2018-02-21

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Ann Arbor, Michigan

An Afternoon Tea

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statement

This week, the Statement took a look at the historical contexts and stark traditionalism of Martha Cook Residence Hall

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T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | FE B RUA RY 2 1 , 201 8

STUDENT GOVERNMENT

CSG calls for transparent decisions on student life Resolution calls for endowment investigation, reps. argue over Michigan Time changes HALEY MCLAUGHLIN/Daily

Bret Stephens, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, discusses the roles of free speech and personal discomfort in education in the League Tuesday.

New York Times columnist talks power of free speech, disagreement Bret Stephens rails against Trump, echoes Navarro on understanding other viewpoints SONIA LEE For The Daily

Bret Stephens, a columnist at the New York Times, spoke on the importance of free speech and disagreement Thursday at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre

in a talk titled, “Free Speech and the Necessity of Discomfort.”

The talk, presented by Wallace House, was part of the “Speech and Inclusion: Recognizing Conflict and Building Tools for Engagement” series, which previously brought speakers such Joshua Johnson of NPR, and was put on by the University of

Michigan’s Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

Stephens joined the New York Times in April 2017, having previously worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Jerusalem Post. A neoconservative and political commentator, he is a member of the “Never Trump” movement of conservatives

opposing President Donald Trump.

Stephens began his talk speaking briefly about his past journalism experience.

He discussed the effects of the 2016 election on free speech and went on to say both sides of the political spectrum were responsible See COLUMNIST, Page 3A

ALICE TRACEY

Daily Staff Reporter

Central Student Government met on Tuesday evening to discuss the University of Michigan’s decision to end Michigan time, the tradition of starting classes 10 minutes after the hour. Beginning on May 1, classes will start on the hour and end 10 minutes before the next to allow for students to get to backto-back classes. The assembly also passed resolutions support the demands for more representation

by Latinx students, and increased transparency in the Univeristy’s endowment investments.

The assembly welcomed Dean of Students Laura Blake

Jones, who explained the administration’s reasoning and answered representatives’ questions. Jones said the University’s professional schools, such as the School of Nursing and the Dental School, operate on the hour. Classes that run on Michigan time cannot use rooms in these professional schools because of the difference in start times.

“Other schools could use those classrooms, but they’re hindered from being able to do that currently because if the classes start at 10 after the hour and that room needs to be ready for transition at 10 until the hour,” Jones said. “It’s not possible to schedule them as efficiently as we See CSG, Page 3A

Alum’s streetwear brand featuring More call it Council to quits from Muslim women launches at the League change city

CRIME

ANN ARBOR

admin. at Mich. State

Ijaz kicks off Seek Refuge clothing line, will donate proceeds to intl. refugee aid

After flood of new lawsuits, VP of Legal Affairs steps down in Nassar fallout

Dozens filed in and out of Seek Refuge’s first clothing line launch party held in the Michigan League’s Hussey Room on Tuesday evening.

Seek Refuge is an organization, founded by Dearborn native Shazia Ijaz, committed to bringing awareness to aid refugees, empower women and represent Muslims through its clothing line. The organization currently gives a portion of its proceeds to a refugee aid program and was recently featured in Vogue magazine.

In its mission statement, Seek Refuge stresses the need to empower millennial Muslim women, and says the clothing line combines Islamic messages and aesthetics with American style to produce a forward fashion choice for millennial Muslim women.

The mission statement continues to focus on how Muslim women are misrepresented in society and how “in today’s social and political climate, it is crucial to accurately represent American Muslims in society.”

The mission statement was echoed at the event, as a video played on repeat showing President Donald Trump exclaiming, “Islam hates us” and other Islamophobic

MATT HARMON Daily News Editor

Michigan State University is facing three new lawsuits as of Saturday with regard to the handling of the sexual assault allegations against Larry Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics doctor and MSU sports medicine doctor, according to the State News on Tuesday. Just days after these lawsuits were announced, Bob Noto, MSU vice president for Legal Affairs and General Counsel, announced his retirement in a press release.

Former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, Robert Young will now coordinate the legal team managing these lawsuits.

Katherine Gordon, one of the victims of Nassar’s abuse, spoke at Nassar’s trial in Ingham County in January, where he received 40 to 175 years for sexual assault. She is now the first to sue MSU, the university’s Board of Trustees and various MSU officials and members of the medical staff See MSU, Page 3A

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comments made by political figures and other figures in the media. The sequence was then followed by a segment with Seek Refuge founder Shazia Ijaz, a University of Michigan alum, who brief ly explained Seek Refuge’s message.

Four models sported the four clothing pieces currently

released by Seek Refuge as the video, mentioned above, played in the background, and Ijaz spoke with event guests.

Ijaz described the label as,“the world’s first streetwear clothing brand for Muslim women.”

“What makes Seek Refuge different as a brand is that we focus on representing

Muslim women through our Islamic designs and not through enforcing a modesty standard,” she said. “We design clothes that work for Muslim women who practice all levels of modesty … And our American street style combined with our Islamic designs allow women who See STREETWEAR, Page 3A

IBRAHIM IJAZ/Daily

LSA senior Sahr Yazdani, Alum Sidra Kader, Ross senior Shaheda Islam and LSA senior Nazmun Nahar model at the Seek Refuge Launch Party at the Michigan League Tuesday.

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Vol. CXXVII, No. 81 ©2018 The Michigan Daily

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Ordinance clears up “blind spots,” health millages will fund affordable housing ALEX COTT

Daily Staff Reporter

Ann Arbor City Council convened Tuesday evening to discuss the Housing and Human Services Advisory Board’s financial constraints, including cutbacks on housing vouchers and the council’s vote to amend the city’s zoning ordinance, which prohibits front yard installments of solar panels.

According to Anne Bannister, D-Ward 1, the Housing and Human Services Advisory Board discussed during their meeting on Feb. 9 how funds from the mental health millages—a new tax approved in last November’s midterm elections—will be spent in the 2019 fiscal year to support the Affordable Housing Fund.

The millage was projected to raise $15 million in sum.

“That’s an eight-year millage and we’re expecting a million dollars coming from the 40 percent designated (for) affordable housing,” Bannister said. “Of that money, we are recommending to council 25 percent pass through supportive services with a handful of See COUNCIL, Page 3A

NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 ARTS......................6

SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............6 SPORTS....................7

News

2A —Wednesday, February 21, 2018

MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

TUESDAY:

By Design

WEDNESDAY: This Week in History

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FRIDAY: Behind the Story

THURSDAY: Twitter Talk

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: STUDENTS DISRUPT LAW LIBRARY WITH DEATH PENALTY PROTEST A group of University students interrupted quiet studying in the Law Library last night in a dramatized protest of the death sentence of a California man.

English Prof. William Alexander and San Francisco activist Richard Kamler organized the event, and the participating students were enrolled in Alexander’s University course, “Theater and Social Change.”

The protest was in the form of a theatrical piece titled “Sound of Lions Roaring,” created by Kamler and first displayed at Alcatraz in response to an earlier death sentence. Familiar with Kamler, Alexander wanted to bring the work to the University.

“The idea dates back a couple of years, but it finally came to fruition this year,” Alexander said.

At about 9:30 p.m., several members of the group in the library stood on their chairs and pointed toward Alexander, who portrayed William Bonin. Bonin, responsible for the deaths of 14 young men in California, was scheduled to be executed by

lethal injection at 3:01 a.m. last night.

Alexander, standing in the midst of about 125 students in the library, began speaking to the crowd in the role of Bonin. During his speech, members of the group posed around Alexander, forming what participants called a “hu- man statue.” Flashlights were used to enhance visual aspects of the performance, and sound speakers broadcasted an audio tape of roaring lions.

Kamler said the presentation was devised to bring awareness to the death penalty. Kamler, Alexander and many students performing in the piece expressed opposition to capital punishment.

“Basically, I don’t think there is ever a need to kill another person,” said LSA senior Ben McDonough, who worked in the formation of the human statue surrounding Alexander.

Many students in the Law Library stopped studying to watch the performance, which lasted for more than three minutes. Student reaction to the event was mixed.

LSA first-year student Susanne Kalman said she thought the message could have been clearer. “(The presentation) didn’t really get the point across,” Kalman said. “It didn’t give any feeling of why they were against (capital punishment).”

Kinesiology first-year student Tomas Filipcik thought a larger crowd might have made the performance more effective. “I think they should have done it in a place where there are more people,” he said. Both Kalman and Filipcik said they were opposed to capital punishment.

Some performers said they felt that the crowd was hostile to the performance. Performer Erin Crowley, an LSA senior, said “there was a lot of hostility in the room towards the effort and the cause, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t somehow give it visibility and recognition, which is what we were after.”

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ON THE DAILY: SIBS REP MAIZE AND BLUE ON OLYMPIC PODIUM SHANNON ORS

Daily Staff Reporter

On Monday evening, Maia and Alex Shibutani— University of Michigan alums affectionately known as the “Shib Sibs”— won a bronze medal in the ice dancing competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, marking the 168th medal won on the Olympic stage by a University of Michigan Wolverine.

Skating to a Coldplay melody, the performance earned the pair a score of 192.59, edging out

Okemos natives and teammates Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue. Hubbell and Donohue took a devastating fall during the free dance which eliminated their podium chances. Both pairs train in Canton at the rink where 2014 gold medalists Charlie White and Meryl Davis also trained.

The siblings were the first sibling ice dancing pair representing the United States to earn a medal.

“We had no path to follow,” Alex Shibutani told CBS News.

“There was no blueprint for us.

(Coach) Marina Zueva had no experience with siblings or Asian-

American ice dancers and we had to discover by ourselves our own path.”

For the Shib Sibs, their bronze medal finish marked an important milestone in their career that began over 14 years ago. After growing up on the East Coast, the pair moved to Ann Arbor in 2007 to train in nearby Canton and have the opportunity to continue their higher education at the University.

Following their 9th place finish in 2014 at the Sochi Olympics, the pair has gained a loyal following that spans beyond the ice dancing community. The pair is active on social media with over 36,000

followers on their Instagram account, @ShibSibs. They also have an active following on their YouTube channel where they post weekly video blogs chronicling their lives as elite athletes with the relatable nuance of sibling antics and morning routines.

In true millennial form, Maia Shibutani shared her excitement with fans on Twitter following the performance, capturing her and Alex’s emotion for their achievement.

“So proud! No matter what. @ AlexShibutani and I just had the best skate of our lives!!!”

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ALEXA ST. JOHN

In run-up to March elections, party platform calls for housing affordability, campus equity on this campus trying to find ways to give back, and I hope to continue to do so next year as student body As students gear up for the Uni- president,” he said. “To serve and versity of Michigan’s Central Student help move the ball forward, make Government elections on March 21 life at Michigan a little bit easier and 22, The Daily sat down with ex- for those who come after me than it ecutive candidates to talk platforms, was for me. I say this because while vision, and plans. In this installment, I love the University of Michigan, it we profile the MomentUM party, has not always been easy, I did not headlined by presidential candidate always feel welcome and I know AJ Ashman and vice presidential a lot of students have had and are candidate Charlie Bingham. having similar experiences. That is Engineering junior AJ Ashman a terrible feeling that no one should said his inspiration to run for CSG have to experience and so my serPresident comes from three places: vice is dedicated to making sure that His mother, those on CSG who have the students here now and those come before him and an innate that come after me do not feel that sense of obligation to give back to way, and that if they do their student others. Furthermore, Ashman em- government takes that experience phasized the importance of ensur- seriously and works to improve it.” ing all students feel welcome at the Ashman chose to describe his University as he did not always feel leadership style using the words that way. “forthright, purpose-driven and “I have tried to spend every day steadfast.”

KAELA THEUT Daily News Editor

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In a similar vein, LSA junior Charlie Bingham explained how the philosophical framework of “self-transcendence” fueled his decision to run as vice president on Ashman’s campaign. Rather than focusing solely on winning, Bingham said he hopes to foster a sense of community, raise awareness for important issues and create positive change on campus to last long after his time.

He described his leadership style as, “principled, but open-minded.”

“From my time as youth governor of Michigan to my current term as a CSG representative, there has always been a sense of urgency for me to involve myself in fighting for the greater good,” he said.

“Running with AJ aligns with this sense of urgency. I believe in this campaign because it is more than just a campaign; it is a philosophical framework, one that says we refuse to regress, retreat or even stand still, and that we want everyone to keep moving forward. Running is about more than the competition and the quest for winning the most votes; it’s about bolstering community, creating awareness, enacting positive changes, and making it easier for those who come after you. Running is an investment in the University, one that, if successful, will allow us to leave behind a legacy of service and progress.”

Ashman broke his party’s platform down into four major components revolving around health, academic affairs, student life and government relations as these issues affect every student on campus, and provide a tangible sphere in which the party can make effective changes regarding the way students engage with the University community.

“The first that comes to mind is housing affordability. This is an issue that affects all students, but especially minority students on our campus because Ann Arbor is the 8th most segregated mid-sized city in the country,” he said. “That affects the most basic ways in which

students engage with this University and the community here. In CSG, we have a chance to really stand up for students on housing and tackle issues like zoning and changing the height limit for downtown, increasing the waiting period for asking tenants to resign, and bringing back the Ann Arbor Tenants’ Union to provide resources for students involved in disputes with their landlord.”

He further discussed the importance of making education accessible for all students through initiatives such as expanding electronic textbook use, lowering the prices of course packs and pushing professors to aid students in securing the most affordable resources to succeed.

“The second major initiative of ours is on educational affordability, and this obviously spans a vast range of issues, but CSG can be a real player in discussions about textbook affordability, open-educational resources, an expansion of course reserves, more use of electronic textbooks and holding faculty accountable when it comes to federal and University rules regarding listing textbooks,” he said. “Additionally, we can do a lot to help make it easier for students to take professional or graduate exams, making course packs more affordable, generally giving students access to the tools they need to excel at this University regardless of income.”

Ashman also called for CSG to increase its advocacy of strengthening student recruitment programs in order to develop a more diverse foundation for future students and faculty. He emphasized these initiatives are realistic, as long as students stand strong in their desire to foster lasting change.

“Issues like recruiting facSee MOMENTUM, Page 3A

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MOMENTUM From Page 2A ulty and students of color require some level of structural change in how we seek out and hire/accept candidates,” he said. “It requires involving students more in the process for both students and faculty.

CSG has the chance to advocate for expansions of cohort-programs that help build and foster a sense of community and the creation of student-led recruitment boards that go out into the community and across the country recruiting students to Michigan. If our administration can make headway on those issues, we will leave behind a solid foundation upon which future efforts can be built. And we can achieve those things. Those things are not beyond us. We just have to be bold enough to stand for them and, in the face of opposition, not be too quick to fold for fear of “wasting” political capital, or being “iced out” by the University administration.”

Furthermore, Ashman ex-

COLUMNIST From Page 1A for a decrease in ideological discussion.

“We are rapidly losing the ability to talk to one another,” Stephens said. “The president has led the way in modeling this uncivil style of discourse. But he has plenty of imitators on the left who are equally as eager to bully or shame Republicans into shutting up because they deem their ideas as backward or insufficiently ‘woke.’”

Stephens also belives hateful speech falls well within the scope of the First Amendment and sees banning speakers from university campuses as only fueling the controversial speakers’ movements.

