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UMich students react to President Ono’s departure
Students share opinions on Ono stepping down in May
KAYLA LUGO Daily Staff Reporter
On May 4, former University of Michigan president Santa Ono announced his departure from the University. The Michigan Daily spoke to students across campus to hear their opinions on Ono stepping down as president and the legacy he leaves behind.
In an interview with The Daily, Eric Veal Jr., LSA rising senior and CSG president, said he appreciated that Ono’s departure was not announced during spring commencement May 3. “I, along with a lot of other students on campus, was very surprised to hear that President Ono was leaving,” Veal Jr. said.
“I think the timing of it was very interesting. I’m glad that it did wait until after graduation, though, so the spotlight could be on students across our campus and making sure that those graduating got the due respect and the due time in the spotlight before he announced that he was leaving.”
Ian Moore, LSA rising senior and College Democrats at the University of Michigan co-chair, told The Daily College Democrats disagreed with Ono’s decision to cut diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the actions his administration took against student protestors.
“We were kind of happy,” Moore said. “But we generally haven’t really been happy with the way that President Ono had led with dismantling DEI and cutting down on student protests.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA rising sophomore Isaac Gardner said he was not surprised with Ono’s departure.
“I honestly was not surprised,” Gardner said. “I mean, his job was really a thankless job between the Palestinian protesters and then the DEI activists, both of those groups deeply opposed him, I’d say, and they made up probably the majority, definitely the majority, of the voices surrounding his job. So I think he had a pretty thankless job, and (the) University of Florida offered him a more thankful job, I would say.”
In an interview with The Daily, Rackham student Tyler Fioritto said he was dissatisfied that Ono failed to meet his goal of listening to students during his presidency, citing a lack of involvement on campus after a strike by the Graduate Employees’ Organization March 2023.
“He branded himself as the Michigan man,” Fioritto said. “That positivity and that unorthodox ‘student first’ presidency just absolutely faded the moment that the first strike for the graduate students happened. I don’t know if that was him or the regents, but at the end of the day,
if he goes along with it, that’s as much his decision as it is theirs. And it was disappointing.”
In an interview with The Daily, Aidan Rozema, LSA rising junior and College Democrats co-chair, said he was greatly frustrated by how Ono silenced protesters on campus.
“DEI, Palestine, you name it, President Ono regularly and consistently expressed a willingness to absolutely trample on the civil liberties of his students, and do so in a pretty unapologetically authoritarian and brutal way,” Rozema said.
“From everything between the tear gas used on protesters at the encampment to his reform of University policies to essentially give himself a blank check of power, he was a very authoritarian and anti-protest president.”
Gardner, however, believes differently with how Ono dealt with student protesters, specifically at the Diag encampment.
“I think he really tried to take more of a non-partisan approach in the beginning,” Gardner said.
“I think he had more of a timid leadership. I think he was more worried about how the student body would react to certain policies. For example, when there was the encampment on the Diag, I remember that was up for almost a month, and that was a surprisingly long time, I think,
considering that didn’t have a permit or anything like that.”
Moore said U-M faculty and staff were also unhappy with Ono’s presidency, specifically mentioning controversies between the administration and the GEO and Lecturers’ Employee Organization.
“I think there was definitely some friction between President Ono and the faculty, especially towards the end,” Moore said.
“The Faculty Senate was very much opposed to a lot of the suppressions of free speech, if you’re including GSIs in there. There was a lot of friction between GEO and LEO and the Ono administration.”
Veal Jr. said there were areas where Ono made a positive impact, particularly regarding student well-being by promoting initiatives such as the Well-Being Collective.
“President Ono cared a lot about mental health support on our campus,” Veal Jr. said. “One thing I really hope is that things like (the) Well-Being Collective and other things like that continue in the momentum that they have.”
Rozema also said he appreciated Ono’s expansion of the Go Blue Guarantee, which allows low-income in-state students to qualify for free tuition. CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Former University President Santa Ono announced in an email he would be leaving the University
The University of Michigan Board of Regents named Domenico Grasso, chancellor of the University of MichiganDearborn, as interim president of the University effective May 8. Former University President Santa Ono announced his departure to the University community in an email May 4. Grasso has served as chancellor of the U-M Dearborn campus since 2018, where he also works as a professor of public policy and sustainable engineering.
The regents will vote to affirm the appointment at their next meeting on May 15 in Dearborn. In an email to the University community, the regents wrote Grasso received his doctorate in environmental engineering from the University in 1987. His prior roles include provost and chief academic officer at the University of Delaware, founding director of the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College and vice president for research at the University of Vermont.
According to University spokesperson Colleen Mastony’s announcement of the decision in the University Record, Grasso
has served as a technical expert to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and vice chair of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board. He served in the U.S. Army on active and reserve duty for over a decade. For his service, he received multiple citations, including the Army Commendation Medal and the Army Parachutist Badge. The regents also wrote Grasso will not apply for the permanent presidency position. Gabriella Scarlatta, UM-Dearborn provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, will serve as interim chancellor of the
University’s Dearborn campus. The regents will begin the search for the next full president in the upcoming weeks, a process expected to be completed before the end of 2025.
In an email to the University community, Grasso wrote he is honored and excited to serve as interim president.
“It is with great humility and pride that I step into the interim role of president of this extraordinary university,” Grasso wrote. “I thank the Board of Regents for their faith and trust in me. As proud Michigan alumni, my wife, Susan, and I share a profound and enduring affection for this world-class institution.”
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OSCR charges 11 pro-Palestine student activists for 2024 demonstrations, marking third round of protest complaints
The University issued complaints against activists at four demonstrations across six months
EMMA SPRING Daily News Editor
Nearly three months after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel dropped all criminal charges against seven protesters arrested for their involvement in the University of Michigan Gaza solidarity encampment, the University has issued formal conduct complaints against 11 student protesters. The cases, which are being handled by the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, are the third round of OSCR complaints involving protests tied to the ongoing war in Gaza and student demands for University divestment.
The complaints stem from four demonstrations: the May 2024 police removal of the Gaza solidarity encampment on the Diag, a May 2024 demonstration outside the University of Michigan Museum of Art where the Board of Regents gathered for a gala, a July 2024 protest at a Division of Public Safety and Security panel for incoming students and an October 2024 walkout.
The University has not publicly released the number of students charged in each case or the nature of the violations alleged.
However, multiple students — U-M alum Eaman Ali; Rackham student Kathleen Brown, former U-M Graduate Employees’ Organization vice president; and an undergraduate student who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, who we will refer to as John — confirmed to The Michigan Daily that they are facing OSCR hearings this month.
The allegations
According to documents reviewed by The Daily, John — who has previously gone through the OSCR process twice — is accused of refusing to leave the
area surrounding the UMMA on May 3, allegedly obstructing public safety operations by encircling police officers. John is also accused of entering the Power Center for the Performing Arts orientation event under false pretenses in July and leading a prolonged protest chant onstage.
In an interview with The Daily, John described how previous efforts at restorative justice with the University did not prevent this third round of charges.
“In March, I met with several high profile members of the University and, essentially, the point of that meeting was to go forward on a restorative justice pathway for me to not get ‘OSCRed’ again,” John said. “I participated in those meetings in good faith. The point of restorative justice is to be learning points for the future. Now I am being sort of retroactively punished for events
that happened before that.”
For Ali, OSCR alleges as written in an email sent to her by OSCR Director Erik Wessel that she failed to comply with police orders, physically obstructed officers and engaged in a physical altercation at the UMMA and October protests. Ali had previously been sanctioned by U-M Human Resources in April, losing her campus job and being permanently barred from future employment at the University.
“It is alleged that you failed to comply with repeated lawful requests to leave the area surrounding the University of Michigan Museum of Art (“UMMA”) as police officers attempted to secure the entry and exit of several event attendees, then obstructed and disrupted publicsafety activities of the University by encircling police officers attempting to disperse a crowd,
engaging in a physical altercation with police officers and others, and impeding attempts by police officers to clear a path as they tried to leave the area upon the event’s conclusion,” Wessel wrote.
Concerns about due process and policy shifts
Formal notices of complaint were issued more than six months after the relevant protests. According to the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities, conduct complaints must be submitted within six months unless the resolution coordinator deems a late submission “reasonable.”
In letters to the students, Wessel wrote the delays stemmed from inadequate information.
“While the Statement requires complaints to be submitted within six months of the incident occurring, the Resolution Coor-
dinator may waive the six-month limitation when a late submission is reasonable,” Wessel wrote. “In this matter, I have deemed the late submission of the complaint reasonable given that the information was not available to OSCR until recently.”
In Ali’s intake meeting, recorded by The Daily, Donovan Golich, the University’s newly hired program manager for formal conflict resolution, confirmed the delay.
“I got this info in about April for the UMMA incident to be certain and it came from the University of Michigan Police Department,” Golich said. “In some cases, I needed more info so I requested body cam footage. I requested the police to talk to me about the incident more; in some, even the police report was enough to move forward.”
In an interview with The
Daily, Brown said she was asked to provide quick-turnaround availability, which has undermined her ability to prepare a proper defense.
“I had my intake on July 16 and I’m told that my hearing is going to be on July 28, and that’s just no time at all,” Brown said. “They’ve had 14 months and now they’re pushing me through this in one month and for me to prepare my case in a week, how am I able to effectively defend myself?”
Ali told The Daily she was also given little time to prepare for hearings scheduled over the summer, and expressed her belief that it was in an effort to bypass due process.
“The entire process has been so rushed,” Ali said. “Many of us haven’t been given nearly enough time to FOIA police reports or police body camera footage that would be relevant to our case that Donovan Golich has had complete open access to. It’s very clear OSCR is trying to rush this along in (an) attempt to disempower the respondents as much as they can from demanding due process.”
OSCR restructuring Multiple students emphasized that OSCR’s approach has changed in recent months after a July 2024 Regents meeting, especially with the University now formally acting as a complainant in these hearings. Ali said she opposed the University’s new ability to directly prosecute students through OSCR.
“Historically, OSCR has been mediating issues and conflicts between students, not between students and the University,” Ali said. “It’s not clear who the University (is). Is it the students? Is it the staff? Is it the faculty? Or is it the Regents?” CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
UMich community reacts to One Big Beautiful Bill Act impact on student loans
The act was championed by President Donald Trump and signed into law July 4
On July 4, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, also known as H.R.1, a sweeping spending and tax bill championed by President Donald Trump, was signed into law. In its nearly 1,000 pages, the bill includes major tax cuts, reductions to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, an increase in border and defense spending, several changes to student loan policy and more. Adjustments made to student loan programs is of particular relevance to the University of Michigan community. These changes include an expansion of Pell Grant eligibility, modifications to repayment plans and new borrowing limits on student loans. The Michigan Daily spoke with U-M community members to hear their views on how H.R.1 impacts student loans.
H.R.1 expanded eligibility for Pell Grants, which are intended for students from low-income
households, to include students attending shorter-term certificate programs, such as trade schools. This change was originally introduced by the Committee on Education & Workforce in 2023 as the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act. In an interview with The Daily, Jeremy Wright-Kim, Education assistant professor who works in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, said the change could provide new opportunities for students while also benefitting labor markets.
“These shorter-term certificate programs are good if your local labor market needs to fill that need,” Wright-Kim said. “There are also students who are more likely to be attracted to those programs, like working adults who maybe can’t attend a full-time, longer-term credential program.”
H.R.1 also reduced the number of loan repayment plans available for new borrowers from seven to two starting July 1, 2026. The new plans include a
standard repayment plan with fixed monthly payments and a repayment assistance plan with income-based monthly payments and a minimum payment of $10 a month. An existing incomebased repayment plan will still be available to borrowers who take out their loans before July 1, 2026. All other existing plans will be phased out by July 1, 2028, requiring borrowers to switch or be reassigned.
In an interview with The Daily, Michigan Law alum Ryan Jansen said he believes cutting down on plans to be logical.
“The new repayment plans, compared to some of the changes, aren’t as bad as they may seem at first glance,” Jansen said. “I don’t think the idea of trying to consolidate plans is inherently bad.”
Jansen said his main issue with these changes is his struggle to find clear guidance on them, especially with the recent layoffs at the Department of Education.
“I haven’t had any information from the Department of Education, from FAFSA or from my
third-party loan servicer, explaining these changes and what I may or may not need to do as somebody who is tentatively enrolled in one plan,” Jansen said. “It’s really hard to get information because this law happened at the same time as a huge downside at the Department of Education. There are less people working and more people trying to get information.”
The University’s financial aid website states it will provide more information on the changes when given more guidance from the Department of Education.
“The recently signed U.S. budget reconciliation bill, H.R.1, impacts federal student loans in many different ways,” the website reads. “Detailed information, including how the changes will be enacted, has not yet been released. The Office of Financial Aid is actively reviewing all information about the new rules and waiting for additional U.S. Department of Education guidance.”
H.R.1 also includes caps on student and parent loans. Start-
ing July 1, 2026, borrowers will
have a lifetime borrowing limit of $257,500 for all federal student loans. In addition, loans for graduate students will be capped at $20,500 a year, and loans for professional degrees, such as degrees for doctors and lawyers, will be capped at $50,000 a year. Parent PLUS loans, which allow parents to take loans out for their children, will be capped at $20,000 per year per student with a lifetime limit of $65,000.
In an interview with The Daily, LSA rising junior Alex Braun, officer-at-large of the College Democrats at the University of Michigan, said he is concerned these caps will make it more difficult for lower-income students to become doctors and lawyers, which is especially troubling due to a doctor shortage in the U.S.
“It sounds like it’s going to be harder to get the funds, harder to repay the loans and, as a result, harder to access higher education institutions, especially for those professional studies, like doctors and lawyers,” Braun said.
“We already have a shortage of doctors in the U.S., and I think these changes are going to make it worse and create more barriers to those higher educations.” Jansen said these caps are too low for students planning to attend the University’s Law School based on its tuition cost.
“While the Department is not
“The cost of attendance at Michigan Law School is over $106,000,” Jansen said. “Michigan Law is really good at giving merit scholarships, but odds are, you might still be on the hook for more than $50,000. (H.R.1) also added a lifetime cap. So if you took out money in undergrad, you’re going to maybe hit that lifetime cap much sooner. I don’t think $50,000 a year makes law school accessible for most people.” Supporters of borrowing caps have presented them as a way of encouraging universities to lower their tuition cost. Wright-Kim said this cost reduction is unlikely to occur.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
US Department of Education investigates UMich Dreamer Scholarship for alleged exclusionary practices
The civil rights probe claims the scholarship is a form of discrimination against students born in the U.S. NEWS BRIEFS
administered on the basis of race, national origin and color. The press release claimed the University’s Dreamer Scholarship, administered through the Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives, violates the act because it aims to fund recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an immigration policy protecting undocumented adults who were brought to the United States as children for work and education.
The investigation follows complaints submitted to the OCR by the Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, which claims the Dreamer Scholarship and other similar scholarships nationwide are a form of discrimination against students born in the U.S. In the statement, William A. Jacobson, founder of the Equal Protection Project, wrote he appreciated the OCR for launching the investigation.
“Protecting equal access to education includes protecting the rights of American-born students,” Jacobson wrote. “At the Equal Protection Project, we are gratified that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is acting on our complaints regarding scholarships that excluded Americanborn students.” Craig Trainor, DOE acting assistant secretary for civil rights and principal deputy assistant
secretary for civil rights, wrote in the press release the investigation fulfills a promise made by President Donald Trump to natural-born citizens upon taking office. “On January 21, 2025, President Trump promised that ‘every single day of the Trump Administration, [he] will, very simply, put America first,’” Trainor wrote. “Neither the Trump Administration’s America first policies nor the Civil Right Act of 1964’s
prohibition on national origin discrimination permit universities to deny our fellow citizens the opportunity to compete for scholarships because they were born in the United States.” In an email to The Michigan Daily, University spokesperson Kay Jarvis wrote the University has no comment on the matter. “The university has received a letter of notification relating to this matter,” Jarvis wrote. “We have no further comment.”
ALYSSA TISCH Daily Staff Reporter
Alum Ellie Vice/DAILY
THE MICHIGAN DAILY NEWS STAFF
Ann Arbor voters pass proposals A and B, advance new downtown library plans
Proposal A was passed with 58.25% of the vote and Proposal B was passed with 57.28% of the vote
amendment that required developers to reserve the Library Lane Parking Structure site for a park and commons area called the “Center of the City.”
Ann Arbor voters passed proposals A and B on the Ann Arbor ballot Aug. 5, advancing plans for a new downtown district library.
Proposal A was passed with 58.25% of the vote, and Proposal B was passed with 57.28% of the vote.
Proposal A allows the Ann Arbor District Library to buy the properties of 326 S. Division St. and 319 S. Fifth Ave. for $1 from the city of Ann Arbor to expand current library space and facilities. These properties are currently the site of the Library Lane Parking Structure, which is situated across the street from the downtown branch.
Proposal B repeals a 2018
With both proposals passed, the downtown district library will move forward with its plans to remodel and reopen in six to seven years. The new establishment will include open public and retail spaces, as well as mixed-income housing above the library.
According to a press release by the city of Ann Arbor, in-person voter turnout was low on the day of the election, which the city had anticipated.
“Due to high turnout of absentee ballots and at the city’s four early voting sites, in person voting on Election Day was relatively modest, as anticipated,”
the press release reads. “Early reports from the precincts suggest a more than 20% voter turnout citywide, including absentee ballots, early votes and Election Day ballots cast.”
In another press release, Ann Arbor mayor Christopher Taylor wrote community feedback will be considered during the expansion.
“This is an incredible opportunity for Ann Arbor,” Taylor said. “The prospect of a stateof-the-art downtown library, vibrant public open space, new housing, and dynamic community gathering areas would be transformative for the downtown. We’re grateful for the voters’ support and look forward to advancing this vision with the AADL along with community engagement.”
Ann Arbor’s 66th annual Art Fair highlights young talent
The nation’s largest juried art fair featured youth showcases like ‘New Art, New Artists’
youth showcases such as Youth Art Fair and New Art, New Artists.
Almost half a million visitors flooded the streets of downtown Ann Arbor starting Thursday, July 17 for the city’s annual Art Fair — the largest juried art fair in the nation. Though generally viewed as one event, Ann Arbor’s Art Fair is composed of three separate, independently juried nonprofit fairs: Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, The Original; Ann Arbor State Street District Art Fair; and The Guild’s Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair. Spanning 30 city blocks, the three-day event — this year running from Thursday morning to Saturday afternoon — showcases about 1,000 artists and includes dozens of stands for county nonprofits, food vendors and entertainers.
This year’s fair was cut several hours short on its final day due to inclement weather. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Angela Kline, executive director of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, said the weather conditions were dangerous to the artwork and artists alike.
“We had gorgeous weather the first two days of this fair and half of Saturday, and then we just had this impending storm with high winds, and that creates a lot of danger for our artists,” Kline said. “Not only do we worry about their artwork getting damaged and them traveling long distances, but when you’re dealing with high winds and tents and poles, it can get really scary really quickly.”
Kline said her favorite part of organizing the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair every year is supporting the artists, especially through
“Each year I get to see all of our artists, our professional artists, come back, and I work all year long just to make their experience as wonderful as we can and to make sure that we’re supporting their hopes and dreams and pocketbooks,” Kline said. “Another part that I really love is our dedication to youth, to free arts education programming. So we have the Youth Art Fair, we have the New Art, New Artists, which is our college artist program. And both of these programs at the original art fair allow for students to jury in and exhibit their artwork 100% free, and they retain all of their earnings.”
LSA rising senior Kayla Turner, one of NANA’s artists this year, told The Daily in an interview she felt youth spotlights like these were a good way of helping young artists network.
“I think it’s a really great way to connect people to the community — not only with buyers and people who are interested in collecting art, but with other artists who do this for a living,” Turner said. “It’s been amazing to see how tight-knit and supportive the art community here is at the fair end in Ann Arbor, and I’ve been able to learn so much from such a short amount of time.”
The Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan runs a similar booth for young artists in the State Street District Art Fair. In an interview with The Daily, Art & Design rising sophomore Kas Brajkovic said she felt the Art & Design School booth was helping set her up for success in her
future art career.
“Having little gallery experiences like this (is) perfect, because as you’re growing as an artist, you’re applying to so many galleries that often have an application fee or a lot more complicated application process,” Brajkovic said. “This — with no fee, being able to exhibit with your school — is really easy entry into the art world. And as someone who’s planning to apply to the actual art fair next year, it’s really nice to kind of understand the buyers you’re gonna have and the crowds you’re gonna attract.”
The Guild’s Art Fair also included booths that showcased young talent, including the Michigan Silversmiths Guild.
In an interview with The Daily, Lori Brauer, a metalworker with the Silversmiths Guild, said the organization tries to include younger metalworkers so they can try selling at art fairs without the usual high barriers to entry.
“(Our booth) allows new artists an opportunity to test out an art fair without having to invest in renting a booth and all of that — we’ve really tried to look for new artists to bring in and let them see what it’s like before they try to do it on their own,” Brauer said. “(It’s) a platform that you can dive off of and grow and get a feel if this is something that you want to do as an artist.”
Brauer said arts exposure for youth is an essential part of a multifaceted education.“I think the arts are very, very important,” Brauer said. “Not only STEM, but STEAM — adding the arts to it. Arts are such a very vital part of growing up and education. It just makes a well-rounded person, in my
LYRA WILDER Daily Staff Reporter
ALYSSA TISCH Daily Staff Reporter
Federal agents arrest UMich research fellow on charges of allegedly smuggling dangerous pathogen
The FBI charged a Chinese student and research fellow specializing in molecular, cellular and developmental biology
On July 1, the FBI disclosed they would be charging Yunqing Jian, a Chinese student and research fellow specializing in molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Michigan, with allegedly smuggling dangerous pathogens into the United States. She made her first appearance in court later that day. The charges follow an attempt by Jian’s boyfriend Zunyong Liu, a fellow researcher from China, to smuggle samples of the pathogen Fusarium graminearum through U.S. customs at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in July 2024.
Federal agents stopped Liu at customs and questioned him about several small bags of plant material he was carrying. When questioned by Customs and Border Patrol agents, Liu initially claimed someone could have put the samples in his bag but eventually admitted that they were samples of Fusarium graminearum — a pathogen harmful to crops that he intended to use for research in a lab at the University. Liu said he hid the samples in his bag to get around import restrictions that would have impeded his research.
