2018-10-24

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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”I just got really good at covering up how I feel” Read the experiences of gay students navigating campus

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CSG proposal would subsidize meal plans for Pell Grant students Senior Alexandrea Somers hopes to implement food insecurity program by Nov.

PRASHANTH PANICKER/Daily

Students speak at the Central Student Government meeting Tuesday evening.

CATHERINE NOUHAN Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan Central Student Government met Tuesday night and discussed the introduction of many resolutions including reducing meal prices for Pell Grant students. Public Policy senior Alexandrea Somers, the author of the resolution,

said she hopes to pass this resolution by early November after modifications are made by the assembly.

The resolution proposed would be a pilot program to combat food insecurity.

Somers discussed how the program would allow Pell Grant recipients to apply for a reduced meal plan through University dining halls.

Fifty Pell Grant students per semester would receive a subsidized meal plan and pay only $7 per meal instead of the current rate of $16 a meal in the dining halls. Pell Grant recipients come from families who earn an income of less than $50,000 a year. Somers emphasized the importance of the initiative as it was one of the issues she promised to address in her election campaign.

“When I ran for CSG, one thing that ran out to me was that people said that they wanted to have (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits for the dining halls,” Somers said. “I thought well, SNAP benefits are complicated, so what’s an easier way to start making those steps towards getting near that goal. Dining hall accessibility is valuable to off-campus and Pell Grant students, so that is the first step to make things happen.”

Some questioned whether Somers would be willing to extend the benefits to people who don’t qualify for the Pell Grant such as undocumented, international and graduate

students. Somers said she would be open to the idea, but recognizes her time is running short as a senior.

“Things need to move quickly for me,” Somers said.

“I’m a senior, and it’s almost the end of the first semester.

This is a big need. As a lowincome student, I think it’s important that students aren’t starving. This university has

CRIME

Asst. coach for women’s gymnastics resigns amid misconduct Scott Vetere, an assistant women’s coach charged with obscene public behavior BENJAMIN KATZ & MIKE PERSAK Daily Sports Writer & Managing Sports Editor

See CSG, Page 3A

Scott Vetere resigned as assistant coach for the Michigan women’s gymnastics team Oct. 15 following a misdemeanor charge for alleged indecent or obscene conduct in public, as indicated by a case report obtained through the Michigan Courts website.

Vetere, 39, and an 18-yearold student at the University,

were each charged on Oct. 8 after officers found Vetere and the student engaged in sexual activity in a parked car outside of an apartment complex at 625 Hidden Valley Club Drive, according to MLive. Vetere was arraigned Friday, Oct. 19 in Ann Arbor’s 15th District Court, and his pre-trial is scheduled for Nov. 14. The student’s arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 14, also according to MLive.

The Daily confirmed Vetere’s resignation Tuesday evening. Associate athletic See GYMNASTICS, Page 3A

Dialogues on Diversity holds event to Rep. Rabhi Founder of introduces bring social justice issues to sciences Jim Crow

GOVERNMENT

CAMPUS LIFE

renewable energy bill

Hosted by the theater company and DEI, skits applied equity issues to labwork

Proposal would mandate 100 percent renewable energy in MI by 2050

As part of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiative to start conversations about diversity within different fields of study, Dialogues on Diversity in Science was held Tuesday evening at the University of Michigan Power Center.

Dialogues on Diversity, a social justice theater company, helped host the event, with executive director Ron Jones asking the audience questions to combat preconceived notions of diversity and privilege.

The end of the discussion consisted of scenario skits and discussion of how to handle situations such as sexual harassment, racially charged comments and bad reputations.

While the event was scheduled to last from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., discussion about scenarios lingered for thirty minutes longer than expected.

Some attendees said those in the sciences not value conversations on diversity, equity and inclusion, but instead regards them as “distractions to the lab.”

“There’s a culture clash when a minority or non-dominant culture come to an environment where it’s mostly a dominant culture,” Rackham student Omari Baruti said. “They don’t value conversations on diversity or you talking about diversity as much as the non-

JORDYN BAKER Daily Staff Reporter

  State Rep. Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, proposed a bill last week to require all utilities’ energy in Michigan to come from renewable sources by 2050.

The state of Michigan currently requires 10 percent of energy to come from renewable sources such as wind and solar, and this number will increase to 15 percent by 2021.

Under Rabhi’s proposed legislation, House Bill 6466, this standard of renewable energy requirements would increase to 25 percent by 2025, 50 percent by 2032, 75 percent by 2040, and 100 percent by 2050.

The bill follows a report released by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that warned of the dangers that will face ecosystems and human health if global warming is not soon limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Part of the timing on this is we saw the International Commission that issued its dire predictions of what was going to See ENERGY, Page 3A

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Daily Staff Reporter

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dominant culture. Some things they say is that, ‘I’ve never had to experience these issues, so I feel like I shouldn’t have to talk about this.’ Or, ‘I feel like this is something we shouldn’t talk about in the lab. I don’t want to talk about it here. Maybe you guys can go elsewhere and talk about it, but not here.’ They feel like it’s a distraction from the productivity of the lab.”

Rackham student Angela

Carter said that she has experienced microaggressions in her work and that the pressure of representing Black women to her peers and superiors takes an emotional toll.

“There’s a lot of microaggressions,” Carter said.

“You go into the department, and you’re the person representing whatever identity you conform with. Me, being a Black woman, I’m representing Black women.

Anything that I do wrong or do correctly is representing all Black women. So I have to always be correct and always right and always perfect. You have to be 100 percent on all the time.”

Rackham student Kaylin White said she was happy to see the number of people in attendance, but wished more faculty members were present.

See DIVERSITY, Page 3A

PRASHANTH PANICKER/Daily

Dr. Rob Seller speaks about the importance of discussing diversity at the Dialogues on Diversity in Science at the Power Center Tuesday.

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INDEX

Vol. CXXVIII, No. 16 ©2018 The Michigan Daily

Museum talks race

Curator emphasizes importance of artifacts in teaching about racism CALLIE TEITELBAUM For the Daily

David Pilgrim, founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University spoke at the University of Michigan Museum of Art Tuesday about promoting social justice and tolerance through the artifacts in the Jim Crow Museum, the nation’s largest collection of racist artifacts. The Stern Auditorium was packed with students and Ann Arbor residents.

Pilgrim is the vice president for Diversity and Inclusion at Ferris State and an expert on issues related to diversity, multiculturalism and race relations. In the mid-1990s, Pilgrim donated his personal collection of 2,000 artifacts to the university. In 2012, he was able to open the Jim Crow Museum due to a donation made by DTE Energy.

The museum now receives hundreds of relic donations annually and consists of over 9,000 objects.

The museum houses See JIM CROW, Page 2A

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

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

News

2A — Wednesday, October 24, 2018

MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

TUESDAY:

By Design

WEDNESDAY: This Week in History

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THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: ELEVEN MORE ARRESTS: CIA PROTESTED FOR SECOND DAY October 24, 1985 Eleven demonstrators protesting recruitment by the Central Intelligence Agency on campus, were arrested yesterday in the second day of protests in the Student Activities Building.

A total of 26 demonstrators were arrested in the two days of CIA protests. Most of those who were arrested are University students.

Protesters accused the agency of helping overthrow legitimate governments in Chile and Guatemala, as well as helping in trying to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

They also say that the agency has helped train secret

police in South Africa as well as “death squads” in El Salvador.

Despite the protests, Deborah Orr May, director of the Career Planning and Placement Office, said CIA recruiters interviewed all eight University students scheduled yesterday.

Seventeen students were interviewed Tuesday.

The arrests yesterday came in two stages, beginning with four University students who were arrested early in the morning and charged with disorderly conduct.

According to Mark Weinstein, an LSA junior involved in the protests, six protesters were chanting

“CIA go away” outside one of two back doors to the career planning office. Two were also banging on the doors, he said.

He said police opened the doors and arrested four of the protesters, while the other two — including Weinsten — f led.

“The cops just went, ‘get him, and him, and him, and him,’” said John Iscrow, an Ann Arbor resident who was arrested. Peter Rosset, a Rackham graduate student, Bill Michael, an Ann Arbor resident, and Bob Krause, an LSA junior, were also arrested.

“If chanting in front of a police officer is disorderly conduct, then we’re living in

a totalitarian state,” Rosset said.

The other arrests came shortly afterwards. About 30 students gathered outside the other back door to the office and began chanting.

As police opened the door to let in a Detroit television news crew, seven of the protesters blocked the door open with their bodies and began chanting, “USA, CIA, out of Nicaragua.”

After May read them the trespassing act, giving them the choice of leaving the building or being arrested, police carried the seven to police busses waiting in front of the building.

Arrested were Phyllis Flora, an LSA junior; David

Miklethun, an Ann Arbor Student Government; Hugh resident; Dean Baker, a McGunness, a Rackham graduate student; Carey Garlick, an LSA senior; John Hartigan, an LSA junior; and Steve Latta, an Ann Arbor resident. They were later charged with trespassing.

All arrested yesterday were released on their own recognizance, and given court dates late this month and early next month.

May said she decided to read the trespass act because the protester’s changing and singing were disturbing the interviews.

If chanting in front of a police officer is disorderly conduct, then we’re living in a totalitarian state

Rackham graduate student and president of the Rackham

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Editorial Staff MILES MACKLIN/Daily A portion of East Liberty Street near the University of Michigan campus was shut down Tuesday as part of a “Literature vs. Traffic” project.

DAYTON HARE Managing Editor

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RIYAH BASHA and SOPHIE SHERRY

ON THE DAILY: ART INSTALLATION LIGHTS UP LIBERTY STREET A portion of East Liberty Street near the University of Michigan campus was shut down Tuesday as part of a “Literature vs. Traffic” project. Thousands of discarded books lined the streets and were illuminated at night with LED lights. Ann Arbor is one of several cities, including Toronto, New York and Melbourne, to participate in this art installation created

by Luzinterruptus, a Spanish undercover art collective.

The event was organized by

the Institute for the Humanities at the University in an effort to have literature fill the streets, allowing passersby to be surrounded by the written word.

“What was just a street will become a beautiful installation, as we bring the power of art, education, the written word, and free thought to the entire Ann Arbor community by essentially ‘paving’ Liberty St. with thousands of glowing books,” the Institute’s website reads.

Luzinterruptus began public

installations in Madrid in 2008 and since has focused on using light as their main artistic material. “Literature vs. Traffic” has been one of their most popular exhibitions, using over 10,000 books in one exhibition.

“A city area which is typically reserved for speed, pollution and noise, will become, for one night, a place for quietness, calm and coexistance (sic) illuminated by the vague, soft light coming out of the lighted pages,” their website reads. “Cars will eventually fill

their space but for many of those who walked by this place that night, the memory of those books that took the same space will improve their relationship with these surroundings.”

Volunteers from the Ann Arbor community and University campus began working with artists the week before the event to prepare books and attach lights. Visitors who viewed the installation after 8 p.m. Tuesday were able to take books home for free.

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JIM CROW From Page 2A thousands of racist objects with the goal of educating people and using “objects of intolerance to teach tolerance.”

The objects

themselves range from postcards to newspaper clippings to lynching trees.

Depictions of blackface and caricatures of Black people are displayed in a variety of mediums such as license plates and kitchen tools.

“Our approach is to

document, not to serve as a shrine to racism, but to document the existence through material objects of attitudes, taste and values that permeated our culture,” Pilgrim said.

The museum is formatted so people can walk through and view the artifacts without a guide.

“We want people to experience the museum the way they experience it,” Pilgrim said.

Pilgrim spoke about the ways in which to conduct meaningful conversations about race. He described the tendency of educated people to “crush” ignorant ideas or thoughts that are not developed when having race conversations.

“Sometimes when you’re an instructor, there is this temptation to punish your students’ ignorance ... If you crush a person, you can’t teach them anything,” Pilgrim said.

LSA junior Alice Hanlon commented on Pilgrim’s idea of conducting meaningful conversations about race. “(Using objects of intolerance to teach)

It’s definitely a position that’s kind of against what we’ve been taught, especially in a very liberal place like Ann Arbor, I think we are pretty censored with good intentions,” Hanlon said. “But I think people do often feel like they have to kind of walk on eggshells when talking about things like this, like talking about race. I definitely think Dr. Pilgrim brought up so many good points about teaching and being able to have these conversations without feeling like you’re going to offend anyone just to actually learn.”

In a similar vein at the University, the Bentley Historical Library is expanding its efforts to record the histories of Black Americans on campus.

“Having these records digitized is important because student activism is often erased in U-M’s diversity effort,” LSA senior Kayla McKinney, Black Student Union speaker told The Daily last week.

Pilgrim concluded by speaking about the future expansion of the museum and the importance of future dialogues about race.

“We’ve got to grow up as a nation,” Pilgrim said. “We’ve got to be able to have real conversations.”

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CSG From Page 1A enough resources so that they are not starving.”

Engineering sophomore Tony Xavier was unanimously confirmed to the International Student Assembly seat. Before his confirmation, he discussed specific issues relating to international students that he hopes to address.

“For international students, there is one thing that University of Michigan completely neglects,” Xavier said. “There is no financial aid giving to international students.”

He went on to say many of the reasons the University does not offer aid is due to a stereotype of international students being wealthy. Xavier said the stereotype does not apply to

him or other people he knew in India.

“There were three of my classmates back in India who could not come to the University because they found out the tuition was too expensive,” Xavier said.

After the CSG town hall meeting next Monday, CSG will release their survey and guide for housing lease managing guide. This is an effort to compile lists to pinpoint landlord reliability and housing prices are accessible to University students.

Engineering senior Michael Nwansi proposed student organizations receiving funding from CSG to apply for compostable dining material.

According to Nwansi, the Student Sustainability Initiative spends a lot of money on advertisements for students to

A Pieology closes doors, reasoning is unknown 2

Hand-written sign said restaurant closing due to “unfortunate circumstances” ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Daily Staff Reporter

Pieology, a pizzeria located at 620 E. Liberty St. in Ann Arbor, closed Tuesday, Oct. 23.

On the restaurant’s front door hangs a handwritten sign stating, “due to unfortunate circumstances beyond our control, this Pieology location is no longer open for business.”

University of Michigan student Jonah Erlich, an Engineering junior who said he eats at Pieology about every other week, read the sign with dismay. He said he was surprised, and noted the mystery surrounding “unfortunate circumstances.”

“I was mostly surprised,” Erlich said. “It kind of sucks, but I’m mostly just confused.

Unfortunate circumstances is very vague.”

Pieology’s sudden closing reminded Erlich of BurgerFi closing in 2017, as they also notified customers with a sign on the door.

“What’s interesting is this is kind of how BurgerFi shut down a few years ago,” Erich said. “It was just kind of done one day. So I wonder if there’s some kind of city law or something.”

This Pieology location opened in summer 2015, replacing the former Borders bookstore. It was the California-based chain’s first location in the state of Michigan, preceding the opening of a Grand Rapids location. It’s known for its customizable pizzas and salads.

According to MLive, Hughes Properties CEO Ron Hughes, landlord of 620 E. Liberty, said Pieology had not yet given notice of closing as of Tuesday.

