially when you throw names like “Trump” and “Kanye” into the mix. It’s important that these problems are contextualized for the young voters who are most likely to make these mistakes. A vote for
Kanye West is a vote for the payroll tax cuts Trump used to dupe people into not realizing that he’s driving Social Security to insolvency. Student debt totals over $1 trillion in the U.S., but a vote for Kanye West ensures that your debt stays on the books, while corporations and the top 1% of wage-earners continue to reap the benefits of the excess income Trump’s 2017 tax cuts handed them. A vote for West is a vote for the $141 million in taxpayer funds used since 2017 to finance the logistics of Trump’s 277 golf outings as the “leader” of the free world. Kanye West has created art that resonates with and uplifts millions of millennials and Gen Z’ers. His music has inspired countless young people around the world. He’s one of the most enigmatic, prolific and influential artists of our lifetimes. Don’t remember him for that. Remember him for trying to screw over your country for a generation. For our generation. Never forget it. Jack Roshco can be reached at jroshco@umich.edu.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 11
‘DROWNING IN THE MAINSTREAM’ COLUMN
FILM REVIEW
‘The Babysitter’ is gory, mindless fun Mainstream: Don’t be so tough on TV ROSS LONDON Daily Arts Writer
In need of a laugh and looking for a Tarantino knockoff with a B-list cast? Look no further than “The Babysitter: Killer Queen,” released last Thursday on Netf lix. This film is a sequel to Netf lix’s 2017 film “The Babysitter.” At the time of writing this, “Killer Queen” is #3 in the US on Netf lix, but it peaked at #1. I pressed play with no intention of liking this movie. In fact, I was fairly certain that I’d have nothing but criticism for a cheesy, gory horror-comedy. And oh, is it cheesy. But I find myself eager to overlook the film’s many faults, and to appreciate the puerile one-liners for what they
If only because it doesn’t take itself seriously, it’s best if the viewer doesn’t take this film seriously either
are: simple entertainment. In 2017’s “The Babysitter,” Cole’s (Judah Lewis, “Demolition”) parents go out for the night, leaving him with Bee (Samara Weaving, “Guns Akimbo”), his babysitter and the apple of his eye. After Bee thinks Cole has gone to sleep, she invites some friends over for good oldfashioned fun. One thing leads to another and (spoiler) Bee’s friends turn out to be members of a cult, having all made various
SAMANTHA DELLA FERA Daily Arts Columnist
deals with the devil. There is a ritual to be performed, and the young satanists need Cole’s blood! But Cole doesn’t plan to go down without a fight. With the help of his best friend and love interest Melanie (Emily Alyn Lind, “Doctor Sleep”), Cole emerges victorious and has his first kiss (thanks, Melanie!). The unfortunate part? Satan’s intercession involves an obstruction of justice and the destruction of evidence. In short, Cole’s parents don’t buy the “Satanic cult” story, and instead think their kid is delusional. This brings us to 2020’s “Killer Queen.” Two years later, Cole is aff licted by f lashbacks and an overactive imagination. There’s a new girl at school, enigmatic Phoebe (Jenna Ortenga, “Saving Flora”), destined to wind up involved in Cole’s predicament. Cole’s parents make him take pills, which don’t seem to help, and have resolved to send him off to a psychiatric high school. But once again, Cole lives by his own rules. Ditching school to party at “the Lake” with Melanie and her crew is certainly out of character for the shy and sharply dressed Cole, but his feelings for Melanie have him convinced that what he needs is to let loose. Needless to say, the party boat quickly becomes a crime scene,
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and Cole must fight his demons once again, now with Phoebe’s help. This movie is fun. Yes, the characters are awfully shallow, and bodily f luids are
And oh, is it cheesy. But I find myself eager to overlook the film’s many faults, and to appreciate the puerile one-
sprayed with excessive force and frequency. And yet, I found myself engrossed. The incorporation of text, f lashbacks and martial-arts battle between the two leading women all have
a distinctly Tarantino f lair. That is, if Tarantino was a 14-year-old boy. Astonishingly, the film is not without social critique, either; it seems these hellions are all seeking internet fame (which is ironic, given Alexander Bachelor, aka King Bach’s, leading role and Amanda Cerny’s cameo). The viewer is left with several clichéd aphorisms, the most relevant of which being “shortcuts don’t pay off.” In other words, earn your fame, don’t buy it from Satan. Perhaps the most offputting and unnecessary element of this film is the euphemistic montage, meant to represent Cole and Phoebe’s tryst, set to The Sugarhill Gang’s “Apache.” Between pithy criticisms of inf luencer culture and seismic spurts of blood, this f lick is funny. Bad acting and moderate ableism aside, director McG gets a lot right. If only because it does not take itself seriously, it’s best if the viewer doesn’t take this film seriously either. Perfectly mindless, funny enough and engaging — “The Babysitter: Killer Queen” entertains. When you next find yourself with a free evening, turn your brain off for a while and watch “Killer Queen.” I can’t say you won’t be disappointed, but I’m pretty sure it’ll make you grin.
TV REVIEW
‘Ratched’ dismisses its iconic origin ANYA SOLLER Daily Arts Writer
On a list of iconic movie villains, Nurse Ratched from the 1975 Academy Award-winning “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” usually ranks near the top. Based on the 1962 novel by the same name, the film quickly became a beloved part of American pop culture, mostly because of Jack Nicholson’s charismatic portrayal of Randle McMurphy as he struggles against Nurse Ratched’s oppressive practices on her psychiatric ward.
Perhaps the most infuriating thing about this new series, however, is that it doesn’t feel remotely
“Ratched” is uninterested in acknowledging that legacy. Instead, it opts to be indistinguishable from any season of “American Horror Story” or otherwise generic Ryan Murphy production. Focusing on the titular nurse, this new Netf lix series explores the origins of a Mildred Ratched (Sarah Paulson, “Mrs. America”) as she transitions from caring, compassionate caregiver to cold-
In 2013, Tina Fey opened her Golden Globes monologue with the line, “Tonight we honor the television shows that have entertained us all year, as well as the films that have only been in theaters for two days.” It was a sly quip at awards season releases, how the December month becomes saturated with the next best film. But as a matriarch of television, Fey was also poking fun at a phenomenon she probably knows all too well: People don’t view television as “art.” Think about it — when you picture that bleach-haired boy in your film class playing devil’s advocate, what media does he project onto? He unplugs his Sufjan Stevens and tucks the Ayn Rand book into his backpack to begin an unprompted and unwanted discussion about the latest Tarantino movie (it’s not that HE doesn’t respect women, it’s that his CHARACTERS don’t). He’s not sweeping aside self-cut bangs to watch you as you talk about “Atlanta” or making side comments to his friend about how no one truly understands “Stranger Things,” because to the high society artist, television is not worth a critical eye. Whenever I coyly throw a television reference into conversation or get giddy over my favorite show restarting, too often the response I get is “Oh, I don’t watch TV.” Rarely do people say “I don’t really care for books,” or “I don’t listen to music much,” and when I mention that I am not really a movie person, every head turns with shock. But for some reason, television is a medium that is acceptable to ignore. In a lot of ways, I get it. Television — with its excessive advertisements and time-sucking nature — can be the medium most associated with indulgent consumerism. “The Irishman” didn’t have three separate Poptart commercials peppered throughout and no one is binging “The Lord of the Rings” franchise in a two-day bender. There are drawbacks when it comes to watching television, but that’s true with every art form. Not every movie you paid to see is going to be worth it, and not every album you anticipated is going to be great. But nobody stops watching movies or listening to music because of these realities, so why be so tough on TV? One of the things that draws people to art so much is the opportunity to live through stories they themselves are not a part of and be moved to feel a range of emotions from something they could not create. I would argue that television is the medium that excels in this the most. There are very few movies in which the viewer can grow with characters over years, sometimes decades, and those that do feature such a thing get critical acclaim. Television exists beyond the constraints of 90 minutes, having multiple episodes and seasons to add depth to characters and create multiple story arcs. Those that abuse this opportunity to change and shift their shows fail loudly and miserably — “Community” refers to its own Season 4 as “the gas leak year” and many “Arrested Development” fans choose to ignore the existence of the last two seasons. But so many television shows run their course gracefully, ending in ways that are both artfully sound and fan-friendly. Two recent hit shows — “The Good Place” and “Schitt’s Creek” — both ended their run on the writer’s own terms, recognizing that the shows had run their course and therefore giving themselves the time and opportunity to flesh out proper endings. The results from both were particularly
Watching television has been painted as the lazy man’s vice, the activity we partake in when there’s just nothing else to do. Yet I say to watch television is to observe art. hearted sadist. Like most Ryan Murphy shows, “Ratched” opens on a brutal and bloody massacre. This massacre is of an entire Catholic clerg y house of priests in 1947. A few months later, the killer, Edmond Tolleson (Finn Wittrock, “American Horror Story”), is headed to a psychiatric facility in scenic Lucia, California so that doctors can determine if he’s clinically insane or if he’s fit to stand trial and possibly recieve the death penalty. Like Tolleson, Nurse Ratched is also headed to secure a job at the Lucia hospital. When the head of the facility, Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones, “American Crime Story”), is hesitant to hire her, Mildred begins manipulating the staff, patients and even the governor of California in order to rise through the ranks and get close to the mysterious new admission, Tolleson. Before long, she’s befriended the governor’s wife Gwendolyn (Cynthia Nixon, “Sex and the City”) and secured
NETFLIX
her place as a the woman behind the curtain. “Ratched” fails to stand out from the crowd of other Ryan Murphy shows on TV right now. Nearly every scene feels cut and pasted from “American Horror Story: Asylum” or the fellow Netf lix series “Hollywood.” While the monochromatic color palette, sharp-tongued dialogue and graphic moments of sex and violence may have been groundbreaking a few years ago, this formula does “Ratched” little favors. This campy, slasher TV genre of the 2010s desensitized audiences long ago — there is nothing truly shocking left. Perhaps the most infuriating thing about this new series, however, is that it doesn’t feel remotely adjacent to its source material. The only thing connecting the titular character of “Ratched” to the villain of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a name. What makes Nurse Ratched such an iconic
character is the savagery of her mundanity, the weaponization of bureaucracy to suppress the vulnerable. With a show as in-your-face and over the top as “Ratched,” there’s no room for subtlety, reality or even just compelling commentary. “Ratched” may find inspiration in its title, but the similarities end there. If viewers watch this series expecting something that honors the 1975 film, they’ll be disappointed. If viewers watch this series without knowing who Nurse Ratched is, they might enjoy the frivolity of the excessive gore and the 1940’s glamour. Without properly grounding itself, this Netf lix series will waste its potential to revisit a classic character and remain indistinguishable from every other unnecessarily gritty franchise reboot on television. Daily Arts Writer Anya Soller can be reached at anyasol@umich. edu.
poignant for two network comedies, touching on topics ranging from a family’s love to the legacies we leave after we die. Denying yourself television is denying yourself the chance to truly fall in love with stories and characters, and to follow them beyond the confines of a two hour film. How can you worship “The Godfather” but never bother to watch “The Sopranos”? How can you watch every war movie ever released without recognizing the impact of “M*A*S*H”? How can you throw “Star Wars” posters up on your bedroom walls without even trying out “Battlestar Galactica?” Television comes in every genre we know and love, elongating the stories and offering us new characters that don’t disappear once the theater lights flick on. Watching television has been painted as the lazy man’s vice, the activity we partake in when there’s just nothing else to do. Yet I say to watch television is to observe art, to understand different people and be moved by different stories. Don’t be ashamed if your favorite form of media is television — whether it’s “Cutthroat Kitchen” or “Killing Eve.” Television is suspenseful, it’s disturbing, it’s clever and sometimes it’s downright dumb. No matter what it is, television is what you and your family or friends are always going to gather around for something to do, something to enjoy together. Daily Arts Columnist Samantha Della Fera can be reached at samdf@umich.edu.
