ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Ann Arbor, Michigan
michigandaily.com
CAMPUS LIFE
Alumni of color call on Order of Angell to disband in Feb. 22 letter
Letter comes after current class sent email to all alum Feb. 17 asking input on “sunsetting” the organization CALDER LEWIS & LIAT WEINSTEIN Daily News Editors
Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, with edits by Madison Grosvenor
FROM THE EDITOR
The Daily votes to prohibit editors from joining Order of Angell, other societies Current leadership denounces the racist history of Order, apologizes for past involvement CLAIRE HAO, JOHN GRIEVE & BRITTANY BOWMAN Editor-in-Chief, Digital Managing Editor & Managing Editor
The Michigan Daily’s 2021 Management Desk voted Feb. 7 to prohibit any of The Daily’s editors from holding membership in Order of Angell, an exclusive senior honor society formerly known as Michigamua, or any similar society at the University of Michigan. This decision was made after recognizing that Order’s nature and those of other such societies goes against the mission and ethos of The Daily, as well as to denounce Order’s egregiously racist past. As a news organization, The Daily aims for transparency and accountability of all public institutions. Order and other organizations like it, which bring together powerful student leaders
from across campus and do not publicize their actions, are the antithesis of that. Order’s “About Us” page and its members have always been vague about its activities, which the group’s members have previously attributed to the organization’s historical pillar of “humility in secrecy.” What this really means is that those outside the organization do not know what the group does and therefore are unaware of the true breadth of its influence. Despite former members’ denial of the organization’s secrecy and sway, it is clear that Order holds power on campus. By its own account, Order was significantly involved in the creation of the Michigan Union and continues “to lead many vital projects that have made the University of Michigan the great public institution that it is today.” Prominent faculty and administration members have “occasionally” been invited to join the organization as
honorary members, including an administrator in the Office of Institutional Equity in 2007. Many administrators have spoken at Order’s Leaders for Life conference, including University President Mark Schlissel and at least two regents. One former Daily staffer who was in Order cited the organization as a way to be privy to otherwise inaccessible information. The Daily believes it is important to remain distinct from organizations friendly with the University’s administration, and Order fits this description. In this way, having a clear separation from Order and other such organizations aligns with The Daily’s existing policy prohibiting Daily staffers from holding membership in Central Student Government. Furthermore, per The Daily’s bylaws and code of ethics, Daily staffers must “remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.” Past Daily staffers
CITY
have debated whether being a part of Order is a conflict of interest for the closeness that Order fosters between The Daily’s editors and student leaders of organizations that The Daily is supposed to report on. This year’s Management Desk has decided that it is. Membership in societies like Order places The Daily amid ongoing controversy and erodes our integrity. In the past, at least one Daily staffer has stepped down due to concerns over another’s membership in Order. Previous Daily editors who’ve held membership in Order have deferred editorial oversight of all articles relating to Order or naming members of Order. However, there is still unresolved gray area as The Daily publishes numerous articles on prominent student organizations, many of which have individuals who carry membership in the society. See SOCIETIES, Page 3
Order of Angell, an exclusive senior honor society oft-criticized for its legacy of racism and its elitism, is considering disbanding, according to an email sent to the society’s alumni obtained by The Michigan Daily. The email, sent by the current 2021 class of members on Feb. 17, says Order is seeking feedback from alumni on its value to campus, its changes over time and the ramifications of “sunsetting” the organization by not selecting another class. Order has suspended the process of tapping potential new members while it considers its future, according to the email. Order’s Class of 2021 — known as the “Pride” of 2021 — cites reasons “beyond their control” for “not start(ing) on a solid footing,” such as their smallest size relative to past classes, complications from the pandemic and being called racist over social media. “The conditions on campus have been difficult,” the email reads. “For example, dealing with being labeled as racists on social media, the internal push for further reforms, and the inability to engage in oral and in-person traditions have eroded confidence in selecting another Pride. Further volatility around campus standing, sponsor units, programs, agendas, and alumni engagement over our recent history also led to organizational fatigue.” Alumni were asked in a Google form how Order has positively impacted campus or their lives, as well as what they had done to improve campus relations and promote a “more accurate narrative” of the organization. Finally, they were asked: “What are your reactions, advice, or final Wise Words to the potential Last Pride Ever?” On Tuesday morning, Order alumni of color released a letter to the current class calling on the group to disband or, alternatively,
implement five main reforms. These reforms include making Order’s history known through “public truth-telling,” requiring racial justice education for current members and alumni and holding a “restorative-justice” process with Indigenous community members to mend the damage done by Order’s past appropriation of Native American symbols and traditions. The other reforms include having a transparent nomination and selection process, as well as developing organizational measures to limit or end engagement with alumni, particularly those before the 2006 name change from Michigamua. The letter, which has 21 signatures from current members, alumni and allies as of Tuesday afternoon, says both Order’s racist past and current treatment of members of color makes it necessary for the group to disband. The letter says that though Order claims to champion diversity and inclusion on the surface, “being a person of color in the organization was both laborious and harmful.” “At the table on Monday nights, students of color often faced a hostile environment riddled with microaggressions and tokenism,” the letter reads. “Attempts to address these inequities were often met with silence at best and silencing at worst. The power within the organization was always with white students, backed by a powerful cadre of alumni who pulled strings within the Pride. Race-based aggression was assumed to have been limited to “the past,” even while racialized power dynamics continued to shape the day-to-day of the organization.” The letter also says that students of color had to cross higher thresholds to be considered for acceptance into the society. “Students of color have had to be exceptional in their leadership, while many non-marginalized students are granted seemingly automatic memberships due to their association with so-called “legacy” organizations,” the letter reads.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
ADMINISTRATION
Ann Arbor councilmembers urge Regents pressed to reopen for fall return to in-person, hybrid learning semester, discuss Capitol insurrection
Council letter comes amid community debate as remote school approaches 1 year EMMA RUBERG & JULIANNA MORANO Daily News Editor & Daily Staff Reporter
In what some residents are calling a jurisdiction-breaching move, six Ann Arbor City Council members and Mayor Christopher Taylor signed a public letter Sunday night addressed to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education demanding further planning and action around a return to in-person and hybrid learning in the district. The move comes after weeks of debates over the safety of in-person teaching and a Jan. 31 protest by AAPS students and parents requesting the option to return to classrooms in-person. AAPS has been fully virtual since March 2020. According to a Facebook post from Councilmember Jen Eyer, D-Ward 4, who is one of the letter’s signatories, their specific demands include an accelerated return to in-person learning amid declining COVID-19 cases and increasing vaccinations,
confirmation of the district’s hybrid in-school learning plan and a target date of return, as well as greater communication regarding plans for the Fall 2021 semester. In their letter, the councilmembers emphasized the importance of in-person learning and the negative impact a lack of in-person instruction has on students’ wellbeing. “The extended absence of in-school learning harms the emotional and mental state of students and stresses already stressed families,” the letter reads. “These harms are universal, but they are compounded among homes with young students and community members who are resource-deprived or who have special needs.” This letter from some councilmembers comes after AAPS Superintendent Jeanice Swift announced mid-January that the district would conduct remote instruction indefinitely, given continued difficulty for teachers to acquire the COVID-19 vaccine and the presence of the B.1.1.7 variant in Ann Arbor. She explicitly said there was no specific date set
GOT A NEWS TIP? Call 734-418-4115 or e-mail news@michigandaily.com and let us know.
Follow The Daily on Instagram, @michigandaily
for the start of hybrid-learning, though she wrote that the district would plan for possible in-person options with community input. Swift also laid out the district’s stages for return to in-person learning, beginning with “students with high-level specialized learning needs” who choose to return. Other priority groups include pre-school and kindergarten age students as well as small groups of middle and high school groups to receive in-school learning center support. In a Jan. 8 press conference, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer urged all schools to offer in-person instruction beginning March 1. Despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that schools are not major sites for COVID-19 transmission if proper protocols are enforced, some AAPS parents and teachers are reluctant to return to classrooms — especially as COVID-19 cases among University of Michigan students remain high.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Board also provides update on fossil fuel divestment CHRISTIAN JULIANO & JARED DOUGALL Daily Staff Reporters
The University of Michigan Board of Regents met virtually Thursday afternoon for the first time during the 2021 calendar year. During the meeting, board members gave updates about the current state of the University and heard from public commenters regarding concerns over lecturer status, fund allocations to the satellite campuses and the University’s COVID-19 response. Regents Ron Weiser (R) and Katherine White (D) were not in attendance at the meeting, and the reasons for their absence were not clarified at the meeting. U-M spokesman Rick Fitzgerald later confirmed to The Michigan Daily that while U-M officials do not know why the regents were not in attendance, scheduling conflicts are not uncommon. U-M President Mark Schlissel began the meeting by providing an update on the status of returning to more in-person instruction for the Fall 2021 semester, which
For more stories and coverage, visit
michigandaily.com
INDEX
will heavily depend on vaccine availability. “We’re optimistic that fall will look and feel much more like a normal academic and residential term at U of M,” Schlissel said. “We’re looking at various scenarios based on what fraction of our faculty, staff and students are able to be vaccinated … We’re hopeful that unlike present circumstances, COVID-19 vaccine supplies will outpace demand in the coming months.” Regent Jordan Acker (D) then addressed the January insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. “We must live in the same basic truth: the election of 2020 was not stolen, the insurrection was not a hoax and our government can only endure when the losers of election accept the legitimacy of defeat,” Acker said. “There was, in fact, no steal to stop.” Acker’s speech comes after calls for the resignation of his fellow Regent Weiser from some U-M community members. In recent weeks, Weiser has come under fire from those who think
Vol. CXXX, No. 21 ©2021 The Michigan Daily
he did not adequately denounce the riots in the U.S. Capitol and has been accused of making undisclosed payments to further his campaign for Michigan GOP Chair. Inappropriate emails from Weiser to the other Regents have also surfaced in the last few weeks. In February 2020, the Board of Regents announced the University would not bring forward any new direct investments in fossil fuel companies after sustained student activism to divest entirely from fossil fuels. At Thursday’s meeting, Regent Mark Bernstein (D) said he and the board have been collaborating with activists, peer universities and other climate experts to find a way to sustainably invest the University’s assets, but did not otherwise specify the University’s next steps. “We aim to make our investments in a way that contributes to the essential transition to a low-carbon economy, and we expect to share concrete next steps at our next board meeting,” Regent Bernstein said.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
NEWS.........................2 MIC............................4 ARTS............................6
S TAT E M E N T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 O P I N I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 2 S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 4
2 — Wednesday, February 24, 2021
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com
CLAIRE HAO
Editor in Chief cmhao@michigandaily.com
TARA MOORE
Business Manager tmooree@michigandaily.com
NEWS TIPS
news@michigandaily.com
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR tothedaily@michigandaily.com
EDITORIAL PAGE
opinion@michigandaily.com
PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION
ARTS SECTION
photo@michigandaily.com
NEWSROOM
arts@michigandaily.com
SPORTS SECTION
news@michigandaily.com
sports@michigandaily.com
CORRECTIONS
corrections@michigandaily.com
ADVERTISING
WMG-contact@umich.edu
Editorial Staff
KATE HUA/Daily Students walk around the Diag after another snowstorm in Ann Arbor Thursday afternoon.
ANN ARBOR
Ann Arbor City Council and public react to proposed rules to limit time New resolution aims to improve discourse and accessibility of meetings JULIA FORREST Daily Staff Reporter
In an effort to improve discourse and ensure meetings are accessible to the public, the Ann Arbor City Council introduced a new resolution on Feb. 1 to amend Council Rules to have Council meetings end earlier, garnering both support and wariness from councilmembers. Since the council moved to conduct fully remote meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, meetings have often gone into the early morning, sometimes past 1 a.m. The resolution also aims to limit negative interactions between councilmembers. On Feb. 1, City Council voted to approve the resolution R-21047, a Resolution to Approve Amendments to the Council Rules. It was brought up for a second time on Feb. 16 in a motion to reconsider its approval after issues were raised about the resolution potentially infringing on free speech. The motion to reconsider was approved. The resolution entails limiting discussion and debate on agenda items by reducing speaking times for councilmembers from three minutes down to two. An amendment in the resolution calls for councilmembers not to “assail, question, or impugn the integrity, character or motives of another Member” in or outside of council meetings. Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor would act as the Presiding Officer over the meeting and would ultimately decide if a violation occurs.
If the mayor deems that a violation occurred, he will give the councilmember who was spoken against two minutes of speaking time to defend themselves or say that the other councilmember is out of order. Councilmember Julie Grand, D-Ward 3, spoke at the Feb. 1 meeting in support of the resolution, saying that the resolution will give power to councilmembers to defend themselves against attacks made on them without it taking up their limited speaking time. She has been on City Council since 2014 and said she hopes the resolution will help to improve councilmembers’ behavior. “I believe the point of this is not to use it frequently and to actually keep us from going down in a rabbit hole where we’re defending one another,” Grand said at the meeting. “It really just gives that person, on hopefully a very rare occasion, the opportunity, if they have been clearly attacked to step in and get back in quickly to the work that we’ve been doing.” Councilmember Lisa Disch, D-Ward 1, also spoke at the Feb. 1 meeting in support of the section allowing councilmembers to defend themselves against attacks that may imgun their integrity. Disch has been a member of City Council since Nov. 2020. “This is not constraining anyone’s ability to express their opinion,” Disch said. “It is constraining their ability to promulgate negativity about this body and its individual members. And because statements that promulgate negativity about the body
and it’s members compromise the dignity of this council, it compromises trustin council.” Councilmember Elizabeth Nelson, D-Ward 4, told The Daily she does not think the resolution would shorten the meeting because the length is based largely on the number of agenda items, not each individual speaking. She also worried about issues not being fully discussed and understood by various councilmembers in the interest of time. “I’m concerned about the idea that we want to reduce speaking time and that the suggestion is coming from new councilmembers right out of the gate,” Nelson said. “(They) are perhaps less informed about some of these issues, and I will say that when I first got on council, I benefited hearing from our colleagues who have more experience than me.” Councilmember Jeff Hayner, D-Ward 1, said he also disapproves of the proposal and told The Michigan Daily he thinks the desire of new councilmembers to limit speaking time seems to be an overstep. “I didn’t see the need for the rules,” Hayner said. “And the rules were coming from a couple of councilmembers who’ve only been seated for a month and a half and so I thought it was a little presumptuous to start changing the rules.” Hayner said the new rule would reduce the amount of time councilmembers are present to hear the concerns of their constituents. “It’s not like you’re reducing speaking time, what you’re reducing is my ability to speak
on behalf of the 25,000 people I represent,” Hayner said. “I feel like you’re taking away from constituents your ability to express your constituents’ concerns.” Brandon Dimcheff, a resident of Ward 4, spoke to The Daily in support of the resolution. He said he thinks the rule should be adopted to limit councilmembers from arguing with one another. “I feel like (the resolution) shouldn’t be that controversial,” Dimcheff said. “For me, I am definitely happy that (the resolution is) happening. People think it’s going to be weaponized against something, but I don’t see it. I think regardless of the situation, they should stop bickering at each other.” Dimcheff also said he thinks councilmembers’ time should be time-limited to shorten the total meeting times. “I think that this process is not intended to limit the scope of the grievance hearing,” Dimcheff said. “I don’t think anybody’s First Amendment rights are getting trampled.” Dimcheff said he believes that the new rule would result in increased information density and quality of debate, as each councilmember would have to keep the information they are sharing concise. “If everyone comes prepared for the meeting (it will be) productive,” Dimcheff said. “Everyone would get up to speed individually and ask the best questions.” Daily Staff Reporter Julia Forrest can be reached at juforres@umich.edu.
BRITTANY BOWMAN Managing Editor
babowm@michigandaily.com
JACK GRIEVE
Digital Managing Editor
jgrieve@michigandaily.com
BARBARA COLLINS and LIAT WEINSTEIN Managing News Editors
news@michigandaily.com
Senior News Editors: Emma Ruberg, Hannah Mackay, Calder Lewis, Jasmin Lee, Francesca Duong, Kristina Zheng Investigative Editor: Sammy Sussman FOIA Manager: Ayse Eldes
LIZ COOK and JOEL WEINER
Editorial Page Editors tothedaily@michigandaily.com Senior Opinion Editors: Zack Blumberg, Andrew Gerace, Min Soo Kim, Mary Rolfes, Elayna Swift
LANE KIZZIAH and KENT SCHWARTZ
Managing Sports Editors sportseditors@michigandaily.com Senior Sports Editors: Rian Ratnavale, Drew Cox, Lily Friedman, Jack Kingsley
ELISE GODFRYD and ZOE PHILLIPS
Managing Arts Editors arts@michigandaily.com Senior Arts Editors: Andrew Pluta, Grace Tucker, Kari Anderson, Katie Beekman, Sophia Yoon Arts Beat Editors: Elizabeth Yoon, Peter Hummer, Mik Deitz, Sabriya Imami, Kaitlyn Fox, Anya Soller
AYA SALIM and SAMUEL TURNER
Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com Senior Design Editors: Shannon Stocking, Adam Bressler
ALLISON ENGKVIST and MADDIE HINKLEY
Managing Photo Editors photo@michigandaily.com Senior Photo Editors: Emma Mati, Miles Macklin, Becca Mahon, Julia Schachinger Assistant Photo Editors: Maddie Fox, Luke Hales, Jeremy Weine, Gabby Ceritano, Sophia Afendoulis
ANDIE HOROWITZ
Managing Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com Deputy Editors: Isabelle Hasslund, Marisa Wright
MADISON GAGNE and OLIVIA BRADISH
Managing Copy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com Senior Copy Editors: Caroline Atkinson, Anjali Chiravuri, Ethan Patrick, Kelsey Burke, Emily Wilson, Vanita Seed, Sophie Kephart, Rena McRoy
PARTH DHYANI and NAITIAN ZHOU Managing Online Editors
webteam@michigandaily.com
IULIA DOBRIN and ANNIKA WANG
Managing Video Editors video@michigandaily.com Senior Video Editors: Margaret Rudnick, Jordan Shefman
ANAMIKA KANNAN and GABRIJELA SKOKO
Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com Senior Michigan in Color Editors: Noor Moughni, Maya Kadouh, Eliya Imtiaz, Jessica Kwon, Lola Yang
EMILY OHL and GERALD SILL
Managing Podcast Editors podeditors@michigandaily.com Senior Podcast Editors: Doug McClure, Max Rosenzweig, Avin Katyal
HALEY JOHNSON and ASHA LEWIS
Managing Social Media Editors socialmedia@michigandaily.com Senior Social Media Editors: Kirti Aplash, Natalie Knight, Ria Dubey, Ryan Postman, Evan DeLorenzo, Atticus Raasch, Bella Morreale
ALEX HARRING and SARAH SZALAI Co-Chairs of Access & Inclusion
Business Staff RORI MILLER Creative Director
SCHUYLER JANZEN Sales Manager
The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is publishing weekly on Wednesdays for the Winter 2021 semester by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. If you would like a current copy of the paper mailed to you, please visit store. pub.umich.edu/michigan-daily-buy-this-edition to place your order. ISAAC MANGOLD/Daily Members of the Ann Arbor City Council are debating new rules to limit the length of meetings and to allow councilmembers to respond to direct verbal attacks.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 — 3
BUSINESS
Local businesses in Ann Arbor discuss impact of a potential federal $15 minimum wage policy
Restaurant owners, U-M professor talk pros and cons of raising workers’ salaries amid pandemic, financial uncertainty GEORGE WEYKAMP Daily Staff Reporter
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced Feb. 11 that a raise in the federal minimum wage to $15 would be included in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill. The bill, if passed by the House of Representatives, would be able to bypass the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate through budget reconciliation and only requires a simple majority to be voted into law. However, the bill faces significant roadblocks in the Senate. With a 50-50 divided Senate, all 50 Senate Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris would have to vote to enact the bill through budget reconciliation. The potential increase to the minimum wage, which would include gradual increases over a period of four years, would be the first time Congress has raised the minimum wage since 2009, where it was set to $7.25 per hour. In Michigan, the minimum wage is currently set at $9.65 per hour. A $15 per hour hike would represent a nearly 107% increase in the minimum wage on the federal level and a 55% increase for the state of Michigan. Dr. Wally Hopp, University of Michigan Business and Engineering professor, said he has reservations about the unprecedented wage increase, especially during a pandemic. Hopp said he thinks Congress should wait until the economy has recovered to raise the minimum wage and to do so in a more phased approach than the current plan. “If we go too suddenly absolutely, (there’s risks),” Hopp said. “Using a phased approach … we’re going to aim to get to $15 an hour, but we’re going to go on a pace that takes into account inflationary effects and unemployment.” Engineering sophomore Nick Tran said he believes that the federal minimum wage should be higher than $15 per hour. Tran is from Seattle, a city that has already implemented a $15-perhour minimum wage, and said that the increased wages allowed
him to save up money for college and put more money into the economy. “(The wage) allows me to support myself based on that salary,” Tran said. “If I was paid a lot less than that it would be somewhat more of a problem.” It costs almost 32% less to live in Ann Arbor than it does to live in Seattle. Hopp said that he believed the role of the federal government is to set a bare minimum wage that could be increased gradually, but that the real increases should come at the state and local levels. “The minimum wage should be different for different parts of the country, and it is,” Hopp said. “I think there is a role for setting a bottom for the federal minimum wage … if we sort of push on the bottom of the wage scale a little bit, then it forces people like myself to make decisions to accommodate (employees).” Hopp is also the owner of Great Harvest Bread Company in Lake Orion, Mich., and noted business owners have options other than layoffs when it came to balancing their budgets in the face of an increased minimum wage. These options, such as reduced hours and underemployment, are not counted in current unemployment metrics. “In order to stay in business at all, I really only have two levers: one is to increase prices and the other is to decrease hours,” Hopp said. “If I can’t be viable with adjustments to those two, then I go out of business.” James Wilhelm, the General Manager of Black Pearl on Main Street, spoke to the challenges his restaurant would encounter in the face of an increased minimum wage. Wilhelm said his business has thirteen employees making less than $15 per hour with approximately half of them as high school or college students. He said business has changed drastically over the course of the pandemic, and he had to temporarily consolidate positions to ensure safety and to cut costs. If the minimum wage were to be raised, those changes could become permanent, Wilhelm said.
