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CHANGING LANES
Carr ignites second-half spark for Michigan, leading to win over Penn State JORDAN KLEIN Daily Sports Writer
A
t halftime Saturday, Michigan coach Kyle Whittingham knew his team needed a spark. Something needed to change on offense, as they’d been held scoreless and turned the ball over twice. And Whittingham found that spark in freshman quarterback Tommy Carr. In the second half, the Wolverines opted to go with Carr over sophomore quarterback Bryce Underwood, and the choice paid dividends. Improvement at the quarterback position — combined with a revitalized rushing attack and three forced turnovers — were the difference for Michigan in the second half, propelling the Wolverines (4-2 overall, 1-2 Big Ten) to a 21-18 win over Penn State (3-4, 0-3).
“He provided (a spark), and players rallied around him,” Whittingham said. Before Carr reinvigorated Michigan, the Nittany Lions were able to get on the board early. They took the Wolverines’ defense down the field through a healthy mix of run and pass. Michigan’s defense eventually showed its true colors, holding Penn State in a goal-to-go situation to set up a field goal that put the Nittany Lions up 3-0. The Wolverines’ offense got absolutely nothing going on the ground or through the air in the first half, producing just 88 yards of offense. Their five drives ended in three punts and two Underwood interceptions. At the same time, Michigan’s defense held Penn State scoreless and to just 88 more yards of offense following the field goal. Because of that, the Wolverines were down 3-0 and were losing the turnover margin, which has been an emphasis for Whittingham and
his staff all season long. Something needed to change. That change was Carr. “There just wasn’t that fire,” Whittingham said. “As you watch the game unfold, I definitely thought our guys were playing hard. But it’s a bit different when you’re playing with a great deal of emotion and passion, which I think picked up in the second half. I think it goes back to some excitement with our new quarterback, and a chance to help him out.” Carr himself didn’t contribute much early, but his teammates clearly elevated their games. After Carr’s first drive stalled out near midfield, Michigan’s defense went out and made a play. Graduate safety Rod Moore jumped a route for an interception, allowing Carr and the offense to take over in opponents’ territory. The Wolverines’ offense quickly answered the call. On the second play of the ensuing drive, senior
running back Bryson Kuzdzal exploded for a 43-yard touchdown run, putting Michigan up 7-3. Kuzdal’s touchdown helped kick off a half in which the Wolverines rushed for 174 yards — their highest single-half total of the season. If Kuzdal’s touchdown and Moore’s interception weren’t enough, Michigan’s defense came up big yet again for Carr. After the Nittany Lions reached the other side of midfield, junior safety Chris Bracy — sitting in a zone — baited Penn State quarterback Rocco Becht and jumped a route for an interception. And again, the Wolverines’ offense capitalized on the turnover, and Carr finally got in on the action. Early in the drive, Carr found junior tight end Hogan Hansen for a 22-yard gain, Michigan’s longest completion of the day. And after an 18-yard rush from freshman running back Savion Hiter brought the Wolverines into opponents’
territory, Carr scampered for another 22 to set up first-andgoal from the one. Junior running back Jordan Marshall eventually punched it in to put Michigan up 14-3. “I was prepared for this since Week 1,” Carr said. “I prepared every day like I was the starter, and I got the call. There was a little bit of nerves, but I was prepared and ready for this moment.” The Nittany Lions didn’t go away easily, however. On their next drive, they picked on the Wolverines secondary as they marched down the field for a touchdown, completing three passes of over 10 yards. They successfully converted the two-point conversion as well, cutting their deficit to just three points. Three traded punts later, Michigan’s defense came up with yet another big play. With five minutes left in the fourth quarter, Bracy came off the
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edge on a blitz, sacked Becht and stripped the ball in the process. Senior defensive tackle Enow Etta recovered the fumble, allowing the Wolverines’ offense to take over at the Nittany Lions 15-yard line. And Carr cashed in, keeping the ball on a speed option to score from 12 yards, giving Michigan a 21-11 lead with under three minutes left. Penn State continued to hang around, putting together a 75-yard touchdown drive thanks to several Wolverines penalties. But Michigan recovered the ensuing onside kick, and Carr kneeled to end the game. Carr may not have been an undisputed savior for Michigan. But his play, and the spark he provided in the second half — evidenced by three forced turnovers and an improved rushing attack — was enough for the Wolverines to come away with a much-needed win.
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GOVERNMENT
Benson and James clash over financial integrity, tax plans in final debate
The gubernatorial candidates were asked about gas prices, data centers and how they measure success for the state KEVIN GONZAGA Daily Staff Reporter
Michigan gubernatorial candidates Jocelyn Benson and John James met in Detroit Thursday night for their second debate of the 2026 election cycle, nine days after their first in Grand Rapids. During the hour-long debate — hosted by WDIV Local 4 and moderated by reporter Jason Colthrop, candidates answered questions about cost of living, data centers and economic growth. Republican nominee John James has served as the U.S. representative for Michigan’s 10th District since 2023. James’ campaign is focused on lowering energy costs, keeping neighborhoods safe and bringing transparency to Lansing. In his opening statement, James said he has the experience and plans needed to improve life in Michigan. “Accountable and affordable Michigan — I have a plan to bring that,” James said. “Having somebody who has experience where it matters is exactly what we need in our next governor.” Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic nominee, has served as Michigan’s secretary of state since 2019. Benson’s campaign emphasizes affordability, healthcare and education. In her opening statement, Benson said she will
work for Michiganders above all else, despite previous threats to her life. “I will work for you. Not the highest bidder, not Donald Trump — you,” Benson said. “Even if it means sheltering in my home here in Detroit, while people with guns assemble on our front lawn because of lies spread by my opponent and others, I will always fight for you.” Colthrop began the debate by asking how each candidate would work to reduce the cost of living in Michigan, particularly in regard to rising gas prices statewide. James said he would work to repeal the state’s gas tax, arguing Benson would not do the same because she wanted to blame gas prices on President Donald Trump’s administration. “You are paying more at the pumps because your pain is her plan,” James said. “She wants to run against Donald Trump, and she hates him so much she’s willing to make you pay for it. We need to focus on lowering energy costs and supporting the repeal of the gas tax.” In response, Benson said James has not made a sufficient effort to suspend the federal gas tax, despite the fact he has the ability to do so as a congressman. “I have no patience for politicians who are all talk and no action, and that is what my opponent represents,” Benson
ADMINISTRATION
GEO files unfair labor practice charge against UMich
The union took issue with 2 felony complaints the University filed against GEO President Hiab Teshome in June ALEXA CHEANEY Daily News Editor
The University of Michigan’s Graduate Employees’ Organization filed an unfair labor practice charge against the University Wednesday for filing two felony charges against GEO President Hiab Teshome. Teshome was charged with embezzlement and false pretenses in June based on a complaint from the University the week earlier. The charges were dropped by a district court judge two months later. GEO claimed these charges were brought on by the Division of Public Safety and Security’s U-M Police Department in an attempt to restrict Teshome from participating in ongoing bargaining efforts. “It is abundantly clear that, if not for Hiab’s protected union activity, the University of Michigan would never have sought the issuance of such meritless charges,” the statement read. “These charges
were an attempt to limit Hiab from appearing as a bargaining representative and to restrict her rights as a public employee.” The statement also references an excerpt from the Student Organization Advancement & Recognition Accountability Procedure Manual that states campus accountability is an educational procedure rather than a legal process. In an email to The Michigan Daily, GEO Communications Chair Natalie Chen wrote that the charges brought against Teshome contradicted this policy and resulted in a harsher punishment for Teshome. “Using U-M’s own accountability procedures would have made it more difficult for UM to hurt Hiab, because the remedies are much less severe than felony charges (e.g., formal reprimand, fines or restitution) and are often directed at the student organization rather than students themselves,” Chen wrote.
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said. “I was the first person to call for a suspension of the federal gas tax, something he can directly do something about and has not done a thing about. That’s the difference in this race.” Both candidates were also asked why voters should trust them regarding data centers given both Benson and James’ financial connections to the projects. Benson denied claims of her family benefiting from data center projects, attacking James for directly profiting from data center companies and putting their interests over Michigan residents. “My opponent voted four times to stop local citizens from having a voice in whether data centers could come to your town,” Benson said. “He also has bought stock in data center companies and gotten millions from it, and then he passed tax breaks to protect those companies.” Benson highlighted James’ votes on earlier provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have placed a 10-year moratorium on local governments being able to regulate artificial intelligence and data center developments. In response, James said Benson was trying to conceal the extent of her own profits from data center companies. “She’s throwing mud to obscure the fact that she’s dirty as sin on this,” James said. “Of course she’s going to come up with a
moratorium after they’ve already made out with $370,000 on these backroom deals.” Candidates were then asked whether their opponent had any policies they agreed with and might enact should they win. Neither candidate provided one. To end the debate, Colthrop asked what metric voters should look at in four years to judge the state’s progress if they win. Benson said voters should look for her numbers on education levels and economic growth. “I want to ensure our public schools are among the best in the nation, leading in reading scores, education opportunities and economic growth,” Benson said. “All so that Michigan is the economic engine of the Midwest and the best place in the nation to call home.” James said his governorship should be judged on whether there is a decrease of young people leaving Michigan in four years. “I want to turn around the number of our children who are leaving,” James said. “Under Jocelyn Benson and Democrats who have controlled Lansing for the past eight years, Michigan’s number one exporter has been our young people.” Voters will elect the next Michigan governor during the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Absentee ballots are now available, and early voting starts Oct. 24.
NEWS BRIEF
Search underway for man who threatened group of Allen Elementary School students “AAPD encourages parents and guardians to talk with their children about personal safety.” DOMINIC APAP Daily News Editor
Police are investigating after an individual allegedly threatened a group of elementary school students at County Farm Park Friday morning. The students attend Allen Elementary School, located less than a mile away from the park. In a post to Instagram, the Ann Arbor Police Department wrote that the individual approached the group of children and touched one of them before the students cleared the area. “Preliminary investigation indicates between 8:15 and 8:45 a.m., a group of Allen Elementary School students were walking through the park when a man approached them and made threatening statements,” the statement read. “He also grabbed one student by the arm. The students left the
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area and reported the incident to a parent, who called 911.” After searching the area, officers did not locate the individual, but the AAPD has increased security presence near the school. The department wrote that the students handled the situation correctly. “We do want to acknowledge that the students took appropriate action by leaving the area and immediately telling a trusted adult,” the statement read. “AAPD encourages parents and guardians to talk with their children about personal safety, including staying alert to their surroundings, moving away from situations that make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, and reporting concerns to a trusted adult as soon as possible.” The department is still reviewing surveillance footage and gathering more information. The AAPD encourages anyone with more information to contact the department or submit an online tip.
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News
CAMPUS LIFE
Artist Holly Bass presents ‘We Hold These Truths’ UMMA exhibition centering American history and democracy campus
Wednesday, October 21, 2026 — 3
ANN ARBOR
TheRide receives $6.6 million state grant for Bus Rapid Transit study
“It’s important for young people to understand that they have power and agency, that they can really change the direction that we’re going “When we invest in transit, we’re in as a country if they bring their voices together.” investing in people’s time, OLIVIA AVERSANO their opportunities, and Michigan’s future.” Daily Staff Reporter
The University of Michigan Museum of Art recently opened its newest exhibit, “We Hold These Truths,” by artist Holly Bass, the museum’s 20252026 Roman J. Witt Resident artist-in-residence and Towsley policymaker in residence. The exhibit — Bass’ largest yet — seeks to highlight key political divides and the evolution of patriotism over the American anniversary years of 1876, 1976 and 2026. It is especially concerned with the question of who belongs in the American story. The exhibit includes settings representing different periods of American history, including an 1876 parlor and 1976 living room. Window displays also feature audio and images representing narratives of American communities. On Oct. 10, Bass hosted an interactive, hands-on art-making event at the exhibit’s main “century table” display: a long assortment of different American dining table styles topped with questions urging visitors to consider what makes a country a home to them. Community members and students came together to enjoy the exhibit, converse with Bass and take part in a variety of activities. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Bass said her background as an educator inspired her to include interactive elements to help visitors connect the exhibition’s larger themes of historic remembrance and national aspirations. “I also have a background as an educator, so it’s really important for me to create opportunities for people to learn
DOMINIC APAP Daily News Editor
Zoe Wang/DAILY Artwork from artist Holly Bass’ “We Hold These Truth” exhibition sits on display at UMMA Thursday afternoon.
and to directly engage,” Bass said. “Things like the writing desk, to sit at that desk and sort of imagine yourself at a different time and place and to practice Spencerian handwriting.” UMMA’s Alumni Memorial Hall was closed for eight months while its historic flooring was renovated and replaced with marble. Bass said she was excited to be one of the opening exhibits in the newly updated hall. “It’s just exciting to have the first exhibition in this new space,” Bass said. “It looks so bright and beautiful and welcoming. I’m glad to invite people into the space.” LSA senior Izdiyad Iskandar told The Daily he thinks students don’t fully take advantage of the art events and experiences offered at UMMA. “People just often just walk past the museum and go about their day,” Iskandar said. “They go to class, they go out but I don’t think many of the people I’ve spoken to really go to the museum.” In an interview with The Daily, LSA senior Iman Sedi said she liked
the exhibit’s interactive aspect and thought more students should participate in exhibitions and enjoy what UMMA has to offer. “I really like it; it feels more intentional, and it makes you feel more connected to the arts,” Sedi said. “And there’s always the description, but it definitely would be great to listen from the artist’s perspective.” In an interview with The Daily, Molly Spencer, a writing instructor at the Ford School of Public Policy, said she was impressed by the exhibit’s focus on American history. “I’ve been really pleased to see the University putting its resources toward all of us collectively thinking about democracy and what we want for our country,” Spencer said. “I’ve always cared deeply about public policy and democracy. But I’m glad we’re having a lot of conversations at this particular moment in history.” Spencer’s son, Andy Parker, a senior at Western Michigan
University, also participated in the event’s interactive activities. Parker said he found the exhibit’s political messages particularly relevant to students. “People my age, we haven’t gotten a really good education in arts or politics unless that’s specifically what we’re studying,” Parker said. “I’m a (political science) major, so I have gotten a good education in that, but there are members of my cohort who have not, and I think we need more stuff like this, cultural experiences.” Bass said it is important for young people to engage with American history to understand the country’s overall direction. “I just want to remind young people that it’s very cliche to say you are the future, but it’s also actually true,” Bass said. “It’s important for young people to understand that they have power and agency, that they can really change the direction that we’re going in as a country if they bring their voices together.”
