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ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM

Monday, December 10, 2018

Ann Arbor, Michigan

michigandaily.com

10 in a row

Michigan improved to 10-0 after defeating South Carolina in a high-scoring, offensive shootout on Saturday.

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Former students allege 40 years of misconduct by SMTD professor

SAMMY SUSSMAN Daily Staff Reporter

The University of Michigan hired Stephen Shipps as an associate professor of music on Sept. 1, 1989. Since then, he has had a successful academic career at the University. From 2001 to 2004, he served on the Executive Committee of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. From 2002 to 2007, he served as the associate dean for academic affairs. He is currently the chair of strings and the faculty director of the Strings Preparatory Academy,

a university-affiliated pre-college music program for local middle and high school students. A Michigan Daily investigation unearthed previously undisclosed allegations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct against Shipps. These reports span nearly 40 years, from Fall 1978 to a Universityaffiliated summer program in the last five years. They include accusations of unwanted touching, sexual assault, prolonged sexual relationships with teenage students, and misogynistic and sexist verbal statements. Shipps declined to comment for

this article. His lawyer, David Nacht, also declined to comment. The Daily also found reports that at least one faculty member in the Music, Theatre & Dance school, Prof. Yizhak Schotten, was made aware of some of these allegations soon after Shipps’s hiring was announced and before he started teaching. It is unclear whether he communicated these concerns to the University at the time, or if the University has ever been made aware of these concerns. *** Shipps taught at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts — known then as the North Carolina

School of the Arts before a 2008 name change — prior to coming to the University of Michigan. The Daily spoke with a former North Carolina School of the Arts college student, who wished to remain anonymous, citing professional and privacy concerns. She currently serves as the associate principal second (the second-ranked member of the second violin section) in a full-time professional orchestra. In this article, she will be referred to as Meghan.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Crashes at intersection of Washtenaw Regents see ‘U’ creates ideological and Hill concern residents, students new Neuro

ADMINISTRATION

RESEARCH

shift for ’19, future

Residents suspect that the sloping road and high speed limit play a role

Changes in Regents’ parties’ will not effect decisions, says Schlissel

At the intersection of Washtenaw Avenue and Hill Street, where the University of Michigan’s iconic painted Rock resides, residents have reported many dangerous car accidents that put drivers and pedestrians at risk. Michigan Traffic Crash Facts, a tool developed by the University, compiles queries of accident information across the state of Michigan. According to MTCF, there were 245 crashes within 150 feet of the intersection of Washtenaw and Hill from 2008 to 2017, and 41 of those crashes were in 2017 alone. In fact, the number of crashes almost doubled from 2016 to 2017 with 25 crashes reported in 2016. Information about 2018 has yet to be synthesized. Residents suspect the high frequency of accidents can be attributed to the sloping road, illegal left turns and the high speed limit –– 45 miles per hour. Holde Dorcherts, a retired University of Michigan library researcher, has lived in a house at this intersection for the last 39 years. She claims accidents have increased since she and her husband have moved into the house. “I’m saying that for the last 39 years, Ann Arbor has increased in size. It’s

RILEY LANGEFELD Daily Staff Reporter

When the new University of Michigan’s Board of Regents convenes in 2019, it will have seven Democrats and just one Republican, the result of two new Democratic members, Jordan Acker and Paul Brown, replacing two current Republican members, Andrew Richner and Andrea Fischer Newman. This will shift the ideological balance of the board to the furthest left it has been in several decades. The board has been comprised of eight officials elected statewide since 1852. Members were initially mostly nonpartisan but increasingly identified with one of the major political parties. By the early 20th century, nearly all members of the board had political affiliations. Since this period, such partisan dominance that will be present next year has rarely been seen. There were several brief periods of Republican dominance, but since the emergence of the modern party system, there have been only two such periods, from 1967 to 1968 and from 1975 to 1984, both marked See REGENTS, Page 2A

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CATHERINE NOUHAN Daily Staff Reporter

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becoming a city instead of a cute little town, and we have enormous traffic coming into town –– thousands of cars,” she said. “This intersection is poorly designed. It was fine 50 to 100 years ago, but now it is a major server into town. Because of this increase in population and traffic we have a lot more accidents here, but the intersection design has not changed.” Dorcherts said it is not an

uncommon occurrence to hear an accident across the street shortly followed by the sirens of an ambulance. “We built over the years a pretty solid hedge, and that hedge takes so much abuse at that corner,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what we plant, it gets demolished from cars.” A similar event happened to resident Chad Brummett, a professor of anesthesiology at the Medical School, when

his iron-rod fence was split in half by an automobile accident a few weeks ago. Brummett said he was shocked by the sheer force needed to dent the fence, let alone break it. “We’ve lived in this house for almost nine years. We see accidents there all the time,” Brummett said.