2018-09-12

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Ann Arbor, Michigan

When the city takes your home Amid a foreclosure crisis, Detroit residents fight to stay in their homes

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statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | S E P T E M B E R 12 , 201 8

RESEARCH

Universities Whencontribute the city billion decides$18.7 to take to economy your home AARON BAKER/Daily

Report shows large increase in additions to state economy and 78,845 new jobs

Pulitzer-prize winning author Viet Than Nguyen speaks about his work and life at the Michigan League Tuesday.

Author Viet Thanh Nguyen speaks on refugee experiences, storytelling The Pulitzer-prize winner detailed his journey from “refugee to bourgeoisie” ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Daily Staff Reporter

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, a professor at the University of Southern California, spoke Tuesday to a packed Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre on the perceptions of

refufees and the Vietnamese perspective of the Vietnam War. Using his own experiences and excerpts from his award-winning books, he also discussed the importance of storytelling.

This event was put together by over 13 organizations, including the Vietnamese Student Association, the United Asian

American Organizations, the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ program. Prof. Emily Lawsin, an organizer of the event, introduced Nguyen, highlighting the crucial perspective he offers in such a turbulent time.

“A refugee at a time of rising xenophobia, a survivor of war in an era of ceaseless violence, a

transnational visionary in the face of borders and walls, a writer of color in an age of resurgent white supremacy and, last but not least, a teacher at a time when we are bombarded daily with ignorance wrapped in 280-character spitwads,” Lawsin said.

Nguyen, who is a Vietnamese See REFUGEE, Page 3A

RILEY LANGEFELD Daily Staff Reporter

The University Research Corridor — a partnership of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University — released its 11th economic impact report last week. The report highlights the universities’ contributions to the state economy, which totaled $18.7 billion in 2017.

This is a significant increase from 2015, when the URC added $16.5 billion to the state economy.

Britany AffolterCaine, executive director of the URC, attributes this increase to federal funding and larger

student populations.

“It is being successful — the three universities — and continuing to grow their operations in terms of research and education,” Affolter-Caine said. “They’ve grown enrollment over the last several years.

They’ve been more successful in capturing federal grants to fund their research. … Continuing growth in those areas is why we can say we’ve had a bigger impact.”

In addition, the URC added 78,845 jobs in 2017.

“I think it’s really important to think about the impact that’s non-monetary — the impact on individuals,” Affolter-Caine said. “There are many impacts See MOBILITY, Page 2A

Latinx community celebrates, reflects University Psychology to receive at Heritage Month opening ceremony professors

GOVERNMENT

ACADEMICS

$1 million in grants

Students and administrators emphasize importance of passing the torch

Funds are intended to help manufacturers hurt by recent tarriffs on China

“Empowerment.”

That’s the word Public Policy senior Yvonne Navarrete used to describe her experience as a Latina woman at the University of Michigan. Last year, Navarrete worked as the lead director of La Casa, a student organization and advocacy group dedicated to uniting Latinx students at the University. She now works as an undergraduate adviser for the organization.

Tuesday night marked the beginning of Latinx Heritage Month at the University, and over 200 students, faculty and staff attended the opening ceremony in the Michigan League ballroom.

Navarrete was one of many volunteers from La Casa who attended the ceremony and described her personal process of become a student leader on campus.

“It’s all about coming into a space that’s not historically created for your people or those with similar identities as you and being able to bring your community in,” Navarrete said. “You do that not just for yourself, but the students coming after you.

That’s really what La Casa has been doing since its creation and through Latinx Heritage Month: creating those spaces so that Latinx students can

LEAH GRAHAM Daily Staff Reporter

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced last Wednesday that the University of Michigan’s Great Lakes Trade Adjustment Assistance Center, which works with companies in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio that have been hurt by foreign competition, has been awarded a $1.1 million Economic Development Administration grant.

A total of $13 million was issued to 11 different Trade Adjustment Assistance Centers nationwide, which “help American manufacturers hurt by imports adjust to increasing global competition.”

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the TAACs “support a wide range of technical, planning, and business recovery projects that help companies and communities adapt to international competition.”

Many of the center’s clients, frequently small manufacturers in the region, faced uncertainty in light of recent tariffs levied See TARIFFS, Page 3A

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KATHERINA SOURINE Daily Staff Reporter

feel included and represented, feel at home, and not only that they belong on campus, but that they are a part of campus. They are what makes the University of Michigan great.”

The event included opening remarks from University President Mark Schlissel in which he emphasized the importance of protecting

historically marginalized communities. He highlighted the need for communication and openness on campus.

“I assure that we will continue to work with all of you and your leaders this year and into the future, trying to understand how best to serve you as students,” he said.

The ceremony also featured Catalina Ormsby, managing

director of the National Forum on Higher Education, Ethriam Brammer, assistant dean and DEI implementation lead at Rackham Graduate School, and LSA junior Alex Mullen, internal director of La Casa.

Mullen discussed how important Latinx Heritage Month is for students See LATINX, Page 3A

PRASHANTH PANICKER/Daily

Bryan Terrazas and Cristina Castillo dance at the LatinX Heritage Month Opning Ceremony Tuesday.

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INDEX

Vol. CXXVII, No. 133 ©2018 The Michigan Daily

reexamine curriculum

Debunking of formerly essential studies in field prompts questions ALICE TRACEY

Daily Staff Reporter

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University, constructed a fake jail in the basement of the university.

He filled the prison with 21 college-age male volunteers, 10 designated “prisoners” and 11 designated “guards.”

Zimbardo planned to run a jail simulation, acting as the warden of the prison, for two weeks to observe the impact of roles and labels in the environment. The experiment quickly deteriorated, however, and the mock prison descended into chaos. After only six days, the experiment was shut down when a visiting student reported the abusive behavior of the guards and the psychological distress of the prisoners.

Zimbardo’s investigation, dubbed the Stanford prison experiment, would come to be hailed as a classic psychology study revealing one dark facet of human nature.

However, in June 2018, See PSYCH, Page 3A

NEWS.........................2 OPINION.....................4 ARTS...........................5

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MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: TWO YEARS LATER STUDENTS STILL UNITE, PRAY FOR PEACE — BUT NOT EN MASSE As candles flickered across the Diag, members of the campus community bowed their heads to commemorate the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“The September 11 vigil was a place for all members of the University community to come together, to remember and to reflect on these tragic events,” said MSA President Angela Galardi.

The vigil was sponsored by the Michigan Student Assembly.

Although last year’s program did not include music, Music School senior Darnell Ishmel sang the national anthem at last night’s vigil.

LSA freshman Theresa

Bomer said, “(The national anthem) is very important because it’s not just the campus coming together, it’s the entire nation” The decision to sing the national anthem was controversial, said Courtney Skiles, MSA communication chair.

But “the committee felt that it was expected to be sung tonight,” Skiles said.

LSA junior Deborah Kim, a member of the vigil planning committee said the anthem should be included. “Even though it talks about war, the song symbolizes freedom,” Kim said.

The vigil began with an introduction from Galardi

followed by remarks from the University President Mary Sue Coleman.

“Some moments in our lives are too deep for words,” Coleman said, adding that she believes that being in the company of others is a great comfort.

Following Coleman, Ann Arbor Police Chief Daniel Gates took the podium. Oates, a former member of the…

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ON THE DAILY: CANCER RESEARCHER RECEIVES $6.5 MILLION Arul Chinnaiyan, a member of the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, has received an Outstanding Investigator Award and $6.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute.

Over the next seven years, this grant will fund Chinnaiyan in his research on understanding genetic markers and cancer treatments that can be targeted to specific markers.

“The grant will fund research to create new bioinformatics resources and identify new cancer biomarkers to improve diagnosis and ultimately to

develop new targeted therapies,” a Michigan Medicine press release said.

The Outstanding Investigator Award, rather than funding a specific project, presents leading researchers with support through a grant nearly three times the amount of a traditional individual investigator award.

Through R35, a grant program developed by the National Cancer Institute, the sevenyear extended period of funding is designed to provide flexible, long-term support to investigators.

“The field of precision oncology continues to evolve with the overarching goal of providing cancer patients with enhanced diagnostic and prognostic capabilities and better treatments,” Chinnaiyan said. “This grant will help us identify new biomarkers and understand their biological roles in cancer progression.”

Chinnaiyan, who is also the director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology and the S.P. Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology and Urology at the University of

Michigan Medical School, is considered one of the nation’s top researchers in precision oncology. He founded the Michigan Oncology Sequencing Program at the Rogel Cancer Center in 2010, which has enrolled over 3,000 patients and has produced several publications.

The program researches the sequencing of DNA and RNA of metastatic cancers and normal tissue to seek changes that could help to

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MOBILITY From Page 1A

at URC universities contribute who attend these universities collaborations, said in addition to directly to the state and local frequently find career paths in the the raw economic contributions, economies by buying goods and state, often working on projects the URC has helped significantly services and boosting business. and jobs that can improve the in facilitating further cooperation between the universities. that affect the rank-and-file In the long-term, their presence lives of Michiganders.

He noted that the three Michigander.” is more important, according Affolter-Caine also attributes Sudoku Syndication http://www.sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/ In the short term, students to Affolter-Caine.

Students the success to innovative services universities have been working to improve the and projects developed by the together between state universities which directly networking impact the state. She cites researchers and practitioners in the Perinatology Research and out of Michigan.

Branch, part of the Wayne Like Affolter-Caine, Daigger State School of Medicine, believes that innovation is central MEDIUM as an excellent example of a to the success and impact of the university project that helped URC. He also credits researchers the general public. The PRB and academics for their work.

“If you aren’t doing new things has discovered a non-invasive treatment for women at risk and improving and so forth, you’re for pre-term labor, which is actually going down,” Daigger now part of standard practice said. “In terms of economic in hospitals across Michigan. contribution, the dollars flowing Affolter-Caine also cited in for research are certainly a Mcity, a mock city in Ann contribution, but it’s the ideas and Arbor used to test driverless the people and the enthusiasm cars, as another excellent and so forth that are the biggest contribution to continue the example.

“There are just not that economic development here in many really unique facilities Michigan.”

Daigger also emphasized like Mcity,” Affolter-Caine said. “And it is bringing the importance of students businesses from all over the to the research and economic world to Ann Arbor. It gives contributions from all three students an opportunity to universities.

“Every engine needs fuel. The conduct research and get that research engine needs money. experience.”

Engineering professor One of the other fuels is the Glen Daigger, who has been students,” Daigger said. “They’re © sudokusolver.com. For personal use only.

JUST MEET ME IN. puzzle by sudokusyndication.com acquainted with the URC for the hands and the minds and the three years and participated curiosity that really drive much of in several cross-university this research.”

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The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University OF Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. Subscriptions for September-April are $250 and year long subscriptions are $275.

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LATINX From Page 1A on campus and the Latinx communities in Ann Arbor.

In addition to the opening ceremony, La Casa is organizing events featuring Latinx professors and guest speakers such as Prof. Ruth Behar and Prof. Ashley Lucas.

REFUGEE From Page 1A refugee, started his talk by acknowledging his refugee identity, jokingly referring to his transformation “from refugee to bourgeoisie.” Nguyen and his family fled to the United States in 1975 after the fall of Saigon, settling in a refugee camp in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. He explained he still feels like a refugee because his earliest memories are of this time when he was separated from his parents and brother — a story parallel to the child-parent separation crisis of today at the U.S.-Mexican border.

“That’s why I take it personally when I hear stories today about children being taken away from their parents, because I feel there is no justification of that,” Nguyen said.

He then talked about the idea of “good” and “bad” refugees, describing the limitations of these one-sided views and emphasizing every person’s right in America to be mediocre, a line that garnered a lot of applause.

“I resist this whole idea of good and bad refugees or good and bad immigrants, because what that implies is the only acceptable refugee or immigrant is the exceptional refugee, the exceptional immigrant,” Nguyen said. “But you can only admit one or two of those people, and I think that’s exactly the intent behind this idea of good and bad refugees or immigrants. I, for one, believe in America in which equality means the equal right to be mediocre.”

Nguyen also spoke about U.S. and Vietnamese perceptions of the Vietnam War. He shared how the war wasn’t over for the Vietnamese people surrounding him in his refugee camp growing up with the losses and grief they still carried. He described himself feeling “split in two” while watching “Apocalypse Now,” at first being on the side of the American soldiers until he saw them killing Vietnamese. Through

PSYCH From Page 1A an article published in Medium claimed the Stanford prison experiment lacks credibility.

The article said new interviews revealed the guards had been coached, and raised other issues having to do with the methodology and replicability of the study.

The Stanford prison experiment is not the only example of canonical psychology research coming under fire. A number of studies –– including the Milgram experiment, which was meant to demonstrate the disturbing extent of human obedience –– have received criticism for lack of replicability or sloppy procedures. Many of these studies are considered essential to the field and appear in standard psychology textbooks.

According to Howard Kurtzman, acting executive director of the American Psychological Association’s Science Directorate, the problem of older psychology studies being re-evaluated is not new but part of a continual trend.

“I see this as a gradual process,” Kurtzman said. “There are some findings that we’ve thought were true that maybe aren’t, but more commonly the magnitudes of the effects may be smaller than we realized.”

Kurtzman said a major issue is that many older studies have been difficult for researchers to repeat due to a variety of factors including small sample sizes and careless use of statistical methods. He clarified replicability problems affect all scientific disciplines, not just psychology. The

The Center for MultiEthnic Student Affairs and La Casa are working collaboratively to feature more than 20 events over the next month.

This collaboration marks progress from last year’s boycott organized by La Casa against MESA, claiming they overlooked Latinx students on campus.

La Casa Lead Director

this movie and other media of its kind, he realized how powerful and destructive stories can be.

“Stories can empower and stories can destroy us at the same time, and that’s one of the reasons why I became a writer,” Nguyen said.