The state of Michigan awarded the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority $6.6 million to study a potential Bus Rapid Transit route in an attempt to decrease commuting times on Washtenaw Avenue, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Tuesday. The study will explore creating a BRT route, which would roughly follow the Interstate 94 Business Loop, starting on Jackson Avenue near Maple Road and continuing down Huron Street through downtown Ann Arbor. The potential route will then follow Washtenaw Avenue to U.S. Route 23 and end in downtown Ypsilanti, mostly along TheRide Route 4, which has one of the system’s highest ridership rates. The grant will allow TheRide to study the feasibility of many aspects of BRT, including queue jump lanes so buses can pass traffic buildups at stoplights and traffic signal priority that would adjust traffic signal cycles to reduce the amount of time buses spend stopped at red lights. The AAATA will also research the addition of dedicated bus lanes. TheRide will collect data and survey public opinion while beginning preliminary engineering and seeking federal approval. In a press release, TheRide CEO Matt Carpenter wrote he is thankful for assistance from the state government to improve service in Ann Arbor. “This funding is a significant step toward realizing our long-
term regional transit goals and will help us build a more connected, accessible, and efficient transportation system for the communities we serve,” Carpenter wrote. The grant is part of $65 million awarded through the Infrastructure Projects Authority Fund — a newly-established state fund to support public transportation projects in cities throughout Michigan. The fund also allocated $10 million to restore the Detroit People Mover and about $13.6 million to the Mass Transportation Authority in Genesee County to improve transportation in and around Flint. The proposed BRT route is included in the AAATA’s TheRide 2045 plan for improving service. The plan suggests buses would arrive at stops along the BRT corridor as often as every five minutes during peak hours and travel longer distances between stops. Additionally, buses and stops could include amenities like bus arrival information, larger shelters and ticketing machines. In a press release, state Rep. Jason Morgan, D-Ann Arbor, wrote he hopes these investments will help decrease commuting time. “No one should have to spend hours getting to work, school, a doctor’s appointment, or home simply because they don’t have reliable transportation,” Morgan wrote. “When we invest in transit, we’re investing in people’s time, their opportunities, and Michigan’s future.”
FEATURES
Who is umichgreg? Meet the account romanticizing the U-M campus “It’s an outside perspective, and people don’t really know who’s running it.”
KATELYN CAMBEIRO & JULIA MOORE Daily News Contributors
While mindlessly scrolling on TikTok, a familiar scene suddenly appears on the screen. Yellow-golden light spills off the bricks of a West Hall, the same building that hosts hundreds of students for 8 a.m. lectures. Taylor Swift’s “mirrorball” plays in the background. The @umichgreg TikTok account is allowing students to slow down and experience the University of Michigan through romanticized snapshots of life on campus. Since the creation of the TikTok account on Sept. 6,
CAMPUS LIFE
umichgreg has gained more than 2,000 followers and 75,000 likes across its 24 videos. The concept is based on the viral account @ nycgreg, also known as Greg. Greg gained popularity by posting scenic videos of New York City — ranging from the Brooklyn Bridge to random trees on Greg’s daily route — often paired with a Taylor Swift song. Posting multiple times a day, the account now has more than 700,000 followers and 135 million likes. Many have taken inspiration from Greg’s popularity and created similar accounts specific to their universities. Accounts such as @ iowastategreg and @mizzougreg have applied the concept to their own schools, highlighting the beauty of campus.
The creator of the umichgreg account, an LSA freshman, has requested to keep their identity anonymous. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, umichgreg explained how the account came to be. “I wondered if we had (a greg TikTok account) for Michigan, and then I looked up and there was nothing,” umichgreg said. “I was like, ‘This is totally something I could do.’ … It started off as an inside joke between me and my friends because I take so many videos or pictures of our campus.” According to umichgreg, each video takes about 10 to 15 minutes to make. They draw inspiration from their walks on campus or recommendations
for certain sounds and visuals from comments on TikTok. Though umichgreg has no prior history in cinematography or editing, after their first video got 10,000 likes, umichgreg said it inspired them to learn more about videomaking. “I kind of locked in, and I figured out the proper ways to take videos to make them more stable and less shaky,” umichgreg said. “But still, I try to keep it lighthearted. I don’t want to take it too seriously because I feel like if I take it too seriously, it ruins the fun behind it and the de-stress factor of it.” In an interview with The Daily, Kinesiology sophomore Vivian Alexander said she thinks the umichgreg account encourages
people to explore and gain an appreciation for different parts of campus. “I definitely think that it helps maybe new UMich students get to know the campus a little more and see what’s happening,” Alexander said. “They’ve definitely made me think more about what I get to do here as a student, while I go through all these places like every day, seeing them on social media and seeing them famous kind of makes me think how lucky I am to be a part of all of it.” Alexander said the anonymity of the account contributes to the account being a shared community space. “There’s no opinion going into it,” Alexander said. “It’s
an outside perspective, and people don’t really know who’s running it. They don’t have any withstanding bias against who’s running it.” Engineering freshman Aarav Singh told The Daily he believes umichgreg makes students feel more connected to one another and represents the University positively — a sign of students’ true school spirit. “I feel like our college having our own Greg makes us feel part of a bigger community,” Singh said. “I think it does represent UMich and the light that it should be seen in, where people see the beautiful campus, the people, the energy, the vibes and this little sense of community with Greg.”
‘A natural ability of getting someone to open up’: The therapy dogs helping ease exam season stress
Founded in 1988, Therapaws is a volunteer organization offering therapy dog visits across campus AMANDA PIEL
Daily Staff Reporter
College students face a lot of pressure, especially around exam season, but a few minutes with a friendly dog can offer a world of reassurance. At the University of Michigan, therapy dogs have become popular visitors around campus, often popping up in libraries during exam season and hospitals to provide emotional support and comfort. For many student and faculty organizations at the University, Therapaws of Michigan — a volunteer organization that offers therapy dog visits — is the go-to resource for canine companionship. Therapaws dates back to 1988, when a golden retriever named
Willie was approved to visit patients at Michigan Medicine. Since then, the organization has grown to have more than 120 active dog-human pairs that regularly visit over 25 locations in Washtenaw County. Therapaws president Brinda Ganesan, and her nine-yearold Newfoundland Paddington, have been involved in Therapaws since 2018. Paddington has a long black coat and weighs 150 pounds. He is a low-energy dog with a good temperament, both of which help him succeed at work. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Ganesan described the gratitude she feels when taking Paddington to therapy dog events. “Many people, including myself, take their dogs for granted, being their primary caregivers and seeing them
every day,” Ganesan said. “When taking Paddington outside, I expose him to people that don’t spend one-on-one time with him. I see how enamored and grateful they are for the opportunity. It’s a very humbling and gratifying experience.” Therapaws director Jared Wadley has served as a handler for the past 16 years. His current dog, Bree, is the protagonist in “Paws of Comfort: Bree’s Helping Adventures,” a book Wadley wrote to inspire children to become handlers and grow closer with their dogs. Last year, Wadley and Bree attended NAMIWalks, an event that supports people living with mental health conditions. In an interview with The Daily, Wadley said he feels interactions between university students and Bree at the event showed
therapy dogs’ positive impact on the community. “I think Bree has a natural ability of getting someone to open up, or just feel a little bit better if they have any troubles,” Wadley said. “It could be with school, family or relationships, but that short interaction with Bree allows them to take their mind off of things.” Therapaws volunteer Irena Markovits adopted Emma, a golden retriever, eight years ago. Emma was a service dog before Markovits adopted her, which made it easy for her to transition into therapy work. Emma loves interacting with people and receiving attention. Outside of work, she loves to chase chipmunks and squirrels in Nichols Arboretum. In an interview with The Daily, Markovits said Emma can
Courtesy of Dave Konkle.
single out the people who need the most comfort. “She can really feel and can tell who needs her most,” Markovits said. “When there are several students around her, she singles out the one who needs the most comfort, who is the most stressed out. I’ve seen her hug and snuggle
with him or with her more than with the others.” Markovits said the number of dogs working during exam season makes her proud, and she hopes Therapaws will continue to help the community.
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Arts
4 — Wednesday, October 21, 2026
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Why won’t we free the madwoman in the attic? MAEVE MCGINN Daily Arts Writer
“Jane Eyre” has been haunting my life since high school. This may seem strange, but after completing a thesis project on Charlotte Brontë’s novels my senior year, I continue to see its tropes and versions of its characters everywhere. The “crazy first wife” or “madwoman in the attic” trope was popularized by “Jane Eyre” and, despite the changes that the trope has undergone, our culture still appears fascinated with how this trope portrays the dark female psyche. Bertha Mason — Mr. Rochester’s first wife — and Jane provide symbolism and commentary beyond their characters, making the novel compelling even all these years later. However, many modern interpretations often lack this nuance and focus on the “madwoman” aspect to create more thriller-esque works (hello, “Verity”). In “Jane Eyre,” Bertha serves as a dark mirror of Jane and essentially is the hidden and repressed side of Jane’s personality. With Bertha’s desperation to escape the locked attic and cause destruction in Jane’s life at Thornfield Hall,
AMANY SAYED Daily Arts Writer
Once upon a time, my mom read me fairy tales out of a thick children’s short story collection before bed. The edges of the book were sprayed in gold, and every other page was illustrated in faded watercolor. It was a magical book, one I enjoyed holding and flipping through just to feel the weight of it in my hands. Throughout my life, I have read histories and mysteries and dramas, but there is just something about fantasy books — specifically fairy tales — that always pulls me in. I become a child again, wide-eyed and ready to listen, whenever the familiar tales of Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood begins to unfold.
she is the embodiment of the violent and angry parts of Jane that are begging to be seen. While her symbolic existence as Jane’s darkness diminishes her as a character in her own right, it makes for more development of Jane’s characterization, feelings and reactions, stemming from her childhood all the way to becoming Mr. Rochester’s second wife. Jean Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea” — a companion novel that serves as a postcolonial critique of “Jane Eyre” — explores Bertha’s marriage to Mr. Rochester, and seeks to correct the lack of characterization that Bertha receives. The book goes a step further by delving into her Creole heritage and implying Mr. Rochester is at fault for the devolution from the bright young woman at the start of the novel to the deranged woman seen in “Jane Eyre.” The relationship between these two books also depicts an aspect of the narrative that is common in modern versions of “the crazy first wife” trope: The husband is usually the driving factor in the wife’s descent into “madness.” While more recent works like “Verity” and “The Housemaid” are both variations of this “madwoman”
When I was first introduced to the book “Scarlet” by Marissa Meyer in my sixth-grade English classroom, I fell in love immediately. All my favorite fairy tales, set in a dystopian, futuristic world? Magic, combined with mystery? Forbidden romance? I checked the novel out from my classroom library without even knowing the proper order to read the book series in. In hindsight, the utter lack of explanation for major events in the plot probably should have thrown me off. But I was so entertained by the book, I didn’t notice it was the second installment of The Lunar Chronicles until I’d finished the novel and immediately went looking for more. The Lunar Chronicles brought me back to my roots: the fairy tales I had loved as a child. They also introduced me to the genre of fairy
trope, where the first wife appears “crazy” to the new woman in the house by the admission of the often-suspect husband, they don’t include the original context of having the “madwoman in the attic” as a representation of the darkness within the main protagonist’s psyche. They instead use the mystery surrounding the “crazed” first wife and why she’s locked up as a vehicle for the protagonist’s conflict with the love interest, rather than as an opportunity to explore the dark nature shared between the first wife and the repressed psyche of the protagonist. Other works, however, have continued to explore this depiction of the female mind as having a separate, animalistic, “crazed” side that needs to be kept locked away from polite society. Instead of using a literal “madwoman in the attic,” they explore these darker parts of female characters by using mirror scenes where the character’s mask breaks to show the “unhinged” mind beneath (think “Gone Girl” or “I, Tonya”). Media today still draws inspiration from “Jane Eyre,” though it is rarely with the symbolic nature of the “madwoman in the attic.”