“I think that the worst way of dealing with hateful speech is to try and shut it down,” Stephens said in an interview with The Daily prior to his talk.

“The answer to hate speech is more speech. Hateful speakers thrive on controversy that some universities thoughtlessly afford them by trying to ban them.

Censorship is oxygen to hate speech.”

He also commented on the impact social media has on journalism.

“Am I as a columnist no longer allowed to use irony as a rhetorical device, because there is always a risk that bigots and dimwits will take it the wrong way?” Stephens said. “Can I rely on context to make my point here, or must I lie in fear that any sentence can be lifted out of context and pasted onto Twitter

MSU From Page 1A including Nassar, William Strampel, the former dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine and MSU athletic trainer Destiny TeachnorHauk and more. The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 17 by the law firms Manly, Stewart & Finaldi in California and Drew, Cooper & Anding in Grand Rapids.

The second and third lawsuits, which were filed on Sunday, are represented

by Louis Corey of the Corey Law Firm and were filed on behalf of Jane Doe 01 and Jane Doe 02, minors who were reportedly abused by Nassar.

These lawsuits both name MSU, the Board of Trustees, Nassar, MSU Sports Medicine Clinic and USA Gymnastics, Inc. as defendants.

In a comment in the State News, the Corey Law Firm said the two cases are seeking compensation for the “acts, conduct, and omissions” by Nassar, MSU and the other defendants.

All three lawsuits are reportedly requesting a trial by jury.

In addition to the recent lawsuit announcement, Noto’s retirement is coming

News

plained the oftentimes immense barriers which prevent students from joining campus organizations such as CSG. “There are structural reasons why CSG feels inaccessible. An example being that CSG meets at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday,” he said. “Those are working hours for many students who hold an on-campus job. And personally, my involvement in CSG has always required a sizable investment of time to do the job well, routinely upwards of 20 hours a week. That is a heavy burden to bare if you’re a student working to make ends meet. I’ve worked a job every day I have been on this campus; it’s hard to balance classes, student government, and working. We need to think a lot about how to tear down those barriers to involvement because it’s not just student government that has this problem. This leads to the Leadership Engagement Scholarship, which we call for the expansion of as a matter of equity, inclusivity and justice.”

Ultimately, Ashman emphasized although the University is large, change is tangible by work-

ing with students and amplifying their voices through solidarity and action.

“Connecting with communities that feel underrepresented is about finding ways to bring those people into the fold, through informal or more structural means, so that is where you go to recruit leaders from,” he said. “Having those leaders helps establish a culture of representation from the top-down.

You have to make people feel as though their work is valued and the time they are spending on that work is justified; they must realize they are part of something larger than themselves. It is then about listening to those underrepresented communities and, rather than just hearing them, showing that we are with them. Sometimes, it’s easy to feel like Michigan is too large to change. Even having worked in CSG it is possible to feel that way, but students are counting on us to take up their causes, to see them, to hear them and to stand beside them. We know that without being a part of the conversation, we cannot reasonably expect things to change.”

and used against me?”

Stephens ended his talk asking the audience to make the choice to listen to others’ points of view.

“It isn’t, or is not nearly, so that we can hear ourselves or those who completely agree speak,” he said. “It’s also to hear other people, with other views, have to say. To hear such speech may make us uncomfortable, as well it should.”

The talk was followed by a question and answer session, with Stephens taking questions from audience members and over Twitter. Several students from the audience criticized his talk as hypocritical and questions ranged from critiques of Stephens’s op-ed piece on Woody Allen to questions about the future of the conservatism and the political right wing.

“I think part of an intelligent pedagogy, particularly at places like the University of Michigan, is to say, ‘Good, let’s talk about your offense,’” Stephens said in response to one Twitter question about why people are sensitive to opposing views. “Let’s take it another step further. Let’s turn offense into a conversation starter and not a conversation ender.”

Throughout the session, Stephens maintained uncomfortable discussion was essential for understanding different viewpoints, and emphasized accepting and understanding these viewpoints.

This took on a similar perspective to Joshua Johnson’s panel last Thursday.

“Discomfort is not injury, and intellectual provocation is not a physical assault,” Stephens said.

“To hear speech with which we disagree may cause us to wince.

But with time it can also sharpen our thinking, or even change our minds.”

After the talk, audience members continued to express opposing opinions regarding Stephens and the event.

LSA freshman Jason Higdon was one audience member who was opposed to having Stephens give this particular talk on campus.

“He and basically the rest of the conservative commentary on the Times, on WaPo, on any major newspaper, are just as bad as the conservative establishment that enabled them, in a sense,” Higdon said. “I just thought it wasn’t good to have someone like Bret Stephens here to lecture us on the necessity of ideological diversity.”

In an earlier interview with the Daily, Michigan Mellon Fellow Austin McCoy said he believes the free speech and inclusion series does not adequately combat Spencer’s hateful rhetoric.

“It would be better if there were actual conversations about the resurgence of white supremacists or white nationalist politics and what that means for political culture, but also having a frank conversation about the intentions of people like Richard Spencer,” McCoy said.

On the other hand, LSA senior Ben Decatur felt it was important to have a conservative speak on campus about Trump.

“I think it was really important for students to hear on campus a conservative who is against Trump,” Decatur said.

“I think he was incredibly smart and hit on important points of what conservatives need to do in the future in the age of Trump.”

on the heels of MSU Trustee Brian Mosallam’s calling for Noto to resign from his position last month. Mosallam tweeted demanding Noto resign and called for “an independent review of the legal department’s handling of the Nassar matter,” after a copy of the Title IX report filed against Nassar published online seemed to implicate MSU and Noto in hiding details about the case and the university’s knowledge of the abuse.

In the wake of Noto’s retirement announcement, Robert Young, former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, has been named lead counsel by the university to coordinate the legal team representing the university in these recently filed lawsuits and the other Title IX suits pending against MSU. In the press release, Young said he and interim MSU President John Engler, who took over the position after former President Lou Anna Simon resigned last month, will cooperate with all Title IX lawsuits filed against the university.

“I am pleased to assist the university in addressing its multiple challenges,” he said.

“President Engler has made it clear that MSU is cooperating

fully with the various investigations and that will be an ongoing priority for me.”

According to the Detroit News, Young is also representing Gov. Rick Snyder in a lawsuit to force Snyder to oust current MSU trustees as of last week.

Kristine Zayko, a former deputy general counsel for the university, will temporarily fill the position of vice president for Legal Affairs effective March 5. Zayko will serve in the role while the university searches for a permanent replacement.

In the press release, Noto did not mention his specific reasons for leaving the position but instead heralded the university’s values and said he hopes the university will continue to serve Michigan and the country.

“It has been my privilege and pleasure to build and lead MSU’s legal team, in which I have great confidence,” Noto said. “I am proud to have Kristine Zayko as acting vice president for legal affairs and general counsel. I am deeply committed to the university’s land-grant mission and have worked with colleagues and clients to help MSU serve our state and nation. I am fortunate to have devoted my career to these goals and principles.”

STREETWEAR From Page 1A are millennial Muslims to feel like they’re representing their religion and their culture at the same time.”

When discussing her motivation to start the brand and help empower millennial Muslim women, Ijaz cited today’s Islamophobic climate.

“We focus on Muslims, women and refugees because those are three groups that we feel have been targeted since the 2016 election, for example, with sexist rhetoric, with the Muslim ban and with the decreased number of refugees being accepted into the United States,” she said. “These are things that we are actively fighting against with our clothes and our brand and our voice.”

Each of the four models on the platform exhibited one of the clothing line’s shirts,

COUNCIL From Page 1A

nonprofits in tow provide services on site of the housing commission and the other 75 percent of the million dollars would go to the Affordable Housing Fund.”

Zachary Ackerman, D-Ward 3, highlighted though the housing commission has been successful with rehabilitating affordable housing units, their difficult financial position may restrict them from continuing to provide Section 8 housing vouchers — a primary function of the commission.

“Over the course of the next months, we will better understand what Congress intends to do with our Section 8 program, but it’s looking like cuts of at least 10 percent, which looks like a real effect on our housing commission and our ability to provide housing vouchers for people to live in our community who may not otherwise be able to,” Ackerman said.

Ackerman emphasized the commission’s current concern to ensure they can support their own regulatory costs.

“The result is a very fiscally responsible manner, the housing commission has looked inward about how to keep their house in order and has decided to focus revenues on ensuring they can handle their administrative costs,” Ackerman said.

However, Ackerman also stressed the significant role local service providers play in Ann Arbor and their reliance on the commission’s funds.

“There are eight service providers in the community who do tremendous good staffing after-school programs and

CSG From Page 1A

could.”

Jones noted the University will save on classroom construction, which “dries up tuition,” by standardizing start times across all campuses.

She also said “interdisciplinary” students will benefit from the switch. Jones explained under the current system, a student taking back-to-back LSA and nursing courses has no transition time between classes.

University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald and Christine Gerdes, Special Counsel to the Provost, reiterated Jones’ points. Fitzgerald, who also visited University Council’s meeting Tuesday night, mentioned the importance of communication, saying the administration hopes to keep students up-to-date on the switch from Michigan time using Canvas, social media, posters and student publications.

Multiple representatives raised concerns about the University’s lack of transparency in making the decision to end Michigan time.

Jones said she had hoped to speak with CSG before the news broke.

CSG also hosted Architecture students Courtney Klee and Ellis

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 — 3A

hoodies or jackets. One of the pieces, an ocean blue jean jacket, sported the phrase “Seek Refuge” and an Arabic poem on the back.

Ijaz described the meaning of the poem and its representation of the refugee experience.

“It’s written by a Syrian Refugee,” she said. “It is about their journey and about their feelings of being displaced from their home and forced into a country where they don’t feel comfortable … But they can’t go back to their home.”

LSA senior Nazmun Nahar was thrilled when given the opportunity to model for the clothing brand at the event, as she feels the brand gives Muslim women a new way to express themselves.

“I’m a Muslim woman and it does represent me because I do wear street style a lot so I’m really happy that this is a thing now, she said.

LSA junior Adam Bowen was fascinated by Seek Refuge’s efforts to use fashion as a

source of activism for refugees.

“I think it’s a really cool mission, the idea of working the fashion industry into activism because it’s something that can be really left out,” he said. “It’s hard to find a way to be progressive with fashion.”

The event was co-sponsored by the University’s Muslim Students’ Association, the South Asian Awareness Network, Humanity First, the Michigan Refugee Assistance Program, Students Organize for Syria at the University of Michigan, Michigan Pakistanis, Redefine and MPak. In an interview, Ijaz told Vogue she hopes her brand ensures Muslim women feel empowered as leaders in today’s society.

“It’s more important than ever for the next generation of Muslim leaders to feel represented in our society and to represent our religion as it really is: a peaceful one,” she said.

support programs at our various housing commission properties,” Ackerman said. “They may be looking to us for support to continue those services which are absolutely necessary for our affordable housing system.”

Ackerman said the legislation passed on the mental health millage from the past year will aid the commission through their financial struggle.

“Fortunately, during the Trump administration, we passed a mental health millage that will help us carry our efforts forward,” Ackerman said. “The Housing and Human Services Board will be working on a resolution expressing some guidance to make sure the housing commission remains afloat.”

The Council also voted on an ordinance to amend a chapter of the city’s zoning ordinance.

The ordinance passed with eight votes in favor and two votes opposed.

The ordinance supports the efficient use of solar energy systems and outlines guidelines for their siting, design and installation.

Within these standards, the ordinance allows ground-mounting solar panels on the rear or side yards of singlefamily homes, but prohibits the installation of panels in front yards.

Ackerman expressed his support for the ordinance and need for clarity in the current zoning ordinance.

“I think that accessory structures are a blind spot in our zoning ordinance when it comes to single-family homes,” Ackerman said. “They allow for 21-foot structures to be put in place. But for the reasons I’ve stated tonight, I will be voting for this ordinance as written today.”

However, Ann Arbor resident

Ernest Figueroa brought up his disapproval of the ordinance and desire to install solar panels in front yards rather than limiting homeowners.

“What I can’t understand is that our neighbors simply don’t like the aesthetics of solar panels in front yards,” Figueroa. “It appears that it’s the aesthetic of an open, green front yard. Working with a landscape architect, we can put solar installation in the front yard. We’re simply trying to do what we think is right and according to our conscious.”

Yet, Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2, emphasized the community’s commitment to the beauty of the residential neighborhoods and supported the ordinance’s limit to only side and rear panel installation.

“There’s a clear lesson learned here: The aesthetics and character of our neighborhood is something our residents care deeply about and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to us,” Lumm said. “It’s a major contributor to our quality of life. We clearly need to engage the community and ask them what they think.”

However, Chip Smith, D-Ward 5, emphasized the city’s need for community-level solar to support residents who own properties unfit for solar panel installations.

“I view climate change as the most serious existential threat that we face and I think that aesthetics versus presenting somebody with no other options, the opportunity to create renewable energy is a mistake,” Smith said.

“Unfortunately, we have DTE, it has not communicated a willingness to partner with us for community solar.”

Wills-Begley of the Initiative for Inclusive Design, a project aiming aims to foster dialogue about building accessibility issues. According to Wills-Begley, architecture often discriminates against people with disabilities.

After listening to the guest speakers, CSG moved on to community concerns, executive communications, general updates and resolutions.

Dental student Tommy Vu introduced a reading day resolution also authored by by Public Policy senior Ben Keller, a senior policy advisor. The resolution would block professors from scheduling tests right before or after a school break. Vu said the resolution aims to address mental health concerns.

Abby Richburg, a project leader for CSG’s Mental Health Task Force, updated representatives on the motion to establish a Wellness Zone on North Campus. Richburg reminded the assembly that mental health resources are less accessible to students on North Campus.

“Fifty percent of students overall on campus have been deterred from CAPS resources as a result of the distance from North Campus,” Richburg said.

Richburg noted the project is making progress. The Mental Health Task Force has been gathering student input through focus groups.

CSG voted on several resolutions

Tuesday night, including a proposal that would change the University’s academic calendar. According to CSG Vice President Nadine Jawad, the motion would give students additional days off on election day and around the holidays, but school would start before Labor Day. LSA junior Nicholas Fadanelli, LSA student government president, also spoke on the matter. He said the administration needs to see student support for the proposal before offering its approval. According to surveys, Fadanelli said, many students are in favor of the changes to the academic calendar.

“Overwhelmingly the students say that if they can either get out earlier or maintain having certain days off they would prefer to start before Labor Day,” Fadanelli said.

The academic calendar resolution had already passed through University Council, so representatives could not propose amendments.

The resolution passed with 24 in favor and several abstensions.

