2021-02-10

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Weiser sought Regents’ support after calls for his resignation: “Remember Germany in the 1930s” Newly-elected GOP Chair sent multiple controversial emails to board over past year CALDER LEWIS Daily News Editor

University of Michigan Regent Ron Weiser (R) has sent emails to his fellow regents during the last year comparing the board’s silence in the face of recent calls for his resignation to “Germany in the 1930’s,” calling graduate student protesters “hired union hacks” and one containing only a picture of a bikini-clad woman.

The emails, obtained by The Michigan Daily, were first reported by WDET. Some in the U-M community demanded Weiser’s resignation following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol because they thought he inadequately addressed the incident. Weiser called on the board to support him in a Jan. 17 email to the Board of Regents, U-M President Mark Schlissel and U-M Secretary Sally Churchill.

“Their issues are not about anything I have done or said only about being a Republican Leader and not saying exactly what they want me to say (it varies with some of them actually saying I’m antiSemitic),” Weiser wrote. “It might be nice if part or all of my fellow Board Members say something about my service or largess to the University. Silence has historical

consequences.

Remember Germany in the 1930’s.”

None of the regents have followed through on Weiser’s request to comment publicly on the matter.

When asked by The Daily in a previous interview about the calls for Weiser’s resignation, Schlissel said questions about Weiser’s political associations and activities within the Republican Party are

questions for Weiser, not the University, to answer. He pointed out regents are accountable to the public through statewide popular vote every eight years.

“I think that the many faculty

said. “It’ll have to be worked out, but I can say that the University itself, as well as all the regents, unambiguously condemn the violence and those that incited the violence. That’s not a matter of question.”

Weiser has sent other questionable emails to the U-M administration. In an April email to the board, Weiser relayed an anecdote from his wife about a Graduate Employees’ Organization car demonstration outside the Weiser residence during bargaining with the University at the time.

“I suspect these are hired union hacks,” Weiser’s email reads.

“The lead person truly has no idea of U governance, he was sure the U was a for profit business.

While he was cleanly dressed it was impossible to imagine him in a classroom. Janitor maybe from the mental content.”

Additionally, on May 1, 2020, Weiser sent an email to the regents containing only a selfie of a woman in sunglasses and a bikini top laying on a towel.

Design by Ahmad Kady The subject of the email is “BB.” and students in the community The Daily is not publishing the and others that have objections photo as it is unable to verify the are raising those objections, woman’s identity and to protect they’re getting lots of coverage her privacy. in the media, and those fall into the political process,” Schlissel See WEISER, Page 4

RESEARCH

BUSINESS

talks COVID-19 response

Even with Gov. Whitmer’s approval, some businesses hesitant to fully reopen

U-M medical historian who coined the term “flattening the curve”

Dr. Howard Markel discusses impact of quarantine on marginalized communities SIERRA ÉLISE HANSEN Daily News Contributor

Dr. Howard Markel, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine, has written extensively on American pandemics, as well as on the political uses of quarantine and isolation. The Michigan Daily spoke with Markel over the phone last month to hear more about his work as a doctor and scholar during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Markel began by explaining how he co-authored a paper with his colleague Dr. Marty Citron on “flattening the curve” in 2007, which suggested that cases are reduced when social distancing measures are implemented.

Citron visualized data into a curve, now considered by many to be a defining public health image of COVID-19.

Markel said his work on flattening the curve began in 2005 in the era of the H5N1 avian flu. Citron, who worked as the head of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would frequently travel with Markel to give presentations. Usually, their trips took them to Atlanta or to Washington, D.C. “I knew the room service menu at the hotel I stayed in by heart,” Markel recalled. “I always ordered the same thing. I can even tell you: chicken with a mustard sauce and rice.”

Markel said he coined the term “flattening the curve” while opening a takeout container of pad thai, which looked like a flat curve.

“When I took out the pad

thai, it was all flat like one giant noodle,” he explained. “I said: ‘it’s just like the curve. It’s flat!’

So, that’s where ‘flattening the curve’ came from.”

Markel said the implementation of social distancing measures in Mexico during the 2009 influenza epidemic became the pair’s first living “laboratory” for their concept. At the time, Markel said he and Citron noticed that though the influenza epidemic was not as deadly as some feared, the application of social distancing measures had the desired effect they’d predicted: They extended the preparation time allotted to the Mexican government, ensuring its hospitals were able to see a smaller and therefore more manageable influx of patients.

Despite the reduction in cases, Markel said he and Citron encountered strong doubt — and outright dismissal — when they presented their work to the public in the early 2010’s.

Markel said he experienced contradictory emotions when seeing his life’s work suddenly become so relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We didn’t have a crisis to apply this to until now,” Markel said. “It’s been incredibly exciting for me as a scholar and a professor, and as an observer, I’ve been horrified.”

While social distancing is “the nuclear option” because it is so disruptive to how society functions, Markel said it remains necessary for putting an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and, despite disagreements over public health programs and policies, the country needs a centralized program.

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See MARKEL, Page 4

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Restaurants face complications in resuming indoor dining GEORGE WEYKAMP Daily Staff Reporter

On Jan. 22 — six days after the first case of the COVID-19 B.1.1.7 variant was first detected in Washtenaw County — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced indoor dining could resume at 25% capacity on Feb. 1. Just three days after the announcement, the Washtenaw County Health Department imposed a stay in place recommendation on the University of Michigan.

Now that businesses can

finally open, the stay in place recommendation has introduced further complications.

This resumption comes after nearly three months of restaurants being restricted to takeout and outdoor dining under Gov. Whitmer’s Nov. 15 “Pause to Save Lives” executive order, which was met with frustration from local business owners.

The stay in place recommendation, which is similar in structure to the October 2020 stay at home order, asks students not to leave their residences except for essential activities

such as in-person classes, work or research that cannot be completed remotely, obtaining food or medical care and other approved activities until 11:59 P.M on Feb. 7. Unlike the first order, however, the recommendation didn’t explicitly ban indoor dining.

Jerusalem Garden owner Ali Ramlawi, a City Council member for Ward 5, said the stay in place recommendation didn’t impact his business nearly as drastically as the October order, mostly because they have only been open for outdoor or carry out dining since June.

“We’re not seeing a noticeable decrease — maybe a 5-10% drop,” Ramlawi said. “It has been a little slower, but it’s hard to pinpoint when you’re not doing much in sales.”

LSA freshman Meredith Dirkman said while she plans to avoid sit-down restaurants and utilize takeout until the stay-athome recommendation expires, she is comfortable with the steps restaurants have taken to keep guests safe and would be willing to eat at one.

See RESTAURANTS, Page 4

Class of 2021 to receive virtual commencement ceremony CAMPUS LIFE

‘U’ will not have graduation at the Big House for second year due to the pandemic FRANCESCA DUONG Daily News Editor

The University of Michigan’s class of 2021 spring commencement will be held virtually amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as announced in an email by University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel Thursday morning.

The announcement comes after a two-week stay-in-place recommendation for the University

by Washtenaw County Health Department, and currently, COVID-19 cases at the University account for more than 34% of the cases in the county.

The commencement ceremony is scheduled for May 1 with plans for synchronous content that will be recorded and available for viewing afterwards. According to the email, the University is also working to provide virtual performances, host interactive elements and bring an inspiring main speaker.

Schlissel noted the decision

was carefully considered, pointing to the uncertainty around future gathering sizes, travel restrictions, infection rates and vaccination rates as strong factors. He acknowledged the community impact of holding a virtual ceremony in his email.

“We very much wish that we could hold a safe commencement in Michigan Stadium, along with the many other celebration activities that are a fundamental part of our community life and traditions,” Schlissel wrote. “Commencement is the most joyous event of the academic year for many in our community, as we celebrate the accomplishments of our graduates and draw inspiration from the achievements they will share with our world.”

The class of 2020 also received a virtual spring and winter commencement ceremony, making this the third ceremony that has been affected by the pandemic. Schlissel stated all graduates affected by the pandemic are welcome to any future

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INDEX

commencement of their choosing.

“They and their families will be our honored guests at these ceremonies, and the graduates will be recognized not just for the completion of their degrees, but also for their resilience and fortitude in persevering during these challenging times,” Schlissel wrote.

According to the email, the

University also hopes to invite both classes back in the future for special future in-person celebrations.

For future updates about the spring commencement, the email encourages students to visit the commencement website.

Daily News Editor Francesca Duong can be reached at fduong@ umich.edu.

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily Commencement for the Class of 2021 will be held virtually and not in the Big House.

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GOVERNMENT

Public Policy Dean Michael Barr’s likely appointment opposed by progressives Biden will reportedly nominate Ford School head as comptroller of the currency KATE WEILAND Daily Staff Reporter

President Joe Biden is expected to nominate Michael Barr, dean of the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, as comptroller of the currency, a role that involves regulation of the banking industry. Following the initial report from The Wall Street Journal, some Democrats are disappointed with the appointment, preferring University of CaliforniaIrvine law professor and more progressive candidate Mehrsa Baradaran over Barr.

As comptroller of the currency, Barr would be in charge of overseeing and regulating the federal banking system, ensuring banks operate in a safe manner and setting the standards for their activities in minority and low-income areas.

Barr previously criticized the Trump administration’s handling of banking regulation, such as a reduction in consumer protection laws and the lack of action taken to address the COVID-19 pandemic, which have had detrimental effects on banks.

Barr worked in several Treasury and State Department roles during the Clinton administration and served as an assistant secretary of the treasury under the Obama administration.

Barr contributed to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which changed financial regulations to reduce the economic impact of the 2008 Great Recession.

The Michigan Daily spoke to some progressive University of Michigan students to gauge their thoughts on Barr’s likely nomination.

Public Policy senior Kerrigan McCabe believes that Barr’s previous experience makes him well fit for comptroller of the currency.

“Barr has such a long history working on economic regulations and protecting consumers, so I think he’s very well fit for the job,” McCabe said. “Barr’s appointment makes sense with what the Biden administration has promised voters about what the economic landscape is going to look like in the future.”

Recently, Barr served as an adviser to the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, a nonprofit representing financial technology firms, which attempts to merge financial regulation and digital design.

Critics believe this position should disqualify Barr from the Biden administration appointment, as the position would allow him to grant bank charters to companies, including firms the Alliance for Innovative Regulation may have advised.

Public Policy junior Tuhin Chakraborty said he supports Barr’s possible appointment and disagrees with critics who say his financial technology experience should disqualify him.

“Fintech companies are rapidly coming into the future of the banking and finance industries, so Barr’s knowledge of tech and future technology will be invaluable to revolutionizing the finance sector in the coming years,” Chakraborty said. “It’s easier to work with someone you are familiar with. I’d say Barr’s work with fintech is the exact opposite of a disqualification.”

However, Public Policy junior Alexander Zittleman, the action co-chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter at the University, said he thinks Barr should not be appointed to the position.

“I think Barr’s experience with fintech firms shows that he’s not the right option,” Zittleman said.

“I don’t think it’s automatically disqualifying, but there are other candidates who don’t have that experience and who aren’t liable to having that as their main priority.”

Baradaran, the other candidate favored by some, has previously championed racial equity and closing the wealth gap, something progressives think would make her a good choice for comptroller of the currency.

Following Biden’s repeated calls for unity — not only across partisan lines but within the Democratic party itself — many hoped progressives such as Baradaran would receive appointments.

Public Policy junior Reuben Glasser, resident and founder of Michigan Political Consulting, wrote in an email to The Daily he believes Barr will also be able to address the issues of racial equity that Baradaran has promoted.

“While I strongly agree that closing the racial wealth gap should be one of the focuses of our Banking Regulator, I’m unsure how that disqualifies Dean Barr,” Glasser wrote. “I have strong faith he will do everything in his power to work with the administration and Congress to do so, while also

doing a fantastic job on a plethora of other issues.”

Recent Public Policy graduate Brooke Bacigal agreed with Glasser, writing in a statement to The Daily she hoped Barr would prioritize addressing issues of systemic injustice he frequently spoke about as dean.

“In an email to the Ford community this past summer addressing racial violence and police brutality he said ‘as policy professionals, we must commit ourselves to addressing these public challenges, difficulties, and social ills directly,’” Bacigal wrote. “Now with the opportunity to do exactly that, I hope that as Comptroller, Dean Barr will prioritize addressing the systemic barriers that have perpetuated racialized economic inequality, strengthen financial inclusion and banking protections for minority communities, and employ the same post-crisis construction of regulations as he did with his work on Dodd-Frank, steering the OCC.” Historically, Barr has been resistant to more progressive limitations on the industry suggested by lawmakers, such as a stricter version of the Volcker Rule, which prevents banks from using depositors’ money for certain investment activities and limits their dealing with covered funds.

After the election, in an email to Public Policy students, Barr congratulated Biden and Harris on their win and emphasized the importance of working across the aisle.

“I also think it is fair to say, that those who have worked with President-elect Biden, from across the political spectrum, whether or not they agree with him on policy or politics, view him as a person of great personal integrity, decency, and compassion,” Barr wrote.

Chakraborty said he thinks Barr’s moderate stance will allow for more legislation to be passed, as Democrats only have

50 seats in the Senate — not enough to pass legislation with the filibuster-proof majority that is often necessary.

“By no means (do Democrats) have a mandate to push forth this stronger, more progressive clause of the Volcker Rule,” Chakraborty said. “Barr will moderate policies and make them more palatable to both the GOP and Democrats and will help more efficiently put forth bipartisan solutions that will be more feasible to turn into law.”

On the other hand, Zittleman said he believes Baradaran’s progressive stance would bring about more positive change.

“A lot of the things that Baradaran supports are things that would directly address issues like racial and intergenerational wealth equality,” Zittleman said. “Is Biden unifying with Republicans across the aisle trying to come up with neoliberal policy agendas that can work for both sides, or is he trying to combat white supremacy and unify with this multicultural tapestry that is America?”

But Glasser emphasized the importance of bipartisanship across party lines.

“Right now the country is in a bit of disarray on every side, I think the choice we, Americans, made to elect Biden is a choice of healing — in hopes both sides can work together,” Glasser wrote.

“If Dean Barr is a result of trying to cultivate more bipartisanship, more conversation and better results for America, I’m all with it.”

Chakraborty agreed with Glasser, stating that unification is something Barr would promote.

“Being able to efficiently work with both parties will produce the most viable policy that has the highest chances of becoming law,” Chakraborty said. “It’s political, uniting and efficient.”

Daily Staff Reporter Kate Weiland can be reached at kmwblue@umich.edu.

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FILE PHOTO/Daily Michael Barr, dean of the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy, is expected to be nominated as comptroller of the currency.

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Wednesday, February 10, 2021 — 3

Activist, scholar LaTosha Brown hosts Black History Month kickoff event CAMPUS LIFE

Speaker encourages students to “reimagine how we can better our world” JANICE KANG

Daily Staff Reporter

To begin this month’s Black History Month celebrations, LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund and a 2020-2021 American Democracy Fellow at Harvard University, discussed civic engagement, voter suppression and political power in the 21st century at a virtual event Monday evening.

Hosted by the University of Michigan Office of MultiEthnic Student Affairs, the event marked the start of a month dedicated to honoring, informing and recognizing the important role that Black people play in American history.

Brown not only spoke on the significance of Black History Month but also shared personal experiences. She began her lecture by singing a song discussing how her hometown of Selma, Ala., inf luenced her political activism today.

“Well, the first thing I did right was the day I started to fight,” Brown sang. “Keep your eyes on the prize and hold on.”

Brown’s vocals and use of music during her talk resonated with many attendees, including Music, Theatre & Dance senior Jack Williams III. “It was really beautiful to not only hear her sing, but to also hear her stories about how music has helped shape her life and shape her work, and about the ways in which music is being used time and time again,” Williams said.

“If you look at old videos from the Civil Rights Movement, you will see them singing as

they’re marching. It just makes me think of the ways in which Black people have used their voices time and time again to enact change.”

Despite the bleak history that often accompanies her tune, Brown said this song is also optimistic because it is an anthem for political activism.

“It was being created and raised within the context of people who had that song in their heart that ultimately shaped me into the person I am today,” Brown said.

Brown carried this tone of positivity into addressing President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. She said people have a responsibility to be civically engaged and cognizant of the policies that impact their day-to-day lives.

“We want people to believe that they have agency and the right to govern themselves,” Brown said. “Every single aspect of our lives is impacted by policy. We’re not asking you to believe in the system. We’re asking you to believe in your agency and power. You’ve got to show up.”

Brown urged the audience to continue fighting for democracy, noting that democracy has always been a threat to white supremacy.

“Democracy has been a vehicle for American exceptionalism to hide behind,” Brown said. “At the same time that we were having lofty ideas that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator, we saw the genocide of Indigenous people in this country and the exploitation and dehumanization of Africans.

However, democracy allows

us to use our leverage and our collective voice to reduce some of the harm that has happened in our communities. If Black people were not voting in this country, we would not have a democracy.”

Brown also commented on a more recent event: the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Brown said current economic uncertainties, as well as blatant racism and scapegoating, contributed to the attempted insurrection.

America look like without racism?”

“98% of people cannot see anything when doing this exercise,” said Brown. “Spend more time radically envisioning what this world can be. There is nothing that has ever been brought into being that was not first envisioned. We can radically reimagine every system as founders of a new America. Spend more time not just reacting to what is

“Spend more time radically envisioning what this world can be. There is nothing that has ever been brought into being that was not first envisioned.”

“There are some larger structural issues that are driving the frustration that is rooted in the current state of the country and economy,” said Brown. “However, Black people and immigrants are consistently the scapegoat and receive most of the blame.

There is an expectation that America is supposed to serve the interest of white comfort.

So when there is white discomfort, there has been a history of society blaming people of color.”

LSA senior Josiah Walker, vice president of LSA student government, asked Brown about the inf luence that Black college students have on the future of democracy. Brown responded by posing a question of her own: “What would

happening around us, but to reimagine how we can better our world.”

This exercise was powerful and eye-opening for many attendees, including Music, Theatre & Dance associate professor Antonio C. Cuyler, who moderated the event.

“I’ve heard of this experiment before and I’ve been thinking about it more,” Cuyler said. “If we remove racism, if we remove sexism, if we remove all forms of oppression currently in our society, what would that look like? And the answer I came up with is a more prosperous society, a society that allows all of us to prosper unencumbered by these artificial differences that we placed too much value in.”

Walker said he wanted to see the University raise awareness of Black history during all months of the year.

“Black people still exist outside the month of February,” Walker said. “I want to see the University continue to promote Black history further and highlight the contributions that the Black community has made in American society throughout history and today.”

Chief Diversity Officer Robert Sellers spoke on the panel and echoed Walker’s sentiments, urging the audience to celebrate Black history and recognize the contributions Black people have made to the country.

“You can’t understand American history without understanding AfricanAmerican history,” Sellers said.

“I would like for everybody — regardless of race and cultural background — to have a better understanding of the role of African Americans in the world.”

Williams said he wished the University would spend more time and resources to events supporting the Black community on campus.

“I think having consistent programming that acknowledges Black students on campus is important,” Williams said. “Members of my Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., Epsilon Chapter in the past were really inf luential in starting organizations such as the Black Student Union and things of that nature. So, I think that it’s important that the University acknowledges the work that Black students do because part of the Black experience on campus is not

just the hardships of being the only person of color in the classroom. It’s the fun things too — it’s the things that we do to constantly uplift students on a day-to-day basis.”

Public Policy senior Cydney Gardner-Brown, also a panelist, encouraged the University to pay students who speak on panels and offer their knowledge to the University community.

“It seems that the University recognizes the importance of having student panelists and having the voice of student activists on their panels, but they don’t see the necessity of making sure those students feel compensated for their work,” Gardner-Brown said. “A lot of the work that student activists do are things that people in the workforce get paid to do.”

Throughout the event, Brown urged attendees to advance humanity in a direction where equality reverberates through every community. According to Brown, commitment and perseverance form the foundation of successful movements. She encouraged the audience to welcome the tension and pressure that accompanies producing radical change.

“Pressure either destroys you or stimulates you,” Brown said. “You have to radically recreate what you want to see. Every generation has something to offer. Tension is normal. As long as you have mutual respect, change can happen.”

Daily Staff Reporter Janice Kang can be reached at janicegk@umich.edu.

CAMPUS LIFE

Students of Color Liberation Front releases anti-racist demands for U-M administration Coalition of racial/ethnic justice organizations calls on University to increase funding, decolonize curricula and more PAIGE HODDER

Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan’s Students of Color Liberation Front — a coalition of racial/ethnic justice organizations — released a 15-page document of demands Monday calling on the University to take concrete steps to address and dismantle racism on campus.

Almost 100 community members have signed in support of the statement by time of publication.

The SoC LF is made up of the Black Student Union, United Asian American Organizations, La Casa, Arab Student Association, Native American Student Association, the Student Community of Progressive Empowerment and Students Allied for Freedom and Education.

The demands cover a wide range of issues, some new and many longtime demands from each of these organizations. The goal of these demands is to improve the experiences of students, faculty and staff of color on campus while positively impacting the entire U-M community, the statement said.

Some of the demands call on the University to support the leadership of racial justice organizations on campus in their work. This includes the Office of Student Life giving each organization $1,500 in funding starting this semester, as well as offering other sustainable funding models particularly for Arab Student Association.

The statement also asks that student leaders from SoC LF member organizations be able to recommend candidates to fill administrative positions, particularly those that impact students of color on campus.

Some of the demands pertain to

academics at the University: they ask the University to decolonize its curriculums, echoing sentiments from last semester’s United Statement; reassess the Race and Ethnicity requirement; and provide more support for faculty of color.

One category of demands are increasing staff for students of color in key support areas, such as Counseling and Psychological Services — particularly for Indigenous, LGBTQ+ and/or undocumented students — as well as at the Spectrum Center.

Other demands ask for making Indigenous People’s Day a U-M holiday, abolishing the Office of Enrollment Management’s 40-day clause for in-state tuition and disaggregating Asian/ Pacific Islander American data for climate surveys. The latter two have been long-time asks of SCOPE, the organization advocating for undocumented students on campus, and AAPI groups, respectively. Additionally, the demands include mandating that Student Legal Services provide training for Arab/ Palestine student activists and that the University commit to transparency regarding secret societies’ access to administrative resources, among many other asks.

LSA junior Rebeca Yanes, external director of La Casa, wrote in an email to The Michigan Daily that these demands are empowering because they encourage students of color to actively participate in discussions about anti-racism.

“The Students of Color Liberation Front, along with the collective leadership and membership of the organizations that make it up, should be regarded as stakeholders in conversations about anti-racism on campus,”

Yanes wrote. “I believe that University leadership should equally and meaningfully consult all the demands if they seek to create a truly anti-racist campus.”

Yanes also wrote that the power of these demands lies in the collective action of these different organizations to make campus better for all students.

“As the Students of Color Liberation Front, we are a united front, equally invested in the empowerment of each other’s communities and demands for University leadership,” Yanes wrote. “Each demand is made as equally valuable and significant in the University’s work that impacts students of color.”

Policing demands The executive board of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality wrote in a statement to The Daily that SoC LF is a platform for people of color to collectively address racism at the University, especially after members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization, faculty and undergraduate students called for demilitarization and diversion of funds from local and campus police during their strike last semester.

The demands include that the University cut all ties with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Ann Arbor Police Department, commit to investigating alternatives to police intervention and reexamine how the University currently utilizes alternative methods to policing.

The statement writes that these demands are non-negotiable.

“Accordingly, these action items will cultivate a safe campus climate for all students,” the demands read. “Especially Black and Brown students who are disproportionately placed at risk when the University relies heavily

on police presence on campus.”

These demands followed a summer of protests to end police brutality. In response to GEO’s anti-policing demands, the University created the U-M task force on public safety to evaluate the operations of the Division of Public Safety and Security and recommend improvements, though a member of the task force told The Daily the group is set on police reform.

The demilitarization demands also arose out of the University’s choice to introduce — and soon after repeal — the controversial Michigan Ambassadors program, which had armed police officers walking around campus to monitor student behavior during the pandemic. Many cultural associations said they were not consulted about the creation of the Michigan Ambassadors program.

“SoC LF is a coalition space made up of various racial justice organizations that have had existing relationships, but our organizations came together under this name in response to the University’s decisions regarding policing last semester, and the lack of consultation with our organizations,” the statement reads. “In response, our coalition banded together to resist shallow consultation of students of color, and over the course of the last few months, developed these demands for this anti-racist vision.”

Outreach to prospective students of color The demands also call on the University to restructure outreach initiatives to underrepresented students of color. In their statement, SoC LF said this is a necessary step toward creating an equitable campus.

The steps for achieving this include increasing the population

of staff who can speak to experiences of students of color in the Office of Financial Aid, meeting the 10% Black student enrollment benchmark as originally demanded by the Black Action Movement and hiring fulltime staff members who are wellversed in experiences of people of color to coordinate the 2006 Proposal 2 adherent recruitment strategies.

It also asks the University to recommit the Comprehensive Studies Program to its original purpose of serving Black students and giving “students — primarily in-state minority students from inner-city high schools — an opportunity to attend the University of Michigan during the summer to achieve a solid academic foundation for success in the fall term.” Other programs meant for Black students, like the Bridge Scholars Program, has also seen a decrease in Black student enrollment.

“The University of Michigan must commit to an extensive restructuring of outreach and recruitment methods in enrollment management and outreach offices,” the demands read.

The University previously offered the Provost Award, which fully met out-of-state students’ demonstrated needs who typically had expected family contribution below approximately $11,000. Last year, the award was discontinued and the Victors Award was introduced, which includes a merit component and provides a flat $8,000 per year. The award is given in addition to other aid for which a student might qualify for.

Last month, after seeing a drop in Latinx enrollment, La Casa released a statement opposing the discontinuation of the Provost Award. According to the

statement, the reduced financial aid packages did not provide sufficient support for out-of-state Latinx students who were unable to afford University tuition. The University has countered that the drop in Latinx enrollment could be due to the pandemic, but La Casa maintains that it believes the end of the Provost’s Award also played a factor.

“The policy sends a concerning message to the Latinx community and prospective out-of-state students who experience financial hardship that the University of Michigan is not accessible,” the statement reads.

Climate demands SoC LF also asks that the University reassess its relationship with the fossil fuel industry and divest from companies that violate the rights of Palestinians in order to demonstrate a commitment to sustainable, ethical and moral spending.

In December, the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality — created after sustained student activism — released its draft recommendations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the University.

However, activists — particularly those involved with the Climate Action Movement — have criticized the PCCN for not including divestment from fossil fuel industries under the scope of its work.

“Rather than be purely profit-driven, the University’s investments must be built upon ethical and moral considerations for sustainable investment,” SoC LF’s list of demands reads.

Daily Staff Reporter Paige Hodder can be reached at phodder@ umich.edu.

News

4 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Study shows Black researchers about 55% less likely to receive NIH funding than white peers RESEARCH

Report by U-M professor calls for end to racial disparities in government research spending NAVYA GUPTA

Daily Staff Reporter

University of Michigan biomedical engineering professor Omolola EniolaAdefeso, along with 19 other women in biomedical engineering across the country, published a paper last month calling for an end to racial disparity in funding by the National Institute of Health.

According to the paper, the probability of Black principal investigators receiving a research award was about 55% of the probability of white principal investigators receiving one in 2000-2006.

In 2014-2016, this number remained the same.

“We, as scientists and engineers, wrote editorials and promised to do better,” the paper reads. “Yet, over a decade

WEISER From Page 1 The University’s Office of Public Affairs declined to comment on Weiser’s emails.

Weiser, incoming co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, faced criticism from some in the University community after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. More than 150 U-M professors signed onto a request that Weiser resign, arguing that attempts by members of the Michigan GOP to overturn the 2020 presidential election by perpetuating lies about voter fraud make his role as regent and head of the state party incompatible.

“These events are not an aberration but the inevitable end result of positions the MI-GOP has openly endorsed or tacitly tolerated, with your consent and support,” the request reads. “As Trump’s Michigan campaign chair, you directly contributed to the rise of a politician who, as President of the United States, incited a mob to storm the nation’s Capitol with the express aim of preventing the certification of a democratic election.”

Weiser has repeatedly condemned the violence at the Capitol and said it is time for Republicans to move on from the 2020 election. His incoming co-chair, Meshawn Maddock, organized buses of Michigan supporters of former President Donald Trump to Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 6 “stop the steal” rally that turned into an insurrection.

Maddock retweeted a video of Trump supporters marching to the Capitol that afternoon with the caption: “The most incredible crowd and sea of people I’ve ever walked with (heart emoji).”

Weiser told Bridge

MARKEL From Page 1 In his book “When Germs Travel,” Markel makes the case for a globally funded public health program.

Markel said the World Health Organization has a very small staff and must be invited into a country because it has no “police powers.”

“The main thesis of (the book) is that germs don’t respect borders,” Markel said.

“There’s no sovereignty to an epidemic — they travel. An outbreak anywhere can easily go everywhere, as we found out.”

Markel is especially interested in the weaponization of epidemics against immigrant and migrant groups. Markel, who worked at an AIDS clinic as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and at an immigrant hostel in Detroit, said this interest stemmed from his Eastern European

later, this gap persists.”