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Instead, modern writers often separate Bertha’s character into two possible interpretations: Either the first wife is a haunting and enigmatic figure in the protagonist’s love story with the husband, or her dark psyche has been absorbed into
Fairy tales as old as time tale retellings, which I continue to indulge in to this day. I have read and loved different versions of Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel. The time periods, settings or exact plot lines shift, but it was the beating heart of these stories that made me fall in love with them as a child. Adaptations and retellings bring me back to the childlike escape and appreciation of storytelling. There is comfort in already knowing the underlying themes of a story and recognizing its characters. Sure, I find excitement in reading suspense stories and immersing myself in a unique piece of art, but maybe everything doesn’t have to be perfectly original. There’s a reason we come back to certain stories again and again; the love and care that go into forming a retelling that is new, but still preserves the original source
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Sunday, October 18, 2026 — Puzzle by Jules Frankel and Tobin Saxton ACROSS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1. Tag line? 14 15 16 5. Lang. of Rome 9. Dentist's request, perhaps 17 18 19 14. "10 Things I ___ About You" 20 21 22 23 15. Prop for Mr. Monopoly 16. Eat at 24 25 26 17. Faux cough 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 18. Museo display 19. Woman's nickname that 35 36 37 38 sounds like its first and third letters 39 40 41 42 43 20. Lifting weights, slangily 44 45 46 47 23. Metropolis in Mo. 24. Start of something 48 49 50 51 52 25. Neither's companion 27. Prez who signed the Civil 53 54 55 Rights Act 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 30. Thick-cut french fry alternative 64 65 66 67 35. Candy heart words 37. Palindromic anxiety drug, 68 69 70 informally 71 72 73 38. Paul McCartney and Elton John, for two 39. Relating to union issues? DOWN 40. 2026 Senate candidate and 42. Most songs on a DJ's set 1. London boy University of Michigan alum 44. Strong as ___ El-Sayed 2. Where Pearl Harbor is 45. Chinese steamed bun 41. Matthew Stafford's team, briefly 3. Flower stalk 47. $100 bill, slangily 4. Something a musician might pick 43. Tate who sings "greedy" 48. Orange juice and vodka up 46. Kind of paint with a smooth finish cocktail 5. "You underestimate me!" 49. "IDs are required to get in" 52. "Old Town Road" rapper Lil 6. Store with a bullseye logo 50. Repeated a musical section during ___ X a solo 7. Like the Boston Tea Party 53. Modern, in Munich participants 51. Justice Kagan and others 54. Every other line of "Deck the 8. Skeevy look 55. Skewers Halls" 9. "That's no surprise to us" 56. Keto no-no 56. Many a "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" 10. Roth ___ 57. Like many a language exam character 11. Pac-Man's sustenance 58. 2016 compilation album "___ 59. Extracurricular event ... or McCartney" 12. Polish where you might find the ends of 20-, 30- and 13. Instagram video akin to a TikTok 60. West Coast sch. whose colors are similar to the University of 48-Across? 21. Two cents Michigan's 64. "___, Jamaica, ooh, I wanna 22. Two ___ (double-teaming 61. Big name in frozen confections take ya" (The Beach Boys situation) lyric) 62. Not one 26. Tree compound that might trap an 66. ___ Crunch (cereal) 63. General idea insect 67. Playa Bowls' signature 65. Buzzer 27. Tiny green beans 68. Like pink steak vis-à-vis 28. "Knives Out" detective Benoit darker steak 29. One with a courtside seat? 69. Out on the ocean 31. Black road substance 70. Hospital count 32. Mason-___ line (historical 71. Ooze red boundary) 72. Lights that might hang on a 33. Climate activist Thunberg porch, briefly 34. Letters before tees 73. One in first class is usually 36. The fourth of Santa's nine 9-Across reindeer
material, makes me appreciate it that much more. Stories lead into stories lead into more stories, and so on, forever. Even media that isn’t explicitly a retelling usually takes some semblance of inspiration from at least one other work of art. It is beautiful that today, I can read something like “Winter” by Marissa Meyer and take away the lesson of true beauty lying within that readers of Grimm’s Fairy Tales did in the 1800s, albeit in a slightly lighter way. The best part of reading a Meyer novel is seeing all the ways she sneaks in references to both the original fairy tale and other beloved adaptations. The Little Mermaid’s lost voice becomes an android’s dysfunctional voice box. Rapunzel’s hidden tower becomes a satellite orbiting space. Cinderella’s lost slipper becomes a
the protagonist, only peeking through when she is confronted with her reflection. While I enjoy seeing homages to the beloved “Jane Eyre,” modern media should strive to more wholly incorporate the dark, unpleasant thoughts that are often inherent to
womanhood without commiting to demonizing their characters. The internet is obsessed with society’s acceptance, or lack thereof, regarding “complex female characters,” but I hope that we are moving away from separating the “madwoman” from the heroine.
fallen mechanical foot. It’s almost like being part of a fandom before even reading the book. You get the chance to catch these easter eggs and interpret the translations while also becoming part of a wholly creative, fresh world. I am currently enrolled in a course about some of William Shakespeare’s major plays and adaptations of them from all over the world. We just watched “Goliyon Ki Raasleela RamLeela,” a Bollywood reimagining of “Romeo and Juliet.” At the end of the class, we will have to plan out our own adaptations of a Shakespeare play of our choosing. Despite the constraints of Shakespeare’s limited source material, the possibilities are limitless. Someone in class proposed turning “Romeo and Juliet” into a story of elementary school playground rivalry. Someone
else said the masquerade ball at the beginning could translate into a college frat party. Though I’m unsure where I want to take my own adaptation, my experience poring over Meyer’s novels has prepared me for this exact moment. Fairy tale adaptations, and the genre of retellings in general, have made me a more exploratory writer and attentive reader. I like to imagine stories in new settings or time periods, or switch the narrative focus to the so-called villain. People like to claim every story has already been told. So what? How can someone else tell it differently? As a kid, I had no idea that fairy tales would follow me into young adulthood. Now that they have through retellings, I can say with certainty that, thanks to them, I am one step closer to living happily ever after.
The lost magic of a reread EMILY KIM
Music Beat Editor
As a fifth grader, there was no greater joy than battling the Minotaur or devising a plan against Kronos’ army in my bedroom at 10 p.m., head buried under the covers with my book light to avoid getting caught by my parents. In my sleep, I tossed and turned, dreaming of Camp Half-Blood and me dressed in the orange T-shirt high-fiving Annabeth Chase as we walked to the archery field together. I dreamt a lot as a kid, and having a whole other world in my back pocket only enhanced those dreams. When my realworld battles with rocky middle school friendships and or extracurriculars forced on me by my parents became heavy, my dreams were an escape. Those characters were my friends and my safe place. While vigorously fighting my AP Calculus textbook and reading AP U.S. History notes in high school, I would glance up at my bookshelf every so often and be reminded of the world where none of the endless information and lecture slides matter. I sat, staring at the top shelf where all my Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus books sat neatly organized, begging to be picked up after years of collecting dust and watching the bright yellow wallpaper of my room be replaced with a muted gray. My gaze flickered between my messily sprawled homework and the series patiently waiting on the shelf, knowing that with only a few more minutes of contemplation, they would win me over. Those next few days I dedicated to reacquainting myself with all of the books were days full of nostalgia, yearning and bittersweet memories: memories of who I was when I first read the series, memories of the cheers I let out when Percy and Annabeth
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finally kissed and memories of when I closed “The Blood of Olympus” and knew I would never find another series like this again. Many readers, myself included, relish in the art of diving back into a novel or series years after an initial read. Whether it be Dork Diaries or The Hunger Games, rereading allows us to pick up new details that flew over our heads when caught up in the excitement and snowballing narrative of a first read. That’s not to say the value of picking up a book for the first time diminishes; it only further proves that rereading something — anything — is never a waste of time. I reread both Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus series again fairly recently, after returning from a summer away from home and away from obligations I both intentionally and unintentionally pushed aside. And yet, with this third big reread, I found myself not paying attention to the big, gasp-worthy scenes of betrayal, but the tiny, rooted details of the campers. How I once admonished Silena Beauregard for betraying Camp Half-Blood, I now read her death and feel a twinge of understanding and sympathy for the lost, broken daughter of Aphrodite. I once
rolled my eyes when Rachel Elizabeth Dare kissed Percy Jackson, and now I understand she was just a lonely teenage girl with a fat crush on a boy. I am now older than all of the characters that once felt older than me by many years. I realize now that they are all just teenagers, kids that are crawling through a cruel world that was created for us readers to enjoy. This realization has allowed me to read with more sympathy, understanding and openness, a kind of reading I was so far from as a 10-year-old opening “The Lightning Thief” for the very first time. What’s so wonderful about rereading is that the novel itself never changes. The world, story and writing are all permanently bound by a spine and a couple hundred pages. It’s us, the readers, that change, and by changing, we alter the way the world appears to us. We notice things we hadn’t noticed before. We nestle ourselves into the world on the pages differently than when we first did so. All those changes, while they can be a reminder of what is no longer with us, are the reason I will dedicate hours to reenter a world I once already explored. The art is rooted in me forever, and I now have the privilege of exploring it differently however many times I want.
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The Roots B-Side
‘School Spirits’ taught me how to live REAGAN KELLER Daily Arts Writer
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MEAGAN ISMAIL Senior Arts Editor
The art you interact with throughout your life shapes you into who you are. Any interest could be traced back to a single moment that sparked your curiosity, a small seed that grew into the passion you have today. You might have a piece of art that shaped your standard for everything else to come,
or maybe one that is so deeply intertwined with your life that it feels like a part of you. You might even have something that you can’t outgrow no matter how hard you try. In a similar manner, art itself is interwoven with other works. The themes and lessons within one piece of art can grow into a trope referenced across centuries. In The Roots B-Side, Daily Arts writers trace various twisting branches back to where they stem from: the roots.
Wednesday, October 21, 2026 — 5
I’d spend an eternity in limbo just to watch my favorite ghosts find happiness. (I’m dead serious. Sign me up.) Even when my life’s spinning out of control, I’ve learned that I can always count on the Paramount+ show “School Spirits” to guide me home. The supernatural teen drama follows a group of high school ghosts trapped for eternal enrollment on campus — unless they unlock their exit doors out of the afterlife. At Split River High, confronting trauma is the only way to escape it, or as the show earnestly reiterates, “the only way out is through.” The ghosts’ trauma materializes as scars — psychologically torturous, immersive reenactments of their final moments — located in the rooms where they died. These scars aren’t necessarily literal, but designed to prey on each character’s worst memories, with accompanying visions of their greatest regrets, lost loved ones and enemies.
And when the ghosts’ fears spring to life, they learn to confront them. Over the decades, Split River High School has accumulated a ghostly found family, including a ’50s STEM girl, ’60s beatnik, ’70s stoner, ’80s football star, ’90s nerdy boy and an early 2000s band geek. Now, they form a tightly knit friend group, solving mysteries and growing even closer in the throes of supernatural conflict and heightened teen emotions. Truthfully, my life has become so intertwined with the spirits’ stories that it feels like they’re a part of me. Together, they taught me what it means to live. Witty, ineffably endearing and somehow invincible to the modern pitfalls of teenage character writing, the school spirits — Charley (Nick Pugliese), Yuri (Miles Elliot), Rhonda (Sara Yarkin), Quinn (Ci Hang Ma), Wally (Milo Manheim), Janet (Jess Gabor) and Dawn (RaeAnne Boon) — paint a realistic portrait of what it’s like to undergo trauma and persevere despite it. For Charley, moving forward means accepting the past.