Though Erlich feels sad about Pieology’s sudden farewell, he is sure he’ll keep eating delicious pizza elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of good pizza in Ann Arbor, so I’m not too worried,” Erlich said.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 — 3A

apply for compostable material.

He thinks the resolution will help the University’s goal of reducing landfill waste by 40 percent in 2025.

Public Policy senior Alli Berry asked for CSG sponsorship for an event that will bring one Israeli orthodox Jewish person and one Palestinian person to campus to discuss their experiences and opinions on the current state of affairs in Israel. She said she knows it is a difficult topic to discuss, but hopes for a challenging yet respectful event and not a “kumbaya moment.”

The event comes at a time when the conflict is on the minds of many University students and professors, specifically in relation to Prof. John Cheney-Lippold’s recent decision to rescind his recommendation for a student to

a study abroad program in Israel and the University’s subsequent sanctions against him. Berry hopes the discussion helps foster questions about the situation, not further divide campus.

“I think that this event could potentially leave people with more questions than they had coming in, but it’s an initial conversation,” Berry said. “And if we don’t sit down to start these conversations we will continue to see what we see on campus which are these isolated events hosted by multiple organizations that don’t foster diversity.”

CSG President Daniel Greene, a Public Policy senior, also emphasized how important it is to promote their Buses to Ballots initiative, which will aid students getting to the polls on Nov. 6.

DIVERSITY From Page 1A

power. Having this community is great, but it’s really important for (faculty members) to figure it out.”

Sherrica Tai, who recently finished her post-doctoral studies in pharmacology, believes a top-down approach is key to increasing faculty attendance at diversity dialogues.

“Just like the scenarios that were put into play, everyone kept saying it seems to be the victim’s responsibility to change this, but it can also be the top-down approach where their superiors need to tell the faculty that they need to attend these trainings,” Tai said. “I don’t remember seeing too many of the faculty members in the session, especially when they asked. If they were told to go, if it was mandatory for their employment here, to participate in an event like this once a year or every other year, that would make a difference. Why am I being the one educated on this issue, but yet, faculty are not.”

Rackham student Chiamaka Ukachukwu, a first-year PIBS student, thinks dialogue trainings are necessary to increase appropriate conduct within workspaces.

“Some of these professors don’t care, they just don’t,” Ukachukwu said. “So having them do these mandatory trainings, if this is not something you care about or something that you don’t agree with, I don’t need you to agree, I just need you to treat me with respect. For me, I think one of

the main points is just making sure there is some sort of action plan whether you agree with this and are genuinely interested in learning how to be a better person, or this is something you have no interest in doing, it’s mandatory.

Just don’t touch my hair, don’t talk about Colored People Time. You don’t have to agree with, just don’t do it.”

White emphasized this point, saying such remarks make it difficult to concentrate in the workplace.

“It’s accountability,” White said. “It’s not like, ‘Hey, don’t hurt our feelings.’ It’s like, ‘You are making my life harder for me to get my job done right now.’ I hope people can be empathetic and not treat people poorly, but that’s not apparently the world we live in.

For a morality standpoint, that’s not enough for scientists.”

Carter believes the issue lies in representation and thinks increasing minority faculty members could help mitigate it.

“I think the issue is also looking at the faculty themselves,” Carter said. “There are only a few faculty members of color at that level. So the bottleneck isn’t necessarily grad school or even post-doctoral level. It’s the faculty level. That’s where the change needs to happens. If you get more women. If you get more people who identify as LGBTQIA. If you get more people of color. There are more voices. And you have more advocacy.”

Rackham student Rachael Baliira said providing financial incentive through grant funding would increase faculty participation.

“A huge part of a grant should be, ‘Have you done this training?’ so that professors get rewarded,” Baliira said. “Some people, they only count points and that’s how they measure success. They need it to be measurable. For some PIs (principal investigators), attending these training courses doesn’t help them or they don’t think it affects their research.

It’s a waste of time. But if it did financially affect their research, they would have to do it.”

Carter said organizations like the National Institutes of Health are requiring diversity in research, which could serve as a solution to similar problems.

“A lot of funding agencies, like the NIH, are asking for that now,” Carter said. “They’re really, really looking for that. They’re looking for that in terms of our studies, just in terms of designing experiments.

You have to do research on both sexes. And if you’re looking at social sciences, you have to look at all gender spectrums as well.

They’re also looking for that in terms of people of color and other, as they said, non-dominant culture. That’s something that’s also happening. That could be where that initiative is.”

before the late 2020s, 45 percent by 2030 and 75 percent by 2040.

While Rabhi does expect some opposition from state energy companies regarding his proposal of 100 percent renewable energy, he also believes the 30-year timeline to accomplish the goal will allow companies adequate time to adjust.

Rabhi explained the current standards in Michigan have already set the precedent for increasing the use of renewable energy, and the bill would continue the practices that are currently used but would increase standards to higher percentages.

“There’s already a precedent and a mechanism in place to force the utilities to do these types of increases in terms of their ratio of alternative energy that’s generated of the total amount of energy,” Rabhi said. “The mechanism would really be the same that we currently have in the current system, and it would just be increasing the percentage standard … so that there’s sort of benchmarks and dates by which the utilities have to improve their renewable energy standard over that period of time, which is now only 32 years.”

Engineering junior Nathan Houghteling, who helped found the Michigan Energy Club last year and currently serves as its vice president, stated he agrees it’s necessary to set goals to reduce the impacts of climate change in the energy industry, and the energy industry is a place where this work can be done. However, he also thinks it is important to think about the implications of a 100 percent renewable energy plan.

“There’s a lot of complexities involved with renewable energy that our current grid isn’t equipped for,” Houghteling said.

“A lot of it’s the intermittency of renewable sources, especially wind and solar, and to accommodate a 100-percent

renewable grid would require a lot of new technologies. What could potentially happen is the costs of these technologies don’t fall enough over the next thirty years, is we could see a dramatic spike in the price of energy per unit for residential users, for commercial users, for people across the board who are trying to buy energy if we’re trying to go to a 100-percent renewable grid.”

For Rabhi, the bill is a vision that sets goals for where the state and the country should be moving in terms of renewable energy.

“I wanted to set the goalpost of where we should be going. I don’t necessarily support an energy future that has any CO2 emitting sources, I think that we should ultimately have a carbon-free energy economy, and so I would like to see a day when Michigan, and quite frankly our country and our world, doesn’t have to use carbon to generate energy,” Rabhi said. “Instead of passing legislation or putting forward legislation that is sort of working around the margins of the problem, I’d like to actually aspire to something and address the actual problem.”

When considering the impacts this bill might have on students, Rabhi emphasized the effects of climate change on young people who currently see the climate changing and who might, in the future, witness even more drastic effects to the environment if steps aren’t taken soon to reduce global warming.

Rosenberg agreed and spoke on the actions the University is taking to reduce harm to the environment. She also highlighted the influence that the state legislative level could have on the University in continuing to improve their environmentallyfriendly decisions and projects.

“I know (the University of) Michigan has really lofty goals of becoming renewable and there’s a huge emphasis on serving

local food in the dining halls and on campus to reduce carbon footprints,” Rosenberg said. “I think it could just be a really inspiring push for the University because obviously, they want to be at the forefront of what’s happening, and they’re already doing their part but it could be even more if the state of Michigan were to actually implement this … Long term, it could be really, really important in mitigating climate change.”

Houghteling urged consideration of the details that must be taken into account should a bill such as Rabhi’s be implemented. Specifically, he spoke on the importance of ensuring power is transmitted safely, efficiently and with a good quality of the power.

Focusing on technologies that will be necessary for increasing renewable energy standards will be vital, he explained.

“I would say with some confidence that I don’t think there’s any grid on the scale of a state that could handle 100 percent renewable energy today,” Houghteling said. “Just technologically it wouldn’t work, the grid would fail. I think that looking out towards 2050 there’s a lot of room for those developments to be made, but I’m looking at the technologies.”

Rabhi further spoke on activism he’s seen around campus on the issues of climate change and protecting the environment.

He highlighted the impact this bill could have on living conditions in the future.

“It impacts us now and it impacts us in the future, and we need to be at the forefront of advocacy to push for a carbonfree future,” Rabhi said. “I think it impacts everybody, and it impacts our climate, our environment, and ultimately it impacts each of our abilities to live on a planet that continues to be habitable into the future.”

“I was happy to see the large attendance numbers,” White said. “There have been so few events like this so far. Seeing that many people, and not just seeing those seats being filled with black people or the white LGBTQ crowd that comes out for their events and things. It was good to see people who aren’t necessarily part of some marginalized groups show up, or not visibly a part of it, which in one sense is a privilege, to be honest. I really wish that more faculty came, I really do. But that’s not on the event, that’s on the faculty again. But I’m glad that this is happening on a University level.”

The dialogue was not mandatory for every department, although the umbrella organization, Program in Biomedical Sciences, did require its members to attend.

Many attendees were concerned faculty members were not required to be in attendance.

“I’m not as worried about what another person in my cohort thinks of me, to a certain extent — yes, as I am about someone who’s going to be writing a recommendation letter for me, someone who basically my future’s in their hands, someone who contributes to my daily happiness, because I have to interact with every day,” White said. “That is way more

ENERGY From Page 1A happen to our planet, not within the next century, but within decades and less if we don’t do something about climate change,” Rabhi said.

In 2011, the University of Michigan established a set of sustainability goals to achieve by 2025, chief among them to reduce campus emissions 25 percent below the 2006 level of 680,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent. In 2017, the University emitted approximately 644,000 metric tons, representing a decrease of about 5 percent.

LSA senior Carly Rosenberg, a student studying in the Program in the Environment, voiced support of Rabhi’s bill and spoke on the importance of taking action at the state level to reduce harmful environmental impacts of climate change.

“I support this bill 100 percent,” Rosenberg said. “At the very least, I think it’s really important that he’s bringing in this bill because it’s calling attention to the fact that we need to do better and Michigan could be at the forefront of renewable energy and reducing our carbon footprint.”

DTE Energy, serving about 2.2 million customers in southeast Michigan, has also released plans to improve upon their own energy sources. Earlier this year, the company announced plans to double their use of renewable energy over the coming four years through wind and solar energy.

The company has also proposed plans to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent before 2050, with the goal of having renewable sources power 40 percent of its energy by 2040.

Like Rabhi’s bill, DTE’s plan to increase use of renewable energy also has interim targets to meet their goals. These targets would reduce emissions by 30 percent

GYMNASTICS From Page 1A director Kurt Svoboda offered the following statement: “We learned about an incident with Mr. Vetere on Oct. 10 and suspended him that day. He resigned from his position on Oct. 15 during our disciplinary review process.”

Svoboda said he “can not comment” on the identity of the 18-year-old student.

Vetere did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Vetere was hired as an assistant coach in 2017 and was a former gymnast at Michigan, graduating in 2003. A 10-time NCAA AllAmerican, he was a member of the 1999 team that won the national championship and

He resigned from his position on Oct. 15 during our disciplinary review process served as an assistant coach for the men’s team for five seasons, from 2005-09.

Previously, Vetere worked with the women’s team at its summer camps for six years prior to his hiring.

Ethan Sears and Max Marcovitch also contributed to the reporting of this story.

This is a developing story.

Check back at michigandaily. com for more details.

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, October 24, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

AARON BAKER | COLUMN

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All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

FROM THE OPINION EDITORS

T

What we owe Khashoggi

he killing and alleged dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi

by Saudi operatives has sent shock waves throughout the media and the larger international community. Calls have been made to boycott Saudi companies and support U.S. sanctions on Saudi Arabia, but the voice that rings clearest throughout the hurricane of emotions and opinions is Khashoggi’s own.

On Oct. 17, the Washing ton Post published Khashoggi’s last column, which coincidentally described the realities of the Arab media communit y that contributed to the suspected motives behind his disappearance.

The column comments on the misinformation and lack of information available for Arab citizens due to the censorship and suppression tactics of the hegemonic governments that control the media. Khashoggi mentions the unfair imprisonment of his friend, Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, as an example of an atrocit y that failed to capture the attention of the international communit y, an example that carries the somber irony of foreshadowing in the context of Khashoggi’s own situation.

He goes on to caution the world about the free reig n afforded to Arab countries when journalists are unable to safely report on their experiences.

It’s easy to feel helpless when confronted with issues of international scale. The nuances of global politics are difficult to comprehend, let alone inf luence, but in this instance, we as members

It’s easy to feel helpless when confronted with issues of international scale of the media communit y, readers and writers alike, are presented with an opportunit y to effect real change. Khashoggi’s final published parag raph imparted the need for more Arab voices to be elevated in publications through the creation of an independent international

forum, aimed at addressing the structural problems affecting Arab societies today.

We as an editorial board, wholeheartedly support the creation of such an entit y and encourage our readers to support organizations that start initiatives to highlight Arab voices in journalism in the coming years. Regimes are temporary, but culture is durable, and cultural change cannot be effectively achieved without strong and loud voices with high platforms. As members of the global communit y, we are actively witnessing a political culture of predation.

It’s our imperative to facilitate appropriate avenues for change when we can.

Khashoggi spent a lifetime dedicated to the cause of illuminating the Arab world for Western readers. The least we can do is help other Arab journalists honor his memory by shining that same light for their own communities.

ANAMARIA CUZA | COLUMN

Y

Algorithm prophecies

ou might have heard the stories about the oracles of Greek antiquity, who were able to make prophetic predictions. You might be familiar with the name Nostradamus, whose prophecies are even nowadays picked up by those who predicted that 2012 would be the end of the world.

You probably made fun of these people’s beliefs in prophets, prophecies or anything related to inferring “facts” about the future because, as educated people, we know that we live in a chaotic world where the future cannot be predicted accurately.

Still, our brains do not seem to have the same reactions when we talk about predictions. You can find article after article on how you can “How to predict the NBA with a Machine Learning system written in Python,” and paper after paper on an “improved model for predicting presidential election outcomes.”

Stop using gods, and start using numbers and variables, change the word “prophecy” to “prediction” or, even better, “forecasting” and you suddenly have a “fact” about the future, that is worthy of academic papers and headlines. There is something about the idea of certainty that makes us shiver with delight. That need for certainty has brought us back to the same mindset that made us believe centuries ago in Pythia, the priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

The problem with this mindset is not inherent in predictions.

After all, scientists use models to make predictions to ease the process of understanding the world.

Even though these techniques aren’t always accurate, they are modeling biological patterns, not the unpredictable behavior of humans or societies. Our

fascination with peeking into the future, though, pushes us to use predictive models in psychology, trading or even politics. One algorithm was built to predict revolutions, but while it was capable of predicting an insurgency in Paraguay, it didn’t foresee the uprising in Ukraine.

The people involved in building the model argued that the project’s end result wasn’t the prediction itself, but the testing of geopolitical theories. It was a way for researchers to rethink their theories, to reanalyze dogmas.

Predictive algorithms, though, have a way of creating new dogmas. The complexity of the models, the usually untraceable prediction process, combined with people’s greater trust in numbers than in fellow humans, makes us take the prediction’s result for granted.

The Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions algorithm predicts a defendant’s risk of committing another crime. After several years of being used by many states across the U.S., a 2018 study showed that the COMPAS model was no better at predicting a person’s likelihood of recidivism than volunteers randomly selected from the internet. Still, back in 2013, Paul Zilly was convicted of stealing a push lawnmower, leading the prosecutor to recommend a year in county jail. Instead, the judge suddenly overturned the plea deal, imposing two years in a state prison. His reasoning?

He had seen Paul Zilly’s highrisk score from COMPAS. He had allowed his judgment to be guided by a predictive model that was no better in its predictions than a random group of volunteers.

Today’s predictive models are probably better equipped

in making sense of the future than the prophets of past centuries. After all, these kinds of algorithms are fed immense amounts of historical data from which they start observing certain patterns. But what if particular human behaviors, economic fluctuations, and revolutions are bound to happen outside of historical patterns?

That is where these algorithms fail.

The problem is when we forget that these predictions are doomed to have their failures. We forget because we rejoice in the idea that algorithms give us certainty in a world of uncertainties.

We allow ourselves to get trapped in the same idea that made people seek out an oracle’s prophecies, the same idea that made them analyze Nostradamus’s writing to predict the 2012 apocalypse.

If we are so afraid of the coming revolution of artificial intelligence and algorithms that will take over our jobs, we should take a moment to reflect on the inherent imperfection of these systems, and on our own imperfections as humans.

After all, adding these highly complex models into our daily lives only leads to one more element of uncertainty. The same uncertainty that we have been dealing with since the beginning of humanity. Once we can understand that technology will most likely add a layer of uncertainty to our lives, instead of playing into the false sense of certainty we’ve craved for centuries, we can start grasping the way our humanity will merge with algorithms.

Anamaria Cuza can be reached at anacuza@umich.edu

I

The West vs. the rest

spent last summer working for a nongovernmental organization in Delhi, India.

One weekend I took a day trip to see the Taj Mahal. On the bus back, I struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler — a deceptively young-looking Swiss man. He had spent months traveling throughout Latin America and Asia. Toward the end of the bus ride, he summarized his travels with a comparison. He told me “our” societies in the West are different than in non-Western countries. In the West, he told me, we share fundamental values and a way of life. He thought Argentina was more Western and thus felt more at home there.

Back at my office in Delhi, one of my bosses would make similar comments, comparing “Western” America with “Eastern” India. For Westerners, it often seems that understanding foreign cultures is easier by comparing them to the West, which ostensibly has a similar set of values, or shared civilizational foundations. But comparisons that contrast a totemic “Western world” with the rest of the world are misleading and problematic.

The “West” is a racial and religious category. For a country to be Western, it must have a majority white population and a history of Christianity. Japan is a democratic country with a capitalist system but is not Western. Latin American countries are debatably Western just as they are debatably white.

The categories of race and religion do not have the explanatory power to sufficiently understand another individual or society. To understand the differences between life in China and France today, you cannot simply consider the differences between Christianity and being white with Confucianism or Daoism and being Han Chinese.

Doing so would not give you any meaningful understanding of the differences between modern France and modern China, nor of people that live in the two countries. But, when people talk about the “West,” they don’t usually think it as a religious or racial category, at least not consciously. So, what do people mean when they compare the “West” to the rest of the world?

The idea of Western values and civilization as fundamentally different from those of “Eastern” or non-Western societies stems from European imperialism.

Europeans tried to schematize the vast swaths of people they

encountered with the endgoal of maintaining imperialism.

Guided by “social Darwinist” ideas, the scholarship of nonEuropeans by 19th-century and early 20th-century Europeans was terribly flawed. The comparison of the West and the rest of the world developed to simplify human diversity in a way that justified the subjugation of “primitive” races and peoples by an advanced assortment of “Western” countries.

For example, James Mill, the leading 19th-century British “scholar” of Indian history, made sweeping conclusions that Indians and other non-Western colonial subjects were primitive.

He shrugged Indian intellectual advances, like the creation of the decimal system, or the philosophically-rich Bhagavad Gita, as primitive “hieroglyphics.

The British, he concluded, could spread their advanced, Western thought and technology to the primitive peoples of the East.

Today, the idea of the West versus the rest of the world is by no means as racist as it was during the age of imperialism. As Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize-winning Indian economist, noted in his book “The Argumentative Indian,” Westerners who today rely on the simplifying comparisons to the West often do so because they want to understand other cultures rather than dominate them.

Understanding other cultures through simplified comparisons with the West can help people intensify their own identities through contrast, as Edward Said noted in his theory of Orientalism.

But, use of the comparison of the “West” and the rest of the world should still be avoided.

Today, the most politically influential version of comparing the West to the rest of the world is Samuel Huntington. His seminal book “Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” asserted the world was divided into distinct civilizations that naturally opposed each other. He attributes the primary difference between Western civilization and other civilizations to the development of liberalism rooted in individual rights and liberties in the West. This way of thinking is rife with potential for prejudice.

The idea that non-Europeans have different, lesser civilizational values is a strong argument against an inclusive immigration policy. If too many non-Westerners live in the West, how long before “their” civilization replaces “ours”?

Similarly, if each civilization has such distinct values and character, then maybe more progressive “Western values” of human rights, women’s rights or democracy are not legitimate outside the West. This civilizational way of thinking is attractive to Western xenophobes, Islamic fundamentalists and dictators alike.

Luckily, it isn’t hard to discredit Huntington’s divisive argument.

The development of individualism and liberalism can be found in non-Western histories. Early versions of private property existed in the Qin dynasty starting in 221 B.C. Mencius, a disciple of Confucius, thought anyone could become emperor on the basis of their merit. He also conceived of an early social contract by which an emperor could be overthrown if his rule did not benefit the people. In India, Amartya Sen argues in “The Argumentative Indian” a long tradition of heterodoxy, public reason and tolerance laid the groundwork for democracy. And Indian rulers like Ashoka and Akbar ruled a tolerant and multicultural empire, where religious tolerance, choice and interfaith dialogue were encouraged. And even in histories where finding liberal traditions are harder, like Japan’s, liberal ideas and governance can still be adopted, as is the case with modern Japan.

If you’ve taken any liberal arts classes on a modern college campus you might agree with me. A key principle for many liberal arts courses seems to be to warn you not to essentialize or generalize. Essentialism can be defined as “attributing natural, essential characteristics to members of specific culturally defined (gender, age, ethnic, “racial”, socioeconomic, linguistic...) groups.”

It is easy to look at the world through generalizations that explain dizzying difference and complexity through simple comparisons of different social groups. But that same thinking, though not inherently racist or bigoted, contributes to some of our biggest social problems. All forms of bigotry hinge on essentialism and generalizations. Thinking with less essentialism and less generalizations would promote individualism and tolerance, something that should attract both liberals and conservatives.

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

ELIAS KHOURY | COLUMN

O

The GOP assault on America

n Oct. 21, I spent a significant chunk of my Sunday night watching a debate between Sam Seder, a progressive talk radio host, and Charlie Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA. The guiding question of the debate was “Is President Trump helping the middle class?” Though I already knew the answer to this easy question — “no” — I decided to tune in any way.

I was very much familiar with the two participants prior to the debate. And while things did not go exactly as I expected, I cannot say that I was surprised by what transpired. Kirk was prone to incoherent rambling with outdated talking points sprinkled into stutterfilled diatribes. Seder, on the other hand, took a far more meteredout approach, pointing to specific Trump administration policies that have had catastrophic effects on the middle class.

One specific example of this was when Kirk touted the current administration’s cutting of regulation as advantageous to the middle class. Seder immediately fired back, citing specific environmental regulations that have been cut with projected death tolls in the tens of thousands. Kirk, subsequently, was silent.

Quickly coming to the realization that he was fighting a losing battle, Kirk began the flail.

The errand boy of GOP megadonors adopted a new strategy in order to cut his losses: Go, and stay, off topic.

In all fairness, this tactic worked quite well for Kirk as he was able to drag Seder into murky waters that, within the intended confines of this debate, were supposed to go uncharted. For a significant stretch, what was supposed to be a debate about the impact of the current administration’s policies on the

middle class became an argument over the minutia of banking procedure.

Nevertheless, any objective viewer came away with the impression that Seder, though not in peak form, won the exchange handily.

While the actual content of the debate left something to be desired, the timing was absolutely appropriate as it came in the wake of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s call for massive cuts to the two most popular government programs — Social Security and Medicare. This fundamentally anti-democratic move was proposed under the guise of “fiscal responsibility.” Nothing could be more disingenuous.

This is the same party that drastically reduced government revenues by passing a tax cut bill in which 83 percent of the benefits went to the top 1 percent. They coupled this with increases to our already bloated military budget which has become less about national defense and more about lining the pockets of corrupt, evil war profiteers. This abuse of the American taxpayer is cronyism marketed as patriotism.

Unsurprisingly, the deficit has ballooned to $779 billion and is set to surpass $1 trillion by 2019. Rather than making the rich pay their fair share in taxes or attacking military waste (the Department of Defense spent $1.5 trillion on a fighter jet that doesn’t work), they have decided to continue their crusade to destroy the programs Americans hold dearest.

They want to further eviscerate an already measly welfare state.

The Republican economic plan gives to the rich by taking away from the rest of us. This is not deficit hawkishness. It’s economic elitism.

A 62-percent majority of Americans see the GOP as the party of the rich — this is why.

If one is concerned about the deficit and national debt, you should take a good, hard look at Medicare.

There are changes in the program that could be made that would save the federal government a lot of money. The key to saving money with Medicare is to expand it.

According to a recent study funded by the Koch brothers, a “Medicare for all” system would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10 year period.

Moreover, a single-payer health care system would get rid of the greatest national embarrassment of all: The fact that people are dying in the streets of the richest country on Earth due to a lack of ability to pay for astronomically expensive healthcare.

As for Social Security, to cut this program would constitute theft.

People have been paying into the system their whole lives. To take what they are rightfully entitled to from them would be immoral.

In summation, the latest push by the Republicans to gut social services has nothing to do with wanting to be “fiscally responsible.” It is just another example of politicians acting as slaves to the plutocracy rather than standing up for what is right.

Current government policy has been working against working and middle-class Americans — and things might just get a lot worse.

I urge you to keep all of this in mind when you head to the polls this November. Every election is a fight for the soul of a nation. Fiftyeight percent of Americans believe this country is headed in the wrong direction. Let’s do what we can to try to turn it around.

Elias Khoury can be reached at ekhoury@umich.edu.

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 — 5A

FILM REVIEW

ALBUM REVIEW

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

EPIC RECORDS

Nostalgia can’t carry the ‘Drugs’ is just anonther limp ‘Halloween’ reboot mediocre rapper collab JEREMIAH VANDERHELM Daily Arts Writer

We should all be so lucky as to have a grandmother like Laurie Stode. By the beginning of the most recent entry in the “Halloween” franchise, the original final girl has grown into a badass bound and determined to protect her family from Michael Myers, the Shatner-masked serial killer who turned her life inside out 40 years ago, by any means necessary. Played, as always, by a riveting Jamie Lee Curtis (“New Girl”), the same moxie that endeared her to audiences all those years ago is still there, but there’s something broken, too – something that Michael took from her that she never got back. A more focused film would see Curtis’s rendering of that brokenness and know to focus the movie on that, but in its quest to replicate as much about the original as possible, the newest “Halloween” misses out on the greatness right in front of it.

I’m not going to act like there’s no pleasure to watching Laurie and Michael go head-tohead “Clash of the Titans” style.

When it happens, it’s a sight to behold, an edge-of-your-seat, knockdown-dragout fight with crowd-pleasing moments and breathless tension galore. It’s unarguably awesome, but you have to sit through an hour of the plot spinning its wheels and director David Gordon Green (“Stronger”) running down his “Halloween” checklist to get there.

So not only is “Halloween” about Laurie hunting Michael after his escape, it’s about Laurie’s granddaughter, Allyson

(Andi Matichak, “Evol”) running around on Halloween night dealing with relationship trouble and trying not to get murdered. It’s about Allyson’s friends, who also try not to get murdered but don’t have the good fortune of being the direct descendant of the first movie’s heroine. It’s about a doctor who believes Michael is pure evil and has developed a strange fascination with him, and who is explicitly called “the new Loomis.” All of these have some

“Halloween” Ann Arbor 20, Goodrich Quality 16 Universal Pictures direct analogue to the first film, and while Green’s staging of these homage-driven plotlines clearly shows his love of the original film, homages alone aren’t enough to make them interesting. They inevitably feel like distractions from the main event instead of stories and characters worth caring about all their own.

Even the cinematography cues meant to play on audience nostalgia fall flat. The 1978 “Halloween” famously opens with a tracking shot from Michael’s point-of-view that follows him as he murders his sister. It’s an iconic shot for a number of reasons: the technical accomplishment of it, the innate cheesiness — why does Michael turn to watch the knife in the middle of the stabbing? — the voyeuristic thrill, the twist ending that the murderer is a six-year-old boy, the list goes on. The new

film shoots much of its action in the same way, but here the tracking shots feel strangely perfunctory. They lack the kinetic thrill and immediacy offered by the best historical uses of the technique, and this is coming from someone so prone to praising films that include tracking shots that it arguably constitutes a form of bribery.

What’s more, when the new film actually goes off the beaten path, it can be a treat. The Laurie-Michael storyline should have been given far more focus, but it’s still engaging thanks to the catharsis of watching Laurie regain her agency. The cinematography apart from the tracking shots, can be downright gorgeous at times, especially in its use of wide shots and inventive available lighting. The cast is mostly game, with Jibrail Nantambu in his big screen debut playing what is objectively the best character of the year in film.

The nostalgia cues aren’t all bad, either, with a kickass new score from original director / composer John Carpenter, his son Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies (“Zoo”) that plays on the original but adds a number of propulsive new layers. More importantly, Green makes the wise choice to keep Michael in the background for most of the first act, his murderous intent removed from the forefront of the frame but never from the forefront of Laurie’s and the viewer’s mind. The director’s understanding of what works in the original film can’t be denied, but that all too rarely carries over into understanding what works in his own film. When it’s good, it’s good, but far too often it’s a monotonous retread of the original’s greatest hits.

MATT GALLATIN Daily Arts Writer

WRLD ON DRUGS, the latest innocuous rap collaboration album, follows its predecessors: interesting in theory, fun on first listen but expectedly reductive.

Not since Watch the Throne has an album collaboration between two major rappers resulted in something other than the sum of its parts (but that album at least takes on a quality unique to that collaboration).

What makes many of the recent collaboration albums bland is their inability to attain this quality. Often there’s the sense they’re not even trying, that these crossovers exist as industry moves rather than as organic efforts to coalesce skill sets and aim for a gestalt.

Last year’s collaboration albums between Future and Young Thug (SUPER SLIMEY), 21 Savage and Offset (Without Warning), and Quavo and Travis Scott (HUNCHO JACK, Jack Huncho) all evidenced this. The artists in that list are each dynamic and boundarypushing in their own right, so it’s strange that these albums can be played back to back and sound like a relatively consistent piece of music.

