2021-05-27

Thursday, May 27, 2021

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

inside

Hundreds march across Ann Arbor in solidarity with Palestine

NEWS

Carbon Neutrality University commits to net-zero emissions in the coming decades

NIRALI PATEL Daily Staff Reporter

>> SEE PAGE 2

and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a prominent computer science research organization.

In July 2020, OIE found that Lasecki had not violated the University’s sexual harassment policies. In February 2021, ACM banned Lasecki for at least five years under their Policy Against Harassment.

Lasecki did not respond to multiple emails requesting comment for this article. In statements to OIE obtained

by The Daily, he denied the allegations against him.

All University administrators mentioned in this article declined to comment, instead redirecting The Daily to University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald.

‘CSE could have done more, had they wanted to; they chose not to act’ Three of the four allegations filed with the University were from non-University students.

They requested anonymity, citing Lasecki’s prominence in the field and their fear of retribution. As in Part One of this investigative series, they will be referred to as Jane, Alex and Rachel.

These three students allege that Lasecki harassed them and touched them inappropriately at social gatherings and industry conferences between 2016 and 2018.

Hundreds of protestors gathered in front of Larcom City Hall in Ann Arbor on Saturday to express their support for Palestinians. Several protestors waved Palestinian flags in the air.

Cardboard cutouts bore phrases like “Free Palestine” and ”End the Occupation,” while others carried the names of Palestinians who lost their lives to the Israeli Defense Forces.

U-M Dearborn Business junior Maha Faisal, one of the protesters, said continuing to protest was important for spreading awareness now that people are paying attention to the way that the actions of Israel are affecting Palestinans.

“We’re putting pressure on the whole world to be doing something,” Faisal said.

Before people began marching from City Hall down East William Street, South State Street and throughout downtown Ann Arbor, several community members spoke to the protestors gathered in front of City Hall.

U-M faculty member Dr. Abdul el-Sayed, a doctor and politician, began his speech saying he came as a “doctor, American and human being.” The former candidate for Michigan governor discussed his work in educating people about COVID-19. He said as a doctor, he was upset that the U.S. set conditions that put the health of Palestinian civilians at risk during the pandemic.

“I’ve watched (as) 3.5 billion dollars of our government taxpayer money (has) funded a military that has destroyed testing facilities for COVID19, killed some of the leading doctors in Gaza, and kicked off a third wave of COVID-19 in the Gaza strip,” el-Sayed said.

El-Sayed also discussed how he is using his voice as an American to speak out against injustice where he sees it, understanding that the U.S.

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OPINION

TikTok Fashion A new avenue for clothes to be marketed to the public

>> SEE PAGE 5 Design by Madison Grosvenor

MICHIGAN IN COLOR

Horoscopes What do the stars have in store for you this week?

We’ve got all the answers inside >> SEE PAGE 7

ARTS

Gold Diggers

Sanjena Sathian’s novel delivers a truthful critique of the (Indian) American Dream

>> SEE PAGE 9

SPORTS

Softball Tumbles Michigan eliminated from NCAAs after losing backto-back heartbreakers to Washington

> SEE PAGE 13

INDEX Vol. CXXIX, No. 112 © 2020 The Michigan Daily

NEWS .................................... 2 OPINION................................ 4 MiC......................................... 6 ARTS.......................................8 STATEMENT..........................10 SPORTS.................................12

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Daily investigation finds School of Information, College of Engineering differed in response to allegations against CSE professor voted to revoke Lasecki’s courtesy

NINA MOLINA AND SAMMY appointment, which had allowed him SUSSMAN to advise SI students and maintain Daily Staff Reporters

This article is the second part of a two-part investigation by The Michigan Daily into allegations of sexual misconduct against computer science professor Walter Lasecki and the University of Michigan’s handling of these allegations. It is based on emails, documents, notes and interviews with 12 individuals knowledgeable of these events.

Part one focused on the allegations against Lasecki and the divergent conclusions of the University’s Office for Institutional Equity and the Association for Computing Machinery, an outside research organization.

CW: Sexual harassment and misconduct Though the University of Michigan’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) ultimately determined that a “preponderance of evidence” did not support four allegations of sexual misconduct against computer science professor Walter Lasecki, the School of Information (SI) faculty made their feelings very clear in the months before this finding was released: the SI faculty did not want Lasecki to remain one of them.

In February 2020, even before OIE had finished its investigation and made a determination, the SI faculty

an SI office space. According to emails obtained by The Daily, Lasecki resigned his courtesy appointment and forfeited these privileges before the results of the faculty vote could be enforced.

But at the College of Engineering, Lasecki maintains his position on the faculty of the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department. He did not teach for this department during the 2020-2021 academic year.

In a CSE town hall meeting in February 2021, CSE Chair Michael Wellman told the department that OIE had not found Lasecki in violation of any University policies. According to three individuals present at the meeting, Wellman read a statement co-written by Lasecki in which Lasecki apologized for unspecified actions.

In February 2020 and again in August 2020, dozens of concerned faculty and staff sent letters to University President Mark Schissel and Provost Susan Collins regarding the allegations against Lasecki.

Correspondence reviewed by The Daily confirms that Schlissel responded to the first one, while Collins responded to the second.

In November 2019, four students filed complaints of alleged sexual harassment and misconduct against Lasecki with the University’s OIE

2 NEWS

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Students across campus respond to CSG Palestinian Solidarity Statement NIRALI PATEL

Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan’s Central Student Government (CSG) hosted a “Community Concerns” panel during the sixth meeting of the 11th CSG assembly. Students, alumni and staff voiced their concerns or support for CSG leadership’s recent statement of solidarity with the Palestinian community, which was released last Tuesday.

In the statement, executive team members of CSG wrote that they recognize anti-Palestinian sentiment on campus, the University’s refusal to divest from Israeli companies that they say contributes to the violence, and CSG’s past complicity in participating in annual trips that support the Israeli government. The CSG leaders closed their statement by promoting H.R.2590, a bill that urges U.S President Joe Biden and his administration to withdraw taxpayer money from funding the Israeli military.

“Palestinians have been pushed out of the political discourse and have been censored,” the statement said.

“Our solidarity with Palestinians is late but necessary and we aim to do whatever is in our power to ensure that we remain in lockstep with them and their fight against oppression.”

Solidarity with Palestinians The panel opened with rising Public Policy junior Mahnoor Imran, who said she supported the CSG statement. Imran said as an incoming Ford student, she was particularly disappointed by the separate statement released by CSG Representative Emma Sandberg, who wrote she held a neutral stance in regards to Palestine and Israel.

“Let me be very clear: neutrality entrenches oppression,” Imran said.

“The CSG statement in support of Palestinian liberation is one step. I urge us and challenge us to take more (steps) on this campus.”

Another speaker, rising LSA junior Salma Ammar Hamamy, said what Palestinians are experiencing is more than a two-sided conflict, but is instead an imbalance of power that is rarely acknowledged by the media.

“I’m not here to make the colonizers feel comfortable when the mainstream media decides to broadcast broken windows of an Israeli building rather than thousands of innocent

Palestinians killed,” Hamamy said. “If you only like to talk about the reaction of the oppressed, rather than the cause of the oppression, congratulations —you play a vital role in keeping colonialism and genocide.”

Due to a high volume of petitioners, CSG hosted another virtual session on Wednesday to give more students the opportunity to voice their concerns and opinions on the crisis in Israel.

LSA rising senior Hadeel Abulenin, one of the student callers, expressed disbelief regarding the poor treatment of Palestinians.

“Even animals are treated better than the people who live in Gaza, which is unbelievable,” Abulenin said.

“How can you with any conscience look at what’s happening there and say yes, this is a government that I fully support.”

Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) members — rising Engineering senior Nadine Samaha, rising LSA senior Jacob Sirhan and rising Public Policy senior Jinan Abufarha — also pledged their support for the CSG statement. Sirhan, the co-president of SAFE, said Palestinian students and activists on the U-M campus have been targeted and doxxed on websites for advocating on behalf of the Palestinian people. Sirhan said the CSG statement was a positive step towards making the University community feel more inclusive for Palestinian students.

“Year after year, Palestinians have come to CSG, as well as (to) administrators, to beg for their humanity,” Sirhan said. “This victimization means that Palestinians are only read through loss and need, and in many ways, that has been self internalized. Truth is a precursor to recovery and deliberation — the CSG statement took these steps.”

Abufarha said she feels like the CSG statement amplified her voice along with the voices of blacklisted Palestinian activists who have been made fearful to speak up for decades.

“From an extremely young age, my mother taught me that the condition of being Palestinian in this country is to wrap yourself in your silences and swallow a baseline level of violence against your existence,” Abufarha said.

Abufarha said it was tiresome to constantly share trauma and have her concerns reduced to being too political for powerful institutions to confront.

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Regents, Schlissel commit to plan for U-M-wide carbon neutrality by 2040

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University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel announced a commitment to a new plan that will achieve carbon neutrality by 2040 across all three U-M campuses at Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting.

The plan’s release comes after the completion of the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality’s (PCCN) final report in March 2021. The report outlined strategies and recommendations for the University to achieve specific carbon neutrality goals and benchmarks, many of which appear in the plan announced at the meeting.

The plan aims to eliminate scope 1 emissions, which derive directly from the University’s operations, by 2040. The PCCN’s recommendation of carbon neutrality, inclusive of carbon offsets, for this scope’s emissions by 2025 was not addressed in the plan. Schlissel said he would evaluate carbon offsets — the practice of counting carbon sequestrations that the University contributes to financially elsewhere towards neutrality — in the future.

The University plan aims to achieve carbon neutrality for scope 2 emissions, which come from the purchase of power off campus, by 2025. Defined goals for achieving carbon neutrality for scope 3 emissions, which are any emissions indirectly related to the University, will also be laid out by 2025, according to the plan. The latter two goals are in alignment with those of the PCCN. To achieve the elimination

of these scopes, the University outlined multiple steps. Some of these include committing to geothermal heating and cooling projects, electrifying Ann Arbor and Dearborn’s bus fleets, requesting that off campus electricity purchases come from renewable sources and creating an executive-level leadership position that will monitor the progress of these carbon neutrality initiatives.

The University also plans to create a dashboard that will track the progress of these goals.

Schlissel expressed excitement about taking charge towards a more carbon neutral future at the University.

“To fulfill our mission as a public research university, we must address the climate crisis by leading the way on our campuses and beyond, creating, testing and teaching the knowledge and technologies that will transfer to other large institutions, and inspiring and empowering others to solve the defining scientific and social challenge of our time,” Schlissel said.