An investigation of Liu’s phone revealed that he had previously
discussed smuggling biological materials past CPB agents in 2022 in messages with Jian. Liu and Jian have both published multiple papers on Fusarium graminearum since as far back as 2014. In February of this year, FBI agents interviewed Jian at the University, where she denied any knowledge of her boyfriend’s plans. Jian’s phone was searched, and she was arrested some time after.
Jerome Gorgon, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, wrote in a press release that the pair’s actions were a major security concern in regard to potential biological terrorism.
“The alleged actions of these Chinese nationals — including a loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party — are of the gravest national security concerns,” Gorgon wrote. “These two aliens have been charged with smuggling a fungus that has been described as a ‘potential agroterrorism weapon’ into the heartland of America, where they apparently intended to use a University of Michigan laboratory to further their scheme.”
These allegations of bioterrorism are primarily based on three factors: the pathogen’s danger to crops, Jian’s phone containing a form pledging allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party and Liu’s phone containing an article titled “Plant-Pathogen Warfare under Changing Climate Condi-
tions.” However, neither the press release released by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan nor the article published by the Detroit News on the subject specifically mention any communications on biological terrorism.
The pair has been charged with criminal complaint with conspiracy, smuggling, false statements and visa fraud. The investigation is still ongoing by the FBI and CBP, and once the investigation is concluded, Gorgon will decide whether to seek a felony indictment. Jian remains in the United States as the investigation continues, while Liu has since returned to China.
In a statement published July 2, University president Domenico Grasso wrote the University will comply with applicable laws about research and national security, and that it supports international student researchers.
“Let me be clear: We will fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations and take all necessary actions to safeguard our people, our research, and our nation,” Grasso wrote. “We are equally dedicated to supporting international scholars and students who bring critical global perspectives to our classrooms and laboratories, thereby enriching our broader community.” CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
UMich offers Early Decision application plan
Early Action and Regular Decision plans will still be application options for first-year applicants
The University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus announced July 9 they would be implementing Early Decision as an available application plan for the 2026 undergraduate admissions cycle. Early Action and Regular Decision plans will still be application options for first-year applicants.
Applicants who select Early Decision will submit their applications by Nov. 1 — the same deadline as Early Action applications. However, unlike Early Action applicants, Early Decision applicants who receive letters of acceptance will enter a binding agreement to attend the University unless their financial aid package is insufficient. Once accepted, Early Decision applicants are required to withdraw any pending applications to other higher education institutions.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, University Regent Sarah Hubbard (R) said she approved of the recent implementation of Early Decision.
“It will allow us to secure the best students that are interested in (the University),” Hubbard said. “I believe we’ve been losing some of the best students to other schools and colleges that offer Early Decision — binding Early Decision — where they were waiting to hear from Michigan but were forced to make a decision on other places first. This will make us more competitive with some of those schools and colleges by offering a similar timeline and a similar commitment.”
The University has witnessed
a decrease in the percentage of accepted students in recent years as the number of applicants continues to climb. University Provost Laurie McCauley, executive vice president for academic affairs, wrote in the press release the implementation of Early Decision aims to target high-achieving undergraduate students.
“As we approach the start of an academic year with what is likely to be a record number of undergraduate students, we are excited to offer this new approach to the undergraduate application process at the university,” McCauley wrote. “The introduction of Early Decision at U-M allows high-achieving undergraduate students to affirm their commitment to the university earlier in the application process and enjoy peace of mind during the rest of their senior year of high school.”
In an email to The Daily, LSA rising senior Elijah Wiseman, president and founder of the Leadership, Education, and Achievement Program, a volunteer organization that serves underprivileged members of the Ann Arbor community through free college
counseling and test preparation services, wrote the change did not surprise him given the University’s reputation as a top university.
“Upon initially hearing about the addition of an Early Decision option, I wasn’t particularly surprised,” Wiseman wrote. “If anything, I think the decision makes sense given the academically rigorous standard for acceptance to Michigan and how high up it is on many prospective students’ list of colleges and universities.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA rising senior Celine Fawaz said for students like her, who are looking for the best financial aid package available, applying Early Decision could be limiting their prospective options.
“I’m actually the kind of person that’s really against Early Decision in general,” Fawaz said. “You never know what your financial aid packages will look like. Early Decision is really risky, because (the University) is such an expensive institution, so I feel like Early Decision is a privilege.”
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
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GLENN HEDIN Daily Staff Reporter
ANJALI BUDHRAM Daily Staff Reporter
UMich dismisses SMTD professor Scott Piper for violating sexual harassment policies
A complaint against was first filed by an anonymous student with the University’s Equity, Civil Rights & Title IX office in May
The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents voted unanimously on July 17 to dismiss Scott Piper, former Associate Professor of Music in Voice at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, for violation of U-M sexual harassment policies.
A complaint against Piper was first filed by an anonymous student with the University’s Equity, Civil Rights & Title IX office in May 2024, according to records obtained and reported on by The Michigan Daily. This incident was one of four of sexual harassment allegations made by the student against Piper while he was the chair of the Music, Theatre & Dance School’s Department
of Voice & Opera. These allegations included inappropriate confessions of romantic feelings, unwelcome physical contact, abuse of power in a one-on-one private lesson setting and repeated inappropriate comments made towards the student.
The Daily found that following the complaint, in June 2024, Piper was removed as the chair of the department and put on administrative leave until further notice. In October 2024, ECRT Hearing Officer Jeff Knight recommended Piper be dismissed from his tenured position, which Piper appealed in November 2024. Piper’s appeal was denied in January 2025 by external reviewer Lawrence F. Stengel, who upheld the original findings.
Piper’s dismissal was rec-
ommended by interim University President Domenico Grasso under Bylaw Section 5.09, according to Grasso’s communication to the board.
“For the reasons contained in the record, I have determined that Professor Piper’s conduct substantially impairs the fulfillment of his responsibilities as a tenured faculty member at the University of Michigan and therefore constitutes cause for dismissal under Bylaw 5.09,” Grasso wrote.
The Music, Theatre & Dance School has faced two previous, separate cases of sexual misconduct. Former professors Stephen Shipps and David Daniels have also faced similar allegations in 2018 and 2020, respectively, resulting in prison time for Shipps and dismissal for Daniels.
Former DEI administrator sues UMich over alleged discrimination in termination
Rachel Dawson was the former executive director of the University of Michigan Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives
Rachel Dawson, former executive director of the University of Michigan Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives, filed a lawsuit against the University July 14 for alleged racial and gender discrimination during her termination process. The lawsuit, submitted through the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, claims Dawson’s termination violated Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the lawsuit, Dawson also intends to simultaneously file suit in the Michigan Court of Claims for violations of her constitutional rights to free speech and due process. Dawson, a Black woman, was fired in December 2024 following a report that she allegedly made antisemitic remarks at an academic diversity conference in March 2024, where she did not speak on behalf of nor represent the University. According to the lawsuit, two conference attendees filed complaints against Dawson with the Anti-Defamation League, claiming she said Jewish people have “no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel” and that the University was “controlled by wealthy Jews.” The University then hired Covington & Burling LLP, a Washington, D.C.based law firm, to investigate the allegations. Covington & Burling also provides legal services for the ADL. In her lawsuit, Dawson claims these allegations were false and exaggerated. The lawsuit stated that the two individuals approached Dawson by discussing rumors of antisemitism on the U-M campus and repeatedly asked her questions, prompting her to share her views on the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
without termination, and that she was singled out for a disciplinary review committee because she is a Black woman.
“Ms. Klos and the other woman became angry with Ms. Dawson when she did not simply agree with their pre-conceived belief that the University of Michigan allowed antisemitism to flourish freely on campus,” the lawsuit stated. “They began to berate her and pepper her with unrelated questions, such as whether she understood the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Ms. Dawson responded that she did, and that she had recently read a scholarly article which stated that both Jewish and Palestinian people had ancient origins in the region. This angered the two women further.” According to the lawsuit, prior to a disciplinary review conference held by the University in December 2024, Dawson also submitted a written statement to the University. In the section of the statement included in the lawsuit, Dawson wrote non-Black faculty have faced similar complaints
“The University’s characterization of my conduct as “aggressive” and “abusive” reflects negative stereotypes about Black women, and I am concerned that discrimination and bias may have informed the University’s response and decision to not only discipline me, but escalate my discipline from a written warning to a DRC,” Dawson wrote. “I am aware of several non-Black employees of the University who have been the subject of similar complaints about their behavior, and none have been terminated… The allegations against me illustrate how racial and gender biases can shape the interpretation of events and statements, especially for Black woman in positions of authority.”
Dawson seeks reparation for her lost wages and compensation for emotional and physical stress among other damages. Laurie Michelson, a district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, will preside over the hearing.
In an email to The Michigan Daily, University spokesperson Kay Jarvis wrote the University defends its decision to terminate Dawson.
“Rachel Dawson was appropriately terminated from her employment at the University of Michigan,” Jarvis wrote. “We will vigorously defend this matter.”
THE MICHIGAN DAILY NEWS STAFF
CLAUDIA MINETTI & SARAH SPENCER Daily Staff Reporters
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LEO-GLAM ratifies contract with
The University of Michigan Librarians, Archivists, and Curators Bargaining Unit, a subunit of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization, successfully ratified a new contract with University administration on May 15.
The ratification was voted for unanimously by 89% of LEOGLAM members, according to an Instagram post by LEO. The ratification follows a tentative contractual agreement reached with the University’s administration May 5. The new contract will reestablish extended sick
leave for those who have worked more than 10 years, shorten consideration for promotion opportunities and implement a paid “floating” holiday allowing staff to choose one paid day off work during the year. LEO-GLAM also negotiated additional lump sum salary payments of $1,500 for the first and second years of the contract and a 3% annual salary increase for all four years.
In an email to The Michigan Daily, LEO-GLAM chair Meredith Kahn wrote LEO-GLAM will continue to work with University administration to advance labor rights. “As we move forward with contract implementation and
enforcement, we will continue to educate our members about their rights, and hold the employer accountable for their contractual obligations,” Kahn wrote.
The new contract will also provide guidance on the use of artificial intelligence. Kahn wrote this inclusion is important due to the unique understanding of AI that librarians, archivists and curators have.
“As information professionals, we librarians, archivists, and curators see ourselves as subject matter experts when it comes to AI,” Kahn wrote. “It is our position that AI is a form of automation, and we have numerous examples of how it is being
implemented in tools and workflows we use in our jobs, and therefore it is directly relevant to our working conditions.”
In an email to The Daily, University spokesperson Kay Jarvis wrote the negotiation process resulted in a successful, mutually agreed-upon outcome.
“The University is delighted that LEO-GLAM’s members unanimously ratified the successor collective bargaining agreement,” Jarvis wrote. “We thank both negotiations teams for their hard work and collaborative efforts that resulted in mutually beneficial contract terms for years to come.”
UMich visiting scholar arrested, charged with smuggling roundworm material
The FBI arrested and charged a Chinese doctorate student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology
On June 9, the FBI arrested and charged Chengxuan Han, a Chinese doctorate student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, with smuggling four packages containing biological material related to the cultivation of roundworms into the United States and making false statements regarding their content. These packages were delivered to two persons employed at a University lab between September 2024 and March 2025.
According to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Detroit, the biological material was identified to be nematode growth medium — the material used to grow nematodes, also known as roundworms, in a lab — and plasmids. Han’s research
focused on animals’ sensory mechanisms for detecting touch, light, chemical and temperature cues as well as the interactions between sensory processing and behavioral responses.
Han arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport Sunday on a J1 visa, where she was later inspected by Customs and Border Protection and questioned about the shipping of the four packages to the United States, according to a press release issued by the United States Attorney’s Office. At the time, Han allegedly made false statements to CBP officials regarding the packages’ contents. CBP officials also found Han’s electronic device had been wiped three days prior to her entry into the U.S. At the end of the inspection, FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents interviewed Han, who allegedly admitted to sending the packages of biological mate -
rials and providing false statements about the contents of the packages to CBP officials.
Han had listed a U-M professor as her advisor and said she had received an offer from the University to be a visiting scholar. Han allegedly denied that professors at Huazhong University nor the University of Michigan knew the contents of the packages.
In the press release, Jerome Gorgon, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, wrote the case points to a broader national security threat.
“The alleged smuggling of biological materials by this alien from a science and technology university in Wuhan, China—to be used at a University of Michigan laboratory—is part of an alarming pattern that threatens our security,” Gorgon wrote. “The American taxpayer should not be underwriting a PRC-based smuggling operation
at one of our crucial public institutions.”
John Nowak, CBP acting director of field operations, wrote that the act of smuggling biological material for research purposes misuses current importing guidelines.
“The guidelines for importing biological materials into the U.S. for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” Nowak said. “We will not tolerate the smuggling of regulated biological materials through our ports of entry, and this interdiction is another recent example of our commitment—along with that of our law enforcement partners—to preventing potentially dangerous goods from harming the American people.”
In a public statement, Arthur Lupia, University interim vice president for research and
innovation, wrote the University is committed both to the integrity of research advancement and to community safety.
The university takes these situations extremely seriously,” Lupia wrote. “That is why the university is: Fully cooperating with federal investigations about these matters; actively reviewing all relevant policies; reexamining internal protocols to determine how to improve training and provide additional guidance; and ensuring that failure to comply with all laws, regulations, and policies will have consequences, up to termination.”
In a statement published July 2, University president Domenico Grasso wrote the University will comply with applicable laws about research and national security, and that it supports international student researchers.
“Let me be clear: We will fully
comply with all applicable laws and regulations and take all necessary actions to safeguard our people, our research, and our nation,” Grasso wrote. “We are equally dedicated to supporting international scholars and students who bring critical global perspectives to our classrooms and laboratories, thereby enriching our broader community.” Grasso wrote recent security concerns prompted the University to launch a website with detailed information on research security, safety and compliance protocols.
“Our research enterprise is dynamic, and our safety and security procedures must be equally vigorous,” Grasso wrote. “Today we launched a new website with clear, concise information and guidance on our policies, compliance training, laboratory safety protocols, and other relevant topics.“
CLAUDIA MINETTI Daily Staff Reporter
Michigan Medicine confronts national emergency department overcrowding crisis
EMMA SPRING Daily News Editor
When you walk through the doors of Michigan Medicine’s adult emergency department at the University Hospital, you enter a hotspot of healthcare activity. According to Dr. Prashant Mahajan, Michigan Medicine department of emergency medicine chair, the unit contains around 100 beds — not including stretchers overflowing into hallways — and sees an influx of patients that creates a scarcity of both staff and space. Emergency department wait times, patient flow and hospital capacity remain issues at Michigan Medicine, especially as patient volumes continue to increase nationwide.
At Michigan Medicine, ED wait time is defined as the time from patient arrival until they are first seen by a health care provider. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Mahajan said wait times have increased since the pandemic due to a rise in patient visits, increased complexity and severity of illness and community outpatient resources at risk.
“(Wait times) have gone up for multiple reasons,” Mahajan said.
“The number of patient visits have gone up. People are living longer and older, so (they) have more chronic problems. Nationally, which is also reflected here, the community resources to where the patients would need to go following either their ER visit or following their inpatient hospitalization, like skilled nursing facilities, all have been impacted because of lack of nursing in the community or lack of mental health resources in the community.”
The Daily requested specific metrics from Michigan Medicine to better understand their capacity, including current and historical emergency department wait times, door-to-balloon time and overall patient volume. In response, Ananya Sen, Michigan Medicine public relations representative, wrote in an email to The Daily that the requested numbers are difficult to quantify in a meaningful way.
“As I understand it, the wait time is highly variable depending on several factors and so having just a numerical average would not capture that nuance,” Sen wrote.
The University Hospital serves as tertiary care, treating complicated and rare illnesses that often require longer hospital stays.
Dr. Alexander Janke, clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine, said in an interview with The Daily that when inpatient beds are full, patients wait in the emergency department for a hospital bed, reducing its capacity.
“When the hospital upstairs is full, patients queue in the ED, ‘boarding’ while they wait for a bed to become available,” Janke said. “At times, EDs dedicate an enormous amount of their space to boarding, thus reducing the functional capacity of the (ED) to take care of new patients coming in the door.”
Wait times are not just the result of an ED bottleneck — in many cases, the problem starts long before a patient shows up at the hospital. Dr. Andrew Ibrahim, associate professor of surgery, studies health care delivery through policy and design. In an interview with The Daily, Ibrahim said patients often turn to the ED when they lack primary care
providers and could not identify or manage health issues before they warrant immediate attention.
“The conditions we studied, like hernias or colon cancer, are ideally identified proactively by a primary care doctor,” Ibrahim said. “When that happens, there is time to plan ahead, refer the patient to a surgeon and do the surgery electively. If there is not a PCP, patients usually do not have that condition identified until it is an emergency, so they come to the ED with symptoms, often pain, and need their surgery right away.”
Mahajan said that because many people face barriers to accessing timely outpatient care, they turn to the ED as their only option even before their health declines.
“Emergency medicine also serves as the safety net for a lot of people,” Mahajan said. “There are a lot of people who cannot access the healthcare system, so even though they may not be very ill in the sense (of) suffering an emergency, they don’t have any place to go.”
The University Hospital has introduced several measures to address these issues. These include advanced triage providers stationed at the front of the ED, the Hospital Care at Home program for stable patients and coordination with ambulatory specialists to reduce unnecessary visits. The hospital also opened a 26-bed medical short-stay unit in April and is preparing to open the 690,000-square-foot D. Dan and Betty Kahn Health Care Pavilion this fall.
Michigan Medicine is also exploring data-driven collaboration with other areas of the University, such as the
College of Engineering’s Center for Healthcare Engineering & Patient Safety. In an interview with The Daily, Beata Mostafavi, Michigan Medicine public relations manager, said CHEPS’ leadership is focused not only on expanding physical space but also on improving the systems behind emergency care.
“There is an unwavering focus on ED operations, patient experience and provider wellbeing by the new leadership in the emergency department led by the chair,” Mostafavi said. “We are using innovative approaches such as a joint collaboration with the Center for Healthcare Engineering & Patient Safety to use data-driven approaches to enhance our efficiency without compromising patient safety and use of sophisticated data science tools including artificial intelligence to gain insights into ED operations.”
Behind the beeping cardiac monitors and resident rounds, engineers and consultants track real-time data on the number of patients in the waiting room, those admitted but still in the ED and length of stay. Vincenzo Loffredo, Michigan Medicine business consult intermediate, leads a team that shadows ED providers to identify bottlenecks and test solutions. Loffredo said in an interview with The Daily that one early breakthrough involved stress tests, a diagnostic procedure for patients with chest pain.
“These are low-risk patients that are occupying a bed and then have to wait overnight which means maybe they have to provide for child care, pet care, having to still sleep in an uncomfortable bed, for something that probably
could’ve been turned into an appointment,” Loffredo said. “We found that (free) slots were all located in the morning and the majority of stress test orders came in the afternoon, and therefore those orders would be processed the following morning. So by just changing where those slots were allocated, we were able to reduce the waiting time for these types of patients.”
According to Loffredo, his team is currently investigating two long-standing issues: imaging delays and the unnecessary use of specialty consults. Nursing rising senior Laney Hoving, a system engineering intern at CHEPS who works alongside Loffredo, said in an interview with The Daily that imaging diagnostics are a critical pain point of the team’s investigation.
“Patients often end up waiting hours for these tests and it is typically only after these tests are interpreted that meaningful interventions can be initiated or disposition can be determined,” Hoving said. “As we think about ways to improve these processes,
there are two main questions we ask: ‘Is the right patient getting the right test at the right time?’ and ‘Is the process itself streamlined?’ When the answer to either question is ‘no,’ we have our work laid out.”
Hoving said engineers are uniquely positioned to find solutions that clinical teams may not have the time or distance to see from within the dynamic setting of the ED.
“Everyone is dealing with the next crisis, and there’s
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The Michigan Daily Sports section covers all varsity sports teams at the University of Michigan, and occasionally club and adaptive events as well. From regular-season events at Crisler Center to earning datelines at National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournaments, The Daily provides in-depth coverage on one of the most storied athletic departments. The Sports section offers many different types of stories that range from directly reporting off events (gamers and sidebars) to long-form features and columns. The Sports section doesn’t require any kind of application or requirements to join — just show up to our meetings! Anyone and everyone can report on the dozens of non-revenue sports Michigan has to offer. We also sponsor six beats — Football, Men’s and Women’s Basketball, Ice Hockey, Softball and Baseball — each of which consists of four writers who give season-long coverage to Michigan’s revenue sports. We provide our readers with up to 80 articles a week in addition to newsbreaks, our newsletter, videos and podcasts. And why do we do it? Because sports are fun!
SAM GIBSON Daily Sports Editor
Senior linebacker Ernest Hausmann had been expecting it since Big Ten Media Day, and likely even earlier. Graduate defensive back Rod Moore said it was “just an honor” after spending more than a season rehabilitating a torn ACL. Senior edge rusher Derrick Moore tried to stay humble as coach Sherrone Moore revealed the ‘C’ printed on his jersey. Graduate offensive lineman Giovannni El-Hadi thanked God first. Then, he called his mom. All four of them, along with graduate fullback Max Bredeson and senior tight end Marlin Klein, were announced as the Michigan football team’s captains Thursday,
SPORTS
Michigan names 6 captains ahead of season
with the Wolverines’ season opener almost a week away. The sextet includes two previous captains, Bredeson and Rod Moore, and marks the second time Michigan has named six captains.
“In ‘23 we had the same amount of captains,” Rod Moore said Thursday. “Six captains, two of them were fifth years, and everybody else was in the same class. So just to have that tightknit group of leaders, that means a lot.” All six of them were there for the National Championship two years ago, and their perspectives on leadership and football have inherently been molded by the captains before them. But for Hausmann, he’s not exactly relying on anyone older as a blueprint.
“There’s not one specific guy,” Hausmann said. “Because I think when I first came to Michigan, there was a huge abundance of leaders here, but they led in their own type of ways. It’s very
important to just be able to see the different type of leaderships.” Hausmann, soft-spoken but always heard, called some playerled meetings earlier this year.
Bredeson made the decision to
room with freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood in the fall.
El-Hadi, unsatisfied with last season just like everyone else in Schembechler Hall, is steadily becoming more vocal.
players such as Hausmann and Derrick Moore set to level up their dominance at their respective positions.
“(I want to) be one of them guys that
“I feel like at the beginning, I was more showing by example,”
El-Hadi said. “And then last year I realized, let me start talking more and show them how I truly feel. And I know they all respect me, that my words mean something. This year I said, no matter what’s going on, I’m gonna say whatever I need to say, because this year has to be different than last year.”