Arts
12 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
FILM NOTEBOOK
The film beat revisits Disney Channel Original Movies DAILY FILM WRITERS Daily Arts Writer
Last spring, the Daily Film beat was inspired by the doldrums of quarantine and the introduction of Disney+ to watch and review a number of Disney Channel Original Movies — DCOMs for short. There are many ways to look at DCOMs — as relics of the 2000s, as problematic attempts at representation, as textbook examples of the power of nostalgia — but there is no denying that they are somewhat trivial in the grand scheme of things. If we’re being honest, it’s been a while since quarantine has felt truly idle: Between the pandemic, protests and politics, the world feels as though it is unraveling. It can feel odd to talk about something as inconsequential as DCOMs when these past few months have been difficult for everyone in different ways, and we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that. That said, there is a difference between reprieve and perpetuating ignorance. If you choose to go on this DCOM journey with us, we ask that you keep this in mind. For us at the Daily Film beat, DCOMs were a big part of our childhoods. The Disney Channel has long been a staple of children’s entertainment, churning out hit TV shows, family-friendly pop stars and their beloved original movies. Over 100 original DCOMs have aired on Disney Channel since the DCOM banner began in 1997, raking in millions of viewers with each film. As a beat, we’ve decided to watch and review a number of these films, whether they’re musicals, classics or generally unknown. We all know that these aren’t exactly highconcept — despite their charm, most DCOMs are incredibly low-budget, filmed cheaply in Canada with unseasoned child actors and awkward dialogue. So instead, our reviews are based on how much we enjoyed the film in the context of it being a 90-minute TV movie made for kids. We’re also aware that these reviews are particularly biased, fueled by nostalgia for the films, actors and music that defined our childhoods. The first installment of this series will cover the first set of what we’re calling “Classic DCOMs” — well-known DCOMs
that reached a wide audience through high viewer ratings and perpetual re-airings. Many of these DCOMs feature Disney Channel stars, killer 2000s soundtracks and iconic aesthetics. As you join us for this joyride of nostalgia and charmingly low quality, we only have one thing left to say: “Hi, we’re the Film beat, and you’re watching Disney Channel.” — Kari Anderson, Daily Arts Writer “Halloweentown” (1998) Disney Channel in October was always an experience — fun, Halloween-themed movies playing every day of the month and new Halloween episodes of “Hannah Montana” and “Wizards of Waverly Place” on Sunday nights. What more could an eight-year-old ask for? Obviously, the only thing better than a month of Disney Halloween is to create a universe where Halloween is through the whole year; enter, “Halloweentown.” Released in 1998, the film is the first installment of four in which we meet the Pipers: Marnie (Kimberly J. Brown, “Quints”), Dylan (Joey Zimmerman, “Treehouse Hostage”) and Sophie (Emily Roeske, “Fell’s Redeemer”). The film also introduces their mother Gwen (Judith Hoag, “Forever My Girl”) and grandmother Aggie (Debbie Reynolds, “Singin’ in the Rain”). For Marnie and her siblings, the magic of Halloween is marred by the fact that their mother refuses to let them enjoy the holiday to the fullest, a tragedy for anyone who understands the joys of trick-or-treating. As the film progresses, the audience learns about Halloweentown, a world of warlocks, witches, trolls and other fantastical creatures. “Halloweentown” is one of the more impressive DCOM franchises, second only to “High School Musical.” The first film addresses how well we really know our parents. As 10-year-olds, we’ve really only been alive for a third of our parents’ lives, a fact that becomes increasingly clear when Marnie learns of her mother’s witchy history. On top of that, the films successfully create a whole other dimension with social issues that parallel those of the real world (for example, the prejudice towards “mortals”), all while maintaining that signature Disney pluck. — Emma Chang, Daily Arts Writer
“Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century” (1999) “Zenon” is arguably one of the most iconic DCOMs, with its neon color palette and costumes that gave millennials a nostalgic love of holographic outfits. The film is set in 2049 on a private space station that Zenon Kar (Kirsten Storms, “General Hospital”) has called home for eight years. Despite growing up in space, Zenon is basically a normal 13-year-old girl: curious and unapologetic, with boy band posters in her room and a vocabulary of unique slang terms (like “Zetus Lapetus” or “lunarious”). Clashes with the station’s rules lead to Zenon getting “grounded” — sent to live on Earth with her slightly agoraphobic Aunt Judy (Holly Fulger, “Anything But Love”). Adapting to life on Earth is not easy for Zenon, whether it’s understanding money, learning how to ride a bike or making friends. To make it harder, it’s suddenly up to her to save the space station and everyone on it. “Zenon” has a predictability to it, but it’s unique in terms of creative worldbuilding. It’s fun to see the idea of 2049 from a 1999 point of view: The tech gadgets are advanced but the rock stars still have frosted tips. The movie inspired two sequels, making it one of Disney Channel’s first franchises, and features Raven-Symoné (“That’s So Raven”) at the beginning of a long Disney Channel career. And while “Zenon” may inspire some questions — are all of the cars in 2049 Volkswagen Bugs? Did they really give a Northwestern University astronomy professor an unacknowledged cameo? How do I pull off a high side-ponytail like Zenon? — you can’t deny that this film is, as Zenon might say, totally lunarious. — Kari Anderson, Daily Arts Writer Smart House (1999) “Smart” technology, beginning with the smartphone, has certainly changed the way we go about life — there’s little that isn’t documented through the help of an iPhone camera, and with the rise of technology like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Home, the idea of a smart house is no longer just a cheesy 1999 Disney movie, but rather our reality. In “Smart House,” technology and the way characters interact with it are surprisingly similar to today, regardless of the fact that “Smart House” is over two
decades old. Ryan Merriman (“The Luck of the Irish”) plays Ben, a teenager desperate to make sure his family doesn’t forget their late mother, mainly by preventing his dad from ever meeting someone new. Part of this plan involves winning, and moving into, a “smart” house. And, at first, it seems to work — Pat, much like Siri or Alexa, is programmed to respond to whatever the family asks of her. Whether it’s finishing up homework or making a snack, this smart house can do it. What’s interesting is the warning that Disney gives regarding our reliance on technology. Ben programs the house to act as a surrogate mother, not realizing the detrimental effects this may have on his life. Expecting a computer to behave like a human is a dangerous idea with which many sciencefiction authors have grappled. In spite of the fact that it instills a fear of technology, Disney’s “Smart House” deserves much praise, if only because the dad (Kevin Kilner, “A Cinderella Story”) is beautiful. — Emma Chang, Daily Arts Writer “Johnny Tsunami” (1999) “Johnny Tsunami” is one of the best, most literal takes on the DCOM fish-out-of-water story, centering Johnny Kapahaala (Brandon Baker, “One World”), who was born and raised in Hawaii. His grandfather Johnny Tsunami (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, “The Last Emperor”) is a legendary surfer and has been teaching Johnny to surf his entire life. The Kapahaala family isn’t always on the same page: Johnny’s father Pete (Yuji Okumoto, “The Karate Kid Part II”) has a troubled relationship with his father that extends to his relationship with Johnny, while Johnny’s mother Melanie (Mary Page Keller, “Duet”) tries to keep the peace. When the family moves to Vermont for Pete’s job, Johnny is forced to adapt, leaving Hawaii, surfing and his grandfather behind. He gets involved with winter sports, but finds himself in the middle of a bizarre turf war between private school and public school kids: Private school kids, known as Skies, are skiers, while public school kids, known as Urchins, are snowboarders. Even with the strange socio-economic undertones (did the public school kids really have to be called urchins?), it’s a status quo that’s itching to be broken. Despite going to
private school, Johnny becomes friends with Sam (Lee Thompson Young, “The Famous Jett Jackson”), an Urchin who teaches him how to snowboard. Together, they dare to break the mold, hoping to unite the mountain in the process. “Johnny Tsunami” can be cheesy at times, but it’s generally delightful. It’s a wholesome movie about taking on challenges and being yourself, as well as a beautiful mix of surfing and snowboarding montages that make me miss the beach and the mountains at the same time. — Kari Anderson, Daily Arts Writer “Luck of the Irish” (2001) Theplotlineof“LuckoftheIrish”isbonkers: 15-year-old Kyle (Ryan Merriman, “Smart House”) discovers that he’s half-leprechaun after losing a family good luck charm. Kyle is a relatively popular basketball player with a lucky streak, so he finds it distressing when he starts having bad luck, as well as getting shorter and occasionally slipping into an Irish accent — all side effects of losing the lucky charm. He then has to work with his family and friends to get the charm back from a zany and maniacal villain (Timothy Omundson, “Psych”), a struggle that concludes with a bizarre Irish sports tournament. “Luck of the Irish” is occasionally hilarious, sometimes when the writers are trying to be funny and sometimes when they really aren’t. The writing is often awkward, and the strong Irish accents are impossible to take seriously. It’s a fascinating amalgamation that doesn’t always work — part fantasy and part sports movie, with a dash of Irish step-dancing and a strong through-line about heritage that essentially (and disappointingly) ends with “we’re all American.” It’s interesting to see where Disney tries to broach the idea of discrimination with a very brief discussion of anti-Irish sentiments in the 1800s, but it’s almost as interesting to wonder why so many people are invested in junior high school basketball. “Luck of the Irish” is such a weird film, but it’s fun enough to deserve some credit. — Kari Anderson, Daily Arts Writer
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COMMUNITY CULTURE PROFILE
Community culture artist profile: Kaitlyn Bondoni NINA MOLINA Daily Arts Writer
The first thing LSA senior Kailyn Bondoni learned about poetry was that it rhymes. The second was that haikus existed. The third was that free verse also existed, which, in turn, erased the first lesson she learned. Bondoni’s journey to artistic expression, particularly in poetry, began in her fourth grade classroom. Her teacher read and recited “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein. “He had this book fully marked up,” Bondoni told The Daily. “Then he just recited it from memory and spoke so fast. It was so intriguing and terrifying for some reason but like cool. Like when you say, ‘oh, you fear God’: that was this man. So much poetic power.” After Shel Silverstein came angst-driven poems in middle school and poems to aid emotional processing in high school. At the
University, her time in the Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts (LSWA) and her creative writing classes exposed her to the wider spectrum of poetry’s possibilities. “I originally thought of free verse and not having to rhyme as freedom,” Bondoni said. “Forms or rhyme scheme is its own challenge and talent that I don’t think I had enough respect for until coming into college and actually trying it.” Now, Bondoni double majors in Film, TV and Media Studies and English with a subconcentration in Creative Writing, alongside minors in Writing and Environment. Her long list of interests pushed her to discover poetry’s playful malleability. Early in college, Bondoni took English 223: Introduction to Creative Writing on a whim. Her LSA professor, Joseph Mahoney, encouraged her to pursue the poetry track of the English major’s creative writing concentration. This year, she will take English 428, the creative writing capstone, to finish her concentration. There, Bondoni hopes to write a poetry collection that traces
her changing poetry and style over time, capturing her experiences from that fourth grade classroom to the present. LSWA also exposed Bondoni to poetry performance. She recalled her first reading as “an experience and a half,” full of shaking hands and shallow breaths. But by the end of her freshman year, poetry performance became a playful experience for her, an opportunity for laughter. At one memorable event, she donned a winter trapper hat and sunglasses and enlisted a friend to play the bongos from the Donkey Kong game. “I think that was kind of the turning point where I was like, ‘okay, it’s not something that I have to be nervous for because I’m expressing,’” she said. “It can also just be a release of tension.” That artistic release provides a welcome relief from the flurry of emotions that college brings. “It’s a good way of figuring out what I’m feeling,” Bondoni said. “In college you meet people and you’re thrown around emotionally. College is a washing machine
that you have no control over; you are the last sock in the washing machine. As that sock, I find that poetry helps me kind of surface.” Though poetry may seem divergent or even in opposition to the visual nature of her Film degree, Bondoni finds their marriage in screenwriting. The first time that she fully saw the connection was actually over Twitter, when someone tweeted screenshots from Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” script. The director is one of Bondoni’s biggest inspirations. “The way that she writes her action lines and the script itself was beautiful. Some of the lines just sounded poetic with just a couple of analogies and metaphors that would really allow an actor to sink their teeth into the script,” she said. Bondoni realized that this poetic approach allows screenwriters to leave their creative mark. She quickly gravitated toward TV writing — “There’s so much more room for character development in there,” she said. “You can really see so many
different angles, multiple characters, and that really is so attractive to me.” The playfulness of her poetry is not lost along the way: Finding shows that combine both heartfelt and comedic elements greatly appeals to her. Bill Hader’s “Barry” hit the right combination. “Shows like that really inspire me to try to write more of a real story with comedic elements. I think that’s really the target I’m planning to land on aiming for,” said Bondoni. Though asking a senior about their postgraduation plans can often cause anxiety, Bondoni knows that the film industry path, though challenging, is one she’ll continue chasing. She plans on moving to Los Angeles and holding onto her current screenwriting internship as long as possible.