According to Eniola-Adefeso, equitable research grants from the NIH are necessary for ensuring diversity in biomedical engineering research and enabling researchers to acquire promotions and tenured positions. She told The Michigan Daily funding diverse research teams motivates students from all backgrounds to pursue research.

“We recognize that part of the problem is that (NIH funded researchers), as a body, are not diverse,” EniolaAdefeso said. “We are primarily responsible for training the U.S. workforce, and if we are not training a diverse workforce, we are leaving people out from accessing high-paying jobs.”

The paper highlighted several ways funding agencies could work towards eliminating disparities in grants awarded.

Michigan on Jan. 7 that Maddock did not incite the riot. He said he did not know if Trump bore any blame.

“I didn’t read any of that stuff, and I didn’t watch television,” Weiser told Bridge. “I watched Michigan destroy Minnesota in basketball, and that kind of contest is something that I strongly support.”

Weiser has not mentioned Trump or anyone else as holding responsibility in his statements.

“To move forward as a party, we must acknowledge our mistakes and never let them happen again,” Weiser tweeted on Jan. 9. “Let me be clear, the events in our nation’s Capital this week were both incredibly tragic and wrong. People were misled. And that resulted in death and destruction. That is unacceptable and abhorrent.”

Weiser did not respond to a request to comment for this story. Regents Katherine White (D), Michael Behm (D), Denise Ilitch (D), Mark Bernstein (D) did not respond to requests for comment.

Regents Jordan Acker (D) and Sarah Hubbard (R) declined to comment. Regent Paul Brown (D) declined to comment on specific emails, but said Weiser is an “exceptional” regent.

“Although our political views differ greatly, I know that he always has the best interest of the University at heart,” Brown wrote. “I would also hope that we live in a world that would excuse me, or anyone else, who inadvertently sends a personal email. Additionally, I know the board has actual important things to worry about.”

Daily News Editor Calder Lewis can be reached at calderll@umich.edu.

Jewish heritage.

Markel learned from his grandparents — who raised him in a bilingual household speaking Yiddish — that the typhus fever and cholera epidemics had been blamed on Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York City at the turn of the century.

“I wanted to delve into the Yiddish press and sources to see how they experienced it, in comparison to how the AngloAmerican or white American press encountered it,” Markel said. “Of course, they knew what was going on. They knew enough science and they knew they were being corralled.”

Markel said the “uses and misuses of public health measures as social means” contributed to staggering misconceptions about patients affected by the AIDS epidemic.

While working at the AIDS clinic, Markel said many patients who were gay or used intravenous drugs asked him if they’d be quarantined.

These include officially acknowledging the prevalence of racism in academia and committing to work towards its expulsion, instituting policies that will enable equitable funding for Black researchers and prioritizing diverse research teams for funding.

Numerous studies cited in the paper show diverse research teams generate the most creative and impactful ideas and solutions. Eniola-Adefeso said the NIH should create a diversity score that measures the diversity of research teams and enables teams with higher scores to be prioritized for funding, encouraging diversification and innovation.

“Diversity of people, diversity of background, diversity of life experiences — if those are important in getting innovative solutions, then why is it that the NIH grant scoring process does

not give points to the diversity of the research team?” EniolaAdefeso said.

Korie Grayson, an engineering postdoctoral fellow in Eniola-Adefeso’s lab, said it is essential to identify the core issues in the research funding process to ensure it can be successfully eliminated, as the paper does.

Grayson said the disparity in research funding is unsurprising since women of color pursuing research have to combat unwelcome environments and numerous gender and racial biases and stereotypes while working in the field.

“Being half as likely to be funded as your white counterpart who is basically on the same level as you is discouraging,” Grayson said.

“It is discouraging but it is not surprising, which is the

sad part. In order to have more young scientists of color, specifically Black women, there has to be a change.”

The Biomedical Engineering Society, a student organization promoting networking and research panels in the biomedical engineering field at the University, agreed with the paper’s findings. In an email to The Daily, Engineering senior Likitha Nimmagadda, president of the Biomedical Engineering Society, emphasized the organization’s support for the need to ensure equitable research grants awarded by the NIH. “The BMES chapter at U of M fully supports and agrees with the sentiments expressed by the authors of the ‘Fund Black scientists’ commentary published in Cell,” Nimmagadda wrote. “Black scientists must be funded at the same rate as white

scientists and improving this racial funding disparity must be prioritized. In order to improve equity in funding received by researchers, we must ‘see color’.”

Eniola-Adefeso also said the conception of the paper was spurred by the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed on May 25 by police.

She said the murder prompted biomedical engineering faculty members to discuss and work to combat racial inequities existing in the research field.

“We can no longer allow this to go under the radar,” EniolaAdefeso said. “We have a voice as faculty and we felt like this was a time to reengage the NIH in this conversation.”

Daily Staff Reporter Navya Gupta can be reached at itznavya@umich.edu.

Design by Melissa Lee

“Since the (stay in place recommendation) I’ve gotten (takeout) and that’s it,” Dirkman said. “But I think that I will go to restaurants more (once the order ends).”

In contrast, LSA freshman Annie Cress has ruled out going to a restaurant for indoor dining regardless of the stay in place recommendation and said she has reservations about whether or not restaurants would actually be able to stop the spread.

“I don’t feel 100% comfortable, it really depends on what the restaurants are doing with their

(safety) guidelines,” Cress said.

“But I do get takeout to support local businesses.”

Adam Baru, owner of Isalita and Mani Osteria, said that with the current situation, he doesn’t feel comfortable opening his restaurant to indoor dining. Baru, whose restaurant is fairly reliant on student life, said there is a certain experience one gets when coming to his restaurant. If all of his guests and employees are not entirely comfortable at his restaurant, then he is not going to open.

“Opening and closing and opening and closing is really hard on a restaurant,” Baru said. “I’d rather wait until we’re out of the woods to be at the point where

scales tip in favor of safety instead of being open because we want or need to be open.”

Baru also acknowledged his business was privileged enough to not have to worry about finances, as he is certain they will survive until the vaccine is widely available.

The University’s plans for Winter 2021 influenced some business owners’ decision on whether or not to resume indoor dining. The plans, which were announced in an email from University President Schlissel on Nov. 6, consisted of the vast majority of classes being conducted online and reduced occupancy in U-M residence halls.

Jared Hoffman, owner of Salads

UP on E. Liberty St., estimated that students made up almost 70% of his clientele, and not having them on campus was a factor in his decision to transition away from a sit-down establishment and towards a grab-and-go style restaurant.

“Ann Arbor, we’re really a college town,” Hoffman said.

“The campus was built here for student life and the students really drive business traffic.

I totally understand (the University’s decision), but when you lose X amount of students, the whole economy and the town is affected.”

“First, I said, ‘Well, no, it’s not the right disease, it’s sexually transmitted and that wouldn’t be the way to do it,’” Markel said. “But, I kept hearing this question and as a doctor, you don’t hear the same

Markel said the realization that the political manipulation of quarantine was used as an excuse to isolate already stigmatized or scapegoated populations struck him “like a lightning bolt.”

but rather a metaphor for the increasing stigmatization and isolation that resulted from their illness.

In his book “Quarantine,” Markel said his historical research and clinical practices are similar because they both require him to use primary sources to arrive at a diagnosis.

Markel said he feels an obligation to bring attention to marginalized communities, referencing his work with individuals who have AIDS. “(I have a) responsibility to bear witness and tell the stories (of scapegoated groups),” Markel said. “What I was inspired to do, based on what I saw in my clinic with AIDS patients, was to dig as deeply as I could.”

Markel said even while taking on various roles — such as medical historian, physician or writer — he never forgets the Hippocratic oath he took to protect and serve his patients.

Though he said he has been accused of holding partisan

opinions after writing about strategies for containing the virus, Markel said he cannot endorse viewpoints that do not protect his patients’ lives.

“I’m a pediatrician, and I take care of kids,” Markel said.

“I’m pretty sure that if I told people I wouldn’t do everything in my power to preserve lives, no one would want me as their doctor.”

When asked about what kind of work he will do for the remainder of the pandemic, Markel emphasized his range of expertise.

“I’m a medical historian, and so I don’t pretend to know anything about how to predict the future,” Markel said. “But what we do know from history is what works, so I can say with confidence that we know social distancing and f lattening the curve works.”

RESTAURANTS From Page 1

“I’m a medical historian, and so I don’t pretend to know anything about how to predict the future...

But what we do know from history is what works, so I can say with confidence that we know social distancing and flattening the curve works.” social question over and over again. You hear, like, ‘Will it hurt? How much does it cost?’

Or, ‘What are the side effects?’

But you don’t hear that.”

He also said his patients were painfully aware of this trend.

To these patients, the word quarantine was not simply code for a public health policy,

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Daily News Contributor Sierra Élise Hansen can be reached at hsierra@umich.edu.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Arts

Wednesday, February 10, 2021 — 5

Arlo Parks Explores Light and Loss on ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’ NORA LEWIS

Daily Arts Writer

If you’ve ever dug up an old diary and leafed through its pages, it’s very likely you’ve stumbled upon some melodramatic vignettes of adolescence, both cringeworthy to read yet strangely impossible to tear your eyes away from. There’s a certain appeal to re-living the most intimate moments of your life through the gel-penned scribbles of your younger self. London indie-pop singer Arlo Park’s newest project, Collapsed in Sunbeams, sounds like a cinematic reimagining of that high school diary — sans the pubescent theatrics.

The 20-year-old’s debut album, following a steady release of singles and collaborations with the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo, takes on both the gritty and lighthearted experiences that come with navigating friendship and love as a young adult. Across 12 tracks, seven lo-fi covers and one poem track, Parks paints

a picture book of solace and isolation. In an interview with The New York Times, she shared, “I find it harder to write about joy because it’s simpler. There’s more complexity in sad things. But I’m a defiant optimist.” On Collapsed in Sunbeams, these quiet moments of joy and sadness intermix to create a deeply personal bedroom pop album perfect for the new year.

Parks first broke out of anonymity with her 2018 single “Cola.” The strippedback track, crafted in under 20 minutes by Parks and producer Luca Buccellati, chronicles the breaking point of a relationship filled with infidelity, earning over 15 million streams on Spotify since its initial release. Parks solidified her knack for storytelling and vivid imagery on “Cola,” a skill she’s maintained and grown on Collapsed in Sunbeams.

Citing a line from Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty” as inspiration for the album title, Parks has found her vision in a wide variety of sources, including Studio Ghibli

films, Frank Ocean and her own journal from when she was 13. It’s easy to see these connections on the project, with its kaleidoscope of visuals and intimate pockets of teenagehood.

On the song “Black Dog,” Parks approaches depression and the loss of a friend by suicide with emotive sincerity. She sings, “Let’s go to the corner store and buy some fruit / I would do anything to get you out your room / Just take your medicine and eat some food / It’s so cruel what your mind can do for no reason.” Set against plucky guitar and a simple beat, Parks’s gentle vocals soften the song’s tragic words.

Airy and glowing like the sunbeams of the album’s namesake, Parks’s voice carries the listener to another trial on the dreamy pop track “Green Eyes.” Here, she details the loss of a relationship plagued by unaccepting parents and sheltered sexuality, with songwriting credits and background vocals from Clairo.

Parks, who is openly bisexual,

sings, “Of course I know why we lasted two months / Could not hold my hand in public / Felt their eyes judging our love and baying for blood.” Its breezy and warm instrumentation are meant to “uplift and comfort those going through hard times,” according to Parks. Her ability to find the sunny undersides of even the darkest struggles shines, a key element that prevents Collapsed in Sunbeams from feeling too heavy to enjoy.

The sleepy and beautiful “Eugene,” which found its way onto one of Michelle Obama’s summer playlists last August, narrates the sting of falling for your best friend who falls for someone else. Parks reflects, “Hey, I know I’ve been a little bit off and that’s my mistake / I kind of fell half in love and you’re to blame / I guess I just forgot that we’ve been mates since day.”

It’s both a highly personal narrative and yet something anyone can find resonant.

Maybe we’ve all had our own version of “Eugene,” someone

who disrupts something good and leaves us feeling detached from the familiar. With tucked in spoken-word pieces like the titular “Collapsed in Sunbeams” and “Black Dog Poem,” Parks further immerses the listener in her stories and provides a kind of intimacy and specificity sometimes missing from mainstream bedroom pop.

Parks has grown since “Cola,” still serving snapshots of inner turmoil and love but with matured sound and production.

The tracks “Too Good” and

“Portra 400,” which Paul Epworth (Adele, Florence + the Machine) produced, evoking the coming-of-age, end credit vibrance Parks says she dreamed of in an interview with Apple Music.

She’s no longer a 17-yearold making beats in a nameless London flat, but Parks’s music today is no less disarmingly sincere. Collapsed in Sunbeams is a melancholic journey through youth, promising a bright future of storytelling and vulnerability for Parks.

with while reading “The Divines” was this gaping disconnect between Josephine’s past and present selves; how did this insecure, awkward teenager become a functioning adult? I don’t doubt that this kind of transformation is possible (I can only hope that I’ve changed a lot from my high school self), but the book offers no insight into how Josephine turned out so different as an adult.

Were her teenage insecurities purely run-of-the-mill adolescent angst, something she grew out of with age? This question isn’t really answered in the novel, and I was left struggling to bridge the gap between younger and

older Josephine. I did, however, enjoy seeing how Jospehine’s past affected her as an adult. Though somewhat disjointed, the paralleled storylines serve their intended purpose, adding to the suspense and allowing us to see the legacy of Josephine’s past as a Divine.

Because of the slow and deliberate development of the novel, it took me a while to get into it, but when I did, boy, was I hooked. “The Divines” is a provocative coming of age story, rich with explorations of class divides, secrets, sexual awakenings and adolescent insecurities. I will admit I began reading knowing nothing about

the novel or author, but was left haunted by the story for days after I finished and keenly interested in what Ellie Eaton might write next. The Divines’ school motto is memoir amici, (“remember friends”) — an ironic inclusion considering Josephine spends most of her adult life trying to escape her past as a Divine.

And yet, in the end, she is unable to. She is just as haunted by childhood friendships, secrets and the trauma of her past well into adulthood. “The Divines” brought me back to my own adolescence, and the experience felt just as exciting, awkward, uncomfortable and thrilling as I remember it.

Transgressive Records

‘The Divines’ offers a razorsharp exploration of adolescence and class divides EMMA DOETTLING Daily Arts Writer

Welcome to St. John the Divine, an English boarding school for girls where students (nicknamed the Divines) keep secrets, form alliances and vie for popularity.

There are several things that make a Divine: the coy hair flip, the blasé use of French, the haughty walk, the mysterious nicknames. To be one of the Divines is to embody something intangible, a result of the social molding that takes place in every girl that enters the school’s hallowed halls. But what goes on behind the smiles and façades?

In Ellie Eaton’s razor-sharp new novel, “The Divines,” Josephine, a former student at St. John the Divine, revisits the grounds of her old school and reflects on her haunted past. In her last year at boarding school, a scandal rocked the Divines that torments Josephine well into her adult life. Under her husband’s gentle prompting, Josephine faces her complicated past and realizes that, despite the distance she put between herself and her old school,

she can never fully escape its legacy.

The world of the Divines is equally compelling and twisted; they exude a kind of ethereal energy that is intoxicating to read about. Eaton makes sweeping claims about her characters, saying, “Divines were committed oversharers by nature,” “together Divines were indomitable” and “Divines could sleep anywhere,” giving the reader a sense of the exclusive and cult-like nature of the novel.

At the same time, the petty grievances, social struggles, references to sexual misconduct and class biases reveal an uglier side to the world of the Divines.

The fact of the matter is the girls of the Divine are snobby and entitled, calling the residents of a nearby village ‘townies’ and flaunting their privilege and money. Josephine seems to disapprove of this behavior, but is equally complicit.

In this way, the novel perfectly captures the pain of adolescence, making sharp observations about social dynamics and the cruelty of youth. Little interactions between the girls felt momentous: Fleeting looks, cold shoulders and insincere

smiles become agonizingly significant. “The Divines” painfully reminded me of my angsty teenage years, evoking the same raw and gritty feelings.

The story unfolds at a perfectly measured pace. As Josephine reflects on her past as a Divine, little by little, details of her time at the boarding school reveal themselves.

For the reader, there is a sense of foreboding. Something bad is going to happen and you can feel it.

The prologue gives a little taste of the scandal that occurs, leaving the reader hooked, needing to know what happens. I spent the rest of the novel breathlessly awaiting the big reveal, feeling the tension in the novel coil tight like a spring. Eaton writes with a nuance and masterful grasp of social interplay that feels reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go.” As a teenager, Josephine is angsty, self-conscious and compliant. She is tormented with thoughts of whether she is liked, where she falls on the social ladder at school and how she can appear cool. On the other hand, her adult self is happily married and selfsufficient. One thing I struggled

Design by Elizabeth Yoon

Velveteen Dreams: Serge Lutens, an Olfactory Odyssey, Pt. Two SAM KREMKE

Daily Arts Columnist

The main thing I love about perfume is that it’s ridiculous.

Every aspect of it is ridiculous.

The very sound of the word “perfume,” even as I hear it in my head, makes my skin crawl, and it’s exhilarating. I love the saccharine, schmaltzy snips of copy generously classified as descriptions. I love how everyone involved in the marketing of it has collectively come to the conclusion that the less sense you make, the better.

Full abstraction. I don’t know how an advert featuring Nicole Kidman running around taxis in Times Square, looking completely

bewildered in a $20,000 gown, translates into a concrete sales figure, but you know what? I’ll let one of the business majors figure it out; that’s not my problem.

The business of fragrance is built on artifice. Fragrance itself is about as detached as a creative medium can get from reality — the best roses are composed of no discernible rose, chemical compounds that give musk its “sex” factor are naturally occurring signs of decay and an entire scent category (the fougère) was inspired by an odorless plant.

Yet, smell is the sense most closely linked to emotion and memory, and the skilled deployment of scent can communicate things that lie beyond words, logic and

rationalization. Few perfume houses have been able to marry creative vision and emotion while wielding the inherent silliness of the industry, and the house of Serge Lutens is one of them.

Serge Lutens, the former art director of Shiseido and pioneering figurehead of his eponymous label, is an intensely private man. Despite his fame, he almost never gives interviews.

Outside of his profile on Kafkaesque, there is little to be found concretely about his early life, let alone his swift entree into the fashion and beauty world of the 1960s.

There are hints of his origins in the titles of his fragrances, especially more recent outputs like “L’Orpheline” and “Baptême East West Haven

du Feu” (French for “The Orphan” and “Baptism of Fire,” respectively) that touch on his tumultuous childhood. He was separated from his mother shortly after birth, because it was illegal for an unwed woman to give birth and raise a child as a single mother in Lutens’s French hometown.

His experiences with familial rejection and abandonment — and their ties to a societal and legal system steeped in a very conservative interpretation of Catholicism — had a profound impact on his life and work, not the least of which being his contribution to perfumery.

At 14, Lutens began working in a salon in Lille, and despite not wishing to work there, it would serve as a catalyst for his creative prowess to come to life. He soon ventured into hairdressing, makeup artistry, photography, styling and creative consulting.

He had a penchant for feminine extremes and borderline-gothic contrasts between white, black and bold colors.

His polaroids eventually landed him a place at French Vogue under Edmonde CharlesRoux, which then opened doors at a number of high profile publications, including Elle and Harper’s Bazaar. He is credited with helping develop the first high fashion cosmetics line at Christian Dior in 1966, working at the house until accepting his post at Shiseido in the early 1980s.

It was under Shiseido that he created “Nombre Noir,” a nowinfamous and highly coveted collector’s item, but commercial flop whose stock is humorously

rumored to have been bulldozed by the company.

Despite “Nombre Noir’s” incredibly high production expense and commercial failure, its liberal use of rose-tinted damascenones and its complicated, yet sheer chypre structure colored the path on which Lutens was headed.

Shiseido’s faith in his ideas didn’t wane, and his collaboration with perfumers Christopher Sheldrake and Pierre Bourdon spawned a dark, yet minimalistic and transparent take on a cedarbased perfume in the inimitable “Féminité du Bois” in 1992.

“Féminité du Bois” was a sensation, taking the sheer, uncomplicated sentiment in perfumery represented by Bulgari’s “Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert” and Issey Miyake’s “L’eau d’Issey” and giving it an emotional, yet sovereign and unmistakably dark backbone with piles of dried fruits like peach and plum, ginger, benzoin and his now-signature clove.

It may sound dramatic, but it’s hard to understate the influence of “Féminité du Bois” in modern perfumery. The room-filling ambers and chypres of the 1970s and ’80s had reached their breaking point, but the ethereal jingles issued as a response to them felt more like an apology than a meaningful evolution.

The notion that you could either have a symphony or a wisp was put to rest by Serge’s second release under Shiseido, and it spawned the “Les Eaux Boisées” line that initially occupied his Palais Royal storefront.

The aforementioned “Féminité du Bois,” “Bois et Musc,” “Bois et Fruits,” “Bois Oriental” (a name and olfactory category, now referred to as amber, currently undergoing a politically-inclined reconstruction), “Un bois sépia,” “Un bois vanille,” “Miel de bois” and “Bois de Violette” were among the house’s first releases, which would soon reinvent the modern amber, the tawdry musk and the soliflore with something new to say.

In the house’s nearly 30 years of existence, Serge Lutens has created a number of ambers, f lorals and other fragrances that remain true to its brand of complicated, interesting, even “loud” offerings that veer from weighing themselves down. Beyond the “Bois” f lankers, ranky, stanky fuck me musks like “Muscs Koublai Khan,” leathery f lorals like “Sarrasins,” sonorous solif lores like “A la nuit” and smoldering ambers like “La couche du diable” all do their part in populating a canon that simply cannot be outdone or diminished.

Though the copy and the art direction may reach far beyond the threshold of camp, the heart of Serge Lutens continues to create products rooted in ideas that gleefully skip down to their scientific and artistic extremes.

There is not a bottle that is phoned in, and there is not an accompanying write-up that doesn’t blast beyond the confines of what can be readily imagined, and that’s what makes this house so powerful.

Arts

6 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Taubman-sponsored event ‘The Nature of Nature’ shows us highlights feminist architecture that ecological conservation makes collab that reminds us why we work economic and moral sense BEN VASSAR

Daily Arts Writer

Feminist thought is pervasive in American culture today, but rarely has it been considered in reference to the rarified field of architecture.

Feminist architecture collaborative “f-architecture” visited Taubman College virtually on Tuesday evening to speak on how their practice challenges architecture’s historical allegiances to capital — or, in other words, the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.

The presentation began in a digitally-rendered girl’s bedroom with greek columns acting as bed stands and a poster of Princess Nokia on the wall. The three women — Virginia Black, Gabrielle Printz and Rosana Elkhatib — cozied up in bed together, or rather, photoshopped together. The bedroom — a place of “primordial teenage rebellion” — was a fitting space to introduce the forces driving the collaborative’s practice.

Though they were about to introduce projects that tackled subjects ranging from Native land rights in Ecuador to the artificial production of virginity in Lebanon, these politicized issues were inextricably personal as well.

One of their earliest projects took form in October 2016 at the United Nations Habitat III Conference in Quito, Ecuador. The conference worked to implement the U.N.’s “New Urban Agenda,” and while it claimed to seek representation from underrepresented voices in the region, a single booth cost $4,000 USD. For the Amazonian Kichwa midwives of AMUPAKIN, a self-organized birthing center providing traditional plantbased medical care in Archidona, the conference was inaccessible.

So where does design come into this?

F-architecture submitted a publication

to Habitat III’s “urban library” that considered how the U.N. could break from its extractionist mindset to incorporate “lesser known languages, other socialities, convivialities, semiotic registers, and ritual engagement with the non-human … as a basis for other sustainable futures and more sustainable pasts.”

Black then explained how they also fundraised to sponsor the members of AMUPAKIN to attend the conference and arranged several locations in Quito at which they could sell their wares to benefit the birthing center. At this point in the presentation, it was clear that not only was no one paying f-architecture, f-architecture was, in fact, sometimes paying their clients.

So how do they practice out of New York City? At the start of the presentation, Elkhatib acknowledged the privileges granted to them by their degrees, connections and “physical ability to hustle.” Coming out of school at Columbia University, they established an “air of legitimacy” by renting out desk space at New Inc, The New Museum’s incubator space dedicated to supporting innovative practices in art, design and technology, for just $200 a month.

The last project they presented examined the spatial politics of hymen reconstructive surgery clinics in Beirut, Lebanon. In other words, they wanted to know what role the space of the clinics themselves played in reinforcing virginity culture and the ideal body in the country.

For VI PER Gallery in Prague, f-architecture physically reconstructed the spaces of the surgery clinics using observations collected from fieldwork in Lebanon the year prior. Presenting this, the three women were now photoshopped riding a digitallyanimated train car. A pair of hands

entered the foreground to hold a sheet of paper that formed the background for the images of the installation they were about to show.

The first image they presented was a photo of their reconstructed waiting room. Describing its effect, they explained that upon entering, you’re greeted with a womanly scent and a sink at which to apply some of the sweet odor. Lebanese Fashion TV plays in the background.

Then, the second image shows the reconstructed self-examination room.

An inflatable plastic cushion sits in front of a curved mirror and suggests its usage. Gallery-goers would put on a VR headset while reclined on the cushion to enter a simulation of the operating room. A male doctor’s voice says ominous things while the tools of operation float overhead.

The third and final space is a boutique hotel room space for recovery. The sheets are bubble wrap and pop after one usage. This last room — and the others too, for that matter — are not some twisted conceptions of f-architecture. They are rather a critical representation of the real clinics of Dr. Nader Saab in Beirut, clinics that reinforce the construction of virginity and bodily transformation under the guise of luxury and class.

Armed with a sensitivity for the way space reinforces these existing power structures, f-architecture framed these clinics in a light surely no one had before. Although this all seems like more of an installation artist’s work than an architect’s, architectural education today engrains an apprehensive mindset in students. In an age of impending ecological disaster, what design really justifies its environmental cost?

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

TRINA PAL

Daily Arts Writer

Like many conservationists, Enric Sala loved our world before he thought about saving it. “I loved the natural world before I could understand it. In fact, I was interested in understanding it because I loved it,” Sala writes in his book, “The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild.”

Sala is a scientist, conservationist and National Geographic explorerin-residence. Formerlyw a university professor who became tired of “writing the obituary of ocean life,” Sala founded National Geographic Pristine Seas, a project that explores the wildest seas on our planet to convince national leaders to protect these biodiversity hotspots. “The Nature of Nature” is a compilation of Sala’s experiences in a lengthy career of protecting marine areas in an effort to save our planet.

“The Nature of Nature” is perfect for anyone who feels a pull to our Earth but struggles to understand its complexities. Sala’s goal is to give us a comprehensive understanding of ecology and the entangled relationships that make up our world. The initial chapters are a crash course in ecology: Readers learn about ecological succession, predator-prey relationships, keystone species. For those already familiar with ecology, the first half of the novel is a little dull. However, if ecology isn’t your forte, these chapters are succinct and valuable.

But it’s worth pushing through these initial chapters to arrive at the heart of Sala’s argument. In it, he examines the intersection of the Anthropocene and the environment to make a compelling case to preserve the last wild areas on our planet for the benefit of all species — including us.

There is both an economic imperative

and moral responsibility to do so.

A scientist by training, Sala uses multiple lines of argument to arrive at this conclusion. *** The Historical Imperative: Our current attitudes toward the Earth are shaped by the actions of our past.

Since the industrial era, the Western world has had a one-way relationship with the Earth — taking and giving little in return. “The energy we extract from the natural world around us flows in one direction: toward us and our built environment,” Sala writes.

This approach is the exact opposite of what many indigenous groups around the world employ. Living in harmony with the Earth requires respect and gratitude — nurturing in return for taking.

Sala powerfully shows us that humans are different from other species for one novel reason (hint: it’s not our superior intellect). We take advantage of the ancient compounded, dead layers of our Earth by mining for fossil fuels. “We use energy from the past to subsidize our looting of the present,” Sala writes.

This approach is as unconscionable as it is unsustainable. Areas of the world that haven’t been damaged by extraction are more biodiverse with secure boundaries against the industrial world. Most zoonotic viruses, viral agents that are transmitted from a non-human animal to a human, including COVID19, have roots in disturbing ecosystem boundaries.

The Economic Imperative: Many believe that countering the damage we’ve done to our planet would cost an exorbitant amount. Sala reveals that it does, but only in the short term. “The long-term benefits of restoring our degraded ecosystems and protecting the wild left on our planet far exceed the short-term benefits under a status

quo that continues to destroy our natural world,” Sala writes.

Sala’s life-work involves convincing world leaders that natural areas are worth protecting. This means keeping forests free of deforestation and marine reserves free of fishing.

The cost of doing so pays off in the long-run: Protecting marine reserves increases local biodiversity that spills over to nearby waters where fishing is permitted, giving fisheries an economic boom. Sala’s unique work gives readers a valuable vantage point on the economic benefits of conservation.

The Moral Imperative: As a species on the top of the food chain, Sala argues humans have a moral responsibility to care for the Earth.

“The planetary ethic moves humans away from a self-proclaimed center of the world and into a humble and respectful membership in the greater biosphere. It moves us from a position over the natural world to a place within it,” Sala says. This shift in perspective is a critical step to begin to care for our planet.