What they’re going for on these projects is the continuation of a sound, owed to Atlanta and centered approximately around the Quality Control label.

Like those projects, WRLD ON DRUGS aims for a commercial middle. Juice WRLD, of up-and-coming fame, should add some vitality to storied rap giant Future; Future’s reverence in the Atlanta rap scene should act as a sign of confidence to the

TV REVIEW

ABC

Rosanne-less ‘The Conners’ moves on from its former star with grace MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN Daily Arts Writer

Killing off a television character tends to present a strange paradox: A character’s absence can be so deeply felt that it manifests as an unsettling ghost-like presence.

This is especially true of a show like “Roseanne”’s successor,

“The Conners,” which has not simply lost a character, but the character. It’s true. Roseanne (Roseanne Barr, “The Roseanne Show”) — the dry, divisive, titular materfamilias who started it all — is dead.

“The Conners” moves on without her with grace and, of course, the Conner family’s signature brand of droll, piercing humor. It’s no easy feat: The

show was tasked with explaining a character’s death (we learn it was an opioid overdose), giving its characters room to grieve and still providing humor all within a half-hour, Roseanne’s absence hanging over the episode like the patchwork afghan draped across the Conners’ living room couch.

It was a huge gamble for the executives at ABC, who bet that there might be something left for

the show to work with following Barr’s abrupt firing last May. It paid off; turns out there’s a lot left for “The Conners” to work with, namely some sharp writing and excellent performances. Jackie (the splendid Laurie Metcalf, “Lady Bird”) is coping with her sister’s death by frantically re-organizing the kitchen; Dan (John Goodman, “Argo”), now without a sparring partner,

upstart. To give them credit, this goal is ostensibly achieved.

The very existence of this album achieves it.

With that box checked, the songs feel tacked onto this accomplishment. Right from opening track “Jet Lag,” Juice WRLD takes on a shiny new persona as a confident drug rapper that renders the sadboy aesthetic he rode to fame unrecognizable. Future sounds great as always, perfectly

WRLD ON DRUGS Future & Juice WRLD Epic Records

content to ride yet another victory lap around in his Bentley to help out the newbie.

But Future’s best work is when he’s least satisfied, swallowing pain down with a cup of codeine and dredging up the past with a heavy snarl, and just as WRLD’s emo tendencies are gone here, so are Future’s.

The moments that work best are when Future and WRLD give each other some distance, allowing WRLD to feel more comfortable as himself. “Fine China” and “Realer N Realer” both are standouts. On the latter, WRLD gives some tongue-in-cheek thoughts about money in sing-song: “People love to talk about the money that they make / Nobody wanna talk about the money that they save / Who am I to talk about it?

I blow money every day.” In the former, Future’s higher pitched flow plays off WRLD’s autotune

well, and it makes for a track that manages to make Atlanta rap a little bit funny, à la Lil Yachty, while avoiding being, well, Lil Yachty.

“Astronauts,” “Red Bentley” and “Transformer” all find Future taking on the same kind of approachable, consistent flow he donned for much of SUPER SLIMEY, which makes it easier for those along for the ride to keep up (though Nicki Minaj mostly holds her own on “Transformer”). They’re all bouncy, bass-heavy tracks that fit easily within Future’s more recent discography. But it’s not clear why WRLD needs to be on any of them, and such is the problem with many of these 16 tracks.

It’s strange that the two have decided to land at this happy commercial brag for so much of the album given Juice WRLD’s debut last year, Goodbye & Good Riddance. It’s an album all about pain, filled with cringeinducing admissions and riding along the dark “emo-rap” style recently popularized by Lil Uzi Vert. WRLD channels the energy just right of the occult that Uzi dances with, and it’s a big part of what made him so palatable to an audience increasingly interested in this genre crossover. It doesn’t make him look dynamic to wipe this persona away on this collaboration — nearly any rapper in 2018 can sound like he does here with the right producer. Even Usher gave it his best shot this week with his surprise Zaytoven collaboration A. It does the opposite, and we come off this album wondering if Juice WRLD might not be wondering, like we’re wondering, exactly who Juice WRLD is.

is roped into helping his gay trades barbs with her Trumpgrandson deal with his crushes; voting sister. Roseanne calls and Darlene (Sara Gilbert, “The Jackie a snowflake. Jackie Talk”), now the real core of the brings Russian salad to dinner. show, is the one left making sure Roseanne says something everyone’s OK. about taking a knee. It wasn’t a Without Roseanne in the discussion; it was an assemblage picture, Metcalf, Goodman and of punchlines. And it was an Gilbert prove themselves the enormous disservice to the fact strongest actors on television. that the original “Roseanne” had It quickly becomes apparent always been intensely political, that it was, in fact, Roseanne without calling much attention Barr herself who prevented last to it. season’s “Roseanne” reboot from Old “Roseanne” was about a really being “Roseanne.” family’s improbable resilience When “Roseanne” was in the face of life’s anxieties. revived, ABC was quick to It captured the way families guard against Barr’s distasteful really experience politics: not political views by touting the through reductive strawman show’s new progressive bona arguments in the kitchen, but fides.

Roseanne through struggling Conner now had a to pay the bills and Black grandchild dealing with the and another who IRS and striking at was gender nonthe plastics factory.

Series Premiere conforming.

But That insight was it was the real on full display in ABC Roseanne, and the first episode not the fictional of “The Conners,” Tuesdays at 8 one, who loomed which saw the over the reboot. family weather How could anyone square those through grief and also come to characters with Roseanne terms with the sobering reality Barr’s documented racism and that the bills have to be paid and transphobia? How could a show the trivialities of life go on. about a regular family star a In the episode’s final scene, for notorious Trump supporter? the first time since Roseanne’s Last year’s “Roseanne” death, Dan sleeps in the bed he promised frank discussions and shared with his late wife. He good faith attempts to bridge tosses and turns, readjusts the the divide, but ultimately it was covers, makes his peace and an empty promise. In the first closes his eyes. It’s unfamiliar, episode of the season, Jackie, even strange, but there’s a way clad in a “Nasty Woman” T-shirt forward.

“The Conners”

Arts

6A — Wednesday , October 24, 2018

FILM REVIEW

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

CONCERT REVIEW

FOX SEARCHLIGHT

NETTWERK

Robert Redford charms in Great Lake Swimmers ‘The Old Man and the Gun’ own the midwest sound ANISH TAMHANEY Daily Arts Writer

Heists have never felt so heartwarming.

“The Old Man and the Gun” provides the mostly-true story of Forrest Tucker, a lifelong criminal who escapes prison at 70 and begins a gleeful spree of robberies again. He confounds nearly everyone he encounters, from a woman he falls in love with (Sissy Spacek, “The Help”) to an amused detective (Casey Aff leck, “Manchester by the Sea”) to dozens of nervous bank tellers.

Director David Lowery (“A Ghost Story”) outfits the film with a nostalgic look and feel.

The picture is grainy enough to feel as if the events not only happened in another era, but were filmed then too. His camerawork is self-indulgently goofy at times, with quick pans and zooms, invoking the absurdity of the story at hand, yet his style more prominently features extreme close-ups of his well-chosen cast. The proximity to their visages is not claustrophobic; it’s endearing and emotionally persuasive.

Perhaps these shots work well because every performance in the film is

genuine and captivating.

Even those in the supporting cast, including Danny Glover (“Sorry to Bother You”) and Tom Waits (“Short Cuts”), never feel as though they are acting. Each line of dialogue feels fresh and spontaneous,

contagious grin hold the movie together, but makes it believable too. A viewer might ask themselves, “Would I really hand over money to a man who never showed me that he had a gun?” And upon seeing Redford’s confident charisma, the answer is inarguably: Yes. A recurring point of humor in the movie is the way that Tucker smiles politely at the people as he robs them, making them feel at ease as they hand over bags of cash.

But the expression is as much a descriptor of Redford’s witty charm as it is the audience’s reaction to the robberies — not trepidation or urgency, but glee.

For all these enjoyable moments, the film purviews a gentle appreciation and not much else. Lowery aims for a pure, untainted ode to Redford’s legendary career, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But when the narrative momentum picks up, the genuf lection overrides any possibility of tension from the audience.

The truth is, the film wraps the viewer up so completely within itself that the constant encomium does not vastly take away from the experience.

However, it prevents the film from having a truly gripping

“The Old Man and the Gun” Michigan Theater Fox Searchlight

each idiosyncrasy smooth and habitual. Above all, the film oozes humanity, and that’s why its impact is so memorable.

“Old Man” defies the abrasive tendencies in its genre with admirable indifference.

It is among the few truly “feel good” crime stories, not forcing a viewer in with guns and violence, but inviting them instead with a pair of twinkling eyes and an old-timey charm.

Those twinkling eyes, of course, belong to none other than Robert Redford, a legend made iconic by his role as the Sundance Kid. Not only does Redford’s dry wit and

DAILY ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN

Why I don’t believe in “media socialism” Spotify.

Pandora.

Apple Music. What do these things have in common? They are all music streaming services that have become all but omnipresent across the entertainment landscape. Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and the forthcoming Disney streaming service are gaining an ever larger foothold on the way we consume media. I try to avoid taking part in any of it. Oh sure, I mooch off my family’s Netflix account and occasionally log into my roommate’s HBO Go app on my laptop, but when it comes to music, for many years now, I have done what most of my friends are convinced is insane: I’ve remained firmly rooted in the past.

I have never had a Spotify account. Ditto for Pandora or Apple Music. When I was in middle school, I would occasionally dabble with Grooveshark, which to the illinformed was kind of like a free Spotify before Spotify was a thing (it was also totally illegal and got shut down eventually), but I never made the jump to the trendier music platforms that have come to dominate our culture. There’s a very simple reason for this, the same one I give whenever I am questioned on this point by any of my understandably incredulous friends: I don’t believe in media socialism.

There’s an analogy I like to use whenever I end up on this particular soapbox. Imagine a world where there aren’t any

bookstores. The only way you can read books is by going to a library. Now imagine that public libraries don’t exist. The only libraries that are around are ones privately funded and owned by corporations that have become increasingly stringent about giving the authors of those books

IAN HARRIS the proper cut of the profits from their work. These authors have no choice but to go along with this system because if they don’t put their writing out through these privately owned libraries, then there will be no real way for them to get it out at all. That is the world that I believe we will soon be living in with regards to music.

What will I do if, say a decade from now, I decide I don’t agree with something that the Spotify company is doing, or, for whatever reason, I no longer want to pay for the service and decide to leave it? Suddenly, I no longer have access to any music

from the past decade and a half of my life, having not purchased an album since around 2013.

I already feel trapped in the technological prison of Apple.

In the past two years, both my phone and laptop have broken and have required replacement and both times I felt forced to pay a new Apple product even though I felt strongly that I was buying what was essentially an inferior product to what I had before (the lack of ports on the new MacBook Pro is especially detrimental to a film major’s lifestyle). I fear that many of us will soon end up in this same trap with music.

I still download songs (or albums from CDs I’ve purchased), load them onto my iPhone and manually choose what playlists and songs to listen to whenever I leave class or go for a run. Many have called me insane. I can only get away with this because I don’t listen to a lot of modern music, so it’s not like I’m constantly having to go out and buy the new Travis Scott or Kanye West album. Those people might be right. But I don’t think I’m entirely wrong either. Much and more has been written about how bad the move to streaming is for artists, and while it seemingly creates a more diverse marketplace, it also minimizes the number of outlets that new music can be successfully distributed through.

I’m a slow adapter. I still frequently use my external disc drive. I’m not at all opposed to purchasing DVDs or Blu-Rays

MEGHAN CHOU Daily Arts Writer

For a band from Toronto, Great Lake Swimmers gives off a strong f lyover country vibe, an initial modesty that quickly finds its voice. At The Ark on a rainy Friday night, lead singer Tony Dekker stood awkwardly at the mic, his hands in fists and stance unbalanced. Bassist Bret Higgins wore abbreviated cowboy boots that barely reached above his ankles. The rest of the ensemble — Kelsey McNulty on keyboards and Erik Arnesen on guitar and banjo — also exuded a midwest humbleness in their presence.

Only drummer Marshall Bureau added a showy, urban energy to the stage. However, once the band settled in, their music pulled the audience along for a great ride.

On tour for their new album The Waves, The Wake, Great Lake Swimmers stepped away from their usual acoustic guitar-centered sound to a more multi-instrumental taste.

The band often records albums in non-studio locations like an abandoned grain silo for their debut Great Lake Swimmers and a 145-year-old church for The Waves, The Wake. As a result, even with the acoustic

of movies I intend to frequently re-watch. I never took much to e-readers or e-books and like to read front to back a copy of the New Yorker that comes to my door every week (thank you, Grandpa). Before I joined The Daily, I would always pick up a copy on my way up my dorm at the end of the day. Call me oldfashioned, but there’s something about actually having a physical copy of a piece of entertainment or work of literature that helps

Imagine a world where there aren’t any bookstores.

The only way you can read books is by going to a library. Now imagine that public libraries don’t exist.

me to connect with it. I find that screens create a distance between us and the material we are trying to engage with, or at least they do for me. That’s why I’m against media socialism. I live in fear of the idea that one day, the only place I will be able to find new music is by paying $10 a month to Spotify or, god forbid, giving even more money to Apple. So join me. Drag that song from your iTunes to your iPhone. Pop that CD into the player in the car.

beauty produced in a venue like The Ark, their live set has trouble mimicking the recording.

Still, Great Lake Swimmers found a way to fill the

space with the addition of McNulty on keyboards. Her stripped-down synth patterns contrasted the more classic folk guitars and bass, bringing the band into a new era.

Although the band could not transport a whole woodwind

section, they were clever in how to adjust the set and minimize gaps in the music.

Several songs began with a solo instrument then added different sounds, crescendoing into a massive wave.

Despite their indie status, Great Lake Swimmers released their first album back in 2003 and have since produced a steady stream of EPs and records. Reliant on the songwriting talents of Dekker, Great Lake Swimmers has been a constant presence in the Canadian folk-rock scene, receiving nominations for the Polaris Prize and Juno Awards. While tracks like “The Great Exhale” from New Wild Everywhere and “Zero in the City” from A Forest of Arms follow the traditional songwriting verse-chorusverse-chorus formula, other tracks run off on tangents of enchanting harmonization or instrumental interludes. When the band played “In a Certain Way,” Arnesen’s banjo riff alone could carry the song.

Great Lake Swimmers are a hidden gem of folk rock music.

Although they are based in Canada, their soulful rhythm guitar and sincere lyrics radiate a Midwestern feel, making the band right at home in the Great Lakes state.

Bust out a cassette tape every now and then. You might find yourself rediscovering an old favorite, or finding new meaning a song you’ve heard a thousand

times. You might also realize you haven’t been missing anything at all. In that case, no problem, I’m sure Spotify will have a few suggestions for you.

Although they are based in Canada, their soulful rhythm guitar and sincere lyrics radiate a Midwestern feel, making the band right at home in the Great Lakes state.

Release Date: Wednesday, October 24, 2018

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

ACROSS 1 Vote to accept 6 Sincerely asks for 10 Vicki Lawrence sitcom role 14 Harley owner 15 “This is __ a test” 16 Flower painted by van Gogh 17 Roadblocks 19 Friendly 20 Win the affections of 21 “__ lost!”