Throughout his talk, Nguyen read excerpts from four of his books: “The Sympathizer,” “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War,” “The Refugees” and “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.” After sharing his stories, he held a question-and-answer session. In one response, he emphasized the need to write stories that bring people together.

“We have to change how stories are told,” Nguyen said. “We need to write stories in America that build bridges instead of building walls. We need to tell stories opening our hearts instead of closing our minds.”

LSA junior Hannah Brauer read some of Nguyen’s books in her classes and appreciated the viewpoint he provided on the Vietnam War. She said something that resonated with her was his reference to a New York Times review for his book “The Sympathizer” that called it “the voice for the voiceless” when really those voices were just not being heard.

“I like how he referenced the New York Times review they gave him about the book, when really it’s not the voiceless, it’s those who popular culture refuses to hear,” Brauer said. “So he’s trying to be that voice that is heard, and he is being is heard.”

Christina Do, an employee at Washtenaw Community College, is also a fan of Nguyen’s writing and relates to many of his experiences as her parents are also refugees of the Vietnam War. She talked about the power of seeing her identity represented

by Nguyen.

“The feeling of seeing someone who shares your experience, who shares your identity in some way, it’s an incredibly gratifying experience,” Do said.

National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine is currently conducting a study on reproducibility in science.

Over the past five to 10 years, Kurtzman said, the psychology community has been working to address the replicability crisis, focusing on increasing sample sizes, sharing data and pre-registering studies to promote transparency.

Because of the attention being paid to replicability issues, Kurtzman believes research quality and reliability will improve within the next 10 to 20 years with journals and scientific funding agencies increasing their standards.

He estimated the field’s focus on high-quality research will begin to change teaching practices for psychology over the next five to 10 years.

“I think going forward research that is published in journals will be more reliable,” Kurtzman said. “All that will filter into teaching. I’m sure it’s being discussed already at the graduate level and seminars, and that will filter down, I think, to undergraduate teaching and eventually into textbooks.”

The replicability crisis has also become an area of focus for the University of Michigan Department of Psychology.

Patricia Reuter-Lorenz, chair of the Department, said psychology faculty are well aware of the problem.

“I know that there’s been a lot of attention paid in smaller groups of faculty and graduate students in particular to the replication crisis and improving the rigor of research methods,” Reuter-Lorenz said. “We have several department-wide initiatives that are organized to achieve those goals.”

Though the department

Lesley Rivas, an LSA junior, explained how La Casa works to uplift Latinx students at the University.

“We try to give leadership opportunities where they can learn about their history, learn how to be activists on campus and how to take initiative,” she said. “The Latinx Heritage Month this year is really a product of many months of

really hard work put on by students, staff and faculty, in contrast to last year when our heritage month wasn’t prioritized. This month we really emphasized the fact that we matter on campus, our community is a priority, especially right now because of how the families and students here are being impacted by everything politically, namely

TARIFFS From Page 1A by the Trump administration.

The Trump administration’s announcement caused uncertainty in the markets as the tariffs go against years of precedence of free trade with China.

Director Scott Jacobs said the program helps companies “step back and assess their business practices in order to become more competitive.”

“The whole idea of the assistance model is to help

companies invest in themselves by building their capabilities faster and more efficiently than they could without the program,” Jacobs said.

The program offers client companies guidance in a variety of areas, including sales and marketing, personnel training and new product development.

Firms can qualify for up to $75,000 in matching funds from the center to cover the cost of business improvement projects.

The grants announced Wednesday represent a $300,000 decrease in funding overall from 2017 when the

Wednesday, September 12, 2018 — 3A Trump’s administration and negative media portrayal.”

LSA sophomore Yosabeth Guerrero explained how she is continuously thankful for the community she has become a part of and the support it provides her.

“Being Latina means I’m able to represent my culture and be with people who look like me, people with the same skin tones

Department of Commerce designated a total of $13.3 million to TAACs. 2018 marks a $600,000 decrease in funding for the Great Lakes Trade Adjustment Assistance Center, which was awarded $1.7 million in 2017. In 2016, the Center received $1.65 million from the EDA. Jacobs said the center was currently in the third year of a five-year cooperative agreement between the Department of Commerce and the University, and that federal funding is not distributed in a “uniform manner.”

and with the same practices and traditions,” Guerrero said.

“It’s important, especially on this campus because it is a PWI, predominantly white institution, so when we get together, we form a coalition in order to provide a better support system amongst ourselves as a marginalized group on campus. I feel like I’m back home.”

“It ends up fluctuating, and we were disappointed in that lower amount of funding, however, over the three years so far … we’ve received well over $3 million, which, in sum, is adequate for us to our work,” Jacobs said.

“Our clients and companies across the U.S. are worried about a potential increase in raw material costs, but largely they haven’t seen that yet,” Jacobs said. “Anything beyond that — restrictions in trade or a bunch of uncertainty — you know, it’s unclear what’s going to happen with that.”

Central Student Government funds Buses to Ballots student voter initiative CATHERINE NOUHAN Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan’s Central Student Government met Tuesday night to pass a resolution to fund the Buses to Ballots initiative and another to help fund the Career Center’s JCPenney Suit Up event.

The assembly also passed a resolution to recommend adding motion activated lights in academic buildings at the University. Shortly after the meeting began, CSG observed a moment of silence in memorial of 9/11.

The Buses to Ballots initiative was born out of the Big Ten Voting Challenge, the conference-wide push to increase student voter turnout in the 2018 midterm elections.

Buses would take students to and from polling places from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Election Day in November in an attempt to increase student voter turnout.

The 2014 midterms only produced a 14 percent college student voter turnout, which

cannot dictate what professors teach, Reuter-Lorenz added, faculty are committed to training students to become good scientists.

“I don’t tell faculty they have to do things a particular way, but I think there’s enough of an appreciation for the importance of this that we have as a shared value that we will be rigorous in the methodologies that we teach,” Reuter-Lorenz said.

In addition to the replicability crisis, Reuter-Lorenz noted the University has been affected by the fact that standard studies like the Stanford prison experiment and Milgram experiment have been facing scrutiny.

“I think there’s some classic studies that have been part of many of our introductory classes and gateway classes that have come under fire, that have come under question, because of methods and ethics and things like that,” Reuter-Lorenz said.

Still, Reuter-Lorenz and Kurtzman said introductory psychology textbooks have not necessarily been updated to reflect controversies surrounding older, quintessential psychology studies. Kurtzman said whether older studies like the Stanford prison experiment remain in textbooks depends on the textbook author’s goal and approach.

“If a textbook author does address that study, they would be well-advised to include coverage of the controversies surrounding its methods and to address what it teaches us about the importance of institutional review boards,” Kurtzman said.

According to Reuter-Lorenz, this re-evaluation of older psychology studies has elicited a response from University

students and administrators are eager to raise.

CSG Vice President Izzy Baer, an LSA junior, says this is a great opportunity to highlight and overcome barriers to voting for students.

“CSG is very excited to have the opportunity to support student voting accessibility on election day,” Baer wrote later to The Daily. “While it is vital for students to register and vote, there are difficulties — such as transportation — that are often not discussed. We see this as a positive step forward in increasing student voting turnout across the board this November.”

CSG President Daniel Greene, a Public Policy senior, discussed the positive implications that subsidizing transportation to the polls will bring.

“CSG is excited to uphold (University) President Schlissel’s Big Ten Voter Challenge and help improve voter turnout amongst Michigan students,” Greene

psychology professors. She said faculty are generally aware of the issues with older studies and make sure to address them in class.

“Our instructors are cognizant of the importance of staying up-to-date on developments in the field, that’s why they’re here at the University of Michigan,” Reuter-Lorenz said. “Science is a work in progress. There’s always new discoveries and it’s very important that our faculty stay on top of those.”

In fact, Reuter-Lorenz added, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology published two papers in 2016 outlining how professors should cover studies with dubious methodology.

One paper discussed the Stanford prison experiment while the othertouched on the Milgram experiment. ReuterLorenz said one introductory psychology professor at the University has been using both to inform her teaching.

LSA senior Melissa Hall, who studies psychology, said older studies including the Stanford prison experiment, the Bobo doll experiment and the Genie experiment are still examined in introductory courses.

Though Hall said she has not taken a psychology course that addressed the re-evaluation of these studies, her professors and classmates do discuss controversies surrounding older research.

“Often people will raise their hands and try and contradict the information and explain how there’s been controversy,” Hall said. “The professors would address it then, but they still use them as examples.”

According to Hall, many older psychology studies used methods that would not meet

wrote to The Daily following the meeting. “AR 8-009 makes voting less of a burden by addressing barriers created by some polling site’s offcampus locations. The funding allocation subsidizes student transportation to the polls, so students have guaranteed, direct transportation to their assigned polling stations.”

Greene also says CSG is dedicated to the student body’s interests and will continue to pass policies to achieve this.

“CSG remains committed to empowering student voices beyond campus, and I believe the resolutions helps Central Student Government embody the University’s mission to develop leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future,” Greene wrote.

Engineering junior Zeke Majeske was happy the resolution passed, but says these busing systems will bring out many students who only

modern norms for scientific methodology or ethics. Those generational differences are typically addressed in her University classes, Hall said, though these older studies are still treated as valid examples.

“Many of these studies obviously took place many years ago, so we just kind of address the differences in generation and why it’s not all applicable

live in Ann Arbor for their educational career, swaying the votes against the permanent residents living in the city. He expressed his concern with this affair.

“I am afraid that the buses will bring lots of non-residents to polling places where they will vote in city elections,” Majeske wrote to The Daily.

“I am happy the resolution passed, I just like to vote ‘no with rights’ on stuff if I think more needs to be said.”

The Career Center’s JCPenney Suit Up event is taking place September 30, and will be busing students to JCPenney. CSG also passed a resolution to help sustain the Career Center’s Clothes Closet for non-traditional sizes.

Other resolutions passed included the fall 2018 CSG budget plan, as well as a resolution to amend the CSG election code. Under this new code, students would not be able to endorse the representatives through social media platforms without filling out the official endorsement paperwork.

nowadays,” Hall said.

Reuter-Lorenz said students can learn from discussing studies that are now considered flawed.

“There are better methods that can be used than were used in the past and they

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, September 12, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ANAMARIA CUZA | COLUMN

Algorithms of inequality Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

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AARON BAKER | COLUMN

The patriotism of immigration

President Donald Trump’s position on immigration is blatantly unpatriotic. Through his comments and actions as a candidate and President, we know he is no fan of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere.

Many Trump supporters say it’s only illegal immigration that the President is opposed to, but the fact is that the president’s war against legal immigration is equally, if not more fervent than his efforts against illegal immigration.

President Trump has proposed to cut legal immigration in half by weakening the family ties clause of our immigration system that allows legal residents to sponsor family members. He wants to limit naturalization for legal immigrants if they have ever used government welfare programs. He has also cut the number of green cards we grant and is lessening the number of asylum seekers we accept.

And let’s not forget his leaked comments that he doesn’t want people — legal or illegal — from “shithole” countries — each of which was poor and brown — i­mmigrating here. Why are Trump’s immigration policies unpatriotic?

In one of former President Ronald Reagan’s last televised addresses as president, he explained why he felt America was an exceptional country: “America represents something universal in the human spirit …

Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.”

Reagan’s patriotism is rooted in the belief that American values are universal. That is, anyone should be able to become an American because the American identity is rooted in its values.

This is called civic nationalism, where the national identity is based on shared values rather than a shared perceptible identity. Late Sen. John McCain echoed Reagan’s sentiment last May, when he said that you don’t even need to know English to be fully American, you only need to have American values.

What are these values? I would say they are they are pretty clearly delineated in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. They are a capacious set of values rooted in the basic liberal tradition of free speech, individual rights

and due process. These values can incorporate a wide variety of political positions, ideologies, religions and cultures.

The vast majority of countries in the world are nation-states with an ethnic, religious or hegemonic cultural identity that serves as the basis of their national identity. Nationstates like China, Italy or India have commonly perceived shared traits, like traditions, religious beliefs or histories that many citizens associate with their national identity. If you lie outside these common traits, integrating as a fully equal citizen in social and even sometimes legal terms can be hard. The extent of exclusivity to the national identities of the nation-states of the world varies, but I would argue none come close to the level of inclusivity the American identity has had in recent history. We grew up calling America a nation of immigrants for a reason.

But it was only in 1965, after the Civil Rights Movement had left its mark, that America liberalized its immigration policy and became the country Reagan and McCain praised.

Anyone should be able to become an American because the American identity is rooted in its values

From 1924 to 1965, America closed its doors with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924.

An ethnic and racial hierarchy was codified in a quota system that essentially only let Northern Europeans enter.

Back then, xenophobia was directed toward not only nonEuropean groups, but also European groups perceived as threatening to the AngloAmerican character of America.

Italians, Jews, Irish and at one point even Germans, threatened the homogeneity of the dominant culture. Italians, the Irish and the Jews were considered nonwhite races and faced widespread discrimination. Eventually, all of these groups integrated into the dominant culture, a process

which changed the immigrant groups but also changed the country for the better. America, despite the incessant plague of xenophobia, has continually been shaped by immigrants.

Since 1965, after the repeal of the Immigration Act of 1924, America’s demographics have begun to unsurprisingly change drastically. By 2065, so long as current rate of immigration remains constant, 46 percent of America will be white creating a majority-minority nation. When Trump said he doesn’t want people from shithole countries, he was harkening back to the tradition of xenophobia that resulted in the 1924 act. In fact, Attorney General Jeff Sessions actually cited the Immigration Act of 1924 as a model for current immigration policy in an interview with Breitbart News Network.