Sala’s compelling message has been echoed by conservationists and indigenous groups alike. Indigenous peoples around the world are fighting to grant personhood to what the Western world considers “nonliving,” such as lakes, mountains and coral reefs. Maori tribes in New Zealand have succeeded in giving the Whanganui River the same rights as a person, recognizing its sacred character and the consequences if it’s polluted or destroyed.

“It is essential for our future that humans experience that transcendent overview effect and begin to treat the biosphere like a living thing instead of something to ignore or abuse,” Sala writes.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Artist Profile: ComCo proves that COVID hasn’t killed comedy

SUDOKU

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

Release Date: Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Not imagined 5 On 9 Arthur of tennis 13 Country quarters 14 Be behind 15 Skier’s need, maybe 16 Arose to catch the proverbial worm 18 President’s Day event 19 Ivy League student 20 Dynamic prefix 21 Sushi bar brews 22 Ristorante favorite 24 “Holy smokes!”

26 Award won twice

by Adele and Kelly Clarkson 30 Monks’ wear 33 Total drubbing 34 Flatow of “Science Friday” 35 Opposite of home 36 Dozen dozen 38 Craftsy etailer 39 Tiny, for short 40 “Not long” 41 Guilty and not guilty 42 Philanthropist who was a Time Person of the Year co-honoree in 2005 46 Spectrum maker 47 Comment after a missed shot 51 Characteristic 53 Shred 54 Tint 55 “I didn’t mean to do that” 56 Relatively unknown quality items ... and what can be found in 16-, 26- and 42-Across 59 Unmitigated joy 60 Seller, usually 61 Its symbol is Fe 62 Some cameras, for short 63 Amorously pursues 64 Fiddling emperor DOWN 1 Orion’s left foot, some say

2 __ Gay 3 Naysayers 4 Pelican State sch.

5 Biblical mount 6 Tropical root vegetable 7 Squeaky-wheel need 8 Tissue layer 9 Attack 10 Hazard in many old Westerns 11 Opening 13 Lambs’ Filmmaker with a 12 moms 14 New drivers, typically 17 Novel units s __ the 21 Whack at aother” mosquito 23 With skill 24 Family outing destinations 25 Numbered piece 27 Outlet insert 28 Celestial bear 29 First Black MLB team captain, 32 Bridal shop array 1964 of some 37 Source 30 Not nervous 31 Something Mommy needs to kiss?

32 Computer screen background

36 Odin and Thor 37 Wander 38 “Need anything __?”

40 Sulky state 41 Pie nut 43 Flowery van Gogh work 44 Battery terminals 45 Solution strength measure 48 “Over __!”

49 Something from a mill?

50 Type of survey question 51 Duds 52 Dinner table staple 53 License plate fig.

56 “__ come?”

57 Iconic WWII island, briefly 58 Winning game cry

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

02/10/21 02/04/21

By Catherine Cetta ©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

WHISPER “Love Notes, baby!”

“Snow!”

02/10/21

NINA MOLINA Daily Arts Writer

Before the pandemic, The Comedy Company, better known as ‘ComCo,’ would pack the Angell Hall Auditorium for improv comedy performances. Their most dedicated fans would sit cross-legged on the floor, right before the elevated stage.

LSA junior Finn Maloney likened ComCo shows to hanging out in a friend’s basement — just with over 200 friends.

Now, amid COVID-19 restrictions, the University of Michigan’s oldest improv group is shifting their live comedy to virtual platforms. Even fall auditions were switched to Zoom.

Despite a lack of announcements and publicity during activities like Festifall and Northfest, ComCo still watched fifty auditions. Unlike improvising live, hopefuls auditioned from their bedrooms.

“It was really interesting as people were, like, picking up stuff around the room and, like, hiding under blankets.

That was just really fun, but not what we were looking for. And so we had to specify that you’re, like, in a room with lighting so we can see you and make sure you have your audio on,” School of Music, Theatre & Dance senior Ansleigh Hamilton said.

Hamilton auditioned and joined ComCo her sophomore year after walking around Festifall. Recalling her all-denim ensemble, Hamilton describes walking up to the ComCo table as a “Hollywood magic moment” when ComCo member Archie Magnus pointed at her in the crowd.

Like Maloney, Hamilton reminisces about the live shows of the pre-COVID era, missing feeding off the audience’s energy, even while underneath bright stage lights, the performers growing more and more sweaty with every scene.

“We’re not just performers together. We’re friends, and that was part of what made it so strong,” Hamilton said.

Founded in 1979, ComCo has developed traditions over the years, including the annual Ross show held in February. This ComCo staple was moved into video form and released on YouTube in December. Maloney describes the show as “a gift to (Ross seniors) who are about to graduate.”

“We come in, and we all wear suits, and we’re, like, ‘oh, stocks and shit, I love that stuff.’ It’s never meanspirited, and usually, everybody’s in on the joke,” Maloney said.

Filmed socially-distanced outside the Ross School of Business, ComCo members donned their blazers, power suits and AirPods for their Rossinspired satire. Hamilton’s pug also made an appearance as a Ross alum.

“There’s definitely an ironic distance between our performance and what we actually believe of Ross,” Maloney said.

Maloney described the scaffolding of their normal in-person shows as rehearsed, like knowing which game is happening. At ComCo, games are the improv moments when the performers and audience are engaged.

“Once the actual improv starts, it is completely improvised all the time, always,” Maloney said.

About ten ComCo members filmed the Ross video in-person and socially distanced, while members outside of Ann Arbor had clips inserted.

Both Maloney and Hamilton described members working on aspects of a video or performance that cater to their strengths, whether that be writing jokes, creating musical numbers or videography.

Though live performances in crowded spaces are not currently safe, ComCo has found a way to keep the laughs coming. Two-hour rehearsals continue twice a week.

Virtual hang-outs help build group chemistry, allowing members to replicate that energy in video and Zoom performances. Maloney found that hanging out, whether on Friday nights or sober practices, forges bonds vital to the group’s flow on stage.

ComCo tried a trial Zoom show in the fall semester. Hamilton also hopes the annual year-end showcase, traditionally held at the Mendelssohn Theatre, can be made virtual this semester.

“I felt so welcomed when I was first in ComCo because they’d say, ‘we’re gonna go to a party tonight’ or ‘I’m grabbing brunch. You’re coming.’

This year, we can’t even hang out with our newbies and really get to know them,” Hamilton said.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, February 10, 2021 — 7

Capitalism’s cautionary tale: The fall of Barry B. Benson DARBY WILLIAMS Daily Arts Writer

Every child of the 2000s can recall exactly where they were when Jerry Seinfield’s magnum opus “Bee Movie” first graced the big screen.

Indeed, I would argue that the defining moment of my childhood occurred when the all-too-fateful “Do ya like jazz?” playfully escaped the intoxicatingly seductive lips of Barry B. Benson. As a seven-yearold, I lionized the insectoid idol with a fervor that could be characterized as obsessive. The lofty ideals and down-to-earth nature of dear Barry B. Benson, when juxtaposed with his almost flippant accessibility, crafted a black and yellow brand of heroism I couldn’t help but aspire to.

Alas, as a jaded young adult, the family-friendly bildungsroman that once brought me such joy now brings me great existential agony. In my all-too-jarring transition into the adult world — a transition marked by adherence to a capitalist system that seeks to exploit my mind and body for profit, I discovered that the Bensons of this world are few and far between, and we need not examine their honey-tinted dogmas too long before uncovering a plethora of truly sinister forces at work.

When analyzed in conjunction with similar industrial adventure narratives such as the iconic Marxist flick “Monsters, Inc.,” “Bee Movie” appears to follow a predictable but not trite formula. The marginalized worker

gains an awareness of the manners by which a neoliberal economic system exploits him, and he consequently attempts to inform his comrades of their plight. He is mocked, rendering himself a pariah, a lunatic. He finds a way to seize control of the means of production, overthrowing the existing system of labor and rendering class order obsolete.

Or so it would appear.

In the first act of this laissez-faire tragicomedy, our six-legged savior agonizes over his career path, which he will inevitably pursue until the day he dies (much like you and me).

He fears the inexorable absurdity that awaits him at the end of his life cycle, and cannot stomach a lifetime defined by the production and distribution of honey, a sticky and overt symbol for human’s monetary currency. Early in the film, Benson challenges convention by journeying outside the hive with the “pollen jocks,” who occupy the upper echelon of the proletariat (think “Mean Girls”’s Plastics of the bee world).

Benson’s journey into the commercial heart of New York City culminates in his realization that the bourgeoisie class of humans has profited from the labor of the bees for centuries. He then proceeds to sue the human race for their calculated exploitation of his species (evidently the ACLU wasn’t taking his calls).

Barry’s unrelenting dedication to his fellow bees grants the audience the opportunity to view him as an altruistic savior, perhaps even as a metaphorical representation of Karl Marx himself.

Nevertheless, despite his indefatigable commitment to justice, coupled with his fervent collectivist ideology, Barry B. Benson fails to bring about the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Benson seeks to overturn capitalist institutions using their own tricks. He pursues his cause through the human legal system with the aid of his Engelsian paramore, Vanessa.

Vanessa’s involvement in Barry’s schemes is suspect, if not downright shady, as her flower shop depends on the exploitation of the pollen jocks.

Hence, like Engels, her ideology and practice are ultimately contradictory in nature. The co-founder of Marxism condemned the treatment of factory workers while simultaneously owning several large textile factories.

Alas, the budding love affair between Barry and Vanessa cannot grow to fruition, primarily due to the inter-species divide; reality truly stings. This biological division serves as a mirror image of the socioeconomic division between bourgeois Vanessa and proletariat Barry. In his psychedelic daydreams about Vanessa, we see Barry floating in a pool of honey, as The Archies’ 1969 hit “Sugar, Sugar” plays in the background. The constant invocation of “honey honey” is no accident. Barry associates Vanessa with honey, which in his world, is the sole marker of economic and social mobility. Hence, their love is ultimately superficial and economically motivated.

“Bee Movie” cannot be accurately categorized as a Marxist triumph. In fact, I would assert that it is its very

antithesis. Barry’s attempt to overturn the existing order for the greater good culminates in him instituting a free market economy for the bees. Their exploitation will continue, merely under a different label. Any attempt to take action outside of the neoliberal institutions of power ends in tragedy, which is further emphasized by the mortal wounds Barry’s friend Adam experiences in his attempt to physically attack a human.

The supposedly happy ending of the film takes place when the bees return to the existing system of production with the addition of a few inconsequential concessions.

They remain enslaved to the humans, producing honey with the efficiency of a disgruntled union worker, only this time with marginal improvements to their working conditions. Barry embraces his profession as a pollen jock and part-time lawyer in a futile attempt to integrate himself into the petite (no pun intended) bourgeoise of the human legal system.

In his attempt to spearhead a proletariat revolution, my childhood idol finds himself trapped in the very system he sought to overturn.

His overreliance on bourgeois institutions to take down the class as a whole leads to his ideological demise.

The temptress Vanessa returns to her exploitative ways, utilizing bees for capital gain. In his glorious rage against the dying of the light, Barry finds himself less like a bee and more like a moth, incinerated instantly in his futile attempt to embrace glory.

The Lover’s Sonnet (pt. 1) MADELINE VIRGINA GANNON Daily Arts Writer

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? He asks.

The world must seem so beautiful Through his rose-tinted looking glass, Blinders fashioned from Bouquets, Jewels, Promises.

The delusions of a romantic — Is this sincerity?

I’m not sure.

For a summer’s day is as beautiful as a dream, A wish; To dream of summer is to wish for Escape.

Perhaps

ARIES

Take the heat out of disputes with friends by trying to look at the situation calmly and objectively.

TAURUS

The New Moon in your career zone helps you to get a better picture of where you’re heading – and how to get there.

Flattery is an offense hidden Behind soft petals of red, A thorn — For if this love be genuine, Why escape When I already await you here?

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, He says.

But even statues must die.

An eternal summer is destruction disguised, The Earth frozen in time, The death of reality, The end to natural bounty — Love destroys even at its brightest.

I am but a simple girl, A simple woman, Who longs for the snows of winter The thunderstorms of spring

And the hovering death of autumn.

What do I do with this lover’s sonnet?

A bird in a gilded cage Of unfading green?

A lover whose eyes Stand captured by distant horizon, Seeing past me, Through me Anything but me.

What to do when love Makes blind, Its willing victim, Its unwilling sacrifice.

I have never loved, and My question echoes through the abyss Of this hallowed chamber Of the apple of his eye.

If he loves me, then why Must I be punished to eternity?

Death is an old friend — Does love demand abandonment?

Who is to say, When the only one who speaks of love Writes sonnets Rose-tinted Rose-stained.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee, He promises.

Am I now to be Trapped —

Is this love?

PISCES

YOUR WEEKLY

You may feel emotionally raw, but by sharing your feelings and your experiences you are helping and inspiring others.

AQUARIUS

WHISPER

A New Moon in your own sign encourages you to put your own needs front and center for a change.

“You are ruining the pharmaceutical industry.”

GEMINI It’s a choice to worry or not – so choose not to. Pay attention to detail, but stop fretting about the future.

CAPRICORN A New Moon in your money zone helps you to keep better control of your finances. Don’t be miserly but do be sensible.

“I want to become a helper.”

CANCER Issues or trauma from the past can be successfully dealt with this week by therapy or counseling – don’t be afraid to open up.

LEO The New Moon in your love zone means romance and passion aplenty, provided you allow time for love when you’re so busy at work.

SAGITTARIUS Get organized if you want to succeed in this hugely busy week – you’ll need to brush up on your time management skills.

“You’ve yee’d your last haw.”

VIRGO Let the world turn without you for a while. You’ve spent too long juggling everything for no thanks or appreciation.

LIBRA The New Moon in your dating zone brings plenty of flirtatious fun, so don’t take love too seriously – just enjoy.

SCORPIO Family members may be pushing your buttons, but a New Moon in your family zone will help you regain control.

Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv

Burning JOE CHANG

Daily Arts Writer

The following is an excerpt from “Burning,” written by Jo Chang, a writer who typically avoids writing romances but decided to experiment with this short fiction piece.

Where did you find this woman?

I’ve never met anyone like her before.

Last week, the first time I heard Naomi’s cries from the living room, I texted you in a panic.

Hi naomi is crying? What should i do Is she in her piano lesson rn Yes Its fine dont worry about it “What?” I muttered to myself.

I guess in my head I was expecting someone like my own old piano teacher, a terse older European woman who seemed to get off on smacking the backs of my hands with a ruler she brought especially for that purpose.

You’ve never met her, since I stopped taking lessons after the accident. But out stepped that woman who was almost as short as the eight-yearold girl bouncing after her. The first thought that came into my mind was that she looked vaguely ill. I wondered how old she was. Younger than us, probably, maybe mid-twenties? She’s as small as a child and extremely fragilelooking, pale skin with a greenish tint and dark circles under her eyes.

“Uh, hey,” I said. I had been in the middle of bringing up the clean laundry from the basement, and it was only after I instinctively reached out for a handshake that I realized I wasn’t wearing my usual cotton gloves.

The piano teacher hesitated also, and I thought it was in response to the scarred and twisted flesh I was extending out to her, but when she took her left hand out of her pocket I saw that she only had two fingers, the thumb and the pinky. Between them lay a smooth basin.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said quietly. She had a lilting accent, a mix between British, and maybe Chinese?

I flushed and tore my gaze away from her hand. “My name is Stella.”

“Nice to meet you,” I repeated. “I’m Olive.”

Her skin was clammy and cold, smooth and weightless as plastic.

“I used to play the piano too,” I find myself telling the table over my plate of overcooked pasta. The three of us are sitting all together and the atmosphere feels amazingly awkward. Maybe it’s just me though; Naomi and Stella eat quietly but seem rather comfortable in the silence. I rub at an imaginary stain on my gloves, feeling like I am part of a weird parody of a nuclear family.

“Really?” She says. She’s barely made a dent in her pasta; Naomi reaches across the table for a second serving.

“When I was like, super young,” I ramble. “My parents really wanted me to learn music.” There’s a long pause, punctuated by the slurping noises of Naomi finishing up her second plate.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I think I did.” The pasta is practically mush.

On her way out, after giving Naomi a final hug, Stella turns around and whoa she is way too close, I take a step back — “Um,” she says. “If you ever want, I can teach you some piano. Again. If you want.” Her breath smells sweet, but the nauseating kind of cloying that makes me think of something rotting.

Naomi is asleep and I am in your office, at your desk, intent on working on my novel. A framed picture of you and me stands next to one of you and your first husband on your marriage day. There are no pictures of the new man. I do my best to avoid looking at both pictures. It’s so bizarre, to see photos of myself in your house. There are several that I have found in here so far, hanging and standing and pressed behind glass. In this one, we are around ten or eleven, just a few years older than Naomi, and we are sitting on the front step of our old apartment complex, smiling so hard it must have been painful. My red-raw hands sit inert in my lap. The golden beads in your hair flash in the sunlight.

You’d worn your hair in its natural style since I met you, but when we were nine years old you got your hair done in long box braids for the first time; your mother added these thick golden bands at the ends. I think you caught me staring at them wistfully once. They were so beautiful, they glinted in your dark hair like stars.

“Our hair isn’t the same,” I said.

“We’ll never look the same. Because we’re not sisters.”

I think you took that the wrong way.

I think you thought the expression on my face was sadness. “I know that,” you said. “But I think of you as my real sister —”

“No,” I interrupted. I held your gaze. “We’re not.”

I think that was the first time you saw the thing that was festering inside of me. The burning.

I am in love with you and you know it.

I tried to hate you, once. I don’t know if you even noticed, but that promise only lasted for maybe half a day, until you smiled and asked if I wanted to watch a movie together after school. I wish that I could. Hate you, I mean.

I accidentally fall asleep slumped over your desk, my neck limp as if it has been snapped. I have a dream about my lungs. I am at the doctor’s office and a woman who smells like thyme and coconut is raking her nails softly across my bare shoulders and down my spine with her cool dry hands. She slides a stethoscope between my breasts from behind and I try to remain as still as possible when I breathe in and then out, my breath is too loud in this white room. I can’t bear to turn around. I don’t smoke, I tell the doctor quickly. I already know, she replies and I can’t hear her voice but I know that she is speaking.

Take a look. I peer down and my flesh has become transparent, everything inside of me has turned into paper.

My liver and intestines are masses of origami, my heart is a crumpled ball.

My veins have become dark lines of ink that seep all over the pages.

Before your family moved into the apartment three doors down I was losing my mind. I was six years old and dying of boredom and loneliness. Do you remember how in our apartment complex, we were the only living creatures under the age of thirty-five?

Except for the hideous white dog that lived above us that had an unsettling habit of jumping off high surfaces with as much force as its tiny body could muster, so that at night it sounded like there were literal cats and dogs being flung onto the roof over our heads.

I’ve always had beautiful hands, it’s what everyone used to tell me.

My mother would always say I had princess hands, all long fingers and soft skin. She was only half-joking when she’d tell me I should be a hand model when I grow up. My father would protest, only half-joking himself. “No,” he’d say. “Mi princesa is going to be someone big. Something special.”

We were all surprised when your mother took me in as her own after the accident. Our parents were not exactly friends, mostly because mine didn’t know much English and yours were always leaving early and coming home late from work. I was in a coma for a week after the accident, so I did not have time to worry about the fact that I was now an orphan — an orphan — with no living relatives in this country who did not even know how to spell the word “insurance.”

That drunk driver didn’t just steal my parents from me. When the fire licked my arms up to the elbows and my long dark hair, I became someone who wasn’t a princesa anymore, a royal gown traded for a shorn head and hospital gown and hands encased in thick layers of plaster. Your mother was sitting at my side when I woke up, and hers was the first face I saw after being born into this new life. Even now, I will never stop thanking the God my parents prayed to every night.

Naomi looks almost nothing like you. I’m sure you’ve heard this many times already. She takes almost completely after her father, save for her ears, which stick out in the same endearing way that yours do. And you two eat the same way, quickly as if someone is about to steal each bite.

When you two eat cereal, your teeth scrape against the spoon.

I only half-believe her when your daughter insists that you let her eat this kind of sugary garbage all the time, but she seems to be enjoying it so much that I can’t feel too bad. I pour myself some of the cereal too, to see what it tastes like.

“What d’ya wanna do today?” I ask her over my own bowl of what is essentially mini chocolate chip cookies soaked in milk. “It’s the weekend, there’s probably a lot of stuff to do around here, right?”

“Mmm,” she says absentmindedly.

“I can’t think of anything.”

When you called me and asked for a favor, I agreed before you even finished explaining what it was, that you really needed to find someone to watch over Naomi for a week while you and he went on your honeymoon.

Everyone else was too busy with work, or had their own kids, but even so, you would have asked me anyway, since you trust me the most in this entire world.

“But even so,” you continued. “I’m so sorry to ask, I know it’s a lot — ”

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Arts

8 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021

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Design by Yassmine El-Rewini

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sundance Film Festival, like many events over the past year, had to adapt to the circumstances. Though the Festival’s fully virtual format

meant that it may have lost some of its usual sense of authenticity and tradition, it also meant that the films were far more accessible. As a result, our writers were able to cover many

“Coda” JUDITH LAWRENCE Daily Arts Writer

“Ruby’s passion and talent are beautifully struck against the pressure that she feels to stay and help her family. Heder creates a vivid life for these characters, flawlessly

more of these incredible, unique films than would have otherwise been possible.

Whether in-person or completely remote, Sundance Film Festival is

a quintessential event for the film community. Our writers watched films with Oscar-winning actors and first-time filmmakers, as well as films that tested the bounds of

contemporary filmmaking — films that made us laugh, cry, think or all of the above.

This wide breadth of cinematic experiences made this year’s

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

demonstrating the role that Ruby has played in her family since she was a child. But the members of her family, particularly her parents, are given the same depth and compassion.

They too are conflicted, bearing the same worries that any parent has about their child growing up and leaving for college.”

“Cryptozoo”

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

ANDREW WARRICK

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Daily Arts Writer

‘The Blazing World’ does way too much and nothing at all

“‘Cryptozoo’ combines the speculative wit of Kurt Vonnegut, the visual surrealism of David Lynch and the aloof humor of Wes Anderson, with a helping of ‘Jurassic Park.’

It’s more than this approximation, though. ‘Cryptozoo’ isn’t just strange for strangeness’s sake — there’s a reason behind its madness, a bedrock of meaning beneath its shimmering psychedelic veneer.”

ROSS LONDON Daily Arts Writer

“In the Earth” JACOB LUSK

Daily Arts Writer

“‘In the Earth’ is completely a creature of the pandemic. The idea for the film was conceived on the first day of the U.K. lockdown. The film was shot during the summer months over 15 days, the first new British production since the crisis started.

Sundance Film Festival a remarkable opportunity, and we are very proud of the content that we’ve created.

— Kari Anderson and Sabriya Imami, Daily Film Editors

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

“But, as writer-director-editor Ben Wheatley (“Rebecca”) was quick to point out in the postpremiere Q&A session, ‘In the Earth’ is not about the pandemic — it’s a reflection of our times.

Some traces of lockdown living — natural themes of isolation and its strain on interpersonal relationships — are indelibly imprinted on it, but the film stands on its own two legs.”

“Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir” KARI ANDERSON Senior Arts Editor

“The film depicts an evolution of Tan’s complex relationship with her mother — how a troubled childhood filled with clashes later led to a period of reconciliation, buoyed by a renewed understanding of her mother’s trauma. From there, the documentary seamlessly transitions into Tan’s writing and into the complexities of her celebrity.”

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Carlson Young (“Scream: The TV Series”) directs and stars as Margaret Winter in this feature-length version of her 2018 short film of the same name.

The movie, a fantasy-meets-horrormeets-drug trip exploration of trauma’s effect on the subconscious, plays with familiar tropes in unoriginal ways.

After the tragic drowning of her sister (Lillie Fink, in her debut), survivor’s guilt plagues Margaret’s psyche, sparking nightmares and an interest in metaphysical spirituality. The audience is taken along on one of these rich and dramatic dreams for a journey that is too unbelievable to be enthralling.

I’m not sure if there is anything in “The Blazing World” that I had not seen before, though the source material was far too varied to feel like an homage to any particular filmic trend. That said, in Sundance’s post-screening Q&A, cinematographer Shane F. Kelly (“Boyhood”) cited Young’s love of obscure German horror from the ’80s as an influence; I confess I am ignorant of German horror, regardless of decade or degree of obscurity, so I cannot evaluate this claim.

However, other apparent influences draw on a larger spectrum of film, from “Citizen Kane” to “2001: A Space Odyssey” to “Spirited Away.”

The viewer is met with a barrage of filmmaking techniques, none of which necessarily complement one another, many relying on excessive CGI.

Most troubling of all is the oversimplicity of the narrative. In this way, the film feels like nothing more than a dragged-on short. We are never sure what is reality and what is dreamscape, so the “American Psycho”-like final revelation is not shocking or interesting. The beyondcliché tale in which a timid girl gains confidence through a quest is poorly executed, as there is no gradual change. The timid girl remains timid and afraid, with just enough determination to endure the quest’s challenges, and confidence comes as a deluge with minutes remaining in the film. This is not a story of growth though, even if it is set up to be.

On top of this limp formula, the lesson Margaret learns is eye-rollingly trite: We carry the dead within ourselves as memories. By the end of the film, the viewer is still in the dark about what is real and what is not.

This lack of clarity blunts the effect of the film’s premise, that unresolved trauma can infect our dreams.

Moreover, the idea that an event so tragic as to provoke decades of nightmares intoxicated by guilt and confusion could be dismissed by the simple realization that the dead are preserved in memory is an insult to trauma victims and trauma therapists everywhere. Those on the precipice of suicide or self-destruction are not rejuvenated with such ease.

Perhaps it is the utter simplicity of the film’s narrative elements that makes the blizzard of influences and otherworldliness so banal and campy.

The camp element is not alleviated by the actors’ lack of dramatic range or odd high-school hangout scenes reminiscent of, dare I say it, “The Babysitter.” Unfortunately for Young, “The Babysitter” was funny — “The Blazing World” is not.

I will give credit to the set and lighting designers, as these elements would have been sufficient for a strong fantasy film had the story been better and the cinematography more focused.

The abundance of flora within the stately, Southern-gothic home brings the “Alice in Wonderland” element front of mind. Composed by Isom Innis (“Foster the People”), the film’s score is also a highlight, except when it is not. A luscious blend of old-school cinematic horns with fantastical harp and immersive synth, the film opens with promise.

However, in a misguided attempt to emphasize every shadow in the corner and every sinister glance, the score overpowers the action on more than one occasion. As a stand-alone work of art, Innis’s score would evoke the emotions sought onscreen; alongside the visual, the strength of sound only highlights the weak storytelling.

The most imaginative creators must know when to pull back and let the story tell itself. It is eminently clear that Young is a highly imaginative filmmaker; she just hasn’t quite struck the balance between visual grandeur and a cohesive narrative. As a campy fantasy film with a few out-of-place scenes, “The Blazing World” will satisfy the undiscerning audience.

‘Hive’ wins awards and smashes the patriarchy with bees and roast peppers JACOB LUSK

Daily Arts Writer

“Hive” is a quiet sort of film. The color palette is a bit subdued, the camerawork relatively plain. There’s no novel set piece or showstopping, paroxysmal performance. But just beneath those muted trappings, there is a writhing, soul-biting pathos that is most often spun by true-life stories. “Hive” is not a story about a maybe-maybe-not widowed Kosovan beekeeper trying to break into the pepper spread industry because writer-director Blerta Basholli simply sat around till the idea percolated from the ether and onto the script of her directorial debut. “Hive” is anything but ethereal — it’s earthly, depressive and, excusing some creative liberties, it very much happened.

In 1999, a little village in southwestern Kosovo by the name of Krusha e Madhe was massacred by Serbian special police at the tail-end of the Kosovo War. Men were killed or kidnapped, leaving the village largely in the hands of women and children. One such woman is Fahrije, in “Hive” played by Yllka Gashi (“Kukuni”). At the beginning of the

film, she’s rifling through body bags and burnet clothing: no luck. As one woman characterizes, Fahrije is one of the unlucky ones. Not because her husband is missing; that’s many or most of them, after all. The lucky ones are those that, having heard the worst, no longer have to “startle whenever the door knocks.”

With the local charitable organization suffering a chronic lack of funds and her apiary only trickling out the scantest dribbles of honey (she and her husband were beekeepers by trade — the movie’s called “Hive,” after all), Fahrije is forced to get down to business. To make ends meet — for herself, her family and the village, really — Fahrije has to learn how to drive to find work in the city making and selling avjar, a popular Balkan condiment.

And for this, she is decreed a whore.

Repeatedly. By the café-loitering deadbeat men. By other women. By her own daughter. Because, you know, whores drive cars. Or something. Tiny villages in the Balkans don’t love an entrepreneurial woman.

Fahrije is the sole and principal focus of “Hive,” despite a name suggestive of community. It’s about community, for sure — about family,

about leaning on one another in tough times, about female solidarity — but Fahrije is indisputably the apple of the camera’s eye. It often tracks her across a scene, focusing on her face.

Gashi, the woman who plays Fahrije, channels a subdued yet compelling gravity, conveying masked pain and unyielding tenaciousness behind perpetually somber expressions.

