2018-12-05

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Ann Arbor, Michigan

The Sex Issue

The Statement Magazine dives into the results of its annual sex survey

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ACADEMICS

Scholarships send three students to China, U.K. PRASHANTH PANICKER/Daily

Prestigious Marshall and Schwarzman awards provide graduate opportunities

Dr. Deeohn Ferris, Audubon vice president, speaks about environmental justice, equity and law at the Dana building Tuesday.

Audubon vice president reflects on environmental equity, diversity

School for Environment and Sustainability hosts lecture for DEI speaker series CALLIE TEITELBAUM Daily Staff Reporter

Deeohn Ferris, vice president for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at National Audubon Society, presented Tuesday at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and

Sustainability on initiatives to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in the environmental conservation field. The lecture was organized through the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program as a part of the “DEI December Presentation: Environmental Justice, Equity and Law.”

The National Audubon Society is a nonprofit conservation organization with a mission to protect bird and wildlife habitats.

Audubon policy, education and science experts provide guidance to lawmakers to shape conservation actions and policies.

In Ferris’s first job as a

lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency, she and her colleagues looked into patterns of the locations of companies who did not comply with regulations. Everywhere they had a case, Ferris and her colleagues determined people of color and lowSee AUDUBON, Page 3A

LIAT WEINSTEIN Daily Staff Reporter

Three students have been awarded the prestigious Marshall and Schwarzman scholarships to pursue graduate studies at universities in the United Kingdom and China during the upcoming academic year.

LSA seniors Amanda Burcroff and Noah McNeal won the Marshall Scholarship, which provides up to 50 students from across the United States full funding to study at any U.K. institution in any field of choice. Business and LSA senior Eduardo Batista became the first University of Michigan

student to win the Schwarzman Scholarship, which was created in 2016. According to the website, the Schwarzman Scholarship offers students interested in global affairs the chance to study at China’s Tsinghua University.

Burcroff and McNeal became the University’s 8th and 9th Marshall Scholarship winners, and are the first winners since 2013. A press release published Monday afternoon by the Marshall Scholarship Program said the 48 scholars were chosen from a pool of over 1,000 applicants. The winners will join an accomplished alumni base including Supreme Court See SCHOLARSHIPS, Page 3A

Bird scooters will not fly south for ‘U’ study CSG talks evaluates winter weather, company announces new NET

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diversity statements

Licensing agreement with city requires company to assume liability for improper use

New hiring requirements in higher education “a really promising practice”

Bird –– the scooter-sharing company that took Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan’s campus by storm this fall –– says it will continue to operate during the winter, depending on daily weather conditions.

A Bird spokesperson confirmed the company’s intentions to let the public proceed with riding through the winter months, but added that the vehicles could be removed if inclement weather were to occur.

“Bird is extremely committed to the safety of our riders, and so we take into account the weather conditions of each city where Bird is available,” a Bird spokesperson wrote in an email to The Daily.

The spokesperson said Bird has a monitoring team that reviews riding conditions and determines whether roads are safe for use each day, and oftentimes the service will pause riding when weather is not permitting, such as during storms or hurricanes. When there’s a threat of blizzards or icy roads, the company investigates to deem whether the driving environment is safe.

Bird’s statement still leaves uncertainty as to whether the Bird scooters will, in fact, completely migrate south for the winter.

Scooter usage has been

RILEY LANGEFELD Daily Staff Reporter

A new study on the use of diversity statements in hiring at the University of Michigan was recently conducted at the University’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. The study served to analyze the effects of new and evolving practices in faculty hiring in higher education.

Diversity statements are written pieces of an application in which the applicant explains the ways their background, experience, scholarship, mentoring and other previous work can contribute to campus efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. The statements are requested from candidates for some faculty positions at the University and increasingly at institutions of higher education across the country.

Prof. Tabbye Chavous, director of NCID, co-authored the paper.

Chavous said the purpose of the study was to gain a more thorough understanding of how candidates and faculty used the See DIVERSITY, Page 3A

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hotly contested ever since they arrived in Ann Arbor this past September. After the scooters’ initial deployment, the city of Ann Arbor temporarily removed nearly two dozen scooters for violating city ordinances that require motorized vehicles not to interfere with the public right-of-way. According to Lisa Wondrash, the city’s communications director, Ann Arbor has had many Bird-

related violations, but only one has been reported and confirmed to have resulted in an injury attributable to a Bird scooter. Since the initial crackdown, a total of 44 scooters have been impounded.

Backlash from the local government’s decision to seize the scooters led to an agreement passed in November with Bird Rides, Inc. that requires the company to pay a fee to the

city of Ann Arbor, provide educational materials to its users and assume liability for improper driving or parking of the vehicles.

“The City Council has provided their policy direction regarding Bird and scooter share companies, which is that we should allow them to operate insofar as they can be operated safely and they can See BIRD, Page 2A

MILES MACKLIN/Daily

Bird says it will continue to operate during the Winter, depending on daily weather conditions.

For more stories and coverage, visit

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INDEX

Vol. CXXVII, No. 45 ©2018 The Michigan Daily

inclusivity program

Assembly also introduced fund to empower survivors through SAPAC donation ABIGAIL BERGER For the Daily

The University of Michigan Central Student Government met Tuesday night to introduce and discuss the NET plan — narrative, equity and transformation — an inclusivity program to enhance diversity and inclusion among student organizations on campus.

The NET plan is part of the University’s commitment to increasing diversity, equity and inclusion on campus.

Public Health junior Lloyd Lyons, a diversity peer educator, explained the purpose of the NET plan.

“The NET plan is a narrative, equity and transformation program within student organizations on campus,” Lyons said. “This program was created to fulfill the needs that a lot of organizations felt that they were missing, that they didn’t have all voices represented, and that they didn’t have different people within their organizations.”

Lyons said this program See CSG, Page 3A

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

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

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2A — Wednesday, December 5, 2018

MONDAY: Looking at the Numbers

TUESDAY:

By Design

WEDNESDAY: This Week in History

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FRIDAY: Behind the Story

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: A 2 GAY COUPLES PRAISE HAWAII MARRIAGE RULING December 5, 1996 After years of being unable to marry, Ronni Sanlo and Kathy Lindblad may soon be able to realize their dream of a same-sex marriage, following Tuesday’s historic decision in Hawaii.

Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Kevin Chang said the Hawaiian state government had failed to establish a compelling state interest to justify prohibiting same-sex marriages.

Yesterday, Chang granted a stay, putting the ruling on hold for at least a year, while the state appeals to Hawaii’s Supreme Court.

Sanlo, director of the University’s Lesbian, Gay and

Bisexual Programs Office, said she anticipated the decision with caution.

“I had anticipated Judge Chang’s decision to be in favor of the marriages. When I heard the decision I felt overly joyed but was cautious because of the appeal process that will probably take place for at least another month,” she said.

Sanlo asserted that Chang’s decision will not be overruled.

“I strongly feel that decision will hold up. There will be opposition in other states who passed laws recently, like Michigan, but they will most likely be ruled unconstitutional.

With that in mind, I decided to ask my partner to got to Hawaii

to get married. Hopefully it will happen very soon.”

Sanlo stressed the importance of being recognized in society as being married for legal and personal issues.

“It’s a little scary thinking about what could happen without being recognized to be married. If I died tomorrow, my partner has no legal right to claim the children that we have raised together. We also are forced to pay higher taxes that married couples are exempt from. That simply isn’t fair,” she said.

“It’s very important we have children, we have grandchildren that includes us as part of the family. There

is no way to legitimize our relationship. For this law to pass — it gives us hope to finally have the opportunity to have a recognized commitment in society.”

Ryan LaLonde, a member of Queer Unity Project, said he couldn’t believe Chang’s decision.

“I was a little sceptical about the idea of same-sex marriages ever occurring during my lifetime. I had the idea that it was something so unattainable in present society,” LaLonde said. “Hopefully the appeal of the decision will not change Judge Chang’s decision.”

LaLonde also said he believed the prejudice that

plagues the gay community will only be alleviated when future generations take over.

“For us to have true equality, we must wait till the older generations pass on. I look at the future generations and see the ideas that they have and am very impressed with their knowledge and maturity with these subjects,” LaLonde said.

Bob Edwards, president of Ann Arbor Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, also said he feels the decision will be met with little opposition.

“At work yesterday, the general response to the decision has been overwhelmingly positive.

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ON THE DAILY: BEAVER TRAP, SMOKE’S POUTINERIE CLOSE Smoke’s Poutinerie, a poutine restaurant in Ann Arbor, and The Beaver Trap, its connected bar, both ended service in November.

No reason for closure was provided by the owner.

Within 18 months of opening, the first Michigan installation of the Smoke’s franchise closed.

Smoke’s has become a staple of fast food dining in Canada ever since its opening in Toronto in 2009. The poutine franchise now has more than 200 locations in Canada. After successfully growing its business across

BIRDS From Page 1A add value in terms of providing an alternative and in-demand transportation option for Ann Arbor,” Wondrash said.

With the passage of the resolution, scooters are to be parked responsibly on sidewalks when not in use, not directly in the walking path or in any way impeding

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Canada in college towns and major cities alike, Smoke’s sought to expand the reach of its brand by opening franchises in the United States. Its first location in the U.S. opened in Berkeley, Calif. during winter 2014. The launch of its first Michigan restaurant in Ann Arbor followed in spring 2017, as Smoke’s hoped to expand into the Midwest.

The Beaver Trap bar was made an extension to the Ann Arbor Smoke’s franchise in hopes of attracting students.

Smoke’s and The Beaver

a pedestrian’s access. Though the resolution with Bird could potentially limit students’ abilities to ride more frequently, some students, like LSA junior Yosef Gross, agree with the measures.

“I think that making the operator take financial responsibility for inappropriate use of scooters is sensible because it will incentivize them to educate and encourage riders to use them properly,” Gross

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Trap’s did not seem to widely capture the attention of college students that frequented Ann Arbor’s bar scene. Many times the bar was empty compared to others in town.

“What drew me to the restaurant was that it was never crowded, the drinks were cheap and well made and there was great service,” Information senior Emma Welch said.

“I think Beaver Trap failed to stay open because it is hard to compete with the wellestablished student bars on

wrote in an email interview.

While Bird scooters are still allowed on campus, the University has also intervened to discipline scooter-related violations. Melissa Overton, deputy chief of police at the University of Michigan Police Department, said UMPD has issued two Bird-related violations: one for being parked inside a building, and one for being involved in an accident.

Bird scooters have taken on a cult following among University students, who use the vehicles to move throughout Michigan’s vast campus.

The convenience of the scooters is what most attracts student riders.

“A 10-minute walk to class only takes me four minutes when I scooter,” Gross wrote.

As temperatures continue to plummet and inclement weather begins to arrive in Ann Arbor during the winter months, city officials are concerned with the potential safety hazards that could come with riding scooters on icy roads or other slippery surfaces.

“Bird riders will have to be careful in the winter, and make sure that the roads and sidewalks are clear of snow and ice before they attempt to ride on them,” Wondrash said.

“Bird has said that they will monitor snow and

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South U, like Brown Jug, Blue Leprechaun and Good Time Charley’s.”

Welch said many patrons did not seem to connect with the dining options from Smoke’s.

“The food was the one thing that was lacking,” Welch said.

“They only had poutine which my friends and I did not enjoy.

Other bars had good food and I think this is what caused Beaver Trap to never get as popular as it could have.”

Smoke’s Poutinerie staff declined requests for comment.

ice to determine deployment levels of scooters, and the city also has the authority to order the scooters off the streets if weather makes their operation impractical, according to the licensing agreement.”

Gross, however, wrote he’s “not too concerned about scootering in the winter.”

“If there is a significant amount of snow or ice on the ground, I won’t ride one,” Gross wrote. “Otherwise, I trust my scootering skills that I’ve honed ever since I rode my first razor scooter in elementary school.”