The fear that immigrants perceived as different cannot integrate into American society is clearly not new. And it is as wrong now as it was wrong in 1924. The implicit argument today that non-European immigrants carry an immutable cultural alienness that renders them unable to integrate into American society is incorrect. Yet, Hispanic immigrants, most often the target of anti-immigration rhetoric, are integrating into American society just as European immigrants have integrated in the past. Like President Reagan said, anyone can become American because anyone can live by the values of liberty and justice and strive to uphold these values when we all seem to be falling short.

Economic arguments against immigration similarly fall short of the facts and succumb to misperceptions.

Immigrants contribute to the economy rather than slow it down. Immigrants are more likely than native-born Americans to start a business and contribute a net increase to the living standards of the average American. The impetus against immigration is largely a visceral fear that someone who looks different or practices a different religion can’t have the same values or way of life. But isn’t the true testament to the strength of our values the fact that we believe anyone can live by them?

Aaron Baker can be reached at aaronbak@umich.edu.

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These past few months, The Michigan Daily readers have probably become a bit more mindful when using Facebook.

Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, people were outraged. So, we started clicking away on our profiles’s privacy settings, congratulating ourselves on our newly found concern for the data collected on us and maybe even stopped liking things so that advertisers wouldn’t know our interests.

Indeed, Facebook did a lot of outrageous things with our data, like allowing housing advertisers to target their ads to only white people and employers to advertise jobs exclusively to young people. We might argue that our beloved social media platforms will slowly wash away their sins as journalists discover and report the misuses of their algorithms — seemingly holding Facebook and the like accountable. Is that the whole story, though?

With every piece of data collected about each one of us, and each algorithm that comes across our individual online trails, we become entangled in a system that takes ownership of our private lives. Algorithms and data collection form these sticky webs around our online and offline lives — that we both knowingly and unknowingly get stuck in. Once we clicked the “turn off” button in our privacy settings, it might feel as if we own our data once again — that we have liberated ourselves from some of the algorithmic sticky webs laid out all around us. But what about the less educated people, those who don’t know enough about privacy, people who maybe wouldn’t even be able to navigate Facebook’s privacy settings? They are still caught up in that web.

While some of us might be worried about advertisers collecting data on our love for burritos and our favorite series, others — who might not even

know what to look out for — are often part of a stickier, denser part of the web: a web in which it’s not only Facebook and Netflix collecting their data.

At the beginning of this year, I came across an article published by ProPublica in 2016 about a software used across the U.S. intended to collect data on defendants, process it and get a score. The score would predict people’s future as criminals — and it was biased against Black defendants. My inner geek who loved the idea of using math to predict future events was terrified by that article for a long time. So, I went on a

With every piece of data collected about each one of us, we become entangled in a system that takes ownership of our private lives

journey via Google to discover what other algorithms were being used by the government.

During my search, I came across a website filled with tips on possible algorithms used by the government. Then, I got stuck.

I realized I knew nothing about how these algorithms worked.

From where did they collect the data? Did they have data on everyone? How could you even get your hands on these algorithms and study them?

Thankfully, Prof. Virginia Eubanks blessed me (and all of us) with her book: “Automating Inequality,” which brings me back to our algorithmic sticky web we are all caught in. Her book shined a light on the denser, hidden parts of the web where people from low-income families might find themselves caught. She delves into three algorithms used in different

states: one that decides citizens’ eligibility for welfare programs, one that assigns scores to people who find themselves homeless, and one which tries to predict child maltreatment in families.

Read again that last sentence.

All of them focus on low income citizens. Why? Because the government can only collect data from those who access welfare programs, adding them forever to a database, creating a score out of their past in order to categorize their future.

Still, as enlightening as books can be, they rarely offer us a stepby-step guide to taking action.

We are only college students and, for a lot of us, the closest we have come to algorithms are the recommendations offered

by Amazon. There are some of us, like myself, who are not even American citizens, and so we obviously start wondering if all this algorithmic bias isn’t better fit for a Wired article or a latenight talk in the dorms than as a wake-up alarm for protests. I’ve definitely faced these questions and I am still navigating them, but I am looking at all of us when I am saying this issue needs to be solved and discussed. Math and engineering students, take a break from your classes and take the time to understand the world where social justice takes precedence over the power of numbers and coding. Humanities and social science students, take a break from writing your paper because if you don’t intervene, concepts like justice and fairness will get to be shaped by a score given by an algorithm. School has just started, so don’t get so busy with your coursework that you forget to take in the inf luence that your work might have in a society changing at the pace of an algorithm giving you a score.

Anamaria Cuza can be reached at anacuza@umich.edu.

ALANNA BERGER | COLUMN

Don’t blame the border Like many Americans, I spent this summer — one filled with political scandals and rampant pop culture gossip — haunted by one news story in particular: the story of Mollie Tibbetts, a University of Iowa student. Tibbetts’s disappearance prompted a national media circus, a desperate search and the ultimate discovery of her murder resulted in political outcry.

Twenty-year-old Tibbetts was last seen before she went for a jog on the evening of July 18, 2018. She was reported missing the next morning when she did not show up for work, and for the next month her image was plastered on major news outlets and across social media. Her family pleaded for her safe return — a cry that went unanswered until August 21, 2018, when 24-year-old Cristhian Rivera confessed to her murder and led authorities to her body. Rivera later revealed that he came across Tibbetts on her evening jog, where he then pursued her both in his vehicle and on foot.

She repeatedly told him to leave her alone, finally threatening to call the police. It was then that Rivera, angry at her blatant rejection, allegedly kidnapped and murdered Tibbetts, leaving her body in a vast cornfield.

There is much to be said about Mollie Tibbetts’s story, and many reasons why it resonated so strongly with the American people. There is the shock value of a wholesome young Midwestern woman meeting a violent and tragic end in a small sleepy town. Then there’s the political: Rivera’s contested legal status. This detail has been seized upon to support the antiimmigration narrative of President Trump and other members of the Republican Party — a political move subsequently denounced by the victim’s father.

But among these various debates, one fact of her story remains clear: In 2018, among an age of anti-misogynist social movements and female political empowerment, it still remains dangerous, even potentially fatal, for a woman to reject the advances of a man. The hardest aspect to

swallow of Tibbetts’s story is that it is not at all unique. In the days after her body was found, a 2016 Runner’s World survey resurfaced.

The survey asked readers, “How often, if ever, does a stranger whistle at you, comment on your body, needlessly honk at you, or give you other similar unsolicited sexual attention?” Forty-three percent of female respondents answered that they “sometimes, often, or always” encountered such attention during a run, while only 4 percent of their male counterparts reported the

In 2018, among an age of anti-misogynist social movements, it still remains potentially fatal for a woman to reject the advances of a man

same. The statistics get even more abysmal from there. While only 3 percent of female respondents reported any sort of physical contact or assault while on a run, 30 percent reported being followed on foot or by car, 18 percent reported being sexually propositioned and 5 percent reported being flashed.

Maybe, in light of Tibbetts’s murder, a whistle, honk or unwanted comment seems trivial, and there is undoubtedly a world of difference between a catcall and a murder. But ask any girl or woman above the age of 15, and she will certainly have an arsenal of instances of being leered at, whistled at, groped or spoken to like a sexual object by a man in a way that made her fear for her safety, or even her life.

These small instances build up to create a society in which women are taught to constantly be on edge.

In this society, we’re instructed to never walk anywhere alone, especially at night, or if we must, to never wear headphones, to hold our keys between our fingers to use as a potential weapon and to carry

pepper spray. We’re taught that simply existing as a woman makes us an open invitation to men, and we must do everything in our power to make ourselves less inviting, to dress ourselves in modest clothing, to wear less makeup and to drink less alcohol. We’ve had to hold ourselves responsible for crimes in which we were victimized. Perhaps most difficult of all, we’ve been conditioned to view every man as a potential threat, even the ones we think we trust and know intimately.

While Tibbetts fell victim to the violence of a stranger, women are overwhelmingly more likely to be stalked, threatened, assaulted or murdered by men they know. In fact, as reported by the National Organization for Women, every day three women are murdered by an intimate partner, and up to onethird of female homicide victims are killed by their partners. The stories of these women are not as widely shared as that of Mollie Tibbetts, maybe because as a society we hold them responsible for their deaths because they closely knew their attackers, or maybe because they are disproportionately low-income women of color.

Yet, these women, along with Mollie Tibbetts and the smattering of other women who make headlines from time to time, highlight the fear that accompanies the everyday actions of women.

Actions as habitual as going for a run. When it comes down to it, Mollie Tibbetts was not killed by illegal immigration, or because she made the “mistake” of going for a run by herself. She, along with thousands of other women annually, fell victim to a culture that encourages male entitlement and toxic masculinity. She was killed by a man enraged with her exercising her theoretical right to say no, a right that was stripped away from her and so many others. If we really want to address the violence that brought Tibbetts to her end, we need not look to our borders, but at ourselves. Until we rectify a society that places male desire above Alanna Berger can be reached at balanna@umich.edu.

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, September 12, 2018 — 5A

ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN

FILM REVIEW

The Futility of Sports as Entertainment

NETFLIX

‘Most Assasinated’ fails as dull murder mystery STEPHEN SATARINO Daily Arts Writer

The Netflix original “The Most Assassinated Woman in the World,” released last Friday, is a bland rehashing of the murder mystery genre, the thematic conceit being the altogether lack of mystery involved (there’s only one possible suspect and guess what happens in the end!).

“Most Assassinated” feels like one of those movies that Netflix

“The Most Assasinated Woman” Netflix green-lighted to fill a quota for main menu titles rather than an attempt at expanding the universe of human expression.

I honestly don’t know how the script just didn’t end up as an episode of “Bones” eight years ago.

The “Most Assassinated,” (yet very much still alive) woman at the center of the film, Paula Maxa (Anna Mouglalis, “Baron noir”), is a stage actress famous for her gory, pantomimed deaths. In fact, the troupe she stars in, and the theater that houses them all, specializes on her nightly demises, packing the theater wall to wall six days a week for a series of bloody scenes with little to no plot beyond the stabbing, hanging, crushing and lashing of that particular evening. And the audience only really wants to see the gore, the theater’s whole business model riding on the draw of perversion for droves of thrillstymied Parisians. In this, “Most Assassinated” happens upon a fairly interesting

quandary, though it’s never fleshed out; the film half-posits the question of, one, who is more morally reprehensible, the ones killing each other on stage, or the hoards of spectators returning time and time to see it? And two, what would the effect of such a theatrical institution have on a city? Is it a pressure-release valve that could give someone the outlet they need to avoid acting out the perversions on their own? Or is it a motivating, exemplifying danger that only puts the city at higher risk?

Yet instead of forging on in this more interesting direction, “Most Assassinated” falls back into a dull murder mystery type without enough suspects or possibilities for any of the crimes shown to really grab the attention. Basically, everything wrong that happens to the actress Maxa is perpetrated by one, polio-stricken, rebukedcourter from Maxa’s past — an older man named Jean. The pathos of “Most Assassinated” is set up to come from Maxa’s figurative perch just out of reach of his dangerous clutches, only one false step away from his murderous grasp. It fails, however, to give any dimension to the two of them or to the relationship they once had. His motives are never understood past his perverse desire to watch her die, making the cat and mouse chase that is the second two-thirds of the movie a little dry to watch.

The issues at the core of “Most Assassinated” stem mostly from the characters’ lack of character. The film is over-saturated by characters that don’t seem to have any inclinations past what they quip about to each other on screen. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if it were just the peripheral characters who

lacked any dimension, but even Maxa herself is missing any intrigue behind her actions.

Perhaps a woman on the run for her life doesn’t need a grand underlying philosophy behind the doorway stoops she hides in, but it would be nice to see her choices in allies backed up at all.

Had “Most Assassinated” leaned further into the guts and gore on-stage, incorporating it

It’s not the worst movie to put on and talk over with a group of friends

into theater’s dark underbelly, the film could have been spun into a compelling thriller or horror flick. As it stands, the bloodshed is used as fictitiously in the film as it is used on Paula Maxa’s stage. And of course, all my ponderings on how the film could have been tweaked to go a little further are derivations of the issues first mentioned above — the film lacks a philosophy on the events it puts on screen; it doesn’t try to say anything.

As a conditional recommendation, it’s not the worst movie to put on and talk over with a group of friends.

The confusing, yet-to-be resolved twists that happen in the last 10 or 11 minutes can be fun to laugh about after the fact, but it’s nowhere near worth watching alone. If you’re looking for a refresher for your third-semester French, maybe go watch something by Rhomer (specifically “Claire’s Knee”).

TV REVIEW

‘Kidding’ showcases the best sides of Jim Carrey SAMANTHA DELLA FERA Daily Arts Writer

Throughout his nearly 20-year career, Jim Carrey has become one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. Film after film, he has delivered iconic performances through dramatic movements and charismatic acting. Oftentimes his movies are pure comedy, using Carrey’s naturally goofy essence to craft a lovable and dumb character.

Others present a warped reality — part comedy, part drama — Carrey’s highly emotive face telling the audience exactly how they should be feeling.

His newest project, “Kidding,” falls in the latter category. A rare journey into television, Carrey assumes the role of children’s television star Jeff (Mr. Pickles), a Mr. Rogersesque character who struggles to balance the happy-go-lucky

nature of his popular TV show with the crushing realities of his own life. On television, Mr. Pickles is a smiling, singing and sweater-wearing man who radiates joy. In real life, Jeff is a seperated husband coping with the loss of his young son Phil

“Kidding” Series Premiere Sunday @ 10 p.m.

Showtime (Cole Allen, “Professor Isle’s Laboratory”).

“Kidding” succeeds in making the viewer feel the exact tug-of-war that Jeff himself is experiencing. The series premiere is bright and happy, featuring bouncy songs and warm colors. Yet there are glimpses of the darkness Jeff is facing and those glimpses grow bigger as the episode progresses.