The University also hopes to uphold a community culture which values sustainability. The plan outlines steps to achieve this goal, such as incorporating environmental justice principles into the University’s decisionmaking process, engaging with the communities around the three campuses about climate equity and investing in carbon neutrality research efforts.

Schlissel emphasized how important community involvement will be in the implementation of the new climate neutrality plan.

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Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Local businesses reflect on harsh year, but anticipate better prospects for the fall MARTHA LEWAND Daily News Staff Reporter

In a normal semester, Good Time Charley’s — the Ann Arbor bar located in the heart of the South University Avenue district — would be packed shoulder-to-shoulder with students and community members gathered to watch sports games or celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. But since the pandemic began, Charley’s and other local small businesses have received less business and faced additional challenges.

Charley’s co-owner Adam Lowenstein said since March of 2020, Charley’s has suffered a 60% decrease in sales, along with multiple different shut-downs and a minor fire caused by an outside heater. Lowenstein said the fire was “the cherry on top” to an already hard year with the pandemic.

“The whole year was a major blow,” Lowenstein said. “It was kind of a crazy year where we had to just adapt on the fly and adjust to everything that was being thrown at us.”

Ann Arbor businesses like Charley’s experienced major declines in sales, staff, in-person capacity and store hours over the course of the fall and winter semesters due to public health guidelines set by the state and University of Michigan administration. Lowenstein and other small business owners were forced to completely alter their traditional business models due to COVID-19, and will continue to navigate running a small business through the aftermath of the pandemic.

Lowenstein said the constant fluctuations in curfew policies, capacity and more challenged Charley’s traditional business model.

“We’ve had to alter our business model entirely,” Lowenstein said.

“We’ve shortened our hours; focused more on takeout and delivery; we’ve not done a happy hour; we’re doing a lot more regular sit-down restaurant sales.

A business model like that is not profitable.”

During the fall and winter months, Charley’s relied heavily on their newly updated takeout and delivery service, which includes

alcoholic beverages, as well as the warmer weather that allows for maximized outdoor seating.

However, Lowenstein said that even with these successes, the fluctuating rise of COVID-19 cases in Ann Arbor still presented difficulties for Charley’s.

“The hardest part is the uncertainty: trying to always be changing and always be adapting and not knowing when you’re going to be able to just go back to normal,” Lowenstein said.

Zingerman’s Delicatessen, another Ann Arbor and U-M community favorite, has been closed for in-person dining since the pandemic began in March 2020. Jennifer Hall, marketing and communications manager for Zingerman’s, said, like Charley’s, Zingerman’s had to completely revise their original business model by implementing new programs.

“We’re always looking for change and are able to experiment

Grand Rapids and Detroit,” Hall said. “Last summer, people weren’t traveling very much outside of their own communities, so they placed orders with us, and then we took the orders out to them. It was like a giant takeout project, and that was a great idea. We have a lot of people who were super interested and they loved it.”

Ann Arbor Councilmember Ali Ramlawi, D-Ward 5, is the owner and operator of Jerusalem Garden.

He said there is adversity rooted in keeping a business alive and well during an ongoing pandemic.

“When you can’t plan in business, it’s very stressful,” Ramlawi said.

“You want to plan for your staff, how you train your staff, how much staff to have, how much food to have. And you would get these dictates at the last minute, and you got to redraw your plans again.

You’re trying to run a business, and with anything business you want to be consistent with everything, and

ISAAC MANGOLD/Daily Ann Arbor businesses anticipate a return to more normal operations in the fall.

with different approaches and take the best of what we learn in that work and then try it out,” Hall said. “If it works, it’s great, and if it doesn’t work, we try again. So we’ll continue to do that, we’ll continue to look for ways to improve and opportunities to make changes across our operations and our service to meet whatever the demands of the time are.”

Zingerman’s “Reuben Tour” was one of the new ideas the business put together last summer in the hopes of increasing business.

According to Hall, the “Reuben Tour” was a success and could be repeated this upcoming summer.

“We took orders from people in different cities like Kalamazoo and

there was very little consistency in the last year.”

Ramlawi also discussed the ongoing struggles and battles small businesses in Ann Arbor have to endure and try to overcome.

“As entrepreneurs, small business owners and restaurateurs, we are creative, fighters, hard workers, and we show up every day and we know every day is a new day,” Ramlawi said. “Even though yesterday was one of the worst days you’ve had in a long time, you’d come back, dust yourself off, show up again, hope that your staff joins you, and you fight to live to see another day.”

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NEWS 3

Class-action complaint filed against U-M for its handling of Anderson cases JARED DOUGALL Summer News Editor

A class action complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Thursday against the University of Michigan for its handling of allegations of sexual assault against former University doctor Robert E. Anderson. The complaint, in order to prevent and respond to sexual violence on the U-M campus, seeks a court order that will require the University to carry out major reforms surrounding the school’s best-practice policies and procedures related to sexual and gender-based abuse on campus.

“The patient-physician relationship involves a solemn commitment and trust,” the complaint reads. “Without trust, how could a physician expect patients to reveal the full extent of their medically relevant history, expose themselves to the physical exam, or act on recommendations for tests or treatments? For decades, the University of Michigan allowed and enabled a physician in its employ, Dr. Robert E. Anderson to continuously violate that solemn trust.”

The complaint, which lists a series of reforms and bestpractices, states that the University needs to implement more training and education, and add additional policies for how to identify, prevent and respond to sexual and genderbased assault. It also seeks to appoint an “independent monitor” to oversee the implementation of these policies and report on progress to the court.

Some lawyers representing plaintiffs, like Annika K. Martin, made statements providing support to victims of Anderson.

“Everyone who was abused

by Robert Anderson – including those who may not be ready to come forward – deserves an opportunity to hold U-M accountable and have their voice

heard,” Martin said. “U-M has repeatedly failed to implement policies that put students first, and accordingly this complaint seeks relief through the court to ensure they will.”

Led by LSA junior Josephine Graham, the complaint is a companion to a suit filed in March 2020 by survivors of abuse at the hands of Anderson.

The complaint alleges the University and its Regents enabled Anderson’s sexual abuse of students from 1968 until 2003.

“The Anderson case is one of many at U-M rooted in the university’s pervasive and broken culture mirroring our greater society,” Graham said in a press release. “Genderbased violence is a complex, systemic issue that requires systemic solutions to prevent and eradicate it.”

More than 70 individual lawsuits have been filed in federal court, but the class action suit, unlike the individual lawsuits which only represent specific plaintiffs, seeks to prosecute the University on behalf of all students affected by Anderson — even those who may not be ready to come forward.

Since October 2020, the lawyers representing the University and the lawyers who brought the original class action suit have been in negotiations.

A settlement could cost the University millions of dollars in damages to the hundreds of alleged victims of Anderson’s abuse.

The law firm WilmerHale completed their independent investigation of the allegations against Anderson last week.

The investigation concluded that there was “no doubt” about the fact that the hundreds of complaints against Anderson were credible and Anderson exhibited a consistent pattern of misconduct. The report outlines recommendations for the University to follow in order to improve upon their practices and procedures regarding sexual assault.

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4 OPINION

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

OLIVIA MOURADIAN | OPINION COLUMNIST

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

TikTok: A fashion marketing monster

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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.

BRANDON COWIT | OPINION COLUMNIST

Colombian state-sanctioned murder: the U.S.’s darkest secret

W

ho is the first Colombian you can think of? Maybe it’s a popular musician, like Shakira or J Balvin. Maybe it’s an athlete, like weightlifter Oscar Figueroa or soccer player Carlos Valderrama. Or maybe it’s an actor, like “Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara or “Ice Age” star John Leguizamo — who, in researching this piece, I was surprised to find was born in Colombia.

In any case, the answer is probably not former President Alvaro Uribe.

This is not terribly surprising; the only foreign leaders most Americans consistently seem to recognize are British Prime Ministers and long-time leaders of enemy nations, like Fidel Castro. Nevertheless, he is probably the most important figure in shaping Colombia over the last two decades. During his administration from 2002 to 2010, he implemented far-reaching neoliberal economic reforms such as privatization of state-owned enterprises and strong economic deregulation. He also cracked down on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a guerrilla insurgency that had been on one side of the nation’s decades-long civil war, reducing its membership from 20,000 to 8,000. He was incredibly popular throughout his presidency, winning re-election in 2006 with around 62.4% of the vote and leaving office with an approval

rating of 75%. It is unsurprising that both of his successors, Juan Manuel Santos and current President Iván Duque, are both deeply connected to Uribe, with the former having been his Minister of National Defense and the latter’s party, Democratic Center, having been founded by Uribe.

All of this popularity comes in spite of the fact that Uribe and his government’s security forces, in their effort to vanquish FARC, enacted untold amounts of brutality toward Colombian civilians. The most notable examples of this are the series of murders known as the “false positives” scandal.

During Uribe’s presidency, civilians, often poor and mentally ill, were promised high-paying jobs, lured into remote areas, killed by military officials and officially recorded as FARC militants to inflate military kill totals. Until these murders were revealed in 2008, the military officials involved were frequently given promotions for the estimated 10,000 killings between 2002 and 2010. Additionally, Uribe and a number of his allies were found to have ties to right-wing paramilitary groups, which over the course of the civil war killed around 100,000 civilians. Horrifyingly, all of this was carried out with U.S. funds as part of the Plan Colombia program, which pledged $10 billion between 2000 and 2015 to Colombia to fight both FARC and drug trafficking. Its

principal advocates included thenSenator Joe Biden.

Why is this relevant to today?

Over the past few weeks, Colombia has been engulfed by protests. These protests started over a since-scrapped plan by the Duque administration to raise taxes on the poor, but they have now broadened to include frustrations over the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that it has broken the 2016 peace deal with FARC — killing a number of social movement leaders and former FARC fighters. The police’s response to these protests has been swift and brutal, killing 39 protestors, arbitrarily detaining 900 and sexually assaulting 12, according to human rights group Temblores y Indepaz. One of the most prominent voices in favor of this crackdown has been Uribe himself, whose tweet expressing support for police was removed by Twitter for “glorifying violence.” This type of violence against protestors is not unprecedented for Duque. In 2019, protests over police brutality were met with police brutality themselves, with one estimate stating that 13 protestors were killed by police in the first two days alone.

Read more at michigandaily.com Brandon Cowit is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at cowitb@umich.edu.