Just before he succumbed to anaphylactic shock, Charley broke things off with his ex-boyfriend — a regret that’s haunted him since he arrived in the afterlife. Upon entering his scar, Charley discovers it’s not his failed relationship that’s barring him from unlocking his exit door, but his internalized shame and self-hatred. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see myself every time Charley nervously word-vomits or cracks jokes at his own expense. Sure, he’s a little bit of an anxious mess, but his anxiety never negates his individuality, liveliness or sense of humor. Despite his trauma and self-doubt, he’s still allowed to love; he’s allowed to mess up; he’s deeply affected by old wounds and lashes out as a result, but never once does the narrative penalize him for it. Charley taught me that it’s okay to be human. Even if I make mistakes, I’m still worthy of love, forgiveness and compassion. Like Charley, Yuri must confront his past in order to move on; the problem is, he’s spent the last 50 years self-isolating in the pottery studio, avoiding the
life he left behind. He’s terrified to go into his scar, and for good reason. In possibly the show’s most existential scar sequence; the evenkeeled, ’70s stoner comes face-toface with everything he feared becoming: a cog in the corporate machine, a deadbeat dad and an alcoholic. I’ve always understood Yuri’s inclination to hide from his fears. I was there, too, hiding at the back of my high school’s art classroom, letting my anxiety swallow me up. But, as Yuri learns, hiding isn’t really living. Neither is avoidance — only by breaking free from his comfort zone, befriending the other ghosts and confronting his regrets can he truly begin to live again. Watching Yuri’s scar was like watching my own life unfold in front of me. Suddenly, I saw myself trapped inside the same cycle of self-isolation and regret as Yuri. Seeing him confront his fears made me understand that mine would only grow if I didn’t meet them head-on. So, I started living again.
media algorithms, even the not-very-profound tunes made iconic by bands like DEVO and The Cars are noteworthy for being catchy all the way through, as opposed to in 15-second snatches. University of Michigan students take great pride in our school’s purported “work hard, play hard” culture, but most of the fun of going out is extracted when campus nightlife is reduced to drinking and limited social engagement. I already have a protracted hip injury, but by the time I am encumbered by taxes, I would like to look back on my university years and know I danced without needing to appear jaded. The eternal power of new wave serves this end effectively. Neither of us can hold a tune, or sing or play any instrument with any proficiency at all, but
being part of a family legacy of loving something so ardently reminds me that I am not in uncharted territory of youth and college-aged independence. During my calls home, I can bridge the gap of time and space dividing me and my father by discussing Talking Heads lyrics and other art we hold important. Out of breath running along the Huron River, my aforementioned hip injury flaring up once again, I can listen to Led Zeppelin and briefly feel just like my dad. The great access our generation has to art from anywhere and any time is so often used to divide Generation Z into groups defined by taste. These signifiers of culture miss the point of being able to listen to, watch and read anything we want: being able to connect with anyone.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Ghosts of discotechs past SOFIA THORNLEY Daily Arts Writer
My father was the same age that I am now in 1979. Sometimes I picture him, blond and lanky and Kiwi-accented,
and know we would not find much in common. He’d spent his childhood on a remote island in a far less interconnected era. He was the first in his family to attend college, and he studied computer science before personal computers
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were common in workplaces. But we decidedly share at least one enduring passion: classic rock and new wave. For all our differences, he and I both live and die by the synthesizer and electric guitar. It is no coincidence that I grew up immersed in Queen and Duran Duran. One of my dad’s favorite pastimes is still intently watching YouTube videos of live performances from the ’80s. He favors Live Aid and Roger Taylor interviews. I have been regaled many times by descriptions of the great financial and emotional commitment that would go into purchasing a vinyl record. Instead of facing the paralysis of choice I often feel upon opening Spotify, with its litany of playlists curated just for me, my dad listened to every album he owned with focused devotion in
his adolescence. Now that those same records are so accessible, they go platinum on his personal computer and mine. Though I would argue that mine is the more expansive music repertoire, part of my listening curiosity can be attributed to my taste first being steeped in the hits of decades prior. Surely, if I can find something to love from half a century ago, there is more value to be found elsewhere. Beyond encouraging this exploratory attitude, my dad’s music taste has proven apt from his college experience to mine. I like ’90s grunge or boygenius as much as the next person, but something about synthpop encourages people to dance like not much else. In an era where the mainstream music industry is increasingly catering to social
For curiosity that leads to discovery, Look to Michigan. At the University of Michigan, we’re turning learning into impact—from classrooms and labs to clinics and studios. Across education, research, and health care, we’re preparing the next generation to defy boundaries and improve lives. For access. For opportunity. For all of us. Look to Michigan.
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Congress should keep AI out of American military decisions KAI FARJO
Opinion Columnist
I
n February, the Pentagon directed Anthropic — the company responsible for developing the artificial intelligence model Claude — to permit military use of its software for any lawful purpose, including autonomous weapons. Anthropic refused because its contract barred the use of Claude for fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of Americans. In March, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth labeled Anthropic a national security risk because of its non-compliance. This dispute showed that the main barrier to military AI usage was company permission, and the Pentagon navigated it by merely punishing them and signing with other AI firms. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, announced its agreement that allows the Pentagon to use its models for all operational requirements. Anthropic challenged the national security risk label in court, but the appeals court ruled that decisions about the military’s use of AI belong to the president and the secretary of defense rather than to private companies, meaning they can elect to use AI-integrated weapons in any military engagement or capacity they like. Congress should work to pass an improved law that strictly regulates the armed forces’ use of AI to conduct military operations, especially in the selection of targets, the authorization of strikes
Through the U-M data center, Chris Kolb attacks everything he once championed NATHAN KIM
Opinion Contributor
C Gabriella Spagnuolo/DAILY
and logistical decisions. A law would also slow an AI arms race led by the U.S. and keep life-ordeath decisions away from systems that are prone to escalation. The current regulatory structure rests on a Pentagon policy and company contracts, which can be rewritten. The United States and China lead the world in AI development, and the U.S. has used its position to avoid limits on AI weaponry. U.S. diplomats told the United Nations that existing law already covers autonomous weapons and that a new treaty is unnecessary. The U.S. voted against a General Assembly resolution that pushed toward one. U.S. and tech leaders emphasize that a country leading technological development has little reason to accept rules that would slow its lead. However, other militaries will compare their capabilities against what the leading powers have, so the U.S. refusal to regulate becomes the default. Any restrictions on AI weapons will have to come from
Congress, because the current U.S. administration refuses to negotiate on international treaties limiting their military presence. In the first 24 hours of the war in Iran, the U.S. used the Maven Smart System to help strike more than 1,000 targets — ten times the pace achieved without the system. The Pentagon’s rule regarding AI requires only “appropriate levels of human judgment” over the use of force. However, the volume of AI-recommended strikes in Iran made human review of each target impractical, essentially guaranteeing that AI fully automated some strikes. Researchers who placed language models in simulated war games found that the models escalated conflicts and, in a few cases, launched nuclear weapons. Therefore, the Pentagon’s human approval requirement means little when analysts may oversee thousands of machine-generated targets a day.
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hris Kolb, the University of Michigan’s vice president for government relations, has spent decades carefully building a public image around sustainability, social justice and protecting the most marginalized communities. On Ann Arbor’s City Council in the ’90s, Kolb championed a living wage ordinance and affordable housing, leading a 1998 Ann Arbor News op-ed to call him the council’s most activist member. As a state representative, he introduced legislation to strengthen and protect the Department of Environmental Quality, urged then-President George W. Bush to act on global warming and sponsored a resolution condemning violence by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement against immigrants. He went on to lead the Michigan Environmental Council and serve on the task force that investigated the Flint water crisis, a high-profile role that helped land his position as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s budget director. Kolb did not hold back in his criticism of the government during the Flint water crisis. He called it a catastrophic failure born of ignorance, incompetence and arrogance among decisionmakers. It was proof of complacency and a resulting lack of attention and care for water infrastructure. The root of the disaster, he argued, was
the purposeful refusal to involve residents in government decisions. His lesson was blunt: “Government has to be open to criticisms and challenges, and it was not throughout the water crisis,” Kolb said. Many may be surprised to learn this, as I was. To U-M community members who are new to Ann Arbor, Kolb is better known for his work as a university administrator. It’s a role under which he’s been responsible for the University’s more draconian policies. Most infamously, Kolb is one of the champions of the University’s planned $1.2 billion data center in Ypsilanti with Los Alamos National Laboratory, a facility that would consume enough electricity to power 90,000 homes. The University boasts of the potential of this site’s use for its cancer and energy research, but based on its application to a $100 million grant from the Michigan Strategic Fund, the University will be able to use less than 10% of the facility. The vast majority of the site would be used by LANL in order to develop new nuclear weapons. The University has been embroiled in controversy since its announcement; Ypsilanti residents have objected to the potential destruction of the environment and the Huron River, as well as the project’s role in the war machine and the way Kolb and U-M administrators imposed it on Ypsilanti Township. Kolb’s response to all of this has focused on insisting that the U-M and LANL data center is not a data center.
The data center isn’t the only place where the University has fallen short under Kolb’s leadership. As ICE activity intensifies around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Kolb has offered the U-M community little more than “empty” guidance, conceding that agents may enter open campus spaces, leaving workers and students to prepare their own defense. Instead, he should have taken whatever action possible to protect people, even in small ways. “You may not resist or otherwise interfere with the actions of law enforcement,” his guidance, informed by Timothy Lynch, the University’s vice president and general counsel, reads. When President Donald Trump’s administration displayed its anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion agenda, it was Kolb who took it upon himself to urge the University to prepare for sacrifices. The University dropped its diversity statements within hours and ended all DEI programming three months later, prompting outcry over the University’s quick compliance. The University had not received any threat by the time Kolb delivered his remarks to the University’s Board of Regents, and Trump’s attacks on DEI were already seen as “weak” on their own — the University, not Trump, chose to end DEI. So, did Kolb change? Has the activist Kolb of the ’90s become someone else entirely?
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John James couldn’t escape Trump in Michigan’s gubernatorial debate ELENA NICHOLSON Editorial Page Editor
W
ith midterm elections just a month away, two gubernatorial candidates took the stage to discuss issues Michiganders face in their dayto-day lives. They answered questions about everything ranging from children’s literacy and data centers to international trade and climate policy. Democratic nominee Jocelyn Benson, current secretary of state, and Republican nominee John James, current U.S. representative, were well prepared, both proposing thorough policy plans and inserting quick rebuttals to attacks from their counterpart that they surely saw coming. As the hour passed, however, the more it felt as though a third person lingered on the stage
alongside Benson and James: President Donald Trump. In almost every category — tariffs, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, gas prices, Medicaid, technology, renewable energy — Benson tied James’ voting record and conduct in Congress to Trump’s agenda. And while James attempted to prove that Trump isn’t the cause of decreased quality of life for American citizens, there was clear dissonance between his rhetoric and his voting record. In key topics addressed during the gubernatorial debate, James’ nearly unfaltering alignment with Trump weakened his ability to convince Michiganders to cast their vote for him — a challenge many Republicans aligned with Trump are facing across the country. Gas Prices In the face of exorbitant gas prices across Michigan, both candidates demonstrated receptivity to and support for
suspending the 52-cent-per-gallon state tax on gasoline. Seeking the opportunity, though, Benson quickly turned to the culprit that raised prices so high: Trump’s war in Iran. She pointed to James’ vote for the war — one that he now condemns. James did not directly vote to start the war, as Benson’s statement insinuates, but he did vote six times to keep it going. This change in stance is indicative of a larger shift in values among Republicans this election cycle and demonstrates a minor deviation from James’ alignment with Trump. Multiple times throughout the debate, James pointed to his disagreement with Trump over Iran to demonstrate his capacity to break with the president. Unfortunately, beyond simple statements, James was unable to demonstrate any action he has taken to end the war. This was also the only subject matter James could cite to prove his capacity for
How are Michigan researchers working to detect dementia earlier? A. By observing when memory loss occurs B. By measuring changes in handwriting C. By using imaging and blood-based biomarkers
Find the answer: myumi.ch/alzheimers
opposition against the president — disconcerting, considering it is a relatively easy topic to disagree with regardless of political affiliation. Cross-border Tariffs Trade with Canada is paramount to much of Michigan’s economic functioning which high tariffs disrupted almost immediately. In response to the ongoing trade war, Benson stated that she supports negotiation of a subnational agreement with Canada in order to minimize tariffs between Michigan and the nation, bypassing Trump entirely. This would be an unprecedented move, considering these kinds of agreements have never previously extended to trade decisions, and ultimately may not actually be possible. Benson also quickly accused James of upholding the federal government’s unreasonable tariffs and trade war with Canada.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
Opinion
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Wednesday, October 21, 2026 — 7
The danger of nostalgia in politics
MAXIMUS CRAIG Opinion Columnist
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hen he left office in 2009, former President George W. Bush was one of the most unpopular presidents in American history, ending his tenure with approval ratings as low as 22%. His presidency was marred by the 2008 financial crisis and unpopular Iraq War. When the 2008 presidential election rolled around, Americans elected former U.S. Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., by substantial margins, in no small part due to Bush’s unpopularity. Yet, only a few years later, Bush’s public image had considerably softened, even in liberal spaces. By 2013, he was viewed more positively than negatively by the American public. Explicitly liberal talk
show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Ellen DeGeneres had Bush on their shows and, in effect, he successfully repositioned himself as a wholesome painter above current political divides. On a more serious note, prominent Democrats began to praise Bush as a role model in contrast to other politicians’ Islamophobia. The mystifying revisionism surrounding Bush continued during President Donald Trump’s comparatively erratic administrations. However, this raises concerns as to how susceptible Americans are to political nostalgia. While our country’s past may seem better in hindsight, defaulting to nostalgia is not helpful for enacting change; in times of crisis, it leaves us without a vision of where to go. Instead, we need to work on recreating a faulty vision of the past, one that’s never as good as we remember it being.