Sorrowful but by no means lachrymose — it’s a picture of stoicism and the will to persevere.

The modest nature of the film — the unimpressed might even call it banal — belies its historicity.

It’s the first film to take home all three of the preeminent prizes of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition: the Directing Award, the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Award. A win for Kosovo (the film’s motherland), a win for burgeoning directorial talent Basholli, a win for the film’s principal star Yllka Gashi and a win for Fahrije Huti and the women of Krusha e Madhe.

In a manner that mirrors its modest yet historic nature, it’s the unique admixture of the bleak and the hopeful that made “Hive” so popular at this year’s Sundance

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Film Festival. Although the movie didn’t percolate from the ether, it’s anything but ethereal — war, loss, constrictive gender norms, these are everyday things. Not celluloid inventions — real, earthbound phenomena. A depressive reality.

But this austere front belies that

aforementioned undercurrent channeled by Gashi — just as death and loss are earthbound ordeals, so are endurance and companionship. The massacre happened 22 years ago. And just the same, a widowed beekeeper really did launch her own pepper

condiment business to support her community and those she loves.

Not everyone can be born in a land of milk and honey. “Hive” shows us how, when life gives you peppers, you make ajvar. With a few awards to boot.

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Michigan in Color

9 - Wednesday, February 10, 2021 Design by Marina Sun

Notifications are ruining my life MARINA SUN MiC Columnist

I have 997 unread emails. 188 texts to open. 2 Instagram direct messages about the latest viral food video. And I’m feeling overwhelmed.

As the winter semester grinds to a start, I’ve realized that a malicious byproduct of virtual learning has emerged: notifications.

Endless Facebook postings about club recruitment, classmates blurting their existential crisis in the 200+ person GroupMe, or automated Piazza Activity Digest emails –– I’m over it. And as a new semester welcomes an opportunity to start fresh, I’m coming in with a new perspective: Notifications are ruining my life.

Notifications are skewing my self worth. I used to watch my Instagram like a hawk after posting a selfindulgent picture, dragging my finger down the screen to refresh the like count, and believing so intently that off-red digital hearts could quantify my popularity or impact my personal happiness. There was something terrifyingly instant about the way a two-sentence update could make

me feel like a sudden sensation or an invisible nobody, and with each glance at my phone I felt an increasing sense of anxiety to keep momentum with an ever-moving online atmosphere.

Notifications are cluttering my digital and mental clarity. Even before the fall semester had begun, my newly created university email inbox was inundated with a never-ending avalanche of notifications. “Join our Physical Activity Study,” “Alumni Association Welcomes You” and “MPrint Maintenance Tomorrow” were amongst the endless stream of messages that occupied my digital space, and the sheer volume of niche information often overshadowed a rare important update from a professor or recruiting opportunity. Checking my email became an unappealing chore, as my mental disorganization simultaneously worsened with each increase in unread messages.

Notifications are overwhelming my daily schedule. I nervously refresh application portals or my email inbox for hours, burning precious time while awaiting news of a club acceptance or internship application decision.

Hours have genuinely been wasted

this way, as any thoughts of other priorities or personal nourishment are pushed aside in favor of capturing the exact moment an update rolls onto the screen. I depend on notifications for validation, let them control my moods and watch helplessly as my personal connections dwindle until all I am left with is my own anxiety –– and that has to stop.

Notifications are ruining my life, so this semester I’m turning them off. The emails, the texts, and yes –– even the Bachelor Twitter updates. I’ve been prioritizing connecting to the wrong network for too long, losing focus on my mental health and the simple benefits of human communication.

Now I check my phone when I want to. If something is urgent, people will call. Suddenly the tense feeling in my shoulders has eased, and I experience a rare moment of control.

I don’t know how many emails I have. And the air is oddly quiet in the absence of a text vibration.

Refreshingly, each step is fueled by a calmness and conviction to resist any urge to glance at my phone — I’ll check my Instagram direct messages later, after this walk.

Semester above South U EASHETA SHAH MiC Columnist

We’re already moving full steam into the new semester, but I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from the previous one. Part of me wants to forge ahead and never look back at any part of 2020, but things don’t suddenly change when the clock strikes midnight, and the debris from the catastrophic year still lingers everywhere. It lingers in the unease and the discomfort of upending my first year of college. It lingers in my detached concept of home since we got sent back last March.

And it lingers in my diminished sense of self caused by the agonizing purgatory that was quarantine. I know better than to think that the new year will change any of that, so here’s to looking back and finding comfort in the chaos of an otherwise cruel semester — to rediscovering what home feels like, above South University Avenue.

As the last weeks of August approached, it was finally time to come back to Ann Arbor. It felt like coming back to life. After a six-month long haze, I was back to the most citylife experience my small suburbanupbringing self had known. And here I’d stay for the semester, in my room on the 16th floor of my apartment building. It was my cramped little space that allowed me to catch my breath for the first time in months.

Things were different now. I was different. But the essence of my college coming-of-age was imminent.

As the brilliant colors of the sunset faded into the first night of my post-quarantine freedom, I looked through my living room window to the street below. A line had begun to form outside of Brown Jug, and friends stumbled around, linked at the arms and masked up. That was the beginning of my infatuation with the eccentric character of South University Avenue.

The semester would go on like this, and the weekend bustle would start as early as Wednesday, due to asynchronous schedules brought about by a new normal. 8 o’clock would bring the earliest sounds of soft laughter and music seeping through our windows, signifying the end of Zoom calls and the beginning of something more familiar. During a normal semester, I would be on my way to the UGLi for late hours of studying, but a long day of screens calls for more frequent breaks and new nightly routines. In time, my roommates and I took comfort in living vicariously through the people that walked down South U — it filled the void that came with missing out on what were supposed to be the best nights of our lives, in the name of public health safety.

From above, we would drink along with the carousers, crafting the most ridiculous stories about those we saw and heard 16 floors down.

Down there, that was Trish. With a skip in her step, she was on her way to meet up with the guy from class she kept pinned on her 11 a.m.

Chemistry Zoom screen. She found home in romanticizing even the most reckless first dates.

On nights when Pizza House take-out was calling my name, I’d stay outside a bit longer, taking in the spirited characters of the street.

From the rare political bar fights to the two people waiting outside of Champs Liquor Store standing too close to be just friends, I found home within the strangers that roamed South U. And slowly but surely, the deep disquiet of the past six months started to fade.

And when night turned to day, the sidewalks would populate with skateboard heads and students looking for a place to study. I’d peer down through my bedroom window, questioning the need for a sweatshirt in the early September morning.

A woman running in shorts and a group of boys walking in t-shirts

discouraged the extra layers as I got ready to make my own trek across campus. In those couple of seconds I spent gazing into the daily activities of people on that street, I felt comfort.

I felt comfort in knowing that no matter how difficult the semester would get, we were in it together: me and my window view of this city and its people. And maybe that’s what coming home feels like.

I remember the mess that was our first week of classes: from clashing Zoom calls in the living room to the dynamic sounds of the powerful Graduate Employees’ Organization strikes further down the street. It felt surreal and chaotic. That week stood as a painfully accurate precedent for the months to come, and as October turned into November, I promptly sensed the aftermath of an experimental semester gone wrong. But even in the chaos, I felt at peace in the home I had created. With the new lockdown order across campus, the street that once had so many stories to tell was empty, and my routine gaze down had lifted higher to the LED-lit living rooms and newly-decorated Christmas trees in the windows of the high-rises across from us. Every square was a different color; every square was a different story. Now, midterms and finals were upon us, and there was no time for idle people-watching. Nevertheless, as night time approached and lights flickered on, I was reminded of my pact with the view of South U. It’s hard to find what home is when you’re still caught in between who you are and who you’re becoming — when your concept of home continues to evolve as you do — and it’s even harder with the added uncertainty of the inexhaustible pandemic.

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Iced Coffee, Four and Four YASMINE SLIMANI MiC Columnist

I’ve always ordered an iced coffee, four and four.

The sickly sweet drink has been my specialty since high school. It was a joke amongst anyone who knew me; they would pester me with well-meaning quips about the fact that every day, just like clockwork, I’d walk into class late with that predictable beverage in my hand. Even now, years after the fact, I can’t get myself to order anything else.

I’ve always been a creature of habit. My interests, routines, favorite songs and foods remained stagnant as the years went on. I never saw a problem with it –– these things brought me comfort, and I indulged in them for so long that they started to become mine. In my mind, I was defined by my unwaveringly long hair, unchanging music taste and steadfast coffee order. But this past year, I’ve felt a gnawing, incessant need to change. The familiarity began to feel less like a comfortable security blanket and more like a suffocating character flaw. I was petrified that years had gone by and I’d been standing completely still.

Perhaps this fear was rooted in the fact that lately, everything has been changing. With so many things out of our control –– a shut-down world, the loss of family members and friends, our compromised routines and sense of normalcy –– familiarity feels foreign. We cut our quarantine bangs, rearrange the furniture in our rooms and look for ways to reinvent and seize control over lives that suddenly feel a little less vibrant. I’m no different. Rather than embracing my penchant for consistency, I felt an urgent desire to change something,

anything, about myself.

So instead of shuffling through the same Taylor Swift album I’ve listened to since freshman year of high school, I forced myself to listen to experimental post-punk records. I started to never use the same car air freshener scent twice. I tried (and failed) every 15-day ab challenge, 15 times over.

I took risks at the drive-thru, and feigned surprise when I hated the way that black coffee bitterly coated my tong ue.

“That change, the gradual kind, sneaks up on you.

I don’t think you realize it until it has already shifted your perspective and simply becomes you. For me, the change that I had been actively pursuing was happening all along, quietly and unsuspectingly.”

My miniscule vies for spontaneity were rooted in this need to have changed in some way over the course of the past year.

However, I’ve found that those small acts were disingenuous for me. The bizarre need to prove that I’ve evolved, as if such a feat is dictated by new hair or music, just convinced me that any of my “normals” made me boring and

needed correcting. Even worse, it presupposed me as a static, twodimensional creature, discrediting the real change I’d made –– the kind I couldn’t immediately see.

That change, the gradual kind, sneaks up on you. I don’t think you realize it until it has already shifted your perspective and simply becomes you. For me, the change that I had been actively pursuing was happening all along, quietly and unsuspectingly.

One day, that particular bad memory I could never speak about without crying no longer evoked tears when I told the story.

One day, my friend off-handedly mentioned that she was so proud of how much I had matured, and that she’d noticed it over the past few months and never said anything.

One day, the “end-of-theworld” embarrassing moments and heartbreaking rejections I thought I could never get over began to take up less space in my mind, until I didn’t think about them at all. I had never noticed or appreciated this kind of change, but it’d been happening all along.

I think that the pressure to have a new, exciting version of yourself to parade doesn’t require compromising the things we define ourselves by now, in fear of being boring. In some ways, I think that we are a new, exciting version of ourselves every day.

Time necessitates change, and this change shapes us whether we like it or not. The things we learn and the experiences that strengthen us culminate silently, even if your coffee order has never changed or you’ve had the same favorite song since middle school. I realize that now and can appreciate the growth that I’ve made when I wasn’t even looking.

Today, I ordered an iced coffee, four and four. I never liked black coffee anyway.

Revisiting Jonestown: What we can learn from the 1978 mass-murder suicide ANCHAL MALH MiC Columnist

Content warning: this article discusses abuse and suicide.

Growing up in New York City, my mother always tried her best to ensure that I felt connected to my heritage and the land my ancestors came from.

This meant only having pepper-pot on Christmas Day, learning how to play cricket on the weekends and watching Indian movies every Saturday night. On Wednesday nights, after I had turned nine years old, she sat me down with a notebook and pen and began teaching me Guyanese history. Her eyes always lit up with pride as she educated me about the colors of Guyana’s flag and their symbolism: green for the beautiful forests that encompassed the region, white for the ever-flowing bodies of water, gold for the country’s abundance of minerals, black for the people’s perseverance to make Guyana a better country and red for the dynamic nature that holds together an independent nation. However, for this week’s history lesson, the dim light in the corner of our living room fell on her face, but the light in her eyes faded as she recalled the horrifying mass murder-suicide that occurred almost 43 years ago.

We often say, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” to warn individuals not to blindly believe everything they hear. However, people may not know that this phrase stems from mass manipulation and false promises that ultimately led to more than 900 dead bodies abandoned in the rainforests of Guyana –– the largest loss of American civilian lives pre-9/11 (excluding natural disasters).

Jim Jones was born on May 31, 1931, in Crete, Ind. He would go on to become a preacher at the Peoples Temple, an Evangelist group based in San Francisco. In the 1950s, Jones became a leader who promoted desegregation and racial equality. He eventually gained a large following of primarily elderly, Black women and children due to his charismatic personality and ideas that preyed on an audience seeking acceptance in society. “My life was in turmoil, I had a failed marriage and I was looking for a place to be political in a safer environment after a series of bad decisions,” Laura Kohl, a survivor of Jonestown, stated when questioned about why she felt a sense of comfort in the Peoples Temple. However, with Jones’s newfound fame as a preacher, he became increasingly paranoid of the American government’s scrutiny.

Jones preached about creating a utopian socialist society located in the jungles of Guyana to his followers who, believing in this, donated their money to move to Guyana and create a community named Jonestown. His supporters believed they were going to be welcomed by the tall palm trees that graced the rainforests of Guyana. They believed the wide and bright green leaves would protect them from the injustices they were facing in America.

However, when these followers arrived, they were met with small and shabby huts located on nutrientdeprived soil that was not sustainable for large groups. Their utopian socialist society resembled a prison camp.

Survivors of Jonestown recall having to work long hours with minimal food while suffering abuse from Jones.

He forced his followers to write him letters explaining their fears and past mistakes, and if he perceived that they “betrayed” him, Jones would divulge the information at weekly public meetings. “He started to alienate you from your families … destroy that family unit,” said Jonestown survivor Yulanda Williams. “So that then he could become the predator, but also the one who was the provider of every need that you required in life.”

In addition, Jones would rehearse

mass suicides in which followers were instructed to drink a beverage called Flavor-Aid, which was concocted by mixing a fruit-flavored powder with water, similar to Kool-Aid. Jones repeated this frequently as a test of their loyalty to ensure that on the day he officially decided to proceed with the previously mentioned murdersuicide, Jonestown would have no survivors.

Friends and families of followers that went to Jonestown became concerned with the idea that their loved ones were being held against their will after receiving letters that they believed were not truly written with excitement and joy. Concerned with the complaints from relatives and from reports of horrendous living conditions at Jonestown, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan, D-Calif., wrote to the House of Foreign Affairs asking to make a visit to the Peoples Temple in Guyana. Initially, Jones refused to have Rep. Ryan as a guest but eventually allowed him to come.

On Nov. 18, 1978, Rep. Ryan arrived on the Port Kaituma airstrip with several journalists and was allowed to visit the commune. During his visit, people in the commune told Rep. Ryan they wished to return home.

Tension rose within the community

as Jones became aware of this, so he decided to finally conduct the mass murder-suicide. As Rep. Ryan was on the Port Kaituma airstrip, he and several other journalists were shot by gunmen affiliated with the Peoples Temple. While Rep. Ryan was being attacked, followers at the commune were ordered to drink a grape-flavored punch laced with cyanide. After bodies dropped to the floor, Jones had his gunmen traverse the commune to ensure that all of his followers died. When examining bodies from Jonestown, inspectors discovered injections on many, affirming claims that those who played dead were later injected with lethal poison. Any remaining survivors were either asleep during the event, posed as a part of Rep. Ryan’s party or were sent by Jones to retrieve supplies or carry out negotiations with different nations.

As we move forward and reflect on the events of Jonestown, we must be mindful of the people who lost their lives seeking a paradise and liberation from constricting societal bounds. We must respect the efforts of the journalists who accompanied Rep. Ryan and sought to unmask the ugly truths of Jonestown. Survivors of Jonestown are continuously reminded of the psychological harm

and danger they faced, many feeling extreme guilt for making it out alive.

Saying “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” belittles the events of Jonestown and mocks the people who were victims of Jones’s terror. It reduces Guyana to a mere shell of a horrific legacy.

When I think of Guyana, I hear the sound of Tassa drums ringing through the air on wedding days, signaling a time of joy and celebration in a neighborhood. I remember my summer visits to Guyana as a child, and I feel my bare feet touch the rocky ground, the clay-like soil seeping through my toes as I played hide and seek with my cousins. I see the cows roaming the neighborhood, heading towards the trenches to graze on the grass and sip water flowing through. I see the local shops that sell traditional Indian clothing, sarees and lenghas covered in small crystal diamonds with carefully hemmed neon flowers at the edge of each piece. But when the harmful idiom is said, it ceases the tropical breeze, dries out the water of my ancestor’s land, makes the once vibrant green leaves wilt in the sun and reduces Guyana to a mass graveyard.

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Michigan in Color

10 - Wednesday, February 10, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Where’s the Black joy in Hollywood MARIA PATTON MiC Columnist

This past year has been a lot to deal with and having constant access to news about the traumas of our realities has only worsened our mental health.

Especially in the Black community, it seems like every time we recover from one thing and find some happiness, another disastrous headline or tragic event surfaces to bring us back down.

The Black community has lost many of our brothers and sisters since January 2020. Kobe Bryant, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Chadwick Boseman, John Lewis, Ahmaud Arbery, Cicely Tyson, Hank Aaron, Natalie DeselleReid and Naya Rivera are only a few of the angels we have recently gained.

We’re facing these heartbreaking losses while the pandemic keeps us isolated from the distractions and loved ones we go to for comfort. We’ve constantly hoped and searched for a light that will guide us out of this lonely darkness, only to be thrown in deeper. One way I have tried to bring myself out of the empty darkness is by absorbing Black joy through different artistic mediums.

I’ve listened to a lot of music by

my favorite Black artists and read inspirational books by Black authors, but I have spent most of my time watching countless movies and films I’ve loved my whole life that showcase Black voices in a positive light.

Nostalgia has pushed these classic reruns back into my life, including “Cinderella” with Whitney Houston and Brandy, “Black Panther”, “Jump In!” and many other films that brought me joy when I was younger and when the world seemed so much brighter. Revisiting these old sources of happiness have been great ways to take my mind off the turmoil this country is undergoing. While I enjoyed these trips down memory lane, I couldn’t help but notice how many of my favorite films don’t illustrate Black people in the positive way that I remember.

Disney was a staple in my childhood. Its filmography was a big source of my happiness. These movies and shows made me feel like I could achieve anything in my wildest dreams. A notable film that I was excited to rewatch was “The Princess and the Frog.” I loved this movie as a kid because Tiana, the only Black Disney princess, was the only princess I was able to see myself

Graphic by Alan Yang. Images courtesy of Gage Skidmore, Joan Hernandez, Mike D. Photography and gdcgraphics.

in. The music, the characters, the plot, everything about the movie made me so happy as a kid. Watching it again brought me some joy, but why is the only Black Disney princess a frog for the majority of her film? I didn’t notice this when I was eight.

I was just happy to finally have that representation. It caused me to wonder why that representation has to come at such a dehumanizing cost? Why do displays of Black joy always come with a price? Disney is supposed to be a place where dreams come true. My dream is to live in a society free of racists and racism, but

I guess that is one dream Disney isn’t willing to grant.

Now that I am older, I am able to catch the subtle hints of racism in dialogue, like in “Total Drama Island”.

I’m over Black characters dying first in horror films like in “Scream 2”. I am sick of the role of the Black best friend being implemented in shows and films just so they can be awarded their diversity points, like in “Clueless”.

I can’t help but wonder if Tiana would still be my favorite princess if I was given more options, ones that aren’t as demeaning. I’m either asking why there are no Black people in

No thanks, Obama KARIS CLARK MiC Columnist

There exists an overwhelming amount of cognitive dissonance when it comes time to address the awful actualities of former President Barack Obama’s legacy, but if we want to ensure that the era of Trumpism is truly gone for good, it must be done, lest we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. As the first Black president of the United States, Obama was, and still is for many, a symbol of progress and hope. For people my age, he was the first president many of us have memories of — and juxtaposed with the recent administration, it’s easy to feel a sense of nostalgia for the bygone era of his presidency. But this nostalgia for Obama is just that –– nostalgia –– and it ignores the reality of the fact that his administration was right-wing, white-supremacist and imperialist in nature.

To start, one of the most overlooked ways the first Black president harmed his own people was abroad in Africa.

Through the United States Africa Command, which originated in 2008 under President George W. Bush, Obama oversaw its advancement and expansion as he worked effortlessly to continue neo-colonialism by extending U.S. influence throughout Africa via military dominance.

Domestically, Obama arguably made it his mission to harm Black Americans. His administration contributed more heavily to the militarization of the police than any president, leading to an overwhelming increase of police brutality in Black America. This directly resulted in the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, which, as you may recall, started during the Obama administration for this reason. Ultimately, the Obama administration responded to this movement and subsequent protests by sending troops and tanks to

Ferguson, calling Baltimore rioters “thugs” and working to increase surveillance of prominent Black activists — sound familiar?

Looking toward immigration, Obama’s immigration policy resulted in fostering the growth of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Starting in 2008, his administration cultivated the Alien Transfer and Exit Program which deliberately sought to create complications for migrants seeking to cross the border, by separating them from their families and shipping them off to mystery locations without any identification or means to contact their loved ones. As his admisinistration continued on, it participated in the deportation and removal of nearly 2.7 million undocumented immigrants. Additionally, it caused tens of thousands of undocumented parents to be stripped of contact with their own children, most likely forever; some “disappeared” only to be found in countries they weren’t even from, where they were most likely trafficked, sexually abused or killed. On top of this, in 2014, the administration constructed border detention facilities with the sole purpose of placing undocumented parents’ children in cages. The growth in detainment of immigrants occuring during the Obama era proved especially lucrative for firms like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, two companies that contributed hundreds of thousands to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

From his military coup in Honduras, displacing the democratically-elected leftist government of Manuel Zelaya and putting a far-right narco-dictatorship in its place, to his parliamentary coup in Brazil, which gave rise to the fascist Bolsonaro regime, to his soft coup in Paraguay, to his managing

of Project Gunrunner, which led to armed drug cartels in Mexico with thousands of weapons, to the sanctions he imposed on Venezuela after declaring it an “extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States,” the great instability regarding immigration is not only the fault of the Obama administration, but Obama as well. If you’re appalled at the violence that took place at the U.S. Capitol last month, imagine how the citizens of these countries felt when forces of U.S. imperialism came to wreck havoc and unleash chaos in their home countries, all in service of capital and Western hegemony.

On the other side of the globe, Obama was also actively destabilizing the Middle East, having dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven Muslim-majority countries in 2016 alone (a low estimate). His administration conducted airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and led a drone-strike program in which 90% of the people killed were civilians, or non-enemy combatants. During his time as president, he initiated the civil war in Yemen and offered $1 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, resulting in one of the largest modern-day humanitarian catastrophes with over hundreds of thousands of casualties. Obama armed the Israeli apartheid regime with $38 billion in military aid and launched a war in Libya, using NATO to support rebel groups of Islamist extremists and resulting in the destablization of the Libyan government and an increase in slave markets. Yet, while the president who allegedly told a White House aide in 2011, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine” continues to be seen as a beacon of good in the Western world, the Global South still suffers from the evils of his legacy.

With the U.S. military being one of the largest polluters, bigger than 140 countries combined, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than any other institution on the planet, it’s clear the Obama administration was not the climatechange conscious, science-believing administration it led the American public to believe it was. Furthermore, Obama worked diligently to increase domestic oil production to record levels and allowed police officers to attack Indigenous protestors at Standing Rock in order to build a corporate oil pipeline.

As Paulo Freire wrote in Pedagogy of Freedom, “The capitalist system reaches, in its globalizing neoliberal crusade, the maximum efficacy of its intrinsically evil nature.” This was embodied in the Obama administration, and from a dialectical standpoint, because of its fundamentally contradictory nature, ushered in the era of Trumpism we just witnessed.

Naturally, it’s very easy to read these accounts, hear these details, see these article links and brush them off as “things of the past.” It’s even easier to justify these atrocities by saying that “Trump did these things, too.”

It’s even easier to trivialize them by pointing to the positive aspects of Obama’s presidency. What’s hard, is making a conscious decision to modify our behavior and attitude in order to overcome the cognitive dissonance we face when we hear the truth about someone we once admired. If we really want to say “no thanks” to Obama, we can start by remembering that these aren’t simply article links and facts. These are real events that happened to real people with real families whose lives (if they still have them) have been changed for the worse, forever, because of President Obama’s administration. And if you think that’s bad, wait till you find out who his vice president was.

a film or TV show, or, if I’m lucky enough to get that representation, I find myself asking why the plots are so saturated with racism?

I love the displays of Black culture in “The Princess and the Frog,” but I am no longer willing to accept the underlying consequences as a price for this exposure. It’s 2021, and Black stories about our happiness without having to overcome some kind of racial tragedy have been long overdue. That being said, not all displays of Black culture have been negative; movies and shows like “Little”, “Soul”, “The Wiz”, “The

Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, “Black is King”, “That’s So Raven”, “Coming to America”, “Bad Boys” and so many more are great examples of this display of unapologetic Black culture. Movies that encourage you to find your purpose, love who you are and rise above the standard are uplifting messages that the Black community and our Black children should be able to access.

These positive messages within Black representation have given me that hope I have been looking for amongst the darkness. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Biblioamorapathy is a made-up word SARAH AKAABOUNE MiC Columnist

Biblioamorapathy.

Adjective, though in some especially sneaky cases, functions as a noun. Derived from the Latin roots “biblio,” meaning book, “amora,” meaning love and “pathy,” to feel. Defined as the special sort of giddy feeling one gets after checking out a particularly large stack of books from the local library, or happening across a dirtcheap box of yellowed, dog-eared, paperback novels at a yard sale –– the kind of yard sale held in a desperate attempt to exhume a home of all its oddities. It’s the painting of a poppy field in Marseille whose colors bleed so finely together under the fluorescence of display, yet seem so entirely out of place on the blank wall above the couch in the living room; spider web-fractured holiday-themed mugs gifted by friends who were now nothing more than strangers exchanging tight-lipped smiles. A feeling that comes from the beautiful realization that the book forced upon you by your world literature teacher, with indiscernible brown stains in its margins and blue arrows and circles around seemingly meaningless words left by students past, ultimately proved itself to be the kind of book you found yourself counting hours, minutes and seconds until the next encounter.

Biblioamorapathy, in its entirety, is a feeling of pure elation –– one that has never been defined before in any kind of classical dictionary, thesaurus or new-age search engine that interprets popular slang for Generation X. Though in order to truly define biblioamorapathy, or any other word for that matter, we must trace its origins, obtain a sound understanding of all its varying contexts and tenses, so that when we finally do put it into writing, in

extensively detailed research papers, in beasts of literary works conceived in the most peculiar of ways –– perhaps while standing up, in the shower, writing in exclusively bright pink ink — we know in our hearts that we have done the word proper justice. I first became acquainted with biblioamorapathy the minute I learned to read; I found it intertwined within anecdotes on the backs of cereal boxes in seizure-inducing color palettes, no doubt an attempt to distract from the potential health implications that would soon arise from the sheer amount of saturated fats. I found it in “Fun with Dick and Jane,” in the boyish exploits of “Frog and Toad,” later in the home I created at Hogwarts alongside Harry Potter, and soon after in the gardens of the Brontë sisters and Dante’s journey through Inferno.

Biblioamorapathy manifests itself in a multitude of ways –– the most common a telltale nagging itch that tickles the pit of your stomach and soon diffuses into your bloodstream, seeping into the folds of your grey matter, coating the endings of your nerves, so that in due time, every fiber of your body begins to vibrate with an unseen force of belligerent joy. The only remedy is immediate exposure to the half-finished book splayed on your bedroom floor, the novel with a department store coupon for a bookmark in the recesses of your bag vehemently demanding to be read. Biblioamorapathy is a learned sensation, devoid of any innate predisposition, born from the ability to love books and be loved by books. While often mistaken for heart problems, indigestion, or Langston Hughesesque weary blues, it’s important to understand that biblioamorapathy isn’t a complication but rather a gift endowed upon the lucky few of the world.

What went wrong: Egypt’s political landscape and the impact of the youth MARIAM ALSHOURBAGY MiC Columnist

“Kefaya!” (Enough!) screamed the Egyptian youth as Hosni Mubarak planned his fifth six-year presidential term. “Kefaya!” they said to their parents and grandparents when told to sit back down and wait for time to mend their country. “Kefaya!” they yelled to the painfully familiar corruption and manipulation.

“Kefaya!” became the motto of the Egyptian youth in a movement not only in opposition to the old regime but against an entire ideology ingrained in the minds of all Egyptian generations prior.

Egypt’s youth, aged 30 and under, makes up 60% of the entire population. So on Jan. 25, 2011, when they stood together in Tahrir Square, they took the nation by surprise. They were the first in generations to stand united against oppression despite the insurmountable obstacle it presented: The Egyptian government comprises individuals 40 years of age and older

with decades of experience in politics.

So even as the revolutionaries gained more optimism and secured their first hearing with the government, who could they have sent to make negotiations? The fight came down to some naive 20-year-olds trying to negotiate with military strategists who had years of experience in feigned appeasement.

