SPORTS
» PAGE 4A
FOOTBALL SEATING: The controversial general admission policy has been jettisoned in favor of a revised attendance-based system.
ONE-HUNDRED-TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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ACADEMICS
Students draft race & ethnicity proposals After meetings with administration, group works to change curriculum
LILY ANGELL/Daily
History Prof. Victor Lieberman was surprised with the Golden Apple Award during his lecture on the Arab-Israeli Conflict Tuesday.
History prof. wins award Student-driven Golden Apple award given to Victor Lieberman
By STEPHANIE SHENOUDA Daily News Editor
It was business as usual in History Prof. Victor Lieberman’s Arab-Israeli Conflict
lecture on Tuesday afternoon until an unfamiliar face asked if he liked apples. Though the question was more than a bit out of place, the answer soon came when a parade of students entered the auditorium carrying flowers, maize and blue balloons and 24 gold-painted apples, to congratulate Lieberman on winning the 2014 Golden Apple Award, which recognizes excellence in teaching. Lieberman was selected
based on nominations from students, faculty and alumni who felt his commitment to teaching was impactful on their experience at the University. Along with the distinction of being a Golden Apple Award winner, Lieberman will have the opportunity to address students and colleagues at the Golden Apple Award Ceremony on April 2 at Rackham Auditorium at 6 p.m. Dubbed “The Last Lecture,” it is an invitation to deviate from his
By HILLARY CRAWFORD Daily Staff Reporter
Mark’s Carts, a food cart courtyard located on Washington Street on April 14, will welcome a new food cart called Simply Spanish. The new food cart will join three other carts, which serve Mexican, Indian and Asian street food, and will specialize in serving a variety of traditional, authentic tapas. Xavi Vitta, the owner and vendor of the new cart, is originally from Spain. After arriving in the United States in June, Vitta recognized that authentic Spanish cuisine tended to be served in more formal restaurant settings. He wanted to share his Spanish culture with Ann Arbor residents in a more accessible venue, one that reminded him of home. “Authentic Spanish food is simple; the concept of a cart is also simple and the cost is lower,” Vitta said. “My goal is to share Spanish culture based on food.”
As the #BBUM movement gained traction at the University and attention across the nation, one student began working behind the scenes to tackle diversity from inside the classroom. Public Policy junior Carly Manes, an LSA representative on the CSG Assembly and current CSG presidential candidate for FORUM, has met with University administrators since October to reform LSA’s Race and Ethnicity requirement, gathering a coalition of student activists along the way to promote the cause.
B R I TA I N ’ S B I T E S
Mark’s Carts to welcome new Spanish cuisine Tapas are small Spanish appetizers, oftentimes paired with beer or wine. Since January, the Simply Spanish Facebook page has been posting updates as well as photos and descriptions of potential menu items and traditional Spanish dishes. Vitta said the menu items are based on dishes he grew up with as a child. He plans to include 10 to 12 varieties of tapas on the cart’s menu. In addition he plans to offer paella — a traditional rice dish from Valencia — pinchos — small sandwiches — and two to three desserts. He will introduce specials as the season progresses. “The selection I will offer we ate at home or in the tascas of Spain,” Vitta wrote in an e-mail. “The cart is designed around the menu.” Vitta decided to pair tapas with a food cart concept not only to create a more comfortable atmosphere, but also to foster social interaction between customers. Traditionally, tapas are shared among a group of people often seated at bars, and constitute a more social style of eating. “Tapas are at the very heart of Spanish lifestyle and culture,” See CUISINE, Page 3A
Daily Staff Reporter
course material and speak as if it were his last time at the podium. After being confronted with the outpouring of gratitude, Lieberman appeared surprised and almost speechless. “I really enjoy teaching students and interacting with students, and it makes it that much more enjoyable that you enjoy it, too,” he said in an interview after the event. “I was really surprised, for sure, but I’m very See GOLDEN APPLE, Page 3A
BUSINESS
New cart inspired by food from the owner’s childhood
By MICHAEL SUGERMAN
The group met Tuesday night to draft an initial proposal for a new “identity requirement” — its official name is still in the works — which the group’s members will present to the LSA Curriculum Committee on March 18. The proposal is two-pronged: aiming to both expand the breadth of classes that satisfy the current R&E requirement as well as implement the component into the curriculum of all University colleges. “It would highlight and it would focus on intersectionality as the core component of the educational model,” Manes said. “So, insuring that intersectionality is highlighted in every class that counts for this new requirement.” According to Manes, intersectionality is meant to envelop a number of identity-based themes including sexuality, gender See CURRICULUM, Page 3A
GOVERNMENT
DNC begins project to up college voter registration Initiative is part of the party’s strategy for the midterms By ALLANA AKHTAR Daily Staff Reporter
TERESA MATHEW/Daily
A stall owner turns olives at an antipasta stand at the Portebello Road Market in Notting Hill. To see more photos of a photographer’s London adventures, SEE PAGE 8B OF THE STATMENT.
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
CSG unanimously votes to fund health program Michigan Health Aid awarded funds for free clinic By KRISTEN FEDOR Daily Staff Reporter
The Central Student Government unanimously passed a resolution to allocate funds
to Michigan Health Aid at Tuesday night’s meeting. The approved resolution will allocate $3,000 from the Legislative Discretionary Account to Michigan Health Aid for an upcoming free medical clinic to be held in September. Michigan Health Aid is an organization dedicated to helping improve the health of underprivileged residents of
Washtenaw County. Last September, Michigan Health Aid served 32 patients at its first free clinic in Ypsilanti, which CSG also contributed $3,000 to. Last year’s clinic provided free walk-in medical checkups. The upcoming clinic will follow a format similar to last year’s event but will be expandSee CSG, Page 3A
As Democratic strategists begin gearing up for midterm elections in the fall, they are again planning to make young voters a key component of their strategy. The Democratic National Committee held a conference call Tuesday for student newspaper reporters at colleges and universities to highlight its new Voter Expansion Project — an initiative aimed at increasing student voter turnout. The project was initiated by former President Bill Clinton last month. In a video message to DNC supporters, he explained how the project would work to counter voter identification laws and other provisions that restrict voting and voter registration. During the conference call, DNC Communications Director Mo Elleithee said one of the Democratic Party’s most imporSee VOTERS, Page 3A
to suffer in silence » SEE INSIDE
WEATHER TOMORROW
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Vol. CXXIV, No. 80 ©2014 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com
Examining the stigmas behind disordered eating
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News
2A — Wednesday, March 12, 2014
MONDAY: This Week in History
TUESDAY: Professor Profiles
CH E M CHAOS
LILY ANGELL/Daily
Shengzhuang Tang, a lab technician for Michigan’s Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences, works on a compound for a drug Tuesday.
WEDNESDAY: In Other Ivory Towers
THURSDAY: Alumni Profiles
FRIDAY: Photos of the Week
MONKEYING AROUND
Jane Goodall talks chimps at Iowa Jane Goodall, a renowned anthropologist, spoke to University of Iowa students about her research and the importance of following passions, The Daily Iowan reported Monday. Goodall is best known for her work studying the social behavior of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. A graduate of Cambridge University, she went on to be named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2004 and found the Jane Goodall Institute, an organization that funds research related to chimpanzee habitat protection. The talk was the largest
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event of the year sponsored by the university’s guest lecturer committee. Administrators had to change the venue to CarverHawkeye Arena to accommodate the thousands of students planning to attend. Goodall talked about her work with chimpanzees and her nonprofit organization devoted to sustainability. By coming to the university, she said she hopes to inspire young people to find what they are passionate about before graduating. “College students are about to go out in the world, and it’s the last chance to try to reach them if they haven’t already been reached,” Goodall said.
CAMPUS EVENTS & NOTES
The Ride
Gibbons case
BY MAX RADWIN
BY MATT SLOVIN
LGBTQ parent Medical school info session lecture
The Ride will move to the larger, relocated Blake Transit Center on March 17 in response to growing ridership, which has increased by more than 88 percent since the 1980s. In 2012, the city recorded a record number of riders at 6.6 million.
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, The Ann Arbor News learned that the University Office of Institutional Equity requested photographs in October 2013 from the police investigation of the Gibbons case.
WHAT: A panel will examine the legal and public policy issues surrounding the rights of LGBTQ parents. WHO: School of Social Work Office of Alumni Relations WHEN: 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. WHERE: School of Social Work Building
THE PODIUM
THE WIRE
THE WIRE
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
THE WIRE
Obamacare
Spring in A2
BY MICHAEL CASEY
BY STATEMENT STAFF
Casey observes the “messy” politics resulting from Obamacare. In his analysis, he acknowledges that there has been a decline in the number of U.S. citizens who are uninsured, but comes to the conclusion that this cannot be attributed to Obamacare.
The Statement Magazine explores the top five reasons to stay in Ann Arbor during spring term. Highlights include the summer festival scene, time to explore the town and easier classes. Read more from these blogs at michigandaily.com
“The Act of Killing” WHAT: See a screening of this Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature. WHO: Center for Southeast Asian Studies WHEN: 7 p.m. WHERE: The Michigan Theater
WHAT: Join experts for a “when, what and how” discussion for the medical school application process. WHO: The Career Center WHEN: 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. WHERE: The Student Activities Building CORRECTIONS l An article that appeared in the March 11 edition of The Michigan Daily, “CSG judiciary examines Engineering election issues” listed Andrew Weisberg, Brandon Barlog and Lukas Garske as “UMEC” justices. They are Central Student Judiciary justices. l Please report any error in the Daily to corrections@michigandaily.com.
Palestine banner removed from Barnard College building Barnard College administrators ordered Columbia University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to remove the banner they recently hung on the front of Barnard Hall displaying the words “Stand for Justice, Stand for Palestine” on Monday, the Columbia Spectator reported. The banner meant to advertise the student organization’s annual Israeli Apartheid Week, a movement designed to promote the voice of Palestinians calling for freedom from Israeli influence. — ALLANA AKHTAR
THREE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW TODAY
1
After a domestic dispute this weekend, a 31-yearold woman bit off her boyfriend’s ear, the New York Daily News reported. The Michigan woman allegedly began violently attacking her boyfriend after he entered their bedroom.
2
Disordered eating is prevalent on college campuses, but few are willing to talk about it. This week’s Statement takes a look at the silence and stigma that students who are suffering from disordered eating face. >> FOR MORE, SEE STATEMENT, 1B
3
Chimerix pharmacutical company has decided to give a seven-year-old boy a drug that could save his life, CNN reported. The company was initially hesitant because it might interfere with the drug’s official launch date.
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Libya’s western-backed prime minister ousted Move comes after struggle between Islamists and antiIslamist factions
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Libya’s parliament ousted Western-backed prime minister Ali Zidan in a Tuesday vote, removing the first democratically chosen leader who had struggled for 15 months to stem the country’s spiraling descent into chaos, with divisive political power struggles and rampant militias out of the control of the weak central government. The government has been paralyzed for months by the power struggle between Islamists in parliament trying to remove Zidan and antiIslamist political factions — each side backed by rival militias. Zidan’s removal came as another fault line in the coun-
try was rumbling — between the central government and the restive eastern half of the country, where many are demanding greater autonomy, with each side again backed by their own militias. On Tuesday, a powerful militia from the western city of Misrata clashed with a rival eastern militia outside the central city of Sirte in heavy fighting, on a drive to take control of the oil terminal of al-Sidra, further east along the coast. The eastern, pro-autonomy militia, headed by a commander named Ibrahim Jedran, has controlled al-Sidra and other oil facilities in the east for months in defiance of the central government, shutting down exports of the country’s biggest revenue earner. This week, Jedran’s militia sought for the first time to export oil itself, with a North Korean-flagged tanker docked at one of the ports it controls, al-Sidra.
Pro-government militias claimed Monday to have recaptured the tanker, a claim the militia holding the port denies. The status of the tanker has not been independently confirmed, but officials in the capital Tripoli have vowed to rally their forces to retake not only al-Sidra, but also the other facilities held by Jedran’s fighters — a move that could spark wider fighting with the east. A group of pro-autonomy leaders of eastern tribes issued a statement Tuesday warning that the clashes and the drive to take back the oil facilities could push them to increase their demands to “separation” for the eastern region, known as Barqa. “We are not responsible for any repercussions,” they warned, saying they support Jedran’s forces and its bid to sell the oil. From the other camp, Col. Hassan Shaka claimed his forces had taken Sirte and told the LANA news agency his fighters would continue east to retake the oil terminals. Zidan has appeared particularly helpless in recent days in trying to deal with the crisis over the oil tanker. He confessed to reporters on Saturday that the nation’s military does not carry out his orders and complained that “everyone is working against the government.” After the “no” vote carried Tuesday vote of confidence, parliament named the defense minister, Abdullah al-Thinni, as interim prime minister until a replacement for Zidan is found. Zidan was Libya’s first prime minister chosen by an elected parliament after the 2011 revolt that removed and killed longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi. Gadhafi’s 42-year rule left Libya with no strong state institutions. Zidan has presided over a government that has little authority and is frequently subjected to humiliations.
MAYA ALLERUZZO/AP
Syrian women wait with their children at the U.N. refugee agency’s registration center in Zahleh, Lebanon.