Perhaps the most concentrated form of political nostalgia is that for former presidents. While political moments are the result of thousands of people, presidents are the most recognizable and enduring, and they can symbolize entire eras. But glorifying previous presidents and limiting ideas of success to specific individuals — rather than specific policies or approaches to governing — is problematic. Bush is one example of this: Americans began to fondly remember his administration only when newer problems overshadowed its own. Now, in the age of Trump, Democrats have turned to replicating an Obamalike candidate every election cycle, resting on the laurels of his administration and relying on his popularity for turnout. Current politicians hope that campaigning with him might rub off well
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on their own races, valuing his perceived sense of stability or cross-aisle appeal, even if it is somewhat exaggerated. Even though Obama is far better liked than both his successors, he was far from a flawless embodiment of progressivism. His record number of deportations of undocumented immigrants earned him the title of “Deporterin-Chief,” and his use of drone strikes in the Middle East led to accusations of war crimes. While one might reasonably miss the relatively scandal-free administration of Obama, or more generally admire him for his eloquence or emphasis on hearing other people out (traits certainly lacking in today’s politics), those invested in politics should set longterm goals that aren’t confined to replicating any one aspect of a politician’s former successes because such attempts will be seen for the hollow recreations they are. This might entail a more direct focus on writing policy into law, rather than relying on executive orders that can be easily reversed. Nowadays, Americans tend to stress over rampant polarization, which, while a real concern, can falsely suggest that Americans haven’t been passionately fighting over politics for centuries. Presidencies immediately preceding Trump’s were by no means devoid of bitter political divides; in fact, polarization surged from 1987 to 2012. The notion of general American “greatness” before Trump — or any other president — confines America’s faults to particular presidents, administration or Congress. There are, of course, many qualms to be had with the current president, but a movement whose focus is on returning to a preTrump country has no truly
progressive aims of its own; it relies solely on undoing the bad rather than doing good. Removing a president may limit the danger they pose, but it does not single-handedly bring about any policy. Plus, the reason any president can come into power in the first place is that they are able to take advantage of the existing systems that let them do so. Take, for example, the Electoral College or the influence of money in politics. Wanting to just “go back” ignores what should be changed systemically. Trump’s success is, in many ways, the very result of political nostalgia. His slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is an inherently nostalgic one, and variations of it have even been used by former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton during their campaigns. The words “great again” are definitionally regressive and prevent forward thinking, leading many to argue that they entail returning to racist social hierarchies. While it might be disingenuous to say a nostalgia for Obama’s 2010s is as insidious as that of MAGA’s nostalgia for, say, the 1950s, the catalyst is the same: uncritically longing for the past. It goes to show what traditionalism and chasing the past get you when weaponized for political means. Though nostalgia may be largely dangerous, this isn’t to say there are not times when it may be useful as a rallying tool or mobilizing force. Trump was clearly able to find political success with the strategy, and there’s reason to think this might work for a different political objective. After all, former President Joe Biden ran on “restoring the soul of America,” and his campaign was mostly focused on undoing Trump’s damage.
While these instincts may have served Biden in 2020, progressive goals, specifically, are best achieved by imaginative frameworks that look at the past critically. Establishment goals of returning to normalcy are markedly different from progressive ones, which imagine all-new frameworks like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal. Yes, we can learn from our past mistakes to move forward, but we shouldn’t embrace the past blindly when we can try something different. Ironically, some of the campaigns we look back on most fondly were distinctly focused on the future. For those who love Obama, his successful platform was explicitly forward-thinking: His slogans and posters often focused on “change” and “hope”. And, beyond straightforward messaging, his 2008 campaign excited people by virtue of everything new about him: his youth, his potential of becoming the first Black president, his moves toward broader healthcare, his anti-war stance and so on. Politicians and voters alike should realize that, while it may seem easy to capitalize on, nostalgia’s viability as a political tool is short-lived and limited. When we examine what we would like to change about our country, we should look to imaginative and innovative solutions that haven’t necessarily been previously explored, rather than ones concerned with undoing whatever present damage has been done. Lastly, we should also appreciate where we have come from, or at least understand that the past is not always something worth replicating. Otherwise, we may remain in a loop of repeating our same mistakes, only to romanticize them a few decades later.
Not everything should be ‘just a joke’ MIA NUZZO
Opinion Columnist
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any view Generation Z as unique for their heightened emotional awareness. In addition, we are more socially active and are working to destigmatize topics that were previously labeled as taboo, like mental and reproductive health. Generally speaking, compared to previous generations, we have a lower tolerance for slurs, discrimination and toxic environments. However, it seems this heightened awareness does not translate into how we communicate over social media. Gen Z has turned some of the most painful parts of marginalized experiences into punchlines through mainstream memes, viral audio clips and popular internet vernacular. While this media may seem
harmless and funny, it strips away the cultural and historical context behind the original content that they were pulled from. By appropriating marginalized experiences through social media, Gen Z risks undermining the progress they have advocated for by trivializing discrimination and stereotypes, turning them into entertainment that ignores the struggles they are rooted in. Countless minority groups have been subjected to this phenomenon. Time and time again, the Black community’s struggles and experiences have been misused as viral social media content that does not acknowledge their background. For example, there is a viral audio originating from “Hidden Figures,” a movie that discusses discrimination against African American women who work as mathematicians for NASA. In a heated moment, Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), declares, “I work like
a dog, day and night, living off a coffee from a pot none of you wanna touch!” While the line conveys the struggles of workplace sexism and racism at the time, the internet has repurposed it to be the soundtrack of a TikTok trend where people complain about minor inconveniences that they take on. Boyfriends make videos joking about how bothersome it is to take pictures of their girlfriends, and girls post about how much of a burden it is to bake treats for their friends. As a result, an emotionally charged line has become a generic way to express trivial, voluntary annoyances — often things that should be seen as simple acts of care rather than inconveniences. Similarly, mental illnesses and neurodivergent conditions are frequently made into jokes online. It has become common to casually label perfectionist tendencies as “obsessive compulsive disorder,”
call someone “autistic” for being socially awkward or describe unpredictable behavior as “bipolar,” when in actuality, these terms refer to complex conditions that should not be joked about. In addition, the term “hyperfixation,” which is defined as an intense focus on something that is often associated with neurodivergence, has become a way to describe anything that someone happens to find particularly interesting at the moment, like a “hyperfixation meal.” Likewise, it has become commonplace to use “overstimulated” in place of “overwhelmed,” although they have distinctly different meanings. Using this rhetoric as casual slang invalidates the challenges of real people who actually live with these conditions. Also, it generates stigma around the very conditions that we have worked so hard to destigmatize. Joking about these
conditions makes people with them feel even more isolated and less comfortable being open about their experiences. Social media trends also poke fun at women as well. Terms like “female rage,” “girl math” and “girl dinner” have been circulating the internet for some time now. Although they are less problematic at first glance, they ultimately reinforce harmful stereotypes about women. These jokes are rooted in dated assumptions — that women are emotional and hormonal, financially illiterate or should eat small, dainty portions. When stereotypes are repackaged as harmless jokes, they inadvertently allow them to persist, which may negatively affect how women are perceived and treated in everyday life. These viral audios and terms probably weren’t popularized with any malintent and instead were intended to bond over shared experiences. Regardless, we need
to separate intent from impact. Something does not have to be intentionally harmful to cause harm. Additionally, there is nothing inherently wrong with people using humor to cope with or bond over experiences they share. The issue arises when these jokes and references are separated from the context they originate from and used by people who don’t resonate with the experiences behind them, allowing them to permeate into broader internet culture. While we may initially think these jokes are funny or even use them ourselves, we need to be more cognizant of not trivializing communities’ historical struggles. That is what makes this issue so complicated — we are participants in the culture that we criticize. Collectively, we need to figure out where to draw the line on jokes and become more conscious of who and what we’re laughing about.
Congress needs more experts SETH GABRIELSON Opinion Columnist
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n 2013, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services took up a bill that would let big banks keep certain risky trades — called swaps — inside the parts of the bank backed by federal deposit insurance and emergency support from the Federal Reserve. When reporters at The New York Times compared the bill to a draft written by Citigroup’s lobbyists, they found that 70 of its 85 lines reflected the bank’s recommendations. Two paragraphs were copied almost exactly, except for two words lawmakers made plural. The bill passed the House 292-122, with 70 Democrats joining 222 Republicans, and in December 2014, it became law. No bribe was needed. Citigroup was able to write the bill because it had people who understood swaps and the committee did not. Political scientists describe this kind of lobbying as a subsidy — lobbyists do the research and drafting that congressional staff would otherwise do, and their work is paid for by the interest groups that benefit from the result. In that model, influence comes from doing a lawmaker’s work for them, rather than directly paying them off.
For decades, Congress has cut the expert staff it needs to understand the laws it writes, and that work has quietly moved to the industries it is supposed to regulate. Rebuilding Congress’ own expert staff is the cheapest reform in Washington with the biggest payoff. It would make the federal government more effective without making it any more powerful. The decline in Congress’ expert staff is measurable. Congress employed nearly 2,150 professional committee staff in 1993, a number which dropped to 1,316 by 2011. The executive branch now has more than 120 times the legislative branch’s funding, which means the agencies Congress is supposed to oversee have funds to access far more experts and resources than the lawmakers overseeing them. The clearest casualty was the Office of Technology Assessment — a small, nonpartisan office that gave members of Congress plain explanations about science and technology issues. Over its 23 years, it produced roughly 750 reports. Its 1986 study of the Social Security Administration’s computer systems was credited with $368 million in savings, more than 16 times the office’s entire $22 million annual budget. Congress defunded it in 1995 as part of a broader effort to downsize Congress itself.
The staffers who remain in lawmakers’ personal offices and on committees do not stay long. The average congressional staffer lasts about 3.1 years on Capitol Hill, and roughly half of those headed to the private sector say they want to become lobbyists. Many already have: Over a single decade, nearly 5,400 current and former congressional staffers moved between Capitol Hill and registered lobbying, and in 2011 alone, 388 aides left Congress to become lobbyists. This used to matter less, because other federal agencies filled in the gaps. Under a 1984 Supreme Court decision, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, judges had to accept an agency’s reasonable reading of a vague law, even if they would have read it differently themselves. That case, for example, let the Environmental Protection Agency decide what counted as a “stationary source” of air pollution when the Clean Air Act left the term unclear. In 2024, the Supreme Court overturned that rule in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Now, judges decide for themselves what an unclear law means, even when an agency’s specialists disagree. So when Congress leaves a gap, a judge fills it rather than an expert. That puts the burden on Congress to write laws specific enough to stand on their own. Two years later,
the Bipartisan Policy Center — a Washington, D.C.-based think tank — warned Congress may not currently have the staff, expertise or training it needs to draft those laws. And among experienced senior congressional staff, only 5% say they are very satisfied with Congress’ capacity. Loper Bright was sold as a way to take power from unelected bureaucrats and return it to elected representatives. But without the expertise to use that power, it goes to whoever can write the detailed language of the law, and too often that is members of the industry being regulated. An industry writing its own rules will write them in its own favor, in the same way Citigroup loosened a rule meant to keep taxpayers from backing its riskiest bets. The Citigroup bill sets a precedent; unless something changes, this is what lawmaking looks like from here on. The fix is small and specific. First, Congress should bring back a dedicated science and technology office. Sens. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced a bill in 2023 to revive the Office of Technology Assessment. Even adjusted for inflation, the office’s old budget would cost the government less than $10 for every $1 million it spent in fiscal year 2025. Second, Congress should restore the professional staff it cut across
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its committees and pay experts enough to stay. The House already showed this is possible in 2022 when it set a $45,000 minimum salary for staff. This kind of investment pays for itself. The Government Accountability Office — the nonpartisan agency that audits federal spending for Congress — reported $62.7 billion in financial benefits to the federal government in fiscal year 2025, savings that came from agencies and Congress acting on its audits, including $15.7 billion in Medicaid savings alone. Some fiscal conservatives will hear “more staff” and think “bigger government.” It is the opposite. R Street Institute — a free-market think tank — argues
starving Congress makes it more dependent on lobbyists and weaker as a check on the executive branch. A 2020 essay in the conservative Federalist Society’s series on modernizing Congress makes the same case, warning high staff turnover hands power to lobbyists and executive agencies and calling a stronger Congress a conservative goal. Spending a little more on Congress moves power away from unelected agencies and industry insiders and back to the people voters actually elect. It does not impact how states run their governments, and it does not expand federal power over a single citizen.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
MiC What I missed about Arabic music
8 — Wednesday, October 21, 2026
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SABEEN FAIKH
Michigan in Color is The Michigan Daily’s section by and for People of Color. In this space, we invite our contributors to be vulnerable and authentic about our experiences and the important issues in our world today. Our work represents our identities in a way that is both unapologetic and creative. We are a community that reclaims our stories on our own terms.