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BOOKS NOTEBOOK
The different forms of self within self-help books EMMA DOETTLING Daily Arts Writer
I, like many other steadfast fiction readers, generally would not touch a non-fiction book with a ten-foot pole, preferring stories that offer an escape from my own mundane life. Once in a blue moon, I grudgingly venture into the world of non-fiction, feeling like I need to expand my repertoire of books, only to mentally check out after the first few pages. Why would I read about real life when imagination can conjure up scenarios that are so much more interesting? However, this year marked a surprising change for me. I entered the world of non-fiction books, and this time, I stuck around. This adjustment came amid a time of extraordinary change, namely the emergence of COVID-19. During the long months of quarantine, many, inspired by online blogs or extreme boredom, decided to make use of their isolation by embarking on self-improvement journeys. As COVID19 spread through the country and people were forced to remain home, online yoga, meditation and mental health resources started popping up on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. I watched as my friends began undertaking self-improvement journeys, posting about
their morning quarantine yoga flows, mediation sessions and Chloe Ting workout challenges. Unfortunately, I was not one of the productive quarantine types. Besides reading and baking a lot, I did not respond to complete social isolation with increased motivation like some others, who seemed to be checking off every life goal during quarantine (starting a podcast, really?). Nonetheless, I surprisingly ended up participating in the aforementioned selfhelp trend. This summer I took a roadtrip across the country, and eight hours into the third day I was getting stir crazy from the boredom and monotony of the drive. Desperate for some entertainment, I looked for free audiobooks on Spotify. The only book I could find was Mark Manson’s “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck”. Having nothing else to do, I started listening and found myself immediately engrossed in the author’s philosophy on life. Five hours later, I had listened to the whole book, and it was through this experience that I stumbled onto a new genre of reading: self-help books. After Manson’s book, I read two other self-help books in quick succession, “Daring Greatly” by Brenée Brown and “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. What I found most interesting about these three books was how different
each author’s message was. I found myself wondering, how do I know who to believe? Some ideas resonated more deeply with me than others, and I tended to lean toward the books that had practical applicability in my life or related to the issues I was currently facing. Each author approaches giving advice differently. Manson talks about his failures bluntly, and explains the experiences that led him to his current philosophy on life. His personal style is straightforward, unsparing and often raunchy. Rather than telling readers to ‘be positive’ and ‘look on the bright side’ like I had expected from selfhelp books, he speaks frankly about what he thinks is wrong with people nowadays, and how they can fix themselves. Manson does not have a background in psychology or experience studying his ideas in practice, he simply explains his theory on having a fulfilling life and acknowledges his openness to being wrong and having more to learn. Brenée Brown, on the other hand, has a somewhat different personal style from Manson; she is understanding, relatable and funny. I felt like I was having a conversation with a friend, as she took me through her own experiences with vulnerability and opening up. Brown also has a strong background in research and the study of human emotion, vulnerability, shame and
leadership. She is therefore able to base all of her ideas on years of meticulous research, and grounds her recommendations in facts and studies. This came through in her book, as she references study after study that support her suggestions. I found myself trusting her due to the enormous amount of research that she presented as evidence, as well as her approachable and genuine personal voice. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie diverged the most from the two other books. Carnegie suggests psychology-based techniques for becoming a more likeable and charismatic person, proposing tips on ways to make people like you, win people to agree with your way of thinking and change people without arousing resentment. I felt mildly embarrassed to be reading this book, feeling like I was being given insider information on how to trick people into liking me. In every book, I noticed the author’s experiences and background subtly intertwining themselves with their recommendation for how others could transform their lives. They viewed the world through the lenses of their own lives, and as a result, their conclusions included ideas that might not work for everyone. For example, Brenée Brown spoke a lot about her perfectionistic tendencies and
how to mitigate them. Personally, I am not a perfectionist, so this portion of the book went entirely over my head. Manson, meanwhile, recounted his experiences dropping everything to travel the world, something I have always dreamed of doing. His findings were extremely interesting and clearly life-altering for him; however, his methods may not be the most suitable for everyone. Carnegie gave advice based on psychological techniques on how to make others like you. For me this did not resonate, as some of the strategies that Carnegie suggested seemed manipulative and underhanded to me. Reading these three wildly different books helped me understand that self-help books are not one-size-fits-all. Each book was a bestseller and incredibly popular among readers, and yet I had extremely different reactions to each one. I ended up picking and choosing the ideas that fit my own life and disregarding the rest. My struggles may not be the same as the authors’, and so it only makes sense that some of the techniques that helped them may not be as beneficial to my own life.
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Arts
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 13
Pepe the Frog’s fall from grace in ‘Feels Good Man’ ROSS LONDON Daily Arts Writer
This review has taken longer to write than I, or my editors, expected. In the last few days my time has been spent digesting the insidious darkness that characterizes “Feels Good Man.” This documentary follows the tale of Pepe the Frog and the character-turned-meme’s journey to become a symbol of hate. But it is also a tale of depravity fueled by anonymity, of how social media is both a reflection and a perversion of real social life, and a chapter in the grand history of white nationalism in America. The very sour cherry atop this sundae of reckless hatred is the man behind the meme — Matt Furie, Pepe’s own Dr. Frankenstein — whose innocent cartoon was bastardized by the internet, shattering his psyche. “Feels Good Man” is not for the faint of heart. I am left questioning my own “stamina” in the face of hatred. Furie created Pepe in 2005 for his “Boy’s Club” comic. The lanky frog was an innocuous character with one particularly peculiar habit: He peed with his pants around his ankles. When questioned about this idiosyncrasy, Pepe could only say “feels good man.” How did a cartoon frog’s bathroom habits make the character an icon for the alt-right? For that, we can blame the internet. Pepe’s circuitous journey into internet hell really began on 4chan, where anonymous
users jockeyed for a spot at the top of one of the site’s message boards by eliciting reactions from their peers. This feature of 4chan meant that provocativeness was valuable. To be number one, you had to garner attention and incite a reaction. This will spell Pepe’s downfall. The documentary features a few 4chan users, who share that they saw themselves in Pepe; their own peculiar habits, embodied by the selfproclaimed moniker NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training), made them “feel good,” too. Pepe represented an internet counterculture, those who felt rejected by mainstream society. The problems began when Pepe memes leaked out of 4chan and onto Instagram, Facebook and other mainstream social media. Pepe had been taken by “normies,” the socially welladjusted people who are seen to represent the oppressors of NEETs, the relegation of the less well-adjusted to a lesser social status. So, while 4chan users had already been making Pepe a provocateur, to keep “normies” from stealing the symbol of the counterculture, and to prevent Pepe from gaining mainstream recognition, the memes had to be so offensive and distasteful that no one would dare touch Pepe again. All told, a group of people who felt they were being actively kept at the bottom rung of society now had a tool to push back. And by pasting their virulent racist rhetoric atop a cartoon frog,
they made real bigotry into a joke. Fighting Pepe would be farcical, because it was “just a meme.” Hillary Clinton was lambasted by the alt-right for doing precisely this. This twisted irony is at the center of Pepe’s most despicable associations. When “smug Pepe,” a meme in which the frog touches his chin and dons a sinister smirk, made its rounds, people compared it to Trump’s mug on the cover of GQ in 1984 and the association between thencandidate Trump and Pepe was solidified. Trump-Pepe memes became more common, with Trump himself tweeting an illustration of himself as the racist frog. As Trump’s policies began to interact with the meme-ing provocateurs on 4chan, Pepe’s status as a genuine symbol of the alt-right was undeniable. One of the documentary’s more prominent interviewees is Susan Blackmore, scholar and author of “The Meme Machine,” a text exploring Richard Dawkins’s memetic theory. Blackmore believes, in short, that ideas are spread autonomously by human “meme machines.” Like evolutionary gene theory, in which the stronger biological traits outlast and supersede weaker ones, meme theory says that certain ideas will outlast and overpower others. Blackmore says that “culture … is more like a vast parasite growing and living and feeding on us than a tool of our creation.” In other words, culture is memes, shared by humans in the form of language, religion,
Raised by RuneScape: my extremely online childhood DYLAN YONO Daily Arts Writer
When I describe myself as being “extremely online” to my friends, they usually agree — they too love memes and spend hours on Twitter. Trying to clarify what I mean gets messy. It usually turns into some form of me reciting my own version of Bane’s quote from “The Dark Knight Rises”: “You merely adopted the internet; I was born in it, molded by it.” If I was molded by the internet, “RuneScape” was the pair of hands that shaped me. By the time I reached third grade, I was in the internet trenches. Deep in the trenches. I’m talking roleplaying “Pokémon” on fansite forums, watching Naruto fan flash animations on Saiyan Island, trying to learn the dance from “Caramelldansen” and consuming dozens of Strong Bad emails on Homestar Runner. According to the record books, June 21, 2007 was the first time I logged into RuneScape. I spent the first of what would become thousands of hours glued to the computer. If “Pokémon” roleplay and Naruto fan flashes were the trenches, “RuneScape” was my ninth circle of digital hell. For the uninitiated,
COURTESY OF DYLAN YONO
“RuneScape” is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), an open world fantasy multiplayer game where you play alongside thousands of other players. If you’ve ever played “World of Warcraft” or “Club Penguin,” you’ve played an MMO. They have an emphasis on social interaction, with in-game guilds and virtual economies. It’s the social aspect of “RuneScape” that shaped me most — where I learned everything from politics and pop culture, to learning what sex was and finding out Santa isn’t real. As a young kid hooked on fantasy, “RuneScape” triggered all the right neurotransmitters in my brain. I could practice archery and slay dragons and do quests day and night. I loved the grind of mining coal or fishing for lobsters ad infinitum, selling them for gold and buying fashionable clothes for my character to wear while mining and fishing. Whenever I leveled up in “RuneScape,” a little animation of fireworks would display over my character; I can still feel that dopamine rush. My favorite thing to do was chat with other players while training — I would usually juggle three or four conversations at once. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, I was going days without stepping outside. I rarely opened my mouth. Messages on “RuneScape” could be my only
social interaction for days. Before long, I grew so deeply immersed into my online identity that there was Dylan and then there was Smallbones25, my “RuneScape” username. By fourth grade I genuinely didn’t have a reallife friend, but that never bothered me. I had friends in noodleboy12, a friend met fishing on the docks in Karamja, and Vortex King, a “RuneScape” veteran I met training in the Warrior’s Guild. My social life got even better when I adopted the alter-ego of a 17-yearold girl named Kendra. When your character is a girl in a maledominated video game, friendship and conversation online come easy. Somewhere down the line my dad picked up on the unnatural amount of time I spent on my computer and the extreme emotional investment I had in “RuneScape.” As a parent, I can’t imagine how shameful and disappointing it must have felt when your eight-year-old son with no friends came to you bawling his eyes out because he got scammed in a video game or accidentally died and lost all his virtual possessions. It crossed the line when I started staying up too late and sleeping in on school days. My dad started cutting the internet on my computer at 7:30 p.m. on school nights. The first night I staged a pseudo-strike outside his
MOVIECLIPS INDIE
art and Pepe. For Blackmore, memes share themselves. She doesn’t address this in the documentary; however, I am curious if she would ascribe any culpability to the millions of people who have created and shared offensive Pepe images in the decade or so since he took the internet by storm. While images may share themselves by way of the human “meme machine” mind, this transmission can certainly be manipulated and directed. Another remarkable interviewee is a former Trump campaign official who spoke matter-of-factly about the campaign’s use of social media to win support. In criticizing Matt Furie’s #SavePepe quest in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to reclaim the meme, this former campaign official suggested that Furie failed to understand the internet and its machinations. In many ways, this campaign official is right: #SavePepe backfired, and the Peace, Love and Pepe memes were co-opted and swiftly
desecrated. In a September 2016 interview with Adam Serwer for The Atlantic (who is also featured in the film), Furie says “I think that’s it’s just a phase, and come November, it’s just gonna go on to the next phase … in terms of meme culture, it’s people reappropriating things for their own agenda. That’s just a product of the internet.” It seems Furie takes a view similar to Blackmore’s of memetics and acknowledges the entropic character of the internet. What’s unsettling, though, is Furie’s confidence that white nationalism would all go away. If this country has seen anything in the four years since Furie’s interview with Serwer, it is that hatred is not “just a phase.” The very foundation of our society is constructed from inequity and bigotry. In this moment of reckoning, we must be hyper-aware of the “jokes,” because hatred masked as humor is insidious. The film is not entirely without hope. Pepe has been
taken up by protestors in Hong Kong as a symbol of love. Alex Jones of InfoWARS settled out of court with Furie after Pepe’s creator sued the vicious conspiracy theorist for copyright infringement. Furie, whose sadness and guilt are upsettingly palpable throughout the film, has moved onto new projects. His art is really something. Despite developments in Hong Kong, a recent expedition to 4chan showed me that in the U.S., Pepe is beyond salvation. But our democracy is not. As we continue to fight hatred in America, pay close attention to the potentially dangerous power of the meme, especially wielded by anonymous idealogues. This summer of organizing and resistance has shown that the internet can be a potent force for good and change. Let us embrace this in the hopes that we might shift the tide of memetics in our favor. And for the love of Pepe, VOTE. Daily Arts Writer Ross London can be reached at rhorg@umich.edu.