There is a false dichotomy when it comes to analyzing the political and economic reasons behind the revolution. The Egyptian people spent 30 years under Mubarak’s inefficient, irresponsible and corrupt regime.

One cannot group the protestors’ grievances under either politics or the economy as the citizens endured low wages, collapsing health care and a failing education system to the point that other nations began to know Egyptians as apathetic and apolitical.

The Egyptians needed a revolution to restore their dignity, stolen by Mubarak’s 30-year-long tyranny.

Nonetheless, these protesters made the mistake of listening to the older generations, who told them to

be “grateful that the President even mentioned, or reiterated, some of the demands” they made. So they washed the graffiti, swept the roads and left the square before securing any of their demands. Nevertheless, they were still optimistic –– after all, nothing had ever before grabbed the attention of the government or prompted the whole nation to stand together. Right after that, Mubarak stepped down and public officials speedily organized an election and several candidates were nominated on the platform of representation and democracy. However, did the National Association for Change, the Coalition of the Revolution’s Youth, independent trade unions, independent Islamists, the radical left, the March 9 Professors, human rights groups, the Constitutional Referendum and the Muslim and Christian religious establishments who came together in support of the 2011 revolution all want the same thing? Yes and no.

United in wanting Mubarak out of office, but divided by political and religious ideologies, each group was

left scrambling for points of cohesion.

Meanwhile, the military, on the opposing side, proposed a single man, Ahmed Shafik, to run their campaign instead of splitting their votes over multiple runners, a strategy that came at a great cost for the revolutionaries as it once again deepened the divide between the people. And although the military did not successfully elect their candidate, this divide proved insurmountable –– no one candidate seemed able to pacify the country.

These mistakes have something in common: inexperience. The revolution of 2011 was an uprising by the youth and for the people, but the youth did not have a point of reference or the guidance of wiser minds –– even the oldest generation alive was born in the midst of this corruption. The younger generation was vulnerable to the manipulation of military officials and the older politicians that made up the regime. Nevertheless, this youth would grow up and prove they have an advantage. They saw the power they had when they stood behind a common purpose with a

single voice and gained an increased understanding of what goes on behind closed doors in Cairo. As they look forward, being part of the revolution of Jan. 25 against Mubarak’s regime gives them the experience they need to engage in more successful political activism in the future.

Fast forward to 2021, and Egypt is still suffering under military leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. After the mishaps of the last political revolution, Egypt was in ruins, and the fastest way to reassemble the torn country was to elect strong leadership. But at what cost? The streets may be safer now, but prisons no longer distinguish between criminals and political activists who oppose al-Sisi’s regime. As the government supposedly invests billions of dollars on projects to restore the economy, Egypt’s infrastructure and public services are collapsing. Even as the faith in the democratic system was restored after the revolution –– since Egypt saw unprecedented voter turnout and multiple parties on the ballot for

the first time in generations –– this hope only lasted for a year under former President Mohamed Morsi before Sisi’s military coup –– which amassed near-unanimous support and ended any hope of political representation. Sisi learned his lesson from the events of Jan. 25 and worked harder to stifle any attempts of revolution. Unfortunately for him, the youth took their own notes.

The next step is to wait. The youth must wait for an opening to return to the square after learning from their previous mistakes. The revolution of 2011 was the first sign of the power of new ideologies and tolerance amongst younger generations, but they didn’t have the experience that only comes with time on their side. The last thing they should do is lose hope because, even if they can’t see it yet, they are now at an advantage. So they should remain optimistic and never forget how Kefaya, a single word, held so much power. This is the opportunity of a complete revamp of society, to make it better and to say Kefaya to oppression.

Opinion

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From The Daily: America needs ambitious policy. The Democrats have to deliver.

W

ith the election of President Joe Biden and Sens. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Democrats now have control of the presidency, the House and the Senate for the first time in 10 years. But their majority is slim, and their control of Congress will likely end in two years, following the 2022 midterm elections.

As such, the Democrats need to be strategic with their legislative focus and get to work immediately.

Wasting time on minute aspects of bills that the general public does not understand, as the Obama administration did with its economic relief measure, will cost them their positions. Biden must spearhead policy that is effective and has clear, tangible results for Democrats to have any hope of successfully maintaining a majority through the midterms.

Before beginning a conversation on the policies that will be crucial for the Biden administration to push, it is important to note the likely disastrous role of the filibuster in preventing the Senate Democrats from passing legislation.

Recently, Biden has refrained from taking a strong stance on the filibuster — the popular Senate stalling strategy — and suspicions are arising among some Democrats that he may be a stronger supporter of the filibuster than they wish. In an ideal America, where bipartisanship flourishes flawlessly and democracy is perfectly embodied, Biden’s desire to negotiate and work with the Republicans without the removal of the filibuster might be a reality.

But neither of the above exists in 2021. If Biden fails to acknowledge that truth, then he can wave goodbye to any legislative plans for the coming months. His pursuit of political compromise is noble and admirable, but it is naive to think Republicans will agree to most aspects of a Democratic agenda.

Simply put, Biden needs to end the filibuster for any progress to be made.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recognizes the power of the filibuster and the harm that outlawing it could have on his party’s role in politics in the coming years, noting just before Biden’s inauguration that he planned to present an ultimatum to Majority Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the Democrats.

His warning: Keep the filibuster, or expect a lack of cooperation.

Since then, following reassurance from a few Democratic senators that they would not endorse removing the filibuster, McConnell has calmed his stance.

Reformed health care, climate initiatives, economic restoration and much more are all crucial to the Biden agenda and are desperately needed by Americans living in a post-Trump United States. The filibuster can easily block all of them.

At the moment, Biden’s plan of attack seems to be through executive orders, as both Donald Trump and Barack Obama did before him. But if the Republicans re-secure the presidency, any executive orders can be reversed.

It happened with Trump, who quickly moved to dismantle many of Obama’s orders, and is now happening with Biden, who plans to do the same to Trump’s. For this reason, Biden and the Democrats cannot shy away from pushing

their agenda in Congress by passing laws, arguably the most legitimate form of the legislative process.

It is inevitable that Biden will face the destructive power of the filibuster in his policy plans. It is simply a matter of if he is willing to dismantle it or not.

Apart from the set of usual responsibilities faced by U.S. presidents, the Biden-Harris administration has inherited a number of challenges this term unseen by prior administrations.

In tackling them, we hope they enact policies that fully address the urgency of the pandemic while also working toward solving long-term issues like protecting Americans from further economic turmoil.

In addition to mitigating the spread of COVID-19, Biden and Harris should also seek economic stability for all.

With 15,536 lives lost in Michigan and more than 400,000 dead in the U.S., coupled with a stunted economy and persistently high unemployment, the weight of each signature during these first 100 days remains heavy. A poorly balanced response could lead to an additional 200,000 deaths in the U.S. alone.

The Biden-Harris plan to beat COVID-19 is bold. But is it enough? With a seven-point strategy that values science, seeks the re-harnessing of national cooperation and emphasizes accessibility and inclusivity, our nation’s future is more hopeful than it was before this transition of power. With specific goals, such as vaccinating 100 million in the first 100 days, bringing down COVIDrelated costs and barriers and working to rebuild transparency and public trust in scientific institutions, the Biden-Harris plan has the potential to set America on the right track. Experts warn, however, that the plan may be lacking when it comes to funding, staffing and procedures regarding the new COVID-19 variant, SARSCoV-2 B.1.1.7.

While the Biden-Harris administration is primarily responsible for enacting their seven-point strategy to address COVID-19, we must be equally committed to doing the work as a community. In Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County, if we want to save lives in our own neighborhoods, we must remain committed to recommendations made by public health experts, like wearing well-fitted masks outside of our households and following all guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This pandemic will not go away on its own. Following mandates, enforcing travel restrictions and implementing common-sense economic measures will be equally important up until day 101 and thereafter. Without follow-through from every community in the U.S. and a sense of personal responsibility, the advances made by Biden’s administration will falter.

Though we only sit at the tip of the iceberg that will inevitably

consume 2021, November 2022 and the midterm elections are just around the corner. The best way for Democrats to retain control of Congress in the 2022 midterms will be to govern like McConnell.

That is: viciously, obstinately and without tolerance for dissent on important issues like the minimum wage or the filibuster — we are looking at you, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. From a purely electoral angle, one critique of the Obama administration is that former President Obama governed in the long term. Yes, the Affordable Care Act proved to be a relatively popular piece of legislation in the long run, but in the short term, this nearly 2,500-page law did little to improve the electoral odds for Democrats during the 2010 midterms.

Democrats’ failure to pass visible policies that benefited their core supporters arguably led to Republicans taking the House in 2010. Obama had much to show for his work, but most of it was too indirect to compel voters.

In contrast to the Obama administration, the Biden administration should focus first on the short term. Biden should push through those ambitious policies which will garner immediate approval from the public. An immediate, rapid-fire approach is the only type of administration that Biden can afford to have, because maintaining a governing coalition after 2022 is by no means guaranteed. Some examples of ambitious measures that have broad public support include a $15 minimum wage, marijuana legalization at the federal level and expanding government-sponsored health care plans.

Outside of policy, as Democrats move into 2021, they may want to fortify their messaging — Republicans certainly will. Take U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., who recently said, “I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation.”

Whether Democrats are more or moderate or progressive, it is clear that their messaging has been faulty. Even if Biden delivers on many of his more ambitious campaign promises, it will be useless in the coming elections if Democrats can’t communicate in new and effective ways.

For example, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has made several successful appearances on Fox News, a notably conservative network.

This could signal a welcome change in how Democrats conduct their messaging for the coming election cycle.

Democrats are not faced with the decision of either keeping control of Congress or passing ambitious policies. Those goals are one and the same. If Joe Biden wants to be a successful president, the only path that he can follow is one of aggressive action, be it on the COVID-19 pandemic, the dysfunction in our economy or in wrangling a grid-locked government.

Travel restrictions only work if they are thorough, Joe

L

ate last year, news broke of the COVID-19 B.1.1.7 variant reaching the United States, specifically Colorado. Much like last March, when the news was reported that the coronavirus had arrived in the U.S., panic and uncertainty quickly spread throughout the country. Now, nearly a month after the initial detection of the novel variant, over 600 domestic cases of B.1.1.7 have been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 13 cases are here in Washtenaw County.

The county health department’s response to this: all University of Michigan students currently residing in Ann Arbor should “stay in place,” including not traveling within or out of the county, for two weeks. The Biden administration has also taken action, deploying countrywide travel restrictions on those coming from countries that are heavily populated with new and potentially dangerous variants, including Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and South Africa. However, there is a problematic exception to that ban: American citizens are still welcome back, even if they have traveled to those destinations.

Although likely wellintentioned, these travel restrictions are heavily flawed in their design.

As we have seen an unfortunate number of times — over 26 million, to be exact — over the last few months, the virus does not care one bit about citizenship. Traveling to a location where the virus, especially a highly contagious variant of it, is rampant (or even just present) is a nearperfect recipe for contracting it. Thus, excluding those that have traveled to these countries from travel restrictions simply because their legal documents read “U.S. citizen” is illogical.

These Americans can and likely will contract the disease, too.

Although not a perfect analogy, when Washtenaw County announced its stayat-home recommendation last week, they did not say Ann Arbor citizens could be excused, as doing so would be ineffective.

The same should be expected from U.S. citizens on both a larger and more exhaustive

scale. A strict quarantine, not simply an advisory to do so, should be mandatory for these individuals should they wish to return.

The U.S. has been struggling with this concept since well before President Joe Biden took office. Look back to Thanksgiving or Christmas, only a few months ago, for example.

Despite repeated advisories from the CDC to avoid travel, strict restrictions were not enacted and consequently, Americans traveled during the holidays in mass numbers. In the days and weeks following Thanksgiving this year, daily hospitalizations reached over 100,000 and daily deaths were at about 3,000. Experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, note that this was likely a direct result of the inf lux of travel around the holiday.

“This evaluation is not to say that Biden and his administration are not on the right track, but rather that they need to go full force with the ban, or at the very least with the conditions they impose on returning. ” What is potentially even more troubling about this data is that most of the holiday travel was domestic. International travel thus proposes a whole new concern, if those other countries are experiencing problems with increased cases due to the novel variant. Travel for anyone during a pandemic will inevitably lead to a distribution of cases, including if it is international.

This evaluation is not to say that Biden and his administration are not on the

right track, but rather that they need to go full force with the ban, or at the very least with the conditions they impose on returning.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to understand the need for harsh limitations, announcing earlier this week a much stricter set of restrictions. Upon arrival, travelers to our neighbor to the north must begin quarantine in a hotel, in addition to adhering to protocols for in-airport and pre-boarding PCR testing. Additionally, the destinations within the country for international travel have been restricted to four cities, in attempts to limit the points of entry for those with the virus.

The U.S. should do the same, plain and simple.

Australia is even stricter.

Among other policies, most notably, all arrivals to the country have a mandatory two-week hotel quarantine.

After recording their first case in months this Sunday, the country promptly put the city of Perth under a comprehensive lockdown. Of course one must account for population differences but, for perspective, the U.S. is averaging at least 100,000 cases daily.

Imposing similarly strict travel restrictions, especially in the wake of a concerning new virus variant, could dwindle that figure significantly. It seems that for all countries that enact stricter policies like these, cases seem to be consistently down — I doubt this is coincidental.

Enacting more comprehensive policies is going to anger a lot of people. The pandemic has been tiring, fatal and strenuous and the last thing many want, especially those who have yet to grapple with or see the severity of the virus themselves, is more or stricter restrictions.

Unfortunately, though, until vaccines are fully distributed, restrictions are needed. Biden and his team cannot skimp out on how they impose them.

Otherwise, we could soon be seeing yet another resurgence, this time with variants that could be doing more damage than the first one.

John Tumpowsky can be reached at jgtump@umich.edu.

ISABELLE SCHINDLER | COLUMNIST

Keep Congress out of the stock market

T

he news of how a group of people on Reddit used shares of GameStop to outmatch a Wall Street hedge fund has not only captured national attention but has also started an ethics conversation about hedge funds and the stock market.

However, private citizens are not the only ones using questionable strategies to make money in stocks. Over the past few years, this issue has gained widespread attention due to a number of lawmakers who have engaged in ethically dubious trades.

This has raised significant concerns among watchdog groups and the general public and has led to calls for greater regulation of stock trading among members of Congress.

For many years, there was no law explicitly preventing members of Congress from trading on congressional knowledge. Members of Congress could use privileged, and therefore asymmetric, information that they received to influence their stock trades. Finally, in 2012, Congress passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which prohibits members of Congress from using information that is not available to the public to influence their stock market trading.

While this act was an important first step in addressing this issue, it did not go far enough, as demonstrated by the actions of many lawmakers recently.

In February 2020, Congress received a briefing that outlined the severe threat of COVID-19 on the country and the economy.

Following this briefing, multiple elected officials, including former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., made a series of controversial stock trades. Loeffler sold large

stock holdings only days before the market had a large downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

She also went a step further by investing in teleworking software, a field that became much more profitable during the pandemic.

Not only did Loeffler make these controversial stock purchases but so did members of her family, including her husband, who is the president of the New York Stock Exchange. He bought many stocks in industries that would soon boom following the passage of the then-secret Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Former Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., also has an eyebrowraising stock profile. In his six years in the Senate, Perdue made 2,596 stock trades. Many of these trades were of stocks of companies that fell under the purview of the committees that he sat on, such as the Senate Banking Committee. Having a senator holding stock in companies that they oversee as a member of a related committee is a major concern.

The stock purchases by Perdue and Loeffler were flagged and investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Committee. However, the cases were eventually dismissed, which is par for the course. Since the passage of the STOCK Act, no members of Congress have been prosecuted for using insider information on stock purchases.

While the passage of the STOCK Act was an important first step, the law is far too lenient to be effective. If we want to address the issue of members

of Congress using their position and private information to enrich themselves through the stock market, there needs to be a more rigorous and comprehensive law put into place. There is a bipartisan bill called the Transparent Representation Upholding Service and Trust Act that would do just this. This bill would require members of Congress and their families to put their stocks in a blind trust, where a person has no control or knowledge of the assets or how they’re being managed.

Having members of Congress put their stocks in blind trusts would help to eliminate the issue of insider trading by our elected officials and promote greater trust in our legislative branch.

There is much that we can do to help address this issue. You can advocate for stricter regulations with your elected officials. You can also hold your representatives accountable at the ballot box.

This year in the Georgia Senate special election, Sens. Perdue and Loeffler were both assailed over their stock purchases by their Democratic counterparts.

The election of Sens. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and Jon Ossoff, D-Ga, shows how voters have the power to hold members of Congress accountable for their misuse of private information in the stock market.

Our government should work for us. We must all do what we can to hold our representatives accountable and ensure that our representatives serve us and not their own financial interests.

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

Opinion

Wednesday, February 10, 2021 — 12

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

GEO’S 2020-2021 OFFICERS | CONTRIBUTORS

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n recent weeks, thousands of University of Michigan students, alumni and community members signed a petition demanding University Regent Ronald Weiser (R) be removed from his post for failing to unequivocally disavow the Capitol riot and the chain of events leading up to it. Though Weiser condemned the violence itself, he failed to account for how he, his colleagues in the Michigan Republican Party and the politicians he funds — one of whom was former President Donald Trump — stoked the fires of mistrust and faux-populist rage that led to this disgraceful event.

One of Weiser’s connections to the riot is his soon-to-be co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Meshawn Maddock, who was at the center of the racist and anti-democratic campaign to overturn Michigan’s election results and who happened to organize the busing of protestors to the rally that became the insurrection.

For Weiser to claim that Maddock didn’t incite the riot is to pretend that there is no connection between the movement to undermine the legitimacy of the election and the riot itself. It is to say Maddock is not responsible for a fire, despite pouring kerosene and handing out matches.

It simply defies belief, and it is an instance of a U-M Regent excusing actions that contributed to a violent attack on our nation’s Capitol.

We write this op-ed to call Weiser to resign due to his fundamental conflicts of interest and immoral conduct regarding the Capitol riot. But we also write this op-ed to connect Weiser’s troubling links to the Capitol riot to the problematic nature of his relationship to the University, which far predates the events at the Capitol.

We call on all of us, as members of the U-M community, to hold Weiser accountable. In particular, we believe the faculty at the ironically named Weiser Center for Emerging

Ron Weiser, Democracy and the University

Democracies should be more vocal about the ways Weiser has worked to undermine democracy at our university and in the state of Michigan.

Professor Dan Slater, the director of the WCED, released a statement on the events at the Capitol. His statement is worth reading — it throws the tensions between the values of the Weiser Center and its namesake into sharp relief. Slater is clear that “to claim that the election was fraudulent or stolen is to betray the democratic foundations of our Republic.”

Thus, from Slater’s own perspective, Maddock, a close colleague of the man who funds the center Slater heads, has betrayed American democracy.

The WCED’s mission is to study “how democracies emerge and the conditions necessary for assuring and extending freedom.” Its namesake, however, is a man who actively works to undermine democracy, both in our country at large and at the University. The Graduate Employees’ Organization calls on Slater to issue a statement about the tension between the source of his funding and the admirable mission he undertakes through his important work.

That Weiser would be implicated in this reprehensible series of events comes as no surprise to us at GEO. It has long been our position that it is completely inappropriate for Weiser, a major landlord in Ann Arbor and donor to the University, to sit on the Board of Regents. Weiser is the founder of McKinley Associates Inc., one of Ann Arbor’s biggest landlords.

As Regent, he has significant input over the University’s budget.

As the University has increased its student population over the past decade without building new dorm space, rental prices in Ann Arbor have skyrocketed. Weiser has likely profited handsomely, given the unfettered increase in the cost of living and housing. According to an online petition, the company raised their monthly rent by up to $200 in

Design by Meghana Tummula

the summer of 2020, in the thick of the pandemic, despite having received $5 to $10 million in low-interest, federallybacked loans which may be forgiven.

Over the summer, when the University made the questionable decision to bring undergraduates back to Ann Arbor for an in-person pandemic semester, Weiser’s profits from McKinley properties in Ann Arbor were potentially on the line should the students not return and leave his rental units vacant.

Weiser’s assault on American democracy goes beyond his support of the far-right and financial interests as a landlord. As any scholar at the WCED would tell you, democracy means much more than simply voting.

GEO sees ourselves as working at the intersection of two important sites of democracy: the University as a public institution and the labor movement as an expression of workers’ selfdetermination. Weiser has insidiously worked to undermine both, and we believe it is incumbent on Slater and others at the WCED — if they are serious about “Reviving Democracy, Globally and Locally” — to comment

on his role therein.

The University’s standing as a democratic institution is seriously undermined by the unaccountable power Weiser wields as a donor.

In our view, Weiser only has many millions of dollars to donate to the University since the top 1% have been undertaxed for decades.

As tenants, many of whom line Weiser’s pockets with rents equalling half our salaries, we believe this money is not his to give away. That money belongs to the people of Michigan and should go to the University without Weiser getting to put his name on buildings or direct how it is spent. A university is not truly a public entity, and will not be directed to work in the public interest especially if it receives an ever-dwindling share of its funding from the state. Relying on private donations mans that the University is perversely incentivized to prioritize projects that would attract donations over those that are in the public interest. This shift to relying on private donations goes far beyond Weiser and ultimately undermines the University’s mission as a public institution. Weiser,

in his triple role as Regent, mega-donor and landlord, exemplifies a troubling broader trend while at the same time existing uniquely beyond the pale of anything even resembling democratic accountability. This is fundamentally at odds with the mission of the WCED and, indeed, the University itself.

Weiser has also worked to undermine Michigan’s labor movement and, with it, workplace democracy. University professor Elizabeth Anderson has argued in her book “Private Government” that workplaces, where employees have no say in their management, are akin to dictatorships. Trade unions are one of the few bulwarks against such dictatorships and give workers a say in the decisions that govern their lives.

Robust trade unions are a critical feature of any society that would claim the mantle of democracy.

Weiser, together with the DeVos family, worked for the campaign to pass so-called “Right-to-Work” legislation in Michigan, which has hamstrung the labor movement here and across the country. This was nothing less than a full-scale assault

on democracy in Michigan. When the Editorial Page Editors reached out to Weiser for comment, he did not respond. In the conclusion of his statement on the Capitol riot, Slater eloquently and wisely asserted, “Democracy never finishes emerging.

It is a set of actions, not a finished state of being. American democracy has always been incomplete. It has never worked for all of us. This week’s violent events show just how fragile and faulty our incomplete democracy is as well.”

GEO could not agree more.

Weiser’s place in the University is an affront to the principles that Slater and his colleagues at the WCED work to defend. We call on Slater and all those at the University whose work seeks to further the righteous cause of democracy to speak out against Weiser and join GEO in the fight for a truly democratic university — one that would serve the public interest and respect the rights of its employees to have a say in the management of their workplace.

GEO ‘s 2020-2021 Officers can be reached at umgeo@geo3550.org.

JESSIE MITCHELL | COLUMNIST

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Take notes: Columbia’s tuition strike offers a lesson for the future

ore than 1,100 students at Columbia University in New York City are refusing to pay tuition until the university lowers the cost by at least 10% as students face another semester of mainly-online classes. Tuition for undergraduates this academic year is $29,460 per semester. In the fall, Columbia allowed fewer than 1,000 of its over 6,000 undergraduates to return to campus. This spring, roughly 1,800 undergraduates will be on campus.

The tuition strike, organized

by Columbia’s chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America via their Twitter account, also includes demands for increased financial aid, for the university to engage in good faith bargaining with campus unions, for defunding the university’s Public Safety and for providing increased economic opportunities and outreach to the neighborhood surrounding Columbia. Though not all students are able to participate in

the tuition strike due to their financial aid situation, Willem Morris, a senior and organizer for Columbia’s YDSA chapter, told The Daily that there are thousands of students who are supporting the strike in other ways.

Organizing, emailing administrators and pledging to withhold donations are some of the ways students on campus have gotten involved.

On Jan. 29, Columbia’s YDSA chapter called for a national tuition strike. Howard University’s YDSA chapter announced they were similarly planning a tuition strike for the fall semester. The Columbia strike was inspired in part by the University of Manchester’s rent strike that resulted in a 30% reduction in rent.

The demand for a 10% reduction in tuition is in line with the tuition discount given by many comparable institutions for the 2020-2021 academic year. American University, Georgetown University and Princeton University offered 10% off tuition while

Williams College cut tuition by 15%.

Already, the strikers have won some concessions, including increased financial aid payments. Billing statements issued by the university in December said that late fees would be suspended “to minimize the financial hardship” caused or exacerbated by the pandemic. However, some students who did not pay tuition in January were still assessed the $150 fee.

The question of whether tuition rates should reflect the ongoing pandemic is not unique to Columbia.

This past spring, some University of Chicago students also held a tuition strike, calling for a 50% reduction in tuition. The University of Illinois was set to increase tuition after an in-state tuition freeze between 2015-2019, but decided to hold off on the increase until the 2021-2022 academic year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students at the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus will recall the 1.9% tuition increase for the

SAM WOITESHEK | COLUMNIST

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The virtues of buying into the hype

he other day I received an email. One of my friends from back home is a student at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, Calif., and he wanted me to watch a lecture from his professor, Dr. Courtney W. Davis. I had no true indication as to why he wanted me to watch that video, specifically. I hit “play” and settled in for 20-plus minutes.

Davis, who teaches communication management, claimed to be “skeptical of things that other people think are cool and amazing.” She states that she never had crushes on boy bands, dresses anti-trendy and rarely downloads the latest iOS update upon its release. Davis, in summary, is someone who is anti-hype.

As I listened to this way of thinking, I could not help but applaud the professor for her unwavering originality. Throughout life, there will always be a strong contingent of people that latch on to the latest trends, unconsciously submitting to the laws of groupthink. Moreover, these people sometimes base their happiness in the behaviors of others, surely an unhealthy action.

However, I reject Davis’s notion of rejecting “hype.” While it may be true that, yes, sometimes experiences do not live up to expectation, if it were not for such precursory anticipation and energy, how would anyone be motivated to do anything? We, as humans, love the build-up to a strong rush of adrenaline. Psychologically, this hormone rush is similar to the

release of dopamine; physically, we feel as though we are superhuman because of the increased blood flow to our muscles.

In the 1970s, psychologist Marvin Zuckerman, a professor at the University of Delaware, created a personality questionnaire that identified four types of sensationseekers. An article from The Atlantic describes the first three of them as people who look for adventure, people who seek new experiences and people looking for ways to lose their inhibitions. There are some easy actions that fulfill the last one, but the other two can go handin-hand. Yet, what do these three behaviors have in common? Before they occur, they are preceded by “hype.”

Davis, however, seems like the fourth type of individual: people who are susceptible to boredom. Did she never wait in line for concert tickets?

Refuse to go to the movie on opening night because Rotten Tomatoes said it was bad? Decide to go to class on senior skip day?

These are often labeled as essential human experiences by society, but not for the events themselves.

They are sensational because of their respective buzz — the eager anticipation of personal enjoyment.

For this reason, I must express my sympathy for Davis. Perhaps, as Zuckerman concludes, she craves individual novelty. To her credit, Zuckerman notes that the payoffs of

these four sensations are the same.

While her character is undoubtedly authentic and she appears to be a kind individual — the two traits that are perhaps most important in this world — I wish she would buy into the hype, if only a little bit.

In fairness to Davis, I had similar tendencies early on. I would scoff at those who went to the beach every summer afternoon or dressed identically in Nike or Patagonia, the two apparel lines that basically sponsor my hometown. I didn’t even try Chick-Fil-A until a year after a location opened twenty-five minutes from my house — a mistake I gravely regret.

Yet, at a certain point, I grew tired of watching on the sidelines — I wanted to try new things. When I think about how my life would’ve been different if I had never embraced the anticipatory excitement of my experiences, I probably wouldn’t have experienced them in the first place. I wouldn’t have immersed myself in homecoming week, sports seasons or the limited senior festivities I partook in. If I wasn’t enthusiastic about spending fall Saturdays in Ann Arbor growing up, I probably would not have been as motivated to come here. I wouldn’t be writing this column.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com Sam Woiteshek can be reach at swoitesh@umich.edu.

2020-2021 school year passed back in June despite student advocacy. At the time, University Regents told The Daily that the increase would only be felt by those who could afford to pay it.

At both Columbia and the University of Michigan, discussions about lowering tuition during a pandemic seem to circle the same main points. Students point out massive endowments that could be used to help them out during a financially precarious time. Administrators sigh and tell students that endowments aren’t just unrestricted rainy-day funds. On and on.

Really though, the pandemic has made it clear that we’re paying too much, always. As Morris said, the “price of higher education is completely detached from the quality of the education.”

That’s not to say that both schools don’t offer high-quality education, but it is to point out that tuition rates are far outpacing

inflation. If we were paying the inflation-adjusted tuition rate that a student paid in 2002, an out-ofstate student with fewer than 55 credits would be paying $16,617 per semester instead of $25,919. An in-state student would be paying $5,196, instead of $7,760. Is our education worth more now than it was in 2002? All signs point to no.

Wages for new college graduates are barely rising. CBS reported that between 1989 and 2019, average wages for recent graduates rose less than half of one percent every year. That’s tough to chew on when staring down a 1.9% tuition increase.

