2018-11-28

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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Ann Arbor, Michigan

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T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | N OV E M B E R 28 , 201 8

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CAMPUS LIFE

Panel talks strategies to navigate fake news

University faculty discuss difficulties conducting research, analysis on topic AARON BAKER/Daily

Louis Evans, professor of History, speaks at the Unappointed Advisory Committee on Academic Freedom teach-in at the Michigan League Tuesday.

“Unappointed” committee holds discussion on academic freedom Panelists aimed to contextualize recent discipline of Prof. Cheney-Lippold held a panel discussion and general assembly on Tuesday Daily Staff Reporter evening to discuss the history of noncompliance, divestment and The Unappointed Advisory boycott at the University of Michigan Committee on Academic Freedom in an effort to contextualize KATHERINA SOURINE

the recent disciplining of Prof.

John Cheney-Lippold and Graduate Student Instructor Lucy Peterson’s refusal to write an academic recommendation for a student to study abroad in Israel.

The panelists were introduced by Deirdre de la Cruz, director of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History, who emphasized the teach-in as an analysis of the See ACADEMICS, Page 3A

ALEX HARRING Daily Staff Reporter

Five speakers shared their research in regulating false information online to a crowd of approximately 50 students and faculty members Tuesday night at Rackham Assembly Hall. The panel, titled “Catching Fake News,” was part of the University of Michigan Dissonance Event Series, which focuses on the intersection of technology, privacy, policy, security and law.

Panelists included Mark Ackerman, a School of Information professor, Ceren Budak, a School of Information assistant professor, Engineering

Author Heather Ann Thompson CSG forms a plan for speaks at Writers to Writers series

professor Rada Mihalcea and Fredrik Laurin, a KnightWallace fellow. The panel was moderated by Brendan Nyhan, a professor in the Ford School of Public Policy.

Nyhan opened the event by sharing the history of fake news. He said fake news is now more widely read than ever before. Nyhan also said humans struggle to handle the volume of content they are exposed to daily, so machines can be used to help ease the issue of volume. “‘What should we do about it?’ is the values question implicated here,” Nyhan said.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

STUDENT GOVERNMENT

GOVERNMENT

student org integration

Pulitzer Prize winner discusses the challenges and joys of historical writing

University study looks into court hearings

Initiative proposed after concerns over CSG visibility, campus bubbles

Pulitzer Prize winning author Heather Ann Thompson spoke at Literati Bookstore on Tuesday night as a part of the Sweetland Writing Center’s Writer to Writer series. As part of the series, the center brings in a renowned author monthly to speak about their work, their process and their advice to younger writers studying at the University of Michigan and in the surrounding area.

Thompson works as a historian at the University in the Departments of AfroAmerican and African studies and History as well as the Residential College.

Additionally, Thompson is a critically-acclaimed author with more than 20 awards including a Bancroft Prize and Pulitzer Prize for her book “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy.” Since its release, Thompson has been on a neverending press tour for “Blood in the Water”, including an interview on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.”

Shelly Manis who works at the Sweetland Writing Center and runs the Writer to Writer Series, conducted the interview with Thompson at Literati and organized for it to be broadcasted live on the student radio station WCBN.

PARNIA MAZHAR Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan’s Central Student Government met Tuesday to introduce and discuss a proposal of the executive team’s new liaison program to be integrated within all campus organizations.

The mission of the program is to provide a platform for students and their organizations to externally address possible issues within their groups. It also aims to foster a greater connection between campus organizations.

According to LSA senior Sena Adjei, CSG senior policy advisor, this initiative came about after concerns arose on how to make the campus more connected and make CSG more visible campus-wide.

“This is the exec team’s best answer to one of the most serious ills that campus has seen,” Adjei said. “The University of Michigan is such a big campus and exists in a bunch of completely isolated See CSG, Page 3A

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MELANIE TAYLOR Daily Staff Reporter

Check out the Daily’s News podcast, The Daily Weekly

Thompson first revealed that she never viewed writing as her calling, nor did it come naturally to her, which was rather discouraging as she began to work in her field of study.

“Writing is hard and it feels like your identity is always on display when you try to convey something on paper,” Thompson said.

Thompson explained that once she found “a passion

for what I wanted to write about,” the process seemed to flow. She set out as a writer to kindle that same passion in her readers because the issues that she covers are so important to surround with conversation.

She writes in an “accessible” manner so that anyone can learn from her research.

“I wanted my random relatives in Kansas to pick this up and go, ‘Oh, this is a page turner,’” Thompson remarked.

“Blood in the Water” chronicles a 1971 prison uprising at Attica Correctional Facility in New York.

Prisoners had been trying to improve their conditions legally by petitioning the government, but they were met with extreme resistance.

As a result, the inmates staged an uprising, taking the prison guards hostage and negotiating with the state.

See PULITZER, Page 3A

MILES MACKLIN/DAILY

Dr. Heather Ann Thompson reads from her Pulitzer Prize winning book Blood in the Water to the crowd at Literati Bookstore Tuesday night.

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INDEX

Vol. CXXVIII, No. 39 ©2018 The Michigan Daily

Research shows bipartisan support for independent legal investigations MAEVE O’BRIEN Daily Staff Reporter

This month, a team of political scientists known as the Bright Line Watch released a study showing that Republicans, Democrats and independents are all more likely to support candidates that respect independent legal investigations. Bright Line Watch works to monitor the state of U.S. democracy and any potential threats it faces.

Brendan Nyhan, a professor in the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and a co-director of the Bright Line Watch team, co-authored the study along with five other political scientists.

The study, called “Party, policy, democracy and candidate choice in U.S. elections,” was conducted in late October and involved surveying 962 online participants about their preferences for candidates’ policy positions in a hypothetical upcoming election.

See COURT, Page 2A

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SUDOKU.....................2 CLASSIFIEDS...............5 SPORTS....................7

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2A — Wednesday, November 28, 2018

MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

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WEDNESDAY: This Week in History

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FRIDAY: Behind the Story

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: HOLIDAY CREATES ‘GHOST TOWN’ November 28, 1988 Although about 900,000 people gathered on the streets of downtown Detroit 45 minutes away to celebrate Thanksgiving with a parade, Ann Arbor was a lonely town.

“I can’t wait to get out of here — who would be staying?” said Amy Keen, an LSA sophomore on her way home to Tennessee.

Yet there are a few students who stay behind. And for them, Thanksgiving break is not spent eating turkey with their families and watching parades. For Marcus Lien, an LSA junior from Pittsburg, who stayed “because of the money and because I had to study,”

the atmosphere around was a pleasant one. “It was really nice.

I like it better without people, the school is really peaceful.”

Guo Tao, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering who stayed for the duration said, “most of the time I am working or at school — the four day break gives me lots of free time to do my dissertation.”

For most local businesses, the days of Thanksgiving are too slow to stay open. “The place looks like ghost town,” said Stucci’s manager Chris Fisher, who closed all his ice cream parlours for Thanksgiving.

“As far as the University area is concerned, all businesses are closed,” he said. The only

restaurant opened around the University was The Great Wall. “Thanksgiving is not a Chinese Holiday and besides we open all year,” said manager Chu Monner. “We think some people do not go home because they have no place to go so they could eat here.” Monner reported that business was not as good as usual, but it was better Thursday than Friday.

Many don’t realize that some students stay behind. “I never thought about people who do not go,” said Daren Stabinski an LSA sophomore who left last Friday for Florida. “I could never really imagine, it seems like a time when you should go home or have your

family here,” said Kathleen Klonowski a LSA sophomore from Saginaw who went home but came back early to prepare for exams she has this week.

Yet Klonowski realizes that not everyone, including her brother from California, can afford to go home for Thanksgiving.

“We really miss him but it is impossible for him to come — we call him and try to keep the tie. He would be home pretty soon too.” Lien also held this as a consolation. “I’m going home in three weeks and with the tuition increase I can’t afford to go home (more) often.” Last evening the “ghost town” came back to life. The parking lots were full and the streets came

alive once again. Computer centers filled yesterday with

people on waiting lists trying to do their papers for today.

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ON THE DAILY: JOHN JAMES UP FOR U.N. AMBASSADOR JORDYN BAKER Daily Staff Reporter

John James, the 2018 U.S. Senate candidate for the state of Michigan, is being considered

by President Donald Trump to replace Nikki Haley, ambassador to the United Nations, according to recent reports.

James, a Republican who served as president of James Group International, a firm based in Detroit, lost the November midterm election for one of Michigan’s U.S. Senate seats to incumbent Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow. James ran as a “conservative outsider who supports the Trump agenda,” making issues like border security and governmental deregulation central to his platform. While James was ahead of Stabenow for much of the evening, once votes were counted from metropolitan Detroit, Stabenow defeated James with 52.2 percent of the

state’s votes, compared to James’s 45.8 percent. This was Stabenow’s weakest showing in the polls since her election in 2000, when she first took office in the Senate.

During the election season, many state and national Republicans promoted James as a rising star in the party. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence headlined rallies for James.

Trump endorsed James during the Republican primary cycle and invited James to the White House in September.

According to Bloomberg, James visited the White House last week to talk “about an administration post with Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence,” adding he is being considered to take the position of U.N. ambassador.

Current ambassador Haley served as governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and was appointed to be

U.N. ambassador following Trump’s election in 2016. It was announced in early October that Haley will resign at the end of the year. According to the Bloomberg report, Trump is also considering the U.S. ambassadors to France, Germany and Canada to take over the position.

LSA sophomore Dylan Berger, president of the University of Michigan’s chapter of College Republicans, stated he supports any possibility of James serving as U.N. ambassador.

“I’m ecstatic because John James is one of the most incredible public servants that we have in our nation at this point … In the beginning (of the Senate race) they gave him zero shot whatsoever against Debbie Stabenow and he ended up getting 46 percent of the vote and that’s because of who he is,” Berger said. “I can’t think of anyone that would represent our nation better at the United Nations than John James would

and I enthusiastically support his nomination to the United Nations. I hope that the president makes that decision.”

Public Policy junior Katie Kelly, who serves as communications director of the University’s chapter of College Democrats, expressed concern over James’s qualifications to serve in a position within foreign relations.

“John James does not hold the proper experience required to be an effective UN Ambassador,” Kelly wrote in an email interview.

“With no prior experience with international politics or as an ambassador, James is clearly unqualified to handle the intricacies of foreign relations.

We need qualified people representing our country on the international level. We hope the Trump administration will think carefully about who they put into this position and that they are qualified to speak on behalf of the United States.”

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COURT From Page 1A These findings come amid former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s forced resignation, which has left the future of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election unclear. Trump has since appointed Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general.

According to the study, 35 percent of the respondents identified as Republicans or independents who lean Republican, 43 percent as Democrats or independents who lean Democratic and 17 percent as independents with no partisan lean.

The survey found candidates who favor political control over independent

investigations instead of neutrality were 5.3 percentage points less likely to win the support of Democratic voters, nearly four percentage points less likely for Republicans, and 8.1 percentage points less likely among independents.

This specific finding stood in contrast to the others of the study, in which there were sharp partisan divides when it came to tax policy, discrimination and affirmative action and voting rights.

Nyhan said he was surprised by the bipartisan support of independent investigations.

“I thought the stream of attacks by the Trump administration on the Mueller investigation and on unfavorable rulings by judges would produce a wider partisan divide,” Nyhan wrote in an email See COURT, Page 3A

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PULITZER From Page 1A Despite nearly ubiquitous news coverage and relatively civil negotiations, New York state troopers came in with force. The troopers tortured the inmates but would come to deny such proceedings. There were 39 fatalities.

“This book is about the uprising, but it was also about the coverup,” Thompson.

Thompson spent 13 years researching and writing “Blood in the Water”. New York sealed their archives regarding the Attica riot, so Thompson said she had to retrieve the information in a roundabout way.

“The thing about being a historian, it’s like being a detective,” Thompson said. “You have to think about where’s the secret. Who knows where the sources are? That’s the fun part.

It’s amazing how creative you can be. Believe me, the stuff is there. You just have to look for it.”

Thompson looked at union records for prison guards and coroner’s reports for autopsies.

She interviewed inmates, prison guards and state troopers alike in order to offer every perspective.

“Who’s really telling the truth of the narrative?” Thompson said. “That’s kind of the most vexing thing.”

Thompson said she views it as her responsibility as a historian to tell stories comprehensively to the best of her ability. She said this is compounded by her privilege as a white woman covering such volatile research regarding race and ethnicity.

She assured the audience that

COURT From Page 2A interview. “I find those results encouraging - they are a valuable reminder that most people don’t follow politics very closely and that many democratic norms still enjoy bipartisan support.”

Both representatives from the University’s chapter of College Republicans and chapter of College Democrats, however, said they were not surprised by the bipartisan support for independent investigations.

LSA sophomore Dylan Berger, president of College Republicans, said the study reaffirmed what he already knew.

“I don’t think that (the finding) surprised me because in this country, it’s very important that we put conservative and liberal aside and do what’s right, and I think the majority of people want to make sure that we’re bridging those divides and have good government,” Berger said.

Public Policy junior Katie Kelly, director of communications for College Democrats, said she was also unsurprised by the results.

“I don’t think that this finding is that surprising,” Kelly said. “In a country where bipartisanship has become more difficult to achieve than ever before, it is very important that we focus on the issues that we all agree on. This survey shows that the majority of Americans are united on this particular issue, not just Democrats, Republicans, or independents.”

The study cautions readers from interpreting the bipartisan support for independent investigations in an overly optimistic way. As Nyhan pointed out, even though Democrats and Republicans may believe the same underlying principle, they could potentially interpret the meaning of an “independent and fair” investigation in different ways.