office, demanding my internet be reinstated. He ignored my futile protests, so I adapted. At 7:30 I would go to sleep for the night, and when the internet turned back on at 5 in the morning, I woke up to play “RuneScape” before school. For a long time I was content with “RuneScape,” a constant in my life I didn’t know how to live without. Then puberty hit in sixth or seventh grade and my virtual friends were no longer enough for me. I started to acknowledge my hobby as an addiction. I started to recognize my lack of real friends as an inadequacy, a personal failure. I wanted to be one of the “cool kids,” and those kids were talking to girls on Facebook and wearing fake Gucci Belts, not slaying dragons on “RuneScape.” If I wanted to be cool, I’d have to quit “RuneScape” and instead play “Call of Duty” with them and drop slurs on Xbox Live. I quit “RuneScape” cold turkey. For the next few years I dreaded and resented the addictive game upon which I built my prepubescent social life. Making friends in middle school felt like a desperate attempt to catch up on what I missed out on for so long. In the deepest pits of my eighth-grade depression, I blamed “RuneScape” for my complete lack of social skills and feared it for its life-shattering power. I clocked in over 2,000 hours on my main “RuneScape” account and easily thousands more that went uncounted, and what did it give me? I thought: “RuneScape” doesn’t give, it only takes. Mostly, I thought “RuneScape” took away my childhood. I’d find myself thinking things like, if I’d spent all that time playing sports, I could be the star of the football team. When I heard people talk about their childhood memories and childhood friends, it would trigger a depressive episode that lasted hours. My childhood memories placed me in a dark room in front of a screen for hours on end. “I will never have a childhood,” echoed through my skull. I’d made some friends in middle school and tried to do more “normal” things like joining the track team or going to the mall, but with social skills built on the internet, face-to-face interaction felt like a losing battle in my head. I frantically advertised my dedication to fashion as my new-
found “cool” hobby. I needed a way to distinguish Dylan, the cool track runner fashionista, from Smallbones25, the internetaddicted dweeb. Naively I thought I was alone in living my life online. Even after I quit “RuneScape,” I just dumped the same amount of time into new outlets like playing “Minecraft” or making friends on anime fansites. I was caught somewhere between wishing I could leave it all behind to become a “cool kid” and wishing all those people I met on “RuneScape”
born on the internet. They even played MMOs! The library nerd circle developed into a close-knit crew that would be some of the only friends of mine to persist after high school. We played games online together, yeah, but we also did the same kinds of things I would have done with considerably more “normal” friends, like going to the movie theater or talking about school. Something about the backdrop of a shared childhood spent in front of screens made those normal things feel so much more genuine, like our brains were all tuned to the same frequency. A small part of me still feared “RuneScape” for a long time, but by the time college rolled around I was breathing nostalgia for it. Watching my friends play MMOs like “Path of Exile” or “Final Fantasy XIV” was encouraging. I finally had a reckoning with RuneScape when I logged into old school “RuneScape” for the first time in seven years, a perfect recreation of the game that first sucked me into the abyss back in 2007. It wrapped me up in excitement just like it did when I was a kid, but in a new, healthier way. Old friends like noodleboy12 and Vortex King were long gone, but new friends took their place. Most of the player base is also nostalgic adults, and reminiscing about a childhood built on “RuneScape” is a staple conversation in old school. Like me, many of them balanced school, work, hobbies and a social life. I spent a couple months in the summer getting my fill of nostalgia and then naturally drifted from the game when school came back around. I still wish I went outside and talked to real people a lot more than I did when I was a kid, but I wouldn’t remove “RuneScape” from my life story. The game didn’t just take — it gave a lot back. It gave back in small ways, like all the weird quirks embedded in my personality. I have a knack for napkin math from always calculating my experience points and levels. I chatted so much on “RuneScape” that I learned to type fast — so absurdly fast that I’ve never met anyone faster. I also spent years accidentally spelling things in British English (“RuneScape” is a British game).
If I was molded by the internet, “RuneScape” was the pair of hands that shaped me.
or “Minecraft” or anime fansites could be real. It never clicked that there were real life people behind all those “RuneScape” avatars. One day during a discussion in English class, I dropped an anime reference in front of the class. As soon as I let it slip I shut myself up — I’d accidentally let a little bit of Smallbones25 out. It didn’t seem like anybody noticed, though. Somebody noticed. Sitting alone at lunch always made me uncomfortable, so I would always eat in the library. The library was where the “nerds” hung out until fourth period. One of those nerds was in my English class. He saw through the fashionrunner-boy and knew I was hiding Smallbones25 beneath. Gradually he lured me in and inducted me into his nerd circle. I’d made real friends in the last two years since I’d quit “RuneScape” and tried to start over, but for the first time in my life I had friends I could be myself around. They were different. They didn’t play sports. They didn’t talk to girls. They didn’t give a shit about my Air Jordans. But they watched videogamedunkey and played “Dungeons & Dragons” and they were always three steps ahead of the meme curve from constantly browsing 4chan. They too were
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statement
14 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Looking in: The unseen challenges of Chinese international students at U-M BY LOLA YANG, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
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put my fingers on the scanning screen for the third time, as the machine was unable to recognize my fingerprints. After finally succeeding, I quickly put my mask back on as my fingers fumbled with my immigration documents. “Please come with me,” a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer signaled in my direction after I passed the Canadian border into the United States, proceeding to walk me to a door on the side of the hall. I sat alone on the bench and waited for about 10 minutes before another officer came into the room and sat beside me. In a calm manner, she asked me a series of personal questions: What were my private and school emails, what was my American address, how much cash I was carrying and lastly, “Do you have WeChat?” WeChat is a multipurpose, Chinese social media application. Many people refer to it as China’s equivalent of WhatsApp, but with greater bandwidth. The services WeChat offers include, but are not limited to, e-transferring, mobile payments, ordering food at a restaurant without waiters, online shopping and location sharing. Recently, due to WeChat’s role in China’s oversea censorship and spreading propagandistic misinformation, the Trump administration has denounced the app as a national security threat and proposed its ban in the United States. I reluctantly gave the officer my information. Though recently many Chinese international students have been subjected to harassment and interrogation at Customs and Border Protection, I was completely caught off guard by their line of questioning. I am not a Chinese citizen, but a Canadian one — the only indication of my Chinese heritage is my name and a stamp on my passport showing I had traveled there last summer. In that moment, my sense of surprise was overcome by fear and anxiety about my alien status in the U.S. Do I really belong? The officer then put the notepad away and went into the back room for a pair of gloves, her demeanor seemingly pleasant but her actions and questions intrusive. She unpacked all of the pockets in my backpack, my pencil case, my wallet (and counted the cash) and my immigration files. She pointed at the Hangul characters in my notebook and asked “Is that Mandarin?” She was startled after I told her that it was actually Korean, a language I was trying to learn, and moved on with her search. She left in a haste after thoroughly probing all of my belongings. When alone, I realized that my legs were shaking. ensions between the U.S. and China escalated during the trade war of late 2018. Though economic pressures from both sides had calmed after a series of negotiations, more conflicts ensued in mid-February, when China expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters in the name of a racially insensitive headline: “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia” — a phrase that carries strong undertones of European colonial history in China. Though the reason for expulsion may be justified, this measure only provoked further retaliations — like limited staff for five Chinese news organizations in the
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nese international student enrollment rates prior to the pandemic. As the Trump administration continues to enforce travel restrictions and other policies that restrict work opportunities from international students, the road ahead appears uncertain. For now, though, Julia is willing to risk this uncertainty for her education. “Now I just miss home cooked food.” Julia smiled again, this time not exasperatedly. “I have a lot of friends who went to the Shanghai Disneyland already and I am super jealous.” huchen: On a warm Saturday afternoon, I met with Shuchen Wei on Zoom, me in my East Quad Residence Hall room and she in her off-campus apartment. Shuchen is currently in her last year at the University of Michigan, and she chose to stay in Ann Arbor in March in fear that further U.S.-China tensions could keep her ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY stuck in China and meddle with was for Winter Break. Coming to the U.S. was a big decision her graduation plans. “It has been a year since I last went for her, but Julia wanted new possibilities home and I really miss my parents,” in life and to challenge herself. Julia’s college experience has largely been positive, Shuchen said. “But if I go back (to China), as she met many people who shared her attending synchronous lectures would passions in her program. But when the vi- disrupt my sleep cycles.” Shuchen told me that homesickness rus spread through the world last March, she began to develop a deeper under- is not an unfamiliar feeling for her, since standing of racism and xenophobia on the she has repeatedly thought about going home as COVID-19 cases were increascampus that she made her home. According to Pew Research Center, ing at an unprecedented pace in the U.S. 31% of Asian Ameircans and 21% of Black She was also concerned about the armed Americans report having experienced ra- demonstrations in East Lansing in protest cial slurs and jokes since the COVID-19 of Governor Whitmer’s stay-at-home oroutbreak began. When I told Julia that ders, seeing it as a sign of the U.S.’s poor earlier this year people would turn around pandemic strategies. However, booking a to look at me while I’d speak on the phone flight home was no easy feat: In March, with my mom in Chinese, Julia confessed 3,102 out of 3,800 planned commercial that she has felt similar aversion and con- flights from and to China were canceled. China had also restricted many internafusion from others. “A white girl once told my friend dur- tional flights to prevent their own citizens ing class ‘it’s the Chinese who brought from bringing the virus home. Additionally, on July 6, the U.S. Immithe virus here,’” Julia recounted. “I was so shocked to learn this from my friend. gration and Customs Enforcement issued Apparently the girl said it so blatantly in a new policy (now revoked after backlash front of a lot of students, and I found that from various prestigious universities) that would have stripped international stuquite rude.” Born into a racially homogenous home- dents of their visas if their coursework land (Han Chinese makes up 91% of Chi- were entirely online. This also generated nese population), Julia said that she did great anxieties among Chinese students not start thinking seriously about racial about their immigration status and fears issues until after she moved to the United of never being able to return to their inStates. She told me she was particularly stitutions. “After the ICE policy first came out, influenced by a sociology course she took a lot of my classmates who returned to this past summer, where the professor invited speakers from different ethnic back- China for the summer panicked,” Shuchen grounds to share their experiences with explained. “I know of some people who planned to quarantine in Cambodia for race. “That’s when I had an epiphany, that 14 days and then make their flight back. the color of your skin could dictate how There were a lot of flight cancellations but some tickets did not offer refunds, which others perceive you.” Despite her unpleasant experience was also stressful financially.” More so, U.S. government officials have with xenophobia, Julia told me that she is still interested in pursuing her postgradu- recommended excluding Chinese stuate studies in the U.S. However, she can dents from critical technology disciplines also foresee the increased discrimination to prevent espionage efforts, while Chiand retaliation that she might face as U.S.- nese international students have faced China relations aggravate, such as further increasing scrutiny while passing through limited opportunities for international Customs and Border Protection. These students and drastic changes in visa poli- policies have since turned many Chinese students and researchers away from purcies. As one of the U.S.’s most profitable ex- suing their education here in the future. Shuchen echoed a similar sentiports, higher-education institutions have always relied on their international stuRead more at MichiganDaily.com dents to make up for budget gaps. Nevertheless, many American colleges have already observed a sharp decline in Chi-