Just as Bird has stated, there are still common sense situations that would cause for scooter usage to be suspended. In the event of a major snowstorm or icy road conditions, the service assigns employees to remove the scooters from the city in which they are operated. Such conditions are understandably unnavigable to the public and have led some to accept removal of the vehicles.

“I think scooters should be shut down on days with particularly bad weather conditions, like when there is a lot of ice or snow. Otherwise, I think that they should still be allowed in the winter,” Gross wrote. “I actually think that they could be more convenient in the winter because they will minimize the time that riders have to spend outside in the cold and maybe lead riders to go to places they wouldn’t otherwise walk to in the cold.”

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SCHOLARSHIPS From Page 1A Justices Stephen Breyer and Neil Gorsuch and Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn. For McNeal, winning the Marshall Scholarship represented a unique opportunity to pursue his interest in public policy and its intersections with science and technology. McNeal, who is planning on attending the University of Sussex, said he has been fascinated with physics and mathematics since high school but hopes the scholarship will allow him to indulge in other interests as well.

“When I started undergraduate, I had this linear progression in my mind about where I was going to go,” McNeal said. “I was going to go to high school, go through undergraduate, do physics, and then go straight to grad school, then have a postdoc, then keep going along that path. But then, along the way, I have other interests that motivate me and that linear progression kind of excludes those. It didn’t allow for much deviation and so I wanted to look at alternative paths.”

During his years at the University, McNeal served as the undergraduate liaison between students and faculty for the Physics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. He also leads the Society of Physics Students and Japanese Language Circle as president of both groups.

McNeal said his experiences working both in physics labs and in student organizations led him to realize that he wanted

AUDUBON From Page 1A income backgrounds were struggling with the hazardous environmental exposures.

Ferris said these findings inspired her to dedicate her work to equity and inclusion.

In her role at the National Audubon Society, Ferris’s work is focused on equity and inclusion of racially diverse groups that are currently underrepresented in the environmental conservation field. Ferris’s initiatives are directed toward diversifying the workers at Audubon as well as shifting the work of the organization itself.

In order to advance DEI initiatives, Ferris said Audubon is currently curating their first comprehensive report which gives a historical record of investments and initiatives that are advancing equity and diversity at Audubon.

Ferris drew attention to the Audubon’s Statement on Equity,

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to incite meaningful change through policy work — he will pursue a degree in Science and Technology Policy starting in September.

“Just barreling forward just didn’t seem like the right thing to do,” McNeal said. “These other interests and these other sides of life that I’m interested in, they’re calling me as well to not just become a researcher — because there’s more to life than just physics research. And I wanted to be more impactful outside of that, and part of where I could see myself making a difference would be in some aspect of policy.”

After Burcroff spent the summer after her freshman year studying advanced mathematics and combinatorics at the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program, she became increasingly passionate about understanding the different ways math is taught.

As an aspiring mathematics professor, Burcroff tutored high school students in the Michigan Math Circle and Wolverine Pathways program throughout her undergraduate career and found it meaningful to teach younger students about creative approaches to mathematics.

“All of these experiences allow me to mentor younger students, and I’ve watched a few of them as they’ve grown and some of them have gone on to the same Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program,” Burcroff said. “Walking them through the process and the benefits of what it can mean to study abroad or what it can mean to learn mathematics from a different

culture really reaffirmed for me why I wanted to continue doing it.”

The Schwarzman Scholarship recruits students interested in international politics to pursue a master’s degree in Global Affairs in Beijing. Unlike the Marshall Scholarship, Schwarzman Scholars can hail from any country around the world — according to a press release published Monday. The 2020 class includes students from 38 countries and 119 universities.

After a competitive application process resulting in 400 semifinalists, 147 applicants were chosen to receive the award.

As the University’s first Schwarzman Scholar, Batista said he hopes to both further his interest in global affairs and represent Brazil, his home country. Batista was a community assistant in MosherJordan Residence Hall his freshman year and currently serves as a residential adviser in South Quad Residence Hall. He is also an intern in the Boston Consulting Group’s Detroit office. For his senior thesis in the Ross School of Business, he is researching the role of trust and corruption in democratic societies. Batista said his experience as an international student at the University gave him a new perspective on Brazil’s politics and culture.

“As soon as I came to the U.S., I had a view that was as an outsider of the United States and almost as an outsider of my own country, as well,” Batista said. “I think that allowed me to think more deeply about systems of governance as opposed to just

being immersed in that system and not exactly understanding what is going on.”

Batista said his reaction to winning the Schwarzman Scholarship was utter shock, especially because he is only the fifth Brazilian to ever receive the award.

“My jaw just dropped, and I think it dropped for a solid week,” Batista said.

Though Dyson attributed the award winners’ success to their incredible academic achievements, he also mentioned how the scholarships also reflect the students’ personalities, interests and character.

“I don’t want to set up a stereotype of what a Rhodes Scholar or Marshall Scholar or Schwarzman Scholar looks like,” Dyson said. “I really think it’s about your story — so who are you, where you’re going in the future, how this scholarship moves you forward.”

Each August, students complete the first step of the Marshall Scholarship application by seeking institutional endorsement from the University.

According to Henry Dyson, director of the Office of National Scholarships and Fellowships, applicants are required to submit an online application and four letters of recommendation in a competitive nomination process. Once nominated, Dyson oversees their applications as they move to the national level and begin interviewing with the scholarship program itself.

“It’s quite prestigious and competitive even to be nominated for these scholarships,” Dyson said.

Diversity and Inclusion, which reads, “Just as biodiversity strengthens natural systems, the diversity of human experience strengthens our conservation efforts for the benefit of nature and all human beings.”

“I think it’s important to draw parallels to what is going on in the conservation world and our aspirations,” Ferris said.

“Just as we recognize, herald and acknowledge biodiversity of species we also need to be heralding and supporting social diversity in the work that we do.”

The organization is 114 years old, and diversity, Ferris said, was necessary for its survival.

“Our aim is to be more representative of groups that are currently underrepresented so that we can be around for another 114 years,” Ferris said. “The United States has been racially and culturally diverse for a really long time ...

What we have now is a game of employer catch up.”

Sonia Joshi, the SEAS DEI

program manager, explained how the DEI speaker series coincides with a new DEI seminar course that is offered in SEAS. In the past, the DEI speaker series usually consisted of one to two speakers per semester. This year, there have been one to two speakers per month.

“The premise (of the speakers) was to bring in environmental professionals of color that are doing impactful environment and conservation work, to really put the lens to people that might not realize that there are people of color that are working in the environmental space and are in leadership positions,” Joshi said.

Joshi also said the DEI course is supposed to highlight that diversity, equity and inclusion is a growing field, and many environmental organizations are now creating positions and departments solely dedicated to this type of work.

Environment and Sustainability graduate student Zoe Fullem is enrolled in the

DEI seminar class and said this speaker was more informative than previous ones.

“We’ve had a lot of speakers but this was cool because she actually touched on what she’s done at a huge organization,” Fullem said. “We haven’t had someone from such a big environmental organization.”

Environment and Sustainability graduate student Joy Yakie said the seminars that coincide with the DEI course are helpful in comprehending the material.

“Taking the class with the seminar, that’s when you feel the impact more,” Yakie said.

“If I had taken the class without this seminar, it would be purely just theoretical reading journals.”

Fullem believes the onecredit class is not enough to fully delve into the topic of diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We wish we could get deeper into things,” Fullem said. “I feel like it’s not enough. But it’s a great pairing to come to these speaker series.”

Most patients lie to doctors about health issues, University study finds ALYSSA MCMURTRY For the Daily

A University of Michigan study published last Friday found anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of patients are not completely truthful with their doctors.

The study, led by Brian Zikmund-Fisher, associate professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University, examined the frequency of patients failing to disclose relevant information to their clinicians.

The study used an online survey to assess participants’ interactions with health professionals, asking them to answer about what aspects of their lives they failed to tell the truth about, such as how often they exercise and whether or not they take their prescriptions correctly. Researchers found the main reason patients withheld information was a fear of being judged.

Zikmund-Fisher said clinicians did not wish to make patients feel embarrassed or judged.

“There’s certainly part of it that’s internal,” ZikmundFisher said. “They didn’t want to take up more of their health

care providers time, they didn’t want their healthcare providers to think they’re stupid, they didn’t want this information to be in their record (and) they didn’t want to hear how bad the behavior is.”

The study found young people were roughly 20 percent more likely to lie to their health care providers than older generations. In particular, younger female participants with worse self-rated health reported withholding information from health care professionals more often.

Researcher Aaron Scherer, an associate professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa, said he wants to know if more honest relationships could occur if a doctor shares similar identities to their patient.

“One interesting way to build off these findings would be to test whether the extent to which a patient shares similarities with their doctor (e.g., they share the same race or gender) inf luences their tendency to tell their doctor potentially important health information or not,” Scherer wrote in an email interview.

In order to lower the rate of patient dishonesty, ZikmundFisher said greater verbal

compassion from the health care provider is necessary.

“This is speculation, we do not have evidence for this in our study, but my speculation is that now that we know that this is in fact quite common it may be important for healthcare providers to acknowledge that,” Zikmund-Fisher said. “Just say to patients, ‘I know that it is difficult sometimes to share with me if you don’t understand me, if you aren’t following the instructions, if you are engaging in behaviors that you know you probably shouldn’t be.’ Acknowledge that sharing that type of information is hard … and to try and reassure patients that.”

Scherer said empathy is important from the patients as well.

“I think one solution to this problem is the development of increased empathy from both doctors and patients,” Scherer wrote. “On the patient-side, I don’t think most patients realize the enormous number of demands that are being placed on doctors right now, so it might be necessary for a broader information campaign about these demands to change how the general public view their doctors.”

When presented with the research, Nursing sophomore Jacob Doxen said he was surprised to find out the percentage of dishonest patients was so high.

“It’s shocking because people in the medical profession, nurses and doctors, are just trying to help their patients,” Doxen said.

“There’s no judgment involved in being a nurse or a doctor. We can really only provide the help that the patient needs.”

However, Doxen said he is hopeful for the future and believes trust is necessary to create the best relationship between a patient and a health care professional.

“In nursing school, one of the biggest things that they emphasize is building trust with your patients and proving to them that they can be open with you and honest with you,” Doxen said. “Make sure that trust is established and continue to build upon it with every visit or every time you interact. It’s a lot easier to lose trust than it is to build trust.”

Wednesday, December 5, 2018 — 3A

DIVERSITY From Page 1A diversity statements and how higher education institutions use them to evaluate candidates.

The authors were able to find better ways to elicit thorough statements from candidates, which Chavous said would make the practice more effective.

“We think that this is a really promising practice and tool,” Chavous said. “One part of our University DEI initiative is enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion in our campus environment and part of that is through the faculty that we hire. So having tools that allow us to both understand and assess the different types of work and contributions that faculty have made allows us to be more thoughtful and purposeful about selecting faculty who contribute to our academic mission and who contribute to an inclusive and equitable environment.”

The diversity statements are not a required part of hiring through the entire University, but several colleges within the University have recently begun using them, including the Ford School of Public Policy, which mandated in May that the statements be used in all future hiring. Paula Lantz, the school’s associate dean for academic affairs, said the diversity statements simply serve as additional information for consideration in the hiring process — information that is especially important given the subject matter taught in the Public Policy School.

“Issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion are really central to everything that we do here,” Lantz said. “There are not very many issues in public policy that don’t grapple with issues related to social inequality, to political difference, to how policies affect different groups of people across society. So when we are looking to expand our faculty, we really do want people who we think can contribute to how we teach in 2018 and going forward and also how we engage in research and policy.”

Lantz said the practice of using the diversity statements will enrich the student experience by bringing in a more capable and holistically valuable faculty.