The University of Michigan, no doubt, attracts students based on its excellent reputation. But it also recruits students marketing the “college experience” — who among us doesn’t remember being told how many clubs the University offered during admitted student days? Without clubs and game days, it becomes clear that the “college

experience” was a way to conceal the bloated tuition. If the college experience was more than that — more than just a shiny object to attract undergraduates — wouldn’t college cost less without it?

This column is not about why and how college is so expensive. There are already plenty of articles about that, such as this piece in The Atlantic.

This column is about one thing that might be done about college tuition, the burden of which is falling on students and on their families. What seems inevitable is that, as long as students will keep paying, tuition will keep rising. It is in that context that a tuition strike seems not only reasonable, but necessary. I’ll be watching closely as Columbia students fight for a fair tuition amount that is one tiny step closer to what their degree is worth and taking notes for the fall.

Jessie Mitchell can be reached at jessiemi@umich.edu.

MADELYN VERVAECKE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU.

Opinion

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

LIZZY PEPPERCORN | COLUMNIST

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recently noticed the growing stack of books on my desk and was overcome with disappointment and discouragement.

There were now eight books stacked on top of each other, all of which I had started but not finished. The hardest part of acknowledging these books was that I actually enjoyed them all and still wanted to finish them. So why hadn’t I? During school breaks, visits home and especially during quarantine, reading is a hobby I turn to for learning, relaxation and escape. But when I returned to campus, I often found myself blaming my course load or social schedule for leaving me no time to read. After checking my daily screen time and discovering that, in the past week, I had been spending over two hours every day on social media and virtual entertainment applications such as Netflix and YouTube, I knew a lack of free time was not the problem.

The importance and benefits of reading have been repeatedly praised, by both my teachers and my parents all throughout my upbringing. Still, I could count the number of friends I have that read consistently at the University of Michigan on one hand.

According to a 2018 Bureau of Labor Statistics study, reading for pleasure in

Bring back reading for pleasure

the United States has decreased more than 30% since 2004 to a low of 19%.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness and stress have increased in the student body. Ross sophomore Samantha Bakes, who began reading a chapter of a book every night before going to bed during quarantine, explained, “Reading has helped give me routine and also made me feel more purposeful. I read a lot of selfimprovement books and books about religion so that I can try to focus on bettering myself instead of feeling defeated and helpless by things out of my control.”

Research on the benefits of reading shows that leisurely reading can reduce symptoms of depression while improving overall well-being.

There has also been a correlation found between lower levels of stress and reading for pleasure.

While benefits also include a better understanding of self-identity, improved empathy, reductions of dementia symptoms and more, the advantages are much more likely to be seen when the reading is for pleasure. Reading assignments for school or work do not provide the same benefits as a book you choose yourself.

LSA sophomore David Kinane, who claims to have not read for

pleasure since middle school, expressed that he feels as though “reading is a time investment that does not guarantee enjoyment since I might not like the book. It is much more likely that I will like a YouTube video so it is easier to do that.”

Choosing a book to read can feel like a larger commitment and risk than watching videos. However, the satisfaction of finishing a good book or chapter is personally much more rewarding. Further, people who use technology before going to bed instead of reading report less sleep and are more likely to feel the need to find time to sleep during the day.

Relaxing and unwinding before going to bed is a large part of most people’s daily routine. The form of entertainment you choose impacts your sleep, contributing to mental health and overall well-being. LSA sophomore Anna Haase explained, “I feel like you get a different type of entertainment than from movies or television because it’s more intellectually stimulating and there is more to get out of it.”

Both Haase and Bakes shared that they complete all of their school readings, which takes them around four hours a week. Neither generally struggle with school readings unless it happens to be an especially boring textbook chapter. On the other

SHUBHUM GIROTI | COLUMNIST

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The case against Yang’s universal basic income proposal

n the 2020 Democratic primaries, an unlikely and uniquecandidatearose:Andrew Yang. Yang, a former businessman and entrepreneur, ran to highlight the important issue of automation and the subsequent job loss associated with it. His cornerstone policy plan was to guarantee a universal basic income to all citizens over 18 in the United States — he proposed $1000 a month to all eligible recipients. My reservations lie in how the poorest of Americans, whom proponents of this plan claim to support, would actually be worse off due to this program.

While Yang brings a lot of progressive thinking to the issues of automation, his ideas about UBI can best be described as libertarian in nature, since they would diminish government safety nets for individualized ones. The hallmark of libertarian ideology is that the role of the government is to enable individuals to make their own choices, which a UBI does effectively. Yang advocates for creating a value-added tax and critically “consolidating some welfare programs” then using that funding for the UBI. A VAT is described by Yang himself as a tax taken at each point the product switches hands through the supply chain. These VATs exist in numerous countries already, but not currently in the U.S. This in and of intuitive proposal that could work to generate large amounts of revenue for the U.S. The problem lies in the specifics. Yang himself claims that this policy would generate about $800 billion for the Freedom Dividend, his policy name for UBI. In reality, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that it would only yield about $600 billion, which is merely one-fifth of the yearly cost of the program he proposes: $3 trillion.

Additionally,evenJimPugh,astrong proponent of a UBI and co-director of the Universal Income Project, admits that “because the Freedom Dividend is funded through a regressive Value Added Tax, costs will rise for lowincome Americans, leaving some of the most vulnerable Americans worse off than before.” It is clear that a VAT

alone would disproportionately hurt poorer Americans, especially if they do not reap the majority of subsequent benefits. Between this issue and concern over Yang’s claims about the plan’s financing, there is ample reason for concern.

Every study of UBI, and even Yang himself, admits that to have a UBI, there would need to be some marginal tradeoff with welfare programs. The problem with this is that welfare programs usually directly target poorer Americans and, in general, have been found to provide monetary benefits upwards of the $12,000 a year that Yang has proposed.

On net impact, this would leave the poorest and most vulnerable Americans in a worse position.

Economists Hilary Hoynes and Jesse Rothstein studied a hypothetical UBI in the U.S. and agreed — finding that a UBI in the U.S. would disproportionately advantage “childless, non-elderly, non-disabled households” when compared to existing welfare programs, and would direct more money to middleincome households, rather than lowincome ones that need it most.

This is because a majority of means-tested programs currently target the most disadvantaged populations, whereas a UBI would replace that with a program that distributes relatively equal sums to all, therefore failing to account for already-existing differences.

Melissa Kearney and Magne Mostead of The Aspen Institute agree again by defining a few important findings. First, they agree that existing safety net programs provide more money to poor Americans than Yang’s UBI-style welfare plan would.

Second, they found that the only way to fully fund this proposal would be to completely eliminate several major welfare programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Dwyer Gunn, a contributor to the Pacific Standard, finds that elderly individuals annually receive about $17,400 from Social Security and $12,900 in Medicaid and Medicare benefits. Cutting those to zero and replacing it with $12,000 a year

DIMITRA COLOVOS | COLUMNIST

“

30 minutes prior to your appointment please take either 600mg of Ibuprofen or 1,000mg of Tylenol.” These are the pre-appointment instructions for the insertion of an intrauterine device.

Why are women expected to take only slightly higher doses of over the counter narcotics to handle a procedure on the most sensitive part of their body? The answer is years of sexism in medicine.

In private life, women are still not encouraged to talk openly about sex, and are subject to intense criticism and name-calling if they do. Even today, women being excessively open and comfortable with sexuality is considered embarrassing, yet men compare “body counts” only to encourage raising the number higher. In a society where women cannot discuss their sexual lives and partners without facing judgment, the

13 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021

would put these individuals at a major disadvantage. Additionally, she finds that this program will put poorer kids further behind their wealthier counterparts in schooling and careerareas. Removing or decreasing funding for programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or the Earned Income Tax Credit would disadvantage poorer children, especially since early childhood nutrition and education are essential for later success.

Children in the U.S. are already a low priority for the government, and putting them further behind is not what we need as a society. While Yang does not support these harsh cuts to welfare, he does support welfare cuts to some extent, including a potential substantial cut to food stamps. Regardless, it is important to understand what the experts have found to be feasible, rather than taking Yang’s theoretical policy positions at face value.

It is important to recognize that we, at some point, must yield to the vulnerablecommunitiesinourcountry and do what is in their best interest, rather than our own. Cutting welfare programs that low-income individuals rely on for survival and replacing them with inferior alternatives is not the right way to go about dealing with the very serious problems of automation and technological job displacement that Yang brings up. Instead, we must look to solutions that work for all of America, or at the very least those most impacted by these problems.

While Yang and his campaign seem to be coming from a well-intentioned background of helping everyone equally, after analyzing the totality of the evidence, it is clear that middleincome and rich Americans would be better off, whereas poorer Americans would be hurt by a UBI. Instead, we could use the money that Yang proposes garnering from a VAT and reinvest it into the communities and individuals who need it most, thus getting closer to the end goal of equity and equal opportunity for all.

Shubhum Giroti can be reached at epepperc@umich.edu.

Design courtesy of Man Lam Cheng

hand, Kinane explained that though he should be doing four hours of reading for school each week, he usually spends less than ten minutes a day on course work readings.

Reading is shown to improve attention span and is a skill that can be improved by reading more. By reading more for pleasure on topics that you are interested in, your

language and interpretation skills can improve, and the practice can help with actual academic assigned readings, easing the stress and overwhelming feelings that long reading lists often bring students.

Making the effort to incorporate reading for pleasure this semester into your daily life may improve aspects of student life and health

that the pandemic has worsened.

Developing habits takes time but reading a chapter or flipping through book pages for 15 minutes a day is a small and accomplishable step that can make a large impact on your semester.

Lizzy Peppercorn can be reached at epepperc@umich.edu.

SAM FOGEL | COLUMNIST

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Apes and bananas: shorting the stock market

ame one thing that Reddit users infatuated with Elon Musk and Twitter leftists have in common. Did you guess a hatred of Wall Street? If you did, I applaud you. Because we’ve witnessed something truly interesting this week. I don’t pay much attention to the stock market, but even I heard about the insane crowdfunded effort in shortsqueezing to thwart the effort of the firms shorting GameStop stock. The stock for GameStop, a brick-andmortar chain of video game retailers, was at a price of $17.25 and in a period of stagnation on Jan. 4.

By Jan. 31, it was at a staggering price of $325, a 1,784.06% increase in value. It was an absolute dumpster fire, with people on both sides lamenting losses and reveling in the victory of improbable gains. One of the firms that was attempting to short the stock, Melvin Capital, lost more than $4.5 billion. This week has been so absurdly tumultuous for the stock market that the troubles even reached the executive office, with President Joe Biden and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell debating how to approach this reported catastrophe.

Now, how are we supposed to interpret this insane string of events?

It’s a good indicator that the general opinion of Wall Street has turned sour and that their ever-present hypocrisy is on display for everyone to see. It’s a clear sign that the stock market is an abstraction, completely separate from the material well-being of the American people.

What’s shorting, you may ask? It’s a practice many investment firms engage in, which is essentially betting on the price of a stock falling. A common “copypasta,” a block of text that people copy and paste around the internet, is being shared that explains shorting in terms of apes, snakes and banana prices. But for our purposes, it’s basically borrowing stocks, selling them to force the price down, then buying the stock back at a lower price to reimburse the loan and pocketing the difference. It’s a slimy operation that hinges on the failure of people’s livelihoods.

I’ll give a quick debriefing on the actors at play. Reddit is a social media of sorts — a collection of online forums that specialize in many different topics. One of these subreddits is r/wallstreetbets (WSB), and they describe themselves in their About Community page as if “4chan found a bloomberg terminal.” It’s a pretty apt description — a bunch of hyper-insular young men that are crass and brazen in both their speech and their investments. They think the “stonks” meme is still funny by proxy of Elon Musk using it on Twitter, which is all I really have to say.

Recently, they noticed a few investment firms shorting GameStop. In all their brazen lunacy, they decided that they would shortsqueeze the companies. It worked, amazingly, and has many scrambling to find a way to minimize losses. Elon Musk even joined in on the fun, using his status as an idol for many who use Reddit to bolster WSB’s efforts.

However, despite their reprehensible predilections, they have caused Melvin Capital to lose billions in assets, along with a staggering $19-billion loss for the multitude of firms interested in shorting GameStop. In turn, these companies have made a mad dash to protect their assets and find any way to stop people from investing.

Robinhood, an application for trading at the stock market, controversially stopped its users from trading GME nearly instantly after the stock shot up. As of now, as some sort of concession, they allow their users to trade only one stock of GME at a time; a handful of other stocks are also limited.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission put out a statement on Jan. 29 saying “the Commission will work to protect investors, to maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and to facilitate capital formation. The Commission is working closely with our regulatory partners, both across the government and at FINRA and other self-regulatory organizations, including the stock exchanges, to ensure that regulated entities uphold their obligations to protect investors

and to identify and pursue potential wrongdoing.” To many, this seems like a way to cater to both sides, or to side with the investment firms rather than the individuals.

This entire debacle has really shown to everyone the sham that is the market. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., shared discourse about this on Twitter, seemingly sharing the anti-firm sentiment. What seemed like a moment where the two agreed took no time to dissolve, however.

But their sentiments seemed to be similar.

Firms have been manipulating the market for decades — the SEC even admitted so during the 2008 financial crisis. The status of the stock market is completely separated from the actual material struggles of most Americans. We saw this especially clearly last year, with the COVID-19 pandemic obliterating jobs and unemployment skyrocketing to 14.7% in April. In December, unemployment was 6.7%, still nearly doubled from January of that year at 3.6%.

Despite this, the S&P 500, an index of the most profitable stocks from 500 American firms, displayed an 8% year-to-date gain in September 2020.

There is virtually no connection between the health of investment firms and the material conditions Americans have to endure every day.

Discourse has shown that this isn’t even a partisan issue. If Sen. Cruz can try and piggyback off the sentiment of Rep. OcasioCortez, then perhaps there’s a kernel of truth within the object of contention. Since the success of this unprecedented and decentralized effort, I guarantee we’ll see more grassroots efforts to turn the stock market on its head. We shouldn’t let Wall Street feed off the American economy like a parasite, festering in its own greed and hubris.

We’re riding this thing to the moon, whether we want to or not.

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

Gynecology and women’s rights

gynecologist’s office should be a safe haven.

Stepping into the office is already an uncomfortable feeling due to the multiple greeters and receptionists a woman will encounter before the private visit with her gynecologist.

But once the doors are closed, this discomfort only escalates with the unique feeling of full vulnerability while in stirrups. Going in for an IUD appointment is extremely anxietyinducing, and there isn’t much conversation about this form of birth control to make women feel more comfortable during this appointment.

Ironically, gynecology was considered a man’s work until recent years. Though the percentage of female OB-GYNs and gynecologists increased from 7% in 1970 to approximately 59% in 2017 now, the history of sexism in hiring women into this occupation

has perpetuated into a lack of truly understanding the female body and the psychological and physiological effects of different appointments.

Without a personal experience with the female reproductive system, male gynecologists created a precedent of normalcy for women enduring physical pains as an expected aspect of their experience in the doctor’s office.

Furthermore, studies indicate that “male physicians take medical illnesses more seriously in men than women,” which could lead to an explanation as to why women’s pain is generally less believed by physicians even after the demographic shift of this occupation.

This lack of understanding between the doctor and patient creates not only pain in the office, but also normalized anxiety outside of it.

Birth control is extremely important and relevant to many college students,

especially with the convenience of University Health Services on campus.

Yet, with the gaining popularity of this method of birth control, there is no growing comfort in having the procedure done. Many students may choose to undergo this procedure due to the predominant sex culture in college. Of course, this relates back to the expectation of women in heterosexual relationships to carry a strong burden of birth control over the male partner, potentially forcing women into painful procedures.

Though an IUD is not the only option for birth control, it is known to be one of the most effective methods, having a 99% success rate.

Why is a woman’s comfort not prioritized during such an appointment?

Women’s rights outside of the gynecologist’s office should apply inside as well, though

many women find themselves nervous to attend appointments due to the discomfort experienced during them. This lack of care for a woman’s well-being and ease during an important appointment further proves the lack of consideration for women’s rights and the continued sexism women experience due to different standards to which they are held.

Every source I spoke with to provide a personal experience described the insertion of an IUD as, “the worst pain of their lives.” A close friend of mine was almost sent to the hospital for profuse vomiting due to the physical pain she experienced after the insertion. Newsflash, 600 mg of Ibuprofen or 1,000 mg of Tylenol doesn’t do much when a plastic or metal device is inserted roughly seven centimeters into the

most sensitive part of a female’s body. Yet, women are told this is normal, that this is the only step they can take beforehand in order to relieve themselves of some future discomfort.

This notion of women being able to endure this amount of pain has only been continued through years of sexism propelled through the medical system, and it only continues to be normalized with the acceptance of birth control in general. Although this method is extremely effective, women should not have to choose effectiveness through unavoidable, intense pain.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com Dimitra Colovos can be reached at dimitrac@umich.edu.

Sports

14 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Steve Shields accomplishes his goal as development director LANE KIZZIAH

Managing Sports Editor

Over his 30-year relationship with the Michigan hockey team, Steve Shields has held a lot of different titles — player, coach, director — but, through it all, one thing has stayed the same: He’s been looking out for others.

That role, though, goes back much further than 30 years.

Shields was adopted from a foster home when he was just a couple months old. Growing up with his adopted parents and sister in North Bay, Ontario — the Canadian equivalent to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — Shields never considered being adopted to be anything out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until he was older that he realized his experience differed from most of his friends and had most likely shaped who he is today.

“When you’re an adopted kid, you have that innate feeling, that instinct that you were left or abandoned at some point when you were very young,” Shields says. “When you’re growing up adopted, there’s an instinctual feeling that you don’t have that unconditional love. So what do you do when you don’t have that unconditional love? You please people so they don’t leave you.

You can come to terms with that as you grow up if you deal with it, but it never really goes away.”

As an adopted child, Shields feels he’s much more aware of how others perceive him.

While that can have negative

consequences, he thinks it’s the reason he’s always gravitated towards those who need help, something he does every day in his role as director of player development. *** When Shields graduated from Michigan, he knew very little of life outside of hockey.

As a goaltender for the Wolverines, Shields’s world revolved around practices at Yost Ice Arena and his classes.

He graduated in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in education, but very few practical skills that would help him get a job.

When asked if he was focused on his future at that age, Shields laughed.

“No, absolutely not. … I was solely focused on playing hockey.

I had no idea that hockey could end in a day. Telling me that at that age would mean nothing to me.”

The opportunity to play professionally allowed Shields to put off his future a while longer. He played 12 years after college — 10 in the NHL — but eventually retired in 2006.

By that time, Shields was in his mid-thirties with little idea of what to do next.

“I didn’t know anybody,” Shields said. “First of all, I didn’t have any idea how to network. I didn’t know what my options were, I didn’t know what my interests were and I didn’t know what I was good at.”

He spent a couple years working in software development

and bouncing between different pet projects, but he found himself drawn to positions where he could help others. Shields has always felt an innate ability to sense when someone is stressed

And as he worked with more and more players over the years, he started to see a hole in the system, the same hole that had left him feeling so unprepared years earlier.

LUKE HALES/Daily

For the past two years, Steve Shields has served as Michigan’s Director of Player Development, helping players prepare for life outside of hockey.

or unhappy, and he wanted to put that skill to use.

Two years after leaving the world of hockey, he jumped back in with a new purpose: helping players reach their full potential on the ice. Shields worked as an assistant coach under thenMichigan Tech coach Mel Pearson before joining Florida Panthers’ coaching staff in 2013 as a goaltending consultant.

In 2015, Shields returned to Ann Arbor to assist with the goaltenders under thenMichigan coach Red Berenson.

While the University offers countless resources for studentathletes, Shields found that his hockey players weren’t taking advantage of them.

“When a student athlete comes to Michigan, they have two things that are mandatory: They have to go to class, and they play on their team,” Shields said. “The hole in the system is that anything that has to do with their future in the business world or life after Michigan is optional for them when they have time.”

UMich Esports benefits from recreational sports status, virtual features CONNOR EAREGOOD Daily Sports Writer

The COVID-19 pandemic has sidelined most aspects of typical club sports, derailing practice schedules and throwing competitions out the window. The UMich Esports team, though, felt right at home with the switch to a virtual landscape.

The impact of the pandemic on the outside world has pushed many into the virtual space in which esports teams have traditionally resided, potentially boosting the validity of esports in the minds of some fans moving forward. This can be seen with the increase in popularity of Twitch — a platform where fans can watch professional or recreational esports online — streams during the spring and summer.

That boost in popularity has led to Michigan esports earning recreational sports status.

In its first year under the jurisdiction of Michigan’s recreational sports department, the Wolverines have still been able to power through their schedule full of practices, scrimmages and tournaments — with more yet to come. Training and competing remotely had been a staple of Michigan’s teams prior to the pandemic, ever since they lost access to their usual meeting spots when they became a recreational sport over the summer.

Those meetings used to take place at the Ross School of Business, where the team began as a student organization in 2015 under the direction of founder Tony Yuan, a former Michigan student. Now hosting teams across 10 different games — including “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,” “Rocket League” and “League of Legends” — the team’s growth into a recreational sport came

at the cost of their typically held rooms at Ross.

While functioning has proven easier for the Wolverines than many other club sports, teams across its 10 different games have lost the opportunity to host in-person events that drew in new players and fans.

Recruiting new members for each game occurred virtually this season, and although networking online paled in comparison to previous

speaking through Skype or a Discord voice chat doesn’t really promote,” the team’s vice president, sophomore Seth Izzard, said.

That chemistry used to be created through the team’s in-person local area network events where casual and competitive players would meet up and play a variety of games together. The ongoing pandemic forced Michigan to

Courtesy of Charles Hinkley

UMich Esports is finding ways to grow its brand in spite of the pandemic.

in-person events, Michigan was still able to draw in community members and competitive players to its Discord server.

Outside of bolstering their ranks, the Wolverines want to create an effective virtual presence. With so many teams and players to keep track of, communicating schedules and scores to fans has proven difficult.

A virtual community isn’t the only home Michigan is trying to build. In a post-pandemic world, the Wolverines want to acquire an in-person facility where teams can practice, compete and, most importantly, bond.

“It is very helpful to have a space on campus where we could go and our teams could compete in the same room and just help build that team chemistry in a way that simply

Here, he saw his opportunity to help.

He pitched his idea, first to Berenson, then to Pearson when he replaced Berenson.

Pearson approved, and Shields

cease holding those meetups.

Building connections can be the deciding factor between a skilled roster and a winning team. Those communication skills and familiarities, something Michigan’s teams utilize frequently, can make a difference when facing other skilled teams.

“We’re almost like a family,” senior Ryan Foley, Rocket Leag ue director, said.

“We all respect each other, we’re all really good friends, even in real life, so it makes it a lot better. (In Rocket Leag ue) maybe we’re not the best players, but we’re always one of the best teams because we have really good communication, and we enjoy playing with each other.”

In order to fund a physical home to build those relationships, the Wolverines

hope to find funding through their newly-christened status as a recreational sport. Future sponsorships and budgeting will now be coordinated with University support.

In the meantime, Michigan looks forward to another perk of joining Rec Sports: Giving Blue Day. The online event, set to take place March 10, is a 24-hour donation drive where alumni, companies and community members can support Michigan student programs.

Michigan also now has automatic access to Festifall, something the team can use to its advantage when in-person recruiting events are safe again.

While stuck at its virtual home for the time being, the momentum the Wolverines have built has created feelings of pride and hope for their members. Some even look forward to a future home in the athletic department as a varsity sport, a long-term goal of the Wolverines.

“Esports viewership is skyrocketing, but it’s still not at the same level as your football, or your basketball or your soccer ( games),” Izzard said. “And that has actually been helped by the COV ID19 situation because so many people are at home and the traditional sports aren’t competing at the same level.”

While f uture g row th plays into the team’s planning, UMich Esports also wants to make its impact felt right now.

Izzard said that he hopes breaking down the stig ma surrounding esports will drive improvements surrounding the team’s communit y events. With more resources and a permanent home, the Wolverines can show that esports is a leg itimate team worthy of one day attaining varsit y status.

became the program’s first director of player development — a position he’s held for the past two years.

He works closely with athletes and advisors, serving as a “touchpoint” between the two to make sure the hockey players don’t get lost in the shuff le. Michigan’s Athletics Career Center consists of only two staff members for 900 athletes.

While his job isn’t to prepare the players for any certain career, his goal is to get them

to think about a future outside of hockey — a Herculean task when you consider most of his players are primarily focused on making it to the NHL. “For how many of those guys is it going to work out where they play in the NHL, retire from hockey and never have to worry about finances or a career?” Shields said. “One or 2% of the time.”

Shields starts small.

Initially, he just asks the younger players to identify interests and skills they have off the ice. He knows that it’s unrealistic to get any of these players to focus on a career, but he hopes his work will get them a little more prepared for whatever life has in store after graduation. The hockey team was the first at Michigan to have all their players make a resume.

As much as Shields still loves the game of hockey, he’s happy with his current role and can’t imagine a return to coaching.

To be a coach, you have to put the total wins and losses about all else, something Shields doesn’t think he can do.

“The score of our games is probably the least important thing to me,” Shields said. “So, does that make me coaching material long term? Probably not.”

But being “coaching material” isn’t Shields’s goal.

Now, he wants to help players access resources that he didn’t have.

‘M’ flips Benny, adds three DTs on National Signing Day

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Shaun Nua landed three commitments along the defensive line after Michigan failed to sign a defensive tackle in December.

ARIA GERSON

Daily Sports Writer

After an Early Signing Day headlined by talent on the offensive side of the ball, Michigan addressed its biggest need on Wednesday, defense, with three signees on National Signing Day. All three signees were defensive tackles, a position at which the Wolverines have little depth. That lack of depth showed in the defense’s performance this year, and in the early period, Michigan failed to add a single player at the position.

However, the Wolverines were able to flip four-star Rayshaun Benny — now the sixth-rated commit in the class — from Michigan State, where he had committed after the Spartans beat Michigan in October.

The Wolverines also flipped three-star Ikechukwu Iwunnah from Colorado and added a late commitment, four-star George Rooks.

After Jim Harbaugh inked an extension in December, he

revamped his staff, going much younger and fortifying both the offensive and defensive staffs with more recruiters. The National Signing Day returns seem to vindicate that strategy.

According to 247Sports, new co-defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald was one of the primary recruiters for Iwunnah, while Benny and Rooks were primarily recruited by defensive line coach Shaun Nua and co-offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore.

Even after a 2-4 season, Michigan was able to land five of the top 15 players in the state, according to the 247Sports composite. Following Benny’s last-minute flip, none of those 15 players signed with Michigan State. (Penn State had four, Northwestern two, and Alabama, Notre Dame, LSU and Nebraska secured one each.)

With the new additions, the Wolverines have the 10th-best 2021 class in the country and second-best in the Big Ten behind Ohio State. The class ranks as the fourth best in the Harbaugh era.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Sports

Wednesday, February 10, 2021 — 15

Michigan lacrosse: Becoming Varsity DREW COX

Daily Sports Editor

days, as a non-varsity sport, we weren’t always under the watch of the athletic department and the administration, so that required some adjustment to make sure that guys were always doing the right

with the Titans for the better part of the contest, heading into halftime tied, 5-5, thanks in large to a pair of goals each from Yealy and sophomore midfielder Doug Bryant. Detroit Mercy went on to

a false confidence of what it was like to play at the varsity level, Paul figured that, in the long run, it was best to throw the team into the deep end. If the Wolverines wanted to someday be one of the best

After leading the Michigan men’s lacrosse team to three consecutive championships at the club level, John Paul was gearing up to prepare the Wolverines for their first season as a part of Division I varsity lacrosse.

Now competing in the upper echelon of collegiate lacrosse would bring new challenges for Paul and his players, but they were committed to charging forward in hopes of building a brighter future for the program.

Starting a Division I program on a year’s notice isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do.

For “Team One,” as Paul dubbed it, Michigan had numerous pieces to try to put together on a narrow timeframe.

First, the Wolverines needed to find Division I opponents. The Big Ten didn’t exist in NCAA lacrosse until 2015, so Michigan signed on as an affiliate member of the then-prominent Eastern College Athletic Conference for the 2012 season, joining traditional rivals Ohio State and Penn State, as well as lacrosse stalwarts like Denver FILE PHOTO/Daily and Loyola.

In his 20 years as its coach, John Paul laid the foundation for the Michigan lacrosse program which is celebrating Second, the Wolverines needed its 10th season this year. to find a space to operate on Michi- things.” score eight of the next 12 goals in programs in Division I, they had gan’s athletic campus. Although the After sitting at the top of the the second half, though, to secure a to know what those kinds of teams team now had greater access to the food chain for several years in the 13-9 win. looked like and how they operated University’s and athletic departMCLA, members of Team One Michigan dropped its next four up close. ment’s vast resources, including a now had to manage battling with matchups as well. On March 4, the *** strength and conditioning coach, some of the best lacrosse players in Wolverines tasted victory for the Partially due to Paul’s commitmore reasonable practice field the entire country. To compensate first time in varsity program hisment to playing a strenuous schedtimes and academic support, it for such a daunting talent gap that tory following a commanding 14-4 ule, Michigan’s growing pains didn’t have its own stadium yet. lay ahead, Paul put an enormous win over Mercer, in which Paras carried over into its next couple In the meantime, Team One had emphasis on practicing fundamen- tallied six points and Yealy and seasons as well. to use other programs’ facilities tals to ensure that Michigan was Bryant each netted hat tricks.