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U.S. — from the Trump administration. After China passed the National Security Law, which significantly infringes upon Hong Kong’s democracy, the Trump administration responded by ending Hong Kong’s preferential trade status with the U.S. and China vowed to retaliate. In late July, the U.S. had also shut down the Chinese Consulate in Houston, accusing it of espionage efforts. As a direct result, the American Consulate in Chengdu was ordered to close within a 72-hour time frame. When the pandemic first started taking shape in the U.S., fear and ignorance about the virus fueled an increased sentiment of xenophobia. Asians have been assaulted on public transit and called “diseased,” and Chinese businesses in New York City reported an approximate 40% sales drop while Boston’s Chinatown had also suffered significant customer loss after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Massachusetts. As U.S.-China tensions escalate, Chinese nationals tend to become the most vulnerable subjects of discrimination. Therefore, I spoke* to three Chinese international students about how they are persevering and navigating their lives in a country that does not want them. *The following interviews were conducted in Mandarin Chinese, for the most effective and genuine form of communication, and translated into English. ulia**: **The following interviewee uses a pseudonym for fear of retaliation from the University. It was one minute past our meeting time at 7 p.m. when Julia entered the Zoom meeting. She was sitting at her desk in her shared apartment near central campus. Throughout our conversations, I could hear loud bass music coming from her side and the occasional roaring motorcycles passing by. “Do you ever hear parties like that where you live?” Julia smiled exasperatedly, “We get that all the time.” Julia is a Chinese international student who just transferred to the University of Michigan last September. Julia made the choice to stay in Ann Arbor when classes moved online because she did not want to contract COVID-19 on her way home. She has stayed in the U.S. for more than nine months as the last time she went home
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statement
15 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
COVID-19 and the dissolution of the community W
hat does it mean to live in a community? In one sense, a community is a group of people who have something in common. When I reflect on what I have in common with my fellow students, faculty and staff, two things come to mind. The first is our affiliation with the University of Michigan. The mere fact of affiliation, however, confers little significance within Ann Arbor. Meeting a fellow Wolverine in your hometown or on a trip abroad is exciting, yet here, our Wolverineness tends to fade into the background. The school swells with spirit on game days, but in the course of daily life meeting another Wolverine is so common that it ceases to be special. Another aspect of our community is that we share a common space and engage with each other within it. We meet our peers in this neutral territory so that we can form bonds and foster relationships of trust that lead to deeper social connections. From the buzz of the Diag to the roar of the Big House, the activities that bind the individual to the community invariably take place in the presence of others. Leaving the privacy of one’s home is crucial to attaining this newfound sense of belonging. It is this second aspect — our interaction in public spaces — that is the greatest determinant of our sense of community. When people say, “I went to the University of Michigan,” they do not simply refer to receiving their degree. It is rather a question of being there; memories of screaming in the students’ section, getting lost in Angell Hall and hustling to class in sub-zero temperatures linger in the minds of U-M students years after graduation. In a similar vein, the invaluable work of faculty and staff ensures that this environment is preserved for current students as well as the generations of students to come. However, this semester COVID-19 has forced us to adapt to an unfamiliar social reality. Reflecting on the possible ramifications of this adaptation, I began to wonder: How did we interact historically in public spaces here at the University, and how have these interactions changed in the time of COVID-19? In probing this question, I decided to examine three kinds of public spaces in particular: dining halls, libraries and “crossroads,” places students walk through or spend a few hours in doing a variety of activities, such as the Diag or the Law Quadrangle. efore the pandemic, Michigan Dining hosted thousands of students per day in seven public dining halls and two, Martha Cook Dining Hall and the Lawyer’s Club, designated as “residents only.” MDining is also the top student employer on campus, with approximately 1,000 jobs offered each term. The amount of food produced and consumed in all of these places combined was and still is staggering — anyone who has relied on the dining hall system in their college career should pause to quietly applaud this herculean effort. For MDining, the act of feeding thousands of students has stayed the same. The experience of going to the dining hall, however, has changed a lot. Dining hall student coordinator and LSA senior Alethia Blough told me in our Zoom call about the major differences in dining before and during the pandemic. She works in South Quad Dining Hall, where the old system of grabbing food from different mini-restaurants has given way to a highly organized series of socially-distanced lines. There is no more eating in the dining hall, either; students enter the dining hall, join one of the lines and are finally spit out at the exit. “We’re definitely trying to keep things more enforced and be a more known presence, just to direct the lines and things like that. And so (students) kind of have to interact with us. They
BY ALEXANDER SATOLA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
can’t just grab their plate and go.” Perhaps counterintuitively, the necessity of the situation has decreased spontaneous interactions among students and introduced required interactions between student diners and employees. This is a clear, even encouraging caveat to any categorical denunciation of COVID-19 damaging all social relations. As has been the case for many other essential workers, the pandemic has shown the importance of people that previously students might have taken for granted. Moreover, as cases climb in dormitories across campus, fostering trust between workers and diners is more important than ever. When I spoke with Aidan Meador-Woodruff, an LSA Residential College freshman, on the phone to get the student perspective on the dining hall experience, one of the first things he expressed was an appreciation for the kindness of dining hall workers. “The people who greet us at the dining hall and the actual staff are very kind in their interactions with students,” MeadorWoodruff said. And these small, everyday interactions count for a lot in a time when the coronavirus pandemic also threatens an epidemic of loneliness for new students. However well people get along in the contemporary dining hall experience, it is no substitute for the vital social function dining halls have played in previous years — the possibility of sharing a meal with friends in these common spaces was crucial for developing a sense of connection among students. Especially as the temperature drops, residence hall residents — and anyone who lives alone — will have to reckon with fewer opportunities to break bread with their peers. he library is another focal point of public life that has drastically altered its operations. As physical spaces, the many U-M libraries have offered generations of students a sanctuary for academic study. Unlike with the Union, the Fishbowl
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and other serious academic hubs, the library is not only a study space; it also holds a vast repository of knowledge. The whole apparatus of the library — both physical and virtual — is directed toward the goal of supporting scholars from all disciplines across the university. This semester, most libraries at the University have temporarily closed in observances of public health guidelines, yet librarians are still working hard to replace the loss of in-person access to the physical spaces. I got to hear more about these efforts when I talked with two librarians over Zoom: Emily Petty Puckett Rodgers, a space design and assessment librarian who also leads the Library Environments department, and Dr. Rebecca Price, a subject specialist for architecture and urban planning. As the lead of the Library Environments department, Puckett Rogers conducts research on how patrons engage with the physical, and now virtual, spaces of the library. She told me about some of the new services the library was testing out, such as specialist virtual consultations, contactless pickup and continued access to the spe-
cial collections. “I think that we are responding to some of these challenges in ways that try to place us at the point of need for people,” Puckett Rogers explained. It is clear that Puckett Rogers and her team, along with the hundreds of employees of the U-M library, are continuing to earnestly support researchers here at the University in the virtual environment. What has been temporarily lost, however, is the experience of being in the library. Price illustrated the nature of this experience well in our conversation. “Just being near all the ideas that are in those books; you have, sort of, conversations. People are talking to you — that sounds really scary.” At this point Price paused and laughed at herself. “But when you’re in the library there are these conversations going on all the time that you can be part of.” This is an evocative description of what is special about libraries, though I think Price’s notion of being near the ideas also points the way to a broader truth. When you go to a library, “the ideas” are not only sitting on dusty shelves — they also exist in the minds of everyone around you. At any given moment, the vast majority of people working in libraries are wrestling with concepts, proofs, code, essays or whatever they happen to be working on. They do so privately in their own minds, but publicly in the act of writing, typing and talking. In addition to the ghostly conversations happening between writers and readers, actual conversations also take place between the budding scholars of the future. Puckett Rogers described the library as an “intellectual collision space.” That might be an oddly chaotic image for a place usually reserved for quiet contemplation, although the second floor of the Shapiro Undergraduate Library is a notable exception. At the level of ideas, however, collisions do occur. Even in the silence of the Law Library, one can constantly hear the
tration with people not wearing masks — this has been a problem since the beginning of the pandemic. I have noticed that, with regard to how we treat each other, not much has changed at all. I arrived at this understanding while I was sitting on the Law Quad. It was a beautiful autumn day, and lots of people had come out to relax or do schoolwork on the lawn. The scene was eerily normal. There was something familiar about how people were simply leaving each other alone. It was then that I realized that COVID-19 has given us an opportunity to ignore each other even more intensely than before. Though we may not like to admit it, ignoring each other is an integral part of the culture of our campus. It’s rare to receive a smile from a passerby on the way to class, unless you know them. At bars, people tend to keep to their circle of friends. In the few minutes before class begins, as people are unpacking notebooks and their pencil cases, no one is in the mood for a conversation. At a school as competitive as Michigan, people are too busy, distracted, tired or stressed to truly dedicate time and curiosity to the well-being of strangers. To be fair, this cultural practice is in no way unique to the University of Michigan. In all large cities and towns, there comes a point when it is cumbersome to actively acknowledge the existence of everyone you see. Instead, minding your own business becomes the predominant attitude. I think that is why there are so many smaller communities at the University. The innumerable fraternities, sororities, pre-professional fraternities, consulting groups, a capella groups, interest groups, clubs and even the student newspaper contribute to a sense of community that is much stronger than what mere university affiliation can provide. Students in these organizations care about each other, make lasting friendships and in some cases do incredible things with a group of diverse, like-minded individuals. PHOTO BY ALEC COHEN It is clear, however, that caring for a smaller community does not always translate to caring for the U-M community as a whole. People who are conscious of COVID-19 keep their distance and wear a mask, effectively “ignoring” you, but they do so because it is in the interest of the community; they acknowledge that others’ health is important to them. On the contrary, I am not sure what I can say about the person who walks the streets without a mask, spits on the ground and does not apologize for either. This person clearly does not know me, and he does not care about me. Like all of us, he pays attention to what he finds significant. I do not think there is any mystery involved in his behavior, nor an interesting psychological problem. He simply does not give a damn. frenetic pitter-patter of fingers on a keyboard. he paradox of COVID-19 is that Collisions are happening everywhere. building a real community requires ast but not least, I reflected on the meaningful and sustained intercharacter of the thoroughfares of action, while at the same it is currently in the campus: places like the Diag and the interest of the broader community for us to reLaw Quad. main temporarily apart. The Diag is the most “public” of all the In terms of how we conduct ourselves in the spaces addressed in this article. It is a com- public sphere, we can learn much from their mon byway for practically everyone, ranging stewards such as dining hall employees and lifrom seasoned townies to fans of the opposing brarians. They ensure the continued function team on game days. The student population, of essential services, as well as the spaces in however, still probably provides the majority which those services are rendered. They canof foot traffic. Indeed, in the time before virtual not afford to ignore others as a part of their job, learning, I traversed the Diag every day, which but the truth is that neither can we. is the case for most students. For this reason, I Our lives are becoming increasingly private, assumed it would mark the cornerstone of the but in those rare moments when we are in pubcommunity; it would represent our sense of to- lic we must tread carefully. Personal respongetherness. sibility will not be enough; what is currently Yet, I have started to notice something trou- missing in the weakly-bound communities bling about the character of daily life in Ann across the United States is a sense of the colArbor. It is not the fact that people keep their lective. Only when we are able to acknowledge distance from each other — this is a good thing, the existence of others will we recognize the albeit an unfortunate truth of following public deprivations of unmitigated self-interest and health guidelines. It’s also not about my frus- the virtues of living in the public sphere.