Conflict in Syria continues to affect millions of children UNICEF report draws attention to worsening plight BEIRUT (AP) — The number of Syrian children affected by the civil war in their homeland has doubled in the past year to at least 5.5 million — more than half the country’s children — with devastating effects on the health, education and psychological well-being of an entire generation, the United Nations children’s agency said Tuesday. The conflict, which enters its fourth year this month, has unleashed massive suffering across all segments of Syrian society, but the impact on children has been especially acute, according to a new report by UNICEF. Malnutrition and illness have stunted their growth; a lack of learning opportunities has derailed their education; and the bloody trauma of war has left deep psychological scars. “After three years of conflict and turmoil, Syria is now one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a child,” the agency said. “In their thousands, children have lost lives and limbs, along with virtually every aspect of their childhood. They have lost classrooms and teachers, brothers and sisters, friends, caregivers, homes and stability.”
“Millions of young people risk becoming, in effect, a lost generation,” UNICEF said. Since the conflict began, thousands of videos and photographs of bloodied babies, lifeless children and bombed out schools in Syria have provided stark images of the war’s impact on children. But in many ways, figures provide perhaps the clearest indication of how sweeping an effect the conflict has on their lives. UNICEF said that more than 10,000 children have been killed in the violence, which would translate into the highest casualty rates recorded in any recent conflict in the region. Of those who have survived, thousands have been wounded, lost their home and schools, and seen family members and friends killed. That trauma has left around 2 million children in need of psychological support or treatment, the agency said. Almost 3 million children are displaced inside Syria, while another 1.2 million have fled the country and now live as refugees in camps and overwhelmed neighboring communities where clean water, food and other basic items are scarce. On the education front, UNICEF said that nearly half of Syria’s school-age children — 2.8 million and counting — cannot get an education because of the devastation and violence.
More than 2 million of those who should be in classes remain within Syria’s borders, as education and health services collapse and classrooms are bombed or used as shelters and military barracks. Another 300,000 Syrian children are out of school in Lebanon, along with some 93,000 in Jordan, 78,000 in Turkey, 26,000 in Iraq and 4,000 in Egypt, agency officials said in Geneva. Many are forced to grow up fast: One in 10 refugee children is now working, the agency estimates, while one in five Syrian girls in Jordan is forced into early marriage. Inside Syria, boys as young as 12 have been recruited to help the rebels, some as fighters and others in a support role, the U.N. report said. Syria’s conflict began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests against President Bashar Assad. Facing a brutal government crackdown, protesters eventually took up arms and the country descended into a civil war. has killed more than 140,000 people so far. On the ground, meanwhile, the fighting has shown no sign of slowing down. On Tuesday, three suicide bombers blew themselves up in a local administration building in the Kurdish town of Qamishli in northeast Syria, killing at least five people, state media and a Kurdish official said.
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NEWS BRIEFS
GOLDEN APPLE From Page 1A
DETROIT
General Motors addresses recalls General Motors’ executives and government regulators will soon have to explain to Congress why it took years to recall 1.6 million compact cars with a known defect linked to 13 deaths. And the Justice Department is investigating whether GM broke any laws with its slow response, according to a person briefed on the matter. Members of two congressional committees will likely ask why a proposed fix to the problem was never implemented and why GM didn’t immediately tell car owners about the defect. Here’s a look at the developments so far in the recall and what’s ahead.
FORT BRAGG, N.C.
Army general tried for sexual assault The trial of an Army general accused of sexual assault moved into uncharted legal territory Tuesday when the judge dismissed the jury to allow the defense time to hammer out a new plea deal with the military. While the highly unusual decision gives Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair a second chance to negotiate the dismissal of the most serious charges, he appears certain to face an inglorious end to a nearly 30-year career spanning service in three wars. His lawyers said it could take weeks to finalize an agreement. Experts in military law said Judge Col. James Pohl is seeking a just and innovative solution for a courtroom situation that doesn’t fit prior case law.
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine
Disputes over annexation persist As the campaign increased for tension-filled Crimea to split off from Ukraine in a weekend referendum and join Russia, the region’s parliament said Tuesday that if voters approve the move it would first declare itself an independent state, a maneuver that could de-escalate the standoff between Moscow and the West. The move would give Moscow the option of saying there is no need for Crimea to become part of Russia while keeping it firmly within its sphere of influence. The dispute between Moscow and the West over Crimea is one of the most severe geopolitical crises in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Russian forces have secured control over the peninsula, but Ukraine’s government and Western nations have denounced the referendum as illegitimate and strongly warned Russia against trying to annex Crimea.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
Missing Malaysian jet changed course The missing Boeing 777 jetliner changed course over the sea, crossed Malaysia and reached the Strait of Malacca — hundreds of miles from its last position recorded by civilian authorities, Malaysian military officials said Tuesday, citing military radar data. The development added confusion and mystery into one of most puzzling aviation incidents of recent time, and it has raised questions about why the Malaysia Airlines flight apparently was not transmitting signals detectable by civilian radar, why its crew was silent about the course change and why no distress calls were sent after it turned back. Many experts have been working on the assumption there was a catastrophic event on the flight — such as an explosion, engine failure, terrorist attack, extreme turbulence, pilot error or even suicide. The director of the CIA said in Washington that he still would not rule out terrorism. —Compiled from Daily wire reports
grateful. It makes a lot of the hard work worthwhile and further stimulates my interest in teaching.” Though Lieberman teaches a class about the Arab-Israeli conflict, his specialty is Southeast Asian history. Lieberman said he is unsure if he will deliver a lecture regarding his own research or one related to the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Business senior Jake Levey, Golden Apple co-president, said the committee had taken measures throughout the year to increase student awareness of the award. Their efforts resulted
CUISINE From Page 1A Vitta said. “Tapas mean sociability, friends and family.” After the new business is
CSG From Page 1A ed to include internal medicine, dental, pediatrics, gynecology, psychology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, gastroenterology, urology and podiatry. Several patients in the past received serious diagnoses as a result of the checkups, allowing for preventative care. High blood pressure related to diabetes and suicidal thoughts were among the cases discovered. Business senior Matthew Fernandez, finance chairman of Michigan Health Aid, said the clinics help bring attention to health concerns of patients who otherwise would have gone unattended.
VOTERS From Page 1A tant ideals is making voting accessible to all American citizens. “To have a stronger country and a stronger party, our country does better and our party does better when more people’s voices are heard,” Elleithee said. He went on to chastise the Republican Party for what he said was their insistence on restricting voter behavior. He said the Republican Party recognizes that they almost always have a disadvantage when it comes to the popular vote and therefore attempt to restrict voter turn out. “Their recourse is to actually try to limit participation by making it harder to vote. Any group that tends to vote against them, they throw out obstacles — whether it be African Americans, whether it be Latinas, whether it’s women, whether it’s young people or college students.” A representative from the University’s chapter of the College Republicans was unavailable for
News in more than 600 nominations, a record high inthe award’s 24-year existence. After reading every nomination, the committee narrowed the pool down to 10 professors before choosing Lieberman. Many of Lieberman’s nominations were several paragraphs long and recounted qualities such as his ability to “teach a difficult subject to a sometimes difficult audience” and remain unbiased, allowing students to objectively form an opinion regarding the topic for themselves. LSA senior Amalia Zimmerman, Golden Apple co-chair, is currently in Lieberman’s Arab-Israeli Conf lict class, and said she relates to the
views expressed in the nominations. “As a Jew growing up with a lot of knowledge of the Israeli side of things … it was really eye-opening to see things from another unbiased perspective,” Zimmerman said. “People of all backgrounds come together and they’re all passionate to learn because he’s passionate about teaching.” Levey said while the large number of nominations made it difficult to choose a winner, he is glad students demonstrated a passion for their teachers, and is happy to see the Golden Apple Award becoming a vessel through which to honor them and show what getting a University education is about.
up and running, Vitta hopes to expand his reach to eventually serve the wider Ann Arbor community. However, the food cart may face competition in its vicinity. Aventura, a more formal Span-
ish restaurant also specializing in tapas, is located at 216 E. Washington Street. Sava Lelcaj, owner of Sava’s and of Babo Market, both located near campus, opened the restaurant in November.
“We can give them the help and advice they need,” he said. “If it’s something that requires immediate medical attention, at least we’re there to be able to bring them to a hospital.” LSA junior Annie Pidgeon, representative and co-author of the resolution, said the passing of the resolution is important as CSG is the main source of funding for the clinic. Fernandez added that Michigan Health Aid hopes to increase funding from businesses and other outside donors this year and into the future. He said as the organization expands, it will be easier to get funding from sources other than CSG. “Now it will be much easier, once we’ve gained the trust of the community, to get more
funding, to have more patients, to have more doctors,” he said. Fernandez said the clinic will be a way for the student body to make a difference beyond campus. “The student body has a lot of potential to make an impact in people’s lives, and if you have the opportunity to do so, you should do whatever you can,” Fernandez said. Pidgeon said students often forget that Ann Arbor goes on outside the campus community, adding that upcoming clinic is an important way to give back to Ann Arbor. “In helping everyone around us, we end up helping ourselves as well, because it’s a stronger community and it’s a healthier community,” she said.
comment Tuesday evening. Pratt Wiley, DNC director of voter protection and another moderator on the conference call, cited the recent North Carolina voter law passed by a Republican legislature that prevents college students from using their school IDs as identification at the polls. He added that voter turnout — especially among young people — is vital for a thriving democracy. “If there’s one thing more so than anything else that I want you all to take away is that it should be easy to vote,” Wiley said. “If you have any questions we can answer your questions, but no one should ever deny you your voice and your right to be heard.” In recent elections, young people have been an important part of the Democratic Party’s coalition. In 2012, 60 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 voted for President Barack Obama. However, a Harvard Institute of Politics survey released in December found that more than 50 percent of polled young people between the ages of 18 and 29 disapproved of Obama’s
handling of key issues during his second term. In a December conference call with Reuters, Trey Grayson, director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, said the survey illustrates Obama’s declining support among young voters. “This isn’t a problem for Obama because he’s not coming up for election again,” Grayson said. “But it is a potential problem for any Democratic candidate seeking to mobilize young Americans.” State Rep. Jeff Irwin (D–Ann Arbor) said it’s crucial for young people to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. “Going into the election year and the president isn’t on the ballot, this is usually the year we see a high level of drop-off particularly from younger voters,” Irwin said. “As Democrats stand for more of the values younger people hold it’s important to get the voters out and let those voters know that their ideas and values are at stake even when the president isn’t on the ballot.”
Haitians file lawsuit over deadly cholera outbreak Disease resulted in death of more than 8,000 people NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly 1,500 Haitians filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking compensation from the United Nations for victims of a cholera outbreak that health officials say has killed more than 8,000 people and sickened over 600,000 in the impoverished Caribbean nation. Scientific studies have shown that cholera was likely introduced in Haiti by U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal, where the disease is endemic. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rejected a previous claim for compensation for cholera victims, citing diplomatic immunity, but announced a $2.27 billion initiative to help eradicate cholera in Haiti in December 2012. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court seeks compensations for deaths and
illnesses and funding for clean water in Haiti, which was devastated by a 2010 earthquake. The suit includes documents which the plaintiffs say clearly show that the U.N. waived its immunity. It asks the court to declare that the U.N. has no immunity. The documents include the U.N.’s 2004 agreement on the status of U.N. forces in Haiti which is quoted as saying that third-party claims for personal injury, illness or death “arising from or directly attributed to” the agreement “shall be settled by the United Nations ... and the United Nations shall pay compensation...” The suit also cites a document stating that the U.N. General Assembly assumes “liability for damage caused by members of its forces in the performance of their duties.” It says this document was adopted several times by the 193-member world body, and by the U.N. Security Council, as the official policy of the organization. U.N. spokesman Stephane
Dujarric refused to comment on the lawsuit or the issue of immunity saying: “We’re not going to comment on any ongoing litigation concerning Haiti. The legal issues are the legal issues, and in parallel we continue to work with the government of Haiti on the issue of cholera eradication.” Human rights groups filed a similar lawsuit in Manhattan federal court in October blaming the United Nations for the cholera outbreak and seeking compensation for victims. It sought class-action status to pursue relief for all victims of the disease, which it said the U.N. spread by contaminating Haiti’s principal river with cholera-infected human waste beginning in October 2010. U.S. State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said Friday that the U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement to the Manhattan court saying the U.N., its peacekeeping force, the secretary-general and the U.N. peacekeeping chief “are immune from suit ... in this case.”
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 — 3A
CURRICULUM From Page 1A expression, religion, documentation status and race. This type of broad connection to modern issues is something that Business and LSA senior Sagar Lathia, LSA Student Government president, said is lacking from the current R&E requirement. He added that many students see R&E classes as nothing more than a requirement, rather than as a valuable facet of their learning experience. He said LSA-SG executives have worked for months with the LSA Executive Committee — comprised of all the school’s associate deans and numerous faculty members — to confront issues on an administrative level. Currently, the LSA Curriculum Committee, which is responsible for approving all changes to the undergraduate college curriculum, leaves class certification to professors, Lathia said. “One of the negative consequences of this is that there is a kind of disparity in classes that have the distribution versus those that don’t, but cover issues in a similar lens,” he said. This disparity is one that Public Policy senior Donavan McKinney, a member of Manes’ student coalition, said frustrates students of all disciplines. As a sophomore, McKinney took Political Science 324: AfricanAmerican Politics and was surprised to learn that the class did not satisfy his R&E requirement. “It wasn’t labeled R&E, but all we did was talk about race and ethnicity problems, and the barriers Black people have to face in order to get to elected office,” he said. “There are a lot of people who are just really frustrated and really want to see classes they have taken that touch on the issues of race and ethnicity to be labeled as such.” McKinney said the coalition’s vision is to eradicate this frustration by reevaluating the criteria of classes that fulfill the R&E requirement. Lathia said it is necessary to put the responsibility of class certification and distribution in the hands of students. He said this change would allow the people taking classes to help develop requirements and a well-liked curriculum. He added that student input could allow R&E-type classes to be tailored toward majors of all kinds, rather than just those pertaining to the humanities. He added that as an Economics major, he thought it would be pertinent to have a course that examines poverty, inequality and labor through the scope of race and ethnicity. This kind of customization is what Manes is striving to enact.