22 Mental flash 23 Be rude to 24 Doc’s org.

26 Good name for many a tree-lined street 28 Energy 29 Barely sufficient 33 “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” co-creator Fey 37 Crossed (out) 39 Prepare, as Romano 40 Womb-related 42 Crowd control weapon 44 Part of TNT 45 Trace amount 47 Not tacit 48 Ledger column 50 Charlotte-toRaleigh dir.

51 Did nothing 52 Calypsoinfluenced genre 53 __ of March 57 Minor argument 60 Baseball bat wood 62 In the center 64 Airport idler 65 Gambles in a church basement, maybe 67 Golfer’s selection 68 Easy gait 69 Winemaker with 1900 acres of vineyards in California 70 __ a bell: sounded familiar 71 Short-horned bighorns 72 Lid inflammations DOWN 1 Clerics in un monastère

2 “Outlander” novelist Gabaldon 3 Gumbo pods 4 Salon jobs 5 Crosby, Stills & Nash, e.g.

6 Fancy neckwear 7 Final stage of a chess match 8 TV series with choreographed numbers 9 Word with metric or merit 10 Wawa and 7-Eleven 11 Bone-dry 12 Attic pests 13 Topside, perhaps 18 Cowardly 25 With 38-Down, bar offering found in each set of circles 27 Big name in small construction 30 “Poker Face” Lady 31 Needle case 32 Tear to bits 33 Sushi option

34 “For real?”

35 Brooklyn NBA team 36 Captivating 38 See 25-Down 41 Greek letter 43 Support group?

46 Mold into a new form 49 Paper clip alternative 53 Senseless sort 54 Shabby

55 Sharp-eyed hunter 56 Astringent plumlike fruits 57 Prepare, as a 25-/38-Down 58 Prefix with graph 59 Neural transmitter 61 Hoping for more customers 63 Drops off 66 “Amen!”

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

By Tim Schenck ©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

10/24/18

10/24/18

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Sports

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 — 7A

Livers looks for more aggression as sophomore Wolverines draw, 1-1,

with Michigan State

JACOB SHAMES Daily Sports Writer

Coming off an illustrious prep career at Kalamazoo Central High School, Isaiah Livers joined the Michigan men’s basketball team last year with hype and anticipation as one of the program’s top recruits.

He then proceeded to make himself invisible.

As a freshman, Livers did much of the dirty work: cleaning up the offensive glass, playing solid defense and scoring only when needed.

In 15.1 minutes per game, he averaged 3.4 points on 2.9 shots and recorded a miniscule 12.9 usage rate — the lowest of any Wolverine. He attempted just 12 free throws all season.

Granted, with shot creators such as Moritz Wagner and Muhammad-Ali AbdurRahkman around him, Livers didn’t necessarily need to be noticed. He was the prototypical role player, and he filled a role that implied — if not demanded — invisibility.

Of course, that’s different this year. Wagner, AbdurRahkman and Duncan Robinson play professionally now, and much of Michigan’s creative punch and outside shooting will have to be replaced.

Some of that responsibility will fall to Livers, but right now, it’s unclear just how much.

Livers’ fit on the team is still very much a mystery, but Wolverine players and coaches will tell you it’s no mystery what Livers can be.

At 6-foot-7 and 235 pounds, Michigan’s Gatorade Player of the Year and Mr. Basketball in 2017 has a potent combination of size, athleticism and shooting range seemingly tailor-made for coach John Beilein’s offensive system.

The process of harnessing Livers’ considerable talent, in large part, might just involve the passage of time and the transition from freshman to sophomore. Livers admitted at Michigan’s media day on Monday that he “wasn’t much of a talker” last year. But this year, players and coaches have both noted his improved on-court communication, pointing also to the relationship Livers developed with Robinson.

“He’s a very bright young man, very bright in school, and he thinks the same way defensively,” Beilein said. “He sees things around him and educates the other guys. That’s

KENT SCHWARTZ For the Daily

EVAN AARON/Daily

Sophomore forward Isaiah Livers has embodied a more assertive mentality in his second year with the Wolverines.

the biggest thing. He probably has more of a sense of a veteran than a lot of sophomores would have.”

Added assistant coach Luke Yaklich: “Isaiah was able to sit next to Duncan in the film room every single day, share a lot of the same drills together and a lot of the same defensive talks last year. And he saw the value of Duncan’s presence on the defensive end, because of the IQ he had, the positioning he had, and then the personal challenge that Duncan took every day. Isaiah came in and this summer and said, ‘I’m going to be that talker this year, I’m going to be the communicator, I’m going to be the guy that can guard multiple positions.’ And so far he’s done a wonderful job doing that.”

Livers bolstered more than his communication skills this offseason, in which he spent both the spring and summer semesters in Ann Arbor along with sophomore guard Jordan Poole, his best friend on the team. And from Poole’s observation, some of Poole’s trademark swagger may have rubbed off on his roommate.

“He’s been really aggressive.

We were really trying to get on Isaiah last year about taking more shots,” Poole said. “...

“He’s extremely athletic and he has God-given talent...”

He’s extremely athletic and he has God-given talent, so we just worked out every day and we were focusing on being confident in your shot, get to your spots, start working on moving more naturally.”

Poole isn’t the only one who’s been impressed with Livers’ more assertive mentality. Junior center Jon Teske mentioned that Livers dunked on him in practice on Sunday — no small feat against a 7-foot-1 behemoth.

Monday’s practice displayed more of the same.

Livers threw down a handful of impressive dunks in open play, and towards the end of an offensive set, he spun and hit a deep, contested threepointer. Coming out to guard highly-touted freshman Ignas Brazdeikis on the perimeter, Livers stayed in front of him all the way to the rim, where he cleanly rejected the Canadian slasher’s layup. “(Yaklich) talks about hunting shots all the time,” Livers said. “I wasn’t much of a hunter last year. … But this year I feel so much different because I think the offseason really helped, staying here in the spring and summer, I learned so much about the offense. So now I know where my shots are and when to hunt

them.”

Livers is probably never going to be Poole. Even with the glut of offensive creativity that the Wolverines have to replace, it’s not necessarily imperative that he change his game. After all, while he may have been invisible last season, he was quite solid at doing so.

But that invisibility, coupled with Livers’ potential, rendered his freshman season inconclusive.

As a sophomore, though, Livers is seemingly established as Michigan’s starter at the ‘4.’ It’s a role that should come with increased confidence, responsibility and attention.

Will Livers remain the capable “glue guy” he was as a freshman? Or will he tap into his potential as a defensive communicator and powerful scorer, and emerge as one of the Big Ten’s elite power forwards?

It’s not exactly a make-orbreak scenario, but this year, the Wolverines should start to find out just who they have in him.

“Coach B knows what he expects and Isaiah knows what he expects from himself,” Poole said. “He’s locked in, he’s a different player than he was last year.”

“I wasn’t much of a hunter last year.”

Chaos.

Wild, wild football. There was no order in the game. There were no beautiful goal-scoring sequences. There was just swinging legs, knees, shoulders, hips. Clean contact on the ball was something you only saw when the ball was stationary.

That describes nearly every opportunity that came for the Michigan men’s soccer team in the second half and beyond Tuesday night against Michigan State, including senior forward Noah Kleedtke’s game-tying goal in the 78th minute. The cross came in from sophomore defender Austin Swiech, past Spartan goalkeeper Jimmy Hague’s outstretched arms, bounced on the ground, then off a defender and right into the path of Kleedtke’s knee.

The goal was an important equalizer for the Wolverines (9-42 overall, 3-2-2 Big Ten), as the game ended in a 1-1 draw. Michigan State (10-2-4, 4-1-2) had scored in the 52nd minute with a half-volley from Jack Beck that went just past the reach of a screened Michigan sophomore goalkeeper Henry Mashburn.

The draw means Michigan is currently the fifth seed in the Big Ten Tournament, one point behind Maryland and Wisconsin. The top four seeds host a quarterfinal match. There is still hope, though, for the Wolverines’ chances to host the quarterfinal match: they play the Terrapins Sunday in the regular season finale.

“Our guys would love to play another home game in front of our fans, in front of our families, in front of our local crowd,” said Michigan coach Chaka Daley.

“We’ll certainly be looking to push the game. We won’t go in looking to tie, we’re obviously looking to see if we can win the next one.”

However, Michigan’s form recently has been subpar. In the last five games, the Wolverines are

1-3-1, their lone win against Detroit Mercy. Tuesday, while they showed fight, they also showed an inability to finish. Nine shots on goal and nine corners led to only one goal.

Kleedtke’s goal was the standout, in fact. Time and time again for Michigan the ball would enter the box, and the shot would go wide, straight to the goalkeeper, or the kick would just miss the ball entirely. If the Wolverines could have finished those chances, they could have won the game cleanly.

“We had many chances in and around the six,” Daley said. “We were stunned on the sideline that we couldn’t get a touch or a foot on the ball to steal the game completely.”

Instead it was an entertaining, chaotic game. A game of two halves and two styles.

The first half was organized, patient, precise. Especially for Michigan.

“We not just dominated out wide, but dominated the game in many stretches, especially in the first half,” Daley said.

The second half, not so much.

The Spartans got their goal early, and as the game went on the Wolverines got more and more desperate, leading to chaotic football where no one knew what was going to happen next, especially after Michigan’s equalizer.

The first overtime was just a continuation of the second half.

Chance after chance for either team. If you blinked, you missed it. The second overtime, though, was a lazy 10 minutes with little excitement or chances — they were tired.

Still, Daley and Michigan stayed upbeat reflecting on the draw.

“I mean from our perspective, we’re pleased with the performance, disappointed with the result,” Daley said. “I think we’re a little bit unfortunate not to get more out of the game tonight, but on the road in the Big Ten, you always take point. You put points on the board and keep fighting.”

CARTER FOX/Daily

Senior forward Noah Kleedtke scored the game-tying goal on Tuesday night.

8A — Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Harbaugh’s last shot at Dantonio Michigan sweeps at

J

im Harbaugh did not need to host a press conference on Monday. Only once, in fact, had the Michigan MARK football coach CALCAGNO done so during a bye week.

That was a year ago when a spinal injury to former Wolverines quarterback Wilton Speight prompted Harbaugh to criticize Purdue’s football facilities.

It was a calculated message intended to spark reform by the Big Ten Conference.

Harbaugh started his weekly meeting with reporters on Monday with his standard fare: a limited update on injuries, compliments for his players and goals for the bye week — stuff that fills the morning sports pages but nothing that makes you blink twice.

That was until 19 minutes in, when Harbaugh pulled a piece of paper out from his back pocket. He decided it was time to deliver the message he had come to give.

First was his bureaucratic assessment of the Wolverines and Spartans’ pregame fracas. Then came his latest cut at Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio.

“It’s the opposite of B.S. Coach (Dantonio) said it was B.S. That’s not B.S., that’s fact. … I’ll go one step further and use Coach Dantonio’s words from a few years back,” Harbaugh said, dipping his head down to read, “ ‘It’s not a product of a team but their program.’ ” “And that’s using his words.”

Those words mean that college football teams are indicative of their coaches. And if so, the MichiganMichigan State rivalry has hit a new level of quarrelsomeness.

Harbaugh and Dantonio have a history of tempered ill-will that broadened Monday. Last December, after the Wolverines were picked ahead of the Spartans to participate in the Outback Bowl, Dantonio said he’d “just continue to concentrate

on beating Michigan.”

Harbaugh, as he did Monday, made sure to counter.

“Saw Coach D comments on continuing to ‘focus’ on how ‘he’ can beat Michigan,” Harbaugh tweeted on Dec. 4. “Congrats on turning around a 3-9 team, plagued with off field issues.”

Dantonio then retorted with his infamous response to Mike Hart’s 2007 “little brother” comments.

“It’s not over, it’ll never be over, it’s just getting started,” Dantonio tweeted two hours later.

Michigan State used Hart’s words as locker room bulletin board material for years. It fueled the Spartans to eight wins in the series’ past 11 meetings.

The lasting images from Saturday’s game will only add fuel to the fire. Fifth-year senior defensive end Chase Winovich repeated Hart’s quote verbatim in his FOX postgame interview. Devin Bush Jr., of course, tore up the Michigan State logo at midfield after his pregame exchange with the Spartan Walk.

“I don’t blame Devin,” Harbaugh said when asked about his message to the junior linebacker. “I like the

way our guys handled it.”

Hear that? Jim Harbaugh doesn’t mind his players participating in the pettiness. He wants them to get into it. His note read that teams are a product of their programs — and he has certainly chosen to battle with Dantonio.

It’s no surprise, then, to see the two sides continue to go back and forth.

“That’d be like going back and saying ‘Oh, look at Devin Bush!

Look at him out there, he’s out at midfield scraping up the logo,’ ” Harbaugh continued, pointing and working his hands in a digging motion. “After what just took place, I mean, that’s right out of the Pistons’ playbook. Do something to them, say something to them, elbow them, and then when somebody else does something back, then flop.”

Harbaugh was referring to the Bad Boys Era Detroit Pistons, who were famous for doing anything necessary — trash talk, cheap shots and pure disrespect included — to get under their opponents’ skin.

Whether Dantonio “orchestrated” a “stormtrooper” march

to provoke the Wolverines is up to who you ask. That is how Harbaugh saw it, but Michigan State released a statement Monday night saying it followed the planned protocol and the tradition had “never” caused issues before.

One way or another, Harbaugh came to Schembechler Hall with a mission: to provoke Dantonio, just as he thought the Spartan coach had done to him two days earlier.

Eventually, Harbaugh ended his spiel and press conference on a rosy note, quoting legendary radio announcer Bob Ufer before calling defensive coordinator Don Brown the best coach he’d been around.

Mission accomplished.

On Tuesday, however, Dantonio refused to answer questions about Harbaugh’s comments, seemingly ending things for the time being.

But if the both the rivalry and coaches’ history is any indication, this won’t be the last spat between Jim Harbaugh and Mark Dantonio.

Calcagno can be reached at markcal@umich.edu or on Twitter at @MWCalcagno.

Daily Sports Writer

Eyes and ears were fixated as Chase Winovich repeated Mike Hart’s “little brother” remarks on television after topping Michigan State. All of the hype, eye-rolls or whatever you felt was translated to a sustained social media frenzy.

Josh Uche’s TV interview followed and hardly a peep was made of it.

Speaking after Winovich, one could imagine, is a tough act to follow. With his eyes wideopen, the junior defensive end was loud and clear.

“All that celebrating, all that talking (the Spartans were) doing before the game, all that just fueled the fire,” a fiery Uche shouted into the microphone. “We love that, man. We love that shit. Excuse my language, but this is what we do. If you want to talk that talk, well, we can walk that walk. We just came out and dominated like we were supposed to.”

Uche rarely, if ever, likes to talk about himself — his impact is often muff led amongst a starstudded defensive unit anyway.

But in the wake of an injury with an unknown timeline to defensive end Rashan Gary, Uche has seamlessly filled his absence and shined. His two sacks against Michigan State upped his season total to five — a team high.