CSG voted on another resolution requiring drama students to receive consent training. Sierra Stephens, School of Music, Theatre & Dance representative, said she had updated the document with statistics on sexual harassment. The resolution passed unanimously.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ISAIAH ZEAVIN-MOSS | COLUMN Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

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MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA | COLUMN

M

#RespecttheLecs

y friends always household with more than one complain that I know child. Many of these struggling my teachers by first lecturers turn to other partname. They scoff when time occupations, I wave to my Spanish such as driving instructor in the hall. for Uber or other They complain about jobs that add to their own professors, their workweek. nameless bodies who Addit iona lly, occupy a lecture hall lect urers a re for an hour and then benef it sdisappear into space, insecure; due to their purpose fulfilled. adm inist rat ion As a student in policies, pa r tMAGGIE the University of t ime lect urers Michigan’s Residential MIHAYLOVA cannot obtain College, I have the advantage consistent health care coverage. of creating close relationships This inequality has pushed LEO with my teachers: Class sizes are lecturers to fight for an improved smaller, meaning more one-on- contract for years. one interaction. Additionally, RC These are not greedy, faculty plans an overwhelming unsupported demands. As I number of extracurricular described, my own experience events to help students, such has proven lecturers are qualified as language lunch tables and instructors who go beyond community engagement classes. what is expected to create a In other words, they go above stimulating and constructive and beyond. learning environment. Each It wasn’t until halfway coffee hour I attended for through my first semester Spanish was organized, helpful that one of those above-and- and fun. Every extracurricular beyond mentors, Katherine event I visited brought me closer Mendeloff, my first-year to my teachers, classmates writing requirement instructor, and coursework. In addition, mentioned the Lecturers’ there is statistical evidence Employee Organization to my that lecturers are a crucial class. She described how the force in our University; they majority of RC faculty do not generate a massive surplus of serve as tenured staff, but as tuition revenue. In the 2016non-tenure track faculty called 2017 academic year, lecturers lecturers. I thought about my induced a $377 million surplus own instructors, and how every tuition, and yet only 4 percent of one of my passionate, dedicated this contribution was diverted and knowledgeable teachers has to lecturer pay and benefits. been a lecturer. As I researched Many argue that the reason more into the labor union, and for this is that the University the work they do, I became cannot afford to raise lecturer increasingly irritated. How could salary without raising student the University disrespect such a tuition. This is false and simply large, impactful and necessary an excuse, as last academic population of their staff, one year, the University generated that had eased and enhanced my $513 million in unrestricted transition to college? excess cash flow. This reflects LEO is a labor union of how the University can afford lecturers on all three University to better pay lecturers. Our of Michigan campuses. As administration just chooses stated previously, lecturers are not to. non-tenure track instructional Due to this constant faculty; this means that, unlike exploitation, this year, the their tenured colleagues, they fight for respect swelled. LEO don’t possess guaranteed job lecturers began bargaining with stability, decent wages or other University administration for benefits. For example, whereas a new contract to secure fair the average University full and consistent rights. Members professor makes about $149,000 are pushing for increased per academic year, the minimum wages, reliable health care, salary for a full-time Lecturer job security, recognition for is about $35,000 in Ann Arbor, inclusive teaching and improved $28,000 in Dearborn and $27,000 disability accommodations. In a in Flint. This translates to a $15 meeting on Feb. 12, University per hour pay, which is below a administration finally living wage for a single parent introduced a counterproposal — with children, or a two-parent one that served as a slap in the

face. The University responded with an offer of a $1,000 starting salary increase; this solely demonstrates that the University wants to move on, not actually solve a problem. $1,000 is not a sufficient raise by any measure; even with this increase, lecturers will struggle and suffer.

If this injustice does not morally motivate change within the student body, we should note that it does affect us as students as well. Student tuition is already very substantial and creeping higher and higher. Why isn’t our money being invested back into our education? Lecturers often teach introductory or undergraduate courses, so their motivation, attention and dedication are important to our development in academia.

If a lecturer has to split time between teaching and driving Uber, they obviously cannot give their 100 percent in the classroom. Therefore, everyone suffers and the highly paid administration turns a blind eye.

This is a difficult and often hidden fight. Many students don’t know about the struggles their own teachers face.

Therefore, my call to action is advocacy and presence. The University cannot function without lecturers — they teach a third of student credit hours in Ann Arbor — and we cannot receive a good education without them. I urge my peers to sport a #RespectTheLecs pin, attend Board of Regents meetings and create discourse among our student body. Any noise can be impactful in showing support for lecturers.

It is easy to overlook your first teachers in college, or to take crucial introductory classes for granted. However, these teachers, who often fly under the radar in their importance, cannot be pushed aside in their vitality. We do need to #RespectTheLecs, but we also need to be active in our fight for them.

ATTEND OPEN BARGAINING: Friday, March 16th, 10:00 a.m.; 4th Floor Palmer Commons (Here, allies observe bargaining. Having a room filled with supportive students sends a strong message)

Maggie Mihaylova can be reached at mmhiyalo@umich.edu.

HANNAH MYERS | HANNAH CAN BE REACHED AT HSMYERS@UMICH.EDU

E

Hiding from our lives

very time a classroom door opens in the middle of a class, I momentarily freeze.

I look toward the door, no longer able to hear my professor’s words, only coming to a place of relaxation when a student or somebody else who’s meant to be there meets my eyes.

I’m scared of it being someone who has come to shoot my peers and me.

This has been true throughout my time at college, in all kinds of classrooms. Maybe you think this is paranoid and stupid. As the child of two psychoanalysts, I might try to consider this a quirk of mine that speaks to some larger insecurity relating to some larger truth about myself that only a professional can solve for me.

Or maybe this is a sign of how internalized these shootings have become, how automatically the shootings are part of our lexicon, both with each other and within ourselves. My understanding of what is conceivable on a moment-tomoment basis, of what my present environment might bring me, feels like it has to include these shootings because of how often they occur.

I imagine what the implications of this automatic acceptance of the possibility that this would take place would have on younger kids. The Sandy Hook shooting, frequently cited as the event that introduced this modern era of public shootings in the U.S. (at schools, concerts and movie theaters alike), only happened in 2012, when I was 15. I imagine what it’s like to be growing up in elementary schools around the country that are under threat, as silence continues to emanate from our lawmakers.

I saw an Instagram post from Shaun King, the writer and civil rights activist. He had taken a

photograph of travel blogger Tanai Benard’s Facebook feed. Benard is a mother of a 10-year-old child who was explaining the protocol his teachers taught him in case an “active shooter” came to his school.

The child says, “The teacher is supposed to shut and lock the door, put the black paper over the window on the door. Then myself and three other boys are supposed to push the table against the door. After that the class is going to stand behind us on the back wall.”

Shocked that her Black son — only one of three Black children in a class of 23 students — would be asked to stand in front of the whole group, Benard asks him, “Why did you get picked to stand in front of everyone else if a shooter came to your school?” And the child answers: “I didn’t get picked. I volunteered to push the table and protect my friends.” Benard asks him why. And he says, “If it came down to it I would rather be the one that died protecting my friends than have an entire class die and I be the only one that lived.”

Benard’s 10-year-old child goes to school with a life-or-death mindset, willing to sacrifice his body for his classmates. This is simply part of the process of going to school, even from such an early age as 10.

This question of gun control, then, is not about anything besides these children. This is not about preserving the cultural tradition of the Second Amendment — that is an argument that deals with the connotations of the debate rather than the debate itself. This is not about mental health, either — of course, people who kill others en masse are mentally deranged. Every single country in the world has these people. But only the United States arms them. Last year, President Donald Trump signed a bill revoking

gun checks for mentally ill people.

No. There are two sides in this debate: the National Rifle Association and the government that it funds versus these children in American schools. How we respond to this set of questions will impact not only the future students to die at the hands of one of these attacks, but also those who survive; left to learn in an environment of danger and potentially grave sacrifice. Students have been forced to understand themselves and their peers as competitors, not collaborators. They become tactical pieces in an effort to save their own lives, using time in school to push tables against walls and hide.

Hide. Go to school and learn to hide. Is there no more backward lesson to teach our children than that? Elementary schools and high schools alike ought to be a place where students flourish and find themselves in their passions, their friendships, where they can freely and safely navigate the pressures and contradictions and messy developments of life.

I do not know the implications of this kind of fear-based education. I don’t think any of us can until some time further down the line. But I do know that in my own life, my most fruitful educational experiences, in and outside of classrooms, have occurred when I have felt least strongly a need to hide. Instead, they have come when I have been able to come out and speak in such a way that my voice and my story gets developed, where there’s a free and open exchange of ideas across differences.

Isaiah Zeavin-Moss can be reached at izeavinm@umich.edu.

MATTHEW COUNTRYMAN | OP-ED

T

Disrupting White Supremacy

his evening, the University of Michigan’s Department of History is sponsoring “Disrupting White Supremacy,” a teach-in on the global history of white supremacy, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Mendelssohn Theatre in the Michigan League. The teachin’s mission reads in part: “White supremacy uses history to fuel its fictions. Its promulgators anchor their vision of a racist future in mythical depictions of the past. But the past is not the place that white supremacists imagine it to be. We must reclaim and retell the global history of race.” Or to put it another way, Richard Spencer is largely beside the point.

Yes, Spencer and his followers in the “alt-right” constitute a dangerous force in American society. As we saw last summer in Charlottesville, Va., they are a real and present danger to Black and brown people and all who stand up for racial equality and justice. His simplistic and hateful message of white identity politics and ethnic cleansing is easy to identify and oppose. But the true challenge is to root out white supremacy in the very institutions we inhabit every day.

When the controversy over Spencer’s request to speak at the University of Michigan first emerged, I worried it would distract the University community from essential discussions of what it will take to build a racially-just university. In one sense, I was right.

For months now, students, faculty and community activists have devoted countless hours to building coalitions and debating strategic options for confronting Spencer’s white supremacy and hate speech.

But far from distracting activists from the imperative to work for racial justice on campus and in the local community, these efforts have produced a renewed sense of solidarity and commitment within the anti-racist community. Activists have organized a series of principled, creative protests and educational initiatives that have not only voiced their outrage against the resurgence of white supremacist hate but also served to remind us all of the continual need to work for racial justice. This is the message that tonight’s teach-in seeks to reinforce: that white supremacy is more than a project of a few extremists on the far right, that ideologies and practices of racial superiority have been a driving force in constructing the radical disparities in health, wealth and opportunity that characterize

the modern world, and that in order enrollment (African-American, to win local struggles for racial Native American, and Latinx equity and justice we must grapple students) to a peak of 3,297 (14.5 with the long, global history of racial percent) in that same year. But these domination and exploitation. were short-lived gains. Following As the saying goes, if you are not the 2006 passage of Proposition 2, outraged, you have not been paying the referendum that banned the attention. But outrage is not enough. use of racial preferences in college It will take much more than outrage admissions in Michigan, the number if we are going to systematically of Black undergraduates fell to 1,166 address the structural forces or 4.6 percent of total enrollment that continue to leave Black and and underrepresented minority brown people excluded from and enrollment to 2,822 (10.7 percent) marginalized within the University in 2014. Once again it took student community. activism, this time in in the form of Take, for example, the issue the #BBUM (Being Black at U-M) of African-American, Latinx and movement, to push the University Native American enrollment at the administration to prioritize diversity University. For its first 150 years, the in undergraduate enrollment. Four University was virtually an all-white years later, overall underrepresented institution. While Michigan was not minority undergraduate enrollment legally segregated like its southern has increased to 12.8 percent. counterparts, the University However, Black student enrollment operated within a cultural milieu remains stuck at 4.57 percent, ten that assumed that all but a very percentage points below the state’s small handful of people of color Black population. lacked the intellectual capacity to The cultural biases and attend the University. Before 1970, structural barriers that excluded as educational historian James African Americans from the Anderson has put it, Michigan University during its first 150 years “engaged in racially discriminatory continue to shape Black and brown and exclusionary practices that educational opportunity in the state earned it a reputation as an institution and at the University as it enters for White students.” In fact, for most its third century. It is one thing to of its history, the University did not oppose the Richard Spencers of the even keep track of the number of world. But unless we are willing to students of color enrolled. Only now insist that the University take action has the Bentley Library undertaken to admit a student body that reflects a project to identify and document our state and nation’s diversity, we all the African Americans who will have done little to dismantle attended the University in the years the white supremacist practices that before the civil rights movement. As pervade daily life on campus. of last April, the library’s researchers Nor is diversity enough. We had identified 1,700 Black students must also address the oftenfor the 117 years between 1853 overlooked structures and and 1970. As late as 1966, the practices that undergird the University estimated the Black sense that students and faculty student population to have been of color are more interlopers about 400 students, or 1.2 percent than valued members of the of that year’s total enrollment of community. This will be hard 32,500 undergraduate and graduate work as it involves attitudes and students. expectations as much as formal The movement to demand rules and procedures. At this racial equity in U-M student point, the University’s Diversity, enrollment began with the “Black Equity and Inclusion plan seems Action Movement” in 1970, which more focused on process, longdemanded the University achieve term goals and feel-good visions 10 percent Black enrollment by than on benchmarks and tangible 1973. The story of the three “Black steps. Plans are important but Action Movements” and the rise what we need is accountability, and fall of affirmative action at the from the University, from its University is too long and involved academic programs and from for this article. What we can say every member of the campus is that student activism led to the community. establishment of the Michigan Mandate in 1988 and a new set of admissions policies that raised black Professor Matthew Countryman is undergraduate enrollment to a peak an Associate Professor of History and of 2,101 students (9.2 percent) in 1997 American Culture in the College of LSA and underrepresented minority

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 — 5A

History is made with the ‘Porgy and Bess’ concert

MUSIC ALBUM REVIEW

ISABELLE HASSLUND Daily Arts Writer

HBO

‘Here and Now’ is a great experiment gone wrong MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN Daily Arts Writer

Maybe the strangest thing to come out of the rise of the television antihero was the writers’ room assumption that if viewers could root for the flawed and morally ambiguous — the Don Drapers and Tony Sopranos — surely we would find it in ourselves to extend that empathy to the downright insufferable.

Sometimes, if executed well, we actually might; “Girls” and “You’re the Worst” come to mind. But that’s not the case with “Here and Now,” a new HBO series from Alan Ball (“Six Feet Under”) that feels simultaneously overstuffed and empty, all while serving up perhaps the most unpleasant bunch of characters in recent TV history.

At the center of the show is the Portland-based BayerBoatwright family, led by matriarch Audrey (Holly Hunter, “The Big Sick”) — a conflict resolution specialist and director of one-woman nonprofit The Empathy Initiative — and her husband Greg (Tim Robbins, “The Brink”), a washed-up philosophy professor.

The couple has three grown, adopted children, each varying degrees of unlikable: Vietnamese Duc (Raymond Lee, “Mozart in the Jungle”), a “motivational architect” whose job appears to involve little more than barking meaningless platitudes at his Instagram followers while being paid an infuriatingly large sum of money for it; Liberian Ashley (Jerrika Hinton, “Grey’s Anatomy”), the owner of an online fashion boutique; and Colombian Ramon (Daniel Zovatto, “Fear the Walking

Dead”), a video game designer.

The Bayer-Boatwrights also have a biological daughter, the whiny 17-year-old Kristen, who unconvincingly maintains her contentment being “the boring white chick in the family.”

For Greg and Audrey, Berkeley alums who met at a protest for disarmament, this multiracial family is the living embodiment of their progressive dream for America.

But things are different now.

“Here and Now” Episodes 1-4 Sundays, 9 p.m.

HBO Donald Trump won the election.

The truth doesn’t matter anymore. White supremacy is on the rise. And even Portland — the self-styled progressive utopia — isn’t safe from any of this. “We lost, folks,” says Greg, at his birthday dinner in the first episode. “I look back on this great experiment that is our family and I wonder, I really do wonder, did any of it make any difference?”

And so the show finds itself very much in the here and now, keenly aware of its place in the Trump era. But instead of capturing the mood of America, Ball’s answer to this peculiar time is a bizarre, whirlwind tour through every hot-button issue imaginable, never quite stopping to give any of them the time or depth they deserve.