“Currently my servers are running their own food and bussing their own tables which is something pre-pandemic … we were paying (other) people to do,” Wilhelm said. “If the minimum wage goes up, there’s no way I could afford to pay the servers (that wage), plus pay a food runner, plus pay a busser.” If he were to give raises to employees to get them to the new minimum wage, Wilhelm said he would have to give equivalent raises to the rest of his staff to maintain the same hierarchy as before the wage increase. This increase would likely lead to him having to further consolidate employees or raise his prices. Wilhelm said he feels fortunate that his restaurant has larger ticket prices than other restaurants. Smaller, lowerpriced restaurants, he feared, wouldn’t be able to handle the
CAMPUS LIFE
U-M students detail experiences living through snowstorms across the country
Some lost power, struggled to complete assignments due to extreme weather VARSHA VEDAPUDI Daily Staff Reporter
With snowstorms raging across the country, University of Michigan students are grappling with bad weather conditions while taking virtual classes from across the country. LSA junior Emery Hakim has been living with friends in an apartment on the University of Texas at Austin’s campus for the Winter 2021 semester. Texas has been particularly hard-hit by the weather, and Hakim said she and her roommates have not had water supply for the last few days. All classes and activities at UT-Austin, including virtual activities, were canceled due to the snowstorm. She said the grocery stores are not open and the roads are not clear, forcing Hakim and her roommates to conserve their food until the situation resolves. “We really did not expect for it to get this bad,” Hakim said. “Like we knew it was going to snow, and it snows all the time in Michigan, but now the entire city is shut down and classes (at UT-Austin) have been canceled.” Engineering freshman Tom Sherman, on campus in Ann Arbor, was trying to get to his 8:30 a.m. class on North Campus on Tuesday and had to decide between taking the bus and riding his bike 2.6 miles.
Sherman said the bus is cold anyway since the windows are kept open to reduce the spread of COVID-19, so he chose to bike. “That was a mistake because the sidewalks weren’t clear, and I fell off my bike,” Sherman said. “I guess in a normal year it would be nice to ride in a nice, warm bus and have the bus drop you right outside your building. I guess those aren’t luxuries we have this year.” LSA sophomore Maryam Haltam is taking classes from her home in Plano, Texas. She said her house lost power for a couple of hours, causing her to join the widespread panic across the state. “When we lost power, we started panicking and my dad started looking for hotels but they were all full,” Haltam said. Luckily, the power came back shortly after. Haltam also said she got to help some of her neighbors who had lost power and water. “Our neighbors came over to have dinner with us since they had lost power for two days,” Haltam said. “I know a ton of people right now who do not have internet, cell service and are literally shivering in their houses trying to stay warm.” Haltam said she is concerned about the state’s response to the snowstorm and how state leadership is navigating the crisis. “(Texas Gov.) Greg Abbott
went live, and he was like, ‘Guys it’s because we actually do need fossil fuels because renewable energy isn’t reliable,’ which isn’t true,” Haltam said. “Because the actual problem wasn’t that. It was the outdated power plants that cannot withstand the cold.” Gov. Abbott and other Republican politicians falsely blamed frozen wind turbines as the root cause of the widespread power outages in Texas that left almost 3 million homes without power. Renewable energy only accounted for 13% of the power outages. Coal and gas energy sources accounted for double the amount of energy lost. According to the Texas Tribune, the state also decided to not update their equipment to withstand harsh winter weather conditions per energy and policy experts. Many Texan politicians also chose to ignore warnings for extreme weather, citing they “prioritized the free market.” Hakim said she lost power Wednesday afternoon and is concerned that she might not be able to submit a paper due on Friday without access to WiFi. “I’m pretty sure my professor will understand,” Hakim said. “But there’s a lot of chaotic energy here in this apartment right now.” Daily Staff Reporter Varsha Vedapudi can be reached at varshakv@umich.edu.
CARA JHANG/Daily Ann Arbor restaurant owners and a U-M Business professor weighed in on how a potential federal $15 minimum wage policy would affect the local area.
increase nearly as well. “I hope (government officials) talk to real restaurant owners and actually get the opinions of people who have been doing this,” Wilhelm said. “My restaurant may survive, but it doesn’t mean all restaurants are going to survive … I worry about the smaller restaurants that aren’t as busy (as Black Pearl).” In contrast, Lauren Bloom, owner of Bløm Meadworks on 4th Avenue, said all of her employees currently make more than $15 per hour and that it was important for all of her employees to make a livable wage. Bloom said while owners of businesses and restaurants specifically are hurting right now, their servers and employees are hurting just as much. “I do understand that this is a
SOCIETIES From Page 1 Additionally, separating Order membership from editing responsibility still hurts our ability to report on Order, as groups opposed to Order will nonetheless decline to talk to Daily reporters who are not in Order, which The Daily experienced as recently as 2019. Importantly, knowing that journalism aims to “comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable,” Daily membership in Order hurts our ability to build trust with and amplify the perspectives of marginalized communities. This is given Order’s history of racism and harm, specifically in regards to its misuse of Indigenous rituals, language and artifacts. The organization, previously named Michigamua, had exclusive access to the tower of the Michigan Union, a privilege unlike those given to any other student group. Since at least the 1970s, some U-M students have pushed back against Michigamua’s appropriation of Indigenous culture, and in 1989, the group agreed to eliminate all references to Indigenous culture except in its name. But in 2000, activists in the Students of Color Coalition occupied Michigamua’s tower space for 37 days, finding that Michigamua’s meeting space had a “wigwam-like” design and exhibited Indigenous statues, headdresses and instruments. Michigamua also displayed photos of members taking part in initiation rites based on Indigenous rituals and gave members nicknames disrespecting Indigenous language. Past Michigamua/Order members well into 2012 have accused SCC of setting them up, despite extensive records suggesting the contrary. After sustained SCC protest, the University’s administration removed Michigamua from the Union tower. In 2007, Michigamua went
challenging time for restaurant and service industry owners right now,” Bloom said. “But there’s never going to be a time that’s easy for business owners to make an increase in wages … but just as business owners are struggling, I think service employees are struggling too.” The federal bill also seeks to eliminate tip credit, which allows businesses to pay employees less than minimum wage if their income is subsidized through consumer tips. Phillis Engelbert owns The Lunch Room and Detroit Filling Station and said she is a staunch supporter of an increased minimum wage. Engelbert estimated that her employees make $17 per hour with tips, and if the tip credit were to be abolished, she would raise the price of products and reform the tip
process. “Restaurants would have to figure out how to pass that price increase on to the consumers, there would be no other way to do it,” Engelbert said. “I think that would have to alter the way tipping happens … maybe tipping would go away altogether and customers would get charged the true cost of the product, including the true cost of the labor.” In early February, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that a $15 minimum wage would increase unemployment by 1.4 million workers by 2025, but it also has the potential to lift 900,000 people out of poverty.
through a series of reforms: it registered as an official student organization through the University, began to release its list of members and renamed itself as Order of Angell in honor of former University President James Burrill Angell — who founded the group in 1902 — against the Angell family’s wishes. Even today, though Order writes on its website that members “no longer participate in (Indigenous) rituals and actively condemn the practice,” the organization partially excuses its past as Michigamua by writing that “(a Native American theme) was a very common theme for many social clubs and literally millions of their members across the country” at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also noteworthy that during his tenure as University president, Angell negotiated the treaty that was the predecessor to the Chinese Exclusion Act and believed Chinese immigrants to the U.S. were inherently foreign and unassimilable. In 2019, multiple campus organizations condemned participation in Order due to the organization’s past appropriation of Indigenous culture and its elitism. These groups — including the United Asian American Organizations, La Casa and the Arab Student Association — announced policies that bar students who accept membership in the society from holding leadership positions within their organizations. The Daily’s current leadership acknowledges and apologizes for our organization’s past involvement in Order. Since 1930, at least 58 Daily staffers have been a part of Order, very often The Daily’s Editor-inChief or other high-ranking leaders. And since renaming itself as Order of Angell and attempting to distance itself from the term “secret society” in 2007, Order has also used The Daily as a platform to publicize its member list, as recently as 2017. Though unable to make up for over 90 years of complicity with
one letter from the editor or one Management Desk vote, The Daily’s current leadership wants to begin rectifying damage by dissociating formally from Order and other exclusive senior honor societies on campus. We believe The Daily’s platform should not be used to further the agendas of alreadypowerful, historically problematic organizations such as Order. This year’s leadership also recognizes that Michigan in Color, a section within The Daily by and for students of color, was the first entity within The Daily to condemn Order and “all other secret societies,” doing so in 2019. On Feb. 7, 2021, The Daily’s Management Desk approved the following provisional amendment to The Daily’s bylaws: Because The Michigan Daily is committed to accountability and transparency, MDesk members will not join Order of Angell or any other exclusive senior honor society on campus or participate in programming run by these societies (i.e. Leaders for Life). A leader within The Daily partaking in a secretive group with a history of harm, including in any of their programming, does not align with our mission and core values. Participation in these societies, which value non-transparency over open engagement, directly goes against The Daily’s goal of being an organization that holds power responsible and elevates diverse narratives. A staff-wide vote to confirm the provisional amendment will be held at the next all-staff assembly in April, per bylaw procedure.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Claire Hao is the 2021 Editor-inChief and can be reached at cmhao@ michigandaily.com. John Grieve is the 2021 Digital Managing Editor and can be reached at jgrieve@michigandaily. com. Brittany Bowman is the 2021 Managing Editor and can be reached at babowm@michigandaily.com.
Michigan in Color
4 — Wednesday, February 24, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Design by Janice Lin
Valentine’s Day is stereotypical MEGHAN DODABALLAPUR MiC Columnist
The L-word ZAFIRAH RAHMAN MiC Columnist
Pink happens to be my favorite color. Yet, I’m not that excited to see stores boast hues of pink and red as this time of year approaches. The l word didn’t exist for me until Valentine’s Day. As a kid, I was always excited by the prospect of Valentine’s: how lovely it is that we have a day dedicated to showing affection and care for those in our life. I dreamed of dramatic confessions, endless bouquets of roses and taking time to appreciate one another in typical romantic-comedy fashion. I believed that Valentine’s Day enabled people to be brave enough to say “the l word.” Since then, I’ve been tying some sort of magic to the day. A couple of years ago, I would have been hoping for my own Patrick Verona to walk through the door.
In high school, I might’ve thought about the boy in my geometry class sending me a candy-gram — anonymously of course — to jumpstart our high school sweethearts story. Last year, it would’ve been nice to grab Starbucks with someone. But you see, none of these aims ever came true. I was set up by the rom-com industry and Hallmark holiday that is Valentine’s Day. And before I knew it, “the l word,” whether in text or out loud, left me feeling sick. Recently, I’ve been thinking about why it’s so hard for me to even say “the l word.” Maybe because it’s sacred to me. Maybe because my mom never said it. Maybe because I’ve only seen it on a television screen. Maybe because I don’t think it belongs to me. Maybe it’s not even real. My friends and I often say that your perception of “the l word” is based on its presence around you. So, I’ve been searching for it. For love. Yes, love. In old photos, hand-medown clothes and in every fold of a love
Design by Janice Lin/MiC
letter. And I can tell you, it’s real. I see it when my mom silently leaves a plate of peeled mandarins on my desk. My uncles who fight to pay the bill at a restaurant. Friends that send each other songs that remind them of each other. Sending audio messages over texting. My favorite is when partners hold onto each other’s belongings so gently while the other is occupied. Plus, all the moments we can’t see or don’t know about. Like how you think of someone in your Duas (prayers). Or looking forward to their name under your notification bar. It’s not the break-out-in-song-anddance or Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” type of love that I’ve always envisioned, but it is love. While it’s nice to hear and see the word this Valentine’s Day, it doesn’t always have to be said aloud. Hidden amidst the pink hearts and bubble lettered l word, it’s the beautiful action of love that finds itself everywhere.
My mother taught me, however unintentionally, about love through her life stories. She would tell me how when she was younger, her father would make extra money by fixing other people’s broken household appliances. She explained how when her birthday was approaching, he would pray that people’s appliances would break so he could afford to buy her a dress, even though she never expected anything. My mother showed me home videos she found from 1998. The videos consisted of my parents being completely and utterly mesmerized by my older sister, who was just one year old at the time, doing nothing besides sitting. My mother was the one who taught me that love is gentle, kind, patient and forgiving. She taught me that love has the ability to grow and change over time, so that it can become stronger. Love takes effort and is ongoing. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I can’t help but note the differences between mainstream society’s expression of love and my mother’s stories about love. Society dictates that men are frantically browsing stores, trying to figure out the perfect gift for their significant others. They search aisle after aisle, wondering if their wife or girlfriend would want chocolate, flowers or jewelry. Or maybe they want it all. Of course, the basic expectation is a nice dinner, so that has to
happen regardless of what gift he chooses. These men consequently feel as though the pressure is on when it comes to Valentine’s Day. Much of society and the media claim that Valentine’s Day is the designated holiday to proclaim love and appreciation for the important people in our lives. In theory, Valentine’s Day seems like a wholesome way to express love, and giving gifts is a method of depicting your love on this holiday. Though society has largely accepted this, the holiday can easily turn into a performative, shallow way of appeasing your supposed loved one through materialistic items, which ultimately goes against everything I believe love stands for. It is just as important to celebrate your loved ones every single day in simple ways, whether that be through actions or words. Since when did the magnitude of love become quantifiable through gifts and how much someone spends? Love is not measured on a monetary scale. Celebrating a holiday that directly or indirectly supports this notion can and will never depict the amount of love someone has for another person, whether that person is a parent, sibling, friend or significant other. The modern meaning of love, as suggested by Valentine’s Day, is not the same love my mother taught me. When you really love someone, you show it on more than just one day. It is seen through actions rather than materials. This type of love appears to be absent from the stereotypical notion of Valentine’s Day.
Love in color: Minder edition NADA ELDAWAY, MAYA MOKH & LORA FARAJ MiC Contributors
Nada Eldawy *Call me cleopatra the way I’ll conquer your heart <3 *Serial Netflix watcher *Love my cat more than I’ll love you: I had planned to start this piece by saying I downloaded Minder (Muslim Tinder) for purely journalistic purposes, a last-ditch effort to contribute to Love in Color before graduating as a chronically-single senior. But in all honesty, the application was on my phone weeks before the inspiration to write this piece struck. I never really felt like love was meant for me. Whether that’s a symptom of growing up without a huge Muslim community or just a product of insecurity, it was never really on my to-do list. However, like most people reading this, I found myself with all this time on my hands after quarantine, too much of which was spent aimlessly scrolling through my phone, before I realized — maybe halal dating could fill this gap. I downloaded Minder for a total of twenty minutes, including the time it took to create my profile. I barely began scrolling. One second, I saw a familiar face, the next second, the app was deleted off my phone and all traces of my profile’s existence were gone. Then I came across a Vice article of three people swiping right on Minder for a month, and before I even finished reading it, I knew — if I couldn’t stay on Minder for myself, I could at least do it under the guise of research. I forwarded the article to Maya, and the rest is history. The second time around, I was relaxed enough to appreciate all the app has to offer. From checking off your Islamic priorities, to getting straight to the point about willingness to relocate and marriage timing, your profile included all the no-nonsense communication to avoid games and keep things halal. While seeing marriage timelines of “less than 1 year” was terrifying and made me question my entire existence, it also gave me all the necessary information to get to know someone seriously without having to guess their intentions (and also very valid reasons for swiping left). If this was my Google Play review, I would give the Minder profile setup a 10/10 — and if you’re off-put by the reference to an Android, don’t worry. So were most of my Minder prospects. The profiles themselves are a different story. I only made it a day on Minder before the guilt of my ulterior motive of writing this article ate me up, and I added it to my profile. I went for a cute and quirky, “Here for an article, but swipe right if you still want to chat!” Most people ignored the tidbit or asked about it in shock days after they reached out, leading me to believe that men don’t actually read what you write. Prove me wrong. As for the profiles I saw, there was a severe lack of creativity. Along with the classic set of questions, Minder lets you choose three extra prompts to put on your profile. I cannot express the sheer amount of men who chose the question “What do you love about your mom?” and I’m still wrapping my head around how many of those answers were along the lines of
Design by Sharon Kwan
“Everything, she’s an angel.” I’m unclear about whether the whole brown boy obsession with their mothers is sweet or alarming. There was also a huge demographic of non-Muslims just there with the motto, “‘If she’s white, don’t swipe right’ -me, 2019” (a direct quote from a fratty-looking white man). To be honest, I’m not sure what these self-proclaimed nonMuslims expected to get out of Muslim dating, especially on a platform that exists explicitly to meet other Muslims. You could call it interest in other cultures and religions, but I prefer to call it what it is: fetishization. On the other end of the spectrum was the plea of, “Please no girls who are westernized — no makeup, must wear hijab, and not be a protester in the streets. If you support BLM or Gay Rights, please astaghfirullah just unmatch.” (This wasn’t supposed to be an exposé, but here we are). That, too, was a huge red flag. All too often I feel like my religiosity is written off because I don’t wear a hijab, so any profiles explicitly mentioning the hijab ate away at me bit by bit. But more than that, I was appalled how <Unnamed Muslim Man> expected women to swipe right on a person who explicitly opposed the most integral tenet of Islam: standing up for justice and helping the marginalized. Every once in a while, I would come across a regular Muslim guy who was chill and woke, and we’d chat. I went through many of the same conversations consisting of someone asking me about my favorite Netflix original, me answering and conversations fizzling out naturally. A couple times I took conversations off the app, looking for the elusive “click,” and while I met some really great people, things never panned out for one reason or another. A couple people were just geographically too far away — a side-effect of me setting my profile to national to avoid only seeing people from our Muslim Students’ Association. One guy accused me of friend-zoning myself right off the bat (he wasn’t wrong). Another blocked me after a pretty standard conversation, which took many days of friend-therapy for me to realize I hadn’t
done anything wrong (That is a PSA: Saying you’re not interested is infinitely better than blocking someone). There was a time or two when someone checked all of the boxes, every single one, but the thought of spending my life with someone scared me so much I exited. Honestly, while I deleted Minder and do not foresee returning back to it in the near future, I do not regret the experience. By the end of my month-long trial, I no longer felt the urge to throw my phone at the wall when I saw someone I knew, and I gained some important communication skills in the process. Especially as a Muslim woman, it was valuable for me to destigmatize talking to people romantically. There is so much internalized judgement in the Muslim community surrounding dating, but as long as your intentions are pure, there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting to know someone or exploring your feelings. In another world where I was a bit more emotionally ready, who knows? I could’ve found my naseeb on Minder. Maya Moka *Looking for my Arabic ting *If this doesn’t work out it was a dare *A life goal of mine: to go viral on TikTok: I consider myself a hopeless romantic. I grew up fantasizing about the Hallmark, cheesy relationships I saw on TV and dreaming of the day I could someday come to experience a love of my own, catapulted by a quirky meet-cute and followed by love letters and dancing in the rain. I blame Taylor Swift for a large portion of this. Being Arab and Muslim, however, and growing up with rigid expectations of what love looked like and the sequence of events that it should follow (meet someone, immediately get parents involved and start planning your future together), I never really saw that type of love in the cards for me. Still though, a girl could dream. It wasn’t until I grew up that I began to see things were not all black and white when it came to religion and dating, and that things could be done in a more modern way while still being kept halal (well, depending on who’s definition of “halal” we’re using). I still had, and to
an extent have, crazy high expectations for love and hopeless romantic ideals, and the short-lived relationships I’ve had can definitely speak to that (If I’ve ever made you a playlist, you owe me a V-Day present). So, when the idea of a Muslim dating app came up, I was very reluctant at first because I had never considered meeting people in such a systematic way before. I liked love to be spontaneous, hitting you out of nowhere — on a study abroad or on a random night hanging out with a group of friends when you realize there might be a little something more between you and another person. But for the sake of quarantine, and writing this piece, I decided to give it a shot. Similar to Nada though, while I downloaded it under the guise of MiC content, I secretly hoped it would lead to something akin to real romance. I have had the app for about three months now. That’s three times longer than I originally planned to have it, and I hate to say it, but I have indeed not found love. I bought the threemonth premium membership because I had a crippling fear of being found by people I knew, which may stem from the irrational feeling that dating apps are a “last resort” when I know that’s not true and the sheer embarrassment of having to announce to the world that I’m single. I have found a friendship that could have maybe eventually turned into a relationship if he were more serious and if we didn’t live on opposite sides of the country. It started off great, but sort of fizzled out as things often do when someone stops putting in as much effort and it begins to feel like more trouble than it’s worth. In terms of Minder, it proved to me that I could indeed vibe with someone I met online and that I do have the capacity to sustain something with distance and delayed gratification if need be. It also dispelled the notion I had ingrained in myself that romance can’t be real if it has intentional, planned beginnings. In terms of guys my age, it proved the usual — diving in too quickly still isn’t the right move for me and pretty words often amount to zero actions or follow-through.