When it comes to actually playing football, the group boasts talent on either side of the ball, with guys like Klein and Bredeson expected to be significant contributors to an improved offense and defensive
As Michigan head coach, Kevin Sullivan expands upon his legacy where it first took root
Long before he received a phone call regarding a new candidate in the mix for cross country head coach at Michigan, Mason Ferlic was well aware of who Kevin Sullivan was.
The most decorated Wolverine in program history, Sullivan was renowned in the distance world for his triumphs in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Sullivan excelled in a wide range of middle- and long-distance races, earning himself three trips to the Olympics, four NCAA titles, 16 Big Ten Titles and 14 All-American honors. He was the kind of individual athlete that guys like Ferlic, a former co-captain of the Michigan cross country team, would study with awe as they tried to replicate some of that success during their own time in Ann Arbor.
“(Me and my teammates) would pull up old NCAA meets of Sully and you could tell from his running form he was very distinct. He was super toey and springy, just a machine out there,” Ferlic told The Michigan Daily.
“His range was also legendary, a guy that was top ten in cross country every year and also an indoor mile champion. … I can’t even imagine that.” So in 2014 when Sullivan decided to return to Michigan to fill the new head coach vacancy, he was met with nothing but praise from the runners he was soon to coach, including thenjunior and captain Ferlic.
“Track and field director Jerry Clayton at the time called up some of us senior captains and said, ‘We’re in the hunt for a new cross country head coach, one of the front runners is Kevin Sullivan,’ ” Ferlic said. “I think a lot of us were really excited and entertained by the idea. ” For the athletes, it was a chance to learn from and compete for one of the best Canadian runners of all time, a man many of them idolized since arriving on campus. For Sullivan, it presented a different kind of opportunity. His athletic legacy as an individual in every event — from the 1,500 to the 12,000 meters — was already more than secure. But when he became the head coach at the very same institution that gave rise to his illustrious
career, Sullivan was given the opportunity of imparting those same characteristics on the next generation of collegiate athletes to create a new legacy — one that isn’t all about him.
***
Sullivan first discovered his natural talent for running long distances in the fourth grade, after a dominant performance in his school’s annual field day. The experience prompted him to join the local track club in the sixth grade, where, at the age of 14, Sullivan famously ran 800 meters in 1:53, a record for his age at the time.
“Being good at it initially got me into (running),” Sullivan told The Daily. “Sometimes, running in particular is a bit of an acquired taste … winning definitely helped.”
While winning drew him in, it was the finer details of distance running that made him fall in love. From a young age, he absorbed information on the training of the greats of his era, learning what workouts they did and why, and seeing what he could incorporate into his own workouts to improve. A future engineering major at Michigan,
Sullivan always loved the science and the math behind what made the greats great. But it was the individuality of the sport that most stood out.
Running, at its core, is an individual sport. While it’s true that only a team can win a National
championship outright each year, it’s the individual performances that most people remember. On the race track and in training, each runner is responsible for themself. And Sullivan, a selfproclaimed introvert, embraced it all with open arms.
“I like the idea that my results are focused on myself, I don’t have to rely on somebody else to get results,” Sullivan said. “I like that it’s a different kind of pressure.”
Outfitting the next generation: Michigan athletes create nonprofit to give back to the athletic community
Every great athlete was once in your shoes. At least, that’s the mantra Michigan track and field runners Yasmine Mansi, a 2025 graduate, and Clare McNamara, a current graduate student, coined when they founded their nonprofit, The SunBundle. The organization aims to provide local communities with fitness education and upcycled athletic gear — putting young athletes, quite literally, into the shoes of their predecessors.
***
In the summer of 2024, Mansi traveled to Ismailia, Egypt to race for the Al Ahly club team. Upon her arrival at the event, she was swiftly reminded of her fortunate situation back home. With the Wolverines, Mansi had access to a state of the art hydraulic running track, a personal nutritionist and a brand new pair of shoes whenever she needed them.
These robust training accommodations were a stark contrast to her opponents’
experience in Ismailia. On the day of her race, the heat in Ismailia reached a high of 105 degrees and the sun beat down relentlessly on the track. When Mansi looked down the starting line at her competitors’ feet she realized that some of them were racing entirely barefoot. The image of bare feet on a scorching track stuck with her from the finish line all the way back to Ann Arbor. After the race, she returned to the Ross School of Business for her junior year, where she balanced her entrepreneurship courses and accounting meetings with rigorous track practices and extracurricular clubs. Mansi was heavily involved in other organizations including the American Advertising Federation and the Muslim Student Business Association, where she served as the president. When Mansi first enrolled in the business school, she knew she wanted to own her own company in the future, but with the hectic nature of her schedule, she didn’t think it was possible. However, disparities in athletic resources pushed her to take the leap.
“I always wondered, if people who lacked resources had the right ones, how far they could go?”
Mansi told The Michigan Daily. “What level could they reach with their talent if they just had that?”
Mansi officially launched her nonprofit, The SunBundle, in 2023. The mission of the organization is to empower athletes in underserved communities by supplying physical resources and educational information. The name, SunBundle, is an homage to the scorching sun during her race in Egypt. As Mansi saw the runners next to her fly down the track without any foot protection, she was inspired by their grit and dedication despite the conditions — traits she wants to invoke for the recipients of the care packages.
The basic business model consists of collecting pre-loved athletic shoes via donation boxes around campus, hosting events for volunteers to assemble care packages and identifying schools and homeless shelters in the area to be recipients. Each package contains a pair of refurbished athletic shoes, a pair of socks,
personal hygiene products, a goalsetting notebook and a notecard with general fitness information. In addition, the packages may be customized based on the donation site, with some schools receiving racing spikes and other athletic gear for their racing teams. The SunBundle identifies locations in need by using a software that targets schools with high percentages of students benefiting from free and reduced cost lunches.
At the beginning, Mansi orchestrated each step of this process entirely on her own, as well as writing grant proposals and promoting the organization on social media. Owning a company is more than a full-time job, and Mansi started to feel the weight of building her company while also being a student athlete. But Mansi wouldn’t be by herself for long. Soon, Mansi discovered that some of her teammates shared her passion for entrepreneurship and supporting young athletes, and the load began to lighten.
*** McNamara has been a longtime teammate and friend of
Mansi’s, racing together since they were teenagers at Northville High School. When Mansi started The SunBundle, McNamara was one of the many teammates that became involved with the program, showing up to events and assembling care packages alongside Mansi.
As a fellow Business Analytics major, McNamara became interested in the technical side of operations, and when a position on the executive board of The SunBundle opened in January 2024, McNamara stepped in.
“If we saw each other in the training room and we were doing our recovery, or passing each other in the locker room, we’d be like, ‘I had this idea for SunBundle,’ ” McNamara told The Daily.
Other teammates also took interest in the organization and its goals. Currently, four out of five positions on the executive board are filled by Michigan track and field athletes. Aside from Mansi and McNamara, graduate students Leah Doezema and Lucy Petee serve as the Vice President of Engagement and
Vice President of Marketing, respectively. Having student athletes as active members of the organization helps promote the message and maintain connections with the University and volunteers. Additionally, the perspective of the athletes drives one of the main pillars of the SunBundle care packages: education. Alongside the athletic items, each SunBundle package contains an information booklet with guidance on proper nutrition, hydration and step-by-step guides on stretching and cool down routines to keep your body in shape.
“We don’t want to just drop off a pair of shoes at a school, we want to create an experience for those athletes,” Mansi said. “We recognize that underserved communities don’t not only have physical resources, but they also don’t have educational resources. We want to be able to entirely use our experience to help benefit those communities.” CONTINUED AT
Alum Jenna Hickey/DAILY
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DREW LENARD Daily Sports Writer
Courtesy of Michigan Athletics. CROSS COUNTRY
LUCY LANGERVELD
Michigan sets offensive line ahead of season opener
ALINA LEVINE Daily Sports Editor
While the Michigan football team’s offensive line loves to have fun, there’s less than a week until the Wolverines’ first game of the season and some decisions to be made. From naming a starting quarterback to the line that protects him, Michigan’s offense needs everything in place to ensure it doesn’t crack come game day.
So for now, the Wolverines are done playing musical chairs and have officially locked in their front five.
Looking down the line on the left side, you’ll find offensive linemen junior Evan Link and graduate Giovanni El-Hadi starting at left tackle and left guard, respectively. As two of the most experienced players on the offensive line, they’ve provided a solid foundation to build off of come the start of the season.
El-Hadi, in particular, has stood out as one of the leaders of the group. While perhaps not the most vocal, according to Link, he leads by example and sets the tone off the bat. Anchoring the rest of the line alongside him is graduate offensive lineman Greg Crippen. And this season, you’ll find Crippen right where he usually is — at the center of it all.
“It’s been a long journey for me,” Crippen said Monday. “A lot ups and downs, but the biggest thing for me is the mental side of things. Physically, that is something I always could do, but mentally, it’s just a lot of growth, you know, confidence (in) myself and positive thoughts … I got a lot of big expectations for myself this year. Just want us to keep winning. And me be the reason for that.”
In addition to big expectations for himself, there’s also a high bar for the rest of the O-line.
Freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood was just recently named QB1, and while he was the No.1 national prospect, he still has yet to play college ball. As Underwood adjusts to the increased level of competition, the offensive line will be even more crucial for his — and the rest of the team’s — success.
To create a strong offensive line, you need chemistry. Luckily for Michigan, it has no shortage of that.
“It’s a huge thing for us,” Crippen said. “Taking a lot of time out of the day in the summer and in the winter to hang out with each other. We hung out all the time. That’s the biggest thing we did. Just even having coach Castillo come, we worked a lot as a group together, after workouts, before practice. That is something that has really helped us out.”
This kind of team bonding has likely been particularly helpful for the right side of the line, where there’s less experience. Offensive linemen junior Brady Norton and sophomore Andrew Sprague will be starting at right guard and right tackle this season, respectively. While Sprague only appeared in four games last season, Norton started in 11. However, Norton started these games at left tackle at the FCS level, making his switch to right guard come as a bit of a surprise.
Nonetheless, regardless of their experience or position on the line, the only thing that matters is whether or not the Wolverines’ O-line can successfully block where and when it needs to. And heading into the first game, Michigan is optimistic.
“In camp, we’ve really fired off the ball and did a great job, because we have a great defense,” Crippen said. “I’m really, really happy where we’re at, and I think we’re ready to make a huge impact this year.”
With the lineup set, the Wolverines’ offensive line is ready to graduate from building chemistry at fall camp to generating offensive momentum in game time. And Saturday, they’ll try to prove they’re the right five for the job.
Bryce Underwood named Michigan’s starting quarterback
Before anyone could even ask the question, Sherrone Moore provided the answer.
In front of the media on Monday, Moore named freshman Bryce Underwood as Michigan’s starting quarterback, confirming an initial CBS Sports report released the day prior.
“He just did the things the right way,” Moore said. “(He) used his skill and never tried to do too much for a young guy, very mature beyond his years, and he’s still only 18 years old. He’s gonna make mistakes, but that’s what we’re here for, coaches and and players. We’re all going to support him as he goes on this journey, we go on this journey together, but he’s earned that job.”
Underwood, who celebrated his eighteenth birthday just last week, will become the youngest Wolverine ever to start under center. Underwood’s name has been automatically attached to any conversation surrounding Michigan football since late last year, when the high-school phenom decommitted from Louisiana State and signed with the Wolverines. Reportedly, he signed a four-year, $12.5 million NIL deal with Michigan upon committing.
Underwood enrolled early, arrived on campus in the
spring and immediately drew praise from teammates and coaches for his play-making abilities and maturity beyond his years. After splitting snaps with sophomore Jadyn Davis in spring ball, and the quarterback battle opening up as graduates Mikey Keene and Jake Garcia entered the picture in fall camp, Moore designated Underwood as QB1 to the team on Sunday.
But according to Moore, he knew long before then.
Sometime halfway through fall camp, the Wolverines packed up their practice equipment and took the very short drive from Schembechler Hall to Michigan Stadium. For Underwood’s first scrimmage in the Big House, he supposedly didn’t play like it.
“He made a couple throws, and I just looked at (offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey), and he just nodded at me,” Moore said. “(I) looked at (associate head coach Biff Poggi), who was behind me, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I think this is the guy.’ ” For what it’s worth, that story lines up with what every other coach and player has said about Underwood: the 6-4, 225-pound quarterback doesn’t play — or look — like a freshman.
It’s understandable that winning two state championships and a laundry list of other awards helps
shake the nerves of playing quarterback, even in his first year of college. It’s not as easy to point to where the composure comes from, although that trait seems just as prevalent.
“On the field, how he controls the offense, how he tempos, it’s almost relaxed, and not frantic or anything, which obviously helps us as well,” graduate center Greg Crippen said.
Confidence, calmness and being able to rally a team were three boxes Moore was looking to check when he was evaluating the quarterback position. As he sees it, Underwood checked all three.
“You put him in adverse situations and he responds,” Moore said. “Never makes the same mistake twice.
Even if he makes a mistake, it doesn’t come back and it’s the same thing, and you’re like, ‘Oh, dude, we gotta go through this again.’ That doesn’t happen. … He talks to everybody. He assimilates with everybody: offense, defense, DBs, D-tackles, O-line, D-line. When you feel like somebody gravitates and has got the team, then you feel like you got your quarterback.”
Against New Mexico in Michigan’s season opener, Underwood will have the keys. And after an offseason with some questions at the position, the Wolverines finally have their quarterback.
SAM GIBSON Daily Sports Editor
How new regulation affects Michigan NIL in the revenue-sharing era
JORDAN KLEIN Daily Sports Editor
In June, a district court ruled that universities were permitted to distribute a portion of revenue directly to athletes, upheaving the decades-old rules that prohibited direct revenue distributions. This year, universities will distribute $20.6 million in revenue directly to athletes.
Part of that ruling involved regulating the name, image and likeness (NIL) space that has transformed college athletics in the past four years. In 2021, a judge ruled that the NCAA could no longer prohibit college athletes from profiting off of their NIL, and athletes started cashing in. While some athlete endorsements were legitimate, profitable business ventures, many were “pay-for-play” deals to draw athletes to their schools. As a result, athletes were being compensated well over their “fair market value.” The majority of this compensation came from NIL collectives, fundraising organizations established by boosters to bring athletes to their schools. To raise money, collectives hold events like dinners and autograph sessions featuring their schools top athletes.
But the recent ruling ends these pay-for-play deals, forcing changes to the operational models of many collectives. Beginning this academic year, all third-party NIL deals will have to be approved by the “NIL Go” clearinghouse, operated by the consulting firm Deloitte, to confirm that the
other metrics, “NIL Go” will analyze an athlete’s performance, social media presence and brand influence to make such determinations. Deloitte estimates that 70% of past deals would have been denied under the current rules.
The Wolverines’ NIL collective, Champions Circle, was founded in 2022 and became an official partner of the athletic department in 2023. Since then, they’ve spearheaded multiple fundraising campaigns, including the Those Who Stay campaign, which was launched after the 2023 National Championship to help keep Michigan’s top talent at Michigan. Further, the collective played a role in bringing bluechip quarterback recruit Bryce Underwood to Michigan, and they launched a March With May campaign this spring that helped the Wolverines land the secondbest transfer portal class in the nation, according to 247Sports.
“We are closely monitoring the situation to ensure that we continue to conduct ourselves in a compliant manner,” Champions Circle Co-Founder Jared Wangler told The Michigan Daily in a statement. “Given our experience in this historically unpredictable market and the broad spectrum of offerings in our fan engagement platform, we are confident that the commercial infrastructure we have built will allow us to evolve and thrive no matter the changes in the collegiate NIL landscape.”
In early July, the College Sports Commission, an independent organization created to oversee the new revenue-sharing regulation,
before the end of the month, giving collectives the authority to compensate athletes — but only for their fair market value. Now, the role of NIL collectives is to provide payments to athletes to supplement the money they’re receiving from their schools.
“Pay-for-play will not be permitted, and every NIL deal done with a student-athlete must be a legitimate deal, not pay-forplay in disguise,” College Sports Commission CEO Bryan Seeley said in a statement.
With that, Champions Circle will continue to offer the events — including autograph signings and exclusive dinners — used to provide athlete compensation. But post-regulation, they’ll have to ensure the services athletes provide to Champions Circle are fair market value for the compensation the athletes receive.
But here’s where Michigan’s advantages come in — the block ‘M’ and Michigan brand are powerful. While most NIL collectives, including Ohio State’s “THE Foundation”, Southern California’s “House of Victory” and Texas Tech’s “The Matador Club” operate as 501(c)(3) not-for-profits, Champions Circle is a for-profit entity. While no one can be certain without seeing the financials, it’s certainly possible that Champions Circle is able to generate value more than the collectives of the Wolverines’ competitors. Therefore, the fair market value — and the corresponding compensation athletes can receive — for Champions Circle services likely exceeds that of many other schools.
‘Do it, own it, give it, appreciate it’: How Mark Rothstein’s coaching has shaped Michigan rowing
ELLA GURFEIN Daily Sports Writer
Since its varsity inception in 1997, the Michigan rowing team has fostered hundreds of collegiate rowing careers as well as team wide results on the leaderboard. And while the program has fostered various personalities, gained immense success and suffered frustrating defeats, one person has remained constant — head coach Mark Rothstein.
A Michigan alum and Ann Arbor native himself, Rothstein has been a lifelong supporter of the Wolverines. At Michigan, he rowed on the men’s crew team while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in physics and continued to work as a club rowing coach after graduating.
So when the University of Michigan announced that it was adding a women’s varsity rowing team, it didn’t have to look far for the perfect coach.
“In 1995, the athletic department announced that they were going to add a women’s sport,” Rothstein told The Michigan Daily. “So they chose rowing as the sport to elevate and I was the club coach at the time. … I got pretty lucky. I was kind of in the right place at the right time and they hired me.”
The decision proved successful for both Rothstein and the Wolverines, as he has led the program to nine Big Ten titles
the program has also produced a multitude of Olympians and All-Americans, as well as many former athletes who have seen major successes in their professional endeavors outside of the boathouse.
In Rothstein’s early seasons, the rowing team saw quick success, with a fifth-place overall finish in its second year and a Big Ten championship title two years later.
“Our goal is not necessarily to produce Olympians, although we’ve produced a lot from our program, but it’s really to produce Olympic-caliber people,” Rothstein said. “Not everyone wants to pursue that, but I think everyone can be really impactful in their life post-Michigan and that’s the goal.”
But Rothstein’s impact extends far beyond the many trophies and accolades he’s brought to the program. The rowers Rothstein have coached often cite him as ‘the best’ and reflect fondly on their experiences with him, largely due to the individual attention he provides each member of his team. Rothstein’s mentorship has helped student-athletes in their lives beyond the boat. There is a common sentiment among Rothstein’s rowers — no matter what these athletes pursue after college, they all laud Rothstein for his role in shaping their wellrounded abilities.
“Mark is a really great coach because he can adapt
volunteer assistant coach Felice Mueller told The Daily. “He could be more of a hard driver with people who need it, he had an adaptable coaching style, which really speaks to his strength and time on the field and being able to understand the nuances between athletes.” Rothstein’s drive to help his athletes develop is a testament to his overall strength as a coach. Rather than just focusing on the strength of the team as a whole, he cares about individual athletes and motivates them to be their best selves — both in and outside the boat — a belief that has brought him success in his many years of coaching.
*** The rowing team is the largest women’s varsity sport at Michigan, with 58 athletes on its roster in the 2024-25 season and amassing as many as 85 rowers in previous seasons. Despite the size of the team, Rothstein continues to focus on each individual rower, always striving to grow and improve the program.
“I really try to evaluate myself as a coach and our program and what we’re doing well, what I’m doing well and when I’m not doing well,” Rothstein said. “I just try to stay in a mindset of perpetually getting better. Every year I learn something new and every year is different. Every team is different and I think it’s just really fun to constantly learn and grow.”
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Down 1-0 in its season opener to Notre Dame, the Michigan men’s soccer team found itself struggling to control the ball.
After forcing the long ball and playing from the flanks, junior defender Will Baker found graduate forward Shuma Sasaki for the equalizer.
From the pinpoint accuracy of Baker’s long ball to Sasaki’s pace, with timing and precise finishing, it was a perfectly executed move. But the Wolverines (0-01) couldn’t establish a consistent offensive presence as difficulty establishing possession turned a winnable game into a 1-1 draw with the Fighting Irish (0-0-1).
“To start the game, we strug-
Frailties in possession leave Michigan wanting more in 1-1 draw with Notre Dame
gled a little bit with our pressure centrally,” Michigan coach Chaka Daley said. “We played one in front of the other, and then (Notre Dame) played big passes centrally into the number ‘9’ and the ‘9’ set into the team, and the two ‘10s’ came underneath and they caused us some problems.”
The match got off to a choppy start, with 10 fouls in the first 25 minutes. Issues in tempo also forced each team to play their men out wide. As a result, there was no room for fluid, one-touch passing. Having neutralized their opponents’ ability to control the middle of the field, both the Wolverines and the Fighting Irish had to resort to beating each other in the air or on set pieces.
Tipping the offensive seesaw was Notre Dame, who drew first blood. In the 25th minute, grad-
uate midfielder Mitar Mitrovic made a costly challenge just outside the box on Fighting Irish midfielder Nolan Spicer, giving Notre Dame a free kick. The resulting free kick was skied high and bounced around the box, before Fighting Irish midfielder Diego Ochoa pounced on the
loose ball and fired it in to hand Notre Dame the 1-0 lead.
The sequence highlighted the vulnerabilities in possession that plagued Michigan all game. The Wolverines’ inability to sustain stretches of dominance over the ball meant that they spent much of the first half trying to win
it back. But Michigan’s lack of structure in possession bled into its defensive setup, as the Wolverines struggled to put together a consistent press and had to resort to last-ditch challenges — the type of challenges that led to the Fighting Irish’s goal.
Looking to get back into the game, Michigan relied heavily on the long ball. The Wolverines’ struggles to maintain possession prevented them from building up attacks through the middle and forced them into the periphery in search of a goal. Many of Michigan’s chances came in the form of crosses or aerial passes from the fullbacks, targeting Sasaki or freshman forward Guy Michaeli, who roamed the right flank.
It was a strategy that yielded mixed results. Though the equalizer came off a perfectly placed
Baker long ball, many of these passes couldn’t find their mark, or left Sasaki or Michaeli at an awkward angle from which to score. The Wolverines created 13 shots, but just four of these were on goal, reflecting the dearth of quality chances.