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T

he strawberry dress. The crossover leggings. The Vivianne Westwood pearl choker. There are endless examples of fashion trends that TikTok has breathed into existence. This relatively new smartphone application has so much ownership over these trends that their original names are frequently tossed aside in favor of “the TikTok (insert article of clothing).” As an Aerie employee, I saw the buying power behind TikTok firsthand as I watched girls swarm to our store for months in search of “the TikTok leggings,” a term that can be linked to both Aerie’s crossover leggings or Amazon’s scrunch leggings.

TikTok’s seemingly endless amount of discomfiting content and young audience have built a connotation of thoughtlessness around the platform.

But seeing droves of people who had never been in an Aerie before walk in with such purpose and interest illustrated the tangible effects of this deceptively simple app.

For an app that is so commonly deemed to be “stupid” or “for middle school girls” — an insult rooted in the well-established tradition of delegitimizing female interests — TikTok has created an impressive amount of careers for users in a relatively short period of time right from their own bedrooms. However, TikTokers are rarely given the respect that influencers on other apps are given. Whether or not their content deserves this respect is dependent on both the TikToker and the perspective of the viewer. With their problematically superfluous associations with the fashion industry, fashion TikTokers are often seen in a materialistic manner. However, considering the 156,000 emails Aerie received from customers asking to be

put on the waitlist for the crossover leggings, this “materialism” resonates with audiences of a multitude of different backgrounds.

At some point, we have to ask ourselves: Is liking clothing and the way it can make you feel frivolous, or is the assumption that these interests are frivolous, frivolous itself?

Similarly, is TikTok thoughtless, or is that connotation a result of thoughtlessness? Many people make a pointed effort to separate themselves from what society generally considers to be unimportant. In terms of TikTok and fashion, two subjects that are frequently discredited, TikTok’s ability to get people to spend money — a metric American capitalism places particular emphasis on, for better or for worse — stands in stark opposition to the perception of frivolity around the two.

The subject of a TikTok does not seem to affect the popularization of a specific piece of clothing. Even videos that have nothing to do with what the creator is wearing have gone viral due to their clothing. The particular TikTok that sparked the frenzy around the aforementioned leggings was a simple dancing video.

This trend embodies the constant presence of the fashion industry in our lives. Just by dancing, Hannah Schlenker, the creator who made the video that began the craze, caused Aerie stores all across the country to sell out of the leggings — an item that, from my experience working there, had not been performing well for months.

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Olivia Mouradian is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at omouradi@umich.edu.

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

O

Op-Ed: GEO’s fight for the right to boycott

n Thursday, April 22, representatives from the Graduate Employees’ Organization met with University of Michigan administrators to discuss an issue of free speech on campus — the right to exercise freedom of conscience through the refusal of letters of recommendation. The discussion revealed the University’s current policy, or “governing principle,” for what it is: an attack on academic freedom designed not to protect students or faculty, but only to shield the University from controversy and liability.

This right has been under attack at the University of Michigan since 2018 when, in separate incidents, two instructors — Professor John CheneyLippold and a graduate student instructor — declined requests for recommendations from students wishing to study in Israel. Writing these letters would have gone against the academic boycott of Israel in support of Palestinian human rights, and both instructors declined them for that reason. Even

though Cheney-Lippold, associate professor of American Culture, was exercising his constitutional right to free speech, U-M leaders nevertheless issued severe sanctions, including the loss of his upcoming sabbatical and a denial of a merit-based raise for one year. The graduate student instructor received a formal letter of admonishment from her department chair with implied threats of dismissal from the graduate program if such behavior were to happen again. What’s more, University President Mark Schlissel and then-Provost Martin Philbert issued a public statement that denounced both instructors.

The punishment meted out to Professor Cheney-Lippold and the public statement from the most powerful U-M leaders was meant to warn campus faculty of the price for academic freedom, and potentially had a chilling effect on those who might otherwise speak out if they did not feel threatened.

But the University wanted to make sure this wouldn’t happen again, so

they convened a so-called Blue Ribbon Panel to devise a principle that would govern letters of recommendation.

The resulting policy is a strident attack on free speech. It doesn’t prohibit instructors from denying letters of recommendation for political or ethical reasons, but only from vocalizing those reasons. This did not sit well with GEO members, who voted overwhelmingly to oppose the policy in our 2020 contract negotiations. Much has been written about “the Palestine exception to free speech,” which describes the way norms of freedom of expression are so often bent to exclude those who would speak out for justice in Palestine.

Despite the ongoing assault on Palestinian lives and human rights, however, our problem with the University’s policy on letters of recommendation is not just about Palestine. More and more, instructors are starting to see letters of recommendation as an important site of political opposition and learning.

There is a growing movement among mathematicians to refuse to write let-

ZACK BLUMBERG | SENIOR OPINION EDITOR

I

OPINION 5

Op-Ed: It can happen here

n September 2020, Barton Gellman, staff writer at The Atlantic magazine, published an ominous piece titled “The Election That Could Break America.” In the article, Gellman, with the help of legal scholars and political scientists, broke down the ways in which incumbent President Donald Trump, aided by Republican loyalists, could potentially utilize the United States Constitution’s ambiguities to subvert the results of the 2020 election and sow chaos. Although the worst of Gellman’s predictions did not come to fruition, the election and its aftermath were a time of extreme instability which eventually culminated in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. As such, Gellman’s article provides a prescient look at the more mechanical aspects of a major issue which much of American society hasn’t seemed to fully internalize: the weakness of democracy. Ultimately, in order to protect democracy and its institutions going forward, Americans must first be willing to both recognize and confront the concerning, real possibility of democratic backsliding at home.

The takeaway from both Gellman’s article and the 2020 election itself should not be that America survived its one potential run-in with authoritarianism, but rather that democracy itself

desperately needs to be strengthened and protected. The Republican Party, now fully backing Trump and his “big lie” about the 2020 election, has developed an antidemocratic vengeance that American society, including the Democratic Party, is wholly unprepared to contend with in the coming years. However, it doesn’t seem like Democrats in power have actually internalized the significance of either the situation itself or their unduly tepid response in a meaningful way.

Since reclaiming the Presidency and the Senate, Democrats have focused on passing popular bills, such as the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, and worked to highlight the values of bipartisan legislation. While these approaches are, in and of themselves, both good strategies for potentially winning over Republican voters, they miss a key point: Defeating an undemocratic movement purely via popular policies, as the Democrats have attempted to do thus far, is not a sustainable strategy. It doesn’t actually counter or limit the Republicans’ undemocratic approach, and therefore fails to secure the future of America’s democratic institutions (although the House has passed H.R. 1, it is exceedingly unlikely to ever receive the necessary support to pass in the Senate).

However, the more fundamen-

tal problem is that truly protecting democracy and its institutions requires Americans to fully comprehend their ephemeral nature. Americans must recognize that the United States, like every other democracy on earth, is susceptible to backsliding, a process by which formerly-democratic institutions slowly become increasingly less liberal. Unfortunately, America’s democratic origin story (one which also glosses over many less inclusive parts of the country’s political history) can numb both politicians and citizens to the fact that democratic governance is not an unyielding constant, but rather something which must be consciously upheld and protected.

Because of America’s long democratic history, it is easy to visualize democracy as a binary, with a simple divide between democratic countries like the United States (those with elections) and undemocratic ones (those without elections). However, the truth is that democracy is a complicated and nuanced system that exists along a continuum, and often has no clear or explicit boundaries. As backsliding across the world has recently shown, the erosion of democratic institutions is often akin to the fable of the boiling frog, who is slowly killed as the water in the pot gets continually hotter. Just as there is no temperature at which

ters for privacy-violating surveillance organizations, like the National Security Agency. There is also the longstanding trend of declining recommendation requests for Teach for America applicants. We can think of a whole host of objectionable organizations — ExxonMobil, Raytheon, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s congressional office — to which an instructor may want to vocally refuse to write letters of recommendation. Being able to voice the reason for denying a letter of recommendation is a critical component of any boycott, and GEO is proud to stand against this indefensible policy.

GEO ultimately won a meeting with U-M administrators to discuss the policy and how it will be implemented.

The discussion left us only with a clearer sense of how poorly thought-out and difficult to implement the policy is. While U-M administrators made repeated reference to fears of discrimination as justification for the policy, they were never able to explain how

Teach for America applicants could be understood as a group that could be discriminated against. The argument that the policy was designed to protect students from discrimination fell apart as the administrators repeatedly told us that graduate student instructors could deny letters for any reason at all — just so long as we don’t vocalize it. Indeed, the University policy as it stands practically gives license to instructors to discriminate against students in denying letters of recommendation, provided that they don’t say the quiet part out loud.

Furthermore, while the University claims to be protecting students, the policy actually makes it more difficult for students to get letters of recommendation.

Read more at michigandaily.com Amir Fleischmann is the Contract Committee Co-Chair of the Graduate Employees’ Organization and can be reached at contractchair@geo3550.org.

MADELYN VERVAECKE | OPINION CARTOONIST CAN BE REACHED AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU.

the frog can definitively say the water has suddenly become too hot, there is usually no single, objective point where a system becomes too illiberal to be considered a real democracy. For instance, although America has free and fair elections, it also has several hugely unrepresentative political institutions and a rash of voter restrictions.

These limitations obviously don’t make America a totalitarian dictatorship à la North Korea, but they do certainly make it less democratic than it could be.

With that in mind, Americans must

confront the fact that the country’s metaphorical pot of water is heating.

For decades, American democracy has — according to Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, the authors of “How Democracies Die” — survived through mutual toleration and political forbearance.

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Zack Blumberg is a Senior Opinion Editor and can be reached at zblumber@umich.edu.

6 MICHIGAN IN COLOR ELIYA IMTIAZ MiC Columnist

Every so often I hear about Hazaras in Afghanistan. I just did last week — it was mostly children who died. I remember how Khaled Hosseini so beautifully and eloquently painted a heartbreaking picture of the recent history of Afghanistan in his novel, “The Kite Runner.” To this, students at my high school analyzed questions such as, “Why did Hassan and Ammar get treated so differently?” and, “What was the basis of discrimination and subjection for Hassan and his family?”

Every so often, I hear about a blast in Pakistan and, every so often, I meet a family friend whose uncle, cousin or sibling was killed in these blasts. Just yesterday, I found out about the Gilgit massacre of Shia Muslims: initiated over a difference in Eid dates. I stared blankly at my laptop screen wide-eyed, shocked at the abhorrent events and appalled that I just now heard of them. When thinking about the intra-religious persecution of Shias, especially in my home country of Pakistan, I think about my privilege to freely practice my Shiism here. But then I wonder:

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Living as the exception

Is it really freedom when yes, I openly use a sajdiga for my daily prayer, but still have to hear the classic “Why do you pray on a rock” joke? Is it really freedom when I have to feign toleration upon hearing Sunni Muslims say, “We’re allowed to marry Jews and Christians, just not Shias”?