I have also found several short-lived conversations that ended abruptly, a couple reasons to change my phone number, many cheesy bios, many weirdly hypersexual profile pictures and a much clearer picture of what I do and don’t want in a potential partner. And that counts for something, right? What struck me the most was the discrepancy between the types of guys on the app and what they wanted, as well as how many men simply do not know how to talk to women — be it from shyness, impatience, not being serious about the app or whatever else. Some of them genuinely sounded like they had never talked to a woman in their entire life. Don’t get me wrong, my expectations for men on a dating app were not unrealistic, but where was the charisma and charm that Taylor Swift wrote hundreds of songs about? While some of my matches asked right off the bat if I would send nudes or was into something more “casual,” others brought up marriage within the first conversation. And then to echo Nada’s point, there was the outrageous laziness and lack of creativity in bios: About me: Just ask.;The key to my heart: food. What keeps me up at night: Netflix. Thanks, Ali. That, coupled with your shirtless mirror selfie, really sold me. However, guys’ lazy bios and cringey photos are a running joke on most dating apps, so I definitely don’t chalk it up to religion or demographics. All in all, the experience was quite fun and interesting, and I appreciate Minder for what it is: A place for Muslims to get to know each other and clearly articulate what they want in a partner and relationship. It definitely plays a role in destigmatizing dating in our religion, and we deserve a place where we are the norm and not an exception or a fetish, but I think my overall disappointment is less about dating as a Muslim and more about dating apps more generally.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 — 5
Love: our true destiny KARIS CLARK MiC Columnist
The exploitative, violent nature of the capitalist system cultivates a culture of lovelessness. The hyperconsumerism of late-capitalism –– with its damning demands for domination, rugged individualism and conformity –– permeates and toxifies our interpersonal relationships, making way for a severe drought of love. Simply put, love and capitalism cannot coexist. They’re incompatible. Only by reconnecting with our inner divinity and embracing radical love can we find ourselves one step closer to deconstructing oppressive structures on our path towards liberation. Liberation, however, is just one aspect of the journey, for love is our true destiny. German social psychologist Erich Fromm, in his book “The Art of Loving,” discusses the ways in which love is the answer to the problem of human existence. He explains that having awareness of ourselves, of our fellow man and woman, of the future and the fact that we will inevitably die, prompts within us an awareness of our aloneness, or “separateness,” which is the source of all anxiety. In our attempts to overcome separateness, Fromm claims that we achieve (re)union by transcending our own life and finding at-onement (harmony). He also describes the ways that humankind has strived to prolong the anxiety of our separateness through inadequate means; from the orgiastic states of drugs, sexual desire or the accumulation of capital, we’ve seen time and time again an overwhelming tendency to try and alleviate our own experience of separateness. Much like author C.S. Lewis once stated, “All that we call human history — money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery — [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” Whether we refer to it as God, higher consciousness, a higher power or whatever, there is truth in the fact that amid the mystery and miracle that is life, forces beyond our own seem to be guiding our spirit in the direction of interconnectedness, communion, fullness, wholeness or simply put, love.
As Black feminist activist bell hooks remarks in her book “All About Love,” “my belief that God is love, love is everything, our true destiny — sustains me.” The Buddha defined the spiritual path to freedom as a practice characterized by the liberation of the heart which is love.. And as the Biblical passage 1 John 3:14 states, “Anyone who does not know love remains in death.” Even in a culture distinguished by immense lovelessness, we all still seek to know love. But how do we know love, and what separates love from basic attraction? Martin Luther King Jr. sought to answer these questions in his 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” in which he said, “When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This HinduMuslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: ‘Let us love one another, for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.’” Similarly, according to bell hooks, to know love we must “let go of our obsession with power and domination” which pervades Western society everywhere from our places of employment, religious institutions, political arenas, school systems and interpersonal relationships. We can let go of this obsession with power and domination by first understanding love as an active force. With this in mind, we can come to an understanding of the four basic elements, according to Fromm, that denote the active character of love, and exist in all forms of love: care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. Fromm cites care of love as “an active concern for the life and growth of that which we love.” He explains that we must labor in order to love, and that it requires dedicated work and effort in order to enhance the life of those we love. He describes the responsibility of love as “being able and ready to respond.” In order to love, we have to be able to react to the needs of others and understand the necessity of putting others first –– before our own needs are met.
Design by Madison Grosvenor
Fromm describes respect of love as not out of fear or awe, but “in accordance with the root of the word.” This means that respect is predicated on the basis of freedom and independence, or the absence of exploitation. If we’re in accordance with someone, that means we are aware of and conscious of their boundaries and rights as a human being. But to do this, we must know them. Thus, the knowledge of love, or the knowing whom we love, is an absolute necessity. Fromm claims that “knowledge is empty if not motivated by concern.” He goes on to say that this knowledge has another aspect to it, and that by knowing someone else, we come further to uncovering the secrets inherent in the miracle of life itself. While we can only know ourselves to a limited extent, knowing others allows us the affirmation and assurance that we are not, in fact, alone in this universe. In this, Fromm concludes that the only way to “full knowledge” lies in the act of love.
To my talented Black Queens continue to prove that no one is touching the power of Black women and R&B. I am loving MiC Columnist every millisecond of it. You aren’t one-dimensional. No. You are multi-talented Queens that demand your To my talented Black Queens, The love I have for you is indescribable. I worth be known in every aspect of society. am so proud of all that you have accomplished. Lizzo isn’t stuck in one musical genre –– my In the music industry, you continue to set the unapologetic queen can do them all. Rihanna standard, raise the bar, dominate and make is killing it in beauty, fashion, music and us proud. Flo Milli’s flow is unmatched, and everything in between. Teyana Taylor is a Cardi always comes through with the dynamic singer, songwriter, actress, dancer and director; visuals. JT and Caresha create a lifestyle all I mean, is there anything she can’t do? Beyoncé City Girls strive for, and Saweetie’s impeccable leaves me in awe 24/7. No words can describe her impact. With her impeccable music, style and business hustle are not to be vocals, films, music videos, jawmessed with. Megan’s rhymes and dropping performances and confidence make us all turn into incomparable Ivy Park line, Hot Girls. Nicki Minaj is the she has shown that girls Rap Queen, and Doja’s style “The disrespect have run the world for changes are so effortless. decades. You ladies are You ladies have followed Black women capable of so many in the footsteps of the endure is hard and great things, and you greats including Queen do it all so gracefully. Latifah, Lil’ Kim, undeserved. But People constantly Missy Elliot and Saltyou continue to compare you all, and N-Pepa, and continue I know it can be a lot. to dominate the rap rise above the hate, The haters persistently game. shine, and support tell you that you don’t But Black women one another and belong on the pedestals aren’t just taking over where you so firmly reside. rap music. They’re succeeed.” They constantly body dominating R&B. Chloe x shame Lizzo and Megan. Halle are a power team that They call Beyoncé untalented. always comes through with the They created drama between Nicki mesmerizing harmonies. Kehlani and Cardi to distract from their immense and Victoria Monét’s pens have me repeating verses two or three times over before talent. The disrespect Black women endure I finish their songs, just to make sure I catch all is hard and undeserved. But you continue to of their clever word plays. H.E.R. and Solange’s rise above the hate, shine, support one another moving messages produce emotions that are so and succeed. There are so many more Black powerful, and the combination of Jhené Aiko’s women killing it; I can’t even name them all. soft voice and her soothing instrumentals You’ve changed my life more than you could ringing through my ears creates such a magical ever know. The confidence boost I get every and comforting experience. SZA’s lyrics always time I open Apple Music is unreal. You make make me feel like she is speaking directly me feel like I can accomplish anything just by to me and describe exactly how I’m feeling. being my unapologetic self. Everything about Jazmine’s strong voice is unmatched, and her you is admirable, inspirational and flawless. I timeless music is somehow nostalgic while also love you, and feel so lucky to be alive to witness sounding fresh over a decade later. You ladies such greatness. Keep killing it! MARIA PATTON
I love you, stranger YASMINE SLIMANI MiC Columnist
The woman in the pale pink raincoat pulls me aside at TJ Maxx, and her voice drips with honey as she drawls that she absolutely loooves my sweater. My knee-jerk instinct is to reply, “Thanks, I love you!” I feel my cheeks burn, a crimson flush washing over my face as her thin eyebrows furrow in confusion. How bizarre must it be to hear those words from a stranger, uttered by anyone beyond your family, closest friends and significant other? But though I didn’t intend to let that slip, I mean it. I do love her. I love her the same way I love the stout old man who owns the bakery on West Warren Avenue. During an unexpected blizzard in high school, my tire explodes on the way to class. After skidding aimlessly for a few minutes, rim grinding against icy concrete, I pull into an empty parking lot to inspect the car. As I stand shaking from the snow and scowling from the inconvenience, I hear a thickly-accented voice call out from behind me, “Come inside. It’s cold.” Moments later, I am seated adjacent from Issam, the Palestinian bakery owner who has managed to serve me a plate of piping hot manaeesh only seconds after I was whisked into the store. We share the generous serving of bread, tugging warm tendrils of cheese behind it with each slice pulled, and exchange stories while I wait for my mother to call me back. We stumble through the conversation — with his broken English and my underdeveloped Arabic — and I learn about his brothers back home and his eldest daughter with whom I share a name. He tells me that his bakery is a family, despite the lack of blood relations. I watch them work, smiling warmly and cracking jokes with every passing moment, and I think I see it too. He shoots me a toothy grin and slides a crumpled five-dollar bill to get my tire replaced. As we part ways, he offers
Re: Covid-love YOON KIM
MiC Columnist
In light of Valentine’s Day, our MiC editors asked us to each write a piece on love. I had to sit and think about what, even in all of my incredibly extensive experience and expertise, I could possibly draw from. But as I sat with myself in silly embarrassment and contemplation, I realized I would be lying if I said I hadn’t felt a tremendous amount of love this past year and even in the last few weeks. I have felt love even, and especially so, outside of any kind of romantic sense of the word. I have witnessed a love that transcends, that inspires … a love that I am immensely grateful for in this season. At first, I was going to write about how the pandemic has taught me that love, in any and all of its forms, is essential. How it is a grounding force whose power and necessity I have recognized in this precise moment. How I have realized that having even just a handful of people, whether it be friends or family members, to love and gingerly receive love back
from has been a crucial stake in my mental health and a truly supernatural constant amidst such uncertain times. I think it goes without saying that this past year has been extremely difficult and frightening and uneasy. But it really has been the loved ones surrounding me who have not only occupied my mind with matters other than a raging pandemic, but who have also filled each passing day with joy, comfort and someone or something to look forward to. I was going to write about how, despite the ambiguous shifting — and even expedited drifting — that this pandemic has caused in many of our relationships, the love you engage in with this handful of people, whoever they may be, is more than enough to carry you along. But I have also realized that maybe this love is not necessarily a given. For myself, it has been the love from my family members, close friends and roommates that has helped me move forward despite such troubling times, not just begrudgingly so but even with an expectant joy. From gorging on Mr Spots’ Philly cheesesteaks in the Law Quad to talking late into the night around a warm
It is only when we are taking action, or acting in some way that we are fully alive. As Christine Valters Paintner states, “our greatest creative act is living our daily lives.” What better way to live our lives than with love in our hearts and on our minds? As bell hooks asserts in her chapter on Divine Love, “To be fully alive is to act … I understand action to be any way that we can co-create reality with other beings and the Spirit. Action like a sacrament is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of inward power.” By being critical and examining our own actions, we become better at outwardly putting forth this inward power inherent in all of us. By offering care, remaining responsible and respectful and having a desire to learn and to know, in all our interactions, we enrich not only others, but ourselves in the process. As we continue to strive through our actions to be fully alive, we embark on a lifelong trip towards our true destiny –– love.
bonfire to clinking thermoses full of hot cocoa on a snowy day, being able to hold onto these loved ones so closely and safely, I now realize is a privilege. For many others, this handful of people might be out of arm’s reach, or unavailable to see safely, or hurting or even gone. And I think it would be foolish and perhaps even entitled of me to assume that an abundance of love is currently accessible or guaranteed to everyone in today’s circumstances. What I have found this Valentine’s weekend is that love in the era of COVID-19 is not a given but rather a gift. And I should cherish it as such. I should consider the love that I have been so lucky to know during this pandemic as something that is incredibly precious, and in doing so appreciate my handful of loved ones in a way that is more frequent, more intentional and more vocal. I should call them more often, check up on them as they do for me and wish them good morning and good night. For Valentine’s Day 2021, perhaps I should simply unwrap, enjoy and reply to the love I have received this year. Design by Jessica Chiu
me a can of Pepsi and a warmth that seems to thaw the bitter cold outside. Years later, I still owe him five dollars. I love her the same way I love the eccentric Jimmy John’s employee who speaks to me in his self-proclaimed “alien language,” an endearing string of foreign noises indecipherable to Earthlings like me. Freshman year makes devoted regulars of my roommate and me, and we find ourselves stumbling into the tiny storefront every other night without fail, only to be greeted by our favorite night-shift worker. Soon, this becomes the highlight of our school year. With every anxiety-inducing all-nighter, we find solace in our Jimmy John’s visits. He makes us laugh so hard we forget our dreadful essays and exams, and soon the fluorescently-lit shop becomes our safe haven on campus. When he informs us that he’s quitting, we’re inconsolable, sobbing on the floor of our tiny room in the residence hall. My friend Kyra and I pour our hearts into a farewell letter and present it to him on his last day. An unfamiliar ‘80s pop song croons over the speakers, and before we know it, the three of us are swaying back and forth in time with the music. We continue our awkward, wordless dance in the empty State Street sandwich shop before reluctantly saying goodbye to our favorite stranger, clutching our Turkey Toms like an unspoken parting gift. My other friend laughs at this story, asking how we could feel such grief over someone we hardly knew. I respond incredulously, “Because we love him!” I love people recklessly and often. Passing strangers, Zoom classmates, cheerful Starbucks baristas: All great loves of my life that have come and gone, victims of my naive romanticization. I think it’s my favorite thing to do. A grave mistake we make is assuming that love is a finite, limited commodity — that we must cling to it with unrelenting persistence and grant it to a select few.
These reservations around love, particularly the version we’re sold through Hallmark movies and Billboard Top 100 songs, are understandable. It feels malicious and elusive. It hides away from us. It taunts the single and lonely, and it convinces us that we’ll never acquire its joy. I’ve come to find that this version of love has blinded us to the real thing entirely. The real thing does not hide. It is not an extraordinary gift that few are blessed to find or receive; love is wherever you allow it to be. It’s not always clasped in the hand of a lover. No, sometimes it sings along to the hum of the engine when your friend drives you home after a long day, a gentle hymn only heard by the two of you. Sometimes it slips through the crack of the door held open by a stranger. Sometimes it is neatly folded in the pile of laundry your mother leaves on your bed, engulfed in the scent of fresh linen or woven into the stories your little sister tells her friends, the ones in which you are always the valiant superhero. Sometimes you don’t know you’ve planted it until you feel the tickle of its leaves on your neck, and sometimes you’ll never realize it was love. But it will fill someone up and unravel them, and they will bask in its warmth which endures for years. Love is wherever you find it, so if it slips between your lips, let it curl into your lungs and dance around like smoke, tingeing your skin pink. If it gives up a seat on the bus for you, nod in appreciation and rest your weary bones. If it lands at your feet in shards, make a mosaic and let the light refracted shine brighter than any burning hatred or dull indifference. I hope you learn to find love in all of those unexpected places: bakeries, sandwich shops or fleeting conversations. When you do, I hope you recognize it for what it is and allow yourself to either hold it close or pass it on. If you can’t find it there, I hope you at least find it in these words, knowing that I love you, stranger.