“It’s important for us to deal with those (long balls) well,” Daley said. “… It’s a hard thing to deal with because there’s a lot of them.”
The second half was a more cohesive effort from Michigan, with more successful long passes and runs into the box. But the Wolverines still weren’t able to capitalize on their improvement — due in part to their disjointed first half, and squandered a potential victory.
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Shuma Sasaki shines in first game with Michigan
started 64 games with the Patriots before arriving at Michigan.
Surging up the left wing and taking on a defender, graduate midfielder Shuma Sasaki garnered “MVP Shuma! MVP Shuma!” chants from the crowd. This reaction proved to be a trend in Sasaki’s first game for Michigan Thursday evening, along with his ability to create chances for his new team.
After playing four seasons with the University of the Cumberlands, Sasaki joined the Wolverines as a graduate transfer. Scoring 12 goals and notching 25 assists over his four-year career, Sasaki
So in a 1-1 draw against Notre Dame, Michigan’s sole goal came late in the first half thanks to Sasaki. Junior defender Will Baker played a long ball over the top which Sasaki controlled, cut onto his left foot and hammered into the far side of the net to notch the tying goal for the Wolverines. As no others came during the rest of the game, this one proved to be vital.
“(Sasaki) is a top player,” Michigan coach Chaka Daley said. “He’s got good, really good instincts. Scored a smashing goal, big time goal. And I think 1-v-1 sometimes he can be unplayable.”
Sasaki’s goal not only evened the score, but its exigence before halftime proved essential. Tying the game up before the break gave the Wolverines the momentum to come out strong to start the second half. Not only did they keep from conceding, they also outshot the Fighting Irish 7-0 in the last 45 minutes.
“It’s a huge, huge thing for belief (and) winning — for one of your players who we rely on to help change the game, to score, (it) gives the team and the crowd a big lift,” Daley said. “We went into halftime in a much more confident place, saying, ‘Hey, we can be positive in the way that we play. We can be aggressive. We can play
with courage,’ and I think we did that in the second half.”
Apart from his goal, Sasaki created chances for both him and his teammates. Nearing the end of the second half, Sasaki ran onto a long ball and dribbled down the sideline before he played a threatening cross that resulted in a corner kick. And with less than 13 minutes left in the game, Sasaki cut past multiple defenders, causing Notre Dame to foul and handing Michigan a free kick on the corner of the box.
Although the Wolverines were unable to capitalize, Sasaki’s abilities to create these opportunities certainly stood out.
“Hopefully a big one,” Daley
said
when asked about what Sasaki’s future impact will be. “He’s a top player. … It’s just the tip of the iceberg, as you say. He’s got a big chance.”
With four shots in his debut game, the most of any Michigan player, Sasaki clearly had a large impact — one that, if continued, could result in more MVP chants.
VIHAAN EASWAR
Ananya Kedia/DAILY
HADLEY
Alum Riley Nieboer/DAILY
Build
Michigan offense unable to keep pace with Alabama in 3-1 loss
something you want to see in your forward.”
we were able to get a couple of corners and get a couple more shots.”
After scoring six goals in just two games this season, the Michigan women’s soccer team hoped to continue its strong offensive streak against Alabama.
While the Wolverines’ (2-1) offense struck first, it wasn’t enough to overcome the Crimson Tide (3-0) offense, losing 3-1. Michigan not only got outscored, but outshot as its offensive streak came to a screeching halt.
Alabama’s offense attacked first with a shot in the opening minute of the game followed by another attempt eight minutes later. However, neither shot was a concern for the Wolverines as both were out of range. Soon after, Michigan got its own scoring opportunity in the 12th minute with two consecutive shots from sophomore forward Elle Ervin and sophomore midfielder Adi Walick. But just like the Crimson Tide’s earlier attempts, the Wolverines weren’t offensively threatening. But two minutes later, Michigan’s offense found the back of the net first off a shot from Ervin, giving it an early lead.
“She definitely has a way of doing it,” Wolverines coach Jennifer Klein said. “She’s finding the back of the net more often this year, which is really good,
However, Alabama’s offense was not deterred by Ervin’s goal and began making offensive chances for themselves. The next few shots from the Crimson Tide were on goal, each to the bottom part of the net. Though these shots were saved by senior goalkeeper Sophie Homan, Alabama eventually got its first goal in the 34th minute as forward Larkin Thomason found her shot go past Homan, tying the game.
The Crimson Tide threatened one more time before half with a shot aimed for the top part of the net, but Homan was there to make the save. At the end of the half, the two squads had a goal each, but Alabama was outshooting Michigan, 11-4, because its offense had more opportunities and was putting on more pressure.
The Crimson Tide’s offense continued to dominate as midfielder Madeline Padelski scored in the opening minute of the second half, firing the ball to the bottom center of the net and giving Alabama a 2-1 lead.
“It was a bit unfortunate that in the opening minutes of the second half we gave up a goal, … but I thought we did a good job of fighting back,” Klein said. “ …
We had some moments where we really were able to possess higher up and in their attacking half. And I think from there
One of those players getting more shots in the half was Ervin. In the 53rd minute, Ervin slotted the ball to the bottom center of the net but the potential game-tying goal was blocked by Crimson Tide goalkeeper Coralie Lallier. Later on in the 64th minute, Ervin shot the ball again but it went too high.
“Elle (is) really good at being a target for us, where we can play off of and through her,” Klein said. “We just have to make sure that if that’s going to be the case, you’re showing up for her underneath so that way we can get the ball and then look to play into one of our other players”
However, the Wolverines weren’t able to get this support, and Alabama went on to score again, this time off a penalty kick by Thomason, increasing its advantage to 3-1. The Crimson Tide offense, still hungry for more goals, fired the ball for shots on goal twice while Michigan’s offense struggled, only shooting the ball once which was too far left.
The Wolverines’ initial offensive surge wasn’t enough as Alabama’s offense quickly responded. From there, the Crimson Tide didn’t look back, as its pressure near the net proved to be too much for Michigan.
KAYLA LUGO Daily Sports Writer
Alyssa Mulligan/DAILY
VIHAAN EASWAR Daily Sports Writer
Fifty-two minutes into the Michigan men’s soccer team’s Sunday match against UC Riverside, graduate midfielder Quin Rogers had a choice. Receiving the ball at the edge of the box, Rogers had the option of passing the ball off to one of his two onside teammates or taking a crack at the net for himself.
Rogers decided to let it rip, unleashing a thundering strike that left Highlanders goalkeeper Andrew Hermosillo sprawled helplessly on his side and doubled the Wolverines’ lead to 2-0.
Rogers’ risk-taking from outside the box was reflective of Michigan’s approach to the
Michigan rides wave of energy to commanding 2-0 victory over UC Riverside
match as a whole, as the Wolverines (1-0-1) made good on an energetic performance to down UC Riverside (0-2-0), 2-0, for their first win of the season.
“Our goal for every game is to come in with a lot of energy,”
Rogers said. “… We try to make it about ourselves, and we set the tone of our games rather than letting our opponents set the tone themselves.”
Michigan dictated the pulse of the game from the onset, with three shots in the first 10 minutes. The Wolverines were more comfortable in possession than they were Thursday night against Notre Dame, dictating the tempo of play — a sequence of quick one-touch passes in their end of the field early in the first half illustrated their ability on the ball.
Michigan didn’t simply consign itself to playing tiki taka football, though. The speed of graduate forward Shuma Sasaki provided the Wolverines with a direct threat in the final third, and he prowled the edges of the box throughout the first half.
Though Sasaki himself didn’t score, he logged four shots, the most of any Michigan player.
And Sasaki’s menace reared its head in the 43rd minute, when he won a penalty off a foul on the edge of the box. Stepping to the spot was Rogers, who arrowed the penalty into the roof of the goal for the Wolverines’ opener.
“I’ve always been a big guy for penalties,” Rogers said. “Nothing new for me to score one.”
Michigan maintained its high energy levels into the sec -
ond half, culminating in Rogers’ ambitious goal. The rest of the second half reflected this intensity. Though they failed to find the back of the net again, the Wolverines tallied another 10 shots, with UC Riverside having to call upon Hermosillo to make several saves and prevent an already one-sided contest from turning into a rout.
“We want to be aggressive in our mentality,” Michigan coach Chaka Daley said. “We want to try to play what we’ve been coached to play, possession based, see if we can build, but don’t just have possession for the sake of possession. Can we do it with a little bit of an instinct to affect the background? Can we do it in a way that forces the other team to be on their heels or pushes the
buttons a little bit and forces errors or mistakes?”
The score itself was just 2-0, but the Wolverines took 16 shots, eight of which were on goal, overwhelming the High -
landers with a blend of speed and precise passing. Michigan’s high-energy, aggressive approach gave it an impressive victory that was more imposing than the scoreline suggests.
The Michigan women’s soccer team started off hot — winning back-to-back games with a mix of late-game heroics and offensive firepower. But against tougher competition in the form of Alabama on Thursday, the Wolverines faltered. If Michigan wanted a chance to salvage its SEC road trip with a win against Georgia, the Wolverines needed to reset, and do so fast.
Yet for the second game in a row, Michigan’s (2-2) subpar play against the Bulldogs (3-1) mirrored its match versus the
Crimson Tide. Unable to control the ball or pace of play, the Wolverines lost handedly to Georgia, 3-0.
Omnipresent even in their wins, Michigan has struggled to come out of the blocks hot.
After a misplaced header gave the ball right to the Wolverines in the middle of the field, a simple one-time pass to unguarded senior forward Kali Burrell would have put her in a prime scoring location. However, that pass was played too late and too far, resulting in a goal kick instead of a shot on goal.
While Michigan’s sloppy play continued, the Bulldogs found their rhythm. Finally, after two shots sailed high, Georgia for -
ward Summer Denigan slotted the ball in the upper 90 from over 20 yards out to make it 1-0.
Suffocated by Georgia’s offense, the Wolverines were backed into their defensive third and couldn’t find a way out.
“In moments where we would regain the ball we just turned it over too easily, too much transition to transition,” Michigan coach Jennifer Klein said. “So we gotta be better in those moments, once we regain, valuing the ball for a little bit longer, so we can get higher at the field and showcase our ability on the ball.”
By the end of the first half, the Wolverines managed to generate only one shot while the Bulldogs racked up five.
Down a single goal going into the second half, Michigan had another chance to reset and find their footing. However, the Wolverines came out in the second half flat-footed yet again as Denigan recorded her second goal of the match in the 48th minute.
“We have to find a way to start the second half a bit better,” Klein said. “(Now) it’s two games in a row we’re giving up goals a little early.”
Georgia continued their offensive showcase, firing 10 shots with half of them on goal throughout the second half. Eventually, in the 70th minute, the Bulldogs secured their final goal of the match as yet another shot from outside the box was
placed into the same upper left corner as the first goal.
Still stuck in its defensive third for the rest of the half, Michigan mounted no successful counterattacks. Even Michigan’s top goal-scoring strikers, sophomore Elle Ervin and junior Gabrielle Prych, failed to put a shot on net. Without anyone else stepping up, the Wolverines’ offense was stifled, as only senior forward Taylor Brennan managed to put a shot on target.
Off days are a statistical certainty for any given team. However, the ability to recognize what’s going wrong and how to reset during those days is a skill that Michigan needs to harness. The Wolverines have the talent to compete with teams like Georgia, but if they can’t control the little things, pace and possession, winning those matches on those days becomes a dimmer and dimmer possibility.
Off days are a statistical certainty for any given team. However, after the loss to Alabama, Michigan needed to recognize what went wrong and how to reset. The Wolverines had the talent to compete with Georgia, but their inability to control the little things, pace and possession, made a win on Sunday a dimmer and dimmer possibility until the final whistle made it an impossibility.
Ananya Kedia/DAILY
Coming off two losses in its previous exhibition games, the Michigan women’s soccer team played as if those defeats were still weighing on its back, not making many significant moves as it played from behind against Villanova for most of the seasonopening match.
A late-game spark pushed the Wolverines (1-0) ahead of the Wildcats (0-1), and Michigan officially started its season on a high note with a 2-1 victory.
Play was even for the first half — there were a mix of wide shots, yellow cards and hydration breaks. Michigan pushed early and had its first shot on goal around the fourth minute when freshman midfielder Maya Raghunandanan ran down the sideline uncontested, cutting in around the 18-yard line to take a shot that reflected off the Wildcats’ goalie. Villanova had its first real look at the net around the 10th minute with an unreachable corner kick being placed in the back right of the 18-yard box, keeping the contest at 0-0.
By halftime, the Wolverines still hadn’t established themselves, but neither had their opponents. The ball took its turn with each team and only produced eight shots total between both, with one save in goal by senior goalkeeper Sophie Homan. The Wildcats had five opportunities to score on corner kicks — compared to Michigan’s one — yet still couldn’t seal the deal.
Scoreless, the Wolverines needed to implement adjustments to put the ball in the back of the net.
“I think sometimes you have to get settled into the game and recognize what it is giving you,” Wolverines coach Jennifer Klein
GYMNASTICS
said. “And for us it was definitely finding the highest options.”
Play action stayed equal for most of the second half. Trying to utilize their highest options and settle in, sophomore forward Ellie Ervin and senior midfielder
Jenna Lang were top contenders up front all night. Ervin drove, shoulder to shoulder, with the Wildcats’ defense as Lang found the ball at her foot for a few far outside shots on goal.
It wasn’t until the 69th minute where the excitement really began. In the 6-yard box Homan reached up to deflect a ball and collided with a Villanova player who was hoping to head the ball into the goal. The play was ruled to be worthy of a penalty kick in favor of the Wildcats.
Michigan needed a stop, but Villanova fought hard for a goal.
From the penalty spot, the ball soared, hit the right side goal post and bounced in.
With the score now 1-0, Michigan tried to tie the game as it heightened its pace, constantly weaving through Villanova’s defense. Deflecting off a Wildcat player, Michigan was granted an opportunity at its third and final corner kick of the night.
In the corner, junior defender Jewell Campbell sent the ball out in the middle of the 6-yard box, pulling the Villanova goalie with it. The ball skimmed through her
sticky, padded gloves and Ervin blasted it with the crest of her head, placing it in the bottom center of the goal in the 77th minute.
“A big thing is implementing our style of working, being really consistent, and showing up,” Klein said. “No matter the momentum of the game, (we have to) find some good moments of transition and finish the attack.”
Tied and under pressure from the Wildcats, Michigan grabbed the lead nine minutes later in the 86th minute. Assisted by Ervin, junior forward Gabrielle Prych slotted the ball in the bottom center of the net, pulling the Wolverines ahead 2-1. Villanova kept the heaters on and made its presence seen on the Wolverines’ defensive line. But it wasn’t enough as the countdown from 10 seconds echoed across the field, and the game ended from the loud blare of a horn.
“We stayed and believed in our ability to generate some chances,” Klein said. “Showcasing our feasibility to get a result on the road gives us some confidence, and now celebrate it tonight and then tomorrow, get right back to work.”
The Wildcats’ initial surge only fired Michigan to come back stronger. And with that lategame wake-up call, the Wolverines found the spark that allowed them to start their season off victorious.
Michigan men’s gymnastics and Cirque du Soleil, oh my!
How the two intertwine
KAYLA LUGO
Over the past two decades, the Michigan men’s gymnastics program has cultivated some of the nation’s top athletes while also redefining what it means to compete at an elite level.
At the center of this evolution is Yuan Xiao, who has served as the Wolverines’ head coach for the past five years. During Xiao’s time in Ann Arbor, Michigan has won Big Ten Titles, the NCAA Championship and sent multiple gymnasts to the Olympics. But Xiao’s philosophy extends beyond the traditional competitive focus, emphasizing success equals a blend of athleticism and artistry.
“It’s a very similar performer and in the stage and competing for all support,” Xiao told The Michigan Daily. “That’s why our sports call the artist gymnastics, because the artists that goes first. You know, people love to see people doing all supports and also show they are performing first.”
This approach is influenced in part by Xiao’s wife Julia, a former Cirque du Soleil performer, whose experience in one of the most visually stunning and artistically ambitious performance companies in the world has shaped her view on training. Julia and Xiao have changed how the Wolverines think about movement, expression and storytelling in their routines.
“After we performed, we had a program done, the entire audience (stood) up for three to five minutes, just applause,” Xiao said. “They never see us perform like it that way. So that (gave) (Julia) a beautiful memory. (I’ll) never forget because of the performance, you can just catch everyone’s heart. People never see, it’s amazing.”
Rather than simply training athletes to meet technical standards and go for the highest scores, Xiao
encourages his gymnasts to explore personal expression and the performative aspects of the sport that haven’t been culturally accepted in men’s gymnastics until recently.
“There’s a stigma around artistry and performing arts that has often meant men’s gymnastics strays away from what is obviously performance aspects in women’s gymnastics,” Michigan program assistant Kavan Puri told The Daily. “The stigma of trying to make men’s gymnastics seem more masculine led to this cultural athletic shift away from women’s gymnastics to where there was very little artistry in men’s gymnastics. But I think over the past few years with athletes such as (junior) Charlie Larson, but also athletes around the world at the Olympic stage embracing artistry has brought that back to the forefront.”
The Wolverines are undoubtedly a part of this movement Puri describes. And Larson, who specializes on the floor event, is a prime example of such creativity.
Floor — considered to be one of the more creative events — allows for gymnasts like Larson to have personal freedom when it comes to creating routines and picking the music. Larson uses his mix of athleticism and creative liberty, adding double backflips and double layouts throughout his routine. This creativity and leeway that the event provides gives Larson the ability to put his own spin on the sport of men’s gymnastics and allows him to view his routine more like a Cirque Soleil inspired performance.
Noll himself has always aspired to be a part of Cirque, envisioning a future where the skills honed in the gym such as discipline and precision required in gymnastics, combined with an understanding of expression and performance, can make the transition from sport to stage more natural. By training under Xiao’s philosophy, Noll is able to compete with a team at Michigan while also exploring the artistry and showmanship that Cirque demands.
“Gymnastics is an individual sport, but you’re a team,” Noll told The Daily. “No one’s out there on the event with you, but your performance affects the team. Every routine counts, and every 10th (of a point) matters, and something like Cirque (du) Soleil, it’s not like competition, but everything you do affects everyone around you. It’s like a puzzle piece. So learning how to compete with other people relying on you would translate well.”
Ultimately, the Cirque du Soleil influence is more about cultivating a mindset that values expression alongside achievement. It teaches athletes to move with intention, to embrace their individuality and to perform with awareness of both self and team.
For the Wolverines, this philosophy is paying off, not just in team cohesion and individual confidence, but in national recognition. Athletes are not just executing skills — they are performing, connecting and expressing. As the sport itself evolves, the Wolverines are pushing the boundaries of what men’s gymnastics can be — a place where athleticism meets artistry, and every routine is both a technical feat and a performance to be remembered with the guidance of Xiao.
For senior Robert Noll, who competed on still rings and high bars in the 2025 season, artistry isn’t as visible as it is on floor. But even in these events, Xiao encourages athletes to consider form, fluidity and the subtle ways in which their personal style can enhance the audience’s experience. It’s about moving with intention and presence, even when the spotlight doesn’t directly allow for dance or choreography.
CATIE PUSH Daily Sports Writer
Alum Sydney Hastings-Wilkins/DAILY
Daily Sports Writer
SportsMonday: Michigan needs Bryce Underwood to be the quarterback
ZACH EDWARDS Managing Sports Editor
Throughout the entire offseason, speculations and interrogations have surrounded the Michigan football team over the quarterback battle for who will be the starter for the Aug. 30 season opener against New Mexico.
Freshman Bryce Underwood, who turned 18 years old less than a week ago, has received the most attention by far. But the experience of graduate Mikey Keene is undeniable with 8,245 career passing yards with 65 touchdown passes. And sophomore Jadyn Davis, who was one of two quarterbacks from the Wolverines’ spring game, alongside Underwood, has the most tenure on the Wolverines’ roster of those in the battle.
All players outside the quar
terback room have talked highly of each option. And reports that Underwood has already claimed the starting job have heightened anticipation for Aug. 24 from Michigan coach Sherrone Moore on who will be the lead man.
“It’s just been great to see the competition within that room,” senior tight end Marlin Klein said Aug. 8. “It makes my day, getting in (the huddle) and you don’t know who’s going to be in there, still battling that out. So it’s been super fun this camp.”
While it might be unfair to close the door on a four-man quarterback competition that hasn’t been announced, you don’t even need to see a snap of football to know that Underwood needs to be the starter for the Wolverines.
From an on-field standpoint, Keene might appear to
be the clear favorite due to his experience alone. However, his ongoing battle with injury throughout the offseason limited his reps entirely in spring camp and until midway through fall camp.
And when comparing Underwood to Davis, neither have started a college football game but Underwood’s potential as the top recruit and frequent NFL comparisons to make him the clear favorite, especially when Davis didn’t start during last year’s quarterback struggles.
“(Underwood will) stand in the pocket, and he might be taking a hit but he’ll let it
rip,” graduate wide receiver
Donaven McCulley said Aug. 4. “A lot of poise outside of football, you know, he’s confident, a leader, just trying to be an example.”
Last season’s quarterback carousel made Michigan struggle to find any kind of consistency on offense. But once the Wolverines settled with graduate quarterback Davis Warren, they were able to find a rhythm, not necessarily through the air but as an overall unit.
So if Michigan wants to have the most on-field success, trusting the development of Underwood from the get-go and sticking with him
is the best move. Although he may not start out perfect, with sky-high potential, it is a risk worth taking.
Even off the field, Underwood has seemed to immediately separate himself. Through the buzz of the offseason, every player and coach for the Wolverines gave nearly the exact same sentiments when describing Underwood.
“He’s very mature for his age, and he has a great mindset, great head on his shoulders,” senior offensive lineman Giovannni El-Hadi said Thursday. And Underwood proved that confidence and maturity
even further, stating that no one will see a freshman like him when he spoke with confidence on Big Ten Michigan Preview show. When combining a five-star recruiting rank, confidence, nods of maturity beyond his years and great leadership from teammates, it’s easy to point to all the reasons why he deserves the job.
But Underwood doesn’t just deserve the job, Michigan needs him to be its quarterback.
While a strong on-field presence has yet to see the lights of Michigan Stadium, his offfield attention from major NIL signings starting the second
he committed will only continue to grow. In December, he received a 4-year, $12.5 million deal when he committed. With such a price tag for one player, it would be underwhelming to say the least for those sponsors to see the freshman on the sideline. And if he doesn’t see the field, who’s to say that won’t discourage future highprofile commits like Underwood to come to Ann Arbor.