“As we describe, it is possible for a consensus to exist on various democratic principles but for partisans to disagree sharply on how to interpret or apply those principles in particular cases,” Nyhan wrote. “Imagine two people who say investigations should be impartial but one opposes political interference in the Mueller investigation and the other thinks the investigation is a partisan ‘witch hunt’ that should therefore be shut down.”

The study raises questions

News

she is “not pretending that it’s my story.”

“I see that as a privilege, but I also see it as an obligation to figure out what the hell happened and report back,” Thompson said.

Thompson’s work revolves around this idea of responsibility to find the truth. Her favorite kind of writing is not weighty, academic works, but rather breaking news opinion pieces regarding current affairs.

Thompson called this her work as a public intellectual and describes it as trying “to correct the record in the moment.”

Thompson writes often on issues regarding police and prisons. Public Policy junior Bhavya Sukhavasi said she enjoyed the fact that Thompson delved into this aspect of her work at the event.

“It isn’t just about writing a professional book, but writing just day-to-day,” Sukhavasi said.

Thompson told the audience about an opportunity that she had to write an op-ed for The New York Times regarding a recent prison riot in South Carolina. She publicly condemned the story of the police — claiming they were not telling the whole truth.

Following the release of Thompson’s op-ed, inmates came forward with videos from inside the prison during the riots that confirmed the misdeeds of the police. Thompson said she enjoys being able to write important stories using her historical expertise in order to facilitate a dialogue about the issues at hand.

“There’s no choice,” Thompson said. “You weigh in now or you don’t. You write now or you don’t.”

It is with this courage that

Thompson advised her students to write. She said she is happiest when it seems her students portray “a confidence to have some mastery of the sources rather than the sources master them.”

“They need to just have some confidence in their own voice,” Thompson said. “You kind of have to have a little bit of that bravery to step in front of it like that.”

Julie Babcock, a lecturer in Sweetland Center for Writing said as an educator, she reverberated Thompson’s sentiments regarding the necessity for students to present confidence in their writing.

“We want to hear your thoughts, and we want to see you engage in such conversations,” Babcock said.

In sharing her experience, Thompson said she finds one of her most important roles is instilling hope in her students suffering the frustrations of entering into writing.

“It’s so overwhelming when you’re in it,” Thompson said.

“It’s important that students understand all the barriers you have also faced and how you overcame them to kind of brainstorm strategies for moving forward.”

Thompson is currently researching for her next book on the bombing of a building housing MOVE Black liberation activists in Philadelphia in the spring of 1985. This past year, she was awarded the Bearing Witness Writing Fellowship from the Ford Foundation’s Art of Justice Fund to allow her to conduct more research. Next year, she will be teaching at Cambridge University and she plans to release her next book in about three years.

about how the U.S. electorate will react if Mueller’s investigation is ended prematurely by Whitaker.

Both College Republicans and College Democrats say they have conversations within their organizations about the Mueller probe.

Berger said he is confident President Donald Trump will allow Mueller’s investigation to be carried through to completion, while Kelly saidshe saw real concern among voters when canvassing before the midterm elections that the investigation would be cut short.

“Outside of our members, I personally saw a good amount of discussion on the issue when knocking doors during the election cycle,” Kelly said.

“Many people were concerned about the investigation being cut short. We in College Democrats share that concern.

It is important that Robert Mueller has the appropriate time and resources to complete a full investigation.”

Another major finding of the study was that parties divide sharply on the issue of voting rights. Based on the survey, the public ranked the importance of equal voting rights very high, with 89 percent of respondents calling it important or essential, but the two parties perceive this democratic principle differently. Republicans are concerned with enforcing equal voting rights by combating voter fraud, while Democrats are focused on protecting voter rights by ensuring equal access to the ballot box.

Nyhan made the distinction that widespread voter fraud is not an issue the U.S. faces, whereas voter suppression of marginalized groups does exist.

“The problem is there’s a factual misperception at the heart of this dispute,” Nyhan wrote. “Every serious inquiry has shown that widespread voter fraud is virtually nonexistent.

By contrast, the risk of voter ID laws creating undue burdens on voters from disadvantaged groups is real.” He also pointed out, though, that the literature is mixed as to whether stricter voter ID laws do reduce voter turnout.

Berger said it is important to both protect Americans’ constitutional right to vote and ensure that only those that are supposed to vote actually go out and vote. He said he believes voter fraud is one of the most important issues facing our country.

“I would really like to see both sides become more interested

in protecting from voter fraud because if you have voter fraud going on in this country, our election system will not be able to stand up, because in order to retain legitimacy, you’ve got to make sure that only those that are supposed to vote actually vote,” Berger said.

Kelly affirmed College Democrats are concerned about voter suppression across the United States.

“Both as College Democrats and as college students, we know firsthand that voter suppression is a problem in this country,” Kelly said. “As stated in the survey, research has shown that voter fraud is not a problem in this country. I think that elections like those in Georgia show that we have a long way to go to ensure equal voting rights for every American citizen.”

Kelly is referring to voter suppression efforts in Georgia during the midterm elections, in which Brian Kemp, governorelect and former secretary of state of Georgia, purged the voter rolls prior to the election, under the justification of removing people who haven’t voted in recent elections, as well as those who had died.

His office held 53,000 voter registrations, nearly 70 percent of which were Black voters, because the name used on the registration did not exactly match one on government records. When ending her bid for governor, Kemp’s opponent Stacey Abrams lamented an “erosion of democracy” that she believed kept some of her supporters from voting.

Looking forward, Nyhan believes the study has implications for the 2020 presidential election, mainly in the general election if Trump’s democratic norm violations contribute to his underperformance in the polls.

“His approval ratings are well below what we’d expect given the state of the economy,” Nyhan said. “If Trump continues to underperform because of factors like democratic norm violations, it could put him at greater risk of defeat in 2020.”

Both Berger and Kelly said they think the study indicates the American electorate will want a candidate who can put the needs of the country over party and respect American democratic institutions.

“I think this survey shows that there are issues that Americans agree upon,” Kelly said. “Future candidates must focus on uniting our country instead of dividing it.”

CSG From Page 1A pockets and CSG has not been effective enough in accessing those pockets and making sure they are seen by us and supported by us, so we are going out to them, we are asking them to come to us and meet with us regularly so we can serve with them regularly.”

The proposed organization of the program is to use a cohort system in which student organizations will be separated into groups.

To determine the groups, CSG offered organizations several different categories, such as “service,” “identity” and “professional,” which they could place themselves into. To best represent their groups, organizations had the option to place themselves group into multiple categories.

“In the conversations to see how we can really empower the students and give them the platform, we decided to compartmentalize student orgs based on their identities and based on their missions,” LSA sophomore Jacob Pollitt, CSG external relations officer, said.

“Hopefully by bringing them together, they’ll be able to share their experiences, share their information, begin to understand sort of how similar orgs face similar issues and maybe how they’re different and how through the collaboration they can sort of help each other with the issues that they face.”

Every student organization

ACADEMICS From Page 1A current moment, not a debate. The second part of the event featured a workshop for developing policy recommendations for the University.

“This event is first and foremost a proactive, studentgenerated response to the administration’s call to gather input from stakeholders across the University, and its primary objective is to gain insights and recommendations from a diverse, multidisciplinary, intergenerational and multiranked community for our provost panel’s consideration,” De la Cruz said.

The first panelist, Howard Brick, professor in the Department of History, provided a brief overview of political regulation at the University in the 20th century. He noted the American Association of University Professors’ declaration of principles on academic freedom and academic tenure in relation to the University’s history with social activism. Brick highlighted the precarity of the AAUP’s 1970 revision of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, explaining how many components are undefined of what constitutes academic freedom versus violation.

“The point was not to avoid controversy, but in fact, the 1970 statement said that the scholar could be controversial and polemical provided he or she was being so for the sake of facing scholarship,” he said.

Brick considered periods in which the University repressed faculty based on social or political views, drawing from war periods and the Cold War. He compared these to the social issues faced today on campus and the AAUP’s letter statement.

“It may be a little discomforting to recognize that oddly enough, the question of whether one has the right to deny a letter of recommendation on grounds other than solely merit,” he said. “It turns up here in the letter, in the context, of course, we would not approve regarding the disciplining of a student, which only shows how these questions of academic freedom are so fraught and dependent on context, and not fixed by nature as an absolute.”

The second panelist, Chandler Davis, was a

Wednesday, November 28, 2018 — 3A

will appoint a liaison who will work with Adjei and Pollitt. Each liaison will funnel into a cohort, which will interact directly with CSG to create action plans, facilitate activities and provide necessary resources through bi-weekly meetings.

As part of the program, CSG would collaborate with student organizations to establish workshops and seminars for the groups to attend, potentially discussing topics such as money management, technolog y and social media.

“The seminars that we are going to be hosting, they optimize the benefits of organizations,” Adjei said.

“Workshops can focus on ways the administration as an entity can work with organizations more directly to remove barriers that they’re facing or to help their agendas.”

According to Pollitt, the liaison program will provide multiple short-term and long-term benefits for the University. Some benefits include opportunities to build networks, being able to use CSG as a platform for advocacy and increased accessibility of CSG initiatives.

“Accessibility to other CSG projects, current and future, that’s a really important thing to touch on,” Pollitt said. “We do have projects in the work and the Liaison Program will sort of smooth the way in terms of implementation that not only will benefit the student orgs and their experience on campus, but also will help

CSG achieve the visibility that is necessary.”

During the presentation, LSA sophomore Amanda Kaplan, CSG vice chair of the finance committee, raised a concern about the logistics behind integrating student organizations with a pre-established internal governmental structure.

“What is your plan for different types of student groups that kind of already have an established government hierarchy like sorority and fraternity life, how are you going to incorporate them into other cohorts?” Kaplan asked.

In response, Adjei and Pollitt said even if groups such as sororities and fraternities already have their own hierarchy, by coming to CSG, they can receive additional help and have an additional resource to overcome any barriers.

Ultimately, they said, CSG would just be an additional platform to help make their voices and perspectives heard.

Toward the end of their presentation, Adjei and Pollitt proposed their goals for the program in the next five years, stating they hope for an annual summit, guest presenters, consulting sessions and more.

“Ideally we want the entire campus to be in on this,” Adjei said. “In five years we want to be up and running fully efficiently at maximum velocity. We want every corner of campus to at least know that we are there as a resource and have a direct line to us.”

University professor in the ’50s and was given a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee along with three other U-M faculty for being branded a communist.

Davis refused to answer HUAC questions, pleading the Fifth Amendment in the hopes of being convicted and appealing the case to the Supreme Court to protest against the governmentsponsored anti-communist campaign. Davis was ultimately fired from the University, lost his appeal to the Supreme Court and served a six-month sentence in prison.

“Any faculty member refusing to answer questions before the red hunter committees created a presumption of unfitness, I summarize the plight administrators face this way: They hoped there were no reds on the faculty, they hoped nobody would ask them if they were, but if the inquisitors obliged them to fire a red they would go along wholeheartedly,” Davis said.

The third speaker, Alan Wald, a professor emeritus of American Culture and English, compared his social activism as a professor

in the ’70s and ’80s against apartheid in South Africa and that of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in regard to Israel. According to Wald, both movements focused on economic targeting and have a history of colonization at the root of the problem. He also acknowledged the implications and history of the oppression of Jewish people searching for survival upon coming to Israel, and explained how discourse at the University is vital to understanding the multifaceted issue.

“I’ve heard it mentioned that everybody supported the anti-apartheid struggle,” Wald said. “That’s as misleading as imagining that the beginning of the movement against the war in Vietnam that everybody supported it. The battle for divestment from apartheid went on for close to 20 years, day in and day out for the core activists and U-M was far behind many universities.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, November 28, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

NOAH HARRISON | COLUMN

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FROM THE DAILY

DeVos’s proposal fails survivors

L

ast week, our very own Michigan-born Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, decided to make sexual assault investigations even harder to prosecute through new Title IX rules. In an overhaul of campus sexual assault rules, DeVos reduced the liability of colleges and universities investigating sexual misconduct claims and increased the due process rights of the defendant. or lawyer in what will essentially become a full-on trial that colleges are not necessarily trained to handle. It also There is also a new caveat that allows both the accuser and the accused to cross-examine each other through an adviser or lawyer in what will essentially become a full-on trial that colleges are not necessarily trained to handle. It also creates a narrower definition of sexual assault, referring to it as an act “so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the school’s education program or activity.” This will make the line between what is and is not considered sexual assault blurrier and effectively harder to prove in this new courtroomtype setting. In essence, these new proposals set forth a rhetoric that aligns with the air of doubt so often attributed to sexual assault survivors. The Michigan Daily Editorial Board opposes the new proposals and urges the University to continue to support survivors in the face of these changes.

Most at stake with the new proposals is the fact that the University not only has a recent history of sexual assault cases but the existing investigation process, though comprehensive, has flaws in implementation. New proposals would build upon an already unstable investigation process.

Just recently, the University has faced several sexual assault cases.

Samuel Schultz, a New Yorkbased baritone, accused School of Music, Theatre & Dance professor David Daniels and Daniels’s husband Scott Walters of sexual assault. Daniels has taken a leave of absence from the University but still denies the allegations.

An investigation is active but no arrests have been made, according to The Daily. In another instance, a senior in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance reported being sexually assaulted by her

Graduate Student Instructor. As highlighted by The Daily, the student’s experience with the current Title IX reporting process was tedious and slow. These are just a handful of the known Title IX cases that have occurred at the University. We can only imagine

New provisions would build upon an already unstable investigation process how many more instances like this have affected students across campus.

The new Title IX rules will also essentially make schools less liable for sexual assault charges. Under the new proposal, schools are only responsible for investigating if they have “actual knowledge” of the assault, meaning a formal complaint would have to be correctly reported to the right person or group to take care of the claim. Not only does this inhibit the reporting procedure, but the requirement of “actual knowledge” inherently casts doubt on those who come forward.