She and members of her coalition have met with deans from multiple colleges, including the Ross School of Business and the College of Engineering. Business senior Shayla Scales, a member of the Black Student Union, has been one of the leading advocates of curriculum reform at the business school. She said intersectionality is key for business students and is working to develop either diversity-focused seminars or a Management and Organizations course concentrated on race and ethnicity. She is also working to have more corporate organizations visit and speak to Ross students about diversity in the workplace. “I truly believe innovation lies in the crevices of diversity,” Scales said. “Making sure that we incorporate diversity in all of our thinking and the way that we see the world will only lead to innovation.” While changing curricula across all of the University’s colleges is an important step toward modernizing the campus climate, McKinney said the additions would also require frequent reevaluation. Currently, a class that is certified to satisfy the R&E requirement is reexamined every five years, which he said is not frequent enough. “Times have changed,” McKinney said. “Things change every single day. We think that it should be at least a two- to three-year process where classes can be evaluated, and looked at to see if they fit the criteria of R&E.” Manes added that this process would be easier if the R&E requirement were expanded to “identity,” a more encompassing term that could also include Intergroup Relations courses. “People come to Michigan with all different experiences, all different communities, and we want to ensure that people have the opportunity to expose themselves to a new set of ideas,” she said. “It is critical to have that kind of education to ensure that we are bettering ourselves as students, bettering our campus climate, and being better people when we go out into the workplace.” While Lathia, who has also been working to implement this reform, is encouraged by Manes’ goals and initiative, he said everyone involved must keep the process in perspective. “It’s a really tough issue bureaucratically to change such an inner process, because if you think about it, a change in distribution requirement for R&E may trickle down and change all distribution requirements,” he said. “This isn’t something that I think can be changed in one or two meetings. It’s something so core to the College of LSA that it’s gonna take some time to get a compromise.”
ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Come to
420 MAYNARD on
FRIDAY, MARCH 14
to engage in a panel discussion about its importance on campus.
Opinion
4A — Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com PETER SHAHIN EDITOR IN CHIEF
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Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
FROM THE DAILY
Opening closed doors
O
University decisions should be made in the public sphere
n Feb. 18, the Michigan House of Representatives Oversight Committee held a legislative hearing on the University’s Board of Regents’ compliance with the Michigan Open Meetings Act of 1976. Herschel Fink, general counsel to The Detroit Free Press and several other Gannett Media organizations, called the regents “serial abusers of the Open Meetings Act,” and cited the University’s largely private selection of University President-elect Mark Schlissel as a primary example. He also called for a constitutional amendment that would expand the purview of government transparency laws. Going forward, the University should support any amendment that expands the public’s role in University decision-making. While public universities are allowed a greater degree of autonomy than most other governmental bodies under the state Constitution, they are still bound by the Open Meetings Act. The application of the act to universities is somewhat unclear and has been largely decided in Michigan’s courts. In selecting a public university president, the act requires that the students, faculty and members of the public serve on a selection committee, and that the final five candidates be announced. However, in Federated Publications, Inc. v. Michigan State University Board of Trustees, the State Supreme Court ruled that university presidential searches do not need to be public unless they’re done at a public meeting. The regents are able to skirt general transparency requirements by designating meetings as a status other than public. A state constitutional amendment is necessary to eliminate this loophole and promote a culture of accountability. As elected public servants, the regents are accountable to the people they serve. At these official public meetings, the only practical option for members of the public to be heard is during a public comment segment at the end of the meetings, in which speakers sign up ahead of time and have five minutes to discuss their topic of choice. Closed-door discussion
among the regents prior to the public meetings renders them “perfunctory,” according to Fink. The Board of Regents has a history of abusing the guidelines set up by the Open Meetings Act. In 2010, the regents were sued by University alum Robert Davis for not holding a public meeting to discuss an NCAA investigation into the University’s football program. The University settled the matter out of court, but reportedly paid $5,380 in legal fees to Davis. However, the settlement was not an admission of guilt by the University. It is alarming that the University is flaunting the spirit of the act so soon after the lawsuit. By not including students and the public in important decisions and on the presidential search committee, the University has again failed to respect our right to governmental oversight. Furthermore, the public — especially students and faculty — should be given more say in University decisions. While discourse is allowed at the public meetings, there is very little debate, discussion or disagreement, as most proposals are already discussed and settled behind closed doors. The Board of Regents and all University governing bodies need to be held accountable and incorporate more public oversight into their decisionmaking process.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Barry Belmont, Nivedita Karki, Jacob Karafa, Jordyn Kay, Kellie Halushka, Aarica Marsh, Megan McDonald, Victoria Noble, Michael Schramm, Matthew Seligman, Paul Sherman, Allison Raeck, Linh Vu, Daniel Wang, Derek Wolfe JESSE SELVIN, C.J. BIGGS AND JULIANA ROTH | VIEWPOINT
Prioritizing clean energy at the ‘U’ After a string of stunning home-court performances, the Wolverines sit atop the Big Ten basketball standings. On the heels of these last few spectacular seasons with Michigan Coach John Beilein, the University has truly reestablished itself as an elite program in college basketball. After all, we are the “Leaders and Best,” and we should feel proud for this accomplishment. But, are we always the leaders and best? When it comes to the administration’s renewable energy policy, we are actually far from the top. The University of Michigan’s energy portfolio, which mostly derives from DTE’s coal-powered grid, is frankly abysmal. We’re left to wonder: where has our competitive spirit gone? Ranked against the other Big Ten schools, Michigan falls far behind the pack. One of our closest competitors, Michigan State, is currently at 8 percent renewable energy with a goal to reach 15 percent by 2015, increasing to 40 percent by 2030. Ohio State’s electricity portfolio is 23 percent wind energy. Northwestern recently climbed to 37 percent. Michigan, on the other hand, receives less than 4 percent of its energy from renewables and has completely unsatisfactory renewable energy goals. Granted, the University does have a goal to reduce 25 percent of its carbon emissions by 2025. This step, however, is a far cry from a comprehensive renewable energy policy and seems paltry when compared to the other efforts underway throughout all of the Big Ten, let alone the nation’s leading universities. Students for Clean Energy, a group dedicated to persuading Michigan to make the switch to renewable energy, thinks we can match — if not exceed — Michigan State’s goal, at the very least. Since the launch of Planet Blue, a student sustainability initiative on campus, the administration’s commitment to renewable
energy has stagnated. Students are left to wonder why the administration has not committed to increased renewable energy investment when seemingly every other Big Ten school has. SfCE met with several times in the Fall 2012 term to talk about the importance of a clean energy portfolio for meeting their emissions goal, which cannot be met by efficiency standards alone. It was told the University had no interest in setting such a goal. So, SfCE tried to get the University’s attention by helping the Divest and Invest Campaign successfully raise student awareness concerning renewables. Still, nothing. The fact of the matter is the University will continue to be a hypocrite concerning sustainability and renewable energy until it makes an actually significant step. We can start by buying Renewable Energy Credits from DTE, like Northwestern does, or sign a long-term renewable energy contract like Ohio State, a power purchasing agreement, saving the school one million dollars per year. These are easy transitions to make and could lead to the University saving a lot of money. Nevertheless, as of yet the University is still refusing to take such a step. The University is failing to see that its students are vehemently passionate about committing to clean energy. That’s why Students for Clean Energy is launching a new campaign to make Michigan’s energy portfolio more renewable than its Big Ten peers, especially OSU and MSU. If we want our University to live up to its own standard of excellence, we need to strive for that in everything — especially renewable energy. Until the administration makes that change, we won’t really be the “Leaders and Best.” Jesse Selvin is an LSA junior, C.J. Biggs is an LSA sophomore and Juliana Roth is an junior.
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Welcoming our digital fate
s an engineer, I spend a lot of time thinking about the digital future. I get excited and sometimes a little emotional about robots. I frequently scan a variety of Twitter feeds and websites for updates like “NASA wants your code to hunt JULIA asteroids” and ZARINA “scientists take steps toward fusion energy, but you can’t use it to power your DeLorean just yet.” When I go home to D.C., I make a ritual trip to the Air and Space Museum to ask the staff all the questions about space systems and satellites I’ve accumulated over the past semester to which Google has not returned satisfactory answers. As a person, I spend a lot of time thinking about my love-hate relationship with the digital present. I periodically delete my Facebook in what is usually a misguided effort to see the people I care about more in “real life” and less through a screen. I don’t text very much. Twitter is a weakness I hate to love and love to hate, but I overuse it shamelessly as a testing ground for bad jokes and as a quick news resource. I Snapchat. I Instagram. I occasionally use Tumblr and Tinder — but view my presence on those sites as the clearest indicator that an Internet intervention is warranted. I curate my digital life fairly carefully — not only because being a college student comes with endless reminders that your future employers are apparently hunched over a computer in a darkened room as we speak, scouring every detail of your personal life online — but because as much as I hate to admit it, I care about the way I present myself through what I post. I don’t think anyone would find that statement particularly surprising. Our generation has been partially living, or at least existing, online almost since we were born. For better or worse, we are defining a digital existence to be almost as important and meaningful as an existence in the physical world. There is very little in our lives that is not affected by technology: from our education, to our entertainment, to our personal relationships. We date online and identify with movies
where a man falls in love with an operating system. Our friends live in other cities in person but live in our phones in spirit. A vast and growing expanse of information is collected about us daily: what we buy at the grocery store, what we tweet about, where we travel, even who we call and what we talk about, depending on how interesting the NSA finds us. The future of our digital existence will be defined by what we do with this data: how we process it into information, how we interpret it and use it to shape our lives both online and offline. Big data is a ubiquitous buzzword in business, research and government. It describes the massive volume, velocity and variety of data that is collected daily to track trends, target customers and identify processes. In 2012, the amount of this data stored exceeded 2.8 Zettabytes and is expected to be nearly 50 times that by 2020. The cumulative size of the centers needed to store all of this data would fill a two-lane highway stretching from Tokyo to San Francisco. The challenge now is not gathering the data, but making sense from the noise. Only 0.5 percent of the data currently collected is processed, tagged and catalogued into what we can consider useful information. Here at the University of Michigan, researchers in the EECS Department explore areas like machine learning — the technology behind what makes your e-mail recognize spam as spam and messages from your boss as important, for example — and robotics to design systems that make information processing and decision-making easier. In the corporate world, IBM is spearheading an initiative to put Watson, their Jeopardy-winning “cognitive system,” to work in practical applications. Humans are inherently limited in the amount of parallel processing we can do and the amount of information we can memorize. Both scientists and CEOs are trying to answer questions about the limitations of people and machines alike. Will the doctors, teachers and bankers of the future be computers, or are there certain, invaluable human characteristics that can never be programmed or executed by code? In “A Super Sad True Love Story,” a novel by Gary Shteyngart, the not so distant future is portrayed as a blurring of the lines between data
and life. People walk the streets with their real life stats displayed for strangers to interpret and corporations to target. Billboards change as they pass to show the exact brand and product they are most likely to buy. Strangers in a bar decide who to talk to based on the digital broadcasting of their interests and others’ ratings. Privacy is not only obsolete, but irrelevant. It’s a distinctly invasive existence, albeit a very efficient one. Objectively, I think I’d like to know my own stats: how many pizzas I’ve consumed in my lifetime, how many people think I’m insufferably obnoxious, whether that man at the coffee shop lists Ayn Rand as one of his favorite authors, thereby indicating that I should resolutely not bother gathering up the courage to ask him to dinner. Having all this data compiled and processed would take so much of the uncertainty and guesswork out of life. I wonder if I would be happier or just plain bored. Recently in an interview with The Guardian titled “Are the robots about to rise?” Ray Kurzweil, Google’s new director of engineering, expressed his beliefs that the data processing capabilities of artificial intelligence will overtake human intelligence in every capacity in the near future and that computers will gain what he describes as something a lot like our concept of consciousness. Many people dismiss these predictions as improbable — computers still struggle with many of the things that define us as distinctly human such as semantics, humor and emotions — but reality is not far off. Human behavior is still easily distinguishable from that of computers, but life and technology are converging in medicine, business, relationships and nearly every other aspect of our society. We have not thus far drawn a line in the sand that we are unwilling to cross. Will we ever, or do we value the imperfections and inefficiencies of the human experience too much? Is there anything that humans can do that computers will never be able to do better? Is there anything that makes us distinctly different? Does it even matter? The future is here and the possibilities are ready to be shaped into reality. I, for one, welcome the robots with open arms. — Julia Zarina can be reached at jumilton@umich.edu.