Every so often when I hear the news, I turn to the only method of denoting solidarity in this day and age: Instagram social activism. This metric is by no means indicative of genuity, but it is telling enough in the sense that many Muslims will post about all social justice issues — only until it comes to Shias.

Ironically, these are the same Muslims who retweet, “When it’s Muslims, the world is silent,” as though oppression is even a competition to begin with. For me as a Shia and my best friend as an Ahmadi, there’s another layer to that silence; when it is us, even fellow Muslims will be silent.

The sense of solidarity that every so often arises among Muslims is always amazing to see, but a disquieting part of me feels like an outsider looking in, knowing that this same unity will never be granted to persecuted Muslim minorities.

Although these creeping realities often surface, being in a subgroup affords one the clarity of noting not only hypocrisy, but

logical inconsistencies. When you exist at the intersection of multiple identities, it becomes almost a habit to attempt mentally checking off the boxes when evaluating the validity of activism: If advocating for women’s rights, does it only center white women? If uplifting Muslim perspectives, is it complicit in silencing Shia and Ahmadi voices? On the other hand, while minority communities focus on marginalized voices that are buried under these grander narratives, they also dismiss overarching issues such as sexism and racism that still arise within these smaller spaces. Yet at the same time, every so often I’ll hear or read, “YOU CANNOT BE PROGRESSIVE WITHOUT SUPPORTING _____.”

The text is right — claiming to be a progressive can’t stop where discomfort begins. It can’t stop at what was preached to you at a Friday night khutba or who your parents told you were kafir.

Muslim activism must push itself beyond the bounds of looking outwards. Sooner or later, our “one ummah,” one community, must begin looking inwards, where so frequently, we commit the same acts of abhorrent oppression against each other that we lament are inflicted onto us.

This brings me to the tragedy

Design by Marina Sun

of Aya Hachem that occurred in the spring of 2020. In what was likely to have been a hate crime, Aya was shot in the chest and died at only 19 years old, only one year into law school.

Immediately, graphics were sprawled throughout social media and donation links were shared once news of the event travelled. Then, a halt. In a series of anxiety-riddled tweets, Twitter user @humbleakh1 wrote, “I didn’t know she was a Shia… no way do I want to be in a situation where all this cause could go against me on the Day of Judgement.” The online Muslim community had found out that Aya was not merely Muslim, but Shia Muslim, and that modifier

changed everything. Donations were rescinded and fundraisers were frozen — the predominantly Sunni Muslims organizing and donating wanted to rid their hands of connections to the Shia rafidis, “rejectors.” After observing this discourse, I turned to hear the thoughts of my own Sunni friends, expecting a similar sense of the seething anger I had. In response, I got either radio silence or the occasional “Yeah, that really sucks.” It felt like screaming into an abyss that would awkwardly shuffle at my volume, uncomfortable probably more at its own complicity rather than the situation at hand.

from 2019, and at the end of her performance she said, “If you can love me, you can love yourselves too.” Her wording sounded so similar to the numerous selflove statements I’ve read before, but she inverts it. Her rhetoric doesn’t imply that an insecure person is devoid or incapable of love; love, rather, is just hiding inside of ourselves. She’s telling us that precisely because we have so much love for others, we have the capacity to extend that love to ourselves.

When I first saw Lizzo and started listening to her music, I greatly admired her because I was so insecure. Even though I didn’t discover her Tinydesk concert until rather recently, I think I coincidentally followed her advice anyway. Compared to other self-

love affirmations, I think Lizzo’s quote is the most productive and actionable. By identifying the things I love about other people, I could develop the same qualities for myself. Lizzo is gorgeous, and I realized that if I could see her for her beauty, I could see myself as beautiful too.

I’ve realized that self-love is not merely the absence of sadness, but rather an endless pursuit of fully actualized potential. While I may love myself on a physical level, I’m realizing that I could be working to improve my confidence in other areas of my life. However, I strive to improve, not because I hate my current self, but rather because I love myself and want to see myself achieve my full potential. I know that even if I’m not perfect, I am still worthy of love.

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Cuz I love you ANDREW NAKAMURA MiC Columnist

For as long as I can remember, I have always been fat. For me, selflove could never be a matter of “you’re not fat” or “it’s all in your head” because through my daily interactions with other people, I’m often reminded that others see me as fat even when they mean well and especially when they don’t. As such, I had no choice but to confront fatness itself and accept myself as I was. However, loving my body was much easier said than done, because fatphobia is so ingrained in society that unconscious bias is accepted as reasonable and almost never challenged.

When I was a young teenager, I sunk many hours into scrolling

through Tumblr and my Instagram explore page (that exclusively consisted of reposts from Tumblr) in order to find some sort of inspiration to love myself.

While I waded through a flood of posts, I saw countless variations of “you have to love yourself before you can love someone else.” At the time, I didn’t think critically about these statements. They promoted self-love, which I recognized as a good thing even if I didn’t really know what that was supposed to mean to me personally. Yet reading these quotes never left me feeling inspired to solve my internal problems. At the time, they all sounded as if they were trying harder to sound deep than to actually be insightful.

None of them helped me reflect on my approach to self-love, or

even define what self-love is. I was drowning in this ocean of insecurity, and all these vague quotes were like defective liferafts. Now that I’m revisiting these quotes, I’m honestly glad that I didn’t really pay attention to them before, because I think they’re not only unproductive but wrong. I know many people who do not love themselves but have developed healthy relationships; is their love invalid? If I have only ever given “fake” love, then what is “real” love? How can I love myself when I’ve apparently been doing it wrong for my whole life?

The sentiment behind this quote may be pure, but its language is unproductive at best and harmful at worst.

Several years later, I watched Lizzo’s NPR Tinydesk concert

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Where are you on the individuality spectrum?

ROSHNIMOHAN MiC Columnist

It was jean shorts and a cropped tank top, probably because we were in the middle of a hot summer, and it was a cute outfit that let them stay cool.

Crowds of girls walked around campus wearing similar outfits.

I didn’t see any problem with it, but the people around me sure did, and so did Instagram and Twitter. Pictures of groups of girls circulated throughout Barstool’s Instagram with “copy and paste” being a go-to phrase in the comment section, ironically pointing out their “lack of originality.” Their outfit became the symbol of “basic,” a term commonly used as another way to shame women for almost everything they do, when in reality, it’s just a popular form of individuality.

When I think of individuality, I think of a spectrum. On the extreme left, we have the individuality complexes, where every decision we make revolves around being different and standing out from the people around us. On the extreme right, we have the opposite, where we deny ourselves from any ounce of individuality to simply fit in with the crowd. In my experience, we all have to dabble on both sides of the spectrum before actually finding ourselves in the middle.

For most of middle school, I planted myself on the left side of the spectrum. Walking into

school every day with dark blue basketball shorts and a dry-fit T-shirt made me feel like I was different, playing into the “not like other girls” trope. This trope centers around — and against — society’s description of “basic” women as unintelligent, uninteresting, talentless and superficial in order to portray them as inferior to men. It forces many women to try to prove themselves as worthy and further distance themselves from the “basic” girl stereotype put upon them. Falling into a spiral of trying to prove myself, I rejected pop music, hated makeup and the color pink and fixated on sports. There’s nothing actually wrong with hating or liking these things, but this persona I adapted by following the “not like other girls” trope felt constricting. I lost touch with the real me.

My box of earrings sat in the corner of my room untouched. The piercings on my ears closed up for the first time since I was a baby.

My collection of nail polish was quickly thrown into the trash, all because I did not want to fit into the “stereotypical girl” who liked pink and jewelry and dresses.

But the clothes I wore to break away from the stereotypes did not represent me. I simply played into them to stand out. I was not the tomboy that I tried to present myself as, and I felt trapped and constricted playing into this “not like other girls” cliché. By the time eighth grade rolled around, I got tired and felt unhappy with having to avoid the “girly” things I secretly liked for so long.

During this time, I started letting new people into my life that drastically changed my lifestyle; our weekends were filled with movie marathons of every “chick flick” that we could think of. My friends would talk about them for hours after we watched, highlighting everything they loved and hated about the movies.

In every movie we watched, they picked apart the hidden sexism behind the characters and the plot — the “not like other girls” trope. Before this, I had never even acknowledged the trope’s existence, yet I unknowingly went along with it. I quickly grew to be embarrassed for acting differently just for the sake of being different and playing into a misogynistic cliché. To get past this phase, I pushed myself to the right, but way too far.

Throughout the rest of middle school, and even a large portion of high school, I stayed on the right side of the spectrum. “through the late night” by Travis Scott would blare through my headphones while walking to class, as I would adjust my hair riddled with heat damage from straightening my natural curls.

Leggings and a plain or floral top, sometimes a little cropped.

White Adidas sneakers instead of Air Force Ones only because the latter were always sold out. And don’t get me wrong, the outfits were cute, but other than the cushy sneakers, it wasn’t me. I dressed like everyone else, used the same slang and listened to the same music — even though I hated what I had become. If

Celestial Motion 5/24-5/30 ANDREW NAKAMURA MiC Columnist

The week begins with the Moon in Scorpio from May 24 to 25. The Scorpio Moon unearths our innermost desires and emotions, and lets us face them in all their intensity. Dig deep into your mind and abandon any fears or limiting beliefs.

The powerful energy of the Scorpio Moon transitions into the even brighter full Moon and a lunar eclipse in Sagittarius on May 26. The full Moon brings each sign closure, and the eclipse magnifies the full

Moon’s power. Now is the time to make peace with your past and confidently move forward with your life.

Venus squares Neptune on May 27, leaving everyone slightly on edge and prone to disappointment. Be careful to communicate clearly. On May 28 the Moon enters Capricorn, which can motivate us to be very productive and work tirelessly toward our success.

Mercury begins its dreaded retrograde cycle on May 29, and it will exit its retrograde phase on June 22. Mercury is currently in Gemini, whose f lippant nature indicates that

each sign will need to face many changes at the same time.

Remain f lexible in order to transform Mercury retrograde’s challenges into opportunities.

On the same day, Mercury forms a conjunction with Venus, which brings cheerfulness and lighthearted merriment.

The Moon enters Aquarius on May 30, which encourages us to think of new ideas, revise our usual routines and interact with others. The week closes on a high note with Mars forming a trine with Neptune, which boosts our creativity and energizes us for the week ahead.