“Students gain from a process in which we are making sure that when we bring new faculty into the school, they’re going to really be contributing to all parts of our mission,” Lantz said. “Our entire community benefits when we bring in new faculty who we are sure are going to be contributing to all of the work that we want our community to be contributing to the world.”

Music, Theatre & Dance junior Saawan Tiwari echoed

CSG From Page 1A is an attempt to connect students with the DEI program.

Diversity peer educators, such as Lyons, work towards diversity and inclusion that is tailored to students’ experiences on campus. The NET plan was developed in response to multiple student organization requests, wanting to enhance their diversity and inclusion.

Implementation of the NET plan would mean conducting demographic and climate surveys for student organization and establishing an inclusivity plan tailored to that organization.

Other resolutions included the Survivor Empowerment Fund, which calls for the allocation of $5,000 to support the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center and other sexual assault empowerment organizations on campus. This fund would sponsor events and guest speakers.

LSA junior Izzy Baer, CSG vice president, explained how the Survivor Empowerment Fund is a way to increase survivors’ opportunities, as SAPAC would be able to put on more events and host more speakers.

this sentiment, saying faculty with more diversity of experience offer students more ways of thinking that can aid them in a wide range of disciplines.

“Having more diversity on staff and diversity in teaching obviously helps because it’s being told something differently,” Tiwari said. “The more staff you have teaching in different ways, the more that the student can figure out what staff they like, figure out why that is and then figure out how to apply how that staff is teaching them things to other courses.”

Chavous noted there has been criticism of the practice of using diversity statements among the higher education academic community. Some educators have said the statements amount to required professions of political beliefs, which would have ambiguous implications for the academic freedom of the applicants.

However, Chavous said this is a misperception and added it is necessary for institutions to be specific about the purpose of the statements — they are intended to be used to gather information about candidates’ skills and strengths, not their political beliefs.

One of Chavous’s general findings from the study was that diversity statements tended to be more useful when the instructions were more explicit. She emphasized there are numerous ways for faculty candidates to consider diversity in their work and contribute to the University environment.

“We have to be thoughtful about the way that we ask for the information,” Chavous said. “Thoughtful and inclusive about the ways that we consider different ways of expressing diversity commitments — through scholarship, through teaching, through mentoring, through service.”

Chavous also said some academic units that request diversity statements have reported they are yielding more diverse applicant pools. Chavous believes this is happening because the practice of using the statements signals these institutions value diversity, which may attract more diverse applicants.

Chavous is now sharing the findings from the study at national conferences and using them to improve the practices of universities across the country. She believes the practice will directly affect the education students receive at the University and elsewhere.

Overall, Chavous expressed optimism about the tangible effects that the practice will have in the future.

“We think this is a start,” Chavous said. “But we really think this is a promising start of a practice and a set of practices that will have a high impact for our campus.

“They don’t have funding for projects that they would otherwise have wanted to do,” Baer said.

Public Policy senior Daniel Greene, CSG president, closed the meeting with an announcement about an upcoming mental health event to help students cope with stress during finals.

“They don’t have funding for projoects that they would otherwise have wanted to do”

“On Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 6:00 p.m., we will be holding a workshop led by the director of CAPS (Counseling and Psychology Services), which will be titled, ‘10 things you can do right now to reduce your finals anxiety and stress,’” Greene said.

Opinion

4A — Wednesday, December 5, 2018

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

KENDALL HECKER | COLUMN

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NOAH WEAVERDYCK | OP-ED

A

Time to lead on climate

bombshell report was dropped over Thanksgiving. The Fourth National Climate Assessment provided perhaps the most detailed scientific assessment of how climate change is going to impact every area of our lives.

Produced by a confederation of 13 federal agencies, including NASA, the Department of Defense, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture and more, it details societal response strategies to mitigate and adapt to the effects of global climate change. Projected effects include massive declines in crop yield, sea-level rise that threatens millions, devastating wildfires and billions of dollars of economic losses every year. All of this will destabilize food and social systems we rely upon, which will exacerbate conditions leading to war and mass migration. Almost every national and international scientific body on the planet has converged around this reality, pointing to climate change as the largest impending disaster humankind has ever faced, and urging rapid action.

The advantage of a global scientific consensus is that we also have a roadmap to avoid these catastrophic effects and a metric to gauge our progress. The NCA reaffirms that avoiding the most damaging effects requires us to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and a report released by the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October indicates that achieving this will necessitate global carbon neutrality by 2050. This is still technically feasible, but it requires dramatic and immediate action.

Unfortunately, we at the University of Michigan have a lot of catching up to do. Universities are particularly well placed to act on climate: They have the means to understand the science, are not subject to the same quarterly focus as private institutions and have a stated mission to “serve the people.”

In spite of this, the University has been woefully negligent when it comes to climate action — our emissions reduction goals are among the very bottom of Big Ten institutions, we lack a climate

action plan, our administration refused to divest from fossil fuels despite broad community support and we have yet to join any of the large national coalitions (such as the University Climate Change Coalition or Climate Leadership Network) that help universities and their communities to become more sustainable. It has been noted in the press how badly we compare to Michigan State University, which is highlighted in the NCA for generating 5 percent of their energy locally via solar carports, and to The Ohio State University, which is 10th in the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the top 30 green-powered universities and which committed to carbon neutrality 10 years ago. University President Mark Schlissel’s own Greenhouse Gas Reduction Committee recommended back in 2015 that the University commit to much more ambitious targets and detailed specific ways to achieve such targets, but three years later, little has changed.

Our impact will only be meaningful if it is public and ambitious We can and must do better.

The U-M community is filled with knowledgeable and passionate individuals, but climate change is an issue that we can only tackle if we work together, and we need bold leadership to focus our collective efforts. In a sign of hope, Schlissel announced in October that he was committed to “putting U-M on a trajectory towards carbon neutrality,” along with his intention to form a commission that would be “tasked with developing our plan.” But for this commission to be effective, Schlissel must commit to a defined, science-based date for carbon neutrality. In a detailed letter to Schlissel, the Climate Action Movement at U-M (of which I am a part) has urged him to commit the University to achieving carbon neutrality by 2035, a goal in keeping

with the IPCC timeline. This puts a firm date with a tangible outcome to the pledge that Schlissel has already made to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as laid out in the 2015 Paris agreement, and also reposition the University community as leaders in the fight against climate change.

Without a specific date, the commission’s mandate remains frighteningly vague and we will lose valuable time as they debate what their mandate even is, let alone how to develop a plan to achieve it. It will be far too easy for the commission to set the bar low and fall back on Schlissel’s qualification that such a plan must be “financially responsible,” an excuse for inaction that is all too familiar to a younger generation that has seen its future grossly and systematically undervalued.

While there is a consensus that aggressive climate action now will be far cheaper than if it is delayed, the necessary investments in our future will still be substantial, and we will need the mandate of a public commitment from the highest levels of the University in order to sustain momentum.

Schlissel rightly calls climate change “the defining scientific and social problem of our age.” Beyond the science we produce, the greatest asset that the University has to offer in the fight against climate change is bold and public leadership. Even though we at the University produce nearly a third of Ann Arbor’s emissions, Schlissel is right that simply becoming carbon neutral will not alone make a significant difference for climate change. The University’s impact — our impact — will only be meaningful if it is public and if it is ambitious. We must put to rest the notion that the necessary changes are simply too difficult or impractical. We can be what we have claimed to be all along: Leaders and the Best.

The world needs leaders right now, and with some of the world’s greatest minds, a commitment to serve the public good and an endowment larger than the economies of one-third of the world’s nations, no one is better positioned to lead than we are. I hope we do, and

Noah Weaverdyck is a Ph.D. candidate in Physics and a member of the Climate Action Movement at U-M

MAECY LIGHTHALL | CONTACT EMILY AT MAECYL@UMICH.EDU

Footsteps and imprints

E

the shape of my very day, I walk younger stride. out my front door, When I was and turn to lock 16, I spent it behind me. I cross the a summer front porch, take the four studying in steps to the sidewalk, and a program turn left up Benjamin in England.

Street as it curves into It was only a Mary Street. I take a left month, but I on Packard Street and a some right on Hill Street and KENDALL made wonderful walk up the steps to the HECKER friends and Weill Hall, where I have became enamored with the most of my classes.

I do this walk every day, at city and University of Oxford. least twice a day, oftentimes I remember crying as I more. As the semester has prepared to leave, lugging my slowly seeped away I have overstuffed suitcase across taken this path in Birkenstocks, the dormitory threshold and Blundstones, snow boots and waving goodbye to my new high heels. On the way, I have closest friends. On my way listened to music and podcasts to the airport, we zig-zagged the now-familiar or chatted with a friend as we through strode shoulder to shoulder. streets and hills. As we did These four short blocks have so, I wrote, “Throughout our seen me content, anxious, lives we nestle into pockets stressed and triumphant. I of comfort, pockmarking the usually find myself lost in globe with our memories, thought, concerned for a friend, notches of home that lay vacant thinking about the weekend’s when we leave, as only our plans or pondering how I’ll ever get all my work done that day.

I feel as though the weight of all that contact has worn a path along the pavement that exactly matches the length of my stride and the contours of my feet, like the concrete’s muscle memory has come to expect me. I had a similar sensation last year on my daily walk to class along Oakland Avenue, and my freshman year as I crossed in front of Mosher- bodies can fill them perfectly.”

By that point in my life, I Jordan Residence Hall and along the bridge beside the had a lot of these pockets. I had Central Campus Recreation school, camp and my family Building each day, winding home. I had my cousin’s living around the Ruthven Natural room in Toronto and friends’ History Museum. I spent a houses in Cleveland. I had the lot of time on each of those theater rehearsal room, the routes, engendering a feeling student newspaper lab and the of nostalgia when I walk them park where the soccer team practiced. now.

Now, five years later, Over Thanksgiving break, my family and I drove past our old my imprint portfolio has house, where I spent the first six expanded. But I have the years of my life. As we wound benefit of something I didn’t along the strangely familiar have at 16: a little distance. roads, I could practically feel The next summer I returned my head resting against my to Oxford as a tourist, eager to little car seat, knowing my dad show the friends with whom would pick me up and piggyback I was traveling the city I had me to bed once we got home. come to adore, waiting to fill I imagine I’ll find that same once again the little me-shaped comfortable familiarity in 10 notch I had left behind. It years when I return to campus, was a fun day. We went to my carrying with me a completely favorite Indian restaurant and different life, with different ice cream shop. We walked the worries and a new soundtrack, same roads I had walked every walking these old routes and day that summer. We even re-familiarizing myself with returned to my dorm, crossing

The only thing we can do is leave the highest quality imprint possible

the threshold through which I’d dragged my suitcase my last morning in England.

I spent all day trying to fill up the little crevice I’d left behind, but found I couldn’t quite fit. I could practically feel the dent, running my fingers around its edges as we strolled through town and by a beloved bookstore. I could sense it as we smelled the fryers bubbling in my favorite chip shop. But I was a different shape than I’d been the summer before. Parts had been stretched, parts refined and some parts had been moved around or discarded altogether. It was bittersweet to find so tangibly all the ways in which I was now somehow different.

My column this semester has been all about reaching back to feel the edges of these indentations, relearning their contours and finding comfort in the inevitable swell of nostalgia. It’s been an introspective journey that has forced me to recognize the transience of these few years in college that we are all experiencing together. There is a lingering frustration still left over from that day in Oxford.

The idea of recapturing a long lost feeling is tantalizing, but probably fruitless.

The only thing we can do is leave the highest quality imprint possible. As I walk to class each day I tr y to do so mindf ully, not always allowing myself to wander off in thought but rather make a point to feel the temperature on my skin and smile at strangers I pass. I tr y to recog nize the shape I am making on the world around me so maybe I can feel it more genuinely when I return one day. We are always told that college will be some of the best years of our lives. So we should stretch as far as we can, making impressions all throughout campus, leaving the shape of ourselves up and down Ann Arbor. The more we do, the more memories we make, and the more we have to look back on years from now, smiling against the grain of a bittersweet nostalgia — grateful for the many places in the world we can call home.