Arts
6 — Wednesday, February 24, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Marcelo Castillo discusses the ‘undocupoet’ experience at Helen Zell Visiting Writers Series HADLEY SAMARCO Daily Arts Writer
Pollard shines a light on Black Art in HBO’s Black Art: In the Absence of Light’ CECILIA DURAN For The Daily
On Feb. 9, HBO aired a new documentary directed by the renowned Sam Pollard, known for his work in the 1998 Academy Awardnominated documentary “4 Little Girls.” The documentary, “Black Art: In the Absence of Light,” is an enlightening, 90-minute-long experience cultivated by the insight of artists ranging from Carrie Mae Weems to Kehinde Wiley, alongside other notable curators, collectors and scholars. It is an analysis of every stepping stone that has helped forge the path for Black artists and the emergence of Black American art within a predominantly white sphere. The documentary centers its narrative around David C. Driskell’s 1976 exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which compiled 200 years of art history using 63 carefully chosen artists. The event became a social-historical phenomenon by shining a light on the legacy of Black American artists. The discourse of “Black Art: In the Absence of Light” centers around institutions and their role in providing a sense of belonging. Museums, through their collection and exhibition practices, play a crucial part in the representation of the Black community, whose talent has long been ignored by mainstream American society. Art historian Maurice Berger, who gives his insight on the role of institutions throughout the film, exposes a clear problem of museum curation when he states
that 85% of artists in the collections of American museums are white and that only a shocking 1.2% are Black. Driskell’s “Two Centuries” paved the way for the numerous movements, museums and exhibitions that emerged towards the end of the 20th century, facilitating the introduction of Black art in the mainstream fine art sphere. However, it has certainly not been a smooth path. The film recalls “Harlem on my Mind,” the 1968 exhibition showcased at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as a hypocritical and wrongful display of “Black art.” While the show was centered around the African-American community, it showcased zero Black artists. This, alongside the emerging Civil Rights Movement, became an impetus for rethinking who decides which stories get told and in what way. In a sense, a lot of the reactionary exhibitions that came thereafter sought to take viewers out of their comfort zones and to challenge the previous conventionality of the art. This is exemplified in another exhibition the film calls attention to: “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art” at the Whitney Museum of New York in 1994, which was curated by Thelma Golden, another important figure throughout the documentary. “‘Black Male,’” in the words of Kehinde Wiley, the artist behind former President Barack Obama’s portrait, “looked at the body as a sign of strength. It looked at masculinity as a sign of performance. It looked at femininity as an invention.” This exhibition reshaped the meaning of
Blackness and maleness in visual culture. In the documentary, images of the exhibit and cutouts of media critiques are shown, allowing the spectator to see how something so controversial had become liberating and illuminating for many but bewildering and perturbing to others. It’s amusing to read that what the press had to say echoed the exhibition’s original intention: a sort of artistic rebellion. Black art has been there since the foundation of this nation: As Theaster Gates, the artist who concludes the film, said, “We are part of a continued renaissance — it’s been happening.” But now it’s time to make Black art part of the mainstream and the public eye. To become “great makers in the absence of light.” After dissecting and deconstructing “Black Art: In the Absence of Light,” I appreciate the value of the whole and the importance of every featured voice — many of which I was unfamiliar with and others for whom my interest grew stronger. It is comforting to see Black art flourish and get its rightful recognition. However, the documentary could be more succinct. In and of itself, it is a sort of exhibition. It deals with the impact that two generations of artists had on today’s artists and it acts as a general summary of what an arbitrary selection of Black artists have accomplished since. It is an analysis of various themes within a culture too frequently considered monolithic.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Last week, the Zell Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, featured Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, a renowned poet and graduate of the University of Michigan who recently published his first memoir “Children of the Land.” During the event, which took place over Zoom, Castillo shared his work, talked about his career and answered questions for the public in an hour and a half long talk with faculty, staff and community members. The meeting opened with a heartfelt introduction from Castillo’s editor, Sofia Groopman, who told us how the two had met. When she first read his poetry, she felt the fundamental trust that exists between a writer and their editor — an unnamable reliance as mysterious as it is strong; she knew she had to work with him. Castillo possesses many laureates: He is a graduate of the University’s Master of Fine Arts program and is the first undocumented student to have done so. He is the founder of Undocupoets, a group of poets who support and advocate for other undocumented poets, and a published author. His award-winning poetry was also recently adapted into an opera and now most recently, his memoir was published. This latest work, which has been nominated for multiple awards and praised heavily, tells his story of being an undocumented immigrant crossing the border to becoming a celebrated modern poet. Following his introduction, Castillo took some time to read a few excerpts from his work. Even though he sat alone in his room, his enthusiasm and charisma could be felt from miles away. Every pause in his reading, every extra emphasis in his voice, all served to illustrate the complex and
vibrant picture that was his poetry. He began with the titular poem from his first book, “Cenzóntle.” An emotional piece, it can only be summarized by a quote: “Because the bird flew before there was a word for flight years from now there will be a name for what you and I are doing.” These were the opening lines to the poem — each line that followed grew more ethereal, packed with yearning, loss and emotions too complicated to name. Although the audience could not be viewed from Zoom’s speaker setup, it was clear they were enraptured (I know I was). Sometimes while watching a performer you can see their passion for their work in every move they make, and you know that this is what they were meant to do — this is how it felt listening to Castillo. He then read an excerpt from his memoir: a chapter detailing what it was like to send his mother back to Mexico as she self-deported. Taking place 12 years after his father was also deported, Castillo and his siblings had to experience the pain and sorrow again, but this time in the new, bitter context of knowing they were sending their mother to be alone with her abusive husband and they may never be together as a family again. Beautifully written, it was clear from every twist and quiver of the words that this heart-wrenching story was written by a poet. Following his readings, Castillo entered a Q&A session with Nadia Mota, a current graduate student at the University. When asked about his graduate experience at the University, Castillo reminisced on the invaluable community he found in the writer’s program and has since returned to his alma mater as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Program to teach and advise current students on their writing.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Ann Arbor’s own Ai Bendr is featured on ‘Euphoria’ ZOE PHILLIPS
Managing Arts Editor
SUDOKU
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
Release Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis 36 Gossip 52 Stud fee, ACROSS DOWN 1 It may break and 1 Constitutional 38 Poisonous maybe crash events flowering shrub 53 Hawaiian 5 It has an eye 2 Disney mermaid 40 Terraced goose on TV 3 Blood-drinking structure 54 Anatomy book 8 Slightly open mammal of ancient author Henry 12 Sea that’s a 4 “Seinfeld” Mesopotamia 55 Five-star victim of irrigation regular 42 Naval lockup 56 Smoked salmon projects 5 High light 44 Surrealist Joan 57 Cuckoo clock 13 Water park 6 Delta of 46 Magical potion feature feature “Designing 48 Persian king 58 Baseball glove 15 Heavyweight Women” 51 “__ Trigger”: part fight? 7 Spelunking sight Bugs Bunny 61 Vegas snake 16 Capital founded 8 Try to date cartoon eyes by Pizarro 9 Support for ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PREVIOUS PUZZLE: PUZZLE: 17 They may draft Tarzan briefs 10 Love, to Luigi 18 Saloon door’s 11 Judicial attire 13 One working on lack bks. who wrote 19 Civil War topper 13 Martin 14 Linguistic suffix 20 Tattoo joint? 21 Folklore monster 23 It may be tapped 25 Fifth of 12, 22 Move furtively alphabetically: 24 “Breaking Bad” 21 Winfrey of HBO’s Abbr. org. 27 Place for 25 Verne who shooting stars? created Nemo 29 Free (of) 26 Dodger rival of shortstop Rizzuto 30 Shoe that’s full of holes 28 Bucket of bolts 31 Dance that may 30 “Evita” narrator involve a chair 32 Gummy bear 33 Reddit Q&A ingredient session 34 YouTube clip, for 35 1980s-’90s Cal.-to-Fla. game short 31 highway 37 Prefix with call 02/24/21 02/18/21 39 Meek 40 Tubes on the table 41 Sonicare rival 43 Get into a stew? 44 One who digs hard rock 45 Wedding reception hiree 47 Pressing 49 Catch a bug, say 50 Energy unit 51 Loitering ... or how 3-, 5-, 7- and 9-Down might be seen? 58 Magic prop 59 Tech company that became a verb 60 Source 62 Harper’s Bazaar designer 63 Absurd 64 Swear to be true 65 Tap serving 66 California’s Point __ National Seashore 67 Cook Islands By Bryant White 02/24/21 ©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC export
WHISPER “Goat cheese is lowkey controversial but I dont care ”
“Nothing he does is extraordinary.”
Fans of HBO’s “Euphoria” may already be well-acquainted with the meditative rhythms of rising indie artist Ai Bendr — her debut single “Love Me Low” appeared in the most recent episode of the hit television show in January. The song now has over one million plays on Spotify and thousands on YouTube. For those who don’t yet know about Bendr, though, the introductory period happens quite quickly: Her soothing music bounces in between the walls like the warm hug we’ve all so desperately needed since this time last year. Give it a minute — maybe two — and you’re left with the oddly comforting sense that this woman must know you personally, for how else could a few notes be so exactly what you needed to hear? Despite the intimacy of her sound, Bendr remains relatively unknown as an artist — but her story is actually quite interwoven with Michigan. Originally born in Australia, Bendr moved to Ann Arbor as a toddler, where she spent most of her childhood. She then went to boarding school in Massachusetts before returning to Lady Ann last fall when she started as a freshman in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Bendr studies performing arts technology or, in her words, “basically music production.” This semester, she’s taking advantage of online classes by living in Los Angeles, meeting with producers and putting the content of her coursework to practical use. More recently, she signed with Interscope Records — her first-ever record label — and now has a year of exciting new releases planned under their management. But most of the story behind “Love Me Low,” the track featured in HBO’s glittered show, starts long before the glamour of these dreams became a reality. “I was peeing when I came up with the tune,” Bendr told The Daily from her room in Los Angeles. She laughed at the memory, which perhaps feels quite distant after a year of such turbulence. She wrote the song last February, in the last weeks that she would spend at her boarding school before COVID-19 prematurely ended her senior year. At the time, she was in a relationship and thoroughly in love. “I was thinking about graduation and having to say goodbye to this
person that I really loved,” Bendr said. “I was sad because I was happy, and I knew that in the future I would be sad.” In this sense, Bendr says, “Love Me Low” is essentially just a goodbye song. “It’s really a combination of this sad feeling because you’re letting go of this person that makes you so happy,” she said. “But you’re also just grateful that you were able to have them in the first place.” The song tells the story of a heartbreak that you see coming but do not try to stop: a feeling of melancholic happiness, of holding on to each moment because you know that soon, one of them will be the last. Bendr took this inspiration with her back home to Michigan and eventually recorded the single in her parents’ boiler room. “It was the best place for acoustics,” Bendr said. She lined the walls with couch cushions to avoid echo — now one million people on Spotify have heard the end result. Since then, a lot has changed. Press attention grew, and record labels came knocking. Bendr started making plans to move to Los Angeles in January, and more projects started falling into place. Then, one day last fall, she was sitting at her desk doing schoolwork when her phone buzzed with a notification from her producers. “They were like, ‘Hey can you give us a second, could you FaceTime us, because “Love Me Low” is going to be in “Euphoria,”’ ” Bendr said. She smiled at the memory of it all happening so quickly and simply. “I just kind of spammed them, I was like ‘wtf wtf — you can’t just say that.’ ” But it turned out to be just that simple: An agent who had appeared in Bendr’s Twitter direct messages a few months prior had been the one to facilitate the deal. A few weeks later, Bendr’s song echoed in the background of Jules’s (Hunter Schafer) bedroom toward the end of the second “Euphoria” special episode which was released on Jan. 22. The song’s placement feels especially fitting for Bendr; she still remembers watching the first season of “Euphoria” with the person who eventually inspired the “Love Me Low” tune. “It is so full circle,” she said. And from here she hopes that that circle will only grow.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 — 7
An interview with Indigo Sparke, laid bare ROSA SOFIA KAMINSKI Daily Arts Writer
We began by talking about our dreams in abstraction, the intuition that webs our subconscious. Indigo Sparke, the Australian singersongwriter, expertly builds a world of her own in her music — dreamlike, filled with coursing energies and space to let yourself expand. “I think I’ll like, wake up and … I’m still living in the motion and some sort of dream space,” she mused in a Zoom interview with The Daily. Her dreams infiltrate every inch of her new record, Echo. The beginning of consciousness when waking can be so hard to pinpoint. Sometimes, upon arising from a deep sleep, there is a feeling, just for a bit, that you’ve come into a very real world that is not your own. This otherworldliness is prominent in her music. Sometimes, though, Sparke’s dreams give her a better sense of connection with her life. These dreams are “psychic,” even as she laughs at herself for using the word. They give her a sense of what is to come, preparing her for a future she can face calmly. We discussed why this inner sense of prophecy might be figuring its delicate way into her sleep. “I think actually, everybody has the capacity to tune into an energy field where the information is existing already,” she said quietly. “And I think everybody has access to a certain level of intuition. And it’s just about refining that tool and tuning into something that is so inherently what it means to
be a human being in a world where we’re living in subtle energy.” This sort of mindfulness requires the trifecta of body, mind and environment to carefully be in tune. Her music walks this line. At the best of times, this personal balance is difficult to manage; in periods of suffering, it can feel like the three are falling out of sync in a way that can never be repaired. Oh, these periods of suffering. Sparke’s haunting, gentle voice paints a fragile veneer over the chasms of emotion her new work covers. It draws deeply from the spirit of the desert. The stretching of skies found in such a landscape was a necessity for her at the moment of writing. It was an environment she could fill her lungs with, something she could merge with and allow to envelop her. She described herself as surrendering to her environment, as though this was something everyone did, as if everyone had as easy of a time letting go of the boundaries of their body and becoming a part of a whole. It is a gift, a way to contribute to the experience of everything around you. This sense of everything, a holistic view of the world, falls right in line with Sparke’s philosophy. She believes that “everything is inherently linked and there is a greater energy,” pivoting toward a discussion of spirituality in her music. An old man named God who lives in the clouds is not in her periphery. Faith of any kind is a tricky thing to capture with your own two hands in a definitive way; it is something that she thinks of as lived, instead of conjured in the mind.
Your outside reflects your inside, both in your actions of living a sacred life and in dealing with your own traumas. “The Urgency of Change,” a book by Jiddu Krishnamurti she told me about, handles this subject well, addressing, in Sparke’s words, how we are “always seeing externally … what is unresolved internally.” “I feel like I’m full of minefields that I’m constantly trying to understand,” she finished, although not hopelessly. This self-searching process is part of the privilege of life, and one she pursues in so many different ways. I asked: “When do you feel most at peace with yourself and the world around you?” She instantly recalled the desert and the ocean, open spaces that allow room for her to be. Another instance, perhaps, of using our external and internal environments to tap into each other. This sense of peace is something that comes and goes for her, just like for the rest of us; what motivates her music and her life are the themes of love and grief. “What is it to heal?” she asked, a question coming some months after the breakup of a meaningful relationship. “I feel that you can’t have the healing without the breaking in some way.” Breaking yourself down is a process that feels like it must have some absolute end, but really, it is a cyclical one. These senses of love and grief have inhabited her life ever since she was a kid, and they take their rightful places in her music. The gentle humming of guitars and plaintive lilt of her voice gives a sweetness to any tears produced over the course of her life.
Adrianne Lenker
Tears of love, tears of change. On the cover of her new album, her long blonde hair blows across her face, with her eyes peering out of the shadows it creates. This shadow has since been removed, as she hacked off her hair until it was shoulder-length in a cathartic process that included half an hour of sobbing. It involved ridding herself of the male gaze, as she let go of the trait she had been complimented on since childhood. “It didn’t take away from how I saw myself in my beauty at all,” Sparke told me. It allowed her to define her beauty for herself, instead of having others try to do it for her. “Someone told me that hair holds trauma,” she said, building up to a laugh. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got like, 17 years on me.’” Not only a physical change, the
The life cycle of a song ROSA SOFIA KAMINSKI Daily Arts Writer
The “First Time” Maybe a friend sends it to you with a little text saying “thought you’d like this!!” that instantly makes your chest balloon. Or maybe it comes up on a Spotify radio station or playlist. Perhaps it intrigues you from the depths of a book passage. It’s possible you choose it because the album art looked interesting. Maybe it means a lot instantly. Maybe it takes a second to settle in, finding the perfect way to inhabit your brain. Whatever the case, that song stays with you. For some reason, it’s really lodged in there. You can’t get it out of your head. The two of you are intertwined. The Three Days Where You Play It A Million Times With your cell phone, you can take it anywhere.
ARIES
Showcase your talents and focus on your career, but don’t forget to take care of yourself, particularly by getting enough sleep.
TAURUS
Mindfulness and meditation will help you create an attitude shift which will serve you well during the coming year.
The song becomes the thing you most consistently spend time with. You’re working most of the time, but luckily you can concentrate while listening to music. You put it on in the background when you find time to hang out with friends. It accompanies you to the grocery store, people staring at you as you hum it in the aisles. You write the lyrics you like best on the back of your hand, and you listen to it seven times in a row. And each time, you seem to somehow like it better. You Add It To Playlists What’s that emotion you’re feeling right now? You can’t quite figure it out. Your finger absentmindedly hovers on your mouse, as you look over your playlists. The song sits on your mind, and you decide it’s time to give it a home. But which one to add it to? These days, it feels like everything in your life is constantly moving fluidly into the next thing.
There are no times to stop and breathe (except winter break, when everything stopped just a little too much). All you can do is take the things as they come and try to process them even as you’re moving on to the next. But this song, it just seems to fit into some niche. It clicks, somehow, God, you know that sounds cheesy. It’s when you’re adding it to the playlist that you usually listen to at 1 a.m. that you realize, maybe this is a sad song. How strange that this comes as a surprise. It’s not immediately apparent, you suppose, thinking about how maybe the touches of trumpets or drifting guitar strings hide the impact of the lyrics. This tune walks some strange line across your mind. You guess that you just haven’t really taken the time to figure out why that is. Why does the song’s balance appeal to you right now?
What is it you love at the moment that makes this blend of notes and emotions make sense? What is it you need? You Send It To Loved Ones It sounds almost like that song that played over and over that September when you and your best friend were 16 and she had her own car and gave you summery, open-windowed car rides home from school — it has the same bass line, maybe. You text it to her, and immediately she writes back that she misses you. What does quality time mean in a pandemic? What does it mean when you and your best friend go to different colleges? Sometimes, the best you can do is send a song you think she’d like and schedule a FaceTime.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
A deeply romantic week finds you able to communicate better, sharing your deepest sentiments with your partner.
AQUARIUS
WHISPER
Karmic links and a nostalgic vibe see a focus on the past this week, with much you can learn from where you have been.
“It’s all going very well, no problems at all.” GEMINI Family relationships comfort and sustain you; it’s a great week for moving ahead with a domestic project.
CAPRICORN Pursue your hobbies and passions in this highly creative week – a sense of purpose will drive you forwards.
“Remember the fact that you have ribs.”
CANCER Your interpersonal skills are front and center, and not just in your love life – focus too on friendships and colleagues.
LEO Your strength and willpower is bringing positive results at work, and in your financial situation too.
SAGITTARIUS
“Judas the stray cat, if you’re reeading this please come inside the house. It’s too cold outside”
VIRGO Expect a highly creative week, with a boost to your self-confidence; don’t discount wacky ideas.
LIBRA Being able to resolve and move on from past trauma will feel like a weight off your shoulders.
spontaneously a while back, when living with fellow artists in a castle in Italy. There is a magic there that she keeps with her. It is magic of a very personal kind; Sparke is keenly herself at all times, in conversations and in songs, even when it bruises and hurts. Vulnerability and honesty are woven into the fabric of her music — her work is a healing scab, acknowledging that its recovery is impermanent and that the skin will eventually be broken again. She lays herself bare not only in the words she sings but in how she sings them, offering them as an expression of her truest self. She makes this music for what she’s going through, she told me, never appeasing the listener.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
A love letter to ‘Obvious Child’
PISCES
YOUR WEEKLY
cutting of hair allowed something to click between mind and body. All of a sudden, there came a connection. “Once I chopped it off, I actually realized that in a place in a home deeper in myself than I even knew was there, my values were actually intact in some way,” Sparke said. She described her core values as consistency, vulnerability and honesty, pausing between each word, turning it over on her tongue and in her mind as she checked to make sure it truly matched her feelings. Consistency is a virtue in love and relationships of any kind, she decided. This safe harbor of return assuages the physical stress she feels upon change. That doesn’t mean impulses can’t figure their way in, though. “Dog Bark Echo,” one of the tracks on her new album, was recorded
Developments at work may move swiftly, but you’re finding better ways to handle the stress. Focus on your mental health.