“I feel like they like Bryce more than like me,” wide receivers coach Ron Bellamy said Aug. 11 about visiting recruits. “No, but it’s great, Bryce is great. When the kids come on campus, especially with the receiver position, he makes sure he spends time with them, and I think that’s important.”
While it’s up for debate whether this line of thinking is a good thing for the sport of college football, with the new days of revenue sharing and NIL, the reality of the recruitment process has changed forever.
On top of that, Underwood’s other NIL signings from Barstool Sports to his most recent signing and commercial with Beats by Dre prove the world sees him as the face of the program, even before taking a snap in uniform. And if he isn’t on the field playing, that’s a lot of wasted attention for the Wolverines as a program to a player that deserves a chance to start.
So on Aug. 30, if No. 19 isn’t lined for Michigan’s first offensive drive of the season, not only will it be a bad decision for the Wolverines’ future on the field, but with the ever changing landscape of the NCAA, it will make it harder for other players like Underwood to come to Ann Arbor.
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The Opinion section of The Michigan Daily is a platform for your most pressing thoughts and strong perspectives on anything from pop culture to STEM, from University of Michigan politics to national politics or anything in between. In the Opinion section, you can either write a biweekly column as a columnist, write a monthly column as an analyst or draw up a topical cartoon as a cartoonist! As a member of the section, you also will be a participant in our weekly Editorial Board meetings where we have a dialogue on current events as an entire section, with the opportunity to become an official member of the Editorial Board. Each week, we collaborate to write an Editorial discussing the most pressing campus and national issues. The Opinion section is also the only section at The Daily that accepts external (non-Daily staff) writer submissions, including Op-Eds and Letters to the Editor. This includes current U-M students, alumni, Ann Arbor residents and more, giving external voices the opportunity to have their opinions heard. For all of your pressing opinions or outstanding debates with your friends, The Michigan Daily’s Opinion section is the place for you.
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From The Daily: Students deserve a president that listens
On May 4, former University of Michigan President Santa Ono was unanimously recommended as the sole finalist for president of the University of Florida. Since then, Ono has announced his intention to leave Ann Arbor and assume his new role in Gainesville, Florida. After nearly three years of broken promises, restrictions on student rights and damaging executive decisions, this Editorial Board believes it was high time for Ono to resign. Looking forward, we call upon the University’s Board of Regents to learn from the mistake of selecting Ono, and choose a new president dedicated to protecting the student body. Before he was sworn in, the U-M community was optimistic about Ono. He used social media as a way to connect with campus, making him seem more relatable than his predecessor, former University President Mark Schlissel. As a result, it appeared he would be more open to productive dialogues on campusrelated issues.
Ultimately, this Editorial Board believes Ono’s tenure reflected the opposite. His consistent disregard and suppression of pro-Palestine protesters — often under the guise of institutional neutrality — underscored his unwillingness to listen to students. His decisions to end the Gaza encampments and fire pro-Palestinian faculty members for protesting are blatant attacks on the very people Ono promised to support: University students and faculty. As a result, he was frequently criticized by campus for turning his back on students.
Ono refused to listen to the U-M community on domestic issues as much as foreign ones. Last December, students and faculty protested the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Ono ignored the outrage, and in March, announced that the University would be closing its Office of DEI and Office of Health, Equity and Inclusion, along with other related programs, a decision he later lauded as a major accomplishment.
Ultimately, the facade wore off; when it truly mattered, Ono neglected his responsibility to equally support the students he was hired to serve — a dereliction of leadership that marks his presidency as a failure, even by his own standards.
While Ono’s tenure was one marked by a secretive and tight-lipped administration that avoided any possible confrontation with the student body, we remain hopeful that a new president will bring change. For the time being, Domenico Grasso has been named the University’s interim president. In his time as the sixth chancellor of the University’s Dearborn campus, Grasso was generally liked by both students and faculty. Dearborn saw a period of growth that included new additions to campus and a 50% increase in its endowment.
DEI at U-M Dearborn had become a politicized issue, but the support for its alternative — largely spearheaded by Grasso — has been positive. There, the Office of Holistic Excellence acts as a neutral way of encouraging diversity through individual and holistic analysis.
After two years of an uncommunicative president, this Editorial Board is calling for transparency and clear communication from the administration. As the board searches for a new president, we hope that Grasso keeps students’ best interests at the forefront of his decisions-making. He might have been present at football games and commencements, but Ono never really seemed to defend the interests of students behind closed doors. We hope Grasso learns from his predecessor by serving as an advocate for students in private just as much as he champions them in public. His actions should make it clear that the president is an ally, not an adversary.
With Grasso not applying for the permanent position, the hunt for the next University president begins with a clear mandate: This time, students cannot be sidelined. The search for Ono’s successor must prioritize not just academic credentials or political palatability, but a genuine commitment to student voices and democratic values on campus.
A key lesson from Ono’s presidency is that institutional neutrality must not be a shield for silence. The concept, while well-intentioned in theory, was wielded by Ono as a tool to avoid moral clarity on critical issues affecting students. But neutrality is not the same as submission. A wise and intentional application of neutrality would recognize that some issues — like the dismantling of DEI initiatives or the suppression of student protest — are not simply “political controversies,” but decisions
that directly impact the lives and well-being of marginalized students. In these moments, leadership demands courage, not capitulation.
The next president must be someone who understands that student trust must be earned, not assumed. Too many major decisions in recent years — such as discreet changes to the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities and the cancellation of the Central Student Government resolutions related to the war in Gaza — have been made behind closed doors, often without student input or basic explanation. We cannot afford another presidency where students feel like an afterthought. If the administration is truly committed to fostering a campus that reflects the values of diversity and academic freedom, then students must have a seat at the table — not just in town halls, but in the presidential search process itself.
That means creating transparent mechanisms for student engagement, like public forums, regular Q&As with administration and anonymous feedback systems with real accountability. It also means including students on the presidential search committee — not as tokens, but as participants. The University should actively solicit the views of the communities most affected by presidential decisions: student activists, cultural organizations, first-generation students and those involved in academic governance.
The days of curated photo ops and sanitized email statements must end. We need a leader who speaks to students with honesty, listens with humility and governs with the understanding that leadership on this campus means more than administrative management — it means moral clarity, accessibility and genuine connection.
We are not asking for perfection. We are asking for presence.
Ono’s resignation leaves behind more than an open administrative position — it leaves an opportunity to rebuild University leadership at a time when higher education is increasingly under attack. It is imperative we take this transition as a chance for a fresh start — an opportunity to build a more honest, collaborative and inclusive community. Only then can the University move on from Ono’s disastrous tenure and move forward toward upholding our values of integrity and respect.
Something in the maize and blue tells me we’re not through
Nothing compares to the anticipation of seeing your favorite artist live.
For many, that is Zach Bryan.
The Okie-troubadour is known for his introspective and deeply personal songwriting. Bryan has been a staple of summer playlists and August campfires since his hit debut album, DeAnn, in 2019. Since then, Bryan has blown up as one of country music’s hottest artists, with his critically acclaimed Quittin’ Time Tour grossing more than $321 million and counting as Bryan continues to add shows for this summer.
It is no surprise that the University of Michigan picked Zach Bryan to headline the firstever concert at the Big House. This show, which subsequently sold out, will be the largest ticketed show in American history. Joining Bryan on stage is guitar virtuoso John Mayer, adding to the culture-defining mythos of Sept. 27, 2025.
Despite the event being the first of its kind at the University, students have been left out of it almost completely. An email sent out by the University Athletic Department highlighted that only emails directly attached to season ticket holders could access the special presale before the general release.
This is ironic for an artist whose live album is titled All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster In today’s world, failing to acquire presale tickets is a death sentence for your live music aspirations.
With the growing commercialization of live music through ticket monopolies like Ticketmaster and Live Nation, affording a ticket has become harder than ever. The average price of a concert ticket in 2024 was just above $135, a steep increase from the $78 price tag in 2015.
Especially as Ann Arbor seems to become increasingly expensive year after year, it becomes harder for students to afford tickets to their favorite shows regardless of the artist’s popularity.
Following the announcement for the Big House show, Bryan recently announced two more college-specific shows that he will be performing at this year. He will play at Notre Dame Stadium Sept. 6 alongside comedian Shane Gillis and at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards Stadium Aug. 30.
The administrations of Marshall University and the University of Notre Dame sent similar emails to students. However, there was one crucial difference. The emails sent to Marshall University and the University of Notre Dame encouraged students and faculty
to buy tickets for the show, even promising a presale specifically for students and faculty alike.
The U-M administration’s failure to prioritize student interest in this historical event raised my suspicion about the motives behind planning such a spectacle. Other Universityaffiliated organizations directly contrast the agendas of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
Sara Billmann, University Musical Society vice president of marketing and communications, works day-in and day-out to provide students and the greater Ann Arbor community access to world-class acts. Just in the past year, there were performances by the Berlin Philharmonic and Wynton Marsalis with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Billmann spoke on the importance of live performances to the college experience.
“We would love every student to graduate from (the University) having had a UMS experience,” said Billmann. “It can open up your world to a completely different kind of entertainment experience. … Those kinds of experiences can be pivotal,” Billmann added. “We really want every student to have that kind of experience and have that be on their (U-M) bucket list.”
UMS, however, is a non-profit organization largely funded by private donors; it is not directly affiliated with the University. The University, on the other hand, has about $200 million poured into its athletic department alone. With the growing world of NIL, that amount is only going to increase as college athletes’ paychecks get bigger and bigger.
With that being said, UMS’s central mission is to encourage students to engage with these live performances. Part of that mission involves lowering costs for student tickets, which has increased student involvement with UMS.
“Somewhere between 20-25% of our total audience is students, and we prioritize student attendance for the events that we know are going to be of interest,” Billmann said.
Billmann’s overwhelming commitment to student experience is what students would want to see from the University. The Bryan concert is an experience that concertgoers will be bragging about to their friends for years. This is the culture-defining event of some lucky students’ college experience, but due to a lack of engagement with the student body, some students will, unfortunately, have to watch the concert through the countless Snapchat stories and Instagram posts that pop up the next day.
“We could charge a lot more money for some of our events, but our mission isn’t about making
money,” Billmann said. “It’s really about providing people with opportunities to engage with the arts.”
With a national platform like the largest ticketed concert in American history, one would think the University would use it to showcase some of the local talent in Ann Arbor.
Some local musicians feel that putting a local artist on the bill could once again prove to the world that Ann Arbor still has a rich music scene waiting to be shared. In an interview with The Daily, local artist Maddy Ringo spoke on how she would like to see the University become more involved with the local scene, especially on the Big House stage.
“There has to be a way to bring Ann Arbor to the Big House,” Ringo said.
Ringo, whose new album People of the Earth and Sea was released March 28, is deeply ingrained within the musical tradition of Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor has a long history of culturally significant music moments, like Nirvana’s show at The Blind Pig in 1989 and Bob Dylan’s show in 1964. Ringo looks to continue in this tradition by performing at local venues like The Ark or Canterbury House. “I think that having local talent open is a basic step that the University could take to make a show that is friendlier to our city and our student body,” said Ringo. “There are so many talented people in our music community who could absolutely open, … no question about it.”
Some students may say that this show will attract more artists to perform at the Big House. The magnifying glass placed on Ann Arbor during the show’s weekend will attract national attention and entice other headlining artists to perform at the biggest stadium in North America. The hope is that the Big House will attain the same venue notoriety as Madison Square Garden or the Grand Ole Opry. Bringing shows of this caliber to Ann Arbor every year would be a great way to excite students and the community about the forthcoming school year. Despite this excitement, there has to be an act by the promoters of these shows to provide incentives for the students to fill the seats of their stadium where they watch football every Saturday. Without the involvement of students, whether on stage or in the crowd, the student body is playing second fiddle in the profitability and publicity of the show itself.
Singing “Revival” with 100,000 plus people losing their minds will be a memorable experience and one that adds to the Big House’s legendary resume. It is unfortunate that, for a school that is synonymous with “the team, the team, the team,” this show feels like a solo act.
WILLIAM FOLBE Daily Opinion Columnist
Rumaisa
THE MICHIGAN DAILY SUMMER EDITORIAL BOARD
Alum Sam Adler/DAILY
The higher education lesson
LINDSEY SPENCER Opinion Columnist
In a little over a week, I will be an alum of the University of Michigan. It’s both nauseating and exciting to write out that new title. It means new possibilities, new people and new places, but it also means leaving behind my tried-andtrue routines and comfortable life in Ann Arbor. Having the privilege of a college education is not lost on me, especially as a student at the colloquially — and, might I add, correctly — titled “greatest university in the world.”
However, the fate of the American university — and education in general — is in untrustworthy, insecure hands. We’re watching in shock as President Donald Trump’s administration targets the colleges’ federal funding, threatens to undertake judicial oversight over an Ivy League university and allows the deportation of college students. Our university has been no exception to this rule, just recently cutting all University diversity, equity and inclusion programs and standing idly by as international students’ visas are revoked. Higher education is falling behind on the lesson plan it drafted at its birth: Protect, educate and better its students.
Over the last decade or so, the worth of a college education and degree has diminished. Not only has attending university become incredibly expensive, but the gift of a diploma at the end of your four years on campus is also no longer necessary for success. Fewer jobs require a college degree and Americans are no longer under the impression that you necessarily need to be
a college graduate in order to be successful. Despite this collective change of heart, it’s crucial to recognize that college is not all about that piece of paper, and remains key to personal development.
We enter the halls of higher education with the belief that we will be learning who to be and what we want for our future. But there’s more to it than that. Both inside and out of the classroom, we more critically reflect on the kind of people we don’t want to be. The power dynamics, political instability and interpersonal disputes taking place on modern college campuses expose us to bad actors with even worse intentions. It’s like they say:
“Never meet your heroes.” Our university presidents, deans and campus administrators — the people meant to serve us — are leading us astray, and aren’t teaching us how to be our best possible selves. You don’t make those kinds of moral judgements on a graded Bluebook exam; you make them with a critical eye toward power.
In looking back on my four years at the University, I see multiple instances of extracurricular education. A former University president resigned, the Graduate Employees’ Organization went on strike, U-M students set up a Gaza solidarity encampment — which would be taken down a month later — and numerous assaults on students’ rights were approved by the University’s Board of Regents. I’ve learned dozens of lessons from my professors, lecturers and graduate student instructors, but these non-traditional educational experiences have been even more formative. Watching as campus organizers, faculty and community members have fought to expose the dark underbel-
ly of the University and turn traditional hierarchies on their head has taught me lessons you can’t obtain in the classroom. My college degree will certainly prove to be useful in the long run, but it is entirely separate from my college education.
A college degree is strictly institutional, a few sentences on a piece of paper that attest to one’s completion of a bachelor’s degree. Your education, however, is something more nuanced. It is defined by the teachings received from peers and complete strangers, the groups that teach you how to be intellectually critical and vocalize your discontent. There are great benefits to possessing knowledge, but it goes further than the classroom. Knowledge means having a firm grasp on politics, power and people; it means having a disposition toward truth and the proverbial “right thing.” A classroom can’t teach you this, but an institutional crisis can.
In this regard, a university campus acts as a microcosm of American society. Diversity in belief and background broadens our horizons and we are challenged by obstacles sometimes greater than ourselves. Administrators and bureaucrats can make our lives harder, but we can come together as a unit to fight back. When leadership fails, the onus falls on its constituents to bring forth stability and care. Our community keeps us sane and our principles keep us grounded in these moments of disrepair. We are not only preparing for the workplace in our undergraduate years, but also for how to overcome the unequal dispersal of power among humankind.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
UMich needs a public health minor
Growing up, I watched family members battle nutritional deficiencies, chronic illnesses and various forms of cancer. I simultaneously came to know friends battling mental health issues, an illness that disproportionately threatens young people. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic — which put our public health establishment in the spotlight for millions of Americans — dominated my high school years. The mass exposure to these critical health issues fostered my interest in public health as a discipline. Like many of my fellow undergraduate students, I am still narrowing down my major and ideal career path. While I am certainly drawn to studying public health, it is not my primary academic focus. Much to my disappointment, the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus does not offer a minor in public health, despite the extensive list of offered minors.. At present, the School of Public Health effectively restricts a comprehensive public health education to students who are fully committed to careers in public health. While non-public health students can still take public health classes, the constraints of graduation and major requirements make it difficult for students to pursue non-major subjects to the depth that a minor provides.
The Public Health School ranks second in the nation. If the University’s Ann Arbor campus expanded access to its resources through a program similar to the
U-M Dearborn campus’s public health minor, it would diversify the student population in its public health courses and enhance students’ educations across a myriad of disciplines.
The lack of a public health minor at the University is unique. The Stephen M. Ross School of Business and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, two global leaders in their respective fields, both offer minor programs that all undergraduate students, no matter their school of study, can apply for.
By making public health education more accessible, the University could attract a broader range of students to the field and generate public health innovation from unique perspectives and industries. Students can benefit from such a minor because public health already has a significant influence in fields beyond its own. In 2022, businessman Mark Cuban set out to combat America’s unfairly high prescription drug prices. As a result, early customers of his company, Cost Plus Drugs, are saving 40 to 60% on prescription spending. The legal system is confronting this same issue, with attorneys suing pharmacy benefit managers to secure lower prices for consumers. While these occupations are not traditional public health careers, graduates going into these fields would still have a competitive edge from a supplementary public health education.
If the Public Health School provided a minor to future U-M alumni across disciplines it would allow critical public health practices to better inform and influence industries.
This minor curriculum could include targeted courses about systemic inequality, health care access disparities, disease control and the food supply. These niche focuses, while not sufficient for a full-fledged bachelor’s degree in public health, would be valuable for undergraduate students hoping to pile on some useful knowledge via a minor degree.
Unlike individual classes, minor programs provide students with access to schoolwide emails, networking events and world-renowned networks. These extensive resources better enable students to leverage the information they learn in courses in a real-world context.
On a national scale, we are facing a public health crisis: Among high-income nations, the U.S. spends the most money on health care while having the worst health outcomes. It has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations, a rapidly declining fertility rate, the tenth highest obesity rate in the world and the highest rate of individuals with multiple chronic illnesses.
For students who grew up amid a global pandemic and an abrupt decline in American health, a public health education would expand their understanding of the problems that plague the country, giving them the ability to make educated health choices across different industries. By creating an authentic program for completion, the University could incentivize more students to pursue this education for great societal benefit. CONTINUED AT
Embrace stewardship, not just ownership
ELENA NICHOLSON Opinion Columnist
Growing up, my family often recounted The Legend of Sleeping Bear. In this tale, a mother bear and her two cubs flee a forest fire in Wisconsin, swimming across the northernmost part of Lake Michigan to reach safety. But the cubs tire after hours of swimming and drown in the lake’s waters. The mother bear, in her sorrow, reaches shore, climbs a dune and lies down, where she transforms into the dune, keeping vigil over the cubs that morphed into two islands: North and South Manitou. At the time, I was ignorant of the fact that this was a centuries-old Ojibwe tribe legend, the tribe that once dominated the Great Lakes area, including the land that the University of Michigan was built upon.
This story represents a traditionally Indigenous understanding that land is rich in history. In attaching legend to the land, the Ojibwe people created a feeling of responsibility toward it. Land wasn’t something that was just owned. It was common practice that communities cared for land together, conserving what they could and taking only what they needed. This concept is called stewardship, a form of sustainable land management that emphasizes a reciprocal relationship with the land, lived through spirituality and community-wide interconnection. Including Native American ideas of stewardship in modern sustainability practice is imperative. Tribes like the Ojibwe
understood the importance of preserving land because of their spiritual connection to the land they inhabited for thousands of years. By having a historical connection to the land, Indigenous people should be an integral element of land management and conservation in the United States. They are the only ones who understand the rich and storied history, like that of the mother bear and her two cubs, that tribes pass from one generation to the next to provide meaning and importance beyond just what land can offer us.
In 1817, the Ojibwe – sometimes referred to as the Anishinaabe – gifted the University of Michigan its land in the Treaty at the Foot of the Rapids, also known as the Treaty of Fort Meigs. The University recognizes this in their Land Acknowledgement Statement that is often tacked on to the end of emails and in introductory speeches. This tribe once ceded their land to help create the University with the hopes that their children might be educated there, and now we should replace some of our Western perspectives with the art of Indigenous stewardship; if not to better understand the natural world around us, then to preserve what is left of it.
In 2019, the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found that land managed by Indigenous groups and communities was less severe or almost completely unaffected by human action. When land is managed community-wide, rather than exploitatively, it is healthier. Not only is this in the interest
of the land, but also in the selfinterest of these communities. Minnesota’s Leech Lake Band, part of the Ojibwe tribe, is a primary example of effective land stewardship in conjunction with land management. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service and the Leech Lake Band renewed a co-stewardship agreement in 2024 to ensure that land remains protected and utilized appropriately. In addition to rejecting the construction of a new pipeline through their reservation in 2021, tribal members are prominent leaders in climate change protests. From the Standing Rock Sioux movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline to Indigenousled educational programs on environmental stewardship, leaders in these communities are fighting to expand Native American perspectives to protect sacred land. Stewardship in itself is a means of protest against current land management practices. In March of 2024, Indigenous leaders, including Leech Lake Band members, lobbied at the Capitol in the fight against climate change. Leanna Goose, Leech Lake Band member, spoke about growing up on Leech Lake land, where wild rice (known as manoomin) is diminishing due to the changing climate. She detailed the long history of her people on this land, and her vision to restore biodiversity with both this legacy and future generations in mind. Her primary talking point was the land she grew up on, and the importance of preserving it.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Taking freedom off the market
Every summer, Americans celebrate their independence with fireworks and barbecues. Freedom, we’re told, is something we must never take for granted. Since our earliest days, we’ve been conditioned to view America as the “land of the free.”
After all, liberty is central to our national identity, declared by our founding fathers as an inalienable right. As the age-old mantra goes: Freedom isn’t free.
Freedom certainly has a price, and thanks to the cash bail system, that price has become outrageously expensive. In a country that jails 2 million people in over 4,000 prisons, thousands of our citizens pay cash bail to secure their release before they even face conviction. For a nation founded on the principle of innocent until proven guilty, it seems that freedom is a lot more alienable than we thought.