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Take a seat
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 16
BY TAYLOR SCHOTT, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT
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ave you ever tried to count all of the benches in Nichols Arboretum? I tried once and have only an estimate to show for it: 72. Though I know that an estimate is better than nothing, better than not trying at all and better than letting that curiosity fade into the recesses of a cluttered mind, I still wish to know the exact number, not just an insecure estimate. Peculiarity aside, indulging in that kind of curiosity, and in nature, is more necessary than most college students realize. The Arb does not feel like the rest of Ann Arbor; it is out of place, but necessarily so. Because of the discordance between the hallowed columns of campus and the gentle green of the Arb, the latter becomes a kind of sanctuary. Spend too much time there, though, and you’ll begin to fixate on odd particularities: every different way to describe how the wind moves through the leaves, which exact hue of green it is that the slanting shadows create on the grass or wondering if those who have engraved “in memory” instead of “in loving memory” on the bench plaques love their dead less than those who chose to engrave the latter. It is important, then, to become acutely aware of what is indulgence and what is obsession — a differentiation that can seem outwardly obvious but is inwardly murky. Like many students, I’ll run in the Arb, but only if my schedule requires quickness, or if I figure that my complexion could use some circulatory rouge. I’ll sail down the gravel paths toward the Huron River, the downhill working for me, my legs just carrying out the task. Each step that connects with the gravel is immediately satisfying, that crunch, rapid breath and a pulsating chest. But if time allows, I walk through the Arb with languor. I also bring a bag because the bag can hold paper and pens to record notes like: “Are those chickadees? Tiny birds either way.”
“Overhead on path, ‘We weren’t planning on coming here and then we did.’” “Construction materials but no crew = lunch break?” Entering the Arb off Geddes Road — the entrance with the stout iron gates — I begin to wind through a short path with crowding shrubbery and sporadic yellow flowers that look like banana peppers when you cross your eyes just right. Past the flower-peppers, I reach the first overlook, two benches which abut each other on a soggy plot of land. As I sit, they provide a faraway view of the North Campus clock tower, the one that looks like a futuristic hairbrush. I told a friend once that you could see North Campus from these overlook benches, and she scrunched her face in disgust — we both lived in Bursley Hall last year, and the memory of our residence is still terrifyingly fresh. Benches and overlooks like this are scattered generously all over the Arb. Runners trot past them, their masks set low like chin strasps. The chattering birds, their chorus, swirl around. Some will screech instead of sing — but their song, however unpleasant, you must remember is not for you. There are plaques accompanying almost every bench in the Arboretum, adorning teak wood with memory and with fondness. I tally their beginnings: In Loving Memory I I I I I I I I In Memory IIIIII In Recognition IIII In Honor III In Tribute II These plaques lie on the backrest of the bench, some with quotes, some without. I write down the most interesting ones, one of which is regrettably Shakespeare: “Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.” Then I think: Who is to say the rain isn’t the comforting part? Another bench, oddly so, displays a plaque written in Swedish, and this is what Google Translate gives me: “Always so happy, so honest, so happy. An
example. A sun stick in the dark.” I immediately realize that a lot of its true linguistic meaning has been lost, but the sentiment of remembrance remains, even if partial. Farther along the path, another reads, “He lived and laughed, and loved and left, and the world will never be the same,” and I think I like this one the best. Perhaps it is because of the alliteration, but it is more likely that I just appreciate a succinctly presented truth — the brevity of life. Past these benches, spiraling stairs lead me down to the grassy basin, the “main valley,” everything sloping and everything lush. Down there, the fences sit stacked with a conception so basic that they appear to me like Lincoln Logs — low and rudimentary — notched at the ends for a smart fit. Some benches — yes, there are more here — aren’t wooden at all, some are just rectangular slabs of concrete wedged firmly into dark dirt, a shaded spot that doesn’t seem to necessitate a seat. Though these slabs don’t have a backrest, I like how firm they are, and I like that none of them can have plaques, which means no worrying over quotes. Squirrels wriggle their bodies through the cut grass, moving along in a fluid gait, which I find amusing. Squirrels aren’t typically characterized as elegant, but elegant is exactly the word I’d use to describe them if I was asked now. As soft ground gives way to my formerly clean sneakers, I head onward toward the Huron River. The highest leaves rustle in the wind like tossing trinkets; I prefer this gentle animation to stillness. The benches proliferate along the river, and a pedagogical sign fronts the moving water: Huron River Watershed. wa • ter • shed 1. a ridge or stretch of high land dividing the areas drained by different rivers or river systems 2. the area drained by a river or a river system
3. a crucial turning point, affecting action, opinion, etc. A map explains the exact geographic setting I’ve wandered into: The Huron River is 130 miles long, the Nichols Arboretum 123 acres. Seeing Lake Erie on the map is disorienting because I constantly forget I’m on the east side of the state, not the west — where I grew up — and that it’s Lake Erie here, not Lake Michigan. Large ants crawl all over this sign, heading southeast and northwest, all over the board without concern for where they head, aimless but free. I choose a firm root at the edge of the river to sit on, instead of the slabs of pavement that jut rudely into the water’s edge. The soft ground and its firm roots, however dirtying, is the curb from which to properly observe. There’s a poem by W.H. Auden titled “It Was Easter as I Walked the Public Gardens” and in it he writes, “Watching traffic of magnificent cloud/moving without anxiety on open sky.” Although it is not Easter, not even close, and today’s sky is cloudless, I still believe that a similar magnificence is taking place today in Nichols Arboretum. A heron wades through the river, folding its neck and plodding along, maneuvering through the traffic of the current. As I shift on my earthy seat, Auden’s words reverberating in my mind, I begin to think about all the different ways to describe how a river babbles, how it ripples, how it bubbles in some places, spouting, and I find myself wishing for calm that I know won’t come for some months, when the semester is finally over and the snow comes to bring its total blanket. Until then, I’ll keep drumming up ways to describe what I find in the Arboretum, seated at the riverside or in the grassy basin or even at my desk in my apartment, the wind carrying through the screen, maybe a trinket or two falling on the sill.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 17
A sport is dying. Does anyone care?
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he last Michigan team to win a national title was men’s gymnastics. The last one before that was also men’s gymnastics. By any measure, it’s among the most successful programs in the school’s history, with six national titles and three in the ETHAN last decade. SEARS In short, when Kurt Golder — the coach who won those championships — talks, you should listen. Golder started out his coaching career at a local high school while in junior college, trying to scrape the grades to attend Michigan and compete in men’s gymnastics. He got the grades. He went to Michigan. Then, in his fifth year of school, he coached at Ann Arbor Huron High School. He’s been coaching ever since, first at Ann Arbor Huron, then as an assistant at Michigan State, then at Genesee Valley — a boys’ gymnastics club — then at Iowa, then back at Michigan, with work for the U.S. national team peppered throughout. He’s won four national titles with the Wolverines, including the school’s most recent in any sport, in 2014. Now, he’s watching what could be the slow death of his sport. Universities have been dropping men’s gymnastics programs since the advent of Title IX in 1972, so this isn’t a new problem, but it’s one accelerated by the pandemic. There were 15 men’s programs competing last season and three — Iowa, Minnesota and William & Mary — have dropped the sport due to
JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily
Men’s gymnastics programs at universities across the United States are being canceled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
budget cuts. That means of the three colleges where Golder has coached, Michigan is the only one that still has a men’s gymnastics program. “You’re seeing the demise of your sport, to some extent, right in front of your eyes,” Golder said. He was sitting in his office, mask off so his words wouldn’t be obscured through the phone, on Tuesday afternoon. A couple hours prior, the Big Ten had announced it would play a football season that, for all intents and purposes, amounts to a saving financial grace for struggling athletic departments. Michigan, before and after that announcement, has been consistent in the position that it won’t drop any sports, and Golder has nothing but praise for athletic director Warde Manuel for sticking to it. But that won’t matter if the Wolverines are the only team left standing a few years from
now. “What we need right now is good leadership,” Golder said. “Let’s say when the bald eagle was nearing extinction, they put a Protected Species Act, and now the bald eagle is thriving. And that was good leadership. “... We just need athletic directors, like at the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota, to have an attitude like our athletic director, Warde, and just say ‘We’re not gonna drop any sports.’ ” Golder first started noticing the effects of contraction decades ago when high school programs eliminated their men’s gymnastics teams. That, combined with a short high school season, meant talented young gymnasts who were serious about competing in college or the Olympics had to train at private clubs. Put it together and you get a country club sport. Now, with fewer college programs, there’s more good
athletes than scholarships. Talented gymnasts may get cut out of the sport if they can’t find a collegiate home. In turn, there’s less competition for the Olympic program, which already pales in comparison to the U.S. women’s team. “I don’t see how gymnastics is gonna survive,” Ron Rapper, a captain on Michigan’s 1970 national championship men’s gymnastics team said. “... For the athletes, yeah, they’re losing the sport they love, but they’re losing a lot of intangibles that they’d be able to build their life upon. Not everyone becomes an Olympic gymnast. Not everyone becomes an NFL football player. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t receive positive benefits from participating in the sport.” If you’re a believer in the stated mission of college athletics — academics and life lessons and all of the stuff people like to talk about — you should care about this a whole lot more than
whatever’s happening with football. Because men’s gymnasts aren’t making money off professional careers. Nobody is dropping bags to get them to commit. They’re the athletes to whom something resembling the NCAA’s mission actually applies, and schools are cutting them anyway. “It does seem like we’re the targeted one,” Golder said. “Boy, I don’t have a good answer for (gymnastics being cut), unfortunately. They’re one of the cleaner programs in a department. They stay out of trouble for the most part. They have great GPAs, they take real challenging courses, they don’t bother people or anything. “In my opinion, they’re sort of like the model student-athletes, and they’re not rewarded for it. They’re eliminated as a result of it.” When football season was canceled, the anger was palpable. Parents protested in Rose-
mont and Ann Arbor. The public lost its mind and the season became a political prop. Football is a lot bigger than men’s gymnastics. But maybe this deserves more than some frustration in select quarters of the internet. “If there’s outrage because they’re delaying the (football) season or something like that, I’m OK with that,” Golder said. “I wish that we had the same public support and the same outrage when they cancelled our season. We had a really, really good shot at winning the Big Ten and NCAA championship last year. And of course that story will never be told or we’ll never know if we would have or not. “But I’m just all about opportunities for every sport and it hurts to see any sport be dropped. Stanford dropped 11 sports. They didn’t drop men’s gymnastics, so I’m real happy about that. But I’m pissed that the culture in America is eliminating opportunity.” Golder had to tell his team, one he thought had a shot at a national title, that their season was over last March. Imagine if he had to tell them the sport itself was done. At least at Michigan, that won’t happen soon. But it’s happening elsewhere. Michigan doesn’t make money off men’s gymnastics. Even if there was a possibility of having fans this year, tickets are free. There aren’t media rights. These guys are playing for themselves and their school. And their sport is on the brink. It’s on everyone else to notice.
Sears can be reached at searseth@umich.edu or on Twitter @ethan_sears.
Allyson Eggleton’s predictably perfect formula
PHOTO COURTESY OF CHAD SHEPARD
Allyson Eggleton, a junior on the Michigan women’s rowing team and advocate for mental health awareness, uses the formula “event plus response equals outcome” to help with mental health.