MICHIGAN IN COLOR 7

Design by Roshni Mohan

everyone blended in, why would I break the pattern? If I broke the pattern, I felt like I would be seen as the same person I was, wearing those oversized basketball shorts just to be perceived as different from the rest. But in reality, trying to conform made me the same person I desperately tried to get away from, but this time in leggings.

A repetitive sequence of left and rights followed, from strictly alternative music and movies, to exclusively pop, and then right back to indie and arthouse. It was only during quarantine that I was forced to focus only on myself. When schools closed and I wasn’t able to see others, I was eventually able to stop comparing myself to my peers and get a remote sense of who I am. But while social interactions decreased, the use of social media quickly replaced it causing setbacks. The continuous use of social media only pushed me further away from discovering myself due to the constantly changing trends displayed on TikTok and Instagram. Platforms like Pinterest are often used to show different style aesthetics.

While this can be helpful as inspiration while concocting your own style, the pressure to conform leads to relying too heavily on the application, resulting in people recreating the exact looks without adding any personal touch. Limiting my interactions with the app and other social media, as well as peers, pushed me to find my own style, since there was no one to compare myself to. It gave me a balance between the two polarizing sides: conformity and explicit individuality.

Being in the middle of the spectrum does not mean you’ve found a balance between being

“unique” and “basic.” It simply means that the way you dress and act represents you. The middle means you stray away from trying to fulfill the “not like other girls” view, but at the same time you are not overcompensating to conform. You act the way you do because that is who you are and the way you express yourself, not because of how your peers act or don’t act. I, for one, classify myself as pretty “basic,” but it does not bother me the way it did before, because it is me.

From childhood, we’ve been ingrained to believe being like a “stereotypical” woman was a bad thing through the movies we watch and the music we listen to. We’re insulted for acting too “basic,” or like other girls. But at the same time, we’re insulted for acting differently. Society uses the trope they created for us and turns it around to insult us. If a girl acts differently, she’s labeled as “trying too hard” and made fun of for being too quirky or weird. Unfortunately, some men and women will shame you with the very phrase they complimented you with minutes earlier, commenting “not like other girls” as an insult. At this point, it seems like there is not a single thing a girl can do without facing any backlash from society. It’s not only insulting but also hypocritical since men are not held to the same exact standard. In many instances, men “lack originality” in the same way women do. They post the same fishing pictures, listen exclusively to the same rap artists and wear the same Guess shirt that was once the pinnacle of male fashion. Yet, “basic” is still mostly used toward and against girls.

Read more at michigandaily.com

8 ARTS

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘Shadow and Bone’ is the fantasy show we’ve been waiting for

Courtesy of ‘Shadow and Bone’

SARAH RAHMAN Daily Arts Writer

There’s something so delightful about the fantasy genre when it’s done right. Maybe it’s the inner child in all of us that appreciates the mysticism and imagination that fuels every fantasy story, or perhaps it’s the adult in us that needs to fully escape our responsibilities for an hour or two. Regardless of the reason, the fantasy genre has cemented itself as a mainstay of popular culture over the years, which should come as no surprise. Fantasy excites our imaginations like no other genre through its characteristic immersive worldbuilding and vibrant characters. A feature of this immersiveness is fantasy’s ability to make us question the conflicts and norms of our own world.

Because media within the fantasy genre must build a reality from the ground up, oftentimes designing an entirely different social paradigm as well, thoughtfully created fantasy stories serve as the perfect stage for social commentary. Enter “Shadow and Bone,” Netflix’s latest fantasy series based on the Grishaverse, the universe developed by author Leigh Bardugo in her Shadow and Bone trilogy and Six of Crows duology.

“Shadow and Bone” combines the narratives from the two book

series, resulting in a thoroughly varied set of plots that culminates into a single, compelling story set in a fascinating universe. The Grishaverse includes a variety of ethnic and tribal divisions based upon regional distinctions, but the primary division in the universe is the one between Grisha, or individuals born with magical abilities, and non-Grisha in the country of Ravka. Non-Grisha view Grisha as witches and sorcerers meant to spread evil and abuse their power, while Grisha view non-Grisha as an oppressive enemy that seeks to exterminate them.

Ravka is divided by the Fold, a mass of darkness and monsters which makes it nearly impossible to travel between the separated regions.

This setup does a number of things. First, it establishes a division between distinct groups of people who have no control over how they are born. In addition, the existence of The Fold provides a concrete obstacle to overcome, as a literal embodiment of division. The story’s primary protagonist is Alina (Jessie Mei Li, “All About Eve”), who was orphaned at a young age when her parents were killed attempting to cross The Fold. Alina is a nobody, orphaned and ostracized for her Shu ancestry, which is seen as a national enemy to Ravka. Alina’s predicament sets the tone for the series, wherein seemingly

powerless individuals are required to tackle systemic structures and obstacles in order to preserve their world’s wellbeing. During this process, Alina transforms from a somewhat naive, selfdoubting character to one capable of recognizing manipulation and abuse. Eventually, Alina learns to stand up for herself, driven by her increasing confidence in her abilities and moral discernment.

On top of its character development, one of the best parts of the series is how it plays around with the concept of love, going against our understanding of the divisions between familial, romantic, and platonic love, opting instead for an ambiguous depiction. The heart of the show is the relationship between Alina and Mal (Archie Renaux, “Morbius”), who share a bond from their beginnings in the same orphanage.

Through the letters they write to each other when they are separated for the first time, we come to understand everything the two have left unspoken during their relationship. It becomes clear that they are devoted to each other in a way that goes beyond traditional relationship definitions.

Similarly, the relationship between characters Kaz (Freddy Carter, “Pennyworth”) and Inej (Amita Suman, “Doctor Who”) is also profoundly supportive in

a way that goes beyond a defined relationship, as they protect each other unconditionally. Kaz is a hustler of sorts who owns a gambling club, while Inej is a woman talented in combat who was sold into servitude as a child.

Not quite a romance, but not quite friendship either, their relationship begins with an alliance meant to benefit both of them. This develops into Kaz helping Inej fight for her freedom from slavery, no matter the cost. Ultimately, the motivation behind their support of one another isn’t for any personal profit, but simply because it seems inherently right. It’s powerful, it’s human and it reads as love in the rawest form.

It should also be noted that the relationship between Kaz and Inej is from the Six of Crows duology, while the relationship between Alina and Mal is from the Shadow and Bone trilogy. The combination of sources creates a strong narrative parallel we otherwise wouldn’t have gotten from the books alone.

Much in the same way the show benefits from its multitude of compelling relationships, the series also benefits from its diverse casting and welcome inclusion of people of color. Many series destroy nuance by featuring a single character of a given race because, consciously or not, the series asserts that character as a representative of their race, preventing them

from fully acting as an individual.

“Shadow and Bone” isn’t perfect by any means, but in casting a multitude of racial backgrounds and lending its diverse characters genuine personality and strengths, the show achieves true realism and nuance.

Given all of this, why is “Shadow and Bone” a series that we need opposed to just another series we might enjoy? It boils down to the complexity of characters and storytelling the series manages to fit within a followable framework.

Season 1 has eight 1-hour episodes — a totally manageable amount of content to consume — and yet it tackles so many interesting concepts and side plots and emotions. The major prerogative of dismantling division and quelling conflict is clear, and yet the series makes sure to highlight how complicated and unwieldy asserting widespread change really is. Currently, we’re in a world that is more tuned into injustice, inequity and political strife than ever, and it’s tough to find oneself as an individual amidst so many daunting problems. But does that mean we shouldn’t try? If we are anything like Alina, or the other characters in “Shadow and Bone,” the answer is a resounding no, which is ultimately why “Shadow and Bone” is absolutely worth the watch.

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ARTS 9

Taylor Swift’s re-recordings: reflection, nostalgia and deja-vu KAITLYN FOX Daily Arts Writer

I was only eight years old when Taylor Swift first released Fearless.

At the time, Swift and her songs about heartbreak were too mature for my childhood self who still adamantly believed that boys had cooties.

As some of my childhood heroes outgrew their roles — Miley Cyrus hanging up Hannah Montana and the devastating breakup of the Jonas Brothers — I found myself gravitating toward Swift and her lovable country sweetheart persona. Even though I didn’t know what love was or what it was like to have my heart broken, I clung to Swift and vicariously lived my perception of high school through her music. Fourteen years later, Swift’s re-release of Fearless has taken on an entirely new meaning, now that I’ve lived through many of the triumphant and tragic love stories that were completely unrelatable for me as a kid.

Listening to the re-release of “Fifteen” has shown me how much I’ve grown since the album’s first version. The song was one of my favorites at 8 years old, allowing me to imagine what it would be like to date “the boy on the football team.”

Now at 21, I know what it’s like to fall in love with the captain of a sports team and have my heart broken.

As an adult, I wish I could tell my younger self that yes, the magic in “Fifteen” is real, but the line “Wish you could go back / And tell yourself what you know now” is the backbone of this story. While my younger self clung to the excitement of love and the anticipation of school dances and dating in high school, as an adult I cling to the hard truth that young love is fleeting. I see now that, as you age, you discover that it’s more important to develop yourself than to rest all of your hope in one person.

While songs like “Fifteen” remind me of how much older I am and how much life I’ve lived since the first release of Fearless, other tracks

like “You Belong With Me” are still timeless classics that transport me back to my childhood. Since the re-release of Fearless, my sister and I have spent many car rides blasting the album, belting the lyrics we’ve known by heart for over a decade. It’s when I’m singing “You Belong with Me” with my sister or hearing “The Way I Loved You” at the store that I experience a strange familiarity to when we were kids singing tracks from Fearless on our karaoke machine, pretending we knew what Swift meant when she says that love is “a roller coaster kind of rush.”

Perhaps this is one of the strangest phenomena of Swift’s re-recordings: their suspension of time. My first time listening to the re-recordings felt a lot like the first time I listened to the original album, and even though I knew what songs to expect, there was still a familiar sense of excitement and wonder as each track faded into the next. In fact, the way Swift mimics nearly all elements of the original recordings preserves a sacred time of

Design by Yassmine El-Rewini

my life. In many ways, the album is a space to reflect and recognize where I’ve been and how far I’ve come.

While many of the conversations surrounding Fearless are centered on the question of artists’ rights and fairness in the music industry, there’s much more at play here than Swift reclaiming the rights to

her work. Like her fans, I’m sure Swift experienced the same sort of nostalgia as she recreated the music that defined her as a teenager; this album has undoubtedly taken on an entirely new meaning for her as an artist.