Before we discuss cash bail, it’s important to consider the primary population it targets — the unconvicted. About 446,100 people in the U.S. jail system have not been convicted of a crime. The number increases for local jails: In midyear 2023, more than 70% of America’s jail population was unconvicted and awaiting trial. The jailing of unconvicted defendants is a significant part of the nation’s mass incarceration crisis, costing taxpayers over $182 billion annually.
Historically, mass incarceration has not impacted all Americans equally: racial inequality
has played a significant role in the nation’s mass incarceration epidemic. One study found that Black Americans were more than three times more likely to have cash bail assigned to them than white defendants. Overall, Black defendants are 25% more likely to face incarceration before trial. We must ask ourselves what role cash bail has played in this disparity. After all, in a country whose average Black citizen makes significantly less than their white counterpart, a pretrial system which assigns freedom or imprisonment on a purely financial basis does not begin from an equitable foundation. If we want to fight against mass incarceration and racial inequality, all while building a more efficient and effective justice system, the use of cash bail should be the first thing on the chopping block.
Since its introduction in the late 19th century, forty-seven U.S. states still rely on a cash bail system. The three exceptions — Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico — passed legislation repealing the use of the practice entirely. In Illinois, for example, lawmakers passed the groundbreaking Pretrial Fairness Act. To determine pretrial release in Illinois, the act requires judges to weigh a defendant’s risk of recidivism and the severity of the crime, rather than their bank account. But critics maintain that while cash bail may lead to inequality,it was designed as a way to encourage people to make their court appearances rather than skipping town. Across the country, however, alternate forms of bonds led to an 88% appearance rate — 7%
higher than that of cash bail. When it comes to discouraging future crime, cash bail appears to have the opposite effect, with one study from Philadelphia showing that cash bail led to a 6-9% increase in recidivism rates. The bottom line is that cash bail is not the most equitable method for deciding pretrial release. It perpetuates racial inequality and contributes to America’s prison crisis. The solution for the problems posed by cash bail lies in replicating the success of Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act across the country. Instead of keeping poor people in jail, the Pretrial Fairness Act establishes the bar for release solely based on the severity of the crime and risk of reoffending — a fairly reasonable concept, especially if you agree that prisons should deter crime and make people safer. Still, it makes sense to ask how Illinois has fared since the bill became law. Many have argued that the bill would overwhelm the justice system and cause inefficiency. But rather than resulting in higher crime rates and fewer court appearances, the bill did exactly what it intended. Researchers at Loyola University found that although the bill led to an increase in pretrial releases, there was no noticeable increase in crime rates. Abolishing cash bail is the first step to combating mass incarceration and structural inequality. America will still have a broken prison system, but eliminating cash bail can at least make it a slightly better one. By abolishing the practice, we can ensure more people in America finally know what it means to be free, regardless of their ability to pay for it.
Rumaisa Wajahath/DAILY
GUNNAR HARTMAN Opinion Columnist
Haylee Bohm/DAILY
HUNTER RYERSON Opinion Columnist
AUDRA WOEHLE Opinion Columnist
istory might not always repeat itself, but it often rhymes. President Donald Trump’s administration has put isolationism — which dominated United States foreign policy in the 1930s — back on the table. Even before the disastrous Feb. 28 meeting in which President Trump and Vice President JD Vance demeaned and demanded gratitude from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president has articulated how little he values Ukraine’s defense against Russia. While some may argue that Trump doesn’t fit the bill of a true isolationist, his “America First” attitude no doubt puts ties to long-time allies on the line.
One of those allies is Germany. Friedrich Merz, leader of the victorious conservative Christian Democratic Union and self-described transatlanticist, has made his dislike of Trump clear. Moving forward, developing European independence — and aiding Ukraine — is of greater interest to him than working with Trump’s America.
This decision is no skin off of Germany or Europe’s back. After all, how would you intend to work with someone who has no interest in working with you? As a student studying abroad, however, I can’t help but wonder about the implications for us young Americans. In times like these, studying abroad and building connections to foreign places becomes all the more important.
One of the greatest benefits of studying abroad is that it allows
the student to develop greater empathy. Through studying abroad, you gain new experiences and immerse yourself in a culture unlike your own. You’re required to approach unfamiliarities with curiosity and understanding, confront your biases and build bridges to new places and people.
The personal connections you build while studying or traveling abroad are not meant to completely replace the political ties between countries, but they certainly are a start.
According to the Pew Research Center, Americans who travel abroad follow international news more closely and have greater interest in and knowledge about foreign affairs than non-travelers. Furthermore, researchers at the University of Chicago’s Center for Practical Wisdom found that students who study abroad are more civically engaged due partly to improved “perspective-taking abilities.”
Consequently, studying abroad sows the seeds of a sense of duty and care at a global level. While it shouldn’t be a one-to-one substitution for international relations, encouraging engagement and compassion through global travel is how we create ambassadors, political or personal.
My travels in the U.S. and abroad have been so impactful because they’ve shown me what’s worth protecting. Whether it’s the incredibly unique ecosystems of the Galápogos Islands, eroding Roman ruins in London or a dying dialect in Germany, building connections through travel gives us something to care about beyond our own situations within our borders.
Considering the importance
of these experiences, it’s especially important in times like these that U.S. colleges and universities make study abroad opportunities more accessible to students. At the individual level, students at the University of Michigan have a good place to start with the Center of Global and Intercultural Study. Funding for study abroad is also available through LSA, as well as the scholarships set up through other smaller programs and departments. There are also countless organizations offering scholarships of their own. All of that to say: Even if the current administration has little interest in fostering global relationships, there are people out there who want to support you in building your own. Should studying abroad not be in your cards right now, there are many other ways to be an engaged global citizen. You can take a few minutes out of your day to catch up on global news or pick up a book on a foreign country or culture. You can start learning a new language or start a correspondence with an international pen pal. You can advocate for people all over the world in ways big and small. While I’m disheartened to see this break between my current home and my home country, no part of me finds it unwarranted. Our representatives to the world have rebuffed our closest allies and let down those who counted on us the most. As a younger generation, however, we have the ability to build and maintain foreign relationships for our future by taking advantage of all the engaging, educational and impactful experiences a study abroad program has to offer.
Diversity of thought will never exist at UMich
With the “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” executive order on his first day of office, President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to end all federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs. This order cemented a long-standing Republican attack on DEI, showing that the executive branch views DEI efforts as wasteful and unnecessary in government and in any program around the country.
Much of this anti-DEI sentiment is centered around a belief that DEI results in self-censorship and ideological programming. In simple terms, critics allege DEI programs promote liberal thought. Most conservatives also argue that DEI doesn’t work because it excludes intellectual diversity. An October 2024 New York Times article criticized the University of Michigan’s supposed DEI failure on the grounds of a lack of ideological diversity.
The potential loss of diversity, equity and inclusion will not fix the University’s lack of diversity of thought among its faculty and student body, nor will the University’s recent decision to eliminate diversity statements in its faculty application. The discourse surrounding “diversity of thought” is not rooted in intellectualism or education, but rather in masking the proliferation of harmful rhetoric. DEI policy at its best creates safe, open spaces for people to discuss their differences and find common ground.
Intellectual diversity refers to uplifting a variety of ways of thinking from people with different backgrounds and viewpoints. But recently, it’s been conflated with the need to have both sides of the argument present, even if one side is blatantly wrong. Climate change serves as a great example. The vast majority of data and sci -
entific studies support the fact that human activity is causing climate change. Yet, a population of Americans believe that the scientists are lying despite having no convincing evidence to prove that conclusion. If a professor taught a class called “Climate Change Isn’t Real,” the University would rightly take issue with that.
While this is an extreme example, it could be a reality we are facing with the loss of DEI. One of the challenges with the DEI debate is that it has become a politically polarized issue. Certain arguments that are grounded in misrepresentation or misinformation are presented as having equal footing to those that are based on research and lived experiences. This can distort the conversation to make it seem like there are legitimately two sides to the argument when there don’t need to be. By conflating the idea of intellectual diversity with the need for argument, we risk moving backward in society.
For example, the anti-vaccine movement is presented by some media outlets as being just as legitimate as the provaccine scientific establishment. There’s a myriad of public health data attributing vaccines to the eradication of diseases and presenting these arguments together leads to harmful rhetoric about vaccines not working, thus causing a greater spread of disease by people who choose not to get vaccinated. While it’s difficult to draw the line between what is fact and what is an open line of debate, debates that have substantial research backing and deadly implications should not fall victim to bothsidesim.
Even if we assume intellectual diversity doesn’t mean perpetuating blatant falsehoods, changing U-M culture to be more conservative or moderate is likely impossible. It would take a much bigger shift than the loss of DEI to change campus culture. Students with liberal-leaning values are attracted to the University of Michigan because it’s a liberal-
leaning university. The same goes for conservative students. Hillsdale College, a university that’s been coined as the leading conservative in higher education, boasts 400 students in their college republicans club but only 6 in the college democrat club.
This is not to say that the University and its peer institutions shouldn’t be teaching its students about different ideas of political thought or communication. A well-rounded education means showing students the entire landscape of facts and letting them choose which one they think are right. This is already happening on campus. The Ford School of Public Policy regularly holds events with politicians associated with the Republican and Democratic Parties, bringing both sides in for productive conversations and employs republican leaders, like the former Michigan head of the Republican party teaching a class. I don’t disagree that there is room for improvement. The University should be hiring more sensible right-of-center faculty to help balance the partisan scales on campus without cutting against rigorous research and truth standards held by the University. But current efforts are mostly ignored by antiDEI activists since they seemingly aren’t changing students’ minds about politics.
It’s important that the University of Michigan not become a monoculture or echo chamber of thoughts and ideas. But taking away diversity, equity and inclusion to procure a stronger “diversity of thought” on campus will not help. The University, like all top universities, is innately liberal because of the way it grounds research and education into its environment. The far-right need for “bothsidesism” conflates misinformation with actual fact and inhibits productive academic conversations that push research forward. Diversity of thought, in the way right-wing conservatives imagine it, will never exist on top college campuses — and it shouldn’t.
ELIZA PHARES Opinion Columnist
Stop reducing immigrants to their economic value
their contributions to the GDP.
IJOVANNA GALLEGOS Opinion Analyst
’ve had more conversations about immigration than I can count. No matter the setting, there’s always someone who, in an attempt to defend immigrants, points out their economic contributions. They always say something like “They pay taxes,” “They do jobs Americans don’t want” or “They boost the economy.” While these statements are true, they just feel incomplete, as if immigrants must justify their existence in dollars and cents. This economic argument is wellintentioned, meant to counter antiimmigrant rhetoric that always paints newcomers as burdens. But it inadvertently strips immigrants of their humanity. Whether documented or undocumented, immigrants are more than their labor. They are family, friends and neighbors. They are people who deserve dignity and safety, regardless of
Too often, discussions about immigration reduce people to statistics. But immigrants don’t just exist in the workforce — they are integral parts of communities. Immigrants are living and breathing individuals with aspirations, loved ones and vibrant histories. They raise children, volunteer at churches, run small businesses and care for elderly family members. They form bonds, add to culture and make neighborhoods lively. These contributions are not quantifiable, yet they are invaluable. By focusing solely on economic metrics, people ignore the emotional and social ties immigrants build. A child should not have to hear that their undocumented parent deserves to stay because they “contribute” financially to this country. Their worth should just be inherent. Reducing people to their economic output creates a transactional view of human value — one that is so deeply flawed.
A pervasive myth is that undocumented immigrants drain public resources without contributing financially in return. Undocumented workers do pay taxes — federal, state and local. The Internal Revenue Service requires individuals earning money in the U.S. to pay taxes, regardless of immigration status. Many
undocumented immigrants file tax returns using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, despite knowing they won’t receive Social Security or Medicare benefits that those taxes help fund.
People who oppose the presence of illegal immigrants, like Vice President JD Vance, frequently point to overburdened resources,
particularly in cities facing housing shortages. This concern is valid — local governments must address this logistical challenge. But it is also important to recognize that immigrants are often scapegoated for broader systemic issues.
For example, the strain on public services in New York City is not just about recent immigration. It is also about decades of underfunding, budget cuts and housing policies that have failed to keep up with demand. Blaming immigrants oversimplifies the problem and distracts from meaningful solutions.
While the focus of discussing immigrants should remain on moral and ethical grounds rather than economic justifications, it’s worth noting that immigrants — documented or not — are unfairly blamed for overburdening resources. In reality, they significantly contribute to sustaining essential industries like agriculture, construction and healthcare. Without them, many cities and towns would struggle even more. Address-
ing resource concerns requires policy solutions, not exclusion.
Furthermore, misconceptions about immigrants’ impact on public resources overshadow the reality that they are ineligible for most government assistance programs, including Medicaid, food stamps and federal housing subsidies. The idea that they drain resources is not supported by data. Instead, they support systems they cannot fully access.
Additionally, it’s essential to understand the difference between civil and criminal law when discussing immigration. Most immigration violations fall under civil law rather than criminal law. For example, entering the U.S. without authorization or overstaying a visa is classified as a civil offense. This means that these actions are similar to regulatory violations like failing to pay a parking ticket, rather than criminal acts like theft or assault.
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Fading words: The unspoken language crisis among international students
Bilingualism has always been a major part of my identity. I grew up in Madrid, so Spanish is my native language, but my father enrolled my brothers and I into a school that spoke predominantly English because he understood the importance of a bilingual education. Throughout my childhood, the two languages intertwined as I jumped from speaking English with my teachers and Spanish with my friends. When I started college at the University of Michigan, my friends and relatives commended my bravery for attending university in a non-Spanish-speaking country. However, I knew I was not going to have problems speaking English. What I did not expect was seeing my fluency in Spanish slowly dissipate — a language that had always
been so natural to me suddenly felt like an unfamiliar landscape of irregular conjugations and accents. It started with forgetting a few words for a split second. Now, there are times when my conjugation is wrong or I lack confidence while speaking, relying on mixing languages when talking to my parents. Moving abroad, though enriching, often leads to a gradual loss of one’s native tongue. Because language is a key part of culture, this shift away from one’s first language can feel uncomfortable. Such experiences create a complex sense of lost culture, causing international students, as well as anyone from a multilingual household, to struggle with the disconnect between their roots and their current environment. This is a key issue impacting thousands of students on campus, and the university should be doing more to help these students combat language loss. There’s a term for this decline
in native language proficiency: first language attrition. The isolation from other speakers causes first language comprehension and production skills to deteriorate, especially when coupled with an increased use of a different, second language.
All multilinguals experience FLA to some degree, but for some people, it can have a significant impact on their everyday life. For international students spending their full education time abroad, the process is particularly pressing: The move abroad forces them to navigate a new culture and the presence of a different language at the same time. The sudden change of environment causes discomfort and uncertainty, and FLA only exacerbates these feelings.
Language, the primary tool for expression and communication, then becomes a source of profound alienation. And to make matters worse, while an interna-
tional student may be undergoing FLA, they are also trying to surmount the incredibly difficult task of becoming proficient in a second language. International students often struggle in this crossfire — between a decrease in fluency in their native language and an attempted increase in fluency in a second language. Not being able to express yourself confidently in any language is extremely anxietyinducing, especially for students already navigating a whole new country by themselves.
Our ability to connect and understand each other stems from the way we communicate. The inability to find the correct word in a native language evokes a sense of cultural disconnect. If that language is their connection to family and country — even if it’s just a single word — it can be isolating, especially for students already physically separated when studying abroad. Grief, anxiety and even
guilt can arise as students grapple with losing a major part of their identity.
For international students to thrive academically, the university must address the emotional toll of first language attrition. Without proper support systems, the distress that comes with losing a part of your identity can cause a significant impact on the student’s wellbeing, and in turn have a negative impact on their academic performance.
Thankfully, first language attrition can be reversible in most cases: re-exposure to the native environment can help return language use to near-native norms. Fluency can be easily reinstated after returning home; however, going back home is not often possible for every international student, as finances alone pose a significant barrier.
Online communication has made it extremely easy to stay in communication with people from
home, allowing students to practice their native language and stay connected with their culture while living abroad. However, a once-aweek thirty-minute conversation isn’t a long-term solution to offset FLA. Nonetheless, the University’s international students are at an advantage because of the diverse student community. With students from every state and 114 countries, it’s easy to find someone who shares the same language and culture. There are also over 1,700 student organizations, and many of them celebrate different cultures and bring communities together. Although these organizations are doing an important job of celebrating cultures and helping maintain cultural connections, there is only so much students alone can do for their international peers. CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Rumaisa Wajahath/DAILY
ADRIANA SEAGE Opinion Columnist
IN COLOR
No matter how committed I am to the pre-law pathway, my parents will always hold onto the hope that I will one day wake up and choose to become a doctor. You would think that since my older sister harbors an intense passion for the sciences and is on the path to becoming a surgeon, I would be off the hook by now. Unfortunately, this is not the case. My dad insists I should become a doctor so I can open up a hospital with my sister and mom, who’s also in the medical field. Part of him is joking, I’m sure, but as the saying goes, behind every joke is a kernel of truth. I’m not alone in my struggle. Most immigrant Arab parents push their kids toward one of three paths: doctor, engineer or lawyer. I mistakenly thought that by choosing to go into law, I’d made an acceptable decision. According to my parents though, the medical field is the best one to enter, both in terms of intelligence, respect and salary. The stereotype of Arab parents pushing their kids toward the medical field is
fueled by the reality of them wanting us to take full advantage of the opportunities we have here in the United States. I can’t argue with the fact that being a doctor offers a degree of security that the blue collar jobs many of our parents had to work don’t. It’s a privilege to even have the opportunity to make a choice, and while the number of options overwhelms me, it’s better than having no choice at all. Yet as an Arab woman society pushes us even further in varying directions. While we’re still expected to pursue higher education and take on high earning careers, we’re simultaneously reminded at every step of the way that our responsibility remains first and foremost to raise a family. It’s not that I don’t want to have kids someday, but the fact that Arab women are constantly told they cannot both be mothers and have successful careers is exhausting, especially when Arab men get the opposite treatment. I want to have both, not in spite of the fact that my ancestors couldn’t, but precisely because I have the opportunity here and now to earn my own money and raise kids at the same time. My parents have always instilled within me the importance of education,
and my mom especially fostered a love in me for learning and the understanding that I can have it all if I am willing to work for it.
My parents’ only concern is that I won’t live up to my full potential and will pursue something misaligned with my capabilities. One of the biggest reasons they want me to become a doctor is because they feel that I’m “too smart” to do anything else. I’m so lucky to have a family that believes in me the way they do, but knowing this, I struggle to pick a career that aligns with my passions out of fear of disappointing them. For example, as much as I want to pursue the arts, I worry that it’s too abstract of an option for it to make sense to them. I’ve always loved creative writing but have never before seriously considered it as a possible career path. As Arabs, we’re often expected to excel in the arts but never actually go into them. As an occupation, art is unpredictable and doesn’t give the guaranteed stability that being a doctor or engineer would.
Being a writer has always been something of a pipe dream for me. The combined pressure of my parents’ expectations and my imposter syndrome has led
me to almost entirely put off creative writing as a hobby and nothing more. Recently though, I’ve realized that in order to make my dreams a reality, I have to take them seriously. It won’t happen overnight, but by majoring in creative writing and actively building a writing routine, I believe I can become a published author in the future, no matter how far away that future might be.
Although I’m currently undeclared, I plan on double majoring in philosophy and creative writing. However, I actually applied to the University of Michigan as a computer science major. I spent the entirety of my four years in high school preparing to become an engineer. I was on the board of my Girls Who Code club, participated in hackathons and took several computer science courses. I was a proud woman in STEM and it was practically my
entire personality. Before that, I wanted to be an optometrist. Before that, a teacher. If you can think of any generic response to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” it was probably mine at some point in time. My whole life, I’ve struggled with making a career choice and discovering my passion, so much so that it was literally the premise of my personal statement. I was — and still am — terrified about making a finalized decision regarding the rest of my life. Even now, I’m worried that once I finally officially declare my major, I’ll want to change my mind. There’s something about being in the in-between that’s comforting to me, like I can just continue to explore and do what makes me happy as opposed to having to pick a road and stick to it. In the real world though, I know that I can’t do everything. Throughout my first year
in college, I’ve grown to understand more about myself as a student but also more generally as a person. While I don’t think I’ll ever be confident enough to completely stop second-guessing my choices, after shadowing lawyers and progressing in my studies, I feel more at peace than I ever have. However, it’s easy to feel that my time in high school has now gone to waste because of how committed I was to computer science. More than that, it’s easy to feel less than my pre-med or comp-sci peers now that I’m no longer in STEM myself. When my friends complain to me about organic chemistry labs and infamous Electrical Engineering and Computer Science projects, I worry that the classes I’m taking are too easy and that I’m not taking full advantage of my opportunities at the University.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
A Girl
with
A woman.
I am sick
The modern woman — typically middle-class, typically white — an always-already “feminist.”
Modern, every woman she is presumed to be She, the subject
She is already spoken for She is made common.
Feminist adj. She’s a feminist Colloquial. To be contested.
A “liberated” hypersexual. An always-angry man-hater. An aggressor.
The common “she,” She is a myth.
To be used in a sentence: a bra-burning cunt, she is.
She is a bimbo, a slut.
I think I am ill
I know yearning
I am not fun
She loves him I do not forgive him
I am a non-woman as it were
Nonconforming. Mannish and ill.
Do we not exist to conform Does my body offend you now?
There is something about you
Me
She is distinctly unlovable
I am sick
Yet I I wish to be beautiful.
Perhaps, I remain ill.
AMANY SAYED MiC Columnist
Cecilia Ledezma/MiC
ALLANA SMITH — MiC Columnist
Alum Anna Fuder/DAILY
Constellations of the past
A few months ago, while studying away in the Hatcher Graduate Library carrels, my eye caught something unexpected — a copy of the Boburnoma (Baburnama), fully in Cyrillic Uzbek, shelved among other books of Indian history. I picked it up and flipped through its pages, surprised to see a historical text I had always heard about but never actually read. I never expected to find the text, much less in my native language which is represented so rarely in academic spaces.
My first response was the usual — to call my parents and express my wonder and excitement at the existence of an Uzbek classic hidden within my midwestern university. Then I tried to actually read the book to understand who exactly Babur was beyond the scattered facts I had informally absorbed over the years. Babur belonged to a lineage of conquerors, each carving empires out of the Central Asian lands they marched through. His ancestors, Timur and Genghis Khan, had built vast dominions through warfare and strategic alliances, and Babur inherited that legacy, along with a desire to reclaim his ancestral homeland of Samarqand. His early years were marked by struggles to hold onto Samarqand, a city he captured and lost multiple times before he was ultimately forced to abandon it. Exiled from the land of his birth, he turned his ambitions southward, leading his followers into Afghanistan and then across the Indus River into India, where he founded the Mughal Empire in 1526.