RIAN RATNAVALE Daily Sports Editor
Allyson Eggleton lives by a formula. Event, plus response, equals outcome. In a given race, the junior rower and her teammates on the Michigan women’s rowing team use it to spend energy only on what they can control, and not any bumps thrown their way. It seems simple enough. But when grappling with the age of COVID-19, the Big Ten canceling sports and prior personal struggles, Eggleton rode out — and continues to ride out — that mantra in the face of adversity. “Student athletes have such a pressure put on them and are
seen as these holy icons of grit, strength and perseverance,” Eggleton said. “(Know) that it’s okay to struggle too, and that we all struggle, and that it’s not anything that’s not normal.” As a teenager, Eggleton experienced, in her own words, severe bouts of depression and anxiety. Not comfortable telling anybody, she didn’t mention it to anyone for four years until she told her doctor during her junior year of high school and finally found effective treatment methods. That, in combination with coming to Ann Arbor, was a turning point — a renewed focus on the response, as opposed to the event. “The lowest was towards the end of high school, so coming out of that and coming to Mich-
igan, I was already working my way back up from like, a really dark place,” Eggleton said. “Michigan has been so helpful for me to have a community of people so passionate about what I’m passionate about.” Whereas before Eggleton didn’t feel comfortable being vulnerable about mental health, her time at Michigan has not only enabled her to grow intrinsically, but also shaped her into a vocal advocate for student-athlete mental health. Eggleton chose to major in psychology, is a student ambassador for “The Hidden Opponent” — a non-profit that aims to “address the stigma in sports culture” — and hopes to be selected to be one of two yearly mental health liaisons that facilitate discussions
between student-athletes and the athletic department. And even though she believes that the Michigan athletic department as a whole does a good job of destigmatizing mental health and stress, she knows there’s always work to be done for every individual. “I think there’s a culture, I can’t speak on every team’s behalf, but the culture that my team and my coaches have built up has shown me a side of Michigan athletics that is focused on being the best you,” Eggleton said. “We preach ‘The Team, The Team, The Team,’ but you can’t contribute anything to your team if you can’t keep yourself sane and happy.” Eggleton is assured and placid when she says that, but to anyone that’s followed college
athletics during the COVID-19 pandemic and the perils of canceled seasons for non-revenue sports, the rower’s demeanor only furthers underscores how vital being careful with her mental health habits is to her. When Michigan rowing coach Mark Rothstein got off the phone with the Big Ten after it canceled all spring championships in March, Eggleton was haunted — the “wails of her teammates” permanently and unforgettably etched in her mind. And as the sadness of a canceled season and time of relative isolation began for athletes across the university, Eggleton, as always, had a response. “We have a saying on the team: E+R=O,” Eggleton said. “Event plus response equals
outcome, and the only thing that you can control in that formula is your response. I’ve been thinking about that a lot and how this year is looking going ahead, not just for my team but for my life, and what I can control, in the event of COVID, is my response and outlook.” “So that’s my biggest piece of advice — focus on what you can control, the way you react and look at any situation with a glass half-full, and if it doesn’t take you far it will hopefully warp your perspective a little bit and take you down a more positive path.” Sometimes the best Eggleton, or anyone, can do is just keep rowing and reacting — bumps along the way be damned.
Sports
18 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Kwity Paye and Carlo Kemp lead initiative to help Michigan football team register to vote BRANDON TRACHTENBERG Daily Sports Writer
On Aug. 23, a video went viral of a police officer shooting a Black man named Jacob Blake seven times in his back in front of his family in Kenosha, Wisc. Yet another disturbing story of police brutality, the shooting of Blake sent shockwaves to the growing protests and marches that had been happening since June in cities across the country. Three days later, the Milwaukee Bucks’ players decided that it was not appropriate to continue playing sports as the country continued to burn both physically and spiritually. The ensuing league-wide boycott cancelled the remaining NBA games for several days, all while in the midst of a hotly contested playoff. The rest of the sports world followed, as athletes demonstrated that there were bigger things at play than sports. Seeing the horrific videos and hearing about the stories that have been circulating these past few months, Michigan senior defensive lineman Kwity Paye, along with many other athletes around the country, felt that it was too hard to continue to do his job and go along with his normal life. “During camp, a lot of news was breaking out about police killing a Black man,” Paye told The Daily. “A lot of people were outraged with all the social injustice going on.” Paye and graduate Michigan defensive lineman Carlo Kemp couldn’t stand being complacent, so they decided to take action. The one thing they could control was
FILE PHOTO/Daily
Senior defensive lineman Kwity Paye, along with teammate Carlo Kemp, led an initiative to help get the Michigan football team registered to vote.
getting themselves and their team registered to vote. “It was something that we’ve wanted for a while,” Paye said, “For me, although I have never voted before, it was something that I felt like I had to do. To make change, the change I want, it starts with voting and getting registered was the first step in doing that.” So, last Thursday, Paye and Kemp led an initiative to register the Michigan football team to vote in the upcoming November election. “There was one day after practice,” Paye said, “me and Carlo had to call (director of player personnel) Sean Magee one day a while ago and we were like ‘Is it possible for the whole
team to get registered to vote?’ … One day randomly after practice, we walk into the locker room and the table was set up and they got guys registered to vote.” Elections are a staple of a democracy, and the best way that citizens can have an immediate impact on their community is by choosing the people they think fit their beliefs and ideas on how to solve issues and lead. However, the past few years, many people, especially young people, have refrained from voting and neglected their right. In 2016, only 58.1% of voting-eligible people turned out to vote and despite young people (18-29 year olds) making up
With football’s return on the horizon, Michigan ready to play
a third of those people, only half of them actually voted. “For a while,” Paye said, “the older generation thought that we weren’t the type to fight back or the type to go out and do these protests or the type to stand up for what we think is right.” But this election feels different from the rest. There’s so much at stake as this country handles the worst pandemic seen in a century, as well as the uprising of sweeping social movements. Paye and many other community leaders agree that now is the right time for people to get active in making decisions that could affect their lives by using their right to vote.
“I would say it is just really different,” Paye said, “... We are getting a lot more of the younger generation into voting, because we have seen what has happened in past years where our generation doesn’t vote. We don’t get what we want in office, so for us, it’s a duty.” Many young athletes argue that getting involved in the voting process is the best way to do that. On June 22, LeBron James and his business team created ‘More than a Vote,’ an organization — consisting of Black athletes and artists — to encourage participation in elections and make it easier for people to register and request ballots. Like James, Paye and Kemp
In Donovan Edwards, Michigan has its chance to win back the mitten
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Senior linebacker Josh Ross is looking forward to getting back on the field at Michigan Stadium this fall.
ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
When Josh Ross typed “Big Ten” into Twitter’s search bar Wednesday morning, it showed the senior linebacker everything he wanted to know. In five weeks, he would be playing football. “We were so excited hearing that news,” Ross said. “Finally! That’s how I was feeling, ‘Finally!’ We’ve been putting so much work in preparing and it’s just a blessing we get to play this fall.” Since the announcement, that’s been the prevailing feeling among the Michigan football team, which hasn’t stopped practicing since returning to campus in June. The Wolverines have made it a point to stay ready to play. Hearing the news changed the tenor of Michigan’s practice on Wednesday. The intensity was higher. The adrenaline, too. Football was back. Well, with just a few changes. The Big Ten announced that it would not allow general ticket sales for the 2020 season, with the only potential recipients being families of players and staff. Michigan president Mark Schlissel confirmed Thursday that there would be no fans in the stands at Michigan Stadium. But at this point, the Wolverines don’t care how many fans there are as long as it means they get to play football.
“At the end of the day I just want to play,” Ross said. “Regardless of if there’s people in the stands, we can be playing in Schembechler (Hall). I just want to play at the end of the day. It might be a little weird, but it don’t matter, we wanna go out there and play and hit.” Another difference this year is part of what enabled the Big Ten’s return — a strict set of protocols. Among them is a rule that if at least 5% of a team’s tests are positive and 7.5% of the team population tests positive in a sevenday period, that team must shut down practice for seven days. Additionally, any player who tests positive can only return after a minimum of 21 days post-diagnosis, all in a nine-week schedule with no bye weeks. Although the protocols are strict, Michigan is prepared to meet them. After all, the Wolverines have already gone three months without a positive test thanks to strong enforcement. The new thresholds add an additional incentive to comply with social distancing requirements. “When they said that, I’m not leaving the house unless I’m at (Schembechler),” Ross said. “I’m not leaving, I’m not going anywhere. Of course if I got class, but other than that, I’m in my apartment.” Several notable players — wide receiver Nico Collins, cornerback Ambry Thomas and offensive tackle Jalen Mayfield — have already
declared for the draft, though Thomas indicated on Big Ten Radio on Thursday that he may be able to return. But many 2019 starters are back. Senior defensive lineman Kwity Paye expressed his intention to play in 2020 on Twitter. And fifth-year senior running back Chris Evans is returning from suspension. Even with several losses on the offensive side — including all five starting offensive linemen, Collins and fellow receivers Donovan PeoplesJones and Tarik Black — the returning players on that side of the ball are steadfast in their confidence that they’ll be ready to go. Among those waiting in the wings are junior quarterback Joe Milton, presumed to be the starter, and wide receivers Giles Jackson, Cornelius Johnson and Mike Sainristil, who all saw time at the position in 2019. “I wouldn’t say it really feels different,” Jackson said. “We’re rolling on offense. It doesn’t feel like we’ve really missed a beat, honestly. If you just look out there, yeah, there’s new people out there but you can’t tell. We look good.” For now, the next step for Michigan is getting in pads, a step previously not allowed by the Big Ten. Ross emphasized how much he’s missed padded practice, noting the tenacity of hitting another player. But there’s further significance, too: Each day the players spend in pads will be one day closer to the return of games.
have realized the potential for using their platform for good. They decided to start internally by getting themselves registered, before going out and encouraging others to do the same. “We just wanted to do our part,” Paye said. “Make sure that we’re voting. Just because the stuff that’s going on right now, it’s just ridiculous.” Most of Kemp and Paye’s teammates were not even registered to vote prior to this month, so they jumped at this opportunity that Kemp and Paye provided. “It was just something as a world, we have to take on and vote and change the world and make it a better place,” senior defensive back Brad Hawkins said. “We preach that at the university, staying together and being a family. That’s something that was helpful for us and we took pride in everyone getting registered to vote.” Michigan football players know what’s at stake come November, and they want to make sure they do their part to fight for the issues they think are important for them. They understand that — as young people — they are the future, and the issues present now are ones that will continue to affect them unless any change happens. “The next generation is gonna be possibly taking over this country,” Paye said, “and we are gonna have to be ones to make decisions. The younger generation has the obligation to start doing things now and showing that they can be responsible enough in the near future to fix what’s wrong and just do what’s right by the other citizens.”
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
Running back Donovan Edwards is a recruit that Michigan needs in order to assert itself in the state.
THEO MACKIE
Managing Sports Editor
OAK PARK — Late Friday night, in the moments before the floodlights flicked off at Oak Park High School, Donovan Edwards stood surrounded by media, answering a slew of questions about his future. This is the situation the West Bloomfield running back finds himself in now, as a blue-chip prospect in the backyard of a school that so desperately needs him. When he speaks, a group of reporters swarms, as if he’s already at Michigan — or Georgia or Oklahoma or any of the other major Division I programs in pursuit of his talents. And when he’s done, the lights darken, as if they had waited for the night’s brightest star to be done dazzling. Friday, by Edwards’ own admission, wasn’t his finest performance. Quarterback Alex Short and running back Dillon Tatum both saw more usage as West Bloomfield romped to a 39-0 win. But when the Lakers needed him, Edwards stepped up, rushing for three touchdowns and flashing a little bit of everything that makes him the top player on Michigan’s 2021 board. “My ability to run up the field to score a touchdown, I feel as though it’s unmatched,” Edwards said after the game. For the Wolverines, though, that’s not why Edwards matters so much. Per 247Sports composite rankings, he’s the 36th-ranked player in the 2021 class. That’s 10 spots higher than Zach
Charbonnet was in 2019 and a few dozen higher than Blake Corum was last year. On the field, he would combine with JJ McCarthy to create a tantalizingly talented offensive duo. He would, in other words, be critical to Michigan’s short-term success. But the Wolverines’ 2021 class would still be dwarfed by Ohio State’s. Jim Harbaugh would still face an uphill battle to carry Michigan to the heights most envisioned when he arrived in Ann Arbor five years ago. Here in Metro Detroit, though, Edwards’ commitment would represent a shifting of the tides. “Given the fact that he’s so highly ranked and he’s right in their backyard and Michigan led very early on big time, it would be a massive disappointment if they couldn’t get that one done,” Steve Lorenz, a recruiting analyst at 247Sports, said. For years, even as Harbaugh has consistently compiled topranked recruiting classes, he’s faced questions in Metro Detroit. Last month, Rocco Spindler committed to Notre Dame amid heavy pursuit from Michigan. In 2020, Justin Rodgers — the state’s top recruit — ended up at Kentucky. The year before, it was Devontae Dobbs and Julian Barnett out of Belleville High School, both of whom went to Michigan State. Perhaps, Lorenz says, these struggles are blown out of proportion by perception. Recruiting in 2020 requires a national footprint. But at the same time, it’s true that Ohio State doesn’t miss out on the top recruits in Ohio. Michigan, for
whatever reason, misses out on the top recruits in Michigan. In Edwards, the Wolverines have the chance to change that. “He’s a kid that a lot of kids are following , his lead and his path on things,” Ron Bellamy, Edwards’ coach at West Bloomfield, said when asked whether Edwards could help Michigan’s future recruiting in Metro Detroit. “He’s a kid that whatever college he chooses, he’s going to entice kids to maybe follow his path.” Bellamy is careful to play politics, too. When asked whether Michigan would be impacted in the long term if Edwards selects Georgia or Oklahoma, he says no, citing the Wolverines’ ability to identify talent. It’s hard to comport that, though, with “he’s going to entice kids to maybe follow his path.” That’s why Michigan has known Edwards is a player they had to have since he started high school, if not earlier. And it’s why, before games, Michigan running backs’ coach Jay Harbaugh calls Edwards to give him pointers and forge a relationship beyond football. “The people I’m gonna be around every single day,” Edwards said of what he’s looking for in a school. “The coaches’ personalities, just being around a great atmosphere, an atmosphere that feels just like home.” Come December, when Edwards is expecting to make his decision, that’s what Michigan will need to provide. If the Wolverines can deliver, they’ll land not only a future star in their backfield, but an inroads to reclaiming their backyard.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 19
MICHIGAN 2020 SEASON FOOTBALL SCHEDULE How Michigan will fill voids left by departures
WEEK 1 | OCT. 24 @ MINNESOTA WEEK 2 | OCT. 31
VS MICH. STATE
WEEK 3 | NOV. 7 @ INDIANA WEEK 4 | NOV. 14 VS WISCONSIN ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
Wide receiver Nico Collins is one of three major departures for the Michigan football team, the others being cornerback Ambry Thomas and quarterback Dylan McCaffrey.