In a similar affront to reporting procedures, schools are no longer required to deal with off-campus assaults, where 68 percent of the student body live and where many sexual assaults may occur. Victims must also prove their case through “clear and convincing evidence,” making proof of sexual assault elevated to a higher caliber. This is in stark contrast to the lower evidentiary level established

by President Barack Obama’s administration. With the ease of liability, the new provisions could make the investigating procedure more difficult for survivors and also further deter universities from taking action. This is unsurprising, given the amount of time and money that goes into a sexual assault investigation, and the damage it can do to a school’s reputation.

Instead of supporting sexual assault survivors, DeVos, responsible for the true well-being of students, has proactively inhibited the reporting process and effectively introduced proposals espousing a rhetoric and subsequent actions that do the opposite of protecting student’s well-being.

With these new rules close to being enacted, we implore the University, and all other universities and colleges, to hold itself to higher standards.

The University owes it to its students, past and future, to keep survivors and students in mind when navigating these cases, and most importantly, safe from harm. For those who have been affected by sexual assault and violence, we encourage you not to be deterred by these rule changes. Your experience matters and your safety is of the utmost importance.

If you have experienced any sort of sexual assault, please visit the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center. We have listed some resources for those in need, including the SAPAC website: SAPAC homepage: https:// sapac.umich.edu Resources: https://sapac. umich.edu/resources/list/ campus Options for reporting: https:// sapac.umich.edu/article/optionsreporting CAPS homepage: https://caps.

EMILY WOLFE | CONTACT EMILY AT ELWOLFE@UMICH.EDU

Trump and climate change

I

n December, world leaders will gather in Katowice, Poland for the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, dubbed COP24, to review the ongoing implementation of the 2015 Paris agreement and discuss the next steps in combating climate change. An air of fresh urgency surrounds the summit following the release of a special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned of catastrophic consequences unless the world cuts its carbon emissions, substantially and immediately.

The conference comes shortly after the publication of an ominous U.S. government report last week. The report projects climate change will cost hundreds of billions of dollars due to extreme weather, decreasing agricultural yields, fatal heat waves, the spread of vector-borne diseases and other adverse health effects, ultimately shrinking the American economy and endangering millions of lives.

Despite withdrawing from the Paris agreement, President Donald Trump’s administration will send representatives to Katowice.

However, rather than participate in meaningful discourse, the American delegation plans to give a presentation on the merits of coal.

Yes, at an international summit to combat climate change, the Trump administration will be promoting the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the climatic impacts of coal is absurd, but frankly unsurprising given his long history of denying human-caused climate change and its grave implications. Trump and the Republican Party’s stubborn refusal to believe proven climate science contributes to the American public’s ignorance on the matter, particularly amongst their base. A majority of Republicans don’t believe humans cause climate change and

say the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated. The result is the extreme politicization of what should be a nonpartisan, non-controversial issue. After all, with the exception of the U.S., every country in the world — including those ruled by both leftwing and right-wing governments — is part of the Paris agreement.

While the rest of the world seems committed to solving the issue of climate change, this is not an issue that can be solved without American

This is not an issue that can be solved without Amerian involvement involvement. The U.S. is the world’s second-highest emitter, accounting for 15 percent of total emissions in 2015 and has among the highest emissions per capita. Given the urgency of action outlined in the latest IPCC report, the world simply cannot afford for any major country, much less the U.S., to not aggressively cut emissions if the world is to avoid the severe consequences of warming in excess of 1.5 degrees Celsius. The U.S. prides itself on being a global leader, but when it comes to international efforts to alleviate climate change, the U.S. has shown little interest in participating, much less leading.

The scary thing is that the Paris agreement was just the first step of many in truly cutting emissions. The agreement instructed each country to devise its own emissions reduction target and a plan to reach it, but it stopped short of requiring a certain level of emissions cuts by any given time or mandating certain types of emissions-cutting mechanisms.

The agreement was obviously a significant first step, but countries must now reevaluate their targets to

ensure the world collectively reaches the 1.5 degrees Celcius target (or get as close as possible), and establish a concrete plan of action to achieve their individual targets then.

Emissions reductions will not happen automatically. Governments must be prepared to implement policies to guide the economy to lower emissions levels. There are two main ways to do this. First, by implementing carbon pricing through either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, which forces companies and consumers to consider the external costs (i.e. climate change costs) of carbon emissions. This way is the most efficient and effective but also the most politically difficult to accomplish — President Barack Obama tried to establish a cap-andtrade system in the early years of his presidency but failed, despite Democratic majorities in Congress.

The second way is through a bundle of individual regulations, such as fuel efficiency standards in cars and subsidies for renewable energies.

In this realm, President Trump is derailing existing regulations, lowering fuel efficiency standards, slashing funding for renewable energy research and development and proposing subsidies for derelict coal-fired power plants to keep them profitable.

These actions defy logic and have serious implications. The time for dragging our feet has passed. The world has an extremely narrow window to address climate change, yet the Trump administration is pulling the U.S. backward. U.S. noninvolvement will sink international efforts, and that will sink the planet.

The upcoming conference in Katowice is a reminder that the current U.S. response to climate change is not just inadequate, it is pitiful.

Noah Harrison can be reached at noahharr@umich.edu.

KRYSTAL HUR | COLUMN

T

Between two worlds, Ross and LSA

his year, I recently enrolled in the Ross School of Business from the College of Literature, Science and Arts to be on track for pursuing dual degrees in English and Business. Now that the first semester is nearly over, I’ve noticed some notable differences between the schools. More specifically, I’ve found that the Business School is very different from what I expected.

One key difference is that the Business School focuses on the future while LSA focuses on the present. As a Business student, I’ve noticed that I am constantly pushed to think about the future: There are recruiters in the Winter Garden most days and I constantly overhear people talking about upcoming interviews and job offers. Every sophomore is required to create a résumé and refine it until we get a certain score on an online résumé grader — VMock — as part of one of our classes.

In contrast, my LSA professors rarely discuss our future careers, and instead will only ask about my major. Sometimes, they’ll ask whether or not I have any idea what kind of career I want to pursue. Granted, most of my courses were humanities and social science-related, so I don’t know if this is the same in other disciplines. I’ve also found that my LSA professors are much more likely to discuss current issues than my Business professors are (though instructors in general usually shy away from such topics), and that the coursework more easily ties in with nonbusiness related current events than my Ross coursework does.

Other differences include the ambience: While LSA courses are so diverse and plentiful that defining an exact atmosphere is impossible, Ross is most decidedly cutthroat and stressful. This is largely due to the Business School distribution (or the “Ross curve”) that assigns a certain percentage of students to a grade range for each class. While this system suggests that receiving good grades in Ross courses is easy, the exams are extremely difficult, making it difficult to receive an A. Moreover, because of the distribution, students don’t necessarily have to do well on the exams to receive a good grade: They just need to do better than their peers. This creates an extremely competitive atmosphere in which students are

constantly worried about their peers’ performances just as much as they are worried about their own.

Interestingly, the Business School also places a great deal of importance on teamwork. Most of our assignments are completed in groups and often take hours to finish, requiring students to meet with their teams on a regular basis. We’re provided with tutors who are available multiple times a week, as well as peer advisors with whom we can speak should we have any questions about academics or recruiting.

This stark contrast between the nature of the distribution, which pits students against each other, and the need to work in teams, which connects students, baffles me. How can a school that stresses the importance of collaboration in every part of its curriculum use a grading system that fosters unhealthy competition among its students? I do understand that the grading system does mimic the business world — people in business all compete for the same opportunities. However, having to work with other students while knowing that they probably secretly want me to fail my exams so that they do better, and at times feeling the same way about them, makes me feel as though our collaboration is marred by superficiality. This isn’t to say that Business students don’t care about each other — students in the Business School commiserate about their shared classes (we all take the same core courses) and are always much more willing to help each other than I’ve noticed students in my LSA courses are.

The part about the Business School that surprised me the most, however, is how different it is from its reputation, which can be surmised in one word: Rosshole. There’s a clear image of who exactly a “Rosshole” is: He’s a rich white guy from New York whose parents work on Wall Street. He wears Patagonia and Canada Goose, interned or plans to intern at Goldman Sachs and is a frat bro. He rides a Bird around campus in a suit. Do these types of students exist in the Business School? Absolutely. However, they don’t make up the entire student population, and the term “Rosshole” is based on mostly false assumptions.

There’s a statement that a senior at the Business School I spoke with last year told me

that sums up what it is like as a student at the business school. She said that if I do join the Business School, I’ll meet both the best and worst people I’ll ever meet. This is pretty spot on. I’ve met some really wonderful people at the Business School whom I hope I can continue to get to know even after I graduate. Most people in the Business School, including people I don’t even know, have extended offers to help me with anything I need, whether that be with fine-tuning my résumé, completing my homework or just venting about school. I’ve only met a couple of people who I wouldn’t mind never seeing again.

In addition, the awful people at the Business School aren’t exceptionally meaner or more annoying than the generic asshole (more high-strung, maybe).

But the truth is that there are annoying and privileged people everywhere. Business students aren’t special in that department.

“LSAhole” just doesn’t have the same ring to it that “Rosshole” has — and truthfully, because the Rosshole stereotype has little merit, I find the term to be strangely endearing.

Of course, the Business School is far from perfect. According to the Office of the Registrar, about 63 percent of students enrolled as of fall 2018 are male, while only about 37 percent are female. There are also 2,208 white students out of the 4,223 enrolled and only 142 Black students and 218 Hispanic students. These numbers belie the need for more diversity in the Business School, and while they have been becoming more even in recent years, Ross must be held responsible for working towards more diversity.

Therefore, stereotypes such as the “Rosshole” that are parroted by students are mostly untrue and oversimplify the real problem of diversity in the Business School and the University as a whole.

As a student enrolled in both the Business School and LSA, it’s become clear to me that the strange tension between the two schools that is unnecessary and founded on misguided beliefs.

Being in both schools certainly requires finesse at times, but it shouldn’t be because of any friction between the two schools.

Krystal Hur can be reached at kryshur@umich.edu

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

THEATRE REVIEW

ALEC COHEN / DAILY

Musket puts on pertinent performance of ‘Cabaret’ TRINA PAL

Daily Arts Writer

The night that Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was bitterly cold outside. Early October — too early to dig out your winter jacket, but too late for thin windbreakers. As I was leaving a restaurant with my friend, I glanced up at the TV screen set on CNN news: “Breaking News: Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to U.S. Supreme Court.”

The hundreds of sexual abuse victims stepping forward to tell their stories had shattered my spirit over and over again this year, but this seemed like the icing on the cake. Then my friend asked, “Who’s Brett Kavanaugh?”

The terrible thing about ignorance is that it’s so easy.

It takes no effort at all to push

away the world around you and focus on more pressing things, such as exams or what you’re doing Friday night. That’s why, when I saw Musket’s production of “Cabaret” at the Power Center this past weekend, I knew it was vital to our times.

Musket, the largest student-run musical theatre organization at the University, puts on one Broadway-style production per semester.

“Cabaret” was their latest musical venture, set in 1929 Berlin — the most liberal city in Germany with a vibrant, sultry nightlife that openly embraced homosexuality — four years before Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany. The story follows the relationship between Clifford Bradshaw, a visiting American novelist played by LSA Fifth Year Casey Board, and Sally Bowles, a cabaret singer played

by SMTD Sophomore Caroline Glazier. “Cabaret,” based on the play by John Van Druten, was directed by SMTD and LSA Junior Isabel K. Olsen and choreographed by SMTD Sophomore Johanna Kepler.

“Cabaret” opened in a burst of energy with “Willkommen,” which welcomed audiences to the seedy Berlin Kit Kat Klub.

Emcee Wilson Plonk (SMTD Junior) deserves special mention for his excellent, exuberant performance.

Plonk skillfully embodied the overwhelming passion of Berlin in the 1920s while simultaneously keeping the audience at ease with the f lamboyant backdrop of the production.

Musket did a wonderful job of giving the audience glimpses at the underlying fascist regime while maintaining that, on the surface, life still contained parties and wild

TV REVIEW

Catherine Zeta-Jones to the rescue in ‘Queen America’ Daily Arts Writer

No matter how many Nicki Swift videos accuse Catherine Zeta-Jones (“Red 2”) of being one of the haughtiest stars in Hollywood, I constantly find myself arguing in her defense.

What is it about her that draws my unwavering allegiance? Is it her marriage to fine wine Michael Douglas (“Ant-Man and the Wasp”)? Is it because I cannot separate her from her character of Velma Kelly in the 2002 adaptation of “Chicago”? Or is it because she has mastered an American accent despite hailing from Wales? It’s probably Michael Douglas, but while the actress reportedly may not be a delight to work with, she consistently turns out a great performance no matter the quality of the project. Zeta-Jones can act her ass off, and nowhere is this superhuman ability to salvage a script as evident as in “Queen America.”

Much like its central star, I have mixed opinions about “Queen America.” Due to the irreversible trauma inf licted upon me by “Insatiable,” I

entertainment.

“Money,” a number evolving from embracing the grandeur of wealth to desperation at not having it, was the performance’s first look at the dichotomy of Germany in the 1920s. After using the first half of the production to establish relationships and set the scene, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” directly before intermission, stunned the audience with its sudden display of the hidden Nazi culture in Berlin. Clifford’s friend revealed an armband emblazoned with a black swastika and the cheerful, sultry dancing changed to dark, ominous stomping.

As a character, Sally Bowles chose to ignore the hints of Hitler’s rise even when blatantly obvious.

Glazier’s rendition of “Maybe This Time,” ref lecting her happiness at finally being in a stable relationship with Clifford, was artfully done and did justice to her character.