JACOB KORNFELD | VIEWPOINT
Standing up for my future
Not long ago, the weekend of March 1, I got arrested. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. I went peacefully, telling the arresting officer my name and waiting while he secured my hands behind my back with plastic, zip-tie handcuffs. He led me to a line where I was told to remember my number, “three thirty-two.” I was the 332nd person arrested in front of the White House last Sunday in an act of peaceful civil disobedience to object to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Alberta down to the Gulf Coast. My day of protest began more than eight hours earlier in Georgetown University’s Red Square. I joined over 1,000 students from across the country and began a march to the White House in an event we called XL Dissent. We wanted to make it as clear as possible to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, upon whose shoulders the Keystone XL permit rests, that we do not want this pipeline. This pipeline is not in our national interest. Moreover, this pipeline is not in the interest of the people of color and the impoverished people it would disproportionately affect. We are willing to lay our future on the line to stop this pipeline. We thronged through the streets of Georgetown, leaving a black, shining tarp on the steps of John Kerry’s house with the message, “Don’t tar your legacy, stop KXL.” From there we marched the rest of the two miles through downtown D.C. to Lafayette Square, directly across the street from the White House. Here we were addressed by a series of speakers attesting to the destructive potential of the Keystone XL pipeline. One of the speakers was Chris Wahmhoff, a Michigan resident from Kalamazoo, who held his fist high in the air, displaying a chunk of solidified tar sands oil he had pulled out of the Kalamazoo River. It was left over from a pipeline similar to KXL that ruptured and polluted the
river four years ago. The damage from the spill can still be seen today, even after a multi-milliondollar clean up. He was followed by Jasmine Thomas, who spoke of the impact tar sands would have on the water resources of her Saik’uz First Nation’s land in British Columbia. Next, a university student stood up and reminded everyone of Obama’s promises to protect the environment and our future. I poured hours into volunteering for the Obama campaign and enthusiastically casted my vote for him in the last election. If he allows this pipeline he will no longer be a symbol of hope and positive change to me, but instead one of betrayal, broken trust and a bleak future. Finally, a call to action was given, and our protest escalated. Hundreds of students, some brandishing zip ties, others clad in oil-covered hazmat suits and one in a Captain Planet costume, rushed across the street to set up camp in Obama’s front yard. A 40-foot by 60-foot black tarp was rolled out across the sidewalk and street to symbolize an oil spill, and protestors flung their bodies down on it to represent the deaths Keystone XL would bring through its impacts on public health, including increased incidence of asthma and cancer. Others, myself included, found a spot along the iron fence surrounding the White House and fastened our wrists to the metal. While the police secured the area and read us procedural warnings, we chanted for climate justice and called for Obama to reject the pipeline. Two hours later, they declared that we were all under arrest and began to handcuff people. At this point, the cheering and singing only got louder. As I watched the police load my peers into paddy wagons, I was sure we were doing the right thing. Even as students preparing to enter the workforce, the Keystone pipeline poses a far greater threat to our future than an arrest on our permanent record. At the end of the day, 398 of
us were arrested. Our reasons were manifold. Some had at the front of their mind the impact a Keystone spill could have on the massive aquifer that provides water for cropland in the Midwest. Many were standing up for the communities like Port Arthur, Texas, where people of color would be disproportionately put at risk for cancer as a consequence of the emissions from the refineries. Some people thought of the land they were bullied into giving up across the Midwest. Others did it to stop the effect such an operation would have on the climate. I did it with the symbolic potential of Keystone XL in mind. If Obama rejects the permit it will send the message that America can still be a leader on environmental issues. That we can, and will, take the necessary steps to combat climate change, to fight pollution and to build a clean energy future, regardless of what the fossil fuel industry has to say. I realize that my action was one taken from a place of privilege; I had the resources to risk getting arrested. I made the decision I felt was most appropriate in my circumstance, though I acknowledge it had its flaws. Our protest lacked the voices of the underprivileged, lacked the voices of the frontline communities and relied on the highly educated, who would likely feel the tar sands pipeline’s impact the least. Even so, I wanted to help in whatever capacity I could, so I joined XL Dissent. With this in mind, I was proud when after six hours in the cold rain, I was cut down from the fence and put into custody. I was proud that I took action for a cause I believe in. I was proud that our protest would be covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. And I was proud as I was taken away from the front steps of the White House in handcuffs, knowing Obama might finally hear my concern. Jacob Kornfeld is an LSA sophomore.
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
HEALTH AND FITNESS COLUMN
I
Learning to unplug
didn’t have your typical Spring Break this year. While thousands of people my age flocked to the South to sip on margaritas, bask in the sun and play hard, I was sipping on bottled water, basking in fluorescent lights and working hard … on myself. CARLY While it KEYES would’ve been far less emotionally and financially stressful — and arguably a whole lot more fun — to go to the South by Southwest festival while in Austin, I was there to attend a four-day workshop called “The Inner Journey.” When I shared my plans with people close to me, a few of them inquired with concern: “Are you thinking about drinking?” I’m not thinking about drinking. I don’t need to drink too much in order to be miserable. All I need to do is think too much. Thinking can be a dangerous pastime for someone who has a mental disease. Addiction is baffling enough to those who haven’t experienced it for themselves, but I’m going to go ahead and toss in another integral yet confusing facet about the illness: Abstinence is merely a pre-requisite for the healing process. I’m an alcoholic, but my problem isn’t alcohol; my problem is me. The only reason I don’t also identify as a “drug addict” when I talk about my addiction is because I never used drugs. But had I snorted a line of cocaine, injected heroin, or taken pills during one of my booze-driven benders, I’d have been addicted. Guaranteed. I know I dodged a bullet there. Because I can’t have just one of anything, this is where that concept of abstinence gets confusing. There’s no such thing for me as one cookie, one piece of gum, one episode of House of Cards. Instead, I consume a bag of cookies, I chew a pack of gum, and I plow through Season Two in one sitting. These behaviors only worsened after getting sober because — without alcohol — they morphed into compensatory crutches. My life has been a lot like that arcade game “Whac-AMole.” I hit one addiction on the head, it recedes into its hole, and then another one pops up in its place. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I used this metaphor when I was asked to share my story recently at a recovery meeting in downtown Detroit, and I received a wonderful piece of feedback from a wise, seasoned man who’d been sober for years. “In the beginning, I played that game, too,” he said. “But I had to quit putting in the quarters, trying to win. I just had to unplug the game.” This notion pierced my thoughts, challenged my resolve, and it frightened me. “How free do you want to be?” The man asked me, rhetorically. I don’t want to just be substance-free. I’ll never rise above human, I realize, but I don’t want to justify my other harmful addictive tendencies with the excuse that I’m sober, and so, that’s
enough, and I’m entitled to this and that … because I’m sober. And so, down to Austin I went, and I spent four days learning how to unplug the game — how to unlearn what I have learned. Yoda would be proud. One of the copious tools I gained from this experience centers on the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza and a book he’s written called, “Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One.” While it sounds like your typical self-help read, it couldn’t be further from. In his book, Dispenza discusses quantum physics, neuroscience, brain chemistry, biology and genetics, and he combines these concepts with spiritual practices to illuminate the possibility for human beings to change their realities and alter their life trajectories. “Nerve cells that fire together, wire together,” Dispenza writes, citing the Hebbian theory that explains the brain’s neuroplastic capability. Essentially, we have the ability to rewire our brains through spiritual practice. Let me clarify what I mean when I say spiritual practice, because I don’t want to scare you away. I’m talking about meditation.
I can’t have just one of anything. I’m terrible at sitting still. I probably rearrange my position in my chair during a 90-minute class fifty times on average. I despise silence. I’m most comfortable jaunting about campus with my headphones on. But I’ve learned that life begins at the end of my comfort zone, so here I venture bravely into the land of discomfort … the land of change. I’m only three days into this meditation program that accompanies Dispenza’s book, which utilizes soothing, whimsical background music and his soft, encouraging voice — training wheels for those of you who also can’t stand silence. In the first week, the meditation lasts 24 minutes, and it climbs to 35 minutes in the second week, 48 minutes in the third week, and 70 minutes in the fourth week. Forget about 70 minutes. I can’t even comprehend that, yet. Twenty-four?! I have to sit still, to do nothing, for 24 minutes? I never realized how hard it is for me to shut down, to turn off my brain and to just be, surrender and trust in something. And I never could have anticipated the feeling that follows. Is this feeling peace? Is it serenity? Is it truth? I’m not sure what you’d call the product of meditation, but for me, it’s best defined by what it’s not. It’s the absence of what’s typically echoing throughout my mind. It’s the absence of anger. It’s the absence of fear. It’s the absence of pain, shame and guilt. And so I’ve realized that, for 24 minutes, I’ve unplugged the game. And next week, it’ll be 35. Keyes is looking for inner peace. To join her, e-mail cekmusic@umich.edu.
DAILY ARTS IS BASICALLY A “SO YOU THINK YOU CAN WRITE?” COMPETITION. PROVE YOURSELF. Email jplyn@umich.edu to request an application.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 — 5A
EVENT PREVIEW
‘U’ MFA Thesis Exhibitions to examine issues of identity Students to showcase their works spanning many mediums By COSMOS PAPPAS For the Daily
This week, the 2014 MFA Thesis Exhibitions in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design will begin its run School of through the Art and first week of April. Design “It’s one MFA of the highlights of the Thesis year for the Exhibitions School of Art and Design Various dates and for our Robbins, university Slusser and community,” Work galleries said Professor in Ann Arbor David Chung, director of Free the MFA program. This year, nine graduate students are exhibiting their work, with pieces ranging
from documentary film (Peter Leix’s “Muscatawingh - Plains Burnt Over”) to painting (Katie St. Clair’s Wayside) to live video projection and performance art crossovers (Ann Bartges’s Holding Still). Students from all areas of the visual arts display their work during this time, marking the end of a college career and, for many of the program’s soon-to-be graduates, the start of life as an artist. In fact, when asked why the program made the transition to being a two-year program from three, Chung said that many of the program’s students were artists who lived off the profits from their work prior to application. For many of these artists, three years is often an unmanageable amount of time away from the working world. They come to the program to refine their craft and learn how to navigate the more difficult world of institutional art including residencies, grant applications and exhibition proposals. The MFA program, whose alumni feature Guggenheim fellows and residents at some of the world’s most renowned
artistic institutions, provides disciplined instruction through experimentation with different visual media and subject matter. To crown this rigorous training in the program there are the annual thesis exhibitions. Comparing it to the accomplishment of an MFA in Creative Writing who finishes a book or a collection of shortstories or poetry, Chung said, “Think about it that way, since the visual arts are a kind of unknown territory for a lot of people.” “The other important thing is the interdisciplinary nature of the program,” Chung said. As a requirement of the program, students work alongside an “outside cognate,” a faculty member from a department outside of the School of Art and Design, who acts as an advisor. This is only one piece of evidence of the program’s commitment to interdisciplinarity and social consciousness. Many of this year’s pieces are concerned with issues of cultural difference and identity. “Parisa Ghaderi, who is originally from Iran, is doing a very interesting piece about
these two worlds trying to connect and how communication is difficult. It’s a really beautiful piece that features projections,” Chung said. Rolando Palacio, on the other hand, is working intimately with the immigrant community of in Mexican Town of Detroit to create a series of documentary photographs that captures the modern immigrant experience in the city — working alongside faculty in the Department of Anthropolog y to broach these questions in his art. These artists and others will display their work at locations in both Ann Arbor and Detroit, reinforcing both the growing artistic community in the city as well as Ann Arbor’s and Detroit’s increasing cultural and social interaction. The MFA Program is attached to the city through connections with exhibition spaces, artists, community groups and other schools. “Our artists are addressing things that are very immediate to them,” Chung said. A full list of the exhibits and their dates can be viewed on the school’s website.
NEW MEDIA NOTEBOOK
The very real dangers of virtual reality By STEVEN TWEEDIE Daily Arts Writer
Virtual reality as a cinematic and gaming medium is still in its infancy, but the VR industry is no longer a desolate graveyard filled with the ancient and cumbersome technology failures of the ’80s and ’90s. Instead, the wildly hyped and inexpensive Oculus Rift headset has pummeled its way to the forefront of mainstream virtual reality exploration, managing to secure over $75 million in funding in the process and all but securing a successful consumer launch later this year. The Rift is an immersive experience like none other, allowing people wearing the headset to gaze around their environments as if they were truly there. You can even take a trip up the wall of the Night’s Watch from “Game of Thrones” if you want to — just ask Arya Stark. If a traditional television screen is a window frame into another world, VR lets you chuck that frame into the woodchipper and climb right through. This is an exciting, promising and downright futuristic tech development, but it’s also a double-edged blade with all the promise to potentially create a level of dystopic obsession that makes the World of Warcraft guy from “South Park” look tame. People naturally gravitate towards activities that offer a certain level of escapism. Back in 2009, when “Avatar” began its “titanic” voyage toward becoming the highest grossing movie of all time, people felt this kind of escape in the lush, vibrant forests of the fantastical Pandora. Stunning CGI and high fidelity 3D filming offered a level of immersion that began to blur the lines
ERAN FOLIO
When “next level shit” goes wrong.
between imagined environment and reality. And as surreal as it may sound, for some people, this harsh disconnect from bioluminescent jungle to cinema parking lot actually caused feelings of depression and suicide, prompting fan forums and a CNN article discussing how to cope with “Pandora being intangible.” And this was still just a film being projected on a cinema screen, with entire audiences participating in the experience — now imagine a personal technology capable of much higher caliber of immersion, and you can see how the Rift will prove a slippery slope for those already prone to the addictive qualities of modern media. The reasonable counter-argument is that this will only be an issue for those already addicted to escapists media forms. Yes, classically addictive games like “Second Life” are getting the VR treatment, and yes, it will soon be possible to gaze around a cozy
concert venue watching your favorite band practice, but will we really start observing people opting for a virtual girlfriend à la Joaquin Phoenix in “Her”? The higher the fidelity of the illusion, the tougher it will become to unplug. Already, you can experience what it would be like to embody the other gender, and adult entertainment companies have wasted no time designing stimulation devices to accompany the Rift. And yes, it’s exactly what you think it is. Keep in mind the Rift hasn’t even officially hit shelves yet. And while technology that wins favor with the pornography industry usually finds mainstream success, it will soon become far easier for people to become lost in fantasy, and harder to disconnect. Suddenly, the issues brought up by “Her” don’t seem so futuristic. This is where simple awareness of, and caution toward, VR won’t be enough. One day I’ll be
immortalizing my Rift developer unit as a collectible milestone in technology’s rapid advancement, much like any collector would wish to save the first radio or television. But amidst all the possibility and childlike glee at such a futuristic experience, perhaps a warning should accompany VR headsets, similar to the way massively popular video games flash an “All things in moderation” quote across the loading screen every once in a while.