After leading the Wolverines in when they weren’t occupied. For always the more technically sound, The sweet flavor would only points in 2012, notching 26 goals, practices and games, the Wolverdisciplined team on the playing remain on Michigan’s tastebuds for Yealy left a gaping hole in Michiines continued to use the football field. so long, though — the Wolverines gan’s offense when he graduated at team’s Oosterbaan Field House “As a club program, we won on lost their remaining eight games to the season’s end. as they did during the club days. what was a combination of talent finish their inaugural season with a To fill it, Paul turned to the They also now played in Michigan and coaching,” Yealy said. “When lowly 1-13 record. recruiting trail, where he found No. Stadium and used the baseball we got to the Division I level, we Although Michigan expected to 7 Canadian prospect Kyle Jackson. team’s visitors’ locker room for big were still a talented team, but we lose games early on in its transition, Growing up in Sarnia, Ontario, just matchups. Paul had a trailer in a were no longer the most talented, it was still jarring for Paul and his under a two hour trip on I-94 from nearby parking lot that served as that’s for sure. … So there was an players to deal with defeat on such Ann Arbor, the crafty offensive his “office.” incredible focus on fundamentals, a tilted scale. After going 76-2 the weapon played high school lacrosse At the top of Paul’s priority list, because what we couldn’t afford previous four seasons, the Wolverat the Hill Academy, a forceful though, was mentally and physical- was to be the least talented and also ines did a complete about-face in independent school that has sent ly preparing himself and his players be the sloppiest. There was a real just one year.

Canadians to the best lacrosse colto compete in Division I lacrosse. focus on back to basics.” “(It was) really hard,” Paul said. lege programs in the United States Having never played or coached The odds would be significantly “When you have a bunch of guys since its inception in 2006. beyond the club level, Paul didn’t stacked against the Wolverines in who are used to winning 90% of While some of Jackson’s have quite the pedigree or contheir first couple seasons. It was their games, if not 100%, and then teammates elected to go to more nections that his future opposing going to be very, very difficult to going to winning none of their established East Coast schools like coaches did. Until this point, he had win individual games, let alone games, that’s hard. Culturally, Loyola and Lehigh, Michigan was largely pulled his coaching career enjoy the same kind of success that’s really hard.” the perfect place for him. Eager up by his bootstraps. attained at the club level.

Added Yealy: “Nobody was to go somewhere he could start “I had to learn a lot of it on my To lead the charge, though, thrilled about losing and I think all four years and contribute to a own,” Paul said. “I was a student Michigan had offensive leaders that did weigh on people’s minds. It program’s grassroots development, of the game. I ate up everything I like Yealy — now a fifth-year senior was frustrating in the moment for Jackson knew that he could have could.”

— and junior Thomas Paras. After sure. Going week to week practican instant positive impact on the For advice on coaching a Divifinishing the 2011 season first and ing and itching to get that first win, Wolverines as a member of their sion I sport, Paul tapped into Mich- second on the Wolverines in points and then once we got the first one, inaugural recruiting class. He also igan’s rich network. He became with 69 and 66, respectively, Yealy itching to get more wins. It was wanted to show his fellow Canadiclose with coaches like Erik Bakich and Paras were consistent contribdefinitely trying.” ans that the future of lacrosse lay and Carol Hutchins, often stopping utors and active leaders who knew Michigan’s initial struggles not in its East Coast strongholds, by baseball and softball practices to how to compete and energize their weren’t necessarily a signal of but in programs like Michigan watch and talk shop with them. teammates. imminent failure, though. Instead, that had benefited from the game’s “I don’t think you have to just And above all, players like Yealy they were indicative of who the westward expansion. pigeon-hole yourself into your recognized their role in laying the Wolverines were competing “Going to the Midwest and sport,” Paul said. “Obviously Michi- groundwork for the future of Mich- against right off the bat. Rather having Michigan open those doors gan has a whole stable full of coach- igan lacrosse. They were grateful to than slate his players against lackfor a lot of people, it allowed other es, so I would learn as much as I have the opportunity to play at the luster opponents to pile up some players to have an avenue to go that could from my friends who I was highest level of the sport — someeasy wins, Paul elected early on to wasn’t just the East Coast,” Jackson surrounded with, other coaches in thing they didn’t think they would put them against some of the best said. “I wanted to go somewhere other sports.” ever get to experience during their teams in all of Division I, including and show, not (just) the top-tier From a roster perspective, since time with the Wolverines.

No. 9 Loyola, as well as out-of-conplayers, but (also) your mid-level the 2012 season would commence “It was great to continue playing ference foes like Harvard and No. 5 lacrosse players, your bottom-tier without bringing in a single Diviwith that set of guys, play at the North Carolina. lacrosse players, that you don’t just sion I recruit, Team One was comhighest level of collegiate lacrosse, Michigan played the 39th most have to go to a powerhouse school posed solely of players carried over and try to build the foundation for difficult schedule in the NCAA in order to be successful longfrom the club days. While the team something that would last longer in 2012. Around the same time, term.” was tight-knit and accustomed to than any of us as individuals ever Richmond took an easier route in And so Jackson did exactly those playing at a high level of lacrosse, would,” Yealy said. “To be someits inaugural season, playing just things. culturally, becoming varsity thing that was bigger than us.” the 63rd most difficult schedule In 2013, his freshman campaign, brought new challenges to over*** in 2014. As a result, the Spiders Jackson led the team in points and come and expectations to meet.

On Feb. 12, 2012, Michigan notched a 6-11 record in their first goals, with 26 and 17, respectively.

“I think culturally we had to played its first game as a Division year as opposed to the Wolverines’ While attackman Ian King took become a little more disciplined,” I program against Detroit Mercy.

1-13 in 2012. over his role as chief goal scorer in Yealy said. “Even in the club The Wolverines stood toe-to-toe But rather than give Michigan 2014 and 2015, Jackson became the

program’s all-time career leader in points and goals in his senior year, racking up a cumulative 113 and 88, respectively.

While talented newcomers like Jackson and King racked up incredible individual statistics and accolades, Michigan still struggled to get tallies in the win column. In 2013, the Wolverines once again went 1-13, and in the subsequent three campaigns, they never eclipsed more than five wins in a season.

Culturally, according to Paul and Jackson, this dichotomy created an interesting dynamic between the tenured club players who remained with the team and the fresh, highly-touted recruits like Jackson and King. Although everyone got along in the locker room and had fun together in their spare time, the disappointment and frustration of losing — compounded by the natural evolution of the roster’s composition — sometimes breeded competition and animosity across its castes.

“Without deliberately saying that we weren’t the most liked on the team when we came in, I think that’s the best way of phrasing it, because there were players that had played for the club team for at that point three, almost four years,” Jackson said. “You had people that were on teams that were extremely successful at the club level and now you got all these young kids coming in as freshmen, trying to take their spots and really ultimately doing so.”

In a way, though, Jackson saw all of this as a necessary step in Michigan’s growth as a Division I lacrosse program. If the Wolverines were going to become a legitimate force in the sport, he believed that they were going to have to push one another and compete with one another As Jackson entered his upperclassman years and the last remaining club players graduated, he became the pace car that dictated the direction of the program for years to come. The club days were over, but just as Michigan’s seniors did in 2007 to elevate the club team, Jackson began to take the next step.

Players like Yealy that came before him had set the foundation for the program.

Now, he was building it up.

“We literally (were) building the framework for what Michigan lacrosse is today and (will be) in 10 years and 20 years and 50 years,” Jackson said. “And you can always look back on that and know that although you didn’t have the success in the world at the beginning, you built the framework. You built the structure that that house is now built on, and people can move forward with and they can take it and make it their own.” *** In 2017, although Jackson had since graduated, the Wolverines began to reap the benefits of the team culture he helped cultivate during his time at Michigan. His enthusiasm and fervor had been contagious, and it now permeated throughout the Wolverines’ roster, particularly in players like midfielders Brent Noseworthy and Decker Curran — who were budding freshmen during Jackson’s senior year and began taking on larger roles.

“They just took more ownership of what the team could be,” Paul said. “They weren’t as much just waiting for the coaches to tell them what to do. The leaders of the team were taking more charge of the younger guys and saying, ‘Look,

this is the way it’s gonna be.’ And it was just shifting from a team of reactionary people to a team of a lot more proactive guys.”

Michigan got off to a hot start, winning six of its first seven games, with its sole loss coming from No. 5 Notre Dame. Halfway into the season, the Wolverines took down No. 10 Pennsylvania, 13-12, to pick up their first win against a ranked opponent.

While Michigan was subsequently swept in Big Ten play — a misfortune of playing in what had become the NCAA’s most competitive conference — it finished the 2017 season with an 8-6 record. The program had its first ever winning season and made its first appearance in the top-20 rankings, reaching as high as No. 18 in the Maverik Media Poll. Behind King, who set the Wolverines’ new record for points in a season with 47 his senior year, Noseworthy and Curran finished second and third on the team, with 43 and 25 points, respectively, in breakout sophomore campaigns.

“We were just getting started there,” Paul said. “It certainly wasn’t there yet. (But) you (saw) where the team (was) going. We had the kind of start we were looking for that year, and that didn’t come because we were more talented, it came because the guys were really starting to push each other harder.”

Added Noseworthy: “We were starting to develop confidence. I think we showed some glimpses of what a great program could look like. It was good to have the feeling of some big wins.”

After five years of trudging through losses and molding the team’s culture, it finally looked like Michigan was moving into the next phase of establishing itself as a solid Division I program.

The athletic department likely shared the same sentiment that the Wolverines were on the brink of something. But upon the arrival of new athletic director Warde Manuel in 2016, there was some concern that Paul, whose contract was set to expire, had taken the program as far as he could. Despite an overall successful season in 2017, after witnessing several blowouts to ranked and Big Ten opponents — including a particularly transparent 18-7 loss to No. 9 Ohio State prior to the football team’s spring game — perhaps Michigan needed a fresh start in order to start winning the big games.

On May 2, 2017, Manuel announced that the University would not be renewing Paul’s contract, thus ending his nearly 20-year journey with the program.

As the man who had largely built Michigan lacrosse to become everything that it had ever been and everything it was at the moment, Paul was obviously disappointed by the decision.

At the end of the day, though, Paul was finally content knowing that he had poured everything he had into the program and the players he loved from the instant he came aboard back in 1998.

Through trials and triumph, he had given Michigan all that he could, and that was enough for him.

“I did this out of love for Michigan and the program and not so much for any kind of career ambitions,” Paul said. “I kinda stumbled and bumbled along for 20 years and came out the other end with what we had. And that’s how it kinda felt the whole time. I was just kinda latched on and rode it for wherever it went.”

16 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

NCAA Football, NIL and a conversation with Denard Robinson I’m on the phone with Denard Robinson, and I need to make an admission. I called him because of the news this week –– the kind of news that saves a very slow week when you have to turn in a column on Sunday night –– that EA Sports would be reviving its widely-beloved ETHAN NCAA Football SEARS video game franchise. It won’t be this year, and it’ll be called EA Sports College Football instead of NCAA Football, but its release will mark the first new college football game EA has made since 2013, when Robinson occupied the cover.

I want to ask him about the dichotomy of being on the cover of a video game because of what he did as an unpaid college athlete.

About what it’s like to be famous and unable to capitalize on your earnings potential and whether he thinks this news underscores the problem at hand.

But first I need to tell him: I’ve never played NCAA Football.

“Oh my gosh. Jesus,” he says.

“What? Why not? So you never played NCAA, that’s what you’re telling me?”

Yup. “This is bad. This is really bad.

Who gave you the — come on, man.

You gotta pick this game up. Do I gotta send this game to you and make you play it?”

Robinson, before he came to Michigan and played himself onto the cover, grew up the same way lots of people his age did: playing the game. He and his brothers would create players and try to win the Heisman Trophy, going

FILE PHOTO/Daily

When Denard Robinson played in Ann Arbor, he wasn’t able to profit off of his fame; that is set to change in 2023 as Michigan passed House bills 5317 and 5218 allowing college athletes to be paid for endorsements.

through a four-year career then doing it again and again and again.

He sounds the same way most people do when they talk about this game. It’s the sort of deep-rooted nostalgia that a new edition has a way of killing. When he got to be in the game, let alone on the cover, he thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

“Just to be one of the players on that — and it don’t even have my name, it just said 16 from Deerfield Beach, Florida,” Robinson said.

“That just meant so much for my city, for me to represent my city. It felt unreal, you know.”

But the first part is the important part. It didn’t have his name because college athletes aren’t

allowed to license their image for money. Instead, it had a nameless Michigan quarterback from Deerfield Beach, Fla., with dreadlocks who wore #16 and ran the ball really well.

When former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA over his likeness being used without compensation in the same way, part of the effect was EA discontinuing the games. In the fine print of the announcement this week was a note that no player likenesses will be used in the new video game.

But by 2023, when the game is expected to launch, that decision might have nothing to do with O’Bannon v. NCAA. Twenty states

have either passed or considered laws allowing student-athletes to capitalize on their image rights.

Bills have been introduced at the federal level as well, with bipartisan support, and the NCAA has started to lobby Congress not to vote the bills down, but only so it can have some level of control over what happens. In this respect, Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate will likely make a bill more favorable to athletes if passed.

Even if a federal bill isn’t passed, though, Florida’s bill goes into effect in July of this year. In the state of Michigan, a law passed in December and goes into effect in … 2023.

“College guys gonna need a union,” Robinson said. “And I say that because they’re gonna need someone to represent them. Cause somebody gotta be in that room to represent them. If it’s just NCAA people representing them, well then they’re gonna look out for the best for themselves. So I think somebody’s gonna have to be in that room to represent them and come up with some solutions.”

For a brief moment this August, it seemed like there was momentum towards a union — or something resembling one — forming.

A group of players including Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and Michigan’s Hunter Reynolds went on social media and tweeted a proposal, asking to play the season with universally mandated safety protocols, the ability to opt out, retain eligibility and create a College Football Players’ Association.

Then-President Donald Trump seemed to endorse it.

Two of those demands — a season and eligibility retention — were met. A third, universal safety protocols, didn’t quite happen, but each conference had its own set of protocols. That last one? You don’t hear much about that last one anymore.

I tell Robinson my pet theory: That a majority of players would never choose to sit out games in the name of forming a union, thus the effort will always fizzle out. “I think that’s the truth,” he said. At Michigan, he and his teammates noticed people getting in trouble for selling shoes, shirts, tickets or anything else. “Of course we had that conversation,” he said, “but we never came up with a solution.”

Robinson thinks athletes “need” to get paid, but he isn’t closer to finding that solution than anyone else. A union and health insurance

would be a good place to start, though. Thanks to a stint in the NFL, Robinson has insurance now.

At Michigan, though, when his earnings potential was at its peak, he was always a bad injury away from all those dollars evaporating.

So his brother paid for insurance.

“I’m thinking I’m gonna get drafted,” Robinson said. “But if I get injured in my last year, I won’t be able to see any of the money that I thought I shoulda seen when I was in college.”

He brings up the case of Marcus Lattimore, a running back at South Carolina the same time Robinson was at Michigan. In his freshman year, Lattimore ran for 1,197 yards, but he had severe knee injuries his sophomore and junior years. He got drafted by the San Francisco 49ers, but never played an NFL game. “He was one of the best backs in South Carolina history,” Robinson said. “... He played three years, four years in college and never got to see his real earnings because of (injuries).”

Robinson, of course, has his own story. Because he had graduated before being on the cover — EA approached him about it right after the last game of his senior year — he could be paid for that. But the man who might have been the most marketable Michigan football player this side of Charles Woodson left Ann Arbor with that being the lone endorsement to his name.

“This is true,” he said.

So does it bother him?

“No, no,” he said. “… I think everything happens for a reason in life.”

Sears can be reached at searseth@umich.edu or on Twitter @ethan_sears.

Maddie Nolan making strides with Leigha Brown still out

Simplicio - “So what’s this new idea you’re so excited about?”

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily

With Leigha Brown out due to COVID-19 protocols, Maddie Nolan has stepped into the starting lineup and provided important contributions.

ABBIE TELGENHOF Daily Sports Writer

The Michigan women’s basketball team had a hole to fill ever since junior wing Leigha Brown became ineligible for play due to COVID-19 protocols on Jan. 7, right before the Wolverine’s match-up with Nebraska.

Brown was an integral part of Michigan’s early success that led to a 10-0 start. Without her, Michigan has struggled to put points on the board and guard opposing teams’ perimeter threats.

“I think the hardest part is learning to play without (Brown),” fifth-year senior guard Akienreh Johnson said after a win over Illinois on Jan. 10. “(Brown’s) such an offensive presence. She can really get any shots she wanted, whenever she wanted.”

But with Brown out, Michigan might have found their new bright spot in sophomore guard Maddie Nolan.

Nolan’s no stranger to stepping into big roles. Last season she contributed big minutes late in the season after multiple players sustained significant injuries.

Her breakout game against

Northwestern in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament, with 13 points and eight rebounds, made her a consistent substitute for tired guards early in her sophomore season. She’s a scrappy defender that made teams uncomfortable.

After a brief stint of junior guard Danielle Rauch trying to fill the spot left by Brown, Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico decided it was time to pencil Nolan into the lineup once again.

“Last year when we made our run in the Big Ten Tournament and when Kayla (Robbins) went down with her injury that she stepped in and really did a tremendous job for us,” Barnes Arico said after a win over Wisconsin on Jan. 14. “But I think it was just her getting back her confidence, or knowing that she had the green light.”

Nolan had only started one other time this season against Oakland, when Johnson went down with a leg injury the game before. Nolan added three points and nine rebounds against the Golden Grizzlies.

But in her second opportunity of the season, Nolan proved she’s more than capable of holding a starting spot. Against Wisconsin on Jan. 14, she had 21 points — 15 of which

came from beyond the arc. In the Wolverines’ final game before the two-week shutdown, Nolan had six rebounds and five assists.

She brought a 3-point threat back to Michigan’s offense, something it missed without Brown. In the defensive end, Nolan uses her quickness to disorient other guards.

Contributing on both sides of the floor, Nolan fills in the gaps.

“Last year gave her an opportunity to really play, and to get experience as a freshman,” Barnes Arico said after that same Wisconsin game. “Now her confidence is at another level. She’s a big strong guard, she defends exceptionally well, she rebounds well and she can shoot the ball and that really gave us an option from the outside.”

While Nolan can’t fully replace Leigha Brown, her performance shows that Michigan has many starting options. Nolan has the potential to grow into Brown’s shoes. And with Johnson and senior forward Hailey Brown graduating this season, the Wolverines will need replacements in the lineup.

Nolan’s continued development will be necessary for sustaining the program’s success in the coming seasons.

Sagredo - “It’s called ‘undulatory propagation.’

It’s the idea that phase change occurs as an electromagnetic wave propagates. This changes the frequencey of the wave.

There isn’t a lot of experimental support yet, but this idea provides a really nice way to explain the Michelson-Morley Experiment.”

See the next big idea in theoretical physics at its beginning . . . www.jimetherdrift2013.net/etherdrift.html

©

cameron

LOVE ISSUE What does love mean to you?

2A — Wednesday, February 10th, 2021

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Sex and love: Women at U-M reflect on lessons learned

BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT Content warning: The following article contains discussion of sexual assault. he old adage goes as follows: One of the most sacred places for a young woman is in the bathroom at a bar. In pre-COVID times, these sanctuaries were not only places for breaking the seal (or on a worse night, throwing up), but they were also a place of community — of drunk compliments on outfits, of shared insults over shitty men, of exchanged hair-ties and tampons. In the women’s bathroom, with the faint waft of puke and the floors sticky with beer, we find ourselves free to be vulnerable and anonymous. We don’t know who is washing their hands in the sink next to us, but for some reason, we feel we can confide in them. We don’t care if they are in a sorority or not, if they are prettier than us or if they gave us a dirty look on the dance floor just minutes before — in that moment, we have shared solidarity.

It’s a common anecdote, and one that LSA junior Naya Alkhaldi and

T

I were discussing over Zoom last Thursday afternoon. Naya, who is studying Political Science and International Studies, was describing how she has felt that support between women fade when moving around in a world defined by the male gaze. And while we both recognized the analogy of the bathroom as a safe space as too simplistic and situational to encompass the entirety of the female experience, we agreed that there is a truth to it.

“That male narrative is brought back in the picture as soon as you leave the bathroom,” Naya said. “And we kind of start judging girls, and the way we judge girls is always very male-centric, like, ‘Oh, she’s pretty,’ which is like … why does it matter, being pretty? It’s because men will want you more … like ‘Oh, she has a big butt, I want a big butt,’ but if men didn’t like big butts, no one would have f---ing cared about big butts.”

Indeed, many of our preconceptions on how we should look and act as women are defined by what men

ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE

want. In the modern feminist canon “The Second Sex” by Simone de Beauvoir, she describes the paradox and prison women are forced into through standards of physical beauty.

“The ideal of feminine beauty is variable; but some requirements remain constant; one of them is that since a woman is destined to be possessed, her body has to provide the inert and passive qualities of an object,” de Beauvoir writes. “The most naive form of this requirement is the Hottentot ideal … as the buttocks are the part of the body with the fewest nerve endings, where the flesh appears as a given without purpose … weighed down by fat or on the contrary so diaphanous that any effort is forbidden to it, paralyzed by uncomfortable clothes and rites of propriety, the body thus appeared to man as his thing.”

It’s an impossible state to be in, one that many young women are familiar with — the pressure to be, all at once, beautiful, well-dressed, thin but with curves, sophisticated and youthful.

This is especially present in the college setting when compounded with academics and professional life (you should be the smartest and most successful woman, too). More so, many women experience relationships for the first time in college, meaning it is on campus that we begin learning what is expected in love and sex.

I wondered how other cis women, specifically those who are attracted to men, experience love and sex at University of Michigan and if those interactions have lingering impacts on their self-esteem, aspirations and worldview. Do the bounds that de Beauvoir described actually exist, and are they as deeply rooted in women’s struggles for equality as we claim?

Is college really a place where these

behaviors are formed and reinforced — especially since the University is a largely liberal campus?

To find out, I spoke with six women from varying backgrounds, all of whom are either straight or bisexual.

Lesbian women are also under the scrutiny and rules of the male gaze, and this narrative is important and necessary to explore, but since this article focuses on the romantic and sexual relationships between men and women, the lesbian experience will not be fully realized here. Any reference to “women” will imply straight or bisexual cis-gendered women.

Times have changed since de Beauvoir wrote “The Second Sex” in 1949, but the problems that women face still endure, even in our presumed Ann Arbor liberal bubble. The heavy questions de Beauvoir asked in her landmark book are still echoed today, and I felt that weight of wondering in my conversations with Naya and the five other women: “How, in the feminine condition, can a human being accomplish herself? What paths are open to her?

Which ones lead to dead ends?” de Beauvoir asked. “How can she find independence within dependence?” *** It’s 2021. Women make up close to half of the labor force. We earn more college degrees than men. We have a woman of color, Kamala Harris, as vice president. As de Beauvoir puts it, “many of us have never felt our femaleness to be a difficulty or an obstacle; many other problems seem more essential than those that concern us uniquely.”

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

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Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 — 3A

COVID, stupid, love

BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

W

hen I think of Valentine’s Day, I think of a hard-shelled, cherry-red, Saran-wrapped version of love that bores cavities in your teeth and sits on your tongue like the aftermath of a bad French kiss.

I think of the time in middle school when I made a list of my “future boyfriends” using a pink piece of construction paper and red crayola marker, and I think about the freckle-faced love interest who picked it up and then forced me to confess my feelings for him the next period. I think of the hundreds of elementary worksheets vandalized by my semi-psycho repetitions of “Mrs. Grace Smith,” adopting the surname of whichever dimpled specimen I decided I was in love with on that given weekday. I think of entire lunch periods spent with other pony-tailed fourth graders passionately debating which Drew was the more “attractive Drew” in our class (I oscillated teams constantly).

There was always a certain level of embarrassment that came with that hallowed day in mid-February, when teachers and real, grown adults fashioned love into platonic paper crafts, like you hadn’t spent every second of your adolescence thinking about just that: boys and crushes and this Drew or that one.

Much like the blaring beat of silence that comes when teachers announce they’re expecting a baby — each student realizing

what step was taken to get to that bit of news — the launch of private, romantic affairs into public consciousness is awkward. And in middle school, Valentine’s Day was a whole day of just that.

I first experienced the sickening embarrassment of being crushed on publicly in fifth grade, when a pale and freckle-faced boy named Liam confessed his love for me via a stack of valentines. The mess of red paper slips, overflowing like confetti from my glittered Valentine’s Day box, was an adorable stream of boyish consciousness. His endearingly scribbled handwriting read: “I like you so much, Grace.”

“I like your eyes, Grace.”

“Do you like me back?

Choose: Yes or No.” “Will you be my valentine?”

It should have been my dream come true: A boy was pouring his heart out for me — he was maxing out my Valentine’s Day box in just the perfect way, my desk showered with enough notes of affection to make a single girl cry.

But I could not have been more appalled. All I wanted to do was tear each valentine one by one, ridding myself of any speck of Liam’s affection that remained on that desk.

Maybe it was a mixture of embarrassment, confused feelings and being confronted with a tsunami of real-life boy attention I had yet to receive as an adolescent. But either way, the essential truth is this: The in-

ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY

troduction of the private, Liam and my enduring flame of love, into the public, Mrs. Parker’s fifth-grade classroom, was a wildly uncomfortable affair.

And thus, we arrive at the dreaded Valentine’s Day paradox: the idea of a collective day when private celebration is thrusted into public consciousness and punctuated by obtrusive spells of commodification all the while. It’s brutal.

Originally founded in Christian and ancient Roman traditions, the romantic sentiment associated with Valentine’s Day was made tangible beginning in the 15th century, when written notes were traded to convey affection. Then, in the 1840s, a woman named Esther Howland, now revered as the “Mother of the Valentine,” began to mass-produce those cov-

eted greeting cards, finally liberating us from the burden of having to put our thoughts to pen and paper.

Around this same time, Valentine’s Day was in the process of being rebranded. An 1849 edition of Graham’s American Monthly harnessed the day’s full capitalist potential: “St. Valentine’s day...is becoming, nay, it has become a national holyday.”

And thus, Feb. 14 had turned into a whole new woman: Suddenly, drugstores were stocked with pastel-colored valentines, a Bostoner invented the beloved Necco candy hearts and holiday merchandise in an array of blushed tones littered store windows.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

4A — Wednesday, February 10th, 2021

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The heart grows up fonder:

A commentary on sibling love as it enters into adulthood

BY MELANIE TAYLOR, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

W

hen I was 10, my family packed up our quaint little Royal Oak home into boxes and embarked on a treacherous journey up Woodward Avenue, the oldest highway in the state of Michigan. It took us a whole 15 minutes to reach our destination: a brave new world that, a decade later, I now regard as my childhood home.

Well, our childhood home — Josh, my brother, lived there too.

When choosing between the house on the corner and one nestled in halfway down the dead-end block, my parents opted for the peace and quiet.

It was the right choice. There were awesome kids living across the street to play with when we were younger and more when I was old enough to babysit. But when Josh and I first moved in, our favorite thing about the new house was the ice cream store on the corner of the block.

Little people live in little worlds, so we did not yet know that “the ice cream store” had a name. All we knew is that we wanted our parents to take us down for a $2 cone. We made up skits and wrote ourselves songs to perform for our parents to convince them. Josh and I knew from a young age how to join forces to fight for the common good. I’m not sure what it means that our weapons of choice were song and dance.

Talking to other University of Michigan students, I came across many stories that sounded just like Josh’s and mine. As kids, we devised our own unique forms of entertainment bolstered by the support of those around us. If we were surrounded by other kids around our age all the time, then we were inclined to come up with some pretty creative ways to combat the boredom.

For many, those other kids were

their siblings. Recent studies have shown that about 80% of Americans have at least one sibling. LSA senior Andrew Kohrman has two.

Korhman described his siblings’ early relationship as “hierarchical.”

Each of the three of them occupied a different role. The youngest, his sister Sydney, could always get him and his brother Alex in trouble with their parents. The oldest, Alex, was tasked with conceiving the ways they’d pass the time, including one game which can only be described as an extreme form of dodgeball.

“The game that (Alex) invented for us was he would hit these balls at us and we would try to dodge them, and I don’t know how that came to be as we enjoyed it,” Kohrman said. “But he was the one that was always inventing the games for us to play, and he was the one that was always in charge of changing the rules in his favor.”

In childhood, Kohrman came to appreciate his siblings as role models, teammates and confidants. For many of us, this introduction sets the foundation for an ever-evolving relationship that matures, as we do, over time.

My parents met in law school, so naturally in our house, you didn’t get anything you didn’t need without justification. This meant that Josh and I had to put on skits to earn ice cream and do chores to earn allowance. When we grew older and could no longer exchange our cuteness for cash, I walked down to the same ice cream store Josh and I used to frequent as kids for a job. When Josh was 14, he did the same.