Sally stays in-denial, singing: “Life is a cabaret old chum,” until the very end. The simplicity of detachment is written all over her face, but the audience senses the danger

entered into pageant-centric “Queen America” expecting the absolute worst. After all, the shows resemble each other so much they could be cousins: Southern-fried teen pageantry, overbearing and appearanceobsessed coaches, the promise to highlight messages about body image — the list goes on.

Additionally working against my first impression of the

“Queen America” Series Premiere Facebook Watch Sundays at 9 p.m. show was the idea that it had acted as an opportunistic rip-off meant to capitalize on the newsworthiness of “Insatiable.” No one likes a copycat.

Very early on, the show distinguishes itself from “Insatiable” by putting its central focus on the coach Vicki Ellis (Zeta-Jones), rather than the individual competing in the pageant. Vicki Ellis is the

best pageant coach in Tulsa — scratch that — all of Oklahoma, in the midst of creating her next star. Her protegée, Hayley Wilson (Victoria ‘I Think We All Sing’ Justice, “The Outcasts”), is the reigning Miss Tulsa and a favorite to take home the crown of Miss Oklahoma. When we first meet Vicki barking orders as Hayley sprints on the treadmill, she appears to be nothing more than another two-dimensional character used only as a vessel to make overdone jokes about the superficiality of pageants or lazily embody everything wrong with this specific subculture. Vicki’s vitriol is more sloppy than sharp, and she seems to be judgemental of her anti-pageant niece Bella (Isabella Amara, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”) because she is overweight.

As the episode progresses and more information about Vicki’s family life and background is uncovered, she becomes a much more complex and purposeful character. The bourgeois, Escalade-driving Vicki is not all she appears to be; behind her façade is a white-trash girl who betrayed her roots in favor of pursuing a life she assumed to be superior

in remaining idle, a message incredibly relevant to our current political climate.

The second half of “Cabaret” included the memorable “What Would You Do?” performed by Fraulein Schneider (SMTD Sophomore Samantha Buyers), a poor landlord in love with a Jewish fruit-seller Herr Schultz (SMTD Junior Aaron Robinson). Fraulein Schneider ends her engagement to Herr Schultz in the wake of the Nazis’ rise to power, but Herr Schultz firmly believes that “it will pass,” even after bricks are thrown through his window in an effort to drive him out of town.

Denial can only persevere for so long. The last scene shows a spotlight shining on a missing orchestra, with instruments lying haphazardly across the f loor and music stands upended, but music continued to play. We see the Emcee rip off his suit to reveal an inmate’s concentration camp uniform with a bullet hole in his chest, while other members of the cast, wearing white, stare at a bright light in the middle of the stage.

Strobe lights f lash on and off and we see the cast contort,

as if being shot, before finally collapsing, lifeless. Everyone is taken in the end — the orchestra, the cast, even the audience. Seeing intricately developed characters die is heartbreaking, reminding us of the full consequences of Hitler’s power and how the current sociopolitical divide in the U.S. seems to be converging on the same path.

A musical as relevant as “Cabaret” was a wonderful selection, but I would have liked to see more explicit connections to our times.

“Cabaret” is a wake-up call for its audience, but still largely sticks to the original script.

Deviations to move from the past to the present would have allowed the audience to resonate more with the message.

“Cabaret” shows us how easily one can focus on the beauty of the world and ignore the reality. This country currently hosts a president who openly shames women, racial minorities and the queer community. How long can we keep up this complacency?

Letting our minds become numb to atrocities is as good as joining the perpetrator.

ALEC COHEN / DAILY

to the one she was born into.

This denial of her history cuts much deeper than mere class tension: In order to pursue this luxe life, she abandoned Bella at birth to be raised by her sister. It is this connection to Bella that serves to explain why Vicki has so much stake in, and concurrently, so much disappointment with the way that Bella has turned out under her sister’s care.

“Queen America” is not perfect by any means: Jokes

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ALLY OWENS

Wednesday, November 28, 2018 — 5A

fall flat, exposition can be clunky and the only overweight character is still positioned as the binary opposite of class and beauty. Its central character is no paragon either.

Vicki actually believes that she is unerring in most of her stances, and that in projecting her own insecurities onto the likes of Hayley or Bella she is helping them. However, it is this intoxicating imperfection that makes “Queen America” a relative stand-out among

the array of recently debuted web series — especially those released on Facebook Watch.

The show does not attempt to delude us into believing they have the solutions for these large overarching issues.

Rather, it plunges beneath the simplistic surface of pointing the finger at the wrongness of pageants in order to give us an in-depth look at how class, beauty standards and body image interact to create a horrendously damaged woman.

SINGLE REVIEW: ‘COME OUT AND PLAY’

INTERSCOPE RECORDS

Billie Eilish may only be 16, but it seems like she’s been around forever. A year after her big break into the music industry, Eilish has already established a clear brand of strippedback, atmospheric pop that showcases her unique voice.

This bare yet poignant sound reaches a melancholic peak on her recently released single “come out and play,” a song perfect for the holidays without any direct ties to the season. Listening to Eilish’s voice is like holding a hot cup of tea in front of the fire — it is comforting most of the time, but occasionally rises with a sharp pang of emotion, burning the listener with momentary glimpses into the singer’s darker thoughts. She

is complex, but so is her art, offering her audience a way to understand the turmoil that seems to lay under

“come out and play” Billie Eilish Interscope Records Eilish’s languid exterior through her poetic lyrics and simple orchestrations. “come out and play” clocks in at a typical pop single length of three minutes and 30 seconds, however, the song could easily go on for several more verses without losing the listener. Eilish merges the crackling spirit

of the holidays with a solemn longing to produce the kind of mood that is found in only some winter songs, like “River” by Joni Mitchell and Luther Vandross’s “Every Christmas.” While Eilish is a newcomer compared to legends like Mitchell and Vandross, she displays the kind of soulful sorrow of an artist with legitimate talent that will last the test of time.

The single’s simplicity and earnest narrative ring true to this talent, surprising anyone who takes the time to listen with an outstretched hand, asking them to leave their worries behind and come out to dance in the snow.

-Clara Scott, Daily Arts Writer

Arts

6A — Wednesday, November 28, 2018

DAILY HUMOR COLUMN

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

BOOK REVIEW

Oh my pod! The new radio Self-help goes beyond the comedy golden age self in Havrilesky’s essays Way before that guy in your English class discovered NPR, audio entertainment had been amusing audiences for decades.

While today it seems everyone and their mother has a podcast, the renaissance of the art form is a revival of the old time radio technology on which it is based. The rebranding of radio programs as podcasts is the best thing to happen to the medium since it was replaced by television back in the ’50s. Podcasts today have occupied every realm of entertainment that radio once had a monopoly on: There are dramas like “Serial,” news programs like The New York Times’s “The Daily” and even comedy shows like “WTF with Marc Maron” and “2 Dope Queens.” Podcasts have most certainly declared themselves the second golden age of radio and more importantly, I would say, the second golden age of radio comedy.

The Golden Age of Radio was a time period in American entertainment lasting from the 1930s until televisions entered nearly every home in the country by the mid 1950s. Back in the day, families gathered around the radio weekly to tune into beloved comedy shows like “The Goldbergs” or “The Aldrich Family.” Like podcasts today, these shows survived on advertisements, but instead of ads for Blue Apron and Gillette, they were sponsored by Camel cigarettes and Pepsodent.

Many comedies in the radio age were episodic and situational.

“Abbott and Costello” used the medium for clever wordplay and endless puns to crack up listeners everywhere.

The original “Funny Girl,” Fanny Brice, portrayed the silly young girl Snooks Higgins on “The Baby Snooks Show,” sometimes called “Baby Snooks and Daddy.”

Bob Hope — usually recognized for hosting the Academy Awards a record number of 19 times and earning five honorary Oscars — was a massive part of the radio industry. For his 64-year broadcasting run he was closely associated with NBC. He performed everywhere from Broadway to US military bases.

On Hope’s show he had celebrity guests like Al Jolson, Jack Benny and Doris Day. A comedian in his

own right, Hope’s show, “The Pepsodent Show Starring Bob Hope,” was wildly popular. The show boasted some 15 writers, including a young Sherwood Schwartz who would go on to create “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch.”

BECKY PORTMAN While much of radio comedy and radio in general was superseded by TV in the ’50s, one very important radio comedy show made itself known in the peak of TV’s reign in the early 1970s. It ran weekly sketches and musical parodies from 1973 until 1974. That show was “The National Lampoon’s Radio Hour” starring the likes of John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and Harold Ramis. Like the Lampoon itself, the show was chock full of controversial and crude material, making it difficult to keep advertisers. The radio hour was even cut down to half an hour after 13 weeks. While the show only lasted a year, its alumni went on to change the history of comedy. Most of the alumni went on to work at “Saturday Night Live,” the show’s creator, Michael O’Donoghue was even head writer at “SNL” for its first three seasons.

Today, the selection of podcasts is, to put it lightly, overwhelming.

Comedy podcasts are no exception, as there are hundreds of pods out there with the chief goal of making you chuckle on your morning commute. Earwolf — a podcast network part of the Stitcher family — is putting out some of the best comedic content thanks to the genius of comedy podcast king, Scott Aukerman.

The comedy writer and improv master started the podcast “Comedy Bang! Bang!” under the name of “Comedy Death-

Ray Radio” in 2009. The show is an improviser’s dream as it runs on witty rapport and impressive character work. It is goofy, weird and sometimes downright bizarre, but always hilarious.

Featuring special guests every week, “Comedy Bang! Bang!” never fails at keeping our attention. Some of my favorite recurring guests include Jason Mantzoukas (“Big Mouth”), Paul F. Tompkins (“Bojack Horseman”), Lauren Lapkus (“Crashing”) and Nick Kroll (“Big Mouth”). Aukerman and his business partner launched Earwolf in 2010; now, the network hosts over 35 different comedy programs including Paul Scheer’s “How Did This Get Made?” and Jonathan Van Ness’s “Getting Curious.” Aukerman has also recently launched a podcast with Adam Scott of “Parks and Recreation” fame.

The show in question, formerly known as “U Talkin’ U2 To Me?,” is now called “R U Talkin’ R.E.M. RE: ME?” The hilarious pod was previously devoted to delving into the discography of the rock band U2 and has now shifted its focus to the band R.E.M. — they have amazing banter that makes you wish you could be in the studio with them.

If you want to get into humorous podcasts but fear the incessant banter of improvbased and character-focused pods of Aukerman fame, have a listen to my personal favorite, “My Dad Wrote a Porno.” The British show is hosted by James Cooper, Jamie Morton and Alice Levine. Each episode, Morton reads a chapter from his father’s self-published series of erotic novels, “Belinda Blinked.” Every moment is a cringe-fest verging on tears from laughter. The three friends tear apart the novel with hilarious running commentary, making the most uncomfortable moments of the highly sexual erotica laugh-out-loud funny.

The pod is now on their fourth season, as Morton’s father continues to publish his work, for which we are eternally grateful.

The art of radio comedy is alive and well with the plethora of comedy podcasts in our midst; the only thing left to do now is to get listening. And with that, Dear Reader, I bid you happy listening!

MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: ‘SINCERITY IS SCARY’

INTERSCOPE RECORDS

Just a little over a week before dropping their longawaited album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, The 1975 released the music video for “Sincerity is Scary.”

Departing from the moody, jazz-influenced pop sound of 2016’s I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It, their sophomore effort ABIIOR seems destined for a more uplifting and radiant resonance with singles such as “Give Yourself a Try” and “TOOTIME TOOTIMETOOTIME.” However, “Sincerity is Scary” fits the bill in a different fashion.

Whereas The 1975’s most recent videos veered more towards abstract visuals, “Sincerity is Scary” tells a story. Classically

misanthropic, danceable and a bit condescending, the video mimics the song on an acoustic and aesthetic level.

“Sincerity is Scary” The 1975 Interscope Records The visuals take a turn from the fluorescent pinks and blues we would expect from The 1975, and the first scene features a disheveled Matty Healy in a completely white room, the only exception being his navy forearm tattoo that reads “WEAK MESSAGES CREATE BAD SITUATIONS.” The camera then pans to a black-andwhite piece of art on the wall

before landing on a vivid urban scene. From then on, Healy takes to singing in the streets and adapting to the various dance scenes and street illusions he encounters throughout his leisurely stroll.

While seemingly unfit for a song about a difficult relationship, the music video suits the narrative in its capacity to foster a fun, upbeat energy in the face of the various difficulties Healy faces throughout it. Though characteristically pedantic and corny in its delivery and aims, it showcases The 1975’s undeniable strength in generating an appeal and sound that is genuine and all their own.

- Diana Yassin, Daily Arts Writer

JULIA MOSS

Daily Arts Writer

I love the genre of self-help. I love its relentless optimism, its fundamental belief in our ability to cultivate positive change and the way it encourages us to see ourselves as active participants in our lives rather than as victims. In an age of overwhelming anxiety, I love being told that the problems of the world are simple and individual, and that if only I were to meditate / journal / pray more, I would be able to insulate myself against universal human emotions like fear, anger, insecurity and loss.

“What If This Were Enough?”

Heather Havrilesky Doubleday Oct. 2, 2018 But I don’t entirely trust self-help, for exactly these reasons: its oversimplification, its insistence that we exorcize our uncomfortable emotions and the way it puts the onus for change on the individual rather than on the society. The “self” in self-help is important, even essential, but in a world where we are hyper-connected — our circumstances largely dictated by power structures beyond our control — it can’t be the whole story. Don’t we have a responsibility at some point to stop navel-gazing and help the world around us too?

