ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM Friday, October 16, 2015
Ann Arbor, Michigan
michigandaily.com
ADMINISTRATION
University investment portfolio totals $10B Return on investment drops 15.3 percent since 2014 report By ALLANA AKHTAR Daily Staff Reporter ALEXA BORROMEO/Daily
The Michigan Daily asked international professors and graduate student instructors what it’s like to teach classes in English. From top left, clockwise: “We are a minority on campus, and we do not have a good pathway to raise the community’s awareness of our difficulties and to understand and appreciate our efforts.” GSI Yidi Li, from China. “I feel like when they see me and when I speak that they think, in some form, that I am a second-class professor.” Professor Luis Felipe Sfeir-Younis, from Chile. “At the end of the day what is really hard, in my opinion is to just be yourself, not being fluent.” GSI Claudio Vilas Boas Favero, from Brazil. “Sometimes, I still feel nervous when students talk fast. And when I ask them to reiterate again I’d be worried if the students would be like ‘Haha, she didn’t understand me’ and they would be making fun of me in the back.” GSI Yang Wang, from China.
TEACHING IN TRANSLATION By ALEXA BORROMEO Daily Video Editor
“My calc teacher is so foreign that she spoke in Chinese for a full minute before realizing it wasn’t English” -Anonymous (Yik Yak, September 21, 2015, 100 upvotes) “Really wishing my foreign GSI came with subtitles right now.” -Anonymous (Yik Yak, October 2, 2015, 156 upvotes) Discriminating remarks like these have become
commonplace amongst undergraduate students on our campus. Maybe you’ve overheard side comments in the back of lecture filled with more than 100 students about your professor’s accent or listened to friends complain about having a “foreign GSI” in the dorms. Maybe you’ve even responded to these comments made on popular college campus social media platforms such as Yik Yak. This video series was made in an attempt to respond to these comments by providing a direct perspective and voice
from our professors and GSI’s who face discrimination because of their language and culture. Each interview was done in the instructor’s first language. “Having this conversation in English and reproducing the same feelings of feeling different is meaningless,” said Psychology and Women’s Studies GSI Özge Savas. Speaking in one’s first language on a daily basis is a privilege that many students at the University, including myself, have; we are able to fully express ourselves
and easily communicate our ideas without second thought or fear of being misunderstood or judged based on our ability to speak a language. To reverse this privilege, even if only within the scope of this video series, will hopefully put those of us at the University who do speak English as our first language, or speak English as our only language, in a role that we are not too familiar with - the patient role of translating and understanding in language that isn’t your own. See INTERNATIONAL, Page 2A
Students host vigil for victims of recent terror attacks in Israel Gathering on the Diag features prayer, songs, personal connections to events abroad By LEA GIOTTO Daily Staff Reporter
Students gathered on the Diag on Thursday night to honor victims of terror attacks that have taken place in the Israel over the past month. The event, which was co-hosted by multiple student organizations including J Street, WolvPac, the American Movement for Israel and I-LEAD, featured prayers and accounts from those somehow affected by the attacks. See VIGIL, Page 3A
WEATHER TOMORROW INDEX
Vol. CXXIV No. 12 ©2015 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com
HI: 50 LO: 28
MATT VAILLIENCOURT/Daily
Engineering sophomore Kevin Wolf recites a prayer for those who have been affected by terror attacks in Israel at a vigil on the Diag on Thursday.
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NEWS......................... 2A OPINION.....................4A ARTS........................5A
SUDOKU..................... 3A CL ASSIFIEDS...............6A FOOTBALL SAT U R DAY. . 1 B
FLINT — Though the University’s endowment continued to increase in fiscal year 2015, its return on investment decreased by 15.3 percent from 2014, University administrators announced at Thursday’s University’s Board of Regents meeting. The endowment is a pool of funds, much of which are received from donors. The principal amount of the fund remains untouched, but is invested and grows with interest from year to year. The University does not spend all the resulting interest, resulting in a theoretically neverending source of funding. “You can think of it, in a way,
as this giant bond … which pays out a certain amount of interest every year to the University,” said Rafael Castilla, director of investment risk management in the University’s investment office, said in a 2014 interview with The Michigan Daily. The total value of the endowment increased to $10 billion this year from $9.7 billion in 2014, due to a 3.5-percent return on investment in fiscal year 2015. The distributions from the endowment, which represent the money the University spends from returns on the endowment, were $292.5 million this year. In 2014, the endowment had an 18.8-percent return on investment, and chose to distribute $284.4 million. The University bases its distributions on a seven-year average of the endowment’s value, pulling a set percentage of that average value every year. In 2014, the University implemented a reduction to the set percentage, from 5 to 4.5 percent annually. “Our investment team’s longSee INVESTMENT, Page 3A
CAMPUS LIFE
SAPAC talks draft sexual assault policy Conversation focuses on ‘U’ definition of incapacitation By EMMA KINERY Daily Staff Reporter
Seeking to gather input on how the University addresses sexual assault on campus, students and Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center officials gathered in the Michigan Union on Friday for a roundtable discussion. The forum focused on proposed updates to the University’s Student Sexual Misconduct Policy. A series of similar roundtable discussions are scheduled through Nov. 3 and SAPAC Director Holly Rider-Milkovich said she has already recognized potential improvements to the draft since the sessions began earlier this month. “We are learning from students every single time we do one of these roundtables,” Rider-Milkovich said. “We heard tonight, for example, that we should make clear on the policy who is responsible for ensuring that sanctions are enforced. That’s a really important point, and that is not a point we have heard from others. That’s just one example and we have
those examples for every single roundtable we’ve done.” The roundtables are the second of three stages RiderMilkovich said are in the works before a new policy on student sexual misconduct rolls out next semester, as part of a process that first began when the policy was last revised in 2013. In November 2014, the University began collecting feedback from the administration and external experts on sexual misconduct policies on campuses, as well as reviewing how other schools around the country were addressing the issue. A University survey released in June indicated that 22.5 percent of female undergraduates experienced sexual assault within the past year. A similar survey conducted at 28 research universities by the Association of American Universities, released in September, showed about 30 percent of undergraduate women at the University reported experiencing nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching by force or incapacitation. That’s almost 7 percent above the national average. The University is now considering revisions to the 2013 policy, with a draft of a new sexual misconduct policy open to student input — an opportunity See SAPAC, Page 3A
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