Hard to hit the off-switch. Stronger and more spectacular illusions are exciting, and escapism certainly holds its own therapeutic benefits, but a firmer nod in the direction of the off-switch might not hurt either.
Sports
6A — Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
‘M’ falls to Northwestern Ulehla welcomes stiff tests First-year varsity program falls to top-10 team By AZALEA HINOJOSA For the Daily
Frustrated shouts from the sideline filled Oosterbaan Field House Tuesday afternoon as the Michigan women’s lacrosse team took on No. 8 Northwestern. The Wolverines (0-5) began the tough matchup sluggishly, allowing their 6 MICHIGAN N’WESTERN 20 opponents to score four unanswered goals in the first five minutes of play. Those first few minutes were indicative of how of the rest of the game would play out, ending with a 20-6 Northwestern win. Though the Wildcats (4-2) were in possession of the ball for the majority of the first half, the Wolverines managed to break past midfield and take eight shots on goal. Few of these shots found the net. Following the missed attempts, the Wolverines called the only timeout of the game as the first half wound down. It proved helpful when freshman attacker Lauren Oberlander finally landed a shot less than three minutes later. The goal brought the score to 10-1, breaking Northwestern’s 10-goal streak and serving as motivation for the two Michigan goals that followed, which were scored by freshman midfielder Anna Schueler and freshman attacker Sophie duPhily. But as the game went on, the Wolverines’ shouts were slowly drowned out by the Wildcats’ cheers of their own. Michigan only scored one of the next nine goals, bringing the score to an insurmountable 18-4. “We need to realize that when we get down on the field we need to spread out more and pass the ball,” Oberlander said. “Make sure that we’re getting open for our teammates,
especially since they were double teaming us a lot.” Northwestern’s aggressive performance hindered the Wolverines’ offense, only allowing it to take half as many shots as the Wildcats. Michigan regained some momentum by scoring back-toback goals toward the end of the second half. The first goal was made by duPhily, and the second was sent flying in by freshman midfielder Kim Coughlan, bringing the score to 18-6. But Northwestern responded with two more goals for the final margin. Freshman goaltender Allison Silber was successful in blocking seven shots, but the Wildcats still dominated the Wolverines’ defense with their quick speed and came out on
top. Much can be learned from a challenging matchup like this one, especially for a team of freshmen going up against Northwestern, a squad that has won seven of the last nine NCAA championships. Michigan coach Jennifer Ulehla agreed that a game against a top opponent like the Wildcats was an enormous task to overcome. “This is how we went into it: Let’s control what we can control, which is ourselves,” Ulehla said. “Being a team, communicating and working hard when we’re going to take our bumps and bruises. “We got better from our Florida experience and today. Obviously the scoreboard doesn’t necessarily show it, but I know it and they know it.”
“We’re going to take our bumps and bruises.”
Coach plans to build program through adversity By MITCH BECKMAN Daily Sports Writer
Striding out of the locker room almost 30 minutes after the final buzzer went off in her team’s 20-6 loss to Northwestern, Michigan women’s lacrosse coach Jennifer Ulehla had her explanation ready. “Sorry I took so long,” Ulehla said. “This was a learning opportunity, and I wanted to use it.” Determined to use her team of freshmen as the building block for a nationally respected program, Ulehla wants to ensure that her young team can take something away
from every game it plays, win or lose. The Wolverines’ first-year coach understands that while it is hard for her fledgling team to compete with the nation’s top teams, in the long run it will be beneficial for the program. In its first five games, Michigan (0-5) has already faced No. 5 Florida and No. 8 Northwestern (4-2), a program that has won seven of the last nine national titles. While both have ended in lopsided defeats, Ulehla knows this will improve her program down the road. In the Wolverines’ Tuesday matchup with the Wildcats, Ulehla stressed the importance of taking advantage of the opportunities before them, controlling what they can control and giving all the effort they can.
“I felt we were working much better as a team.”
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily
Michigan women’s lacrosse coach Jennifer Ulehla hopes that her team’s tough schedule will lead to success in the future, as it did when she coached at Florida.
“Northwestern is an incredibly talented team, so for us to have that opportunity — especially on defense, the way they worked our defense — was really a great chance for us to get better,” Ulehla said. “We’re making progress, it just takes time. In our last game, we came out real flat and were more or less watching the other team play as opposed to competing.” The offense, while only scoring six goals, looked more engaged and competitive than it had since its home opener, committing fewer unforced turnovers than in previous games and creating some wideopen looks in transition. Several posts and some acrobatic saves by the Wildcats’ goalie kept the Wolverines from adding a few more goals. “One of the things (Northwestern) isn’t doing as well this year is getting in and getting balanced defensively,” Ulehla said. “To just get the ball and go hard was one of our goals.” Compared to her team’s last game against Florida, which ended 20-4, Ulehla saw some improvement. “It was similar in the score, but different because I felt we were working much better as a team. I thought the effort was better,” Ulehla said. “It’s about getting a young group moving forward.” While coaching a first-year program comprised solely of freshmen is a rare occurrence, Ulehla has been through the situation before. She was an assistant coach for Florida in its inaugural 2008 season and stayed there until 2010. The Gators have since become one of the nation’s top programs, a rise she is hoping to duplicate at Michigan. “A lot of what we’re going through right now is what I went through at Florida,” Ulehla said. “It’s a good thing for me because it keeps me grounded and reminds me that we’re building — and we’re building a foundation this year and each and every experience is a great opportunity to get better. The future is bright. This is gonna be a tough year, but we’re gonna get better.”
MEN’S GOLF
Classifieds RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
HELP WANTED
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 Deer guy 5 Dian Fossey subjects 9 Walking tall 14 Snoop (around) 15 Son of Leah and Jacob 16 One unlikely to bring home the bacon? 17 Work on galleys 18 Works by Raphael and Michelangelo, e.g. 20 Signed agreement mailed by someone in prison? 22 “... kissed thee __ killed thee”: Othello 23 NYC-based insurance co. 24 Backs a fashion venture? 31 Eyelid inflammations 32 Dogwood, e.g. 33 Sock part 34 Pottery oven 35 Drag through the mud 37 Gardener’s bagful 38 Rescuer of Odysseus 39 Irene of “Fame” 40 Gainesville is about halfway between it and Jacksonville 41 Authorize two bros’ gettogether? 45 “Double Fantasy” artist 46 Measurement named for a body part 47 Songwriter’s dream? 54 Rites of passage 55 Heathrow postings: Abbr. 56 Point a finger at 57 Dark purple 58 Charlie Brown cry 59 Title role for Michael or Jude 60 New newts 61 “Off with you!” DOWN 1 Job detail 2 Commotion
3 Analogous 4 Avenges a wrong 5 Runway shapes 6 Bob __, first NBA player to be named MVP (1956) 7 FEMA recommendation, maybe 8 Storage structure 9 Like some press conference answers 10 Go back (on) 11 “A Summer Place” co-star Richard 12 Dessert conveyance 13 “Rizzoli & Isles” airer 19 More ridiculous 21 Spanish 101 word 24 1986 rock autobiography 25 Windbreaker fabric 26 Cook, as dumplings 27 One may be rolled over 28 Weasel kin 29 Patterned fabric 30 Ward of “CSI: NY”
31 Two percent alternative 35 Skipped 36 C-ration successor 37 Throws here and there 39 Fails to understand 40 Funk 42 Musical scale sequence 43 Produce a change in
44 Scary Wild West circles? 47 Meet, as needs 48 Norwegian saint 49 “Won’t do it” 50 Plenty, in slang 51 Bonneville Salt Flats site 52 Peacekeeping acronym 53 Name on a Canadian pump 54 Mgmt. degree
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
xwordeditor@aol.com
03/12/14
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Wolverines take fourth in Classic By NATE CLARK Daily Sports Writer
I Love You, California. The words are not only the title of California’s state song, but they also describe the sentiments of the Michigan men’s golf team after its trip to Chula Vista, Calif. The Wolverines were in third place after the first two rounds Monday at the Lamkin Grips San Diego Classic, and Michigan coach Chris Whitten hoped his team could take the tournament. Even with a disappointing final round Tuesday, the Wolverines finished fourth out of 13 teams. Michigan finished with a team score of 871, or seven over par. Only USC, San Diego State and Wake Forest finished ahead of the Wolverines. All three of those teams are ranked in the top 50. “The guys played with good momentum and good energy on the first day and we finished off the round well,” Whitten said. “Even though the guys were well prepared, the round (on Tuesday) was kind of flat all day. So while we’ll call it a solid tournament, we definitely expected more from today. But that will motivate us going into our next match at Texas A&M.” Sophomore Chris O’Neill led Michigan, finishing in a twoway tie for sixth place, out of 84 golfers, with a total of 214 strokes, or two under par. He finished the first round with just 69 strokes, including six birdies. In the third round — despite six bogeys — eagles on the eighth and 17th holes, along with three birdies, brought his score to 71 strokes. “Chris is one of the most consistent golfers on our team,” Whitten said. “Even though he
and I both felt his swing was not his best today, he still finished strong and that really helps the team.” Junior Noori Hyun also had a strong performance for the Wolverines, finishing in a three-way tie for eighth place with a total score of 215, one under par. Hyun scored 70 and 71 on the second and third rounds, respectively, including a birdie on the 16th hole of the third round. Freshman Reed Hrynewich finished in a fiveway tie for 13th place with an overall score of 218, two over par. He shot 71 in the first round and 70 in the second. “Reed knows he has some things to work on,” Whitten said. “But his swing was very good the entire time and that helped a lot.” Sophomore Andrew Yeager finished in a three-way tie for 25th place with 222 strokes, and he was helped by a 71 in the second round that featured an eagle on the second hole as well as six birdies. The Wolverines have had no shortage of travel this season, having been to Florida and Puerto Rico as well as California. However, Whitten believes the travel has been good for his team — the warm weather has allowed it to get regular playing time and keep rhythm. “We had a good spring break trip,” Whitten said. “We got some quality work in at some great golf courses in California. The weather was absolutely perfect during the match.” But all good things must come to an end, and the Wolverines must now leave their beloved California sunshine behind and return to Michigan, where winter is still very much alive.
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 — 7A
‘Starstruck’ Dwyer makes official debut Redshirt junior records three saves in front of sold-out Yost Arena crowd By ALEJANDRO ZÚÑIGA Daily Sports Editor
Luke Dwyer knows that he’ll never start a game for the Michigan hockey team. The 5-foot-10 junior goaltender redshirted, then didn’t play a single minute his freshman or sophomore seasons. He has seen other netminders come into the program and immediately leapfrog him on the depth chart. On his player profile on MGoBlue.com, his career highlights all say “to come.” Last weekend against Michigan State, a highlight finally came. Up 6-1 with 3:32 remaining in the game, Michigan assistant coach Billy Powers took away Dwyer’s clipboard, which he had been using to record faceoffs. The unsuspecting goaltender’s teammates and the sold-out crowd at Yost Ice Arena greeted the surprise substitution with a loud roar. And for the final minutes, a “starstruck” Dwyer stonewalled the Spartans, making three saves as the Wolverines rolled to a 7-1 win. On his first play, a draw
in Michigan’s zone, Dwyer sprawled out onto the ice to corral a loose puck, laying facedown on the ice with it clenched in his glove. Later, with the Wolverines on the power play, he had to apologize to the referee after covering a shot that most goaltenders would have left for a teammate. “I didn’t want to let anything by, so I had to,” Dwyer said after the game, shaking in excitement. And when the final horn sounded, his teammates poured onto the ice in jubilation — not because of the win, but because of Dwyer. “The team jumped off the bench like they had won the Stanley Cup,” said Michigan coach Red Berenson. “That’s what he means to the team.” *** Dwyer was never meant to be a varsity athlete at Michigan. Even Berenson admits as much. The coach knew of the netminder in high school, but the Wolverines already had three goaltenders on their roster and had no need for a fourth. But when a spot opened up for the 2011-12 campaign after two graduations the previous season, Berenson knew who to call. “We needed a goalie,” Berenson said. “I’d heard of him going to the Cube with his goalie equipment and just playing. … I’m really glad we connected
“I wish I would’ve looked around and let it sink in a bit.”