Each character throws around buzzwords (“genderqueer,” “slutshaming”) with the avidity and preachiness of a college freshman home for Thanksgiving break, recently mindblown by the first two months of Introduction to

Sociology and simply dying to tell you all about it. There’s plenty of talking about plenty of different things — abortion, policing, gender identity, white pride, religion and political correctness — but for all that talking, it’s remarkable how little is actually said.

As if that weren’t enough material, there’s also a hint of the supernatural — Ramon, the golden child of the family, begins experiencing hallucinations, and the number 11:11 seems to be haunting him.

It’s in this storyline that the show begins to find its real narrative and emotional core, which lies not in any of the Bayer-Boatwrights, but with Dr. Farid Shokrani (an excellent Peter Macdissi, “Six Feet Under”), Ramon’s psychiatrist.

At home with Dr. Shokrani, his wife Layla (Necar Zadegan, “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce”) and his son Navid (Marwan Salama, “American Crime”) is where we finally get characters worth caring about.

Like the Bayer-Boatwrights, the Shokranis have problems of their own; they disagree about how to practice their Muslim faith and worry that Navid’s gender fluidity will put him in danger. But unlike the BayerBoatwrights, they actually come across as real people, not television characters.

And that’s the fundamental problem with “Here and Now.” It’s so obvious what Ball is trying to do here that nearly every scene, every miserable character, every piece of dialogue seems inauthentic, carefully constructed to get some heavy-handed message across. The result is a disingenuous, self-involved rumination on upper middle class ennui that doesn’t accomplish any of the things it’s clearly trying to.

History was made this past Saturday night at Hill Auditorium. The University Musical Society and the School of Music, Theatre & Dance presented the new, scholarly performing edition of the score of the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess” in a concert style. The original Gershwin score was edited and refined by Wayne Shirley from the University’s Gershwin Initiative, which aims to create scholarly versions of the Gershwins’ works.

A standing ovation at the end of the four-hour long performance and the multiple applauses that exploded from the audience in the middle of acts attest to the incredible vocal and performing skill of the entire cast. “Porgy and Bess” is a work that deals with heavy topics, such as drug abuse, sexual abuse and racism, in a controversial way. The opera was not only vocally exhaustive — singing for four hours is no small feat — the content of the opera inevitably makes it emotionally exhaustive, as well. Soprano Karen Slack, who was the role of Serena, gave a notably heartbreaking performance of “My Man’s Gone Now.” Her powerful voice and expressiveness sent a wave of anguish over the audience. As Slack sang about the heartwrenching grief of a widow, I found my own heart aching and paining for Serena’s loss of her husband.

Tenor Chauncey Parker gave a lively performance playing Sportin’ Life, a dope dealer. Parker fully embodied this deceivingly charming character in both voice and movement. One of his most memorable moments was his performance of “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” where Parker masterfully inflected his voice to embellish the already jazzy and bluesy music, and danced to the more light-hearted jazz melody. His fun energy emanated from the stage, giving the audience a rest from the heavy emotions that are constantly hammered at throughout the entire opera.

Parker used the character to charm the audience as he charms most of the rest of the characters in “Porgy.” It’s

a genius way to approach a character that is supposed to represent a malicious force in the community.

The chorus, under the direction of Jerry Blackstone and Willis C. Patterson, played an interesting role in the scheme of events of the opera.

They provided many functions in this performance, such as commentators, narrators,

A standing ovation at the end of the four-hour long performance and the multiple applauses that exploded from the audience in the middle of acts attest to the incredible vocal and performing skill of the entire cast

scene setters or informants interacting with the lead roles.

They produced a beautiful, well-blended sound and partook in the emotions that all of the main roles were feeling.

The chorus was flexible and effectively acted in whatever role they were in at the time — not just singing words from a page, but understanding the significance of the words they were singing and finding their own individual meanings behind the words. Whenever they chimed in on the action of Porgy and Bess, it was always a memorable and powerful moment.

The singing was exquisite.

Morris Robinson (who played Porgy) had a bass voice that bellowed every time he opened his mouth, sending dark, rich tones sweeping over the audience. His bombastic

grumbles vibrated the walls of Hill Auditorium, a beautiful contrast with the smooth and floaty tones that soprano Talise Trevigne, who played Bess, produced. Trevigne’s voice was enchanting to listen to and complimented her graceful stage presence.

All of the title roles displayed great attention to vocal technique, which produced powerful and alluring sounds.

Still, at times, I wished that the performers would have paid more attention to detail when it came to physically embodying their characters.

The performance was given in a concert style, giving room for the performers to not only showcase their beautiful voices, but to fill the stage completely with the raw emotion that the opera lends itself to. When characters were alone on stage in order to sing their arias, it seemed more natural and easier for them to express the emotions of their characters in a convincing and natural way.

However, when more than one performer was on stage, the body language of the characters seemed to change.

I wished that the performers would have gone further in establishing their relationships by making more eye contact and interacting with each other in a non-superficial way.

“Porgy and Bess” is a work that should leave the audience in tears from the pain, in a cloud of bittersweetness. This performance did not have that effect on me, despite the beautiful voices and orchestration.

The University Orchestra, under the direction of Kenneth Kiesler, gave a stellar performance. I really enjoyed hearing the bluesy and jazzy tones coming from the orchestra — it gave a very cool dynamic to the show. The instrumentalists displayed such stamina and professionality — playing together for four hours straight and not seeming the least bit exhausted by the end of the show.

Time flew by watching this spectacular performance of “Porgy and Bess” and listening to the premiere of the new scholarly performing score edited by Wayne Shirley. It was an incredible experience to see a piece of history form before my own eyes.

‘LEMON GLOW’ BY BEACH HOUSE

BOOKS

Rereading ‘Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul’ now MIRIAM FRANCISCO Daily Arts Writer

No one is proud of reading self-help books. I’m not referring to the pop-science books about harnessing your brain power, or the Malcolm Gladwell-type stuff that tells you how to beat the odds. I mean real self-help: I’m talking “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.”

I’m sure most people aged 15 to 25 have stumbled across (or been gifted) “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.” It’s a selfhelp book (of sorts) made up of a series of personal narratives written by teenagers about love, friendship, school and family.

In a bizarre turn, I recently found out that the publishers of that book also created a number of ridiculously specific variations: “Chicken Soup for

the Cat and Dog Lover’s Soul,” “Chicken Soup for the Mother of Preschooler’s Soul” and “Chicken Soup for the Latterday Saint Soul.” My personal favorite title is “Chicken Soup for the Woman Golfer’s Soul.”

Why is it so easy to make fun of these books? Maybe because the first-person stories are so eager, so simple, naive and nice. A review by Will Friedle of “Boy Meets World” (how very ‘90s) on the first page of “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul” commends the very concept of the book: “The idea of teenagers writing about their experiences to help other teenagers is brilliant.”

Is it? The advice my mom gave me in high school and middle school was a lot better (in retrospect) than whatever convoluted solutions my friends came up with. I don’t think the power of this book is that the

content is really helpful in any tangible way, although I guess it’s comforting to know that everyone else is heartbroken and pimply, too. Instead, it’s that it’s entertaining. This book is like all the gossip that went around your middle school, written up and condensed. There’s a disappointing first kiss, a young romance cut short by a crosscountry move and many, many, many stories of unrequited love.

Rereading “Chicken Soup,” I was surprised by how deeply I was drawn into the narratives.

The intensity of their emotions is somehow both ridiculous and poignant. I’m not much older than the contributing authors, and I vividly remember how hard it is to be 15 — everything is the end of the world.

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PAULO DAURDO

The intrigue of Beach House, composed of Baltimore duo Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, stems from their minimalism. Albums seemed to be endless, largely unbroken by variation or complexity.

Within the empty stretches of Depression Cherry’s “Days of Candy” or Bloom’s “Lazuli,” the mind wandered, filling in gaps with daydreams. Beach House was the music to bring on long plane rides. Suspended in air, their lethargic pull dissolved time, holding every second spellbound — forever immortalized in the amber of repetitive melodies and eventoned vocals.

Beach House’s newest single “Lemon Glow” builds

off of the band’s trademark creeping sensuality, but sharpens it. The hazy smudge that their past discography left behind becomes more defined

“Lemon Glow” Beach House Sub Pop Records with every layered component.

“When you turn the lights down low / Lemon color, honey glow,” Legrand sings, and the tempo pulses underneath, unwavering. Organ meshes with keyboard meshes with electronic abstraction until the song itself vibrates with tension — the final build

into “Candy-colored mystery / The color of your mind” is a dramatic cacophony. There’s an abrasiveness here that isn’t normally heard with Beach House. Vocals are harsher, brought into focus through the jarring kick of an unwavering synth line. Somewhere, almost lost in the dissonance, a bass drum races on.

“Lemon Glow” is constantly in motion and hopefully this is indicative of a new direction for Beach House, a much-needed change after the dreary trudge of their last full album, 2015’s Thank Your Lucky Stars.

– Shima Sadaghiyani, Daily Music Editor

Arts

6A — Wednesday, February 21, 2018

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ENTERTAINMENT & MEDIA COLUMN

The tragedy of George R.R. Martin and ‘Thrones’ A few days ago on his blog “Not a Blog,” George R.R. Martin wrote to a commenter that “Fire and Blood” will be the next book he publishes.

“Fire and Blood” is to be a history of the Targaryen family, who are the central dragon riders of Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels and feature prominently in the immensely popular HBO series “Game of Thrones.”

For fans of the book series, though, this was not cause for celebration. Beginning in 1996 with “A Game of Thrones,” for over 20 years Martin has strung readers along with the promise of a conclusion to his expansive saga, a journey that has become all the more agonizing in the past decade with the emergence of “Game of Thrones” as a pop culture TV phenomenon. The fifth volume “A Dance With Dragons” was published in 2011, the same year the TV series began. Since then, Martin’s readers have waited patiently for the sixth book in the planned seven-book series.

Readers have openly wondered whether Martin, at the age of 69, writing a book every six to eight years, will die before he reaches the end. Many have criticized these demanding readers for acting as though Martin owes them something.

In my eyes, he absolutely does.

When you begin telling a story, you sign a social contract with the people listening. You agree to an unspoken rule that you will tell them how the story ends. The only way you can escape from this agreement is if something external happens that makes it impossible for you to continue the story. A TV show being canceled, for example.

No such situation exists for Martin. It does not matter how long it takes him to write. He has had time to write “Game of Thrones” spin-off books, so surely he has had time to write the main saga. Fans don’t want the history of the Targaryens, or at least, they don’t want it as much as they want the next book in the series. If Martin is simply no longer interested in finishing the story, he should just come out and say so. Better to announce that the series will never be concluded than to continue stringing his devoted readers along for years on end.

It is becoming increasingly

likely that in the time between Martin publishing “A Dance With Dragons” and the forthcoming “The Winds of Winter,” HBO will have told the entire story in eight seasons of “Game of Thrones.” Certainly, no one could have predicted when the show started how popular it would become and certainly no one could have predicted that by the time the show ended Martin still wouldn’t have released his next

IAN HARRIS book, but that is where we are.

Starting with season six, the show entered territory that few book to screen adaptations have ever had to face, continuing the story without the original source material to draw upon. Now your mileage may vary as it comes to the post season four/five episodes of “Thrones.” The show continues to be enormously well received, but amongst the most hardcore of book readers and showwatchers, the tides have slowly shifted.

The most recent season was widely and rightly criticized for ridiculous storytelling that at times asked audiences to suspend every ounce of disbelief they had left. Characters made the distance across continents looks like a walk across the street. Long awaited revelations and moments were handled in the clumsiest of fashions.

Main characters appeared to have death proof shields that allowed them to survive even the most unlikely of circumstances. “Game of Thrones,” the show that built its reputation of the death of its first season main character, had suddenly become safe. If you ask the average show-watcher, they might tell you that this season was a disappointment, but if you ask a book-reader, they will tell you that the problems began long ago.

Without Martin to go on,

it became clear to me that D.B. Weiss and David Benioff had no idea what they were doing. As far back as season five, they began making story and character decisions that seemed to defy even basic reason or rationale. A lot of the characters (Jaime Lannister in particular, but also Ayra Stark, Sansa Stark and to an extent Tyrion Lannister) no longer bear almost any resemblance to the people portrayed in Martin’s books. The story has veered so far away from not just the events Martin was portraying, but moreover the themes that he was writing about, that it’s hard for anyone who has read the books to see how “Game of Thrones” can ever end in a way that will leave those still waiting for Martin’s next tome satisfied.

It’s hard to say why George R.R. Martin appears to be writing at the pace of a snail.

It’s possible that he’s become uninterested in the story and has been for some time. It’s possible that he lost a significant amount of motivation when he realized that the show would beat him to the punch. It’s possible that he just writes slow.

Regardless of the reason, one of the greatest fantasy stories of all time seems destined to have an unsatisfying ending. Fans of the book series will likely never see what Martin intended for his final volumes and fans of the TV show will get an ending that is based on Weiss and Benioff’s late-season blunders, not what was promised in the inherent premise of the show when it began in season one. For many involved, the story will end happily. Benioff and Weiss have a future making “Star Wars” to look forward to. Many actors from the HBO series have jump-started their careers and will have many more great performances to come. HBO itself will continue pumping out “Game of Thrones” spinoffs for as long as they make money.

Audiences will move on to the next thing. But for Martin and his fans, the ones who began reading his books at any point between 1996 and now, this story will sadly end like the late Robb Stark’s, with a betrayal from his allies and in a personal tragedy of his own for failing to finish what he started. Valar Morghulis.

COMMUNITY CULTURE

‘The Last Days of Judas Iscariot’ is darkly funny SAMMY SUSSMAN Daily Arts Writer

The play opens on a judge sitting with a gavel behind a makeshift bench calling to his bailiff. At first glance, this is a standard courtroom drama. After the opening lines, however, the impression is broken — this is not a legal court, but a quasireligious court of judgment in which lawyers and a judge deliberate over the guilt or innocence of Judas Iscariot. This was last week’s Department of Musical Theatre production of “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” a dark, humorous and thought-provoking production full of modern cultural references and absurd juxtapositions.

The play features a diverse array of important cultural figures: everyone from Satan and Caiaphas the Elder to Mother Teresa and Sigmund Freud. Saint Monica, for example, was played by SMTD freshman Mikaela Secada in a Cardi B-esque fashion, a humorous blend of hip hop and Biblical culture.

These juxtapositions also raise new questions about these Biblical figures; Mason Reeve’s depiction of Jesus in modern, casual attire, for example, undercuts the inherent Westernized perception of Jesus.

He probably did not appear divine

at the beginning of his life. The play suggests him to have instead been a revolutionary, if not outright rebellious leader.

While these juxtapositions can be extremely comedic, this energy quickly loses focus against the serious backdrop of the trial occurring onstage. The first act of the play was extremely humorous, the outrageous comparisons between popular culture and Biblical culture leading to some truly memorable jokes. The humor was extremely dark, though — I found myself regretting the fact that I had laughed at certain points. While I was never outright uncomfortable, the humor definitely lent the play a shocking quality that carried through the entire act.

The second act, however, quickly dropped this comedic tone in favor of more serious subject matter, though this was still delivered through a dark lens.