Heather Havrilesky’s latest collection of essays, “What If This Were Enough?” does exactly that, directing the introspective and philosophical tools of self-help not only

at the individual, but at the society at large. Havrilesky’s project is simple in theory, but fascinatingly nuanced in practice: to diagnose our shared cultural values, anxieties, obsessions and illusions in order to better understand the way they influence our individual emotional landscapes.

The essays in this collection are richly layered, emotionally evocative and often profoundly funny. Havrilesky focuses mostly on popular culture as a medium for our shared preoccupations, and moves nimbly between analytical investigations of what our cultural artifacts tell us about our priorities and deeply personal reckonings with how those priorities infiltrate our psyches.

In “The Smile Factory,” she explores how the phenomenons of Disney and Buzzfeed have created a culture of obligatory cheerfulness and constant distraction. In “The Land of Heroic Villains,” she connects our narrative fascination with antiheroes to the elevation of figures like Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump. In “The Popularity Contest,” she analyzes how the numbers game of social media has warped the way we evaluate our own worth.

Other essays, like “Adults Only” and “Playing House,” take a more personal turn, recounting Havrilesky’s own experiences with hard-earned wisdom and haunting vulnerability.

Pulling together all these loose threads is Havrilesky’s overarching emphasis on mindfulness and gratitude — not in the shallow, gimmicky ways these terms often get thrown around in the rhetoric of self-care, but as the only logical remedies for a sick culture. She encourages us to be more cognizant of the ways we’ve internalized our society’s poisonous values and assumptions, and crusades

Classifieds

against distraction, asking us to look closely at our difficult experiences and emotions rather than pathologically turning away from them.

Havrilesky’s insistence that we face this darker side of our humanity might come across as depressing if it wasn’t such a refreshing change from the enforced perfection we so often experience, and if it wasn’t balanced with an unrelenting compassion for our shared humanity.

Again and again, she comes to the conclusion that the only way for us to live full,

Don’t we have a responsibility at some point to stop navel-gazing and help the world around us too?

meaningful lives is to do what we can with what we have, to live for the present and to “embrace the conflicted nature of humankind.” Ultimately, she writes, “We have to rediscover how to navigate each day. We have to learn how to embrace the imperfection of the present moment and accept the wide range of experiences that fall between happiness and sadness, success and failure, true love and hatred, popularity and invisibility.” Only when we release our belief in perfection and get comfortable with that uncomfortable middle-ground will we be able to see that what we have right now, in this moment, is enough.

Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

SERVICES Release Date: Wednesday, November 28, 2018

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

ACROSS 1 Mary Oliver, e.g.

5 Tweak 11 Obliterate in a flash 14 Prefix with sphere 15 Self-moving vacuum 16 “I __ you one” 17 High-tech classroom 19 Starchy grain 20 Bygone Persian rulers 21 Long-jawed fish 22 Present 23 Fighter at the Olympics 27 Man-horse hybrid 30 Synagogue reading 31 Country between Vietnam and Thailand 32 Quaint contraction 34 Type of coffee or whiskey 37 Congressional statute 38 Military IDs ... or what 17-, 23-, 51and 61-Across have 41 Life highlights, briefly 42 Moby-Dick, e.g.

44 Hula strings 45 Pungent quality 46 Rice dish 49 “The Shawshank Redemption” extras 51 Court long shot 54 __ hog 55 Org. whose returns were never sales 56 Get to 60 Trellis climber 61 Astute attorney 64 Golf peg, or where it’s used 65 Long cold spell 66 Image in a botanical print 67 Make a typo, say 68 Litter box visitor 69 Pre-Easter season DOWN 1 D.C. influence gps.

2 “However,” in tweets

3 “Handsome, clever, and rich” Jane Austen character 4 Headwear with tails 5 Works on walls 6 Stag’s mate 7 Longtime Univision news anchor Ramos 8 Two dots above a vowel 9 Pizza chain in many food courts 10 Bar bill 11 Madagascar!, in the Bronx 12 In the know 13 Pan in Neverland 18 Inst. with the fight song “On, Brave Old Army Team” 22 Frost 24 Jay-Z’s “D.O.A. (Death of __-Tune)” 25 H.S. subject that covers all the angles?

26 Jewish ritual 27 Jaguar’s weapon 28 Individually 29 “Fat chance!”

33 “The Simpsons” disco devotee

35 Locale 36 Soil-clearing tools 38 Mark for omission 39 Related 40 Well-mannered man 43 Made up things 45 Reveal everything 47 Individually 48 Draw a blank 50 Nothing but

51 Done to death 52 Float in the air 53 Actor Oscar __ of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” 57 Pulitzer-winning author James 58 Close-knit group 59 Test by lifting 61 Backtalk 62 Alternative to JFK or EWR 63 Perfecta or trifecta

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

By Gary Cee ©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

11/28/18

11/28/18

STORAGE FOR STUDENTS studying abroad. Indoor, clean, safe, closest to campus. AnnArborStorage. com or (734)‑663‑0690.

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, November 28, 2018 — 7A

Johnson adds depth, Wolverines to take on Navy in Tournament leadership to lineup DANIEL DASH

Daily Sports Writer

CONNOR BRENNAN Daily Sports Writer

Three days after Hailey Brown went down with a leg injury last February, thensophomore guard Akienreh Johnson scored a career-high 19 points against Minnesota.

From that point on, Johnson — “AK” as she’s known by her teammates — was a staple of the Michigan women’s basketball lineup. She went from seeing barely any minutes off the bench to excelling as the Wolverines’ sixth-woman — scoring in double figures in three of the last six games of the season.

“AK had an outstanding finish to last season,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico. “She really came on strong late. She helped in the Big Ten Tournament and helped us in the NCAA Tournament. So I think she brings a level of experience playing in big games.”

That stretch did wonders for Johnson’s confidence. Her ascent to the starting lineup — or at the very least, significant minutes off the bench — looked within reach heading into her junior campaign.

Unfortunately for Johnson and the Michigan team as a whole, she suffered a broken hand right before the season got in the way of that. She missed the first three games of the regular season and only returned to practice a few days before her season debut against Missouri in the Gulf Coast Showcase.

“I was a little nervous because I had only had like a practice and a half before getting into the game,” Johnson said. “So I was a little nervous to get my feet wet. But I think coming back was good for me mentally, too, because I came back against such competitive teams that I’ll be ready for the rest of the season.”

Over the course of the Gulf Coast Showcase, Johnson averaged 14 minutes per game against the likes of the 21st-ranked Tigers, No. 5 Texas and Washington — a figure that will likely increase as the season goes on.

The benefits of her return are two-fold for the Wolverines.

On the court, Johnson’s size at the guard position makes her a tough matchup for a lot of players. She has shown an ability to both shoot from the outside and drive the basketball with success, but her real contribution takes shape in her rebounding ability.

“I’m more of a taller guard,” she said. “A lot of guards are smaller than me so they don’t

expect the wings to be able to rebound. So I think I’m more of a rebounding, stronger, physical guard that can get to the basket but also shoot the wide-open jump shot.”

Now a junior, her feel and game experience also suits a relatively young Michigan squad.

“She’s been through practices,” Barnes Arico said.

“I think the game is starting to slow down for her. She has a good feel for the game.

She knows how to cut, she knows how to read, she’s really a student of the game.

I think she’s really going to provide a lot of experience at the guard spot.”

The second, and arguably more important, aspect of her return is her development as a team leader.

Following her stellar end to last season, Barnes Arico and the other coaches encouraged Johnson to be more outspoken.

Sidelined with her hand injury, she finally embraced a more vocal role in practice and during games.

“Off the court, I do a lot like take the freshmen places,” she said. “If they need a ride, I’ll do that to try and build a relationship off the court, so that on the court, I can be more trustworthy to people and I can have a better relationship with them.”

Johnson’s experience at Michigan thus far is one that resonates with her younger teammates. Her basketball career has been riddled with adversity.

Two ACL injuries over the course of three years, having to bide her time on the bench until her number was called at the end of her sophomore season and then getting injured again shortly after is a sequence of events not easily overcome.

And yet, Johnson has battled through it all.

“She is a kid that didn’t play much in her younger days,” Barnes Arico said. “For the younger kids to see that and to see her growth and now where she is, I think they believe ‘Hey, that could be me. I need to buy in and I need to keep working.’

“AK is soft-spoken, but she connects with everyone, and I think she’s helped the rest of the players in our program really believe in that vision.”

Johnson may not be a starter, but her continued growth as both a player and a leader could be a major asset for the Wolverines going forward.

“I think the game is starting to slow down for her.”

“I think coming back was good for me mentally, too.”

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Junior forward Akienreh Johnson is helping lead a young Michigan team.

With Thanksgiving now in the rearview mirror, the end of November means one thing for Division I women’s volleyball: the Big Dance is upon us.

This Friday, the No. 18 Michigan women’s volleyball team (22-9 overall, 11-9 Big Ten) will travel to Pittsburgh to take on unseeded Navy (23-8 overall, 13-3 Patriot League) in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.

Friday’s clash features two programs that took drastically different paths to the Steel City.

Though Michigan finished seventh in the Big Ten standings, its fourth consecutive 20-win season proved strong enough to earn an at-large bid. The Big Ten has seven teams in the field — more than any other conference in the nation.

Despite being seeded outside of the top-16, the Wolverines still enter the Tournament as one of the most polished teams in the field of 64. With 2017 All-American Carly Skjodt leading the charge on offense and senior libero Jenna Lerg anchoring the defense, opponents have struggled to find a weak link in Michigan’s starting lineup.

After beginning the season unranked, the Wolverines clawed their way up to as high as No. 12 in the AVCA Coaches Poll before closing out the regular season ranked 18th in the poll and 21st in RPI. The team lost redshirt junior middle blocker Cori Crocker to an ankle sprain and junior opposite Sydney Wetterstrom to an undisclosed injury for the entirety of October, but both starters made their way back into the fold during November. Their absences gave Michigan coach Mark Rosen a chance to develop young talent under authentic match

T

conditions, which could be a key component of the team’s potential tournament run.

On the other hand, Navy will be making its first tournament appearance in program history after securing the Patriot League’s autobid. The Mids guaranteed themselves a spot in the Big Dance by upending topseeded American University in the conference championship game behind a match-high 25 kills from sophomore outside hitter Maddi Sgattoni.

Under the guidance of firstyear head coach Paco Labrador, Navy has relied on Sgattoni to spearhead its offense all year long — she has recorded 1,252 attack attempts, while none of her teammates have even eclipsed 725. Though she has regularly posted high kill tallies, quantity hasn’t yielded quality for Sgattoni, who finished the regular season

with an inefficient attack percentage of just .181.

In order to compare the Wolverines and the Mids on the same scale, take a look at each team’s result against Rutgers, one of their common opponents during the regular season. The Scarlet Knights are 1-99 — yes, you read that correctly — against Big Ten opponents since joining the conference in 2014, with their lone triumph coming against Maryland in 2015.

Rutgers defeated Navy in four sets on Sept. 8, outscoring the Mids by 17 in the process.

Meanwhile, Michigan trounced Rutgers to the tune of a 3-0 sweep on Sept. 28, while holding the Scarlet Knights to under 15 points in two of the three sets. The discrepancy in each team’s outcome against the same opponent in a 20-day span shows a wide gap in talent

between the rosters.

Navy comes into the tournament slotted at 90th in national RPI, 69 spots behind the Wolverines. The Mids are the Patriot League’s only team ranked in the top 100 of the RPI rankings, while 16 of Michigan’s regular season opponents — 13 of which compete in the Big Ten — finished in the top 100.

The big takeaway? The Wolverines, who have made the tournament in 17 of Rosen’s 20 seasons at the helm of the program, are far more prepared for the tournament’s level of competition and its accompanying pressure than their rookie opponent.

When push comes to shove, Michigan’s first round fate will lie in its ability to keep Sgattoni in check while simultaneously varying its own offensive attack.

DARBY STIPE/Daily

Michigan coach Mark Rosen is preparing the Wolverines to play against Navy in the NCAA Tournament on Friday.

Stop UNC, stop anyone

he No. 7 Michigan men’s basketball team enters Wednesday’s top-15 showdown with North Carolina ranked just four spots ahead of the Tar Heels.

How they THEO got there MACKIE couldn’t be more different.

North Carolina’s high-powered offense is averaging 96.6 points per game in its 6-1 start.

The Wolverines, meanwhile, have ascended to their highest regular-season ranking in six years on the back of a defense that allows just 48.8 points per game.

One — or more likely, both — of those numbers is going to change Wednesday evening.

The question for Michigan is where that balance will be struck.

Because if its defense can stop the Tar Heels, it can stop anyone.

North Carolina’s offense isn’t the best in the country — it currently ranks fourth in KenPom adjusted offensive efficiency, behind Nevada, Duke and Gonzaga. But as far as the Wolverines are concerned, it may as well be. The difference between the Tar Heels and the three teams ahead of them is negligible and, more importantly, they may be the team best built to overcome Michigan’s stifling defense.

As Villanova learned two weeks ago, the Wolverines’ defense makes it extremely difficult to score once an opposing offense settles into the half court. It chases shooters off the perimeter, and uses quick hands to stop guards from penetrating into the lane.

What Michigan hasn’t faced — since its 86-71 loss in Chapel Hill a year ago — is an offense that can run like North Carolina’s. Transition offense has always been a staple of Roy

Williams’ offenses, but this team is unique. Of Williams’ five teams that have ranked in the top-10 in adjusted tempo, two won the national championship. This year’s version of the Tar Heels is 11th through seven games. The Wolverines have yet to face a team in the top 200.

“When they’re running, they are running downhill,” said Michigan coach John Beilein on Tuesday. “It’s like a freight train coming at you.”

Last year, against a less talented North Carolina team, the Wolverines couldn’t handle that tempo. But, as sophomore forward Isaiah Livers notes, that was just their eighth game under assistant coach and defensive specialist Luke Yaklich. Since that loss last November, Michigan has allowed more than 72 points just twice — against Purdue and Villanova, the nation’s two best teams by adjusted offensive efficiency.