Not too shabby for a secondstringer.

“Yeah, Josh Uche’s playing really good ball,” said Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh on Monday. “Two big sacks in the game. Really coming off the edge with speed and power, and impacting the games. He’s doing a great job.”

It’s difficult to characterize Uche’s play as surprising given the track record of Don Brown

PAIGE VOEFFRAY Daily Sports Editor

There was a lot on the line for the Michigan women’s tennis team as it hosted the ITA Midwest Regional.

The six-day tournament featured 22 teams, eight top-100 ranked players and automatic berths to the Oracle ITA National Fall Championships.

And once the tournament wrapped up Tuesday, it was clear the Wolverines had the most dominant performance.

In an event where all players were entered individually and weren’t affiliated as a team, Michigan found its most common opponent to be, well, Michigan.

Senior Kate Fahey swept the weekend, winning the doubles and singles draws. But in order to claim the singles crown, Fahey had to get past two of her own teammates. After breezing through her first three rounds — outscoring her opponents, 36-4 — Fahey faced her biggest challenge of the tournament in the semifinal.

Surely Fahey had played fellow senior Brienne Minor many times in practice, but this time around, there was more on the line. Either side refused to budge in the first set, sending it to a tiebreaker. Minor just barely took the set, giving her the momentum in the second set. She was one game away from the championship match, but Fahey rattled off nine of the match’s final 12 games to steal the match from Minor.

“I was telling my mom if Bri had played one more good game, I was out of there,” Fahey said.

“But she played really, really well the whole tournament. … It kind of just came down to toughing it out, toughing that second set out, and the third set I played well again. It was good.”

But the battle wasn’t over.

Awaiting Fahey in the finals was another teammate, junior Chiara Lommer.

Fahey cruised to an early 5-1 lead and even as Lommer tried to battle back, Fahey took the first set, 6-4. The second set was much less contested and Fahey punched her ticket to the National Fall Championships with a 6-2 victory.

“It’s brutal,” Fahey said. “Like Chiara and I room together and

we were studying together last night. It’s tough obviously and you never want to do it, it feels like a practice match. But it gets pretty competitive. I mean, obviously we both want to win.

“Obviously, when I played Bri and Chiara, there’s both mutual respect there.”

While Fahey triumphed in the singles draw, that’s not the only thing she has to show for her weekend. Just days before knocking Minor out of the singles draw, the duo clinched the doubles title and earned themselves a spot at the fall championships. The pair outscored their opponents, 40-13, over six games.

The all-senior pairing isn’t one fans are used to. While it is rare for Minor and Fahey to play together, it usually proves beneficial for the Wolverines.

“I love playing with Bri,” Fahey said. “I love playing with everyone, but playing with Bri is special, being the same year.

We’ve been through a lot. … It’s just really fun.

I think she’s one of the only people who can make me smile on a tennis court.”

There seems to be plenty for Fahey and Michigan to smile about after the tournament they had and it has Michigan coach Ronni Bernstein thinking about what this means for January and the team’s spring season.

“We have the best teams in the region here so it’s exciting to see where we are in October,” Bernstein said. “I thought it was good that we didn’t really have to play each other until the very end. You know, with so many people in it sometimes, they can play early and knock each other out.

“I’m proud of the girls, we saw a lot of good stuff and to see Chiara and Kate playing each other in the finals is really good for the program.”

Fahey continues to prove herself as the frontrunner of this Wolverine squad, but there were many bright spots coming from this weekend. All Michigan players won at least one match throughout the tournament and four Wolverines made it to the quarterfinals of the singles draw. Bernstein is excited about where her team is at right now, but what may be even more exciting is where it will be next spring.

“I mean, obviously we both want to win.”

EVAN AARON/Daily

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh commented on the pre-game antics between Michigan and Michigan State on Saturday.

With Gary out, Uche stars on defensive line ETHAN WOLFE

ITA Midwest Regional

defenses. But the ascendance of Uche rests squarely on his shoulders.

It started with a conversation Brown recalled with Uche.

“After the (2017) bowl game, we had a discussion because he wanted to play more,” Brown remembered prior to the 2018 season opener. “He wanted to fight me, I think. He wants to play. It’s easy to say, ‘Hey coach, I want to play.

Let me play.’

Go earn it, how about that?

How about go earn it? Well, he’s earned it.

I think that’s probably fair to say.”

Uche’s no-nonsense pragmatism has become his trademark. It could just be a byproduct of being on the No. 1-ranked defense in the country through eight weeks.

When asked about what the team’s trademark was, Uche retorted “You tell me?” like it was sacreligious that he was being asked to spell it out.

He’s blunt and confident, beyond overused media

“If you want to talk that talk, well, we can walk that walk.”

platitudes. What did he have to say after a second-half shutout and game-ending sack against Northwestern?

“We knew they couldn’t really hang with us.”

And after a sack and dominant performance against Wisconsin?

“We’ve been a dominant defense all year, that’s what we do. … If they gave up, that’s on them, that’s a personal problem on their side.”

Beating offenses into submission has been a theme of Michigan’s 2018 defense, though, and Uche has been a spark plug for that tendency. He is listed at 238 pounds and runs a 4.5 forty-yard dash according to Brown, who also said he “gave (strength and conditioning coach) Ben Herbert a kiss on the lips for that.”

But his technique has also been revelatory.

Scrolling through Uche’s Twitter, you can find videos he retweeted

after the Michigan State game with hundreds of likes that dissects how he swatted an opposing lineman’s hands to create a path to the quarterback.

If Gary returns this season, the defense will have that much of an easier time staying as the top-ranked defense, with Uche maintaining a prominent spot in that defensive line rotation.

He may not be a household name like Winovich, Gary or junior linebacker Devin Bush Jr. But Uche has the same intensity, if not greater. In that same post-game interview, he was asked what he felt about Bush’s pre-game yelling and field stomping.

“We from the same place, I wouldn’t expect anything less than that,” Uche said. “I would’ve done the same thing.”

And he stared at the interviewer like he was angry, even in the most celebratory moment of Michigan’s season.

“We knew they couldn’t really hang with us.”

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Junior defensive end Josh Uche leads Michigan’s football team in sacks with five throughout the 2018 season.

MEN’S BASKETBALL

2020 guard Zeb Jackson

commits to play at ‘M’ ETHAN SEARS

Daily Sports Writer

John Beilein picked up his first commitment of the 2020 cycle on Tuesday night.

Zeb Jackson, a four-star guard from Maumee, Ohio, committed to Michigan over a final seven that included Ohio State, Michigan State, Butler, Purdue, Arizona State and Marquette via a video on his Twitter.

Jackson, who plays for junior guard Zavier Simpson’s father, Quincey, with Under Armour C2K Elite’s AAU program, has developed a close relationship with the Wolverine point guard.

“Zavier’s like my brother,” Jackson said over the phone last month, “so we talk a lot.”

Jackson never officially visited Michigan because he lives just 45 minutes away, making Ann Arbor an easy weekend jaunt. In addition to Simpson, he also mentioned Jordan Poole, Isaiah Livers and David DeJulius as players with whom he’s close. Jackson camped with the Wolverines in June, and though he nearly announced a commitment to Butler in August, saw his profile rise from there. In September, after coming to watch him work out, Beilein

extended Michigan’s first offer of the 2020 cycle to Jackson.

In addition to location and Simpson, there was another connection working in Michigan’s favor. Assistant coach DeAndre Haynes, who took a lead in Jackson’s recruitment, was on Toledo’s staff when the Rockets offered him in eighth grade.

“A close relationship with the head coach, a place where I’ll feel comfortable to play my game,” Jackson said when asked what he looked for in a school. “Life after basketball, like, having a coach who can teach me how to be more than a player, be a man. Go to a school where a degree goes a long way. And my final goal is to go to the NBA. And win, and win.”

Jackson, a scorer who can make plays off ball-screens, fits well in Beilein’s system.

On a 2020 roster that will have lost Zavier Simpson, adding a guard was an important step as well.

As of now, the Wolverines have allotted 12 of 13 scholarships for the 2020-21 season, as with the 2019-20 season, and will likely plan for departures between now and then. Four-star Ethan Morton is currently their only other offer for the class of 2020.

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | O C TO B E R 24 , 201 8

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Wednesday, October 24, 2018// The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | O C TO B E R 24 , 201 8

Managing Statement Editor: Brian Kuang

Editor in Chief: Alexa St. John

Managing Editor: Dayton Hare

Deputy Editors: Colin Beresford Jennifer Meer

Photo Editor: Amelia Cacchione

Copy Editors: Elise Laarman Finntan Storer

Designer: Elizabeth Bigham

The Gaper on State Street

BY MARTINA VILLALOBOS, COLUMNIST

I

t was the first chilly night in Ann Arbor since term had started. I was walking down State Street with a friend — the plans of watching a movie on the horizon to escape the stressful realities of our lives. While we were walking, the brisk October air at our heels, we noticed a man coming toward us. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, and yet this article wouldn’t be possible without his gaze.

Face buried in a book, he quickly glances up to realize he is on a track to collide with us, but he looks back down at his book almost as if he hadn’t quite rationalized what he saw. He takes a few more steps toward us, only to finally catch up with what he saw, and looks up again, only this time, his mouth is gaping open.

He is quickly behind us — my friend and I begin to laugh. Sure, we are all

guilty of staring, but this was almost visceral. We spent the next several minutes arguing that the gaper was in fact gaping at the other one. Giggling like high school girls, the uncomfortable moment was soon behind us.

I think the first time that I became acutely aware of my gender was earlier this year. I had flown across the Atlantic and spent six weeks of the summer in France. It was on the dimlylit cobblestone streets of Europe that I began to be conscious that I am a woman.

I have always identified as female.

However, the actual weight and composition of what it means to be a woman, at least for me, wasn’t a daily thought. It was a fact as arbitrary as the clothes I wear — an afterthought.

This began to change in France.

There, my gender became an identifier that I could never seem to leave the

house without. It was in France that I began to notice the cars slow down as the men inside checked me out. My resting face was interpreted as an invitation to conversation. My polite, “excuse-moi”

is an afterthought — only a part of my identity, not the entirety of it. However, in France, I felt as though my gender was the first thing people noticed. It wasn’t always the overt catcalling that

“While we were walking, the brisk October air at our heels, we noticed a man coming toward us. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, and yet this article wouldn’t be possible without his gaze.”

was now an opening. It was as though I was plagued by my own gender, unable to shake it off. There is a strong notion that European countries have won critical social battles, leaving the United States behind. While several important social victories have taken place within French borders, there is still significant work to be done in regard to gender equality. There is a sexism ingrained in the very fibers of the culture — it is in these nuances that sexism proliferates.

Before leaving for study abroad, women are often advised to be alert to these cultural differences. These small things like catcalling — that at times may be deemed negligible — are so commonplace that it is difficult to eradicate them making the problem of gender equality harder to answer.

Yet, despite being aware of these potential moments, I was not necessarily prepared to accept them. I still shuddered when the older French man leaned into me and whispered in my ear, “Vous-etes merveilleuse,” or “You are magnificent,” as if I were a specimen to be admired. I could hear his voice carry throughout my body. A whisper in an ear is not the worst thing that most women experience, but establishing a hierarchy of grievances only stands to divide us.

Prior to studying abroad, when I would walk in the U.S. — where there is still notable gender inequality — I ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY KOFFSKYwould walk like a person whose gender

reminded me that I was a woman, but rather always feeling under someone’s gaze. At times it was rather unsettling to walk to class just to have someone peer at me from head to toe.

I don’t think this is a problem exclusive to France, nor to the greater European Union. Gender equality is a battle that has been underway for several decades and its successes or failures are manifested in various ways across the world. France has several initiatives in order to combat things like catcalling. There are posters everywhere on the trains ensuring that harassment is prohibited. There are even laws that attempt to penalize those who catcall women. Such incentives are important for moving forward, but they are not an end all be all solution.

So as I walked down State Street, the gaze brought me back to this struggle of being aware of my gender. What I believe lay dormant in the U.S. was in fact still active. A sensation I thought would stay within the confines of study abroad managed to permeate to my daily life. Maybe a gaping man is innocent, but it is not the man itself that is unsettling, it is that the gape reduces you to nothing more than the exploitation of your gender. Your sexuality is taken without your consent and objectified. A woman walking down the becomes an object for admiration, not a person.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 // The Statement

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Navigating campus gyms: Rules that objectify

BY MIRIAM FRANCISCO, COLUMNIST

A

t the University of Michigan, sexism is often subtle. It’s hidden in plain sight, lodged in the school’s culture and traditions in ways that are hard to see and even harder to address.

One unexpected location of sexism?

Campus g yms.

Ideally, campus g yms are a space for students to unwind from the stresses of college life and stay physically active. In long Michigan winters, snow and freezing weather make outdoor physical activity nearly impossible. From November to March, the three campus g yms (North Campus Recreation Building, Central Campus Recreation Building and the Intramural Sports Building) are the only places where students can exercise indoors without paying membership fees for access to offcampus g yms, yoga studios or other workout spaces.

However, many female University students feel that Recreational Sports’s dress code policies, specifically those enforced in exercise settings, treat their bodies as dangerous and distracting.

In an online petition to change the IM Building ’s dress code, Information student Ankita Avadhani wrote about her roommate’s experience with being asked to cover up or change.

“I am absolutely appalled by the University of Michigan’s Intramural Sports Building,” Avadhani wrote.

“Today my roommate went to the IM building to work out in between classes. In the middle of her workout she was approached by an employee who told her that she was reported by someone using the space for wearing a sports bra … at the g ym.”

The petition, which as of Oct. 20 had 604 signatures and 48 comments, explains that the roommate eventually left after being told she needed to cover up because she was violating the dress code. The Recreational Sports’s participant g uidelines for facilities states, “Members must wear appropriate athletic clothing while working out and must wear shirts in all activity areas except the pool and saunas.”

“Yet, when I go to the g ym, I frequently see men in cut-out shirts which fully expose the rib-cage and torso side,” Avadhani wrote in the online petition. “This has become such common form of g ym apparel, it is now a cliché commonly referred to

as ‘bro-tanks.’”

“We are not blaming the IM building, its employees, or the University of Michigan,” Avadhani wrote.

“We are simply asking them to reevaluate their policies. Their current attire policy prioritizes the discomfort members have with women’s bodies over the benefits to physical and mental health for women. This alienates women who are seeking out a judgement-free place to improve their overall health and wellbeing. We need to change the dress code because sexism has no place at the University of Michigan.”