Satan’s second appearance as a witness, for example, results in an incredibly dark sequence in which Satan (played by SMTD senior Simon Longnight) quickly parses through both lawyers’ characters before finding and provoking their most vulnerable weaknesses.

He criticizes the overzealous prosecution lawyer (played by

SMTD senior Alexander Sherwin) for caring more about his fame than his reputation, suddenly proclaiming that he will amount to nothing. And he criticizes the high-minded defense lawyer (played by SMTD senior Kat Ward) for refusing to listen to others, proclaiming again that she, at her very core, is unsure of these beliefs.

Compared to the first act, this second act moved slower and lasted almost twice as long. It had brilliant moments, but it took a lot of development to reach them. It seemed to move in a predictable pattern — conflicts between characters would crescendo until every character was yelling, then they would slowly resolve. While these conflicts were extremely thought-provoking, this predictable pattern took away slightly from the overall experience: The predictability of the development slowly overshadowed the impact of the resolution.

At the end of the play, the comedic references to modern and Biblical culture had been stripped away. It was this eerie focus on the incnsistencies in our modern understanding of the human condition that rang true.

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STUDIOCANAL

‘Early Man’ falls a bit flat JEREMIAH VANDERHELM Daily Arts Writer

There’s a terrific movie somewhere in “Early Man” that apparently got lost in translation.

The latest from Aardman Animation, the studio most well-known for their “Wallace and Gromit” cartoons, boasts an insane voice cast featuring the likes of Eddie Redmayne (“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”), Maisie Williams (“Game of Thrones”) and Tom Hiddleston (“Thor: Ragnarok”), as well as some undeniably beautiful animation. At first glance, the idea of a group of cavemen having to face Bronze Age-invaders even seems ripe for the kind of Monty Python-esque humor that Aardman trades in, but after an inspired first act, the humor steadily spirals into clumsy pratfalls and dragged-out unfunny gags.

The argument will be made that part of the problem is the aforementioned poor translation between the decidedly British script and American audiences.

This is first and foremost a soccer movie, a sport that doesn’t hold as much water in the U.S. as it does overseas. However, “Early Man” is missing the one thing that every underdog sports movie must have:

its heart.

For all its montages set to inspiring music and “teamwork makes the dream work” speeches, there’s nothing going on beneath the surface to keep viewers engaged. None of the characters are interesting beyond

“Early Man” Goodrich Quality 16 StudioCanal the ludicrous amounts of talent behind them, even for memorable quirks. Likewise, nothing about the story takes advantage of its unique prehistoric trappings after the familiarity of the sports movie tropes set in. It’s just a bore.

This goes double for the humor.

Every once in a great while, there’s a funny line or artfully constructed pun, but these are drowned out by a painful series of attempts at physical comedy that lack any sense of timing or wit.

They’re simply not funny because they either overstay their welcome or aren’t any good to begin with.

The best moments are those when writers Mark Burton and James Higginson (“Shaun the Sheep Movie”) lean into the insanity of their core idea. There’s a hysterical sequence involving a giant duck

Classifieds

that’s so unexpectedly brilliant it dwarfs every aspect of the movie around it. Instead of taking ideas like this further, though, they usually settle for, “Get it? It’s funny because they’re cavemen.”

At the very least, the animation is consistently dynamic and idiosyncratically dazzling. The first scene alone features a perfect combination of stop-motion and CGI that the talented animators at Aardman work to create a grander sense of scale than any of their previous productions. The scenes set in the soccer stadium may lack energy from the writing, but the animation does lend it a certain amount of liveliness. Even when there’s nothing going on in the foreground, the backgrounds alone are almost gorgeous in how they evoke the era in which “Early Man” takes place. At several points, they’re almost reminiscent of the Academy Award-winning production design from “The Lord of the Rings.”

The vocal talent also exceeds the script, with Hiddleston in particular donning a thick, unrecognizable French accent, but visuals and voices alone aren’t enough of a substitute for stale writing. Any intermittent charm offered by the animation or brief forays into smarter humor is canceled out by a crippling lack of heart and laughs.

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RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

FOR RENT

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Your business is her business 6 Tiny cut 10 Jeans line 14 Spreadsheet program 15 Comes to the rescue of 16 “The Time Machine” race 17 Like a cowboy in denial?

20 Emotional wound 21 “At __, soldier!”

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35 Riveting icon 36 Overplay a part 37 Mission lead-in 38 Potentially offensive, for short 39 Tends to the sauce 40 Nerve 41 Early 16thcentury date 42 Earthquake 43 “Impression, Sunrise” painter 44 Like a cowboy out of retirement?

47 Ky. neighbor 48 Show stoppers 49 Limoges product 52 Entertainment show VIP 55 Builder’s map 59 Like a cowboy in charge?

62 Area behind an altar 63 Wonder Woman’s friend __ Candy 64 Temporary tattoo dye 65 Get weepy, with “up” 66 State openly 67 More curious DOWN 1 Trees that sound like sheep 2 Corporate VIP 3 Final Four letters 4 Marvelous

5 “Hidden Figures” actor Mahershala __ 6 Epic tale 7 They may be fine points 8 Sit in traffic 9 Tire gauge no.

10 Tranquil 11 Periodic table listing: Abbr.

12 Limited choice 13 Fail to see 18 Vegas illuminator 19 Nook or cranny 24 Peach dessert 25 Many “Suits” characters: Abbr.

26 Busser’s target 27 Maker of Clarity alternative fuel cars 28 Jelly made from meat stock 29 “Capisce?”

30 Anabaptist descendants 31 Velvet-voiced Mel 32 Like most books 33 Recon goal 34 Palate 39 FedEx, say 40 “Safe travels!”

42 Egyptian peninsula

43 Satiric magazine since 1952 45 Less harsh 46 Fill and then some 49 Converse 50 Partner of pray 51 Ingrid’s “Casablanca” role 52 “Tiny House Hunters” cable channel

53 Bart and Lisa’s bus driver 54 Professor Higgins’ creator 56 Swedish soprano Jenny 57 Hathaway of “The Intern” (2015) 58 Winter Palace resident 60 Org. for teachers 61 17th Greek letter

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Sports

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 — 7A

A dad and his daughter: How Katelynn Flaherty became the face of Michigan ETHAN SEARS

Daily Sports Writer

Katelynn Flaherty’s back was acting up again.

During the summer, she spent six weeks off the court recovering from a back injury, her only basketball activities consisting of dribbling a ball as she walked around the block and taking between 800 and 1,000 foul shots every day. She pushed herself — that’s a habit of hers — and got clearance to start pushing a little harder with three weeks left in the summer.

“We knew that we were gonna do it,” said Tom Flaherty, her dad and Amateur Athletic Union coach.

“It was just me and her — and then all the sudden, with three weeks to go, the other girls came down, couple of the high school girls came around that were real good players, couple of the college girls came down, couple guys came down. We used to have some 2-on-2, 3-on-3 games. … She looked real good.”

But now — at halftime of a Jan. 10 contest against Indiana — she had just four points and to go along with four turnovers in the first 20 minutes, an uncharacteristic performance for a player who was on the verge of becoming Michigan’s all-time leading scorer, woman or man.

Her dad knew something was wrong. She knew that she would get through it.

19 second-half points and an 84-79 win later, Flaherty had done just that. Three days later, she passed Glen Rice to become the Wolverines’ all-time leading scorer.

The scare had passed.

On that day, actions spoke louder than words. Flaherty got through it. She always does. *** Flaherty’s story starts before she could even walk, with one of the best women’s basketball players of all-time: Asjha Jones, a two-time national champion at the University of Connecticut, who was then a high school freshman looking for a team.

She found HoopsAmerica, a clinic operated by Rich Leary and Tom Flaherty. At the time, it was without a girls’ team, but Jones seemed a pretty good reason to start one.

“I was coaching just boys and one of the fathers kept inquiring, inquiring, inquiring at the location where we played, and then a girl, Asjha Jones, was his daughter, and he wanted me to train her,” Leary said. “Now, I had no idea the level of girls’ basketball player (she was), this was just some random, rising ninth-grade girl.”

Jones started training at HoopsAmerica regularly and it didn’t take long to see what she could do.

“I let her come down to work out with us, she fit in pretty well,” Leary said. “It was a gym full of very, very talented boys … and Asjha and a friend of hers started working out with us and then they brought their whole team over and we started a New Jersey Demons team.”

Tom coached the newly formed squad, and soon enough, Flaherty, age four by Leary’s recollection, was in the huddle with him. And in practices.

“We’d be in my backyard with the Demons team that I was coaching and we were playing in games,” Tom said. “And say I would have her in a game — she was maybe five, six years old — and she was fast-breaking, she got the ball and we’d throw to her the ball, if she would go down and she’d make the layup, it was good. If not, they would rebound and play the game back. She would do that and then, while we were going over work, practice and stuff like that, she would do her coloring book and stuff like that.

“But then after that, we would do baby hooks on a little basket, little moves, we started doing moves right away, like, basic moves. Jab step moves, in-and-out moves, little (dribble) moves, stuff like that.”

Even at a young age, Flaherty’s competitiveness and athleticism were evident. She was a standout in neighborhood softball, kickball and wiffleball games. When her cousin, two years her elder and a next-door neighbor, learned to ride a bike, so did she — while young enough to be in kindergarten.

“She took her training wheels off and then I was like, ‘Well, I want mine off,’ ” Flaherty said.

“Cause we hung out all the time, so whatever she wanted — it’s like a

COURTESY OF THE FLAHERTY FAMILY

Katelynn Flaherty began sitting in the huddle of the team her dad, Tom, coached at the young age of four.

sister — that I wanted just as good.

So I remember telling (Tom), he’s like, ‘No, we’re not doing that.’ … I like begged him and begged him.

And I remember by the end of that day … I was riding my bike without training wheels.”

By the time Flaherty reached seventh grade, basketball was a constant. Tom would organize pickup games between other girls from HoopsAmerica and his daughter that often went to 30, full-court, no matter the weather.

When people came down the bike trail that cut through the same park as the court, they stopped and gawked.

After that, Flaherty would take 300 extra shots and run two miles on the boardwalk.

Tom had two rules: Flaherty had to do well in school and she had to work out. They only ran into a problem once — a day in middle school when Flaherty decided she didn’t want to go play basketball.

The Flahertys’ backyard had a stone wall, and Tom got creative.

“Here, shovel stones,” he told her. “See how you like that.”

Flaherty obliged and soon had tears in her eyes. She stopped after two minutes.

“He was just making me dig stones and put them back,” Flaherty said. “Like, the most pointless thing ever.”

“Dad, I think I’d rather play basketball,” Tom recounts her saying. “I’d rather work out at a sport.” *** The blacktop smelt like tar, the humidity was thick enough to add extra weight to clothing and still the games went on.

Tom kept an attendance book throughout, to see who kept showing up every summer, every day, to work out and play pickup.

The initial workout was for twoand-a-half-hours, followed by two or three games, then a twomile run. Flaherty estimates they started in fifth grade and went until her freshman year in college. Only the strong survived.

“There’d be 20 girls on again at the beginning of that summer that started. And you would see the attendance, and maybe five lasted through the whole (time),” Tom said. “ … And you could see the five or six or seven or eight people that stayed with it went to major Division I colleges. “ … It’s pretty intense. I mean, a lot of people would say, ‘Oh yeah,

we’ll go down to the park and play,’ or ‘We’ll go down.’ They ended up not lasting long. Because these kids had the ability to work hard.

They wanted to make something of themselves, you know?”

“It felt fun. It felt free,” said Sadie Edwards, a former Demon and current senior guard at USC. “ … It was much different from like, structured basketball. But, that’s for me, personally. I don’t know, that’s where you learn to play basketball.”

With Tom, a former guard at Seton Hall, involved — and often playing in the games himself — hours stretched into full days.

“We’d play like three games to 20 and he’d be like, ‘No, do another one,’ ” Flaherty recalled. “So you’re there all day, basically. That’s your whole day.”

Once everyone else went home for the day, drenched in sweat, Flaherty stayed and worked. She would do 300-400 extra shots those days, just like the extra workouts with her dad after AAU practice, just like the 500-600 extra shots she does on the gun now, even with leftover soreness from a foot injury sustained two weeks ago against Northwestern — the same game in which she scored a season-high 36 points.

Not everybody on the team worked as hard as Flaherty. Then again, not everybody had Tom, the impetus for working out seven relentless days a week. When the team was together at practice, the workouts were the same. But Flaherty separated herself by working at home.

“I would say other girls all worked hard, but Katelynn would be an exception because she had her dad there to do the work each and every day and make sure that she was doing it,” Leary said. “And ultimately, it became who she was.

That’s who Katelynn is.”

Flaherty’s dad rode her harder than everybody else in practice, in part because it dispelled any notion of bias and in part because he wanted her to develop an ethos of hard work.

“I think he wanted a lot out of me,” Flaherty said. “And then showing that he could get on his own daughter made other people feel comfortable when he yelled at them.”

In the summer of 2016, when both were going into their junior collegiate years, now-senior forward Jillian Dunston joined the

festivities. The workouts nearly broke Dunston — a basketball warrior in her own right.

“I was so beat up after two days that (Flaherty’s) dad told me just to do the drills to half-court,” Dunston said. “Everyone else did them full-court. I said, ‘I can’t move.’ My body was cramping — I only cramp in basketball games, not in workouts — I mean, it was tough.”

Added Flaherty: “People say it’s crazy and (Dunston) was like, ‘No, you’re literally crazy.’ But I think it’s just been a way of life.”

Tom and Leary preach the value of hard work like nuns preaching abstinence. “(Flaherty) would come back (after practice) and work out,” Tom said. “Other girls had the opportunity to, but they did other things.

“Which was cool,” he adds in a tone that makes you question just how cool it was. “You know, everybody has their own thing, you know?”

It’s rare that anybody actually works hard for such a sustained period of time. Flaherty did, and started reaping the rewards before high school.

After a local tournament at Rutgers when Flaherty was between eighth and ninth grade, C. Vivian Stringer, the coach of the Scarlet Knights, asked to meet with Tom. She promptly offered Flaherty a scholarship. Tom’s reaction was one of incredulity.

He didn’t know if his daughter had the speed to play in Division I. He knew she could shoot, sure, but running with the best competition in the nation was a different issue altogether. And if he didn’t know for sure, neither did Stringer. “ ‘It’s ridiculous to think my daughter can play Division I basketball when she’s just starting 9th grade,’ ” Leary recounted Tom saying. “ ‘That’s impossible.’ ” In the coming years, however, Stringer would be proven right.

“I think that’s when I knew, ‘Okay, well if I can start working really hard, then I can get a lot of these pretty big-time offers,” Flaherty said. “ … That was definitely incredible, in ninth grade, you have a full ride to a huge school.” *** The Demons are unlike most AAU programs. Leary describes their philosophy as similar to the Golden State Warriors — sharing

the ball and shooting a lot of 3-pointers — then explains they don’t practice shooting 3-pointers and believe in the value of 1-on-1 games for development.

“It’s been Tom’s feeling that you don’t have to practice a large number of 3-point shots in order to be a really good 3-point shooter,” Leary said. “It’s developing a rhythm in that your body identifies with the distance that you are from the basket. You don’t have to rethink it, when you’re — or make adjustments, conscious adjustments, when you’re shooting from 17 feet to 25 or 26 feet. You’re — if you’ve done enough repetitions, your body just naturally knows the additional force that you need in order to shoot from (distance).”