“We were experimenting with a new defense,” Livers said of last year’s game. “And now, I feel like our defense is experienced enough and (has) more veterans to understand our roles.”

As good as last year’s defense was, Wednesday is the Wolverines’ opportunity to prove that this group is deserving of its billing as the nation’s best.

It hasn’t allowed more than 61 points in a game and held Villanova — at Villanova — to its lowest point total in six years.

But the Wildcats are still finding themselves after losing their top three scorers from last season. The Tar Heels, at least offensively, know who they are — and it works.

Point guard Coby White looks like a star, averaging 26 points and 5.5 assists last weekend at the Las Vegas Invitational. Guard Cameron Johnson is shooting 48.5 percent from three. Forward Nassir Little, who played with Michigan freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis in a high school showcase, is projected to be a

top-five NBA draft pick.

“He’s just one of those players that can do it all,” Brazdeikis said. “It’s just gonna be exciting to matchup with a guy like that.”

That’s before you get to forward Luke Maye, who was a Wooden Award finalist last year and is one of the early favorites to win it this year.

Maye presents a unique problem for Michigan because of his ability to play as a stretch ‘5,’ countering the Wolverines’ small-ball lineup that features Livers at the ‘5.’

If there’s a trick to beating the Wolverines’ defense — whether that be speed, talent or style — North Carolina has

it. Michigan could give up 90 points on Wednesday and still have a very good defense. But if the Wolverines are able to extend their streak of holding opponents under 62 against the Tar Heels, they’ll prove that they can stop anybody.

Just ask Beilein.

“Don’t hand national championships to anybody until you see this team tomorrow,” Beilein said, referring to North Carolina.

Then he paused.

“These two teams tomorrow.”

Mackie can be reached on email at tmackie@umich.edu, or on Twitter @theo_mackie

Sports

8A — Wednesday, November 28, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Hayden Lavigne shows progress in overtimes TIEN LE

Daily Sports Writer

The first overtime period of the season didn’t amount to much for the No. 14 Michigan hockey team.

Against Penn State on Nov. 16, the extra period lasted approximately six seconds when Nittany Lion forward Sam Sternschein scored the overtime goal.

So the first real taste of overtime came in this weekend’s series against Wisconsin, with both a double-overtime win and a shootout loss.

And Hayden Lavigne stayed front and center.

The junior goaltender played a major factor during regulation in both games, allowing only one goal in 18 attempts Friday and two in 37 attempts Saturday. It was in the overtime periods that he shined the most, however.

Lavigne has struggled to maintain his spot in the net.

After coming into the season as the unquestioned starter, his shaky performances pushed freshman Strauss Mann in the rotation to add competition.

Against Penn State, though, Mann received starting nods to start the entire weekend, rather than splitting with Lavigne — a rotation Michigan has maintained throughout the season.

So this weekend’s extra periods were, in a sense, redemption.

“Hayden Lavigne, excellent,” said Michigan coach Mel Pearson. “He’s the reason we got the point tonight. Good for him. That’s the Hayden that we’ve come to expect and know, so a really good weekend for him.”

It didn’t come easy. Friday, Lavigne fended off two Badger pushes in overtime before forcing a double-overtime period that ended brief ly.

But after Quinn Hughes, Will Lockwood and Josh Norris took control of the puck, little needed to be done goaltendingwise. The Wolverines had scored in their first offensive possession.

And it came to Lavigne’s relief. The fast-paced nature of three-on-three hockey makes Lavigne “really anxious,” and the team doesn’t practice any three-on-three.

That was until Saturday, when Michigan found itself in another double-overtime period. Except this time, it was in a worse situation. The Wolverines had committed a penalty right before the initial overtime period ended, which carried into the next period.

So rather than playing an already troublesome threeon-three hockey, Lavigne had to battle against Wisconsin’s man-advantage.

“I just kind of knew that there was going to be a guy open at all times, and look for a one-timer like how they scored

their first power play goal on,” Lavigne said. “Sure enough, we did a good job of getting in lanes. So there wasn’t an initial shot option for most of the guys, and I just tried to try to stay calm and make sure I was making reads and knowing where everybody was.”

Added Pearson: “They made a couple nice plays, had guys all alone, and Hayden made key saves. He battled tonight.

He competed tonight. He was sharp, he was sharp. You could tell he was on it and he made it look pretty easy.”

Staying calm was a strategy that proved successful in double overtime for Lavigne.

So when play extended to a shootout, he did it again.

“I try to stay calm,” Lavigne said. “The biggest thing is outwaiting the shooter.”

In the first shootout attempt, the patience paid off. Choosing to put pressure on the shooter, Lavigne positioned himself out far to block off the shot lanes.

He inched back to the goal,

facing the shooter as he slid back into the net.

Wisconsin defenseman Wyatt Kalynuk couldn’t find any openings and tried a backhand f lick as the ice in front of him wound down. It was a save to extend the game at least one more play.

The second attempt, however, showed a brief moment when Lavigne’s patience didn’t benefit him.

“I did well on the first one, the second one I might have waited a little bit too long, he kinda beat me on that,” Lavigne said. It’s kinda patience pretty much, just wait for him to make a move and wait for that instead of trying to make a move first.”

The skater took his time, curling in an “S”-shaped route before centering himself in front of Lavigne. Not wanting to bite too quickly on a potential fake, Lavigne stayed up and wasn’t able to react to the five-hole shot that ended the game.

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily

Junior goaltender Hayden Lavigne allowed three goals in 55 shot attempts over Michigan’s series split with Wisconsin.

P R E S E NTS :

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Speak Truth to Power: The Role of Journalism

ICE HOCKEY

Notebook: Pastujov

sees offensive uptick JORGE CAZARES Daily Sports Writer

Last season, junior forward Nick Pastujov recorded just four goals and 11 assists in 36 games.

This season, he has seven goals and four assists through 13 games — nearly doubling his scoring production just a third of the way through the season.

The New York Islanders’ draft pick saw an increase in offensive production from his freshman season — where he scored one goal and added two assists in 28 games — to his sophomore campaign. The trend has quietly continued into his third year with the Michigan hockey team.

Being a point producer has never been Pastujov’s calling card, but he thrives when embracing physicality, creating havoc in the offensive zone and winning faceoff battles. This season, he is second on the team in faceoff-win percentage at .571, an increase from last season’s .452-win percentage in the circle.

The jump in production has not gone unnoticed by Michigan coach Mel Pearson.

“He’s so much better than he was offensively,” Pearson said. “I think he’s hitting the net more, more confidence.

He was playing with a couple freshmen last year and they’re sophomores now — they’re both having better years than they did last year, too. So, I think it’s a combination.”

After practice on Tuesday, Pearson also noted that this past summer was Pastujov’s most impressive as far as training. “(I) worked on little things like winning battles and winning stick battles, winning corner battles, getting stronger,” Pastujov said.

“Just getting stronger, faster and a little bit smarter.

“We’re on the power play now, too, and gotten some goals there, so we’re getting a lot more ice time. Getting to create more chances, getting out there more and being able to get in a groove as the game goes on. And I think that’s played a big role in that uptick in production.”

One area of play that has been an issue for Pastujov this season, though, has been his plus-minus. He currently sits at minus-four, which would be the lowest of his collegiate career.

“It’s something where we’ve been in the room a lot watching video, focusing really heavily on turning that minus into a plus,” Pastujov said. “Hopefully before Christmas but definitely very, very quickly. That has to be the biggest thing to work on, just keeping that production up.

“Just gotta score, or get scored on.”

Luke Morgan and Adam Winborg record first goals of season There were times during practice coming into this season where redshirt sophomore forward Luke Morgan looked like the best player on the ice, according to Pearson. And on Saturday — his 13th game of the season — he tallied his first goal in a Michigan sweater.

“It felt good, definitely,” Morgan said.

“It’s a big relief, it took a lot longer than I’d like it to, but it’s definitely a big relief going forward knowing I don’t have to worry about it.”

Junior forward Adam Winborg joined Morgan in recording his first goal of the campaign over the weekend.

The Stockholm native saw plenty of ice time in his first two seasons, playing in 30 and 39 games, respectively. Thus far, he has played in seven of thirteen regular season games, but has been a mainstay in the lineup since the Lake Superior State weekend series.

“He’s so much better than he was offensively.”

Goaltender continues

competition

For two consecutive weekends now, Pearson has opted to start the same goaltender on back-to-back

Wednesday, Dec. 5 @ 7PM Ann Arbor District Librar y 343 S 5th Ave. Ann Arbor

nights, after previously rotating starters for each game.

Freshman Strauss Mann got the nod in net for both games against Penn State, while junior Hayden Lavigne started this past weekend against Wisconsin.

Michigan came out of both weekends with three points and all four games were competitive to the final buzzer.

The difference? Mann allowed 11 goals to a high-powered Nittany Lions offense while Lavigne surrendered just three to Wisconsin.

“It just depends on how they play,” Pearson said. “If Hayden gets the opportunity to play Friday and plays like he did this past weekend and strings games together then I think he’s making a strong case to be ‘the guy.’ And Strauss, it’s a little bit of work in progress.

He’s very capable, I’ve got a lot of confidence in him, as the team does. But he did give up 11 goals — whatever way you slice it — against Penn State, and he played well.

“But Hayden comes in and gives up three goals. Now different teams — you look at where they are in the offensive stats in the country and you take that into consideration, too, but no timeline at this point.”

Cam York announces commitment to Michigan Cam York, a defenseman for the U.S. National Team Development Program, announced his commitment to Michigan on Tuesday. He has recorded 16 points through 21 games this season. York — a five-star prospect and likely an eventual NHL-first rounder — decommitted from Boston College in September and joins fellow USNTDP forward John Beecher as a Wolverine commit.

FEATURING PANELISTS

ALEXA ST. JOHN

ROBERT YOON

2018 Michigan Daily Political Journalist Editor in Chief and Moderator Howard R Marsh Visiting Professor

MICKI MAYNARD

DAVID JESSE

Forbes contributor Higher Education reporter, Adjunct lecturer at UM Detroit Free Press

KATREASE STAFFORD Detroit government watchdog reporter, Detroit Free Press

RYAN MCLOUGHLIN/Daily

Junior forward Nick Pastujov has nearly doubled his scoring production thus far.

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“I didn’t realize academia was a career for me”

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Designer: Elizabeth Bigham

Our high school cars deserve more credit than we give them

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ometimes I dim my computer screen and meander down the streets of my hometown via the panoramic lens of Google Street View. This is a pathetic confession, I know, but also an unexpected remedy for the occasional pangs of nostalgia.

In my head, I relate these virtual escapes to the same sort of self-reflection preached

by Henry David Thoreau and his transcendentalist clique. I’ll pause for a second and admit that this analogy would have undoubtedly yielded a sarcastic red pen comment from my high school literature teacher, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity.

Anyhow, I bring this guilty pleasure of mine up not to embarrass myself, but rather to provide the context for how I found my 2007 Subaru Forester parked in front of my high school on Google Street View. That is right, my car has preserved a high school legacy that beats any state championship trophy or school newspaper byline.

I am rather proud of this accomplishment. Not just because securing this parking space likely required pressing the snooze button only once and successfully parallel parking. But also, because my car is scrapbooked into the town’s internet identity — an achievement much more impressive than any yearbook superlative.

Before I go any further, I should clarify that while I will refer to the car as “mine” for simplicity’s sake, it is not. It is my parents’. I didn’t sign the check at the used car dealership. It was my dad who spent hours perusing Craigslist and chatting with car salesmen.

And it was my mom who researched “safest cars for teenage drivers.” This is how it was decided I would drive a Subaru.

Subaru. The car breed synonymous with Vermonters who I would imagine spend Saturday mornings loading their mountain bike into the trunk along with a packed lunch of Clif bars and Soylent. Subaru drivers wear flannel, don handlebar mustaches and will likely be the first ones to slap on a Bernie 2020 bumper sticker. In other words, my L.L. Bean cable knit sweater probably isn’t enough to earn the distinction of an archetype Subaru driver.

Yet, the transaction that resulted in me driving a Subaru eerily resembles the signature “precious little girl” trope beloved by

BY SHANNON ORS, DAILY STAFF REPORTER

RUCHITA IYER/DAILY

the Subaru marketing team. This probably also explains why my parents affixed a “Caution New Driver” bumper sticker to the rear window. I think that is all the evidence you need to confirm I was the oldest child.

My car is named Silvia. I am not sure what prompted my 16-year-old self to select that name. Most obviously, the nickname aptly matches her grey exterior and silver spray-painted rims –– the handiwork of her previous owner.

Assigning a name to your first car was a routine practice among my high school peers.

Silvia’s friends included a sedan named Ruby and a Jeep named Conrad. I think the tradition humanized the metal frames of our literal high school ride or dies.

Silvia’s upholstered seats reeked of chlorine from all the swim team carpools where we opted to not change out of our swimsuits.

Her glove compartment housed a collection of guilty pleasure CDs that would likely cause embarrassment if my Spotify account now showed them as recently played. Besides the sticky residue of unidentifiable liquids from can drive fundraisers, the trunk stored a snow scraper that was tossed between my sister and me after removing the inches of overnight snow accumulation.

As I would often explain to my mother

when justifying Silvia’s unkempt nature, the cleanliness of the car often correlated with the stress I was experiencing that particular week. The ACT was looming that coming Saturday? Please excuse the loose practice tests strewn across the backseat. Oh, the AP Spanish midterm was tomorrow? Look for the dozens of subjunctive verb flashcards crammed into the center console. It was peak swim season with 14-hour days? I am sorry, Dad, for the six water bottles that never seemed to return to the dishwasher.