MARY ELIZABETH JOHNSON Daily Arts Writer
Jenny Slate (“Gifted”) cries a lot in “Obvious Child.” My sister makes fun of me because I have a running list of the best crying faces in film (at the top is Rooney Mara in “The Social Network”), and she reminds me that the ability to cry on camera doesn’t automatically meet the criteria for a good actor. One of my biggest pet peeves, actually, is when actors drool for their big crying scene, making a show out of the spittle and snot running down their face, like they’re silently hoping this scene makes the cut for their Best Supporting Actor reel. I think it’s the pendulum swinging back from when vaudeville-era stars would have single tears rolling down their faces so as not to muddle their makeup or when that one director told Jessica Alba to “cry pretty.” Either way, it just feels really performative — when we’re watching a film, we’re not supposed to see the actor performing, we’re just supposed to see the character existing. Slate plays the lead Donna in Gillian Robespierre’s (“Landline”) directorial debut, and she doesn’t ugly cry. We follow her as she stumbles her way through a new relationship and pregnancy after being cheated on by her now ex-boyfriend. She cries so much — when she’s waiting outside her ex’s house, when she’s at an abortion clinic, when she’s lying in her mother’s bed — and, because of that, it’s become as natural as scratching an itch or tucking her hair behind her ear. Donna doesn’t ugly cry because she’s grieving her relationship. The tears roll down her face easily, with no restraint left, because she’s just living through these awful things that keep happening. She doesn’t have the strength anymore to hold back tears when she lost her job, got cheated on and didn’t know how she was going to pay for her abortion. I love how even though this movie is a romantic comedy, at times it feels deeply sad. I love how they portray the arduous, non-linear process of repairing Donna’s life: visiting family, drinking, performing stand-up comedy. I love how winter is an integral part of the backdrop: Valentine’s Day ironically falling on the coldest day of the year, running out of a bar into a freezing night looking for someone,
listening to the rattle of your old radiator. It’s my comfort movie when I’m depressed and miss the sun. There’s this scene where her boss says, “Change is good, Donna.” And she says, “Man, that’s like, the rudest thing you’ve ever said to me.” It’s just an iconic quarter-life crisis film. We need more sad romances with happy endings. For all the silent crying and worrying in this movie, it’s still so, so romantic. I have this theory that pre-coital scenes (and post-coital, like the Magic 8 Ball scene in “Good Will Hunting”) could be better utilized in film, and not just a cut to candles as soon as they start making out to keep the PG rating in a sexless Marvel movie. Donna and Max, her one-night stand (Jake Lacy, “High Fidelity”), have an impromptu drunken dance scene to Paul Simon’s “The Obvious Child,” and it’s so heartbreakingly beautiful that it breaks my heart. They’re goofy and visibly sweaty and laughing into each kiss — and it’s just so tender it makes me insane. While romantic scenes like when Max warms up Donna’s butter for her are really incredible, the greatest part of “Obvious Child” is its deep understanding and appreciation of love in all its forms. Platonic, familial, self-love — it means so much to me to see Donna have a nice dinner with her parents or put her head in her roommate’s lap. And Richard Kind (“Inside Out”) is a treasure as Donna’s father. When he says, “Creative energy can come from the lowest point in your life,” it just makes me wish he was my dad. I rewatched it recently, and I forgot how funny it is, actually. So much of it feels so poignant to me, even when Max brings flowers to the abortion clinic like some kind of Georgia O’Keeffe joke, or their conversation about naming blizzards because “That’s what it’s gonna be like from now on.” When I feel really defeatist about life, it means a lot to hear Donna’s deeply confessional jokes about her vagina. I just hold on to the thought that you can cry over the low hum of medical equipment during a procedure, then wrap yourself in a blanket, hold your partner’s hand and wait to heal.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com A24
SCORPIO An excellent week for love and romance, with the sparkle returning to a relationship and friends being highly supportive.
Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv
8— Wednesday, February 24, 2021
statement
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Full of gender, free from designation BY MELANIE TAYLOR, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
M
y name is Melanie Renee Taylor, and my pronouns are she/ they. These are your two requisite pieces of information needed when addressing, discussing or otherwise perceiving me. And as intrinsic as they both are to my identity, even they aren’t set in stone. Maybe someday I’ll change my name. It was only very recently that I adopted new pronouns. Yet, when I introduce myself as such, it paints a stagnant picture that allows you to begin to make evaluations and assumptions about the person I am. However, there’s something you may not have inferred from that introduction: I love language. I love how it provides an outlet for explanation and innovation, putting words to concepts which would otherwise only exist in the mind. I love the way language ebbs and flows with the human experience, both influencing and being influenced by the introduction of new cultural norms. But language, like all other manifestations of culture, can only attempt to estimate its nuances and complexities. One example of this phenomenon can be found in gendered pronouns. Studies show that Gen Z has the largest proportion of publicly queer-identifying people of any generation to date. Over the past few years, and particularly during the lockdowns, young people across the country have convened with their peers and taken to social media, mulling over exactly what kinds of gender identity fit them. Along with that exploration comes a logistical debate over how our language can adapt to these newly emerging demographics. Gendered pronouns are often inconvenient. They imbue gender identity with formality and rigidity where it’s not always natural. We have to put our identity in a box as a function of our language. Gendered pronouns are also a great source for enforcement of the existing patriarchal status quo, exacerbating certain stigmas against those who can’t or won’t conform. Many widely-used languages — including Korean, Afrikaans and more — function without gendered pronouns as they exist in English. And for many of the languages that treat pronouns like English does, activists across the world are working toward increasing the use of gender-neutral language in their respective cultures and countries. Some have argued that the solution lies in transitioning to gender-neutral language entirely. But in my experience, acceptance and normalization of gender neutrality is not always the answer. Many people find empowerment in gendered pronouns. It can be very affirming for someone who transitioned from male to female or vice versa to “pass” as their desired binary gender, and when they are “misgendered” — either through use of the opposite binary pronouns or through a reductionist use of they/them — that constitutes a microaggression. The way I see it, ubiquitous use of agender pronouns is comparable to attempting a “colorblind” approach to race; it’s tone deaf and ignores all of the intricacies that gender identity has to offer. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, gender identity continues to be muddled and misunderstood. Perhaps the only thing we can really do is stop taking it so seriously. *** We’ve established that the nuances of gender cannot be described through a catalog of identity monikers. Gender encompasses emotion, expression, personality, perspective. In a recent Tiktok trend, creators emphasized this complexity by attempting to describe their gender by likening it to some object or experience. In keeping with the trend, LSA junior Syd Lio Riley (they/them) said in a phone interview with The Daily that they’d describe their gender as “when an LSA freshman tells you their major, and it’s like, ‘Maybe that’s it,
but probably not.’ And it’s too soon for anybody to actually tell.” Riley — who often uses he/ him pronouns as well — also compared their gender to Bernie Sanders’ tumultuous political orientation. “I am a man in the same way that Bernie Sanders is a communist,” Riley said. “Like I’m definitely not, but I’m close enough to let you think that. And the more removed from gender and transness that you get, the more likely that you are to assume me of being (a man).” Riley said that in this sense, their identity is often least understood by cisgender people who haven’t had to grapple with any inaccuracies produced by a binary conception of gender. Thus, it is more difficult for cisgender people to understand the nuances of Riley’s identity. Art & Design junior Xochi Sanchez (she/her) — who in a phone interview with The Daily described her gender as “a raccoon that you’ve befriended” — believes that it’s “intuitive” for queer people to understand the nuances of their peers’ gender whereas cisgender people may not. Without an organic introduction to gender politics, such as the lived experience of questioning your own gender, it becomes much more difficult to empathize with what that looks like for another person. “I think I’m lucky,” Sanchez said. “Nearly every person I’m friends with is trans and/or nonbinary, so they just all know.” For LSA junior Parker Kherig (ze/hir), confusing people with hir gender is half the fun of it. Kherig, whose self-described gender is “the bundt cake from ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ with the little flower in it,” said in a phone interview with The Daily that ze find joy in subverting gender expectations. “I feel like (spite) really colors my gender,” Kherig said. “Because so much of my gender expression is just, ‘How f---ing confusing can I look? How absolutely perplexing can I present myself to the world?’” Kherig said hir first experience questioning hir gender happened at a very young age. One night when Kherig was in elementary school, ze were intrigued by something happening on hir block and attempted to go out to investigate in hir pajamas. Ze made it down the stairs only to be stopped at the door by hir father. “He was like, ‘You can’t go outside in that,’” Kherig said, “Because it says something about my morals if me — a seven-yearold — went outside in my pink princess Barbie nightgown. And that was the point where I was like, ‘What is this bullshit?’” For Riley, that realization surfaced a bit later in life. Riley began to wonder about their gender when they were in high school because they had been dating someone who identified as gender fluid. At first, Riley said, it was difficult to understand. “I never felt like I fit into that expectation of what gender fluidity was supposed to be,” Riley said. “But as soon as I kind of unlearned the idea of gender needing to look any particular way, I started identifying as nonbinary.” Sanchez also took to questioning her gender identity late in high school, but it
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE
wasn’t really until two years later when she transferred to the University of Michigan that Sanchez started feeling comfortable in her identity. She met a group of queer people also in the School of Art & Design and habitually attended the school’s events hosted by trans artists whom she showed her work to and solicited advice from. “That ended up being the breaking point where it was like, ‘You know what, it’s been over two years,’” Sanchez said. “I need to actually get this out in the open and start working on it.” It was then that Sanchez started coming out to her family and others “in little bits.” And that’s the thing about coming out — it’s not some one-and-done task that can be accomplished in a single, swift motion. Contrary to how it may seem in film or television, coming out is a long and laborious process that never really ends. So long as they continue to have new life experiences and expand their group of friends and acquaintances, queer people will always have someone else they need to come out to. or example, I attend upwards of 10 Zoom meetings every week. Because my account, like most students, is hosted by the University, I am unable to permanently alter my name on the platform. That means that if I want it to list my pronouns next to my name, I have to manually go in and make that change every single time I enter a Zoom call. When you have to come out once every two hours, it starts to get exhausting. “It’s become such a formal way of designating not only what gender are you, but who in the space is trans,” Riley said. “And I have to choose then what pronouns I put next to my name — if I do at all — and then as soon as I do, what statement does that make about who I am in that space?” Riley goes on to note an added complication: Our identities aren’t static. Not only
F
do they evolve over the course of our lives, but they also switch from context to context. Sometimes we may choose not to update the pronouns in our name because in that particular setting, expressing one’s nonbinary identity doesn’t feel safe or welcome. Kherig described this code-switching as a defense mechanism used by queer people in situations where they may not feel safe expressing their whole or truest identity. “I think there are plenty of times where the real thing, the big thing, the beautiful thing is just too much for people,” Kherig said. “So there are definitely ways that I have learned to make myself smaller, to protect myself in certain spaces. And I think that’s something that most people have to do.” Kherig also noted a sense of shame prevalent in the queer community which arises when someone simplifies themselves to conform in unsafe situations. To Kherig, that shame is neither fair nor necessary. “We have to make ourselves smaller for other people to protect ourselves,” Kherig said. “And you should never feel ashamed of that. Because you are preserving yourself, you’re preserving your peace. And you deserve to survive.” Riley said that it is difficult for a third party to ever be fully cued into a nonbinary or trans peer’s entire gender identity. “One thing that would be really useful for non-trans and cis folks to understand is that they will never be able to fully get it right,” Riley said. “And I think that’s a really hard thing for people to sit with, especially if you’re a person who cares about other people and affirms other people.” There are so many factors influencing how a person’s gender manifests at any given moment that it’s not feasible to evaluate it all from a distance. Read more at MichiganDaily.com
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 — 9
Scattered quarantine thoughts from a terrible dancer BY ANNIE KLUSENDORF, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT April 12, 2020 What does a pandemic look like? or me, it’s a monotony of days peppered with bouts of depression in the apartment my grandparents pay for and waves of overwhelming guilt and helplessness. Neither are productive emotions in a pandemic. There are also good days, where the sun is out and my coffee tastes just right, and I remember that this is only temporary. I live alone, though a friend lives upstairs. I never thought I’d be grateful to be an introvert. The sadness of the world sometimes feels far away, accessible only through Twitter headlines or the New York Times articles my mother sends me … hourly. Other times it feels like it’s moved into my apartment, stitched into my clothes and seated across the table. It feels as if we’re under- and overreacting at the same time. A pandemic smells like solitude, an endless supply of lavender candles lingering in the corners of my apartment. It tastes like too much whiskey, consumed alone. In warmer times, a pandemic can sound like the crack of dice hitting the plywood tables punctuating Ann Arbor’s yards — the fraternity house across the street has been playing for what seems like weeks. Last night, my friend called a noise complaint on them. Sometimes life feels normal. I remember a March afternoon my freshman year of college, when I left my dorm for class and froze outside the building door. What words are adequate to describe feeling fresh sunshine on your skin after weeks of studying and existing under fluorescent lighting and the smothering dullness of the world? Sunshine meant frat boys outside in their yards, shirtless (always) and Weezer spilling through the speakers. On an island in the sun, we’ll be playing and having fun, and it makes me feel so fine, the speakers say. In my early quarantine days, I siphoned as much sun as I could from my front yard. I pulled a plastic yellow chair into the yard to do my homework and yelled over, “Hey, can you turn the music up?” I pointed upward in the air with my thumb. A barefoot guy in blue shorts and abs I can count from across the street yelled “Oh, you want it up? You got it!” Maybe it’s the 2020 “college” version of the orchestra that played as the Titanic went down, and I’ll take what I can get. A pandemic also sounds like the Spotify playlist I’ve been building called “quarantine, baby!” I only put songs on it that make me happy or want to dance or smile. That’s what we all need more of, anyway. Every couple hours I turn up the music and dance around my apartment, because in a pandemic you need endorphins. I’m grateful no one is around to see this abomination. Then again, this is because no one is around. My homework and unwatched lectures linger on my chipped, paint-covered brown desk, watching me twirl around the room. Right as I trip into the coffee table, my inbox dings with another email from my astronomy professor.
F
As usual, he’s massacred it with his capslock addiction, and I forward the message on a one-way trip to the trash. I call my mom several times a day — imagine that, 16-year-old Annie! Pandemics make you see how much you need other people. I make a quarantine playlist for her too. I listen to it as I walk the streets around my house, filled with empty porches and the beginnings of spring flowers. “Annie!” I hear someone’s voice, but I can’t see them. “Annie!” It’s my friend Hannah — we spent six weeks in the New Hampshire woods together last spring, sharing poems, hammocks and secrets. She’s standing at the top of the
stairs to her porch, I’m 10 feet back on the sidewalk. It’s awkward. “Am I allowed to hug you?” I ask. “I mean, I’m fine with it,” she laughs. It’s a clumsy hug, our arms bumping as we find our footing together. In retrospect, I probably should have stayed on the sidewalk, but it’s human nature to crave connection. Sometimes a pandemic is more work. My dad stayed near his job in Chicago throughout March, organizing huge orders of equipment for field hospitals in McCormick Place from the Army Corps of Engineers. He forwards us the plans: “AWARDED ACF CONTRACTS,” the email attachment reads. Eight projects, equaling 9,693 beds, to be completed in 27 days, at most. He writes in the email, “Kind of surreal, let’s hope they build them and are not needed.” My dad spends his Saturdays at the delivery dock so his shipping guys can stay home. Luckily, I’m at the age where I can appreciate his empathy for his employees instead of complaining that he’s not at home. But a month into the pandemic, it became clear how different it looked for those on opposite ends of the financial security spectrum. A pandemic looks a billion different ways, and most of them are not as privileged as mine. New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo called COVID-19 “the great equalizer,” but this evidently could not be farther from the truth. Maybe in just plain human terms, it’s accurate. We’re all dealing with something, and it will only go away if we all do our part. But our losses are by no means equal. I think about this a lot. More than 16 million Americans have applied for unemployment. I was laid off. My co-workers have houses, kids and bills to pay. People are displaced, losing income, losing benefits, losing family members and friends. The Guardian declared that minority and at-risk groups are, of course, disproportionately af-
Lake Michigan. “I think a lot of my sadness is coming from seeing the way the U.S. is handling this and realizing the state of our country,” I told Julia. “Like, I lost a lot of faith and pride in my country when Trump was elected but seeing doctors and nurses beg for supplies is just another level that I wasn’t prepared for.” It’s silent on the other end. Who has an answer to that? Finally, she said, “I’m doing what is perceived as normal, and inside I’m kind of screaming.” Maybe in a pandemic, that’s all you can do. February 18, 2021 What does a pandemic look like? It looks like six half-full orange bottles, compounding in a cupboard as my psychiatrist tinkers with the chemicals my brain thinks it can do without. It looks like falling in love — a few nervous phone calls and our first date on the porch with the windows open. We’re both stubborn and eager and dive hungrily into learning each other. It looks like my mom with her drawer full of KN95s, a stack of writing portfolios to grade, a cafe au lait, a glass of wine, her running shoes and a round of greetings as her students enter the Zoom. It looks like a wedding in my grandma’s backyard, tables of pizza and salads spaced out by tiki torches and apprehension. My cousin and her husband say “I do” on my aunt’s porch, framed by July sunflowers from a friend’s garden. Two families mingle together next to Lake Michigan as the sun sets. There are some better days — even a few nights spent in tents. Nov. 9, when Joe Biden officially won the election. People cascaded into Chicago’s streets, ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE dancing and singing, befriending strangers, feeling an unfamiliar fected: “It’s a racial justice issue,” their warmth in the air. The day my friends headlines read. Celebrities on Twitter and I cooked shakshuka next to Lake are learning what it means to be an ac- Superior. Moving into a new apartment, tual parent, without the help of nannies, a two-bedroom this time, with a small while single mothers watch incredulous- army of plants, my best friend and her ly. Small businesses rely on GoFundMes dog. The day my mom got vaccinated. to survive. A Navy captain pleaded with All the dinners, walks, games, naps and his superiors for more resources for his breaks taken outside. ship in order to combat COVID-19. After Young people are entrenched in a his firing, he tested positive for the virus. mental health crisis (no need to read What about people without running wa- the article, a scroll through Twitter or ter to wash their hands? People with pre- TikTok will give a good indication), Goexisting conditions? Those who have lost FundMe has ballooned into America’s health insurance? Those with insufficient insurance policy and climate change and health care? Single parents? People expe- government oversight joined forces to riencing homelessness? The list goes on. trample Texas. I once wrote a letter to my future chilI’ve always wanted to believe that dren for a nonfiction writing class. At the those with means will help those withtime, Australia was on fire. “It’s 2020, and out, and in the past year I’ve watched right now it feels like the world is much both brilliant displays of empathy and more bad than good, I wrote. I hope you soul-crushing acts of hatred and selfishare more confident about your world than ness. “It’s 2021, and right now it feels like I am with mine.” But now it just seems the world is much more bad than good.” like the world is burning everywhere. If Today, Ann Arbor is quiet, except for only I’d know what was ahead. A national the brawling snow plows and the salt election, a pandemic, climate change, ri- crunching under my boots. I force myself ots at the Capitol. The list goes on. to walk down to the Huron River a few In the letter I’d also written that “poli- times a week; I lay on the ice and watch tics has become morality and I don’t clouds skid across the sky. The handful know how to navigate that.” My old of people milling around the river nod housemate, Julia, and I had a late night slightly to each other. We’re all looking conversation from our respective sides of to be seen.
statement
10 — Wednesday, February 24, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
No more Mr. Nice Guys BY RAELYNN SNODGRASS, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
“
I’m a nice guy,” crooned Neil, the sloppy, cocaine-addicted aspiring novelist, to the woman he’d just attempted to sexually assault, Carey Mulligan’s Cassandra. She eyes him now knowing otherwise. “I’m a nice guy.” Neil repeated, desperation creeping into his voice. Cassandra smiled. “You keep saying that. You’re not as rare as you think. You know how I know? Because every week, I go to a club, and every week, I act like I’m too drunk to stand. And every f---ing week, a nice guy like you comes over to see if I’m okay. You want to f--- me still?” “I’m a nice guy.” Though I watched “Promising Young Woman” on pay-per-view in my bed by myself, I could still hear the collective eye roll from women everywhere at this line. I could almost as clearly hear the gears turning in the head of every man who’d heard the line and thought back to a time he’d crooned it too. I remember hearing it in high
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
school. I got B’s DM almost a month after he’d been accused of sexually assaulting a girl I knew as a friend of a friend of a friend. This news shocked me as I thought back to running lines with him in a practice room for a play we were both auditioning for. Slightly chubby, awkwardly kind and willing to run lines with the freshman girl who didn’t know anyone there, he seemed like such a … nice guy. He promised. He promised that he was a nice guy in the DM, then he asked me on a date. He was probably lonely after he’d been kicked out of the show based on the allegations, but I knew better. This was no nice guy. I blocked him from my Instagram, along with the story from my mind. I heard this line again a few years later. S was my new friend, why shouldn’t I have thought of him as a nice guy? I was crewing a show he was starring in, and he sure seemed like one in the beginning. We’d get coffee after rehearsals. He’d always offer to drive and pay. He showered
me with compliments, even mentioning me in his bio in the playbill. Swoon. And so, I had no reason to think otherwise until his texts began to get more frequent and more demanding, and I complained to my friends that he was beginning to get a little … clingy? I felt the first red flag when I told him I’d lost my virginity and he responded, “How about you seriously consider not f---ing someone unless you’re in a committed relationship with them.” First, this is verbatim, I still have the screenshots. Second, this is some seriously demented patriarchal nonsense. Another red flag sprung up when he pointed out that I’d stopped responding as much as I used to and that he had “separation anxiety” when I ignored him. “I’m working,” I lied. “Are you lying to me?” he responded. Yikes. He wasn’t wrong, but he clearly couldn’t take a hint. His response? “Don’t ignore me. I’m a nice guy.”