Kendall Hecker can be reached at kfhecker@umich.edu.

ALI SAFAWI | COLUMN

I

Oreos, cheese and other hard drugs

n 2013, an undergraduate research project suggesting Oreos activated more of the brain’s pleasure centers than either cocaine or morphine set off a storm of media attention.

However, the study was done in rats and never directly compared Oreos to either drug. Another blitz of media coverage, this time claiming cheese was as addictive as crack cocaine, was predicated on a study by associate professor Ashley Gearhardt, in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan.

Ironically, Gearhardt’s study only mentioned cheese a few times.

Bad science journalism aside, can foods be addictive? Is food addiction a valid behavioral health condition?

According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, addiction is a chronic brain disease where “an individual pathologically pursues reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.” While this definition is harsh upon first reading, it is important to note that not everyone exposed to something addictive develops an addiction. For instance, only 8 to 12 percent of people (still a concerning statistic) who misuse prescription opioids, e.g. taking them not as their doctor ordered, develop opioid use disorder. So no need to fear, yet, Oreo lovers.

Oreos, cheese and other foods some would label as addictive have one thing in common: the bliss point. The bliss point is the right amount of salt, sugar and fat to maximize a food’s irresistibility.

Like the tobacco companies that genetically modify tobacco plants to double their nicotine content, food companies meticulously design processed foods to take

advantage of our evolutionary cravings for salt, sugar and fat for more sales.

Anthropologists estimate that Homo sapiens has been around for about 300,000 years and, for a vast majority of our species’s time on Earth, foods high in sugar, fat and/ or salt were a luxury. Since we need all three of those nutrients to live, it makes sense we evolved neural circuits that reward us for obtaining fatty, sugary and salty foods. Fast forward to 2018, however, where a vast majority of humanity gets the nutrition it needs from these foods and you run into a problem: We no longer need to seek fatty, sugary and salty foods to survive, but the neural circuits of 300,000 years ago still exist.

The one thing that trips people up the most about the idea of food addiction is the question, “How can food be addictive if we need it to live?” We still need fat, sugar and salt, however, we have innumerably more sources of these ingredients than our ancestors did. Something a lot of people do not realize about drugs like marijuana is that their addictive properties are rooted in biology. Your body is coursing with naturally produced chemicals that are structurally similar to a molecule of THC. That is why THC is able to activate your endocannabinoid receptors and cause the effects one feels when smoking or eating pot.

Marijuana would get no one high if THC was not similar to anandamide, a brain chemical.

Why do I draw the parallel between marijuana and food? The brain needs a molecule to activate the endocannabinoid receptors. Both anandamide and THC will do the trick, however, they are not the same.

I apply the same concept to food. We need food, yes. However, an Oreo and

a cucumber are not created equal nor should they be treated as such.

In my conversations with people at the School of Public Health’s Department of Nutritional Sciences, I have observed that people readily fall squarely into the “yes, food addiction exists” and “no, food addiction does not exist.” I have already presented arguments for the former, but what about the latter camp?

The most consistent and cogent argument I hear against food addiction as a concept is that it is seen as conflicted with the “intuitive model of eating.” Intuitive eating is all about learning to respect your internal cues for eating, such as fullness, and rejecting external cues like diet culture. This model also maintains that no food is a bad food.

On face value, the idea of addictive foods flies in the face of intuitive eating. It’s an external cue that makes some food “bad.”

I respect this argument and the intuitive model of eating, however, I believe the conflict is rooted in misunderstanding, not fundamental incompatibility. We label drugs of abuse like opioids and cocaine as “bad” and the dominance of Alcoholics Anonymous and its cousin Narcotics Anonymous in the addiction treatment world lead many to believe that abstinence is the only treatment for addiction.

If that were the case, then we would tell people to avoid certain foods which could be addictive, which as I said before, goes against intuitive eating. While AA and NA have done worlds of good, their total abstinence mindset is

Read more at MichiganDaily.com Ali Safawi can be reached at asafawi@umich.edu.

Arts

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

EVENT REVIEW

Wednesday, December 5, 2018 — 5A

STYLE NOTEBOOK

ALEC COHEN / DAILY

ROUGH TRADE RECORDS

Kerrytown KindleFest Inside a tomboy’s closet sparks the holiday season ERIKA SHEVCHEK Daily Arts Writer

ALIX CURNOW Daily Arts Writer

The last evening of Nov. has always been unremarkable compared to the exciting holiday season that precedes it. Yet, this year the 30th of Nov. had a surprise in store for me. Little did I know that the festivity that would be accompanying my friends and me on our evening out would be one overflowing with fantastical holiday cheer. The friction of bodies huddled together beneath the string of decorative lights kept us warm in the chilled air as we nudged our way through crowds of people looking to spend big this year at the Kerrytown KindleFest.

Had the market been indoors, I wouldn’t have felt as great a sense of community as I did when I smiled in comradery to rosy cheeks and chilly noses buried beneath layers of scarves and hats. Ann Arborites and students alike joined together in sifting through German food (pretzels, bratwursts, roasted nuts), strolling musicians and even Santa Claus himself at the annual outdoor Holiday Market. The joy on the faces of children as they roasted marshmallows over a pit of roaring fire seemed to radiate to the rest of the hoards of people in attendance. Everyone walked cheerfully along to the quick tune of the violin coming from the musician in the center.

“We should hang out outside of the University more often!” my friend whispered to me as she was passed a free sample of Glühwein

(a mulled wine) from a cheerful bearded gentleman.

I couldn’t help but agree with her. So often, I feel as though the town of Ann Arbor and the University do not coincide with one another. Yet, the Kerrytown KindleFest seamlessly allowed townees and students to happily enjoy the company of one another through an appreciation of this niche little city in eastern Michigan.

It was quite smart of the organizers of the event to provide activities all members of the family could enjoy beneath the awning bending over the market. While adults shopped, kids met Santa Claus. Those over 21 could sip German beer, and those under 21 could do arts and crafts. I looked to my right and saw a woman brush her graying hair behind her ear as she swayed to the festive music while the child holding her hand attempted to move her little legs as quick as her grandmother’s. I looked to my right and watched a group of 20-somethings laughing jovially with a group of teenagers about a funny art piece one of the artisans had created. This event was the perfect curator for togetherness between not only Ann Arborites and students, but families of all ages.

One aspect of the event that was not so age- (or economically-) friendly were the prices. All the vendors at the festival had created such interesting pieces of art. I so desperately wanted to purchase a present for my mother, who loves German-inspired festivals such as

this one. However, when I’d look at the price tag of the art I wanted, the number following the dollar sign would be far too high to not make a twinge of guilt churn inside of me. I couldn’t imagine families attending the event that had debts greater than mine. While there were many free activities, it still seemed that the majority of the crowd this market drew in were people in the upper middle class (and mostly white). I’d like to see the market step outside of the box next year, and incorporate more economically friendly vendors and activities. Then, more students would be inclined to go, as well as Ann Arborites whose incomes don’t nearly match that of the people I saw on Friday night.

With that thought aside, I left the market with a spirit chipper enough to help me persevere through Dec. — a month that is filled to the brim with exams, pressing due dates and increasingly colder weather. While I’d like to see more free activities and more economically diverse crowds, the event did a terrific job at igniting the sense of togetherness that seems to fit so nicely with the holiday season. All the vendors were friendly enough to tell me interesting stories about their art, their businesses and their lives.

With a funny story stuck in one ear and holiday music ringing happily in the other, I left the event with much more than I had coming in. I’d recommend it to everyone who’s in need of an evening away from the stresses of the day, which seems to be us all.

TV REVIEW

‘Baby’ keeps its audience waiting for something else SAYAN GHOSH Daily Arts Writer

Netflix’s Italian drama “Baby” occupies a bizarre space in the TV quality spectrum. It took me only a couple sittings to watch its six episodes, each clocking in at around 45 minutes. The plot moved fairly quickly and had enough tension and intrigue to keep me hooked, but by the end of it, I couldn’t help but feel rather underwhelmed.

Normally, if I deem a show binge-worthy and waste away potential hours of productivity, I expect to arrive at the end with something along the lines of my jaw on the floor, hair messed up in an existential crisis, as if I was somehow taken around a lap of Monza by Michael Schumacher himself.

“Baby” is set in the swanky, upscale neighborhood Parioli, in Rome, in a sea of the most pretentious, despicable people you’ll ever meet.

Chiara (Benedetta Porcaroli, “Tutto può succedere”) and her best friend Camilla (Chabeli Sastre Gonzalez, newcomer) are two of the more likable kids in their snooty private school.

They become entangled with more “unsavory” characters, including Ludovica (Alice Pagani, “Loro 2”) and Damiano (Riccardo Mandolini, “Al Posto Tuo”). Ludovica is an infamous outcast, known for filming a sex tape with an ex, while Damiano,

a new student who is rougher around the edges than most, is the illegitimate son of an ambassador.

Rather quickly, Chiara becomes a more rebellious version of herself, spending late nights partying and getting involved with sketchy characters such as Saverio (Paolo Calabresi) and Fiore (Giuseppe Maggio), two nightclub owners. The two men entice Chiara and Camilla into becoming escorts. They are

“Baby” Netflix Season One extremely manipulative, using the girls’ feelings of alienation to their own nefarious purposes without any threats of violence at the onset.

Porcaroli and Pagani are the two standout performers, easily transitioning from vulnerable to confident and self-assured.

While there are several side characters involved in the story as well, none of their storylines are quite as developed and insightful. “Baby” shows these two falling into the depths of the Italian underworld out of a mixture of desiring to rebel against upper class ennui, and the negligence of their parents. Chiara’s parents are all but separated, only staying together for their daughter, while Camilla’s single mother

squanders what money she has with her new boyfriend, neglecting Camilla’s school fees.

However, “Baby” never quite gives the depth its own story deserves. The real-life teen prostitution scandal that it is based on is truly disturbing and creepy, but “Baby” does not make it seem so. It rarely gives any window into the psychological torment Chiara and Camilla go through, from their dealings with the predatory Saverio and Fiore to their disintegrating relationships with their own friends and families. The show never settles on tone, flipping often between “Skins”-esque teen drama and adult thriller.

When it’s the former, it is never as insightful as “Skins” was.

Damiano, another character who feels out-of-place due to his lower-class background and the absence of his dead mother, is sympathetic, but is mostly used as Chiara and Camilla’s love interest. Unlike many shows, it does not fall into the trap of gratuitous voyeurism, but it equally avoids truly exploring the vain, status-obsessed world they live in.

“Baby” has a lot of potential to further explore the psychology of these teenagers in Parioli, but it needs to flesh out its surrounding cast to allow even Chiara and Camilla’s story to develop. At the moment, it takes a superficial view of a troubling real-life story and makes little out of it.

The best way I can describe my style is by using the words of rapper and feminist icon Princess Nokia. In an interview with The Guardian she said, “(I’m) not a typical clean-cut young lady, always a bit rough around the edges, always a bit messy … I didn’t wear the cute things girls wore at the time, I was on some baggy clothes, Harriet The Spy tomboy shit.”

The word “tomboy” has always been in my vocabulary.

At first, others put this label on me, quantifying me into the category of baggy-shorts wearing, ponytail-styling, young female athletes. In addition to my wardrobe, I have grossly bitten fingernails, “man-sized” hands and feet, a sharp jawline and a prominent nose. I’m not the typical, petite female with soft features and cute actions — I’m no manic pixie dream girl. As I grew older, however, I found myself wrestling with this “tomboy” label, considering whether or not I was one and understanding the stigmas that came with it.