I admit that the first time I shifted Silvia’s gear into drive I felt like I had finally earned the classification of a true American teenager. The mobility allowed by the automobile had propelled generations of teenagers to engage in the most lauded pop culture shenanigans. I felt empowered by the possibility of cutting class like Ferris Bueller, dancing with the T-Birds to Greased Lightning or speeding down main street like in “Herbie: Fully Loaded.”

For a moment, a limitlessness to my existence was introduced. An existence beyond hometown borders or parent drop-offs.

However, in reality, Silvia’s rebellious possibility was quelled by my own conservative personality. That is, I can count on my fingers the number of times she reached 60

mph while I was driving. In fact, her driving record while I manned the wheel probably more closely resembled a car parked in a Florida condominium.

Silvia rarely traveled more than a few miles at a time. This is evidenced by the rare occasions that the heater would actually warm up before reaching the destination.

Most subzero mornings were spent driving with mittens and relying on the liquid heat of Earl Grey tea to warm my body.

So, unlike what the ’80s movie canon had led me to believe, my car did not deliver many crazy adolescent escapades. It did not cruise rural Michigan till godless hours of the night. She never went to a drive-in movie with a boy. Nor was the hiding place for illicit substances. I guess sometimes I swore in the car, but that doesn’t necessarily qualify as material for the next teenage flick.

I occasionally dwell on the rather platonic highlight reel of my high school years. But then, I remember perhaps the most valuable tenet of Silvia’s companionship was beyond the coming of age narrative we liken to teenage car ownership.

Silvia listened to me rehearse Spanish oral conversaciones. She patiently endured the endless duets of “Wicked” with a best friend whose friendship later crackled amidst the changing leaves of our first college semester. She guarded the confessions that were divulged during gossip sessions about school dances. I opened college acceptance emails in Silvia. I slammed her door when group projects failed miserably.

And she comforted me when the lingering goals of high school slipped away from the window of attainability.

Our first cars see us at our most raw moments of adolescence. They are our most intimate confidants throughout high school. For those of us without cars in college, the discretion that a high school car was able to provide is no longer guaranteed.

Emotion is harder to conceal with the perpetual company of 28,000 undergraduates.

I think that is why I take comfort in the ability to plug in an address and see sweet little Silvia right where I remember her the most.

Just waiting for a hometown visit and the chance to plug in the aux cord for the best type of high school reunion.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018// The Statement

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Ode to Egglantine

BY ALICE TRACEY, DAILY STAFF REPORTER

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ne afternoon in late May 2017, my family and I pulled our Ford Escape into the driveway — we’d just gotten back from a short Memorial Day weekend trip — to find a small, red chicken coop sitting on our lawn.

I dashed over and lifted up the roof of the coop, exposing two anxiously clucking, rust-colored hens cowering in the sawdust-covered nesting box.

The birds were afraid to let me touch them, but I released them from their pen and spent the rest of the afternoon watching them explore our small backyard, scratching at fallen leaves and nibbling on crabgrass. My parents, brother and I named the smaller, more nervous hen Egglantine, after a character in the “Guardians of Ga’hoole,” and the more robust one Yolklanda, a cringe-worthy egg pun.

The hens were a surprise for my 19th birthday, a gift for which I’d begged my parents after hearing of other chicken owners in greater Boston. The idea of raising farm animals in a suburban area was appealing, and quite honestly, the chickens served as a welcome distraction. I’d just returned home from an exhausting first year at the University of Michigan. It had been a long, lonely two semesters — I’d found

COURTESY OF ALICE TRACEY

it nearly impossible to branch out and make friends, and had struggled with anxiety and low self-esteem. That spring, I’d come home feeling depleted, unclear on who I was or what I wanted.

Pouring my energy into the chickens helped me to feel grounded in a way I hadn’t during my first year of school. I turned the chickens into my personal project, building new additions to their pen, ordering bulk quantities of feed and treats off the internet, noticing and researching every new sound or behavior. Driven to own the happiest suburban chickens ever, I’d rush home from work each afternoon to release the hens for their free-range time. I worried constantly about the chickens’ well-being and picked up the slightest signs of discomfort. On hot days, Egglantine and Yolklanda were pampered with frozen treats and ice-cold water, changed every few hours.

Not only did the chickens give me purpose, but I found them incredibly calming. Each morning before work, I’d collect their eggs, change their water, clean the cage and then sit on my porch with a cup of tea and a crossword puzzle, watching the hens scratch around the yard. I loved the routine, and the chickens looked so focused and peaceful foraging for their breakfast that it

was hard to not feel relaxed.

As I settled in to the summer and slowly processed my freshman year, the chickens transitioned in their own way. Yolklanda quickly became comfortable with her new home and owners, but Egglantine adjusted a bit more gradually. For the first few weeks after her move, she refused to lay eggs — a sign of stress — and was skittish around people. Eventually, Egglantine began

called home, I’d ask for details about Egglantine and Yolklanda — did they seem healthy? Had they done anything funny or cute?

I pushed myself to find my place at the University that fall, joining student organizations and connecting with new people in my classes and clubs.

Even as my schedule filled up and I slowly started to recognize more faces on campus, the chickens remained an important piece of my identity. They were my go-to fun fact, a dependable conversation starter. Owning chickens didn’t help me make friends, but did make it easier to introduce myself and give others a glimpse of my personality.

By second semester sophomore year, I was finally feeling adjusted. I’d developed close friendships with my roommates and a few classmates, forming a small but closely-knit social network. I still had moments of anxiety and loneliness, but I was paying much more attention to my mental health, and overall felt more centered and confident.

I thought of the chickens occasionally, asking my family for updates and stories, but as the University became home, they gradually faded into the periphery of my mind. I was busy, immersed in my friends, clubs and classes, fully present. No longer was the fact that I raised chickens my default “about me” — I had new ways to connect with people, friends in common, shared clubs and extracurricular interests. My social circle expanded more over the summer, as I stayed in Ann Arbor for an internship at a local tech company.

One morning in August, I was running along Washtenaw Avenue, engrossed in my thoughts about the day ahead. I was happy, looking forward to an afternwoon swim in the Huron River followed by a game night with friends. When my brother called and told me he had bad news, I wasn’t surprised by the words that came next: Egglantine, sickly as ever, had died. Her sister was headed back to the farm where she’d been born, because hens don’t like living alone.

The news hurt to hear, but I didn’t feel sad, only reflective. I kept running, lost in the rhythm of my steps on the pavement, contemplating my one year and three months as a chicken owner. The hens had given me structure when I felt untethered, a sense of self when I needed one. For one-pound birds, Egglantine and Yolklanda had carried a lot of weight.

Not only did the chickens give me purpose, but I found them incredibly calming. laying, and by the end of the summer she was confident enough to run up to me and accept treats from my hand.

It wasn’t easy for me to part with my chickens that August, because they’d come to represent the comfort and routine of home. For the first semester of sophomore year, each time I

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Wednesday, November 28, 2018 // The Statement

Wednesday, November 28, 2018 // The Statement

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“I didn’t realize academia was a career for me”: Stories of LSA academics

BY JENNIFER MEER, DEPUTY STATEMENT EDITOR I

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

remember it vividly. It was summer of 2015 and I was receiving emails from the University of Michigan about something called the “Undergraduate Research Opportunity.” I had no idea what this meant, nor did I take the time to care. I was excited to be attending the University in just a few months, but was not one to open seemingly-superfluous emails. It was probably spam or a solicitation for funding, but certainly not something that required attention from me — an incoming freshman with absolutely no idea what was going on.

Fast forward to the winter semester of my sophomore year, I took a class on sociological research methods and fell in love. I ultimately majored in Sociology and Political Science, and became involved with the Sociology Department’s research programs. By conducting research, mostly under the supervision of Sociology graduate students, I glanced a simple, yet significant, window into academia.

In my time reading academic articles for classes and conducting my own research, I have learned a lot. If you were to ask me about the difference between big “G” and little “g” globalization; or about why philosopher John Locke would support gun rights; or about what influences where college students want to live in the future; or about how gender and sexual orientation relate to one’s feelings on the environment, I could talk your ear off. Though this knowledge doesn’t serve any immediate practical function, it has piqued my interest for the past three years,, and for that reason, I value it.

The University has been ranked the number one public research university in the country by the National Science Foundation. It spends nearly $1.5 billion annually on research. And its Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program alone allows more than 1,300 undergraduates to work with more than 800 faculty members on research projects each year.

But why, I wondered, does one come to dedicate their life to research? Where does this research go once it leaves the University? And how does it function in the everyday world?

To answer these questions, I spoke with four professors in the humanities and social sciences about their work and came to the realization that what professors lecture about in their courses is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of their knowledge and experience. Entering

academia from a variety of backgrounds, they explore the nuances of their fields.

They engage with colleagues across the world, and they face challenges, such as how their work fits into the public sphere. or Fatma Müge Göçek, a professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies, a career in academia was not her original course in life. She was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey.

Like her family, she planned to go into business. But, as she finished high school and started college, student movements broke out in Turkey, which brought with them a wave of violence and political repression.

“I couldn’t, I decided, in good conscience, make money when the whole society was crumbling around me,” she said. “As a consequence, I switched from being a business major to social sciences, and eventually to sociology.”

She was initially interested in why Turkey could not transition from an empire to a republic and sustainable democracy.

While researching the topic, she wrote several books. She said she believed that for Turkey to have normalized violence, there must have been violence in its past that was never accounted for and that is what became normalized.

She looked at the Armenian genocide, which occurred between 1915 and 1917, and said she was able to understand why a heartless government was able to commit such a massacre, but she was unable to understand why the Turkish people put up with it. In Turkey, there is still denial of the genocide and, in fact, its recognition is legally punishable. After the assassination of one of her good friends — an Armenian journalist — in 2007, Göçek fully devoted herself to the topic.

“From that point onward, I’ve been very active,” she said. “But as a consequence — as I was working on this, giving talks — people wanted to, they think, slander me… (by) saying that I was Armenian. There were these awful things. I received death threats.”

Nevertheless, Göçek has continued her work, although she doesn’t travel to Turkey but anymore. After completing her most recent book on the Armenian genocide, “Denial of Violence,” she moved on to exploring Turkish violence aimed at the Kurdish people. ike Göçek, Mai Hassan didn’t initially intend to pursue a career in academia.

When she was a third-year undergrad-

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uate at the University of Virginia in the mid-2000s, she learned about the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute. RBSI is named for the first African American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for helping with mediation efforts between Israel and Palestine.

It is a pipeline program for minority students who are interested in pursuing careers in academia. As Hassan noted, minorities are not well-represented in the field.

“I didn’t realize academia was a career for me, I (figured I would) go to law school, lots of political science majors do that,” she said.

Hassan worked on a research project through RBSI and conducted research with an economics professor at the University of Virginia. Through both opportunities, she learned about academia.

When she graduated college in 2008, she was accepted into grad school, and since 2016, she has been an assistant professor of political science at the University of Michigan, with a focus on African politics.

Having emigrated from Sudan to the United States in the 1990s, Hassan initially wanted to focus her research on Sudan, but found it was extremely challenging to get access and be taken seriously as a young woman in the field. She then turned to sub-Saharan Africa, and her initial research focused on decentralization processes in Kenya.

Hassan’s first book project looked at the Kenyan bureaucracy, and she is now looking at land allocation and registration in Kenya and Sudan. or some of the other professors I spoke to, their paths into academia came as a result of their upbringings. In the Department of History, Jonathan Wells’s research interests were similarly influenced by his childhood in the South.

A professor of history in the Departments of Afroamerican and African Studies and History, as well as the director of the Residential College, Wells has always been interested in American politics. His father was a professor of American literature, so the life of an academic appealed to him.

“In some ways, I grew up with a very privileged understanding of what does it mean to get a Ph.D., what do you have to do to get a doctorate, what does the life of a professor look like,” he said. “In that sense, I had a really early understanding

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of what it meant to be a researcher, what it meant to be an academic, and what it meant to teach in colleges.”

Wells grew up in North Carolina, and later near the University of South Florida, as his father was a professor there. He decided to study the history of the American South, as he became interested in the cultural and political differences between the regions.

His first book, “The Origins of the Southern Middle Class,” focused on a segment of the white Southern population that came to have careers in professional fields, as well as in careers as merchants and business leaders.

Over time, Wells became more and more interested in African-American history. He was particularly interested in the Fugitive Slave Act, passed by Congress in 1850. Wells became interested in the implications of the law, and specifically the impact it had on the Northern thinking about slavery and the Civil War. ther social scientists have ended up in their respective fields after radically pivoting from another area of study, which has helped them to engage broader audiences with their work. Erin Cech, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, was an electrical engineering major in her undergraduate program, where she was interested in developing assistive technologies for the disabled.

However, she picked up sociology as a second major and became interested in the broader social issues of STEM education and professions. In order to make a difference in the fields of STEM, she said, she decided to pursue an advanced degree in sociology.

“As I was taking my engineering courses, I enjoyed them, I thought it was interesting, but I found myself asking questions that my professors couldn’t really answer about issues of access and finances and things like that,” she said.

“I sought out sociology as an intellectual space that had the tools for thinking around those things.”

From there, Cech continued to look at inequality in STEM, but also at issues of inequality across the country broadly.

Currently, she is interested in the cultural mechanisms of inequality reproduction, and specifically the way that certain taken-for-granted cultural practices and beliefs can help to reinforce inequality.

Most of Cech’s networks are outside of the University, and she collaborates with

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people across the country. She spends as much time on Skype calls as she does in in-person meetings.

Her background as an engineer has allowed her to engage with audiences outside of sociology, setting Cech apart from other sociology professors who might be only able to connect with their fellow social scientists. She has presented to chemistry departments and at National Academy of Engineering events, among other places.