I brushed it off and showed the texts to my friends. We ended up laughing about it. I would never have admitted it to myself at the time, but the attention seemed harmless. The red flags are obvious now, but at the time I was almost flattered to have someone so obsessed with me. It became a little less funny when he started texting my friends begging them for my address because he wanted to drop off my usual coffee order and apologize for being clingy. I then told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore. It was even less funny when he told one of our mutual friends, “Honestly, the only thing that would fix our friendship would be a gun.” So much for a nice guy. Isn’t it funny how that works? From my experience with guys, this is how it usually goes: Guys only have to promise they’re nice guys in the event they prove themselves to be otherwise. A nice guy is a term used “to describe someone who believes himself to possess genuine ‘nice guy’ characteristics, even though he actually may not, and who uses acts of friendship and basic social etiquette with the unstated aim of progressing to a romantic or sexual relationship.” Sounds about right, especially when you add the context that it’s often used as a cover for violent or misogynistic behavior directed at women. After everything I’ve gathered from my experiences with men, I request but one thing of the male population: Be a nice guy and mean it. We want to give you the benefit of the doubt. Women are not prudes or “Social Justice Warriors” or “unf---able b-tches” for not putting out or not wanting to go home with you or putting you in the “friend-zone” or not letting you hold our drinks. We’ve just heard way too many stories about what happens to girls who do. The threat of gender-based violence is always in the back of our minds, and we go out of our way to avoid making ourselves a target. We’ll give the guy we’re not very interested in our phone number at the bar because we don’t know how angry he’ll get if we don’t. On the other end of the spectrum, we aren’t sluts or whores or whatever other terms of endearment you want to call us to your buddies when we do choose to do something with you. Assuming consent was present, we think you’re a nice guy. Don’t screw it up. People who date guys, I commend you for having to deal with not one but two pandemics in these troubling times: COVID-19 and the nearly as deadly “Nice Guy” epidemic. According to a study published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2018, six women were killed every hour at the hands of someone they knew. In February 2017, a school nurse in a Dallas suburb began identifying and counting women murdered by men. By 2018, the spreadsheet has reached 1,807 rows and counting. But they were such nice guys…
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 — 11
In the midst of a pandemic,
a refuge in reading
BY ABIGAIL SNYDER, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
W
hen I was in kindergarten, I had mandatory Quiet Time in my room every day after school for an hour. I could play with my toys or look at books or color, but I was not to disturb my mom unless I needed something important. Needless to say, I was not a big fan of Quiet Time when the policy was first put into place, and I protested. Loudly. And daily. But my mother is an incredibly smart woman, and she quickly figured out how to get me to cooperate. One fall afternoon, having finished my after-school snack, I trudged up to my room, complaining all the way upstairs. When I got into my room, I found a shiny new book waiting for me at the end of my bed. It was a kids’ biography of Abigail Adams, whose name had instantly earned her my admiration when we learned about the Revolutionary War. (Remember the ladies!) Suddenly, Quiet Time didn’t seem all that bad. Usually, I spent most of the hour bemoaning the drudgery my own mother was subjecting me to and checking the clock every few minutes. But that day, I barely noticed as the once-dreaded hour ticked by. I was absorbed in my new book. My mom must have noticed my relative lack of complaints when I came back downstairs an hour later. Because after that, for as long as I had after-school Quiet Time, every so often, she would leave a book or two — sometimes new, sometimes from the library — waiting for me on my bed. As I got older (and relatively easier to manage), Quiet Time was no longer required. But by then, I had become a full-blown bookworm. My favorite day of the week was the day my mom drove me to our local library after school. I had the route from my school to the library memorized before I could even ride a bike. I would tumble out of the car the second my mom parked and skipped across the shaded parking lot. I’d bounced down the stairs to the children’s section, where I’d promptly buried myself in the stacks. I’d stay there browsing happily until it was time to go, at which point my mom invariably had to help me carry my massive pile of books upstairs to the checkout desk. When we got home, my mom helped me carry my books upstairs and organize them in a precarious tower on my nightstand. I picked up the book I was most excited about and, if I was left unbothered, would spend the rest of the afternoon reading until it was time for dinner. Somewhere between 15 and 21, my love for reading lost that intensity, that excitement. Math homework started getting harder. TV started getting more interesting. My friends and I were suddenly allowed to go places on our own — and sure, they were just the mall and the local Starbucks, but our newfound freedom was thrilling. On top of that, the intense pressure I felt to fit in meant I was terrified of being judged for my reading choices. I’d rarely pick up books I hadn’t already heard my peers talking about, and if I did, I wouldn’t mention it. It was just another reason to read less. I still read books, of course. I even still read not-required-for-English-class books, and I kept an eye on the news. When I had the time, I’d pick up a murder mystery or whatever novel all friends were talking about at the time. But always something light and easy; always something that wouldn’t require too much brainpower; always something I could easily put down if I had to. Because of that, it wasn’t the same. I no longer read for the sheer excitement of it. I no longer devoured books because I just had to know what happened next. The amount of schoolwork and extracurriculars I had left me with few afternoons to spend reading, and very little mental energy to tear through a book at breakneck speed. So even though I read books I liked — books I loved, even — the old excitement was reduced to a few glimmers.
Most of those patterns I started forming in middle and high school became cemented in college. Once I found my friends at school, I was less scared about being judged, but it was midterms by then, and the only thing I had time for was school. As much as I loved reading for fun, I just didn’t have the time — or the brainpower — for it. Then COVID-19 happened, and suddenly, I had all kinds of time. It started in early May, just after I had finished classes. My mom and some of her friends had planned a mother-daughter Netflix Party to watch “Clueless,” the gloriously 90’s teenmovie adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” which I had recently started reading as a way to wind down during finals. A love for Austen is one of many things I inherited from my mother, who excitedly watched the entire BBC “Pride and Prejudice” series with me when I decided to read it freshman year of high school. So this was an exciting moment: We could watch an adaptation of “Emma” (a movie we both already loved) while I was reading it. Suddenly, I was right back to my middle school reading habits. I spent afternoons reading on our porch. I fell asleep with images of Regency flirtations dancing in my head. I finished the remaining three-quarters of the book in four days. The old flame was reignited. I tore through books last summer, just for the fun of it. I read whatever I felt like reading: murder mysteries and spy thrillers, gritty true crime and cheesy rom-coms, high literature and history and Harry Potter for the 100th time. And suddenly, reading was fun in a way it hadn’t been in years. A quick scroll through Twitter confirmed that I wasn’t the only one feeling like this. My feed was full of nostalgia for the elementary school Scholastic Book Fair, book recommendations and people like myself who had gone back to their middle school reading habits in quarantine. For me, quarantine also took the pressure off reading because I stopped feeling like I had to be reading something impressive or cool or interesting whenever anyone asked. I stopped caring what other people thought about my book du jour.
N
ot caring what people thought about my current read made an incredible difference. I sourced book recommendations from family and friends and social media. Eventually, I made a Goodreads account to track what I was reading and find more suggestions. It quickly became my favorite Internet rabbit hole — say what you will about robots monitoring our lives, but the algorithm on that website is very, very accurate, and I am thankful for that. It’s part of a larger trend we saw during quarantine: allowing ourselves to indulge in self-care to escape the literal hellscape outside. Along with countless skincare TikToks and plenty of online shopping, reading fun books became a way for me to treat myself to something uplifting or escapist. Of course, as the summer progressed, reading became so much more than just an escape. As the Black Lives Matter movement rightly took its place in the forefront of our consciousness, we got a necessary reminder about the importance of reading diverse authors and educating ourselves, and leaders in the movement recommended books like Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.” Mike Gustafson, who co-owns Literati Bookstore in downtown Ann Arbor with his wife, and Richard Retyi, the director of communications and outreach for the Ann Arbor District Library, both told me in interviews last week that antiracist literature has been in more demand ever since. It’s an adjustment, to be sure — these are not light, easy reads. But honestly, at this point, what’s one more adjustment? We’ve switched to online classes, contactless takeout meals and countless Zoom holidays. Switching up what we’re reading is a small, but important addition to the massive change the last year has brought. Lockdown has also been incredibly difficult for local libraries. The Ann Arbor District Library hasn’t opened its doors in almost a year. But AADL is committed to serving the community, so they’ve adapted. Story hours, book clubs and film discussions were all moved online. Librarians are available for shelf service to find what their patrons are looking for. Checkout is
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
now done contactless in the library’s lobby or online, as AADL works to make audiobooks and e-books, which are in more demand than ever, as widely accessible as possible. And it’s working. I spoke with Retyi last week, and his pride in the work AADL is doing to help the community through the pandemic was audible over the phone. “We are circulating about 60% of the amount of material that we were when we were fully open,” Retyi said. “It’s remarkable — to have two-thirds of our stuff still going out even though nobody can browse. It’s huge. The volume has been awesome.” Indie bookstores are also struggling. It was true before the pandemic, thanks to Amazon and Jeff Bezos’ correct assumption that giving me a coupon for a book on my to-read list will, in fact, make me buy the book online rather than going to the store. But the pandemic has made it even harder. It’s no longer safe to just pop in and browse your local bookstore, so that two-day Prime shipping looks better and better. So indie bookstores have adapted, too. My beloved Capitol Hill Books at home in D.C. is doing appointments where you can have the entire store to yourself (a literal dream) to browse safely for an hour and custom-book grab bags. Literati has expanded its online aup and virtual events. They’ve even put their signature Public Typewriter online. It hasn’t been easy. But like the library, indie bookstores are finding their niche in this pandemic. Gustafson told me more about what indie bookstores are doing to stay afloat during the pandemic over email, and though it’s been challenging, Gustafson’s love for and pride in his work is clear. Still though, attending online events and picking up books curbside is a far cry from afternoons spent studying, browsing and drinking coffee in Literati or getting lost in the stacks at the Dawn Treader. It’s only a “semblance” of that pre-pandemic haven, Gustafson says.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Opinion
12 — Wednesday, February 24, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MADELYN VERVAECKE | CARTOONIST CAN BE CONTACTED AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU. Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com
ELIZABETH COOK AND JOEL WEINER
CLAIRE HAO Editor in Chief
BRITTANY BOWMAN Managing Editor
Editorial Page Editors
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Zack Blumberg Brittany Bowman Emily Considine Elizabeth Cook Jess D’Agostino
Andrew Gerace John Grieve Krystal Hur Min Soo Kim Zoe Phillips
Mary Rolfes Gabrijela Skoko Elayna Swift Joel Weiner Erin White
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
JOHN TUMPOWSKY | COLUMNIST
D
Schools can, and should, reopen now
espite the few fond memories of my time at high school, I am certain that I would have preferred my in-person experience to that of any K-12 student currently attending class virtually. Now, nearly a year into the pandemic, a significant proportion of schools still remain closed, offering instruction solely via a computer screen. President Joe Biden entered office with an ambitious reopening plan, pledging to return K-12 students to classrooms within his first 100 days. Following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new guidelines for reopening, announced last Friday, it is looking like that plan is not only ambitious but unlikely. With that being said, even if Biden’s original threshold back in December was over-aggressive, opening schools is possible. And, for the sake of all of the students who have dysfunctional or abusive households, depend on food from their school, do not have strong internet connections or are suffering through Zoomadministered physics lessons, it should be treated as a priority. According to the CDC’s report, elementary schools are pretty much in the clear to go back to the classroom. As long as proper procedures, such as mask-wearing and social distancing, are followed, they can operate regardless of the community transmission rate. Doing that is not feasible for every school, depending on the potential size and infrastructure limitations, but for many, it can be done. Middle schools and high schools are also permitted to operate, except if transmission rates in the district reach the highest level — defined by either a 10% or greater positive community test rate or 100 or more cases per 100,000 people in a seven-day period. The main barrier to schools reopening countrywide is not necessarily the logistics of adhering to safety regulations, even if that is difficult to do in some districts. One of the most prominent oppositions is from teachers’ unions and staff
within the buildings, many of whom do not believe that schools can be reopened in a safe manner. Teacher unions have held firm that a strict set of demands must be put in place before the process of reopening schools can begin. But even they are beginning to lay down their guard following this new report from the CDC, with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, responding with a positive review: “Today, the CDC met fear of the pandemic with facts and evidence. … For the first time since the start of this pandemic, we have a rigorous road map, based on science, that our members can use to fight for a safe reopening.” For some, vaccinations have been at the heart of that strict set of demands — teachers in Minnesota have rallied and nurses, educators and parents plan to hold daily press conferences to voice their concerns about a rushed reopening. While the CDC agrees with unions that teachers should be among the top of the priority hierarchy, vaccinations are not a prerequisite for students nor staff under these new guidelines. New York City’s success in regard to teacher safety has been evidence for that. Still, one prominent concern remains for others: ventilation. Many schools are old and lack proper ventilation systems, which in the context of COVID19 could present a significant risk for its occupants. Experts have criticized the CDC’s report on this point, noting that a less aggressive emphasis should be placed on sanitizing surfaces around school buildings and more should be placed on ensuring adequate ventilation. After all, this is an airborne disease. Biden and the House Democrats are working on a solution to various infrastructure restraints. Their proposed COVID-19 relief bill includes $129 billion in education relief funding that, in theory, could
address improper ventilation in applicable districts. Of course, infrastructure like that will take some time to implement, but once it is, a true in-person learning experience could be in sight. The reality is reopening will not be perfectly risk-free. But that does not mean it is extraordinarily risky. And the values of in-person education need to be weighed against these risks. As Gov. Gretchen Whitmer stated this month, “The value of in-person learning for our kids is immeasurable.” She is spot on. Virtual schooling removes nearly all of the social aspects of school, stripping learning down to the cutand-dried: teaching and learning. There is only so much that teachers can do to foster participation and students certainly do not have the same ability to chat or check-in with their peers as they do in person. Racial inequities, which were already prominent within our school systems prior to the pandemic, are now exacerbated by online or hybrid learning. Nearly 30% of all K-12 public school students in the United States do not have proper access to the internet in their homes. This, mixed with parents who are often already stretched thin with their own jobs and the loud environments that are common within multiple-family homes, makes for a horrendous learning environment for a large proportion of American students. The virus’s danger must be acknowledged. But the CDC has already considered the risks, and within the context of schooling, the danger can be heavily mitigated in several ways. We should not be abandoning the concept of in-person schooling because it may require some extra work to reopen. Instead, go full steam ahead. The consequences of being stuck at home for students are only going to multiply if we don’t.
John Tumpowsky can be reached at jgtump@umich.edu.
SHUBHUM GIROTI | COLUMNIST
Progressive messaging needs an overhaul
T
his summer was not the first time Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets demanding change and accountability of and within “the system.” However, it was one of the first times that substantive policy proposals came out of the movement and into mainstream discourse. The main policy proposal: defunding the police. This has different definitions depending on who you ask, but it can range anywhere from reallocating some of the funding police departments receive to mental health and counseling initiatives all the way to abolishing the entire police system in this country. I am not here to discuss the merits of this plan, but merely the messaging that younger progressives brought to the streets this summer. In early December, former President Barack Obama said, “I guess you can use a snappy slogan like ‘Defund The Police,’ but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done.” What Obama is saying is that there are serious and systemic problems that need to be solved and addressed by politicians, but by using such harsh language, younger Democrats have alienated themselves from the larger population. I know from experience that older Americans were turned off from the language of “defund the police” at first because they viewed that as a direct threat to their personal safety. One huge assumption that progressives made is that the average person will read beyond the title of a plan and do their due diligence in researching the actual policies it is aiming to advocate. It is impossible to expect this of every American. Clearly, our messaging matters. A lot.
In a meta-analysis of polls in June, around 31% of Americans supported defunding the police system. What is even more shocking is that when the polling question changes from “Do you support defunding the police?” to a more specific question asking if you would support using some taxpayer funds that go to the police to other agencies that could better respond to some emergencies, the number shoots up to 72%. This represents a massive gap between the support of the slogan and the support of the actual messaging behind it. Almost three in four Americans believe in the concept of taking some responsibilities off the plate of law enforcement and giving them to more qualified professionals instead. This stands sharply in contrast with the slightly more than one in four who support the attached slogan. This shows us that Obama was right: Messaging matters. People often quickly jump the gun and go for the home-run solution when the practical and effective approach is right in front of their eyes. It is important to understand that policymaking does not happen in a simple Democratic or Republican vacuum. Real policymaking takes compromise and understanding of others. A lot of young people simply see the world from one lens, sometimes clouded by privilege and relative inexperience. While well-intentioned, the messaging of defunding the police played right into the hands of the current Republican Party in the 2020 election cycle; they ran numerous false ads targeting Democratic candidates saying that these candidates supported defunding the police when many had categorically denied this. These include the senate seats in 2020 in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia — the majority of which Democrats
lost — as well as attempting to leverage this claim in the presidential race. Additionally, an ad claiming that Joe Biden supported defunding the police decreased his net favorable rating by 11 points in focus groups. Black Americans, who many progressives claim to be acting on the behalf of, do not overwhelmingly support this policy — anywhere from 51% of Black voters in Michigan are actually against defunding the police. These findings confirm that using this divisive messaging is not accomplishing the goal we need to be striving for: police reform. It is getting us further away from that goal in exchange for a snazzy slogan that we can exert on our parents or less “woke” friends. While I believe the damage of the “defund the police” slogan has already been done, progressives, liberals, independents and conservatives concerned with the gravely serious issues of police brutality and systemic racism should instead look to see how we can best solve this in the future. We can do it by approaching people who do not look or think like us to see how best to get our message across to them. There have been many issues where messaging has limited the policy goals behind it, but it must stop here. Progressives have great ideas to move this country in a positive direction, but we must understand how our views come across to others and plan accordingly. If we want to genuinely accomplish something with our messaging, it is not enough to merely think we are correct and not care about the public perception. We must engage with others on a substantive level to truly accomplish policy change in the future.
Shubhum Giroti can be reached at sgiroti@umich.edu.
XHULIA GURI | CONTRIBUTOR
I am a person, not an “alien”
T
he first time someone referred to me as an alien, I laughed. I did not have a big, bald head. My skin wasn’t green and my eyes, while on the large side, looked quite normal to me. The word “alien” followed me around for years. In America, because of my immigration status, I was as extraterrestrial as Zoe Saldana in “Avatar.” Therefore, when confronted with the question, “What does an alien look like?” in a freshman seminar, my answer was, “they look a bit like us.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the meaning “foreigner” has been associated with the word “alien” as early as the 1380s. The first citation for the science-fiction meaning was in 1929, in the Wonder Stories magazine. It appears that we had been using the word “alien” to refer to foreigners long before we used it to refer to extraterrestrial creatures. Consequently, we can conclude that when the English-speaking world first wrote about Martians in space, they imagined these Martians to be similar to foreigners. Alien means the same today as it did in the 1380s — it is used to differentiate between people based on race and borders. It is a pejorative term that strips immigrants of their humanity and their rights on the basis of such humanity. In 18th and 19th century humanitarianism, autopsies were popularized. They made it clear that on the inside, our bodies are
extremely similar, if not all the same. It is one of the reasons humanitarian aid exists today. We realize, above all, we are human. According to Thomas Laqueur, “the humanitarian narrative relies on the personal body, not only as the locus of pain but also as the common bond between those who suffer and those who would help.” But the act of referring to a person as an “alien” clashes with the notion of humanity. Identifying someone as “alien” disregards all of their other forms of identity and simply classifies them as “the other.” It is an unnecessary word that only serves the purpose of differentiating between people on the basis of race, ethnicity and nationality. It is used to deepen the divide between “us” and “them,” and it perpetuates racism and problematic stereotypes. In his article about the social and legal construction of “aliens,” Kevin Johnson writes: “the concept of the alien helps to reinforce and strengthen nativist sentiment toward members of new immigrant groups, which in turn inf luences U.S. responses to immigration and human rights issues.” These inf luences appear in politics and laws that are ver y prominent in our societ y’s ver y recent political agenda. The Muslim Ban comes to mind. The infamous wall at the Mexican-American border comes to mind. Children in cages and separation of families comes to
Design by Yassmine El-Rewini
mind. The rampant sentiment of “go back to your countr y” comes to mind. My mother, who doesn’t speak English, works at a bistro. A customer thought that she made his coffee with water instead of milk and told her to “go back to Russia.” My mother is not Russian.