Numerous women commented on Avadhani’s Facebook post, which included an image of what her roommate wore at the gym, with accounts of their own experiences The Central Campus Recreation Building. with dress code violations best, these violations make women at campus gyms. uncomfortable. At worst, they can Irreg ular enforcement of dress end in violence and tragedy. codes at college g yms is not unique to Women’s bodies are especially the University of Michigan. In 2017, vulnerable to harassment during a College of Charleston student was physical activity, and the attitudes asked to cover up and ultimately leave that permeate campus g yms are the g ym for wearing a long sports bra not unrelated to this vulnerability. and leggings, an outfit which she was Unnecessarily gendered dress codes told did not comply with the g ym’s don’t keep g yms sanitary, they simply dress code. Another student had a create environments where women similar experience at a New York feel as though their bodies are on University g ym last fall. display for others to examine and Both students were told that the visually dissect. Dress codes that dress code was meant to ensure that target female bodies place the blame the g ym remained sanitary. for harassment and sexualization In 2016, a student at Santa Clara on women. They reinforce the idea University was asked to leave the that men are not to blame for their campus g ym after being told that actions, and that women must censor her crop top could facilitate the themselves to avoid violence. spread of MRSA (a bacteria-resistant While the University’s Recreational infection) and that it also violated Sports dress code is not overtly the university’s Jesuit ideals. A quick sexist, the accounts of many female Google search brings up page after students suggest that women may page of similar stories. be held to it more strictly than men, In private g yms, the issue is which is simply unfair. Recreational no better addressed.

Women Sports should take women’s are frequently cat-called while complaints seriously, and they should exercising and subjected to sexual reconsider why, exactly, sports bras comments about their bodies. At are considered inappropriate attire.

Alexis Rankin/Daily

I can’t help but wonder if it has more to do with the sexualization of women’s bodies than concerns about cleanliness.

I’ve been to the CCRB, and no one is monitoring everyone, ensuring they sanitize their machine after using it. If Recreational Sports is worried about exercise equipment spreading illness, that seems like a far more productive strateg y than trying to reduce the amount of exposed, sweaty skin.

When so many very big unfair things are happening to women in America, real rights, respect and safety all feel monumentally out of reach. While being asked to wear an extra layer at the g ym may seem unimportant compared to more extreme forms of discrimination and bodily harm, sexist enforcement of dress codes is just another example of the self-policing women must perform in public. By not allowing women to exercise in the clothes that make them most comfortable, campus g yms reproduce the same problematic environments that give way to more blatant forms of sexism.

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Wednesday, October 24, 2018 // The Statement

Aurora

A

urora is an invoker. By its definition, its implications and its pronunciation it invokes a sense of grandeur unlike any other word in the English language. It is my salvation, the conviction of all other convictions. It is that word that hangs over me during the starry night while I lay atop my vehicle in the middle of the field with a lover. It is a sweet song that plays, creating an ambiance of pure love that emanates into a halo around such a youthful and romantic desire. It is the sweet song playing now, as I write these words, driving my pen ever forward toward the love of it, whatever it might be.

The Aurora is completely pure, and is thus the greatest beacon of hope that exists. The only thing more pure is that which does not exist. It is a cold night.

Snow is on the ground casting away and purifying the unique color palate of warmer times. It is cold to the touch of a naked body walking onward forever in the direction of his or her prophecy.

There are dark trees in this snowy midnight. It is so dark that all that can be seen are the straight, defiantly vertical trunks.

We must walk toward the Aurora, for there is nothing else that can be done.

Ages pass and misery and happiness are merely transferred to new souls, the illusion of growth persists always.

Wednesday, October 24,, 2018 // The Statement

BY CODY LADD, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

And the notion of freedom is a poisoned and lost concept. If true freedom is to exist, then we must find the Aurora, and we will cry, for its beauty is unlike anything we have ever known. So much beauty to behold everywhere, if only our eyes were free to see it all.

The cold northern gale is a caress of the Aurora, it is a reminder to heed its call, the call of the wild, the call of the north and the call of life. Life as never before experienced. Life that has but one goal, one central desire, and whatever that might be, for it is irrelevant and different between each individual, it is more important to embark upon the journey of awareness and enlightenment; that one central desire is, for me, represented through Aurora. The journey itself very well might be the achievement of that, the panacea of ignorance, and the endeavor that changes forever a life. Getting lost to be found is never the goal. The process of truly getting lost is an arduous undertaking, and the reward of it is not getting lost, but being lost. Persisting in a state of perpetual lostness, with only the Aurora to guide me. That is what I principally desire.

A simple three syllable word.

Au-ror-a, and yet I am ruthlessly deconstructed immediately upon hearing and experiencing it. It is an aura of raw power to be tapped into and used

to build the newly aware’s confidence.

The word rolls of the tongue elegantly, the syllables are all vowel rich and are a pleasure to pronounce, and all three in a row creates a sort of light, airy word easy to speak. Aurora. Aurora. Aurora.

The Aurora borealis can be seen in the northern realms. I have never seen them before, and yet I worship them.

Perhaps I have associated Aurora with something more. . . evidently, this must be true. A f leeing into the northern kingdoms, away from all of the misery and lack of love and romance perhaps?

A pilgrimage, a great northern odyssey that we all want to take, though the reasons and direction might be different. Flee. Flee. Flee as fast as the naked body can through the darkness, moonlight unveiling the bare tree trunks and light snow falling. Falling slowly and gracefully like the breath of one in the midst of it. It as something undefinable, an inconceivable and inexplicable answer to an inconceivable and inexplicable question.

There is a power that drives life. A meaning that must be found. Aurora is my meaning, it is both a driving force and an end goal that is both attainable and unattainable. It is the wind that sways the trees and the sunlight that helps us wade through the darkness. It is the sweet music that is heard, immersive it is, and loved while in the region of one’s

dreams. It is even perhaps the love that is so essential to us all. We all must love; whether another individual, a place, a song, whether it is that journey through the midnight snow. Aurora is my it. And the midnight snow and bare tree trunks are my where; it is, in my soul, that particular region that we all have that begs for us to explore.

I would walk amongst those lonely trees forever in perhaps a vain attempt to find that other individual whom I can, and would completely, love and cherish. And we would love and cherish that particular region, and it would become the realest of realities.

I put hope into such a romance, and I shall walk through the snow until that happens, forever in that sad, northern midnight.

And at the brink of eternity, I must relinquish the siphon of pure wisdom that has been feeding me, and while it was personally useful and enjoyed, it must unselfishly be shared to those who have reached the edge of that lifealtering conviction of all convictions.

Aurora. Infinity. Aurora. Eternity.

Aurora. Awareness. Can you feel the passion building? Go on in a state of ecstatic excitement and anticipation . . . it is calling.

“I just got really good at covering up how I feel”: Profiles of gay loneliness

“Y

ou’re really cool, man, but I’m looking for a straight roommate.”

I wasn’t too surprised. The search for the perfect freshman year roommate was now nearing its fifth month, and this had been the third person I had connected with that had changed their mind about living with me after learning that I was gay.

But this one felt different. I thought I had checked off all the boxes. We had maintained a 20-day Snapchat streak, exchanging daily pictures that displayed how much fun our senior years were. We had talked about rushing a fraternity, what we wanted to major in. We both even agreed that we would — of course — attend every game at the Big House, but that our studies were “for sure” equally as important.

So when John (whose name is changed for privacy reasons) from California told me the day before the roommate request deadline that he could no longer live with me, I felt defective, as if I were a toy with compromised packaging. I still worked, but my torn label, nonetheless, meant I had to be returned.

“I think my roommate just broke up with me??” I half-jokingly texted a friend.

I did laugh at first. The process one had to go through to find the person you will be crammed into a room with for the next eight months was pretty strange.

Yet, with no one prepared to make the “brave” sacrifice of willingly living with a gay person, the fate of my first dorm experience was left in the hands of the University of Michigan Office for Student Life.

Despite this uncertain start, my excitement about moving to campus and experiencing the “best four years of my life” remained undeterred. It was Ann Arbor, after all, and the reality of being known as my high school’s “funny gay kid” would soon transform to a place where I could simply become just one among many. And to me, that casual existence also meant the ease of finally being in a community I could fully call my own.

Soon, I thought, I could unreservedly be me. id you hear about how Matt has a gay roommate?”

“D

I LLUSTR ATIO N BY ELIZ AB E TH ST U B B S

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“I heard. He needs to switch out ASAP,” a look of revulsion hardening his face.

“I’m not kidding. It’s disgusting. If my son became gay, I would legit kill him.”

It was the start of Welcome Week, and the naive hope of belonging was replaced with a familiar, aching feeling of loneliness. With my parents gone, and the temperature of my 12x11, un-air-

BY ALEX KUBIE, CONTRIBUTOR

conditioned room rising with the arrival of each eager freshman, I found myself sinking back into the hole I spent years digging myself out of. I came to Ann Arbor ready to embrace sides of myself that I never truly had the opportunity to explore. Now, I could finally take advantage of the resources, the community and the freedom that I had longed for. I had already come out in high school, so one of the top ten “Best Colleges for LGBTQ Students” was sure to only strengthen my confidence with my identity.

Yet, as the process of fraternity rush evolved and the pressure to find new friends mounted, I found myself falling back into the same patterns I had exhibited most of my life: Talk to girls, be as masculine as possible, but most importantly, do not let people know that you are gay.

“I’m not lying to anyone,” I tried convincing myself. “I just am keeping it to myself.”

For a while, this worked. Almost too well. While I had a few friends from home that were aware of my sexuality, in every other part of my college life, I simply “kept it to myself.” Maybe I thought it was a prize, an achievement when people came to believe I was straight. The more I could do this, I thought, the more friends I would have — and the rest I would figure out afterward.

But finally, this act began to become undone. Walking with five friends I had met from my dorm, the subject of roommates became the focus of our conversation. Recalling the struggle I had in finding my own, I remained silent.

Soon, however, their words brought back the dreaded feeling of loneliness that I worked so hard to escape. I listened as they began to describe their disgust of gay people: How they shouldn’t be placed in “straight rooms,” how they would disown their children if they were to “make this choice.” I was then reminded of why I came out in the first place and the importance of finding my own community at the University.

As my time at Michigan unfolded –– while speaking with friends, volunteers and even strangers –– I became engrossed by the distinct sense of commonality embedded in the experiences of LGBT students. I listened to familiar stories of fear, of dejection, of sadness. Stories uniquely their own but still bearing patterns similar enough to thread together into one tattered quilt. Even in a post-Obergefell v. Hodges world where same-sex couples have been guaranteed equal standing before the law in America, beyond the closet, even on a campus as accepting as the University of Michigan, gay students suffer an inescapable sense

Alex Kubie

“I

of otherness. think I was the last guy you were with before your girlfriend, so like, did I turn you gay?”

It’s 8:30 p.m. at Espresso Royale, and Information senior Nicole AckermanGreenberg is winding down after what she describes as a “pretty light day.” After two classes, an hour-long call with her peer advisor and a weekly meeting for her tech fraternity, she returns to her seat across the aging wooden table, gripping her drink tightly with both hands.

“Then he proceeded to do us ‘a favor’ by offering his ‘assistance if we ever needed a third.’”

“It was ridiculous,” she continues. “I felt like some foreign object — in need of his pity.” Steam from her freshlypoured coffee obscures her face as the fluorescent overhead light illuminates her now-focused green eyes. This was not the first time people she considered

Courtesy of Sam Goldin

herself close with had made comments in a similar vein.

“I think that’s what gets me the most,” she says, tracing her fingers in the indecipherable carvings of the table in front of her. “I’m surrounded by all these people who say they accept me, yet I constantly feel as if I’m not fully there.”

Born and raised in Oakland, Calif., Ackerman-Greenberg never dwelled too much on her sexuality. In fact, she had found no need to ever “come out.”

Rather, when she first began dating her now girlfriend, she simply broke the news to her parents by letting them know she would be coming to visit the next week.

So, when she found herself for the first time becoming truly mindful of her identity at age 20, the weight she had been able to avoid for most of her life began to gradually bog her down.

“I felt like I was an object.”

The societal objectification of gay

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Wednesday, October 24, 2018// The Statement

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 // The Statement

people, particularly women, remains rampant in our culture. On “Friends,” Chandler and Joey jump at the opportunity to watch Rachel and Monica share a minute-long kiss. In Katy Perry’s debut single, “I Kissed a Girl,” she perpetuates the notion that relationships between two women are just experimental and simply a way to entertain straight men.

Ackerman-Greenberg, now speaking louder than before, attempting to break through the voices of students frantically ordering their last caffeine fix before moving to the library for the night, begins to highlight how these portrayals in pop culture have manifested in her own life.

“I was at Skeeps (Scorekeepers Sports Grill and Pub), and my girlfriend and I kissed for the first time,” she said. “For the first time in my life I was kissing a girl that I cared about,” a hint of red beginning to color her face. “It felt as if there was not another person in the world.”

That euphoric feeling did not last

Nicole Ackerman-Greenberg

long, she notes. Soon, that world was interrupted by the sight of half a dozen men, staring, cheering, as more onlookers began to gather around for “their own entertainment.” While this brought a “feeling of disgust,” what stuck in her mind the most was having to weave through the crowded bar, watching as dozens of straight couples intensely, and “sloppily,” made out with one another — unnoticed and unbothered.

“I’m sure there are hundreds of bisexual girls like me on campus, people who I can talk to and who could relate to these things,” she said, placing her drink back down, the bottom of her cup now visible.

“I guess I just don’t know where to find them.”

Her phone buzzes, interrupting a solemn gaze. It’s her girlfriend, asking when she will be back home. A smile returns to her face.

“I almost feel bad for complaining. You know, it could be much worse. My parents

Courtesy of Sam Goldin

are so accepting. I have a girlfriend who I love. But sometimes — as soon as I begin to let go just a bit, something brings me crashing back down to reality.” came home from school, and I knew something was wrong.”

“I

“My parents sat me down and they said, ‘We heard you’ve been cutting yourself.’”

LSA junior Caleb Grimes met me in the middle of the Ross School of Business Winter Garden. He stood out amid the chaos of networking calls and coffee chats transpiring around him, dressed in a sweatshirt and the only one without a backpack or briefcase.

“Sorry I was late,” he said calmly, “I had to come straight here from my friend’s house” Hailing from an all-boys Catholic school in Kentucky, Grimes exhibits an air that one might expect from an AllAmerican lacrosse player. At first glance, his hardy demeanor supports the cool and unaffected presence that he carries. Yet, as his guard begins to wane, his effort to maintain this composure becomes more apparent.

“It was hard,” he says in a more solemn tone. “I was just 15 years old. I wasn’t even sure what or who I was. So, when I tried talking to a friend to maybe get some sort of clarity, and it suddenly spread across the town, I fell into a dark place.”

During his sophomore year of high school, Grimes’s parents received a phone call from a friend about his self-harm and the rumors of his sexuality. Hoping to alleviate their son’s pain and confusion, they sought out a therapist to speak with him.

“I never got to have my ‘coming out moment,’” he says with a more sunken face, his hands retreating into the refuge of his sweatshirt. “Instead, I woke up each day wondering if I would even be alive the next morning, all while trying to maintain this image of the lacrosse player, of the football player, of the student.”

Grimes’s internal conflict with his identity is pervasive in LGBT teens across the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who are gay are four times as likely to attempt suicide when compared to heterosexual youth. The fear of discrimination and harassment because of one’s sexuality also leads LGBT people to have depression and anxiety disorder rates three times as high as their straight counterparts.

“My therapist helped me sort through some of these things, but that constant anxiety and overthinking just never went away.” He begins to pause at the sound of his voice becoming shakier, almost taking this as a signal to tuck back these difficult memories. “So I clung to anything that I thought would make it easier.”