with him.” In his spare time, Dwyer had been joining pickup games at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube. When the Michigan coaches came to watch and offered the thenfreshman a spot on the team, he jumped at the opportunity. Until this season, the goaltender had been comfortable in his niche off the ice. Berenson called Dwyer one of the team’s best leaders, though he had never seen a moment of playing time in exhibitions or otherwise. “If he sees something he doesn’t like, he’ll speak up,” Berenson said. “He’s not afraid to act like a captain.” His team noticed and pleaded for Dwyer to play if the Wolverines had a substantial lead at the end of their Dec. 5, 2013 midseason exhibition against the U.S. Under-18 National Team Development Program. So the coach complied. When the announcer called Dwyer’s name and he skated to his spot in the crease, Michigan held a comfortable 4-2 lead. Just a couple of minutes remained. His teammates pounded their sticks against the ice and the boards in anticipation of the moment. But that night offered no storybook ending. The NTDP scored twice in the final minute of the third period and added the winner in overtime. Dwyer finished with three goalsagainst and only one save in 5:31. Afterward, the team blamed itself for defensive breakdowns while Dwyer was in net. “He has been the hardest worker here for two-and-a-half years, and he has nothing to show for it,” said junior forward Alex Guptill. “That’s why everyone was begging to get him in there at the end, and I’ve got a sick
feeling in my stomach right now for us to blow that lead for him.” Of that game, Dwyer remembers every excruciating moment, from the anxiety of making his unofficial debut to the bitter reality of having lost. “I was thinking a little bit too much,” he said. “I was a little overwhelmed by the moment.” *** Against Michigan State, Dwyer had another chance. And this time, he didn’t let anybody down. This time, when the coaches
told him that they were making the substitution, Dwyer didn’t have time to think about the enormity of the situation. This time, when he crouched in the crease before play resumed, he didn’t glance to see how many minutes remained. This time, he didn’t even spend what little time it would have taken to glance at the 5,800 pairs of eyes on him from the bleachers. “I wish I would’ve looked around and let it sink in a bit, but I didn’t really want to do that at the time,” Dwyer said. “I was just focused on not giving
anything up. … I was too dumb to look around and just relax. I’m sure it would’ve been a cool sight.” When the final horn sounded, this time, there were no melancholy pats on the helmet or players volunteering to take blame. This time, he gave himself something to show for his dedication to Michigan: a highlight.
Want more sports news? Check MichiganDaily.com for coverage of every program
PAUL SHERMAN/Daily
Michigan coach Red Berenson praised Luke Dwyer for his leadership, even though the goaltender rarely sees the ice.
Sports
8A — Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Basketball by the numbers By DANIEL WASSERMAN Daily Sports Editor
It has been 108 days since Michigan lost to Charlotte in Puerto Rico — the days since the men’s basketball program shed significant weight off its bandwagon following a runnerup performance in last year’s NCAA Tournament. In the meantime, the Wolverines turned their season around. Aside from wins and losses, isolated numbers rarely tell the full story of a season, but together, they help paint a more complete picture. 42: Days outside the AP Top 25 poll. Following a 10-point loss to Duke, which came on the heels of Michigan’s stunning loss to the 49ers, the Wolverines dropped out of the rankings on Dec. 9, six weeks after debuting as the nation’s No. 7 team. Less than two weeks later, sophomore forward Mitch McGary played his final game and soon after, it was announced that he would likely sit out the remainder of the regular season following back surgery. Sophomore guard Nik Stauskas had yet to emerge as the team’s clear go-to scorer — a void left large by the NBA departures of Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. It wasn’t unreasonable at the time to assume Michigan’s absence from the poll would last the rest of the season, and the Wolverines’ NCAA Tournament hopes were in serious question. But Michigan’s turnaround jumpstarted with a Dec. 21 win over Stanford in Brooklyn, the first of a 10-game win streak that would land the Wolverines back in the poll Jan. 20 after six weeks. 11.5, 9.9: The combined production (points, rebounds) from fifth-year senior Jordan Morgan and redshirt junior
Jon Horford after McGary’s final game. The numbers aren’t eyepopping, or hardly noteworthy, for a pair’s output. But for Michigan’s one-big man system, they were enough to score the Wolverines an outright Big Ten title. Had McGary stayed healthy for the duration of the 2013-14 campaign, little would’ve been asked of Morgan and Horford. McGary’s NCAA Tournament run last year was enough to earn him preseason All-America honors, while the veteran forwards combined to average just 5.6 minutes in that span. But with McGary out, serious questions emerged as to whether Michigan’s talented backcourt and wings would be enough to carry the team. Stauskas and sophomore guard Caris LeVert certainly did the brunt of the work, but the near double-double average from the Wolverines’ frontcourt was often more than enough to produce wins.
12.0: Stauskas’ points per game in Michigan’s seven losses. The Big Ten’s consensus Player of the Year finished fourth in the league with 17.4 points per game. Though many expected sophomore forward Glenn Robinson III to carry the Wolverines, it didn’t take long for Stauskas to assert himself as Michigan’s top weapon. But throughout the season, especially in an early Feburary stretch when the Wolverines dropped three of five games, it became clear that they were only as good as their best player. On average, Stauskas’ point production dropped by more than five in losses — in three of those games, he failed to score more than 10 points. Don’t expect things to be any different come tournament time, as the sophomore will certainly enter the postseason with a chip on his shoulder following his performance in March and April last year. Stauskas had a breakout 22-point showing against
Florida in the Elite Eight, but was otherwise held completely in check. In two games at the Final Four, he made just one field goal — a 3-pointer — for his only points in Atlanta. 1.161: Michigan’s points per possession. With two thirds of its backcourt depleted thanks to early departures to the NBA — including the reigning consensus National Player of the Year in Burke, whose point-guard replacement is a true freshman — the Wolverines would’ve had ample excuses should their offensive efficiency have taken a major dip. Michigan’s points per possession did take a dip, but not the expected one. After finishing last season’s regular season ranked No. 3 in efficiency at 1.130 points per possession, the Wolverines fell to No. 4 this season, but the offense’s efficiency actually rose by .031 points per possession — a noteworthy margin.
PATRICK BARRON/Daily
Sophomore guard Caris LeVert was voted second-team All-Big Ten by coaches and media. He is averaging 13.4 points.
FOOTBALL TICKETING
‘U’ announces new ticket, seating policy By ALEJANDRO ZÚÑIGA Daily Sports Editor
General admission is no more. Tuesday afternoon, Central Student Government announced a revamped policy for student seating at home football games. In the new format, students will be rewarded with better seats for their attendance the previous year. Business senior Michael Proppe, CSG president, and Public Policy junior Bobby Dishell, CSG’s vice president, worked closely with the Athletic Department on the changes. The result, Proppe said, is “the best of both worlds.” Under the new policy, an individual’s accumulated attendance points this fall will be the sole determinant of his or her seat location in 2015. Students will earn three points for attending a game and can collect three more if they arrive at least 30 minutes before kickoff. That pattern will continue for the foreseeable future, with seat location assigned via the individual’s points from the previous year only. This fall will be a transition season, in which seats will be assigned in the following order: Students who attended at least five home games on time in 2013 are deemed “SuperFans” and will sit closest to the field in order of seniority, and those who did not will be behind them based solely on seniority. The attendance points accumulated this season will be tallied automatically when tickets are scanned. The new reserved ticketing
format will also allow students to form seating groups of up to 100 people. This fall, a group will sit closest to the field if they are all SuperFans and will otherwise be placed via seniority; in following years, it will be determined by taking an average of the attendance points of the group members from the prior season. Football season tickets this fall will cost $280 with a $15 service fee, matching prices from last year. Both seasons feature seven home contests. “This is certainly a policy that’s consistent with what students said they wanted,” Proppe said. CSG and the Athletic Department have been meeting regularly since September 2013 to assess the now scrapped general admission policy. On-time attendance increased in 2013, according to Proppe, but “the effect was negligible” and “did not achieve the Athletic Department’s goals” of having a full student section at kickoff. A survey conducted by CSG released Oct. 16 revealed that 76 percent of respondents said they were opposed to general admission, with many indicating their displeasure at not being able to form reserved groups to sit with friends. Seventy-seven percent indicated that they preferred the policy in previous years, in which seating was assigned and determined by credit hours. But Proppe believes the new policy will make students happy. “Students are getting the main things they wanted,” he said. “Some of the nightmare of general admission will be over.”
“This is the best of both worlds.”
2B Wednesday, March 12, 2014 // The Statement
THE
list | B
UZZFEED, BUT BETTER
Five reasons to stay in Ann Arbor over spring term No, spring may not have the full load of 46,000 students on campus. But what it does have is charm. Here are reasons why you should consider staying behind.
1. The Startup Scene
Every wondered what it was like to work at a startup? Lucky for you, startups flourish in AA over the spring. Check out the TechArb, and other entrepreneurial outlets on campus to see if any small, student-run businesses catch your eye!
2. IM Sports We get it — between your clubs, Greek Life commitments and
school work, IM sports just don’t have a place during the school year. That’s what spring is for. With all that warm weather and lighter class load, you can finally unleash your inner athlete.
3. Easier Classes The #MichiganDifference standard of classes drops just a bit
during the spring and summer semesters. Need to fight through General Chemistry or Economics 401 requirements? Spring is your chance.
4. Festival Season Ann Arbor Summer Festival. The Ann Arbor Art Fair. The
Festival of Inner Peace. Arts are at its peak in the spring — just in time for you to pull out your shades, and release your inner hipster.
the writer’s notebook: not literature, not theatre by max radwin I’ve encountered slam poetry a few times in the past few years — more so in high school than now. I was always in the audience, never onstage. That’s not to say I didn’t write poetry. I did, and do. I acted in high school pretty often as well. I didn’t do musicals because I wasn’t a singer, but I always auditioned for the fall play and did some of the smaller productions and shows that our school put on. I considered myself both an actor and a writer, but slam poetry never crossed my mind as a medium of interest. It never sat right with me. Even while in the audience, I wasn’t sure how to feel, or how to make sense of what I was experiencing. Perhaps it’s because slam poetry is a synthesis of those two mediums of art done poorly. It isn’t literature, and it really isn’t theatre. The words don’t have to be good because they can fall back on the performance and the performance doesn’t have to be good because the words are
5. Explore
When was the last time you went through a run through the Arb? Have you ever checked out the University’s Museum of Art? Our campus has more to offer than what meets the eye, and spring semester is your time to live out an adventure.
this st. patty’s day, FOLLOW US BEYOND THE RAINBOW FOR
TWEETS OF GOLD.
@thestatementmag COVER BY AMY MACKENS & RUBY WALLAU
THE
statement
Magazine Editor: Carlina Duan Deputy Editors: Max Radwin
Photo Editor: Ruby Wallau Illustrator: Megan Mulholland
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Peter Shahin
Managing Editor: Katie Burke Copy Editors: Mark Ossolinski Meaghan Thompson
there to distract you. You forget your expectations and readjust them as you go along. I’ve gotten chills down my spine from slam poetry. But those chills were inauthentic. Is that possible to have inauthentic emotions? I think so. It’s possible because the emotions exist on the surface level of the art. You get the same sensation you get when watching a drippy romantic comedy. It forgets to make you think
THE
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND
and instead, you’re left with feelings that conform to what the performance set out to make you feel at all costs. It’s like intentional fallacy, but for your emotions. It’s emotional fallacy. In the late ’50s a poet named Robert Lowell published a book of poems called “Life Studies” that began a movement of Confessional poetry. Lowell wrote about his family, his relationships and his history. In short, he wrote personally. The “I” wasn’t a fictional speaker; it was himself. It’s not so tidy and clean but — after a storm of literary criticism — it’s said that there was a subsequent Post- and Anti-Confessional movement, which reconciled the narcissism and inaccessibility that comes with writing personally and Confessionally. But slam poetry exists outside of these literary movements because it isn’t taught in a classroom. No one reads a slam poem and critiques it. They listen and if something confuses on the first read-through then it gets cut — it has to be ingested on the first go-around because no one’s reading it, only listening. The poem
loses its depth. It stops being a poem and becomes something baseless altogether. Lowell’s poetry was shocking at the time. Confessional poetry can be pretty shocking. Think about some of those darker poems by Sylvia Plath. Slam Poetry has embraced that full-on and hasn’t let go. In fact, most slam poems I’ve experienced have been about sexual assault, rape, abuse, alcoholism or depression — and always in an overthe-top kind of way that seemed to miss out on the opportunity to explore the important elements of those topics in favor of dramatic delivery. Without fail, the speaker always seems to say “fuck” or “cunt” sometime during the performance, and usually in a way that doesn’t utilize the word beyond its shock value. Is it unfair to generalize an entire medium and deem it as structurally flawed? I suppose. But if the angsty, hyper-Confessionalism of Slam Poetry that has strained all the complexity from its product is not inherent, then it is at least a trend — and one that exists because its performers often defer to melodrama over art.
rules TMD’
S WEEKLY SURVIVAL GUIDE
No. 543:
No. 544:
No. 545:
Spring break is over so put the binge drinking on pause for a little while. That is, until St. Patrick’s Day next weekend.
Forty days until classes end … but who’s counting, right?