Words carry meaning. Language influences attitudes in society. The fact that extraterrestrial beings are named after immigrants serves as proof. The word alien carries negative connotations that reinforce distinctions and divisions between human beings. It perpetuates stereotypes that make it impossible for our society to progress.
The only thing all aliens have in common is that they’re aliens. The only thing that all people have in common is that they’re people. You can’t be both. Xhulia Guri is a junior in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts and can be reached at xguri@umich.edu.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 — 13
SAM WOITESHEK | COLUMNIST
Lights! Video camera! Better communication!
B
EEP! BEEP! BEEP! It’s 9:15 a.m. I get up, hop in the shower and then get dressed. Moving semi-quickly, I usually prefer to go anti-“Zoom casual.” I don’t roll out of bed. I try to get dressed as if I were going to school in person, along with brushing my teeth; this routine helps me get into “school mode.” It’s 10 a.m. and my history class is starting. As I join Zoom, I select “Join with Video” and prepare to see the faces of my classmates too. However, I am mistaken. The cameras are off, including the cameras of both professors — I am suddenly the only face to the learning process. Embarrassed, I swiftly turn mine off as well and for the remaining 79 minutes, I stare at black boxes or the names of my illusive peers. What the heck is going on? The first semester, I estimated, was an anomaly. As students, we were all getting used to Zoom and maybe we preferred to go unseen in our non-traditional learning states. So be it. Now, in the second semester, I’m confused. Almost a year into this whole “virtual learning” situation, are we still breaking the ice? We shouldn’t be. In fact, keeping cameras on compensates for the lack of informal social interactions that can occur outside of a pandemic. In a breakout room for another class, I noticed a poster for Drake’s Nothing Was the Same album on the wall of my peer’s room. Coincidentally, he happens to be my favorite artist and NWTS is my favorite album, so a natural conversation transpired. If my friend had her camera off or we were in a classroom, chances are I would have never known she liked Drake too. In a pandemic setting, where creating informal social interactions is incredibly difficult, these candid on-camera moments are a social lifeline. Forbes notes that not only are face-to-face video calls encouraged, but they are becoming the norm. Gene Marks, business columnist and founder of The Marks Group consulting firm, believes that turning the camera on has helped him “close more deals and connect to our customers better.” Seeing is, quite literally, believing; people are more trusting in others when they can view them. The Stanford Daily ran a survey of 46 students across the country about leaving their videos off during class. Two-thirds of respondents said they’ve been in a situation that is uncomfortable during class and preferred to not use their camera. Don’t worry, I get it — I’ve been there too. We all have. A
brief period without visuals is warranted at times, certainly. However, as students, the number one thing we crave from our professors is transparency. It’s a two-way road. How can we expect it from our professors if they aren’t receiving it from us? Let’s be honest: you’re probably not paying attention with your camera off. I receive daily Snapchats of other people’s computer screens in a gallery view. Moreover, how does anyone capture the “Zoom fails” I watch on YouTube? While these moments are clearly mortifying, they are relatively preventable if you pay close attention to what is in view in your background and warn your housemates and family members that you are on a call. Additionally, don’t we want to see other people while we learn? We feel reassured when assimilating with others’ confused looks in math class, curiosity when we catch someone daydreaming and solidarity in rolling our eyes at the one kid who always talks. Quite simply, face-to-face interaction is essential to our educational experience. I hate to be this guy, but there is a possibility that Zoom becomes our future. The convenience of clicking on a link and joining a meeting via mobile device is exponentially greater than the trouble of organizing in-person meetings. For example, say you’re a businessperson and have a 10 a.m. meeting. Do you want to wake up at 8 a.m., have to put on a suit and tie and wait in traffic? Or would you rather wake up at 9 a.m., take a shower (which could even be optional) and only have to focus on your top half looking sharp? Turning our cameras off, especially just because we feel like it, is yet another bad tendency of ours exposed by Zoom: laziness. For many of us, we often welcome the path of least resistance within our respective day-today grinds. Thus, we have to make a conscious effort to salvage the positives of our day we had grown accustomed to before this pandemic: seeing each other. I’m not saying that you have to show us your roommate picking their nose in the background and I don’t necessarily need to see an empty chair if you go to the bathroom. All I ask is that for the sake of our collective sanity, it would be nice to enjoy each other’s company the way Zoom, FaceTime and all other video conferencing platforms are intended. Until then, I’ll be sure to wear my best slippers and robe. See you in class! Sam Woiteshek can be reached at swoitesh@umich.edu.
CHRISTINA KIM | CARTOONIST CAN BE CONTACTED AT CKIMC@UMICH.EDU.
Design by Yassmine El-Rewini
BRANDON COWIT | COLUMNIST
T
Biden’s unpromising foreign policy team
rump is gone. After four long years and a particularly tumultuous last two weeks, former President Donald Trump has left office and President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been sworn in. While it’s natural to want to take some time to celebrate the inauguration of an at least slightly less terrible administration, it is important to discuss what the new Biden administration plans to do with its mandate and narrow congressional majority. While writers for The Daily have already discussed what policies the new administration should and should not pursue, it is important to consider what foreign policies they are actually pursuing. To quote Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., “personnel is policy,” so it’s worth asking who Biden’s foreign policy personnel are. The answers are not inspiring. Biden’s principal foreign policy staffers highlight his adherence to the bipartisan foreign policy status quo: one of endless war, devastating sanctions and pursuance of defense industry profits over rational decision-making. One of Biden’s picks that best exemplifies these issues is Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, who is in charge of coordinating intelligence relating to national security issues and briefing the president on it. Over the summer, Haines’s addition to the Biden campaign’s foreign policy team generated a great deal of controversy, both from generally left-wing detractors and those who were flabbergasted that those detractors existed. The latter category, consisting largely of former Obama administration officials, pointed to her creation in 2013 of guidelines for when drone strikes should be used. The most important of these guidelines was a standard of certainty that a drone strike target is actually the lawful target that it is aimed for. The ex-Obama officials in question cited these guidelines as a reason that anti-war progressives should support Haines’s addition. Samantha Power, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was quoted as saying, “(Haines) sought to put a lethal instrument of U.S. power into a legal framework, to minimize the risk of civilian casualties, and to give a program shrouded in
secrecy far more transparency.” While it is impossible to tell how many civilian lives this policy saved, there are also plenty of problems. A 2016 report on civilian casualties between 2009 and 2015, which Haines, then-deputy national security advisor, was almost certainly involved in publishing, was considered by news outlets such as The Guardian to be a massive undercount of actual casualties. Additionally, years after the guidance was issued, the Obama administration bombed Doctors Without Borders hospitals in Afghanistan and funerals in Yemen, a violation of international law. Essentially, at best, the guidance report debatably decreased civilian casualties and certainly did little to increase transparency. Haines’s issues don’t stop with the drone program. As Deputy Director of the CIA, she presided over the release of the Senate report on the CIA’s torture program. Her particular role was to classify as much of the report as possible, keeping valuable information about the crimes committed in the program away from the public’s eyes. Haines’s consistent stance against accountability for torturers and perpetrators continued with her support for the selection of Trump’s CIA Director Gina Haspel, who oversaw waterboarding at a CIA black site in Thailand. Beyond the obvious abhorrence of doing this in the first place, this shows an unwillingness on Haines’s part to hold U.S. government officials accountable for crimes they commit during her tenure, an important issue should anything like the CIA torture program ever occur again. Haines is not the only problematic figure on Biden’s foreign policy team. While Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has spent most of his career in the military, and thus does not have a political policy-making record to analyze, he was, until his confirmation as Defense Secretary, a member of the Board of Directors at military contractor Raytheon Technologies. While he has pledged to recuse himself from decisions regarding his former employer, this still leaves an opening for Austin to support military actions that would help Raytheon’s bottom line, just as long as
he does not have a hand in negotiating the contract. Perhaps most importantly, Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for Secretary of State, has been behind just about every bad foreign policy decision during his two decades in government. As then-Sen. Biden’s chief foreign policy advisor, he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a particularly consequential view given Biden’s position as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As then-Vice President Biden’s National Security Advisor, he supported the 2011 invasion of Libya, which plunged the country into civil war. Additionally, as then-President Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State, he supported the Saudi invasion of Yemen, which has created what UNICEF has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Even now, during his confirmation hearings for Secretary of State, he declared his support for sanctions on Iran, which have, among other things, crippled its ability to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Defenders of Biden will likely respond to all of this with something to the effect of “well, at least Biden’s better than Trump.” On issues such as climate change and immigration, that is true. However, with the exception of the war in Yemen, which Biden has recently spoken against, every issue mentioned here is a continuation of Trumpera policies. Trump took the Obama administration’s already opaque, murderous drone program and made it worse. As mentioned before, Trump’s Haines-endorsed pick for Director of the CIA oversaw torture personally and Trump’s last confirmed Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, was also a weapons contractor lobbyist, like Austin. Every single war and sanctions program that Blinken supported was either started by Trump or continued under him. A real break from the Trump era requires an adjustment in its foreign policy, and with his initial picks for key foreign policy positions, President Biden seems unwilling to make the necessary changes. Brandon Cowit can be reached cowitb@umich.edu.
JESSIE MITCHELL | COLUMNIST
Remote work is here to stay
C
ollege students could reasonably be forgiven for being wary of the future of remote work. After nearly a year of dancing between hybrid classes and fully online ones — the uncertainty often coupled with an increased workload and isolation — remote work might seem like a tough sell. But even after the population reaches herd immunity, many companies are planning to offer more work-from-home options for their employees. Salesforce recently announced that it will allow employees to choose if they ever return to the office. Facebook and Twitter also announced similar policies. Other companies are targeting a fall return to the office, but remain tentative and don’t expect a sudden, full-time return. The lack of haste to return to the working place in any capacity speaks to the fact that overall, productivity has not decreased. If anything, it’s up. The benefits of working from home are numerous. Fully remote work or hybrid work that allows for less frequent travel means people can live further from expensive urban centers or closer to loved ones. It means commute time can be repurposed into time for family, exercise or rest. It means less traffic and more flexibility. We’ve been seeing all of that for almost a year, but have been unable to fully reap the rewards. A sentiment I often see is that we aren’t working from home: We are working through a crisis. Work is the afterthought, the last item on the to-do list after the job of surviving. It would feel a whole lot different if you could choose
to do work in a coffee shop one day, for example, or catch up with friends over dinner after work. I am excited for the possibility of greater work-from-home opportunities. For one thing, it improves accessibility for everyone. Disability advocates have been asking for greater work-fromhome accommodations for years. Even for companies that don’t decide to let the majority of their employees remain remote, the productivity and benefits of remote work will make it harder to deny reasonable accommodations. It is hard to believe how often we went to school or meetings while ill prior to the pandemic. Before a cough represented a potentially deadly virus, it still represented illness, yet the messaging I always received was that a hard-working student would show up anyway. I haven’t even gotten a cold since last March (knock on wood), whereas I feel like I used to be a little bit sick from October to April of every year prior. From now on, if I’m lucky enough to have a job that I can do from home, I’ll stay home with the sniffles and not feel guilty about it. Not every job is going to be conducive to remote work, but many likely will, perhaps even entry-level jobs that University of Michigan grads could expect to take. It is, however, going to require a shift of mindset. Pandemic-era college students, I predict, are going to come out of college with an obliterated sense of work boundaries. Most of us don’t have the luxury of even separating our workspace from our sleep space the way working
Design by Man Lam Cheng
adults might. After a day of classes and office hours, many of us have meetings until well past dinner. In the before time, we could pretend those meetings were social, at least a little. Maybe someone would bring food, play music or make small talk before the beginning of the meeting. Now? It’s all work, Zooming past 9:30 p.m. We’ll likely be in this remote or hybrid setting for the foreseeable future,
and I wonder if we, as students, can help restructure some of those virtual boundaries for ourselves. We can’t magically give ourselves home offices or less work, but maybe we can send less of those late-night homework texts? Those club meetings from the “great before,” do they all need to be Zoom calls? As many of us prepare to enter the remote workforce, I want to talk more seriously about how we can make it
sustainable after the unavoidable mess that has been online school. For me, that means making myself less available after 8 p.m., using my perennial proximity to the kitchen to eat a lot of small meals and occasionally giving up for an hour and lying on my bed. But I seriously can’t wait my room. Jessie Mitchell can be reached at jessiemi@umich.edu
Sports
14 — Wednesday, February 24, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan’s Adaptive Sports and Fitness Program: An opportunity to be a part of history ALEX WALKON
Daily Sports Writer
When Chris Kelley arrived in New York for a wheelchair tennis tournament, continuing his athletic career at Michigan was already on his radar. As the 2019 United States Tennis Association champion with a No. 2 ranking in the Men’s A division, Kelley was highly sought after and Dr. Feranmi Okanlami, the Director of Michigan’s Adaptive Sports and Fitness program, had made it clear that he wanted Kelley as a Wolverine. About to return home, Kelley crossed paths with “the tipping point” — Okanlami was coincidentally at the same New York airport as him at the same time. “It felt like I was supposed to be here (at Michigan),” Kelley said. While Okanlami may not be able to stumble upon every prospective athlete across the nation, Michigan must find a way to separate itself from colleges like Alabama, which has a multi-million dollar facility dedicated to adaptive sports, or Illinois and its rich adaptive sports history. Still in the early stages, it’s no secret that the Wolverines are playing catch up. But Michigan has all the makings of becoming a recruiting powerhouse in the Midwest. “There is no program that exists in Michigan and the surrounding area,” Erik Robeznieks, the Project Manager of Michigan’s Adaptive Sports and Fitness program, said. “The closest program to us in the collegiate space is the University of Illinois.” Kelley, a Michigan native, chose not to play adaptive sports as an undergrad because there simply wasn’t an in-state option. Now, there is. As a result, Michigan can tap into the in-state recruiting pool, as well as the remainder of the Midwest athletes looking for a program closer to home — a clear path to bolstering a program on the rise. With that
said, it is far more than the most convenient option. “The academics (were) another thing that drew me to Michigan,” Kelley said. “When you’re looking at athletics, whether you’re on the adaptive or able-bodied side, we all know that eventually, we’re not going to be playing sports. Our bodies will get to a point where competitive play just isn’t in the cards anymore. When I started thinking about my future, the opportunities that the University has for me to further my education were more appealing to me.” A blossoming relationship with Michigan Medicine offers Adaptive Sports a critical resource when it comes to sports medicine and prioritizing the health of its studentathletes. “Having somebody who understands disabilities and the needs of the wheelchair population on a team overall is pretty important,” Kelley said. “Johan Latorre is one of the coaches that helps out, and he’s also a doctor.” But physical health is not the only factor contributing to an athlete’s ability to perform at the highest level. A robust support team fortified by university resources assists student-athletes with all aspects of life. “The fact that there is an integrated support team between academic support services, program staff, the coach, their peer student-athletes,” Robeznieks said. “We have all those different resources and connections within the University in place to support the all-around student-athlete.” Yet programs like Michigan Medicine, MDisability and Services for Students with Disabilities are just the tip of the iceberg. A partnership with the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living has provided a space that Adaptive Sports can call its own. “Our athletes need strength and conditioning,” Robeznieks said. “They need fitness beyond their sport. We’ve painted the walls maize and blue. We put in rubber
flooring to actually make a better tactile environment for people in day-chairs.” Adaptive Sports has also partnered with the Varsity Tennis Center and the U-M Indoor Track Building, providing frequent access to high-level facilities. But “frequent” is not enough. Equitable access to the resources Michigan offers able-bodied student-athletes is the program’s ticket to appealing to the best adaptive student-athletes around the country. “We’re not asking for a 10-million dollar facility for ourselves,” Robeznieks said. “We’re just looking for that same level of access.” As the program continues its efforts for equitable resources, notoriety remains an equally important area for improvement. A multitude of facilities are only worthwhile if prospective student-athletes are aware of them. Largely dependent on word of mouth as of now, Adaptive Sports has centered its focus on carving out its own recruiting pipeline by linking itself to the greater adaptive sports community. “A great end for us was establishing connections with the people who are now affiliated with the Midwest Adaptive Sports Committee,” Robzenieks said. “We are now in with a system of people and organizations that operate within adaptive sports at the junior level in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.” Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital, the Turnstone Center for Children & Adult with Disabilities and the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association have generated a recruiting pool brimming with talented athletes looking for post-secondary education. On the flip side of things, universities across the country need help from the NCAA to make information about prospective adaptive student-athletes more readily available. “In able-bodied tennis, there’s the Universal Tennis Ranking,” Kelley said. “You get star-rankings so you might be a one-star
Courtesy of Grayson Buning
Michigan is building its Adaptive Sports programs to compete with top schools like Illinois and Alabama for recruits and recognition
recruit or a two-star recruit or a three-star recruit. And in wheelchair tennis, we don’t have something like that right now.” With the minimal recruiting infrastructure in place for adaptive sports, there needs to be a massive implementation of tools and platforms to help coaches and scouts evaluate the best athletes around the country. When there are elite players like Kelley, decorated with accolades and looking to take their athletic career to the next level, the entirety of the adaptive sports realm needs to know about it. As the logistics of adaptive sports continue to be fluid at both the university and national
level, one thing remains constant: Michigan’s program offers the opportunity to be a part of history. “It takes a very different kind of athlete to come to a new program because there is a bit of unknown rather than the tried and true history of some of these more established programs,” Robeznieks said. “But some of the feedback we’ve gotten from the athletes so far is that they feel a lot of value being part of the University of Michigan Adaptive Sports program because day after day we’re forging history. “We’re building a program from scratch and they get to be there from day one.”
Michigan searches for consistency as postseason looms JOSH TAUBMAN Daily Sports Writer
MADDIE FOX/Daily
With the post-season in sight, depth could be Michigan’s secret weapon.