The episode opens on Conan’s talk show, with Mr. Pickles being interviewed and dedicating a sweet little song to his wife, Jill (Judy Greer, “Driven”). As he sings “You can feel, anything at all, anything at all, you can feel,” the scene shifts to Jeff returning to his dingy hotel room, straightening the hair of a drunkenly passedout teen and putting on a violent movie. Later the viewers find out that Mr. Pickles is separated from the wife he sang to, and, in fact, he cannot feel very much at all. While Mr. Pickles promotes the expression of emotion, Jeff is wearing a mask of happiness as he internalizes deep trauma and sadness over the death of his son.

In the pilot, this mask is artfully shown through the formatting of the show itself. The general vibe is lighthearted, but as Jeff begins to break down, the atmosphere of the show does as well. In the

KAITYLN MULCAHEY / DAILY

A sports article in an arts column. It feels perverse. Are there not enough articles written about sports already, both in this paper and in others around the world? Surely there are more important things to write about in the field of entertainment, the return of fall TV, the fall of a CBS mogul, the ways in which Netflix and Amazon are changing the way we view movies or some other such subject. But sports are what are currently on my mind. Or rather, if there is a futility in being a fan of certain sports. Michigan Football is a religion after all, and not one with much basis in reality. Most fans of sports are indoctrinated into the fandom in some way or another. Unlike other kinds of fandom, sports fans often don’t choose their teams, their teams choose them.

That only makes it feel even more disheartening when you realize this form of entertainment you are so attached to is doomed to continually let you down.

Michigan seemed to have some kind of miracle chance to come back and win the game I could not find it in myself to conjure up even the faintest of hopes like those around me. I’d seen this movie too many times before.

IAN HARRIS

I’ve been a Michigan Football fan for literally my entire life.

I was in the womb during that fateful 1997 season and unknowingly attended many victories that would allow the Wolverines to go on and win the national championship. The overpriced hot dogs and stale popcorn of Michigan Stadium were in my bloodstream from the very beginning. The idea of rooting for a college team other than Michigan is anathema to me; it goes against the very fabric of who I believe I am. And yet after the Notre Dame game two weeks ago I felt something I’d never felt before as a Michigan Football fan: uninterest. As the game wound to a close and

College sports, to the vast majority of people who watch them, are nothing more than entertainment. Win, lose, come back from behind, blow out a bad team — it’s an excuse to take a break from the real world for a few hours, eat junk food, hang out with your friends, drink and feel as though you are a part of something larger than yourself.

At the end of the day it won’t truly impact your life in any way if Michigan wins or loses and in ten, 20, or 30 years from now most people won’t even be able to remember the games that we won and the games that we lost.

But year in and year out, 100,000 people in Ann Arbor continue to pay increasingly expensive fees to attend the games and by and large they are continually disappointed. Michigan has beaten Ohio State just once in my memory. We’ve beaten Michigan State a few times. I cannot recall Michigan winning a Big Ten championship. Some part of me realizes we must have when I was younger, but I have no memories of such an event, only vague recollections of getting blown out by a west coast team in the Rose Bowl. Such is the tragedy of being a lifelong Michigan fan.

So why do I keep watching?

Why do we keep watching? Why do we keep spending money, time and energy on something that brings us pain? It’s a sad devotion to an ancient religion that has given us little reason to actually be loyal to it. If a television series I like starts to go down the toilet, I’ll stop watching. If a movie franchise I enjoy becomes complete garbage, I’ll stop going to see it. But with sports, people will continue to support even the most hopeless of teams for decades on end. Do the people who pay money to

beginning there are only short, sporadic cuts to the tragedy that underlies the plot. Between scenes, a car crashes into the screen or a green traffic light glitches, referencing the death of Jeff’s son in a car accident.

These scenes grow longer and more intense as Jeff loses control of his life, his family and even of his very own likeness.

The ending scene in particular sticks out, as the cohesive persona Jeff has maintained instantly falls apart.

In the final minutes of the pilot, Jeff rushes home and shaves through the center of his head,

leaving him looking crazed and unsettled. The obsession with his wife that has shown itself throughout the episode comes to a peak as he buys the house directly across from her. He is able to spy on her through the window and when he sees her with another man, Jeff rips a faucet out of the wall. In this vital scene, “Kidding” tells its viewers from this point on, Jeff’s life will cease being polished and contained.

Every scene in “Kidding” binds together to craft a show that perfectly maps the life and demise of this troubled man. It

After the Notre Dame game two weeks ago I felt something I’d never felt before as a Michigan Football fan: uninterest

watch the Cleveland Browns get embarrassed year after year feel as though their money is being well spent? How about the people who went to see the Lions redefine the meaning of the word abysmal on Monday night? Is there not something else they would rather be doing?

As Jerry Seinfeld once noted, it’s really the clothes that we are rooting for. Players will leave the team or go to a different team, coaches will come and go and only the colors and the clothes remain through it all. The Every Three Weekly recently published a piece lampooning the idea that students self worth was tied directly to the performance of the Michigan Football team in a way that can’t be explained by any rhythm or reason; for many on this campus, that is their reality.

Being a Michigan Football fan is like returning to a partner who constantly plays with your emotions, who gives you nothing back, who is a constant drain on your wallet and your time and whom you only continue to run

Why do we keep watching?

Why do we keep spending money, time and energy on something that brings us pain?

back to because you literally do not know what it would be like not to do so.

Being a sports fan means being a fan of something that does not care about you, that is designed to entertain you and nothing more.

It distracts you from the more important and more worthy things in your life — a cold hearted business masquerading as school spirit. It’s entertainment with no end in sight, no world in which you’re ever satisfied and no way to ever fully escape from the horrible grip that it has on your soul. Colleges and the world would perhaps be a better place if people didn’t care nearly so much about it.

I’ll see you at the game on Saturday.

is almost unsettling in the way a horror movie is: Even when everything feels right, you can’t help feel that something is about to go horribly wrong.

It is beautifully disturbing and hauntingly reminiscent of the lives of Robin Williams or Anthony Bourdain — real, beloved stars who hid dark lives behind a veil of smiles and comedy. “Kidding” will no doubt be a shining mark on the legacy of Jim Carrey, one that speaks to his ability to add comedy to thoughtful topics, and leave us all wondering if we really should be laughing.

Arts

6A — Wednesday, September 12, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com here. I just want to hear the end of the song.

A few minutes later, like a cliché or a fiction, I pause in the middle of “The Lonesome Road” and turn off the car.

I don’t think about Stevie Wonder all the time, or I didn’t use to. Most of the moments I thought about him this summer didn’t feel like landmarks at the time, and it’s only in looking back that I see any thread at all. At the time they only felt like moments that were worth attending to. I’m hoping that’s the case with this piece of writing; I’m writing it because I can’t sort through myself alone and no musician can do it, either, not even Stevie Wonder, but there are times when it feels like the two might help each other along. This piece

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

isn’t meant to be entirely about Stevie Wonder, but I wouldn’t have included him if I’d thought it was entirely about me, either.

It’s about something in between somewhere — about the way music enters our lives, not only as a soundtrack, but as a translation of something very close to us, a message to be decoded.

It occurred to me as strange the other day that “Angel Baby (Don’t You Ever Leave Me)” never got as popular as “Uptight (Everything’s Alright).” It’s catchy and just as upbeat. Maybe it’s because it’s a more insecure song and people really do want everything to be alright. Then again, “Superstition” was a hit, so maybe I’m wrong. Maybe people love a good anxiety story.

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

Anxiety in the key of Stevie Wonder How I learned to dance on two feet LAURA DZUBAY Daily Arts Writer

In April, I’m asked to write about an album cover I think is important, and I choose Talking Book by Stevie Wonder. I admire its candor and closeness: the first album cover to show him without his glasses. He looks more vulnerable than on his previous covers, and simultaneously more introspective and mature.

I admire Wonder for his drive to evolve, to maneuver through new sounds and ideas; by 21, he was writing and producing all his own music.

He had an early pop phase and a “classic period,” all by the time he was 25. I yearn for that level of self-awareness, self-confidence, self-sufficiency.

I listen to the album while I’m writing, and I get addicted. I march around town to the twangy beat of “Maybe Your Baby,” the sly chorus echoing on a loop in my head: “Maybe your baby done made some other plans.”

Midsummer, I buy a record player from an old high school classmate for 40 dollars. I’ve always wanted a record player.

I don’t own any records other than a few I found for free at a yard sale last summer in Baltimore — some Tchaikovsky and Mozart, the Beach Boys’ L.A. (Light Album), a frayed folk

compendium, Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP — because until now I’ve never had a valid reason to buy them. I ask my brother if I can look through his collection, gifted from my grandfather several years ago, and in those cardboard boxes, I unearth gold mines: Louis Prima, Ray Charles, The Beatles, Aretha Franklin. The one Stevie Wonder record I find is Talking Book, and I listen to it about twice as often as I listen to everything else combined.

As I’m nearing the end of a novel I’ve been working on for six months, my family flies west to visit the National Repertory Orchestra.

In Denver, we see an exhibit featuring works by Jeffrey Gibson, which incorporates beading, weaving, neon lights, electricity, video and color all over the place.

I’m enamored.

The exhibit is titled “Like a Hammer,” after the idea that someone who is “like a hammer” is “capable of building up and tearing down.”

One material Gibson uses is song lyrics, and I spend several minutes staring at a decorated punching bag entitled “You Can Feel It All Over.” The description on the wall quotes “Sir Duke” and mentions the creative venture of reworking the words, of channeling joy into pain and vice versa. I take a

Even when Wonder’s songs are excited and happy, there’s an element of apprehension

Release Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Los Angeles player 4 Dancer Charisse 7 1938 “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcaster 10 Chewed-over material 13 The Obama years, e.g.

14 Cube that rolls 15 “The Murders in the __ Morgue” 16 Harlem Globetrotters promoter Saperstein 17 Feel out of sorts 18 Official reproach 20 Diamond, for one 21 Not of the clergy 23 Peaceful ’60s protest 24 Sandwich with tzatziki sauce 25 Vermeer, notably 28 Cold response?

31 Actor Pesci 32 __ Free: caffeinefree soda 36 They’re bound to sell 37 CIO partner 38 Hides from animals 39 Remove, as a knot 40 10% of MDX 41 Poky one 42 London gallery 43 Unisex fragrance 45 Strings for Orpheus 46 “Just like that!” sound 47 High temperature 48 Abbr. in job titles 49 2001 Pixar hit, and a hint to the start of 19-, 22and 24-Down 52 Spanish surrealist 53 Poker variety 55 Formally ask for 58 Ignore the alarm clock 61 Come before 62 Ceramic casserole dish 63 Ancient land in the Fertile Crescent 64 Still going on

DOWN 1 Authentic 2 Diva’s moment 3 West African country 4 Atlanta-based health agcy.

5 Traffic directive 6 Guess apparel 7 Luxury voyage vessel 8 Seriously overcooked 9 “Capisce?”

10 Shrewd 11 Car service app 12 Floor sample 19 1989 Al Pacino thriller 22 Website’s list of browser data rules 24 Magic ringwielding superhero 26 Get beaten 27 “House” actor Omar 28 Borders on 29 Sir Arthur __ Doyle 30 Spicy Mexican wraps 33 Serves as matchmaker

34 Uses a swizzle stick 35 Daysail destination 43 Mike Trout and Mickey Mantle, by pos.

44 Hectic hosp. areas 50 More pleasant 51 Grenoble’s river 52 British bombshell Diana

54 Use the good china, say 55 Healthful getaway 56 Despot portrayed

by Forest 57 Drink from a kettle 58 “The Simpsons” disco guy 59 Cariou of “Blue Bloods” 60 Actor Beatty

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

By C.C. Burnikel ©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

09/12/18

09/12/18

picture of the punching bag and the description.

Writing the last chapter or two of my book on this trip, I start thinking about what will come afterward: I’m proud of the book, and I want to query it, to enter it in contests, to find an agent and get it published.

I’m indirect and wishful when I talk about these things with my family and friends — “Published? If only,” I say, or, “That would be a dream come true” — but it is what I want. If not for this book, then for the next I write, or the next. However long it takes, it’s what I want, less in a dream way, more in a goal way.

I’m not close, but I do feel closer with this book than I’ve ever felt before. The prospect makes me incredibly nervous. I think about failure constantly. I teeter between optimism and realism, excitement and levelheadedness.

Day by day, I coach myself with the same advice Stevie Wonder will give me later in the summer: “Be cool. Be calm. Keep yourself together.” Someday it will strike me as funny how that’s what the song tells you to do when the music itself sounds so jittery and urgent.

I start revising, and as I revise, I begin finding weak words in all of my writing: “felt like,” “slightly,” “kind of.” “Maybe” seems particularly common. Is particularly common.

Even when Wonder’s songs are excited and happy, there’s an element of apprehension. I know everyone relates to music differently, and this could be my own projecting. But I can’t think of him without thinking of the restlessness of “Higher Ground,” the bursting nostalgia of “I Wish,” the existential wariness of “Pastime Paradise.”

The insecurity of “All Day Sucker,” “My World Is Empty Without You” and “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).”

Sometimes it’s in the melody, sometimes the lyrics, sometimes both. Yet I continue to associate Wonder’s music with happiness, the way I always have: music for a good mood, for inspiration, faith, joy, for picking yourself back up again.

I have my first real panic attack in June. I’m actually not sure if it’s the first I’ve ever had, but it’s the first I’ve decided to name, anyway. Two hours later, I drive the five hours from Ind. to Mich. I usually listen to music the whole way. It’s a tradition I love: singing my heart out, alone and loving it. A five-hourlong concert where the venue is my car and the star and the audience are both me, no one else to worry about.