Grimes notes that he wore his “nonstereotypical” background as a badge of honor for the majority of both his high school and college careers. “It was funny how much I relied on that single label of the ‘lacrosse kid’ as a way to lift myself up.”

“Half of the reason I wanted to play lacrosse in college was because I wanted to maintain that safety of, ‘Yeah, I am gay, but look at me defying the stereotypes!’” he laughs with an almost-regretful tone.

Upon coming to campus, Caleb saw Greek life as his next outlet to bolster this image. He recalls hoping to not be seen as the “gay kid,” but as the “masculine, gay frat kid.” While he eventually found a supportive community within this new space, there are times he still feels isolated because of his sexuality. To him, Greek life is built upon, in many ways, the expectation of going out and finding another person to hook up with.

Reinforced by dark, cramped basement parties, where the conversation is limited by blaring music, people can mainly just “dance and hook up.” While friends may come briefly to wave hello, most of them quickly disperse as he “obviously doesn’t fit what they came there for.”

Even when he has brought another guy with him to a party — something he notes he is very lucky to be able to do — that isolating feeling begins to reemerge.

“I never truly feel comfortable or accepted with another guy in public. Even the most accepting people cringe deep down when they see two guys together.”

When I asked him why he thinks that, he responded coldly, “Because we cringe too.”

Before heading back to return to his friends, Grimes notes how his years hiding his identity have manifested throughout almost all spheres of his life.

“I just got really good at covering up how I feel,” he confessed. “But I go through an internal battle every single day.”

This is a common theme for many gay people. As discussed in a recent study from Georgetown University, LGBT people have learned that it is often safer to conceal their feelings than to become open to criticism or ridicule. This instinctual sense of protection, however, leads to an undermining of self-esteem and selfworth.

“I am grossly insecure with myself and I constantly regulate how people might view me,” Grimes admits. “And because of that, I may have come across in the wrong way to some people.”

Now, six years since his talk with his parents, he notes he is becoming more comfortable with the many facets of his identity. His family, too, has been celebrating this part of him as well. In fact, he tells me, they even went to a Pride parade without him.

A smile begins to break, and a warm glow fills his eyes.

“Yeah, that was pretty cool.” usiness senior Chandra Sahu highlights how being a woman of color has played in her experience as a queer woman. While it has been easier for her to identify other Black students on campus, her pursuit of finding other gay students was difficult.

“I was surprised by how little of a community for gay people there was here,” she said in a disappointed tone.

“Statistically, there have to be a lot more

B

began to head home. The brisk chill that waited patiently at the door accompanied me on the walk that night.

Passing through the places I had grown to know during my time at Michigan, I spotted friends and former classmates around each mindless turn of the corner.

Maybe I wasn’t so alone, after all.

But with each step closer to home, the sidewalks grew barer. Approaching the stairs of my apartment building, the outlines of two figures under the dying street light were etched out of the darkness. As the sound of my sneakers dragging across the cracked pavement below broke the silence of the night, the lock of their lips became undone.

In unison, they jolted their heads in my direction, as if they had been caught doing something wrong. I could now recognize they were both men. Almost instinctively, they took two steps back from one another. The air now felt colder than before.

“How’s it going, man?” one nodded as

I passed by, as if they were testing my reaction to what I had seen.

I approached the door, feeling the icy touch of its frigid handle. Memories began to flood my mind as that same, bitter Michigan chill danced through my fingers. My eyes watered, and whether the single tear that managed to escape was from the gust of wind or the influx of memories, I do not know. Yet, as I crawled into bed that night, my freshman self took a hold of my mind.

The fear that I saw in the faces of those two men outside was all too familiar. It was the same fear I felt just three years earlier, walking through an unfamiliar campus with my freshman year roommate. That fear of rejection, how others may react. Suddenly, that insidious, creeping isolation began to re-emerge in my mind.

Hoping to clear my thoughts, I peered outside my frosted window, but now, beneath that same, dying streetlight lay nothing but leaf-covered pavement.

Courtesy of Sam Goldin Caleb Grimes

people that are not straight, yet there’s just no community.”

As president of both the Black Business Society and Out for Business, Sahu has used the tight-knit community of the Business School to find a place for minority groups to come together. Yet, unlike the University’s Black community, which she has been able to find a place in, she finds the LGBT community remains disjointed. Gay spaces do exist in Ann Arbor, including the University’s Spectrum Center. However, many queer students on campus feel its efforts to provide the resources needed to foster a connected LGBT community remain inadequate — a reality that has tangible consequences for its students.

“I am surrounded constantly by so many people,” Sahu confessed in a hushed tone. “Yet I still feel so alone.”

Music, Theatre & Dance sophomore Alix Curnow echoed this sentiment of seclusion to me. As the flicker of the Michigan Theatre’s sign lit the right side of her face, she detailed the struggle she has faced in search of a community of her

7B

own.

“I feel very isolated,” she explained, her entire face now drowned in the light. “I went through many stages of depression and most of it was rooted in trying to find where this part of me fit in my life.”

Curnow was ready to immerse herself in the progressive Ann Arbor community, hoping to find refuge in a place where she would not just be tolerated, but embraced.

However, her time spent trying to fully discover her own self became increasingly disheartening.

“Friends, even people that are gay, have questioned my sexuality — telling me I’m just confused.”

“Even though friends try to offer their support, it’s lonely,” her shaded eyes now fixated on the floor below. “And being able to sit down in class and just knowing if there were other people like me would make things so much easier.” idnight came and the empty booths and folded chairs signaled it was time to pack up. Gripping my empty mug and the hastily-scribbled notes from the day, I

M

Alix Curnow

Courtesy of Sam Goldin

6B

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 // The Statement

people, particularly women, remains rampant in our culture. On “Friends,” Chandler and Joey jump at the opportunity to watch Rachel and Monica share a minute-long kiss. In Katy Perry’s debut single, “I Kissed a Girl,” she perpetuates the notion that relationships between two women are just experimental and simply a way to entertain straight men.

Ackerman-Greenberg, now speaking louder than before, attempting to break through the voices of students frantically ordering their last caffeine fix before moving to the library for the night, begins to highlight how these portrayals in pop culture have manifested in her own life.

“I was at Skeeps (Scorekeepers Sports Grill and Pub), and my girlfriend and I kissed for the first time,” she said. “For the first time in my life I was kissing a girl that I cared about,” a hint of red beginning to color her face. “It felt as if there was not another person in the world.”

That euphoric feeling did not last

Nicole Ackerman-Greenberg

long, she notes. Soon, that world was interrupted by the sight of half a dozen men, staring, cheering, as more onlookers began to gather around for “their own entertainment.” While this brought a “feeling of disgust,” what stuck in her mind the most was having to weave through the crowded bar, watching as dozens of straight couples intensely, and “sloppily,” made out with one another — unnoticed and unbothered.

“I’m sure there are hundreds of bisexual girls like me on campus, people who I can talk to and who could relate to these things,” she said, placing her drink back down, the bottom of her cup now visible.

“I guess I just don’t know where to find them.”

Her phone buzzes, interrupting a solemn gaze. It’s her girlfriend, asking when she will be back home. A smile returns to her face.

“I almost feel bad for complaining. You know, it could be much worse. My parents

Courtesy of Sam Goldin

are so accepting. I have a girlfriend who I love. But sometimes — as soon as I begin to let go just a bit, something brings me crashing back down to reality.” came home from school, and I knew something was wrong.”

“I

“My parents sat me down and they said, ‘We heard you’ve been cutting yourself.’”

LSA junior Caleb Grimes met me in the middle of the Ross School of Business Winter Garden. He stood out amid the chaos of networking calls and coffee chats transpiring around him, dressed in a sweatshirt and the only one without a backpack or briefcase.

“Sorry I was late,” he said calmly, “I had to come straight here from my friend’s house” Hailing from an all-boys Catholic school in Kentucky, Grimes exhibits an air that one might expect from an AllAmerican lacrosse player. At first glance, his hardy demeanor supports the cool and unaffected presence that he carries. Yet, as his guard begins to wane, his effort to maintain this composure becomes more apparent.

“It was hard,” he says in a more solemn tone. “I was just 15 years old. I wasn’t even sure what or who I was. So, when I tried talking to a friend to maybe get some sort of clarity, and it suddenly spread across the town, I fell into a dark place.”

During his sophomore year of high school, Grimes’s parents received a phone call from a friend about his self-harm and the rumors of his sexuality. Hoping to alleviate their son’s pain and confusion, they sought out a therapist to speak with him.

“I never got to have my ‘coming out moment,’” he says with a more sunken face, his hands retreating into the refuge of his sweatshirt. “Instead, I woke up each day wondering if I would even be alive the next morning, all while trying to maintain this image of the lacrosse player, of the football player, of the student.”

Grimes’s internal conflict with his identity is pervasive in LGBT teens across the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who are gay are four times as likely to attempt suicide when compared to heterosexual youth. The fear of discrimination and harassment because of one’s sexuality also leads LGBT people to have depression and anxiety disorder rates three times as high as their straight counterparts.

“My therapist helped me sort through some of these things, but that constant anxiety and overthinking just never went away.” He begins to pause at the sound of his voice becoming shakier, almost taking this as a signal to tuck back these difficult memories. “So I clung to anything that I thought would make it easier.”

Grimes notes that he wore his “nonstereotypical” background as a badge of honor for the majority of both his high school and college careers. “It was funny how much I relied on that single label of the ‘lacrosse kid’ as a way to lift myself up.”

“Half of the reason I wanted to play lacrosse in college was because I wanted to maintain that safety of, ‘Yeah, I am gay, but look at me defying the stereotypes!’” he laughs with an almost-regretful tone.

Upon coming to campus, Caleb saw Greek life as his next outlet to bolster this image. He recalls hoping to not be seen as the “gay kid,” but as the “masculine, gay frat kid.” While he eventually found a supportive community within this new space, there are times he still feels isolated because of his sexuality. To him, Greek life is built upon, in many ways, the expectation of going out and finding another person to hook up with.

Reinforced by dark, cramped basement parties, where the conversation is limited by blaring music, people can mainly just “dance and hook up.” While friends may come briefly to wave hello, most of them quickly disperse as he “obviously doesn’t fit what they came there for.”

Even when he has brought another guy with him to a party — something he notes he is very lucky to be able to do — that isolating feeling begins to reemerge.

“I never truly feel comfortable or accepted with another guy in public. Even the most accepting people cringe deep down when they see two guys together.”

When I asked him why he thinks that, he responded coldly, “Because we cringe too.”

Before heading back to return to his friends, Grimes notes how his years hiding his identity have manifested throughout almost all spheres of his life.

“I just got really good at covering up how I feel,” he confessed. “But I go through an internal battle every single day.”

This is a common theme for many gay people. As discussed in a recent study from Georgetown University, LGBT people have learned that it is often safer to conceal their feelings than to become open to criticism or ridicule. This instinctual sense of protection, however, leads to an undermining of self-esteem and selfworth.

“I am grossly insecure with myself and I constantly regulate how people might view me,” Grimes admits. “And because of that, I may have come across in the wrong way to some people.”

Now, six years since his talk with his parents, he notes he is becoming more comfortable with the many facets of his identity. His family, too, has been celebrating this part of him as well. In fact, he tells me, they even went to a Pride parade without him.

A smile begins to break, and a warm glow fills his eyes.

“Yeah, that was pretty cool.” usiness senior Chandra Sahu highlights how being a woman of color has played in her experience as a queer woman. While it has been easier for her to identify other Black students on campus, her pursuit of finding other gay students was difficult.

“I was surprised by how little of a community for gay people there was here,” she said in a disappointed tone.

“Statistically, there have to be a lot more

B

Wednesday, October 24, 2018// The Statement

began to head home. The brisk chill that waited patiently at the door accompanied me on the walk that night.

Passing through the places I had grown to know during my time at Michigan, I spotted friends and former classmates around each mindless turn of the corner.

Maybe I wasn’t so alone, after all.

But with each step closer to home, the sidewalks grew barer. Approaching the stairs of my apartment building, the outlines of two figures under the dying street light were etched out of the darkness. As the sound of my sneakers dragging across the cracked pavement below broke the silence of the night, the lock of their lips became undone.

In unison, they jolted their heads in my direction, as if they had been caught doing something wrong. I could now recognize they were both men. Almost instinctively, they took two steps back from one another. The air now felt colder than before.

“How’s it going, man?” one nodded as I passed by, as if they were testing my reaction to what I had seen.

I approached the door, feeling the icy touch of its frigid handle. Memories began to flood my mind as that same, bitter Michigan chill danced through my fingers. My eyes watered, and whether the single tear that managed to escape was from the gust of wind or the influx of memories, I do not know. Yet, as I crawled into bed that night, my freshman self took a hold of my mind.

The fear that I saw in the faces of those two men outside was all too familiar. It was the same fear I felt just three years earlier, walking through an unfamiliar campus with my freshman year roommate. That fear of rejection, how others may react. Suddenly, that insidious, creeping isolation began to re-emerge in my mind.

Hoping to clear my thoughts, I peered outside my frosted window, but now, beneath that same, dying streetlight lay nothing but leaf-covered pavement.

There I knew, despite the people I’ve come to know and the things I’ve come to learn, I could not escape that unshakable loneliness.

Courtesy of Sam Goldin Caleb Grimes

people that are not straight, yet there’s just no community.”

As president of both the Black Business Society and Out for Business, Sahu has used the tight-knit community of the Business School to find a place for minority groups to come together. Yet, unlike the University’s Black community, which she has been able to find a place in, she finds the LGBT community remains disjointed. Gay spaces do exist in Ann Arbor, including the University’s Spectrum Center. However, many queer students on campus feel its efforts to provide the resources needed to foster a connected LGBT community remain inadequate — a reality that has tangible consequences for its students.

“I am surrounded constantly by so many people,” Sahu confessed in a hushed tone. “Yet I still feel so alone.”

Music, Theatre & Dance sophomore Alix Curnow echoed this sentiment of seclusion to me. As the flicker of the Michigan Theatre’s sign lit the right side of her face, she detailed the struggle she has faced in search of a community of her

7B

own.

“I feel very isolated,” she explained, her entire face now drowned in the light. “I went through many stages of depression and most of it was rooted in trying to find where this part of me fit in my life.”

Curnow was ready to immerse herself in the progressive Ann Arbor community, hoping to find refuge in a place where she would not just be tolerated, but embraced.

However, her time spent trying to fully discover her own self became increasingly disheartening.

“Friends, even people that are gay, have questioned my sexuality — telling me I’m just confused.”

“Even though friends try to offer their support, it’s lonely,” her shaded eyes now fixated on the floor below. “And being able to sit down in class and just knowing if there were other people like me would make things so much easier.” idnight came and the empty booths and folded chairs signaled it was time to pack up. Gripping my empty mug and the hastily-scribbled notes from the day, I

M

Alix Curnow

Courtesy of Sam Goldin

8B

Wednesday, October 24 2018 // The Statement

V I S UA L S TAT E M E N T:

Glass Blowing photos by Max Kuang