March Madness starts soon. Time to make as many brackets as you can.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 // The Statement 3B
the thought bubble
the fashion voyeur: clothing as an expressive tool BY ADRIENNE ROBERTS
PHOTO BY RUBY WALLAU
“If I could do anything in the world, I would go out to Borneo tomorrow and I would just research orangutans and live in the forest, tent everything; if I could get a hammock it would be perfect. I could sleep up in the trees with (the orangutans). That would be a dream job, the best thing of my entire life.” – MEGAN SKRZYPEK, LSA Freshman ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE MILLER
This semester, I’m in an English class that also counts as creative expression credit. This is probably one of the only classes where you get a mix of English majors — who often dress in clothing that could only be categorized as “hipster” — and everyone else, often students in Greek Life who, well, don’t wear ripped tights, purposefully ugly sweaters and mom jeans. What is interesting is that this class is filled with seniors, yet the students in Greek Life still wear their letters on sweatshirts, t-shirts, etc. Add on rain boots, yoga pants and light wash jeans for men, and you have yourself a classic “Greek Life” look. We often
hear that freshman year is the year when students are making very conscious efforts to form their own identities in college through their appearance — they wear too much makeup, they put on pants to go to class (which seniors would argue is “trying too hard”), and they’re basically walking advertisements for whatever club or group they joined at Festifall. I am not so sure if that theory holds up, though. I think students use clothing more than they imagine as a tool to express who they are and what they stand for — even seniors who say they barely make it out of bed each morning in time for class.
On Saturday, air traffic control lost track of a plane traveling from Malaysia to Beijing carrying 239 passengers. The day was spent with rescue and search operations to find missing passengers over the South China Sea.
trending #Paralympics #WomensDay #B1GTENVictors
DMITRY LOVETSKY
Sochi isn’t bidding adieu to athletics just yet. Amid the political crisis in Ukraine only 300 miles away, Russian soil will host 45 countries to compete for 72 gold medals over 10 days.
AP PHOTO/ Lai Seng Sin
#ElvisisAlive #MH370 # ShannonSzabados #SB2K14 #MarsOneWay
SOCHISZABADOS.COM
After winning her second gold medal as a member of the Canadian women’s hockey team in Sochi, Szabados signed with the men’s team Columbus Cottonmouth for the rest of the season.
In 2024, Mars might be ready to welcome its first set of permanent human settlers. Over 200,000 astronauts have applied to be the first to take a oneway trip to Mars and restart human life. Training will begin next year. CNN.COM
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Wednesday, March 12, 2014 // The Statement
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 // The Statement
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A SILENT
BATTLE HOW STUDENTS COPE WITH DISORDERED EATING BY ADRIENNE ROBERTS
SA senior Kylie Miller is a resident advisor, a member of the Ballroom Dance Team and has a supportive group of friends. Miller also suffers from disordered eating. She has spent up to two dozen nights sitting in the bathroom for hours at a time, battling with herself, deciding whether or not to purge after a binge. Jenna, an LSA freshman, who asked not to be identified with her last name, doesn’t have a group of friends in Ann Arbor. She’s quiet, and spends most of her time getting ahead on homework. Jenna has suffered from anorexia since she was 14 years old. She currently seeks the support of a nutritionist and a therapist twice a week. I met both students after they performed at the Body Monologues, a free event hosted by University Health Service and Body-Peace Corps once a year that provides a platform for members of the University community to share their experiences with their bodies and the way they view them. On the evening of Feb. 4, Mendelssohn Theater, which seats more than 600 people, was almost at capacity. For two hours, students and people in the University community shared their experiences with being bullied about their weight in school, obsessive thoughts about food, self-harm, abuse and more. Some performances were humorous, others raw and emotional. All of the performances, however, displayed vulnerability and openness on the part of speakers, with many noting that this was their first time sharing their personal experiences with anyone. The audience’s response ranged from cheers to gasps to shared tears in the bathroom after the performance. The diversity of experiences and reactions were vast, but what united them was the noticeable effect they had on everyone in attendance. Audience members and performers alike covered their mouths in horror at some stories while others elicited laughter. Miller hid her struggles with her weight and eating habits from her family and friends until the Body Monologues, when she decided to publicly share her story. For Jenna, the Monologues was also her first time admitting to anyone besides her family that she has suffered from anorexia for upward of four years. When exploring the climate of eating disorders at the University, there seems to be a disconnect between the silent dialogue on those who suffer from eating disorders, compared to the open environment of the Body Monologues. According to a 2010 survey of college counselors and other professionals by the Eating Disorders Recovery Center, there are numerous reasons why college students suffering from disordered eating do not seek treatment. About 28 percent were embarrassed to ask for professional help, 48 percent did not know they had an eating disorder, and 82 percent were simply unwilling to find treatment. This prompts the question: Why are some students brave enough to get up on stage and discuss their struggles on eating with an audience of strangers, but aren’t comfortable enough to tell their friends and seek out treatment?
Just college or cause for concern? According to an article on MiTalk, an online mental health resource for ‘U’ students, an estimated 25 to 31 percent of students on the University of Michigan’s campus suffer from disordered eating, which encompasses a wide range of abnormal eating patterns — such as over-exercising to compensate for eating too much, or feeling guilty when eating. When Miller started college in the fall of 2010, she was worried about gaining the Freshman 15, the myth of first-year weight gain. She started counting every calorie that went into her body. This habit quickly evolved into an obsession. She lost 20 pounds during freshman year, and her new social network only knew “Kylieminus-20-pounds,” she said. “They didn’t see me as a cow, like kids in high school did. But I still thought of myself as that,” Miller said. “There was this weird disjunction. Even though they were super supportive in a lot of ways, I didn’t talk about all the really negative self-thoughts.” Miller’s friends were also concerned with eating healthy, too. But this isn’t always the case, especially in college when eating habits are largely determined by social situations and sobriety level, Andrea Lawson, the assistant director of Clinical Services at the Counseling and Psychological Services and the coordinator of Eating and Body Image Concerns, said. “A lot of challenges surrounding college students’ mental health are discerning what’s an issue and what’s cultural, or what’s part of a typical student’s life,” Lawson said. For some students, eating an entire pizza at 2 a.m. on a Saturday is normal behavior. Binge eating disorder is characterized by uncontrollable and excessive eating without a purge, often leading to being overweight or obesity. Lawson said those in her profession are currently seeing many people with binge-eating disorder, which affects men just as frequently as it does women. According to a 2012 survey of 10,000 University of Michigan students, about 20 percent of both men and women are binging once a week or more. For people like Miller, who suffers from a wide range of disordered eating habits, binge eating results in overwhelming feelings of guilt and self-hatred, prompting her to turn to purging — forced vomiting. “One time I ate a whole medium pizza, and after eating only salads and fruit, you feel terrible.” Miller then described how, following a binge, she would then contemplate for an hour or more whether or not she should purge. “For the most part, I’ve been able to control it more than I know a lot of people who struggle with it. I would battle with myself internally. ‘Do it, no, don’t do it. Do it.’ Sometimes one would win, sometimes the other would win,” Miller said. Nearly 10 percent of female students at the University purge in some way. “Because (the way I view my body) is an internal problem, it won’t change until I change it. Things won’t actually change
for me until I can change them myself. It’s a cycle of negative self-thought,” Miller said. External factors, such as friends’ eating habits and triggering comments, caused Miller to internalize her problems with body image and eating habits. “My family is amazing and I have a group of super supportive friends, which I think has made my experience easier in a lot of ways. But because it’s an internal problem, it won’t change until I change it,” she said. Lawson said she increasingly sees eating disorders that don’t fit neatly within the criteria for anorexia or bulimia. Students who exhibit symptoms may not be entirely consistent with defined thresholds of disorders. In effect, this means that students can have difficulty recognizing and categorizing their symptoms, making it even more difficult to seek help. A complicated battle Jenna, on the other hand, cannot identify specific reasons why she might have developed an eating disorder at age 14. During the summer before her sophomore year of high school, she restricted her diet to fruits and yogurt, and never once binged or purged. Her parents took her to rehab and she was told she would never eat another meal alone again. The summer before she began college, she was at her highest weight and excited to begin her time at college. But, she noted that being at the University has had a negative effect on her struggle with anorexia. Jenna, too, was nervous about the Freshman 15, and small portions in the cafeteria added stress to the equation. “If I would go up to get more, (people working in the cafeteria) would look at me funny and I would think they were judging me,” she said. Jenna doesn’t feel like she’s found a group or community here. Perceived judgment and feelings of isolation dominate her thoughts. Her family has suggested taking time off of school to recover.
“College is not the best when you’re struggling with anything. I get pretty lonely which brings on depression, which brings on bad eating. It all goes downhill from there.” Jenna is addicted to not eating. She also suffers from anxiety and depression, taking 10 pills everyday to fight various forms of mental illnesses — not uncommon for those struggling with an eating disorder. According to a University Study of Habits, Attitudes, and Perceptions around Eating survey conducted in 2012, 29 percent of women and 27 percent of men at the University who screen positive for an eating disorder also screen positive for depression. Additionally, 49 percent of women and 31 percent of men who screen positive for an eating disorder also screen positive for anxiety. This makes discussing — and treating — eating disorders very difficult. “With the eating disorder came depression and anxiety, so it goes from fighting one thing to fighting many (things), which isn’t easy,” Jenna said. “When my depression is the worst, my eating is the worst.” While focusing on treating one illness, she feels like all other challenges have to go on the back-burner. “You can’t really fight everything at once.” Jenna is a self-described perfectionist who spends most of her time doing her homework weeks ahead of time. According to Lawson, this is a trait often reflected in students at competitive universities. “Perfectionism is something we see in students with eating disorders but that’s also something we see with students all around the University of Michigan,” says Lawson. “There’s quite a bit of perfectionism going on, and I think there’s specific attention to social settings and dynamics when students eat with other people.” Perfectionism is considered a marker of genetic risk factors for susceptibility to an eating disorder. Personality traits and mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression can make it difficult for these students to even articulate what they’re experiencing, let alone seek help.
DELVING INTO THE DATA
A (silent) campus community For many incoming students at the University, fears about gaining the Freshman 15 dominate their thoughts. Upon arrival to the University, Jenna felt this pressure immediately. “I was really scared about the Freshman 15 and everyone makes comments (about calories) when they’re in the dining hall,” she said. A majority of females — and about 30 percent of males — come to the University worried about gaining the Freshman 15, according to the 2012 U-SHAPE survey. This can often lead into extreme calorie counting, a behavior which is amplified in the dining hall setting. After all, the University of Michigan Student Life and Housing posts all nutrition labels online, as well as listing them on paper at the dining hall. This can be both enabling and helpful for students watching their weight. For Miller, calorie counts were helpful when she was dieting. “Depending on the cycle I was in, calorie counting was great. I could see exactly what I was putting in my body,” she said. However, they were also a terrifying reminder of exactly how many calories she was putting into her body when she binged. “Mentally it’s tough, it’s like ‘What did you just do, you ate 3,000 calories in one sitting?’” Miller said. Julie Stocks, a dietitian at the Nutrition Clinic at University Health Service, echoed this sentiment. “When it comes from a disordered eating lens, (calorie counts) are a very bad thing,” Stocks said. “I think in and of itself it’s harmless, it just depends what lens you look at it through. It’s our obligation to keep awareness high, to keep those lens opens.” Universities like Harvard College removed index cards detailing nutritional information in their dining halls after students and parents raised concerns that clearly-displayed calorie counts could cause or worsen eating disorders. The calorie counts are still displayed in kiosks in the dining halls and online.
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What Jenna found surprising at the University of Michigan is the lack of conversation around the topic. “I wish the University thought more about what they were doing when they put nutritional facts out there or made their portion sizes really small. I wish they were more considerate. (Eating disorders) are not talked about. It could honestly just incorporate a healthy eating presentation into orientation.” Body-Peace Corps, a student group on campus, is currently attempting to combat the wall of silence around eating disorders. According to group leaders, the Body-Peace Corps’ mission is to build a community where people can discuss their body issues, free from stigma and discrimination. The group offers peer-facilitated workshops for residence halls and living communities, and also hosts campus events to raise awareness. But even LSA sophomore Brianna Mayer, Body-Peace Corps executive board member, acknowledges that the group faces limitations. “A lot of our events will attract people who have experiences (with eating disorders) and know what we’re talking about,” Mayer said. “We’re having a hard time reaching out to the general student body that may not have any knowledge of these issues whatsoever. So I think the University, Body-Peace Corps, and other groups need to find a way to reach the general student body.” According to the U-SHAPE survey, 51 percent of students at the University know at least one student who has eating or body image problems. The Body Monologues is, in a way, a step toward recovery for many students. Miller found telling their story to their friends, family, and a large audience, to be a beneficial undertaking. “I worked through a lot of things as I wrote my monologue. It was a cathartic experience for me to come up with the piece,” Miller said. By sharing their internal experiences on eating with the audience, Body Monologues performers conveyed their vulnerability. This kind of shared vulnerability is, perhaps, the start of a much needed, campus-wide conversation.