My style has always been an uphill battle because it was always about confronting my identity. The way we style ourselves matters to the world around us as much as it matters to us individually. My style journey has not been natural or conforming. It has taken me years to fully see that my own beautiful body wears the clothes and that the clothes don’t wear me. Discovering that nobody, including myself, needs to mold into society’s notion of femininity or culturally-accepted fashion styles, I began to realize that these notions apply to labels like “tomboy.” Tomboy has its own society-influenced definition. And it’s bullshit.

Before I became aware of this beautiful idea of what it means to be a tomboy, it’s important to reflect on the hurdles I leaped in order to finally feel comfortable in the clothes I wear today.

In 7th grade, a boy told me that I looked like a man. And he told me to my face.

I had a wide gap in my teeth, dirty blonde, surfer-looking hair and swimmer shoulders that probably intimidated this frail, 13-year-old, pubescent weenie. In other words, I believe my appearance and my personality were too outwardly “confident” for him — which unfortunately is often socially synonymous with the word “masculine.”

While I chuckle at the comment now, I won’t forget it.

To some extent, it still hurts.

I contemplated my identity for months after. I thought about what I was saying, doing and, most importantly, wearing: graphic tees and zipup hoodies, skinny jeans and soccer sweatpants, Converse and flip-flops, baseball hats and tight ponytails. No makeup.

No nail polish.

“What about me makes me man-ish?” I thought. “Am I not the cool, punky and sporty girl I always thought I was?” Yes, these are highly introspective questions for a 13-year-old girl to ask herself. But realistically, these are questions that many young adults still ask themselves today — me included.

Shouting aggressively in

her New York accent, Princess Nokia raps these lyrics in her track “Tomboy,” declaring it as one of her most popular, confidence-boosting anthems: “Who that is, hoe? / That girl is a tomboy! / That girl is a tomboy! / That girl is a tomboy!”

For my first prom, my mom took me dress shopping. The tomboy and modest girl that I am decided to seek out simpler dresses with fewer rhinestones, duller colors and styles that made my fully-developed chest look smaller. As the aweinspiring feminist activist Emma Watson once said: “My idea of sexy is that less is more.

The less you reveal, the more people can wonder.” Modesty is, indeed, sexy.

I can only hope that every little girl can unapologetically find her own version of the tomboy

My mom can sometimes treat me like her own Barbie doll and dress me the way she wants. In the store, she found an openback, head-to-toe, hot-pink sequin gown that was “made for my body,” considering there was only one size and no zipper on the dress. As she shrieked in excitement, I was utterly disgusted. Overwhelmed, in fact.

Since I love my mother, I tried it on for her. She loved the way it framed my muscular back and bustier chest. I laughed for a minute, showing my mom how ridiculous I felt in this gown and how I could never walk into any event wearing it. But afterwards, while she journeyed around the store finding more dresses, I went to the dressing room and cried, peeling off the heavy, sequin-vomit dress.

I cried because I felt ugly.

Not because the dress itself was ugly or obnoxious or extreme (which, to an extent, it absolutely was). But rather because the dress was wearing me, and I couldn’t see the girl behind the sequins. I felt ugly because I didn’t feel like me.

“I’m really into the fact that I could walk into any room and snatch any man in there like it’s nothing. A cup, baggy sweatpants and a fucked-up ponytail and they’ll still love me. I am one captivating son a bitch,” said Princess Nokia in an interview with Mass Appeal. “Who I am and what makes me me, the New York City project rat; the messy but beautiful; the sloppy but still sexy. When you got the juice, everybody wants to drink from your pitcher.”

My sophomore year of college, I met with an energy reader and medium. In an attempt to analyze my energy balances and chakra alignment, she spiritually sensed the flood of masculine energy that I was exerting. She asked if it made an effect on my relationships and day-to-day life.

With my legs spread open

and body slouched into the couch, I rested my cheek onto my fist. I nonchalantly told her that I “tend to dress more manly.” I expressed how I don’t do my hair or paint my nails or do my makeup all the time. I felt as though boys were not as attracted to me as they would be to other girls.

My medium told me that although my style choices have something to do with this masculine energy, it was my inner self that was truly causing this energy to radiate.

She assured me that it was my confidence, my creativity, my giddiness, my exuberant language and intense beliefs that ignited this masculine energy. That energy just so happened to be presented through my appearance.

And that is when I began to believe that the tomboy isn’t a type of person or a specific style — it’s an attitude.

“Male energy is currently being challenged by alpha female energy,” Princess Nokia added in the Mass Appeal interview. My tomboyishness wasn’t a factor of me being manly after all, but rather a prime feature of my femininity. To some degree, my tomboyishness is my confidence, my superpower, my alpha-femaleness.

When I lace up my sneakers and slap a beanie to my head, I’m unequivocally putting on my supersuit. I’m less nervous when speaking to people (especially flirting with boys), and I tend to find my most creative ideas. I notice myself apologizing less and smiling more.

I’d rather wear joggers and a t-shirt than skinny jeans with a crop-top. I like my baseball cap loose around my head with my thick hair pushing out on all sides. I’m more comfortable when I sit with my knees to my chest than one crossed over the other. I’d rather wear head-to-toe black (yes, a turtleneck, black leggings and ankle-high black boots with no skin showing) than wear any drop of color. Through these outfits, my tomboyishness is revealed to the world — a visual representation of who I am within the clothes. It’s not necessarily the physical article of clothing or a sport or a tone of voice that constitutes this label, it’s the clothing that ignites the attitude and the attitude that manifests as the tomboy.

Sure, my outfits represent how I’m feeling on a day-today basis, fluctuating between these male and female energies.

Some days I do show more of my femininity, like when I wear a “Buffy”-esque, ’90s-mood outfit with knee-boots, a mini skirt and dangly earrings.

But on any day when I am the most comfortable in what I am wearing, how I am acting and where I am going, those are the days when I represent my truest tomboy — my truest self. Coming to terms with my stylistic choices and my personality, I can confidently say that I’ll forever be a tomboy.

I can only hope that every little girl can unapologetically find her own version of the tomboy, becoming the most authentic version of herself, regardless of wardrobe.

“The only way you can make something work is really by being your most unique self and having a lane,” Princess Nokia stated in an NME interview.

“And there’s no one in my lane.”

Arts

6A — Wednesday, December 5, 2018

FILM REVIEW

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

‘Instant Family’ is a fun and wholesome delight JEREMIAH VANDERHELM Daily Arts Writer

More than almost any movie released this year, “Instant Family” wears its heart on its sleeve. Early on, as Mark Wahlberg’s (“Mile 22”) Pete and Rose Byrne’s (“Peter Rabbit”) Ellie walk through a foster care center, the camera lingers on a poster announcing “November is National Adoption Month!” Throughout the movie, characters work to make clear the plight of youth in the system and the importance of finding them loving homes. Before the credits roll, websites are given for viewers to find out more about fostering adopting children.

“Instant Family” is a message movie, and it’s not a terribly subtle one.

There’s a cynical side of me that’s driven to criticize the film for this ham-fistedness — it’s the same side that’s led to my cementing a reputation as someone who likes to, or at least has a knack for, writing negative reviews — but if it’s cool with you, I’d like to do something different. Instead of lambasting “Instant Family” for its cheesiness, I’d like to focus on how fundamentally good-hearted it is, and how genuine emotion driven by strong performances and a terrific sense of humor earn it every ounce of its schmaltz.

So many films try and fail for this sort of touching story. They go their entire runtimes tossing

out cheap, predictable emotional moments sandwiched between equally dull jokes. “Instant Family” director Sean Anders is no stranger to this, having helmed “Daddy’s Home 2” — a truly sad attempt at a Christmas comedy — but here he strikes gold. Where “Daddy’s Home 2” seemed nearly incapable of landing a punchline, “Instant Family” establishes early on that it knows how to set up a great joke and how to follow

“Instant Family” Ann Arbor 20 + IMAX, Goodrich Quality 16 Paramount Pictures through with it. It may be too early to say that Anders learned from the mistakes of his earlier films, but at the very least, he’s clearly learned to let the jokes breathe and allow the chemistry between his performers to speak for itself.

Wahlberg and Byrne head up the cast and play off each other well.

The relationship between them that forms the core of the movie is easy to believe as a result. There’s little time spent establishing them; we’re just thrown into their marriage and expected to follow along. The stand-out of the cast is Isabela Moner (“Sicario: Day of the Soldado”) as Lizzy, the oldest of the foster siblings Pete and Ellie

adopt. Moner already proved that she can partially salvage even a flat script with her work in the “Sicario” sequel, and with the stronger script present in “Instant Family,” she shines in a role that finds her perfectly portraying a teenager who has been in the system long enough to become jaded by it. The young actress’s work in the past year alone has proven her to be a talent to watch as her career continues.

For all the well-deserved praise there is to be heaped upon the main cast, a word must be spared for the supporting players.

Octavia Spencer (“The Shape of Water”) and Tig Notaro (“Dog Days”) play Karen and Sharon, the two social workers who help Pete and Ellie as they enter the world of foster parenting, and they both lend vibrant performances to characters that another script may have left devoid of personality. Here, they become comedic highlights of the film, an odd couple that never fails to get a laugh. As Pete’s mother Sandy, perpetual scene-stealer (and University alum!) Margo Martindale (“Sneaky Pete”) gets perhaps the most emotionally resonant moment of a film chockfull of them. Everyone, onscreen and off, gives their all, and the finished product reflects that over and over again. “Instant Family” is a film with a goal, gooey edges and all; it’s a rousing, funny and deeply moving success.

ALBUM REVIEW

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

verses barbed with hostility and cartoonish rowdiness land like punches to the gut.

Earl is aimlessly angry, pushing the boundary of social acceptability without any substance behind the drive. Yet, there was no denying Earl Sweatshirt’s skill — heavy-handed wordplay unpacking neatly, precise yet still unpredictable — and he soon caught attention, especially after disappearing shortly (spending a hiatus at a boarding school in Samoa) after Earl’s release, as the rest of Odd Future adopted “Free Earl!” into a rallying cry. In this absence, Earl Sweatshirt became a symbol that Odd Future used in part to catapult themselves further into the public sphere, an anarchic representation that was discordant to the Earl who ended up returning two years later to L.A. Within his time apart from Odd Future’s chaotic world, he found space to turn his attention inward, changing perspectives as he changed physical locations.

Perhaps a result of this isolated period of discovery, or perhaps not, in between every single project Earl Sweatshirt has released — from Earl to 2013’s Doris to 2015’s I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt to this year’s Some Rap Songs — there has been a progression: of technical skill, of self, of forms of expression.

This growth is evident within Earl’s music. Doris dismantles Earl’s juvenile foundations and builds them anew, grounding songs in more personal subject matter and showcasing a greater variation in sound while still maintaining the dense, twisting, MF DOOMesque lyricism he became infamous for in 2010.

I Don’t Like Shit takes Doris’s eclecticism and f lattens it, focusing inward.

Sweeping samples and bright jazz-infused chords are made murky, transformed into fragmented instrumentation and muddled melodies — a dark backdrop that Earl cuts right through. Oftentimes rapping at a slower pace than he did on Doris or Earl, his words seem to be the biggest focus of I Don’t Like Shit, diving into his own psyche with a heaviness that was never quite as apparent before. If this was rock bottom, then Some Rap Songs arrives like the first breath of air after emerging from the waves. It cuts all the previous deadweight to effortlessly hang suspended: a

masterwork of efficiency.

In the grand scheme of Earl Sweatshirt’s entire discography (save for 2015’s loosie “solace”), Some Rap Songs stands out as a kind of anomaly. Rather than the clean organization of bars

Some Rap Songs is an attempt to reconceive not only what kind of music Earl Sweatshirt creates but who exactly Earl Sweatshirt is

delivered one on top of the next in staccato bursts, this album is more organic. It glitches; it hisses; it loops relentlessly over bars that aimlessly drift off into a multitude of directions. Take opener “Shattered Dreams” — the loop begins with a sample from author James Baldwin.