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“Gold Diggers” brews dazzling satire of the American dream MEERA KUMAR Daily Arts Writer

On the first day of my 10th-grade American Literature class, as an introduction to the quintessential high-school-English-class novel “The Great Gatsby,” we learned about the ever-present American dream, or the belief that anyone can make it in the United States if they just work hard enough. To my then 15-year-old self, the critique of the American dream was foreign; my parents, who emigrated from India, are patriots who firmly believe in this social ideal. Thus, I was thoroughly intrigued by “Gold Diggers,” a 2021 magical realism novel written by Sanjena Sathian that portrays secondgeneration, Indian American youth willing to do whatever it takes to become successful. Sathian mixes magical realism, historical fiction and satire to deliver a truthful critique of the (Indian) American dream idolized by many immigrants in the late 20th and early 21st century.

“Gold Diggers” follows Neil Narayan, a boy crushed by societal expectations deeply infatuated with his driven neighbor, Anita Dayal. The novel is divided into two parts. The

first, set in Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, details Neil and Anita through high school, where Neil struggles in his classes until discovering Anita’s secret to success: alchemy. Anita and her mother steal gold to brew lemonade that “harnesses the ambition” of the owner. Neil, desperate to fit into his community’s ideals, begins to down the lemonade in copious quantities until his actions cause tragedy to strike. The second part is set ten years later in Silicon Valley, where most of his peers have migrated. He reunites with Anita to pull off “one last heist.”

I made the mistake of starting (and finishing) the book during finals, reading it in a single sitting.

The book bends literary conventions.

It’s difficult to find books that can be incredibly entertaining while seriously pondering deep questions.

It’s difficult to find books that capture the ambition taught from a young age within Indian American communities without dehumanizing Indian Americans into literal manifestations of the model minority myth as socially inept, clout-chasing side characters that lack inner worlds. It’s difficult to find books that bend genres like magical realism, historical fiction and satire in a way that is complex in its undertaking yet is still accessible.

The deeply talented and witty Sathian effortlessly pulls it off, creating a masterpiece of a novel that questions the ambition of Indian Americans and their place in American history.

Sathian details the life of a community just outside “the perimeter” of Atlanta and American society. The community, like so many others, believes that if they keep their heads down and work, success is inevitable. They’re often berated for fooling around — in Neil’s mother’s view, this might “include anything from neglecting to take up AP Biology to shooting up hard drugs.” Children, pushed by their parents, try to uphold cultural expectations while surviving in a society they feel unaccustomed to. Some with seemingly effortless abilities, like Anita, breeze through high school, while others like Neil struggle. Neil, initially annoyed with his “lack of intellect,” realizes that the success around him isn’t effortless, and is in fact just the opposite: Aside from working ample amounts, Anita has resources, like her lemonade.

Similarly, the American dream is never solely based on hard work or merit because often those who succeed already have the upper hand.

Sathian also focuses on the place of Indian Americans in American

history; Neil, as a high school student, discovers the story of an Indian man in the California Gold Rush. As a graduate student studying history at the University of California, Berkeley, he becomes obsessed with finding the man, his “Bombayan gold digger,” who was ostracized and later lynched.

The book focuses on how many Indian Americans weren’t viewed as American despite their ambition and participation within communities.

No matter how hard the characters strive for the American dream, they continually struggle financially, emotionally and, eventually, physically. Their Indian American community constantly pushes the narrative of the dream, and Neil and Anita work like hell for it, hopped up on lemonade (and, sometimes, coke).

Still, their solidified place “within the perimeter” of the American dream always seems just out of reach.

Sathian uses Neil’s “everyman” character to indicate how stifling the myth of the American dream can be.

That’s not to say Neil is devoid of personality — the lengths that Neil goes to maintain the illusion of the community ideal of success are frightening. Neil is selfish, oblivious and insecure. Academically, by his community’s standards, he’s

considered shockingly mediocre (which is an experience that I am not unfamiliar with). He’s a jerk and also one of the most realistic characters I’ve encountered in fiction.

He constantly compares himself to Shruti, a girl who he ridicules but is jealous of, calling her “discomfiting” and “embarrassing.” Her refusal to adhere to the American social, beauty and femininity standards of the early 2000s annoy others, especially Neil, and thus, he uses her as a scapegoat to vent his frustrations with Indian culture. In order to pursue the dream, Neil engages in petty, selfish high school drama with Shruti, which leads to an extremely devastating calamity when mixed with supernatural forces.

Sathian details horrors and truths too often swept under the rug in pursuing the American dream, indicating just how much of a toll the ideal can exert.

Many were deeply impressed with the novel; Ann Arbor’s local Literati Bookstore hosted an event with Sathian, which was organized

by Sarah Thankam Matthews.

Additionally, the book is being adapted into television by Mindy Kaling’s production company, Kaling International.

Read more at michigandaily.com

10 STATEMENT

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Town or gown: the two sides of Ann Arbor

BY LANE KIZZIAH

Design by Katherine Lee

Painting the rock at the corner sign erected as recently as the 1970s of Hill Street and Washtenaw begging people not to paint the Avenue is much more than just a memorial, but the tradition was too longstanding campus tradition. cemented in campus culture to be In 1953, Michigan students and shut down. their Michigan State counterparts For at least some residents in began vandalizing each other’s the area, the Rock represents a campuses with paint the week lot more harm than good. Despite before a rivalry football game, a its co-optation by the University tradition that escalated to student community, the Rock sits in arrests and suspensions. While George Washington Park, on city the vandalism subsided on campus, property. For Lauren (whose name the Spartans tried to get the final has been changed due to her fear word, painting “M.S.U.” on the side of retribution to her business by of a limestone boulder in an Ann University clients), a born and Arbor park sometime in the late raised Ann Arbor resident, the 1950s. The tradition of “Painting rock is the perfect depiction of the the Rock” persists at both schools University’s relationship to the today. Almost every time I drive broader community. down Washtenaw, the Rock looks Lauren expressed her frustration different after a new student group to me in a recent phone call. She’s or sports team has covered it with one of several local residents who everything from “Go Blue”s to have complained about the littering students’ names to political slogans. of paint buckets or concerns of But the Rock had a life long toxins getting into the gutter. In before the 1950s. If you were to 2016, Nehama Glogower, another scrape off the hundreds — maybe resident, wrote an article for the thousands — of layers of paint, you’d Ann Arbor Observer about her find a copper plaque depicting experience slipping in wet paint the stone’s original purpose: “To on the surrounding sidewalk.

George Washington this memorial According to the women in both erected in celebration of the two cases, they were unable to get their hundredth anniversary of his birth, concerns heard.

1932.” For years after the painting “(Residents) resent (the began, there was a push to preserve University’s) entitlement,” Lauren the monument’s integrity with a said. “Where (the students are) a

transient population, they don’t have a sense of placemaking because this isn’t their permanent home. And the University sort of allows that for their brand, and they don’t have a sense of collaboration.”

Colin Smith, Parks and Recreation Services Manager for the City of Ann Arbor, gets occasional complaints about the park, mostly when paint gets on the sidewalk or beyond. He said his department has to maintain the park at least twice a year, which he estimates costs about $500-$750 per visit when accounting for the materials needed to repaint the sidewalk and the labor. However, Michael Rein, U-M director of community relations, said he has never heard complaints about the Rock.

What is remarkable about the history of tension between the University and the town is how seldom it is addressed. Ann Arbor is constantly ranked among the top college towns in the country and is considered one of the University’s biggest assets. The school is so intertwined with the surrounding area — geographically, culturally and economically — that town and gown problems can seem nonexistent.

Ann Arbor was founded in 1824 by John Allen and Elisha

W. Rumsey. The two men headed west from Detroit in January of that year and reached what is now present-day Ann Arbor by early February. The pair purchased a collective 2.6 square kilometers of land for $800 (what would be about $22,000 today) and opened up the Washtenaw Coffee House, the town’s first structure. Ann Arbor — named in honor of Rumsey and Allen’s wives, both named Ann — started to expand as an agricultural trading center.

The University of Michigan, which had been founded in Detroit in 1817, relocated to Ann Arbor in 1839 while both school and town were in their infancy. Less than 20 years after its founding, the city had a population of 2,000, a courthouse, a jail, a bank, four churches and two mills. The University was even smaller. During its first year in the new town, the University had just seven students and two professors.

Now, the city’s population stands at over 120,000, and the school’s total enrollment is over 44,700.

Michigan and Ann Arbor have grown, simultaneously, but not necessarily together.

While most state constitutions give state legislatures power to provide for higher education, Michigan is one of the few that

mentions specific institutions and enumerates specific forms of governance and autonomy. Most states’ public higher education systems are controlled by a governing board, while Michigan’s 15 universities are independent schools. Each has their own school board that generally supervises the university’s actions and controls its finances. The governing bodies of Michigan’s three flagship institutions — the University of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State — are given almost complete autonomy over the universities’ operations. This has a number of implications, one being that the University isn’t bound by the Ann Arbor local government in nearly any form — it doesn’t pay taxes or follow the same zoning regulations — which, naturally, can cause some town and gown problems.

“The University doesn’t need to follow any of our rules,” Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor said.

“They don’t follow our zoning; they don’t follow our planning. And, of course, they have the resources to do what they want when they want to do it.”

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STATEMENT 11

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

The art of the roommate pitch

BY ANNIE RAUWERDA It was a match made on Facebook. My roommate Maggie and I found each other on the Class of 2022 page and immediately clicked because we had so much in common. We had both taken gap years. We shared a bedtime (11pm to 1am), diet (vegetarian) and cleanliness level (we let clutter build up when we were busy). We were both training for our first marathon. We both came from small, religious communities in the Midwest. We had seven-yearold brothers. She seemed warm and worldly, like the type of girl you meet in college. She felt — through a screen — perversely familiar. She seemed safe. If you can choose a great person like Maggie, I thought, why risk getting stuck with someone who blasts Nickelback at 3 a.m., or microwaves fish, or leaves toenails on your bed, or eats all your snacks without bothering to wipe away the crumbs?

In the United States, it’s a suspense-filled rite of passage to move from a childhood bedroom to a stuffy 9’ by 6’ dormitory: a world of carpeted corridors, hall councils and lanyard-wearing RAs who exude hollow cheerfulness.

Increasingly, freshman year of college is the first time students share a room, and after the infamous awkward photo in front of the bunk bed, roommates have the potential to make or break each other’s college experiences.

Amidst the uncertainty of going to college, uprooted students fearfully cling to peers who seem familiar.