The history we collect NOUR KAMOUNI MiC Columnist
There is a large gray rectangular box in my basement that I spend much time sorting through. It has an unassuming exterior, unexciting to the unfamiliar eye, like one of those plastic boxes you would purchase to store some old clothes or paperwork. But to me — someone who has spent quite some time sorting through its contents — it narrates a story of a girl pieced together by letters from friends, family and the occasional coworker. Through photo albums depicting babies slowly growing into toddlers like a stop-motion animation and notes from friends gained and lost, I assemble the story of a woman who I had yet to meet — one whose youth was a mystery to me. The box belongs to my mother. Some of these items were curated, with the intention of being carefully placed in this so-called “memory box.” Others were haphazardly tossed in. However, each article holds the power to resurface a memory — one that may have dulled with time but is instantly revived upon contact with a forgotten note or photo. The contents of this box have the ability to attest to a certainty that she was unique in the life she lived, that she possessed a personal truth. Beatriz González, a Colombian painter and sculptor, once said, “Art says things that history cannot.” I would argue that, in some capacity, the personal narratives we create through archives like these are also a sort
Charlie Cui/MiC
of art. They interject our personal voices against the “mainstream” narrative curated by society, which tends to be carefully cherry-picked to omit the parts of history that don’t fit into the “ideal” image. Our memories, our receipts, our stickers, our ticket stubs from a play we might have seen with our friends — these all create a necessary interjection, a disruption. The act itself might seem fairly simple, but collecting has the power to inspire memories of our unique existence, to revive our personhood. This becomes increasingly evident in cases where art is intentionally used as resistance. With Palestinian artists like Sliman Mansour, art has become integral in the fight to defend Palestinian identity. Mansour contends that after the Nakba, it was essential to maintain and preserve Palestinian art to rebel against the erasure of their identity. Palestinian artists began to use recognizable cultural symbols in their art to maintain their presence and
reflect their history. Their art is evidence that they still exist, a form of resistance against the narrative that has attempted to gloss over them. The Palestinian act of expression is not an isolated event. Collecting and crafting one’s own history has often been a form of resistance to the kind of oppression that seeks to erase people and their experiences. These personal insights humanize and create a new way of seeing, one that is more accurate to life than the glorified version we are fed daily through news outlets and in our public school history classes. During the suffragist movement, for example, women collected documents and formed them into scrapbooks to preserve the activities of the Geneva Political Equality Club. Scrapbooking allowed them to craft their own stories instead of leaving it to the government and textbooks to decide their fate.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
MiC Columnist
Thinking back on the Arabic music I listened to throughout my childhood, not many songs come to mind. However, one of the few songs I do remember clearly is “Kellon Aandon Sayarat,” a song that I’m sure almost every Arab kid has heard before. “Kellon Aandon Sayarat” is a children’s song about an old man who travels everywhere by riding his donkey and refuses to drive a car like everybody else … so it’s safe to say I wasn’t exposed to a lot of Arabic music growing up. The message of the song is simple: the older generation always holds on to tradition and resists change. The old man insists on riding his donkey every day and refuses to adapt despite the many inconveniences he deals with. That pretty much sums up how I used to view Arabic music and Arabic culture in general — I thought it was too traditional and old-fashioned compared to mainstream pop culture, which seemed to always be adapting and innovating. But the more I listened to and understood Arabic music, the more these misconceptions began to fade. Specifically, it was the iconic Lebanese artist Fairuz that made me realize I had it all wrong. When I first heard Macklemore’s “Hind’s Hall,” written in response to student protests and the struggle of speaking out for Palestine, I immediately recognized the introduction of the song because it sampled one of Fairuz’s most popular songs, “Ana La Habibi.” Before this, I had only known one or two of her songs — and very little about the artist herself or why she was so beloved across the Arab world. To this day, I am still learning more about why Fairuz is such a big deal, and I am still coming across new songs that quickly become my favorites. There are so many reasons why Fairuz is immensely popular, but what I appreciate most about her music is that she is the voice of strength and hope in the Arab world. She
erases lines that were drawn by colonizers and brings us together in ways that never happened in history before. What struck me when learning about her past was the fact that when her music was first received, it was considered a challenge against the norm. Her style didn’t follow the dominant Egyptian sound of the time, and she revolutionized Arabic music forever. Her music showed me that Arabic music wasn’t stuck in time. It is always changing and being redefined; I just hadn’t been paying attention. I think part of my misconception came from the weight of history. Arabic as a language dates back thousands of years, and Arabic culture is very rich in its history and roots. On the other hand, American culture felt so modern. But Arabic culture is not stagnant. If anything, it’s the opposite — it has had a major influence on the same pop culture and media I used to think was so much more fresh and current. It’s just been so deeply woven into American culture that people don’t even notice it. Arabic music in particular has managed to preserve its identity while still impacting and influencing new sounds and new generations. That balance is what makes it timeless, not outdated. When you begin to look closer, it becomes clear that Arabic music hasn’t just been evolving internally, but it’s also been shaping global music in ways that often go unrecognized. Not long after I became immersed in Fairuz’s music, I began noticing how often Arab songs were sampled in mainstream pop music, even by big artists like Drake and Kanye West. But the presence of Arabic music in mainstream media is so much more than just “exotic” sounds layered into Western tracks like “Big Pimpin’” by Jay-Z featuring UGK or “Wicked” by Future — it extends from instrumentation to melodies, modern musical styles to medievalera Europe. Long before the electric guitar became a prevalent part of modern music, its beginning was taking shape in the Arab world. The “grandfather” of the guitar is
believed to be the pear-shaped oud, a fretless stringed instrument. As the oud moved west, cultural exchange resulted in its evolution into the European lute, which then laid the groundwork for the guitar we recognize today. Although this may seem like a distant influence, it is, in reality, embedded in the foundation of some of the most familiar sounds in contemporary music. Similarly, the Arabic instrument rebab is widely regarded as the earliest known bowed string instrument and the ancestor of many European bowed instruments. The North African and Middle Eastern rebab emerged in the medieval Arab world and featured a simple body that was made from wood or a coconut shell. It is typically played using a bow or sometimes plucked. Despite its modest look, the rebab produces a deeply expressive sound that has made it popular across time. As trade and cultural exchange grew between Europe and the Arab world, the rebab’s design and playing techniques spread. Its influence can be seen in the development of instruments such as the rebec and the Byzantine lyra, both of which adapted the rebab’s bowed technique. Over time, these instruments contributed to the emergence of the violin family in Europe, making the rebab an important predecessor to one of the most iconic instruments in Western music: the electric guitar.
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Twenty-something differently KINANA ABDALLA MiC Columnist
One night, as I mindlessly scrolled on Instagram, I came across a video of a man discussing the struggles of his immigrant parents. His frustration sounded so familiar that I was quickly drawn in. He spoke about growing up questioning why his parents were always working, why they struggled to slow down and why rest never seemed to come easily for them. I, too, had asked myself those questions about my parents. I sat there, listening intently as he explained how we needed to be more understanding of our parents and the obstacles they faced. It’s scary how quick we are to judge our parents for the ways they live differently from us — for always working, never slowing down and struggling to relax — while failing to recognize the privileges their sacrifices have awarded us. Instantly, I felt a sense of guilt: Had I been too quick to judge? I grew up blessed in that I could take a break when I needed one and could make decisions based on desire, not necessity. This made me unable to recognize why my parents operated the way they did. Seeing them constantly working so hard, I would grow frustrated at what seemed like their inability to relax. As a kid, I wanted my parents to just sit down. Even when there was nowhere they needed to be, there always seemed to be something that needed to get done. I would watch them move from one task to the next and wonder, why can’t they just relax? To me, rest was something you did when the work was over. I didn’t yet understand that for my parents, the work never really felt over. As a child, I never thought much about the challenges my parents went through as immigrants: leaving their families and country behind, becoming fluent in a new language and trying to understand a way of life that was vastly different from the one they were used to. My privilege left a barrier between our understanding of one another.
There’s a pressure placed on immigrants to succeed, whether that stems from familial pressure to provide, societal pressure to prove their place or just survival. As a result, hard work becomes the norm for many immigrant parents, including my own. Working hard wasn’t just about ambition for them; it represented stability and security in a world that often felt uncertain. My dad often sits down with me and my siblings and reminisces about the days of his youth. The more I listen to his stories, the more I understand. “I left Syria when I was 24, took the first flight out that I could find,” my dad said. “I didn’t want to risk getting stuck living under the Assad regime; life was hard even before the civil war began.” My parents were newlyweds when they came to this difficult decision. At an age not far from my own, they were making decisions that would determine the course of the rest of their lives. My dad arrived in Chicago and began his medical residency, working long nights while simultaneously learning how to exist in an unfamiliar country. My mom was adapting to a new home where she could barely speak the language. When I compare their 20s to my own, I begin to understand the privilege hidden in something as simple as taking a break. I can worry about whether I am overworking myself or whether I have time to slow down. For my parents, slowing down could
have come at the expense of the stability they were trying to build. Navigating an unfamiliar world, they were often faced with different kinds of obstacles. Anyone who has learned a new language knows that conversational language and textbook language are very different. My parents quickly realized that the English they had been taught in school sounded very different from the language they were hearing all around them. My dad had a group of medical school friends who had also left Syria, and together, they found creative ways to practice their English. “Back then we used phonebooks when we wanted to find somebody and make a call,” my dad said. “We used to go through the phonebook and find customer service lines so that we could call them and practice our English.” I think about that story often. When my dad encountered a situation he wasn’t familiar with, there wasn’t much room for him to sit with the discomfort. He found a way to learn because he had to. That instinct — to figure it out, keep moving and make things work — didn’t disappear once my parents became comfortable in America. It followed them into the life they built here. What I once interpreted as an inability to relax began to look more like a habit formed through years when slowing down wasn’t always an option.
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Kinana Abdalla/MiC
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
STATEMENT
Wednesday, October 21, 2026 — 9
The women’s bathroom problem MEGHAN DWAN
Statement Correspondent
How much time have you spent wandering the halls in search of restrooms? The last perilous journey for me meant missing two lecture slides with different hominins and passing two occupied gender neutral bathrooms and two men’s bathrooms. After 15 minutes of class had gone by, I had bled through my pants and found the women’s bathroom of West Hall on a different floor through a set of doors, with a line. The small stall was ill-equipped and, after dropping my menstrual products on the floor, my only option was the free cardboard ones neatly lined up in a plastic bin. This beautiful, TMI story of my time of the month is a common experience for women at the University of Michigan. Many female students have joked about the annoyance of finding a women’s bathroom on a different floor, clearly constructed out of an old storage closet and ill-equipped to actually handle a woman’s needs. It always feels a little heavier than the joking tone it’s carried with. Why should we be relegated to the old supply closets and renovated urinals? Women were only allowed to attend classes at the University starting in the 1870s, with small class sizes, 34 women in the first year and limited opportunities. Even after being allowed in, women were still not exactly welcome. Until the 1960s, women weren’t technically allowed in through the front entrance of the Michigan Union. Tradition upheld that it was a men’s club, and women needed a man to escort them inside. Until the 1950s, they weren’t welcomed by fellow students at all. They could only enter through the side doors that go into the basement. While women may have been allowed in other buildings, many of those buildings weren’t constructed with the needs of women in mind, or even the thought that they would be here. It’s why finding a bathroom in the Chemistry Building feels a little bit like a scavenger hunt, and the women’s bathroom in Mason Hall feels like entering a Scooby-Doo trap door. Both were constructed before women were admitted. While women are now welcome — or even encouraged — in these spaces administratively, they lack
that support in a systematic and cultural way. The architecture does not tell a welcoming story. The difference in paintings in the Michigan League versus the Union or the Hatcher Graduate Library is very apparent. They tell us what our future holds. Women don’t hold war, glory and knowledge; they don’t ride horses while soldiers march behind them. They sit straight. They sew and read books at the same time. To some extent, these buildings function as museums. They tell stories from the times they were made. They promote narratives. What does it tell me about women’s history at this university? What does it suggest that a scholarly woman should do? When I enter the League and see paintings of straight-backed women with unsmiling faces, I wonder what I would’ve made for myself if I had come here all those years ago. Would I have been brave enough to rally funds after being banned from the other union? Would I have attended school at all? The women in these paintings are so serious. They look nearly unhappy. In the Hatcher Library, there are two paintings in the reference room that always stood out to me as encouraging after long hours studying in silence. They tell two different stories, with a large cast of characters, but only include one woman sitting and reading a scroll. It strikes me that these painters thought women didn’t engage in intellectual debates, social movements or political problems. This is obviously not true. Increasingly, women are moving into academic fields at a higher rate than men are, and with better scores. As women move into more academic positions, shouldn’t we better adjust to the needs of the students here? Don’t get me wrong, there have been some recent changes in women’s accessibility that were unfamiliar to me before I came to the University. I had never seen a breastfeeding room before, despite federal laws mandating that there be space for pumping. While some are more asylum-like than others, with the white brick wall and wobbly wooden table that connects to the bathroom, it’s a step in the right direction. And while it’s great that free menstrual products are available in most bathrooms, the reality is that they are the worst possible items to use. I don’t know
a single woman who prefers a cardboard tampon to a plastic one, or the smallest size of a pad. Though often, the dispensers are nearly empty. Menstruation in a public bathroom is a nightmare and a balancing act. You really never know what you’re walking into. If there’s going to be such a taboo on menstruation, it’d be a lot more convenient if they made it easier to hide. Or, at the very least, more sanitary. I’ve often found the bins for used menstrual products are nearly full or overflowing. Sometimes, there is no bin, and I’ll just walk it out to the paper towel bin, which feels a little embarrassing, honestly. I hate balancing everything on my legs while trying to change a product. There’s no sanitary place to put my products. I don’t want to waste my publicly allocated cardboard tampon by dropping it on the floor — I’ve never seen a bathroom handle this well. I’ve never walked into a bathroom and felt clean while menstruating. There’s nowhere to put my clean products or dirty ones while my hands are occupied. This is also true of chronic diseases. Many chronic diseases require upkeep that can feel uncomfortable to do publicly, like changing a diabetic site. Often it’s necessary to keep things sanitary and have a place to put them. In my opinion, as spheres of privacy, bathrooms hold power over how we view what is socially acceptable and what is taboo. It’s why locker room talk exists. It’s taboo in front of women, disrespectful even, but bathrooms provide a place for men to expand on that taboo without women there. That sphere of privacy is what allows men to speak like that. For the women’s bathroom, this means children’s changing tables are something that’s private to women. It’s not acceptable in public, it’s delegated to the bathrooms. Breastfeeding is seen as inappropriate, so it’s relegated to the bathrooms. I wonder if it shirks parental responsibilities more solidly onto women. If we look at bathrooms objectively, they are sacred spaces. There are special rules, special rituals that bend to a certain extent because of this boundary. It’s okay to chit chat with others as long as you’re not between stalls. It’s okay to ask for embarrassing things from others, for advice or even to give compliments. It’s a separated
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social space. It’s why women love to go to the bathroom together in the club and why it feels a little violating when a bathroom door is propped open, even though you still have privacy in your stall. They are spaces with meaning. Women’s bathrooms can be extremely social and uplifting places. There are cultural differences in what a bathroom is required to do. Often, while I was studying abroad in Buenos Aires, I found that there weren’t really women’s and men’s bathrooms as much as single-stall bathrooms to save space. Though that could just be my personal experience, culturally, bathrooms do change, with certain things allowed and disallowed. You don’t treat a women’s bathroom in the club the same as a gender neutral bathroom in a school building. The context matters. Bathrooms have changed a lot over the course of history, with gender-specific ones coming in and out of fashion throughout the years. Until recently, the male-only bathrooms, or urinary leash, as some call it, prevented women from being in public at all. It was a way of forcing women to stay at home or risk embarrassment and shame. It still happens in many places today. Creating a space for women to be comfortable in their privacy is the difference between having women there. The standard stall we find in most restrooms wasn’t built with women in mind beyond tolerating their waste. It takes forever when there’s
a line, it’s incredibly annoying to change menstruation products when there are no ledges and the period bins aren’t built to hold a lot of products. Women have twice the reason to be in the bathroom, but often, there’s not even the same number of men’s and women’s bathrooms in a given space, let alone enough to compensate for the fact that women need more stalls and more bathroom trips. To get to the women’s bathroom in East Hall, I walk by the door with a faded men’s sign on it. I walk past the sink that’s been broken and the toilet that’s been blocked off with tape for months. I wait in line with other women while we switch out of the two remaining stalls. I am late for class. There’s no time to find the next women’s bathroom, which is on an entirely different floor or in a different building. It is frustrating that my time is valued less than a man’s. It’s frustrating that I have to choose between dropping my phone in the toilet or setting the cardboard tampon on the bathroom floor. It’s frustrating that if I had a menstrual disc, there’d be no place to wash it except the one sink in the bathroom that’s still working. There’s also the worry that doing this could make others uncomfortable. I imagine when I become a mother, there’ll be a long list of new frustrations that are still unknown to me. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for the changes that have already occurred. It’s wonderful that now, mothers have a place to breastfeed
and I have access to free tampons, even if they’re not a quality brand. Still, this is a clear reminder about a larger social issue. Had more women been architects, perhaps bathroom standards would be more fitting for women’s needs. Perhaps there’d be more women’s bathrooms in each building. As the U.S. shifts to having more women in the workforce, resources may trickle down into architecture. Perhaps there will be better resources for menstruating, pregnant or childrearing women. Even as women are welcome at academic institutions now, it’s a reflection of the systems we have in place from the past. The architecture was built for men, and the buildings still are — the bathrooms still are. As we move into a more inclusive world, I’m excited to see how the designs we’ve always lived with will be transformed for others. When women are given the opportunity, how can we adapt to equity issues like menstruation? It presents an opportunity for women to carve themselves out in the world. We are no longer reluctant matriculants welcomed only through the basement floor. How many systemic issues exist simply because there were only so many people allowed at the drawing board? Though women have always been creative innovators, now there’s enough acceptance to let their ingenuity shine. Women have carved out the possibility to be constructors in their own right; what might be built?