This time, I worry about everything that crosses my mind. I listen to half of “Hem of Her Dress” by First Aid Kit, two or three minutes, then turn the music off in the middle of the song. The rest of the five-hour drive I spend in silence.

I get startled easily. I say

this sentence all the time as half-explanation, half-apology for jumping into the air when someone surprises me by opening a door or saying “hello” when I didn’t know they were there. Lately, it’s been getting pretty comical. A dog will start barking, and I’ll fall out of my chair. Sometimes I even gasp, my hand flying to my heart like I’m a woman out of some Southern melodrama. I don’t know whatever got me to be so uptight (“everything is all right,” my mind sings), but this is one of the things about myself I’ve decided to just go with.

Sometimes I get tired of music. I love it, and I surround myself with other people who love it, and it seems like they never get tired of it. But I do. I get tired of books, too, reading and writing.

My passions stem from the works and people who make me back up to the things I love: Mitski.​ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Haydn. Tomi Adeyemi.

First Aid Kit. This happens to me toward the end of Aug., with Stevie Wonder’s Down to Earth. I’m finally about to start querying my science fiction novel, and Down To Earth is exactly where I’d like to be, so I put it on shuffle at the beginning of a 20-minute car ride.

I’ve never heard of it before, and when I press play, I’m expecting to have to skip songs, make concessions. But I’ve underestimated Wonder, who was only 16 when he released it. The album wraps me up and carries me away. Suddenly there’s no place I’d rather be than here, “Sixteen Tons” trailing me like a ghost on a moonlit drive.

Pulling up next to my mother’s house to “A Place in the Sun,” I spend five minutes accelerating and reversing, inching my car closer to the curb, even though it’s the suburbs and nobody cares. No one will crash into me

Sometimes I get tired of music.

I love it, and I surround myself with other people who love it, and it seems like they never get tired of it. But I do

DOMINIC POLSINELLI Senior Arts Editor

I’ve always been a bit of an awkward dancer, far more comfortable tossing my body around in a crowded concert pit than following any sort of rhythm. Being a closeted homosexual for nearly 20 years certainly didn’t help, fueling my anxiety over my outward image — constantly battling the “faggot”s spewed my way throughout my teenage years, the “Still no girlfriend?”s from my family, the urges to belt out some Britney Spears lyrics at the top of my lungs.

It was, in no lesser words, exhausting.

And then I moved to college and I began to go to house parties and then bars where dancing is the social norm, and I was absolutely mortified (unless my BAC was a bit higher than what is considered “healthy,” of course). I was mostly conservative on the dance f loor, moving only one foot at a time, never daring to risk the f luidity, the natural ease of two feet.

The deeply internalized homophobia of my youth, steeped in Catholicism, was a fickle venom, infecting all my actions with “What if this is too gay?”

Making the full leap from punk and indie to pop was a bit of an awkward period in my life. Spending my high school years as a “scene” kid whose playlists consisted heavily of Passion Pit, A Day To Remember and Modern Baseball, I only began to really explore my love for pop music during my last year living in my parents’ home; I waited for eight hours in line for a Marina and the Diamonds concert, accompanied by f lashes of embarrassment with an outfit on that was far better suited for Warped Tour.

Lorde’s Pure Heroine, Taylor Swift’s Red and Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die were absolutely critical albums during this volatile period in my life, helping me get in

touch with a vulnerability I repeatedly swallowed out of fear. Lorde’s “Ribs” helped me make peace with growing up; “All Too Well” gave me a glimpse of the intimacy I denied myself during my adolescence; “Off To The Races” showed me the power in femininity.

Slowly but surely, I began to surround myself with people who made me feel more at ease in my own skin, mostly fellow queers who helped me find my rhythm in my newfound love of pop. Without even realizing it, I began to dance with two feet, to allow my hands to rise above my head and fall to my knees. After living years and years on a tense ledge threatening to crumble beneath me at any moment, it was like having lungs that fully inf lated for the first time. I had finally learned to love the music that had always drawn me like a magnet.

I mentioned before that I didn’t notice when or how I began to dance with two feet because it was like learning to ride a bike. Now, the occasional instances of homophobia don’t hurt me the way one would expect anymore, like a slap to the face or a dagger to the heart. Rather, it now serves as a reminder to shake my ass the second I hear the deep bass of Ariana Grande’s “Into You” burst through a speaker, to share a drunken screech of excitement at the opening saxophone of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away with Me” and let it all go when Lorde’s “Supercut” rings through my ears.

I went out to Rick’s a few days ago, possibly the most oppressively anti-queer establishment in Ann Arbor, and rather than feeling the effects of the old venom that haunted my veins, I finally noticed just how comfortable I finally was on the dancef loor.

Like learning how to ride a bike, the hypervisibility that is inevitably forced upon me in a space like Rick’s didn’t cost me my newfound rhythm rather reinforced it as a life skill.

UNIVERSAL MUSIC NEW ZEALAND

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Sports

Wednesday, September 12, 2018 — 7A

‘M’ shuts out Marquette for fourth straight win JORGE CAZARES Daily Sports Writer

On Monday night, the scoreboard read 3-0 at the half.

For the coaches and players, though, the game was still scoreless. The Michigan men’s soccer team (4-1) did not want to not fall victim to the same fate as the previous game.

The Wolverines found themselves in a familiar situation: a multi-goal lead going into the half. Last Friday, Michigan was up 2-0 against Western Michigan.

In the second half of that game, the Broncos stormed back to force overtime in a game that the Wolverines eventually won.

But in the second half on Monday night, Michigan played like a team determined to win in regulation. Led by a stingy backline, the Wolverines earned a shutout over Marquette (2-3) — the first victory over the Golden Eagles in five head-to-head matches all-time — and their fourth consecutive win of the season.

The first 10 minutes of the match featured back-and-forth play with neither team having a clear advantage in possession.

Any control Michigan had on the attack throughout the opening minutes of the game was featured almost exclusively on the left side of the pitch. Sophomore forward Umar Farouk Osman created a few early scoring opportunities, using his pace to create space in the attacking third but couldn’t capitalize on the chances.

Sophomore defender Austin Swiech opened up scoring in the 12th minute. As the ball trickled out of the 18-yard box in what became a broken play off of a corner kick, Swiech fired in a low shot that found the right corner of the net past outstretched goalkeeper Cedrik Stern for his first career goal.

“It was rolling out to me, how we do it in training,” Swiech said.

“I just saw it and struck it low and into traffic and I hoped it went in or for a deflection to go in.”

MEN’S SOCCER

Balance propels ‘M’ JACOB KOPNICK Daily Sports Writer

CARTER FOX/Daily

Junior forward Jack Hallahan scored one of three goals in Michigan’s shutout of Marquette on Monday night.

After Swiech’s goal, the Wolverines not only took the lead but also control of the game.

Just over a minute later, good ball movement in the attacking third found open senior midfielder and captain Robbie Mertz inside the 18-yard box, who slotted the ball past the right side of Stern, to give his team a 2-0 advantage.

Michigan kept the pressure on the Golden Eagles’ defense, squandering Marquette’s offensive momentum and dominating play particularly on the right side of the field through junior forward Jack Hallahan.

The Wolverines earned a pair of corner kicks in the 27th minute. After a weak clearance on the second corner, the ball found Hallahan on the right side of the pitch outside the 18-yard box. Hallahan then curled in a left-footed shot towards the far post, just under the crossbar

and over a leaping Stern, giving Michigan a commanding 3-0 lead going into the half. “(Hallahan’s) scored some fabulous goals here at Michigan,” said Michigan coach Chaka Daley. “So, it didn’t surprise me when he put it in. I was like, ‘Man, he meant to do that.’ Because at the end of the day, he’s scored some really nice goals for us and that was one of them.”

Despite having a halftime lead, the Wolverines were weary of the complacency that led to their defensive collapse in their previous game. “(Coach Daley) just said, ‘Don’t let go. Keep going out there and pretend like it’s nil-nil. Keep going at them, you never know what can happen,’ ” Hallahan said.

As expected, Marquette came into the second half aggressive on offense, desperate to push the pace and create scoring chances.

Michigan’s defense weathered the storm, however, halting any opportunities the Golden Eagles had.

The Wolverines regained control of possession after the early offensive blitz from Marquette who, by the 80th minute, appeared demoralized by the 3-0 deficit.

“I think it was a point of riding the storm at first,” Hallahan said.

“Making sure we didn’t concede, keep a clean sheet and then eventually get control of the ball again. The more possession we had, the less they could do with the ball and the less fret against us.”

At the final whistle, Michigan reconciled the second-half struggles that plagued the team in its previous match by playing dominant on defense for a full 90 minutes to extend their win streak to four games heading into Big Ten play.

Individual talent alone cannot win team sports — just ask LeBron James. It takes teamwork, dedication and balance. Monday night, the Michigan men’s soccer team (4-1) demonstrated it has all three in spades with a 3-0 shutout of Marquette (2-3).

On attack, the Wolverines showed just how balanced their squad is as three different players found the back of the net. The offense employed early aggression and worked diligently to create opportunities for all its players.

Kicking things off for Michigan was sophomore defenseman Austin Swiech.

In just the thirteenth minute of the game, the Wolverines’ offensive pressure paid off. After a cross from sophomore forward Umar Farouk Osman was headed outside of the box, Swiech picked up the rebound in stride and sent a rocket screaming towards the net. The ball tipped off a Golden Eagle defender and snuck inside the left post, and just like that, Swiech had his first career goal.

On the other side of the field, Swiech consistently made key defensive stops, serving as the anchor of the defensive line.

Swiech’s quality of play speaks volumes to the depth and team chemistry of this Michigan squad.

Swiech wasn’t originally intended to start for the Wolverines this year, but instead was thrust into a starting role in light of an injury to senior defenseman Peter Brown.

Since assuming the position, Swiech has exceeded expectations, much to the delight of his teammates and coaches.

“Swiech’s been brilliant,” said junior forward Jack Hallahan. “I think he didn’t get many minutes last year. I think he made a few appearances, but it’s brilliant to see him step up. He got his first goal, really happy for him tonight, and I think he deserves it. About time he got one.”

Added Michigan coach Chaka Daley: “Austin’s played himself

into a position where he’s been consistent, passes the ball well, scored a goal tonight, which helps.

He’s got good service, has defended well one v. one and he’s learning on the job. He’s being deputized as the games go on, but it’s a tough one as he replaces someone who is injured, but he’s given himself a fair shot to be included.”

Beyond the efforts of Swiech, the Wolverines have found meaningful contributions up and down their roster against nearly all competition so far this season. With his team scoring multiple goals in all of its wins, Daley finds unselfish play and offensive prowess coming easily to his players. But more importantly, his players have bought into the idea.

“Unselfish, unselfish, unselfish, and our guys have bought into it,” Daley said. “They don’t have to be.

You gotta remember that. They can be a different way, but they’ve been very unselfish, and I think the proof’s in the pudding. They’ve all created chances for themselves and for others, and the goals have flowed because of that.”

That kind of altruism and group cohesion does not come easily or quickly. It takes time and effort as teams build a rapport and fall into a rhythm. By playing together last year and finding early success this season, Michigan is right where it wants to be.

To gauge this cohesion, Daley checks the tape. But not the footage of seamless passing or highlight reel assists — Daley watches his players’ celebrations.

“I go back, it’s kinda a weird thing, I go back and I look at the celebrations a little bit to see who’s with who and how we’re acting and reacting,” Daley said. “Very teamcentric, making sure we’re about the team, the team, the team. And I’m looking at all the celebrations online or on video where I watch it and making sure guys are very intermingled.”

Nothing brings people together like winning, and right now, due to their cohesion and balance, the Wolverines are doing a lot of it.

Notebook: Bushell-Beatty fights against criticisms, Thomas on offense MAX MARCOVITCH Daily Sports Editor

Fifth-year senior tackle Juwann Bushell-Beatty doesn’t seek it out, but it’s impossible to ignore. He scrolls through social media and sees and hears the harsh criticism his unit faces. It reached a fever pitch after the 24-17 loss to Notre Dame on Sep. 1, and has since quieted a tad, after the Wolverines rushed for over 300 yards against Western Michigan this past weekend.

BushellBeatty says that’s how it goes — lose one week and fans want your head, win the next and the uproar fades. He thinks it stems from the public’s inability to understand the fundamentals of offensive line play. He, like Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, thinks the criticism of the offensive line has been misguided.

“The public doesn’t really understand the inner-workings of how things go on in here,” Bushell-Beatty said Tuesday afternoon. “I think there were mistakes, and when there’s mistakes — and there’s always, everyone wants to point fingers and there are things that happened. It’s football. I understand, regardless of what happens, O-Line is going to take blame for whatever. I’ve accepted that. Whether it’s true or not, is not up to me.

“Some of it is (unwarranted), but that’s life. People are going to criticize you for everything you do. The sooner you learn to accept that the better.”

He added that it’s a galvanizing force for a group that isn’t willing to apologize for weaknesses it feels doesn’t exist. Redshirt sophomore center Stephen Spinellis affirmed this sentiment Monday afternoon.

When Bushell-Beatty talks,

he sounds like a calloused veteran who’s been on the receiving end of insults his entire career. He speaks candidly, but maturely, about how he feels, not in a combative way, but in a stern assertion of how he feels.

He hasn’t always been able to handle criticism as assuredly.

“It’s not something that’s easy to have people pointing fingers at you,” he said. “It’s something that takes time. I understand my role on this team and as a football player, there are things that happen, things are going to go wrong, people are going to say, ‘You suck.’ But, I mean, at the end of the day, they can’t do what they do, that’s why they watch us on TV.” Ambry Thomas getting chance on offense Whether in seven-year-old Pee Wee football or on the road at Notre Dame, the recipe for sophomore Ambry Thomas has long been the same: Just run.

“I was literally seven years old,” Thomas said. “Every time I touched it, I just ran and scored. They just tell me ‘Run!’ That’s all I did. I just ran. Like Forest Gump, run.”