Michigan’s depth proves its value over course of season MAX WADLEY
Daily Sports Writer
There is a reason collegiate and professional basketball leagues give out a sixth player of the year award at the end of every season: Depth matters. And the Michigan women’s basketball team has proven it has no shortage of depth. Rotation players have combined to score 16% of the team’s overall points this season. In moments when the starting five have required rest or missed games because of COVID-19 protocols, the bench has stepped up for the Wolverines. Michigan’s 13-2 record is in large parts a product of its depth. Sophomore guard Maddie Nolan is arguably the team’s best player off the bench, even earning her way into the starting lineup four times, first being thrust into the lineup when Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico put her in while junior wing Leigha Brown was absent with COVID-19 complications. One of the team’s best 3-point shooters, Nolan frequently reignites the Wolverines’ offensive momentum. In Michigan’s win over Wisconsin, where she scored a career-high 21 points, Nolan was a consistent outside threat that the team leaned on. In the early moments of the game, graduate student guard Akienreh Johnson got tangled up
with some defenders and managed to find Nolan on the outside. Nolan fired a shot from behind the arc and got the team, which had bungled the last few possessions, back on track. “She’s big, a strong guard, she defends exceptionally well, she rebounds well,” Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico said. “She can shoot the ball and that really (gives) us an option from the outside.” Junior guard Danielle Rauch is another player that has played considerable time for the Wolverines, averaging 15.2 minutes per game and starting twice when Brown was out. Rauch’s impact can’t be quantified by a mere box score. Rauch has only scored 21 points in the 200 minutes she’s played for Michigan, but her role isn’t necessarily to come off the bench and score basket after basket. Usually subbing in for junior guard Amy Dilk, Rauch becomes a de facto manager of the offense, spreading the ball around to players for open shots. Rauch has 19 assists on the season, the fifth-most on the team even besting some of the starters who’ve gotten much more time on the court. “I’d give Danielle Rauch a lot of credit. She’s really grown into her role outside and on the court,” Dilk said when asked about leadership within the team. “All of us, with everything going on, have really had
to step up and have a leadership role.” Junior forward Emily Kiser missed the first five games of the season due to an ankle injury, but she’s emerged as a consistently solid defender since her return. Specifically, Kiser has demonstrated her ability to play strong defense in the post with senior forward Hailey Brown and junior forward Naz Hillmon. Sophomore guard Michelle Sidor is another rotation player that hasn’t seen a lot of playing time but has been efficient with the minutes she gets. Appearing in 10 games off of the bench, Sidor is most effective from behind the arc, shooting 34.8% from deep so far this season. She knocked down three triples against Oakland and tied her career-high 16 points against Butler, a performance fueled by 4-for-8 shooting behind the arc. The four-player freshman class has also shown flashes of talent for the Wolverines, revealing a bright future where Michigan has roster depth in the long term. Depth matters, and Michigan is lucky to have such consistent players to back up its starters. In an unorthodox season, you never know when a player will have to take up the mantle of the team’s mantra: “Next man up.” Come March, it might make all the difference.
A lack of focus. No energy. Not being mentally prepared. These were the factors that contributed to the Michigan hockey team’s upset loss Friday night against Ohio State. Fortunately for the Wolverines, they were able to bounce back the next day with a 6-0 throttling of the Buckeyes. Come tournament time, though, Michigan won’t be afforded the luxury of a second chance. “We’re gonna get into a situation, a big game where it’s just a one-off,” Michigan coach Mel Pearson said. “You don’t get a second opportunity. That’s your season, and how would you like to feel after you play like that and you’re done?” Since the Wolverines returned from their COVID-19 induced shutdown, they’ve split both their series. One game, they’ll look like an unstoppable force that can score at will. The next, they’ll be caught completely flat-footed and unable to make up an early deficit. “I asked our team what’s the difference from one night to the next,” Pearson said. “For some its mental preparation. You have to work through that. You have to find a way to persevere and work through that.” Being plagued by inconsistent play is an issue many teams deal with,
mainly in the early stages of a season. It’s not something Michigan wants to be working through now — especially with the Big Ten Tournament looming just over three weeks away. It appeared the Wolverines were hitting their stride prior to the shutdown. Following the long layoff for winter break, Michigan won five of its first six games and was building its rapport as a national title contender. As the Wolverines work back from the pause, the team is desperately trying to get its conditioning back to the level it needs to be. “(That two-week shutdown) happened at the most inopportune time,” Pearson said. “That’s our big challenge, is how much do we need physically. But at the same time, we’ve got to back off so mentally so they can recharge and refresh.” It’s no mystery how good this team can be. Michigan has been ranked in the top-10 all season, and even after their loss to an Ohio State team with just six wins, it stayed planted at No. 7. The perception is that this team will be fighting it out with the nation’s elite come late March. And yet, the Wolverines aren’t even dominating their own conference. They are currently tied for third place in the standings, 11 points behind Wisconsin and 15 behind Minnesota. They’ll have to go through both to win the Big Ten
Tournament, and they’ll have to come into each game mentally and physically prepared — with no wiggle room for off days. “Maybe these guys are just waiting to turn it on or turn it off,” Pearson said. “I still think we’re probably another week, week and a half away from being where we need to be.” Not every game is going to be an offensive shootout. In between, there will be slow-paced, war-of-attrition type battles. In single-elimination tournaments, the Wolverines can’t afford to quit if the game’s style of play doesn’t align with theirs. Michigan needs to approach these upcoming games with a consistent effort, and finding that consistency starts in practice. Pearson expressed his frustration with his players’ latest work ethic: “When I put them on the goal line and they skate down to the far end and touch the boards and come back as fast as they can; they go pretty fast. And then you say, ‘Okay, why don’t I put five million dollars down at the end of the rink and you got to go down there and there’s another five million when you come back.’ Are you gonna skate faster? They usually say every time, ‘Oh, absolutely.’ ” “Well, why? Why can’t you do it all the time? Why can’t you play all out all the time?” So can Michigan flip the switch? That’s the five million dollar question.
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
After splitting the two series, concerns over consistancy still plague ‘M.’
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 — 15
‘M’ rides extra motivation to win Wolverines edge Ohio State on the over fourth-ranked Buckeyes road in thrilling top-5 showdown CONNOR BRENNAN
Daily Sports Editor
Videos were shown, elbows were thrown, some choice words were exchanged and bodies hit the f loor. Whenever Michigan and Ohio State square off — regardless of the sport — there are sure to be some fireworks and animosity. On Sunday, though, bolstered by both teams’ top-5 rankings and their recent encounters, the intensity was ratcheted up. The bitter rivals were at each other’s throats with hard fouls, aggressive drives to the rim and players diving for loose balls. The Wolverines seemed to relish the physicality. “I like these types of games, dog fights,” senior guard Chaundee Brown said. “Like (Michigan coach Juwan Howard) says, it’s a boxing match.” From the tip-off, it was clear the game was going to be a war of attrition. Whichever team was left standing at the end was going to have to earn it. Using every bit of motivation afforded by the Buckeyes, Michigan did just that. It’s typical for players and coaches to claim that they view each game in a vacuum, that they don’t look ahead to any one opponent and don’t look back at the results of previous seasons. For the Wolverines, who hadn’t won in Columbus since 2014, this was not the case.
“The biggest thing that we came into it looking at was our record at Ohio State,” senior guard Eli Brooks said. “That’s something we really wanted to change at the start of the day. That’s what drove us the most.” While seniors like Brooks didn’t want to see their 0-3 road record extended further, even those playing in their first game against the Buckeyes had added motivation. Prior to the game, Howard showed the team a video of Ohio State players dancing in the locker room after beating Michigan for the second time last year. The Buckeyes subsequently also started a tradition of presenting “golden jersey” trinkets to players who sweep the Wolverines in the season-series. Michigan took offense to all of it. “Of course we were motivated by it,” freshman center Hunter Dickinson said. “But I think the players here last year and coach Howard were probably the most motivated from watching that video. “I think it was just the Michael Jordan approach, any little thing that can get you extra motivated helps. That was something that definitely got everybody really prepared for this game and motivated.” Added Brooks: “Yeah, we showed them a couple videos that rubbed us the wrong way and that we wanted to change the tides, so that’s why we did
that.” Despite this being their first taste of the rivalry, Brown and Dickinson were involved in a majority of the trash talk and strife — Brown by choice and Dickinson by virtue of his position. At one point, the referees had to step in and tell Brown to tone down the backand-forth he was having with a Buckeye. Meanwhile, the usually even-keeled, mild-mannered Dickinson threw down a monstrous two-handed dunk in traffic with a little more aggression than usual, driving the Michigan bench to nearhysteria. “I could tell that they didn’t like us, and we sure didn’t like them either,” Dickinson said. “You could see that it was a really competitive game and I think there’s definitely something to be said for an Ohio State-Michigan rivalry. It’s definitely one of the best in the country.” Whether it was from newcomers to the rivalry or veterans well-conditioned to the rough-and-tumble nature of it, the Wolverines brought a bit more intensity over the Michigan-Ohio border. And it paid off in a big way. “Gonna enjoy the bus ride home with the victory,” Howard said. “Because I’ve been on the other side before when you’ve lost a game and you had to have a bus ride back home. It’s not a good feeling.”
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
Due to the nature of the rivalry, Michigan brought particular fervor in its win over Ohio State on Sunday.
JARED GREENSPAN
Daily Sports Writer
COLUMBUS — Something had to give. Entering Sunday, the Michigan men’s basketball team boasted the nation’s seventh-best defense. Ohio State, meanwhile, owned the third-best offense. In a battle of Big Ten heavyweights, the Buckeye attack proved potent. Yet, the Wolverine offense matched Ohio State punch for punch, rising to the occasion and securing Michigan (16-1 overall, 11-1 Big Ten) a decisive 92-87 road win over the Buckeyes (18-5, 12-5). “We’re going to enjoy this victory,” Michigan coach Juwan Howard said. “Overall, it was a big production for everyone who played in that game from start to finish, every guy contributed huge, made great plays for us down the stretch.” One hundred and nine years passed before a top-5 matchup precipitated on the hardwood between the bitter rivals. The first one, though, lived up to its billing. Both teams came out swinging. Duane Washington notched 10 quick points for Ohio State, showcasing a lethal 3-point stroke. Senior wing Chaundee Brown offered a counter off the bench, draining three 3-pointers and keying an 8-0 run that dug the Wolverines out of an early five point hole. “I told (senior forward) Isaiah Livers in warmups, I was like, ‘I like these rims, I love these rims,’ ” Brown said. “I was like, ‘Yo, it’s gonna be a good one.’ ”
Brown’s teammates followed suit, with Michigan putting together a scintillating first-half performance, punctuated by a 10-of-13 mark from beyond the arc. On 17 first-half baskets, the Wolverines recorded 12 assists. “Our guys understand … about just making the easy plays,” Howard said. “And we need more ball and player movement. And get away from the iso-ball. So the different defensive reads, our guys took their time making simple plays.” Though Michigan’s offense percolated, the Wolverines failed to build an advantage on the scoreboard. Each basket induced an answer from Ohio State at the other end, with 6-foot-7 E.J. Liddell giving Michigan fits. Liddell’s three offensive rebounds contributed to 10 second-chance points in the first half. Heading into the locker room, Michigan clenched a two point lead. In the opening minutes of the second half, the offense grew cold. Open looks, the likes of which the Wolverines capitalized on during the first twenty minutes, became misses. Ohio State seized a three point lead. And yet, Michigan clawed back, shifting its attention inside to 7-foot-1 freshman center Hunter Dickinson. Pulverizing an undersized Buckeye frontcourt, Dickinson scored 16 of his teamhigh 22 points in the second half. “That’s what we expect him to do,” senior guard Eli Brooks said. “We feel that he can’t be stopped down there. He’s proven himself that he can score against anybody. He did that today.”
The offense, though, by no means became one-dimensional. Five different Wolverines scored in double-figures, with a sixth — sophomore wing Franz Wagner — finishing with nine points. They only committed seven turnovers, with all but one coming before halftime. “The ball movement was really great today,” Dickinson said. “That’s something I think has been great all year. Such an unselfish team, I think I’ve said it after every game, how unselfish the team played. I think everybody just enjoys playing with one another, so it’s really easy to share the ball.” A pair of ferocious offensive rebounds by Brown sustained a possession that culminated in his lay-up, giving Michigan a two point lead with 5:45 to play. It was a lead the Wolverines wouldn’t relinquish. The two teams continued to trade blows in a game marked by its intensity and physicality. The tide seemed to turn definitively in Michigan’s favor when Livers scooped up an errant Ohio State pass. He finished on the other end with an and-one, giving the Wolverines a six-point lead with 2:33 left. With the clock waning, Livers spiked Ohio State’s inbounds pass back down the court, thwarting the last-ditch comeback attempt. The Buckeye sideline sat in silence while Michigan spilled onto the court and bum-rushed the tunnel, relishing its most-impressive win on a season that seems destined for a special ending.
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
The Wolverines dominated from outside and in the paint to best Ohio State on Sunday afternoon.
Michigan proved it’s ready for March, maybe April Gottlieb, responding: “Lol.” “I think coming into the season, some people didn’t have us ranked in the country,” Dickinson said. “Some people had us ranked I think seven in the Big Ten. And so I don’t think it’s anything new to us. I think one way or another, they’re gonna have to, I guess, realize who we are and what we’re about. One way or another. “We don’t look for anybody’s appreciation. We’re gonna go out there and earn it every day in practice and in the games.” If you didn’t think those questions were answered before Sunday, look to the first half. The Buckeyes were bringing doubleteams on Dickinson every time he put the ball on the floor, making it impossible for him to score inside. So Michigan moved the ball and shot the lights out with 10 3pointers and 12 assists, keeping it in the game when its defense and its star big man couldn’t. Or look to halftime. That’s when Brown, one of those players who was on fire from outside in the first half, told Wolverines’ coach Juwan Howard: “Go to Hunter.” Needing to stop Michigan from shooting more 3-pointers, Ohio State didn’t pressure Dickinson quite as much in the last 20 minutes. So he scored 16 points with five rebounds, including a two-handed dunk that shook the Schottenstein Center’s foundations to put the Wolverines up 82-76. “They had a 6-7 guy (Lid ell) guarding a 7-2 guy,” Brown said. “So I’m like, if they double, we have myself, Isaiah (Livers), Mike (Smith), Eli (Brooks), (as) shooters around the perimeter. So they
gotta give one. They’re not gonna double him, or if they do, we gotta shoot it. It was just common sense.” You can also look a few minutes before that dunk. That’s when
who looks like a Player of the Year candidate or Michigan happens to have a bad day shooting, there’s no answer. “When it’s time to compete out there on the floor, we talk
the Badgers on the road, Rutgers at home and Ohio State in what might be the best game of college basketball’s regular season, even those with their heads in the sand have awoken to the possibility that this team might just be playing on
a Monday night in April. “Welp,” Gottlieb tweeted after the game. “Missed this one.” Sears can be reached at searseth@umich.edu or on Twitter @ethan_sears.
Optical Frequency Combs //
MILES MACKLIN/Daily
Michigan proved its me
in a top-5 victory on the road Sunday.
Brown grabbed two straight offensive rebounds underneath Michigan’s basket with Buckeye bodies all around him. He flipped up a putback attempt — the Wolverines’ third shot of what’s technically classified as one possession — that went in. It put Michigan up 71-69, a lead it never relinquished. “It was very inspiring,” Howard said. But let’s go back to what Brown said for a second. It gets at the heart of what makes Michigan so good, so frustrating to play, so impossible to defend. You can’t get away with single-covering Dickinson. You can’t get away with leaving the Wolverines’ shooters. Unless you’ve got a big man capable of containing a guy
about all the time, winning the day and be(ing) appreciative of the opportunity to have this time to play basketball,” Howard said. “During these games when there are tough stretches, when we go through scoring droughts or turn the ball over or the other team gets an offensive rebound, our guys always figure it out and stay the course.” Slowly but surely, the truth of that — the truth of everything Howard preaches — has become evident over the course of the last three months. It’s been impossible to ignore or shrug off since midJanuary, when the Wolverines blew the doors off Minnesota and Wisconsin at home. Since they’ve returned from a COVID-19-induced pause, beating
//
Online Event: Thursday, March 4, 2021 | 4:00 p.m.
COLUMBUS — Hunter Dickinson fired off a tweet and stepped up to the Zoom camera. “First of all, did you literally just tweet that clap back at Doug Gottlieb before coming on this Zoom call?” a reporter asked. “Yeah.” Around when Michigan men’s basketball was tipping off in Columbus, Gottlieb, a ETHAN sports radio SEARS host, had tweeted: “Michigan hasn’t played the better Big 10 teams, got smoked by Minnesota on the road… Hard to guess how they play today- smart money is on Ohio State.” It’s the kind of sentiment the Wolverines have heard for much of the season. They’ll probably hear much less of it after Sunday. Because, really, what else is left to question. Between Gottlieb’s tweet and Dickinson’s press conference, Michigan and Ohio State played the sort of basketball game usually reserved for an elevated court in April. Shots hitting nets. Bodies hitting floors. Dickinson and E.J. Lid ell battling. Chaundee Brown and Duane Washington Jr. all over the place. Rankings tend to border on meaningless — this, though, felt every bit like No. 3 vs. No. 4. Michigan came out on top, 92-87. It is, at this point, a prohibitive favorite to win the Big Ten regular-season title. The questions left now are reserved for March. So Dickinson hit back at
STEVEN CUNDIFF
Harrison M. Randall Collegiate Professor of Physics
LSA COLLEGIATE LECTURE
An online lecture. For more information, visit events.umich.edu/event/81662 or call 734.615.6667.
DICKINSON’S HUGE SECOND HALF LIFTS U-M TO WIN OVER BUCKEYES TEDDY GUTKIN Daily Sports Writer
In the halftime locker room during the Michigan men’s basketball team’s game against Ohio State, senior wing Chaundee Brown had one message for Michigan coach Juwan Howard: “Go to Hunter.” In their biggest game of the year, the Wolverines shouldered their offensive load onto freshman center Hunter Dickinson. Putting that kind of pressure on any freshman will undoubtedly lead to a few butterflies. At this point in his young career, though, Dickinson has grown accustomed to it. The night before the game, Dickinson met with Howard to go over film. The pair broke down Dickinson’s game, zeroing in on areas that could still be polished. “Those one-on-one film sessions, those workouts that we have, the team workouts, the big man
workouts, he’s growing before our eyes,” Howard said. “It takes freshmen a little longer to figure it out, but Hunter has this high basketball IQ because of his passion for the game and the way how he’s accepted learning. A lot of guys don’t want to be coached. Hunter wants to be coached.” Dickinson was held relatively in check in the first half. He was routinely swarmed by double teams and struggled to find looks inside, forcing the Wolverines to concentrate their offensive attack on the perimeter. The strategy paid off, and a 10-for-13 3-point shooting display in the first half forced the Buckeyes to take their attention away from the paint. “They had a 6-7 guy guarding a 7-2 guy,” Brown said. “So I’m like, if they double, we have myself, Isaiah (Livers), Mike (Smith), Eli (Brooks) (as) shooters around the perimeter. So they gotta give one. They’re not gonna double him or if they do we
gotta shoot it. It was just common sense.” Once the Buckeyes keyed in on stopping the Wolverines’ 3-point attack, Dickinson had an opportunity to take over. He notched 16 points in the last 20 minutes alone, whether it was at the free throw line, shimmies in the post or a thunderous jam over two Buckeyes that put Michigan up, 75-72, with 4:19 minutes left. The Buckeyes’ E.J. Liddell, who stands at 6-foot-7, drew the assignment of Dickinson. With Dickinson standing at 7-foot-2, the Wolverines continued to feed him nearly every trip down. For Dickinson, his second half masterclass isn’t anything new. He’s proven that he’s more than willing to shoulder the scoring load in the second half, whether it be willing Michigan’s offense to a two-point win over Penn State in its Big Ten opener or scoring 13 second half points to help defeat Maryland on
the road. While most freshmen may shy away from the big moments, Dickinson lives for them. “Hunter’s performance shows to me exactly what I knew from the beginning and why I recruited him,” Howard said. “He’s a competitor. He’s not gonna beg or shy away from competition.” As much as Howard praises Dickinson, the young center speaks just as, if not more, glowingly of his coach. Following a 10-point outing against Rutgers that saw him shoot just 4-of-10, Dickinson was unhappy with his performance. He turned to Howard for guidance on how to bounce back. “Whenever I’m down on myself from a previous game … I always come to him and ask (Howard) to go over the previous game with me,” Dickinson said. “He’s really a player-friendly coach, so whenever I come to him for help, he’s always there 110% with me.” One key aspect of Dickinson’s
game that he has expressed desire to work on is working out of double teams. On Sunday, he looked far more comfortable working out of them, consistently firing crosscourt passes to open shooters. “Today, I think they came with different looks at me,” Dickinson said. “I think the experience from playing teams who have doubled me, teams who haven’t and then teams who mix it up has really helped me grow in that aspect. (I’m) just really reading the floor a lot better.” More and more, Howard can see a little bit of himself in Dickinson, whether it be his drive to work on his game, his work in the post or his willingness to get better. He even thinks one day Dickinson could be a coach if he chooses to once he retires. Howard knows that can wait though. In the short term, Dickinson and the dominant Wolverines have other goals on their mind. Miles Macklin/Daily Design by Jack Silberman