His memoirs offer a personal and detailed account of his life and the world around him. Unlike many royal chronicles that glorify rulers with exaggerated stories, Babur’s writing is candid, filled with reflections on his victories, defeats and the landscapes he encountered. He dwells on the beauty of the places he traveled
through — like the lush valleys of Kabul, the rivers of Hindustan, the symmetry of Persian gardens. He expresses a deep appreciation for nature, often pausing to describe flowers, fruit trees and the changing seasons. Yet beneath his observations of the world, there is an undercurrent of loss. He writes with nostalgia for the lands he left behind, particularly Samarqand, often reflecting on the impermanence of power, recognizing that conquest alone does not guarantee stability or fulfillment. His memoirs reveal a man torn between ambition and longing, between the reality of ruling a foreign land and the memory of a home that remained just out of reach.
I wondered if I should feel pride in him. He is one of the few historical figures from my heritage known beyond Uzbekistan, but does that alone justify admiration? Should a conqueror be a source of pride, or is that just a product of inherited nationalism? Is there value in his legacy beyond military success? His life was defined by displacement and survival, by the challenge of maintaining his identity as he moved from one place to another. That, at least, is something I can understand.
But Babur wasn’t the part of his lineage that interested me the most. Instead, I was fascinated with his great-grandfather, Ulughbek. Unlike the others in his family, Ulughbek wasn’t a conqueror — he was a scientist, an astronomer, a ruler more interested in the stars than in swords. In the 15th century, he built an observatory in Samarqand, a structure that still partially stands today. It was one of the most advanced observatories of its time, suggested to contain a massive sextant used to measure the positions of celestial bodies with remarkable precision. His team created a star catalog that rivaled anything in Europe, calculating the length of a year to an accuracy within a minute and two seconds of what we now know to be true.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Michigan in Color: The University doesn’t protect us, we do
MICHIGAN IN COLOR STAFF
At this point, it’s a given that each new statement from President Santa Ono and the Board of Regents will be a disappointment. And on March 27, just one week after the discontinuation of the LEAD Scholars program, a merit-based scholarship initiative specifically created to support underrepresented minority undergraduate students, U-M administration unsurprisingly announced the termination of their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The statement outlined the closing of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion, as well as the cancellation of their DEI 2.0 Strategic Plan and the removal of all diversity statements in faculty hiring, admissions and other formal considerations. In their statement, they also claimed these decisions were a result of pressures from stakeholders and threats to higher education on a national level.
But there’s a lot the University doesn’t want to say out loud, and for us, those values are clear: The University has never had the interests or protection of their marginalized students in mind. The cuts to DEI are a stark reminder of that. While students continue to organize for the right to exist and thrive at this institution, the U-M administration has once again shown that they have no problem sacrificing the safety of their students in exchange for donor approval.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are not simply politically charged buzzwords. They have provided us with the scholarships that have helped fund our education, built us the cultural centers
‘That’s some white people shit’
and lounges where we’ve established community, and created the policies that aimed — however imperfectly — to facilitate the acknowledgement and understanding of systemic inequalities.
Michigan in Color was founded as a commentary section of The Michigan Daily in response to the overwhelmingly resounding noise of doubt, erasure and minimization of the experiences of students of Color present on campus. In over 10 years of production, we have had to regroup, shift our focus, rediscover our voices and change. The University administration, on the other hand, has not.
The Michigan in Color staff, and all minority groups on campus and beyond, are all too familiar with the dilemma of tokenization. There is an extremely fine line between taking pride in your students and taking advantage of them. One seeks to elevate and empower members of the community toward collective advancement. The other treats the diversity of human experience like fine china: meticulously collected and only used when needed.
You will see us everywhere that you look on campus. We will be front-page on your University website, laughing with our multiethnic friend group on the Diag. Our faces will be plastered on the social media pages and, most importantly, we will be a key statistic, paraded during tour groups and admissions brochures alike as a bragging point: “Look how many of them we have!” And yet, when the cameras are off and the hashtags fade, when we demand real equity and ask for sit-downs with University leaders about divestment instead of a halfhearted MDining “shish tawook” and “lamb kofta,” we are met with silence.
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In the summer of 2021, one of the major streets in my city was reduced by a lane to add bike lanes and expand the sidewalks for pedestrians. The goal was to transform the area into a more walkable space, encouraging patrons to stroll through the area and visit the gamut of stores, cafes and boutiques. This decision was met with frustration, since this street is essential for traversing my neighborhood. If you want to go to the grocery store, go out to eat or go to other parts of the city, you have to take this street. Reducing car lanes creates massive traffic backups, especially during rush hour. Every time I’m on that street, the person driving laments about the traffic jams caused by these bike lanes.
However, there’s one specific phrase I hear tossed around in addition to this complaint: “That bike lane is for white people. They’re the only ones that bike around this area.”
Despite what you might assume, biking around my neighborhood is not difficult. In fact, I find it to be safer and easier than biking in Ann Arbor, even before these new additions. So why the disdain, and why the racialization?
The grievance is, in part, a frustration at the changes to our city occurring due to an increasing white population. I’m from Detroit, an area that’s been called one of the Blackest cities in America. This started to change a few years ago, a bit before the bike lanes popped up. The primary difference between the Detroit of today and the Detroit of five years ago that was allegedly a wasteland is that now there are more white people, expensive restaurants and corporate offices. Why do we consider these things
to be upgrades from Black and brown establishments with our senior apartments and community owned stores?
When phrased like this, I fully agree. I don’t think we should roll out the red carpet in welcome of the wealthy white people gentrifying our city and shaping it in their image. I totally understand — and experience — the simmering anger this evokes. But there’s a hidden part of this sentiment that I fully reject: the idea that bike lanes are for white people.
Whether it’s witnessing white people walking in the middle of the sidewalk or making EDM remixes of rap songs, the chuckled phrase, “That’s some white people shit,” is a cultural mainstay. Most Black people hear or say it regularly. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a funny, and often appropriate, saying. There are some things that just feel so … white. Further, there are some (arguably white) things I would never do as a Black person for cultural, respect or safety reasons, like cursing at my parents or catching an attitude with the police. Disrespecting your Black parent is a quick way to get read for filth and disrespecting the police is a quick way to put yourself in serious danger. Many of these precautions just aren’t the norm in many white communities. I’ve definitely said, “That’s some white people shit,” myself, whether it’s while watching students go out to parties and bars every Thursday or raising my eyebrows at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend ski trip advertised on campus (which seriously feels like “Get Out”). The phrase is often funny and relevant, a sociopolitical analysis of race wrapped in a joke to soften the blow.
But under the surface, another idea lurks. After, “That’s some white people shit,” there’s an unspoken, “therefore, Black people can’t or shouldn’t do this.” CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
In the Arts section, we bring attention to all the art around us, writing reviews, notebooks and features. Reviews provide a quick summary of a work of art while detailing its cultural and artistic relevance. Notebooks are personal articles, allowing the writer to explore their unique observations and emotional connection to a work, art movement or general trend. Features are a new format where writers perform a deep dive, exploring their topic of choice with a strong focus on research. On top of these three formats, we also conduct interviews with creatives and organize The B-Side, a biweekly series of themed articles.
Arts section is divided into
‘Sinners,’ Grace and the Asian American
Note: This article contains spoilers. During the first half-hour of “Sinners,” hundreds of thoughts rushed through my mind, ranging from how gorgeous Miles Caton’s (debut) voice is to wondering how they seamlessly shot Michael B. Jordan (“Creed III”) passing a cigarette to himself. But the thing that stuck out to me the most was the appearance of Bo (Yao, “#LookAtMe”) and Grace (Li Jun Li, “Babylon”) in the film; an Asian American shopkeeping couple in the Deep South. As an Asian American, my personal knowledge of the Asian American diaspora in the early 20th century consisted of the large communities on the West Coast of the United States — not anywhere near Clarksdale, Mississippi. After the film ended, I did some research and discovered that Chinese Americans really did have a presence in the Mississippi Delta at that time. The spread of Chinese Americans to the Mississippi Delta area began
in the late 19th century, as white plantation owners used newly immigrated workers to pick cotton in a similar manner to the recently freed Black slaves. Over time, these Chinese communities began opening their own businesses — grocery stores — in the area, serving both white and Black customers. But still, the Chinese Americans in these Mississippi Delta communities found themselves in limbo; they were not Black, but they were not white either. They were stuck in this
awkward middle. This overlooked community played a vital role in small towns across the South, and as such, director Ryan Coogler (“Creed III”) includes them in “Sinners,” providing meaningful, historically accurate representation. Coogler even went so far as recruiting Dolly Li, a documentarian on Asian American history, as a historical consultant in depicting the Chinese American community for the film. CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Staring at stairs: A review of the University of Michigan’s staircases
There is truly nothing more embarrassing than arriving at Mason Hall 3330 at 10 a.m. panting, beads of sweat beginning to perspire on my forehead. No, I did not run to class (an image of me lumbering down State Street with my backpack haunts my nightmares) nor did I have some illicit affair in the inner workings of the Mason/Angell/ Tisch/Haven Hall labyrinth. Unfortunately, it’s much worse: I took the stairs.
In a time where our tallest skyscrapers reach more than 130 floors and stairs are hidden in dingy back corners of buildings, elevators feel like a Darwinian adaptation. Not only do they provide a modern luxury and the slight thrill of feeling the floor rise or fall under your feet, but they also have their own sub-genre of music to bump on your way up or down. Yet, as someone who hates cramped
spaces and the awkwardness of spamming the “close” button, the stairs are often my favorite mode of ascension and descension. Maybe it’s some lingering childhood trauma from the “Stretching Room” in Walt Disney World, or the omniscient voice of my father describing how he always takes the stairs — a separate form of childhood trauma — but since coming to college, I’ve been the one searching for the staircase in any building.
On a campus more than 150 years old with a diverse array of architectural styles, this search has led me to some interesting places. Back hallways, strange doors and coming close to setting off emergency exit alarms are all a part of the stairseeker journey. So is trudging up the Hatcher Graduate Library stacks steps before another long night, or circling the Kinesiology building 500 times in order to find a study spot (they knew what they were doing with that architectural maze). After climbing up and down (and then
ALA:174 Leadership Lab Leadership can
up again), I decided it’s time to bring to light the highs and lows of the best, worst and strangest stairs on campus. So start stretching those hamstrings and fill up your water bottle because by the end of this article, you’ll be out of breath, too.
Worst: Mason Hall Staircase Yeah, we’re starting here, and I have thoughts. To keep this from turning into its own essay, here they are, rapid-fire: First off, you’d think you were waiting in line for Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s or trying to get a taco from the dining hall in South Quad Residence Hall judging by the way the line looks at 11:50 a.m. on a weekday. The poorly planned locations of the exits mean you are constantly cutting someone off, or awkwardly holding the door for someone — only to find out they’re going up another level. That’s because there is always another level with these stairs, especially since the building starts on ground floor instead of floor one. CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
JC RAFAL Daily Arts Writer
IAN GALLMORE Daily Arts Writer
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The last of my patience
Warning: There are spoilers for The Last of Us seasons one and two as well as The Last of Us: Part I and II. Maybe the expectations were too high.
Maybe a TV adaptation of one of the most controversial games in recent history didn’t stand a chance, and this show was always destined to share the same turbulent fate as its source material. Maybe expecting “The Last of Us” season two to somehow unite a heavily divided fanbase while still remaining faithful to the source material was a death sentence waiting to happen.
Regardless, I was disappointed by the aftermath.
With a universally beloved first season, it was hard to see how its successor could go wrong. Although season one changed many aspects of the source material’s plot points, fans of both the show and the game believed the adaptation to be faithful and respectful to the original story. Every change, big and small, elevated both the overarching narrative and character development, with the understanding that some elements of the game wouldn’t function in the medium of television.
A stellar example of these broadstroke changes is Bill (Nick Offerman, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning”) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlett, “The White Lotus”) love story, a beloved original addition to the show. Even though this was a large step away from the source material, this new inclusion allowed for the story’s overarching theme of love and hope to permeate through more subplots, strengthening the core of the game’s message.
The show continued making bold changes in the same fash-
ion: taking themes at the center of The Last of Us video game and making tweaks to positively impact the new narrative format. Essentially, “The Last of Us” season one became the blueprint for a perfect video game adaptation by making meaningful changes to the source material without damaging the essence of the original story.
I expected season two to be no different. In fact, the second season held boundless potential as an adaptation that could improve upon its source material, given the game’s reception to material.
The Last of Us: Part II is about two women’s desire for revenge and the destruction that this desire causes. Since its release, Part II has been one of the most divisive games of all time, being simultaneously vilified and adored by thousands.
The sequel strays quite far from the original narrative of its predecessor, both thematically and through its protagonists. In the first game, we play as Joel Miller, a smuggler tasked with taking a potential cure for the Infection across the country. Only the cure isn’t a vaccine or a probiotic — it’s a young girl immune to the Infection. Joel and Ellie build a strong familial bond that is tested once it is revealed that creating the cure would kill Ellie in the process. Choosing between saving the
world or saving his newfound daughter, Joel kills everyone involved in the vaccine-making process, including the surgeon planning on operating on Ellie.
In the second game, Joel is abruptly and violently murdered by a group of strangers, with a woman named Abby asw their leader. Unbeknownst to Joel or Ellie, Abby’s father was the surgeon murdered by Joel five years prior. In turn, Ellie succumbs to the same vindictive rage and becomes driven to find and kill Abby. A vicious cycle of violence consumes the two of them, causing the women to lose everyone they hold dear. At the same time, Abby and Ellie are in the middle of a warzone in Seattle, where two factions, the Wolves (Washington Liberation Front) and Scars (Seraphites), are massacring each other for land they both believe they lay claim to. Both the characters and the setting reflect how the only way to end the cycle of violence is to walk away from it.
Many critics cite the strange pacing, Ellie’s character arc, Abby’s character and, of course, Joel’s untimely death as the sources of its failure. In stark contrast, many fans of the game praise the bold risks the story took to tackle themes of empathy, violence and forgiveness. CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
‘The Tortured Poets Department’: One year later
I’ve always liked Taylor Swift in her deficits. Swift is often best at her most unexpected, at her most doubted. From the shitstorm-causing reputation, to the complete shock of folklore, she seems to thrive when writing in secret.
Last year, Swift released her 11th original studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, to a culture completely overexposed to her presence. In the middle of the highest grossing tour in music history and in the process of (re-)releasing an insane amount of music, she has had more eyes on her than are comprehensible for a human being.
Statistically, The Tortured Poets Department thrived. It was the fastest album to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify, and “Fortnight” stands as the song with the most streams ever in one day.
Socially, however, it failed. It would be redundant to summarize the album’s failures, as it seems everybody has already done it. In
short, it’s stylistically boring and lyrically corny. Not only was the album dull, but it was also shrouded in controversy. Many of the songs are seemingly about Swift’s public appearances with The 1975’s Matty Healy, a man who has a difficult and confusing reputation. It’s bloated with an overreliance on sloppy, overdone, immature lyrics, seen in titles like “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” These elements bred a culture of hatred for this album, one that I played into at the time. But a year later, I cannot stop thinking about this album. There is something frightening about it — something I can’t peel myself away from. The album is like watching someone you know drown underneath something they refuse to talk about. It’s me, as a 12-year-old girl, miserable for no specific reason, posting slightly concerning Snapchat stories in the hopes that somebody would recognize my nonsensical growing pains.
There is so much I still don’t like about this album, so much that leaves me both bewildered and bored. It is The Tortured Poets
Department’s argument, however, that’s starting to pull me in.
In an explanation regarding the opening track, “Fortnight,” Swift summarized the spirit of her songwriting.
“Inherently, this album is wildly dramatic. ‘I love you, it’s ruining my life.’ These are very hyperbolic, dramatic things to say. It’s that kind of album.”
The album oozes with this hyperbole, presenting love as something genuinely ruining her life, a wildly theatrical and melodramatic take.
When this album came out, this dramatic position on love held no weight for me. It was too pretentious to pretend that love was more than just something to secretly attempt and publicly scoff at. It was too writerly in my eyes to devote shitty poems to somebody, to brim with an obsession so consuming that it has to end in ink-stained fingers. To say that loving someone could ruin a life was, to me, a wild misstep — an incredibly naive admission.
The Tortured Poets Department refuses to back down from admitting the weight of love. It refuses to cower, like me. I’m reminded of Salma Deera’s poem “salt” which begins, “In front of my mother and my sisters, I pretend love is cheap and vulgar. I act like it’s a sin — I pretend that love is for women on a dark path. But at night I dream of a love so heavy it makes my spine throb.” The Tortured Poets Department, unlike Deera, unlike me, does not pretend that love is nothing — it argues that love is everything. And as everything, it holds the power to rot you from the inside.
Official image from ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 distributed by Max.
CORA ROLFES & CAMPBELL JOHNS Daily Arts Writer & Summer Managing Arts Editor
ANA TORRESARPI Daily Arts Writer
HOLLY TSCH Daily Arts Writer
In January of 2021, Adobe Flash went offline. A nearly uncountable number of games, animations and webtoys made with the software went along with it. Though Adobe’s unsavory practices have been known for a long time, I felt betrayed. The entire internet was going down: Armor Games, where I spent hundreds of hidden computer lab hours; Orsinal, a bizarre little site none of my friends seemed to remember; Nitrome, home of all the most lavishly overproduced flash games a child could ever want; and, of course, Newgrounds, home of every type of juvenile content imaginable.
In response to this fire in the library, my friend tipped me off to the Flashpoint archive: a massive, near-comprehensive collection of 200,000 games and animations. It’s a library taking up more than a terabyte and a half, with a smaller version of the app starting at 3.5 GB. I downloaded it as soon as Flash went down, and have returned to it every few months ever since. This is a tour of that graveyard.
While all modern versions of Flash activated a kill switch functionally stopping these games from existing, the code is still there, and new stuff is presently being added to Flashpoint. At the same time, it’s clear that all this is the lowest priority art to be preserved, on account of it being considered a low artform mostly occupied by teenage boys and juvenile comedy. What needs to be protected more? These are the groundwork for the groundwork of the modern internet’s culture. Our towers of immaturity owe their existence to places like Newgrounds.
Storage of artistic history is one of the fields I’ve been the most consistently frustrated with since becoming an adult. I’ve even written about it for The Michigan Daily. The internet is rich with companies that would rather let art rot than be freely accessible, given Dig-
ital Rights Management and restrictive copyright laws.
When asked about piracy of his own game, Ultrakill, indie game developer Arsi Patala said, “Culture shouldn’t exist only for those who can afford it.” In the frequently asked questions segment of Flashpoint’s website, they say this on its legality, “The only real answer is nobody knows and really, nobody should care. Games that more or less have a ticking clock until they die need to be saved now, as fast as possible.” The funny part is, no one cares. Flashpoint has run with few notable challenges, and the games have been saved. 200,000 flash games and animations. Let’s take a walk.
First, the computer lab classics. Bloxorz is always first. Perfect for skipping your Type
to Learn assignments. The second option is probably This is the Only Level. Are the games fun? It’s complicated. They all follow a no-price arcade style of design. They are overwhelmingly simple, and from the perspective of a 22-year-old, more than a little flat. What they lack in interesting ideas and high artistic sensibilities, they make up with a sense of pale, empty nostalgia. That emptiness always gets to me first. Games like Bloxorz pass up on music for ambience. It’s a well-acknowledged fact that Flash is not very good at doing sound consistently. This informs the older games, but once the craft was developed, some of the best games kept that emptiness.
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The art of mundanity: Ocean Vuong and ‘The Emperor of Gladness’
ers, peering into these real lives.
Ocean Vuong’s bestselling debut novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” took the literary world by storm. Upon its release, the book was widely praised for its heartbreaking character depictions which were matched equally by the beauty of the author’s prose. When writing this epistolary novel, Vuong leaned into his roots as a poet, with flowery, lyrical language at its core. In addition to the author’s many accolades, including the 2014 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and the American Book Award, his newest novel, “The Emperor of Gladness,” has been recognized by Oprah’s Book Club and quick-
ly rose on bestseller lists. As “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” focused on beautiful prose, it lacked a coherent plotline, which drew me to pick up “The Emperor of Gladness,” which seemed to have a far clearer plot progression and apparently tangible characters. The individuality of these novels also encouraged my attendance at his national tour which enriched my reading experience by providing insight not only into the production of his novels, but also what it means to write. The novel opens with our narrator, Hai, standing on a bridge, ready to end his life. Breaking through the rain and the noise of his thoughts, an elderly widow, Grazina, calls to him and saves his life. Hai becomes Grazina’s caretaker as she falls deeper into her dementia, and in spite of it
all, they become unlikely companions, leaning on one another as they live through their respective hardships. Taking place during the rise of the opioid epidemic in 2009, this story is one of resilience and the beauty in the most mundane aspects of life. Vuong reminds readers that the stories of everyday individuals are just as beautiful as the fantastical and epic stories more widely represented in literature.
While “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” focuses on the complications of generational experiences and the meaning of blood, “The Emperor of Gladness” takes an even deeper look at the meaning of chosen family. The thickness of blood can be suffocating, and the turn to the purity of friendship can be the breath of fresh air we so desper-
ately need. Both of these perspectives are important in their own ways, though in “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” I found that the characters felt more like ideas than people. There is a certain beauty in describing a Queer relationship and the complexities between a mother and son, the way Vuong wrote into his first novel. Hai, living in East Gladness, however, lives the unaesthetic life of a fast food worker, including anecdotes like butchering pigs or racist customers, which exemplify that these people may not fall into the role of an “ideal” protagonist. While Vuong’s debut was beautifully written and heart-wrenching, the silent beauty of this second novel allows for a rich cast of characters that truly feel like real people rather than ideas of them. The readers are intrud-
2025 Wallenberg Medal and Lecture
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Russian politician, author, historian, and former political prisoner
Tuesday, November 4, 2025 4:30PM Rackham Auditorium 915 East Washington St., Ann Arbor
Though we come to read a story, we turn the last page feeling as though we have worked, laughed and cried with these characters as their friends.
On Instagram, Vuong has described each book he writes as “reincarnations of one another.”
The stark difference, yet evident interlinking of his two novels is indicative of this sentiment.