“Imprecise words,” Baldwin states and the beat haltingly picks up, stumbling under the drawn-out fuzzy repetition of “dreams.” Beneath it all, Earl ambles into nonsequiturs, “Mask off, mask on, we trickor-treatin’ / Back off, standoffish and anemic / Yeah, my n***a Ish, told him it’s a feelin’ / Blast off, buckshot into my ceilin’.” The result is a track that sinks into an introspective haze, and within its garbled notes, Earl taps into a nearly uncharacterizable sentiment: a yearning, a searching and a wistfulness for something just beyond reach.

This strange abstraction of mood and sound is due in part to Some Rap Songs’s collaborators. The crew of young artists who worked on the album with Earl — NYC rappers MIKE and Medhane, alongside rapper/producer Sixpress and innovative collective Standing on the

Classifieds

Corner, among others — are all known for pushing experimental boundaries within their own music, splintering apart traditional aspects of jazz and hip hop in order to create a more unorthodox form of soulsearching. “I be with Mike and Med / Nowadays I be with Sage and with Sixpress, ya dig?” Earl says on “Nowhere2Go,” and it’s easy to see the effect of these new relationships through the album’s preference for feeling over structure.

Most of the tracks on Some Rap Songs hold some kind of technical malfunction — Earl Sweatshirt’s raps don’t sit quite right on the looped sample of Soul Superiors’s 1970 song “Trust In Me Baby” on “Ontheway!” and his verses in “Peanut” are chopped and layered so roughly it becomes difficult to discern the words — yet it is these very cracks in the album’s musical landscape that allows the underlying emotion to be so easily perceived. Much like J Dilla brought a human aspect to the mechanics of his programming, incorporating aspects of swing and groove into his hip-hop beats, the f laws on Some Rap Songs make the album feel more personable as the unfocused looping samples give Earl Sweatshirt an opportunity to wander into self-ref lection.

Some Rap Songs is an attempt to reconceive not only what kind of music Earl Sweatshirt creates but who exactly Earl Sweatshirt is.

On “Playing Possums,” Earl stitches together recordings of an old speech his mother, Cheryl Harris, gave at UCLA and his recently deceased father, Keorapestse Kgositsile, reciting an excerpt from his poem, “Anguish Longer Than Sorrow.” “To my son Thebe,” we hear Harris say. “Cultural worker and student of life, whose growth and insights inspire me,” and in the background, Kgositsile slowly echoes, “For some children / Words like home / Could not carry any possible meaning / But / Displaced / Border / Refugee.” It is an effort to reconcile two very strained familial relationships, and although Kgositsile passed away before he could hear it, the intent behind “Playing Possums” still remains strongly rooted within the framework of Some Rap Songs: a cathartic letter addressed in the form of music, bringing with it the belief that there is always a chance to rebuild anew again.

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Thoughts on ‘Some Songs’ SHIMA SADAGHIYANI Daily Music Editor

In a recent interview with Vulture, rapper Earl Sweatshirt ref lected on the sound of his most recent third studio album Some Rap Songs, stating that, “(the album) is infinitum. It’s the snake eating its tail.”

As the quote suggests, Some Rap Songs brings to mind an image of the ouroboros.

Each song is built solely off of loops — segments of endlessly repeating warped beats, stripped-down instrumentals and muff led audio clips. Each track’s end eats the beginning of the next, creating a sort of timeless vacuum both within the songs themselves and within the album as a whole.

In this nebula, Earl Sweatshirt f loats, allowing his verses to unravel, free-form and purposefully off-beat. The

resulting sound is markedly different from the sharp technical perfection of any of Earl’s past projects, yet to produce something polished doesn’t seem to be the point.

Within the hypnotism of intense loops, Some Rap Songs constantly redefines itself, creating a layered meditation on where Earl Sweatshirt has

Some Rap Songs Earl Sweatshirt Tan Cressida been, on how he is now and on where he could go in the future.

In the ouroboros, it is impossible to arrive at the end without simultaneously stumbling upon the beginning.

In the same sense, it is impossible to appraise this

album without first looking back.

Earl Sweatshirt made his official debut in 2010 with the release of the “EARL” music video. “I got nuts to bust, and butts to fuck, and ups to shut / And sluts to fucking uppercut / It’s O-F, buttercup, go head, fuck with us,” he raps over scenes of him and other members of Odd Future (see: OFWGKTA) loitering around various locations in Los Angeles. Under a fisheye lens, they drink a suspiciously brown concoction that is equal parts prescription drugs, cough syrup, malt liquor and marijuana. They end up convulsing on the ground, foaming at the mouth and spitting up various bodily f luids.

This offensively grotesque parody of body horror matches the insolence of the self-titled mixtape “EARL” emerged from. Here,

ACROSS 1 Insurance submission 6 Spars on the briny 11 Spanish I verb 14 Vital body vessel 15 Choristers who are usually women 16 Young bloke 17 Get increasingly steamed 19 “Diary of a Wimpy __”: Jeff Kinney book series 20 Home of the NHL’s Blues 21 Scrape off 22 Radio hobbyists 23 Rickie Fowler’s org.

24 One way to travel 26 Provocative social media tactic 32 Old Italian bread?

34 Jai __ 35 Forearm-related 36 Wee hr.

38 Approves 39 Disciple’s query 40 “Am not!” retort 41 Spa treatment 43 Bullet __: list highlight 44 Battlefield order 47 __ Mode, designer voiced

by Brad Bird in “Incredibles 2” 48 Strive 49 Skinny 51 Sleeping bag closer 55 Getting stuff done, initially 58 “Who, me?”

59 Striking white stripe between a horse’s eyes 61 From A to Z 62 Venue with skyboxes 63 Expected 64 Animation frame 65 Venomous snake 66 Hindu spiritual writing DOWN 1 Despicable dudes 2 Ransack

3 Depleted sea 4 “__ Quiet Uptown”: “Hamilton” song 5 Spanish dessert wine 6 Bryn __ College 7 Goya’s “Duchess of __” 8 It may be earpiercing 9 Bullfight figure 10 ID gradually being omitted from Medicare cards 11 Water’s capability to neutralize acid 12 Injure badly 13 Track ratios 18 President who appointed two women to the Supreme Court 22 Sledding spot 23 “Yes, fine by me” 25 Pierre’s “his” 26 Second cup at a diner, e.g.

27 Unite on the sly 28 Spoken for 29 Stairway element

30 Statistician Silver 31 Dire 32 Bakery unit 33 Cross inscription 37 Like harvested hay 42 Video game stage 45 Black ice, e.g.

46 Boeing rival 49 All-in-one Apple 50 Florida State player, familiarly

52 Secured, as a win 53 Source of cones 54 Early late-night TV host 55 Lacking slack 56 Business magnate 57 Olympics coach Karolyi 59 Tower authority: Abbr.

60 The SEC’s Tigers

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Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Wednesday, December 5, 2018 — 7A

Doing it the hard way EVANSTON — Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue.

A minute into his press conference, trying to sum up a game in which his team played above its level yet still came ETHAN up short, SEARS Northwestern coach Chris Collins offered the kind of statement you couldn’t have imagined anyone saying about Michigan a month ago.

“We still fight back,” Collins said. “We take the lead, get it to the last two minutes against what a lot of you feel is the best team in the country.”

And, after a ninth-straight win to start the season for the

Wolverines, that wasn’t all that surprising a thing to say.

Tuesday was the worst game Michigan has played this season.

It suffered scoreless stretches in which its best offensive answer was junior point guard Zavier Simpson chucking a 3-pointer, on which he was 0-for-5. It struggled to contain Dererk Pardon, who scored 20 points on 9-of-10 shooting with five rebounds as a result. When junior center Jon Teske was off the floor, the Wolverines struggled to contain pretty much everyone. In the waning minutes of a close game, Michigan coach John Beilein went to sophomore Eli Brooks to run point — not Simpson, the team’s heart and soul.

And yet, when the clock read zeroes, the Wolverines had beaten the Wildcats, 62-60. In that sense, Tuesday’s was the most

impressive game Michigan has played thus far.

This was on the road, in the Big Ten, with a hostile crowd, in a late, close game against an opponent who had beaten the Wolverines every time the two played in its building since 2013. It’s the type of game Michigan could get away with losing and given the way Michigan played, it’s the type of game it should have lost.

Last year, it was a game the Wolverines did lose. A year ago to the day, Michigan went to Columbus and coughed up a 20-point lead, unable to stop the Buckeyes’ sea of momentum once they got rolling. There was nobody it could trust in that spot and when adversity came, things fell apart.

This year?

“We didn’t get scrambled,” said sophomore guard Jordan Poole.

ANNIE KLUS/Daily

Ignas Brazdeikis and Jordan Poole combined for 38 points, as Michigan won it’s ninth straight game Tuesday night.

‘M’ escapes Northwestern with 62-60 win THEO MACKIE

Daily Sports Writer

EVANSTON — For 23 minutes, it looked like it was going to be easy.

Then, the No. 5 Michigan men’s basketball team (2-0 Big Ten, 9-0 overall) inexplicably met its biggest challenge in a season that has included three double-digit wins over ranked opponents, just before escaping with a 62-60 win.

Northwestern — trailing 45-30 with 16:13 to play — broke off seven quick points to cut the Wolverines’ lead to eight. Michigan, though, was used to that. Both North Carolina and Purdue made second half miniruns without ever really threatening the Wolverines.

“Every other team that has played this team,” said Wildcats coach Chris Collins, “when they made a push on them, like they did to get to 15 points, every other team has laid down and lost by 25 or 30.”

So when freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis hit a layup to break Michigan’s drought, most assumed that the Wolverines would roll for the rest of the evening.

But before anyone had time to digest that assumption, the Wildcats got an and-one, followed by a pair of baskets off turnovers.

Then, another and-one.

As Michigan coach John Beilein signaled for a timeout, the crowd at Welsh-Ryan Arena — or at least, the purple-clad half of it — rose to a fever pitch, temporarily transforming

into a standing-room-only venue.

Brazdeikis — who finished with a game-high 23 points — and junior guard Zavier Simpson hit back-toback baskets for the Wolverines to briefly placate the storm, but the rest of the night was far from comfortable for Michigan.

With 6:33 to play, Northwestern guard Vic Law pulled up for his second 3-point attempt in a row.

Just like the previous one, it found nothing but nylon, putting the Wildcats up, 52-51 — the Wolverines’ first second half deficit since Nov. 10 against Holy Cross.

“The shots that Law was making and (Ryan) Taylor made, they were tough shots,” Beilein said. “It wasn’t like he was getting open, he created all those NBA (shots).”

Added Brazdeikis: “They were hitting shots when we weren’t. I felt like we had a bunch of open shots in the second half, and they weren’t falling. And then they started to hit crazy shots.”

That three, combined with Michigan’s ongoing five-minute scoring drought, prompted Beilein to make an unusual change, replacing Simpson with sophomore guard Eli Brooks.

Simpson was among the Wolverines’ most important players in the early going, with eight firsthalf points. But Collins’ defense adjusted at halftime, playing off Simspon and forcing him to beat them from 3-point range. And when Simpson responded by going

ANNIE KLUS/Daily

Junior guard Zavier Simpson scored eight first-half points on Tuesday night.

0-for-5 from three, Beilein called on Brooks.

Brooks — after a Brazdeikis three tied the game — rewarded his coach’s faith by hitting a three to restore Michigan’s lead.

“They were just daring (Simpson) to shoot,” Beilein said. “And as a result, we ran with Eli. We got faith in him. Eli’s a good defender. He’s an above-average defender, Zavier is a spectacular defender. So we’re giving up something, but we needed to get something from somebody and he gave it.”