When you have the speed Thomas does, that works out more often than it doesn’t.

When Thomas watches film, his speed even stands out to him.

“I didn’t know I was that fast,” Thomas said. “I knew I was fast, but that fast, no.”

The Monday after the loss to Notre Dame, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh informed the team Thomas wouldn’t just be using his speed at cornerback and on special teams; he’d work in with the offense as well. It’s a chance Thomas had awaited with baited breath.

He got one carry on Saturday against Western Michigan, gaining five yards.

He

“Everytime I touched it, I just ran and scored.”

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily

Fifth-year senior tackle Juwann Bushell-Beatty was part of an offensive line that rushed for over 300 yards in Michigan’s 49-3 win over Western Michigan Saturday.

estimates he’s been working on offense for a play or two in each practice — hardly a challenging endeavor for the sophomore.

But an enticing opportunity for him and for an offense in dire need of explosive plays, nonetheless.

Last season, Michigan ranked 58th in IsoPPP, a statistic that meaures explosive offensive plays.

Thomas is a walking explosive play. He was in Pee Wee. He was in high school. He can be in college, too.

“High school, it was like the same thing. That’s when I really got at corner,” Thomas said. “They saw what I could do at corner, they liked my speed there. They said ‘Aw, yeah, this guy could possible be a two-way player at the next level.’

“I just like knowing that

you have the opportunity to change the game, if you get the ball in your hands. That’s real exciting to me.”

McCurry’s first touchdown Redshirt freshman wide receiver Jake McCurry didn’t keep the ball.

It didn’t occur to him that his first touchdown in the Big House — and the first catch of his career — might carry some sentimentality down the road.

“That didn’t go through my head at all,” McCurry said Tuesday afternoon.

With just under nine minutes left in Saturday’s blowout over Western Michigan, McCurry lined up in the slot to redshirt freshman quarterback Dylan

McCaffery’s right. McCaffery took the snap, faked a handoff and rolled to McCurry’s side.

“I’m not really sure what I am in the progression. I was one of the main routes,” McCurry said. “I just remember looking at the leverage the DB had — it was a quick play. We got up right there and ran it. It was a quick play, and I remember I had to get outside and try to stack him a little bit. That’s really all I thought when I was running the route.”

McCaffery delivered the strike to McCurry on the sideline, who then juked a lunging defender and dove into the endzone.

“I was just excited, that’s the only way to describe it.”

It was McCaffery’s first passing touchdown of his career, to boot.

“Initially, I just wanted to see Dylan, because I’m pretty close with Dylan — it was a special moment that he threw me the ball. I was just excited, that’s the only way to describe it.”

McCurry heard from all walks of life — his phone blowing up with tweets, texts, all forms of congratulatory messages.

“It was definitely a special moment,” McCurry said. “It was specifically special with Dylan and other guys that were on the field that are my best friends, like Joel Hornigford, Oliver Martin, I think Andrew Steuber might have been out there, Tru (Wilson). Those are the guys I’ve really hung out with a lot, and are really close to.”

Sports

8A — Wednesday, September 12, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Peoples-Jones seeks consistency after touchdown ETHAN WOLFE Daily Sports Writer

Donovan Peoples-Jones finally thought he had it.

Spotted at the Western Michigan 14-yard line with 9:59 remaining in the second quarter, the sophomore wide receiver caught a pass from junior quarterback Shea Patterson on an underneath crossing route, rounded the corner and lunged towards the pylon.

“I feel like I was in the endzone,” Peoples-Jones said, “but they called it and said I stepped out on the three or the four. I didn’t even feel myself step out.”

The elusive receiving touchdown had escaped Peoples-Jones through the first 14 games of his career. It’s escaped the entire receiving corps for the past 12 contests.

So it’s easy to understand Peoples-Jones’ frustration on the play — hitting paydirt has been hard to come by.

Just over three minutes later in the quarter, sophomore wide receiver Nico Collins hauled in a 44-yard score to snap the drought, lifting the weight off the wide receivers’ shoulders.

But Peoples-Jones — the No. 2 receiver in the 2017 recruiting class, according to 247Sports. com — had yet to find any luck.

At the 6:21 mark of the third quarter, though, that would change. Positioned at the Broncos’ five-yard line and Collins blanketed on the short slant, Patterson read his progressions and lofted the ball to Peoples-Jones at the back of the endzone just over the defensive back’s outstretched arm.

“That throw to Donovan was really good,” said coach Jim Harbaugh. “That wasn’t his first read. That was a long throw, from one sideline to the back corner endzone. And that one required some touch on it.

But it had to get up and down

FOOTBALL

Michigan lands three recruits in two days MIKE PERSAK

Managing Sports Editor

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily

Sophomore wide receiver Donovan Peoples-Jones scored his first career touchdown against Western Michigan.

quick before Donovan got out of bounds.

“That’s pretty high-level stuff.”

It was six points, but it also ushered in a new chapter for Peoples-Jones’s playing career, one that opens speculation for what he could become in his sophomore campaign — a capable routerunner that can create separation and high-point balls thrown his way.

“He’s way more physical now,” said sophomore defensive back Ambry Thomas. “And he knows that he’s not scared to use his strength and his speed.”

In the season opener against Notre Dame, his ceiling looked

limited. Wide receivers’ coach Jim McElwain even thought his No. 1 receiver played too many snaps. Peoples-Jones gathered six receptions for just 38 yards, a byproduct of capping his routes to primarily comebacks and screens.

PeoplesJones’ 2017 yardage came off similar plays, but he occasionally showed separation on deeper routes with few results to show.

Saturday’s touchdown against Western Michigan could be just as much of an anomaly as it could be a routine, but high-level performaces are exactly what the Wolverines had expected Peoples-Jones to

“And he knows that he’s not scared to use his strength...”

do consistently.

“Donovan ran a heck of a route to stem that inside and get to the back pylon,” Patterson said after the game. “… It’s kind of a routine throw.”

If it’s routine for Patterson and Peoples-Jones is the go-to guy, it could be a connection that happens more often on Saturdays. But the softspoken Peoples-Jones wouldn’t divulge what he thought his potential was or what kind of player he expects to be. He just knows he’s on track to answer the pressure that comes with the ballyhoo.

“More confidence, more focused, more experienced, more comfortable,” he said of his play.

As the No. 1 receiver with the toughest obstacles yet to come this season, it’s everything Michigan can hope for as it refines its offense.

In the matter of just two days, the Michigan football team added two more commitments to next year’s already-solid recruiting class, as well as a commitment for the 2020 class.

It started Sunday, when 4-star defensive end Mike Morris, who was previously committed to Florida State, announced via Twitter that he had flipped his commitment to the Wolverines. “… I feel like GOD is guiding me in a different direction,” Morris said in his tweet. “So I would like to say that I’m decommitting from Florida State University and recommitting to the University of Michigan.”

Morris is the 22nd-ranked strongside defensive end in the 2019 class, and he adds depth to the class at that position, which already includes David Ojabo and Chris Hinton, the 19th- and 2nd-best strongside defensive ends in the class, respectively.

In addition to Morris, Michigan landed the commitment of 3-star, 2020 tight end Nick Patterson, the brother of junior quarterback Shea Patterson.

Nick was visiting this weekend for the Wolverines’ game against Western Michigan, and according

to Sam Webb of 247sports, he had a meeting Sunday afternoon with coach Jim Harbaugh in which Nick made his intentions known.

The next day, the reports were confirmed, as Nick also took to Twitter to make his commitment public.

“Thank you (Michigan football), (Shea Patterson) and (Harbaugh) for an amazing weekend in the Big House. I’m thrilled to make it official that I’ll be joining the Big Blue!!” Nick said.

The strong recruiting weekend was polished off on Monday by yet another 4-star commitment, as Giles Jackson, the No. 5 all-purpose back in the 2019 class, announced he would be coming to Ann Arbor as well.

Jackson joins Eric Gray, the No. 3 all-purpose back in the class, and Zach Charbonnet, the No. 9 running back in the class, who committed to Michigan earlier this summer.

The Wolverines’ 2019 class was already strong, and with the additions of Morris and Jackson, it ranks 10th nationally and first in the Big Ten. With that and Michigan’s win over the Broncos, it’s safe to say it was a good weekend for Harbaugh and company.

AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh signed three recruits on Monday and Tuesday.

Michigan Football

RECRUITING UPDATE NAME

POSITION

CLASS

POSITION RANKING RATING (247SPORTS) (247SPORTS)

COMMITMENT DATE

Mike Morris

SDE 2019

22

9/9/18

Giles Jackson

APB 2019

5

9/10/18

TE

20

9/9/18

Nick Patterson ALEXIS RANKIN/DAILY DESIGN BY JACK SILBERMAN

2020

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When the city decides to take your home

2B

Wednesday, September 12, 2018// The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | S E P T E M B E R 12 , 201 8

Managing Statement Editor: Brian Kuang

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Patriotism: A fabric woven of anger and fear

BY MARTINA VILLALOBOS, COLUMNIST

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t was just last year that I was hurrying through the Diag, late for class, when I noticed hundreds of American f lags staked on the lawns. It took me a few minutes to remember the day. Sept. 11 — a day whose significance bears the same weight on the American consciousness today as it did in 2001. But with a symbol that means vastly different things to different people, how could an event like Sept. 11 be reduced to the f lying of a few f lags on a university

campus?

I was born in Santiago de Chile.

My parents have their own disparate experiences of Sept.11. For them, this day is ingrained in a collective and historical consciousness.

Sept. 11, 1973 was the date of the military coup that redefined Chilean politics and society. This was the beginning of two decades where the CIA-backed military took over the country under the mantra of national reconstruction.

The following

years would be characterized by systematic political repression and the persecution and murder of dissidents.

Every year, the eleventh is a day of national protests where Chileans of all generations march in the streets holding posters demanding answers for the atrocities that occurred under the dictatorship that followed and demanding change for its persistent political implications. However, not everyone in Chile sees this day as a day of pain and anger. Some celebrate Sept.

11 as the day Chile was saved from the supposed clutches of communism. General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, for some, represents a neoliberal salvation that propelled Chile into the modern era. On Chilean soil, Sept. 11 represents a symbolic moment where the fracture of its society is reenacted.

I left Chile before my first birthday only to return in 2011.

I remember going to El Museo de la Memoria y Los Derechos Humanos, or the Museum of Memory and Human Rights — a museum that documents the brutality of Pinochet’s dictatorship.

I remember being 13 and walking down the dimly lit hallways listening to testimonies of those who had survived. I can still hear the voice of a woman who talked about being stripped naked and tied to a metal bed frame as she was electrocuted by the regime.

I looked away because I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face, but when I looked back, I saw my mother silently crying in the corner of the room. The silence was suffocating.

I wonder if here in the United States this date has come to mark historical ignorance. We talk brief ly about Sept. 11 in school.

We talk about the tragic loss of life. We talk about the heroes DESIGN BY CASEY TIN of New York City who worked

endlessly to find those trapped in the rubble of the twin towers. But while Americans of all political stripes commemorate the victims and heroes of 9/11, do we ever really talk about its aftermath or the subsequent wars?

Unlike in Chile, these consequences are almost never up for debate. In effect, does this silence cheapen those deaths with a patriotic rhetoric about keeping America safe?

There was a time — and perhaps we are still in the time — when questioning those in charge is not the natural order of a democracy, but rather a blatant attack on America. To question is to be anti-patriotic. The fear and sorrow of 2001 has become a fiber of apathy in a cloth of patriotism. It is a resignation to let politics run its course.

My own history is marked by the aftermath of two distinct historical events. Sept. 11 has become a historic ref lux that won’t go away with a prescribed dose of patriotism, fear, or apathy. It comes back as an itch that demands to be scratched. In Chile, it erupts time and time again as anger towards a dictatorship whose constitution is still the law. On one side you have mothers holding posters of their children whose bodies are likely lost in the desert. On the other side, you have recently-appointed government ministers questioning the validity of El Museo de la Memoria as a leftist dramatization of history. This is a tear in the fabric of Chilean history, a tear that will never fully repair itself.

A world away, in the U.S., resignation to fear blanketed by a rhetoric of patriotism has become an excuse for hate. Did the pain of 9/11 help foster a narrative that we use today to divide the citizens of our country? What will come of the memory of Sept. 11? To have an identity defined by two critical moments that share the same date is to have a day on which you are reminded on both fronts that history doesn’t just disappear like the bodies in the sand or under rubble but that it lingers like a scar.

Wednesday, September 12, 2018 // The Statement

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Translating the Donald to Japanese

BY ISHI MORI, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

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eople always complain about Donald Trump.

I say, try to explain him to a foreign audience.

This summer I had the privilege of working at the New York bureau of TV Tokyo, one of Japan’s major television stations. I was put on a morning news program that focuses on business and finance, so of course, there was a lot of reading the Wall Street Journal as well as dusty econ textbooks in the back of the office.

But the most memorable part of the whole experience was the arduous task of reporting on none other than the president himself.

The words of the president of the United States has a massive impact both at home and abroad. Love him or hate him, everyone is compelled to hear what Trump is saying on Twitter, and the people of Japan are no different.

But here’s where it gets complicated: Sometimes, nobody — not even his own staff — can comprehend what he’s saying. If native English speakers can’t understand him, that means it’s a massive headache for foreign broadcasters.

The difficulty translators have when putting Trump’s speeches and tweets in their own lang uage has been well documented. Trump is a free-wheeling speaker on stage and a “covfefe” online, which confuses people used to presidents sticking to a script. Media outlets across the globe have also been known to go to great leng ths to offer roundabout expressions of Trump’s most offending statements.

I’ve always heard about the difficulty of translating the Donald, but never did I anticipate how much of a pain in the butt it would be until I actually had to do it.