While “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” is a dark, contemplative story of a Queer immigrant experience, “The Emperor of Gladness” is witty, even hilarious at times despite discussing topics not entirely different from his first novel. By focusing on the individuality of a singular life rather than generational trauma, Vuong’s personality shines through the characters, and his humor introduces a new side to
his writing that we, as readers, had not previously experienced. To Vuong, his first novel was a story reflecting his heritage. In “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” Vuong’s individuality is relevant, but the book loses purpose without the generational focus. Its serious nature is a response to its audience, which is a largely non-Vietnamese demographic. On tour, Vuong explained that in order to do his work justice, he remained hyperaware of this audience and felt humor was inappropriate, leading his prose with respect for those who came before him. His second novel, by contrast, is largely inspired by a singular story, and its hope and humor are equal to the adversity these characters share.
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Tuesday September 16 Tuesday October 21 Tuesday November 18
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ARCHISHA PATHAK Daily Arts Writer
STATEMENT
‘Yes I said yes I will Yes’ to James Joyce’s Dublin
KATIE LYNCH Statement Deputy Editor
Living in Ireland is teaching me how to walk slower. I’m in Dublin for an exchange semester, and sometimes the change of pace is all I can think about. In Ann Arbor, I’m a fast walker, always hurrying to class, the library and back home again, headphones on as I call my parents or listen to an audio recording of my next reading assignment. But here, I feel I am given permission to take my time and to move through the day without rushing.
Earlier this week, I went for a stroll along Sandymount Strand, a beach on the Irish Sea southeast of Dublin city center. It was well after sunset and the tide had gone way out, leaving behind rippled patterns in the sand and little pools of water that glistened under the nearby streetlights. I stayed close to the water line and stared out at the ocean, the warm city lights of Blackrock and Dún Laoghaire to my right and two red-and-whitestriped smokestacks surrounded by gray factory buildings to my left. Cold wind stung my cheeks and whistled in my ears, but the
ISHA JAYADEV Statement Columnist
his first real gift — a secondhand harmonium — and he’s spent the past week learning how to move his fingers across the keys. It’s much smaller than a piano, with only 42 keys as opposed to a piano’s 88, but the hard part is training his left hand to pump air every few seconds, breathing life into the sound. It’s a small rectangular box, just big enough to reach his hands comfortably while he sits cross-legged on the dirt. The daylight has run out and there’s no electricity in the hut, which is why he’s gravitated to the only part of the village with a
water’s surface remained still. I walked as slowly as I could, indulging in the salty sea air and the way my footsteps sunk into the wet sand.
As I moved down the strand, I found myself thinking about James Joyce’s Dublin. The words “Sandymount Strand” have been ringing around in my head ever since I took a class on Joyce last year at the University of Michigan and read three of his most notable works: “Dubliners,” “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and “Ulysses.”
Sandymount Strand is the setting of the “Nausicaa” chapter of “Ulysses,” a sentimental and uncomfortably erotic episode that takes place at twilight and culminates in Leopold Bloom (the book’s protagonist) falling asleep in the sand. It’s also where Joyce’s semi-self-inserted character Stephen Dedalus goes for a walk in “Proteus” and spends an agonizing chapter stuck in his own head. Ever since reading these books, I’ve been so eager to see the strand which seemed to be, according to Joyce, one of the best spots in Dublin for people-watching and self-revelation. I wondered, like Stephen said in “Ulysses,” “Am
I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand?” It sort of felt like I was. The strand at twilight felt liminal, inviting me to continue walking further and more curiously along some of the scenic inspiration for Joyce’s writing.
Almost everything I knew about Dublin before arriving here in January came through the lens of Joyce’s writing, which was informed by the way the city looked in the early 20th century. Joyce isn’t the only reason why I wanted to come to Ireland, however. Ancestors on my dad’s side were Irish, and I’ve always been interested in the country’s traditions of resistance and literary splendor, not to mention proximity to the ocean and the lush, green countryside. But still, it is undeniable that just as much as Joyce’s writing was inspired by Dublin, the city itself has in turn been influenced by his work. He is everywhere — in statues and bookstore display cases and building names. Half of the postcards I’ve seen on metal racks are adorned with Joyce quotes in cursive or photos of him wearing his iconic round glasses and a crooked top hat.
It’s a bit of an odd thing to experience the real-life version of a place that I was first intimately introduced to in a literary and fictional capacity. For Joyce, having grown up in Dublin, it was almost the complete opposite — his fictional works, including the modernist masterpiece “Ulysses,” were reflective of the Ireland he already knew well. Joyce once famously said to a friend that in writing “Ulysses,”
My grandfather’s harmonium
lightbulb. He knows he’ll be called in soon and all eight of his siblings will be asleep together on the floor. He dreads returning to his one-room hut, built from just mud and water, never sturdy enough to keep out the lizards. So before the sound of his mother’s voice permeates the village air, he lets his music fill the silence, relishing in the harmonium his father gifted him despite struggling to feed his children three meals a day.
He doesn’t know it yet, but 50 years later, he’ll be yelling at his children to handle it carefully, to always hold it with two hands and to never set it down on the hardwood floor. 50 years later and it’ll still be the most important thing he owns. My grandpa, Thatha in my
native tongue, was only eight when he was gifted his first harmonium — worn but sturdy. From that day on, he spent every waking minute teaching himself to play. It was the 1950s in some of the poorest parts of India and his family didn’t have much besides cows, a few acres of farming land and a radio. Thatha and his siblings would spend their evenings finishing their homework while listening to popular Bollywood songs that crackled over their radio — melodies that eventually had him hunched over the keyboard, following the notes with his fingers. Finally, his dad, the first person to notice his son’s passion for the instrument, searched far and wide for a teacher who would train Thatha for cheap.
His dad finally found a blind music teacher and brought him
from the village he was from to their home. They couldn’t pay him, but the teacher was willing to give Thatha proper harmonium lessons in exchange for care. He needed Thatha to take him to the bathroom, shower him and give him an easier life in exchange for his musical expertise.
When I asked my grandmother, Ajji, when he would even get the chance to play, she responded, “Oh, there’s always a hubba.”
I laughed, mainly because she’s right — there is no shortage of hubbas, or religious gatherings, in India; there is always a god to celebrate and always people there to celebrate it.
He’s sitting at the front, facing the crowd of freshly-showered villagers, all in their nicest garments. He’s only had his harmonium for a year and he’s
keenly aware of that as his fingers race across the keyboard, trying to keep pace with the seasoned Carnatic singer beside him. Everyone’s hands are together in prayer to show respect for the bhajan being played.
He didn’t know it at the time, but a swamiji, a religious leader, was in the audience, patiently waiting for the bhajans to end before he could meet the boy playing the harmonium. He was mesmerized by this young boy swaying to the tune of his keys and, when he finally got the chance to speak to him, he fervently clutched the boy’s hands in his own and implored for his presence at his residential school.
When the boy told his parents, his mother cried and wailed and begged his father not to let him go. The son she birthed, left alone in a
different town — nothing could be worse. The swamiji spoke calmly to them, explaining the education he hoped to give the boy and the opportunities it would open up for him. Swayed by this proposal, the boy’s dad agreed and, with a heavy heart, sent the boy off to live at this new school.
Thatha stayed at the school until he was 16. The students were all poor and the school wasn’t much better off. They ate the same thing every day — rice and mudde — and were only fed twice a day. When Thatha first arrived, there wasn’t even a resident music teacher at the school, but the swamiji kept his promise and began bringing him to the ashram, where Hindu sages stay, to learn from his new teacher, Raju Master.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
There are echoes soft as breath reverberating off hidden doorways each night when the sun slips into the sea and the hush of darkness descends — a velvet weight across the world. To some, hopes bloom into tangible treasures. For others, they remain just out of reach, as if suspended between life and death, chained instead to the unyielding anchor of reality. Dreams can stretch across a vast spectrum — shifting and twisting between blooming wishes and harsh nightmares that grow darker with the gravity of deviance or beam brighter the more you pray. They can be restless storms raging behind closed eyes or fragile gifts so familiar they fade into the quiet background of life.
It has always been easy for me to drift into dreams — to become weightless, if only for a fleeting instant, feeling burdens not as shackles but as the fierce, molten fire that forges my character into diamond. My ability to crave for more, to strive to become a force to be reckoned with, to want to mark my impact on the communities I build, is met with such ease that I have come to take aspirations for granted. My dreams hold the power to morph. One moment, I envision myself as a lawyer; the next, I am a designer who is passionate about social justice advocacy. Walking this tightrope feels daunting, yet beneath me lie invisible safety nets — a bed of threads whispering from the lips of my ancestors, “As long as you do it for yourself, things will turn out okay.”
But not everyone holds the privilege to dream for themselves. Not all are granted the chance to be the star of their own
unfolding story, to chase desire without apology or to imagine a life shaped by choice rather than circumstance.
My relationship with dreams is ever-shifting, molded like clay by the hands of those I have met and the cultures I have moved through. During the summer of 2023, in a small neurodivergent orphanage in Kalimantan, I saw dreams distilled to their essence — children longing simply to see, to hear, to belong in a world that felt beyond reach. Arif — one of the residents who found delight in music when I played an opera performance on my phone screen — could only imagine the movement of the singer’s lips and the warmth of her smile dissolving into a sea of standing ovation. Hearing opened a surreal window to his world, while sight remained an inevitable absence he could only imagine. He longed to see his mother’s touch, not just feel it — to witness the arms of performers striking gamelans and shaking angklungs, not merely hear their rhythms — and to build towers of neatly pressed nasi kuning dishes without having to rely solely on taste.
A whole world existed beyond the senses he was given, and to receive the ability to see would unlock unfathomable doors that he often spoke of as the key to his mother’s happiness. It would replace his burdens with blessings, unbind him from a life woven chiefly by sound and bring a smile of relief to his mother’s face. It would grant him the precious gift to feel more deeply and draw portraits with greater clarity. But most of all, he dreamed of seeing for her.
The nature of dreaming for others does not end at one orphanage; it unfolds across generations, carrying with it
layers of yearning, sacrifice and transformation. Growing up, the dreams of my grandparents and parents were carved from the rugged stone of hardship, shaped and restrained by the unforgiving hands of life and the immigrant journey. They dreamed in quiet colors — simple wishes for clean food that nourished, any work that braced their weary hands and the brittle courage to speak without fear amid political and economic oppression. My father sought nothing more than a haven within an all native-Indonesian school where Chinese Medanese children were marked and targeted. He balanced the weight of earning money to support his parents while my grandmother worked tirelessly — two full-time jobs as a florist by day and a mathematics professor by night — sacrificing everything to save enough for my father and his older brothers to pursue an education. Similarly, my mother sought the fragile comfort of safety in a homeland shadowed by a legacy of racism and unease — where many of her ancestors had ventured far to labor in the tin mines of Bangka and the goldladen hills of Borneo, their hopes weighed heavy with history and hardship.
It is their sacrifices, etched deep into their cyclical, life-enduring fears, that allow my dreams to soar boundless and free. I carry the gift of seeing the world through a kaleidoscope of possibility and the rare privilege to wrestle with my passions. I dream of touching lives, of becoming a steady hand — an extension of the future my parents once had to wait for. What would it be like to live a life where savvy meets innovation? Could I become an inventor, a creator of new worlds? Is there a place waiting for me in the limitless realms of design and technology, research and craft
— where ideas take flight and hands can bring dreams to life? Is it wrong to carry this privilege — one shaped by the sacrifices of those who gave up their own dreams? Is it just to pursue mine without earning the cost they paid for my ambitions? And if that is the case, are my dreams truly unfettered or are they held back by the unspoken bind of obligation?
The questions I face are seldom “could I,” but more often “would I.”
And when “could” dares to surface, it is scarcely due to the lack of opportunity, but rather the subtle shadows of self-doubt and neglect that I let rise between me and the fragile rarity we call dreams. I never had to deeply examine whether I could do something because of circumstances where life-and-death dilemmas unveiled — only whether I truly wanted to. I have had to confront my values and wrestle with what I seek in life, but I have never had to silence
my ardor beneath the crushing shadow of urgent needs and desperation.
Dreams are a reminder of my potential — delicate yet powerful, like the wings of a butterfly unfolding from its cocoon. In that serene, formative space, I prepare for a life of flight, of exploration. Now, I am the butterfly, rising toward the light above the surface. But in my ascent, I ask: Am I leaving behind the vestiges of my family and local community? How do I make peace with the piercing truth that the very shadows that sheltered me — the cocoon that once nurtured me — is not my destination, but instead the stepping stones that carried me to where I am today? If there were ever a world where the dreams of those who dreamed for others could be fulfilled, I would not be asking could or if, but how — how will these dreams unfold and through
whom? Because there is a delicate balance — of selflessness and selfhood, of the tamed and the wild, the intrepid and the secure. A balance held by those who spent their lives wishing quietly for themselves and those who gave up their wishes so others might dream
ALESSI PSYCHIATRY AND LIFE CENTER
(Un)marred heaven STATEMENT
AVA FAYAD Statement Deputy Editor
I am 11 years old, laying in bed on a school night, staring at my ceiling, and swirling, swirling, swirling in the deep crevices of my mind as I try to fall asleep is the question: “Will God accept me into His heaven?”
I had always been an uptight child. Some may call it neuroticism or emotional instability, but the telltale signs of anxiety were evident within me from the very beginning. Questioning mortality and my own holy trials and tribulations was not something novel to me at my ripe age of 11.
Many cultural communities are formed around a shared religion. Within the culture of Abrahamic religions — not the religions themselves, but within the shared society that has been formed from the commonality in practice — there is the idea that sadness or depression is largely conquerable.
It’s thought that such negative feelings can simply be traced to some sort of inherent deficiency, one that must be overcome through prayer and drowned out with pleas for forgiveness and mercy. Sadness and depression are thought to be a test of strength and one must pull through to prove that they have come out on top, to prove that they are, in fact, deserving of eternal salvation. Or, very simply put, if you are depressed, then your faith in God is just not strong enough. You must pray, pray, pray, repent, repent, repent and then maybe — just maybe — you will be normal like all the other devout human beings.
Heaven is perfection. Heaven is goodness. Heaven is purity. To be acceptable for heaven you must be perfect, you must have goodness, you must have endless love. But if you are sad, if you are stuck in the limbo that is depression, if you feel that you are none of these things, then what?
Which comes first: sadness or doubt? How do you make sense of either?
When depression renders you so incomplete, so fractured and cracked, right down the middle, can you still possibly be worthy of the faith that you hold? Worthy to be accepted to heaven? Can you still even possibly be human?
I felt that, for a long time, people would look right through me. I wasn’t completely there in the way that most normally functioning people are able to be in a present moment — even I myself know this. Among the many symptoms of depression is the oh-so-notorious fog that seemingly overtakes everything: it slows your thoughts, movements and social capacity and does away with each, one by one. It puts you in a sleepwalklike stupor — eyes closed, senses numb, with everything outside the mind almost imperceptible and unintelligible. It is, or it feels like, an inhuman state.
But what is human, anyway? What is the mind, the soul, the
body — spoken of so highly, revered so violently — that must be kept intact, must be kept whole, must be, must be, must be? If humans and humanity have slowly ebbed away, slowly been crushed out, slowly been lost, what is one to do now? If I am no longer whole, then what?
To be human is to be whole, to be full — full of life, of love, of energy, of the ability to speak without being afraid, of an overflow of sheer love for life. To not be whole is to be tired — to be too tired to muster up the energy, the courage, to walk through life. It is to feel like you are not human.
My childhood self wonders if she was still worthy too. She wonders, what is human?
The holy test tells us to endure our suffering, to push through, for by the end of it, we will be made better. We will come out stronger. But what if, when it comes time for my test to end, I cannot be fixed?
I used to think that “test” was the cruelest word I could think of. We all have our battles and the word “test” is plastered over them, as if that word makes it better, as if they all have a purpose and justification.
We test, we are tested, we are made to endure the test, but by the end of it, is who — or what — we are acceptable? Acceptable enough for the beauty, the lushness, the purity of heaven? The test injures, the test mars, the test disfigures. The test is meant to test, and we, in turn, are broken by the end of it. But will we be fixed? Heaven promises respite, but does it also promise wholeness?
The “fixing” of the injured human psyche — does this take place after our sentence of suffering has been endured, quietly, submissively, shamefully?
Head down, hands in prayer, brows knit in shame? Am I to wake each morning and simply move past the grief, past the strife, past being knocked down, over and over again? Am I to expect, pray, hope, that the fixing takes place soon so that I will be made whole again?
The very deep, very impassible stigma surrounding the “act” of being depressed, if you can even call it that, is incomprehensible. Yes, I prayed and prayed and prayed. I fasted. I tried my best to be kind, even when I didn’t receive the same in return. I tried to help others when I could. But, even through all this, I was sad. And no
one could understand that. And this, in turn, led to me to wonder, “What now?”
In what state is God willing to accept us into heaven? In what state can we still be considered human?
Is humanity a threshold, and can pain — or what it does to us — make us any less human? What if, by the end of the battle, we are so scarred, so disfigured, that we can never again be what we once were? Where do we go from there? What if we cannot heal properly?
Depression and chronic mental illness are framed as battles — something to be won, something to be scarred for, something to get as close as possible to death for, but to never actually let it kill you, of course, because then you would be a sinner. There is shame in admitting that you are having qualms, that you are sad and unsure if you are able to get through it.
But we are not bulletproof. We are not invincible. We are human.
Elyn Saks, University of Southern California law professor and mental health law expert, after having lived with undiagnosed schizophrenia and through multiple bouts of psychosis for 28 years, wrote a memoir on her experience titled “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.” While speaking of the conviction instilled in her by a drug rehabilitation center that anything can be overcome through sheer willpower, Saks writes:
The fundamental flaw in all this, though, is that it neglects something intrinsic to the complex real world and to complex real human beings. In fact, it is not necessarily true that everything can be conquered with willpower. There are forces of nature and circumstance that are beyond our control, let alone our understanding, and to insist on victory in the face of this, to accept nothing less, is just asking for a soul-pummeling. We feel how we feel. We do with that all that we know how.
Saks brings up the point that rather than separating ourselves from our illness and treating it as something bad that must be done away with or must be taken care of, we must learn to accept that it is a part of us — to accept that we must we can make it better, can improve, but that we also must learn to live with it.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Just friends: Are boys and girls ever purely platonic?
LISKA TOROK Statement Associate Editor
Sixteen was a year of entirely new experiences for me: it was just after the COVID-19 pandemic and the first time I’d attended in-person high school without a mask. I was immediately thrown into the chaos of young adulthood. But when I think back to 16, one new experience stands out the most: boys. Having attended an all-girls middle school, going to school with boys was a novel concept and an experience I had to learn from scratch. For the first time in my life, I had boys around me, and even some boy friends. However, by my 17th birthday, I’d discovered one of the downsides of befriending boys: the confusing and blurry line between being friends and something more.
At one point in the infamous romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally,” Harry (Billy Crystal, “Standing Up, Falling Down”) turns to Sally (Meg Ryan, “You’ve Got Mail”) in the car and says, “What I’m saying is — and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form — is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.” One of the most famous ideas prompted in cinematic history, and my 16th year, begs the question of whether the media created this idea of men and women being unable to stay platonic friends, or if it simply portrays it because it’s true?
First, we need to understand the aspects that make a relationship romantic versus platonic. For the purpose of this article, when I reference media and my personal experiences, I’m referring to friendships between women who are attracted to men and men who are attracted to women. While attraction is multidimensional, I would argue that there are two things that make up romantic attraction: emotional attraction and physical attraction. However, I think physical attraction is different from finding someone objectively attractive. It’s important to note that it’s possible to think someone is an attractive person
without being attracted to them. Harry and Sally’s notorious conversation sets the framework for the claim that boys are only friends with girls they find attractive. However, a study from the University of Texas debunks this, finding that men often take advantage of opportunities to have sex with their girl friends, even when they are not attracted to them. What this study reveals is not that boys are more attracted to their girl friends, but that they are simply more likely to have sex in general. In this sense, Harry is right: Men will often think about the women they are friends with in a sexual way, but this is simply because many men are taught to view all women in a sexual context.
“When Harry Met Sally” ultimately upholds the idea that sex — or at least, feelings of physical attraction — frequently interfere with opposite-sex friendships, because Harry and Sally end up together. Maybe this is the Harry and Sally effect: If a boy and a girl spend enough time together, attraction is inevitable. A possible explanation for this comes from a 2022 study that found men appear to be more motivated than women to befriend the opposite sex because of the potential for sex, regardless of whether they are single or not. The final sentiment expressed in the conclusion previously stated is important because it implies that even if a man is in a relationship at the time he befriends a woman, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee strictly platonic feelings. So, can we be friends with someone we find attractive? I think we can. I don’t think any of my friends — boy or girl — are unattractive. However, I am not attracted to them, and that is the key distinction. I didn’t befriend them because of the possibility of being something more, or because of the way they look. Additionally, I’ve also liked people I didn’t initially find attractive after getting to know them, meaning that even if you swore off of befriending anyone you found remotely attractive, strict platonic feelings are not guaranteed. But as long as
you don’t pursue a friendship because you are attracted to someone, the possibility of it being platonic is strong and your intentions are in the right place. But what happens if the girl is also interested in physicality? “Friends with benefits” has been tried again and again by many, sometimes ending because one party is too attached or because one party finds another partner or because both parties end up realizing they are attracted to one another emotionally as well. To many college-aged students, this might be the ideal situation — low commitment during busy class schedules while still enjoying the “benefits” of a romantic (sexual) relationship. But these relationships are often not as straightforward as we would like them to be.
There are several explanations to this, and most have to do with the inherent differences between men and women when approaching sex. While this statement is generalized, it is also frequently found to be true: Women are more likely than men to form emotional bonds from sex. Part of this has to do with the release of the hormone oxytocin which is essentially a feel-good hormone released during sex. Oxytocin promotes feelings of trust, empathy and attachment, which is key since women tend to produce more oxytocin than men during sex. Biologically, women are wired to have stronger feelings of attachment in sexual situations. Moreover, gender roles also play into this. Men are often conditioned to view sex as something disposable, while women are shown through the media and traditional gender stereotypes that casual sex is not for them — from the shaming language we use to describe women who have lots of casual sex to the risk of pregnancy that men simply don’t have to deal with. So, these two factors make “friends with benefits” likely to turn into “friends with feelings.” If we have sex with someone we emotionally enjoy, we essentially create romantic feelings because all three types of attraction are then ticked off.