Cech believes bridging this gap will become even more crucial in the future.

She explained that science and engineering fields have traditionally been resistant to the reconciliation of the disciplines, as they only look to address technical issues, but Cech believes there needs to be more engagement now.

“Especially as the technical world becomes so much more complicated and the technologies that we have in our day to day lives are interfacing with us at a very high level, at great frequency, it means that the people designing and managing those technologies are going to need more and more knowledge of how the social world works,” she said. ech’s multidisciplinary work points to a much broader question — that of connecting academia to the public more broadly, an issue that is very prevalent among scholars.

In our interview, Cech expressed that academics should do a better job taking advantage of “translational spaces” to make their work more accessible to a broader audience.

For academic historians, Wells explained, this has always been a challenge.

“There’s a problem in that so many of us write academic history that only sells a few hundred copies to the main resource libraries at other universities, so that means we’re essentially only talking to each other,” he said.

Wells pointed to David McCullough, who wrote a famous biography on John Adams, and described him as an amateur historian, in order to distinguish him from academic historians. Wells noted that McCullough sells thousands of copies of his books and thus has a much more direct impact on the public perception of history than an academic historian.

“Many of us (academic historians) have argued that we need to be more concerned about publicizing our work in the broader public arenas,” he said. “And the

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reason is because history, since it’s the study of change over time, really helps us form a contextual understanding for current problems.”

Both Wells and Hassan suggested that the public does not necessarily have a good understanding of what academics do, as so much of their work occurs behind the scenes.

Hassan also agreed with Wells that perhaps academics have not done a good enough job conveying their work to the public. If an undergraduate at the University were to be a handed an article she has written, chances are they wouldn’t really understand it, but that isn’t necessarily their fault.

“It’s because we’re talking in really precise terms, there are these really highlydefined concepts and ideas that we’re all trying to build on top of each other,” she said. “There’s a requisite level of knowledge that is necessary to be able to make advances on some things. So I understand why it happens.”

She said that academia may not be addressing the most pressing public policy questions of the day; however, she suggested this isn’t necessarily problematic.

Many pressing questions are not theoretically interesting, and if a question isn’t theoretically interesting, it’s not going to appeal to academics. She explained that it is the role of academics in the arts and sciences to create new theory and allow people to think about things that they’ve never thought about before.

Göçek, on the other hand, feels she has been able to engage the broader community. She explained that over the years she has become very interested not only in Turkey, but also in the United States.

After 9/11, she began giving talks about Islam at churches, for instance, and became very interested in the perspectives of minorities.

“Being a sociologist enabled me to engage much more in the social problems here, that I wouldn’t otherwise,” she said.

She has also looked for ways to engage students by appealing to topics they are interested in, such as making her classes relevant to them. One extremely popular class she has taught is called Sociology of Culture: From the Kennedys to the Kardashians — the title alone is a draw.

With regard to Sociology, Göçek joked that many people may not know the difference between a socialist and a sociologist, while Cech explained that, by nature, people aren’t really interested in

accepting academic notions of society.

“There’s something about the way that Americans tend to think about the world that actually, I think, limits the ability for social sciences, particularly sociology, which focuses on group processes, to resonate,” she said. “That’s because people tend to think about life and their own experiences and the experiences of others in a very individualistic way.”

Nevertheless, despite the constraints that exist in academia, all four professors pointed to alternative outlets, primarily in the media, as ways to communicate with the general public — something they believe is important.

For example, Cech would “translate” gender research into a less jargon-y form for the Stanford Clayman Institute for Gender Research during her postdoc years and Göçek blogs about Sociology in The New York Times in Education, which is targeted to K-12 students, as well as colleges and universities. f I could go back in time, I absolutely would have opened those UROP emails my freshman year.

I’m not sure if it would have made much of a difference in the end, but it would have given me two additional years of research exploration and experience.

Though I am still unsure if academia is the path for me, pursuing social research has been crucial to my time at the University. I have discovered that research is an excellent way to learn about the world, but also to learn about where all of the things taught in school originate. Professors don’t pull information out of thin air, despite often seeming that way.

“I think social science research is so important, I really feel everyone should give it a shot for a semester or a year — just to be a good citizen,” Hassan said, explaining that by conducting research, one can become confident about the information they acquire. Otherwise, how can people know that what they read in newspapers and other articles is true?

Cech echoed Hassan on the importance of the “production of knowledge,” but emphasized the importance of also making research accessible to the public.

This type of work, she explained, could be extremely important for people who plan to pursue careers in activism or nonprofit work, among other opportunities.

Coming from such different backgrounds, it stuck out to me that the four individuals ended up in the same place, all extremely passionate about what they do.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2018 // The Statement

On going home

BY MARTINA VILLALOBOS, COLUMNIST ILLUSTRATION BY VALERIE CHRISTOU

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very semester starts with the same icebreaker: Where are you from, what year are you and what is your major? I always got tripped up by the first question.

I was born in Santiago de Chile but I left before my first birthday.

I lived in in Pittsburgh for five years and by the time I was six I had already crossed into new state lines. I lived in Jonesboro, Ark., only to move a year later to Fayetteville, Ark., where I would live for 10 years. I have spent the last four years in Michigan and I expect to spend the next seven months in Germany. Home, as a physical place, has never been something I can pinpoint in my mind. I can’t tell you what home looks like, but I can tell you what it feels like.

Home has always been an idea — it is my mom’s arms, her soft cadences, the smells of lentils cooking and my dad’s voice.

It is these images that constitute my home because I have always left a place never to return.

I moved to Michigan while in the process of inventing myself.

So, in an attempt to affirm who I thought I was, I hastily closed

my chapter in Arkansas. I left in a flurry of emotions, and while I promised others I would return, I vowed myself to never do so.

My story in Arkansas was an anomaly I wanted to let go of.

Yet, I found myself one Thanksgiving Break in the Detroit Metropolitan Airport with a ticket to Tennesee in hand. I sat at the gate and there I did the math I had avoided doing — it had been five years since I had been in Jonesboro. As I boarded the plane, I didn’t feel like I was just flying back to the Natural State, it felt instead like I was going home.

I lived in Jonesboro, Ark., when I was six, and in this tiny town of 75,866 residents I found my best friend and a family. Sierra has flaming red hair that glimmers in the sun, and in one of those magical coincidences of the universe she became my friend. I don’t remember much about my time in Jonesboro, but I remember her. I spent most of my weekends at her house playing and eventually her parents became a part of my family. They easily adopted me. Their house is so ingrained in my memory that if I close my eyes I can walk through

it remembering where the paint is chipped or the feel of the couch.

This is what I was flying back to.

Janelle and Marcus, Sierra’s parents, picked me up from the airport — smiles adorned their faces, and in Janelle’s hands were two homemade chocolate muffins.

These muffins were the flavor that greeted me every Saturday morning as Sierra and I ate breakfast.

As I stood in the glimmering sunshine of the South, all the memories I had kept locked up began to overflow the banks of my mind.

I began to remember the Southern hospitality that had caught me off guard as I rushed around the airport hardly making eye contact and avoiding the five seconds it takes to say hello. I remembered the warm Southern air. I remembered the house and all its noises.

The first hours I noticed I had forgotten how quiet Jonesboro was. I woke up my first morning to a silence I couldn’t remember.

In this silence I began to stitch back up a past I had ignored.

Walking through the house, I remembered spending the morning in the window room gazing out to the vast open yard covered in

autumn leaves. I remembered the nooks and crannies that Sierra and I discovered as we played hide and seek. I remembered sitting under the piano while Marcus played. I remembered the dining room and how I had learned the word vegetarian there. I remembered sitting in Michigan thinking of Janelle’s chair empty when she told me she had been diagnosed with cancer.

On returning home I realized the immense hurt I had caused myself. Being back allowed me to reclaim this past but most importantly to embrace it as part of who I am. Maybe my time in Arkansas doesn’t make sense, maybe there were episodes in my childhood there I wished had never occurred, but by ignoring those I was also shutting out home.

I was erasing my childhood with Sierra. I was erasing Janelle and Marcus who have never stopped inviting me back. Their small family, of quirky English professors and my best friend, were the ones who encouraged me to keep reading and writing.

For me home is still the idea but it is now also that house on Church Street.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018 // The Statement

The Comical Strangeness of Second-Hand Embarrassment

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BY SAM ROSENBERG, SENIOR ARTS EDITOR

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eavy breathing, a rapid heartbeat, trembling knees, a tightened throat — these are typical symptoms for someone who experiences performance anxiety. You know, that noxious feeling you get when you’re about to go onstage and speak, dance or sing in front of a crowd of people. I’ve had that anxiety for most of my life. Depending on the circumstances, I naturally become nervous and overwhelmed when the attention is put on me, especially when I don’t see it coming. And while I have been able to find healthy coping mechanisms for combating these nerves, there is another anxiety I have that is a bit harder to figure out: “second-hand embarrassment” — that icky, white-hot, skin-crawling panic you get when you watch someone else perform, worried that they might mess up or when you’re in a confined setting and something uncomfortable occurs.

Like most of my neuroses, this anxiety stems from a somewhat traumatic experience I had growing up.

When I was about three years old, my family and I saw a kids-only production of “Peter Pan” that my sister starred in. She played Jane and was hooked onto a wire in order to create the illusion that she was flying.

Even though she didn’t fall, just the mere thought of her crashing down onto the floor was enough to make me erupt into a volcano of tears. Ever since then, I find myself on edge whenever I’m among a large gathering of spectators at all kinds of public events — movie theaters, lectures, plays and musicals, you name it.

As a prepubescent boy, this anxiety manifested most often whenever I heard sexually explicit rap and pop music at parties, particularly ones of the bar mitzvah variety. The fact that there were adults around us while Lil Jon yelled, “To the sweat drop down my balls!” made me want to collapse into oblivion. Hearing LMFAO talk about getting their cocks sucked was equivalent to nails on a chalkboard. And I’m pretty sure Kesha’s “Blah Blah Blah,” with its cringe-worthy, hypersexual lyrics, almost gave me a heart attack once — no offense to Kesha. I love her other songs, just not that one. At my own bar mitzvah party, I specifically told the DJ to bleep out the cuss words in “Boom Boom Pow” by The Black Eyed Peas, but imagine my horror when I heard Fergie rap “I’m on that next shit now” as I danced with my oblivious aunt. That period of awkwardness has thankfully subsided, but looking back on it, I’m a bit sad this unshakable dread robbed me of having a good time at these kinds of parties, frequently forcing me to leave the dance floor and seclude myself in a bathroom or somewhere far enough away where I couldn’t hear anything.

Watching movie trailers in a movie theater can also be really difficult for me. I know that sounds strange, but just hear me out. I tend to watch a lot of movie trailers on YouTube out of paradoxical boredom and obsessive interest, and I’ve seen so many that I am able to distinguish which trailers are bad and formulaic. If it’s a trailer for a studio comedy, there’s likely going to be quirky characters in quirky situations, jarringly swift editing, a light pop song to lighten the mood and some

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

cheesy line of dialogue that doesn’t line up with what the character is saying on-screen. If it’s a trailer for a drama, there’s usually a solemn orchestral score, sad or serious-looking characters undergoing a serious change, a morose indie folk song or a funny moment to lighten the mood. These kinds of repetitive formulas might not bother the regular moviegoer, but for some reason they unsettle me. Maybe it’s because I find discomfort in their emotionally manipulative attempt at advertising the movie. Maybe it’s because I worry about how those around me might react, and that their reactions will be negative. Maybe I’m just too quick to judge.

Whatever the case, it’s something I have a difficult time controlling. It’s even more disorienting when movie theaters put trailers that don’t match the tone or genre of the movie that I’m there to see. This past summer, I went with my family to see “Tully,” a dramedy about a struggling mother of three who hires a night nanny, and the trailers that played before it were “The Darkest Minds” (a boilerplate “Divergent” ripoff), “Johnny English Strikes Again” (that goddamn British action comedy franchise that has zero justification for its continuance) and “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation” (are you fucking kidding me?). Knowing how out-of-place these trailers were and the mortified response they could elicit from the audience, I looked straight down at the ground for the entire duration of the trailers because I knew I would probably explode right there on the spot if I glanced up at the screen.

It seems odd that visual and aural stimuli are the main agents that stir this stress inside me, considering how much I love music and film. Even when I’m

not at a movie theater or at a party, I somehow am still capable of experiencing second-hand embarrassment induced by mundane, everyday occurrences.

For instance, witnessing a technical malfunction or interruption during a lecture — like when a video has trouble buffering, when there’s a commercial for a movie that plays beforehand or when the professor forgets to turn off AutoPlay and another video appears — is probably one of my top 10 fears of all time. Seeing a college a cappella group perform a medley of suggestive pop songs is also a big no-no for me — if I wanted to watch a sexy rendition of a Top 40 jam, I’d just watch “Pitch Perfect.” Both situations, while equally upsetting, can trigger me for different reasons. I tend to cringe at the incompetence of the former scenario and the ostentatiousness of the latter.

Suppressing this anxiety has not been easy. It’s one of several insecurities I have that I’ve only been able to curb either by managing it or discussing it.

My strategies for managing it range from incessantly doodling in my journal to typing out my thoughts in the Notes app on my phone to excusing myself and waiting alone outside for an extended period of time.

And usually, I get a mix of bewilderment and fascination when I tell my family and friends about this, which is expected because it’s not something people tend to talk about when it comes to mental health discourse. Anxieties are strange, especially ones that feel very specific to who we are. It is only when we can share our experiences that we can maybe harness some power over the things that inhibit us from being the very best versions of ourselves.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2018 // The Statement

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Ann Arbor Tr e e L i g h t i n g F e s i t v a l

photos by Max Kuang