From there, the teams traded baskets. After Brooks’ three, it was Brazdeikis with a free throw.

Then junior center Jon Teske and sophomore guard Jordan Poole with a pair of easy dunks.

But with each Michigan basket that seemed to shift momentum back to the Wolverines’ sideline, the Wildcats conjured a response.

Brazdeikis’ free throw was the only time in the last 11:30 that Northwestern didn’t respond with a basket of its own.

So, despite a late flurry of points, Michigan was unable to extend its lead beyond one possession.

When a Wildcat offensive foul granted the Wolverines the opportunity to do so, redshirt junior forward Charles Matthews promptly responded with a traveling violation. On its next possession — with a two-point lead and under a minute to play — Michigan had yet another opportunity to put the game to bed after a pair of clutch defensive rebounds. This time, it was a shot-clock violation that undid the Wolverines, offering Northwestern a final possession with 14.2 seconds to play.

Then, Michigan’s stifling defense — absent for so much of the second half — showed why it has been lauded as the nation’s best when it mattered most.

It forced the Wildcats into a desperation heave at the buzzer that smacked off the backboard, cladded the front of the rim and bounced harmlessly to the floor as the Wolverines — somehow — escaped with their perfect record intact.

“I knew we were gonna have to go through games like this if we’re gonna be good,” Beilein said.

“And we survived it. I don’t know how.”

“I feel like a team can easily get scrambled being in a situation like this for the first time, but we had a lot of vets out there on the court. Guys who had been in this situation last year. We didn’t get rattled. We were just executing.”

After Northwestern pulled into the lead for the first time, with 6:32 to go in the game, Brooks and freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis hit 3-pointers on backto-back possessions to take it right back.

After the Wildcats tied it again with just over two minutes to go, Poole cruised into the lane and

threw down a hammer.

And after the offense failed to execute in the game’s final minute — redshirt junior Charles Matthews traveling and Northwestern forcing a shot clock violation — the Wolverines bore down and forced a desperation 3-pointer from Ryan Taylor at the buzzer.

At some point amid the preceding run from the Wildcats, Simpson told the team to calm down. It wasn’t necessary.

“He didn’t have to say calm down,” Poole said, “cause everybody’s already calm.”

Michigan is relatively young, without a senior on its roster, but it carries the experience of last year’s Final Four run — in droves.

Save for Brazdeikis, everyone on the floor as the game wound down had faced situations a whole lot tougher than Welsh-Ryan Arena on a Tuesday.

As for the freshman, who led the team in scoring with 23 points, there was no ambiguity.

“We can go all the way,” Brazdeikis said. “We can win the whole damn thing. No doubt.”

At this point, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

8A — Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Sports

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

What will Michigan make of its season?

There’s really no other way to spin it: picking up only one point last weekend against a reeling Michigan State team is JORGE embarrassCAZARES ing.

From top to bottom, there needs to be a sense of urgency from the No. 15 Michigan hockey team. There is no questioning the fight the team displayed over the weekend — ­ but even though the individual effort was there, the results were not.

In order to be one of the best teams in the country as they showed they could be last season, the Wolverines need to find ways to win. After both games last weekend, Michigan coach Mel Pearson emphasized

the need for his team to be able to grind out a game.

“We’re going to have to learn to play in games like this,” Pearson said on Friday. “It’s not going to be up and down hockey every night. We’re going to have to stop, start, grind it out, keep it simple and then find a way to win games.”

Michigan has the talent level on its roster to be among college hockey’s elite. There are nine NHL draft picks on the team — just four other programs have more — including two first-round selections, second only to Boston University’s four.

The Wolverines have shown flashes all season long. They matched a high-powered Penn State offense in Happy Valley — scoring 12 goals in two games — and duked it out against a defensive-minded Notre Dame team (save for a disastrous second period in the 6-2 blowout).

But inconsistencies continue

to plague the team as though Moses himself is still looking to prove a point.

Speaking of that second period against Notre Dame, it is a prime example of the team’s inconsistency. Michigan gave up three goals in a span of three minutes to begin the period — a period that senior captain Joseph Cecconi called “embarrassing” — and allowed one more before going into the second intermission. Outside of the second period of that game, they matched, if not outplayed, the fifth-ranked Fighting Irish — outscoring Notre Dame, 4-3.

The Wolverines are reaching the pivotal halfway point of their season, marked by the annual Great Lakes Invita-

tional Tournament that takes place Dec. 30 and 31. As far as results go, they currently find themselves in a state of mediocrity — two points away from the bottom of the Big Ten standings and dropping eleven spots from their preseason No. 4 ranking.

Remember, only the top-16 ranked teams go on to the NCAA Tournament.

Last year, the Wolverines were 7-7-2 going into the GLI Tournament. A strikingly similar record to this season’s 6-6-3 with a series against Minnesota — one of three teams tied at the bottom of the conference standings — still remaining before the twogame tournament begins.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Pearson said after Saturday’s

“We were in a very similar situation last year.”

game. “We were in a very similar situation last year. Can we come out of that funk? This weekend will be a good chance for us to right the ship and go home for a few days in a good mood. We’ll be ready to go this weekend.”

Last season, the GLI marked a turning point of sorts for the Wolverines. They rattled off 11 wins in their next 16 regularseason games, climbing to No. 10 in the rankings after being unranked at the end of the GLI Tournament.

If last year is any indication, anything can happen this season. And though there is no uphill climb to make it into the rankings this year, Michigan is instead battling with a slippery slope, trying to cling to its top16 spot.

Senior defenseman Joseph Cecconi addressed the team after their loss on Saturday, reestablishing the team’s expectations and emphasizing

the effort and buy-in needed on a daily basis. He made the decision to return to Ann Arbor instead of joining the Dallas Stars. Sophomore defenseman Quinn Hughes also opted to return in lieu of beginning a promising NHL career in Vancouver. The defensive pairing — along with the other seven NHL draftees on the roster — clearly saw the potential to make another deep tournament run. There’s still half a season before that run is even a possibility.

Though the season is far from over, whether Michigan can find consistency and have a second-half push similar to last season remains to be seen.

And so, it’s time for the team to take a long look in the mirror and decide what it wants to make of its season.

Cazares can be reached on Twitter @jcazares98 or via email at jcazares@umich.edu.

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Michigan coach Mel Pearson has guided a similar start as last season, with a 6-6-3 record through the first 15 games.

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | D ECE M B E R 5 , 201 8

ILLUSTRATION BY CASEY TIN

The Sex Issue

2B

Wednesday, December 5, 2018 // The Statement

statement T H E M I CH I GA N DAI LY | D ECE M B E R 5 , 201 8

Managing Statement Editor: Brian Kuang

Editor in Chief: Alexa St. John

Managing Editor: Dayton Hare

Deputy Editors: Colin Beresford Jennifer Meer

Photo Editor: Amelia Cacchione

Copy Editors: Elise Laarman Finntan Storer

Designer: Elizabeth Bigham

Copy That: The one about sex

BY EMILY STILLMAN, DAILY COPY EDITOR

I

’ve never written about sex before. It’s always felt like a breach of some invisible social contract, like a taboo topic tiptoed around euphemistically because we can’t talk about the details: It’s too personal, too vulnerable, too awkward for your grandmother to hear you wrote an article about hooking up. I’ve always thrown sex into the category of things beyond my scope of personal, opinionated expertise, like foreign policy or Major League Baseball or classical music.

Let me preface ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL this with the fact that I do not write. My job at The Michigan Daily is to edit: I proofread and fact check, suggest and question. But in terms of generating content, I leave my opinions unsaid. Armed with the words of others, I am free to wholeheartedly participate in the world of journalism without baring an inch of my soul. All without being the slightest bit exposed — no byline with my name and no picture. I do not write. And I most certainly do not write about sex.

But I’ve been in college for three years now and it occurred to me that maybe I do have something to say. Maybe there is room beyond the silence, beyond the closed lips, beyond the texts I have typed and deleted, just past whispers of friends and sharp turns I’ve taken to avoid him, to avoid you, to avoid myself.

There is all the space in the world to say what I want to say.

It takes courage to share our stories.

It takes bravery to share our trauma,

I do not write. And I most certainly do not write about sex.

our regrets, our mistakes and our successes. It is one of the hardest things in the world to be honest. As an editor, I’ve had the privilege to read so many accounts of honesty: Passionate opinions, personal narratives, coverage of tragedies and triumphs. The mundane and the unusual, the wins and the losses.

I am going to write that sex in college is not what I expected. Hookup culture, to me, has been a source of intangible, undefinable confusion. I have gotten by without much thought.

I haven’t been in danger, or in love. I have played my part in the chaos, at the frat parties, at the bar, in the middle of the night. I have lied and been lied to, I have rejected and been rejected, I have stomached disappointment and an extra drink. I have snuck home in the morning and called my mother.

I don’t write, but I am a writer. And I’m not a born communicator: In fact, I’m an expert in avoidance. A lot of us are. What strikes me about hookup culture is how deeply removed we’ve become from our truths. I am 21 and just learning how to say what I mean.

My mom always told me I’d never be in a relationship until I stopped looking over my shoulder every time I make a decision. I always told her it wouldn’t matter here. But I have to learn how to write what I’m thinking, how to leave something unedited and unfinished.

There is a lot of noise. There are a lot of layers. I was always the one in high school turning down the music at parties so I could hear you speak more clearly. I was always one to want what I couldn’t have. That has been my biggest flaw. I could never articulate perfectly what I was feeling, so I didn’t say anything. I was never 100 percent sure about foreign policy, or baseball, or music or sex, so I never spoke up at all.

I think we forget that people are listening. I forget I’m always staying just 10 more minutes at the bar because I have more to say. I’m always forgetting that I know how to be myself. I’m an editor: always cutting things out, always fixing your mistakes. I don’t write about sex. Maybe I’ll learn how to.

The annual sex survey I

n this issue of The Statement Magazine, we’re talking about sex. But to get a comprehensive view of the campus sexual landscape, we can’t simply rely on anecdotes and personal experiences. In an effort to get some quantitative information about student sexual activity, The Daily anonymously surveyed 11,000 randomly-selected students abouwt their experiences and perceptions of sex.

The survey received 1,409 responses, with respondents spread evenly across undergraduate grade levels. The respondents were 55.4 percent female, 43.1 percent male and 1.5 percent identifying as nonbinary or “other.” They were also 83.3 percent heterosexual, 4.5 percent homosexual and 9.3 percent bisexual. It should be noted the statistics resulting from this survey may be biased, as many individuals may not wish to disclose such information.

The survey questions covered several areas, including perceptions of sex (both in general and on campus), sex education and personal experience. Some notable statistics and trends emerged from the responses.

To begin broadly, students shared differing perceptions of what “sex” is. While there was broad (97.3 percent) agreement that penetrative sex qualifies as sex, 47.8 percent of students also considered oral sex to be sex, and 33.7 percent considered any kind of genital contact to be sex.

Students also reported differing definitions of “hooking up.”

In total, 75 percent of students included oral sex and penetrative sex in their definitions, and 67.8 percent included other genital contact. Notably, 58 percent included making out in their definitions.

By these personal definitions, a total of 65.2 percent of students reported having sex during this semester, with 28.5 percent reporting that they had sex once or twice per month or less and 21.5 percent reporting that they had sex an average of once or twice per week. Students also proved to be relatively prescient about their peers’ sexual habits, as 50.7 percent of respondents estimated that between 60 and 80 percent of students had sex this semester.

Wednesday, December 5, 2018 // The Statement

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BY RILEY LANGEFELD, DAILY STAFF REPORTER

ILLUSTRATION BY VALERIE CHRISTOU

A total of 61.9 percent of students said they had had mostly positive sexual experiences in college, and a total of 77.8 percent of respondents agreed that they felt comfortable discussing sexual topics with friends.