Do not resuscitate — leave the dead be JULIA CARNEY
Statement Correspondent
I’ve been to 13 funerals in my lifetime. To me, that feels like a lot for a 20-year-old. Most of them were for strangers or people that my young heart had not grown to know deeply. My dad recently told me that the last thing he wanted was for me to fail to honor the dead because I was too afraid of death. I suppose he needed to make sure I knew what love looked like when it morphs into loss. Hence, a little me in a black dress and tightly curled hair stood between my parents at every funeral they were invited to. There wasn’t anything deeply traumatic to recall. I remember smoke breaks on my dad’s side of the family and a lot of people I’d never met before trying to insist, as one might to amnesiacs, that we had met before. I remember fooling around with my sisters and cousins in the funeral home and my curls falling flat in an instant. I most distinctly remember a box made of pale wood or a pale body well-decorated at the front of the room. I was so fascinated by the dead, truly. It didn’t even take 13 funerals to get to that point. Nonetheless, this fascination was well acquainted with fear, and I always remember my small heart pounding as my black flats took little steps toward the large, velvet-cushioned box. I knelt at the altar in front of the body, trying to pray. I couldn’t take my eyes off the quiet entity. If you can hear me, let me know, I would think, eyes pinned on a pale nose or gold jewelry. Move your thumb. Do something. I
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might have repeated the subtle attempt at resuscitation a couple of times per service. It was as if a dead person opening their eyes would be less scary than the idea of losing someone forever — even if I hardly knew them. And maybe, in the moment, it was. Things in my life eventually got scarier than spending an hour with the dead bodies of strangers. By the time I got to college, I realized that people could willingly leave me long before death and old age had even begun to stake a claim on their bodies. I experienced a friendship breakup in my sophomore year to prove this facet of adulthood to be true. We had been having problems for some time. We weren’t talking about them. Eventually, when a short and painful exchange over text revealed she was upset with me for a reason left vague, it ended right there with my
heart pounding and the gray text bubbles glaring at me. For the months following, I tried to retrace my steps and recover the indecencies I was said to have committed leading up to my slow walk toward the altar. I slipped into a strange phase doing this, as if I was watching decomposition taking on the body of our friendship. Months of obsession passed. The body was dumb and lifeless, and still I watched it decay in hopes of answers beneath the skin. She, in comparison, was alive and likely well. Funerals have always been simpler for me in this sense. The only time I was showing up for the person who died was at the very last moment, and they couldn’t even judge the worthiness of the love I had to share. With my friendship breakup, though, I thought I had shown up time and time again to show her that I would do
anything for her. It still wasn’t enough. And it was never going to be. I spent so much time wondering why “I love you” and “Let’s hang out” weren’t enough that I failed to see all of the other important words we failed to exchange. As I now reflect, it seems that I was ignoring what made me angry and hurt for many months in fear of being the “reason” for our friendship dissipating, and eventually became quiet, with an absence of restorative words. We became less magnetic in social circles and began turning to different people for support. Our faces ceased to light up when we saw each other. We didn’t fight, nor did we provide solutions. The only time I got the frantic adrenaline rush to save our friendship was when the body had been pronounced dead in that dead-end text message, though surely I had known that
hurting her feelings the final time wasn’t this grand coup de grace. Painfully, I can now say that the thing that I was fighting to keep alive wasn’t love. It was just any substitute for loss. There was another friend in my life at this time that challenged me in a different way. We met in the fall of 2025, freshly single and with a similar zest for life. Our first quarrel, as with my previous friendship, had begun as a miscommunication when I couldn’t verbalize that I needed space. I was snappy and impatient with her. Our long drive home from our latest adventure became a quiet one. She had gotten the hint. I regretfully wondered in the quiet days that followed if, just like my last friendship, I had guided us across a point of no return. Still, I reached out after a week to check in; she replied by inviting me over to her apartment. I remember driving over in a solemn state, feeling I was nearing closer to the time of death. To my surprise, upon pulling up to her apartment, the face I had expected to match my sober one was glimmering with joy, and the long arms I had expected to be crossed in anger were waving a grand hello to me. My heart quieted its thunderous march toward death. We talked through the hard stuff, there on her couch in her apartment, namely the miscommunications and the due apologies. I had become well-acquainted in my life with taking time for the dead. As I looked someone I loved in the eyes and saw hurt, I realized that I was poor at taking time for the living who enriched my own. Moments like that make me wonder how much connection
I had avoided in my life by hosting a funeral in my head for everything I fear I might lose. It wouldn’t have been historically out of character for me to continue on with our friendship by merely checking the pulse: asking if we were good, if I was good or how I could become good. That’s not friendship. It’s just a heartbeat that could still give out at any second, no matter if things were in fact good the previous moment. Friends aren’t meant to be a personal moral compass any more than they are supposed to stay by your side no matter what. I think it’s so interesting, though, that this didn’t seem to become apparent until I found friendships really worth keeping alive. At the second most recent funeral I went to, the first since I had started college, the funeral director made a speech about showing up for people. He explained that, sometimes, attending a funeral is the easiest part of being a friend, relative or overall community member in terms of loss, yet the hardest thing is to show up for every loss aside from that of life. My new friend and I had lost a lot that year: friendships, boyfriends and sometimes our strength. Losing each other, too, is never completely out of the question. The uncertainty that what we have to give is “enough” solidifies the idea that every room we walk into may require black attire and somber remembrance. But as long as the body at the front of the room is full of life, waving and smiling, I’ll try not to say, “If you can hear me, let me know.” For at least another day, I’ll hang up my black dress and just smile back.
10 — Wednesday, October 21, 2026
STATEMENT
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
I was a Resident Advisor for two years. Michigan Housing needs to change. NOLAN SARGENT
Statement Correspondent
Content warning: This article contains mentions of suicide. I stood in front of an ordinary wooden door watching the time on my phone, held in a shaky hand, count up. At 4:10 p.m., I would have to knock on that door. At 4:10 p.m., I would have to walk into that room not knowing if I would walk out with an eviction notice in hand. It was April 2025, and I was in the lobby of Mary Markley Residence Hall where I worked as a resident adviser. My supervisor and his boss waited on the other side of the door. Would I be the next in a series of fired R.A.s? Would I be the next Christopher Son? Would I lose my housing and meal plan in an instant? Would I be forced to scramble for a place to live in Ann Arbor, a city known for its affordability crisis, during finals season? I had no clue, and I was terrified, my body a mess of nerves and sweat and jittering limbs. 4:10 p.m. I breathed, I knocked and I entered. *** Mid-August, about 500 people, including myself, were crowded in the largest lecture hall on Central Campus for the annual week of student residential staff training. On the wide, pale stage, a woman stood alone beneath bright lights and a bank of screens that stretched from wall to wall. She was an employee of the University’s Counseling and Psychological Services office, there to train R.A.s on how to address situations involving residents’ mental health. The presentation began the same as all the others that week: She displayed a slide, spoke on the topic briefly and moved to the next slide. Then, she opened the floor for questions. That was when things began to veer into tense territory. Some background: The previous semester, winter 2025, an R.A. at
South Quad Residence Hall was fired for a first ever offense in which he did not call the University of Michigan’s Division of Public Safety and Security after hearing a resident make a flippant comment about taking their own life. The R.A., Christopher Son, submitted a report about the incident and checked in with the resident multiple times to confirm that the comment was not sincere. The questions directed toward the CAPS representative concerned this situation. I do not have access to the CAPS presentation, but I recall that the portion that discussed self-harm and suicide contradicted Michigan Housing policy. I remember previously learning that Michigan Housing instructs ResStaff to call DPSS if they ever hear a resident speak of taking their life. Yet, the CAPS presentation I was listening to recommended a more nuanced approach in which a call to authorities would only be made when immediate danger was present. I recall looking around the lecture hall in confusion and seeing many other ResStaff heads swivel about the room with the same puzzled expression. When question time came, the gathered ResStaff were quick to inform the CAPS representative of Michigan Housing’s policy and further pressed the issue. Was it truly best practice to call security at any and all mentions of suicide, even those made in clear hyperbole or jest? Could this approach not upset and alienate residents? We were all keenly aware just how common suicide comments and jokes are, especially among young people, which meant that we were all at risk of termination if we did not call security in response to every overheard hyperbole. Further, we knew to be terrified of termination because it meant almost immediate eviction and meal plan loss without recourse or appeal. The CAPS representative was taken aback,
and it became clear that she had no clue about Michigan Housing policy or why they had adopted it. Losing control of the crowd and conscious of her inability to give a satisfactory answer, she looked to the back of the room, where members of the full-time, professional Michigan Housing staff sat. One of the higher-ups rushed to grab a microphone and explain that the policy, in fact, existed for our sakes. She said that Michigan Housing simply did not want to put ResStaff in a situation where we would have to make a judgment call about what was or was not serious, and so we were expected to call DPSS at any mention of suicide. Time ran out, and the CAPS presentation concluded. Afterward, a group of about 20 ResStaff approached the woman from CAPS to ask follow-up questions. At least, it began that way. It quickly morphed into an opportunity to express all of our stresses and concerns about the job to someone outside of Michigan Housing who seemed to have expertise and authority. She’d just been up on a big stage, after all. But all she could do was listen and watch as voices shook and eyes grew wet with tears. Once again, she was taken aback, clearly at a loss for words beyond “I’m sorry to hear that.” Soon, her voice shook, too, and pain showed in her eyes. A workplace that provokes shock and frustration from mental health professionals is clearly dysfunctional. This instance reflects the larger impact that Michigan Housing’s pattern of decisions has had on ResStaff. That huddle of scared students looking for reassurance, looking for help — that was a direct result of choices the department has made and continues to make that result in the destruction of trust between ResStaff and Michigan Housing. *** I worked for two years as an R.A. at Markley. I think I was a
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decent one. While I stayed on top of my responsibilities and deadlines, I could have made more time to connect with my residents. My performance reviews were consistently positive, although I made a few small missteps. In a normal workplace, none of these small missteps should have resulted in a weeks-long spiral of daily distress. Michigan Housing is not a normal workplace. My potentially terminal mistake was filling out a form inaccurately. The Community Engagement Map is a spreadsheet each R.A. must fill out weekly to keep track of their interactions with all of their residents. The number of residents a given R.A. is responsible for varies across buildings and floors. However, at the time of this incident, I was expected to keep track of about 50 residents. Typically, I would have been responsible for half as many, but the other R.A. on my floor had moved buildings and had not yet been replaced, so I also had to track his residents.