Roommate self-selection has risen in recent years. Starting around 2010, Facebook has facilitated roommate-finding forums in which incoming students post blurbs about themselves and message the people who seem like compatible roommates.

So, what do 18-year-olds say about themselves when they’re trying to find the Monica to their Rachel, the Owen Wilson to their Wes Anderson (they roomed together at UT Austin), the yin to their yang?

It’s not unlike dating apps. The posts follow a predictable pattern: market-friendly biographies, chirpy and casual, laden with

Design by Annie Rauwerda

“go blue!”s and “can’t wait”s and lists of carefully chosen favorites (not too obscure, not too basic).

Excluding common words like “and” and “for,” the most-used word is “love.” Everyone is “super excited” and “pretty chill.” It’s as if one person in the class did the homework, and everyone else turned in a copy with a few words changed.

Integral to the post are articulated contradictions to the likes of ‘I love to go out but I also love to stay in’ or ‘I prioritize my studies but I also like to have fun’: statements so obvious that they become meaningless. You might as well say ‘I like to be awake sometimes but I also like to sleep.’ A form of the phrase, now crystallized as a cliche, shows up in about half of the posts.

Sometimes, students establish individuality with careful divulgences— descriptions

which are quirky enough to be memorable, safe enough to be cool and always positive. ‘I take an obscene amount of naps’ or ‘I am a bit of a sunset fanatic and love to watch them from a hammock’ or ‘I’m also obsessed with 7-Eleven and Chipotle’ or ‘I have a lot of crystals (not meth).’

Certain types of people in these roommate marketplaces seem more likely to post than others.

Students who choose to post on the Facebook page are not entirely representative of the entire incoming freshman class. About 75% of posts are by females. In my opinion, self-described “foodies” seem grossly overrepresented, although I suppose I can’t prove it. Among those who have posted in the 2025Facebook group in the past two weeks (I tallied them up), the most common major/ career track, shared by 23% of all posters, is pre-med, followed by

undeclared (15%), Engineering (14%) and Business (9%). Though the pre-med numbers seemed high to me, U-M advisor Julie Berson-Grand thinks the number sounds about right. In an email, she explained that the University of Michigan is “consistently in the top three of the number of medical school applications in the country.”

I found myself fascinated by the odd art of the roommate marketplace post and eventually got so invested that I tried to recreate the posts with artificial intelligence. These blurbs are so formulaic that an AI model picked up on the script rapidly, hilariously.

I used a number of resources including GPT-2 and TensorFlow, fed a few hundred posts into the AI model, and it quickly started spitting out examples based on what it had gleaned. The generated blurbs emulated the style enough to be somewhat believable, but

they had a sort of chaotic humor that one would expect from a robot trying to find a roommate.

Here’s one example: I (Gryffindor) have been partying all year and we decided to go out. There has been a lot of talk about basketball and basketball related dramas but I’m a big fan of Family Guy and Friends and Psych — unlike most people. My favorite shows are Big Bang Theory with greatest era, Psych and the office with greatest shows. I listen to a wide range of music and am very social. I can’t wait to go to all the football and basketball games and to watch the football and basketball teams play.

I’m considering rushing but can’t wait to go to all the football and basketball games. My sister and I recently committed to LSA and will be studying either psychology or chemistry. I can’t wait to meet all the students and make friends!

Please reach out to be besties and tell us something new! GO BLUE Instagram – @kateslategamer Snapchat – kateslategamer The result had all the parts of a roommate post: expected college major, social media handles, hobbies, taste in movies and TV, current slang (‘please reach out to be besties’), a ‘GO BLUE’ and even their Harry Potter house! But it’s eerily, palpably out-of-touch, right from the first sentence. Other subtle failures are implying that Friends, one of the most popular TV shows of all time, is obscure and gushing about football and basketball in an obscenely repetitive manner. But some of the model’s other posts, while stilted, are a little more convincing: “Hello my name is Daniel and i’m from Michigan. I’m undecided with my major but will be doing something business related and probably apply research into the subject. I’m an avid reader, I’m a big movie guy and I enjoy lots of life activities, but I’m also kind of a night owl. I love going out and hanging with my friends and can’t wait to go to tailgates and football games, but I’m also down to go out and have fun. I’m hoping to study abroad in LSA before my med school” Read more at michigandaily.com

12 SPORTS

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.

Michigan shows it belongs In competitive debut, Michigan Adaptive Sports and Fitness sends a message SPENCER RAINES Daily Sports Writer

SEATTLE — No team had ever beaten Washington in a regional game it hosted since 1995. The Huskies were a perfect 52-0.

Yet there Michigan was in the bottom of the seventh, up 2-1, and just three outs away from being the first team to do so.

Alex Storako clearly was ready for the opportunity.

Three outs later — and without throwing a single ball — the game was over. The Wolverines won, and in doing so, showed the NCAA that they belonged.

had their chance at Washington.

And, well, you know what happened.

Their 2-1 victory clinched a spot in the Seattle regional final on Sunday. And with the Huskies ace Gabbie Plane having pitched nearly two full games already this weekend, and Michigan needing to only win one more game while any other team needs to win three, the Wolverines truly sit in the driver’s seat.

Michigan’s best performance came against its strongest test to date. In the final rankings before the NCAA selection show, the Huskies came in 6th. The Wolverines’ best opponent prior to Saturday’s game

MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily Michigan’s big win over Washington proved it belonged in the national conversation.

“We had to just play our game,” Michigan coach Carol Hutchins said. “And I’ve told them all week, you don’t have to be better than you are just play the game you know how to play, I really thought we did that.”

To understand the significance of this win you have to go back a week to Sunday night — the NCAA selection show. Many expected Michigan to get a top 16 spot and host a regional at Alumni Field this weekend.

That did not happen.

Instead, they were seeded 17th and were sent across the country to play in Seattle against the 16th seeded Huskies along with Seattle University and Portland State. “(The selection committee) disrespected our entire conference,” Hutchins said to reporters immediately after the selection show on May 16th. “I’m not very pleased with it at all. Disrespect.”

But they still made the most of the hand they were dealt.

After a Friday night win over the Seattle Redhawks, the Wolverines

was Minnesota, who was ranked 24th.

Again, Michigan showed that it should have belonged in the national conversation all year.

The Wolverines showed that they deserved more respect. And they showed that they should’ve hosted a regional.

Because they didn’t just beat Washington while Plane was on the mound. Michigan controlled the game from the second inning all the way until Storako’s final pitch. The 2-1 scoreline wasn’t truly indicative of how the game went. Because while two solo home runs from senior infielders Lou Allan and Taylor Bump did provide the scoring for Michigan, it had multiple chances throughout the game to score as well, while Washington did not. The Wolverines had two runners reach third base throughout the game, the Huskies had zero. Michigan outhit Washington and Storako outpitched Plane.

Read more at michigandaily.com

GRAYSON BUNING Daily Sports Writer

Collegiate wheelchair tennis has grown markedly in recent years. Since 2019, the number of participating schools and athletes at the annual Collegiate Wheelchair Tennis National Championships has more than doubled despite the hardships imposed by the pandemic.

However, no program has yet come close to challenging the sport’s long-time heavyweights — the University of Arizona, San Diego State University, and the six-time champions University of Alabama.

That is, until this year.

Michigan was an enigma coming into this year’s Collegiate Wheelchair Tennis Nationals. People knew that the Wolverines were building something — word travels fast in the tight-knit adaptive sports community.

But beyond graduate student and wheelchair tennis star Chris Kelley, the caliber of Michigan’s athletes was, for the most part, anyone’s guess.

Shocking everyone, the Wolverines’ inexperience didn’t prove to be a barrier. Michigan traveled home with a fistful of finalist medals, even managing to give Alabama a run for its money in the team final.

Undoubtedly, the Wolverines’ performance on the court in its first ever competitive appearance

was remarkable. More remarkable still, however, was Michigan’s performance off the court.

Compared to the other participating schools, Michigan’s traveling entourage was enormous: the most athletes, two coaches, a physical therapist, and a host of supporting students. All were clad in a coordinated display of Wolverine pride, donning shirts, shorts, shoes embroidered with “Michigan Adaptive Sports and Fitness.” Even the spokes on the tires of the athletes’ wheelchairs were painted an eyecatching maize.

While this level of support and coordination at a major collegiate competition may strike the seasoned college athletics fan as standard or unexceptional, this is by no means the case for the majority of adaptive sports programs across the nation. Minimal funding and feeble institutional recognition is pervasive, stunting their growth.

Only a few collegiate programs have thus far been successful in generating the support necessary to begin to resemble the average collegiate varsity sports team, and it’s taken them a long time.

But this year, Michigan shattered that model. In the span of only two years, a combination of support from key institutional players and generous financial backing from the Adam Miller Memorial Fund, among others, has enabled the Wolverines

to become a dominant force in the collegiate adaptive sports space in next to no time.

“The support we’ve had — that’s why we had matching apparel and chairs,” Dr. Feranmi Okanlami, Director of Michigan’s Adaptive Sports and Fitness Program, said.

“These might seem like superficial items, but they made every other program look and see that we’re a well-oiled machine with organized ideas — they brought an energy that made people know that Michigan was there.”

Throughout the tournament, that energy was an attractive force. A significant number of passerby and Michigan alumni stopped by the Michigan contingent to inquire about the program and wheelchair tennis. A conversation between Okanlami and a hitting partner of former Michigan Men’s Varsity Tennis player and Wimbledon Finalist Mal Washington even led to a video of support from Washington himself.

“People that were not initially part of this entourage became part of this entourage,” Okanlami said.

“We had parents of athletes from other institutions come and sit with us because they were there by themselves — they gravitated to the Michigan contingent. I think that energy really attracted people and benefitted the competition.”

Read more at michigandaily.com

Courtesy of Manuela Davis Michigan’s Adaptive Sports and Fitness program has come a long way in a short time.

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Offense disappears in rubber game loss JACK WHITTEN Daily Sports Writer

The No. 24 Michigan baseball team entered the bottom of the ninth down by four runs — not an insurmountable deficit by the Wolverines’ standards. When slugger Griffin Mazur came to bat with one on and only one out, he needed just one good swing to put Michigan back in the game.

Instead, the fifth-year catcher swung at the first pitch of the at-bat and produced a weak grounder to the left side. The Maryland infield handled it cleanly, turning a game-ending double play that secured its 7-3 win over the Wolverines and mercifully ended one of Michigan’s most anemic offensive performances of the season.

The Wolverines scored all their runs in the bottom of the second, when fifth-year shortstop Benjamin Sems and sophomore second baseman Ted Burton both hit safely and sophomore left fielder Tito Flores crushed a three-run

homer.