Students also reported using dating apps at significant rates.

The most commonly used dating app was Tinder, with 47.8 percent of respondents saying they use it.

The next highest was Bumble, with 20.6 percent reporting they use it. However, most students using these apps reported they don’t use them to actively look for partners. A majority of 57.7 percent of students who use dating apps use them primarily for casual browsing — that is, without the primary intention of

finding a partner. Most students had used the internet for sexual activity, and a total of 57.3 percent of students reported they had sent a nude photo or received one from someone they knew.

Responding to a question about contraception, 73.8 percent of students named condoms as a preferred method of contraception, and 51.3 percent named birth control pills. Intrauterine devices were chosen by 16.4 percent, and withdrawal (also known as “pulling out”) and abstinence were each chosen by 15.8 percent of students.

The data also revealed some subtle differences in sexual attitudes by gender. For example, women were 13.8 percentage points more likely than men to

say they were comfortable openly discussing sexual topics with friends. And when it comes to using dating apps, women were 21.2 percentage points more likely to be using the apps primarily for casual browsing. Men were 6.8 percentage points more likely to be looking for a relationship on these apps and 16.2 percentage points more likely to be looking to hook up.

Men were also less likely to consider most sexual activity to be “hooking up,” with the exception of penetrative sex, which had similar perceptions among men and women.

There were also notable differences in experience by sexual orientation. For instance, gay and lesbian students were about

twice as likely as other students to have had five or more sexual partners in college. The data also revealed some troubling differences between students of different sexual orientations. Straight students were 10.4 percent more likely than bisexual students to say that they had mostly positive sexual experiences in college. Gay and lesbian students fell in the middle of these groups.

(It should be noted that majorities of all three groups reported mostly positive experiences).

In the free response section, which asked several general questions about sex and relationships, responses varied widely but followed some general trends. In response to the question “What is the worst thing to hear from your partner after sex?”, the most common response by a significant margin was a comment that the experience was negative or underwhelming for the partner. Other frequent responses included rude, dismissive or uncaring comments.

Asked about their favorite postsex activity, responses consistently included activities such as cuddling, talking, sleeping, eating and showering.

For the question “What suggestions would you like to give to your current sexual partner?”, respondents frequently expressed a desire for better communication from their partner. Other frequent answers included requests for more sexual attention and a desire to be more adventurous in sexual relationships.

Students also expressed a general dissatisfaction with the sex education they received. Asked about what they wished they knew about sex when they were younger, most students said they wished they had a more comprehensive view of sexual activity. Many students said they had abstinence-only sex education in school and that it left them unprepared for sexual situations, as well as uninformed about consent and safe sex. Many also said that their sexual education mostly just covered basic anatomical information about sex. These students generally wished that they learned more about healthy sexual relationships, emotional aspects of sex, gender dynamics and unhealthy societal perceptions about sex.

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Wednesday, December 5, 2018 // The Statement

Wednesday, December 5, 2018 // The Statement

THE SEX SURVEY

This year, 1449 undergraduate students took The Statement’s annual sex survey. 41.9% percent of respondents identified as male, 56.5% percent identified as female, and 1.5% percent Design by Willa Hua and Casey Tin | Analysis by Robert Lesser, Parth Dhyani, Alice Liu identified as non-binary. Check out the results below!

internet & sex Where did people learn the most about sex?

sexual experiences in college

FRESHMAN

SENIOR

1

3

55%

Have you had overall positive sexual experiences?

Number of Sexual Partners

FRESHMAN

SENIOR

51%

70%

Overall, people learned the most about sex from the internet. Significantly more females (34.2%) than males (18.9%) learned from friends, and significantly more males (66.7%) than females (53.1%) from the internet.

Straight Female

80

Straight Male Queer

60

of students have used dating apps

* These numbers represent medians.

40

20

talking about sex in college

0

How often do students have sex?

Internet

Friends

Other

What Students Use Hookup Apps for: None

Freshman

Straight males are more likely to be looking for a relationship or for a hookup than straight females.

1 or 2 per month

Sophomore Junior Senior

Straight Females

3 to 4 per week

Straight Males

5 to 6 per week

Queer

7+ per week 0

20

40

60

What is considered sex? What are hookups?

Most consider sex as penetration and oral sex, while definitions of hookups vary.

100

Hookup Sex

80

80

40

Female

20

Male Penetration

Oral Sex

Other Genital Heavy Contact Petting

Making out

-20

0

~

20

20

40

60

80

100 %

safe sex Most Commonly Used Birth Control Methods

Females feel more comfortable talking about sex with friends than males. Significantly more females answered strongly agree (37%) or agree (46.6%) than male (30.4% and 39.4% respectively).

Strongly disagree

Casual Browsing Relationship Hooking Up Other

0

100 %

“I feel comfortable openly discussing sexual topics with my friends. ”

60

0

1 or 2 per week

Condoms

Pills

IUD

Withdrawal

Abstinence

73.2%

50.6%

16.3%

15.7%

15.8%

Strongly agree

40

60

80

%

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Wednesday, December 5, 2018 // The Statement From left to right: Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca

“Sounds Fake but Okay”: Asexuality on Campus

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or LSA seniors Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca, it was best friendship at first sight. Sarah and Kayla were roommates freshman year, randomly placed together in Alice Lloyd Residence Hall. They’ve lived together ever since, save for summers and a semester Sarah spent in Germany.

“We just happened to get each other,” Sarah explained.

“Week one, we were like, ‘We’re in love!’”

Kayla joked.

“By day two we were like, ‘Oh! We’re already best friends!’” Sarah added.

Their three-and-a-half years of friendship have created countless inside jokes and an easy intimacy — as well as a weekly podcast, which now has more than 60 episodes. The subject of this podcast is sexuality, specifically asexuality and demisexuality. It’s grown to have an impressive following: about 1,000 listens per week and roughly 25,000 total listens. uring their freshman year, Sarah and Kayla didn’t really talk much about sexuality.

Sarah was still figuring out her sexuality, and it wasn’t until the summer after freshman year that she came out as asexual.

Asexuality is the absence of sexual attraction. People who are asexual, otherwise known as “ace,” simply do not feel sexual attraction toward any gender.

Sarah identifies as aromantic asexual, or “aro-ace,” meaning that she isn’t interested in romantic or sexual relationships.

“The summer after freshman year, I found out Sarah was asexual — she made a post on Tumblr and I followed her Tumblr,” Kayla recounted with her friend.

The three of us were crowded around a small table in the lobby of the UgLi. Murmured homework questions and shouted coffee orders from Bert’s provided a steady stream of background noise.

“It wasn’t even a post about coming out,” Sarah clarified. “It was an ‘about me’ post.”

“So I saw and I messaged her and I was like, ‘Hey, I saw this,’ and she was like, ‘Cool,’ and I was like, ‘Cool!’ And that was it.”

The podcast, which the pair named

D

BY MIRIAM FRANCISCO, STATEMENT COLUMNIST “Sounds Fake But Okay,” grew out of fied. “Because I’m my father’s daughter.”

“I was saying how much the podconversations between Sarah and Kayla about sexuality during their junior cast has helped me realize things about year. These discussions about the diver- myself, and how Sarah has been there sity of sexual attraction led to Kayla’s for me throughout, helping me underrealization that she is demisexual. stand and teaching me things,” Kayla said. “I got very emotional.”

People Most of the episodes of who are “Sounds Fake But Okay” demisexual, are inspired by Sarah and or “demi,” Kayla’s own experienconly experies. For example, the duo ence sexual recorded an episode about attraction ace exclusion from the after formLGBTQ+ community after ing an emoa high school classmate tional bond of Sarah’s — who identiwith their fies as queer — tweeted on potential the subject, expressing his partner. opinion that asexual peoKayla began ple should not be included to suspect in the LGBTQ+ commushe might nity. Sarah explained that be demisexCourtesy of Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca acephobia(discrimination ual during her junior year, but she was in against asexual people) often comes a committed relationship with a from within the LGBTQ+ community.

“Sarah was livid,” Kayla man at the time and so it didn’t feel urgent for her to define her sexuality. said. “I was also very angry.”

“I was just upset because I really liked However, after Kayla’s relationship with her boyfriend ended, her demisexu- this (classmate) as a person,” Sarah added, ality became much more evident to her. “And I was like, ‘You’re a part of the Casual sex had never appealed to her, and queer community, how can you be doing demisexuality just made sense. It feels like this?’ So that was an angry episode.”

The classmate messaged Kayla less of a big deal for her to be demisexual as a woman, she explained, because soci- after listening to their episode on ace ety already expects women to need an exclusion to apologize for his tweet.

“I think he kind of got it a little bit more emotional connection for sex. Some people confuse demisexuality with the choice after that,” Kayla said. “In that episode, to wait for an emotional commitment we did a lot of explaining about why the before sex, but just as asexuality isn’t the ace community deserves to be in the queer same as celibacy, demisexual people are community. A lot of people’s basis (for ace different from those who make an active exclusion) is, ‘Well, you don’t receive as decision to postpone sexual activity. much discrimination so you shouldn’t Kayla remembered the intensity of belong’… There should be no barriers recording the January 2018 episode about to entry (into the queer community).”

“It’s a harmful way of thinking, to be her realization that she is demisexual.

“I made Sarah very uncomfortable like, ‘You have to have experienced horri(by crying), because Sarah doesn’t do ble, horrible things or else you can’t be part emotions in general — which is a stereo- of this community,’” Sarah agreed. “I will type (about asexual people),” Kayla said. acknowledge that in general, the ace com“Not because I’m ace,” Sarah clari- munity has had, especially on a systemic

level, less discrimination than the gay community and the trans community.”

For example, no one has ever tried to stop asexual people from being able to marry — but then again, many aces don’t want to marry if they’re also aromantic.

Some asexual people are homoromantic, Sarah explained, but they face discrimination because of their same-sex romantic orientation, not their asexuality.

“Asexual people have existed forever, but it was only recently that it became a community,” she said.

“There’s still a lot of discrimination (against asexual people),” Kayla said. “Maybe that stuff isn’t as bad as what’s happening to gay people or trans people, but that doesn’t take away the fact that it happens.”

Sarah described “corrective” rape as one such issue aces often face. “Corrective” rape is when sexual assault is intended to “fix” a perceived sexual deviance, such as same-sex attraction or, in the case of asexual people, a lack of sexual desire toward anyone.

As an aro-ace college student, Sarah sometimes worries that her friendliness might be taken as flirtation. She explained that she tries to be careful not to insinuate romantic or sexual interest, but that she hasn’t had too many awkward situations arise since most of her friends know that she’s asexual.

“If they follow me on Twitter, they probably know I’m ace,” she said.

“And if they like you, they’re gonna follow you on Twitter,” Kayla joked.

“Exactly!”

Sarah laughed.

“My Twitter’s great!”

Though Sarah and Kayla’s friends and family have been accepting of their sexualities, society still has a ways to go in accepting and respecting the different patterns of sexual attraction.

“A lot of people make judgment calls on asexuality when they don’t really understand it,” Sarah explained. “Part of the reason why we started the podcast is because we wanted to help other people understand asexuality.”

Wednesday, December 5, 2018 // The Statement

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEX ISSUE COVERS The first Statement Sex Issue ran in December 2012, with a cover piece about gay cruising in Ann Arbor. This would turn into an annual feature that has now run into its seventh year.

2013

2015

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Wednesday, December 5, 2018 // The Statement

VISUAL S TAT E M E N T:

Michigan We b P re s s At 11:30 PM last night, after making the paper, The Michigan Daily senior class traveled an hour North to Davisburg, Michigan. Every year, the seniors get a tour of the Michigan Web Press where our papers are printed. We got to see the process from start to finish, from the first proof to the bounded stacks of newspaper. photos: Amelia Cacchione and Evan Aaron