At this point, he and I had settled into our own lives. We have an awkward age gap: Being three years apart meant that after I graduated fifth grade, we didn’t go to the same school for six years. We were on different

schedules and at different points of our lives. Between dance team for me, rock climbing for him, newspaper for me, musical theater for him and homework for the both of us, working at the ice cream store was the only time we got to see each other.

We each had a window into each other’s lives again. Not only that, but we had a common experience to bond over. I’d say that working together was definitely what catalyzed the close relationship Josh and I have today. Ever since then, he’s felt like not only my baby brother, but also my friend.

For many people, their relationship with their sibling will be the longest one in their life. You bear witness to every one of their accomplishments and misfortunes. According to Kohrman, his siblings know practically everything about him.

“It’s a very unique thing for siblings, because they’ve known you since whenever they open their eyes … from day one to now,” Kohrman said.

Korhman said his relationship with his older brother blossomed when Alex left for college. Suddenly, there was an empty seat at family dinners and a vacant room at the end of the hall.

Kohrman had to put in extra effort to maintain him and his brother’s relationship. He would call Alex up every once in a while, just to stay in touch.

With his younger sister Sydney, Kohrman had it easier. He says they became much closer when Sydney joined their high school’s marching band and they had a reason to spend a lot more time together. Their relationship was imbued with a common interest and a common friend group, facilitating its evolution into something more significant than just extreme dodgeball partners.

“Interacting with her and then my friends at the same time together kind of

transitioned it from sibling to more of a friendship,” Kohrman said.

For LSA freshman Jessica Cho, that transition occurred much earlier. Cho described her older sister Maddie as “protective,” a quality which she admits she didn’t always appreciate enough.

“I always kind of noticed that we were a partnership, like we would stick together, but I didn’t see that she wanted to help me grow and help me improve until like, middle school,” Cho said.

Cho looked up to her older sister.

Maddie would pick her up from school every day, and that became a time for the two of them to catch up, debate or just chat. It was at this point that their mom got remarried, so there were a lot of changes happening at home for the two of them. Between turbulence in their family situation and the general tragedy that is middle school, Cho came to understand that Maddie was her rock.

“The respect (I felt for her) sort of transitioned my intimidation (around) her into appreciation,” Cho said. “But at the same time, the intimidation is still there.”

Cho moved in with Maddie about a month and a half ago. Nowadays she and her sister are on opposite schedules.

Maddie is working as an EMT and Cho is in her second semester of college, so the two rarely have time to spend together. Still, they’ve established a tradition of family dinners which serve a similar purpose to those middle school car rides home.

“From her job, a lot of the stuff (Maddie) sees can be very traumatic, and she is good at handling that and processing that and sticking through it in order to help people,” Cho said. “And she does the same thing for the people that she cares a lot about. And I think that’s one of the most notable things about her.”

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Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 — 5A

The intricate fabrics of love

BY ANDIE HOROWITZ, STATEMENT MANAGING EDITOR

M

y dad shows his love through gifting t-shirts.

It doesn’t matter the occasion or the time of year or the person receiving it — the man does it out of pure joy. Because of this obsession, it would seem rather intuitive that his go-to holiday presents are tshirts galore, from the “Don’t speak to me before my coffee” shirt for my mother to the “Michigan Grandpa” shirts for his father.

My dad’s knack for gifting t-shirts kicked off 15 or so years ago, at the height of March Madness with his best friend Scott. The two met when they were 18-year-old students at the University of Michigan, living as freshmen in Alice Lloyd, and they quickly grew close when they rushed a fraternity together. The two lived together for the rest of their college careers and eventually moved to the same New York City suburb of Millburn, N.J. They were, and still are, an inseparable pair who love to create fun in any situation, no matter the circumstance.

Through the years, with a love of sports and a passion for adrenaline, Scott and my dad had done their fair share of casual sports betting. So every year when March rolled around, they both cashed into a handful of leagues with numerous potential brackets on their side. After some time, that tradition became boring and repetitive. They no longer got a kick out of just cheering for Michigan or winning a few bucks here and there. My dad and Scott needed to do what they did best: Make something out of what had become not so much.

Something to note about March Madness is that there are always a handful of lesser-known teams that emerge out of the shadows as forces to be reckoned with. They’re the upset teams, the Cinderella stories, the “Who beat Duke?!” soundbites.

They’re the schools my dad and Scott loved to occasionally place wagers on saying they’d go far, but their fun usually ended there. But then they found the perfect way to spice things up: Become dedicated fans of these underdog teams. And what better way to become a dedicated fan than by purchasing the team’s apparel for one another?

This was the early 2000s, and the internet wasn’t the mass-marketplace that it is today. My dad and Scott had to physically pay a visit to the smaller universities whenever they had the chance just to secure a t-shirt. For example, when my dad took a business trip to Nashville, Tenn., he made a point to stop by Belmont to get Scott a Bruins short sleeve. He did the same with Florida Gulf Coast when he went on vacation in Naples, Fla. And with that, a tradition was born. A small tradition that, with the help of the internet, became larger, more accessible and undoubtedly significant with the years to come.

Since the pair began this ritual, they extended the limitations to shirts with famous movie quotes on them, and individually have collected and gifted over 50 t-shirts for the other (all of which they wear).

The action of gifting Scott the perfect short sleeve tee gave my dad so much satisfaction that it began to carry over to other significant relationships in his life. After every business trip, concert or outing, my dad returned home with a shirt for each member of my family, allowing us all to start collections of our own.

Because of him, I now have a pile full of obscure Grateful Dead tees, a Longhorns sleep shirt and a Breckenridge v-neck, among others. I also now have an extremely sentimental Ruth Bader Ginsburg dancing bear shirt — a gift that was sent to comfort me and commemorate her after she

passed. Most recently, a shirt with cartoon drawings of my beloved dogs was added to my collection, which I received following an anxiety attack that occurred on the phone with him. With each package came yet another reminder that he loved me, was thinking of me and was here for me whenever, through whatever.

I’ve only bought a t-shirt as a gift for someone a few times in my life, with my dad being the primary receiver. But even so, gift-giving has never exactly been my strong suit.

I never know what to get, where to get it or what I’m even looking for.

I’m much better at showing my love through articulating my emotions rather than offering a tangible symbol of it. Birthday cards and love letters take me only minutes to write, and when I feel something strong enough, I feel compelled to verbalize it in whatever capacity I see fit. I often don’t take vulnerability into consideration — I see words as my armor and verbal support as my form of expression.

I show my love by explicitly telling people I need them, I care about them, I’d give anything in the world just to spend time with them. This is a drastically different experience than gifting t-shirts. But then again, people often have radically different and niche ways of expressing their love.

This phenomenon is so persistent in society that in 1992, the author Gary Chapman created a theory explaining these differences in a book titled “The Five Love Languages”. Chapman theorizes that each member in a relationship — romantic, platonic or familial — offer love in the way they want to receive it, with actions falling into one of five so-called “languages”: physical touch, quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation and receiving gifts.

The book ended up gaining more attention than anticipated, with

over 13 million copies sold worldwide and a spot on The New York Times’ best seller list since 2007.

Chapman’s theory of love languages has received a significant amount of praise from major media organizations and the general public, becoming a common phrase in everyday conversation. The amount of positive feedback and success stories from reading the book makes it evident that Chapman’s theory has at least some truth to it. And though I admit I have never read the book myself, I see his general ideas play out in my everyday life.

However, I didn’t consciously buy into the idea of love languages for a while — and that was a problem.

Because I have always been so vocal with my feelings, I saw others staying silent about theirs as a sign of dislike or mistrust. I desperately wanted my friends, family or significant others to not only tell me how they felt, but to shout it from the rooftops. I needed to hear a confirmation that our relationship was real because in my eyes without that articulation, it wasn’t.

As I write this now, I am further reminded of how backwards and toxic that train of thought can be. I failed to recognize that some people have a harder time speaking in a vulnerable capacity than others, and that some people avoid it all together. But this absence of explicit language doesn’t necessarily equate to an absence of love — it just indicates that they have a different way of expressing it, a different love language. My perspective on relationships, kindness and care changed significantly once I took a step back and recognized that.

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6A — Wednesday, February 10th, 2021

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3300 ANN ARBOR - SALINE RD

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com L, there’s no one else I’d rather have as my restaurant week date! -M C, I love you so much and wish I could take away any time you’ve felt stressed or undervalued or misunderstood.

You are flawless to me. I couldn’t have found a better friend-M Rachel, let’s never end our weekly routine madisofo, you’re the goat to my cheese, the jerry to my seinfeld, the tabouli to my hummus, the penny to my stamps, the david to my bowie, and everything else in between If you ever feel like you haven’t had your first love, don’t worry because you have and it’s me. happy v day bestie Adrian: Our third Valentine’s Day in a row! Cheers to many more <3 i guess this is going to be a tradition. i miss you + hope california is treating you better than i could (impossible). i’m going to eat chipotle in your honor. te amo <3 Do I have a crush on my roommate or is he just the only single male I’ve smoked a bowl with in the past 6 months?

D, I love you. I’m glad to be a part of your life. I’m lucky you’re a part of mine. I’m scared by how I love you but I wouldn’t trade these feelings. Again, I love you -M I LOVE YOU OLIVIA UTTER. I ALWAYS HAVE. Grace: Thank you for 4 years of friendship. You’re my day 1 and I have appreciated you in my life every step of the way. I can’t wait to see what our futures hold!

With my whole heart, know that I hope for you to be my forever valentine. Let it be known, eternalized in print.

B, I know that you will be my forever valentine. Let it be known, eternalized in print. Love, J My little cutie Cupid, you are the sweetest Valentine anyone could ever ask for. I love that you’re mine forever. xoxo mommy Katie Sullivan I looooove you!! You are the best friend a girl could ask for!

Happy Valentine’s Day angel!!!

Danyel, thank you for being a constant source of sunshine and kindness. I can’t wait to see what adventures the future takes us on! Love you long time :) Abbyyyyy, I love love love youuu!!! <3 Thank you so much for the GYOAT Emma, I really like your sense of style (especially when you wear a shirt with my face on it). Let’s catch up and talk vampire culture over Bloody Marys.

Robert Pattinson To my darling Grace, consider this a virtual rose to satisfy my tradition of giving my friends a rose each year for Valentine’s. I love you big my gal!

Alexandra— You make my life better every day. I am so grateful for you!

Here’s to our first Valentine’s Day, I love you! XO, Claire This is a special shout-out to one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Michigan fans I know! My lovely mom. We wish we could be with you. Happy early Valentine’s Day, mom!

to my wonderful roommates of 324: i couldn’t have done it without you!!! love you forever, anna To Samantha Cole, u r so hot and i am in love with you.

LOVE YOU BESTIES <3 <3 <3 whether we’re 146 or 46 days apart, 600 or 60 miles away, I miss you just the same I love you gulu-gulu :) Roses are red, violet are blue, I love Rich JC and so do you.

Sometimes you cheat, and pick up No Thai, if it were for our dinner date, I’d say goodbye.

Maybe I’ll hope One day you’ll see Rich JC is the only one for me!

Bex, thank you for being the best roommate and friend !!! <3 TM I love you Tara :) thank you for everything you do to keep me going. I literally could not be a person without you. happy valentines day xoxo

you’ve been mauriced. <3 TM I have a crush on you thanks for being my friend. I know its difficult but you’re a trooper. happy valentines day xoxo wish you were here right now. I miss you and love you. thank you for being my rock. xoxo

Business S, Anytime you need to talk about love issues I’ll be there. Love can suck sometimes but I truly believe you’ll come out the other side stronger for having those feelings. -M E, I enjoy your company even if it’s just seeing your face while doing work over a video call. You’re an amazing book club buddy and I appreciate you. -M Luke—you fill my world with affection, baked goods, and opportunities to make myself the best person I can be. I love you. Wanna be more than comrades?

Dear love, I can’t wait to meet you and hold you, I can’t wait to see what the future has in-store for us. #LDR Hi Shub, I love you! Thank you for always being so supportive of my dreams. I wouldn’t be a contributor to this paper if you didn’t encourage me.

XOXO To my roomies/best friends (Soom, Soup, Fran, and Sweet Madison): I love you guys! You make my life better every day. Thank you for everything.

Dearest EMM, Be my valentine? Or else you have to start paying rent.

Stay Stinky, IJB P.S. Thank you for everything. You are simply the best.

Hey I had a Zoom crush on you in English last semester. (You always remembered that I was studying Spanish).

Barb: Love you forever, reporting partner. Happy bdayyyyy -alex

To the boys of Church! Here’s to seeing Our man Karl M. once said “If you love eachother at our best and worst, but not being able to tell the difference yeah? without evoking love in return, then your love is impotent, it is a misforDear LANZ, I love yall tune.” I love you and I miss you &ie Buy $GME and hold. Let’s f*** the Horowitz hedge funds together.

D, I love you. I’m glad to be a part of Leroy- Happy Valentine’s Day! Thanks your life. I’m lucky you’re a part of mine. I’m scared by how I love you but for all of the love and warmth. I love I wouldn’t trade these feelings. Again, I you lots. - Keith i have a crush on you.

love you -M

Jajikaya- o beloved cat, you make these trying times much more bearable with your passive, yet loving presence.

You’re the best neighbor cat a college house could ever want.

Jonathan, your ambition and passion inspires me everyday. Thank you for being my rock through everything, your support means the world. I love you.

To the girls in the State St. house, thank you for the endless support and the fun nights. I have so much love for you all!

D- I have such a huge crush on you.

You live everyday with purpose and passion, despite it all- I may never actually get to tell you, but I’m always in your corner regardless.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my sunshine!

Everyday is brighter with you in it. You are the most loving & talented person I know! p.s. coffee with you is the best part of my day.

Hails—I hate it that you’re not around.

And the fact that you didn’t call. But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

To my little sister and best friend, I couldn’t be more proud of you! I can’t wait to have you on campus in the fall!

Go blue and I love you! - Paige

To every member of the MMB- it’s been a lonely year for us, and I just want you all to know I love and miss you dearly.

I can’t wait for us to be together as a family again.

Sending tons of love to the Michigan Daily Business family from the 20172018 school year. Miss you all dearly and hope you are all doing well <3

you sneaky bitch. i wuv u tho #reeeeek

ayo i’m so glad i get to live with u and i wuv uuuuuu #stoptwirlingyourhair

i love corona (beer not the virus)

Claire Yang, you were my class crush back in high school! always thought you were cute and smart af!

Hi Hi Steven I love you ayo i’m having separation anxiety let’s order some more plain deep dish pizza. I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love i wuv uuu you I love you I love you I love you ur soul is so kind and sparkly i love you

Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 — 7A thou art as mind-numbingly gorgeous as a toilet bowl in full bloom. bae i love you forever - Moon’s godmother To the best friends, Happy Valentines Day. Here’s to many more giggles and goofs and spending every Valentine’s Day together forever and ever<3.

TO THE GALS OF 1103 WHITE - I LOVE YOU! Synaptic transmission? More like your existence is a sinful mission. Happy V-day, va-va voom Hi Bestie hi bestie I’m afraid to tell you this bestie I’m afraid to tell you this bestie HI bestie ~ big chungus AS - Crosswords contigo are my favorite thing in the whole wide world. I’m so happy I’ve met you. You are amazing :) - Cariño (bagel emoji) You’re the most delight. Imysm To my best friend, the love of my life, and the most precious person in the whole world. I love you Liz! Can’t wait to be cat parents forever with you <3.

Harbor Freight Tools finna b bussin’ this summer. stay crazy my lazy if I’ve ever told you that you’re scary, that either means a) at one point I had a crush on you or b) I just think you’re real fun to be around You’re stuck with me like your bus got stuck under that bridge.

Nick, Happy Valentines Day! You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

You’re so sweet and kind and patient and you’re a great father to our cat. I love you! thank u for being the best roommate, wouldn’t wanna be manic and create chaos with anyone else :) Dear Gwen, I like you enough to share my candy with you <3 roomies - I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! living with you this semester has been such a chaotic wonderful time, from the beanbag chats to the pink whitney fiasco & everything between, ily HIII love you guys so much ugh cannot even express how much I adore saturday night dinners literally u guys are my besties for ze resties mwah you’re all so wonderful and cool hi babes ~~ Lots of great hair in that house. Happy happy v-day to my fav, very dapper lads. xo, Lizzie hi darlings, hope your days are yummy & sweet. Can’t wait to split water bills next fall <3 Lizzie hi babes ~~ Lots of great hair in that house. Happy happy v-day to my fav, very dapper lads. xo, Lizzie Christine-- 1/2 of coolest nurses to be.

Can’t wait to be united on the West Coast <3 Mo-- 1/2 of coolest nurses to be. Can’t wait to be united on the West Coast <3 So happy i get to annoy you every day.

I’ve been waiting on the couch for forever now can you please come down so we can watch Downton Abbey xoxo -SA Jack dood I love you so much! You are the most amazing person in the history of the universe. You are so loved <3

Hi Meggy I love you :) im glad you taught me how to scrape snow off of your car the right way. Thanks for driving me around everywhere and giving me your hairbrush. xoxo Hi Sophia i love u. Thx for driving me around all the time. love our bathroom conversations and spending time w you! miss you come back, we literally never talk anymore xoxo hi lauren i love you! i’m sorry i gave your mom the wrong venmo and kept feeding you misinformation about how there’s a toledo, michigan....love spending w you xoxo hi i love u! thought you would enjoy a little note in here instead of a box full of glitter on v day. okie have a good day talk to you tonight xoxo Isaly, Joelie, Claire, Ava, and Gab, thank you for being my best friends!!

You guys made first semester so much fun and I can’t wait for this semester.

Love you all! roses are red, you make me swoon. i think you’re cute, you a crab rangoon. you are the most beautiful human being inside + out! you are so poised, confident, and crazy smart. i’m so happy to call you my roommate and best friend. be mine? to my brave, beautiful, best friend, you set my world on fire and there is no one else who makes me feel so heard. i love you to markley and back xoxo the universe knew we would be too powerful to be lovers, i guess best friends will do. xoxo i love you thank you for being my boyfriend and love of my life. you deserve to be happy xo Zach Duval, you are the greatest housemate one could ever have. You are beholden in my heart forever, and I will miss you when you’re gone. Stay classy my friend Cooper Clark, with all my heart I am taken by you. I miss you, and I hope to have you in my arms again soon Hey Stinky, love you lots <3 I am so thankful for the night I met you, as since that moment, time has slowed as life has felt like a movie. I love you Dear Michele, thank you for being the most amazing friend ever. Beyond grateful that we met when we did and I’m SO lucky to have you in my life.

Love you more than anything <3 Happy 1 year and Valentine’s Day to my best friend & smush. Whether it’s watching Schitt’s Creek or Madagascar, I always have the best time with you. I love you so much.

Thank you for being my rock and supporting me through everything. Thank you for making me laugh every day. I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life, I love you.

Zayna, I love seeing you in Zoom class and reading all your articles. You’re so cute!

-Your secret admirer P.S. Let’s grab coffee one day Barbara Collins - I’m your secret admirer from miles away, I hope this note finds you okay. I hope we meet again someday, and if we do I will shout “hurray!”

8A — Wednesday, February 10th, 2021

Business

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

On good days, we celebrate. On bad, we commiserate. The grad student’s life is hard, it’s true - That’s why I’m thankful that I have you (to drink). XOXO to Sauvignon Blanc

dudu !!! i am so happy you are my friend. instead of being opinionated, you always throw straight facts. you have showed me many new things. happy valentine’s day!!!! uwu

Allen, In a terrible, horrible year, you’ve made me the happiest I’ve ever been. I love you, always.

Claire

Hey Billy, sending my love from Bay City! Thank you for spending the last couple years with me and let’s hope for many more. I love you and I’ll see you soon:)

Halcyon years gone in a daze, the student life ends when I cross the stage.

Thinking of you, in times of Corona: my diploma.

LV, I’ve had a crush on you since the day I came down to MoJo dining and saw you wearing a pink shirt and glasses while reading. Your NROTC uniform was just an added bonus –NA

To the Econ Major Hate Group (Except Ben & AOC) - You all have kept me sane and laughing in otherwise crazy, sad times. Grateful for your friendship every day. - Claire

Anita, ma chèrie. Tu est le Chris de ma Harrison, le pink de ma mamma, le gude de ma tama, la maison de mon cœur. Je t’aime!

still grateful that you told me to take care of myself hours before we were sent home in march. sorry our lineage dies with me, but so glad to have you in my life <3

Dear Dan: Thank you for being Mine.

They say people always leave (in Getaway Cars), but this Love Story is Ours.

I had an Epiphany when I was 22, and You Belong With Me. — A

BIG happy vday to the best big ever. fishbowls and fritas soon!!!

Remember the days when all we had to do was laugh at Brady Hoke and make a paper, before life got complicated?

Thank you for flying me hoMe, and #ForeverGoBlue.

A constant friend, despite when my workload is vile, there’s nothing you can’t mend, even writing my thesis seems mild (lie). Thank you for your service Sadako & Namaste Andie—thanks for being my friend & educating me about the T people in el gee be tees. I can always trust you to make good pierogis and be the sunshine.

Jean—thanks for being my friend & always trying the food I make. I can always count on you for a diy hair moment, plus jokes for the gays AND the straights alike.

Thank you for your endless support!

Best grandparents ever.

Nina Nina! I am so lucky to have your friendship this year and cannot wait to see what the future holds. I trust we’ll see each other soon <3 I miss you. I hope we find each other again.

Dear Erika, Happy Valentine’s day! Love you unni <3 Love, Keri

Hi Madalyn, I love and miss you. Wish I could be with you today. I especially miss your stinky feet. (Not really, but kind of) My world: You’re the best dog dad, poet, and man there is. Counting down the days until we say “I do” and start our lives back where it all began in A2.

Happy Valentine’s Day! M’lady Elicia, You have a const pointer to my heart My dearest love Julia <3 you make my heart full of joy, so glad the world forced us together last year, I wouldn’t be half as happy nor sane without you :) Through thick and thin, we’ve grown together. To the moon and back.

Victoria!!! I love and miss you and your wonderful hilarious brilliant self! You are phenomenal and inspiring, even Roses are red, Violets are blue, HanAllison!! i have no idea what i’ d do There are so many One Tree Hill when you have covid, and I’m sending nah’s the ultimate Newsie Guru! without you, you are the best coeditor quotes, and so small of a character all my love to you <3 anyone could ask for and are an insanehi bestie, ur my twin flame so i wanted limit. Your art (still) matters. It’s what ly talented QUEEN!! thanks for being Maddie!!! Thank you for being a wonto know if you’d be my valentine this got me here.

You only wrote one cross country story, you, all the love <3 derful co-editor and for going sledding Jacob, I’m so lucky to have you. Even year <3 love you too much ! -e but you scored two touchdowns and a with me in the middle of the night. though we can’t spend Valentine’s Day dear mara: we are each other’s pracplace inside my heart.

Love you!!! Allison <3 together I thought this was a cute and Relationships like ours don’t come by ticed joy, a daily harvest of your always simple way to show you how much I do that often during a lifetime. You make Rob Hurts, Boba <3 I love you and can’t wait to warmth, your righteous wit, and your life so memorable and meaningful and love you I miss you- JQ I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a house, soft, soft letters tucked in my hungry make heart shaped pizza with you.

I hope you know how important you binging love island and binge drinking, hand.

Here’s to just the two of us. Sincerely, are to me.

I love you!

Dear Hannah, I’m the luckiest guy to with anyone else. Love u all forever!

Big Al. be dating the best SNED at the Daily. I Hi T <3, One time I sat on the floor of MAE love you so much and look forward to I’m so incredibly lucky to know you. your favorite member of the bourelections and someone said it was inev- I love you, you clown. I’m so grateful to be friends with you. Hopefully we can every Valentine’s Day to come. itable that there would be days where Thank you for being the light in my day geoisie sit on the floor, eat garlic cashews and the MAEs would hate each other.

I have everyday <3 xoxo sweettart you’re absolutely amazing, talented, you shine just like the sun trash-talk soon. <3 never hated you. and intelligent and i don’t want you to and i am the moon; Happy Valentines Day to the best two ever forget it, you make so many people a reflection of your beauty Han, I love having you as a home and My queen, my mentor, my everything roommates and friends I could ask for!! smile and keep being you (‘: who i want to be, my dearest Magdayou always brought out the best in me I love you more than I love ice cubes school friend, rw forever <3 TM lena: i can never thank you enough -m in my water bottle and my morning Hi Maddie, Allison, and Annie, thank With you, everything feels at ease for all of the wisdom and joy you’ve oatmeal, and that’s a lot. and happiness is never-ending. Never brought me. so grateful for you<3 you for making the Daily and photo To my mom, one of the most amazing thought I’d admire someone this much. feel like my second home, I’m so inpeople in my life, I just like to start and I love you and you suck because you credibly thankful that you all took me Let’s put those records on and get to Happy Valentine’s Day to my person, I looked at me typing this *tongue say I love you. You are my go to, my spinnin’. Cheers, Parker. under your wing <3 love you so much! XOXO Addison :) person and I’m so glad you are so close. sticking out at you* thank you for being you :) I love you so much You make me feel so warm even laid in Happy Valentine’s Day!! <3 Beth you are amazing, you are a star, snow. I am so lucky to know you and you are one of my best friends, and I Haylea, my love! You are the best friend Ysabae - you always make me smile! hope you fix your sleep schedule soon love you. unnie here i am expressing my love ever and I am so glad you are in my Love you so much & happy Valentine’s <3 for you on this very capitalist and I am in love with you Ellie Roubal. life. You make the boring days fun and Day:) over-commercialized holiday. i hope make me laugh and smile every day. I Hi my Serbian Vitamin I love you and My love letter is for Samantha Master. you have the best day with your family ANNIE ELSE: you rocked my world love you!

I’m so thankful to have you in my life! Samantha, you bring so much warmth and i cannot wait to see you! and I can’t get you out of my head Can’t wait to be roomies next year :) to this world and are greatly appreciatRoses are Red, ed by everyone that has the privilege to To the Daily’s amazing photostaff: You Happy Valentine’s Day Sarthak! I love Violets are Blue, Anjali, you are the best roommate ever meet you. Xoxo all are inspiring, hilarious and INyou :) 11 years at Michigan and I am rooting for you in the pen SANELY TALENTED! Thank you for led me to marrying you!

Love your hair & you, griff boy hockey department <3 rita mf vega. you are the most talented the hard work this semester, WE LOVE Happy V Day, Jason! fruit person with the biggest and best heart YOU!!!! <3 Allison & Maddie to my ladies: y’all rock, always.

Happy Valentines Day, babe! You make ever. you are special and one of a kind.

Looking for members to join the Sway thankful for every shenanigan, antic, me the happiest man in the world, i miss you + can’t wait to see you soon. GiuJohns, you are the greatest person House Fan Club! We love talking gossip and hijink that I roll my eyes at but and I couldn’t imagine life without love you, TSM I know. I say that a lot, but I want to and fantasizing about Noah Beck and secretly love. you. Cant wait to take you to dinner continue to say it everyday. I love you Bryce Hall! Message me on Instagram every single day is better with you four. tonight :) Roses are red, the little mermaid is teal, loads, thank you for your friendship <3 for details - sfort_18! <3, B I have a crush on you, but my lips are Roses are Red, sealed. And your roomate who I will Finn - it’s our third love note and Violets are Blue, Julie, getting to know you has been the also pursue, because I do in fact have a Hi Amy, Valentine’s Day! I love you so much and Since I can’t give you a physical card The best part of residency highlight of my year and talking to you crush on him too cannot WAIT to see you in a few days. this year, I’ll settle for this love note. I was meeting you! brings a smile to my face every time, Let’s dance :). Love, Lizzy Happy V Day, Regina!

I can’t wait to keep being cheesy with to my literal rats of ann arbor and now love you so much and am thankful for our deep talks about life. LOL austin: i love you ladies through and Lizzy, Happy Valentine’s Day! So lucky you! - Paige Rose are red, XOXO, Alexa through. thanks for adding all of the to have you in my life, I love you lots!

Violets are blue, Hey Billy, sending my love from Bay Dear Em, right spice and support to my life <3 - Finn Film class at Michigan, City! Thank you for spending the last I love you and I will miss you so much Led me to you <3 Danny!

I have a crush on you!

So You make me love life and love myself couple years with me and let’s hope for next year. You better pick up my FaceHappy 9th Valentine’s Day, Joe! I love <3 I love you to the moon and back many more. I love you and I’ll see you im throwing it out into the universe Times! I will also be sending you lots you! hoping you will never see it hehe thats soon:) times infinity, let’s throw on some car of cabbages. all carry on jams and drive to Wendy’s Love, Che Che Roses are red, Violets are not My dearest Rori, how my heart longs you’re the definition of the best kind of Minnesota is freezing To Aria, Though we live on stilts in a shaky for your company, sushi dinners, and friendship But you’re really hot I have loved you ever since I first laid year, you five keep me on solid ground. pre-dinner cake dates. Your friendships Even though we’re 14 hours away, my eyes on you. You’re the subject of Thank you for making me laugh the means the world to me. love and miss please b nice to me. i want attention thanks for always being there. You’re my every waking thought. I would love hardest & being there when I cry the you loads, madisofo and boba. the best, Aria. Love Jake to get to know you at some point. most. Blanket fort 4ever <3