ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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CAMPUS LIFE
Survivors share their stories at Speak Out Students recount experiences with sexual assault at 29th annual SAPAC event By RIYAH BASHA CLAIRE ABDO/Daily
Hip-Hop artist Frank Waln and dancer Samsoche Sampson perform for the Native American Heritage Month keynote performance at the Michigan Union on Monday.
Concert caps off Native American Heritage Month Event includes hip-hop, dialogue about identity, historical context By LYDIA MURRAY Daily Staff Reporter
The Native American Student Association capped off Native American Heritage Month on
Monday night with a concert featured noted performers Frank Waln and Samsoche Sampson. The performance, which drew more than 80 people, featured a blend of Native American dancing and traditional instrument playing overlaid on more modern, hip-hop style music. Waln, a Sicangu Lakota from South Dakota, has been recognized for his work raising awareness for Native American
culture, and has received numerous awards for those efforts — including three Native American Music Awards, the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development 2014 Native American 40 Under 40 award and the 2014 Chicago Mayor’s Award for Civic Engagement. Sampson is an artist who works to fuse modern art with traditional Native American elements, and his work
involves a variety of mediums including dance, music, acting, printmaking and painting. The two are both 2014 graduates of Columbia College Chicago, where Waln received a bachelor’s degree in audio arts and acoustics, and Sampson received a Bachelor of Fine Arts. They have been working together since 2011. A talking circle — a traditional Native American problemSee CONCERT, Page 3
Daily Staff Reporter
At the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center’s 29th annual Speak Out, more than 150 attendees shared and listened to each other’s personal accounts of sexual assault and harassment. The public forum presented an opportunity for self-identifying survivors of sexual assault to speak in a confidential setting. Common themes, such as others doubting their accounts and the importance of advocacy and solidarity emerged in many of the stories. LSA senior Alex Barkin, a co-coordinator with SAPAC, said Speak Out provides a safe space for survivors. “A lot of people up there speaking have never spoken before, and it’s a way for people to start thinking of ways they can
ARTS PREVIEW
SCIENCE
Rackham show features Timo Andres’ work Takacs Quartet performs composer’s ‘Strong Language’ By DAYTON HARE Daily Arts Writer
The image of the starving artist is one of the most deeply ingrained etchings in the collective consciousness of the Western world, and certainly Takacs with good Quartet reason. For Wednesday, generations, many creative Dec. 2, laborers have 7:30 p.m. struggled to sustain a Rackham Auditorium comfortable income for $26 to $52, students $12 themselves, often wres- to $20 tling with a public that doesn’t place a high monetary value on creative work. In many cases, artists will take a second job with a more sustainable cash f low — in the most favorable instances, a job related to their art. For the creative figure of the composer, this second job will often involve teaching music, both privately or at a college or university. But for those courageous and talented few who
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work to make a living by composing alone, income generally comes in the form of commissions, requests for a new work for a specific ensemble or occasion. In Rackham Auditorium on Wednesday, the Takács String Quartet will be performing one such commissioned piece, Timo Andres’s Strong Language, written for the ensemble and commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Shriver Hall. Timo Andres is a young and talented composer and pianist based out of Brooklyn. Born in 1985, he first came under the public gaze in 2010 with the release of his piano music album Shy and Mighty, which The New Yorker’s Alex Ross wrote “achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene” — but Andres’s musical life began far earlier. “I grew up as a pretty serious classical pianist. I started when I was about seven, and became pretty serious pretty quickly. It was something that I initially just took to very naturally, and then pretty soon just decided that it was going to be my career,” Andres said in a phone interview with The Michigan Daily. “And I started writing things down right around the same time. It was just sort of something that I didn’t even really See ANDRES, Page 6
heal,” Barkin said. The event’s organizers repeatedly emphasized both confidentiality and safety throughout the session. About 20 SAPAC volunteers staffed the event and were present throughout the session in case any of the survivors’ accounts proved triggering for listeners. Professional advocates also manned a separate crisis room to serve as on-call support. “The sharing that takes place is emotional and powerful, and we need to make sure that survivors are in a safe space,” she said. Survivors echoed similar sentiments. “We’ve all been through so much of the same,” one survivor said. “This bond we have, even if it’s the worst bond ever, is still amazing.” LSA senior Kara Kundert, a SAPAC peer facilitator, noted that Speak Out often empowers survivors to begin working toward institutional change. “The advocacy work being done, especially by student survivors, comes out of spaces like this,” she said. “Having Speak Outs helps people cleanse See SPEAK OUT, Page 3
Schlissel talks role of genetics in medicine
ZOEY HOLMSTROM/Daily
Program pioneered at Berkeley drew criticism for asking students to donate DNA samples
Neurology Prof. Lewis Morgenstern, a health disparities researcher, speaks about a program to reduce income inequality at the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs meeting in the Regents Room on Monday
Prof. discusses income inequality with SACUA CSG president also calls for expedited release of course evaluation data By GEN HUMMER Daily Staff Reporter
A potential University program to address income inequality led discussion at Monday’s Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs meeting — where Neurology Prof. Lewis Morgenstern, whose research focuses on health disparities, unveiled a “social experiment” to address the issue. The meeting also featured comments from CSG President Cooper Charlton, an LSA
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senior, who again asked SACUA to move up the timeline for releasing student course evaluatation data. Morgenstern said the income gap in the United States, which hesaid is higher now than it’s ever been with the exception of just before the Great Depression, is one of the main factors driving health care inequality. He added that the responsibility to address the growing disparity must fall to the private sector. Under Morgenstern’s plan, those working at the top end of the University’s pay scale would have the opportunity to donate a percentage of their salary to those working at the low end of the University’s pay scale. The idea is that money that might otherwise be locked into retirement funds could now be
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transferred to those who would spend it immediately. Morgenstern was quick to clarify that the idea is not driven by a particular problem at the University. Instead, he hopes the University can pioneer the program with the eventual goal of its adoption by large, for-profit corporations. “This is not in any way saying that there’s anything wrong with what happens here,” Morgenstern said. “This is just a social experiment that could go on anywhere and might as well start at home. Being an employee at the University of Michigan is a great thing and in no way is this targeting Michigan because there’s a problem.” Rather than donations funding health care costs See SACUA, Page 3
Vol. CXXV No. 38 ©2015 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com
By MAYA SHANKAR Daily Staff Reporter
Before he was University president, Mark Schlissel was the dean of biological sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. During his tenure there, he helped implement a controversial orientation program in which all freshmen were asked to submit a DNA sample for analysis, which were intended to then inform an orientation week discussion on genetics. Schlissel discussed that project — and the backlash to it — during a panel held Monday as part of the University of Michigan Department of Human Genetics Seminar Series. The orientation program, called “Bring Your Genes to Cal,” initially intended to analyze student saliva samples for three non-disease associated genes related to the ability to metabolize alcohol, lactose and folic acid. In return for submitting their samples, students were told they would have access to their own results and the opportunity to See GENETICS, Page 3
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SPORTS......................7 SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............6