It’s a contradiction, but one that’s developed, among others, Flaherty and Jones on the women’s side and Luol Deng and Jay Williams on the men’s.

“You just practice your form over and over and over again, so it becomes natural,” Flaherty said.

“And then when I was at the point where I was strong enough to shoot from (3-point range), it just felt like shooting a regular shot.”

The Demons don’t play in many tournaments either, purposefully so, preferring to focus on training.

They do, however, participate in the Rose Classic, a New York City staple. The Demons were in the finals against Exodus during the summer before Flaherty’s junior year. Then, Tom got ejected, with his team down big and without doing anything wrong.

The first technical went against him because someone affiliated with the program yelled at the referee. The second because the referee mistook his yelling at a player for arguing. Tom was forced to leave the gym.

“Tom never talks to referees,” Leary said. “I mean, he’ll talk to them, but he doesn’t complain about fouls, that’s just not what he does. He coaches, and is just entirely focused on the coaching.

Whatever happens with the refs happens with the refs, so be it.”

Added Flaherty: “I think that’s the first and only time ever (he was ejected).”

Exactly how much the Demons were losing by at this point varies depending on who you ask — the consensus is between nine and 15. What doesn’t is the awe in describing what happened next.

Flaherty went off, raining triples

COURTESY OF THE FLAHERTY FAMILY

Katelynn Flaherty grew to love basketball from a young age thanks to the tutelage and encouragement of her dad, Tom.

like a math savant rattling off digits of pi.

“She scored like the next 17 points,” said Leary, who coached in Tom’s absence. “It was unbelievable.”

Added Edwards: “They were tough (shots). They were like, off the dribble, stepbacks, all sorts. “... That moment, I was like, ‘She’s special.’ Like, she has a chance to do something special. As she can channel that and be that all the time. Because she can be that all the time.”

Tom watched part of the ensuing action from the door, but not enough.

“After the game is over, I go out and tell Tom, ‘Tom, you gotta come back in for the awards ceremony,’” Leary said. “So he’s obviously fuming — he just got kicked out of a game in which he did nothing wrong. He said, ‘Let’s just go. I don’t want to, I’m so upset right now, I don’t want to go in.’

“Tom,” Leary replied, “we won.” *** Her first year in Ann Arbor, Flaherty was coming off a lisfranc injury and struggled in the early goings of practice.

When the tide changed, though, it changed fast.

“We came back from (a trip to) Cedar Point and she didn’t miss a single shot in open gym that day,” Dunston said. “ … We played like 10 games. I’m talking not one thing.

I was like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She was like, ‘That’s how I normally shoot.’ ” Flaherty’s work ethic also made an impression. Nicole Munger had met her just once — an awkward hello forced by their parents when the two future Wolverines attended the same game in New York — before she enrolled a year behind Flaherty.

Munger thought she worked hard, but she hadn’t worked out with Flaherty. She kept trying to outlast her and kept falling short.

“She’ll be in the gym for four hours on a summer day,” Munger said. “I’ll just be like, ‘I’m going home.’ ” That work ethic has always paid dividends for Flaherty, but none more this season. The senior has turned Crisler Center into her personal playground, draining pull-up triples and blowing by anyone who closes too hard. She has played 40 or more minutes eight times this season and hasn’t slowed down. Against Illinois — days after playing the entirety of an upset win at then-No. 8 Ohio State — she heaved a half-court shot at the first quarter’s buzzer to the delight of a group of little girls in the crowd, then finished 5-of-8 from outside for the game.

On Senior Day this Thursday, she’ll play her last regular season home game at Crisler Center, leaving as the face of the program — not just for this season, but ever.

Her number will likely be the first ever retired by the Michigan women’s basketball team. She deserves that honor without a shadow of a doubt. *** The game ended 45 minutes ago, a standard blowout over the Fighting Illini, but the girls are still waiting. They’re on the Blissfield travel basketball team, age nine, and can’t stop asking the same question: “When is Flaherty coming?”

Without ever spending hours on a blacktop, running extra miles or taking extra shots together — hell, without ever meeting — Flaherty imprinted a love of basketball onto the group.

“I’ve been following her a long time,” says Kara Perser, proudly informing her audience that she has been to almost every home game and watches them on the road. She even brought a poster to the game.

Flaherty had left the interview room a few minutes prior after taking questions, mostly about a half-court shot and another great game in the midst of another great season. Whether she’s coming to meet this starry-eyed crowd is an unanswerable question, at least for a reporter who stopped to talk on his way out of the building.

“When is Flaherty coming?” the chorus chimes.

Finally, one changes up the question.

“Have you interviewed Flaherty?” another one asks.

Once she hears an affirmative from the reporter, she makes a request.

“Tell her I love her.”

8A — Wednesday, Feburary 21, 2018

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Penn State gelling ahead of clash with Wolverines

WOMEN’S GOLF

‘M’ struggles at Moon Golf Invitational, finishes in 10th BAILEY JOHNSON For the Daily

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Michigan coach John Beilein recognizes the challenge ahead as his team will take on a Penn State team eager to earn a NCAA bid.

MARK CALCAGNO Daily Sports Editor

Wednesday is Senior Day for the Penn State men’s basketball team. That has meant a larger crowd than the usual barren amount and a jovial atmosphere at Bryce Jordan Center. A slew of pregame senior festivities is typically the sole attraction for fans. By the time the final home game of the year rolls around, the Nittany Lions have seldom had much to compete for.

But this year is different, and everyone in State College knows it. The slogan ‘We’re climbin’ decorates the shirts the school will give away Wednesday. It’s an apt slogan.

After years of mediocrity, Penn State has been a surprise this year, positioning itself for a shot at the NCAA Tournament contingent on a strong finish.

Last Thursday, the Nittany Lions completed a sweep of then-No. 8 Ohio State with a dominant 23-point victory before playing No. 9 Purdue to the wire on the road Sunday.

Penn State (9-7 Big Ten, 19-10

overall) is quite dangerous and has everything to play for as it welcomes No. 17 Michigan (115, 22-7) on Wednesday. A win could push the Nittany Lions off the bubble for the first time since 2011.

“This Penn State team is making a great run right now and is really talented,” said Michigan coach John Beilein. “They’re young, and they’re extremely talented.”

That youth and skill is perfectly embodied by the Nittany Lions’ sophomore class.

With one of the purest outside strokes in college basketball, sophomore point guard Tony Carr leads the Big Ten, averaging nearly 20 points and ranks fifth in assists with around five pergame.

Manning the interior is one of the conference’s best interior defenders in Mike Watkins — a 6-foot-9, 254-pound forward good for nearly three blocks and 10 rebounds a contest.

Small forward Lamar Stevens, meanwhile, adds a scoring threat to the frontcourt, averaging over 15 points a contest.

“Their sophomores are outstanding,” Beilein said. “They got a shot blocker inside. They can shoot it, they can pass it.”

That all contributes to a strong sense of trepidation for the Wolverines. Two weeks ago, they ran into another surging team on the road in Northwestern and lost after a disastrous second half. A similar story unraveled in Lincoln, where Nebraska dominated Michigan to a 20-point win in January.

Penn State could be an even taller task for the Wolverines.

“This is one that will be really difficult for us,” Beilein said.

“This is a game where we’re absolutely going to have to play our best game of the year if we’re going to be in it at the end.”

Further complicating things for Michigan is the possibility that the Nittany Lions play zone defense — something they’ve flashed throughout the season. From Southern Mississippi in November to the Feb. 6 Northwestern loss, the Wolverines have struggled to adjust against the zone.

“That’s the challenge,” Beilein

Versatile players help Michigan

EMMA RICHTER/Daily

Sophomore forward Adam Winborg is one of several players whose main contributions don’t show up on the stat sheet.

ROBERT HEFTER Daily Sports Editor

In South Bend, Ind. on Friday, sophomore forward Adam Winborg notched the first goal of the Michigan hockey team’s series against Notre Dame, a goal that would catalyze the rest of the offense to rout the top team in the country.

Winborg is just one example of an emerging category of Wolverine skaters who fill a utility role.

“Yeah, he scored a number of goals on a couple power plays last year and he’s willing to block shots on the PKs,” said Michigan coach Mel Pearson, “and he’s good on face-offs. So he can play, he’s one of those utility players.

“I guess you can play him in a lot of different situations and trust him. And that allows us to be able to slot him into different areas in the game and that’s where his value comes. It’s just, he’s so versatile.”

While the spotlight for the 13th-ranked Wolverines (11-103 Big Ten, 16-3-3 overall) have mostly been placed on veteran top-line leadership, Michigan has found its backbone in the younger utility players.

Joining Winborg’s ranks on

offense are sophomore Nick Pastujov, freshman Jack Becker and junior Brendan Warren.

The trio has combined for 32 points thus far — which isn’t even as many points as junior forward Cooper Marody’s leading 37 — that adds a marginal advantage. While Winborg’s goal helped the Wolverines prevail over Notre Dame, their offensive contribution pales in comparison to their off-puck feats.

“Personally, for me, it’s been a little bit of a different season than last year, but it’s been good,” Winborg said. “I have a good role on the team, like killing penalties and working five-on-five and trying to do that to the best of my ability.”

As evident in the series against the Fighting Irish, the entire Michigan squad was hustling all over the ice, blocking shots and killing penalties — something that wasn’t so apparent in the beginning of the season.

In roughly four minutes of man-disadvantage time Sunday, the Wolverines yielded no tallies.

In its two past series, Michigan has let just two power-play goals in, and much of that can be attributed to the likes of Winborg, Pastujov,

Becker and Warren, all of whom have taken a prominent role in shot-blocking and clearing.

“This year is more of a PK role and I’m enjoying that,” Winborg said. “I think that’s a big part of the game and it for sure can help a team like in tight games like last weekend, it’s one goal games and if you can prevent them from scoring then it’s going to help out the team.”

And, with Pearson’s recent emphasis on varying the lineup, every player has gotten the chance to work on different lines, even in huge games like this past weekend.

“Now we know we have some good chemistry on certain lines,” Pearson said. “And you know you always have that in the bank but it’s good to be able to, even in a game, just throw different guys out to see what you have.”

While teams in the past have found success when specializing players into different concrete roles, this year, Michigan has found success in quite the opposite.

With numerous young utility players on the roster with substantial playing time, the Wolverines have excelled in having their skaters play loosely.

said. “We’re going to have to make foul shots, we’re going to have to limit their (secondchance) shots, and when we’re open from 3, we’re going to have to knock it down because you won’t have much of a margin of error in this game.”

Michigan did many of these things well in Sunday’s victory over Ohio State. Senior guard Muhammad-Ali AbdurRahkman, who will be making his final regular season trip to his home state of Pennsylvania on Wednesday, led the Wolverines with 17 points, while understudy and freshman guard Jordan Poole added 15.

Michigan is playing its best basketball of the season as March approaches — but so are the Nittany Lions.

Penn State is indeed climbing, and Wednesday will be its biggest game in recent memory. A soldout Bryce Jordan Center will undoubtedly let the Wolverines know it.

“They’ve done it before against big crowds,” Beilein said.

“But we’re going to have to play at our best.”

Controlling the golf ball was the theme of this week’s tournament for Emily White.

The senior headlined the Michigan women’s golf team at the Moon Golf Invitational with the team’s highest score, tying for 28th place. The wind was howling throughout the third round, but White’s control allowed her to move up seven spots after that round of play.

“She made a lot of birdies this week and controlled her golf ball really well,” said Michigan coach Jan Dowling.

“She came out pretty strong to start the spring and she was ready to go.”

White’s performance was an outlier, though, as the rest of the team struggled through its first competition of the spring season with a 10th place finish out of 13 teams. The team hadn’t competed since the end of October, so there was quite a bit of dust to knock off in the first round Monday as the team scored 312, its worst score of the season.

But the team adjusted to the course in Monday’s second round and scored 298 with a large improvement in the quality of play and ball control.

The Wolverines finished the first day in 11th place, with sophomore Hannah Ghelfi tied for 21st individually.

“We dug ourselves into a pretty big hole after the first round, it certainly wasn’t our best golf,” Dowling said. “We

played two solid team rounds in round two and round three.

In round two we made some nice adjustments … so that was good.”

A solid showing in Tuesday’s final round moved Michigan up one spot to 10th place overall.

The Wolverines’ two individual golfers, Ghelfi and sophomore Alisa Snyder, were consistent throughout the three rounds. Ghelfi scored a career-best 73 in Monday’s second round, and Snyder finished in a tie for 48th with scores of 78, 76, and 77.

Their scores did not count for the team score, but the performances may lead Ghelfi and Snyder to a spot in the starting lineup.

“There’s a lot of pieces that go into picking the lineup, including past play,” Dowling said. “The good thing about our team is that we’ve got some depth, and we’ve got some things to figure out as far as who’s going to be in the starting lineup moving forwards.”

Resilience was a highlight for Michigan during the competition after a challenging first round. Each golfer improved upon her first-round score in the second or third rounds, an encouraging sight for Dowling as the spring season begins.

The positive takeaways from the spring’s first competition show early signs of a solid campaign for the Wolverines, but they will need to continue to work on losing the cobwebs before the team can be where it wants to be.

“We dug ourselves into a pretty big hole.”

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | FE B RUA RY 2 1 , 201 8

An Afternoon Tea

2B

Wednesday, February 21, 2018// The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | FE B RUA RY 2 1 , 201 8

Managing Statement Editor: Brian Kuang

Photo Editor: Amelia Cacchione

Deputy Editors: Colin Beresford Jennifer Meer Rebecca Tarnopol

Editor in Chief: Alexa St. John

Copy Editors: Elise Laarman Finntan Storer

Managing Editor: Dayton Hare

Critical Questions: Cultural appropriation

M

y relatives like to joke that Asians and AsianAmericans shouldn’t do hip-hop because we haven’t faced the same tribulations as other races. They especially ridicule certain rappers from their native Japan, who never suffered from racism, abject poverty, street violence or drug dealing but don expensive sneakers and talk about swag.

I wonder what they would think of Rich Chigga.

“And you don’t wanna f--k with a chigga like me / When I pull up in that Maserati / Better duck ’fore ya brain splatter on the concrete / I’ma hit you with that .45, bullet hit yo neck round the bow tie” In 2016, hip-hop artist Rich Brian (born Brian Imanuel) became a sensation online after his viral hit, “Dat $tick” racked up tens of millions of views on YouTube and scored approval by established rappers like Desiigner and Ghostface Killah, the latter of which recorded an official remix of the song with him.

The song also became a target for heavy criticism for the supposed sin of cultural appropriation.

That’s because Rich Chigga, as Imanuel was known professionally before 2018, was a homeschooled Chinese-Indonesian teenager whose

Hip-hop artist Rich Brian

BY ISHI MORI, COLUMNIST father was a lawyer. And though for sure he saw plenty of ugly things growing up in a middle-to-low class neighborhood in West Jakarta, it was questionable whether it was appropriate for him to borrow the language and style of Black street culture.

Even his stage name was controversial.

“Chigga,” a portmanteau of “Chinese” and a racial slur, was a ploy to attract attention by naming himself “the most controversial s--t ever,” hardly a good reason to offend numerous people.

Musicians like Rich Brian (as he now prefers to go by) become a flashpoint around cultural appropriation, or the adoption of elements of a minority culture by a member of the dominant culture.