DANIEL DASH
Daily Sports Editor
When the Michigan football team takes the field the weekend of Oct. 24, it will do so without a handful of key pieces. Cornerback Ambry Thomas declared for the NFL Draft last month, leaving the Wolverines without their top cornerback. On Wednesday, mere hours after news broke of a unanimous decision to begin a Big Ten football season, Sports Illustrated reported that senior wideout Nico Collins signed with agent Drew Rosenhaus and the Detroit News reported that redshirt junior quarterback Dylan McCaffrey has opted out of the 2020 season and intends to transfer. With three marquee players no longer in the fold, The Daily broke down how Michigan can fill the voids this fall: Replacing Nico Collins Perhaps the Wolverines’ most dangerous offensive threat a
season ago, Collins’s decision to sign with an NFL agent leaves Michigan without its top vertical threat. Collins recorded 37 catches for 729 receiving yards and seven touchdowns as a junior, including a 165-yard, threetouchdown outburst against Indiana in November. The Wolverines’ wide receivers room already took a hit when Donovan Peoples-Jones declared for the NFL Draft following his junior season, and with Collins now gone, it appears the team’s top returner will be junior slot receiver Ronnie Bell. Behind him, sophomores Giles Jackson, Mike Sainristil and Cornelius Johnson showed flashes of potential as true freshmen last fall. Without the 6-foot-4 Collins, offensive coordinator Josh Gattis’ emphasis on speed will only become more important. Jackson and Sainristil are two of the fastest players on the team, while the Wolverines will also welcome a pair of four-star burners in A.J. Henning and Roman Wilson.
Replacing Ambry Thomas When Thomas announced he’d be returning for his senior season in January, it provided some much-needed experience for a cornerbacks group that lost Lavert Hill to the 2020 NFL Draft. Thomas started all 13 games at cornerback last year, recording 38 tackles and three interceptions en route to a third team All-Big Ten selection. Without Thomas, the Wolverines’ top cornerback will be redshirt sophomore Vincent Gray, who appeared in all 13 games last fall. Candidates to start opposite Gray and in the nickel include redshirt freshman D.J. Turner and true freshman Andre Seldon, neither of which have any in-game college experience at cornerback. Redshirt freshman Jalen Perry and redshirt sophomore Gemon Green could also carve out roles. In Thomas, the Wolverines also lose an explosive kick returner. Jackson, who returned a kickoff for a touchdown against Maryland
last fall, figures to handle the majority of return duties this fall. Replacing Dylan McCaffrey After totaling 242 passing yards, 166 rushing yards and five total touchdowns across 13 career appearances, McCaffrey will finish out his remaining two years of eligibility elsewhere. By all accounts, McCaffrey’s decision to opt out and transfer is an indicator that the starting quarterback job belongs to redshirt sophomore Joe Milton. With Milton and his cannon of an arm under center, Michigan’s offense unlocks another dimension of verticality. Milton showed flashes of potential against Rutgers last September, completing three of his four passes for 59 yards and a touchdown. As Milton slides into the starting role, redshirt freshman Cade McNamara becomes the presumptive backup. The Wolverines also added three-star pro-style quarterback Dan Villari to their 2020 recruiting class last December.
Report: Jalen Mayfield hoping to opt back in for 2020 season ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer
When Michigan begins its season on Oct. 24, it will do so with one of its top prospects for the 2021 NFL Draft. On Friday afternoon, Rivals reported that offensive tackle Jalen Mayfield was hoping to opt back into the 2020 season after originally declaring for the draft in August. Mayfield seemed to confirm the news on Twitter shortly afterward with a shoutout to quarterback Joe Milton. Offensive coordinator Josh Gattis also tweeted about the development. “Let’s go!!! This season will be special for you!!!” the tweet read. Although Mayfield has expressed his desire to return now that the Big
Ten has reversed course and decided to play this fall after all, he and receiver Nico Collins will still need approval from the NCAA to play. According to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated, Mayfield signed with an agent after opting out, which would normally render a player ineligible. Attorney Tom Mars has expressed that players like Mayfield would likely have a good argument to be reinstated given that the Big Ten originally said that their decision to postpone the fall season would not be revisited. According to The Athletic, Mayfield is still enrolled in online classes for the fall semester, which would clear another eligibility hurdle. Mayfield is not the only Big Ten player who originally declared for the
draft who is now hoping to opt back in. Minnesota wide receiver Rashod Bateman is also hoping to gain eligibility. A statement put out by the Golden Gophers’ football program today indicated that Bateman has been allowed to practice with the team, but they are still working to get him cleared by the NCAA to play. Before news broke of Mayfield’s intention to return, Gattis expressed on Twitter that players like Bateman and Mayfield should be able to opt back in if they so choose. “Players who opted out to prepare for the NFL should all be reinstated without penalty regardless of what they accepted it’s not a competitive advantage,” the tweet read. “However these agents offering these young men money to leave school in
the fall show they don’t have a post NFL plan for you!” If the Wolverines can get Mayfield back, it will be a boon for a team that looked like it would have to break in five new offensive linemen this fall. Mayfield, who started at right tackle in 2019, held his own against Ohio State’s Chase Young. He is widely considered one of Michigan’s top draft prospects and ranked in the top 50 of CBS Sports’ Big Board. Should Mayfield be ruled eligible, his skill and experience will help anchor the young unit. It remains to be seen whether the other Michigan players who have opted out — cornerback Ambry Thomas, Collins and running back Christian Turner — will choose to opt back in.
Casey Phinney flips commitment from Michigan to Boston College DANIEL DASH
Daily Sports Editor
On Saturday morning, the Michigan football team’s 2021 recruiting class lost its second member in as many weeks when three-star inside linebacker Casey Phinney flipped his commitment to Boston College.
Recruited by defensive coordinator Don Brown, the Marshfield, Mass. native originally committed to Michigan over Army, Yale, Georgetown and Princeton, among others, on Apr. 3. Phinney is a high school teammate of four-star 2021 offensive lineman Drew Kendall, one of offensive line coach Ed Warinner’s top recruiting targets this cycle. Ranked the No. 1,189 overall
prospect in the 2021 class, Phinney was the Wolverines’ lowest-rated linebacker commitment and the third-lowest overall player in the class, according to the 247Sports composite. Following Phinney’s departure, the Wolverines’ 2021 class now ranks No. 10 nationally in the 247Sports team rankings. With Phinney no longer in the fold, Michigan is now left with three
linebackers in its recruiting class: four-stars Junior Colson and Jaydon Hood and three-star Tyler McLaurin. Whether or not the Wolverines pursue a fourth linebacker at this point remains to be seen. Earlier this month, Michigan’s recruiting class also lost three-star wide receiver Markus Allen. Without Phinney, the Wolverines’ 2021 group is down to 20 total commitments.
WEEK 5 | NOV. 21 @ RUTGERS WEEK 6 | NOV. 28 VS PENN STATE
WEEK 7 | DEC. 5 VS MARYLAND WEEK 8 | DEC. 12 @ OHIO STATE WEEK 9 | DEC. 19 VS B1G WEST
20 — Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
THEO MACKIE
Managing Sports Editor
For years, Joe Milton’s talent has been a mercurial talking point at the tip of Michigan coaches’ tongues. There are the stories, repeated ad nauseum, of his arm strength. Early in his Michigan career, the stories go, he injured receivers with passes zipped in at warp speed. Eightyfive yards, allegedly, is his maximum throwing distance. Giles Jackson has one of those stories too, as told in a Zoom call with reporters Thursday. “In practice one time, we had a deep ball, I was probably 70 yards out and he just launched it,” the sophomore receiver said. “I thought he threw it late, but the ball beat me to my spot. I was like, whoa. He has an arm I’ve never seen before.” There’s a different tone to such a story now, though. Because over the course of a few hours Wednesday morning, everything changed for Milton. First, the Big Ten announced its plans to return to play after canceling the fall football season just five weeks prior. Then, a few hours later, word trickled in that senior Dylan McCaffrey was opting out to pursue a transfer. Suddenly, Milton, whose precocious talent had always sat outside of the limelight, was in line to start a football game for Michigan in just five weeks. For Milton, it’s an opportunity he always deemed within reach even as most outside the program assumed McCaffrey would succeed Shea Patterson as the Wolverines’ starter. “Nothing been on my mind to (transfer) somewhere else,” Milton said last December, ahead of the Citrus Bowl. “Just being patient and humble. It’s gonna come one day.” The program did not make Milton available to media Thursday afternoon, but Jackson has seen his teammate seize this offseason’s quarterback competition, even as practice time has been limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
You could tell, he wanted to play, and he was just more locked in.
“I think he’s just more focused, I’d say,” Jackson said. “You could tell, as soon as this offseason, he was a whole different person. He was more serious, more focused. You could tell, he wanted to play, and he was just more locked in.” The two live next door in Ann Arbor and have developed into close friends over the past year, part of a bond between Michigan’s quarterbacks and receivers. On the field, that has parlayed into a trust between two largely inexperienced groups. After Nico Collins signed with an agent this week, indicating his intentions to declare for the NFL Draft, the Wolverines’ only returning starting pass catchers are junior receiver Ronnie Bell and fifth-year senior tight end Nick Eubanks. That lack of experience leaves a heavy burden on Michigan’s sophomore trio of Giles Jackson, Cornelius Johnson and Mike Sainristil. The three combined for just 21 catches for 348 yards and a touchdown last season, but all fit the mold of offensive coordinator Josh Gattis’ speed in space philosophy. Combined with their burgeoning connection with Milton, that has Jackson feeling confident. “I’m always with him getting better, watching film,” Jackson said. “I know in the offseason we were getting together, throwing footballs together a lot. That just helped. We have a good bond.” Put it all together and Michigan has an offense built of players whose talent has always lurked in the shadows, thrust into the public eye only by press conference hype. On the field, Milton is 6-for-11 for 117 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions. His freshman year of college, in which he went 3-for-4, is the only time he’s ever completed more than 50 percent of his passes, including in high school. And in Collins, he loses the receiver who most fits with his vertical style of play, at least on paper. But now, that qualifier — “on paper” — is on the verge of becoming a remnant of the past for Milton. In 36 days, he will almost certainly take the field as Michigan’s QB1. And when he does so, the hype will finally meet its test.
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