Take this news from July 31.

A radical g un rights activist was preparing to release files online with instructions on how to build 3D model g uns while the attorneys general of eight states were suing to block him. It sounded complicated enough, especially when we had to condense it to a 30-second segment, but then Trump decided to wade into the debate.

“I am looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public,” Trump tweeted. “Already spoke to NR A, doesn’t seem to make much sense!”

The main obstacle to translating

this tweet is glaringly obvious. We are unsure whether “doesn’t seem to make much sense!” refers to 3D g uns in general (the first sentence) or his conversation with the National Rif le Association (the second sentence).

In America, we would have the luxury of watching commentators on CNN battle out what exactly Trump means by this tweet. But the Japanese have their own problems to worry about — a tweet about 3D g uns would most likely not make it onto the evening File Photo/Daily political roundtable A Japanese newscaster records in front of the New York City skyline. program. vocabulary and lang uage skills. Japanese. And since Trump’s words Thus, the burden falls on Japan’s newspapers and TV stations Trump’s grammar and diction in were likely going to move the market (that’s me!) to accurately convey what speeches is known to be just below a (which it actually did), we had to the president of the United States is sixth-grade level, and we Americans be meticulous in conveying the treat them as such. thinking. right mood so audiences (especially However, in Japan — perhaps out of investors) won’t get too alarmed.

What’s important here is context.

Unfortunately, the White House respect for decorum — the media does In the end, we settled on “I’m not never commented on this tweet to not directly translate Trump’s words impressed,” which admittedly felt clarify what Trump was thinking, into the vocabulary-level of a sixth a little mature and well thought out so I had to think back to the past grader and instead elevates it to that than the original English. But since few news cycles to determine where appropriate of an elder statesman. the other options, including the Spoken Japanese, especially in onomatopoeia “waku waku,” which Trump would stand on 3D-printed fiction, has a variety of cues that indicates excitement, made him g uns.

I knew right after the shooting at reveal the gender, age, social class sound immature or did not accurately Marjory Stoneman Douglas High and regional origin. So as a 72-year convey his mood, we had to settle on School, Trump said “we have to fight old head of state, Trump has to be a substitute. (the NR A) every once in a while” in accorded proper lang uage to not Other similar Trumpisms roiled enacting sensible g un control laws. shock viewers with the speech of a my corner of the newsroom once in a However, he backtracked in May 12-year old boy. while, but with tenacity and grit, we Take this July 19 interview when, managed to get it right every time. and vowed not to support any more in an unusual move for presidents, firearm reg ulations.

It is ironic that I started to keenly Trump supporting liberal causes Trump said he was “not thrilled” realize the importance of words in and then f lipping to the conservative about the Federal Reserve Board politics only after encountering them position to please his supporters raising interest rates. in a foreign lang uage. Back in 1946, “I’m not thrilled because we go up,” George Orwell wrote in “Politics and has been a common occurrence, but sometimes he genuinely seems to Trump said. “And every time you go the English Lang uage” that political change his mind — which leaves us at up, they want to raise rates again. I speech “is designed to make lies sound a loss as to what his true feelings are. don’t really — I am not happy about truthful and murder respectable, and In the end, my editor and I it.” to give an appearance of solidity to This one was tricky for two reasons. pure wind.” determined that Trump would The first was “every time you go probably not attack the NR A at The same could be said of today’s that moment, and the f low of the up.” In his usual fashion, Trump left political lang uage.

In today’s sentence seemed to indicate Trump what was going up ambig uous. Based globalized economy, the words of one was befuddled by 3D g uns generally. on context clues, my editor and I politician can reverberate around the Thus, we decided the expression “he determined the what was the state world in a matter of seconds. This is expressed skepticism of 3D g uns” of the economy, so we translated the why we should always demand those while not expressing approval or statement as “every time the economy in higher positions to clarify their lack thereof best represented the recovers .” words, lest we get mired in untruths The second was “I’m not thrilled.” and convenient euphemisms. situation.

Another difficulty translators That is a colloquial expression Oh, and to alleviate the workload of face in interpreting Trump is his in English with no equivalent in translators too!

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Wednesday, September 12, 2018 // The Statement

Wednesday, September 12, 2018 // The Statement

In a foreclosure crisis, Detroit residents fight to remain in their homes

by Andrea Pérez, Statement Correspondent

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n late August, Michael Andrews learned his Southwest Detroit home was in foreclosure. It came into his family’s possession in 1963, but falling on hard times during the 2007 recession made it difficult to keep up with his property taxes. The city’s systematically f lawed practices have further created and perpetuated an oppressive system nearly impossible for at-risk residents to escape.

A yellow bag appeared on Andrews’ door twice in the past year. He recognized that as an obvious sign of foreclosure, but the following notifications of the status of the home were ambiguous and easy to ignore. His story isn’t uncommon. Yellow paper bags appear on residents’ front doors and mail is sent to their address, but many don’t comprehend the severity of their situation due to the legal jargon and confusing format of the notifications.

It wasn’t until a United Community Housing Coalition volunteer came to his house that he realized how dire his situation was.

“I’m looking at (the notices) and it was the first time I sat down to read them,” Andrews said. “I started to read them

and I was like I seen October you know and that’s how they do it in bold, so it makes you think you have until October. I’m looking at the papers then I read down below in the writing and I’m like ‘Oh wow.’ You’re right. I got to get down here and do something.”

However, having lived in Detroit for 40 years, Andrews is committed to saving his family home.He sits in counseling appointments with UCHC to see if there is any possibility that he might keep his home. When confronted with the idea that he might be evicted, Andrews was shock.

“I don’t know, I really don’t know,” Andrews says. “As long as I’ve been there, I have no idea what I would do. I pretty much lost all my family. I’m just lost for words because I’ve never been in this situation.” n the past few years, leaders of the City of Detroit have made countless headlines proclaiming the city’s so-called comeback. They point to the end of state oversight of the city’s finances, the new Little Caesars Arena, Ford’s Motor Co.’s purchase of the Michigan Central Station and new construction of homes and office buildings

I

around downtown and midtown as evidence of the city’s resurgence. However, the revitalization of these areas contrasts with the reality of other city neighborhoods. Far from downtown, trash builds on corners, windows are boarded up, streets remain dark through the hours of the night and residents are being pushed out from their homes by a tax foreclosure process that over assesses the tax burden for some of the city’s most vulnerable residents.

According to Motor City Mapping, 111,167 Detroit properties went up for foreclosure between 2002 and 2014.

With Detroiters paying one of the highest property tax rates in Michigan and the second highest in the nation as of 2016, it comes to no surprise that already steep taxes, coupled with an archaic tax assessment process and persistent poverty lead to Detroit’s immense volume of tax foreclosures.

Filling a gap unserved by the city, community organizations, like the United Community Housing Coalition, have established programs to help thousands of Detroiters at risk of losing their homes to navigate the foreclosure process. Residents like Andrews use their services to stay informed about the status of their homes, keep up with their payment plans and in extreme cases, explore last resort options. he sound of footsteps and shuff ling papers can be heard from the elevator on the third f loor of 2727 Second Ave. in Midtown, where UCHC is housed. There is a glass door at the end of the hallway that displays their logo, and behind it, the hallway is filled with people waiting their turn for a word with the front desk. UCHC counseling hours for tax foreclosure prevention started Alexis Rankin/Daily a few minutes prior, and everyone waiting

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The side of a building in Detroit, Michigan.

is here because their homes are at risk of being taken away through formalities of a system encompassed by racism and bigotry.

The smell of a pot of coffee brewing and the scent of dusty filing cabinets lingers in the air. The walls are clad with inspirational quotes, pictures and art from Black historical figures, but that is

“Every six months, when their tax bills come and if they are still unable to pay them despite being informed and willing, they will be on the foreclosure track again.

After a year, they might get another yellow bag on their doorstep, and three years after that they might find themselves at UCHC again, wondering what they can do to stay in their homes.”

the last thing anyone was paying attention to. People sit, face between their knees, some cradling their children, with folders of paperwork in their hands.

Every chair in the waiting room is taken, so people spill into the hall and take up some of the chairs against both sides of the wall. All the while UCHC staff runs in and out of the waiting room and main hallway, bringing people into individual counseling rooms.

Bustling mornings like this are common at UCHC. The organization has been committed to providing housing assistance to low-income Detroiters since

1973, and this year is no exception. Operating at near capacity, UCHC will save 515 homes this year, including Andrews’, from being sold in the auction through their Right of Refusal Program.

The program permits at-risk Detroit residents, previous owners or renters alike, to stay in their homes. To do this, they evoke the Right of First Refusal in which the Wayne State Treasurer’s office is required to offer the homes to the right holder, which in this case would be the person occupying the home before it can open up a deal to other potential buyers.

Through buying the homes from the Wayne County Treasurer’s office before the bidding starts, UCHC is able to acquire them for an affordable price and offer their clients a fair payment plan.

This way, the person who occupied the home before it was foreclosed is able to remain in the property, and even better yet, their tax bill starts anew. s many as 25 percent of Detroit properties went into tax foreclosure between 2011 and 2015.

This crisis has affected the composition of neighborhoods, displaced families and changed the overarching atmosphere in the city as many houses lay unoccupied and blighted. The underlying drivers for these foreclosures are disputed, but prominent narratives don’t acknowledge the role of the city and treasurer’s office in enforcing laws that have long disproportionately affected at-risk communities.

However, Bernadette Atuahene, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, argues the city of Detroit is overassessing the value of these properties and foreclosing on them in an unconstitutional manner.

According to the Michigan Constitution, properties need to be assessed annually and at no more than 50 percent of their market value. Atuahene found that Detroiters homes were assessed between 53 and 84 percent of their value between 2009 and 2015.

She suggests three reasons the city violated protocol. First, the assessor’s office could be too short-handed to actually assess the value of most properties in the city, and assumed property values were growing at an unrealistically high rate.

Alternatively, many Detroit residents are unaware of the relevant regulations and therefore fail to hold the city government accountable. Finally, she raises the possibility the city found it easier to raise revenues by illegally assuming its taxable properties were more valuable than they actually were, rather than withstanding the political burden of raising tax rates.

“Given the (Detroit) property tax rate is already one of the highest in the nation, it may be challenging to get voters to approve a hike,” Atuhene’s article reads.

“In contrast, Wayne County reimburses Detroit for any property tax revenue that it fails to collect; in exchange, the county receives the right to collect the revenues

A

(with penalties and interests) and to confiscate the home if payment is not forthcoming after three years of delinquency.” imilar to any other property owner in Michigan, Detroiters get two property tax bills in the year. One usually comes in the summer and the other in winter.

The current year’s tax bills come in the from the city of Detroit, but delinquent taxes or back taxes that have accumulated from previous years are billed by the Wayne County Treasurer’s office. When residents get a bill from the treasurer, it means that they are behind on their taxes and the 18 percent interest rate is already An abandoned house in Detroit, Michigan. accruing.

When delinquent or back taxes accu“It’s stressful when, you know, you mulate for three years, a yellow bag is have a debt and they send it and let you dropped by the front door of the property know you’re always on it,” Andrews said. by the treasurer, signaling that it is in the “After I get this situated I’m going to go list of potential foreclosures. The county file for bankruptcy for my first time. I’ve offers a few options for residents to pay never done it before, but I’m going to go back their delinquent taxes before their get that cleaned up and then I guess they home goes into auction, and some of the will start over my credits.” most widely used are payment plans.

Another lifelong Detroiter, Wesley Payment plans like the Interest Reduc- Mosley, is in a similar situation. She sits tion Stipulated Payment Agreement and in the counseling room at UCHC, visthe Stipulated Payment Agreement allow ibly pregnant and glowing with joy at the residents to pay back their delinquent thought of finally having a girl after raistaxes in split payments with the interest ing three boys. She tells the story of how reduced to 6 percent. However, if resi- she recently married her husband just dents fail to register for a payment plan released from prison, but the joy escapes or if they fall back on taxes again, their her eyes when the topic reverts to her homes end up on auction. house. It is listed for the upcoming aucAs a last resort to collect the taxes owed tion, as she has also found it hard to stay to them by the properties, the Wayne current with her taxes due to unemployState Treasurer’s office holds an annual ment. auction for the purchase of foreclosed “I got a yellow bag on the door, and that properties. This year, around 1,500 occu- was in 2016,” she says. “The house was pied homes are up for foreclosure auction still under my sister’s name, but she quit — including Andrews’s — yet this number claim deed it to me because I had been is much lower than the 2015 peak when there since 2011.”

9,111 occupied homes went up for sale.

The state of her neighborhood, like Many of these homeowners or renters Andrews’s, has fluctuated throughout the experience financial and emotional diffi- years. Her elderly neighbors have manculties that inhibit them from keeping up aged to stay, but most other houses either with their property taxes. change owners often, are always on the “Right now, I have been unemployed,” verge of going vacant or lay blighted.

Andrews said. “With my background, Despite these circumstances, she is stuff has been kind of hard to find also committed to saving her home. It is employment so I do whatever I can on the the first home she has owned and where side. Sparse side jobs. It’s tough just to she is raising her children. She has been make ends meet.” living in it for many years and is still conLiving below the poverty line and try- stantly trying to turn her “house” into a ing to stay current on all bills on top of “home.” already high property taxes can take a toll “Now I have just recently seen that over on residents like Andrews, who makes the summer people are coming to look at less than $1,000 a month and would have the homes that has been abandoned or to buy back his home for a minimum of what not,” she said. “I don’t want my home $500. to be one of the homes that they look at, so

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Alexis Rankin/Daily

I try to stay on top of everything. It’s just been hard being a single mother.”

Her home’s situation is why she is here, but the outcome is still uncertain.