A blatant example would be fetishizing a minority culture by wearing an Arab thawb or a fake Fu Manchu for Halloween.

But, the common counter-argument goes, every present-day culture is the result of appropriations other cultures have developed by adopting aspects of other cultures. Indeed, most of the time it’s difficult to determine whether a song or dance is cultural appropriation, appreciation or exchange.

“Hip-hop is for everyone,” they say. “It transcends race.”

I believe cultural appropriation no doubt exists; weeaboos, for instance,

offend my Japanese heritage when they reduce my culture to cute anime girls.

But the question is where the limit is, and in cases like Rich Chigga, the line is so hard to draw.

The debate about non-Black people doing hip-hop reminds me of another form of Black music picked up by another race: Rock ‘n’ roll. When Elvis Presley shocked white America in the 50s, it wasn’t because rock ‘n’ roll was an inherently “degenerate” genre for young people; it was because Presley’s singing style and hip gyrations reminded parents of African-American musicians.

So were The Rolling Stones, lifelong adherents and promoters of Black R&B music, Jack Hamilton writes in “How Rock and Roll Became White.” “The world’s greatest rock-and-roll band” (to some) truly respected and focused on covers of blues and R&B musicians like Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, and were annoyed that their fans were more obsessed with them than the American originals.

When the group first arrived on U.S. soil, the press vilified them with attacks against their physical appearance and dehumanizing comparisons to animals.

It was a dog-whistle tactic to convince white adults that Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the rest of these Englishmen were subversive beings who adored Black music; the press even played on the fear of miscegenation when they asked, “Would you let your sister go out with a Rolling Stone?” But the Stones didn’t counter these claims; in fact, they adopted it as part of their dangerous image.

I see a similar phenomenon happening in hip-hop. Hip-hop, which developed in New York City as the music of AfricanAmericans, immigrants and children of immigrants from the Caribbean, contains lyrics borne out of that community’s culture and struggles. “The Message”

by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the first prominent hip-hop song to provide social commentary, talks of difficulties of living in inner cities, which is a common theme in hip-hop today.

The problem with non-Black musicians rapping these days is that hip-hop has

become a cheap shortcut to evoke a thuggish and criminal cool that doesn’t belong in a white or Asian middle-class suburb. It fetishizes the real struggles some of these artists have gone through on a daily basis.

Hamilton writes that the Stones were guilty of this too; “Brown Sugar” is an upbeat song that casually talks about slave rape as part of Jagger’s discussion on interracial sex.

We shouldn’t pretend, especially in Asian hip-hop, there is absolutely no power dynamic between Asians and African-Americans in the U.S. Asians on a whole definitely yield more privilege, so “hip-hop is for everyone” rings hollow when the phrase equates Black struggles with Asian struggles.

Rich Brian is then indeed guilty of appropriating aspects of Black culture.

And though in “Dat $tick” he provides insights from the streets of Jakarta, I believe there is a way to do that without so overtly featuring cliché hip-hop tropes.

That isn’t to say non-Black people shouldn’t listen, appreciate or perform hip-hop on their own. With due respect to the original and staying within one’s boundaries, non-Black rappers like Eminem can create an art that is rightfully their own.

We also shouldn’t cast cultural appropriation in popular music as some capitalist and colonialist scheme to dominate minority cultures. The irony of genres like hip-hop and rock is they’re rebellious in content, yet at the same time they line the pockets of rich executives in record companies that promote these tracks to mass audiences; this irony is what makes hip-hop and rock reach mass audiences.

In the end, sometimes whether culture is appropriated or appreciated is determined by whether a work is tasteful and artistic. As Rivka Galchen points out, nobody accuses the Wu-Tang Clan of appropriating Chinese culture; we as a culture bestowed the rap group artistic license because they gave back with good music that goes beyond the inspiration borrowed from their Chinese neighbors.

Wednesday, February 21 2018 // The Statement

3B

Let’s Bitch About It: Your study space is trash

BY LYDIA MURRAY, COLUMNIST

W

hen not fawning over Reggie or tailgating before football games (both of which are overrated), most students spend their time outside of class studying for said classes. Students spend night after night in various study spaces cramming for exams, having mental breakdowns or procrastinating on Facebook.

However, despite these long hours spent studying, the ideal study spot (especially for late-night workers) can be hard to find. Coffee shops close, studying at home too easily leads to Netflix or sleeping, and the Law Library never seems to have an open table.

A lack of options leads to students cramming into bleak study spots featuring loud patrons, dirty bathrooms and ugly views.

The University of Michigan is decidedly beautiful. Every other Instagram has a photo of the inside of Hatcher during finals season or the Law Quadrangle during the first snow. Why does it seem that there are maybe four spots on campus worthy of Instagram but the rest of the widely-known study spaces are generally trash?

The Shapiro Undergraduate Library Appearance: 1/10 Environment: 0/10 Productivity: 2/10 The UGLi is notorious for being the worst study space on campus. Despite this infamy, there are never any open tables. The second you walk into the building you can feel the unhealthy mix of procrastination and stress.

The third and fourth floors can be nice if you get one of those tables by the windows, but of course, the only way to get one of those is to sell your soul to Mark Schlissel himself or study at 10 p.m. on a Saturday.

The UGLi earns the descriptor of the seventh circle of Hell due to the lessthan-studious students who populate the first and second floors. I personally prefer not to hear about Chad from Tau Mu Delta’s wild night at Skeeps while trying to do my homework. Legend has it even when the second floor appears completely empty, you can still hear the sound of a frat star dragging his Timbs while walking.

I would also like to remind my fellow library patrons that the UGLi is not a restaurant where you and your pals can eat and catch up: I do not want to have to smell your greasy food. Yet you cannot walk through the UGLi after 10 p.m. without seeing at least four Pizza House boxes and likely a mix of Chipotle,

Buffalo Wild Wings and Jimmy Johns.

Does the party of 10 talking loudly next to me not have any homework to do?

The UGLi is a hotbed of procrastination as groups of friends sit around complaining that they are incredibly busy and stressed out while actually getting no work done. Then suddenly when midnight hits, half of the population begins leaving after finishing little to no work. Meanwhile, the other half realizes the error of their ways and proceeds to cram their work before ultimately going to bed at 3 a.m. under entirely preventable circumstances.

The Stacks Appearance: 1.5/10 Environment: 2/10 Productivity: 3.5/10 I understand the appeal of a quiet, private study space, but the Stacks offers the same sort of silent solidarity as a prison cell. The uniform boxes do nothing to motivate the young student, offering only a window to the outside world full of free individuals.

The Stacks is the place fake, tortured freshman gather to stress over a fivepage intro-level English essay, which apparently requires an all-nighter to finish. It’s the place where you stress out over your first Math 116 exam, which you plan to spend 36 straight hours studying for, but you will actually spend much of this time procrastinating. It’s the place for students who love the idea of being more stressed than their friends — the kid who can’t help but one-up you in workload.

“Oh, you were up until 1:00 a.m. doing Poli Sci 101? I was in the Stacks until they closed cramming for this Orgo exam,” Some freshman who doesn’t understand how college works yet says.

Stop torturing yourself! It’s not cool to be stressed out and sleep deprived.

Most people graduate from the Stacks when they realize it’s not high school anymore and they learn of better study spaces. Though there are the few who never change this mindset (I’m sure you know at least one).

While that feeling can pass with time (or an acceptance to the minor in my case), what never passes is the white men in Canada Goose jackets blocking the hallway. There is never a shortage of bro hugs in the Ross Winter Gardens.

From the perspective of being a study spot, Ross continues to fall short. Ross students do have the luxury of booking private study rooms (which is admittedly nice for group projects), but for any other student who chooses to study there, space is often limited to the Winter Gardens, which are almost always loud, crowded and weirdly echoic.

Also, why are the chairs and tables so weird? Is the rounded black plastic with a strange curvature at the bottom supposed to be ergonomic? With all the money tax-avoidance expert Stephen M. Ross donated, you would think they could furnish the space with something better than inconveniently shaped cheap plastic.

The Michigan Union Appearance: 4/10 Environment: 3/10 Productivity: 3/10 I love the Union, but I love the Union as a convenient place to buy coffee on my way to class, not as a place to study.

I love that I can get food there (Au Bon Pain is my true love). But I do not know why I would want to study in the same place I’m grabbing a quick Blue Bucksfunded, between-class bite.

Eating should be a time to relax

between classes, studying, work and all the rest. It’s a time for mindlessly staring at your phone while shoveling down the arguably disgusting and disappointing Panda Express. It is not a time to try to do your homework.

Conversely, while studying, I do not want to smell food — or even worse watch or hear other people eat. If I’m trying to finish an assignment, I do not want to smell the nauseating mix of Wendy’s and Subway while working on a perpetually sticky table.

There are the few nice study tables in the two study rooms in the front, but seating is so limited, so why bother? You could have the same style of study space in more beautiful buildings like the Law Library or in Hatcher’s Reference Room. Much better to try one of those places than awkwardly walk into the Union study room only to have to walk out again 30 seconds later after finding all the chairs taken.

As a whole, the Union has its merits, but at best it’s an aggressively average study space.

T

here are of course hidden gems (like Rackham or a few others which I will not name as to not publicize my favorite study spots) but in looking for a nice spot to settle down for several hours for a late night study session, options are limited.

Then again, your favorite study spot may be trash, but if it keeps you out of mine, feel free to remain blissful in your ignorance.

Ross Winter Gardens Appearance: 5/10 Environment: 3/10 Productivity: 2/10 Walking into Ross (if you are not a Ross student) offers the same internal feeling of a thousand frat boys asking, “Who do you know here?” It’s intimidating. It feels like everyone is watching you with the knowledge that you are not one of them.

ILLUSTRATION BY ROSEANNE CHAO

4B

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 // The Statement

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 // The Statement

An Afternoon Tea The stark traditionalism of Martha Cook

by Andrea Perez, Daily Arts Writer

A

s I pass through the doors of Martha Cook Residence Hall at the University of Michigan, I enter a hallway clad in wooden panels whose austerity of color and design evokes past eras.

Brightly lit by ostentatious chandeliers and archaic windows, the space draws the eye to the Venus de Milo statue situated at the end of the hallway. To the left, near the windows, there’s a table that displays silver platters with perfectly manicured pyramids of cucumber sandwiches and chocolate pastries. The sound of laughter and the clinking of glasses echoes through the main f loor.

The effervescent atmosphere in the building can be felt as women stroll in and out of rooms in their formal dress: It is Friday afternoon tea time.

Walking into Martha Cook is like traveling back to the early 20th century.

The halls and impeccable entertainment chambers feel unfamiliar and incongruous with the happenings and progressive values of our modern campus. The building, standing almost unchanged from the time of its inauguration, seems to be a world away from the University, yet it occupies a central place on our campus.

Coming to campus as a woman of color, I never questioned my place at this university. I believed myself to be as qualified and deserving of a worldclass education as any other student who vowed to never step on the bronze block ‘M.’ Like most, I took a tour before officially enrolling as a student. My tour guide brief ly signaled Martha Cook as a women’s only dormitory, but any thought or preoccupation with it was forgotten by the time we walked past.

I was highly ignorant of the history of women on this campus and completely unaware of the origin of the word “coed.”

It wasn’t until one of my professors assigned a reading on Martha Cook that I first considered the history of women on campus. It should not have come as a surprise to read about the long-lasting paternalism faced by women on campus. However, the most jarring aspect of learning about this history was becoming aware of every blind tradition and system of oppression that has prevailed.

I came to see the dormitory as a constant reminder that, despite being an enclave for progressive thinking and inclusion, the University of Michigan still held onto small artifacts of its exclusive past.

A resident serves tea in Martha Cook’s Gold Room at the weekly tea time Friday.

But in my incredulity, I wanted to see this community firsthand, not satisfied to simply read critiques of it on paper. nce inside, I was ushered by the Tea Chair — the member of the house board who organizes Friday teas — into the Gold Room. Heavy curtains framed the windows. An antique piano, Elizabethan furniture and two fireplaces adorned the room, which is illuminated by the dim light of gilded lamps and the ref lection of the snow outside.

Almost every chair or sofa was taken up by girls immersed in conversation. The majesty of the room astounded me, but it seemed to be a given for the rest of the girls who were sipping on their tea and eating cucumber sandwiches off of crystal platters.

Most of the girls who come to tea every week, like Business freshman Jacqueline Kenny, use it as an opportunity to socialize.

“I knew I didn’t want to rush a sorority, but I still wanted an all-female community where I could live and make friends so Martha Cook sort of fit the bill,” Kenny noted.

Martha Cook’s lively tea tradition may seem innocent from an outsider’s

O

perspective, but an intuitive University student or community member may realize that the dormitory’s walls are tainted with a history of female oppression as well as racial and socioeconomic divides. The girls that once inhabited its rooms and walked its halls came from predominantly white, upper-class backgrounds with much more rigid social norms.

Women were first permitted to enroll in the University in 1870, and the first cohort of women arrived the following year. At the time of Martha Cook’s inauguration in 1915, they were still relegated to second-class status to their male classmates.

“All the spaces of a college campus were assumed to be for men, unless they were specifically carved out for women,” Carla Yanni, a professor of art history at Rutgers University, writes in an architecture journal. In fact, women were referred to as “coeds,” because “student” had implicitly only referred to males during the era.

The idea for a women’s dorm came about when the University Women’s League — an organization representing female students — discussed inadequate housing situations for its members.

Plans were drawn for the construction of the first University-affiliated dormitory, which would also be women-only.

Upon hearing of the project, William Cook — a wealthy lawyer, Michigan alum and namesake of the Law Library — immediately offered a large donation for the construction of this building.

However, once he saw the ideas originally brought forth by the Woman’s League, he deemed them insufficient and set forth a plan of his own. In exchange for his large donation, Cook ensured the building’s administrators were to follow a specific set of rules to create an environment that fostered a “model for gracious living,” according to the “Martha Cook Building History and Traditions” pamphlet.

As a patron, Cook intended for his building to “create young women of outstanding sophistication and savoir faire,” according to Yanni. Though portrayed as a beacon of egalitarianism, Martha Cook, Yanni explains, “was intended as Amelia Cacchione/Daily a quasi-domestic retreat within the setting of a masculinist campus.”

The result of these guiding principles, and Cook’s place in society as a white upper-class male, created exclusivity in the Martha Cook residence hall. Only upper-class Anglo-Saxon women who intended to become caretakers of their homes were encouraged to reside in Martha Cook.

At the time of Martha Cook’s establishment, women’s dormitories were places where “coeds” needed to stay in order to be subdued and kept on the domestic and bridal tracks. In a way, these buildings typified gender repression and ensured educated women were always reminded of their place in society. As residents of Martha Cook, women typically aspired to be cultured housewives, and these aspirations were encouraged by invitations to dances, teas and other socials and “baby days” where they would practice taking care of faculty members’ children.

The norms and environment of Martha Cook thus promoted their social status as second-class citizens and as domestic, inferior beings only deserving certain types of education.

Other than exemplifying the stereotypical roles of women, classism was ingrained in William Cook’s beliefs and practices when it came to his patronage of Martha Cook, despite his intentions to keep room and board accessible to less privileged women. Decades after the dormitory first opened its doors, Cook reversed his original belief and promoted his building as an exclusive space only meant for women of high class. In addition, he expressed his distaste for “blue stocking ” women, who were known to have a “taste for literature and scholarship” according to Yanni.