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Wednesday, March 12, 2014 // The Statement
Oedipus and drugs: The history of psychoanalysis in Ann Arbor by John Bohn
Remember those cartoon Zoloft commercials? A sad white blob mopes around, but, presumably having taken Zoloft midway through the commercial, is bouncing around happily in the end. Abilify, Cymbalta, Prozac. Before the era of Netflix, I remember being bombarded with pharmaceutical ads on cable television. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry spent $27 billion for drug promotions in 2012 alone. Since the 1980s, the growth of pharmaceuticals has had a significant impact on clinical practices and psychiatry units around the world. The turn to medicine is so common nowadays that it may come as a surprise to know that other forms of engaging with mental health are still available. One of the known alternatives is psychoanalysis — often referred to as psychodynamic psychotherapy, or a more comprehensive psychotherapy. However, the basic assumptions made in the one-paragraph explanations in Psychology 101 textbooks and the quick jokes made about Austrian psychologist and credited founder of Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud don’t detail the ways in which psychoanalysis can be valued and beneficial to our mental health. Caricatures and accusations surrounding psychoanalysis hold some truth in the history of psychoanalysis, reflecting many of the cultural values of the 20th century society in which it emerged. However, since its inception, Freud’s successors have taken his groundwork in new, progressive directions. Feminist psychoanalysts Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva, during the ’70s and ’80s, challenged the psychoanalytic interpretation of women’s psychology, updating the discipline for the demands of a Second Wave feminist audience. The rather mocking way in which some handle psychoanalysis obscures both these progressive developments, as well as the rich history the discipline has had in Ann Arbor. Walking down Washington Street, one may see a sign that reads “Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute” and assume it to be the relic of some fortunately forgotten past. Yet Ann Arbor offers a vibrant community of analysts and scholars who employ psychoanalysis in their work and everyday lives, and who see its potential for understanding human relations and seek to push back against some of the numerous misconceptions that have emerged during its century-long history. In the 1970s, psychoanalytic practitioners worked side-by-side their nascent biomedical partners at the University’s Psychiatric department. Analysts, like University alum Jean-Paul Pegeron, a practicing psychoanalyst in the Ann Arbor area, were trained in both disciplines during their residency at the University. “There was no question at the time, at least in that particular setting, that the two could not be compatible,” Pegeron said. In a psychiatric ward where both biomedical and psychoanalytic disciplines are used, the clinician would determine when medication was necessary and when long-term psychoanalytic therapy may be better suited. Pegeron, a certi-
fied prescriber, often provides consultation to other psychoanalysts in making this decision. “There’s obviously a gray zone,” Pegeron said. “In the less severe cases, you often find some underlying emotional issues, maybe some traumatic experiences and losses which would kind of tip you off to a more emotional issue.” Pegeron said that though there is a whole range of depressive symptoms that can be diagnosed, the issue might be more biological, in which case it cannot be treated solely through
psychoanalytic therapy. “Their clock is set a bit lower than most people, so they might be in therapy for a while but nothing changes,” Pegeron added. “So that would be an example of why you need to think about medication; lift enough of the mood and symptoms that their life hasn’t changed yet, so then they can make use of therapy.” In media, these therapy sessions have the stereotypical image of the patient lying on a reclined couch lamenting about their life while a silent analyst looks on indifferently. But whatever experiences Woody Allen may have had, the practitioners of Ann Arbor paint a different picture. “The invitation we make to our patients is this: to speak as freely as they can about whatever comes into their minds,” University alum Michael Shulman, faculty member of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, said. “Thoughts may occur that they’re not sure they can or would like to say, but we ask them to do their best to speak them anyway.” “What psychoanalysts do when we think we have something useful to say to help our patients speak more freely about what is inside,” Shulman added. “But there is much more quiet and listening that develops than in ordinary conversation.” Through this dialogue, both analyst and patient seek to understand the unconscious determining factors that may lead to recurring problems in relationships and everyday life.
These factors can be so habitual or commonplace in the life of the patient that they become difficult to determine where they are and why they are at play. Examinations of childhood experiences and past relations, along with present issues, work toward uncovering the hidden ways in which patients’ past experiences affect their present. At the same time, the analyst seeks to prevent their own sentiments from influencing the patients’ understanding of their issues. “It’s been said by an analyst recently, one who is especially articulate, that Freud’s greatest discovery was of a new form of human relatedness,” Shulman said. “It is a unique form of human relationship that allows an unfolding of the self through this process.” As ideal as the process sounds, psychoanalysis has found difficulties retaining credibility in the public eye. In recent years, a lack of exposure to the process has been RUBY WALLAU/Daily the result of pressure from insurance companies. “Most insurances don’t cover psychoanalysis,” Pegeron said. “They will cover psychotherapy, usually with a limited number of sessions even though they claim it’s unlimited. And what they use is medical necessity. In other words, you have to show that the person is still having enough disturbances that they require continued therapy.” The psychoanalytic process, however, never has a set trajectory. While four to five sessions a week is typical, patients are free to choose their own pace and gradually build momentum. Even the conclusion of sessions comes from the patient. “People begin to talk about, and become able to think of their psychoanalysis ending, when they feel that enough of the difficulties they started with have been resolved and can be looked back on, and that they can reflect enough on their own about all that they have learned about themselves to carry on alone,” Shulman said. Pharmaceuticals, however, provide a quick fix with fewer costs for insurance companies. Additionally, in the University setting, the capacity of pharmaceuticals to be tested on hundreds of subjects with immediate results makes conducting research simpler than in the case of long-term therapies. As a result, the convenience of medication has led to fewer practitioners such as Pegeron, who seek to bridge the two disciplines.
While psychology departments in the United States have seen a decline in practicing psychoanalysts, University students can still gain exposure to the ideas of Freud through a variety of courses taught in LSA and seminars and conferences held at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Tomoko Masuzawa, professor of comparative literature and history, and Andreas Gailus, associate chair and professor of Germanic languages, have offered such an opportunity to varying degrees of success. “I tend to have a number of classes that include some Freud texts,” Gailus said. “The first thing people will tell you is, well clearly isn’t he wrong? They always assume that (psychoanalysis) has somehow been completely superseded and that it’s now entirely clear that everything Freud has to say is wrong.” “I usually, as a beginning, say sexuality or sex in Freud isn’t what you think,” Masuzawa said of the way she overcomes many student’s initial mindset. For Gailus, starting with a work by Freud on a topic outside sexuality is a rule of thumb. Mourning and Melancholia, Freud’s essay on depression, has proven to be a popular read among students. “(Students) find (the essay) fascinating and they realize that (Freud) has a way of bringing into relief the landscape of experience,” Gailus said. Even in such a negative environment, students continue to find many concepts in psychoanalysis useful. Rackham student Shannon Winston, who founded the University’s psychoanalysis reading group, uses Freud’s approach to imagination in her work. Freud, in “The Interpretation of Dreams,” examines the ways in which the imagination creates associations between objects that aren’t necessarily connected by ideas, but rather by simpler qualities like shapes or color. For Winston, this approach becomes a new way of reading works such as “The Iguana” by Italian author Anna Maria Ortese. “In Ortese’s ‘The Iguana,’ I chart the color turquoise in its different manifestations,” Winston said. “In the beginning of her novel, Ortese mentions the beautiful turquoise of the Mediterranean. Then the narrative invokes stones and the Iguana of the same color. What I’m tracing are visual and perceptual networks of color throughout the narrative, which reveal perceptual resonances with the Sea.” As Freud famously wrote in “Three Theories of Sexuality,” the only abnormal person is a psychologically normal person. As one in 10 adult Americans suffer from depression today, according to the Center for Disease Control, Freud’s claim seems to be corroborated. With the prevalence of depression in many people’s lives, one must wonder what the consequences are for a culture that largely resorts to one way, namely medication, in dealing with mental health and the interior landscape of the mind.
To see the full version, go to michigandaily.com
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 // The Statement
7B
Personal Statement: Diving into my insecurity by Ruby Wallau It was a snowy night as I sat with my grandparents, my mother, her boyfriend and my younger brother at a round booth in a dimly lit restaurant. My grandmother smiled softly beside me as I gently bumped my shoulders against hers, wanting to feel her presence. She is light, her spirit buoyed by unabashed kindness, but I often fear she sacrifices too much of her confidence for the happiness of others. She offered my mother a taste of her risotto, the same dish that sat in front of me. My mother laughed and said no, she shouldn’t eat so many carbs if she wanted to stay skinny. My grandmother said nothing. My skirt suddenly felt too tight to hold in my round tummy and my face too chubby to make eye contact with anyone at the table. I set my fork down and let false claims of fullness spill off of my lips. The sweet red wine and selfconsciousness soaked into my skin as I watched my mother in the candlelight. My arms are like thick logs compared to her twigs. I have always been a round heavy tree standing next to her brittle fluttering leaves. As we left the restaurant, I shimmied into my coat, letting it swallow me. I’ve learned to relish in the way winter hides me. I was born in a place surrounded by the ocean, but I grew afraid of the beach. I’m not afraid of seeing a silver fin peeking out of the deep blue, or the purple jellyfish that have stung me before, or even being crushed by the pounding waves that once covered my skin with bruises when I ran through them carelessly. I am afraid of the beach because the thought of donning a bathing suit makes my heart race and my body cringe. There is a photo of me when I was five wearing a blue bikini with little pink flowers and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the beach. My hair was dirty blonde, curly and wild. My skin was sun-kissed and underneath my knotted hair was a sandy scalp. It is the last documentation of me eating without shame and the last time I wore a bikini. Each summer, my cousins and I would pretend we were mermaids as we splashed and laughed in Lake Michigan. Now, I spend every summer coming up with new excuses for why I would rather sit in the sand with a book wearing shorts and a tank top than swim with them. Weight transformed into a number that I couldn’t stop thinking about. In the fourth grade, a friend whispered into my ear as she pointed at the tag
peeking out from the shirt of the chubby girl sitting in front of us, “I bet she weighs over a hundred pounds.” In line at the grocery store, between the candy bars and comic books, I would read the headlines of gossip tabloids speculating about celebrity weight gain. I began to see weight everywhere. When I returned to my childhood home one summer in middle school, I discovered that my best friend, who had always had a round face and fleshy arms that mirrored my own, had become so thin that I could wrap a single arm around her waist. It felt like a betrayal. Her cheeks were sharp and her thickest feature were the chunky braces on her teeth. I had only become rounder during our time apart. My father handed me the shiny blue “South Beach Diet” book and told me that we would do it together. He bought a bag of sugarless mints and said that if we ate only those and vegetables for a week, we could lose 10 pounds. The small book felt heavy in my hands as I tucked it away in my closet. Later that afternoon, he bought my brother a cheeseburger from McDonalds. I desperately wanted to lose the weight. Every bite of food I swallowed came with three bites of shame. I would eat as little as possible in front of my parents, instead waiting until the late hours of the night
to tip-toe downstairs to our pantry and sneak yogurt pretzels or a cup of ice
no longer felt like an uncontrollable force in my life. I had accomplished something that I had been trying to do unsuccessfully for years. But it didn’t transform my body; it just changed my perception of it. The heavy pounds of fat I felt on my body were only heavy to me. When I looked in the mirror, my body wasn’t all that different, but awkward round shapes that I had hated before began to feel like curves I could enjoy. I wore a bathing suit for the first time in years the summer before my freshman year of college. It was at a murky campground lake, mosquitos nipped at my legs and sticky humidity coated my skin. Clad in a pinstriped one-piece, I self-consciously wrapped my arms around my middle. My friend grabbed me by the waist and tossed me into the water. I screamed and dove head first PHOTO COURTESY OF RUBY WALLAU into the insecurity that had scared me for so long. He swam cream back to my room. after me as my head broke the surface. During senior year, I finally dug up It felt like I was floating, weightless, that blue glossy “South Beach Diet” even though my feet could touch the book from where it was hidden in my rocky bottom. closet. I learned to eat only vegetables A couple of days ago, as I waded and meat for weeks and would wake across the Diag through the slush on up an extra hour earlier to run on the my way to class, I overheard the girls treadmill before class. When I lost ten in front of me worrying about Spring pounds, it transformed me. My weight Break. “I’ve really let myself go,” one
said. The other agreed, chastising herself for unhealthy eating habits and not going to the gym enough. They began to devise a plan to get bikini-ready in less than three weeks. I wanted to roll my eyes and brush off their words as superficial, but I couldn’t because I knew that I have had nearly the exact same conversations with my own friends. I am afraid to ever calculate how many hours I’ve spent in my short lifetime thinking about losing weight, counting calories and googling crash diets. I once read that women monitor their bodies once every 30 seconds. We each devise a system to mask our own flaws, learning how to wear our clothes, how to fold our legs or rest our hips to project the thinnest versions of ourselves. Body image will probably always be an internal struggle for me. There are still days when I obsess about the numbers on the scale or spend all day hating myself for binging on Nutella the night before. But I’m ready to fight this battle. I am tired of apologizing for eating. It exhausts me that when I sit at a table with my friends, I expect to hear myself or them make a joke at our own expense. Body hate has become a normative behavior in our society. It is a habit that I try to fight everyday. Even though sometimes I hate the person in my reflection and the curves I don’t recognize, I am learning that it’s alright to also love the person I find there, too.
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Wednesday, March 12, 2014 // The Statement
T H E V I S U A L S TAT E M E N T: A N E N G L I S H M A J O R ’ S P I L G R I M A G E T E R E S A M AT H E W T R AV E L E D T O L O N D O N A N D OXFO R D FO R SPR IN G B R E AK TO VISIT T H E L A N D O F H E R MOT H E R TO N G U E , S CO N E S , I M P E C C A B LY D R E S S E D H U M A N S A N D T H E W O R L D ’ S M O S T FA M O U S B O Y W I Z A R D .
A man, presumably an Oxford student, cycles underneath the Bridge of Sighs in Hertford College, Oxford.
Teresa wasn’t quite sure what delicacies were in this shop (besides chives), but she was pretty sure she couldn’t afford them.
Afternoon tea in Camellia’s Tea House is a must for anyone who likes to feel fancy and eat cake (i.e. college students and your grandmother).
Tourists and locals mingle in the Portebello Road Market in Notting Hill, London enjoying the sunshine and food carts.