“After the three-run homer, I thought for sure we would just keep the scoring going,” Michigan coach Erik Bakich said. “But we didn’t have much going on offensively after the second inning outside of some lineouts and a few walks.”

Even during the productive second inning, Michigan’s hitters showed a crucial lack of discipline: Mazur struck out on three pitches and redshirt sophomore center fielder Jordon Rogers and sophomore designated hitter Joey Velazquez ended the inning with back-toback strikeouts.

The Wolverines had another scoring opportunity in the third, when Sems batted with a runner on base. Sems got under the pitch from Terrapins’ starter Sean Burke and popped out in foul ground to end the inning, a rare occurrence for one of the team leaders in batting average and quality at-bat percentage.

Burke continued to dominate Michigan in the fourth and fifth and the Wolverines’ hitters didn’t make the necessary adjustments in their second

and third at-bats against him.

Burton struck out on three pitches and Mazur popped out in foul ground. Rogers and fifthyear third baseman Christian Molfetta managed to work full counts before striking out, at least.

Sophomore right fielder Clark Elliott and Sems both made hard contact in the sixth, but the Maryland defense was perfectly positioned to make the play both times.

“Maryland was pitching fine,” Bakich said. “Our fault for not making more hard contact, and the hard contact we made was caught.”

Michigan’s poor performance continued against the bullpen, which, like Burke, forced nearly every hitter into two-strike counts. Mazur struck out on three pitches again and Flores grounded into a double play. In the eighth, the Wolverines put two runners on for sophomore first baseman Jimmy Obertop but a breaking ball missed his bat for an inning-ending strikeout.

“We weren’t really able to string something together,” Elliott said. “We were taking

SPORTS 13

BECCA MAHON/Daily An anemic offensive performance cost Michigan the win against Maryland.

good at-bats sporadically.”

Altogether, Michigan managed only four hits and three walks and struck out 11 times. Molfetta, Mazur and Sems, typically three of the Wolverines’ best and most consistent hitters, went 1-for-11 in their last home game.

“You’d like to see all the seniors hit home runs and have awesome days on senior day,” Bakich said.“But it seems like it never goes to script that way.”

Regionals are only two weeks away, and for Michigan to survive and advance, it will need to hold the strike zone, work deeper into at-bats and move runners around in stressful situations.

Today isn’t the first time the offense has completely abandoned its successful approach in a rubber game, which doesn’t bode well for the pressure-packed games on the horizon.

Blown opportunity: Michigan falls short in NCAA Regional final, wasting talented senior class NICHOLAS STOLL Daily Sports Writer

SEATTLE — Michigan was up four. The lead was more runs than Washington had scored against the Wolverines in the past two games combined. There was an .88 ERA pitcher in the circle for Michigan and a pitcher who had just thrown a complete, seven-inning game on the rubber for the Huskies.

There was no reason to lose.

Then they blew it.

They bottled it, fumbled the bag, dropped the ball, shit the bed — however you want to put it, Michigan let an NCAA Regional victory fall through its hands.

The Wolverines (38-8), who entered the day only needing one out of two games to advance to the Norman Super Regional, crumbled at the brink of triumph at the hands of Washington (45-12) by a score of 10-5.

Michigan took the lead early.

A Lexie Blair single opened up the game, and a bunt from senior infielder Natalia Rodriguez advanced the junior outfielder into scoring position.

Senior first baseman Lou Allan ripped a ball to center field in the next at-bat, scoring Blair. Standing

up from her slide, Blair shouted towards the Michigan dugout and the team shouted back with just as much conviction.

After senior third baseman Taylor Bump drew a walk, a flyout advanced sophomore Audrey LeClair — pinch-running for Allan

MADELINE HINKLEY/Daily Michigan fell short in the NCAA tournament and let down its talented senior class.

— to third. Sophomore designated player Lauren Esman stepped up to the plate. In three pitches, Esman was rung up.

“We made a couple of miscues,” Michigan coach Carol Hutchins said, “They got a little over-amped and over-anxious.”

In the bottom of the frame, Washington answered with a series of hits that resulted in a sacrifice fly scoring Klingler from third.

All tied up, the Wolverines struck again, this time more decisively. A flurry of well-worked counts and balls finding gaps saw Michigan with bases loaded. More small ball saw the Wolverines scoring four one-by-one.

In the bottom of the third, the Huskies found their own basesloaded opportunity. A two-RBI double by Kelley Lynch was all they could muster before ending the inning on a pop out and a strikeout.

Michigan still had a two-run lead. It was in the driver’s seat heading into the fourth despite the

slip-up. Then it began to unravel.

Washington outfielder Jadelyn Allchin opened up the frame with a home run, cutting the deficit to one. Hutchins had seen enough, deciding to bring in senior lefthander Meghan Beaubien for junior right-hander Alex Storako.

She didn’t fare any better.

Sophomore second baseman Julia Jimenez took her time on the throw and Washington’s Sis Bates beat it out. A Klingler double scored Bates, tying the game at five apiece.

A grounder back to second was thrown home, Jimenez trying to get the force out at the plate, but the runner beat the throw and the Huskies took their first lead of the game. A gap shot fell in shallow right-center field scoring another.

Then, a double from outfielder Madison Huskey scored two more, making it 9-5, Washington. A short bunt froze Bump on the decision and yet another run scored.

Read more at michigandaily.com

14 SPORTS

Thursday, May 27, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Michigan offense struggles in loss against Maryland STEEL HURLEY Daily Sports Writer

Sophomore infielder Jimmy Obertop swung right through a curveball, striking out and leaving two runners on base with the score 7-3 in the eighth inning.

The Maryland bench erupted as Michigan’s first real chance to get back in the game disappeared.

The Wolverines (26-15 Big Ten) struggled on both sides of the plate as they fell to the Terrapins (26-15) on Sunday, 7-3.

Sophomore left-hander Jacob Denner started on the mound for Michigan, although it was a short start. He struggled early, allowing two home runs in the first inning as Maryland jumped out to a 3-0 lead. Denner got through the second but allowed a double in the third and was pulled in favor of senior right-hander Blake Beers.

“When you face good hitting and you fall behind or you make mistakes out over the middle of the plate good hitters are gonna hit

it,” Michigan coach Erik Bakich said. “They made us pay early in the game and we got down.”

Beers did not fare much better than Denner. He allowed an inherited runner to score, and then ran into trouble an inning later, allowing two runs and two more to reach base before he exited.

Freshman left-hander Logan Wood took over and allowed one run to score but was able to induce a double play to end the inning with the score at 7-3. Wood got through 2.1 innings before leaving.

The back end of the bullpen did well, as graduate student righthander Joe Pace worked a clean 1.1 innings in relief of Wood, and junior right-hander Willie Weiss finished off the game with two scoreless frames.

“Logan Ward and Joe Pace and Willie Weiss were able to land their secondary stuff at a much better rate than the first two guys were,” Bakich said. “They got ahead of hitters and had them off balance.”

But the damage was already

done. The Michigan offense was dormant, putting up just three runs and four hits as the team struggled to muster up quality at bats.

“We didn’t have much going on offensively after the second inning,” Bakich said. “Credit to their pitching, they were pitching fine and it’s also our fault for not making more hard contact. The hard contact we made was caught.”

Sophomore outfielder Tito Flores got the Wolverines on the board in the second, crushing a three-run home run to the left after graduate transfer infielder Benjamin Sems singled and sophomore infielder Ted Burton doubled to level the score at three.

Those early hits turned out be three of the four total that Michigan lodged in the game There was no late-inning magic today, as the eighth-inning opportunity ended with Obertop’s strikeout. In the ninth, a leadoff walk by Sems was erased by a Burton strikeout and Mazur grounding into a double play to

end the game.

The explosive Wolverine offense struggled to produce and early pitching struggles gave Maryland an insurmountable

with a win today against Ohio State.

“It feels horrible,” sophomore outfielder Clark Elliott said.

“Especially on senior day, not to

BECCA MAHON/Daily Michigan pitching struggled to contain the Maryland offense.

lead and the series win. The loss eliminates Michigan from Big Ten title contention, as Nebraska clinched the title by moving 3.5 games ahead of the Wolverines

mention the weight that it carried for the postseason, it leaves a sour taste in our mouth. You want to let the seniors go out on a win, but we just couldn’t get it done.”

Against first non-conference opponent of the season, Meghan Beaubien delivers no-hitter SAM BERNARDI Daily Sports Writer

SEATTLE — Boos rang out in a cacophony from the Seattle University fans as centerfielder Bailey Thompson was rung out on a changeup that floated in and picked the bottom right corner of the zone.

From the press vantage point, nearly behind the plate, the pitch thrown by senior left-hander Meghan Beaubien was objectively a strike.

So why the jeers from the Redhawk crowd? They haven’t seen a pitcher of this caliber since Washington’s Gabbie Plain on March 13, and it was clear neither had the Seattle players.

Leaving the game with no hits allowed and 12 strikeouts, Beaubien was lethal. She picked apart hitters with surgical precision, choosing her placement and offspeed pitches systematically and scientifically.

“It’s a nice little pride thing,” Beaubien said. “It’s nice to throw that and say that no one got any hits on you that game.”

Meanwhile, the Redhawks looked flustered in nearly every at-bat, swinging at bad-opportunity pitches

and watching good ones pass by them before turning around and heading back to the dugout.

“I think a combination of

everything I got was really going for me today,” Beaubien said. “That helps keep hitters off balance.”

When Seattle did make contact,

they were typically groundouts handled well by the Wolverine infielders.

Rarely, Michigan’s outfielders had to get under a deep ball

JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily Michigan softball player Meghan Beaubien threw a no-hitter against Seattle University.

to convert the out.

Despite the controlling pitching appearance, the start of the game foreshadowed a much shakier outing.

On the third batter of the game, Beaubien accidentally launched a ball backwards from her windup, counting as a ball. She came back with another pitch that soared high. The third came inside, striking Thompson on the forearm and giving up the free base.

The entire at-bat for Beaubien was shambolic.

Beaubien came back the very next batter to prove everyone wrong. It took seven pitches as Seattle first baseman Madison Catchcart fought off Beaubien’s assault, but in the end Beaubien won, ringing Catchcart up on a heater and sending the Redhawks back to their dugout empty handed.

For the rest of the game, she was as stout as can be, not a single sign of uncertainty peeking through her confident performance.

And with little support from her offense, Beaubien needed to. She willed her team to a 2-0 victory in the opening game of the NCAA Seattle Regional.

Read more at michigandaily.com