Many current Martha Cook residents acknowledge the contrast of its original benefactor’s values to those of its present residents. “(Cook) thought that women should go to finishing school, but then he was like, ‘Well I guess if you’re going to go to college, we are going to let you be in a place that looks like a finishing school,’” said Engineering junior Jenny Jasperse, house board president.

Even though the building still looks like a f inishing school — a place where women went to be prepared to enter high societ y as housewives — Friday afternoon tea no longer suggests this.

The g irls I saw sitting in the Gold Room were t ypical Universit y students talking about the Shapiro Underg raduate Librar y and complaining about their computer science or business classes.

As LSA junior Jillian Hurst said it, “What is important is that the building evolves their curriculum and their space to be inclusive of other walks of life and to adapt to the modernization of feminism and the female experience.”

T

Amelia Cacchione/Daily

The entryway in Martha Cook.

hough all three all-womens’ dorms on campus — including Betsy Barbour and Helen Newberry — originated in the same decade, only Martha Cook retains such a distinctive reputation. Since its establishment, Martha Cook has operated autonomously from the rest of the residence halls on campus. Amassing its own alumni association, board of governors and detailed instructions from William Cook’s will, the building has imposed traditions, like Friday afternoon tea, that can’t be found elsewhere on campus. This autonomy has allowed the dormitory to function on the periphery of University Housing, serving a largely homogenous cohort of self-selecting girls living in a unique situation.

Residents, or “Cookies,” as they refer to themselves, reside in a limbo between the modern campus and the old-fashioned traditions that regulate their home. They are modern, intelligent and diverse women who have chosen — or, in the case of legacy women, have been prompted by their families — to live in a place that still upholds the traditionalist values of a man who lived a century ago. The surface Martha Cook experience, as exemplified by formal dinners, dress codes and century-old traditions, is being challenged every day by its residents.

Residential life in Martha Cook, like everything else on campus, has changed throughout the years. Today, women can freely use all campus facilities without second thought. For the most part, women are treated equally by professors, advisers and University staff. Teas are only once a week instead of every day, and women are now allowed to

5B

wear pants in the Gold Room. In addition, the women attending Friday afternoon tea today are not preoccupied with marriage or entertaining their male counterparts.

The Alumni Association of Martha Cook has instituted the “gap” scholarship which subsidizes the difference in the cost of housing between other University housing and the significantly more expensive Martha Cook dormitory. In this way, a woman from any class who wants to live in Martha Cook, and demonstrates financial need, is able to do so if awarded this scholarship.

Even though traditions have evolved since its inauguration, Martha Cook’s preservation of traditional values and gendered experiences poses many questions about its design and purpose. Its regulations still include “boy hours” — limiting the hours when members of the opposite sex could be present, and only if escorted by a resident — and a restricted meal plan that, except for Saturday evenings and lunch on North Campus, requires residents to have all of their meals in the Martha Cook dining hall.

This old-fashioned and mostly homogenous space stands in stark contrast to the experiences of other women on campus who are not residents of Martha Cook.

Women not originally intended or allowed to live in the building by William Cook now enjoy the perks and experience the challenges of being a Cookie. Hurst, who only happened to be at afternoon tea because she was fulfilling her required “tea service” hours, expressed her indifference toward the building’s history.

“There are a lot of institutions on this

campus that have roots in things that don’t benefit me as a woman of color, but I have to fight my fight elsewhere,” she said. “I think that the way I overcome that is just by living in this building and getting my education and working my way out.”

As I interviewed modern day Cookies, I learned this indifference is widespread. Cookies are not fully aware of, or at least are not preoccupied with, the history of their residence hall. They occupy its rooms and follow its traditions without thinking about the implications of its history. By overlooking this history, Cookies uphold Martha Cook’s image of a residence hall peopled by, as expressed by Hurst, “predominantly upper middle-class women with values and interests I can only describe as traditional.”

As for me, visiting Martha Cook was an eye-opening experience. As a selfproclaimed feminist, the persistence of this building on our campus was initially alarming, but when I walked out and said my last goodbye to the Venus of Milo, I was more understanding of the value given to the building by its residents. I realized that the residents and staff didn’t dwell on its history, and instead viewed the dorm as their home and a place to be proud of.

William Cook’s beliefs still permeate the environment in the dorm; however, they seem to be set aside by the members of the Martha Cook community.

Modern Cookies are a part of the everyday campus, but at night, when they retire to their rooms that stand mostly untouched, they are living an alternative reality and in some ways, upholding old-fashioned values that contrast our modern campus.

6B

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 // The Statement

This isn’t easy to write

BY MATT HARMON, SENIOR NEWS EDITOR

I

planned out everything I wanted to say and how much I wanted to reveal about myself in this personal statement the entire week prior to the moment I sat down to write.

I would pretend to write it in my head during class, dictating telepathically to someone somewhere with a pad and paper. I expected to wake up and have all of my emotions and experiences laying on my lap typed, double-spaced and stapled with eloquent prose to boot. Sadly, I had to do the heavy lifting myself.

If you read my columns, you’ve probably gotten used to my meaningless rants on music and second-hand embarrassment. This is not that. You’ll just have to wait another week for the goofy, cheerful facade of Matt Harmon to return. I’m honestly on the edge of my seat, waiting for him to come back with another playlist and an amusing tale of woe. I prefer that Matt Harmon as opposed to this one: introspective and brooding. At this point, I expect Godot to show up sooner than the happy Matt Harmon.

Whenever anyone has approached me looking for solace, my response has always ended with, “Just try and concentrate on the happier moments of life.” Am I proud of that response?

Hell no. I’m actually ashamed of it. But it shows how I dealt with problems; I suffocated them with smiles and extraversion and just general clowniness.

I’ve always assumed all of the problems and situations I’ve been through with family, relationships (or lack thereof ) and anxiety were solely my burdens to bear. I was the camel and every straw broke my back repeatedly.

If I couldn’t keep up, it was my fault.

I don’t mean to let my column seep into this piece too much but sometimes song lyrics hit a little too close to home.

I hear a line, a certain chord in my heart is struck and my eyes open wide.

I become obsessed with the song for weeks, expecting more to be revealed about myself through that one line.

While music can’t respond or listen to your problems, it channels what you’re feeling into something that makes sense.

Music was my first therapist.

“I say the loudest in the room / Is prolly the loneliest one in the room” Tyler, the Creator “Lovin’ you sure makes me afraid of losin” - Field Medic

“I’m not the only man who’s scared to be alone” - Joe Hertler and the Rainbow Seekers For years, instead of seeking the help I most definitely needed, I receded into a den of music and emotional suppression. When my heart sank into the bottom of my chest and my breaths became short and sharp, my hand would immediately f ly to my pocket where my earbuds resided. I’d plug in, listen to something positive and wait until I regained control of my body and could smile again.

tormenting me and gnawing at my sense of self.

I pulled over to the side of the road and tried to recoup. In the suburbs, it’s safe to say many people do not like cars with their lights on pulling up and waiting outside their house. Though they expected to see someone in a full, black and white-striped burglar’s outfit with mask and all ready to ransack the place, what they would’ve seen is a 17-year-old boy with tears streaming down his face, a shock in either case.

When homeowners would come to the

ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY KOFFSKY

The first time I realized what I was experiencing was a genuine mental health issue, I was driving in my hometown — a less than ideal location for a moment of self-discovery and trauma. I had received a very alarming text from someone — specific details are not important — but someone I cared about was not addressing me in the greatest of lights. As the yellow line dividing the road hugged my tire, my chest grew heavy. I was scared.

What if I genuinely hurt someone and lost a friend? What did I do? What if they hated me? A barrage of questions in this vein swirled about in my head,

door to see what I was doing, I would get scared and pull off, searching for a new street to park on and breathe.

I called my best friend Michael and practically forced him to come with me to a diner so I could talk out what was happening to me. He didn’t hesitate and I’ll always love him for that. Sitting in the booth for what seemed like hours, I ranted and raved and tried to make sense of how I was feeling. Though he didn’t have any answers, he sat and listened and made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

My second therapist.

That was a year-and-a-half ago. My

first taste of what it could be like to talk about my feelings and try to improve my mental state. After that night with Michael at the diner, I was more conscious of my emotions and anxiety even though I didn’t know it was called anxiety at the time. I began to notice when I was distressed.

One of my problems is I unconsciously sabotage chances for me to experience some form of happiness because I’m afraid I will hurt people in the end. The last thing I want to do is be the cause of someone’s pain. I’d rather cry for hours, filling an ocean with my sobs, than be the root of one person’s single tear.

I spent so many years with my emotions bottled up in my chest, hiding behind jokes and a wide grin. This new mode of self-ref lection was incredibly foreign. Still, I believed it was a solitary effort to conquer these fears. I can talk to friends about it but in the end, it was my psyche and I should probably be the one to make myself well again.

I had never even considered the idea of official therapy until my friend mentioned it during this past winter break.

“Have you thought about going to CAPS?” she said.

The short answer was no, I hadn’t.

The long answer was I had, deep in the back of my brain, but was terrified.

I thought the moment you entered a bonafide therapist’s office was the moment you announced to the world something was wrong with you. I couldn’t bear the idea of sitting in that room, having someone not only listen to my troubles but try to find the cause of them. They’d tell me things I already knew but didn’t want to admit, not even to myself. It may sound irrational but it’s how I felt and sometimes still feel.

No one wants to admit their happiness is being hindered by their own actions.

After many days and nights of wrestling with the idea while Frank Ocean helped the stress leave my body, I entered the Michigan Union, ready to find the CAPS office and jump over the first hurdle. Every tour guide and campus representative will say CAPS is on the third f loor of the Union.

However, the third f loor was an enigma to me. I had never been there before. I didn’t think I had a reason to.

I walked in the front doors of the Union and saw a mass of people studying on the first f loor, a common sight for any U-M student. I climbed the stairs to the second f loor. Again,

Wednesday, February 21, 2018// The Statement

7B

Let’s Talk About It: Save our schools

BY RABAB JAFRI, COLUMNIST (continued from 6B)

anyone could have a reason to go to the second f loor. As I began to ascend the next f light of stairs to the third f loor, I looked around. I swore people were looking at me.

“We know why you’re going to the third f loor,” they seemed to say.

“Why else would anyone go higher than the second f loor unless they’re sick in the head?” they said.

I powered through and started up the stairs to the third f loor. When I looked back for the last time, I saw my extroverted-self staring at me from the second f loor. He’s perfectly fine; nothing going on in that ol’ noggin of his beside Hawaiian shirts and a happy-go-lucky demeanor. I envied him. I wanted to go back to the way things were and be ignorant of my anxiety.

Just then, the vision of that past-self shattered into a million pieces, shards f lying all about the second f loor of the Union. I ran up to the third f loor before he could come back. I stepped into the CAPS office and was paired with someone who listens to my stories, asks questions and works to help me with my anxiety towards relationships and happiness.

My third and current therapist.

I wouldn’t call it fun to dive into your past experiences and cry for a while. I sometimes think I look like the Kim Kardashian crying meme, which is never a good look, but when I leave, I feel a little more and more relieved. I wrote this poem on my phone’s Notes app after my first session. It hurts to share but I trust all of you. “when i left my first therapy session the cold wind stung more than it ever had before cause my tears that had stained the circles under my eyes and draped down my cheeks made my face bare a fresh coat of paint ready for next week at 3:30” I wrote this piece not only to help Statement fill pages but also to help myself. If I can put this inner struggle out there and feel comfortable with my decision to do so, I have a base to grow from. There’s no big lesson here for everyone to relate to and it wasn’t easy to write but I guess I’ll end with this: I hope happiness is just around the corner for all of us.

I

remember practice lockdowns Even when people post about a school to be some of the most awkward shooting, or any issue, social media experiences of my early w“slacktivism” —posting about issues schooling. The entire class huddled without enacting real change — is into the corner of a dark classroom more prevalent than concrete actions. so we would be prepared if anyone Sometimes it seems that people lose potentially dangerous entered the hope in creating change, though many school. I remember thinking it unlikely other countries have taken practical that turning the lights off would be steps to reduce the occurrence of enough to keep someone from trying to school shootings and gun violence, and enter the room. have been successful.

I thought about what decisions my As a country, we are stuck in an teacher would have to make if someone unending debate over gun control and did find us. Some mornings, when other discussions on how to make I walked into school or came late, I schools safer, such as having more noticed how easy it would be to enter a school, even with a required sign-in.

But I never anticipated that school shootings would become so common.

As a student teacher, I worry for the safety of my students. Sometimes I worry what decisions I might have to make when I have my own classroom, and how to mentally prepare my students for this reality.

Unfortunately, these thoughts are only becoming increasingly relevant in the United States, where there has been little to no progress in school shooting prevention.

Thirtyone percent of school shootings occur in ILLUSTRATION BY RABAB JAFRI the U.S., with eight school shootings in 2018 alone. Just this security, or police officers in schools. week, I overheard students in the school And though to some, having a police I teach at talking about the recent school presence in schools is a viable option, the shooting in Florida and what they would truth is the people that suffer the most do if there were to be a shooting in their from this are students of color. These own school. students are often preemptively seen as Yet, I struggle to explain these realities troublemakers and dealt with forcefully to my students so that they take school by police officers. Even as an adult, I lockdowns more seriously, but in doing find the police presence to be nerveso, would I shatter any feeling of safety wracking as a person of color. I can that students feel at school? Though imagine my students could have similar public outrage should be increasing in reactions. Some schools hire security response to these shootings, people are guards for their school instead, which becoming desensitized to the unending may be a better alternative, but is not a violence that permeates mainstream preventive measure to keep shootings and social media. from happening in the first place.

National public debates usually focus on less significant aspects of the issue, repeatedly asking the same questions after each occurrence: Who was the shooter? If the shooter had a family, why did they still do it? Did the shooter play violent video games?

Meanwhile, the National Rif le Association spends millions of dollars lobbying not only for the protection of the right to arms, but also for a lack of regulation on gun purchases.

This system prevents finding concrete solutions to public safety, but the issue is often dismissed as unsolvable, as if it is impossible to know the factors that contribute to school shootings.

Over 16 years ago, filmmaker Michael Moore attempted to answer the question, “Why is gun violence so prevalent in America?”

Is it America’s history of violence? Is it the number of citizens that own guns? Moore concluded that though these factors are important, the most distinctive factor in America, it seems, is fear. Media outlets and politicians, only worsening the issue, constantly feed the fear that we have of others in this country. It is this extreme fear that festers in our society, along with the lack of gun regulations that causes these mass shootings to become so prevalent. And while it is true that we have to try as a society to reduce the factors that cause someone to want to pick up a gun to kill mass amounts of people — whether it be mental health, extreme racism, fear or other factors — guns should not be so easily accessible to people.

It should not take a shooting in every school in the nation to make people concerned about the epidemic, but without any concrete changes in legislation to prevent school shootings, they will only become more commonplace.

8B

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 // The Statement

V I S UA L STAT E M E NT:

L I V I N G S PAC E S

Martha Cook is one of many dorms on campus. Here, photo staff highlights their favorite dorm spots.

Mosher-Jordan, Alice Liu

Mosher-Jordan, Alice Liu

Stockwell, Alexis Rankin

Betsy Barbour, Katelyn Mulcahy