“I wouldn’t have no choice but to work hard and try to get into another home, but it’s going to be hard,” she said. “I know I probably won’t get into no home until about March of next year or something like that when I have enough money saved up to have a down payment. I don’t want to have to go to no shelter with no newborn baby and three kids.”

Andrews and Mosley are two of many Detroiters who utilize the services UCHC has to offer. They will likely get to stay in their homes, but unfortunately, going to a homeless shelter is a reality for others.

Out of 1,500 occupied homes that were listed for the auction, UCHC was only able to buy back 515. Those residents did not have access to UCHC Andrews and Mosley were will likely be pushed out of their homes soon.

Even then, Andrews’s and Mosley’s fights aren’t over. Every six months, when their tax bills come and if they are still unable to pay them despite being informed and willing, they will be on the foreclosure track again. After a year, they might get another yellow bag on their doorstep, and three years after that they might find themselves at UCHC again, wondering what they can do to stay in their homes.

This cycle will continue to be a reality until the city and county make concrete efforts to reform how they assess properties values for taxes, and make genuine strides to inform the public about the status of their homes and options for payment. This cycle not stop until the government ceases profiting off the misery of its constituents.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2018 // The Statement

Re: Union

BY MATT GALLATIN, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

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n late April, I walked up the stairs to the Michigan Union, as I’d done many times before. It was a warm day — warmer still with the winter semester finally over and the summer near. I’d walked up those stairs in every possible state: wet, hot, cold, disheveled, elated, disappointed, happy, tired, content, angry, heartbroken. Most of the time, though, I was just hungry. And on this late April day, I was hungry for an Au Bon Pain sandwich. For two years, I ordered the same thing, the Turkey Avocado, but out of fear of becoming a regular, I’d go long stretches avoiding the place when I felt myself becoming too predictable.

But most of the time, each day at noon, there I was, like clockwork running up and down the Union stairs, stuffing my Turkey Avocado into my backpack, already late for my discussion. A text from my friend in class would read, “Dude you still coming? I have a seat.”

This whole operation of having my lunch in class would have gone a lot more smoothly if I was a quiet eater. But I have a habit of getting food everywhere, crinkling paper bags too loudly, chewing at the quietest times in lecture. My friend, the “still coming?” friend, would look at me with a mix of humor and humiliation. I could never figure out which was stronger. Nonetheless, I persevered, for lunchtime is lunchtime, and who am I to disrupt it?

Eventually, I learned to stop taking

ILLUSTRATION BY ROSEANNE CHAO

classes at noon.

The point here is that on this day in late April 2018, the front doors to the Union didn’t open. I tried them a few more times. In the moment, I tried to think of a single time in my three years at the University of Michigan when the Union doors wouldn’t open. I couldn’t think of one. I’d opened those doors from nine to five and every hour before and after. But indeed, this time they were locked, and it took me a minute to remember, oh, that’s right, the Re:Union.

The Re:Union is the name of the massive renovation project the University is undertaking to overhaul the Michigan Union. It will take two years and $85 million, and aims, according to the website, to “restore and reactivate the Michigan Union while maintaining its historic fabric and reasserting its role as a vibrant social hub and locus of inclusivity, innovation, activism and involvement.”

That’s quite a mouthful. A lot of moving parts there. Still, I don’t think one student who has walked through the Union would disagree with the premise, that the place needed an overhaul. It took me three years to realize there was a piano hall, just to the left of the front entrance, where I’d walked by a hundred times before. It took me just as long to find all the damn printers.

The first floor always felt strangely empty. The second was easily forgotten.

On Yom Kippur, I’d ascend the steps to the conference hall upstairs, where they occasionally held services, and rediscover that not only did the second floor exist, but that it had a pool table and bathrooms and — during Yom Kippur — a lot of welldressed Jews.

The Union was secretive in that way — filled with unexplored hallways and dead ends and rooms and rumors of access to the roof.

There was the Tap Room without a tap, a Mediterranean restaurant that sold Mexican food, a Barnes & Noble that never seemed to have your books and that never seemed to be open when you needed it (and most egregiously, somehow always ran out of Blue Books the morning of your midterm).

There were couches that looked like someone dropped them off from a yard sale and couldn’t figure out where to fit them; food shops that sold exam packets; sober dances ripped straight out of high

school; phone booths I did interviews in for jobs I didn’t get; a tech store with overpriced headphones I purchased four times a year; a Wendy’s open late but never late enough; small rooms for club meetings I’d attend two or three times before asking to be removed from the email list. This was part of its allure — the confoundedness of the building.

My first Welcome Week, a few kids I’d met at orientation decided to explore it. One of them suggested that we could get to the roof via a hidden stairwell. He said there might even be a pool up there.

His older brother had found it, he swore.

It was just a matter of finding the door.

We went up the fluorescent staircase by the north entrance, a little drunk, a little stupid, making more noise than those upstairs offices deserved.

Quickly lost, we started aimlessly wandering around, reading literature about programs we didn’t know the University had and administrative titles that seemed hopelessly bureaucratic. I did, in fact, find a door to the roof, and a window too, but both were locked, and after some half-hearted attempts at picking the bolts, we gave up and descended the stairs.

We never found the pool, and I lost touch with those kids afterward. I never had much faith that that it was up there (though the Union did, in fairness, actually once have a pool). The pool-onthe-roof is such a classic ploy leveled against freshmen by their older siblings that it would have been unfathomable to believe it. I looked for a pool on the roof as a high school freshman too, and that didn’t exist either. But sometimes it’s liberating to believe in something because you’re expected to. You never really know when the pool might be real.

I’m just saying it doesn’t hurt to check.

That wasn’t the last time I’d get lost in the halls of the Union. It was absurdly inaccessible, extremely difficult to navigate — as bewildering for a freshman as life smacking you dead in the face. Hallways didn’t go where they should have gone. There were rooms that looked like they hadn’t been used since the 70s, and certainly hadn’t had a design update since then.

Getting lost in the Union was, in a sense, a rite of passage. We all had to figure out where the Tap Room printers were. We all, in our own ways, stared at grades below our standards on Canvas in the cafeteria, read rejection emails on the couches and fell asleep in the huge chairs in the study lounge with a red eye from Starbucks in hand — spilling it just enough to wake ourselves up with the

burn.

Eventually, though, you found your way through the Union. Eventually, you learned where the hell the bathrooms were and what the hell a red eye from Starbucks was, learned who you wanted to see in that cafeteria off Au Bon Pain, and who you didn’t. You didn’t notice the progression. One day you looked back and realized it just sort of happened.

Will the class of 2024 experience spring as tangibly with a Union courtyard roofed by glass? Will they feel history as present in the post-renovation “mediarich zones” as it did in the sweltering heat of a corroding study lounge?

Will breakups be as meaningful — as quintessentially college — when they’re no longer shared with the rest of the Tap Room, done in those damp basement corners over Subway sandwiches, in hushed whispers still loud enough for the rest of the room to hear? “It’s just that… that at this point, well, I’m in college, I’m trying new things out, and I just think that I’m not in the place for… something like this right now….” “What is this…?” they ask back in a curt tone — masking hurt. There’s never a right answer.

Can this all exist in a “welcome and flexible environment” like the newly planned Idea Hub? Will it be — for all this talk of collaboration and innovation — ever so organic and shared again?

Sure. Probably. It seems senior year has a habit of making people grossly nostalgic, and I’ve easily fallen into the trap. I’m a sucker, I admit it. I have no doubt that when the Union reopens in 2020, the newly designed north entrance, complete with a glass overhang, will indeed promote an inclusive and open experience, as the website claims. I’m sure freshmen will walk through it just as I did, looking for roof access they’re likely to be disappointed by. Maybe that glass overhang will be what keeps those explorers in touch, rather than fall away.

What it will not be, unsurprisingly, is the same. I won’t be around to see this new, glorious hub of student interaction; to learn new places to have discreet phone calls and print assignments rushed to the last minute; to fall asleep on new chairs and couches and compose breakup texts over whatever new food options are available. And I’ll say, thank god for it. I was satisfied with eating my Panda Express while wet, hot, cold, disheveled, elated, disappointed, happy, tired, content, angry, heartbroken, and writing out: “I’m just … not in the mindset right now …”

Wednesday, September 12, 2018// The Statement

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On religious campuses, a birth control revolt

BY MIRIAM FRANCISCO, DAILY ARTS WRITER

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ending contraceptives through the mail seems like a remnant of the early 20th century when methods of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases were largely relegated to legallymurky backchannels. But 86 years after Margaret Sanger’s shipment of diaphragms to a New York City doctor was confiscated, students at Catholic universities are using anonymous texting services and covertly mailed packages to circumvent their schools’ restrictions on sexual health products.

Colleges and universities provide health care and insurance to millions of young American students, but these health plans often do not adequately cover sexual health resources or services such as condoms and birth control. In addition to preventing pregnancy and disease, contraception has other, equally important applications. Women who suffer from endometriosis use hormonal birth control to control painful periods and prevent infertility. Hormonal birth control is also used to treat polycystic ovary Syndrome, primary ovarian insufficiency and acne.

With over 19 million students enrolled in higher education institutions, campus health centers and insurance plans are essential to the conversation surrounding their health care. By denying students access to contraceptives, Catholic universities make it difficult for students with medical conditions to receive care while also withholding the resources and tools that would encourage students to be safe during sexual activity.

Health care payers in academia and the private sector refused to cover contraceptive care on religious grounds. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., for example, successfully challenged the requirement that it cover contraception for employees under the Affordable Care Act before the Supreme Court on the grounds of its management’s religious objections.

The larger tension evident in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. — between the religious freedom of institutions and the right of Americans to have reproductive care covered by their insurance — also manifests itself in certain religious-affiliated college health care systems, particularly at Catholic universities.

While not all students use their school’s health insurance, many, if not most, students use university health centers. At public universities, contraceptives are generally available at these university-run clinics. At colleges and universities

with religious affiliations, this is often not the case. Some schools’ health centers, such as those at Fordham University and Georgetown University, only prescribe hormonal birth control for non-contraceptive uses. While controversial, providing contraceptives at Catholic universities isn’t entirely without precedent.

The University of Notre Dame, for example, recently began allowing its health center to prescribe hormonal contraceptives for the purpose of preventing pregnancy despite a federal court ruling allowing it to be exempt from a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandate to supply contraception.

of matrimony may be referred to the Student Conduct System.” While this policy is not strictly enforced, its presence in the Code of Conduct is symbolic, demonstrating just how deeply Catholic beliefs about sexuality are embedded in the established principles of Boston College.

It seems unlikely that all students follow this policy, an assumption supported in a study conducted by Boston College alum Connor Kratz.

He found that in 2018, 79.9 percent of students reported being sexually active during their tenure at the school.

Boston College Students for Sexual Health was founded in 2009 by Boston

What happens when university health systems refuse to provide contraceptives or sexual health information — services that college students both want and need? At Boston College — a Jesuit institution in the leafy Boston suburb of Chestnut Hill, Mass. — friction has been growing between students and administrators over sexual health resources. This protracted enmity illustrates the tension between what providers want to offer and what Americans need — ref lecting a bitter division that exists across the United States.

Boston College’s University Health Services does not provide contraceptives since premarital sex is against the institution’s rules.

Boston College’s Code of Student Conduct states that “incidents of sexual intercourse outside the bonds

College students.

After 89 percent of voting students approved a referendum asking for improved access to contraceptives and sexual health information, SSH was established to construct a peerto-peer network countering the administration’s refusal to take action.

Notably, the group changed their name to Students for Sexual Health, excising their explicit affiliation with Boston College when the college’s administration threatened them with disciplinary action.

SSH has faced significant opposition in their quest to provide condoms and other contraceptive devices to students, despite a 2018 non-binding referendum which found 94 percent of students in favor of accessible contraception. Furthermore, SSH initially ran so-called “safe sites” —

File Photo/Daily

places where students could obtain condoms and information — out of their dorm rooms until Boston College threatened disciplinary action. Now, SSH is turning to the postal service to distribute condoms.

Boston College junior Esteban Coellar, SSH acting president, said the group’s practice of mailing condoms to students is federally protected.

The Comstock Law, under which Margaret Sanger’s package was confiscated in 1932, prohibited the distribution of “obscene” materials such as condoms and sexual health information. A series of Supreme Court cases eventually found the law and others like it unconstitutional.

This loophole is grudgingly accepted by the Boston College administration, though SSH hopes that one day these secretive and mecumbersome methods will not be necessary.

“Ultimately, our goal is to get to a place where University Health Services offers sexual health resources,” Coellar said. This year, they’re starting small and specific.

“We’re trying to get UHS to provide Plan B to sexual assault victims.”

Students at Vincentian-founded DePaul University — a Catholic institution in Chicago — are using similar methods.

DePaul University senior Jenni Holtz is the co-founder of Students for Reproductive Justice, a studentrun organization promoting sexual health at DePaul and in the Chicago community. They said grassroots efforts are important when students are asking for changes in the administration.

SRJ recently began running TxtJane, a confidential delivery service that began at Loyola University Chicago.

Students can text a designated number and a member of SRJ will personally deliver contraceptives or pregnancy tests to a specified location. TxtJane was inspired by the Jane Collective, a clandestine network of women who provided abortions in Chicago during the four years prior to the Roe v. Wade decision.

“What’s important to us is to get resources to students even when the administration refuses to protect their students,” Holtz said. “Our efforts are also showing students what the university is not providing to them, so they can share in our anger and get involved in calling out the administration for their lack of care for students. We have been able to get resources to students without help from the university and we will continue to do so until DePaul does it.”

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Wednesday, September 12, 2018 // The Statement

Dancing in the Streets V I S UA L S TAT E M E N T:

Dancing in the Streets

an annual festival in downtown Ann Arbor hosted by the Ann Arbor Community for Traditional Music and Dance Photos by Max Kuang