On the afternoon of March 27, 2025, my supervisor — one of the Markley hall directors — sent me a Google Chat message asking if I was available to meet. Both my supervisor and the other Markley hall director were waiting in the office, and they closed the door as soon as I entered. If I hadn’t already been scared, I certainly was when I realized how unsettled they seemed. They informed me that I had been marking a resident who did not appear on their more up-to-date roster of all residents in Markley as present on my CEM, and that there now was a concern about that individual’s whereabouts or well-being. I understood the utility of the CEM in addressing such situations, and I do not deny that I made a mistake. I believe I had been confusing the individual in question with one of two people on the floor with the same first name; keeping track of 50 people is not an easy thing to do. Still, I regret that I failed to ensure
the information in my CEM was accurate, and I said as much in the meeting. Along with my guilt, I felt intensely afraid. Despite the sweat breaking cold across my body, my shortness of breath, the lights far too bright and the room shaking around me, I worked to steady myself. I tried to focus on the voices — fading by the moment into the anxious static buzzing inside my skull — of the hall directors. I could not determine how serious the situation was, but they appeared deeply concerned. Was this former resident okay? I asked. They couldn’t tell me any details, of course. Concern for my former resident mingled with fear for myself. With no way of knowing the severity of the situation and no understanding of what Michigan Housing considered a fireable offense, it quickly occurred to me that my job, along with my housing and meal plan, was in danger.
CONTINUED AT MICHIGANDAILY.COM
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Sports
Wednesday, October 21, 2026 — 11
FOOTBALL
Tommy Carr’s second-half performance a long time coming for Michigan
NATE SCHRECK Daily Sports Editor
It felt preordained. 29 years ago, former Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr summited the mountaintop, leading the Wolverines to their first national championship in almost 50 years. Carr coached Michigan for another decade, and retired as the third-winningest coach in program history. Two decades later, enter Tommy Carr. Tommy — Lloyd’s grandson — was a three-star quarterback committed to Miami (OH) before flipping to the Wolverines during his senior season. Carr’s commitment was seen as a win for Michigan’s football heritage — especially after missing out on Tommy’s five-star brother, CJ, two years prior — and an addition of a talented young quarterback. Still, then-freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood was the starter, and there were at least 10 million dollars worth of reasons to keep it that way. Carr arguably outdueled Underwood in the Spring Game, going 21-for-31 with 67 rushing yards. He also had the last name. But over the summer, Underwood was voted a team captain. At Big Ten Media Days, Wolverines coach Kyle Whittingham declared, under no uncertain terms, that Bryce was “the guy.” Flash forward two months and Michigan is 3-2. Underwood wasn’t performing up to caliber and — rational or not — large factions of the Wolverines’
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fanbase were calling for Carr. After bottoming out in a loss to Minnesota, Whittingham knew his team had to take a long look in the mirror. “We’re certainly going to analyze every possibility,” Whittingham said after the loss to the Golden Gophers. “ … (We have) a bye week to figure out our problems because we got enough problems to occupy our time.” The hype train around Carr was reaching a fever pitch, and questions lingered in everyone’s
minds about Underwood’s status as QB1. The offense’s problems only continued in the first half against Penn State Saturday. Underwood threw two interceptions, and the offense looked listless with just 80 yards and no points as the teams headed to the locker room. For the third time this year, boo birds rained down on the Wolverines — louder than they’d been all season. If Michigan wanted any chance of putting points on the board it needed a change, so finally, Whittingham made it. Carr had
played some snaps in garbage time during a blowout over Texas El Paso, but the second half would be his first snaps against a Power Four opponent in a game that wasn’t already decided. Most 19-year-old freshmen would’ve been fazed, but then again, most players don’t have a childhood’s worth of Saturdays at the Big House and a brother who is one of the best quarterbacks in college football. As Carr trotted onto the field for the second half, the boo birds changed their tune and the crowd
crescendoed into its loudest volume of the night. With a new quarterback under center, the Wolverines’ offense suddenly looked dynamic. Carr completed a pass on his first play, finding sophomore wide receiver JJ Buchanan over the middle. Michigan three-andouted two plays later, but the energy was different. “You’re playing with a great deal of emotion and passion, which I think picked up in the second half,” Whittingham said. “I think it goes back to some excitement
(with) a new quarterback and the chance to help him out.” On the next drive, the Wolverines snapped off a 43-yard touchdown run. The rushing attack started to pick up, and with a 7-3 lead, Carr found junior tight end Hogan Hansen for a 22-yard pitch-and-catch. A few plays later, Carr scampered 22 yards inside the 5-yard line to set up another touchdown. The storybook performance from Carr was cemented in the fourth quarter. With just a threepoint lead, Michigan’s defense forced a fumble and recovered inside the red zone. Kicking a field goal would still leave the Nittany Lions the chance to win the game on their final drive. So on thirdand-9, Carr faked the pitch on a speed option and kept the ball for 12 yards into the end zone. The TV broadcast panned to an 81-year-old Lloyd Carr in a suite watching his grandson ice a mustwin game. It was poetic. “There were a lot of different ways it could’ve played out,” Carr said on how he imagined this moment. “All I imagined was getting out there and getting the win, and that’s what happened.” Carr by no means won the game by himself: The defense gave him favorable field position with three second-half takeaways, and the rushing attack looked better than it had all season. Carr’s recruiting commitment was met with words like “destiny” — and his second-half performance Saturday felt the same way. Under the watchful eye of Lloyd Carr, the prodigal grandson returned and led Michigan to its first conference win of the season.
ICE HOCKEY
No. 2 Michigan prevails, 4-3, in fast-paced back-and-forth, sweeps No. 1 Denver ANNA LIAO
Daily Sports Writer
The winner of the highly anticipated rematch of the top two teams in the nation was never going to have it easy. But the team that left last year’s Frozen Four after a doubleovertime loss flipped the script, starting by taking control of the series’ tempo. The No. 2 Michigan hockey team (6-0) swept No. 1 Denver (2-2) in a 4-3 win characterized by the Wolverines’ fast and cohesive offensive efforts that nullified, and eventually overpowered, a congruent campaign from the Pioneers. “When you play good teams, there’s just a push back and forth,” Michigan coach Brandon Naurato said. “There’s lots of momentum shifts.”
Despite the rhythm that defined the rest of the game, neither the Wolverines nor Denver initially made much ground. Michigan and the Pioneers spent the start of the first period trading shots wide of the net. Sophomore goaltender Jack Ivankovic faced an onslaught of shots on the Wolverines’ net — more than Denver goaltender Tyler Krivtsov. Nonetheless, each team came out hot: One seeking to avenge last night’s loss and the other itching for its third sweep of the season. The Pioneers struck first. With Michigan shorthanded, Denver skaters broke away from the pressure and raced for the net. From there, only Ivankovic stood between the Pioneers and an early lead. But the Wolverines didn’t stay down for long. After tipping in a rebound off the crossbar,
Michigan rode its newfound momentum through even faster, more coordinated play than its opponent. Both teams shared equal time in their offensive zones, but the Wolverines created enough traffic in front of their own net that Denver couldn’t create a good scoring opportunity. And when Michigan got the chance, it didn’t hesitate to convert. Immediately after the puck dropped on the Wolverines’ first power play, sophomore defenseman Henry Mews passed the puck to freshman defenseman Landon DuPont. From there, sophomore forward Adam Valentini took over and found an opening for an effortless goal to go up, 2-1. The lightning-fast sequence prevented the Pioneers from being able to respond. And in the blink of an eye, Michigan regained control of the game.
The fast tempo of play worked in the Wolverines’ favor more than once. From the right side of the net, senior forward Jayden Perron raced in front of Denver’s skaters and drew Krivtsov to the lower right corner of the net. Perron sniped the puck straight into the opposite corner of the net giving Michigan a decisive 3-1 lead. “Anytime there’s penalties or stoppage during the game, it’s hard to get a rhythm going,” senior forward Garrett Schifsky said. “But once we did get a rhythm going, we were flying. We were moving our feet out there, making plays and just helping out one another.” Meanwhile, the Wolverines attempted to mirror the same pace in their defensive zone. For over half of the second period, Michigan held the Pioneers to just five shots on goal. But once
the Wolverines began playing shorthanded, Denver pulled Ivankovic to the left side of his net just as Perron had done for his own goal. Through the traffic, Pioneers forward Sam Harris tipped the puck in to bring Denver within a goal of Michigan, setting the score at 3-2. For the next fifteen minutes of play, the Pioneers and Wolverines matched each other step for step and shot for shot, and each fought to tip the game’s rhythm in their favor. In the end, Denver won the battle first. While Michigan established its lead in a series of fast, coordinated drives, the Pioneers tied up the game, 3-3, through the persistence of a single player. But his efforts would ultimately be overshadowed by the gamedetermining play.
The game-winning goal wasn’t clean or poetic. It wasn’t even a clear-cut shot. Sophomore defenseman Asher Barnett pushed his way between three Denver skaters, then squared to take a shot. The puck bounced off the crossbar just as it had for the Wolverines’ first goal. This time, it ricocheted off a Pioneers skater before landing outright in the net. It wasn’t pretty, and it was even contested in the moment. But that goal sealed Michigan’s series sweep over Denver, cementing one final storyline over all the noise — No. 1 vs. No. 2, Frozen Four flashbacks and each team’s quest to build on their highlydecorrated histories — that surrounded the weekend. The Wolverines had a wealth of talent entering the season, but in their first real test, their fast-paced, coordinated attack proved true.
MEN’S BASKETBALL
Michigan topples Oregon State, 98-93, in back-and-forth brawl
GABE MILLER
Daily Sports Writer
By the final buzzer, the final lead change out of 18 had stuck. The Michigan men’s basketball team shot its way up early on the backs of its frontcourt, yet coming out of halftime, a brawl ensued. Exchanging blows with Oregon State, both teams had success on all three levels to keep the game close, with the Wolverines ultimately scraping by off the performance of their stars, 98-93. Michigan came out the gate swinging, with sophomore guard Ricky Liburd swiping the ball after a Beaver’s turnover and dunking it for the first points on the board. Oregon State refused to be deterred by this, though, sniping shots from beyond the arc to go up 12-7 by the first media time out. Fueled by its frontcourt in the first half, the Wolverines pulled ahead via multiple powerful runs. Junior center Moustapha Thiam stole the show early, lacing a behind-the-back pass through the paint in head-spinning fashion. He then dropped back behind the arc to shoot threes, sinking two before halftime. “If I stretch the floor, it’s gonna put the bigs in some tough positions, because staying in front of (senior guard Elliot Cadeau) is not easy,” Thiam said. “So when
I stretch the floor, I think it’s gonna help in the paint, and we’re just gonna get some layups and downs.” Thiam contributed to the widest lead of the game after a 12-0 run had Michigan up 37-25. Still, the Beavers worked to level the score. Going into the second half, they’d managed to cut down the deficit to just three points — and with the game narrowing down, both teams prepared to rough it out. By the second half, Oregon State went fully on the offensive to wrestle victory away from the Wolverines. Sinking two 3-pointers in three minutes, it gradually clawed its way forward on the back of guard Legend Smiley, shooting one of the aforementioned threes and continued his trend to keep things tight. By the final buzzer, he was 5-for-9 from the perimeter, with only one of his total shots coming from midrange. But Cadeau was ready in the second half as well. Cadeau had just one point in the first half, and after foul trouble sidelined him for a worrisome chunk of time, he was raring to go when he came back out. While he wasn’t ripping it from behind the arc, he worked to draw fouls every chance he got. Leaving the charity stripe with 12 total points, he went off to drop 26 more total points in the second half. He didn’t eat all the scraps though, playing his
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role as the engine with eight total assists to go with his deadly aim. “I think our balance between threes and twos is a good one, especially since we have a lot of talented shooters,” Cadeau said. “When we’re shooting these shots, on a good day, we’ll probably
be able to beat any team in the country.” With just over 10 minutes remaining and the game tied at 63-63, both teams fought tooth and nail to get ahead. The slugfest kept rolling as Cadeau, alongside sophomore guard
Trey McKenney, dueled with the Beavers’ wings. Both backcourts felt automatic, but finally, Oregon State began slipping. The Beavers had 17 turnovers by the end, and Michigan didn’t shy away from capitalizing on them. Cadeau moved up to the midrange
with his jumpers, and Thiam drew fouls while protecting him, giving the Wolverines an 87-81 lead in the game’s final minutes. With its lethality showing itself, Michigan never looked back, holding onto that precious lead when it mattered most.
12 — Wednesday, October 21, 2026
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com